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Learn True Health with Ashley James

On Learn True Health, Ashley James interviews today's most successful natural healers. Learn True Health was created for YOU, the health enthusiast. If you are passionate about organic living or struggling with health issues and are looking to gain your health naturally, our holistic podcast is what you have been looking for! Ashley James interviews Naturopathic Doctors and expert holistic health care practitioners to bring you key holistic health information, results based advice and new natural steps you can take to achieve true health, starting NOW! If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired, if you are fed up with prescription drug side effects, if you want to live in optimal health but you don't know where to start, this podcast is for you! If you are looking for ACTIONABLE advice from holistic doctors to get you on your path to healing, you will enjoy the wisdom each episode brings. Each practitioner will leave you with a challenge, something that you can do now, and each day, to measurably improve your health, energy, and vitality. Learn about new healing diet strategies, how to boost your immune system, balance your hormones, increase your energy, what supplements to take and why and how to experience your health and stamina in a new way. Ashley James from Learn True Health interviews doctors like Dr. Joel Wallach, Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Oz, Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Molly Niedermeyer on Naturopathic Medicine, Homeopathy, Supplements, Meditation, Holistic Health and Alternative Health Strategies for Gaining Optimal Health.
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Now displaying: 2019
Dec 31, 2019

Check out the great offer Dr. Haley is giving Learn True Health Listeners: https://www.learntruehealth.com/aloe
And be sure to use coupon code LTH for an additional discount!

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"Uniq - Japan" is under a Royalty Free license. Photo of the license: http://bit.ly/2sTETUQ Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: https://youtu.be/MAiHpRUbc0k

 

The Benefits of Taking Aloe Vera Gel

https://www.learntruehealth.com/the-benefits-of-taking-aloe-vera-gel

Highlights:

  • Benefits of ingesting Aloe Vera gel
  • Elimination diet to determine the good and bad foods for you
  • Aloe’s outer leaf acts as a laxative
  • Filtered vs. Unfiltered Aloe Vera gel
  • Look at what’s in the food
  • Always ask: Did that food exist 100 years ago?
  • Grow your own food
  • What the GAPS diet is
  • Powdered foods vs. whole foods
  • Heal from the inside out with the help of Aloe
  • Aloe is not a magic bullet, sometimes medicine is needed but Aloe speeds up healing
  • Gut people: keep it simple on everything

 

Nowadays, Aloe Vera has become a popular hit because of the benefits it can give especially when it comes to beauty. But did you know that Aloe Vera also contains medicinal properties as it contains powerful antioxidants? In today’s episode, let us all listen as Dr. Michael Haley how to heal the body from the inside out with the help of Aloe.

 

[0:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health podcast.

This interview blew my mind. I’ve really been looking forward to publishing this episode with Dr. Michael Haley who stumbled upon this one plant, this one plant that studies are showing doubles healing time, doubles healing time. Can you think of anything on the market, drug or natural that offers that kind of amazing support when it comes to healing? They’re seeing that it doubles the healing time of the digestive tract, that is also helping with skin and there are people with cancer for whom it is helping, acne, eczema, their type 2 diabetes that are seeing fantastic result. So you’re going to love learning more about this great plant from Dr. Michael Haley today.

I want to let you know that he is offering us a fantastic discount. I love asking my guests for great specials for you guys. I love you guys and I want you to get the best deal possible because we’re all going to be trying his amazing juice. I am absolutely sure of it. I love it. I was able to get some from him and it really does live up to its name. So enjoy today’s interview to get all this great information. Then when you’re ready to check out his offer, he’s actually giving us something for free as well. You can go to learntruehealth.com/aloe. That’s learntruehealth.com/aloe. He’s giving us a free cream that is very healing as well as his particular juice and he explains the difference between his and others. I highly agree, everything he says has been my experience as well.

Use the coupon code LTH for an additional discount for the Learn True Health listeners. So go to learntruehealth.com/aloe and use the coupon code LTH. Excellent. Enjoy today’s interview and please, share it with those you love who want to heal their gut and no longer have heartburn.

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 401.

 

[0:02:33] Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s guest. We have on the show with us Dr. Michael Haley, who is an expert in many things, in healing the gut and in Aloe Vera. I am really intrigued about this topic. I actually use Aloe Vera in my early 20s to heal a persistent GERD. I had really bad heartburn. I couldn’t figure out how to heal and I healed it by drinking Aloe Vera juice every day. Ever since then I’ve been such a huge fan. So when I saw that there’s an expert out there in Aloe Vera I said, “Man, we have to get him on the show.” Welcome to the show.

 

[0:03:10] Dr. Michael Haley: Ashley James, thank you so much for having me. I am just finding this out for the first time that you had GERD.

 

[0:03:17] Ashley James: Yeah. Way back in my early 20s. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. I just lost my mother to cancer. I was incredibly stressed out. I was eating the standard Canadian diet which is similar to the standard American diet. My health was just spinning out of control. I had tons of inflammation. I obviously was eating foods that my body was reacting to negatively. I was taking over the counter little purple pills to just make the heartburn go away then one day a naturopath was on the TV sharing ways to heal GERD, heal acid reflux naturally. I thought, “Oh my gosh. That makes so much sense.” I threw those little purple pills right into the trash and started chugging the Aloe Vera every day and apple cider vinegar, I did that a few times. Aloe Vera was really what did it for me. I was so impressed.

Obviously I needed to get out of the abusive relationship and heal the emotional stress that I was going through and also correct my diet. There were many steps along that journey. One of my first steps into holistic health in my 20s was the results I got from drinking Aloe Vera.

 

[0:04:41] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Wonderful. I’m glad to hear this from you because what you just described is probably one of the most common health conditions, not GERD specifically. That’s just part of the digestive tract that you experienced your symptoms in. But people make wrong choices. You’re not hiding that from your listeners. You’re open about that. You started out your life eating pretty well. You then kind of threw caution to the wind and enjoyed the pleasures of life when it comes to the foods that are available to us thinking they are foods because everyone else doing it and they’re still alive, right? It’s not killing them, right? It is.

You start realizing. It’s like, “Okay. I’m starting to look more and more like them as I’m making the same dietary decisions. Something’s not right here. My skin doesn’t look healthy anymore. My gut’s not healthy anymore.” More and more, as people are eating this, they call it food, it’s not food. It’s not. They think it’s food but it’s not. Real food is real food. It grows on trees and we pull them out of the ground. There’s real food and there’s things that people think are food but they’re filled with chemicals that are killing the digestive tract. Some people experience up on the front end and we call it acid reflux, GERD, heartburn as we start getting a little deeper, bacterial overgrowth as we getting to the back end we start calling it things like colitis or if it’s all systemic all over the place irritable bowel disease. There’s a hundred names for it. You called yours GERD because your symptoms was more on the front end.

 

[0:06:48] Ashley James: Right. The same damage if it’s experienced lower in the gut is going to just be called a different thing but you’re saying the location the damage determines the diagnosis but it’s all the same cause, the same damage, the same root cause.

  

[0:07:05] Dr. Michael Haley: Exactly. It’s funny because what you just said, that right there, let’s lock in on that for a minute. We call it something different, why? Because we need a medical diagnosis so that we can treat it when we’re a physician, right? Then we have our treatment protocols. But if you think about it it’s all inflammatory, irritable bowels. It’s all inflamed intestines somewhere between the mouth and the anus. Now, the reality is we have all these different diagnosis depending on where it is and what we think caused it. For instance, if we think it was caused by gluten we might call it this name and if we think it was caused by eating too much Mexican food we might call it that. You eat you’re too much Mexican and you have this heartburn, right? We call it heartburn. You eat too much wheat and we call it, is that celiac with the wheat and the dairy? So all these different names but what is the one cure for all of them?

Well, the cure is in the prevention. First, don’t get it to begin with. It’s easier to prevent than it is to cure. But once you have these, it doesn’t matter if it’s acid reflux or Crohn’s. It doesn’t matter which end it’s on or what the cause was. The cure is the same. Stop eating the things that are killing you. Start eating the things that are good for you.

 

[0:08:41] Ashley James: That’s such a tricky wicket though because something that is good for you may not be good for you, cooked a certain way or not cooked a certain way when you have inflammation. So for example kale, such a great superfood but if someone with inflammation in the gut eats a raw kale salad that’s just going to tear right through them because it’s already inflamed. I was telling a client this just the other day that the gut when someone has all that inflammation, imagine you have sunburn or you’ve been burnt in a fire. If you put vinegar on that burn or salt in that wound basically it really hurts. When you’re arm, let’s say the skin in your arm is intact and it’s totally healthy and you put some vinegar on your skin or some salt in your skin, you don’t feel anything.

We can’t see our digestive tract and how angry it is but imagine we have a sunburn, a really really bad sunburn with blisters on our arm or on our skin, that’s how angry the digestive tract is when we’re constantly eating foods that are harming it. So then, when someone is transitioning to eating foods that heal the gut, they have to pick the foods that are healing for the gut now and then as their gut is healed then they can eat foods that are in a sense of prevention. Does that make sense?

 

[0:10:11] Dr. Michael Haley: Absolutely. One of the greatest things that I learned along the same lines of what you’re just saying is from Dr. Natasha McBride. She has this concept that helping people identify the foods that are right for them because everybody is different. One of the things she’ll do is an elimination diet. Then you start with foods that are probably good for most people, adding them one at a time and seeing what happens.

Now, if you add one of those good foods that’s good for most people and it doesn’t work for you, well you take it back out. In this process, there’s this journal. Imagine three columns. On the first column is date and time stamp, the second column would be what you ate and the third column is how you feel. Now, you don’t always need a “what you ate in the” entry. You don’t always need a how you feel in the entry. You might just do an entry and this is just a how you feel entry. “I didn’t eat anything but for some reason, I’m just bubbling with energy. I’m thinking clearly. My thoughts are just firing like, the synapses are there.”

Well, if they’re not normally like that then maybe you’re eating things that are fogging you. What did you eat? What was your last meal? What have you been eating up to this point that’s giving you all this energy, making things fire properly? That’s probably a good food for you. “I feel strong. I feel weak. I’m fatigued.” What foods did you eat? The last time you ate that food, look back in the journal. When you follow it in the journal and you look at your symptoms do you see fatigue about those same number of hours after you ate it? We’re now developing a pattern when you eat this starchy food: the potatoes, the pasta or whatever it is and a couple of hours later or an hour later or a half-hour later, again everyone’s different, you crash. That’s probably not a good food for you.

 

[0:12:33] Ashley James: I love that you are teaching this in such a straightforward, succinct manner. The food-mood journal is one of the best tools that we can use. But how long should people wait before they start judging foods? Because my understanding is if let’s say someone is allergic to dairy and they’ve just recently eliminated it. Doesn’t it take like a month for the body to really recover from that inflammation before they can really start to decipher what foods are helping and what foods are not helping? Is there a certain period of time of an elimination diet that one must complete before the food mood journal is more accurate tool?

 

[0:13:15] Dr. Michael Haley: You know what, Dr. Natasha McBride, let’s go back to her. Since she’s the one that came up with this concept. I don’t know if she invented it but she sure is teaching it to thousands of practitioners around the world right now. Her concept of elimination diet is going to something so basic and simple that what most people can consume and meet most of their needs with one food. For her that would be bone stock soup. How long are you on that? Until your body stabilizes. Is it a day, is it three days, is it a week? I don’t know but conceptually there’s enough healthy fats and healthy amino acids and everything that you need to sustain you for that period of time until you figure that out. Then once you stabilize, now we’re going to start building on that diet and adding one thing at a time.

Working from her list she has groups of foods. This is the first food group that you’re going to play in as we build your diet and then we’re going to go to these foods, you can start working from this list after that but that first list is the things that most people can tolerate. I wouldn’t say it’s a time period because everybody is different. I do know this, there’s foods that will make me crash. They could be pretty healthy foods for most people. I’ll notice that I’ll crash maybe 45 minutes after eating them and then about an hour later I’ll be fine. So for me to get over that crash from that food that I ate, it’s about an hour.

 

[0:15:02] Ashley James: Have you gotten testing and saw that you have like an immunoglobulin response to those foods? I mean, is there something you can see in blood work to confirm, “Oh yeah. My body, my immune system is reacting in a negative way.” Is this something that no blood test can pick up and really it’s about listening to your body?

 

[0:15:20] Dr. Michael Haley: I did get the blood testing years ago and it wasn’t necessarily matching up with me symptomatically. This is one of the problems I have with it. I think it’s beneficial information but I don’t think it’s a 100. Think about allergy testing. Think about egg albumin as an example. Are eggs good for you? Forget about what you think from a diet perspective and the general health belief system that you have. That’s commonly tested as an allergen. Well, where did you get that albumin from? What kind of eggs did it come from? Was it grass and insect truly pastured hens or were they fed chicken meal from a bag of wheat and corn, which is inflammatory? I don’t know. So the material that you’re using for the allergy test that you’re testing it against, where did it come from? We don’t know. It’s just called albumin.

 

[0:16:32] Ashley James: So you’re saying that some people who have egg allergies may not react to eggs if they’re fresh off of a farm that’s pasture-raised but they will have allergy to eggs that are factory farmed?

 

[0:16:44] Dr. Michael Haley: I’m suggesting that it’s possible. That’s something that I just kind of made up as a possibility. The point being is that the eggs are definitely different. I remember the first time we ran out of eggs from our backyard and I did my best. I ran to the store and studied all the labels and came home with the best organic pastured eggs I could find. I remember cracking them in the pan in front of my kids. I remember their reactions because one of them especially went, “Eww,” based on sight, “what is that?” Because he never saw a pale yellow yolk before. When they were eating them they go, “Oh. These are disgusting.” Because it was this maybe similar texture but it had no flavor because the flavor comes from the nutrients and it was missing the nutrients.

So the eggs were definitely different than what they were used to. Our chickens, we did not feed them period, ever because if we did, they’d get lazy and they’d forget how to survive. They need to know how to survive and eat what they’re supposed to. So their eggs were absolutely amazing. What was their diet? Insects, grass, lizards. If they caught a lizard, it was on. It was a fight for that steak. Contrast that to what you see on the TV. You’ll see such and such farms, “Our hens are fed a vegan diet of corn, soy and marigold.” Well, let me tell you something. Chickens aren’t vegans.

 

[0:18:37] Ashley James: Also, even if they say the chickens are pasture-raised it actually means that they’re in a giant football stadium-sized indoor building with a tiny porch basically that’s only 50 chickens can fit out on the porch that’s all caged in. There’s 20,000 chickens inside this giant container and there’s no room for them or the regular factory-farmed chickens are born and raised in cages with no room to move. We’re not feeding them the nutrients they need but we’re also torturing them and giving them a horrible existence. All that energy, that suffering goes into their meat and goes into their egg versus if you eat something like you said you’re backyard eggs. Just even the energy, the vibration of that food is displayed in the happiness and the whole life that that animal’s been given. We have to look at the quality of everything that goes into our food.

Imagine all the people that touch our food. I’ve often thought about this. When I eat, I often think about the farmers, the pickers who are out there really early in the morning sometimes really bad weather. They spend their entire day bent over, picking that food for me so that I can eat it and thinking about the quality of all the lives of all the people that touch our food. I like to support farms that treat their workers well that all the people were happy who touched my food. If a farmer really really loves what they do like they’re doing biodynamic farming, organic farming, they’re putting so much of their energy into making sure that soil is healthy, that their animals are healthy, that the workers are happy and taken care of. Even that energy I feel goes into the food and I feel better for it versus going to a restaurant where you know that they’re cutting corners to save money and they’re going to buy ingredients that are the lowest quality possible so that they can make the biggest profit possible.

Getting back to talking about healing the gut. I love to know what happened along your journey as a doctor that made you really excited about healing the gut because you didn’t start off as wanting to be a gut expert. What happened?

 

[0:21:18] Dr. Michael Haley: Oh my goodness. My journey is not based on personal tragedy. I don’t say that to boast. Certainly it would’ve been a lot easier to learn it if I had to but I was forced into it. It’s a unique set of circumstances. You know, since we’re touching on this, can I talk about one thing real quick? Right now, we’re talking about eggs. I’ll be honest, half of the healthcare professionals will say eggs are a healthy food and half of them will say they’re not. There’s a difference in belief systems and if somebody’s hearing me talk about eggs right now and they’re uncomfortable with that, I do want to address this. Why do we have different belief systems about what a healthy diet looks like? You don’t have to have the right answer to this. I think I know what the answer is and I want to address that because it does lead into why I help people get well.

 

[0:22:17] Ashley James: Right. Let’s address it. Why is it that we have so many conflicting diet dogmas out there?

 

[0:22:26] Dr. Michael Haley: Let’s look at it from the dogma of someone who’s trying to help heal guts and contrast that with someone who’s trying to heal cancer. You see, in a gut-healing diet, I want growth and repair foods but in an anti-cancer diet, if I give you growth and repair I might actually be supporting your tumor. So these diets are going to be different.

If I was coaching someone to play the line in the NFL and I want them to have maximum power and strength, which is different than say being a safety that needs to be able to fly up and down the field like a gazelle just incredible speed and light on his feet and be able to jump up to stop a pass. The lineman might be more of a, well both of these would be a type of survival diet. Survival of the fittest out in the wild. You might have to fight off a lion. That’s different than a detoxing, cleansing diet to get well from cancer.

So, as we’re talking about gut-healing foods and to the raw vegan, don’t look at it like you’re raw vegan perspective is based on cleansing and detox. So understand there’s a place for those things and we’re not contrasting, we’re not saying that you don’t have a healthy diet. We’re just saying it’s a different purpose than what we’re talking about here.

 

[0:24:19] Ashley James: Right. Also healing the heart. If you have a patient with heart disease with clogged arteries in the heart you want them on a cleansing and detoxing diet to help the body heal the heart versus if you have someone with an inflamed and angry gut. You’re not going to put them on a raw vegan diet because raw vegan diet is really really really nutrient-packed but it’s really not appropriate for a gut that’s inflamed and angry.

So you’re really looking at food as medicine and what’s the medicine that person needs and understanding that through our life. We should change our diets based on our needs.

  

[0:24:59] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, you said something interesting before and you were talking about sunburns. Aloe Vera is tremendous on sunburns. I like something like a friend of mine, Robert Scott Bell, talks about the tube, the digestive tube between the mouth and the anus. This epithelial tissue, which is the same kind of tissue that your skin is. As we’re formed in embryology, we start out as ball of cells. Essentially, it’s like it gets pushed in from two sides and it meets in the middle and there’s now a tube running through the ball of cells. It’s kind of the same tissue that’s originally on the outside of that ball of cells. It’s almost as if that’s really the same organ, the skin and the gut. When you’re in that gut, when you’re in that tube, you’re actually really in a protected environment inside the body but it’s really still outside of the body. Because when you eat stuff it actually has to pass through that later to really get inside the body where the body can use it.

You see, this epithelial tissue, the gut, eats and drinks just like the skin. People say, “Well, your skin doesn’t eat and drink.” Yeah. That’s why doctors will actually give drug patches, pain patches and hormone patches and help you quit smoking patches. They put these on your skin because your skin will absorb and it goes into the bloodstream and it actually eats and drinks through your skin and your skin excretes waste just like your gut.

So, we start thinking about this more of the same organ, which is important because as we talk about healing the gut, we actually do have a somewhat of a visual look at what your gut might look like. The gut’s much more mucosal and probably a lot more angry than what you actually see on your skin. So the changes might be subtle on the skin but they’re there. You just have to know to look for them and say, “How’s my skin doing? I think my gut’s actually getting better,” or “this doesn’t look good. I wonder what’s going on inside?”

Well, Rodney Stockton – ah, going back to the Aloe. Aloe helps heal the sunburn. You have a sunburn, you put it on there. If you put a handprint of Aloe and take your hand off, the next day you notice where your hand was it’s all of a sudden white while it’s still red around on the outside.

 

[0:27:40] Ashley James: That’s so cool.

 

[0:27:41] Dr. Michael Haley: Well, it heals things faster. It’s scientifically proven to cut the healing time of burns in half. Now, if it does that on the skin and the gut is the same organ, can that do it inside? We’ve never actually done that kind of science to know for sure but a lot of people will say, “Absolutely. I’ve had this problem. I drink Aloe. You said it and things did better.” Well, I hear it all the time.

I talked to someone on the phone earlier today, one of our customers, and GERD was her complaint. She placed her first order a month ago and went through two half gallons of our Aloe and she was calling to reorder because ever since she’s been drinking the Aloe she hasn’t had to take her, I forgot what’s the color of the pills were that she said but she said hasn’t had to take them anymore to control her GERD.

Well, this guy Rodney Stockton came into my office. I’m a chiropractor and he used to take this Aloe door-to-door in South Florida. He ships some to New York because he had friends there but it was kind of a small business and he insisted that I put all my patients on it, which I did not. But when I destroyed my hands as a chiropractor. Accidentally I got some bad burns on them by accident. He gave me this Aloe cream to on them and that’s when I said, “Oh my goodness. My hands look better now after three days of using this Aloe cream than they did before the injuries. What is this stuff?” That’s what got my attention.

Well, my family was using it. The topically and internally and at some point I had my first patient that had cancer drinking it. Rodney used to tell everyone, “Cancer. It’s like a common cold. Just drink three glasses of Aloe a day. A couple of weeks it will be gone.” It’s kind of funny. That’s how he actually really talked. I don’t talk like that. I think that it could be helpful and beneficial and part of an anti-cancer healing plan but and yes he did get some kind of results.

Well, I did have one of my patients on it that got well from a very serious cancer. To me it was like, “Wow, there’s something to this.” Well, Rodney had died and I realized how important his product was and all of a sudden my supply was going, it was going away. The company was crumbling without Rodney. So I stepped in and took over. Now, this is a long answer to a real short question.

The question was about gut-healing and where did this come from? I realized that people needed this Aloe Vera. My customer base of a company that stepped in to save was people that either have or once had cancer and swear that Aloe was the only thing that got them well. In my research I realized that it was accepted for people that have gut conditions medically, FDA. I’m not going to get in trouble talking about it for the gut. I knew that I had to save the product for the people that knew they needed it regardless of what their condition was. I just knew I couldn’t talk about this one condition but I could keep it alive by helping people that have another condition that needed it.

So, that’s kind of how I got so familiar with all of the digestive problems and what was causing them because if you have irritable bowel, Aloe Vera is not the cure. It’s a Band-Aid. It’s like a drug if you’re just taking it to get well because as soon as you stop, you’re problems going to come back if you haven’t made any changes.

 

[0:32:00] Ashley James: It’s like taking, like you said, drugs. Drugs were created 100 – 150 years ago. They were created at first out of a need to patent natural medicine. “Oh. See that plant over there in that field that helps XYZ problem? Well, how can we molecularly make a compound so that we can administer this as a pill? When we go back and we say, “Well, now we have to reverse engineer.” We go, “Okay. You want this pharmaceutical,” well, over the counter let’s say pharmaceutical. Well, what’s the natural alternative that it came from originally? So why don’t we go use that instead?

 

[0:32:47] Dr. Michael Haley: I agree. I completely agree. The nutrition, the medicine is in all the things that are growing around us but what I want and if anyone hears us and thinks, “Oh. I can get well by drinking Aloe.” If you have inflammatory bowel conditions, you could probably get symptom-free drinking the Aloe because what we’ve done is increase the speed of healing and now you’re healing faster than the new damage you’re creating. So it’s no different than a medical mindset because you’re taking it for a desired effect. The people have to really realize, if that’s their mindset, I’m sure your listeners have a different mindset but the people that have that mindset, what you really have to do is say, “Wait a second, how did I get this to begin with? Because I fix it but don’t change the cause it’s coming right back.”

 

[0:33:55] Ashley James: So how long have you been using Aloe Vera in your practice and with clients and also helping this company? How long have you been diving into the world of Aloe Vera?

 

[0:34:07] Dr. Michael Haley: You know, Rodney Stockton first came to me and I want to say it was 1996 as a patient. He brought a half-gallon of Aloe with him. He said, “You got to start drinking this. Recommend it to all your patients.” At first I thought he was crazy. I hadn’t quite evolved yet. I’m still evolving, we all still are but at that point in time, to me it seemed crazy. I was at that point in my life where I thought I could eat anything and just exercise into good health.

When I had that experience, the injury to my hands I realized the power of the Aloe and started recommending it and seeing it work in people’s lives. My family and I have been consuming it since about 2000 so about almost 20 years now. We use a lot of it. We really use a lot of it. I think it’s neat. I remember Rodney and he was so proud of how he looked in his 80s, “Can you believe I’m only 87 years old?”

 

[0:35:22] Ashley James: I’m really glad you say that because you said he died. I’m like, “Oh God. What if he died of a heart attack at 40 or something?” This doesn’t really play really well for a great health story like, “Hey. Drink this guy’s Aloe Vera. He dropped dead at age 40.” So he was like he lived a very long and healthy life, right?

 

[0:35:38] Dr. Michael Haley: Well, sort of. Yes. It’s interesting. I have a picture of him in the newspaper in 1958. The newspaper stamp 1958. This was shortly after he discovered Aloe and he’s in the Aloe field and he’s researching it and making it his life mission to make this available to everyone throughout the world. Well, I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, “Wow. You look old in 1958.” So he obviously didn’t do that well up to that point when he discovered Aloe. Now, here I am. He’s in my office in the later 90’s not looking much different than that newspaper.

Now, he still was TV dinners, fast food, French fries, cheeseburgers. He still did not eat healthy. He did drink one glass of Aloe Vera every day. Now, when he was in the, he did die of a heart attack. He was 96 years old and I remember going to see him in the hospital when he was in all the machines keeping his body alive but his brain was gone. I remember looking at his legs. I was squeezing kind of his lower you know where his shins are and stuff. No pitting edema, plump white skin. You know how most people of that age they have like black and blue at the further parts away from their hear down near the wrists and forearms and their ankles. He had this amazing plump, white, healthy skin that just blew me away. That’s one of those things that I’ll never forget. He did not live a healthy lifestyle. He did drink one glass of Aloe every day.

Our new customers say, “How much Aloe should I drink?” I say, “Well, our smallest order’s at two-pack. Get the two-pack. Make sure you drink that whole first bottle in the first week and then look in the mirror.” I told you about the woman I spoke to earlier who had GERD today. It’s funny, she was talking about skin conditions. I said, “Actually, you might see a difference in your skin.” She was only drinking three ounces a day for the last month.” She said, “It’s funny now that you say that people have been telling me I look really good lately. How can that be I’m so sick but yes, they keep telling me I look good.”

Aloe Vera as your gut gets better, she’s the one that hasn’t had any GERD problems hasn’t needed the medicine, when your gut is getting better, your skin looks better. It’s an external picture of the inside.

 

[0:38:33] Ashley James: Yeah. There’s a direct link between skin health and gut health. Absolutely. On so many levels and the fact that the microbiome which is keeping us alive is in there and that the inflammation, the leaky gut, the immune system is all around the gut. The gut converts 25% of our T3, it makes our serotonin but also if we’re not digesting and absorbing nutrition we’re going to see that on the skin. We’re just going to look pale. We’re not going to have that glow. Some people look grey in the skin or have dark circles into the eyes. We can really tell. I think unconsciously, we can pick up a lot by looking at someone’s face in terms of their health. It really does show. I love that you’re saying that within days of someone focusing on healing their gut that it starts to become noticeable in their face.

I have a friend who has been coming to me for some health advice. I kind of  have that reputation with my friends as being the one to go to. After talking to her, I see in one of her children, I can see in his face he’s allergic to dairy. It’s just so obvious when I look at his face. It looks like he has lupus. His body is very inflamed and his cheeks are red like lupus red. I talked to her. I had a very gentle conversation about doing an elimination diet and eliminating wheat, sorry, gluten grains and dairy and just doing an experiment with her family.

They did it for one week and I didn’t know that they were choosing to do it that particular week. I saw her and I said, “What has changed? Your face looks something looks so good. Something looks so different.” I was like, “Did you get new glasses? Did you get a haircut?” I couldn’t figure it out but she looked so good. Then she finally said, “It’s because we tried going dairy and gluten-free for a week.” I could tell her her son also didn’t have any of that redness like they’re really really – the rosacea in his cheeks are completely gone. It’s interesting that quickly that within a week of cutting out barley, wheat, rye and cow dairy that you could see it on their face. But not only that, they could feel it. They were both having some success already in their physical symptoms.

So, yeah. You’ve been drinking Aloe Vera, you and your family, for 20 years now. You’re seeing it yourself. I want to dive into the science a bit and understand why is it that Aloe Vera has this ability to speed up healing and decrease inflammation? What is it about it? Also, I’d like you to differentiate between whole Aloe Vera and just the gel because I know there’s a big difference in the juice. Should one drink a whole Aloe Vera plant versus drinking just the gel of the plant?

 

[0:41:47] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. If I was to take a leaf and shove it in the blender and turn it on high and pour it into the glass, we would probably call that Aloe Vera juice but Aloe Vera juice is also if you buy a juice like a fruit juice with sugar in it that has Aloe in it. So, that term is used kind of loosely and be careful when you see Aloe Vera juice. It may or may not be beneficial for you. Whole leaf is generally considered juice. Now, I personally don’t like the outer leaf. Why is it used medicinally? Well, it has laxative properties.

 

[0:42:32] Ashley James: To put it nicely.

 

[0:42:35] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. And we are in a backed-up nation which because people are clogged, their intestine are clogged, I don’t think adding drain-all is the solution. What we need to do is get our diets right so our intestines work like they’re supposed to. But Aloe Vera has that bowel-loosening, the outer leaf part, the Aloe and the yellow, the bitter stuff, it’s absolutely disgusting. So what they’ve done medicinally is put in the capsules and people would take that as a laxative. Well, eventually the NIH and the FDA kind of teamed up and did a little research on Aloe Vera extract which is the outer leaf stuff and they gave it to rats until the rats got cancer, which is another interesting topic here because what’s cancer?

Well, in the case of the rats, the cells of the intestines that make mucus grew so that they could make more mucous because they were being fed this continuous flow of irritant because they got the extract without the gel which was the opposite, healing part of the plant. Well, in other words for the rats it was actually an adaptive protective change that we call cancer, which cancer’s often an adaptive change.

All right, rabbit trail here but those are the different parts of the plant and I don’t think we should be using the outer leaf. I think we should fix our diet. The inner leaf, that’s the part where if you put it on a sunburn it calms it down and heals it faster. We are confident based on all the clinical case studies where people get well. Anyone I’ve given it to where they had bleeding bowel movements within three days the bleeding has stopped regardless how many days, months or years they’ve been bleeding. That’s what I have seen. So somehow what it’s doing on the skin on burns it’s also doing on the inside and I don’t know why. I can’t tell you why that happens. I don’t know. I can’t tell you why it heals sunburns. I can’t tell you why it heals the intestines but we’ve definitely seen it happen.

 

[0:44:54] Ashley James: Well, I mean it’s known. It’s just absolutely known. Ever since I was a kid we’d be down at Mexico, I’d get a sunburn and there’d be this giant Aloe Vera plant. My mom would crack it open and squeeze out the gel and rub my body with it and the next day I was good to go. I mean, it’s just known that it heals the skin. Very interesting about the irritant that if someone were to drink the whole plant, the juice of the whole plant, that the rodents would eventually develop cancer. Like you said it is an irritant so it’s forcing the body to have diarrhea or it’s the laxative effects.

I remember doing that once buying the wrong kind of Aloe Vera at the store and suffering for it. It’s not a pleasant experience but if you drink the gel, the pure gel of Aloe Vera it is an enjoyable experience. What’s the difference between your company and the ones that are sold like at Whole Foods or at other health markets? I won’t name names but there’s a variety of them. Some of them, many of them have sugar. Many of them do but there are a few that don’t. So what’s the difference in quality between yours and those other brands out there?

 

[0:46:19] Dr. Michael Haley: Okay. I’m going to give you a short answer on this and then tells you a story that explains it. You can apply this, don’t just apply this to Aloe Vera. Take this in for anything that you might purchase that is like a juice beverage because this is what happens in the juice industry.

Imagine that I was to purchase orange juice and I went to the store and there’s all these different labels. Lots of those different labels actually all come from the same farm. It doesn’t mean that they’re all the same though because we have big companies in the United States that will purchase up big 55 gallon drums from main farms, from maybe one or two main farm sources. Then sell those barrels to the various companies throughout the United States that reprocess them.

There’s a good chance, well those barrels have been pasteurized and they probably have chemical preservatives in them. But the companies that buy the big drums then reprocess and they might add new preservatives. Those are the preservatives that you’re actually going to see on the label. They might add flavors, they might add water, they might add other juices. They do what they want to make it their own. They might add thickeners.

In the case of Aloe Vera, because it’s no longer Aloe Vera because it’s been filtered down so much and changed so much they actually might add thickeners to thicken it up like guar gum or something like that or a carrageenan so that you think that it’s actually Aloe Vera gel. If you read the labels you will see these things and it will say carrageenan as a thickening agent.

This is what happens in the industry. There’s various levels of filtering and there’s various levels of adding things in. Now, let’s focus just on Aloe for a second. Not just all juice products but in the case of Aloe Vera, there’s unfiltered which is what we are and there’s ultra-filtered which is what another brand is that tastes like water. I promise you, if you find a brand that you can pick up and shake and it splashes and it sounds like water and you drink it. If you give it to someone with a blindfold on, they will tell you it’s water. You cannot taste the difference between that and water. It’s very filtered. Is it Aloe? Yeah. 100% comes from the Aloe plant. But you can take something and filter it so much that the only thing you have, you can purify it to the point where it’s only water. I don’t know that that’s what’s happening in this case but it’s super filtered.

Everything else is somewhere between what we have and what that is. Our brand is the only one that I’m aware of that is not pasteurized. It’s not filtered. How do we do it? How do we not filter? People say, “How do you take the Aloe in? What’s the outer one? That’s the very bitter stuff.” Well, we never let it in to begin with. Our aloes are hand-cut, hand-filleted. We bleed out the Aloe in and then we skin it. Then that gel, that inner fillet runs through a grinder, runs through a chiller, goes into the containers that goes into the freezer. We freeze it. We don’t filter it. We don’t pasteurize it. We don’t add preservatives. We don’t add thickeners. We don’t do anything. The only thing that’s in there is the ground up fillet from the Aloe plant.

So that is kind of the difference. Now, you had a similar experience as one of my patients. This was actually an employee of mine. She came to me on her second day on the job, came in sad. I said, “What’s wrong?” She said, “Well, I found out that I probably have breast cancer again.” I said, “Okay. Don’t freak out. We know how to fix this. We’re going to make a lot of changes but the first thing I want you to do is start drinking this.” I gave her two bottles of our Aloe gel and I said, “I want you to start drinking three full glasses every day.” I was going to continue to make other changes in her diet and take things away from her.

Well, the next day, she was literally in the bathroom half of the day. After I think it was the second day of being in the bathroom all day long she came to me and said, “Dr. Haley, is it possible the Aloe is running right through me?” I said, “Not a chance.” Well, I shouldn’t say that. I said, “If you got Aloe Vera from Whole Foods, yeah but not what I gave you.” She said, “Oh.” I said, “What do you mean oh?” She said, “Well, before drinking the Aloe that you gave me I thought I would drink Richard’s. He’s drinking it for his diabetes.” That is her husband. I said, “Oh no.” She said, “Yeah. I got it from Whole Foods.” “Oh no. How much were you drinking?” She said, “I couldn’t drink three glasses a day. I could only do two.” To which I respond, “Thank God. Three could have killed you.” Meaning, she was getting so much of that outer leaf.

See, that particular brand that she was drinking had so much outer leaf that the serving size is a tablespoon not a glassful. Its intention is to loosen the bowels when you have constipation, lower and stabilize blood sugar levels. Those kinds of things. It still has those properties but I wanted her to drink a whole bunch because I wanted her to have the extra anti-cancer benefits. It could’ve literally depleted her of all of her electrolyte minerals and dehydrated her. She was in the bathroom all that whole time because she was drinking another brand using this serving size recommendation based on ours.

I learned that people might do that. I’ve never made that mistake again. I never said, “Oh, yeah. Just go drink a glass of Aloe every day.” No. Only if it’s our brand. Every bottle is different. Every company has their own purpose for what they’re putting in their bottle.

Gut health is one thing I’m talking a little bit about anti-cancer. Can I do that? Can you talk about Aloe Vera and anti-cancer properties? Yeah. I’m not saying we’re curing cancer but I will tell you some science to why someone with cancer should have it. One of the neat things is – well, let me give you a whole bunch of them actually. I’ll build-up to the bigger ones.

There was a study done at Hippocrates Health Institute. They gave one group Aloe Vera with their supplements and the other group didn’t get the Aloe. When they tested their blood, the group that got the Aloe Vera with their supplements, their blood tested higher for every single nutrient that was tested. So, conclusion was, well, people that are using Aloe Vera they’re gut must work better and absorb more nutrients from the food. That’s a good thing.

We also know it helps make the gut healthy which is where the immune system is and helps heal guts. It also helps lower and stabilize blood sugar levels in people that have diabetes. Well, cancer is an obligatory glucose metabolizer and if you’re lowering blood sugar levels that could be a really good thing. Well, there’s also something in Aloe Vera called acemannan. This nutrient is known to cause the macrophages of the immune system to secrete three very important factors. I’m only going to talk about one. It’s my favorite just because of the name. It’s called tumor necrosis factor, TNF. What does that do?

Tumor necrosis factor, tumor = cancer, necrosis = death two. It’s the factor that causes death to cancer. What it actually does is helps the immune system to see the cancer cells so that it knows to kill them. But, there’s still an even more exciting thing in Aloe. Those slimy mucopolysaccharides. What’s a polysaccharides? Well, you have sugars. Join them together you have carbohydrates. Join those together you have complex carbohydrates. Join those together and make them really big and bulky we have mucopolysaccharides. The mucopolysaccharides in Aloe Vera is made up of a sugar molecule called mannose, which is the one sugar molecule that we know to be toxic to cancer cells.

It’s kind of like the cancer cell locks on to it because it wants to eat the sugar molecule but it can’t. So now, it can’t eat anything else because it’s like got its mouth stuck with mannose but it can’t eat the mannose. So it essentially starves itself by holding on to the mannose and not being able to eat it.

 

[0:56:08] Ashley James: Cool. That’s so cool. Tell us more. I love this stuff. I’m totally geeking out on this fun little science things. You said you’re only going to tell us one of the three but can you tell us more?

 

[0:56:24] Dr. Michael Haley: Well, that was a whole bunch of them right there meaning making the gut healthy which is where the immune system is, lowering the blood sugar levels, causing your got to absorb more nutrients. The tumor necrosis factor interferons and interleukins were the other factors that increase with the Aloe Vera. Then the fifth one was the mannose being that thing that the cancer cells can’t eat because it can lock on to them but it can’t actually consume them.

That research was actually done by a, if I understand it my impression of it was that it was done by a company that is manufacturing a chemotherapy because there conclusion was consume mannose with the chemotherapy. I think they said that the mannose stops the cancer from growing and the chemotherapy kills the cancer. That was their conclusion.

 

[0:57:27] Ashley James: What about helping people with dysbiosis or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth? Does it have any anti-parasitic properties or help to starve the candida or starve the bad bacteria or feed the good bacteria? Is there anything around those lines?

 

[0:57:50] Dr. Michael Haley: Good question. We’re going to go into some stuff that I don’t know all about but I’ll tell you what I do know that makes sense to me. Aloe Vera is a food and bacteria can grow in it but it’s not bacteriostatic. It doesn’t stop the growth of bacteria but they grow very slowly in it compared to other foods. Kind of like honey is a food. Honey can sit in your cabinet for a very long time. That’s more bacteriostatic compared to Aloe Vera versus table sugar that can ferment into alcohol very quickly.

So, different things are more of a food source for bacteria than others. In the case of Aloe Vera and I think that’s related to that mannose sugar molecule that some things just don’t really love. So, it can be a food item. I cannot tell you that it won’t feed candida. I don’t know that. What I do know is that there’s lots of good fiber in it that could be prebiotic in nature. I know that it helps heal the gut and people that have either too loose of bowels or too stiff of bowels it seems to normalize both ends to the more normal perspective.

I know that people who had bacterial overgrowth, some of them their bowels are moving too fast some are moving too slow. Probably more often too slow which kind of gives bacteria more time to multiply and overtake the intestines. It seems those slow-moving bowels, sometimes the bad bacteria can work its way up towards the front in a sense.

Now, why do I say all that? I don’t always think that the bacterial overgrowth is a diet problem. It could be a slow-moving gut which might be a neurological problem. Possibly you need chiropractic massage, yoga, acupuncture something to destress the spine where the nerves go to the intestines and get things functioning more like they’re supposed to. When we talk about a condition like that, Aloe Vera is not the cure, it might be part of the diet plan to help the plan get better but we have to step back and look at the big picture and say, “Okay. Let’s look at this from the nutrition, exercise, rest, mental well-being.” You know how the mind controls the chemistry of the body? You’ve alluded to that earlier with toxic relationships.

So you really have to step back and say, “Okay. Is Aloe going to help this?” I don’t know. It might but we got to really look at the big picture here.

 

[1:00:54] Ashley James: Can you tell us some stories in your last 20 years with experiencing the healing benefits of Aloe Vera that were just mind-blowing. You’ve mentioned some common things that Aloe helps with but what’s some really far out there like, “Wow. I never thought it would help with that,” kind of stories that you could share with us?

 

[1:01:14] Dr. Michael Haley: I hear that stuff all the time from healing people’s gums to headed for dialysis and God lead me to consume Aloe Vera and from 30% to now 68% kidney function and the only change I made was Aloe Vera. Well, that’s pretty cool. We’ve heard everything from decreased pain, which I think when people have less pain, I think it’s because their pain is probably auto-immune related. By healing the gut we’re calming down the immune system that’s causing the inflammatory response that causes the pain because other people with pain don’t notice any difference.

When you heal the gut, it can affect everything. So we’ve heard every condition under the sun people saying that they got well from it. I don’t think it’s a cure for every condition under the sun. I think it could help the gut get well and I think that it’s important for most people.

Ultimately, again, I always tell people that you got to look at the other side of the equation. You got to look at what’s in the food. The food is full of antibiotics and drugs if you’re eating animal foods and pesticides and preservatives and artificial flavors and colors and sweeteners and trans fats and they’re partially hydrogenated and they’re GMOs and we got chlorinated watering, there’s mercury in the fish. There is so much crap in the foods that’s killing us and we have to stop consuming it. You got to look at the other side of the equation.

I’ve seen a stage for pancreatic patients get well and stay well for ten years. How does that happen? We didn’t just give her Aloe. We said, “You can’t eat sugars anymore. We want you to juicing fruits and vegetables and growing sprouts.” We changed her lifestyle and she ended up losing weight and at first feeling she was going to die of starvation but eventually getting her energy back and feeling better than ever before. That was my first significant patient that I recommended three glasses of Aloe a day for. It just so happens that she got well from stage 4, worst kind of cancer you could have. Did the Aloe cure her? No. I think her lifestyle change cured her and I think Aloe Vera was one of her things in her lifestyle change.

 

[1:04:30] Ashley James: Well, you said that it’s been proven that Aloe speeds up healing by 50%. So if you could take anything to speed up healing while you’re on a healing protocol I mean that just makes sense.

 

[1:04:43] Dr. Michael Haley: Absolutely. Yeah.

 

[1:04:46] Ashley James: I interviewed one of your mentors, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, episode 385. She has an amazing story. She helps to reverse autism. She’s made a link between the GAPS diet being the gut and the psychology diet linking that there is a direct link between gut health and psychology and to brain health and showing that if she can get children before the age of five on the GAPS diet who are on the autism spectrum or displaying symptoms of autism that they will no longer be autistic. She makes that bold claim based on her clinical experience over the last 24 years where she has seen thousands of children to reverse autism. She says if it’s caught after the age of five they still have some quirks but go from low-functioning to high-functioning basically.

That was a really interesting interview. So you stumbled upon her work in an effort to find tools in your tool belt to help people with healing the gut. What have you seen in terms of psychology, in terms of mental health and emotional health? How have you seen Aloe Vera help in that aspect?

 

[1:06:07] Dr. Michael Haley: I’m going to tell you about a friend’s child that has autism. He as an older teenager struggling to maintain his job because of his emotional outbursts, having meltdowns in the home and talking to the mother. I remember the conversation quite well because sometimes people can look at you like you’ve got three heads because of what you say. “Yeah. You shouldn’t be drinking Coca Cola.” Really? They look at you like you have three heads. “No. That’s not going to be good for someone that has autism.” It’s not going to be good for really anybody. The point being is I gave her a whole diet plan that included Aloe Vera and eliminated a lot of stuff. He had the absolute best week of his life with very normal functioning.

But he had a meltdown. I said, “What happened?” She said, “He couldn’t do it anymore. He had to have his sodas again.” He went back to his soda. Had a meltdown that day on the job, lost his job. It’s funny. He went from having the best week, most normal week of his life with normal functioning in society to “I can’t do this. I need my sugar fix, my caffeinated sugar fix.”

We’ve seen it with kids. You give the kids sugar and they get all crazy. What you eat changes the way you act, the way you feel. It changes you. I can give a grown adult a couple shots of whiskey and within minutes he had changed. What goes in your mouth affects the way your body works.

 

[1:08:23] Ashley James: I love that you’re bringing this up. I actually have a study, I have two studies right here printed out. Parasites, nutrition, immune responses and biology of metabolic tissues and the other one is Signaling in Parasitic Nematodes: Physicochemical Communication Between Host and Parasite and Endogenous Molecular Transduction Pathways Governing Worm Development and Survival. Basically these two and there’s a ton more studies about the connection between what is living in our gut and what our cravings. They’re showing that parasites and it doesn’t have to be like a giant tapeworm. Whenever someone says parasites that’s all I think about is these Dune like the giant worms from Dune. I’m just imagining them.

Most parasites are microscopic, one cell or a few cells, candida, yeast. This dysbiosis basically they’re finding now that let’s say you have a dysbiosis or you have these parasites, you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or whatever it is that basically things are living in your gut that shouldn’t be there and the things that should be living in your gut are not in a healthy proportion. It’s kind of like the gangs have moved into the neighborhood and your gut.

These entities, these creatures, when you stop feeding them the sugary beverages for example that this person you’re talking about was craving, which is the food that they live on. So the donuts and the pizza or whatever it is. The food, the simple carbohydrates that they live on. If you stop eating the foods they live on, you start to starve them. When you start to starve them, they will actually produce a chemical. It’s been proven in these studies. They will produce a chemical that is absorbed into your bloodstream, go straight to your brain and takes over your brain and makes you crave the foods that feed them.

So how much of our cravings and our control over our own behavior and our mind is us versus the parasites? Who’s controlling this body? Is it the parasite controlling us? They’re showing now that there’s a direct link. So when you go on a detox, when you go on a cleansing diet or a cleansing protocol or a negative parasite killing protocol, you will have cravings and those cravings are not you. You’re body’s not saying, “I really want a brownie and I really need a brownie right now.” No. That is the bugs in your gut trying to hi-jack your brain. Luckily we have the ability to overcome those cravings. We can go for a walk, drink some water, do some deep breathing. We can overcome. It takes a few days to let it pass but just sharing what you’re sharing is that the Aloe Vera and the change in the diet helped him gain control over his psychology and then he gave in to those little worms or whatever, those little parasites were starving so they hi-jacked his brain.

We also know that sugar is addictive and we do go through a withdrawal from caffeine and from sugar. So it’s kind of a one-two punch. We’re sort of up against it when we’re looking to make changes like that and cut out sugar. It’s also helpful to know that this craving isn’t what my body actually needs even though my body is telling me it needs it. If you’re cravings foods that are full of sugar and full of chemicals and are highly processed or baked goods or whatever. If we’re craving something from a package or a can, it’s not in our highest interest. When we shift our diet and we start craving kale and carrots and zucchini, we start actually craving our apples, we start craving whole foods, that when we know that the good bacteria is replenishing itself because it’s starting to send signals to the brain., “Hey, give me more of that pineapple. Give me more of that leafy green salad you had the other day. That really fulfilled us. Give me more of that Aloe juice. I really love those polysaccharides in the Aloe juice. I want some more of that to feed us.”

So the good bacteria, the good microbiome can also communicate with us and help our body to feel really high in a good sense on those foods. I have a friend who gets high off of kale smoothies now. Her body just buzzes and she’s like, “It’s like my drug. I get high off of it.” So it’s fun when we shift our diet we could start to get really high off of these whole foods. That’s our bodies saying, “Yes. We’re feeding the good bacteria, everything’s healing. The nutrition is being absorbed and utilized. All the 37.2 trillion cells in the body are being bathed with this green, gorgeous nutrients and all the toxins are being pulled away. Everything is just running on the right path.”

That’s how we want to feel every day. If we’re not waking up in the morning and bouncing out of bed full of energy and full of life and then having good stamina throughout the day and never a dull moment. Never like we’re at 3 PM and we’re kind of like, “I need a coffee,” or “I need a whatever.” If we can just go all day feeling great, having mental clarity and then our body around 9 PM goes, “Okay. It’s time to wind down. All right. I feel like reading a book in bed. This is good.” That’s health right there.

So I just look at the quality of the day-to-day. What’s the body giving me? The day to day quality of how it feels. Instead of medicating, self-medicating with sugar and caffeine and stimulate that little pleasure response temporarily, right? Because those forms of self-medication mean that we’re really masking the body’s language which the body is telling us, “I’m sick. We’re going the wrong direction. You’re not feeding me the nutrient it needs.”

Did your friend’s son ever get back on track? I feel for him.

 

[1:14:55] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Not something that I followed too much. I know overall and it was a few years ago, overall he’s definitely doing better now so something’s different that I do know.

 

[1:15:10] Ashley James: I’ve seen that before. I have a friend with autistic twins. He went totally clean diet and then he went to a friend’s house and we watched him jump into a bag of Pringles and proceed to kick holes through the walls. Time and time again, if he eats what he’s allergic too there’s just almost an immediate violent, he just gets very violent. It’s hard though to tell a teenager, “Don’t eat the foods that your friends are eating.”

 

[1:15:42] Dr. Michael Haley: Or don’t eat the stuff that your friends are eating because it’s really not food.

 

[1:15:46] Ashley James: It’s not food. It’s not food. Don’t eat the chemical bag filled with crap. Yeah. Exactly.

 

[1:15:54] Dr. Michael Haley: The GMOs, do people really understand what GMOs are? Do they really understand how many chemicals are in that? The modifications really means round-up ready or pesticide manufacturing? I don’t think people have any clue how many chemicals. Do people realize, I love this, Ashley, what is, don’t answer though, what is the purpose of a preservative? I have asked this question so many times and the answer I always get is to make the food last longer. That is not true. The purpose of the preservative is to kill mold, yeast, fungus, and bacteria.

 

[1:16:50] Ashley James: Right.

 

[1:16:53] Dr. Michael Haley: When you eat it does it know to stop killing? When we manufacture products, we add preservatives, we add chemicals to it and we measure the logarithmic reduction of the bacteria so we can measure its killing potential because that’s its purpose. The foods are filled with chemicals that are designed to kill.

Why do they put chlorine in the water? To kill. That’s the purpose of it. We got to wake up and realize what’s really in the food. They give an antibiotics to animals. I’d like the way Jordan Rubin put it. He said – because we don’t take antibiotics. When we get sick we don’t take antibiotics. Do we eat conventional food? You’re eating antibiotics. Jordan Rubin said, “People think that they treat animals with antibiotics. He said they don’t treat them with antibiotics. They give them antibiotics so they can mistreat them.” Let’s just include it in their food to continuously try to kill off these infections. Guess what, that becomes a part of them.

Another thing he said that was wise, when it comes to animal foods he said, “You heard it well said that you are what you eat but I say when it comes to animal foods, you are what they ate.”

 

[1:18:28] Ashley James: And what drugs they were given.

 

[1:18:30] Dr. Michael Haley: Exactly.

 

[1:18:32] Ashley James: I did an interview on GMOs with Jeffrey Smith.

 

[1:18:38] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. I love Jeff.

 

[1:18:40] Ashley James: Yes. I recommend everyone listen and learn more from Jeffrey Smith. He has a course you can take on his website that teaches you how to become a GMO educator. It’s just fascinating. So great episode. It’s 133 of Learn True Health Podcast.

He would talk about how the Bt toxin, what they found is that in this GMOs, one of the GMOs are designed for the Bt toxin to be produced in the plant. But when we eat that plant the Bt toxin then actually the genes of it get into the bacteria. They hi-jack the bacteria in our gut and our bacteria in our gut starts producing the Bt toxin.

 

[1:19:23] Dr. Michael Haley: AKA the sharp protein because its purpose is to essentially explode the guts of the bacteria.

 

[1:19:32] Ashley James: Why is it that all of a sudden, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth and now small intestinal fungal overgrowth is a thing? I had a doctor on the show who discovered small intestinal fungal overgrowth. He is a very allopathic mainstream doctor. He’s a PhD, he’s a professor, teaches at a teaching hospital. He is well-educated. Just the credentials are coming out of just like they’re a mile long. The thing is he’s now being rejected by the mainstream medical system, the same system that he comes from and he embraces. He’s not a holistic doctor whatsoever. But because he is saying, this is what he’s saying is that small intestinal fungal overgrowth is a thing. He has discovered it and he says it’s a 100% man-made because of the medical procedures we are now doing, because of the amount of antibiotics we’re giving people, because of the standard diet, because of everything basically. But he said 20 years ago this didn’t exist. And now it’s rampant and he’s seeing it everywhere.

I thought that was really interesting that he’s actually trying to make a change in the medical system and the medical system is trying to silence him, which is really interesting. They just don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to hear that there’s small intestinal fungal overgrowth that’s rampant in patients and that’s totally man-made because the system is broken.

 

[1:20:59] Dr. Michael Haley: You know, I think I misspoke on something. I think I said that the Bt toxin was exploding the guts of the bacteria. I mean the insects that ate the plant food that has the Bt toxin in it, which you got to think if it can damage those little insects guts what can it do to ours? If it’s exploding theirs, we’re thicker, it might not explode them but it’s got to be jabbing them. Is it possible that that’s why so many inflammatory bowel conditions are existing today? It’s not exploding the bacteria, it’s exploding the insects that eat the Bt toxin, the sharp protein.

 

[1:21:40] Ashley James: Yeah. Jeffrey talks about a study in Canada where they found that after eating GMO, the Bt toxin GMO plants, the bacteria in the person who ate it then their gut basically started to reproduce Bt toxin. So it hi-jacked the genes, the genes of the GMO hi-jacked the gut biome.

 

[1:22:05] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. I would see it as now having this little tiny daggers that are continuously in you. You have this thick intestinal wall but a bunch of tiny little daggers just kind of jabbing at it, gradually irritating it more and more and more. It’s definitely a problem. That’s what’s happening and you got Bt toxin in your gut not only do you want to be consuming the Bt toxin but if you’re manufacturing it, we got to reprogram that gut flora quick.

 

[1:22:43] Ashley James: So, for those who are listening who decided to join us and listen to this because they have gut issues to heal. You mentioned IBS, Crohn’s, colitis, GERD. Can you imagine that we’re sitting there with you as your patient or in a lecture, you’re educating us on what we can do. What steps can we take to heal our gut?

 

[1:23:10] Dr. Michael Haley: Let’s throw a wind with that because we just named a bunch of gut conditions. Let’s throw in all of those skin conditions, auto-immune skin conditions from the psoriasis, eczema or whatever it is because it’s all the same. What actionable steps, acne, what actionable steps can we take to start healing the skin and the gut because we’re looking at that as one organ?

Obviously, number one stop eating the chemicals, the inflammatory foods. Inflammatory foods are one thing and then chemicals are another. Sometimes they are the same food, you’re getting a double whammy. The preservatives, the things that are killing your gut flora. The genetically modified foods. The unfiltered water filled with chlorine. The animal foods that have antibiotics in them or that are fed inflammatory foods. If you’re eating beef and it’s not grass-finished it’s going to be inflammatory. It’s different. It’s a different kind of meat. All the artificial flavors and sweeteners. You see in the ingredients red and yellow and blue number this and that, it’s not real. Partially hydrogenated foods or things that we know have been radiated and killed off. If it’s not food, let’s stir away from those things and get back to the real foods.

Then the other side is when we’re looking at real foods, what are the real foods that are real good for me? Now, we talked earlier about the diet log, the mood log or symptom log the what you eat and how you feel log. This is another one that I got from Dr. Natasha McBride. The skin test, back in the day they didn’t take blood and work from the blood. They would actually maybe scratch your back and then put an antigen on it and then if you got a little bump there we knew you were allergic to it. You can do that at home yourself. Whether or not you choose to scratch yourself, that’s up to you. You’d probably get a better response but you can actually take the foods that you’re eating and put it right on maybe the thin part of your wrist there and make a little paste out of it or whatever and leave it on there for an hour or so. Then wash it off if it leave you a red spot.

If it did, you probably have an allergy to it. It’s probably inflammatory for you. Maybe stay away from that food. Then we start consuming more gut-healing foods that make sense. Bone stock makes sense. Aloe Vera makes sense. Both of those make sense if you don’t have allergies to them. Fermented foods probably makes sense. It’s funny when you think fermented foods people say, “Yeah. I’ll just get a bottle of wine.” Rethink that one unless it’s natural wine, homemade wine. Did you buy raw grape juice and it fermented and it became effervescent by itself? Well, then it’s probably truly probiotic. But if it’s a bottle of wine where they fermented it and then they added sulfites as a preservative to stop that fermentation so they can stop the flavor where it is right there and then, it’s probably not really a live beverage. Maybe try something more simple like sauerkraut, homemade sauerkraut if you can find it or you can have a –

 

[1:27:19] Ashley James: Make it yourself.

 

[1:27:21] Dr. Michael Haley: Absolutely. Or if you have a source at a farmers’ market where someone’s making it and it’s not pasteurized, does not have chemical preservatives but it’s actually a live culture. When it comes to dairy, we can get in trouble talking about this because some people think dairy is the devil, but there is different kinds of dairy. You can have cultured whey which is if you ever eat yogurt you don’t finish it all and then you go back the next day and you see that liquid there, that’s the whey where it’s separated. It could be very good, very probiotic and it could be well-fermented where a lot of the things that might cause problems that you have your allergies to are already consumed by the bacteria. Cultured dairy, especially if it’s from the right kind of cows or goat milk, can be very probiotic and very beneficial for some people, not for everybody. But it could work.

So, as we start getting back to our roots eating – I like this one question too. When you’re thinking, “What about this? Should I eat this?” Did that exist 100 years ago?

 

[1:28:53] Ashley James: Right or 500 years ago. I think they had Coca Cola I don’t know. They had something like that 100 years ago. It did have like cocaine in it so it was a little different.

 

[1:29:08] Dr. Michael Haley: It was probably better for you.

 

[1:29:14] Ashley James: That’s really funny.

 

[1:29:16] Dr. Michael Haley: That’s also a trick question too though. “Well, yeah. This is a hamburger. That existed 100 years ago.” Let’s dig in a little deeper. What did they feed the cows 100 years ago? Where did the cows live 100 years ago? In the fields eating grass. So you might have to dig a little deeper to understand if it really exists at 100 years ago.

How was it processed? Get as close to the real food as possible. Grow your own food for heaven’s sakes. If you really want to understand food, grow your own and start learning. “Oh. Wow. I treat my soil good and make it more nutritious and it becomes this wet, moist, microbiome of its own. I get some really good fruits and vegetables. Isn’t that amazing?”

 

[1:30:17] Ashley James: There’s a free documentary on YouTube I highly recommend watching that teaches you basically you can turn your backyard into a thriving garden. It’s called Back to Eden Gardening. It’s a man who moved here 30 years ago into Sequim, Washington on the banana belt. So we get a lot of sunshine, a lot of rain. He bought this big property. He basically want to make a homestead and live off a land and never go to a grocery store again. Dug a well and there is so low pressure that he just started crying and he said, “Why God? Why?” He spent his whole life savings to buy this beautiful property. He thought this was it. This is where he was going to live. He is a very religious man and a very spiritual man and he prayed. He got a message from God who said, “Go into the forest and see how the forest can be lush and beautiful after 60 days with no rain.” Because that’s often what happens here in the summer, we get 60 or 90 days with no rain. It’s sunny and hot every day. The forest looks beautiful. It’s pristine.

So he goes into the forest and he looks up and he sees all the trees with all their leaves are doing well and all the bushes are doing well. What’s going on? They didn’t need any water but certainly I need water to water my crops every day. I’m going to need that much and my well won’t provide it for me so what am I going to do? He starts digging in the mulch which is very dry. Two, three, four inches down, down to like nine inches down of mulch, it’s moist. It’s so moist it’s like it just rained.

Then the light bulb went on that he was going to recreate how nature grows in his garden. So there’s no-till. No upturning of the soil, no-till whatsoever which means that he’s not disrupting the microbiome. He uses wood chips, which you can get for free and he teaches you how to do that. So he covered a few acres, if you have a backyard whatever the size of your backyard you could do a 5×5 space, it doesn’t have to be acres. He covers it with inches of wood chips and then manure which he gets from farms nearby. Find some people with horses basically. Then he got some chickens and uses their chicken manure also.

Because he’s trying to mimic nature he planted a bunch of apple trees about 10 – 15 feet away from each other. His squash will actually grow because he plants everything really close together. Relatively you can still walk around little plants. There’s’ no weeds. So the squash will climb up the apple trees and it looks like he has a squash plant. Like butternut squashes are hanging down from the apple tree. He does free tours in the summer and you can come and spend two hours with him on a Saturday or Sunday and eat from his garden. He says he hasn’t been to a grocery store in 12 years. All he eats is what he grows and what he produces on his homestead.

He doesn’t have a computer or internet so I wrote him a letter old school and he called me back. We had a nice like 90-minute conversation. He’s really nice. People are recreating how he does it and how he teaches it. I did it in our backyard with a 50×25 foot pot. I couldn’t believe it. The food we grew, oh my gosh. You get a high off of gardening when you can just- you’re hungry you walk into your backyard, pick a few things, come into the kitchen and I didn’t have to drive anywhere. The food is so mineral-rich. The enzymes are still alive. I mean, eating live food, there’s nothing like it on the planet. You feel so good after eating something that’s live.

I love the advice that you’re giving. That’s really awesome. Now, in terms of healing the gut and the skin conditions, do you have any books you can recommend or resources you recommend? I know you like Jordan Rubin’s The Maker’s Diet and of course Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, her book The GAPS Diet. Are there any resources that you’d recommend beyond that?

 

[1:34:43] Dr. Michael Haley: Those are two of my favorite resources. Those are probably the two that had the largest impact on me personally. I also love YouTube. I love my friend Chris Wark at chrisbeatcancer.com. Wonderful resource when it comes to healing the gut and strengthening against cancer as well. You mentioned Jeff Smith. He’s got a lot of great content that helps you understand how we got in this problem to begin with. There’s guys like Sean Croxton who focuses on gut health. There’s so many resources. I loved a lot of the work that Ty Bollinger has been doing in – well, Truth About Cancer was a big start that really launched him into that health and healing. Again, he’s always a part of the big health how do we live to maximize our lives? That always involves gut health.

There’s just so many resources. When it comes to the books my favorite are Jordan Rubin’s who really has probably 30 books or more now. They all talk about gut health because that was his big issue. The GAPS diet is one of those things where it’s not the most exciting read but the further you get into the more it makes sense. It just really help shape my understanding. How about yourself? I bet you have a couple as well.

 

[1:36:48] Ashley James: When it comes to healing the gut, I’m such a believer in eliminating the foods that are harming it. I learned from Dr. Joel Wallach who’s a naturopathic physician. He’s been preaching for almost 20 years now going gluten-free: barley, wheat, rye and oats because oats contain gliadin. He thinks 100% of the population should be without because he says it’s not that it’s an immune issue it’s a mechanical issue. Mechanical you’re not designed to fully break down the proteins so they end up causing damage to the microvilli as they go through. Now some people have an immune component in addition to that and it’s more obvious but he sees that when he gets 100% of people off of barley, wheat, rye and oats that he sees improvement in digestion.

He believes in making sure that we are minerally rich. He thinks that all of our food supplies void of minerals because of the last 100 years of farming practices that have led to depleting the soil. It’s very rare that you can find foods that are grown in minerally rich soil. So he’s a big believer in making sure we’re taking supplements to fill in those gaps. I’ve seen a lot of results from following that. I mean, it’s undeniable the GAPS diet although it’s very strict and hard to follow, the results are undeniable, which is amazing, right?

Now, what about powders and stuff? This day and age people are – now we’re seeing everything’s powdered and packaged and you can buy bone broth powder versus the actual bone broth. I’m imagining someone’s invented Aloe Vera powder out there. What’s the difference? Is it one-to-one? Could you really get the same healing benefits from powdered bone broth versus making it yourself in the Instant Pot or on the stove? The same with Aloe Vera, once it’s powdered. Aren’t there some components removed, some of this components removed when it’s been powdered?

 

[1:39:18] Dr. Michael Haley: You know, oddly I’m going to give you the answer that you’re probably not expecting.

 

[1:39:22] Ashley James: I’m ready.

 

[1:39:23] Dr. Michael Haley: We’ve seen people get amazing results with powdered foods. To me, it’s not the best solution. Real food is real food. Powders are a convenience and sometimes they help us get well because it’s just more convenient and easier. If that’s what’s going to take to get you well, okay. If harvesting your own Aloe Vera and filleting your own leaves isn’t something you’re up for and ordering raw or frozen Aloe Vera is too expensive or you live in a part of the world that you don’t have access to it, well guess what? Powdered Aloe could definitely be a benefit to you. In the same way powdered greens. If you’re not getting your ten servings of fruits and vegetables every day. Is a scoop of powdered greens bad? No. It’s probably going to really help you get a lot of nutrients that you’re missing because you’re not getting ten servings of fruits and vegetables representing all the colors every day.

So these powdered foods can certainly be a lot more convenient and help you get the nutrition that you should be getting from your food.

 

[1:40:42] Ashley James: I like it. So it’s better than not doing it at all. If someone’s like, “I am too busy.” Or maybe they’re too tired or too sick or maybe they’re just starting off and really instead of juicing their own juices or making their own smoothies, if we could just have them throw some of these dehydrated vegetables and fruits into a blender then just have them drink it, that’s better than nothing. That’s better than not doing it at all. You are seeing good results. That’s good. I like it because you prefer whole foods in their unadulterated state but you’re saying that a powder is an option if it’s the difference is not doing it and doing it.

 

[1:41:25] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Absolutely. Juicing isn’t a whole food. Juicing has its benefits of being able to get a whole bunch of nutrients in your body quicker and faster which could be beneficial. When you juice your fruits and vegetables, you’re getting rid of the fiber that your gut can use for good health unless you’re not tolerating the fiber at the moment because you have an issue there. You’re also missing the beginning of digestion which is mastication which infuses the nutrients that you’re consuming with the digestive enzyme initiation, that whole process. It’s part of digestion and you’re skipping it because you’re running your fruits and vegetables through a juicer and you’re drinking it.

Now, I still juice. Is it a bad thing? Well, I eat a lot of really good food too and I chew my food 50 times like Jordan Rubin told me. Not always but we try to chew our food better and do things right. A lot of times, if we juice the fruits and vegetables we’ll actually take the pulp and make crackers out of them. So we’re still getting that benefit in an enjoyable way. But remember, the best thing is probably if you can do it a lifestyle that includes eating real food. Most of the time. Most of the time or all the time if possible.

 

[1:42:57] Ashley James: Let’s get into dosages of your, let’s just assume that everyone’s really excited and they want to try your frozen Aloe gel that’s been unadulterated and it’s the closest thing to them actually just being out in the Aloe field, cracking open an Aloe leaf and sucking out the gel themselves. That’s the closest thing they can get to that freshness. Tell us about the dosages and tell us how to take it because this is like a gel. So what am I, how am I drinking this?

 

[1:43:28] Dr. Michael Haley: Okay. Hold your nose, tilt your head back. No.

 

[1:43:34] Ashley James: Like an oyster? Just let it slide down your throat.

 

[1:43:39] Dr. Michael Haley: I actually can say that with a little humor because the reality is it could be like that for some people that aren’t used to the texture or the taste. Now, our Aloe Vera doesn’t have much taste to it because we’ve done a good job at eliminating the outer leaf. If you have ever made your own Aloe gel and you just got a little dab of that yellow sap on the tip of your tongue, it’s like eating a raw garlic clove and you just taste it on your tongue for the rest of the day. It doesn’t go away.

So that’s how Aloe Vera can be. Ours happens to do a really good job at eliminating more than 99% of that so you can barely taste it but it does have that little bit of a taste. Healthy people generally say, “Oh. This tastes good,” or “doesn’t taste like anything at all.” People that don’t have much concept of what healthy foods are say, “Oh. I could never drink that.” But the easiest way is to just drink it. You don’t have to mix it with anything. Just drink it.

As far as the serving size, I recommend all of our new customers drink a full 8-ounce glass every day for the first week and then look in the mirror. Pay attention and say, “what’s different?” Not everyone notices a difference. Most people seem to actually do notice a difference. It’s like, “Wow. I really really look different. My skin is really doing better. My heels aren’t as cracked and dry. My skin looks better. People are telling me I’m glowing and ask me what I’m doing.” Okay. Something’s changing on the inside then.

For some people, if you’re having real serious problems like bleeding bowel movements, I’m going to probably tell them drink three full glasses a day for a few days. Put the fire out. Front end load. How much can you drink a day? Don’t do that with other brands by the way because if it has the outer leaf in it you’re going to have problems.

How much of our brand can you drink? Ours is this thick, mucousy kind of, you know, it’s right from the plant. It is thick. How much of ours can you drink? When I’m in the Dominican Republic supervising the harvest, I have eight checkpoints. I drink eight ounces at each checkpoint. I’m drinking a half gallon a day. There’s a point of diminishing returns. If you drink twice as much, you’re not getting twice the benefit. But you’re not going to overdose on our brand. If you’re drinking one that has the outer leaf in it, yes you can. Be careful.

So, hope that makes sense and it depends on the problem why you’re drinking. Lower and stabilizing blood sugar levels. You know, have an ounce two or three times a day and measure your blood sugar for the next couple of weeks and see what happens.

 

[1:46:50] Ashley James: Can I add it to a smoothie or can I water it down? Can I add some lime or lemon juice to it? I mean are there any other ways of taking it?

 

[1:47:00] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. But it doesn’t seem to be the most pleasant thing for a lot of people. As you’re adding things to it you’re just increasing the amount of something you don’t like. No. Something like myself, I kind of like it now. I didn’t always like it. So if I juice my carrots and celery and maybe a little apple and lemon or whatever and pour a few ounces of Aloe in it, to me it just adds some texture and thickness. I like it because it makes it for me more satisfying.

 

[1:47:37] Ashley James: Yeah. I like the flavor. I especially like it with a little bit of lemon or lime. That’s me. I like it cool. Like I like it over ice or something if it isn’t – with yours it’s already frozen then we thaw it. Do we just put it in the fridge and let it thaw there or how long until we can drink it from frozen?

 

[1:48:01] Dr. Michael Haley: Yeah. Just leave it out of the refrigerator for about six or seven hours. Give it a shake, pour your glass and then keep it in the refrigerator the rest of the time. I would say up to a couple of weeks in the refrigerator. If you’re not going to consume it within a couple of weeks, as soon as you melt that whole bottle pour some in the smaller containers and refreeze them.

 

[1:48:21] Ashley James: Got it. Got it. Very cool. There’s no diminishing of the health benefits because it was frozen?

 

[1:48:31] Dr. Michael Haley: The only thing I’ve ever measured was the acemannan content and we did not see a diminish in that. What we do know is it’s viscous and we know it’s not filtered. So it’s probably way more nutritious than those that have been filtered. Why do they filter? Because they have too much outer leaf and they have to take out the irritant. So how do you do that? You use diatomaceous earth and activated carbon. Stir it into this big slurry and then you push it through a filter and this clear, thin liquid comes out.

The question I have is, “Okay. Does carbon know what the difference is between the good nutrients and the sucker you’re trying to take out? Of course not. So what you’re getting is a diluted product. You’re getting less nutrients. If ours does diminish, I’m certain it’s better than having them filtered, pasteurized and preserved.

The ultimate would be hand-fillet a fresh Aloe leaf. What’s that? What’s a fresh Aloe leaf? It’s not one you buy at the grocery store. By the time you see it in the grocery store, there’s a video on my website actually. On my YouTube channel, rather, that shows that it’s probably already a month old. It gives three reasons why. How I came with that I think is pretty accurate.

A fresh Aloe leaf. Grow your own Aloe plant. Take one off, hand fillet it, run it through a grinder and drink it down. That would be the best. I think the next best option to that is raw frozen Aloe that someone else did that for you. The freezing is really the only way we know how to truly preserve it in its natural form.

 

[1:50:26] Ashley James: Very cool. Now, you’ve seen people reverse psoriasis and other skin conditions drinking Aloe. Of course making lifestyle changes, we’ve already discussed that. Let’s say they’ve already made the life choices, I know so many people who have these skin problems and the itching and the bleeding and the cracking. They’ve changed their diet but inflammation’s a tricky thing. It’s this domino effect. There needs to be a break state. There needs to be something that comes in because sometimes it can kind of be in a vicious loop. Even things like stress or no sleep can set it off so people might have already made lifestyle and diet changes and then they bring in your Aloe Vera gel. Now they’re speeding up the healing and decreasing inflammation and they start to see results.

They’re drinking it. They’re not applying it on their skin directly or are they doing both?

 

[1:51:20] Dr. Michael Haley: No. Well, some people would definitely use Aloe Vera externally but it’s so much better if it works from the inside out. Yeah. You got a burn and you want some relief, go ahead put some Aloe on it. You got a cut or a scrape and you want some maybe scar prevention, go ahead put some Aloe on it. But you got a chronic condition, okay if you need a little bit of relief with your eczema or your psoriasis, go ahead put some Aloe on it but heal it from the inside out.

 

[1:51:55] Ashley James: That’s where it started and that’s what’s  having it continue.

 

[1:52:01] Dr. Michael Haley: Now, with that, there is a time for medicine. I’ll give you an example that most people could probably relate to. If we look at a common skin condition cracked feet, cracked dry feet. Dr. Natasha had always talked about parasites entering through the feet, through cracks in the feet. Once they get in one now you got something else to deal with. A lot of people will have fungus infections, athlete’s foot in these deep cracks. It’s not like you can moisten the feet enough with Aloe Vera, you get a pedicure and file the hard stuff off and keep on treating it. You’re not necessarily getting rid of the fungus infection.

There is a time where you might use a medicated cream or maybe an Aloe with some anti-fungal essential oils.

 

[1:53:07] Ashley James: Like tea tree oil.

 

[1:53:09] Dr. Michael Haley: Yes. You might actually medicinally in a sense treat that fungus infection with something natural or medicated. Whatever you choose to do. It’s not always just, there’s not a magic bullet. “Oh. Let me just drink Aloe. Let me just put Aloe on it.”

 

[1:53:28] Ashley James: Or using as a tool to speed up healing and decrease inflammation. Like the five things you said: helps blood sugar, it’s helping feed the good gut bacteria, I love the fact that it speeds up healing because if we’re doing everything else right then why not just get in a time where Aloe Vera is like a time machine. Let’s just get in the time machine and get some faster results. In order to get those faster results we have to change, we also want to do stuff at the root level: change the diet, change the lifestyle.

I’m actually really excited for my listeners to try your Aloe Vera because this is the best brand that’s the best quality. Like you said, we can grow our own Aloe plants. Not in all climates, maybe indoors. Spend the time growing them and then squeezing, bleeding the stuff out and then squeezing the gel out ourselves, which we wouldn’t be drinking the amounts that are going to be part of a healing routine. That just needs really cumbersome. So getting your Aloe seems like absolutely the best way to go and I’m really looking forward to hearing from my listeners how implementing your Aloe has helped them.

Now, you’re giving us a special bonus. Listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/aloe and with their order they’re going to get your Aloe cream as well which sounds wonderful. That’s made with your special Aloe gel right?

 

[1:55:01] Dr. Michael Haley: Yes. Absolutely. In fact, 70% of what is in the tube is our Aloe Vera. I didn’t tell you. We’re doing this with a sunscreen that’s coming out soon. It’s going to be a natural formula. I did not know this that pretty much all of your sun protections are mostly water. Ours is going to be zero water. Everywhere water would go we’re putting Aloe.

 

[1:55:33] Ashley James: That is so cool. The fact that it’s an all-natural. Right now we’re getting into the season where people are flying down south for winter break or spring break. So even though it’s winter up here, so people aren’t necessarily thinking about wearing sunscreen on a day-to-day basis. Many people go down to a tropical area, more sunny area over the holidays. We can all buy your sunscreen especially for when springtime comes. I am very picky when it comes to sunscreen because of how much heavy metals and chemicals and cancer-causing chemicals and also environmentally. There’s some sunscreens that harm the environment as well and kill the coral reef which was just a shock to hear about.

So you have an all-natural sunscreen coming out that is healthy for the body, healthy for the environment and contains Aloe instead of water so it’s medicinal sunscreen. I’m very excited about that.

Now you’re giving our listeners a 10% off coupon. That’s coupon code: LTH. That’s for all of your wonderful products. Your flagship is the Aloe gel that we drink but you have these other products. Tell us a bit about the other products so we know. I know you have some CBD. Tell us about your other Aloe products.

 

[1:57:01] Dr. Michael Haley: Well, the Aloe products pretty much two skin formula right now until we have the sunscreen as well. The one is the Youth-Derm Aloe Cream which is your plain formula which I recommend for most of our customers. It’s actually the better value. You get a lot more for less money. What’s the other one and why is it so much more expensive for half the amount? It’s more of an anti-aging product with things that I’ll call synergistic ultra-healing ingredients. So we call it the Ultra Healing Youth-Derm Aloe Cream. What do I mean synergistic ultra-healing ingredients? Things like tremella mushroom and shea butter and lavender essential oil and manuka honey with bee venom and propolis. It’s the exquisite formula that people are using for anti-aging.

For our customers, if you are someone with a gut problem and maybe have more sensitivities, go with the plain formula. Keep it simple. You want less things. Even though it’s filled with natural things like the lavender essential oil is organic. Well, that’s just one more thing that you might be sensitive to. So I always want our gut people to know keep it simple on everything. Those are our two main skin formulas.

We have other things. The CBD oil we’re not manufacturing. Again, there’s thousands of brands but only a few really good manufacturers. What we have found in our research is that most of these products don’t work. That bothered me. In fact I was completely down on the industry until I found out the why to that and found out about the differences based on laboratory testing. Even now, if you’ve been watching the news you realize that lots of the CBD products out there not only don’t have the amounts of CBD in them that’s contained on the label but some don’t have any at all.

I actually went and visited the factory in Colorado and got the tour, saw this massive bales coming in which just blew me away. Incredible experience. A robot and the – it was just neat. Well, the final products were very different color, much darker than things I have seen in the past which okay, that color is nutrients, aroma is nutrients. It’s part of a plant. I gave some to my wife. Actually, a sample at the factory. Gave it to my wife and by that night she was saying that her sciatica pain was gone that she has struggled with for so long. I said, “No way,” because I’m still skeptical. There’s no way because everything we’ve tried in the past didn’t do anything. There’s no way or maybe we really landed on something here.

Well, we had them made one that was twice as potent as the one that she had taken at the factory. The results we’ve been getting have been freaky. So how come we were getting no results with trying all these different brands? I understand. I get it. These other ones were very weak. There was not much CBD in them that’s why they didn’t taste like anything, didn’t smell like anything. Here we’re actually getting results. People sleeping better.

I actually injured my shoulder and after two weeks I was screaming. I remember leaving the office one day. I said, my exact words which this is not like me to say something like this. I said, “I’m going home before I shoot myself.” For some reason I thought about it, “wait a second.” I took a dropper-full of the CBD and then I squirt some on my hand from the same bottle and rubbed it on my shoulder. I woke up that night after sleeping for about five hours straight, which was a record in a couple of weeks, I woke up sleeping on the shoulder that hurts so much. I could not have done that. I was struggling to get a comfortable position for two weeks and I woke up and I thought, “Wow. I barely feel it.”

Of course that next day when I went to work, I had another dropper-full because I still only had a tiny tiny bit of pain, never had it again. So this is doing something. The difference is in the quality of the manufacturing what’s really in it and what the lab reports are showing is really in it. CBD works. If you’re trying one and it’s not working, you just don’t have the right product or it’s not the solution to your problem. But we are seeing some amazing results.

 

[2:02:23] Ashley James: It really is you get what you pay for. Buying CBD at the drugstore because it’s now just everywhere. It’s good and bad, right? People say, “Well, why isn’t the supplement industry regulated?” You don’t want it regulated because then the pharmaceutical companies would take over. It is the Wild West, it is buyer beware but that’s really to our advantage if we are smart about it. So we have to hunt for the companies that produce quality and sounds like you found one.

 

[2:02:56] Dr. Michael Haley: If you’re getting CBD 1000, 1500 or more mg per bottle, understand the difference per bottle. If you got a bottle that says 200 mg you might get confused because you might buy a bottle of ibuprofen that says 200 mg. Guess what, ibuprofen that’s 200 mg per capsule. CBD it’s 200 mg per bottle. “Oh. How many servings are in there?” Well, 30 droppers full and a serving is a whole dropper full. 200 divided by 30 servings, that’s what you’re getting each serving size. Or your issue, okay one option is take five servings at a time then. So you get the serving size that you would if it was a 1000 mg bottle.

 

[2:03:52] Ashley James: So one problem is the concentration but also the quality because of how the plant I mean it depends on the strain. It depends on how it was grown. Was it indoor? Was it outdoor? Do they use chemicals or natural fertilizer? Was it grown in hydroponics or in soil? All of that plays a role in the medicinal qualities.

 

[2:04:16] Dr. Michael Haley: How did you take out the THC to make it legal and what else did you take out with it when you did that process?

 

[2:04:23] Ashley James: Or whether it was hemp or cannabis? Is it whole plant extract like you said? Yeah. There’s so many variation that goes into the quality of the medicine. The more process the more likely we are going to remove things that are medicinal. It’s just the beginning. It’s the Wild West. We’re just at the beginning. It’s very very exciting. It should never have been illegal in the first place. This medicine. It’s all political. So it’s very cool that now hemp is coming back because we can use it for building supplies, food, textiles. It’s so good for the environment and it’s so good for our bodies. I love hemp hearts. I eat them weekly. I cook with them and eat them over salads and smoothies.

 

[2:05:21] Dr. Michael Haley: They’re delicious.

 

[2:05:22] Ashley James: Yeah. Full of omegas. So good. I have episodes, we have several episodes just on the endocannabinoid system of the body and understanding that there are receptors in the body for CBD that our body actually makes it. When we’re deficient and healthy fats our body can’t make it enough of it. That’s why people such good benefits from taking it externally because it’s a nutrient the body is deficient in and that blew my mind. Yeah. It’s wonderful. I’m really glad that you found a quality source of CBD.

So you sell the tinctures, you sell any creams or salves? How does that work?

 

[2:06:01] Dr. Michael Haley: No. we just have the ingestible in the dropper. Why? Well, my experience I realized that we don’t have to make it in a wonderful cream because you can use it topically or ingest it. You know what I mean? It’s the same thing either way. What is it when we make it a topical? Well we use the same stuff and we just mix it with other things which really dilutes it.

 

[2:06:26] Ashley James: No need to.

 

[2:06:27] Dr. Michael Haley: To me it’s pointless. If you want to use it topically just use it topically.

 

[2:06:32] Ashley James: Right and we could take your Aloe Vera cream which is 70% Aloe Vera gel and mix it in with the CBD and rub it somewhere if we wanted to or just ingest it. Very cool. I love it. Is there anything else we should know about the products that you sell or about being a customer? The experience being a customer with you that we should know about.

 

[2:06:53] Dr. Michael Haley: I am available to answer questions. We have a wonderful staff that answers most questions. When it gets in the medical questions they put it through to me. You’re listeners, you have access to get your medical questions answered. What products you should use and how much and things like that. Feel free to call.

 

[2:07:18] Ashley James: Awesome. Awesome. The listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/aloe to get the special gift that you’re giving Learn True Health listeners. Thank you so much for that. Use the coupon code: LTH for 10% off for your first purchase. I greatly appreciate your generosity today both of your time and also the discount and the free gift that you’re giving us. Dr. Haley, is there anything else that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?

 

[2:07:43] Dr. Michael Haley: I want to thank you for all that you are doing because your listeners are getting a wealth of information. I can’t believe who you have interviewed in the past and how much quality content is there on your channel. So thank you for everything that you are doing.

 

[2:08:01] Outro: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview as much as I did. Go to learntruehealth.com/aloe. That’s learntruehealth.com/aloe. He’s giving us a free cream that is very healing as well as his particular juice. Use the coupon code: LTH for an additional discount for the Learn True Health listeners. So go to learntruehealth.com/aloe and use the coupon code LTH.

Thank you so much for being a wonderful listener. Be sure to join the Facebook group if you haven’t already. We have over 3500 excellent, wonderful, amazing Learn True Health followers, true health seekers. Together we create a beautiful community that is very supportive and loving. So coming into 2020, launching your health to a whole new level. If you want a wonderfully supportive community, come join us. Learn True Health on Facebook. Join the group and ask questions and join the discussion. I’d love to see you there. Have a fantastic rest of your day.

 

Get Connected with Dr. Michael Haley!

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Recommended Readings by Dr. Michael Haley

The Maker’s Diet  by Jordan Rubin

The GAPS Diet by Dr. Natasha Campbell – McBride

Dec 24, 2019

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Emily's Site: Remediesbyemily.etsy.com

Healing Through Prayers

https://www.learntruehealth.com/healing-through-prayers

Highlights:

  • Power of prayer
  • Prayer are stepping stones to recovering health
  • Building relationship through prayer
  • Let go of fear through faith, belief, and prayer.
  • As you build your relationship with God through prayer, you start receiving more and more good things
  • Prayers help people to have more positive outlook
  • One-on-one connection with God
  • Reticular activating system
  • You feel more joy from giving than that person will ever get from receiving
  • Learn from the returns
  • God’s answer is yes, no, or later
  • Looking at all aspects of your life and bring it all into balance
  • Life in a few years can be so brilliant, so amazing that you wouldn’t want to give it up for anything
  • Write down who you want to pray for, what you’d like for yourself, and also something to give, if you have something to give praise about
  • You should surround yourself and try to serve and reach as many people as you can whatever you are

 

In today’s episode, Emily will share with us the value of prayer and how it helps us recover our health and how it builds a deeper connection with God, ourselves and other people.

 

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 400.

I am so excited to have back on the show Emily Becker. She was here in Episode 340 sharing about how she reversed her alopecia. She basically went — her entire body went bald.  And she restored herself with natural medicine and she helps families and men and women and children who have this condition. She helps them to reverse it naturally as well. So if you have alopecia, if you have hair loss, or if you know anyone who does, listen to Episode 340 and share it with them. And let them know but Emily Becker because she is definitely living proof. You should see pictures. Emily, your hair is gorgeous. And I’ve been Facebook friends with you since your alopecia days when you didn’t have any hair. And then you started to grow the hair. A little peach fuzz at first and now I think your hair is as long as mine. I mean it’s just like it’s going to be so long people are going to be climbing it. That was a Disney movie with no hair.

 

[00:01:20] Emily Becker: Rapunzel.

 

 

[00:01:21] Ashley James: You’re going to be Rapunzel soon. Your hair is so luscious and long. And so it was great having you on the show in Episode 340. And I’m glad you could come back to share what’s happened since. When you came on the show, you shared what your story and what you did to naturally reverse your alopecia, both diet and supplements and topical things. And since then you were just starting your business which is at home. You have formulated the most amazing organic and 100 percent natural herbal creams and salves and remedies for all kinds of skin and hair conditions. And your businesses just taken off and you do it all from home. When the kids go to bed, you’re a busy stay at home mom.

I’ve been loving watching you flourish. And watching all your customers report back to you on Facebook just how much your pain cream with the CBD in it has helped them. Or you know, your face creams. And I love your face cream. It’s so luxurious. So I could go on and on about how wonderful your own natural products are. And I love that you show pictures on Facebook of the process of you making things so we see the ingredients and see how you do it. And we know absolutely 100 percent of the ingredients that are going in so there’s no chemicals or pesticides or anything like that in your home remedy cosmetics. It’s wonderful.

So welcome back to the show.

 

 

[00:02:56] Emily Becker: Thank you, Ashley. I’m so happy to be here. I had so much fun last time we did this together. I’ve been wanting to ask you to come back on the show for so long and I’m grateful that you’re willing to do this in such a short notice with me.

 

 

[00:03:14] Ashley James: Oh, yeah. This week you’re like, “Can I come back on the show?” I’m like, “Yeah. What you doing this weekend?” It’s like Saturday afternoon – about to be afternoon right now and here we are hanging out.

 

 

[00:03:25] Emily Becker: Well, I was feeling inspired to thank your supporters and all your listeners for all of their support for me. I get emails and I mean, they order from me as well. But I get a lot of emails saying that, you know, they need help with their alopecia. Or that they connected with me through face and then we’ll pray together through email and spend some time together like that. And I just wanted to thank them so much for their support.

 

 

[00:03:57] Ashley James: Wonderful. Well, I love the community. The Learn True Health community is filled with really loving and caring people who want to get their health back and want to help their friends and family do the same. And so I love that you have found that to be the case as well that my listeners have reached out to you because of their alopecia or other skin issues. That they’ve also connected with you on a level of faith.

I know something that’s really made a big difference to you and to your healing and to your success is utilizing the power of prayer.

 

 

[00:04:33] Emily Becker: Absolutely.

 

 

[00:04:35] Ashley James: What does that mean? What does it mean to have the power of prayer help you? How has prayer helped you specifically? Because I know you were telling me before we hit record that prayer has been something that has absolutely made a difference in your life. And for those who have not really ever prayed or maybe not to spiritual or religious, they might scoff at it. That, you know, it’s just you’re just basically talking to some Sky Daddy. Like that’s how some people feel, right? So some people, “I’ve never connected with prayer.” And then there’s other people I’ve met who say prayer has been life changing for them. That they absolutely feel that it is one of the biggest reasons why they have gotten their health back, or become successful, or been able to attain the goals that they intend to obtain.

Can you give us – share us the story of what happened in your life that had you see that prayer made a big difference to you?

 

 

[00:05:38] Emily Becker: Well, prayer has made a big difference to me from the beginning of my health recovery. I wasn’t a believer as a young child or in my teens or anything. I didn’t – I always knew that there was a God but I didn’t have a relationship with Him or anything like that. And it was when I started to pray without trusting Jesus or anything like that that I started asking God to lead me to health. I stopped fearing my health conditions. I stopped fearing how I looked in the mirror and how my health was affecting me. I started asking for help and guidance through prayer. Within a month of the first time I ever prayed, I was on my way. I didn’t really see it happening when it was happening. But looking back, as I prayed, all of my prayers were answered. It was like stepping stones to recovering my health. I used to have a lot of fear in my heart and in my life. I had anxiety and I was living in fear. And as I would pray, the fear, all that, would be lifted from me momentarily as I prayed for a day or two. And then, eventually, I saw that I personally needed this holy help. I needed Jesus. This is my personal story. This is how I feel that I needed Him to help me with my burdens. I needed to give Him the weight that’s on my shoulders. And that I couldn’t do it alone. And I needed guidance. So I started trusting in Jesus. And then after that, it’s just been building this relationship through prayer. Where instead of feeling like I’m alone and praying for all the bad things to go away, I prayed for help and love and guidance.

And as I did that, I started receiving blessings, gifts. I started meeting people who could help me. I started believing that I could get better. I started believing that everything was going to be okay. And as my faith and my belief and my prayer life grew stronger and stronger, the more I was able to let go my fear.

I actually took – Ashley, I took your anxiety course, how to release your anxiety. And I got to tell you, I never finished. I’ve done the first 15 days three times. And it’s really similar to prayer because when – I love it. I love it. Because once you start talking about stuff that I’m familiar with, I’m like, “I got to get this other stuff ingrained in my head.” Once you set your eyes on what your heart really wants, God is listening. He wants good things for all of us. And that was how I started to believe in the power of prayer. And the things that I personally that have healed or come to me through prayer have been meeting the doctor who could help me with my hair loss. I prayed for that. And I also prayed – there’s other things that I’ll pray for and I’m like, “Oh, I can’t believe I did that. Now look at this.”

 

 

[00:09:19] Ashley James: What do you mean? What specifically?

 

 

[00:09:21] Emily Becker: So I’ll pray in simple little areas of my life. Like, “I like to eat more whole foods and eat healthier. And then all of a sudden, my kids get – you know, they’re sick and I know I need to cut out the processed foods or they’re going to just going to get sicker and sicker. So it’s like, “Okay. Well, I don’t want to change my whole lifestyle but it looks like we’re going to have to. Thanks, God.” All right. So it’s not always the answer you want but he’s always there trying to give you good things. So as you build your relationship with God through prayer, you start receiving more and more good things. And then I couldn’t keep that to myself. I started praying over my orders. I started praying over my friends, my neighbors. And by praying for my friends and my neighbors, I’m able to see that, one, it’s rewarding to share that love with Jesus through prayer. Whether they know it or not, it’s really rewarding to love someone enough that you would pray for them.

 

I really appreciate the breath work before this interview. I am.

 

 

[00:10:42] Ashley James: It was hilarious. I shared with Emily the breath work interview I did recently. I said, “You have to listen to this.” And she wrote back a few hours later, “I just listened to the world’s longest interview on breath work.” It was like a two hour long interview on breathing. It’s breathing. We all do it. But I mean, it was amazing. And so before we hit record, I’m like, “Let’s do some deep breathing together. Let’s just, you know, get Emily a bit calm.” Because she doesn’t normally jump on podcasts.

 

 

[00:11:13] Emily Becker: No.

 

 

[00:11:12] Ashley James: And so let’s get grounded. But you shared something really interesting, just as an offshoot, I want to make sure we covered this. You told me what you do to get your kids to get sleepy and wind them down before bed that you used breathing. Can you share how you do that to get your family to calm down for bedtime?

 

 

[00:11:34] Emily Becker: Yeah. Well, yeah, when I was listening to the podcast about breath work, I was like, “Oh, I already do this with my kids.” And what happens is everybody’s excited and they won’t even listen to a story. They won’t settle down for a good book. And what I’ll do is I won’t say anything. I’ll just start breathing nice and slow and deep. And after a few breaths, you’ll start to see – just like how yawning, it’s contagious. You’ll start to see their breathing slow down. Some of them will start to yawn. And then they all start to relax. And I’ve been doing that for a while now. If I haven’t on and off, probably, since my first baby. But a lot recently with my three year old just to help her relax and get ready for bed. I’d spend – so helpful.

 

 

[00:12:32] Ashley James: So you don’t sing to her. Like, “It’s bedtime. Okay. Wind it down. Stop playing with toys.” You’re not saying anything. You just are sitting near her as she’s playing. And you start to slow your breath and take deep slow breaths. And then because she has rapport with you at an unconscious level, she starts – her body starts to copy what you’re doing and she also starts to breathe slow and deep. And then that calms her down and then she’s able to sit with you and read some books before bed.

 

 

[00:13:03] Emily Becker: And focus and relax.

 

 

[00:13:06] Ashley James: Yeah. I love that you pointed that out. Right. It’s so great because that’s actually something I learned when I studied neuro-linguistic programming is this idea of rapport that when we work with our clients, we want to gain rapport with them and watch their breathing. And first, we match them how fast they’re talking, the kind of tonality they’re using, even the words they’re using, how they’re sitting, their body language, and how they’re breathing. And so it’s this idea of –

 

 

[00:13:34] Emily Becker: I don’t want to do that with my daughter. I don’t want to get that excited.

 

 

[00:13:37] Ashley James: No, no. You don’t – right. Right. You wouldn’t do that with her. But she has a rapport with you. But for clients who you don’t necessarily have rapport with yet, we would do that to put them at ease. And then what happens is once they’ve gained rapport with us, then we slow down our breathing, and then they slow down their breathing. And I learned this trick for children. As a NLP practitioner, if I’m working with children who have ADD or ADHD, that having them match my breath at an unconscious level by slowing down my breathe actually helps their neurology to slow down and calm down. It gives their body unconscious permission to slow down. So I love that idea that we can just take slower deep breaths to tell the people around us that it’s safe and okay to slow down and calm down. That we don’t need to be in fight or flight. And that it’s time for bed.

 

 

[00:14:41] Emily Becker: Yeah. It also helps me personally quiet my inner voice. Because I’m an introvert, but my mind is constantly going. And when I start taking my deep breaths, I can relax and think clearly. And then I do that also be for prayer. I don’t do the 20 minutes breath work yet. But maybe I will, maybe, for prayer. Because it’s it really is something that helps, just as we said, helps in layman’s terms for me, seeing clearly and to slow down.

 

 

[00:15:18] Ashley James: So you had mentioned that you pray over the orders that your customers have placed before you mail them out. Have you received any feedback since you started doing that? Like, I mean, I know it’s anecdotal. Did you notice any difference between before doing that and after you started praying for your clients?

 

 

[00:15:43] Emily Becker: Since I’ve been doing this what I’ve noticed is that people come back with a new energy in their emails, a new level of faith, or they’re just excited about it. Something I didn’t notice from other people. People will say, “Oh, this is great. This is great. This is great.” The products are, right? But after starting the prayers, what I noticed is that people have more positive outlook on what’s going on. I haven’t seen any miracles. I can’t – as far as that goes.

I did send a very, very, very wonderful woman who was going through breast cancer one lotion. And she wasn’t allowed to have any preservatives or anything like that inside. It had to be just raw ingredients. And she really needed a hand cream because when you’re going through cancer and chemo, the chemo medicine dries out your skin. So I sent her a big jug of lotion to put in her fridge. Well, they did the surgery. It was all successful afterwards. And the way she lights up about how amazing that simple gift has been really rewarding. I wish I could share her passion and her excitement and love about what she received.

It’s really a one on one connection. And for me, it’s a three way here. Because I’m not doing this on my own. I’m doing this with God, the Father. And I’m trusting everything in him. As I do this, we talked earlier before this interview about studies and results. You can’t measure divine intervention. You can only have faith in what the results are. Because good things happen without divine intervention anyways. God wants good things for us. And then sometimes it’s his hands are placing people in your life. His hands are that positive voice saying, you know like, “You can do this today.” I didn’t think I would share with anyone that I prayed over the orders. Because I don’t do it every time there’s been a few slips where I’m like, “Oh, I forgot to pray over that order.”

 

 

[00:18:16] Ashley James: But you could backdate that prayer.

 

 

[00:18:20] Emily Becker: I have.

 

 

[00:18:21] Ashley James: It’s never too late.

 

 

[00:18:22] Emily Becker: I’ll be like, “Oh, God. Please forgive me. I can’t even remember her last name but she’s an Oklahoman. Please, Lord, let this order that she receives not just be good for her but a blessing to her.” And suddenly that has changed the feedback that I have gotten. So it hasn’t just been, “Oh, these are amazing products.” But, “Wow.” Maybe while we’re talking here, I can pull something up. I don’t want to mention anyone’s names because this is very personal information, which is why I’m hesitant to share. But I also want to give praise to God. I was a late in life Born Again Christian. So I am not well versed in the Bible. I am well versed in my faith and how He’s brought me to where I am. I know, I can look back and be like, “Wow. He really protected me there.”

 

 

[00:19:23] Ashley James: You had mentioned that and I just remembered something that happened when I was a kid. So I have to share it. I was maybe about – I don’t know – eight or nine. And I grew up in Canada, in Ontario. And we were up in Muskoka. And it was probably February. I mean, it was cold. There was tons of ice, tons of snow. And I was hiking in the woods with my friend, Jane. We were really close to the lake up on a cliff. And I didn’t realize how close we were to the cliff until I lost my footing and I began to slide backwards.

And something that I guess I just picked up from all the other kids is always saying, “Oh, my God. You know, like, “Oh, my God. Like, Oh, my God.” Right? Because I was like this little – you know, I mean this little, like, nine year old probably thinking she’s like 13, right? I’m like, “Oh, my God.” And so I slipped. And I began to fall backwards and I’m sliding down this cliff. And it drops off. And there’s a few stories. I mean, it’s very, very high on to basically jagged rocks, open water, and ice. And it would have been death. It would have been instant. If I wouldn’t have died from hitting the rocks. It would have been drowning in ice water, right? It was not – I mean, there’s no way in which I would have survived that. And I yelled out, “Oh, my God.” Because I was very afraid. And that was just sort of this instant reaction. But what happened next really surprised me. All of a sudden there was a branch sticking out of the rock. And it was sort of like those cartoons where there’s like a one branch tree in the middle of a cliff with no roots. And you’re like, “How’d that get there?” And it and it caught my back. And I remember looking over my shoulder, like looking down at the rocks, and the ice, and the water. And being like – and I grew up in this area. Swimming in this area in the summertime. I never ever, ever saw this tree before – this branch. It was just like a branch sticking out.

The first thing I realized is I called out God’s name. And I was immediately caught. And that was like – this is like a nine year old going, “Oh, my gosh.” And it hit me and I was like, “Oh, my gosh.” He saved me. And I was just there being held by this branch. And my friend, Jane, was like, “Hold on. I got to go get a rope.” And she ran back and got a rope and came back and I was held the whole time. And she got me out. And then I looked and that’s when she when she pulled down and looked down and I realized that, “I don’t think that was there before.” I mean, you know, maybe it was. But that was really like a very odd place for a one branch tree to grow on a side of a cliff and to be able to hold my weight and just everything. Everything, like, I could have – if I was one foot to the left or one foot to the right, I would have been gone. And so that was my first experience of hit sort of His hand and his guidance.

 

 

[00:22:39] Emily Becker: Well, literally, that’s amazing.

 

 

[00:22:41] Ashley James: Right. And you just reminded me of that. That sometimes in life, there’s just these events that you go, there is something more here than – I don’t know – we’re dead and there’s nothing. Like, there’s something more to this. And I wasn’t sure – I think I believed conceptually, like, maybe theoretically that there was a soul. But when my mom died, I actually had an experience of her soul moving through me. I held her hand as she died. And it was about 1:00 or 1:30 in the morning. All the lights were pretty much off. It was in a hospital room. And it was just a light glow of like beeping things. She took her last breath. And even the doctor lent me their stethoscope so I could – just her heart had slowed over the course of the day because she had gone into a coma. And she had stopped moving her body, had stopped – like, she was stopped responding basically to us talking to her. So we were holding her hand and rubbing her feet and hugging her and everything the whole day. But she was gone. She was in a coma. And as she died, so she died, her heart stopped, she stopped breathing. She squeezed my hand. And it was only the hand – it wasn’t like both hands squeeze, it wasn’t some kind of involuntary. She grabbed – I was holding one of her hands, she squeezed it, pulled it to her heart. And then I felt an intense energy move through me and it was the color yellow. Like if you felt the color yellow. And that was one of my mom’s favorite colors. And the entire room lit up yellow. Her soul was letting me know it was okay and saying goodbye.

 

 

[00:24:30] Emily Becker: That’s incredible.

 

 

[00:24:32] Ashley James: That was like another big experience of mine to know that there’s more here. So I’m sharing this because sometimes we disregard these amazing experiences. Because I think in the mainstream media, I don’t know if they’re pushing like an atheist agenda. I don’t know what. And I’m not trying to push any religion on anyone. But I want to share, don’t discredit things that happen and just push them to the side. Listen to these amazing miracles that could happen in your life or in other people’s lives. And let that fuel you. Because I’ve heard people have incredible experiences through the power of prayer. Even people who are not religious have used prayer. And through that have found a closer connection to their Creator.

 

 

[00:25:28] Emily Becker: Oh, absolutely.

 

 

[00:25:31] Ashley James: Health is physical. And I have a lot of doctors on the show. And a lot of times we talk about, you know, using food as medicine or supplements. So health is physical. But there’s also the spiritual aspects that we see that if someone has great physical health but has absolutely no spiritual health, that they can have a level of emptiness in their life. Sort of like a sickness on an energetic level. And a lot of times when people get really sick, they look to prayer and look to God and that –

 

 

[00:25:58] Emily Becker: Then be more positive on their outlook and they change their mindset too. They pray.

 

 

[00:26:04] Ashley James: Yes. Because there is a mind body connection. There is a kind of direct connection between the emotional body and the physical health. If we’re sick emotionally or sick mentally, we can also feel those effects physically. And same with our energetic and our spiritual body. So we want to look to heal and balance all aspects of life.

So I like to leave no stone unturned. And that’s why I wanted – when you said you wanted to come on and share about your experiences with the power of prayer and how much prayer has helped you in your life. I wanted to, first of all, hear your experiences. And have the listeners hear them because maybe even if one listener can gain some huge benefit from learning from you, then it’ll all be worth it. But I know that when we align our thoughts with what we want versus what we don’t want.

If we’re going to look at neuroscience, there’s a part of our brain it’s in the brainstem called the reticular activating system. And it helps us to seek out what we want. But when we focus on what we don’t want, so if you’re constantly thinking about an illness you have, your particular activating system is going to keep filtering out your experiences to only remind you of all the illness you have. And will actually delete any evidence that you might be getting better. So the reticular activating system just helps you focus on what you’re focusing on. We have this part of our brain because if we’re foraging in the woods, let’s say for a type of berry. A green berry in a green woods and it’s really hard to see. Well, the reticular activating system helps us to identify it and seek it out. So the same goes with our attitude and our focus in life.

So if you’re praying about what you want to have, blessings in your life for yourself or for others, you’re actually telling your brain, your reticular activating system, to seek out and help you on the conscious level help you see the evidence and work towards achieving it.

 

 

[00:28:22] Emily Becker: I did a recent Facebook challenge with my friends on my personal page that helped people do exactly what you just said. I told them that – I gave them a little background. I said, “Sometimes I would sit and wonder if my decisions please God.” But that is assuming that God is limited. So now, instead, I wonder how God can bless my choices. So I told them to try, that their next hurdle, their next crossroad, the moment of uncertainty. And this can go for health, you know, something wrong with your health and you’d like to see better. I told him to pray for what that what you choose to do about it to me a blessed choice. And in that, you also want to have the good outcome. You don’t want to sit there and pray about what bad could happen. Anyone, right? About what good do you would like to happen?

And then when that alone has brought me blessings and prayers. And that’s true even with my marriage. You’re like, “Oh, I want to be more involved with my family.” Or, “Eat more wholesome foods.” Or, “I really want to reconnect with my sister again.” All these little things. As soon as you start praying for them, as soon as you start thinking about them, as soon as it’s close to your heart, everything changes for what you want.

 

 

[00:29:50] Ashley James: Yes. What you’re bringing up is something that I talked about in my course, the Free Your Anxiety course.

 

 

[00:29:56] Emily Becker: I love that course.

 

 

[00:29:57] Ashley James: My Free Anxiety course which is available on the website, learntruehealth.com in the menu section there. But you’ve done – it’s funny. You’ve done day one through 15 a few times. You got to finish the course. It’s like the ending is good too.

 

 

[00:30:11] Emily Becker: Okay. [Inaudible] [00:30:12] stuff that I’m familiar with. And I want to have the positive rewiring [inaudible] [00:30:18].

 

 

[00:30:21] Ashley James: I love it. I love that you’re doing it repeatedly. That’s actually really great to wire it in the stuff that you’re learning. But one thing I talk about is focusing on what you want versus what you don’t want. And what you’re saying is when you pray – I think this is really important – that you catch your language instead of saying like, “Dear God. Please don’t allow my husband to get in a car crash today. And please don’t let my kids fail at school.” I mean, I know I’m being like kind of over exaggerating. But we do this where we focus on what we don’t want to have happen. And that is creating the stress response in the body. And that’s not actually helping us focus on what we do want to have happen or we do want to create in our life. And so we have to catch our language. When we say what we don’t want to have happen, we have to catch our language and go, “Oh, okay. I’m not actually saying what I want. I’m just saying a bunch of what I don’t want. So what do I want?” And then say that. So my example is – when I first learned this lesson – every year I slipped on ice and fell and bruised my tailbone. And this is up in Canada. And I learned this lesson about focusing on what we do want to have happen in our internal dialogue. And I caught myself, it’s around February, we just had an ice rain. I was walking to my car and everything was icy. And I started to feel my feet slip. And I just knew the next step would be, like, a bruised bum. And I caught myself and I heard my inner dialogue say, “I don’t want to slip. I don’t want to slip. I don’t want to slip.” And I’m like, “Oh my, gosh. I’m doing it.” I’m focusing on what I don’t want to have happen.

And we do it so naturally because I think it’s part of our – I don’t know if it’s just part of our culture. Or maybe it’s a bit of, I think, the pessimists are the ones that survived. All the optimists kind of ran into bears in the woods and they didn’t procreate. So all of our ancestors were basically pessimists. So we kind of got the pessimists gene down path. Because the pessimists were like, “Well, there’s probably a bear over there. So I’m not going to go over there.” So they’re looking out for the negative things and avoided them long enough to procreate and pass down the genes. So we were taught that it’s safe to be a pessimist because you if you think about a lot of bad things that could go wrong, then you could avoid them. But the problem with that is, when we think about what we don’t want to have happen, we’re constantly triggering the stress response in the body. But we’re also telling the reticular activating system in the brain to focus on what we don’t want to have happen instead of what we do want to have happen. And so when good things actually do happen, sometimes our brain can’t even see it or perceive it, or take up that opportunity.

And so in that moment, when I was catching myself slipping on the ice, I went, “Well, what’s the opposite of I don’t want to slip.” And that was a really hard one because I was so used to thinking about what I don’t want to have happen. And then I had to go, “Okay. Well, I want to say, walk safely. Okay.” So I told myself, “I want to walk safely.” I imagined myself walking safely to my car. I imagine like there’s little bear claws coming out of my boots and allowing me to walk safely. And then I did. And I didn’t slip. And I have not slipped — knock on wood. I haven’t slept since. And that was, like, 19 years ago.

So to give you that idea that we can catch ourselves in prayer and also out of prayer. When we’re focusing on what we don’t want to have happen by stating the negative. Like, “I don’t want this to happen.” We have to catch ourselves and say, “Well, what do I want to have happen?” And focus on that instead. Because the reticular activating system will delete, distort, and generalize the information coming to us. So through our eyes, and our ears, through all of our senses, will delete, distort, and generalize before it reaches our consciousness. And so our reality is dependent on what we focus on. You and I, Emily, could go to a movie. And we could both walk out with totally different opinions about that movie with the same movie. But you and I saw different things and experienced different things because our unconscious mind deletes the source and generalized filters the information before we get to experience it consciously. So we have to catch ourselves and the languaging.

I’ll give you one example before – as I have a question for you. So I know that you and I have the same doctor mentor. This doctor, we talked about him and Episode 340. This doctor who helped me nine years ago reverse my type 2 diabetes, my chronic adrenal fatigue, my chronic infertility, and my polycystic ovarian syndrome. He helped me reverse those with diet and supplements. And I had an opportunity to actually learn from him about a-year-and-a-half before I did. But this is a perfect example because I was listening to a podcast or some kind of radio show or some kind of alternative media and he was being interviewed. And my reticular activating system at a time, I was focusing on, “I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough money. I’m broke. I can’t have money.” I was focusing –

 

 

[00:36:05] Emily Becker: Absolutely. I had the same thing happen.

 

 

[00:36:10] Ashley James: I was focusing on not having enough money.  And so when I heard the interview, my thought was, “That sounds really interesting, but I don’t have enough money.” And so I did not pursue any of his information because it just sound – I was, in my mind, it was like a brick wall. “Well, I don’t have enough money. So I shouldn’t even pursue the information.” Now, if I had not – if my reticular activating system, if I had not programmed my brain by constantly thinking about, “I don’t have enough money. I don’t have enough money.” If I hadn’t done that, I would have listened to him then and I would have gone, “Wow. I need to dive into his information further.” I may have gone to the library for free and gotten some of his books. I may have listened to more interviews with him. I may have called into his radio show. There’s so many ways I could have – he has a supplement that’s like $24. I could have afforded that. I should have got on that. And the diet that he recommends, I could have gotten that information for free. Lots of stuff, I could have done it. I could have begun my healing journey then, a-year-and-a-half before I did. But the little thought in my head was, “I can’t. I can’t because I don’t have enough money.” And then it was a brick wall and I stopped taking any action.

And a-year-and-a-half later, I was in the same financial situation but I heard the information again. And my husband is the one that said, “We need to pursue this. This sounds like this could be the answer for you.” And it’s because the him that I picked up the phone and started to take action. And thank God I did. But this is a prime example of how we limit ourselves, like you said, God will present the right people in your path. But it’s up to us to see that those people are there – that they’ve been put there in our path. And luckily, that doctor was putting my path again and the information came back to me. And then my husband heard it and he was helping me see the light. But that’s the thing, we have to catch are unconscious mining and see, “Am I blocking myself from moving forward because I’m focusing on what I don’t want to have happen instead of what I do want to have happen.”

 

 

[00:38:33] Emily Becker: Well, we can run from what He wants us to do all we want, but He still wants us to do it. And He wants us to get there. I can relate to that. Because my husband is the one who’s like, “Oh, there’s a seminar.” We ordered exactly what later would have recommended for me, just guessing what we needed. We were like, “Okay. Was this is brand new? Let’s get this. This seems to be the right one.” Then we went to the seminar and then when I spoke to him, he’s like, “This is exactly what you need to do.” We went home that day and my husband is like, “We’re going to do this. We’re going to listen.” And I wasn’t able to even have a negative thought because it was just happening.

 

 

[00:39:17] Ashley James: But if you had been left on your own, you might have been like, “Oh, we can’t do this.”

 

 

[00:39:22] Emily Becker: Right. Right. And I prayed for all these good things and they’re right in front of me. I had to be the one who took advantage of the people. I had take advantage of the tools. To take advantage of the gifts.  And, like you were saying, like, financially, you can always never afford what you want. If you think about it, “I can’t afford it.” Just like this business, I cannot afford to start my business. But all I had to do is say, “Hey, honey. I’m going to take away from my family if I ask for a little bit of money.” I was like, “You know what? Okay. People are asking for these remedies. I got to ask.” It was an immediate easy, yes. But anyways, so my husband got me to that doctor, to that lecture. And then was very supportive in ways that I never thought he would be. Like throwing the gluten out of the house. I was amazed that he would even do that.

 

 

[00:40:32] Ashley James: That’s awesome. Never underestimate your husband’s desire for you to be healthy. Because I think a lot of times I never thought my husband – man, he’s given up so much. When I met him, he was on ice cream and he drink. I mean, you know, he was on Monster Energy drinks. He was on venti coffees. He was on sugar and dairy and gluten. I think, that’s all he ate. That was his diet. It was like ice cream, coffee, Monsters, and gluten – like Monster Energy drinks. That’s was his entire diet. And now, all he eats is vegetables. It’s just amazing.

 

 

[00:41:05] Emily Becker: Some incredible change.

 

 

[00:41:06] Ashley James: Right. But never underestimate the power of your husband’s desire for you to be healthy environment.

 

 

[00:41:14] Emily Becker: That’s all your inner voice. I asked my husband once I was like, “How do you not think these horrible negative thoughts?” And he’s, “You just push them out.” And I like, “You make it sound so easy.” But you literally do it just through your cores, just the way he said it. It’s like, personally for me, I see it as Satan trying to whisper into your ear just like he whispered into Eve’s at the tree. It’s like, “Eat that fruit. That’s going to be good.” And he doesn’t want good things for you. And he will whisper lies into your ear. He’s not God. He’s nothing. You can push all of that out. You got to do it over and over and over and over. But eventually, he starts to shut up. And then you can have more faith and live more positively.

Before this interview, you had asked some questions about what miracles are out there.

 

 

[00:42:10] Ashley James: Well, my thing is that there’s always that part of me that thinks, “Well, what if it’s all just coincidence.” And I’m sure other people feel that way too. Because that’s what faith is. It’s blind, right? God hasn’t come down and been like, “Hello” in person, right? So there has –

 

 

[00:42:30] Emily Becker: He wants you to have a relationship with him. It’s a scientific thing. It’s not divine. Because he is more than just what he’s created here on Earth. He’s the Creator. So to have faith and healing, you can’t measure it. You can look at statistics which I’ve done, if you’re interested in that at all.

 

 

[00:42:54] Ashley James: I am interested.  I think it’s fun. Because then you start to go, “Wow. That’s more than a coincidence.” So my thing is I think some people go, “What if prayer is just coincidence?” Like, let’s say, you never prayed over for anything. When your husband would have still told you to go that health lecture and still got you on supplements and thrown out the gluten. Did prayer really do that? Or is it all just coincidence? Right? So what’s interesting is when we look at the statistics that they’ve done studies on the power of prayer. And they try to be non objective because, really, they just want to pull the information together and go, “Let’s just look and see. Is it just coincidence or is it more times than not that prayers help with the positive outcome?” So yeah, please share. And these statistics are – these studies are online. The National Institutes of Health –

 

 

[00:43:52] Emily Becker: The government page, PubMed NCBI, they’re all doctor articles. When you’re going through them, it’s really amazing to see how little faith they have. But they have the numbers. How do they come up with finding that 71 percent of clinical studies and 62 percent of the laboratory studies reported positive outcomes for distinct healing? And by distant healing, they refer to for prayer. After the studies, they’re like, “Well, you know -” they were given names of people. And how do we know that there weren’t multiple people with that name? Or, they look at it at a scientific view where God knows the hearts of  people who are praying, So they have the numbers.

 

 

[00:44:40] Ashley James: Can you go through the numbers? So 71 percent was what?

 

 

[00:44:44] Emily Becker: In one study, Dr. Crawford examined the quality of studies of hands on healing and distant healing. And this was published between 1955 and 2000 — or at least those studies were published between 1955 and 2001.

 

 

[00:45:02] Ashley James: How many studies did they look at? Or how many people were involved? So there was 90 different studies. But they split them in half, 45 of them were clinical settings and 45 were laboratory studies settings. What they found was that 71 percent of the clinical studies and 62 percent of the laboratory studies both reported positive outcomes. And that’s pretty good outcomes, in my opinion. And we also reported that the overall internal validity of the studies on healing was 75 percent for the clinical investigations. And 81 percent for the laboratory investigations. They’re able to say that these are valid studies with high percentage positive outcomes.

 

 

[00:45:50] Emily Becker: Did they split it up so that there was like a group of people that weren’t prayed for and a group that were prayed for?

 

 

[00:45:58] Ashley James: In this specific study, they didn’t have a control group. I also looked at another one with a control group. And that’s where they claim, “Well, they – ” you know, someone from the control group could have the same name as someone from the not controlled group. Because they’re – in those studies, they would get like a name to pray for, just the first name. And so they don’t consider the results valid in those situations. Another study conducted a systematic review of the literature on the efficacy of any form of distant healing as a treatment for any medical condition. And it included 23 trials, which totaled 2,774 patients. They met the inclusion criteria. And they were all subjected to analysis of these studies. Thirteen, about 57 percent, yielded statistically significant treatment effects favoring distant healing. And then nine of the studies showed no superiority of distant healing over control interventions. And only one showed a negative effect for distant healing.

 

 

[00:47:13] Ashley James: Well, that still sounds better than drug trials where people, like still die. And the drug still gets approved. Only five people died in our study drug approved, right?  Interesting. Like, you’re throwing out numbers like 71 percent, 62 percent, 57 percent. These are all more than 50 percent. Anyone would take these numbers to Vegas. Interesting.

 

 

[00:47:43] Emily Becker: We can rely on prayer. But sometimes we got to know what God wants us to do. We got to trust what God wants us to do.

 

 

[00:47:50] Ashley James: I like that you brought that up because you said earlier that things come to you through prayer. And that’s how you know or that’s how maybe you’re figuring  out what God wants for you. I always thought prayer was a one way street.

 

 

[00:48:05] Emily Becker: No. He wants a relationship. And he doesn’t – we’re not here to fill his plan. He has his own plan. But He can use everybody in ways that you won’t even know. Even people who don’t believe in God, He’ll place them in your life to help you get to the next step. And He wants good things for everyone. If He has chosen you to do something, it’s going to happen.

 

 

[00:48:33] Ashley James: Sorry. You’re reminding of Jonah and the Whale.

 

 

[00:48:36] Emily Becker: Yeah. I thought a lot about that today, too, before this interview. I was just like, “You know, you can run and run and run. But His will be done.” And a lot of ways – a lot of where I am today, when I first started running a business, I would be like, “God. I need this. I need this. I need this. I need this.” and what I’ve realized is that He wants the favor – I don’t know if this is the right words. I don’t want to be held accountable for this. But He wants retort. He wants us to have this relationship where when He gives me everything that I asked for that He wants people to hear my praise for him. And through that I, personally, am a tool for connecting other people with Him and strengthening their relationship with Him by giving praise. I would ask, “I just really want to help this person and get them to feel better.” Well, a lot of the times, I’d be like, “I need $50. I need $130 to make this happen for this person.” And the condition of I want and I need and all that stuff wasn’t being blessed. He wasn’t doing anything for me. He didn’t want to have anything to do with that. And when I started to ask, “How can I use this to praise you? Can we make this work together so we can help these people? Can I start this business so I can help these people? And then also bring people closer to you, God. And somehow, for me, that’s where I started to become successful, just being open and being myself.

I’ve thought about doing a YouTube channel of like, “Let’s be real.” I’m not a good person. I fall all the time. I swear. I’m not the person to look to.  But I feel like God who wants me to share my story to help other people to come to him to prayer. And praying has changed my life so much that God can use a doctor to restore someone’s arm. And that’s an amazing gift – ability. Something [inaudible]  [00:51:08] and I’m not going to be that doctor. I’m going to be a different tool to help people get better and to strengthen their relationship with Him.

 

 

[00:51:19] Ashley James: I like that idea, what kind of tool can I be to help others? Helping us get out of our ego. When we’re in service, they’ve looked at mental health and volunteering and service. And they see that those who are suicidal and depressed, like clinically depressed, when they volunteer, when they actively on a regular basis volunteer, it lifts depression, it creates joy. And there’s even studies to show that it increases longevity. That the more that we give ourselves, it fulfills us, it brings us joy. And it also decreases our stress. Surrounds us with a community. Because when you volunteer, most of the time you’re also around others who are volunteering, you create a community, you’re part of a community. But those people end up living longer, happier lives. And so giving of ourselves to help others actually helps us more. It’s like that it comes back to us more.

I heard, I think, it was Neale Donald Walsch. I went to one of his weekend workshops about five years ago. And Neale said, “You know, carry around some extra money.” Like, he says he carries around 20s. And he calls it his walking money. Now, he’s a millionaire. So he gives away 20s all day long. Anytime he sees someone in need, he gives them a 20. He says, “You know, maybe for you that’s $1. Maybe have like $5 in your wallet and that’s the $5 you’re going to give away to people this week.” And he goes, “Don’t care if they’re going to buy alcohol with it. Don’t stop the flow. You’re passing on. You’re blessing someone. And let them – you know, maybe they’re going to go buy food with it or pay for their shelter or buy new socks. Whatever they’re going to do with it is their business. You’re just blessing someone in need.” And so anytime he finds someone in need, like maybe someone is struggling to pay their grocery bill, he’ll like jump in and pay for it. Or he’ll pay for the person behind him at Starbucks, who knows, or someone who’s homeless. But he’s always looking to help. And he says, “You give that person like $5 or $1 and you notice how good you feel.” He says. “It’s like a high. You feel more joy from giving than that person will ever get from receiving.”

And that’s probably why that client of yours, she loves that cream that you gave her. But you have twice as much joy out of the act of gifting it to her than she’ll ever get from receiving it. And so the business that you’re doing in that, you’re helping clients. But when you do, the charity work you do it is giving you so much purpose and joy. And so when we can connect with others and ask ourselves, “How can I be a tool to help others?” And focusing on that, the ego can’t live there. The ego melts away when we’re in service.

 

 

[00:54:48] Emily Becker: Yeah. How can we serve each other? And that can go from your relationship with your husband or your sisters or your neighbors and people you don’t know. Just when you put their needs first, it’s so rewarding. And that goes for my customers too. And I’m not perfect. I’ve had mistakes. I’ve had refunds. I’ve had fallouts. But you can’t let that bring you down. And you just got to keep serving. Because not everyone’s going to like what you have to offer. And you, personally, are always – we’re human, we make mistakes. And you just find ways that you don’t hold on to that. You continue to serve. You continue to help people. And just work hard for others.

 

 

[00:55:38] Ashley James: Right. Well, every business has returns. And as long as you learn from the returns, like a broken bottle in shipping or something, you learn from it. And then you give great customer service. And you don’t let ego get in the way. Then you’re growing as a business. You’re a real business now. This isn’t a hobby. So you’re going to have these bumps. But as long as you learn from them, your business will keep improving.

 

 

[00:56:06] Ashley James: Speaking of praise — well, not praise. But speaking of my business, I am now a legitimate company with the Department of Wisconsin revenue. Anyways, I’m a real business now. And I have taxes to pay. And I am the owner of Emily’s Remedies. I’m no longer just doing this as myself. I have the business. And that might not seem like a whole lot different. But for me, it’s this huge blessing. I am functioning more as a company. And that’s something I’ve always wanted to do. And to operate less as a hobby and more as a professional. Because everybody deserves that professional quality. And as a hobby, I was pushing out orders from three days to a month. And that’s no way to treat a customer. Since this business, it’s been my goal to get orders out right away. To start bringing what I have to my community – my new community since they moved. And just to treat people with – and you have a responsibility of people’s money and their expectations of the product. Every single jar, everything that I make, all the soaps that I’ve introduced are made with the same quality as the very first one I ever made.

 

 

[00:57:31] Ashley James: For yourself.

 

 

[00:57:33] Emily Becker: For myself, yeah.

 

 

[00:57:33] Ashley James: And for your family and the people you love. You know, I wish every business owner was as conscientious and caring as you. You put your heart and soul into it. And we can hear that. And I like following you on Facebook to see – every time you put post orders, every time you mail them out, you announce it. And you don’t rush when you make your products. You make it so that the quality is there. But you do rush – once they’re in the jars, you do rush as much as you can to get the packages out because you want people to get their orders as fast as possible. And you put so much into it. This is exactly what it’s like to start a business from the ground up. And I know that we’re going to see you, like, on Shark Tank in a few years or something like that. You’re going to keep growing and we’re going to see you continue to expand. And you will always keep the same amount of hurt as you did with the very first bottle or jar. And that’s what we want from every business owner is this conscientious business. This is what we want from every single business owner, to have a love of their customer and a love the quality of their product and to never compromise either one. And that’s why I love buying something from you or from someone who is doing it with their own hands. And you’re investing with their own time and energy to be able to create the quality products. Knowing that it’s pure ingredients. So I love that. I love that you’re this example of the kind of business owner that we all should be that takes the time to give great customer service and really, really cares about each customer.

 

 

[00:59:23] Emily Becker: Yeah. I really love having a connection with my customers because every order and then I said or – I mean, you know, most of the orders I get, I am like, “Oh, please give me all feedback. I want to know everything that’s bad. And I want to know what other ways I can help the these people who are ordering.” Because I love when you start having connection and conversation with your customers. You get to know them hen you can serve them better the next time. And that’s my favorite part is just this expanse of connections that I’m getting. And it gets a little bit hard sometimes because there’s a lot of people who want to talk to me. But I’m so grateful for all of them. And I try my best to be there for all of them.

 

 

[01:00:13] Ashley James: Can we go back to when you first started to pray? You weren’t really – I mean, you said you believe in God but you didn’t really have a relationship with God. And you weren’t really, like, Christian. But you’re very sick. You had your alopecia and your other health issues that you talked more about in Episode 340. Can you remember the first time you prayed for your health?

 

 

[01:00:39] Emily Becker: I remember – okay. So I was living in fear in my head. And I knew my husband was a very strong Christian. And I would be like, “Oh, can you please pray for this.” And wake him up and like, “I’m scared.” Just I don’t know where. Like, I can’t sleep or whatever. And I say, “Can you pray for me? And he would. And that’s when I realized I need to take responsibility and action for myself. I sought help. I called a woman who helped me learn how to pray. She’s an incredible woman. And she taught me to say things that I used to be afraid of saying. Like, “In the name of Jesus Christ, please give me this.” Or, “In the name of Jesus Christ, evict these thoughts,” and stuff like that. And that’s when she was teaching me how to pray. Because before, if I tried to pray, it was like, “Please don’t let this happen to me, you know, like evict them.” Instead of someone of faith and courage and confidence.

 

[01:01:47] Ashley James: You’re focusing on what you didn’t want to have happen.

 

 

[01:01:49] Emily Becker: Yeah. So she taught me how to pray. And I can almost remember the day, I want to say it was January 4, late at night, in 2012. I started to pray that ,”God -” instead of that I wouldn’t be bald anymore. That God would bring me healing. That was my first prayer. I would still sometimes break down and be like, “I don’t want this to happen to me.” But now and then I’d remind myself. I knew all the things that were negative. I don’t like looking at – I’m like, “I don’t want to be – when I look in the mirror, God, I want to see someone beautiful.” Instead of praying for that, I wanted healing. And then within a month, my husband was like, “This doctor is in town. We got to go to the seminar.” Just like, I wasn’t even thinking, “Oh, he’s going to help me with my hair.” I wasn’t even hopeful. I was like, “Oh, yeah, we got to go get healthier.” Maybe my husband was more conscious what was going on. But for me, it was just being like someone taking my hand and guiding me. It was then – oh gosh – that was that was really hard because I used everything. Even the good things, I was fearful of, you know? But I was like, “Okay. God, please, I need you in my life. I need your help.” I started praying for healing. And then after that, it just all started to happen.

And then after practice and just experience, I stopped focusing and praying for things not to happen. I started praying for all the good things. And then when I was going through this prayer stage of learning how to pray, I had this unbelievable desire to cleanse both physically and spiritually of everything that was eating away at me. I even did a private – I did my own baptism. I was just like, “I need to be washed.” I got in the bathtub. I was home alone. I looked online, I was like, “What do I say to be baptized?” And some people think you need to have someone there to do it for you. And I did that later in life where I was baptized with someone. But I washed myself clean. And then I started to work on evicting those negative thoughts. And for me, it was a spiritual experience. As I cleansed my spiritual being, I was able to work towards healing my physical being. And as I prayed to God for healing and for all these burdens and weights to be lifted from me of my past and from my health, he was more than willing to do it. And sometimes it was, God it’s a yes. The answer is yes, no, or later. I find a lot more that he has a later in there, in my personal experience.

It’s like, “Okay. This is what your heart wants. We’re going to work on you to help you get there.” That’s how I am here today with a business, with long hair, with confidence, feeling beautiful, and just a completely different person, really.

 

 

[01:05:20 Ashley James: Beautiful. I love the transformation that you’ve made since 2012. It’s beautiful. You’ve grown your health spiritually and attended your health physically, and mentally and emotionally. You know, you’re looking at all aspects of your life and bring it all into balance. And if we were to go back and talk to Emily from 2012, she would not believe that the Emily now could be possible. Right?

 

 

[01:05:52] Emily Becker: Yeah. Absolutely.

 

 

[01:05:56] Ashley James: And so no matter how bad it gets in life – and that’s something I really want us to teach the young generation, Generation Z I believe they’re calling it or Zed, between the ages of 10 and 24. Because in the last ten years, suicide has risen to be the second cause – second leading cause of death among –

 

 

[01:06:19] Emily Becker: Isn’t that horrible?

 

 

[01:06:21] Ashley James: Yeah. It’s risen. It’s something crazy like 52 percent or something. But it’s totally skyrocketed because of social media, because of the way our culture has changed drastically over one generation. They’re left feeling devastated if one bad thing happens or online. Because the bullying is constant. They feel isolated, alone. And how they’re feeling right now is it’s like how they’re going to feel for the rest of their life.

 

 

[01:06:54] Emily Becker: Yeah. You don’t feel like anything good could happen when you’re developing. Everything is forever. And if you’re being bullied, you feel like this is how you’re going to feel forever.

 

 

[01:07:12] Ashley James: And it isn’t. The Emily that was depressed, and afraid, and scared, and afraid of everything even good, like you said, back in 2012, that Emily could not perceive of the Emily you are now. And yet you worked on it bit by bit. And you addressed your health on all levels, meaning physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. You addressed it on all levels. And you looked at, also, getting outside of your own head and helping others. And look at what you’ve evolved. And that’s what we can all do. Wherever we are in our life right now, no matter what our age is, no matter what our health level is, the person we are now is nothing compared to the magnificent person that we can become. And we are [inaudible] [01:08:08] right now. But we can become this unrecognizable –

 

 

[01:08:13] Emily Becker: You realize how magnificent you are.

 

 

[01:08:15] Ashley James: Right. The sky is the limit. But for those who are depressed, who have anxiety, who have fear, who have thought of suicide, life in a few years can be so brilliant, so amazing that you wouldn’t want to give it up for anything. Like, it could just be so amazing. And you can grow that even in chronic illness. Because I know, Emily, back in 2012, you thought that’s how your life is going to be for the rest of your life. And doctors will tell you that you’re going to have this condition for the rest of your life. Many people are suffering with a chronic condition and they’ve been told by doctors that they’re going to have it for the rest of their life. And that doesn’t mean they have to suffer though. That doesn’t mean you know –  we can reverse diseases. We can manage them. We can gain health. Even in the face of terminal illness, we can still increase the quality of life and bring in joy. So it’s always more. You can always get better. But we have to look at every aspect of health. So not just diet. Diet is great. And emotional health and mental health and spiritual health looking at it all and start by asking, by praying, by asking and focus on what you want. Can you give us some steps for those who maybe are rusty at praying or haven’t prayed before? And have been inspired by what you’ve shared and they want to start praying. Can you share some steps, like how do we pray?

 

 

[01:10:00] Emily Becker: I went through the same thing. I had no idea how to pray. What I find to be useful is some people like to do affirmations. And I’ve never – I’m so busy that I don’t go looking for someone’s [inaudible] [01:10:16]. What I like to do is, I like to get a piece of paper. What I’ll do is, I will write down who I want to pray for, what I’d like for myself, and also something to give, if I have something to give praise about. And I’ll write it down and then just the act of writing it down, gets your mind to start to think about it. And then when you’re ready, for me, personally, it’s that moment like after the kids go to bed. I’ll be like, “I have this on my heart and mind.” Or the next time I see that piece of paper – I leave it right at my nightstand.

It’s usually just one thing. One does five things. But really, you can just start with one thing. It can be something simple like, “God, I’ve been really struggling in this area. I want to start to have more energy for work and for my kids and for my husband.” So it can be something as simple as having more energy. And then when I wake up in morning, I see that paper. I look at it and I’ll be like, “Oh, yeah. That’s important to meet God. God, this is important to me. Can you please help me?”

So from this interview, I reached out to you because I want to thank your supporters. I can’t talk to everybody. So I wanted to reach out to all my customers somehow. Because I get a lot of emails and I also want to let them know that I’m thinking of them. So for me, that’s what’s on my heart. And so I’m going to pray with you if that’s okay, Ashley.

 

 

[01:11:52] Ashley James: Sure.

 

 

[01:11:54] Emily Becker: And just to give people an idea how to pray. Because sometimes we don’t pray because we don’t hear it and we’re not around it. It’s not something we exercise. And someone else starts. I like to give praise. I like to acknowledge God as God. I like to give thanks  for the good things that he’s given me. And then I ask for what’s on my heart. And then I can clear it with trust and confidence and faith. And a lot of how I got this is from the Lord’s prayer that Jesus Himself prayed. The people are asking, “How do we pray?” And then He prayed. He told them to pray the Lord’s Prayer. And you can Google that. But I’m going to do my own prayer.

Thank you, Heavenly Father, for this opportunity to be with Ashley James on the Learn True Health podcast. And for bringing this opportunity to me. Thank you so much, Lord, for all the all the people who have reached out to me. We’re grateful for a relationship. I trust that they are grateful for me. And I am so grateful for how you are using them to transform me. Lord, I thank you for this opportunity to be on a podcast praying. This is incredible 2020 or 2018 to be here giving praise. I ask that my supporters know that you want good things for them. And they can rely on you and that they will continue to come seek your help. And to be blessed by the things that are given to them. I ask that you place people and tools in their lives to bring them health and healing, both spiritually and physically. We pray these things in Jesus Christ’s name your Son, amen.

And it can be a lot shorter than that.

 

 

[01:13:57] Ashley James: I hear that you started out with a lot of gratitude.

 

[01:14:00] Emily Becker: Yes. Yes. I do. And it helps me to condition my heart to not be selfish. Because I told you about that in the past where I tried to be helpful to people. But I was never grateful. And that changed. That also helped me in my prayers and my growth.

 

 

[01:14:30] Ashley James: So you would help people but then you weren’t really – there wasn’t gratitude there. So it was still, maybe, selfish intentions. Which when we’re living – when we’re coming from, the selfishness, we’re coming from the fear. We’re afraid of the lack of – so how much can we really help others when we’re focusing on how little money we have or little time we have or little energy we have. How much could we actually help others? And then if we go to help others, then we resent them because they’ve taken off our precious time, money, or energy. And so it becomes this ego of resentment and feeling like they should be more grateful for what I’ve done for them because I had to sacrifice my time and whatever. And it doesn’t become rewarding. Because we’re coming from ego. And our fear, we’re coming from this fear of a lack of. And when we bring gratitude and we become grateful for the money we do have and the time we do have. Even though we have a little bit of it, right? What do we have and become grateful for it and thankful for what we do have and ask for help. And ask for – you know, focusing on the positive direction that we want, the outcome to go in for ourselves and others. Coming from that, that kind of bounty focusing on – because you know what?

Even though I could be perceiving myself as not having a lot of money, I am so fortunate to have a roof over my head. I’m so fortunate to have food in my fridge, to have the electricity on, to have the heat on . I could spend the next hour talking about how grateful I am for all the things I do have that other people don’t. And I could take a little bit of my money at the end of the month and see if I could help someone else become a little bit more comfortable. Maybe handout blankets. I could go to a thrift store and buy clean used blankets and go hand them out to the shelters. Or I could go through all my closets and things that we’re not using and donate it to the battered women’s shelter. You know what I mean? We can help people become more fortunate. Right? So it doesn’t mean it has to be a sacrifice for us. But if we’re focusing on the ego and all the stuff we don’t have, then from that perspective, we can’t actually be of service and help others. But I love that most of your prayer is actually gratitude and grounding yourself in how grateful you are for what we have.

 

 

[01:17:19] Emily Becker: Hold on, I’m just breathing. I’m practicing the breath work here. And I am so grateful. Well, I mean, as much as I’d like to win souls for Jesus, that’s not why I’m here. I’m here – well, I think, as Christians and as anyone you should surround yourself and try to serve and reach as many people as you can whatever you are. If you were a doctor who could sew a finger back on, you wouldn’t want to only surround yourself with other doctors. You’re going to want to help everybody you can. You want to find the person who’s got the missing finger. You want to be that tool for them. And I think it’s a great opportunity for me to be able to be this tool for some people. And that said  alone, I have so many who are tools for me. I have family that have really helped me along the way spiritually.

Just like the 2012 me, I don’t think I would have known I can be who I’ve become without them. I don’t – there’s a purpose for everything. And I have a lot of more confidence and a lot more things. And for me, it’s a spiritual growth.

 

 

[1:19:09] Ashley James: I love that you’re willing to learn. And I love that you’re vulnerable enough to come share with us, share your experience. So in your prayers, have you ever felt the God is talking to you? Have you ever gotten a message?

 

 

[01:19:25] Emily Becker: Oh, yes.

 

 

[01:19:26] Ashley James: Can you talk a little bit about that? So I was raised Anglican. I have friends that are Mormon. And they’ve shared with me that in the LDS church, they incorporate fasting, meditation, deep, deep prayer. And the elders in the church are going to make like a decision about something that they fast and they do deep long meditative prayers. And that they receive answers. And that shocked me because I was kind of raised to believe that it’s a one way street. That you just – you know, you recite the Lord’s Prayer, you do communion, you basically state where you believe.

 

 

[01:20:12] Emily Becker: [Inaudible]  [01:20:12].

 

 

[01:20:14] Ashley James: Right. Right. I believe in the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. You just repeat these things that you’re taught to say in church. And that you pray. But there’s no God talking to you. Like, it’s a one way street. This is just how I was raised. And then I started to hear from other people and other religions or other – I don’t know -some people believe Mormonism is totally separate from Christianity. Others believe it’s just like a division or flavor of Christianity. But basically, I’ve heard from many different people, that they were raised differently than me, that in different churches that they’re actually receiving messages. And so some people would say, “Well, that must be Satan.” Or other people say, “Well, that’s just your brain. That’s just your brain filling in the gaps. That’s nothing.” So this is again where faith comes in, right? Because what do you believe? And there’s no – no one can prove it or disprove it, right? But what is your experience? So your experiences your reality. And your reality is not my reality. But that’s where faith comes in. So I was really surprised to hear from many people that they’re actually receiving information when they do go through prayer.

And a dear, dear friend of mine who’s had two near death experiences, he’s died twice. And he has recollection – very clear recollection of meeting God both times. And he receives information when he prays. And he is a wonderful being and I love him. And he gets filled with – he says he’s filled with the Holy Spirit. He gets goosebumps. And he is dead on. He actually has been – I don’t want to say prophesizes. But he’ll be told things or know things before it happens. And he’s very, very Christian. And so he’ll get goosebumps. His whole body is filled with goosebumps. You can look at his skin, it’s all goosebumps. And anytime he goes to make a decision in his life, he prays and then he gets filled with goosebumps. If that’s the direction you’re supposed to go in. And he says anytime, let’s say, he really wants something. Like he really wants to buy this car and he prays about it, but he doesn’t get filled with the Holy Spirit. But then, he buys it anyway because it’s like ego. His ego really wants it. The car breaks down immediately. It’s like every single time. But whenever he makes a decision no matter how – like buying a house, like big, big decisions, or little decisions, anytime he makes a decision and he’s filled with the Holy Spirit and when he’s praying, and he goes for it, it always works out. And he goes, it’s like 100 percent success rate. So like I hear from these different people as I’m talking to them but their experience of prayer and it’s very personal. So I just wanted to hear from your very personal experience when you pray, how does God talk to you?

 

 

[01:23:17] Emily Becker: This is very personal. Well, I get all – I when I asked for things, a lot of times what I receive – and I think it’s because I’m still trying to figure filter out language here. But I’ll ask for things, I will get a clear yes or no or a jumble sentence that I don’t understand. I don’t think my confidence, my faith, or that I’m ready for his answer is what I get.

But I do get a lot of yeses and noes. And as you pray, I’ve actually invited – you can invite the Holy Spirit into your home. And I did a lot of that. When I was going through my fear phase, I would pray and ask – I would welcome the Holy Spirit into my home. And you can feel that physically, just like you said, your friend feels it. You get chills. And there’s this new atmosphere in your home that’s brighter and lighter and warmer. And that’s what I experienced.

I have family who’s – oh, I wonder if I need his permission. I won’t use any names. But I have family who – when he challenged me to do something because he had an incredible experience. He said he was able to pray from the third heaven. And honestly, I don’t know what that means. But he was able to pray and be in heaven just for a moment and looked down on earth. And he challenged me to try that. And out of fear and understanding, I haven’t done it. I think a lot of times that’s why I can’t understand all of the messages from God is that I still am growing in my faith. How much do I honestly trust them with take full control of everything. And it’s a process.  And I have prayed for – I’m trying to think – because I go through phases where I pray more often and speak – just like you do with any relationship, you go through phases where you connect stronger at times with someone. I was praying in private. And I would ask – I wonder what it was. Sometimes it helps to remember what you’re going through. I know what it was. Okay. My husband had – we went through this long process of getting his remote work approved.

 

 

[01:26:42] Ashley James: To work from home for his job?

 

 

[01:26:44] Emily Becker: Yeah. For his job. So we could move out of the cities and into his hometown. And when he did that, I started praying. And I was like – I even asked, I was like, “God, will his remote work be approved?” And I got a single word answer yes. But then I was so impatient. It just was such a long, ongoing process. I’d be like, “Okay. God, when is this going to happen?” And then I started to lose faith that it was going to happen. And then I asked again, I was like, “God, is his remote work request going to be approved?” And I got another yes. And I was like, “God, can you please make it, you know, next week?” And then I get that garbled and I don’t understand. And then my own thoughts and wouldn’t be able to raise receive anything. But from that alone, I learned to just be patient.

I think before earlier in this interview, we talked about how a lot of his answers in my personal experience have been later. Because God wants miracles to happen but sometimes He’s setting everything up like a domino effect to give you your answer. Well, He already has His answer but He’s setting it up so it can happen wonderfully for Him and be good for you.

I asked once – you know, this is really personal. And I don’t know what the results are going to be because it’s – the prayer hasn’t been answered. But I prayed once for my father-in-law’s eyes  to return sight. And he has gone through all different kinds of health adventures, I would say. He’s done every diet. He’s done everything even that I have done to try to restore his sight. And it’s only gotten worse over the years. And I’ve been personally praying that he would be able to see. And once in faith asked God, I was praying for him. I was like, “God, my father-in-law, will he be able to see again?” And I got us cleaning straight answer yes. And now, in faith, I don’t know what to do. It’s like, “Okay. Well, is it going to be that he’s going to be able to see again when he gets to heaven?” Or, “Is he going to be healed on earth? Are we going to see this miraculous healing?” And I don’t know what the answer is. But I’m going to continue to pray for him. And to just wait and see and trying to receive God.

And you had – I know I sidetracked a little bit. You had asked if I’ve heard God. And the answer is yes. And sometimes I don’t understand what he’s saying. And sometimes it is a very clear message. And as far as the tingles and the chills, I get them right now when you were talking earlier in truth about the kids being depressed. I could feel that chill and that truth. And God is the Creator of all things that are true. And when you can – you have to have faith. And I don’t know if everyone gets the same tools. Because there’s some people who have reported having out of body experiences. Well, not all of us are going to have that. Not all of us are going to have the same relationship because we all have a unique relationship with God. He’s going to give us different gifts when we ask for them, or when we try to use them, or whatever the situation is. But when you do, you want to do it and to serve Him, I think, is the keys. How can you use these gifts to serve Him. And for me, I think a lot of how he wants us to serve Him is to praise His son and to just keep growing in our relationship with Him.

 

 

[01:32:21] Ashley James: Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your experiences, Emily. Is there anything left unsaid or is there anything you really want to make sure that you shared in this interview today?

 

 

[01:32:33] Emily Becker: Oh, honestly, Ashley, I shared way more than I thought. I felt so called to be on this. I don’t know. Try praying. And I love hearing from the Learn True Health community. They’re just incredible whether they’re asking for prayers or they’re just, like asking, for an inch cream. I love hearing from them. And they’re not all – the ones that reach out to me aren’t all Christians. I get all kinds of emails from people. It’s just really fun. I love it. I love hearing from everyone. And if you want to say something and you want to start a conversation, let’s start a conversation. That’s how we’re going to grow. We need to be ourselves and to relax a little bit in these awkward conversations.

 

 

[01:33:46] Ashley James: I like that, relax a little bit in these awkward conversations. Just today on in the Learn True Health Facebook Group, I was having a good discussion with one of the listeners about an episode. She felt as though lately the podcast is more biased around diet in terms of being whole food plant based. And I pointed out to her that I had just a few episodes ago done an episode about a diet that is pretty much 100 percent meat based. But because I had then a few episodes later had an interview with Chef AJ, who’s vegan, that then it might upset people who aren’t vegan. Or vegans might get upset when I have someone on that promotes a meat diet. Right? And my –

 

 

[01:34:30] Emily Becker: [Inaudible] [01:34:30] show is that you have everybody. That’s what I love about your show is I can – whether or not I agree with – you had someone on for mushrooms. They mentioned whether it is – gosh – [inaudible] [01:34:50] but something else. Essentially an herbal drug. And even though I disagree with the use of that –

 

 

[01:35:04] Ashley James: Are you talking about microdosing psilocybin?

 

 

[01:35:07] Emily Becker: I think so.

 

 

[01:35:08] Ashley James: Yes. Microdosing psilocybin, it’s not for getting people high. It’s microdosing. And it’s a really interesting interview. And I am not – again, I totally agree with you, I’m not promoting taking street drugs to hallucinate or anything. But I did. I did an interview on some kind of shaman ritual in Peru, Ayahuasca. I was having a brain fart. I did a whole interview on Ayahuasca. And it’s like I’m not saying everyone should go do this or everyone should go – I’m not saying everyone should do one diet or another diet. If we just open our minds and take in information from different people and different points of view, listen for the gold. Because you can learn from someone who eats a different diet than you? It doesn’t mean that you should go eat that diet. And we can learn from people of different spiritual faiths to help us strengthen our faith. Because maybe you hear something and you’re like, “Wow. This makes me want to go investigate something more.” It’s not about converting anyone. I loved that you said, like, saving souls.

Although I love hearing like – I do love getting emails from listeners. And I’ve gotten several of them having them say, “I’ve never gone to a Naturopath. And now I’m seeing one.” Or two listeners have written me and said, “I was in med school. I’m just going to become an MD. And now I’m going to become a Naturopathic physician because of your show.” So those are the kind of like – I like to save people from allopathic medicine when they could be using holistic medicine. I love hearing that kind of conversion. I really want to empower listeners to find their health and build their own health by gaining the goal that they can gain from every single guest. Because the guests don’t have to have the same point of view as you. But that doesn’t mean – let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because when guests might believe in eating meat or not eating meat and you don’t agree with them. It doesn’t mean that that everything they say is not valid, right? And so we have this tendency right now in our social media day and age to do these mass generalizations. Where if someone voted for someone that we don’t like, all of a sudden it’s a master analyzation. We don’t like any of their decisions. How could they be trusted because they believe in this one thing. And that’s how we’re manipulated, unfortunately. So we need to put our bias aside and say, “You know what? It’s okay for other people have different opinions. And I can learn from everyone. Everyone matters. And I can learn from everyone because I’m listening for the gold. I’m listening for my own lessons. And I think that especially when we pray and ask for help that that helped might come in the form of hearing some little gold nuggets of wisdom from other people of other faiths or other diets or other health practices. And it doesn’t mean we have to adopt what they do. But we can learn from everyone. I know my listeners do that. They’re listening to people – a variety of people so we can all learn and grow.

So thank you for coming on the show. And this might be controversial to talk about prayer and God and Christianity and just faith and the power of prayer. And the idea that we can set our intentions by focusing on gratitude. That we can volunteer our time to improve our happiness. That we can free ourselves from anxiety by focusing on what we want instead of we don’t want. These topics are incredibly beneficial. And for some people it might be controversial and that’s okay. It’s okay to be controversial. But our intention is to help people. Not to hurt them. So let’s just keep helping people. And keep having an open mind. And so thank you everyone for listening. And thank you, Emily, for coming and sharing your story. I really, really hope and pray that today’s episode has helped people, has helped the listeners to give them some new tools. And maybe just opened up their mind to start thinking about their healing practices and maybe incorporating gratitude and prayer in them. That’d be great to see what happens in their life if they do.

 

 

[01:40:01] Emily Becker: Thank you so much for having me here. I am also going to give you and your listeners a 10 percent off if they ever shop at my store online, emilysremedies.com.

 

 

[01:40:13] Ashley James: Okay. Awesome. Well, the links to everything that you do are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcasts at learntruehealth.comemilysremedies.com.

Thank you, Emily for coming on the show. This has been wonderful.

 

 

[01:40:26] Emily Becker: Awesome. Thank you, Ashley.

 

 

[01:40:28] Ashley James: Yeah. And you know, I know you were nervous and you did a stellar job. So good job.

 

 

[01:40:34] Emily Becker: Awesome. Thank you.

 

 

[01:40:35] Outro: -to optimize your health. Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

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Episode 340 – Natural Remedies For The Hair

 

Dec 20, 2019

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Get a free module to see if IIN's Health Coach Training Program is right for you by going to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach

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The Future of Health Coaching

https://www.learntruehealth.com/future-health-coaching

Highlights:

  • Recognizing and honoring our uniqueness is going to be the key to our health and happiness.
  • Primary food is what feeds us but it’s not because what comes on a plate. It comes in a bunch of different categories. It could be your relationship with health, it could be your physical activity, it could be your career, it could be spiritual, it could be financial. It’s all those things around you that impact who you are and so you need to think about those. 
  • Living a life of balance being our best self every single day, it’s just knowing what you want to do and how you want to get there you have to help get balance in your primary food.
  • IIN’s philosophy and what it means to be health coach

 

Want to learn how to be the best version of yourself? Where you could have a life lived with balance in all sorts of ways. Find out on today’s podcast on how you can achieve with as Lynda Cloud shares her success story.

 

[Intro:]

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I am really excited for you to listen to today’s interview. It’s a little bit different than our other interviews because I’m interviewing the CEO of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. The world largest health coaching training company. Lynda Cloud has some wonderful insights. It’s really interesting looking at the life of someone who was so accomplished and so busy working in New York City as a CEO of a major multimillion dollar company. Here she is focusing on how to create balance and health in her life. In a company who’s corporate culture puts the health of the employees first above all else. The emotional, mental and physical health of the employees above all else. Isn’t that interesting? Wouldn’t you like to work for in a company that treated your health as the most important thing? Of course, a very close second, the customer and customer support and customer satisfaction. What an interesting concept. Normally it’s about cutting corners and trying to figure out how to save money and pinch a penny here and there. With IIN, there are bowls of avocados for their staff. They have a chiropractor come in weekly and a massage therapist come in. they have yoga classes and meditation room. They set out to make sure that the staff really are making sure that their life is balanced. That they have joy in every areas of their life and fulfillment. What does IIN get in return for investing in their staff? They get amazing productivity, creativity and trickles down to us, the consumer, the customer. Me as a graduate, while I was going through the program, I felt so supported and the staff are so wonderful to work with.

Many of my friends and many listeners actually have gone through IIN’s program and they had also found that they get incredible service and they feel connected. When they call IIN they feel like they’re being listened to like a human and they’re not just another number. And there’s no high pressure sales that they’re just talking to someone who’s so passionate about helping people become the healthiest versions of their selves. Imagine what the world would be like if every company adapted the same corporate culture as IIN. What’s really neat is that there are companies, and this is what Lynda talks about today is that there are companies who’s training to adapt this. It’s very neat and she shares what she’s done in her life to balance her life in a way that has stopped illness from becoming a problem. I think no matter where you are in life whether you’re interested in becoming a health coach or not. You’re really going to like today’s interview because there’s so much to learn here. I wanted to let you know if you are interested in contacting IIN, they actually created a special phone number, a priority line for Learn True Health listeners. You can give this a call and you’ll be placed with a wonderful staff member at IIN. Most of them are health coaches already where they can discuss with you all the details you want just so you could gather more information and see If that’s something that’s right for you. It’s a major decision to make to want to dive in which of course I did immediately the second I heard about IIN.

I dove into that same day. It’s a major decision to make. If you think about it, you’re investing a year of your life into learning and growing. About half the people that jump into IIN do so because they want the personal growth. I got a lot of personal growth out of the program. I can see just doing it for that alone instead of making a career change. The other half are the people that join do make a career change that they want to add on to their tool belt that they’re already in the holistic health space or they want to join the holistic health space as a health coach. You could call this number, 877-780-5748. That’s 877-780-5748. That will also be on the show notes of today’s podcast on Learntruehealth.com so you can go there. If you’re driving or if you can’t give them a call maybe it’s the middle of the night, you could go to Learntruehealth.com/coach and that gives you access to one of their modules. You can just check it out and see if that’s right for you. I highly recommend giving them a call because having a great discussion with one of their staff members and getting more information from them, you’ll start to feel what it’s like to be part of that culture. Be part of the health coaching culture and you’ll learn more about the different areas that you can work and how it can impact your life and how you can impact others. That phone number again is 877-780-5748. Enjoy today’s interview. Please share it with those who you think would be a great health coach. This is the fastest growing sector of the health space and that’s really exciting. That very soon, I think health coaching would be as popular and as well-known as hiring a personal trainer. That it will be that popular that you’ll be able to go to any gym or any health clinic or hospital and you’ll be able to have access to a health coach. There’s so much potential here and also, with the new legislature. We’ve talked about this in the interview that in 2020 health coaches will be able to work with insurance companies. There are just so many doors that are opening, it’s very exciting. Excellent. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and a wonderful holiday season.

 

 

[06:09] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 399. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have with us, Lynda Cloud, who is the CEO of Institute for Integrative Nutrition, IIN. It’s the worlds largest health coach training program and the program that I graduated from and many of the listeners have been graduates or are currently going through the program. I’m so excited to learn from you today, Lynda. It’s such a pleasure to have you here on the show.

 

[06:49] Lynda Cloud: Pleasure is all mine, Ashley.

 

[06:52] Ashley James:  This is awesome. Now, you have over 30 years of experience in the education space and a lot of it even online of course because we’ve all transitioned to learning online. This idea that no matter how old we are, we can go back to school. No matter how busy we are, we can go back. We can get a degree. We can get certification. We can continue our learning no matter where we are in life. No matter what country we are in. I love that IIN is in all countries. There are students from all around the world who come to become health coaches. I’m really curious. What happened in your life that led you to become the CEO of IIN?

 

[07:40] Lynda Cloud:  Well, it’s an interesting question. As you said 30 years experience which makes me feel a little old. Not seasoned but old. Had the distinct pleasure of being in education online learning for really my entire career. I started out in education teaching for a bit and fell in love with the idea of learning and fell in love with the idea of trying to make learning as engaging as I could and accessible as I could. That took me through a journey working for the one of the largest at that time, education companies, Pearson and really grew up there. Learned a lot about instructional design, learned a lot about product management marketing, sales. Kinda sat in lots of different seats and that gave me the opportunity to really get a holistic view on customers and what’s important to them. Even what’s most important which is how we help students be successful. That foundation really led me into the next step on my career which is running a division in the K-12 space online learning. That was incredibly rewarding and we did a lot on innovation, a lot of innovative stuff there. Had a great run with that company and through my whole journey. I knew I loved helping make education and schools better. That’s what the first part of my story is, then as I went through this journey I realized as a working mom and trying to do a million things, the thing I let slipped and probably paid the least attention to was my own health of wellness journey. Because if you get only so many hours in the day, what you end up doing is sacrificing things. At the point in my life, I was really sacrificing the time I needed to help myself be the best person I could. Whether it was fitness and activity or meditation and good nutrition. These were all came together for me when I started to talk to the folks at IIN and learn about the school and learn about the mission. It felt like a natural intersection where I could take the general management experience and the work I’ve been doing in running large education companies and marry that really in a way I hadn’t been able to do personally. Where I could live my best self at work at all the time. That’s what led me her and I fell in love with the people and the school.

 

[10:26] Ashley James: I love it. Now you have mentioned that you were part of creating some innovative stuff in the K-12 space. Is there particular aspect of the K-12 program that you helped innovate the you’re really proud off?

 

[10:44] Lynda Cloud: Yes. There’s a couple of examples. I was really fortunate to be given a space in large corporations where I could do a lot of RND and a lot of disruptive stuff to help us re-imagine online learning and education. One area I’m most proud of was at K-12 was at one large online learning school. One of the things I did there as launch a new category for them around career destinations. A lot of the students going through that curriculum really, it was their last chance. They were struggling for what they were doing next and maybe to where four-year college wasn’t the right path for them. They were looking for an alternate path. We looked that where the jobs we’re going to be in the next 10 years and we put together a series of curriculum with partners to get people get their high school diploma online while they were getting certified and key areas and help them get a career advancement and opportunities. That was brand new school that was launched. That was fulfilling and mission-driven. Doing good and having fun.

 

[12:02] Ashley James: How many people would you say went through that program? Just thinking of thousands of people, the ripple effect that you’ve had that idea that you’ve ran with your team. Now because if that thousands of people have their career path and they’re supporting their families and feel proud of themselves like they belong to society.

 

[12:27] Lynda Cloud: It was a fun one. It was one of those that everybody was, “Who could say no helping kids be successful and getting a career path?” I don’t know the actual numbers. I do know when I left, it was fast growing part of the company. We had a lot of success there and longevity. Really for me, that would – your point the ripple impact is really what’s driven me. I have been lucky enough to be successful and I really attribute my success because I love what I do everyday and I feel like I’m making a difference in people’s lives. I think that when success comes when you’re passionate about something and as you know, the days are long and to be able to make a difference and to take that ripple and pay it forward is awesome which is what I think IIN does.

 

[13:21] Ashley James: I love it. What inspired you to be the CEO of IIN? Did someone reached out to you or did you reached out to them?

 

[13:30] Lynda Cloud: Yes, they reached out to me and I started some conversations. I could tell you the moment that I knew in my heart of hearts that I wanted this role was, I spent a day with the IIN team and if any of you get a chance, which we would love to have you come visit us. Our offices in New York City are so cool. You’ll get a chance to meet the incredible team. You walk into the office and you can feel the mission. There’s bowls of avocados, there’s fruit, there’s a vitamin bar, there’s yoga instruction on Thursday night. There’s a chiropractor, there’s a massage therapist. We live our mission everyday and the people here are really passionate about what we do. We have over 78% of our staff are female and they’re mostly all trained health coaches. They are graduates of the program and so they know first hand what’s important to our students and help make our curriculum and our teaching better everyday as a result of it.

 

[14:39] Ashley James: I get to interview Joshua Rosenthal. The creator of IIN, the founder at episode 106. He talked about the corporate culture that he had created. That he wanted culture where people really did put their health first. Put the company second. Their health obviously everyone’s health is first and then the mission of helping the students is a close second obviously but we have to take care of ourselves. We have to walk the walk and talk the talk. I thought that was so brilliant. I interviewed one of your staff members and she sure enough said that it’s absolutely amazing. That it’s a culture that supported each other and each other’s health. I thought that is so brilliant. What if every business did this? I know that Microsoft did a test in their Japan office where they introduced a four-day workweek and they saw productivity go up. I think it was like over 60%. Every corporate needs to look at IIN and see what they’re doing and look at what Microsoft just did in Japan and see that by shifting the focus from let’s say Amazon. Amazon works their workers to the bone and it’s cutthroat and a really dangerous work environment to be in long term, shift from that to the more nurturing, making sure we have work life balance. We see that productivity goes up and that longevity goes up. The company flourishes long time and which is what is happening with IIN. So you walked for that space that day and you’re just re-pinching yourself thinking that this is different from every other corporation you have ever witnessed.

 

[16:35] Lynda Cloud: Yes, I did. For me, that was the personal shift I needed to make. I’ve been in corporate America for over 25 years, my typical lens as a general manger and former head of these divisions was figuring out, how do you take the cost out, does this makes sense, are we operating as efficiently. A hard look at business. When I walked in here, what went through my mind, “Gosh, these avocados must’ve cost a fortune” but as I got to spend time with everyone around the organization and realized that, they really are living their true best self here. As a result of it, yes, we have incredible creativity and innovation and productivity. Figuring out how you merge your personal best with your professional. I hadn’t seen in action life there before. So the avocados are staying for sure.

 

[17:43] Ashley James: Since becoming the CEO this year which is back in March. You’re coming up on a year in a few months and you’ve obviously just got a moment to step into the role and get the landscape. What have you changed or you personally brought in that has been innovative since you’ve stepped in as CEO?

 

[18:09] Lynda Cloud: The school is incredible. I can’t say enough great things about Joshua and his vision from how he developed and thought about the curriculum to the teams that he hired. Really, I was brought in to help build upon that solid foundation and how to take the organization from good to great. Trying to think through what that can look like ad how we can start to take the footprint that’s here. Really make a bigger impact around the world and so, we are known as the original, the OG’s are what the team calls it. Health and wellness, health coaching. He coined and created the category. Everything we do is about servicing the category and continuing to build the health coach industry so we can have the ripple effect around the world. The work I’ve been doing over the past few months was starting to transition the organization from the school that we are today and help with some professional development and training of the teams. We’ve brought in a new head of sales and marketing. We’ve bought in a new chief financial officer. We’ve kept a nice blend of the old and new guards to help us think through. How we can start to build and enter adjacent markets. We’ve kicked off a new business plan. We’ll be launching a new product line in April because we see how impactful our health coach training program has been and making difference in people’s lives we want to create versions of that. That then can enter for example corporate wellness and help make aspects of the content much more accessible for folks and giving them a taste of small or short-term course. The first courses will start in April. We’re on that which we’re super excited on that. That’s some of the new things we’ve done. We’ve infused new talent. We’ve invested in our existing teams and we’ve started to think about some of the new markets we’re going to be entering.

 

[20:24] Ashley James: Very cool. When I’ve had Joshua on the show, episode 106. He said that IIN was hiring lobbyists to advocate and educate politicians in DC on the benefits of health coaching and certified health coaches so that we can carve space out. First of all, protect our rights to be health coaches and also make sure that there is space moving forward for certified health coaches and then just this year, IIN announced that here was some movement in legislature. Can you share more details on that?

 

[21:04] Lynda Cloud: Yes, I’m happy to. We are the only health coach school really that has full time lobbyist in DC. I had the good fortune of going down and something on DC with him. About a month or two ago, meeting with different senators and legislators to talk about the category of health coaching. Part of what we are doing, is bringing awareness. Helping people understand exactly what a health coach is, how we can impact people’s lives and how we can work side by side with hospitals and insurance companies to help be the coach that based on help reverse chronic disease and looking for ways we can help implement new practices and support for people. The change that you’re mentioning is around it’s called CPT111 codes. That consortium in particular is instrumental in getting the work for the ground. Really what that does is positive for the market because it helps get recognized potentially for some insurance payees and different reimbursements in that area. We have right now was a category 3 and that enables us to collect data around the work that we’re all doing around the industry which hopefully results to category 1 which is what we’re striving for in that space.

 

[22:30] Ashley James: Does that mean that a health coach soon will be able to work with insurance companies?

 

[22:38] Lynda Cloud: For reimbursement. What we are hoping. Yes, exactly.

 

[22:41] Ashley James: Very cool. I see it everywhere which is so neat. I didn’t see it everywhere 10 years ago but now I see health coaches at the doctor’s office and even in the hospitals. My health insurance offers health coaches, health coach service. Because now health insurance companies see that they’re going to save money if they get their customers using a health coach because then it’s preventive medicine in a sense. People are cleaning up their diets and being motivate around their health and they’re less likely to get sick. So the insurance companies are investing in hiring health coaches. I’m seeing the space just open and open where there’s so many job opportunities. I know that IIN also teaches people to be independent health coaches. I think some people, they’re being interested in being health coach but they’re not interested at being an entrepreneur? Can you speak to that? For those who maybe a bit hesitant to jump into the health coaching space because they don’t feel like they could not be an entrepreneur?

 

[23:46] Lynda Cloud: Yes, happy to. Maybe just by way of context, your observations are spot on. I also couldn’t decide if it’s just because I’m living and breathing this every day and now enrolled as a student that I’m seeing health coaches everywhere but when you look at the data, the health coach market is estimated that it’s going to reach 7.9 billion by 2022. We’re seeing incredible acceptance and growth and I feel like we are just at this pivotal moment where we’re going to become ubiquitous in terms of health coaching and how we can help provide health coaches. Our students who go through the programs you know, we graduate close to 10,000 students each year. About 50% and the data’s been remarkably consistent. About 50% of our students are going through the curriculum for personal transformation. Maybe they have something they’re trying to solve in their lives. Maybe they just want to get themselves better. Maybe they’re stuck and they want to get unstuck but about 50% are going though for their own personal journey and personal transformation and betterment. The other 50% are going through it maybe they are a yoga instructor, a fitness instructor, chiropractor and they want to get additional certification or they want to pursue a career in health coaching and those 50% maybe in doctor’s office, they maybe insurance companies.

Where MDs hiring health coaches, hospitals all over the world are hiring health coaches. Our students who come out the other side are what we’re trying to do is we look at the curriculum is look at ways we could support them in their journey with different options at the end of graduation. One of the things you’ll hear from us early in 2020, I can’t quite announce it yet but we’re keenly focused on how do we help our health coaches who maybe loves what they’re doing. Some of our students are incredibly entrepreneurial but some of them really don’t want to spend their time doing all the business administrative stuff so what we’re working on is the solution where we can help them just push play. And it would be a way for them to get their business going on much more quickly. In the curriculum, we have way that you could help with. We could help you get your social page going, we could help you get your webpage going, we could help you if want to write a book and launch your dream book but this would be much more supportive very specific to the health coach graduate who want to start their own business.

 

[26:32] Ashley James: That sounds really exciting. That sound like another Lynda Cloud innovative thing since you –

 

[26:39] Lynda Cloud: Well, it is certainly a team innovative thing.

 

[26:42] Ashley James: Well, you’re the head right? Just looking back the ways that you carved out a whole new space for the k-12 online platform and help those students who were, they didn’t have a place, they didn’t feel like they belong and they had a place. That’s sort of the same. Right now, you’re doing the same for these health coaches who or people who wanted to be health coaches but they don’t have the entrepreneurial skill. They don’t have the time energy or the skill to break out on their own but they are amazing at health coaching. We’re expected nowadays to be a jack-of-all-trades to the jane-of-all trades. We’re expected to be a great mom and a great career woman or a great stay at home mom or a great homeschooler. Whatever we’re doing basically 15-hour days and then on top of that have these know everything we should know about internet marketing so that we can have a successful health coaching practice. It’s like, I would really want to see someone who’s an amazing health coach and I don’t need them to be a great marketer but how am I going to reach them or how are they going to reach me? I love that IIN is creating a way for these amazing health coaches to be able to get connected with the people to the people that are looking for amazing health coaches.

 

[28:09] Lynda Cloud: Yes, it’s interesting. I think that our students and the people in the health and wellness field in particular, were passionate people. We’re really are doing this because we want the world to be better place. Often times it’s hard for people to put a price tag on that. One of the first notes I got when I started here via LinkedIn was from one of my students saying, “Welcome. What do you think I should charge for my health coaching session?” I was like, “Oh, geez.” Because we just don’t know how to put a price tag and contemplate the business aspect of running a business which is so important. This side, I think what we’re working on people will be super excited about. It’ll all just help make their lives easier. They still have the opportunity to personalize it as much as they want or invest the time if that’s where they want to choose it but if as you say, we want a really good health coach spending their time coaching and advising and partnering and they want their tools and the resources they can get them.

 

[29:00] Ashley James: That is such a common question back when I was 19. I went to college to become a massage therapist. In Canada, it’s a bigger course. It’s like a 3,000 hour course. We study alongside nurses when we take the anatomy classes in college. That was one of the biggest question was, “What do we charge? What do we charge for a service?” I’ve seen that again in the NLP space. I was master practitioner and trainer and worked with the international training company teaching people how to become NLP practitioners. All the NLP practitioners didn’t know what to charge. That was the big question. You charge too little people don’t value what you do. You charge too much you’re unobtainable. You want the sweet spot and basically you want a price that honors the client. What I love about health coaching is it’s affordable. It’s accessible and affordable for people to go through your program but for people for clients who also hire health coaches. I love that it creates because you could do group coaching. Some people charge like $20 or $40 a month and they get a whole group together and by the end of it, the group learns more from each other. Learns even more from each other than they did from the coach but the coach was the facilitator. There’s so many opportunities for people who are even they can’t afford to go see all these holistic experts but they can definitely afford health coaching because health coaching helps them to identify the actionable steps they can take to bring their life back into balance. Now you started being a student at IIN. How far along are you in the program?

 

 

[31:00] Lynda Cloud: I am in early days. I think I’m in fifth module. I started working with the education team on the curriculum. We’re starting to look and refresh of the current and I thought I had to start taking this because this is just so compelling. I’m loving it, I’m doing it at night. I’m having fun with it. My family I think is feeling the impacts of it already.

 

[31:30] Ashley James: Now even before module five when you first joined IIN, there’s a foundation. The second you join even let’s say your class hasn’t started yet because there’s an official launch. The whole cohort of students go through it together even though it’s online you feel like you have this community. I love that because I connect with people around the world. All the students that were in it that the same time as I was. I participated in discussion throughout the whole year together online. Before your official start date when you join, so you can join anytime. You’re given the fundamentals modules and you have to have Kleenex with you because I bawled. I was crying tears of inspiration the entire time. I was like, “I am meant to be here.” It felt like –

 

[32:25] Lynda Cloud: You found your people.

 

[32:26] Ashley James: Yes. And it felt like I wasn’t the black sheep anymore. I was just crying and crying. It was so good. It was so cathartic. I felt like my favorite part of the entire year was the foundation. So don’t change that. Just add to it but don’t change it. It was so good. When you watched the fundamentals, the foundation modules what were you’re thinking as you’re going through it?

 

[32:56] Lynda Cloud: So for me, there are couple of things that happen. I feel like I cheated a little bit because of my role I have the opportunity to go to one of our live events. We had a couple of months ago that was incredible which I’ll talk about which felt like for me that was cathartic but it all made sense to me. There was a ton of common sense but then there’s this shift that transpired where what you were all of a sudden is primary food is not a primary food anymore. Once you start to make that shift and you think about the idea of what’s feeding your soul versus feeding your body and understanding. All those aspects. That to me was really substantial and how I thought about all aspects of my life. Then it was great to get to know Josh which you’ll do – you just feel like, he’s brought you into his world. As well as the other visiting teachers that are incredible. It’s been great. It’s been really helpful for me. Not just in my own personal life but also professionally.

 

[34:15] Ashley James: Tell us about the live event because it sounds like you enjoyed that even more than taking the online training.

 

[34:23] Lynda Cloud: Each student as you know who goes through our program has the opportunity to participate in a live event. It’s an event we hold one big event and that’s another area we’re actually looking at for next year is diversifying that and holding many more live events so that we could give people the opportunity the students the opportunity to come together. The live event that I attended was at the Lincoln center. It was a combination of incredible speakers, incredible community. We we’re dancing, we were swaying, we were crying, it’s like a revival meeting where you’ve come to gather and you found your people and people were just excited to be with other students. We have about 25% of people there who came outside the US, which marries the numbers of students we have in our curriculum who participate from outside the US. But was wonderful. It was just a good combination of wonderful speakers and community and people coming together.

 

[35:34] Ashley James: That’s really cool. What speaker was your favorite?

 

[35:37] Lynda Cloud: Dr. Weil was there. I just adore him. Andrew Weil I think is brilliant. He’s fantastic. Cherry Walsh talked about her protocol. I had the chance to visit with her and her daughter. She’s just an inspiration. From the business side, there was a woman there Meghan McCarthy. She is a hospital administrator from a hospital in the Pacific Northwest that we do a lot of work with. She’s like our first corporate client if you will. Meghan is an inspiration because she is breaking down those walls and saying, “I believe that health coaches can save the world and I believe that everybody needs to be health coach. “ What Meghan is doing is putting folks in the hospital through the health coach program and then doing a train the trainer model within her hospital community. She’s breaking it. She’s killing it. She’s just doing great work.

 

[36:48] Ashley James: Wow. Can you share which hospital it is?

 

[36:50] Lynda Cloud: PeaceHealth.

 

[36:53] Ashley James: I live in the Pacific North West, I’ve never heard of it but I bet I will be hearing about it. Sounds amazing.

 

[36:57] Lynda Cloud: You will, yes. We’re actually doing some outreach. She’s a force and she’s just great to work with. So we’re doing some additional work with her. Going out into committees and helping train the trainer within the communities and some of the work she’s doing with meals on wheels program, YMCA, etc.

 

[37:18] Ashley James: I love it. Since you joined IIN as their CEO, obviously you’ve been learning, you immersed into the corporate culture of IIN. You have gone to the live event, you’ve rubbed elbows with Joshua Rosenthal which you spent any amount of time with him and he is teaching you how to balance your life in a way that brings you joy. You have started to really absorb all of the education that IIN teaches. What changes have you made to your personal life since joining IIN?

 

[38:00] Lynda Cloud: My whole world changed when I joined IIN. I’ll tell you about it personally and the how IIN helped me get thought the change. I was living up in a town called Newton, Massachusetts right outside of Boston before taking the role at IIN. I moved to New York City. For the first time in my life, I’m living in New York city. That was a huge change. On top of that, my youngest left for college and we were instant empty nesters. You couldn’t have changed one more thing on our world if you wanted to.  For IIN to New York City, that’s a big change. What I found though is I’m eating a lot healthier. We have organic breakfasts and lunches. I eat clean every day that has helped for sure with my energy and my stamina and my overall health. I’m meditating more because New York can eat you up. It can be a really frenetic hectic place. Overwhelming for a sensory perspective, IIN’s philosophy and methodology has helped me I think transition into the city in ways that I can focus on self-care in New York City which is not a an easy thing to do. But it has helped me think about ways to optimize my nutrition, my fitness and my health in a city environment.

 

[39:39] Ashley James: Very cool. As you’ve been going through the course, I know you’re only five modules in, there’s still a lot of content there. What homework have you implemented in your life from the course?

 

[39:56] Lynda Cloud: I have taken the spirit of bio-individuality and I’ve taken that from theory to practice. So for those of you who haven’t been through the course when you start to think about bio individuality and the term, it’s really that we’re all unique. Recognizing and honoring our uniqueness is going to be the key to our health and happiness. What you need each point in time in your life may change and it’s very personal to you and one of the things I’ve done in terms of theory to practice is taken that and apply that to a very diverse family that I’ve had. I’ve had vegetarian son and a husband who really loves meat and trying to figure out how do I introduce individualized meals and nutrition for them in ways that are going to make them the best they can be and enjoy what they’re doing and knowing that what’s good for one person isn’t necessarily always good for the other person. It’s really shifted my mindset I would say.

 

[41:08] Ashley James: Instead of trying to get your son to eat meat and your husband to eat vegetables.

 

[41:11] Lynda Cloud: Exactly. Which was not successful. We’re trying to find the one meal that would satisfy everybody. That’s been great. We’ve also been busy looking at what the next year’s going to bring for IIN and that’s been super fun. We’ve got a team of really talented people. There’s no shortage of ideas where we can take the company but we think there’s some really great stuff we’re doing in terms of working more closely with our affiliates and ambassadors and visiting teachers. That’s been cool.

 

[41:52] Ashley James: I love it. You’ve been around enough now to have heard some success stories. Both from the standpoint of the students and the staff and also clients. Can you share some really inspiring success stories that standout in your mind?

 

[42:12] Lynda Cloud: Yes. I think I’ll share a story of a woman I met at the conference. She was just absolutely fantastic. She just finished the program and she was sharing with me that she had her son who have diabetes and was just really struggling with of how to help him. She was telling me the story welling up at how this gave her clarity in ways that things hadn’t been able to give her family clarity before. She was able to take the philosophy of figuring out exactly what was right for him and helping him become healthier and the success he had. When you hear those kind of nuggets, when you hear those kind of stories, whether it’s health related or it’s just people feeling stronger or people feeling like they’re in a place that they didn’t realize they could get to and how the curriculum and the community which is I would say is the most unsung hero around IIN, is just how strong of a force the community is. Whether you’re posting something or sharing something or seeing someone in person just when the community comes together you feel as you were describing, you found your tribe, you found your people who all of a sudden understand what you needed. They are nothing but supportive and they’re just nothing but supportive and happy people that help you in your journey. That’s  kind of the theme of the most of the stories and most of the impact. That’s the vision is to create this cripple around the world and pay it forward. That’s our goal.

 

[44:11] Ashley James: Back in the day, Joshua used to call this something else. It wasn’t health coaching, it was health counselling? Was it counselling? But then the word counselling, it wasn’t clear enough and I don’t think it was legal to be called counselor because that’s is more for therapy. What I thought is interesting is I went into – I signed up to IIN to become a health coach not knowing how much emotional support you learn how to provide. I thought I was going in because you learn in IIN in the yearlong course, you learn a hundred dietary theories and I thought I was going in to learn nutrition and how much vitamin C is in something. Which is you don’t really need to know. You don’t need to memorize how much vitamin C is in stuff, you could just google it but you actually learn skills in IIN. How to be with someone and hold the space for them to feel heard. Sometimes for the first time in their life. In a way that is not biased or doesn’t have an agenda. Because when we go to our best friend or when we go to our mom, or we go to people that are in our life, they have agenda. I remember going telling my best friend I was moving. I was moving to a different country. I’m from Canada. And she was really upset because she didn’t want me to move right? That was my path and I needed to. I wasn’t going to get a positive space. She wasn’t going to make a positive space for me. She had to process her own emotions about me moving. When we got to friend or a family member, to talk about what’s happening in our life that stop us from achieving our health goals. Their emotions come up. They can’t be a blank supportive space. Sometimes there’s even self-sabotage and I’ve seen it in my family. I have a family member that says to another family member, “When are you going to lose weight?” and then offers them a cookie. Over and over again. This level of sabotage that’s going on and we love our friends and family, they have their own agenda and maybe it’s unconscious.

Going to a health coach you have someone who listens to you who just sits with you listens to you and helps decipher what your goals are. What your true desires are. Then holds that space for you to achieve it and helps you to uncover what’s stopping you and then helps you create an action plan towards it. I’ve had some amazing times with my clients as a health coach that I pinch myself and Joshua says this happens when you as a health coach get as much growth out of health coaching as your client does. Every time my client had a success I felt like I had a success because I learn so much about myself and also my ability to hold the space for someone as they grew.

 It’s this career that is constantly evolving you as a person and allowing you to feel human connection and love and care for someone in a way that is not co-dependent. In a way that is uplifting them. Letting them do the work but holding them accountable. It’s a beautiful dance because anyone could google the nutrition or the calories in something that doesn’t teach us how to help someone be the best version of themselves. IIN doesn’t teach us stuff that we can go an just google. It’s teaching us skills that we can really help someone achieve not only their physical health but the emotional health ad help them achieve their life goals. I’ve had clients who we ended up talking about their relationships and their career and things would come up and one of them was an entrepreneur something in her business but changing something in her business it actually affected her health because it lowered her stress. I like that IIN doesn’t just say, “Okay, we’re not talking about your physical health, we’re talking about your client’s entire life.

 

[48:38] Lynda Cloud: Every aspect of it you’re absolutely right. I love the way when you’re describing it. I pictured this swirl. I pictured this symbiotic imagery that what you’re doing on this side has a direct correlation in this side and this side and this side. So as you talk to a health coach it’s deconstructing and building up and understanding and as you say create the space but also these goals and creating this journey and creating this champion that doesn’t have an agenda. There’s somebody you know you’ve got in your camp that is helping you be the best person you can be based on what you want and what you want to do. That is such a gift. I agree with you, everyone whether it’s friends or families it’s really hard to be at complete objective and partial cheerleader for any of us. I know I try, not always successful with my kids but I’m getting better. It’s a really special space and we’re starting to look with some research behind the power of that in the wellness journey. The hospital I mentioned earlier for example is starting to do some work on we want this to be a third party study of folks who’ve inserted, health coaches into their wellness journey and how that has accelerated and impact what they’re trying to do both on the emotional and physical perspective.

 

[50:20] Ashley James: Wow. Are there any results back from that study yet?

 

[50:23] Lynda Cloud: No. Not yet. Just kicked off.

 

[50:24] Ashley James: I’m so excited. That is going to be so cool to hear about that. I love that you’re doing third party and you just because you want to get the truth.

 

[50:34] Lynda Cloud: We want to get objective, exactly.

 

[50:36] Ashley James: Yes. Now you mentioned primary food. For those who have not been immersed in the culture of IIN may not have heard the term primary food. Can you teach us what primary food is?

 

[50:48] Lynda Cloud: Yes. What I thought primary food was before I started IIN was probably what most of you think primary food is which is the food you eat. Actually when you go through the curriculum what you learn is, primary food is what feeds us but it’s not because what comes on a plate. It comes in a bunch of different categories. It could be your relationship with health, it could be your physical activity, it could be your career, it could be spiritual, it could be financial. It’s all those things around you that impact who you are and so you need to think about those how you balance and what imbalances you have to help get balance in your primary food. As opposed to secondary food which is the things we eat and we start to think about food and food is medicine and how that can help feed our soul but also give us balance in our primary food. It’s very spiral in terms of how you think about it. It’s all interrelated. That’s what generally what primary food means.

 

 

[52:02] Ashley James: Right and that’s one of the first things that when someone goes to an IIN health coach that they’re given this little on page quiz that helps them to determine the balance and actually see on this graph the balance of their life. How much joy and fulfillment they have, spiritual fulfillment. Emotional fulfilment, connection, fulfillment within their relationship, within their career. They get to see that. The areas that they’re missing. I’ll give a great example that I just witnessed in myself. I’m looking back at the person I was before IIN. I’ve been on a health journey for many years. In my 20’s, I was very sick. I had type II diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic infections for which I was on monthly antibiotics for. I’d wake up every morning feeling like I was hungover with a splitting headache feeling like I drank alcohol but I hadn’t. I was just sick all the time. And in your 20’s you’re supposed to feel the healthiest. I was so sick of being sick. I was also told that I was infertile and I’d never have kids. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome. Basically every day I was a prisoner trapped in my own body who look outside the doctor’s office for what I could do for my health because being given drugs every month. It was just keeping the infections at bay, it wasn’t helping –

 

[53:25] Lynda Cloud: The root cause, yes.

 

[53:26] Ashley James: Right. I was a really busy sales manager for an international training company. I lived in Las Vegas which is sometimes may not be a very healthy environment. Most of the time we’re always indoor in air-conditioning and it’s a very interesting place to live, let’s just put it that way. My husband and I started watching documentaries. Netflix has just started streaming documentaries. That was a new thing for Netflix back in 2008. Some health documentary said, “Eat organic and shop the perimeter of the grocery store.” Within one month, my chronic infections went away just eating organic and not eating as much processed foods. I thought, “If I could change my health in one month, what else could I do.?” That’s what led me down my journey to reverse all of my health conditions. We conceived or child naturally and were just getting healthier and healthier. I’m still on my health journey and what I noticed was before I joined IIN to become a heath coach. I already started the podcast I actually interviewed on of your graduates and I asked him during my interview, “How did you become a health coach?” because that was my first time interviewing a health coach. I almost didn’t interview him because I thought it was so cliché. I thought, “This sounds like a BS certification.” I really almost didn’t give him the time of day. Something me and I love that listen to your gut. Something in me said listen to him and it was a beautiful interview. He had ADD and was put on meds his entire childhood. He had side effects from it. He decided to take control of his health and he completely reversed his ADD using diet and healed his body. Then he went on to become a health coach. Now that’s what he does for others. In the interview he told me all about IIN. I immediately got skype from the interview. I called up IIN and I signed up that day. I was so inspired. Of course I turned to my husband and I said, “Is this okay?” he said, “Go for it. This is great. You should totally do this.” I talked to Juliet. By the way, Juliet is amazing.

 

[55:37] Lynda Cloud: She’s downstairs right now. She’s a rock star.

 

[55:41] Ashley James: Yes, I think she’s been there forever. Juliet’s  fantastic. That I called up my best friend and then told her about it and then she signed up. So we did it together. Which I highly recommend. It was great. She’s in Canada and I’m here in the States. Being long distance and doing this course together was so wonderful. That was back in 2016. I graduated in 2017. The person I was before IIN, even though I was eating really healthy, I’ve reversed all those health conditions, I’m doing this podcast I’m totally onboard with holistic health, that person I was would not have said “No” to the free sample of chocolate at Costco. That person every time and we go to Costco like twice a week at least because I buy a lot of organic stuff, we have a great Costco it’s filled with organic produce. The cart gets filled up with organic freshfruits and vegetables every time we go and I will go back again and again for the free chocolate samples because they’ll give out as many. The Lindor chocolate they’re really decadent ones. I would just circle the Costco and go back and again and again and get as much free chocolate as they’ll give which they’ll give infinite amount of free chocolate samples but every year I would absolutely do that. And then would just not feel my best for a few days. I’m allergic to milk and so my immune system would be upset. My digestive system would be upset. I would be inflamed. I’d have brain fog. When you’re really healthy and clean, if you eat something your body doesn’t like it causes inflammation you really notice it. When you eat it all the time and you’re habituated, you don’t notice it as much. Even though I was on this great path I would still give into chocolate and then when I went through IIN. I started to look at my primary foods. Meaning, the food in life that brings me joy and happiness and fulfillment and balance. The food being connection with my husband, connection with my child. Feeling like I’m making a difference in this world. Now fast forward to now, I walked through Costco twice this week and didn’t even give them the time of day, didn’t touched any of the chocolate and didn’t feel deprived about it. I actually felt really happy. Because in the past I recognized that I was using chocolate even if it was free samplse, I was using chocolate to try to give myself joy and fulfillment because my primary food where out of balance. Just yesterday I had a package in the mail that had a bunch of Hershey’s kisses in it from a friend of mine who I guess – it’s just people send chocolate and it’s that the time of year that they send chocolate. I love that person. I’m grateful and I threw out the chocolate. I have no need for that in my body but I didn’t feel deprived and I’m not, I don’t have a ton of self-control. It’s not like I’m one of these people that has a ton of self-control. It just didn’t needed it. It doesn’t fulfill that I’m not using chocolate to self medicate because my primary foods are imbalanced. I’m deeply connected with my husband and my son, I feel fulfilled in my career. I’ve gone through and done the work in the primary foods. I recognized that my food addictive behaviors have subsided because I have done the work that I learned through IIN.

 

[59:36] Lynda Cloud: Your story is awesome and it is inspirational and it’s also very familiar. When you talk to a lot of before and after IIN, it’s very similar. That you don’t realize what was missing or what was out of alignment or what part of your world your primary foods weren’t in sync but once you actually make that shift tor work on making that shift because the way you describe it is exactly right. Just identifying that, “Do I have the strongest healthiest relationship I should? Do I have the most fulfilling career? Am I in the right place for my spiritually? Am I getting the right amount of physical activity?” Once you actually start paying attention to those aspects and then doing the work in those things that you know are going to help you create that balance, you have this Aha moment and you say – the way you describe it was your Lindor chocolate, you don’t actually think about that anymore. That used to be probably the first thing you thought about when you got into the car on your way to Costco. I know probably would’ve been mine too but now, your mission is different. Your priorities are different. Anyway, I love your story and I love your journey. It’s exactly what we want to hear from our grads.

 

 

[01:01:02] Ashley James: Thank you. Thank you for the work that you’re doing. I’m really excited for all the innovative stuff you’re going to be doing with you and your team at IIN. Is there anything that you wanted to teach today or homework you want to give? Is there anything that you really wanted to make sure that the listeners walk away with?

 

[01:01:25] Lynda Cloud: Well. I think what I would say is one of two things. One is I’ll just say some tips maybe as people are headed into the holiday season as you described, the baskets of chocolates, the baskets of cookies. Getting off your rhythm or your routine. It happens. And so I would just caution people to embrace what they’re about to embark on. Enjoy their family, enjoy their friends. Don’t beat yourself up over if you grab the Lindor chocolates a couple of times this months. It’s going to happen. Or where if you fell like you need to just remember that everything you’re doing is good for you and who you are. Stay true to your mission and vision of what you want to be and where your life to take you because we’re all – I think it’s not about being our best self every single day, it’s just knowing what you want to do and how you want to get there. For me, I go into this season I am still be an interesting one, I can tell you from the last 3 years, I have ended up with an incredible sickness that’s started the first week of December. Literally, I had been in an urgent care in the hospital every December for the past 3 years because of the stress of the holidays. It would often be end of year budget. I would have blisters on my throat. I would end up respiratory something. I’d have all sorts of illnesses and going into this December I feel so different.

One is because I’ve got alignment around – not that I haven’t loved my career but I feel like my career and my personal goals are so aligned for the first time in my life. I am paying attention in what my body is feeling so I’m drinking more great tea so I can help with some of the inflammation. I’m eating more mushroom because I know it’s going to help me in terms of detoxing and looking at some things that are going to be stressful for my body. I’m going into the season not that I’m going to live a completely different life but I’m paying attention to my gut and my body and what my body has been telling me for years that I never ever listen to. That’s my advice. People should just go on to the holiday season listening to their body, listen to what they need to be successful and happy and have a fulfilling holiday season. That’s some advice and then I would just, I’d close with keep your eye out for what were going to be, you’ll be hearing from us over the next year. I think we’re doing some super exciting stuff to help based on what we’ve heard from our students and based on how I think we could make a difference in lives around the world. So we’re launching a detox your life healing with alternative medicine, stress management, different types of specialty course that we think will be really interesting for folks to get a taste of IIN curriculum in ways that’s new and different and also our business tool kit which you’ll hear more about as I promise early next year.

 

[01:04:49] Ashley James: Very cool. Awesome. Listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/coach to sign up to get a free module just to get a taste of it and see if it’s right for them and learn more about IIN. So it’s learntruehealth.com/coach. They could also just call up IIN. I know that listeners get a really special deal for saying that they heard the Learn True Health podcast with Ashley James when they call IIN. I know that there’s a new lower payment plan for those who would instead of paying the price in one payment would rather pay it off monthly. What Juliet told me when I first signed up she said – I joined and did the payment plan. She said to me if you do the 12-month course because now you can actually become a full time student and do it in six but my understanding is that most people because we have full time lives –

 

[0105:53] Lynda Cloud: It’s designed for most people who have a full day and then want to do it on top of that. Yes.

 

[01:06:00] Ashley James: Right. For me, I had my son who was a young toddler at that time or just entering toddlerhood. I also had the podcast. I was very busy and I still managed to do it. Log in into the evenings, do 20 minutes a day oftentimes listen to the videos while I was commuting, while I was at the gym, while I was doing the laundry. I could listen and commute a lot I just pretty much anytime we are commuting we are listening and that was cool because I was like getting my husband to listen too and he enjoyed it. He actually went vegan. Went completely whole food plant-based and he went from a carnivore. Maybe play the videos while your husband listening.

 

[01:06:48] Lynda Cloud: I have been.

 

[01:06:49] Ashley James: I’m not saying that everyone should go vegan or everyone should go one diet. I don’t believe in any one diet dogma. My husband listened to his body. After listening  to enough just sort of being the fly on the wall while I was taking IIN, he listened to enough lectures and he was also listening to my interviews and he was taking all these information listening to his body and he really wasn’t happy with the direction his heath was going. He just cold turkey said, “I’m never eating meat again.” So he just eats one to two pounds of vegetables a day. Potatoes and brown rice and he just says I’m ever going back. I can’t believe food tastes this good. If you told me that the whole food plant-based tasted this good, I would’ve stopped eating meat long ago and that’s just the 180 because my husband when I met him, was like would never ever touch vegetables. Pretty much just ate steak breakfast, lunch and dinner or eggs and steak breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Just very interesting that he started listening to his body. Really this videos do have an impact on the people who absorb them. I found that I could either listen to it little bits of it throughout the week or sometimes if I got really busy I would then to choose to spend a Sunday afternoon catching up for all the work that week. Just so I found it to be easy to go through the entire year but what Juliet said when she first enrolled me into the program, she said after the first six month, you start to take on clients. Some students get to the point where they actually pay of the entire course before they’ve completed the course because they’ve taken on some clients while they’re still in the course. Because the first six months gives you the foundation. The next six months you continue your training but you also learn how to work with clients as you’re working with clients which is just find brilliant.

 

[01:08:40] Lynda Cloud: That’s right. You’re moving from theory to practice. Exactly. Yes.

 

[01:08:43] Ashley James: I love that you guys don’t just like, “Okay, here’s all the information. Now you’re on your own.” It’s really you feel supported for the six months while you’re working with clients. It’s really a wonderful system and that people can immediately start to within the first after six months can start to basically pay off the course. It’s accessible to everyone and I love that. Any advice around those who want or interested or have more questions or want to sign up or any sort of want to make sure that potential students know some information?

 

[01:09:21] Lynda Cloud: I’ll just give you a quick little. As you described, you can do it on accelerated program six months or you can do a full year program. There are lots of promotions so you should check in to instituteofintegrativenutrition.com. You obviously – I think if you go through Ashley, you’re also going to get additional promotions. Logistically that’s just good to know. I think you should also know, Juliet is a really good example. We actually just did a town hall. We celebrated her 14th year with IIN. Our coaches down stairs are health coaches who’ve gone through the program. Even if you’re just on the fence and you’re saying, “I’m not sure if this is right for me. Can I invest this kind of time? Can I invest this kind of money?” I would have the conversation because you’ll learn something about yourself in that conversation. These are not folks who are going to give you a hard sell. They’re going to walk you through the philosophy and what it means to be health coach because they’re all health coaches and they’ve done this. You’ll get something out of the engagement in the call and learn a little bit about yourself. We would love to have everybody to join one of the cohorts starting next year. We think it’s going to be a super year next year.

 

 

[01:10:48] Ashley James: Awesome. Yes, 2020 sounds fantastic. Lynda, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing with us and I would love to have you or one of your wonderful staff members come back on the show to share all of the things you’ve said are in the works. Like the legislation and the new business thing that’s coming out next year who’s going to support health coaches to be entrepreneurs and successfully be health coaches. Also, the third party study implementing health coaches.

 

[01:11:26] Lynda Cloud: Yes. Our new events too. Yes, we have a lot in the works, we’re super excited, and I would love that. I’d love to visit in person with you so –

 

[01:11:36] Ashley James: That would be wonderful. If ever you’re in Seattle, let me know. If I’m ever in New York, you know I’m going to be popping by IIN.

 

[01:11:43] Lynda Cloud: Please do. Please do.

 

[01:11:45] Ashley James: Fantastic

 

[01:11:46] Lynda Cloud: Happy Holidays, Ashley.

 

[01:11:47] Ashley James: Thank you, you too.

 

Get Connected With Lynda Cloud!

Institute of Integrative Nutrition (IIN)

Linkedin

Dec 16, 2019

Check out IIN to see if Health Coaching is meant for you!

Learntruehealth.com/coach

Molly's sites:

Main website: www.buildingheroesacademy.com
My book: www.homeschoolgetitdone.com
My curriculum funnel: www.3homeschoolsecrets.com

Building Heroes Academy Homeschool curriculum - homeschool all the kids in an hour a day
Book: How to Get Everything Done: How to homeschool AND clean the house AND stay sane

I LOVE encouraging homeschool moms. It's overwhelming to so many because it's such an unknown and goes against what most the world is doing. I love teaching principles to help shift your mindset from overwhelm to enjoying life! I love to talk about "How to get everything done" and "how to build heroes in your home - and why you need to."

 

Homeschool Secret: How To Master Mindset And Avoid Procrastination

https://www.learntruehealth.com/homeschool-secret-how-to-master-mindset-avoid-procrastination

Highlights:

  • The Hero’s Journey
  • Pattern to all myths – the details are different, you have this basic pattern
  • People feel discontent because we’re not doing what we should be doing
  • Parents are not here to control their children
  • Every human being was born with greatness within
  • Learn how to start listening to calls to action and acting on them
  • The first voice is your authentic self; listen to the first voice
  • When you start feeling stuck in the muck, that’s part of the journey
  • Homeschooling – learn together but you connect it to yourself through principles
  • Obstacles are learning opportunities
  • Training with learning how to be consistent
  • Family economy system – time and money
  • Learn from real life skills that are going to affect them when they get older
  • Play is an important part of child development
  • Program for moms who want to learn how to become disciplined and create habits for themselves
  • Brain principles
  • Children model their parents

 

In today’s episode with Molly Christensen, listeners will get to know about the tools that Molly uses for homeschooling, tips on how to avoid procrastination and get past the overwhelm, and habits that moms should practice to be the best models for their children.

 

[00:00:00] Intro: Hello, true health seeker. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You are going to love today’s guest. Now, Molly Christensen specializes in working with moms, especially ones that are overwhelmed and doing homeschooling. However, I think everyone could benefit from listening to today’s interview because Molly shares some amazing tools that help everyone.

So enjoy today’s interview. Please share it with busy moms. Share with all the busy mom friends that you have. And all the homeschooling friends you have. Because they’ll gain benefit from it as well. Because she does share specifically some information about that. But she gives amazing advice for those that would love to master their mindset and no longer allow procrastination to stop them. So really, really, really great nuggets of gold in today’s interview.

And I want to let you know something really special. If you are a stay at home mom and you   would also like to have a career in helping people, you can become a health coach. You can go to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. It’s 100 percent online. I did their online program. It’s actually designed for busy moms. Now, dads can take it too. But the program is designed for women who are so busy that they’re taking care of a family. And even moms that are taking care of family and a career, but basically we’re so, so busy that they designed as you can fit it in in the evenings, maybe 20 minutes a day. That’s about how much I did, 20 minutes a day for an entire year and I became a certified health coach. What’s really exciting is that in 2020, it’s going to be covered by healthcare. It’s going to be covered by insurance. So it opens up the doors for so many people who maybe in the past couldn’t afford a health coach, would now be able to. Which is really exciting for you as a health coach and also exciting for people who want to hire a health coach that you can use your insurance which is really, really exciting. Give IIN a call. Just Google IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Give them a call and ask them for more information. You can also get a free module of the course by going to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learntruehealth.com/coach. They give you access to a module and you can see if it’s right for you.

Now, I got a special deal for my Learn True Health listeners. You get $1,500 off. It’s a huge chunk of the tuition is taken off for mentioning the Learn True Health podcast for being one of my listeners. They also have lots of great specials throughout the year. Sometimes they include things like a tablet or an Amazon gift card for additional books, because of course we love learning. So you know, call them up and ask them what kind of special is going on right now especially through mentioning the Learn True Health podcast and all of the great discounts that they give us as listeners. And please share this information with those in your life that you know would make an amazing health coach. It is the fastest growing field in the health field – n the health space. I think that we’re going to get to a point where health coaching is a household name and that it’s as common to go to a health coach as it is to have a certified trainer when you go to a gym. I’m very excited about that because we need to turn this around. The rate of disease is just increasing every year. We need to turn this around. We need to give the chance for everyone, give the education and the chance for everyone to have true health. That’s exactly what I’m here to do is to help you learn what you can do mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, to optimize your health.

Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing the podcast to help as many people as possible. Enjoy today’s interview.

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 398.

I am so excited for today’s guests. We have on with us Molly Christensen, who is an expert in homeschooling and supporting busy moms. Helping them to no longer be overwhelmed. I came across — my husband actually came across Molly’s work. And as we were watching one of her videos, my husband said, “You have to have her on the show.” And I was like, “You’re right.” She has so much wisdom to share. I thought this is awesome. Even if you’re not a homeschooling mom, I think you can still take away some amazing gold information from Molly. Because nowadays, even kids that are in the public school system come home with, like, over an hour’s worth of homework and it’s overwhelming. And even if you’re not a stay at home mom and you have a career and then you come home and then you have to help your kids with homework and then you have to manage the chores.

So I just think that Molly even though your expertise is helping homeschooling moms, I still think that all parents could take away great wisdom from you because you teach that how to have balance with your children, with the chores, and with your own emotional state as well. Which if our emotional state is not in order, if our mindset is not in order, everyone in the household suffers. You know what I mean?

 

 

[00:06:00] Molly Christensen: For sure. Absolutely. If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Right?

 

 

[00:06:04] Ashley James: Nobody happy. That’s right. Oh, Molly, welcome to the show.

 

 

[00:06:09] Molly Christensen: Well, thank you so much. I’m super excited to be here. And thank you for inviting me. This is exciting.

 

 

[00:06:15] Ashley James: Absolutely. You have three websites I want to let listeners know about. Your main website is buildingheroesacademy.com. Your book is homeschoolgetitdone.com. And your curriculum funnel is the number three, 3homeschoolsecrets.com. Of course the links to everything that Molly does is going to be in the show notes for today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com.

I want to dive right into your story because, man, you’ve got — like, I just want to, like, be a fly on the wall and absorb all the wisdom that you emanate from your years of experience. I only have one kid. I don’t know how in the world you’ve done it. You’ve done everything you’ve done. How many children have you homeschooled?

 

 

[00:07:09] Molly Christensen: Well, I have seven children.

 

 

[00:07:13] Ashley James: And you look amazing by the way.

 

 

[00:07:15] Molly Christensen: Thank you. 

 

 

[00:07:15] Ashley James: So you definitely are doing – you are managing your stress levels. You’re managing everything really well. And I know it’s been trial and error. And now you love teaching people and teaching homeschooling moms how to do that. How to do just what you’re doing. But to take us back to your story, what happened in your life that made you want to homeschool your children?

 

 

[00:07:39] Molly Christensen: Okay. For sure. Yeah. So when I was growing up, I actually was kind of an angry child. So people who know me now are like, “Yeah. Right.” So the good news is that you can change that. I was always mad and blaming other people for things. And you know, my siblings now will say, “Yeah. We’re kind of scared of you.” But I was also a very determined person. And luckily, my mother also could see potential in me. She could see that if I put my mind to something, then I could do it. I would do it. But still growing up, I kind of thought, “You know, I’m a mean person. Nobody really likes me.” I remember when my mom came to me – let’s see how old was I? I was probably 14 or so. And she was very brave. She came to me and she said, “You know, if you smiled every once in a while, people might not be – they might want to be in the same room as you.” Okay. She didn’t exactly say that. But that was kind of the gist of it. Of course, I hated hearing that and I was mad at her. But I did take her words to heart and I decided to practice smiling. So I started smiling. And you’re like, “Wait. What does this have to do with homeschool?” Don’t worry, it connects in.

But I did start to smile and I did realize that it was better to be happy and to smile and to have people not be scared of you.

So when I was in high school, she actually started homeschooling my younger brother and sister. And let’s just say I still wasn’t that great at being happy about things. And I thought, “Why in the world would anybody want to do that?” And they even asked me, “Do you want to be homeschooled too?” And I’m like, “Heck no.” I thought it was the worst idea ever. Why would I want to be home with you? Which is really sad in retrospect. But I did get better. So this is good. So that’s why it was kind of interesting that when I started having kids of my own, and my oldest son was about four, I started thinking about homeschooling. And my brain was like, “No way. You can’t do that. Because not only are you a disorganized mess, It’s weird.” People think you’re weird if you homeschool. And what about socialization? Your kids, they’re going to be weird.

 

 

[00:10:29] Ashley James: Yeah. We all know that one weird that came in to, like, maybe junior high or something that was homeschooled. Like, we all know or someone told us. Someone told us, “Oh, yeah. I knew a homeschooled kid and they were just weird.” And so it’s, like, you hear about this one person or a rumor gets spread about one person, maybe you never even met them. And then everyone thinks that it’s like the stigma that all homeschooling kids are just weird, and unsocialized, and awkward, and they don’t know how to communicate. Oh, man. I’ve met some more schooling kids that are so brilliant. And they look you in the eye and they have wonderful conversations. And they’re so on and so connected. That is one of those stigmas that it’s just not true.

 

 

[00:11:18] Molly Christensen: I know. But everybody worries about it. And actually I can address that later if we want to go into that. Like, why it’s not even a problem. But I didn’t know that then. I was sitting there going, “I can’t do homeschool.” I don’t even know how. And seriously, I am the most undisciplined person ever is what I thought, you know, because I kind of was. I was kind of a mess. So I didn’t do it. I sent him to kindergarten. And I did not like that, actually. Because part of what I was seeing was he was bringing home some bad behaviors that I did not teach him. And he was learning things like, they had a whole two month unit on saving the rain forest. And I’m like, “You know, I am all for saving rain forest. But when you’re five, shouldn’t the focus be like learning how to clean your room first? Why are we putting all this pressure on him?” I don’t know. That just really kind of bugged me because – and I was thinking, “If you were home, that’s what we could focus on.” And I started looking at what was going on in the classroom. And I was like, “You know, this isn’t really rocket science.” Although, rocket science actually would have been easier for me because I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. I was like, “Yeah. I think maybe I could do this.” Only because I was seeing that it didn’t look quite as hard as I had been picturing it to be.

And so the next year in first grade, I decided that I was going to homeschool him. And I asked my husband about it. And he was like, “I don’t care.” He’s just like, “Yeah. If that’s what you want to do, that’s fine.” But he didn’t really understand what homeschool is all about either and neither does I at that time. So I pulled him out in first grade. And by then, I had another kid and she was four at the time. But I didn’t think about the fact that she might want to learn too. So I tried to send all my energy to this one kid, my oldest son, who’s six mind you. And we would go from, like, 9:00 a.m. to about 4:00 p.m. and still not get all the stuff done that I had planned for the day. Because I was thinking, “Hey, if I’m going to homeschool, well, then you’re going to be way ahead of everybody else. And I’m going to make sure that happens.” 

Why are we laughing?

 

 

[00:14:07] Ashley James: Well, I’m laughing because it’s funny –

 

 

[00:14:09] Molly Christensen: I’m just kidding.

 

 

[00:14:09] Ashley James: – how much pressure we put on ourselves and also put on our children.  On one hand, children really can excel in homeschooling because they’re getting one on one. If they went to – even if they went somewhere else and it wasn’t you that was teaching them and they had a teacher, a tutor, teach them one on one for a whole entire day, they would have learned more in that day than they would in an entire week at a school. Because a teacher that has to manage 15 or 30 kids is not going to be able to give your child the amount of attention. And also cater to where they are and their learning style. So I’m laughing because they can – and children, when kids are really young, their minds are like sponges. They can really take on and learn so much. But at the same time, I think that as parents, we can put too much on their plate. And I’m talking from my experience. I’ve noticed that with our four year old. I’ve put too much pressure on him. And then I backed off and realized, “Okay. Maybe I need to -” there’s got to be some balance. And I definitely want to talk to you about that.

But continue with your story. So here you have your six year old and you have, basically, created a college level curriculum for a first grader that he’s getting the best tutelage in the world. And what’s happening with the four year old? Is the four year old jumping in and wanting to learn also?

 

 

[00:15:38] Molly Christensen: Right. So this is what happens. It is kind of funny because so many of us homeschool moms think, “Oh my gosh. I’m going to make my kid be a genius or something.” And then reality hits and you’re like, “I can’t even get him out of bed in the morning.” Because there’s no place to go. So what happened was, my four year old would just kind of tag along. But I didn’t really include her much, which was kind of silly of me. But she was listening and she was soaking everything in. She would actually go off preschool, which is kind of funny, so that I would have free time to work with my other son during that time too. And then when she was home, I would let her do a little bit of stuff here and there. But I was mainly focused on this oldest child. And I was trying to get through this list of, like, 25 different subjects every day. And I was trying to have him do writing assignments that would be things like, “Write three sentences to describe this pencil.” And now if there was anything that was going to ignite passion in a first grade boy, that’s not it. Right?

So it was pretty miserable because I was trying to follow all those curriculum that said this is what I had to do in order to get him where I thought he should be. And it was a nightmare because we would end up crying every day. Because I’m like, “Oh, I can’t do this.” And he is like, “I don’t want to do this. I just want to play.” Because he’s a six year old boy, which is what they do. And they do learn a ton from playing. But I didn’t know that. And so I just started searching for answers. And I finally had this thought pop into my brain, which was, instead of trying to get him through all these checklist items and then rewarding him by reading aloud at the end. Why don’t you start off with just reading aloud at the beginning of the day? And I was like, “I can’t do that. That’s the fun part.” But I tried it and actually that made life so much easier when I just put read aloud first. Because what it did is, it was so fun and we had loved it so much to learn and hear different stories together. That what it did is it built our relationship, made us grow closer together. And we have this common learning ground here that was fun instead of miserable. So it was then that I was like, “Okay. If I’m going to homeschool, I got to figure this thing out.” Because it’s great to put the reading first. But how is he supposed to learn everything else? I can’t make him because we’re in power struggles all the time. And it’s miserable. And so that’s kind of when I really just started my journey to figure out what it was that I needed to do. And also at the same time when I’m trying to homeschool, I’ve got these two kids and we are a disaster at home. Because I was spending all this time trying to homeschool all day long that I didn’t ever get around to cleaning the house or actually preparing meals. I just go the fridge and say, “Hm. What’s not moldy in here? Let’s see what I can pull out.” Because they always keep getting hungry, strangely enough. They want food.

And I kind of as a free spirit, I’m like, “You know, I just want to be spontaneous and free.” Except for when you can’t find your shoes. You can’t go out anywhere to field trips. So it was one of these really kind of defining moments in my life rose just like, always – so I had started smiling. And so that’s how you could actually get married because I wasn’t so grumpy anymore. And I could have kids. But what I learned was that in my heart, I was still very grumpy. And I was still blaming people. And I was still complaining about everything. And I didn’t realize that it was me causing most of my problems. And so what I had to figure out was that If I really wanted to make homeschool work, I was going to have to change. I was going to have to do things differently. I was going to have to think differently. And so I started reading all the books I could. Because that’s what I do. I’m like, “I got a problem to solve. I want to solve it.” I’m going to start reading. I’m not a quitter. I’m determined. I am pretty stubborn. I have a stubborn card in my back pocket. I can pull it out when I need it. So I started reading all these books. I started learning all these things. But what I found is that I could hardly even ever implement anything because I really was that undisciplined. And I wanted my kids to be able to say they’re going to do something and then be able to do it. Just even with no one nagging them. I always wanted my mom there. Well, I don’t have my mom here to nag me to do the stuff I know I should be doing but I can’t make myself do.

 

 

[00:21:01] Ashley James: It took it took me many years of personal growth to get rid of that little nagging – my mom’s nagging voice in my head telling me I’m not doing enough.

 

 

[00:21:11] Molly Christensen: Well, I just wanted her told me to do it. You know, sometimes because I couldn’t make myself do it. But yes, we do have our moms that they love us so much and they wanted this so much for us. But I was like, at some point I just got to figure this out for myself. I’ve just got to do this. Because I do not want to ruin my child’s life by homeschooling but I felt pretty strongly that I was supposed to do it. So that’s when I had it turned to me. And what is really funny that happens first for most homeschool moms and probably just moms who are parents, they’ll do is too. They’re always looking for the magic bullet. And this happened to me too. We go through every single curriculum out there. We buy all of them because we want the one that’s going to work and solve all of our problems. And the same thing with moms just who aren’t homeschoolers, we’re trying to find things that will fix our kids, really. When really, it’s us as a mom who is kind of creating a lot of the issues in our own lives. So I did that. I went out and bought a ton of different curriculum and none of it worked, surprisingly. Not really. But that’s because I didn’t even have the discipline in the first place to be able to teach my kids good character. And this is not against my parents, by the way. Part of is just my personality and my mom’s personality. And my mom was just struggling to get through raising these kids mostly by herself. I do have a dad, who’s a wonderful dad. But she felt like a single mom because he was an international airline pilot and he was always gone. Always gone. And when he was home, which I didn’t even think about until I was an adult, was the fact that he was jet lagged when he was home. So they were doing the best they could. But somehow some of the training kind of slipped away. And I didn’t get it mostly just because I did whatever I wanted kind of a free spirit. I got away with it.

So as I started reading all these self help books and taking classes and all this stuff, I was just getting more and more discouraged as I went along. Because I’m like, “I am a reasonably smart person. I should be able to figure this out. Why is this so hard? Why is it so hard to actually homeschool my kids, and to keep my house clean, and to just stay sane? And as I was reading all these books, I was getting different bits and pieces here and there. And so I was improving but it was pretty slow. Pretty slow improvement. But as I did get through this, I did finally come up with some key things that really changed the way I thought about things. And how I could actually homeschool my kids without completely failing them and ruining them. And how I could actually have a house where I wouldn’t be completely embarrassed to have visitors come over. And where I could be happy and not always feeling like a miserable failure.

And so that’s kind of what the message that I want — well, that is the message. That is the message that I like to share with people because there is hope. Like, if me, Miss Super Disorganized can figure these things out, you can too.

 

 

[00:25:05] Ashley James: And you’re no longer super disorganized is the point. You have really conquered these issues because – and so much so that you’ve mastered them after homeschooling seven children. And now this is what you do, you teach others how to do the same.

 

 

[00:25:23] Molly Christensen: Exactly I mean some people say your mess is your message. Which I love because, yeah it’s the mess that I had to deal with and figure out how to get over. And that’s why I want to share that with other people because it’s all about having hope. And the other thing, too, is I have not mastered everything in my life. Which is actually pretty awesome because it just means I get to keep learning. If I had mastered everything, I’d be done.

 

 

[00:25:55] Ashley James: We are never done.

 

 

[00:25:55] Molly Christensen: I’m not done yet. I am not done yet. And I am still homeschooling as well because I have these seven kids. So that takes a long time to get through them all. But I have my three oldest who have graduated from high school. And actually, the two oldest have graduated from college. The third has gotten his associates degree and high school degree. He’s 18 now. So I still have four left at home. So we’re still doing this project.

 

 

[00:26:26] Ashley James: Nice. Man, by the time you’re done with the last one, all your kids are going to turn to you and hand over your grandchildren to you. And say, “Mom, can you homeschool our kids too?”

 

 

[00:26:39] Molly Christensen: And I’m going to be like, “Nope. That’s your journey.” That is your journey. But I’ll help. I would love to help and encourage and support you along your journey. That’s what I do.

 

 

[00:26:51] Ashley James: That is what you do.

 

 

[00:26:53] Molly Christensen: Uh-huh. And actually, that is the key to what really changed my mindset. So this is actually probably a good time to share that. So when I started homeschooling, I thought it was all up to me to make sure that my son knew everything. And my poor son, being my guinea pig, number one. Let’s just say he actually turned out really, really awesome. And he doesn’t remember all the hard things those first few years. I was like, “Yes. He’s forgiven. And he’s awesome. It’s so good, it works.”

Anyway, so I want to share with you – is this a good time to do that? Should I just do that? Share with you this pattern that I had come across that actually really changed the whole way that I thought about homeschooling my kids and just raising my kids in general.

 

 

[00:27:50] Ashley James: Yes. Oh, I’m so excited. Absolutely.

 

 

[00:27:53] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Okay. So I heard about this pattern of the Hero’s Journey, probably a good 10 or 15 years ago now. I don’t remember exactly. But I had heard about it and I thought, “Yeah. That’s pretty cool.” So what the Hero’s Journey is this this pattern that was discovered – or I don’t know if discovered is the right word – but noticed because you notice patterns, right? It was a pattern that was noticed by an Oxford English professor. And of course, right now, his name has slipped my mind. But he wrote a book called The Power of Myth. Anyway, he studied all this mythology of the world, you know, Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology, all the different cultures. And he noticed there was a pattern to all these myths. And he called it the Hero’s Journey, because while the details are different, you have this basic pattern. And then he also noticed, too – well, okay. We’ll go here.

The basic pattern is this, you start with an ordinary person or at least a person who thinks they’re ordinary, who gets a call to action. A call to do something bigger than themselves and they don’t know how to do it. And so the next thing is they refuse. They’re not going to follow up on that call to action because they can’t do it. But then something happens and they decide to commit to the action and dive in and do it. Along the way on their journey, they will have mentors that will help them. They will have friends and allies who are on the same path with them. They also have enemies who try to stop them or tell them it’s stupid. And they’ll also run into test traps, trials, and temptations that may stop them if they’re not aware that they need to get around it. And that they need to continue on this journey because that call to action was so important that they need to finish the journey. And then as they get to the final conflict that’s really big and they finally get around it, they have success. And they are transformed and they are changed as a person, but also just as part of the journey and whatever it was they set out to accomplish has been accomplished.

So when I learned that pattern, I started noticing it everywhere because it is. It’s in every movie that we like, so many good books, and it’s everywhere. And I thought, “Oh, yeah. That’s pretty cool. That’s a pattern. It’s everywhere.” But when it really became powerful for me was when I realized it was a pattern for our own lives and the lives of my kids. And so what it did for me is it made me realize that I cannot just fill my kids up with all the information that they need. Because that’s not the purpose of learning and education.

 

 

[00:31:05] Ashley James: Yeah. And it’s not how we really learn it.

 

 

[00:31:09] Molly Christensen: It’s not.

 

 

[00:31:09] Ashley James: I mean, school is really good at filling us up with facts that we can regurgitate. Like, when was the war of blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It’s like, “Okay. Great. You memorized that fact. But did you learn to think?”

 

 

[00:31:22] Molly Christensen: No. And I didn’t know how that knowledge applied to me. In fact, when I was in school, I hated history because it was so boring memorizing all the facts. It wasn’t until I started teaching my own kids about history where I was like, “Holy cow. History is amazing. Because it’s all just hero journey stories. How do people overcome.” And it’s telling us how to live life, what the success principles are. That’s what it’s all about. But we didn’t know that growing up in my AP – well, I didn’t take AP History. I took AP English. But whatever. In my history class, it was very boring because we didn’t know the stories. It’s all about the stories. And so the Hero’s Journey is the story of our own life. And most of us don’t know that. We don’t know that we are potential heroes who can go on the journey. We get calls to action do you think is greater than us but we listen to the refusals and then do nothing. And that’s why we don’t go on the journey of our life. And that’s why people feel discontent because we’re not doing what we should be doing.

 

 

[00:32:31] Ashley James: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, one thing I’ve noticed parenting is, I have this urge to jump in and fix things for my son and do it but I don’t. It is an uncomfortable feeling to watch my son struggle. And I consciously pull back and I just encourage him. He will get it. Encourage him. Let him do it himself. So like, we’re doing arts and crafts and he’s got to paint something. And if I just let him do it himself, it’s not going to be perfect. It’s going to be messy. Because he’s still learning how to do that. And it’s also going to be his own creativity. And I hold back and I let him figure something out, like how to tie that knot or how to – whatever he’s struggling with. But that look on his face when he triumphs, when he does something he didn’t think he could do, he has now learned. And he had that moment where he was struggling, he was failing. I was encouraging him. And then he figured it out. It clicked and it works. And that triumphant on his face, that neurologically set that lesson in place.  He now has that. Whereas, if I just did it for him and like, “Look what I’m doing. You do it this way.” There would be no emotion of triumph associated with the lesson for him. When we set up circumstances for them to have a challenge that they get to rise to, and struggle, and then learn from that, and then succeed, that has so much more emotion involved invested in the learning that it really solidifies the learning inside their neurology.

 

 

[00:34:18] Molly Christensen: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that’s exactly why it changed my whole perspective of raising my kids because I realized that I am not here to control them. It doesn’t work anyway. You can try it. You get power struggles.

 

 

[00:34:36] Ashley James: I definitely want to talk about power struggles because setting boundaries and getting kids to do their chores and what happens when the kid says no to you? Like, I definitely want to go there.

 

 

[00:34:48] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let’s go there in a minute. But I’ll finish this thought.  So what I realized is my role is not to be the bucket filler. But my role is to be the support team, to be the mentor, to be the trainer, to be the coach. So I heard this quote – well, I don’t know if it’s a quote but it’s kind of one of those things. But a pastor got up in church and he said to his congregation, “Are you preparing your kids for the path? Or are you preparing the path for your kids?” And I said, “Yeah. Wow.” There’s a big difference there.

 

 

[00:35:33] Ashley James: Because we can never- we won’t be around their whole lives. So we can never put padding and safety, whatever, make it safe for them. We can’t just go around and keep preparing the path for them. We have to give them all the tools because we want them to be independent.

 

 

[00:35:54] Molly Christensen: Right. And also, we don’t even know what their path is. They have a totally different path than mine is. It’s their own path. It’s their hero’s journey. And the hero’s journey is just full of things they need in order for them to learn to become the person that they are meant to be.

So the other part of why that pattern was so powerful for me was not only did it shift my role, but it shifted how I thought about them. Because I think sometimes we think that people are intentionally mean or naughty or whatever. And you know, “You’re bad. You’re bad boy,” or whatever. But really, every human being was born with greatness within. Every human being desires good. Every human being has that inside of them. And when you shift your focus to believing that and focusing on the good intention rather than how it comes out, then it changes things. Your kid accept and this is, maybe, where we can go into more obedient stuff. It’s not because they’re horrible people or you’re a horrible person. It’s just because they are human. And they are learning how to become better and they just haven’t gotten there yet. And that’s actually a really good thing to remember for teenagers, especially. Especially when they start going, “Mom, you just don’t understand. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” And they get a little grumpy and all those hormones are going around. It’s not because they’re bad. It’s only because they do have all this hormone stuff coming up. They’re confused. They don’t always know how to manage themselves at all. They haven’t learned it all yet. But they are good people. They want good. They want to be kind to other people. But it doesn’t always come out that way. And so it’s always really good to keep that vision of who they are. They are potential heroes. I mean, they are. They have the goodness inside. They can go on the journey to get to the greatness but only if they choose not to listen to all those negative voices in their head that tell them why they can’t do it.

 

 

[00:38:13] Ashley James: So how do you help them to not hear the negative? How do you help them to focus on what they want – the positive and create the positive behavior?

 

 

[00:38:27] Molly Christensen: So it really had to start with me first. Because I was so sucked into that negative thinking. I had to learn how to start listening to calls to action and acting on them. Because the Hero’s Journey is a pattern for your whole life but you’re also getting calls to action all the time. You don’t even hear most of them. Because you rationalize them away. And when I say you, I mean me too. It’s a learned skill there. And so to get out of the negative thought patterns I had to lead the way in. And the beautiful thing about having kids is you love them so much that you actually change for them. Because you want to lead the way for them. I figured that if I’m not willing to go there, why would I expect them to,? Even though it’s hard. So I started working hard on me first.

And so what I did one year, I had this thought pop into my head that I should make this blog called Kindness Daily, where I would do something kind every day. And I would blog about it. Now, the funny thing about that is, I’m not a disciplined consistent person. But my oldest son and I were just talking about how, with marketing or with a business really, people are attracted to people who can be consistent. Very consistent in their message, right? And so I blurted it out one day, I’m like, “Oh, you know, this would be kind of cool.” And he’s like, “Yeah. You should do it.” I was like, “Oh man, why did I say that out loud?” And as soon as I got that call to action to do this for 365 days, to write a blog, my brain immediately came up with all the refusals. And I sit and I said to myself, “I can’t do that. I don’t even know how to make a blog. And what if I can’t think of anything kind to do and I’m not consistent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” And, then I was like, “You know, I think I’m just going to try it. I’m going to do it.” I decided I was going to do it because I was at the point where I was like, “You know what? If I’m not going to do hard things then why are my kids?” So I thought, “I’ll give it a try.” So I started it. And the first few days, I was worried because – well, I wasn’t too worried. I just made cookies for the neighbors.

But after like three or four days that I was just like, “You know what? I really cannot make cookies every single day. I’m not that kind of mom.” And it’s going to get out of control. So I’m going to have to come up with different things to be kind about.

And I realized that I was getting thoughts to do kindnesses that I didn’t want to do. So I didn’t do them. So like one day – I know, right? One day, I had my neighbor’s kids over because she had to go to a doctor’s appointment. And I had this thought, “You know, you have to make dinner. Why don’t you just make her some dinner too?” And I immediately got these refusals in my brain that said, “Well, they’re not going to like what we’re having. I don’t think I have enough ingredients. I probably don’t have enough time.” So then I went, “Wait. That was a call to action with refusals. Oh, I should do it.” I did. I committed to doing it. And it turns out, I didn’t have enough gradients and I did have enough time. And she was – I don’t know if they liked it or not but it doesn’t matter. Because when she came home a lot later than she expected, I said, “Hey, I knew you’re going to be running late and you’re not going to have time to make dinner. So I just made it for you.” And she was just delighted. And she felt just so loved. So I learned from these experiences when I was doing these kindnesses every day that if I get three refusals, I darn well better do it. Because that’s part of my hero journey. I need to act on those things to become better to develop the character that I need to become the example for my kids. To go through this hero’s journey. To do the hard things that I’m asked to do.

And so I did do this blog where I recorded a lot of my kindnesses. Some of the days were super – I mean, they were so uninteresting to write about. But other days were really awesome. And I was like, “Wow. This is cool stuff.”  And I actually ended up – I told you I wasn’t consistent, which was actually true. I was not consistent. And I did not do it for 365 days. But I did do it for 180 days out of the whole year. And I thought, “You know what? I have a choice here.” So I could look back at the year and I had a choice. I could look at it and think of it as a miserable failure because I did not do what I set out to do. I did not get 365 days. But I also could look at it and say, “You know what? I did do half of it. And I did learn so much just from the process of that.” I learned so much about how my brain worked, and how I was refusing calls to action, and how I could learn what calls to action I actually needed to follow. And so you asked me, “How do we teach this to our children? And then I went off on this big long story about how we have to lead our way – lead the way and figure it out ourselves first. And that’s actually what I did.

So after I did these kind of daily challenges – after I started doing them, I introduced it to my kids. And I had them do the similar thing. I said, “Here’s a jar. And here’s a bag of pompoms. Whenever you think of something kind to do and you actually do it, you can put a pompom in the jar. And when the jar is full, we’ll go do a fun family activity or something like that.” And they started to realize that their heroes on this hero journey. They get calls to action and sometimes they really don’t want to do it. They get refusals. But they can listen to those and not do them. Or they can listen to the call to action and then hear the refusals and then say, “No. Those are not true. I’m going to do it anyway because it’s a good thing.” So that that’s been huge in teaching the kids how to overcome those negative thoughts. So that’s an awesome tool right there is really – because heroes – this is probably one thing I didn’t say earlier, but heroes are not in it for themselves. They’re not going on this journey just for all the honor and glory. Maybe some of them are in some of the movies. But they’re doing it because it’s for a cause bigger than themselves, is to serve other people. That’s why we’re here. And so that’s why – I’m sorry. I totally neglected to say that earlier. That would made more sense. But that’s why this little smaller scale hero journey works out so nicely and it preps them for the real thing. It’s a good training.

 

 

[00:46:04] Ashley James: Can you give us an example? Like, when working with your kids, an example where they did some – they came up with an idea and they heard the refusals in their head. But you encouraged them and they then did it anyway. And it was a project that served others.

 

 

[00:46:22] Molly Christensen: Yeah. For sure. My 16 year old daughter just the other day, she said, “You know, I had this thought that I should text this friend that I hadn’t talked to for a while and just say something nice to her.”  And she said, in her brain she heard, “No. That’s weird. You haven’t talked to him forever. And besides, what would you say if that’s a bad idea?” And then she’s like, “Wait. I got to do that.” And so she did. She texted this friend anyway. And it turns out that friend had been feeling really down that day. And when my daughter texted her she just felt so loved.

 

 

[00:47:03] Ashley James: I love it. Because when you first started sharing this, I immediately went to health related topics. So we’ve had Naturopaths on the show. Naturopathic doctors share that our body has a language. It speaks its symptoms. The symptoms of the body are the language that it speaks. So if you have a headache, don’t just go take a medication for it. Or if you’re tired, don’t just go drink coffee. But that’s the body actually speaking to you and saying, “Hey, there’s something I’m missing. Help me.” This is how it speaks to us. So when we think to ourselves, I want to run a marathon or I want to go to the gym. And then there’s these little thoughts that come up, like, “You can’t. That’s going to be too hard. You can’t do it.”

 

 

[00:47:53] Molly Christensen: I got a story about that one. No, it does. It’s the goodness inside of us that’s speaking. Because we are good. We do get those good thoughts. I got a call to action to run a half marathon. And I can tell you some of the refusals I got. My husband and my two sons had actually run it the year before. And I got the call. I was like, “Well, why don’t you run it within them the next year?” That was in my own brain. They didn’t say it to me. And my refusals were, “No way. I do not run. I am not a runner.” The last time I really seriously ran was when I was in high school, which was like 20 years before. And I had run a-mile-and-a-half for the PE test, you know, to show that you’re fit. And I passed it. But then I pretty much felt like I was going to die afterwards because I found out later that I actually had bronchitis. So I probably shouldn’t have run it. But they told us to. So I had that thought in my head that I was going to die if I ran more than a-mile-and-a-half for 20 years. And it was actually right around this time where I started experimenting with controlling my thoughts and my brain with the calls to action and everything that this call to run the half marathon came up. And I thought, “You know what? This will be a really good test. Let’s see if I actually have power of my thoughts in my head.” You know, can I actually do this? And so I had all these reasons not to. And I thought, “You know what? I’m going to do it anyway.”

So the first day I get out there and I go running like half-a-block before I feel like I’m about to die. And my brain kicked in. Because our brains are there to keep us comfortable. When you’re trying to change, that is not comfortable. And so it’s going to give you all the reasons to pull you back to where you used to be. That was more comfortable for it. So my brain starts going, “This is a really dumb idea. You can’t do this. What are you thinking? You’re about to die after half-a-block.” So what I did was I just told my brain, “Thank you for sharing that with me because that’s good to know. I’m on the right path.” I’m getting refusals, which means that if I keep going, I’m going to grow. So thanks for sharing but we’re going to keep doing this. So I did. I kept running. And I kept going slightly farther every day until I got to a-mile-and-a-half. And what was really funny is I didn’t realize I was doing this to myself. But for about two months, I only ran for a-mile-and-a-half until I was like, “Wait a second. I can run a-mile-and-a-half and I don’t feel like I’m about to die. Well, why don’t I just go farther?”

 

 

[00:50:41] Ashley James: You had to bust through a belief system that you unconsciously created in high school.

 

 

[00:50:46] Molly Christensen: Totally did. Totally did. And so I just kept going. And I did run the half marathon. I did post a pretty good time for somebody who was never runner before. I mean, I was just over two hours. I was like, “Holy cow. Look what I did I could do that.” That is what you’re talking about, it’s that feeling of triumph, which is awesome. But I would have never got there had I not failed along the way.

 

 

[00:51:13] Ashley James: Yes. And listen to the first voice. I really love that you have deciphered this. The first voice is your authentic self. The first thought happens really quick. And sometimes it’s actually quieter than the refusals that come after. They can be pretty loud. But the first voice like. “I should go to the gym. I should do a juice fast. I should eat more broccoli.” Like whatever, right? The first voice, that’s your authentic self. That’s the part of you that wants you to grow, that wants you to live a healthy happy life full of lessons and learning and just joy. That is the authentic self. But that’s the self that wants you to go up against the wall and push yourself and to really grow. And then the refusals –

You know, it’s interesting because I’ve had different interviews on about self-talk. And one Naturopathic physician, the whole episode was about self-talk. And she talked about how this voice, as you call, the refusals. She calls it self-talk that it is part of our survival mechanism because the pessimists are the ones that survived. All of our ancestors were the pessimists. If you think about the ancestors that were like, “There’s no bears in the woods. Let’s go frolic.” They were all eaten by the bears. It was the ones that were very pessimistic. And was like, “Fire burns you. Don’t touch the fire. Don’t go in the woods, the Bears are over there.” The pessimists looking for all the bad things that could happen were probably the ones that ended up surviving. So we just have this genetic predisposition to looking at conserving our energy as much as possible, which is talked about in the book, The Pleasure Trap by Dr. Lisle and Dr. Goldhamer. He talks about the evolution of our brain and what motivates us in an unconscious level to survive, which is to procreate, conserve energy, and consume food.

So we basically want to be lazy as possible. Consume as much calories as possible. And we’re motivated by procreation. Because that’s just genetically what all animals do to survive and to carry on the species. So that little voice inside of us is like, “Don’t run a marathon. That would not be conserving energy.” That would not be part of fulfilling the genetic – this genetic programming. So on one level, it’s genetic programming. On the other level, it’s this voice in our heads that tries to keep us safe. But safe is not – there’s no happiness in safe. There’s no growth in safe. If being safe is being stuck in the gray zone of just – what’s that? – purgatory. It’s like purgatory. You’re just stuck. And that is where depression sets in. That’s where people end up self-medicating with drugs and alcohol and sugary foods. Because their life is so safe that they bring a pint of ice cream home. Because it’s like that’s the only joy they’re going to get. So that’s like when we’re feeling stuck in life, that’s because we’re listening to all the refusals and not the first voice.

 

 

[00:54:31] Molly Christensen: Right. And we also don’t realize that a lot of times we get stuck because we hit a wall or a tract or something on our journey. So when you start feeling stuck in the muck, that’s part of the journey. It’s got to happen. But if you can see in the perspective of the Hero’s Journey, you’re like, ” Oh, wait. I’m stuck. I don’t have to be stuck here. This is a journey. I can get out.”

 

 

[00:54:55] Ashley James: Like a Disney Princess. This is just the middle of the movie, right?

 

 

[00:54:59] Molly Christensen: That’s right. It’s just part of the journey.

 

 

[00:55:00] Ashley James: Right. I’m just hitting the wall. I need to overcome it. On an esoteric level, there’s a consideration that the refusals are the devil or the negative spiritual energy that wants to keep us down. Which it has no power over us if we refuse it. If we go, “No. I’m not listening to those voices. I’m not listening to that. That’s not me.” You know that t-shirt, Not today, Satan? It’s like, “No. That’s not me. Thanks.” But I like that you think it. Because that’s actually what the Naturopath that I interviewed does. She says, thank that voice. “Thanks for letting me know I can’t run a marathon because I’ll probably collapse. Thanks. I take that into consideration but I’m going to prove you wrong.”

 

 

[00:55:50] Molly Christensen: Well, and I think it because it’s letting me figure out where my blocks are, where my walls are, what’s keeping me stuck. Because now that I see seen it, I can do something about it. Talk about empowering.

 

 

[00:56:03] Ashley James: Yes. So when you hear the refusals, you go, “Hey. Thanks for letting me know where my blind spots are and what’s keeping me in purgatory.”

 

 

[00:56:12] Molly Christensen: Uh-huh. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, the whole journey is all really just a battle in your brain. Because it’s a battle about whether your bodily appetites are going to control your brain or if that goodness, your soul, your spirit, whatever you want to call it, is going to control your brain. Because it’s much easier to sit on the couch and watch TV. Not that I’m knocking that. Sometimes you got to do it. But it’s much easier to do that than it is to get up and go wash the dishes.

 

 

[00:56:46] Ashley James: Choose your hard.

 

 

[00:56:48] Molly Christensen: Yeah. I mean, so your bodily appetite is the one that’s dealing with easy. Your goodness is getting up and doing what’s right. Which one’s going to control your brain?

 

 

[00:57:01] Ashley James: I love it. I love it. So this is how you – you took this and designed your entire homeschooling curriculum around the concept of the Hero’s Journey.

 

 

[00:57:10] Molly Christensen: Yes. That is what I did. Because what I realized is knowledge right now in the internet age, anybody can get knowledge. It’s free all over the internet. You don’t even have to go to school, really, you could just Google if you just want to get knowledge. And what I did with my homeschool curriculum is I feel like, “You know, there’s a lot of great knowledge out there.” But unless it is relevant to you, unless you can connect it to you, it’s not really helpful. So knowledge is still important. I’m not saying it’s unimportant. But it’s knowledge that’s applied wisely that really makes your life better. And especially with little kids, they love to learn. They love to learn new things. But sometimes they get crushed down because we’re trying to force feed it to them. And so they’re like, “Well, what’s the point? Why are you trying to make me do this?”

So what I did with my curriculum is I went through and I got all the basic knowledge in the different subject areas, you know, topics. And I created it so that you can just sit down with your kids, your family, however many you got. And then you just learn together but then you connect it to yourself through principles. So you’re using it as a vehicle to teach principles, like for success in life and for good character. And that’s how it makes it relevant. So we’re not learning it just to learn it to pass the test. But we’re learning it because it brings us together. It’s exciting. We can love learning because it’s so interesting. And then we can make connections. Because when you make connections, it sits those neurons firing off in your brain. And it’s like, “Oh, this is so cool.”

A funny example is when one of my little daughters figured out that green beans and re-fried beans were both beans. Oh, my gosh. She made that connection herself. And she was so proud. And the more epiphanies you can get – and you get those from when you make connections – the more exciting learning is going to be. And the more excited you are about learning, the more you’re going to do it. And the more you’re excited about learning, the more excited you are to go on that hero journey, too, because you’re going to hit the obstacles. And those are all about learning. In fact, I call the obstacles, learning opportunities. Because that’s what they’re all about. And so we want to love learning but some of the learning is hard when you get stuck. But you have to look and go, “Oh, this is a learning opportunity. Isn’t this exciting.” So that’s the feeling I want – it’s more important to inspire this feeling. That’s the feeling I want to inspire. Rather than, “This is miserable and I’m not doing what mom says because it’s stupid.”

 

 

[01:00:10] Ashley James: So then they get really excited about their homeschooling because they’re taking charge.

 

 

[01:00:18] Molly Christensen: Yeah. I mean, you’re setting the environment by learning with them and showing them what it’s like to make connections and to just love it. And then they can take that off into the other parts of their lives, too, when you’re not there actively learning with them.

 

 

[01:00:37] Ashley James: Since you have so many children of different ages, you’re homeschooling different grades, right? Your different levels at the same time. Can you give us an example of what a day looks like?

 

 

[01:00:53] Molly Christensen: Yes. And it’s kind of funny because I actually did a Facebook Live on my day on Monday. And everybody felt very validated because it did not look as perfect as they were picturing for what my day might look like. So I can tell you the ideal and then I can tell you reality. Okay? So we do family style homeschooling because people are going to learn at whatever level they are on. They don’t have to learn at whatever level some expert says that they should learn on. Because it’s their own journey. If they’re not ready to learn something yet, then why am I trying to make them? So we do family style learning. A big part of our homeschool is actually training with learning how to be consistent. Probably, I might be – I’d like to focus on that just maybe because it was such a big struggle for me. For some of my kids, it’s not as much of a struggle just because their personality type is just different. My husband is excellent at being consistent at things and disciplined with himself. Every kid is different. They all have different personalities. But we do work a lot on consistency. They do a lot of chores. Or at least they think they do. I don’t. I want them to know how to work.

And we also have a family economy system where my kids, when they turn eight, they have to purchase their own clothing. Which is interesting because they don’t get an allowance and they can’t really go out and get a job so they get creative. I will pay the minimum wage though. But this is probably a whole other talk. But I will let them work extra money for me to earn money. And people wonder how I afford it is because I don’t have to buy their clothes. Anyway, so we have systems in place where they can learn from real life skills that are going to affect them when they get older. And big ones, big challenges for people, for adults, for most adults are time and money. So that’s why we have those two systems in place for the work because that helps with being consistent with time and then for the money. So that’s a big part of our homeschool is just life, just living life and doing that.

So we do, do like a morning devotional in the mornings most of the time. And we will have breakfast. And we will clean. And then if we haven’t gotten all distracted like, we will sit down in the morning and we will just learn together as a family for about an hour. Now, sometimes my older kids who are in high school and have other – when I say they’re in high school, they’re not really in high school but high school level. But they’ll have projects and stuff that they have to work on their own. And Austin, my older kid, will be in Co Op. So they’ll have classes that they need to take. So they’ll have homework. And so they start just self studying themselves. And so me and, usually, the younger kids and, sometimes, the older kids will join it, too, we will learn together. So we will read aloud and we’ll just learn things together. And there’s no pressure. There’s no homework on that. It’s like we just do activities. Today, we drew drafts. So that was fun. Some of them want to do it. Some of them didn’t. And that was fine.

And we also usually eat a snack. Because snacks just make life better. I don’t know.

 

 

[01:04:39] Ashley James: Yeah. They definitely keep kids engaged.

 

 

[01:04:44] Molly Christensen: Yes. And it keeps their mouths full so they can’t talk as much if you want them to listen. I like them to talk but not when I’m reading aloud. So we always try to have a shared learning experience. Then in the afternoons, my kids play. I work so hard to protect my schedule so I don’t over schedule them. I want them to be able to play. I want them to run outside. Because play is such an important part of their development. And a lot of people think, “Oh, they’re just wasting time. Nuh-uh.” No. They are learning so much through play. And in he afternoons, if they do have classes, they’ll usually take those then. So that’s kind of the basics of it. That’s kind of the ideal day to kind of flow through that. Because, really, homeschooling is just life. But it’s not a free for all. It’s structured. But sometimes it might look like a free for all. And what I mean by structured is, I’ve thought a lot about how to set up the environment of my home. Like, what feeling do I want there and how do we get that in here and how do we flow. And I always got it adjusted because it never just stays that way. I’m like, “Wait. The feeling I want is not chaos. So how do we fix that?” You know what I mean? So there’s always things you can keep adjusting. But for me, it’s more about creating this environment of learning where they know that they are heroes and that they’re meant to have a mission in life where they’re doing good for other people. And so instead of me constantly telling them what to do and how to do it, it makes my life so much less stressful. And in fact, that’s how I get everything done is because I realized the only one I can control is really me. And I can control the household feeling and the environment. But I can’t control them. But I can love them.

 

 

[01:06:46] Ashley James: So what happens when you need to control them? Like they’re defying house rules, like, power struggles? And of course it depends. Obviously, a 16 year old and a four year old are going to be treated a little differently, I imagine. But how do you handle disobedience or power struggles?

 

 

[01:07:05] Molly Christensen: Yes. Okay. So the thing here is I’m still not controlling them. I’m training them because they’re heroes. I am training them for the journey. And that’s how I had to reframe it. And it’s the same principle whether they’re four or 16. I, here again, have to realize they are good. I have to remember that they’re good. And they’re not acting up because I’m a failure. They’re not acting up because they’re bad. They’re just acting up because they don’t know another way yet. So it just simply means that they need a little extra help in training and learning how to obey.

Now, sometimes when I talk about obedience, I know there’s  two extremes here. You got some people who just don’t even believe in obedience at all. Because they’re kids. Let kids be kids. And then you got other people who believe in very strict obedience. I’m hoping that I fell somewhere in between. I expect that my kids are going to obey when I ask them to do something. And it’s not like I’m asking them to do unreasonable things. But I have to be very careful with what I’m going to ask them to do. And I’m going to also usually train more on obedience with chores rather than education. Because education, I want them – if I require it, then they’re going to do the bare minimum. You know what I’m saying? So, I want them to get inspired and want to do more. So I have to be very careful with what I require and what I ask them to do. So I do have to train them to be obedient. But I do it from that perspective that they are good and I am just helping them to become better. And I’m doing it because I love them and I know they’re good. But I just know that sometimes it’s hard to be obedient because you don’t want to do it. So I don’t get into a power struggle because I don’t get mad. And I set the expectation up front. They know, if you don’t obey, then we’re probably going to have to do kid training. And once I’ve done the initial kid training, they sometimes slip a little bit. And all I have to do is mention, “Oh, I’m sorry. You don’t obey right now. Do we need to do some extra kid training right now?” And they’ll be like, “Nope. I’m going to go obey.”

So it also helps with teaching emotional regulation as well .Because if they’re going to throw a fit, that’s not obeying. Because they got to obey when they’re calm. So basically, when they’re younger, ideally three, four, or five, sometimes it goes into six and seven, it depends on the kid, I will just be very intentional about training them in obedience. And sometimes that’s what my homeschool days would look like is all I did was train in obedience. And I would have to keep myself very calm. And then sometimes go in my room and give myself a timeout.

 

 

[01:10:31] Ashley James: Mama needs a timeout.

 

 

[01:10:34] Molly Christensen: Oh, yeah. Yes. So I’d be very intentional. And if I ask them to obey and do something, I would expect them to go do it right away. If they didn’t, I would say, “Oh, I’m sorry. Just now I asked you to obey and you didn’t. So now we’re going to have to go into – now, you’re going to have an extra chore.” And if they scream or yell or whatever, I would have to say, “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re not calm enough to do that chore. So we’re going to have to go into level two where you’re going to get another chore.” And lot of times they still scream and yell until they know you’re really serious and that you’re going to actually follow through. And so we’d get to level three. And they’re still screaming and yelling. They don’t want to do it. And they got three extra chores. So you can’t blame them, right? It’s usually just little things that I could think of on the fly that they could do based on their age. And they can do

fairly easily. They just have to be obedient to do it. If they got all three levels, I would just say, “Well, I’m sorry. We’re doing this kid training so you can learn to obey because it’s a really good skill to have in life. So right now you’ve lost all your privileges for the next day. So that just means you can’t watch any shows. You can’t have any snacks.” Just whatever you decide were privileges. You can only have the basics. You can’t play with friends. After doing that a couple times, although it depends on the kid, like some kids it only takes one time of getting that far. Other kids would take me like ten times because they’re very stubborn. But it was it was mostly just me, where I would just have to stay calm and consistent, which was really, really hard for me to do at first.

But I just realized, “You know what? There’s no sense in making them feel like they’re bad.” You do it all in a loving way. Because they’re not. They’re good. And they have this journey. And it’s not like I’m a failure if they’re acting up, because this is just part of the journey. This is just part of what they’ve got to learn. It’s okay. And it’s really all about that consistent training at first. But it takes – your mind thinks it takes way longer than it does once you do it. Initially, it doesn’t take as long. But, like, maybe a week or two of just intense training. So it’s a lot more intense maybe than your mind thinks of it before you do it. But it doesn’t take nearly as many weeks or days or months as you might think. You know what I’m saying? So that’s how I deal with the obedience part. Because you do still need obedience in there. They need to know how to obey and how to make themselves obey. And they also need to know who to obey to and why.

 

 

[01:13:20] Ashley James: So you’re making it to be a lesson in obedience. Like you’re training if you’re training a hero, you’re the coach, or the trainer. And if they don’t obey, they get more and more chores until it’s like strike three. And then they have all their privileges removed. How do you get them to calm down though from that? I mean, if they’re in a power struggle and they’re really upset and they’re maybe throwing things or they’re just very upset at you and upset of the situation. How do you get them to the point where they’re like, they’re happy they’re learning the lesson of obedience?

 

 

[01:13:57] Molly Christensen: Their time doesn’t start for the loss of their privileges until they’re calm. So it’s their choice. I just tell them that, “You know what, buddy? It’s your choice. When you want to get out of this, I’ll be so excited when you get your privileges back. But we got to do this. We can learn how to obey.” And then I also teach them, too. It’s like we’re learning how to obey those voices in our head too. It’s the same principle there. Because the obedience pattern, it starts with learning how to obey in your family. You got to be your parents. And then you’ve got to learn how to obey the good. Your conscience, really. You need to learn to obey your parents first. Because that’s kind of the physical thing that they can see. And then you learn how to obey the more spiritual aspect of your brain. You got to learn how – right?

 

 

[01:14:58] Ashley James: So you’re teaching them obedience not because you are like a general and you just want some good soldiers. And children should just do what we say without question. You’re not coming from that at all. You’re coming from you want them to learn the life skill of self-discipline.

 

 

[01:15:17] Molly Christensen: Exactly. Yeah. It’s not because – yeah. It’s not because I’m so lazy that I want them to do everything for me either. Sometimes they’ll say that but no.

 

 

[01:15:27] Ashley James: Wow. That’s harsh.

 

 

[01:15:30] Molly Christensen: I know. Well, it’s just because that’s what their brains come up with as a reason why they don’t want to do it. You know what I mean? I’ve thought that before. So it’s not that. It’s not that I want to control them. It’s because it’s a life skill. It’s because we grow up as adults and we don’t know who to obey.

 

 

[01:15:53] Ashley James: I love it. You know, we weren’t taught how to listen to the first voice and how to deny the negative thoughts that tell us not to follow through. No one taught us the self-discipline or how to foster it. And I love that you made, like, manners and following the rules and obedience be a lesson in how they can listen to their authentic voice and then follow through with it. That’s really beautiful.

 

 

[01:16:36] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Isn’t it though? They don’t always understand that when they’re kids. But as we keep repeating it, they’ll get it when they’re adults.

 

 

[0:16:46] Ashley James: Are you seeing that now and your three oldest children?

 

 

[01:16:49] Molly Christensen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. They’re awesome. They’re really awesome at self-regulating. And following their consciences.

 

 

[01:17:00] Ashley James: Now, I’ve seen videos where you’re talking more about this. Is this part of your training as well? The training that you sell? Do you also teach this, how to discipline and ideas for different age groups?

 

 

[01:17:17] Molly Christensen: I haven’t got a specific program for this yet. But what I do have is I have a program for moms who want to learn how to become disciplined and create habits for themselves. Like even the habits they’ve never even been able to do before. Because a lot of times those habits that we wish we had, that’s a big call to action. But the refusals are so strong. And they’re just so hard to do because we tried them so many times and failed that we can figure out how to do them anymore. So I do have that program for moms and then a lot of moms take it and teach their kids how to do that. It’s really how to – like for me for example, I was such a night owl. I could never get to bed before, like, 2:00 in the morning. And I would rationalize that away. And whenever I would think about changing it, so I had the call to action, “I should go to bed earlier.” And then I’d be like, “Oh. But the kids are in bed and I’m getting all this stuff done, blah, blah, blah.” And I finally realized – well, I finally came up with all these different keys of how my brain works partly by doing that kindness daily blog. I learned so much about how my brain works and how it’s not just my brain that works like this. So I teach a lot of those brain principles from that. And also from reading other books and mentors and stuff, too. But I teach moms how to listen to what’s going on in their brains so that they can lead the way for their kids too. So if you want something that’s just going to fix the kids that way, I don’t have that program yet.

 

 

[01:18:54] Ashley James:Yet.

 

 

[01:18:55] Molly Christensen: Yet.

 

 

[01:18:57] Ashley James: But we have to be the example. Like you said, we have to be the example. 

 

 

[01:19:00] Molly Christensen: Right. We have to lead the way.

 

 

[01:19:02] Ashley James: So as parents, we need to learn how to do that. And then we can be the example but also teach our kids.

 

 

[01:19:08] Molly Christensen: Exactly. And that’s what I encourage the moms – and I have some dads too – of how to do that, how to get control of your brain. And we do it with the vehicle of creating some of these good habits that you wish you had but could never figure out how to get.

 

 

[01:19:28] Ashley James: I love it. I love it.  So I watched some of your videos and they’ve got lots of free content as well that people can absorb and learn from you. And I did one of your webinars where I was – and even there was like a link to watch some videos on your curriculum. Because you teach a homeschooling – you sell a homeschooling curriculum that can be taught to all ages. Because the parent would then adjust it for the age level. And I loved it. I got so excited about it. Actually, I really want to do it with our son. You were showing how like day one, they’re starting reading about Egypt. And so they’re getting excited about learning about the cool things about Egypt. But they’re learning about geography and history. And then they’re learning about architecture. And it’s all kind of wrapped into one, which I love that whole learning where it’s not – they could be drawing and then writing at the same time. And it’s like art and language and science are all wrapped into one. It’s not like, “Okay. Well, put down your pencils now we’re learning math.: It’s like math could be part of that, right? So it’s all wrapped into one. And that’s how the brain learns so well when it’s a whole lesson learning.

But I looked through your curriculum and I was inspired by it. And there’s so much of it as you turning to the child and getting them to share their creative ideas and to come up with new ones. And then they’re so excited about the lesson that they’re not bummed out about writing something or doing a writing assignment because they were so inspired by it.

 

 

[01:21:21] Molly Christensen: Right. Right. And that’s what the whole idea is, is because it’s all connected, they can make connections too. It’s like subjects are a new invention of the modern age. And we do actually have it broken up into subjects. Kind of funny. But even though I know it’s so much better when it’s all connected. But we do it in subjects just because that’s kind of – well, for one reason, the reason why I came up with subjects for industrial ages was just because it made it more systemized. And so that’s one reason why I just kept it that way. But all the subjects are interconnected.

 

 

[01:21:53] Ashley James: That’s what I meant. They’re all connected so that they get the connections. My husband and I are both very creative and smart. Not to toot my own horn. But we both struggled in school because we’re the kind of learners that need to know why do I need to know this. Before they’re just like, “You have to learn this”. And I’ve always found it so frustrating in high school when – I loved science. And I was in physics. And they hadn’t taught us the type of math that I needed to know yet to do the physics work. And I went up to my physics teacher, I’m like, “I haven’t learned this yet in my math class.” And he’s like, “Oh, we’ll go talk to your Math teacher.” And they’re like, “Oh, yeah. We’re doing that next quarter.” And I’m like, “You are just all not talking to each other. How is this possible?” And then I was writing my first history exam in grade ten. And it said, “Write the answer in essay format.” Never ever in my life had I heard of the term essay format. And my history teacher was so upset for me. And he advocated for me. I remember him grabbing my hand and storming into my English teachers office saying, “How is it possible she’s in grade ten and she has fallen through the cracks and she has never learned how to do an essay. This is not okay.” And it was like how many children are falling through the cracks that we’re learning these different – the separate subjects?

Whereas, if you are doing homeschooling, for example, you’re talking about the middle ages. And then within that theme, then you’re learning some math, and then you’re learning some geography, and then you’re learning some history, and learning the science. But you’re using a theme that connects it. And that maybe even a project like, “Okay. We’re going to make a castle out of popsicle sticks. But we have to do the math and we have to do the architecture.” So it allows them to apply it and understand why they need to know all these things. And then they end up coming up with all their questions that they want to have answered. So it makes sense to their brains and then it solidifies the learnings.

 

 

[01:24:24] Molly Christensen: Absolutely. And also, if you think about the famous men and women of the Renaissance. They did not just limit themselves to going deep in one subject. They need all the different subjects. When you call a renaissance man a renaissance man is because they are well read in all the different areas. And that’s the kind of person that’s going to come up with the most creative ideas because they can make the connections. And that’s where they come up with the new things. So like our industrialized age, we go really deep and specialized, which is great if you’ve got somebody who’s a heart surgeon or something. I want them to be specialized. But if you’re going to be creative and come up with new ideas, you want to connect everything. So what I did in my curriculum is I just used history to connect everything. Well, not just. We used history and principle.

So each month, you have new principles that we call the superpowers. Superpower principles, and they’re just like success principles, leadership principles. Because that’s what I wanted my kids to learn the awareness they’re getting until they’re a little older, especially. So I wanted to put it in my family style curriculum because that’s what makes life worth living is knowing how to go on your journey. So when you connect everything with history, it’s awesome because it’s the story of why and who we are and why we came up with things. So I loved the math part, especially because a lot of times we’re just throwing in all these calculations, which is boring.

 

 

[01:26:03] Ashley James: There’s no story.

 

 

[01:26:04] Molly Christensen: There’s no story. 

 

 

[01:26:04] Ashley James: There’s no reason. And the thing is, when you get out into the real world as an adult, there is a story. I am balancing the family budget, there is a story. Because if I messed that up, we don’t have food on the table. So there’s an emotional –  when we’re out in the real world or doing math for our job, like doing payroll or something, there is a story. There’s always, always in the real world an emotional component and a story behind math. Or if you’re doing math for NASA, like people could die because you’re flying out to outer space. And that math needs to make sense. So there’s always a reason why we’re doing math in the real world. But when we’re learning it, it’s like just figure these situations out.

 

 

[01:26:50] Molly Christensen: Just do it.

 

 

[01:26:50] Ashley James: Just do it. Just do it. And that’s just not how math – that’s not how we do math. I the real world, we do math with a reason with our emotional component. So I love that you’re including that because it helps us learn and really solidify that learning.

 

 

[01:27:03] Molly Christensen: Well, and also, you look at, let’s say, 12 years of math, right? It took mankind 6,000 years to learn most of that math. So they had to figure it out for a reason and why. And so that’s the stories I’m including in there. It’s like, “Well, why did they have to figure this out? Where did this come from?” So it’s pretty fascinating that way. And it really does make kids pretty excited because it brings in the music of math. I mean, you still have to learn the calculation skills. But that’s just something that I use to practice consistency and discipline. Because that doesn’t require thinking so much once you got it – once you understand it. So it’s all about inspiring them to love it, to love it more so they think. But then also training them so they get the skills. And the training is just the stuff that they don’t have to think about. But just practice.

 

 

[01:28:06] Ashley James: I love it. Oh, it’s so cool. So in all of this because you, after seven children, have developed a really amazing curriculum that now you sell. And so many, many other families are doing it and sharing with you their success. Can you tell us a bit about that? Like, what had you – because you told us your story but you didn’t get to the part where you then sat down and taught yourself how to create an internet course. And how to make this replicatable. And it is so – it’s so good looking, by the way. It looks like you hired a company to put it together. It looks so good. It’s like a textbook. It looks so good. I could tell you really put a lot of work into it. So I’m congratulating you on the hard work because I know what it takes.

 

 

[01:29:00] Molly Christensen: Thank you. 

 

 

[01:29:00] Ashley James: I know what it takes. But you thought, how can I then make this replicatable so other families can do it? And now you have had other families do it. So can you share a bit about that?

 

 

[01:29:12] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Sure. Okay. So another big part of my journey is the entrepreneurship journey, which anybody who’s an entrepreneur knows is a journey. But I mean, that too, is just another hero’s journey of life. I was always kind of entrepreneurial when I was a kid. But I also got tons of refusals. Like, “I don’t like to talk to people. People think I mean.” So I kind of just hobby entrepreneured. Entrepreneured, I don’t know if that’s a verb. But I tended to set it down because so many people think that entrepreneurship is bad. It’s a lot of people losing a lot of money and they’re kind of crazy and all this. I had to really just shift my mind said about entrepreneurs. But as I started developing this program, because I wanted this program for my own kids. To systemize it because you can follow rabbit trails if you want. But my brain, we get so distracted that I would never come back to earth. And I just wanted a simple easy system that I could sit down and just cover all the basics in an hour a day.

I actually had a friend who said – well, where this really came up? I should back up a little bit. Is that I thought, you know, when our kids are teenagers and are Co-Ops, we do a really good job of teaching them leadership principles. Because we created that culture of teaching them that. And I thought, why don’t have something like this for the whole family and especially for the younger kids. Why not introduce them earlier to these principles?  And I said that to her. And she’s like, “Oh, that’s a great idea. You should do it.” And I was like, “No. No, no, no. I don’t have time for that.” And then all the refusals came in. You know how that goes, right? Now, you’ve seeing this pattern. And I said, “I do have a lot of experience though. Maybe I could do this.” I own every single curriculum out there since I bought them all in my days when I was insecure and thinking a curriculum would solve all my problems. But I thought – you know, I have researched a lot of curriculum and I’ve noticed there’s not anything like this out there. And so I just thought, “Okay. I will do this.” But as many homeschool moms are, I’m a real DIY-er, you know, do everything yourself. And one of the big things I knew I was going to learn on this journey was that I was going to have to allow other people to help me, which has been fantastic. I’ve done a ton of it myself, for sure. But I have had other people come in and help me with this. And I did have a graphic designer. I don’t know how to do that. Thank goodness.

 

 

[01:32:04] Ashley James: Well, it looks so professional. So good job. Good job.

 

 

[01:32:07] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Yes. So she came up with kind of the ideas there too. But I was like – we’ve been writing the content. I write the math and the science. My sister came in. She homeschools too. And she’s wonderful. And she’s been writing the history and the language arts. And as we keep growing, I’m hoping I can bring more people on to help with it as well. But it’s really been a wonderful journey to learn all this stuff and to learn how to let other people help you too. Because guess what? That’s another huge chunk of the hero’s journey. Because when I was describing that hero’s journey to you, I said, the journey includes mentors. It includes friends and allies who are going on the path with you. It also includes enemies sometimes. Sometimes you hear things that are just aren’t so nice. And you don’t worry about it because you just know it’s part of the journey. And you feel compassion for the enemies because you think, “Oh, I’m so sorry that you haven’t found your path yet.” And maybe they have. But it’s just different.

So yes, really, it’s been an amazing project to do. And I love that I can share this with other homeschool moms so that they can see that, really, you can cover all of this basic knowledge in just an hour a day and to conspire them to want to go learn more. And to become the person that they’re meant to become. And to travel on their hero’s journey.

 

 

[01:33:38] Ashley James: So you just spend an hour a day homeschooling?

 

 

[01:33:43] Molly Christensen: Essentially, yes.

 

 

[01:33:44] Ashley James: And the kids are doing other things throughout the day like reading, and doing projects, and playing, and doing art, and stuff like that. But you sit down and you basically have a classroom for one hour a day. Is it seven days a week?

 

 

[01:33:59] Molly Christensen: No. We have a couch. Not a classroom. And the kitchen table. And no, we actually usually only do it about three or four days a week. Because the other – I definitely wouldn’t do it on the weekends. But I say three or four days because sometimes we’re going to go on a field trip or maybe we’re just running errands or something, you know. So yes, it takes surprisingly a lot less time than one might think to teach your kids because of this, we think it takes 9:00 to 3:00 like the public schools, but they’ve done all these studies about how much time is wasted there. But also, it’s because of the teaching style is different. I’m focusing on the feeling. If they have the right feeling, they’re going to learn it so much faster because they want to. Public schools, because there’s so many kids in there – and I’m not knocking public schools. It is what it is. And it’s a good option for many people. But they have to focus more on repetition. It does not take six years of grammar worksheets to learn grammar. It just doesn’t. If they’re ready and they have something they want to say, they can learn it really fast. And if they’ve been read really good books to, they have it in their brain when they read. A lot of the stuff they just pick up. I don’t even have to teach them because it’s like osmosis, you know. So it really is not as – it’s not rocket science as we think.

 

 

[01:35:31 Ashley James: There’s this type of school – is it called the Sudbury School? The type of school? Yeah. So I was looking – when we were pregnant, my husband and I – well, I was really motivated too. Because when you’re pregnant, you’re like – or at least with the first baby because I only had one – I was trying to consume all the information possible about my child’s future. Like, you know what kind of schooling and all this stuff. What are we going to do and how are we going to discipline, and what kind of birth are we going to have. And I came across this type of school called the Sudbury School. And it completely blew my mind. It is totally – I don’t know. I feel like I’ve entered – I’ve gone into a time warp but entered like 1969 and we’re surrounded by hippies. Because it’s basically a kid commune where you drop your kid off on a place with buildings and a few acres. And you leave your kid there and there’s no formal classrooms, there’s no teachers. There are adults and they’re called coaches or something. And the child is just allowed to do whatever they want. Of course, actually the children come up with their own rules. Because they come up with their own government. And the kids get to run the place. And the kids could actually vote to fire one of the adults should they want to.

And so the adults really who are there because they love to share and teach. And so the kids, if they’re interested will go to the computer room and ask the adult to teach them how to do – how to make a video game, how to code. Or the child would go to the music room and say, “I want to learn how to play the guitar.” And I’ve watched a lot of videos of graduates of this system. And the they go on to college. And they say, for the first year, you might just – the kids might spend the entire time playing video games. And he says, “Yeah. They do.” They kind of get it all out. They get it out of their system. They do whatever they want and they get it out of their system. And then they start to look around and go, “How does this work? How does that work? Oh, man, I really want to try this. I really want to do this.” And they start getting inspired by things. And then they go ask the adults for help to learn those things. And then if they decided they want to – because they get so inspired, they go, “You know, I really want to become an engineer.” Well, they have to ask, “What do I need to do?” “Okay. Well, you have to learn this, this, this, and this. And in order to pass this test to go on to college.” And then they want to and then they’re constantly asking for help because they’re learning. So it’s like the Wild West there. And there are children who don’t excel in that environment because – for whatever reason. Bt there are children who excel incredibly well because their learning style is just, “Leave me alone and let me come to you when I’m ready. And I want to completely have my education be based on my motivation.”

And that blew my mind. I think it blew a circuit in my brain. Because I was raised in the system of you, you shut up, you sit down, don’t talk until you’re spoken to. Children are seen and not heard. Raise your hand if you need to go to the bathroom. You have to have a hall pass. And really made to feel afraid of adults and afraid of the teachers. And education is not supposed to be fun. That was the system I was raised in. And I was always – I always had a belief that I was stupid because that was the system I was raised in. But then as an adult, I’m like,” I want to learn how to code. I want to learn how to make a website. I want to learn how to video edit.” And I found myself picking things up so quickly that I realized I am a really good learner. But it has to be something that I love to do, which is how our brain works. So that’s why – and so I think Sudbury is the type of that schooling or unschooling is this one end of the extreme. And then military school would be the other side of the extreme.

But I like that what you’ve done is you’ve picked mindset and teaching them how to be the best versions of themselves as the core of your curriculum. So you’re building – like you said, you’re building the their character but you’re also building your own character as a parent, which is really beautiful.

 

 

[01:39:56] Molly Christensen: Yeah. You nailed it. That’s exactly what I wanted to do. Because I love the idea of Sudbury. But part of me wonders where does the character coming in especially if they’re being sent away all day. Plus, I don’t want to send my kids away all day. You know what I mean?

 

 

[01:40:12] Ashley James: Right. I imagine it like Lord of the Flies. You just get a bunch of kids together –

 

 

[01:40:16] Molly Christensen: That’s kind of what I would do.

 

 

[01:40:18] Ashley James: Oh man, Lord of the Flies. It just scares me. But it did open my mind and expand my mind to this idea of there are aspects of this unschooling that make a lot of sense or child led learning that makes a lot of sense. Not 100 percent of the time for me as a parent. But it opened my mind up to, “Well, how do we learn?” And I really want my son to want to learn and get excited about learning. And he is. And I don’t want to thwart that, which we do. By the time we send our kids to school, a lot of the school system thwarts their desire to learn because –

 

 

[01:40:55] Molly Christensen: Absolutely. And the comparison culture to. I mean, you even said you thought you were stupid. It’s like, none of those kids are stupid. They all have their own unique abilities. And they all have goodness inside. They just have different journeys. I’ve had some kids learn to read when they were four. And I have another kid now who’s eight-and-a-half and it just hasn’t quite clicked yet. It’s just about to though. But because I can let her go on her own journey, I can just keep saying, “This is awesome. You can keep working out. You’re going to get there.”

 

 

[01:41:30] Ashley James: Beautiful. Now, let’s talk about socialization. Because I think that’s on everyone’s mind. I mean, the fact that you did have seven kids so those kids are all working together so they’re not alone. But there’s a lot of parents that just have one or two kids. And so if they’re at home all day, how are they going to be amazing adults to connecting with people and knowing how to communicate if they’re those oddball kids who are isolated at home as we often think or that’s the mainstream media’s idea of homeschooling.

 

 

[01:42:03] Molly Christensen: Right. Well, what I learned really quickly was that basically children they model their parents. So if you feel like somebody else unsocialized, it could come from the parents. Sad to say. And we got unsocialized kids at public school too. The outcast. The social outcast. So for me, because I was worried about that, I was like, “Well, I guess I better lead the way.” So I am a total introvert. I went through high school and was I socialized? Did I learn how to communicate with people? No. Not really. I felt awkward all the time in high school. Like, why do we think that’s a good environment to learn how to communicate with people? I just mostly just felt awkward. And so I just decided I just need to learn how to love and serve other people. And I figure if we can do that, hey, we’re going to be socialized. We’re going to know how to get along with other people.

So I just remember some of my first few Co-Op activities I took my son to. What I really want to do is just go sit in the corner and hide and he did too. In fact, he didn’t even want get out the car. But I just made myself go introduce myself to other people and get to know them. You know, what, people are amazing. People are great. And it was really like, as I practiced my socialization skills,  they followed suit as well. I was a little worried at first when he wouldn’t get out of the car ever. But he figured it about. He’s an amazing kid. And so, really, what socialization is all about is just loving and serving people. And you can absolutely do that in your home. You can absolutely do that and take your kids to other places and just love and serve people. And there’s so much of the other socialization stuff that comes from sending your kids to school that I didn’t want. Like, I mentioned that my son was bringing home some bad behaviors. I was like, “Why would I want that?”

 

 

[01:44:15] Ashley James: Bullying. And it’s really sad that the number two cause of death between the ages of 10 and 24 suicide right now. That it raised up to, I think, it’s 56 percent in the last ten years. I mean, suicide is at an all time high, basically, with our youth.

 

 

[01:44:38] Molly Christensen: Yeah. It’s horrible.

 

 

[01:44:38] Ashley James: And that’s something we have to stop and say there’s something wrong with our system. And I don’t think there’s only one thing. I don’t think you can only say that it’s the school system. Or you only say that they all have cell phones or social media. I think it is -and we have to look at everything. We have to take the shotgun approach. We have to look at everything and go there’s something wrong with how we’re addressing mental health, with how we’re addressing bullying, with how we’re addressing online bullying, with how we’re addressing it in the schools.

There was a child – this is such a sad topic to bring up. There’s a eight or nine year old child just this week that committed suicide because he was knocked unconscious when beaten in his school. And it was filmed by one of the students. And the school tried to suppress it and deny it. And I don’t know what kind –

 

 

[01:45:31] Molly Christensen: He didn’t feel heard.

 

 

[01:45:31] Ashley James: So he didn’t feel heard. And then he killed himself. And that is so wrong and so sad. And we should all feel very angry and want to take action to fix this problem. I think that we all need to fix the problem. That we all need to take – we need to take personal responsibility because we can only change ourselves. So we need to figure out what can we do as individuals to make this world, to make this society, to make our community, a place where mental health can be addressed and what is the root cause of bullying. What is going on? The root cause of bullying and figure that out. We have to figure it out. And then we have to address it with our children, with our children’s friends, with all the parents that were around. We need to take action as individuals. Because we can’t wait for the government to fix it or the school system to fix it. If we just wait it’s going to just get worse and worse. And so that’s my little soapbox about this that we need to take responsibility for our own actions. And the first voice, the little voice that everyone just heard in themselves go, “That is wrong. And I want to help stop this. I want to help turn this around.” That voice was our authentic self. And then all the refusals that came after, “Well, who am I to do that? And I’m just one person. And I don’t know anyone -“

 

 

[01:47:08] Molly Christensen: What to do.

 

 

[01:47:09] Ashley James: “I don’t know what to do.” All those little refusals, that’s the party that wants to keep you safe. But we need to go. “Ah. Thanks for pointing out where I’m stuck in life. I’m going to break through that. And I’m going to prove those voices wrong. Listen to the authentic voice.” So all of us could just do one thing like you did your blog. You did 180 beautiful acts of kindness in a year. And what if we all just did one act of kindness dedicated to lowering the suicide rate among youth? We don’t have to know what it looks like but just start. Just start by saying, “I’m going to do something and be part of this change to turn the world around.” And I don’t know what it looks like yet but I’m declaring it. I’m declaring it right now. And then I’m going to go and talk to other parents. And maybe we’ll create a little organization or get them all together for tea and just brainstorm what can we do as individuals to turn this around. Because this is our mission. As long as we’re in service of others with love and service of others and being an example for our children, then we will have a positive impact.

 

 

[01:48:21] Molly Christensen: Well, absolutely. And I actually think that so many elements of the hero’s journey address this as well. Because I think our nation is a nation with an identity crisis. People do not know who they are. They don’t know that they have goodness inside because they have no purpose. They don’t understand so many of these principles. And I think this as long as we’re doing these kindnesses and we see people who are  lonely. We reach out and we teach people and love people. That’s what we can do.

 

 

[01:48:54] Ashley James: It’s so beautiful. Molly, thank you so much for coming today and sharing. This episode would help anyone. Although the formal topic was on homeschooling, you addressed some principles of personal growth that I find to be so beautiful and so, so, so helpful to everyone that wants to break through and to grow. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing. Of course, the links to everything that Molly does is going to be the show notes of today’s podcasts at learntruehealth.com. Your main website which is buildingheroesacademy.com is fantastic. Also, your book is homeschool get it done.com. And then your curriculum funnel is the number 3homeschoolsecrets.com.

Molly, is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview? Is there anything left unsaid or anything that you want to make sure that you’ve got to share?

 

 

[01:49:52] Molly Christensen: Yeah. Thank you so much for inviting me. This has been great. And I love that you are sharing your message. And that’s actually another thing that many of us are called to do is to share our messages. But we have fears and we shut ourselves down. So I guess really what I want to end we’re with is just that, to remember that you are one of those heroes that we’ve been talking about on this hero’s journey. Everybody listening to this and Ashley, for sure. Because just knowing that just makes such a shift in your life. And I love the visual that that can bring to you so you can remember, when you do get down, when you do hit obstacles, it’s just part of the journey. And it’s a great thing because it just means that you are on the right path, that you are just going to be learning and growing. And as you’ve learned how to get through those obstacles and you’re changing so many lives as you go through because you are doing what you were meant to do. You were called to the action that you did it. And that’s really what life is all about, it’s just doing that so that you can serve people. So thank you so much for having me on. And I hope to talk to you again sometime.

 

 

[01:50:58] Ashley James: Absolutely, Molly. This is not our last conversation. This is just the first of many. Thank you. It’s been such a pleasure to have you on today. Thank you so much.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected with Molly Christensen!

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Recommended Reading by Molly Christensen

Teaching from Rest by Sarah McKenzie

Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien

Dec 13, 2019

Join the Facebook group and be part of the Learn True Health community! https://learntruehealth.com/group

Website: www.happygutlife.com

Book: Happy Gut -- The Cleansing Program To Help You Lose Weight, Gain Energy, and Eliminate Pain

Promotional giveaway: www.happygutlife.com/gutreboot. This is a Free 3-Day Anti-Inflammatory self-guided gut reset that can easily be done over a weekend, with recipes, mindset, and all the guidance needed to reduce bloating, stop indigestion, and reboot your health in just three days.

Practice website: www.pedremd.com. At my practice, I help the patient take a deep dive into their gut health and gut-related health issues using functional medicine and a mind-body-spirit approach to wellness.

 

Happy Gut

https://www.learntruehealth.com/happy-gut

 

Highlights:

  • What gut health is really about.
  • Acid Reflux is not really having too much acid in our stomachs but actually less of it.
  • Mindset id the first thing we should change when accepting the challenge of being healthy also goes with lifestyle changes.
  • Having a healthy gut is the start of being healthy all throughout.
  • How concussions can sometimes be the cause of gut dysfunction.
  • The health of the body is really dependent on the health of your entire digestive system.
  • Medication is not going to build good health for a person, it’s going to be lifestyle, it’s going to be the way they eat.

 

Sometimes we have to listen our bodies when it’s telling us that something is wrong. A certain symptom can sometimes present itself with a different root cause. In the instance of having an unhealthy gut, an upset stomach or maybe even heartburn can manifest towards when our bodies are fighting off the imbalances in the acids within. Dr. Vincent Pedre shares some of his expertise towards having a healthy gut in this episode we’re sure everyone is interested to know about.

 

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love today’s show with functional medicine doctor, Vincent Pedre. He has some amazing information about healing the gut and I know you will just love it. I wanted to share an email I got. I love emails from you guys, from the listeners. They often bring me to tears and this one from a listener that I’ve received a few days ago and I got permission to read it. I won’t share their name. They’re actually really excited for me to share because they wanted to spread hope. They say, “Hey there, Ashley. Hope the start of your holiday season is treating you and your family well. I just wanted to sincere thank you for the incredible impact you and your podcast has had in my life. After struggling with nervous system issues, digestive system issues for over 5 years, after a concussion landed me in the ER, after years of bouncing around to numerous practitioner and following countless protocols and spending way more money that I’d like to admit. It was two episodes of your podcast in particular that introduced me to the missing links in my healing process. I was able to locate an atlas orthogonal chiropractor in Seattle after hearing your episode with Dr. Patrick Gallagher. And I happen to see Eric Thorton who literally put my brain back in place. I imagine you get loads of emails like these but just wanted to extend my appreciation and gratitude for you and your work. All your shows are so jam-packed with valuable information that I will continue to listen, learn and pass along the information. Many cheers and hope you have a very happy and healthy holiday.”

Thank you so much for this letter. I wanted to share this because this listener had spent years and years over 5 years going from doctor to doctor with all kinds of issues and they didn’t give up hope. They’ve kept educating themselves and through some wonderful episodes, they really unlocked and unlocked what they’re looking for. I’ve had similar emails recently saying that specific episodes were the missing links that they were searching and searching and something just clicked. That was the missing link. Sometimes its diet. Sometimes it’s really simple like removing something out of your diet. Sometimes it’s a nutrient deficiency. Something as simple as magnesium or zinc. Sometimes it’s taking the time to breathe. Something really simple. And sometimes it is a lot of things. It’s the shotgun approach needing to do many changes. If you’re suffering and you are feeling sick. You’re tired of feeling sick, know that there’s hope. Keep moving forward and every little change matters. You’ll look back and you’ll realize, today you’re better than the day before. That’s how I was. I was so sick for so many years and now looking back, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how sick I was because I feel so good now. It took me years to build this. It’s the foundation of health you’re building, it’s funny that this listener wrote this about having a concussion because in today’s interview, Dr. Pedre talks about one cause of gut dysfunction, is concussion. He explains that.

Concussions are really common and often overlooked by regular doctors. When I say regular, I mean just like, run of the mill doctors. Not ones that have more advanced training like in functional medicine. So you go to an average doctor and they wouldn’t know when you’re having digestive issues to actually look at your brain health. Very interesting. So you’ll enjoy today’s interview if you have gut issues and that you’re looking to heal because Dr. Pedre has a wonderful book called, Happy Gut and he teaches some and brings us some great information in today’s interview. He’s going to come back on the show because even after 90 minutes we just got in the surface. I’m very excited to have him continue to come back and teach more and more. I want all of you to have wonderfully healthy guts. That doesn’t sound good. I want all of us to have wonderfully healthy tummies and happy healthy tummies and digestive systems. Enjoy today’s interview. Please share this episode with those you love who you also want to extend having healthy tummies with. That would be great if we could include all of our loved ones. Build happy healthy tummies with us. Enjoy today’s episode and have an excellent rest of your day.

 

[05:25] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 397. I am so excited for today’s guest. This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and my gut. We have Dr. Vincent Pedre, who is an MD that specializes in healing the gut, holistically. Man, your bio, we could spend 2 hours just talking about your bio and your credentials. You have been on some amazing TV shows, you’ve hung out with Dr. Oz, you’ve done so many interviews. You’ve written so much great articles and books and your website, Happygutlife.com. I’m really excited for us to talk about this today because so many people complain. A lot of my listeners that they have bloating, they have constipation. That they’re on medications for heart burn that they just don’t know where to start or maybe they’ve been trying to do some diet to heal their candida, or heal their small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. It’s such a long path and they’re not getting the results that they want to get. Gut health is the foundation. If we don’t have our gut health, we don’t have anything. Because if we’re not absorbing and utilizing our nutrition, everything falls apart. That’s where it all begins.

 

[07:03] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Totally. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast. I’d like to think of the gut as the root system of the body. The same that the roots are for a tree. They are foundational. Imagine the health of the tree is guided by the health of the roots. Same way, the health of the body is really dependent on the health of your entire digestive system.

 

[07:27] Ashley James: Absolutely. Yes. Then more recently, people have been talking about how they’re seeing a direct correlation between gut health and brain health. That the vagus nerve can become inflamed and they’re seeing that also in the gut. That we make some of our neuro chemicals in the gut and that even our T3’s converted, 25% of our T3’s converted in the gut. The gut is not just for digesting food, it’s also affecting our brain and our hormones.

 

[08:03] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Let’s say, metabolically active organ system that is involved in making if we include the gut microbiome in that picture, is included in making neuro transmitters. It makes it’s own hormone that affect things like your appetite also your sense of that you’ve already eaten enough. It control so many things, it regulates blood sugar. It’s a really integral part of the entire picture of what makes up our health.

 

[08:39:] Ashley James: Now you wrote a book called Happy Gut. The cleansing program to help you lose weight, gain energy and eliminate pain. I heard about the study where they took obese, I think it was obese mice and mice of a healthy weight. They did a fecal transplant from the healthy weight mice to the obese mice and then the obese mice then became, without changing their chloric intake, the obese mice became not obese. So they’re saying that even our gut health has to do with the obesity and since we’re seeing that that is one of the largest health problems occurring today. Would you say that gut health and that almost everyone doesn’t have gut health right now?

 

[09:28] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You could argue for that. That we are in an epidemic of gut disorders. Let’s say in gut related disorders all throughout the world. It’s fascinating because I teach – I’ve had the honor to teach in Australia and Mexico. I just came back from Peru. Obesity is a problem that is a worldwide problem and the rise in diabetes and metabolic syndrome which is a precursor to diabetes that’s growing all over the world. You could argue which is the chicken or the egg, what’s coming first. There has been so many changes in the way that we eat. Our dietary patterns are so skewed from our ancestral patterns because of the availability of food, but also just the preponderance of sugar-laden foods, the refined carbohydrates, packaged foods. All sorts of things that are convenient but they’re just not healthy for us and certainly not healthy for the gut microbiome which then regulates things like how your body processes sugars. That’s going to relate to how much fat you pack into the middle of your body because that’s regulated by the hormone insulin.

You could argue, look at just the trends for example. The second most prescribed medication worldwide is a proton pump inhibitor, which lowers the acidity of the stomach. If you just look at this just as a late person. Even just like of an innocent child asking questions like, “Weren’t we made to have acid in our stomach for a reason? Is it okay to go in and alter that?” And think that we are solving a problem without a problem without creating downstream problems. That was my question in the 90’s when the proton pump inhibitors became the new panacea for gut issues if you’ve’ had acid reflux, let’s give you a proton pump inhibitor. You know, even back then, I asked the question, “You know, our physiology evolved to have a PH in the stomach around 3. We evolved to create stomach acid, why is it okay to change that? Are you sure that by changing that we’re not causing some downstream problems?” Early on in the days of the proton pump inhibitors, I swear if you spoke to a gastroenterologist, they thought it should just be added to the water and there were no problems with it. We know now, more than two decades later, that they lead to all sorts of things like calcium malabsorption, iron malabsorption. It could cause B12 deficiency. They lead to low bone mass eventually maybe to osteoporosis.

 

[12:46] Ashley James: Would it also lead to something like H-Pylori and allow for other parasitic infections to occur because if we don’t have enough acid in the stomach, like that’s our line of defense, it’s kind of a like a mote around it’s castle. It’s preventing stuff from getting in right?

 

[13:06] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. It’s initial line of defense, let’s say bacteria that might get through the food that we eat. Yeast for example. Candida has a hard time surviving stomach acid but if your stomach PH is raised and much easier than to colonize the stomach and really the small intestine and large intestine with yeast. H. Pylori’s a different story because PPI’s actually inhibit H.Pylori. Slow down the growth H.Pylori but they don’t eradicate the infection. They could actually perpetuate an H.Pylori infection at a very low grade but never fully get rid of it.

 

[13:52] Ashley James: That sounds like, you could insert that into almost any condition where chronic drugs we’re given to mask how the body functions. To sort of manage symptoms but not solve the problem. It persists. Something persists.

 

[14:10] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Exactly and for many people, we’re starting with stomach acid. For many people, acid reflux, heart burn is both an issue of diet and lifestyle habits, but it can also be an issue with not enough stomach acid production which is counter intuitive. Most people think that acid reflux means you’re making too much acid. For the majority of people what it means they making too little acid. They’re probably not making enough stomach acid because there’s different levels of malfunction they could be nutrient deficient so maybe they don’t have enough zinc in their diet. For example, they could have vagal nerve malfunction and thus they’re not getting the nerve impulses that would stimulate the stomach to produce enough acid to break down protein.

 

[15:06] Ashley James: What causes that? What causes vagal nerve malfunction?

 

[15:09] Dr. Vincent Pedre: The probably the easiest thing to understand that could cause that is a concussion for example. How many people have had concussions in their life where they lose consciousness and they recover for it. At least they think they’ve recovered from it but then something is not quite right after that. We know that if you have a concussion with loss of consciousness that within 30 minutes, you have vagal nerve malfunction and because of that you get leaky gut syndrome. The vagus nerve also regulates the gut barrier and the permeability of the gut. The other thing that I see in my practice that is more common that concussion that causes vagal nerve malfunction is stress. I would say that’s the number one reason people are – just think through a time where you’ve been really stressed and you eat but that food feels like it’s like a rock in your stomach? That’s because you’re not making enough digestive enzyme. They say you have to rest to digest. Or another word is you have to be in a relax state in order for your body to be able to digest foods. If you’re not into a relax state your body thinks that you need to be ready to run because something’s going to come and attack you. That’s the state of our modern lives. It’s maladaptive stress response because we’re not out in the wild. We don’t need to protect ourselves form some animals that going to try and attack and eat us. We’re living in a state as if it exists and we don’t resolve that state so a lot of people live in that chronic fight or flight response.

That will then affect your vagal tone that reduces vagal tones and terms has cascading effects of reducing stomach acid production. You might get stomachaches, maybe you start getting some reflux and then you think, “Well, I’m producing too much acid so I should take some of the acid lowering medication.” For the most part, that is the wrong thing to do. Now you’re going to create new problems because once you’re reducing stomach acid, I’ve mentioned calcium malabsorption, B12. They’ve also found that people who take PPI’s long term so proton pump inhibitors, these acid reducing medications out there that they’re at increased risk for some pneumonia and for being hospitalized with a pneumonia. They’re also at an increased risk for an infection and infection that you never want to get which is C. DIFF Diarrhea which is caused by bacteria called Clostridium Difficile. Which is extremely difficult to treat has become more and more resistant to the classic antibiotics that were used for that because of the overuse of antibiotics. It’s something that you don’t want to get. Along with yeast overgrowth and potentially I had a patient who came in who develop C. DIFF as a result of being on a proton pump inhibitor.

 

[18:28] Ashley James: There just doesn’t seem like there any positive news that comes to taking these medications. They get temporarily relief but they’re going to have worse side effects down the road.

 

[18:43] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Right. It’s either the quick solution versus what is going to be a little bit harder work. Which is figuring out, “Okay, you need to look at yourself, change your lifestyle.” Maybe you’re coming home at 8pm at night. Eating dinner and then you’re in bed by 11. You haven’t had enough time to digest your food and then at nighttime that food is sitting there putting pressure and stomach acid comes up because you’re lying down. A lot of times it takes making some tough choices about changing lifestyle habits. A lot of people, they’d rather just take a pill than change lifestyle but honestly, the lifestyle’s going to have the most favorable effects. The other thing is not breaking down protein properly. We started talking about neuro transmitters and hormones, what not. If you don’t break down your protein properly, you’re not going to have the sub stream necessary to make the neuro transmitter that help keep you happy and help life feel satisfying. Then you know you can go down the path of depression and anxiety because you’re not breaking down your protein properly.

 

[19:57] Ashley James: I’ve been advertised to recently, Zantac which is an anti-acid and anti-histamine now there’s a big recall because it’s now linked to causing cancer.

 

[20:12] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Let me explain it. There’s an ingredient in there, the scientific term for it, it’s an inert ingredient that’s used as filler to make these tablets.

 

[20:25] Ashley James: So it’s not that anti-acids directly causes cancer.

 

[20:28] Dr. Vincent Pedre: No. It was an ingredient within Zantac and it was a lot of the generic manufacturers. It was actually a recall that affected other generics as well because I have patients that take blood pressure medication that was also within that recall and it’s because they found that it had an ingredient that had an increase suspicion of being increasing the risk of cancer for people. So it was basically not the active ingredient itself, but another ingredient in the – which is scary because there are over the counter medications that you can just go and buy without a doctor’s prescription. And it had a substance in it that had been found to increase the risk for cancer.

 

[21:17] Ashley James: We live in a world where we feel that because it’s been sold over the counter that it’s safe. But if we go to Costco, you can buy one purchase of cough syrup because they sell this both too so that there’s two bulk giant, it’s like half a liter I think or something. It’s some crazy amount of cough syrup and they’re strapped together but two bottles of this big cough syrup and if you were to accidentally, maybe you were just sipping on it or you have a cough and you don’t read a label, you could kill yourself. It has a lethal dose of acetaminophen in it. It’s sold over the counter like we can go to a drugstore and buy something that doesn’t seem excessive and kill ourselves. We have to like really be careful taking any medication at all and make sure that we’re talking tour doctor and doing our research and like you said, stopping and looking at lifestyle and diet.

 

[22:16] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. I think a lot of doctors are trained within the system. You know, I hate to say it but I was trained in that system. That in some ways and this is what really turned me off to medicine at the end of my training is that, we’re just glorified reps for the pharmaceutical industry. That’s the way they train us. We’re constantly being marketed to by the different companies and back in the day and the early 2000’s, we were wined and dined. They found that doctors that were visited by pharmaceutical reps with the newest most expensive drugs tended to prescribe those newer and more expensive medications. When maybe there were alternatives that were much cheaper that would have been out for the long time. Obviously, the push is always to sell the newest because those are the medications that are unpatented and the companies that are going to make most money with. It’s horrible to say but in some ways I feel like until you wake up as a doctor, you’re basically a glorified rep for pharmaceutical companies writing their medications.

 

[23:37] Ashley James: This is so refreshing because normally I’m the one that gets into the soapbox that starts ranting and raving about the allopathic medical system but I decided to just hold back and you just filled in everything. It was perfect. I love it.

 

[23:52] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I can say that now because what I do as much as – I’m talking about the system, medications can be lifesaving. They are definitely places where medications can help change the course of the disease that has gone too far to be able to make and immediate change by using natural means. Even when and even with because I sit on both sides of the fence as in internal medicine trained doctor but also functional medicine trained. I kind of mewled the two and there are places for each but I’m always regardless having a conversation with a patient about nutrition, about lifestyle, about stress management. Everything that I think builds good health because a medication is not going to build good health for a person, it’s going to be lifestyle, it’s going to be the way they eat. That’s what’s going to help build good health for people.

 

[24:58] Ashley James: Exactly. The thing is, by the time they go to get on the medication, they’re really sick of being sick and they’re sick of that symptom. They need some relief and pain is the biggest motivator. When we’re in pain –

 

[25:14] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Anything that makes us uncomfortable. Right? You know, thank goodness for podcasts like yours that are out there educating people because if you think about it, 20 plus years ago, pre internet age, the place that people got their medical knowledge was from doctors who were trained to prescribe medications and to treat disease with bandage rather than to look at the root cause. Now we’re in an era where information is wide and open. You would probably chuckle if you saw the sticker that’s on the side of my computer that faces my patients because I think it’s funny but I also respect the free flow of information and the searching that this is created in. It’s really the last 20 years I think empowered patients to see that they had played a bigger role in their health than they were made to believe by our paternalistic allopathic medical system. My sticker says, “Please don’t confuse your google search with my medical degree.” [Laughter] As I say that I still encourage people to be their own doctor and part of what I do with my patients is I teach them to listen to their body and to basically evolve their own intuitive awareness of what is right for them and what is wrong for them. I think a lot of people are moving through life and we’re talking about gut health here and just think the gut is the intuitive center of the body. It’s really about tuning into your body and seeing that if you eat this, how does it make you feel? If you don’t eat it? Do you feel better? Do you feel more clear headed? Some people are really not living by that level of awareness. They’re feeling horrible. They’re not connecting the two together that the way they’re eating is part of the reason they don’t feel that great.

 

 

[27:27] Ashley James: About 2 years ago, I started to get this sore throat and my glands were swollen and I went to my Naturopath and she did swabs for everything and everything came out negative. I’m so weird, I’m like, “What’s going on?” I didn’t feel sick other than my glands were swollen, my adenoids, and my throat was always sore just out of nowhere. It was around February so I thought, “Okay, I got to have something, some kind of bug.”  I was talking all this herbs and stuff for anti-viral and anti-bacterial and when again few weeks later, I said, “This is ridiculous.” I got to the point where I couldn’t do interviews because my throat was so sore, my voice was so sore. She was swabbing me checking again, nothing. Everything came back, all the cultures came back negative and she looks at me and she goes, “This could be heartburn.” I thought, “There’s no way this is heart burn. I eat so healthy.” Then she says, “Okay, let’s do a test.” She doesn’t think that Tums are a healthy thing to take but it’s an easy diagnostic tool. It’s the cheapest diagnostic tool. She was like, “Take Tums for 3 days and if you get relief and your sore throat goes away then we need to look at your diet. We need to look at what’s going on.” Sure enough, within hours of talking some Tums, my sore throat starts to subside. I thought, “Shoot. Are you kidding me?”

That heartburn can appear as just a sore throat. It doesn’t have to be that classic, sensation in the tummy or in the esophagus. I figured out that I – because I was my husband went vegan like whole food plant based and I was trying to adapt to that way of eating so I started to eating tofu at every meal. Because I hadn’t really learned yet how to do this way of eating and my body was going, “What are you feeding me?” My body was giving me heartburn from eating tofu so I cut tofu out. I all went away and then I had to learn that I can eat lots of beans and peas and nuts and seeds and all other kinds of foods for fiber and protein and all that. Now I can eat tofu once in a while and I had absolutely no problem but it was sort of the daily eating at pretty much every meal my body went, “This isn’t happening.” I thought that was really interesting because if I had gone to an MD, I don’t know, they would started probably with anti-biotic. I had classic look like infected throat and maybe later on I would’ve been put on some antacids. Never looking at adjusting the diet whereas going to you, the functional doctor, you would’ve started with, “Okay, what’s going on with your life? What’s going on with your diet? What changes have you made? How was your stress level? What are you eating?” You know, you’re looking at the root.

 

[30:28] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Exactly. Definitely. We’re looking at a much bigger picture of where the symptoms are coming from.

 

[30:38] Ashley James: What can people do if they’re currently on anti-acids and they want to get their gut to the point where it’s making healthy levels of acid, they no longer have those painful symptoms. What kind of steps can they ate to get themselves so healthy so that they no longer need that crutch?

 

[30:58] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That is a really great question. It can be tough for some people. That ones that I’ve had that are the most challenging, part of it can be also belief system. If you’ve been on anti-acid mediation for over 10 years, you’ve learn that you can’t live without it. The first part of it is changing the mindset around that because there is almost like a psychological dependence around taking the medication because if you don’t, you’re going to have acid reflux. You’re not going to feel well, you’re not going to be able to eat but the way I used to do presentation where I showed a picture of hoover dam and that was my analogy of the PPI is that, it basically slows down the acid production. It’s blocking those proton pumps but the body has a response hypertrophies, the proton pumps so it actually makes more of them but then they’re all getting blocked right? Now say you stop taking the PPI, now you have more proton pumps than you had before. Guess what’s going to happen?

 

[32:21] Ashley James: Is it like a flood?

 

[32:23] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You’re going to start producing too much stomach acid. You stop the medication then you feel worse, and then you think, “Well, that means, I can’t be off of this medication.” Right? A lot of the work that I do with patients is that transition point which can be a multi-month process. It could be a 6 month process. A lot of times involves looking at full lifestyle because we started talking about the role of the vagus nerve and stress and how that affects stomach acid secretion. How acid reflux is probably for the most part, low stomach acid not high stomach acid production and yet yes, it does respond to going on a PPI because it raises the PH o the stomach acid so if it does come up it doesn’t bother the esophagus. You don’t get those heartburn symptoms in the same way. The transition can be tough for some people but very slow taper of the medication we don’t go from on to off knowing that there is a hypertrophy of those proton pumps that if you stop if suddenly you’re going to get a flood of acid.

Then we work on giving them nutrients that help heal the gut barrier. A lot of people are zinc deficient and zinc is very important for the health of the stomach lining. We may supplement with some zinc carnosine. A lot of times use combination supplement with marshmallow roots, slippery elm bark, aloe, DGL, which is a licorice derivative. Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice. Then we might also start and this is so counter intuitive and hard for people to understand. I may start to introduce a hydrochloric acid supplement with meals where they’re eating protein. That’s to help them break down the protein better. A lot of times that’s the hard part for patient who’s been used to being taught and told that you’re producing too much stomach acid now I’m going to give you more stomach acid, like, “How is that going to make me better?”

 

[35:00] Ashley James: But they were taught a lie. For those who don’t know the physiology of the esophageal sphincter, isn’t that why they get GERD because they weren’t producing enough stomach acid so the sphincter wasn’t closing. The sphincter is triggered by a certain level of acid? Can you explain that?

 

[35:27] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That is part of the picture. Then you have to think about all the things that people might be doing that we can or relax the lower esophageal sphincter which is a protection from that acid coming up. For example, chewing gum excessively or eating too much chocolate or drinking a bunch of coffee or smoking. All of these things affect the tone of the lower esophageal sphincter. Then that can also allow acid to come up.

 

[36:09] Ashley James: Does stress or the vagal nerve malfunction also affect the lower esophageal sphincter?

 

[36:18] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I’m going to say that there’s stronger influence on what’s happening on the stomach. It probably has some level of defect because stress definitely can affect the ability of the esophageal sphincter to contract or relax but it’s probably the bigger role as it effects on stomach acid production.

 

[36:47] Ashley James: Got it. So someone stressed out one of the listeners, busy mom. Stay at home mom or a guy that one of the listener’s is a male and he rushes off to work or a female who has manage taking care of their elderly parents and a job. They’re basically burning the candles at both ends. They’re stressed. Maybe they’ve had a concussion in their past, who knows. Concussions are really common. They have that, they’ve got the stress. Maybe they’ve had in the past, a few years they’ve had some antibiotics that they’ve been on so their gut flora isn’t that great. Maybe they have like you said a nutrient deficiency of zinc so they’ve sent out his perfect storm. Maybe they’re sort off so tried that they’ve pounding back the coffee just to like be able to get through the day. Have some adrenaline going on. Now they start getting this heartburn so they start popping this over the counter medications, TUMS, whatever they’re doing which is lowering stomach acid because that gives temp relief but what that does is persist the problem of malabsorption of nutrients, might even allow for Candida overgrowth or other dysbiosis to occur. Now they’re having more and more symptoms. So then it just grows and grows and grows and grows.

 

[38:15] Dr. Vincent Pedre:  Yes. So you see like this is like a snowball or avalanche effect. It starts small and then before you know it, you feel sick. You feel fat. You feel like you don’t have you’re bloated and you don’t have energy for anything and you’re supposed to be this super mom.

 

[38:42] Ashley James: Yes. And it’s really hard because we, I can only speak from my experience as a woman. We will put the oxygen mask on everyone else first especially when we’re a mom. Especially if we have family member who are in need of help. Right now, so many baby boomers or even our grandparents who are still around need us. We’re taking care of a lot of people and then we have to pay the bills. We sometimes put our needs last and sometimes, we self-medicate.

 

[39:17] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Sometimes or a lot of the times. I have such respect for women do in the world. You have to hold so much space for so many things. We are in an era where it’s just in many ways so difficult because it would be much simpler if you’re a mom to stay home and take care of the kids but I have a lot of working moms that have a child. They’re giving 3 months maternity leave which in my opinion is not long enough. Then they have to say goodbye to their baby child, leave them with a nanny or in best-case scenario it’s the mom or family member. Go back to work and now they’re supposed to work full time, maybe pumping breastmilk. I feel like it’s a huge load on women because you have to be like superhuman. That is a huge stressor. Huge stressor. Then of course, you know we’ve talked about snowball effect of stress and how that affects the body. It affects the gut microbiome. It affects the way the gut functions from acid productions to digestive enzyme production to the permeability of the gut and also for the makeup of your gut microbiome. All of that is sensitive to the stress signals within the body.

 

 

[40:46] Ashley James: You know, so many listeners are really intrigued by, “What’s the perfect diet?” Like, “What should I eat to be healthy?” I keep saying there’s no one perfect diet for everyone. Right? Because if an athlete, 40-year-old athlete came in versus 70-year-old woman with osteoporosis versus a 20-year-old with the recent diagnosis of type two diabetes. Those three people might need a different nutrient plan, right? They have different needs. Their body one person might be in a histamine response and great amount of inflammation whereas the other person might have zinc deficiency and calcium deficiency. There’s not one perfect approach like a one diet that fits all but diet isn’t the first thing we should be asking. What you’re sharing is really gut health is the first thing, we should be asking. “Do I have gut health?” Because if I don’t have gut health, it doesn’t matter what I’m eating. My body’s not digesting and absorbing it.

 

[42:00] Dr. Vincent Pedre: It could be problematic because you could think that you’re being super healthy. Eating lots of salads raw vegetables and if your gut is disordered, you don’t have the right microbiome to break down those very difficult to break down plant cell wall fibers, then you’re not going to feel well. Perhaps in that moment in time, timestamped, you would do better with cooked vegetables, healing the gut microbiome. Healing the production of digestive enzymes then over time then Segway the diet back towards a mix of cooked and raw or maybe just lightly steamed. Even what is the right diet is not just what is the right diet for you as an individual but what is the right diet for you now. You know you almost have to put that out also in the timeline because the right diet changes. I do see general trends. We know that the more plants you eat, in my opinion and that’s what the science had showed its what’s better for you but then there are really interesting studies have been done. Like the Hadza people of Tanzania, the hunter-gatherers. Which is I’m so excited because I’m going to be travelling there to meet them next year.

 

[43:39] Ashley James: Wow. Cool.

 

[43:42] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Then there’s about little over a thousand of them but at least a quarter still lived in their more traditional way which is eating tubers, berries, the baobab fruit. They eat the seed, also the meat the pulp of the fruit. It’s very high in fiber. They also hunt. They eat large two medium sized animals. Sometimes bigger. They also eat honey but when I say that, you have to take your western mind out of it. It’s not honey that comes in a jar. They’re actually going and getting the honeycomb and they’re eating the entire thing including larvae inside. Their gut microbiome when they’ve done test, they’ve done PCR testing had a much greater variety than in one study they’ve looked at Italian group of control. You can imagine an Italian diet, pasta and meat dishes and lots of fresh tomatoes and vegetables from the garden.

Their gut microbiome was not as diverse as the Hadza people. So you ask, “Okay. What is the missing element?” The Hadza are certainly not eating the diet that as varied as the Italian group. So why do they have such a diverse microbiome and probably part of it is their contact with nature and living out in the wild and contact with dirt. They’re not living in this hygiene, over clean environment. They’re not washing their hands when they come home from hunting. Maybe they have some blood in their hands before they hug or kiss their wives. That’s something else to look at is the missing element of just being connected with nature. Being out there. That’s part of what builds diversity in our microbiome and creates a healthy gut.

 

[45:54] Ashley James: I’d be really interested to know that what they incorporate in their – when you go there remember this question, what do they incorporate as an anti-parasitic because when we looked at traditional ancient cultures, they have like in India, Mimosa Pudica seed for example is used commonly to deworm eating pumpkin seeds deworms. That was normal. Like a hundred years ago, it was normal for farmers twice a year to deworm their animals and the farmers would take the same herb themselves. That was normal. So I’m wondering what do they do to deworm themselves. Like, is it honey? What is it that’s just cleaning them out because parasites they happen.

 

[46:47] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Exactly. Also, the question is are they living in a different state of balance with parasites than people in the west do? Because of a slightly different composition of their gut microbiome. I would keep that in mind. It’s so crazy to me that I will be out on the middle of the bush in Tanzania and get to live and spend a couple of days with them in this various small group. It’s going to be really amazing because I’ve been looking at their microbiome and the studies on that and seeing it’s just a big curiosity. Like, why do they have such a diverse microbiome and why do they have no diabetes, they do not have cancer.

 

[47:43] Ashley James: What do they die off? When it comes to illness, what do they die off?

 

[47:47] Dr. Vincent Pedre: When it comes to illness, they die of a lot of times from accidents. Funny enough. There might be some infant mortality but otherwise if they don’t die in the young age or because of an accident, they live into their 60’s, 70’s. Not as long of a life span that would think but still pretty amazing for hunter gatherer.

 

[48:17] Ashley James: I’d be really curious thought when they die in their 60s or 70’s. What illnesses do they die from? Is it all heart disease? Is it all infection like that? It would be interesting to see the correlation between their lifestyle and then what they die from.

 

[48:35] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That would be another question for my research when I go.

 

[48:37] Ashley James: Nice. All right. I want to have you back on the show after that trip because I want to hear all about it. I think that sounds fascinating. That is a true, average and all diet. That’s like if all of us were picked up some reality TV show and threw us on an island, that’s how we have to eat to survive.

 

[48:57] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Oh my gosh, can you imagine eating like –

 

[49:00] Ashley James: Larvae and honey?

 

[49:03] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Can you imagine eating honeycomb? That would be – [laughter].

 

[49:07] Ashley James: I think my 4-year-old would fight me for it. I think he would be so excited. He has this fascination with insects and I don’t think he would mind eating them at all. There has to be something primal in there.

 

[49:19] Dr. Vincent Pedre: There’s a lot of nutrition in the honeycomb that helps support the gut microbiome. It’s also interesting how- I’ve looked at their microbiome every time as they go from a rainy season to a more dry season. During those two different seasons, their diet skews in one direction and in the other. I see that there are parts of the microbiome that appear during the season because they’re being fed, let’s say the honey and when their diet skews in another direction that part disappears, seemingly disappears but then it comes back the next season.

 

[49:56] Ashley James: Yes. Isn’t there like a whole season where all they eat are tubers for a few months and that their microbiome adapts for that?

 

[50:05] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That is a really big part of, at least my understanding a big part of their diet. Also interestingly, when they wean kids off of breastmilk what they do is create a porridge of the baobab. The baobab is kind of really hard fruit. It’s got a lot of fiber inside. They grind that out and they make a porridge out of it. The kids are getting anywhere between 50 and a hundred grams of fiber a day. Their bellies will be bit extended because that amount of fiber is going to produce a good amount of gas which I think about because in the west, we don’t want to be distended. We don’t want to look fat. For them, it’s like yes, whatever it’s part of. In comparison, the average American gets about 10 maybe maximum 15 grams of fiber in a day just to put it in perspective and the recommended amount of fiber we should be eating is anywhere between 25 and 35 grams of fiber and yet the Hads are eating up to 50 grams of fiber per day.

 

[51:26] Ashley James: Can we eat too much fiber? Is there any point where it’s like, “Oh, 100 grams of fiber’s dangerous.” I mean, as long as you’re consuming enough water and you feel fine and you’re not hurting, it’s okay to have 100 grams of fiber?

 

[51:39] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. I have a feeling if you have a 100 grams you would be really bloated and uncomfortable. Yes, the danger is you get really stocked inside, constipated because you’re not drinking enough water with the fiber or maybe you’re not getting enough healthy fats to lubricate things and help move things along. I always think it’s important to be careful to make sure you’re balancing all.

 

[52:10] Ashley James: Right. I made this chia seed pudding. It’s amazing. It tastes exactly like pumpkin pie and my husband swears he can taste the crust in it too. It kind of something like Willy Wonka, would make where you can it tastes like an entire pumpkin pie with the crust and there’s a ton of chia seeds in it, like a ton. Your gut is getting so lubricated but it tastes just like pumpkin pie and it’s great for breakfast because it’s so filling. Such good fiber in it.

 

[52:46] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Oh my god, that sounds so good.

 

[52:46] Ashley James: I will give you the recipe. I’m launching a membership called Learn True Health home kitchen. Where we’re doing cooking videos and teaching people how to cook whole food plant based. For those who don’t want to give up meat entirely, they can just learn to have more vegetables and have more fiber and more whole food in their life but people who want to try to learn whole food plant based and experience it, they can jump in and do everything. That’s one of the recipes that I’m adding to the membership. We’re going to launch it soon. I got so excited because my son really wanted some pumpkin pie and I really wanted to make something healthy for him for breakfast. I was just like, “I’ve got a lot of chia seeds and  a lot of pumpkin, let me see what I can do with that.” Yes but I was just thinking, how much fiber is in it. It’s crazy. It’s a crazy amount of fiber but you feel so good afterwards. Obviously, it’s moist and it’s not dehydrating but you definitely want to drink a lot of water if you’re adding chia or flax to your food. I’ve learned that the hard way once. I thought I was safe to just adding some flax meal to my salads and I didn’t drink enough water and I found out pretty quickly that it’s not a smart move.

 

[54:04] Dr. Vincent Pedre: No and it just can kind of condense things in the gut and not let things move. You definitely want a mix of both soluble and insoluble fibers that’s also important. You think of insoluble fibers a roughage. Kind of like cleans out the inside of the gut. Gets things moving, provides a lot of the fibers that are fermented and the soluble fiber which are things like oats which then allow for control of how nutrients come into the bloodstream so they help slow down the sugars like the sugars that are getting broken down, carbohydrates from entering too quickly and causing an insulin spike. It’s important to make sure you’re getting a balance of both types of fibers. Apples are another great example. Organic apples.

 

[54:58] Ashley James: Organic apples are my favorite. The outside the peel of an apple is insoluble fiber and then the inside is soluble fiber.

 

[55:07] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. Basically you’re getting both types of fibers in an apple. I don’t know if your listeners know this but if you’re eating non organic apples they are sprayed with up to several different types of pesticides that have up to 40 something different neuro toxins. If you ever follow the environmental working group, the Clean15 and the Dirty Dozen, you know that apples are very high up on the list of the dirty dozen. Anything that has a thin skin like an apple that is sprayed with pesticide is going to be infused with that pesticide. You cannot wash it off. So you should never and if you can choose that, if you’re going to choose where do you spend your dollars on groceries, buy organic apples. Don’t buy non-organic. You can get them at them farm – you’re in Seattle so you’re like in an apple state and I’m in New York which also is a great apple state. I think it’s either pay a little bit more now or pay later for the consequences thereof.

 

[56:20] Ashley James: I’ve told the story before on the show but I’ll share with you. I was really sick in my 20’s. I was just eating the standard American diet, I had type two diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic monthly infections for which is was taking antibiotics monthly. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome and told by an endocrinologist that I was infertile and I’d never have kids. I’ve spent my 20’s on medications and sick and getting sicker and sicker I ended up actually on medication for heart burn. I mean the whole thing and I remember watching – I was also completely stressed out to the max. I was in an abusive relationship. My mom had died, I was very depressed,

 

[57:02] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You sound like our talking patient. Like what we’re talking about.

 

[57:08] Ashley James: Exactly. I was going through the ringer. I found joy in the day-to-day things but I was just going downhill and I was gaining weight even though I was exercising like crazy and I eat like all the other guys in the dojo. I was doing martial arts 6 days a week. I would eat like all of them because they look healthy so I go to subway with them and get like whole wheat. Think that’s like super healthy, “I’m getting whole wheat subway sandwiches thinking, Oh I’m eating healthy.” Of course, then I immediately have heartburn after and then I popped my heart burn pills. This is my 20’s when this happened. I happen to turn on the TV and then there was this show, I guess a Naturopath and they were just some kind of talk show and she was saying, “If you have heartburn, it’s too little stomach acid not too much. Drink some apple cider vinegar and drink some aloe.” I threw away that box of over-the-counter meds, started drinking aloe, and started listening to my body a bit more. And my heartburn went away I’m like, “Whoa.” Then a few years later, it’s 2008 we watched the documentary on Netflix right when I started doing streaming of videos and it was some health documentary like Food Inc. or something. They said, “Shop the perimeter of the grocery store and eat organic.” At this point, I was so sick. I’d wake up every morning with a pounding headache. Feeling as though I drank a bottle of vodka and got hit by a mad truck the night before. I was out of control sick. I felt like a prisoner of my own body. I cried daily because of how much pain and suffering I was in because I felt like such a prisoner of a sick body. We did it. We went to whole foods and we shopped the perimeter of the store and we bought organic and within 30 days my chronic infections went away. I thought the only thing I changed besides, I probably cut out some sugar like accidentally because I wasn’t buying processed food. I’m still eating meat, I’m still eating dairy even. I was eating just fruits, vegetables, meat and I wasn’t even gluten free at the time. I was still eating grains but I was just eating less processed food and cutting out all the pesticides. It just hit me, I’m like, “Pesticides were the reason that I was getting these infections. It was the stressor on my body and in my gut.” When I went organic, that was the biggest shift that happened within 30 days. That’s what had me keep seeing how to heal my body. With food and lifestyle changes and supplements, I healed my type 2 diabetes. My chronic adrenal fatigue went away. I got rid of my polycystic ovarian syndrome. I’m now completely free of that. My numbers are amazing. I get regular bloodwork with my Naturopath. We naturally conceived our child who is almost five and he’s so healthy.

 

[1:00:10] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That is so great.

 

[01:00:11] Ashley James: So that’s what shifting to organic and then shifting lifestyle looking at stress, taking supplements to fill in those nutrient gaps. That’s why I do what I do know because I know my listeners are suffering and I want them to find the answers that they need so that they don’t have to suffer anymore because it’s possible. That healing is possible. That’s why I love the message that you give and what you teach because you’re showing people that they can be free of the suffering of the heartburn or the bloating, of the constipation or the small intestinal overgrowth. That they could be free of it.

 

[01:00:55] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I’ve always been, as much as I can be the type of practitioner that walks his talk because I also was subject to multiple rounds of antibiotics when I was a child. As a teenager and I didn’t realize at that time because I was getting 2 or 3 rounds of antibiotics. Every year the doctors, the pediatricians were telling my parents my immune system is weak. I couldn’t gain weight, I was super thin. I ate probably more than 3,000 calories a day but I was eating cereal with milk in the morning and maybe a sandwich at school or pastry. Then there was breaded dinner and maybe there was ice cream after dinner. A lot of times I used to go and get a milkshake on the way home from school. It’s crazy how much sugar and wheat and dairy that I was eating. I can look back and now say that the multiple rounds of antibiotics was probably the instigator of the dysbiosis of the balance of the good and bad bacteria in my gut. Then lead to leaky gut and allowed me to become sensitive to wheat, gluten and dairy. It was over the years figuring that out because by my 20’s I’ve had IBS and I just thought this is just the way my life is going to be. I’m always going to have sensitive stomach, I’m not going to be able to tolerate a lot of things. I had to be careful when I ate out. I never knew what is causing what.

It wasn’t until I discovered and started making changes in the diet but I was always even though when I was in my medical education and not being taught nutrition I always had a gut intuition, pardon the pun, that nutrition was a big part of the picture. I was always trying to hack, it’s perhaps a little bit selfish on my part but I think it guided a lot of what I’ve strived to learn. Then what I do with my patients was I – just back in my early 20’s wanted to hack, “Why do I get sick so often and how can I not get so sick so often?” I was in medical school, experimenting with my diet. Reduced the amount of dairy in my diet and then immediately noticed that I wasn’t getting sick as often. Without anybody teaching me back then, there was not teaching around dairy and it’s inflammatory effects. I just kind of concluded by being an observer in my own body that dairy was problematic for me and I had to be careful about consuming dairy as much as I loved in my 20’s, ice cream.

 

[01:03:53] Ashley James: Who doesn’t? [Laughter]

 

[01:03:54] Vincent Pedre: I know. It’s still a weakness. Thankfully now, there’s vegan ice creams and coconut –

 

[01:04:01] Ashley James: You can get a vitamix and make your own ice cream.

 

[01:04:04] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Exactly. I’ve made avocado ice cream.

 

[01:04:08] Ashley James: Oh my gosh, that sounds crazy.

 

[01:04:09] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. Over the years, there was one point when I was in my residency training in New York. I was going out with my friends and late nights and eating out and I wasn’t feeling that great and I was dragging. I just told all of them, I’m going to disappear for the next month and I’m going to do some self-care and I went to the supermarket. I bought organic, I started coking for myself more often. No more take out and within, I kid you not, in two weeks I felt so different. Just eating food that was more vital. In 4 weeks, I felt great. At that time, I had also been doing yoga and had started meditating. I was meditating 5 days per week and when I went back, and met up with my friends they looked at me and like, “What did you do? You look totally different.” All I did was reduce my stress by meditating and eating right. That was it. I was listening to your story and thinking, you know, I have a very similar story. But even then, I had not completely hacked the gut issues and it wasn’t until I ran into a functional medicine and started learning functional medicine and understand the role of the gut and the gut microbiome and really the complexity of all that. That I was able to heal my gut. Because of that, I had such a big fascination with gut health and patients who came in with gut problems because we’re really not taught in western medicine all the potential root causes of gut problems. We are taught – let me clarify it.

We’re taught from the perspective of western medicine but we’re not really taught the root root causes which could be yeast overgrowth. Which could be dysbiosis, which could be low stomach acid, which could be not enough leaky gut with damage to the brush boarder in the small intestine then affecting your pancreas ability to produce enzyme because it’s not getting the right signals. I got a much more complex understanding of gut health and all the interconnections and how it’s connected to allergies, asthmas, migraine, auto immune disease and that became a fascination for me and working with gut patients was just something that I enjoyed. Of course, when you enjoy something, you want to do more of that. Just accidentally one gut patient would get better, they would refer a friend. The friend would get better. A friend would refer another friend. It wasn’t like I was out there saying, “I want to be a gut expert.” It was more like, “I’m just pursuing my passion. My passion is helping people heal at the root.” It turned out that had to do with even my own plight growing up with gut issues. That was where my book Happy Gut was born from. Was from my own struggles figuring that out and working with patients and seeing them improve and seeing what a dramatic influence you can make in people’s lives by healing their gut health.

 

[01:07:36] Ashley James: I love it. How long have you been practicing functional medicine?

 

[01:07:43] Dr. Vincent Pedre: My first conference was in 2006 and soon after that, I started learning and I dove into their advanced practice modules starting in 2008. The institute have not had a whole certification program built out and they came out with that over that time period and then I started doing the advance practice modules. Over 10 years that I’m integrating that into my practice. Obviously, you learn it in theory but then you have to practice it, you gain a lot of experience by dealing with a bunch of different patients and scenarios and then as you become more of a recognized gut expert which I am now. You then get the more difficult cases.

 

[01:08:38] Ashley James: Nice. Very cool. So my listeners who have really or the difficult cases, I have listeners out there who feel that they’re complex, can they see you? Do you take consultations over Skype? Or could they come see you in person?

 

[01:08:56] Dr. Vincent Pedre: They could come see me in person. I take very few patients now because as you can imagine, I’ve got a pretty full practice but my plan is to, next year to bring in a functional trained nurse practitioner who can train with me and start to see patients. Because I recognize it’s just funny how you go from not being known to known and then everybody wants to come in and see you and you realize, I just can’t serve everyone. That’s part of the reason why I wrote my book because I realized there are so many people out there who need help that I can’t possibly ever see in my lifetime. Because there’s just – I’m very much into balance and I’m very much into also my own self-care and bringing my best foot forward which means that I don’t work a 12-hour day. I don’t see patient every 15 minutes because I believe in quality over quantity and I think that’s what the people who come see me know that I’m about is I’ll spent significant amount of time with you. To me for any doctor’s practicing functional medicine, it’s a collaborative effort. It’s me and the patient both facing the path into the future together. It not the old paradigm of I’m a fatherly doctor, you come in and I give you this medication and you just take that and you don’t have to do anything else and you’ll be better.

No. I give my patients homework but realizing that it’s impossible for me to see all the people that I would ever want to help in my life and I wanted to have a bigger impact that why I do things like interview with you and give this information for people to hear this and then think maybe they could do things a little bit differently. Or maybe there’s something that they could change that could help them heal or at least start a conversation with their health practitioner with, “What is really going on here? Are we really addressing the root cause?” That’s why I wrote my book because I realized partly honestly I don’t know if you have felt this but even from the early 2000’s, I started getting this feeling inside that I had a book in me that had to be written. I didn’t know what that book was.

If you look at my files in my iPhone, I’ve got so many book ideas that have been written down but it wasn’t until I landed on this idea that was also connected to my own story. That it felt authentic enough for me to put the work in because doing a book is like running a 50-mile mega marathon. It is a toil. It is a labor of love. It is not for the weak hearted. Yes, I mean you could produce a really short book but for me, it was like my manifesto was like me putting all my work everything that I had learned together to teach people how to have healthy gut. Why did I get sidetracked on that?

 

[01:12:41] Ashley James: Oh, well your book, it’s a marathon and you have more books in you. By the way, you’ll definitely going to write more books but that Happy Gut is you’ve poured your passion into it, your over 10 years’ experience of helping people heal their gut but also your own story, healer heal thyself. You healed yourself and you walk the walk.

 

[01:13:10] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You’re always a better healer I think when you have to face your own challenges that have made you human. The hardest thing about being a doctor is being put on the pedestal and people think that you’re like this super human. We were talking about super women and supermoms, in some many ways walking the walk of the doctor sometimes being that super human but we are also human. I have been so grateful in my life for all the challenges that I’ve had that have really condensed me into just being a grounded human and understanding things not just from theory, from learning in the book but from having lived it myself. One thing, I don’t know if you ever watched Grey’s Anatomy?

 

[01:14:04] Ashley James: I do.

 

[01:14:06] Dr. Vincent Pedre: There was an episode where the chief of surgery I think was speaking with the woman doctor that was also in surgery. It was about being a parent and he said, this was I remember seeing this episode when my son was probably two or three years old and he said, “Being a parent makes you a better doctor.” I totally connected with that because having a child was that first moment of, “Wow. It’s not about me anymore. It’s not just about me anymore. It’s about this new life that has arrived.” It really puts you in a place of service. I looked at for me, my work with patients is almost like a in some ways, I almost feel like it’s almost like the service that a priest does. It alike vocation. Sometimes I think of my patients as my sheep. It really does require a great deal of sacrifice on our part but with that sacrifice and kind of tied back into the important or realizing that at some point, the balance can shift too far and you have to come back and look into the mirror and realize, you also need to take care of myself. Put your oxygen ask on first, then put on everyone else’s oxygen mask. Because what you don’t realize is when you’re not doing that, yes, you might be taking care of everyone, you’re not doing it as well as you could if you are in your best light.

 

[01:16:09] Ashley James: Right. We absolutely don’t take care of those we love best if we’re neglecting ourselves just like, I mean it’s funny, people will take care of their car more than they take care of themselves. They’ll make sure it gets an oil change. All the foods are topped of. It’s clean.

 

[01:16:25] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I have patients who will cook an entire dinner for their kids and then just order in for themselves. Or they’ll cook for their dog and then their dogs eats better than they do. Okay, if you’re taking trouble to do that, let’s refocus here. Let’s see how can get care back to self and that was part of the reason that I named the program, when I was trying to come up with an acronym for the program. That would be like the system that I used for healing the gut, I called it Gut C.A.R.E. Care being an acronym for cleanse, activate, restore and enhance. It’s a whole system for healing the gut that I wrote in my book but in the bigger picture it’s also care. Caring for self. I think it’s so important because the commonality I find in patients that come in with gut health issues is a lot of times, they’re really putting themselves last.

 

[01:17:33] Ashley James: Yes. I love it that you started at the beginning of the interview talking about how the first thing you do to help someone get off a medication and heal the gut to the point where they no longer need that crutch is mindset. I think a lot of people will go, “Pfft, mindset. Whatever, okay.” Really that is everything. We can actually create a placebo effect or a nocebo effect based our belief system. Based on our mindset.

 

[01:18:00] Dr. Vincent Pedre: This is a crazy fact. Patients who feel more connected and liked their doctor have better results than patients that don’t.

 

[01:18:12] Ashley James: That’s the nocebo or the placebo effect. If you like your doctor then you think it’s going to work even if you got a sugar pill –

 

[01:18:22] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Just think of the blue zones around the world and the factors that affect the reason that people lived past a hundred and part of it is a sense of community. Being together and that’s a very important part of I think for humans healing is to feel like they’re in community connected. Whether it’s with family, with friends, for some people it’s church. For other people it’s their CrossFit box. Whatever it is. It’s a sense of having community where you feel you belong. I think that’s a very important human need and something we don’t often talk about in health is that importance of community. If you think about it, each individual is a community. We are the this symbiotic organisms that some people argue couldn’t not exist without the metabolic byproducts produced by the gut microbiome because some scientists say there are not enough genes in the body to encode for everything the body needs in order to function optimally. That you also need the microbiome and the genetic pool of the microbiome which is hundred times greater than our own genetic pool to create metabolic byproducts that regulate and help support the body.

That to me is super fascinating because if you only thought that your gut microbiome is one of the most complex eco systems on the planet, think of it that way. How would you treat that? Now that you know that within you, you have this treasure. This really great treasure that is evolved over centuries with us passed on from human to human through our environment. Through our interaction with nature that helps support health or it can be a detriment to health. Depending on circumstances like antibiotics. Over use of antibiotics. How do you treat your body? What would you eat if you know you have this really important internal garden. I think that there is a lot of mindlessness that happens with people. A lot of unintentional eating, they’re not really thinking about how they feel and how things affect them. I think that’s really important.

 

[01:21:19] Ashley James: I was just grabbing a few studies that are printed out on my paper on my desk that’s why I was making some noise because what you said goes exactly with, I love the serendipity of this. I’m holding in my hand some studies on the gut biome and that they’re seeing that the signaling in parasitic nematodes that there’s a psychochemical communication between host and parasite and the indigenous molecular transduction pathways governing the warm development and survival. That was one. The other one was parasites nutrition and immune response in the biology of metabolic tissues but in these, they talk about not only are they talking about negative pathogens, like negative stuff in your gut but basically the gut biome which could have parasites. Not all parasites are worms, right? But parasites are good bacteria, bad bacteria. Anything living in the gut is sending their seeing that they’re sending signals. There’s these studies now that show that they can see that their psycho chemicals being created by whatever it is in your gut. Let’s say you want fast food every day, that’s the gut biome you created. You created the Homer Simpson of gut biomes. That is signaling to you. The gut biome is actually telling you to feed it more fast food because that’s what feeds it.

 

[01:22:57] Dr. Vincent Pedre: And the most blatant example of that that I see in practice is when someone has yeast overgrowth or candida. They have an irrational craving for sugar or for refined carbohydrates. It could be sugar or it could just comfort foods like potatoes, pasta, rice. Yes, that’s another really blatant example of where it’s like who’s in control. Is your brain in control or is your microbiome in the gut in control?

 

[01:23:35] Ashley James: Yes. Who’s craving? Who’s having the cravings? Right. A dear friend of mine is going through a parasite cleanse right now because she was having very strange symptoms around the full moon for about 4 months now and I kept saying, “Dude this is parasites. You’ve got to look at this.” She was having heart palpitations, mood swings and just feeing totally off but it was only during the full moon. Which of course someone might think that’s hormones. But she was like, it was pretty consistent around the full moon so she started a parasite cleanse and she can tell a difference and that is just very interesting that the parasites and even gut dysbiosis can cause crazy symptoms in the body but it an also tell us what to eat to feed it. That’s what I noticed when I started eating whole foods plant based. I didn’t like love vegetable but I admit I hate them and now, when I see kale I actually have a pavlovian’s response. I actually stare salivating. I started getting a little excited. Just like someone might get exited if they see Krispy Kreme donuts which I will have like a revulsion towards now. Not even interested but man if you made me a kale salad, I’m like I’m getting a little happy actually salad my mouth is getting watery just thinking about it. Just because the gut biome I created over the last few years is like super happy with eating that way. I get almost a high off of eating these leafy greens.

 

[01:25:14] Dr. Vincent Pedre: For me, because I travel a lot and sometimes to foreign countries, when you’re missing the amount of greens that I’m used to eating on a regular basis, you started to crave it. It’s almost like you’re  – that’s yet another level of that intuitive awareness where you sense a craving but then you actually honor it. You realize, oh it’s because my body needs this.

 

[01:25:46] Ashley James: Now we’ve got to catch ourselves now because if we’re having that craving for processed sugar of –

 

[01:25:51] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That’s a whole different – I was going to say actually I’m glad that you come back to that because I was going to say that, what I’ve seen with patients and it was amazing because you can take a person who feels like they cannot live without sugar and if you can put them on a sugar cleanse. You take all processed sugars out of the diet and keep them on that. The first day or two they’re going to feel horrible. They’re going to feel like they’re not going to make it through the day. By day 3, they’re a little bit better. By day 4, they’re really not needing sugar and by the end of 7 days, they’re off of sugar.

 

[01:26:34] Ashley James: It’s like getting on heroine.

 

[01:26:36] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. We know sugar has the same effect on the brain as cocaine. It affects the dopamine pathway which is the reward pathway in the brain that makes you feel good when you do something. So, of course. Everyone wants sugar. The interesting thing. I know you don’t eat processed sugar, eat a lot of sugar. I’m the same. I find that I’m also dogmatic but I also allow for fussy boarders because I think that in my own eating because I think if we just are strict all the time, that can get a little too much and that becomes a stressor. You know, I might be travelling and someone offers a dessert but they didn’t tell you if there’s too much sugar. I actually feel horrible. I can’t feel it immediately. My heart rates goes up as soon as I eat it. I have the reverse effect like I’ll have sugar and I’ll realize, you know what, this is not worth it for me. You heard me unwrapping this earlier was my dark chocolate form Peru.

 

[01:27:45] Ashley James: Right. I was like, “Is that a candy wrapper in the background? What was going on?” And you’re like, “Well, let me tell you about my 85% Peruvian dark chocolate.”

 

[01:27:57] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes and that is my go to because it’s low in sugar. It’s not going to bump my blood sugar. It’s not going to give me sugar cravings and it satisfies a little element of sweetness. There’s we were talking about dark chocolate with stevia. You know, sometimes I need that little bit of sweet but I also know if I have something too sweet it’s going to actually feel pretty horrible for me because once you get your body accustomed to being cleaner it actually tells you when you don’t, when you step outside of that.

 

[01:28:33] Ashley James: Yes. Just yesterday we are filming for the Learn True Health home kitchen and we made brownies. Whole food brownies. And it’s sweetened with yams, with sweet potatoes and there’s raw organic cacao powder but when you bake them your whole house smells like brownies. Now they’re not as sweet as store bought brownies because obviously, they’re whole foods but they tastes really good and my son loves them. He thinks they’re the best thing in the world. If you can get a 4-year-old to eat something that’s healthy and love it, oh man, you’re hitting a home run. He likes that. That’s his new go to food. Between that and the chia seed pumpkin pie pudding.

 

[01:29:25] Dr. Vincent Pedre: What is the base for the brownie?

 

[01:25:26] Ashley James: It is yams. I call them sweet potatoes but they’re orange yams. They’re organic. The big bag of them from Costco is really cheap right now and we make them in the instant pot and then we blend them with cacao and vanilla. You can put in some maple syrup if you want. Or stevia if you want. If you need more sweet because sometimes you need more sweet if you’re first of all giving it to people who are neuro adapted to eating no sugar. Just help them transition or if sometimes yams, sometimes they’re really sweet or sometimes they aren’t so you just got to play around basically taste the batter. We just blended it and then we –

 

[01:30:15] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Japanese yams.

 

[01:30:16] Ashley James: Yes. Oh my gosh, seriously. Yes, you can play around with the different kinds of sweet potatoes and yam because some of them are sweeter than the others. Then you bake it for an hour and that creates that brownie crust as wonderful. Very moist and it really does feel like there’s flour. There’s no flour in it.

 

[01:30:37] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That sounds like a dream. Last year I tried and failed. This was my first try to make black bean brownies for the holidays. Needless to say, my family doesn’t share the same zest for healthy renditions of things as I do and I thought they were actually pretty good but they did not.

 

 

[01:31:02] Ashley James: I love black bean brownies but one thing I’d say is, do one can of black beans with between 1 and 2 cups of yams. That really balances it out.

 

[01:31:16] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. To keep it a little more sustenance.

 

[01:31:19] Ashley James: Yes and you can add some vanilla powder in there. There’s a few things you can add in there like some cinnamon. You can play around it and then lots of the cacao powder which has caffeine in it so don’t eat it late at night. I learned that the hard way. I’m like, “Why am I so awake right now?”

 

[01:31:43] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes, I have to be careful because usually my desire for dark chocolate is right after dinner. By the way the benefits of dark chocolate partly and due to the microbiome. They’re processing of the I believe it’s an endemite in the dark chocolate. You need the microbiome to convert the chemical in there to a version that is antioxidant for the body. It’s kind of a little fascinating fact.

 

[01:32:16] Ashley James: That is so fascinating. It’s amazing the microbiome is needed to convert so much of what our body needs. It really is that garden in our body. We have the most complex garden inside us. It’s somewhere between I heard between 4 and 6 pounds of bacteria living inside us. I have so many more questions for you. We have to have you back on the show. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s been so much fun.

 

[01:32:43] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I know. How did this fly? How did this go by?

 

[01:32:44] Ashley James: I know. It’s just amazing.

 

[01:32:45] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You’ve got to have me back after I get back from Africa.

 

[01:32:48] Ashley James: Please. Yes.

 

[01:32:50] Dr. Vincent Pedre: The Hadzas, that’s going to be so wild.

 

[01:32:52] Ashley James: I’m so excited. When are you going next year?

 

[01:32:55] Dr. Vincent Pedre: February.

 

[01:32:56] Ashley James: Awesome. Okay. I need to get you on the calendar when you get back and after you’ve recovered from the wonderful trip. While you’re still on the glow of how amazing it was I have to get you back on the show. I think I’d be wonderful. I’m definitely going to make sure that links to everything that Dr. Vincent Pedre does is in the show notes of today’s podcast at Learntruehealth.com. Dr. Vincent’s book, Happy Gut making sure the link is there as well. We should all get it for Christmas and give it to each other. What a great Christmas gift. Let’s all give each other the gift of a healthy gut.

 

[01:33:28] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That sounds like a great idea. [Laughter]

 

[01:33:32] Ashley James: Awesome. Of course, your website is happygutlife.com. You also have PedreMD.com. That’s P-E-D-R-E-M-D.com

 

[01:33:45] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That was my practice website.

 

[01:33:46] Ashley James: Got it. You know I see you hiring five nurse practitioners and maybe like 12 certified health coaches. You should just hire a bunch at once and train this whole team, it’ll save you time. Instead of training one person at a time you should just hire a whole team.

 

[01:34:03] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. Well guess what, you’re ahead of me but I have already shot the video for and I’m going to be rolling out probably quarter two of 2020, a health coach certification in Happy Gut.

 

[01:34:22] Ashley James: Awesome. Well you know what, I’ve got a ton of health coaches as listeners especially a lot of IIN graduates. I’m an IIN graduate as well. I know a lot of my listeners who’d be really interested because we have a lot of health coaches and a lot of holistic health professionals that are listeners that would love to take your course. When you come back and tell us about your trip, you’ll also going to tell us about your Happy Gut health coaching training.

 

[01:34:50] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. Can I briefly end with a funny story?

 

[01:34:54] Ashley James: Yes, please do.

 

[01:34:56] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yes. I was just with my family in Washington DC for Thanksgiving. It’s my sister with my niece and nephews and obviously, the kids, a lot of their high school friends get back there. My niece is 25 years old. So she was with a friend of hers and she was raving about this book and how it changed her life and how she had IBS and now she’s followed the diet plan and it took away all her gut issues. They’re out at a bar and she pulls our my book, and it’s like, it has notes and bent pages and she’s got marking everywhere and she says, “I never travel without this book.” She didn’t know that my niece was related to me and my niece tells her, “You know, that’s my uncle?” Because my sister she has a different last name and so she says, “You know, my uncle’s in town if you want to meet him.” and she’s like, “Oh no, I don’t think I could handle it I think I would faint or something.” I thought, it’s so funny, I told her, “Yes, if she wants to meet me. Yes, I’m in town.” I thought, that why I did this. To help people that I probably maybe would never have the opportunity to meet but to be able to change their lives in that way. That’s why I did what I did. That’s why I continue to do things like these, be on podcasts and interviews. I just want to help as many people as possible.

 

[01:36:45] Ashley James: I love it. That’s my mission too. We’re right in alignment. We have a really active Facebook group, the listeners. The Learn True Health Facebook group. I know that my listeners after they get your book and they start reading it and loving it and writing notes in it and everything. They’ll start talking about it in the Facebook group and we’ll start having some wonderful discussion about it. I can’t wait to have you back on the show. Thank you so much. This has been wonderful. I love this topic. Can’t wait to continue exploring happy gut and gut health and how to balance ourselves naturally in our next interviews. I can’t wait to hear all about your trip. Have a very safe and very enlightening trip. I can’t wait to connect with you when you come back.

 

[01:37:31] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I look forward to it. Thank you.

 

Outro:

Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program.

 

Get Connected With Dr. Vincent Pedre

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Happy Gut Life

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Happy Gut

Dec 10, 2019

Get the CBD Holiday Special for Learn True Health listeners!

Go to MedTerraCBD.com and use the coupon code lthholiday

to get the extra bottle added to your order of $50 or more. 

 


Listen to my interview with the founder of MedTerra CBD:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/cbd

 


Kellyann's website:

https://www.platinumenergysystems.ca

15% off LTH discount on PES


Music:

 


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"Uniq - Japan" is under a Royalty Free license. Photo of the license: http://bit.ly/2sTETUQ Music promoted by BreakingCopyright: https://youtu.be/MAiHpRUbc0k

 

EMF And Heavy Metal Detox

https://www.learntruehealth.com/emf-heavy-metal-detox

Highlights:

  • Medterra CBD, medterracbd.com
  • Platinum Energy Systems, platinumenergysystems.ca
  • 5G, heavy metals, and WiFi, and EMF exposure
  • Exposure to EMF, heavy metals, high acidity is clogging up the lymph system
  • Three primary metal toxicity: lead, mercury, and aluminum
  • Edema from heavy metals
  • Cells, organs, and tissues, thoughts, and emotions have a specific frequency
  • Manmade electromagnetic frequency
  • Create a healing environment inside and outside your body
  • Set the tone within your being to vibrate at this higher frequency
  • Take mastery over your emotions and your thoughts because we are all exposed to all this content every day
  • Health is putting the right stuff in and getting the wrong stuff out.
  • Illness is putting the wrong stuff in and not getting the wrong stuff out

 

In today’s episode, Kellyann Andrews and I will discuss and share about what EMF does to our body and how we’re exposed to it. We will also tackle heavy metal toxicity and how we can get rid of it to promote a healing environment outside and inside our body.

 

[00:00:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast.

I’m excited for you to hear today’s interview with Kellyann Andrews. She’s back on the show with us. She’s been here for a few episodes teaching about heavy metal detoxification, and how to alkalize the body, and how to test our pH. She’s shared so much wonderful advice in past episodes. So we’re continuing our great conversation with her about detoxification and promotion of optimal health.

To promote your optimal health, I have wonderful news. I just heard from my favorite CBD company, Medterra CBD, that’s medterracbd.comI interviewed the founder a while back. You can find that episode by going to learntruehealth.com and search CBD to find my interview with the founder of Medterra CBD. He shares how they source their hemp to make sure that it’s organic. And the different processes it goes through to extract the CBD in the healthiest way possible. Now, it is not a whole hemp plant extract. Meaning, you will pass a drug test if you take it because there is no THC in it. It is pure CBD.

I’ve used a lot of different companies trying out different types of CBD from cannabis plants and from hemp plants. I really like their CBD. I don’t suffer, fortunately, with chronic pain but I do. notice that for me it really calms me down. Sometimes I get really wound up after a great interview and I need to wind down a little bit. It really calms me down. And I could see their CBD being a fantastic replacement for alcohol. If you’re the type of person that wants to come home and have a glass of wine at night, I can see this being absolutely very healthy replacement. Because as we know, alcohol is a poison. It’s a toxin for the liver. And over time it does do liver damage. It also drains our resources and drains our minerals in our body. Whereas, CBD is so healthy for the nervous system. And that’s something that we’ve discussed in our episodes in our CBD interviews. So you could go to learntruehealth.com, type in CBD, learn more about CBD.

But if you’re interested in it for pain management, for sleep, or for stress reduction, then check it out. Go to medterracbd.com and use the promo code they gave us just for December. It ends December 31st. When you purchase $50 or more, they’re going to throw in a free 250 milligram tincture. So you get a free bottle which is so cool because you can throw that in your purse, or in your car, or you can gift it to a friend. So for every purchase, you’re going to receive an additional bottle by using a coupon code LTHHoliday. Our normal coupon code is LTH. And that gives you the listener discount. And then right now we’re getting this additional promotion which is LTHHoliday, all one word. So go to medterracbd.com and put in the coupon code LTHHoliday. Check it out.

If you want to just to try and see what’s the hype, what’s CBD all about it. It gives me the same amount of relief that, like, a glass of wine would. But it doesn’t create a buzz in your head. It doesn’t make you stoned in any way. It doesn’t make you feel high in any way. It just is wonderfully calming for the nervous system. And a lot of people have reported that it’s really helped them with their pain, and also with their anxiety, and also with their sleep, which is excellent. Just a wonderful news.

Than you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing the Learn True Health Podcast with those you love so that we can help as many people as possible. If you want to join the email list, go to learntruehealth.com, wait for the pop up. It happens after about five seconds. Put in your email. I promise not to spam you. I just send a few emails a month. And also join the Facebook Group. It’s an active wonderful community. We’re all helping each other answering each other’s health questions. If you just want a tribe of really great and positive people that love helping each other, then you absolutely will love the Learn True Health Facebook Group. So you can just search Learn True Health in Facebook or go to learntruehealth.com/group and you will be able to join us. I can’t wait to see you there. Awesome.

So remember, medterracbd.com, using the coupon code LTHHoliday. Get your free bottle. And let me know what you think. You can chat about it with all the other listeners in the Facebook Group. Or you can email me, ashley@learntruehealth.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Enjoy today’s interview.

Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 396.

I’m very happy to have back on the show with us Kellyann Andrews. This is your fifth time being here, Kellyann. You were in Episode 292, 293, 329, and 330. Kellyann is the co-founder of Platinum Energy Systems. And their website is platinumenergysystems.ca. I love your – we call the PES for short, right? I love the PES. Many listeners have – I think, like, over 60 or something listeners have purchased a PES and have been sharing with their friends and family. I’ve shared it with many of my friends with outstanding results, really interesting results.

I originally – and please, listeners, go back and check out the first episode, 292, because I share my serendipitous experience of how Kellyann and I met shortly after I interviewed Dr. Klinghardt. And I was on a mission to figure out how to detox my body of heavy metals. Because I realized that my liver – my chronic liver inflammation one of the problems was heavy metal toxicity. And I was looking at all the healthy things I could do to remove heavy metals in the safest way possible. And Dr. Klinghardt says in our interview, that this ionic foot bath is a thing he highly recommends. And I thought, “Man, I really want to get one of those.” And then that’s when I met Kellyann. And it was just, like, perfect timing. And it turned out that, Kellyann, your system is the same one that Dr. Klinghardt uses in his clinics to help very ill patients regain their health through removing these heavy metals in a safe way.

So I started using the PES. It has to be over a year that I’ve been using it now. I should go back and look at the exact date I started using it. And I noticed right away really positive results for myself. My liver inflammation went away. I no longer taste heavy metals in my mouth. I was having issues, my immune system was reacting to the heavy metals as well. And I’m not having those issues anymore. So it is a shotgun approach because I also use the Sunlight and Sauna, and I soak in magnesium, and I eat chlorella, and I take supplements and I exercise, and I juice, and I eat eight cups of vegetables a day. You know, I do all kinds of things for my health. So I’m not saying it’s just one thing but I did notice that what really helped is when I added the PES system to my life, I got great results.

So this episode though is not strictly about the PES system. I’m just in prefacing the wonderful guest we have on today. I wanted to share that I love the work that you do, Kellyann. I love the PES. And I know that my listeners who also have one would agree. As I’ve heard from many of them that it makes a big difference. But today you’re here to talk about something that I think instills a lot of fear in people. And there’s a lot of fear around 5G, heavy metals, and WiFi, and EMF exposure. Especially when we start to look into it and realize that there is a really big problem.

And that’s something that Dr. Klinghardt talked about in our interview. He talked about how he’s able to reverse autism. And he does it regularly. And one thing he says is the first thing he does with autistic children is he gets them away from WiFi, because the WiFi vibrates at a certain frequency that vibrates the heavy metals in their brain. And it’s like putting their brain in a microwave. And it, like, short circuits the brain. And when he removes autistic children from WiFi – 100 percent removes them out of WiFi, there’s a difference in their behavior. And then he gets them on a gentle heavy metal detox. And that’s his next step. Including the PES.

Just recently, I had a friend come over who has a son who has developmental delays. And it’s very difficult to understand what he’s saying. He’s four years old. And when he speaks,

you really want to understand him because he has such enthusiasm. But really, I rarely understand a word he says. And we have video footage. His mom filmed it. After one session in the PES, he spoke clearly. And the mom was beside herself. She had never heard him speak so clearly. He was able to communicate. And it was just amazing. That was after his first session. So I’ve seen wonderful things happen when we help the body to pull heavy metals out and detox.

Now, Kellyann, I know that you want to make sure that we start today’s interview by setting a tone. Not a fear based tone. But a tone of hope and bringing in actionable steps and showing the listeners the things that we can do in our daily life to support our body’s ability to heal itself and to protect our body. So I want to make sure that you get a chance to set this tone. I know that you don’t want to be fear based and you want to make sure the listeners feel that they can do something. That they’re in the driver’s seat of their health.

 

 

[00:11:04] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. Exactly. You know, I’ve watched as we all have and listened to so many podcasts especially around health issues. And there’s a lot of them that just really portray almost a doomsday kind of mentality and mindset. By the end of it, it’s sort of like watching a horror show. You just don’t feel good. That’s where I love being with you because you just set such a different tone. And really focus on the solution orientation and what people can do to decrease the fear. Because the fear has everything to do with hyper acidifying your body causing a sympathetic nervous system overdrive response to fight and flight. A trapped feeling you’re in the box and there’s no doors, all that kind of thing. And I think there’s just a huge amount of that going on in the world today. And people are just stressed beyond their capacity. And people are having meltdowns on not only physical levels which we’re seeing if anybody ever has to go to emergency. I mean, the poor people who work in the emergency rooms now, they need to get treatment almost because they are so overwhelmed by all that’s coming at them. But it’s not just on that level. It’s on the emotional and the mental level as well.

So in this podcast I want to give your listeners the insights of what I have. I was the field biologist at age five, six collecting the tadpole eggs to watch them change to tadpoles and then the frogs. So I’ve always had a watcher kind of interest and curiosity and fascination. And so during the journey of my own detoxification of heavy metals and other toxic content, then expanding that into other practitioners and their patients and then family members, and just sort of the ripple effect outward. And then working with medical clinics all over North America. I began to see a pattern occurring in what was happening, like the Platinum Energy System seem to somehow be hitting a reset button for people. And that in itself fascinated me. But what occurred as we went through this journey of watching people’s recovery was the pattern that started to emerged, what I’ve watched when they had their sessions.

Initially, they released a lot of lymphatic clog up. So this fatty substance, sometimes it almost looked like molten lava being released on the surface of the water would come out. And until that content came out, the heavy metals didn’t. But when that content came out, like in the previous podcast I told about a woman who came to us in a total state of dimension. Didn’t know where she was. And I don’t know who she was. But she released like an inch or two of goop into the base and that looked like chicken soup stuck in the fridge overnight. But once that content came out, boom, out came some other content. In which then we began to realize that all of these patients were suffering from some version of what the Chinese called stagnation, where there was a lack of flow of energy. And that the various circulatory systems in the body were clogging up. Whether it was a systemic entire broad view of the arterial system or whether it was a localized issue of sinus congestion. So wherever the congestion was, then that’s where the issue was primarily showing up. But I always use the analogy of an aquarium. And if it’s in one corner of the aquarium, it’s through the whole aquarium. So then what we began to see was just like if you have a lack of exercise, the blood and the length don’t flow. And that is so vital. But behind the stagnation was a high level of pH. And so the things that we saw in the pattern of the clients history was that they all came to us usually with mold, microbe, and parasite issues, infections. But behind that was heavy metals. And behind that was an exposure to EMF. And that combination along with high acidity was clogging up the lymph system.

In the podcast we talked about previously the issue with copper and nickel. So the listeners can just go back there and begin to see how those are complicating human physiology. But in our testing, what we did was we were fascinated to see what was being released and what was the content. So when we did the water analysis, we ran the system with no feet and then we ran with four different patients. So we compared the control with no feet in the water as opposed to patients. And so for example, in terms of lead, one of the things that we’re seeing is just the majority of people are coming to us with lead, mercury, and aluminum toxicity are the three primary ones. So in the control, what we saw was lead was 1.7. But the last patient who was a commercial artist, she had 30 units of lead released in one session. So then we looked at the blood. So we had a 50 year old male come to us who had the flu. And his pH was 6 at the beginning. But at the end, it was 7.5. And he released a lot of heavy metals. But you can see in the photographs of the blood that he had total stagnation in his blood. His blood cells were all stacked together. But yet after the session, they opened up and started to move and you could actually see the difference in the red blood cells.

 

 

[00:17:31] Ashley James: You mean live blood cell analysis. Just for people who don’t know what it means in the photos of his blood. And I’ve had live blood cell analysis done back in ’99. It was fascinating. And I wish it was more readily used because I think it would be so convincing to go to the doctor’s office. They take a prick of your blood and they put it under a microscope and they project it onto a computer. And you can see right there, your red blood cells and the health of your red blood cells. You see so much just by looking. When red blood cells are stuck together, they get clumped stuck together like a Congo line. And you can see the way that they’re stuck together, they’re not functioning correctly. They’re not able to fully release oxygen and grab on to what they need to grab on to take stuff away from the cells. They’re not able to really bring the nutrients to the cell. The blood isn’t able to work correctly. So you can see it’s like sludge. You can see big fat globule. You can see Candida floating around. You can see how the white blood cells are responding.

And it’s interesting, if you eat a cheeseburger and an hour later go and get your blood cell analysis done, you can see your blood turns to sludge and there’s big globs of fat floating around in your blood. And then if you do stuff like this kind of frequency work, I’ve seen live blood cell analysis done after being on a Beemer mat, where they use specific frequencies or a PES system using the PES detox system. That the blood looks and acts differently just minutes after, like before and after the sessions. And it lasts. It’s a lasting effect that lasts all day. But you see that the red blood cells are no longer clump together. That the cells are more viscous. Everything is moving and able to function correctly.

 

 

[00:19:43] Kellyann Andrews: And you know what makes that difference, Ashley? Electricity. So what happens with all diseases – and this is why the photographs are so fabulous – because it showed what the Chinese called that stagnation, which is what you’re just talking about. The blood cells all stuck together. So the reason they were stuck together is because they had no electricity. And so once the heavy metals were removed, now the blood completely opened up and moved. It was just so beautiful. I mean, another artist looked at and she said, “I don’t know anything about blood.” But she said this top picture, which was a picture of them all stuck together, like as you said, salmon roe or salmon eggs, she said, “That’s a picture of chaos.” And then she saw the bottom picture after the session and after a series of sessions, she said, “My God, that’s the picture of harmony.” And that’s why I want to bring this this topic in because I’m going to show you why that is occurring in terms of heavy metals and EMF.

 

 

[00:20:49] Ashley James: Now, to clear up a confusion. EMF is electromagnetic frequency. And you’re saying that the energy from a PES, for example, it’s a positive – it’s a healing frequency. But that the EMF we get from being around electronics is a harmful frequency.

 

 

[00:21:09] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. And I’m going to go into full detail about that just a little later on. But just to mention the last one – because this was really significant – was we then tested urine. A medical clinic that we were working with had two patients that tested the urine. And neither of these patients had any intervention, which is really interesting before because that’s an unusual case. But the first male had lead at 73 – sorry – at 23. And after six sessions had a 50 percent reduction. But lead on the second male was at 79, which was an astronomical score. And after ten sessions, released 50 percent. But what we watched was how the pH change in all of those cases with all those patients.

Now, what’s interesting about lead – I don’t know if you realize this – but I was quite shocked when I checked into it. Lead pipes – at least in Canada – were not outlawed until 1975. Like, that is so close to where we live now. I mean, you know, it’s not that many years ago. But no lead soldering in the pipes wasn’t outlawed until 86.

 

 

[00:22:34] Ashley James: So many of us could be living in homes with lead pipes or lead soldering.

 

 

[00:22:38] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. And the person that released the 30 units of lead into the base and in one session, she was a commercial artist and did stained glass. What do you use to hold the glass together? Lead soldering. And so then you could see it. So now we had another patient, it was sent to us from clinic. Now, she was in her 50s and she had Lyme. And she had really severe pain in her face. And she said the pain in her face was almost at a constant five or six but it had spikes up to ten. And she felt very nauseated and her pH was six. And she had had a lot of dental fillings and a lot of dental work done. And when they tested her, she had high levels of mercury, lead, and aluminum. But she said – and we see this often with heavy metals – because you see heavy metals in the body, because they are heavy. Of course, gravity takes them down to the feet. She said when she walked on her feet, she felt like she was walking on glass. And her whole body was tight. And her description of her own body was that she felt like she was constipated through her whole body. And her ankles were swollen with edema. Well, of course, heavy metals when they joined together make a perfect log jam Beaver Dam. And so then they totally create the flow of blood through the body to be logged jammed. And then of course, it just builds up and becomes edema. But she said that her brain felt like a veil was in front of her all the time. And she had very poor level of memory at the time. They discovered that she lived in a house with mold and she actually had to leave the house and move and leave all her possessions behind. We have many patients that have that, where they can’t even take anything out of their house because it’s all contaminated. But here’s the key, is that she grew up on a farm with well water. And that iron content was so immense that she couldn’t wear white because it would stain all her white clothes orange.

So that’s where her original contact was. But after she had a session and a series, she released those heavy metals. And she said that her water smells like iron. And her feet weren’t sore anymore and they’re lighter. And she could feel the difference in her feet that she didn’t have that stagnation occurring anymore. And I mean, her energy levels sore. But the greatest thing was to listen to her before and after. And that’s what I just absolutely love is all these people who are liberated. I mean, she sounded so joyful and perky. She sounded like a chirping Robin.

Now, when you talked about Dr. Klinghardt before, he is very keenly focused, of course, as you say, on the electromagnetic sensitivities of people. And he ends up with people that are so extreme in the sensitivity that a lot of these people have a hard time detoxifying because they want to overwhelm so easily. But there is a huge correlation with electromagnetic frequencies affecting them with those high metals in their body. And they all seem to have -all the ones that come to us from Dr. Klinghardt’s clinics is they all have that mold exposure and the heavy metals. There’s a huge correlation there. And so the recovery started to occur when the heavy metals were released. And so we just sort of watched this pattern of stagnation and hyperacidity disappear once these heavy metals came out of the body. And they’re so affecting the central nervous system of the human body.

I mean, the artists who had 30 y units of lead released in the session, she came in walking on a cane. Her mobility, I mean, she was just like a stiff robot when she came in. But I had to run out to the car to give her cane afterwards because she forgot. She forgot her cane. That was so funny.

But I want to give you an example of a city – a small town, actually, that’s in the United States that will not be named. But in this city – and we won’t name the company either. But there’s a huge chemical company in this town. And this chemical company, as we know, is just the source of a lot of not only bad chemistry, but heavy metals. And also of course, then a lot of these companies are having to use sophisticated technologies. And so they’re a big emitter of electromagnetic frequencies. So in this town, they are the main employer in this town. And everybody in the town is either connected with it by being employed by them or family members employed or somehow there’s a connection back to them. But the whole entire town is sick. So this clinic came to us with the, focus on detoxifying their people in the town. And so people started coming in for sessions to get detox with Platinum Energy. And the patients all started having different recoveries in all different systems of the body. And so that was sort of the fascination.

But if you go back to the concept of the heavy metals, the hyper acidity, and the stagnation, their symptoms are just showing up where the sites of stagnation are. So for example, one woman who had a thyroid issue. Sso the glands and the organs of the bodies get clogged up with this content. And then, of course, it can’t function properly. So once you started to detox and the heavy metals came out, her scores on her thyroid improved. Her brain, she said, felt like it was working better. She feels better in general and looks better. But what was interesting was that the men and women that are coming in, they’re now thinking clear. They’re not as cloudy or foggy. They’re feeling lighter. And their feet are feeling lighter. And they’re very, very relaxed. Now, I’m going to tie this all in with the science later as to why these people are experiencing these very specific symptoms to begin with and then why the releases are related.

And so the clinic told me that they’re all leaving feeling revitalized and things like joints aren’t hurting. The joint pain is diminishing and they’re no longer got restless legs syndrome. I mean, how many people do you hear about restless leg syndrome? And that’s hugely related to stagnation, heavy metals clogging up the arterial system in the legs. And neuropathy, we talked about that already. So here’s an example, people need to realize that, for example, we had a husband come to us who was a welder. So of course, a welder is dealing with metals all day, right? Well, his wife when their blood tests were taken – I mean, when their urine challenge tests were done – now, that’s a really good point by the way. People will go and have their blood tested for heavy metals. Now, it will show up an acute exposure in the blood. Like, if they just had something happened and one of these mining disasters where the wall breaks and all the content comes down into the city or into the water or whatever. So that’s an acute exposure. But what happens when the people get it chronically is that they got to test the urine. And so when you test the urine – both husband and wife were tested – she had as much heavy metals as he had because she washed his uniforms in the family laundry.

 

 

[00:31:24] Ashley James: So how did you figure that one out?

 

 

[00:31:27] Kellyann Andrews: Well, because of the fact – I’ve got this investigator mind. And so I was like, the fact that she had as much as him and she didn’t do the welding and yet he did, there was some form of pass it forward, which wasn’t a good story. And so then I was like – I just asked her, “Are you washing this uniforms?” And she said yeah. And so then it was being put in with all the clothes and it was just contaminating the next person.

 

 

[00:32:00] Ashley James: And they both were very high?

 

[00:32:01] Kellyann Andrews: They were very high in the metals that he was working with – in the exact metals he was working with. And so we see this a lot in industry where people are coming to us. I remember one person who was working in a factory in Calgary and it was pop cans, so aluminum. She was so full of aluminum. She was like off the chart. And she was totally debilitated. I mean, absolutely debilitated. But as she started to unravel the extreme levels of heavy metals, her health started to come – rebound.

So we had a stockbroker who came to us. Now, you think – I always ask people right up front what is their industry so that I can start to see where the toxicology issues are in their lives. So this man was a stockbroker. So boom, immediately up comes, “Okay. Lots of exposure to electrical.” I mean, I don’t know if you ever been on a stock broker room. But they’ve got the band thing go on across the ceiling that’s telling what all the numbers are. They’re all in this small room with, God knows, how many computers going off at the same time, phone’s going off, everybody’s on a cell phone walking around. It’s just got to be an electrical nightmare in those kind of rooms. So what happened was eight years before he came to us, he had a complete nervous system breakdown. And when they analyzed his metal levels, he had high mercury because we’ve been having a lot of dental work done plus he had a lot of lead. What had happened was that he had the experience of really strong current running through his entire body. But he said it created a violent sensation. And his heart was beating completely out of rhythm. And when he tested his pH and the before session it was six. And I had him test his urine as well and his urine was 5.5 and like norm. The blood should be 7.35 to 7.45. So we’re seeing a huge correlation with these people with low level levels of alkalinity but high levels of acidity. So he has a series of sessions. Now, he feels lighter, he’s more flexible. He released – what I always jokingly say which isn’t so great really – but it’s the mother lode of heavy metals.

But after this oily content came out, so he was all clogged up. So again, stagnation. So the lymph system gets all clogged up.

Now, a lot of people are doing diets in which they’re doing a lot of animal protein and they’re also doing high fats. Well, it amazes me in our modern times that we don’t learn from our history. But the Pritikin diet, I mean, Pritikin himself didn’t last on it. But it clogs them up. And so they get clogged up in the lymphatic system. And we see this hugely especially with the – you know, we need protein. Granted. I agree absolutely really need protein way more than we’re eating all these carbs. But too much protein especially from an animal source and too much oil is completely logged jamming the lymphatic system. So that’s where with his heavy metal content and high levels of acidity were hugely affecting him. So after a series of sessions and releasing this heavy metals, boing, his urine comes up to a 7 and so does his saliva. Now, he’s sleeping deeper, his energy levels up, his stamina is up, his mood is up, he feels mellow, and he’s more present and alert.

And wait to see how this ties in with the electrical system of the body and the EMF and all of that together. So I’m going to get to that. But I want people to understand there is a pattern here that’s emerging. So now we have people that have a very high level of electromagnetic sensitivity. These people can’t go near computers .They can’t use phones, especially cell phones. So we had a patient who was sent to us who if she touched a wire, her heart would go into extreme palpitations. In other words, beat very, very fast. But the great thing was – and she knew she knew how much heavy metal she had in her body. So she knew she couldn’t go near anything electric. But once she released those heavy metals, a month later, she could touch the wire and she had no heart palpitations. And she was so joyful.

Because people when they get in these states of health, as you’ve seen and experienced, and we’ve all experienced, is the trouble is when you get into – what I call – a low tide position. You become very fearful. And it’s a now experience. But the human body when not happy, gives very strong signals. And the trouble with the human thought form or mindset is that then you project that to be eternity. That you’re always going to feel this. And if there’s one message that I could get across today, is to realize it’s just a moment in time. And the fact that it continues, if it’s more than a moment in time, is because of the body is clogged up and it needs to release this content. But once you release the content, rejuvenation occurs. But in these states have the debilitating, degeneration is occurring. But that is not an eternal position. It’s just a temporary focus if you address the core cause.

 

 

[00:38:30] Ashley James: I noticed that when I did – because I’ve taken the PES machine and used it with many of my friends. And I noticed that the first few sessions were thick black tar that when we were done in the session, it would be very frothy and it would be oily. And this is stuff that came out of their feet. What is it? What is this stuff that’s coming out of our feet?

 

 

[ 00:39:01] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. Well, it’s the same content that would come out of the colon or the urine. We’ve just created a different door of exit. So what we’ve done is we’ve gone directly to accessing it straight out of the lymph system. But the body is intelligent. The whole discovery process – and it was just such a an interesting journey of trying to determine and be able to answer your question – was what was occurring here? Why were some people experiencing complete relief on a sinus issue or a joint issue or digestive issue or a bone issue or whatever? So it’s like how can this technology knowing exactly what it is that the body needs? Well, it’s the body knowing. So the technology joins with the body wisdom. And your body has thousands of years of wisdom on how to survive. It is absolutely completely program for survival. And if there’s anything that I could get also across today is to test it to trust – trust and also test – you might as well test it too – the intelligence of your body to give you the signals that it needs to tell you whether something is good or bad for you. Well, that’s exactly what’s happening in the process of release, is the body knows what is most toxic at this time, which is most running interference with its metabolism, its ability to function. So it will release that per session. The body’s wisdom is understanding we are just creating a new outlet for which the content can be released.

 

 

[00:40:47] Ashley James: So after the first – it depends on the person, I’ve noticed. But after the first one to three sessions, the water changes. And I’ve done it with – it’s not the machine. It’s, like, with each array. I know it’s not because if I run the array in just plain water with a little bit of salt like you’re supposed to without feet in it, it’s different. I noticed that for the first three sessions that someone does. It’s like this weird frothy water. And then after a while, it becomes clearer and clearer and clearer. And you said that even when the water is clear and doesn’t have the oily frothy film that’s coming out of us, that when you have the water tested that they see that there’s still high levels of lead, mercury, or aluminum coming out of the people. Because we don’t necessarily can see those particles in the water.

 

 

[00:41:42] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that’s the thing is people try to – especially the imitation models are all into the look of the water. And so we completely try to diminish that whole fascination. It’s like how does your body feel as a result of that session? But you’re right, the content will change over time. Now, when you have the lighter purges, that is usually current levels of toxicity, especially hyper acidity. So what we noticed with people are really releasing a lot of acid in the session and usually heavy metals with that, is that – I don’t know if you ever noticed the feet exfoliating, the dead skin coming off of the feet. That’s when you know you’ve had a really big acid download into the water. But that’s why we tested the pH to see then how pH is rebounded. And usually in those cases, you can see it.

But I had a dentist phone me up the other day. I always get the greatest questions coming at me. And she goes, “Why was it that at the beginning of the session, the patient’s pH was 7. But at the end of the session, it was 5?” Because people were expecting it to start at 5 and end at 7 t the end of the session. And I said, “Well, that’s because whatever they ate or drank before – ” because she’s a holistic dentist and she’s dealing with lots of supplements and nutrients and alkalizer. I said, “Whatever they ate or drank before they came in for a session, hyper alkalized them so it reborns their alkalinity. But that’s not their native score. Their native score, their real score was that after score. So 5 was what they had.” And that’s what we’re classically seeing with all of these sick people is they’re down in the 5 and 6 range on pH when they first come to us. And they’re just, like, on their knees with some kind of issue in the body.

 

 

[00:43:51] Ashley James: Right. And then in our past interviews, you’ve talked about these test strips which are so affordable that you can use is to test your saliva and your urine pH. And you explained in a previous interview exactly how to test your pH in the morning and then throughout the day and to understand what it means. And it’s a good indicator of where your body is right now.

 

It’s funny, the first time we used the test trips, my husband had just eaten a big glass of blueberries. And so of course, his pH was, like, 8. It was perfect. It was like the best pH ever. And then he had a big smile on his face. But you’re right, whatever we eat or drink can affect the pH, whether we took our supplements or ate some food that was alkalizing. So it’s best to do it several hours away from food or first thing in the morning to get a baseline of where we are. And it’s interesting though that it changes. I’ve seen pH change for the positive after people have done a session.

But let’s get into this idea of how EMF is affecting us. Because I know you’re painting a picture. I know you’ve been preparing us mentally for understanding what you’re here to teach us today.

 

 

[00:45:18] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. So that’s why if we just keep in that idea of the stagnation and the cells being all stuck together because they didn’t have any electricity. So that correlates with hyper acidity. So that’s where the tie into that is. But it also ties into heavy metals. But then will lead into how the energy in the body is affected externally by external sources as well. So of course, we know the body is made out of atoms. Now these atoms produce [inaudible 00:45:50] and receive electricity. And there’s a very specific frequency for health. All of our cells, organs, and tissues, and even your thoughts and emotions have a specific frequency. So they create as a result of that frequency an electromagnetic field. And so we’ve all seen pictures of that energy field that is emitted from beyond the physical skin. So there’s an energy field that’s emitted. And actually, I saw just this morning on something where when the astronauts got out of the shuttle on to the moon, that there was this glow of light around the astronaut. And so it’s actually portraying that electromagnetic field. But even things like chanting which is really interesting. And of course, that’s taking energy into the body through the oxygen. But even chanting something like Om, O-M, will actually create a Mandala pattern around the body and they’ve been able to see that. So what happens is the body requires certain things. It requires water, minerals, a flow as opposed to stagnation, and a pH of 7.3 to 7.5 – I mean – sorry – 7.45.

So now if you start to think of the body as an energy field, and just for an example, think about a tuning fork. When you ding the first tuning fork – so you got two tuning forks. Ding the first one and it vibrates at whatever that frequency is. Then you bring it up against the second tuning fork and you’re not dinging the second tuning fork. You’re just holding the vibrating first fork near the second one. The second one will start vibrating at the same frequency. So it synchronizes to the first tuning fork. Now, we just begin to realize that the human body is the same as the tuning fork. That our internals – this is an expression I coined – how our internals are affected by our externals. So now we look at things like solar flares and geomagnetic activity on the earth. So solar flares cause an imbalance in the brain and hearts synchronicity.

So I don’t know – did you know this, Ashley? I found this out recently. And I was quite astounded. We all think of the brain as sort of the control tower at the airport. And it’s giving off all of the signals to the airplanes kind of thing, you know, the messages in the body. So we think of the brain as the major communicator in the body. But they found that in actual fact, the heart is communicating more to the brain than the brain is to the heart.

 

 

[00:49:15] Ashley James: Yes. Yes. Something like – I heard that recently that the brain receives between six and ten more signals in that it puts out.

 

 

[00:49:29] Kellyann Andrews: I just thought that was so fascinating. And so, to me, that is so classic. Because I mean, you and I operate at the physical level, like we all do. But my fascination is to go up a few levels to the spiritual and to see how that correlates. So the heart, of course, in western medicine is the center of everything happening. Granted if your heart is not pumping, then nothing’s happening. So the heart is the center of the energetic aspect of the body. And so define that the heart is the one who’s the master communicator, I just thought was so brilliant.

So basically, what happens though is that solar flares – to bring it back to the energy level. Solar flares will affect things like our blood pressure. It will actually even affect reproduction in our immune systems. It affects the heart. It affects all neurological and causes neurological problems. It can even cause mental and emotional disorders, even as much as depression and suicide. So solar flares are doing that. Now, on the earth itself, there is a natural frequency on the earth, as you know, the Schumann frequency. And it is 7.8 hertz. So what’s really interesting is – I’m going to tie that back in with the brain frequency in a minute. But basically, what happens with geomagnetic storms and solar flares is that it affects – it has an effect on the body on the frequencies to our internal parts and functions. So it will alter the actual heart-brain synchronicity and it will change even the brain’s level of melatonin.

 

 

[00:51:28] Ashley James: I just had a complete aha moment. You mentioned that the – so I mean, hold that thought about melatonin. That’s also interesting. But what you said just made me go, “Oh my gosh. What if? ” Okay. So you talked about solar flares increase suicide rates. It affects us on that level. You reminded me of back in the fourth grade, I read a paper and it always stuck with me that during the times of the Santa Ana winds, the Santa Ana Hills near LA, the wind would blow and it would create – because it was so dry, it would create positive ions which are not positive. They’re very bad for us. And they would increase the positive ions. The positive ionic charge of the air. And it would increase the suicide rates in the area. That they could see the suicides would go up when the Santa Ana winds blew because it would increase the ionic charge in the air. Again, affecting us on an energetic level. We are electromagnetic, right? That’s how we work. You know, when you go to a hospital, you get hooked up to machines to read your energy, right? That’s how they read your heartbeat and read – they put all these – you know, the EKG and then then EEG and all these machines on your head and your heart, their reading the energy of your impulses of your brain and of your heart. So, of course, of course that makes sense.

And it just hit me because lately I’ve been seeing how much all this information about the children ages from 10 to 24 – I know 24 year olds are children – but this particular generation, in the last ten years, the suicide rates went up 52 percent. It is the second leading cause of death among those ages 10 to 24 right now. And thinking about how much exposure they have to EMF, I’m wondering if – and of course, the bullying on social media and that, obviously, plays a role in the fact that they’re given an overly toxic world with 80,000 more chemicals in their food than we had when we were 10. Far more medications. They’re even putting infants now on antipsychotic medication. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. It’s a toxic world. It’s way more toxic than was when we were kids. I agree that it’s not just one thing. But to then think, “Wait a second.” If exposure to an electrical frequency that is disruptive for the body can increase suicide rates. Is it possible that the EMF exposure that this generation has had since they were born, if that is also playing a role?

 

 

[00:54:53] Kellyann Andrews: It is hugely playing a role. I mean, here’s the subtlety. When we find that solar flares are effective, the Schumann frequency at 10 hertz will speed up body reactions. But at 3 hertz, it will slow it down – megahertz. And so they actually been able to witness this on EEG patterns, like brain patterns. And what it’s doing is it’s affecting the calcium iron uptake in the brain.

 

 

[00:55:29] Ashley James: Interesting. So when it speeds up the calcium and iron uptake in the brain, what does that do?

 

 

[00:55:35] Kellyann Andrews: Well, that was just the illustration of how low these frequencies are actually having an effect. But here we go on to realize that solar flares is so far away. Schumann frequency is so subtle. But what is occurring is we’ve got this electromagnetic frequency, manmade, that’s right up close. And when they originally came out and they said how cell phones were okay and they didn’t cause any damage and all that kind of stuff. It was an infrequent use of them. But that’s not what’s happening now. What’s happening now is you can’t go anywhere and not be exposed to it.

I went into the grocery store and everybody’s on their iPhone, either sending a picture back of some product to say, “Is this the one you want?” Or talking to somebody on it. Or you’re in the lineup or you go to the doctor’s office and everybody in the waiting room is on a cell phone. I mean, you just can’t get away from it. So what is occurring is that these frequencies, when it’s a natural frequency, like Schuler, it’s a resonance in that frequency is a natural vibration. So the body has its own natural vibration. So the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system of the human body, vibrates at a certain level. And so you have your parasympathetic and then you have your, sympathetic. And what is occurring when they get around manmade frequencies is that is altering, the pattern is being altered.

So, for example, we got the brainwaves. So you have delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. So delta is like, 0.5 to 4. And they theta is 4 to 7. Alpha is 8 to 12. Now, remember when I talked about Schuler’s frequency, that’s why people feel so mellow when they’re in an alpha frequency. Because it’s Schuler’s frequency. But what is happening, which is what you brought in and especially going up into the suicide level, even on the extreme level, is that these kids are resonating like the tuning fork at beta and gamma, and that is 12 to 30 and 30 to 100. Well, what they found with autism is the children cannot settle into an alpha pattern. So they’re remaining in a ADHD or hyperactivity level because they can’t settle the brain. Because I used the analogy of the dribble or the mouse on the wheel. And that’s what happens with the brain when it gets hyper acidic. So when you got too much heavy metals in the brain, and of course, the noggin fillings are right next to the brain and other things are getting there as well through other sources. Now, you got hyper acidity, you’ve got heavy metals which put off chaos frequency right next to the brain and a higher frequency, is there any wonder why people can’t settle? And we saw, from what I talked about earlier with the melatonin, that if solar flares are affecting our melatonin level – my God – it’s not surprising to see that this electromagnetic manmade frequency is causing people to be completely insomniacs.

 

 

[00:59:40] Ashley James: And remembering that when they approved cell phones for safety back in –  gosh, was it the 80s? I don’t know. It must have been the 80s, yeah.  When they did their tests, they tested it for, like, a two minute phone call or something. Because back then you paid, like, $12 a minute for cell phone use. And so why would anyone have more than a two minute phone call? Back then it was like you called because you need to ask if they – your wife needed to bring eggs home. And that would be, like, $12 to make that phone call to ask. So it was we really did not use them very frequently. And they did a test and they held a cell phone up to a man’s head or whatever. And they figured that it didn’t – it heated up the brain a little bit but not enough to cause damage for the two minutes. And then they approved it. And they haven’t done – it’s not required for them to do any safety tests now for someone to have a cell phone on their body or using a cell phone 24 hours a day.

 

 

[01:00:5] Kellyann Andrews: Let me add something to what you just said because it’s so important. Is that the man they tested was a 210  pound male, six feet tall. You said it was a two minute phone call and it heated up his brain, I think, two degrees and went in three centimeters or whatever. But anyway, so now they’ve retested it using thermography, heat sensory to see what it’s actually doing to the brain. Or like an MRI or CAT scan kind of situation. So they’re able to see – what these people did was – God – I can’t imagine being the subject of this person doing this. But anyways, they put him with a cell phone to see what was happening. So with someone like that guy who’s got probably a lion size head, it was going like, say, a third into his head. But then as the heads got smaller in terms of your children there, it was going further across the head. So that when you got a little kid who was, like, eight years old, it went from one ear to the other all the way across his head.

 

 

[01:02:11] Ashley James: Uh-huh.  And heating up the whole brain. I had a guest on the show – I can’t remember his name right now. But an expert in this field said that they found that having a cell phone – holding it in your hand or whatever the cell phone was basically close to within a two inch range, the mitochondria in those cells would go dormant for hours afterwards. And when you have a cell phone up to your brain, the mitochondria in your brain are going dormant. Those are the powerhouses of the brain. No wonder we’re feeling fatigued and not ourselves. But we’re surrounded by this. We’re surrounded by WiFi. We’re surrounded by by cell phone towers. We’re surrounded by computers. I’m in front of a computer right now to be able to talk to you. So we are surrounded by – and we have to be in this  –

 

 

[01:03:00] Kellyann Andrews: Yes. The reality.

 

 

[01:03:00] Ashley James: That’s the reality. I mean, there’s these measures we can take. I know like we had Robyn Openshaw on the show in the past talking about the kind of measures that we can take to reduce our EMF exposure. And there’s smart things we can do. My husband and I never have the WiFi on. We have a little switch on the back. And we just turn it on only when we need it. Like, when I use the sauna, because it’s WiFi and then we turn it off.

 

 

[01:03:28] Kellyann Andrews: And the routers, what you can do with the routers which is what my husband has done. You put a timer on it. You can actually have it turned off and turned on by a timer. And so that just is wonderful because it will make the difference. But along this level, you said something that I just really need to have the women understand is – for God’s sake – do not put the cell phone in your bra. They actually showed on something I was looking at where cell phone – she had a tumor in her breast and it was the exact shape of her cell phone. But the other thing women really need to understand is nobody should be wearing wired bras. That completely changes the whole electrical around your mammary gland – your breast glands and also the heart. The heart is so close to that whole area and sending into different frequency. Now right back in 1920s, they said that every disease has a frequency.

So here’s the facts on the frequency. Disease body start at 58 so cold and the flu. Now those pictures that I was telling you about before the person had the flu – the blood pictures. So the person had the flu and the pH was 6 at the beginning. Now colds and flus frequency start at 78 to 60. Candida overgrowth is 55. Receptivity to Epstein Barr is 52. Receptivity to cancer is 42. Notice how the numbers are going down. And death begins at 25. So it’s the frequency of the body is being brought down, that’s where the life of the cell. And that’s what you talked about the mitochondria, the more and more the body is going into a lower state of frequency –

 

 

[01:05:35] Ashley James: The sicker we become.

 

 

[01:05:36] Kellyann Andrews: The more unhealthy we are.

 

 

[01:05:38] Ashley James: Yeah. That’s something that Robyn Openshaw brought up almost two years ago. I believe I had her on the show about two years ago. I know this because right after the episodet my husband went vegan. He went he went basically from eating Atkins. He only ate meat. And then after hearing – I mean this was kind of a compilation of many things he was hearing. But this was the straw for him – the final straw to break for him to decide to go whole food plant based. That he heard that the healthier you are, the higher your body vibrate. Actually, our bodies vibrate at a certain level and that they can hook you up to a machine and say, “Oh, you’re vibrating at, you know, 80 hertz. Oh, you’re vibrating at 100 hertz.” But when we are sick that we go lower and lower at 60 and lower than 60 is disease. And then death is around – like on a deathbed is, like, 40. And she said – she started listing off the hertz of different – or the frequency of different foods like broccoli and these healthy foods very, very high frequency, like 200. The frequency of certain a vegetable is 200. And she said, “How much you think pork is?” And I think we had just eaten pork sausages for breakfast that morning.  And she says it’s six. And I nearly fell off my chair. And she said, “Yeah. There’s this – “

Her whole book was called Vibe. And it was about this concept of we’re either putting foods that lower frequency into our body or putting foods that raise our frequency into our body. And she’s not trying to make people go vegan. She’s just showing you when we eat dead animal flesh, we’re eating a very, very low frequency food. And when we eat vegetables and fruit and raw foods, we’re eating incredibly high frequency food. And they’re seeing that the people who eat more low frequency foods that just lowers their body’s frequency into the frequencies that create disease. So if we’re looking if disease starts on an energetic level, then this is it. You know, what can we do to raise the frequency? And raising the frequency of the body can also be exercise, breathing, praying, meditating. The things that can bring us into that alpha state. The things that calm us down. Unplugging from the WiFi. Unplugging from the EMFs. Eating foods that are vibrating really high. Juicing smoothies. Getting tons of vegetables into us. And that brings the whole body up because you can’t be sick and be vibrating at 100 on this frequency scale. You can’t. The sick people always are vibrating at that lower level.

So it just made so much sense, if we’re looking at disease from the energetic standpoint, like Rife was able to discover in the 1920s. And that book about him which is, you pick up that book, you’ll finish the entire thing. It’s a very short book. But you will absolutely can’t put it down. I got it on eBay. You have to get it – I don’t think it’s in print anymore. It’s called The Cancer Cure That Worked. And it’s about Rife’s research and his discoveries in the 1920s. And how he discovered that he could turn off disease in the body, basically, explode viruses by using frequencies.

 

 

[01:09:26] Kellyann Andrews: He would send back their own frequency to them and that’s what exploded them.

 

 

[01:09:29] Ashley James: Yeah. He figured out what the frequency of cancer was, for example. And he was able to just explode it. It was like a sine wave that neutralized it. And then the government came in and destroyed everything and stole it all because that is bad for business to be able to end disease.

 

 

[01:09:49] Kellyann Andrews: Well, they tried to buy it first. He wouldn’t sell it. And so when he wouldn’t sell it. But to go back to your food thing, just it’s a really important point, processed food and canned food, guess what vibration that is? Zero. Zero. No vibration. And then you think of all those people that are eating that kind of – it just makes sense, you know. It totally makes sense.

So yeah, it’s such an interesting world. But when you realized that –  for example, in Europe. When we go back to the EMF focus, in Europe, they call it electrosmog. And when you think of that, it’s so true. Like, microwave and radio wave sickness is recognized as an occupational disease in Soviet Union. And then out of a group of 17 men who worked on an experiment, experimental electromagnetic pulse experiment generating system in 1967, five of them died of cancer in the following seven years. But the University of Colorado, the medical research found that death rate in certain cancers such as leukemia was higher than average in homes that were 130 feet or 40 meters from a high currency power line.

 

 

[01:11:28] Ashley James: Can you say that again? So 130 feet?

 

 

[ 01:11:31] Kellyann Andrews: 130 feet from a high current power line.

 

 

[01:11:35] Ashley James: That’s not the regular ones, like the regular lines on the street? But the really big ones that buzz.

 

 

[01:11:41] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. The buzz. Yeah. If it’s a buzz, it’s not a good thing. I was thinking this morning because I loved your analogy in the other talk that you did with Robyn when you said it’s too bad it doesn’t create a burn. You know, like a sunburn. Sun is lovely, it will do things for you. But too much exposure isn’t great. So I was thinking about if you just think of anything electric like a beehive. But think of it, especially the cell phone as like a swarming beehive, in all of your sensory perception that’s built into that beautiful intelligence in your body, you would never go stand by a swarming beehive. Just think of everything electric on that kind of level. And so what’s the answer? The answer is distance. How far away you are to it. So like holding a cell phone up to your head. But the other thing is, is that you also got to watch out that all the iPhones, they not only are doing an antenna. The actual electric aspect is coming from the whole body of the phone. And that’s what’s making a difference. But anybody who’s using YouTube –  what is it called? Bluetooth. Bluetooth is putting an antenna right in your head. It’s putting an antenna right in your head. So what they found at University of California – this was a real shocker – they had this monster – well, not so monster. But it was a cell tower. And so the cell tower was on the campus right beside this building. And what they found over a period of time was every single professor in every one of those classrooms ended up with brain tumor.

 

 

[01:13:40] Ashley James: No.

 

 

[01:13:41] Kellyann Andrews:  Yeah. And so why are we not hearing about the adverse effects? I mean, you and I are because we investigate it. And then we also do deep research to find it. But what’s happened recently – and I’m sure that you’ve been telling people – but Google has been completely muffled. And so people like Mercola, The Truth About Cancer, even Green PubMed, I mean, all of these people have been knocked out by Google. And even on Amazon, Amazon is restricting what can be sold through Amazon because they’re all been bought out by pharmaceuticals. And so people need to realize why are they not hearing about it because the media is being muffled.

 

 

[01:14:30] Ashley James: You know, iTunes, which most listeners – like, 95 percent of listeners listen through iTunes. iTunes has not suppressed the information yet. Knock on wood. Good for iTunes. I know. I’m really happy of that. Because they spent the last year optimizing their search engine. iTunes now basically transcribes all the audio for all the podcasts. So that when you search for things, like if you type in something very specific, it’s going to bring up a better representation for you. Because it scans through the content of what’s said in the podcast. And then brings up what you really want to find. So they’re not – as of yet, they had not suppressed any holistic information. Whereas Google, about six months ago – you know, a year ago, you could type in natural cure for – I don’t know – for yeast infection. And you would get all kinds of wonderful blogs by Naturopaths. And great, great, great information. Now, the first five are going to be medical – pharmaceutical based medical things. And you have to go several pages – which no one ever clicks on page two. It’s something like 1 percent of people click on page two.

 

 

[01:15:49] Kellyann Andrews: I go to five.

 

 

[01:15:51] Ashley James: Well, you’re in the top, top, top 0.01 percent of people. Most people go to the first few in the search. But Google has also made it so that some websites are completely unlisted now. It won’t even show up in a Google search. And these are good, holistic websites. So yeah, there’s a war.

 

 

[01:16:15] Kellyann Andrews: So have you told people about DuckDuckGo?

 

 

[01:16:18] Ashley James: I have not. But that’s something that you could definitely let them know about.

 

 

[01:16:22] Kellyann Andrews: Well, it’s another search engine. And apparently they’re, shall we say, more open minded that you can find things through that one. So DuckDuckGo is another option for people to access through. But you just need to keep digging deeper to find the answers nowadays. And yeah,it’s really interesting because I have a medical background. I was trained as a nurse. And so I can see a lot of what is occurring and what’s being presented. And have that understanding of the filter that is going on presently.

But the awesome thing – and that’s why I really want to acknowledge you, Ashley, is you’ve gone out on a limb to create this entire environment in which people can find the truth. And the truth is, as my husband says, EMF is what he calls inconvenient truth. People don’t want to hear about it. They don’t want to know that their cell phone isn’t great. And having your cell phone on in your car is like being inside a microwave oven. So people don’t want to hear that part. But the thing is, is that your audience is so awesome because they are open minded. They are seekers. They’re truth finders. They’re walking the talk. They’re doing what it takes to change it around. And that’s such a big, big thing. Because the way things are on the planet, especially at this moment, is quite chaotic. And it’s so easy to get disillusioned. And when your energy goes down, your emotions go down, your mind starts to think all the bad things. And you just go into a negative spin.

But like Ashley said at the beginning of the call, you just do the domino effect in the right direction. So you take your nutrients, you drink your water, you do all the things that bring your electric up, you dance, you sing, you do exercise, you move your body, you listen to positive influences, and you allow positive influences into your body, your being and your world. And it becomes a whole different orientation. You don’t have to resonate at that low frequency that the world is vibrating at right now. A bunch of us can just have a party and resonate at a whole different frequency. So let us all be high frequency tuning forks and we’ll all resonate together.

 

[01:19:15] Ashley James: I love that. Teach us how can we resonate on a higher level?

 

 

[01:19:21] Kellyann Andrews: First of all, its mindset. It is definitely a mindset. You need to just absolutely want to live that other life so that you’re willing to move into action steps on what you can do. So you need to have a mastery mindset. You need to do what it takes. And number one is to create a healing environment inside and outside your body. So identify what you want. That’s the first step. If there’s anything that’s really important is you got to know what you want. If you’re going on a trip, where are you going? People spend more time and attention on their vacations than they do their lives. So what is it you want and then you create the actions to achieve it. So number one is to protect yourself. And number two is to nourish yourself. And these are not just physical. These are emotional, mental, and spiritual. And on the physical level but also on all of those levels as you purify yourself. So if you have someone that’s in your world, if they’re your family, it can be kind of interesting. But if there’s negative influences in your world, you got to be – this is the one example that we’ll use. It’s an office and asset on a computer. You can hit the minus screen. Minimize, minimize that influence in your world. So the number one thing we need to do on a physical level is be smart. We have such incredible brilliance designed into us biologically, intelligently, and universally. We just connect with that wisdom that is so part of our nature. So on an electrical level, obviously, you distance yourself from the electronics. You time or dosage, you turn down the dosage level and how much you go on it. And obviously, there’s an aspect to the intensity of it, too.

But here’s the key of life is the contrast between expansion and contraction. Is your life expanding or contracting? And just think about your muscles expanding and contracting. So well-being – so expansion is relaxed. It’s having an attitude and latitude of gratitude. And then there’s a sense of ease that comes with that and allowing. You are allowing your world to expand. You’re allowing your health to expand. You’re allowing yourself to feel good. So many of us, especially as women, I think are programmed to not feel good. That we’re supposed to be in service to everybody else. So I deal with all these women. They’re completely exhausted because they’re the caretakers of their – they’re the hubcap of their entire family. And nobody’s taking care of them. But more importantly, they’re not taking care of themselves. So there’s an allowingness that self-care is a priority in your life. So the opposite is contraction, where there’s a whole sense of resistance. There’s resentment. There’s anger. There’s struggle. And there’s blocking, blocking energy. And that’s low frequency way to go through life for sure.

But the attitude and gratitude is so important. One of the things that I do every day is I spend the day literally all day saying thank you. I get the parking place or someone I connect with in the lineup at the grocery store or wherever I’m doing my errands, we just have a wonderful interaction. And you may never ever see that person but you just have the soul to soul connection and three minutes space of time. And it can change your frequency. And then focusing on ideas and inspirations. I spend all of my meal preparation time listening to inspirational kind of things. There’s one that I’m listening to right no and it’s about breathing. And it’s like, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. So there’s all these positive affirmations that are beginning. And so you literally like breathe them in and then you send them out. And so that’s why I always sort of see myself as the sunshine presence of taking the light in and then sending it out.

And having an attitude. This is a beautiful mindset to have that everything today is falling into place. My day is harmonic. Everything around me as harmony. And so it’s so important because I am one of those who truly believes in God, the angels, and miracles. And all day long, I will thank all those sources for setting everything up in my world to work. So I surrender to all that works is the most beautiful mindset and affirmation. And so as if something derails in your world, you just say, “Okay. That’s just a momentary time. But I am returning to all that works.” And because I am Irish, I have a strong thing about signs. So I always ask for signs to be given to me. And it’s amazing how many I get in a day. And it’s so important to ask for help. Not only from humans but from all sources, spiritual and above, to just come along. Because the thing is you got to set the tone within your being to vibrate at this higher frequency.

So let me give you an example of fear. So I was going from Victoria to Vancouver. And on the way, because I was focusing on putting this together, what came into my awareness 100 percent was all the cell towers. So on the first trip to Vancouver, I saw these cell towers and I was just like a rabbit. I was cringing every time I saw cell tower. And it just set off all of this absolutely sympathetic nervous system fight and flight response in my body. So my heart beat got faster. My adrenaline was racing through my body. My respiratory level was higher. Everything was sped up inside of me. And so I had all of this fear every time I saw cell tower. And so what I realized on the second trip to Vancouver was that that wasn’t doing my body any good. So in the second trip to Vancouver, I decided ask the four archangels to go surround each cell tower I saw. So I put all this light around the cell towers and then violet flamed them. And I did all this spiritual stuff. And you know what was the most amazing thing, Ashley, was that I ended up feeling awesome. I felt so great. So when I said, “Oh, there’s another cell tower we need to heal.” So I send all this healing energy to the cell tower so it couldn’t radiate all this negativity. But what happened to me in the process of doing that was that I started feeling phenomenally calm, more centered, my breathing went deeper, I felt more relaxed.

 

 

[01:27:41] Ashley James: Sure. Because you weren’t perceiving it as a threat.

 

 

[01:27:44] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. So that whole cell danger response, people need to watch out for that. Because what happens biologically in the moment is when the body feels danger. Now, that can be on a physical level, mental level, emotional level. When it feels danger, it goes into that fight or flight cell danger response. And it will physiologically change all of your body to gear up as if it was an espresso coffee.

 

 

[01:28:17] Ashley James: Uh-huh. Right. Any perception of a threat or a potential threat causes the body to go into that fight or flight response.

 

 

[01:28:27] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. Exactly. So some of the things that you can do to help the body and its frequency, of course, is to be conscious to reduce your exposure to toxins, EMFs, and all the above the cause the danger response, and to decrease the heavy metals. Number one, you see, we can do all these things in life. Like, if you have a thorn in your finger and you can put a Band-Aid over it, you can put iodine on it, you can put rescue remedy on it, you can do all these things. But if you don’t take the thorn out and address the core issue, then you’re still going to have the problem. And that’s why it’s so important if people don’t want to be a walking antenna that they need to get the heavy metals out of the body.

So for those that are really interested and want to test their levels, a client of mine actually has a lab and she is brilliant at at labs and understanding the physiology of lab work and what is actually portraying. She goes into a very deep level with it. So her organization and company is called My Labs For Life. So for those that are interested in knowing what their levels actually are, I would highly recommend that. And then to do what it takes to decrease your body burden. Because through input of diet and output of releasing through either the urine, the colon, the detox organs, or using the PES system, you’ve got to get that content out of the body, like the thorn in the finger. Until you release it, you’re not going to feel excellent.

So another thing people can do and I talked about this in the last podcast was slippery elm. Slippery elm is really great because along with increasing fiber, which tends to absorb toxicity in the body and seaweed which also helps to create a slippery mucosal level like Slippery Elm does. All of these will help so that you decrease leaky gut. Because leaky gut is a huge problem. Because when the protein molecules get across the body in too large of form, the body will go into that danger alert thing. And it will start to attack those. But what happens is heavy metals will start to be attached to those molecules as well and the body will go into immune responses because it knows. The people have the immune issues and diseases. Those are because the body’s intelligence is at work trying to attack that foreign content that is on the tissue or the organ or the cell or whatever. And so we need to get that content out of the body to calm the body down.

And that’s what we see with these autistic children when they have a session. I mean, it’s just so amazing to watch what happens with these kids that are so hyperactive. The moms say to me, “How am I going again to sit for 30 minutes in a foot spa when they can’t sit for three seconds?” I said, “Put them in and see what happens.” And they completely chill out. Like, this one child was only four years old and very, very hyperactive. The mother called him the Tasmanian Devil because he was such a whirlwind. Anyways, but when he had a session, he would sit through the whole session very calmly. So they were seeing the body is shifting from that danger response that’s making them very hyperactive. The heavy metals and the acidity in the body is causing the pH to be a very acidic level. And then the EMF are amplifying to make the body an absolute antenna. So that’s why the kids are beyond hyper state. And with the little autistic kids, apparently, when they knock their heads on the floor, the reason they’re doing that is they’re trying to numb their brains. And that’s why they’re doing it.

But when we’ve had whether it’s little ones are very elderly. One of the examples was kidneys. Now, I don’t know if you realize but glyphosate, which everybody is well talking about these days, round up, did you realize that Roundup has 11 metals in it?. And pesticides, every pesticide they tested had, like, 22 metals in them. So now you have people who are walking around in bare feet and exposed to all of this on grass. The other day somebody phoned me up because their client phoned them up, because he had just gone outside in Florida and walked on grass. And he absorbed all this glyphosate through his feet. So what they found in Sri Lanka was that there was a huge correlation. They actually banned glyphosate because we found there’s a huge correlation to kidney disease.

 

[01:34:26] Ashley James: I had Dr. Stephanie Seneff on the show. That is definitely an episode worth listening to. I had her on twice. And listeners can go to learntruehealth.com and search in the search box for any past episodes when you want to listen to them. But Dr. Stephanie Seneff is a PhD MIT top research scientist with a team of researchers has been trying to decipher what’s going on with autism and the huge spike. When I was a kid – I’m 39. I’m going to be 40. So it’s not that long ago. But when I was a kid, there was one in 10,000. I never knew an autistic child growing up because that’s how rare it was. And granted, they’ve changed how they diagnose autism. So there’s more of a spectrum. And now, maybe children they would have perceived as hyperactive back then might be put on a spectrum now. But however, that does not account for – and if you talk to teachers who’ve been teachers for 40 years, they will tell you the children have changed. They’re not the same. Now, it is one in every 30 or 40 children are diagnosed on the spectrum. So literally every classroom has someone on the spectrum or potentially could have someone on the spectrum because that’s how common it is. And that wasn’t the case back then. So Dr. Stephanie Seneff with these amazing research scientists have put together this information because they’re looking for what happened in the last 40 years to cause it to go from a rare event to a common event that our children have autism. And what she saw – what these scientists saw was that glyphosate is present in the MMR vaccine. Because they used some kind of  – they used an extract from bovine – a bovine material. And she explains it. She explains how does Roundup get in the vaccine and she explains how.

But basically, what she describes is that glyphosate – and she didn’t even talk about the fact that Roundup also has 11 metals in it. She said that glyphosate itself is a key leader. Meaning it binds to heavy metals and washes them away. Well, this particular molecule and how it works, glyphosate will bind to a heavy metal. So let’s say, aluminum. And then it will release. It lets go of kind of like losing a static charge, losing a bond. It lets go of heavy metals when the pH changes. And she says where in the body does pH change? When fluids cross over from one kind of fluid to another. So for example, blood becomes urine, pH changes. Blood becomes cerebral spinal fluid, pH changes. And she said, what’s happening with the glyphosate when we eat it? So let’s say our children are eating it. It’s very high in cereal. Non-organic cereal and I’m not going to mention which brands but they’re circles, little holes in them, look like donuts. And all kinds of other cereals out there on the market are tested very high for glyphosate. So we eat glyphosate. It binds to heavy metals and releases them, deposits them in our kidneys and in our brain.

And they’re able to see this. And that’s what Dr. Klinghardt sees as well. And that’s how he’s able to reverse autism. Because what we’re seeing, the majority of people on the spectrum now are not actually autistic. They have all the same symptoms as autism. It’s not actually – the one in 40 that we’re seeing now is not autism. A true, true autism is still like that one in 10,000. What we’re seeing is toxicity in the brain, heavy metal toxicity in the brain, and overexposure to these frequencies like WiFi, which are stimulating the metals in the brain. So this is what Dr. Dr. Klinghardt says. And then he backs it up by completely reversing autism. He gets children who are rocking, beating their heads, and nonverbal to be able to talk again, completely function in society, be happy, be healthy, and go to school, and later go to college. He talks about in our interview that the children he’s worked with for so many years because he’s been a doctor for over 40 years are now – he has children that are now professors and PhDs and composers and very intellectual and wonderful positions. And these kids were rocking and nonverbal when they came to him. And so he says, it’s not autism.

And the thing is, we are allowing the first – we’re allowing this blanket diagnosis to then prevent us from seeking the answers. Like, “Well, why?” Right? Why is it? So it isn’t vaccines is what they’re saying. Because you can’t just say it’s all vaccines because what they’re saying is it’s actually the glyphosate. And that, although vaccines do have heavy metals in them, which is like you’re directly depositing heavy metals in the body. The delivery system into the brain is the glyphosate. So that’s what these scientists are proposing.

And then what do we do? That’s the next question. Because as individuals, we can’t stop them from spraying glyphosate. We can choose not to buy it. We can choose not to buy those products. I even know listeners who have called up their organizations around them, like the schools, and the golf courses, and their neighborhoods, and convince the communities to stop using glyphosate. So there are there are things that we can do at individual levels. Unfortunately, we can’t change everything. We can do what we can do. But what we do have control over is our day to day choices. And so there are things that we can do for ourselves and our children on a day to day level to ensure that we minimize our exposure to these chemicals that are rampant in our environment. I wish there was some kind of special goggles we could put on to see all the chemicals. You can’t see glyphosate when it’s in your food. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we put on – remember that that sci-fi movie. I love sci-fi movie. I love sci-fi anything. And there’s that sci-fi movie, it was called They Live. Where he puts on the glasses and he can see all the aliens that are living among us. Imagine if we could put on these glasses and see the damaging EMFs and see the damaging chemicals. And then look and see the healthy foods that aren’t contaminated, that don’t have radiation and pesticides, and they are healthy vibrating, and on a good frequency. Imagine if we had that ability to –

 

 

[01:42:31] Kellyann Andrews: Well, you do have the ability. Because if you go into the grocery store and you see the produce that looks like they put it out four weeks ago, that will tell you the unhealthy state of the lack of energy in that food. But in the markets when you go in the summertime and you see the food that’s just come out of the ground, its color, its vibrancy. That is one of the things where you can tell how high the level of minerals are. And minerals in the body create the electricity. So if the food is this brilliant, like a carrot, just imagine the most vivid color of orange that you can ever imagine. And then you look at a carrot that looks like it’s been bleached because it has, then you get which foods are the best ones for you. And then you start to look around but your body will queue you to all of that if we just tune into that. And that’s what’s so brilliant.

I want to give an example because you brought up Dr. Klinghardt. Here’s one of his clients, an eight year old boy who had a brain injury and was in total agitated behavior. When he first came to us, his pH was six. And so again, that agitation was being antagonized by that pH. But when he had a session, it would boil up to 7.5. But here’s the way I want to share the story is that he became so calm and relaxed. And I was on the phone with his mom. And I was asking for his feedback at the time. And he goes, “I love my foot spices.” And then he says in the most beautiful voice, he goes, “I feel so good.” And you could just hear the joyous tone.

And then we had another five year olds – because it’s always so awesome when you can connect with the kids. Because as you said, they’re the ones that’s been most exposed in their lifetime. So there was a five year old and she was very, very hyperactive. And if not on the spectrum close. But anyways, she went to kindergarten and the teacher asked her and the whole class to draw their favorite family activity. And she drew herself having a foot spa and mom putting the water into it. Isn’t that awesome? But what was so lovely was that the mom told me after her sessions, she noticed how her daughter became more affectionate and would hold eye contact now. And she would become more articulate like your friends then.

But here’s the interesting thing which we didn’t mention before to give insight. Heavy metals affect the humans in this way. They create headaches and migraines. And we talked about that in the podcast on copper, especially. Fatigue, stress symptoms and responses, dizziness. So how many people have you got ringing in the ear and that kind of thing and sleep disturbances. So skin issues, GI issues, muscle cramps and aches, and joint pain, and stiffness. A lot of people phone me up and say, “How come I’m now experiencing this one? I’m 40. And I’ve never experienced this before. ” And the answer to that is the accumulation factor. And they’re also experiencing things like numbness. But to turn that around is just so awesome.

I’ve got to give you this example because we were talking about the glyphosate. So here’s the example that I was bringing up because I want people to realize there is an answer. There is solutions. It’s not, “We’re doomed.” So here’s the sunshine coming up and dawn. So we had a famous wildlife photographer – sorry – artist. He was a photographer but he also did artwork. Originally did artwork and now he does photography. He’s in his 70s and he was in complete renal failure. And the Nephrologist was hounding him like crazy to go on dialysis. But he didn’t want to for all the reasons that most people would understand including having to sit next door machine that’s – anyways, we won’t go into it. So anyways he goes and has – because his doctor recommended it to him – has sessions in our system. And he has not had to go on dialysis. As a matter of fact his Nephrologist, the kidney doctor, and for other Nephrologists have all told clients of ours that they have never ever seen kidney function improve. And these are old time docs. They’ve been in business for decades. And so they said,” I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep doing it.” But that’s why in this illustration, the whole thing is, you’ve just got to get the toxicity out. So by doing the fiber and the water and the minerals, and also, of course, B vitamins. Because the B vitamins create healthy nerve cell growth. And then iodine, iodine, we talked about mitochondria. By the way, I don’t know if you know, mitochondria in the cell creates energy .So it creates energy and that’s ATP. Now ATP in the cell creates energy. But ATP outside the cell actually is part of the alert signal of the danger. So that’s kind of interesting. But anyways, going back to solutions, iodine. Iodine feeds the mitochondria. Now, when you were born, Ashley, everybody was using iodine for any cuts or scrapes. They’re using it for surgery preparations. You saw people being prepped, shaved, and then iodine put all over their belly when they’re having whatever operation. And so iodine used to be part of our entire culture. But it has completely disappeared in our era. But it actually is a mineral. So we think of iodine in the holistic field is feeding the thyroid. But in actual fact, it feeds every cell in the body because it’s a mineral. And the mitochondria needs it to function.

So you talked about before when the EMF puts the mitochondria in a state of shock and goes offline for a while. Here’s how to bring your mitochondria online. And then as you mentioned earlier, too, breath work is so important. And when you breathe through the feet, because we’re all spinning too fast because we’re multitasking, our days are requiring us to do more in it than then there’s time. And that creates pressure internally. So we need to ground ourselves. So just go through your day and breathe through your feet. So not only will that oxygenate your body and bring energy into your cells, but it will also ground you.

Then the other thing that’s really, really important nowadays is Bach flowers. So Bach, like the musician, B-A-C-H. Bach flowers help to balance out your emotional and mental realms. And there’s 38 different remedies and you can just get in at the health food store or look it up online, whatever.

 

 

[01:50:26] Ashley James: It’s like homeopathy for emotions.

 

 

[01:50:30] Kellyann Andrews: And thoughts. Yeah. So it’s like, mindsets. And so it takes rescue remedy is the most famous one. And veterinarians, like animals, will use it for the distress of the animal. And when it works on kids and animals, it’s not just the placebo effect. And so that one’s a really great solution.

But the others is to smile. The big thing is you got to get oxygen up into the brain by smiling. You’re literally relaxing the muscles around your neck. And that opens up the arterial system to the brain. So we want to get that oxygen and nutrients up into the brain. And so by smiling, you open up the arterial system. By frowning, you close it down. So think – because we’re at Christmas time, think of the difference in the face of Santa Claus and Scrooge. And that will show you what smiling and gratitude does. Because Santa is grateful for all those little elves. And Scrooge has got a totally different mindset. So look in the mirror every day and look to see what your face is looking like. And you want to get your face to have that permanent smile and not the permanent frown.

So one of the things that I really want to focus on and it actually was a book that I have sitting in front of me every day. Because what I do in the morning is I choose to get up and immediately go exercise . And I do shi bafa. And that is S-H-I-space-B-A-F-A. And this was designed by the Chinese to keep the Chinese out of the hospital. So it’s like stand up yoga kind of posture. Some people think I’m – like, when I’m waiting for the ferry, I’ll do it in the terminal and they go, “Oh, are you doing Tai Chi?” And I said, “Well, it’s sort of similar or Qi Gong. And it’s sort of similar to that too.” So it’s movement with breath and intent. But it actually opens up the physiology of the body. So while I’m doing that, at home, I have a book that’s in front of me and it says, “And this is your message for today. Love only today. Breathe more, stress less, and choose love.” Because that will keep you in a parasympathetic mode. And then the last thing is, treat your body as your best friend because it is.

 

 

[01:53:31] Ashley James: No kidding. We need to step back and look at the thoughts we have about ourselves. And look at how we treat ourselves. And then and think about how we treat our best friend or how we treat a loved one and start treating ourselves like we’re worth. We’re worth being put first because if we put everyone else first, we won’t be here to take care of them.

 

 

[01:54:02] Kellyann Andrews: Oh, yes. You know what? I just was going through my notes as you were saying that, one of the things going back to the electromagnetic solutions. Things to do is reduce the amount of sources of EMF in your life, reduce your time exposure, increase your distance from it – the beehive concept – use wired accessories. Now, there’s a whole test that you can do with a cheap AM radio. Because a lot of these you know gadgets that will test the level of output from an electrical thing do sort of tend to be pricey. But here’s something you can do on a easy level. Get hold of a really inexpensive AM radio. Now, not AM/FM, just AM. Turn it on and you can either have it on the station or in between the station and it will create that kind of noise. But take it up against an electronic thing and it will amplify the closer you get to it. So you can go around. Now, my friend who has that My Labs For Life, she will do this when she goes into hotel rooms. And she will go up against the wall to see where the wiring is. She’ll go up close to the bed to see anything that’s active there. She’ll unplug the alarm clock, radio.

And so you can actually go up to all the electronics in your house and you can see what kind of intensity they’re putting out. And one of the suggestions is just unplug all – well, obviously, you can’t unplug your fridge or your freezer but the appliances that you’re not using so it’s not putting things out. But here’s another one that that is so easy to not do is, when you go to the grocery store or even London Drugs or Costco or whoever has them, do not use one of those scanners. self checkout. They’re putting out major stuff. I back away anytime I see that light. And my body has that response. And even when you’re fueling up your car, make sure you’re breathing the opposite direction of the field.

 

 

[01:56:27] Ashley James: Just hold your breath.

 

 

[01:56:29] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. Yeah. Usually when you fill up your car, you can’t hold it that long. But just try to catch the wind in the other direction. And then just listen to your body’s alert signals. Your body is awesome for understanding what, what you need in the moment. And just tuning into its wisdom is so wonderful.

 

 

[01:56:54] Ashley James: Absolutely. And I’d say that more specific advice on decreasing heavy metals in the body. Dr. Stephanie Seneff and Dr. Klinghardt both go into this. But I’ve had firsthand experience with it having spent the last two years working on – or more than two years, actually, working on decreasing my heavy metals. And obviously, I love the PES system. I’m having great experience with it. I sweat in my Sunlight and Sauna. I eat the chlorella from ENERGYbits. And that is my favorite brand because she has it tested twice. And it’s all about purity. There’s a lot of chlorella out there that has lead in it. And hers does not. I’ve had Katherine Ornstein on the show several times sharing about the benefits of LG. But chlorella specifically, is a key leader. And then taking herbs like parsley and cilantro and putting them in a blender, maybe like a Vitamix. You can throw in something like a handful of spinach or kale and blend it with some water and drink it. It doesn’t need to taste good. I mean, if you want to make it taste good throw in an apple and some ginger to make it taste good. But it’s really not about taste because you just kind of chug it and get it into your body. But the cilantro is very effective for gentle chelation as well. So those are daily gentle things.

Now, there’s also a whole form of homeopathy that are homeopathic chelators. And that would be worth going to. And I’ve used them in the past. It will be worth going to a Naturopathic physician or homeopath to get access to those as well. But these are all the things that we can do gently that are very supportive of the body that don’t have side effects. Like, if you were to go get actual chelation therapy, IV chelation, that unfortunately also strips all the really good minerals out of the body as well. It kind of washes – it’s kind of like taking antibiotic. It takes the good with the bad.

 

 

[01:59:17] Kellyann Andrews: And you do need to watch out for that one. Especially calcium, if they don’t get the calcium levels right – I mean, they’ve actually had people not be on the planet after that experience because the calcium levels were – so that’s why a lot of Naturopaths will not choose that methodology to do that.

Now, what was really interesting was we have an acupuncturist and other therapists who use our system. And they said that what they’re finding nowadays, Ashley, is that people are not able to naturally release their toxic burden loads. Because it’s just coming in too quickly. And so she actually – this one acupuncturist – had a patient who he worked in the industry of – he was actually an inventor. So he worked with a lot of metals and a lot of chemicals. Silly soul. He didn’t put gloves on. So he had for 20 years pain at seven out of ten. And she was doing a lot of the different methods you just mentioned and she wasn’t able to shift the sky at all. And so finally, the detox foot spa with him and, boom, the water just turned completely black. The guy was just so full of heavy metals.

So some people are getting good results through this methodologies. But if you’re using those and finding that you’re not getting it, it’s just because your load or burden level is too high. And so that you need to then do a more efficient methodology. And that’s what we found was just, the older someone is, the higher levels they have. And the higher levels they have, the more they’re a walking antenna. And so they’re more feeling the effect. But with all of those methodologies that you mentioned, just to highlight it again. Please, please, make sure that you’re drinking lots and lots of water to help the flushing process after doing any kind of therapy.  Because otherwise you’re just going to get it reabsorbing in your body.

 

 

[02:01:32] Ashley James: I love doing things to stimulate the lymph system. Not a lot of people understand what the lymph system is. So we have our circulatory system, which we understand that there are arteries and veins and that blood is circulating through them. Lymph is everything else. Lymph is the fluid in between every single cell in interstitial fluid. This fluid is part of the immune system. And also it delivers nutrients to the cells, it helps remove toxins away from the cells. And it’s like our cells are coral reef. They’re stationary animals, in a sense. They’re stationary creatures. And that the lymph system is like the ocean bringing nutrients to it and removing toxins away from it. And so the lymph system doesn’t have a heart to beat it. It does and of get sucked back up. Re-brought up back into our circulatory system so that the liver can flush – can clean it so that those toxins can be brought to the kidneys as well. But our lymph system doesn’t move if we don’t move. And the only way it actually pumps, because it doesn’t have a hurt to beat it, is by moving our joints. And because at each joint in our body, there are lymph nodes. And the nodes kind of squeeze and pump this along. So with this day and age, we’re not moving like we’re designed to move. We’re sitting all the time.

 

 

[02:03:11] Kellyann Andrews: Stagnation.

 

 

[02:03:13] Ashley James: We’re being stagnant. Right. So I love a Rebounder which is a small – and you should get an adult one. I tried using my son’s one, it does not work. Get a small Rebounder. I have it actually linked on my website. At the top of learntruehealth.com, there’s like Ashley Recommends and it goes to Amazon and my favorite health gadgets are there. But there’s an adult Rebounder. And you’re not supposed to jump on it to the point where your feet leave the mat. It’s actually just very gentle. Your body is only moving three or four inches up and down. You’re just bouncing gently.

 

 

[02:03:48] Kellyann Andrews: Rocking chair motion rather than roller coaster ride.

 

 

[02:03:51] Ashley James: Right. Yeah. You’re just bouncing gently up and down. Kind of like if you – imagine if you’re holding a baby and you just want to bounce the baby. But you’re bouncing your whole body on the Rebounder and do some deep breathing. Just do it for five minutes, put on a good song – one or two good songs and you’re done. Do that a few times a day, that’s flushed your entire lymph system and flushed all the fluids. Now, of course, going for a brisk walk, doing weightlifting, doing cardio, all that would help as well. But if you’re at an office or at home and  you can’t just leave and go for a brisk walk for 15 minutes a few times a day, then jump on a Rebounder. And I noticed that when I do a Rebounder before a PES session or before soaking in magnesium or before going in the sauna, that I get better results during my detox. Much better results. It’s very interesting. Just a few minutes of stimulating the lymph system, how that kick starts detoxification.

 

 

[02:04:51] Kellyann Andrews: It is. It’s amazing how that works. And here’s a great visual for the lymph system is just a volcano and you got the molten lava at the core of the mountain, and you want to release it to the surface. So in the human body you’ve got the toxins stuck inside the cell and it needs to release. So the lymph system is the portal to get it out of the body. And so just image the lymph system to being like lava tubes.

 

 

[02:05:19] Ashley James: Oh, yeah. Lava tubes throughout the body. Right. Sure. Sure. Yeah. So we’ve got this sludge, we’ve got this stagnation, we have this heavy metal buildup through many different sources. But it’s no longer a problem that only welders have or only people who’ve worked directly with heavy metals. And now we’re seeing that, like you said, entire towns. If there’s a company that’s emitting heavy metals into the water in the air and the soil, that the entire town is sick from it. And the sickness is going to show up as different symptoms depending on someone’s genetics.

 

 

[02:06:08] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. You know what I just found out which is just horrible, is that in Canada they are starting to test the water. And the water in many of the Canadian cities was worse than Flint, Michigan.

 

 

[02:06:23] Ashley James: The water in the tap?

 

 

[02:06:25] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah.

 

 

[02:06:26] Ashley James: So you said water and I imagined lakes. I was like – 

 

 

[02:06:29] Kellyann Andrews: No. The tap water.

 

 

[2:06:31] Ashley James: So I was just for Thanksgiving several of my friends got together and we had like a friends giving. American Thanksgiving just happened, for listeners who are not in the United States. And it’s different than Canada. But basically last week, I was at a friend’s house and we’re all very health conscious. It was a whole foods plant based Thanksgiving. It was great. We did bowls. And everyone, there was, like, 40 different things that we could choose from. It was so delicious. It was amazing. So, so yummy. And we had all our kids there and we had a really, really great time. The kids were on one side the house and adults were on the other. It was fantastic. It was wonderful. Yes, it was great. We had little adult time. And I was helping to prepare some of the food and I noticed that there was, like, these black flakes in the keen wall, like, the water. We put the water in the keen wall and at first I thought it was maybe some food particles of something else that got washed into it. And then I realized it was these big black flakes. So I was picking it out. And then I go to use the sink and black flakes were coming out of the tap. Big black flakes we’re coming out of the tap. And it’s an older house in Seattle.

 

 

[02:07:44] Kellyann Andrews: Lead.

 

 

[02:07:45] Ashley James: Is that what that is? I was like, what – 

 

 

[02:07:47] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. Actually, anything – that’s what’s so amazing. Anything prior to 1975, that’s not that long ago. So that’s the thing, is that we’re – just to bring it back to solution. So you get exposed. so you can’t freak out about what you’re exposed to every day. That will just ask from your body more. Keep your body in sympathetic overdrive, cell danger mode. That’s why you got it take mastery over your emotions and your thoughts because we are all exposed to all this content every day. But it doesn’t mean that it has to cripple you. It doesn’t mean that it has to cause illness in you. You do the dominoes in the right direction. And you move it out. But the most important thing is your mental attitude and your mindset. So be your body’s own best friend. So if you have something that derails your day, some event that causes you agitation that puts you in a sympathetic focus, catch yourself in that moment. And just absolutely breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Just hear me saying this to you breathe in, breathe out. And reset. Hit your reset button by saying to yourself, “Now, if this was happening to my best friend, what would I tell him or her to do in this situation?” Because you’re brilliant at giving awesome wise advice to others. So now, you just need to give it to yourself. But the key here is you’ve got to do whatever you advise the other one to do. Amen.

 

 

[02:09:49] Ashley James: Right. We’re so good at giving advice. We can start taking our own advice.

 

 

[02:09:54] Kellyann Andrews: Because your objective when it’s someone else’s story. But you lose that clarity when it’s your own because you go to hind brain fight or flight. So I’m bringing it to the front part of your brain. And you can even tap on the front part of your brain, like right up by your hairline, and that will bring you to your creative centers of your brain. And you can go back into a thinking mode. But when you go into fight or flight, you go right into the back of the brain and you shut down all your creativity in that moment.

 

 

[02:10:22] Ashley James: Well, here’s what happens. Someone goes, “I should eat more vegetables.” Or whatever it is. Whatever it is that they decide they should do. “Oh, man. I should turn off my WiFi.” Or “I shouldn’t have my cell phone on me.” Or, “I want to make these changes.” And then there’s this other voice in the head that goes, “but, but, but, and excuse, excuse, excuse.” “Oh, but the kids won’t like that.” Or. “My husband doesn’t eat that way.”

 

 

[02:10:48 Kellyann Andrews: You rationalize.

 

 

[02:10:49 Ashley James: We rationalize our other ourselves back to status quo.

 

 

[02:10:55] Kellyann Andrews: I know. I know. And that’s where you got to catch yourself. So that’s where the word mastery. We’re all on this planet to learn mastery. That is why you’re here. And the first mastery you need to accomplish is over your thoughts and your feelings and your reactions. So I always find it very fun in a day to have my human experience and my spiritual experience is happening simultaneously. So I feel how my emotions are wild like a dog with hackles over some injustice or something that’s happened or someone almost hits your car, whatever. And so I feel the reaction happen. And then I’m also watching the reaction happen. But in that moment, I can just choose to breathe. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. That’s sort of the reset button and rethink button. And then you can choose how you respond instead of react.

 

 

[02:11:57] Ashley James: Thank you so much for coming on the show today and bringing this awareness. I’m sure many of us have heard of these different things. But we go back to that status quo. We let the excuses come in. Or sometimes we just like to go unconscious. And right now is the perfect time to become conscious again. We tend to do it right around the New Year. The most amount of gym memberships happen right around the New Year. And then by March, the attendance drops down by, like, over 70 percent. So it’s how we are. But if we could, this time around, especially since we’re coming into a whole new decade 2020, we can really kick into a different gear and never go back to the old complacency. Kick into a new gear by taking Kellyann’s advice. Start by get out a journal. Get out a blank piece of paper and ask yourself, “What do I want? What do I want? What kind of health do I want in my body? And what do I want to do about it?” And and if you ever find excuses, if you ever here the little voice go, “but, but, but.” “I’m too tired in the morning to go to gym.” Or, “I don’t like cleaning up after juicing.” Or, “My kids don’t like eating that way. I’m going to have to cook for two different -” whatever. All those little excuses, right? You can write them down on a separate piece of paper and just keep writing down the excuses because get it out of your head. I find that when we get the mess out of our head, and that’s why working with a health coach really helps, working with a counselor really helps. Someone that is not judgmental, doesn’t have an ulterior motive of like, maybe, if you talk to a friend or family member. They would have an ulterior motive. But someone who’s a sounding board. And then you get the chaos out of your head and you start to see it for what it is. And those excuses stop having power over you. And I’ve heard this from so many people, the little excuse in the head, “Oh. Vegetables don’t taste good. I don’t want to eat a stir fry. I don’t want to eat a salad. I don’t want to have a green smoothie. That doesn’t taste good.” That little voice in the head is trying to convince us not to do it. But the second you put that first bite in your mouth of that salad or drink that smoothie, it’s like, “This is good. My body’s buzzing.”

Today for breakfast, I had a green juice. And my son drink it too. And my husband drink it. And our bodies were buzzing until after the gym we came home and had lunch. It was just like we were buzzing. We felt so good. But you bet, that little voice in my head first thing in the morning when I woke up was saying, “Can we just sleep in longer? We don’t have to go to the gym. I want waffles for breakfast. I don’t want to have a juice.” That’s the thing we’re fighting against is either the status quo in our own head. Or we make up excuses for that other people wouldn’t like it. Like, “Oh, my husband wouldn’t like it. So therefore, I’m not going to do it.” Or we think about, “Oh, the children wouldn’t like it. So therefore, I can’t do it.” We don’t even talk to them about it. We just decide that there’s going to be too much turmoil. And therefore we’re just going to stick with the status quo. But the status quo is going to continue to give us the ill health that we have right now.

 

 

[02:15:29] Kellyann Andrews: Low frequency.

 

 

[02:15:31] Ashley James: Right. So let’s get ourselves to a new frequency.

 

 

[02:15:33] Kellyann Andrews: Let’s get to a high frequency. And so one of the things I do, like you just said, is all day long, I look and I surround myself with high nutrient food. Whether it’s chlorella or wheatgrass or minerals. Or my drink that I love to do, which is, turmeric, Goats whey, mineral matrix – and what else do I put in there? The Slippery Elm and sunflower lecithin and then I’ve been adding collagen into that. So I just created a drink or something, some form of nutrients that are easy for you to literally absorb. And when you take that into the body, you just make your body sing, yourself sing. And that’s what is so lovely is when your bodies are singing like a chirping robin in springtime, you’re at a higher frequency. Your thoughts are clear. Your emotions are balanced. You’re feeling like singing. And you have energetic sunshine presence.

And so one of the things that I wish for you in this next year of 2020 is that you completely open up to receiving all the blessings the this wonderful world has to give you. And that you allow us to support you and to surrender to the highest blessings you could ever imagine. Just literally open up your hands right at this minute and just say, “I surrender to God’s, the angels -” or whatever it is you honor – “support and I receive your blessings today. And I will then pass them forward.”

 

 

[02:17:37] Ashley James: Beautiful. I love it. Thank you so much, Kellyann, for coming on the show and getting us aware. Because the first step is awareness. Just like in AA, the first step is being aware.

 

 

[02:17:49 Kellyann Andrews: Awake. Awake.

 

 

[02:17:50] Ashley James: Being awake and conscious. We are awake and aware and conscious. And then we need to know what we want and write it down.

 

 

[02:17:58] Kellyann Andrews: And make a choice.

 

 

[02:17:59] Ashley James: And make a choice.

 

 

[02:18:01] Kellyann Andrews: And make a conscious choice, just what you were talking about.

 

 

[02:18:04] Ashley James: I have a whole interview, this was done a while ago, maybe close to three years ago. So you can look it up on learntruehealth.com. About how to install healthy new habits. There’s a way to utilize how the brain works to create new habits. I mean, you could listen to that whole episode to get all the steps. But the takeaway is, grab a habit you already do and piggyback a new habit onto it.

 

 

[02:18:34] Kellyann Andrews: I call it the domino effect in the right direction.

 

 

[0 2:18:36] Ashley James: Right. Yeah. So if you always – I use coffee as an example. If you always brew coffee in the morning, what can you do while you’re brewing coffee? What new habit? And so my husband took these exercise bands and we do exercise. This is back when we brewed coffee. He would do exercises. It’s like – I don’t know – five minutes. And he’d really feel it in his legs, you know, burning. Because we do these leg exercises until the coffee was done. If you brush your teeth every morning, what could you do right before or after brushing your teeth? So you grab a habit you already do, that you never forget to do. And even during vacations or weekends, you still do.

 

 

[02:19:16] Kellyann Andrews: The one with the brushing of the teeth – let me add that – is you look in the mirror at yourself and you say, “I love you.” And you look into your eyes and keep doing it until you can totally open up to receive that love back.

 

 

[02:19:36] Ashley James: Beautiful. So we think about the different habits and we install things like that. So it might be how can we get our eight cups of vegetables in every day? How can we get our 80 ounces or more water in every day? Get our supplements and minerals in every day. Get some kind of exercise that stimulates the lymph system every day. Get some kind of green smoothie filled with those greens that I had mentioned before that are amazing. Get them in first thing in the morning because they will replace the need for coffee. You get a good greens, get in some alive food, juice or make a smoothie. It feels amazing.

 

 

[02:20:23] Kellyann Andrews: I suck on chlorella tablets all day long.

 

 

[02:20:27] Ashley James: Yes.

 

 

[02:20:30] Kellyann Andrews: I have them as a candy.

 

 

[02:20:32] Ashley James: Well, my son loves them. He calls them green crackers. And some people complain that they’re dry and they get stuck in your teeth. I just chew them with water. And it just dissolves. So I don’t have a problem. But you can also take the chlorella tablets and put them in a smoothie if you want. So there’s just – it’s little habits. But if every day, we switched a few negative things into positives, it will exponentially grow. And we want to look at decreasing our exposure to the heavy metals into the EMFs. And we want to look at everything that we can do to support the body’s ability to not have that stagnation.

I know you told told me about shi bafa. And I’m going to go look it up on YouTube. Also, you mentioned that you listen to these motivational talks while you’re doing your food prep. Where do you get them from?

 

 

[02:21:30] Kellyann Andrews: It’s on YouTube. So if you look up, I Am Affirmations. I Am Affirmations. And the one that I love the best – he does a ton of them – and just put in I Am Affirmations-Miracles and Gratitude. And it just has the most soothing music and beautiful visuals and fabulous things. So I just listen to that when I’m doing the meal preparations every day And then just take that in and then focus on your breathing. Because that was the other one that I added on recently, doing the affirmations and just breathe it in and breathe it out. So like you’re taking it in and you’re giving it out, breathe it in and breathe it out.

 

 

[02:22:19] Ashley James: I love it. Awesome. Kellyann, is there anything left unsaid to wrap up today’s show?

 

 

[02:22:24] Kellyann Andrews: I think just for people to be gentle on themselves. Because we always got that parent voice in our head of all the things we didn’t get done today or the derailments that happened, it’s so easy to focus on them. And just at the end of the day and throughout the day, to take pauses of time where you just sit and do nothing but breathe. Just literally sit in a chair and just completely relax your body so that you go into that parasympathetic nervous system. And so the summary of the whole entire topic today is health is putting the right stuff in and getting the wrong stuff out. Illness is putting the wrong stuff in and not getting the wrong stuff out.

 

[02:23:10] Ashley James: And putting good the right stuff in.

 

 

[02:23:12] Kellyann Andrews: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. We want to definitely put the right stuff in.

 

 

[02:23:16] Ashley James: Right. Higher vibration.

 

 

[02:23:18] Kellyann Andrews: Exactly. Everything. Whether that’s on a physical level or mental level or emotional level, especially spiritual. Because the spiritual can transform all of the the others so quickly. And it’s so important to connect into that realm.

 

 

[02:23:37] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Kellyann, for coming on the show. And listeners can check out your website.

 

 

[02:23:46] Kellyann Andrews: Platinumenergysytems.ca. CA is Canada.

 

 

[02:23:47] Ashley James: I was going to say PES.

 

 

[02:23:49] Kellyann Andrews: Right. That’s right. Platinum energy, you know, people are so fun. They go, “Platinum?” And I said, “Yes. Like the ultimate credit card. That platinum. The platinum energy. That’s what you want is the ultimate ,the highest frequency energy.” And so platinumenergysystems.ca.

 

 

[02:24:11] Ashley James: Great. Excellent. Thank you so much, Kellyann. And listeners, definitely check out the past episodes as well, Episode 292, 293329, and 330 It’s a pleasure to have you on the show. And I can’t wait to have you back again. Thanks so much.

 

 

[02:24:26] Kellyann Andrews: Well, it’s so awesome to connect with you always, Ashley. And thank you so much for being such an amazing person yourself. And willingness to be who you are and to be a beautiful circle of influence on this planet this time. Because your message is exactly what we all need to hear, that there is a way forward. And then we just need to all pass that forward.

 

 

[02:25:00] Ashley James: Yes. Yes. Let’s turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to learn what it is like to have true health.

 

 

[02:25:08] Kellyann Andrews: And to feel worthy of it. There’s something on humans level, especially women. There’s a psychological aspect that just is, why wouldn’t you choose the food that is the highest vibration? Why wouldn’t you choose to stop doing the things that make you feel not great? So I give you absolute full permission to be your own best friend and to put into your body and your being all those things that make you feel your best.

 

 

[02:25:44] Ashley James: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over 100 dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health.

I definitely recommend that you check them out. You can Google Institute for integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learnttruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health

Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices. You can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children to be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success in their health goals.

There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon.  The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected With Kellyann Andrews!

Official Website

Recommended Readings by Kellyann Andrews

Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton

Quantum-Touch by Richard Gordon

The New Human by Richard Gordon

Power of Now+Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle

A Return To Love by Marianne Williamson

Check out other interviews of Kellyann Andrews!

Episode 330 – Holistic Habits And Success Stories (Part 2)

Episode 329 – Stories of Success Through Detox

Episode 293 – Balancing pH

Episode 292 – Creating Wellness

Dec 5, 2019

Check out IIN! LearnTrueHealth.com/coach
Try the supplements Ashley loves: TakeYourSupplements.com
Join the Facebook Group: LearnTrueHealth.com/group

Elissa's Site:
https://elissagoodman.com/
Services/Products:
-One-on-One counseling (both in-person and virtual via Zoom)
-Cancer Hacks book: https://elissagoodman.com/cancer-hacks/
-SOUP Cleanse: https://elissagoodman.com/soup-cleanse/
-7-Day RESET Cleanse: https://elissagoodman.com/7-day-reset/
-Super Seed Bars: https://elissagoodman.com/product/super-seed-bars/

 

Preventing Cancer And Healing Autoimmune With Whole Foods

https://www.learntruehealth.com/preventing-cancer-healing-autoimmune-whole-foods

Highlights:

  • Getting second and third opinions are important
  • Emotional healing is just as important as physical healing and mental healing
  • Healing cancer holistically: emotional, food, supplements, exercise
  • Pay attention to what we eat and what upsets our digestive system
  • Increase fiber content to flush all the toxins in our system
  • Adding fruits to juices increases sugar, better to eat fruits whole
  • Sleep is crucial to healing
  • Increase water intake
  • Avoid processed foods, go for whole foods
  • Going organic is important if you have health issues but not all things have to be organic

 

In this episode, Elissa Godman shares with us how she reversed and healed her cancer and autoimmune condition. She shares that getting enough sleeps helps in healing our bodies. Eating the right foods for our body is very important. She also shares distressing helps in healing too.

[0:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker and welcome to another episode of Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love our guest today, Elissa Goodman, and everything she has to share about healing the body, preventing cancer and reversing and healing autoimmune condition. We have such a great conversation and she shares such amazing advice. So you’re going to love it.

As you’re listening, if the thoughts come into your head like, “I wish I could do what she’s doing. I wish I could help people in that level.” Consider looking into the institute for Integrative Nutrition. That’s where I got my certification as a health coach. It’s a wonderful program. It is designed to be done online and paced in a way that even busy, working men and women are able to do it, are able to complete it.

I interviewed the founder of that company, Joshua Rosenthal, who’s also one of the instructors there at IIN. He shares that he designed it so that busy stay-at-home moms, while having to manage the entire household and their kids, they’re also able to get the certification and then start their ability to work with clients from home and they can write books, they can teach people how to cook, they can see clients in person. There’s many opportunities. Now, with the new legislature that’s brought into place, health coaching in 2020 will be covered by insurance. So, there’s so many opportunities. This is the fastest-growing field, fastest-growing career in the health field, in the health space.

There’s a huge demand for health coaches and there’s going to be an even bigger demand next year, starting very soon in a few months when it goes into full effect and that health coaches will be covered by medical insurance for those in the United States, which is so wonderful because health coaches make such a huge difference as you hear when Elissa shares the kind of work that she does with her clients. She describes it perfectly what it feels like to be a health coach. To use her words, she helps her clients tune, she tunes them back into themselves because deep inside, the client themselves, at the unconscious level or at the level of intuition, their body knows what it needs. Health coaches help to begin to listen to your own body’s ability to heal itself, begin to listen again to your body crying out the intuition of your body telling you what you really need. Sometimes, we have too much chaos going on and we can’t tap into it. Health coaches help us get there.

So, as you’re thinking about as you’re listening to this episode, as you’re learning from Elissa and my conversation in this interview and you’re thinking, ”I’d love to do that as a career,” call up IIN. Just google IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Give them a call. I organized a discount for all my listeners because it made such a big difference in my life. I knew I’d be talking about it. I know my listeners would want to participate and become certified as health coaches. So I got a discount. It’s $1500.00 off. It’s a huge discount. More recently, they just launched a brand new payment plan that’s a more affordable payment plan, a payment option. So if you think, “I couldn’t spend thousands of dollars.” You don’t have to. It’s about as much as a credit card payment. You can do it and because after six months of the program you’re seeing clients so you start to pay it off within six months and then the year-long program. So some people even have it totally paid off before they even graduate, which is really exciting.

So if you want to become a health coach, look into IIN. Come into the Learn True Health Facebook group and ask me and ask the other listeners who have also participated in IIN about our experience. I love to share more about my experience with you. If you have any questions you can reach out to me through Facebook or you can email me, support@learntruehealth.com. I’d love to share with you. You know what, there’s a ton of IIN grads in the Learn True Health Facebook group and I’m sure they’d love to share with you as well. So come join the Learn True Health Facebook group and check out IIN. You can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach to get a free sample class to see if it would be something that would interest you. After taking that sample class you’ll have a really strong idea as to whether you’d want to take that program or not. So go to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach or you could call them up and ask them some questions, ask them to send you some more information. Make sure you mention the Learn True Health Podcast with Ashley James to get the listener discount.

One more thing, Elissa talks about supplements. I want to let you know that my absolute favorite, favorite supplements are with TakeYourSupplements.com. When you go to TakeYourSupplements.com it’s not like other websites where you buy it without talking to someone. In fact, the only way to get them is to talk to someone. Her name is Jennifer Saltzman. I’ve known her for coming on nine years now. She’s a wonderful, wonderful health coach. She works with a variety of different supplements. These supplements are what my family and I have taken for the last nine years and I absolutely love them. They’re very high-quality minerals. A lot of them are liquid so the body absorbs them really well. They’re all plant-based and they’re all whole foods based. So they’re really wonderful.

A lot of them are very very high quality and I recommend checking it out. Talking with her, talking with Jennifer Saltzman at TakeYourSupplements.com. Just fill out your information. She’s not a salesperson. She doesn’t push. She’s not high pressure. She was never trained in sales. She is a health coach so she’ll talk to you and ask you questions about your health. It’s a free consultation. She’s talking to you for free and then she’s helping you to order the right supplements for you, for your health needs, and for your budget. They’re high-quality supplements that have a 30-day money-back guarantee if you don’t like them, which is unheard of that’s why I love the company that she works with and the quality of then supplements which are designed by naturopaths. I love that she provides that service. She could absolutely charge for her time but she doesn’t because she really wants to help people. She believes that the more people she helps, everyone benefits.

So go to TakeYourSupplements.com and talk to Jennifer Saltzman and get on a really wonderful mineral, trace mineral. It’s life-changing. It was for me especially if you are deficient in trace minerals, you feel it within days. It feels really great. She has a liquid multivitamins so if you think you might be low in your B-vitamins, just try it. Try it for one month and see how you feel. Everyone that I’ve seen get on this supplements has had more energy and more mental clarity and it helps us and do things like make better choices like have more energy to cook healthier food, to get out there and exercise.

So if you’re wondering where you should start, baby steps, one step at a time. Elissa gives lots of great information in today’s interview. One thing that’s really easy that you can implement right now is a great liquid multivitamin, multimineral that you take every day that just helps saturate every cell in your body with the nutrients they need so that they can continue to build healthier and healthier cells. Thank you so much for being a listener of this show. It’s made such a difference in my life to participate in creating this show for you. It’s a labor of love and I love being here for you guys and learning from all these wonderful experts. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group if you haven’t already. It’s a really supportive community of health-conscious people who are looking to help each other and also grow their health themselves. Excellent. Enjoy today’s interview.

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 395.

 

[0:08:27] Ashley James: I am very excited for today’s guest. We have with us, Elissa Goodman, who has an amazing story. You’re a certified holistic nutritionist, is that right?

 

[0:08:40] Elissa Goodman: That is right.

 

[0:08:41] Ashley James: Yes. We’re going to love learning from you. It’s very timely. I didn’t tell you this before because I wanted to tell you and the listeners at the same time but this interview is dedicated to my friend Barnetty who passed away on the 2nd. I was with her in the hospital. She passed away of –

 

[0:09:09] Elissa Goodman: Are you saying December 2nd?

 

[0:09:11] Ashley James: December 2nd, yeah. I was with her a few days ago. It was standing room only in the hospital, surrounded by friends. We watched her pass away very peacefully. When she was first diagnosed with cancer, I was with her. I was with her for the biopsy. I went to all her doctor’s appointments with her for the first eight months. After eight months of doing holistic medicine and she was on the really, really good path. She totally had stopped the growth of the tumor. It had just completely halted. It was a very aggressive form of breast cancer. After eight months she decided to go chemo and then after chemo decided to radiation and she regretted that so much because the cancer had completely gone away and they convinced her to keep doing chemo and radiation and then all of a sudden it was in every organ system of her body. She fought and fought and fought. She regretted so much going down that path.

It was amazing to watch the amount of fear that the doctors instilled in her and they convinced her. She said, “I just want to do, I want to stop and just see and monitor and see what happens.” They said, “If you do this it’s going to come back and we have to do radiation, we have to do more chemo.” There’s a side-effect. There is a potential side-effect. Chemo and radiation has a potential side-effect of causing cancer and the cancer that ended her life was likely that.

So there was a regret for her but she fought for four years. So when I looked on my calendar because I’ve been a little dazed recovering from losing her, I looked at my calendar and I saw that my next interview was with a woman who healed her body from cancer. I

 

[0:11:03] Elissa Goodman: That’s interesting.

 

[0:11:05] Ashley James: Yeah. You know what, the universe does that many times. It’s been serendipitous many many times. Because people book themselves, they choose the dates. I’ve had on multiple occasions where I’ll get three interviews in a row about heart health and I’m like, “I didn’t schedule that way.” It’s really neat or I’ll get three plant-based doctors in a row. I’ll get multiple kind of just the same topic. I’m sure the listeners think I’m trying to make a series on this one topic. I just invite a bunch of amazing guests to come and they choose when they book themselves and it always seems to work out. It’s funny because I’ve had listeners write me and say, “I cannot believe timing of this conversation. I was just looking for these answers.”

So I know that there’s divine universal intervention and the fact that you are my first interview since losing Barnetty to cancer.

 

[0:12:07] Elissa Goodman: Wow. It does give me the chills.

 

[0:12:09] Ashley James: It does give me the chills. I’m sure she would love, she would have loved hearing your story. So, with that, I just want all of us to take a moment to think about everyone we love and give them all mentally big hugs and gratitude because all of us eventually will not be here. That’s just life.

 

[0:12:35] Elissa Goodman: Right, right. Cycle of life.

 

[0:12:37] Ashley James: We get to determine the quality of our lives and we get to determine the quality of our deaths, hopefully. If it’s not like from an accidents but if it’s from illness we get to choose that based on our daily choices. So you’re going to teach us some amazing things today. The daily choices that we can make that’s going to improve the quality of our lives from years to come. Hopefully even the quality of our death. I was just watching last night a video, a cardiologist that passed away at 104. He stopped working as a cardiologist at 95 but the interview he did was he was 98 years old. He has been a vegan since his 50s. He ate no processed foods, no oil, no salt. He just ate whole foods. He said, “I could still be working right now but I just chose to retire so I could spend more time with my family.” He passed away so peacefully at 104. I wish that on all of us. I wish that on every listener that we are – he was gardening up until he was 104. He was healthy as a horse.

That level of quality of life. His family said he was lucid and awake to the moment he passed away. That he was completely here with us. He didn’t have dementia, he didn’t have heart disease, he wasn’t degenerating. That’s what I want for all of us. That level of health

 

[0:14:05] Elissa Goodman: That’s remarkable. I need to know that –

 

[0:14:09] Ashley James: I’ll send it to you. I’ll post it in the show notes. It’s a great video interview. I’ve seen other clips of this man but he’s one of the cardiologists, the early cardiologist who following like Dr. Esselstyn who I’ve had on the show, this movement of doctors that believe in the whole food, plant-based diet no oil, no processed food at all, no salt, no sugar. They reverse heart disease all the time. They reverse four clogs in the heart. They’re completely gone with diet. They’re going against the grain because they don’t believe that the drugs are helpful. They’ll blatantly say it and these are cardiologists, the MDs. Dr. Esselstyn is in his 80s and is still actively working as a cardiologist in the Cleveland Clinic. So we have to get, always get a seconds opinion, always look to the body’s ability to heal itself, and always believe that the body has a miraculous ability to heal itself. We just need to support it and give it what it needs.

Drugs have their place but the problem is we often will get swept up in the fear-based mentality that some doctors like to instill upon the patients. So I want to empower all of us, myself included, to always support the body’s ability to heal itself with every choice we make. I know, Elissa that you have some amazing information having healed your own body of cancer and then went on to become a holistic certified nutritionist. I know your life goal is to teach all of us how to get that level of the quality of life that we could all live to be 104 gardening in our 100s. Come one. Let’s do it, Elissa. Let’s do it.

 

[0:16:00] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Amen sister.

 

[0:16:01] Ashley James: Yes. Tell us your story.

 

[0:16:04] Elissa Goodman: Well, my story started, interestingly I talked to a lot of my clients about this too, is when I came into the world I actually had a low white blood cell count. So my immune system was compromised at an early age. I remember growing up getting sick all the time. Just everything that was out there if it was tonsillitis going around school or strep throat or mono or just constantly never getting a pass. Always feeling sick. When I was young I had to get blood shots because my white blood cell count was low so I had to get blood shots every 28 days for years. I was in and out of the hospital at an early age.

So I came into the world not strong in my immune system but I also came into the world with two parents who were very successful, very type A, were taking on the world by storm. So that culmination I feel, looking back, was hard on me because I wanted to be where they’re at. I wanted to have the energy and the ability to get the things done that they did in a day and what they’re able to accomplish, which I couldn’t because I was always tired, not feeling well. I was always the behind the eight ball. So it was really rough growing up like that even though I love my parents and I love my childhood but there was that underlying situation going on with my immunity and my emotional well-being. I didn’t feel good enough. I didn’t feel like I could keep up. I didn’t feel like I was worthy. So it was just at an early age, it was a constant battle between the two of them.

Then I actually followed in their footsteps with my job and my career. I would move to New York and worked in a fast-paced advertising business. I thought that’s what I wanted because that’s all I knew and I was always sick also with that because it was late nights. A lot of partying, a lot of just not taking care of myself. I was very addicted to sugar, caffeine, carbs. Also in the days in the 80s and 90s it was all about low-fat cookies and no sugar drinks even though it was all chemically-based. So I’m sure that didn’t do any good things for me. It wasn’t about, in those days, really whole foods and organic things. It wasn’t organic when that was happening. Even when I was diagnosed there wasn’t really organic.

 

[0:18:51] Ashley James: Right. Well, there was 50,000 or 80,000 less chemicals in our environment though.

 

[0:18:56] Elissa Goodman: That’s true. Yes.

 

[0:18:58] Ashley James: There wasn’t organic food in the 80s. Although you could go to maybe a farmers’ market or if a friend had a garden but we didn’t know what organic was in the 80s. But there was significantly less chemicals in our food.

 

[0:19:14] Elissa Goodman: Exactly. Yes, we still had food dyes. We still had some of those unhealthy fats and hydrogenated oils in our food. We still had too much sugar but you’re right. The chemical pesticides on produce wasn’t as bad. You’re right, that was happening.

So what happened was I was living in New York for almost ten years and I met husband there. We are both in the advertising business climbing the corporate ladder. Just we decided we were ready to start a family. We had gotten married and I was like I can’t see myself commuting out of the city on the train an hour back into the city for work. It didn’t feel healthy for me and also I just kind of want to get back west because I grew up in the west coast in Arizona.

So I said to him, “I really want to investigate maybe looking at California, Arizona to have a little bit of a simpler, better life than this crazy New York life that we are living.” We did end up moving to Los Angeles. At that time I ended up getting a job with Vogue magazine, which I thought was a dream job, in the marketing-sales area. Then six months after the job with Vogue magazine I ended up getting diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I always do that. My husband had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I had a Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

 

[0:20:46] Ashley James: Is one worse than the other?

 

[0:20:48] Elissa Goodman: It just depends – they say non-Hodgkin’s is a little worse because it has different stages of lymphoma like large B-cell, follicular. There’s combinations of lymphoma cells that are combined for the non-Hodgkin’s where Hodgkin’s is just disease in lymphatic system. It doesn’t have the different forms. So it just depends on how far along either of these because I know people who have passed away from both.

I had an early stage but I didn’t know what my symptoms were because basically I always felt crappy. So I was getting a massage from a woman and I was sitting upright. She was massaging my neck and my collar bone and she felt a lymph node in the crevice of my collarbone. She’s like, “Wow. You’re really not supposed to have a swollen lymph node there. You should just get that checked out.”

So a week later I did go to the doctor, just a general practitioner. He felt it. I’ll never forget this moment because he felt it and he was like he’s face just went completely blank and it was like, “Oh my God. This could be cancer.” That’s what he says to me. I was just like, “whoa.” Doctor’s really don’t have a great bed-side manner a lot of times to throw that out there into your face without having further knowledge of anything. I did end up going to get a biopsy and it was an early stage of Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

But just the way that I was treated along the way with the oncologist, with the general practitioner, it was very fear-based like you were talking earlier. It was like, “Oh my God. Oh my God. You’re going to have to do chemo, radiation and you haven’t had kids yet so you’re probably going to have to freeze your eggs. Do you have a donor because we might have to do a stem-cell transplant with a donor?” This was way before this was staged. It was just like, “Hold on you guys. This is way too much information for me to absorb.” I’m already freaking out that I have cancer. Secondly that cancer instills the fear that you could die. Thirdly, all of these treatments that I know nothing about really at the time are scaring the living daylight out of me.

So I had seen two oncologists. Then a friend said, “I want you to go see a radiologist at another hospital in LA.” I’m like, “Oh my God. I can’t go get another third opinion.” I was just so done at that point. She’ like, “Please, please. Go see him.” I did, reluctantly. He sat me down. It was staged at the time. It was an early stage. He asked me, “Are you happy? Do you love what you do? What’s going on in your life? How stressed are you on a scale of 1 to 10? Emotionally, what’s going on?” I was like, “Oh my God.” I burst into tears. No one had ever asked me that really. I was like, “I’m miserable. I’m in a job that’s over my head. I don’t feel very well. I never have. I have all these emotions sort of stirred up inside me. Those feelings of insecurity and not feeling good enough.” It was just the flood of emotion happening in his office and he just hugged me.

He goes, “You know what, we need to get you into therapy.” I did. I went into therapy at that time. He basically just helped me on the emotional component, which was so big. Then I jumped into reading everything I could about just healing holistically with cancer. I knew I wasn’t going to go completely go holistically but I decided to not do chemo because it really scared me with my immune system I was petrified of it. I did half the radiation that they recommended. My oncologist that I was going to fired me because he said, “You’re not doing what I recommend and if this comes back it could be lawsuit material.” I’m like, “okay.”

So I went to find an oncologist, a radiologist and he did the radiation. My gut instincts are like, “Baby, I’m going to kick this sucker. It’s an early stage. I’m going to change my lifestyle. Deal with my emotions.” That’s when a lot of things changed for me. I started juicing. There was one juice place blocks from where I live in Los Angeles. There was Mrs. Gooch’s which is Whole Foods today, which was a grocery that was so beautiful. The produce was beautiful. Things were healthier. There was a lot to offer in LA at the time. So I just dove into all that.

I went to see a naturopath. I went and got [unintelligible]. I’m an Aries. Aries kind of like they just dive in and they do everything they can and sometimes without thinking. But I was determined. I got into yoga. I did a lot. I did too much basically but I did heal. I basically healed and then I went on to have two healthy girls. Not without some complications because after the radiation because they radiated my thyroid, I got hypothyroidism Hashimoto’s. That took three-four years to diagnose. So that was a little tricky.

I had gut issues. I had a lot of stuff after the treatment. But I did have two girls and then 11 years later my husband, at 43 ½ was diagnosed with non-Hodkin’s lymphoma.

 

[0:26:49] Ashley James: Can I stop you right there? I got questions about your – so you went for chemo and radiation?

 

[0:26:59] Elissa Goodman: No. I decided not to do the chemo. I said no to the chemo and I did half the radiation they recommended.

 

[0:27:06] Ashley James: So what happened? You were like, how many sessions was that? Like six sessions?

 

[0:27:11] Elissa Goodman: Six sessions. Yeah.

 

[0:27:13] Ashley James: So you did six. What happened on your sixth? Why did you stop?

 

[0:27:16] Elissa Goodman: Well, no. I just decided – basically they wanted me to do it right. They wanted me to do 12. At six my lymph node was completely gone. I just decided that, the radiologist was on board with me with the six sessions. So it wasn’t like I was just going. I wasn’t going into the wild wild west without any help and guidance. My radiologist that I had taken on was on board with me in regards to not completely frying myself. When I didn’t need to.

 

[0:27:51] Ashley James: When you were doing the six radiation sessions that made the lymph node go away, you had also implemented all these other things at the same time right?

 

[0:28:00] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. I did.

 

[0:28:01] Ashley James: How do you know it was for sure just the radiation or you think it was a combination of everything? Or you’re like, “Okay. I’m good. I’m just going to keep doing all these natural stuff.”

 

[0:28:13] Elissa Goodman: No. I mean I don’t recommend people just going natural of course, I won’t preface that.

 

[0:28:20] Ashley James: We should always work with the doctor that we trust and get second and third opinions. It’s just the question when we do the shotgun approach, which we often do when it’s something, when it’s a serious illness, right? We want to do the shotgun approach but there’s always that question of what worked? If someone had just done radiation and not worked on all the emotions and not started eating healthy and not changed anything of their lifestyle that led to the cancer in the first place would the radiation have been effective with six sessions or they needed 12 or would they needed that and chemo and the would’ve died anyway. So the question is –

 

[0:28:59] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Good question.

 

[0:29:00] Ashley James: What really helps the body heal cancer?

 

[0:29:05] Elissa Goodman: Well now years later, many many years, I’m working with a lot of cancer clients I could tell you what does heal the cancer now. Then I wasn’t sure. But one of my favorite cancer books that came out maybe two-three years ago is called Radical Remission. Do you know it? It’s by Kelly Turner. She did her PhD for ten years. She interviewed stage IV cancer cases. They all healed holistically. None of them did western meds. She came up with ten modalities. Seven of them emotional. The eighth one was food. The ninth one was supplements. The tenth one was exercise.

So, in a nutshell, I think it comes down to when working with clients and seeing what happened with my husband who passed away a year and a half after his diagnosis and what you are saying with the fear factor, I think that what it is – we have, our subconscious is fully downloaded by the age of seven. So we operate, you and I operate today 90-95% out of our subconscious. So if we had any trauma going on in those early years and it doesn’t potentially have to just be those early years. But that subconscious is fully set on those early years. If we had death, divorce or people saying you’re not smart enough or you’re not pretty enough or could just be depending on if you’re a sensitive soul and you come into the world or people are slighting you that could be traumatic for you. There’s all kinds of things that go on in our lives when we come into the world. Maybe it’s not a safe household and parents are not getting along. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on. It depends on the person too that our subconscious is consistently sending us messages. We’re not good enough. We’re not good enough. We’re not pretty enough. We’re never going to be smart enough. It down-regulates our immune system. I think in a nutshell.

 

[0:31:14] Ashley James: Yeah. Every time we’re triggering the sympathetic nervous system response going into fight or flight, any stress or emotional, anything perceived as a threat. Even a cultural threat or a community-based threat. So that unconscious fear of being rejected from the tribe because that meant death to us. So even being bullied on social media. So it can totally emotional but that would absolutely trigger the stress response and thus affect the immune system.

 

[0:31:50] Elissa Goodman: Absolutely. I think it’s that in a nutshell or living in fear consistently. Or it shuts down the digestive system when you’re stressed as we know. Even if you’re drinking healthy juices and eating kale salads you might not absorb nutrients from that healthy food.

 

[0:32:10] Ashley James: If you’re in stress mode because we don’t digest when we’re in stress.

 

[0:32:14] Elissa Goodman: Exactly. Yeah. Liver doesn’t work properly to detox the toxins out of the system or to turn them into a safe form to get them out of the body. Yeah. Everything kind of shuts down. I lived in fight or flight my entire life. I was always in that mode. Yeah. I was still in fight or flight when I dove into all these things. I mean, honestly I feel grateful and I think I was just really lucky that I don’t which of those things really did help me. I think a combination of them did. But I think I also dove in and went on worth living because my life is worth it and I have a lot of years to live and I definitely want to live them. I wasn’t ready to go. I think that’s a big thing. I think my husband who passed away, his dad died of two of cancer of melanoma. I will never know to this day if that was in his subconscious that he just thought cancer was death and that was it. But he was in a fear-based mode for a year and a half and never got out of it. I don’t think he thought that he could live. I think there was a part of him that was like, “This is going to get me. I’m going to try not to let me down.”

The same thing happened to him that happened to your girlfriend. In a year and a half he had two stem-cell transplants, his own and a donor, which is really unheard of. Every time that cancer came back in his blood he was getting hardcore chemo. He did of fungal pneumonia. He didn’t die of cancer. He died because his immune system was compromised. So these treatments, yes they can work but I think the biggest thing we have to focus on these days is the love we have for ourselves, the self-worth we have, the honoring ourselves that we’re good enough, and that we’re worth of a really beautiful life because I think a lot of clients and myself included didn’t feel that way. I didn’t even know what loving myself felt like. When I ask my client these days, “Do you love yourself?” 99% say no. What does that look like? What does that feel like? They don’t even know.

 

[0:34:53] Ashley James: Early on when I first started this podcast, it’s way back, somewhere in the first 20 episodes, I interviewed a mental health counselor. Actually I interviewed two mental health counselors. It’s like four interviews in total. I did two interviews with each. So it’s way back in the first interviews of the show. One of them said, and it just floored me almost fell off my chair, “If you were to look at your relationship with yourself, like a relationship a couple has, you’d call the cops on yourself.” I was like, “You’re right.” He goes, “You would never talk to a love one the way you talk to yourself.”

 

[0:35:33] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. True.

 

[0:35:35] Ashley James: When we really look at it, how much compassion are we giving ourselves? We’ll self-medicate to help us feel better. We’ll binge Netflix late at night instead of giving our bodies the sleep it needs or drink wine or eat sugar or whatever way to numb emotions instead of face them. We’ll make excuses for not going to the gym or we’ll make excuses for eating out instead of eating a home-cooked meal. But if we had a child that we are taking care of we’d be like, “No, I’m not going to feed you fried restaurant food every day. No, I’m not going to let you stay up until two in the morning binging Netflix. No, I’m not going to let you eat a pint of ice cream. Of course I’m going to take you to the park so you can get a lot of exercise.” We treat other people better that are in our charge than we do our own body and our body’s in our charge as well. Then the body’s like, “The only body we’re going to have this lifetime.” So it’s like the coat we put on and we have to take care of this coat for 104 years, right? We have to make it last. We really need that wakeup call, myself included, why are we treating ourselves this way?

 

[0:37:00] Elissa Goodman: I mean, I don’t mean to laugh at it. It’s just we get on an airplane and we’re told to put the oxygen mask on first. I wonder if we’re in that situation if we really would do it.

 

[0:37:11] Ashley James: Well, that’s what they have to tell us. They actually put little cartoons on the thing that show you doing it. It’s just like because it would go completely against our instinct. We would be making sure everyone else has an oxygen mask on first and then we pass out. That makes us a danger to others around us.

 

[0:37:34] Elissa Goodman: Yes. It does. It does. I know today that with having a family and having a second family, if I’m not in a good place emotionally and if I’m stressed and not feeling well and not sleeping and all of those things, the rest of the household just really pays the price. Everybody is off kilter. Because women, yes women a lot of times and I’m not saying that men don’t, but a lot of times a woman do set the tone for the house and how happy it is, how safe it is, how calm it is. We aren’t doing that these days. We are creating an unsafe very stressful environment. We are really doing it to service to our kids and to even our love ones. I mean I think that we’re brought and we still are being brought up that we are supposed to take care of everybody else before ourselves. It’s really not okay at all. There’s no part of that that is okay. I know I still struggle with it at my age, at 59. I have never felt better in my entire life. Because I have started to take care of myself and love myself and honor myself and really be selfish but hopefully not in a selfish way where I’m disregarding the people that I love in my life. I see the benefits because I just have so much energy. I don’t get sick. I’m very mentally clear. I sleep really well. I have really beautiful intimate relationships. I just love life. But it took me a long time to get there. So my goal of course these days is to help people get there sooner than I did.

I didn’t live a healthy life for many years. But now at 59 I feel fantastic. So, I’m trying to tell and teach people like, “You can get there. Yes, you don’t feel good now but that’s not your destiny. Yes, you have cancer now but that doesn’t have to be your destiny. Cancer doesn’t mean death. Cancer doesn’t mean that your life is going to be endlessly health issues. Your body can heal itself. I mean, if stage IV cancer can heal holistically, you can heal from these ailments. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen clients heal. I’ve seen clients go in for radiation and not get radiation and the tumor shrink.”

 

[0:40:22] Ashley James: I’m sorry. Can you say that again? They went in for radiation but they didn’t get the radiation?

 

[0:40:28] Elissa Goodman: They didn’t. It was a placebo effect. It’s studies that have been done. I mean placebo is all over the place. We know that if we think we’re healing most of the time, we are healing as we are talking about with the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. If we’re in rest mode we are healing. If we are not in rest mode we are not healing. So it can be as simples as that. If we are constantly pumping out cortisol and adrenaline from our adrenals, we are not in the mode to heal. Bottom line, I try to teach people that it doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t mean that it has to be a hyperbaric chamber in your house or an infrared sauna. Expensive things. What helps us heal is getting back on our body and teaching ourselves to distress whatever manner that might be. If that’s doing yoga or doing mediation or it’s doing breath work or it’s journaling. There’s some beautiful things out there these days where we can get out body to be definitely relax our central nervous system and our vagus nerve and get ourselves back into a place where we’re back into our body. A lot of times, I see my clients where their head is disconnected from their body.

So, to get us back into feeling our intuition and our gut instincts because they’re very strong because we know what to do for ourselves. We know when we’re stressed. We know when we need sleep. We know when we need better food, right? We came into the world with incredible instincts. We just lost sight of them but they’re still there. Sleep is crucial because our body resets between 10 PM and 2 AM but we don’t get to bed at 10 PM usually. We’re up until two watching Netflix or binging on the Netflix or something. We lose those four hours of resetting. We can’t regain those. That’s the problem. We can’t sleep in until ten and hope that it’s going to help us. That doesn’t work like that.

 

[0:42:54] Ashley James: It’s not regenerative sleep. Even if we did sleep in it’s not the kind of regenerative sleep we need.

 

[0:43:00] Elissa Goodman: It’s things that the stress is crucial, the sleep is crucial. We’re such a dehydrated society but then we have all these bottled water out there and all the bottled water we’re buying but we’re drinking it and peeing it out because we’re not absorbing it because we don’t have the minerals in our body to help the water go into the cells. We’re very dehydrated. We get up and we go right for that coffee in the morning. We don’t even drink water after our body’s been detoxing and cleansing throughout the night and it’s super dehydrated. Just getting up and drinking two cups of water is a beautiful thing before you drink your coffee or any caffeine drinks.

 

[0:43:45] Ashley James: That’s the catch 22 is that’s the self-medication because we are so dehydrated, lacking sleep, lacking minerals, lacking nutrients, full of stress. So then we need to self-medicate in the morning just to get started. That masks the symptoms our body’s trying to. The symptoms are the language of the body. So many naturopaths have said that the body whispers to us first. We need to listen to that language of the body. If we listen to these symptoms, for example my friend Barnetty a year before her cancer diagnosis her body started giving her some really weird symptoms. Sometimes we ignore these symptoms.

My mom passed away of liver cancer when I 22 was years old. She ignored her symptoms and she chalked them up to things like post-menopause, I’m stressed because she had just closed her business and retired early. She was in her 50s. She retired. She moved. She sold the house then moved to a condo then we sold the condo and then they moved to Florida. It was just like so much that stress. But she was chalking up all her physical symptoms. My mom was so healthy. She was always physically fit. She exercised six days a week. She did step classes, spinning, pilates, weightlifting. She took supplements. She went to naturopaths. She did all these healthy stuff and then her MD talked her into a bunch of meds to get her to go to sleep, meds for hormones, which were non-bioidentical hormones. As she was dying in the hospital, those meds were taken off the market. The hormones that her doctor had her on were taken off the market in Canada for causing too much cancer.

So maybe if she was not in a stressed state, maybe if she had taken a more easy, maybe her immune system would’ve been stronger and not have gotten cancer. That’s possible. Maybe if she had not gotten on that med and not listened to that doctor and instead maybe taken her hormonal advice from a naturopath who would’ve given her some herbs, maybe… So there’s so many maybes, right? We can always hindsight it. But her body was telling her symptoms for a long time before it led to cancer but we often will override them by self-medicating or by writing it off, brushing it off as normal. We drag ourselves to the mud and we just drag our bodies through the mud putting everyone else’s needs first and downplaying our own needs.

I was just helping a family member, take them to the emergency room about a month ago. The doctors said there, “Why didn’t you come in three days ago when your symptoms first started?” Not in a mean tone at all. He’s very nice. He just wanted to know why. She said, “You know, I thought it would get better.” He said, “That is the number one thing I hear.” He asks every patient and the number one thing people say is, “I think it might get better and I just wouldn’t want to go to the hassle of going to the clinic or going to see a doctor about it.” Because you don’t want to be that person who’s like, “My toe hurts,” and then the doctor looks at you like, “There’s nothing wrong with you. Go home.” Which some doctors might do even if there is something wrong so that’s always good to get second opinion.

But this is where listening to your intuition like you said, tap into your intuition and don’t be worried about being a bother. Some people are worried that it would be too troublesome. “I’m going to bother the doctors and I don’t need to and they’re going to think I’m silly.” Forget it. Your body has these symptoms for a reason. If your car made weird noises, you’d take it to a mechanic hopefully. It’s the listening in when it’s still a whisper.

 

[0:47:54] Elissa Goodman: Right. That’s why I was saying, intuition, those instincts because they were really strong when they were born. We lose sight of them because when we grow up we have people in our life saying, “Oh no. You shouldn’t feel that way,” or “No. That’s not the way it will happen.” We do know, I do know honestly when I’m making the right choice or not making a right choice. It doesn’t mean that I make wrong choices but I know. My instincts are speaking very loudly to me even with food now because I’m so tuned in to it because of what I do. I can drink cashew milk for instance but if I have a handful of cashews, my stomach is a mess. Sometimes I’ll just crave those nuts and I’ll have a handful of cashews and I’ll be a mess. I’m like, “Damn, girl. I know better.” But if we tap in more often than not it doesn’t mean we’re going to be perfect.

Yes. Our body is speaking to us. It totally is telling us everything we need to know. I basically love where medicine is going a bit more these days because the integrative functional naturopaths are really incredible because they’re doing blood tests and they’re actually spending time with their clients. Mind do here in LA. Finding out about the emotional well-being and their upbringing and if they’re natural childbirth or C-section because sometimes we know that the gut plays a large part in our immune system of course. Also what happens with our serotonin and our mood. Sometimes C-section babies, they don’t have enough microbiome. But they ask these questions. It’s like, “Wow. That is amazing.” Because we can go way back and see what the history is like. Is the immune system not been that strong? Is the emotional stress been intense through their life? Have they taken some hardcore drugs like you were saying? Maybe it’s the birth control pills have wreaked a lot of havoc with gut bacteria. It’s Accutane that kids take for the – even over the counter drugs: Tylenol, Advil, Aleve, they’re all causing havoc with our microbiome. Even anti-histamines are some of the worst.

So today, it’s very cool that a lot of doctors are knowing that these things have some issues and they can ask clients and I can ask clients, “Give me your history. What have you done over your lifetime? Have you taken a lot of these things?” We could kind of get to the more, to the root cause of why they’re having certain symptoms. Maybe even why they have cancer. I do believe we have microscopic cancer cells in our body. I just think that. We have toxins. We have pesticides. We have heavy metals probably and some mold and parasites. Not to scare anybody.

 

[0:51:04] Ashley James: It’s okay. We talk about parasites all the time on the show.

 

[0:51:07] Elissa Goodman: I think that they are just lying dormant there. Viruses, they lay dormant in the body and then when sort of the perfect storm happens, they can raise their ugly. That’s when these things come to fruition and you’re like, “Holy. Why wasn’t I taking better care of myself for those years?” Sometimes, people just don’t know how to take better care of themselves. They’ve never been taught. They don’t know what it looks like, right, Ashley?

 

[0:51:39] Ashley James: Right. Right. My dad was an Aries so I know he was like you. He was just, “Go, go, go, go, go.” He had this thing where he believed that the mind-body connection was so strong that when he was six, so he got a cold or a flu or whatever, he would tell his body he wasn’t sick. He would tell his body he’s healthy and he just plowed through it. He’d be lying in bed with 105 fever just delusional being like, “I’m fine. I’m just going to get up tomorrow. I’m just going to sweat it out and get up tomorrow and I’ll be fine.” He really believed in the mind-body connection, which is a mind-body connection. We can have a positive belief system about our healing. He would use it in a more negative way to deny his body care that it needed and he wouldn’t actually sit and rest. His brother, my uncle, died suddenly in our family factory. He completely shut down. His body just shut down. He got pneumonia. He needs to take six months off. That was the first time I ever saw him take a break in his life. He was just so depressed. He would go, go, go, go, go A-type personality and then he hit a wall. His body said, “I can’t handle this. You can’t keep going at a millions miles per hour and have these emotions. You just have to shut down.” So that was my example.

Then my other example, growing up we look at both our parents for lessons. So on one hand I’m looking at my dad like, “You can just rule yourself healthy and go, go, go and just eat your emotions and ignore your body. Your mind is so strong you can plow through it. Just have coffee and keep going. Who needs sleep anyway?” Then my mom, Taurus, A-type personality, slower than my dad but driven, a bull. She going to just push through slowly. She had a routine. She was fierce. She would get up at six in the morning. She would do the same thing every day: have the protein shake, do her makeup or no. She would go to the gym then do her makeup, go to work for like 12 hours because she ran her own business, then come home super late at night totally exhausted and do it all over again day after day after day.

So I watched both of them and then they’d crash on the weekends. Weekends were like they were just dead. Back then there was no internet. You couldn’t actually work on the weekends. If they could’ve worked on the weekends they would’ve kept going, right? This is my example of health. It’s just you go, go, go, ignore your body, you’re a machine and then you just crash. So when it came to like have vacation, we would take three weeks off in the wintertime because that’s when their businesses, no own was working. So thank God. No one was working so they couldn’t work because they both own their businesses.

The first week of vacation was just them totally collapsed. They couldn’t even enjoy themselves, right? It’s like, how much enjoyment are you getting out of life by just plowing through it and ignoring your body? My mom died at 55. My dad died at 62.

 

[0:54:48] Elissa Goodman: Wow. So sorry. You’ve had a lot of death around you. Whoa.

 

[0:54:55] Ashley James: I share it because –

 

[0:54:59] Elissa Goodman: And it’s too young.

 

[0:55:00] Ashley James: It is very young for me to lose my parents. They were very passionate. I carry on everything I learn from them. I’m using it as an example because we can look at our own lives and look at how we treat our bodies and look at the room for improvement because no matter how much self-care we do, I think there’s always room for improvement. There’s always blind spots. My parents had blind spots. I’m sure they would differently if they had the hindsight. They really believed they were going to live well into their 80s. Genetically, they could have. I have family members on both sides that are almost 90. Genetically, they could have done it and that’s where lifestyle comes into play. Genes are just the blueprints. The nutrition aspect, like you said, we have to have the minerals to get the hydration into the cells, right? If you don’t, it doesn’t matter what kind of genes you have whether your whole family has cancer in the history or not. It’s about the level of lifestyle and nutrition you’re dealing with now.

Obviously, you had this tragedy you losing your husband. Where did you go from there? You were obviously in shock. That was very quick to have lost him from diagnosis to his death was, did you say was 18 months?

 

[0:56:34] Elissa Goodman: Yes. It was a year and a half. Yeah.

 

[0:56:35] Ashley James: So it’s very quick and he was fighting but you saw that it is belief system. He didn’t work on his belief system. That he sort of had this belief that this is a death sentence.

 

[0:56:45] Elissa Goodman: Yes. I think that he was very type A as well and was also one of those that power through like didn’t watch his symptoms, didn’t pay attention. So there was like months and months went on where he had swollen lymph nodes on his neck, didn’t take care of them. So, yeah. I’m not that. If he had taken care of it potentially at the beginning maybe it could’ve been a different outcome.

 

[0:57:18] Ashley James: All we can do is learn. All we can do is learn from the past. We can’t hold ourselves to this regret. For so long after my mom’s passing, I blamed myself for her death, which is crazy to do for a 22-year-old. To think, “If only I had done this for my mom.” I was just grasping at straws because I guess I wanted to make sense of it and I ended up feeling guilty for her death and blaming myself. I did a ton of emotional work. I’ve spent years in the healing and gaining great perspective. I feel very healthy about my childhood, about my past and about my relationship with my mom and her death. I feel like I’ve come to a very place now because I’ve done that work. I can see that even now at Barnetty’s passing, I caught myself going into that, “I could’ve done this. I could’ve done that.” I just become the observer and seeing that self-talk and not letting it take hold of me but just observing it. Going, “Isn’t that interesting this thought process. It’s not the truth.” What do they say? Feelings aren’t facts. It’s just the thought. This thought isn’t true. It’s okay, I can have this thought but I’m not going to let this become a truth for me. I could not control her like I can’t control anyone, I can only control myself. I couldn’t have controlled the outcome no matter how much I wanted to, obviously.

 

 

[0:58:51] Elissa Goodman: Same. Same with him. That’s the same. I mean, I tried to bring in some holistic things into his regime but it was hard because the doctors were speaking another language. They’re like, “Yeah. That’s not going to help. None of that healthy food, the juicing, all that stuff. That’s not going to help.”

 

[0:59:11] Ashley James: “Nurturing the body, giving it all the raw building blocks it needs to build healthy cells. That’s not going to help. You need hardcore drugs and chemicals.”

                                                  

[0:59:19] Elissa Goodman: Right. To just demolish your body and demolish all the cells, the good, the healthy and the not healthy cells. I know. Interestingly afterwards, a girl friend of mine was into the EMFs, the magnetic frequencies. He wanted to come over the house after he passed away to actually test the house. Because we had taken an old home in Los Angeles and we remodeled it. She just have this feeling that she didn’t feel right about the, there might be too many EMFs in the house. She was actually completely right. She came over with her meter and shockingly, when we tested it on his side of the bed, the EMFs were off the chart.

We’re not sure of course exactly what caused that. I do know that we had built on our master bedroom. Sometimes what happens is his wires aren’t grounded properly. There’s all kinds of things that go on. So interestingly, yes, on my side of the bed it was normal. On his side of the bed, it was off the charts high.

 

[1:00:33] Ashley James: I’ve interviewed a few building biologists. I’ve had some handful EMF interviews. Sal La Duca was the first one I did. He’s like a PhD electrician or something. His credentials are off the charts and he has some amazing stories to share about the home and EMFs. How he’ll be invited into a home and just like you said, on one side of the bed will be cancer-causing EMFs or something similar. But he’s had some amazing experiences but he can actually explain why it happens. Because he’s an electrician or like an electrician engineer or something like that. I know I’m saying his credentials wrong but it’s very academic and can absolutely explain the science why.

That so many homes that we think we’re safe but it can be whole neighborhoods. He says the problem can actually start at the transformer for an entire neighborhood. So a transformer, I guess we’re naïve. We assume our food is safe, our home is safe, our electricity is safe. But he shares many horror stories and also the resolution of them were the transformer. The problem is outside the home but it was effecting every single home in the neighborhood and that everyone’s health was affected. If you’re again ignoring your body, you’re self-medicating with coffee and sugar and alcohol or whatever, then you’re not listening to your body. You may not realize that you feel worse when you’re at home and better when you’re away from the house.

 

[1:02:20] Elissa Goodman: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I know. I agree that all this stuff – even with the mold issues with the people homes. I definitely see a lot of that too. Thank God we’re making them aware of these things, the EMFs. Trying to talk to people about 5G which is really sort of detrimental to our health. The mold issues and let’s say the heavy metals. I’m constantly having my clients get tested for pesticides and heavy metals and molds just to see if there’s any underlying currents that we need to take care of because those underlying currents are what cause inflammation to happen and a lot of times too causes the body to go into that mode that the cells won’t actually replicate in a healthy way. Plus getting nutrient deficiency tests done to see what nutrients not just piling on all the nutrients and going out and buying all these millions of supplements that there are today with fillers and synthetics, which drive me crazy as well.

Just really finding out at the root level what nutrients you are deficient in and taking care of that. Just by doing that and doing a really a deep-dive in your blood counts, your thyroid, your adrenals, your hormones, what’s really going on with your cortisol, your vitamin D can be life-changing. In those days when I was going through all these and when my husband was going through it they didn’t do any of that.

 

[1:04:05] Ashley James: Yeah. Something as simple as vitamin D. Having healthy levels of vitamin D is a huge cancer preventer. They’re seeing that people who are chronically low in vitamin D are far more likely, I don’t know the statistics but it was shocking, far more likely to get cancer if you have chronic low vitamin D. It’s also an indication. Early on I have an episode. These episode have been bumped off of iTunes because iTunes only last for 300 and we’re approaching 400 but they’re all on my website LearnTrueHealth.com. I have an early interview early on all on vitamin D, the entire episode by a naturopath all in vitamin D.

It’s fascinating how our body makes it. I just thought it was like sunlight hits our skin and then we have vitamin D. I didn’t know anything else. That our liver’s involved, our kidney’s involved, our cholesterol levels are involved. Obviously, sunlight being that final step. Our body needs sunlight on direct naked skin but that’s if we have kidney issues or liver issues or not enough healthy cholesterol, those are all factors that need to come into play to make vitamin D levels. Then we have to look at like what if low vitamin D is not the problem but the symptom of a problem?

So coming back even before that, why is the body not producing enough vitamin D? Besides the fact that we’re not getting enough sunlight, even in the summertime people are vitamin D deficient. So what’s going on is the body deficient in the healthy cholesterol. Why is the body deficient in healthy cholesterol? Are the kidneys functioning correctly? Is the liver functioning correctly? What other the co-factors are missing? Kind of creeping back and trying to go sort of upstream, what is actually causing? Where is the beginning? What is this dysfunction? Where did it all start that has this? Because we’re just doing a blood test of something and we’re treating just take the vitamin D supplement. Well, if your underlying problem is a kidney issue or a liver issue or the low healthy cholesterol, I mean great to take a vitamin D supplement but that’s again just masking a symptom. That’s not digesting the root cause.

 

[1:06:21] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. I know. I think what it feels scary these days for a lot of people and for me too sometimes is the internet and Google. That’s very overwhelming. I mean, I know when I was going through all these I didn’t have that so it had to be searching through books or talking to doctors. Google can really screw us up. Because you can just go on and plug in what are the symptoms of low vitamin D. You have some of these symptoms and buy the vitamin D. Even go on, you know, watch me on Instagram and I’m like, “Hey, everybody. Vitamin D is really important because of these reasons.” Then a lot of my followers will go out and buy that buy that vitamin D. I’m like, “Maybe you don’t need it. Have you check to see,” like you were saying, “if you really do need it and what’s going on with you an what are the other factors happening for the reasons why you might think you might need it?”

We’ve done a disservice. There’s a [bend] through ourselves with all the information out there too because people are very confused at what direction they should be going these days and what is going to make them healthy and what isn’t going to make them healthy. That’s a whole other. The supplement market is just really out of control. The super foods that are out there. The combinations of things. A lot of them have fillers and synthetics in them that aren’t so great for you.

 

[1:07:58] Ashley James: Well, I would propose that the pharmaceutical industry is out of control and that people are desperately seeking less poisonous. Anytime that there is a demand, people are going to try to fill that demand. There’s companies that are ethical and companies that are looking to make a profit off of us because it’s the wild west out there but we want it to be. If the supplement industry was regulated, which it’s not, if it was regulated then it would be completely controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. We want to protect our ability to gain access to supplements. We just have to be educated consumers. So we have to find the supplement companies that are ethical, that don’t do skip-batch testing, they test every batch with a third-party lab, that they publish those findings. Like you said, they don’t have the fillers. That they’re willing to be that open book and show us that they’re ethical. There are out there. There’s supplements out there.

Then you go to Walmart or whatever. You go to some kind of Bartells, Walgreens whatever and you’re just like, “Oh. Here’s vitamin whatever. Let’s pick it off the shelf.” I have a friend who is doing his premed in Michigan. He in one of his classes did a really fun science experiment. They went, it was for chemistry or something, but they went out and they bought vitamin C off of every brand they could get. Any kind of over the counter so went to a bunch of pharmacies. Went to a bunch of big box stores and bought every single kind of vitamin C, every brand they could find. They went and they tested it. They had equipment that they could test the purity of it. There were brands that had zero vitamin C in it that claim that it’s a 100 mg tablet or whatever, 1000 mg tablet. There’s some that have no vitamin C that are just all flavoring. There are some that have half the amount of vitamin C. None of them were pure and none of them were what they actually said was on the label.

I know that they’ve done a study and you could Google this that they were studying gingko biloba and they found that most of them had lower levels than were published on the label and some had no gingko biloba, which is an herb. So it is buyer beware, which I agree. I think it’s coming from a demand that the consumers are sick and tired of being sick and also sick and tired of being given drugs for absolutely every symptom. We’re kind of just like blindly flailing our arms grabbing at whatever we can and sometimes it’s low-quality supplements. Then people say supplements don’t work and they’re given a bad rap, which is unfortunate because really high-quality supplements are life-changing. They have been for me.

 

[1:11:06] Elissa Goodman: Yes. They are for me too. They absolutely are for me too. I know. There are some really great ones. I’m a supplement junkie for some reason. I got into all of that years ago and just over the years I’ve love to try everything. I’m always searching the highest quality products and companies. Yeah. I do. They have been life-changing for me. Definitely. Certain supplements I feel that are important for us to take because I’ve noticed over the years with working with clients how well they do on them on some of the simplistic ones like a probiotic. I mean I think we all need a better beneficial microbiome. There’s controversies about the probiotic. Do they work? Do they not work?

I’ve seen year after year with people putting them on really good high-quality probiotics, their digestive issues go away. They digest their food better. Their weight is affected, their sleep, their mood, everything, their immunity. So there just really are things that are important out there that people should be taking but making sure that they are the highest quality.

 

[1:12:24] Ashley James: Yeah. I know the controversy about probiotics is interesting. They say that after 30 days of taking a probiotic that they couldn’t find the actual probiotics culture in the gut. Because we thought, “Just take a bottle and it will repopulate your gut and it will always stay there.” But they’re actually finding that after you complete a course of probiotics, that they don’t live much longer in the gut after we’ve taken it.

I had a naturopath, he’s in research side of things, on the show talking about probiotics. But he said that doesn’t mean they’re not beneficial. They play this amazing role in helping heal the gut. He doesn’t think that people should be on them forever and you should cycle through and take different strains. It’s helping to crowd out the bad bacteria while you’re taking it and also helping digest while you’re taking it. But then, it kind of creates this healthy space that when you stop taking it for the good bacteria. But to also accompany it with eating a variety of fermented foods at each meal, small amounts of fermented food at each meal.

 

[1:13:37] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. I agree. That’s what I do. I love fermented food. I have a cleanse that I actually cook and deliver to 100 people most months in Los Angeles. 150 people on about 3 or 4 months out of the year. For five days I put them on a reset. The morning drink is a detox sonic for your gut and it is coconut kaffir, which is fermented coconut water and it is full of beneficial bacteria. Then we have a liquid aloe vera and lemon and ginger and apple cider vinegar and a liquid probiotic. People love that drink. Their guts are so much better in five days.

Just seeing adding a probiotic and adding coconut kaffir or even the yogurts out there that are great or sauerkraut, kimchi. Those fermented foods are amazing. I know that a lot of clients don’t eat enough of the fermented stuff so I kind of have to push them more down that road.

 

[1:14:41] Ashley James: Yeah. Well. We used to eat fermented foods all the time. But now we’re kind of obsessed in the last, I don’t know, 50 years we’re really obsessed with sterile foods. Maybe it started around, I don’t know, when we learned about germs. Then we made all these cleaners for bleaching germs. Maybe we started thinking we should sterilize our food. Or right around the 1950s when we have the TV dinners. It became this idea to have package sterile foods would be really good for us. We lost that connection with living foods.

Now we’re seeing that, there’s about six pounds of good and bad bacteria, depending on the dysbiosis that’s occurring in your body, but there’s about six pounds of bacteria that are in our gut that we need. That we absolutely rely on. If we were sterile, we could not digest that the bacteria’s that’s digesting our food and helping us assimilate those nutrients. So it’s phenomenal that we are this giant petri dish. We need to support the petri dish, the good bacteria. You have mentioned –

 

[1:16:03] Elissa Goodman: We are bacteria. We’re made up of bacteria’s. So we have more bacteria in our body than we do cells.

 

[1:16:10] Ashley James: There’s more. It’s like 10:1 ratio I read. The other day I was reading about that but the bacteria cells are much smaller but it is a 10:1 ratio meaning for everyone, and we have 37.2 trillion human cells in our body and then it’s ten times more bacteria. So we are a home to these, we’re a host to this symbiotic relationship. It’s kind of like do you want to be a ghetto and have the street gangs in your body or do you want to have the leave it to beaver kind of family. I don’t know, I’m just trying to make –

 

[1:16:47] Elissa Goodman: White picket fence. The white picket fence.

 

[1:16:49] Ashley James: Yeah. We want the white picket fence. We want to be that home. We wanna have that very peaceful, no one arguing. We want all the good bacteria. We don’t want the violent gang bacteria in our body that’s creating the dysbiosis and the candida and the parasites. So we have to create that environment. Then that also directly affects our immune system which then would either help us create cancer or avoid cancer.

 

[1:17:14] Elissa Goodman: Absolutely. As well as depression, anxiety, all of the above. 90% of your serotonin is produced in your gut. Then your gut, you need that microbiome to actually absorb the nutrients from your food and also help with producing B12, which is really crucial, another crucial vitamin for the body. If we don’t have proper microbiome in our ilium, which is the lower part of our small intestine, we’re not going to produce B12. So that’s a little bit intricate. That is crucial for us with energy and mental fog and all of that.

 

[1:17:59] Ashley James: I also learned recently that 25% of our T3 is converted in the gut. So someone might end up having low thyroid hormones on their blood panel and then be put on some drug. And the doctor was just freaking looking at the symptoms, just looking at the blood test, looking at symptoms and then treating the symptoms with the drug rather than going – they’re treating the smoke not the fire. Can you imagine if firefighters only treated the smoke and left the fire burning? That’s what doctors are doing by treating symptoms and not kind of backtracking going, “Why is it that your body has less T3?”

If we could go back, what helps create T3 and is it because you’re missing the precursors? Is there something wrong with the HPA axes or the HPT axes? What’s going on? Doctors just ask more questions and try to go back further and further to the beginning, they could actually help treat the root cause. But that’s not part of their training. Their training is to deliver drugs and manage symptoms of the body. Unless you go to a holistic doctor or holistic nutritionist like yourself who gets really curious and wants to help us get to the root cause.

So if you heal the gut and that is the problem then all of a sudden the thyroid levels are normal. That person never needed to take medication for their thyroid because their thyroid was healthy. It’s just the gut was not converting the T3.

 

[1:19:24] Elissa Goodman: That thyroid medication is going to affect the microbiome. It’s going to deplete it. I know, it is really crazy. I mean, the whole thyroid Hashimoto’s whole thing is also pretty enormous. I mean, it’s sad that cancer is not getting any better and Hashimoto’s is one of the fastest-growing autoimmune diseases today, which is related to the thyroid. I mean, it is sad what is happening these days. What you’re talking about exactly what we need more of is to have people out there that are educated, that are talking the talk like you’re saying about the T3 and the gut because we’ll put on thyroid medication that’s only T4. If you have Hashimoto’s you won’t convert T4 to T3 and T3 is what is really the driving force behind your thyroid.

Even the endocrinologists don’t talk about that. They don’t even check your gut. They don’t check for celiac or what’s going on in your gut. Is your microbiome not healthy? It’s really crazy. But I think that what is great that, yes like I said, people like myself and lots of people like myself and great functional doctors and people who are really diving into all these and getting to the root and knowing what to do when someone comes in and has these issues and can do a blood panel or a gut microbiome test or stool sample or whatever it needs to be to see what is really going on at the root level. Not just taking the symptoms and band-aiding them because we’re not getting anywhere. Like I said, we’re not getting anywhere with the cancer or the Hashimoto’s or the thyroid. I mean, thyroid is just rapid in terms of the number of people. The younger generation that are having thyroid issues.

So this is really crazy and we can reverse it. I reversed it after 25 years on medication, I went into remission for Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism and my numbers are all perfect.

 

[1:21:35] Ashley James: I love it. I love it that you’re saying that because I’ve talked to so many people who say they really believe it’s a life sentence that they will have their autoimmune condition for the rest of their life. I will scream it from the rooftops, autoimmune condition is not a life sentence. It’s not like type 1 diabetes where you have to have it. That’s unfortunate we haven’t found a cure for type 1 diabetes. Maybe with stem cell therapy they’ll be able to regenerate the pancreas. It’s simply the pancreas is gone. It’s not working. Type 2 diabetes, easily reversible within three months. I reversed mine. I’ve helped so many people reverse theirs. Type 2 diabetes is not a life sentence but if you go to an average doctor, they will put you on meds and say we have to manage the diabetes and never talk about cure, never.

The average doctor will tell you that you have your Hashimoto’s for the rest of your life and just help you manage it. Tell you you have your autoimmune condition for the rest of your life, help you manage it. Now can you recreate it? I can recreate diabetes. I can go right now to some fast-food restaurant. I can eat absolute crap, change my diet and I could recreate diabetes because that’s genetically or whatever. My body is going to go in that direction if I fill it with crap. If you fill your body with crap, and I can eat the same crap food, you may never get diabetes but you may get Hashimoto’s again. You may get cancer again. Your body is going in that direction. The stressors putting stress in your body exhibits in that disease. That’s what breaks down first.

It’s like every car, if we drive for a million miles, the different parts will break. It’s just we put the wear and tear on the car, different things break. For me, my body’s going to go type 2 diabetes. That is the first thing it’s going to do if I eat crap for three months. But you can reverse it. You can 100% reverse autoimmune condition. I’ve seen so many people 100% be in remission, no longer have it, no longer worry about it. I’m glad you’re saying that today because I want those who have autoimmune to know that there is so much hope. That the body can heal itself to the point where you no longer have it. It is possible.

So after 25 years of having Hashimoto’s, did you all of a sudden do something differently to heal your Hashimoto’s and what was it? What was it?

 

[1:24:05] Elissa Goodman: It was kind of fascinating because I do love all these science aspect of things and I do try to dive into that as well. But I’m also a little bit of a – I’ve seen energy healers for ten years. I love [raky], I love just that all of the other holistic modalities that you don’t potentially have a lot of science behind it. So what happened was three years ago, I basically read the medical medium, he’s name is Anthony William. I’m sure you’d know about him. I read his first book and I put it down. I was like, “Ha. This is interesting.” He’s talking about all these viral issues in the body that lay dormant. I had chickenpox and I had mono twice and strep throat and tonsillitis and I even had shingles. So I probably had a high viral condition that’s probably laying dormant in my organs.

So I just was interested like wow, no one’s talked about that. So I did a session with him the following week. I got lucky to do one and he was on the phone and he basically over the phone said, “You have Epstein-Barr in your thyroid and your liver and if you don’t do something about it asap, you’re going to have some serious health issues.” Who knows? He just is telling me over the phone. So you take it for a grain of salt. I’m like, “This is interesting.” He puts me on a protocol to lower my viral loads. So he puts me on [biractisilver] and concentrated liquid zinc, high dose of Ester-c, lysine. Things that I knew about too that lower viral issues. Licorice root extract. I did a little bit of concentrated iodine for my thyroid. Swear to God in three months, I went into hyperthyroid mode because I was still on my thyroid medication and then basically my doctor weaned me off of the thyroid medication slowly. That’s three months to four months after doing this protocol I was like felt fantastic.

That was the beginning of my journey. I ended up finding out that I had celiac and I had a parasite. I kind of like just dove into all these and I took care of both of those things by healing my gut and by getting rid of the parasite. I stayed on his protocol for probably a year. Then I ended up just diving into more meditation. That’s when I discovered my self-love aspect. I really just tried to go down this road of what I have been preaching but also potentially not necessarily doing really well myself. I knew better and so I did. I dove into taking care of myself better. Because I was already eating really healthy. I still do. Since I’ve got into this practice I eat really well and I’m more plant-based but I didn’t really dive into the crux of what was underneath it all like the potential parasites I had and the celiac and some of the nutrient deficiencies that were happening within the body.

 

[1:27:30] Ashley James: My issue with celiac is so many people can be diagnosed incorrectly because not the entire small intestine is affected and they take a biopsy and look at it under a microscope. They’ll take a few different biopsies and they’re just, you know, guessing. Someone could absolutely have celiac and it might come back as not. So the thing is for me is, and I have been working with people for the last seven-eight years now, I get 100% of them to try no barley, wheat, rye or oats. I know a lot of people will go, “Well, there’s no gluten in oats,” or “but these are gluten-free oats.” Oats contain gliadin, just consider it a similar enough protein to cause the same damage. People who react to barley, wheat, rye also will react to oats. So many times it’s worth just taking it out, see what happens.

Oats also really spike the blood sugar. I had the author of wheat belly, who’s a cardiologist that heals heart health and other diseases by creating healthy blood-sugar basically. He’s like, “Oats are just, they’re kind of junk in that they really do raise blood sugar. They’re not really great for many people.” So anyway, barley, wheat, rye and oats. Avoid them for 30 days and then do a test day. Just eat pasta and pizza and just eat all your favorite, eat a bagel. Just fill your life with barley, wheat, rye and oats that day and see in a few days how you feel.

My husband and I, we’re going to do this challenge. This is back in 2011. We were told to do this challenge with a naturopath we were working with. That was hard because we were eating somewhat still the standard American diet. We’d already gone organic. We’re shopping the perimeter but to be told to cut that out, some people they just don’t know how to shop or how to cook without barley, wheat, rye and oats. So we said, “Okay. We’ll do the challenge. We’ll do what you said. We’ll take it out and then we’ll do a challenge day.”

By the fifth day we’re like, “We are never eating these foods again. We feel so amazing.” I lost 25 pounds of water weight. I know it wasn’t fat. It was 25 pounds of water weight from the inflammation. My husband, I don’t know how much he lost, he lost a bunch. Then our rings started flying off our fingers. We had our rings sized for us when we got married. We had been married since 2008 so they were well-fitted rings. They weren’t too tight. They were just perfect. They started flying off our hands. We decided to get them resized after a few months because I didn’t want to, what if this was temporary and the water came back? So after a few months we went to get our rings resized. I went down 1 ½ ring sizes and he went down 2 ring sizes. That’s just from cutting out barley, wheat, rye and oats.

So we were never diagnosed with celiac but we didn’t have to be. We were convinced after day 5. We didn’t even had to do the challenge day. We did not even want to do the challenge day. Since then, there’s been a handful of times where I was like gluten-poisoned either by choice or by accident. I got a tummy ache and get kind of bloated but it’s not life-threatening, thank goodness. It’s just a day-to-day inconvenience.

So my day-to-day life is barley, wheat, rye and oat-free. It’s really interesting when I eat it and I don’t know I’m eating it by accident and then I start feeling ill and then I look at the ingredients. It’s like, “Oh. Yeah.” When I was eating it every day that was my norm. When we’re eating something our body’s reacting, imagine if you eat cashews every day.

 

[1:31:29] Elissa Goodman: I know.

 

[1:31:30] Ashley James: Right. And it’s just your norm and you don’t know it’s the cashews because it’s your norm. The average person out there would eat what they’re allergic to and then take some kind of, I don’t want to say some brand names, but take some kind of drug to mask their digestive upset and just keep plowing through life and not knowing that every time they ate that food it actually disrupted their gut biome, disrupted their ability to convert T3, disrupted their immune system, put the body in a stress response, fed the wrong bacteria. Basically cultivated a stressed state for the body to create cancer and other diseases.

It’s so easy to cut something out and replace it with something else. People are like, “What do you eat? Oh my gosh. You’re gluten-free. What do you eat?” I’m like, “Anything I want. Just not barley, wheat, rye and oats.” There’s so many foods. There’s so much.

 

[1:32:25] Elissa Goodman: There’s so many other things that yeah, you can eat. I know. I know exactly. It’s so true. Like I said earlier in our call is it’s not supposed to be hard, all of this. We’re supposed to learn how to destress. We know sleep is important for us. We know that we need to be hydrated. Then when it comes to food, we know that we need to feel good after we eat. We do not to be bloated and have digestive issues. That is not normal. So paying attention to that and eliminating those that do give you the upset can be life-changing.

Just trying so hard not to eat the processed foods and going for the whole foods as much as you can is really the ticket and going organic, especially if you have a health issue. But not all things have to be organic. Just really especially soy and like you said oats and wheat that do have that [unintelligible] issues and corn, that’s usually important. Just trying to eat whole foods and real foods. I tell people that, try to teach people how to meal prep for the week, to roast some vegetables and stick them in a glass Pyrex dish and have them in the fridge.

Just having maybe sweet potatoes. Some kind of grains of complex carbs, not necessarily grains but that do have minerals in them. Roasted carrots and roasted beets and all of those things. Maybe wild rice or black rice that don’t have the gluten or sensitivity to the gut. Having those in a Pyrex dish. I go more plant-based. I’m a soy girl so I do love organic soy. Edamame or tempeh or lentils or chickpeas and having those in a Pyrex dish. Then I have them have a lot of greens and then they throw them all into a bowl and a great dressing and you’re a home run, a piece of cake. You could have that for the week setup or you can make some easy pureed soups because that’s what my cleanse is. It’s a lot of soups and salads and it’s a soup cleanse. I have recipes where it takes 15 minutes to make a parade soup. You can pull that out and make a salad and be on your way to health.

 

[1:34:54] Ashley James: You’re talking my language. Bowls. That’s exactly how I eat. I just make batches of different foods then you just pull them all out. I have bowls. That’s what I had lunch for today. Lunch yesterday, lunch today, dinner the day before. I like doing a combination of raw and cooked. So I love, love – my favorite raw foods to put, because you want the enzymes form the uncooked foods. I love purple cabbage. It is so delicious. My son, my 4-year-old who has become quite picky, also loves purple cabbage. He doesn’t like it cooked. He only likes it raw. It’s crunchy and it has this great flavor and it’s so wonderful. It’s so colorful to sprinkle on top of your food.

So I love making sure that there are some cut-up purple cabbage ready to go. I get the Instant Pot out and I make a whole thing of potatoes or wild rice like you said. Wild rice is not like any of the other rices. It’s a totally different starch. It’s non-reactive to the immune system. It’s actually the highest amount of antioxidants. I was reading an article recently that talked about that women who ate wild rice one to two times a week had a significantly lower risk of heart disease and cancer. I can’t remember the exact numbers but something like 30% or 40%. It was low enough to be like, “Yes. I now give myself permission a bit more money,” because wild rice is a bit more expensive but it still less expensive than eating out at a restaurant and very, very, very healthy. I love it. I love that.

I want to share a sauce since we’re talking about bowls, I’ll share a recipe that was shared with me, and it’s kind of been passed down from whole food person to whole food person. It’s called 3-2-1 sauce. It’s three parts balsamic, two parts mustard, 1 part maple syrup. But I don’t know anyone who likes it that sweet. So although the name is 3-2-1 sauce, it’s really more like 32.25. You just put a tiny, tiny bit of maple syrup. It does not need that much. Sometimes with a sweet balsamic it doesn’t need any. You mix those three together in any ratio that makes you happy but it’s supposed to be 3-2-1 but for me, like I said, 32.25. Balsamic, mustard and any kind of mustard you want, any kind of balsamic you want, of course always organic. Then any kind of maple syrup. Hopefully real maple syrup. Mix the three together. You can have it in a jar or something and then you take it to the restaurant with you.

If you want to eat really, really clean but you want to go out, Thai restaurant in the back of the menu, there’s a section called side dish, you can order steamed vegetables. Sometimes they have black rice, sometimes they have brown rice. You can get a whole bunch of steamed vegetables and then pour your 321 sauce on it. So good. Most restaurant will do just plain steamed vegetables. I love steamed cabbage. They often, the Thai restaurants will often do steamed cabbage. It’s so good.

I’ve been filming with one of my friends, Naomi. We both went plant-based for health reasons and have seen great results. We noticed that a lot of my listeners want to be healthier but don’t know how to cook. So we’ve been filming videos on how to cook. I’m about to launch a membership site that’s going to be affordable for everyone where they learn how to cook. I’m saying, listen, people don’t have to give up their meat. That’s their choice. I’m not a high-pressure vegan salesperson. I’m not trying to convert. I went kicking and screaming because I loved meat and now I can’t believe how good I feel when I stopped eating it. Stopped eating eggs, stopped eating meat. I already cut out dairy and I feel like a millions bucks within days of not eating meat. I could not believe. But there’s this part of my brain that was screaming, yelling going, “Where’s the meat? Where’s the meat?”

For me, I went kicking and screaming. My husband went vegan overnight and he’s coming up on his two-year veganniversary. He went from eating basically 100% Atkins all the time to zero meat. He just gave it up cold turkey. Me, I weaned off of it. Took me like two years. Now, I love cooking these foods and bowls is totally the answer, like you said.

So my thing is, we’re making all these videos to show people just how to eat more healthy food. They just add it. If they want to still do meat that’s fine. They can just add more healthy food to that. If they want to try this they can try it. I love that it’s accessible. It actually saves time and saves money to eat this way especially with exactly what you said, which is the food prep.

 

[1:39:58] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Absolutely. I have a dressing on the cleanse that’s called, it’s really called, the detox herb vinaigrette. You could put it on salads and bowls. It’s a little different than what’ you were talking about. It’s a handful of parsley, cilantro and basil and garlic and apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper and olive oil. It goes into a Vitamix. It is to die for. It is so delicious. You just put a little bit of that in a bowl or your salad or even you can put it in chicken if you want to eat meat or fish. It’s so good.

You’re right to have these really good dressings in the fridge to make it all come together. There’s also an herb salt that I live and die by. It’s sea salt with fresh herbs in it. It’s called Herbamare, H-E-R-B-A-M-A-R-E. That’s also a lifesaver. You put that on to spice up any kind of bowl dish. It’s fabulous too.

There are some great things to do out there. I know. I’m definitely, I’m not total plant-based vegan but I’m 80%. I’m more of a pescatarian. I do love fish and I feel like I can’t get enough calories and enough oomph from my vegan lifestyle so I do have to add in some of the animal. Like you’re saying, my husband who passed away, he was a big Atkins guy and he was a sugarholic. He had to have sweets after every meal. A little dessert, a little sweets and then in his office was the crappy candy in the bowls.

 

[1:41:41] Ashley James: He just ate meat and candy.

 

[1:41:43] Elissa Goodman: Candy and sugar kept him going. I know. He was watching his weight with the Atkins, whole thing. He did lose weight and looked great so no one would have ever known.

 

[1:41:54] Ashley James: Which we know just call it keto. We don’t call it Atkins anymore. It’s basically the same diet with a different name because people who do Keto wrong end up just eating Atkins. Because Atkins is mostly protein and Keto is mostly fat. Most people don’t actually keto and they think they are, they’re actually eating Atkins because very, very few people eat 80% fat. They’re just thinking they can eat butter and cheese and meat. They think they’re doing Keto but they’re doing Atkins. Either one, not healthy long-term. Not a healthy long-term diet. You’re missing minerals, you’re missing nutrients, it’s very acidic for the body. We could go on and on.

I love that you’re listening to your body. That’s another thing I want to emphasize is that there is no one diet that’s right for anyone. There’s no diet dogma. You might turn around tomorrow and check-in with yourself and your body might say, “I need more fish. I need no fish. I need eggs. I don’t need eggs. I need more broccoli. I don’t need any broccoli.” It is about listening. Getting to that point where you could listen to that body and then make some adjustments and be willing to experiment. Be willing to do the eliminations. Be willing to go egg-free. I discovered, eggs were the last thing for me to kick to be 100% plant-based.

I started to get heart palpitations which was so weird because I’m like, “I am so healthy. What’s going on?” I even saw a cardiologist. He’s like, “Your heart is super healthy.” He said something really interesting. He said, “The heart is so strong and so sensitive that any stressor in the body the heart will respond to.” It could be emotional stress, mental stress, it could be physical stress. The heart is resetting. So my heart palpitations were from the heart resetting and I thought, “That’s really weird.” So then I cut out eggs and my heart palpitations went away. Then I reintroduced them and my heart palpitations came back like while I was eating them.

So, over and over again, I could basically turn on and off my heart palpitations by whether I ate eggs or not. So I just went no eggs whatsoever and they haven’t returned. That was, I don’t know, almost a year ago.

Interesting that the body will speak to us. If we listen, listen to the symptoms and then make adjustments in our diet and be willing to experiment to figure out. You know what, there was a time when eggs were really healthy for me. There was. My body really responded well to them and then there was a time that it wasn’t. So there might be a time when cashews really work well for you.

 

[1:44:27] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Worked fine. Yes. And then now they aren’t.

 

[1:44:28] Ashley James: But we have to be willing to change our belief system about food to shift. Now, what happened in your life that had you go to become a certified nutritionist? When did that happen in your life story?

 

[1:44:42] Elissa Goodman: Well, it was two years after my husband passed away. Because I really felt like I had two girls that had two parents who had cancer. So I really needed to do a deep dive into figuring out how to keep myself healthy and them healthy because I was worried about them. I really thought they’re going to think they’re going to have cancer because of us potentially in their mindset. I needed to be around for them for a long period of time because at that time, they only had me.

So I just went back to school like learning for that reason not to become a nutritionist. There was no part of me that was looking at going into a nutrition career. I just wanted to learn as much as I could about just how to be healthy and strong. Then also emotionally. How to release these traumas that we had gone through and to help the girls with all that. It was so spectacular. I mean I fell in love with it. I just couldn’t get enough of it. Still, to this day, I can’t get enough of it. Honestly, I go a little overboard of like everything that I read and investigate.

When I graduated. A friend of mine had brought this restaurant from northern California called Café Gratitude, which was a vegan restaurant down to LA. She asked me to do a cleanse together for them. So I was like, “A cleanse? What the hell is that?” But I had a marketing background and an advertising background. Their food was really healthy. So it was fun and easy. I did that. I ran that cleanse for Café Gratitude for like three and a half years.

A year after she asked me to do it for them, this macrobiotic restaurant in LA called M Café, asked me to do a reset for them. For them, similar. Their food was cooked and raw. So I did that for about four and a half – five years. Then a natural food market in LA, Erewhon, which is the premier health food store in the country. I absolutely love this place. It’s crazy out of control in terms of its prices and what’s going on in the health world. But it’s pretty cool because it has everything, the latest of everything. They asked me to put a cleanse for them too. So I did that for a little while.

So I’ve got involved in this whole cleansing world but what it was it was just really resetting your body and healthy eating for five days. Then six years ago I designed my own. The rest is history. I’ve been cooking and delivering food to people for six years. Getting ready next year to probably expand into being able to service more people. It’s all delivered in glass and it’s organic and it’s homemade. It’s just is a lot of love and nurturing goes into the food. These people just keep coming back for it and we sell out every time we do it.

So that’s really my story. I honestly have to pinch myself at the fact that I’m here and that I’m doing what I love. When I sat down on this course I never thought I would love it. But also, that does help to keep you healthy.

 

[1:48:00] Ashley James: It’s kind of sad that a cleanse is just eating healthy for five days. I mean really, “Why can’t we eat that way all the time?” I mean really. That it’s just like, “Why can’t we eat that way all the time?”

 

[1:48:10] Elissa Goodman: I know, I know, I know. I’m trying to get people to incorporate some of this food into the all the time. Because when you see how you feel after five days and you’re sleeping better and you’re stress is better and you even lose weight with eating a lot of food, it’s a lot of food we give them. Because I don’t want them to starve or be deprived. So then they hopefully get the bug and they go, “I want to feel more like this more often.”

 

[1:48:39] Ashley James: A hundred calories is nothing when you think about, people think 100 calories is maybe a snack, right? A hundred calories is nothing. But eat a hundred calories of broccoli, that’s a pound. That’s like two and a half cups. You eat two and a half cups of broccoli, you’re good. You’re good for an hour. That’s only 100 calories. So yeah. You can feel them up. Non-starchy vegetables are 100 calories a pound. Starchy vegetables are 300 to 400 calories a pound. Calories isn’t everything but it’s just like gaining perspective. If someone’s eating 1500 calories of fruits vegetables and some kind of healthy starches. That is a huge portion of food. They’re probably eating more fiber in one day than they do in one month. So they’re going to feel amazing. Fiber binds to the toxins and pulls them out of your gut, helps remove them from the body and also feeds the microbiome.

So you’re really helping them with that reset. But it’s kind of like, if you look at it, it’s kind of like we’re all alcoholics and we just stop drinking alcohol for five days. It’s like, “Here, I’m going to give you a cleanse. It’s call drink water and nothing else. Don’t drink anything except for water. No alcohol for five days.” You feel amazing – we probably feel bad for the first few days because you’re body’s like, “What is happening?” then the fifth day you’re like, “Oh my gosh. I can think again. My liver stopped hurting.”

We need to start eating healthy. This is good. This is good timing. I mean, I keep saying we, I eat healthy but I always look and go, “Why am I letting this in my life? Why am I running to that?” And I just become the observer going, “That’s interesting that I’m making that food choice. Where is this really coming from?” I think so much of our food choices are this unconscious emotional whether it’s a reward. “Oh. I did something. I had a really hard day I deserve this.” Or “I had a really great day. Let’s celebrate.” Or “I’m really stressed out. I don’t want to feel this way anymore.” We run to, we justify. That little voice in our head justifies because we’re addicted to the dopamine response, the pleasure response we get because we’re trained from kids to get treats.

I always see more infections after Halloween in people. That’s what happened to me when I was 13. I was really health from age 6 to 13 because I saw a naturopath when I was 6. We cut out sugar and cut out a bunch of food and I took supplements. I was really healthy from 6 to 13. Then at 13 I rebelled. I was very upset with my parents. I was 13 basically. I did normal 13-year-old stuff but I ate an entire bag of my entire Halloween collection of candy, an entire bag of candy in one night. That was the first time I ever needed antibiotics. Very shortly after that I had an infection that was a chronic infection that lasted from Halloween through Christmas.

To this day, I think back and I go, “How many people eat way more sugar than they used to do on Halloween then within a month they’re sick?” They don’t correlate the two because sugar – actually there’s really something interesting. I can’t remember the exact white blood cell. One of our white blood cells goes dormant when we eat sugar. It also feeds the candida, feeds the bad microbiome.

 

[1:52:17] Elissa Goodman: I didn’t know that about the white blood cell. Interesting.

 

[1:52:19] Ashley James: Yeah. A naturopath I work with, he mentioned. I’ll go figure out which one it was he was saying. But there’s one white blood cell that goes dormant when there’s too much sugar. The too much sugar being exactly what we consume when we eat any kind of sugar would be enough. But when we eat a whole food that doesn’t happen.

 

[1:52:41] Elissa Goodman: Right. Right. With its fiber intact. That’s interesting. I sort of thought all the white blood cells go dormant when we eat sugar, the crappy sugar.

 

[1:52:57] Ashley James: Right. Yeah. It definitely affects the immune system to the point where people get infections. I just wonder, we call this time of year flu season. Think about how much sugar we consume in the summertime versus right around now. We have Halloween, we have Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s. These are four times where people on average are drinking more alcohol, eating more pie, eating more sugar, making excuses or reasons, eggnog. Just think of all the sugar we’re eating more so this time of the year than we would in April or any other time of the year. I just wonder how much of a correlation there is between the types of food this time of year and then people getting sick come January and February and you know, the flu.

 

[1:53:49] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. That makes sense. That does. Then maybe vitamin D levels going down because you’re not outside as much.

 

[1:53:58] Ashley James: Stress growing up, we’re not dealing with our emotions, we’re on our family’s.

 

[1:54:02] Elissa Goodman: Yes. Very true. I know.

 

[1:54:09] Ashley James: Having so much experience helping people for so many years, I’d love for you to teach the listeners something that we can actively do today. Some actionable homework or steps that we could take to begin to build a healthy body that prevents cancer.

 

[1:54:28] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. I would love to. So I would say that the first thing is to really tap into managing your stress. There’s some great apps out there that you can listen to. Unplug has a great one, Headspace, Calm.com. Like Headspace and Calm.com are the big ones where it can really help just relax your brain, stop thinking for a bit, not that you have to go brain dead but just to calm down the brain. I think putting one of those apps on your phone, I use Calm.com, listening to some of the music or the waves of the water just for five minutes. Is huge for the system. Absolutely amazing. Lowering cortisol levels like that is huge.

Then there’s a study that has come out where drinking even half of your body weight in water is not enough. So they’re basically saying 90 ounces of water or liquid that doesn’t include caffeine.

 

[1:55:42] Ashley James: When you say half your body weight, because we don’t want them drinking pound or kilograms of water, you’re referring to for every pound you are you drink an ounce. So if someone’s 200 pounds, they would drink 100 ounces.

 

[1:55:55] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Drink 100 ounces. Yeah.

 

[1:55:57] Ashley James: Because some people might go, “I have to drink how many pounds of water?”

 

[1:56:00] Elissa Goodman: Yes. You’re right. Ounces. It’s really important, like I said, get up in the morning and drink 16 ounces is the minimum mandatory amount. That would be life-changing. If you put a little bit of lemon in there to alkalize the body and to clean out the intestines, that also is pretty amazing. So it’s the stress, it’s the hydration. For me, what I find is really really been phenomenal in my life is I’ve been a juicer ever since I was diagnosed with cancer. I have a Breville Cold Fountain Plus, not expensive.

 

[1:56:37] Ashley James: I’m so glad you brought this up. That’s so funny. I’ve been doing research to do a whole segment on juicing. That is so funny you brought this up because I own I think every juicer on the planet except the cold press, the kind that goes in from the top. I have all the old school cold pressing ones but I don’t have the ones from the top. I’ve been watching tons of review videos trying to decipher, “Is this just a new mouse trap they’re trying to sell us or is it really better?” Is it really better to do the cold press, the slow masticating juicer with the top loading vegetable or do the old school masticating juicers work just as well?

 

[1:57:20] Elissa Goodman: I think the old school works just as well.

 

[1:57:21] Ashley James: Okay, good. Because I own like seven.

 

[1:57:26] Elissa Goodman: I juice and drink right away. So it’s really easy and it work really fast because those cold press ones don’t work very fast unless you’re going to get a high-powered one that’s like extremely expensive. Those ones that we’ve had on the market even when they’re heating a heat source still I think work just as well. I’ve seen incredible results from it. I do a lot of green juices. I just do simple juices. It’s non-expensive. I do celery and cucumber and lemon and ginger. I was doing romaine because of the salmonella I’ve gotten away from the romaine. Parsley, which is a heavy metal detoxifier and cilantro. I just thrown in these greens that are not expensive. It really is a liquid IV of vitamins and minerals into the body. They go right into the cells.

 

[1:58:25] Ashley James: You know what tastes amazing? Cucumber and lemon. Just juicing cucumber and lemon. Get four to six big cucumbers and one lemon. Juice the whole lemon. Make sure it’s organic juice. The whole lemon including the rind because of those wonderful essential oils that come out. Here’s a tip for saving money. Go to your local coop and ask if they give a case discount. I was just on the phone this morning at PCC, which is a local coop here. They’ll give us a 10% discount if we order a case. Then the produce manager, talk to the produce manager is willing to help me with case size. She’s like, “I could make a case 10 pounds to 40 pounds.” She’s willing to make it a smaller case to make it manageable. 10% off groceries, heck I’ll go for it. She’ll even help me source the freshest. She’s like really geeks out on it. So find a produce manager at a health food store that’s willing to work with you because with case discounts and buying in bulk, you can save so much money.

One of the naturopaths I studied with her passion is to help women who are on food stamps who are in need, in poverty, help them eat healthy. She shows them how to use their food stamps in a way to buy bulk brown rice, beans, vegetables. She goes, “Get a kiddie pool even if you live in an apartment. Get a kiddie pool. Fill it with dirt. Put it on your balcony and grow your own kale or grow some micro greens.” You can do it on a budget and get your greens into your everyday. Because her thing is six cups of greens no matter what every day. However you get them in you get them in you. She talks about when you’re in a budget here’s what you can buy that’s not organic kind of thing.

That buying in bulk can really save you a lot of money. I’ve done this before where I go with another family or even two families and you can buy in bulk, bulk apples right from a farmer. Find bulk deals. So if we ended up having to buy bulk broccoli or something, two other families could split it, right. That helps you save money. There’s ways. They’re creative ways. If you’re dedicated to your health and it’s the number one most important thing, we don’t let money stop us. We just get creative and figure out how to do it. It’s not that we can’t do it. It’s just how can we do it?

Building those relationships with produce manages. I have a friend, I don’t know how he does it, he’s a raw vegan. He lives on romaine lettuce and mangoes and all kinds of raw foods. He will often post on Facebook. He gets the most amazing deals. He just becomes friends with all the produce managers. He just talks to them. He’s nice to them and tells them what he does and they will give him screaming deals. Like screaming deals on big cases of food. It’s just getting creative. But I love that especially with juicing because we need a lot of it. Our Costco has a lot of organic foods. So I get the carrots by the giant bag of carrots and sweet potatoes all organic.

 

[2:01:51] Elissa Goodman: Which is beautiful. I am personally a purist so I do not juice high fruit even vegetables. So beets and carrots are no go for me because I think we get enough sugar in our diet and I don’t need to have all this sugar shooting into my bloodstream. So I eat carrots and beats and then I roast them. I absolutely think they are crucial. They’re very anti-cancer. I do six of the greens and lemon, ginger. No apple in my juices unless it’s summer and it’s super hot outside. That’s a different story. I mean, because you burn off the sugar. Definitely a little better when it’s hot like you said, not in the winter but in the summer and you’re out in the heat.

Juicing has been amazing. For the readers, upping your fiber content. Basically we need fiber to flush all these toxins in our system and we’re getting barely 15 grams of fiber and we need to be getting a minimum of 25, really 35 a day. So that fiber is crucial. Even flax and chia seeds and also all the legumes are high fiber. We need definitely to be focusing on – and even don’t know if you know, even a cup of raspberries is like eight grams of fiber.

 

[2:03:27] Ashley James: Yeah. It’s so great. If you have to strain it all in the toilet. If you have to strain at any point then you’re not getting enough fiber and enough water. If you’re not getting enough water and fiber, you don’t need to bring your cellphone to go sit on the toilet. You basically sit down, number two happens and you’re done. It’s just so fast and it’s perfectly formed. I have an entire episode on healthy poop. It was so funny to do. Dr. Heidi Semanie, the same naturopath that did the episode all on vitamin D. It’s how to have the perfect poop. Really amazing how little fiber we eat and how much fiber our ancestors ate and how much fiber we really should eat. I’ve tracked it before and now I eat about 50 grams a day.

 

[2:04:13] Elissa Goodman: Wow. That’s fantastic.

 

[2:04:14] Ashley James: I mean, it’s really amazing. I know, right? But I feel amazing. On the days that I don’t eat enough fiber, I really feel it the next day. It takes your health to a whole new level when you’re getting that fiber.

 

[2:04:27] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. It does. Absolutely. That’s really crucial and we don’t think about that. That’s the simple thing too to add and make conscious of it in your diet. I think I am a believer that animal protein, eating too much of it is a precursor for cancer. So I say, cut back on your animal protein. Eat animal protein one time a day I try to get my clients to do not three times a day. Incorporating more plant-based proteins into your diet on the other two if you eat breakfast and lunch and dinner. That’s really my take.

I think that really watching your sugar. We’re only supposed to have 25 added sugar per day. If you do juice a green juice and you put an apple in it like 16 ounces, that’s 18 grams of sugar in that one green juice. Then let’s say you have a bar like an RX bar that has 12 grams of sugar, your one bar and one juice you’re already over your sugar allotment.

 

[2:05:33] Ashley James: What if someone were to eat the apple and instead of RX bar, which is processed, what if they ate three apples a day? Are you saying that when it’s in its whole food form it isn’t considered added sugar?

 

[2:05:45] Elissa Goodman: Yes. Right. Right.

 

[2:05:48] Ashley James: I’d rather eat the whole apple.

 

[2:05:51] Elissa Goodman: Right. Yeah. It’s always better to just eat the real food always than doing anything that’s processed. Even I think with the protein powders. I know they’re super popular and I do use them in a pinch but a lot of times I try to go with maybe a couple tablespoons of hemp seeds, organic soy milk or some cashews or almonds or almond butter like real foods.

 

[2:06:21] Ashley James: Pumpkin seeds are so full of protein that you can blend them. You can get pumpkin seed protein which is ground pumpkin seeds which I’m not sure about because once you grind another see, you’re exposing the fat to oxygen and it becomes rancid. But pumpkin seeds themselves you could grind them and then add them to a smoothie or just throw them on your food. I like to do that, just a handful of pumpkin seeds thrown on the food. They’re very high on protein as well.

 

[2:06:51] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Very. They’re awesome.

 

[2:06:53] Ashley James: I really believed when I first started this podcast, it will be four years next month that I’ve been doing this.

 

[2:06:59] Elissa Goodman: Wow. Congratulations

 

[2:07:00] Ashley James: Thank you. When I first started this, I mean if listeners go back and listen to episode one and follow my journey because I’ve been on a health journey for many years before I started the podcast, I also believe we’re never done. No matter how much we know we’re never done. I’m sure if you were to check back in with you at ten years from now, you’ll be like, “I can’t believe myself back in my 50s. What was I even thinking? I learned so much.” I’d love to have you back on the show and hear the – basically old me when I first started this podcast just almost four years ago, I really did not believe that I could go a meal without meat at all. That was just, “Are you kidding me?” that wasn’t even healthy. In my mind, that wasn’t even healthy. You should eat meat at every meal.

Then I interviewed, this was very early one like maybe episode 30 it’s like very early on in the podcast, Suzanna McGee, and I still remember her name. She’s a wonderful woman. Has a beautiful accent because she was raised in four or five different European countries so you can’t quite pin-point but she just has the most beautiful melodic accent. She’s a pro-athlete raw vegan in LA actually, near Venice beach. One of the things she does she teaches tennis. She looks 20 years younger than she is. She acts 30 years younger than she is.

She talks about what she eats in a day. She swears by adding, she takes a handful of pumpkin seeds and throws it on everything she eats. She swears that. That is her protein source. She never runs out of energy. She trains people out in the hot sun day after day teaching tennis and plays tennis matches and just is go, go, go. Always with lots of energy. She swears by the pumpkin seeds, handful on everything. She always believes in one big salad a day, which she’s a warmer climate so she can do that. I think colder climates I’d rather do like you said souping. Do some soup which is just a hot smoothie basically.

 

[2:09:07] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. It is. It basically is a hot smoothie. That’s what I say too. Any way that you can get a juice, a smoothie with a green spatter or all with greens and a pureed soup because it bypasses the digestive system and get those nutrients into your cells, home run. So, that’s what I would say.

 

[2:09:30] Ashley James: Get more fiber. Get more water. Fill your body up with whole foods. Try to decrease meats with one meal a day you’re saying. You are pescatarian. You get your animal protein from fish. So people can experiment see how their body feels. It’s interesting, I just interviewed Cilla Whatcott. She actually worked on healing her breast cancer and her naturopath who’s a naturopathic oncologist did her DNA, and said, and I don’t know about these markers but she said, “Your DNA says you need meat.” She had gone basically vegan after she was diagnosed with cancer. Then she added a little bit of meat back. Nowhere near as much as the standard American diet but just a little bit. It was free range all that good stuff, organic. The chicken was very happy and lived a good life and no pesticides and all that and lived out in a field somewhere. Then she started to feel really good after adding that back which is interesting to me because some people respond very well to no meat. Some people respond very well to a little me. We don’t know until we try. We have to try.

You’re saying get to bed before ten. You’re saying fall asleep –

 

[2:10:59] Elissa Goodman: Let’s get to bed by ten. Get to bed by ten. Well, that’s the ultimate. I mean, you know in the old days when we didn’t have electricity and the sun went down, we start to unwind and melatonin kicked in. We were able to go to sleep earlier. Just try to get into bed. I mean, I got to give my clients a leeway to fall asleep by 11:00 is just what I say.

 

[2:11:21] Ashley James: But optimal. Optimal. Let’s say we all had a cancer diagnosis and we’re like, “You know what? We’re going to beat this.” We need 100% change our life. Give me the optimal. There’s no room for, I don’t know, there’s no room for just being… What’s a way of saying where it’s just like, “I want to treat myself. I’m going to go have some chocolate ice cream. I’ll go to the gym tomorrow.” What is that? There’s no room for that. We’re putting our body firs.t we don’t need that dopamine form the food. We’re going to get it in another way. We’ll go hug our family or go do something fun. We’re not going to poison our body to get some dopamine. We’re not trading our health for some dopamine high. We’re not addicts. We can do this.

So, if we were to optimize our health to completely heal our body. What would you say we should do?

 

[2:12:24] Elissa Goodman: I would say, completely optimize, the sleep is crucial. Sleep is absolutely. That’s when we reset and regenerate. We do need to calm down our central nervous system. That’s absolutely crucial. Then focus on fruits and vegetables because that’s where all the nutrients are. That is really really crucial in terms of getting that into our cells, into our mitochondria. There is a lot to all of this. Then the stress part. Just I was saying, trying to figure out how to best destress your life.

 

[2:13:18] Ashley James: It might be looking at going getting a counselor. Finding one that you really really work well with. There’s an old mentality, an old belief system that we go to counseling because we are broken or there’s something wrong with us, that we’re abnormal. People who are walking around with stressful lives go, “Well I don’t need a counselor I’m not abnormal.” That’s the old way of thinking about counseling that only abnormal or broken or mentally unhealthy people go to counselors. The new way of thinking, and I think millenials are really really adopting this because culture is change that we go for optimal health. You wouldn’t wait to get sick to go to a naturopath. You go to a naturopath and then they help you to stay healthy. You don’t wait to completely mentally breakdown before you see a counselor. Go see a counselor especially behavioral therapy where we’re looking at how can we create healthy boundaries, what kind of actual step in relationships to support ourselves and how can we get a new perspective?

I have a girl friend who’s very busy. She owns her own business. She’s a personal chef in Seattle. So she just drives around everywhere cooking for all these wealthy families who have totally different diet plans. She has a young daughter and a boyfriend so she’s got a busy life. She said on Facebook once, she goes, “Everyone asks how I keep my stuff together. How do I keep it all together because I’m always happy and I’m always on top of everything? I’m a great mom, a great girlfriend, I have a great business. How do I do it?” She goes, “I go to a therapist three times a week. If I didn’t do that, because I don’t unload on my friend, my clients, my boyfriend. I don’t unload on people. I go to my therapist and I work stuff out. That is how I stay on top of my health.” I was like, “Oh man. I love that.”

We could think about going to a therapist as a way of distressing, as a way of helping our physical body by helping our mental, emotional body. So I love that you brought that up.

 

[2:15:26] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Yeah. Nowadays there’s also great healers that you can talk to and coaches and things that actually have the ability. Some really good ones that can go in and really see what kind of stressors are causing you issues to really kind of tune in to you and some of the good ones and say, “Hey. This is what I’m picking up from you. Because sometimes we can’t tap into our own stuff. Then we can start thinking about, “Wow. That really does make sense. That has been on my mind and that is bothering me. So maybe going from there to figure out how to release it from our body.

 

[2:16:08] Ashley James: Yeah. It’s great to a perspective on the blind spots. We all have them. No one’s perfect. It’s those who are in action that are going to get the traction they need. So you have so many resources available. People can work with you one-on-one. You have a book. You have a Cancer Hacks book. You have the soup cleanse, the seven-day reset. Tell us about all. Then you’re working on an autoimmune book. When’s that coming out?

 

[2:16:43] Elissa Goodman: So, probably next year. I have an autoimmune hacks pdf on the website. If you sign-up for my newsletter you’ll get the download for free. I’m actually trying to figure out how to put it in my website so you could get it for free anyway if you’re already someone who gets my newsletter weekly. But I do weekly put out a nutrition and a recipe that I test. We test a lot of recipes. I’m always trying to give out nutrition information and I’m on social media and all of that.

The autoimmune thing has been rally fascinating to me as well like the cancer was and still is because the idea that I was able to overcome the caner and then overcome the autoimmune just feels so empowering to me. I just want to be able to help people and tell people then believe in themselves that they can do it. It’s just the best feeling ever to be able to do that in my life. I’m one lucky lady.

 

[2:17:48] Ashley James: I love it. Well. You’re going to have to come back on the show when you –

 

[2:17:51] Elissa Goodman: Thank you, Ashley.

 

[2:17:52] Ashley James: Yeah. When you release your book you’re going to have to come back on and dive totally into the autoimmune nutrition protocol, which is your book that’s coming out. Did you pick a name for it yet?

 

[2:18:07] Elissa Goodman: It might be called Autoimmune Hacks just like the Cancer Hacks. So probably going to be more about my story and how I healed through the whole process. So it’s going to be more personal.

 

[2:18:20] Ashley James: Awesome.

 

[2:18:21] Elissa Goodman: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. It’s been fun talking with you. You’re a wealth of information.

 

[2:18:27] Ashley James: Well, this was great. Tell the listeners more about how they can work with you. So your website is your name.com. It’s so easy, Elissa Goodman. Of course the links to everything else she does is going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. Tell us about what it is like to work with you virtually?

 

[2:18:46] Elissa Goodman: Virtually? I love the virtual. It’s shocking. I used to think I would love the in person but I’ve been doing a lot of Zoom calls and I’m probably going to go more just to Zoom because it feels like you’re right there with the person. You’re sort of like right face to face with them and it’s so fun. I really get to see their personality and also learn a lot about what I was saying earlier about, how they came into the world and what was the birth like? Then their mom breastfed them. Do they have any traumas in their life? What kind of health issues do they have and how they eat. I really do a deep dive into getting behind the psyche, the emotional components, what might be happening physiological in the body and just really finding out also what drives them? What wakes them up in the morning? What’s their passion and their purpose? All of that is what is going to tell me why they’re where they’re at.

The interesting thing is, by the end of the session, they’re telling me why they’re where they’re at.

 

[2:20:00] Ashley James: Yes.

 

[2:20:02] Elissa Goodman: So it’s so cool because it’s like, “I already knew why I have digestive issues or sleep issues.” At the beginning you’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I’ve got that. I don’t know why that’s going on.” But we talk and we talk and then I’m like, “You just answered the reason why you have digestive issues. Did you just hear yourself? You honestly came to that answer and that conclusion on your own because your instincts were right on.” They were probably right on before the phone call but you didn’t just trust them. That’s the cool thing.

This job doesn’t feel hard to me because of that. Because just being able to tune somebody back into themselves is like watching those light bulbs go off for them and then having them institute a few things that they make changes on. Then life starts to unfold in so many beautiful ways. You’re like, “Wow. That is the ultimate.”

 

[2:21:11] Ashley James: So awesome. I love that you said tune them back into themselves.

 

[2:21:16] Elissa Goodman: Yeah.

 

[2:21:18] Ashley James: That’s amazing when we get to see a health coach and it’s just they become that reflection that also the open listening to allow us to empty out and then allow us to sort out that chaos that’s been our lives and been in our head and then start to see your lives clearly. So you are helping them sort that out just by being there listening, asking the right questions and definitely being the one asking the right questions. Then tuning back into themselves. It’s beautiful. I love that you put it that way.

Awesome. Well, the links if listeners want to connect with you, get your free pdf, make sure that they’re following you for your autoimmune book. All those links are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com.

Elissa, it’s been such a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you so much for being here and also for scheduling exactly when you need to schedule. Perfect timing. I think it’s wonderful. I’d love to have you back especially for the launch of your next book. That would be wonderful.

 

[2:22:27] Elissa Goodman: Absolutely. Thank you. It was a pleasure. And I can’t wait for it to come out.

 

[2:22:32] Ashley James: Me too.

 

[2:22:36] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program.

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Nov 26, 2019

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Watch Cilla Whatcott's 3 Part Documentary Movie Series for Free This December. Visit Realimmunity.org

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Choosing Real Immunity

https://www.learntruehealth.com/choosing-real-immunity

Highlights:

  • Dr. Cilla’s documentaries
  • Homeoprophylaxis is 90% effective in terms of disease prevention
  • Hope4Cancer Center (Mexico, Tijuana, Cancun, Thailand, and Colombia)
  • Role of mental attitude and meditation
  • The support of those around you and your mental attitude are two huge factors
  • Importance of clean living
  • Fasting, the unsung hero of healing
  • Homeopathics theory – it’s all about susceptibility
  • It has to be our decision what we’re going to do with our body
  • Homeopathy for cancer
  • The Truth About Cancer documentary
  • Influenzinum vs. flu shot
  • The Type C personality
  • Indiscriminate inflammation is what causes autoimmunity

 

In this episode, Dr. Cilla Whatcott will share with us how homeoprophylaxis aids in disease prevention, the choices that we make based on our needs, two huge factors that affect our health,and what it means to have real immunity.

 

[00:00:00] Intro: Hello, true health seekers. And welcome to another exciting Episode the Learn True Health podcast.

I’m so excited for you to hear today’s interview with Dr. Dr. Cilla Whatcott. She is a regular guest on our show. She has been in Episode 137155228, and 305. So this is her fifth time being on the show. I highly recommend you go back and listen to our past interviews, especially the first one, 137, where she shares her story.

So we jump right in to the interview without going into her story. But just a little bit of background, she’s a PhD in Homeopathy, specializing in homeoprophylaxis. She shares with us some amazing information about her battle and her winning her battle with triple positive, a very aggressive form of breast cancer.

And her documentary series which is coming out in December and you can watch it for free, all three movies, that she has produced. Tons of amazing information from experts around the world who are wonderful doctors that help people to gain healthy immunity. So whether you have a chronic illness, whether you’re battling cancer, whether you’re a parent and you’re wondering how you can support your children in fighting infections, whether you have an autoimmune condition, this Episode applies to you. Basically, if you breathe and you have a pulse, this Episode applies to you because we all want to avoid getting influenza. We all want to avoid catching colds, or having a diagnosis of some kind of worse infection, or cancer. And today we cover some amazing information about supporting the body’s ability to heal itself and boosting the immune system with holistic medicine. 

Please stay tuned. I’m launching a membership site that’s affordable to everyone. And it teaches people how to cook a whole food plant based diet. But what that means is you will learn amazing recipes in the kitchen that tastes phenomenal. And the focus is on healing food. So super foods and healing foods to heal the gut, to heal your liver, to heal your immune system. People who choose to still eat meat, you can still eat meat. You’re just going to learn how to add more wonderful nutrient dense foods to your life. If you want to try going totally whole food plant based, we teach you how to do that too. And we teach you how to do it for busy families, for people on a budget, for people with no time, for people who don’t even know how to cook. You’re going to learn everything you need to learn to be an amazing cook in the kitchen cooking healing foods that are delicious for the whole family. Even kids love these recipes. I know because I have a four year old. And my partner, Naomi, has three boys who are all very picky. And we both have husbands who also have different palates. So we’re having to constantly cook for many different palates. And so we bring our experience. And we do have some guest contributors as well. So we all bring our experience of how to cook on a budget, how to cook quickly, teach people how to cook with little experience. Wherever you are in the spectrum, we will help you to eat healthier and cook these delicious meals to heal the body. That’s the goal.

How can we make it so that food tastes absolutely phenomenal, and is healing your body, and saves you money and saves you time? That’s exactly what you’re going to get from the Learn True Health Home Kitchen membership. We’re launching it soon. So stay tuned. Join the Facebook Group, Learn True Health in Facebook. Or go to the website learntruehealth.com and jump on the email list to stay tuned because it’s coming out soon. Awesome.

Thank you so much for being a listener. And thank you for sharing these Episodes with your friends and family so we can help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 394.

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show with us PhD Dr. Cilla Whatcott. This is your fifth time here. You’re like a regular.

 

[00:04:38] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: That’s right. That’s right. It’s great. Thank you for having me.

 

 

[00:04:42] Ashley James: Absolutely. It’s such a pleasure. I’ve enjoyed every interview with you. Listeners can go back and check out all of our different interviews around immunity, homeoprophylaxis, and using homeopathy, Episode 137, 155, 228, and 305.

Now, I feel like I’ve been with you for the last three years along your journey wanting to spread this information about immunity, and what is immunity, and building real immunity. You decided that you were going to get this information out there. Your own public service to the world. Interviewing experts on building immunity. And you’ve created a three part docuseries. Is it like three separate movies?

 

 

[00:05:40] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yes. Three separate full feature documentaries. They’re each an hour and a half long.

 

 

[00:05:46] Ashley James: Awesome. Awesome. And I’ve watched the first one because you released the first one. And we talked about that in a previous interview. But now, finally, the day has come we’ve been waiting. That in December, you’re launching all three movies about building real immunity to the public for free. And you’re here today to teach us a bit about that. And share some of the details from your three movies that you’ve made about building real immunity. And do some myth busting, like fevers and vaccinations and whether, you know, our babies or children are immune, and how do we support their immunity. And if you’ve been exposed to something, does that mean you’re immune. And so you’ll go through some of the most common FAQs when it comes to what immunity is.

And I know you’ve also been on a personal health journey with cancer. And I’m very interested for you to share your story. Because I know it’s an inspiring one. And you’ll also give us some great information, some great tools. Because when we don’t have a choice, it’s a dilemma. It’s a dilemma when the only thing we have is one system of medicine. And I love it when guests come on the show and share, “Hey, you may not know but there’s this other system of medicine and there’s actually hundreds of other systems of medicine that may help you.” And so I love to hear your story.

Tell us about these movies that you’re doing. Dr. Cilla Whatcott’s website is realimmunity.org. Listeners can go there to sign up to receive the emails and the access to watch the three movies that you’ve created, these three documentaries. So tell us about these documentaries that are going to be released in December.

 

 

[00:07:47] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yes. So the first one is Quest For Real Immunity. And it’s the very first film in the series. And it’s basically dispelling the fear about childhood illnesses, fever, viruses. And taking a deeper look into intuition, a mother’s intuition and how that is responsible for so much of our survival, basically. So we’ll look at fear, we’ll look at intuition in that first film. And hear from a lot of experts, pediatricians, immunologists, researchers. Andy Wakefield is in the first film. Paul Thomas, the well-known pediatrician on the west coast is in the first film. He’s a wonderful guy. And in the first film, it’s fascinating because we’ve gone into his childhood. His history when I asked him what’s made you the person that you are. So we take a look back into his upbringing in Africa. And that will be the first weekend in December, the 6th through the 8th. Forty-eight hours of free launch. And you just have to sign up through realimmunity.org or the Facebook page, Real Immunity.

And then the second weekend, we’ll be launching Passage To Real Immunity. And that film takes a look at the 200 year old method of homeoprophylaxis. And this has been around for all that time. Very, very safe. About 90% effective in terms of disease prevention. And it’s utilized in India, Cuba, South America. And there’s a lot of families now using it in the US for childhood diseases. There was a 15 year study that supports it with children from Australia. And we’ll hear also from Dr. Wakefield in that film. And a number of parents who have utilized homeoprophylaxis and what their impressions are. As well as some doctors from India, some doctors from Europe, and a researcher from Australia, Dr. Isaac Golden speaks in that film.

And then the third weekend is December, I think, it’s the 20th of the 22nd, Friday through Sunday, 48 hours. And it’s called Choosing Real Immunity. And this film took a turn in content when my own diagnosis came in January of this year, 2019. The universe has a way of taking us to task when we say things. Right, Ashley?

 

 

[00:10:30] Ashley James: Yeah. You’ve been preaching immunity and holistic medicine. Then in January you get a cancer diagnosis.

 

 

[00:10:37] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Time to walk the talk.

 

 

[00:10:39] Ashley James: Yeah. Walking the talk. Now you were probably left in that little – that point of bifurcation where you could have gone into fear mode and run to the Allopathic doctors for chemotherapy and radiation surgery. And looking at their statistics on survival, they think if you live for five years after a cancer diagnosis, that’s success. And that you die at the end of five years.

In talking with an Oncologist who I interviewed with one of my friends who has cancer, she said, “You know, I recommend X, Y, Z chemotherapy.” And I asked her what are the side effects. Potential side effect being leukemia. And she says it’s very small. It’s a very small percentage. And it turned out that it was like 2%. And I’m like, “You know, that’s not actually small.” If you think about how many people get this kind of chemotherapy, it’s not that small. It’s actually kind of like a large percentage of – it’s thousands of people end up getting leukemia if you think how many people are getting on this kind of chemotherapy. And I don’t know, I don’t want to put something in my body that has a 2% chance of causing leukemia. So that’s where my mind goes. So you had this moment. I definitely want to hear about it. I definitely hear about that moment where you had to walk your talk.

 

 

[00:12:24] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. So it interweaves with the content of this third film, Choosing Real Immunity, because I had to choose. I completely trashed all the content that I had lined up and ready for post-production, re-interviewed a number of different individuals, which I’ll share with you. And the entire movie switched to kind of my journey in a way inadvertently. It wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the star of the third film. But it’s about how do we choose real immunity and what are our choices.

And initially, I was struck with fear. But at the same time, Ashley, I had this intense sense that it was a sacred blessing what I was being served up. Because it was an opportunity for me to make necessary changes in my life, an opportunity for me to walk the talk that I’ve been teaching and preaching for the last decade, and a learning opportunity. You know, one of the things that I regretted when I got so busy in my practice was I wasn’t open to learning as much because I was so busy treating and serving other people.

And one thing I had to do was cut my practice back about 70%. And I made the choice to go to Mexico, to a place called Hope4Cancer. And they have clinics in Tijuana, Cancun, Thailand, and Colombia. I went to Cancun. It’s a three week program. You stay in a hotel. A van picks you up with the other patients at 7:00 a.m. You’re in the clinic until 3:00 p.m. They serve your meals, all organic, natural, they juice, they cook vegetarian. There’s a chef there. And then you go back to the hotel at 3:00 p.m. Have dinner with your spouse or whoever came with you. And then go back to the clinic the next morning. Six days a week. Sundays were free. And I was there for three weeks. My program includes two follow up visits, which one I took in June and when I took an October just recently. And then it includes home care for one year after that.  Where you get a phone call every three weeks but you have access to them to call them up or email them at any time to ask questions and receive home care. And they do send you home with lots of supplements, therapies, some equipment, everything comes home with you. So it’s a very inclusive program. It’s not a one size fits all. It’s very individualized to the person and their form of cancer.

My breast cancer was stage two, but it was an aggressive form. It had a 40% proliferation rate. And it was triple positive.  And that means estrogen positive, progesterone positive, and HER2 positive. So after about eight, nine months, nothing had grown, nothing had changed, which is a win. That’s a success in itself with the type of cancer that I had. But it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to see it going away. And of course, fear is always in the background when you have that kind of diagnosis. And I actually opted to have surgery at that point. So my integrative Oncologist I was seeing, Nasha Winters. And also I was having dark field microscopy, which is looking at the blood under a microscope to see at the cellular level what’s happening. And both my labs and my dark field microscopy were stable and improving. So clearly I was improving at a cellular level. And everyone agreed that having surgery at that point would not be disruptive. It would not cause the cancer to spread. So I did opt to have a mastectomy at that point and remove the tumor itself. Because every time I felt it, I knew it was there. my focus was on it. And if I learned anything during this journey, it’s that what we focus on enlarges. And we give it energy. Whatever we focus on, we give energy.

So roundabout June, after my initial three weeks at Hope4Cancer, I recognized what a large role my mental attitude had in the whole process, my thought processes And I decided to do a week long intensive seminar with Dr. Joe Dispenza in meditation. And it was intense. Some days we meditated as much as seven hours in a day. And they were all guided meditations that he did with lots of explanations and data about brain waves, about pineal gland, about all of the aspects that he was promoting with his education about meditation. And it was life changing. And learning how to focus one’s mind and keep it focused in the right direction. And how you can change outcomes with visualization, with focus became very, very important to me. So I’ve been meditating 45 minutes a day ever since June when I went to that conference – that seminar.

And also interviewed Dr. Joe Dispenza, who is in the third film, Choosing Real Immunity. In the film itself, I chose to interview different individuals, Dr. Tony Jimenez, who’s the medical director of Hope4Cancer, about how he chose this path. He’s an MD but how did he choose this path to take? And how do people make the choice to do something alternative? I interviewed Dr. Joe Dispenza, about children’s minds, and how they form, and what’s happening in brainwaves in children, and how we can choose to raise our children in order to be aware and be conscious and raise their level of consciousness. I interview another gentleman who talks about the levels of consciousness themselves based on Dr. David Hawkins work. And how we can raise those levels. I interviewed Torako Yui, who’s a Japanese homeopath. She was in corporate industry and was very, very sick, almost died. And met a homeopath who saved her life, turned her around, and she chose to become a homeopath and start a homeopathic school. So I’ve also interviewed a medical doctor who has become a homeopath. Another woman who started homeopathic school. Just lots of interviews about people making choices. Why do people choose the other road, you know, the road less traveled? And how do we do that?

Because, Ashley, my biggest goal is to inspire people to know they have choices. And they can make their life what they want it to be. And to rise above the herd, basically, and make choices for yourself based on what your needs are is really what it’s all about. So Choosing Real Immunity focuses on those concepts and they spring out of my own experience.

 

 

[00:19:57] Ashley James: I’m so excited. That sounds so cool. So that’s the third weekend of December?

 

 

[00:20:05] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: That’s right. I think it’s the 20th to the 22nd, Friday to Sunday.

 

 

[00:20:09] Ashley James: Very cool. So when you started the meditation, was that before you got the surgery?

 

 

[00:20:19] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yes. Yes. It was in June that I did the seminar.

 

 

[00:20:23] Ashley James: Did you notice – so you’d gone from never meditating to meditating 45 minutes a day every day?

 

 

00:20:30] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Pretty much. Yeah.

 

 

[00:20:32 Ashley James: Did you notice a difference? Because you were focusing on your health so intensely at that time, was there a shift in your health after incorporating meditation?

 

 

[00:20:47] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Initially, it was very difficult to meditate. Because I always considered myself someone who couldn’t. That my mind was so busy. And then initially when I started meditating, a lot of disruption came up. And a lot of depression, tears, angst, anxiety came up. And it wasn’t until I went to the seminar and really got a better handle on what the goals were and lowered my expectations of myself that I could meditate more effectively and just relax into it. And the biggest impact was on anxiety and clarity. Because the anxiety is always there. When you get a diagnosis like this – I’m sorry – fear becomes your bedfellow. And you wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts. So it’s inevitable. And it’s not like you ever step off the path because there’s always that question of whether you’re doing everything you can so that it doesn’t come back. So it’s really your mind you have to control. Because I’m a huge observer of human nature and read and read and read voraciously about people’s cancer stories and their experiences. And what’s the difference between someone who goes into complete remission and someone who doesn’t. And meeting people at the Hope4Cancer Center and my own clients who chose one way or another way. So I became very curious about what contributes to that. And I have to say that support of those around you and your mental attitude are two huge factors. Huge. So I needed to get a handle on that. I’m a fretter by nature. And I just had to get a handle on that in meditation.

 

 

[00:22:45] Ashley James: And when we’re in anxiety, we’re triggering the stress response and we are decreasing our body’s ability to actually get into healing mode. Because we’re in the sympathetic response instead of the parasympathetic response. So when you start to meditate and get good at it, and start to relax into it, you’re putting yourself into healing mode. After maybe a few weeks after you started to get more practice and more proficient at meditation and you realized that you were in the healing mode of the autonomic nervous system’s parasympathetic response of rest and digest, did you see any changes to labs or to markers? Did you see, “Because I added meditation daily, I can see this X, Y, Z.” Like you can see it as a result, was there anything specific that you could point to and say, “I believe this is because I added meditation.”

 

 

[00:23:51] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, my labs have consistently improved over the span of time. But I’ve been doing many, many things. So it’s hard to fair it out exactly what the introduction of meditation did because I’ve been doing multiple things at the same time. So lots of supplementation, coffee enemas, ultrasound to the tumor, infrared light, GcMAF injections, IV vitamin C, UVBI, which is Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation, all of these – hyperbaric chamber, hyperthermia, whole body hyperthermia. I would get my internal temperature up to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. So all of these things were being done concurrently with the meditation. So it’s hard to say which one was doing the most. And honestly, I tried to apply my intuition. Because some things I would eliminate or reduce. And it was a matter of just getting quiet and asking myself, is this really important for me right now? Or can I cut back on it? Do I need to replace it with something? And that’s kind of how I’ve worked.

And I will say, Ashley, to that, I think the hardest part for most people is it’s very comforting to have somebody drive the bus. And somebody to say, “This is what you need to do. This is going to work. You must do this.” And there’s a relinquishment of your personal agency in that. And it’s like they’re going to fix me. And I could never do that. I would love to be able to but I couldn’t do that. So I have reached out to colleagues. I’ve reached out to my integrative Oncologist. I see her once every three months by phone. I reached out to the Hope4Cancer doctors. But then I have to take all that information and crunch it up and decide what I’m going to choose. And I’ve had to make the final decision, which for some people I understand is daunting. It’s very challenging to do that.

And that’s what I saw in my practice. Like I’ve had different clients in my practice with cancers, different breast cancer or other cancers, who have chosen one way or the other way. And I’ve watched because those who choose the conventional way, it’s mostly because their families pressured them. So that’s the support system. And their doctors convinced them it was the only way to survive. So it’s the mental piece and it’s the support piece. And if you have family, loved ones, around you saying, “You have to do this. We want you to do this.” It’s very difficult to resist that. As opposed to having people around you who support what you choose.

 

 

[00:26:50] Ashley James: So you chose to not do chemo and not do radiation. And you spent eight months doing holistic treatments. And you stopped the growth of the tumor in its tracks, which is very hard to do because of how aggressive it is. It did not spread because everything that you were doing, all the natural medicine you were doing. And then you had decided after eight months of being you’re in a good spot, all your labs are showing that you’re in excellent health, everything’s improving, you decided, “Let’s just get it out.” And you got clean margins. It’s been removed. How many months has it been since the surgery?

 

 

[00:27:34] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Early September, I had the surgery. So it’s just been two months.

 

 

[00:27:38] Ashley James: And what is considered – like, at what point will you go, “Okay. That was a success.” At what point do you say, “I’m done.” Obviously you’re cancer free and all your scans are clear. But do you wait a few years? Are you able to just go live your life now?

 

 

[00:28:03] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Honestly, it’s a little hard to just live your life because you’re always living in the specter of that diagnosis to a certain degree. Let me digress for just a minute, cancer produces stem cells. And it’s a known fact that chemo radiation, those therapies don’t kill stem cells. So that’s why you can kill the original tumor. And then two years later or three years later, you’ve got it cropping up in another organ because the stem cells went out and proliferated somewhere else. So the only way to address stem cells is at a cellular level with your real immunity. You boost your real immunity and it can mitigate the spread of those stem cells. So that’s my insurance. And I will always be kind of on my case about maybe my diet, maintain my supplements, getting exercise, getting strength training, make sure I’m not working too much, all of the factors.

Hope4Cancer talks about seven principles of healing. And to apply those seven principles always for prevention. So that’s going to be my insurance going forward to always be applying those principles.

 

 

[00:29:23] Ashley James: Are those principles taught in your last documentary, the Choosing Real Immunity?

 

 

[00:29:33] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I don’t elucidate the seven principles. I talked with Dr. Tony and he has a recent book out which he shows in the film. And the book does go through the seven principles.

 

 

[00:29:45] Ashley James: Okay. So it’s like a whole book?

 

 

[00:29:48] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a whole book. Right. Right. It’s a lot easier and more straightforward than one would think. It’s clean living. It’s your diet, your exercise, your thoughts, your support system, your environmental toxins. I mean, all of these things are what contribute. You want to reduce the toxins, you want to increase the support, you want to increase nutrition, you want to get rid of baggage. So you look at your past. You forgive who you have to forgive. You move on. All of those aspects really clean your system so that you can move forward in a more healthy way.

 

 

[00:30:36] Ashley James: You mentioned diet, What is your diet right now? What is the beat and prevent cancer diet that you prescribed to?

 

 

[00:30:44] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: There are a lot of differing opinions on this. She laughs. Yeah.

 

 

[00:30:50] Ashley James: That’s why I’m asking. Because I’m like, “I’m very curious.” There’s so many diets out there for killing cancer.

 

 

[00:30:57] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: So many opinions. Yes. At the Hope4Cancer clinic, it was all vegetarian. Organic, of course. A lot of juicing. And that was good. That was great. They do a nutritional consult with you. But I’ve also, with Nasha Winters, my integrative Oncologist, she’s looked at my genetic snips. And she has said to me, “You must eat meat. That you’re genetically not wired to only eat vegetarian.” So I add chicken and some beef and fish. I stay away from grains. I stay away from gluten. I stay away from sugar. So those three things. And I try to do intermittent fasting. So intermittent fasting has been – I can feel it in my body making improvements. So I’ll fast for anywhere from 13 to 18 hours a day during the week. And then the goal is to do a 24 hour fast at least once a month. In the beginning, I did a four day fast. And it was difficult. And I can feel the difference in my level of strength. I am much stronger now. I have much more energy now. And that’s a little bit of my barometer for whether I’m on the right diet and going in the right direction.

 

 

[00:32:26] Ashley James: Yes. I’ve had some interviews, really interesting interviews on fasting. And one man, Troy Reicherter, he’s done $20,000 with the labs. He does one big fast a year. And he’s been doing all these labs to determine how much pollution is in his body. And whether fasting works. And what he’s seeing is that fasting has a lasting effect. It’s not something like you do your four day fast and then two weeks later, it’s not affecting you. It’s like, it is still affecting you even months later. And he shows that even a year after a 21 day fast. His health benefits are there.

And I’ve had other people like Robyn Openshaw shared this that they’re finding that fasting has lasting health effects or very long term health effects. And also Episode 230 with Dr. Alen Goldhamer, who runs the TrueNorth Medical Center. And he does water only medically supervised fasting. He had a woman come in -he published this actually. He had a woman come in with end stage cancer. The Oncologist told her to go home and die. And 30 days after her fast, she was completely cancer free. And all the scans showed it. So he published that and he talks about it in the interview. So the fasting is such a powerful tool. I’m curious why you don’t do long fasts.

 

 

[00:34:07] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I need to get back on it. I just been distracted. I’ve been doing so much traveling back and forth to Mexico. And it’s been life. It’s gotten in the way. But I should. You’re inspiring me to do another long fast. And actually my integrative Oncologist, Nasha Winters, that’s how she started her career. She was 19, diagnosed with ovarian cancer end stage. They told her to go home and die. They couldn’t do chemo. They couldn’t do anything. And she fasted for a month. And this is 20 years ago.

 

 

[00:34:37] Ashley James: Oh my, I got to interview her too. Wow.

 

 

[00:34:41] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. She’s a great interview.

 

 

[00:34:43] Ashley James: Cool. Go to the TrueNorth Medical Center. They just take care of you. It’s like going on vacation and then you fast there. So I find it challenging to fast in my house. There’s a kitchen here and I have to feed people. I mean, it’s doable. I’ve done it. But the TrueNorth Medical Center is in California and it’s very pretty. And I’ve talked to many people who’ve gone there. And I’m planning on going there. I’ve just got to save up the time and money to do it. But I’m absolutely – it’s on my life bucket list to go spend, like, a month there. It’s quite affordable. It’s a nonprofit, which is wonderful. And if I win the lottery, I’d definitely donate to him. And it’s now sort of become a teaching clinic. So there’s all kinds – and these aren’t, like, new doctors, like, residents. These are doctors that have been doctors for many years and they want to then learn this system. So there’s a ton of, basically, doctor students that are there. But they’ve all have great amount of experience. And they come and learn from Dr. Goldhamer.

And so it’s about the cost of a good hotel. So it’s something like $170 a night kind of thing. And it includes a very nice bed in your room. And your meals when you’re not fasting or you’re re-feeding and all that. And then they have classes and socialization. So you’re never bored. And lots of fun things to do. And you’re doing a lot of resting also. And then you have doctor visits basically in the morning and in the evening. And all the medical staff are there in case anything happens. But I’ve talked to several people and I’ve heard that it’s an amazing place to go.

But I love that you brought up fasting because I think it’s this an unsung hero of healing, right? Because I think when we – it’s free. Essentially, you could do a short fast at home. Like, a three day fast doesn’t require medical supervision. Anything after three days, it’s better to be medically supervised is what Dr. Goldhamer says. Or if you’re doing like you’d you do, 18 hour fasts, you can still go to work. You can still even maybe do light exercise like walking. It’s not that disruptive. But when we get into longer than three day fasts, that’s when we really should take the steps to be monitored.

So I like that you bring this up, because I think that when things are free, we don’t really value them. Like doing a hot shower and then a cold shower and then a hot shower. The things that we could do that every day. Or we can go for a walk or we can do meditation, these are free things. And I think it’s part of our mentality is to is to not think that they’re that great because they’re free. But when I hear that it’s made a ton of difference for you and even helped your Oncologist to heal her own cancer 20 years ago, that’s so cool. I love hearing that.

It’s interesting because I thought that your docu series was sort of going this route of vaccines versus natural medicine. And I know you’re not overtly saying this isn’t my antivaxxer movement. You’re not going that route. But I kind of got the feeling that it was more about immunity. Like, don’t get the flu shot, go do things to just be healthy and boost your immune system, for example. And you bring up cancer, obviously, because it’s in your experience. But it made me think, “You know, I think we think cancer is so different.” It’s so different from catching something like the flu or polio. But it’s the immune system, right? Is cancer a failure – is getting cancer a failure of the immune system?

 

 

[00:39:05] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: You bring up a very good point. And first, I want to address your comment that, yes, initially, it was all about using homeoprophylaxis as a safe method as opposed to vaccination. And early on, I realized I couldn’t jump in that pool too quickly. First, I had to lay down a foundation of what is immunity and what are the experts saying. So the first film came out as kind of laying the groundwork. The second film was about homeoprophylaxis, saying, “Look, here is an option. It’s viable. It’s safe. It’s effective.” The third film was going to then wrap things up and summarize everything. And that got waylaid into down a new path.

And to answer your question, the realization is it doesn’t matter if it’s a cold or if it’s cancer. It’s all about our immune system. It’s about what is self and not self, basically. And the conventional thinking about cancer is that it’s this foreign invader that you have to kill or fight. And no, it’s you. It’s you gone awry. It’s your immune system that’s not functioning properly. And all you have to do is reteach it how to function properly and it will take care of the situation. So it’s really truly right in line with everything else about real immunity. And that’s the big misconception about cancer. And the way it’s been treated conventionally with chemo, radiation, chemo, radiation. Insurance will pay for. That’s all Oncologist can recommend. It’s just this mantra in the conventional field when the Reality is, every person’s cancer needs to be treated differently.

And I’ve watched how individualized care has been applied to each person that goes through Hope4Cancer. Because I’ve formed this relationships with other people, patients there, and watched how if they’re not moving forward, they introduced some other methods. And they just keep applying different methods because just like the immune system has intelligence, that aberration of the immune system will keep trying to find a workaround. And you have to address it in a way that it hears – listens so that your system can then move in the direction of health. So not everybody’s treatment is the same that Hope4Cancer. We start out the same with certain nutritional IVs and coffee enemas, et cetera. But then it becomes much more highly individualized as time goes on.

 

 

[00:42:00] Ashley James: So you said that Oncologists are only allowed to legally recommend radiation, chemo, and surgery. And I’ve heard this many times before. And I think that when the law doesn’t let a doctor let you know about other treatments that are proven to help, then it’s like, “Who is the law protecting? Is it protecting the drug cartel? The big pharma?” Who is it really protecting? Oncologists are highly intelligent that they’ve spent a decade studying. And you go to one and they’ve probably been working for like 15 years in the field. They’re very intelligent. They’re really good at reading studies. Why are they given the freedom to also look at alternative methods and go, “Well, we’ve seen – this group over here has seen improvements when they eat this way and use this herb and do this sauna therapy.” It’s just, really? We’re not allowed to say that that is good. Now, how is it that your Oncologist is practicing and recommending alternative medicine?

 

 

[00:43:31] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, she’s a Naturopath, first and foremost. She’s not an MD. She’s a Naturopath. But I’ll answer your question, Ashley, with a question back to you. And that is, if you went to medical school. And you had to have $200,000 in school debt. And you were indoctrinated into this program where you were taught that anything alternative is baloney. And that the conventional way is the only way. And then you sold chemo drugs that you then upsell to your patients and make an additional revenue. How easily could you admit that there’s another way?

 

 

[00:44:11] Ashley James: I like that you brought that up because when I heard that, that was the nail in the coffin for me. That when an MD prescribes every round of chemotherapy – every dose of chemotherapy, they get a kickback. They get thousands of dollars. That’s their boat payment. That’s their child going to another college class like that. They’re being bribed to prescribe chemotherapy.

 

 

[00:44:42] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, I like to see this positive reinforcement. If you got an m&m every time you did something. It’s positive reinforcement. It’s very difficult to do something different. But some of them are humble enough that they’ll recognize maybe there’s another way. I’ve run into too much arrogance in that field and it’s difficult. It’s really difficult. Because those of us who want to explore unconventional things in alternative medicine are viewed as crackpots or idiots. Anyway, that’s another topic we could delve into.

 

 

[00:45:27] Ashley James: So when we develop a tumor,they say that it’s been like four or eight years in development. It’s not overnight. Although might feel overnight. But it’s actually been a long time coming that the body went from having a few cancer cells to just so much that we’re seeing it for the first time. When we grew a tumor – I mean, the body is clearing out cancer every day. Little tiny mutations the immune systems sees it and clears it out. What happens that the immune system didn’t clear out yours or didn’t clear out other people’s cancer? Why does it? What happens has the body not recognize that that’s a cancer?

 

 

[00:46:17] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, to some extent, it’s what you said earlier about sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. It overcomes the system. The system is not in the healing phase enough hours a day to do its work. So we’re always on a trajectory. We’re always by virtue of the choices we make each day, do we get enough sleep? Are we drinking water? How are we eating? We are on a trajectory. Either we’re static or we’re getting better or we’re getting worse. So if you take enough days going down that trajectory and getting worse, it allows your body the leeway to build up those aberrant cells and proliferate those cancer cells. Because they’re sending out millions of stem cells, a tumor does, daily. So those can go park in other organs. And if you’re compromising your system with your diet or with stress – stress is a huge one – or with excessive toxins in your environment, then it gives your body the opportunity to proliferate those cells.

 

[00:47:27] Ashley James: And have you seen – I know you didn’t do this for your own cancer,  but have you seen any therapies that turn the immune system back on to the point where the body now recognizes a tumor?

 

 

[00:47:43] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, some of the studies show full body hyperthermia is enormous. The main things that were used to Hope4Cancer, heat, light, sound, and oxygen. Those four things. So heat, when you raise the core temperature that engages your immune system and turns it on high alert. So there are documented cases of people getting measles and having a brain tumor disappear. Or some acute disease which then ameliorates the chronic disease. And this is documented in the literature. Because the acute is event for the deeper pathology. So by getting a fever, it charges that immune system. Now, apparently the literature shows that doing it intermittently for short bursts is effective. But much of what I’ve read and been familiar with are cases when it’s a longer term acute illness, like measles and there’s 103 fever for a week or longer period of time with a high fever. But at Hope4Cancer, we went into whole body hyperthermia where you have heat above you, heat below you. And they ramp up your internal temperature. They keep taking your internal temperature. Mine was up to 108 degrees.

 

 

[00:49:13] Ashley James: For how long?

 

 

[00:49:15] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Maybe ten minutes. And then it takes a while to come down. You just can’t tolerate it much longer. And I had the freedom to get out when I needed to get out. But I would try to stay in as long as possible. But it’s ramping up your immune system. The other thing is a hyperbaric chamber. So you’re forcing oxygen into the cells. And cancer does not like heat, does not like light,and does not like oxygen. Those are three environmental conditions where it can’t live. So we would do heat therapy. And it was just like a wand with heat on the actual tumor for five minute just on the tumor itself. Infrared lamp on the tumor. Laser lights on the tumor. They would do infrared where they take 100 milliliters of blood out. Inject that hundred milliliters with ozone, which is oxygen. Run it past ultraviolet light. And back into your body. So now you’ve irradiated the blood and oxygenated it and returned it to the body. That’s a great therapy.

 

 

[00:50:32] Ashley James: Can you explain why ozone and ultraviolet directly to the blood, why that is a great therapy? It doesn’t kill the white blood cells or red blood cells.

 

 

[00:50:44] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: No. But it kills all the parasitic infections, viruses, the comorbidities of cancer. Typically people with cancer have comorbidities. They have lyme. They have Epstein Barr. They have parasites. And the question is, did those things open them up to be more susceptible to cancer? Or did the cancer compromise their immune system in such a way as to take on those other afflictions? But regardless, the UVBI can help to address some of those comorbidities, which that’s essential in treating cancer. So I forget your original question.

 

 

[00:51:30] Ashley James: I was just –

 

 

[00:51:31] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Specific therapies you were saying.

 

 

[00:51:32] Ashley James: Yeah. No. We’re on a tangent and I like the tangent. And that’s okay. I interviewed Dr. Tullio Simoncini, who is an Oncologist in Italy. And he, I believe had his license taken away for curing cancer. How dare he? how dare have the audacity to cure cancer naturally? But what he saw when he cut open tumors is that they would look like yeast. The inside of a tumor looks like yeast. And he thought, “This is so weird.” And he had someone – and I apologize for not remembering all the details of the story. But listeners can go listen to the Episode because it’s fascinating. It’s Episode 136. And he had a patient who was sort of on their deathbed and it’s kind of like last ditch effort. So he took sodium bicarbonate which he says it kills Candida, it kills yeast. And he took a solution and injected it into the — no. He washed their colons. It’s colon cancer. He washed their colon with it. Kind of like a colonic. That was his first attempt and it worked. And then he had another person that, I believe, was a child in a coma. And it was like they have hours to live because the tumor was so big. And he took sodium bicarbonate, injected it into the vasculature right before the tumor. So it fed straight into the vasculature of the tumor. Sodium bicarbonate, if you inject it into you, the solution he had would not hurt anyone. But it would kill yeast or Candida. And then he went on break and he came back and the child was sitting up and laughing with the mom. And he just freaked out. So that’s what led him down this road of treating cancer with sodium bicarbonate. But the problem is you can’t just drink it or put it up your bum like he did with that one person. You have to have a surgeon, he says. Because you have to have it injected straight into the vasculature of the tumor to be effective. And he sees that he’s had a very high success rate. Because my thing is like, “Well, is it all tumors or only some tumors?”

And this is interesting that you’re bringing up co-infections. I’ve had many lyme experts on the show talk about when someone has a lyme infection so they have Lyme disease, they always have other parasites. It’s like at least three. We start to see that it’s a Catch 22, what came first? Did the person have co-infections? Did the person have these parasites and have these multiple infections sort of hanging around the body because the environment of the body was a perfect storm, a perfect petri dish –

 

 

[00:54:36] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Environment, yeah.

 

 

[00:54:36] Ashley James: – for these infections? And then Lyme came around and their body was amazing petri dish for the lyme to propagate. Whereas, other people might have been bit by that same tick and the body clears out the lyme.

 

 

[00:54:51] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Exactly. And it’s all about susceptibility. That’s homeopathics theory. It’s about our susceptibility. We could all be in the room with someone with Ebola or measles, some will catch it, some won’t. It’s about your susceptibility. And that’s the terrain.

 

 

[00:55:05] Ashley James: I had Dr. Heather Wolfson on the show. I’ve had both Wolfson’s.  The husband who’s the cardiologist and the wife who’s a chiropractor. And she’s even more than a chiropractor, which many chiropractors are because they know so much about nutrition and healing. And she said, if you had 100 people in a room with polio, 95% of them would be asymptomatic. And that blew my mind. Because I was raised to believe that polio is incredibly dangerous, deadly. It’s like Ebola. Everyone’s going to get it. But no, it’s not the case. I mean, obviously, it’s not like, “Oh, yeah. Let’s all have a polio party.” It’s not what I’m saying. But it’s just looking at when you have really healthy people and you really have a cleansed body and the body is not a good petri dish, it’s not a good environment, it’s alkaline, it’s balanced, you’re in a parasympathetic state as much as possible, it’s not a good environment to host illness.

And so it’s interesting that I’ve never heard someone bring this up that you say that when we look at people with cancer, even before they had the cancer, they can see that they actually had other infections going on. They had Candida or Lyme disease or parasites but they their body was already a petri dish building up illness.

 

 

[00:56:42] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. Right. But these days who doesn’t have all of those infections? I mean, seriously. You know what I mean? The world is a crazy place and people are sick. Because of our environmental toxicity, we’re just bombarded.

 

 

[00:57:01] Ashley James: It’s the rare person who is of optimal health. But we all strive for it. So that’s why we’re here. We want to learn for you. How long were you vegetarian during your cancer therapies?

 

 

[00:57:17] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Probably from when I first was diagnosed in January until the end of March, April, May, somewhere there.

 

 

[00:57:28] Ashley James: Okay. So like, maybe, four months. And then your Naturopathic Oncologist told you to add meat back. Did you notice that you felt better after adding meat?

 

 

[00:57:37] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Oh, yeah. I feel I had much more strength, much more vitality.

 

[00:57:42] Ashley James: I really I really liked that she looked at your genetic markers for this. We have a Facebook Group, Learn True Health Facebook Group, there’s 3,300 listeners in it. And I love the wonderful discussions. And she’s been a listener for a year. She’s passionate about it. Loves the show. And she’s probably listening right now. So hello. But she said that she was concerned that I was leaning towards sort of anti-meat. And I feel like in every Episode, we talked about diet, I say – I feel like I’m just a parrot saying the same thing. I don’t believe in diet dogma. You have to figure out what your body needs right now.

Cilla, you might find in a year from now you need to go vegan or raw vegan. And then next year, you might find the right to go carnivore. But you have an open mind and a willingness and you’re not buying into any dogma. You’re looking at your labs. And you’re looking at your genetics. You’re looking at your own body’s ability and how you’re feeling. And I think that when some people get – for example, they go keto. And they’re eating. And it might be unhealthy keto. Maybe they’re eating bacon and avocados and cheese all day. And they lose some weight and then they buy into the dogma of it. And then they are upset and unwilling to look at anything that opposes keto. And that’s a problem, when we buy into any diet and are unwilling to look at the rest of the information out there. Because our body is constantly changing and its needs are changing.

Me, I have done well over 30 diets to heal my body. And I’m willing to make these changes. And what I have found working for me this last year on my blood work – I get my blood work done every four months. And I have never been healthier. I almost cry every time I go to the Naturopathic office and get my blood results and have my next follow up and get my blood taken again. Because I’m on the best path for me and it’s because I’m on a whole food plant based, no oil and no salt and sugar diet. And that’s my health. My path. I’m not imposing that on you or on anyone. But I’m passionate to share what’s working for me. And I’m happy that I’m on this path. And I love that you’re sharing that. It sounds like you’re doing a more paleo style eating. No greens, you’re eating, obviously organic free range, and you’re focusing on a ton of vegetables. And that is working best for your health. So I honor that. And I’m really glad that you got to share that.

 

 

[01:00:20] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Thank you. Yeah. It’s tricky. I think it’s been the most challenging part of the healing journey because I wanted somebody to tell me something was the right way to go. And I have to figure it out myself and that’s hard.

 

 

[01:00:37] Ashley James: I love that you brought that up. It’s hard. We just want to hand over our choices to an expert. We want to feel like a child again and have a mother take care of us. But we’re adults. And especially if we have a health issue, we need to take the reins. And it’s okay to lean on our doctor experts that we put on our team. That we get to hire our Naturopath or our Oncologist or whoever we have on our team and bounce things off of them. But ultimately, it has to be our decision what we’re going to do with our body. That level of advocacy will allow us to listen to our intuition and steer the ship in the right direction. Do you have any resources? Obviously, people need to go to your website realimmunity.org and they need to watch these documentaries. Do you have any resources that you highly recommend listeners check out for –

 

 

[1:01:46] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Definitely the Hope4Cancer clinics. Their website is hope and then the number four cancer.com. And they have some excellent – they have a third party researcher doing their stats on survival rates. And I was just speaking with the director in October and they were amazed when their stats came in and asked them to recheck them because they couldn’t believe it. Conventional medicine for stage four cancers, lung and pancreatic, the survival rate after four years is 2 to 3% for stage four of those types of cancers. Hope4Cancer, the survival rate after four years, stage four pancreatic and lung 44%.

 

 

[01:02:36] Ashley James: I would love to see like a third one, which is people who choose to not – they get the diagnosis and they’re like, “I don’t want chemo radiation. I’m just going to go on a road trip and see what happens.”

 

 

[01:02:54] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. go live my life.

 

 

[01:02:57] Ashley James: Go live my life and see what happens. I mean, obviously, you know, there’s people out there that do that. And it’d be cool if we could see the statistics on no treatments and just living life. Maybe how the treatment is, like, being happier versus cut, burn, and poison versus intense holistic therapies. I’m guessing the bill for the Hope4Cancer Center is like in the tens of thousands.

 

 

[01:03:28] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: The cost? Yeahh. So I think it’s different depending on which therapies they’re recommending for you. Mine was $50,000. It includes the three weeks there, including food and hotel, and all my treatments. It includes everything going home for three months of a home care program, supplements, equipment, injections. And then it includes two follow ups coming back and a year of home support.

 

 

[01:04:00] Ashley James: I mean, I know that’s a lot of money. But it also sounds kind of reasonable when you think about –

 

 

[01:04:07] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I know. Well, here’s a comparison. I had a needle biopsy done in the beginning. Which I struggled with because I didn’t really want to interrupt the tumor but I wanted proof of exactly what kind of tumor I had. And our deductible hadn’t been satisfied yet. So we had a large deductible. That biopsy cost me $10,000. A needle biopsy. I’m still paying $500 a month for it.

 

 

[01:04:38] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

 

 

[01:04:39] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. That’s the condition of conventional medicine. It’s shameful.

 

 

[01:04:47] Ashley James: So where does homeopathy play a role when someone has a cancer diagnosis? Obviously, you’re a homeopath. You love homeopathy. Because there’s no homeopathy for cancer. It’s because it’s not about treating the –

 

[01:05:07] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Oh, yeah. No. There is.

 

 

[01:05:09] Ashley James: There is?

 

 

[01:05:09] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: There definitely is. And there are studies. The  Banerjee Clinic out of India has studies in coordination with MD Anderson Cancer Center.

 

 

[01:05:18] Ashley James: You’re blowing my mind right now. Okay. Tell us more about this. Tell us what the study is. I want to know.

 

 

[01:05:20] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So the main study is with a gliomas, like brain tumors. Some very significant studies. And there’s a method called the Radha Krishna method. I’ve used it on a number of cancer patients. There is definitely homeopathic treatment for cancers. I didn’t rely entirely on only homeopathy. I used the shotgun approach of probably too many therapies, you know, everything from –

 

 

[01:05:51] Ashley James: I would be right there with you. Because, to me, it doesn’t matter which one works. They all work. They’re all going to work because I’m going to heal this. So as long as you’re okay with doing all of them, I wouldn’t be upset about it like. If it’s something little – like I don’t know – if it was Lyme Disease and someone wanted to try one therapy at a time because maybe budget or maybe they’re just scientific and they want to see one thing at a time. Lyme disease you have time. Whereas cancer, it has that sort of potential of metastasizing. And we want to address it as fast as possible. At the same time, we want to take enough time to figure out what our steps are and not be rushed into anything. So we do – I love that they teach this when watching the docu series, The Truth About Cancer. Which I’ve had Ty Bollinger on the show before. All the experts there on this docu series say, you have enough time to slow down, get out of fear mode, and make a plan of action. And they say if you go to an Oncologist, they’re going to try to rush you into your therapy within days and not give you any breathing room to second guess. Or to even get a second opinion. And so all these experts or these Oncologists on Truth About Cancer said get a second opinion, slow down, make a plan of action. But once you have the plan of action, then then rush into it and do it. So you did the shotgun approach, which is great. But you did use some homeopathy because there are studies. Tell us about the studies in India.

 

 

[01:07:36] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, the Banerjee doctors are generations of doctors. They have a very large clinic in India. They see thousands of patients a day. It’s an amazing clinic. It’s homeopathy applied in an allopathic way because they apply it based on diagnosis. So it’s a little bit different than the classical approach. There’s some different schools of thought within homeopathy. But nonetheless, it’s viable. It’s applicable to many different conditions. And the study with MD Anderson Center was specifically on gliomas. So different brain tumors and the use of homeopathic remedies. And they saw good results.

 

 

[01:08:21] Ashley James: Do you remember what the numbers were?

 

 

[01:08:24] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I can’t recall the numbers off the top of my head. But I know they were positive.

 

 

[01:08:30] Ashley James: So much so that you remember it. That you remember that it was a worthwhile study and that it was better than chance.

 

 

[01:08:39] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Exactly. And the fact that MD Anderson would be open to doing something like that is interesting.

 

 

[01:08:45] Ashley James: Cool.

 

 

[01:08:47] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: So homeopathy is a deep curative form of system of medicine, a whole system of medicine.

 

 

[01:08:54] Ashley James: Yes. And we’ve talked about it before in the show and other people talk about it. I think, it might have been the last time you came on the show, you talked about what we can do instead of the flu vaccine. And I love your homeopathy for the flu, the Influenzinum. We used it in our entire family – it’s been a year. We’ve used it for the last year. And our entire family has not gotten the flu. We were getting it – and we have a toddler and he is a germ magnet, you know, because they bring home everything.

And I know I could also contribute to the fact that I’m on a healing journey. So my body, obviously, is healthier today than it was a year ago. But I was getting the flu at least once a year. And I haven’t had a flu. And the whole family. And I haven’t had a flu in the last year and none of us have and we’ve been using your Influenzinum. So I’m very excited about that. What else do you want to make sure that we cover that we make sure that listeners know about?

 

 

[01:10:07] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, the films, of course, because it’ll be launched free and those will be available. But also the homeoprophylaxis programs. I mean, the programs that we provide through realimmunity.org, they’re based on Dr. Isaac Golden’s 15 year study in Australia. So he saw a 90% effectiveness rate with this particular program. And more than just protecting from disease, it exercises the immune system and matures it in a way that supports the natural development of children. So it’s an amazing program.

And my goal really, Ashley, is to change the paradigm. Not just to sell a widget or a product but to change the paradigm so people understand the power of their immunity and how supporting it is the best thing you can do. And homeoprophylaxis is an amazing way to support it. And I’m overcome with grief when I see the new normal cropping up and people accepting asthma and chronic conditions as normal. This is not how children are intended to be.

And my families that do homeoprophylaxi, they rave about how vibrant their children are. And how their speech is miles ahead. Their cognitive skills or developmental leaps, it’s amazing. And this is how kids are supposed to be. So I can’t say enough about the HP programs. I would urge anyone to look into it and see the value of it in terms of shifting that paradigm.

The other thing we’re going to do at Real Immunity is we’re starting these empowerment groups. So the goal is to support groups of parents who think like this but feel like they’re alone. And media would have us think that everybody wants to vaccinate and everybody has these certain ideas. It’s simply not true. And part of my goal in making the Real Immunity series was to support those parents who are thinking clearly but they think they’re alone and they’re afraid to speak up. So these empowerment groups, we’re going to be starting them probably just in the beginning of 2020. What they are is an opportunity for people to get together and view segments of the films. They’ll be divided into three segments each. And then there’s discussion questions. There’s mechanisms for support. It’s a whole process of empowering this group so their consciousness gets raised to a certain level. And we know from one of the interviews in the third film, that people operating at a certain level of consciousness have the capacity to bring up tens of thousands of other people in their consciousness. So what we’re doing is we’re replacing outmoded ideas with truth and with a new paradigm of real immunity. And that’s what the empowerment groups are intended to do.

 

 

[01:13:16] Ashley James: Oh, fun. Very cool. Well, you discussed homeoprophylaxis in Episode 137 in a detailed way that made me incredibly passionate about it. And I really feel that this is a tool that should be in every single parents tool belt to train the child’s immune system so that it’s responding in a healthy way to these infections should the child be exposed to them. And when you cited that in India, for example, they’ve had millions of people go through homeoprophylaxis. And they’ve seen success n Australia, in India, in Cuba. It blew my mind that they don’t have side effects and they have incredible success. Whereas, we can’t say the same for vaccines.

 

 

[01:14:17] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right? Absolutely.

 

 

[01:14:20] Ashley James: You’ve talked –

 

 

[01:14:23] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: And they’re so easily distributed. There’s no cold chain. It’s inexpensive for third world countries. It’s not species specific. It’s not gender orage specific. I mean, there’s so many benefits to be utilized worldwide. Why not? Except it doesn’t bring revenue to pharma.

 

 

[01:14:41] Ashley James: I just read, there’s a Pacific Island, that – small Pacific island that had three babies – three infants instantly die after getting a vaccine recently. And it turns out that the vaccines were made incorrectly. I mean, whereas you won’t find that using homeopathy. And then this is something new to me that something, like 85% of our vaccines now come from China that or manufactured in China. And I believe it was recent. It was very recent that in congressional hearings, the FDA said that they do not – China does not need to disclose the ingredients of the vaccines. I was reading this article and I was shocked.

 

 

[01:15:42] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: That’s shocking. I’m not familiar with that information but I would believe it.

 

 

[01:15:48] Ashley James: Well, you bring up the quality. So I’ll have to pull it up and find it. But you bring up the quality of the chain of custody and all the things that go into ensuring the safety of a vaccine vs. homeopathy. One is, with a vaccine, there’s so many chances that something could go wrong. Whereas, with homeopathy, it’s inert. It’s energetic medicine versus molecular medicine. We’ve had a few people in the Facebook Group talk about not wanting to get the flu vaccine. One woman last year wrote she was very upset. She had recently had the flu vaccine and became so sick. She never been that sick in her life. She was contemplating going to the hospital. She was that sick. She says she felt like she was dying. And she was so upset at herself. Because she bought into – we have a constant bombardment, “I go to the grocery store, you can get 20% off your groceries if you get a flu shot at my local grocery store – near a grocery store near us.” Every very place I go into I feel – like even Costco, there’s a big sign, “Get your vaccine. Get your vaccine.” Every time I go- not the Naturopath, of course. But other doctors offices, they’re asking me several times if I want a flu shot. So we’re constantly having it offered to us. And maybe we buy into the – it’s easy to buy into the fear and go, “Well, we should get this because we’re protecting ourselves. We’re protecting others.” You know, buy into this fear. And she was really upset that she did that because she didn’t want to buy into the fear. And she realized she had.

And then others have shared in the Learn True Health group that they want to choose a different way. Can you share with us – if you could just bust some myths about the flu shot. We’re taught that it is protective. We’re taught that it will ensure that – or at least really significantly decrease our chance of getting the flu. And for some, the flu is fatal. So that it’s really smart to get the flu shot and we’re really stupid if we don’t get the flu shot. Can you bust some myths about the flu shot versus Influenzinum, or example, which is the homeopathy version of the flu shot.

 

 

[01:18:19] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. Right. So initially I’d send people to the Cochrane Collaboration. The Cochrane Collaboration is a group that’s unrelated to pharma and does meta analysis. They take lots of data. They crunch it. They look at it. And they come up with analysis of that data. And what they have said is that under the age of two, flu shots are no more effective than placebo. They don’t work. For the elderly, they don’t prevent transmission of the flu. And they don’t reduce hospital stays. And then we know for a fact, because the CDC comes out with a percentage how much they’re working. I’m not familiar with what it is this year. But I think they said it was lower than it’s been in many, many years. So we know it’s not that effective to start with.

Then I would point people to a study by Cowling and Fang from 2012. And that study showed us that what it does, it compromises TH1, which is your innate arm of your immune system. So you may have protection about whatever particular strain has been targeted for that year. But what’s happened, you’ve compromised your immunity to every other virus going around. So these people get sicker with other viruses. Another study that’s out, and I can’t quote the authors on this one. It’s not on the top of my mind. But study that shows us repeated flu shots makes you more susceptible to catching the flu as well. That the efficacy wanes.

So from many different angles, we see that flu shots are not what they’re trumped up to be. When I was growing up the only people that were recommended to get flu shots were those in nursing homes closed communities. But never for children. So Influenzinum is something that’s made from a variety of historical flus. So flus are ancient viruses. They continue to mutate over time. They’re a life form. They’re going to find a way. So they mutate and change. And they reside many times in fowl, you know, birds. And then come into human hosts. And the Influenzinum is a combination of a variety of historical flus. So it covers all the mutations because homeopathy is based on treating it’s symptom picture. It’s not the actual species or a type of flu. So any mutation is going to be covered. It’s completely safe. You don’t need a new one each year, from the Influenzinum that I use. Some of them are being sold because they’re selling a product so there is a new one each year. It’s based on the flu vaccine basically. But mine has the historical flus. And then mine has Tubercalinum, which covers the [inaudible 01:21:30] tendency to be susceptible to lung infections. So very, very safe. It can be taken every week during flu season. I take it when I fly, always. I take it when I’m going to be in public, in a group, like at a conference or a large group, or if I’m in my office and a child comes in sneezing and coughing and drooling. I’ll go home and I’ll take a dose just to protect myself.

So just recently, my husband was at a social event and people were sick. And he felt like he was coming down with something so he came home, he took Influenzinum. That night, he felt like he had kind of a fever. The next day, it abated. And after that, he was totally fine.

So I mean it simply engages your immune system in a way to recognize these viruses and then mount its own immune response in a healthy way.

 

 

[0:22:28] Ashley James: The way you said that made me think of cancer again. To get the immune system to recognize it and respond in a different way. I wonder.

 

 

[01:22:44] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. And we actually use Carcinosin. Ashley. There’s two types of Carcinosin. One is made from breast tumors. Another is made from 58 different kinds of cancer tumors. And it basically engages the immune system to recognize self from non-self and discriminate. Because that’s really the hallmark of cancer is it hasn’t recognized self from non-self. And it’s allowed this growth to get out of control.

 

And we see that on the emotional level as well. The Type C personality, which is the cancer personality, has trouble with boundaries. They’re givers. They’re doers. They’re strivers. They’re people who always are worried about what the other person thinks. And they’ll compromise themselves for the other person. They don’t do self-care very well. And that’s the typical cancer personality. So part of the challenge is learning how to care for oneself and recognize self from non-self, basically.

 

 

[01:23:44] Ashley James: Yeah. Let’s all start putting ourselves first. Not to be selfish. But to be –

 

 

[01:23:53] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Healthy.

 

 

[01:23:55] Ashley James: And to realize that – so my mom died when she was 55. And growing up, my mom was athletic, gorgeous. She was a model. And then she became a rep for women’s clothing lines. She built an empire. She built this beautiful company that she had to constantly look her best. She was walking around in stilettos, you know, 10 hours, 12 hours a day kind of thing. She’d wake up the crack of dawn, make us all protein shakes, and put on her gym outfit, and take her dry cleaning with her. And she would head to the gym by 6:00 in the morning. And then after the gym – so she worked out six days a week. And then she’d be gone all day. Come home at 7:00 and she’ll have, like, a salad and a chicken breast. And then put me down to bed.  And then she’d go to sleep. And it was like rinse and repeat her whole life. She took supplements. She exercised a lot. She ate really clean. She didn’t take enough downtime, that’s for sure. But she was beautiful, hardworking, didn’t take the time to rest and relax a lot. Because she was A type personality, constantly put stress on herself, and she had a lot of anger and a lot, I guess, a lot of fear. A lot of fear of not being successful. And then she just got liver cancer and died within months. And she was so healthy.

It was like a practical joke on our family because my dad struggled with weight. He would gain and lose 100 pounds, 200 pounds even. When he died, we had to pay extra money because the casket needed to be bigger. And just the year before he was his goal weight. His whole life he struggled greatly with that. And he constantly worked at it. But he also was A type personality, hard worker, did not even know what self-care was. Self-care to him was, like, treating themselves to a steak dinner, basically. But both of my parents were loving and wonderful people. And my dad died, you know, six years later when he was like 62 years old.

So to watch my mom who was the epitome of health. My dad who was not the epitome of health end up outliving my mom. And my mom was the healthiest person we knew. And for her to go so quickly had me really look at self-care in a new light. That it’s not selfish. That it is actually selfish not to do self-care. That my mom – because I’d asked her so many times to – like I said to her, “Stay home. Hang out with me.” And she kept saying, “I’m going to give you a better childhood than I had.” But at the end of the day, could have worked less. And again, I’m not blaming her. It’s just a hindsight, right? Looking at it and going, if she had created a more balanced life, yeah, maybe she would have made less money, but she would have been happier and she’d still be alive, possibly.

 

 

[01:27:18 Dr. Cilla Whatcott: How old were you, Ashley?

 

 

[01:27:20] Ashley James: When she died? I was 22. So self-care is not selfish. It is selfish to not do self-care. Because our children need us here alive. And it’s okay. My friend, Naomi, she takes off and goes to the women’s spa once in a while. And treats herself to – it’s a beautiful spa here in Seattle in Lynnwood, where it’s an all women spa. And you basically hang out with a bunch of women and hot tubs and saunas. And it’s like her family won’t have her for a few hours. And they will have to fend for themselves. But she’s doing her self-care.

And I say bye- bye to my son and my husband and I get in the sauna. And they have to fend for themselves for an hour or whatever. But it’s like we have to – sometimes we have to disconnect from our family and take care of ourselves. But it’s for our family that we do it. So I just know that some of us still have to get over that idea that self-care is selfish. Even buying a massage, like, “Oh, that $60.”  And taking $60 away from buying books for my son or something. Our little voice in our head says that money should be spent on our family. But if we’re not doing the self- care that we need every day or every week and decreasing our stress, supporting our immune health, then we’re not ensuring that will be here long term.

 

[01:28:58] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. You’re very, very right. It took cancer for me to give myself permission to care for myself.

 

 

[01:29:04] Ashley James: Yeah. And that caring for yourself equals caring for your family. I love that you did the shotgun approach. But is there anything that you can share as you think back? Like, did you ever add something and then go, “Wow. It’s really working. I’m glad I added this.” Is there any kind of stuff that you added along the way and you’re really happy you did?

 

 

[01:29:31] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Probably the diet. Just supplemental, just tons of organic vegetables, you know, smoothies and vegetables. That’s really your foundation, what you’re putting in your body. I’d say that’s huge. And my diet wasn’t bad to begin with. So it was hard for me to accept that I was doing anything good. Because it was like this isn’t very different than I’ve always eaten. But I saw people at Hope4Cancer who came from terrible diets, do that diet for three weeks, and have their tumors shrink to nothing before they got out. So I watched it.

Like your mother, my lifestyle wasn’t that unhealthy. I was overworking. And I had a lot of trauma in my past that was still activated for me that I had to address.

 

 

[01:30:29] Ashley James: What did you do to address it? Because trauma is another really big – it’s another really big – they see that there’s a connection between unresolved trauma and disease. Dr. Hamer, who has unfortunately passed away, he created meta medicine. I started studying it in 2005. And I think it’s fascinating that he could identify disease in the body and relate it back to a trauma that has been unresolved.

 

 

[01:31:00] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. So this does bring to mind an answer to your question, is there anything that really worked well for me. And what I used to address trauma was microcurrent. So microcurrent is a method that was introduced by chiropractors for muscular skeletal stuff initially. And then it was shown to have value with PTSD and different forms of trauma. So it’s a very, very low level current that’s run through the body. You don’t feel anything at all.

 

 

[01:31:33] Ashley James: Is this frequency specific microcurrent?

 

 

[01:31:35] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah, yeah. That’s it.

 

 

[01:31:36] Ashley James: Yeah. I’ve had an interview – fascinating. For some reason, I didn’t think it would affect emotions.

 

 

[01:31:46] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Who did you interview? Who was the person you interviewed? Is it Carolyn?

 

 

[0 1:31:50] Ashley James: Carolyn McMakin? McMakin?

 

 

[01:31:52] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. And she still teaches

 

 

[01:31:55] Ashley James: Episode 332 and 333. It’s a two parter. That interview was amazing. I asked my first question, which is tell me your story. So you know I love – when you’re a new guest, I get you to tell your story. One hour later, I asked my second question.

 

 

[01:32:14] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. She’s amazing.

 

 

[01:32:16] Ashley James: It was phenomenal. Her story is phenomenal. Oh my gosh, I never knew that frequency specific –

 

 

[01:32:22] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. I loved it. I loved it. And I did it twice a week for a while. It was huge for me. I knew I needed something that was hands on. I didn’t want something that was based on talk. Because I’m a talker and I’m an analytical person and I’ve talked my trauma to death. I don’t need to talk about it anymore.

 

 

[01:32:49] Ashley James: It’s funny you should say that. It’s like, you know intellectually – you can kind of intellectualize the trauma out then it’s still stuck in the body.

 

 

[01:33:02] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Yeah. I needed something to get it out of my body. Since it had to be something that was touching me, I did EFT, I did Qigong, I did – what was it called? They did it at Hope4Cancer. It was recall healing. But it’s based on talking and looking at different traumas at different ages and how in the ancestry it relates. So I did all of those things. But it was that microcurrent that I really liked. And she did craniosacral at the same time. So she’d hook me up to the microcurrent and do craniosacral. So there’s no talking involved.

 

 

[01:33:45] Ashley James: Right. How did you know it was working on your traumas?

 

 

[01:33:49] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Because after some of the sessions I would just have this amazing feeling the next day. Just like this well-being feeling like when I was a kid that I had forgotten. So I liked it a lot.

 

 

[01:34:08] Ashley James: I mean, did you ever try testing it? Thinking back to your trauma and then realizing the emotions weren’t there anymore? Or did you –

 

 

[01:34:15] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: No. Because the emotions aren’t there. I can talk about any of the trauma very analytically that I do not sense any emotions being there anymore. I think it’s only at a cellular level. So in that way, I didn’t notice anything. But definitely this just subtle sense the next day of well-being. And I went after it. Like I said, Qigong, EFT, lots of different kinds of energetic therapies. But it didn’t click. It didn’t feel like, “Yeah. This is it. I got it.” It was until the microcurrent.

 

 

[01:34:57] Ashley James: Cool. Thank you for sharing that. I encourage you to also check into Timeline Therapy created by Ted James.

 

 

[01:35:06] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Timeline Therapy. Okay.

 

 

[01:35:08] Ashley James: Timeline Therapy. I’m a master practitioner and trainer of Timeline Therapy. I learned it in 2005 from Todd James, of have no relation. And he created it. But it is, I guess, inspired by neuro linguistic programming. It is incredibly effective at getting to the root cause of trauma and resolving it at the unconscious and conscious level. Although you might not need it now. But yeah, Timeline Therapy is phenomenal. I’ve had really great success with resolving chronic pain, anxiety, phobias, fears, anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt that is unresolved from the past it just keeps hanging on. It’s great. It’s great. So that’s another thing. But like you said, you know, taking the shotgun approach, trying one thing, trying another, and finding your truth, finding what’s going to resonate with you. And it’s good to do this. Always looking at the labs. We have to look subjectively and objectively to make sure we’re on the right path.

Don’t put our head in the sand. It’s so easy to because it’s part of our culture. I feel like in the mainstream of Hollywood and just every day we’re bombarded by this culture of putting our head in the sand and just going the easy route, going with the flow. Just go to the doctor, take the pills, do what they say, eat the food everyone else eats. Just go with the flow. And when we do that, we become a statistic. One in three people have pre-diabetes. One in three people have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. I think the number is worse for men. Or was it worse for women?

 

 

[01:37:02] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Women. Women.

 

 

[01:37:03] Ashley James: Women. Like one or two women are going to have – 50% of women are going to have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. Over 70% of the adult population of the United States is on at least one prescription medication. There’s currently over 2 million children in the United States on –

 

 

[01:37:22] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Chronic meds.

 

 

[01:37:22] Ashley James: — antipsychotic medication. I mean, I just read that. So the statistics are getting worse and worse. And if we want to be a statistic, we must live like everyone else’s. We’ll go with the flow, right? But if we want to not be a statistic, we have to go upstream. We have to at least challenge the status quo to shake it up. And so you’re going upstream. And at first, it’s a bit exhausting. Because, like you said, we have that pressure from our family and our culture and this constant bombardment of mainstream media telling us we’re wrong. And I love that you’re putting together a group of people so we, at least, can start to realize we’re not alone. And that there are other people out there. Like in our Learn True Health Facebook Group, like listeners of this group, and also the people who are following you and want to join your groups. That there are communities or pockets of people that want to swim upstream. And it becomes easier, especially when we start seeing results.

Now, before we wrap up today’s interview, this has been on my mind and I’m sort of racking my brain for which guests told on me this. So hopefully, you can clarify. I heard that the immune system of an infant and even a child up until between age six and seven cannot or should not produce T cells or should not – like there’s something about an immune system of a young child before the age of six that isn’t designed to produce this kind of immunity that a vaccine forces it to produce. Have you heard of this?

 

 

[01:39:08] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Right. Yeah. And I think it’s only the first couple years that they’re not fully mature. A child’s immune system isn’t fully mature until the age of 12, I believe. But in those first few years, they’re not producing antibodies in the same way that they do once they’re mature. And I can’t tell you the physiological theory behind that. But you’re correct that their immune systems can’t produce.

 

 

[01:39:34] Ashley James: And so they’re being forced to. The body is being forced to produce it. And that we’re seeing a giant spike in autoimmune as a result of, basically, playing God and messing with the immune system. We talked about this a little bit in our other interviews about how having an autoimmune disease is something that we need to look at as well when healing the body. Because the immune system gone awry. So cancer, catching a cold like a virus, an autoimmune condition. There’s acute and chronic but it all has to do with coming back to the immune system. So in your three part documentary movie series, you go through this. You talk about how to help the immune system come back into balance. Do you have any specific guests talk about autoimmune issues?

 

 

[01:40:22] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I can’t recall if there’s a specific interview that addresses this. But I would say very simply that indiscriminate inflammation is what causes autoimmunity. So when you pump an immune system full of adjuvants, such as aluminum which are designed to create inflammation and, thus, antibodies. You’re promoting indiscriminate inflammation in the body. So of course you’re going to see autoimmunity. It’s logical.

 

 

[01:40:56] Ashley James: Yeah. Well, I urge listeners to go back and check out our other and views because they are enlightening and fascinating and have largely influenced what I do with my health and my family.

So I thank you because our family has, obviously, we’re doing the shotgun approach too. We’re eating healthy. We’re detoxing. We’re doing all of it. But we added homeoprophylaxis and Influenzinum. And you’d be so proud. The other day my husband had this dry cough that you couldn’t shake. It was the weirdest thing. And throw stuff at him. And I made him some throat coat tea. I took some fresh thyme. I made him a tea and all this other stuff. And then he went by himself to the medicine cabinet and got himself homeopathic remedies. And figured out by himself which remedy. And I think it was like nux vomica, which like surprised me, but that was the one that worked for him. But he figured out. He researched online. He picked three different ones. He tested it himself. I didn’t need to do any of it for him. I was proud. And I also kind of was kicking myself because I didn’t think about homeopathy. Homeopathy for him is in the forefront of his mind because we’ve seen it work so well with our son and also for me. And I’ve shared in the past Episodes my amazing, amazing results with homeopathy and our son’s. And so now it’s actually the forefront of my husband’s mind. That’s one of the first things he thinks about when he has a symptom is to go to homeopathy. So I thank you for that influence.

 

 

[01:42:38] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: I love it. That’s really great bliss. Thank you so much.

 

 

[01:42:41] Ashley James: I want to make sure listeners know, go to Episode 137, 155, 228, and 305 to listen to other interviews.

Cilla, thank you so much for coming on the show. It has been such a pleasure to have you back. And I’m really looking forward to watching the rest of your documentary. I’ve seen the first one. The first Episode, Quest For Real Immunity. I’m really excited for Passage For Real Immunity and of course, Choosing Real Immunity because that’s where the entire thing takes a totally different direction. I’m sure it’s going to be fascinating. I’m really excited. So I definitely urge listeners to sign up to watch it for free. Is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?

 

[01:43:27] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Well, my sincere thanks for having me, of course. But I think in closing, I would just say that the consciousness of this entire world is raising. And it’s calling people to take responsibility. And with choice comes responsibility. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t look towards someone to tell you what to do. But ask for your free agency at the same time. So I would just say learn, listen. You know you’ve learned enough when there’s not fear. Get past the fear. Fear is a very low vibration. And have trust in your intuition. But like you’re saying, Ashley, use your head and your heart. Look at the facts plus look at your intuition. Put the two together and really exercise your free agency and then take responsibility.

 

[01:44:24] Ashley James: You remind me of the quote from Dune, “I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. “Fear is the mind killer, I was like, “Oh, yeah.” So get past the fear. And I like that, when you’ve studied enough and you know enough and you have sort of armed yourself with enough information, the fear will be running you.

 

 

[01:44:47] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: It’s gone.

 

 

[01:44:47] Ashley James: Yeah.Right. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Cilla. Please come back on the show anytime you want to share or teach. We’d be lucky to have you.

 

 

[01:44:58] Dr. Cilla Whatcott: Thank you, Ashley. Thanks so much.

 

 

[01:45:01] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over 100 dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their lives and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health.

I definitely recommend that you check them out. You can Google Institute for integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learnttruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health

Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices. You can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children to be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success in their health goals.

There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon.  The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected With Dr. Cilla Whatcott! 

Real Immunity Organization

World Wide Choice

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Twitter

Learn True Health – vaccines

Book by Dr. Cilla Whatcott

There Is a Choice – Homeoprophylaxis

Recommended Readings by Dr. Cilla Whatcott

Dissolving Illusions – Suzanne Humphries (Vaccines)

Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies – Neil Miller (Vaccines)

Impossible Cure –  Amy Lansky (Homeopathy)

The Complete  Homeopathy Handbook – Miranda Castro (Homeopathy)

Check out other interviews of Dr. Cilla Whatcott!

Episode 137: Homeoprophylaxis

Episode 155: Developing Real Immunity

Episode 228: Homeopathy

Episode 305: How To Naturally Avoid The Flu

Nov 21, 2019

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Heart Rate Variability

https://www.learntruehealth.com/heart-rate-variability

Highlights:

  • What heart rate variability is
  • Benefits of heart rate variability
  • How to induce the right side of the brain
  • What spatial perception is
  • What hakalau is
  • Four proofs that you are experiencing heart rate variability

 

In this episode, Forrest Knutson teaches us how to achieve heart rate variability in five to ten minutes. He also shares with us the benefits of heart rate variability and the proofs that you are experiencing heart rate variability resonant breathing.

[0:00] Intro: Hello true health seekers and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love today’s episode with Forrest Knutson. He teaches some really awesome things about decreasing the stress response and that is something 100% of us need especially after some of the interviews that I’ve done recently that I’m going to be publishing soon. So many experts are talking about the leading cause of illness, chronic illness, being either caused by or exacerbated by stress. So if we do this simple breathing exercise every day we can all lower our stress levels and prevent disease. That is very exciting.

Now please, go to Learn True Health/Group and go to Learn True Health Facebook group. Thanksgiving is just around the corner here in the United States. That means there’s going to be some awesome deals that all these health companies end up releasing there, Cyber Monday or Black Friday specials. I make sure I go around collecting my favorite ones and I announce them all in the Facebook group. So if you want to make sure you’re getting the best deals on some of the coolest gadgets and supplements and all those fun holistic things that are great gifts for you because you should treat yourself and pamper yourself and take care of yourself because if you’re not around for your family then who will be? So we should take care of ourselves. Self-care is a gift we give to our family. So, now more guilt when you take care of yourself. You take care of yourself and it makes sure that you’re around for your family.

So treat yourself, join the Facebook group Learn True Health Facebook group so you can get those announcements that are going to come out next week. Make sure you stock up on some of the really awesome deals. I know there’s going to be the best deal ever on the magnesium soak, which my absolute favorite treat that I give myself. It is so therapeutic to soak in magnesium and make sure that I’m filling up my magnesium stores. When we are deficient in magnesium, there’s 1800 processes that cannot function correctly and everything seems to break down without magnesium. So join the Facebook group so you can learn about the best deal I’ve ever heard on this magnesium soak. I know there’s going to be some other great specials also. All my favorite gadgets and goodies. I’ll be snatching them up along with you come Cyber Monday. Awesome.

I look forward to seeing you there in the Facebook group Learn True Health. Please also, go to my website learntruehealth.com. When little pop-up comes, put your email in. I promise not to spam you. I don’t sell your information to anyone. I just send a few emails .a month. I definitely will make sure I send out an email about all of my favorite Black Friday specials that are happening just in case you’re not on Facebook then you can join the email list. Awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener and for sharing my episodes with your friends and family to help us spread this information and help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 393.

 

[0:03:17] Ashley James: I am so excited to have back on the show with us, Forrest Knutson. Forrest, you were here on the show back all the way at the beginning, episode 25 and episode 32. So much has happened since you were on the show. Welcome back.

 

[0:03:32] Forrest Knutson: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I think there might have been one more in there somewhere.

 

[0:03:40] Ashley James: I’ve had you on a few times. But it feels like years.

 

[0:03:44] Forrest Knutson: It feels forever.

 

[0:03:46] Ashley James: It’s been hundreds of episodes.

 

[0:03:48] Forrest Knutson: Every time I come back you’ve got a million more people listening.

 

[0:03:53] Ashley James: Millions. Millions of people.

 

[0:03:55] Forrest Knutson: Maniacal laugh in there in the middle.

 

[0:04:01] Ashley James: Millions.

 

[0:04:02] Forrest Knutson: Perfect, perfect. Well done. Hard work.

 

[0:04:05] Ashley James: It’s all hard work. Blood, sweat, and tears. I love what you teach and I love that you started your YouTube channel since we’ve had you on the show. You are a machine. You pump out videos each week teaching people different aspects of meditation from the medical standpoint, from the yogic standpoint, from the neuroscience standpoint, from the neuro-linguistic programming standpoint. You are coming at it from many different angles. I love that you love focusing on heart rate variability. Actually learns heart rate variability from a handful of naturopathic physicians as I was interviewing them over the course of the last three and a half years. It kept coming up. I was like, “What is this? What is this heart rate variability that sounds so weird?” Yet they were saying that it was one of the most important things we need to focus on when reversing chronic disease because it was this marker that allowed us to see whether the body was in stress mode or in healing mode. If we are having healthy heart rate variability we could turn on the body’s magnificent healing response.

Then, here you are teaching a technique that within minutes people are turning on the heart rate variability response. So you’re teaching this on your YouTube channel, ThatYogiGuy.com. Of course, links to everything that Forrest does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com.

Welcome back to the show. I’ve just got many things I want you to teach us. Teach us how to turn on this healing response in the body.

 

[0:05:46] Forrest Knutson: Beautiful. Yeah. I’d love to. So the way that I teach it is very organic because I want you to be able to do it at any time, in any place. So if you’re at home, that’s the perfect place, right? You can close the door. You can turn off your phone for a minute or five minutes or ten minutes even better. Really sink into it while you’re at home, while you’re free from distraction. Then maybe you’re at work and you want to take a break and get into heart rate variability or let’s say you’re a professional athlete and you’re about to tee off at the golf course or get ready for your set to whatever it is. You want to get in the zone before you do that. Well, the very best thing that you can do is get yourself into heart rate variability resonance and you do that through your breath. So it’s resonant breathing. The way that I teach it is the holy trinity of breath.

So there are three rules that we follow as we breathe that will basically guarantee that you’re going to put yourself into heart rate variability if you will do it for about five to ten minutes. It should probably take about five minutes but we say ten just to make sure that you really get yourself into it. So what I teach after that is there are four proofs where you can begin to notice that you are accomplishing this. That it is making a physiological shift in your body. So then you know, “Oh my God. I’m doing it.” Nobody had to tell you. You can tell yourself because you have this internal perceived proofs which are not made up in your mind but they’re actually in your body. So there’s a cycle physiological shift that has taken place. So that’s how I teach it.

So the first rule is that we want to lower our breath rate under seven breaths per minute. That’s the very first thing. So that breath would be four seconds in and five seconds out.

 

[0:07:59] Ashley James: Could people do this by accident or do you have to really be conscientious of your breathing to lower it to seven breaths a minute?

 

[0:08:09] Forrest Knutson: You possibly could do it by accident. Absolutely. If you’re concentrated on something very deeply. So that’s the traditional meditation guidance is to concentrate very deeply on thing. While you do that, your breath rate will automatically reduce. You can see that when you’re at work or when you are really into something or you’re concentrating very very deeply on one subject, you’ll notice that your breath rate drops automatically. If you’re in a very loving state, not an excited loving state but a very very our loving state then same thing can happen. Your breath rate can drop when you’re in a very safe loving atmosphere then your breath rate will automatically drop as well. To make sure that you can actually do it on purpose, that’s the holy trinity. So it gives you a real self-reliance that you can do this thing, you can accomplish it and you can do it anytime that you want.

 

[0:09:16] Ashley James: Before we go on to the rest of the steps I feel like we should understand a bit more what heart rate variability is and why we want to do it? What is it? What benefits do we get from creating a more distinct heart rate variability? Who benefits from it? Can you just walk us through for those who have never heard of heart rate variability?

 

[0:09:40] Forrest Knutson: There’s a thing called sinus arrhythmia. So that was understood first and then building on that understanding was this idea of heart rate variability. What that is is that when you breathe in there’s more work going on in the lungs so the heart needs to pump, it needs to do more work at that point.

 

[0:10:06] Ashley James: Is that because the pressure? Because the heart is basically in this chest cavity is creating more pressure on the heart so the heart has to beat harder?

 

[0:10:16] Forrest Knutson: There’s a lot of complicated things going on at the same time but the simple reason is that you’ve got gases in your lungs. They have to be processed and that’s the work of the heart. So the heart does that work and it has to pump more during that time when there is breath in the lungs. Then, when the air is out of the lungs, there’s less work to do. So the heart rate has a chance. If we’re not in a stress state it has a chance to lower the heart rate. It does that because your diaphragm goes up and that puts more pressure on the entire thoracic cavity. All that pressure translates backwards toward the spine. Right along the spine is the dorsal vagal nerve. This is the parasympathetic nerve. It’s one of the aspects of the parasympathetic nerve and it goes straight up into your medulla. So all that pressure goes on the dorsal vagal nerve. That nerve sends a signal to the medulla which is the breath center. It sends a signal down to the heart that, “Hey. There’s more pressure, therefore, lower the heart rate.” So the heart rate comes down a little bit. Now you’ve got a variance. So the in-breath the heart rate will go up. The out-breath the heart rate will go down if we’re not in a stress state. That’s heart rate variability in a nutshell.

 

[0:11:55] Ashley James: So it’s the ratio between the beats happening during the in-breath and the beats happening during an out-breath or when we’ve exhaled and we haven’t inhaled. There’s a pause after exhaling and we haven’t inhaled yet. So that time. Basically, the time of the inhale and the time of the exhale and the pause. You want the ratio to be great?

 

[0:12:26] Forrest Knutson: It’s not so much the pause as it is the actual out-breath. The pause is there as well but when you’re trying to induce heart rate variability, the pause can mess you up. So if you pause too long while you’re trying to induce it – so once it’s been induced, that’s a whole another story. But when you’re trying to get out of a semi-stress state and into more resonance, that resonance what does that mean? That just means that your heart rate and your breath are working together as one system. There’s a resonance between them. That means your breath goes in. You feel it filling up your lungs and at the same time, your heart rate is going to go up a little bit. Then you breathe out and you feel the breath going out of your lungs going down. Sorry, your diaphragm goes up actually. But you feel the breath coming out of you. At the same time, your heart rate is going down slightly. So there is that resonance. It’s coming up and down, both of them, simultaneously. That’s why we call it resonance, heart rate variability resonant breathing.

 

[0:13:46] Ashley James: So when this happens, and what’s really interesting is I like listening to my son’s heartbeat. When he’s sleeping I’ll put my ear to his chest and it kind of freaked me out the first few times until I realized. Because I took him to the doctor and I was like, “I think there’s something wrong with him.” They’re like, “No, he’s fine.” He has a very large difference between the heart rate during an inhale and the heart rate during an exhale. I was worried that he had like AFib because I’m listening to his heart and it’ll be like bum-bum-bum-bum-bum and then he’d exhale will be like bum-bum bum-bum. I’m like, “Whoa. What is going on?” So there was a really big difference. So that is heart rate variability? So it’s beating faster when you’re inhaling and slower when you’re exhaling?

 

[0:14:35] Forrest Knutson: Correct. That’s exactly right. You’re not the only one to ever be freaked out by that. So the story, I think I told you guys this last time but since it’s been so long maybe it’s okay to retell you the story.

 

[0:14:48] Ashley James: Yeah. We have millions, millions of listeners. Millions.

 

[0:14:54] Forrest Knutson: Ok, great. Perfect. So the story, I love this story, the story that I like to tell is that so the Russian Cosmonauts were up in space. They had a whole team monitoring them. This was before some of the real-time satellite information was able to pass through and you had video and all that. This was just simple radio at the time. But they had them, their Cosmonauts, hooked up and were monitoring their signals including their heart rate. While they were doing this one of their Cosmonauts were up their meditation but they didn’t know that. They saw, the team that was there the head guy was monitoring this, he saw that his Cosmonauts heart rate was going up really high and then it was going way down. It was going up really high and then go way down. Then he thought, “Oh my God. This guy’s having a heart attack in space.” So they got them on the line. He said, “What’s happening? What’s happening? What’s going on?” The Cosmonaut you know, “What? I’m meditating.”

 

[0:16:05] Ashley James: “How to shoo. Duh.”

 

[0:16:07] Forrest Knutson: “Leave me alone. I’m meditating.” Funny story. From there, they actually began to study it. So very, very interesting. A lot of that research is the basis of some of the research that was done here in the United States. They confirmed a lot of the things that some of the researchers were finding here.

 

[0:16:36] Ashley James: What I’ve heard is that people who are sick don’t have heart rate variability.

 

[0:16:42] Forrest Knutson: When you’re in a stress state, the heart rate and the breath disjoin. So they’re not going up and down in this resonance that I’m talking about. Your heart rate, when you’re very very sick, your heart rate will stay steady beat to beat. A way to think about that is that you’re like a plate of glass. Any pressure on the glass is liable to break it. That’s not a good thing. Nature loves flexibility. That’s why this variance in the heart rate is such an indicator of health. This is really an emerging field.

So when I came on to YouTube I said, “Heart rate variability, breathing.” People are like, “I don’t think that’s the correct term.” I was like, “Okay the sign is arrhythmia and there’s heart rate variability resonant breathing. We can draw it out into a longer name but sometimes when I’m talking I just shorten it a bit.” So this heart rate variability breathing was not on YouTube when I started but now you can look it up and it’s a search term. 

 

 

[0:17:56] Ashley James: So you were like the first person on YouTube to create a video on how to successfully achieve heart rate variability through breathing?

 

[0:18:04] Forrest Knutson: In terms of defining it purely as a set of rules that you can follow and get success with. You don’t have to hook yourself up to a monitor or anything like that. I think some of the instructions that I saw at the time were like develop a pleasant feeling and just concentrate on that. So it was very –

 

[0:18:25] Ashley James: Obtuse.

 

[0:18:26] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. It was a little bit hard to follow and make sure that you can do it. I like things that you can follow and have success every single time. That’s what I love. So yeah. It’s really a developing field. You’re going to see it, I predict, explode.

 

[0:18:45] Ashley James: Well you were telling me that life insurance companies use this as an indicator whether they’re going to cover people or not. Can you tell us a bit about that?

 

[0:18:55] Forrest Knutson: They’re researching it now. I don’t know how far ahead. If one of your listeners knows maybe they can leak it and tell us but I would love to know more. My understanding is that the insurance field is looking at this as an indicator of health and mortality so that they will look at it and decide how long you’re going to live based on how much heart rate variability resonance you have in any moment so they can predict whether to insure you or how long they’re going to insure you or what they’re going to charge you in order to insure you for life insurance. They’re finding this probably one of the most effective indicators that they’ve ever found. These are people with lots of lots of money to throw this kind of research. So it’s really exciting. Sounds a bit morbid but that’s actually really exciting.

 

[0:19:54] Ashley James: Well, it’s really exciting if we can use it to our advantage to live to be 120 years old. Healthfully.

 

[0:20:00] Forrest Knutson: Exactly. You look at that and you hear that and you’re like, “Oh my God. This is so exciting.” But I look at it in terms of yogis and what the old yogis said was that we have a set amount of breaths to breathe in one life. If you breathe less, what I said that first rule you’ve got to lower your breath rate right? So if we breathe less we will automatically breathe longer. So they understood it was an indicator a couple of thousand years ago at least.

 

[0:20:35] Ashley James: It’s interesting because we’re thought that aerobic exercise is something that’s very healthy for us. You do a lot of breaths during aerobic exercise. Do we get into heart rate variability if we’re exercising or is that too stressful?

 

[0:20:54] Forrest Knutson: Yes. Well, it will a little bit will take you a long way. So if you raise your heart rate and then you relax, it’s that relaxation which benefits you the most. So you get benefit from pumping it up but it’s the relaxation phase which is most beneficial to your body long term. So, work then rest, work then rest. That’s the cycle that’s going to benefit you the most in terms of health.

 

[0:21:25] Ashley James: So cut out the middleman. Just rest a bunch.

 

[0:21:27] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. Exactly. But don’t let the couch swallow you. It’s the balance, the middle way that’s going to benefit you the very most.

 

[0:21:41] Ashley James: What health benefits have you personally noticed? Now, Forrest, you and I have personally known each other since 2006. You’ve always been fairly healthy but I know you’re also very conscientious and very present to your body. I know you’ve been meditating and studying this subject and studying neuroscience and meditation for many years. You started when you were in high school. When did you start focusing on heart rate variability? Has it only been the last two years or three years?

 

[0:22:20] Forrest Knutson: It’s been recent. So I was monastic for about five and a half years. I went very deeply into the study of meditation at that time. I found this obscure reference to the breath that it would shift as it goes in and out of your nose. I thought this was fascinating. In the process of studying this, this physiological shift in the body that happens in meditation, I thought that, “Well, that you can turn this into a whole biofeedback device.” I didn’t have that terminology but I understood it. That’s exactly what I did.

So I developed it for myself. I call it the five breath states. There’s a bunch of other information. There’s a bunch of other shifts like tastes in the mouth and length of the breath as it exits the nose. So there’s a whole bunch of other information. I threw all that out and I just concentrated on the one thing which was the easiest to feel in the body. What I believe is actually happening is that we have these little things inside the nose called the turbinates. As the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system come into balance through meditation, they affect the turbinates in the nose and that affects the breath. So you’ll actually feel these shifts take place in the nose. So I became – how can I explain?

I started playing with this and it affected my meditation so profoundly that I went crazy with it. I was doing it every day all the time. I didn’t have any language to explain why this was such a big deal. I tried telling the people I lived with, the yogis that I lived with and other people, my family and my friends. “Hey. This is a big deal. You have to try this out.” Their response was always, “Okay.” I’m like, “No. You don’t get it. This is a really big deal.” I couldn’t translate it. When I saw, let’s see I’m going to slaughter his name, his name is professor [Getherts]. When I saw him explaining heart rate variability, my brain exploded. This is it. This is what I was doing a different way in a very very deep into heart rate variability resonance through this five breath state process.

So if you really want to know about the five breath sates I’ve got a video on that on YouTube. It’s called the five breath states. So you would see that on my channel. I go through that and I explain what they are. They’re also in my book Hacking the Universe, there’s a little plug. But anyway. So I was doing it – what was that? That must have been 2001? So I was doing it on my way but I didn’t have a language to explain it. What got me so excited was there was no more hit and miss in my meditations. It was consistent. I can go deep every single time. It was experiential. I knew it. It was just a huge milestone. It was a watershed moment. So, when I saw the heart rate variability resonant breathing language I thought, “Oh my God. This is amazing.” So it’s just a glorious framework to talk about meditation.

So if you’re a Buddhist, if you’re a Christian and you pray, if you are doing anything which is of that interior interoceptive world, you have to begin with heart rate variability. Either you’re doing unconsciously or you’re doing it consciously but either way, all interoception begins with this reset point, this balance point of heart rate variability resonance.

 

[0:26:48] Ashley James: So when you started to focus on heart rate variability and breathing specifically for shifting heart rate variability, were you then achieving new heart rate variability or had you already been achieving it for years because you meditate?

 

[0:27:05] Forrest Knutson: Because of the five breath states, I’ve already been achieving it for like 15 years at that point. But I didn’t have the language to explain it. Really cool with the people on my channel they try it out and they report back. Their experiences it’s like, “I’m just doing your heart rate variability and this happened.” It’s just explosive.

 

[0:27:34] Ashley James: Like what? Can you give some examples?

 

[0:27:36] Forrest Knutson: So, a lot of times they will suddenly shift and fall into a very shallow breath naturally. In the meditative world, one of the names for this is tranquil breath. Your whole system gets so relaxed and so centered and so balanced that you automatically shift into a very shallow breath. You probably go into a trance momentarily, a trance-like state. You’d be watching your breath and then suddenly you’ll just kind of go into kind of float off mentally for a moment and then you’ll come back and you’ll notice that your breath is very very shallow. So it’s a whole different system of breath that your body has entered into naturally. Then your whole system is working so quietly that you can actually begin the true process of meditation because none of that body machinery is getting in the way of your mind.

So let’s say you’re a researcher, right? This would be the perfect time to begin your thoughts on your research. Well, let’s say you’re going to pray. This would be the perfect time to begin your prayer. Or if you’re meditating, this would be the perfect time to pick your one idea. Let’s say you’re going to practice, you’re a Buddhist and you’re going to practice metta, which is to take one thought like gratitude or love and just put yourself on that one thought. Now is the perfect time because the body machinery is out of the way. It’s not making a ton of noise and distracting you and drawing you back to the outward world. So you’re able to interocept much more easily.

 

[0:29:22] Ashley James: I know we could go into your YouTube channel ThatYogiGuy.com. We could go there and we could read the comments of people sharing their experiences. Has anyone had any stories of success in terms of noticing shifts in their health?

 

[0:29:43] Forrest Knutson: Yes. They say that they feel more alive and more centered, calm, things don’t disturb you that much because you have this balance. This interior centered stated.

 

[0:30:05] Ashley James: Obviously, 15 years ago you said, can you think back to before you had really figured out this type of breathing that triggered heart rate variability? Can you go back in your mind and think about sort of your health before and after? Did you have any noticeable health changes from – because you’ve been meditating for so long but your meditation wasn’t really centered around creating heart rate variability? So people can meditate and not necessarily create great heart rate variability. Then you do these specific things either in meditation or you don’t have to be meditating you just breathe this way and create heart rate variability. What I’m saying is, you don’t have to meditate in order to create it but you are doing it within meditation. So can you look back 15 years ago and see, is there a difference in your health or vitality that you could tell the before and after when you started creating heart rate variability?

 

[0:31:09] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. Absolutely. You have a lot less energy when you’re not in heart rate variability resonance. So, your concentration is going to lack. Your stamina is going to lack. Your ease, just being in your own skin is going to be less because you’re in a stress state. I mean your cortisol is up. All of that is going to affect the entire system. So with heart rate variability, your serotonin goes up. Everything goes up. Your rest. It’s like you’re in your car and you come to the stop sign. You don’t go sit there and go [revving sound] and rev your engine while you’re at the stop sign, right? You let the car go down into an idle.

So imagine that you go through life revving your engine constantly when you don’t need to. What’s that going to do to your car? It’s going to put stress on your car which is not necessary. That’s the majority of our life, right? Where you’re at work, your boss comes up and you freak out. Your adrenaline goes up, your whole system goes out of whack. If you’re in the jungle and the jungle cat comes up, you get up and you run for your life. Now you’re putting carbon in your muscles. When you’re at work and you don’t jump up when your boss come, maybe you should but we don’t. We sit there and the adrenaline goes up but there’s no carbon in the muscles because we’re just sitting there. So there’s no carbon-oxygen exchange in the body. So you’re hyperventilating because you’re in stress but you’re not exchanging that oxygen. It just stays in your blood. It doesn’t transfer to the muscles because there’s no carbon in the muscles. It’s a marketplace and they have to be able to exchange one for the other.

So that’s how the whole system falls apart, how it gets out of whack.

 

[0:33:23] Ashley James: Can you go deeper into that? I know you’ve explained it to me off-air before with a bit more detail. I don’t want to glaze over this. I remember I think you called me up one day you were like, “I figured something really cool out about carbon.” So take us back to when you first figured this out. What had you figure this out?

 

[0:33:45] Forrest Knutson: So the breath and the body are like a marketplace. So when you breathe in a lot, you oxygenate the blood. That oxygen flows through your blood. It comes up against your muscles. It says, “Hey. I’ve got oxygen. I want to buy some carbon.” But if there’s no carbon in your muscles, then the marketplace doesn’t work. There’s nothing to exchange. So the muscle says, “Hey. I don’t have any carbon so I can’t buy your oxygen.” So the blood just keeps going, just cycling that oxygen and then it gets rid of it for nothing. It was all for nothing.

So when you either workout a little bit and you get carbon in your muscles, now you’ve got the ability to create the exchange. So you’re breathing a lot. You get oxygen in the blood. The blood shows up to the muscle and it exchanges the oxygen for carbon. So the carbon goes into the blood to be recycled and the oxygen goes into the muscle to revamp the muscle, so oxygenate the muscle. That’s what you want. That’s the carbon-oxygen exchange when it’s working properly.

So, the way the body was designed, the jungle cat comes up to eat us and we jump up. We’re full of adrenaline, we’re full of oxygen because we’re breathing like crazy. We’re running for our lives. So there’s carbon in our muscles and everything is working right. The carbon and the oxygen exchange takes place. Then we fast forward to today, we don’t jump up. We sit there. There’s no carbon-oxygen exchange. So as a yogi, how do you fix this? Or as a heart rate variability resonant breather, how do you fix this?

Well, you lower the breath rate and by lowering the breath rate, you introduce more carbon into the cycle of the breath. That carbon and oxygen floats through the blood and essentially you’re kickstarting your own body economy. The blood gives the carbon to the muscles and the muscles exchange the carbon back for oxygen. Now you’ve kick-started the economy in your body and you have carbon-oxygen exchange because you have a lowered breath rate.

So automatically you’re going to feel if you do it very well and very deeply, you’ll feel your whole body tingle like it has come alive for the first time in 20 years. It’s kind of insane. You’ll get used to it. But it’s really kind of crazy.

 

[0:36:48] Ashley James: Cool. I like it. So what’s the downside to not producing a lot of carbon?

 

[0:36:56] Forrest Knutson: The downside to not producing a lot of carbon.

 

[0:37:03] Ashley James: Well, besides being lazy or not moving. I mean, is there really a downside to – we’re doing a lot of breathing. We’re in stress response, the boss is coming. We were just sitting there. The adrenaline’s going and we’re not really moving. We’re not making carbon. What’s the downside to just breathing in a bunch of oxygen but not having a lot of carbon being produced?

 

[0:37:24] Forrest Knutson: Right. There’s no exchange. There’s no exchange that takes place. The body and the muscles, which form a huge part of the body and all of the tissues which are in proximity to the muscles they don’t get oxygenated. You don’t come alive, right?

 

[0:37:45] Ashley James: You’re not really giving the mitochondria everything it needs and giving every cell everything it needs because we need to basically move the body in order to kick start economy is what you’re saying?

 

[0:37:58] Forrest Knutson: Yes. So you need to either move the body or introduce a lower breath rate to introduce carbon into the mix. So, when we think of breath we usually think of oxygen but there’s actually a host of gases which are in the mix. If you take those out you begin to destroy the rest of the balance. So it’s not just oxygen. A huge part of our breath is actually carbon. We’re often told that we need to breathe more. This is kind of a wrong idea because it can lead to the idea that hyperventilation is a good. It could be a short-term at some positive effects but long-term it’s not going to benefit you. So what we actually need is less breathing, a lower breath rate.

 

[0:38:49] Ashley James: I was recently reading an article in I think it was a bunch of British scientists, a British medical journal, that had measured weight loss and determined that most weight loss – where does the fat go? That’s always been my question when someone loses 25 pounds. Where did it go? You didn’t pee it out or poop it out. Where did it go, right? Most fat we exhale. Isn’t that crazy that they actually measured the carbon? They figured out that the fat is broken down, obviously, energy and the body uses energy but that it’s broken down and leaves the body as carbon and other byproducts. So most weight loss – and also heat. The body uses that fat to metabolic energy. They could measure in heat and in carbon leaving breath, measure 25 pounds basically of fat loss by measuring the carbon leaving the breath and proving that that was your fat. So, we’re breathing out our fat. In that way, wouldn’t hyperventilation be good? Let’s breathe more lose weight.

 

[0:40:19] Forrest Knutson: Right. It’s possible. It’s definitely going to work the body a lot to hyperventilate but your long-term benefit has to be the resonance between the heart and the breath. So there’s the Wim Hof method, which is a lot of hyperventilation in the beginning. It’s an easy way to get into a state where you momentarily don’t need to breathe. It’s much easier to practice breath holds after you’ve hyperventilated. But the problem that I see, it’s going to work a little bit but it’s also going to make you very tired sometimes. If you’re not up on your game if you’re not on top of your game and you do a lot of hyperventilation you’re going to feel very tired. So it’s going to adversely affect your body if you’re doing that day after day and you’re not doing it when you’re at your peak.

I have a lot of worries about people who really get into the Wim Hof method. I think it could be better explained exactly what his end goal is and what the breathing is for. You can basically do three kinds of breathing, four. You can be in a normal state. You can do heart rate variability resonant breathing. You can do hyperventilation or a purging breath. You can do a breath-hold. Those are the basic four things that you can do with your breath. They all have their place. The one that’s really the most beneficial physically and spiritually so to speak is the heart rate variability resonant breathing.

 

[0:42:32] Ashley James: Well, it’s triggering within minutes. You said within ten minutes it’s triggering the autonomic nervous systems parasympathetic response of rest and digest, lowering cortisol levels, lowering the stress levels in the body, stress hormones in the body, shunting blood away from the limbs into the digestion and bating all the organs in oxygen-rich blood. It’s allowing the blood flow open up to all the logic centers of the brain and turning on digestion. Turning on, even epigenetically, turning on enzymatic processes of digestion and enzymes for healing. So it is the perfect state to be in for healing. If something happens, like the boss calls us and we need to jump up or there’s a rock in the road and we need to drive around it really quick we need our stress response. We can turn back on for a moment and then come back into the parasympathetic response of healing.

Some people feel like they need stress in order to be better at their job, like a high-stress job. I’ve heard that before in many different ways but it’s actually this state of the parasympathetic state where we have full access to the brain because in stress response, it shunts blood away from logic centers to the brain. So, if we’re trying to meet a deadline or studying or trying to finish the project, if we don’t have access to our full brain, it makes it very difficult to be efficient. But when we’re in the parasympathetic nervous response of rest and digest, we are able to really concentrate. You said even focused in on one task and not have the voice chatter and the sort of the ADD brain going on. Have you ever had anyone share with you any results about reducing ADD or ADHD as a result of this type of breathing?

 

[0:44:42] Forrest Knutson: No I haven’t. But I absolutely think it would work exceptionally well for that purpose. So I haven’t heard that specifically but I think it would be a fantastic recipe for reversal of that. That’s a perfect point what you talked about. You would know that instantly if you spoke with a professional athlete and you say, “Hey. You want to come into a game being all stressed out or would you rather be in kind of the zone where you’re in it but not stressed out about it?” Of course, they’re going to tell you, “I’d rather be in the zone.” That’s exactly the best state to be in. That’s a state of HRV resonance.

 

[0:45:30] Ashley James: Cool. So listeners who have ADD or ADHD, please do this what Forrest is going to teach us today. Then come into the Facebook group, Learn True Health Facebook group and let us know your results because I want to know if this helps people with ADD and ADHD. I want to know real stories of success. I think that would be really cool. Because ADHD is partially from neurochemical, I don’t want to say imbalance because that makes it sound like I’m calling them broken. I think that there’s a place for us who have ADD-like there’s a place in this world. It can be cumbersome to be distracted by racing thoughts. So I think part of it is maybe an imbalance of certain neurochemicals because I’ve seen people with ADD or ADHD find peace mentally when they come back into health even more. Then partly it’s strategy, partly it’s unconscious programing.

So there’s lots of NLP for example, neuro-linguistic programming techniques for changing young conscious programming to allow us not to have ADD or ADHD limit us, right? If we can do something like as simple as consciously changing our breath and that then has a cascade effect and changes the neurological state of our brain and the state of our endocrine system and just kind of cascades down and affects our whole body and our circulation and our energy levels and our vitality. It’s affecting every system. That sounds wonderful. If we can do something as simple as breathe and make it so that we are able to quiet our mind, focus more. I mean can see that people might even be able to no longer want to use a medication or use over the counter sometimes people self-medicate with drugs, alcohol, sugar what have you that they might find that they’re coming into balance and they don’t need that.

 

 

[0:47:59] Forrest Knutson: I think it would be great. The whole premise of yogic meditation is that I’m going to use toe body to affect the mind. So if you’ve ever tried to meditate and you’re like, “I can’t do this. This is my brain. It’s just all over the place.” Well, that’s very normal. It’s just a misconception because you’re not meant to wrestle with your own mind in mediation because if your mind fights your mind and one mind wins, you still got your original problem. You still have your mind, right? So the body follows this amazing rule, it’s called the 80-20 rule that for everyone single that your brain sends out so your brain is like the general. It sends out one signal to the body, “Hey. Do this.” The body send five signals back of messages giving this well we did this and we felt this and this happened. It’s feedback, right? So there’s much more signals. Your neurology is setup, your nervous system is set up to give much more signals back to the brain than is being sent out by the brain.

So it’s easier to control the brain from the body than it is to try and control the brain itself. So when you quiet the body, you will instantly quiet the mind. It’s just the biggest lever in the room to make change.

 

[0:49:29] Ashley James: I never thought of it that way.

 

[0:49:31] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. It’s amazing, isn’t it?

 

[0:49:33] Ashley James: I’m sure you’ve said it to me that way before but just the way you said it. So quieting the body helps to quiet the mind because, for every one message the brain is sending out, it’s receiving five signals back which makes sense. If you think of just walking down a hallway your brain is saying, “All right. Move this leg, move that leg,” but you’re hearing things, seeing things, feeling things, tasting things. There’s so much more input going on.

 

[0:50:02] Forrest Knutson: Exactly. So the yogi takes that rule and applies it to meditation in order to quiet the body, quiet the mind. Then you’ve already, instead of wrestling with your mind and trying to stick it in a corner that it doesn’t want to go into, you just affect the body and then the mind follows suit automatically. That cascade of events, that’s how it works.

Another thing that you might want to think about with ADHD is that we have a left brain which is kind of like a predator. So for example, the bird will – well it’s going to peck a seed. It will look down at the seed with its right eye because the right eye is connected to the left brain. So that predator brain, that predator part of the brain which will focus on one thing like the seed is in activation as it’s looking at that seed. So it’s going to peck at that one seed and while that’s happening, nature knows that the bird is very vulnerable because it’s caught in that one thing, right? So nature designed us with a whole other side of the brain which is very very disassociated from what’s going on in the left brain. That’s the right brain. The right brain has this spherical kind of perception of everything that’s going on around us simultaneously and that’s the brain that warns us that something’s not quite right when we don’t actually know why it’s warning us, right?

 

[0:51:35] Ashley James: Like when we have a gut feeling that something’s not okay?

 

[0:51:38] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. That’s right. That is very possibly the right side of the brain trying to tell us something. It might not make logical sense but it’s an instinctual understanding that’s coming from the right side of the brain which is really, I like to call it the parent brain. If you want to use older terminology you could say it’s the guardian angel in us. So it’s looking out for us constantly and it has to do that because you’re vulnerable while you’re concentrating on one thing. In our western society, we developed that law and it’s very very good for us. We have to be able to concentrate on one thing. We have to get a task done. We have to have our list and go down our list and make the list done. That’s just part of our life. But we also should develop this other side where we can benefit from everything we just completed so we can go out and look at the sunset and enjoy it. We can watch the waves crash on the beach and enjoy it. So we can enjoy music, we can enjoy poetry.

One of the people I love to follow is Iain McGilchrist. He’s very very great at describing the left and the right side of the brain. Some of the science that came out originally they said, “Oh my God. There’s this huge difference between the left and the right side of the brain.” Then they did more research and they said, “Well, actually there are signals going to the left and the right all the time. We were incorrect.” What Iain McGilchrist says is that well, we weren’t in that middle space. We were not asking the correct questions. So the most up to date research is showing they are more correct the first time that there is a big difference between the left and the right side of the brain but it’s not what. It’s how, how does the brain respond to different things?

It responds as if we are two personalities. So the way to think about that is perhaps one is the child and one is the parent brain. So the left is the child, it’s the predator. The right is the parental, it’s the watcher. So we have in mediation circles where you’re allowed to be the watcher. They’re trying to induce that right side of the brain to induce that very calm state. So when you’re in a state where you’re very manic or very hyper, well that’s going to be a left-brain process.

So there’s few tricks you can do to induce the right brain very very quickly and easily. One of those is spatial perception. This is my favorite. So if you will think of two points either it’s outside of yourself or inside of yourself. So you could think of your right big toe and your left ear. If you will hold those in your brain, try and feel your right toe and your left toe at the same time. While you do that you’ll realize there’s no thoughts when you’re really trying to feel both of those simultaneously. There’s just no thoughts, right? There’s no words chattering in your brain. So you could play with that or you could go into what the kahuna would call hakalau. Pick one point in front of you. Go into your left spatial perception on the left, that peripheral vision and then go into your right peripheral vision. Hold all three of those points. The point in front of you, and the left peripheral vision and the right peripheral vision. Hold all of that at the same time.

 

[0:55:25] Ashley James: I just want to break that down.

 

[0:55:28] Forrest Knutson: Was that too fast?

 

[0:55:29] Ashley James: Yeah. That was too fast for hakalau.

 

[0:55:31] Forrest Knutson: Okay.

 

[0:55:32] Ashley James: No. No. It’s okay because you’re on a roll so hold that thought. I want to continue on that roll. But for hakalau is so so important. I love teaching it to my clients. You can even do this if you’re driving because you’re keeping your eyes open. But basically, you look in front of you at a point. If you’re in a room look at the wall, look at something in front of you. If you’re driving just look at the road. Keep looking where you should be going but notice your peripheral. Notice as far as you can to the left and to the right as you’re staring forward. Your eyes aren’t moving but notice if you can see. If you’re driving, notice if you can see the mirrors the side view mirrors, both of the side view mirrors. Open up your peripherals so that you could see as much as possible and observe as much as possible in the room or in the car, wherever you are. If you’re not driving you can actually stretch your arms out to each side and wiggle your fingers so that you can see them in the corner of your vision on either side while you’re staring forward.

So you’re opening up because most people walk around in life in tunnel vision. I remember doing this for the first time and I freaked out because I’d never experienced my peripheral vision. I just was living life in tunnel vision. That it neurologically changes us. The Hunas, the ancient Polynesian tradition of Huna, the Hawaiians knew that when we shift our perception to be aware of our periphery that we’re shifting our neurological state. We cannot stay in a state of anger or stress while doing it. So that’s hakalau. When we do that when we’re studying we memorize things much better. It brings us to a calm stage. If we’re on stage and we notice we’re on tunnel vision we’re on stage, when you’re giving a presentation and we do this and it calms us down. Makes us to become aware of the whole room. But yeah. I love teaching this to my clients because it makes a big difference to them in relieving anxiety as well. I’m glad you brought that up. Okay. Continue.

 

[0:57:39] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. Well, it’s really fun because when you play around with that spatial perception you’re inducing the right hippocampus of the brain. That’s spatial perception. It really induces a very calm state very quickly. So it’s very very cool. That would be a good thing to play around with. If you had any kind of ADHD symptoms that would be really really fun to play around with and see how well it affects you. Then if you were to put that together with heart rate variability resonant breathing then you really really be playing with fire. You really really have something.

 

[0:58:29] Ashley James: Maybe not fire. Maybe cooking with fire, cooking with gas. Playing with fire sounds dangerous. You mean like now you are cooking?

 

[0:58:38] Forrest Knutson: I mean that now it’s going to make you very dangerous when it comes to your own ADHD. You’re going to have power that you didn’t have before. When you walk into the room you’re nervous. It’s going to give you power. It’s going to give you tools in your toolbox that you didn’t have before. So it’s going to make you just a little bit dangerous.

 

[0:59:00] Ashley James: In a good way. In a productive way.

 

[0:59:04] Forrest Knutson: In a very beautiful productive way. Absolutely.

 

[0:59:08] Ashley James: Not in like dangerous like you’re going to implode or something?

 

[0:59:14] Forrest Knutson: Right.

 

[0:59:15] Ashley James: Dangerous like you’re going to kick butt.

 

[0:59:17] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. Take names while you’re at it.

 

[0:59:20] Ashley James: Kick butt and take names.

 

[0:59:23] Forrest Knutson: But in a very peaceful way.

 

[0:59:25] Ashley James: Yes. We’re pacifists in a way that we not harm anyone. We’re just going to kick proverbial butt and take home the gold.

 

[0:59:37] Forrest Knutson: Exactly. That’s what it is. We have to be successful in whatever we do. There’s room for lots of success for everybody.

 

[0:59:45] Ashley James: Do you see that because you love studying the neuroscience of this. I know we’ve geeked out for hours on the phone. You telling me about left brain and right brain and being able to access from one to the other and the benefits of that. My question is, let’s say complete newbies are listening, not everyone I know some of you are experience. But let’s say some of us are complete newbies and we for the first time ever start doing this breathwork you’re going to teach us to get heart rate variability for the many benefits such as longevity and energy and vitality and peace, tranquility and the ability to kick proverbial butt. All of that. So we’re changing our breath. Let’s say we didn’t meditate, we didn’t pray, we just kept our eyes open and took in the room like took in our peripheral, kept our eyes open and slowed down our breath and did the things that you’re going to teach us to do to increase our heart rate variability. Would that alone cause a shift to go into the right brain?                    

                           

 

[1:00:56] Forrest Knutson: It’s going to put you in the arena of that. It’s going to put you much much closer. It’s the entry point. So there’s some yogic jargon I can throw into you. There’s a state that yogis know about which is called pratyahara. That just means interiorization but it’s a really really big deal when you’re trying to get into a deep meditative state. Heart rate variability resonance is the beginning of that state. Absolutely. If you want to get into that kind of depth this is where you have to be to do that. So the results that come back, that’s what you’re asking, it’s just phenomenal. It really is amazing. So people are trying to meditate. They’re trying to get into a calm state. They’re trying to feel better. It’s okay. It’s hit and miss. “Yeah. I had this good session once upon a time and then I did your heart rate variability resonant breathing and it works every single – what the hell? It’s a game-changer. It’s a huge shift.” I get that kind of feedback a lot. Makes it all worthwhile. It’s really fun.

 

[1:02:21] Ashley James: So it sounds like it’s an easy win formula for getting some results.

 

[1:02:28] Forrest Knutson: Yes. Every time.

 

[1:02:29] Ashley James: Cool. Every time. All right. Teach us. We are ready.

 

[1:02:32] Forrest Knutson: Okay. Great. So this is the holy trinity of breath. A good way to think about it is that we’re boxing ourselves into the dorsal vagal nerves. We’re going to make sure that we hit the parasympathetic nervous system every single time at work. You can do this standing as well if you’re going to go on stage or you’re going to present something or you’re going to talk to your boss you can stand and you can do this for a minute or two or five. You’re going to induce a much more calm state. You’re going to get into the zone and then you’re ready to do whatever you’re going to do. What we’re doing is we’re just kind of making sure that we’re going to get into that parasympathetic system, the dorsal vagal nerve. So we’re trying to box ourselves in. So that’s what all the rules are for.

So the first rule is put the breath rate under seven breaths per minute. You got to kind of play with it. Play with it a little bit and see which one of the breaths feels the most comfortable for you. So a lot of people on my channel they get really excited and they want to go to the lowest breath rate. But that’s not it. It’s not a competition. It’s just the one that fits for you.

 

[1:03:53] Ashley James: One breath a minute. Let’s go.

 

[1:03:56] Forrest Knutson: Exactly. You can work up to that kind of thing but in the beginning, it’s just about what fits and what is correct for you. So you want to try out all of the breaths, all of the breath rates and see which one feels really comfortable and seems to bring you into the centered, balanced state really quickly.

So the first breath is going to be four seconds in and five seconds out. Then from there you can try five seconds in and six seconds out. Then you can try six seconds in and seven seconds out. Anywhere between those three breaths. So first one was four seconds in and five seconds out. Anywhere under that is going to put you into heart rate variability.

The second rule is that as we’re breathing we want to accentuate that parasympathetic because we’re maybe in a slight stressed state. So we want to accentuate the parasympathetic and make sure that we really get into it. So we’re going to make the outbreaths slightly longer. So that’s why the different numbers four seconds in and at least five seconds out. So that’s going to accentuate the parasympathetic because the breath is going out, the diaphragm is going up, there’s more pressure on the thoracic cavity. That pressure translate to the dorsal vagal nerve. That sends a signal to the medulla. The medulla sends a signal to the heart rate, “Go ahead and lower down all the tool bits.” So that’s how it works.

The third rule is want to take out the pauses. So the pause at the bottom of the breath and the pause at the top of the breath. While we’re inducing this, we don’t want those pauses because it can just mess up the cycle that we’re trying to get into. So we just don’t have to hurry but we don’t want to pause for a long time. We want this nice, rhythmic in and out-breath to really get into that heart rate variability resonance. That’s the holy trinity. That’s how you do it.

So, do you want me to guide it for a second?

 

[1:06:24] Ashley James: Yeah. Guide us for like a minute? Should we breathing in through our mouth or our nose? Does it matter?

 

[1:06:34] Forrest Knutson: Definitely through the nose.

 

[1:06:37] Ashley James: And out through the nose or out through the mouth?

 

[1:06:39] Forrest Knutson: Out through the nose as well. It’s the most economical for the body. It’s going to put more carbon into the mix. That’s one of the reasons why you have a sinus passage is to introduce carbon into the blood mix.

 

[1:06:55] Ashley James: If someone has a stuffy nose it’s okay to do this through the mouth?

 

[1:06:59] Forrest Knutson: It is. Absolutely.

 

[1:07:01] Ashley James: It’s still effective. It’s just more effective through the nose?

 

[1:07:03] Forrest Knutson: Correct.

 

[1:07:06] Ashley James: Okay. Do you want to count when you do the seconds?

 

[1:07:10] Forrest Knutson: Sure. Yeah. I can count. Absolutely.

 

[1:07:16] Ashley James: All right. Okay. Guide us.

 

[1:07:19] Forrest Knutson: All right. Here we go. So we’re going to start breathing in one, two, three four. Breathe out five one, two, three, four, five. Breathe in one, two, three four. Breathe out one, two, three, four, five. Breathe in one, two, three four. Breathe out one, two, three, four, five. Breathe in one, two, three four. Breathe out one, two, three, four, five. Breathe in one, two, three four. Breathe out one, two, three, four, five. That was a minute.

 

[1:08:22] Ashley James: I totally went into parasympathetic. My hands started the shift because I know how it feels. Because you know, being a massage therapist in my past you know when you’re in parasympathetic. My hands shifted. I always feel it first in my hands. There’s a little bit of a tingle and a shift in blood flow in my hands.

 

[1:08:44] Forrest Knutson: That’s actually perfect. That’s the very first sign. So I have a video called clinical mindfulness and I teach this four proofs that your hands being hot and heavy. I call it HHH. That’s the HHH symptom that you are in heart rate variability.

 

[1:09:04] Ashley James: Hands hot and heavy?

 

[1:09:05] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. Hilarious right? But it sticks in your brain

 

[1:09:07] Ashley James: What are the other symptoms? If I kept doing it what else would I have noticed?

 

[1:09:14] Forrest Knutson: So you have to sit still to notice these things. That helps you into the free state in the body. A very good, positive kind of free state. So the next thing that you might notice is we bring your mind to your lips and you might notice that the blood kind of tingles in and tingles out of your lip especially the bottom lip. Then if you go and put your mind on your spine, right along your thoracic cavity, right along your rib cage, right? Your spine. Put your mind there and you might notice actually start to feel the pressure on the dorsal vagal nerve and it will feel really good. It can be maybe tingly, maybe pleasurable, maybe a cool feeling. So that’s the third one. Then the fourth one is to put your attention in your whole skin. Your whole skin may begin to tingle. It might feel a little bit crawly like a crawling sensation. It’s extremely pleasurable. So I call these meditative mellows because they feel really good. It’s a great sign that you are doing everything correctly and the parasympathetic system is working for the first time, maybe in a long time, very very well.

So that breath rate that we just did, it may be fast for some people but it is the entry point. That’s the entry breath rate that we need to get into heart rate variability. We have to be under that breath rate. So from there you can just take it whatever is comfortable for you.

 

[1:11:02] Ashley James: I know you just published three videos on your YouTube channel just this week showing the different breath rates. I don’t remember the exact titles.

 

[1:11:17] Forrest Knutson: So the music has to be steady. So you have to kind of cheat to make the in-breath shorter and the out-breath longer.

 

[1:11:25] Ashley James: What was the title?

 

[1:11:27] Forrest Knutson: Heart rate variability resonant breathing with music.

 

[1:11:31] Ashley James: Okay. A very straightforward title. It was like you had three different ones, the different breath rates, right?

 

[1:11:39] Forrest Knutson: Yes. So it’s four:four, five:five and six:six. Like I said, you try and make that out-breath a little just a tiny bit longer. The music is beautiful. Doug Gemmell gave that music to me so that could help me out to produce those videos. Really really beautiful music. Very relaxing and it teaches you something which is so deep. This heart rate variability resonance it’s just so profound. Every deep state that you have in meditation is built on top of that, guaranteed. You can’t skip it. It’s in there somewhere.

 

[1:12:24] Ashley James: When I asked, this was I don’t know 300 episodes ago, I asked a naturopath right at the end of the interview. So the interview wasn’t really about this but it’s near the end of this interview and I said, “What’s the one thing that you tell all your clients to have? Is there a gadget?” I’ve asked this a few times. So I’ve gotten really cool answers like one naturopath said, “100% of my clients I tell them to get a grounding mat.” That was my first time ever hearing about grounding mats and now while we’re talking I’m on my grounding mat because I love it so much. I have some great interviews about grounding mats. An entire documentary is pinned in the Learn True Health Facebook group about grounding and earthing and the scientific benefits of it. That it actually decreases inflation in the body and explains how by giving up excess electrons the body shouldn’t be storing that it significantly decreases the imbalance in the body to the point where people are going into remission who have MS. So really, grounding and earthing really makes a huge difference.

So this question has gotten me a lot of mileage. I asked this one naturopath sort of along the lines of what’s really important for 100% of your clients or what’s really important for all of us to know. She said, “We should all be aware of our heart rate variability.” She told me about this machine that you wear like a heart monitor that’s over $200.00 and that you put it on every morning and it reads out your heart rate variability. I was confused because I’m thinking is this just a heart rate monitor? I said, “Wouldn’t it change throughout the day?” She goes, “No. You wake up first thing in the morning. You put it on.” Again, I’m thinking this is not really accessible for all the listeners to spend a few hundred dollars on a little machine that you’re just wearing a minute a day and it’s going to tell you what your heart rate variability is. Her thing is, she was not teaching us how to affect heart rate variability necessarily. She was teaching to use it like a diabetic would use a glucometer.

You get up first thing in the morning and you read out your heart rate variability with this machine to determine if the last 24 hours were good for you or not good for you. She said, for example, and I’ve heard this from other experts, one glass of wine or beer one basically alcoholic beverage throws us into the stress response for 24 hours. Throws us out of heart rate variability for 24 hours. She said with her clients, because she gets her clients to buy this machine and report back to her, that if they ate something they’re allergic to let’s say they’re allergic to dairy or eggs or gluten or whatever or they ate a lot of sugar, a lot of highly processed foods the day before or they had a fight with their spouse or they hate their job and they had a fight with their boss, whatever. Something stressful happened or they drink alcohol. The next day, even though they just woke up and they were sleeping for let’s say seven-eight hours they should be in a state of rest. But their heart rate variability will prove otherwise, will prove that they’re still in a stress response and their endocrine system, their digestive system, their whole body is not in healing mode. They’re either in stress mode or healing mode. That even though they slept, they were sleeping in a state of stress and not in a state of relaxation.

So she uses this device to go see look, whatever you did yesterday isn’t working for you. The next day or a few days later you take your reading and you’re like, “Wow. I have really good heart rate variability.” She goes, “Okay. Whatever you ate yesterday keep eating it. Whatever you did yesterday keep doing it because it’s working.” So she used the machine as a way of proving that what they’re doing is working or not working because she can tell her clients don’t drink alcohol but they’re not going to listen. But if they see that they’re in a state of stress they’re like, “Wow. She’s right.” People drink alcohol to calm down because they feel stressed out and they want to relax. It’s acceptable in today’s society to use alcohol just like also use sugar, it’s sort of a meme. Women are stressed or they broke up with their boyfriend they’re going to eat a pint of ice cream. It’s a dangerous meme to continue to push on us. This idea that we need to self-medicate with sugar or alcohol in order to manage our emotion. When it actually doesn’t, it doesn’t decrease our stress levels. It will temporarily give us a dopamine high and make us feel good but it sends the body in a state of stress and not healing.

Then when we’re in that state of stressor that happens pushes us over the edge and makes us feel overwhelmed. So then we have to manage ourselves more with sugar or alcohol. Then we’re closer to our breaking point again. So then some little stressor happens like someone honks at us and then our nervous system, our endocrine system and nervous system freak out again. It’s like our fuse for our ability to handle crap in our life become shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter.

When we stop and we stop drinking alcohol and stop using sugar and highly processed foods as a way of self-medicating, because all those things make our fuse shorter and shorter or our ability to handle crap before we hit breaking point. If we stop using that and we decrease the inflammation in our body then our nervous system can kind of actually take on more stimulants before we reach our breaking point, before we feel overwhelmed and stress and we increase our heart rate variability. Now we have a long fuse. I know you Forrest, I mean I’ve known you. We’ve been really good friends for a long time. You have a really long fuse for handling stress and handling BS.

So I think that on an emotional mental health level this is very helpful as well. So that’s my first exposure to heart rate variability was this idea that we could use this like measuring our blood sugar or our blood sugar as a means of seeing if what we’re doing is working or not. You’re saying that we don’t need to spend a few hundred dollars on a machine. We can just do the breathing anyway and also clean up other areas of our life to better serve our health. But by doing the breathing we’re increasing heart rate variability and thus making that fuse longer. Our threshold wider for being able to handle stress in our life.

 

[1:19:25] Forrest Knutson: Absolutely. All of that was perfect. Everything you said was perfect. Yes, you can actually affect these things. It’s kind of amazing. So, yeah. You just do the breathing and it’s going to reset your system, recalibrate your parasympathetic nervous system to start working properly again if it’s been out of whack. Maybe you’re very peaceful already but this is going to make you more peaceful and more profoundly relaxed.

 

[1:20:06] Ashley James: Even more. That’s right.

 

[1:20:07] Forrest Knutson: Down the rabbit hole we go. It’s a very very cool thing.

 

[1:20:16] Ashley James: Awesome. I love it, Forrest. I love having you on the show. You’re so great. You’re one of my favorite people in the whole world. It’s an honor. It’s an honor to have you here. I really encourage to go to ThatYogiGuy.com which will take them straight to your YouTube channel. You’ve produced a lot of fantastic YouTube videos. Listeners, if you have more questions for Forrest, please check out his YouTube channel and comment in any of the videos asking him questions or requesting topics for him to cover because he will do it. He’s very active on his YouTube channel. He will reply to his comments. He will take video requests because he loves teaching. Ever since I’ve known you, you just love teaching and love helping people. You have this equal love of helping people and teaching. So you’re just this perfect person to learn from and you’re very humble.

 

[1:21:19] Forrest Knutson: I am. I am very humble. I’m actually writing a book about it

 

[1:21:25] Ashley James: You’re writing a book about how humble and great you are?

 

[1:21:28] Forrest Knutson: Yes. It’s call Humility and How I Attained it. I have to say, that’s not my joke. I stole that joke from what was his name?

 

[1:21:37] Ashley James: You know, if you weren’t humble you would’ve owned the joke. You can just own the joke, Forrest. It’s okay. You don’t need to give credit. Stop being so humble.

 

[1:21:48] Forrest Knutson: You’re right. I really should. It’s a horrible thing.

 

[1:21:51] Ashley James: Stop it. Americans don’t understand. It doesn’t make sense to us. You have a great amount of information for people. The way in which you package your information comes across so that we can all understand it. So I just love how you teach. This is where I’m complimenting you and thanking you. So thank you.

 

[1:22:15] Forrest Knutson: Thank you.

 

[1:22:17] Ashley James: Now, your website ThatYogiGuy.com, you have a book Hacking the Universe. Is there anything else that we should know?

 

[1:22:25] Forrest Knutson: I’m going to come out with a training very very shortly.

 

[1:22:29] Ashley James: Yeah. Sweet. Tell us about your training.

 

[1:22:31] Forrest Knutson: So I’m working on it now. I’m actually editing it. I have a couple more clips to finish. It’s going to be on heart rate variability and how to take that very very deep into a very deep meditation.

 

[1:22:49] Ashley James: Into the right brain?

 

[1:22:50] Forrest Knutson: Not all the way into the right brain. We can’t do that at one training. That’s going to take four trainings. So I actually have four trainings in my brain. I’ve never seen anything like them. So it’s really exciting for that reason that it’s going to be – if you’re in the meditation world or you have meditative interest they’re going to be extremely powerful. It’s combining a lot of information in a way which is very palatable like you say very easy to access. So it’s going to be off the hook. Very exciting.

 

[1:23:29] Ashley James: I know you have a Facebook group for your students. Those who follow you on YouTube and learn from all your videos. You have a Facebook group. We’ll make sure to link that. It’s also on the show notes. What’s the name of the Facebook group?

 

[1:23:44] Forrest Knutson: It’s Meditate with Forrest. So very easy to remember.

 

[1:23:48] Ashley James: Meditate with Forrest.

 

[1:23:50] Forrest Knutson: Forrest Gump.

 

[1:23:52] Ashley James: No.

 

[1:23:53] Forrest Knutson: I do that. Sometimes people don’t hear my name because it’s a strange to them so they don’t actually hear it. So I started – every time I ask for something at a diner or something like that I’ll always say, “You know, like Forrest Gump.”

 

[1:24:12] Ashley James: And they love that? People like that joke?

                                                                                                                                                                                           

[1:24:15] Forrest Knutson: They always laugh so.

 

[1:24:17] Ashley James: You’re the only Forrest I know that like Forrest Gump. I interviewed another Forrest and he said that he doesn’t like that movie. That it was like people teased him in school. I’m like, “No. My friend Forrest loved it and he got so much mileage out of it.” It sounds like you’re still getting mileage out of it.

 

[1:24:34] Forrest Knutson: Well, you know, you turn the joke around and you use it and then it’s fun. Yeah. People will be like, “Run, Forrest,” and I’d call back, “I’m a running fool.” “That boy is a running fool.” So, yeah. I loved it. It was great.

 

[1:24:48] Ashley James: I like that you disarmed – that’s another thing we didn’t get to talk about is aikido. You disarm people, the bullies. You’ve never let the bullies get you down because you just disarm them.

 

[1:25:00] Forrest Knutson: Right. Well, I kind of had to. There’s a very famous book called Giving in to Get Your Way. It’s a beautiful principle that you can see in a lot of different martial arts. If somebody’s joking at you and you run with the joke, you’ve completely diffused the entire situation. It’s very powerful.

 

[1:25:22] Ashley James: Yes. Yes. Yes. That is a great tool. That’s so great. So I had this one-star review. I have well over 700, almost 800 five star reviews on iTunes. I have like 41 one stars. Which one do you think I focus on? Do you think I focus on the 800 people who took the time to give me a five-star review and tell me how much they love the show? Do you think I focus on the 41 people that hate me, that wish that I would just die or something? Of course, this part of my brain is like, “There’s 41 people in the world that don’t like me.” I have to tell myself to suck it up because I’m not doing it, I’m not doing the podcast for 41 people that hate me. I’m doing it for the people I want to help. I want to help people. Those are the people I’m doing it for. The people who appreciate it not the people who don’t appreciate it.

There’s one person once left me a one-star review that said that I sound like I’m a cow because when I go, “Hmm,” I sound like I’m mooing. At first, I was like, “How dare. Oh crap, they’re right. They’re right.” Then I started laughing because I’m editing. As I’m editing the show I’m listening. Every time I go, “Hmm,” I’m like, “Oh my gosh I really do sound like…” Is that bad? I love cows. They’re really beautiful creatures. They’re amazing animals. They’re so much fun to visit when I take, we take our son to this sanctuary farm. Oh my gosh. If I could cuddle a cow I would. They’re the coolest things, right? So why am I upset about this? This guy is trying to insult me.

Then I realize he could have said, and I’m assuming his gender is male-only because I don’t think a female would’ve said that about me but that’s just my bias. So I’m assuming that he’s a guy and he has nothing better to do than rip on the fact that once in a while I go, “Hmm,” to a guest’s really cool whatever they said is really cool and I moo, apparently. I’m like, “That’s the only thing he could come up with?” He couldn’t find anything to make fun of the show. That’s the only thing. That’s kind of a compliment in it of itself that there’s nothing wrong with the show. He couldn’t find anything wrong with it but that I sound like I’m mooing when I hum praise to someone’s comment.

So I just kind of laughed it off and laughed it off. It could’ve eaten me for days but I laughed about it. Then he deleted the comment. A few days later I looked back and he retracted his one-star. That’s really cool. In other one-star, I would’ve obsessed about what they said because there’s no way to write back to them and try to explain myself. Sometimes someone gives me a one-star for something a guest said. I have no control over that. It’s just kind of silly.

The fact that you can take bullying and laugh at it and not take it personally but laugh at it, then you’ve won. You’ve gained control of the situation.

 

[1:28:44] Forrest Knutson: You know, you really turn it around mentally. That’s so amazing. That’s so fantastic. It’s so easy to fall in that. I’ve listened to a number of YouTubers comment about how you deal with really grumpy trolling.

 

[1:29:05] Ashley James: They’re brutal on YouTube. Oh my gosh. My husband, I’m so thankful. He just deletes the comments. The really brutal, he won’t let me see them and that’s good because he know I’ll go into a tailspin. I care so much. The thing is I’ve worked on this for so long like my ability to kind of fluff it off but people on YouTube are brutal. We post all the episodes of the show on YouTube. There’s a level of trolling on YouTube that I understand why children are committing suicide. It’s the second leading cause of death between the ages of 10 and 24.

Suicide’s gone up 52% in the last 10 years for children ages 10 through 24, I understand. They’re being bullied just so brutally. If there’s a way to, obviously we need to shelter our children from that because when someone is 10, that level of bullying is devastating but when we’re 30, yeah it’s harmful but we can go, “Okay. Let’s use our logic brain. Let’s not end our life over it.” So I love that you brought up this book. What was the book again?

 

[1:30:18] Forrest Knutson: Giving In To Get Your Way. It’s a great great old aikido book.

 

[1:30:24] Ashley James: I saw a video on Facebook and it was a presenter in front of a middle school I think it was. He had a girl; come up, I’ve seen this video kind of circulate through. It has millions and millions of views. So if you ever see it on Facebook, watch it. It’s so good.

It’s like how to end bullying immediately. He says to this girl, “Okay. Just bully me. Just say really mean things.” She’s a bit nervous.

 

[1:30:51] Forrest Knutson: I saw this.

 

[1:30:52] Ashley James: She’s like, “You really suck,” and he’s like, “You’re right. You’re right. When you’re right you’re so right.” She’s like, “Yeah. I’m right and you’re wrong and you’re dumb.” He’s like, “You know what? I just love how right you are. You’re so pretty.” She couldn’t keep a straight face. She kept trying to bully him. He just kept owning it and smiling and being her friend. She was totally disarmed. She was nowhere to go. The whole audience, all the kids just freaked out and cheered and they thought it was great that it was – if we cannot let it land in our psyche and use our ego. But if we can slough it off, that is really helpful. I love it.

 

[1:31:44] Forrest Knutson: Absolutely. That’s a very good recipe. You can build on top of that recipe and have a more complex way to deal with it so that you don’t have to own the negative. You could just let it bypass you completely but that’s a great way to start is just take it all in and then say, “Hey. Whatever.” It’s a great great way. It’s hard. It’s tough. I get comments then I go meditate.

 

[1:32:16] Ashley James: Nice. In meditation do you ever had this insights which are like, “Oh. That’s why the probably said that?”

 

[1:32:25] Forrest Knutson: Oh yeah.

                                                        

[1:32:26] Ashley James: I mean, do you find such clarity with your thoughts when you meditate?

 

[1:32:30] Forrest Knutson: Yes. It will diffuse to the point where I disassociate from the body. The body just kind of disappears. So then you’re just left with your perception itself. Then it becomes very simple but then you have to get to that point. If you’re in a stress state you won’t be able to get to that point you’ll be stuck with it. So that’s where the word attachment comes from. You’re attached to the problem. That’s where we usually begins. That something happens and we get overly attached to that negative happening and then we can’t release our self from it. We can’t even begin to think logically because we’re so wrapped up in it.

 

[1:33:14] Ashley James: So when’s your course coming up?

 

[1:33:17] Forrest Knutson: Very very soon. I think maybe a week?

 

[1:33:22] Ashley James: Awesome. Very cool. So listeners, by the time this gets published and their listening to it it’ll just be days away if not already released. It’s very exciting. They can find you in their Facebook group Meditate with Forrest. Forrest Knutson not Forrest Gump but just Meditate with Forrest. Do you think if they typed in Meditate with Forrest Gump that would show up too or is there a different? You have to check. You never know.

 

[1:33:46] Forrest Knutson: There might be Meditate with Forrest Gump. That would be a pretty – it might probably run a lot.

 

[1:33:53] Ashley James: To eat chocolate or something. So mow a lawn. Make some shrimp.

 

[1:33:57] Forrest Knutson: Very good things.

 

[1:33:59] Ashley James: I love that movie.

 

[1:33:60] Forrest Knutson: That’s great. I love it.

 

[1:34:03] Ashley James: I wonder how many listens haven’t seen that movie because it’s kind of old but it’s such a classic.

 

[1:34:08] Forrest Knutson: It’s so classic. It just has this simple purity which is what the whole movie is about. It’s that simple purity. Win in the end.

 

[1:34:19] Ashley James: I love it. Awesome. It does make you feel like – you walk away with that movie feeling like you can win. I love that. It does lift you up. So that’s good. “If you can do it I could do it.” So Meditate with Forrest Facebook group. Go to ThatYogiGuy.com to gain access to the YouTube videos. Buy the book Hacking the Universe if you want to go deeper with Forrest or just wait for the course. Have you come up with a name, a title for your course? A final title or are you still working on a working title?

 

[1:34:59] Forrest Knutson: Let me think about this. What am I calling this? Yes. It’s going to be called the fourth phase of breath also the tranquil breath. Those will both be in the title. The fourth phase of breath.

 

[1:35:13] Ashley James: That will be part one of four to get into the right brain?

 

[1:35:17] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. So when I say get into the right brain I mean Samadhi so that’s a very deep state. I think another name for that is satori. It’s the merging. To merge with one thought but that’s a very very deep state.

 

[1:35:41] Ashley James: Cool. So basically if you want to go deep we keep following you?

 

[1:35:45] Forrest Knutson: Perfect.

 

[1:35:46] Ashley James: Down the rabbit hole.

 

[1:35:47] Forrest Knutson: That’s right. Down the rabbit hole we go.

 

[1:35:50] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much Forrest for coming on the show. It’s been such a pleasure having you here today. Anything you want to say to wrap up today’s interview? Anything left unsaid that you want to make sure we cover?

 

[1:36:02] Forrest Knutson: Well, you are one of my favorite people. You are a genius. I love everything that you do. Thank you so much for having me.

 

[1:36:13] Ashley James: You’re so welcome. Compliments always welcome. It helps to displace those 41 one-star reviews on iTunes. If you’re all, “You’re beautiful,” comments. Awesome. Thank you so much Forrest. I really hope that this episode makes a difference for all my fantastic listeners. We’ll just have to stay in touch and let us know how your course go. You’re launching your courses and all your students and their results. I know you’re in the Learn True Health Facebook group so we’ll just continue the conversation there. Listeners, if you have any question for Forrest you could also post them on the Learn True Health Facebook group as well. It’s Forrest Knutson, ThatYogiGuy.com Thank you so much.

 

[1:36:55] Forrest Knutson: Thank you.

 

[1:36:56] Ashley James: Yeah. We’ll have to have you back on again at some point because I want you to teach more about getting into the right brain. Samadhi sounds so neat especially from the neuroscience perspective. What happens to the brain and the different brain waves? Because I know you’re really into that.

 

[1:37:14] Forrest Knutson: Yeah. There’s a lot that still needs to be uncovered about brain waves. It’s really really amazing.

 

[1:37:23] Ashley James: So we’ll just get into that in another interview.

 

[1:37:26] Forrest Knutson: Absolutely.

 

[1:37:27] Ashley James: All right. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you so much.

 

[1:37:29] Forrest Knutson: All right. Take care.

 

[1:37:31] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program.

 

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Check Out Other Episodes With Forrest Knutson!

Episode 32 – How To Meditate

Episode 25 – Yogic Meditation Adventures

Nov 13, 2019

"Eat plants, fit in your pants." Chef AJ lost over 50lbs and has kept it off eating over 2lbs of veggies a day

Listen to my first interview with Chef AJ, episode 278:

http://learntruehealth.com/food-addiction-2/

Chef AJ's site: EatUnprocessed.com

Chef AJ's Books:

The Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss: A Revolutionary Approach to Conquer Cravings, Overcome Food Addiction and Lose Weight Without Going Hungry

https://amzn.to/2uSuIS1

Unprocessed: How to Achieve Vibrant Health and Your Ideal Weight

https://amzn.to/2JZaGtX

 

The Ultimate Weight Loss Program

https://www.learntruehealth.com/the-ultimate-weight-loss-program

  • The Real Truth About Weight Loss Summit
  • Eating the way your ancestors ate throughout human history
  • You cannot be protein deficient unless you’re calorie deficient
  • Complex carbs and refined carbs
  • Eat until no longer hungry and still full instead of until full
  • Anytime you process a food, you make it calorically rich and nutrient poor
  • The real secret to weight loss and weight maintenance and good health is to eat more vegetables
  • Antioxidants
  • Health At Every Size
  • Metabolic disadvantage concept
  • Health mistakes people make
  • Ultimate Weight Loss Facebook Group
  • Feel Fabulous Over 40
  • How To Eat Healthfully Anywhere
  • Ultimate Weight Loss Program
  • Weight Loss Wednesday

In this episode with Chef AJ, we are going to discuss and share about healthy eating and secrets to weight loss. Find out the real truth about Weight Loss Summit, healthy eating anywhere, the ultimate weight loss program and so much more

[00:00:01] Intro: Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health Podcast. I’m really excited for you to hear today’s interview with Chef AJ. When I had her last on the show just over a year ago, I didn’t know that that episode would absolutely changed my life. I adapted her style of eating the whole food plant based no oil, no flour, no processed foods. Just focusing on plants and eating lots of vegetables. And my health has gotten even better this last year. And I should go into that in this interview.

We have some really fun things coming up. I want you to be included in them. So to make sure that you stay plugged in, get in our community in the Facebook Group. Go to Facebook and search Learn True Health and join our group. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/group and join our group. We’re going to have some fun giveaways coming up. I know in a few weeks we’re having American Thanksgiving. So there’ll be some Cyber Monday sales from these different health companies that I love that I’ll make sure that I announce in the group. And you know, I love the giveaway. So come join the conversation so that you can be part of it. You’ll never know, maybe you win one of the giveaways.

Also, make sure to go to my website learntruehealth.com and get on the email list. I have a fantastic doctor course. I filmed with some wonderful Naturopathic physicians and they teach the fundamentals of health. If you haven’t watched it already, you definitely want to check it out. Go to learntruehealth.com, a pop up comes up, and then you put in your email address. I promise not to spam you. And you get some wonderful videos from me, from these doctors that teach the foundations of holistic health and simple things that you can do today to start building a healthy foundation for your body. So please join the Facebook Group. Go to learntruehealth.com/group to join the Facebook Group. And get on the email list to get that free doctor course by going to learntruehealth.com.

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Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 392.

 

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show Chef AJ. I had her on the show, Episode 278. That was July 26, 2018. Man, has so much happened in the last – almost a-year-and-a-half. And it’s just been a whirlwind. I have become  – since I interviewed you I’ve become a raving fan of yours, Chef AJ. I think every single person on the planet should listen to our first interview and should get your books and should absolutely learn from you. You are a godsend. Thank you so much for the mission that you’re on. You have a big cheerleader over here.

 

 

[00:04:04] Chef AJ: Thank you so much. I admire your work too. Thank you.

 

 

[00:04:08] Ashley James: Awesome. Well, yeah. So since July of 2018 having you on the show, I joined your – you have this outstanding Facebook Group as part of your course – one of the courses. You have several online courses that are all community based, which I think is really helpful. And it’s such a thriving community. And what I’m inspired by every week, it’s really emotionally helped me to be in your Facebook Group. Because it’s seeing the success stories of people transforming their lives through using food as medicine, whole food plant based diet. And the things that people are transforming is so beautiful. And every week, there are dozens of stories. It’s a very active group. And to have that level of support in the community and people always are asking questions and always supporting each other. So it’s this beautiful community.

But what I see is you foster community wherever you go. And I think that’s really beautiful. Because we’re not alone in this. I love to expose these concepts that we often feel too ashamed to talk about, like addiction, and emotional eating, overeating, binge eating. Things that many, many people do and may not even realize they’re doing because they have emotional issues or maybe they’re eating foods that are so hyperpalatable, they hijack the brain. And what we really want to do is figure out how to use food as medicine. And how to heal our bodies and have optimal health . Ad you teach a wonderful way to do that in a way that’s delicious. So because your name is chef, Chef AJ. So you do teach us how to make delicious food, right?

 

 

[00:05:50] Chef AJ: I do my best. Absolutely.

 

 

[00:05:51] Ashley James: Yes, you do. I love every episode of – every episode – every recipe I’ve ever made of yours has been a huge hit. I made your lasagna. Oh my gosh, you mentioned in your book – I think the unprocessed was the book that you – your book unprocessed has the lasagna recipe. And it’s to die for. And I made both versions, one with the noodles and one with the eggplant. And both trays of it, we’re eating that day. And it wasn’t just by me. It was the whole – like I had friends over. But you say in your book, this doesn’t go in the freezer because it there’s never leftovers.

 

 

[00:06:28] Chef AJ: There’s never any leftovers. That’s why I call it the disappearing lasagna. Because honestly, I don’t even know if it freezes because there’s never been leftovers on that particular recipe. And that is the God’s honest truth.

 

 

[00:06:38] Ashley James: I took that as a challenge. So I actually took the recipe and times it by four. And I made four times the amount that the recipe calls for. And I have pictures. Four giant trays of lasagna and I baked them all and I had friends over. And they wanted to all take some home. I mean, there was no leftovers.  That lasagna was so good. And I even some zucchini and I added some extra vegetables. Because I was like, “There’s not enough vegetables here. Let’s add more.” And it was so amazing. We had kids over and they were eating it. And this lasagna doesn’t have any dairy. It doesn’t have any meat in. It’s whole food plant based. And it is so delicious. And the kids, which these kids never eat vegetables, were just like, “Can I have another? Can I have another?” So it’s really satisfying when you can make something that’s so delicious and also so wholesome and so healthy. So every recipe I’ve ever made of yours has been outstanding and easy to follow.

So anyways, I could praise you for the next two hours but I’m sure we want to start learning from you. So since July of 2018, I know a lot has happened in your life. I’d love to hear the updates what’s been going on?

 

 

[00:07:52] Chef AJ: So I’ve been busy but in a good way. So one of the things I did is I changed where I live. Because environment to me is critical in any one’s success, whether it’s success trying to lose weight or be happy in life. And I pretty much was born in Chicago. Pretty much I was born in Chicago. But I pretty much was raised in LA from the time that I was 11 until January of this year. And I love LA for so many reasons. But man, it’s just not for me anymore. It’s busy and it’s crowded, and it’s noisy. And I just wanted to live somewhere peaceful. I’m going to be 60. Not that I’m trying to retire. But I wanted to just have a calmer, slower pace of life. So I moved to the desert. I live near Palm Springs now. I have a house instead of an apartment. And it’s just been beautiful. And it’s allowed me to do just more work it with what I love in giving this information to people. And I’ve been doing it through educational programs. I have a partner now and we do these online courses.

But one of the things I did that just blew my mind was that I got to host one of those wonderful online summits. And this was called The Real Truth About Weight Loss Summit. This was offered to me, this position. I always wanted to do a summit but not being very tech savvy, I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. Just like you, I’ve always wanted to do a podcast. But man, I can barely turn on my iPhone. So when this opportunity came about, I thought I was just being asked to be a guest interviewed for something called The Real Truth About Weight Loss Summit. When they said, “No. We want you to do the interviews.” It was amazing because I got to handpick the experts. There were a few that were already decided upon. Maybe the people that I didn’t know but they were all great interviews. But I got to really handpick, like, the best of the best and create something that I’m going to forever be proud of. Because it answered the question, “What is the real truth about weight loss?”

There’s so much conflicting information and misinformation. And we had 34 experts that pretty much agreed about pretty much everything. There were some nuances, how many nuts should we eat? But for the most part, they all agreed. And it was interesting, actually, because, as you know, when you’re doing this podcast, you’re listening to me but you’re also kind of involved. You have to watch the tech. You have to do things. When I was interviewing them, I couldn’t really pay attention as well as I wanted to because I had to look for bells and whistles on the computer. But then when we ran the summit and I listened again, I’m like, “Oh my god.” We did the summit for free. I mean, people could buy it afterwards for a nominal fee to own the recordings. But I’m like, “This information is like mind blowing. Why are these people on the cover of Time Magazine?”

 

 

[00:10:23] Ashley James: Well, I definitely want to pique your brain as to what you learned as the interviewer for the series? I watched some of the episodes or the interviews that you did, that you conducted. And I loved it. I love the information. It was very thorough. I will let you know that since starting following your protocol, I’ve lost over 40 pounds and kept it off. I’d been, like, yoyo-ing my entire adult life. The second a diet would end, it was like, poof. It would just all blow up in my face. And with your program, it’s not something you ever end. So it’s something that you just – and you never feel like you’re deprived because of volume metrics. You eat to live. Your plate is full of delicious food. You never go hungry. Through eating how I learned through you and through Dr. Goldhamer and this whole food plant based way, my body is just naturally slowly healthfully shed.

I just went last week to my doctor. I go every few months just to my Naturopath to get blood work and check in. And she had a smile on her face from ear to ear. She was so happy with my numbers. She was so happy with my slow and consistent and continual weight loss. Everything is coming into balance. All my numbers are coming just better and better and better. My cholesterol has never looked better. All my inflammatory markers have never looked better. Just everything. All my hormones are even better. I mean, just everything is better and better and better. All I’m doing is just filling my plate with this delicious food that’s whole food plant based. And I’ve been on over 30 diets. And I’ve never been on a diet where I felt completely satisfied, completely nourished, completely taken care of. And also my body was coming to a place of health more and more and more. It really does work.

 

 

[00:12:26] Chef AJ: That’s amazing. And congratulations. And the thing I want to just say is, you’re not really on a diet, you’re actually just eating the way your ancestors ate throughout human history. The way our species was designed to eat. Because we’ve gotten so far away from that. And most people don’t even eat food anymore. Most people eat something like 70% of their calories from processed food. They think of the way we eat now is restrictive or a diet. Yet this is how humans ate throughout all of human history until just a few hundred years ago, actually.

So it’s so true, Ashley, because you mentioned volume metrics. And Dr. Barbara Rolls was one of the only people that I didn’t get to interview for the summit because she had broken her arm. But we are going to rerun the summit next February with some new speakers and she is going to be one of it. Because volume metrics is the ticket. I call it ultimate weight loss. I also call it lose weight with a full plate. But it’s not a diet. Because on diets they asked you to give up certain food groups, like carbs. And they ask you to eat less or weigh and measure your food or count points or things like that. We’re not on a diet. I eat the same way that Dr. Joel Fuhrman eats. He’s never been overweight. We eat huge quantities of delicious whole food. It’s not a diet.

 

 

[00:13:38] Ashley James: For breakfast this morning, I had the soup. I texted you a picture of the soup my husband I made. We made two giant things of soup. And this soup is like a stew. The soup is so hearty. And there are carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, and spices like rosemary time, bailey, the regular stuff you’d put in soup, and legumes, brown lentils. I maybe forgetting a few vegetables. Because we put in a lot of stuff in this thing. And then we just let it simmer for a few hours. We had it yesterday for lunch. We had it for dinner. Then we had it for breakfast. And it tastes different the longer it kind of sits in its own juices. It tastes like a different experience. [Inaudible 00:14:23] turned to me and said, “I could eat this every day for every meal. It’s so good. And so filling.” I just had a soup I had a soup for breakfast and I am so full and I feel – I have so much energy. It’s very low in calories but it’s very dense in nutrition.

And I was even tracking my protein because people are freaking out about, “Where do you get your protein from if all you eat are potatoes and vegetables?” On average, I get 50 grams of protein a day from a variety of sources that are obviously not animals. So have you ever seen anyone protein deprived not eating meat?

 

 

[00:15:00] Chef AJ: Never. That’s called kwashiorkor. And from my understanding, there’s never been a single case of it in reported history with the exception of, maybe, like a child abuse case or an anorexic or somebody actually was calorie deficient. You cannot be protein deficient unless you’re calorie deficient.

 

 

[00:15:19] Ashley James: So if you fill your plate up with whole foods with plants, basically, you’re good in terms of protein?

 

 

[00:15:26] Chef AJ: Absolutely. There’s actually more protein per calorie in broccoli than steak. I believe that 100 grams of – broccoli has 11.2 grams of protein and 100 grams of steak – 100 calories – excuse me – 100 calories of steak has something like 5.4 grams of protein. So I mean, think about it. All the large herbivores that have walked this planet for centuries, you know, elephants, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, giraffe, they’re not worrying about where they’re getting their protein. They eat plants. The animals that we eat are the plant eaters. We’re not eating carnivorous animals like the lions and the tigers. Were eating animals that eat the plants. Cut out the middleman, eat the plants. You don’t need to eat animal flesh.

There’s a great book about this by Dr. Garth Davis – he’d make a wonderful interview for you – called Proteinaholic. I highly recommend that if people really want to understand this. And of course, The China Study. Think about it, when a human being needs the most protein in their life is when they’re an infant, when they’re growing. Breast milk is less than 10% protein. So why would we have a system that we need more of it when we’re not growing. This is just absurd. This is such absurdity.

 

 

[00:16:37] Ashley James: Can you share the things that you learned from your summit around carbs versus fat versus protein? Did any of the guests, the experts that helped people with successful weight loss, did any of them cover that?

 

 

[00:16:50] Chef AJ: They did. One of the things they had covered was that it’s the difference between complex carbs and refined carbs. So in other words, carbs have a bad rep. You know, we shouldn’t eat carbs. Carbs make us fat. But you can’t just say carbs without knowing what the carbs are. Because there are complex carbohydrates that are unrefined, found in nature, like sweet potatoes and winter squashes, and legumes, and whole grains. And then there’s refined and processed carbs, which is what most Americans are eating that make them fat and sick, like flour and sugar and alcohol. So you can’t just lump carbs all together. That’s like saying, you can’t lump people together saying all these kind of people are bad. There’s different kinds of people in all these various groups. Just like there’s different kinds of carbs.

And so definitely they explained that when you’re eating the whole plant found in nature, that has the fiber, and the water, and the vitamins, and the minerals, and the phytochemicals, and the micronutrients all intact. That is so different to your body than when you’re stripping the fiber away and having these processed carbs like flour and sugar. Which go through the same refining process, by the way, as drugs and alcohol. And it just makes no sense. How can we now be designed to run on fat or fat and protein when that’s all our ancestors ate throughout history were these unrefined, complex carbohydrates. The longest lived people in the world from of the blue zones. The Okinawans, for example, eat something like more than 70% of their calories from sweet potatoes. Those are carbs. They don’t they’re not overweight or obese. They don’t have heart disease. They don’t have cancer. There’s a book by Dr. Colin Campbell called the Low Carb Fraud. And what’s happened is because of these processed carbs, all carbs have gotten a bad reputation.

 

 

[00:18:38] Ashley James: Throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I had to really come to terms with that. Because growing up my mother was obsessed with dieting. She was never overweight but she was obsessed with dieting. And so she instilled in me a fear of carbs. I remember her yelling at me once at a restaurant because I ordered the fish. I thought that was going to impress her. I ordered the fish. It’s so healthy. But the fish came with the side of rice. And my mom yelled at me in the restaurant and food shamed me – and I was like 12 or something – because I was going to eat rice. In healing my relationship with my body and with food, I had to also heal  – I don’t want to call it trauma – but the belief system that I had adopted from my mother, which was a fear, a real fear of healthy carbohydrates like whole grains. I am gluten free because my body just does not respond well to gluten, whole grains like brown rice, or even potatoes. My belief system developed because my mother would have me feel shame and guilt for eating those foods. And I just wonder how many people are feeling negative emotions around healthy foods because of the belief system they were raised in?

 

 

[00:19:57] Chef AJ: Yeah. That’s a good question. And I think if they do an experiment where they maybe given themselves three weeks to eat nothing but these foods and see how their health improves, how they lose weight. It’s absurd to think that these foods make you fat. They don’t make you fat if they’re in their unrefined form. It’s what you put on them. So if for example, it’s the butter that people put on the rice. It’s the butter, and the sour cream, and the cheese, and the bacon that people put on potatoes. If carbs made people fat and sick then how did they end up doing these studies with just potatoes? For example, something called the KON Potato Study – you can Google it – where it healthy young couple who are actually were athletes ate nothing but potatoes for an entire year. This wasn’t a weight loss study. They were trying to show that you would not be any deficient in any nutrient just by eating potatoes. And in one year of eating nothing but potatoes, they didn’t have any nutrient deficiencies. They actually lost too much weight they had to start adding oil to their potatoes in order to get enough calories.

There’s a man named Andrew Taylor who lives in Australia, who became well-known as spud, fit for eating nothing but potatoes for an entire year and lost 120 pounds. And reversed his food addiction and his depression. And Chris Voigt of the Washington Potato Commission, several years ago, was very upset that the government would not allow people to use food stamps to buy potatoes. Bbut they could use them to buy Kool Aid and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. And so he basically for 68 days, I think, was something like 20 potatoes a day and he was still eating oil and cheese and animal products. And he still reversed his high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high triglycerides. Carbs, they’re the fuel that our body is designed for. Just like you wouldn’t put lemonade in your gas tank. Can we run on on fat? Like a keto diet or protein. Yeah, we can. But that’s not what the body was designed to do. That’s like an emergency state that people do called ketosis. That was never what we were supposed to do.

And it’s very unsatisfying. It’s funny that you mentioned rice shaming. Because I speak at a lot of spas and cruise ships, they’re not even vegan or plant based just because I’m known as somebody that has helped lots of people lose weight. So they booked me for that. It turns out that my protocol is vegan. But I don’t even have to say it either in my lecture or to get booked because it just so happens that the foods that are the healthiest and also lowest in calorie density but highest nutrient density all happened to be plants. But I remember one of these spas because it’s a weight loss fight. It’s like they weigh and measure your food and you get really sparse portions. And you get literally, like, a-half-a-cup of rice which doesn’t even fit in my hand. I had to actually go to the doctor or the nurse and get a permission slip to get an extra half cup of rice. Now when I eat rice at home, I eat like two to four cups in in a serving. And I’m thinking like, “How does anybody eat a-half-a-cup of rice? That’s like nothing.” I just don’t get it. It’s just it’s sad to me that people feel that that’s what they need to do to lose weight and be healthy. When the exact opposite is true, they need to eat more but of the right foods.

But the problem is that they like our system, Ashley, which is ad libitum. where we eat as much as we want to the left of the red line. But they want to include their likely glass of wine or their soda or their Starbucks macchiato or their rich desserts. And unfortunately, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t eat all you want of the nutritious foods and still include the unhealthy foods. If you want to include foods of a higher caloric density or unhealthy foods, you can do it and possibly maintain weight loss. But you’re going to then have to do portion control. And who wants to do that? We aren’t designed for scales.

 

 

[00:23:45] Ashley James: There’s this book, First Bite: How We Learn To Eat by Bee Wilson. And she said that they did these experiments. Of course, they probably can’t do them nowadays because it would be like child abuse. But they did experiments on orphans. They took a bunch of children, like toddlers, and they put many, many different kinds of foods in front of them. Instead of forcing them like, “Here’s your macaroni and cheese. Or here’s your hot dog. Or here’s your chicken nuggets.” or whatever. They put everything broccoli, beans, carrots. They just put everything out in front of them and let the children choose what they want it to eat. And they then calculated all the nutrients. And they’d figured out that, intuitively, these toddlers who they’re too young to have had societal – I don’t know – norms imposed on them. They’re just listening to the instinct of their body. They kind of looked at a whole week’s snapshot of what they ate all week.

So maybe one day they did mono eating. They only ate carrot. So they only ate rice. And of course, as a parent, you’re freaking out thinking, “Okay. This kid is going to be nutrient deficient because they’re only eating this one food.” But by the end of the week, all of the children had a balanced diet of all the nutrients they needed. And their illnesses started to reverse. So they started to notice that over time, letting the children gravitate towards and choose the food. So intuitively, they wanted to eat, like, let’s say, all broccoli that day. And then the next day they want to eat only apples and only bananas. And their bodies just knew to eat what they needed to eat. Children eat until they no longer feel hungry versus adults eat until we feel full. We have to feel the sensation like nothing else can fit inside me. Whereas, children will eat just until hunger goes away and then they’ll go play. And I thought, “Man, that really -” because I was trying to think when I was young – when I was a kid, I was skinny. And food wasn’t even in my mind. I would eat when I was hungry until the hunger went away and then I go and play again. So it’s a real big difference. Something shifts in us.

 

 

[00:25:55] Chef AJ: [Inaudible 00:25:57] profound. That is really profound. Eat until no longer hungry and still full instead of until full when overly. A lot of people until they’re completely overly stuffed they don’t even know they’re full. And I think part of it has to do with eating processed food and animal products. Because think about it, Ashley, processed food and animal products have a lot in common. And that they aren’t completely devoid of fiber and water. And when you’re eating, most of your calories are from animal products and processed food. Which is what most Americans do, over 92% of calories, in fact. You’re not going to feel full until you’ve over eaten because your stretch receptors aren’t going to be activated by the water and fiber that would be in those whole plant foods that we were designed to eat.

 

 

[00:26:39] Ashley James: Uh-huh. Right. So if you’re eating a turkey sandwich or something, there’s bread, for example, is dehydrated in a sense that it’s very calorically dense but doesn’t take up a lot of room in the stomach. So you have to eat a lot more before you feel full. But then you’ve eaten hundreds of calories more than you actually needed.

 

 

[00:27:02] Chef AJ: Absolutely. Because think about it, all whole grains are about 500 calories a pound. When you mill the whole grains into flour to make bread, it’s now 1,500 calories a pound. It’s triple the caloric density. So anytime you process a food, you make it calorically rich and nutrient poor. So you you’re right, to feel full, you have to eat a lot more bread than you do whole grain. And that’s why I wrote my first book on processed because my feeling was, whether you want to be vegan or not, I can’t make you. But we’re still not designed to eat processed foods. Our stomachs are about the size of a cantaloupe. They hold about a liter of food, which is about 4.22 cups. I can easily eat 500 calories of brown rice.  That’s about, let’s say, it’s three cups or something like that. I’ll feel really full because I’ll activate my mechanisms of satiety, my stretch in nutrient and calorie receptors. But if I have to eat that much flour or bread, I won’t feel full because they won’t activate the mechanism stylus

Water is so important. I don’t mean just drinking water, which of course we should. Because water in it of itself has no society. It won’t make you feel full. Even if you drink a gallon of water, it will make you feel full for a little bit but it exits the digestive tract too quickly. But when water is bound to the whole natural food, like the fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and legumes, it not only has weight but it creates bulk because it’s attached to the fiber. And that bulk is what creates satiety that allows us to stop eating before we’re overly full. That’s why people mutilate their bodies and have gastric bypass is to make their stomach, which is about 4.22 cups now hold maybe a cup or less so that they will get in touch again with what it feels like to feel full. Whereas, if you just change the composition of what you eat, that’s nature’s gastric bypass.

 

 

[00:28:53] Ashley James: I love how you have a rule of eating two pounds of vegetables a day at a minimum, right? So it’s a minimum.

 

 

[00:29:01] Chef AJ: That’s minimum. When I was losing weight, I was eating probably four or maybe more. That’s the minimum that I think everyone should eat just for optimal health. But if you’re trying to lose weight, you want to eat more vegetables. Vegetables are the food that are not only lowest in caloric density but highest in nutrient density. And whenever your diet is nutrient deficient, you’re going to over, over eat on calories looking for nutrients. But you’re looking for them in all the wrong places. Some vegetables are actually considered fruits botanically. So things like zucchini, eggplant, tomato, bell pepper, okra, and cucumber. These are botanically fruits. But we classify them as non-starchy vegetables. There are about 67 calories per pound. For the same amount of calories in one tablespoon of olive oil, you could eat two pounds of zucchini. That’s a lot of food. You can air fry it and make it taste as delicious as you want.

But when people really understand calorie density, most people opt in. Because who wants to eat gimbal sized portions of food and be chained to having to weigh and measure their food for the rest of their life? So vegetables are incredible because they fill you up on so few calories. It’s almost as if you burn more calories in chewing and digesting of the vegetables than even in the vegetables.

And I think you might have interviewed Dr. Alan Goldhamer. He’s one of my mentors. Well, one of the things he said to me is, “Show me an overweight person. And I’ll show you someone who is unwilling to eat enough raw salad and steamed vegetables.” That really is one of the greatest secrets to weight loss and weight maintenance and good health is to eat more vegetables. And people are like, “I could never eat two pounds.” “Really?” Because they don’t have a problem eating a two pound box See’s Candy. It’s not that much two pounds of vegetables. And that’s true, if you were trying to eat two pounds of raw kale, that would be a lot. But if you cook your vegetables, if you steam them, it reduces the volume.

Honestly when I make my balsamic Dijon glazed Brussels sprouts from a pound of Brussels sprouts, it’s like two handfuls of food. It’s not that much food. And because you’ve got the fiber and the water intact, it’s going to be filling. And I don’t want people to just eat vegetables because that wouldn’t be enough calories. They need the starch. The complex carbohydrates that we talked about at the beginning of the show that people are afraid of, the potatoes and sweet potatoes and winter squashes and rice and beans to feel full. But I mean that is really the secret. Every meal you eat, even breakfast, make sure that half of your plate is non-starchy vegetables. You do that your health will soar, your weight will decrease if you need to lose weight, your skin will glow.

Like I’m almost 60. And if people watch my YouTube channel, there’s some episodes where I’ve got a lot of makeup on because I play around with makeup. Actually, since I live in the desert, I don’t wear it anymore because it’s just too hot and it will just melt off your face. But I enjoyed in the past wearing makeup. So you’ll see some [inaudible 00:31:46] wears a lot of makeup. But really, most of them now, nothing. No makeup. And people say, “Oh my god, your skin glows.” Well, it’s the vegetables. It’s the fruit and vegetables, the antioxidants. Most Americans are on an antioxidant poor diet. They look for these health creams or these potions to put on their skin with antioxidants. You’ve got to take them internally by eating lots of fruits and vegetables. That really – it seems so simple but yet so few people do it.

 

 

[00:32:17] Ashley James: I love that you bring up this idea of antioxidants. Actually, that’s something that Eric Thornton, who I told you about has been on the show several times. He says, “You know, humans don’t make their own antioxidants like vitamin C.” And we do make glutathione. It’s very hard for the body to make glutathione. There’s a lot of cool factors. It’s very expensive – I should say – for the body to make glutathione. So that’s our own antioxidant. But our body doesn’t produce vitamin C. For example, cats, and dogs, and goats, and wolves, they make their own vitamin C. So animals that are designed to eat other animals and don’t eat plants need to make vitamin C because they’re not going to eat it.

And that’s another argument for why we’re supposed to be plant based. We need to eat the vitamin C. We need to take in the antioxidants from the plants. Because our bodies don’t produce it. So we need to bring it in as much as possible because we’re not going to get it. So like these animals that don’t produce it, get it from their food, get it from the plants. So plant eaters don’t produce the vitamin C. I’m sure a zoologist could correct me if there are any animals that are an exception. But my understanding is that animals that do produce vitamin C almost exclusively eat meat. And animals that don’t produce vitamin C and other antioxidants, don’t do so because they were designed to get it from plants.

 

 

[00:33:51] Chef AJ: It doesn’t make sense what you’re saying. There’s really nothing you can’t get from a plant based diet that you can get in a better and more utilizable form in an animal based diet. There’s only one exception, vitamin B12. And it’s not because animals contain vitamin B12. It’s because they eat the dirt. Which we have very good hygienic practices now and the soil is depleted. That’s where the vitamin B12 is. People they go, “You need the cow to get the B12.” The cow got it from eating the grass because the dirt is where the B12 was. So that’s really the only thing that people have – if they have to worry – worry about. And the truth is, there are just as many carnivores that are B12 deficient as being. So it’s not even really something to worry about.

 

 

[00:34:34] Ashley James: Right. You’re saying that people, regardless of what diet they’re on, whether they eat meat or not, there’s a percentage of the population they’re B12 deficient because they don’t get enough of that bacteria, basically. So that’s a good supplement to be on. It’s a really good bioavailable form of B12. Unless, we’re going out in our own garden and picking stuff out of the ground and eating it while the bacteria is still on it. There was a study done on vegans in India versus the same heritage of people eating the same diet in the UK. And they found that those in India were not vitamin B12 deficient and they were vegan. But it was the bacteria that they were getting from the food versus the very sterilized food that they were eating in the UK. And so they were showing that it’s more about the bacteria. And maybe if you’re eating food that’s right out of the ground, really fresh, not sterilized, that you are less likely to be B12 deficient. So it’s nothing to do with meat consumption necessarily. I like that you pointed that out.

I started steaming a pound of vegetables for breakfast almost every morning or trying to get it in  as early as possible. But I found that when I do that, my energy goes through the roof. I feel so good. My family has been able to quit caffeine and not even feel a blip. Not even feel caffeine deprived. Some people go, “I could never do a day without.” If I get a pound of vegetables in, in the morning, that’s like my cup of coffee now.

 

 

[00:36:09] Chef AJ: Yeah. Absolutely. And do you drink the liquid? Because that’s called pot liquor, Ashley. And I love the liquid from the steamed greens. That’s like a turbocharged drink. You don’t need caffeine when you have green, seriously.

 

 

[00:36:21] Ashley James: That is so funny you mentioned that. So my grandmother was born in 1912 in Toronto. And she was about to die of type 1 diabetes. When insulin was invented and first used in Toronto on the children there, she was one of the first ever to receive insulin. And she lived to be 77 years old. Would have kept living but it was very hard to manage them back in the 80s. It was in 1987. A harder back then to manage type 1 diabetes and so she fell into a coma. And we didn’t catch her in time because she was still living on her own in her own condo. She taught me as a child to steam vegetables and then let the water cool and drink the water. And that was one of the things she did every day and was one of her secrets to her health. So I love that you brought that up.

 

 

[00:37:04] Chef AJ: Absolutely. And it’s delicious and it tastes different every day depending on what vegetables you use. If you use something like butternut squash, for example, it’s going to be really sweet. But I love pot liquor, it’s the best. I didn’t know it was called that, actually, until I spoke in New Orleans. I just thought it was broth but it’s really good.

 

 

[00:37:22] Ashley James: So are there actually nutrients? Is there, like, a noticeable amount of nutrients in the water? Or is it just hydrate with flavorful steamed water?

 

 

[00:37:32] Chef AJ: Yeah. I’m sure that there’s nutrients. They say something like 30% of the vitamins and minerals of vegetables are lost during cooking. But if you’re steaming them and if you drink the water, you’re not missing out on any of them.

 

 

[00:37:46] Ashley James: How many minutes do you steam your vegetables for?

 

 

[00:37:51] Chef AJ: So it just depends if I’m doing it on the stove or in the pressure cooker. So if I’m doing it in the pressure cooker, my Instant Pot, and they’re not cut up small, the greens, I might do as much as five minutes. But if it’s a vegetable like zucchini or even broccoli where it’s going to turn to mush, it might be zero to one minute. On the stove, it probably takes a few more minutes. Just until the water boils.

 

 

[00:38:11] Ashley James: You’ve got some fantastic videos on YouTube. I love all your cooking videos on YouTube. You make it really accessible. I really enjoy that. What other points really stand out in your mind? Did you have any aha moments as you were doing your summit?

 

 

[00:38:27] Chef AJ: Yeah, so many. I almost wish I could have been a guest on my own summit after the summit just to summarize everything I learned. But one of the things is, there’s a movement called like Health At Every Size. And of course, we should never make fun of people, criticize them, blame them, shame them for having any kind of disability or disease. I think of being overweight or obese as a disability.

But what this doctor said that is that, that’s a myth. You really can’t have health at every size. And they explained why medically. Every disease is, you’re so much more susceptible to having these diseases, even cancer and the specific kinds of cancer when you’re overweight. And of course, the more you’re overweight, the more risk. So it’s not just about visually looking a certain way. It’s about that when you have more fat, you have more blood – I’m not going to do it just as the way these doctors explained it medically. But your risk for disease just increases exponentially with every pound. You have to take this seriously. Like 66% more likely to get type 2 diabetes and all the various cancers. Breast cancer, for example, that you’re going to be more prone to with every extra pound of body fat. And I never really looked at it that way, because as a female, you just care about being thin because that’s how you’re raised. It’s better. And you won’t get a date or to go to the prom. I didn’t get asked to my prom. I was the fat kid from age five until age 50.

I never really thought about that the health consequences long term or short term of being overweight or obese. But these doctors explained what they were. So that was really, really eye opening because people should accept themselves and love themselves at every weight. But they have to understand that a lot of people – I’ve heard people say, “Well, I’m healthy.” They have a physical or maybe there’s just no markers at that time when they’ve had their blood tested. But if you are overweight or obese, you’re not healthy. You’re certainly not as healthy as you can be. That you are a disease waiting to happen, if you will. And so I think people need to understand that from a health standpoint. And maybe they’ll take better control of their health. And of course, if people would just eat better and eat in a healthful manner, their weight would come off.

So people are approaching it backwards. They’re approaching it like, “Well, I have to go on a diet and lose weight.” But they’re not even going on a healthful diet like the one we. They’re going on something that will give them results very quickly like a keto or a paleo. Because when you don’t eat carbs, of course, you’ll lose all that water weight. But you’re not really losing fat. The way we eat, I mean, it took me 27 months to lose 50 pounds. It’s slow weight loss but it’s sustainable. And I kept it off for almost eight years now. So many people are desperate to lose weight that they’re willing to mortgage their health in the short term doing the keto type diet. So you need to look at it like diet – and again, one thing they all agreed on is if you eat or diet for health. If you eat for health, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes, a whole food plant based diet, lower in fat, no processed food, no animal products, alcohol, things like that. Then when you eat in this manner for health, the weight ceases to become an issue because it really does fall off. And so people are approaching it backwards.

The other thing I learned that I wish I hadn’t learned. And if you’re female, you’re not going to like this. And I’m sorry, but it’s good to know. And this was from Dr. Rosane Oliveira, who is a geneticist at UC Davis, and Dr. Michelle McMacken, a family practice doctor in New York. They both talked about this concept called metabolic disadvantage. And we all know that most people can lose weight. And they have lost weight sometime in their life following whatever dietary style they chose at the time. But most people can’t maintain their weight loss. Something like 98% of people that ever lose weight through a great deal of suffering and deprivation, gain it all back usually within two years. And part of it, I think, is because people look at this as a diet. So they look at eating a certain way to lose weight. And then they go back to the diet that made them fat and sick and think that they’re going to maintain their weight.

 

 

[00:42:32] Ashley James: Temporarily, yeah. Eat this way temporarily and then it’ll be done.

 

 

[00:42:37] Chef AJ: Yeah. It’s sort of like an alcoholic saying, “You know what? I’m not going to drink any alcohol until I get sober. But once I’m sober, I’m going to go back to drinking alcohol.” Well, then you’re not going to be sober anymore. It’s sort of the same thing. People understand this with other substances but not so much with food. But what these doctors explained is that – and this is especially important with females because they’re generally the people that really want to lose weight – for example, if you have a woman that is five-foot-five inches tall and weighs 125 pounds, which is probably a pretty good weight for that female. And let’s say this woman has always been that weight as an adult never had weight issues. She needs a certain amount of calories every day just to maintain her 125 pound, five-foot-five inch frame.

Let’s say you have another woman that’s five-foot-five inches and weighed 175 pounds or whatever she weighed. And then she lost weight to now weigh her ideal weight of 125 pounds. Well due to this penalty, if you will, a metabolic disadvantage. And the reason Dr. Oliveira knows this is because she has a biologically identical twin sister. And they’ve done all kinds of experiments. Because the sister went on a low carb diet. And Dr. Oliveira eats a low-fat whole food plant based diet. Has never been overweight. The sister was 50 pounds overweight. And eventually lost the weight but it’s been very difficult. Compared to Rosane.

Now, is the person that lost weight needs far fewer calories to maintain your 125 pound frame than the person that was never overweight. And this is why it can be so difficult. Because while you’re overweight, you get to eat many more calories than you do once you lose weight. But if you’ve been overweight, it’s like a penalty. And you can’t eat as many calories as somebody who is your exact weight that’s never been overweight.

Now, Dr. Oliveira says in a couple of years, if you stick to the program, this often can reverse itself so that you can get more calories. But this is just completely unfair. But people need to know this. And when they know this, if they follow the way of eating I recommend – losing weight with a full plate in accordance with the principles of calorie density – they can still eat large volumes of food. Maybe even more food than they ate before. And still maintain that weight loss without going hungry. But they need to know that they can’t go back to eating the way they were eating before they lost weight.

 

 

[00:44:51] Ashley James: That’s one thing when I first went this way of eating. I was hungry all the time. And my first thought – and I think I even asked you in our interview or I think asked you may be outside the interview – I can’t remember – but I remember going, “Am I protein deficient?” Because again, I was a newbie. I was eating lots of vegetables and lots of legumes and beans and nuts and seeds and all that. But no meat. And I was hungry 45 minutes after or an hour after eating a meal. And I couldn’t figure out why. And I think you were the one that told me you’re not eating enough. And I was like, “Oh.” Because my plate would be – I’d fill my stomach up. And it would only be like 200 or 300 calories because it’s a potato and some beans and some broccoli. And it was delicious. And maybe put some homemade salsa on it or something. Again, very low calorie, very high dense nutrition wise, lots of fantastic vitamins and minerals, and really great nutrients for the body. But then an hour later, I was hungry. And so I’m thinking, “Is it because my body is missing something? And it’s like, “No. silly. I just didn’t eat enough food. I just need to eat more.”

So that’s one thing that happens when people transition into this is that they’re hungrier because they think they just eat a potato and some beans and some spinach. And that’s only like 300 or 400 calories. It’s not what they’re used to. They’re used to like 1,200 calories a meal, right?

 

 

[00:46:25] Chef AJ: Right. Absolutely. And that’s why it’s really important, in my opinion, to understand calorie density so that you know you have to eat more to weigh less. You have to. Because if you apply the same thinking to your previous dietary failures to this way of eating, you will starve. Because like you say, vegetables are 100 calories a pound, fruit 200 to 300 calories a pound, sweet potatoes, potatoes 400 calories a pound. We need to eat. However, many calories we eat, we need to eat several pounds of food a day in order to feel full.

Dr. Barbara Rolls at Penn State University who studies human eating behavior in her laboratory. The author of the book, Volume Metrics, that you had mentioned previously. She discovered that we all eat about three to five pounds of food a day. Now, an Olympic athlete, is going to eat more than a four- foot-ten, 90 year old woman. Of course, not everybody eats the same amount of food. But most of us consistently eat between three to five pounds of food per day. We need to eat that much food in order to feel full. And so when you change the caloric density of your food, if you are eating most of your calories from animal products and processed food, which are of very high caloric density -what I call to the right of the red line – you wouldn’t need as much food. But now, if you’re lowering the caloric density to 600 calories per pound or less – fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes – you’re going to need to eat a greater volume of food in order to feel full. And this is a mistake people make.

Another mistake they make is they shun the starch. The starch meaning the whole grains, the legumes, the potatoes, and winter squashes. People are still afraid of starch. So they’ll give up the animal products and the oils and the processed food and the alcohol. And they’ll just eat fruits and vegetables, which is very healthy. But it’s a mistake. Because without starch, you won’t have that satiety. That feeling of fullness that tells us to stop eating. No starch, no satiety. Starch is to the hunger drive, what oxygen is to breathing. And that is what’s going to make you satisfied.

The fruits and vegetables they fill – think about like you have a box. And if you just filled it with packing peanuts, there’s still be lots of space in the box. And you need to fill the whole box. And your stomach is like that box. So you can you can fill it with the packing peanuts, with the fruits and vegetables. But there’s still a lot of space left over. You need to have the starch. So the starch is going to make you feel satisfied. But the fruits and vegetables are going to make you feel full. So that’s why you want to eat half your plate vegetables, then the other half mostly starch with maybe some fruit. You’ll feel full. You’ll feel satisfied. If you have a lifestyle related disease like heart disease or type 2 diabetes, most people will be able to reverse it. And many people will be able to prevent it by eating the way that our ancestors ate.

 

 

[00:49:11] Ashley James: I like that you brought up type 2 diabetes. I used to have type 2 diabetes. And I reversed it by shifting my lifestyle and my diet. Originally, when I shifted it, I went low carb. It felt like a long uphill battle with constantly checking my blood sugar. It took a long time to get to a point where I didn’t have diabetes anymore. I noticed I could easily recreate blood sugar imbalance. Going on this diet, I kept hearing all the experts that I’ve interviewed say you can absolutely reverse type 2 diabetes 100%. You can even get type 1 Diabetes to be more efficient. Some people have reported getting on 75% less insulin needed after eating this way. And yet it’s the most carbs they’ve ever eaten in their life.

So I was tracking what I was eating and it was over 200 grams of carbohydrates a day eating this way. And this little voice in my head is thinking, “You’re crazy. You’re going to give yourself diabetes.” And of course, most of my brain went, “No. Just listen. Just wait. Wait and see. You’re going to be impressed.” The little critic in my head. And sure enough, like a month after eating this way, I took my blood sugar two hours after a meal and burst into tears. I’d never seen healthier blood sugar in my life eating this way. My blood work I just got back from the doctor – and I haven’t been diabetic for years. But it’s always monitoring it. And my blood work is- my insulin is super healthy. A1C is, like, 4.7. And I’m eating more carbohydrates than I ever have in my life. They’re just the right kind.

And so for those diabetics that are listening who are afraid to eat a banana or afraid to eat a potato, why is it that when we cut out the meat and the fat from – the processed fat, like the oil, and we eat a whole food plant based, why is it that bounces blood sugar? Everyone’s blaming the sugar.

 

 

[00:51:12] Chef AJ: Right. And when the problem is fat. And you know who can answer that question for you beautifully other than Dr. Neal Barnard, is Robby and Cyrus. They have a program called Mastering Diabetes. They are both type 1 diabetics. And they actually have a podcast too. They make great guests individually or together for you. Because they can totally explain why a high carb, low fat diet works beautifully for health, for reversing, and living with diabetes for the people that are type 1. And also just for preventing other common diseases of lifestyle and reversing them like obesity and heart disease.

 

 

[00:51:47] Ashley James: Yeah. I had one of them on my show. That’s what convinced me. Because they have type 1 and type 2 diabetes. They eat nothing but bananas for the first three days just to kind of reset themselves. And people are freaking out. But then they’re like, “Wow. My blood sugar is coming back into balance. I can’t believe it.” So that’s what had me kind of go, “Wow. This is really real.” And there’s something about fat that clogs up the cells. It seemed totally – I mean, we’re myth busting. But it’s going against the mainstream narrative. The mainstream narrative is diabetics need to cut back. You know, basically diabetics should go on keto is what the mainstream narrative is going towards. And yet, that’s going to create further problems with insulin resistance down the road.

 

 

[00:52:31] Chef AJ: Absolutely. And the thing is it works. I mean, they get better numbers. But then they’re creating heart disease for themselves.

 

 

[00:52:39] Ashley James: It only works as long as they’re in ketosis. But then the second they eat even an apple, they’re having problems because it’s actually the fat that’s creating more and more insulin resistance. And it’s the wrong kind of fat. If you eat a handful of walnuts, it’s not going to do it. It’s the processed oils and the meat and the dairy. It’s just amazing looking at the science of food and how we can heal the body. It’s really exciting.

And of course, these diseases that are coming back into balance, people even in your Facebook Group are sharing, “You know, I used to have this and now I don’t have it.” What kind of amazing lifestyle diseases have you seen reversed, eating this way?

 

 

[00:53:19] Chef AJ: Oh my gosh. So many. Just this week when I spoke at a conference, a lady came up to me and she is on the donor list for a kidney. And because of eating this way, it just keeps getting delayed. So I don’t know if she’s still going to need that kidney or not. But the point is, is that she’s not in dire kidney failure anymore. She just keeps getting better. And they’re like, “Oh. We don’t necessarily have to do this now.” I had somebody come up to me once and said, “You know, I didn’t even buy your book. I just watched your YouTube show. And I reversed stage four kidney failure.” I mean, that’s unbelievable, right?

I mean, usually by then they’re getting ready for dialysis. So it’s unbelievable what it will do if people will just give it a chance. I mean, heart disease is the one you hear all the time, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, high blood pressure. That, you hear all the time because we know that from Dr. Esselstyn [inaudible 00:54:14] prevent reverse heart disease if  people eat this way. Those things are pretty much guaranteed to improve. But as you said, type 2 diabetes. Type 1, no. I’ve never seen anybody completely reverse it. Like you say, they have lowered their need for insulin dramatically and gained health in other ways. Cancer, I can’t say anybody said. Who knows what they’re preventing with this. But I have never seen anybody just reverse their cancer eating this way. But I’ve seen them improve their health. So that when they have to go through the procedures that they often get with chemotherapy or radiation, their health just improves while they’re doing it

I would never say, “Eat this way, you won’t get cancer. You reverse it.” No. But I think you will just greatly improve your health on so many levels that when you’re dealing with any kind of disease, it’s going to be so much easier. Well, of course, obesity. I mean, people have been – as you know, being in the ultimate weight loss group, people have reversed that. We’ve had people lose 300 pounds. That was the most spectacular one. But it’s very common for people to lose 50 and 100. And keep it off. Well, that’s the most important part.

 

 

[00:55:27] Ashley James: Yeah. But also, I love that the culture of your group encourages people to share the non-scale achievements. The successes that have nothing to do with getting on scale because we can kind of sabotage ourselves by jumping on a scale every day. And so people are sharing like, “I’ve never been able to run around my grandchildren. And I just spent the entire day running around with them.” Or, “I’ve never been able to go hiking with my dogs and now I can.”  Or, “I’m fitting into clothing I have been able to fit into since college.” And they’re sharing these emotional breakthroughs that they’re having incredible energy and vitality. And they’re feeling free of the constraints of this disease that is in part created by, obviously, the food choices but also the hyper palatable foods that contribute to triggering overeating. So some people actually have an addiction, addictive personalities, or they’re looking to food in a way like we would look to drugs or alcohol.

But other people don’t necessarily have an emotional eating issue. But food is like a drug. And that hyper palatable food is designed to trigger the brain to want to eat more and more and more of it. It’s like cleansing the palate when we eat the way you teach us to eat. It cleanses the palate and calms the mind. So now the mind is not being hijacked by food anymore.

 

 

[00:56:55] Chef AJ: Absolutely. We call them non-scale victories, NSV, which is also an acronym for non-starchy vegetables. But yeah, you’re right. Those are so much more meaningful especially that they’re more meaningful than losing the weight. But they’re more immediate in a lot of ways. Because people don’t realize that you don’t lose weight overnight. If you’re a female, you lose about two ounces of fat a day. And that’s why weighing yourself is one of the worst things you can do while you’re losing weight, especially if you weigh yourself every day. Maybe every month. But you can have other things like improvement in your markers, like blood pressure, and all the numbers, like cholesterol and triglycerides, and things like that. Or getting on the floor and playing with your grandchildren. I mean, to me, that’s the reason to do it.

 

 

[00:57:40] Ashley James: Uh-huh. Absolutely. Any other keys that stick out in your mind that really were big aha moments when you were doing your interviews for your summit?

 

 

[00:57:51] Chef AJ: Yeah. It’s funny because one of the things Dr. Allen Goldhamer, who I mentioned previously, as my mentor, he has this funny thing where he says, “You know, I assess a person’s intelligence by how much they agree with me.” And I actually spoke very little in the summit. I had about four questions that I asked each guests for the one hour interview. But it was really mostly about the guests. And I was kind of just there to run tech. But I had about four questions that I asked everyone.

And what was interesting is that there was something that I had been teaching since day one, when I started coaching people and running the ultimate weight loss program, first in person and then online, was the importance of your environment when you are trying to lose weight or recover from an addiction or just improve your health or lifestyle in any way. And people would always get upset with me. I’m not a doctor. And they would just like, “Well, I can it’s too hard. I live -” all these excuses. Every single person on the summit said how critical the environment was. From Dr. Doug Lisle, who said, we must work harder on the environment than we do ourselves. From Fitness Guru John Pierre, we must sanitize our environment. There was one saying about they have the saying AA – not LA – but maybe in LA at the AA, whereas, if you hang around a barbershop long enough, it’s just a matter of time until you get a haircut.

I’ve been saying to people for years that, if it’s in your house, it’s in your mouth. And it’s not a question of if you will eat it only when. But then when we have the co-author of The China Study, Dr. Tom Campbell saying, if you have temptation anywhere in your environment, you will fail. People actually listen because he’s a doctor. So the environment is critical towards your recovery from an addiction of any kind, towards your success for weight loss. We’re not designed to eat these foods. And we’re genetically hardwired to always consume the most concentrated source of calories in our environment. And if it’s in your house, you’re going to eat it. And you might be able to use willpower in the short term. But eventually, you’re going to have a bad day and you’re going to be hungry and there’s going to be sometime in the future or even if it’s not your favorite flavor junk food or whatever, you’re going to eat it. It never fails. And that’s why for an in person client, I will not work with them unless they completely sanitize their environment and I actually see it. But it’s going to be really hard if you’re not willing to clean your environment.

A lot of people say, “Well, my husband and kids won’t eat this way.” That’s fine. They can eat however they want out of your house. But you can’t have junk food in your environment if you want to recover. If you’re an alcoholic, you can’t have alcohol for company. You just can’t. And you got to know it’s the same thing with these high fat, high calorie, hyperpalatable foods. So it was really reassuring to hear that I’ve been on the right track for the last 20 years explaining to people the importance of cleaning their environment if they want to affect permanent dietary and lifestyle change. So that was great to have that reinforced.

And then the other thing that I also teach after the environment is clean is, you’ve got to have some kind of preparation. You can’t just clean the environment of all the crap and then just have no food in your house. You’ll be like Mother Hubbard with a bare cupboard. You have to have the healthy food there so that that is the default. People say, “Oh, my kids are such picky eaters.” Your kids aren’t picky. They’re just not hungry. And as long as junk food is a choice, instead of cut up vegetables with hummus and guacamole or fresh fruit, they’re always going to pick the junk food. They’re never going to pick the healthy food. But if all you see when you open your refrigerator are beautiful glass jars of cut up fruits and vegetables and cooked sweet potatoes, you will eat them, your family will eat them. So now we got to figure out how to get that food in your house. Preparation always tramps motivation. So if you’re angry, tired, lonely, bored, but that’s all that’s in your house is whole natural food. Guess what? You’re going to eat it. So how do we get the food in there?

Well, a lot of people don’t even know how to cook. Believe it or not. I had a client recently with a 44 year old woman. She didn’t even know how to microwave a potato. I’m not kidding you. People eat fast food as their primary source of food these days. So we either have to teach you how to cook. And there’s plenty of programs, mine, there’s other programs, you can take cooking classes online or in person. So we need to teach you some kitchen essentials, like how to use an instant pot, maybe an air fryer. So we either got to teach you how to cook or we got to get the food in there some other way. Like, maybe using one of these whole food delivery services where you can get the food delivered to you, either dehydrated or refrigerated, so that the food is there. Or you got to get somebody else to do it. And it’s not as expensive as you think. So it’s like you need the environment clean but you need the preparation to have the good stuff in the environment. And these sort of go hand in hand.

And then I would say, the third leg of – I don’t know how many legs does a stool have, three or four? Well, the third the third leg of the triangle – I’m not sure – I think about it as sort of a three-fold process. You clean the environment of the bad stuff. You learn how to get good stuff in the environment on an ongoing basis. And you find a community to support yourself. Many of the experts said that that was really important. Because no man is an island. And when you’re asking somebody to do something that goes against the norm, that’s completely different, then possibly they’re friends and family. See, it’s great that your family did this as a unit. But not every family will be cooperative. You need to find like-minded people. That’s why we have the Ultimate Weight Loss Facebook Group. I have now one called Feel Fabulous Over 40. But you don’t have to be over 40. You don’t even have to be a female to be in there. Where we provide ongoing education and support so that people don’t feel so alone. And the education is so important, Ashley. Especially when you have all this misinformation out there about keto and paleo and even doctors telling you to do this. If people don’t have some rudimentary answers to give people and they say, “Well, why are you eating vegetables? ” They need some kind of education and support system so that they don’t feel alone. And when you’re with like-minded people and you’re raised up and supported by people that are on the same path as you, that’s really a wonderful thing.

 

 

[01:03:58] Ashley James: I love it. I love that you said preparation tramps motivation. I feel like I’ve had to learn all this the hard way. Even though I’ve heard it along the way, I feel like I still am one of those people that I just have to do it the hard way. And if there is anything in the house that is a temptation – you’re right – if it’s like I’m tired, it’s dinnertime. I’m going to go for the easiest possible, like, the frozen pizza, right? The easiest possible solution. I’m not going to go for the, “Oh, it’s going to take me a-half-an-hour to cook this. No. I’m going to go for the what can I throw in the oven.” Because when we’re hungry, it’s like all of our goals go out the window.

 

 

[01:04:36] Chef AJ: Yes. Also, willpower, which you can use for a short period of time. Will power gets depleted easily, especially if you’re tired, especially if you have to make a decision. But you never have to decide to not eat something that isn’t there in the first place.

 

 

[01:04:53] Ashley James: Exactly. What I do is I go to Costco when they have it. They don’t always have it. But they have a right now at my Costco, at least. And it’s a giant bag of sweet potatoes. There’s probably about ten of them in there. One bag lasts us about three days, I’d say. We also had a farm close by, U-Pick Farm. So we did this all summer long. And it was all organic. And they had two kinds of potatoes. And I would fill up buckets, like giant, giant bins of potatoes. Having a ton of them in the house. And then I bake a bunch. Like I get a huge thing that fills the oven and I bake six to eight big sweet potatoes at a time, 375 or 400 degrees for 90 minutes. I just let them go. And then I peel them. And I have them in the fridge and they’re ready to go cold. Cold as a snack. I’ll have potato is a snack, like, in between interviews.

I heard this summer that sweet potatoes gives you energy for nine hours. It take nine hours for the body to digest and absorb all the nutrients from it. So it’s kind of like this slow drip of nine hours of energy from sweet potatoes. My son who’s four and a half love sweet potatoes. And I think, like just last night for dinner, that’s all he ate was a sweet potatoes for dinner. And then we’ll add it to salads cold or we’ll heat it up and make a mash or we’ll make a stew out of it. It’s a great base for a stew. But just basically having a ton of cooked potatoes and cooked sweet potatoes already in the fridge is great. And then I usually have a few pounds of cooked vegetables or steamed or sautéed or baked – and sautéed with no oil, it’s with water – in the fridge just ready to go. And so if I’m really hungry – and I love you’re saying, “If you’re not hungry enough to eat vegetables, you’re not hungry” because that’s become my mantra. I open the fridge and I fill my plate.

And there’s that voice that goes, “This isn’t going to be fun. Where’s the fun food?” But the second you start eating it, that voice goes away because the food is delicious. I just have to acknowledge that that there’s that voice that wants to cover it with cheese or ranch dressing or something completely gross and unhealthy but that it’s hyperpalatable. So there’s that little voice in my head that still goes, “This isn’t yummy. Where’s the yummy food? Give me the bad food.” And I just have to tell it to take a hike. And the second that sweet potato or homemade salsa on  some kind of vegetable hits my lips, that voice goes away because the food’s delicious. And it’s very satisfying. So eating foods that are whole food, meaning you know exactly what you’re putting in your body, you know all the ingredients. And then it’s just something amazing happens where my energy, I feel like I’m buzzing. My body just feels like I’m burning clean fuel. Do You know what I mean? It feels so good.

 

 

[01:07:52] Chef AJ: Absolutely. I could live on sweet potatoes and I practically do. And what’s great about Costco is they’re actually organic.

 

 

[01:08:00] Ashley James: Oh, yes. I only buy organic as much as possible, as often as possible. And then Whole Foods has lowered their prices since Amazon bought Whole Foods. And so a lot of people who have avoided Whole Foods because of pricing, go back. Go back to Whole Foods. They do have more affordable organic vegetables now. So we do that and we buy in bulk. If you have a large family, there’s ways to get organic for cheap. You can talk to the grocer. And often you can order in bulk, like by the case. And that saves a lot of money. So there’s fun tricks.

And then the thing that has really fallen into place for me has been staying on program when I’m leaving the house. Because that’s where it’s like I can clean my environment. I can control my environment in my house. But I can’t control the chaotic world outside. And so I think I’m only leaving the house for one errand and then one leads to another leads to another and now I’m out for the whole day and I’m really hungry. And that’s where it’s like, “Good luck finding really healthy food.” And so I love that you have a technique where you pack food with you wherever you go. Can you share a bit about that?

 

 

[01:09:07] Chef AJ: Yeah. I actually [inaudible 01:09:09] free webinars. It’s on my YouTube page, How To Eat Healthfully Anywhere. And it’s true. The world is not set up to support us in healthy eating. Your environment is everywhere you go. So you could have a perfectly clean environment at home with delicious food. But you go out and eating unhealthful food, junk food is socially acceptable, readily available, easily affordable. It’s everywhere. You go to the hardware store, you go to the pet store, there’s m&m’s at the counter. Even though dogs aren’t supposed to eat m&m’s. A cooler, I have actually – because I’m female and I don’t mind having a purse. I mean, the gentleman may not want to have a lady’s purse. But if you’re lady that already carries a purse, they make so many beautiful cooler purses. I’ve gotten some from Tupperware. I’ve gotten some on Amazon, Bed, Bath and Beyond. I think my favorite are in my Amazon store. But these look exactly like stylish women’s purses but their coolers. And you can have an ice chip in there so that you can sneak them into the movies or wherever you go. And I always make sure – and it’s not just about fruits or vegetables, but you got to have that [inaudible 01:10:15]. We call it pimping it, P-I-M-P, you know, Potato In My Purse. Always have a cooked potato or sweet potato with you. So that is so, so important to do that.

The one day you don’t take the food is the one day you’re not going to be back in an hour. “I’m just going to stroll. I’ll be back in an hour.” And that’s the day that you’re going to get a flat tire. It’s going to be like six hours. So while it’s true that hunger is not an emergency. And I like to teach my people that they can go several hours without food. That you always have it with you. I generally don’t like people to eat dried snacks, dehydrated stuff. They’re not as good for weight loss because the water has been [inaudible 01:10:56]. But there’s certain things that you can get without oil, sugar, or salt, like a [inaudible 01:11:00] or sprouts. It’s just carrots but they’re dried, right? Or just beats. And having those, you won’t need a cooler for those. But those might be some good things to have in your glove apartment or with you if you really feel like you’re going to be starving. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to get a healthy meal at a restaurant that’s completely oil free or salt free. It depends how much you want to reach your goals and why you’re doing this, how strict you want to be. But in general, any food you bring is going to be less expensive. It’s going to be more bountiful. It’s going to be more delicious than anything you can get on the outside.

And I’ve traveled everywhere from Canada to Mexico multiple times, across the United States almost every week for many years and I’ve never had a problem. I bring my instant pot with me on the plane. I have the three quart instant pot and I can cook in my room. I have one of these little microwave steamers from Tupperware and Pampered Chef that if I don’t want to bring my Instant Pot, I can easily cook vegetables. Because most hotels now have microwaves. And if they don’t, there’s usually one in the lobby that you can use. But you really have to learn how to have healthful food with you.

 

 

[01:12:07] Ashley James: I love it. Oh, yes. It’s made such a difference that concept. I make food in bulk. So I cook once, eat four times. They say cook once, eat twice. I like to cook once, eat for a whole week. So I fill the oven with potatoes, for example. Or when I steamed vegetables, I’m steaming close to four pounds of vegetables because I have those bamboo steamers. You stack the bamboo and it’s so great. You can get them in Asian markets you can get them on Amazon. But these bamboo steamers are phenomenal. And that you can stack them. So you could do, like, three layers, three stacks or four stacks and you steam a ton of vegetables. Super delicious.

 

I have food already cooked in the fridge like the beans, and legumes, and the brown rice, and potatoes, and the vegetables. And then if we’re going somewhere, I’m just filling up some glass, whatever Tupperware and throwing it in the cooler. That was, for me the biggest trick. That was, like, the last thing to kind of make everything fall into place. Because if I were to eat out at a restaurant and go eat, even if it’s vegan food, it’s still covered in oil and just filled with salt and sugar and all kinds of stuff. I would feel kind of crappy for a few days after eating that. But then the cravings come back. And then it’s like a mental mind mess for a few days. Because then I’m like, fighting those little voice in my head saying, “Oh, you deserve this.” Or, “You should have this. You feel so deprived.” And then it becomes more of a mental emotional fight.

 

 

[01:13:40] Chef AJ: It’s so hard. The first bite is the only bite than anybody can refuse. And I just think it’s so much easier to stay on track, at least for me, than to constantly trying to have to get back on track.

 

 

[01:13:56] Ashley James: So seeing how you do it has really helped. And you talked about taking it into the movie theaters. My friend Naomi, who’s a listener – so she’s listening. Hi, Naomi. Her and my husband and I went to see the premiere of the Game Changers last month. And she brought in her cooler purse, she baked and seasoned chickpeas just like popcorn. So we just popped these wonderfully seasoned chickpeas into our mouth. And then, I think, she had hummus and dip. And then she had baked some kind of zucchini cookies that were – she did some fantastic thing with vegetables and made them into these cookie looking things. And so we just – it was like I didn’t feel deprived at all. I didn’t want that oily salty popcorn. Actually no one in the theater was eating bad food. It was kind of funny because they were all on board already. But yeah, we were sitting there just feeling really satisfied bringing our healthy food into the movie theater.

I love that. I love the ability to feel prepared. And it actually gives me a lot of – it gives me a sense of wellbeing to feel prepared no matter what. It feels so good eating this way that I want to stay on this path. It’s obviously working because my Naturopath says that my blood work keeps getting better and better and better every few months that I get it taken. So I’m not deprived at all. I just love it. I love it.

It’s kind of like the skeptic wants to ask this question, the skeptic amigos. Has anyone ever gotten unhealthy eating this way? Has anyone ever gone like, “Man, you know, my doctor put me back on steak because this wasn’t working for me.”

 

 

[01:15:39] Chef AJ: Well, I mean, I haven’t had a client that has happened to that really has followed the program the way it was laid out. But there are people that do their own variations with their own additions of food that don’t necessarily thrive or lose weight the same way. What I’ve seen though when people have been told to go back to meet by the doctors, it’s often the unhealthy vegans that are not following the health promoting diet. That are just vegans for ethical reasons, which is great, because I am as well. But they eat a junk food diet and they get some kind of a disease. And their doctor says, “Oh, well. It’s because you didn’t eat meat.” And I’d have seen people go back to eating meat because it’ll help. But not when following a whole food unprocessed plant based diet with enough calories from delicious fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes.

 

 

[01:16:28] Ashley James: Yeah, that’s right. I think a lot of people will learn a diet like you learn your lifestyle. And then start to make little alterations. Like start to add in alcohol or the sweets or the oil once in a while. They’re not going to give up the dairy in their coffee or something. They sort of negate those little things and then they start altering it more and more and more and making their own version of it. I’ve seen that happen in many other types of diets.

 

 

[01:17:00] Chef AJ: And you know, that’s fine. But then they complain that the program didn’t work. And that’s because they weren’t doing the program. It’s like people being vegan for over 42 years and people say, “Oh, I’m vegetarian. I eat chicken and fish occasionally.” Well, you’re not vegetarian. It’s like, “I’m faithful to my wife except when I go on business trips.” This is where the concepts of abstinence comes in. But people don’t like abstinence. It’s hard. It’s not sexy. And it’s not something most people look forward to doing. But I will tell you that complete abstinence is a lot easier than perfect moderation. And that is a direct quote from St. Augustine.

 

 

[01:17:38] Ashley James: Wow. I like it. It’s awesome. Yeah. So you have so many programs that I want to make sure that my listeners know about all your programs. So you have the website, eatunprocessed.com or chefajwebsite.com.

 

 

[01:17:58] Chef AJ: Right. They’re both the same website. Absolutely.

 

 

[01:18:01] Ashley James: Okay. So either. I’ll make sure the links to everything you do is in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Now, you have your ultimate weight loss program, which that’s the one I keep referring to this Facebook Group. And that’s part of the – the Facebook Group is part of that. But just let listeners know what is the Ultimate Weight Loss Program.

 

 

[01:18:23] Chef AJ: So what that is – just so they know so that I don’t want them to think that I’m there every second answering questions. I’m actually not in that group except for twice a month where I do a live q&a based on their questions to all the members, myself, and John Pierre. This is a pure supported group for people that are following the program. But what they get when they join is lots of audios and videos.

And just to explain what the program is, this was created before my book came out. So it might just be easier and more cost effective if they just want to pick up like the Kindle version of my book for less than 10 bucks to understand what the program is. But if they need the support, if they want to connect with the tribe of like minded people, then this is why they might want to join the program instead of just reading the book.

 

 

[01:19:06] Ashley James: It’s worth every penny. Your Facebook Group is worth every penny. And I told my friend this I said, “You know the videos and the audios are great. They’re all great. Of course, you can get it from the book too.” But really it’s worth every penny for the Facebook Group support. I go in that Facebook Group almost every day and get so much information. And I love sharing in that group. I love getting the inspiration from others. And the support is truly a beautiful community. So I highly recommend. That Facebook Group is phenomenal. Yeah. Absolutely.

 

 

[01:19:43] Chef AJ: Thank you so much. And you know what’s nice is that people get to know each other virtually. And then when we have our annual conference, which next year is moving from Las Vegas to Palm Springs in May, they know that people already. And so it’s like a reunion or old home week or going to camp. So that’s one of the nice things about it that the people have made some really nice connections and forged so many friendships. So That’s pretty cool.

And in July, I started a membership website, which is a little bit different way of delivering content. And it’s actually quite affordable if they go in for a whole year. It’s like $12 a month. But what I do is, every single week, Wednesdays at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, we go live where they can ask questions. And not just of me but I have just amazing experts like Dr. Doug Lyle and Dr. Alan Goldhamer that come in and do these classes or do some success stories where we interview people that had that. So we have a weekly interaction for at least an hour. Plus, just meal planning tools. And my partner, Toby, we just built this amazing system where they could go in and search anything that I’ve ever said. Like, if they have a question and it takes it right to the video. Because I’ve done almost 500 YouTube videos now. And it’s kind of hard, like if you have a question like, “Is stevia okay?” I don’t know where it is. But if you’re in the membership area, you just put the word stevia in. And anytime I’ve ever mentioned it in my life, the video will pop up. It’s very, very cool. And there’s a way to get an accountability partner. And we do, like, videos for yoga and Zumba. So it’s kind of cool. It’s just another group for people to have a different way of delivering content. Also, not everybody likes Facebook. And so the Feel Fabulous is not Facebook dependent. There is a group for it. But we interact with the website, which is very nice.

 

 

[01:21:33] Ashley James: Nice. So that’s feelfabulousoverforty.com?

 

 

[01:21:37] Chef AJ: Yeah. And if they go to slash register, they can have two weeks for free. So we wanted to do that because we don’t want somebody in there that’s going to be unhappy. So we give everybody two weeks for free. And they can see if they like it. They can print out the recipes. They can create their own customized meal plan. Find an accountability partner. I mean, the longer this goes, the more videos there are. But there’s just tons of these. Not everybody can be with you. live at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesdays. Many people are several hundred are always there on the group videos which we do through WebinarJam. But they can watch these as often as they want. And it’s kind of a really cool website. So check it out. You might like it.

 

 

[01:22:14] Ashley James: Awesome. Very cool. I love you, Chef AJ. I love what you do.

 

 

[01:22:19] Chef AJ: Thank you.

 

 

[01:22:19] Ashley James: And you know, you look like you’re in your 40s. I know that you’re –

 

 

[01:22:24] Chef AJ: Almost 60.

 

 

[01:22:25] Ashley James: I know right? And this – if any listener is vain and just really wants to freeze their youth and hold on to their youth as long as possible, you got to eat this way. Because every person I’ve interviewed who eats this way – I feel like even if you listed a dozen people, Dr. Allen Goldhamer, Dr. Esselstyn, you, Dr. Joel Fuhrman, and Dr. Joel Khan, and a handful of others, they all look 20 years younger than – and Dr. Bernard, they all look 20 years younger than they are. And they feel it. And it’s amazing that this way of eating prevents disease.

Now, some people like to say that the China study is bogus. And vegans don’t live a really long life. It’s complete baloney. That we have to eat meat in order to live a long life. Is there anything that you would like to say to that? I know you’re not a doctor.

 

 

[01:23:30] Chef AJ: No, I’m not.

 

 

[01:23:31] Ashley James: But you’ve interviewed a lot of them. You’ve worked with a lot of them. And this has been your passion to teach people how to eat in a way that helps them come back into balance, come back into health. Have you any information around that you can shed light on that –

 

 

[01:23:50] Chef AJ: Yeah. The China Study, I mean, I would refer your listeners to the book, The China Study, where they found that these people – yes, they ate about something like 10% of their calories from animal products. Not necessarily everybody’s ready to go or willing to go 100% vegan. But my goodness, to think that that’s what you’re supposed to eat and that’s where the majority of your calories are going to come from. Look at the Blue Zones by Dan Buettner. These successful populations, the longest lived people in history, and longest lived people today, it’s the Okinawans in Japan. The people on, I think, [inaudible 01:24:22] Costa Rica. There’s five locations.

 

 

[01:24:23] Ashley James: Right. [Inaudible 01:24:24], the Georgians –

 

 

[01:24:26] Chef AJ: They eat primarily – primarily – a plant based diet. We are not carnivores. Think about it, those little teeth that we have in our mouth called canine teeth, do you really think we could bite into flesh and eat it if it wasn’t killed for us and cooked by somebody else? No.

 

 

[01:24:49] Ashley James: Right. Go chase an elk.

 

 

[01:24:54] Chef AJ: I remember Harvey Diamond who wrote Fit For Life, who, fortunately, I don’t think is vegan anymore. He wrote a book once and he said, “You know, take a baby and put a carrot and a bunny next to the baby. And if the baby plays with the carrot and eats the bunny, I’ll give you a $10,000.”

 

 

[01:25:16] Ashley James: Oh, that’s so cute. I love it.

 

 

[01:25:17] Chef AJ: Is that funny?

 

 

[01:25:18] Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

[01:25:18] Chef AJ: Dr. Michael Greger once said, “I know I’m going to die. I just don’t want it to be my fault.” And so by eating the way that we eat, you really do make yourself bulletproof against so many of these Western diseases that our ancestors never suffered from. And we get to eat a healthy long life without destroying the planet, without harming the animals, and without harming ourselves.

 

 

[01:25:43] Ashley James: Beautifully said. Do you have any homework that you’d like to give us?

 

 

[01:25:49] Chef AJ: Maybe. I have a series I do every Wednesday called Weight Loss Wednesday. I think there’s about 150 episodes now. They shouldn’t watch all of them obviously unless they want to. But there’s a couple of them where they could maybe really learn, like, what I eat in a day so they can see. I think it’s Episode 36. So that they can see how much food you really need to eat if you want to eat in accordance with the principles of calorie density. Or Episode 24, I believe it is, the vegetable edition just to see how easy it is to prepare vegetables very easily. Those are the ones I’d recommend. I have a very short YouTube Easy Meals To Make You Thin just to kind of an overview. Or if they really want to know where I came from and how I achieve success, one called From Fat Vegan to Skinny Bitch.

I guess my homework would be just to try this for three weeks. There’s a holiday called Lent, where for 42 days people do incredibly difficult things like giving up things they love, like coffee or alcohol. Why not try this for three weeks? Just do an experiment. See how you feel. You can always go back.

 

 

[01:26:54] Ashley James: Brilliant. I love it. Thank you so much, Chef AJ for coming on.

 

 

[01:27:00] Chef AJ: My pleasure.

 

 

[01:27:01] Ashley James: You’re welcome back any time. I love what you do. And I’m so inspired by the work that you do. And I know that my listeners, especially the ones that take you up on your challenge, will also love it. I highly recommend reading your book on processed. And Episode 230 of my podcast is the one I did with Dr. Alan Goldhamer. And that’s when I first learned about his book with Dr. Lyle.

 

 

[01:27:29] Chef AJ: The pleasure trap.

 

 

[01:27:31] Ashley James: Yes. Where I learned about the book, The Pleasure Trap, you were the narrator.

 

 

[01:27:34] Chef AJ: Yeah. That was fun.

 

 

[01:27:36 ] Ashley James: That was great. I love it. Because I’m really so busy, sometimes I just can’t sit down and read a book. But man, I can definitely listen to one while driving. And what’s extra great is my husband gets to listen with me because we do a lot of driving together. And we both work from home. So when we leave the house, it’s like our quality time together. So we’ll go drive, you know, we’ll be together. Yeah, listening to you it was very pleasurable to listen to The Pleasure Trap. That’s a fantastic book to start with because it’s talking our history, or genealogy, or what we were designed to do. Which you’d mentioned is, we’re designed to seek out the most calorically dense foods possible. And that was fine 200 years ago when there wasn’t really highly, highly processed foods. And flour wasn’t in abundance. And sugar was definitely not an abundance. And so we still wouldn’t eat very unhealthy 200 years ago because we didn’t have access to this incredibly calorically dense food. And even meat wasn’t a daily staple for most people. They couldn’t afford it. Most people that ate meat, it would be something on the farm, right? So if you had to kill a chicken and pluck it and all that stuff, that’s pretty tiresome. That’s something that maybe they would do once a week or that was something like they do on Sunday or on Friday. That wasn’t a daily thing. And now, we’re sort of marketed, too, to expect to eat meat three times a day and have it basically be. And every meal has to include it. And so it’s been all marketed to us, our belief system. That’s why I love the movie, the one that’s about to be on Netflix really soon.

 

 

[01:29:28] Chef AJ: It’s on now. Are you talking about Game Changers? Because Game Changers is on Netflix and Amazon Prime at least right now.

 

 

[01:29:34] Ashley James: Is it on right now? Okay.  It’s on Netflix right now. I thought it was on the 26th. So it’s on Netflix right now. So Game Changers is great because it shows us – it kind of exposes – I love this documentary because it doesn’t do fear mongering. It doesn’t sort of make us feel belittled. Some other documentaries kind of beat us up and make us feel bad. This documentary, not at all. It feels really positive. But it does show us and expose how much our choices that we make every day are actually we’ve been programmed. We’ve been brainwashed by years and years and years of marketing. And so looking at that our bodies want to because it’s part of how we survived for however many thousands of years and however many generations.  We’ve looked for the foods that are the most pleasurable. And that’s because the pleasure, The Pleasure Trap, because the pleasurable foods are the high density caloric foods to help us survive famines.

And so this whole book – which your audio book is wonderful so listeners can just get it from Amazon and listen to Chef AJ narrate The Pleasure Trap by Dr. Goldhamer and Dr. Lyle – helps us to understand why eating the way you teach us to eat is actually the healthiest for brain and our body and also for our emotional state. So it’s really beautiful because it helps break that addiction. So if someone finds that they’re addicted to drugs or alcohol or food, this is a fantastic book and a fantastic diet as well. So I love that. Thank you so much for that.

 

 

[01:31:21] Chef AJ: Yeah. Absolutely. I love that book. That book was a game changer for many people.

 

 

[01:31:27] Ashley James: And I hope I hope this interview and your information will be a game changer for many people as I know it has been for me. Is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?

 

 

[01:31:38] Chef AJ: Let’s see, I think I’ve said just about everything. Just eat plants. Eat plants.

 

[01:31:47] Ashley James: I just wanted to make sure I squeezed every drop of wisdom I could get out of you before saying goodbye. So eat plants everyone.

 

 

[01:31:54] Chef AJ: Eat plants, fit into your pants. That’s what I say.

 

 

[01:31:55] Ashley James: Eat plants, fit in your pants. Love it. Okay. Fantastic. Awesome. Thank you.

 

 

[01:32:00] Chef AJ: Thanks, Ashley. Thanks everybody. Take care everyone.

 

 

[01:32:03] Outro:

Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program.

Get Connected With Chef AJ:

Official Website

The Wisdom Course

Healing Movement

Feel Fabulous Over Forty

Books By Chef AJ

Unprocessed

 

The Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss

Check Out Other Episodes With Chef Aj!

Episode 278: Food Addiction

 

 

Overseas by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9 Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/oversas Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/YnbgCSf-ANI

Nov 8, 2019

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 Jon Paul's Site: https://www.breathewithjp.com

 

Breathwork

https://www.learntruehealth.com/breathwork

Highlights:

  • Four alienations: nature, each other, work, ourselves
  • Grief gets stuck in the lungs. Breathwork clears out grief out of the lungs
  • There’s nothing you’re going to get from the outside that’s going to make you enough on the inside
  • Breathwork makes you realize that you are enough
  • Breathwork is an adjunct to 12-step programs for people to get sober
  • Trauma is passed down the DNA
  • We breathe differently depending on what state we’re in
  • Be willing to be an explorer, a scientist within yourself
  • Contraindications of breathwork

 

In this episode, Jon Paul Crimi tells us how breathwork helped him turn his life around. He tells us stories of how breathwork transformed other people’s lives as well. He also explains the breathwork technique to us and the contraindications of breathwork.

 

 [0:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker and welcome to another episode of Learn True Health podcast.

Join the Facebook group Learn True Health on Facebook because I’ve got some exciting news coming up. I’m going to be announcing it there first and I want you to be the first to hear it. So please join the Learn True Health Facebook group. Plus we have some awesome giveaways that always happen and wonderful conversations. It’s a great group to be in, a great community. Very supportive community. Jump on my email list. I give you seven days of videos that I filmed with naturopathic physicians teaching you the foundations of health. All good information that everyone should know. Very fun course. It’s all free. So go to LearnTrueHealth.com and a pop up happens. Just put in your email. I promise I will not spam you. I send out maybe three emails a month. But you’ll get every day, for seven days, you will get videos that I filmed with these naturopaths who are wonderful doctors teaching the foundations of health. So join the Facebook group and get on the website and join the email list so that you get the news first because I have some really exciting news coming up. I want to make sure that you’re connected so that you get it.

You’re going to love today’s interview. I loved, loved interviewing Jon Paul and I can’t wait to have him back on the show. I think this information is something that 100% of the population needs to hear. You know some interviews are just for women or some interviews are just for people with thyroid problems. This interview is for 100% of the population. I’m very excited for you to hear it. Please, share it with those that you love that you know it will help. Help me to spread this information and get it out to as many people as possible so we can help all of our loved ones and everyone we care about to learn true health. Enjoy today’s interview.

Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 391.

 

[0:02:19] Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s guest. We have on with us Jon Paul Crimi. I love your last name. I’m saying it like you told me to say it. Like an Italian, Crimi.

 

[0:02:31] Jon Paul Crimi: That’s right. Kreme. It’s beautiful. I love it. Thank you.

 

[0:02:35] Ashley James: Jon Paul has a wonderful website breathewithjp.com. We were in the presence of a celebrity here. I’m feeling the pressure. Feel the Hollywood pressure. You’ve been in Hollywood for the last 20 years with the bigwigs. You are sought after. Your classes are full. Your teacher trainings are full. Your breath technique that you’ve developed over the last 20 years has helped people to become very successful in the Olympics, in Hollywood, CEOs, major corporations and executives. So today we get to jam with you and figure out what’s up with breathwork and why are all the celebrities just jumping on the bandwagon? What’s up? So good to have you here today.

 

[0:03:27] Jon Paul Crimi: Thanks. It’s great to be here. At first, I don’t think I’m a celebrity. I’m more celebrity adjacent. I’m like next to the celebrities or working with the celebrities. I’ve worked with a lot of celebrities over the years and I found that when I’m standing next to some big celebrity I’m pretty much invisible. It’s okay. I’m happy to be invisible. Lately, I’ve been in the spotlight with breathwork. It’s really taken off and people have really taken to it which is it’s fantastic to see because it changes people’s lives in a very short amount of time which is great because we live in this society today that everybody wants a quick fix and there really aren’t any quick fixes out there, right? But this actually is a quick fix. In one session, the most common statement I hear is like, ‘Oh my God, it’s like 20 years of therapy without having to say a word.’ So if you can feel that way after one session or one class or one workshop you know, it sells out. People come in droves. They have this experience then they bring their family members back and their friends back, everyone they know that needs it which is everyone right now on the planet seems like.

 

[0:04:36] Ashley James: You were telling me before we hit record that you were just in at Hay House, which is a publishing company, Hay House summit.

 

[0:04:46] Jon Paul Crimi: Wellso glad it was the Heal. You know the Heal documentary on Netflix? Heal had a Hay House online summit. So it was great. It was like Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Michael Beckwith, Dr. Sue Mortimer. It was like doctor, doctor, doctor, Jon Paul Crimi, doctor, doctor, doctor.

 

[0:05:09] Ashley James: I like in your website you say, “I’m not a doctor. I’m not your doctor.” But what you do helps people to access their own ability to heal itself. After you were on the summit, your interview is only available for 24 hours you said. After that hundreds, hundreds of people came to your website and bought your five-day course. You have this course. We are definitely going to talk about it because I’m interested in learning more about it. Then you started to get the flood of emails. You’ve been telling me that the weekends been non-stop emails of people telling you that what they learned and what they’ve done with you and your coursework so far has been nothing sort of life-changing.

 

[0:05:46] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean, to read the emails and to hear the stories from people saying that they let go of trauma that they’ve been holding on to for their whole life. That their bodies are starting to heal. Because so much of our physical health is due to emotional health, right? So if we can start to clear out that stuff, those negative emotions or things that we’re storing in our body then some of that physical health will start to get better. So we can dive into that because that’s a big part of my own personal story as well. So just hearing these stories from people who are doing this course all over the world and having this incredible results and then they want to turn around and give it to other people, to show it to other people. So I’m creating these like soldiers for good out there of people taking other people to breathwork and changing lives. It’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done. It’s the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done. In a million years I never would’ve thought I would be doing something like this. I’m not that guy. I’m not your typical guy.

 

[0:06:48] Ashley James: Guru?

 

[0:06:49] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I’m not a guru. I don’t like that. I’m a breath teacher, you know. I’m just not that guy. I’m from the South Shore of Boston Massachusetts where people are kind of rough and tumble. I grew up in a really rough way. This thing was never on my radar. None of this stuff was on my radar but the universe has this funny way of pushing you down roads through pain, right?

 

[0:07:19] Ashley James: Well we’ll definitely get into your story in a minute. I studied Huna which is the ancient Polynesian spiritual practice. I can’t really call it a religion but in Hawaii, they practice Huna every step of, if they’re practicing Huna is part of their life. It’s part of how they go fishing. It’s part of how they are a parent. It’s part of how they practice medicine. It’s part of how they chant. It’s every aspect of their life. They have a saying in Hawaii. They call foreigners or white people haoles. They say it, it’s a derogatory almost a racist term but haole means without breath. Imagine a hundred years ago, the ancient Polynesian Hawaiian people have never met any foreigners and they were living in harmony. There was actually no recorded accounts of mental illness at all. There was no depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, nothing. People were fishing and gardening and dancing and racing families and they were harmonious. Then these ships came out of nowhere. Most of the people there, the natives were half-naked because it’s really hot. These people, these missionaries come dressed head to toe in wool. Holding bibles and telling them that they needed to stop being sinners, get dressed. The Hawaiians noticed that these people never pause and take a breath. They were just like breathe shallow and be kind of nervous and emotional, uptight at the same time. The Hawaiians would actually take a breath, part of the practice, part of their Huna was that when you met someone to say hello, you would take a pause and you would take a breath and then you would say hello. That you would pause to eat. You would pause before you fish and take a breath. Everything they did was they would stop, take a breath and then do something. So when these foreigners came and they never paused to take a breath they called them haole without breath. I thought that was so interesting, that distinction of our Western culture that we are without breath.

 

[0:09:49] Jon Paul Crimi: You know, I’ve heard the term haole quite a bit because I have some surfer friends from Hawaii. I have a really good friend who was in this movie North Shore. He says in the movie, “He’s so haole he doesn’t even know he’s haole.” Talking about the white guy in the movie. He doesn’t even know that he doesn’t belong, you know. The shallow breath that you’re talking about, there’s a saying, ‘Shallow breath, shallow life. Deep breath, deep life.’  Hearing that story made me think we’re so disconnected know in our society. The four alienations, right?

The first alienation is we’re disconnected from nature, from the world, from the earth. They were working in nature. They were fishing and they had their feet in the ground. So we’re disconnected in that and we’re destroying the planet. Then we’re disconnected from each other. We’re on social media but we’re not really connecting with people and listening and taking them in and spending quality time as much. We’re disconnected from our work, from what we do. So many people don’t love what they do for work anymore. So we’re disconnected from that. We’re disconnected from ourselves. That’s the biggest one. Those people were connected that’s why there was no schizophrenia, there was no mental illness, there was no sickness. I mean, it’s just as simple as that. It’s like when you have those things in place it’s so obvious for me to see now.

I work with people. In my other business, in my sober coaching, sober companion business I’ve worked with very successful people. Millionaires, some billionaires, actors, and musicians. They’re isolated. They’ve isolated themselves off from the world. They can’t understand why they’re not happy. Everybody else can’t understand why they’re not happy because it’s seemingly what society dictates that they have it all. They have a career, they’re beautiful, they have money, they have success. But yet, if you look at those things I just explained, they don’t have any of those things. They’re isolated off. They’re disconnected from all those things. When you start to sit inside and isolated yourself off from the world your brain starts to play tricks on you when you start to think about all the stuff. You start to read all the stuff online about you. You get down this rabbit hole. I can see how they quickly make themselves sick with that.

 

[0:12:22] Ashley James: Right. I was just reading the latest statistics of suicide rated among our youth is now the second leading cause of death. Suicide went up 52% I believe it was for ages between 10 and 24. Just yesterday, between –

 

[0:12:46] Jon Paul Crimi: What is it an 11-year-old or a 10-year-old? You’re playing outside.

 

[0:12:53] Ashley James: A nine-year-old committed suicide about a month ago. It was in the news. It’s just, what’s going on that we are so disconnected.

 

[0:13:00] Jon Paul Crimi: That hurts my heart.

 

[0:13:01] Ashley James: This is so recent. This is just this generation. I mean, it went up 52% in the last 10 years.

 

[0:13:08] Jon Paul Crimi: Well, what do you think that is?

 

[0:13:11] Ashley James: We’ve got social media.

 

[0:13:12] Jon Paul Crimi: Social media. That’s it. That’s it.

 

[0:13:14] Ashley James: We’re disconnected. We’re disconnected like you said. We’re not meeting face-to-face and we’re isolated. We’re more and more isolated. We think we’re connected digitally but we’re actually more and more isolated.

 

[0:13:26] Jon Paul Crimi: I agree. I think what happens too is that you know I had a hard time at school. But at least when I got home from school I had my house and my safe backyard. All my stuff, right? Now these kids, they get home from school and now they’re bullied on social media and it’s endless. You can’t get away from it. It’s worse on social media than in school. They’re constantly being bullied and barraged. You know, I had someone close to me that I knew, one of my nieces. She was bullied on social media where they created a website or created a profile for that wasn’t her. I mean, it was pretty serious. She had a lot of problems around it. Just the things that can happen online are you know awful to people. When your brain is that young it’s not fully formed yet. I don’t think you realize that all that online stuff it really isn’t real you know.

 

[0:14:25] Ashley James: It feels like the real world.

 

[0:14:26] Jon Paul Crimi: It feels like the real world for some people. They can’t separate that out because they just think that is the real world. It’s scary that suicide is an option. I have a lot of experience with people close to me committing suicide. It’s very difficult. Part of that course, one of the days of the Five Day Emotional Detox is things called the ‘transformational letter.’ That was formed out of loss of someone that was very dear to me that committed suicide. What was happening to me was I couldn’t move the grief out. It was stuck. I went and saw someone who was really wise and they told me, “Write a letter to him saying everything you wish you could say, everything you want to say, everything you can’t say.” I was like, “Yeah. I’ve heard that before.” Then he said, “Write a letter back from him saying everything you want him to say, everything he can’t say, right.” So I did the two letters and then I laid down and I did the breathwork and it was incredible. It transformed everything for me because the letter has brought all the stuff up to the surface. It made me see what I couldn’t see because I was just stuck in a loop that I felt guilty because I could’ve done more, I could’ve said more. I felt responsible in some way. The letters really help me get clear about my part in it and also what I wanted from him, what I needed from him. Then the breathwork really cleared it out of my lungs because grief they say gets stuck in the lungs. We hold on to it. We just keep relieving it over and over again. We just carry it around with us. It moved the grief out and threw me. I was able to get some kind of measure of compassion for him and what he was going through and for myself, let myself off the hook. Because with suicide there is an element of guilt to that that we carry sometimes. I mean, it’s hard. To see that it’s so big and it’s so prevalent in our society that it just hurts my heart to hear about a 10-year-old or a 9-year-old committing suicide. It just, it breaks my heart. I’m really sensitive. It was very difficult to grow up where I grew up being as sensitive as I am. So I had to find ways to deal with it. The ways that I found to deal with it were not great tools, not the right tools. Whether it was through alcohol or drugs or candy or TV or whatever. Just trying to checkout from my feelings. Now, I have found all these really powerful, healthy ways of allowing, expressing those feelings. I’ve just gotten to a place and maybe part of it is just growing. Really, I think it’s the breathwork. It’s gotten me to this place. Someone actually messaged me today and they said, I’m really open at night. I’m really sensitive and I cry and I get emotional in my classes and in my workshops and in my teacher trainings. She said to me, “Were you like that before the breathwork?” I said, “No. I wasn’t like that before the breathwork. I couldn’t access those feelings. I wouldn’t allow those feelings and I certainly wouldn’t allow it in a room full of people.” Now I’ve just gotten into this place now where I’m like I don’t care if I’m on a stage of 200 people. I don’t care if I’m on a podcast or an interview or something like that and I start to get emotional because that’s what I’m feeling, right? There’s nothing wrong with that. Let me allow that emotion. I’m sad that nine-year-olds are committing suicide. It’s terrible, right? So let me just allow that for a minute instead of going, I don’t want to feel that. Because I need to –

 

[0:18:27] Ashley James: That’s so healthy.

 

[0:18:28] Jon Paul Crimi: I need to be present in this interview. I need to do the best interview I can or I need to do the best class I can. It’s like, no no let me just be sad and let that come through you. What I’ve discovered just coincidentally because I was actually teaching breathwork when that guy committed suicide and I wasn’t going to cancel the classes and I said, “I’m going to go.” I’m so emotional in classes and what happened was me being so emotional in classes allowed everybody else in the room to let their emotions out and let their emotions go. So it gave permission for people breathing in the room to get emotional. We don’t get that permission, a lot of us, growing up. Be strong, be tough, never let anyone see you cry, never let anyone see your emotions. That’s a lot of the messages that I heard growing up. Most of the people I knew growing up hurt growing up. We get these messages. Knowing what I know now is terrible because if I was to say to you, “Listen, Ashley, I don’t want you to go in the bathroom. Don’t go to the bathroom okay.” You’d be like what? That’s so unhealthy. You’re going to die, right? But why is crying is the same exact thing. Our bodies need it. It’s a mechanism within our bodies to cleanse us and help us release certain emotions. Yet I have people who come to my classes and my things and say, ‘Oh my God, that’s the first time I’ve cried in three years or five years.” You’re going to get sick. You’re going to get some horrible disease if you don’t start allowing those emotions because we’re supposed to cry. We’re supposed to allow those things. For some reason, people are not. They’re fighting all of that stuff. It’s causing a lot of health issues out there in the world.

 

[0:20:14] Ashley James: Men are taught not to cry. I caught my husband. My husband’s very open-minded. He’s not like a 1950s male that thinks we all need to eat meat and men don’t have feelings. He’s very evolved. He has caught himself saying to out four-year-old son, “Men don’t cry. Don’t cry. Stop crying. Men don’t cry.” Something along that. I jumped down his throat when he says that.

 

[0:20:46] Jon Paul Crimi: Well just have him watch The Mask You Live In. That documentary. That’s a game-changer. When you watch that as a man and you see what we do to boys, to little boys when we put that on them. It just breaks your heart and you go, “Why are we doing this to little boys?” They’re little boys. They’re just as sensitive as little girls. There’s no difference in the sensitivity level. When my son cries, I just pick him up and I rub his back and I say, “Yeah. That’s okay. Let it out.” I heard a lot, ‘you’re too sensitive,’ growing up. What does that mean? There’s something wrong with me? There’s something wrong with my feelings? If I say something bothers me the response was, ‘you’re too sensitive.’ So now whenever I said bothers me is invalid, it’s me, there’s something wrong with me, right? Our parents, if they knew better they’d do better. A lot of our stuff comes from our parents. Their stuff come from their parents. It’s passed on generationally. Trauma is passed on generationally as well. So I say, ‘your problems may have other people’s names on it but your solutions have your name on it. It’s up to you if you’re going to do something about it and change it and change it for your children.

 

[0:22:10] Ashley James: Absolutely. We can really only heal ourselves and we can make a better environment for our children. I want to get into your story. What happened in your life that led you to create this type of breathwork that helps people heal physically and emotionally?

 

[0:22:32] Jon Paul Crimi: So I didn’t create it. This breathwork has been around for thousands of years from India, right? I wish I created it.

 

[0:22:41] Ashley James: Well you created your own unique style though.

 

[0:22:44] Jon Paul Crimi: I did. I created a technique. Breathwork has been around for thousands of years from India. What happened was for me is I discovered this incredible technique and it was life-changing for my first session. But the package that it was wrapped in, the way it was done was so new agey and woo woo that I somehow had an open enough mind to do it. I mean I just been to Tony Robbins and I think it cracked me open. A couple of people that didn’t know each other said to me, ‘you need to go do breathwork.’ I was like, ‘what’s breathwork?’ and I find this place. I went to this class and there were five or six people there. It was very woo woo, new agey crystals and oils and all of it. It was just awful for me then. The experience was undeniable. I started doing it on my own every day and at one point I said, “God, if somebody did this in a way that wasn’t new agey and it wasn’t woo woo, they would have 200 people in the room and they would change the world.”

I started teaching it. I was never going to teach it but I somehow started teaching it. I took all that woo woo stuff out of it. I actually added in all these other stuff to make it even more palatable for people. Then I added in a few more components. It just built and it just kept tweaking it and going, ‘how would I want this if I was on the other side? If I was the person laying on the floor right now, what the best experience that I can deliver for somebody?’ So I just shaped it and honed it and it became that. Now, tons of people are doing it the same way. Some of them had been trained by me. Some of them haven’t. That’s a whole other story? You know, it’s been incredible. It’s been an incredible ride. At first, no one would come do it. I would tell people, “You got to come try this thing.” And they go, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” I would post about it. There were times that one person would show up. I was renting the room and losing money. I was like, “I want to help people but I don’t want to lose money on the process.” But now, it’s just grown massively. It’s incredible. Everything’s sold out that I do. I’m just so grateful, you know.

                                                                                     

[0:24:59] Ashley James: Take us back to when it wasn’t working out and there’s one person in the room. What happened? How did you all of a sudden become so popular?

 

[0:25:10] Jon Paul Crimi: So, it was kind of a series of events. I kept pursuing it where I would post on Facebook and trying to get friends of mine. I have a lot of friends in recovery. I would just tell them. I hear them share how depressed they were or how angry they were and all this stuff. People could see the change in me. At first, when I was doing it I wasn’t even telling people and people are like, “What’s going on with you. You seem very calm. You’re very different.” I was really angry when I found it. I was so angry because some career dreams hadn’t worked out for me. I’ve been kind of ripped off in Hollywood. I was just so bitter and so angry. You can’t hide that. It just comes out. They say that anger is the mask that sadness wears. The truth is that I was just sad. I was disappointed. I was heartbroken that things didn’t work out. That I got ripped off. All these different things had happened to me. But I didn’t want to feel sad so it came out as anger.

I started doing this breathwork and it just released that anger out of me. It just cleared that anger out of me. It allowed the sadness to come out. It allowed me to cry. It allowed me to feel gratitude and love in a way that I had never experienced before. So I was just doing it every day sometimes twice a day. I could just feel these things leaving my body. I could feel things in my body that had happen to me like I broke my arm when I was a kid. There was something going on in my arm right there. It was healing all these areas, all these traumas within my body. It just started to change me and clients and friends were saying, ‘you seem different.’ I finally started telling people, “I’m doing this weird breathwork thing.’

There was no research, nothing out there on it at the time. I would try and find information. I was a personal trainer, I was a celebrity trainer at Gold’s Gym in Venice. I had the very scientific brain of what’s happening in my body. I couldn’t find the science around it. There is some science out there now. They’re doing more and more studies on it. They’re just starting to go into the studies. Right now, they’re doing a study with breathwork on veterans with PTSD. I think the results are going to be amazing from that. I’ve had veterans with PTSD come in and work with me and see them heal in front of my eyes. See them just transform and clear all these stuff out. So I’m so looking forward to watching this thing grow and it’s growing really fast.

I tell people, “Imagine if I told you there’s this thing, it’s called yoga. It’s going to be everywhere.” They’re like, “Really, yoga? It’s going to be everywhere?” I’m like, “But it’s going to be even bigger than yoga.” A lot of people will go, ‘I’m 300 pounds. I can’t do yoga,’ or ‘I’m not flexible’ or ‘I’m not this.’ They just don’t have that confidence in their body type to go into a yoga studio whereas anyone can go to a breathwork class and just lay on the floor and breathe.

Breathwork, I should straighten this out, breathwork is an umbrella term, right? It’s like saying fitness. If I said I do fitness you’d be like, ‘Okay fitness. What do you do? Do you CrossFit? Do you do cycling? What do you do? Do you do yoga?’ So breathwork, the type of breathwork that I teach, the technique that I teach, and I’ve studied them all but this is the one that I find is the most powerful. So I work with this one specifically it’s called connected breathing, circular breathing.

So in life, you take a breath in through your nose ideally down into your belly ideally. Let it out either through your nose or your mouth. Then you pause for a while and you talk or you rest. In breathwork, we breathe in and out. And through this technique, through conscious connected breathing, through circular breathing, we breathe in and out through our mouth down into our belly without resting in between. It’s intense. So a lot of people have this misconception that they’re going to come and it’s going to be this relaxing kind of like a meditation class and it’s not that at all. It’s a workout. You lay on the floor and you breathe intensely through your mouth for about 28 minutes. In that process, all that crazy things happen in your body physically. All these things happen emotionally. All these things happen mentally. You know, most people have this huge release of emotions. It doesn’t matter if you believe it or not or you think it’s going to work or any of that. It’s undeniable for anyone. In fact, the more resistant to it you are the bigger the experience. That’s what I love about it. I’ll have some women who will do it and then she’ll go, ‘my husband or my boyfriend would never do this but he’ll do with you because you’re a guy guy.’ So the next week or the next month I see the woman there with her boyfriend or husband. He’s just sitting there like, ‘I can’t believe she dragged me to this.’ Then afterward he comes up to me and I can see he’s been crying. He’s had this big experience and he’s like, ‘Can I give you a hug? I never experienced anything like that. That was the most profound experience. It was life-changing.’ That’s what I hear a lot. It’s life-changing. So to answer your question, it slowly started to grow person by person. You get one person who has a huge experience, they would go and tell everyone they know. Then next week they would come back with two or three people. Then so on and so on and so on. It took a while.

There was a meditation studio that opened up in Los Angeles. The owner was really good at marketing. She got people in there. She had me come teach there and my classes grew very fast in there and they were sold out within a couple of months. So I was doing a couple of classes a week there with 66 people in the room because that was as many as we could pack in like sardines. There were 20 people on the waitlist every Monday and Wednesday night. It was just wild. Then I eventually left there and rented this church space, this huge church space in Los Angeles and filled that up. That’s what I still use to this day when I travel back to Los Angeles. I live in Bend, Oregon now. I put 120 people in that class, in that church. When I go to town I’ll do two back-to-back classes sold out which is amazing. So, I’ll fly to Los Angeles say I’m leaving in two weeks. I’ll do a teacher training on Saturday and Sunday where I teach people how to teach it. Then I do two classes on Monday at that church. It’s incredible. It’s an incredible weekend for me. Then I come back to Bend, Oregon where I live with my family and enjoy my life and spend time with my kids and chase my kids around the yard.

 

[0:31:52] Ashley James: That sounds so awesome.

 

[0:31:54] Jon Paul Crimi: It is.

 

[0:31:55] Ashley James: Well, I have so many questions. The constant breathing, the first thing that comes to mind, don’t people pass out? Don’t they get so dizzy? Because I’ve done that prana breathing, pranayama and you get lightheaded. No wonder you have everyone lay down. They might fall over. So do people ever faint or get really lightheaded and they’re afraid of fainting or does that just pass?

 

[0:32:24] Jon Paul Crimi: So it passes. One of the things, when I break it down and I usually break it down in a really funny way in front of the room. I say, “There are three areas that you have to overcome to do this thing to really have a big incredible experience. Just three tiny areas. Just physically, mentally and emotionally. If you could just overcome those three little areas you’re going to have this incredible experience. Here’s what’s going to happen to you.

Physically, things are going to happen in your body that is going to freak you out. Your arms are going to get tingly and weird. Your hands, your fingers can clamp up. It’s called tetany. It’s like claw hands. It freaks people up but it goes away. Your jaw can get tight. You have all these sensations. You’re going to get dizzy. You can get nauseous. You can get lightheaded. All that will go away. It will pass. You have to push through it if you want to have the experience.

The second part is the emotional part, right? So emotions are going to come up. Let them come up. Let them come out. A lot of us are told that we shouldn’t cry, right? A lot of us are told to be strong. Let that stuff out, cry if it comes out for you. Whatever. So let the emotions out.

Then the last part is the mental part. This is actually the toughest part. I notice for most people. Because the brain doesn’t want you to do this. Your brain doesn’t want you to do anything difficult, hard or uncomfortable. So you have to override that, right? Just like going to the gym or anything else. But with this thing, your brain really freaks out because it does this thing called transient hypofrontality. It shuts off part of your brain, part of your frontal lobe. The critic that we all have that tells us we’re not enough. You’re not smart enough. You’re not thin enough. You’re not rich enough. You’re not skinny enough. Whatever. It just tells you you’re not enough, that you’re never going to do anything. We all have this critic in our head all the time. It turns that off. It’s the most incredible feeling when you can turn that off. You can go accomplish anything with your life when you could turn that off. But the brain doesn’t want you to turn that off. So it does everything it can to get you to stop. So it will be like, ‘Ashley, stop doing this. You’re going to pass out. You’re having a stroke. I know he said this can happen to your hands but you’re having a stroke Ashley.’” It will literally freak you out. Some people can’t override. Eventually, you will override it. It’s like stepping out of an airplane. You’re body’s not designed to step out of an airplane to go sky diving, right? So you have to override everything inside of your body physically to step out that door. This is very similar in that way.

The hardest part is the first 12 minutes and then eventually you just go, I’m fine and it just kicks in. The breath starts taking over and you start having this almost psychedelic experience in some way. It’s very incredible. It’s hard to describe. It’s different for everybody. It’s different every time you do it. So I’ve been doing it for a while now and every time I do it it’s still different. So, I tell people, ‘Come back, it’s going to be different.’ Then they go, ‘Oh my God. That was different.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, do it on a regular basis and it will change your life. The way I used it to change my life was I would wake up in the morning and my head would be talking trash to me. I would just lay down and breathe. Okay, let’s get to work on this sober companion business. Let’s get this work on how do we build this breathwork to help more people? How do we do this? How do we build online courses? I don’t know anything about building an online course but let me just breathe and clear out that critic that tells me I can’t build an online course because I can barely use Facebook properly. Let me turn that critic off and just get to work.’ What you can accomplish is incredible when you’re not talking yourself out of it and telling yourself that you can’t do things.

 

[0:36:13] Ashley James: You’ve been teaching or helping people to be sober, get sober and stay sober for a long time now. Longer than you’re teaching your breathwork, correct?

 

[0:36:25] Jon Paul Crimi: Correct, yeah. I’ve been sober 19 ½ years. Since March 5, 2000. I got sort of pulled in to helping people get sober about a year after I got sober. That was transformative to watch other people get sober and be a part of that changed my life. Then I was a celebrity trainer and then someone sort of dragged me into this world of sober coaching, sober companioning which is a high-end niche thing where it started out for rock stars. Rock stars would get out of rehab and they’d need to go on the road for tours and they’d need support. So they would put somebody who was sober on the road with them who knew what they were doing, right? Then they moved into movie stars and TV stars and now it’s CEOs, wealthy children, children of wealthy people, right? Because it’s not inexpensive. Insurance doesn’t cover it, unfortunately. But instead of going to rehab which is a bubble, right? It’s easy to stay sober in rehab for 30 days or whatever the times is because you’re in this bubble and they’re guarding you around. What a sober companion does is they go into your regular life and they help you get sober in your regular life whether that is in your work environment, your home environment. Whatever it is you do, they help you build that rehab in your life and teach you to have a sober lifestyle. It’s like taking a tree that’s sick out of the environment, putting it into rehab, nursing back to health and then putting it back in the environment that it got sick in. It doesn’t make any sense. So let’s nurse the tree back to health in its environment or let’s take it out of the environment, get it healthy, then bring it back with someone that can help it stay healthy in that environment.

 

[0:38:14] Ashley James: So, for many years you were working with people to get sober and stay sober. Then you discover this breathwork and then you adapted your own enhanced version of breathwork that you now teach to many people. When you began to incorporate this breathwork with those who you were helping to get and stay sober, what changes did you see take place?

 

[0:38:44] Jon Paul Crimi: Oh my God. Because people who were newly sober or don’t want to be sober, I mean there’s a lot going on there. I would see people just flipping out. I’m screaming and yelling. I’m going to go get high or I’m going to go jump the balcony. Just this crazy person in front of me. Then I go, ‘Okay. I’ll tell you what. Let’s get high right now.” They’ll look at me like what? I go, ‘Lay down on the floor. I’m going to get you high.’ Then they go, ‘Shut up.’ And I go, ‘No, no. Just lay down on the floor. I’m going to get you high. If you don’t like this, if it isn’t an incredible experience, we’ll go get some drugs.’ Of course, I’m not going to get them drugs but I would say that, right? They go, ‘All right. I’ll take that deal.’ So they’d lay down and I go, ‘You have to do what I say though. You have to push through the discomfort. It’s going to get weird.’ Here’s the thing, alcoholics and addicts, they don’t care if it’s uncomfortable if it’s weird. If it starts to make them feel, it does put you in a bit of an altered state. If it starts to make them feel that, they’re in.

My joke was in the class I could always see who the alcoholics and addicts were in the room because they’re trying to suck all the air out of the room. They’re breathing 10 times harder than everybody else in the room because once they start feeling something, feeling weird they’re into it. Whereas regular people, ‘Oh, I feel weird. I want to slow this down or back off or I don’t like it,’ you know. So I could spot the addicts rather going twice as hard.

So I do this session with them and then they’d come and they’d sit up afterward, and I do this cool stuff after the breathing where I have you reach out and pull moments into of your heart. I’ll say, ‘Put an arm in the air and find a moment where you felt grateful for something, for someone. Where are you? What are you doing? Who are you with? What are you grateful for in this moment? Who are you grateful for at this moment? Step into it and then pull it down to your heart.’ So you could hear the emotion in my voice. It’s like I’m so grateful that I get to do this thing. So I’m leading people through it, these moments of gratitude, of love, of all this incredible stuff and I’m feeling it myself. I’m going through it with them. So I do that people after the breathwork and it’s a really special thing that I’ve added in there that I kind of picked up from Tony Robbins. I adapted it from a technique that he uses and I tweaked it.

So I do these sessions with people that are flipping out. Then they’d sit up afterward and they would be a different person. Their energies are different. They’re different. They look different in the eyes. They’re calm and they go, ‘Oh, wow. That wasn’t really I thought it was going to be at all.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my God. Who is this person?’ This person doesn’t sound the same. They don’t look the same. I’m meeting this person for the first time. It is a different person now in the room with me. It’s a trip. I’ve worked with schizophrenics. It’s kind of like that. They’ve got a whole another personality, well that’s multiple personalities. That’s not schizophrenia, but it’s like another person shows up in a good way. In a really good way because they’ve turned off all the noise in their head that’s telling them, ‘I need to go get high. I’m too uncomfortable of whatever it is I’m feeling.’ I mean, that’s what it comes down to. It’s like, I can’t sit with discomfort in my body, in my body right now. I need something to take me out of that discomfort. Whether that something is alcohol, whether it’s drugs, whether it’s food or sex or TV or the gym. It’s like, I can’t just sit and allow the feelings to be what they need to be. When we could learn how to do that, people say that meditation is great for that. I think meditation, seated meditation is a really advanced thing especially for an addict or an alcoholic. They have a hard time sitting still.

So breathwork is really great for that because you could lay down on your back. I was a trainer so I approached it like it was a workout. Okay, I’m going to lay down on my back. I’m going to breathe in through my mouth as big as I can to my belly. If anybody’s listening to this in the car, please don’t start doing this in your car. It’s very dangerous when you’re in your car. You need to be at home laying down. I would just say, ‘Okay, we’re going to lay down and do this technique.’ So I took all the woo wooness out of it, the new ageyness out of it. I just looked at it like a breathing technique. But there is something magical that happens there. I can’t deny that and that is transformative. I’ve had connections which you know I’m not religious but someone might call them spiritual connections. I don’t usually talk about that because I think that that’s really personal to each person. Everybody’s got their own beliefs and what they feel and what takes it in. I’ve had a gang member come up to me one time after class and he said, “Can I talk to you for a second?” Pulled me aside and he was like looking around and he said, “Man, I felt the presence of like God or something like that when I did that. Is that normal?” And I said, “Yeah. I mean it’s different for everybody.” That guy came on a regular basis and changed his life.

 

[0:43:40] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[0:43:42] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean, I’m going to get choked up just talking about it. I mean it’s just the things that I’ve seen. The people that I see transform in front of my eyes. We’re walking, so many people are walking thinking that they’re just not enough. They’re just not whole like we talked about. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of the biggest celebrities on the planet and some of the most successful people on the planet. They all suffer from I’m not enough. In fact, a lot of them suffer from it more than your average person. That’s what drives them to be so successful. Because when I get this Oscar, when I get this gold medal, when I get this Grammy, when I make a billion dollars I will finally have reached this thing and I will enough. When they get there, they’re not. It doesn’t work because there’s nothing you’re going to get from the outside that’s going to make you enough on the inside. There’s just nothing that’s going to do that from the outside in.

So once they realized that, they don’t really realize it. What happens is they get the thing and they get really depressed afterward. There’s a study. There’s studies out there. The research shows that gold medal winners or Olympic medal winners, they get depressed after they get the medal because they’ve working towards this thing their whole life. Okay, now what? Do I just train again for the next Olympics? They age out of the Olympics. Then, people who get the Oscar and different things like that. I usually work with people after they’ve hit some pinnacle of success then they’re really depressed or they start using drugs and alcohol. Because it’s just that nothing’s working for them. Now they’re isolated from everyone around them in some way because they don’t feel like they can trust people.

This thing, this breathwork thing is really incredible that it makes you realize that you are enough. That you don’t really need anything else. You don’t need anything more. It’s great if you want to work on some things. Like you want to build some things and you want to create some things. It’s a great tool to do that. I’ve used it in that way. But I could just lay on the floor and breathe and just know that right now, right where I’m at, my life is perfect. I just need to be grateful. I don’t need to be the biggest breathwork teacher on the planet. It would be nice. I would love that. It would be great but that’s not going to fix me. There’s not any better moment that I’m going to have than this moment right now.

So just starting to come to that truth, that realization is pretty powerful. I wouldn’t have found it any other way. I don’t think. I couldn’t have found it any other way. I’ve worked with all these big, successful people. I don’t know who said it. I heard someone say. It’s like, ‘Everybody knows that money won’t fix them but they want to find out for themselves.’

 

 

[0:46:41] Ashley James: Yeah. Right. You know what, it’s a lot more fun to be depressed with money than to be depressed without money. I can tell you that. So as you were working with these people, keeping them sober, helping them to stay sober and doing the breathwork. What kind of like percentage increase in success did you see? Were you like, this is 100% creating way more success for people to stay sober if they do this breathwork? Were you able to see measurable, noticeable like with every single person you worked with that people could stay sober because this breathwork had them do that break state and get out of that frenzy and get back in their body and start being able to process the emotions, almost like cleanse their body in a sense and have that reset?

 

[0:47:38] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean I definitely saw people getting sober around them because of it. I’m a big advocate, I want to make this clear, I’m a big advocate of 12-step programs. I think that they work. I’ve seen them work. It’s how I got sober originally. So 12-step programs, recovery programs, I think they work really well. So I think that that’s the foundation and then breathwork is a great adjunct to that. I don’t think breathwork is the foundation to getting sober. I think recovery 12-step programs are the foundation because they’ve worked for 75 years. Usually, when someone tells me, “Oh, I’ve tried that. It didn’t work.” I’ll ask them a few questions. Did you do this? Did you do this? Did you do this? The answer is no. Because if you’ve done those things you would’ve stayed sober, right? So I’m a big proponent of those.

I would see people, they’re starting to put it in a lot of rehabs, a lot of recovery centers now. They’re starting to put breathwork in there because they need anything they can. The truth is, these recovery centers, they’re just drying people out. Then they’re hopefully getting them to go to 12-step, into recovery meetings. They don’t really have many things. They’re having a lot of success with breathwork. They’re having a lot of success now with EMDR and some other therapies. They’re looking for anything they can to help people get sober. It’s hard to measure results. It’s hard to measure success. Because if somebody, what happens I found unfortunately with people whether it’s with recovery, whether it’s with fitness and your health, people get the results that they want and then they get lazy, right? They forget. They’d stop doing the things that got them there in the first place. So we fall off of the fitness routine. We fall off of the things that got us sober and helped us in recovery. We stop doing those things and then it’s only a matter of time before we relapse into whatever our thing is.

I did breathwork in the beginning for a year and it changed my life. I don’t do it that much now but I don’t need it that much now. I do it kind of as needed. So I don’t need it as much now as I did before. I do different techniques and different stuff but I like to do a big session once a week. If I have something going on in my life, something heavy, something happens. I lose somebody close to me. You can be darn sure I’m going to lay down on the ground and I’m going to do breathwork right then and there. So I can start to move those emotions through me. So they don’t stay stuck. Because that’s what it is. It’s about stuck emotions. It’s about stuck traumas. It’s trapped traumas and all that kind of stuff.

So many people don’t realize that trauma is passed down to the DNA. They have studies that show this now that mothers that were pregnant at 9/11, the babies were born with higher cortisol levels, right? They have studies that show, they did this thing with the mice where they spray cherry blossom spray and then they electrocuted it. Then they spray the cherry blossom spray and electrocuted it and then they just spray the spray and it would have a reaction. Then those mice would have babies and they never got electrocuted but they spray cherry blossom spray and they’d have a reaction to it that other mice it didn’t have that. They weren’t shocked it didn’t have. That lasted up to 14 generations.

There are all these books right now like the Body Keeps the Score and It Didn’t Start with You. So, a lot of people don’t even know. They come in and they breathe and they realize all this stuff comes up and comes out. It’s like maybe it’s not even your stuff. Maybe it was your mother’s stuff. Your mother was depressed when she was pregnant with you because there was something difficult going on in the household. Someone that I worked with very closely, the mother had lost a previous child in a really tragic way and then she was pregnant with him. So she was suffering, she was grieving that loss of that precious baby, child. It fell into the water, it drowned. It’s just terrible. It was just heartbreaking. He tells me the story of his brother that he never met. So his mother was depressed and grieving while she was pregnant with him.

So that goes right into the baby. That baby is born into the world. Then they come out and they come out into a world where there’s still grief in that household. They’re probably happy that the new baby is there. That’s in us. When this person started breathing, he was just breathing out all that grief. All that sadness. All that heartbreak. I mean, I don’t know if you can be on this planet and not have disappointment, not have heartache, not have grief. I don’t think it’s possible. So we all have it. So why are we acting we’re all fine all the time? We all have this stuff, right? So I say in my class, “Everyone in this room has heartbreak and sadness and disappointment and grief. Why are we pretending that we’re fine? Allow all that to feel that and then you can feel what’s on the other side of that which is gratitude and love and joy and all the beauty.” Because if you’re denying those feeling then you’re denying all the other good feelings in. My capacity to feel love and gratitude is in direct proportion to my capacity to feel grief and sadness.

So if I want to feel massive love and massive gratitude inside of my life, inside of my heart I have to allow all the other stuff. You can’t shut yourself off from the disappointment and the heartbreak and the sadness and then open yourself up to loving gratitude. It doesn’t work that way, right? So you got to make a choice. How do you want to live?

 

[0:53:57] Ashley James: I want to open up all the doors and feel everything. I want to feel everything. But like you said, don’t let it get stuck.

 

[0:54:04] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. Well, that’s the thing too. People start to feel it. They start to feel sad or grief or whatever and they just back off. They can’t handle it and they back off. So they start to feel grief and they start to feel sadness and they back off because it’s uncomfortable. Okay, if you just allowed it to come through you it would pass through and it’s a few minutes. It’s not going to last forever. I learned that lesson when I was going through a heartbreak of a relationship that ended. My body’s like, ‘what are you feeling?’ I said I’m feeling sad and disappointed and lonely and all these things. He said, ‘go sit there and just feel it. Just sit there and feel that.’ I did. I just sat there and I felt it. Then it lasted like 15 minutes and I was like, ‘okay. I guess I’m going to go make a sandwich now. Where I was fighting so hard to not feel those things and to look for any way around them. I see that with people. To look for any solution to not just allow the feelings to be what they are.

I used to say that feelings aren’t facts and the feeling won’t kill you but I don’t say that anymore because unchecked feelings will kill you. You can get a loop inside of your brain that tells you that I’m not loved, nobody loves me. I’m not enough. People would be better off on this planet without me. You can get that loop going around and around in your heard and you start to believe it, you can take your own life. I’ve seen it happen. It’s a scary thing that your brain can give you bad information. Robin Williams’ brain was giving him bad information. It’s a scary idea that our brain can sometimes not be our friend. It’s there to protect us but sometimes it can get on a loop and start giving us bad information. If you have those kinds of feelings, go share them with somebody that you love and trust that cares about you. Because it’s just not true.

 

[0:56:12] Ashley James: You brought a really good point that those who are committing suicide feel like the world would be better without them and that they’re family, the people they love would actually be better and happier without them. A friend of mine went through this where her brain was telling her this that she really believed that her family would not miss her, would not feel sad and that everyone would be better if she didn’t exist.

 

[0:56:42] Jon Paul Crimi: It’s such a weird lie. Why would your brain do that you? Why would your brain lie to you in that way? So your brain isn’t always telling you the truth but it’s really good at convincing you that it is.

 

[0:56:57] Ashley James: There was a beautiful interview that was posted on Facebook and it’s been shared around a bunch with a man who survived jumping off of the Golden Gate bridge.

 

[0:57:08] Jon Paul Crimi: I’ve seen it.

 

[0:57:09] Ashley James: I bawled my eyes out. I keep trying to reach out to him and I’ve messaged him to get on the show because his story is beautiful. He’s now dedicated his life to helping people prevent suicide. He said that every single person he’s ever spoken to, a lot of people who have attempted suicide and survived, every single one of them he’s spoken to says that they immediately regretted. Like if they jumped or overdosed or whatever they chose to do, that they immediately regretted it.

 

[0:57:46] Jon Paul Crimi: It’s interesting, I’m reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book. I think it’s called talking to strangers. He has this whole chapter dedicated to suicide. What they thought was, if we prevent the way that people commit suicide, if we put a net underneath a bridge, people are just going to go find another way to do it. It’s actually not true. That it’s actually coupled with something else. If they can’t do it that way at that moment because there’s something going on at that moment, then they go off and they do something else and it passes. It’s the easy access to ways to do it that lead to more suicides. There are studies. He has all these studies in his book, Malcolm Gladwell’s amazing. So for years, they didn’t want to put nets, like a net underneath the Golden Gate Bridge because they didn’t want to change the look of it. But once they did, boom the suicides just dropped.

There’s a study in England where they had a gas in the stoves and people were putting their heads in the stoves and killing themselves that way. Then they changed the gas and the suicides just dropped.

 

[0:59:04] Ashley James: Helping to make it less convenient. Like you said, the depression passes the moment passes. If we can teach our children to have that emotional intelligence, they call it emotional quotient where we’re able to wait a certain amount of time because they know. No matter what we’re going through right now, it will shift. It will get better. You breathe. You’re going to teach us some breathing and to breathe.

 

[0:59:32] Jon Paul Crimi: Right. There’s a saying in recovery, this too shall pass. It’s like whatever you’re going through, however how hard it is, whatever is going on, it will pass if you could just hang in there. Maybe you pick up the phone. Maybe you talk to someone. Go see a friend. It will pass. You have a breathing pattern for when you are depressed. You have a breathing pattern for when you’re angry. You have a breathing pattern for when you’re anxious. If you can change your breathing when you’re feeling those emotions, then you can change the emotion. If you can change your emotions, then you can change your life. Because like you were saying, people with emotional intelligence. People with better control of their emotions are very successful in life. They’re more successful in their relationships and their work and their life and their friendships. Every area of their life than people with high, high IQs. We used to think that, ‘oh this person’s a genius. They’re going to be successful.’ That’s just not the case. The studies actually prove out that people who are more emotionally well-adapted are more successful than people with higher IQs. We’re living on a planet that’s about relationships with people. It’s hard to be around people that are emotionally unstable. I know. I’ve worked with them for 20 years. It’s a really challenging work.

Teaching people how to manage their emotions through their breath is a key thing. If you can just start to breathe in a different way. It’s that moment where they’re like, ‘I’m angry. I’m depressed.’ Let me just try something different instead of choosing to be stuck in this thing. Nobody wants to be stuck. Nobody wants to be depressed. Nobody wants to be angry. Nobody wants to be a drug addict. Nobody wants to live on the street and try to find drugs. They’re not choosing that. They’re stuck in the cycle and they can’t get out of it. Just trying to find that moment of the window of opportunity where here’s a moment where someone’s trying to help you or you’re going to reach out and ask for help. I sometimes say in my classes, “Stop waiting for somebody to show up and put their hand on your head and heal you because it’s just not going to happen. You have to do it. You have to take responsibility of your own healing, for your own life. Take action around it.” Every time I take an action, my life changes. Every time I do something I don’t want to do, every time I do something that makes me a little uncomfortable I grow, I change. So if I just do something small every day, some small action every day, then I’m transforming. I’m changing. If you do that, they find that’s it. People who have these, that changed their lives, that transformed their lives, it’s through small little actions over and over, consistently. Just showing up to the gym and doing a couple exercises. It’s just starting the thing. Be a good starter. Have a smart feet, whatever it is, just show up and do it.

After a while of doing breathwork, it got kind of old for me so I had to find new ways. I started listening to motivational speakers that I like while I was breathing. What was incredible about that, I didn’t realize it was seeping into my subconscious and into who I am, all that stuff. Then it started coming out of me and my classes. I became this Tony Robbins of breathwork. I started saying all those stuff in the breathwork classes which nobody did before. It changed how I taught breathwork. So just constantly showing up, you don’t know how you’re going to transform who you are and what you do and then how that’s going to transform other people.

 

[1:03:35] Ashley James: I love it. I like that you pointed out how we breathe differently depending on what state we’re in. I don’t know if you know this about me but I’m a master practitioner and trainer of neuro-linguistic programming.

 

[1:03:48] Jon Paul Crimi: I love NLP.

 

[1:03:49] Ashley James: Right? You were talking about anchoring the idea of being able to get someone in a state when they’re in an acute state. So you get them into the state of gratitude and you have them anchor it into their heart. It becomes part of their neurological strategy to go there. You pointed out that physiologically, we actually have anchors in our physiology. So if you sit hunched over and you frown and you just sit there kind of hunched over and you breathe shallow, however you would if you were depressed and sitting hunched over and frowning with your head tilted downward and breathe shallow. Notice the state your body goes in versus if you just pull your shoulders back, put your head up, open your eyes, look up towards up in a 45-degree angle and smile and pull your shoulders back. Just hold that and breathe openly. You’ve opened the chest up and you breathe.

 

[1:04:59] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. You’re protecting the heart when you’re doing that. When you’re curling over you’re protecting your heart. Then your breath gets really shallow or you’re holding your breath. Most people are walking around not breathing all the way down into their belly, into their diaphragm. They’re breathing very shallow in their chest and holding their breath all the time. That’s why they’re feeling stressed and anxious and depressed. So just breathing in through your nose down into your belly is a game-changer for most people. But you’re saying open, bring it in the physiology in your body. I’m a big big believer in that. You start to feel the emotion. I teach affirmations in my teacher training. I’ve done affirmation workshops. I said, “Listen, you can’t just sit there hunched over and be like, ‘I’m happy, whole and worthy of love.’” Your body, your brain goes BS. That’s BS. Doesn’t feel it. You got to get up. I would have people pound on their chest and open their chest and hold their heads up high and pound. Say, ‘I’m happy, whole and worthy of love.’ We go through each word. ‘I am happy. I am.’ That’s the day two in the five-day detox is that affirmation technique. That’s incredible.

I have them throw their hands up in the air and scream ‘I love my life.’ If you do that, even if you don’t love your life it will start to shift you. It shifts your emotions. If you can just shift your emotion a little bit, break yourself out of that pattern. You’re in a bad pattern, right? It’s just breaking yourself out of that pattern. What’s interesting is, when I was telling you about anchoring those moments. Reaching out and pulling those moments into my heart. For me, I have little children that I love more than anything on this planet. I’ve been pulling these moments with my daughter, with my son and it’s incredible. Now, what’s happened to me from doing that for the last bunch of years, I’ll be with my daughter and my son and I go, ‘I’m in a moment right now.’ I’m having the moment with this moment while it’s happening. It’s such a beautiful thing. I’m just present in it and going, ‘Wow. This is it.’ I’m more present in this moment than I’ve ever been. Maybe I wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t done that in the last 10 years or whatever.

 

[1:07:10] Ashley James: Just by shifting our physiology and not even like, let’s say we’re in a neutral emotion. Just by shifting for example like hunching over and breathing in that shallow way and frowning, we can create sadness. We can actually access sadness. I think we walk around feeling like our emotions run the bus. That are emotions control us. Our emotions drive the bus. People go, ‘I’m just not motivated to do this.’ Who’s running you? Who is running your life? We’re letting emotions run our life but our emotions are actually anchored to our physiological state. So when we hunch over we create sadness because it’s an anchor. It’s attached to that physiology. So we might have been kind of in a good mood but we can access sadness simply by recreating the physiology of sadness. When we pull our shoulders back and smile, even if we don’t feel like smiling, smile, pull your shoulders back and lift your head up. Breathe openly for a few minutes, even 30 seconds all of a sudden you’re noticing your state shifts into a state that is more fulfilled. More motivated. So just by changing our physiology, we can shift our state. With your breathwork, we’re changing your physiology a lot and we’re moving through those emotions.

I love that you’re teaching to not push them down, to not repress the emotions. When we look at violent crimes in the United States and I’m sure around the world, unfortunately, the sad statistic is that most violent crimes are done by men. I’m not saying that no violent crimes are done by women. I’m just saying the majority are done by men. What is going on? How have we raised our boys in the last 70 years? How have we raised? What have we taught our boys that we have most of the violent crimes committed by men? It’s something really crazy like 96%. I was reading the latest statistics on violent crimes. What have we taught our men? What have we taught our boys? Since I have a 4 ½-year-old son I want to raise him to be respectful of men and women, respectful of his own body, respectful of others and emotionally intelligent. So what’s going on that men are committing violent crimes. If they were in touch with their emotions and actually felt them instead of suppressing them and reacted. Like having some kind of altercation at a stoplight and just reacted and started punching each other, right? What if they could feel their emotions and realize, ‘Oh, wow. That came from all the hurt I had as a child with my dad, or with my uncle.’ What if we process our move through our emotions? I think that your breathwork is even more important for men. I mean, of course, women will gain benefit from it. I think it’s even more important for men to do it because we need to create a society where men are emotionally healthy.

 

[1:10:34] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean listen, I have a lot of personal experience with it. I’ve been probably over 100 fights in my life. I was stabbed in the head when I was 19 and lost half the blood in my body and I almost died. I’ve been jumped by five guys at once and beaten unconscious. I’ve had a lot of crazy stuff. A lot of violent stuff happened to me. The message that I got was that I’m not safe in the world.

What started happening to me was I needed to react before I was attacked because I had been jumped so many times. I’ve been attacked so many times that if somebody threatened me, then I needed to react first. That was what started happening to me, right? But I think it goes back to something earlier that you and I were talking about which is we tell our boys to be strong, to be men. They repress all these emotions and there’s nowhere for that emotion to go. So it’s repressed emotions. It’s also a feeling of powerlessness. I think that violence is a powerful thing and men are filled with testosterone. If you teach compassion, it’s pretty hard to be a compassionate person and want to go beat somebody up. You know what I mean?

If you get at the stoplight and this person does something wrong if you practice compassion and you know what that feels like then you go, ‘This person’s probably having a really bad day right now.’ Instead of going like, ‘I can’t let them do that to me. I cannot let that guy get away with that. I cannot let that stand.’ I mean, that’s what that feels like when two guys get out of a car. You’ve crossed a line and I’m not going to allow it. Yeah. I know what that feels like. I’ve been on the other side of that and it’s an awful way to live your life. It’s an awful way to live. To be going around angry, it’s like two magnets just looking for each other to bump up against to express this frustration that’s inside of them. When they find each other, that’s what they want believe it or not. They want that –

 

[1:13:01] Ashley James: That altercation?

 

[1:13:03] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. If two guys. I’m not talking about a violent crime where some guy commits a violent crime against a woman. That’s a sickness. That’s a power thing. I think a lot of that comes from frustration, from sexual frustration. That’s a whole other topic that I don’t think I would talk skillfully on. You know, it’s not my area. I love women. I think women are the most amazing creatures on the planet. I don’t understand them as much as I would like to. I’ve spent 47 years trying to understand. I think I understand them better than most men. But men are really simple. We have a really simple need. We like food and sleep and sex. That’s it.

 

                                                                                                                  

[1:13:48] Ashley James: And breathing.

 

[1:13:51] Jon Paul Crimi: Right. And breathing to clear out the testosterone and the frustration and the emotion. So that’s it. But women have a whole set of needs and motivations that I can’t begin to understand and I don’t think that they understand it neither themselves. Yeah. I mean, a lot of that too is the frustration that people are feeling from social media where so and so has this incredible life, which isn’t true, which is a lie. People are only showing the good stuff. I mean, I’m guilty of it myself. I post all these great videos of my kids and me. I don’t post the videos of their meltdowns. I did post a video where I wasn’t going to do it and then I did it and I regretted it. I hid their Halloween candy on them and I did the Jimmy Kimmel thing where you hide the Halloween candy. You’re like, “I ate all your candy.” They both started crying and I was like, “I’m just kidding. Here’s the candy.” It was 30 seconds, right? I posted it on my social media and people just, people who knew me who really knows me was like, ‘Oh that’s hilarious.’ They know that my kids are my entire world. That I love my kids more than anyone on this planet. It was 30 seconds. People who didn’t know me, I have kind of a big social media following, were like, ‘Oh, that’s awful. That’s not compassionate.’ So I deleted it. It made me feel lousy. I was like, ‘I’m allowing these people who don’t really know me to criticize me and I’m letting that criticism in.’

You know Brené Brown, I’m a huge Brené Brown fan. Brené Brown talks about that, social media, you really allow the criticism of people that are in your inner circle, that know you really, really well.

 

[1:15:55] Ashley James: Right, right.

 

[1:15:56] Jon Paul Crimi: Your five people in your mastermind, in your inner circle. All the other people on the outside that don’t know you, you just can’t allow to let that criticism in. I know that. It still bothered me a little bit because people are really good at digs. I’m human and the best I’m going to do is human. Things get to me sometimes. Things bother me.

I love social media. I think it’s a great tool like I get to see some of my family that I don’t get to see very often on the east coast. It brings people to my classes and my teacher trainings and my workshops. I’ve found amazing people in podcasts that I follow through social media. So I think that it’s an incredible tool. But I also think that it can be really harmful if we’re really allowing it to like if we’re believing it all. Nobody has a perfect life like that. They’re just showing the perfect shot. If I’m comparing my insides to other people’s outsides on social media, I’m going to lose every time.

 

[1:17:10] Ashley James: You know I was just reading Proverbs 27 today. I brought it up because what you said reminded me, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted but an enemy multiplies kisses.” “Wounds from a friend can be trusted,” meaning speak honestly to our friends and the inner circle and take that criticism with heart because they are doing it in a way that’s loving and they care about us.

 

[1:17:41] Jon Paul Crimi: And they know you. They know you and they know what you need and need to hear.

 

[1:17:49] Ashley James: Later on in Proverbs, it says, “As iron sharpens so one person sharpens another.” I love that idea that we’re sharpening each other. Take the criticism from your close friends with love and know that we’re sharpening each other.

 

[1:18:09] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah, 100%.

 

[1:18:12] Ashley James: Well, we talked about the emotional component, which is great. I’d like to get a little bit into the biological component. Something interesting about the Krebs cycle. Our body produces ATP, which is cellular energy but in a state of lack of oxygen, the body cannot continue to produce the bounty of ATP. Instead, by-product becomes lactic acid. Lactic acidosis, I’ve had an expert on the show talk about that, all disease, 100% of disease has elevated levels of lactic acidosis. He feels all disease begins with this break in the Krebs cycle where instead of in an oxygenated state, we’re producing too much lactic acid. If we all got back to the root if we’re all fully oxygenated that we could stay in an alkaline balance state. That we would then not produce lactic acid or get into lactic acidosis and therefore prevent disease.

He goes as far as to say all disease. What have you seen because this has been your biggest passion right? What have you seen around disease? Have you seen people reverse disease? What kind of things have you seen actually physiologically shift when they began to do this deep breathwork on a regular basis?

 

[1:19:40] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of people have physical ailments and come in with physical ailments and say, ‘my back has been bothering me for 20 years and it’s gone.’ I’ve seen people, these guys had this throat thing going on and it cleared up in one session. Just all these kind of things, I would love to see. I would like to have somebody do some studies on the alkalinity in the body before breathwork and then after breathwork. That would be amazing. I mean I know you’re oxygenating the body but you’re also throwing off CO2, right? That causes some stuff to go on there.

When I first started breathwork, people’s hands would clamp up. It never happened to me but I saw it happen to a lot of people that I worked with. It’s called tetany and people would ask me what causes that? The answer that I would get from my breathwork teacher, the people that I study with was like crazy answers. ‘It’s, you’re holding on to stuff’ or ‘it’s the moon. You’re detoxing off marijuana.’ I was like, ‘that’s not what it is.’ I just couldn’t take that for an answer. What I did, as someone who is very from a scientific standpoint, is I started just studying commonalities. Okay, who in the room is cramping up in their hands? Okay. These 20 people out of 60. What are they doing that the other people aren’t doing? Well, they’re breathing a little harder. They’re actually breathing louder and they’re pushing the exhale more.

So I brought in this woman who is a student of mine, Tanya Bentley, she’s a health and science researcher with Harvard. We started looking at it. She started going diving into the studies. My theory was is that when people push the exhale extra hard that it got worse. I was correct. So, when I teach it I try to teach people to really inhale, take the biggest, deepest inhale they can into their belly and then take another inhale into their chest and then let the exhale just snap loose. You just get free just to kind of relax it.

For some reason, a lot of people think that if you have to work on the inhale, you have to work on the exhale. You don’t. You work on the inhale and then you let the exhale just relax and be like a reflex almost. So, I’ve had people who were cramping up in their hands, having this tetany and I’ve coached them through that and then it goes away through relaxing the exhale, which is incredible.

I’ve seen people just heal their bodies because of so much of our physical ailments are emotional. I mean some people try to argue that it’s all emotional. It all comes from emotion. Then you’ll hear the other argument, ‘Well, what if I got hit by a car and I broke my arm? That wouldn’t be from emotion’ I don’t know. I can’t answer that. I don’t have all the answers. Nobody doubts, in this world that we’re living in today, that stress, for example, is causing heart disease, cancer, and all kinds of heart problems, right? If we’re stressing ourselves out so much, I stress out myself so much that I gave myself an auto-immune disorder. I gave myself alopecia, which is a sudden hair loss. I lost all my hair. If I can stress myself out to the point where my body starts to fight against itself and starts to kill my hair follicles off because it thinks it’s a foreign invader, then maybe I can do the opposite. Maybe I can start to love myself enough and heal my body. Because everybody knows that you can stress yourself out and cause health problems. If that’s true and people believe that, why don’t they believe that the opposite is true?

 

[1:23:24] Ashley James: Well they’ don’t know how to decrease the stress. It’s so harder ingrained in their life. How do you not get stressed about your bills? How do you not get stressed about your kids doing stupid stuff? It’s part of your life. You can’t separate yourself from your bills, and your job, and your kids and your husband and the stress. We know intellectually our stress is killing us. But what can we do about it besides take a bubble bath, which helps just for a few minutes, right?

 

[1:24:00] Jon Paul Crimi: I joke in my classes. I say that self-love, self-care isn’t taking a bubble bath. It can be later but self-love, self-care is showing up and doing the hard work, doing the uncomfortable work. That’s what real self-love, real self-care is. So if you do that, listen, you can be stressed out, your kid can have a health problem, your bills can be overdue, you can lay down and breathe. You’ll get up and you’ll go, ‘you know what? It’s all going to be fine. It’s going to work out. It’s going to work out just fine.’ But instead, we dig into that stress. What is stress really but fear? That’s what it really is. Stress is just a fancy word for fear. So you’re allowing your fears to consume you and affect you and affect your health.

What’s the opposite of fear? The opposite of fear is love. So if we can get more into love and start to love yourself more, maybe you can start to combat those fears and let go of some of those fears and know that it’s going to be okay. Because 99% of it is all in our heads. That’s the truth of it. That’s what nobody says. It was Mark Twain that said, “I have a lot of problems some of them actually happened.”

Most of that stuff that you’re stressing out about the bills, and our kids, it all works itself out. It always does. So you’re creating this all in your head. You’re creating these problems in your head. We’re like right now, you might have a bunch of stuff going on. A bunch of issues, problems, whatever you want to call them. There is no issue right now. There’s just you and I talking right now. That’s all there is. In order to get to that issue, you have to go into your head and start to think about it and start to worry about it and start to ruminate on it. Then you start to go, ‘Oh no, how am I going to pay the bills? My son’s got this…’ Just saying that my chest gets tight and I stop breathing. But if I just stop and sit back and take a deep breath in through my nose, down into my belly, put my hand below my belly button and take a big breath in through my nose down there. Then I let out a long exhale twice as long out of my mouth.

Let me do another one of those. In through my nose, down to my stomach, way below my belly button. Then let out a sigh. That long exhale, that breath in through your nose down into your diaphragm. Then that twice as long exhale, that actually activates the parasympathetic nervous system to rest and digest. It starts to calm you down. It starts to calm your body down. So that saying, ‘take a breath,’ we hear it but we don’t do it.

 

[1:27:00] Ashley James: Some are like [shallow breaths].

 

[1:27:04] Jon Paul Crimi: Or like, ‘You take a breath. I’m not going to take a breath.’

 

[1:27:07] Ashley James: Oh man, I’ve told my husband to breathe and it’s just like [shallow breaths]. It’s like a shallow, shallow breath. I’m like, ‘Really, come on. Deep, deep breathe, through your belly.’ He’s like, ‘Okay.’ [shallow breaths] I’ve seen that where people just they’re still breathing shallow. Can you teach us?

 

[1:27:25] Jon Paul Crimi: I couldn’t breathe into my belly when I first started because I was a trainer. I have been working on my abs and I’d kept my stomach flat for 20 years. So when I would try to breathe into my belly laying on the floor, I would arch my back and my back was so sore for the first couple of weeks of breathwork because I couldn’t actually breathe into my diaphragm. I couldn’t actually expand my diaphragm. Eventually, I was able to relax and breathe into my belly but it took a while. It’s incredible once you can do it.

You want me to teach you the breathing technique?

 

[1:28:00] Ashley James: Yeah, teach us. We are your Play-Doh. Mold us.

 

[1:28:05] Jon Paul Crimi: Well, okay. Well, I could give you the technique. The challenge lies in that it needs to be, I would say, you can get benefits in 15 minutes. Usually the 12 minutes of it, the first 12 minutes are the hardest part. So a lot of people will do like five minutes or eight minutes or ten minutes and be like, ‘I don’t like this. This is uncomfortable. This is weird,’ and stop. So if you just 12 minutes of it, it would be awful. It would be the most awful thing you ever did because you have to breakthrough. You have to breakthrough on the other side.

I could tell you how to do it and then you could go do it on your own and you could just make a playlist. I also have some guided iTunes CDs. So I have a couple of CDs. If you go into the iTunes stores, not Apple Music, I have two CDs on iTunes that have different length tracks and I guide you through how to do it.

The technique is really simple. It’s in through the mouth, down into the belly and you take the biggest breath you can into the belly, and you take another one on top of that in your chest and then you just let it fall out. Then you start again. Belly, chest and then the exhale is half a second. It just falls out. You keep that going, circular. Again, don’t do this in the car.

 

[1:29:26] Ashley James: I’m already dizzy. I took two breaths, I’m already dizzy.

 

[1:29:30] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. It passes. If you lay down on the floor and you did it and you did it that dizziness is going to pass. Your brain is going to go, ‘I’m dizzy. I’m going to pass out.’ When I do my classes I demonstrate it. ‘Oh my God. Am I doing this right? Two breaths in, one breath out. I think I messed it up already. Okay. I’m terrible at this. I’m dizzy already. I’m going to pass out.’ You’re not going to pass out. You’re on the floor. You’re fine. Even if you did pass out, you would be fine, right? So you got to push through that fear that you’re going to pass out. ‘Okay, I’m breathing. Who’s crying already? What’s going on in their life? Well, that’s me crying already. What’s going on in my life?’ It’s incredible what your head says to you and tried to talk you out of it. Tries to get you to stop doing it. You just have to push through. You have to be willing to push through. You have to be willing to show up for yourself and do something a little uncomfortable, something a little different.

If you do what you always do, you’ll always have what you’ve always had. If you want something different, you have to try new things. You have to try different things. I thought breathwork was the stupidest thing. I’m going to go to a thing and somebody’s going to show me how to breathe and all this. What’s going to happen? It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve been breathing my whole life, right? That’s what everyone says. That’s the stupid thing I hear from people all the time. ‘I’ve been breathing my whole life. You’re going to show me how to breathe?’ Then finally, when they’re in enough pain they’ll show up. Because people aren’t motivated until they’re in enough pain in some way in some are. Then they show up because they’re willing to try new things. They’re willing to try anything.

If you get in enough pain you’ll try whatever. So, unfortunately, pain is the motivator for most people. For me, when that cracked me open I went, ‘okay, what else is out there?’ I started just going down a rabbit hole of exploring all kinds of stuff and all kinds of modalities out there and trying it al. I added what worked to my trainings. Why didn’t I just let it fall away? So be willing to be an explorer, a scientist within yourself, within your life, within your body.

 

[1:31:50] Ashley James: Is there any contraindications of doing this? Could it be dangerous to breathe this much?

 

[1:31:56] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. There are some contraindications. Some of them are like high blood pressure, glaucoma, certain mental illnesses are not recommended.

 

[1:32:07] Ashley James: Which ones?

 

[1:32:08] Jon Paul Crimi: I would have to go look it up off the top of my head because I’m on the spot right now. I don’t have it all memorized. But here’s the thing, I’ve had all the people with mental illnesses that are on my contraindications and they’re fine. Like I’ve had them come to my classes. I’ve had them come to my training. But you just never know. You just never know what somebody is going to react too. Unfortunately, we live in this litigious society and people want to sue for everything now, right? So, you have to be extra careful. Pregnancy is a big contraindication because miscarriages happen. What do we teach women in Lamaze class, right?

 

[1:32:56] Ashley James: Breathe.

 

[1:32:57] Jon Paul Crimi: Breathe. Right. Deep breathing for the most painful thing you’re ever going to go through. They say when women have a baby, it’s almost the pain that a man feels when he has a cold. But it’s the most painful thing you’re ever going to go through is have a child, childbirth. That’s what they say, right? So we do deep breathing. I believe Lamaze is through the mouth, right?

Here, let me read some of the contraindications for you. A person with history of cardiovascular disease including angina or heart attack, high blood pressure, glaucoma, retinal detachment, osteoporosis. I don’t understand the osteoporosis one. Significant recent physical injuries or surgery which is anything, right? You don’t want to be doing anything when you just had surgery, really. Breathwork is not advised for persons with severe mental illness or seizure disorders or for persons using major medications, which is most of the planet. It is also unsuitable for anyone with a personal history of aneurysms. Pregnant women are advised against practicing breathwork without first consulting and getting approval from their primary care physician. Persons with asthma should bring their inhaler, consult a primary care physician.

I can’t tell you how many women have been in my classes. I’ve seen a hand go up while they’re three songs into the breathwork. I go, ‘Yes?’ They go, ‘Is this okay to do when you’re pregnant? I’m like, ‘Don’t you think you should’ve asked that before you came to the class?’ Because they thought it was going to be some relaxing meditation thing but it’s not. It’s a workout. Like I tell everybody in my classes, ‘You’ve all done something harder in your life than lay on the floor on your back and breathe. Come on.’ A hike is harder than laying on the floor on your back and breathe. It just freaks people out because it catches you unexpected. You’re just not prepared that all this wild stuff is going to happen to you physically, mentally and emotionally from laying on the floor and breathing. So because you’re not prepared for it, it just freaks people out, right?

So my job as a facilitator, as a teacher is to prepare people as best I can. So that they can push through that stuff and go, ‘You know what, JP told me this was going to happen. He’s telling me I’m fine and I’m fine. So just push through it.’ Then have a big experience. A lot of people will have that big experience then tell me, ‘Oh my God. That’s like-changing. I’m going to be here every month or I’m going to be here every week. I’m going to do it all the time.’ Then they don’t do it again. They just don’t. They get too freaked out to go back and do it even though they know it was incredible. They could use it. We don’t take care of ourselves in that way. It’s easier to say with bad habits that we know hurt us. It’s easier to stay in that discomfort that’s familiar than to go into unknown that feels good.

 

[1:35:54] Ashley James: Marilu Henner is an actress who I’ve met a few times and I’ve spent some time with. She has a photographic memory. She was on Taxi and she was on the Apprentice, really cool. She has this whole story and she says, “Choose your hard.” Listen, I mean it’s hard to stay stuck. It’s hard to stay depressed. It’s hard to stay in a bad relationship. It’s hard to stay in a bad job. It’s hard, right? It’s hard to change. It’s hard to get a new habit, a new health habit. It’s hard to get up and go to the gym or eat healthy or not eat crap. Choose your hard. All of it is hard. Everything is hard. Choose your hard. If you’re choosing your hard, which is get up 15-20 minutes earlier and lie on the floor and do breathwork, which would be amazing to start the day off. I can’t even imagine the amount of clarity someone would have after. If they started their day off, they get up, they go potty and then they lay on the ground and they do 15-20 minutes of breathwork first thing in the morning. I mean that would completely reset the day, energize the body, turn on the mitochondria, just totally detoxing. Cleanse the body. Introducing oxygen to the whole body. Just amp up cellular energy production and mental clarity. Turn off that inner critic and allow them to have that huge amount of clarity for the whole day. That sounds like the best. That would beat the best cup of coffee anywhere.

 

[1:37:37] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean listen, if you get up in the morning and you do that, you walk into the world that day filled with gratitude and love. So you show up to whatever it is that you’re showing up that day, work or whatever, with gratitude and love people are attracted to that. You become a magnet in the world. As opposed to showing up with all your stories, all your stuff like we’re doing and we’re saying, ‘Oh my God. You’re not going to believe what happened last night. Let me tell you the story,’ because that’s how so many people are getting attention, which is really just a way that they’re trying to get love is they’re telling all their stories. If you can let go of those stories and just be present and start to embrace yourself and have gratitude and love for your life, you can walk around in the world like that, it changes who you are in the world. It changes what your world becomes because you start to attract all these other things into your life.

The last 20 years for me has just been a series of replacing one horrible bad habit with something better. I do drugs all day at work and then I go home and drink so let me clear that out and replace it with exercise and recovery and helping other people. Okay, now I’m eating sugar and I’m doing this. Let me replace that with ice plunges and float tanks and breathwork. Just trading off a bad habit for a good habit. I think the mistake too many people make is they try to do it all at once and then they fail. Then they go, ‘Yeah. It didn’t work.’ Then they go back to their all bad habits.’ When it’s like just pick one thing. Pick the one thing that you most want to change in your life right now and do that. Focus on that thing. After you’re successful with that and you see that you can change that one thing, build on that. Build on that. I saw that because I was able to show up and do this and eliminate drinking.

Listen, I would read self-help book and spiritual books while I was drinking and doing drugs. It just doesn’t work very well that way. So I kind of think that’s the first thing. I’ve seen people show up to these kinds of events, these motivational events, these guru events. There’s no judgment from me. I just don’t think that none of it is really going to work if you’re medicating which is self-medicating. So start there because you don’t even know what’s going on until you stop with the drinking and the drugs or whatever that is. However, you know you’re self-medicating and then all these feelings start coming up. Then you go, ‘Oh my God. All these feelings are coming up, right?’ That’s when breathwork is a great tool. ‘Oh. All these feelings come up. Let me lay down and breathe and clear them out and get clear. ‘ 

What you start to get clear on is all your old stories. All the stories that you’ve been telling since you were a kid of who you are and why you do these things and how you try to sick love that often doesn’t work for us. You start to get clear on those stories and you can start to let go of those stories even if they’re true, especially if they’re true. When we can start to let go of our stories, our old stories, we can start to write some new ones. We could start to create some new chapters in our lives and we could become a different person.

 

[1:41:11] Ashley James: Is that level of self-reflection happen during the breathwork or those epiphanies come after the breathwork when we’re in that very clear-headed mental state after we get up off the ground from breathing for about 20 minutes?

 

[1:41:28] Jon Paul Crimi: Both. So you’ll have some things that will come out while you’re breathing. Some stuff will come out, some emotions will come up and stuff will come up while you’re breathing. Then afterward, for me, I tell people, the breath after the breathing that laying there after you’re done active breathing, that’s the pay-off. That’s when you get these, I call them downloads from the universe where it’s like, ‘Oh. This is what I need to do. I need to help this person or I need to do this or I need to create this. I just need to be present with my kids.’

I have this joke where I say like, I want to have shirts made that say, ‘I’m sorry for what I said before breathwork.’ Because it’s been so many times. Like I’ve had an argument with my wife or something and I go lay down and I breathe. Then I come back in the room and I’m like, ‘Babe, I’m sorry. I was just being a selfish jerk. I love you and you’re amazing.’ I wouldn’t have got that clarity or whatever that thing was. It wasn’t that important than what really is important. That’s what it gets you to. It gets you to what’s really important. What’s really important is gratitude and love and those moments in your life that go in your heart.

I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and be like, ‘the moments that I pulled in was so unexpected and not what I thought at all.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. That’s what really matters.’ Because we think all the other stuff matters and it doesn’t. So it gets you really clear about what really matters in your life. Everything else is just a distraction. That’s amazing if you can get that clarity.

I would have people come in and go, ‘I’m struggling with this relationship.’ or ‘I’m struggling with this career decision, I’m struggling with this.’ I go, ‘Okay. Let’s just set the intention for clarity on it.’ It’s crystal clear when they come up. There’s zero doubt. They were so torn when they walked into the room. They lay down and breathe. What they need to do. The answer is crystal clear. Then what happens sometimes, especially around relationships, is the head will kick back on a couple of days later and fear kicks in. Fear goes, ‘You don’t really want to go back out there and date do you? You don’t want to go out on Bumble or match.com. He’s pain. He’s not that bad. He does do this.’ We start to make a case. We start to build a case because the fear is telling us that we’re not going to find anyone that’s right for us. The truth is, it’s trite to say but it’s like you want to whole and complete within yourself. Jerry Maguire sold us a lie which is, “You complete me.” Well, that’s BS, right? Nobody completes you. You complete yourself.

 

[1:44:09] Ashley James: I love it.

 

[1:44:11] Jon Paul Crimi: It’s just like, when you complete yourself and you’re whole and complete within yourself and you’re walking around with gratitude and love for your life and not looking for something more, I’m telling you. You are a magnet. You’re a magnet to the opposite sex or the same sex. Whatever you’re into. Whatever your thing is. You’re just a magnet to people who want to be around you who want to be with you in some way who want to work with you, who want to hang out with you. Whatever. It’s like you become this magnet because it’s so rare now in this day and age that people are not walking around needing, wanting something.

 

[1:44:47] Ashley James: Feeling inadequate, feeling like there’s a hole in them that they need to fill.

                                   

[1:44:53] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. There is literally nothing I need right now in my life. It’s weird. I’ve had some really good business-wise a bunch of financial windfalls lately. I’ve gone like, ‘I should buy something.’ I wanted that for so long. I got to that place and there’s nothing I need. You know that that watch isn’t going to make me happy. Let’s put it away for my kids’ college. I don’t know. There’s nothing I need. There’s nothing I want. It’s an incredible place to get to. It finally makes sense now looking back. If you’re in a part in your life where you’re frustrated and you’re angry, you’re not there yet.

Joseph Campbell, the Heroes Journey, right? When you go through all the stages of the hero’s journey and then at the end of the hero’s journey you turn around and you help somebody else. You come back with the elixir, right? That’s where I feel like I’m at now. I’m just turning around and I’m helping other people and it’s incredible. If you’re struggling right now, you’re listening to this and you’re struggling with relationships, with career and all that stuff, it doesn’t make sense yet and it doesn’t make sense for you. You cannot connect the dots, right? Looking back, Steve Jobs said, “You can’t connect the dots until you’re there.” There is no there really. I found this fascinating. Steve Jobs took this font class in college and he didn’t know why. Now, we all know why when we’re staring at an Apple font, we’re starting at the iPhone.

It all makes sense for me in my life. All my disappointments, all my failures, all the things that I tried, they all came together for me to create this thing and share it with people. I never in a million years thought I would be doing this and sharing it with some people. But it totally makes sense to me now looking back. I’m fulfilled in a way that I didn’t know that I would be that I didn’t know I want it, the fulfillment. I tell people all the time, happiness. Everybody’s looking for happiness. They’re searching for happiness. I’m like, ‘You’re looking in the wrong place because happiness is just an emotion like sadness. It’s going to come and it’s going to go.’ Fulfillment, filling yourself up that’s the key. Because whether you’re happy or whether you’re sad, if you’re fulfilled in what you’re doing, happiness or sadness doesn’t matter. So fulfillment is the key to search for, to work for, to find that fulfillment.

Teaching breathwork and helping people get sober has been the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done. I’ll keep doing it until I’ve changed millions of lives on the planet or I find something more powerful to help people with.

 

[1:47:38] Ashley James: Well, I love it. I love that your goal is to help millions of people. My goal is to help millions of people too. To be able to learn how to create optimal health. That’s why the podcast is called Learn True Health. They’re going to learn how to create true health for themselves and help mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually and energetically. Do that by listening to amazing guests like you, Jon Paul. Oh my gosh. It’s been so incredible learning from you.

I want to talk about your course because I have a feeling that my listeners are going to want to do it. Before we hit record, you said that I should do it. So I’m going to do your course, your five-day course. I want you to tell us a bit about it. First, I have some clarifying questions. So, if someone wants to lie on the ground and breathe, they want to do it to a minimum of 15 minutes? You said your classes are 27 minutes long.

 

[1:48:39] Jon Paul Crimi: Well, the class is an hour, right? The class is like 1 hour and 15, but the act of breathing, the active portion of this breathwork that we’re talking about is about, see in a one-on-one session it really depends on the person. Somebody could be done in 20 minutes, right? They could be done in 30 minutes or 35 minutes. So in a class, it’s really challenging to find that sweet spot of time, right? So what I generally try and do, because some people are coming, they come every time and they’ve been doing it for a while. There’s a lot of brand new people in the room. So I try to find a sweet spot of time but it’s really different for everybody.

Let’s just say a minimum of 16-17 minutes. Let’s make it 15 to make it easier. You could go up to 30 minutes. I wouldn’t suggest 30 minutes if it’s your very first time doing breathwork. So you lay on the floor and the active breathing is for 15-30 minutes, anywhere in that zone. The way you might want to do it, the way I used to do it, was I create playlist and I’d know by the song. So I’m going to breathe. I’m going to do the active breathing for six songs. I use songs that are motivational like a workout. I would do the active breathing during the six songs. The last song or two I would do emotion in there like Landslide from Fleetwood Mac. Nobody makes it through Landslide without crying. Landslide breaks everyone. Fire and Rain from James Taylor break everyone.

 So anyway, you don’t have to do that but that’s how I do it. Then have some songs that are beautiful, moving, calming after that. Those are the songs that I call the rest songs because the best part of breathwork is after the breathwork. Laying there and enjoying it. I tell people, ‘You just did that hard and uncomfortable work. Don’t get up afterward. Lay there and that’s where you get the payoff.’ I felt my head quiet for the first time in my life like I’d always try to do with drugs and alcohol after breathwork. So just lay there and enjoy it.

 

[1:50:44] Ashley James: That’s when you can meditate.

 

[1:50:45] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean, that’s how I learned how to meditate was through breathwork. This is what meditation is. This is the quiet space that I could never get to. I would feel my body just vibrating with this incredible energy and that’s your energy that you can use to transform your life and other people’s lives. Just lay there and enjoy it. Get whatever comes in. you’re going to get downloads. You’re going to get messages. I’ve heard all kinds of woo woo stuff in the thing. People tell me their dead relatives have visited them when they’re doing breathwork. People tell me that they have visions and all kind of stuff. I’ve had all kinds of stuff. I try not to put that stuff out there too much because I think it’s different for everybody. It’s different every time you do it. So, who knows what’s going to happen for you but be adventurous and go for it. Lay down on the floor, breathe into your mouth down into your belly, then into your chest, and then let it fall out. Then start again.

So I have a couple of CDs that are guided on iTunes that are like $11.00 I think or $12.00. That’s the cheapest kind of guided option. But you don’t need to do that. You could just do it yourself. Then I have this course, the Five Day Emotional Detox which is on sale right now. I believe it’s 40% off. It’s on my website which is Breathe with JP, B R E A T H E with JP. So a lot of people write breath with JP and then can’t find it. It’s breathe.

 

[1:52:20] Ashley James: You need to buy breath with JP and just have it redirect.

 

[1:52:25] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. That’s a great idea. It’s a really good idea. So there’s courses on my website. You’ll see the buttons there. It will say like, Online Courses. If you want the five-day emotional breathwork detox, that’s what the course is called, you’d click on my Online Course and it will take you there. I also have the teacher trainings online or I do the teacher trainings in person in Los Angeles as well. Then I offer them all as a package online. You could do the five-day course with the two teacher trainings, it’s packaged. But the five-day detox, we talked a lot about it. I mean the first session, the first day is a video of me showing you the technique of breathwork. It really goes into an incredible description. There’s a downloaded, one of those albums is in there that you can download and do it. The audio. You could add music to it, your own music. Another way that you can play it with music. The next day is the affirmations. You combine the affirmations with breathwork. Then the third day is the transformational letter with breathwork. The fourth day is this thing called the eulogy or the legacy where you write your legacy. Who you became at the end of your life, which is really powerful to do. You can read it to somebody too. It’s even more powerful. You write this and you go like, ‘I got to get to work.’ It’s time to get to work, right? It’s really moving and I have people do it in my teacher trainings. I have them get up and read their legacy. The last day is a love letter to yourself. You write the love letter to yourself and you combine it with breathwork.

So if you did these exercises with breathwork, and they don’t have to be five days in a row. If you did them, you would have a massive, massive shift in your life. Then I would get an email from you saying like, ‘Thank you so much.’ And I love that.

 

[1:54:06] Ashley James: Yes you would.

 

[1:54:07] Jon Paul Crimi: I love that. For me, that’s the real payoff is the email that says like, ‘Wow. I did this. It’s so unexpected. It helped me heal this thing or change this. I feel different.’ I have with me my wife at the restaurant. Some woman came up to me in a restaurant and she said, “Are you Jon Paul Crimi?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “I did your five-day detox online and it was life-changing. Thank you so much.” I looked over, “See. That’s my husband over there.” She pointed to her husband and her husband mouthed thank you to me. I was like that’s so awesome. It’s just incredible.

It was a combination of these workshops that I was doing and I decided to just put them together in a course and see what would happen and see if it would work. I didn’t know if it would work. I took a chance. It was an idea that I had to do breathwork. It all comes to me through breathwork. So I put them online and the response has been amazing. I just feel so grateful that I get to share this with people. It was like, ‘How do I share this with people in other parts of the world?’ Because I got emails from people all the time who would hear a podcast with me or see something or hear about it. I was like, ‘I need an effective way to share this.’ So I did the iTunes album. Then I did the course and the course is really powerful because it helps I think when you see me kind of explain it to you. When you watch it physically. When you see my diaphragm expanding and you watch me do the technique. It’s a little challenging to understand just hearing but I think people could do it.

I’ve had people listen to it and hear it and do it and it had incredible results. Oftentimes when people do it just from hearing podcasts like this is they’ll do five minutes or ten minutes and then they’ll get scared and they’ll stop.

 

[1:56:03] Ashley James: Right. They got to power through.

 

[1:56:05] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I mean, that’s actually why the class helps. It’s kind of like peer pressure in a good way like everyone around you is doing it. You hear people around you having emotional experiences and you start to get emotional. So classes are really good. A private session’s a really good for people. But not everybody has access to that. So, if you don’t have access to that, that’s why the online courses are great.

 

[1:56:27] Ashley James: This makes so much sense why you have a link to Spotify with all this playlist. I was going through your website. I was like, ‘Oh, he’s on Spotify.’ I click on it, it’s just a bunch of playlist of songs. I’m like, ‘What? What?’ Now I get it.

 

[1:56:43] Jon Paul Crimi: I’m so glad you brought that up. All right. I have years of my classes. Those are all my classes, right? That I’ve done on Spotify. If you look at the playlist, let me get one up here so I can kind of go over it. If you look at a playlist, let’s just say here we go Bend. So the first song is like a song Feeling Good by Lauryn Hill. That’s a real intense motivational song, right? Then the second song is another motivational song. So the first three or four songs are really pushing you. Then we get into emotional stuff. Then there’s a song in there that’s just sound. What I’m doing there is I’m actually playing the gong in my class. So I have a gong. I can’t believe I have a gong and I play a gong in my class. It’s just so weird for me. How that came about was I was in a class and I didn’t like the class but we screamed into the gong and that was such a powerful experience for me that I added it to my class.

So I have a song where I play the gong and you’re still breathing during the gong playing, which is really weird. Then I count it down, ‘On the count of three, we’re going to scream into the gong. One, two, three. Ahhhh’ I’ll have 200 people in the room just screaming, yelling at the top of their lungs. That in itself is a powerful, powerful release because where in your life do you scream at the top of your lungs, from the bottom of your soul? When do you get to do that? Unless stuff’s gone really wrong in your life, right? It just doesn’t happen. That adds to the release at the end of the breathwork.

Then after the scream, I’m like, ‘Okay. Just relax.’ Then another song will come on. It will be an emotional song like Be Still by the Fray or I Am Light by India.Arie, whatever song I pick. Heroes by Peter Gabriel. So that’s the rest song. That’s the payoff. That’s the beauty. So I don’t say anything during that.

Then this other song, Devi Prayer comes on. You shouldn’t still be breathing by then if that comes on. That’s the song, it’s like a yogi kind of song. The woman is like, ‘Ohh.’ She’s like sort of singing like that. That’s when people reach up and pull moments of gratitude, moments of love into their hearts. Then I read something. Then I say, ‘Okay. I’m going to go outside in the lobby. Come out in a bit. Enjoy these couple of songs and just lay here. This is what you came for not the breathing.’ Then people will come up and hug me on the way out and I get 200 hugs and I feel amazing.

 

[1:59:27] Ashley James: Wow. That sounds awesome. Your classes sound amazing.

 

[1:59:31] Jon Paul Crimi: It’s a good time. I mean, it’s pretty powerful. It’s a ride. It’s an experience. I’ve made it such. I tweaked it and I honed it and I made it into this incredible experience where people come and they bring- I have people that buy 10 tickets and bring all their family members. People that bring like rehabs bring all their people in rehab or sober living. People come with their friends. They drive, people drive. I’ve had people fly in for my classes. It’s wild. It’s become a thing. I’m feeling really blessed. I’m feeling really lucky that I get to do this incredible thing and changes people’s lives. I never knew that I would be here doing this. I’m so glad that I didn’t get what I thought I was supposed to get. It would’ve been so much less.

 

[2:00:34] Ashley James: You thought you were going to some relaxing yoga breathing class.

 

[2:00:40] Jon Paul Crimi: No. I meant in my life. I wanted to be some big celebrity thing. That’s not what happened for me. I’ve got so much more because I saw that that wasn’t going to fix me. I saw that first hand. I believe that’s the reason I worked with all these people is because I got to see that that wasn’t going to fix me. So I got something much more fulfilling.

 

[2:01:05] Ashley James: Yeah you did. Absolutely. You have been training teachers. You’ve been training people. You have an online teacher training and an in-person teacher training.

 

[2:01:15] Jon Paul Crimi: Correct

 

[2:01:16] Ashley James: Thousands of people have been certified in your technique and work with individuals. People can do one-on-one work or they could do classes. It’s a movement. You’re the head of this movement.

 

[2:01:33] Jon Paul Crimi: I don’t know if I’m the head of it. There have been other people that had been around doing it for a long time. I think that I teach it in a way that I just have taken all the new agey woo out of it. I feel like I’m more accessible to most people. I had a fire chief come to my teacher training. I’ve had doctors, PhDs, psychologists coming to my teacher training. So I think I’m just teaching it in a more accessible way that translates to your housewife, to your angry guy guy, to different people who really need this.

People bringing their teenagers to my class, which you have to ask first. I think that it was really kept within this new agey woo woo circles. It was kept small and done that way. It just turned a lot of people off. I just tweaked the technique to make it more accessible to everyone else. One time I had one of these teachers that I’m talking about. If I get any criticism, it’s other breathwork teachers who studied from someone else or had a different style and they don’t like it.

This woman came into my class and she’s like, ‘I can kind of like see how you’re like for like people who would never do this work.’ I was like, ‘Yeah. That’s exactly right. I want a room full of people who needed help, not eight other breathwork teachers pretending that we’re all spiritual in mala robes and mala beads. I want to help angry guys and stressed out moms. That’s what I’m for. Thank you for the compliment that you weren’t intending as a compliment.

I don’t do the whole spiritual speak. I worked at a meditation studio. I worked with a couple of them. I don’t anymore. I rent spaces and just do it myself. The teachers would come in with this, I love a lot of these teachers but I would hear people come in with these voices that are like, “Hey everyone. I know it’s been a hard day. Mercury is in retrograde right now.’ I’m going, ‘Oh my God. A) That’s not really your voice, b) don’t blame it on Mercury in retrograde. Your life is a mess because you made it that way. Just own it. Let’s fix it.

So I’m kind of like a little edgy and I can still be a jerk sometimes. I’m a lot less of a jerk but I’m a human being. I used to go to these classes and I’d go, ‘Oh my God. It’s just on the 405 freeway to the 101 to the 10, which are the three worst freeway in America to get here. I almost choke someone out in the parking lot. Don’t worry, we’re going to put gratitude and love in your heart right now.

So somebody will be like, “Oh my God. This guy is so real. He’s so authentic.’ I’m like, ‘No, no. I’m really going to kill somebody. Just lay down. Stop messing around. Put your phone away.’

 

[2:04:25] Ashley James: Shut up and breathe.

                                                                                                                                                                                         

[2:04:26] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. I’ve actually mellowed quite a bit as a teacher. It’s ironic that attracted a lot of people to me is my style. It’s my sort of like angry breathwork teacher. I mean, I’m not angry anymore. I can get irritated but it’s just not there. Most of it is gone.

 

[2:04:48] Ashley James: I love it.

 

[2:04:49] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. It’s really powerful.  That you would never. So, if I have anything to share with anybody it’s like, ‘Don’t believe your head. Try something different. Try something new. Tray something that you would never try. Do something that you would never do. Be open. Keep showing up for yourself because you’re worth it.

 

[2:05:09] Ashley James: I love it so much. You say you take the woo woo out of it. So, you’re so not woo woo then when kind of like spiritual things happen, it’s a bit of surprise for some people. Can you share with me what kind of interesting spiritual things has happened for you in doing the breathwork that you were shocked happen? That you weren’t aware would happen?

 

[2:05:42] Jon Paul Crimi: I don’t usually share the spiritual stuff because I don’t want people to get turned off by it. I feel like if you’re hearing someone share their spiritual experience you go, ‘Okay. I’m out.’ That’s not for me, right? But if you have your spiritual experience yourself, different story.

 

[2:05:59] Ashley James: Right. To preframe it. One of my regular guests is an exorcist. I think my listeners are more open-minded than the regular population.

 

[2:06:09] Jon Paul Crimi: Okay. All right. We can dive into it. One of my first breathwork sessions, I saw myself on the stage, reaching out in the air, hand in the air, 100 people in the room. They were all reaching out, laying on the floor. I was like, ‘That’s so weird. Why would I be doing that?’ I was on a stage couple of years later with 100 people in the room and I had them doing that, pulling the moments in. I remember that first session. I went, ‘Oh my God. That is the thing I saw in the breathwork session. I saw this. I saw this years ago and I didn’t understand what it meant. So, it was like a future download.

I would get messages. You need to go call this person. You need to help this person. It was always about help. It’s always been about helping people. I’m a selfish, self-centered person by nature. So I was like, ‘Damn. Why can’t it be just about me?’ It’s never about me because when I help other people, my life gets really good. When I focus on myself, my life gets really lousy.

So, just parts of my body healing traumas in my body from different things that happened to me in my life I would feel that. My very first session, I felt connected to the universe. God, spirituality, whatever you want to call it. I felt it in an undeniable way. I felt it in the way like I would want to get out of the car and kill someone in LA in the freeway. It was that real for me. It was that undeniable. I felt it. I felt the presence of something in my life. It was the first time I’d ever felt it. I have grown up in religion. I traveled the world and gone through temples in Cambodia and the cathedral in Notre Dame. I’ve done it all and I never felt it anywhere in my life ever. I felt it in this breathwork session the first time. It was incredible.

I came home and told my wife about it. I made love to my wife and I said, ‘I just made a baby.’ She said, ‘Shut up you idiot.’ I said, ‘No, no. I felt the soul the baby come through me.’ The next day, she was nauseous, I was like, ‘That’s the baby.’ She’s like, ‘It’s the next day, idiot. Shut up.’ Then I had this thing the next day which I’d never experienced before, which was my head was completely turned off for the entire day.

 

[2:08:34] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[2:08:35] Jon Paul Crimi: Yeah. It was the best day of my life I guess. I felt like maybe what someone feels like, I don’t know for sure, with schizophrenia or some kind of mental illness because I was walking around kind of just giggling. Present and giggling. I said to my wife, ‘Do I look like I’m crazy?’ She said, ‘You just look really happy.’ But I’d never experience anything like it. My friend who was a spiritual kind of guru, healer he said, ’You are in the Buddha mind.’ I was in the Buddha-mind for that day and it was just an incredible day. Sure enough, that was the conception of my daughter that day, that night before.

It’s just been one awakening after another. There have been times where I’ve done fasting. I started fasting and I would breathe in a fast. I will go, ‘Oh my God. Now I get it, what the connection is between fasting and spirituality.’ I would have these intense breath sessions where I would do the active breathing for an hour or more. Then I would lay there vibrating on the floor for two hours just connected to some kind of source, to some incredible thing.

So, there’s been journeys like that. I’ve done it on beaches, on planes. I have a float tank, that sensory deprivation tank in my house, which I love. It’s like my favorite place to and I’ve done it a ton in there. I freaked myself out, maybe I’m building too much carbon monoxide here. But it has vents you know. But your mind is really dangerous. It can be really dangerous, right. It’s like acid. They say if you start thinking you’re going to have a bad acid trip you do, right? That really translates into breathwork too. If you think you’re going to have a bad time- there have been people who email me like all scared and worried. I go, ‘Yeah, don’t come. If you think you’re going to have a bad time, you are going to.’ Whether you think you’re right or not, you’re right.

The brain is such a powerful thing. The mind is this supercomputer and it has to be right and so we make it right. So if you think you’re going to have a bad time then you probably are.

 

[2:10:46] Ashley James: Yeah. Yeah. We need to shift our mindset. Absolutely. Because it’s right. Our mindset is right.

 

[2:10:54] Jon Paul Crimi: I program people. Like you’re talking about the NLP, I tell people, ‘You’re going to have this incredible transformational experience tonight. You’re going to walk out of here different than the way you came in. If you can just do these little things. If you can just push through these little discomforts, you’re going to leave here differently.’ People do. Everyone in that room leaves different than the way they came in without a doubt. I’ve been teaching it for eight years now, I’ve never had somebody come up and say nothing happened. This hasn’t happened, never had anyone asked for their money back. It just never happened.

 

[2:11:24] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That’s amazing.

 

[2:11:25] Jon Paul Crimi: I have had people quit at the studio. I would see two or three people quit. They gave up five minutes in because it got hard, it got uncomfortable where they start to feel the physical sensations and they got scared and freak them out and they stop. They go, ‘This isn’t for me.’ I’m like, ‘You haven’t gone to the other side yet. You don’t know if it’s for you. You have to fully do it.’ But what I found out is I would go ask the studio, ‘Was that person here on a guest pass, on a free guest pass?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah. How’d you know?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. Because they gave up.’ Because there was no investment. Being invested is often key to this thing. Having some kind of investment, having some kind of exchange will help you to push through.

If I have you pay $1000.00 to do it, you’re going to do it.

 

[2:12:11] Ashley James: Yeah. I bet the people that fly into LA and dedicate a few days of their life between travel and getting to your class, I bet they get the biggest breakthroughs out of being there.

 

[2:12:22] Jon Paul Crimi: They do. The more invested you are the bigger the experience is going to be. Yeah. Test it out. Let me know what you think. If you have the guts, you got to push through it.

 

[2:12:34] Ashley James: I know. I’m totally going to do it. I’m so excited.

 

[2:12:36] Jon Paul Crimi: The one thing- I just realized I forgot to say that it works better on an empty stomach.

 

[2:12:40] Ashley James: Really glad that you mentioned to do it on an empty stomach because when I was in massage therapy college back when I was 19, many many lifetimes ago, I had learned this breathing exercise that also involves clenching. You clench your muscles and let go. You clench your muscles and let go. I came home and did it with my roommate, he threw up everywhere because he had just eaten. He’s like, ‘What are you doing to me?’ I was really afraid of it afterward. It was so weird. He was just lying there one second next thing he’s throwing up everywhere.

So I imagine that deep breathing because the diaphragm is pushing on the stomach. You definitely want to be- so how many hours away from food should we be?

 

[2:13:25] Jon Paul Crimi: You know look, the less you’ve eaten, the further you’re away from it the actually the bigger the experience will be. But if you’re someone who gets really lightheaded or dizzy or has low blood sugar then I would say two hours, three hours. Bring a bar or bring juice to have after the breathwork to take care of yourself. If you’re someone that can handle it that does fasting regularly then you’re fine. Do it fasted. My biggest experiences have been fasted. But listen, if you’ve never done this before and you’re not someone that fasts, don’t do that. Don’t fast all day and then do this big huge breathwork session. I mean, it’s too much too soon.

 

[2:14:10] Ashley James: The mismatches that are listening, the mismatchers who have to do what you tell them not to do are all going to do a seven-day fast and then start breathwork. The mismatchers, you’ve been warned.

 

[] Jon Paul Crimi: They’re going to see God. They’re going to see God. They’re going to email me 50 emails after that.

 

[2:14:28] Ashley James: So take it slow. It sounds like the best time is first thing in the morning because you’re already coming out of a natural fast having not eaten for the last eight hours.

 

[2:14:37] Jon Paul Crimi: That’s right. That’s right. I do my classes often at night so people will hold off and they normally have dinner at five or six or seven and I’ll do my class at seven or 8:00 and they’ll be really hungry. Those are the class and they go have this big experience. Then they’ll go eat with their friends afterward. I would suggest at least two to three hours of an empty stomach.

 

[2:15:02] Ashley James: Very good. So your five-day class is on breathewithJP.com

 

[2:15:09] Jon Paul Crimi: Yup. Five Day Emotional Detox it’s called.

 

[2:15:11] Ashley James: Five Day Emotional Detox. The link to that and the link to everything Jon Paul does is going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. I want to have you back on the show after I’ve done the Five Day Emotional Detox. We should definitely have you back. We should keep diving into this topic. I think that this is incredibly valuable. My listeners are turning over stones and trying to figure out what am I eating? Am I eating things wrong or right? What am I doing? Should I be taking these supplements? Should I be taking these herbs? Should I be taking these classes? Should I be doing this or doing that? They’re turning over stones and this is the stone that 100% of the population should turn over.

 

[2:15:57] Jon Paul Crimi: Yup.

 

[2:15:58] Ashley James: Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing. I definitely want to have you back. Is there anything you’d like to say to the listeners to complete today’s interview? Any homework you want to give or any final words that you’d like to impart upon us?

 

[2:16:15] Jon Paul Crimi: I think I just want to say that I think I already said it which is you’re worth it, show up and love yourself no matter what, no matter how hard things get. Everybody wants somebody to show up and love them for who they are, the way they are when they’re not loving themselves that way. We teach people how to love us. We show people how to love us by how we love ourselves. How we love ourselves is how we show up and do the hard work for ourselves. So show up and do the hard work for yourself because you’re worth it.

I want to say this little quote by Thich Nhat Hanh which is, “I have been repeating this to myself over with my hand on my heart and it is so healing. To love is to be there. We cannot love if we are not fully breathing into each moment. May we have the courage to open to each moment with a sense of curiosity. May we have the desire to show up for ourselves no matter what. May we put our hands in our hearts and speak in a gentle voice. Dear one, I am here for you. Dear one, I am here for you. Dear one, I am here for you. All my love.

 

[2:17:33] Ashley James: Jon Paul Crimi, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the show. I can’t wait to have you back.

 

[2:17:39] Jon Paul Crimi: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It’s been fabulous.

 

[2:17:43] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program.

 

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Oct 31, 2019

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Modified Fasting

https://www.learntruehealth.com/modified-fasting

 

Highlights:

  • What is modified fasting
  • What is autophagy
  • Is fasting safe?
  • While our bodies are going through a fast, our bodies are trying detox and cleanse and heal
  • Four day modified fast before chemo for cancer patients
  • Fasting decreases inflammations
  • Intermittent fasting is offsetting the damage to the liver and kidneys
  • Atkins and keto is the same diet
  • Diabetes is manageable
  • If weight loss is a goal, you could do modified fasting once or twice a month
  • Other benefits of modified fasting
  • Refeeding process
  • Hormone balancing effect
  • Book: How to Get The Health Benefits of Fasting Without Going Hungry
  • Antibiotics wipe out good bacteria
  • Who shouldn’t do modified fasting?
  • Eating small meals in a window of 12 hours

 

In this episode, Robyn and I will talk about modified fasting and its benefits people who are undergoing cancer treatment, people who are trying to lose weight, and people who are experiencing hormonal imbalance. Robyn also shares with us how fasting decreases inflammation and the other benefits of modified fasting.

 

[00:00:00] Intro: Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. You’re going to love today’s interview with Robyn Openshaw. She’s giving us a free copy of her book. To download her book, go to www.learntruehealth.com/fastbook. That’s learntruehealth.com/ fastbook. As in it’s a book that teaches you how to fast. But it’s also a fast read. So it’ll be easy for you to remember learntruehealth.com/fastbook.

Now, Robyn talks about her Flash Fast. And to get the listener discount on that, go to learntruehealth.com/flashfast. That’s learntruehealth.com /flashfast as in a very quick fast, Flash Fast. All those links are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast as well. So if you’re driving or exercising or running around and you don’t have a pen, you can always jump to the beginning of this episode to hear those links again or go to the show notes of this episode to grab them.  

I definitely want to grab that book though. I could not put it down. Robyn sent me a physical copy of it. It’s 70 pages long. So you can finish it in one sitting. And I just couldn’t put it down. It was a really good book. It’s well-written. It’s an easy read. And it is chock full of science and the data. And she is referencing the latest studies showing how we can fast in a way that is the healthiest, that staves off disease. People are seeing now – it’s amazing, people are actually reversing MS, autoimmune disease. There are cases of cancer being reversed. People are reversing type 2 diabetes. We are able to heal our body and do it in a way that triggers our own body’s self-cleaning mechanism called autophagy.

So we get into that in today’s interview. You’re just going to love it. Please share this interview with your friends who have struggled with metabolic syndrome, who struggled with losing weight, balancing hormones, autoimmune conditions, type 2 diabetes, as we talk about how they can utilize a specific type of fasting that isn’t removing food from their diet. It’s utilizing food in a certain way that triggers the body’s own self-cleaning mechanism. And the mechanism the body uses to repair and heal.

So I know you guys are going to love today’s interview, please share it with your friends because I want to get this information out there. There are people who are suffering like I was suffering for so many years. All through my 20s, I was so sick with six different illnesses. And I reversed them naturally with food and with lifestyle changes and supplements. And I wish I’d had this information that you’re about to learn today. Because it would have definitely made my journey a lot smoother and my healing a lot quicker. I know that we can get this information out there and help a lot of people to heal and support their body’s ability to heal itself. Enjoy today’s interview. Thank you so much for being a listener. And go to learntruehealth.com/ fastbook to get Robyn Openshaw’s free book that I’m really excited that she’s giving it out to everyone so we can get this information out there and help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 390.

 

 

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show with us Robyn Openshaw. She’s Green Smoothie Girl. You can go back and listen to our Episode 178 where she taught us the high vibration foods that bring in the nutrients and the energy, and the vibration that brings in vitality, and to do away with the foods that lower our physical vibration. And it was a phenomenal interview. Actually, that was the interview that convinced my husband to go from basically being an Atkins style meat eater to a complete vegan whole food plant based overnight. I came out of that interview and told him what you said. And he said, “I am never eating meat again.” So that is a pretty powerful interview I have to say. And then you came back on the show, Episode 358, to teach us about how to protect ourselves from EMF.

What I love about learning from Robyn Openshaw and she has a wonderful podcast called Vibe, published 16 books, and just constantly coming out with great information. Robyn, you are who I want to be when I grew up. So I just love that you are pulling in the data, the research, the science and showing people how they can change every single aspect of their life, emotionally, mentally, physically to optimize every part of your being to living truly healthfully in a joyful way. So I must thank you so much. I know my listeners love learning from you. And as always, it’s a pleasure to have you back on the show.

 

[00:05:18] Robyn Openshaw: It’s so nice to be here again, Ashley. And that is high praise. And as you know, I’ve told you this a long time ago, I have a secret fantasy that we co host a podcast one day. I don’t know how to make that happen. It’s just a little throwing that out there.

 

 

[00:05:30] Ashley James: That’d be awesome. We have to figure it out. That’d be super great. When you are with your tribe, when you’re with the people that are on the same path, it feels so good. And I know my listeners feel that way, too, being part of the learn health community because they’re finally finding the people that are all really, really interested in gaining health. But not just physical health, all aspects of life. And you exude that. I love following you on Facebook. I recommend listeners check you out and follow you on Facebook. Because the stuff I learned for you every day is wonderful. And you give such great advice. And you ask such great questions. And make us all think, think about the things in our life. Instead of being the ostrich and just digging our heads in the sand and wanting to be put back in the matrix, we have to open ourselves up and start advocating for ourselves.

Now, today’s episode, I have been really excited to do because fasting has sort of become a buzzword. But there’s a lot of misconceptions. There’s a lot of misinformation. And for some people, there’s a lot of fear and belief that we can’t do fasting, especially if someone has an illness like type 2 diabetes. There’s an idea that we can’t do any form of fasting. And that just is not true. And there’s lots of studies to prove that. And you’re here today to make sure that you clean up all the misconceptions, do all the myth busting, and show us how we can utilize fasting to support absolute optimal health.

 

 

[00:07:01] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. It’s a big question. Basically, is fasting safe? And should people be afraid of it? I think mostly people are afraid of fasting because they’ve never – I learned this on a speaking tour. I spoken 450 cities in six years. And I had many, many people tell me they’ve never missed a meal. And that was shocking to me. And I don’t know why it would be. Because I was raised in a very small community of – well, not really – I think there’s, like, 12 million Mormons worldwide. But I was raised Mormon – or LDS is how they prefer to be called. And we’ve fasted for 24 hours the first Sunday of every month. And so for me, it was just no big deal. Not that it’s fun. It’s not fun to go a whole day without food or, let alone, a week without food. And the most I’ve done water fasting is 12 days without food.

But I think that because we live in a time for the first time in the history of the world where people don’t just naturally go without food for long periods of time because we’re not hunter gatherers. And we don’t have droughts and famines. We have just food anywhere all the time, inexpensive food. Even people who are in poverty, many of them don’t, in North America at least, want for food. I mean there’s food banks, whatever. So just most people haven’t gone without food. And that’s not true. The thing to think about here is that maybe the most powerful thing that people were doing for their health, for literally thousands of years, was something they’re doing unintentionally, which is they just would go hungry. I know we’re going to get into why fasting is possibly the most health preventative, disease preventative thing you can possibly do.

But I agree that it’s scary to think about not having food for a week. In the last four years, I’ve done four different water fasts that were between seven and 12 days. And I don’t go out there and talk on radio shows and podcasts about that because I know that nobody else is going to do it. It’s going to be, like, one in 1000. I mean, it’s kind of like my job to research and write about and publish my own experiments when it comes to health and wellness. And sometimes I do my own trials of people. We’re going to get into, hopefully, my own trials of people doing modified fast. But I really wasn’t out there saying everybody should do, like, seven day or 12 day water fast like I’ve done. But even though I’m open to it, and I was raised fasting once a month, I flew to Texas to stay at an ashram just to literally have the temptation removed. It’s not easy. It is not easy to fast. I would agree with that.

And I do want to say since you mentioned diabetes that people who are on some diabetes medications really do need to be careful about fasting. You can’t just take those medications and go and start water fasting for days, or a week or two at a time. You really do need to have some good guidance from your practitioner. And a functional medicine practitioner is going to be a lot more likely to guide you. But there are some contraindications. Most people can fast, no problem. But people are a lot more toxic than they were even a generation ago. You know, it’s no joke that we have 80,000 chemicals approved for use in our air, food, and water. And they’re all in our organs now. And we all have pretty extraordinary levels of heavy metals. Any anybody who’s tested for that knows that we all pretty much have a variety of heavy metals that are highly toxic. So we have risk factors that maybe two generations ago people didn’t have.

But what’s cool and what we’re going to get into today, I know that’s what you want to talk about, is a way that we can fast and that we can get all the benefits of it without just going cold turkey and having nothing but water for a week.

 

 

[00:10:48] Ashley James: Absolutely. I’ve done a variety of fasts. And you’re right about the temptation to try to do what only fast at home. Well, still cooking for my husband and our son who’s young, he’s four. But he was a little bit younger when I was doing some water only fasting. And just to be around food is difficult the first few days. And then after that the hunger goes away. But I think the first two or three days can be the hardest in my experience. But also then you have to be resting. If you’re water only fasting, you can’t necessarily get up, get the kids ready, make their lunches, take the kids to school, go to work, work a full day, come home, handle the chores. Just everything that we need to do, all the energy we need to put out there. While our bodies are going through a fast, our bodies are trying detox and cleanse and heal. And so we really have to take a break from life and schedule a time to just maybe lie on the couch or go for a gentle walks or read and not really do a lot. And that is not necessarily reasonable to ask the modern mom or dad right now.

But these modified fasts where you we still get the benefits of the water only fasting are much more doable for the average person. I’d love for you to get into how did you get all this research? And how did you get excited about teaching people about fasting? What happened? Because you’ve been fasting, I think you said, since you were eight. That’s when in the LDS church, eight year olds on the first Sunday of every month spent a whole day not eating or drinking. So that’s just been part of your life. But at what point did you start to get into the science of wanting to then teach people how to fast in a way that’s modified so that they can still get the benefits and still actually do it and make it realistic?

 

 

[00:12:52] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. So my exposure to fasting early on, it was really for religious reasons and cultures since the dawn of time have fasted for spiritual purification. And the basic concept is – and anyone who is exposed to these religions or these philosophies, this will be no surprise – that as you humble the body and, like you mentioned it, that if you water fast, you can’t go out and play a tennis match. I’ve done two modified fast in the last two months where I went out on day two and on day three of my modified fast and played a competitive match and they were both in July and August in the Utah desert heat, middle of the day.

This is not something I would have ever scheduled myself for doing a water fast. And so when I fly to this ashram to water fast to basically get away from my refrigerator and my car – like you can’t even get an Uber there. You’re literally out in the middle of nowhere. I pretty much lie in bed. And I might go for, like you said, a slow walk. I mean, I’m not a competitive athlete. And I play sports between one and three hours really every day besides Sunday. And I’ve always done that. And so for me to be so incapacitated by water fasting, you’re right, I would literally have to take time off work or take a week off work or, like I said, I did I did it for 12 days once. And I did it because there has been more and more actual published clinical research of how powerful fasting is.

For instance, my friends who own True North in Santa Rosa, California. If I were going to go water fast again, I would go there. Because you’re getting medical supervision there. I knew I could do it. I knew I was healthy. So me flying to the ashram in Texas is fine. But I don’t recommend it to people. Because they don’t have any real oversight medically. And some people really should be watched over and your vitals taken twice a day and all that. But they’ve taken 20,000 people through a water fast and if people are into that they should totally do it. However, what I found is the vast majority of people won’t do it. So I was becoming aware.

And then Yoshinori Ohsumi, Japanese researcher in 2016. I’m talking this is new information. This is literally less than three years old. He won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering the mechanisms of autophagy. And I became just as a researcher – and my full time job is research and health and wellness and I’m an author of 16 books. And I became completely obsessed with this idea of autophagy. And I especially been preoccupied with it, because I researched cancer a lot. I have a lot of history of cancer in my family going way back. And I’ve always wondered, like, “What would I do? What are the things that I would do if I had cancer?” And then my cancer research all over the world, a lot of these doctors highly recommend fasting. And so I was curious about the mechanism of it.

Well, when autophagy was discovered and quantified, what we learned is that when we deprive the body of food, when the body is not in a fed state, when it is a fasted state, the body shifts its energy. It no longer has to spend 65% of its energy metabolizing food and taking this raw input and taking it through a lot of different processes so that it becomes mitochondrial energy. We’re talking about the very end points of what that food is going to eventually do. So you free up the body from what it spends 65% of its energy doing. Ad guess what it does, it doesn’t take a nap. It goes into repair and clean up. And we could call that process autophagy, which means self- eating.

And in the process of autophagy, the body’s immune system mobilizes – highly, highly mobilized killer T cells and white blood cells. White blood cells and stem cells are mass produced. And the body goes into tearing down broken parts. On the cellular level parts of cells are stripped down, broken down, metabolized, recycled. But also on an organ level and a systems level,your pancreas, for instance – and this is really exciting for diabetics, pre-diabetics, all of us considering that there are people projecting that by 2050 every single one of us will be diabetic if we keep going at the rate we’re going of diagnosis – the pancreas actually strips down broken parts and rebuilds. And those beta cells become more insulin sensitive. So we literally regenerate parts of the pancreas, functions of the pancreas. We become more insulin sensitive. And there are multiple human and animal trials showing that just from modified fasting, not even going completely without food.

And really what I want to talk about is modified fasting because everyone can do it. And doing it a few days a month is the most powerful thing I’ve discovered in my lifetime of being a health and wellness researcher, the most powerful thing could possibly do to avoid disease, to reverse the effects, the ravages, the symptoms of disease. I mean, I’ll tell you what I think is the most mind blowing thing they’ve discovered is, is repairing myelin sheath – rebuilding myelin sheath. I mean, there are millions of people suffering with Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis. And all timers. We’re not we’re not getting on top of these problems at all. And the methods of Western medicine are doing nothing for us, for people with Huntington’s disease and ALS. I mean, what a nightmare of a disease. But multiple sclerosis, it’s where you’re developing these lesions in the central nervous system and the myelin sheath is eroding. Well guess what? A few days of doing a modified fast in both animal and humans, we’re seeing rebuilding myelin sheath. That’s unbelievable.

 

 

[00:19:11] Ashley James: I love it. It is so mind blowing. I actually had Dr. Goldhamer on my show, Episode 230. And he’s the founder of the True North Medical Center that you mentioned. And he said autophagy happens on day three of fast. And then on day five of fast they see a huge spike in stem cells, the body repairing itself .Which is brilliant. It’s like a self-cleaning mechanism. It’s our own self-cleaning mechanism that the autophagy is digesting pathological tissue, bacteria, and viruses, and also cancer, and unwanted cells that are kind of broken or scar tissue, even cysts. And they’ve seen cystic breasts or cystic ovaries that diminished. So the body’s just digesting scar tissue and unwanted tissue, unneeded tissue.

And then after it does the self-cleaning mechanism then it has this boost in the human growth hormone and in the stem cells. Which actually, what I found fascinating is it protects us from losing muscle mass. Because I think that’s a big fear people have is that they’re going to waste away. “If you lose weight on a fast, it’s just your muscle you’re losing. You’re not losing any fat. You’re just losing your muscle.” That’s a fear people have. And yes, we might have it. There’s a very small percentage of muscle that is lost. But then there’s a protective mechanism that kicks in that stops the body from using muscle as fuel in a fast. And I thought that was really interesting. and he published a study, Dr. Goldhamer, showing a woman who came in with end stage cancer. And 30 days after fasting with him walked out with zero cancer. She went and got scans before and after her 30 day stay there at the clinic. And he published it. And that is just, like, mind blowing because no oncologist is going to tell you, “Why don’t you try fasting?”

 

 

[00:21:08] Robyn Openshaw: They’re not. I think they’re going to be. The functional medicine doctors are and they’re putting cancer patients on. And I think that we’re going to see an explosion in this with anybody who’s open to functional medicine, nutritional medicine, are going to start putting people on a modified fast before chemotherapy. And this isn’t even released yet. But Dr. Valter Longo – you’ve mentioned our mutual friend Dr. Alan Goldhamer, and his work is some of what I cite in my new little book. I know you’re going to offer it for free to your readers. You can literally read it in an hour and you get an overview of all of the health conditions that the modified fasting research is showing is super, super beneficial for. And it runs the gamut.

And I want to talk about cancer right now for a second since you brought that up. Because I’m actually telling you this before this clinical trial comes out. But Dr. Longo is the main researcher at USC’s Longevity Institute. And he and Sebastian Brandhorst are behind a lot of the clinical trials. They’re just going to town on all these different, very specific disease states that they study. What happens when you put people on three, four or five days of modified fasting? Johns Hopkins has some great stuff that I also quote in this little 70 page mini book in reversing asthma.

But let’s go back to cancer. The animal studies, usually any hypothesis comes, then you go to an animal study. And then when animals see a major reversal in disease, then you take it into human trial. And that’s what they’re coming out with. They’re going to be recommending a four day modified fast before chemo, because what they found in animals and apparently the human study that they’re coming out with, also really, really exciting results. But three different major mechanisms. Actually, there may be a fourth or fifth. But how it helps cancer patients is several fold. And that is if you deprive the body of food, then the cancer cells and these colonies of cancer cells – and usually by the time somebody is diagnosed with cancer that cancerous growth has developed a vascular system and it’s threatening an organ system. Usually by the time it’s detectable, you’ve got that.

And anybody listening to this, it’s like, “Oh, this doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have cancer.” I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here, but we all have cancer. And most of the holistic cancer doctors I’ve studied with all over the world – which is more than 20 of them- say that your body develops a detectable cancer condition several times during the course of a lifetime. But your body metabolizes. So your body is metabolizing cancer everyday. About 50,000 aberrant cells. Cells that were healthy and mutate. And that could be because of exposure to low grade radiation that we all have from the electromagnetic pollution in our life. It could be like garbage foods we eat. It could be stress. There’s a lot of reasons why cells mutate. We’ve got 50,000 cancer cells forming every day in the average person. And your body is metabolizing it all the way until it isn’t. And when the cancerous growth starts to get the upper hand and the immune system starts to function in a more and more dysfunctional way, so just imagine your immune system is getting weaker, the cancerous growth is getting stronger. Once it’s over about a million cells, that’s when it becomes detectable. That’s when it potentially could compromise some functioning of an organ system.

Well, one thing that happens when you go into autophagy and also ketosis, by the way, when the body is in a fasted state is that cancerous cells can’t put up a shield. And sort of when they when they go into chemotherapy, they’re going to drown in those chemicals. The cancerous cells become more vulnerable as a result of the modified fast. And the healthy cells in the fasted state can put up a shield of sorts. And they become more resistant to chemotherapy. So that’s one of the ways that modified fasting is useful.

Another way that it’s useful is mass production of stem cells increase, like you mentioned, of human growth hormone. Another way that it’s beneficial is that the immune system is strengthened. In a fasted state your white blood cells become very, very active. And other components, the lymphocytes, the killer T cells, like I said. And they all become highly mobilized. They’re hungry. They’re not sluggish. They’re not overfed.

And so we’re going to wait and hear what all the details are of what Longo is coming out with. But he’s basically recommending a four day modified fast now, apparently, for people going into chemotherapy. And so I would be surprised if the oncology industry can continue to ignore the benefits of fasting. Now, I’m not saying a stage four cancer patient who is in cachexia where the body is metabolizing muscle. There’s probably a contraindication for some cancer patients to fast, especially to do a full blown water fast. When they’re in cachexia and the body is sort of breaking down muscle quite quickly, usually, they have people eating extra protein and trying to put on weight to stem that process.

But you’re right, a lot of people are thinking that if – they think a couple things about if they’re fasting. They think that it’s going to slow down their metabolism. And Dr. Jason Fung has proven that, in fact, when you fast or when you do a modified fast for several days, your body’s metabolism actually increases. And people are worried that their body is going to break down muscle. Listen, trust your body to be smarter than that. Your highly intelligent body knows when it’s cleaning up. It knows what to throw out and what to keep. It knows the weeds from the cultivated plants. It knows to not go after healthy muscle tissue. Healthy muscle tissue is extremely durable. Now, it might grow go after some broken down muscle tissue. Because like every other tissue and organ in the body, there’s old skin cells. There’s old cells and tissues that need to be broken down. That’s the muscle tissue that is going to break down.

And let me mention another thing, because you mentioned breaking down muscle tissue and that people are afraid of fasting for that reason. You know what? Another thing that happens is, you know, were studying 2500 people right now who are just starting into our three day modified fast and following our protocol. But before I ever went to a larger group like that, we put 100 people through our Flash Fast, which is a three day modified fast. And it follows all of the science. It follows all the research. Because I collected it all. I analyze it all. And I was like, “Okay. Here are all the principles that all of these researchers like Longo and Brandhorst are using in their clinical trials. They’re getting such great results. And we got to follow that.

In fact, we’re doing one better than they are. Because Longos’s fasting protocol isn’t even organic and ours is organic. So we put 100 people on this three day modified fast and the average weight loss was four pounds. And several of that first group of 100 lost 6.4 pounds. That was the highest we saw. Several people lost that much. Now, you’re going to hear that. And you’re going to say three days of eating – we kept it under 800 calories. And we put them on five mini meals a day so that they never got very hungry. Their average highest hunger level was 3.4 on a scale of 1 to 10. That was their self rating. So you got to ask yourself if you’re scared to do a modified fast, if you’re scared to do a three day modified fast. And you’re like, “Oh my gosh. I’m going to be so hungry. And I won’t be able to exercise. And I won’t be able to take care of my kids. I won’t be able to work.” I’ve done it nine times. I’ve done the Flash Fast nine times. Like I said, I’ve played my competitive sport. I work out every morning. You can do that. I don’t know I would tell everybody to work out super hard. But you can totally be active while you do it. Well, 3.44 average hunger level of scale 1 to 10.

But here’s what I wanted to say because people also think, “Oh, that’s just water weight.” And I want to point out what we’re talking about when we lose water in fasting. We’re not talking about dehydrating the body. When the body releases fluids in the fasting process it’s because of wide scale healing of inflamed tissues. And if you imagine an inflamed cell or an inflamed organ, if you want to go bigger, if you want to step up the ladder and think of an inflamed organ. Imagine that that organ has billions of cells that are trapping fluids because they’re inflamed. So just imagine the outside of the cell is kind of red and angry and injured and trapping fluids. Well, when the fasting process allows you to heal inflammation – and by the way, in that first 100 people we put through the Flash Fast, 100% of them said that they noticed inflammation decreasing or disappearing. And I’m talking about puffy circles under your eyes. I’m talking about joints that hurt. Those are the things that people tend to notice when it comes to inflation. Those are things you feel.

Well, if you’re feeling that your joints hurt, you can guarantee that there are billions of cells that are injured. And so when the body goes into this repair mode and you lose some of that water weight – because I would agree that a minority of that 6.4 pounds is going to be water weight. – what it is, is those inflamed cells healing and releasing dirty fluids. And so it’s not water you want. That water that you’re releasing is dirty fluids from inflamed cells. And it’s a good thing.

 

 

[00:31:58] Ashley James: I love it. I love that you can do – anyone can do your fast, the three day modified fast. Even people who are diabetics because they’re not starving themselves. And they’ll have enough energy to still go to work, take care of the kids. Maybe they’ll need to just rest a little bit. Maybe they can’t run the marathon that day. But you still play tennis while you’re on your modified fast. So it just shows that – and the fact that the hunger levels are under four out of ten is phenomenal. But during the three day fast, people are getting great results.

Now, those listeners who have heard other maybe interviews from other people about the ketogenic diet, I know I was on the ketogenic bandwagon early on in the show. So back in, like, before Episode 100 maybe I was talking about ketogenic. And I was doing ketosis. I thought it was the best thing in the world. And then I went to my Naturopath – my husband and I were doing it for a few months. We went to Naturopath and my husband who had had perfect blood pressure developed dangerously high blood pressure. And then we did some more blood work and urine analysis. And it turns out the ketogenic diet had damaged his kidneys severely. And I had an inflamed liver that was very angry and enlarged. And so we found out. And it took me a while. It took me being really diligent with the Naturopath and getting on the protocols. And completely getting off of the ketogenic bandwagon and getting on a whole food plant based healing plants protocol to heal my liver but and to heal my husband’s kidneys and his heart.

And that’s when I woke up and went, “Wait a second. Everyone is kind of this fad.” This ketogenic diet is this big fad and I’ve been promoting it because I’m listening to all these people who also think it’s amazing. And people get some good results during a ketogenic diet. But there are some big negative results that you can get. And so then that’s when I started to look into interviewing whole food plant based people and started to see the light. So some people who are listening go, “Hey. I’m doing ketosis right now. I’m getting great results.” Or, “I’ve done ketosis. I got great results.” But your diet is not this 90 or 100% fat fast. Like some people say they’re fasting but they’re eating coconut oil a day long. Can you just clarify the for us that you could get into ketosis when you’re fasting, even water fasting, you don’t need to eat fat. But that your program is not a ketogenic diet.

 

 

[00:34:53] Robyn Openshaw: No, it’s not a ketogenic diet. And I’m really troubled by this fad. And people always push back when I post science about the danger of the ketogenic diet. I mean, US News and World Report every year since this became sort of the reigning fad, it sort of took the limelight away from the Paleo diet, that was the rain raining fad before that. There’s a panel of nutrition experts that collaborate and they rank all the fad diets. The ketogenic diets always almost dead last, it’s like in the bottom three of almost 40 diets that US News and World Report ranks every year. And they don’t just look at do people lose weight. Although it actually does pretty poorly there, too, compared to many other approaches that are more sustainable, that are more healthy, that are more useful in your heading on out to the rest of your life and how you can eat for the rest of your life.

But I have a theory and it’s a theory based on my life’s work of studying nutrition. That if people do well on the ketogenic diet – and generally people do well for a short period of time and they get over committed to it if they lost some weight – if they lost some weight, it becomes religious for them. They’re not listening anymore. It becomes like this very emotional thing. Like, “I lost 10 pounds. Therefore, it’s a good diet.” Well, you can lose ten pounds doing the cotton ball diet, too, or the Jelly Bean diet. But here’s the thing, I believe – here’s my theory – that if people do well on the ketogenic diet and they haven’t yet evaluated how devastating it is for the liver to have to metabolize more fat than the human liver was designed to be able to break down and deal with, that’s just the 70% average ratio of fat that people on the ketogenic diet are eating is really, really hard on the liver. And I’m very sorry that that happened to you. And your husband, I am sorry to say, I’m not surprised. But my theory is that people are, to the extent people are doing well and there’s lots of stories like yours. And there’s course like all the keto rash and the bad breath and the bad smells and all the things that happen when you put your body in a really unnatural state and it’s really struggling. Those are all signs of struggle. It’s not a good way to treat your body. They’re doing well not because they’re over eating fat. If they’re doing well, it’s because they skipped a meal.

The intermittent fasting is a great idea and that is offsetting the damage they’re doing to their liver and kidneys. And the other thing that’s offsetting the damage they’re doing to their liver and kidneys is that if you take someone on a standard American diet, where they’re drinking rock stars or their eating Pop Tarts for breakfast, or they eat a candy bar with every lunch and dinner or whatever it is, whatever your dietary sins are, potato chips, you name it. If you take them off of those things because as bad as I think the ketogenic diet is for over feeding fats and that people say, “Oh, I ate good fats.” Yeah, but you still can’t eat 70% fat and expect your liver to keep up it’s not designed for that. You have to know a little bit about the liver to go into an unnatural state of eating like that. But I really believe that getting people off the processed food and the intermittent fasting is why they’re actually pretty bad diet. They’re overeating fats diet is why they might lose weight or why they might feel better. It’s because they got rid of the processed food. It’s really that simple. And unfortunately, because they get people off of sugar, and stimulants, and alcohol while they’re doing the “keto diet.” The overeating of fats gets the credit for that that it doesn’t deserve.

 

 

[00:39:01] Ashley James: Right. And now, the science will eventually catch up and will eventually see. But it’s so new as a fad. We have to remember that it was designed to mimic fasting for epileptic children that were unresponsive to drugs. And its beneficial for a very small percentage of the population. And that these children, in the quality of their life, is significantly lowered if they’re not in a state of ketosis. They created the diet originally, the ketosis – the ketogenic diet originally was created because these doctors were doing fasting with children. They were doing water fasting and they found that the children – because going into a natural state of ketosis when we’re not eating anything – that their epilepsy would get better or significantly lowered amounts of seizures. And then they had to figure out how to modify it so they could still eat because they – I don’t know what it was but legally they couldn’t do fasting with children or something. That’s why the diet came out of basically trying to mimic the benefits of fasting. It’s like why people going after the copycat? Just go to the original source and do a fast and get the benefits from it.

 

 

[00:40:25] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. And you said eventually science will catch up. And I’m glad to hear you being bold and speaking the truth. Because it’s not popular right now to be a critic of the darling diet of the day. But let me just say, because I’m a lot older than you, that the science already did catch up with the last time keto was around with a different name. They put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig. The fact of the matter is that it’s the Atkins diet but you add intermittent fasting. Actually, it’s a better diet than Atkins was. Because Atkins in the early days was like eat unlimited hamburgers and cheese, you just can’t have the bun. And for God’s sake don’t have any fruit. And most of us are aware of how Atkins diet went down is lots and lots and lots of studies of people who had done it off and on for years. Here’s the thing, you can’t really separate out the all the animal products that people are in Atkins from keto. It’s the same thing. You can say, “Oh, that was higher protein and this is higher fat.” Keto is higher fat. But you’re really splitting hairs. And if you take a look at what the diet was they were actually eating on Atkins and the diet people on keto, it’s the same diet.

And Dr. Atkins because he was so under fire for the nutritional deficiencies that people on his diet had. He sold people over 60 different supplements. So it was brilliant in terms of a marketing plan. And that people buy his diet and then they were really suffering. And they smell bad. And they were losing energy. They could hardly function. And so he would sell them a whole bunch of supplements. And people did lose weight. And so they just thought, “Oh, this is the price I have to pay, I guess, to lose weight. And people will do anything to lose weight. That’s why diets are billion dollar industry.

But we already know what happened because there’s lots and lots of published studies. I mean, Colin Campbell wrote the Low Carb Myth. Ari Whitten, Dr. Wade Smith wrote Low Carb Fraud. Michael Greger wrote Carbophobia. And these are just digests of all the published research that came out after 15 years of the Atkins diet. It got run off the stage by science. So exactly what you just said. All we have to do is go back and look at the high levels of diabetes that people who did Atkins for long periods of time had ongoing. They had been paying the piper for that. They still are for years and years and years. Much higher rates of heart disease, much higher rates of cancer.

 

 

[00:43:07] Ashley James: One final thing I want to say about that diet where it’s a low carbohydrate – and these are the good carbohydrates, like the healthy potatoes and vegetables and fruit, and legumes. Really cleansing and healthy for the body filled with vitamins and minerals and phytonutrients and anti-cancer properties. So when you’re eating a diet that’s almost nonexistent, no carbohydrates. And then you’re just consuming fat and animal meat, which is carcinogenic. And there’s a lot of research that shows that. They’re eating that way. Of course, blood sugar, like A1C hemoglobin – I used to be type 2 diabetic and I healed myself with food. And so I’m really passionate about this.

Because people when they go to their MD are told that they will have diabetes for the rest of their life and they manage it with drugs. But there’s no drug on the market to cure diabetes. You can manage it. And yet if you were to walk out of that doctor’s office and go to a holistic practitioner, they would say to you, “Of course type 2 diabetes is reversible. It’s reversible in a few months, a matter of months. Let’s get you on a healing lifestyle and healing protocol.” And so on a ketosis or an Atkins or ketogenic high fat diet or an Atkins high fat and protein diet, of course, your blood sugar levels will come down. You’re not consuming any carbohydrates. But it is doing damage throughout the body. And it is not addressing the insulin resistance. The insulin resistance actually becomes worse for many people. And then if they go back to eating the standard American diet or just even start eating fruits and adding some carbohydrates in, they will quickly see that that diet did not help them to reverse the diabetes. So they’ll become they’ll be just as sensitive to carbs if not more.

So we have to look at how can we help the body come back into balance. Don’t do extreme things. Some people think fasting is extreme. Fasting is a natural state that we’re used to. And like you said, only up until recently we’ve had access to food for three or more meals a day. But fasting is something that it’s a natural state. This is a natural thing the body wants to do. And when we can aid it, either by doing modified Flash Fast, which is that 800 calories a day – very specific calories, not just inner calories of donuts a day. The coffee and donut diet. It’s not the coffee and donut fast. But that we can take our body back into this natural state of self-cleaning – the self-cleaning protocol to clean out the cancer cells, to clean up the water. And the fact that just in three days, the 100 people that you did this experiment with that 100% saw a decrease in inflammation and a decrease in overall that that water that was in their organs and in their tissue because of the inflammation was able to be released is phenomenal.

So how did they feel after the fast? And obviously they weren’t that hungry. They was less than four to ten, that’s just totally fine. That was the most they were ever hungry was like 3.6, you said on average. But how did they feel afterwards?

 

 

[00:46:41] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. I feel like a million bucks afterwards. In fact, I didn’t intend to do the Flash Fast nine times in the last three months. It’s just that I feel like one million bucks. And then so like, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I do it. And I’m going and I’m playing 90 minutes of tennis with my team. I generally will do 45 minutes of cardio as soon as I wake up. Sometimes that night, I’ll go to a hot yoga class. Now, I’m not saying everyone should do that. That’s my normal lifestyle.

The point is, I have been astonished doing it that I don’t have to stop doing that kind of thing. But everyone has their own reaction to it. And we have just tons and tons and tons of people filling out the questionnaire and telling us their results. I mean, people who are seeing their hormone systems balanced. And they go into their next period and they can’t believe that they haven’t had a period like that for ten ears. They just sail through it without the headaches, without the PMS. without the cramps. We have people reporting similar things to what we’ve read in the scientific literature which led me to develop the Flash Fast regarding stabilizing their mood. That’s a huge issue for people. And people are embarrassed to talk about it because they don’t want to talk about that they have a hard time controlling the ups and downs in their moods. So we have so many of us who struggle with anxiety and depression.

And those were some of the exciting things that I had read in this just avalanche that’s coming out especially through Longo and Brandhorst at USC about the many, many categories of health benefits from just doing a modified fast a few days a month. We have people who are doing it now monthly. Especially people who have weight they want to lose. If weight loss is a goal, you could do it once a month, you can do it twice a month. There’s no contraindications for that. There’s no problem with that. Like I said, I’ve been doing it three times a month. If you had a few glasses of wine on the weekend and you wake up on Monday morning, you don’t feel great, instead of it taken two days to feel great, do that modified fast and your body regenerates the liver so quickly. You can’t believe how good you feel by the end of the day, Monday. Now, are you going to be hungrier than you are when you eat your normal 2,000 calories or whatever it is? You are. You are. I no longer dread it now that I’ve done it nine times. Like, I don’t even dread it. It’s not difficult. I know exactly what I’m going to eat. I have my five mini meals. And I like them. They’re delicious. They take two seconds to prepare. And so I mean, some of them take two minutes to prepare. And some of them it’s just a bar made from greens, seeds, nuts, vegetables, and fruits. And so that one doesn’t take any time at all to prepare.

But people are reporting to us that they feel energetic, they feel light on their feet, their joints don’t hurt, their brain the pistons are firing. They don’t have that cognitive delay and the sort of mental slowness. Especially after you come out of a weekend, people tend to let down a little bit on the weekend. But the cognitive, the mental clarity, and energy effects of doing a modified fast are super exciting. Before I put the flash [inaudible 00:50:14], before I started doing my own research, there were some trials where the clinicians who ran them found that fasting, also modified fasting, between days two and seven, people in these studies – there are also animal studies so they’re observing behavior instead of self-report – they have an improvement in mood. They have an increase in alertness. And they have a sense of serenity. Those three big things are things that we are now from our first 2,500 people just now going through the process. They’re reporting to us and it’s beyond exciting.

 

 

[00:50:59] Ashley James: I love it. What about this fear that after doing a three day fast, we would rebound and overeat? As a – I don’t know – as a way of reacting to it. So it’s like if I eat very little for three days, aren’t I just going to eat more the next few days? Some people are afraid. Maybe they’re overeaters or emotional eaters or they binge eat. And they’re worried that by restricting that they would then binge afterwards. What’s been the experience with your cohort?

 

 

[00:51:30] Robyn Openshaw: The interesting thing is that with dieting, we know that that happens. There have been lots of studies that show that people just go face first into a plate of nachos when they’re done. But I want to, first of all, tell you academically why not to do that. But I also want to say that even with water fasting, I didn’t do that. You talked about this stomach shrinking and other phenomena that make you actually not super hungry after a fast. I haven’t experienced that at all. There’s one study that track people doing a monthly cycle of modified fasting who kept the weight off. And they followed them, so in six months – they continued to lose weight, they did not regain it.

There are a bunch of studies – this is one of the things that I think is most exciting about modified fasting – where the insulin sensitivity and other health benefits are long term. The myelin sheath, for instance, these are long term health gains. This isn’t like a little shot in the arm, “O, I eat fewer calories. Of course, I feel better because I lost four pounds or whatever.” The kind of work that the body is able to do when it’s in a fasting state is very restorative. It’s very reparative. And it’s not like we do it once for three days and call it good for life. However – and I’m really advocating for people doing it once a month. Once a month, if you have weight to gain. If you’re completely healthy but you’re just doing it as a preventative, at least consider doing it quarterly.

We at Green Smoothie Girl, we actually feed a child in Zambia through Mothers Without Borders. I’ve supported Mothers Without Borders for many, many years. And I talked to my followers about Mothers Without Borders all the time. They do such amazing work around the world. But specifically, we feed a child in Africa for three days. And we’re talking about AIDS orphans in a place where there’s no public education. And so they’re provided education and food. And for one Flash Fast that when you eat less for three days, I feed a child in Africa for three days in your name. But there are long term weight loss. If you lost an average of four pounds a month doing a three day cycle, potentially that’s 48 pounds in a year just doing a modified fast three days a month. You’re not even addressing the rest of your diet. Now, if the rest of your diet isn’t good, we highly recommend, of course, to a more whole foods plant based diet.

 

 

[00:54:15] Ashley James: Refer to Robbins other books.

 

 

[00:54:18] Robyn Openshaw: Yes. I don’t want to imply, “Hey, keep your crap diet and just do a three day modified fast.” However, we all live in the real world. I just got back from five days in Cancun with my children who are college students. And I can officially report I did not eat a perfect diet there. And I love that I have a quick reset. I mean the liver is the most regenerative organ we have. And it’s also super, super scary when we turn it to rubber. Or end up with fatty liver disease. It’s hard to come back from those things. But you know what? When we do little fine tuning once a month, I think it’s extremely powerful. I can absolutely tell that my liver is serving me well after I do this three day process. I’m just on point. I find my words quickly because I have to. I have 25 employees and I’m constantly in the media and I need to not be on a decline like most people are in their 50s, at my age.

 

 

[00:55:22] Ashley James: Do you find or have people reported that after the three day modified fast, that they are more satiated from eating. That they really do feel like their stomach may be shrunk. And that they’re not – they find that they can eat smaller portions or happier with that. Or is there any kind of reporting on that? I just wonder if the reason why they lose that four pounds on average in those three days but then it stays off. If it stays off then, eventually, they do this fast three days once a month for every month. Eventually, they’re losing fat. Not just water weight because they’re hopefully eating a good diet. They’re losing the inflammation. And you said, it’s restorative, long lasting results. And if they do it consistently, like maybe twice a month or once a month, then eventually they’re losing fat. And I’m just wondering if the reason why it stays off is that it helps to reset our relationship with food. And also physically we just feel satisfied and fuller quicker.

 

 

[00:56:34] Robyn Openshaw: I have definitely gotten that feedback from hundreds of people who’ve done our 26 day detox. With the three day Flash Fast, I don’t know that I have longitudinal enough data or enough data to be able to say that yet. But I haven’t heard people say they want less food after three days. But I do not have the experience myself personally. And I also haven’t heard that the flip side is true, which is that they just want to eat everything in sight. You don’t come out of it the next day wanting to eat like crazy.

And here’s what I wanted to say before. I’m glad that what you just asked me reminded me this. I want to talk about the refeeding process. Because there’s if you do a three day Flash Fast and if people are willing to do six days, do two of them back to back. Our Flash Fast costs 30% of what ProLon is. ProLon is the company spun off by Dr. Longo and those guys who the researchers. I don’t know if he owns it or he just endorses it or what, but it literally costs $225 for five days. Ours is like 40 bucks for three days. It’s less than some people are spending at Starbucks. It’s like $13.33 a day. And ours is organic. And there’s isn’t. And I actually like their product. I don’t understand some of the stuff in it like the glycerin drink. I don’t want to drink glycerin. I don’t understand why I have to drink glycerin. Orange flavored glycerin, no less. I mean, I love what they’re doing. And I love Longo’s research. I don’t really understand the ProLon protocol. I don’t understand why it has to cost $45 a day. So I saw that and I was like, “God, I love the idea.” And some people will go and figure it out themselves. And we’re happy to help them with that, too, figure out how to do what – Longo calls it fasting mimicking diet. And you notice I haven’t said that because he has that trademark. But that’s what is in his book. I call it modified fast. I think that’s a simpler, more intuitive concept.

Basically the same thing. But he is very adamant about this. And I think it’s important to bring up that when you take your body deep into autophagy, three days doesn’t take you deep into autophagy like a 12 day water fast does. But it does get you into autophagy. So when your body goes into breaking down broken parts, Longo talks about the metaphor of the wood burning train. So when I interviewed him on my podcast, he said imagine with fasting – or what we’re calling here modified fasting -he says fasting mimicking diet -imagine that your body in a fasted state is like a wood burning train. And you aren’t going to get to the station. You realize you’re going to run out of fuel in the fire. And you’re not going to make it to the station. So what do you do? You rip out a couple of chairs. So you rip out some of the wood chair. Some of the ones that look like they’re old anyway. And you chop them up and you throw them in the fire. And that way you get to the station. Well, then you get to the station and you got two missing chairs. So you have to rebuild them. And that’s the metaphor for what’s going on if you do the three day modified fast.

If you’re feeling ambitious, if you’re trying to reverse a chronic illness like diabetes or MS or whatever your specific reason is, those folks who are trying to reverse a chronic illness they’re really suffering from, those are the ones who are more likely to be willing to do two Flash Fasts in a row. If you’re willing to do six days, great. Go for it. Flash fast was built to be something that anyone will do. I have talked to – it’s about one in ten that I’ve pulled very, very, very informal research here. People who tried to ProLon and most of them dropped out after day three. I, personally, did three days and I couldn’t take it anymore. And I went back and did another two days later. I never finished –

 

 

[01:00:40] Ashley James: Of the ProLon. Not of your program. Of the ProLon which has weird chemical glycerin flavored stuff and not whole foods, not nutrients.

 

 

[01:00:49] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. And his is a five day. His is a five day. And my own informal research says people don’t finish the five days. The Flash Fast is built for three days. Anyone will do it. Virtually, everyone finishes our three day Flash Fast. If you want to double it and do six days to get into deeper states of autophagy, go for it. There’s no contraindications for that. It’s inexpensive to do.

However, here’s the thing I want to say about refeeding, where you get to the station, you get to the end of the three days. Now, it’s time to rebuild. You have to be aware that after all that effort by your body in autophagy to break down broken parts in cells, broken, defective, old parts of organs, aberrant cell clusters like small cancer clusters. Your body broke all that down. Now, it needs to rebuild. And so for however many days that you did that modified fast, that many days afterward, consider your body to be in refeeding mode. And you want to make sure that you give your body really quality materials. Because that old saying of you are what you eat is never more relevant than we were talking about the refeeding process after a fast. And so you don’t want to do a Flash Fast for three days and then go out and have nachos and beer for your next meal. You don’t want to ask your body to rebuild tissues out of garbage. So the materials you want to use are primarily greens, vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds. So plant-based whole foods.

 

 

[01:02:42] Ashley James: Exactly. And then we could also choose to do it in the form of smoothies or soups or stews, which are very gentle. Very gentle on the on the gut. I like refeeding in a way that is moist food. Just taking your favorite vegetables and blend it into a soup or a stew and add some legumes to it. I did that this morning. I took a wonderful soup that we made. It was just very basic broccoli, potato, onion, cauliflower, water. Boil it then hand immersion, blender it. And that is the foundation. Either I just drink that. I warm it up and drink that. Or I’ll add – this morning I took that as the base and took a bunch of – I had leftover sweet potatoes, leftover [inaudible 01:03:31], leftover mushrooms, and leftover zucchini and threw that into the soup. And so it became a nice kind of fix stew. And then leftover brown lentils and added some – there’s no salt seasoning from Costco, which is really, really delicious. It was something like 23 herbs I think are in it. And it tastes so good. It tastes really, really good. But it’s very gentle and moist. So it’s hydrating to the body and really gentle on the gut. Potato is really good for supporting the microbiome, the good bacteria.

And this type of fast doesn’t really drastically affect the microbiome. Water only fasting kind of kills off a lot of the bacteria that we have to rebuild. But this doesn’t do that. How about people who have SIBO or gut dysbiosis or Candida, what kind of results do they see on your protocol?

 

 

[01:04:32] Robyn Openshaw: I don’t have data like that. We’re too new out there with our specific three day Flash Fast. However, there is evidence that fasting can help repair or seal up that leaky gut disorder. Ad when you starve the body for a period of time, you’re also starving the yeast. And when the body goes into autophagy, we’ve mentioned that it goes after cancerous growth. We’ve kind of focused on that. But also the body can then really go after viral colonies and bacterial overgrowth. Most of us have bacteria and viruses. If all of us got full panels of blood testing, a lot of us would find out we have a Subclinical Epstein Barr. A shocking number of us would find out that we have Subclinical Lyme Disease. We would find out a lot of things that would be disturbing. I know this because I take people to Switzerland and actually get these tests.

And I have found out my own low grade bacterial and viral load that you only think that you “have something” like the flu or whatever when you become ill and you’re in bed. Well, guess what? If your immune system is struggling against a high burden of bacterial and viral load, it just has a hard time doing stuff like staying on top of cancer growth. And another couple of examples that you’re bringing up is, like, that small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. In autophagy, the body goes after that stuff. In fact, when I went to – the last time I was at that ashram in Texas, the fourth time I went, there was a gentleman there named Eric, who had been in the hospital for a month on antibiotics. He had been on antibiotics after antibiotic and it was because he was a heroin addict for many years. I want to say, like, 12 years. He was about my age. And the man looked nine months pregnant. And he showed up in a total desperation because he couldn’t eat anything without looking nine months pregnant. He was thin guy. He was, like 6’4″. And he’s a pretty fit looking guy. He had given up meth a long time before. But because he was so sick from his drug use, he ended up in a MRSA infection. And they just had to just nuke him with every kind of antibiotic there is. So here he has no good gut bacteria. He’s just a disaster. And his long term effects of that, even though he hasn’t done street drugs since then, is that anything he ate would blow his belly up. And he would have all this pain and swelling. And that’s why he looked, well, maybe eight months pregnant. And I actually have a picture of him in a video masterclass I did about our detox. Well, this guy was there too fast for two weeks. And he was there to starve out the bad bacteria that had totally taken over his whole GI tract. And he left there. He texted me weeks afterwards and he said, “I still feel like a million bucks. It’s just a miracle.”

 

 

[01:07:51] Ashley James: I love it. Oh, it’s so cool. So many people are suffering with gut dysbiosis and Candida or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And this is such a gentle way to get rid of it. Because you go to – even [inaudible 01:08:08] doctors they’ll bombard you with these really powerful herbs to kill it. And then you’re dealing with that and you’re dealing with the die off and it doesn’t feel very good. But this is a natural way to, again, self-cleansing. And it’s part of that – almost like a parasite cleanse, the microscopic parasites. It really does feel like we should be doing this on a regular basis to do that self-cleaning. I mean we take our car through a car wash, especially in the summertime. We’ll pay good money to keep our car clean, to keep our carpets clean, to wash our clothes, or even take our clothes to the dry cleaner. We pay good money to look clean on the outside. But what about on the inside? And that’s what this is. This is just the self-cleaning.

What about those with autoimmune conditions? A lot of listeners have Hashimoto’s and other autoimmune conditions. I know MS is considered an autoimmune condition. And it’s amazing to see that people are able to rebuild myelin while doing a fast. Have you heard any information about people with autoimmune, specifically seeing good results?

 

 

[01:09:23] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. And diabetes too. Yes. There is quite a bit of evidence starting to emerge. And I think that Longo and the researchers at USC are taking on more clinical trials with humans for autoimmune. But you can actually break down broken parts in some of the glands and the organs as well. That’s the principle behind it. That’s the mechanism. And help rebuild a healthier thyroid. Help rebuild a healthier pancreas. I mean, when the liver and the pancreas are rehabilitated and can release enzymes appropriately, when the thyroid is regulated and in balance and producing the right amounts of hormones at the right times, that’s when we see this hormone balancing effect. So there are some exciting, new emerging data points that lead to, my great hope, that as we all embrace a few days of modified fasting – if you don’t want to go cold turkey and do water fasting, then don’t. But that’s one of the major benefits that researchers are discovering is that, your hormone system balances itself. And that’s pretty exciting for people who are on chemical or synthetic drugs.

I mean, I’m a fan of the bioidentical approach to hormones. But what if you could actually clean up these organs and glands that produce the hormones in the first place? What if we could, in the process of autophagy, eliminate a lot of the toxic body burden that keeps our thyroid and many other upstream and downstream organs and glands functioning properly? So they’re just not always doing so much battle. I love the idea when I’m fasting of the fact that I’m just stripping it all down, stripping down the garbage. And I’m enhancing and rebuilding and strengthening the various parts of my immune system that I need to keep me strong going into healthy aging.

 

 

[01:11:37] Ashley James: I love that you brought up balancing hormones. And we have a Facebook Group, the Learn True Health Facebook Group. And several members have shared recently their dilemma that they’re on the birth control pill to regulate their period. We have some mothers sharing about their daughters, their teenage daughters who are having too heavy of a period or periods are lasting longer than two weeks. Or the PMS is so drastic, they can’t go to school. And so the doctors put them on the pill to regulate it. Which I’ve had several interviews about the damaging long term effects of being on the pill. And that is definitely worth listening to. You can go to learntruehealth.com and in the search box type in birth control or the pill and find those episodes. It’s really good for us to fully be informed before we get on any medication, both natural and pharmaceutical. But especially pharmaceutical because it is man made. We have to really acknowledge that there are always side effects.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could arm these women with a way to balance their bodies in a completely natural way? I mean, you’re saying that even as simple as a modified fast could support their hormones, could support their endocrine system to come back into balance.

 

 

[01:13:05] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. Absolutely. Because there’s two things to look out. One is your body isn’t producing the right amounts of hormones that are all in the right proportions to each other. Because just throwing some Cytomel at it – or what’s the other one? Not Synthroid. Cytomel and Synthroid, yeah. Just throwing some Synthroid at is not actually solving the problem. But fasting has the capacity to get at the actual problem. The actual problem isn’t just misfire of specific glands that are supposed to serve you. But it’s also the fact that those glands are drowning in chemical toxins, which is another one of the virtues of just stop eating for a few days or eat a lot less.

 

 

[01:13:54] Ashley James: Now, I loved your book. You’re giving it to the listener for free. I loved it. I couldn’t put it down. You said we can finish it in an hour. I just didn’t want to put it down. It’s a really easy read but it is chock full of really good information and constant references to the studies. So it’s not just your opinion. It’s not a fad thing. This is absolutely 100% science based. And it’s a really well-written book. And the fact that you’re giving it to us for free is even better. Listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/fastbook to get the free ebook.

And then and I want to talk next about your Flash Fast program. Like you said it’s about $40 for three days, which would save me money. Because I’m pretty sure I spend more money on groceries just for myself. More than $40 in three days. So that is probably saving a lot of people money to even just do it, like you said, for three or six days. And listeners can check that out by going to learntruehealth.com/flashfast. And all these links are going to be on the show notes for today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com.

How many times in a row would it be safe to do your three day fast? Like you said someone could do it for three or six days if they bought two kits and did it back to back. But let’s say someone wanted to just – I don’t know – do it for 12 days or entire month. At what point do you think people should take a break from it?

 

 

[01:15:22] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. So far we’ve only had people who do two of them back to back. But we just released this product two months ago. And I did it because I was so excited about ProLon having read Dr. Valter Longo who deserves a ton of credit for discovering how powerful modified fasting is. And by the way, the name of the book -just so you guys know why I’m saying, “Hey, this is worth an hour of your life to read this.” It will totally deeply commit you to the idea of fasting. The book and Ashley is giving you a link to get it for free. And we send you with your first Flash Fast. We send you a printed copy of it. But it’s called How to Get The Health Benefits of Fasting Without Going Hungry. And Longo deserves so much credit. He’s got a bee in his bonnet about what does it do for this? What does it do for that? What does it do for this other thing? And I think he’s especially going to really enhance the lives of cancer patients. I mean, his animal study, he did a modified fast on all these mice before he then put them through a cycle of chemotherapy. And after, I think, it was four days of modified fasting, he put the mice on. The ones who got the chemotherapy without fasting first, they were all dead. And the ones who did the four day modified fast cycle before chemotherapy, they were all running around in their cages. So that’s what made him go, “Okay. We got to go take this to human beings.”

But I didn’t love his program. And I didn’t understand why when you’re eating less than 800 calories a day. how does it cost $45 a day? I mean, I could eat in a restaurant for breakfast lunch and dinner for that amount and so much packaging – incredibly much packaging. So I was like, we already make at Green Smoothie Girl, we make these products. They’re organic. They’re plant based. We’ve made them and tweaked them and gotten feedback from our followers for years. And I was like, “Okay. If we put this, this, and this and single serves.” And so we tested the heck out of it. I’ve been working on this for a year. I was like, “How can we bring the cost of this way, way down? ” And read the book, you can do a fast yourself. It’s not for everyone to have it be super, super easy. But on the other hand, it’s not for everyone to have to cook their vegetables and prep it and take it to work and all that.

So it is a little bit higher in protein than your average vegan diet. There’s a significant amount more protein in there. But it’s whole food plant based. One version of it has some bone broth in it. And the other version is 100% vegan. And so you can choose whichever one you want. All of them right now are shakes and bars and sprouted flax that you add two shakes. So everything in, all of the ingredients are superfoods, greens, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds. That’s the end bone broth in one of the kits. And so for the vegans, don’t buy the one with bone broth in it.

 

 

[1:18:30]  Ashley James: But the bone broth is really healing for gut especially if you know you have leaky gut or gut dysbiosis. Any autoimmune condition, just automatically assume you have leaky gut. It’s just really good to just start with healing the gut. So even if you have like distension, like you said that guy who’s thin but he looks seven months pregnant. Anything that has to do with healing the gut and if you’re not vegan, go with the bone broth because it is so healing for helping to close up those gaps in the in the microvilli.

 

 

[01:19:04] Robyn Openshaw: There’s twice as many people choosing the bone broth one than the vegan one. And my assumption is, it’s because that’s the number of people who are noticeably suffering from gut issues. I mean, anyone who’s been on antibiotics in the last 10 to 20 years, most people haven’t really recovered from that. It takes some serious work to recover from antibiotics. And I mean, the average American is being prescribed an antibiotic every 11 months at this point. Actually, that’s American children. I don’t imagine that American adults are much different. So antibiotics, they really wipe out whole swaths of those good bacteria that keep us in balance so that our immune system can do its job. Most of the immune system is in the gut, which I’m sure you’ve said that like 20 times in your – what have you done, 500 episodes now, Ashley?

 

 

[01:20:00] Ashley James: We’re approaching 400 episodes. But yes, I believe it’s something like 70% of the immune system is surrounded by the gut. It surrounds the gut and there’s an absolute relationship between gut health and immune health. And you can’t fix one without the other. You have to address gut health. And what’s wonderful is a whole food plant based diet has all the wonderful prebiotics to support bringing the good cultures in. And a fast helps to starve the bad stuff. So we can do this . We don’t need to be on crazy medications. We can do this naturally.

 

 

[01:20:41] Robyn Openshaw: And I wanted to mention that too. Is if you’re interested in rehabilitating gut health, you got to eat starchy foods. And so these foods are high in fiber. I mean, it’s really very simple. People think they need some kind of medication and to go to the functional medicine doctor to rebuild their gut. But please don’t forget the key in all it, most people are not going to bring their gut health back just by taking probiotic, even if it has prebiotic. Even if it’s alive. Like, I’ve done Facebook demos where I show several brands of probiotics and most of them are dead. Most of them won’t culture milk. But even if you get a good living probiotic and it’s really broad ranging. It has a bunch of different types of probiotics and it’s got good prebiotics for it to feed on. You still need to eat that the bulk. You need to eat the fiber so that there’s something in the gut for the probiotics and the cultured foods that you might be eating to build on. And if you eat the standard American diet, it’s extremely scarce in that fiber. I mean. average American is getting 11 grams a day of fiber. And you got chimpanzees who might eat hundreds of grams of fiber Their gut isn’t a whole lot different than ours. And so we’re very, very similar to the primates. And so 11 grams. I mean, just your court of green smoothie a day, you’re going to double your fiber right there. So habits like that. Veg salads, sweet potatoes, rice, regular potatoes, they’ve been demonized but they’re really great for gut rebuilding. Starchy foods, they’ve gotten a bad rap because the last two fad diets are anti-carbohydrate. But you know what? That’s a lot of why everybody’s suffering with gut issues is there’s people scared of carbohydrates. That’s where the fiber is, friends.

 

 

[01:22:44] Ashley James: These are foods that support a healthy gut biome. So people are on at least one antibiotic a year and then they’re not eating any foods to help support healthy gut bacteria. And then they end up with a slew of medical conditions. Because if we cannot digest and assimilate our nutrients, we can’t build ourselves. And what’s really interesting is that the healthy gut bacteria actually help us. There’s about between two and three pounds of bacteria in our body that isn’t us. Like, cells that aren’t us. It’s just pretty crazy how much of our gut health has nothing to do with us. These are bacteria. But that they are part of our digestive process that without them we could not assimilate and absorb nutrients. So we need them. This is a symbiotic relationship. We can’t be sterile. We need to think about there’s an entire colony inside us that helps to break down and assimilate and absorb nutrients.

What’s really interesting is if you go on a farm and eat, let’s say, strawberries. You pick them right out of the ground. It’s all organic. There’s bacteria on the strawberry. And when you eat it, it gets into your gut. It starts to populate in your gut. That bacteria on the strawberry that’s native to being on the strawberry helps us to break down assimilate the nutrients from strawberry. So the more variety of fruits and vegetables we eat, especially fresh ones – organic and fresh and as fresh as possible right from the ground. So that’s why farmers markets and having your own garden if you can or finding friends that do have their own garden and eating foods that are still alive will also help to repopulate the gut. But then also help you assimilate that food. That’s why people have done studies where they ate nothing potatoes for a year and they weren’t nutrient deficient, which is mind blowing.

I love that you brought up fiber. I’ve had a man on the show twice and he has been doing – he spent $20,000, he’s a school teacher. But his is a masters in acupuncture but now he’s a school teacher. But his passion is doing fasting and proving that fasting is healthy. So he spent about $20,000 of his own money doing these blood tests every six months. Retests the PCBs and bisphenol A, and all of the toxins, glyphosate, all these toxins that are on our food and in our water and air. And he tests his levels. And he’s doing these 30 day fast and then testing to see how long these – how much progress he can make. And what he noticed is that, you do a long fast once a year and he’s a vegan. He eats whole food plant based. So he’s always eating cleaner. He was eating organic. But he still had these high levels of heavy metals and pollution, basically, in his body. And he noticed that he was getting kind of good results. But then he decided to do, “Okay. I’m going to do a fast and sauna.” And then he would watch and see after every six months taking his blood work. And he’d see that was getting even better results. Then he added something to absorb the toxins in his gut. Which he had an activated charcoal and he got the best results. So the best results, absolutely, sauna therapy and fasting. He did like a big fast once a year.

But using activated charcoal during the fast because our liver takes toxins out of our body when we’re fasting, puts them in our bile, and then shoots them into the small intestine is trying to get rid of them. But the problem is our body wasn’t designed to recognize all these toxins. And so to make itself more efficient, the body then reabsorbs the bile. And with all the toxins back in – reabsorbs most of it and reuses it. Because bile is kind of costly for the body to make.

And so fiber, if we did a kind of detox like a modified fast which is your – I love your product, specifically because it’s high in fiber. Fiber binds to and stores and holds onto the bile so that we cannot reabsorb those toxins of the body’s trying to get rid of. And that’s why I really love your fast because people can do it and still go to work. They will still have enough energy to get through the day. In fact, they start feeling even better. They’re dropping inflammation and water weight so they’re noticing that they have less aches and pains and they have more mental clarity. They’re probably saving money. Because saving money on food while still eating, like your 800 calories of organic food. And then their body is – the fiber is able to pull out the toxins and get them out of us while also the same kinds of fiber also supporting the healthy gut biome. So there’s just so many reasons why someone should try your Flash Fast. Are there any reasons why someone shouldn’t do it? I mean, we just really want to be up front. Is there other people for whom this wouldn’t be good for?

 

 

[01:28:10] Robyn Openshaw: Pregnant and nursing women. Nursing being like when breast milk is most of the babies calories. When baby is recreationally nursing later, probably not a problem. But pregnant nursing moms, stage 4 cachexia patients, people in renal failure. People on diabetes medications, you got to work with your doctor. You can go to your doctor and say, “I want to do this fast. What do you think?” And have your doctor watch your meds because you’re probably going to – and this is not me saying to get off your meds, okay? This is like, talk to your doctor, do not go off of your medications without the competent care and oversight of a doctor you trust. But the research is showing that people are getting off of diabetes meds. There are clinical trials showing that people reversed the symptoms of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes I mentioned that one study shows regeneration of the insulin producing beta cells. And then a 2017 study and this is animal study, but four day modified diet triggered changes in mice. That led to – I’m reading from the book here – led to pancreatic beta cell regeneration and the return of insulin secretion. These are changes that correspond to the reversal of type two diabetes. And so I think that diabetics should be completely fascinated by the idea of a fast. I wouldn’t go do a water fast while you’re on meds. So with that one with diabetics, I would say work with a practitioner. I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m not saying do do it without any worries in the world. I’m saying do it with some advice from your practitioner.

 

 

[01:30:15] Ashley James: Absolutely. I love this. I had a client who was very thin and she wanted to reverse some blood sugar issues but she was-  she really couldn’t afford to lose any more weight. And so this idea of water fasting scared her. And she actually called Dr. Goldhamer and talked to him. And he said he did not recommend that she did a water only fast. He recommended that she did a modified fast, exactly like you’re saying. That she can still gain the benefits, the healing benefits to her pancreas and her insulin sensitivity through the exacting – through of the what you’ve designed the Flash Fast where there’s a modified calories. But the calories are designed to be healing for the body.

 

 

[01:31:02] Robyn Openshaw: Well, a lot of people who are underweight, like people think, “Oh, you just have a quick metabolism.” No. I’m sorry to say that a lot of the people in our culture who are underweight – and watch them, watch them eat. I mean, unless their gut hurts, which some of them have gut dysbiosis so bad that they literally don’t enjoy eating because eating hurts. But besides the fact that some of them are eating less because eating causes suffering for them because of their gut dysbiosis. The other thing that’s going on is that food just goes right through. And people know that. Even people will just be like, “Oh, food goes right through you.” And they may have diarrhea and they’re not absorbing the nutrition.

But here’s the thing about a modified fast, it allows that leaky gut to repair, to seal up. And if that happens, then you can absorb nutrition better. And you can, therefore, achieve a more healthy weight. So all the people – the two-thirds of America that is overweight looks at the skinny people and they assume that skinny people are eating less food than they are or eating healthier food than they are. And the crazy thing is that the people who are thin – anywhere from thin to super thin – the vast majority of them are actually thin to super thin for the exact same reasons that two-thirds are overweight. Is that the food they’re doing is doing so much damage but just it’s a flip side of the same coin. So don’t assume that the thin people are healthier than overweight people.

The fact of the matter, certainly there are people who are thin because they eat a very disciplined diet, of course, or very healthy diet. But there’s a significant number of them who are actually not absorbing nutrition. So I am not surprised that Dr. Goldhamer actually recommends that because – then you can get some of that gut sealing effect and that gut healing effect. And so you can absorb nutrition and get up to your healthy weight. Because a lot of people are underweight because they aren’t getting the nutrients they need even though they’re eating the food.

 

 

[01:33:12] Ashley James: I love it. Now, listeners can get the free book to learn more about how to do this Flash Fast by going to learntruehealth.com/fastbook.

Tell us a bit about the Flash Fast, which I think that the majority of listeners will just do it. Just buy the kit. You’ve made it incredibly affordable. It’s all very healthy ingredients and organic and just follow your program for three days. So it’s like this no brainer. They don’t really have to do much. Like you said, it’s a maximum two minutes of preparation to do their mini meals. And they can do it any day of the week and still maintain going to work. So it’s not disruptive. So tell us a bit more about the specific things they would be doing during the day with your kit.

 

 

[01:34:06] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. I like to do it Monday through Wednesday. Like I said, I’ve done it nine times the last three months. And some people might say that’s kind of obsessive. But I’m the researcher who flies to Texas and sits in an ashram and doesn’t eat any food for 12 days too. And some people call it biohacking. I call it experimenting for science. You’re going to get this kit. We’re giving your followers on the link that you give them $10 off their first kit. The retail price is $70. You can get $10 off your first kit or you can get $30 off or 43% off if you sign up for Subscribe Instant Save. So subscribe Instant Save means that every single one that you get is $40, just $30 off. You also get the book in that first package How To Get The Health Benefits Of Fast Without Going Hungry.

You get a little one page insert that tells you not only how to do it, which is like, so easy. But you also have a couple several recipe ideas in the right column telling you ways that you can make it taste different. You can add handfuls of greens, you can add up to two vegetables a day, which I kind of highly recommend. At the beginning of my three day Flash Fast on Monday morning, I’ll steam a whole head of cauliflower and I’ll steam a bunch of asparagus. Now, why cauliflower and asparagus? Because those are the vegetables I like best. So I’m talking about non starchy vegetables. So you can add up to two servings. And the reason for that is that your five mini meals give you 650 total calories. And the research coming from all these different institutions, especially USC, are showing that you can eat up to 800 calories a day to get the benefits. I would love to tell you that men can eat a different number of calories than women. And I would tell you that if I had seen the published evidence about it, but I haven’t seen anybody do that study yet. So unfortunately, right now, all I can tell you is a maximum of 800 calories so you can add to non-starchy vegetables. Like, I do the asparagus. I’ll also cut up a cucumber. You can do stuff like that unlimited. You can cut up a cucumber. You can add handfuls of spinach. You don’t have to do any of those things.

You could also instead of the vegetables, you could add one fruit. And I like to sometimes do my one fruit being a banana. It’s an organic banana. And all this is in your kit – all these little tips. But I cut an organic banana with the peel into my little shake. So my little superfood shake that’s superfoods and plant based proteins. And it’s got some little bit of fruits and vegetable extract, blend that up with a handful of greens. Sometimes I do two. Sometimes I do my two shakes at once. That way I only have to whiz it up in the blender once. But I’ve got two meals. And then I just have it there at my desk or in the fridge to just get my other one out. And then you have a bar that’s super delicious. And you’ll probably, at the end of your Flash Fast day, “I want these bars. I want to have them for my kids. I want to have them in my purse.” They’re the healthiest bar that you’ve ever ordered. And again, organic, everything in it organic. The whole bar is certified organic. And again it’s vegetables, fruits, superfoods, nuts and seeds. Delicious.

Pretty soon we’re coming out with two soups. And they’re high protein plant based soups. And I think they’re quite lovely and quite delicious for those who want something hot in their Flash Fast. But anyways really quick, really easy. I like to do it Monday through Wednesday. You could do it any day that works for you. The reason I like Monday through Wednesday is I don’t really have a social life then. I’m pretty much just at home working. And I don’t have to say no to business lunches or whatever. If somebody reaches out to me for a business lunch, I say, ” Sure. Thursday or Friday, what works?” And if people reach out to me wanting to go to dinner, I’m like, “Sure. Anytime on the weekend.”

And so let’s see what else should I tell you. So keep it under 800 calories. Keep it 90 to 100% plant based. Keep it organic. Make sure it’s high in fiber. Make sure, for satiety purposes, you’re eating small meals in a window of, at the most, 12 hours. So I’ll eat it like 9:00 a.m. And then my last meal will be like 6:00 p.m. The only time I get significantly hungry – if you just follow the plan, eat the five mini meals, space them out. The only time I get really hungry – and again, I probably only get really hungry because I am playing sports every single day that I’ve done the Flash Fast, all nine times. But I get hungry about 9:00 p.m. So you know what I do? I go to bed early.

 

 

[01:39:00] Ashley James: Yes. Yes. That’s so good. I love that. Those are just two tips that you could do every day even without the fast. love starting my day – I’d say about four days a week, I start my day off with steaming a pound of vegetables, non-starchy vegetables and that’s what I eat first. And then when I’m hungry next, I’ll just eat like potato, brown rice, beans, something like that. But I I’ll start my day with a pound. And pound sounds a lot, but it’s maybe two-and-a-half cups. It’s not that much. And I actually really enjoy the flavor. But you can always add herbs, super simple seasonings to it. But I noticed that when I start my day off first thing in the morning, obviously, a glass of water and then steamed vegetables and eat them, my body buzzes. It buzzes. It has energy. It just feels – it really rewards me almost immediately. I can feel it working. I can feel the difference. And then going to bed at 9:00 is like magic. It’s magical. And people will stay up crazy late. And right around 10:00 p.m. is when our cortisol kicks in. So we have that second wind. And if we stay up until 10:00, that is that magic moment where we have now screwed ourselves for good sleep. It really does.

Because we’ll stay up watching TV or looking at our phone or computer. But at 10:00 p.m. – I don’t know if people noticed – they got like a second wind and they’re like, “Oh, I’m not tired. I don’t need to go to bed.” And then it’s like midnight. Because the body goes, “Oh, we’re up late because we have to run away from the bear. We have to survive some kind of situation where we need to be awake.” Because why on earth would we be awake at this hour if it wasn’t for the fact that we needed to fight the bear? And so the body turns on the stress response and stops making melatonin and just get this kick of cortisol. So if we can get in bed by 9:00 and, hopefully, fall asleep soon after, then our body goes into deep restorative sleep. We don’t have that exhaustive spike of cortisol. And then we can wake up maybe a little bit earlier and get all the things you wanted to do done at the end of the day. Just do it at the beginning of the day. But it’s so healing to do that. So I love those two points. I think we should do them anyway regardless of if we’re doing the Flash Fast or not

Now, you talked about this subscription where someone can get it once a month so that they can do this healing, especially people have weight loss or really long term health goals. What’s the feedback you’ve been getting by people who’ve been doing it for more than one month?

 

 

[01:41:50] Robyn Openshaw: Well, I mean, we only released it the end of August – end of August? End of September? So we don’t have longitudinal data. So I can’t say. However, the studies that Longo does tend to be one cycle a month. And I’ve seen some of the other researchers, like Johns Hopkins, some of those researchers, they don’t all do the exact same thing. But I see these health gains coming out. Basically, what I’m seeing is a once a month and some cases with significant illness, I’m seeing them putting subjects on a twice a month cycle of modified fasting. Now you have to be fairly motivated to do a three day Flash Fast twice a month. So you know, either you’re just a person who loves little health experiments – like I do – and you’re really super committed to your health. Or you have a significant health challenge. So if that’s you, if you’re in either one of those categories, and you’re like, “Yeah, I will. I’ll do it once a month.” I highly recommend people get on a once a month modified fast to really gain all the health benefits of it. And with weight loss, there’s no reason why you can’t do it twice a month.

And I think I failed to answer your question earlier when you asked, how often can you do this? Honestly, you could do it long term. I mean, listen, there are prisoners of war who lived like 10, 15 years longer than the average person. And they think it’s because of low calorie, like chronic long term calorie restriction. I mean, did you ever read that novel Unbroken? About that prisoner of war, Louis Zamperini. He just died not long ago. Just a fantastic book. Laura Hillenbrand wrote it. She’s the same author of Seabiscuit. But this guy, Louis Zamperini, who was an Olympic runner and then he went to World War II. He ended up in a concentration camp – not a concentration camp. That’s an obviously –

 

 

[01:44:00] Ashley James: Prisoner of war camp?

 

 

[01:44:02] Robyn Openshaw: Prisoner of war camp. Thank you. And the Japanese fed him nothing for four years. He would volunteer to do laundry all day so he could lick the starch off his fingers from the spray starch cans or whatever. So these are people who are chronically calorie deprived. And obviously, we’re not going to do that. Obviously, you’re not going to go four years with essentially no calories. But the guy lived to be, like, 90 something. And obviously that is a case study and it proves exactly nothing.

But if we know one thing about longevity, it’s people with chronic calorie restriction. So there is no contraindication for people to eat 800 calories or less for a long period of time. And if you don’t feel well, that’s how you know to stop doing it. I don’t think I’m really going to have a whole lot of people who are going to suddenly eat 800 calories or less for long periods of time. But if you did it twice, if you did it three times in a row – I mean I’ve done water fast for 12 days. And it’s the deeper states of autophagy. I mean, Dr. Thomas Lodi, the Columbia train medical doctor, the first thing he wants people to do when they’re diagnosed with cancer is go do a 30 day water fast. Literally eat nothing for 30 days. So I’m not worried about people doing the Flash Fast too many times because, remember, you’re getting nutrient dense food, you’re getting 800 calories. You can pretty much do anything.

I met a woman, she’s a medical doctor. She came to my Swiss retreat that I’ve been doing for eight years. She had my Swiss retreat two summers ago. And her husband who was also a medical doctor had not eaten any food for 70 days. He went to work, the whole thing. He lost like –  I don’t even know how many pounds – somewhere around 100 pounds, maybe it’s more like 70 or 80. But did not eat food for 70 days. And she said he’s felt completely fantastic.

And people who are really into water fasting will tell you that you know when it’s time to stop fasting, it’s when you don’t feel good anymore.

 

 

[01:46:05] Ashley James: I love it. So yeah, so doing three day stints a few times a month of 800 calories. The very specific calories that are dense nutrition and high in fiber and organic and non-GMO, and really super foods and designed to nutrify the body, nutrient dense calorie restricted. That is in no way going to throw someone into some kind of deficiency. The blue zones – a lot of them – these blue zones where they’ve documented people living with almost no disease well into their hundreds. They all live in a calorie – they have calorie restriction. They have times of famine where they fast because that’s what they have to do. Or they only eat one meal a day. So we’ve never seen a gluttonous society eating thousands of calories a day every day, several meals a day, live longer disease free than the rest of the population. That’s part of this habit. This health habit is part of long term health.

 

 

[01:47:16] Robyn Openshaw: Right. None of the blue zones eat to excess. And all of the blue zones eat 90 to 100% plant based. And a lot of people want to ignore that because they’re – not only a lot but maybe even a majority of health and wellness experts out there, they want to just – the denial about the massive body of evidence that says we’ve got to eat mostly plants. I’m not going to say all because I don’t think the evidence proves that we have to eat 100% plant based to be healthy. I don’t think they reprove that. I, personally, rarely eat animal products. And if I do It’s generally because I’m out traveling or whatever. But the longer you do it, the more you just don’t resonate with those animal products anyway. Like, eating animal flesh just doesn’t appeal to me anymore after, literally, decades of not doing it. It doesn’t smell good to me. It doesn’t look good to me. I don’t crave it. I, certainly, in my 20’s was eating as much of it as anybody was two times a day, probably.

But yeah, the blue zones eat 90 to 100% plant based. They eat clean, close to the land, not sprayed, not processed kind of food. And  they had periods where they eat less. And they probably are a lot more in tune with their body because they’re not constantly upping and downing.

You said do people have negative reactions. And I do want to say this, because we have a Facebook page with two health coaches who support our Flash Fasters. And not all the 2,500 people who’ve gotten themselves a Flash Fast in the last month since I told my audience about it – a month to two months as I told my audience about it. Not all of them are in there. But I think close to 1,000 are now. And the one thing is the caffeine drinkers. Because we tell them during that three days, if you want best results get off the caffeine. Well, here’s the thing, if they go off the caffeine right at the same time that they do the Flash Fast, they’ll tell us about their headache. And it’s a little bit frustrating to me, because I’m like, “Well, it would be really great if you could have gotten off the caffeine a few days before.” So that’s what we recommend. But then people don’t do it. Because I swear, you can’t you can’t pry coffee out of some people’s cold dead hands. It’s become this American staple. Like, what is it? Two-thirds of Americans drink an average of two cups of coffee a day. Maybe it’s even worldwide. I think it’s literally like the Western world. And so coffee is such a staple.

But here’s the thing, if you want your ducts to dilate, you want the most amount of detoxification during the period of time that you’re dedicating to the Flash Fast, best if you’re not coming off of coffee where your neurological system is going to be reactive. As your body is like, “Oh good. She’s not dumping caffeine into here anymore.” Which is dehydrating by the way and which it dilates some vessels. I mean people like what it does for their digestive system. But the long term effect is energy depleting. And it’s dehydrating. And we are trying to hydrate and to dilate and relax ductwork to allow for the flushing of the kidneys and the flushing of the liver. And so we ask people to stay off the coffee. If you’re like, “No, can’t do it.” Then do the Flash Fast with the coffee. I would rather have you do the Flash Fast with coffee than not do it at all. However, if you’re willing to go off the coffee for a few days first so that you realize that it’s your coffee withdrawal or your caffeine withdrawal. It’s not a Flash Fast doing that to you. That’s where my frustration comes in.

 

 

[01:51:03] Ashley James: Absolutely. My husband was addicted to coffee. He was drinking 90 ounces of it a day. And this was the strong stuff. We’ve been married for over 11 years and he kind of jokingly complains that I’ve taken everything away from him. Because when I met him he was drinking three Monster Energy drinks a day, venti coffees from Starbucks, he had some other unsavory habits with tobacco and sugar, addicted to ice cream. And so just the standard guy thing. He was a carpenter. And he was, you know, just the standard guy thing. Eating only meat and fries and nachos and cheese, things covered in cheese. So I don’t think I ever seen him eat a vegetable until I came into his life. And so I started with sugar. I took away sugar from – when I say take away, I showed him. I showed him the light. And he decided to do the challenge and try life without sugar, seeing how bad it was. He just didn’t know. And so we got rid of sugar then we got rid of ice cream addiction. And that was fun. I used an NLP technique called Like to Dislike. I neurologically made him be repulsed to ice cream and he couldn’t walk down that aisle in Albertsons for over a year without feeling like he was going to vomit. So he just completely gave up ice cream cold turkey, which was great. And then giving up dairy. And then giving up fried food and tobacco and alcohol – that was another one. He would drink beer every day and so that was gone.

And now finally, he’s like this clean vessel. Ad caffeine was the last thing to go. I mean, he held on to it. He got rid of all that stuff over the last 11 years. And he’s just this clean vessel that just needs nothing but plants. And doesn’t have any vices at all. He doesn’t touch processed food at all. But he was still doing coffee and so we got rid of coffee. And his headache lasted two weeks constant. And so I read up on it because I was a little worried. And it says basically after – if you really are this consistent coffee drinker and you get off of it, the blood vessels in your brain contract or dilate or they do something where they’re just like freaking out. And so your brain is just getting an abnormal blood flow. And that’s what’s causing the headache. So it’s an abnormal blood flow to the brain. And he pounded back the water and just powered through it, went cold turkey. Because he’s one of those guys, he’s either on or off. There’s no just turning it down a little bit. He’s either doing it full blast or he’s not doing it at all. And probably, why it was so easy for him to go vegan just total overnight transformation.

But now he doesn’t need it. He doesn’t need it. And his sleep is better, obviously. But he just notices his heart rate, his respiratory rate, everything is an optimal levels, and he sleeps better. And he now has – this is the funny part – he now has more energy. And that’s because it does, like you said, we think it gives us energy, gives us that boost, but it really exhaust our adrenals. And so when we need an energy boost at our house, we steam a pound of vegetables each or we make a smoothie. And we noticed that our body feels vibrant and gets a jolt, like a really cool rising in energy from these nutritious foods. So I love your protocol because even on your Flash Fast we can be raising and elevating our energy levels using non-stimulants. Using food, which is what our body supposed to use to make energy from.

 

 

[01:55:07] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. Exactly. I mean, how impressive. How impressive that he got off all that stuff. I mean, he basically went from one end of the spectrum to the other. It’s really, really inspiring. It’s too bad he didn’t do a documentary about it. I mean, it’s like my friend, Drew Manning. I don’t know if you know him. But he’s here local. And he’s a longtime friend of mine. And he wrote the book Fit To Fat To Fit. And he was like this body builder. He was a personal trainer. And he purposely gained 70 pounds. He went and did all this national media about it. He purposely gained 70 pounds to feel what his clients felt. And then he lost it again. He’s a super ripped, super gorgeous guy. And then he went and did that. And he just kind of showed how he gained the weight. He just went face first into a giant – an entire box of cereal in the morning. And giant burgers and fries at night, and whatever. So your husband did the exact opposite. And it’s really inspiring because it just goes to show you that these things that we think make us happy, like, “Oh, I need sugar because it makes me happy.” Or “I need alcohol so that I can do social things.” My guess is he probably still does social things without the buzz and that’s really –

 

 

[01:56:24] Ashley James: Well, he’s a high introvert. So alcohol was never social to him. It was all an escape. And so we’ve had long talks about – me too. I mean, It’s both of us have been on this health journey. But we both talked about why do we use this? What is it giving us? Why is it this crutch? So whether it was sugar or overeating or emotional eating, or whether it was the Starbucks or the alcohol or tobacco or whatever it was, it was why do I run to this? And what is it masking? And since we removed it – also, we didn’t have this crutch. So we both had to talk about, “Well, what kind of strategies can we build on our life now that allow us to face things instead of put our head in the sand and kind of numb our emotions.” So we do a lot of processing and talking together. And that, I guess, has made our relationship even stronger.

So my thing has always been like, we’re on this health journey but health isn’t just physical, it’s emotional. We have to address the emotions because there’s absolutely – you can’t remove emotions from food and substances that we constantly use. And the way food is designed nowadays, it’s hyperpalatable and designed to hijack the brain. And so we often we’ll go to food. It’s socially acceptable to go to McDonald’s and have a shake when we’re feeling upset with our boss or when we’re feeling dissatisfied with our life purpose. Instead of actually face it. So we’re using food as a drug. And we use these substances every day, like coffee or alcohol or like legal substances every day, and now, of course, pot is legal and other substances are becoming legal. And so a big part of my healing journey has been to remove what’s unhealthy but then also face why I was using it in the first place. And so my husband has been doing that as well. And it’s been a wonderful journey.

I love you, you know, you point out that you’re kind of experiment on yourself. I’m always experimenting on myself too. And that’s what’s been so great is that when we’re willing to do these experiments and we’re willing to change our diet and try new things that we often find ourselves. We get to strip away so much that isn’t us anymore and it’s not serving us anymore.

 

 

[01:58:39] Robyn Openshaw: Yeah. I love that.

 

 

[01:58:42] Ashley James: You’re Flash Fast is wonderful. I really do love it. Everything in it is delicious, by the way. So I am a really big fan of it. And I love all the products you’ve created. I think you’re just stand alone. Your bars are delicious and they’re these whole food – superfood bars. Your smoothies are wonderful. I love everything that you create because you are so diligent to make sure that every ingredient is clean. You don’t just put a filler in there just because it’ll make it cheaper or save you money so you can make more money. You really are ethical. And so I love your products. And I’ve gotten to know you and know that as you stand as a very ethical person and I trust everything you put out because of that.

You had shared with me, I think back in September or August, you shared with me a testimonial of someone who it blew my mind. I love this testimonial. Do you have any testimonials on hand or that you can remember you can read off the top of your head of people who’ve had outstanding results working with your Flash Fast?

 

 

[01:59:53] Robyn Openshaw: Oh my gosh, I’d have to go into Facebook and read them. But people who get their Flash Fast, we immediately put them in the Facebook Group. It’s a closed group but anybody who buys a Flash Fast, we want them in there so they can go through the experience with other people and see the experience they’re having and ask questions. And I have two help coaches in there. You know what? I could go in my Facebook Messenger right now. So the testimonial that you’re talking about that I sent you is a woman named Dolores. And she said, “End of day three on the Flash Fast. and what a miraculous three day Flash Fast it has been. I had my three shakes with added organic kale, organic mixed berries, ginger, and turmeric. I had my bar and an organic apple and organic banana every day. I have been pain free in my hips and knees since hour 15 of the fast. I’ve been in intense searing chronic knee and hip pain 24/7 for 15 plus years. And it’s gone just like that. I feel like I’m dreaming. and if I am, I don’t want to wake up. I’m beyond thankful.”

So yeah, that testimonial that I had sent you, I had to think for a second what I sent you because we see a lot of these. Although, that one was really quite astonishing. I mean 15 plus years of pain, zero relief whatsoever. And 15 hours and her pain disappeared. It didn’t come back after day three. She reported back to us, she said, “I’m completely astonished. I still have no pain.” I think the point here is – and it’s a great one to end on – is that the body knows what to do. And the body needs the raw materials. It needs a little space and time. And that’s what you’re giving the body as a little space and time. A little breather to instead of having to do all the urgent tasks that are coming at you in your work  – and anybody who works for a living can relate to –  they get urgent stuff coming at you all day every day. And when you have some space and time and those tasks – that would be food coming in are not there – then you can turn to those important but not urgent tasks. And that’s what the body does. It immediately turns to those long overdue maintenance projects and gets it done.

 

 

[02:02:14] Ashley James: I love it. Awesome. Thank you so much, Robyn Openshaw for coming on the show again. It’s been such a pleasure having you on. These two hours just flew by.

Get the free book. Listeners, please go to learntruehealth.com/fastbook and get that free ebook. And also by the Flash Fast. Do it. Check it out. I actually prefer doing your flash, fast getting the kit versus doing it myself because then I have to calorie count and restrict myself and try to stay under 800 calories. Then there’s temptation. Whereas if I have your program, it’s like, “No. I’m just following this.” So it makes it really clear cut. And then I could just do it and forget about it. I don’t have to put a lot of mental energy into it. So that’s why I love your program. It just saves me my mental energy so I can just focus. Just do what you put in front of me, do your kit, and follow the protocol. Like you said, it has one card, basically. Do this, do this, do this, do this for three days. And then and then reap the rewards, reap the benefits. So listeners can go to learntruehealth.com/flashfast to get the – was it $10 off their first kit and try it for themselves.

And I’d love to hear what you think of it. Of course, we’re going to talk about this in the Learn True Health Facebook Group. I want to know what you guys think and what kind of benefits you’ve seen from doing this kind of fasting.

Robyn, I definitely want to have you back on the show. Anytime you want a platform to come share and teach, you are always welcome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing with us the Flash Fast.

 

 

[02:03:57] Robyn Openshaw: My pleasure. Thanks, Ashley.

 

 

[02:04:00] Ashley James: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over 100 dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from the standpoint of how we can help people to shift their lives and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health.

I definitely recommend that you check them out. You can Google Institute for integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health

Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices. You can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children to be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success in their health goals.

There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon.  The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected With Robyn Openshaw:

Official Website

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Books by Robyn Openshaw

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12 Steps To Whole Foods

Vibe: Discover Your Energetic Frequency for Health, Love & Success (FREE!)

Check out other episodes with Robyn Openshaw! 

Episode 358: EMF (Electromagnetic Fields)

Episode 178: High Vibration Foods

Oct 30, 2019

Get in touch with Jennifer Saltzman from Take Your Supplements! Visit TakeYourSupplements.com
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ASHLEY'S 3 FAVORITE PRODUCTS FOR NATURAL PAIN RELIEF:

Sunlighten Sauna:
Call for more info and mention the Learn True Health Podcast with Ashley James for our special listener discount!

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Ashley's favorite CBD tincture:
Jay Hartenbach is giving Learn True Health listeners 15% off on his CBD products, so be sure to type in the discount code LTH at checkout.
https://medterracbd.com/
Listen to my interview about MedTerra CBD:
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Magnesium Soak:
Use coupon code LTH to get 10% off your jug of concentrated magnesium soak at LivingTheGoodLifeNaturally.com
Listen to Ashley's interview with Kristen Bowen about the therapeutic powers of soaking in the right kind of magnesium:
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David's Site:

https://nootropicsexpert.com

 

Nootropics For Pain Relief

https://www.learntruehealth.com/nootropics-pain-relief

 

Highlights:

  • What Nootropics and different Nootropics for pain relief
  • Different natural pain relief supplements
  • Benefits of using lion’s mane and where it’s from
  • Benefits of encapsulating own supplements
  • Benefits of kratom and other uses for kratom
  • What rhodiola rosea is and other uses
  • Benefits of using PQQ
  • Benefits of using CBD oil and its difference hemp oil
  • How NAC works
  • How to get consultation from David Tomen and what you get from his consultation

 

In this episode, David Tomen will share with us today about different nootropics for pain relief. He shares where each nootropic is from and what other benefits does the nootropics have aside from pain relief. He will also share with us different scientific studies and researches that support the use of nootropics for pain relief.

 

[0:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker and welcome to another episode of Learn True Health Podcast.      

Today’s a really exciting interview for those who are looking for pain relief naturally. David Tomen, the Nootropics Expert is back on the show with us. We do mention a bunch of supplements and herbs that you can use to support yourself. One of them being CBD. My favorite company to get CBD from is medterracbd.com. I had the founder on the show. You can listen to that episode by searching CBD on my website learntruehealth.com. We have a coupon code from them. They’re very generously giving us a big discount to all the listeners. So go to medterracbd.com and use the coupon code LTH at checkout.

Why I like their CBD? It is organic, it is very clean and they guarantee that you will pass a drug test because it is just pure CBD. Now they will be coming out in the future with a whole plant supplement which has all the other wonderful phytonutrients in it that are also very healthy and supportive. So just go to their website, check it out medterracbd.comYou can also listen to the episode I did on that. I have several episodes with doctors and experts in CBD so you can fully dive into understanding that whole wonderful world. David Tomen talks a lot about different herbs. Some of them are controversial and that’s okay because he is all about the science. So on his website,  , he sites every single scientific study and research paper when he discusses different herbs and supplements so that he can site exactly the dosages that you can safely take. Thank you so much for being a listener.

If you haven’t heard already, because I have mentioned it in the last few episodes, we are coming out with a very exciting membership the Learn True Health Home Kitchen membership. You will be able to join it and learn how to cook delicious, healthy whole food plant-based meals for you and your whole family. So if you’re looking to go completely plant-based, that will be a fantastic resource for you. Or if you just love to learn how to introduce more wonderful vegetables into your diet and eat even healthier, you will absolutely love our membership. Go ahead and join the Learn True Health Facebook group by searching Learn True Health on Facebook and go to learntruehealth.com and join our newsletter so you will be abreast of all of the news that comes your way as we launch the new membership. We’ve been filming and it has been so much fun. I can’t wait for you to learn all these delicious whole food plant-based recipes. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy today’s interview.

Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 389.

 

[0:03:29] Ashley James: I am so excited today to have back on the show, David Tomen. He is the NootropicsExpert.com. He was on the show in episode 362 and 374. If you haven’t listened to those episodes, you definitely have to go back check out David Tomen’s story as to why he became the nootropics expert. For those who don’t nootropics are and are just getting into, this is their first taste of the David Tomen experience. David, can you start by sharing what are you nootropics?

 

[0:04:00] David Tomen: Hi Ashley.

 

[0:04:02] Ashley James: Hi.

 

[0:04:03] David Tomen: Thank you for having me back. Nootropics are any type of dietary supplement that helps your brain.

 

[0:04:09] Ashley James: Exactly. So, all the good stuff that supports the cardiovascular system to the brain that supports the balance of chemicals in the brain. Everything that just supports the neurological system

 

[0:04:22] David Tomen: What makes your brain work. Yeah. Our brain is, as far as I know, is the most complex thing in the universe that we know of. The deeper I get into the neuroscience the more, I’m no longer blown away just because it’s just so incredibly interesting and deep and we’re a long way from figuring it out. But the little bit that we have figured out, the neuroscience that I have available now and that I’ve got thousands and thousands and thousands of links to clinical studies and all the stuff that I’ve done on NootropicsExpert.com is just supporting what we already, we know that this stuff works and now we’re starting to understand why it works.

 

[0:05:17] Ashley James: Yeah. That’s so cool. I love it. Well, people have been using for thousands of years, have been using herbs, natural nootropics. Now we’re understanding why they work. That’s pretty amazing. Everything from mushroom and herbs, minerals to how now we see why these supplements are supporting the body and supporting the neurosystem in a really positive why. I think they just recently came out with some discovery about the brain that I found fascinating. You probably already heard of it but there’s a type of cell in the brain that is responsible for cleaning up the old tissue. We really want these cells to be happy because when those cells are not happy, they actually start to digest healthy tissue in the brain. One thing that causes them to go haywire and digest healthy tissue in the brain is lack of sleep. Have you heard of this, that lack of sleep causes the brain to basically eat itself? So something as simple as sleep is highly supportive of brain health. So, of course, that’s one thing that you teach is all the things on your amazing website nootropicsexpert.com, how we can maintain a lifestyle to promote the best brain health possible.

 

[0:06:45] David Tomen: Including how to get a good night’s sleep.

 

[0:06:47] Ashley James: Yes. Exactly. Because there are nootropics to support help us –

 

[0:06:51] David Tomen: To help us sleep.

 

[0:06:52] Ashley James: Yeah. Something as simple, almost everyone know what melatonin is, is melatonin a nootropic?

 

[0:06:57] David Tomen: Yes. I consider it a nootropic but I wouldn’t use melatonin. The reason why is because melatonin is, well it goes 5HTPN then serotonin and then melatonin. So your brain naturally produces melatonin, but when you go to buy a melatonin supplement, almost every single melatonin supplement on the market is synthetic. The chemical process that they go through to make melatonin is just scary reading the thing. The other thing that they found out, well a couple of other things. The melatonin supplements, they’re dosed too high because you only use like 0.5 to 0.8 of melatonin naturally. These things are like 3 mg, 5 mg, 10 mg so they’re way, way overdosed. But the other thing is that the label doesn’t jive with what’s in the capsule. Somebody actually did a clinical study and they bought a bunch of melatonin supplements. I actually linked to this in one of my posts. They bought like 25 different melatonin supplements. Then they tested them in a lab to find out how much melatonin was in each capsule. What they found out that it ranges anywhere from -75% to 450% more than what was stated in the label.

 

[0:08:24] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[0:08:26] David Tomen: So, if you buy a 3 mg melatonin supplement and the thing is actually got 50 mg of melatonin in it, you can really mess yourself up. The other thing that they found is some of these manufacturers were actually putting serotonin in the supplement which is not even legal.

 

[0:08:47] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[0:08:51] David Tomen: Yeah. So don’t buy a melatonin supplement. Use something natural like tart cherry juice which is a natural source of melatonin. It’s a lot gentler and it will help you sleep.

 

[0:09:01] Ashley James: That is so true. I love tart cherry juice. It really does knock me out. That’s so funny. I also found that chlorella and spirulina, they also help the body produce melatonin because of the amino acids in it I guess. That’s pretty amazing that if I eat them I get better sleep or if I take tart cherry juice I get better sleep.

 

[0:09:26] David Tomen: It’s just a gentler way of introducing melatonin into your system.

 

[0:09:32] Ashley James: I love that. We weren’t even going to talk about sleep but I was just so fascinated by what I heard that when we don’t get enough sleep our brain digests itself. Since we’re all concerned about dementia, so many of us have seen our grandparents or are parents go through dementia or aunts and uncles. It is something that we want to obviously avoid and prevent. We can prevent it with natural medicine and understanding the nootropics that we can use to support the brain. Now, one thing that I’m interested in is helping the listeners who are in pain. Because when we are in pain, we are willing to do anything to be out of pain. I know you have a personal experience of that. Would you like to share to the listener what has happened recently?

 

[0:10:19] David Tomen: Four weeks ago I had my second major back surgery. It’s a laminectomy. The neurosurgeon did a couple of other things where five years prior to this I had a spinal fusion. So they put two rods attached by two screws each. So two rods and four screws in my lumbar between L4 and L5 to fuse those vertebrae together because they had degraded so much that I almost ended up in a paralyzed in a wheelchair because it had just worn out. So five years later, well this started about two years ago, the pain started to come back. Went and did the scans and discovered that the section right about that is falling apart. You know how you can look at a CT scan and an MRI of your spine? You know how your spinal column comes down? It’s nice and clear all the way down. That’s the nerves come down from your brain. The section between L3 and L4 was black. Completely black. I was in excruciating pain. So, what the surgeon did is he went in and he went in and scraped that all out and he cut off some bone. You can imagine the kind of pain that leaves you. Now, fortunately for me, I had extraordinary sciatic pain dealt down both legs down to my toes. That’s gone. But now I’m just dealing with where the surgery was done and that’s getting incrementally better a little bit day by day. I honestly think that I’m recovering a lot faster from this kind of major surgery than most people do just because of the stuff that I’m taking.

 

[0:12:12] Ashley James: Oh, I bet. Has the surgeon noticed that your healing has been faster?

 

[0:12:17] David Tomen: I haven’t talked to him since he did the surgery four weeks ago. I see him in a couple of weeks. It’s just never occurred for me to ask him.

 

[0:12:30] Ashley James: Well, that would be interesting. Did you expect me to have healed this far along or how many weeks did you expect this to heal? Because I have heard of other people that have been on really good supplements and really good diet and that they’ve impressed the surgeons greatly with their quick ability to heal. I even know a guy who broke both legs. He changed his whole diet to make sure it as mineral-rich, vegetables, and he healed his legs weeks, weeks before the doctors expected him to make a full recovery. He made a full recovery weeks and weeks before. It was funny because all the doctors were saying, ‘you can’t speed up your bones healing by eating better.’ Yes, you can. That’s so funny.

 

[0:13:25] David Tomen: I’ve got a friend in Los Angeles that owns a nootropics company. It’s one of my favorite nootropics stacks. Within the last year, he was in a major traffic accident. He just broke a lot of stuff. It was supposed to take him, the doctors told him it was going to take him eight or nine months to recover. He did in seven weeks.

 

[0:13:51] Ashley James: Nice.

 

[0:13:53] David Tomen: Just using the supplement that he sells. One of the things that I love about the supplement that he sells is it’s loaded with lion’s mane. Lion’s mane mushroom and lion’s mane mushroom just heals nerves. That’s one of its big claim to fame. They actually did a, there was a lion’s mane mushroom, I think it was someplace in Malaysia. They studied on rats in the lab. I kind of cringe when I think about how they did this, but they cut the gluteal nerves crippling the rats so the rats couldn’t walk. Then they fed them lion’s mane-laced water for the next two or three weeks. Within two weeks, these rats were walking again because their gluteal nerves had mended back together again and healed.

 

[0:14:53] Ashley James: That is so cool. It’s so cool. The animal cruelty is horrific but the results are great that they made a full recovery because of lion’s mane. Yeah, I just yesterday made a soup. I was shopping at our local coop called PCC. The beautiful mushrooms. All the wonderful mushrooms they have this time of year. Fall is so great for mushrooms. So, I’ve got lion’s mane. I’ve never had lion’s mane fresh before and I got lion’s mane, shiitake, oyster and chanterelles and onion, carrot and celery. I went home and I cut everything up and put it into my big, big, big, big soup pot. I simmered it for a few hours and I added some herbs like sage and thyme and rosemary. Oh my gosh. This soup is amazing. It felt so healing and so supportive of the immune system. That’s why I was doing it. It was immune system tea or like a soup. That’s like an immune system soup. Now you’re talking about how it’s healing or a startup to the nervous system so that’s even better. Maybe I’m a little smarter today.

 

[0:16:07] David Tomen: You probably are. Absolutely.

 

[0:16:12] Ashley James: So what did you do after the surgery to support yourself in decreasing the pain because obviously, your body is going through healing a wound, a big wound. There’s a lot for your body to heal and in the process, you must be in pain.

 

[0:16:28] David Tomen: Incredible pain. One of the things that I found is extremely effective it was kratom, which is really really controversial these days because the states are trying to ban it because they say it’s an opiate and it’s really. But it acts like an opioid receptors. I find that for me, kratom affects different people in different ways, for me it takes about 8 grams of kratom equals about 10 mg of an opioid, a prescription opioid. That’s how powerful it is. But people use kratom for not only pain but they use it for insomnia, they use it as an anxiolytic, my wife uses it to help her sleep. Then she uses a different strain to help her wake up in the morning. There’s a lot of different things you can do with this herb. The thing is that it’s completely natural. It comes from a tropical deciduous tree that’s native to the coffee family in Southeast Asia where they’ve been using it for thousands of years. The workers there use it as a natural remedy. They make tea out of it. They use it throughout their workday for energy and for pain relief.

 

[0:17:50] Ashley James: It’s related to the coffee plant so there’s some natural caffeine in it, right?

 

[0:17:56] David Tomen: There’s no caffeine in it.

 

[0:17:57] Ashley James: Oh, there’s no caffeine. That’s very interesting.

 

[0:17:58] David Tomen: There is not. But what it does is it affects the dopamine D1 receptors in your brain which helps boost energy. It also affects serotonin in norepinephrine pathways in the central nervous system. So that’s where you get relief from anxiety and depression. It’s an agonist of three different opioid receptors in your brain, which is where the pain relief comes from.

 

[0:18:29] Ashley James: Fascinating. Yeah. I was a little wary about kratom when I started to see these signs pop up in all the smoke shops. Not that I frequent smoke shops but you know, I’m driving by them. They have this sign outside that says, ‘Kratom sold here.’ I’m thinking, anything that a smoke shop sells is probably not good for you, right? So my red flags were up. But then I watched the documentary, A Leaf of Faith on Netflix. It’s still on Netflix. I really recommend watching A Leaf of Faith for anyone who is battling pain or has a friend or family member that’s battling pain or opioid addiction because it is a fascinating dive into the political fight on kratom and how many people are seeing results. Then, we question why if it’s all-natural and people actually get off of pharmaceutical drugs, because they get relief from kratom and there’s no deaths and overdoses. It doesn’t harm people like drugs do so it’s safe and natural and doesn’t profit the pharmaceutical companies. Then why is the government trying to shut it down but totally fine with pharmaceutical drugs that might hurt people?

 

[0:19:41] David Tomen: Because it’s a direct competitor to prescription medication.

 

[0:19:46] Ashley James: There’s a little conspiracy theory there. We got to question everything. We should always do our research and look into things to see if it’s right for us or not.

 

[0:20:00] David Tomen: There’s tons of misinformation out there. They’re saying they’re trying to ban it because it’s an opioid. It’s not. It’s a partial agonist of certain opioid receptors but it’s not a true opioid. In fact, it’s not an opioid. It doesn’t cause the respiratory effects that a prescription opioid does which is the reason why you can overdose on it. People do get in trouble with it for a couple of reasons. One, because its popularity has exploded that everybody and his brother is selling it. You can buy it in the local gas station which I do not recommend that you do because people are putting into these capsules stuff that should not be in those capsules. Yeah. It’s scary. You can physically get yourself in a lot of trouble if you don’t get the real stuff. So you just have to be very, very cautious about where you get it from.

 

[0:21:02] Ashley James: Where do you get it from?

 

[0:21:04] David Tomen: I use a company in Oregon called Phytoextractum. There’s another company in Pennsylvania that my wife gets it from and I can’t remember the name of the company, but I’ve got a link to Phytoextractum in my kratom review on the website. We’ve been buying it from them for years and years and they’ve been consistent. They test their stuff every which way because they’ve gotten into trouble one time. You know when one stuff is contaminated with salmonella? They said, “That will never ever happen again because our reputation is too important.” So now they test everything. They’ve got several different strains of kratom but it’s all absolutely pure. So, we buy the powder and make capsules out of it. But people also make out of it. When we first started using kratom, I didn’t know how to make capsules. So I would just put two or 3 grams in a yogurt and that’s how I would consume it which is fine. Now we make our won capsules.

 

[0:22:19] Ashley James: Right, because you get a jar of this powder. It’s a leaf, right? Or is it a –

 

[0:22:25] David Tomen: No, it’s a leaf. It’s just the leaf. So they just grind up the leaf so it’s a fine powder. Some people say you can smoke it. I wouldn’t smoke it. I don’t see the point in smoking it. I don’t know why you would smoke it. I don’t see any benefit in smoking it. You want to swallow the thing and digest it. That’s how you get the most benefit from it. Yeah. Just stick it in some yogurt or put it in some juice or a smoothie or make capsules of it. Learn what the different strains are and what they do. Then choose the strain that other people say helps them with the sleep or helps them with anxiety or helps them with pain. I find there is one strain in particular that helps me with pain.

 

[0:23:16] Ashley James: What strain is that?

 

[0:23:20] David Tomen: It’s just called Bali. It’s called Green Bali. The one from Phytoextractum. There’s another one called Red Bali that my wife uses to help her sleep. She doesn’t like using Ambien so she uses that instead. You see testimonials over and over and over and over again where people are using it to withdraw from opioid addiction, which is amazing. It really is amazing. I’ve actually got a link to a clinical study wherein the lab, they help people withdraw from opiates with a lot fewer withdrawal symptoms just by using kratom.

 

[0:24:11] Ashley James: Is that because it comes in and attaches with some opiate receptors? So it helps in that way?

 

[0:24:18] David Tomen: Yeah. It just attaches to them in a different way. I think on a different area of the receptor. A neuroreceptor is just not a neuroreceptor. There’s actually different attachment points. Kratom seems to attach to a different part of the opiate receptor than what prescription opiates do. According to the studies that I’ve seen, that’s how it works. I’ve never ever gotten high out of it, ever.

 

[0:24:50] Ashley James: That was my next question. What does it feel like to be on kratom?

 

[0:24:54] David Tomen: Less pain and less anxiety. You’re just in a better mood. You know, people talk about getting high off of it. I don’t know how to do it. You would have to use so much of it that I just like they’re talking 25 grams kratom and I just can’t imagine consuming that much. You take a 00 capsule. If you cram it, jam it jam it really really full that’s a gram. So that it’ll be like swallowing at least 25 or 30 capsules all at once. Why you want to do that, I have no idea.

 

[0:25:45] Ashley James: What’s the dose that you take for your pain right now managing your pain for the surgery that you’re recovering from?

 

[0:25:53] David Tomen: 8 to 10 grams.

 

[0:25:55] Ashley James: So, you make your own capsules. It’s about the size of your regular supplement capsule?

 

[0:26:01] David Tomen: Yeah. A large capsule.

 

[0:26:03] Ashley James: Okay. So a large supplement capsule. How many of those a day do you take and how long does it last?

 

[0:26:08] David Tomen: It lasts for about four hours. Depending on the level of pain, anywhere from 8 to 12 capsules.

 

[0:26:16] Ashley James: Every four hours?

 

[0:26:18] David Tomen: No. I do probably twice a day. Sometimes once a day.

 

[0:26:20] Ashley James: Maybe two to four capsules twice a day?

 

[0:26:25] David Tomen: No. I would do like eight capsules at once. Like in the morning maybe in the afternoon another eight capsules.

 

[0:26:37] Ashley James: That sounds like maybe a tablespoon of the powder I mean just to give us an idea.

 

[0:26:44] David Tomen: You know, people talk about tablespoons.

 

[0:26:48] Ashley James: I think a tablespoon is half an ounce like a shot glass, I think.

 

[0:26:54] David Tomen: I got a little scale by Blade that measures milligrams so I know what a gram looks like in powder piled on a scale. But if you fill up one of this 00 capsules, you’re looking at about 750 to 800 mg if it’s not packed too tight, 800 mg of powder. So, how much would that fill up a tablespoon? I don’t know. I never tried.

 

[0:27:20] Ashley James: Or like a regular-sized soup spoon. I’m just thinking like if someone could have an understanding of how much they’d put in their smoothie if it would be like just a spoonful.

 

[0:27:31] David Tomen: The best thing to do Ashley is to get one of those little scales.

 

[0:27:35] Ashley James: Got it.

 

[0:27:36] David Tomen: They’re $10.00 on Amazon, $10.00 or $12.00. The one that I have is made by, yeah it’s called Blade. It takes two AAA batteries. You switch it on and you pile some powder on it. It tells you how many grams it is or how many milligrams. Right down to the milligram.

 

[0:28:06] Ashley James: Got it.

 

[0:28:06] David Tomen: So I used to measure stuff like that but now I just kind of eyeball it because I know how much would a gram looks like.

 

[0:28:14] Ashley James: Right, and you figured out how much of that goes into the capsules. So it’s about eight capsules every four hours.

 

[0:28:22] David Tomen: I started out with a 20, what is it 20 or 25 capsules? Just this little capsule machine. That’s what I used for years. Now I’ve got one that does 100 capsules.

 

[0:28:33] Ashley James: You have a machine? Wow. I used to, when I was a kid, my first naturopath was Dr. D’Adamo, the creator of Eat Right for your Blood Type Diet. After seeing him, our whole family changed the whole diet and went dairy-free, wheat-free, sugar-free, yeast-free all that. He sent us home with a big powder because he had a compounding nutraceuticals clinic basically. So he compounded all of the nasty tasting, he just said drink it and I couldn’t handle it because it was raw B-vitamins you’re trying to get a 6-year-old to drink raw B-vitamins. I was brave. I chugged it and it felt it’s the most horrible taste ever.

 

[0:29:18] David Tomen: Well, that’s another reason why you want to encapsulate because it tastes like crap.

 

[0:29:22] Ashley James: Right. So he said, ‘you’re not going to drink it? We’ll make capsules.’ My entire childhood I made these capsules by hand. There was no machine back in the 80s to make our capsules for us. So I’m just laughing now that you can go on Amazon and buy a machine to make your own capsules because I sat there by hand for hours making our supplement capsules.

 

[0:29:42] David Tomen: You can get a 100-capsule machine from anywhere $14.00 to $20.00.  

 

[0:29:51] Ashley James: That is so great.

 

[0:29:52] David Tomen: You can buy the capsules now. You can buy the capsules either joined or separated. The separated capsules are a little bit more expensive because they have the short end in one bag and the long end in the other bag. So you just dump on one side of the capsule machine, you just dump a pile of the long part of the capsules and you shake it around and it slides into the holes. Then you dump off the excess back into the bag. Then you do the same side for the short end and then you just dump the powder on top of that. Use a credit card or something like that to spread it around to fill up the capsules. You get a little tamping thing to tamp it down then you fill a little bit more, tamp it down, fill a little bit more. Then you just put the top on and you squeeze it together. Take it off and capsules.

 

[0:30:42] Ashley James: That sounds so cool

 

[0:30:42] David Tomen: It takes me 10 minutes to make 100 capsules.

 

[0:30:47] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That is so neat. To think of all the things that we could take. One of our listeners, Naomi, bought some herbs because she wanted to do her own parasite cleanse. She didn’t want to pay the big bucks to the big companies. So she got ground up and all organic and all good stuff, all the herbs. The clove and all that stuff. She made all her own capsules. I just thought how ingenious is that? If we cannot necessarily afford to take these herbs and buy them from the companies that are obviously making a profit, we cut out the middleman and go find where we can find the organic, high-quality herb ourselves and make our own capsules. But we should always make sure that we’re not taking too much, right? We should really be careful about the quality and the chain of custody. That there’s no mold on it. There’s lots of things that we need to do. If we’re going to make our own capsules, we have to really make sure that at every step in the way, that what we’re putting in our capsules is safe and clean. That’s why I like buying from companies because they’ve done the testing. I always buy from supplement companies that have done the testing for me.

 

[0:32:01] David Tomen: Some of these companies you can go to their website and actually download a certificate of analysis for specific batches. The certificate of analysis is just, it’s a third-party lab that test whatever is in those capsules and they tell you on the certificate of analysis exactly what you’re getting. So look for companies that are willing to do that. Or you can either download it from their website where they say that it’s available if you ask their customer service. But I encapsulate all kinds of other stuff for a couple of reasons. One, it’s less expensive like L-Tyrosine is a precursor to dopamine and [unintelligible] adult ADD. I use stimulants so I need to raise my dopamine so I use L-Tyrosine or N-Acetyl-L-Tyrosine. It’s better for me to get the powder because it’s cheaper and I make my own capsules. The other reason I like making my own capsules because I don’t want any “other ingredients.” When you take a look at a supplement label, you look down at the end of the supplement label and there is this part that says other ingredients. You see things like magnesium stearate and titanium dioxide and dicalcium phosphate and silica. I don’t want that stuff because not only is it not what I’m setting out to put in my body but this stuff is actually bad for you. Like magnesium stearate for example. Nearly every single supplement that you find on a shelf in the local vitamin shop has gotten magnesium stearate on the label. Why? It’s because it’s used as a flow agent. It helps speed up the encapsulation process. It stops the powder from sticking to mechanical equipment, right? So it’s helping the manufacturer but it’s not helping me.

 

[0:33:58] Ashley James: What are the negative effects of taking it?

 

[0:34:01] David Tomen: It suppresses your natural killer T cells which is a key component of your immune system. You don’t want to do that. Titanium dioxide is another classic one that you see on nearly every supplement. They used it to make things look more appealing color. The problem with it is that it leads to mitochondrial dysfunction. It damages astrocyte cells which prevents them from being able to absorb glutamate. So that induces oxidative stress and that causes mitochondrial damage. Another one I just came across that’s a little bit less. You don’t see it as often but it just happens to be on a nootropic stack that I’m reviewing right now that will remain nameless until I publish this thing but it’s called dicalcium phosphate. Dicalcium phosphate is used to help bulk out stuff like as a filler. So if you’re selling a supplement that’s 5 mg, you know how big 5 mg is?

 

[0:35:09] Ashley James: It’s small. Tiny.

 

[0:35:13] David Tomen: It’s teeny, teeny, tiny, right? You can’t get a 5 mg capsule. You won’t be able to pick the thing up. It’s so small. So they’ve got to put a filler in to fill the rest of the capsule. You can use things like rice flour, which is fine. But these guys use dicalcium phosphate. The thing is produced from either sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid.

 

[0:35:38] Ashley James: What does it do to the body?

 

[0:35:44] David Tomen: It’s often radioactive.

 

[0:35:46] Ashley James: What?

 

[0:35:47] David Tomen: Yeah. Well, it’s just hopefully your body just excretes it without doing any damage. But you’d really don’t want that thing going through your system.

 

[0:35:56] Ashley James: So besides rice gram what are some safe fillers? There’s one supplement I take that uses cinnamon as a filler. I mean it’s a blood sugar support. I don’t take it.

 

[0:36:07] David Tomen: Yeah, yeah. Something like cinnamon would be fine. Rice flour is fine. I mean, there’s only a couple of fillers that are natural. The encouraging thing Ashley is that this has been so pervasive for so long that now, once every two or three weeks I see a new supplement company pop up. So I take a look at their label to see what’s there. I find that a couple of them are producing a nootropics supplement that have no other ingredients which is a miracle. That’s one of the reasons why I love Opti-Nutra that makes Mind Lab Pro and Performance Lab line of supplements is because they don’t have. The only other ingredients are the capsule, which is made out of tapioca, and sometimes rice flour as a filler. That’s it. There’s no other ingredients. That is still very, very unusual. So that’s the other reason why I make my own capsules because I don’t have that stuff in there.

 

[0:37:14] Ashley James: Very cool. Now besides kratom, what other supplements are you taking to support the reduction of pain as your body is healing from the surgery?

 

[0:37:27] David Tomen: That’s the main one. There’s a lot of other stuff that is helping that too. I use Mind Lab Pro every day and that’s got lion’s mane in it. So we already talked about lion’s mane and we know how that helps your body heal. There are others and pine bark extract. Pine bark extract comes from the French maritime. It’s called French Maritime Pine Bark. It’s native to the Mediterranean region. The extract of that pine bark holds a thing called proanthocyanidins. It does all kinds of things. Improves blood flow in your brain which means your brain is getting more oxygen and more nutrients but it also helps tame inflammation. When you tame inflammation you reduce pain because a lot of pain comes from inflammation one way or another. So pine bark extract helps in that. My very first experience and I just thought of this when I was researching when I was getting ready for our talk, my first experience with a  nootropic for pain and I didn’t realize it was going on at the time and a couple of years later I realize what was going on. Choline citrate. I used to go to a rheumatologist. Because I’m a writer, I have excruciating should pain. The kind of shoulder pain that massages hardly helped. The doctor used to take big needles and inject stuff into my shoulders to try to help me relieve the pain and it wasn’t working. I was just in excruciating pain. But at the time, I realize I needed to boost acetic choline in my brain. One of the easiest ways is to do that. One of the cheapest ways to do that is with choline citrate. All it is choline combined with citrate which is an isocitric acid. The choline and the citrate combined, they contribute to the synthesis of acetic choline in your brain. The other thing that it does for some reason is it helps relieve muscle pain. I find that you have to take quite a bit of this stuff. Like typically, other acetic choline precursors like Alpha-GPC or CDP-Choline you take 350 mg or 600 mg. With choline citrate, you would take like 5 or 6 grams because it’s not very bioavailable. But choline is an essential nutrient. I find that when I was using it I would have less muscle pain. I didn’t realize that until I started researching how it worked in my body. I went, ‘Oh, that’s the reason why I’m having less pain.’

 

[0:40:55] Ashley James: Cool. So you think your body was deficient in it?

 

[0:41:00] David Tomen: Yeah. I know it was.

 

[0:41:02] Ashley James: So, does choline deficiency cause muscle pain?

 

[0:41:07] David Tomen: Well it can because acetic choline is your body’s signaling neurotransmitter. When you move your finger, that signal is acetic choline. Any muscle movement is signaled by acetic choline. So if there’s not enough acetic choline, what’s going to happen? You’re going to have slow reflexes, your brain’s not going to work as well and your muscles aren’t going to work as well either. There was a clinical study that researches found that providing 2 grams of choline prior to exercise prevented a fall in choline levels and raised choline levels above baseline values for up to two hours after exercise. The researchers found that choline citrate and choline bitartrate were equally effective as well as their two inexpensive supplements that you can buy. One randomized placebo-controlled study found improvements in running times by a significant amount over a 20-mile course when compared to those that were using a placebo compared to the people that were using choline citrate or choline bitartrate. So the dosage of choline citrate is 500 mg to 3000 mg per day.

So the other things that you can use for pain is Holy Basil. Holy Basil is it’s a member of the mint family. It’s also called tulsi or the incomparable one in Hindu. I mean they’ve used it in Ayurveda and the Greeks, the Romans, the Siddha, the Unani. They all used the Holy Basil for things like anxiety, cough, asthma, diarrhea, live dysentery, arthritis, eye diseases, eye [unintelligible], indigestion. I could go on and on and on. Even snake bites. Snake and scorpion bites and malaria. But they found that Holy Basil also helps back pain. It’s probably because Holy Basil is a very very potent antioxidant. It’s a natural COX-2 inhibitor. There are studies that show that some of the compounds included in Holy Basil including eugenol and rosemarinic acid have been compared to ibuprofen, naproxen, and aspirin in their pain-relieving qualities which is pretty amazing.

 

[0:44:09] Ashley James: How do we take Holy Basil? Is that like an extract, an essential oil?

 

[0:44:17] David Tomen: You can use in essential oil but I’ve got more experience and I think that it’s easier to note how much is in a capsule of an extract than it is in an essential oil. So the recommended dosage for Holy Basil extract is 300 to 2000 mg a day. You can also make Holy Basil tea just by pouring boiling water over fresh Holy Basil leaves and let it steep for five minutes. Of course, you don’t know how much you’re getting when you do it that way but it works.

 

[0:44:56] Ashley James: Yeah. It’s fairly safe to make teas. It’s hard to overdose or take too much of it from tea.

 

[0:45:02] David Tomen: Yeah. It’s highly bioavailable when you do it that way too. But I like capsules. I like extracts because I know exactly how much I’m putting in my body.  Rhodiola rosea is German researchers found that rhodiola works really well for pain, headaches, [unintelligible], hemorrhoids. They use it as a stimulant, as an anti-inflammatory. I’m trying to remember why rhodiola works so well for pain because I’ve only studied it for how it works in the brain. One research team found that rhodiola increased the number of neurons in the hippocampus in the people that they were treating. When you increase the number of neurons, of course, your cognition is better ad your memory is better. It plays a role in saving injured neurons in the hippocampus. Some of the neurological diseases that we’ve talked about earlier come from problems with the hippocampus. You can prevent it at least in part by using something like rhodiola rosea which helps save injured neurons.

 

[0:46:32] Ashley James: Yeah. I’m remembering that you have a whole article on recovering after stroke. Preventing stroke obviously, but with someone who had a stroke that there’s nootropics to heal the brain after a traumatic brain injury. We’ve talked about that in our past episodes.

 

[0:46:52] David Tomen: Taurine is an amino acid that is used by athletes. It’s also found in things like Red Bull. But most people find that using taurine, they’ve got sharper eyesight and their muscle pain is reduced and they’re less depressed. Any insulin resistance that’s present goes down.

 

[0:47:21] Ashley James: That makes me wonder if someone who has taurine deficiency would their insulin resistance get worse? Would their eyesight get worse? When you say things get better because someone takes taurine.

 

[0:47:36] David Tomen: Probably. It kind of like makes sense doesn’t it?

 

[0:47:39] Ashley James: It’s a nutrient deficiency that’s causing these problems?

 

[0:47:43] David Tomen: Yeah. So you just have to try. If you’re lucky enough to figure out what that nutrient deficiency is. If you can’t figure it out then you just start experiment with different things using a, you know doing a search of a site like Nootropics Expert and finding things like, ‘oh, okay. I’ll try taurine.’ They also found that taurine supplementation works for treating autism.

 

[0:48:17] Ashley James: Why is that?

 

[0:48:19] David Tomen: Autism spectrum disorder is thought to be associated with oxidative stress caused by your active oxygen species. So it kind of makes sense that oxidative stress is a potential target for therapeutic intervention for autism. Researchers in New York tested 66 children aged 1 ½ to 11 ½ years who are diagnosed with autism. The controls in this study were kids with their healthy siblings and parents.  The studies found that 21 out of 66 autistic children had low taurine concentration in their blood.

 

[0:49:13] Ashley James: What about the researchers’ families? Did the families also have?

 

[0:49:17] David Tomen: No. They had normal. Normal taurine levels. So the researchers conclude that the data implied that taurine may be a valid biomarker for at least some contributing to autism. So will it help? Don’t know. All you can do is try it. I’ve consulted with a couple of parents with kids that have got autism and that’s one of the things suggested. I’m not sure. I haven’t got any feedback from them yet on whether it’s helped or not.

 

[0:49:50] Ashley James: Interesting. I just did an interview yesterday with the doctor who created the GAPS diet. Dr. Campbell-McBride, Her diet is about healing the gut to heal the brain. She’s a neurologist. She healed her son’s. When her son was 2 years old had autism. He totally healed his gut with his diet and his autism went away. So she’s had really great success having reverse autism. Her diet is so high in these amino acids like taurine because the first phase of the diet, we shouldn’t even call it a diet. It’s a really strict program that lasts 1 ½ to 2 years. Then they kind of get weaned off of it because their gut is healed. Then they go back to almost all food after that. But the first phase is just bone broth basically and meat broths high in these amino acids. She had children that has completely reversing autism. I wonder if that’s one of those things that they were really deficient in those amino acids. That was what was –

 

[0:51:01] David Tomen: It sounds like it.

 

[0:51:03] Ashley James: Yeah. Interesting.

 

[0:51:05] David Tomen: Another thing that you can use for pain is PQQ. PQQ is you often see it combined with CoQ10 because those two help make ATP for healing mitochondria. We also find that PQQ promotes the growth of new mitochondria in the brain. It’s the only supplement that we know that does that. It helps grow neurons because it boosts the production of nerve growth factors in your brain. But we found that if you’re dealing with fibromyalgia you might get some benefit alleviating your chronic pain with PQQ. There was one clinical that the researchers concluded that supplementing with PQQ improves C quality and duration, mood improved due to less fatigue and appetite and pain all showed improvement.

 

[0:52:15] Ashley James: Cool.

 

[0:52:17] David Tomen: Yeah. Another one that we haven’t talked about is CBD oil.

 

[0:52:21] Ashley James: Yeah. I was just waiting for that. A lot of people have good results.

 

[0:52:27] David Tomen: Yeah. A lot of people do. I don’t use it. I’ve tried it a couple of times because I’m using other stuff it kind of for me it was like eh. But so many people report benefits with CBD. It kind of makes sense. CBD is one of at least 120 phytocannabinoids found in the cannabis sativa plant. Cannabidiol is extracted from cannabis or marijuana in industrial hemp where it’s synthesized in the lab. Both hemp and marijuana are versions of the cannabis sativa plant, right? The thing is that CBD does not have the same psychomimetic or mind-altering effects as the main plant compound found in this plant THC.

 

[0:53:27] Ashley James: Right. So kids can take it. All adults can take. You can take it. You can take it and drive you’re not going to get high. You’ll feel relaxed.

                                                                                             

[0:53:36] David Tomen: Actually, CBD is used to help counter the mind-altering effects caused by THC.

 

[0:53:42] Ashley James: Right. Yes. When people overdose on marijuana and they’re like tripping hard and they’re freaking out if they take CBD they’ll come down really fast. They’ll come back to earth.

 

[0:53:55] David Tomen: So, it primarily comes from cannabis flowers and the leaves of the marijuana plant. Hemp oil comes from the seeds of the marijuana plant but it doesn’t offer the same therapeutic benefits as CBD oil so don’t make the mistake of some company. Because this market too has just taken off in the last couple of years. Since the farm bill that was passed I think in December that took hemp off of, it’s no longer a Schedule I substance. People are advertising just hemp or in hemp oil as CBD oil and it’s not. CBD oil and hemp oil are not the same thing and they should not be confused. You won’t experience the same benefits with hemp oil as you will with CBD oil. SO you’ll pay more for CBD. That’s why you can buy hemp oil so cheap. CBD is a lot more expensive.

 

[0:54:56] Ashley James:  I’ve seen these companies that are like pain cream companies. They’re like, ‘Now, with hemp oil.’ I feel so angry about that. They’re just throwing in an oil it’s just from the seed, which you can go to Costco and buy the seeds. They’re great to eat. They’re delicious. They’re good to put in smoothies or on your salad. They’re great healthy fats. That doesn’t contain the CBD that we need, in the levels that we need if someone wanted to use it for pain relief. So just having hemp oil added or pain cream is really doing nothing for you. It’s like adding salad dressing to your pain cream. It’s not the same.

 

[0:55:44] David Tomen: It helps to know why CBD oil is more effective. CBD oil can be used as an antidepressant because it enhances serotonin and glutamate signaling via the 5-HT1A receptor which is a serotonin receptor. It also helps enhance GABA which is one of the reasons why CBD oils have been found to help in epilepsy in reusing seizures. Some of its antipsychotic effects are related to increasing levels of anandamide. It acts on CB2 receptors. They’re specific cannabinoid receptors in your body in your brain particularly in your brain that only respond to CBD, not the hemp. So CBD acts on CB2 receptors to produce an anti-inflammatory response in brain immune cells. The anti-cannabinoid system is they’re still trying to figure out exactly how it works.

 

[0:57:02] Ashley James: Just like we’re trying to figure out how the brain works, right? It’s all this new stuff about the brain.

 

[0:57:05] David Tomen: The anti-cannabinoid system is a group of receptors located throughout your body and brain. It consists of signaling molecules in the receptors. It’s CBD that attaches to endocannabinoid receptors, say that fast. There’s CB1 and CB2 receptors. CB1 receptors are found primarily in the brain and central nervous system and is the main molecular target for the endocannabinoid anandamide which is produced in your body and the THC you get from cannabis. The other main endocannabinoid is called 2AG which is also produced in your body and the CBD which you get from cannabis. So both 2AG and CBD are active at both the CB1 and CB2 receptors. CBD cannot bind directly with CB1 receptors like THC can. But CB2 receptors are mainly expressed in immune cells in your body which is probably one of the reasons why it helps boost your immune system and it helps reduce pain.

 

[0:58:22] Ashley James: So good take preventively now as we’re coming into what they call flu season. Make sure that we’re adding healthy levels of CBD to our regular routine. Would you recommend that?

 

[0:58:38] David Tomen: And NAC.

 

[0:58:40] Ashley James: NAC. I love NAC. Yes.

 

[0:58:44] David Tomen: N-acetyl cysteine. I use 600 mg of NAC three times a day and I find that whenever everybody else is getting the flu or a cold in my family, I seem to not get it. It’s probably because I’m using NAC consistently and I have for years.

 

[0:59:03] Ashley James: You need to start slipping NAC into your family’s smoothies.

 

[0:59:07] David Tomen: Yeah. Okay. Why does that work? It works because NAC is a precursor to glutathione. So it’s a potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory and it’s a free radical scavenger. It also modulates glutamate levels and dopamine release in your brain which also helps people with adult ADD like me. It helps reduce irritability, anxiety, and depression. This is one of these supplements that I think everybody should be using.

 

[0:59:43] Ashley James: Absolutely. I use it for my liver and I notice a great difference when I use it. My son, I put it in his smoothies. Our naturopathic pediatrician has him on it. What’s really interesting is he had a really stuffy nose, this was I don’t know maybe a year and a half ago, two years ago something like that. He had a stuffy nose and she’s like, ‘Oh, yeah. You take NAC.’ It blows out stuffy noses. It makes all that mucus move again. So we got him on NAC and right away, his sinus is drained. I thought that was the coolest thing. So love NAC. What is it derived from?

 

 [1:00:26] David Tomen: It’s an acetyl group added to l-Cysteine. You get l-Cysteine naturally from eating things like ricotta and cottage cheese and yogurt and pork and chicken and turkey, duck, wheat germ, granola, oat flakes. They just add an acetyl group to l-Cysteine. L-Cysteine is a naturally forming, naturally occurring amino acid. Your body seems to readily accept it like that and separates the l-Cysteine to use to help boost all kinds of things including glutathione. It helps regulate the amount of glutamate in your brain. It influences the amount of dopamine available in your brain and it keeps dopamine receptors healthy, which is critical for somebody that’s ADD or ADHD that’s using stimulants that is not easy on receptors.

Another study with 30 adult male [unintelligible] of rats. They divided them into three groups. The control group received distilled water. The second group was given Aspartame. The third group was given Aspartame and NAC. Oral administration was done in the morning daily for 90 days. The study found that NAC affected brain deriving tropic level factors. It blocked COX-2 and PGE2 enzymes. It reduced the expression of interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor A inflammatory cytokines in the rat’s cerebral cortex. They found that NAC replenished glutathione levels. So the researchers concluded that NAC prevented neurotoxicity and improved neurological function. It suppressed brain inflammation and oxidative stress.

 

[1:02:34] Ashley James: So cool. We should all be on that.

 

[1:02:37] David Tomen: I know.

 

[1:02:38] Ashley James: Right. One of our listeners, Mike, wanted to know if you could talk about neuropathy? There’s different qualities of pain, different kinds of pain. You mentioned the pain like muscle pain. Now, your pain is very unique in that you’re healing a surgical injury. Other pains can be chronic. We have neuropathy where people often feel it in their limbs or in their extremities, their feet and their hands. Do you have any suggestions around helping neuropathy?

 

[1:03:17] David Tomen: I haven’t done a ton of research into it, but I think fibromyalgia is probably included in that area. I’m hypothyroid. One of the things that I have to deal with for years was fibromyalgia but I don’t anymore. It just went away. What I found after years and years of research was that one doctor, I think it was Brownstein, found that when they brought T3 level, thyroid T3 levels up to optimum, fibromyalgia went away. That’s probably what happened with me. When I finally got my thyroid levels where they were supposed to be, just fibromyalgia went away. I imagine, just to remind everybody that I’m not a doctor. I don’t play one on TV. I’m just an ordinary guy that has figured some of these stuff out by reading tons and tons and tons of clinical studies and trying these stuff on myself. But it seems to me that what we just talked about with NAC, things like COX-2, all the inflammatory enzymes and the expression of things like interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor A, all of these are inflammatory cytokines. They probably somehow contribute to neuropathy when they get out of wack, right? That just makes sense to me.

 

[1:05:11] Ashley James: Right. One of the naturopaths that I mentored with, Dr. Wallach who was a pathologist and a veterinarian and a research scientist before becoming a naturopathic physician says that. He has an interesting perspective because he was a pathologist so he’s used to looking at disease tissue on a cellular level under very big microscopes. He says that neuropathy is a combination of inflammation to the nerves and the nerves inability to regrow the myelin sheaths. So it’s a lack of the essential fatty acids, the healthy cholesterol needed to regrow the myelin and the constant bombardment of inflammation and oxidative damage to the nerves. So when we look at what is a really common illness that also has neuropathy is diabetes. Out of control diabetes either type 1 or type 2. When we have high blood sugar, and even someone who’s not diabetic but has extended periods of high blood sugar, high blood sugar causes a huge amount of inflammation and free radical damage to the body. Also, just the amount of damage over time leaves the limbs having less and less healthy blood flow. So now you’ve got nerves that have less good nutrients coming to them and constant bombardment of damage. The damage is more than the body can repair. Every time the body goes to repair it, it can only repair at 10% versus all the damage happening. So those who are able to their diabetes or type 2 diabetes are able to get their type 1 diabetes totally under control through nutrients, through good food, and through supplements are able to bring their body back into balance. They can reverse neuropathy. That neuropathy is reversible after they heal the root cause. So Dr. Wallach talks about giving the body the essential fatty acids it needs because 70% of the white matter of the brain is made of cholesterol. So we need to make sure that we’re feeding the body with healthy fats and obviously make sure that digesting and absorbing them. Because that’s a big problem that people are fat-deficient aren’t digesting. Maybe they don’t have their gallbladder. They’re not eating the right fats. They’re not digesting them and they’re not absorbing them. Then the body can’t utilize them. Make sure we’re doing things like the NAC and the other nootropics you’ve mentioned that help with decreasing inflammation and also being the free radical scavengers to mop up and soak up those free radicals so that we can put the fire out. It’s about putting the fire out instead of treating the smoke.

 

[1:08:19] David Tomen: And also I think it’s giving your body the nutrients that it needs to regrow myelin.

 

[1:08:25] Ashley James: Yes. Right.

 

[1:08:26] David Tomen: The only way that you can create myelin is with vitamin D, vitamin B12, vitamin B9 or folate, vitamin B8 or inositol, vitamin B6 pyridoxine and thiamin. [Unintelligible] is another one contributes to the synthesis of myelin. Those are the main ones. I think ashwagandha too contributes, you know what, I just found out conditions of chronic stress and excess cortisol your brain’s neurons are coated through sheath and myelin so this doesn’t count. Those are the main vitamins that your body needs for your body to actually synthesize myelin.

 

[1:09:30] Ashley James: Now, we really need to look at making sure that we’re getting the full spectrum of all 90 essential nutrients. All the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fatty acids. That we’re eating a diet that supports, we’ve talked about this in our previous episodes, but eating a diet that’s supportive of the neurological system and the body as a whole. Also practicing a lifestyle that supports the neurological system like getting enough sleep and getting out of stress mode. Getting into the rest and digest the parasympathetic neuro-response of rest and digest so that the body can heal and focus on healing. So there’s a lot that we can do naturally in our day to day lifestyle. Every meal we have can support our whole body. Also, the supplements that we take throughout the day. I love that there’s this resource NootropicsExpert.com because I consider you a research scientist. I mean you’re an autodidact. You’re self-taught but you pour-over, you’ve spent hundreds of hours poring over all the research. If you go to an MD or you walk into a medical office and go to a doctor, they’re highly trained but do they spend hundreds of hours poring over the latest research? They probably don’t.

 

[1:10:47] David Tomen: No because they haven’t gotten time too. Some of them aren’t just interested. Others just, when you go in to see a doctor, how often does it take for you? You show up for a 1:30 appointment and you actually see the doctor at 2:00 or 2:30 because he’s just slammed. When is he going to have time to research? These people just haven’t got time to spend time researching this stuff. We’re kind like on our own with a lot of this.

 

[1:11:20] Ashley James: That’s why we’re all listening to this interview right now because we’re on our own. I mean obviously, we want to have doctors in our corner. They’re on our team but we have to take them off the pedestal and say, ‘I’m the employer. You’re on my team. You’re not the boss. I’m the boss. You’re going to help me inform me on my health. But I need to go collect other information too like listening to this episode to support my health.’ Now, this episode’s not meant to treat anything. I don’t normally do a legal disclaimer because common sense, this is information. You take this information. You keep educating yourself. You obviously talk to your doctor before changing any supplements. Talk to a doctor that’s trained in supplements like a naturopathic physician for example.

 

[1:12:04] David Tomen: They do exist.

 

[1:12:06] Ashley James: Right, they are amazing. If there are not in your state, you can tell a medicine. I’ve got lots of interviews with naturopaths that would love to talk to you. We always want to consult a doctor especially if it would in any way interact with a medication we’re on. That’s something we’ve talked about David in our past episodes. That you also dive into the research about these nootropics, these supplements and how they can interact in a negative way with certain prescriptions. Also, there’s some that interact in a positive way.

There is a naturopath, one of them that trained me in my past, talked about whenever he had to prescribe a drug would prescribe all the nutrient cofactors that would actually make the drug more efficient. So he would prescribe a smaller dose. So let’s say for example he had to prescribe metformin, I really really really hate metformin for many reasons. But let’s say he did that. He would also prescribe, he’d look at what does metformin, for example, decrease in the body? Let’s say it decreases B12, right? So just like cholesterol-lowering drugs which do damage to the liver and force the liver to create less cholesterol. That’s how they work. They actually damage the liver. They also hurt the mitochondria and decrease our CoQ10. So you have to take a CoQ10 supplement with them. So he’d look at what does this drug reduce in the body so we have to supplement that. But then you’d also have to look at what would increase the effectiveness of the drug? So it might be certain minerals or certain whatever would help the receptors, right? He found that he could make drugs more efficient with over the counter supplements.

That’s really interesting because then it brings us back to if the body becomes more efficient when we take vitamins and minerals and essential fatty acids and amino acids. If we take these over the counter supplements from really high-quality companies obviously. And the body becomes more efficient and has less and less disease or less and less symptoms. This is where I keep going. It’s like the deficiency is causing the illness and yet we always run to a drug, this is what we’re trained to do, run to a drug to mask a symptom. This is what our MDs are trained in, masking symptoms and managing symptoms with drugs but not getting into the root cause.

Back in the 50s there’s a doctor, and you can find this on wiki really interesting, the doctor was able to turn type 2 diabetes on and off in rodents, I think it was rats, by removing chromium or adding chromium to their feed. Thus concluding that chromium deficiency, which is a trace mineral, causes the insulin to not work correctly with the cell. So chromium, vanadium aspartic acid, bitter melon, cinnamon. These are all supplements that we can take to support making insulin work correctly with the cell. I know a type 1 diabetic that was able to reduce his insulin by 75% after getting on those nutrients.

 

[1:15:34] David Tomen: Isn’t that amazing?

 

[1:15:35] Ashley James: Amazing.

 

[1:15:36] David Tomen: Wouldn’t it be wonderful that every doctor did this? But they don’t. So it’s up to us.

 

[1:15:39] Ashley James: But the information’s out there.

 

[1:15:41] David Tomen: It’s up to us to get this information and help the doctor heal our bodies.

 

[1:15:47] Ashley James: Right. Right. Exactly. So that’s my little, ‘be sure to work with your physician and make sure to do your own research before you go take any of this.’ Right? This is all just for information because we want to help you to make more informed choices. Now, on the topic of pain, I have to share something really exciting that happened the other day. Had a friend come over to do a little playdate with our kids, our kids are all the same age. I have one kid she has a bunch. She is back up and walking after being basically bed-ridden or couch-ridden for months. She was in a horrible accident and broke both of her ankles. She has this big wicked scars on both sides of both ankles. We didn’t get into the details as to exactly how it happened but she had lots of surgeries to correct it. She was on crutches for a long time. Finally, she’s up to walking but she says she can’t even clean the house or do the dishes in the kitchen because she really can’t stand for long periods of time before it is hurting again. She really doesn’t want to take any opioids and she was really clear about that. I had with me the magnesium soak that I believe in. I know magnesium is great for pain. If the body is deficient in magnesium it’s hard for the body to turn off the pain receptors to shut the channel and stop sending that signal. So I get her to soak in magnesium and she almost cried at the end of it. She said, “This is the first time I’ve been out of pain since before my accident. I have been in months and months of pain.” She couldn’t believe it. She texted me hours later she goes, “I’m still out of pain. I have to get some of this stuff. I can’t believe it.”

So something as simple as soaking in magnesium can, again it comes back to, it’s not that magnesium stops pain. It’s that if the body’s deficient in it then our pain can become exacerbated because the neuro system is not working correctly. Magnesium is what the nerves, magnesium, and calcium are needed for the nerves to send proper signals. Yeah. I know you talked about magnesium and the importance of it on your website as well.

 

[1:18:10] David Tomen: I do. I love stories like that. I love them.

 

[1:18:14] Ashley James: Isn’t that cool?

 

[1:18:15] David Tomen: Yeah. I need to start collecting more testimonials from the people that are coming to Nootropics Expert and months later going, ‘Wow. My life has changed.’

 

[1:18:28] Ashley James: Well you have a bunch of them on your website. What I love about your articles is at the bottom it’s like blog style and that people can leave comments. It’s very active. We have that on LearnTrueHealth.com as well but yours, yours is very active. Lots of people sharing their testimonials on your website. So it’s fun to go through and read it. But it would be great if you were to kind of compile them into like a little testimonials section because it brings people hope. Hope that they can heal their bodies. I was really sick. Really, really sick like in my 20s. If I had that resource to show me that there’s hope, it would’ve accelerated my willingness to dive into this world. It would’ve accelerated my motivation to see that there’s hope. It really helps us to start behaving in a positive way and moving in this direction. So I think it would be beneficial to do that. The next time we have you on the show you could come and share some of those stories of success.

 

[1:19:35] David Tomen: All right. Let me do that. It’s funny, I was booking a bunch of consultations and one lady from, I don’t know where. Someplace in the world, I don’t know where she is. Russia? I don’t know where. I don’t remember. But I sent her a message saying, “This is what. How to prepare for this consultation. This is what I expect from her.” Her response back to me. The very last sentence before sincerely or thank you or whatever, I finally have some hope. Now, it just brings tears to your eyes when you see stuff like that.

 

[1:20:13] Ashley James: You’ve been doing a lot of consultations lately. We were talking about that before we hit record. I’d love for you to share because you were telling how cool it was. Like how many people you’re helping one on one. Can you walk us through what it’s like working with you?

 

[1:20:29] David Tomen: You can book for half an hour or an hour. I charge $100.00 for a half an hour, $200 for an hour. Why would you want to do this? You’ll save time trying to figure this thing out on your own. You can save yourself money because you’re going to avoid trying the wrong supplements. You just don’t blindly walk to the Whole Foods and stand in front of the vitamin shelf and ho, ‘what am I going to get?’ You stay safe by avoiding interactions with prescription meds that you’re on. And you just have more confidence in what you’re putting in your stack together or your supplements together. You just feel more confident in what you’re doing. You’ve got the peace of mind that somebody’s got you back. So that’s why you want to do something like this. People just ho to, I use Calendly to book this. There is a link on the website. If you go to the menu Store dropdown menu consultations. You just click on the link for consultations and you book a time. I ask you to send me a list of the supplements that you’re currently taking. The list of medications that you’re currently on. What your health issues are that you’re dealing with and what you would like some help with. What your goals are for that session. I spend a couple of hours after I get those notes I spend a couple of hours in research finding what the best recommendations are for that person. Then we spent half an hour, typically an hour is better for the first consultation. We talk about how to deal with whatever it is that they’re dealing with. After the consultation, usually, the next day, I send the, one or two pages of notes from that call with just notes of what we talked about so that they’ve got something to refer to. So they know if we talked about they know they need to get this and this and this, they don’t need to take notes during the call because I already have that and I’ll send it to them afterward. So that’s what you get with a consultation.

 

[1:22:48] Ashley James: Right. So if they want an hour with you it costs $200.00 but what they’re actually getting is about five hours of your time because you spend a few hours before and a few hours after the consultation. First, you do all your research for them. Then you talk to them and consult them. Then afterward, you compile all the information together into an email, into an actual plan for them. So that’s probably about five? That sounds like about five hours that they would get out of you for that $200.00. That seems very reasonable.

 

[1:23:24] David Tomen: It’s one of the reasons why I don’t promote consultations very much or very often just because it’s so time-consuming for me. But people do find it really, really, really helpful.

 

[1:23:37] Ashley James: Well, I know that someone’s nerves are probably going to want to talk to you now that we’ve let them know about it.

 

[1:23:45] David Tomen: I would love to. Just tell them that Ashley sent you maybe I’ll be even nicer. It’s just I’m nice all the time. Yeah. Just send people over and I’ll help them if I can.

 

[1:23:59] Ashley James: What’s that sound?

 

[1:24:01] David Tomen: Rain. It just started raining, pouring over here. I live in South Florida by Miami and when it starts to rain here.

 

[1:24:11] Ashley James: It sounds wonderful now that I know that it’s rain. I thought it was like a monster coming to attack you. I was like, ‘what is that sound?’

 

[1:24:17] David Tomen: When it rains here, it rains.

 

[1:24:19] Ashley James: It sounds like something from that, remember that TV show Lost? I was like, ‘what is going on?’

 

[1:24:26] David Tomen: Yeah. When it rains here it pours.

 

[1:24:27] Ashley James: Well, beautiful. I do have a healthy level of jealousy that you live in gorgeous, what is that Miami that you live in?

 

[1:24:34] David Tomen: It’s north of Miami.

 

[1:24:36] Ashley James: North of Miami, beautiful area. We talked about grounding and earthing, you and I. You said that you go barefoot with your dogs when you walk them because you can 12 months of the year in Florida.

 

[1:24:53] David Tomen: Although it does get kind of chilly in January and February.

 

[1:24:56] Ashley James: Don’t even. I’m sorry but you can’t say that to someone who lives in Seattle and grew up in Toronto. It gets below freezing twice in the last week here. So you can’t say it’s called there when people aren’t wearing parkas and boots and winter jackets.

 

[1:25:16] David Tomen: Well, you can tell who the tourists are and the snow burns are because it’s 50 degrees outside and us, we’ve all got winter coats on. These people are walking around in t-shirts and shorts.

 

[1:25:27] Ashley James: Yes. Yup. I remember, when I was a kid we went to Mexico and it was 15 degrees Celsius. Let’s see here, 60 degrees Fahrenheit. All the locals were wearing two sweaters. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. I’m walking around in shorts and a t-shirt going, ‘this feels so good’ because I came from -30. It’s so funny. Are there any nootropics that help people with temperature?

 

[1:25:54] David Tomen: L-Tyrosine

 

[1:25:56] Ashley James: L-Tyrosine. So if someone is always feeling cold or has cold hands, cold feet should they try taking L-Tyrosine?

 

[1:26:04] David Tomen: It just seems to help with when you’re in a stressful situation. Athletes used them. It helps them with endurance. Particularly weather-related stress. They perform better when they’re in cold weather in sports when they’re using something like L-Tyrosine.

 

[1:26:27] Ashley James: Interesting. Well, you got to get your whole family on that for the winter.

 

[1:26:32] David Tomen: Yeah. When it drops down to 50 degrees here.

                                               

[1:26:34] Ashley James: Yeah, 50 degrees. I dream of 50 degrees in the winter. David, it’s been such a pleasure having you back on the show. I always love it when I get to talk with you. Is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview or any homework you’d like to give us?

 

[1:26:51] David Tomen: Help your doctor help you. Really. There is just so much information that’s available now. It’s sound information. It’s real information. I mean, I mention this earlier. I’m not a doctor. I don’t play one on TV. I research this stuff. But this stuff is real. It’s available. You can find it out for yourself. One place that you can use as a resource is NootropicsExpert.com because there’s hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of pages that you can use to research. You can get my book, Head First, which is nearly 600 pages of everything. It’s like a brain repair manual. You can also get a free download of Secrets of the Optimized Brain, which is a little e-booklet, 75 pages. All that is dietary supplements that help the brain nootropics. There are probably 70 or 75 in that 75-page booklet of what they are, where they come from, how much you take, what kind you buy. So that’s free. That’s a free download. Just this help is available. Just reach out for it. You can fix yourself.

 

[1:28:12] Ashley James: Wonderful. There is hope. Thank you so much David Tomen for coming on the show today.

 

[1:28:16] David Tomen: Thank you for having me back.

 

[1:28:18] Ashley James: All the links are going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast. It’s my pleasure. Thank you. We can’t wait to have you back on the show.

 

[1:28:25] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome program.

 

Get Connected With David Tomen! 

Website

YouTube

 

Book by David Tomen

Secrets Of The Optimized Brain (E-book)

Head First – The Complete Guide to Healing and Optimizing Your Brain with Nootropic Supplements  (Ebook)

 

Check out other interviews of David Tomen!

Episode 374: How To Improve Brain Cognition With Nootropics

Episode 362: Nootropics

Oct 25, 2019

Join the Learn True Health Facebook group to get the latest scoop on the upcoming NEW Learn True Health Home Kitchen Membership!

Visit: LearnTrueHealth.com/group

Or Join my email list by visiting LearnTrueHealth.com

 

Dr. Trent's site: http://new-startsolution.com

BOOK: https://amzn.to/2Wbl2hY

 

The Weight Is Over

https://www.learntruehealth.com/the-weight-is-over

Highlights:

  • It is important to prepare your own food
  • The Weight is Over book
  • Figure out the pain generator
  • Lack of mobility and inflammation
  • Hobbies are important factor in health
  • Benefits of family dinner
  • History of food and stress
  • Cortisol and melatonin rhythm
  • Parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system
  • Weight loss becomes a side effect of better health
  • Intermittent fasting is the healthiest style of eating
  • Eighty percent of our nutrition should be plant based. Twenty percent animal based
  • Vegans have low inflammation
  • Every person needs to find that balance for themselves
  • Vitamins from plants, fruits, and vegetables runs the entire human body
  • Research what food does, what vitamins are, where they come from, and how they integrate and interact inside your body

 

00:00:00 Intro: Hello, true health seeker. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. You’re going to love today’s interview with Dr. Trent Mozingo. He’s a wonderful doctor that has a fantastic book. And he teaches so much in this episode. You’re just going to love it.

Well, I can’t contain myself anymore. You know, I was going to keep the secret a little longer but I just can’t contain myself anymore, especially after I recorded this interview today with Dr. Trent. And we discussed some key absolute fundamental things to creating health and reversing disease. Or the major thing, obviously, is the food you put in your body and what you cook. And the fact that you do cook your own food, that you do prepare your own food is so important.

So if you’ve been listening to reason episodes, I’ve hinted at the fact that there’s something really exciting I’ve been working on. There’s been a project I’ve been working on for a while now and I’m about to launch it. I am so, so, so excited to bring it to you. It’s so neat. There’s so many listeners have reached out and asked for this. I’m going to create a membership site that is incredibly affordable. I’m going to teach you whole food plant based cooking so that you can learn how to get more vegetables into you and into your kids and into your husband and into everyone in your family. I’m partnering with a friend of mine who’s a fantastic cook, who is also whole food plant based. And he has three kids that are eating her food. And man, if you can get kids to eat this way and you can make it delicious and fun, then the whole family wants to eat it. So together, the two of us, are teaching in this membership site how to cook whole food plant based diet.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t eat meat. That just means you’re going to learn how to eat more vegetables, more legumes, more beans, and all the variety – wonderful variety of vegetables that are healing. We’re going to have a whole section on healing foods and healing recipes. And we’re going to have a whole section for holiday meals. And whole section for if you just feel like cheating but you still want to eat healthy, super, super delicious desserts and snacks that are still incredibly nutritious and healthy. And then there’s the kind of the bar food when you just want to make some fun stuff and going over to a friend’s house or they’re coming over your house and you kind of just want to pass just like how everyone else eats. But you wanted, like, sneakily still eat healthy, but have it be yummy, we’ve got some of those recipes too.

So we’re teaching how to cook, so people who don’t know how to cook – people have been requesting. like people have been telling me, listeners have been telling me, “I would love to do this but I have no idea how to cook. And I’m just afraid I burn water. I’m just afraid of getting in the kitchen.” So were going to hold people’s hands. And then we’re also going to, for those who are great in the kitchen but just need a little help with recipes and ideas and menu plans, to transition into a healthier holistic way of eating that actually helps heal the body. Then this is going to be for you too. So it’s for both kinds of people, the people with no experience in the kitchen and also the people who have lots of experience but need to adjust their lifestyle into a healing diet that’s also delicious and also is realistic.

Because I’m a mom and I work, obviously, so I’m busy. And so is my partner, Naomi, who is the mom of three and so she manages a busy lifestyle and manages to cook all the meals at home. And a whole foods plant based diet that’s holistic and healing for the whole family. And being able to cook for different palates and different food sensitivities is really important. So we teach that. Also, it’s gluten free. It’s an anti inflammatory diet and anti-disease diet. But it’s done in a way that is very simple. So all recipes are quick. All recipes are delicious. And also we teach how to do it in a way that saves money, saves time, makes it delicious.

And we have menu plans. We have grocery lists. We walk you through everything that’s really important. Cookware, the essentials, the things that you need in your kitchen, how to use them. And also food prep, how to cook once every three days. So you’re just cooking – you’re getting into the kitchen once and you’re actually making enough food for several different meals that pair well together and it tastes delicious.

So that is what I’ve been working on. And I’m so, so excited. We’re going to be launching it soon. And there’s going to be a discount for the listeners, obviously, for you guys, right when we launch it. I want to make sure that I gift you guys. But it is more making sure that everyone can afford it because I want everyone to have access to this information in a way that supports all of you. And I’m really, really excited to bring that to you.

This is something that when you shift your diet to healing foods and you feel good after every meal, but not only that, you feel good the next day when you jump out of bed and you go, “Wow. I have more energy today. Like, I don’t feel aches and pains. I feel great.” And then a month later, you’re just like you can’t believe, like, maybe your headaches have gone away or your endurance goes up. Maybe you’re just happier. Things shift when you feed your body and you nourish your cells, everything starts to get better. And that’s what I really want to share with you is this way to do it. In a fun way that is manageable as a busy parent. That is manageable. And and I we teach how to feed everyone from a toddler all the way up to the grandparents. So everyone in between.

And of course, we’ll take requests for recipes. If you guys have a specific style that you want, all the listeners and the members can reach out and definitely request certain foods as well. Because we’re always expanding the types, the styles of recipes that we’re creating. So that’s going to be available soon. And if you want to be the first to know, so you get in – you become one of the founding members of our wonderful new membership . We’re calling it Learn True Health Home Kitchen. And if you want to be part of Learn True Health Home Kitchen, then join the Facebook Group, the Learn True Health Facebook Group. And also join my email list. You can just go to learntruehealth.com and the pop up comes up within a few seconds, put your email in there. I promise not to spam you. You will get a few emails because that does send out some emails with videos that we made with Naturopaths that teach the foundations of health. And it’s all free. So join the email list and then when we officially launch Learn True Health Home Kitchen, you will be the first to know and you can join it.

I am just so excited to bring this to you. This has been a long time coming. So now is the time. And it’s perfect because Thanksgiving is around the corner, Christmas is around the corner, all these great holidays where wouldn’t you like to feel better the next day. Wouldn’t you like to wake up the day after Thanksgiving or the day after Christmas, the day after New Year’s and feel healthier than the day before? Instead of feeling food coma. And some people kind of dread the holidays because it’s stressful. And we stress eat. And we just don’t eat healthy. But wouldn’t you like to eat really delicious food that actually builds your health and builds you into a better body in 2020. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Well, that’s what we’re going to do together. Awesome.

Enjoy today’s interview. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing these episodes with your friends and family. And helping everyone we love to build healthier bodies.

We have over 37 trillion cells in our body. And everything we eat goes into building healthy cells or sick cells. And I want you to build 37 trillion healthy cells in your body. And we’re going to do that with food, lifestyle, and we’re going to figure out and learn from all these wonderful interviews just like today with Dr. Dr. Trent Mozingo. We’re learning how we can learn true health. Enjoy today’s interview.

Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 388.

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have with us Dr. Dr. Trent Mozingo, who by far has the most beautiful last name I’ve ever heard, Mozingo. We will never forget that. Dr. Trent Mozingo has written an amazing book called The Weight Is Over.

And he was just telling me a little bit about it. And I said – I practically wanted to yell, stop, stop. We have to hit record. This is so amazing. I can’t wait for the listeners to hear about it. Dr. Trent, welcome to the show.

 

00:09:39 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Thank you. Thank you for having me on your show.

 

 

00:09:41 Ashley James: Absolutely. I want to jump right into your story first, because I want to know and I want the listeners to know what happened in your life. You know, growing up that led you to want to become a holistic doctor and help people heal in this way.

 

 

00:09:59 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Well, that’s a – it’s an interesting question. Because I grew up a farmer in southern Indiana. I had no idea the value of growing up raising our own food, raising our own beef cows, or own eggs, or garden, canning, freezing for the winter. I grew up eating from the soil to the table at my house. And when you’re in that as a child, you don’t have a clue that is really fueling a healthy human body. Certainly, I never got sick much as a kid. I never thought much about it. But as I was growing up, my family and I did everything on the farm. We did all our own mechanics. We did all of our own growing, raising, butchering. We pretty much did everything to keep us alive for the winter.

But as a kid, for some reason, I decided I want to be an anesthesiologist. I was about five. I don’t why. But I want to put people to sleep. And I don’t know where that came from. But my dad would drive around everywhere and he’d make me tell the neighbors what I want to be when I grow up, anesthesiologist. And that carried on until I was about 16. And I was in a major car accident. And they did surgery. I broke my jaw on the front and the sides. Smashed a bunch of teeth. It was a pretty bad accident. And I went into surgery and I met the anesthesiologist. Nice guy. I told him, “That’s what I want to be when I get older.” And he’s kind of run down a little bit what he does. And I was a 16 year old kid, I didn’t know much about it.

But as I was starting to go under, he’s sitting there beside this computer with that beeping noise in a hospital that beep, beep, beep. And he’s reading a book. Ad my surgery was four hours and I thought, “Man, he has to sit there and keep me alive for four hours.” And that sounds terrible. I don’t do that anymore. So I decided right then anesthesiologist is a no for me. But during the recovery of my accident, dental work – I had extensive dental work for a year – my back was stiff and sore. But my cousin was a chiropractor in Greensburg, Indiana. Not far from me. And I went and seen him. And 16 years old, he’s the happiest man I’ve ever met. He loves his job. He’s got a really nice car. I said, “John -” that’s his name – “John, how do I become a chiropractor? And he said, “I went to Purdue. Then I went to Palmer College of Chiropractic.” And I did just that.

 

 

00:12:31 Ashley James: Well, tell me a bit about your results. Take me back to that time that you’re in pain and you see your family member who’s a chiropractor. What was your first adjustment like?

 

 

00:12:44 Dr. Trent Mozingo: It was amazing. I felt – I mean, one adjustment, I felt a lot better. I was 16. And as a chiropractor now I know the youth they do adapt to an adjustment a little bit better than an older person. Because there’s no muscle tension, less muscle tension. No degeneration. There’s no arthritic changes. So a kid will respond a little bit better to an adjustment than an older person. But I felt amazing. And again, it was a lot of how I felt when I was left. And I didn’t know anything about chiropractic at the point. I just knew he loved his job. And he was excited to go to work every day.

And as a farmer, it’s hard work. And my brothers are both in the construction industry. They were working hard. And I was an employee for both of their businesses. One does heating and air and one does excavation and trucking. So I knew the hard work of going out doing the construction side of life. And I was pretty good at school. So I wanted to go to college. I was the first one on my family to do so. So it was more just I want to find a career that you love. And my cousin loved it. And I felt great when I left so I thought that is perfect for me.

But as I got to school, my thought process has changed a lot. I learned what chiropractic is. And I learned what holistic health care is. It really – I changed my scope of practice of chiropractic while I was still in school. I realized I didn’t want to be just a chiropractor. I want to do something with this inflammation epidemic going on, which is how I got to where I’m at now.

 

 

00:14:24 Ashley James: Right. Well, so I think that there’s some common misconceptions about what chiropractic is. Can you take a moment to just explain and set the record straight for us. Some people listening have never seen a chiropractor. They’re afraid that it’s just popping and cracking of joints. And a lot of people do go to chiropractors but they still don’t really, maybe, fully grasp what it is doing when you’re seeing chiropractor and having an adjustment.

 

 

00:14:51 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Okay, so I am a science based human. Left handed, live in my right brain. I can’t get out of the analytical life. So chiropractic, there are two styles for the most part. There’s traditional chiropractic that does uses more of like a energy chiropractic adjustments release, increase nerve flow to increase systemic function. And then there’s the science based chiropractic – which I practice, evidence based chiropractic – that I’m more of a pain management doc with my chiropractic care. I do some organic referral pain pattern adjustments. But for the most part, for the majority of patients – I should say – go to the chiropractor for pain. Neck pain, back pain, headaches, that’s the most common reason people go. And that’s the most common reason I see patients.

So what I do is it’s a very systematic physical exam to figure out what is their pain generator? Is it a spinal segments not moving correctly? Aberrant motion? Is it a muscle strain? Is it a ligament or connective tissue injury? Is it a disc injury? So through a series of ortho exams, I can diagnose a patient with, “You have a spinal fixation with lumbar para spinal muscle facilitation.” That sounds technical but really it just means the back is stiff and their segments aren’t moving as they should. So the adjustment is designed to take a spinal segment. We have quite a few of them. There’s seven in your neck and 12 in your mid-back and five om your low back. Find out which one’s not moving properly amongst the others around it. And then you put, what they call, a high velocity, low amplitude adjustment or just the chiropractic adjustment. You put an impulse into that segment and you increase mobility. That is the gold of the chiropractic adjustment, is increasing segmental mobility.

 

 

00:16:58 Ashley James: But there’s something that happens when that mobility is dampened. The sort of minute impingements of the nerves leaving the spine can affect our organs and thus can affect how our entire body functions. Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

 

00:17:19 Dr. Trent Mozingo: That’s more traditional style of chiropractic. And it does make some sense. But what really happens is inflammation happens. So when you have a lack of mobility, so the segments moving amongst each other is good news. So when you move your joints, it lubricates them. It decreases swelling in them. So when the joints get stuck together, they become relatively minorly – or excuse me – minutely inflamed. And that builds pressure in the synovial joint. So the adjustment, when you actually hear the pop of an adjustment, that’s actually relieving that pressure. So that swelling and inflammation is actually what can affect the nerves leaving the spinal segments.

And also motion blocks pain. It’s another really intricate part of chiropractic care. So think about if you slightly pinch your arm or slightly burn your arm or slightly smash your arm, you rub it. That’s what people do. A natural thing is you just rub what hurts. Everyone’s done that, right? So what you’re doing is you’re actually increasing, what they call, mecanorreceptores. The vibration moves faster to the brain, then nociceptors or pain receptors. So what you’re doing is actually in the brain blocking pain. So the motion that put into an adjustment blocks that pain reception. Does that makes some sense?

So that is part of the power of the adjustment is, one, it blocks pain. Two, it can increase mobility to later down the road decreases the growth of inflammation, the increase of inflammation of the joint. And increased mobility always feels better, which is my favorite part of a chiropractic adjustments. I just feel better.

 

 

00:19:13 Ashley James: So my husband had AFib where his heart was beating regularly and it was really scary. And the first time we had it, we weren’t woke yet. We were still in the allopathic system. So we went to the hospital and they put them him beta blockers. The beta blockers didn’t work. I mean, his lips were blue. And it was really bad. They were like, “You know, this is going to create a blood clot if we don’t manage this.” They had to reset his heart like it was scary, scary to see. And then our cardiologist said, “You know, it’s probably holiday heart. You’re under stress.” Well, we hadn’t realized – it hadn’t clicked with us yet. My husband, we just moved. And he had single handedly carried all of our furniture into the 26 foot Penske and driven across the country.

And so he carried a ton of weight on his back. And then drove in a bumpy truck for a few days. And then when we got to where we’re living in Seattle, he unloaded the entire truck on his back. And a few days later, woke up with AFib. It went away after we had the visit to the hospital. A few years later, maybe even just a year later, we had a six year old girl sitting on my husband’s shoulders bouncing as we’re going for a hike with the girl’s mother. And a few hours later, actually, he woke up. It was in the middle night with acute AFib. At this point, we’re seeing a Naturopath. And so the Naturopath was like — this is an old school Naturopath. He said, “Well, AFib, a lot of times if it’s acute like this, it’s actually -nothing is wrong with the heart at all. And it’s an impingement in your thoracic spine. That there’s a nerve that innervates the heart that comes out of the thoracic spine. And you need to go see a chiropractor. You need to do some hot and cold compress, hot and cold showers and compresses on the back to flush the system, flush the inflammation. And go see the chiropractor.” And sure enough, the AFib went away.

And then we had – he had a third episode when we were doing CrossFit. A few years later, we were doing CrossFit and he was lifting the – he never lifted in CrossFit and felt really proud of himself. And then woke up that morning with AFib. And again, we’re like, “Okay. This is a sign.” We went to the chiropractor and we’re like we need to do something about this. So we ended up doing traction for him. Really helped traction and rebuilding his skeleton, you know, getting the nutrients. And we did lots of diet adjustments and got really on board with the holistic health along our journey. But it’s been years, years, years, years and he hasn’t had any AFib because we get regular chiropractic care. And he takes supplements to fill in the gaps with minerals. And he eats a whole food plant based diet.

And it’s just amazing because he would be a candidate for a pacemaker because three acute episodes of AFib is enough to be a candidate for a pacemaker. And so many people go that route not knowing that nothing’s wrong with the heart. But that they should really make sure that they’re decreasing inflammation, having a good diet, and seeing a chiropractor – a good chiropractor. Have you ever seen that in your practice?

 

 

00:22:36 Dr. Trent Mozingo: So yeah. And where my practice has taken – so when you think about – I’m a biochemistry guy. That’s where the book came from. That’s where my office is pointed at is, first we address biochemistry, which is food. I fell in love with biochemistry when I was in chiropractic school. And it was my favorite thing to learn, is how the human body uses food.

So more importantly, the way you describe that is the heart is a muscle. It’s what it is. It uses the same nutrients for the most part that your bicep does to move your arm. The nutrients, B vitamin complex, minerals that every muscle uses to contract every single time has to come from our food. As you lift a lot and you carry a bunch of furniture, you have a heavy CrossFit workout, without eating during that time, your body is going to deplete from the water soluble, B-vitamin complex. And you will become deficient. A deficient muscle will work unorganized. That is where I would push into the cause of that AFib is more of a B complex deficiency in the heart muscle, which beats a whole bunch of times. It contracts and relax 70 times a minute.

So an overall deficiency is, I would say, it’s an easier way to reproduce that symptom. So I say that because evidence based medicine requires that. Not every person with AFib gets a mid- back adjustment will see a positive change. So that’s where I lean into. I need to know what is more concrete that if I do this to every patient, I will get the same result. So that’s where I study nutrition. Because every human muscle needs the same nutrition. And if you’re deficient in it, you will have the same symptoms.

 

 

00:24:54 Ashley James: Uh-huh. I love it. Well, we have to address it as a whole. We can’t just say – like my husband didn’t only get a thoracic adjustment. It was a lot of a lot of change. But the table that you lie on at home that does traction on the back. He was changing his diet, which was decreasing inflammation. He was going more and more into a healthier diet. And then getting the adjustment through changing the diet and then adding supplements when needed. He was addressing those nutrient deficiencies, which is muscles. And heart being the most important muscle was deficient in. So you’re making sure that you’re looking at the person as a whole and their nutritional needs being the most important need of the body.

 

 

00:25:43 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Absolutely. I mean, there’s two things that are – the only things we take in is our food and our emotion, stress. And you have to get those right is the most important.

 

 

00:25:56 Ashley James: And stress is really hard because we don’t feel it until we’re about to break. People think stress is an emotion. “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m doing fine.” And the body is freaking out because they’re constantly in stress mode. What do you do as a chiropractor to help your patients to manage stress?

 

 

00:26:17 Dr. Trent Mozingo: So as a chiropractor, the adjustment will help with physical, mechanical stress. Lack of mobility in any spinal segment will create stress which will create inflammation. So that’s one thing. But lifestyle change is really a major part of my system. Is, you have to figure what’s pushing you down and then work on it. And unfortunately for most people, it’s their 9:00 to 5:00 job.  They don’t love it. That’s hard because you can’t quit your job. You have to keep working. We have to keep making money to live. So finding a hobby,

finding something that fuels your body with joy is a very important factor in health. You can eat clean all day long. But if you hate your life, you’re going to suffer from health issues. So you can’t just address one part of it. You have to get your whole mind, body, spirit.

 

 

00:27:21 Ashley James: I would add to that. Find a hobby that includes a community. Isolation can really increase stress. So if you have a job that is not bringing you joy and that’s stressful or your job – maybe you love your job but it’s stressful. So you have stress and you can’t change your job. It’s one of those things that we’re like, “No. I’m not changing my job. It does give me a certain amount of stress whether I like it or not. Whether I like my job or don’t like my job, it does give me stress.” So in your free time, it’s like what can you do? And I would say, if you can find a hobby that brings you joy and brings you a new community. Community has been shown to decrease stress and also decrease depression and suicide. And increase a sense of well being. There’s even studies that show it increases longevity.

 

 

00:28:09 Dr. Trent Mozingo: I would agree with you 100%. Something as simple as family dinner.

 

 

00:28:15 Ashley James: I love that you mentioned that because we’re jumping into – I want to transition into talking about your book. Family dinner, you know we used to eat in front of the TV. So unhealthy and yet so many of us do it. And so we bought – we went on – I think it was Craigslist at the time. But now, it would be Facebook Marketplace or Offer Up. But we went online and we found a beautiful used table. It was just gorgeous. A gorgeous wooden table with a with a leaf so we can we can expand it for company. And we bought these IKEA chairs, used also, which was so great because we spent like so little money and got this beautiful dining room set. And we chose to have family dinner there. And it really made a difference.

The desire to cook a whole foods from scratch, the desire to feed my family. My friend, Naomi, says – and I love it – she’s a great cook. She goes, “I don’t like cooking but I love – ” and it brings me joy – “I love knowing what’s going into my children.” And so for her, the joy comes from – not necessarily comes from cooking itself. You don’t have to love cooking. But you’ll love sitting down at the table and nourishing and nurturing your family and having that beautiful family time and knowing that you’re feeding their 37 trillion cells. Goodness, right? And for me, I love cooking. It’s so much fun. I’m fine if I burn something in the kitchen because it’s just I’m big on just science experiments. I’m like Edison. I just learn a new way of not how to do it. But explore in the kitchen and I love coming up with these great recipes. I love coming up with these delicious meals that are also really healthy that my four year old will eat and my husband will eat.  And that that fills me with joy.

And sitting down at the table and spending that 20 minutes at the table, a-half-an-hour at the table with the family is priceless. There’s no amount of sitting at a TV and eating dinner that it would ever fulfill. And what I noticed – and there’s been studies done – that we actually consume less calories and more densely nutritious food when we cook it and sit at a table and eat it versus sitting at a computer or at the TV when we’re distracted. And we’re not we’re just eating – we’re eating as a habit without even really tasting or being present to it. And so when we’re present to our family and present to our food sitting at a table, we’re nourishing our body, we’re decreasing our stress but we’re also consuming less calories. And we’re listening to the thermostat of our body tell us that we’re actually full when we’re full.

 

 

00:30:56 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Sure. I mean, you’re describing is you’re getting back that positive relationship with food. Because our culture has misconstrued the idea that food is about quantity at a cheap price. And the birth of the buffet, if you will –

 

 

00:31:27 Ashley James: And the Dollar Menu.

 

 

00:31:28 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yeah. We have an idea that food is just there to fill our tank and we keep moving forward. We have lost that bond and intimacy between this food that you’re sticking in your mouth is literally what builds your human body. You are nothing more than accumulation of everything you’ve eaten to this day. How good did you do?

 

 

00:31:57 Ashley James: Right. We need to remember that. We really need to remember, everything goes into our mouth is building ourselves. I mean do we really want ourselves built out of McDonald’s or some kind of box cereal? I just look at – oh, I look at all those aisles. I’ve said this on the show before. But my first awakening to healthy eating, my first awakening, I was really sick. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, type two diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue. I had chronic monthly infections for which I was on constant antibiotics for. So I was a mess. I could hardly function in life and I was in my 20s – in my 20s. And I was significantly overweight. And I was told by an endocrinologist I would never have kids. I didn’t fertility. And my husband, he was fairly fit because he was a carpenter but he had issues as well. But he was more functioning in the world than I was at the time. And this was back in 2008.

We watched one of the health documentaries on Netflix, like Food, Inc. or Forks Over Knives. And we heard shop the perimeter of the grocery store. And it was just like this new idea to me. Like, “Oh, you mean don’t go down the aisles and eat packaged food.” And I know that sounds so obvious now. But to a 20 year old with, like, six health problems, that wasn’t obvious advice. And so we chose to eat organic and shop the perimeter of the grocery store. And at the end of the month – the first month, I was amazed at how much square footage in the grocery store is completely useless crap.

It was just like, “Wow. We really don’t need to go down any of these aisles.” Maybe the bulk section for brown rice or lentils or something, right? Or maybe the spice section, which could be like a bulk section also for some grocery stores. But other than that, you just don’t – maybe some canned goods once in a while, like canned tomatoes. Single ingredient canned food is fine. But other than that, there’s no going down these aisles.

And in my first month of doing that, my chronic infections went away. And I thought if I can affect my health with one change to my diet, what else can I do? And that began my journey many, many years ago. So shifting that idea of what is really food? And do I really want to build cells out of what I’m eating today? And the meal that’s in front of me, this Dollar Menu or whatever, do I really want to build cells out of this?

 

 

00:34:33 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Sure. I always say, the biggest struggle we have as a culture in regard to our health is just the mixed emotion of who’s responsible for it. We have lost that self-responsibility. We don’t take responsibility for our health anymore. We wait until we’re sick and then we expect some doctor to fix it. And the perception that the only way to fix a problem is with a medication is being sold to everyone. And they’re buying. Everyone is buying in. And it’s costing – I think our healthcare costs over 1.3 trillion a year now.

 

 

00:35:18 Ashley James: Our nation and other nations like Canada, Australia, they have a little bit of a different medical system, obviously. But their numbers are not great either. But ours, the United States, spends the most out of every nation. Spends the most on healthcare and actually has the worst healthcare from all the industrialized nations. It’s just like the outcomes are horrible. And yet we’re spending the most. So the system is broken. It doesn’t work.

Most of my listeners have awoken to this. They understand this concept. Most of them – because they’re listening. If you’re listening, you’re taking responsibility on some level for your health because you’re willing to educate yourself and you’re excited to. And my listeners are really passionate and excited to learn from experts like you. So we do have a bit of a different demographic for people who are listening, which is great.

 

 

00:36:12 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yes. And there’s a lot more resources coming out that are opening so many eyes to this change – this beautiful change in healthcare in general from this reductionist alopathic thing to taking control, learning what food does. And that’s really to be one of those resources. That’s the reason I wrote the book in the first place. I was doing consultations for patients trying to explain this to them. And it would take an hour, two our consultations, and I was going to go broke. But it was my passion. So I had to figure out a way for people to learn what I – for people to gather what I’ve learned. All the pieces of this puzzle I’ve put together. So that’s where I started to write this book. And I was never a writer. I didn’t even like English class growing up. Like I said, I’m left handed. I was great at math. I’m not much of a writer. So to write a 350 page book, it took me some time but it really turned out pretty good. And as a resource, it really helps just nail it down, figure out why, what’s going wrong, and how to fix it.

 

 

00:37:21 Ashley James: So tell us about your book. Since you basically have compiled everything that you took. It would take like an hour or two hours to teach individual clients. And you compiled it into a book that you wish everyone knew. Don’t you just want to just download your book into everyone’s brain? Wouldn’t that make such a big difference in this world?

 

 

00:37:42 Dr. Trent Mozingo: It would be so easy because getting people to read a book these days is also difficult. YouTube is there. And that’s another avenue I plan to take to do some more audio ideas.

 

 

00:37:56 Ashley James: Have you recorded an audio version of your book?

 

 

00:37:59 Dr. Trent Mozingo: I’m working on it. I want to do it myself just to make it feel more genuine.

 

 

00:38:02 Ashley James: You should. Yeah. Totally do it yourself. You know what I love? I love it when authors go off script. Like, you’re reading your book and then all of a sudden you just get this idea in your head. And you’re like, “You know, I’m just going to tell them some stuff.” And it’s totally cool. I love the doctors that do that. The listener still gets the whole book but you get a little bit added things come to your mind and you just want to add in some stuff. I love audiobooks like that because they feel so genuine. They really feel like you’re just sitting with the doctor. So anyway, that’s my two cents when you finish recording your book.

And let us know when you finish recording your audio book and you release it. Or maybe we’ll have you back on or something to promote it and let us know about it. Because there are some listeners who won’t read books that they’ll definitely listen to them.

Now, your book is called The Weight Is Over. And you started telling me about it. I’m like salivating when you’re telling me about it. I got so excited. Like Pavlovian response to something exciting. You started by painting this picture. What happened to our food history? Like, what happened to food? I was just telling a guest or a listener this morning in the Facebook Group – in our Learn True Health Facebook Group – she said something like, why is it that my grandmother who raised – I don’t know how many – she said raised, like, seven children, for example. She’s like, why is that my grandmother who raised a bunch of children and my mom raised a bunch of children, they didn’t have these resources like the Learn True Health Podcast to help them? But they didn’t have the illnesses that we have and our children have. I keep thinking, how did my grandmother do it with seven or nine kids? But she also didn’t have all the problems we have. What has gone on?

And so I kind of went on a rant about like, well, in the last 30 years, there’s over 30,000 chemicals in our food that our body doesn’t even recognize. Think about everything in our environment that has completely changed.  And we just have so much artificial chemicals in our water and air and food that our body doesn’t even know what to do with. And then, of course now, it’s all hyper palatable, highly processed foods with salt, sugar and oil. And that just leads us down a really destructive path as we can see.

So I’d love for you to teach us something from your book. Tell us about the history of food as it relates to our health. Obviously, because food is our health, as you’ve pointed out. It builds our cells. And what’s happened in the last hundred years or so that has made it so that we are so sick now?

 

 

00:40:35 Dr. Trent Mozingo: That is the principle of the book is to help people to learn how the human body works. I grew up on a farm, we talked about that a bit ago. But the education that I got growing up actually played a huge role in my ability to write this book or even understand what I understand as far as the human body. Is because being the youngest of four children, my two older brothers were seven and nine years older than me, they were like my mentors. And my parents gave us a ton of responsibility. We had to fix things. So if it broke down, we didn’t have enough money to pay someone so we had to fix it. So most important education I got growing up is I learned how to figure out how things work. And that is the most valuable factor in trying to fix something. You can’t possibly fix a problem on a tractor or a wood splitter or a weed eater until you know how it works.

So as I got into chiropractic school, I realized that figuring out what is wrong with a patient, figuring out diagnosing a problem, is nothing more than clicking in your brain how the human body works and what would happen if it wasn’t working properly. That would be a symptom. Like a tractor not running would be a pretty serious symptom. You had to figure out what is wrong the engine. If someone’s thyroid gland wasn’t functioning properly, their metabolism was slow. I needed to know how the human body worked in order to be able to give them a possible probable fix.

So as I was researching biochemistry and how the human body worked, all these things started to link together. So that’s really where the book goes to, is teaching you how every human function is linked together. You can’t just break apart one part.

So I started to also learn that nutrition played a major role. And then I could see the writing on the wall that everyone is becoming overweight and diabetic, for the most part. And other conditions like Fibromyalgia is skyrocketing. And hypothyroid function is skyrocketing. And Synthroid is becoming the most prescribed medication in the country. And so I started to link these things together.

And as I started doing research on what happened, that really broke it open for me how food is the reason. And so I started to figure out what diets work better. And I started to write about them, you know, intermittent fasting or Mediterranean or keto diet or Atkins diet, all these different diets and why they don’t work. So that went into my research as well.

So then I started the link back to the history of mankind. As the human body was developed, we only had two stresses back in, we’ll say 180 A.D. Two stresses is all we had. We had to find food and we had to stay alive. Not get eaten as prey. That’s it. Finding a mate was another part of it but it wasn’t really a stress. That was the three functions of life is, finding food, not getting eaten as prey, and finding a mate and reproducing. Those are our three functions.

 

 

00:44:01 Ashley James: And we also had community. We lived as a tribe. We’re tribal people. We weren’t nomads. We lived as a community. So we didn’t have the stresses that we do now, like a mother isolated, having no help taking care of a newborn. We had the entire community. The tribe took care of all the children with the parents. And we also leaned on our sisters and our brothers and leaned on our aunts, leaned on the whole community. So that decreases stress a lot when you grow up as a tribe.

 

 

00:44:32 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Sure. And there were no lights. There were no televisions. There was no freezer. So food was very fresh, which was a great thing. Meat was very fresh because it was killed and eaten within a week. And when night fell, you fell asleep. When it was dark, you went to sleep. When the light came back, when the sun comes out, you woke up. And as I was studying that factor, then you can go into the cortisol and melatonin rhythm, if you want to. Where cortisol peaks in the morning. That gets you up and gets you ready for the day. And melatonin drops off. And then as the day goes on and you exercise, cortisol drops and melatonin spikes and makes you fall asleep and it happens daily. But that’s with a normal rhythm. That’s following daylight and dark.

Since then, we have TV shows on until 1:00 in the morning. Or night clubs open until 2:00 in the morning. And it’s just a totally different world. But more importantly, the food was very fresh. And we didn’t have a job. We just had to find food or do the community whatever your task was. It wasn’t like a job where you make money.

But around the 1800s, the industrial revolution happened. And farmers stopped – through the 1800s, one farmer would raise the tomatoes, one farmer would raise the pigs, one farmer would raise eggs, and you would share. That was another community thing. A very positive thing. You had a little general store, you trade, you had barter. That was life then.

But during the industrial revolution, everything changed. Because instead of that bartering system, instead of waking up every day with only a job to either help the community or feed the community, you had to go to work. Factory life became a thing. Services became a commodity. You had to make money then, to buy food.

And that really changed our perception of what food is. We went from a life centered around creating your food to nourish your body and your family and your community to a life of you go to work to buy food to feed your family.

And during that time people stopped really, like said, lose that intimacy with food. Where when you go to work – most people when they go to work, they don’t love their job. They can only wait to lunch. But it’s not because they get to nourish their human body with food. It’s because lunch means leaving work for 30 minutes or an hour. That is a very unhealthy relationship with food.

They’re not thinking that, “Okay. In one hour, I get to go and fill my body with B complex vitamins from a green leafy salad.” They think, “I want something quick so I can sit in my car and be out of work for 30 minutes.”

 

 

00:47:40 Ashley James: Or they’re looking to satisfy joy. That’s what I did for many years. I was really leaning on food for emotional support. So going to In and Out or going to Jack-in-the-Box or KFC or going out for sushi or Chinese food or pizza, you know, just all those fun foods was about fun and joy. Because that would help me decrease stress because it’s like a drug. You get to have an escape. It’s like I just was shooting up heroin going through the drive thru. It was like shooting up my own little drug. Because that would be that little break. That little 30 minute break was fun. Finding the pleasure in food. And that decreases stress temporarily. But then you’re right back at work and now your body’s inflamed from that horrible food. So now it increases more stress and it’s this vicious cycle.

 

 

00:48:42 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Sure. And then really, where we went as a country went wrong was in 1977. So during the 1900s, the industrial revolution, again, food started becoming processed. The people that were trying to keep it from being processed were being hushed by the powers that be, that being the people that are making money from food.

So the FDA was developed around 1900 or 1912, I think it was. There was a guy named Wiley – Dr. Wiley. He’s actually from Indiana. Not far from where I’m from. Interesting. But he started to discover how when you start bleaching wheat, you increase health problems. So he was against wheat being processed. It’s supposed to be aged. And the powers that be hushed him. And then he got kicked out of the FDA and the new owners took over.

But more importantly, in 77, a guy named George McGovern had a committee to try and stop processed foods. His committee was developed in the 60s. There was a CBS airing, I think it was, it was called Hunger in America, where Northern Alabama, Northern Mississippi into West Virginia, that little area there, was starving. They were underfed. There was no industry there. As the industrial revolution came about there wasn’t any food there because the local stopped growing food. And there wasn’t a lot of money to buy food so people were actually starving. Well, the government stepped in and they started a committee with Senator McGovern and he created the WIC program. The food stamp program to help those families at the areas. And it worked. They’re no longer hungry. Food stamps was a beautiful thing. It helped the people that couldn’t make money anymore – or couldn’t make enough money – I’m sorry – to feed the family as it should. Ironically, those areas are now overweight – the most overweight area in America.

 

 

00:51:00  Ashley James: Right. Because food stamps were – you couldn’t even buy potatoes with food stamps. You couldn’t buy healthy wholesome foods. You couldn’t buy fresh vegetables. And it was just – it’s like packaged. They wanted you to buy the Kellogg’s and the the Kraft.

 

 

00:51:24 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Our government subsidized food but they only subsidize the processed food that was making the food industry lots of money. They didn’t become overweight until many years later. So this a total afterthought. There’s no way to project that because at this point, in the 60s and 70s, they still thought that this food was perfectly safe and healthy. We were still being taught that this food is safe and healthy. But in 77 people started becoming overweight. During the 60s and 70s, the rest of the country we’re becoming unhealthy. Cancer levels are going up. Diabetes levels were going up. Heart disease was a big one that was going up. So Senator McGovern, also at that point, started to say that the government should step in and educate properly on healthy nutrition.

Unfortunately for us, he listened to Ancel Keys. If you know who that is. He did a seven country study, it’s called – where he cherry picked seven countries that showed that fat was the devil. And Senator McGovern listened to him. There was another guy doing research, named Yudkin, who was saying sugar is the devil. And Ancel Keys had a louder voice. So he hushed the Yudkin guy.

 

00:52:48 Ashley James: It’s so amazing when we look at history and it’s just one person. People sometimes feel powerless. Who am I? There’s billions of people and who am I to make a difference to this world. This, this story is an example of how one person can influence millions of people’s lives for generations. If you listen to Yudkin, how much different would the world be if we had reduced our sugar intake in the in the 70s and 80s and 90s, all the way to the day. If we had reduced our sugar intake versus making foods artificially low fat which then you put more sugar in, right?  Oh my gosh, that is just amazing. One person.

 

 

00:53:38 Dr. Trent Mozingo: And mainstream government talk was about how cholesterol was raised because of animal fat instead of sugar. But even worse for us as a country. Senator McGovern had the right idea. He made the McGovern Report and it was designed around just cutting calories. We’re eating too much. We need to eat healthier and more whole foods. More fruits and vegetables. And they’re shut him down. The powers that be, the medical in the food industry, shut it down because that, in 1977, they got shut down. And then his committee got shut down. And in the 80s, 1981 or two, that’s when we got the food pyramid. That is where the special interest of the food and pharmaceutical industry took precedence over American health in 1977. And if you look at any chart, you can look at any of them, diabetes prevalence, ADHD prevalence, inflammation in general prevalence, heart disease prevalence, all of them. If you look at them on the chart, they are steady until about 50. And they climb a little bit. In 60, they climb a little bit. In 70, they climbed. In 80, it skyrockets.

 

 

00:54:53 Ashley James: When the little climbs are the transitioning from the single income family where the mother stays home and cooks meals from whole foods. And that in America and other industrialized nations where we could afford to have, most of the time – obviously, there’s exceptions to the norm – but most of the time, the husband went to work, the mother stayed home and cooked. Or if the mother had a job as well, there was an agreement that the family ate at home. Eating at restaurants was a rare treat. And that there was no such thing as like, delivery pizza. I mean, really think about the 50s. we’re eating, we’re getting together and sitting down as a family and we’re eating our meals. In that these meals, we know what all the ingredients are.

 

 

00:55:43 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Absolutely. And since then, it’s gotten – I mean, it just gotten worse.

 

 

00:55:49 Ashley James: Right. The invention of the microwave dinner, the frozen dinner, right? Was that in the 60s that that came into play? The family would then just get these little frozen dinners and put them in the oven.

 

 

00:56:00 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Sure. TV dinners.

 

 

00:56:02 Ashley James: TV dinner.

 

 

00:56:03 Dr. Trent Mozingo: And they showed the commercials eating in front of the TV on your TV tray. That became normal. And it made sense for people. It was easy, quick, fast. You can get back to work and make more money. Where you buy an expensive car and house but don’t buy expensive food, that is our culture. And it is creating this epidemic.

 

 

00:56:27 Ashley James: It just slowly — if we caught it in the 60s or 70s, if we’d caught it, instead of going fat is bad for the last 40 years. If we had gone highly processed sugar and probably processed food is bad and stick with how we ate in the 40s and before that, we would definitely have significantly less disease. Do you think – I mean, this is a conspiracy theory. But do you think that the pharmaceutical companies influenced – really helped try to influence the Food and Drug Administration and try to influence the government to create the food triangle, the food pyramid, in order to create disease? Do you think that it was really conscious? Like, “Look, if we do this we’re going to create more disease and sell more drugs. So we really need to push this agenda.”

 

 

00:57:29 Dr. Trent Mozingo: I would say they had an agenda to make money. That’s the best way I can explain that. I can’t say that they wanted to make people sick. But they wanted to sell medicine. I think they genuinely thought their medicine helped. Again, the pharmaceutical industry never sees the whole big picture. They see a problem. They try to fix it with a synthetic idea. They try to synthesize health. They genuinely think they’re doing it right. It’s just that they’re wrong.

So they’re trying to fix an issue without cutting off the source of the problem, I guess is the best way for me to explain that. because the source of the problem continues to make them money. And the source of the problem continues to make the food industry money. So what they’re doing is basically in this big cycle of I make money. You make money. I make money. You make money. I make money. You make money. People are staying alive. The longevity –

 

 

00:58:35 Ashley James: Long enough for them to make money. They’re staying alive long enough to make money. But our longevity is going down that –

 

 

00:58:47 Dr. Trent Mozingo: We have started [inaudible 00:58:48].

 

 

00:58:48 Ashley James: Right. We started to go where our children will not – like they’re saying, on average, our children will die before we die. If we live to our 70s, our children are going to live to be 60, basically. It’s going downhill. They’re seeing a decline in our longevity. So we’re really, really going the wrong direction. But we’re seeing that one in three people will have a diagnosis of cancer in their lifetime. That 70% of people have a weight problem. One in three people have pre-diabetes or a diabetic. There’s a major chronic epidemic of – over 70% of adult Americans are on at least one prescription medication. And that it’s being taught that that is normal.

I rarely see MDs. I go to a Naturopath. But I went to an MD yesterday for a checkup – a female checkup, which I’m happy to go to because I really like her. But I don’t buy into any of the – you know, like she said, “I’m going to be 40 soon so I should get a mammogram.” And I almost laughed so hard. I’m like, “Yeah. That’s not going to happen.” And then they offered me the flu shot. They offered me the flu shot and then took my blood pressure, which was really laughable. Because I became so irate them offering me the flu shot and then they took my blood pressure. So my blood pressure was through the roof, which was really funny. Because a week ago when I had it at my Naturopath’s office, it was like 110 over 70. But in the MD’s office, it was like 137 over 93. And I’m like, “Yeah. Because you just offered me a flu shot.” Really, they do that in that order. Offer them a flu shot then quickly take their blood pressure while they’re still upset and then get them on blood pressure medication.

 

 

01:00:28 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Oh, yeah. You can take this, It won’t hurt you. That’s what they’ll tell you.

 

 

01:00:31 Ashley James: Right. Exactly. Yeah. So they were shocked because the nurse was asking me some details before the doctor comes in the office. “And what medications are you on?” Because I had written zero on the form and she didn’t believe that I was on zero medications. I think she asked me three different ways. I’m like, “I’m 39 years old. I’m not on any medications.” And she couldn’t understand it. Like, it didn’t make sense to her. Because every single person that goes in the office is on at least one medication. Because it’s rare, it is rare to be healthy enough to not need a medication. And that is the state of our health right now. So you help people heal their bodies with diet. You help them bring their bodies back into balance and get off of medications healthfully because their body has come back into balance. And what we’re being taught in the mainstream by our by our MDs – and they’re lovely people by the way. Like, this MD I went to yesterday, I love her. She’s a great OB-GYN. And I really, really love her for that specialty. But I would never take food advice, for example.

You just have to know. You don’t go to your mechanic and get carpentry advice, right? You don’t go to your carpenter and get electrical advice, unless that’s their specialty, unless they actually know what they’re talking about. You go to the right professional for the right information. And she is wonderful in what she does in her specialty. But our MDs are taught that food plays a very minor role in our health. And we really need to manage our health with drugs. Because that’s their education. So we have to know to go to the right doctor for the right information. And when we go to a chiropractor, we’re actually getting more science based nutritional information from our chiropractor than we ever would from an MD. Because don’t you have at least an entire year of nutritional training in school, whereas MDs have something like eight hours.

 

01:02:34 Dr. Trent Mozingo: There’s always some – okay. So nutritional training, that’s hard to explain. Because you can’t just train someone on nutrition. You have to train them on what nutrition breaks down into. So what foods break down into is what’s actually important. Whether it’s minerals or amino acids or proteins or whatever.

So in chiropractic education, this is the most important factor here. MDs are doing everything that they’re taught. They’re not doing anything wrong. They’re doing what they’re trained to do. They’re trained in a reduction style thought process. What they’re trained to do is come up with a symptom, figure out a test to pinpoint exactly what is wrong and only address that. They keep blindfolds on how the integration and interconnection of the human body works, which is why we have specialists. We have a kidney doctor, a heart doctor, and oncologist doctor, an OB-GYN. They’re trained for one specific thing. And that doesn’t work.

Because for example, blood pressure, it goes up. So we send people to cardiology. Makes sense, right? Why wouldn’t you send them to a Nephrologist for their kidney? Because a kidney plays more role in blood pressure than your heart does. Your heart is just pumping the stuff. The kidney is actually what retain water and keep your volume. Those things always blow my mind. Which is why when you go to an orthopedic doc when you have swollen lower leg, they never really address the kidney function. They’ll send you to a heart doctor. In reality, it’s usually the kidneys are not releasing the right amount of water. You’re retaining it. Your blood is pooling. And then secondary, you can do a cardio.

So in that thought process, they are missing all of these big pictures. Which is why when you go to one doc, you get a med for blood pressure, which jacks up your kidneys. Then you go the next doc and get a medication to help your kidneys function. And all the while these medications are being processed by the liver and messing it up too.

 

 

01:05:02 Ashley James: Does high blood pressure medication harm the kidneys?

 

 

01:05:06 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Well, it changes the way they function. A water pill, for example, it opens the kidneys up. It makes you pee more. So what they’re doing is they’re synthesizing another function. They’re basically altering another function to help the one function that they’re trying to treat, which just creates another dysfunction. Then they medicate for that which creates another dysfunction, which is grassroots marketing. They’re going to get you on three meds, not one.

 

 

01:05:35 Ashley James: They’re forcing – forcing the body to do something. And it’s the hubris of the pharmaceutical industry and the pharmaceutical trained doctor to believe that we are smarter than the body. Right? Because I’m going to take a drug and force the body to do something, which then has all these other disastrous effects because we’re not getting to the root cause. And we’re really just still treating symptoms.

 

 

01:06:07 Dr. Trent Mozingo: They’re trying to supersede the majesty of nature. The body created itself from two cells. And they’re trying to think that their medication is necessary. I don’t understand that thought process. Your 37 trillion cells from two. And you think your body is deficient on blood pressure medication? I can’t perceive that.

 

 

01:06:33  Ashley James: So when you have a patient come in with high blood pressure, what do you do?

 

 

01:06:38 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Talk to him about what’s going wrong. So that’s the beauty of the second section of the book. I go through in detail how everything is connected and how everyone is at the same – they’re on the same slippery slope. And that goes through the functions. So I teach you how food works inside your body. What happens when you don’t eat the right food inside the body? And I’ll also explain to you how the medical system is doing it backwards? That section too. And if you want, I can explain to you how we are at the level we are in a very systematic way.

 

 

01:07:15 Ashley James: Please.

 

 

01:07:18 Dr. Trent Mozingo: So again, I studied how the human body works. I can’t fix it until I know how it works. So I realized that it’s all a very fluid motion. When you eat, it goes in your digestive system. Makes sense. Well, your digestive system is made to break down proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. That is all. Your mouth breaks down carbohydrates and fats. There’s enzymes released in the mouth to break down carbohydrates and fats. And it breaks down fats. Because if you ever pick up a steak, you get slime on your hands. Right? And you can’t get that slime off.

 

 

01:07:55 Ashley James: You mean raw? Are you talking about raw? If you touch raw chicken or –

 

 

01:08:00 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yes. If you pick up a fish, it’s slimy. And you can’t get that slime off your hands until you do soap. Well, you didn’t have lipase in your mouth, your mouth will stay slimy. That’s what’s it there for, to clean your mouth. That’s an interesting thought.

So you have lipase and amylase. I think that’s the one in the mouth. That breaks down carbohydrates and fats. Now, amylase is in there or the carbohydrate breaking down enzymes, I think it’s amylase in the mouth. It’s there for a reason. So it’s monitoring how much sugar is coming in. It’s a monitoring system. If you have a food that is only carbohydrates, which is a fruit or vegetable or grain, they won’t have much fat so the lipase won’t be usable. So the body knows carbohydrates are coming. So the mouth is now signaling the pancreas. “Look, pancreas. We have sugar coming.” Sugar is coming, you need to get ready with some with some insulin. Get ready. Get it. Chew it. Swallow it. It goes to the stomach. Pancreas kicks in.

If you eat something and it’s a fish or meat, it’s going to be fatty. It’s not going to have any carbohydrate in it so it won’t register that for the pancreas. But it’s going to tell the pancreas we got fat and protein coming. “All right. Pancreas, you gotta get ready because that releases protein digestive enzymes. Also liver and gallbladder, you gotta get ready because you’re going to release bile to break down the fat.”

 

 

01:09:29 Ashley James: I love that you’re painting this picture. Because we don’t chew our food enough. We really don’t. Especially if we’re eating in our car, like you said, that quick lunch break or we’re sitting in front of the TV, we just don’t chew our food. It’s so funny. I’ve seen this on so many Facebook Groups that I’m in for health stuff where people go, “In the toilet, I saw -” you know, whatever they ate, they’re like “- does that mean I’m not digesting?” And everyone is saying, “You’re not chewing your food.” We think that we’re basically swallowing food whole and that our gut is supposed to digest it. But the major part of our digestion starts with chewing.

And so how many chews do we do? Like, I’ve heard 20. I’ve heard someone say 50. How much should we chew the food until it’s properly digested? Like, the process of digestion starts in the mouth.

 

 

01:10:22 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Sure. The mouth is setting your digestive system up for what is coming. It’s getting your body ready. So chewing is a time. It’s a monitoring system. There’s no one size fits all amount of chews per food because some things are chewier than others. Some of them are pretty soft and you can kind of squish them with your tongue on the top of your mouth. I do that a lot with fruit, because my teeth are really sensitive.

So after you chew and you swallow, the body has already figured it out. “Okay. I got proteins, I got fats, and I got carbs coming.” That’s what the mouth tells it. So it drops into the stomach. Or or the stomach is a very, very, very, very, very, acidic place. Hydrochloric acid and pepsin are released from the stomach lining to continue to break down the proteins. They’re very hard to break down. It needs to be super acidic in the stomach to break down food. Now, it’s made to break down proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. When you put chemicals in your stomach, your stomach can’t break it down. It doesn’t know how. It’s like putting vegetable oil in a gasoline car. It’s not going to turn out very good for you. It doesn’t know how to burn it. It doesn’t know how to metabolize. It doesn’t know how to break it down. So that’s when we get acid reflux. The stomach acid is ineffective. So your stomach acid falls. The levels fall. Your stomach becomes basic. Not too acidic. It becomes too basic. Now, there’s only two directions for food to go, down the small intestine or back up.

Well if it’s not digested, the small intestine doesn’t want it. It can’t break it down. And this is bad news across the board. So acid reflux. You want to regurgitate back out. That’s what the body is trying to do. Get this junk food that you just stuck it out. The medical world says, “Let’s just shut that function down. Let’s use antacids.” This is a terrible idea.

 

 

01:12:19 Ashley James: Because the problem in the first place was not enough acid, not enough digestion in the stomach, and not enough digestion in the mouth. I was just thinking as you’re talking about chewing, it’s like people who have weak digestive tracts, who have constant problems with bloating or gas or diarrhea or constipation or problems with GERD, with acid reflux, that if they spent more time chewing – my mom would light candles turn on classical music, and turn off all the lights in the kitchen where our kitchen table was. And she would have a bunch of candles lit on the table and she would set an atmosphere. Which is so funny because I was a kid and my dad doesn’t care at all. But my mom was, she found that it would help her digestion if she set the ambience to just take a breath, calm down, and set the atmosphere for digestion.

 

 

01:13:16 Dr. Trent Mozingo: That’s a fun fact. Because you’re describing the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. You can’t digest in the sympathetic nervous system.

 

 

01:13:25 Ashley James: The fight or flight response.

 

 

01:13:26 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yeah. The fight or flight response will shut off your internal organs to put more blood flow and energy to your muscles so you can run or fight. So she’s calming herself down to get into that parasympathetic rest and digest system. And that does make a lot of sense.

 

 

01:13:42 Ashley James: And it also helps us chew because now we’re calmer. And now we’re not trying to race through the meal. So we’re willing to sit there and chew and then swallow and enjoy the company we have and enjoy the food. But also your taking the extra time to tell the pancreas and tell the stomach and tell the liver and gallbladder to get ready to digest and assimilate the food.

 

 

01:14:12 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Sure. So as it keeps moving down the digestive system, the stomach’s got to work. It’s the most important thing for digestion is to liquefy your food. It needs to be liquefied for the most part before it hits your small intestine or else we’re going downhill fast. So antacids are, in my opinion, the worst thing you can stick in your mouth. You shut off the stomach acid, you are going to have problems. Fun fact, I have never had a fibromyalgia patients come in my office that doesn’t have a history of antacid use.

 

 

01:14:47 Ashley James: Yeah. That makes sense.

 

 

01:14:49 Dr. Trent Mozingo: And that’s actually what really got me thinking about this inner connection is fibromyalgia. And I’ll explain that in a second. So as the time goes on and the body is starving, right? This is one of the main problems of our overweight epidemic. We are starving for food because, actually, we’re starving for nutrients. Because there’s none in our food. So the body is just constantly saying, “I need vitamins and minerals. You’re giving me zero vitamins and minerals.” Your muscles need them every day, every second, every cell, trillions of them need them all the time. And we’re giving them zero. I have patients that come in and have zero, zero whole foods in their diet every day and drink nothing but soda, no water. And I explained to them, “Have you ever fed your plant Coca-Cola?” And they said no. I said if you do it, it will die. And they don’t like that conversation.

So water is very essential. But you can’t drink a lot of water when you’re eating either because that will also increase the base level in your stomach. Decrease the acidity. Because water is pretty much even base – a neutral base. So anyway, as we get hungry and the body just starts to do whatever it can to let this junk food go through the digestive tract. We don’t have an enzyme in our pancreas to digest chemicals. We can’t. It just doesn’t work. So all things considered in the small intestine is where your nutrients are absorbed into the body. Not the large intestine. The small intestine. The large intestine – Dr. McBride talk to you about it. I heard your podcast. – that’s the most important as far as that GAPS diet. The large intestine is more of your immunity, more of your brain connection. But small intestine is actually the workhorse. It’s the one that brings your food into your body.

And it comes in through the portal vein. The mesenteric veins around every bit of the intestines and they filter straight through to the liver. So as we eat this junk food, our digestive system crashes. We have digestive distress from constipation to diarrhea to gallbladder dysfunction to pancreatic inflammation, pancreatitis, if you will, all these things are major problems in the digestive system. But unfortunately, the bad stuff gets through. And the liver becomes toxic. This is the main problem for most folks. Because liver becomes inflamed and your midsection grows. Fat around the liver.

Fatty liver disease is bad. And it’s an epidemic. But more importantly, drug induced liver injury is more prevalent than alcohol now.

 

 

01:17:46 Ashley James: Well, like Stanton’s are so, so, so common. Cholesterol lowering drugs. But no one takes the time to learn how they function. And when people learn how they function, they’re really motivated to not get – not beyond that and to get off them and to change their diet and lifestyle to create healthy cholesterol. Because we don’t just want to lower cholesterol. That’s such a misnomer. In fact, triglycerides are the marker, really, that we need to look at. But to have healthy levels of cholesterol, we need a really clean healthy diet and good – moving our bodies in a way that brings us joy every day. And that really helps bring cholesterol back into balance. And obviously, avoiding processed foods that raise the blood sugar like flour and sugar itself.

But what people don’t know is that these cholesterol lowering drugs how they function

because people think magically – just magically, they lower cholesterol. But what they’re doing is they damage the liver on purpose. They’re like punching your liver and they damage your liver on purpose to the point where you’re liver ceases to function correctly, because our liver makes 30% of our cholesterol. If someone eats a diet with animals in it, 30% of your cholesterol on average is made by your liver. If you eat no animals at all and you’re eating no cholesterol, your liver produces all of your cholesterol. If you’re like a raw vegan or something and you’re getting absolutely no fat whatsoever, I mean you’re just getting such a small amount of fat from fruit basically, those people have healthy cholesterol levels. But they’re not eating any because their liver produces cholesterol. And so the majority of our older population is automatically put on Stanton’s.

There’s a few people on our Facebook Group have said – in the Learn True Health Facebook Group have said that when they went into the hospital, they were automatically given cholesterol. The people that get admitted to hospitals are automatically given cholesterol  lowering medications, given Stanton’s. And what the Stanton’s do is they bruise and harm the liver to the point where the liver ceases to function and ceases to make cholesterol. But that does nothing to stop you from eating cholesterol, which isn’t necessarily bad. And that’s a whole myth busting. We could have you back on for an entire episode around that. And it doesn’t necessarily affect the damage done by the – so triglycerides being you’re seeing damage being done. It’s like seeing the smoke, right? They’re altering the smoke. They’re not they’re not putting out the fire. And in fact, they’re making a whole new fire in the body. So there’s a lot of myth around cholesterol. But you’re saying that the pharmaceuticals people are on are damaging the liver, are clogging it up, and are causing fatty liver syndrome more so than alcoholism causes fatty liver.

 

 

01:21:00  Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yes. Yes.

 

 

01:21:00 Ashley James: My mom died of liver failure. She died of liver cancer.

 

 

01:21:06 Dr. Trent Mozingo: I’m sorry.

 

 

01:21:06 Ashley James: So I personally have seen how quickly someone can go south when their liver is compromised, you die quickly. It is a painful and quick death within a matter of weeks the more and more it gets compromised. If our liver is compromised, we are guaranteeing that we’re having a shorter lifespan that is going to be filled with more problems down the road. So we want to protect our liver and not damage it permanently from years of pharmaceutical use.

And when I say pharmaceutical use, there’s always that caveat of pharmaceuticals that save people’s lives and that’s been phenomenal. We’re obviously not – there’s no dogmatic thinking here. If there’s a drug to save your life, I want you to be alive. But if there’s an unnecessary drug that people are just being put on because that’s just what doctors do. All the doctors are putting everyone on sentence because that’s just like the new thing that they’re all doing. And it doesn’t actually help you.

And I’ve had four cardiologists on the show, all of them reverse heart disease with diet. All of them. And they all say, all four of them have said that Stanton’s do not prevent heart disease. The only thing they’ve seen in studies is that Stanton’s, after your first heart attack, if you then get on Stanton’s, can marginally prevent the second heart attack.

 

 

01:22:40 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yeah. I read that study. You know what I think? It actually works to marginally prevent the second heart attack is having a heart attack.

 

 

01:22:51 Ashley James: Right. Because it wakes them up and go, “Oh. I lived. I should really start shaking myself.”

 

 

01:22:54 Dr. Trent Mozingo: “Hey, I probably should do something here.”

 

 

01:23:00 Ashley James: That’s so funny. And then they’re taking that data and going, “It was the Stanton’s that’s helping.” That’s so funny.

 

 

01:23:07 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yeah. So the liver, again, you’re right. It’s so vitally important. It’s actually the only organ that can regenerate. If you [inaudible 01:23:20], it will grow back. It’s amazing how the liver works. So as I talked about in this book and further down this rabbit hole, digestion is number one. When it goes down, you’re going slippery slope. And it’s a very slippery slope. Because the liver becomes toxic. Because your digestive system starts letting junk through. So your liver becomes jacked up on high fructose corn syrup. And it’s in everything.

Which is why everyone has liver dysfunction and digestive dysfunction and low thyroid function. Everyone that’s overweight, this is where they’re at. Their doctor can run tests all day long and say, “Nope. Your TSH levels are fine.” Which is a total joke of a test as far as thyroid function goes. But if your body temperature is under 98.6, it’s not good news. Your metabolism is slow and it’s because of liver dysfunction and thyroid dysfunction. And I say that because the thyroid actually functions in the liver. They’re connected. This is a connection, I don’t help people to understand.

 

You go into a doctor’s office and they prescribed you Synthroid and they don’t ever address your liver enzymes. They’re doing you a disservice, because the thyroid gland releases two hormones, T4 and T3. T4 has a longer shelf life than T3. It will last longer in your body. T3 is the usable form of thyroid hormone. T4 is not. The thyroid makes T4. The T4 goes to the liver to be converted into T3. And that is part of cholesterol metabolism to make your human body up the

temperature, your thyroid function. So when your liver is fatigued, your cholesterol metabolism is wrecked, and not helped by Stanton’s drugs, your thyroid function decreases. So your metabolism decreases and weight gain becomes inevitable. You can’t help it.

 

And this is where I start to pound the idea is like, standalone weight loss is never going to work. You have to address functionality in your human body. That will make you lose weight as a side effect, for the most part.

 

 

01:26:35 Ashley James: I love it. I love it weight loss becomes a side effect of better health.

 

 

01:26:39 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yes. Better liver function, better thyroid function. Because your liver has to help the thyroid regulates body temperature. So any person listening, if you check your body temp and it’s way under 98, you got some work to do. That’s  a good place to start. That’s a good starting point to say, “All right. It’s time for me to make some changes.” Because you need your body temp to – you need your body temperature to be where it’s supposed to be to burn calories at rest, which is the most abundant form of calorie usage of the day. Your exercise only counts for like 10 to 20% of your calorie usage. So you need to use it through normal metabolic function.

 

 

01:27:24 Ashley James: That sounds similar to Dr. Wilson. I had him on the show. He figures out if someone’s having thyroid problems by having them take their temperature consistently throughout the day for a few days. And if they’re under the norm, then – their thyroid problem might not even show up on blood work because he talks about how it might be the receptors. That the thyroid is working but that their thyroid receptors are off and so he’s looking at temperature to see what’s going on. And if our the temperature is low, then that’s a sign that something – somewhere in the undercurrent system, whether it be the receptors or up in the thyroid or up in the pituitary – hypothalamus pituitary access somewhere along the way, there’s something going on.

But you’re saying, we need to look at what’s coming in our body three times a day, which is the food we’re eating. And we need to look at the liver because the liver is compromised drastically because of our diet. And most people are on some form of medication or have been on medications that if the liver is compromised then we’re not digesting, we’re not detoxifying, we’re not metabolizing. It’s just everything gets clogged up in the body. And if we can’t get rid of the toxins, it gets stored in the fat cells.

 

 

01:28:49 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Sure. And then we got more problems for the thyroid gland. And which another reason – I mean, more reasons that’s becoming such mainstream epidemic of low thyroid function is toxicity, as you just mentioned, is huge. So the thyroid gland, it makes two hormones, like I said. Those hormones are consisting of two amino acids, iodine and tyrosine. These two things come from your food. They have to come from your food. Iodized table salt is what the medical system designed back in the 60s to prevent goiter. I wouldn’t [inaudible 01:29:27] but there was goiters everywhere and they put iodine in a table salt and the goiters went away. That’s important. That’s how important iodine is. If you’re iodine deficient, your thyroid will become distressed. We don’t eat enough fish or seafood, where iodine is naturally coming from. Tyrosine comes from green leafy vegetables and animal meats. We don’t eat enough of those and our digestive systems aren’t able to break them down when we do anymore. So you’re deficient in tyrosine as well.

You can’t make a thyroid hormone without the building blocks. So there’s a major problem we have. More importantly, iodine is halogens. There’s other halogens on the periodic table. If you’re familiar, there’s fluorine, there’s iodine, there’s bromine, and there’s chlorine. Well, chlorine is in our drinking water. That’s bad. Because iodine and the other halogens will block the uptake of iodine. They’re like all brothers and sisters fighting. So if you’re toxic in chlorine, you won’t be able to uptake as much iodine as you would like to. So chlorinated water is bad to drink. Also bleached wheat flour, white bread is bleached. That’s also toxic for your thyroid gland.

Fluorine, which is found in Teflon, which is why it’s bad to eat scratched Teflon, or things cooked in a scratched Teflon pan.

 

 

01:30:55 Ashley James: Let’s just agree that any nonstick Teflon surface is bad for us no matter what. Because you can’t guarantee that you’re not going to scratch it. And the off gas – when you would have heat them it off gases and that’s dangerous.

 

 

01:31:09 Dr. Trent Mozingo: There’s a great documentary called, The Devil We All Know. It was on Netflix. And it goes into – I think it’s 3M is the company that was creating nonstick stuff. And they were pumping the waste into the rivers. And it’s unbelievable how many people are affected. It went all the way – they put so much in the rivers it back fed up river into the Ohio and all the way down the Ohio River Valley. And as I watched this, I thought, “Well, fluorine flooring is terrible for your thyroid gland.” Everyone in the Ohio River Valley – I think, lymphoma is another major problem from fluorine.

There’s like lawsuits up and down the Ohio River Valley of people dying from liver disease, liver – no. I’m sorry – thyroid disease, thyroid cancer, and lymphoma from this fluorine being pumped in. It’s a great documentary I suggest everyone watch that.

And then we also have bromine which is in flame retardants which is also on stain resistant stuff.

 

 

01:32:11 Ashley James: So you’re getting – yeah. You’re getting the children’s clothing that’s stain resistant. And their winter clothing is covered in it.

 

 

01:32:19 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Toxic for the thyroid gland.

 

 

01:32:19 Ashley James: Oh my gosh. And then their mattresses are covered in – flame retardant mattresses. Your carpeting has it. Your coat has it. That’s why when they do testing, they find that the air quality in your home or in your office is ten times more toxic than if you live downtown. Imagine the pollution of living downtown in whatever major city. That pollution is actually fresher air and better for you. Someone living homeless is breathing better air than you are in your home. Because we’re breathing in the flame retardants and all the off gassing.

 

 

01:32:58 Dr. Trent Mozingo: It’s on automotive seats. So every road trip, you pound that stuff in your body. And worse off, it’s vital for infants in neural development. Thyroid function is. So we’re putting flame retardant clothes or stain retardant clothes and these kids and its destructive to their thyroid gland, which is an important factor in neural development. It’s huge. Everything is so related to our health. And we are just waiting to go to the doctor and figure out what med we can take. You know, it’s crazy.

 

 

01:33:31 Ashley James: I love that you’re pointing out these different things and not only are in our food but in our air that bind to the receptors. So they’re invasive. They’re something invasive that is clogging up the receptors in our cells. So the cells cannot receive the T3 –  the healthy thyroid hormone that it needs to receive. And thyroid affects all the cells. It’s not just one or two things. I mean, it’s affecting everything. It’s telling the whole body what to do in terms of metabolism –

 

 

01:34:06 Dr. Trent Mozingo: It’s like your body’s thermostat. It’s your entire body’s thermostat to run your temp. It what it does.

 

 

01:34:12 Ashley James: Another thing is that 25% of our TR is converted in the gut. So if you have dysbiosis and you’ve been on antibiotics and you have poor gut health, you’re not converting your T3 enough. Now you’re, 25% less T3. And then also your serotonin, which is converted in the gut. So we see that people have depression and they have mental health issues. That the mental health issues are sexually symptoms. So maybe they get a diagnosis of bipolar or depression, but they’re actually symptoms of a physical root cause.

 

 

01:34:54 Dr. Trent Mozingo: And it’s the same thing. I mean, what causes the dysbiosis? What causes poor normal flora is the same thing. It’s poor diet choices which wreak havoc on the digestive tract, which jacks up the small intestine, and allows it to start having a bad bacteria overgrowth, and then it shoots on down. CBOE, there’s a huge study, everyone’s talking about CBOE is correlated with fibromyalgia. And I can’t explain to these people, no. The CBOE is not causing fibromyalgia. What’s causing CBOE is the same cause of fibromyalgia. It’s we’re eating poor  foods and we are vitamin deficient. More importantly, for fibromyalgia, is B2 and B3. Those are what are tasked in the – I think it’s the pyruvate chain – to take lactic acid out of the muscles.

And if you can’t do that, you basically have muscle soreness all the time. And if you’re deficient, you can’t do that. So the fibromyalgia epidemic is basically after a workout muscle soreness, they’re stuck with that.

 

 

01:35:54 Ashley James: Right. Because their body is not converting the lactic acid.

 

 

01:35:56 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Back. Yes. It’s not coming out of the muscles. Sure. So that’s the first major principles of the book is the digestive system matters, the liver is huge, and if it’s wrong, your thyroid gland goes wrong. But then it goes in to tie into stress and the adrenal glands. Because stress sends out cortisol, which also goes to liver and also shuts off thyroid function.

So if you’re stressed, your metabolism slows down. People that are stressed all day at their job, have a slower metabolism and they can’t help it.

 

 

01:36:31 Ashley James: I love learning this. It really freaked me out that when we are in stress mode and it’s healthy to have a good stress response. Because if there’s, all of a sudden, a boulder on the highway, I want my freaking adrenaline to go up. I want to be able to maneuver in a split second. I want to be able to look around, put on my signal, and safely avoid that boulder. But then I want to just, like, chill and my body goes back into the parasympathetic nervous system response of rest and digest. And it’s done. So I want to be able to jump into stress mode to survive and then come back into relax and healing mode as often as possible. Coming back and staying in healing mode as often as possible as long as possible.

But what’s interesting is that when we have cortisol, when cortisol goes up, which is like we say adrenaline. When cortisol goes up, when the stress hormone goes up, it tells the pancreas to produce less insulin to drive blood sugar up and keep it elevated to ensure that muscles –  to run away from the – muscles have this energy. And now we have prolonged high blood sugar, which causes body wide systemic inflammation and damage to all the cells. So just by having a stress response – having too much stress response, basically living in stress mode, we’re causing damage to every cell in the body.

That’s just amazing how – now, it would work if we were living in the woods and chilling out and only in stress mode when we had to run away from a bear once in a while. That would work because I want to be able to like outrun that bear. So I want my pancreas to do that. To produce less insulin, to artificially keep the blood sugar high,  to be able to keep the nutrients so that my arms and legs don’t run out of sugar so I can outrun the bear. So we want to outrun the bear and survive to live another day. So it’s okay that in those two minutes of running and climbing a tree or whatever I gotta do to get away from that bear or fight it that I am able to shut off every other process in my body that isn’t essential to surviving the next two minutes. But we live in that state constantly. So we’re actually damaging our body constantly because we’re not in a healing mode. We’re in a fight or flight mode. I mean, our body is really intelligent. But we’re the ones that are driving the bus. So we’re making the decisions that keep us in that fight or flight response. And then of course, the foods we eat are then triggering stress response as well.

I know it’s a little bit doom and gloom what we’ve been talking about. But I want the listeners to know there’s this beautiful sort of light at the end of the tunnel or beautiful –  it’s like the light that – the rays of light are parting the clouds. The fact that you are in control is just the hope that we want to give you and let you know that yes, there’s toxins in all the materials in our house that we need to really be aware of. The cleaning formulas, off gas, even what’s underneath our sink right now is off gassing is creating toxins in our environment. But we have the ability to control it so we can get a healthy mattress. Or we can choose furniture that doesn’t have flame retardants. And we can choose natural cleaning products. So we can take active steps, just baby steps, one at a time to make sure the air in our house is clean. The water that we’re drinking. Maybe get a Berkey or get a reverse osmosis. Get something that’s making sure the water is clean. And then choosing organic food as much as possible. Choosing whole foods as much as possible.

And now we’re going to get into food next because I want to know what your take is on what a healing and a healthy diet is. But the fact that you have control. And no matter what your budget is, there are lots of home remedies on YouTube. Learn how to make your own cleaners that are really effective, that are nontoxic. You can save money. I can’t believe how much money I’ve actually saved eating a whole foods plant based diet that’s organic. So there’s a way to save money and do this as well. There’s so many things you can do. Just take the baby steps. And every time you make a better choice, you know you’re going in the right direction for your liver, for your thyroid, for your gut. Just baby steps everyday. Take the right step every day to build back a healthy body.

So yeah, there’s a lot of dangers out there. And a lot of things that – we could focus on the negative and the fear mongering. But I want to leave listeners empowered and knowing that they’re in control. And ultimately, they’re going to create a healthier life because of the things they’re learning from you today. So a lot of my listeners have dysbiosis and have shared with me that they have symptoms of small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

And it then becomes this question like, do they get on the FODMAPS diet or the GAPS diet or some kind of diet to starve the bad bacteria. Or do they really just get on some herbs and kind of like nuclear bomb the bad and the good bacteria. Wipe them out with olive leaf extract or whatever and all those different herbs and then rebuild. What’s your take on how someone can come back from dysbiosis?

 

 

01:42:06 Dr. Trent Mozingo: So my system, what I focus on is less of the large intestine, more of small intestine function. But yeah, so there’s things that help combat those. I’m not an herbalist. I am not good with those. For me, you need to go to a specialist. You need to go to a Naturopath or someone that they work with herbs all the time. Because they can be pretty anecdotal. They can pack a lot of punch. So doing that correctly is pretty important in my opinion.

But starving the bacteria, it’s not hard to do. The bad bacteria thrives on sugar. So first cut that out. That’s number one, any liquid calories cut that out. You’re going to help a bunch in that regard. Green leafy vegetables are tough to digest for the people that have digestive distress. And it takes time to get back.

Through my system, I let everyone know that their health status – their current health status is not forever. Your health is constantly on a sliding scale. Every single thing, every single choice, every meal, every day a stress or day of joy, it slides that up and down on a scale of zero to 100. That’s how my brain works. Say you fill up my long quiz – it’s on my website – and it tells you how healthy you are on a scale of zero to 100 based on symptoms alone. So you get 65%. That’s not terrible. It’s not great. But I want people to know that that’s where they’re at right now. And every positive choice that you make, whether it’s clean eating or going for a run or picking up a new hobby at the community center, anything you do to make you a positive shift in your health, you’re going to slide up that scale. You’re going to feel less symptoms. You’re going to feel better overall, which should be everyone’s goal. More energy, feeling better.

So that’s a great point that you make, there is light at the end of the tunnel. If you make more good choices than bad, you’re going to slide in a positive shift on your health status. And that is what I teach everyone. Is they are control of every choice they make. I can explain to them what happens when they make the wrong ones. And I can also explain to them the beauty of making the right ones, the right choices, the right nutritional changes.

 

 

01:44:43 Ashley James: So those are good for people who have the dysbiosis. What about people that just really want to eat healthy and want to just make sure that what they’re doing is optimal for longevity. Like you growing up, hardly ever get sick. Obviously, you never needed a flu shot growing up. You hardly ever got sick. You just went to bed when the sun went down and woke up with the sun. And your family made food and lived on the farm .And you knew exactly what was going on. You’re playing going into feed your cells.

 

 

01:45:18 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Sure. It starts with your mentality. Two, you have to have a goal, a plan. And that’s another great thought for anyone that’s trying to do nutritional changes is plan your food. Don’t wake up in the morning not knowing what you’re going to eat that day. Because that often pushes us into that frenzy and we make poor choices. So planning your meal plan for the week is pretty important. And also going to the grocery store and buying your food instead of just saying, “Oh, I’ll just grab something for lunch tomorrow at the restaurant.” Plan it out. It starts there.

So positive thought process is also vital for anyone’s health. I stay positive all day every day. I never let myself get down. And that fear mongering, like you spoke of, that is the medical systems way. They love to doom people into saying, “I’m diagnosed with this.” Or “I’m diagnosed with that.” You’re in control of any dysfunction in your body. You just got to figure out how to fuel it and get the right advice to go in that direction.

 

 

01:46:27 Ashley James: So can you paint the picture of what it looks like for the average American to transition off of the standard American diet and eat a diet that supports their body?

 

 

01:46:40 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Okay. So all the research that I’ve done – again the book is called, The Weight Is Over, because there’s a lot of people out there trying to lose weight. That’s the idea but they’re trying to do it in a healthy way too, I’m hoping. So the healthiest way to eat – and if you want to talk about the hormones involved, I can – but intermittent fasting is the healthiest

style of eating. It basically simulates. Back I talked about at the beginning of time, that hunter and gather style. Food is not always available. Food should not always be available for the human body to thrive. It needs to be hungry a long time. That’s where intermittent fasting comes in. There’s several different ways to do it. You can do a 16 hour fast or 18 hour fast or 12 hour fast or 24 hour fast. Figuring that out is on the individual. So when you are fasted, your body will release the human growth hormone, that is your anti-aging hormone. That is why people that eat less calories live longer. There’s studies that show that. It increases longevity.

So whole food intermittent fasting is how our human body is designed to eat. Not chemicals, intermittent fasting. A Snickers once a day is intermittent fasting. Whole Foods after a fast is how we’re designed to eat. I also feel that animal meats are supposed to be eating after exercise. So think about the hunter and gatherer, berries and roughage was always readily relatively available because you could gather a bunch. But a protein source in animal, you had to go hunt it, you had to find it, you had to gather. You had to, basically, run, catch it, shoot it, stab it with a bow, whatever you had to do. So it was vigorous exercise prior to that treat of an animal meat. So I like to only eat my meats after I exercise that day.

 

 

01:48:37 Ashley James: So you’re really only eating maybe one meal a day with meat. And you’re not necessarily eating meat every day.

 

 

01:48:44 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Eighty percent of our nutrition, in my opinion, should be plant based. Twenty percent animal based.

 

 

01:48:50 Ashley James: Right. A few people I’ve had on the show, like The China Study, which is like this big meta analysis. But Dr. Joel Fuhrman says if we can make 10% of our calories being animal products or less, then they see that that creates longevity and less disease.

 

 

01:49:16 Dr. Trent Mozingo: It’s true to some regards. But there’s also the Eskimo community that eats nothing but fish and meat. And they live very healthy, low inflammation lives as well.

 

 

01:49:27 Ashley James: But they don’t have longevity on their side though. They don’t live to be like 90 or 100 years old. So in terms of disease-free and longevity, because those are the – we could eat the Eskimo diet and will be really low in disease but we won’t live to be 100, basically.

 

 

01:49:45 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Okay. Fair. That’s a fair point with that study. But I mean, climate would probably play a role in there too. They’re also cold all the time. That would be difficult.q2

But something that also – I mean the temperatures you’re exposed to plays a pretty big role in your health too. And sunlight and vitamin D and things like that.

 

 

01:50:05 Ashley James: Sure. Absolutely. I love my Sunlight and Sauna.

 

 

01:50:09 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Absolutely. It’s cleansing. So whole food, 80% nutrition, in my opinion, is vegetable based. If you don’t exercise, you don’t need as much animal fat as well because your muscles don’t need to grow as much. That’s really what animals are for is to support muscle growth.

 

 

01:50:28 Ashley James: Interesting. And I’m not here to be controversial at all because I don’t believe in diet dogma. I want a healing diet for people. And what a whole food plant based, no animal diet is going to be really healing for some and not for others at that period in their life. So it’s like you just have to know what your body needs. But it’s a really interesting documentary. You may or may not have seen it, it’s new. It’s just on Netflix now called the Game Changers. The world’s strongest man who has been a strong man his whole life – his whole adult life, he gained 30 pounds of muscle after going vegan. And he has been vegan for 12 years. And he, actually, as a vegan broke the world record carrying 1200 pounds 33 feet. So it’s interesting that it breaks that misconception that we have to eat animal protein to build healthy muscles. But I respect the value in some of the amino acids you’re saying are readily available from those meats after exercise.

 

 

01:51:39 Dr. Trent Mozingo: And I discussed in the book, if you can live in a vegan life, you’re going to be low inflammation. But that also doesn’t mean – you can be a vegan and eat nothing but crackers. That’s not –

 

 

01:51:49 Ashley James: Or Oreos. Oreos are vegan. And vegan doesn’t mean healthy whole food plant based. No salt, sugar, or oil would definitely mean healthy. 

 

 

01:51:58 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yes. There’s a new documentary also called Fat, it contests that a little bit. It’s really good. It’s very informative on children with, I want to say – there’s a study that shows a high – keto diet would help with – I can’t remember the condition the child had but it cured them. So again, every person needs to find that balance for themselves. What makes them feel good? If you don’t feel good eating something, you probably shouldn’t. Pretty simple logic there.

I also studied under there – read the book of Dr. D’Adamo, the Dieting For Blood Type. Pretty interesting stuff. I’m a type A blood type, which means I should be relatively vegetarian based in it. I actually do thrive on a vegetarian based, very minimal animal fats. But I grew up on a beef farm. So that was hard for me to give up. That’s all I knew. So I can I can only eat steak once a week, usually. It’s the time I’ll eat an animal or – excuse me – a red meat.

But chicken, fish, I digest pretty well and it feels pretty good. And I feel pretty healthy with that. But yeah, it’s 80% plant based for me. But there’s some people that are different. And you got to figure that out.

 

 

01:53:19 Ashley James: So I was looking at our genetics. Genetics don’t – it doesn’t mean that we’re helpless because we have genetics. Because some people say, “Oh, the reason why [inaudible 01:53:30] is genetic.” Or the reason why you have – you know, eczema is genetic. It’s the gun but it doesn’t pull the trigger. Your body is going to respond to nutrient deficiency in a predictable way. You can look at if your entire family is vitamin D deficient or your entire family is calcium deficient or EFA deficient, your entire family kind of develops this set of diseases because that’s like the weak links in your genetics. Versus another family who develops a different set of illnesses with a deficiency or with different stressors. But it doesn’t pull the trigger. So that means we have to know our genetics so that we know how to prevent it by eating for health.

I had Mariel Hemingway on the show, who’s the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway. And she’s had seven suicides in their family, including, of course, the famous American author, Ernest Hemingway. So growing up, it was her – from a very young age, it was her motivation to constantly look at how could she make her entire lifestyle be about physical health and mental health. So she journaled and went to therapy. Her genetics say that – and mostly everyone in her family has depression or suicide or bipolar or alcoholism or drug addiction. So addiction and mental illness are rampant in her genetics. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to have it. It means she knows that if she’s deficient or if she goes and eats the standard American diet, that that’s her genetic predisposition is to have those problems.

Whereas someone else’s with someone else’s genetic makeup, they might have developed type two diabetes. She would develop suicidal thoughts and depression with the same stressors on the body. So we have to understand that genetics don’t cause it. It doesn’t cause our problems. They are the blueprints. And just like some people are just more muscular than others. And some people can put on more muscle than others. Just genetically, the whole family’s really muscular. And all they have to do is just do light exercise and they’re really muscular versus this other family that’s maybe, better at endurance sports.

So it’s like we see the gifts in our genetics but also see that the gift is that you use your genetics as a motivation. Like, everyone in my family had a heart disease and so I’m going to use that as my motivation to prevent it through following this lifestyle. Especially reading your book, The Weight Is Over, which I think is brilliant. I think it’s beautiful. I think it’s actually really obtainable. Like you said, it was hard for you to really cut back on red meat or give it up entirely. A lot of people don’t want to give up their meat. And I was one of those people. My husband went vegan overnight. I had a guest on the show and she said a few key things and he said, “I am never eating meat again.” And he was the guy who ate nothing but meat. To get him to eat a vegetable was ridiculously hard. And then he just overnight said, “You know what? I just heard enough. I’m never eating meat again.” And he loves it. He loves not eating meat. He loves legumes and beans and nuts and seeds and vegetables and fruit. And he thrives on it. And he’s so happy. He’s happier. He’s calmer in his own body. He’s just a happier person. You just notice he’s happier.

I like that you said we really need to be science based because we can all be on, like, the cheese cracker diet or the coffee and cigarette diet. And it’s like you know what? Feeling good – there’s two kinds of feel goods You said we should always feel good on our diet. You know what? You can feel really good on a McDonald’s diet. You can feel really good in the moment. You can be jacked up on sugar. Because it’s fun. It’s fun to eat that way in the moment. You can feel good but do you feel good the next day? Do you feel good waking up in the morning? Do you feel good going to bed at night?

So I would say that, does your diet make you feel good even three days after eating that food? And instead of the feel good in the moment, it’s like, do you feel good all the time? And do you have less inflammation and better digestion? Is your health improving? If your diet is improving and building upon your health, then good. But I love that you said, have 80% of your diet be plant based because we need to get the fiber and vitamins and minerals. We just can’t get that from eating the standard American diet.

 

 

01:59:03 Dr. Trent Mozingo: No. Nothing processed is going to have it. And if it has any vitamins, it’s been synthesized and put back into the – synthetic vitamins are just pumping into the junk food. So it doesn’t really count anyway. Vitamins from plants, fruits, and vegetables it runs the entire human body. You have to have them.

 

 

01:59:27 Ashley James: What did you eat for breakfast this morning?

 

 

01:59:30 Dr. Trent Mozingo: I usually do a smoothie in the morning. Spinach, typically carrots, some strawberries. I use a protein powder from a company that I use a standard process. It’s pretty clean protein powder. And I blend that up with water. It’s not very delicious.

 

 

01:59:48 Ashley James: It’s not?

 

 

01:59:51 Dr. Trent Mozingo: No. No. But I can eat anything. So it’s not really too big of a deal for me. Once you start getting to that eat for health – but then there’s also days when if you think that you have to eat super healthy all the time, it will make you crazy. So there’s a cheat day every once in a while too. But I eat very healthy 90% of my time.

 

 

02:00:09 Ashley James: If you could figure out how to make your cheat meals actually healthy, like I’m – oh man. I have made some really cool desserts. Sweet potatoes, bake some sweet potatoes and then put them in a food processor with raw cacao powder. And if you need, you can add some dates or you can add some date syrup or just a little stevia. But oftentimes the sweet potatoes are sweet enough. And it’s like chocolate. It’s a chocolate pudding and my four year old loves it. And I’m just laughing because I’m feeding them healthy food.

And then another one is just making – you can take avocado and blend it with the raw cacao powder. And that makes a delicious mousse. And then the third, I’m, of course, just going on basically it’s like making mousse with chocolate. But that’s my thing. That’s what satisfies me.

You can also do it with tofu. You can take silken tofu and blend it with raw cacao powder and some stevia or some maple syrup, if you want. If you’re okay with that with a little bit of sugar. Oh my gosh, the kids love it. It tastes amazing. So yeah, there’s things that you can do and you can take sweet potato and black beans and mix them with stevia or maple syrup or whatever sweetener. I prefer stevia. You can do dates. Mix it with some raw cacao powder and bake it and it becomes like brownies.

 

 

02:01:38 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yeah. I’m not very adventurous in my food. I stick a bunch of vegetables on a plate and I put some fruit on top of it to make it a little bit better and I eat it. I am the most boring cook in the world.

 

02:01:52 Ashley James: I love getting creative in the kitchen. But I love to fake cheat. So it’s still healthy food. I still feel good the next day. But once in a while, I get that feeling like I cheated. But it’s not cheating at all. My friend, Naomi, makes the most amazing – she makes a cashew cream and then we dip fruit into it or vegetables into it and it tastes like it’s made from heavy whipping cream but it’s made from cashews and it’s amazing. Oh yeah, so good. And the kids love it. And then they’re like eating more fruit. Not like you need to get the kids to eat fruit. But it is really awesome.

So yeah, there’s some fun ways to still be whole food plant based or still be – eat a whole foods diet. That is fun. So that’s the thing. That’s what I love to look for is, how can I make this enjoyable for the family? But you’re right, most of the time I eat – like my plate is just a bunch of vegetables and I’m happy with that. But once in a while your brain just really wants to break. When we go to the movies, I always pack food to go into the movies because it smells so good at the movie theater. You want to just have their canola oil, GMO canola oil covered popcorn. And then you’re eating glyphosate. And then the next day, I can feel it. I can feel the inflammation from all the junk food eating at the movies. So we pack in. I’ve never had a problem, by the way. I never ever had a problem bringing my own food into the movie theater and my own beverages. I just bring a big thing of water.

But we bake some chickpeas. So you’ve cooked them. They’re already cooked. And then you bake them with seasoning, like Mexican seasoning or whatever. And so they’re dry, but you pop them in your mouth like their popcorn. And it’s so much fun. It’s so easy. And then I usually do cut up vegetables and some kind of hummus or just a bunch of cut up vegetables. You can cut up zucchini, so that’s carrot –  so it’s like crackers. And then you can make little sandwiches, like zucchini sandwiches like the little cracker sandwiches with some hummus.  So there’s like fun things that you can do that you still feel like you’re getting snack food but it’s whole foods. And the best thing is the next day when you wake up in the morning, you jump out of bed and you feel like every cell in your body is singing. You just feel like you’re on top of the world because you just nourished every cell in your body. And instead of creating inflammation and disease.

 

 

02:04:18 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Yeah. That’s a powerful thing. It really is.

 

 

02:04:23 Ashley James: Since coming out with your book, and obviously, you’ve had your clients read it, and you’re promoting it, and you’re getting great feedback. Can you share some stories of success of people that have read your book and implemented your program?

 

 

02:04:38 Dr. Trent Mozingo: For me, I track for patients. I actually make patients track everything on their own. Giving themselves the responsibility back. I want them to understand what their weight which way it’s moving, how many bowel movements they’re having a day, what are the consistency of their bowel movements. And those that are really needing a lot of help, I make them check their blood sugar every day. I think the funniest thing to fix is probably IBS.

 

 

02:05:05 Ashley James: Yeah. No kidding. Because they’re really suffering.

 

 

02:05:08 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Everyday those patients are in distress. They don’t know when it’s going to come. But they know they better have a restroom very close. And to hear them tell me, “I no longer have to stress. I know in the mornings I wake up, I’m going to have a nice healthy bowel movement.” That, in my opinion, is a life changer for these patients. Changing someone’s blood sugar is important, health wise. But it doesn’t change. They’re just overall daily life, like removing that digestive hysteria. And it goes away pretty quick. Like you said, if you organize your food and you get your body rejuvenated and your digestive system healed, it works pretty quick. And helping people lose weight, it’s always fun. But that real stress relief is what I like.

 

 

02:06:02  Ashley James: I love it. I love it. Do you have any homework you like to give the listeners today?

 

 

02:06:08 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Homework? That’s good. I think I would tell a patient or a person or a listener – I don’t know if they’re doing it yet – but meal planning is the most important thing. And it sounds like if you have recipes on your Facebook to go there and find them because they sound delicious. And plan to put some of those in there. But I think that the most important homework is try to do as much research about what food does, what vitamins are, where they come from, and how they integrate and interact inside your body is pretty important as far as learning how to fix yourself is first learning how your body works. And that education is valuable for family, for your kids, for everyone.

 

02:07:02 Ashley James: Some people aren’t motivated to themselves but they’ll do it for their kids.

 

 

02:07:07 Dr. Trent Mozingo:  And they should.

 

 

02:07:08 Ashley James: Our kids are not going to do it. We say they’re going to do what we do. We have to be the example of health for them. And for moms, we often will put our health last. We’ll shovel food in our mouth in between like standing up by the sink. In between feeding one kid and feeding another and getting them better ready for bed. It’s just the standing over the sink shoveling food into our mouth is not dinner. And it’s not a meal. And it’s not even a snack. You’re not even digesting and absorbing that food because you’re still in stress mode. We need to carve out time for ourselves. It is that story of putting the oxygen mask on ourselves first. It is not self-indulgent. It is necessary. If you love –  of course you love your children. But if you want to be here long term because raising children and helping your family is a marathon, not a sprint, then we need to do the self-care everyday. We need to do self-care.

And it’s not self-indulgent, it’s not egotistical. It is needed. That taking care of you is taking care of your family. Because if you’re down for the count, no one’s getting fed. And I saw that in my mom, she ran herself ragged and she was bedridden and sick with the flu, because she wouldn’t even take care of herself. And then she got Candida because her doctor put her on months and months of antibiotics because she wasn’t willing to just sit down and relax. And that’s what led us to –  when I was six – my mom took a Naturopath that actually was Dr. D’Adamo, the writer Your Blood Type Diet. He was my Naturopath when I was six. And I had this entire shift where he said, “You’re O blood type, you’re allergic to wheat, yeast, milk, and sugar. Get it out of your life.” And so we went home and my mom threw it all out. And I grew up on soy milk. And from the age between ages six and 13, I had zero illness, I had full health and vitality. And then I rebelled. I was 13. I was pissed off at the world and my parents. And I ate all the Halloween candy. And I went to a new school with the cafeteria and I just started eating all the cafeteria food. And all it took was one meal a day, that lunch, eating that crappy, crappy cafeteria food.

I gave myself disease b the time I was to 20. Basically, I ate healthy breakfast at home. I ate healthy dinner. But that lunch every day, I gave myself lifestyle and diet – diseases caused by diet. But then I didn’t have the wherewithal. My brain was full of junk and brain fog. And it took me my entire 20s of suffering to turn it around. So by the time I was 26 or – sorry – 28 is when I went – I had that wake up call and started to shop in the perimeter of the grocery store. And now I’m almost 40. So I had that sort of like ill health in my early years. Then many years of health following exactly what you teach. And then I went back to eating the way everyone else eats but only one third of the time. So we can’t just eat a healthy breakfast and a healthy dinner and go out to McDonald’s. I always pick on McDonald’s. But go out to some restaurant one meal a day and think we’re building our body healthfully. It has to be every meal to be able to build health.

 

 

02:10:46 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Stay focused, that’s for sure. Food and mentality too. That’s also just important having a positive outlook, positive thoughts, positive people around you with the same ideas and plans.

 

 

02:11:00 Ashley James: Brilliant. Beautiful. I know we’ve covered so much. Is there anything left unsaid? Anything you want to make sure that you let the listener know to wrap up today’s interview?

 

 

02:11:14 Dr. Trent Mozingo: I think just make sure they know they’re in control of their health. Not their doctor. Not their personal trainer. No one. It’s on them to really take control.

 

 

02:11:23 Ashley James: Awesome. So the listeners who get your book, of course, the links are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. The Weight Is Over book by Dr. Dr. Trent Mozingo. I love your last name. We’re all going to remember that name. Mozingo. Now, your website is new-startsolution.com. That website and the link to your book is going to be in the show notes for today’s podcast. It has been such a pleasure having you on the show today. And you’re welcome back. I bet we could talk about a few more fun topics.

 

 

02:11:54 Dr. Trent Mozingo: I think we could talk forever it sounds like. That’s great.

 

 

02:11:57 Ashley James: That would be wonderful. I’d love to have you back. Thank you so much. It has been such a pleasure having you on the show today.

 

 

02:12:03 Dr. Trent Mozingo: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.

 

 

02:12:05 Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over 100 dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health.

I definitely recommend that you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices. You can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children to be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success in their health goals.

There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon.  The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected With Dr. Trent Mozingo!

Website

Facebook – New Start Health Center

Facebook – Dr. Trent Mozingo

Twitter

 

Book by Dr. Trent Mozingo

The Weight Is Over

 

Recommended Reading by Dr. Trent Mozingo

Start With Why by Simon Sinek

 

Oct 20, 2019

The Homework:

1) Check out meditation videos by Forrest Knutson on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcXwc0ArDa6a2ew5nFyFFDQ

2) The Magnesium Soak! Visit LivingTheGoodLifeNaturally.com and use coupon code LTH for our listener discount.

3) Check out Ashley's Free Your Anxiety Course!

https://members.freeyouranxiety.com/order

Get Eliot's books and listen to his podcasts here:
eliotmarshall.com

 

Inner Power

https://www.learntruehealth.com/inner-power

Highlights:

  • You’re not alone. Community plays an important role in helping people with anxiety or depression to get better. Nobody ever has to be alone.
  • You’re not a victim of your circumstances. You can’t control your circumstances. You don’t have control over others.
  • It’s okay to fail. We learn the best through failing. Nobody learns from success.
  • Give even through the worst times, it’s when you have to give the most because what comes back to you is going to be so much better than what you give.
  • Don’t die for your beliefs. You have to be willing to be wrong. Be willing to change your mind because we keep on learning.

 

In this episode, Eliot Marshall shares with us ways on how he deals with his anxiety. He tells us martial arts has helped him to stay calm in the very worst moments of his life and how teaching martial arts while having anxiety saved his life by giving the most of what he could for his students.

 

[0:00] Intro: Hello true health seeker and welcome to another episode of Learn True Health podcast.

Today we have a wonderful guest. You are going to love Eliot Marshall. He’s such a genuine soul with a beautiful voice and I just love his heart. I know you will love his stories and his passion and compassion today listening to this wonderful interview. Interestingly enough, he asked me, I asked him to give us some homework and he asked me for some homework. So, I want to make sure that you know about these three resources that I shared with him.

One is for mediation, I know it’s a really big buzzword and we can just break it down and make it really simple. So many people find that meditation is helpful to them. So if you want to experience the benefits of meditation but you don’t know where to start, I recommend a free resource. Someone I’ve had on the show before who’s actually a really close friend of mine, his name is Forrest Knutson. You can find him on YouTube by searching Forrest Knutson. His website is thatyogiguy. He teaches. He’s made so many great videos and he teaches how to meditate in a very easy way. He utilizes neurofeedback and neuroscience. So he’s all about the science around what happens to the brain when we quiet the mind and also what happens to the nervous system taking us out of the stress response, which is very helpful if we’re looking to decrease the physical effects of anxiety and also decrease anxiety itself. So I recommend that as a resource.

The next thing I really recommend for anyone who’s experiencing problems with sleep or problems with anxiety or panic attacks is soaking in magnesium. If you’re a first-time listener, I have several interviews about this talking about the science behind magnesium. You can go to my website learntruehealth.com, type in magnesium and listen to my episodes about the magnesium soak. We actually absorb grams of magnesium when we do this soak. It is through livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and we were given a coupon code LTH, as in Learn True Health, to receive the listener discount. So go to livingthegoodlifenaturally.com, type in the coupon code LTH and get the jug of magnesium soak. Listen to the episode first so you understand all the benefits and how to soak in it. Our body actually absorbs grams of this magnesium and people, we have hundreds of listeners shared that they have better sleep, significantly less anxiety and that they have a greater sense of well-being. It really does make a difference especially when we’re magnesium deficient.

The third I recommend, I teach an entire course, it’s an entire month-long course, on eliminating anxiety and all the neurolinguistic programming tools that will allow you and empower you to no longer have anxiety. You can go to my website learntruehealth.com and in the menu click on in the Anxiety there. You’ll see more information about it. I really recommend my course for anyone who wants to significantly reduce stress, anxiety, panic attacks, worry or if you just are really interested in personal growth and you want more tools on your tool belt. It is a fantastic course. I make it affordable for everyone to be able to learn these tools in such a way that it will empower them.

So those are my three recommendations for people who want to decrease stress and anxiety in their life. Check those out. Enjoy today’s show. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you for sharing this episode with those you care about especially those who you know have some issues with anxiety, with worry, with depression. We can get together as a community and support each other. That’s what we need to do. No man is an island. We need to get together and support each other and do that by sharing episodes that’ll help each other and sharing what has helped us. Letting our friends and family know that we’re struggling too and we’re there for them. The more that we put down our guard and be vulnerable with each other and we share with each other that we care for one another, the more we can make a difference in this world. Recently, data from the CDC that was published shows that the suicide rate for generation z, this is the generation between the ages of 10 and 24 years old, has increased by 56% percent between the years 2007 and 2017. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for generation z. This is a major epidemic. We need to do something right now. The only way we can make differences as individuals. So as individuals, all of us together can support each other by sharing this episode with those we care about and using the tools that Eliot teaches today. Just being there for each other, just reaching out to those we love and letting them know that we’re a should that they have and letting them know that we want to hear them and listen to them and that they’re heard. Also letting them know that we’re struggling too. Just that amount of communication could save someone’s life. So that’s why I’m so honored to be able to publish this episode today because my hope is that we can spread this message and turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to learn true health.

Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 387.

 

[06:13] Ashley James: I’m so excited for today’s guest. We have with us Eliot Marshall who has an amazing story. What I love is he’s here to teach us how to find our power. As I’ve said on the show before health, a lot of times we look at physical health but health is not always just physical. Our mental and our emotional body and our energetic body all play a role in creating our physical health. We need to be able to create that inner power, that inner motivation, that inner strength, we need to cultivate that so that we can go out and do the things that support our life, our health physically but also our joy in our life. Eliot, it’s such a pleasure to have you here today.

 

[06:55] Eliot Marshall: Thanks, Ashley. Thanks for having me on. I could not agree with what you said more.

 

[07:00] Ashley James: Absolutely. Now your website is Eliotmarshall.com. Of course links to everything you do, it’s going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast learntruehealth.com. Eliot, you’ve got two podcasts that you do. You wrote a book. You own six gyms. You’re a professional fighter. It’s just like the list goes on and on and on.

 

[07:23] Eliot Marshall: I had a massive breakdown four years ago. I had a massive, what I like to call spiritual mental breakdown/spiritual awakening. I wasn’t paying attention to those things that were so important.

 

[07:36] Ashley James: We’re definitely going to dive in to your story. It sounds like you found your power though.

 

[07:41] Eliot Marshall: Yes. You know, I’m still gathering it. I don’t believe in ever reaching the top of the mountain.

 

[07:49] Ashley James: We’re never done, right?

 

[07:50] Eliot Marshall: We’re never done. The day I stop grinding is the day that they put the dirt on me. That grind might change. I don’t know what it’s going to look like that whenever –

 

[08:01] Ashley James: Yes. You get to the pearly gates and Jesus is like, “Alright, put you to work.”

 

[08:09] Eliot Marshall: Whoever it is up there, you know. Whatever it is. I’m never too concerned. I used to be super concerned with it. Now, I’m not concerned with it at all, I believe that we’re experiencing both heaven and hell while we are alive. So, I’m not sure what happens to me after I die. I guess I don’t even really care. I do care about what I do while I’m here on this earth.

 

[08:39] Ashley James: What a beautiful dichotomy to hold in your mind the idea that we’re going through heaven and hell at the same time. That we can learn and grow and utilize both experiences or both perspectives to help propel us forward and help others as well. I think we find really true joy when we reach out and help others. Our ego drops away. We’re in the now. We’re totally in that moment. You love helping people too. That’s why my podcast is Learn True Health. It’s not like achieve true health and then you’re done. It’s Learn True Health and keep learning and keep learning and keep learning. So, we’re going to learn from you today, Eliot. I’d love for you to start by sharing your story. What happened in your life that lead you to be such a wise soul?

 

[09:26] Eliot Marshall: I’ll start with I was born to an African-American dad who grew up very, very poor and White-Jewish mother whose parents, my grandparents, survived the concentration camps. So, I had a very interesting upbringing. We lived in this really small town. You know those towns where like they know when the kid’s born that he’s going to be the quarterback of a high school football team and a homecoming king? Like everybody knows that. That’s my town. I didn’t fit in very well. Looking back on it, it worked out great for me. In it, it sucked. So then, I would say grandparents, my mom’s parents had a huge, they had a very huge influence on my life. I saw them three times a week. There was a common thing. That common thing was Hitler will be coming again. I didn’t know that it was difficult. I didn’t know the effects that all of that had on me. It obviously played a role.

 

[10:45] Ashley James: Did you feel persecuted or ostracized for?

 

[10:49] Eliot Marshall: Yes. I had no friends. I had two friends my whole growing up, maybe three. That was pretty much the extent of it.

 

[10:58] Ashley James: That lack of acceptance must have really played into the belief that Hitler was coming back for you as a child growing up. That fear, you didn’t feel accepted by your community. If you’re community is already rejecting you then that fear that the holocaust is going to happen again was really real for you, really palpable.

 

[11:15] Eliot Marshall: Yes. There whole life was set for it to happen again. When they died, my sister lives in that currently, when my grandmother died at the time we went downstairs, it was 2000 and there was sugar and flour and stuff from 1979. We were ready. We were definitely ready.

 

[11:42] Ashley James: My aunt was a prepper back in the 70s. Until the day she passed away, she did the same thing. She filled her entire basement with canned goods. I understand that. I didn’t understand at the time but then I started to get. That’s a reality.

 

[12:02] Eliot Marshall: It’s a reality. Look man. We stole. I remember crawling in farms, because I lived in South Jersey where there’s a lot of farms, at night and going to get cucumbers. We didn’t need to steal. There was no necessity for us to steal. That’s just how they survived, my grandparents, right. Like okay, well let’s go. We didn’t steal massive things. We stole 10 cucumbers, which I’m not condoning it. I’m not saying that this was right or anything like that but that was the mentality. That was the concentration camp mentality. You have to survive. For me, I think it’s kind of what triggered my anxiety because I was always like, “Well man, what am I surviving from? It seems pretty good. I’m never hungry. Why should we be scared?” It triggered this from my life, like this. Like what’s coming down the pipe. Then it came a couple of times as an older. The first time I was 19 years old. It was pretty bad. The second time I was 21 and it was bad.

 

[13:22] Ashley James: When you say it was bad, were these events or were these panic attacks?

 

[13:26] Eliot Marshall: Yes. Acute anxiety episodes that lasted for about six to nine months. Then, up until this point you’ll never know what’s coming. Up until this point, my worst one was in 2016. It was, that was my dance with the devil. That was my dance with the devil.

 

[13:51] Ashley James: Were they provoked like something happened that triggered it or just out of nowhere, you’re like sitting at home eating dinner and then boom?

 

[13:58] Eliot Marshall: This last one, in 2016, I just got back from 2 weeks in Maui and my life was perfect. My businesses, I had two at the time, they were successful. I had a great wife. I had a great house. I had two great kids. I’m by no means like a gazillionaire but I didn’t, like if I want something I could do it. We’re not talking like Bugattis and private jets, right. We’re talking like normal everyday people stuff. If I wanted to go out to a nice dinner I wouldn’t even think about like what to save. I’ve none of that going on, nothing. My kids are healthy, my wife’s healthy, everything’s perfect. Literally two weeks in Hawaii, comeback jetlagged and that’s what did it. Just a little jetlag and then I didn’t sleep for five days. Maybe let’s just say somewhere between four and eight hours of sleep in five days.

 

[14:55] Ashley James: Sounds like it’s related to your stress response.

 

[14:57] Eliot Marshall: Yes. Probably. I mean at this time when I go back and look at it, I was consumed with looking at the numbers at work. How many members we had. I was consumed.

 

[15:15] Ashley James: You have a degree in math, right?

 

[15:17] Eliot Marshall: Yes. I have a degree in math but don’t ask me any hard questions coz I got punched in the head for a living for 10 years. So that’s always part of it, right? I’m like, “Man, is this the CTE?” because I couldn’t tell you how many, I mean concussion every day. I got punched in the head twice a week every week from 2005 until 2011. I’m not talking about punching the head by a five-year-old. I’m talking about punch in the head by 250-260 pound man.

 

[15:53] Ashley James: Your neurological wiring growing up was this fear that the third world war is about to happen, the holocaust is about to happen again. Then you have like a million concussions. So there might be some little bit of brain injury that you’re healing from.

 

[16:16] Eliot Marshall: You know, my brain looks good on MRI. Like obviously I’m not stupid. So I was always making sure if things like that. I had a brain MRI, I don’t know two years ago, my brain looks good. The real problems are what you can’t see on an MRI.

 

 

[16:31] Ashley James: Right, because that’s structural. The structure of the brain isn’t really how the brain works.

 

[16:36] Eliot Marshall: Like Aaron Hernandez, when he died it was the worst case of CTE that they’d ever seen. A lot of people think the guy’s a terrible human being but I mean how much can we blame him?

 

[16:50] Ashley James: Right. It’s the same for people who have a mental health condition. You can’t hold something against someone who’s schizophrenic or bipolar. They’re going through something. So, we have to take that into account and hold empathy and forgiveness. So what happened then? So after your last biggest in 2016, your biggest breakdown, how did you recover?

 

[17:22] Eliot Marshall: I realized that the way out was in.

 

[17:26] Ashley: I love that.

 

[17:27] Eliot Marshall: I’m going to try my very best not to sound super conceited here. For my schools, I’m the one that’s made it the farthest. I’ve won almost everything else there is to win. I made it to the UFC, which is like the crown jewel. If there’s a crown jewel for martial arts it’s did you fight in the UFC? I was not a champion but that’s like a marker that most people, almost no one gets to have especially 10 years ago. I’ve competed in everything. I’ve won. So people are like looking at me like, “Okay. That’s the mark.” I was just real honest with people. I was like, “Look, yeah I might be your mark but don’t worry, I struggle too just like you guys. So I’m going to be okay. I have great friends that help me. I have all of the tools necessary to get this done. I just want all of you to know,” and I said this in front of the class one day. I like pulled everyone in right in the middle of my hell. I said, “I want all of you to know that if this is for you too, if this is what’s going on, you’re not alone. You’re not alone. We’ll all get through this together because that’s what we do as a community. We lean on people and we’re strong for ourselves and for others as well.”

 

[18:59] Ashley James: Did anyone come forward and say-?

 

[19:02] Eliot Marshall: Yes, a bunch. I’m like a professional therapist now, Ashley.

 

[19:09] Ashley James: I love that.

 

[19:11] Eliot Marshall: That’s what got me to write my book and start this podcast that I have. My original podcast called the Gospel of Fire. The book is by the same title. So yes, that’s what got me to do all of it was my, I won’t even say my path to overcoming because I don’t believe in overcoming. I just believe in the moment, right now because this is all we’ve got.

 

[19:37] Ashley James: You know if more people were to stand up and say to their friends or their community, “I’m going through depression and I want to let you know. Let’s get through this together. If anyone else is going through depression, let’s talk about it or suicidal thoughts or anxiety or fear. If we were to instead of all be locked away in our houses, you know if you look at neighborhoods today –

 

[20:05] Eliot Marshall: On our cellphones.

 

[20:05] Ashley James: Right, we’re all locked away on our cellphones.

 

[20:08] Eliot Marshall: In our houses on our cellphones.

 

[20:10] Ashley James: Right, right. We’re so isolated. We’ve really created a society in the last generation that’s very isolated. The best thing for mental health is to do it as a community. I did this really amazing interview with this guy who travel around the world to study these techniques that are actually working at helping end addiction and helping end like mental health issues like depression and people who –

 

[20:44] Eliot Marshall: What’s his name?

 

[20:47] Ashley James: I will remember.

 

[20:49] Eliot Marshall: Is it Johann Hari?

 

[20:50] Ashley James: Yes.

 

[20:53] Eliot Marshall: I’m trying to get him on my podcast because he wrote those two books are amazing.

 

[20:57] Ashley James: His books are amazing. Yes, I had Johann on. It’s funny because he was like –

 

[21:01] Eliot Marshall: So his book the one Lost Connections and that’s about anxiety and depression, right? The other –

 

[21:07] Ashley James: I had him on the show right as his second book came out. So we talked about both of them.

 

[21:10] Eliot Marshall: That was Lost Connections.

 

[21:10] Ashley James: Right, we talked about both of them.

 

[21:12] Eliot Marshall: I hit him up. He’s writing a third book right now. He’s like, “Give me six months and I’ll do it.”

 

[21:19] Ashley James: Sweet. Well, he’s a great guest. I’ll vouch for you.

 

[21:23] Eliot Marshall: Yes. I love his books.

 

[21:25] Ashley James: He shares his stories.

 

[21:29] Eliot Marshall: Chasing the Scream because that was the one about addiction. So, Chasing the Scream is about addiction and then Lost Connection was the one about anxiety and depression. My favorite part of that book was the apple. Did you read the book, Lost Connections, did you read it?

 

[21:44] Ashley James: No. I did the interview.

 

[21:47] Eliot Marshall: He tells this story where he’s in, I don’t know, Indonesia or somewhere. He gets sick. He eats this apple and he gets sick like really, really sick. They didn’t know that it was the apple yet. So, he’s telling the story and he’s vomiting everywhere. He barely stayed alive. He’s finally in the hospital. He’s like, “Can you please just give me something for this?” They’re like, “No, we can’t because we don’t know what’s wrong yet. We need your nausea so we can help you.” Sometimes, we need our anxiety. I need my anxiety so that it can help me. It can point me in the direction that I need to go to find my power.

 

[22:29] Ashley James: Yes, because if you keep going down a path, like focusing on what you don’t want to have happen in the future, the anxiety gets worse and worse and worse. So like, okay I’m going down the wrong path. Let me start going down the right path.

 

[22:40] Eliot Marshall: Or you could drink it away, right?

 

[22:43] Ashley James: Sorry?

 

[22:43] Eliot Marshall: We can drink it away with alcohol. We can drug use it away with a whole lot of things, right. Then all we know, I think we both know that what happens is it comes back and it just keeps coming back a little worse and a little worse and a little worse.

 

[22:59] Ashley James: Yeah. He shared some stories about people who, when they got together as a community to support each other that their depression went down significantly. That even people who were, you know contemplating suicide stop contemplating suicide. The idea that bringing together community to support each other does so much for mental health. Things just simple like volunteering. Doesn’t have to be, it could be any kind of volunteering. It could be any kind of volunteering like volunteering at a cat shelter or a dog shelter or volunteering in a soup kitchen or whatever kind of volunteering. The fact that you, they say that the number one thing if you’re depressed, go volunteer. Be part of a community. People start to care about each other and help each other. That they just show unanimously people have less depression and less suicide. Less of being trapped inside yourself when you do things like get into community and volunteer.

 

[23:59] Eliot Marshall: That was my whole goal of my book. First one. So I was introduced to this lady. Her name is Erin Weed, she’s amazing. She does public speaking. I thought I was going to do the whole public speaking route. She does this thing called the Dig. She finds one word that describes you. My one word is power. So that’s why Find Your Power. But what we got to, she was like, “Man, I really don’t know if the speaking route is your way yet because 1) you curse a lot. But I think you’re amazing. And your people.” I’ve been pretty good so far. What are we, 20 minute, 30 minutes in and I haven’t done it.

 

[24:40] Ashley James: You’re doing a really good job. You caught yourself. There is an s word. You almost said it. I was like, smooth.

 

[24:48] Eliot Marshall: Yes. My wife says this about me, I’m like a fungus. I just grow on people. So, that’s why she was like, “Look, you need to start a podcast so people could get to know you. You need to write this book.” The company, she gave me this company. Man, they charge $25,000. $25,000 to write this book. I’m sitting there thinking. I’m like damn it, $25,000, that’s a lot of cash. How do you get an ROI in $25,000 for a book? Because I got to split with Amazon and this and that, right? I’m not Johann Hari. I’m not a New York Times bestseller already and all this stuff. Then I had to rethink it. I had a moment where I was like, man, what if I write just the most amazing book. What will make it so amazing is that one person will contact me and say that I saved their life. If that happen, if one person just hit me up on I I’d have Instagram or Twitter, wherever and said, “Yo, dude. I was getting ready to check it out and you made me not.” I was like, damn, I’d have to write another one then because a life is for sure worth $25,000.

 

[26:02] Ashley James: So did you do it with them? Did you spend $25,000?

 

[26:04] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. I did it. My ROI is ridiculous. Because I had gotten more than one. My ROI has been ridiculous.

 

[26:14] Ashley James: So you really helped save people with your book.

 

[26:17] Eliot Marshall: Yeah and like the whole, we found this why in the academies that I own, you know. We had this, it’s just nobody ever has to be alone. I know I teach martial arts. I teach this violent thing. I have UFC fighters. We’re trying to beat each other up. That’s what the goal of the whole thing is on the outside, on the outside. But man, what it really teaches you, what Brazilian jiu-jitsu really[y teaches you. Do you know anything about it?

 

[26:46] Ashley James: I studied martial arts when I was a teenager and the early 20s.

 

[26:51] Eliot Marshall: Okay. So, what it does, so Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a grappling art where we submit each other with joint locks. The whole position is controlled. Like a joint manipulation of a major joint like your knee or your elbow and chokes, strangulations. We get to practice at full speed because when you lock my arm out straight I can be like, “Oh man, that thing’s not going to go any straighter.” So I tap. Right? So I’m trusting you with my life and you’re doing the same for me. The choke is the same. The better you get, you get to learn how to like be in this submission holds and kind of deal with like, “So, I’m getting choked and I feel this. This is very uncomfortable but I just have to stay really calm. Because I know that freaking out is not going to get me out. So the calmer I stay right now the better I’ll be able to process how to deal with this arm around my neck. It’s not all the way locked in. Like I could still breathe and blood is still flowing through my brain. I’m okay.” How do I stay okay? But those moments. That’s really hard. It’s super hard. It takes a long time how to stay calm in that moment of being strangled. That’s what martial arts and specifically Brazilian jiu-jitsu is teaching us in my opinion is it teaches us how to stay calm in the very, very worst moments that our life is going to bring on us.

 

[28:19] Ashley James: Well, because your body perceives a choke hold as a threat. It wants to go into fight or flight to try to save your life. But being in fight or flight shuns the blood away from logic centers of your brain. So now you’re not, hopefully have some kind of muscle going but you really don’t have clarity of mind when you’re in fight or flight.

 

[28:42] Eliot Marshall: Well, everyone goes into fight or flight in the beginning. If you came into a jiu-jitsu class today, I put my arm around your neck and you’re going to be like, “Oh, God.” You’re going to freak out. Everyone just goes bananas for the first couple of years when they’re getting choked. Then they tap. You go and you start again. That’s the beauty of it though is it goes through like this human lifecycle. Like you’re born, you get to live and fight. That’s the fight and then man you die. You get choked out. Then you get to live again. Then you get to be reborn. You get to try it again. You get to try a little different this time. Like, “Okay, this time I’m going to do this.” You can see whether it works or it doesn’t work. But it’s really safe because you put your partner’s taking care of you. Like I said, his life is in your hands and your life is in hers. So, it doesn’t matter. You build this insane trust with somebody else because you have to do this really hard thing, beating each other up. But you have to do it safely. Because most of my students are not trying to be champions. We have schools littered with somebody who goes to work all day and then has two and a half kids and a white picket fence, right? Like the average American. That’s who we teach. Yeah, we have phenomenal champions as well, but who we teach is, like who we really teach, is you, Ashley. Are you married?

 

[30:11] Ashley James: Yes.

 

[30:12] Eliot Marshall: And your husband and your kids. That’s who we teach. You have zero goals of being champion. But for some reason, you keep walking in. You keep doing this really weird thing like Fight Club.

 

[30:24] Ashley James: You create a community. I loved my martial art family. It was so cool. We’d go out to dinner together after most workouts and hang out and huge amount of bonding. You really, really start to care for these people because you’re right. You’re putting your life in their hands. They’re putting their life in yours. You develop trust really quickly. There’s a great amount of respect. Did you start to notice, like when you dived into this community, that you were getting emotional healing from being part of a community that was so accepting of you and helped you to drop your guard?

 

[31:08] Eliot Marshall: So, I didn’t notice it until later. You know, I really didn’t notice it until one of my students passed away to be honest with you. He passed away. It was at the end of my stint, of my acute nine months. Let’s say, it was much greater. It was down the road. I didn’t cry yet. I hadn’t cried. I was sad but I didn’t cry. He was poor, his very poor. Their family was poor. They couldn’t afford to like give him a service or anything. So we brought them out to Colorado, because they weren’t from here. We, at the school, we just paid for everything, right. Like plane tickets, we just took care of it. So, I had to say something. I had to give a eulogy. I absolutely lost it standing up there. I was baffling, crying, sobbing buffoon. What I realized was that man, over the last two years that my students saved my life. Because I was like, “Come on man, you got to show up to teach your class. You got to show up. When you go teach that class, it’s got to be the best class possible.” Like every class has to be amazing. That was my goal through the day. That’s how I got through the day. Then just more people showed up for me, more people showed up for me. I was trying to give the most that I could. Just by them coming, they gave me the greatest gift that they could ever give me. So, they saved my life. I didn’t really realize it until like that moment, standing up there. I was sobbing. His mom was there, my students, a bunch of my students. I was a mess. I was a mess. But that’s when I realized that all we have to do is give. If we just give, even in the worst times, even in the hardest times, that’s when you got to give the most. Just give. Give to other people. What comes back to you is going to be so stupidly much better. You can’t, I don’t even know how to explain it. Like I don’t even know how to explain it.

 

[33:42] Ashley James: Well, you showed up for them. You kept putting, you kept getting up every day, getting out of bed, putting on your clothes. That was your motivation to keep going, right? In the hard times, was making sure that you brought your everything to the lessons that you’re teaching them. But if you didn’t have your students there for you, you weren’t having a reason to live at that point, right?

 

[34:09] Eliot Marshall: Right, yeah. Look, I had a great wife and kids but like they were like the root of my anxiety. Mine is all around sleep. So, I freak out with the sleep. So I was like, man I’m not going to sleep and then when I don’t sleep I’m going to go crazy. Renee is only going to put up with this for so long and then she’s going to leave me and then she’s going to take the kids. But then I’m going to go more crazy. Then I could just play this circle in my head. It was awful. Like I said, it doesn’t go away. It gets quieter but it doesn’t ever go away from me. So, I couldn’t lean on my family. That sucked, right? Because normally that’s what you do. You lean on your family and I couldn’t do that. Because they were like, the one thing my oldest would do, I think he didn’t understand it. I don’t think he knew at the time. But right when we were tucking them into bed, I would get into bed with him, I would like lay down. Sometimes I’d be like losing it. Maybe he could feel it, he would just like put his hand on my back. That always helped a little. He’s like my mini me, you know. I had to, for the most part, lean on something other than my family, my at home family. I had to really lean on my students. My mom and dad lived and my sister, they lived in New Jersey so I could lean on them a little bit. I wasn’t worried. They weren’t part of the anxiety. A lot of therapy. I go to therapy every week. Still, to this day, every week I go talk to my therapist.

 

[35:56] Ashley James: That is so healthy. I think e most well-adjusted people go to therapy. The old paradigm is, you know, therapy is for crazy people. It’s just like, you know what, therapy is for people who want to be mentally strong. I have a friend who said this. I guess she’s a millennial, she’s like an older millennial. But she said this on Facebook, she said, so she’s a chef. She’s a personal chef in Seattle so she like caters to people. One customer will be paleo, the next one will be vegan, the next one will be raw vegan, the next one’s like I don’t care, I just want to do delicious, the next one’s calorie restricted, the next one’s allergic to garlic. I mean it’s just like the list goes on and on. So, she has to like balance in her mind.

 

[36:38] Eliot Marshall: I hate this by the way. Starbucks is who did this to us. Okay.

 

[36:44] Ashley James: She has to balance in her mind all these different diets and really caters to their taste. Maybe one doesn’t like Indian and the other one does. So, she’s really good at that. She has a daughter who’s about four and a wonderful boyfriend. She also has a horrible commute because Seattle has really bad traffic. She really seems like she got her stuff together. She said this on Facebook the other day, “If you think I’ve got my stuff together, I wouldn’t have my stuff together for the three times a week I go to therapy.” She’s like, “There’s nothing wrong with me mentally and we need to break away in society from this idea that we go to therapy when there’s something wrong.” You go to therapy to make sure that you can keep it together. She says that that’s how she maintains an incredibly successful business and she’s an amazing mom, an amazing girlfriend. She’s got everything together because she goes to therapy three times a week. She says she would’ve exploded and probably killed everyone by now if it wasn’t for the fact that she goes to therapy. So I just, I love that. That idea that you find the type of therapy, you find the type of therapist that really jives with you and you do it because it allows you to stay sane.

 

[37:55] Eliot Marshall: This is how I like to put therapy. This is my best analogy. You brush your teeth every day, twice a day?

 

[38:01] Ashley James: I’d hope so.

 

[38:03] Eliot Marshall: Why?

 

[38:04] Ashley James: So my teeth don’t rot out of my head.

 

[38:07] Eliot Marshall: Okay. So if you ever get to the point where your teeth are rotting out of your head, is brushing your teeth going to do anything?

 

[38:12] Ashley James: No. You got to go to the dentist at the point.

 

[38:14] Eliot Marshall: You have to go take these drastic measures, right? You have to take these drastic measures. You’re in crisis. How about you just brush your teeth every day and I probably could guarantee you that that won’t happen.

 

[38:26] Ashley James: Right.

 

[38:27] Eliot Marshall: I go to therapy like I brush my teeth. So I can stay out of crisis.

 

[38:33] Ashley James: What kind of therapy because there’s so many different kinds? You know what kind you work with?

 

[38:38] Eliot Marshall: We did a lot of CBT. Now, cognitive behavioral therapy. Now, look for me, I just need a verbal vomit to be honest with you. Because I have a lot of people that lean on me. We have seven schools. We’re about to open our seventh school. They’re all run by my best friends. Every single one of them. I don’t do –

 

[39:03] Ashley James: To be the boss of your best friends can be kind of stressful.

 

[39:07] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. So, I’m not really the boss. I’m kind of the boss but we have like a CEO and CFO. We’re charging, we charge. We don’t do this like most martial arts schools. Like every single one of my students knows that if they need something that I’ll be there. I hope they know. If they don’t know, I hope they listen to this podcast and they know that. Well that pressure, that’s a lot of pressure. So I have go talk about that. I have to go get my feelings, how I’m feeling out. I can’t hold it in because I know what happens when I hold it in. When I hold it in, I can just play this loop in my, I caught myself again, I can play this loop in my head. Just go and go and I’ll be, you know. I can start in the North Pole and I’ll end in the South Pole and that is awful.

 

[40:03] Ashley James: So when you sit down and you just get to verbal vomit all the stuff that’s in your head out, after you get it all out and while you’re talking, because I bet the therapist doesn’t really say much. Do you start to really hear the patterns and hear your own limiting decision and hear. You’re like, “Oh, wow. That’s where I’m coming from. That’s interesting.” You’re practically doing your own therapy.

 

[40:31] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. I do a lot of my own therapy. But I need her. I can’t do it, all right, I’m sure I could. But I love her and we only talk once a week. We do not, I don’t get coffee with her. Nothing. I don’t even know when birthday is and she probably doesn’t even remember when mine is. That’s perfect. Right? That is absolutely perfect. I don’t want it differently because it will ruin what we have. Sometimes we’ll be going and then she’ll go like, “Oh, that doesn’t make, can you sake that again please?” I’m like, here we go.

 

[41:10] Ashley James: That’s awesome. So she’s kind of like a coach in a way?

 

[41:12] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. She’s a coach. She‘s this 70-year-old lady. I don’t want to talk to a dude. If I need to tale to a dude, I’m going to call one of my friends. I tried a duded and it just didn’t work. I was like, man, I’m not telling you anything. No, no. I’ll sit here and do this hour because I’m paying for it but it’s going to be the last time we talk. I just, for some reason, the book that I wrote, I need a lady. They get it out of me the best. I don’t know what it is.

 

[41:43] Ashley James: Well, as long as they get it out of you. It sounds like one of the key, so far what I’ve derived is, to find your power, involve community and get therapy. Does that sound about right?

 

[41:58] Eliot Marshall: Yes. That sounds about right. But we’re going to take a hard left turn here if you want. Everything in my life that happens to me is my fault. You can’t be a victim. Extreme ownership. You can’t be a victim. Extreme ownership. Like Jocko Willink book, Extreme Ownership, is amazing. Everything in my life is my fault and then I have it tattooed in my arm in Greek because it was first said in Greek. The impediment of action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way, Marcus Aurelius. The obstacle is the way. So, if it’s hard, amazing.

 

[42:40] Ashley James: I was in a lot of landmark education classes. Have you ever heard of them?

 

[42:48] Eliot Marshall: No.

 

[42:49] Ashley James: They started back in 60s. They called themselves Est and then they transformed and called themselves landmark. There are personal growth and development classes all around the world. That’s one of the first things they focus on is being a cause in your world, being responsible for your world. Not that it’s your fault. So, this beautiful woman, she’s like 6’ tall. Gorgeous African-American, long hair, always wears these amazing suits that just like, she’s always so beautiful. She stood there. I was at a talk, a landmark education talk in Atlanta, Georgia. She stood there in front of hundreds, hundreds of people and she said, “I take responsibility for the Holocaust. I take responsibility for slavery.” People are like, what? This is charged. What are you talking about? She’s like, “Just hold on. If I am responsible for who I am in the matter, then it does not have power over me.” I get to dictate how my life goes. It has no power over me.

 

[44:06] Eliot Marshall: Nobody has my day, Ashley. It’s mine and nobody else’s. So, I like to listen to a lot of people. One of the people I like to listen to is ET, Eric Thomas, motivational speaker, black guy. He’s like,  “Man, you’re damn right I’m an African-American man in America. You’re damn right there’s racism.’’ He’s like, “My dad left when I was a kid. I didn’t graduate high school and my mom did everything she can but she was a crack addict. So what? So what? It’s on me man. It’s on me. Of course that’s not fair.” Now, on the flip side of that, those of are who are fortunate has to do everything we can to help the less fortunate. So, I play this dichotomy. It takes, I’m glad you do long podcasts because if I just hit one side of, people are like, “Oh man that guy sucks.” It’s your fault then no. It is my job to sprinkle, I’m going to steal on Obama line here, to sprinkle as much luck dust on as many people as I possibly can. However, when I’m talking to that individual person, my job is to be like, “No, this is on you.”

 

[45:29] Ashley James: You’re not a victim of your circumstances.

 

[45:30] Eliot Marshall: You’re not a victim of your circumstances. You can’t control your circumstances. The only thing you’ve got is you. If you want to sit here and mope and cry and everything else and it’s not my fault. Man, if it’s not your fault, if it’s someone else’s fault, you’re screwed because you can’t control other people. I can’t get my wife, could you imagine for you to try to be like, you know what’s your husband’s name Ashley?

 

[45:59] Ashley James: Duffy.

 

[46:00] Eliot Marshall: Duffy. It’s amazing. I’m going to try to get Duffy to not be mad at me ever. You would either go to the loony bin, right? You would either go to the loony bin or you’re just screwed. How could you possibly do that? Man, what if Duffy wrecked the car, his mom died, something else happen and you come home and you were supposed to clean the kitchen. The day went to crap. You didn’t know. He didn’t know. The kitchen, the house is destroyed. You’re not home. He walks in. He’s mad at you. Could you imagine? Not of that was your control over that day and you’re going to try to control Duffy? Come on. You’re screwed if you want to deal with other people. It’s on you. It’s on you. You’re not a victim.

 

[46:56] Ashley James: It’s what we do in that moment. So your husband’s angry, it’s what we do in that moment. Do we play the victim? Because that’s not going to solve any problems at all. Do we divert lame? That’s not going to solve any problems at all. But listening and taking ownership and say, “Okay, now what? Now what can we do to solve this problem. Let’s work on it together.”

 

[47:20] Eliot Marshall: I was going to say, I don’t love my wife for all the good times I have with her. Like man, do you know how many good times, and I’m not talking about sex, you know how many good times I have with so many people? I have so many good times. You love them for the awful ones. Like the three in the morning, both kids vomiting. Like mad at each other. Nobody’s doing what we want to do. Then the morning comes and everyone’s still sitting there. That’s where like the sword is forged, you know. The love is forged in those moments. It’s not forged when you’re out at the best dinner ever and you’re walking holding hands at the beach and madly in love. Man, no way. I mean, sure that’s great, but that’s not when that. The sword is just molded in this hard, hard steel. In my opinion, that’s not when that happens. If you’re single, for all the single people out there right now, man, if you’re dating somebody for a week and they’re like, “Yo, let’s go to Hawaii on this amazing vacation.” You’re going to say, yes but you don’t love them, right? You don’t love them yet. So why do you love people? You love them for the hard times and that they’re there for you, the community, the connection, right? You know. So I have six rules for my kids. This is my second book, the Six Rules of Life for you and your Kids. The last rule, rule number six is we ride or die. If my brother goes down, then I go down. That’s what real love is.

 

[49:10] Ashley James: So you don’t let tattle tailing in the house I bet? You get your kids to help each other.

 

[49:16] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. I don’t listen to it, but obviously they’re children. So, it doesn’t affect the decisions that I’m going to make with what happens next. No way. Their job is to love each other more than they love me and their mom. That’s how I want it. Because they’re going to most likely and hopefully outlive both of us. That relationship has to be stronger than the one that they rely on us for. I know, right now, they rely on us for a lot. But they can’t so hard because they have to take care of each other. They do. It’s really amazing. It’s really sweet, you know. My kids were just at a birthday party, a sleepover. My 6-year-old, I have a 9 and a 6-year-old, my 6-year-old it was his first time that he was sleeping at somebody else’s house and it wasn’t the neighbor right across the street. So he thinks the neighbors across the street I mean. So we have this 1950s relationship with them. We don’t knock on each other’s doors like if I need eggs, I don’t ask for eggs. I just walk in the house, go in their refrigerator, grab some eggs. If they’re not home, I have the code to their door. I’ll unlock it and get the eggs. I won’t even have to tell them. It’s vice versa. Everything’s the same. So this was the first sleepover where it wasn’t that family. So basically his second family. He had a little trouble and his brother was there. The way it went down is he got into bed with his brother and they just slept together. His brother took care of him. All of his brother’s friends were there because it was his brother’s friend’s birthday. So, there were like seven kids there, eight kids. All of my eldest son’s age. The reason my youngest son was there was because the birthday boy has a brother who’s their age and they wanted him to be occupied and not be in his brother’s way. So it worked out perfectly but then come sleep time, he’s never slept anywhere else before especially not away from his mom and dad and especially not where his not very comfortable. They know the rule, rule number six man. They take care of each other. They have to take care of each other.

 

[51:40] Ashley James: That’s awesome. So we got to take care of each other but we need to take that responsibility. I like that dichotomy again. We’re 100% accountable for everything that happens in our life and we need to help those who are struggling. We need to build community. I was just thinking, I have a friend who was born with intense dyslexia. He wasn’t diagnosed just because of the time of when he was born. I think he’s about 50 now. He went through school as intense dyslexic but he was not diagnosed until two years after graduating high school. His mom is an art teacher. So his mom helped him to pour in his creative outlet into things because he had a hard time reading and writing. Of course, getting through high school not being able to learn to read and write is very, very hurt. I’m just thinking like, someone who, like you use the example of a man who is African-American whose dad left whose mom was a crack person and had a lot of crap happen. It’s like, he’s like his not of a victim of circumstances. Yes, there’s definitely bias against me, the racial bias, bias around my upbringing, right? Then my friend over here who is extreme dyslexic. Both scenarios, they could have said that they’re a victim of education system. They’re a victim of the government. They’re a victim of societies’ bias against them. They could’ve bought in the victim hood and not made a life for themselves. But they both just worked even harder than everyone else in order to grab the joy and the life that they want. You know what? They’re probably happier because it was probably harder for them and it makes it even sweeter. That’s like, where going to come back to that idea that we’re in heaven and hell at the same time. Because when you don’t have to work for something to earn it, that doesn’t actually bring happiness.

 

[54:06] Eliot Marshall: No, it brings nothing.

 

[54:06] Ashley James: It brings nothing. But when you have to work your butt off to get something that brings you the most joy ever. So, yeah, we have to work our butts off. No one has it all. It’s like someone might be a certain race but the other person has a learning disability or the other person has a physical disability. Like everyone’s got something going on. Someone has, you know, bipolar. Everyone has something. Everyone has their hell. Everyone does. It doesn’t make racism right. It’s not right. That’s how we as a community need to help.

 

[54:46] Eliot Marshall: And we don’t. Sorry, go ahead. You go. I just thought about something.

 

[54:50] Ashley James: I was just saying that we need to, we obviously as individuals need to help as many people as possible, right? Because if we don’t want a world where there’s racism anymore, then we need to be that example as individuals to help that. But everyone is going through their own personal hell. Everyone has their demons they are facing. Everyone has their struggles, right? So, if we own it and then we plug in to community and help other people and other people help us, I love that idea. Taking ownership but at the same time helping other people because we need to help. Everyone has an imbalance that they’re dealing with.

 

[55:32] Eliot Marshall: We don’t need to compare. Mine doesn’t have to be worse than yours. Yours doesn’t have to be worse than mine. We don’t need to do this. We are where we are. Your hell is hell right now. My hell is, I don’t need to be well, let me tell you. Let me tell you about mine was. That’s unnecessary. The last little part here I think that helps me go through my life with this dichotomy is I don’t believe in the self-made man or that term is something man or a woman. It doesn’t exist.

 

[56:10] Ashley James: Because it took more than one person?

 

[56:13] Eliot Marshall: Man. So, I mean, for example this guy Eric Thomas. He’s like the number two. He’s an amazing motivational speaker. Did he invent the internet? Because that’s what made him be able to do it. It’s the internet.

 

[56:33] Ashley James: Right. So someone who’s a famous author, like he didn’t invent books. Tony Robbins didn’t invent infomercials.

 

[56:42] Eliot Marshall: No. Did you invent the author? Did you invent the printing press? No. Because that’s what did it. Without the printing press your author, your amazing writing skills, out the window. How many millions of people, billions of people came before you who tell way better stories in a way better way but there is no such this as the printing press? But now, while you‘re alive, there’s this printing. All of a sudden you did it on your own? Come on.

 

[57:09] Ashley James: I love that because we often will look at these people who have really made it. They made it. Like Tony Robbins has made it. He’s like a billionaire. He has made it. He’s helped so many people. You look at him and you’re like, “I could never do that.” But that’s like the little voice.

 

[57:26] Eliot Marshall: Yes, yes. That might be right. Hold on. You might not be able to be Tony Robbins. You know what I’m not? I’m not Lebron James. I’m not 6’8”. I am not a physical specimen that Lebron James is. That might be what I am. That’s okay. That’s okay. But there’s something that I could be Lebron Jamesesque at. I could be amazing at something. That’s what we have to realize. We’ve got to stop this comparison. Like, man I want to be like Mike. Yeah, me too. I want to be like Mike my whole life. But it didn’t work out. So what? So what? I’m going to be better than Mike at what I do. I’m going to be amazing at Eliot. That’s what I’m going to do. I hope that my amazing at Eliot shows everyone else who’s a fat Jewish black kid growing up with no friends. I hope everyone that sees that can go, “Oh man, I could be amazing too.” Because I don’t believe personally, I don’t know we might differ here, I don’t believe in free will. I believe we are a product of our chemical makeup and our life experience. We can’t touch our chemical makeup. So, there’s medicines and things that we could do to do that. But that is what it is. However, my job is to touch people’s life experience.

 

[58:55] Ashley James: I’m curious. Can you explain what do you mean by we don’t have free will?

 

[59:02] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. So, it comes down to things like choice. We make choices all the time. Every day we make a choice. Am I going to have apple juice or orange juice, bla bla bla? Can you think of a movie for me?

 

[59:16] Ashley James: The Game Changers.

 

[59:18] Eliot Marshall: Think of another one.

 

[59:19] Ashley James: Rambo.

 

[59:20] Eliot Marshall: Okay. So, why did you think of the Game Changers?

 

[59:23] Ashley James: Because I was just telling my doctor about it today.

 

[59:27] Eliot Marshall: Okay. So, you already had that conversation.

 

[59:28] Ashley James: Yup.

 

[59:29] Eliot Marshall: Then why did you think about Rambo?

 

[59:31] Ashley James: I guess because the Game Changer is about a bunch of athletes and Rambo is also a muscular guy.

 

[59:37] Eliot Marshall: Right. So, all on the same realm.

 

[59:39] Ashley James: Yup.

 

[59:39] Eliot Marshall: Why did you make that choice? Did we free to make that choice or did it just pop in your head?

 

[59:45] Ashley James: I mean, I know a lot of movies. I do. But those two popped in my head.

 

[59:49] Eliot Marshall: It just popped and you can’t even explain to me why.

 

[59:51] Ashley James: I can’t, no.

 

[59:53] Eliot Marshall: Were you free or did it just happen?

 

[59:55] Ashley James: I think it just happened.

 

[59:57] Eliot Marshall: So, at what choices that we make in our life do all of a sudden does this innate you take over and start making that choice?

 

[1:00:06] Ashley James: Well, I think consciously when I catch myself –

 

[1:00:13] Eliot Marshall: I couldn’t have asked you a simple conscious question.

 

[1:00:17] Ashley James: When I have to really consciously go, okay, this is a healthier choice for me to make. So, if I’m in the kitchen.

 

[1:00:25] Eliot Marshall: Sometimes you eat ice cream don’t you? 

 

[1:00:28] Ashley James: Yeah. Because I go, okay. We’ll just do it. But it’s plant based, there’s no dairy in it because that would hurt. But yeah.

 

[1:00:40] Eliot Marshall: Are you a Buddhist?

 

[1:00:43] Ashley James: No. I’m allergic to dairy and I’m plant-based.

 

[1:00:47] Eliot Marshall: Right. But still, the choice, it’s really this really weird thing. Like I said, we make choices all the time but if you could –

 

[1:01:02] Ashley James: But who’s making the choice? Who’s making it, right? Like what’s the –

 

[1:01:06] Eliot Marshall: We are. We definitely are. We definitely are making that choice but we couldn’t make another choice in the moment is what no free will means to me. Because of our chemical makeup and our past experience. That’s what lets me do the whole no blame no credit thing.

 

[1:01:21] Ashley James: Well, you’re also stopping yourself from shaming yourself or holding on to guilt.

 

[1:01:29] Eliot Marshall: Shaming myself and/or others. Even like the Murderer. It helps me have a little empathy for the murderer because if I can say, ‘man, if my life was that life, that’s where I’d end up too.’ I’m not better than that guy. Now, it will be really hard for me to get there right now. It will be really hard for me to be poor and broke and homeless right now, currently. That would take some major screw ups. Is screw up a curse word?

 

[1:01:56] Ashley James: No.

 

[1:01:58] Eliot Marshall: Okay. Nice. Okay. That would take some major screw ups on my part. This would take me years to bring me to mess this up bad currently. But man, let’s rewind 20 years. Let’s go put myself in the veteran, Vietnam veteran or the Iraq veteran or the whatever war veteran. Let me live his life and let me kill some kids, possibly, and then see where I go. But we don’t like to think like that. We like to think like, no man. This you could probably handle that but we’re not talking about this you. We’re talking about a different you. A totally different you. So, that what allows me to have a lot of empathy and try to be like, “You know what, I’m not better than anyone.” At the same time, no one’s better than me.

 

[1:02:54] Ashley James: There’s a principle in neurolinguistic programming that everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have available.

 

[1:03:06] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. You think anybody wants to be a crack addict? I know what I’m going to do today. I’m going to wake up and become a crack head. No one has ever said that. A lot of people smoke crack unfortunately, right? A lot of people smoke crack and do terrible awful things and make terrible awful decisions. They’re doing the best they can at the moment.

 

[1:03:40] Ashley James: What’s the advice you have for people who really want to turn their life around for people who have just come to the conclusion that the direction they’re going is not the right one for them? They see themselves going down that really dark path.

 

[1:03:52] Eliot Marshall: Amazing, good for you. Yes. Amazing. So, now we can start. Now we can actually start to do something. Because you’re saying, I want something different. Until you say that, nothing’s going to change. I mean everyone, probably everyone listening if it’s adults, knows somebody or maybe is that person who is an addict, right? How much talking to an addict can you do to get them to change? Nothing.

 

[1:04:25] Ashley: They have to be ready.

 

[1:04:28] Eliot Marshall: They have to want it. I know sometimes they go, ‘oh man, that’s rock bottom,’ and then nope. We don’t l know what rock bottom looks like. But once you see it, once you are lucky enough, and I said lucky enough, to get a glimpse that you want something different for your life. Now we can do it. In my opinion, the way it’s done, is with mindfulness. We have to learn to be in the moment. We have to just be still and be in the moment. The way I do that is with meditation. I meditate every day. That’s where I start. That’s what I recommend for everyone to start when somebody asks me for some help is I say, “Hey, let’s try this mediation thing.”

 

1:05:15] Ashley James: How did you learn to meditate?

 

[1:05:17] Eliot Marshall: So, religions never worked for me. It may never. I hope I’m going to come off like I’m going to bash religion here because I don’t want to. The whole sin thing doesn’t make sense in my mind. It doesn’t make sense to me. Like I was born. So you’re telling me I was born terrible? In my opinion, if you tie it back, it always ties back to some even or something that 10,000 years ago, five, whenever you choose the religion and the event that happened. Man why is that messing with me? Why am I paying that price? Do I do things wrong? Of course I do things wrong. So, the traditional Christianity and Judaism and Islam, they just don’t work for me because I can’t rationalize it out. Sometimes, the eastern religions, they go a little better for me in my head. Not so much the religion of them but the practice of them. Because you lose the self especially in Buddhism. How do we lose the self? We start losing the self by realizing literally just one single moment. I’ve been able to realize moments in my life a couple of times like where I’ve had just this, so when you fight professionally, when you walk into that cage and that cage door gets locked, there’s only you and another dude in there. You’re not thinking about anything else. Dinner is not going through that head. Nothing. My children are not going through my head. My wife and my mom, nothing. Then there’s even just more stillness. I can remember the very last fight that I had. My nickname’s the fire marshal. Then my coach, he will just call me as fire marshal. He sat down on the stool. I was probably, it was either I was tired or I was losing one round a piece. He looks at me and he goes, “All right fire marshal, we all know that this could be it for you right here.” I mean we’re in the middle of chaos. It’s chaos. A fight is just chaos. Literally, if that person were to kick my head off, they would do it, right? I just remember this piece came over me. This absolute calmness. I went out and I had the best round of my life against the best opponent I ever fought. [Inaudible] It was just this amazingness. I never got to do it again because that was my last fight. So, those moments. If we can start to realize them a little more, how do we recreate that? You recreate that by focusing on your breath, by realizing that all we have is right now and just digging deeper and deeper into that.

 

[1:08:43] Ashley James: I love it. That was so cool. One of my best friends is a master create yoga teacher. Create yoga is not the stretchy kind of yoga. It’s the stretch your mind kind of yoga. I’m going to hook you guys up. I’ve had him on the show before. He’s coming on again. His name is Forrest Knutson. He figured out. He lived in a monastery for several years. He was a monk. He’s been meditating since he was a teenager. He grew up in Idaho and he felt like, well everyone was drinking beer and driving trucks, he was meditating. He did not fit in. So he escaped to California and lived in a monastery for many years as a monk. He figured out a way of using biofeedback to go deeper into meditation and to go actually get into those data waves and stuff like that. So he’s all into the science of how to maximize mediation. I think that you guys would really get along. Actually, you might want to have him on your show actually. He’s so, I mean he’s meditating his entire life. What you described is really non-threatening for people who have never meditated. Okay, I’m just going to breathe and focus on the now and get that all that I have is right now. Okay. I’m just going to breathe and be in the now.

 

[1:10:05] Eliot Marshall: You can’t mess it up. If you sit there for 10 minutes, you did it. Yes, your thoughts go all over here and there, wherever. Yes, sure. Okay. A little stillness in your d ay. I’m reading Ryan Holiday’s new book Stillness. It’s amazing. Just have some stillness every day where you just sit there and breathe. Because our days are chaos. We’ve done this to ourselves. Society has done this. You said you have two kids. How old are your kids.

 

[1:10:39] Ashley James: Oh, I have one.

 

[1:10:41] Eliot Marshall: One, I’m sorry.

 

[1:10:42] Ashley James: She’s four and a half.

 

[1:10:42] Eliot Marshall: Four and a half. Like you’re here, you’re there, your husband, your job, your podcast, your this, your that, right? Then your phone rings, that damn cellphone. Because it never leaves you alone or did you choose to have it never leave you alone. Because you actually respond. I do the same thing. I’m as guilty as everyone. I choose to respond. One of the best things I ever did was turn that damn thing on silent. I’m not a slave to it as much. Every bit it makes like beep, beep. What’s that. Oh, a notification. Oh, Instagram. Oh, Facebook. Oh, my email. Oh, this. Oh, that. We try to say these stuff in the name of protection and security. The kids are at school so I have to have my phone on. Man, our parents didn’t have cellphone. Somehow, when I got sick at school, they found my parents. My parents came and got me. I was never stuck at school for days upon days. We do all of this in the name of security. It’s just not true. There’s not more child abductions now than there was before. So why do you have to track your kid on the cellphone?

 

[1:12:11] Ashley James: Did you find that your anxiety went up when you find yourself at the peak of phone notifications?

 

[1:12:21] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. I had to turn my phone off. Yeah, I had to stop screen time. I get 6 o’clock at night, the phone had to be done. I mean, I can do it now, I do better with it now. It doesn’t bother me as much. I didn’t have my phone on silent so every single time that thing beeped there was something for me to respond to. It’s not true. It’s just not true. Can you imagine 20 years ago? How old are you, Ashley?

 

[1:13:01] Ashley James: I’m going to be, I’m 39 1/2.

 

[1:13:03] Eliot Marshall: We’re the same age. When’s your birthday?

 

[1:13:05] Ashley James: March 7, 1980.

 

[1:13:05] Eliot Marshall: I’m July 7, 1980. Look it up. We’re like almost exact dates. A 7th. So we’re the same age, right? When you are 15 years old and somebody left the house, where did they go? They just disappeared in the ether, right.

 

[1:13:26] Ashley James: We just managed to find each other.

 

[1:13:30] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. But somehow it all works out. Mom came back with groceries and dad put them away.

 

[1:13:41] Ashley James: Life without cellphones was fantastic. It was weird. Every time we drive somewhere, I’m like, how did we get places without gps? I don’t remember. I don’t remember. But I remember driving to addresses that I’d never been to. How did we get there? How did we know how to get to places?

 

[1:13:59] Eliot Marshall: I try to do it now. As soon as I drive to a place, so I do a couple times with the gps when I go places. Then I turn the gps off and go, ‘okay, I’m going to try to remember things’ like you remember things. You should be like, okay dude. So you’re going to get to my house. After you take that left you’re going to take the third right. It’s going to be by the Shell station. You had to like do this. That’s exactly how we did it especially when we were kids and we were riding bikes.

 

[1:14:26] Ashley James: It’s like a whole skill that we don’t have anymore.

 

[1:14:31] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. It’s a whole skill. That’s important to keep. Look, I don’t want to just hate on social media and cellphones because it gives us the connection that we need. You and I, we couldn’t be doing this or have scheduled this or anything without social media and things like I’ll call. Because I call this social media and email is social media in my opinion. So, it’s not all terrible. But we need to have this balance. There has to be a little ying and yang. No victims but everything is your fault, but you got to help somebody.

 

[1:15:08] Ashley James: I love it. I love the constant dichotomy is great. It actually, you have to have higher thinking. You have to have developed higher mental thinking to be able to hold two opposing thoughts at once.

 

[1:15:22] Eliot Marshall: Because they oppose. They definitely oppose. I’m a math major. For me I think this is why getting to the religion a little bit. When it never worked there comes a point where the thought can’t be opposed. That has to just be true. That doesn’t work for me. Because everything in my life is falsifiable

 

[1:15:49] Ashley James: Question everything.

 

[1:15:53] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. Question it but you could prove it wrong to me. I wouldn’t die in the single one of my beliefs. I could be so wrong.

 

[1:16:03] Ashley James: Yes. You’re willing to be wrong. You’re willing to change your mind. I love that. I was so hardcore keto I don’t know three ago. Like this is the best diet in the world. I can’t believe it. A few months later, I’m like, this is really bad. What was I thinking? To be able to go, you know what, there’s some diets are really good for some people at that one point in their lives and then three months later it might be like a poisonous diet for them or a different person. It’s about finding the right diet for the right time for the needs of the person. But not buying into any dogma and so being willing to be wrong. Like I love that you say don’t die for your beliefs. Oh my gosh, people do that all the time.

 

[1:16:54] Eliot Marshall: Not a single one. Not to get political. I’m not going to judge you at all based on this question but are you pro-life or pro-choice?

 

[1:17:01] Ashley James: That’s a really, really hard question. It’s something that I’ve grappled with for a really long time. I thought when I was a teenager that I was 100% pro-life. Then I found out after my mom died my dad, the night my mom died my dad sat me down. Why he waited until she died I guess it was her wish. He said, “Do you know that you would have been an abortion? If I wasn’t pro-life…” I was like, what? My dad said to me, your mom never wanted you to know. I said to her, “No. We’re going to get married.” He completely stopped being a bachelor. He lived such a party lifestyle and he said, I love this unborn child in you and I’m going to raise her or him, because they didn’t know. He was just so, he loved life. My dad has passed since but he loved life so much and he loved people so much. He was so firm that life is so precious. That really laid an impact on me. I’m like, yeah. I can’t impose my will on anyone. So for me it’s like my body. Life is precious. I can only say pro-life in my womb because that’s the only womb I control. I wouldn’t impose on anyone else.

 

[1:18:27] Eliot Marshall: So the only reason I ask is because so many people, let’s just say, ‘okay, I’m pro-life but then I know that you would be pro second amendment. Then you would be pro this or pro that or against this or against that. Because we are so divided.

 

[1:18:46] Ashley James: Right. The second someone is pro guns. That must mean they’re this, that must mean they’re that.

 

[1:18:51] Eliot Marshall: That must mean they’re pro-life. If you’re pro-gun you’re pro-life. That is such crap. That is total crap that this is where we are.

 

[1:19:03] Ashley James: The reason why they created a two-party system, if you look at it, it’s to keep people fighting each other. If you keep the masses fighting each other they will not rise together.

 

[1:19:14] Eliot Marshall: Right. Because you think the other side is so terrible. If you voted for Donald Trump you are such an awful person. I can’t even be friends with you anymore. If you voted for Hilary, oh my God, her emails. We just hate each other. We just absolutely hate. Man, the day I lose a friend because of who they vote for, I have a huge problem. I have a huge problem. I’m not friends with anybody because of who they vote for.

 

[1:19:51] Ashley James: There was a time when I was in high school, this was in Canada, so socialized medicine –

 

[1:19:56] Eliot Marshall: I thought so. I thought so.

 

[1:20:00] Ashley James: House about. I don’t see anymore. So when I first moved here, my coworkers beat the eh out of me within one week. Every time I said eh they’d go turn on me and go b, c, d. About a week after that, it’s a habit for us to say eh. Anyways, I don’t say eh, I can’t shake the house or the about. So in Canada, I was really proud that I wasn’t afraid of shots, getting any vaccines. So I’d be the first in line. In high school, they didn’t need our parents’ permission, I got like the hep b, hep c whatever. I got a bunch of those vaccines. I got a bunch of whatever. A flu shot weren’t really big then. They were just starting to come in but I was super proud of getting them. I was first in line. I would pull up my sleeve. Yeah. Give me extra. Give me more. Give me three vaccines. Come on. I’m not afraid. I love shots. I was so pro that. Then I started to learn more and more and more about pharmaceuticals. Now, I look back, I was a completely different person than what I am now. My beliefs system, thank God I didn’t hold on to a belief system just for the idea that it was part of my identity because I have the exact opposite beliefs that I did when I was a teenager.

 

[1:21:24] Eliot Marshall: If I die thinking what I think right now, oh my God. Let’s just say I got to 80, if I die thinking what I think right now in 40 years, what a waste of time. What a waste of time. That means I learned nothing. It means I read no books. It means I did no study. It means I did no self-exploration. I did no growth. If I die like this, if this is where I end. Man, what a waste of time.

 

[1:21:56] Ashley James: I love that attitude. It’s like, ‘challenge me, challenge my belief system. Let me expand my mind.’

 

[1:22:04] Eliot Marshall: Please. So jiu-jitsu for me, that’s my rule number one is, me and my kids, have to jiu-jitsu because it’s ever changing. The way that you have to deal with it is ever changing. You get a live response, like in the moment. You get showed how wrong you are all the time. You have to adjust to that person. Oh, did that wrong, oh did that wrong. If you bat, when I say bat if you’re successful at 25% of the moves that you try in jiu-jitsu then you’re amazing, you’re a world champion because you’re just wrong all the time. But you get good at being wrong. You get good at adjusting. You get good at not caring about, who cares because all I do is mess up. It’s what I do better than everything else in the whole world is mess up.

 

[1:23:01] Ashley James: That is so cool. That concept of like if you’re actually getting it right 25% of the time you’re like a world champion. So there’s a lot of like getting it wrong and that’s okay because that’s actually good because you’re learning from each instance. I know so many people who are afraid to cook in the kitchen, are afraid to really expand their palette because you know, what comes down to it, they were never comfortable failing in the kitchen. They burnt something once, their spouse didn’t like what they cooked or whatever. It’s like this mental block.

 

[1:23:37] Eliot Marshall: Then they might tie their identity to it.

 

[1:23:39] Ashley James: Right. I’m not a cook. I’m not good at cooking.

 

[1:23:41] Eliot Marshall: Then they tie their ego to it. Their ego gets in the way. But if there is no self and there is no ego then how could get in the way? Right? How can it get in the way? So, if we can work on this then we can just be outside of it a little bit then maybe, possibly we can learn how to cook. Because come on, make a meal and you’re telling me you’ve never had a bad meal before. We’ve all eaten at McDonald’s.

 

[1:24:06] Ashley James: I was never afraid to burn things in the kitchen. I was never afraid to mess up. I was like six or seven years old, my grandmother was teaching me how to cook. She was a German Polish background so she’d perogies and shortbread cookies and this amazing chicken soup. I just loved making things in the kitchen. You know, I burnt so many things. That was just part of the process. My friends love, love eating at my place because I cook really, really healthy delicious food. But I just don’t have a fear of failure because I always am pushing the edge of the limits of what I can do. My husband’s like, “You experiment too much.” Because there’s a potential, there’s always like that fear factor. He’s looking at me, about to put the fork in his mouth, is this going to be bad, is this going to be good? I don’t know. Because when it’s good, it’s really good but I’ll serve anything even if it’s bad. So it’s just he does not know what he’s getting. I experiment. Just last night, we were over at our friend’s house. He was like, “You’re food is always good.” He looks at me. You experiment too much. I’m like, ‘That’s because Naomi only serves you the success stories. She doesn’t serve the failures.” Naomi’s like looks at him and goes, “Yeah.” We fail in the kitchen so we can learn how to make stuff better. That’s just how we succeed. But we don’t see them as failures. It’s like science and it’s an experiment. Then we go, ‘oh, less garlic, less thyme next time.’ I’m going to just do this next time or I need to set the temperature at this. It just becomes this continues ebb and flow of learning and growing the culinary skills.

 

[1:25:49] Eliot Marshall: There’s a saying in business. Hire slow, fire fast. That’s what you have to do because you have to realize your failure then let it go, right? I hired the wrong person, now am I going to hold on to this? Because now, again it’s going to be me who failed because I hired that person. It’s going to be me who failed because I burnt the food or I did this or I did that. Again, this all comes back to you and your ego and yourself. If we can get rid of this idea, if we can just lose this idea because we know that our ego is the enemy, then, that’s another Ryan Holiday book sorry. I steal everything, nothing is original. Somebody did it better.

 

[1:26:36] Ashley James: You should. Because you package it better.

 

[1:26:42] Eliot Marshall: I work on my spiel. I’m even doing it without cursing, look. I’ve never done this before.

 

[1:26:48] Ashley James: You’re doing amazing. You need to like hit the road. You need a whole show.

 

 

 

[1:26:56] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. We’ll get there. It’s okay. It really is okay that we fail. It’s the most amazing thing that we can do is we can fail because it’s just like courage. Courage is not, not being afraid. Courage, here comes one of my rules again, rule number four is being afraid and still doing it.

 

[1:27:21] Ashley James: It’s owning your fear.

 

[1:27:22] Eliot Marshall: It’s saying yes, I’m afraid. But you know what it’s not going to do? It’s not going to stop me. Failure is the same. Of course I’m going to fail. Man, there was this one time we were doing this thing for one of the schools. We spent $26,572.00, I remember the exact amount. It took nine months for them to build it out and then implement it. You know how fast we realized it sucked and wasn’t for us?

 

[1:27:53] Ashley James: I don’t know.

 

[1:27:54] Eliot Marshall: One week. One week. They were sitting there looking at each other going, damn it. But it’s not for us. It’s not who we are. It’s not our culture. It was so bad for us that we could see it. We had to let it go. Almost $30,000. But what would’ve been worse is just try to shove that crap down our people’s throats. What would’ve been worse is to put that out into the ether and put that out into the public so people could see that this is what we’re doing and this is how we are. That would’ve been worse because that would’ve compromised my soul.

 

[1:28:41] Ashley James: Or to have not taken any action in the beginning. If not done it for fear that it wouldn’t work out. Then always sit there wondering, what if I had?

 

[1:28:54] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. Wish I would have. What if and wish I would have are two words that I won’t say back to back.

 

[1:29:08] Ashley James: Unless you’re saying I won’t say them.

 

[1:29:09] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. But I won’t go, ‘what if this happens, what if the sun doesn’t come up tomorrow?’ All the evidence says that it will but there is this possibility. Now, am I going to live my life as what if the sun won’t come up? No, and wish I would have? I’m going to grind until the day I die.

 

[1:29:29] Ashley James: Awesome. It does take that conscious effort to catch yourself and go, “Oh, there I am shooting myself. Now I’m going to choose a healthier thought process.” It takes time to rewire the brain. The neuroplasticity of rewiring that brain. It does take that repetition of catching ourselves when we’re shooting ourselves and go, ‘all right, new way of being. New way of thinking.’

 

[1:29:56] Eliot Marshall: So there’s this competition called ADCC. It is the Olympics for grappling, for jiu-jitsu. I’ve been trying to get into this, you have to qualify or get invited, and I’ve been trying to get into this since I was 21 years old. It was the only thing in my professional career that didn’t accomplish. I got into everything else like I said. Man, this year I got in. I got an invite. At this old man age, I was the oldest guy in the whole competition. Look, there was no dreams of winning. The people that win these are 20, right? It’s like the Olympics. They dedicate their whole lives to this that I don’t dedicate. They train like I work. I train like they might actually work. If I get two hours in a day, that’s amazing. I can’t do that every day but they do. Now what got me good enough for me to be able to qualify is peace of mind. Like a different thought of how to compete. So, anyway, I get in and I have a two-time champ in the first round. It’s invite only. It’s 16 people per division. Only happens once every two years. It’s literally the Olympics. I was like, ‘you know what, I’m going to try this move right away. I’m going to sit down and I’m going to boom, I’m going to try to hit this move immediately. It’s a high risk, high reward move. I didn’t do it for the reward of it. I did it for the risk because I knew it was going to get this idea that I had to be perfect in the match out of my head right away. Immediately. I mean, look, I guess if I pulled it off I’d be on a highlight reel for the rest of my life pulling it off. I was also taking this risk that I was going to be on a highlight reel messing it up for the rest of my life. Where we landed was somewhere in the middle, more towards the bad end. It went very poorly for me. Then I’ve had to recover. I had to work my way out. Look, I didn’t win. But it got me out of the idea of I have to be perfect. Because I went into that and I was like, ‘you know what, I’m going to kill or be killed. I’m really going to go for it.’ Because I don’t want to have a boring match. I don’t want to have a match where like – right?

 

[1:32:32] Ashley James: You didn’t play it safe.

 

[1:32:33] Eliot Marshall: Yeah. If I get killed, even at the end I was like, ‘I’m losing right now.’ I was down on points. I was like, ‘I could stay right here,’ and you never want to get finished, right? That’s when you always have to tap. That always sucks. It messes with your ego. In the moment, I was like, ’okay, here I go. I’m going to take this risk.’ Because the only way that I could actually possibly still win is to now take this next major risk of possibly getting finished. I happen. I got finished because the guy’s amazing. He’s a multiple, he’s like a 5-time, 6-time world champion. So, it is what it is. I’m 40, right? But I was super proud of myself for keeping the kill or be killed mentality all the way through the match. I blew it immediately. I didn’t go ten seconds without an absolute epic fail. Then it had no bearing in the match. I recovered to the point where it was mutual again. The score still stayed 0-0. So, yeah. Fine.

 

[1:33:42] Ashley James: That is so sweet. I love recovery stories. I love it.

 

[1:33:47] Eliot Marshall: That’s what we have to do.

 

[1:33:48] Ashley James: Shaking it off and like mentally recovering is a skill. Like how quickly can I bounce back? Another landmark forum experience after my mom died¸ I went and retook landmark forum which is like their foundation weekend course. That’s the course where they have you get that I’m the cause of everything in my world. People are fighting it. They’re like, ‘what about rape?’ they’re bringing out all the really, really dark stuff. By the end of the course they get it. That it’s taking responsibility so that nothing else have power over you. Then when you’re in that mentally position, you position yourself as being responsible for everything in your world. Then you are at cause in your moment. Every moment you’re at cause creating your world. So a victim of rape is no longer a victim of rape. They’re being a cause in their world. They get to decide how they move forward with their life and not allow that act that happened to them to continue to affect them years later. They’re going to seek healing.

 

[1:35:02] Eliot Marshall: How long are you going to take that person rape you?

 

[1:35:04] Ashley James: Exactly. It’s not condoning it. It’s bad. It’s horrible. It’s wrong. They should all be castrated. Seriously, maximum penalty. The person who had it happened to them, they have the power to become empowered. To find their power, right? So, anyways, that’s like the first step in the forum. So, it’s a freaking heavy weekend. I went. I would drove all the way to Montreal with a few of my friends. One of the oldest forum –

 

[1:35:37] Eliot Marshall: Where in Canada are you from?

 

[1:35:38] Ashley James: I’m from Toronto. Yeah. I’m from North York. One of the oldest forum leaders who have been doing it for like 30 years, I asked him. I’m like, ‘You know, I just lost my mom a few months ago and I’m really depressed. I’m grieving really heavily and I want to, I just couldn’t get out of this loop. I want to make sure I’m grieving healthfully.’ He told me a story. He goes, ‘You know, I was leading a landmark forum,’ he was leading this class for hundreds of people. It was a really big class. They only had like 15-minute break. So he comes out and it’s his break and he’s drinking some water or something. He gets a phone call and his brother had just died of a heart attack. His mind just starts going off. He goes, ‘I thought about our last phone call. I can’t remember if I said I love you or not. I didn’t say I love you. We had a fight. It just started vicious cycle over and over again.’ He started feeling guilty and shame and blaming and agree. His mind was just messed up like anyone would be to get the news that their brother had died. He only had 15 minutes to recover and go back on stage because the lives of these people are at stake, right? They’re all there to get a transformation for their life. He can’t just check out mentally. So he had to like seriously have a moment just like you did where it’s like he had to recover. So he caught himself. This is what really hit me is that even the healthiest people in the world, the healthiest people in the world still would catch the cold once in a while. But it’s how fast their body heals. It’s how fast their body gets over it. So they might have a fever, go to bed with sniffles and wake up the next day and be totally fine. Whereas the average person is in bed for a week or two, right? It’s not that we’re invaluable. It’s not that you get so good at personal growth that you never fail or never slip up. It’s how fast you recover. So he share the story of how he was able to recover from that. He said to himself, he just got in touch with what so, with reality. What is real in the now? He said to himself, ‘I miss him. I love him. I’m sad,’ about his brother. I can’t remember his brother’s name. He’s like, “I miss Tom. I love him. I’m sad. I miss him. I love him. I’m sad.’ Any other thought was not what so, it wasn’t real. It was a made up story. He didn’t know I loved him or it’s my fault. I should’ve done this. I should’ve done that. All of that was just tripping him up. But if had just gotten in touch with the what so, what so is I miss him, I love him, I’m sad. That’s what kept him present in the moment. Then he recovered. Then he got back on stage and he led an amazing weekend for those people. Some people might say he wasn’t grieving healthfully or he was like shoving it down. He wasn’t ignoring his feelings. He was owning them. He wasn’t pushing them away. He is in them. He went through them just like you said, go through it. He went through it. He owned. He recovered. He said, eventually the sadness went away. Then he just said, ‘I miss him, I love him.’ He said, ‘he’s gone. I miss him. I love him. I’m sad. He’s gone. I miss him. I love him. I’m sad.’ Then eventually it was, ‘he’s gone. I miss him. I love him.’ That really helped me with my grieving because it’s like, yeah I had so much going on in my head about blaming myself. I mean my mom died of cancer. I was 22 years old and yeti felt like it was my fault or I could’ve done so. If only I had done this. If only I had done that, right? So I had to own what so and then really get all that stuff that’s not so is not real and stop holding it against myself. I love that your story shows that in the most intense situation. You chose to do something completely ballsy and you’re totally okay that it messed up because you recovered really quickly mentally and it’s all mental, right? Because your game is in your head. So you mentally recovered and you physically recovered and then you like shook it off and you kept fighting.

 

[1:40:06] Eliot Marshall: So for me, we have to practice, right? We have to practice for when the big moments come. Like when your mom dies and your brother dies. Because let me tell you, you know when it’s not a big moment? Who the world champion is. What’s your favorite sport?

 

[1:40:25] Ashley James: Hockey?

 

[1:40:27] Eliot Marshall: Hockey, who won the Stanley cup in 2011?

 

[1:40:30] Ashley James: Oh geez, I have no idea. I’m not great.

 

[1:40:33] Eliot Marshall: Hold on. I love jiu-jitsu. I love jiu-jitsu. Guess what, I don’t remember who the world champion was either. Okay. Because how can it actually matter? If we don’t know who the very, very, if we have to Google who the very, very best was at said activity in that year, at that moment, then it can’t really actually matter. So what is the point of this? The point of this is for me to go out there and practice being in the moment. So even if I would’ve won that match it still wouldn’t have mattered because what’s going to matter is my kids going to need me at some point. My kids going to need me maybe on my worst day. When my mom dies or something and I’m going to have to show up. I still going to have to show up. So that’s the practice that I’m doing. These tough moments that I choose to put myself in, come on. You think somebody cares who wins a barely legal street night on a Saturday night? No. Nobody cares. Because if they did they would remember them all but we sure do remember the times when we really needed somebody. So those are the moments I’m practicing for. Those are the moments that I’m always practicing for. That’s why I choose to do really hard stuff. I like hard stuff. I like working out really intensely. I know about the physical benefits. Yes. I like the mental benefit.

 

[1:42:08] Ashley James: I actually got to hang out with Marilu Henner a few times. She’s an actress. She was in Taxi. She was on the Apprentice. I thought she was really good on the Apprentice. She has this crazy ability that she has photographic memory but you can tell her what happened on May 7, 1982. She will tell you everything that happened, or you could say to her if you’ve met her a few times, tell me every date we ever like every period in time we ever met each other. She just remembers dates and what happened on each day. She’s a really cool public speaker. We had an opportunity to hear her a few times. We were actually in Cancun with her at one point. She has this thing where she says, ‘Choose your heart.’ She has a whole spiel obviously that comes with it. But the point is choose your heart. Don’t sit there and worry about stuff and try to stay safe and try to keep comfortable, right? Because the more we try to stay safe and keep comfortable the more uncomfortable and unsafe we’ll be down the road.

 

[1:43:32] Eliot Marshall: God, it’s so terrible. It’s so terrible what we do though, right? It goes back to our kids. You know, all the stuff we do to make our kids safe.

 

[1:43:40] Ashley James: Then we’re just making them unsafe because we’re making them so naïve and so sheltered.

 

[1:43:45] Eliot Marshall: So sheltered. I read this great book. It’s called the Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt. It’s got this amazing line in it. ‘Are you preparing your kid for the road or are you preparing it the road for your kid?’ We know we can’t prepare the road for the kid because we don’t know what the road looks like. You can’t prepare it. It’s impossible. So you have to prepare the child. You have to prepare the child and you. Where we blow this is that our kids’ failures are our failures. That their sucking at soccer is us or their bad great at school. So what did we do? We stopped keeping score and we stopped giving them grades. You’re child’s four, I don’t know how many sports she plays yet or if she’s into them. But let me tell you, the no scoreboard thing is terrible. It’s awful. You should see what happens. Because we have to options with the no scoreboard thing. If we don’t want to keep score, then we also have to teach our kid not to count. Because if they can count, they’re going to keep score. Since there’s not a board that says the score, they scream the score out. God forbid it’s a blowout. ‘It’s 42-2.’ Because they’re counting. If the actual 42-2 is just right on the board, they wouldn’t count.

 

[1:45:22] Ashley James: And rob it in each other’s faces?

 

[1:45:24] Eliot Marshall: No. it seems like they’re robbing it in each other’s faces when they’re screaming 42-2 but they’re not. They’re just counting. They’re just counting. It seems that they’re bragging but they’re six and they’re five so you practice what you’re learning, right? You’re learning how to count and stuff in school so that’s what you’re doing. Now, look. If you just put the scoreboard up there, they wouldn’t do it. It wouldn’t seem like bragging. They wouldn’t be screaming at each other. None of this would be going on. We could actually talk to our kids about, ‘hey Canan,’ that’s my oldest,  ‘this is how you deal with winning by that much. Hey Canan, when you’re on the other side of 42-2, I know that feels really bad. So now we’ve got some chances that we can make. So we can either quit and give up or we can try to learn how to play basketball better. Now look, I won’t even say quitting and giving up isn’t your thing because maybe you have two left hands and you can’t dribble and athletics is just not right for you. Maybe art is or maybe this is. But let’s go find what you’re great at. That’s okay. I’m find with it. We’re not quitting this season. You chose to play basketball so we’re sticking out. I get it. Not for you man. So, I know I loved basketball but that’s okay that you don’t. What are we going to do for you to be amazing? This has nothing to do with me.’ So all of this prepare your kid for the road stuff it’s all back on us. We just can’t handle our kids sucking.

 

[1:47:04] Ashley James: It’s robbing them of how learning through failure. It’s robbing them.

 

[1:47:11] Eliot Marshall: Have you learned any other way?

 

[1:47:13] Ashley James: No. I do not learn from success. I learn from failure and then I tweak and I go, ‘oh that worked. Okay, keep doing that.’

 

[1:47:20] Eliot Marshall: How’d your child learn how to walk?

 

[1:47:21] Ashley James: Right. A lot of wobbly.

 

[1:47:23] Eliot Marshall: He just failed. A lot of wobbly, right? It does this rock thing. It does shoulder to shoulder, on its back and then it can roll over. That took a couple of months. Then he or she does this thing where they start to get up on their hands and knees and they slip out. Then they do this thing where they get up on their hands and feet and they rock back and forth like they’re getting ready to crawl. They do that for a couple of weeks, right? This was my two anyway. Then they crawl and then they fall over. Then they get back up. Then they start to pick themselves up on objects like on couches. This is where things get really bad because now they’re about to be mobile. You can’t just put them down anymore. They won’t be in the same spot when you get back. Then they start crawling or walking along a couch. Then they get really brave. They get really, really brave. They let go of the couch and then what happens? They fall. It doesn’t stop them. Somewhere along the line we do something to them that stops them with their learning that they think that this doing poorly is really, really bad. It’s just not. It’s just a lesson. Man, sometimes you got to say, ‘Hey Johnny, that wasn’t good.’ You cannot say, ‘Johnny, that wasn’t good,’ and then walk away from them. You have to say, ‘Johnny, that’s not good. I’m going to be here with you until we figure out either how to make it good or how to change directions. But I’m not leaving you. I’ll never leave you. So let’s do this. Which one?’

 

 

[1:49:08] Ashley James: I love it. I love it. Own failure. Be excite about it so we can learn it. Learn from it and grow from it and be willing to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones to be okay with the failure. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s like that is the most joy you’re going to get. I played softball and our team came in dead last. I mean I don’t think we won any games. I look back at that so fondly. I had so much fun. We just tried our hardest, you know. We weren’t crying. We weren’t butt hurt. We were hitting the balls as much as we could and running as fast as we could. We just really sucked and that’s okay. I look back on the times I played softball and I had so much fun. I noticed I was a bit better at the end of the season, right? If we probably kept going year after year we would’ve improved. It’s okay. It’s okay to not be perfect. It’s okay to burn something in the kitchen. It’s okay to not be able to run the marathon.

 

[1:50:27] Eliot Marshall: Then there’s Tiger Woods, right. There’s Tiger Woods who had an overbearing dad who pushed him into this. I’m reading this chapters in Stillness. His dad was intense. There’s a Tiger Woods chapter. I mean his dad in his swing while he was swinging he would through change at him and hit him with things. He called him a little n word. ‘You little n word.’ He made Tiger into this stone cold killer that Tiger Woods became. But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough. Tiger is probably the best golfer that’s ever played. He’s for sure made the most money and what happened? It just fell apart. It fell apart. How did he get it back? Because he just got it back in the masters this year, right. He went a decade without winning a major. What changed? He changed. He started to love people. He started to love the crowd. He used to hate the crowd. Hate them. Hated the other players on tour because that’s what his dad made him into being. Then he saw how wrong it was. He reconciled with his ex-wife. I don’t mean reconciled like they’re back together. They’re not back together. They’re able to co-parent, which is what’s more important than that, right? That’s the biggest thing that that guy has to fix. That relationship with his ex-wife so that they could actually be good parents together. Because there’s going to be times, who’s going to be at the graduation? Mommy or daddy? Man, that’s awful for a child. That’s what he fixed. I mean this story to me is one of the most amazing stories there is. Then he was able to come back. He was able to do what he did at the masters. Look at what it did for us. It’s the first time since September, since 9/11, right? Since 2001 that every single person watching something agreed. On Sunday, everyone wanted Tiger to win. That’s what was amazing. Because damn, we love a success story. We love the success story of Tiger. But man, do we love even more to watch someone fall and then rise again. That’s the Jesus story. We love it. We eat it up. We love to watch it come true, He couldn’t have done that without totally breaking himself down. That’s what he have to do. Then look what it did for us. It was amazing. People that don’t even like golf were sitting in bars watching Tiger Woods cheered like they’ve been cheering for him since 1997. Because it’s amazing. It gave you some hope that as a 40-year-old that you could reinvent yourself. That it’s not over.

 

[1:53:59] Ashley James: Brilliant. It’s never over.

 

[1:54:02] Eliot Marshall: It’s over when the dirt comes on top. My eyes closed.

 

[1:54:08] Ashley James: When they put you in the ground, then it’s over.

 

[1:54:09] Eliot Marshall: It’s over you know. Until that point, we need to thank the people that came before us and live for the people that our coming with us. For me, I just did something that was really interesting. Like I said, my grandparents survived the holocaust but I’m not religious. If you ask me what I am, I’m Jewish because of them, because of their suffering. Last Wednesday was Yom Kippur and you’re supposed to fast on Yom Kippur. I’ve never fasted before. But man, I felt the need to fast and I’m going to fast every year on Yom Kippur until it ends and it’s for them. It’s to pass on my family’s tradition. I told this to all of my students, I told all my students on Tuesday night because it was Tuesday night to Wednesday night. I said, ‘look guys, I’m going to fast tomorrow because my grandparents survived the camps. What happened to my grandfather while in the camps, he swore that when Hitler came, I know we started with this, that his family was always going to get out. He was going to make it so that we would be okay. His blood would always be okay. That man saw everyone die. Like when the ghettos were raided, that was it. That was the last time he saw any of his family. He had nine brothers and sisters, a mom and dad, everything. That was done. That was the last. It was over. He then saw his wife die before him. His oldest child, my uncle died before he died. Then he died finally. So the blood that he didn’t see die was my mom and me and my sister. I can remember my whole life, he just wanted me to do something like financially secure. Do this, do this, right? Like so that I could be be my own boss. He fought me the whole way in this martial arts thing. I always said I was going to open my own martial arts school. He fought me the whole way. Then, when he was dying, I went and took my oldest son because my oldest son was a baby at the time and I took him to see him. So that he could see him before he died. He got to meet him. My wife took my baby and left. It was super obvious that this was going to be it. This was going to be the last time that I saw my grandfather. We started crying, my mom started crying. He looked to my mom and he said, “Just give him whatever he wants. Give him whatever he wants when he wants it.” So, he died with a little bit of money on him, look, just like a little bit. What it did was that my mom did it. My mom gave me that money and that’s what opened my first school to let me buy into that school. I don’t have anything in my life without that, without his sacrifice. Without his whatever it is that he did. So, I’m going too fast. I’m not fasting every year because I believe in any of that stuff. I’m fasting for them. Again, it comes back to people. Help people and pass it along. Because what he did for me, I can’t pay that back, right? I can’t pay that back. It goes back to everything that we were talking about, right? That terribleness of the concentration camps. What it lead to was this amazingness that I have with my jiu-jitsu schools. That’s what ended up saving my life, right? That’s what saved my life when it went dark for me. The awfulness. So, when we talk about the holocaust and things like that. We’re talking about ownership. He just said, ‘look, of course it’s not his fault.’ He’s going to make it so that nobody, his blood doesn’t ever have to deal with this again. Now I get to have this amazing thing that I have. This community of martial arts. It’s more than a community of martial arts. It’s a community of family where man, I get to employ my best friends. They don’t have jobs, they have careers. They have careers. They’re never going to go do anything else unless they want to. They’re going to be able to take care of their families, you know. That’s all because of this awful thing that was the holocaust. That’s why all of this happens. So, for me a little bit of suffering and a little bit of sitting back, realizing that one day a year, I can handle that.

 

[1:59:03] Ashley James: You said you can’t pay him back but you can pay it forward

 

[1:59:06] Eliot Marshall: The only thing I can do is try to make more people be as lucky as I was from that moment. Everyone that comes in contact with me, I just want them to be so lucky. I want them to be like, ‘God man, I’m going to find my power.’ Because look, from the holocaust to here. You can draw the line. You can draw the line of my family from one of the most awful things that’s ever happened in the history of the world to where we are today. To where I am today. It’s a straight line. You don’t even have to make a turn.

 

[1:59:43] Ashley James: I love it. That’s brilliant. Thank you so much Eliot Marshal for coming on the show today and sharing some sage, sage wisdom with us. It’s been a real pleasure hanging out with you today. You’ve given us a lot to chew on.

 

[2:00:02] Eliot Marshall: Just hey, you can do it. You can do it. If you’re one of the ones suffering, just know you’re not alone. If you’re not one of the ones suffering, go make someone’s life better. Just watch what happens. Don’t worry about your life. If you’re not suffering, then man, your life’s doing pretty good. So go make someone else’s life better and then now we’re talking. Thank you so much. I mean, I love this two-hour thing because we got to really talk.

 

[2:00:39] Ashley James: Yes. Awesome. It’s such a pleasure having you on the show Eliot. You’re welcome back anytime. This was great. Of course the links to everything Eliot Marshal does, his books and his podcasts are all going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast, learntruehealth.com. Eliot, is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview? Any final homework that you want to give us.

 

[2:00:56] Eliot Marshall: I would like you to give me some homework. Is that okay?

 

[2:01:00] Ashley James: Oh my gosh, I have homework for you. Are you ready it?

 

[2:01:02] Eliot Marshall: Yeah.

 

[2:01:03] Ashley James: I was going to do it when we’re done recording. I’m going to hook you up with my friend Forrest Knutson. His website is That Yogi Guy. He has a ton of videos on YouTube. Really entertaining because he wants to obviously people to actually watch them. So, he makes this entertaining videos teaching create yoga, which is again not stretchy yoga but like mind stretchy yoga. So, I’m going to hook you up with Forrest. You should chat with him. He loves teaching people how to make meditation even deeper and fast and even better at it. Then I’m going to put you in touch with some of my content for eliminating anxiety because these tools, these neurolinguistic programming tools are outstanding when it comes to just bending the mind so it focuses on what you want instead of what you don’t want to get to the root cause of anxiety. The last thing I was going to turn you on to, because a lot of people get really good results with this, I’m sure you take supplements and all that. Magnesium is the most important mineral in the body for everything. It has 1,800 processes, enzymatic processes they’ve figured out that the body needs magnesium for. So it’s more important than calcium but when we’re deficient in it, which a lot of people are, we actually can have physical anxiety and be in stress response easier. You talked about sleep. People who use this magnesium noticed better sleep, deeper, more restful sleep. So people who are deficient magnesium, I mean it’s over 200 symptoms of magnesium deficiency but sleep problems is one of them. Anxiety is another. So, it’s really hard to get enough magnesium orally because of how the gut works. It just goes out the other end really quickly. So, IV has been sort of the best way but no one’s going to go into a doctor’s office every week and like go get intravenous magnesium. That’s just not economical. The other way is this concentrated liquid from the Zechstein Sea in Scandinavia that contains not only magnesium in its most absorbable form for the body, but also other co-factors. So, you take this concentrate and you put it in a little water and put your feet in it. You soak for an hour and you could be like doing a podcast right now with your feet soaking. I always do it when I’m doing something else too. I’m in the desk or I soak when I’m in the sauna. It’s not like you’re sitting there going, ‘darn, I have to soak and I have nothing else to do.’ That doesn’t ever have to happen. You could always do it while you’re doing something.

 

[2:03:47] Eliot Marshall: We don’t live in that world anymore.

 

[2:03:48] Ashley James: We don’t live in that world, no. People have done, it’s thousands of people, have done the blood test called the magnesium RBC test where they their magnesium before and after 30 days soak challenge. Their magnesium goes up to healthy levels. So they’ve done all kinds of test on it. But it’s really, really cool. So, I’m going to hook you up with the magnesium soak that I love. 3, Bowen, who I’ve had on the show several times, created it after she was 78 pounds, having 30 seizures a day in a wheelchair. She tells her story. It’s really amazing. Magnesium was a major major part of her recovery. That’s why she created the company. The company she was sourcing from, they started their quality went down so she decided to make her own. So, she gets it from the Zechstein Sea. She sells it in liquid form, not in the flake. People go, ‘You could save money by using flakes.’ It’s not the same. They’ve chemically processed it. They’ve taken a lot of the co-factors out. It does not raise magnesium RBC levels the same. So people get a really, really positive difference. So, I’m going to hook you up with Kristen Bowen. Her website is livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. That’s a mouthful.

 

[2:05:00] Eliot Marshall: Now, it’s okay. I’m stoked too. I’m stoked

 

[2:05:02] Ashley James: Livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. The listeners get a discount, LTH, gets the discount. I’m going to make sure. I’m going to send an email and hook you up with Forrest and hook you up with Kristen Bowen. Then I’ll send you some links for the free you anxiety. I have some interviews where I teach some of my stuff. Anyone listening that wants to know for more information, Forrest Knutson who’s an amazing meditator. He’s thatyogiguy.com. The magnesium soak, I’m totally, totally obsessed with. I’ve been doing it over a year. My son for example, they’re hyper. They’re three years old, right. He was three years old at the time. He’d always fight us to go to sleep. He’s an Aries if you know astrology. He’s just like, he’s all about being in the now and being awake 24/7. We put him through the magnesium soak in his bath. It’s not like he knew. It’s a blind test. He didn’t know we put it in his bath. He started to tell us he was ready for bed. He’s like, ‘I’m ready. Could we go read some books? I’m ready for bed.’ We’re like, ‘what?’ So it really, really works. A lot of my listeners said it really helped. So, that’s livingthegoodlifenaturally.com, coupon code LTH. The third thins is on my website, learntruehealth.com there’s a tab at the top that says, Anxiety or Free Your Anxiety or you can type anxiety into the search bar. You can get all my episodes where I teach. Then I have a class. It’s only a few hundred dollars where I teach 21 lessons between 30 and 45 minutes long, 21 of them. It’s just like for a few hundred dollars. It’s everything I’ve taught since 2005 with all of my clients who have amazing success with eliminating anxiety. So, those are my three pieces of homework I’m going to send you some emails.

 

[2:06:53] Eliot Marshall: I appreciate it. I was going to ask for it. I wanted to bring it up that way. Yes, I do take Lexapro. I’m trying to come off of it. We talked about it beforehand. I’m just trying to come off of it just to see what the work that I’ve done over the last three years has been like. Just a test.

 

[2:07:12] Ashley James: Test yourself and go. How far have I come?

 

[2:07:15] Eliot Marshall: Maybe the Lexapro allows me to really go far. That’s okay too. I’m okay with going back on in I have to. So I’m kind of in the middle of it. It’s not the most comfortable thing because there are some definite side effects to it. I would like to still keep going for a little bit and keep challenging. We talked about it offline but I think it’s really important for people to know online too. You are not suffering alone. Whatever you do, there’s this huge stigma around SSRIs and things like that. If you need you need it.

 

[2:07:50] Ashley James: It’s better to be on it and be alive and be thriving than to not be on it and to like go somewhere very dark.

 

[2:08:00] Eliot Marshall: We only get one chance at this beautiful thing that we call life. Man, to go through it. Yes, I do love suffering, but to go through it truly suffering like fighting everyday just to be alive. That’s not living guys. So, if you need help, get help. Please, in whatever way you need to. Thank you for the homework. I appreciate that.

 

 

[2:08:26] Ashley James: Awesome. Well Eliot, it’s going to be fun having you on the show in a year or two. You can let us know the follow up. How has it been? I like doing that with guests where they come back and they share like, ‘all right. Well I got off that med and this is what happened then. Then I wrote my book.’ Whatever. You’re going to share the updates because we’re never done learning.

 

[2:08:48] Eliot Marshall: Maybe I won’t be off.

 

[2:08:49] Ashley James: Maybe you won’t be off.

 

[2:08:51] Eliot Marshall: Maybe I won’t be off. That would be okay too. There’s no attachment to that, right? Everyone’s truth isn’t the same. So it’s going to be okay either way.

 

[2:09:04] Ashley James: I want to hear the update to your continuous journey because you’re constantly striving to grow. So, that’s always going to be an adventure to have you back.

 

[2:09:13] Eliot Marshall: Are you on Instagram Ashley?

 

[2:09:14] Ashley James: @learntruehealth

 

[2:09:18] Eliot Marshall: @learntruehealth. I’m going to follow you in a second. Oh man, I really enjoyed this. Thank you very much.

 

[2:09:25] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the show today and can’t wait to keep in touch with you and have you back on the show and have you share your continuous journey with us.

 

[2:09:38] Eliot Marshall: Sounds great Ashley. Have a great night.

 

[2:09:40] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors’ offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There are so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comTakeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

Get Connected With Eliot Marshall!

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Book by Eliot Marshall

The Gospel Of Fire

Recommended Reading

The Obstacle Is The Way by Ryan Holiday

 

 

Oct 15, 2019

Listen to all past episodes with Eric Thorton:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/?s=Eric+thorton

https://ericthorton.com

 

 

Microdosing Psilocybin Mushrooms Therapy

https://www.learntruehealth.com/microdosing-psilocybin-mushrooms-therapy

 

Highlights:

  • Microdosing psilocybin mushrooms for healing wounds and trauma unresolved by therapy
  • Where to find a doctor that support psilocybin mushrooms
  • Where to buy psilocybin mushrooms
  • Psilocybin mushrooms is not legal in every state or country
  • Factors to consider in using mushroom
  • Microdosing psilocybin reduces bipolar disorder and schizophrenia
  • Predatory energy
  • Looking at food and nutrients from a different perspective
  • Natural healing starts and will be with you for the rest of your life
  • Corporate thought forms
  • How important food is to our brain

 

In this episode, Eric Thorton will share with us today about microdosing psilocybin mushrooms and how it helps the body to heal physically, mentally, and emotionally. We will also discuss where to find doctors who support these mushrooms and where to find them.

 

[0:00] Intro: Hello, true health seekers. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today we have back on the show Eric Thorton. He has been a repeat guest. What an interesting, interesting guest he is. If you haven't heard of my episodes with Eric Thorton, I urge you to go back and listen to them. You can find all of them easily by going to learntruehealth.com and typing in Eric Thornton. And all of the episodes that we've been in will pop up on my website.

You may never have been to my website, learntruehealth.com, because most people do listen to the podcast through their podcast app. So learntruehealth.com gives you a lot of resources that you don't have access to when you listen through any of your podcast apps. So you can you can keep listening to your podcast app but be sure to check out learntruehealth.com because we transcribe our episodes now. We've been doing that for the last few months. Thank you so much to the transcriptionist listening to this right now and typing everything I say. I am truly grateful. It takes a lot of work to transcribe our episodes. But because so many of the listeners kept telling me that they would listen to episodes two or three times and take notes so that they could implement all of the wonderful learnings. I just knew that it would be helpful to you if we transcribed. So please go to learntruehealth.com and take advantage of the fact that we transcribed the episodes.

Also, there's some great resources there. I created a seven day course, a free course with Naturopaths that I just love. We filmed that here at our house and put those videos together for you. They're wonderful foundations of health videos. And it's all free. It teaches you some great information. And that is right on the front page so sign up for that.  Lots of great goodies on my website so check it out.

And you'll want to get on my email list because some time very soon I'm going to be launching a new program that will support you in your health in such a wonderful way. You're going to love it. And your whole family will love it as well. It's going to be just - I want to tell you more but I'm going to wait until we get closer to launch before I tell you. So this is just a little Easter egg right now letting you know that something really exciting is around the corner. And I can barely contain myself. And since you love this show, you're going to absolutely love it. I'm very excited to launch it for you.

So join the Facebook Group. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook Group for updates. Follow us on Instagram, Learn True Health, @learntruehealth. Follow us on Facebook. And also join the email list, go to learntruehealth.com and join the email list so that you can get updates when really cool things happen. I will let you know. Including the very exciting program I'm about to launch for you.

Enjoy today's interview. It's such a unique topic. It's so cool to explore these wonderful, unique perspectives. Thank you so much for being a listener. And thank you so much for sharing these episodes. And I have a feeling you're going to be sharing this episode with someone because it's quite interesting and remarkable. This concept of microdosing psilocybin mushrooms to be able to heal mentally and emotionally. And so we explore all that in today's interview.

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 386.

We're back here with Eric Thorton. We were able to figure out the audio issues from the last episode. So today we're sounding so much better than last time.

 

 

[3:52] Eric Thorton: Great to be here.

 

 

[3:53] Ashley James: Yeah. Great for me to be here, too, in your healing studio here in Cottage Lake, Washington. It is always a pleasure to be here and join you for another very interesting interview. And today is going to be -

 

 

[4:06] Eric Thorton: A little out of this world.

 

 

[4:10] Ashley James: A little out there, man. A little out there. When you first shared with me that clients of yours are using small doses - microdoses -

 

 

[4:19] Eric Thorton: Microdoses, yes.

 

 

[4:20] Ashley James: - of the psilocybin mushrooms. Psilocybin mushrooms, the psychedelic or magic mushrooms but microdoses under the care of a physician that they're having outstanding results in healing deep trauma - deep wounds and wounds and trauma that were unable to be resolved in any other therapy.

 

 

[4:49] Eric Thorton: Including here.

 

 

[4:50] Ashley James: And so your guides shared with you, right?

 

 

[4:54] Eric Thorton: Yes, I did.

 

 

[4:54] Ashley James: So yeah, I'd love for you to just kind of take us back to that moment when your guides first said, "Hey man. You need to do some shrooms."

 

 

[5:03] Eric Thorton: First of all, I've never done shrooms. So I was a little shocked. But I was working with a client who had done shrooms, just sitting talking with the client. And the guide to go, "You need to do that." And I literally - I was like - so they call that gobsmacked. I was speechless. It got me like, "Really?" And they go, "Yes. That will really help you out. You have some deep stuff that you've seen but you can't get to." And I go, "Okay. So if you recommended it." So then I found out the procedures and finding a doctor that did this and went to him. And we did this microdosing. I had five major breakthroughs, major breakthroughs, including one where I got - my little brother died when I was eight and I lost all my memory of that. I stuffed the memory so it was less painful. And so I didn't have any of the memories from eight backward. And they all came back to me. Every single memory. Including down to, literally, the smell of things. And it's all there. I can access any moment at any time. I was - I guess the word I used earlier, I was gobsmacked with that too. So anyway, so then I mentioned it and clients started to go, "Oh, yeah. Done that. Done that." I can find places and do their thing. Some recommended the doctor.

 

 

[6:35] Ashley James: When you said find places and do the thing, what do you mean by that?

 

 

[6:39] Eric Thorton: There are persons on their own. They can - I recommend the doctor and they've found places to get the doctor recommendation go to them. And then they found other places to buy the psilocybin in microdosing amount.

 

 

[6:57] Ashley James: So like Colorado where it's legal now, and Canada. Many of the states and many countries, it's not illegal even in micro doses. So we're having a hypothetical conversation right now because we are talking about a controlled substance for many listeners. We're depending on where they're located.

 

 

[7:16]  Eric Thorton: And I can't recommend that. I can recommend the doctor. But I can't recommend illicit activity. 

 

 

[7:25] Ashley James: Right. And the doctor you worked with is really going out there on a limb because he's working with a controlled substance.

 

 

[7:32] Eric Thorton: Yes. And in Washington State they - and Oregon, I understand, they're trying to pass that it can be used in therapeutic situations. Because as you've read, the FDA is studying them.

 

 

[7:45] Ashley James: Right. I have it up on my phone right now. About a year ago, the FDA approves magic mushrooms, the psilocybin therapy trial for treatment resistant depression. And there's tons of trials. That's just one of them that I wanted to quote because if you're doing microdoses, it's not like a street drug where your intention isn't to get high.

 

 

[8:05] Eric Thorton: Correct. You do it, actually, it's recommended that you take the microdose right before bed. Not when you're awake. And then the breakthroughs, sometimes they can come to you in a dream. But they usually happen a day or two, a week, or a month later. My last one was three months after I was done with the microdosing.

 

 

[8:30] Ashley James: That's amazing.

 

 

[8:30] Eric Thorton: It is. It's absolutely phenomenal. But all the things that I've noticed with clients who found their own route with that, it woke up past life for me. And I've done it and I facilitated that. And one client she said, it changed her personality completely. She was an anxious person all the time. Couldn't get out of it. And she's not now.

 

 

[9:02] Ashley James: So I did shrooms twice when I was a teenager. Right?

 

 

[9:07] Eric Thorton: That's two more times than I did it.

 

 

[9:10] Ashley James: For me, I mean, it was the point - it was with a bunch of friends. It was New Year's. The first time, I went over a friend's house and he's like, "Hey, I got these fun things to munch on." And then we watched some scary movies. And then I was super duper afraid. I think it was like [inaudible 00:09:29] was one of the movies. It was really scary. And then I went to bed and I was really grateful the movie was over. And that's it. But the whole point was to get high. And then the second time was we drink mushroom tea at New Year's, like 1996 or something. And that was, again - and that was a really positive experience. We all just hung out and laughed. And for me, that was a much better experience than a bunch of us getting really drunk. Because  I never liked alcohol. So you know, I felt like much more in control. But everything was just very pleasurable. But when you're doing the doses intended to get you high or hallucinate, do they still have the emotional breakthroughs or the emotional breakthroughs only happen in microdoses?

 

 

[10:19] Eric Thorton: Well, the emotional breakthroughs - there's several things that come into play here. One, you mentioned you did it when you were a kid. So someone went out and picked mushrooms. Well, that's a fresh mushroom. And it's inconsistent with the amount of psilocybin in it. There's many different types. In fact, all mushrooms have psilocybin in it. And fact is, it's recommended by the people I work with to cook even [inaudible 00:10:49] before you eat them because heat kills the psilocybin. So your psilocybin tea, you hardly have any psilocybin in it because the heat - it was hot water they put on mushroom, kills the psilocybin.

 

 

[11:04] Ashley James: And maybe that's why the second time was more enjoyable because it was -

 

 

[11:08] Eric Thorton: Because it was a smaller dose. And then there is of the types that you can find in nature. Ones that will kill you. And there's ones that I understand that's been my experience with clients, too, there's ones when you touch them, they give you a purple color. And when you touch them, they give you a black color. Well, they're both used to get high. But the ones that are with the black color are more for medical therapy. From what I was been told and my research online for things like Parkinson's and that type of therapy. Were the ones with the purple color, when they're fresh, are the ones used for psychological therapy. And now, I am not quoting anybody that's just been my experience.

 

 

[12:00] Ashley James: Right. Well, there's many kinds of mushrooms.

 

 

[12:04] Eric Thorton: And you can die from mushrooms.

 

 

[12:05] Ashley James: Oh, absolutely. If you go out and you start picking mushrooms -

 

 

[12:09] Eric Thorton: Right. So this is not for any endorsement of going out and picking mushrooms.

 

 

[12:13] Ashley James: Right. Unless you know what you're doing.

 

 

[12:15] Eric Thorton: Even then, your mushrooms are inconsistent. And so with the microdosing, they test the amount of psilocybin in naturally dried mushrooms. And then they grind it up to get the right amount in it for the medicinal side in the capsule. And so it's scientific. So you get the certain amount of psilocybin with every single dose. And when you go and you just take a fresh one, you don't know how much you're getting. So I have noticed, I have one client who found their way - God only knows - got ones with the black. And that, what I've noticed, causes the brain a lot of problems for a long period of time. And she noticed that too.

 

 

[13:05] Ashley James: What do you mean by problems?

 

 

[13:06] Eric Thorton: It caused her actually more anxiety.

 

 

[13:09] Ashley James: So there are side effects.

 

 

[13:10] Eric Thorton: There are side effects, right. And it caused her body feeling neurological problems. And found she got it from some weird source. And I just went, "What did you take?" Because they were showing me she was taking the wrong thing. And it's caused her problems. So we've been working with that.

 

 

[13:32] Ashley James: So your guide showed you that she was taking the wrong one.

 

 

[13:34] Eric Thorton: Yes. Right. And I didn't know the difference at the time.

 

 

[13:39] Ashley James: I wonder if there was mold. Like, if there's some kind of contamination. Was it the mushroom itself that was just not the right one for her? Was it contamination that was harming her?

 

 

[13:48] Eric Thorton: That, I can't answer. I have no idea. As the guide just said she took the wrong one. She didn't get microtherapy. She went and she got some from a person who grows them for his Parkinson's disease. And it was like, that's uncontrolled. There's no science in that. There's no measuring the amount. There's no looking for toxins in it. It's just picking it and putting it in your mouth. And that's not really - to me, that's not really a safe practice in any way, shape, or form.

 

 

[14:23] Ashley James: Right. My husband, the man sitting beside me right now - he's waving at you guys by the way. He's smiling and waving and nodding at the microphone.

 

 

[14:33] Eric Thorton: With a knowing in his eyes.

 

 

[14:34] Ashley James: He's very kindly saying hello with his eyes. He's shy. And you were just saying about when you were a kid, you'd go to Marymoor Park with your dad to do cycling and that you'd see all kinds of people picking mushrooms. And this is a big park in Redmond, Washington. And then, Eric, you mentioned that psilocybin -

 

 

[15:01] Eric Thorton: Psilocybin mushrooms, as far as the ones that you would use in therapy, grow - my understanding - is they grow where there are people. They don't just grow out in the middle of the woods where there's no people. Now, there could be many factors for that, like, you know, they grow if you have cows. They like cow pies. When there's people and herd of cows. So there could be reasons for that, that they like that type of an environment. And they're usually out in the open. They're not in the deep woods, the type that you would use for that. But I've never picked them. I've just been told and read that they grow where there's people because they're for people. They're designed for people.

 

 

[15:46] Ashley James: It's a beautiful metaphor.

 

 

[15:44] Eric Thorton: It's a beautiful metaphor, correct.

 

 

[15:47] Ashley James: Regardless of whether it's true or not, it's a beautiful metaphor. Because I've heard this from several experts that when you find a poison in the woods - so you come across a plant that would harm you - that nearby is the cure. That nature is in such balance that for animals and humans - us being also animals - that wherever there's a poison, nearby is the cure.

 

 

[16:12] Eric Thorton: That's [inaudible 00:16:12].

 

 

[16:14] Ashley James: Yeah. So the thought that these mushrooms that can actually help us heal anxiety and heal trauma from our past and allow us to access memories to work through them with a professional that these mushrooms grow near us.

 

 

[16:31] Eric Thorton: Right. So my sons found them in the front yard at certain years. I'm going, "Why only certain years?" You know, I don't know enough about the taxonomy of mushrooms to understand when they grow and when they don't.

 

 

[16:47] Ashley James: Or they're sensing your stress levels.

 

 

[16:50] Eric Thorton: Maybe.

 

 

[16:53] Ashley James: "Eric really needs these. Let's grow in the front yard."

 

 

[16:58] Eric Thorton: I've never done them recreationally. But mushrooms, from what I've seen with my clients, it gets into places that the conscious and current personality of the individual will not allow them to go. Period. End of subject. as far as normal healing, normal psychotherapy, and things like that. That's why the FDA is doing the research on anxiety. Because it allows the body to go there. And then you go with someone that can help you work through it, do the energetic work with it, and it's amazing what takes place. And I've noticed with the clients I've worked with, that they'll get effect without the work here that we do. But then we go in and get into this amazing spaces for these people to change who they are just almost overnight out of the issues that they have found detrimental.

 

 

[18:11] Ashley James: I wonder if the microdosing of the psilocybin affects neuroplasticity. So neuroplasticity being - for those who don't know - it's like if you've done a habit, if you've done a pattern in your life, whether it's an avoidance pattern or whether it's anxiety or depression, you do a pattern. Every time you do a pattern, the neurons in the brain wire in that way deeper and deeper and deeper. And it's harder and harder to break that old habit. Like someone who's smoked cigarettes for 40 years versus someone who just took up smoking can quit. They haven't ingrained the habits into their neurology on a deep level versus someone who smoked for 40 years. It's like part of who they are.

 

 

[18:57] Eric Thorton: Well, that's the mechanism. I guess they're trying to find it with the research. But it's got to be something like that. It's never really been looked at. The guys right now are semi-affirming. So you're on the right track.

 

 

[19:08] Ashley James: I feel like the word is neuroplasticity. That it's -

 

 

[19:12] Eric Thorton: So it allows access. So that would be allowing access to the neuroplasticity to get that to change. And they create a better environment for the changing of those things. That would make sense. It would have to be researched. And that type of thing, you could probably seen SPECT scans and such within the brain.

 

 

[19:30] Ashley James: Right. Did the guides have anything they want to share about this therapy or about this topic?

 

 

[19:37] Eric Thorton: I don't know how to answer that. Because I asked them questions and they affirmed we're not.

 

 

[19:41] Ashley James: Right. I know it's kind of like handing the mic off to the guides, "Here, just talk."

 

 

[19:45] Eric Thorton: They don't do that.

 

 

[19:46] Ashley James: They don't do that.

 

 

[19:47] Eric Thorton: Unless I'm in deep meditation with them then we have conversations. But from this point of view, it's me ask the question. And that's why it's so important for me to be able to verbalize and understand what's going on a little bit with the client so I can ask the correct questions to the guides. And as you know as an interviewer, one question leads deeper and deeper and deeper. And that's how it works with guides.

 

 

[20:15] Ashley James: That's very cool.

 

 

[20:16] Eric Thorton: But like they said, "Yeah. You're on the right track."

 

 

[20:21] Ashley James: With the neuroplasticity.

 

 

[20:21] Eric Thorton: With the neuroplasticity.

 

 

[20:21] Ashley James: Very cool. Yes.

 

 

[20:22] Eric Thorton: So it will be interesting to see what the researchers find.

 

 

[20:26] Ashley James: Right. Right. Well, you know, I hope that the drug companies are not just trying to do all this research so they can make an artificial drug they're going to charge $1,000 a pill for.

 

 

[20:38] Eric Thorton: You bet they are going to do that.

 

 

[20:42] Ashley James: I hope we'll have access to the natural psilocybin in the microdoses. So tell me about it. So you take the one capsule -

 

 

[20:51] Eric Thorton: You take one capsule right before bed.

 

 

[20:54] Ashley James: And you go to bed. And it's, again, a microdose that they've done in a lab. They've tested it. So it's like a certain milligrams or microgram.

 

 

[21:00] Eric Thorton: So it's consistent and there's no poisons with it. There's no fungus with it. There's nothing to - the theory is, there's nothing to give you that minimizes any reaction - adverse reaction you might have. And it's controlled because it will give you the same - the 300 milligram will be consistent, or 200 milligrams or 150 milligram, capsules will be consistent throughout your therapy. Where if you just took a mushroom, put it on its scale, and it said 300 milligrams, well, that's fine. But it's not consistent to the next mushroom and the next one.

 

 

[21:37] Ashley James: Well, because you don't know how much the active constituents are in each mushroom. So you do want to have the access to the ones that have been tested and impurity.

 

 

[21:48] Eric Thorton: Purity and source. So anyway, you do this every third day, so twice a week.

 

 

[21:59] Ashley James: So when you went to bed that night, were you a little nervous?

 

 

[22:02] Eric Thorton: Yeah. I've never done - I don't do things like that. I'm just not that kind of person. And it's like, it's fine. I think it's great when people do it. Because like I've worked with people with iowaska, you know, all the other POD and rest of the other ones. I forget. But I've never done them myself. And so I was a little apprehensive. And I just woke up and I didn't even know I took anything. I had no idea.

 

 

[22:27] Ashley James: You didn't wake up in the night or have weird dreams or you feel high when you woke up?

 

 

[22:32] Eric Thorton: No, no. Not at all. And I understand if you were to, you'd be within an hour of taking the actual dose. But it's -

 

 

[22:42] Ashley James: If someone took it during the day, would they felt high or is it certain microdose that you don't?

 

 

[22:46] Eric Thorton: I had one person said he felt kind of like he had smoked a little bit of pot. He took it during the day. And that was it. There was no hallucinations. There was no nothing. You just felt a little bit aloof. But that was it. So it was my fourth dose where I actually woke up and was like, "Oh, mushrooms." And I just went back to sleep. But the breakthroughs came the next morning or the next day.

 

 

[23:23] Ashley James: So take us back to the next morning. So after the first dose -

 

 

[23:27] Eric Thorton: After the first dose -

 

 

[23:27] Ashley James: - what was your first breakthrough?

 

 

[23:29] Eric Thorton: The first breakthrough was the second dose. And that's the one where the image that was given me was - which I mentioned earlier - the eight year old. But I was in a jar. And this little eight year old was in a jar on a shelf. And he was screaming to get out. And I'm going, "What?" So then I thought - and I heard from - so I heard the instructions to open the jar and let him out.

 

 

[23:59] Ashley James: When you hear instructions from your guides.

 

 

[24:00] Eric Thorton: From my guides. Right. And I said okay. So out pops this guy and he jumps - this is a vision I'm having. And he wants to come back. So then I did EMDR [inaudible 00:24:16] and talked about it and worked it through and brought him back in with the help of the guides. I couldn't bring him back in without the help of the guides. And when he came back in, doing the therapy, and writing and journaling, and really respecting the gift, that's when all the memories were set on the back.

 

 

[24:39] Ashley James: What's EMDR?

 

 

[24:41] Eric Thorton: Eye Motor Desensitization And Realization.

 

 

[24:43] Ashley James: Got it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. 

 

 

[24:44] Eric Thorton: These are both - their hypnotherapies. And that was where then it woke up my working with it from past life. And then I got to see, "Okay. This is what has to be done for people if they're going to do this." And I thought, "Oh, well. That's never going to happen."

 

 

[25:07] Ashley James: What? Your clients aren't going to do this?

 

 

[25:09] Eric Thorton: They're not going to do this. They're not going to come in. They've already done it, found it themselves, har about it. But people are talking about this stuff now. And then clients are doing this stuff. And all of a sudden they're showing up at my door. And I'm like, "All right. Well, there you go." And I'm just working with the after effects of their decisions. And it's phenomenal breakthroughs. And it's helping people. They're doing it for depression for the study for the government. But my understanding and from what people are telling me, it reduces bipolar and schizophrenia for up to a year so you don't have to take the medication. And it's along the lines of LSD therapy. It's the exact same therapy. And you can also - I don't want to mention this one. But there is - ecstasy is a hallucinogen. And if when it's microdosed, it can do the same thing as LSD psilocybin.

 

 

[26:20] Ashley James: Well, they're doing this in Silicon Valley. They're doing this in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. It's big. It's big in the tech world. So I'm sure they're doing it here in Seattle. It's big in the tech world to microdose LSD, microdose ecstasy, microdose mushrooms in order to expand their mental abilities. There's this 19 year old that we follow online, who has made how much millions - millions of dollars now trading cryptocurrency. And he microdosed LSD and overnight was able to understand a whole new level of how the system works and how to trade. And then he teaches it. And that these people who are like -

 

 

[27:04] Eric Thorton: He's breakthrough.

 

 

[27:05] Ashley James: Well, he had a huge breakthrough. He's a 19 year old. He's never been trained in it formally. And he basically outsmarted all these guys who, like, have PhDs in math, who were able to - they developed this software to watch how the markets work. And he just looked at it on LSD and it was like seeing the matrix. But it was a microdose. It wasn't like full on, you know. I hear these stories all the time that people are using nootropics or using some form of - hopefully naturally derived -

 

 

[27:39] Eric Thorton: Hopefully.

 

 

[27:40] Ashley James: -- substance to expand that neuroplasticity for the desire to be even better at what they do in the tech world. And be even more creative.

 

 

[27:54] Eric Thorton: You have to be part of this. You said "their desire." That's very important, is you just take it recreationally. You're not directing the wisdom of the mushroom, those are the words I've used or I've been told. There's a wisdom. And recreational, well, it's going to give you recreational wisdom. But if you're going after something and you're open to it, and you journal about it, and you set intention before you even do the microdosing, that's when you get the effects. If apparently, the mushroom - or your brain knows, I guess it would be the call to wisdom of the mushrooms, but - okay. But your brain knows what to do with it with you setting the intention. So doing it recreational, like you had done twice, versus the guy you just mentioned, he had a purpose. So he was able to open up the neuroplasticity of that part of his brain. So from my understanding is that does need to be done. There's a procedure that's done. That is being mindful, setting intention, journaling before, journaling after, getting professional feedback. And that's what I've gotten from the doctors. And then we take it a step farther.

 

 

[29:21] Ashley James: Yeah, when people come to you -

 

 

[29:22] Eric Thorton: When people come to me we can get into that. Get in deeper and change and work with and create, if there's predatory energy, for example. It's not going to allow your brain to change. And if we can get rid of that then we're going to allow it to change. If there's a part of me where we did a little soul retrieval. We had to respect what took place, the severity of why that part of me was jarred or canned, whatever. And work its way back into my life where our normal journey doesn't get there, whether we didn't get rid of the predatory energy, the pain the child had, the trauma, the predatory energy from other people that were around me at the time, et cetera. It was all there in the jar. And when you pull that back out, you have to dissect it and get it down to the exact thing that you're working with.

 

 

[30:25] Ashley James: Right. And so that's why it's so important to work with professionals like you and the doctor that - hopefully, the doctor that prescribed is also a therapist so that they're able to help you process things. But it's important for you to have that intention journal and then work with someone like you who can help to work with them on the energetic level and process it.

 

 

[30:50] Eric Thorton: Well, at least recommend - because you're setting the intention, if you want psychological changes, you should be getting whether - you should be working with somebody to help you explore those changes so you can get them and access them. So if you're just taking them and not doing anything with it, you're not going to get the depth. Period. I mean, that's the fact of anything. Looking at a book doesn't get the information in your brain from reading the book. So it that same correlation. You've done it, you're looking at the cover, "Is that nice?" Some people might like to get high from it or whatever. But you're just looking at the cover of the book. It can show all sorts of details in the picture but you're not absorbing it. And so that's where the therapist comes in. And I can help people with that or find a therapist that's going to help you explore that.

My therapist, I'm bringing the breakthroughs into therapy to see if I can squeeze out a little more even. I mean, it's a different perspective. And as you know it takes a village. And I am a firm believer in that. So why not bring in to my therapist? And the therapist just went, "Yeah. That's great." So we're bringing a little more out of each thing. Because like the child that popped out that we pulled back, he was a full person. Somebody did some more therapy lately and it was sound therapy. Which might be someone you're interested in interviewing. But he looked at that moment. I brought it to him. And he goes, "Well, there's guilt there." And I go, "Huh. I never thought of that." And he goes, "I just see guilt. I don't know what it's attached to." But he goes, "I see guilt." And he did some music with it and it brought up - because I was born with these gifts on. I looked at it and I asked my guide, I go, "The guilt of this eight year old." And they go, "Well, an eight year old doesn't have guilt." I mean, they can feel guilty but they can't be guilty. They're still innocent.

 

 

[3:14] Ashley James: Well, what about survivor's guilt? When a loved one dies, we can feel guilty that we were the ones that lived and they died.

 

 

[33:24] Eric Thorton: But an eight year old doesn't have that depth. And I look back at that and there was no guilt. And there was afterward and there was guilt from the experience and the benefits that I got from that time of him passing.

 

 

[33:44] Ashley James: You felt guilty for gaining benefit from his passing?

 

 

[33:48] Eric Thorton: Yes. But not -

 

 

[33:50] Ashley James: As an adult?

 

 

[33:50] Eric Thorton: As an adult but not as a child. But of course, other people may have felt guilty because of the situation he drowned. And I took that guilt on. Because I am a healer. And it was from close loved ones. And I saw that and it was like, "Oh." I meditated. I went to my guides. They said - and had kind of conversation. I said, "Yeah. There is guilt. But it's not your guilt. You took it on." And then I looked at that and I felt it in my body. And sure enough, and I came out of this really bad spot I have in my back. And it was like - and then the muscle started to shift and soft it up, because I have muscle spasm in a certain area of my back. And that was just three days ago. And it's like I'm sleeping much better. And bringing this to and being honest and upfront with another practitioner, his point of view allowed access because I have a more verbal connection for me to go, "Okay. What is this?" And I was able to get a yet another benefit from the mushroom therapy. I can't say enough about it as far as for what it's helped me with.

 

 

[35:32] Ashley James: But it's not a cure at all. You don't just take it and then go about your business. It opens the door and you have to walk in and you have to got to do the work.

 

 

[35:42] Eric Thorton: You have to do the work.

 

 

[35:44] Ashley James: And you are like an amazing healer. And you're going to other healers because they're getting different - they're allowing different perspectives. And the guides are just going to do everything for us. You can't just sit there and be like, "Okay. Fix me." We can't give away our free will. We have to go and live and explore and connect with other healers and the therapist and they help us to - they help us to see deeper but we've got to do the work.

 

 

[36:14] Eric Thorton: We have to do the work. You mentioned free will and this is one of those pet peeves of mine. People go, "Well, it all has to be done in free will." Of what? People go, free will of the conscious personality, free will of the subconscious personality, free will of the child personality, or free will of the soul's personality. The body wants everything level, kind, sweet, everything. We all want that. But that's not the purpose of life. The free will we're looking at is to stay within the free will of the soul. It's not the free will of the body. And at first I didn't get that until I realized just how weak the body is. The body is a tool. And it keeps going to this place of neutrality trying to achieve that. It is in that process of trying to go there that we have the learning and the wisdom. And as soon as we get there, something else goes. Because if you're in that neutral place, you're in neutral.

 

 

[37:27] Ashley James: Homeostasis.

 

 

[37:28] Eric Thorton: Homeostasis. You're not growing.

 

 

[37:28] Ashley James: It's like purgatory. You're not growing.

 

 

[37:30] Eric Thorton: Right. You're not growing. You're sitting there not growing, what's the use? The soul is here to learn. So it's the free will of the soul that we look at. And this seems to - and I promote this in everything I do, it takes a village. And so you have to be able to go and sit there innocently with people and their gifts. And even when people call in, we check to see if I can be used to help there or not within their free will. And if they're not there, I don't know. They're not there or we're not a match. It's not, they're not there. It's just we're not a match.

 

 

[38:12] Ashley James: Right. You're not like, "You're not good enough for me."

 

 

[38:15] Eric Thorton: No. Sorry. If you implied that, I mean I didn't mean to say that. Butt it's like, "No. It's just we're not a match." My gifts - why spend the money where you're not going to get the most for your buck.

 

 

[38:25] Ashley James: I really respect how you work with people. So when my listeners call in before you guys work together because you can work through Skype very effectively.

 

 

[38:38] Eric Thorton: And we are doing in person [inaudible 00:38:40].

 

 

[38:40] Ashley James: Or people can come in person if they choose to, which is also great. But you're very effective over Skype also. Because it's energy work.

 

 

[38:50] Eric Thorton: It's energy work.

 

 

[38:50] Ashley James: But it's fun to see you in person. It's fun to be here.

 

 

[38:52] Eric Thorton: It is. It's fun to work with people in person. I love it.

 

 

[38:55] Ashley James: But when they call in, you meditate and it takes - sometimes it takes a few days. And you talk to their guides. And your guides and their guides have a little [inaudible 00:39:05] with you. And you figure out if it would be in their best interests to work with you.

 

 

[39:12] Eric Thorton: Right. And it's their best interest. And remember it's the best interest of the soul. It's not the body. What the body wants is different -

 

 

[39:23] Ashley James: Homeostasis.

 

[39:23] Eric Thorton: -- with homeostasis. It's not what the soul needs. So we see if this perspective can help them or not. Sometimes, I guess, you would call it - they say yes, but it will be limited. And so then I tell the patient that and the client that. And because of tightly held beliefs. So sometimes they say yes. But it may be just one session. Or yes, but maybe two sessions, or no. But it's pretty rare. But once in a while they do say no. And people that call in that just want a magic bullet to make everything better, well, sometimes that happens. But most of the time it's a little work. Yeah. So like you mentioned, a friend that had done the iowaska for a number of times to help her immune system. Well, it helped her. That's terrific. And there's no one in the US that probably would have recommended that as far as a professional doctor or somebody.

 

 

[40:40] Ashley James: Right. Yeah. She went all the way to Peru. And I just published that episode. But she went all the way to Peru and had like, I think, 27 doses of iowaska. She's on the mend. And she went for - she wanted to help her body, help her immune system, help her physical body heal. And then she started seeing emotional, spiritual energetic benefits from it as well.

 

 

[41:05] Eric Thorton: Right. Well, iowaska, it helps open us up but it's more of the consciousness. Versus I have found iowaska doesn't get in the same way as microtherapy. It has it's -

 

 

[41:21] Ashley James: Microdosing.

 

 

[41:22] Eric Thorton: Microdosing. Versus the major dosing, which gives you a hallucinogenic and body high and to loosen through all your whole body. You understand. But I worked with people who've done iowaska and they can get in trouble energetically. But we can also repair that and bring it back. And even make iowaska look at those journeys and see what benefit we can pull out of those. And sometimes it's pretty amazing. Sometimes I have ran into it that the person is just a drug addict and they're substituting ayahuasca for heroin. And it's like, "Okay. Well,  that's how deep they are and that's fine." But we're not going to pull anything else out of it. But if they had strong intention when they did it - personal intention - we can pull quite a bit out of the journey that they had in South America. I woke up past life where I've done this before with people, you know, 500, 600 years ago. So it's a different story today.

 

 

[42:29] Ashley James: So you were a shaman.

 

 

[42:30] Eric Thorton: I was a healer that did iowaska [inaudible 00:42:35].

 

 

[42:35] Ashley James: In the Amazon?

 

 

[42:36] Eric Thorton: Actually, it was in what would be -

 

 

[42:41] Ashley James: Central America.  central

 

 

[42:43] Eric Thorton: Kind of central - the Amazon Basin. And I remember the past life. But I didn't - it wasn't woken up as to what I did. And part of it was for people that were bipolar, had mental issues. We did. I [inaudible 00:42:58] journey and followed them through the journey and helped them through the journey. Where today's facilitators, they call them shaman. But they're not. They're facilitators. And so because of that, it can be a bit dangerous. And so I've never recommended it. I've seen people that have done it, then we've taken it and worked with it. But I've known people that have been damaged by it as well. Because the facilitators are trained and then they're given the title shaman. And they're not born a shaman.

 

 

[43:42] Ashley James: With their gifts on.

 

 

[43:43] Eric Thorton: With their gifts on. They are people that have learned techniques. And techniques don't get in there and can't work with hallucination. They can't work. They don't see what is actually going on in that person's mind to help them. To work with them in the little fine - working with them one-on-one and being there and see what they're seeing and experiencing what they're experiencing and refining it and telling them where to go and what to do and what to reach for. That doesn't happen in South America. Which is what I used to do a long time ago, you know, hundreds of years ago, was I would sit with each individual and work with them and literally be with them in there and experiencing what they're experiencing. But fully aware and conscious. And then we maximize it for them.

That was fascinating to see that. The level I did it in the past life. And then bring that to people after they were done with the experience. Because here, that's what we have to do. It's amazing how the little - the fine tuning that can be done which is very important. And you have to have a very amazing facilitator to do that that you can trust. Because they can fine tune it according to their ego. So they have to listen so that they will hear the other person's guides and say, "Okay. What do we do with this nuance? And what do we do with this nuance?" Because otherwise, they're working out of ego and they're going to install their - and they're going to see the individual who's working their problems as a problem when it's not. It's a beginning of a journey or a breakthrough.

But the person's own experience, the facilitator would say, "Oh. That's an issue. We must get rid of that." Versus the guy goes, "No. Okay. Now, let's take it to this step or this step or this step. So it's a very different experience, that's all I'm saying. When you're working and working with it very specifically and experiencing the same thing the person is experiencing.

 

 

[45:57] Ashley James: It's kind of frustrating, many of us can't talk directly to our guides like you can. It's kind of like, "What's the point of having guides if we can't talk to them?" Like, how do they guide us if we can't talk to them?

 

 

[46:11] Eric Thorton: Well, the interesting thing is, is my guides don't guide me. They'll tell me, "Okay. Eric, you're in danger" or something like that. Which is a great tool. There's no question about that.

 

 

[46:26] Ashley James: Because of life. 

 

 

[46:27] Eric Thorton: But with my problems, my personal problems, my human problems, they don't give me the answers. Because it's the journey that you find the answers. If they give me the answers, it's just like going through to the dictionary to learn how to pronounce a word. You try it three weeks later and you can't pronounce it again. Because you've just been given the answer. There's no wisdom with it to hold it in your brain. So that's what most people want, they want to talk to their guide so they can go, "Well, can you take care of this knee pain for me." And they go, "Oh, sure." Bam. And it's done. Well, what was the purpose of the knee pain them? So they've just eliminated the purpose of your knee pain, which was growth. So guides don't do that. Things that aren't guides will, but the guides will not do that.

 

 

[47:14] Ashley James: What do you mean by things that aren't guides?

 

 

[47:16] Eric Thorton: Predatory energy. They will give you answers to things. Like I had a client that said they went to this local guru. And they met each other at this meeting. And he said, "You and you have to get married." And they went and did it. Because this guru was popular. Oh, it was a marriage made in hell. And they didn't - they just learned how to be miserable. And I was like, "That was not a guide. A guide will not tell people to get married."

 

 

[47:55] Ashley James: Right. Because that eliminates total free will of the soul.

 

 

[48:00] Eric Thorton: Free will of the soul. And it causes karma. It causes sin. I mean they had a whole bunch - a whole slew of bad experiences. And I look at bad experiences as good because if you can turn them into something good. Well, I guess it did. It taught them that everybody out there who says they're a spiritual person, they're spiritual but who are they connected to? There's no discernment out there in the new age. And that was ego. And that's one of the ways you tell is, if they're making ego based statements when you're in therapy in doing that.

 

 

[48:39] Ashley James: I imagine most healers or therapists kind of are coming from ego.

 

 

[48:46] Eric Thorton: They are. Well, that's - even I have to go through my ego to do that. So it's a tough statement to make. But something that is trying to control is an ego versus something that is not trying to control is presenting.

 

 

[49:09] Ashley James: So presenting information versus trying to control your decisions around it.

 

 

[49:13] Eric Thorton: Correct. Taking away just providing miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle. That is pleasant for the human homeostasis. But it's not good for the soul's progression. Because you're taking away the wisdom or the purpose of the pain or suffering. Instead of using it and growing from it. So then the pain and suffering becomes irrelevant. And your body gets rid of it. And it's done. And it takes a little more time but it's the level that the healing took place is permanent at that point. Because nothing's coming back. So like if you go to someone who's healing with predatory energy, they'll make the statement, like we talked about earlier, "Well, if you don't heal it, you're at fault." That's an ego statement. And you're blaming someone and you're making them feel inadequate.

 

 

[50:18] Ashley James: This was a healer that was -

 

 

[50:20] Eric Thorton: That I worked with.

 

 

[50:21] Ashley James: That you worked with that was saying that if their clients didn't heal, it was their fault.

 

 

[50:27] Eric Thorton: It was their fault. And you run into a lot of that in new age. It's, "Well, you just weren't ready for it." That's a real common statement. You're not ready yet. And it's like, "Well, that's a cop out." You're not ready yet? Well, we look at that as, "Well, why not? What's blocking it? What do we have to learn first?" If we use the term, "So that they can be ready to fix that." And that's where we're very different, is people will come in with these desires and we find a way to - I'm lead a way to get to them eventually. Sometimes it's time to deal within exactly that versus you have to come around the other way and do the homework to get to the actual thing that originally they came in for. And so it takes effort.

 

 

[51:27] Ashley James: So everyone's ready.

 

 

[51:29] Eric Thorton: Everybody's ready.

 

 

[51:31] Ashley James: Everyone's ready, it's just -

 

 

[51:32] Eric Thorton: It's just finding the pathway.

 

 

[51:32] Ashley James: Yeah. Exactly. What do you got to work on - first, it's kind of like when a sweater becomes that big ball of yarn not like, you know, whatever. I have this big image in my mind of like this impossible, not of yarn. Like, anytime we've tried to make a sweater and then the cat got into it or something. And it's just this impossible giant. It's like, what string do we pull to unravel this mess?

 

 

[51:58] Eric Thorton: What's the right one? There's a word for it, I'm forgetting what it is. But just being able to uncover that key point. And that takes effort to get there. And then once you get there, the healing that takes place is permanent. And if you can't get there, it's not going to happen. Whereas someone with predatory energy might go, "Hit the key point, impress the person, how did you know that?" And then they feel better, they get a placebo effect. And then it comes back. And that's when the new age will often go, "Oh, you weren't ready yet. It's not me. It's you, basically." And the [inaudible 00:52:45].

 

 

[52:45] Ashley James: Which is installing guilt and shame.

 

 

[52:48] Eric Thorton: Guilt and shame and the theory of original sin, that we're not good enough. And to me, I mentioned earlier, I heard someone say one day that, healers create karma so you don't want to go to a healer.

 

 

[53:06] Ashley James: Don't go to a healer because it creates karma for you to go to a healer? 

 

 

[53:10] Eric Thorton: Right. And I'm like, well, I suppose if you got some new age point of view and you could cause healer for the karma - karma for the healer or the individual, either way. If you're making statements that make a person feel bad or inadequate.

 

 

[53:30] Ashley James: The healer is putting their garbage or emotional - their emotional baggage on to the client. And the client walks away holding on to negative beliefs about themselves that the healer either installed or reinforced. Then that is creating karma. And for listeners who haven't heard Eric in past episodes, Eric has gone deep into what is karma, how to work through it, what's it purpose. And so it's not necessarily the new age version or definition of what you think karma is. It's actually - it's quite different. It's quite interesting. I definitely recommend listeners to go to learntruehealth.com and search Eric Thornton in the search bar and listen to our past episodes together. Because we've gone into -

 

 

[54:18] Eric Thorton: They kind of build on each other.

 

 

[54:19] Ashley James: Yeah, they do. They do build - each talk has built on the next one.

 

 

[54:22] Eric Thorton: Right. So we're assuming each time that you've listened to the other episodes. Even we were talking about psilocybin therapy. Well, if it's done right, it really helps. If it's done wrong or not complete - I guess wrong is not the right word. Just not a complete - you don't have someone who can really dig in there and see what's going on -

 

 

[54:51] Ashley James: So if you're just doing it on your own, you order it from Canada and you start microdosing yourself.

 

 

[54:55] Eric Thorton: Right. You start microdosing yourself and you get all these effects and then they do away Then you've just proved yourself that psilocybin doesn't work. Because you didn't do something. That's why I recommend the therapy.

 

[55:09] Ashley James: Right. It's like saying a key to a host doesn't work because just having the key in your pocket doesn't open the door for you and let you inside magically. So it's opening the neuroplasticity but then you actually have to go in and do the work.

 

 

[55:24] Eric Thorton: Do the work. Find the wisdom. Find what it is that happened. It can be from past life. It can be - we've literally done repairs at past life that are depths that are phenomenal. How that past life affects the current life. And we couldn't get out of it before. And we go, it's just because that person's psyche is set up that way. It's not a right or wrong thing. It's just it's set up that way. So we couldn't get in there and now we could. And that being kind and gentle and bringing that up, finessing, listening for the wisdom, listening for the who, what, when, where and why. And so the person can absorb it, experience it, identify the habits. Part of neuroplasticity is identifying those habits and going, "Oh, I'm not there anymore." Giving them an opportunity to bring in another facet of their personality that they just discovered.

So you're replacing - which is what we're doing. It's like if someone has a habit in neuroplasticity, like we talked about, they do things a certain way because they've done it that way for 10,000 times. Well, we can identify that. We can look at it. You can look at the benefits, the non-benefits, et cetera. You can see it. You can roll it around. You can play with it. But until you get in there and actually look at why the habit formed in the beginning.

 

 

[57:01] Ashley James: What is it replacing? Or what is compensating for?

 

 

[57:05] Eric Thorton: What it's compensating for. Specifically what it's compensating for so you can recognize it inside of you, where are you finding it in your body. Recognize, we actually give you the words. And we go - we've done a little bit with you dusty. It's like we've given you a new place to go with the issue you have so that you can go, "Oh, there's the old issue. And this is the new habit." So it's the same type of thing. You have to dig back to find the old issue. Then you have to find what the guide say would replace it. And then you identify it and then you are in free will. Changing your free will of the body, the consciousness, and the soul.

 

 

[57:54] Ashley James: Can you give us an example of someone you've worked with that before they had the psilocybin and then something specific they're working on. Then after the psilocybin. Can you think of a client? Obviously, don't share their name. But think of something like they were able to resolve those habits.

 

 

[58:15] Eric Thorton: I had one client that had an issue came up and they called it gluttony. And I've had that for several people. And it's ,like, we saw where it came from, where the habit started. And what specifically triggers that emotional response in that person's brain. Now, we've gone back prior to that experience with them and with that. And we're able to look at it and see it. But we're not able to go there. So we've been -

 

 

[58:53] Ashley James: What do you mean by not able to go there?

 

 

[58:53] Eric Thorton: Well, we didn't get down to the very, very specific incident combined with this person, combined with a series of instances from past life. When they starved to death in a past life. Another one they were with a - I'm trying to remember here - with an extremely controlling situation where they were rationed food. And then in this life when they were an infant, they were left to be a little more hungry. And so when they were an infant, it triggered the past lives. Not even - they consciously remember it. It triggered the past lives and it formed this subconscious energy which they called gluttony. Because of the reaction to hunger from past lives in this life. Well, prior to that, we could see that mom wasn't really consistent with feeding the baby. And I could see that something from past life was there. But the guides - as I could see the distance. But the guides will say, "No. We're not there yet."

 

 

[1:00:18] Ashley James: And then after doing the microdosing psilocybin that person was ready to go there?

 

 

[1:00:28] Eric Thorton: And that person went there on their own and saw that experience. And then before they could go, "Yeah. My mom's ADD and blah, blah, blah." But they actually went there and they experienced it.  And it opened that porthole up. So when we came here, we saw the experience again. And then the connection to it and what tripped it for this major thing that happened when they were an infant, what tripped it. And that was the past life experience. And it brought forward frequency that allowed predatory energy into it. And that's when it majorly took on a role in that person's life. And they couldn't control their eating.

 

 

[1:01:09] Ashley James: So how long ago did you work with this person, weeks or months ago?

 

 

[1:01:15] Eric Thorton: That was four months ago.

 

 

[1:01:16]  Ashley James: And so you were able to go there with them, heal that release the predatory energy.

 

 

[01:01:22] Eric Thorton: And they're slowly losing weight.

 

 

[1:01:25] Ashley James: And do they feel now in control around food? Or has it shifted overnight? Or is it a process?

 

 

[1:01:32] Eric Thorton: It shifted overnight in that they felt - their report to me was that they felt even though they were still eating, it was more of a choice now. It's the choice started naturally coming in. And they didn't fear hunger. And they realized it just started coming to them, a lot of hunger is because we're dehydrated. And they just started naturally drinking water. It was a natural healing. And it just slowly started. I mean, they're still working it. But it's slowly started, the body looking at food and nutrients from a different perspective. Instead of panic about it, it's like, "Oh, well, let's look at that."

 

 

[1:02:14] Ashley James: And maybe I could drink a glass of water. Or before it was -

 

 

[1:02:18] Eric Thorton: But they just go for the glass of water. They sit with it. They said, "Oh, that's the glutton." And now this is a healthy person. So they sit with it. And then the right thing comes to them. And it's slowly - because they're not affirming the old neural pathways. They're now going, "Okay. There's the neural pathway that was set in, that's the glutton." Versus now the neural pathway is, "Okay. Well, we're not a glutton anymore so we got time." And then they just go and get a glass of water. They don't have to think, "Okay. I got to go get a glass of water." They just go and get a glass of water. Or they'll push the food away. And they put smaller servings on their plate. And that's a natural healing.

If you're fighting it all the time, then you're not healed. So that's the amazing thing. It's just a slow shift in their perspective of food. Because they don't have to keep reaffirming the pattern that was set when they were an infant. They could look at it and go, "That's not me. That came from a combination of past life and this life from circumstances that are beyond my control for this body. And now, I can relax about it. And go, 'Okay. So what's up?'" And they slowly just make different choices. And they've lost - I think they're probably up to seven or eight pounds now with no effort at all. Well, that's a completely flip of the situation. So they're now looking at - and they literally said they can push away." Oh, I've had enough of that."

 

 

[1:03:56] Ashley James: Well, the first time I worked with you, I mean, it was major. I think we did ,like, 12 different things. It was pretty big. But you removed three pretty intense predatory energies that I had since I was nine and it was blatant for me. It was clearly blatant. I've talked about it in past episodes. But what I noticed more lately, I'm really getting that I can only eat half as much as I used to. Like, I push the plate away or I'm not going for seconds or I'm taking a smaller portion. There's a restaurant I really liked because you can be whole food plant based at this restaurant. And it's a Mongolian grill, no oil, you can say no oil. And I go and I just get an entire bowl of vegetables and then choose if I want the garlic water on it or something. And they have brown rice. And in the past, I was able to eat three bowls and be like, "Okay. Now I'm full." Now I can barely finish. It's like, one and I'm full. I'm like, "Damn. I mean, this is an all you can eat place and I'm -"

 

 

[1:05:05] Eric Thorton: I got to get more. I got to get my money's worth.

 

 

[1:05:05] Ashley James: I got to get more. I paid for it. Right. I got to get my money's worth. But I eat one bowl and I'm like, "Whoa. Okay. I'm done." That was great. One bowl of vegetables and a little bit of brown rice and I am done. And so I sat there, I was like, "What has changed?" What has changed? And the only thing that working with you and removing those predatory energies. And it's just amazing that -

 

 

[1:05:28] Eric Thorton: Well, it was the predatory energies that kept you in fear going for more or thinking that way to set off your natural regulator. And it's like yours didn't require the mushroom therapy to get there. Which I've worked with a lot of people and it doesn't require that. Just that one person that did. But it's like, "Okay. That's a natural healing." It just starts and that will be with you for the rest of your life. And if you make a choice to eat a lot more again, that's still your choice. And in the end, you can undo - you not undo. You can create a new neural pathway if you want.

 

 

[1:06:01] Ashley James: I can choose. 

 

 

[1:06:02] Eric Thorton: You can choose.

 

 

[1:06:03] Ashley James: But if when we have predatory energies, it's like --

 

 

[1:06:05] Eric Thorton: You can't choose.

 

 

[1:06:07] Ashley James: Yeah. Our choice is being hijacked.

 

 

[1:06:09]  Eric Thorton: You're being compelled, I call it.

 

 

[1:06:11] Ashley James: Right. Yeah.

 

 

[1:06:12] Eric Thorton: It's like, "No, no. You need that. Oh, gosh." You just got to.

 

 

[1:06:16] Ashley James: And I think it's funny and I mentioned it in past episodes. But I really knew I had a predatory energy when a voice in my head said, "Go eat McDonald's." I'm like, "I eat whole food based. I have eaten McDonald's in nine years or ten years." And it was like, "Chicken nuggets." I'm like, "This is not me." When there's a voice in your head that doesn't align with your personality and it doesn't align with your choices then you know.

 

 

[1:06:45] Eric Thorton: And you have something else.

 

 

[1:06:46] Ashley James: But it could mask itself for many years. And I thought it was just me. I thought it was a part of me for many years until I changed so much consciously. And that part didn't change. And that the predatory energy didn't change. But I changed so much. So I went, "Wow, that's really not me anymore." And so why is this part of me still holding on to past me?

 

 

[1:07:11] Eric Thorton: Right. And you probably done a lot of therapy around it and nothing got there. But once we removed the predatory energy, then all that therapy you'd already done clicks in. Because it's still there in your subconscious mind. And all that therapy did help also make it so you could look at that and not take three bowls. It wasn't just removing. It was the other therapy you've done as well. And so that's, again, why we call this work inclusive. Is because everything you've done prior to that moment, to work, to gain wisdom for the thing that is bothering you. That's all wisdom you got from all the other therapy. If it's just this roadblock and we remove the roadblock, and it flows.

So for someone with years in the situation similar that hadn't done any work at all, they might have had to, we go in, we'd remove the predatory energy, they'd feel the difference. Then their eating habits would come back. And as they come in again and we take the next step and we start doing the therapy that you'd already done.  We start walking through them. What is this? What is this aspect of your personality? What is this thing that's compelling you? I see you had stress here and you ate here? What did it do? Where do you feel that in your body? Get the person back in touch with their body and get in their body's wisdom. Whether maybe the therapy that you had done had gotten you to realize the body's wisdom. Got all that stuff in place. It just could take effect. So that -- sometimes we have to teach the body new wisdom because they haven't got the therapy somewhere else.

 

 

[1:09:05] Ashley James: How many of your clients have done psilocybin or other forms of microdosing? Would you say it's like a really strong percentage of your clients?

 

 

[1:09:18] Eric Thorton: No. They're very small. The microdosing is a fairly new concept with it. I've worked with hundreds of clients who've done macrodosing.

 

 

[1:09:28] Ashley James: Does the microdosing help at all?  Or like you said, it's because of the intention. Their intention was to have fun, party, get high. The intention doesn't - but the substance, the psilocybin was still there. So does that, on some level, help with neuroplasticity? Or it does only help when its microdosed or only helps when it's microdose and there's [inaudible 01:09:48]?

 

 

[1:09:48] Eric Thorton: You don't have the deep breakthroughs where you can actually change overnight major personality conflicts. And sometimes with microdose - and you can also pick up the predatory energy from people when you're in that type of state. I won't even meditate in groups. And that's conscious meditation. You're going there and you're just blowing your psyche open, your soul open.

 

 

[1:10:20] Ashley James: What about yoga? What about doing yoga and a class?

 

 

[1:10:23] Eric Thorton: Yoga is a different intention. But some yoga people do try to get meditation in with it. And you can all share energy really easy. You're comrades in arms. Any group does that. And I just mentioned comrades. The army does it. It's one big intention. To create strength with their intention.

 

 

[1:10:42] Ashley James: Churches.

 

 

[1:10:42] Eric Thorton: Churches do that.

 

 

[1:10:43]  Ashley James: Yeah. The churches I've gone to, they do a lot of like silent meditation and prayer together.

 

 

[1:10:49] Eric Thorton: In Christianity, what is the cross? And it's literally, you know, I've got that thing hanging on the wall here which nobody can see. It's a vortex. The sign of the cross is a vortex. And the Catholic Church knows that. And they even create - at Easter time, they even put the symbol around the center of the cross. The square that's turned sideways with fabric making even a stronger vortex, which is that's a whole another subject. Sorry. We'll have to explore that someday.

 

 

[1:11:24] Ashley James: You can see the gears turning in my head like a million questions.

 

 

[1:11:28] Eric Thorton: Yeah. It's like, "Okay." But what you are doing is you are blowing open this consciousness and the subconsciousness with the psilocybin uncontrolled macrodosing. And putting the person very vulnerable to the other people around them. There are things - even in my past life when I did this, it was one-on-one. We didn't do it in groups. IT was one on one.

 

 

[1:11:54] Ashley James: Right. And just remembering the iowaska interview I just did, most of the time they're doing ayahuasca in groups. And they're all having really big experiences.

 

 

[1:12:07] Eric Thorton: They're having big experiences.

 

 

[1:12:07] Ashley James: The unconscious mind is blown wide open.

 

 

[1:12:09] Eric Thorton: It is. And it's - I don't want to rank on the industry as far as people do get benefits from it. But what is - I experienced that there's a lot more that we could get out - we could wring out of those experiences in the work we do here. And I see that people will take on very predatory energies. I had one young lady and she went with a friend to be safe and they were both raped when they were under the influence. And they don't remember it but they have PTSD from it. And it's like, what are you supposed to do with that? It's become an industry down there.

 

 

[1:13:05] Ashley James: Right. Teresa said that when you go to the airport in Peru or Brazil, other places, a restaurant in the Amazon that there are "shamans" standing there at the airport holding a sign. And people will fly down and then hire the shaman right there in the airport. And that she said that they'll put additional things - additional herbs -

 

 

[1:13:30] Eric Thorton: Lots of different herbs in it.

 

 

[1:13:31] Ashley James: - just to get the person high not to have the healing experience.

 

 

[1:13:35] Eric Thorton: Right. And if they want to take advantage of them and rape them, they can put a certain herb in there and they don't remember anything. And that's the risk. There is no regulation down there. It's my understanding the government has caused this. The governments have caused it indirectly because they're requiring these tribes to put in septic systems, put in water systems, and they all cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead of being nomadic, they have to not be nomadic in the Amazon forest. And they have to create sanitary conditions and they don't have cash. So they've had to do this to create a cash flow. And that was where it originally started. Where they started taking it away from the masters.

I'm not going to call them shaman. You can be a shaman. Not be a master. But the words are cheap. People can throw those words around anywhere. But not the authentic masters that were born with the gifts on that didn't have to learn anything from another shaman. That's someone born. They get it. Period. And there's very few of those around the world. And so there's two masters that did this but they had to come up with cash. So then they started teaching facilitators and calling them shaman.

 

 

[1:15:00] Ashley James: Do you think - and this is getting into a conspiracy theory. But do you think that the countries in the area did it on purpose to disempower the true healings because there's no government that actually wants their citizens to be awake and to be empowered. Those governments are afraid of their citizens so they want to keep them fighting among themselves.

 

 

[1:15:29] Eric Thorton: Subdued. Right. And subdued somehow. Distracted.

 

 

[1:15:29] Ashley James: Did they do that on purpose to stop people from becoming empowered? Or was it just coincidental that that was the result?

 

 

[1:15:40] Eric Thorton: Well, I look at a lot of things with conspiracy theory. And look at it and go, "Well -" it was Dr. Lim that I was talking to. And he said, "Well, it's like with the American Medical Association. There's no one person doing anything that isn't good intention. But their perspectives, their ideas with as good intention to help their clients gets them looked at. And then someone else modifies it again with good intention. And then someone else modifies that with good intention. And then someone else modifies that with good intention. And pretty soon you get a thing that comes up as evil.

 

 

[1:16:29] Ashley James: Well, I would say like -

 

 

[1:16:30] Eric Thorton: Where it isn't one person that's doing it.

 

 

[1:16:32] Ashley James: Well, but there's an organization, let's say the pharmaceutical industry has an intention. And they say "Okay. Lobbyists go. Lobby for this."

 

 

[1:16:41] Eric Thorton: But that's a corporate intention. 

 

 

[1:16:42] Ashley James: Right. But they affect the AMA all the time.

 

 

[1:16:45] Eric Thorton: They do. But the AMA still has to - they're doing it because they want to raise money. Because a corporation is for profit. So they're going there with the idea, "Okay. Let's do the opioid thing." Well, as far as the sales people are taught, "Well, this is good for everybody."

 

 

[1:17:07] Ashley James: Oh, so you're saying it's compartmentalized.

 

 

[1:17:09] Eric Thorton: It's compartmentalize. It's not one person which creates this whole thing - conspiracy - that is to be looked at as evil. This is what people look at the United States for. It's a corporate system. The corporates are for profit. Anything they can do to make money. There's no consciousness with that. Bu to sum total, we talked about corporate consciousness. There is in the end, a corporate consciousness. We call them thought forms.

When everybody as their thoughts to them, it creates something. It could be looked at as evil or can draw a predatory energy to that consciousness. And then it becomes a thing. And then it would be called an evil at that point. Because it drew predatory energy into controlling the populations. And it works out real well for the government. And the governments can start to create it. But the sales people, the people delivering it to the people, they don't have bad intentions.

 

 

[1:18:18] Ashley James: The individuals in the pharmaceutical industry are not bad people. Yeah, I've met the ex-sales people. They've got a spouse and family and kids and their moms and dads and they're not evil. But then they turned around one day and realized that what they were selling was harming people. And then they either chose -

 

 

[1:18:39] Eric Thorton: When they become aware of it, they change.

 

 

[1:18:42] Ashley James: And they either chose to stay or leave.

 

 

[1:18:44] Eric Thorton: Right. Right. If they stayed, then it would be conspiracy. But they chose to leave because they realized it wasn't. So that happens in this too. That's why I mentioned the government required these certain things for their benefit. They needed sanitation. They needed water. Well, that wasn't a bad person coming up with that. Because they couldn't be nomadic anymore because they were using the rainforest for palm oil. Sorry. And so it's not one person but it works for the government in the end.

 

 

[1:19:23] Ashley James: Right. Well, I mean if they had designed it in a way that what is more affordable than - right. So just looking at, because I think there's a correlation between what's happening in Central and South America with iowaska and what's going to happen in the United States with microdosing psilocybin mushrooms. And I see this correlation. Because, you know, history will repeat itself.

 

 

[1:19:46] Eric Thorton: Oh, definitely.

 

 

[1:19:47] Ashley James: Governments like to duplicate what happens? And so we're looking at -

 

 

[1:19:49] Eric Thorton: Correct. So does the medical industry.

 

 

[1:19:53] Ashley James: So countries look at each other and go, what worked? What didn't work? Let's repeat that. We want to have legal access to microdosing psilocybin mushroom like many people now have access to clean CBD or THC should they want that. And so what we want -

 

 

[1:20:20] Eric Thorton: You can go with THC. You can go to a facility that's monitored. And you know, it's not going to be laced with something else. So it's much safer and better for sleep or anxiety and the other. But it's not mixed with something else to get you hooked on it. And so it's just the product. So in that case, it's a good thing.

 

 

[1:20:42] Ashley James: Now, does pot - does marijuana have microdosing? Could it have the same neuroplasticity effects? Or is it just two different of a plant?

 

 

[1:20:54] Eric Thorton: Well, it's different effects. So you're comparing apples and grapes.

 

 

[1:20:59] Ashley James: And motorcars.

 

 

[1:21:00] Eric Thorton: Yeah. They're just different. So there are benefits, obviously, to THC and CBD and the different types of CBDs and other things.

 

 

[1:21:13] Ashley James: Cannabinoids.

 

 

[01:21:14] Eric Thorton: Cannabinoids and the -- I forgot -

 

 

[1:21:16] Ashley James: Terpenes.

 

 

[1:21:20] Eric Thorton: Terpenes. Terpenes. Yeah. And they're just discovering it in our country. They discovered it in other countries. But we have to rediscover everything in our country. But by allowing that in, then we start getting the benefits of it. And, of course, the corporations don't like that. So they want to take the active ingredients and either duplicate them or refine them and then patent that. Well, that's a corporation. That's not an evil. That's a corporation that -

 

 

[1:21:54] Ashley James: Wants to make money.

 

 

[1:21:54]  Eric Thorton: -- that is designed to make profit and give money to their people who buy their stock. That's not evil. But you get 50 corporations building on it. And pretty soon you've got something that's not THC anymore or not cannabinoids anymore. And you're creating something else.

 

 

[1:22:12] Ashley James: And then they lobby for certain laws. And then you know, if they're - that's the problem, we need corporations that want win-win situations and good for all. But we've talked about that before. I'd like to know, maybe you could ask the guides, are there other substances or other techniques that people could use to increase neuroplasticity likes psilocybin?

 

 

[1:22:39] Eric Thorton: Well, I mean, we've already talked about the LSD. We talked about iowaska.

 

 

[1:22:44] Ashley James: Right. But I mean, like a household - you know, some things that are legal or techniques.

 

 

[1:22:52] Eric Thorton: The guides are good. And I understand this. They're going careful because there are. But psilocybin is a poison. And in too much, it causes the wrong type. And the same with iowaska and things like that. They are little poisons. And if you get the wrong ones, even the wrong mushrooms with psilocybin, will kill you.

 

 

[1:23:18] Ashley James: Are there - so I'll reach out. I'll change my question. Are their natural and not poisonous supplements out there that can have the same or similar effects as psilocybin?

 

 

[1:23:35] Eric Thorton: Cheese.

 

 

[1:23:36] Ashley James: Cheese?

 

 

[1:23:37] Eric Thorton: Yeah.

 

 

[1:23:39] Ashley James: That's funny.

 

 

[1:23:41] Eric Thorton: Yeah. Cheese, fat. We get addicted to fat and it gives us an experience that's not us. It calms us. It makes us feel like we're coming out of euphoria. It changes who you are. It changes your body. And it's an addiction. Now, I don't know if you can microdose cheese and get a benefit from it. But we get addicted to foods the same way. Meat causes the same addiction. So does sugar. And these are stronger reactions. What it does is, it causes your body, the bacteria in your intestine to send a signal to your brain to tell you to get more of that. And it slowly changes your neuroplasticity of your brain. It's a slower product. But it is doing it. And so if you took that - the guys are agreeing with that - and you could slowly - if you gave a person piece of cheese and give them at that right moment, you could technically implant a new idea.

 

 

[1:25:01] Ashley James: That's funny.

 

 

[1:25:02] Eric Thorton: That's funny. And it is. And I've never been asked that question before. Never. And they're just showing me what food does. They literally show me, everyday stuff that you eat and how it creates these and creates the direction your neuroplasticity is going. Once you get addicted to cheese, cow's milk, the fats, it has changed your whole life. And not necessarily in a good direction.

 

 

[1:25:36] Ashley James: I did an episode on cheese. I really recommend listeners to learntruehealth.com and search. In the search bar, search cheese. Listen to that episode. It is so good. And it's a short one. But it's very impactful. Lots of great information. When I say short, I mean like 45 minutes is short to me. But it's a really good episode because - I want to say it was Dr. Bernard.

 

 

[1:26:04] Eric Thorton: So you actually interviewed somebody about -

 

 

[1:26:05] Ashley James: About cheese. It was Dr. Bernard. A really great guy in the whole food plant based world. He looks like 40. If you look at his pictures, you're like that is a handsome doctor. He's, like, in his 70s and he looks 40.

 

 

[1:26:18] Eric Thorton: That's phenomenal.

 

 

[1:26:17] Ashley James: Yeah. And he's whole food plant based, you know, vegan. And he wrote a whole book on cheese. And it's great because when - I mean, I know I'm lactose intolerant. I'm totally allergic to milk and I know I shouldn't eat it. But back when I did eat cheese, Duffy and I would sit and we go to Costco and get a brick of Tillamook and we just sit there and watch TV on like a Sunday afternoon and -

 

 

[1:26:44] Eric Thorton: Get high on cheese.

 

 

[1:26:46] Ashley James: We would literally get high on cheese. The two of us, we polish off a brick of Tillamook in a weekend. And we'd sit there and we slice off little thin slices at a time. Just like micro dosing one bite at a time. A whole brick of cheese, oh, man. That Tillamook. But it does. It totally affects the brains. So the whole interview was about how cheese - because concentrated addiction. It's those chemicals that affect the brain.

So Dr. Joel Fuhrman said something really funny. Because I've been studying diets. And I think many listeners would agree with me that when you start feeling really good on a diet, you think it's the right diet for you. We're basing it on our symptoms. So if we start feeling good like, "Oh, wow. I feel really good after that meal. This must be the right way to eat." So people don't go ketogenic. Man, after that the three eggs and bacon, I feel so - or whatever -

 

 

[1:27:49] Eric Thorton: Right. The fat.

 

 

[1:27:50] Ashley James: After that butter on my steak or after that Tillamook cheese, I feel so good. Or after that keto shake, I feel - people will say, I feel really good on fat or on cheese. And Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who I've also interviewed, said -

 

 

[1:28:06] Eric Thorton: That's why the keto diet is so popular.

 

 

[1:28:08] Ashley James: Right. Because the people feel really - people feel really good. But he says, "Listen. If you judge a diet based on how you feel, cocaine will make you feel amazing. It doesn't mean it's good for you." And I was like, "Oh my gosh." My entire world exploded - imploded at that point. Because I thought, I've been judging diets based on how I feel. And it's actually based on - it had to be based on, obviously, the science and what's going on in the brain and what's going on hormonally, and what's going on in the gut. And we have to look at that.

 

 

[1:28:48] Eric Thorton: If you did mushrooms everyday, psilocybin, it would do the same thing that cheese does. Because you lose the ability for the hallucinations with psilocybin. And all you get is a little bit of euphoric feeling from it, which is what cheese does. And at that moment, when you guys were doing those bricks of Tillamook, if you were listening to commercial, they're brainwashing you.

 

 

[1:29:15] Ashley James: Very interesting. So when we eat foods like cheese or highly processed hyper -

 

 

[1:29:21] Eric Thorton: Anything that's in the book, the Pleasure Trap.

 

 

[1:29:24] Ashley James: The Pleasure Trap is a great book. And I recommend getting the audio version of the Pleasure Trap because Chef AJ is the narrator. And I love her. She's great. I also interviewed her. That's a good episode as well. Because she shares how she healed her colon cancer with the whole food plant based diet. But also that she healed her food addiction with it as well. So that's a really good interview. Very interesting. I love how this conversation led to this because we are dosing ourselves daily with foods that are causing our brains to be more susceptible to receiving subconscious messages from marketing.

 

 

[1:30:13] Eric Thorton: What is yesterday? What was yesterday? That's a cheeseburger day?

 

 

[1:30:18] Ashley James: No.

 

 

[1:30:18] Eric Thorton: Yes. And what do they show? The thing you're addicted to in a cheeseburger the most is the cheese. Second is the meat. So they're showing the cheese dripping all over, blah, blah, blah. And it goes back to the feeling that you and Duffy had when you were eating the Tillamook. Just the implant from looking at that, associate it with that, and it goes into, and then you are brainwashed to go get a hamburger, and to have the meat, and to have the blah, blah, blah.

 

 

[1:30:51] Ashley James: So I just watched - my husband and I just went to a documentary. They had this one global event where they released this documentary called The Game Changers.

 

 

[1:31:01] Eric Thorton: I saw that.

 

 

[1:31:01] Ashley James: Did you go see it?

 

 

[1:31:02] Eric Thorton: Thursday.

 

 

[1:31:03] Ashley James: No. Monday.

 

 

[1:31:04] Eric Thorton: No. Monday. Were you there?

 

 

[1:31:05] Ashley James: Did you see it? We went to Northgate.

 

 

[1:31:07] Eric Thorton: We were at Redmond. Yeah. Phenomenal.

 

 

[1:31:08] Ashley James: Yeah. Wasn't it amazing? It was so good.

 

 

[1:31:12] Eric Thorton: I mean, I like it better than Forks Over Knives.

 

 

[1:31:13] Ashley James: It was the best.

 

 

[1:31:13] Eric Thorton: Because it's not convicting or micromanaging. It was just presenting.

 

 

[1:31:19] Ashley James: It was just presenting great information. 

 

 

[1:31:20] Eric Thorton: Great information.

 

 

[1:31:21] Ashley James: My husband I want to - I'm talking about him like a third person like he's not sitting right beside me. Because he doesn't have a microphone on. But we want to get it and get our family to watch it. I mean, it was great. We went with Naomi. Hi, Naomi. She's one of the listeners. And it was outstanding. What I loved the most was seeing that this woman was a cyclist and she went on the whole food plant based diet. And she was getting better.

 

 

 

[1:31:53] Eric Thorton: Olympic cyclist.

 

 

[1:31:53] Ashley James: She's an Olympic cyclist. But she was getting better and better times. And so they couldn't kick her off the team even though she was the oldest person who had ever been on the Olympic cycling team, I think ever.

 

 

[1:32:05] Eric Thorton: Right. Ever.

 

 

[1:32:06] Ashley James: She goes, "Just my times kept getting better and better so they couldn't kick me off. They had to invite me to the Olympics."  And she was 39-and-a-half. The oldest of anyone in her class who had ever cycled in the Olympics. And she won - she brought home the gold at 39-and-a half. There was a heavyweight or weightlifter dude and he was 40, and he brought home the gold, I think. And she talked about that when you drink beet juice before you workout, it increases your endurance something like 33%.

 

 

[1:32:43] Eric Thorton: It's a high dose. It's a high thing. Beet juice creates the environment for the most nitrous oxide. And causing the endothelium to shrink more blood flow to your legs, to your muscles, more lubrication to your myofascial so you can run faster and jump higher for longer periods of time. Your oxygen is better because you're getting more blood physically to the muscles you're using. It's phenomenal. And they show that. They show the scientific, the animation of it in that movie. And I've recommended to one person already. But the beet juice is the highest concentrate of what you need to do that. But close behind it are all the greens. And there's so many fruits, vegetables of all sorts. And that's why athletes are changing over.  How about the thing about what does gladiator me?

 

 

[1:33:44] Ashley James: Oh, that was hilarious.

 

 

[1:33:43] Eric Thorton: Barley and mushroom eaters.

 

 

[1:33:45] Ashley James: Yeah, yeah.

 

 

[1:33:46] Eric Thorton: Or barley something eater.

 

 

[1:33:47] Ashley James: It meant barley and green eaters - or no. Sorry. It was bean and green -

 

 

[1:33:54] Eric Thorton: Bean and barley. Bean and barley eaters.

 

 

[1:33:55] Ashley James: Bean and barley eaters. That was it. The word gladiator translated into - because the gladiators themselves who we think are -

 

 

[1:34:05] Eric Thorton: Meat eaters.

 

 

[1:34:05] Ashley James: We think they're meat eaters because they're these elite athletes from thousands of years ago were actually - were predominantly vegetarian.

 

 

[1:34:14] Eric Thorton: They could tell by the concentration of their bones.

 

 

[1:34:17] Ashley James: Yeah. So I found that the whole movie was fascinating. But how it relates to this discussion is, the neuroplasticity of the brain and our ability to heal. What I've seen over and over again is when people clean up their diet, and you can confirm -

 

 

[1:34:39] Eric Thorton: I totally confirm it.

 

 

[1:34:40] Ashley James: That when we clean up our diet, we remove the hyper palatable foods that are hijacking the brain and the gut. And the gut affects our brain because the gut produces our serotonin, our neurotransmitters. It also - and I just recently learned this because I'm taking a course through FDN. It's an advanced course through Functional Diagnostic Nutrition for health coaches. And I learned that 25% of the body's T3 is converted in the gut. So when we have this biosis, then you go to an MD and you say, "I'm really tired." Well, you're eating the standard American diet or the standard Canadian or standard Australian diet, whatever. You're eating the standard marketed to us diet. Processed food -

 

 

[1:35:20] Eric Thorton: Corporate diets.

 

 

[1:35:22] Ashley James: Corporate diet. We're eating the corporate diet, hyperpalatable foods of salt, sugar, and oil, and animal products, and flour. And we go to our MD because we're tired. The MD says, "Oh, well, you know, you're 40 and you're tired. And you have a few pounds on. So it's probably your thyroid that says you're tired." And then he sees your T3 is low and then he puts you on a synthetic T3. Meanwhile, your thyroid is fine. But it was your - I mean, it could just be, for example, your gut or your liver. Your liver plays a huge role in your in your thyroid hormones. But they don't even look.

 

 

[1:35:57] Eric Thorton: They don't. They don't because they don't want to undo their treatment system. The medical service system is where they make their money. I have to convince - one of the things that we do here is we look at the individual and what they specifically need. It all comes down to we all need to be whole food plant based. We're talking about that. But some people can get away with some meat. But there's nobody can get away with fat.

 

 

[1:36:26] Ashley James: The standard corporate diet.

 

 

[1:36:30] Eric Thorton: The standard corporate diet, nobody can. And they go, "Well, I'm not dying." It's hard to convince people that their thyroid will correct. Everything will correct if they give it the right fuel. And it's the same, we're talking about psilocybin therapy. It's the same with your brain. You give it the right fuel and it's going to change. It's going to change the neuroplasticity. That's why cheese affects that. That's why food affects similarly to hallucinogens. When you asked that question the guy just came and just downloading. He looks like, "Oh my gosh.

 

 

[1:37:06] Ashley James: Right. It's fascinating. That the brain - we can go out and we can get high off of legal food. But you're saying that the drawback -

 

 

[1:37:16] Eric Thorton: You don't get any higher doing microdosing of psilocybin than you do with eating Tillamook cheese. Literally, you don't get any higher. I mean, Tillamook cheese actually gives you this euphoric feeling that's amazing. Tillamook or any cheese. I'm not picking on Tillamook. Sorry.

 

 

[1:37:35] Ashley James: Oh, no. It's delicious.

 

 

[1:37:37] Eric Thorton: It's a delicious cheese.

 

 

[1:37:37] Ashley James: If you're going to do cheese -

 

 

[1:37:40] Eric Thorton: You do Tillamook. 

 

 

[1:37:43] Ashley James: And we should start thinking about flour, sugar, oil, and animal products like street drugs. Are you doing eggs? Are you doing eggs and cheese? I mean, it's like, are you doing meth? Right?

 

 

[1:37:59] Eric Thorton: That's what I do. That's what I do with my kids. So you're still doing me. Okay.

 

 

[1:38:04] Ashley James: And not a point of judgment but a point of awakening and recognition that these foods affect the brain. And we can affect that brain -

 

 

[01:38:16] Eric Thorton: And that's proven.

 

 

[1:38:16] Ashley James: - in a positive way or a negative way. It's proven. But I've seen it so many times with my clients that when they clean up their diet, they're able to do emotional healing work so much easier.  Because the inflammation is gone. The brain isn't hyper-excited from these foods. The brain isn't hijacked from these foods.

 

 

[1:38:39] Eric Thorton: Correct. Right. So I've noticed that with my clients that have taken the plunge and switched over to whole food plant based over the long term. We can get into very different spots. And one, the body is healing itself. And so we start taking the things that are preventing the body from healing itself. And we take away - and then they take away the food items that are preventing the body from healing itself or agitating the immune system. And all of a sudden their brain has time for other things. And their body has time for other things. And it's the priority. You're dying by eating the standard American diet, the standard corporate diets. And so your body has to put everything there, your consciousness there, your subconsciousness there to just stay alive. It's amazing what the body will do too. Because it will keep you alive going even though you're sickly for years and years and years and years. But your experience in life isn't good. You're just experiencing one negative situation to another with your health and your mental capacity. All of a sudden you clean up and the brain has time for spiritual growth.

And you were talking about conspiracy theory. And what the governments do and they want us unaware. When you're sick or sickly, you are obsessed with that. You aren't growing spiritually. So you take it and you become dogmatic. "Okay. I'm exhausted. How do I get to heaven? Okay. Do it this way." And there you go. Or you say, because you're tired, you're exhausted, you don't have anytime left to grow that way.

 

 

[1:40:19] Ashley James: And that and the food is what's making us exhausted, the corporate foods.

 

 

[1:40:22] Eric Thorton: Right. And if you look at the corporate food structure, there is intent with it because the corporation's want to sell you their products. But there's also that enough intent to create the thought forms, which bring predatory energy to it. And then we pick it up. And then we're being compelled. And the corporations love that part of it. Because they're selling more products. And all they care about selling more products. And they don't look at - again, corporations don't have morals.

 

 

[1:40:56]  Ashley James: I think we should ask ourselves - and this is the homework I want to give listeners. Ask yourself for the next week every day at every meal, "Am I compelled to buy this food and eat this? Or can I say no to it? Could I choose a giant bowl of steamed vegetables and just eat that?" And then if you're still hungry, eat something else. But if there's something in you that's compelled to drive to the drive through or compelled to go to the restaurant or compelled to buy the packaged food.

 

 

[1:41:26] Eric Thorton: Or compelled to not eat those vegetables. And not eat the fruit, not eat the potatoes that don't have everything all over them.

 

 

[1:41:34] Ashley James: Just the baked potatoes.

 

 

[1:41:36] Eric Thorton: The baked potatoes.

 

 

[ 1:41:38] Ashley James: Or the brown rice or whatever. But if there's something in you -

 

 

[1:41:41] Eric Thorton: That's going yuck to something is healthy.

 

 

[1:41:41] Ashley James: - that's resisting something healthy or that's compelling you to eat something unhealthy.

 

 

[1:41:48] Eric Thorton: There's something beyond you.

 

 

[1:41:51] Ashley James: It's not you. 

 

 

[1:41:52] Eric Thorton: Yeah. Your body wants what's healthy. I'll give an example with my wife and I. Sometimes we want to go out. That's a problem, right? We found the Mongolian grill, the ones that you're talking about. The normal one doesn't do it.

 

 

[1:42:06] Ashley James: It's called Iron Grill. We call it an Iron Gut. They only have two locations here, one in Mill Creek one and one -

 

 

[1:42:11]  Eric Thorton: Right. It's a privately owned one.

 

 

[1:42:13] Ashley James: One in Monroe. But all the other Mongolian girls are just oil and all this gross stuff.

 

 

[1:42:17] Eric Thorton: Oil over the place. They don't even use oil at these two.

 

 

[1:42:17] Ashley James: They don't even use oil. I love it.

 

 

[1:42:19] Eric Thorton: No oil at all. They don't put it on their grill at all. So we want to go out. So we go to PCC, which is a local coop. And we'll get salad again. And we sit down and we put our dressing up that we bring and we're sitting there going, "Okay. A salad." Take one bite and the body lights up. And you just want to eat that damn salad.

 

 

[1:42:46] Ashley James: Yeah. But the brain is going - 

 

 

[1:42:48] Eric Thorton: The corporate training -

 

 

[1:42:48] Ashley James: The corporate training is like, "No. Not salad again."

 

 

[1:42:51] Eric Thorton: I don't want salad.

 

 

[1:42:53] Ashley James: I don't like vegetables. This isn't fun.

 

 

[1:42:54] Eric Thorton: That didn't work for a caveman that needed to eat the vegetables all the time because there was often no meat. And they had to eat it. And they weren't picky.

 

 

[1:43:05] Ashley James: Right. Well, here.

 

 

[1:43:06] Eric Thorton: They just ate what was in front of them. But there wasn't the thought forms from the corporations. So they just ate it because it was there. You don't got a chimpanzee wanting the ripe banana. They want all the bananas. And because there's nothing compelling them to become picky and have just the right. So then they don't eat them. So it's a buildup of energy that has created - has brought in evil to it. And we call them corporate thought forms. And those influence in every way they can and they use food to enter your brain, the same way psilocybin does. And I just am fascinated by that. Give a whole new world of healing. The guide - your question did. Thank you.

 

 

[1:43:58] Ashley James: Well, you're welcome. But this is what I've been exploring on other episodes, it's been building up to this. This understanding of how important food is to our brain.

 

 

[1:44:07] Eric Thorton: It's huge. This, I know. It totally controls your brain, your mood, your hormones throughout your whole body.  And you can look at that - I mean that has become a conspiracy. That no one person did it. It's a corporate lack of value system. I have thought in the past that because we're all governed by the corporate laws of the world. And I have thought in the past that the corporate laws need to have a standard of morals that is required for all corporate law. And one of the morals is do no harm. Doctors have it. Now, they've bent out a bit. But they still have it. Corporate law doesn't have that. And if corporate law, if it had just that one sentence added to corporate law, how much would be different?

 

 

[1:45:27] Ashley James: Huge. It would take a lot more precautions.

 

 

[1:45:31] Eric Thorton: Right. Do no harm. Instead of allowing - they have a law - you know, the laws in our country allow us not to sue the pharmaceuticals individually. So it's okay for them to do harm. Because that's the only way they can do "science." And that's not true. But they just took away the morals from pharmaceuticals.

 

 

[1:45:57] Ashley James: Right. This was a while ago, but I interviewed a woman who called herself a water [inaudible 01:46:04]. And she's quite interesting but what she did professionally before she got into nutrition was she was a scientist for - I think it was Pringles or Doritos or one of those -

 

 

[1:46:23] Eric Thorton: Isn't that sad. The scientists for a food company.

 

 

[1:46:26] Ashley James: Yeah. It was like a Nestle. It was one of those companies. And her and her team had to make some kind of Doritos be hyperpalatable. They had to always invent new - and I don't know if it was actually Doritos. But it was some kind -

 

 

[1:46:45] Eric Thorton: Well, Doritos is very much there.

 

 

[1:46:47] Ashley James: And they had to figure out what they could do to just make this addictive. And I asked her some questions about that. About what the intention was behind it. Because she left - eventually left that career. Did she feel there was like an evil intention or intention to harm people? And she says not at all. She said the scientists on the team were scientists. And they were just looking at what could they do to make something really excite the brain. And it was cool. It was science. It was neuroscience. What could they do to put a chemical on the tongue and make the brain light up like cocaine? And that was fun for them. And they came up with all kinds of interesting chemicals and interesting fat and carbohydrate mixed with chemical ratios to make the brain light up ten times more than cocaine. So there wasn't a, "Hahaha. We're going to hurt people." It was more just like they were given a task, they're scientists. It was compartmentalize. And they had fun.

 

 

[1:47:52] Eric Thorton: [Inaudible 01:47:52] and compartmentalized.

 

 

[1:47:54] Ashley James: And they had fun doing it because that was their task as a scientist. And then of course, she saw the big picture and saw how much the food industry was harming people. And so her idea was to then focus on how to make foods delicious in a wholesome way.

But that that was her background. So I just thought that was really interesting that her experience wasn't that she didn't feel like the corporation was looking to harm people. It just wants to make money. But the problem is that they don't have the values or the morals behind it to not want to do harm.

 

 

[1:48:34] Eric Thorton: Well, if the confirmation bias - they call that - it's there just to look at the benefits of this. If they also were compelled to do no harm, they would have to look at the whole picture. And then they would discover what she discovered, and she could no longer be there. But instead, their confirmation bias, they're looking for this. This boxed in thing and it's framed in, this is all you're looking for so don't look for anything beyond that frame. Well, if the government said, "Okay. You have to look beyond that frame."

 

 

[1:49:06] Ashley James: Here are your constraints as a business.

 

 

[1:49:09] Eric Thorton: Here it is. You have to do no harm to the human body. No harm. And that includes anyone who does research on it can say, "Okay. That disodium phosphate that they discovered and Lay's discovered. Instead of monosodium glutamate, they put disodium phosphate in. And [inaudible 01:49:29] the chemical that does that." Well, what does it do to your gut? What does it do to - and there's other chemicals too. But what does it do to your brain? What does it - why is it doing that?

 

 

[1:49:38] Ashley James: So what does disodium phosphate do to the body?

 

 

[1:49:40] Eric Thorton: It's an addiction. And so they've eliminated monosodium glutamate because it got a bad name.

 

 

[1:49:47] Ashley James: Right. MSG is bad. But they just replaced it with something else.

 

 

[1:49:49] Eric Thorton: They replaced it with something else to drive you. And that hasn't been investigated yet. Only the benefits of it have been investigated.

 

 

[1:49:59] Ashley James: It's so funny because when I make home baked fries - so I don't fry it with oil. I cut up a potato. I bake in the oven. I can put a little nutritional yeast or Bragg's or something on it, you know, make it taste salty. And it's a potato fry or air fry or that kind of thing. You eat one serving, you're full, you're done. But if you were to eat potato chips -

 

 

[1:50:28] Eric Thorton: You eat three times as much or five times as much.

 

 

[1:50:29] Ashley James: - you can't stop because of the chemicals they put on it.

 

 

[1:50:33] Eric Thorton: And the combination of the chemicals. Exactly.

 

 

[1:50:36] Ashley James: And that's hijacking the brain.

 

 

[1:50:38] Eric Thorton: It's hijacking the brain.

 

 

[1:50:40] Ashley James: And bypassing the internal thermostat that says their full.

 

 

[1:50:43] Eric Thorton: Therefore they're doing harm. So they couldn't do that if that little law was there.

 

 

[1:50:50] Ashley James: Right. So we have to take it upon ourselves that law. We have to really recognize that corporations do not have that law. As individuals we do. Like, you can't go and do harm to your neighbor. You're in a world of hurt if you do. But a corporation can do harm to millions of people and get away with it. So we, as individuals, have to be informed consumers. Everything we put in our mouth, we have to be diligent just like you would with a supplement or the pharmaceutical. We have to choose to look at the side effects. Look at the studies. Look at where it came from. That's why a whole food plant based diet is so easy because it's like, "Here's broccoli."

 

 

[1:51:29] Eric Thorton: Yep. There it is.

 

 

[1:51:31] Ashley James: Three it is. It's safe.

 

 

[1:51:32] Eric Thorton: And if you can get an organic, better.

 

 

[1:51:34] Ashley James: Even better.

 

 

[1:51:35] Eric Thorton: Even better. And broccoli, some people it's not their favorite thing. But there's ways of dealing with that broccoli that can make it absolutely be whole food plant based and be delicious. I just discovered something last night. I'm going to mention it on your blog here so other people can do it. I was cooking them. I cooked greens. They were Swiss chard. And I put in a pressure cooker for four minutes with some water and some garlic and some smoke. And the Swiss chard -

 

 

[1:52:10] Ashley James: When you say smoke -

 

 

[1:52:11] Eric Thorton: Liquid smoke.

 

 

[1:52:12] Ashley James: Liquid smoke, okay. Tiny bit because that stuff is strong.

 

 

[1:52:13] Eric Thorton: A tiny bit. It's very strong. And so I just did that recipe up and I got done. It was a little bit bitter and I like bitter. But I thought, "You know, there's combinations that can do - that the human body likes. And we like sweet-sour, sweet- bitter, sweet- smoky. We like sweet with different combinations" And I thought, "Hm. A little bit of apple juice on this would be amazing." And oh my god -

 

 

[1:52:42] Ashley James: It was really good?

 

 

[1:52:43] Eric Thorton: It was amazing.

 

 

[1:52:44] Ashley James: Swiss chard is a little, too, like stringent for me. But if I did that recipe, I think I'd like it.

 

 

[1:52:50] Eric Thorton: I just put it on [inaudible 01:52:51] like you would vinegar on it or something. Abd [inaudible 01:52:55] apples. Well, let's put apple juice on it. It was like, "Oh."

And it's made it worth eating. I mean, it was delicious.

 

 

[1:53:06] Ashley James: That's awesome.

 

 

[1:53:08] Eric Thorton: I thought, "Oh. I must tell people that." So I'm going to sneak it in on my kids and see how they deal with it.

 

 

[1:53:18] Ashley James: Nice. I love taking - I mean when I'm really busy, I add - lots of grocery stores do this now. You can get organic pre-shredded vegetables and they have pre-shredded broccoli. So it's just totally shredded broccoli in a bag. And then I love mixing that with avocado.

 

 

[1:53:38] Eric Thorton: Oh, I have never done that.

 

 

[1:53:38] Ashley James: And then I just mix with my hands. I mix it all together. So there's no dressing needed. Just half an avocado or something and a bag of this stuff and mix it together. And then I'll throw in whatever greens I want. Because the salad or like a handful of sauerkraut - organic sauerkraut that I get from Costco. And it is an explosion of flavor. It's so good it takes you forever to eat because it's so much fiber. But it's so good.

 

 

[1:54:05] Eric Thorton: It fills you up though.

 

 

[1:54:07] Ashley James: It fills you up. All it will do is fill you up.

 

 

[1:54:07] Eric Thorton: Right. With no calorie or very low calories.

 

 

[1:54:09] Ashley James: Very low calories. It's healthy fats. And I love getting broccoli because it's so good for the body.

 

 

[1:54:16] Eric Thorton: Well, that makes no profit for a corporation. One of the combinations,people will use any excuse for bad behavior. So when I was walking out of that movie, The Game Changers, and this lady goes, "Oh my God. If everybody does this, there'll be unemployment everywhere." And I just went, "Well, if you're going to base your eating off of global employment, well, then fine. But guess what? If everything would shift -

 

 

[1:54:49] Ashley James: Right. Well, they said that if - I can't remember whether it was if America - United States went completely whole food plant based, really vegan, or if it was the whole world. I think it was just America.

 

 

[1:55:02] Eric Thorton: Just America.

 

 

[1:55:02] Ashley James: If America stops eating meat today, then we would clear up the entire - the size of the continent of Africa in terms of the farming that is required to maintain these animals. So it was something like one third of the world, basically, would be free to be forests.

 

 

[1:55:24] Eric Thorton: To grow vegetables and forests.

 

 

[1:55:26] Ashley James: Grow vegetables. But that only -

 

 

[1:55:28] Eric Thorton: Repairs it.

 

 

[1:55:28] Ashley James: That's only 20% of our farmland in the world is used to make non-meat.

 

 

[1:55:35] Eric Thorton: I think it's less. It think it's 15%.

 

 

[1:55:37] Ashley James: It was crazy. It was just crazy. So the numbers - basically, if we didn't grow meat, then the employment would be to grow vegetables, have local farms. I think there's a lot of benefits too. But that's fine if her first thought was all the unemployment. All those poor people that work in the meat factories, that's just the available job. They don't actually like working there.

 

 

[1:55:59] Eric Thorton: No. So anyway, it's a tough - these things that open up our brain for change are not only in our regular diet, but you can also do it, like we say, with microdosing. And we have to be very cautious when you open up our brain in our daily life to any thing. Like, I guess, I won't meditate in groups because we're opening yourself up. Well, that's the same with food -

 

 

[1:56:37] Ashley James: Opening ourselves up every day.

 

 

[1:56:38] Eric Thorton: Opening ourselves up every day.

 

 

[1:56:38] Ashley James: People that go hang out McDonald's together and eat a Big Mac, they're opening themselves up.

 

 

[1:56:42] Eric Thorton: So the same thing that cocaine does and things like that. And again, I remember the name of the book, The Pleasure Trap. And it's like, "Read it." You'll understand the chemical reaction going on. And it's very similar to psilocybin. And it's food. Every time you get mushrooms, you got psilocybin. And we all love mushrooms. And it's because it gives you that same non-high level, it gives you the euphoria that cheese and other meats and things like that will give you.

 

 

[1:57:16] Ashley James: So we can find in a healthy form, like mushrooms -

 

 

[1:57:19] Eric Thorton: Cook them.

 

 

[1:57:20] Ashley James: Yeah. Cook mushrooms. But if we ate raw mushrooms, would we get  - I mean raw Portobello, would we get neurological benefits?

 

 

[1:57:32] Eric Thorton: Well, it opens you up for suggestion. There's no neurological benefits to it.

 

 

[1:57:37] Ashley James: So eat a Portobello raw and then go to your therapist.

 

 

[1:57:41] Eric Thorton: Bring your Portobello to the therapists and eat it while you're - that is an interesting thing that would be worth investigating.

 

 

[1:57:51] Ashley James: Right. I'm going to eat a pound Crimini or Portobello mushrooms and then I'm going to come see you and see what happens.

 

 

[1:57:58] Eric Thorton: So that would be really interesting to investigate that, wouldn't it? But the guides just made that absolute correlation, you are opening up the power of - to opening up to suggestion. And that's what has to be so careful about psilocybin therapy.

 

 

[1:58:15] Ashley James: Well, no one wants to be duped. And we're being duped by marketing all the time. The thought forms, the corporate suggestions, we really need to sit back in quiet time. I think we need to reflect without a screen in front of us, without any media pouring into us. We need to sit quietly and journal and think about and contemplate this thought, "What are my beliefs and what are the beliefs that have been implanted in me from corporations -"

 

 

[1:58:51] Eric Thorton: Corporate interests.

 

 

[1:58:53] Ashley James: Corporate interests.

 

 

[1:58:54] Eric Thorton: Right. No morals. And if they do have morals, they've made them.

 

 

[1:59:00] Ashley James: And they're not our morals. But they've made them for the purpose of profit and power.

 

 

[1:59:07] Ashley James: Yeah. And we don't want to be duped anymore.

 

 

[1:59:10] Eric Thorton: We don't want to be duped. We're realizing that it does - how it does chemically, change the body to eat these foods of any sort. And the benefits and the control that can happen with that. And that's why I will work with people that do uncontrolled hallucinogenic stuff. Just like now, I got to look at it from food. That's going to be interesting healing sessions. But the uncontrolled and what's happened to them versus a controlled situation. And the benefits you can get from that.

 

 

[1:59:48] Ashley James: Controlled, meaning a microdose psilocybin mushrooms -

 

 

[1:59:52] Eric Thorton: With the proper therapy.

 

 

[1:59:53] Ashley James: - with the doctor, with therapy, with working with you.

 

 

[1:59:58] Eric Thorton: So that's where we need to go with this stuff. And that's where the benefit I've had with my clients.

 

 

[2:00:04] Ashley James: Well, it's just fascinating that people with schizophrenia are able to not have schizophrenic episodes. Is it lessened schizophrenic episodes or no schizophrenic episodes with psilocybin?

 

 

[2:00:16] Eric Thorton: From what I have read - because I've only had a couple patients that it has gotten rid of them.

 

 

[2:00:24] Ashley James: Gotten rid of the schizophrenic episodes.

 

 

[2:00:27] Eric Thorton: The schizophrenic episodes for a period of time. And  it's gotten rid of the bipolar behavior for a period of time. Now, if you're just getting the microdose from the doctor but not doing any of the homework -

 

 

[2:00:43] Ashley James: On emotional work.

 

 

[2:00:43] Eric Thorton:-  on the emotional work and things like that, what's firing up - because schizophrenia is fired off in the brain that can have schizophrenia. It's fired off by an emotional reaction. Well, if you can get to the emotional reactions, you're going to win the psilocybin therapy wears off a year later. You're going to have less things that trip you into the schizophrenic or bipolar episode. So you are healing it but you've got to do the work. Not just go down and get the thing once a year or once every six months, it varies from person to person. And just keep - you can, you can just keep doing that or you can do -

 

 

[2:01:20] Ashley James: But there's no growth in that.

 

 

[2:01:23] Eric Thorton: There's no growth. If you can find out what it's all about, why, what triggers it, then you are in control. Not the doctors. So that's where we go.

 

 

[2:01:34] Ashley James: Very cool. So for those who are interested in learning more about how they can work with you or discover a practitioner that will do psilocybin with them and microdoses in a safe environment and do the therapy, they can contact you, ericthorton.com. And that it's not legal in every state or country. So that's needs to be taken into account. But can get it.

 

 

[2:02:03] Eric Thorton: It's their decision.

 

 

[2:02:03] Ashley James: But there are people in different states that even though it's not legal can have access to it with certain doctors that are willing to go against the laws in order to help people. So this is sort of like - I feel like it's, like, ten years ago with marijuana. There's only a matter of time before it's going to be legal. And that people will be able to use it in microdoses for this this type of healing.

 

 

[2:02:32] Eric Thorton: For this type. You have to have the following.

 

 

[2:02:35] Ashley James: But what we can do now is look at our diet. Because it affects our brain. Every meal, every meal, every -

 

 

[2:02:42] Eric Thorton: Every meal, every snack. Everything you put in your body -

 

 

[2:02:44] Ashley James: Affects our brain.

 

 

[2:02:46] Eric Thorton: And it's different. One last thing here, it's different from one person to the next because of the way your body digests food. And how much damage there is to your digestive system. So you have several factors there. And that's why it's not just a one thing fits all.

 

 

[2:03:09] Ashley James: I'm reading a really interesting book right now. It's called The Metabolic Typing Diet. And I'm enjoying the story and the science. I don't necessarily agree with the diet because there's a lot of meat in it. But it's interesting what these doctors, these clinicians found is that we metabolize - people metabolize differently depending on their autonomic nervous system, depending on their oxidative stress, depending on their alkalinity. They found seven different key factors in the metabolism that determine how food affects us.

 

 

[2:03:46]  Eric Thorton: Well, and then you have to add in which they're not obviously not looking at yet, the psychology of it. And what we're talking about,  the addicting factors. So like I in the work here, we look at all of that for each individual. Different set of circumstances for everybody that comes in. Because I listen to their guidance. So we can take them through whatever they've chosen to do. If you look at it as an individual instead of a corporate formula, you're going to get far better care.

 

 

[2:04:22] Ashley James: Is there anything you'd like to say or share to wrap up today's interview? I think that the guides really want to make sure that we say to clearly package this interview.

 

 

[2:04:33] Eric Thorton: Well, let's look at how the things we put in our mouth affect our brain and our body and our digestion. And it affects every single person that is currently alive in the physical body.

 

 

[2:04:46] Ashley James: If you have a pulse.

 

 

[2:04:47] Eric Thorton: Yes. If you have a pulse, it affects you. Denial will get you nowhere. It keeps you right where you're at, which is fine if you're happy with it.

 

 

[2:04:55] Ashley James: I'll share this quick story. I just had a late night phone call with a friend. I called her as we were driving home, our son fell asleep in the car. We picked him up from grandma's after watching the movie The Game Changers, Monday night. Really good movie. It's coming out digitally soon so everyone could watch it. Everyone needs to watch it.

 

 

2:05:13 Eric Thorton: I hope so. Everyone needs to watch it.

 

 

[2:05:14] Ashley James: It was really well done. James Cameron, who's the guy that directed Avatar.

 

 

[2:05:19] Eric Thorton: And directing the new one currently.

 

 

[2:05:23] Ashley James: Right. Currently directing Avatar 2. He's the mastermind behind it. So it was really well done. Even people who are totally convinced they'll never give up meat, you should still watch it because it was very entertaining. But it was really funny too. But anyway, we're driving home and I immediately had to call a friend who's a - she lives in Texas. She lives in a hospital with her friend who is quadriplegic. And she's the caregiver for this quadriplegic who has had the same bedsore that Christopher Reeves died from. And the doctors and nurses are telling my friend you know - they keep reminding my friend, "Christopher Reeves, multimillionaire, died from this. Your friend isn't going to make it." April, the person who's experiencing the bedsore, she has been in three different facilities. And she'd be fine with me sharing this, I know that. I know her. And the first facility - so I sent them a blender and I said, "Put vegetables in the blender and feed April smoothies." Because she fell and broke her neck well down in Texas. And she can't really chew food. And so I sent them a blender and I said - because the hospital food is horrible, I said, "Just blend vegetables. Drink it." And so the first month, there was huge healing. And she just didn't allow April to have any of the hospital food. And they got the doctors on board. Just vegetables and smoothies and almond milk or whatever and drink it, and the healing was amazing. Of course, they're doing all their therapies on it.

And then they transferred April to a different hospital who, for one month, did not allow April to have any vegetables. They said no. They only gave her some kind of protein shake with fake nutrients in it. And she got worse. And then transferred to a different hospital, and now starting to get better again. And the whole time ,it's antibiotic after antibiotic. And all these - they're throwing everything they have allopathically. But the diet, she was doing really bad. Then got on the vegetables and the smoothie, started healing amazingly and responding to their therapies. Then was taken off that diet and started getting worse. Then was put back on the diet and started getting better.

 

 

2:08:04 Eric Thorton: Right. It's all because of antioxidants. We're the only mammal that doesn't produce antioxidants. We have to eat them. And they only come from fruits and vegetables. They reduce the oxidative stress. The body could heal even while sitting on the wound.

 

 

[2:08:20] Ashley James: Right. And it's just amazing that hospitals feed complete crap to people wanting them to get better.

 

 

[2:08:26] Eric Thorton: Right. It's just amazing that they do. There's nothing - there's no value to their food.

 

 

[2:08:33] Ashley James: So coming back to the original point, because people are interested in the emotional and mental healing that had taken place with microdosing psilocybin or at least curious to learn more about it, which they have today. But what's really interesting is that every single person has the power to shift how their brain heals or shift how their emotions heal through every meal.

 

 

[2:08:57] Eric Thorton: Every single one.

 

 

[2:08:58] Ashley James: Yeah. Very cool.

 

 

[2:08:59] Eric Thorton: It is. It's very cool. And I'm happy to be a part of whatever people want me to help them with.

 

 

[2:09:07] Ashley James: Yeah. I definitely recommend listeners work with you. I've had amazing experiences working with you as it has my husband, as it has my friends. It's a pleasure to be here again today, Eric.

 

 

[2:09:17] Eric Thorton: Always.

 

 

[2:09:18] Ashley James: Thank you so much for coming back on the show.

 

 

[2:09:20] Eric Thorton: Thank you for having me.

 

 

[2:09:21] Ashley James: Absolutely. And listeners can go to Learn True Health Facebook Group and type any questions you have for Eric because he's a regular on the show. And you guys can ask questions.

 

 

[2:09:30] Eric Thorton: I'd love to hear them. That's a great idea. I'd love to hear them. We could do a show just on questions people write in.

 

 

[2:09:36] Ashley James: Yeah. Awesome. All right. Terrific. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure being with you again.

 

 

[2:09:39] Eric Thorton: Thank you too, also. However you say that.

 

 

[2:09:46] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity. Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business and support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it's something that you'd be interested in. Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I'm such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There's so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they'll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you're going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That's takeyoursupplements.com. Takeyoursupplements.com. That's takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected With Eric Thorton!

Official Website

Facebook

YouTube

Recommended Reading by Eric Thorton

Educating the Souls, Spiritual Healing and our Eternal Psychology

 

Check out other interviews of Eric Thorton!

Episode 380: Understanding Your Aura

Episode 375: Spiritual Healing In The Real World

Episode 359: Lives Of Discovery

Episode 336: Energetic Boundaries (Part II)

Episode 335: Energetic Boundaries

Episode 327: Spiritual Healing

Oct 11, 2019

Become A Health Coach-Learn More About The Institute for Integrative Nutrition's Health Coaching Certification Program by checking out these four resources:

1) Integrative Nutrition's Curriculum Guide:
http://geti.in/2cmUMxb

2) The IIN Curriculum Syllabus:
http://geti.in/2miXTej

3) Module One of the IIN curriculum:
http://geti.in/2cmWPl8

4) Get three free chapters of Joshua Rosenthal's book:
https://bit.ly/2wgkLOU

Watch my little video on how to become a Certified Health Coach!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDDnofnSldI

************************************

More about Dr. Campbell-McBride:
http://www.gaps.me/dr-campbell-mcbride.php
BOOK: Gut and Psychology Syndrome
https://amzn.to/33jMbBq
BOOK: Vegetarianism Explained
https://amzn.to/2IH0SXm
BOOK: Put Your Heart in Your Mouth
https://amzn.to/33rQPh8

 

The GAPS Diet

https://www.learntruehealth.com/gaps-diet-dr-natasha-campbell-mcbride

Highlights:

  • GAPS or Gut And Psychology Syndrome
  • Diet as a natural cure for many psychiatric and neurological conditions
  • GAPS diet
  • Symptoms of GAPS
  • Normal and abnormal gut flora
  • Antibiotics in food
  • The body’s reaction to undigested food
  • Rebuilding the gut lining, heal and seal the gut wall
  • Sources of toxicity in the body
  • Babies are born with high toxic load and acquire abnormal gut flora
  • FPIES or Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome
  • Recovery by using the GAPS nutritional protocol
  • GAPS diet is for a lifetime
  • Allergies and the GAPS diet
  • The role of cholesterol and fats
  • Vegetarianism and vegan diet – Veganism is not a diet. It is a form of fasting
  • Eat when you are hungry
  • Trust, listen, and work with your body

 

Have you ever wondered how our guts play a major role in our body? In today’s episode, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride will share with us GAPS, the normal and abnormal gut flora and how our body reacts to food.

 

[0:00] Intro: Hello, true health seekers. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast.

I am so, so honored today to have with us Dr. Campbell-McBride. She’s a nutritionist, a medical doctor, neurologist, and neurosurgeon. She’s the creator of the GAPS diet, which stands for Gut And Psychology Syndrome. Her diet heals the gut, eliminates leaky gut syndrome, and thus helps to heal the nervous system. Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride shares that the GAPS diet helped cure her first son of autism. She now widely promotes the diet as a natural cure for many psychiatric and neurological conditions, including autism, asthma, allergies, food sensitivities, ADD and ADHD, dyspraxia, dyslexia, depression, schizophrenia, Tourette’s Syndrome, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorders, gout, and childhood bedwetting.

It is so fascinating to hear the relationship between gut health and our brain and our nervous system and our immune system. And you’re going to love all the things that Dr. Campbell-McBride shares today.

As you’re listening to this episode and if you really geek out on this kind of information, learning about different diets that heal the body in a certain way, and you want to learn more about all the dietary theories out there that helped to heal different issues in the body really using food as medicine, consider becoming a student at IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. This is the online school that I went to, to become a health coach. It’s a year-long training program designed for busy, busy moms and dads or busy working people that also want to learn this information. So they make it in a way that allows you to do it in your free time. Listen to these great audios and watch these videos that you can fit it into your everyday life.

And in the course of a year, you learn a hundred dietary theories and all the ways in which you can heal the body with food. You also learn how to help others. So whether you want to become a health coach to help others or just have another tool in your tool belt to help your friends and family and help yourself, IIN has an amazing program. It was really life changing for me and I’ve said this before in the podcast, I would have done the program just for myself. Just for the personal growth that it gave me. And then in addition to that, it added more tools in my tool belt to help others. So if you’d like to learn more information, you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learntruehealth.com/coach and it allows you to take one of their modules for free to see if it’s something that interests you.

If you have any questions about IIN or going through it as a student and want to know more about the experience, please feel free to reach out to me. You can reach out to me through Facebook and our Facebook Group, the Learn True Health Facebook Group. Or you can email me, ashley@learntruehealth.com and I’d love to answer any questions you may have about my experience about going through it as a student. There are actually dozens of people, dozens of listeners that have gone through their program and become health coaches that are also in our Facebook Group. So you can just post in our Facebook Group, the Learn True Health Facebook Group, any questions you have, and not only will I answer them, but others will answer it so you’ll get an even deeper picture of what it’s like to go through their program.

Excellent. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you love. Please share this episode with the mothers and fathers in your life who have children who may have some difficulties with development or with ADD or ADHD, with allergies. This is something that is life changing not only for children but also for adults. I have a friend who this diet saved her life. Because those who have autoimmune conditions as well see great benefit from doing this protocol if they have leaky gut syndrome. So as you’re listening, you may also start to think about all the friends and family that would benefit from hearing this information. So please keep sharing and thank you so much for helping me get this information out there to help as many people as possible to learn true health.

 

 

[4:47] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 385.

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have with us – I feel like it’s I’m like in the presence of a Hollywood celebrity in the health realm – Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. I have been a big fan of yours. Many of our listeners have been a big fan of yours. And one of my friends who is also a listener says that she would be dead right now if it wasn’t for your protocol. You literally saved her life. And she is the biggest fan girl. Her name is Caroline. She just loves you. So I just want you to know there’s a woman in Seattle who loves you so dearly. People around the world have shared that your protocol has changed their lives. I first saw you on Netflix, actually. The season two, episode one of the Paleo Way. And I was really confused because there are all these diets out there that totally contradict each other.

And what I really get about diets is that it’s about figuring out what your body needs right now. And you have such a scientifically sound protocol to help people heal the brain and heal the gut. You’ve created the GAPS diet. Your website is gaps.me. And we have all the links to everything that Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride in the show notes for today’s podcast Learn True Health. It is such a pleasure to have you here today. Welcome to the show.

 

 

[6:26] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Thank you for inviting me. I’m delighted to be here.

 

 

[6:29] Ashley James: Absolutely. And thank you for taking the time. Isn’t like 6:00 p.m. your time in London right now?

 

 

[6:35] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: It is.

 

 

[6:36] Ashley James: Excellent. Well, thank you. Good evening. And I’d love to start by hearing the story. What happened that led you to create the GAPS diet?

 

 

[6:50] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Well, I guess it was my fate to create it. Because when I was 18 months old, I fell ill myself and nearly died. I had the food poisoning in the crash. And the food was just going in and coming out. And I was losing weight and literally dying. Until my parents contacted my grandmother – my grandparents in the village who had a smallholding in the village. My grandmother took me there and she healed me. And later on I’ve learned what she healed me with was the GAPS diet, basically. That’s exactly what it was.

 

[7:28] Ashley James: I love it.

 

 

[7:29] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: They have their own – yes. They have their own animals. They have their cow and sheep and chickens and garden and bees and all of that and everything was natural. And my grandmother used to make her own fermented milk from her own milk – raw milk. So that’s what healed me. And then when I got married and moved to Britain, my first child was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. And I knew, I knew instinctively at that point that it’s coming from the digestive tract. Because he had severe digestive problems right from the beginning. So I knew that it’s the diet. That the diet has to fix it. That is the most important thing.

And of course, in those days we didn’t have internet. All I could do is go to the local library and ask for books or whatever. And I came across the specific carbohydrate diet. Because I went to a conference where Elaine Gottschall was speaking. And we made a professional relationship. We became professional friends. And I started that protocol. And then I’ve changed it, evolved it, adding what my grandmother would do. Adding the traditional diets to the traditional wisdom to it. And then my own patients have called it the GAPS diet, standing for Gut And Psychology Syndrome. That’s the abbreviation.

Later on, I’ve added another GAPS strip, Gut And Physiology Syndrome. Because initially, obviously, I focused on autism. And as I was working with autistic children, I realized that their siblings are not healthy either. They have digestive symptoms, they have allergies, asthma, eczema, many of them are clingy, many of them are hyperactive, many of them are fussy eaters. Fussy eating just universally present amongst these children. And I realized that these children are just as well as their autistic sibling is just that they’ve had a different pregnancy, different constitution so they’re not autistic, but they have problems which stem from the same place – from the digestive system.

And as I started putting whole families on the GAPS diet, on the GAPS nutritional protocol, the parents started recovering from chronic fatigue syndrome, from fibromyalgia, from multiple sclerosis, from allergies, from migraines, from chronic cystitis, from all kinds of problems. As well as the siblings and the autistic children. So I realized that this is one condition that indeed, as Hippocrates put it all those thousands of years ago, all diseases begin in the gut. Every one of them, chronic diseases. We’re not talking about acute situations, of course. We’re talking about chronic diseases. That they all begin in the gut. And that’s where the treatment has to begin.

What we have with these people, they have abnormal gut flora. Recent research discovered the fact that 90% of all cells in the human body are in our gut flora, 90%. So our human bodies are only 10%. It’s a shell, a habitat for this mass of microbes that live inside us. That’s our gut flora. And it is a highly organized microbial world in a healthy person with all kinds of microbes are present there. From the bacteria viruses, protozoa, archaea, worms, flukes, all kinds of things have to be there. Because they’re all part of the harmonious community of microbes. They plant each other. They harvest each other. They eat each other. They control each other. They don’t allow one another to get out of control and start causing trouble. And normally, when you have that balanced community of microbes in there, then you are able to digest the food properly and benefit from that food. And it protects you from all kinds of illnesses. It protects you from any kind of reactions of the immune system. Because 85% of our immune system is located in the gut wall.

Our digestive system is a major immune organ in our body. It’s the biggest and the most important immune organ in the body. So any kind of immune abnormality, whether it is a chronic inflammation, or allergy, or autoimmune disease, or anything else, or histamine intolerance or anything else. Look in the gut. Don’t look anywhere else. Look in the gut first. Because that’s where the majority of the immune system is. That is where all the commanding echelons of our immune system are. All the generals, admirals, officers, the commanding echelons. And that’s where all the major decisions are made, in the gut.

So what happens in GAPS people, they have abnormal gut flora. Because we live in the world, which is literally set on damaging our gut flora from the moment of birth even before then. Antibiotics, and not only prescription antibiotics but antibiotics in our food because majority of agricultural chemicals used by our industrial agriculture, which grows our plant foods and then feeds them to our animals and feeds cows and pigs and sheep and chickens with antibiotics on a daily basis. Because that makes them increase weight quicker, grow quicker, so it’s more profitable. So all the industrially produced food that you buy in supermarkets is full of antibiotics. Chemicals which are antibiotics in their nature. Every time we put food in our mouths, we eat antibiotics. Antibiotics kill bacteria. That’s all they can kill, bacteria. These bacteria were eating and controlling fungi, viruses, protozoa, archaea, and other things. When you knock them out, all these other creatures suddenly are not controlled anymore. The balance is gone in the digestive tract. As it is on the overgrow and instead of being a beneficial member of a balanced community, they suddenly become pathogenic. They become villains. They start producing toxic substances and they start damaging the integrity of the gut wall.

A gut wall in the GAPS person is like a [inaudible 00:13:51], it’s got holes in it. So food doesn’t get the chance to get digested properly before it absorbs through these holes into your blood and into your lymph. And then your immune system finds this undigested food in your blood, in your lymph. It doesn’t recognize them as food and attacks them. And this attack, first and foremost, manifests itself as a food allergy or intolerance. So that can show itself as any kind of symptoms under the sun. It can be a drop in your blood pressure. It can be a drop in your blood sugar level. It can be a migraine attack. It can be an asthma attack. It can be a skin rash. It can be a panic attack. It can be about cystitis or anything else. It can be a heart palpitations. Anything at all.

And the symptoms can be immediate or it can be delayed. So on any given day, you have no idea what you’re reacting to. You might be reacting at the same time to something you’ve just eaten for lunch plus something you’ve eaten yesterday plus something you’ve eaten several days ago plus something you’ve eaten two weeks ago. All these reactions overlap on top of each other. In effect, you’re reacting to pretty much all food that you’re eating. Because all food is absorbing partially digested, improperly digested. You’re absorbing a lot of food undigested and you’re reacting to it.

There are many laboratories in the world which now can do testing for you on this food allergies and intolerances. And they tell you to remove this food and remove that food. And I’ve lost count of people who have taken that out and they started removing foods and removing and removing, then finish up with virtually nothing left to eat. They’ve got a few, literally, a handful of foods that they’re eating and they’re still reacting. Because as long as you got this like [inaudible 00:15:44], you are absorbing everything undigested. You’re reacting to everything.

So in the GAPS nutritional protocol, I don’t even recommend doing this testing, particularly for people who have limited funds. It’s expensive to do testing. We work on healing and sealing the gut lining. We rebuild the gut lining for the person. Because the beautiful fact is that, human body doesn’t waste effort on healing sick cells or damaged cells. If a cell is damaged, if a cell is sick, it is killed and removed. And then new baby cells are to replace it. In order to give birth to this baby cells, building materials are required. And the whole process is ruled and orchestrated by the bacteria, by the microbes. Not just bacteria but the whole microbial community in the gut. This beautiful process is called cell regeneration. And it goes on in every organ, every tissue in the human body. In the gut lining this process is very fast, very rapid. The cells which line our gut will only live a few days. They have a very short life. And they get replaced all the time. New baby cells are born all the time.

The problem is if a person has abnormal gut flora, and it’s the gut flora that is in charge of this process, these newly born baby cells get damaged immediately as soon as they’re born. Even before they mutate and they’re unable to fulfill proper functions of digestion and absorption of food. So what we want to do, at the same time, we want to change the gut flora. We want to drive out pathogens. Replace them with the beneficial flora. Restore the diversity of gut flora. Restore the whole harmonious microbial community in the gut. So this process goes right and this baby cells do not get damaged. At the same time in order for the gut lining to give birth to trillions of cells every day, we provide concentrated amounts of building materials for the body to make the cells from. And that is what the GAPS diet provides for the person.

So in effect, what we’re doing, we’re building new gut wall for the person. We’re healing and selling it. So that is one aspect of what happens to Gaps people.

The second thing that happens to GAPS people, because their gut flora is abnormal, the food that comes along is digested by this pathogenic abnormal community of microbes. And they have their own metabolism. They convert food into wastes, various products. And these products then absorbed for the damaged gut lining and finish up in the bloodstream. Many of them, thousands of them, are done by poisonous pathogenic. They go into the bloodstream. They get distributed around the body and cause havoc in every organ and every tissue. At the same time, these microbes all of them have their own metabolism. They produce hormones. In fact, now they produce so many hormones in such huge amounts that now researchers in gut flora have pronounced our gut flora to be the biggest and the most important endocrine organ in the human body.

The flow of hormones that comes from the gut flora is enormous. And of course, when these hormones finish up in our bloodstream, they regulate our hormonal balance. They talk to your thyroid gland, to your pancreas, to your dreams, to your sexual hormones. And they upset it. They unbalance it. As a result, usually typically GAPS people develop low thyroid function. Their adrenal hormones all over the place. Cortisol is usually high through the roof. So these people are constantly in a stress response. They can’t sleep well. They can’t cope with their stress. They can’t cope with pressure. And their adrenals are not working very well. They get exhausted in this people. And so sex hormones are all over the place. Some are too high, some are too low, the whole thing is dysregulated. And that will produce perimenstrual syndrome. That will produce polycystic ovaries. That will produce dysmenorrhea and various other problems in that area. In men, it will produce also problems in that area. And infertility is one of those problems as well.

And I would mention another problem that I see because I work with children and have been working for the last, almost, 30 years. So many of these children still stay with me. I observe them for a long, long time. Many of these children with abnormal gut flora, have abnormal sexual development due to this flow of hormones. Hormones from their gut flora. Girls are not sure they’re girls. Boys are not sure they’re boys. There are some secondary sexual characteristics which are not quite right, not quite normal. And they’re abnormalities in this area due to this fact.

Another thing that this community of microbes produces in combination with the gut itself are neurotransmitters. We now know that almost 100% of serotonin is produced in the gut and then transported to the brain to be used. About 70% of dopamine is produced in the gut and then sent to the nervous system to be used. Almost 100% of GABA is produced in the gut. And many other endorphins and neurotransmitters. These are chemicals that our nervous system, the cells in our brain and spine, use to communicate between themselves and between each other.

And when the serotonin is low, if your gut is not functioning well, your gut wall is abnormal, it’s unable to produce enough serotonin. If your serotonin is low then you can’t sleep well, you become negative, and you become depressed. You don’t see any joy in life at all. Because to be positive, to be content, we need serotonin.

When there isn’t enough dopamine, it’s a motivational neurotransmitter, that’s another side of depression. When the person is just apathetic. They don’t want to get out of bed. They don’t want to brush their teeth, brush their hair, change their clothes, to wash themselves. What’s the point? This person has no dopamine. Not enough dopamine is being produced.

When there isn’t enough GABA, the person becomes anxious. That is the cause of anxiety in the person and panic attacks.

And the combination, all of these neurotransmitters are very powerful. They have many, many functions in many different organs, not only on the nervous system. They also affect the immune system. They affect how the muscles work and how many, many other organs in the body work. So it’s a disaster just these three aspects of the activity of the gut flora, abnormal hormonal flow, abnormal neurotransmitter flow, and thousands of poisonous chemicals absorbing. All of this situation turns the digestive system of a person into a major source of toxicity in the body.

While the food is not digesting properly, not absorbing properly, and the person developing multiple nutritional deficiencies. When you have abnormal gut flora, you can be eating the best diet in the world, the best quality food in the world. But you are unable to digest it properly, to absorb it properly. And this food is not really benefiting you as a result. So that’s what happens in the GAPS person.

The more we research gut flora, the more we research microbiome – that’s the new term that science has created – the more we realize that there is nothing sterile in the human body. We have microbes living everywhere. Our blood vessels are populated by microbial community. Our blood has microbes in it. Our heart, our lungs, our brain has microbes in it. Our abdominal cavity has its own microbial flora. The uterus in a woman, the tubes in the woman, the ovaries have their own flora. The flora is everywhere.

But the bulk of it, the headquarters of all these microbial community are in the gut. And I believe that it is from the gut that all the major instructions and data and information goes to the rest of the microbiome in the human body – from the gut. So when we fix the gut, when we turn that gut flora back to normal, and when they heal and seal the gut wall, everything else in my clinical experience just fixes itself in the body.

The person might come to me with rheumatoid arthritis. And when I asked them about their digestive system, they say, “Well, I’m okay in that department. No diarrhea, no constipation, no gas, no bloating, no pain. I’m all right.” But when we test their gut flora, we find that it’s abnormal. When we test the permeability of their gut wall, we find that it’s like a safe, everything absorbs undigested and it’s just the flow of toxicity coming through it. And when we put the person on the GAPS nutritional protocol, the rheumatoid arthritis disappears. The person recovers from this disease which is far away from the digestive system and nobody would connect the two.

The same with the mental illness with the brain. Look how high the brain is in the body and where the digestive system is. That is why for a long time nobody connected the two. And with the GAPS nutritional protocol, what we do – and my book has – the GAPS book came out first in 2004. And when it first came out, I lost count of mainstream medical professionals and professors and so on who were telling me that I’m absolutely crazy. That I’m off my rocker saying things like that. That autism has any connection to the digestive system. Or hyperactivity in children or anything else like that. Now we have a number of scientific studies published which are confirming that fact. So the science eventually caught up with us, which is great.

So what happens in an autistic child? From my point of view and from the point of view of many other holistic doctors that I know, ecological doctors, almost 100% of these poor little darlings, these autistic children in the world – we have an epidemic of autism – we’re born with a perfectly normal brain. These were perfectly normal babies.

But what happened to these babies? They acquired abnormal gut flora from the mother. We now know that the child starts acquiring gut flora during pregnancy in utero. Because the woman has uterine flora. She got the flora in her uterus and her placenta. The placenta is populated richly, apparently, by microbes. And that’s where it all begins. So the baby is born already with some microbes populating the whole digestive system, the skin of the child, the eyes of the child, the mucous membranes. But then a large percent of our gut flora comes in into the baby during the moment of birth if the child is born vaginally, if the child is born normally. Because vagina is richly populated area of the woman’s body. And that flora comes from two sources. It comes from her gut flora. So whatever gut flora she has, it travels out of her rectum, into the groin, and populates the vagina.

The second source is the father. If the father has abnormal gut flora, then he’s groin and all the organs in that area will be populated with that abnormal gut flora. And he shares that flora with the mother a regular basis through sexual conduct. So that’s how Mother Nature designed it. So both mommy and daddy pass their gut flora to the child  at the moment of birth.

If the child was born through C-section, then the flora is impoverished. That’s what research shows. That the diversity of microbes in the flora of these children is much, much lower. It’s impoverished because they didn’t go through the vagina. Therefore, it comes from the hands of people who look after the child, from the bottle, from the nipple of the mother. Because the milk ducts in the breasts of the mother are populated by and enriched microbial flora. So breast milk is a probiotic food. It’s rich in beneficial microbes plus all the necessary food to encourage the right kind of microbes to grow in the digestive tract to the child. So breast is still the best without a doubt. If the child on top of that is not breastfed, is bottle fed, then that’s another source of good gut flora eliminated in this child.

So why is it important to understand and know the parents pass their gut flora? Because that is where we find the source of this epidemic of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, schizophrenia, diabetes type one, allergies, asthma, eczema, and under problems in our children.

About a third of Western children certainly in the United States of America are now being estimated that they will not outlive their parents. Children who were born in the last ten years or so. Because their constitution is so poor and their health is so poor. They just haven’t got the chance, this children. And unfortunately, that proportion of children is growing every year and the situation is getting worse every year. And the same with autism.

When I started practicing when my own child was born, we were diagnosing one child in 10,000 with autism. Today we’re diagnosing one child in 35. And scientists have already projected that line for them. And by 2025, between 2020 and 2025 in the English speaking countries which are on the forefront of this epidemic, they are predicting that one child in two will become autistic.

Half. The other half of our babies will not be healthy either. They will have ADHD, ADD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, schizophrenia, Oppositional Defiant Disorder. The list of various diagnostic labels is growing all the time. Epilepsy, diabetes type one is an absolute epidemic. Absolute epidemic. It is growing through the roof. Rheumatoid arthritis in our babies. Eczema, asthma, allergies, all kinds of health problems. And the proportion of these children is growing.

So what is happening and while this is happening? Before I talk about the health of the child in my clinic, I always talk about the health of the parents first and our grandparents as well, and all the siblings. And out of that information, a typical scenario has emerged. If the grandmother and grandfather were born, let’s say, after the Second World War, they’ve acquired normal healthy gut flora from their parents. Or maybe during the Second World War, they were born. And then antibiotics came onto the market in the 50s, maybe they had one or two courses of antibiotics which damaged their gut flora slightly. It didn’t have any effect on their own health, you know, because the human body is pretty resilient. And then they passed a slightly damaged gut flora to their children at the moment of birth, both the mother and the father. And then these children grew up in a very different world. They grew up in a world where antibiotics were given to them throughout their childhood and youth as sweets for every cough and sneeze, regular courses of antibiotics.

This was the time when the food industry flourished and appeared on the planet. And industrial agriculture appeared on the planet. And then the increasing number of agricultural chemicals being used, many which antibiotics in their nature. This is the time when junk food came onto the market. So a lot of these kids grow up on junk food, processed foods, full of antibiotics, full of chemicals. And then this is the time the generations where the girls will put on the contraceptive pill at the age of 15 or 16, which they took for quite a few years. Because this is the generation again where people started having children later and later in life. So the woman takes this pill for quite a while, quite a few years, before she is ready to have her first child.

Contraceptive pill has a devastating effect on the gut flora and on the immune system of the woman as well. So by the time this generation of people decides to have their first child, they got fully seriously damaged. And that is what they passed to their child at the moment of birth. So these children start their life from a very poor stand, already acquiring abnormal gut flora, abnormal microbiome of the whole body, from their parents. And what I see that every year, this situation is getting worse and worse, deeper and deeper. Those who had their first baby five years ago, passed a little bit better gut flora than young ladies who are having children this year or last year. And it’s accelerating. The whole thing is just accelerating. This is the epidemic of abnormalities in the gut flora that the GAPS epidemic. That is the root cause of all the other epidemics we have, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, poor vision in the children, epilepsy, diabetes type one, allergies, and so on. And every year the situation is getting worse.

 

There’s another factor that joined in the last few decades, particularly recently in the last 20 or 25 years, and that is the toxic load that the baby is born with. It sounds cruel. It sounds unfair. But the way Mother Nature designed a woman’s body is that it uses pregnancy as a chance to clean up by dumping toxins into the fetus, into the baby. Our ladies nowadays grow up in the world, they are born into a world where vanity rules. We now have five year old girls dyeing their hair, doing nails, using makeup, all kinds of personal care products usually targeted at female population as well. All these chemicals, the personal care industry, the makeup, the hair, all of this sort of things. Human skin is not a barrier. It’s a sponge. It absorbs everything you put on it in seconds.

And our chemical industry to date has invented some 80,000 or something of new chemicals which don’t exist in nature. And this list is growing all the time. We haven’t even researched the majority of these chemicals. They are not safe. The human body doesn’t know what to do with them. They accumulate in the human body and the body just tucks them away somewhere so they don’t cause damage.

So by the time the lady is ready to have her first child and women have their children later and later in life, majority of women in the Western world now wouldn’t even think about it until they’re 30, even later sometimes. So the longer the woman waits, the more toxicity her body accumulates. And then as soon as she gets pregnant for the first time, her body thinks great, “I’ll clean up.” And it dumps the whole lot into the baby – into the fetus. If that toxicity is enough to kill the baby then the woman will have a miscarriage or a stillbirth. We have an epidemic of miscarriages. The statistics are also growing. But miscarriage is not a happy event. But it is a chance for the woman’s body to clean up. So for the following pregnancy, she’s cleaner. And she will continue having miscarriages until her body is clean enough to provide an environment for producing a viable body for her baby.

If the woman didn’t have enough toxicity in her body, then her baby will be born with a high toxic load, if it wasn’t enough toxicity to kill a fetus, the fetus has survived, but the baby will be born with a high toxic load. And that means this baby has a compromised constitution. This is not going to be a healthy person. A healthy human being born with a high toxic load. And indeed, if you look at the statistics of autism, of ADHD, and other problems, other health problems in children, the vast majority of them are first born in the family. Because the woman cleaned up on the first pregnancy. And the following pregnancies, she had a cleaner body for those and these children were born with a smaller toxic load. As a result, stronger constitution and stronger health, generally speaking. If a woman was exposed to some toxicity between pregnancies, which can happen in our modern world as well, then following pregnancy will also dump a lot of toxicity into the child.

So this is a double whammy for babies nowadays. They’re born with a high toxic load plus they acquire abnormal gut flora. So there are gaps this children. From my point of view, nobody’s researching this. There are no epidemiological studies done on this yet in the world. How many of our babies are born as GAPS? But from my point of view, a vast majority. A growing majority. It is hard to see healthy babies nowadays. Babies are affected in one way or another.

So what happens in this child? The child begins its life with abnormal gut flora. While the child is exclusively breastfed – breast milk is the best food for the baby for many reasons. First of all, it doesn’t mean digesting. It absorbs – the nutrients are all there ready to be absorbed and to nourish the child. It is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Secondly, the milk ducts in the breast populates a beneficial flora. So this is a probiotic food. So while we are exclusively breastfeeding, we are correcting the gut flora in the child getting it better a little bit.

At the same time whatever abnormal gut flora the mother passed to her child, she had for a while herself. So her immune system has developed some defenses against her own gut flora. She would have antibodies. She will have immune complexes against this microbes. And all of this immune complexes and antibodies will be flowing in her milk. Because milk of any animal is the white blood of the female with red blood cells removed. So everything that is in your blood, in the mother’s blood, will be in her milk. And that means all the immune complexes alive and active, alive and active hormones, neurotransmitters, microbes, nutrients and the right kind of biochemical forms so the breast milk is the best. There’s no doubt about it. So while the woman is breastfeeding, she passed her abnormal gut to the child but at the same time through her breast milk she’s providing protection for her baby. So the baby is protected.

The baby might have colic. Colic is the first symptom that the child has abnormal gut flora. It must not be ignored. It’s very important, Colic has become so universal that health [inaudible 00:39:13] pronounced it as normal. Because they just see so many babies with colic. It is not normal. It means that the gut flora is abnormal in the child and it’s producing too much gas. At the same time, inflammation sets in the walls of the digestive tract of the child. When the bubble of gas accumulates somewhere in the digestive tract, it stretches those sore, inflamed walls, and the child has pain. The child has cramps that is why the child is crying. And until that gas gets released, one way or another, or gas moved into a less painful area of the digestive tract, the child will be screaming. So this should be a signal to the parents that the gut flora is abnormal. We must do something to deal with the situation because if we don’t, later on, that can lead towards autism, towards another learning disability or epilepsy or allergies or [inaudible 00:40:05] or something else disastrous for the child. So that is the first thing that happens.

The child may have colic, the child may be crying, may have eczema. Because eczema is a GAPS condition. What happens? A lot of this toxicity that absorbs from the digestive tract has to be removed from the body somehow. And sweat is a major way to eliminate things out of the body. So when these toxins come out in sweat, they cause irritation on the skin. There is a flora on the skin. The microbes interact with those toxins. They try to initialize them, eat them, or maybe convert them into something even more toxic. That’s a possibility. And of course the immune system is going to join the whole party. When the immune system joins the whole party, that’s when you get the redness, the swelling, the itchy scratchy patches on the skin. Only when the immune system joins in. Because it’s not the toxins and not the microbes that caused the symptoms, It’s the immune system trying to deal with that situation that causes the red, the hot, the itchy, and the painful patches on the skin. So that’s what eczema is. The root of it isn’t the gut. That’s where the toxicity comes from. So when we heal and seal the gut, eczema disappears.

And I have thousands of children who healed from eczema very nicely when they followed the GAPS nutritional protocol. So this baby – let’s come back to this exclusively breastfed baby, the baby might be crying because of colic. The baby might have eczema. But the baby is growing, developing, nobody is particularly concerned. But when solids are introduced or formula is added to the breast milk regimen. And formula, now we have studies to show that even occasional bottle or formula changes the gut flora in the child towards pathogenic end.

So we really need to work on exclusively breastfeeding our babies and avoiding all commercial formulas because they do our babies no good. This is a dead powder made of processed synthetic things, which do nothing good for the baby whatsoever. So breastfeeding, breast is the best.

And many women who do not produce enough milk or have some problems with breastfeeding, they ask me, “What do I do? If I can’t feed formula, what do I do?” What we need to do in our human societies – modern human society is to resurrect thousands of years old practice. Because formula only existed in the world for a few decades. What did women do for thousands of years when a girl can’t produce enough milk for her baby? There will be other women around who are breastfeeding their babies, they will feed her baby for her. And that was called wet nursing. We need to bring that practice back. That is the only viable and the only proper thing to do for our babies. Not to run to the pharmacy and buying formula.

So what I recommend to all pregnant girls who go to antenatal classes, I tell them, “You single out. If you pregnant ladies there who look healthy, speak to them and say let’s form a group.” Because you never know what happens. Giving birth is the most dangerous thing a woman can do in her life. It’s completely unpredictable. You can prepare in the best possible way. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Really, it is from the experience of obstetricians. They will confirm that experience. “So let’s form a group, girls. If one of us cannot breastfeed for whatever reason, we will feed that baby, we will share our milk.”

Many women when they breastfeed produce so much milk, they can feed more than one baby. Definitely. I was one of those women. When I was breastfeeding my two babies, I could breastfeed five, no doubt about it. I had so much milk. And it was very, very rich. I would have been perfectly happy to share. So there are many women like that. And that’s what we need to do. We need to create these communities of wet nursing to support each other and to support our babies. Because no matter how clever and how well the formula is marketed, no formula in the world will ever come close to the quality of the breast milk of a woman. So that’s what we need to be doing.

And what happens to these babies with abnormal gut flora when the solids are introduced? That’s when their pathogenic microbes suddenly get the feast. You know, and usually it’s baby rice or processed powdered milk or anything else processed for these babies. And so they feast on that and they start manufacturing all their toxins and all the abnormal hormones go in and other things go in. And that’s where real problems begin in the child.

And many children nowadays instinctively learn that solids are not good for them. Anything apart from mommy’ breasts, everything else they just diffuse these babies. Because maybe when they were given the first solid or the first formula milk or anything else, the child got a tummy ache or maybe got a headache or maybe got pain in the joints or pain in the muscles. The baby can’t explain this to you. But the baby learns that anything but mommy’s breasts hurts me. I’m not going to have it. They refuse it.

It is rare for a human child to continue thriving exclusively on breast milk past the age of nine months, ten months, maybe on average. That’s when children start losing weight. And the development starts slowing down and everybody gets concerned. And that’s when the child gets diagnosed with failure to thrive in this situation. And the mainstream does all sorts of terrible things. These children have a tube through their nose and fed synthetic formulas through the nose and all sorts of things like that. And if that continues, the child will develop severe profound physical and mental disability.

What we do with these children, we put them on the first stage of the GAPS introduction diet. We start with meat stock for these babies. [Inaudible 00:46:22] boil chicken. We get organic chicken, boil the whole chicken in about two or three liters of water, and we start with that meat stock. The meat stock is warm. It is soothing. It is healing for this baby. So what the mother does when the baby is ready to eat, is not stressed, the baby needs to be happy and calm. There’s no crying, no pain anywhere. And before you give the breast to the child, you give the child one teaspoon of this warm chicken stock. Just put it in the child’s mouth and let the baby swallow it. What we’re doing with teaching the child that the spoon is safe. Because at some point the child learn that spoon is dangerous. That anything coming off the spoon gives me pain. I’m not going to have anything from the spoon or from the beaker or from the bottle or anything else. We’re re-teaching the child that the spoon is safe. And the beaker is safe and the bottle is safe by using this warm soothing healing meat stock.

And we’ll start with a small achievable target, one teaspoon before the breast is given. So before every breastfeeding, we give one teaspoon until one teaspoon is not a problem. Then we move to two teaspoons before every breastfeeding. Then three teaspoons and so on until we start using a bottle, start using a beaker, and the child has a good amount of this meat stock before every breastfeeding. When that’s not a problem, then we’ll take the skin, the fat, a little bit of brown meat of the wings and the legs of that chicken that we made the meat stock and blend into the bouillon into the stock. And this is only for soup. So we’ll make that soup gradually thicker and thicker and thicker. So the child is having the stock and and the chicken itself. And the most valuable parts of the skin of the chicken and the fat of the chicken and a little bit of brown meat. Not the breasts.

And then if that’s not a problem anymore and that has become a normal part of the child’s daily routine, having this little soup, then we start adding some vegetables to the soup. We cook them well. We start with non-starch vegetables. This is described in my book – in my GAPS book, that is part four there, about preconception and new baby. Where there is a diet on new baby. That’s how we deal with that situation.

Learning disabilities and other serious physical problems usually develop when breastfeeding stops in the baby. Because the breast milk was providing protection from these disabilities. Despite the fact that the child has acquired abnormal gut flora. The child has colic, has eczema maybe, has other problems, but as long as the breast milk is provided, it provides protection. Because we can’t live with colic and many parents wouldn’t mind – you know, I’m not so concerned about eczema even compared to autism. Autism was a far more disastrous situation than any of those other situations. So nobody wants that. So what I recommend for these families, if you know that your gut flora is abnormal, if you know that your child already has a colic, has eczema, or has something wrong with the gut flora, breastfeed for as long as you can. Two, three, four years. Even once a day, a little supplement of breast milk will do wonders. It will boost the immune cell status of the child. It will provide the right nutrition. It will provide healing substances for the gut lining. It will provide probiotic microbes for the child. Just don’t stop breastfeeding until you’re sure your child is doing well. And in the meantime, follow the GAPS nutritional protocol to heal the gut, to heal the immune system, to normalize and rebalance the hormonal system in the child, neurotransmitter production, and immune function. Everything in the child will straighten up on the GAPS nutritional protocol.

There’s another very serious situation that is fairly modern. It’s a new diagnostic label called a FPIES. There are now variations of this diagnostic label. And that is a Food Protein-Induced Enterocolitis in the child. Basically, what we have here, we have a child with such damaged gut wall with big holes in the gut wall. So all protein in this child absorbs undigested. And these are the children who are often exclusively breastfed. Breast milk goes in, diarrhea comes out, and the child i’s not putting weight, vomiting, diarrhea, vomiting, diarrhea. Everybody gets concerned. The doctors test this child and find that the child is allergic to all proteins on the planet. So the woman is told to stop breastfeeding. As a result, the child is put on an elemental soy formula, which is terrible. And the parents are told, “You can’t give your child any protein. Just give them some bold carrots or something. And that’s it.” And then, you know, the doctors tell them to look for veganism for the rest of their lives.

So what we do with these babies? I have a growing group of these babies in the world. We have now a support group amongst parents, wonderful mothers, wonderful, just absolute heroes mothers who have healed their own children and now helping hundreds of other babies in the world with this terrible situation.

We start with meat stock with these babies. Lots of protein. But what we’re doing with this meat stock, we’re building a new gut wall for the baby. And until that new gut wall is built, vomiting, diarrhea might continue. The child might continue reacting. But we have to, there is no other path, there is no other way. And this children do recover. They have to stay on the GAPS diet then pretty much for life. For many, many, many years until we’re absolutely sure that the person is healthy and robust. Only then you can try and introduce things which are not allowed on the GAPS diet. But there are now many children in the world who recovered from this condition. This are GAPSters children. And many other health problems. So this is the first year that we talked about.

Now let’s move into the second year of the GAPS children. That is the year when they develop autism, hyperactivity, dyslexia, dyspraxia, diabetes type one, and other learning disabilities and other physical problems. Because that’s usually is the year when the breastfeeding stops and the child is on solids. And the child can digest that food. Their digestive tract is a source of toxicity. How do babies learn? How do children learn how to be a human being in this world? Because they need to learn that sort of thing. They learn through using their senses, their eyes, the ears, their tactile sensitivity, their sense of smell, sense of taste, and other senses. So what does sensory organs do? They collect information from the environment. Just observe babies. They listen to everything. They stare at everybody. They touch everything. They take everything in their mouth. They’re using their sensory organs to collect information from the environment. And then this information is passed to the brain to be processed. And from this processing, the brain learns. Now, “This is mommy. This is daddy. This is a toy. I play with it like this. This is food I eat. These are the children, I copy them.” And that’s how human beings develop. That’s how a baby learns to be a human being.

But in our GAPS children, their brain is clogged with toxicity. That proof of toxicity coming out of the gut gets into the brain of the child and clogs it with toxins. This brain cannot process this information from the sensory organs appropriately. All this information comes into a mush, into a noise in the brain. And depending how much toxicity is in the brain, what kind of toxicity the character with, the child will develop symptoms. If it’s the most severe situation, the child will become autistic. If it’s less severe and there are bits and pieces here and there, the child may become hyperactive or develop attention deficit disorder or dyslexia or dyspraxia or schizophrenia, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, strange fits, strange ticks, and epilepsy.

Epilepsy is a safety valve for the brain. When the brain accumulates too much toxicity and it senses that this toxicity is physically damaging to the tissue of the brain. Remember, these children were born with a perfectly normal brain. This was a perfectly normal brain. But of course, years and years of bombardment of the brain by this toxins will cause physical damage to the brain. And a proportion of these children, the brain develops a cleansing procedure, a safety valve. It sends one electric discharge through or a number of electric charges, and burns the whole lot of toxins out. It cleanses itself. But clinically that manifests itself as an epileptic seizure. We have known that epileptic seizures are cleansing for the brain for the last 200 years from classical psychiatry. There are many descriptions of that and that’s what classical psychiatry understood. So the last thing these children need is another toxin added to the whole load of toxicity in the brain in the form of antibiotic medication. All it does is suppresses the brain activity. So the longer the child is on this medication, the more they are unable to learn and they become – they develop learning disability and they become just couch potatoes. Their personality changes in these children.

What we want is to subtract toxins from the brain. Not to add more. There are dangerous forms of epilepsy. But the child is having several grand mal seizures a day. That’s when the medication is life saving. Because an epileptic seizure can kill a child. But majority of children are not in that category. Majority of children had one seizure and then no seizures for many months. No epileptic activity for many months afterwards. And yet they’re put on medication. My dream is that one day our medical professional will be putting them on the GAPS state. Because I have many, many children around the world who recovered from epilepsy with the GAPS diet. Because what we do with the GAPS diet, the GAPS nutritional protocol will clean the gut, drive out pathogens, reestablish normal harmonious balanced community of microbes in the gut, and we heal and seal the gut wall.

As a result that wave of toxicity coming from the gut stops. And when it stops, the brain cleans itself. Human body has an amazing ability to clean itself. Every cell, every tissue has a cleaner in it, which is very busy and constantly cleaning itself. The headquarters of this cleaning detoxification system is in the liver and departments in every cell of the human body. So the human body and the brain has a beautiful ability to cleanse itself to get rid of toxicity. We just have to stop these toxins from coming in. And in order to do that, we have to heal the gut. Because if your tap in the kitchen is leaking and you have a puddle on the floor ,what do you do first? Do you start mopping the puddle or do you deal with the tap first? It’s a good idea to fix the tap first and then mop the puddle. So by fixing the gut, we’re fixing the tap in the kitchen – the leaky tap. And once the leak stops then we can mop the paddle and be done with the situation.

So as far as the brain is concerned, in my opinion, all mental illness – all of it – schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, addictions, depression, epilepsy, any kind of mental illness, panic attacks, memory problems are GAPS conditions. They’re all coming from the digestive system from my clinical experience, from everything I know, and all learning disabilities and children. So whenever there are any mental symptoms in any person, the first thing we need to do urgently, get on the GAPS diet immediately.

But when this river of toxicity gets to other organs in the body, it will cause disease on those as well. And number one thing that happens in many tissues and organs – and that is a collagen disorder. I call it GAPS collagen disorder. I’m finishing my second GAPS book, the Gut and Physiology book. Hopefully, it will come out next year. If I get enough time to see fit. And I described this condition in there – in that book. What happens? About a third of all protein in the human body is collagen. It’s an elastic protein that holds the human body together, pretty much. It’s made out of fibers, long fibers. The skeleton of your muscle, the skeleton of your bones are made out of collagen. All fissures, all ligaments, capsules of the joints, every joint and all the materials that the joints are made, the cartilage, the synovial fluid, the capsule of the joint, all the ligaments and all the supportive structures are collagen largely. So it is a very, very important part in the human body. The problem with it is that, it is an absolute magnet for toxicity for toxins. This toxic river that is absorbing from the digestive tract of a GAPS person. Many of these toxins are attracted to collagen. They attach themselves to these molecules. And that changes the three dimensional structure of collagen.

Our immune system goes around the body surveying it all the time. What it finds, this change molecules of collagen. It looks at them and says, “You’re not mine. I don’t recognize you as mine. You must be some something foreign that got in.” And initially the immune system would use off the shelf response which is always ready, always there on the shelf, and that is inflammation. It will cause inflammation in that area. What inflammation does, it kills the enemy and cleans the site.  That is its function. It will remove this toxicity. It will clean that place up. So if this influx of toxicity was temporary, and not very heavy, you may get about inflammation somewhere. And inflammation always comes with pain. It’s red, it’s hot, it’s swollen and the function is limited. So that might happen in your knee or your elbow or your thumb or your spine, in your – you’ll get lumbago, you’ll get a backache, back pain. That is a major, major cause of back pain because our spine is a whole collection of tiny little joints. It’s made out of lots and lots of little joints. The spine, lots of collagen.

But if this situation is not temporary, if this toxicity is coming all the time, and the immune system has been using inflammation for many, many days, the immune system will have enough time then to study these changed molecules of collagen and start producing antibodies against them. And you’ve got an autoimmune disease. That’s when your temporary bouts of arthritis turned into rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, or another form of autoimmune arthritis. If this situation happened in your lungs because the lungs are full of collagen, then you may get asthma, you may get obstructive pulmonary disease, or another problem with your lungs. If the situation happens in your heart, and the heart has lots of collagen in it because heart valves are largely collagen. The strings that are attached to the heart walls, the inside lining of the heart has a lot of collagen in it, and the muscle of the heart itself and the capsule of the heart,. Then you can get palpitations and you can get heart problems. So wherever this sort of situation happens, it becomes chronic and there is an autoimmune component as well as inflammation going on in the body.

Many of our GAPS children have that situation pretty much from birth. That is why these children usually have loose weak joints. They are double jointed. They have flat feet. They stumble on a perfectly level floor and hurt themselves all the time. These children, because their joints are loose because the collagen that is holding the joint together is being destroyed by our own immune system by autoimmunity. The [inaudible 01:03:01] has become loose in this person so these children and adults can develop hernias. All our organs inside our bodies are hanging on big sheets of collagen. These are the things that are holding them hanging in the right place. They all sag down quite often. They hang low and these people. And that can cause the problems with the function of these organs. And because our blood vessels are largely made out of collagen, these people get very weak blood vessel walls and they bruise easily.

There are many people with GAPS who say that, “I bruise so easily. I just pick something up and I’ve got a bruise on my hand.” I just have to bump a little bit into something and they get the great big bruise. The wall of your blood vessels is very weak because you have a collagen disorder. That’s what happens in these patients, they are called GAPS collagen disorder because the toxicity is coming out of the digestive system of the person.

Wherever these toxins get you, they will cause disease, neurological illness, multiple sclerosis, neuropathies, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, DM [inaudible 01:04:11] or any other neurological – chronic neurological disorder. Fibromyalgia can be put into that category as well because these people have neuropathies as well.

The skeleton of every peripheral nerve in our body is collagen. And if that collagen inflamed and under autoimmune attack, of course, there will be symptoms. There will be problems. I have many patients with neuropathies who have recovered on the GAPS nutritional protocol.

Energy production in the body also suffers when people have so much toxicity coming out of the gut. The energy in the human body is produced by organelles in every so-called mitochondria, our little energy factories. They’re very effective mitochondria. They produce a lot of energy per unit of glucose or unit of fat that they burn to produce energy. The problem is the process is dirty. The things that shoot out of these mitochondria into the cell are free radicals. This wild oxygen species which can damage a lot of things in the cell. Because this process was designed by Mother Nature over billions of years, the cell has a way of dealing with that situation. It produces antioxidants to deal with this free radicals immediately. It produces lipoic acid, glutathione, vitamin C, and other things, other antioxidants. And the whole thing is ticking nicely.

The problem is, our mitochondria very vulnerable to toxicity coming out of the gut. They get damaged by toxins. And many cells also die. Many cells in the body not only mitochondria but many cells in the body get damaged in the human body. So the energy production starts reducing. The person starts getting fatigue. The person starts getting tired from ordinary or normal activities. They have to rest and pace themselves. And what happens at a certain point in the body? There is a central command that comes from the brain. When the brain senses that enough cells in the body are dying from this toxicity, enough mitochondria being damaged, a central command descend from the brain to shut all mitochondria down. Why does that happen?

And that is the day when the person can’t get out of bed. They become more chair bound at that point. They can breathe. They can just about, you know, live, but they can’t do anything. They can’t function – these people – because there isn’t enough energy.

What happens in this situation? When many cells are dying in the body because of toxicity get destroyed. The human body has to produce lots of baby cells to replace them. Lots and lots. The body becomes broody. It starts producing lots of babies. In order to produce a baby, a cell has to unwrap its genetic material. Its chromosomes which are hidden inside the nucleus of the cell behind a very thick wall. Why it is hidden behind a thick wall? Because our genes, our chromosomes, are extremely vulnerable to free radical damage. And all these free radicals shooting out the mitochondria inside the cell, they can damage our genetic material. When the cell wants to produce a baby, it has to dissolve that wall, make its chromosomes make it inside the cell, divides them into two, build two nuclei, build a wall around those nuclei to protect them, and then divide and produce a baby – produce a baby cell. So while that process is going on, what the cells do? They shut down their mitochondria. They can’t allow them to work. They can’t allow this production of free radicals in the cell.

And while mitochondria are shut down, the cell uses a very old archaic way of production of energy, which comes from evolution, which will allow the cell to divide, will allow it to breathe, but will not allow it to do anything else. It’s archaic. It’s very old. It producers only a little bit of energy that’s not enough to really function to the full capacity. But because the cells divide quite quickly, it only takes a few minutes. As soon as the baby is produced, mitochondria switched on again. And this process worked for us beautifully for thousands of years, possibly millions of years. But what happens when the person is so toxic and so many cells are dying, and so many babies need to be produced? At a certain point, the brain perceives this situation. It keeps a tab on everything going on in the body. And with the central command, it shuts down all mitochondria. And the body starts functioning on that archaic, old way of producing energy in the cytoplasm of the cell. Which will allow you to breathe, to stay alive, but will not allow you to jump out of bed, to make breakfast for your children, to take them to school, to go and work, or do anything else. And this is chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis, and some other conditions where the person suffers from severe fatigue.

 

So how do we help these people? What do we need to do? It’s toxicity that’s killing them. And where is that leaky tap where toxicity is coming from? The gut. We need to fix that tap first. We need to fix the gut first. We need to be on the GAPS diet for many, many years. Sometimes for the rest of the person’s life. Because this is a very serious situation. Once we fix the gut and that waive of toxicity stops, the leaky tap is fixed. Then the body moves up the puddle on the floor. Removes the toxicity. And as the toxins are being removed from the body, the body becomes cleaner and cleaner. At a certain point the brain perceives that situation and it takes off that command, it switches on the mitochondria. And that’s a beautiful day usually for the person because they wake up in the morning and they’ve got enough energy to actually get out of bed and maybe go and brush their teeth, you know,  or brush their hair, or have a shower, or something else like that. The next day, a little bit more energy. Next week a bit more energy. And gradually they regain their normal energy production.

But in order to get to that point, to the point of actually producing energy, first we need to spend time on healing the gut. And that can take a year or a couple of years, it can take time, depending how severe the situation is in the human body. Generally speaking, with all of this severe chronic conditions, the disease has been building up and developing in a person in less. It’s like an onion this whole disease. First, the first layer was developed. And then the second layer developed on top of that. And then another layer. And the healing will go in the reverse order. The body will decide what’s the priority number one, then what’s the priority number two, was the priority number three. And the body has to deal with the priority number one first until it’s done. Only then the body can have a little break, a little respite. And that’s the time when the person feels really well. They really feel well. And then the body decides it’s good enough resources. Enough strength now to attack the layer number two, the second priority. And that’s when new symptoms develop. That’s when the person feels ill again.

Don’t be disheartened if you were on the GAPS nutritional protocol for a year and you got better, much, much better. However, not all your health problems are gone yet. And then suddenly you feel worse again. Your body got to the second layer of the onion. It’s dealing with another second priority. And it could not deal with it before because it had to do with the first priority first. And it’s your body that is doing the healing. The human body has a wonderful ability to heal itself. All the healing mechanisms are programmed into our body. All we have to do is allow the body to do that work without us attacking it with clever inventions, pharmaceuticals or anything else.

Just let the body work and give it all the resources. Give it the right food. Give it enough rest. Give it a positive mental attitude. Give it, maybe, meditation. Give it fresh air. Give it a nice gentle walk in the fresh air every day. And loving, nurturing environment. We each live [inaudible 01:12:44]. You need to have love around you. People who are positive and loving and supportive. All those aspects are important for healing for the human body.

The diet is a huge subject. We probably don’t have time for it in this interview. It’s described in great detail in my book, the Gut And Psychology Syndrome Book. And it’s also described in great detail on my website gaps.me. The diet, how to implement it. And GAPS nutritional protocol is not just a diet. It also has some supplements in it. And it has lifestyle changes. So it’s a problem. So the whole program needs to be done by the person.

 

 

[1:13:24] Ashley James: When you first did it with your son when he was three years old and he was diagnosed with autism and you started as we’ve started to really like dive into this for him and do this, the GAPS diet with him, what kind of changes did you see?

 

 

[01:13:40] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: He’s now an adult. He’s 26 years old now. And he’s fully recovered. He’s leading a normal life. So he was my first teacher. In fact, I believe that children come to us as teachers. We are just teaching them to mind and mundane things you know, how to dress, how to walk, how to drive and so on. While they teach us the most profound universal truths. They make us better human beings. They make us grow and force us to grow. So he was my biggest teacher in my life. And we started the diet when he was three. And by the age of five, he went to the mainstream school with support. About 95% of success we have achieved in the first two years. And then the rest, 5% of the healing, happened over the next five or six years gradually. They were the most difficult bits, obviously, to get rid of.

Apart from the GAPS nutritional protocol, we did the ABA program, Applied Behavior Analysis. And I’m a great advocate of this protocol of this program. Because what happens with autistic children, children learn certain skills at a certain age. That’s how our brain is programmed. From the moment of birth, from the moment of conception, we follow a certain program that has been put in, I don’t know when, I don’t know by who. Because it’s not just genetic. It’s not just genes. Far from it. So it’s a divine extremely complex problem. And as a child is born, they have to learn certain skills at a certain age. That’s when the program that you learn that. A certain window of opportunity. We have to learn to walk around the age of one. We have to learn to speak around the age of two. Then in the following years, we’ll learn syntaxes and grammar. And finally, of the language and social skills and the rest of it. And if the child missed that window of opportunity of learning that skill, they may not learn that skill themselves later on. You have to teach it. And you have to teach it. You have to break that skill into the tiniest possible steps and teach them systematically starting with the simple most fundamental step until that’s mastered. Then build on that. The second step then build on that. The third step. And the only problem that I know that is thorough like that, like a fine tooth comb is the Applied Behavior Analysis. There are other programs out there. But it’s only this protocol that, in my experience, produces the right results with autistic children.

So with these children, it isn’t enough to just fix the body. We have to teach them all the skills that they’ve missed. That is why the younger the child is when we put them on the GAPS nutritional protocol, the quicker they recover and the more fully they recover. Because first of all, the brain wasn’t bombarded that long with toxicity to cause physical damage to it. And secondly, because the child missed less on its development, less windows of opportunity have been missed by the child. It’s easier for them to catch up. Easier for them to fill those gaps. And that usually, you know, children recover fully up to the age of four-and-a-half, maybe maximum five. It’s very individual, obviously, in every child. Older than that, what usually remains? Some percent of it remains. Though I did have some cases where children recovered remarkably well,  95%, 90%, which is most grown. There was just some idiosyncrasies left, some quirks left maybe. But the child could function and live in this world and be a full member of the human society.

So it depends. It’s very individual. But at any age of autism, I will do the GAPS nutritional protocol. I will put these children and adults on the diet for the rest of their life. I used to say that children can come off the diet at some point. Now, with all the experience that I have accumulated I recommend everyone autistic child to stay on the diet strictly for the rest of their life. When they fully recovered occasionally, when you go on holiday, maybe you can cheat a little bit. But then when you’re back home back, back to normal, back to the GAPS diet because that would prevent any illnesses, that will prevent any relapses, that will prevent any regressions and any problems whatsoever. And just make this person very healthy and well and functioning. Functioning on the top of their capacity and developing on the top of their capacity.

So what I recommend to all parents, when something is wrong with your child, don’t wait for the diagnostic label. The label will do nothing for your child. It will not help in any possible way. And doctors can take a very long time – an awful long time to give you a diagnosis. Your parents, in your heart you know something’s wrong. You know something’s not quite right with your child. Start the GAPS nutritional protocol. Start the GAPS diet immediately. And chances are, in a few weeks there will be no need for any diagnostic label. If you’ve got an autistic child who is two or two-and-a-half, a few weeks thereof, you don’t even need to do ABA with them. They’re learning themselves. They’re diverting themselves. They’re off. They’re developing. Maybe we’ll need to work a little bit on some skills but not as intensively as the ABA requires.

So the younger the child is, it’s particularly good to start it when the child is 18 months old. You know, because even at 18 months old with autistic children, you already know something’s wrong. Something’s not quite working. The eye contact is not there. He’s not responding to his name. He’s not pointing. He’s not saying anything. He’s not understanding language. Not understanding commands. It’s clear, something’s not quite right with that child. Start the GAPS diet and chances are you will not needing a diagnostic label and you will not need to do anything else with that child.

Children with hyperactivity, with dyslexia, dyspraxia, and other learning disabilities do very well on the GAPS nutritional protocol with these children. Because there isn’t the same cognitive deficit in the child. He may not need to do any special teaching problem with the child. You just put the physical body right, clean up the brain, allow the brain to function the way it’s supposed to, and the child will be off developing, developing normally the way the child should develop.

 

 

[1:20:21] Ashley James: Brilliant. Now, I know in your book you have a chapter dedicated to children that are picky eaters, fussy eaters. Because I know parents are like, “Well, how am I going to get my kids to do this?” So I know that that’s in the book. I definitely encourage listeners to get the book.

 

 

[1:20:37] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Absolutely.  Absolutely. Fussy eating is a normal symptom on GAPS. It is a part and parcel of GAPS. What happens with these children? The food that they’re eating is converted into millions of toxic substances by the abnormal gut flora. But this microbes in the gut are clever. Part of that toxicity, they make in the form of endorphins. Chemicals that give the brain the pleasure signal. So the brain wants more. So your little adorable darling is a drug addict. The drug is produced in the gut by the abnormal gut flora for this child. So the child is trapped in the typical drug addiction, vicious cycle, when they love and want and limit their diet to the very foods that hurt them, damage their brain, and damage them, and caused their disorder. So if any of you ever read about how difficult it is to try to treat a drug addict, you would realize just how difficult it is to treat them. Your child is going to fight you every step on the way. Pulling a drug addict out of that vicious cycle is hard work. The parents must be united on this issue. The mommy and daddy, grandparents, grandmothers in particular, need to be united on this issue. It takes two adults in the first week or two to break the child out of that vicious cycle. And the child will fight you every step of the way. Be prepared for that. So you have to be strong. You have to stand there like a rock. And that grandma must be like a rock or a daddy or any other member of the family that is helping you.

So what we do, we sit the child down. We make that beautiful meat stock with the chicken or lamb or beef or anything else. And we sit the child down. One adult is standing behind the chair with a big smile on his face, making sure the child cannot leave the situation. The child cannot jump up and run away from the table. Just hold him down gently, nicely, with a smile. The mother is feeding. I will start with a small achievable target, one teaspoon of this meat stock for a reward.

For any child that is verbal and for whom any nonfood reward works, be it a computer game or a favorite video or a favorite book or a favorite game or horses around the house or peekaboo, whatever, whatever works for this particular child, use that as a reward. To swallow that one meaty little teaspoon of the meat stock. As soon as the child swallowed it, we’ll give the child the reward. But most importantly, this is reward has to come with over exaggerated praise from the parents. The parents to explode in happiness. Then you should give the child a complete circus performance in happiness. Throw him up in the air, kiss him, hug him, tickle him, whatever works and then let them go. Let them leave the situation. Let them wander around, play, whatever he wants for five minutes. After five minutes back to that chair, we sit down again, another teaspoon. And we work like that all day until the teaspoon is not a problem anymore wit the child. Quite often children love the circus from the parents so much. It’s so nice for them to have the circus. They will do just for that without any rules. That’s a reward enough for them. The circus from the parents, they always exaggerated praise.

When one teaspoon is not the problem anymore, the child just swallows it and gets the circus and gets the reward, we want two teaspoons for the same reward. And then three teaspoons. And then push and push and push more and more and more until the child has a whole bowl of this stock. And then we start adding that chicken to that stock. And then we start adding vegetables and the rest is history. We just keep working at it and your fussy eater that wouldn’t be anything but from his biscuits or his sweets or whatever it is, in a in a week will be eating everything including liver, fish soup, you know, anything. Absolutely.

 

 

[1:24:37] Ashley James: I love it. Now, what if the child or the adult is allergic to some of the foods on the GAPS diet. My son who – I mean I am absolutely going to put him on the GAPS diet starting today. He has asthma. Definitely induced by what he’s allergic to. He’s allergic to dust mites and there’s about seven foods he’s allergic to. We’re gluten free, dairy free household from birth. And he eats organic and he eats really clean. And so we’ve never – we couldn’t figure out why. And he had colic as a baby. And I couldn’t produce enough breast milk. So I got donated breast milk from as many mothers as I could. And when we ran out, we supplemented with formula but he had colic. Everything you said in this interview is exactly what my son’s been going through. And now here he is, four-and-a-half years old. He has asthma. If he’s a eats avocado or egg or has an exposure to dairy – because we’re allergic – the whole family is allergic to dairy – and garlic, fish, any kind of fish will throw him into an asthmatic attack and his histamines through the roof. So these foods that are very healthy foods, very healing foods, his body’s reacting to. So what do you tell parents when they want to put their child on the GAPS diet but they are allergic to some of these foods?

 

 

[1:25:59] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: The only allergy that we truly respect is anaphylactic typology, because that’s life threatening. It’s very, very dangerous. Or other allergies are due to the leaky gut. To that porous leaky gut wall. Obviously, if there is no anaphylactic reaction, let’s say, to dairy. And the only dairy that we use are well-fermented dairy that were ferment at home for 24 hours. When you ferment the milk and the milk is raw, it’s essential [inaudible 01:26:24]. It’s very, very important. When the fermented milk for 24 hours is predigested, the microbes in the milk they eat all the lactose because microbes like eating sugars, so that is a truly lactose free product. All the proteins, casein, the albumins, and other proteins are predigested, broken down in this product. So it is a very different product from milk, from any dairy that you bought or from a yogurt or [inaudible 01:26:53] that you bought in the supermarket, in the shop. When you fermented at home for 24 hours, it’s a very different product.

And with all of this, if there is something that your child reacts to, initially avoid these things. Because there’s enough other foods in the diet to focus upon. But then gradually try them. And first start with the ones which do not cause any anaphylactic reaction. Obviously, anaphylactic reactions need to be respected for quite a bit. But in about a year or so, the immune system will rebalance itself. We will nourish the immune system, nurture it, it will rebalance itself. It will be a completely different immune system in the child. And you may be surprised to find that when you try a tiny, tiny amount of the food that the child had an anaphylactic reaction to, there is no reaction anymore.

I had a number of children who recovered peanut allergy. Yes. Anaphylactic reactions disappear. They can also be healed. Because they obsolete sort of information that the body remembers. But the body recovers and it rebuilds itself and the immune system is very different in this children. So it is possible to recover even from those. But the reactions that non-anaphylactic, they’re all due to the leaky gut. Generally speaking, we ignore them. We ignore them and we focus on healing and rebuilding the gut wall.

 

 

[1:28:17] Ashley James: What about collagen powder? This is a big fad right now. Getting powdered bone broth and powdered collagen supplements. What do you think about those?

 

 

[1:28:30] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: I don’t. I do not like supplements, particularly. The only supplements we use in the GAPS nutritional protocol, [inaudible 01:28:36]. So described in my book. The supplement industry is a multibillion industry and they will all try to convince you that you need to take the supplement for the rest of your life and you can’t live without it. This meat stock that they’re making with joints and bones of animals will provide you in one bowl of soup with a whole bottle of those capsules of collagen.

Large amounts and it is natural and it is fresh and it is properly digestible. And it will it will do what it’s supposed to do in the body. And it comes with all the cofactors.

 

 

[1:29:14] Ashley James: I have a technical question about cooking. The chicken, for example, let’s say people are starting phase one with the whole chicken. Instead of slowly simmering it on the stove for several hours, what about using the Instant Pot? The electric pressure cooker –

 

 

[1:29:31] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: No, I don’t recommend that.

 

 

[1:29:33] Ashley James: You don’t recommend that. So you recommend just traditional. The old way. We got to do it the way grandma taught us.

 

 

[1:29:38] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Exactly. It’s two hours – for a chicken, it’s two hours. It’s not that long. You just put the whole chicken. It’s best to get also the neck, the head, the feet of the chicken. That would be wonderful. The giblets will be great to put in there. The whole chicken and about three liters of water to it, some salt, and simmer it for a couple of hours until the chicken is soft. You can eat that chicken. It’s delicious. And the stock will be clear absolutely delicious. Every child loves it once they’ve tasted it.

 

 

[1:30:09] Ashley James: And you don’t add any seasonings when you start. It’s just the chicken?

 

 

[1:30:13] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Just the salt. Just the chicken and the salt. And the salt needs to be natural. Himalayan Crystal Salt or Celtic salt, you know, natural unprocessed salt which has all the minerals in it. Nothing has been taken out of that salt. Completely natural. You can add some vegetables to eat at the beginning if you want to. You can add a whole onion, you can add the carrot to it if you want you to, to make that stock richer. Some people do that.

 

 

[1:30:46] Ashley James: Have you seen people heal things like diabetes, heart disease or issues of the gut like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or Candida with this diet?

 

 

[1:30:54] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Absolutely. All those gut. I have written a book called Put Your Heart In Your Mouth. What really causes heart disease? What I explain what causes heart disease, because it’s not cholesterol and not animal fats the cause heart disease. That is all based on a faulty hypothesis, which has been proposed in 1953. And since then it was proven to be completely wrong, by solid, honest science. The problem is that, while the science was working on this hypothesis, a very powerful and very wealthy, commercial, and political machine grew based on this hypothesis. And it doesn’t allow it to die. It’s the machine that educates all the public.

So in that book, I explained the role of cholesterol, the role of the fats in the body. Cholesterol is something that we cannot live without. It’s one of the most essential molecules for every tissue, every cell in the human body, particularly for the brain, particularly for our hormonal system, for our adrenal, and for our immune system. It’s an absolutely essential molecule. That is why the human body has wonderful abilities to manufacture its own cholesterol. The headquarters of this is in the liver. The liver has a factory in it which manufactures cholesterol. And it is the liver that maintains the level of cholesterol in the blood of the person. And the liver works in connection with every cell, every tissue in the body. No healing, for example, can happen in the human body without involvement of large amounts of cholesterol and fats. Saturated fats in particular. Because they give stability to the cells of the human body. So the cell membrane, in particular. About 40% of our brain tissue is cholesterol. The other 40% is saturated fat. This structural elements of the human body.

So when there is any damage in the human body, maybe you had an operation or you’ve been to the dentist or you’ve hurt yourself, you have a trauma, something happened to you, healing has to happen. When you just went through a stressful period of time, stress causes a lot of damage in our tissues in the human body. No healing or repair can happen in the body without  large amounts of cholesterol and animal fats and proper fats. So any damaged tissue in the body sends a signal to the liver saying, “I need cholesterol. I need fats.” So the liver starts that factory inside itself. It manufactures cholesterol. It manufacturers triglycerides. These fats, packages them appropriately. Because these are fat soluble things. Our blood is water based. You can’t put fat soluble things into the water without packaging them appropriately. So cholesterol is packaged into LDLs, low density labor, proteins. And fats are packaged also into other [inaudible 01:33:37]. And these shuttles deliver this vital substances to the place of damage to heal it. That’s the healing. This is the most healing substances in the world.

And what do our doctors test? They test for these things in the blood and say, “Well, they’re high” or whatever. There are no really high or low standards of cholesterol. Whatever level of cholesterol is in your blood is the right level for you in that amount. It depends on what your body is doing. Because your body might be healing something, your body might be under stress, every stress hormones in the body is made from cholesterol. So when we’re under stress, stress hormones are required to deal with that stress. Your adrenal will send a signal to the liver, “I need cholesterol.” The liver will get into gear, produce it, package it, put it in the blood. Your blood will be delivering that cholesterol to adrenal and they’ll be converting it into stress hormones for you to cope with the stressful situation. So your blood cholesterol will be high. If you interfere with that, you will not be able to cope with stress. You will have a breakdown without these hormones. And many people finish up in that situation. There is no way of reducing blood cholesterol to a diet. That’s been proven in hundreds of studies. No way that diet has – you know, you can eat no cholesterol or no fat at all, your liver will just have to work harder to manufacture more. You’re not providing any help to your body at all.

And the only way to reduce blood cholesterol is to break that factor in the liver. And that’s what anti cholesterol pills do. That’s what they’re designed to do, to break that factory in your liver so it cannot produce cholesterol. That is why these drugs cause so many serious side effects. The major part of Alzheimer’s epidemic is due to Statin, the cholesterol pills. The hospital infection problem is due to Statin because the immune system cannot function without large amounts of cholesterol. It cannot. And what do hospitals do? Every person over 40, as soon as they arrived to the hospital, they’re put on a Statin. That’s a routine prescription. They don’t even measure blood cholesterol anymore.  They just put people on Statin straightaway. And that impairs their immune function. They’re unable to fight any infections. So people get infections in the hospitals. You get hospital infections as a result. There are many – memory loss is due to ubiquitous description of this medication.

So please read that book to understand what fat and cholesterol do. GAPS diet is very rich in cholesterol and in animal fats. Because when we analyze human fat, about 50% of your dry weight is fat. The other 50% of your dry weight protein in the human body. About 70% water. So we talk about the dry weight. So fat is a structural element of the human body, 50% of you is made out of it. So fats are not optional for humans. And when we analyze human fat in the laboratory, we find that in its biochemical structure, it’s very similar to fats in lamb, beef, pork, goose, duck, butter.

Plants have lots of fats in them but their biochemical structure is very different. It’s inappropriate for our fats for building our fats in our human’s body. They’re polyunsaturated. We need a little bit of polyunsaturated fats for the human body, omega fats, omega 3, 6, 7, 9 and so on. But we need them in tiny, tiny amounts. So when you eat enough, if you eat a fresh salad or you eat ed a handful of fresh nuts or oily seeds, you’ll get enough. Although you don’t need much of them.

The bulk of fat consumption has to come from animal foods. From animal fats for the human body. Because these are the only fats that are appropriate for our human physiology. They are structural. And they are functional for us as well. That is why GAPS nutritional protocol, GAPS diet is rich in animal fats.

The same with protein, when they look at the protein in the human body and analyze it in the laboratory, we’ll find that in its biochemical composition is very similar to proteins in meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. Plants are full of proteins. The most famous one is gluten. And the more research gluten, the more we realize nobody can digest it. No human being on this planet can digest gluten. It damages everybody. It’s just people don’t connect their piece of beloved bread with their arthritis or their migraines or their skin rash or whatever, psoriasis or whatever. People don’t want to connect because bread is addictive.

And this is just one protein that we’ve researched. Well, there are many, many other proteins in plants and all of them are indigestible for the human digestive system. This biochemical structure is very difficult for us to digest. And amino acid composition in this protein is inappropriate for building our protein or human protein. [Inaudible 01:38:37] amino acids are in excess and the amino acids are in deficit.

And that leads us to another subject here on vegetarianism. We live in a world of nutritional propaganda. And the latest fashion and propaganda promoted by all the governments in the West is that we all should become vegetarian and even vegan. This propaganda is political. It comes from the commercial sector of the world, which will gain huge profits if large parts of humanity become vegetarian and vegan. That is the agrochemical complex. And that’s where the propaganda originates from this sort of thing.

Plants are indigestible for the human digestive system. They do not feed us. They’re largely cleanses. The foods that feed the human body are animal foods, meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. And we discussed the protein and the fats in them that only animal protein and only animal fat are appropriate for building our fat and our protein. The very structure, the physical structure of the human body.

But there’s another aspect to it and that is the way the human digestive system has been designed. The scientific fact is that the only thing on our planet that can digest plants – that can truly digest plants, the only things, are microbes. And this is the fun that Mother Nature used in designing the digestive system of herbivorous animals, cows, goats, sheep, antelope, deer, giraffe, and so on. In order for these animals to digest the plants that they live on, it gave them a very special digestive system called rumen. A cow, the big belly of a cow, a large part of it is rumen. It’s a huge four chamber stomach. Four stomachs, really. And these four stomachs are full of microbes. The bulk of our gut flora lives in that rumen. And it’s these microbes which digest the grass for her. The cow herself is unable to digest grass. It’s the microbes that do the work for her. And then once they’ve digested all that grass, it’s passed into the intestines where the bulk of absorption happens. That’s where all these digestive elements then absorb.

We, human beings, do not have a rumen. We have a small stomach which produces hydrochloric acid, pepsin, and some other things. And the only things – the only food that these

stomach juices are able to digest are meat, fish, eggs and dairy. That’s a simple chemical fact. And if a human stomach is healthy because virtually no microbes in it, the microbial population is very, very sparse. Because hydrochloric acid just kills them. It creates a very, very hostile environment for any kind of microbes to survive in there. Because in a healthy stomach and a healthy person, when they’re hungry, the pH can be below one. It’s extremely acidic. It will kill any kind of microbes. Without microbes, we can’t digest bones.

So the only things that truly digest in a human stomach are meat, fish, eggs and dairy. Plants just sit there waiting for their turn. Not much digestion happens in plants. And then the whole thing gets passed into the several meters of intestines where absorption of food happens. And the only things that can be absorbed are the ones that get properly digested higher up in the stomach. And that is meat, fish, eggs and dairy. So in order to build – to feed the human body, the physical structure of our bodies, we need animal foods. The plants go through that whole intestines. They contribute some vitamins. They contribute some minerals. They contribute some phytonutrients. But they cannot contribute the bulk for building our physical structure, the protein and the fat. They cannot contribute those because they’re indigestible and they’re inappropriate for our physiology. And then the plants land in our bowel at the end of our digestive system, which is the equivalent of the rumen in the cow. That’s where the bulk of our gut flora lives.  And these microbes then digest the plant matter, break it down a little bit, give us some support.

But the difference between us and the cow is that her rumen is at the beginning of her digestive system. Where the grass is properly digested before it’s passed into the absorptive part of the digestive tract. In us human beings, our rumen is at the end of our digestive system. It’s too late now. The bulk of absorption already happened higher up. That is why we human beings derive our feeding and building nutrients from animal foods. So what do we eat plants for then? Plants are powerful cleansers, particularly when we eat them raw. They cannot build the human body to any degree but they keep it clean on the inside. They have antioxidants, phenols, phytonutrients, all kinds of things in there, which absorb and which keep us clean on the inside. That is why we eat plants.

Traditional cultures around the world through the research of Wesley Price and some other researchers who traveled around the world and studied traditional cultures, they all knew this fact. That is why they will spend extra effort on obtaining meat and fish and collecting eggs and milking animals. And they learned that plants don’t feed them, really, to any large degree. So they developed methods of making plants a little bit more digestible. And the major way they did it was fermentation.

Nontraditional culture would even dream of eating grains, for example, any kind of grain or beans without fermenting them first – thoroughly fermenting them. What are we doing with fermentation or [inaudible 01:44:36]? You know, some cultures [inaudible 01:44:38]. What do we do? We employ microbes to digest that plant for us before we put it into our digestive system. We’re doing exactly what the cow does in her rumen. It’s just that nature has already programmed that in the cow. Well, we don’t have a rumen. So that needs to be understood.

So it is possible to be a healthy vegetarians long as the person continues eating some animal foods to sustain the physical structure of their body. As long as the person eats plenty of eggs and plenty of high fat and full fat dairy every day, maybe fish occasionally, and maybe meat occasion. In cultures like that, traditional cultures exist in India where people – why do you think the cow is a sacred animal in India? Because they know that without a cow, they will perish, these cultures. She gives them milk, cheese, ghee, butter, cheese, you know, clean. And that sustain them. And also in India, all of these vegetarian cultures, they will have chickens and ducks and they have plenty of eggs. That’s where the feeding comes for them. And they’re not vegetarians by choice these people. The vegetarian is out of necessity, out of poverty. Because they didn’t have access to meat.  There are so many people in India. India has always been very densely populated. If they start eating their animals, they’ll probably eat them all in two weeks or something like that. So they had to – but when they get a chance to eat meat, they don’t say no to it. Or when they get the chance to get fish, they also cherish it and would eat it.

The western style veganism, the religious evangelical veganism, came with the books of Nathan Pritikin in the 1930s to India and created some following in India. But traditional Indians who are vegetarians, they are vegetarians out of necessity, out of poverty. Veganism is not a diet. It is a form of fasting. You’re not feeding your body to any degree. You’re cleansing, cleansing, and cleansing, and cleansing, and cleansing. Many people in our modern world are very toxic. They couldn’t do with a period of cleansing. And these are the people who when they go on a vegan regimen, they start feeling better quite soon. In the first few weeks, they feel so much better. Because a less toxic body feels much better than a toxic one. And also the removal the process junk, they remove the flour and the sugar, the bread, the pasta, and the cakes, and the biscuits, and the sugar. And any person who removes that feels better immediately. Not because of what they’re eating but because of what they’re not eating anymore. They feel better. And this is the time when they usually write the evangelical books and trying to convince everybody to become a leader.

But at a certain point, the body will finish cleansing and it will become hungry. It will give you a signal, “I finished cleansing. Now, feed me.” And the way the body will give that signal is by giving you a desire for a piece of meat, for roasted chicken, for a pot of green, for a piece of cheese, or something else like that. The problem is many vegans in our modern world follow this regimen for emotional reasons, political reasons, religious, ethical reasons and so on. They don’t listen to their body. They override that signal. They force their body to continue cleansing when the body really needs feeding. And that is when the body has no choice but to start cannibalizing less important tissues to feed more important issues, such as muscle. That’s when they start losing muscle, these people. Because the body breaks down muscle to feed the heart, the liver, the lungs, the digestive system, the brain, the more important organs than the muscle. And the person eventually develops [inaudible 01:48:24] degenerative disease. If the person pushes themselves long enough to veganism. So the veganism can be used as a cleansing fast, as a fasting procedure. But it must never be used as a long term lifestyle. We need animal foods as human beings.

I have many anorexic girls in my clinic and some anorexic boys as well. And what I discovered very quickly that more than 90% of these kids became anorexic because of misguided veganism and vegetarianism. Misguided vegetarianism has become a major cause of mental illness amongst our young people. Many youngsters destroy themselves through this propaganda, through this idea. And that spurred me into researching this subject thoroughly. And very quickly, I’ve discovered that there are no scientific studies we can really trust in this area.  All of them have been conducted by pro-vegan and pro-vegetarian [inaudible 01:49:22] manipulates it.

And the data has been specially analyzed. None of them can be trusted. They’re completely untrustworthy, all of these studies. Particularly the China study. The China study has been criticized very heavily already by many people. There are books written about it. Do not trust it. It’s a lie upon lie upon lie. And once I’ve discovered that, I had no choice but to go to basic sciences of biochemistry, of human physiology, of zoology, of animal physiology, anatomy, and clinical experience. My own clinical experience and clinical experience of other doctors. And based on all that research, I have written a book called Vegetarianism Explained. It came out in 2017. So for all those people who are really interested in this subject, please read that book. It will explain to you all the ins and outs of it so that you don’t get into trouble. It is easy to destroy your health and it’s not so easy to rebuild it. I know many recovering vegans and it takes many, many years to get even halfway to healing and rebuilding your body after several years of veganism.

 

 

[1:50:34] Ashley James: I’ve recently finished reading a book called the Metabolic Typing Diet. And in the beginning of the book, this doctor shares a story of his mentor who has since passed, was a dentist back in the 50s.

 

 

[1:50:51] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Yeah. Donald Kelly. Yeah, I’ve read that.

 

 

[1:50:53] Ashley James: Right. He had a really large pancreatic tumor that was sticking out of his gut. Everyone could see it. And the doctor said, “Go home and get ready to die.” And his mom said, “No. You are going to eat vegan.” Well, they did haven’t a word for it back then. “You’re going to eat fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds and greens and that’s it. We’re going to get you on a vegan diet.” And within months, his pancreatic cancer had shrunk and eventually went away. And so he became a total cheerleader for this diet. And soon, because it was a small town, all the people are coming to him not for dental health but for diet health. And so he put everyone on this diet. Many people saw huge changes, wonderful healings. But there’d be a percentage – a  small percentage of people that would get worse. And he couldn’t figure it out.

Until one day his wife – and this is back in the 50s so, like, they didn’t have many regulations around chemicals. But she was exposed to paint fumes that were toxic and of course disrupted her liver and her mitochondria and everything. And she was bedridden and almost comatose. She was within days of dying, basically. Her body had shut down. And he tried giving her vegetables and fruit and nuts and he was trying to basically put her on the diet that healed her cancer and she got even worse and practically fell into a coma. And so he did the last thing he could possibly think of, “What’s the last thing I haven’t fed my wife is meat.” And he boiled some beef and started feeding her little spoonful’s and she started to get better. And within a day, she was sitting up in bed and he scratched his head and thought, “This is crazy. How come I cured my cancer with no meat? But 100% meat is what helped my wife get better.”

And so he basically sold his practice. Moved to Washington from Texas. And dedicated the rest of his life to studying diets and figuring out why is it that some people can heal eating this way and other people get worse and some people can heal this way. And that’s the big crux of it, is when do we do the GAPS diet? When do we do a vegan cleanse or raw vegan cleanse? When do we do a Paleo diet? When do we do these things to heal certain ailments?

 

 

[1:53:20] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Yes, of course. Every human being is unique. One size fits all doesn’t work. Every human being is unique. And depending if your predecessors were Eskimos or from Scandinavia or not somewhere, chances are you don’t need to eat lots of meat and fish and fat. But if your predecessors come maybe from some tropical areas of the world or Mediterranean basin, then you need to eat more carbohydrates. So indeed, every human being is unique. And that’s what this book on metabolic typing tries to assess and has a large questionnaire to help people to assess that.

And what it basically has created, that protein type people, carbohydrate type people. But the majority of people are in the middle somewhere. We’re all mix type. Most of us are mixed type. The only way for us human beings to really know what we need is to get back in touch with human with our body intelligence. Because it is your own body that is keeping lots of checks and balances up in the air every minute of your existence. Depending on what you do and depending on the season, on the weather, on your stress level, your age, and in women depending on the menstrual cycle, wherever you are in the menstrual cycle, depending on all these factors and parameters, your body needs a certain set of nutrients. And it is unique to you.

And the only way the body can let you know what it needs at any particular moment is by giving you desire for a particular food, which you must listen to. And then it’s essential for us human beings to smell before we eat and to taste. And then listen to our insights and our internal organs which will give us a feedback after we’ve eaten it, does this sit well or doesn’t it sit well. And every human being is unique and every day is unique and what satisfied you for breakfast may be repulsive for lunch and vice versa with the dinner. I have a whole – in the book Vegetarianism Explained, I have a whole chapter which is called One Man’s Meat Is Another Man’s Poison. What I explained to people how to get back in touch with your inner body intelligence. So you can feed yourself properly on a daily basis.

Because one day you wake up, depending on the weather, on your hormonal metabolism today, on what you have to do, whether you’re resting on holiday, whether you’ve got an exam coming at lunchtime, or something else, you may devour a full English breakfast. The next day you wake up, you don’t feel like a full English breakfast. You just – a yogurt and an apple will do. But later on – every time your body will give you a signal what it needs right now. And make no mistake, the human body knows the composition of foods on this planet. So if it needs, for example, so much protein, so much fat, so much B12, so much zinc right now, how can your body give you all that information? And even if the body knew how to give you that information, how are you going to go around accomplishing those proportions?

Well, the human body is kind,  nature is kind. It doesn’t ask us to do anything so complicated. It gave us tastes, it gave us senses, the sense of desire for a particular food at a particular moment. So whenever you have a moment to eat and you feel a bit hungry, ask yourself a simple question, “What would I kill for right now?” The answer will pop into your head immediately. And that food will smell divine, taste divine, and it will satisfy you. But after eating that food, you will not be looking for anything else, not snacking, not kind of still feeling unsatisfied. You can forget about the food for a while and go into something else. But if you feed yourself according to some book or some guru or something else, then you are you are likely to be going against your own body and what your body needs at that moment. And as I say, you need change every hour, every minute, all the time. It depends. It’s very, very unique. So no clever doctor and no laboratory and no clever book can ever design what you need to have for breakfast, what do you have for lunch, what you need to have for dinner, what you need to have in between, or whether you should have dinner at all, or whether you should have lunch at all, or not. Only your body knows that. And you need to get back in touch with it. Listen to it. Respect it. And do what it asks you to do. And then you’ll be fine. And I explained that in that article, please read that article.

 

 

[1:58:08] Ashley James: I’ll make sure that that is linked in the show notes. You brought up when to eat and sometimes not to eat. That’s an interesting concept because what’s really popular now is the idea of intermittent fasting where we don’t eat until, like, 10:00 a.m. Your book, I believe says, to not eat breakfast until 9:30. That can be very healthy for some people. What about people that wake up first thing in the morning ravished with hunger or maybe they have diabetes and they want to eat earlier, should they listen to their body or should they try to extend that fasting window to 9:30 or 10:00?

 

 

[1:58:47] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Intermittent fasting, it’s another fashion. It will pass. There are lots of fashions in nutrition. We have many fashions and now is the fashion for vegetarianism and intermittent fasting. It will pass. There will be other fashions coming in.

Listen to your body. Listen to your body on a daily basis. If you’re not hungry, despite the fact that the member of the family laid a huge dinner on the table, you don’t have to eat now. Listen to your body because you can burn yourself without food. And then it will not digest well and it will only cause disease. It will only cause problems in your body. Eat when you’re hungry. That’s right. Listen to your body. Your body is the expert. Not the book, nothing.

So if you woke up in the morning and you are, obviously, hungry, of course, have a full breakfast and ask yourself what you desire. Because it takes time for people to recover because processed carbohydrates that everybody’s lives on in the world – in the Western world in particular – are addictive. Sugar is the number one addictive substance in the world. The second most addictive substance is wheat flour. Particularly, modern commercial varieties of wheat which are 80 times higher gluten in them. So there’s highly addictive substances. And a lot of humanity is addicted to them. That is why they crave bread and they crave sugar and they drink soft drinks and so on. But if you get back in touch with your body intelligence – with your inner body intelligence, you will need to gradually distinguish is this an addiction or is this what my body really asks for?

 

[2:00:32] Ashley James: I love it. Yeah, we are addicted to those hyperpalatable foods, the salt, the oil, and the sugar. They mix them together and it becomes this wonderful concoction that makes the brain go crazy for it. So when we first start out asking what do we want, the brain is like, “I want pizza” because the brain wants its crack. It wants its drug. And so we have to heal the gut and start to calm down our senses and think about what is my body say it really wants. Not what do I -what drug of choice do I want? What hyperpalatable highly processed food do I want? It’s what my body really wants to nourish it and start to listen to that. I love it.

I could talk to you for hours. It has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. And I really, really would love to have you back especially after you publish your next book, which I hope that you get lots of time to be able to finish it. Because we’re excited to absorb your latest book. And of course all the links to all your books are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com.

To wrap up today’s interview, is there anything you’d like to say to the listeners to complete the interview? Anything left unsaid or any homework that you want to impart on us?

 

 

[2:01:57] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: I would like to say that the human body is a miraculous creation. It’s a pinnacle of evolution on this planet. It has every mechanism of healing itself and maintaining itself, rejuvenating itself programmed into it. Trust it, and listen to it, and work with it, and never lose hope. I have seen so many miracles happening with the GAPS diet alone. Things that have been classified incurable people recover from. Diseases that have been classified as genetic because we don’t know what else might be causing it. People suddenly recover from them despite the fact that they’ve got the gene that the doctors have tested and found the gene and the person still recovers. So never lose hope. Never give up. If your doctor hasn’t got an answer for you, keep searching because the answer is probably elsewhere. So anything can be healed, I believe. And just trust in the human nature, in the Mother Nature, and in the design of the human body.

 

 

[2:03:08] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. It has been such a pleasure having you on the show. You’re welcome back anytime.

 

 

[2:03:15] Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride: Thank you very much. Thank you for listening.

 

 

[2:03:19] Outro: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business? Support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out.

You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James, and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out.

It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help the your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals. There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic True Health Coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.comtakeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected With Dr. Natasha Campbell – McBride!

GAPS Diet Website

Gaps.Me Website

Facebook

Twitter

Books by Dr. Natasha Campbell – McBride

Gut and Psychology Syndrome: Natural Treatment for Autism, Dyspraxia, A.D.D., Dyslexia, A.D.H.D., Depression, Schizophrenia

 

Vegetarianism Explained: Making an Informed Decision

 

 

Oct 7, 2019

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www.gingernash.com
www.feminology.org

 

Solving Women’s Health Holistically

https://www.learntruehealth.com/solving-womens-health-holistically

 

Highlights:

  • What is Menopause and perimenopause
  • How Vaginal and Vulvar health is very important
  • How to have a healthy vaginal and vulvar health
  • An overall approach to your hormone health is definitely going to help the vaginal tissue, help the vulvar tissues.
  • Change your diet. Eat five cups of vegetables per day. Eat a diet that’s anti-inflammatory for you.

 

Did you know that having a good and healthy habit in your gut is as important as taking care of your feminine area? That it’s not just important feeling clean “down there” but making sure that it is really clean and free of infections. Today, Dr. Ginger Nash shares her expertise and experiences about feminology in the podcast. Yes, today’s all about us women.

 

 

[00:00] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 384. I’m so excited to have back on the show with us Dr. Ginger Nash. She’s a Naturopathic physician and if you’re a long-time listener, you know that my favorite guest is a Naturopath. Dr. Ginger Nash was in episode 317 and she shared about hormone health and her specialty is helping women to balance hormones naturally without using replacements. Like hormone replacements, bioidentical hormones. She doesn’t use that. She helps us to actually help the body get so healthy that it has balanced hormones and today, she’s here to share so much more with us about women’s health. For the male listeners, you might want to listen just because you have a wonderful woman in your life this would be great to pass on the information or maybe to just the whole world going down the rabbit hole you’d never heard of. We’re pretty much going to focus on women’s health but I’m sure there’s some tidbits that men will enjoy. We’re going to let everyone listen. Just know that we’re celebrating women’s health today with Dr. Ginger Nash. Welcome back to the show

 

[01:21] Dr. Ginger Nash: Thank you, Ashely. I’m so excited to be back. I love your show.

 

[01:26] Ashley James:  It was such a pleasure having you on episode 317. I know my listeners just loved learning from you. Your website is gingernash.com or you also have another website which is feminology.org. You’ve done a lot of really cool things since we had you on the show. Like you created a course for women around vaginal health. We’ll definitely going to talk about that today. Since you’re on the show last share more with us. What’s happened in your life? What’s going on now?

 

[01:59] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. I’m a busy gal and I’m an Aries so I tend to take on some project but one of the biggest things is started working out of a another office. One of my offices is in New Haven, Connecticut. I joined another practice. My friend and colleague, Dr. Jaquel Patterson who happens to be the president of our national organization. The Association of Naturopathic Physicians. That’s cool. Jaquel and I have known each other for a number of years. She’s awesome and she bought a practice from a doctor. Dr. Darin Ingles and who really focused in Connecticut as you well know there is a tremendous amount of Lyme and other tech borne diseases and post Lyme syndrome. His practice is very much focused on Lyme and those pathogens which I am also familiar with but Dr. Patterson brought me on as a women’s health expert. I started doing some new therapies down there that I’m excited about and I’d love to share more about with you and your listeners. In two offices now, just making my life that much more complex and fun but it’s really great because as you know Ashley, Naturopathic doctors there’s just never a day where we don’t learn something new. Many days we learn many new things. The body’s so complex and there’s so much to learn and there so much in the world of natural medicine for us to continually investigate.

 

[03:33] Ashley James: You want to hire a doctor who loves learning and who’s constantly learning and staying up on the science and has their mind open. Wiling to keep looking. If you go to a doctor who’s a know-it-all who kind of goes, “Pft, diet doesn’t matter. Just take this prescription.” Whatever. They close you off. They go, “That doesn’t work. No, that doesn’t do anything. Doesn’t do anything. “ They’re not willing to even investigate or look or learn. Fire that doctor and go find a doctor who loves learning.

 

[04:07] Dr. Ginger Nash: I love your passion about this Ashley. So true.

 

[04:09] Ashley James:  Right? I think just like in the last day, I’ve had three listeners either private messaged me or in the Facebook group asked about this. It’s frustrating for me because we have been raised to put doctors on the pedestal and we give up our personal power the moment we walk into their office because we’ve been taught that they have all the answers and we don’t know nothing.

 

[04:32] Dr. Ginger Nash: Right. I say to people all the time, “You know your body better than I do but this is a journey we’re going to do together.”

 

[04:39] Ashley James:  Absolutely. You want to go to a doctor who scratches her head but goes, “You know what, I don’t really understand what’s going on in your body but let’s discover it together. I’m going to dive into the research. Let’s figure out how to support your body holistically. Let’s try get to the root cause.” I love that what you do when you work with women you don’t just go, “Oh, your progesterone’s low. Here let’s slap some cream on you and go home.” That doesn’t solve the problem. Why is the progesterone low? What’s going on in the body as a whole. That’s what you love to look at.

 

[05:07] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes, totally. Sometimes hormonal balances are part of a normal life cycle because as women, we certainly go through puberty and the we go through puberty in reverse which is menopause and perimenopause. Sometimes there’s things that are happening in the body that may be causing uncomfortable symptoms and discomfort but sometimes you have to normalize some of it and that’s a big role for me as a physician sometimes with women going through those big changes and post-partum is another major transitional phase in a woman’s life. For those of us that have had children.

 

[05:48] Ashley James: Something I hear is, women are going in menopause earlier and earlier in a very unnatural way because of the level of stress. Physical stress, emotional stress but also the stress of the toxicity in our life, the endocrine-disrupting chemicals are constantly exposed to in our air, water, our food. Even just touching a receipt, the bisphenol touching. Every time you pick up a receipt from the grocery store, you’re touching a chemical that is a endocrine disruptor. We’re exposed constantly to these stressors in the body and then with the emotional stress of having to manage our elderly parents for a lot of people, our children, our partner, our job. Having to manage everything and oftentimes putting ourselves last. All the stress is leading us into early menopause. Have you seen that in your practice?

 

[06:45] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. I really have. It’s amazing that you bring that up because just yesterday, I had a 42-year-old woman who does not have post Lyme syndrome or what I suspect in many others a lot of pathogens be that can sometime disrupt the endocrine system and cause premature ovarian failure. I see more and more women that in their early 40’s they’re really starting to show signs of perimenopause where the whole symphony of the female hormones, starting in the brain of course then affecting the ovaries and the adrenal glands. It’s also out of whack that women are experiencing much more severe types of symptoms at an earlier age. That’s a really good point, Ashley. That I definitely see in my practice. The topics are part of it too. Of course, yes, all the endocrine disruptors. There are over 50,000 chemicals that are in our environment that weren’t around a hundred years ago. Our genetics and our epigenetics can’t keep up. We’re just a lot more toxic obviously.

 

[07:57] Ashley James:  Recently the World Health Organization said that the world’s average is age 52 for going into menopause.

 

[08:09] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. I’ve read 51 actually.

 

[08:12] Ashley James:  Okay. Yes, 51. Women in the United States more and more and then in other industrialized nations. Where we are over toxic, overstressed and undernourished that we are falling into menopause 10 years early.

 

[08:30] Dr. Ginger Nash: Then sometimes, of course, women with endocrine disruptors, hormonal imbalances, more of inflammatory estrogen stimulation. They’re maybe more prone to fibroids or endometriosis which is more of an inflammatory condition than anything. If they have severe problems with their bleeding patterns. They get hysterectomy. Sometimes that can really throw women into premature menopause or if they’ve been diagnosed with breast cancer and then they’re treated with chemotherapy or these estrogen blockers. There’s all sorts of chemical interventions and surgical interventions that can make a woman, overnight her hormone levels can really plummet. There’s those types of phenomenon that are happening more frequently as well.

 

[09:26] Ashley James:  Maybe you can help us understand, should we try to stay off menopause as long as possible? Is it part of longevity that we stay in a premenopausal state or a perimenopausal state as much as possible?

 

[09:44] Dr. Ginger Nash: That’s a really good question. Of course, what happens technically with menopause is you stop ovulating. The role of progesterone, which is only produced after an ovulation once that corpus luteum starts secreting progesterone. The role of progesterone is hugely important women in terms of balancing out the amount of estrogen they have. Of course, if you’re overweight or you do have a lot of endocrine disruptor exposures or you’re toxic etc. You could have a lot more estrogenic activity, your receptors might be extra sensitive, etc. The lack of that progesterone is really what is a big part of the hallmark classic symptoms of menopause as much as the lowering amounts of estrogen and testosterone. It’s an interesting question that you bring up. In some ways, I’m 51 and a half. I’m still menstruating every month and in some ways, just intuitively in my body that feels right. It feels like my youth or my younger tissue levels of hormones and all that is being sustained. I feel like that does contribute to longevity. I agree it’s a probably a good thing, not that you can really stay off menopause naturally, it is a natural process. It is something to be embraced and something that women are really coming to terms within a positive sense. I’m happy to say. I think you know, if these unnatural processes give you a premature perimenopause or menopause then yes, that’s probably going to impact your long term health and your longevity because those hormones are incredibly important. Hormones are so powerful. They do so many things on so many tissues in the body. It’s really fascinating too because human women, I think there’s like a species of whale maybe sperm whales or killer whales. I can’t remember. Are the only species that go through menopause “early” because a lot of species they are able to bear children or offspring much closer to the point of their death. There’s been a lot of interesting conjecture about why that is for humans. We are one of the very few species that does go through menopause early compared to other animals. It’s interesting but we obviously have quite, humans are different in so many ways. We obviously have longer life span than many other animals.

 

[12:43] Ashley James: I guess my understanding about progesterone is that it’s a youthful hormone. That it helps to make sure that we have strong bones, you can fill in the details. What is it about before menopause these hormone levels that we have what is about these hormone levels that we want to keep as naturally balanced as possible to extend our life and to extend our youth so that tissues doesn’t sag. So that we look when we look younger but also that we have healthier bones. [Crosstalk]

 

[13:20] Ginger Nash: Yes, definitely. Estrogen is also the queen of female hormones and really important for longevity and youth. A lot of women who are afraid of gynecological cancer, breast cancer, uterine cancer, cervical cancer, they have missed conceived notions about estrogen because healthy levels of estrogen are incredibly important as are healthy levels of progesterone. These two hormones, you really can’t even separate them, Ashley. They’re both so important and they balance the relative balance of estrogen and progesterone is so important. This is why women have a monthly cycle. Where the first two weeks of the cycle is quite different than the 2nd two weeks of the cycle because the first two weeks are really driven by estrogen and 2nd two weeks after you ovulate is driven by progesterone. Progesterone doesn’t have a specific effect on the nervous system so it’s more of the calming hormone where the estrogen is more stimulating and problems of hyper estrogen can maybe even overstimulate the brain sometimes. Of course, if you have low estrogen you can have brain fog and memory issues and all of that. It’s really the relative balance and every tissues that had estrogen receptors also have progesterone receptors. Estrogen makes the uterine lining grow. Estrogen is our main growth hormone. It makes cell turnover in the breast whereas program maintains the uterine lining. Progesterone slows down the cell turnover in the breast. Every part of your body that’s being affected by estrogen it has a balancing effect from progesterone on that same tissue. It’s really critical to understand and like I said earlier, menopause is a natural part of a woman’s life stages just as puberty is when you’re having some cycles where you’re not ovulating in puberty necessarily. Right away, it’s considered normal for young girls up to 2 years to not have regular cycles. At perimenopause the same thing is happening. That’s really where all the symptoms come in at puberty and at menopause it’s because the body has to find and recalibrate that balance point between estrogen and progesterone again. That happens all over including in the vulva and the vaginal tissues, which is another important part of the body that really is affected by both estrogen and progesterone. A lot of women feel uncomfortable talking about this part of their body sadly. The word vagina, classic Eve Ensler. However, many years ago. Must be 20 years ago now.

  

[16:14] Ashley James:  Vagina monologues?

 

[16:16] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes, vagina monologues. She has to make a whole Broadway show just so people can say the word vagina. It’s great. I do think women are getting more comfortable. Really being embodied and that’s certainly part of my work in feminology is to help educate women about what normal function is for their body and really learning to listen to the signals from their body including the vaginal area and the vulvar area. One of the things that my college in feminology Dr. Tara Nayek when we did our little vaginal course which I love. She started out with terminology because a lot of women refer to sort of everything down there. Again, I’m doing the air quotes “down there” as the vagina when really the vagina is actually the canal that gets penetrated during sexual intercourse. It’s the vulvar area in the outside of the bodies that we have a lot more symptomatology and a lot more familiarity with. I do want to say just at the outset I think that was so great for Tara to bring that up. There’s a lot of confusion even just about the anatomy of our own bodies which is just so amazing. In 2019 we’re still –

 

[17:40] Ashley James:  It’s almost 2020. We don’t know our vulva from our vagina. But now we do.

 

[17:50] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes, totally. Some of the other stuff that we discussed in the course that was really fun to educate women about was how we had this whole, magical vulvar magical vagina because it is this amazing self-cleaning, self-lubricating and it makes it’s own hormones. It really has its own ecosystem. The vaginal canal. Women who have imbalances in hormones and women who have with chronic vaginitis like yeast or BV or chronic herpes conditions etc. they will tell you that when there’s imbalance and symptoms in the area in the body it could be incredibly uncomfortable and distracting making you feel like you can’t really think about anything else. There’s a lot of that going on in my practice certainly. I treat a lot of women with vaginitis and vulvodynia and problems in that area.

 

[18:54] Ashley James:  We want to get into that. I think it’s very interesting. You mention that when we have low estrogen that we have the brain fog. Interesting symptoms that I’ve have in the last is I’ll forget nouns. We’ll know it the certain time of month. My husband will look at me and be like, “Oh, all right.” Looking at the calendar, “Okay. It’s that time of the month again.” Because I’ll be like, “Can you please put that thing in the thing?” I can’t remember. “That thing, can you put that thing? Can you go get that thing and put the thing in the thing?” he has to guess what I’m saying because I don’t remember.

 

[19:26] Dr. Ginger Nash: In my house, we call that a Johnny. We just refer to everything as a Johnny when we don’t have the noun. Like, “Put the Johnny in the Johnny.” Over there by the Johnny is where the Johnny is.” [Laughter]

 

[19:36] Ashley James:  Until now when I learned that it’s actually a hormone thing. Interesting.

 

[19:41] Dr. Ginger Nash: Does it happen at the very end of your period or just a few days after your period is over –

 

[19:48] Ashley James:  It’s like sort of beginning of the cycle is when it’s happening the most.

 

[19:54] Dr. Ginger Nash: That’s when estrogen is the lowest.

 

[19:56] Ashley James: Right. I don’t find that I do it often in an interview which is great. I’m so thankful my brain doesn’t pay attention to my hormonal levels when I’m doing interviews. I’ll be get off an interview be like, “Honey, could you go get me that thing. The thing, the thing over there.” I do it less and less because I have been balancing my hormones more and more especially just the healthier I get this whole since starting the podcast I’ve lost close to 70 pounds.

 

[20:35] Dr. Ginger Nash:  Oh my goodness. Good for you. That’s amazing.

 

[20:37] Ashley James:  I’ve told my story many times but basically I’ve had chronic adrenal fatigue, type II diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and infertility and chronic infections. All through my 20’s and into the early parts of my 30’s and then I found natural medicine and started shopping the perimeter of the store.

 

[20:58] Dr. Ginger Nash: On the corner, one day and I bumped right into [Inaudible 21:02] in the corner.

 

[21:03] Ashley James:  Yes. Exactly. She said, shop the perimeter of the store and stop eating crap food. We ended up seeing Naturopaths and getting on this bandwagon and one thing led to another. My diabetes went away. My polycystic ovarian syndrome slowly got better. Everyone I talked to says, “Well, my doctor says I’m going to have it for life.” I’m like, “Yes, my doctor said I’m going to have it for life too but you know what I was seeing an MD, not an ND.” If you see and ND and you see a good ND, they’re going to say let’s see how much you can heal. Let’s get your body as healthy as you can.” All those problems I had are gone. We conceived our son naturally. I was told by an endocrinologist I was never going to have kids. It was all-natural.

 

[21:48] Dr. Ginger Nash: I hate when I hear that. That’s so awful.

 

[21:51] Ashley James:  Yes. For me, I’ve been doing this investing in my health for 10 years. I’m about to be 40 and I feel healthier and younger than I did 10 years ago. It’s worth it.

 

[22:06] Dr. Ginger Nash: It’s amazing. That’s totally amazing.

 

[22:07] Ashley James:  It’s worth eating healthy and taking supplements when needed making lifestyle changes and doing all the things we learn from guests like you. It’s worth it because 10 years, for now, you’re going to feel younger than you do now.

 

[22:18] Dr. Ginger Nash: That’s awesome. That’s so great. It’s really about learning and empowering yourself to take care of yourself and not putting giving your power away to a medical intervention and something that, I can’t believe it hasn’t even come up yet when I was talking about estrogen and progesterone balance and the impotence of those. Certainly any women who has been diagnosed with PCOS. It’s like, “Okay, you’ve have all these problems. What’s the solution from the mainstream medical model is to put you on the birth control pill.” What does that do about suppress all your hormones level? There’s very strong connection in the literature actually about longevity and anti-aging and all of that. Women are on the pill for 20-30 years sometimes. It’s unreal. This is just considered normal way to manage your symptoms but what you’re doing is you’re shutting down that entire endocrine system. That entire symphony of your hormones. That’s going to have huge effect on almost every body system. I’m so happy to hear that you were aware enough to take your health into your hands and really heal. Part of a Naturopath’s training is the patient is part of the journey as we said earlier but also just that we learned from our patients and that we need to empower them to take care of their health. That’s really amazing. I can’t believe you lost 75 pounds, that’s radical. Ashley. That’s so radical. You’ve had how may children?

 

[24:06] Ashley James:  One. One amazing son. We might have another one. He’s 4 and a half years old. He’s absolutely the light of our life and it was a very healthy, he was a very healthy baby. Everything was great. It’s just our focus is on supporting the body’s ability to maintain health and do that through food. It’s funny that we have this really interesting concept in modern-day society where we don’t see a connection bet what we put in our mouth and the cells that we grow. We were literally made of food. We started out as this 8-pound baby and we just ate and ate and grew but now as adults we just eat whatever we want. We eat the standard American diet and we don’t see that there is consequence to what we put in our mouth. Because we have this false belief that everything is safe. Otherwise, they shouldn’t produce things that aren’t safe.

 

[25:12] Dr. Ginger Nash: Do you know who Dr. Peter Osborne is? He’s done a lot of work with gluten sensitivity and celiac disease and I just listen to a friend of mine’s podcast. Excellent podcast. He had Peter Osborne on and was talking about the history of enriched grains in this country. How cereals became this huge part of our diet and how they were never really meant to be used in such high quantities but of course, because of monocrops and monoculture, agriculture and the way that it’s presented to us. I never really had made this connection before I don’t know if you have, Ashley but if you buy a loaf of regular bread which you probably don’t, I don’t usually buy regular bread but it’s like it will say enriched with B vitamins, thiamine, etc. that’s because the grains are not naturally nutritious enough. It’s not because these processes took them out it’s like cereals and grains. We need to be eating way more vegetables, way more whole foods. If you eat animal products from healthy raised animals not fed antibiotics and corn from the time they were born just to be slaughtered. That is not a healthy form of meat consumption and talk about endocrine disruption. The amount of hormone that you’re exposed to in commercially raised meat product and dairy is way beyond what you’d ever get in just exposures of lesser intensity. You’re absolutely right. The whole role of food in our health is just not acknowledged by medicine. Which is crazy right? It’s crazy that doctors literally tell people, “Your diet doesn’t have anything to do with your digestive problems. Not to mention your hormone problems.”

 

[27:21] Ashley James:  Right. In reversing type two diabetes which was – the first thing I reversed was my chronic monthly infections. Every month I was on antibiotics. The first change we made after watching, it was like Forks over Knives. It was in 2008. It was one of the first health documentaries that Netflix ever streamed. Streaming is like brand new. I think it was Fork over Knives or was it Food, Inc.? It was one of those two. I think we saw Food, Inc. in the movie theaters but any as back then we saw both of them. Between 2008-2009 they said, vote with your fork, vote with your fork. If you don’t like something in the industry like don’t put money in something you don’t like put money in the things you do like. Buy organic if you want to support organic. Then they said shop the perimeter of the store. I thought, “Okay, we’re going to give it a shot.” That month my infections went away. I thought, “I just made one change. What else could I change?” I gave my body over to the MD and they just kept giving me drug after drug and never telling me that I could stop the infections by not eating crap food. I wasn’t sitting there with a bunch of Oreos or Lucky Charms or whatever and Twinkies. I wasn’t sitting there with Halloween candy like every day. I was just eating how everyone else ate. That was enough to make my body unable to handle infections. After that then I reversed my type II diabetes and I did it totally with food.

 

[29:03] Dr. Ginger Nash: That’s amazing. I’m sure that all those antibiotics that you had taken that just makes you overgrow yeast and then if you’re sensitive to yeast then forget it. You’re just going to get inflammatory process after inflammatory process all over your body

 

[29:19] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes, exactly. Having to fight yeast infection and urinary tract infections at the same time. That made me want to look, “What can I do naturally?” because I didn’t want to have to keep going over and over again to get anti-biotic for this what seemed like that was a wakeup call for me when I saw my vagina’s out of balance. What’s going on? My vulva and vagina, right? Now knowing that there’s both those we should really address the whole thing. we’ve had people in the Learn True Health Facebook group, not people, we’ve had women talk about they have yeast infections and UTIs and what to do about it. There’s so much great holistic information out the. I definitely want to get into how we can create a healthier relationship with our vagina and vulva because you have such a great course that you created talking about microbiome and what we can do on a natural level. The reason why I shared my story is to illustrate that something as simple as food can really shift our health hugely. Traditional doctors like MDs who go to medical school, wonderful people, best of intentions, they’re great to go to when out needed drug, when we needed surgery or procedure but they don’t have any training in how to use diet in healing the body. Oftentimes we’re going to the wrong doctor. Going to a Naturopath to help us to heal the body is the right doctor to go to. There’s my little soapbox and getting off of it.

 

[31:07] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. Thank you. I appreciate people like you so much that have really taken it to wider audience. It’s not just Naturopaths talking to other Naturopaths and our patients. It really is a much bigger platform that you helped create Ashley. I think that’s great. We need to hear it from more people outside of the profession about what Naturopathic medicine can do for them. Thank you for the support.

 

[31:35] Ashley James:  Absolutely. I’m the biggest cheerleader, biggest fan of Naturopaths. You’ll ever have. You’ll ever have. Can you tell us in your experience working clinically helping women to balance their hormones? What kind of diet changes have you helped women make? That then you’ve seen in the bloodwork that their hormones became into healthier levels because of those diet changes?

 

[32:00] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes, that’s a great question. Hormones that we’ve talked about so far, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone are all the reproductive hormones. Of course, we’ve got the stress hormones. Cortisol, DHEA, etc. and then the hormones that food affects first and foremost, of course, is insulin and some of the pancreatic secretions that are immediately affected by your diet and this is why I’m sure Ashley, part of your journey in healing yourself of PCOS had to do with your insulin levels. I think a lot of people are familiar with the term insulin resistance. A lot of my dietary recommendations come from one of my main teachers who is Dr. Peter D’Adamo who is the doctor of blood type diet thing and I know you are familiar with his work as well. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot more about Peter’s work because there’s this anti-lectin diet that’s out there in the world now. It just drives me a little baddy because the whole point of lectins is that they’re choosy. Some of them are actually beneficial lectins some of them are negative lectins and depending on what your blood type is.

Means there are certain lectins and foods which are basically sugar-loving proteins that can attach to our blood type antigen which is the sugar. Depending on your blood type antigen, different lectin can have different effects in your body. This is not the veal or anything. Some people have dramatic profound changes just from following a blood type diet. Other people need more tweaking and more finesse but the blood type is always someplace I start because it does mean a tremendous amount about who you are as a biochemical individual to know if you’re blood type O, blood type A, blood type B or AB. That’s always where I’m going to start with diet. Even if I don’t give somebody I use Dr. D’Adamo’s software the SWAMI genotyping diet software for people. In the beginning when I’m working with people, men and women I’m trying to address dietary issues. I may just make some broad stroke recommendations. I always start out with some of the very fundamentals of the blood type diet approach. I have just seen clinically over 20 years a tremendous amount of consistency with people who are blood type A cannot really digest red meat as well as people who are blood type O or B. That might be just one thing I start with.

It’s amazing and maybe you heard this a lot yourself because I know you’ve talked to a lot of people. It’s amazing how a lot of times people will say intuitively that they feel better when they’re eating more according to their blood type. That’s always the starting point or the jumping-off point. When it comes to hormones, one of the things that’s important in terms of hormonal imbalance is whether your gut is clearing the hormones properly. That’s phase three detoxification of all of our hormones. Starting with gut health is always a really commonplace and what’s one of the things that you do several time a day as a therapy for your gut is eat food. Food can be medicine. Food can be therapy. It’s not like I’m specifically saying, “Oh, eat this food which is good for your hormone.” but obviously, we want to minimize the amount of the inflammation in the gut. We want to minimize food sensitivity reactions. We want to minimize the destruction of the gut lining which lectins also play a role in the health of the microvilli in the small intestine which is where all your nutrients are absorbed. That’s always the jumping-off point. The real 30 seconds breakdown is type O’s are tend to be more carnivorous. Type A’s tend to do better with less animal proteins in their diet. Type B’s are what we call idiosyncratic omnivore. There’s some idiosyncratic lectin relationships. Then I’m always interested in looking at someone’s metabolic type. Layered on top of the blood type. For someone if I can use you as an example Ashley I don’t know what your blood type is but if you’ve got PCOS you’ve definitely got some thrifty metabolic tendencies. Meaning when your body is restricted from calories or if it’s eating a lot of empty calories, refined sugars and refined carbohydrates, it’s going to suck those calories away as fat for future times of deprivation. If you’re not giving your body good nutrient-dense foods if you have a thrifty metabolic type. You’re actually going to have a very hard time starving yourself into losing weight and you’re going to feel like crap. You’re going to be irritable, you’re going to be hangry, you’re hormone are going to be completely imbalanced. Your mood can be affected etc.

It’s really important to understand if somebody has that thrifty metabolic type to find the foods that are going to stoke the digestive fires and be healthy sources of calories and nutrients for that person. Depending on whether you’re a type O with a thrifty metabolic type or a type A with a thrifty metabolic type layered on top I would make diff kinds of food recommendations. One thing I can say across the board which I think you probably already know, hopefully, a lot of your listeners already know is that, the amount of whole foods, meaning vegetables and fruits and those types of high fiber foods are going to be excellent for keeping your hormones balanced because the fibers really feed the beneficial bacteria that help your body eliminate excess inflammatory estrogens and some of the excess toxins that are in your system that might be having that feedback to your hormonal balance as well. High fiber is sort of a general statement that I can make across the board that’s beneficial for both gut health and inflammation and the therefore hormonal health. Then also foods that are really beneficial to feed the beneficial bacteria. There’s a lot of types of probiotic supplementation out there that some of those things have the prebiotic fiber in them and healthy fibers and then there things like large arabino galectin and supplements but some of those things can actually just amplify the effects of a healthy diet. It’s always got to address the diet and the gut health no matter what the imbalance or chronic problem is.

 

[39:25] Ashley James:  How much fiber is a good – I mean not like I’m sitting there with Metamucil or flax going, “Well, I got to put another five tablespoons,” not like that but if we were to eat a pound –

 

[39:39] Dr. Ginger Nash: Five cups.

 

[39:40] Ashley James:  Five cups of vegetables a day?

 

[39:43] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. That or fruits because fruits are high in fiber as well. Blueberries are ounce per ounce one of the highest-fiber foods there are. That’s a good rule of thumb. It’s like five cups. Over the summer I lost some weight myself, I was perimenopausal as I’ve mentioned earlier. I’m still cycling but I had put on 10 pounds without really knowing it and then I stepped on the scale and I’m like, “Oh, that’s interesting. My pants feel a little diff.” I did actually start to measure out some of my foods just for a short period of time so I could really get an eyeball. It’s amazing if you start eating five cups of vegetables or fruits per day, your elimination system is going to definitely improve. Last year eating a ton of processed refined flour products which can certainly slow down the bowel movement and create more irritated mucus which can then give you some digestive problems. If you just simply add in foods and I really like to do that as well with my patient base because I like to focus on the things that are beneficial and use food as medicine rather than having people focus on a restrictive mindset all the time. If you just naturally start adding in five cups of veggies that’s going to be so much more filling that you’re just not going to eat as much as the processed refined foods. That’s a good blanket statement that I can make because really all the dietary advice I give is pretty highly individualized.

 

[41:30] Ashley James: Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Someone with small intestine overgrowth is going to have a totally different diet than someone who has GERD. Right absolutely.

 

[41:37] Dr. Ginger Nash: Except their vegetables. Yes, totally. Another cool little dietary thing before we leave that topic there is a great carrot salad recipe that I’ve recommend dot a lot of women. If you just grate some organic carrots, of course, they can be heirloom, they can be the regular orange ones whatever you like, a grated carrot with a little tiny bit of lemon juice, little bit of olive oil, sea salt or if you do apple cider vinegar in small amounts. Even some of the other vinegars that can be really excellent for helping balance your estrogens. That’s a little food thing that almost everyone can tolerate carrots. I haven’t met too many patients that are sensitive to carrots. Generally, that’s a rule.

 

[42:30] Ashley James:  Why is a carrot salad good for balancing hormones?

 

[42:34] Dr. Ginger Nash: It has a certain amount of fibers in it and it feeds some of those beneficial bacteria. It has an effect on the calcium d-glucarate in the gut which helps your body eliminate inflammatory estrogen. Isn’t that cool?

 

[42:49] Ashley James:  Yes, it’s very cool. Before we move on to the vaginal health, I definitely want to get to that. You mentioned gut-clearing hormones being phased three. For those who don’t know, can you just explain what that is? We hear that high estrogens really bad for us but we don’t know the difference between the estrogen the body makes and the estrogen the body want to eliminate?

 

[43:11] Dr. Ginger Nash: Right. Perfect. There’s three different major metabolic pathways or clearance if you will. It’s what happens in your liver to your hormones to help your hormones break down and be eliminated from your body phase one is the first phase of that process. Phase two and I don’t need to go into a big biochemistry lecture. Basically your liver had to go through phase one and phase two and then it kicks into the gut because the blood that circulates from the liver gets emptied into the gut. Then it’s phase three elimination or detoxification is what is related to the health of your microbiome and actually getting those hormone byproducts into your stool so that you can eliminate them. Some of the hormone testing that I use is a urinary metabolite testing. We can actually see how well those liver enzymes are doing in terms of eliminating the various estrogens and which pathway they’re going down because if you got a high – what’s called 4-hydroxy pathway, if you’ve got  a lot of the estrogens going down that pathway you’re going to be a lot more symptomatic.

The 16 pathway also gives you a lot of symptoms like PMS, bloating, the discomfort that a lot of women feel prior to their period and then the 4 pathways is the one that really is more inflammatory and does damage to the DNA. It’s sort of the pre-cancerous pathway. Then the two pathway is the pathway that you would like to see preferentially in a woman. You can do hormone testing through urine metabolites as I’ve said. We can see is your body doing a good job of eliminating these estrogens? Because as we have said from the beginning of the conversation, we don’t want to just have low estrogen that’s not good. Estrogen is really important and it’s especially important after we go through menopause because it is an anti-aging type of hormone in our bodies. Of course, we don’t want to get type of estrogen that’s going to lead to a breast cancer or another type of overgrowth of the cells in an unhealthy way where the DNA is damaged and you’re more likely to have a cancer formation.

 

[45:43] Ashley James:  Got it. So once a body’s done with the estrogen we need to clear it out

 

[45:49] Dr. Ginger Nash: That’s phase three.

 

[45:52] Dr. Ginger Nash: Right. What I hear is that when we have constipation for example or we’re just not having enough healthy bowel movement in the body that the gut reabsorbs and can actually reactivate the estrogen so we can become estrogen dominant because of our gut health, because of poor gut health.

 

[46:12] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes, we could recirculate the estrogens and if you’re taking hormone replacement even bioidentical hormones they can be problematic in terms of the recirculation and you can get elevated levels of certain hormones if you’re moving your bowels in a regular basis. Absolutely. Hugely important topic of healthy bowel movement. I talked to people about poop every day. [Laughter] “Hi, nice to meet you. Please take off most of your clothes so I can do a whole-body thermography scan and now we’re going to talk about your poop.” People have to get real conformable real quick. Actually you know, the health of the vaginal microbiome is related to this too. I think it’s really fascinating that the vagina which is designed to have something come in from the outside it’s an area that’s exposed. Its’ muscle membranes that are exposed to the outside world. It doesn’t have the diversity that the gut microbiome has. You actually don’t want a great diversity of flora in the vaginal tissue as you do in the gut. The effects of antibiotics or the effects of the birth control pill or a number of drugs event he effects of PPI’s and other things that are used to manage digestive symptoms can have a huge effect on not just the microbiome of your gut but the vaginal microbiome as well. You can get a lot of problem with overgrowth in both systems and you need to address them differently.

 

[47:56] Ashley James:  How do we address yeast infections or that would be the overgrowth right? We call that a yeast infection?

 

[48:02] Dr. Ginger Nash: Well, it depends because you can get overgrowth of other things too. Yeast is probably one of the most common organisms that we see overgrowing and not only that Ashley, it doesn’t always – again, it’s like I with everything was a little bit more simple but it’s not. Sometimes for a lot of women it, not a matter of how much yeast they actually have in their bodies. By the way, type O’s definitely have a higher what’s called candida carriage. We just have higher levels of yeast because blood type O antigen is a preferred food source for candida and other yeast. Type O’s might have higher levels of yeast but it’s also a matter of how sensitive the person is to the yeast in their system. This is going down a little bit of a tangent. I’ll get back to answering your question.

 

[48:58] Ashley James: I love this tangent. Keep going.

 

[48:59] Dr. Ginger Nash: That’s one of the things that I’m working with these new therapies and the office that I’m working in Fairfield, Connecticut now which is called Fairfield family health is doing LDA and LDI therapy. I don’t know if you’re familiar with these but they’re therapies that have been around basically since the 1950s. They have grown in popularity recently although they’re still pretty new to the world of natural medicine and they were created by medical doctors. What it is it’s immune desensitization or immune tolerance to various substances. You can do the treatment LDA for environmental sensitives for food sensitivities and you give a very small dose. This is why it just made so much sense to me once I started familiarizing myself with this and being educated and now I’ve listened to a tremendous amount of info I’m actually going to my first conference about this on Oct 9th. It just makes so much sense because it’s not a matter of having an infection of having toxins in your system that you can’t get rid of because you’re so overwhelmed with the environmental toxins like food toxins. It’s more a matter of your immune system getting caught in this vicious cycle of creating to something. This is where something like LDA can be really helpful because it gives you infinitesimal doses like homeopathic doses essentially. These substances that give your body a tolerance to various substances. Like I said, the LDAS are more for the environmental and the food sensitivities but the LDI is really the outgrowth from DR. Ty Vincent of LDI therapy and he’s turned it low dose immunotherapy and that’s using more specific pathogens. I’ve used candida and yeast and also I treat a tremendous amount of Lyme disease and co-infection and there’s an entire Lyme next so you can use this specific pathogens to break that cycle of sensitivity. It’s not like you’re using oregano oil or boric acid or diatomaceous earth or all this things that can kill yeast. you’re using something that actually helps your immune system become more tolerant to his thing that’s in our bodies. We all have yeast in our systems. It’s just a matter of have we been antibiotics ten times in the last ten years? Do we have this incredible overgrowth or do we just have a certain sensitivity to the yeast and that’s really what’s driving all of our symptoms.

 

[52:05] Ashley James:  Got it. If someone doesn’t have a massive overgrowth but if their immune system is mounting this massive response to a small amount of yeast which naturally occurs in all of us then it’s more about dealing with an allergy.

 

[52:20] Dr. Ginger Nash: Exactly. You can even use, it gets really deep. It’s a beautiful approach really and I love that Dr. Vincent is totally transparent about how we really don’t know like the science is not there. The research has not been done, there’s been advances in this type of therapy but we really don’t know. We think we understand what’s happening is that the substances that’s administered in this very small amount Is up regulating the T-lymphocytes and giving your immune system a chance to recognize if you will. This is something that doesn’t need to go crazy and attack. It’s giving you that tolerance and desensitizing your system to this particular substance. One of the things that I’m really excited about treating using this therapy is Hashimoto’s thyroid because there’s a pretty strong case and literature for a pathogen called Yersinia to stimulate to be the trigger to this autoimmune thyroid disease and we can uses LDI to again create a situation in the body where it’s not making the antibodies. You can see this with follow-ups, with blood tests for antibody levels you can see it with yeast. You can see it with Hashimoto’s. The ATA and the TPO anti-bodies you can see it with all the lime pathogens, abicia, Bartonella and I’ve also been starting to treat some women with herpes simplex virus that have had outbreaks of herpes for many years. When you know the offending trigger what the pathogen is that might be involved in any of these processes and certainly in terms of vaginal health and yeast overgrowth you can absolutely sue this type of therapy to desensitize the person to the yeast that is present.

You may also want to do some yeast killing. It depends that’s based on clinical context of “Did they get a wet prep? The gynecologist said, “You know yes, there’s tremendous amount of yeast.” or there’s BV or there’s others organisms or there’s just a lot of white blood cells which means it’s an immune-mediated inflammation and that can happen with chronic UTIs as well. That’s another thing that a lot of women struggle with this chronic UTIs and the more antibiotics they get put on, what’s going to happen? They’re just going develop more candida overgrowth and then that could potentially stimulate an inflammatory process. There’s a lot of creative ways to address this. I just love the idea of supporting the immune system because that to me is through Naturopathic medicine. That’s what we learned in school and what I was definitely reinforced with by Dr. Jaquel, my main homeopathic teacher was that we’re not born with this specific immune system, we have to learn as babies what is self first. Recognize what our self-tissues look like and antigens look like. Then our immune system has to learn specific defenses. Some of this process this immunological process gets really confused that’s why there’s so much autoimmune disease.

Again, we destroyed our microbiomes. We’ve been exposed to all this toxins. We’ve been exposed to all this antigens and climate change has encouraged the rampant spread of tech borne diseases and mosquito-borne disease and all that. As a population, we’re really dealing with a lot more chronic pathogens but even once we’ve cleared the infection stage, we may still have this immune process that’s continuing like a vicious cycle. It’s a really exciting time for me personally as a doctor because I, for many years used a number of complex homeopathic to support the nonspecific aspect of the immune system. With nutrient and with diet as well. I’ve done a lot with supporting the nonspecific aspects of inflammation and histamine reactions. Cytokines and all those kinds of things. Now I’m starting to use more of the specific antigens with it. It’s really been cool. I’m seeing some really great results already. It’s very exciting.

 

[57:17] Ashley James:  Yes. You mentioned all the things that have caused our immune system to go haywire in the last 30 years, what about vaccines? Now, by 2015 by the age of six children would receive 49 doses of vaccines. By the age six. A total of about 70 doses of vaccines are recommended by the time they’re like 21 or something like that. Whereas when I was a child, it was maybe 16?

 

[57:51] Dr. Ginger Nash: Wow. Yes. You know you’re going to drag me into the vaccine conversation.

 

[57:55] Ashley James:  No. I meant I don’t want to like – because that’s a whole episode onto itself but do you think that – [crosstalk] Yes, many episodes we could spend on that. Could you add that to the list of the things that are causing our immune system to not really understand how to deal with stuff? Like why is the autoimmune in the last 40 years has skyrocketed?

 

[58:19] Dr. Ginger Nash: That’s really the main thrust of what Dr. Jaquel taught me right when I graduated from Naturopathic medical school all the way back in 1998. My friend and I flew to New York in this French medical doctor came over and just blew our minds. That was the main thing that he would say. It’s not that vaccines cause autism or vaccines cause diarrhea or whatever. It’s that when they’re administered in such high amounts, they can overwhelm in certain individuals. They can overwhelm the immune system and it causes this perturbation in that natural process of what I just said the body’s ability, the baby’s ability really to recognize self from non-self. That’s a lot of information you’re putting into a little child. About from the outside not just the pathogens but all of the adjuvant ingredient and yadah, yadah. We don’t have to go down that rabbit hole. I’m sure you know a lot about it. I’m sure your listeners know a lot about it. Unfortunately, it’s become this insanely polarizing issue in our society and nobody can really even talk to each other about it. It’s really bad.

 

[59:36] Ashley James:  I’ve got a great interview that’s very balanced. Because people really want to get polarized. People really want to be for or against them. I have a wonderful interview that feels very balanced. Honors both sides. I’ll make sure I’ll link it in the show notes. He’s a pediatrician who has a very busy practice in Portland. I think he has three or four other pediatricians and a Naturopath. Sorry, MDs and a Naturopath and nurses all working with him. They have tens of thousands of patients and in his many years of working there, he has not had one case of full-blown autism because what he says is he does an altered schedule but 50% of his patients choose not to vaccinate because they are attracted to him because he believes in informed consent. Then he has the other 50% chose to do altered schedule. One dose at a time they come in for one and then they monitor and see how the child is. He has a very different altered schedule for those who choose to vaccinate. He wrote a book on it. I think it’s called Safe Vaccines or something like that. The second they see a regression in the child or any kind of reaction they stop. 100% stop vaccines and that’s it. No, this child is not a candidate for them. That’s how he prevents having vaccine injury in his clinic.

Before he started his clinic many years ago he worked as an early pediatrician. He was in a clinic where when children were talking or walking and then they had their vaccine doses and they stopped talking or walking, it was encouraged to keep going. Keep giving the doses. Keep going. He felt so bad because he felt as though he was part of basically causing vaccine injury in children. He would see it and he would argue with other doctors in the clinic because he was such a new doctor they’re like, “Who are you? Don’t question big pharma. Don’t question anything. Keep going.” He made it his mission to look into this. Anyway his whole thing is if you’re going to do vaccines here’s the safest way to do it based on his incredible met clinical experience. I love what you said that from birth we’re putting in this foreign antigens and foreign stuff in the baby and the immune system hasn’t even had the chance to learn who is self and who is not-self.

 

[01:02:20] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. The only defense that we have is – Dr. Nayek used to say it forces the immune system to try and create this specific antibodies before it’s really mature enough to do so. That’s why for me personally, like with my son, once he was 7 which is when naturally our bodies are able to form specific antibodies, I felt a lot more comfortable thinking about the vaccine question before he was 7. You really only have the non-specific immune defense which is inflammation and fever. That’s why so many people see their children get this incredible inflammatory conditions and of course, fevers after vaccinations. Not to mention what it’s doing to the microbiome. All of that

 

[01:03:16] Ashley James: I didn’t meant to go there. [Crosstalk] We had to cover that.

 

[01:03:24] Dr. Ginger Nash: Totally. It’s just one of these things that I don’t want to post on social media about it because you just can’t question anything without being accused of being this rabid anti-science, anti-vaxxer you know like crazy person. It’s awful that that’s where we’re at.

 

[01:03:43] Dr. Ginger Nash: That’s the problem. They’re using a strawman and a red herring, these linguistic fallacies to throw us off our game. The problem is we need to sit down and have an educated discussion about everything so that we can make a better future for ourselves and for our children. They want us fighting against each other because then we don’t if we’re fighting amongst ourselves we don’t rise up to make them change things. We’re fighting amongst ourselves and then we’re questioned a being like you said, anti-science or whatever. I’m not either side. I’m pro-kid and pro-health. Let’s just focus on supporting our body’s ability to heal itself. I really want to make sure we cover it. You created a course, now is this course available to purchase?

 

[01:04:38] Dr. Ginger Nash: No. It was actually just like a little – Dr. Nayek and I just decided we were going to do just a little like, “Hey, let’s just see how this goes in terms of giving women some information.” We have a Facebook group. We share a ton of content for free. It’s just part of building our tribe. Helping empower women, there’s always women that will need more specific support, we’re happy to have more patients from that community. Really at this point, I am just committed to sharing this information as much as possible. We created this little mini-course and we did our first one of vaginal health and we want to do another one about breast health coming up. Just get on our lists and you’ll find out about it. Go to our feminology.org site band, sign up to any one of our free downloads and you’ll be on our email list. We don’t email more than I would say once a month which all of the marketing people say, “Oh, now you’ve got an email every week”. Don’t worry we’re not going to clog up your inbox with tons of emails. Yes, we did this course about vaginal and vulvar health just because as we said earlier, it’s an area of the body that a lot of women are googling about. They’re not actually talking to their doctors or talking to other women because it’s an area that a lot of women have a lot of shame around which is really sad but it’s the truth. We live in a patriarchal society and it’s interesting that we do refer to the area as our vagina because the vagina as I mentioned earlier is really just a canal that is penetrated in sexual intercourse. If you’re having sex with a man but it’s not –

 

[01:06:27] Ashley James: It’s not the fun part.

 

[01:06:28] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes, exactly. Even the way we speak about it and talk about it is informed by our culture but we wanted to do this be a lot of women do have vaginitis and we certainly talked about yeast vaginitis and certain natural supplements can be beneficial and sometimes over the counter stuff is fine. It’s not like you have to see a Naturopath if you have a single yeast infection but if you’re getting yeast infection after yeast infection and you can’t clear them and you’ve got another problems. Vulvodynia developing which is painful sex in the vulvar area which is again another thing that a lot of women struggle with. Then yes, you probably need some more focused support. Then of course, if you’ve had imbalances in the vaginal flora. This can lead to a more prone situation to develop bacterial vaginosis and imbalance in the flora can lead to symptoms. Discharge and discharge is normal for women. Vaginal discharge at different points in the month. You obviously discharge more when you’re ovulating. There’s that cervical mucus. Discharge that’s painful or irritating or discharge that’s itchy or causing itching in the vulvar areas then you may want to get checked out or discharge that smells a little off. All these things can be addressed certainly with natural medicine. I’ve had some funny home remedies that are totally safe. One of the things that I love to recommend to women that they can do especially women if you’ve had any kind of chronic yeast can cause almost even features where the tissues is actually splitting and tremendously painful. One of the best things that I’ve found that’s readily available and inexpensive is Ghee clarified butter.

 

[01:08:39] Ashley James:  Really?

 

[01:08:40] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. Ghee is super duper rich in butyric acid that where butter gets its name from. Butyric acid is used as enemas. Ulcerative colitis. Butyric acid has an amazing ability to heal up the mucosa of birth the gut and the vaginal tissue and the vulvar tissues. It’s totally safe and it smells nice. You can actually use Ghee topically. I know some women that have used coconut butter or coconut oil. I just tend to like the medicinal aspect of the Ghee a little bit more. Then there’s some other things I recommend like pomegranate oil is an amazing, safe, and natural constituent of some of the – I actually used a particular brand of products that I love that are formulated by a friend of mine and they’re called Curious Intimacy and she makes beautiful product that are all-natural, all organic. One of them, in particular, has a good amount of pomegranate oil. That’s long been known to have these potent antioxidant effects but it also reduces tumor necrosis factor activities. Tumor necrosis factor is a molecule that will damage again epithelial cells throughout the body, in the lining of the gut and the vaginal tract as well. It’s going to reduce inflammation that causes damage to the epithelial cells. You probably aren’t going to get the same effect from drinking pomegranate juice although pomegranate juice is also very medicinal as well. It feeds actually really beneficial bacteria in the gut. Pomegranates are wonderful foods for a variety of women’s health conditions but the oil, in particular, I really like to use for vaginal health.

 

[01:10:42] Ashley James: Topically?

 

[01:10:43] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. Topically. Then one of the other things that I like to do topically is cumin seed oil. If you do get it’s found as an essential oil and I believe if you put just one or two drops into a carrier oil like almond oil or even ghee or pomegranate I’ll if you get some pome oil. That can be really beneficial as an anti-yeast as is oregano. Oregano people take oral, encapsulated oregano oil which is wonderful for infections and yeast. That’s another thing that I’ve recommend to women. If you get essential oil just be sure you don’t put straight oregano oil or cumin seed oil on the vaginal tissues. You absolutely have to have a carrier oil. That’s something that I’ve recommended to women as well. It’s great because a little thing of essential oils lasts a long time you only need one or two drops. It’s not a drug. It’s not a pharmaceutical and it’s going to have any other side effects that some of the medicines that are used to treat yeast-like Diflucan which is a very common prescription from your gynecologist. If you’ve got yeast infection take one or two doses of Diflucan. Puts a little bit of stress in your liver if you don’t need to do that I’m sure there’s lots of listeners who would rather try something natural.

 

[01:12:23] Ashley James:  Absolutely. Then there’s more studies that are coming out. They’re showing that there’s several antibiotics that inhibit the body from producing collagen and that later on they’re seeing that aortic aneurysm and things like the Achilles tendon erupting.

 

[01:12:42] Dr. Ginger Nash: Oh, you’ve hit on one of my favorite topics, which is fluoroquinolones. Okay. So here’s a little story about Dr. Ginger. I was training for a half marathon and I was a chronic UTI sufferer. For many years I had [inaudible 01:12:57]. I carried myself into [Inaudible 01:12:59]. I tend it’s just one of my weak spots. I tend to get bladder infections. I’m training for this half marathon it’s during the summer that I training and I get totally dehydrated it was a really hot summer. This was a few years ago. A number of years ago actually eight. Anyway, I get a UTI. I do all of my usual stuff and it’s just not working, I can’t keep up and I can feel it. Sort of, I’ve had 2 kidney infections as well. I feel it traveling into my kidney. I’ve been training for this race for several months and I really don’t want to miss this race because I have a UTI or it’s going to my kidney because you feel really crappy when you’ve got  kidney infections. You get a fever and it’s very serious you need antibiotics immediately. I call my medical doctor friend and I say, “Can you call me in a script for an antibiotic? I have a bladder infection that I’m afraid is traveling to my kidney.” He’s a surgeon. That was a bad idea. He was being nice and doing me a favor but this is a lesson in like go to your regular doctors that take care of you and get prescriptions from people that know your comprehensive health history. He called in a script for Cipro.

I didn’t want to bother him and call him back. He’s a really busy surgeon so I took the Cipro and I ran the half marathon. I can’t believe I didn’t blow up my Achilles but I developed tendonitis in every major tendon in my body. I broke out in hives all over my back. All over my chest. I remember I was caught in traffic in 95. For those of you that live on the east coast 95’s middle name is traffic. I was caught in traffic and I’m looking in the rear view mirror and am like, “My face looks kind of weird and I’m itchy.” and I looked up my neck and I’ve got hives in my neck, hives on my back, hives all over my torso. Of course, my doctor wanted to put me on steroids I was like, “No way. I’m not going on steroids.” I developed this Cipro reaction and I’m sure it was because I stressed my body running the 13 miles and had been taking this medication which you are exactly right, it upsets the collagen. It actually disrupts the DNA and it can cause permanent disability in various connective tissues in the body.

That’s why the aortic aneurysm is coming to light. Those drugs are bad news. They should really be, I would be willing to back they’re going to get pulled from the market. I really strongly recommended if you have UTI if you need some antibiotics get some Bactrim. Get some milder antibiotics, Macrobid, etc. stay away from those fluoroquinolones. They’re really hellacious and some people have had permanent disability from them. I feel like managed over time to get over the tendonitis but I got a tremendous amount of neuromuscular work and bodywork. I was taking a tremendous amount of natural anti-inflammatories and it took me a long time and I still have it’s not my Achilles but on the lower right limb I have a tendon on the outside of my leg I think it’s my peroneal tendon or something like that. Not peroneal because that’s your peroneus muscle but the peroneus muscle which is a postural muscle that had a tendon still bothers me like on a daily basis. Those drugs are super-duper scary. A lot of people have reactions to them. 

 

[01:16:41] Ashley James:  We have to remember that every drug that’s been taken off the market for killing people was first approved safe. When we come back to that vaccine argument, everyone’s yelling it’s safe. We have to remember that every single drug that’s been taken off the market for killing and naming people was first absolutely 100% stamped safe. We need to have a little bit of paranoia to survive in this world. We need to question everything. Do our research. Be willing to go get a second opinion or a third opinion by different kinds of doctors. Be willing to take in different information and weigh it. Weigh the pros and cons and not just go with the flow. I like saying this in the show if you want to be a statistic, if you want to be the one in three people that dies of cancer or one in three people dies of heart disease, the one in three people that has diabetes or pre-diabetes or is obese. If you want to be a statistic, then do what everyone else is doing. If you don’t want to be statistic and you want to live to your genetic potential of 120 years old disease-free and healthy, then you’ve got to go against the grain. We’ve got to be the oddball that says no to gluten and eats organic and goes get put essential oils in vulva and vagina. Those kinds of things. We’ve got to be a little bit out there but were going to make sure if we’re going against the grain that we’re not going to be statistic. Can you share with us what we can do? Let’s say now we recovered from our yeast infection or from everything’s back to normal after using the Ghee or using all the wonderful things you’ve mentioned or maybe adjusted our diet. Maybe looked at some emotional work because I heard that there’s a connection between stress levels emotional levels when women feel betrayed by their partner for example or when they have an affair and they feel guilty or shameful around it that there is an increase in UTIs and yeast infections. Looking at emotional state and emotional stress like the body’s a whole lifestyle, the body’s a whole. Once we come back and we’re no longer infected. How can we support the vagina and vulvar to have a healthy microbiome?

 

[01:19:10] Dr. Ginger Nash: Actually great question. First of all, stay away from bleached tampons. Stay away from all the chemical that are in most of your run of the mill feminine hygiene products, investigate using more of cups if those are comfortable for you. You know other types of ways of managing your menstrual blood. If you don’t mind using just pads, use pads. Watch out for sex toys that are made from inferior quality materials. Latex is a common allergy but there’s definitely you get what you pay for in terms of anything you’re putting inside your vagina. Buy the high-end sex toys if you’re going to go there. It’s something to invest in. Those are two things. Then something really simple that gets overlooked too is just staying hydrated because the vaginal tissue is a sensitive ecosystem. When you get dehydrated there’s a really strong correlation for dryness and when you get dry, you tend to get more tissue damage and keeping your hormone’s balanced overall is really – our vaginas and our vulvas are obviously connected to our bodies. An overall approach to your hormone health is definitely going to help the vaginal tissue, help the vulvar tissues. Eating a diet that’s anti-inflammatory for you. Some of that I mentioned earlier is pretty individualized but there’s definitely some broad strokes that we’ve touched upon and you touched upon Ashely, which is great. Hydrogenated fats and refined sugars and refined flours are pretty much bad for everybody. High fructose corn syrup is not going to make your body a happy place. No matter who you are, what your blood type is, what your metabolic type is, no matter what. Simple things like diet and hydration also just be careful what you put on your body including your vaginal tissue and your vulvar area. I do tend to use a lot of products and certainly recommend to many women not to use soaps. There’s been a lot about the purel and anti-bacterial hand sanitizers. Same thing applies to anything vaginally. You really don’t want to try and kill the good bacteria there. Staying away from harsh chemicals and perfumes and synthetics on that tissue would be definitely an important thing. Also the classic, peeing after sex if you need to wash after sex. Some women I know definitely like to do a little rinse. The products that I mentioned earlier made by my friend Elizabeth Moriarty, Curious intimacy. They have a wonderful After Play products which you can use which is oils as well with some essential oils with some beautiful natural ingredients, that’s definite a way to be proactive and preventive in terms of getting yeast infections. One of the oils, the After Play has the black cumin seed in it. There’s a number of things to do just to keep things healthy and balanced and lot of that is just some of your basic Naturopathic recommendations. Definitely tampons do not use bleached tampons at all.

 

[01:22:57] Ashley James:  What about the organic they’re like, they’re white but they say they’re organic. Is that okay or they’re also bleached?

 

[01:23:01] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. They should say whether they’re bleached I think there are some tampons that are made from organic cotton but they’re still bleached. I wouldn’t like that. Bleach is definitely going to mess up your microbiome and cause pain for some women.

 

[01:23:22] Ashley James:  What about douching with yogurt? That’s kind of a home remedy I learned from my mom. I haven’t need to do it since I was a teenager I think I did it once because my mom was like, “This is what we do.” Is that helpful?

 

[01:23:37] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. I mean I wouldn’t call it douching per se because I think of douching as like washing but you could certainly do a yogurt infusion. I’ve actually along with the Ghee there something else I recommend to women that I didn’t mention already for yeast. The Ghee is more soothing and healing up the irritated the mucosal membranes. For yeast, you could actually nick a little clove of garlic and insert that too. You definitely want to be aware that it’s going to burn for a little bit. I wouldn’t necessarily do it many days in a row. I’m a little cautious about saying this in a public forum because I certainly don’t want anybody to hurt themselves but for most women that can be incredibly soothing and anti-infective as well.

 

[01:24:32] Ashley James:  I’ve totally done the garlic thing. You will smell like garlic. You’re going to walk around being like, “I’m smelling Italian food all the time.” This was back when I was a teenager but it worked.

 

[01:24:42] Dr. Ginger Nash: You should work up with the oregano essential oil and the garlic. It’ll be like a food fest.

 

[01:24:43] Ashley James: Right. Mix it with the oregano that’s so funny, yes. Absolutely. It has been such a pleasure having you on the show today. Two more quick things. One, colloidal silver for the vagina, vagina right? The canal. Would you say that that is a good thing to use if we’re looking to combat an overgrowth?

 

[01:25:08] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes. I’ve never used colloidal silver vaginally. I’ve used it in the sinuses and in net pots and washes. I’ve used colloidal silver spray and I’ve used it orally for viruses and whatnot. I tend to think of the silver as anti-viral so it wouldn’t be the first thing I would think of vaginally but I’m sure it could be beneficial if that’s the main issue. I just tend to think of it more as an anti-viral than an anti-bacterial or anti-yeast.

 

[01:25:42] Ashley James:  It’s less likely we have a viral infection down there

 

[01:25:46] Dr. Ginger Nash: Yes, it’s less likely. Usually, if it’s a viral thing, it’s a herpes virus and it’s going to be transmitted through the nerve tissue. That’s why viral infections are so painful because it’s affecting the nerves. Doing something topically in the vaginal canal isn’t going to be as effective as doing some antivirals that would hit the nerve tissue.

 

[01:26:09] Ashley James:  Yes. Man, I can’t wait to have you back on the show. Just keep coming back. You’ve got so much to share.

 

[01:26:13] Dr. Ginger Nash: Aww, thanks, Ashley.

 

[01:26:14] Ashley James: This is so much fun. Now I’m going to make sure all the links to everything that Dr. Ginger Nash does is in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.comGingernash.com and feminology.org and everything else. Your Facebook group. We’ll put all the information in the show notes today. To wrap up today’s interview, I’d love for you to share some homework. Give us some homework. What do you want us to do? Get us to go out there and do something for our health.

 

[01:26:41] Dr. Ginger Nash: I think that what I mentioned earlier about that five cups of vegetables a day. If you make one change in your diet. Just start trying to eat five cups of vegetables a day. Like I said earlier, fill you up it’s going to automatically decrease the amount of processed foods you’re going to want to eat because those vegetables are not calorically dense. They’re tremendously beneficial for all the fiber content, all the antioxidant content, all the nutrients, the micro-minerals. I particularly love to recommended seaweed salad to people because so many people are mineral deficient. I know you live in Seattle, you have all the good sushi restaurants around you. That’s a really wonderful source of micro-minerals. That would be a good way to go. Get eating your veggies.

 

[01:27:34] Ashley James: I love it. Get your veggies in. I start my day with one pound of steamed vegetables because it’s the easiest thing to do. I can throw either fresh or frozen I could just throw a pound that’s about two cups and I throw that in the steamer. Well, I have like this bamboo thing at the Asian market we got this really cool bamboo steamer and you just put it on top of a wok or a big pot. I steam it while I’m getting the family ready to go in the morning. I eat my 1 pound of steamed vegetables and if I start my day that way, I am so satiated and so balanced. When I wait until the end of the day to get my vegetables in it’s just like, oh whatever. I’m like, “Why make an excuse?” So I get my vegetables in as soon as I can. One pound of vegetables and then I get another pound either for lunch or dinner or I split it up. I just found to just steam it and then I could throw stuff on it. I could throw hot sauce on it or some coconut aminos or some Bragg’s amino liquid or nutritional yeast. Whatever or cayenne or smoked paprika and it might be the same. I could have broccoli for entire week if I wanted to if I got lazy but it always tastes different because I put different stuff on it. I do rotate my vegetables and man that has been a life-changer.

 

[01:28:54] Dr. Ginger Nash: That’s so great. That’s such a good tip. Thank you for teaching me that because I tell people that all the time about exercise if you exercise in the morning you’re much more likely to stick to an exercise regimen and it’s true for vegetables too. I can totally see. We have such a perturbed crazy understanding of what breakfast is in this country. Eat vegetables for breakfast. The five cups of vegetables but try to get at least two cups or a cup there least for breakfast.

 

[01:29:22] Ashley James:  Get two cups. Oh, come on. One cup is like a snack. One cup I could like – I eat one cup like popcorn. If I have any leftover vegetables because I try to not eat after dinner because it’s I don’t need to fill up on calories to go to bed. It’s not like I’m running a marathon in my sleep but if I feel like a little puckish or carve something I will eat steamed vegetables after dinner as a snack and it’s like, “Yes. You know what? If you’re hungry you’re hungry for vegetables. If you’re hungry and you say no to vegetables then you’re not really hungry.” I have to keep facing that. More and more vegetables. Five cups, that’s our homework. We’re going to go do it.

 

[01:30:05] Dr. Ginger Nash: Homework, assignment. Next time I’m on I’m going to check in on everybody. Make sure you report back to Ashley that you’re doing this.

 

[01:30:13] Ashley James:  Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Ginger Nash. It was such a pleasure having you on the show today. Can’t wait to have you back.

 

[01:30:20] Dr. Ginger Nash: Thanks so much, Ashley. Bye.

 

 

Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition and how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health-coaching sort of vacation program and it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition but from the standpoint on how we can help people to shift their life, to shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can google Institute for Integrated Nutrition or IIN, or give them a call or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they would give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctor’s offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help with your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them and their success and their health goals. There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month, so you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. If you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to optimize your health? Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplement.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

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Recommended Readings:

Our Bodies, Ourselves – Judy Norsigian

Wild Feminine – Tami Lynn Kent

Pussy: A Reclamation – Regina Thomashauer

Oct 2, 2019

The Three Products/Companies Mentioned In Today's Interview and How To Get The Special Listener Discounts:
1) Sunlighten Sauna - Give them a call and mention Learn True Health with Ashley James. They offer financing and have several light therapy systems, including a small handheld device and a portable sauna!

Here is the link to the Sunlighten Handheld Device:

https://www.sunlighten.com/luminir/?leadsource=LTH&utm_source=LTH&utm_medium=Partner&utm_campaign=LTH

2) The Magnesium Soak! Visit LivingTheGoodLifeNaturally.com and use coupon code LTH for our listener discount.
3) Energy Bits and Recovery Bits Algae! Visit Energybits.com and use coupon code LTH to get 20% off! Buy the Recovery Bits for the detoxifying chlorella!
Dr. Joel Kahn:
www.drjoelkahn.com
Author 5 books all in the shop at my website
Clinic
www.kahnlongevitycenter.com

 

Sauna Therapy and Heart Health with Dr. Joel Kahn

https://www.learntruehealth.com/dr-joel-kahn

Highlights:

  • Benefits of sauna therapy
  • Benefits of Magnesium soak
  • Benefits of ENERGYbits and RECOVERYbits
  • Plant-based vegan diet is good for heart health
  • Diet and fitness of mind and body are important
  • The science of light therapy for healing
  • Benefits of Infrared sauna
  • Waon therapy of Japan
  • Importance of light for our health
  • Benefits of near infrared sauna
  • Benefits of red light
  • Photobiomodulation
  • Sunlighten lumiNIR
  • Saunas and weight loss
  • Kahn’s three tips: meditation, organic chlorella, HIIT workout
  • Congenital heart conditions in children and adults
  • People should be concerned about their arteries
  • ARVC heart condition
  • Organ meats and processed fat to heal autoimmune diseases
  • Books and doctors that Dr. Kahn follows
  • Kahn’s homework for listeners

 

In this episode Dr. Joel Khan will share with us his three tips to a good cardiovascular health, the importance of light to our health. Ashley and Dr. Khan will also discuss the science of light therapy for healing and how important diet and fitness for our body is.

[0:00] Intro: Hello, true health seeker.

Welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love today’s interview with cardiologist, Dr. Joel Khan. He’s a very unique cardiologist. He’s been a plant-based vegan for over 42 years. And he has this unique perspective on the body. He believes the body has an amazing ability to heal itself. And we just need to support it with the right diet, nutrients, lifestyle. And that we can support the body’s ability to heal and prevent disease. And isn’t that wonderful? Don’t you want a doctor that believes that you can be healthy?

He shares a lot of great information today. We talked a lot about using heat therapy and the different spectrums of light to help the body heal. And he says so much in such a short period of time. There’s so many details. He opened up so many rabbit holes that I know listeners are going to think to themselves, “Man, I need to get a pen. I got to write that down.”

And I want to let you know that we actually transcribe our interviews. We’ve been doing that for the last few months. We hired two wonderful transcriptionists. And we have been transcribing all of the interviews. So a big shout out, thank you to the transcriptionists, who helped us to transcribe. Because our listeners really love going to learntruehealth.com. And then you can click on the episode. And I know that everyone’s been loving being able to have access to all the transcripts. So that when a guest shares so much wonderful information, like telling us about what books we should read, and what supplements we should try, or what lifestyle habits, tips and tricks we should try, we want all the details. And instead of having to listen to the episode two or three times, you can go the transcript and find exactly what the doctor said, which is really exciting. So that is my gift to you, the listener, so that you can make sure that you take all this information and help to transform your life and the health of your whole family and everyone you love. So make sure that you take advantage of our transcripts by going to www.learntruehealth. com.

Now, in this episode we mention three things. So I want to make sure that I cover it in the intro. A lot of the discussion is about sauna therapy, specifically using sunlight. And Sunlighten is the only company I have found and I have looked that is ultra low EMF that is non-toxic. And it uses the full spectrum near, mid, and far infrared. So they’re absolutely wonderful. I highly recommend calling Sunlighten and in talking to them about their different systems. They have what’s called the Solo System, which is portable. So you don’t need – if you don’t have a lot of space and you can just tuck it away under the bed or tuck it away in the closet when you’re not using it. That’s a really great solution for those who don’t want the bigger sauna. Which I have the big one, the wooden one, and I love it. Basically, two people can fit in it. It’s kind of like having a TARDIS, for those who know Doctor Who. It does not look very big but two people can fit in it which is really cool. And it has the full spectrum of near, mid, and far infrared. And we’ll get a little bit into that in the show today. The benefits of those different spectrums. 

If you want to learn more specifically about Sunlighten, I did two interviews. One with the cofounder and one with their manager, Alicia. So Connie Zack being the founder. You can go to learntruehealth.com and you can search in the search bar for Sunlighten or for sauna and find those episodes. And enjoy learning more about why I specifically love Sunlighten as a company when it comes to doing sauna therapy versus all the other companies out there. I’m really sold. I’ve really enjoyed my sauna. And I’ve gotten a lot of great health benefits. It’s helped me with my detox tremendously. It’s helped me with my liver. I had liver problems and it really helped me with that, It helped me with my weight loss. So I feel it is high quality and very effective. So that’s Sunlighten. Give them a call. They give our listeners a great deal. They give us free shipping. And they also throw in something else that’s really cool. And the special kind of keeps changing just depending on what’s going on in the office there. But they always give the listeners a really great discount or really great special. So make sure that you mention Learn True Health with Ashley James so that you get our listener special.

Now, we mentioned two other things. One is the magnesium soak. You have heard me rave about it over and over again. And I love soaking in magnesium while in my sauna. You only need a few cups of water in, like, a foot basin. And it is so wonderful. It opens up all the circulation. It really aids in the detoxification and feeding your liver all those wonderful nutrients it needs to help you with detoxification. So it’s a great one-two punch.

And then the third thing, are the ENERGYbits. Actually, specifically, the RECOVERYbits, which is chlorella. Chlorella is an algae that chelates heavy metals. And so it’s wonderful to eat before you get in the sauna because it aids in binding to the heavy metals and releasing them from our body. It also helps with melatonin production so that it actually aids in deeper sleep. And I’ve done about five interviews I think on the ENERGYbits. So you can type algae into the search function in learntruehealth.com to be able to listen to those episodes where we talk about spirulina and chlorella and all their health benefits. And it’s just wonderful. You can go to energybits.com and use coupon code LTH to get 20% off. And make sure that you grab a bag of the ENERGYbits for your daytime energy. They’re wonderful. They’re spirulina. They actually taste really good compared to all the other spirulinas out there. They don’t have any of the lead or heavy metals that other companies have been known to have. Because ENERGYbits does very rigorous testing. And they have a pure water source when they grow their algae. So lots of great information that you can learn by going to learntruehealth.com and typing in algae and listening to those episodes. But just try it and see how you feel. Buy a bag of Energybits, buy a bag of RECOVERYbits. And RECOVERYbits is for the detoxification. ENERGYbits is for energy. And they don’t have any caffeine. It’s just all algae. But it delivers to the body all the nutrients that it needs to make energy and support hormone health. And I could go on and on. So you can check out those interviews.

But those are the three things that we had mentioned in the episode. And I want to let you know that all three of those things you can get a listener discount for. So to get the magnesium soak, you go to livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and type in the coupon code LTH at checkout. ENERGYbits is energybits.com and type in the coupon code LTH at checkout. And then for your listener discount for Sunlighten, call them up, talk to one of their wonderful salespeople, and mention Learn True Health with Ashley James for the listener discount. And if you have any questions about any of these because I use them all the time and my whole family actually. We soak in magnesium. We eat the ENERGYbits and the RECOVERYbits. And we sweat in our sauna – in our Sunlighten Sauna. And so if you guys have any questions for me and my experience, please email me, support@learntruehealth.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Excellent. Enjoy today’s episode and have yourself a wonderful rest of your day.

 

 

[8:04] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 383.

I am so excited for today’s interview. We have with us Dr. Joel Kahn. He’s an amazing cardiologist. But even more than cardiology. Because I’ve dived into your interviews and some videos, you’re kind of going up against Joe Rogan in a very polite interview. I was waiting for the gloves to come off. It’s very interesting to be a plant-based cardiologist and help people to reverse disease naturally with natural medicine, with food because we can heal the body with food. And that you are surprisingly an expert in so many of these fields. Some of my listeners – so I told them I was interviewing you – said, “I love him. I love his podcasts.” And so I started listening to your podcasts. And it’s amazing just how much you read and how much you share with the listener. So I definitely recommend listeners check out Dr. Joel Kahn’s podcasts. It’s such a pleasure to have you here today.

 

 

[9:02] Dr. Joel Kahn: Well, thank you. It’s really a nice and sincere. A little different than the standard credential introduction. And that’s pretty cool. Yeah, I call it a p-cast. A little bit different than yours. I would never have stayed doing podcasts for two-and-a-half years if I was taking long periods to interview people. So I just talk for 20 minutes. I teach on some subject. I call it a p-cast. It’s like a P in the pod, as you know from listening. But anyways, enough about that.

But I do. At age 60, I have this insane hunger to learn and learn what isn’t whoo as opposed to science. And that can be really tough sometime. If we can acknowledge that there’s whoo whoo advice out there all over the place.

 

 

[9:45] Ashley James: I like that you brought up your age because if listeners go and check out and saw your videos, they’re going to look at a young man who looks about 40, who is incredibly handsome, has tons of energy, and looks like he could win a boxing match against anyone. Like, you just look so good. And then when you said you’re 60, I’m like, “I really don’t believe it.” So that’s the power of the whole food plant-based diet is we actually become more energetic and look younger and have less disease.

 

 

[10:16] Dr. Joel Kahn: Number one, you know, you’re just smothering me with kindness. I just told you before we went on, I’m going to be out in Seattle for a high level medical conference in a few weeks. Now we’re going to have to find a wonderful plant restaurant and go celebrate with your husband and all that. But I actually adopted a plant diet at age 18. It wasn’t a master plan. It was in the time that we had Veggie Grill and Beyond Meat and all the movement that’s going on now, good and bad. It was a college reaction to horrible food and a good salad bar. But that was the last burger chicken piece of turkey I ate was 1977. So you know, every inch of augury and other crucial parts of my body have been bathe in broccoli and cauliflower and rubella for a very long time. And I’m grateful that that was kind of a cork and kind of a twist of fate that in a cardiology career couldn’t have been a better plan if I have had the insight. But it was an insight. It was just a quick little college dorm survival play that I just never went back.

 

 

[11:20] Ashley James: And a friend in college who went raw vegan because he didn’t have a fridge. So he just bought a bunch of fruit, like apples and basically lived on it. And it turned out he became – it made him incredibly healthy. That was like, “Whoa. That’s a really interesting survival mechanism.” At what point in your career as a cardiologist did you realize that how you’re eating was the optimal diet for heart health?

 

 

[11:44] Dr. Joel Kahn: Yeah, it didn’t take long. I actually got into a quick little program at the University of Michigan [inaudible 00:11:49]. I actually was accepted to med school at 17 or 18. And began some medical courses that early. And I was eating plants. I didn’t talk much about it because there wasn’t really a platform. And I didn’t know it was a therapy. If I had dug a little deeper, but I had no Sherpa to guide me, I could have found Nathan Pritikin in the 60s and 70s. I could have found even a couple older pioneers that I now know and study and respect. But really, I started practicing cardiology. I was like this animal in the cath lab. You’re having a heart attack, you’re having chest pain, I have your balloon, I have your aggressive therapy seven days a week.

And three weeks after that, Dr. Dean Ornish, one of the most eminent and deserving of appreciation lifestyle medicine doctors, published a paper. And I mean, I’m three weeks. And this guy that the answer to heart disease is, you know, procedures and balloons. And he puts out data that says you can actually halt and reverse heart disease with a lifestyle that was centered on whole food plant-based.  And added two things I love, fitness and mind body, and yoga, socialization. And I said, “Wow.”

So I’ve literally taught thousands of patients every month of my career since I begun. And it’s all serendipity. I’m just very fortunate. And I am proud to say I kind of grew up in this movement. But it wasn’t exactly proofed inside. I didn’t have a psychic tell me to do this things. It just played out well. I could have, you know, read a paper about bacon and I would have been just messed up for the rest of my career. But I invested well in the plant-based movement in terms of energy and personal health.

 

 

[13:32] Ashley James: Well, and it shows. You’re now – is it 42 or 43 years that you’ve now been vegan? And I mean, I am blown away. But there’s the evidence for you. If we eat a whole food plant-based diet, the way down the road we’re going to look younger and feel younger. And there’s so much science now showing that it prevents and reverses disease. So you love diving into all these different topics. And we have some questions from the listeners that we’ll get to in a little bit.

But I wanted to dive into this topic of saunas and infrared and red light. Because Sunlighten Sauna – actually Alicia at Sunlighten is the one that hooked us up for this interview. And she said that you are an amazing expert at understanding the science. And I’ve been raving about my experience with my Sunlighten. It has really helped me in my health journey. And also using light therapy like red light therapy. But I don’t understand the science. And so I’d love for you to teach us a bit about it. What made you want to dive into learning about sauna therapy and using these kind of light therapies for healing?

 

 

 

[14:36] Dr. Joel Kahn: I took my nutritional knowledge and had my standard cardiology career and did that for a long time. Always offering these patients more than just prescriptions. But about ten years ago, I found a program at a university that you could call Integrative Cardiology. Like some people go back and get an MBA in the weekends at Harvard or whatever. I found the equivalent but it was in my field. But the integrated science based use of food and supplements and stress. And one of the topics was a presentation – several hours – on the science. And I stress, everything I do as odd as it is sometimes, is stimulated when I find that there’s actually science. It’s credible in hopefully multiple studies.

So about 30 plus years ago, and I can’t tell you who was the first that had the spark, but in Japan they started applying infrared saunas. So you’ve got your steam sauna at 180 degrees. A lot of health clubs. Some people have that adapter in their shower and they can make it all steamy. You’ve got kind of the dry Tucson, Arizona sauna with a little box in the corner. Some people have that at home.

And then infrared, it’s a little different. It looks like the wood box of an Arizona sauna. But in the walls are very special panels, infrared emitting panels. We have our – it doesn’t need to be real science-y. I mean, everybody’s sitting in a room right now that probably has a light bulb that’s emitting a spectrum of light. Some are purple, some are greens, some are red, some are blue, yellow wavelengths that make it look white in that combination. But it turns out that there is a slice of light energy called infrared. And we can’t see it. It’s not a visible light.

And these researchers in Japan built infrared saunas. Boxes that have these panels and emit infrared energy. And they would take various – first they did animal studies, which is ultra cool. And the animal study showed a beneficial response to blood vessel function, muscle function, the real basic chemistry. It turns out, we actually have receptors in ourselves. You know, you think we really are more like plants and we think we are like plants. There actually is a very cool science that actually says we’re not so different than the birch tree and the oak tree you might be seeing out a window, perhaps. But anyways, we have receptors in these basic models. And then they started studying sick heart patients in Japan. And these were in academic centers and they published data. You have high blood pressure, you use an infrared sauna. There’s a Japanese word called waon, W-A-O-N. It means healing warmth. And most of the literature anybody could put in their browser, waon, W-A-O-N, therapy and start reading about it. Fifteen minutes in an infrared sauna, usually about 130 hundred or 140 degrees if you give it time to heat up. Then these people would be wrapped up in towels, drink some water, and rest. Because they were not really healthy athletes. They were people with blood pressure and heart damage and heart attacks.

And over the course of 10 or 15 years, they showed that blood pressure responded; congestive heart failure, a really serious diagnosis, responded; artery measures showed improvement. They actually have done some modest sized randomized studies. Sick people got infrared saunas, sick people just got standard therapy, there was an improvement in survival and hospitalization. And in Japan, infrared sauna is used as a first line therapy right there with medication or surgery or whatever else you need. But God knows, until those few hours of lectures, I had never heard in any university -and I’m a professor at a university in Detroit – about any of this. And it’s easy. Now, read the literature, read the literature. It was real. And it’s been reproduced.

So most of us, thank goodness don’t have bad arteries, don’t have congestive heart failure. Most of us aren’t mice in laboratories. But you know, for many ways of supporting our health, I tell my patients, there’s two therapies you don’t know about probably. One a little pricier and one a little less pricey. They both involve using light to accentuate our health and accelerate our energy production and benefit our weight and benefit our skin and benefit our blood pressure. And the higher end one is to research and get a really good infrared sauna like Sunlighten makes. I have one in my bedroom. And their brand called full spectrum. And this is science again. But it’s far infrared, near infrared, and mid infrared in each of those wavelengths. When you turn it on, it’s hot, you can’t see the light waves but they’re there. Each of them has a different effect.

But the near infrared, which is abbreviated in the literature NIR, is really cool because that stuff really works on our muscles. And athletes, if any athletes are listening, many, many professional athletic teams will have various kinds of light therapy and infrared sauna. Because before an athletic event like a football game or after, before basketball or after, recovery pain or they call it delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMs can all be treated. And everything I just said has science and publications. It’s not again to whoo but just not very well known. And I got excited. So many, many of my patients do enjoy it. There may be some other benefits. So you know, we all know it’s the Debbie Downer talk. City water, air, plastics that wrap our burger, whether it’s a Beyond Meat burger or a Black Bean Burger, wherever you’re buying, all these chemicals, these endocrine disrupting chemicals are affecting our fertility and our thyroid and our weight. And one way to get them out – because it’s really hard to keep from having any of them, of course, we want to try and create a lifestyle where we don’t have plastics everywhere and exposure. Air fresheners and perfumes that are all affecting our endocrine system. Infrared sauna does cause you to detoxify and eliminate these better than just gym sweating.

You can imagine somebody did a study, “I’m going to run around a gym and collect sweat droplets from people at an elliptical. And I’m going to go to an infrared sauna room and collect sweat droplets from somebody just sitting still.” And there’s more toxins concentrated in the sweat from an infrared sauna than there are from exercising. And of course both are good. And there are even some gyms now that have put infrared panels in the walls of the gym so you get double whammy. But yeah, very cool stuff for the science of waon therapy and infrared sauna.

 

 

[21:24] Ashley James: You mentioned that we have receptors on our cells, is that to receive light? To receive infrared? Can you tell us a bit more about that.

 

 

[21:33] Dr. Joel Kah: Yeah. So just switching gears a little. Infrared is there but you can’t see it. Then there’s red light. Red lights, easy. I mean, it looks like the matrix. It’s bright. I mean, it’s the one with the one band of the full spectrum. And a prominent researcher at Harvard by the name of Michael Hamblin, H-A-M-B-L-I-N, PhD or MD – I think a PhD – has spent 30 years and many, many publications and textbooks that costs $700. The official name is Photobiomodulation, photolight bio or biology, and we can change our biology through light. But it’s often called the low level laser or red light therapy. But it turns out every one of us have, I think it’s fair to say, billions and billions of mitochondria in our muscles, heart muscles and skeletal muscles, particularly. They’re making all that energy. If anybody’s had the biology background, the ATP energy that keeps our heart strong and our muscles strong, and the rest.

And there is a receptor in the system that makes energy. It’s an enzyme called cytochrome c oxidase. And that receptor will respond to red light. And when it is exposed to red light, it will accelerate this process of making energy. It also creates more nitric oxide. If you ask an athlete who knew biology or a trainer, if you created more nitric oxide that was free to circulate and help an athlete’s blood vessels and you created more efficiency in making ATP in their muscles, do you think it would benefit an athlete either performance or recovery? And they think, “I got it. I’d pay a fortune for such.” It turns out red light does that. Proven. The science is known. And it’s a little different. When you get an infrared sauna, you’re getting near infrared energy. And it’s a wonderful thing and it will activate this receptor. But you also might want to explore the field of Photobiomodulation using red light.

So Sunlighten has this wonderful little handheld device called lumiNIR. There’s some things that red light does that go beyond near infrared and the combination is the powerhouse. I literally use a red light panel in my near infrared sauna and I get both. Because I wouldn’t be getting red light in my sauna alone.

But for all the listeners who want to keep their skin youthful, there’s an FDA approved. This is science backed by years of analysis. That it may promote collagen production, relieve aging spots, wrinkles in the skin. It’s the vanity part. But who doesn’t. You know, eating healthy is clearly beauty inside out is clearly real and the key. But I’m not against using safe therapies that keep us looking a little more youthful. So in the past 12 months, I’ve added red light therapy for 12 or 15 minutes a day. And it’s not tanning and you’re not going to burn yourself. And just another add on to health. It’s fascinating, you know, fascinating.

 

 

[24:38] Ashley James: Yeah. I have one of Sunlighten’s lumiNIRs. It’s a handheld device and they have those different attachments. You can do the blue light or the red light and depending on whether you want to support like a joint pain or you want collagen production. It’s very interesting. And I know Sunlighten and gives our listeners a discount. I’m not sure what it is but I’ll find out for the listeners. So bios photo modulation, you mentioned that it helps the body – helps the mitochondria to produce more ATP and they’ve been able to prove this. Or is it that it helps the production of nitric oxide.

 

 

[25:12] Dr. Joel Kahn: It actually does both. So if you really want to go deep – here we go. It’s called uncaging nitric oxide on this enzyme. Here, you got a muscle cell in your pectoral muscles because you like to do bench presses. In that muscle, there are thousands of mitochondria. And in those mitochondria, there’s a pathway to make ATP energy so you can lift those weights. The cytochrome c oxidase, for reasons I don’t understand, it actually takes and traps nitric oxide. And the nitric oxide doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, which is keep your arteries youthful and prevent plaque. And it kind of clogs up the electron transport chain. So when you’re exposed to red light and infrared light, the nitric oxide gets bumped off and it goes and circulates and it does what it’s supposed to do. Suddenly this little fly in the ointment of making ATP is removed. So you actually get both benefits, which is crazy. I mean, it’s so crazy to think that red light and infrared light can do something that is – you know, I’m still blown away how advanced the science is. We’re talking thousands of research articles and basic science and human science. So there’s even reports – and this is science where I wouldn’t say it.

You know, how many people deal with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease of the thyroid. There are small series that exposing your neck using a red light device like the lumiNIR converts your immune system. It’s called macrophage 1 or macrophage 2. But they stop attacking your own thyroid. And there are reports up substantial 30 or 40% of people no longer needing thyroid replacement after a while. Everybody needs to work with their healthcare team. Of course, their healthcare team won’t have ever heard of this. But if you do look online, Photobiomodulation Hashimoto’s, you can read about it. It’s real science.

 

 

[27:07] Ashley James: Oh, that is fascinating. Do you think it has something to do with the fact that it decreases inflammation?

 

 

[27:12] Dr. Joel Kah: It decreases inflammation by changing the activity of kind of white blood cell or kind of inflammatory. So I’ll call them back macrophage. Exactly.

 

 

[27:22] Ashley James: Because I know that in the 3-in-1 Sunlighten – not the handheld but the big Sunlighten Sauna that has the near, mid, and far infrared – that is incredibly anti-inflammatory to be in. That people notice decreases in pain and inflammation and joint pain. And then I’ve been told the lumiNIR – because I don’t have joint pain – but I’ve been told the lumiNIR has been really helpful for people with joint pain even when it’s like rheumatoid arthritis where there’s an autoimmune component. And you’ve seen the science to back this up.

 

 

[27:51] Dr. Joel Kahn: It probably is multiple pathways that lead people with fibromyalgia and more defined autoimmune conditions, like you mentioned, to respond to full spectrum infrared sauna. Because it probably is detoxification. Some will lose weight, which may help. And then finally, this nitric oxide, ATP energy, something like fibromyalgia, some people believe strongly is a mitochondrial energy deficit problem. So if you can safely non-invasively and frankly rather cost effectively deal with it, then you might as well just power up and get rid of the pain.

 

 

[28:34] Ashley James: Right. I love it. And you mentioned that saunas help with weight loss. I’ve used the sauna to help with detoxification because I was having problems with weight loss when it came to detoxification. My liver would get all really pissed off. I switched to a plant-based diet and everything’s working a lot better now that I’m doing that and doing the sauna. What can you share with us about, from the standpoint of heart health, cardiovascular health, and how saunas help with that, how does the sauna therapy, this heat therapy, help us with detoxification and weight loss?

 

 

[29:10] Dr. Joel Kahn: Yes. Well, it’s actually a very efficient way. It’s interesting. There’s some data that cold therapy is a very efficient way to accelerate your weight loss. So I have adopted this crazy habit I hate that after workout, I jump in the shower. And at least part of it, I douse myself and cold water. It does wake you up like no other. I hate everything about it. Because there’s nothing more comforting than a hot shower but a cold shower.

And on the flip side, the efficiency of burning calories in an infrared sauna is as high as many ellipticals and treadmills. And it might be roughly 500, 600, 700 calories an hour. So you know, it doesn’t replace – number one, if you’re a good athlete and you can really get good workouts, please do it. There’s all kinds of cardiovascular benefits. Some people have reasons that they can’t really get that high level workout. And many people do both. They’ll get the – you know, they CrossFit or the HIIT or yoga or whatever it is and then they’ll add in some saunas on top of it. So it can be very helpful with the calories in, calories out.

The calorie out part of weight loss, I had, unfortunately, in a medical conference, the misfortune of breaking a foot on an escalator two months ago. So I’ve had to give up – it’s recovering very well. But I’ve had to give up the treadmill, elliptical, Concept 2 rower, and all the things I like to do yoga. So I’m spending more time in an infrared sauna and been able to maintain my weight. I mean, a lot of upper body work and such. I shifted. But just a personal example, you know, add that in. And it may be too.

There’s this theory – this gets a little whoo – we really are exposed to a lot of garbage, pesticides, herbicides, these endocrine disrupting chemicals. And a lot of them do get – they’re fat soluble chemicals, particularly PCBs and DDT. And these things are unfortunately highly concentrated in fish. So fish eaters are much more exposed to these things. But you may need to get rid and reduce your burden on some of these chemicals to really lose weight. Because there’s like this battle, if I keep my fat, I dilute these chemicals and they’re less toxic to my physiology. And if I lose weight, and they’re all released in the bloodstream, I may feel bad. Kind of like the Keto flu or the kind of ill feeling that people get the first couple days of some kind of detox. So sweating them out as a real efficient way in a sauna to reduce your burden and accelerate weight loss. Now, everything I just said is a little blurry in terms of, “Do we absolutely know?” But that is a strong theory that people feel reflects life in 2019 and 2020.

 

 

[31:57] Ashley James: And it’s been my experience too. I kept hitting a wall. Every time I lose a few pounds, I get really over toxic and my liver would inflame. I went for ultrasounds and blood work and it was sure enough, my liver was really pissed. And my Naturopath didn’t know what was going on. He was trying to throw some supplements at me to support the liver. But I had to basically stop weight loss and then wait for it to calm down then start again. I was just sick of it. And so finally my niche process was like, “You really should get a sauna.” And that’s why I dived into studying all the different types of saunas. And I came across Sunlighten Sauna and discovered that that was my favorite out of all the other companies. Really low EMF, nontoxic. And then when I started using it, it was like a light bulb went off inside me. It was the total difference. I feel happier when I use it. I get better sleep. I don’t have my inflamed liver anymore. The weight loss has been consistent. So I’ve become this raving fan about Sunlighten. But again, I didn’t understand the deep science behind it. And so I love that you’re saying that the receptors in our body, the cells have receptors for light. And I’ve heard from other people that light is like a nutrient. And we are starving our body because of modern day society. We’re actually starving from the full spectrum that we need. So it’s like we’re nutrient deficient and the nutrient is light.

 

 

[33:23] Dr. Joel Kahn: So that that circles back to something I said a while about how similar we are to plants, which is a novel idea. But of course plants can take light and use them to stimulate the production of energy. It powers them. They have chlorophyll. There is a report in 2014 and I wrote a little blog about it back then. It was so interesting, it made some headlines. It wasn’t a human study but it was a mammal study. And we do not think that we can be out in the sun and create energy out of that process. We’re not plants. But that did occur in mammalian cells. And there may be a whole spectrum of we know light helps you make vitamin D, which is an important health supporting. Some people say hormone and vitamin. There is some data you can make more nitric oxide by being in the sun. And people that live in lower portions in the United States have lower blood pressure than people who live in northern portions. And it all correlates how many hours a day there’s sunshine. But whether we actually can energize and feel better, of course, intuition says, take a vacation in the sun. And it feels great. And it may be partly that we have still pathways that aren’t completely understood in these cytochrome C oxidase pathways may indeed be part of it. So it’s very cool.

And you know, as I say one of the easiest health blaze is to get more light or get more red light with dedicated products. These used to be extremely expensive. You’d have to spend $10,000 to 30,000 to go to a health spa or a dermatology office. But it’s much different now for way, way under $1,000. You got a great system.

 

 

[35:05] Ashley James: Yeah. I really like the lumiNIR and all that you can do with it with all the different attachments. Like you said, you can do the anti-aging. There’s an attachment specifically for helping skin with acne and healing the skin. And I really geek out on helping people with pain and decreasing pain and supporting healthy tissue. So there’s so many different benefits to making sure we’re exposed to light either getting out in the sun or getting in a Sunlighten Sauna. But being able to expose yourself to the different and full – as much as you can full spectrum of light. Now, I know we’re under a time constraint and I definitely want to make sure I get to the listeners questions because I posted on the Learn True Health Facebook Group some questions.

 

 

[35:50] Dr. Joel Kahn: Let me just – before we leave the sauna, let me just shout out three – again, I told everybody I already like science. So I’m going to give three very nonscientific tips here.

 

 

[36:01] Ashley James: Okay. Great.

 

 

[36:01] Dr. Joel Kahn: Well, the first one is okay. I do my meditation. Which isn’t absolutely regular but I do it in the infrared sauna. I call it saunatation. I’m already isolated. I’m already cleansing physiologically my body, why not cleanse some of the stress. So I encourage people that’s just a perfect place to do that. That’s number one. Number two, I actually do take a big handful of organic chlorella about half-an-hour before getting in the sauna. Because I want to be a plant. And I don’t know for sure if that works. But my blood level of chlorophyll is extremely high from taking 25 or 30 little tablets. Like anybody can buy of high quality chlorella. And it just feels good. And the third one, and please don’t do this if you’re not really healthy and know your status. There’s sort of this strategy, go do a HIIT workout for 10 or 15 minutes after you’ve taken a little handful of niacin, a B vitamin that makes you sweat and turn red. And you might feel very poorly on it so be careful. But it’s over the counter. You know, so take your knives and do your workout and pop in a sauna. You want to have a detoxifying sweat, you will have a detoxifying sweat.

 

 

[37:17] Ashley James: Very interesting. So you’re inducing the niacin flush. Is that like opening up capillaries around the surface of the skin?

 

 

[37:27] Dr. Joel Kahn: That’s exactly what you’re feeling on the surface of the skin. Clearly, if you’re not healthy, if you’ve had a bad reaction to niacin – I mean, it’s not a medical therapy and niacin is an over the counter vitamin. So I don’t think I’ve completely violated my Hippocratic oath. And I’ve done it a thousand times and so far still alive and kicking. But it’s an interesting little play.

 

 

[37:51] Ashley James: Now, I’m going to have to try that. I’ve definitely have some niacin here on the shelf. I’m going to have to try that for sure. I usually get the no-flush niacin. But to want to do it on purpose to open up all the blood flow to the surface to increase the sweating and detoxification, that sounds like a really fun experiment.

I’m kind of like — you know, you hear about this term biohacker. I love experimenting on myself in a safe way. You know, try it out. And I feel like my listeners do the same. They love trying different things, especially when they learn from great guests like you and seeing how it works for them. I have two more things to add to your routine – or one more thing for you to add to the routine is trying a magnesium soak while you’re in the sauna. And I’ll make sure I send you some information on it. But it’s transdermal. It’s a liquid. And you just put a few cups of water with a foot basin while you’re in the sauna, and you absorb a ton of magnesium. And so a lot of my listeners, including myself, love doing that in the sauna as well. And that also opens up the blood flow. And then my favorite – and I definitely encourage you to try it out – my favorite chlorella brand – I’ve tried a bunch of them – and I found that ENERGYbits, they make one called –

 

 

[39:06] Dr. Joel Kahn: That’s what I just swallowed.

 

 

[39:07] Ashley James: Yes. RECOVERYbits are my favorite because it tastes amazing. All the other ones kind of tastes fishy to me or stale. And ENERGYbits has been consistent with their quality and their testing. I’ve had Catharine Arnston, the creator of ENERGYbits on the show many times. And so yeah, we’re on the same page. I’m so excited to introduce you the magnesium soak. I’ll make sure I send you some information because I know that you’ll really enjoy adding that to your sauna routine and seeing how you how you feel about it.

So let me get to the listener questions because I know that we’re under time constraint and I want to respect your time. Daniela, first of all, says that your – she’s the one that said your podcast is absolutely amazing. So I want to shout out to Daniela. She was really looking forward to hearing our interview.

Naomi has a really interesting one. Her dad had a valve replacement surgery recently because of a narrow valve. And the doctor said it was congenital. But none of his symptoms started until he was 70. And they’re like, “Well, you know you were born with it.” But none of his symptoms started until his 70 and now they’re seeing narrowing of the arteries. Of course, that can be – as you and I know – corrected with wonderful whole food plant-based diet with no oil. What do you say to that when people say – when doctor said, “Well, that’s just congenital. You were born with it.” But the disease never occurred until they were much later in life.

 

 

[40:28] Dr. Joel Kahn: Go back to Daniela. Thank you, Daniela, for listening to Heart Doc VIP. Okay. I just wanted to say thank you to her because that was kind of you.

But to go to this question. There is a – the number one most common birth condition, congenital heart condition, is actually what her father had. The last valve of the heart when the heart pumps hard to get all the blood out to the body, it goes through a valve called the aortic valve. That looks like a Mercedes Benz or a peace sign, three little parts. They open, they shot. One person people are born where there’s two pieces, not three. It’s called a bicuspid aortic valve. It looks like your rear end. It has two pieces, not three. But we don’t call it a tush valve. It’s a bicuspid valve. Now, you can now call it a tush valve. And because it’s abnormal, 100,000 heartbeats a day. By the time you’re 40 or 45 or 50 or 55, there’s some scarring, some calcification. And the valve may no longer open enough so you start to get shorter breath, tighten the chest, dizzy. And at that point, you may need something done about it.

There’s nothing you can do about being born with it. It’s common. You might ask a doctor. There is some family history. So your listener might ask her doctor, “Are you sure there’s no murmur there when you listen to my heart with the stethoscope?” But there’s really no absolute necessity to make the diagnosis early, early. But they’re just finish it up. Occasionally with that valve – right above the heart is called your aorta. The aorta may be a little enlarged. That’s a little more important of a finding earlier in life. You shouldn’t probably be snapping or catching 300 pound lifts in CrossFit if you knew your aorta was enlarged. So it might be worth pursuing it with what we call an ultrasound of the heart or echocardiogram, if there really was any question your doctor thought they heard something or there really is a strong family history.

I’ll give you one last little tip because your listeners deserve the best of the best. There is a class of antibiotics – I’m totally shifting gears but I’m coming back to your listeners question. They are called fluoroquinolones. But you might know him by Cipro, ciprofloxacin, Levaquin, levofloxacin. These are actually the most commonly prescribed oral and IV antibiotics in the United States. It is now apparent after 30 years of using them, that they weaken our collagen. They cause rupture [inaudible 00:42:57]. Your Achilles can get inflamed or rupture after a seven to ten day course. But now in the last three or four years, your aorta, the most important blood vessel in the body, can get weakened and damaged after just a week or ten days on these antibiotics. And very recently, even heart valves, all of these structures are made of collagen. These antibiotics have – it took years to identify. It’s not common. But when you talk about tens of millions of prescriptions, if it’s only 1% or 1.5% of people, it’s still a lot of people. Which is why somebody like this father – I mean, anybody within a large aorta should now know that there’s FDA warnings about maybe not using this class of antibiotics that are used for prostate and urinary and bronchitis in the hospital and in the office.

I’ll say as I was just on the doctor show being interviewed on this topic, because it is really important and hot. And Drew Ordon, the plastic surgeon with the white hair and wonderful guy said, “I’m Levaquin right now for my prostate and this is scaring me.” And it is being recommended that you ask your doctor maybe shift antibiotics to another one.

So circling back to your question, it’s 1% of people born with an abnormal valve. It might also cause their aorta to be enlarged. If you knew your aorta was enlarged, you do not want to take these classes of antibiotics. And even if your aorta isn’t enlarged, for the sake of your Achilles tendon and other structures, you still might want to ask, ” Can I have a penicillin or sulfa?” Older antibiotic like Macrobid. These drugs have been out for decades. It’s interesting. It’s not the only drug. We’ve learned new things about old drugs that are frankly changing practice and fairly scary. Next question. Next question.

 

 

[44:50] Ashley James: Thank you so much for warning us. Kelly asks, “Are there any recommendations he has for children who are born with heart conditions such as ASD, PFO, etc.?

 

 

[44:59] Dr. Joel Kahn: These are interesting questions because, again, birth defects are rarely the common questions that are asked. I’m certainly welcome to have them. I mean, so you can -the second most common birth defect after the valve is a little hole in the heart called a PFO, Patent Foramen Ovale. Usually very innocent. And then there’s a larger hole called ASD, Atrial Septal Defect. And then there are more complex where it might be apparent before birth or at birth that this is a child that has serious problems, blue babies and developmental problems.

But you know, just like that listener’s Father, it took decades. There are people that have had this hole in their heart for it 20, 30, 40 years. And then they begin to get shorter breath or then they begin to get fatigue. So there isn’t a diet, there isn’t a lifestyle, there isn’t a sauna treatment for everything in life. You just need, at that point, good medical care. And sometimes ultimately, a procedure that more and more is not surgery. More and more, it’s some kind of procedure where they don’t have to crack your chest open.

But people should be much more concerned about their arteries getting clogged and the risk of heart attack and stroke. Because the frequency of that from age 35, 40, 45, and up is a thousand times more of a concern than finding out unexpectedly at age 70. You’ve got a valve or a hole in your heart issue. They’re all important.

 

 

[46:31] Ashley James: Right. That we can prevent heart disease with whole food plant-based diet with no processed foods would be much better for most of the population. And then there’s a small percentage that has a birth defect but could still – even with a birth defect, couldn’t we still optimize our heart health with a really good heart health diet?

 

 

[46:50] Dr. Joel Kahn: Yeah. Always. And there’s an insane number of reasons to as early as you can in life learn the clues. Don’t smoke, stay thin, get fitness, get sleep, manage stress, eat more fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. And anybody around you does. Be the champion of whole real foods from plant sources. Don’t smoke. If I said it twice, it deserves to be said twice.

 

 

[47:17] Ashley James: Don’t vape. 

 

 

[47:17] Dr. Joel Kahn: If nothing happens during your life, you’ve just probably added a dozen plus years of good health and reduce risk of diabetes, cancer, brain disease and heart disease. If something comes up in your life, you’re showing up in the best shape possible. So yes, we buy life insurance, we wear seatbelts, we wear bicycle helmets, we’re into the mode of taking certain precautions even though they’re relatively unlikely. Whereas, heart disease is incredibly likely and we neither look for it nor do we really work very hard to prevent it.

 

 

[47:50] Ashley James: My dad died of heart disease. My mom died of cancer. And that’s one of the biggest reasons why I do this show. I can’t save my parents. I don’t have a time machine. But I can help my listeners save theirs and save themselves. And we can. We can prevent and reverse disease and add years to your life with all the things you’ve talked about.

You know, we’re on a roll. Heidi says, “I have a question as well. My husband has a rare genetic heart condition called ARVC. His arteries are perfectly healthy but it’s electrical part of the heart that’s not. Do you have any advice for anyone with this condition?”

 

 

[48:26] Dr. Joel Kahn: Yeah. Again, an important but very unusual birth abnormality, the right side of your heart, it just doesn’t form normally. And it makes people prone to serious fast heartbeats that could cause you to blackout or worse. And you work with certain cardiologists called electrical cardiologists and sometimes you need that fancy pacemaker called a defibrillator. And they can be life saving for certain people.

And the same comment, show up to that challenge in life. You know, why is that gentleman’s arteries clean? And that’s a very complex question of genetics and lifestyle and fitness and all. But if you start eating plant-based at age 18, as I had the good fortune by luck, you probably are going to show up for that procedure with your arteries clean. And I know at age 60 mine are squeaky clean. There’s ways to get a quick CAT scan and confirm that and there.

So it’s always best. The best protection is to stay out of the hospital on as few medicines as you can with as few doctor procedures as you can. The number three cause of death in the United States is medical procedures and medications that go wrong. Number three causes of death are heart disease and cancer. So the best plan is not need to be there. And I run from hospitals even though I am part of them and I will say I’m on staff with them. But in terms of my own health, I do not trust what goes on in hospitals.

 

 

[49:56] Ashley James: Thank you. I love this. We have to walk that fine line of understanding when we want to go to allopathic medicine and when we don’t. This show obviously celebrates all the times we don’t want to go to allopathic medicine but allopathic medicine has its place. And if my heart was beating to the point where it’s blocking out, I’d really want to see a good electrical cardiologist. Is that what it’s called? I definitely want to go see a really good one.

But for prevention and for optimizing our health, then we can do it through diet. I interviewed Dr. Esselstyn and he has seen people with even four blockages in the heart, reverse it within months of going on a whole food plant-based diet, as you I’m sure have seen and know. So it’s just amazing what the body can do when we give it the nutrition it needs.

Teresa asks – she says, “Many of the autoimmune neuro disease experts insist on good fats in the diet. Added fats like ghee, tallow, lard and coconut oils, mostly for cooking and to drizzle over vegetables for absorption. I personally have trouble breaking down fats and proteins and I’ve had to take digestive enzymes with every meal. Is it really necessary to add all that extra fat for MS, ALS, and even Hashimoto’s? I followed Dr. John McDougall for years and felt great. But that was before autoimmunity. So she then developed an autoimmune condition.” And she says, “Also, the experts talk about organ meats for autoimmunity. What could replace a nutrient density in a plant-based diet?” So she doesn’t want to have to eat organ meats and all this processed fat but she wants to heal her body. Do you have any advice for her?

 

 

[51:37] Dr. Joel Kahn: Yeah. And I think it gets to just a fundamental question. Where do you get your advice? Do they have any conflicts in the advice they’re giving? And are they really trained to give advice? Because every trainer or every dietitian – at least a dietitian has some formal training if they’re an RD, every health coach can get a blog and YouTube and give advice. Go find me data that you need to eat organ meats to heal neurologic or autoimmune disease. And let’s talk about randomized studies that are out there.

And you know, not everything in the world that’s great has to be plant-based. So there’s so many reasons to talk about a whole food plant-base for the environment, for animal rights, and animal cruelty and suffering. And for the gigantic database that it is the best plan to preserve and protect your health in general and for both brain and autoimmune diseases.

I spent the weekend with Dr. Terry Wahls of HLS. And many people will know she’s a medical doctor with a breakout book called The Wahls Protocol a couple years ago. She’s redoing it right now. And she had disabling multiple sclerosis. She was an internist in the University of Iowa at the VA. And kind of created her own plan of hyper nourishment with ten servings a day of organic leafy greens and smoothies and salads and mushrooms and onions and garlic. And a few servings of animal foods during the week. Far less than the typical Paleo diet. Lots of omega-3 rich foods. And I was asking her by and she recovered her own health. She’s helped so many people recover. I mean, I’m not going to argue with her. She’s walking and riding her bike and she was in a wheelchair. I’m going to tell her diet is other than optimal. It worked out optimally for her and a lot of other people.

There is a similar plan that is all plant-based that’s taught by a physician in Houston, Brooke Goldner, G-O-L-D-N-E-R and her book called Goodbye Lupus or Goodbye Autoimmune Disease, her new book. So you can do it super clean whole food plant-based, super clean almost plant-based as Dr. Wahls teaches. But it’s not all that gook you talked about. And what I love about, particularly Dr. Wahls right now, she took her own personal health crisis and recovery. Her broad experience teaching other people within the VA and other medical systems in the University of Iowa. And now she’s actually doing prospective randomized published studies. You can’t jack with somebody who’s done that kind of science.

And I’ll say no disrespect, but it kind of is disrespect. Show me Dr. David Perlmutter’s prospective peer reviewed studies or Dr. Mark Hyman or Dr. Bill Davis. I mean, these are the giants of some of this weird stuff. I mean, bone marrow and bone broth. I know it’s trendy. But let’s talk about where we follow the typical scientific path of you got a hypothesis, you arrange a study, you do it, you publish it. Dr. Wahls sure [inaudible 00:54:32] has.

So my brain favorites are two neurologists by the name of Sherzai, S-H-E-R-Z-A-I. Which is Dean and Ayesha Sherzai, academic neurologists in Long Beach and Loma Linda with a book called The Alzheimer’s Solution. And I would follow their program for brain and neurological health in that book.

 

 

[54:56] Ashley James: Thank you so much. That was great. I love the books that you let us know about because those are going to be great guests for the show. I’m definitely going to ask them all to be on the show. And those will be great resources for the listeners as well. It has been such a pleasure having you on the show. I know time just flies. And I know you’ve got to go. Before you do, is there any advice that you’d like to leave listeners with or homework that you’d like to leave the listeners with?

 

 

[55:25] Dr. Joel Kahn: That’s an interesting question, homework, because that’s exactly the expression I use with my patients. So, “Here’s your homework. And I can’t do this all for you. And I can guide you to people.” I believe my opinion are credible and we should spend time. I mean, everybody should watch Forks Over Knives on Netflix. Or if there’s anybody left that has a DVD player. It’s still available. I give my patients the option of taking a DVD home or watch it on Netflix.

If you want to upgrade that, you might watch What The Health from 2017. And very soon you’ll be able to watch Game Changers. A new movie that was in the theaters that will be released on iTunes very soon. I mean, I’ve seen all those movies. You know, there are a lot of health movies that I don’t think represent fairly. But surely Forks Over Knives, which is Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn and Dr. Caldwell, I would certainly say, are fair.

Other homework, let’s see. You know, get familiar with pubmed.gov. It can be a slippery slope. But that’s the national library of medicine and 30 million scientific articles. You can’t get the full article on everyone but you can and a lot. And like, if you don’t believe me on red light therapy or photobiomodulation and Hashimoto’s, that’s where you go. You go there. And you know, it’s a little tough sometimes to read the scientific articles but that’s a good habit. I mean, you could, I will say, also, put it bone broth and health. That’s where you want to look. You’ll find nothing. Actually, you’ll find one article that says it’s dangerous and toxic in terms of lead levels in bone broth causing bones that your cooking to release some of the stored lead that is in them. But you know, these kind of habits is something if you really want to get as credible as you can. You might know learn simple skills to do.

 

 

[57:24] Ashley James: Oh, I love it. Yes, PubMed. Let’s advocate for ourselves by looking into the science. Absolutely. I went to the movie theaters and saw the Game Changers in the movies. And I went with actually one of our listeners who’s a friend of mine, Naomi. A big shout out to her. And the whole time we kept looking at each other going, “We have to get this person to watch this. Oh my gosh. We got to get our parents to watch this.” We can’t believe it. Like, I am so excited that October 1st when it comes out on iTunes, I’m going to buy the digital copy and get as many of my friends and family to watch it. And I really love that it just shows – it blows this idea that that [inaudible 00:58:01] totally out of the ballpark. And it shows that if you want to have really great sexual health and great muscle and great strength and endurance and all that, men and women get it from a whole food plant-based diet. That’s such a cool – and it is really a game changer. Dr. Joel Kahn, it has been such a pleasure having you on the show today. You are welcome back anytime you want to come share with our listeners. It was a true pleasure to have you today.

 

 

[58:30] Dr. Joel Kahn: Well, it is mutual fan club, mutual Seattle fan club. And yeah, I look forward doing that. I’d be happy to help you contact any of those other people if you want to get them on because I think your listenership would love them.

 

 

[58:43] Ashley James: Awesome. That sounds great. Thank you.

 

 

Outro:

Hello true health seeker.

Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition? And how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business? Support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program. And it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over 100 dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition. But from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their life and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can Google Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call. Or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast. Because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. And I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information.

We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctors offices, you can work in hospitals. ,You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals.

There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

 

Get Connected With Dr. Joel Kahn!

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Books by Dr. Joel Kahn

The Plant Based Solution

The Whole Heart Solution

The No B.S. Diet

Sep 30, 2019

Grounding Mats: Visit learntruehealth.com/grounding and use coupon code MH during the month of October for free shipping within the US. 

My guest today is an actress, author, and holistic health and lifestyle expert, Mariel Hemingway.

At age 14 she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her
breakout role in the 1976 movie lipstick.

She was nominated for several awards for her
performance in the 1979 Woody Allen movie
Manhattan.

Through the years she has acted in or produced over 50 movies and TV shows.

She has starred in, and co-produced videos on yoga and holistic
living and she has published several books focusing on mental and emotional health.

Mariel is the granddaughter of the famous author Ernest Hemingway. Having survived seven suicides in her family Mariel has always focused on shining a light on how we can live an emotionally, mentally, and physically healthy life.

More recently, Mariel was in the documentary "The Earthing Movie."
To watch this documentary join the Learn True Health Facebook group and there pinned to the top of the announcements, you will find the full movie there.


In our interview, Mariel shares great mental, emotional, and physical health tips. She also shares her wonderful experience with the grounding mats. If you would like to get one of the grounding mats for your computer, while watching TV or for your bed while sleeping, please visit learntruehealth.com/grounding and use coupon code MH during the month of October for free shipping within the US.

Enjoy today's episode and have a fantastic rest of your day!

--------------------------------

Mariel Hemingway Shares Powerful Health Tips For Busy People 

https://www.learntruehealth.com/mariel-hemingway

 

Highlights:

  • What is grounding and earthing
  • How do we ground ourselves and the benefit that it gives us when we do it
  • How earthing can help us release the overflow of electrons in the body
  • The importance of having time for yourself, self-care and self-awareness

 

Once there was our ancestors who were connected with the earth and living the life we are designed to do. However, with the advancement of technology and the world as one, these connectedness with the earth including all the benefits that comes with it all faded away. In today’s podcast, Mariel Hemingway shares the importance of earthing and being grounded literally and well, sometimes figuratively.

 

Ashley James: Hello, True Health seekers and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health podcast. I’m excited for you to hear my guest today. She’s actress, author, and holistic health and lifestyle expert. Mariel Hemingway. At age 14, she’s nominated for Golden Globe for her breakout role in the 1976 movie, Lipstick. She was nominated for several awards for her performance in the 1979 Woody Allen movie, Manhattan. Through the years, she’s acted or produced in over 50 movies and TV shows. She starred in and co-produced videos on yoga and holistic living. She has published several books focusing on mental and emotional health. Mariel is the granddaughter of the famous author Ernest Hemingway. Having survived seven suicides in her family, Mariel has always focused on shining a light on how we can live emotionally, mentally, and physically healthy lifestyle. More recently, Mariel was in the documentary, The Earthing movie. Now to watch that documentary join the Learn True Health Facebook group. We were given permission to post it in our Facebook group because it hasn’t come out yet for the world to watch because right now, it is going through the festival. The movie documentary independent film festival circuit. It’s in our Facebook group. You just join the Learn True Health Facebook group and right there pinned to the top is the entire documentary. It’s wonderful. Very fascinating documentary on earthing and grounding. In our interview today, Mariel shares great mental, emotional, physical health tips but she also shares her wonderful experiences with grounding and using the grounding mats that Clint Ober created. If you’d like to get one of these grounding mats that we talked about today for your pets or your children, for yourself, for your computer while working on your computer, while watching TV, while cooking in the kitchen, you can stand on one. Or while sleeping in your bed, go to the website, learntruehealth.com/grounding. That’s learntruehealth.com/grounding and for the month of October, use coupon code MH at checkout to get free shipping on any of your orders to the US. If you’re within the US, the United States of America, you can get free shipping when you go to the learntruehealth.com/grounding and use the coupon code MH. As in Mariel Hemingway for the month of October. Excellent. Well, join in the Facebook group just so you can join the discussion. Every single episode, we have wonderful discussions. The listeners love to ask question and we all jump in and help each other. It’s a wonderful community if you haven’t join already, I’d love to see you there. Enjoy today’s episode and have a fantastic rest of your day.

 

[02:45] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 382. I feel so honored to have with us today, Mariel Hemingway. Who is such an inspiration to me. I just finished watching her documentary Running from Crazy. I love her message and I know you will as well. Mariel, it’s such a pleasure having you on the show today.

 

[03:13] Mariel Hemingway: Thank you for having me. It’s very nice of you to say those things.

 

[03:18] Ashley James:  Absolutely. Now coming from Canada, I didn’t really know your grandfather a lot. Ernest Hemingway. Other than, I was forced to read his books in high school. Then when I went to Florida, my parents had a condo down there as many Canadians love to do. We love to go down to Florida and be snowbirds when we’re older. I kept seeing six-fingered cats and they’re like, “It’s the Hemingway Cats.” I just thought that was the coolest thing. Other than that, I didn’t know your family until I watched the grounding documentary that is we actually have a copy of it in the Learn True Health Facebook group and everyone’s been loving it. You were in that documentary. That’s when I first saw you. I was just like, ”Wow. I love your mission around helping people with mental health and physical health and you are such an advocate for mental health and that is something that is still sort of taboo to talk about. It’s just amazing. Here we are almost 2020 and it’s still a taboo to talk about mental health. I really want to just blow those doors wide open and allow people to feel healthy and normal to discuss when they’re depressed. When they have suicidal thoughts. When they have emotional issues going on that it’s okay. It’s safe and okay now in this day and age that we can open up the discussion and that it’ll be cathartic for all of us.

 

[04:47] Mariel Hemingway: 100%. My sort of mission and passion in life as you know because you watched way too many movies now about me but not really about me but my mission really is to give – I tell my story not because I think my story is so great but because I think my story is so actually pretty normal in the sense at we all have one. We all come from something that’s not perfect. People were unhappy and there were issues. There was addiction. There was this and there was that. Because we’re human beings. By telling my story, it sort of gives other people permission to tell their own. I do believe that the journey towards recovery in all kinds of mental health whether it’s addiction, whether it’s anxiety, whatever it is. The journey towards that is the telling our story to make it okay that we’re not okay sometimes. That sharing that with other people enables them to feel like, “Oh, my god. I’m not alone.” because the worst thing about mental health issues is that people feel isolated and alone. That’s very scary.

I’m actually posting and producing a television show about the prevention of suicide for teenagers. [Inaudible 06:17] is my producing partner because I want to create a platform where kids, everybody but starting out with kids because they don’t know. They don’t know that energy changes. Once a problem today, tomorrow actually won’t be. You know what I mean? We don’t live in that world. We live in a world that is very isolating even though we have connections to 8 billion people and all of their problems. We know what’s going on in the Middle East and in Russia and this and that and the other thing. People never felt more lonely and alone, even though they’re connecting in Facebook or Instagram and all those different places. That’s fun but it should be started from what it is. It is not real connection. It is not a place to really share ideas. It’s sort of why I love podcast. Podcasts are so wonderful because you really get to have a real conversation with somebody and exchange ideas and you could hear people of passion. You could feel – you know what I mean?

To me, those things are important. I think sharing our stories is really a first step in finding some sense of recovery. Recovery is different to everybody. It entails everything you do. It’s not just talking. It’s also about eating. It’s also about drinking water. It’s also about meditation. It’s also about something we’re going to talk a lot about today. It’s also about earthing and grounding. There’s so many elements to making real-life balance. It’s everything you do. Nobody knows, not nobody but so many people, sounds like your audience super informed in the health and wellness field and then those are like, “What do I do?” There’s a lot of people out there that absolutely don’t realize that it’s everything. Our life and finding balance, joy, and happiness is about everything you do.

 

[08:29] Ashley James: I love that you said exactly that because I have a question from one of our listeners and what you just said leads perfectly into her question. I posted in the Learn True Health Facebook group if anyone wanted to ask you a question. Everyone was just like really, “Oh, I’m so excited to hear that interview. I can’t wait for you to publish it.” They didn’t have any questions then Daniela just posted this question right before we got on Skype, I’m like, “This is so perfect.” I think she’s going to be the voice for us, for everyone listening. Her question is so universal but of course, I feel when I read it, I felt her isolation. It’s going to be great.

She says, “I’ve been listening to your podcast for years. As well as many others. I do so while getting the house, family, ready. Driving.” or anytime that she could put earbuds in basically. She says, “Fabulous information and one of a kind access to a variety of topics. I’m struggling to understand how all the recommended healthy home cooking, food shopping, drinking, sleeping routines, exercises and caring for our kids, self, life partners can be practiced in the real world that we live in. Some of us are super busy and stressed stay at home parents or full-time jobs, taking care of kids, homeschooling, etc. while the rest of us have full-time jobs, business, traveling getting home at 7 pm after leaving the house early five days a week. Just with crazy schedules running errands and also trying to spend time enjoying the family. Recently, I’m getting frustrated listening to all lifestyle recommendations.” She’s having this dilemma managing a busy household while working fulltime. Her question is, she says, “How can we make it practical for families living in the real world without the means of having personal chefs and grocery shoppers and house cleaners, staff, and nannies on payroll. How can they if they only have three hours a day to themselves to play with kids, exercise, cooking, cleaning, and shop and make sure to get to bed by 10? How can they do it all?” she also shares that she feels like some of this big purchases like she wants to buy organic mattresses for her whole family but it’s really unaffordable to do these big things and she’s left feeling like she’s not doing enough for her family. In that, she doesn’t say that she’s depressed or anxious but I can hear the anxiety. I can hear the fear that she’s not good enough. The fear that no matter what she does, it’s not enough because we‘re left juggling 500 plates.

Now you are a wonderful mother of two daughters and you have been in over 30 movies, you’ve published books. You are on the go but what I got from watching one of your documentaries is that you always got water in your hand or kombucha in your hand. You’re always doing these little things to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. If you have a minute, you’re in yoga pose. You’re jumping on the trampoline. I would see you do this. You’d be playing with your life partner on the trampoline. It’s like you’re doing exercise, de-stressing fun and you’re also connecting with your partner. It’ll be like this multitasking. I saw that you integrated little things into this really busy life. I’d love for this podcast to be dedicated to Daniela and all the listeners that feel like they’re in her shoes today. How can we best help these listeners who are so busy to be able to feel at the end of this episode, they are good enough. They are absolutely doing an amazing job and how can we help them to some great life strategies as well?

 

[12:22] Mariel Hemingway: Well, wow. I still remember, my daughter’s  grown up now but I still remember the days. By the way, I just want to say that even though I’m Mariel Hemingway, that’s a very big name and shoes to fill in whatever that means. I understand what it means to be a mom. I never had a chef or a personal trainer or somebody to go out and take care of my house do all that stuff. I was pretty much like everybody else. I was trying to juggle all those things. I’m not saying all for me. I’m just saying the reality is, I do understand that anxiety. I do understand the overwhelm that life presents itself. There’s only so many hours in the day, I remember when the babies were no longer needing me 24/7 and I got those 3 hours, I found somebody that would help me so that I would go out and spend 3 hours to go for a hike and do whatever. I needed to do for myself. It was in those early years when life was incredibly busy. I was doing a television series called Civil Wars and Attorney. It was really hard. I worked way too many hours but it was about really focusing on self-care in a way I had to really schedule everything.

When I said meditation is a big and important thing to me. I hear in Daniel’s kind of reaching out. I hear like I don’t have enough time. I don’t have time to do this things. What I would say to people, I wrote a book called Healthy Living From The Inside Out. In that book I talked about, if you want to change the way that you eat if you want to start eating organic, change your breakfast. Start with one meal. Don’t make your husband do the same thing as you.  Just you start taking care of you. Change one meal. See how you feel. See if that makes you feel differently. You have more energy. Feel differently. You’re just all of a sudden it’s like, “Wait, that makes difference in my life. So maybe I want to try lunch too. Then maybe I want to share with the family.” I think it’s better to instead of looking at life as this big overwhelming thing, take small bites of it. Decide that, “I’m going to create a little corner of our bedroom or the living room that is just dedicated  to my own, I call it sacred space, I created. When I go to hotel room and I’m doing a job, I create a little sacred space in the corner whether for me it’s meditation but it’s kind of my thing because I need that to ground me. Emotional, spiritually ground me.

 It’s about doing small things. When I started grounding for instance, which is one of the most profound and healing things that you can do for your body, mind, and spirit, it’s unreal. I started slow. I went out for 20 minutes and I complained and thought it hurt. Like a pain in the ass about it. But now, we just got back from a 2-hour barefoot hike in the mountains on a trail. I stepped on some huge chunk rock and I was like, “Aah.” It’s changing my life but I didn’t got there overnight. It’s about doing small things. Seeing how they feel and realizing that you got to make the choice if you’re going to extend that into your life more. Also, as a mother we get to choose. We get to choose what our kids eat for the most part. We can make little changes in their lives. Not big ones be sometimes that causes so much panic.

You just start small. Also being the example is huge if you start doing these things all of a sudden your partner goes, “Why do you look so happy? Why do you look so rested?” You just keep showing up. Taking care of yourself and even if it’s only for a couple hours a day. One to three hours are yours to choose what’s going to make you feel full and more of yourself. I get that feeling of overwhelm. Even though I have tons of tools and I’ve worked a long time, I get overwhelmed. I have moments of panic but about things like whatever financial stuff comes up and you’d worry and yet when you stay, somebody sent me this beautiful quote from Rumi about staying in your patience and allowing life to come you. Because what you want is actually coming towards you anyway. When you’re seeking it out, you’re just in this place of frustration and anxiety, I should read the quote instead of bashing out.

 

[18:09] Ashley James: Oh no, I love it. Because you’re helping us process it. I’m sitting there in it with you going,”Yes, I’m imagining what I want in life is coming towards me but if I’m so anxious and worried, it’s not going to happen.” All that anxiety I’m creating it’s like I’m delaying it from coming to me.

 

[18:30] Mariel Hemingway: Yes. It’s usually easier said than done but somebody – actually I’m going to be really super honest with you. I was in a massive panic just 3 days ago. A friend of mine, Clint Ober who’s sort of the master behind rediscovering earthing and how important grounding is to every human being. I reached out to him and he sent me that quote and it is, let me read it to you just because I think it’s so important. I think it was so clear and I did it. That was the coolest thing. I could feel it, I read it. First I read it and I didn’t really registered because I was pissed and I panicked. Then I read it again and I went, “Oh.” Let me read it. Okay so it’s, “When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety. If I sit on my own place of patience, what I need flows through me and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me is looking for me, attracting me. There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it. That’s by Rumi.

 

[19:59] Ashley James: Beautiful.

 

[20:01] Mariel Hemingway: How beautiful is that and simple and so I got out of my stupid head, I sat down and I couldn’t meditate because my mind was all over the place.  I sat down on my meditation cushion and I just thought, “Where is my patience?” I just took three deep breaths and I thought, “Help me find that place of patience.” and I could feel myself settle into who I am and I got it. The quote made sense to me and I realized that things more coming towards me. So the desperate search or reaching out and frantic anxiety that I was feeling was just a thing. It wasn’t real thing and it really isn’t who I am. I don’t know if that’s at all helpful but just a lot of –

 

[21:01] Ashley James: It’s so helpful.

 

[21:02] Mariel Hemingway:  Anyway, I really like it.

 

[21:03] Ashley James:  Can you read it again? Because you said, it took you reading it twice for it to sink in. Can you read it again so it could sink in for us?

 

[21:10] Mariel Hemingway:  100% Okay. “When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety. If I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows through me and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me is looking for me, attracting me. This is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it.” That’s Rumi.

 

[21:39] Ashley James:  Beautiful. I love that Clint Ober gave you that quote. I had Clint on the show that why you’re here because Clint was such an awesome guest. Him and his team were like, “Yes, we’ve got another great guest for you. Are you ready for it?” [Laughter] Clint’s amazing. I love the grounding movie. I’m sitting here in my desk with my grounding mat. The kind that they sell for computers. To work at the computer. I’m sitting with my bare feet at it. For those who can’t have bare feet at work, you can put it on your desk and have your wrists on it. It’s totally low key like no one knows what it is.

 

[22:20] Mariel Hemingway:  Also putting it underneath your computer kind of illuminates a lot of the EMFs that we get from looking at our computer. That’s powerful tool.

 

[22:30] Ashley James: It’s wide enough that you could move it in a position where your laptop could be on top of it and your hands could be on it or it could be under the laptop and under your hands. I love it. I really feel the difference when it’s plugged in versus it’s not plugged in. I know. Like someone could get under the desk and say, “Okay. Is it plugged in or not?” Quiz me, I can feel it. That’s really interesting to me.

 

[23:00] Mariel Hemingway: Isn’t it crazy? It’s crazy. I mean, it’s crazy good because Bobby and I, Bobby’s my partner. He was in the movie with me. He was been grounding for years. He was grounding a long time ago and he was trying to get me and I was like too tense. [Inaudible 23:15] like whatever. It hurts my feet. Then I really got into it. We were saying since really being devoted and dedicated to it for the past year, how more really intuitive you are. You really get the sense, you know you think of animals and you think that they know kind of when the weather’s changing and they sense things and they known when people are coming down the driveway. They just know things. We think of animals having a sixth sense. The reason they have a sixth sense is because they’re connected to the earth. They’re connected to the vibrations of the earth all the time. All day long. Except for indoor cats or something that can never go outside the city but for the most part they’re connected. They’ve got to get that connection to the earth and as human beings when we connect to the earth because we are a lecturable being stuff like those animals, we get that vibration. We start to have more intuitive sense. We have a sense of what going to happen.

Bobby and I were astonished. We kind of know things now. It’s like, “Wow.” We don’t think of ourselves as psychics. It’s just like there’s a knowing that happens when you connect with the earth. It’s incredible. I’m so excited to be on this mission to help that movement move forward because like I was talking about in the beginning, mental health have so much to do with being grounded. Getting rid of the inflammation in the body also gets rid of the inflammation in the brain. Neuroinflammation is probably the largest percent of why people suffer from anxiety and depression. Why there are teens that are committing suicide and all kinds of people committing suicide because there is inflammation in the brain. We can get rid of that by stepping outside in the grass or buying a grounding mat for underneath your computer or at your feet in your desk. It’s not about selling something but buying a grounding sleep mat to sleep on. I’m telling you it changed my sleep. I sleep so deeply. I was also getting to an age where I like, “What’s going on?” I wake up. I’d be hot and I’d be this and I’m like, “What’s going on?” and ever since, yes, I’m not into it. Ever since grounding, I’m using the grounding mat I’m like, “I slept so well.” I sleep so deeply and I don’t wake up all night and I don’t go to the bathroom 28,000 times. I just sleep deeply and I wake up. It gets you connected with your circadian rhythm of the earth. We’re electrical beings that are supposed to be connected to the earth. I just love that we’re rediscovering our birthright. Our birthright is joy and happiness in our lives. The way that we have that is by being more connected to nature, to where we come from. I just think it’s super important. Bobby likes to say, man can see it has become an innovative copulate. He think he’s smarter than nature which is actually moron because we are nature. How can you be smarter than yourself? We have to reconnect to who we are. We realized, “Oh, I’m this. I’m not that. I’m not 3D, although you stay in the world differently.

 As human beings and probably everybody listening here but we’re connected. The more we can connect to nature the more we connect to each other. The more we can make change in our own lives. We can change the world in a good way. I really believe that. I really believe that in the simple things that we do, whether it’s changing your breakfast, taking five minutes to meditate, that’s why I say meditation is important. Start with five minutes. Don’t put lots of pressure on yourself. Don’t say, “Oh god, I have to sit down for an hour.” Well, that’s ridiculous. We don’t live those lives. We’re not monks who lives in Tibet. It’d be nice but we don’t have that kind of time. You make time, you make little amounts of time and you hold them precious. When you hold time preciously in your hands or in your heart, you create time that makes a difference in your lives. I’ve often talk about exercise. If you exercise with intention and it could be any movement. Hiking, biking, swimming, yoga, whatever it is. It could be chi gong, taichi, blah blah. It could be anything that you enjoy. Dancing, if you do 20 minutes with intention it’s like doing an hour of just rambling around listening to all kinds of things on an iPad not that it’s fun since in a while but with intention, you make a difference in your life. Getting back to again, it’s like if you can do 20 minutes of focus, intention of taking care of yourself, it’s going to be like an hour. It’s going to be like an hour and a half. That’s showing self-care and also sells love. That’s huge.

 

[29:00] Ashley James: I love it. Five minutes of meditation a newbie feels like an hour. It’s like you’re getting an hour of meditation but you’re condensing it into five minutes and you could set an alarm. Here’s what I would do, here’s what I do. Not every day but I’d to it. Get up first thing in the morning. Usually, it’s pretty quiet in the house. I sit on the potty. We call it a potty because I have a 4-year-old and I set alarm on my phone for five minutes and I meditate on the potty. I’m like, it’s mommy time. I got to just get my head grounded. I’m multitasking but I’m going inward and I’m clearing my head and I’m listening to my inner voice. I’m taking deep breaths and I’m just being myself and centering myself and getting a good intention for the day. My life’s chaos too but I grab these little things. I love what you said about starting the day with a healthy breakfast. I’ve been on over 30 diets and I’ve tried everything. Every time I try one, “Am I doing it right? Is this good? Is this the right one for me?” All those doubts come up.

What I really discovered for me, the whole food plant-based diet for me, for my body is the most healing. I had to go through the gauntlet of trying everything to listen to my own intuition and my body and figure out what I needed but I had to go through all those things that weren’t the right way to eat for me to find what was the right way to eat. I just started this habit a week ago and I’m loving it. It’s exactly what you said, I started with breakfast. I steam one pound of vegs which sounds like a lot but then when you’re done you’re like, “I feel full but I don’t feel overfull. I feel really good.” I eat one pound of vegetables that’s it for breakfast and if I’m hungry later, it could be an hour later, it could be four hours later. I’ll have some potatoes, maybe some more vegetables, maybe some lentils. Then I’m like good to dinner. I’m shocked. It’s 6 pm, and I’m starting to get hungry. I’m like, “Oh my gosh. I just ate two pounds of vegetables today and some potatoes and some beans.” My body is buzzing. I actually have more energy now from that one habit of starting just eating a really good breakfast. I kind of compounded. After that breakfast, I’m on a roll. Lets’ do another pound of vegetables. Let’s go. Let’s see how many I can get into me. It was easy. Today was fresh vegetables but the last week has been just frozen vegetables because I want to clear out the freezer. Giant Costco sized bags of organic vegetables. I’m like, “All right. We are steaming vegetables and it takes no prep time at all to throw those vegetables into the steamer and go into the big bamboo steamer. It’s the little things but I love that. Starting with a great breakfast to help set you up for the day.

 

[31:57] Mariel Hemingway: And then it doesn’t overwhelm you. When you start slow like that. What I love about what you said and you were so mindful about everybody’s body is different and what works for everybody is different. What works for me doesn’t work for you. Like when you said you’ve done every diet, I think I’m probably older than you since you have a 4-year-old. I have done every diet. [Laughter] I’ve been macrobiotic. I was vegetarian. I was vegan for 20 years. I did all fat. I did no fat. I’ve done so many ways of eating. I ate fruit nothing but fruit for an entire year and then I would have a potato at night. It was insanity because I was on this mission to figure myself out and it was a little bit manic. I’ve gotten to a place where the way that I eat now suits is perfect for me. That’s not always perfect. I am much more plant-based than my boyfriend who is an 0 blood type. He actually eats meat but we’re very conscious about the meat that we eat. It has to be humanely treated. We’re just very aware of the world in which we live because it’s a world where you have to be mindful of all these things but one diet does not fit all because one size is not for all. We’re all different sizes. We come from different backgrounds. Everybody finds their sweet spot is right them. Our things is just eat real food. Eat real food. Don’t eat processed food. Don’t eat food that you can’t pronounce. Don’t eat scrubbed white food. Scrubbed with food is probably not good for you unless its [inaudible 33:55] or something. I don’t know. But you know what I mean?

 

 

[33:59] Ashley James: Yes. I had Naturopath on the show that said, “You know, it’s like we’re addicted to baby food.” If you think about it, flour, bread, pizza, pasta. It’s all like chewy consistency. We like this mouthfeel. It’s like baby food. This mouthfeel mushy, soft and I thought it hit me I’m like, “You’re so right.” We’re so addicted to that. Like I want that fatty hyper-palatable. Fatty, salty, mushy feel in my mouth like we get from pasta, pizza, and bread. We’re running around addicted to the drug called food or highly processed food but coming back to real food is that nourishing point that then helps our mental health and our mental clarity. I’d love to know a bit about your story in relationship to your health. It seems that when we watched all of your films, you look so healthy on the outside your entire life. Have you struggled with any health issues? Have you overcome any medical or health issues?

 

[35:09] Mariel Hemingway:  I have overcome not major medical issues. Because I was so concerned about health for – Literally, my mother had cancer when I was growing up. My father had a heart disease. My entire family, they were addicts so my mission in life was to be healthy. Now when I say I did every diet, I was doing every diet because I was so desperate to find something that would actually relieve my brain because I was so scared. I was so scared that I was going to wake up addicted or crazy or have cancer or something or commit suicide. I came from seven suicides. I thought so my mission is I’ve got to be healthy because maybe if I can control my body that would control my mind and I won’t be scared anymore. My issues was much more, I definitely suffered from depression and I think that my extremism in “health” as far as dieting meaning doing all these extreme things. I think what’s part of the reason why I stayed depressed because when I did all fruit all year, I was basically eating sugar and drinking a ton of coffee. But it was organic so I thought I was healthy.

A ton of coffee or tea because that I was depressed. I was depressed because I am eating this imbalanced too much sugar and then I would go into another extreme and eat nothing but air pop – I mean I’ve done so many strange things. I was looking for something that would make me healthy. Anyway, all of those extreme dieting things did shut my thyroid down. I think a lot of women suffer from thyroid issues. That was the only thing that I really have to deal with. Here’s an interesting discovery, since really being dedicated to my grounding and earthing and what have you, I’ve taken Armour Thyroid now for probably 20 years. I am on half a dose. I may be able to get completely off it because of the grounding which is pretty extraordinary. There was that issue and really depression. I was really suffering from depression but a lot of that is coming full circle and because I have a tremendous self-awareness about because I’ve done so many extreme things not because I was a genius actually I was able to learn but because I’m  so – I’ve done so many different things I’ve come to this place where I really know what’s like for me, I mean I’m 57 years old, I know what works for me. I know what makes me feel healthy and well. I know how to make my brain come into a better place. Besides reading that Rumi quote now or whatever it is. I have opened myself up to receiving the messages that I need to learn and also listening to my physical body and listening to what it needs. Whether it’s a little feather and all these things. The microbiome really making sure that I’ve got a healthy gut. I think all of these things that we learned in the last maybe even 10 years have been pretty extraordinary as far as wellness, self-awareness wellness. What we’re taking care of ourselves. Probably, I like to say we all have the ability to be our best doctors, our best teachers, our best guides. It’s about finding that sweet spot for you. The way of eating that works for you but we all know that’s bad for us, we’re not stupid. We know that we shouldn’t drink diet coke. Come on. Somebody who’s like, “Well, what do I have to give up?” Come on. You know what to give up. Like, don’t eat processed food. I’m sorry. You just can’t. Now you could do it once a week. Maybe you get it once a week. Maybe you have a piece of chocolate cake and you need some, whatever. Somebody’s weird thing is but do that once in a while make that a treat. Don’t make that a daily occurrence. You know what I mean.

I travel a lot. I’m sure a lot of you do. You’re in the airport you see these people in the line at Starbucks getting god only knows what those drinks are, but why do we have to have one every day? You can your cup of coffee everyday but do you really need a pumpkin spice latte every day? You know it’s about we have no treats in our life anymore. When I was a kid, we didn’t get dessert every night. We got dessert once a week. It was like a treat. We didn’t go out to dinner every week either. We probably went out to dinner once a month. It was a treat. We don’t have any treats anymore. I think if we can kind of wheel our lives back in so that we create these moments of joy that we can really splurge and if you need to go out to fast food or dinner and have a crazy dessert, that becomes such a treat for you. But f you have it every day it’s really not that exciting. Then it’s not good for you but if you make things special then they don’t hurt you either. If you drink that pumpkin spice latte you’ve got to have it but you only do that once in a while and you really give yourself permission to do it, it doesn’t have a bad effect on you. If you do it all the time and it’s unconscious, then you’ll know what’s going on.

 

 

[41:24] Ashley James:  Or you do it all the time and you beat yourself up and feel guilty for it?

 

[41:28] Mariel Hemingway: Exactly.

 

[41:29] Ashley James: I like that you said, do it rarely and then when you do it really give yourself permission to enjoy it and do it and that’s your treat because then at least you’re not suffering from the hours of guilt and shame which are so harmful to our bodies as well.

 

[41:46] Mariel Hemingway: Oh my god. Unbelievable. It’s so hard on us.

 

[41:50] Ashley James: I have this theory about treats. We’re getting our daily coffee or daily latte, all these we’re choosing foods that are hyper-palatable that make super enjoyable while we’re eating them but we know it’s not the healthiest food. We do these things almost every day or maybe every day or multiple times a day and I have this theory that when we have a big void in our life that joy is missing. That self-care, time for us and a sense of joy when that is really lacking. We try to fill that void with these substances that can be legal over the counter coffees or prescriptions or street drugs, alcohol. We’re filling that void and when we start to look at how to fill our lives with daily joy, true joy. Then we find it’s very easy to shift our habits and not do that daily latte or chocolate cake or wine at night.

 

[42:54] Mariel Hemingway:  Exactly. Is that real joy? That’s the question. Is that joy or is that a way to – I’ve come from a family of addicts. Brilliant people. Amazing creatives. My grandpa is the greatest writer in the 20th century. My sister is super talented. My father is incredibly brilliant but they were addicts. They were addicts because they’re self-medicating pain. You have to ask yourselves when you’re doing these things. Are you doing it because you really enjoy it or are you doing it so that you can avoid looking at something that needs to be looked at. My thing is we all have things that we have to look at all the time. It’s never going to end until we’re off the planet. It’s never bad as we think it is in our head. We are remembering a memory that is scary or going back into it seems frightening when you think about doing it but when you actually do it, memory can’t hurt you and things that you look at, it empowers you to dig deep. It empowers you and it frees you. I’m a perfect example of a life that had been freed by my ability and sometimes my struggle with not wanting to look but then finally coming through that whatever to really look at who I’ve become and how I got here and the choices I made that are completely my own. It was never as bad as I thought it would be. It was actually freeing. I’m now at a time in my life that I can actually say, I love myself. I could never say that years ago. Never. It was embarrassing. I thought that was arrogant. I thought it was weird to say that. I just didn’t have that knowledge. I didn’t have that self-awareness. Now I realized that self is really just the most beautiful thing. It’s so obvious because you can’t love anybody else until you really love yourself but you don’t know that to really have that moment where you go, “Oh my god, this me. I’m okay. I may make some weird-ass choices sometimes and I sometimes I fall off a wagon of self-awareness sand self-love but pretty much, I really like who I’ve become.” That is a long journey. Probably didn’t happen until my early 50’s really. In my relationship with my partner has helped me, in having really good friends, grounding has brought a profound sense of self-awareness to me. It’s why I want to share all the things that I know.

 

[46:01] Ashley James: Awesome. I definitely want to dive into that. Did you have Hashimoto’s? Or was it just hypothyroid?

 

[46:07] Mariel Hemingway:  Hypothyroid. Yes

 

[46:07] Ashley James: Got it. So it was an autoimmune?

 

[46:10] Mariel Hemingway:  No, it was not. Now the interesting thing about that is all the autoimmune diseases are inflammatory based that’s why grounding works so well. It’s curious that even though it’s not autoimmune, grounding still helps my thyroid to condition immensely.

 

[46:30] Ashley James: Exactly. I was going to go there because the grounding documentary which was amazing like just so eye-opening for me and so many of my listeners in our Facebook group. The Learn True Health Facebook group. I’ve talked about how mind-blowing it was. The whole documentary is posted, is pinned at the top in the Facebook group for everyone to watch. In it, they have scientists and they show that by grounding we’re releasing these electrons that we’re supposed to release. We’re not supposed to hold on to them like a battery but we do because we’re living now in this insulated world of carpet and in our car we’re insulated. Wearing shoes, we’re insulated. We’re not barefoot outside anymore all the day long or sleeping in our ground like we were sort of designed to do. We’re designed to be connected to the earth. We’re not connected so we’re actually holding on to this static electricity of electrons and these loose electrons are free radicals that cause major inflammation and trigger a cascade of domino effect in the body on a cellular level of inflammation. So the white blood cells can’t work properly because this inflammation just taking over and they can’t fully heal something because the inflammation is cascading into harming healthy tissue.

 

[47:48] Mariel Hemingway:  It’s harming healthy tissue and because we’re grounded out by our rubber shoes and our carpet and all the lists that you said, there’s no way to release that overflow of inflammation. It comes all this electricity and the biome there’s no way we’re not releasing it. It hasn’t become a cyclical thing. It’s why the circadian rhythm is set back because we’re grounded and we become what is going into the earth it comes through us, it comes into the spine. We’re meant to be. We’re cyclical. It’s like DNA, it goes in a circle. It moves all the time but we stop the movement that’s why there’s a build-up of inflammation.

 

[48:33] Ashley James: It’s like a dam. We created a dam to the natural flow of energy and the dam is all the insulation around us, think about it. We’re lying in a bed that’s insulated, that’s not grounded. We wake up we walk on carpet that’s insulated. Every time we move our feet on carpet, we’re actually creating that static electricity inside us and collecting more and more electrons to store inside us which are free radicals. We get our clothes on. Put our shoes on. Now we’re insulated the entire day. We’re on a car we’re insulated. The entire day we’re on an office building or whatever. The only time we actually accidentally ground ourselves, one of my guests once said that we’d all been dead if it weren’t for the fact that we have faucets. Because we actually wash our hands once in a while and that accidentally grounds us for 30 seconds. Whenever we take a shower, we get grounded a little bit because the faucets every time we touch the faucets that’s grounded.

 

[49:24] Mariel Hemingway: Yes, it’s true.

 

[49:26] Ashley James: Five seconds of being grounded a day is not enough to release all those electrons. If you’ve any static electricity like you touched something and you get spark that means you have way too much of these electrons in your body. That’s a sure sign you need to go get barefoot out in nature of get a grounding mat.

 

[49:43] Mariel Hemingway: I travel with mine so when I get to – I’ve got to get to Vegas. God only knows why. Not my field. I mean in general. It was like, “What am I doing here?” I was in the top of this building, 27th floor. Maybe 60th. I put my grounding mat. I plugged it in. I put it in top of the bed. I just lie in the bed for – because there was no place to go because it was all crazy outside and it was super hot or whatever because I was figuring where to go and it was still summery hot. I lay on the bed and I could feel myself just like be okay. When you sleep in a hotel, the rooms on the high floors in hotel rooms, if you live in a New York City apartment, it’s great but being high up there’s more inflammation, there’s less connection. It so important to have a grounding sleep mat or a mat somewhere in your apartment or your hotel room or something. When I travel and I’m on the high floor I’ve got that grounding mat I still sleep very well. I don’t have any jetlag. It goes within I would say within an hour it’s out of my system. I could see that I have no more swelling in my legs from like whatever the flight may make. It’s astonishing how simple it is and yet you just didn’t even realized it until Clint – he was so great and careful about doing 25 scientific studies so that people wouldn’t think he was a total nut job. It’s crazy that we think that people that do simple things like eat real food and put your feet on the ground or get a grounding mat if you can’t do that. That’s crazy. It’s not crazy. We were doing it before the ‘50s whenever the ’20s and ‘30s rubber-soled shoes started to happen. We do it all the time. We’re grounded all the time. Now we’re grounded no times.

 

[52:00] Ashley James: My mother-in-law who’s in her 70s, she grew up in Altadena, California. Her grandmother was from Germany. Her grandmother came over who was basically her nanny form her childhood. Every morning as the sun rose in Altadena, which is right beside Pasadena, California. Her grandmother would grab her little hand and they’d be in their nightgowns and shed take her outside onto the grass and for about half an hour would walk around the wet grass and the dew. Every morning it was absolutely mandatory and she fondly shares this memories with me of being in the ’40s or ’50s or something. Putting her feet all the time in the grass and that her grandma from Germany is passing on this knowledge of you wake up and you go with the first light of sun. You get out there and now we know the science behind it. Now we know that reconnects us our circadian rhythm. It resets our circadian rhythms to the earth to see the melatonin burns of when sunlight comes through our eyes but that can’t be interrupted by glass we have to go outside. Then going outside and grounding or earthing releasing those electrons. We’re connecting with the earth. We’re seeing now all the science like you said Clint Ober has done all these studies and science has now proving what our great grandparents and great-great grandparents did as a daily habit.

 

[53:27] Mariel Hemingway: They did it as a daily habit and they didn’t even know – they didn’t have a scientific reason behind it. They just knew intuitively that was the right thing to do. Bobby and I wake up every morning especially when we are in California. We have a little sandbox that we created. It’s outside and it’s grounded. Got sand in it. literally sandbox for us not for kids. We sit there and we watch the sunrise. We open our eyes and we look into the sun because the sun in the morning and at evening at sunset is some actually take into your eyes. That’s how you take most of your vitamin D, it’s through your eyes. People don’t know that. The science behind that is extraordinary. Some of our great leaders in America I want to say, Roosevelt, who was a sun gazer. I want to say, Roosevelt. I hope that’s right. He was someone believed in sun gazing and taking sunlight into the eyes. It’s profound and it helps your eyesight, it helps your memory. It’s so incredible and how simple is that. That doesn’t cost money. It’s still important to do these things. Watching sunrise and sunset people don’t realize why they do it. They do it because it actually makes them feel better. Yet it’s beautiful but there’s this attraction to the beauty and there’s an attraction to the energy that you get from that. I have an interesting story. A friend of mine who lives in Pacific North West like you do, he was in Portland. He was on Instagram and I was posting something and I saw his story and he’s got this new video of him. He was so depressed. It was like near tears. I immediately direct messaged him I’m like, “Are you okay?” I got him on the phone, I was talking to him and he said, “I feel horrible. I’m so depressed.” It was in the winter. I think it was February. He said, “I’m a mess. I don’t know what to do.” And I said, “Oh my god. Well here, Told you I’m not a doctor. I’m just going to make some suggestions.” He said, “Well, actually I would listen to you. I’m not sure why but I will.” I said, “Look, I want you to go outside. I know it’s probably raining there but I could see on my iPhone in the weather that you’ve got a pocket of sun. I want you to go outside. I want you to take your shoes off even if it’s on the sidewalk. If it’s the sidewalk and it’s cement and it’s slightly damp, you can ground. I want you to take your shoes off and get your feet on the ground and I also want you to look up to the sun. I just want you to take some deep breaths and just spend at least half an hour outside in the air grounding and looking at the sun.” I sort of said just because he sounded so depressed I was just hoping he’d be okay. And he contacted me an hour later and he said, “I swear to God. I feel like this is a miracle because I feel like a totally different person.” I didn’t even realized it would be that effective. That’s real to me. I was like, “Oh my god. This is great.” I was super happy for him but I was also like, “Oh, you know. This is real. This is real.”

 

[57:02] Ashley James: I love it. I’m racking my brain for why would your hypothyroid that’s not caused by an autoimmune condition, why would hypothyroid be helped by grounding? One thing I thought was really interesting, I’m taking an advanced course for health coaching through Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. I interviewed their founder recently and joined their course and it’s fascinating. One thing I learned and just blows me away is that 25% of our T3’s is converted in the gut. When we have dysbiosis or we have inflammation in our gut or we maybe have some leaky gut or we have maybe eating foods we don’t realize that are IGG response like one of our immunoglobulin response is reacting too. Any of these things can put the gut in a state of metabolic chaos and through that then we convert less of our T3. We go to a doctor and tell them we’re tired and they just immediately go, “Oh, let’s check your thyroid. Oh, you have low T3. Let’s just give you some T3.” Meanwhile, they never look where the root cause was. If you had – so you’re not grounded, maybe your body’s weak point is your gut and maybe you ate something you were sensitive to. Like for me, I discovered I was allergic to bananas. Bananas of all things, right? For me, bananas give me huge amounts of inflammation. It’s so sad. I love bananas. When I don’t eat them, I feel amazing. When I do eat them, I should not eat them. It is an allergy.

 

[58:32] Mariel Hemingway: Yes. I don’t think that I actually absorb the minerals needed in and out of my food or I didn’t for many years. What I think is when you have less of inflammation in the gut, you absorb minerals. You absorb nutrients.

 

[58:51] Ashley James: There you were. You had inflammation because by grounding, you’re releasing the inflammation and then all of a sudden you were now on half of the mediation you needed and you’re working towards having a totally healthy thyroid which is phenomenal. How quickly did you see results from grounding for your thyroid? Was it like weeks, months or years?

 

[59:15] Mariel Hemingway: Within six weeks, I realized that I could bring it down. I actually called Clint. I was like, “Wait,” and he was like, “Oh, you’re on thyroid,” I don’t know how it came up. He said, “You’re on thyroid,” I said, “Yes. I’m not on Synthroid. I don’t believe in that.” he said, “Well, why don’t you try just taking it down a little bit. Don’t do it or take it out totally.” I said, “Yes, I could do that.” It was just fine. Within 6 weeks. That’s how quickly the body responds to having no inflammation. It’s crazy.

 

[01:00:00] Ashley James: I’d love to hear the story of how you met Clint Ober. Obviously, your partner Bobby Williams converted you to grounding. To walking outside barefoot which does sound painful if you’re hiking in the mountains. I’ve got to admit I too do a lot of grounding in my own backyard on the grass. I’ve had some listeners say that they live in metropolitan areas where all the grass is covered in pesticides. I had one listener say that she was so excited to do grounding. Went outside and started running around the grass and she got really sick because her body couldn’t process the toxins of everything that was sprayed on the grass. It was really discouraging, disappointing and thought how many people want to ground but they don’t have access to a clean yard that they know haven’t sprayed. Luckily, you have your sandbox, right? For those who just cannot get out there and for half an hour to an hour a day in the grass on healthy clean pesticide-free yard and grass or out there in the mountains that they could absolutely benefit from grounding through these mats. I’d love to know, can you tell us the story of how you met Clint Ober?

 

[01:01:09] Mariel Hemingway: My really good friends are Josh and Rebecca Tickell who made the movie. Rebecca’s in the movie and she’s talking about her daughter who was very sick and she’s the one who had the complete transformation lost 90 pounds or something. In the movie, she’s at 270 now 190. Through grounding by laying on the ground naked. That’s a whole new conversation you have to have with her. [Laughter] she’s a really good friend and they called me. I had done a couple of projects and supported projects that really, great environmental filmmakers. Then they did a fictional movie. A scripted movie, excuse me that I was also in. They called me out of the blue and they said, “Oh my god. We’re doing this film, we just realized you and Bobby are the perfect people to be in this. This is about earthing.” That’s how I met Clint. I met him after film in that and we were at a screening of it and I was super honored I met him in Sedona and I was like, “You’re cool. I want to hang out with you. Teach me all you know.” [Laughter]

 

[01:02:32] Ashley James:  That’s what I feel about him too. We had a great interview and I was a little gobsmacked. He’s very down to earth. No ego. Really cool. He has what a story. I love his story. For any listener who hasn’t listened to that go back and listen to the interview with Clint Ober. Tell us that day, I’d love for you to walk us through the first day they gave you, did Clint hand you a grounded mat? Or like ceremonially like on one knee like, “Ahhh. Here’s your grounding mat.”

 

[01:03:00] Mariel Hemingway:  Not at all. We all went out to dinner after seeing the movie. They did a panel on the stage and stuff. And then afterward he goes, “Come to my car.” I’m like, “Ohhh.”

 

[01:03:14] Ashley James: Come check out what’s in my trunk.

 

[01:03:16] Mariel Hemingway:  Yes. He opened the trunk and he was handing me blankets and grounding mats. I was like, “Oh my god, I’m so excited.” I haven’t sleep grounded yet and I was super excited to do that. I’ve been grounding for quite a while at that point but never sleeping. Boy that was a real shift. The grounding mats are so reasonable. It wasn’t like, “Oh god. Get a grounding mat, it’s at 8 million dollars.” It’s not expensive. It’s 129 dollars for a single grounding sleep mat. I became so excited by his mission in life. It really is a mission. He’s dedicated his life to helping people understand how inflammation is really causing so many problems. Especially women. Women are just more responsive. Women are usually the ones who get their parents help. When you think about older people and the fact that they need grounding so much more than we realize. Grounding will help with you know, just help the things that are inflammatory based. I got so excited I said, “I want to do a magazine for you.” I created a magazine that we’re going to launch pretty soon called MH earthing. MH being Mariel Hemingway. It’s not because I own it but then we got a little pamphlet on the inside that shows all the ailments that are affected and helped by earthing. Of course, we’re not doctors. We’re not saying that it cures anything but if it’s inflammation which pretty much everything is, it would be affected by this. Few people sharing their story with us at the magazine because we want it we turn it into a movement.

 

[01:05:13] Ashley James: So you’re going to create a grounding magazine like an earthing magazine?

 

[01:05:17] Mariel Hemingway:  Yes. It’s called MH earthing.

 

[01:05:19] Ashley James: I love it.

 

[01:05:20] Mariel Hemingway:  Yes. it’s really cool. It’s so much fun to do. It’s like, “Oh my god. This is great,” I told my friends please write an article about this. I want you to dedicate yourself to earthing for the next. My best friend, Melissa. She wrote an article and she was not okay. She was like, “I don’t know if I’m going to take my shoes off. I’m super scared.” But she goes out into this soccer field in her neighborhood and now she walks every day and she looks forward to it because she’s shifted. She feels differently and she got her whole family doing it. It’s just cool stuff. And it’s easy. It’s just so easy. So simple and when your brain gets it you’re just like, “I can’t go back. I can’t go back to not doing this.”

 

[01:06:07] Ashley James: I’d love to hear, that night you’re in Sedona. It’s dark outside and it get so dark out there and you can see the stars so beautiful. The crickets are singing and he opens his trunk and hands you everything and he says, “Try it. Try my stuff.” You went back to your hotel room. Tell us about your first experience with grounding mats and blankets and all that.

 

[01:06:33] Mariel Hemingway: He didn’t have a lot of stuff so bobby and I we’re very competitive and we fight over everything. It was like, “Who was getting the grounding mat?” I’m like, “Well, I think I have my hands on it first.” He got the blanket. I got the grounding mat. Anyway. We plugged in, read everything and plugged them in and I just remember having a very deep and uninterrupted sleep which doesn’t always happen and hadn’t happened in quite some time. It was wonderful. Bobby slept really well. It was just great. It just make sense. Now, I’ve got extra blanket that I put on the dog beds. I have a 19-year old Yorkie who’s amazing. It’s so funny he sleeps in my room and he makes so much noise because he’s old and he sounds like he’s snoring and ever since being on the grounding mat which is now 7 months, he makes no sound when he sleeps. Not a sound and he’s 20 years old, I’m telling you he has so much energy. He hikes with me everyday when we go out and he likes barefoot hiking it slows me down so he can keep up. Put me down a little, downs me too well. Animals during the day you’ll see them all in the grounding mat on top in the kitchen like they’re all sitting there it’s the cutest thing. They get it. They love it. That’s how do I live, that’s what makes animals healthy. The fact that they’re connected to the earth.

 

[01:08:28] Ashley James: Yes, we had an old cat we plugged in grounding mat for my feet by the computer and he immediately sat on it. He’s got his routine. He’s like five different places. He likes sitting. He immediately sat there and he always comes back to it. I also have a foot leg rest. I kick my feet up sometimes when I’m at the computer, lean back in my chair and I put the mat up on that and he was like, “Where’s my mat?” then he realized it was up on the footrest and so he’d jump up. We do not both fit. It’s a very small footrest. My legs and him don’t fit. He like subtlety just uses his weight to push my legs foo so he can have the mat. I think I need to get another one just for him. But the animals get it. He was hobbling. He’s like 16 I was suspecting he had arthritis because he wasn’t jumping on things anymore. He looks like he was limping as he walks. He also has kidney disease. The vet was like, “Okay. Well, if we take really good care of him, he could live another three or four years but these things can just all of a sudden turn from the worst and he could be gone really soon. We just got to be careful.” We monitor his urinary output and stuff like that obviously because we change his kitty litter.

After he started grounding, I noticed he was running, he was jumping on stuff and he had about this is big for cat, he was 20 pounds but great amount of that was water weight because of the kidney disease. He just had a lot of water weight. He looks like a completely different cat now. He actually like curves, he has lost a significant amount of that water weight and he is jumping, he has so much energy. It’s so cool. I’m looking forward. I’m going to take him back soon and do the blood test and see how his kidney disease is. I bet that it’s actually gotten better. The vet was like, and he’s a holistic vet but “This thing doesn’t get better. You can slow down the progression but doesn’t get better.” I’m thinking with grounding, obviously, he’s eating the healthiest food we could find. We’re like a nontoxic family. We don’t have any toxic cleaners in the house. We’re really cautious about the level of toxicity inside the home. Indoor air pollution can be 20 times worse as outdoor just from having the cleaning products and the off-gassing of the things in our environment so we’re really cautious to that. Like a said, he started grounding and he’s like a new cat. It is amazing. So many people would say, “Oh, a hundred dollars for a mat for my bed? That’s way too expensive.” but then if you’re like, “Well, there’s a grounding mat for your dog.” They’re like, “No problem.” We will always put our pets before us.

 

[01:11:25] Mariel Hemingway: I know. It’s crazy.

 

[01:11:28] Ashley James: Do it for your pets.

 

[01:11:31] Mariel Hemingway: Because we are animals. You remember. They rely on us. They’re so happy. So easy to just make them feel better. Isn’t that crazy? I know. My little 20-year-old Yorkie. He doesn’t make sound when he sleeps in that. I have a border collie who has some problems when he sleeps on those grounding mats, he doesn’t hobble at all. He’s 12 years old.

 

[01:11:57] Ashley James: That’s awesome. Very cool. You said that a lot of your friends because you’re doing this magazine that a lot of your friends were introduced to grounding, to earthing through you and they got to share their stories of success. Do you have any stories that really stand out in your mind that you’d like to share with us?

 

[01:12:15] Mariel Hemingway:  I shared the one about the guy in Portland that was really profound for me. How important that was. I love the woman that’s in the documentary. The old woman who’s like 94. Who’s playing tennis now. She blows my mind. I think for most people, it’s just a level of energy, it’s about sleeping. It’s not like profound because I don’t know anybody with MS but the girl in the documentary with MS, every time I see her and she’s in the documentary several times now. She brings tears in my eyes because she just looks forward to living life and I do have a friend with MS that I haven’t seen in quite a few months. I’m going to reconnect. I’ve reconnected with her husband because I really want to get her a mat because I do believe that it will change her life.

 

[01:13:14] Ashley James: Yes, they showed that woman who’s in a wheelchair and they just put the patches on her so if someone who wants to use the grounding mat they can use the patches.

 

[01:13:22] Mariel Hemingway: Yes. There’s so many options.

 

[01:13:25] Ashley James: Right. Some doctors that listen to the show reached out to me we talked to them. One’s a chiropractor in Canada, we talked about this patch kits. You can put them on your patients and plugged into the ground and then you do it for however long you can because people ask you, “How long should I do it?” I’m like, “However long you can. 15 minutes, an hour, 10 hours. However long you can.”

 

[01:13:46] Mariel Hemingway: I am reminded of a story with my best friend. She came over and we were doing some business. She was also my manager. She was sitting there and she was wiggling her finger and said, “This finger really hurt, it’s been hurting a lot lately.” She was like, “I think I might have arthritis in it.” I went and got a patch kit and I put the sticky patch on her finger and we just sat there talking and she was writing stuff and she looked down 20 minutes later and she said, “It doesn’t hurt at all anymore.” That’s the beauty. You get rid of the inflammation. There is no pain and Clint talking about that all the time. Even if you’re to going to walk in the yard, sitting on the chair you’re going to feel yourself relived of that build-up of electrons. You’re going to feel that inflammation just flowing out of the body. It’s pretty cool.

 

[01:14:46] Ashley James: It is very cool. This has been so amazing sharing these stories with you today. And your wisdom around how we can implement these strategies even as super busy people. I feel so honored to have you here today and have you share everything. We’re going to make sure that all the links to everything you do, all the links to everything that you do, your book and everything is in the show notes of today podcast at learntruehealth.com. Mariel, do you have any homework you want to pass on to the listeners before wrapping up today’s interview?

 

[01:15:19] Mariel Hemingway: Well. Yes. First I would say find somebody that you love and that loves you. That you care about, that you feel safe with and tell your story. However, it is. You don’t have to go on a podcast, you don’t have to go do a television show or anything but tell your story. I think for any of you that needs to release any anxiety about worry come from. That’s number one. I would say take some time to be still. I don’t want to call it meditation because that’s scary for people. Take some time. Whether it’s on the potty as you say. Take some time for yourself that you’re in total silence and just honoring yourself and giving yourself permission to be still and not judging that time that you take. Also, drink good water. Drink water. Just drink more water. Also one more thing and probably the most important thing. Go outside. Put your feet on the ground, in the grass, on some soil just do it. Do it once a day if you can. If you can’t buy a grounding mat do something because I’m telling you, it will change your life.

 

[01:16:32] Ashley James: I love it. Thank you so much, Mariel Hemingway. It has been such an honor having you here today. You’re welcome back on the show any time to come share with us.

 

[01:16:43] Mariel Hemingway: Thank you so much. It was so much fun, oh my gosh.

 

 

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Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition and how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health-coaching sort of vacation program and it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition but from the standpoint on how we can help people to shift their life, to shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can google Institute for Integrated Nutrition or IIN, or give them a call or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they would give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctor’s offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help with your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them and their success and their health goals. There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month, so you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. If you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Get Connected with Mariel Hemingway!

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Books by Mariel Hemingway

Out Came The Sun

Invisible Girl

Healthy Living From The Inside Out

Mariel’s Kitchen

Running With Nature

Sep 25, 2019


Use Coupon Code LTH to Get The Listener's Discount!
www.livingthegoodlifenaturally.com

 

Magnesium Soak

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

 

Highlights:

  • Magnesium soak helps in digestion.
  • Magnesium and detoxification.
  • How to get rid of parasites.
  • Natural law of the body and the circadian rhythm.
  • Hormone health using magnesium and salt.
  • The science behind absorption of magnesium.
  • Is magnesium soak safe for pregnant women?
  • Magnesium soak for swelling, cramps, and pain.
  • What to add in magnesium soak? Jojoba oil, Epsom salt, baking soda, boron, hydrogen peroxide?
  • Omega-3 deficiency, chia seeds, and flax seeds.
  • Thyroid and health.
  • Don’t use magnesium in jetted bathtubs.

 

In this episode, you will discover the benefits of magnesium to our body. Kristen Bowen shares with us today the science behind the absorption of magnesium in our body, how it aids in detoxification, and her magnesium soak.

 

[0:00] Intro: Hello, true health seekers. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I’m so excited for today’s interview. We have Kristen Bowen back on the show to answer your questions about magnesium. We cover a variety of topics. And even though this episode is quite long, the time will just fly by as you’re listening. So I hope you’re doing something really mundane like driving or working out or cleaning the house because we’re going to make it feel like five minutes have gone by in a flash. I love today’s interview because Kristen brings so much experience and so many wonderful stories. I want to let you know that at the end of the interview, I kept recording because Kristen, even though we thought we were done, we started chatting and we realized that we weren’t done. So there’s some –

Hey, sweetie.

 

 

[0:58] Brave: What?

 

 

[0:58] Ashley James: I’m recording right now.

 

 

[1:00] Brave: Oh.

 

 

[1:00] Ashley James: Okay. You want to come say hi? Put your face in the microphone. Say hi to everyone.

 

 

[1:04] Brave: Hi, everyone.

 

 

[1:06] Ashley James: Yeah. Okay. Now go play.

As I was saying, at the end of the interview, I kept recording because Kristen shared with me that she really wants to do a giveaway for the listeners. So three lucky listeners are going to win a jug of the magnesium soak, the magnesium muscle cream, and a jar of acerola cherry powder. Each person, all three of those winners, are going to receive each of those three products that Kristen sells on her website, livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. To participate and possibly be one of the winners, please join the Facebook Group, the Learn True Health Facebook Group. Just search learn True Health in Facebook or go to learntruehealth.com/group, that will immediately direct you to the group. I’ll be posting a post that’s going to be an announcement in the group that’s going to be pinned to the top for the next week or so and then we’ll pick a winner – pick three winners. And, yeah, it’s going to be great.

And for those who would like to purchase the magnesium soak, the muscle cream, or the acerola cherry powder from Kristen Bowen, her website is livingthegoodlifenaturally.com. She gives the listeners a discount, so use the coupon code LTH to get the wonderful listener discount.

And then later after I did this interview, she emailed me and let me know that she was running an experiment on our website right now where she’s offering free shipping in addition to our discount code on orders that are over $75. So that would look like if you bought the jug of magnesium to soak in, it’s a month supply for one person if you did a 30-day challenge. And the jar of magnesium cream which has lasted me months. So that jar lasts a very long time. My husband and I use it all the time. It feels so good and so soothing. If we ever have an ache or a pain or a headache, it takes it away immediately. It’s just wonderful. I love, love that cream. So if you bought those two together, you’d get free shipping. And you’d also get the listener discount with the coupon code LTH. Excellent. Thank you so much for being a listener.

Oh, you’re going to love, love today’s interview and Friday’s interview that I’m publishing. I am so excited for you to hear it. I have on the show the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, who is a Hollywood star and an activist in health, both mentally and physically. And she shared some wonderful information. So that’s going to be Friday’s show. Enjoy today’s episode.

Thank you so much for being a listener. And have yourself a fantastic rest of your day. Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 381.

 

 

[3:58] Ashley James: I am so excited to have back on the show Kristen Bowen. The magnesium soap lady. Kristen, welcome back to the show.

 

 

[4:08] Kristen Bowen: Oh, Ashley, it is so good to be here. So good to be here.

 

 

[4:12] Ashley James: Absolutely. Now you were featured in Episode 294. That was your first episode with us. And then again, you came back for an encore, 341. I encourage listeners to go back and listen to Episode 294 and 341 because Kristen shares her story. That is – I mean, within five minutes of meeting a complete stranger, I tell them your story. I just – anytime someone comes over to my house, I have them soak in magnesium and tell them your story. It’s just your story is probably one of my favorite stories of recovering and inspiring people who are sick right now.

Because when I say to someone, “I have a friend over the other day who died twice after giving birth.” And the doctor said that she would never live. She’d be a vegetable. She has brain damage. But she is, like – she’s up and at it. And you can tell, because when you talk to her sometimes she can’t grasp at words. But she’s doing amazing, you know, raising her two kids.

 

 

[5:18] Kristen Bowen: That’s incredible.

 

 

[5:19] Ashley James: And I told her – I got her to soak in magnesium and told her your story. And it really inspired her. And just the idea that I just paint this picture, I’m like, “Kristen was 78 pounds in a wheelchair having 30 seizures a day and unable to barely talk. And couldn’t advocate for herself.” And that’s your lowest point. Right? And so when I paint that picture and then I show them what you look like now and it’s just like, “Oh my gosh.” And she was able to do it with natural medicine recover after – I won’t get into your story because I want listeners to go back and hear the whole story, Episode 294. But you recovered. And you found – you discovered that magnesium was the biggest key to your healing. And that’s why you started your company to help everyone to soak in magnesium so their body could absorb the right amount of magnesium for their body.

And I’ve had lots of experts on the show share that magnesium is the most important nutrient the body needs. And I love that through soaking, we bypass digestion. So even those who have poor digestion don’t have to worry about it. You just soak in it and your body absorbs grams of magnesium. So we get into the details of why to soak and how to soak and all of the healing benefits. And even testimonials, we’ve had dozens and dozens of listeners. Actually there’s over a thousand listeners that have used your magnesium soak and continued to use it and shared their stories in the Facebook Group Learn True Health Facebook Group. And we talked about that in Episode 294 and 341. So definitely go back and listen to those.

But today Kristen is here to answer some of your questions. Because in the Facebook Group there’s a lot of questions so Kristen is going to answer them. And also, Kristen wants to teach once we’ve achieved our full cell saturation of magnesium, how do we maintain it. And looking at how to hold on to the magnesium because that actually will also help the body properly balance and hold on to its other minerals. And then, also, how to discover your burn rate. How quickly or slowly you burn through magnesium. Because once we do the 30-day challenge where we’re soaking in magnesium for 30 days, most people reach full cell saturation. And then the question is, “Well, how often do I soak to maintain it? Once a week, once a month? What’s the answer?” So Kristen, I’m really excited for you to answer all these questions for us today. And it’s just a pleasure to have you back on the show.

 

 

[8:04] Kristen Bowen: Oh, thank you, Ashley. But before we go any further, may I just have a moment to say something to you?

 

 

[8:14] Ashley James: Sure. You have the whole hour.

 

 

[8:18] Kristen Bowen: Okay. No. First of all, we, your listeners, Ashley, I feel like I can be their voice for them right now. We would like to thank you for the person that you are and the way that you handle and share your gift on your podcast. You make it so easy. I have been invited now since your show, because of your show, I have been invited on numerous podcasts. And sometimes they’re a little rough. And you just make it so easy. The questions that you ask and the way that you communicate.

And I realized one of the podcasts – and I can say this because I’ve asked the person not to even air it. It was such It was such an experience of transactional elitism. And the communication style, they were very transactional. And it was very reminiscent of what many of us have experienced in the doctor’s office that if we have questions or we have a different idea that they immediately put that down and talk over our heads. And I just want to thank you for the way that you do your podcast because you make it so easy. And listening back to your podcasts, it’s easier for us, the listener. Like, the guest you make it easy for but you also make it so easy for us, the listener, to go on this journey with you. Because you allow your guests to take that journey instead of making them step to only what they think should be talked about. And I know you call it ego. We call it the rabbit hole. “Okay, Ashley. Where are we going today?”

 

 

[10:17] Ashley James: Parasites. Parasites.

 

 

[10:18] Kristen Bowen: “Shoot the rifle.” And I just – I want you to experience and just take a moment and just experience our collective gratitude for your podcast and who you are and the way that you communicate on your podcast. It just makes it so easy. So for all of your listeners, I would like to say thank you, Ashley. And a little hand front. A round of applause for Ashley and everything that she does.

 

 

[10:47] Ashley James: You are very welcome. Everyone, everyone, you are all very welcome. This is my pleasure. And I get messages all the time from listeners. And I get, like, Facebook messages and emails all the time from listeners sharing that the podcast has really helped them. And I feel honored to be part of your health journey and be part of your advocating for yourself, to educate yourself, to grow. And the fact that you are in the driver’s seat. That you’re taking control and that you’re educating yourself so you can improve your health, your life, and the health of those you love. You are in charge. And that is the best place to be, being at cause. Not sitting around waiting for a drug or waiting for a doctor but you are at cause. And it’s okay that we don’t know all the answers. But the fact that we’re seeking them is empowerment. So I love being a part of this journey with everyone. And we’re never done, right? We’re never like, “Okay. I got to the top of Mount Everest of health. I’m done.” We’re always getting better, right? We’re always learning and growing. And I’ve got my health goals too. So we’re all doing it together.

 

 

[12:00] Kristen Bowen: You know, Ashley, I love what you said. Taking that power back and literally stepping into that 100% accountability. And not laying the responsibility on a doctor or a Naturopath or a medication or a supplement. That’s the most important step that people can take is to step up and take responsibility for what goes in their mouth, what products go on their skin, what thoughts go through their head, and what supplements they’re choosing to utilize. It’s the most important thing that can happen. And sometimes it can be overwhelming. Because 100% accountability means you are taking some consequences for some choices that we have all made. And so sometimes that can be a little bit overwhelming. But it’s crucial that you stop chasing symptoms and you start building that strong foundation.

 

 

[13:01] Ashley James: Very cool. I love it. Well, your magnesium soak has been quite impactful on my life. And my son and my husband, we’ve all seen a difference. And, of course, when listeners go back and listen to Episode 294 and 341, they’ll hear me share more about that.

But I’ve been having problems with detoxing. My liver gets really congested very quickly. I’ve had inflamed liver. I’ve gone for ultrasounds and blood tests. And in the last four years, I’ve had these flare ups when I go to lose certain amount of weight. The liver just gets really congested, really upset, and it sticks out — actually, it pushes my ribs out. And I could feel my liver pushes out of me. It’s so inflamed. And I would taste heavy metals. I would smell burning rubber like coming out of my body. The smell of like a tire fire, basically.

And I, of course, feel really bad. And we couldn’t figure out what was going on with all kinds of, you know, experts. And it just hit me and this was a few – about two or three years ago, it hit me. Because the doctors were like, “Well, let’s  just — here take these vitamins. Take these herbs. Let’s keep supporting the liver.” But what’s going on? Like, what’s really going on? What’s the root? And I’ve realized that it was the heavy metals stored – my body was having problems processing heavy metals, basically. And that I needed to do something to support heavy metal

Chelation or detox on a very gentle level. I wasn’t willing to do pharmaceutical chelation just yet. But I wanted to try new natural things. And so I got a sauna, Sunlighten Sauna which I love and I’ve talked about several times. I started sweating which is a way to eliminate fat soluble toxins through sweat. And so I was doing that. I was eating the chlorella from ENERGYbits and have talked about that many times. Because that helps to remove the heavy metals.

And I feel like I hit a wall in terms of detoxification. My liver with numbers were still up.  All my, you know, liver enzymes were still up. I was doing all these things. I was getting some results from all of them. Everything I was doing, you know, going for walks, drinking lots of water, like absolutely everything that you could think of to support lymph and support drainage and support detoxification. But I was still hitting this wall. Anytime I’d lose a few pounds of fat, my liver would just really be upset.

And then I discovered your magnesium soak. And I remember the first time soaking and it was with you. You’re giving a health lecture in downtown Seattle. And as I was soaking, I started tasting heavy metals in my mouth. And I told you and you said, “Oh, that means you should probably throttle. And instead of doing it, you know, seven days a week. Do it like three days a week.” I did not listen to that advice.

 

 

[16:05] Kristen Bowen: [Inaudible 16:05].

 

 

[16:03] Ashley James: Yeah. No, I wanted – I started getting results. I mean, that day I started getting results. And so I just soaked pretty much every day. And within three or four days, the heavy metal taste went away. My liver inflammation went down. And of course, I was doing everything else to support the liver. I’m not saying that the only thing I was doing was the magnesium soak. But I felt like it hit a wall. And the magnesium soak helped me to get to the other side. And I have not had any – since I’ve been smoking for over a year, I have not had any liver inflammation or had any of those issues come up again. And I really feel that that was, for me, the missing key also. Like  in your story, the missing biggest key for you is the magnesium soak. In mine, I feel it was definitely the missing nutrient.

And I’ve been taking oral magnesium for years. But I hadn’t been able to get to that full cell saturation. And I noticed a big shift in my detox. And I noticed that sauna sessions are better. And I followed your advice and I soaked my feet in magnesium in my sauna.

 

 

[17:15] Kristen Bowen: That’s – me, I’m Sunlighten Sauna girl also. And to me, that is the ultimate of self-care when I’m in the sauna and I’m soaking in magnesium. That’s my favorite. But we have, literally, thousands of emails and notes that people – and private messages that people have shared with us that the magnesium has helped their detoxification process. And I just like to think of it – and I know this is a complete oversimplification- I love the visual though.  That the magnesium opens up the road. And your detoxification pathway goes from a one lane country road to a freeway. And it opens it up so that your body can do what it knows how to do. It just needed some magnesium to help process it.

 

 

[18:10] Ashley James: Absolutely. Like I said, I’ve had doctors on the show talking about the importance of magnesium just the other day. I had a doctor – a Naturopath that specializes in neurology saying the most important – one of the most important nutrients for the brain or the most important mineral, at least, is magnesium. You know, I’ve had a nootropics expert on recently talk about that magnesium is probably the most important mineral for the brain as well. And then and then other experts talk about detoxification.

Again, we go on and on in those other two episodes. So I really want to get to answering their questions. But I wanted to paint that picture that it has, in the last year of soaking with your magnesium soak, it has definitely helped me. And then for our son, it really helps him. It helps him calm down. He’s had some histamine issues because he’s allergic to certain foods. And if he is exposed to them or exposed to dust mites, he gets asthma and histamine issue. And the magnesium soak has really helped him. It helps his body calm down. It helps his neurology calm down. It helps the histamine calm down. So we noticed a big difference when he has the magnesium soak in his bath. And of course, he’s sleeping better at night.

And I’ve had a lot of parents buy the magnesium soak just for their kids to help them have better transitions for bedtime. When we’re deficient in magnesium, we have anxiety. Our nervous system is in a state of stress. We have problems falling asleep. We have restless legs. There’s over 200 symptoms of magnesium deficiency. So when people – it’s like when people ask, “Well, what is it good for?” It’s kind of like, “It’s good for everything.”

 

 

[19:55] Kristen Bowen: Sometimes when I’m doing classes, do you remember that late night Ron Popeil – I think he was one of the first infomercial guys. Because people will say, “Well, tell us what it’s good for.” Then I’ll say, “Well, how about you tell me what you’re working on and then let’s talk about how magnesium supports it.” And I do want to be really careful. Magnesium is not a cure all. It is the first place to start building for anything that went off in your body. Because it’s so important to trigger those enzymes and trigger those reactions that are happening in your body. And if you don’t have enough magnesium, those processes are not happening. You can have everything else in place. But if you don’t have the magnesium to act like the spark plug, it’s not going to happen. And so it’s so crucial that we not only soak in magnesium but that we understand our own personal burn rate. Because mine is going to be different than yours, Ashley.

 

 

[21:00] Ashley James: Yes. We’re going to get into that. I want you to teach us how to maintain our magnesium, how to discover burn rate, and the best ways we can hold on to it.

But first, I’d love to dive into the questions that the listeners have that they’ve posted in the Learn Through Health Facebook Group.

 

[21:14] Kristen Bowen: Oh, let’s do it.

 

 

[21:16] Ashley James: Yeah, let’s do it. Okay. Let’s see here. I have here Stephanie asks, “I’d like to hear more about getting rid of the parasites. Last time Kristen talked about the cherry powder – the acerola cherry powder helping with parasites as well as celery juice. I have the acerola cherry powder but I’d like to know more about getting rid of those nasty parasites. Like, how to do it? And what’s the best protocol?”

So you did touch on this in Episode 341. We talked about how you rid your body of parasites. Do you want to give Stephanie a bit more information?

 

 

[21:55] Kristen Bowen: Let’s see. Stephanie, let’s start here. Let’s make sure that you are not leaking your power. The power of your voice determines the power of your digestion. I cannot tell you how many times that as women will claim the power of their voice that their digestion improves. And it is such a strong pattern. And so really watch where you are not using your voice. Or even for some women, it’s over using their voice. And for some women, it’s under using their voice. So really start watching that pattern.

Another thing that you can do is, obviously, soaking in the magnesium and making sure that you are keeping that cortisol in check. Cortisol, we need some cortisol but many of us are cortisol addicted. And that’s what we’re using to run on for energy. And if you’re doing that you will never, no matter the parasite protocol that you choose to use, you will never get rid of parasites. Because that cortisol – that excess cortisol, that stress level, is creating a beautiful environment for them to thrive on. And so watching those stressful moments.

So for example, for me, one of mine is technology. I am a technical immigrant. I know there is a beautiful language out there that will make my life better. And sometimes I hand my power over to that technology when it’s not working for me. And that’s where I really have to watch losing my power, getting frustrated. And so being able to identify, Stephanie, these are the things that my stress levels go up. And writing those down and identifying those areas and then coming up with an action plan, what will I do?

So for example, right before Ashley and I got on, Microsoft locked me out of Skype and they text me the number and I’d enter it and then it would lock me out again. And I felt my cortisol levels going up. And so I had to take a deep breath and ask myself, “Is this going to matter in five minutes?” And the answer was no. It was not. And that helped decrease those stress levels. And so really watching your cortisol, and knowing where your triggers are, and being able to bring them into the light, because if we keep those triggers in the dark and we pretend they’re not there, we feed them. So bring them into the light. Acknowledge this is an area that I get stressed out on. And then come up with some viable options to walk away from that response is one of the most important things you can do to get rid of parasites.

 

 

[25:01] Ashley James: I love that answer. Because from the physiological standpoint, when you are cortisol addicted or when you’re running on cortisol, you’re on your way to burn out. But there’s a compensatory phase. It’s phase two of — phase one and phase two, acute and compensatory phase of adrenal burnout. Acute is you are almost always elevated in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening. You have trouble falling asleep because you’re just go go, go, go, go, go go.

And then at some point, the compensatory phase is – probably most people listening are in compensatory phase right now. Because the compensatory phase, you’ll maybe wake up with low cortisol but then you have a huge spike at noon or you’ll start like having a spike near dinner. And so you still have sleep problems but you’ll feel exhausted half the day and, like, wired the other half of the day. And you’ll start to self medicate. So extra Starbucks or extra vitamins or looking to the doctor for pharmaceuticals. That’s when people really start to self- medicate and start to listen to podcasts for answers.

And then the third one is complete exhaustion. And that’s where cortisols are low every single moment of the day. And they’re absolutely 100% doing something to self-medicate, whether it’s natural, caffeinated tea, or some kind of prescription medication. But, absolutely, they’re feeling so out of it from adrenal exhaustion that their cortisol levels cannot rise to normal.

And I was there. I was in complete burnout. Over ten years ago, I did the saliva test and I was diagnosed with absolute cortisol burnout, adrenal fatigue. So I know how it feels to be in all three stages. But when you describe being addicted to cortisol, so those first two stages, the body is out of the healing response and it’s in the fight or flight response. And when that happens, the body is shunting blood away from the core, away from the organs, and away from the digestive system towards the limbs so that we can run, run, run.

But the problem with that is, now, we have oxygen starved, nutrient starved digestive system and organs. And that’s, like you said, the perfect breeding ground for the parasites. So no matter how many herbs we take to kill the parasites, if we’re in that state of stress and addicted to cortisol, like you said, and that all starts with the mindset, then the body cannot go into healing mode. So I love that you pointed that out. Because that’s so great. Instead of just trying to sell us some – like sell us the next great parasite cleanse, you’re telling us the root. The root of it is that we need to get in touch with our stress response. And make sure that we’re in the healing mode. Because in that state is when the protocols will actually work.

 

 

[27:59] Kristen Bowen: You know, I had a client – I’m so grateful for the people that I get to work with, Ashley. She came to me and, actually, someone else was paying for her. And she didn’t have the money. Their family had just hit really hard times. And she said, “Look, you can’t tell me go buy this and go buy that. It’s too expensive to be healthy.” And I told her, “No. That is a lie. It is not too expensive to be healthy. We can start with the basics.” And I said, “If you promise me that you will work on the basics, I promise we can get you feeling better.” And so that’s what we focused on. We focused on her sleeping patterns, getting to bed on time, waking up in the morning. Getting that beautiful sunshine in through her eyes so that her body could produce the melatonin because your body’s pulling it in the morning to produce it at night.

Got her going to bed on time, staying hydrated, and those little pieces of, what I call, grandma wisdom.

She did more in that six weeks than clients that I’ve been working with for a year that could afford all the supplements. Because they were using that ability to go be able to buy everything to walk away from that personal accountability. She didn’t have that. She didn’t have the freedom. Her family was literally destitute. You know, they had been through incredible financial loss. And because of that, what she viewed then as a hardship that now she looks back and she says, “That’s the greatest gift I ever received because I learned how powerful I am in those choices.” And she was able to create better health in six weeks than women who had all the money, chasing all the protocols, chasing all the supplements, going to all the naturopaths, doing all those things, because she didn’t have any other options.

And I think it’s so important that our listeners understand that. You can’t expect to be healthy if you’re breaking natural law. There are some natural laws that you will pay the price if you break them. If you’re going to bed super late, lower your expectations for how healthy you can become. There is a natural law and your body has a circadian rhythm. And the more we respect that circadian rhythm and the more we feed it darkness at night and light in the morning, the better we feel.

 

 

[30:46] Ashley James: I’m having the come to Jesus talk with Kristen.

 

 

[30:50] Kristen Bowen: Oh, are you a late night person, Ashley?

 

 

[30:52] Ashley James: Oh, yeah. I actually just set reminders on my phone to go to bed.

 

 

[31:00] Kristen Bowen: [Inaudible 30:59] text you tonight.

 

 

[31:01] Ashley James: Yeah. No, my phone reminds me every night, “Go to bed.” And I’m like, “Really? It’s that time already? “Go to bed.”

 

 

[31:07] Kristen Bowen: I know.  And it’s interesting because it gets – the deeper we’ve been in adrenal fatigue, the harder the body fights to obey that natural law. And I will have people come to me and there’s some studies out there that say, “Oh, there’s a certain percentage of people that are night owls.” And I have seen those night owls – professed night owls turn their body around and turn their health around when they respect natural law. And they give their body darkness at night and light in the morning. And when you do that, that cell that mitochondria, it starts to function and set itself. And it triggers other things happening. And it’s a beautiful thing.

And it’s grandma wisdom. It’s things are grandma, “Are you eating enough vegetables? Are you going to bed on time? Are you drinking water? Are you hydrated? Are you managing your stress?” It’s that grandma wisdom. And sometimes, you know, it’s easy to go chase down a perfect supplement or a perfect diet, eating protocol. But in reality, it’s those foundational pieces that we must put into place if we want to claim the ultimate help to really lift and serve and love on those people around us.

 

 

[32:33] Ashley James: Beautiful. And then you talked about the protocol that you did in Episode 341. You talked about the turpentine and the acerola cherry powder, and of course, soaking in magnesium.

 

 

[32:47] Kristen Bowen: My husband when I brought home turpentine, he looked at me and he said, “Kristen, I have supported you in all of the things that you have tried.” Because I’ve always got some concoction bubbling or brewing. And on that one, he was like, “I just can’t watch you do this. And have you done the research? And what if this makes you sicker?” And once I shared with them and showed him we’re not talking turpentine like what I grew up with my dad. The synthetic turpentine that my dad used to clean paint brushes with. I’m not talking that type of turpentine. But when you get the right type of turpentine, it can end. And once you’ve set some things in place – you don’t start with turpentine. If you start with turpentine, you are not going to feel well. But once you’ve set some things in place and then if you still feel like you’ve got some hookworms going on that turpentine, boom, they’re gone.

 

 

[33:51] Ashley James: Right. And it’s a natural extract from, like, pine, pine trees or something.

 

 

[33:56] Kristen Bowen: Yes. Turpentine. And I think, Ashley, I’ll send you that link. Don’t you do show notes?

 

 

[34:00] Ashley James: Yes.  Please send the link. 

 

 

[34:01] Kristen Bowen: Okay.  I will send you the link to that so you can throw it in the show notes. I just grabbed mine off of Amazon. But there’s only one company that tested something that I would put in my body and it’s from pine. And it’s not the synthetic version. But boy, I couldn’t get rid of hookworms. I get half of them. But that’s a disgusting experience to get half of the hookworm because you know where the other half is. It’s still inside you. And so that turpentine just annihilated it. And it was just a huge – it created this experience for me of,  “This is easy to be healthy.” Where I have worked it and worked it and worked it and worked it, like many of your listeners have.

And once – personally, for me, once I got on top of that parasite issue, my health became so much easier to manage. And to have that really optimal where I woke up this morning just ready to go, excited, had the energy to follow through on the ideas that I experienced this morning. And it’s just is easier and easier to experience that once I got on top of my parasites.

 

 

[35:24] Ashley James: Very cool. And was there anything else you wanted to add that you didn’t tell us about just for Stephanie’s question? Because you told us that you done, like, a lot of different things to get rid of the parasites. And that magnesium plays a really big role. You talked about the celery juice because celery juice helps to increase hydrochloric acid production. Magnesium, a variety of reasons why that’ll actually help to remove the parasites. And that’s not drinking it. That’s just soaking in it. And the acerola cherry powder, which is really high in vitamin C. A whole food plant based source of vitamin C. And then you did the turpentine. Is there anything else that was really important about –

 

 

[36:06] Kristen Bowen: There are two other layers, Ashley, that I really love. And one of those is a product called My Miracle Tea. And it’s a herbal blend. And when I received the product – people send me products to try. And they know if I love it, I’ll talk about it. And it’s to the point now that I have to create pockets of time to try all the products that people send me. And I’ve had this one for quite some time over a year. And you know, I looked at the back and I thought, “Okay. That’s something I’m willing to put in my body.” But I’m not super impressed. Like, you know, I’ve tried all those herbs before. And then I finally tried it. And his quality of herbs that he has, he still grows them himself. And he stresses them because for an herb that increases the healing quality of the herb. And the My Miracle Tea was very, very beneficial in releasing the microscopic parasites.

And I’m a huge believer, if you play a pattern anywhere, you play that pattern everywhere. And the My Miracle Tea didn’t get rid of the big parasites. But it does start the microscopic parasites leaving. And it’s like once that exodus starts, then it’s a step to start releasing the bigger parasites. So you start with the small ones and then go to the big ones. So that was super beneficial.

And then the other one – and I don’t know – if I can’t remember if we’ve talked about this on your show. I don’t know. Maybe should I text it to you to see if you’re okay.

 

 

[37:48] Ashley James: It’s okay. Go ahead. I’ll edit it out if it’s a problem.

 

 

[37:54] Kristen Bowen: Okay.  I should – anyway, I’m a huge coffee bum club.

 

 

[37:58] Ashley James: Okay. Yes. Coffee enemas. Don’t worry about it. You’re in good company. Many listener regularly does a coffee enema.

 

 

[38:09] Kristen Bowen: My clients would be like, “Are you in the coffee bum club?” I am a huge – I love coffee enemas. And I know that there are some people that will say, “Oh. They don’t work. They don’t -” and I just say, “You know what? Try it yourself. See if they work for you” Because they are one of the most healing modalities for my husband and I. And there’s something that’s very simple, very inexpensive. You can do them at home. And you just feel better after. And they were a huge part of helping me to get rid of the mucus. I got a lot – I had a lot of mucus. And so I love, love the coffee enemas.

 

 

[38:57] Ashley James: Got it. And there’s a right way and any wrong ways to do it. It’s not regular coffee. It’s not roasted. So it’s like a blonde – it’s almost like a green coffee. It’s not roasted. It’s organic. You take about one to two tablespoons for about three to four cups of water and you, basically, boil it and then let it cool to body temperature. And then you can

also add – some people choose to add one drop of essential oils. You can do that. There’s specific ones for liver. The reason why people do coffee – and I found this fascinating. Of course you can Google it and watch YouTube videos about it. It’s that there’s a vein – near the veins. It’s escaping me. It’s like the portal vein. And it’s it goes from the rectum that goes around the rectum and then goes up to the liver really quickly. And this vein takes blood from the colon, from three other organs, and brings the liver to process all the toxins out of.

And so by placing – you don’t have to fill your entire colon with coffee. It’s just the rectum. You just need like one or two cups, really. You don’t need a whole bunch of it. It’s not like the American philosophy of more is better. You just need a little bit and hold it in the rectum for 15 minutes. And when we do that, the blood is taking a little bit of the caffeine so it’s best to do it in the morning. Not right at night. A little bit of the caffeine but this type of coffee, because it’s not roasted, doesn’t have the oxidative damage from roasting. So it takes the caffeine, delivers it to the liver, and actually agitates the liver to produce something like 10 times more glutathione which is the master antioxidant in the body. And that’s just one of the benefits. It does many other things.

But just the fact that it has this huge simulation to the liver –

 

 

[41:08] Kristen Bowen: It’s amazing.

 

 

[41:09] Ashley James: How many times a week did you do coffee enemas?

 

 

[41:11] Kristen Bowen: You know, it varies. It depends on what my goals are. When I was in the thick of that parasite protocol, I was doing them every day. Because my stomach would become so bloated and painful. And doing the coffee enema would release the parasites and I would feel better. And so I do them now, probably – I don’t know – four to six times a month. Back in the day, I sometimes would do two or three a day. And one of the things on the internet, they’ll say, “Oh, you don’t really watch for your electrolytes. You can wash out your electrolytes.” And I’ve never seen anyone have an electrolyte issue doing coffee enemas.

 

 

[42:00] Ashley James: Yeah. I’ve never had – I’ve never heard of that problem either. But I guess if people get really overzealous –

 

 

[42:07] Kristen Bowen: Yeah. They could get overzealous. So you want to – you know, you want to be smart and you want to make sure that you’re hydrated. But they were one of the most healing parts of that protocol and brought me incredible relief. I love coffee enemas.

 

 

[42:24] Ashley James: This miracle tea, I just looked it up, it looks really delicious and very gentle.

 

 

[42:30] Kristen Bowen: It is very gentle.

 

 

[42:31] Ashley James: You’d think it would have senna or something in it to force sort of the bowels to evacuate. But it doesn’t. It has very gentle herbs in it. Persimmon leaf – persimmon leaf – yeah – persimmon leaf, Malva leaf, holy thistle, marshmallow leaf, ginger, and chamomile. So it’s gentle, really nice on the gut, and it helps to remove – like you said, begin to remove those – but in a very gentle way – begin to remove those microscopic unwanted bugs from our body. I’m going to make sure to link to that in the show notes to the podcast. As well as everything else that you that you recommend people do to support their gut health during a parasite cleanse.

So that was Stephanie’s question. I’m sure other people had those questions because we did get into talking about your parasite experience as you were on your way to healing your body from, basically, your deathbed. And you found that killing – removing the parasites was one step closer to optimal health.

 

 

[43:45] Kristen Bowen: Yeah. And please, for those that are listening, don’t jump into a parasite protocol and tell you have worked on the cortisol issue. If you are being run by cortisol, it doesn’t matter what you buy to get rid of the parasites. You will just reproduce another breeding ground for them to grow again. And it’s crucial that the mindset work is done first. You cannot be a cortisol addict and expect a parasite protocol to work. You just have to do that mind work first. And sometimes it’s easy to jump into, “Okay. I’ll buy this and this and I’ll take it and then I’ll get better.” But this one is absolutely crucial that you are on top of managing that stress cortisol before you jump into taking care of parasites.

 

 

[44:39] Ashley James: And one of the most helpful things I have found for managing my cortisol is taking the time to do the self-care with my magnesium soak. So I’ll soak my feet while reading a book or listening to music or being in the sauna. Or I’ll get in the big bathtub and soak in the bathtub. And that is my me time to make sure that I’m de-stressing. And so we got to do things to bring the cortisol down. And self-care is really important throughout the day.

But like you said, in those times of stress, we need to switch gears. We need to mentally switch gears. I love that question you ask yourself, “Is this going to matter of five minutes?” And maybe, “Is this going to matter in five years?” You know, if we’re really stressing about something, is this going to matter in one month? Like, just get that in the grand scheme of things. The freaking out about something is actually not helping us. Because once we’re in stress mode, our body shunts blood away from logic centers of the brain. So now we can’t think clearly anyway. So the more you’re stressed about something, the less we can actually think clearly. So it’s best to take that breather. Get that it’s in the long term not going to matter. And then come back to center. So we can lower the cortisol, lower that adrenaline response, and then get our brain back.

 

[45:59] Kristen Bowen: You know, Ashley, when people will come to me and say, “Kristen, I have tried everything.” At that point I know that the probability that we have a cortisol addiction is incredibly high. That’s why things aren’t working because that cortisol is holding them hostage. It literally is holding them back from experiencing the very thing they say they’ve wanted. So if that thought has ever crossed your mind, “I’ve tried everything. Nothing is working for me.” Let’s look at that mindset issue and managing that cortisol.

And, Ashley, Sunlighten — I think you have a coupon code for Sunlighten don’t you, Ashley?

 

 

[46:40] Ashley James: Yes. When I got mine – I got my Sunlighten, I said to my listeners are going to be hearing about this. So I talked to the company and they give free shipping. So that’s like $500 off. And then they give – they call me up periodically and tell me some specials that they’re going to give our listeners. But on the regular, they always also give $100 off accessories. And my favorite accessory if you get the wooden sauna is the bamboo pad, because it just makes me more comfortable, and the bamboo pillows. But if you get like the solo system, which isn’t the wooden sauna but it’s actually a portable system you can just put in your closet when you’re done using it. Then you might want their – they actually have a cream that you can rub on your body that makes you sweat more. And then they have bamboo towels and that kind of thing. So that’s really neat that they give us the free shipping and they give us these other specials for their accessories. Awesome.

In the thread we have in the Facebook Group you asked our listeners if they would be interested in learning about hormone health. And seven listeners jumped in and said, “Heck, yes.” Of course, we definitely want to learn more about hormone health. So there’s seven different comments there about how to support women’s balanced hormones in any stage in their life. Did you have some advice you wanted to share with us in the interview today?

 

 

[48:17] Kristen Bowen: I would love to. Hormones are something that can make or break our relationships with those people that we love. And if we’re letting those hormones run out of control, they really start to disintegrate those connections that we have with people. And I’m always telling my clients, healthy women are connected women. And they’re connected to other people deeply around them. They’re not women that sit around and scroll on the phone while there’s 20 people around them that they could be interacting with. They’re connected in the moment with where they’re at. And hormones can make or break that connection. And so it’s something I think that’s so important.

And it comes back to some more of that grandma wisdom. Because our hormones are very connected to that circadian rhythm. And we need light in the morning and dark at night. And if we’re giving our body, the quality of our hormone balance will be better.

So for example, in the morning, I love being up as the sun is coming up. It’s one of the most peaceful inspiring parts of my day. That early morning, watching that sun come up, collecting sunshine for that pineal gland, and just standing there in that beautiful sunlight. And then what happens is that early morning light, our body uses that to produce melatonin to produce in the dark. As it gets darker, our body kicks in melatonin production. And when we have strong light in the morning and strong darkness at night, we find a better hormone balance.

So when you go to sleep at night – so many women are sleeping in rooms that have little slivers of light that are disturbing that natural balance. So for example, I sleep with a little eye mask on. Because we’ve got one window that my husband needs right now for where he’s at but I don’t need that light. And so I just put an eye mask on. I make sure that I am not on computers or screens with that blue light two to three hours before I go to bed. And if I am, I have on some blue light blocking glasses to cut that blue light because that will cut that darkness and that melatonin production that we need at night. And just doing those two simple things can make the biggest difference in how we’re holding on to that magnesium.

When we have a strong morning light and a strong darkness at night, we actually hold our magnesium better. And magnesium is crucial in balancing those hormones. But it’s about our patterns and our self-care if we’re giving those things to ourselves and to our body.

 

 

[51:38] Ashley James: And not just sex hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, but all hormones. Even thyroid, even the cortisol, all hormones are affected by the circadian rhythm. The circadian rhythm can determine what your stress levels are. Your stress levels determine what your digestion – the health of your digestion.

I’m in the middle of taking a course through FDN, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. I interviewed the founder, Reed Davis, recently and joined his course. And when I’m finished – but it’s going to be in one or two months because it’s self-lead. When I finish the course, I’m going to be certified to be able to run labs. Really interesting labs, not like the kind you get when you go see your primary care physician once a year but, like, really interesting labs. And one thing I’ve learned through the course is that 25% of our T3 is activated in the gut. So if you go to the doctor and your T3 is down, way, way, way down, they might want to put you on some kind of synthetic hormone to bring your T3 up. Meanwhile, they didn’t even look to see why. And it could be totally gut related. It could be because your stress levels are out of balance. Your sleep is – you know, when you go to sleep and, like you said the routine of going to bed, not watching the blue light, which affects the pineal glands, which affects the body’s ability to bring us down into that state of relaxation for sleep. All of that can throw off digestion and can throw off the gut. And then the gut doesn’t convert the 25% of our T3 properly. And then we have T3. So the doctor – you go to the doctor, and you say, “I’m tired all the time.” And they’re like, “Oh. It must be the thyroid.” And they test the thyroid. “See, yup. You’re T3 is down. Let’s give you some synthetic T3.” Meanwhile, it was all that other stuff that actually created it.

 

 

[53:39] Kristen Bowen: I just got an email yesterday from Sharon. And Sharon have thyroid problems. She had no sex drive. And she had really started putting weight on in her belly, you know, cortisol weight. And about three weeks into working with her. She emailed me and she said, “I cannot believe it was this easy. I just needed to be in the sunshine in the morning and go to bed on time at night in a dark room.” Her thyroid had gotten better. She had dropped a couple of pounds. She still has some – you know, I’m not saying, “Oh. It all went away overnight.” But the scale started going down. Her mood was better. And it was just respecting that circadian rhythm with light and dark.

 

 

[54:26] Ashley James: I love it.

 

 

[54:28] Kristen Bowen: And [inaudible 54:29] numbers went up. Because she started holding her magnesium better.

 

 

[54:35] Ashley James: And we’re going to get into that. That’s something we’re going to talk about today after we get through these questions. So I’m excited for you to teach that.

Is there anything else you wanted to touch on about balancing hormones before we move on to the next question?

 

 

[54:48] Kristen Bowen: Balancing hormones, salt. I think salt is really crucial. I kicked into some hot flashes. We had a little bit of recent stress in our home. And I wasn’t able to do – during that external stress, I wasn’t able to get the sleep that I normally got. And it kicked in some hot flashes for me. And it’s amazing to me what a glass of salt water can do to reduce hot flashes. It’s your body crying out for minerals when you have a hot flash. And so I had salt in my purse, I put it in some water and I drink it. Now, for someone who’s been in full on hot flashes for a while, salt water isn’t going to be enough. But if you’re just starting into them, giving your body that little shot of minerals can actually reduce that hot flash. And it was just incredible. And so making sure that your voltage is strong and salt water is a part of that, salt is a part of that, and so drinking that and water can be super beneficial on hot flashes.

 

 

[56:00] Ashley James: I can see – so if someone had that – if someone had a deficiency in salt or someone didn’t have enough, it can definitely be beneficial because – and I’ve heard this from other doctors that when our cortisol center, adrenal are going to attack. So you went through – and I know what happened in your personal life. You went through something that was ultimately a good thing but it was very stressful for the family to go through. And it was just something you had to take in stride but there was a lot of restless – sleepless nights as you helped a family member through health event. And in recovery afterwards.

 

And so you were – you’re still being her caregiver but you are a caregiver and you were a caregiver. And so you were like a nurse, you had to stay up at night and –

 

 

[56:50] Kristen Bowen: And sleep was really – you know, I did that when my kids were little. But it had been a long time since I’ve had that interrupted sleep where you’re up every two hours. And it really took a toll. And I could see a difference in my hormones. And so adding those minerals and really bumping up those minerals brought me back into balance.

 

 

[57:12] Ashley James: Right. And when the body – when we’re also in a state of higher stress and the body goes from – you know, you’ve been very responsible with managing your cortisol and then all of a sudden, boom, your body’s need for cortisol go through the roof. Because we need to have the high cortisol if we’re going to pull all nighters if we’re going to be a caregiver for someone who’s sick then we’re going to – or someone who’s in recovery, we need that cortisol. But that your body then exhausted your mineral supply faster, your magnesium faster, your salt faster. And so just drinking that glass of salt water every morning, in that instance, would be beneficial. So some people may not notice the benefit because that’s not what they were deficient in. But for those who are all of a sudden in a more stressful event will notice a positive benefit.

And I like that you intuitively listen to your body and made a little glass of salt water. How much salt would you put in this glass? Because I’ve done this before and I gagged because I probably put way too much. So is this like a teaspoon? Is this a tablespoon?

 

 

[58:20] Kristen Bowen: I use the Selina Naturally. That’s my favorite salt. And I use the coarse grain that they have. Because when – the type of salt that is, the color – not all salts the color will indicate the level of minerals. But on this type of salt it does. And the course salt has more minerals than the fine grained. And so on the coarse salt, I would use about a quarter of a teaspoon and about four to six ounces of water. And the interesting thing is, it depends on your cortisol need and your salt needs.

 

So I was in a higher cortisol state of being. And so sometimes I would do that two or three times a day. Sometimes I just did that once a day. It just depended on where those stress levels were. And that hot flash would kick in, I would drink that. And by about the fifth day, the hot flashes quit kicking in.

 

 

[59:22] Ashley James: Nice. Very cool. And you recognize what was going on and you probably started doing more self-care even though you were in a situation where you had to put yourself second, temporarily.

 

 

[59:35] Kristen Bowen: Yeah, there were – like this morning I woke up and I had time set aside. And when you’re in that – when you’re a caretaker and in that crisis situation of life or death, you don’t say, “Oh, excuse me. I’m going to sit in my sauna for an hour.” And there were a lot of times that that self-care – boom – went out the window. And I wanted it going out the window because it was my husband and he is my – you know, he was the priority and helping him and lifting him and making a difference. And so there were some times that self-care wishes, boom, gone. But salt water was easy. And it was so beneficial to me and it really helped keep my adrenals nourished during that really intense time for him and I.

 

 

[1:00:24]  Ashley James: And he’s doing amazing.

 

 

[1:00:25] Kristen Bowen: He is. [Inaudible 00:28].

 

 

[1:00:28] Ashley James: He is doing fantastic.

 

 

[1:00:30] Kristen Bowen: Really, really well. And learned a lot. We’ve learned, we were really able to lean in. And one of our goals was that we observed the intense emotions that we experienced with the loss. And for those of you that aren’t aware, my husband he was born with vascular issues. He doesn’t have enough veins. And so we had double amputation below the knees. And so we were really – as we went through that loss together – and he went through it definitely differently than I did. We were really able – and this comes into that mindset issue. We decided beforehand we would start focusing on observing our emotions instead of leaning in and experiencing them. And it really made a difference for us and we rode less of a roller coaster. Because we would – the emotion would happen but we would observe it instead of embracing it and riding that wave of up and down, and sadness and loss, and all of those things. And so learning how to observe that emotion really helped him and I stay in a better place during that whole experience that is still happening. But the day we’re recording this podcast in three days, he gets a second leg. So boom, we’re having a second leg party in our house.

 

 

[1:01:58] Ashley James: That’s awesome. Yeah. The prosthetic. You’re getting the prosthetic in three days. It’s very exciting.

 

 

[1:02:03] Kristen Bowen: Yes. We are very excited. He tried it on and they took it away. And I think it was the saddest look I’ve ever seen on his face. But they still had to do some fitting. And so they’re just finishing up that second fitting. And then he’ll go in and he’ll get to take it home and start practicing and reworking his body and teaching his body how to walk on his new legs.

 

 

[1:02:29] Ashley James: What I thought was really interesting when you first told me he was getting his legs amputated, I immediately went, “Well, what can we do to prevent this?” And, you know, ” We’ll do some research together. Let’s figure this out. You know, we got lots of experts we can lean on.” And what I thought was really interesting is you said the doctors really wanted to amputate his legs 20 years ago. And that’s when you kicked in and said, “I am going to help you get as healthy as possible.” Because he was born with less veins than his

body needs. So it’s baked into the cake. Right? But you were able to extend it 20 years. You were able to give him 20 years with both of his legs because of all the natural medicine and the magnesium soak and supporting his health for 20 years. So kudos to you and your husband for leaning into natural medicine for that long. I think that was cool.

 

 

[1:03:25] Kristen Bowen: It was so interesting, we were at Stanford and they were doing some procedures to help increase the blood flow and trying to save the legs. And the doctor walked out and she looked at us and she said, “If I wouldn’t have seen that with my own eyes, I would not have believed it.” And we were like, “Well, what did you see?” And she said, “His body has created thousands of little teeny tiny micro arteries trying to get blood flow to his legs.” And she said, “They have kept him going for years.”

And it was – our bodies are amazing. And so a lot of people look at it like, “Oh. He lost his legs.” But we look at it like, “Wow. He kept his legs so much longer than what he should have been able to because of his body and his ability to try different things and try to give his body what he needed to build up that blood flow to his legs.”

 

 

[1:04:32] Ashley James: Very cool. Awesome. Well, I love following you on Facebook and following you and your husband’s journey. And it’s really inspirational what you guys have done and what you guys are doing.

Naomi says, “Yes. I love liquid magnesium. And just ordering my second bottle,” in the thread where I’m asking for questions.

Lina asks, “One, when taking a bath, does it matter if I use a quarter cup or half cup of magnesium?” Your liquid magnesium, obviously. “I mean, does it make a significant difference in uptake in the magnesium?” So she wants to basically know should she make the bath more concentrated or is a quarter cup enough?

 

 

[1:05:16] Kristen Bowen: So here’s what we found when we did the thermal imaging, your body can’t uptake more than a quarter of a cup. So it’s just wasting the magnesium. And you want to make every drop count toward uptake in what your body is utilizing. So adding half a cup isn’t going to get you to cell saturation any faster. So I, personally, wouldn’t do it. And I make sure that my family has a measuring cup. I have attached it to the magnesium jug so that they’ll measure it out. Because your body just doesn’t have the ability to uptake more than a quarter of a cup of magnesium.

 

 

[1:05:54] Ashley James: Got it. And for small children, it’s an eighth of a cup.

 

 

[1:05:57] Kristen Bowen: An eighth of a cup. And I always say, waist and below is an eighth of a cup. Waist and above, even if there is still a child, if they’re above your waist, then it’s a quarter of a cup.

 

 

[1:06:10] Ashley James: So if the child is shorter than below your waist, they’re an eighth of a cup?

 

 

[1:06:14] Kristen Bowen: Yeah. I have a nephew that both of his parents – one is 6’3″ and the other, I think, is 6’4″ or 6’5″ and he’s six or seven and already – I mean he is tall. And so even though he’s “a child,” he is so tall, he does need that adult dose. And so really looking at their body size. But just a ballpark, just below the waist, an eighth of a cup. Above the waist, quarter of a cup.

 

 

[1:06:44] Ashley James: Got it. She says, “If my toddler throws a bunch of plastic toys in the tub, does it decrease the uptake? You mentioned not to use a plastic foot tub for foot soaking. So I was wondering if this would decrease the uptake too. I’m dying to know because my toddler threw about 20 plastic animals in the tub last week while I had magnesium in there.”

 

 

[1:07:05] Kristen Bowen: I wish I knew. We did not even think to put plastic toys in the tub when we did the thermal imaging testing to see if it made a difference. So I don’t know. I don’t have anything to pull from on this one.

 

 

[1:07:21] Ashley James: So I have an intuition. And that is the reason why – just for listeners who don’t know, listen to Episode 294 and 341. You instruct people when they’re doing the foot soak, so just get a basin put five or six cups of warm water and it could be cold water too. I had a friend says, “I’m not going to soak during the summer because it’s too hot.” I said, “You could use cold water.” The temperature doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s really nice because we don’t have air conditioning. So in the summertime, I’d soak with cold water and I’d still get the same great results. But you, basically, get a few cups of water and then you get the fourth of a cup of magnesium – the liquid magnesium, put it in there and then soak for 40 minutes to an hour.

I like to do the full hour because I want to really make sure I caught every drop into my body that my body is going to absorb. But you said, “Don’t use a plastic basin because we noticed that in the thermal imaging people wouldn’t uptake the magnesium when they use plastic versus ceramic, glass, or metal.” And my intuition is, it has to do with grounding. That plastic insulator does not allow for the electrons to flow. But all those other materials would conduct on some level. And so I think it has to do with conductivity. Because you said that in the bath – because a bath isn’t necessarily made of metal or glass.

 

 

[1:08:52] Kristen Bowen: Oh, right. Most of them have plastics, right, that have been put on them. And that’s why I thought, “Oh no. This is affecting – ” because I soak in the bath and so I thought, “Oh my goodness.” But in the bath, it was up taking just like it was in the foot soak. And so it’s that moldable plastic that they’re using for bowls that just stops the uptake.

 

 

[1:09:17] Ashley James: Right. But a plastic – these tubs that are made from some kind of material that isn’t glass, you know, ceramic or metal, it’s still going to conduct because the bathtub is attached to the faucet which is grounded.

 

 

[1:09:36] Kristen Bowen: Right? I think that it would but I don’t – I just never done anything to make sure. But I would think that it would still update.

 

 

[1:09:45] Ashley James: Yeah. And one thing to test is to see does your toddler get really calm and sleepy after a bath with magnesium in it. And if they do, do they have the same calmness after a bath with 20 plastic toys in it or with no plastic toys in it. So that would be my thing. But I really think it has to do with conductivity. So that would be really cool to go back and do the thermal imaging and experiment with being grounded or materials that are conducting versus insulated.

Her third question is, “So much number two above, does it matter if I use plastic cup to rinse my body in the tub? I have been using a glass mason jar just in case.”

 

 

[1:10:25] Kristen Bowen: And again, I don’t think so. But I didn’t do any thermal imaging on that. But I wouldn’t think that it would affect the uptake.

 

 

[1:10:35] Ashley James: Her next question, what are your thoughts on using soap to wash the body while doing a magnesium soak? Does soap decrease the uptake of magnesium?”

 

 

[1:10:46] Kristen Bowen: We had – we use body wash and we use a natural handmade soap. And we did notice a slower start when people used just a typical off-the-counter body wash – a more chemical access body wash. And we did notice a slower uptake but it did still uptake but it just started a little bit slower.

 

 

[1:11:13] Ashley James: So it kind of like, at the beginning, coded the skin. And then stopped the body from absorbing it but then it kind of washed off.

 

 

[1:11:20] Kristen Bowen: Yeah. So it definitely – it made it for a slower start. But once it got started, the uptake was the same.

 

 

[1:11:28] Ashley James: Okay. I love this next question she has. “Does pee decrease the uptake of the magnesium? My toddler pees right when I set him in the bath.” My son does the same thing. I’m like, “Why didn’t you -” he’s four-and-a-half. He’s potty trained. “Why didn’t you go in the potty? The potty is right there.” The second you put them in hot water, they’re just – they get -you know. Yeah. But she wants to know –

 

 

[1:11:50] Kristen Bowen: Okay. So on this one, I do have some feedback on. We grabbed a bunch of little kids. I wanted to know if you put two kids in the tub – and because I know when my kids were home and young, I popped everybody in the tub. I wanted to make sure, is everybody getting magnesium? Like let’s say, you put two kids in the tub and a quarter cup for you and eighth of a cup for you, eighth of a cup for you, quarter cup total. Are both of them pulling up the magnesium? And so a couple things that we – and the kids when we were testing them did the same thing. They all peed and it would make any difference whatsoever. We saw no difference in the thermal imaging.

What we did see is when you have multiple kids in that bathtub, the one with the weakest levels of magnesium will pull more than the other one. And that was really interesting to me. So it doesn’t divide itself exactly. Like, “Okay. You got this eighth of a cup. And you got this eighth of a cup.” And so one of the children would get more of the magnesium than the other one when there was more than one in the tub.

 

 

[1:13:04] Ashley James: Right. That’s very cool. And so if you have multiple children, should they just put a bit of extra magnesium just in case one is absorbing more than the others?

 

 

[1:13:16] Kristen Bowen: You know, I wouldn’t. It wasn’t enough that it I felt like it was something that we need to even address with parents. There was a small difference. And so I would still just do that quarter of a cup for each and celebrate the fact you got them in the tub, you got the magnesium in, and they soaked. And as you continually do that, both of their levels are going to go up.

 

 

[1:13:39] Ashley James: Lina’s last question which I think you’ve already answered. “How much should I use in the tub for a one-and-a-half year old?” And a one-and-a-half year old is not going to be waist high unless they’re my husband who was six-foot-seven by the time he was 14.

 

 

[1:13:54] Kristen Bowen: [Inaudible 1:13:54].

 

 

[1:13:53] Ashley James: Yeah. Yeah. He was towering over – I think when he was like six years old, he could, you know, basically could buy alcohol because people – he was just so tall. When he was one-and-a-half, he was so tall. So unless your child is like really, really, really tall and above waist height, you’re giving them an eighth of a cup in a bath.

Now, does it matter how much water is in that bath? Like, I’ve got one of these three person –  like, this triangular three person bath? It’s huge.

 

 

[1:14:23] Kristen Bowen: No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter.

 

 

[1:14:25] Ashley James: So concentration of water, the magnesium doesn’t matter. The body is going to uptake it.

 

 

[1:14:29] Kristen Bowen: I’m sure at a certain point if the tub – you know, if the container that they were sitting in got bigger and bigger, it would make a difference. But we did the thermal imaging on just regular, what I would call, [inaudible 1:14:43], you know, a small bathtub. And then we did some in large, very spacious, jetted tubs. And we didn’t see a difference from the size. I’m sure, eventually, if the size got large enough, it would dilute how much you are actually coming in contact with. But the size of the tubs that we used, it didn’t.

 

 

[1:15:05] Ashley James: Got it. Great. Cindy says, “I’d like to know the science behind the absorption levels.”

 

 

[1:15:12] Kristen Bowen: So absorption levels, so back in the 50s the FDA thought and assumed and everything was based off of our skin is like an armadillo pad and nothing goes through it. And we know now that that was bad science because, you know, nicotine patches and all sorts of – hormone patches and all sorts of things that we put on our skin. We know our skin is our largest organ. And so we’re just utilizing that largest organ to get that magnesium in. Because think about it, if synthetic – oral magnesium is synthetic. It’s been heated. It’s been put into a powder. No matter which kind it is, it’s still synthetic magnesium. If synthetic magnesium got you healthy, we could all eat cold cereal and get enough magnesium from our cold cereal. Synthetic magnesium doesn’t move your cell saturation levels. And that is always my goal to get to cell saturation. And so taking it in through your skin is a way that we can bypass the gut, which is beautiful because so many people have compromised digestive systems. And that’s an issue. And so we’re just using our largest organ to get that mineral in and move those numbers.

 

 

[1:16:44] Ashley James: Awesome. Very cool. And you notice the difference when you start soaking in it. I’ve had magnesium intravenously before at a Naturopath’s office. They called it the Myer’s push. It’s a concoction of big, huge syringe, maybe four ounces full of different vitamins and minerals. And the biggest mineral being magnesium. And they warn you, don’t stand up right away. Like, just sit for a few minutes after having it. So they take maybe five minutes or, maybe ten minutes to slowly push it in into your vein. And while it’s happening, you begin to taste the B vitamins. And then you start feeling high and that’s the magnesium. You start feeling out of it. You start feeling warmth in your whole body. Because magnesium opens up all the blood vessels and then if you stand up too quickly – because your blood pressure goes down because all your blood vessels open which lowers the blood pressure. And if you stand up too quickly, you’d get dizzy. And so I’d always have to sit there for a few minutes. Just enjoy the feeling. And then go home

But that’s not realistic for people to get their magnesium levels up. Because not many doctors do it. You’d have to find a doctor that does it. And you have to pay and go every week to have magnesium put into your vein. So it’s definitely not sustainable. But when I first soaked in your magnesium, I felt the same effects. And I thought, this is really neat that I know I’m absorbing it because my body is showing me – is demonstrating to me the same feelings as if I had an intravenous magnesium.

 

 

[1:18:32] Kristen Bowen: And there’s two reasons for that, Ashley. One is, our magnesium chloride is not synthetically manufactured in the lab. It’s pulled from the sea. And the other reason is, we don’t water it down for profitability. I want you getting healthy. I want people experiencing health. I do have to keep a profit going in my company to make payroll and keep the lights on. But that’s not what drives me is profitability. What drives me is when I connect with people like you and they look at me and say, “That magnesium made a difference in my life.” And so our magnesium will never be watered down and we will never go with a lab version of magnesium. Because that synthetic liquid magnesium does not move your red blood cell numbers like a magnesium chloride that comes from the sea brine.

 

 

[1:19:27] Ashley James: I love it. Yes. The Zechstein Sea that you also test it to make sure there’s no metals. I love that you do that.

 

 

[1:19:35] Kristen Bowen: I’ve been burned too many times by companies. They’ll send you a test but it’s for five years previous. It’s not from the current batch. So I realized, “Okay. Their standard and my standards are different.” Because I had so many chemicals after those seizures and I had so many chemical sensitivities and my body had to react. And I needed to know what was going on and so I really started testing. And so we always run our own test before it goes on the shelf.

 

 

[1:20:12] Ashley James: Love it. Rachel asks, “I have been wondering about the benefits of soaking while pregnant. I’ve been doing the foot soak and I was curious about any stories Kristen has, if any.”

 

 

[1:20:24] Kristen Bowen: Oh, Rachel. I love it when a pregnant mama soak. Because when I was having – and this will date me. I have six children. They’re all launched. They’re adults and they’re launched out of my home. And when I was having babies, acid reflux was not something that was common among newborns. And now when you’re with a group of young moms and they’ve got their new babies, many of those babies are already on a prescription medication for acid reflux as newborns.

And the reason for that is magnesium deficiency in the mama. Because a mama can only give her baby as much magnesium as she has. And that magnesium is crucial to close that sphincter valve for that baby. I cannot tell you how many moms have come to us and said my first two babies were so fussy and so high maintenance and spit up so much. And we have them on medication for acid reflux. This baby that I soaked in magnesium during the entire pregnancy has been my easiest delivery and my easiest baby. Magnesium makes a difference. We want not only that mama to experience cell saturation but we want that baby to experience cell saturation.  Because we know how crucial magnesium is for the liver. And we want that liver strong. And being born with as much magnesium to kick in all of those processes that need to happen to give him or her a viable strong functional liver.

 

 

[1:22:21] Ashley James: Love it. Excellent. Oh, yes. So magnesium is so helpful during pregnancy and so helpful for the aches and pains that come with being pregnant.

 

 

[1:22:34] Kristen Bowen: You know, your family and you get excited about something, and as my business grows and more and more people will – you know, seeing the benefit of magnesium. And sometimes your family doesn’t get as excited. And sometimes it’s this pull. It’s like, “Oh, listen to me. All these other people listen to me. Why won’t you?” And my kids were teenagers. And I realized the more that I tried to get them to, the more they pushed away. And so I just thought, “Okay. When they are ready. I’m backing off. This is not a fight. I will fight with them when they’re ready. And when they’re leaning in, I’m here.”

So one of my daughters during her pregnancies was experiencing swelling. And so she reached out to me, she leaned in, and she said, “Mom, do you have anything that will help my feet? I’m swelling and my shoes don’t even fit by the end of the day.” I said, “Oh. I do have something. Could I bring you some magnesium?” And she goes, “All that stuff you always talk about?” I said, “Yes. I’d love to bring you some.” And so they used it. And, literally, feet went in the water. Little puffy, swollen toes and feet, and the tops. And you could tell she was just miserable. And the swelling so visibly went down that her husband called me and said, “Could we make sure we have a couple jugs of that stuff?”

And so sometimes when it’s family, you have to be really patient and you have to wait for a very long time for them to catch the vision of what your passion is. But during that pregnancy, magnesium is so critical. And if you’re retaining water and swelling, the magnesium, literally the first soak, you will see the difference.

 

 

[1:24:42] Ashley James: I love it. That reminds me – you know, I told you at the beginning that everyone that comes to my house to visit gets a soak of magnesium. And I am not kidding. Everyone does. A friend of ours who lives in Texas flew up here and was going to drive her car down from Seattle to Texas. And flying – she has some health issues and she’s gotten worlds better – worlds better. She was practically unable to get out of bed and very sick. And now, she is worlds better. But she still is working on some things. And one thing is edema. She lost 80 pounds of water weight. I mean, that’s how bad it was. But she would blow up like a balloon. She was poisoned by an old building that had PCBs and all these different chemicals, I can’t remember the names of, that was poisoning people. And now there’s a big class action lawsuit because hundreds of people were poisoned by this building. Her body just could not detoxify. She, like I said, blow up like a balloon. Gained 80 pounds of water weight. So she was on diuretics. Is doing much better the last two years.

But flying triggers a lot of that. So she flew here and her legs swelled up. She was wearing compression socks, but it was still very bad. And I got her in the magnesium soak every day while she was visiting. And she could not believe it. She’s never seen something. I mean, water pills weren’t even working. She could not believe it that after soaking for an hour, she pulled her feet out and said, “Look. Do you remember what my feet looked like? Like, look.” And it went from like elephant, where it’s just like there’s no difference between the knee and the ankle, basically, down to where you could see her toes and you could see the joints, you could see her ankle move. And then she drove so she had to sit. She drove all the way back to Texas and didn’t have the edema because she had soaked every day in magnesium while she was here. And she could not believe it. And she’s in the Facebook Group now and then raving about it. When people ask, “What do you think about that magnesium soak stuff?” So I love seeing that that people have that their body – it helps equalize the edema and helps equalize the water retention.

 

 

[1:27:14] Kristen Bowen: If I wouldn’t have seen the difference and if I would have just seen my daughter’s feet and not knowing it was my daughter, and if I would have just seen that online, I would have been like, “Oh. They doctored that.” That’s how drastic the difference was.

 

And flying is hard on people. And so one of the things that I do to help my body recover because I’m on the road a lot teaching classes and giving presentations, one of the things that I do is I’ll ship magnesium to wherever I’m going to be so that I can soak when I get there. Because I just feel better. It puts me back in my game. And for me, it decreases inflammation which decreases that achy joint kind of thing. And so I just send some. And then that way if I land, it it’s at the Airbnb or a hotel, it’s waiting for me and I can soak.

 

 

[1:28:08] Ashley James: Very cool. Now, why not – you know what? That makes me think of something. I’ve been meaning to ask you this off air so I’ll just ask you on air Have you ever thought about coming out with travel sized sample bottles? Because, you know, when we travel, we have to have – what is it? – like two ounces or less per container?

 

 

[1:28:30] Kristen Bowen: Two or three?

 

 

[1:28:31] Ashley James: Yeah. Maybe it’s three. I don’t know. But it’s these small little – and so I have a bunch of these little size bottles, like reusable, for when I travel. So I put my shampoo in one, conditioner on the other, body cream, whatever. And I was just – the other day, I looked at my travel – my empty reusable travel bottles and I thought, “I’m going to fill these up with magnesium.”

 

 

[1:28:56] Kristen Bowen: We actually had some that we sold for that very reason. Because I’m on the road a lot and said, “Okay. I’m wanting to take my magnesium with me. Let’s do a three ounce” At that time it was three ounce. It may have gone to two. But the problem that we had was they were leaking. And so we’ve haven’t been able to find a source. Like, we source some and they were really good and they weren’t leaking. And then we lost that source. And so we had about 6,000 bottles was all. And we blew through those really fast. So we’re always on the lookout for sourcing a bottle that doesn’t leak with them. But I would love to.

 

 

[1:29:39] Ashley James: Yeah. You guys are great about – I’ve never had a bottle from you guys leak. Do you guys – the way you package it is wonderful. So I’m always very grateful.

 

 

[1:29:50] Kristen Bowen: Every once in a while we do have issues. But it’s interesting to me, Ashley, it’s always from about October until the end of the year. Because mail – shipping goes up with holiday things. And sometimes those boxes are just annihilated. It looks like a Mack Truck run over the top. But I have to say, our shipping department is actually run by my daughter and she does such a good job. And if someone ever does have a problem that they’re magnesium leaked, all they have to do is send us a picture of the problem and we will send out a replacement. Because we want to take 100% responsibility that it did not get to you how it should have.

 

 

[1:30:33] Ashley James: Yeah. Well, I’ve had just 100% great experiences with your shipping. And you know, other companies I’ve had problems where I’ve had liquid shipped to me and it’s just exploded. And other companies are just, you know, the same thing. Send them a picture and they will refund me or they send me a new bottle. And it happens. We have to be forgiving to these companies.

 

 

[1:30:53] Kristen Bowen: Every once in a while. We don’t – it’s less than a half of a percent.

 

 

[1:30:58] Ashley James: Oh, that’s cool.

 

 

[1:31:00] Kristen Bowen: So it happened often. But man, when it does and you’re that person, it can be frustrating. So if a listener has that happen, please know, you send us a picture of what happened and we will send out that replacement.

 

 

[1:31:12] Ashley James: Awesome. Gretchen asks, “My husband wakes up in the middle of the night crying out in pain because he has a cramp in the back of his thigh or calf. What do you recommend for him? And then he does take supplements that are really high quality.” She mentions them but he has this problem. So he is on a multi-mineral and multivitamin and everything.

 

 

[1:31:38] Kristen Bowen: Right. Soaking in magnesium. We can’t get enough of that orally. And the type of magnesium that we have to take orally is not going to move the dial on getting to cell saturation. And so soaking in that magnesium is going to be crucial. And we just have hundreds of emails and messages and maybe even thousands now – probably thousands of messages saying, “My cramping has gone away.” For some people, it goes away with the first soak and it never comes back. Other people, it takes longer. And so it really depends on some things that are happening in your body how long it will take. But we can always get that to clear up.

 

 

[1:32:24] Ashley James: And for those who don’t know the physiology, the two major minerals in the body are calcium and magnesium. Calcium is used in the muscle to contract. Magnesium is used to relax. So when we have a problem with cramps, the muscle isn’t relaxing. There’s a magnesium deficit or an imbalance in the calcium to magnesium ratio because they should be two to one in the body – in the soft tissue.

But it’s so important. Magnesium and calcium are so important that when we’re deficient in it, our parathyroid will tell the bones – will create a hormone to tell the bones to release magnesium into the bloodstream and release calcium and other minerals into the bloodstream. So if you get – and this is something I want to talk about because you had posted recently about this. If you get certain blood tests, the doctors will be like, “Oh, your calcium-magnesium levels are fine.” But what they’re testing is the serum level. And that is always going to be high – or always going to be on healthy levels because the parathyroid will leach these metals from your bones causing osteopenia and eventually osteoporosis in order to compensate for the soft tissue. And so the blood test you recommend is the magnesium RBC test. Can you can you go into that just a little bit for those who didn’t hear about it in the other episodes?

 

 

[1:33:54] Kristen Bowen: I love the magnesium RBC test red blood cell because Magnesium so crucial for your body that it’s going to do everything it can to keep your serum at 1%. And so it just doesn’t give us an accurate picture of what’s really happening.

 

 

[1:34:14] Ashley James: When you get the serum test.

 

 

[1:34:16] Kristen Bowen: Yes. And so that magnesium RBC, we want ultimately to be between 6.3 and 7. And that’s where we want to stay. And that’s where that burn rate comes in, Ashley. Because, let’s say, you do the 30-day challenge and you get your magnesium RBC and you’re at 6.4. That’s awesome. But how do you stay there? And that will be different for you than it will be for me. How you manage cortisol, how much sugar you eat, how much sleep you get, all of those things will play a role in how you burn through your magnesium.

So for example, my husband’s amputations, fighting the insurance, they kicked him out, they denied a double amputee rehabilitation time. And it was incredibly stressful. Like, just every time I turned around, I was having to fight another battle. Plus, make sure I was taking care of him in the best way possible. So I knew I needed to soak every day again because I was just burning through that magnesium. Now, we’re out of that intense and we’re just in that learning curve. Normally, I have to soak one to two times a week to keep my magnesium levels where they need to be. But because we’re still – we have lots of extra doctor’s appointments, we have lots of people in our home, occupational therapists, physical therapists, and it’s just – we’re still in that learning curve of just one leg, getting them showered, and that kind of thing. I’m having to soak three times a week – three to four times a week to keep my levels where they need to be.

And so not only does that magnesium red blood cell test show you where your numbers are. It can show you how you’re burning through your magnesium. And so I’ve taken that a couple of times. And so I know how much I need to soak in really stressful times, how much I need to soak during holiday times, and how much I need to soak in the summertime. And so it can really give you personal feedback on what your body needs.

Because, Ashley, you and I have very similar goals, what we want. And we have very similar businesses. We’re both in the same industry but our burn rate is very different. And so that RBC test can help you and give you feedback for your own personal burn rate.

 

 

[1:37:01] Ashley James: Awesome. Since we’re on the subject, let’s cover it and then get back to the rest of the questions. The website and we’ll have a link to it is, walkinlab.com. And I think it’s, like, $50 for the blood test.

 

 

[1:37:18] Kristen Bowen: Forty-nine. And they run sales. Anytime you go to do that, if you don’t have – I’ve got a little thing on my laptop that scans for coupon codes. But search for coupon codes for Walk-in Labs, because there’s almost always a coupon code you can use to bring that cost down a little bit.

 

 

[1:37:39] Ashley James: And so we can go – and I don’t know about Canada or any other country. I just know that this website specifically is for labs in the US. But you buy the lab online and then they direct you to a local lab. You just bring the printout. And then they draw your blood, send it in, and then they’ll send you the results. So you don’t need to go see a doctor to have this blood test. And then, basically, for $49 or less, you have now received the results of where your magnesium is and where your levels are.

You said that when the first month when you do a 30-day challenge, you want to reach 5 – 5.0. But that is an optimal. That’s just kind of getting us in the ballpark. Can you talk about the ballpark versus optimal?

 

 

[1:38:26] Kristen Bowen: Absolutely. So one thing I want to throw in about the labs, I have a really good friend who lives in South Dakota, who actually teaches magnesium classes and will do magnesium classes. And so she went on and got the lab and then went to see where she needed to go. And her lab was six hours away because she’s in a very rural area.

So for example, I live in Morro Bay, California and I have 30 labs within 15 minutes of me. And so please make sure, before you buy that test that you’re in an area that there’s a lab that’s within drive-able distance. Like, where my warehouse and retail are in Logan, Utah, I have to drive about 30 minutes. So it will really vary depending on where you live in the United States.

 

 

[1:39:15] Ashley James: Sure. And you might –

 

 

[1:39:16] Kristen Bowen: So just [inaudible 1:39:17] throw that out.

 

 

[1:39:18] Ashley James: Right. Right. And you might be able to talk to a local doctor’s office into doing it or your PCP might be willing to draw the blood if they draw your blood normally. So you might be able to figure something out if it’s, like you said, within like, six hours drive away.

 

 

[1:39:35] Kristen Bowen: Doctors didn’t even have access to that lab. But more and more I’m hearing back from people, “Hey, my doctor was able to pull that lab and my insurance paid for it.”

 

 

[1:39:46] Ashley James: Oh, cool.

 

 

[1:39:46] Kristen Bowen: Yeah. So there’s a real shift coming that way. And three years ago, there wasn’t a doctor that had even heard of that. And now I’m getting feedback from more and more people, “Hey, my doctor had that lab available on his list of what he could ask to be done for me.” So always ask, you know, the worst thing that will happen is, they say, “No. We don’t have access to that lab.” But if you don’t have that you can always go to walkinlab.com.

 

 

[1:40:14] Ashley James: Got it. And it’s not walking labs. Don’t put the S in. Because it’ll just be -it’s just a broken site if you put the S in. It’s walkinlab.com I learned that the hard way.

And yeah, I love your recommendation of ask. Worst case scenario, we’re stuck back where we were at the beginning but at least we could ask. You’re really on the cutting edge. You know, it’s like you said three years ago, people hadn’t even heard of this blood test. And now, doctors are starting to get connected. So you are on the cutting edge.

 

 

[1:40:47] Kristen Bowen: I love the relationships that I’ve been able to build within the western community – western medical community, especially those that are really into collaborative communication. And because I think western has some things to offer us and I think we have some things to offer Western. And I think a lot of doctors and nurses, we have some amazing doctors and nurses, and they recognize they are working within a very broken system. And the breakdown of that system is creating an opportunity for them to look somewhere else. And the benefit of that is, they’re starting to look at better solutions. It’s happening but very slowly. I do want that to happen faster, but it is happening and that’s a good thing.

 

 

[1:41:40] Ashley James: Excellent. So yeah, let’s get into just understanding – getting to cell saturation. So you’re getting to 5.0. In the first month of soaking, you’re getting to 5.0. If you were to do the blood test, you’re getting a 5.0. And then the next step is getting to optimal Can you explain why 5.0 is sort of – it’s in the range of good but not optimal? And what is optimal?

 

 

[1:42:04] Kristen Bowen: Okay. So we used to – when we started, we used to have what we call the 21-day challenge. And in 21 days, we wanted people soaking, you know, every day to get their numbers up. And that worked. And then we started noticing 21 days was not enough for some people to really move the dial on that magnesium RBC number. Because as a society, we’re getting more stressed and sicker. And so we realized we needed to make it a 30-day challenge because we wanted people seeing that dial – that RBC number move. So within a 30-day challenge, we want to come to a 5. But you’re right, 5 is not optimal.

But the thousands of magnesium RBC tests that I have looked at with people that they have taken, when they’re at a 5 we know that their magnesium numbers will move up as they soak. Because sometimes people will soak and nothing happens. They’re moving very, very little. And that percentage, we don’t want that. We want them testing to make sure that their numbers are moving fast enough. So if they test after doing a 30-day challenge and their number is 4.2, we know we have a crack in their foundation. And I cannot tell you how many women have soaked for years and they finally go get tested. And they’re like, “Kristen, I’ve had benefit from the magnesium. But I just did a 30-day challenge and I only tested at 4.7.”

Just think if they would have known that four years ago when they started testing, we could have addressed the crack in their foundation versus them soaking for four years thinking they were doing optimal health magnesium soaking for their body. So in my opinion, it’s really crucial. Because if your numbers aren’t moving, we need to look and find out what crack is happening in your foundation. And how can we go in and support that so we can get those numbers moving?

 

 

[1:44:30] Ashley James: Right. So it’s part of the discussion about maintaining your optimal levels once you reached it. But if you’ve never reached optimal, if you’ve never got to 7 – 7.0, for example, no matter how much you soak, then you’re burning faster than your body can absorb. And magnesium being a major nutrient the body needs, It’s easier to identify. Right? Like, “Oh, wow. It’s really – no matter what we do, we can’t reach optimal.” Just think of the 59 other minerals, what’s happening to them? What’s happening to your levels of the other nutrients in your body? Because if your body’s burning through magnesium quickly, it’s burning through those other ones as well. And there’s so many symptoms that arise from mineral deficiency that people brush off as normal aging. Right? But they’re not.

I’ve seen people have a reversal in gray hair because they were copper deficient. They didn’t know that copper deficiency can cause early gray hair and premature lines and wrinkles. For example, I don’t recommend people go out and get a copper supplement. It’s more of a hole – you want all the minerals together. But if we’re burning through our minerals quickly, and like you said, how we have cracks in the foundation of our health, we’re going to start to see our body degrades faster, sooner. So we want to be able to reverse that and discover those cracks.

Can you give some examples of cracks in our foundation? I know we’ve already talked about not going to sleep on time and not managing our cortisol, not managing our stress. What other cracks in the foundation are really common?

 

 

[1:46:24] Kristen Bowen: So one crack is about lifestyle. And in that lifestyle, we would put their eating habits, their sugar intake, their sleeping habits, and their mindset. Are they always looking at the glass half full? And so that’s a lifestyle crack. On the nutrient crack, it can be an alkaline acidity issue and if they’re just too acidic. And so one thing that we can do to very quickly course correct that is have them drink some baking soda. But you have to be really careful because drinking that baking soda, if you are low in hydrochloric acid, it can drop you even lower. And so we don’t want that to be a long term solution that you’re doing that every day. But it can jumpstart your body up taking that magnesium and get your numbers moving.

Another thing that it can be is a boron deficiency. More and more people are experiencing a boron deficiency. And so adding a boron supplement can help. Minerals need buddies. And boron is a buddy to magnesium. And so adding a boron supplement can help you uptake and hold that magnesium longer in yourself. And another nutritional deficiency it can be is B vitamins. And so taking a good whole food B vitamin or – I’m a bee pollen girl. I want that natural. And so I do a combination of both. I take bee pollen and a whole food B vitamin, and that can be another crack also.

 

 

[1:48:09] Ashley James: Very cool. Yeah. I got my boron concoction right here on my desk. And listening to and following your advice on how to prepare it – and that’s in Episode 341. I believe we get into.

 

 

[1:48:27] Kristen Bowen: The second one we did, we talked about that one.

 

 

[1:48:27] Ashley James: Yeah. The second one. Right. Yeah. And boron is also just like vitamin K2. For example, it’s necessary in laying of healthy new bone tissue. So the body – obviously, the body is always creating bone tissue. Every seven years we have a new skeleton. And we want to as we age – especially as we’re aging, we want to maintain healthy, strong mineral foundation in our bone tissue. And boron helps to do that. People who have bone spurs like in their wrists or in their feet, that is – or some kind of arthritis where there’s bone spurs, that is a symptom where the – showing that the body’s minerals are out of balance, especially the boron, vitamin K, and the calcium-magnesium because the body is unable to lay bone correctly.

And I’ve seen people who had bone spurs after they corrected it. So they started taking boron. They started getting calcium-magnesium in their body. They started eating healthier. They were correcting that issue. Their body reabsorbed the bone spurs. So the bone spurs went away and the body started laying healthy strong bone tissue afterwards.

 

 

[1:49:54] Kristen Bowen: My bone spurs are gone. I can [inaudible 1:49:54] sandals. And it is something that is so doable for people. It’s not out of reach to get rid of those bone spurs.

 

 

[1:50:05] Ashley James: Very cool. And the boron that we talked about in Episode 341 is very affordable.

 

 

[1:50:12] Kristen Bowen: A little outside of the box.

 

 

[1:50:15] Ashley James: You know what? I looked into it more after we talked about it and started discovering other people in the health space doing exactly what you recommend. And there’s articles on it. And there’s lots of episodes of other podcasts talking about it. And there’s lots of health people doing it. So it might be out of the box for some people. It’s very normal for others. But people are getting really great results. And that’s a point.

 

 

[1:50:39] Kristen Bowen: I think one shout out people with PCOS, it is not a good fit for them. Because it will increase their body converting estrogen to testosterone. So it is not a good fit for those people with PCOS.

 

 

[1:50:56] Ashley James: Would there ever be a time when it is? So once they have corrected the PCOS.

 

 

[1:51:00] Kristen Bowen: Yes. Absolutely. But it’s not where they start. Because it will make that testosterone conversion worse. And we don’t want to make that worse. And so it’s a game changer for me. It keeps my arthritis, just my symptoms, my pain down. I love it. But it is not a good fit for those with PCOS.

 

 

[1:51:25] Ashley James: Got it. Very cool. Now, Lori asked a similar question to Gretchen, “Does magnesium stop leg and foot cramps? What are the possible causes of leg cramps?” And we did talk about it, that magnesium being the most important thing. But sometimes there are other things like potassium. Can you touch on that?

 

 

[1:51:44] Kristen Bowen: Yeah. That voltage issue. We want to make sure that voltage is really strong and potassium is a part of that voltage. And so a lot of people don’t realize we need 4,700 milligrams a day of potassium. And you need to be getting that from your foods, your diet. And so a lot of times that cramping will go away with magnesium. But when it doesn’t, or when it becomes more severe, we know we have a potassium issue. And so getting that potassium from potassium rich foods, coconut water, lentils, avocados, eating 4,700 milligrams a day is crucial. And you’ll see it in your skin. You can tell when someone has that potassium voltage in their skin because their skin just glows.

 

 

[1:52:38] Ashley James: Now, most minerals we can’t get from food adequately because of the farming practices. But potassium is one of those minerals we can get from food because farmers will put NPK, nitrogen potassium -and I am totally blanking right now on the other one.  I’m going to kick myself in a second if I can remember. But we put potassium in the soil as part of fertilization. And so I wish they put all 60 minerals in the soil. Sixty minerals and elements, I wish farmers did that. But unfortunately, we don’t. We stopped doing that about 100 years ago. Farmers used to put ash – wood ash in the soil. They burn a forest and put that in the soil. Or we’d all have our own gardens. A-hundred-and-fifty years ago, everyone had their own garden. It was very common. And of course, we heated our house and we cooked food on a wood stove. And we’d always take the wood ash and put it out into the garden and mix it in our soil. And wood ash, the minerals is minerals from the tree that’s leftover. And so we would always remineralize our soil. Up until electricity, we stopped needing wood stoves. And then we started – instead of having these little tiny farms and putting wood ash in soil, now it’s big industrial.

Unfortunately, how we farm now and, unfortunately, with the chemicals, they spray, these chemicals on the soil chelate minerals. So we’re not getting our minerals from the food, unfortunately. And we’re seeing more and more nutrient deficiency and, thus, people getting great results with your magnesium. Now your soak also has other minerals in it. So we’re actually getting other nutrients as well. Is that correct?

 

 

[1:54:29] Kristen Bowen: So when you pull – when you’re using a magnesium that comes from the sea that’s made from brine, depending on what nutrients – and they really shift and they vary, and so when you’re using that brine, you’re getting the cofactors that help support the uptake of that magnesium. The reason that we don’t list those is they change every single – every single time, they’re changing. But that brine does have other nutrients that will help you to uptake that magnesium.

 

 

[1:55:06] Ashley James: So there’s some co-factors to magnesium in there naturally? Yes. Now Gord says, “I don’t remember this being covered in the last show. I’m cheap. So instead of soaking, I’m applying 20 sprays a day directly to my skin. It stung too much using it straight. So I mixed it with jojoba oil and now it’s good. Is this an acceptable –

 

 

[1:55:28] Kristen Bowen: [Inaudible 1:55:29].

 

 

[1:55:31] Ashley James: You love jojoba oil?

 

 

[1:55:33] Kristen Bowen: I’m loving that she asked this question so that I can help people understand.

 

 

[1:55:38] Ashley James: So yeah, so I mixed – he says, “I mixed the jojoba oil and now it’s good. Is this an acceptable way of using the oil? If so, how do you dose it?” I’m assuming it’s a guy asking because his name’s Gord. But it might be the his wife on his account. So either way, this person is taking some of your magnesium mixing with jojoba oil then spraying it on their skin. And they’re wondering Is that enough to absorb the magnesium and get to full cell saturation?

 

 

[1:56:06] Kristen Bowen: Right. So the first question I have for them is, what are your goals with magnesium? If your goal is getting to cell saturation, that will not do it. So 20 sprays a day will give you some magnesium and that’s great. But it won’t move your RBC numbers. And the fact that it stung when you sprayed it on, that is a sign that you are very deficient and so your body pulled it in really fast – too fast and that’s why you get that stinging. And we find 100% of the time, when people soak in magnesium that stinging factor, that tingling ,some people call it, always goes away. Now when you take the magnesium spray and you add the jojoba, you incredibly huge amounts slow down the absorption factor because of the oil.

So for example, our magnesium lotion is formulated for babies. It has oil in it and it slows down how much magnesium can go in through the skin. The oil does. And it will never get them to cell saturation. It will help to relieve muscle aches and that kind of thing. But it will not get them to cell saturation. And it’s the slowest way to get magnesium in the body. So adding that oil is actually really negating if your goal is to get to cell saturation.

 

 

[1:57:38] Ashley James: Very cool. So he should use a quarter cup and soak and do it every day. Or he could spread it out. He could try doing it every two or every three days to see because he wants to save money. So you are frugal. I know that you don’t like to have people waste the money. You don’t like to waste money.

 

 

[1:58:02] Kristen Bowen: I don’t. I don’t want – it kills me when I see – like, a little piece of my soul dies when someone comes in the shop and they were in two weeks before buying magnesium. And I’m like, “What are you doing here? I just talked to you two weeks ago.” Because I know that families are budgeting and there’s a lot of places for that money to go. And I just – I don’t want them to use half a cup thinking I’m getting more benefit. You’re just wasting half of your magnesium. And so I just want to help people maximize their dosage and use the least amount possible for the maximum benefit. And that’s my goal.

 

 

[1:58:49] Ashley James: Right. And that’s how I figured out that the optimal level for adults is a quarter cup. And that we don’t actually absorb much more than that. And I believe when we talked about the numbers – and you can you can clarify later. I know you’ll go back and look at all your science data that you have in your Google Doc. But you had told me in the last episode that it was about 24 grams of magnesium in a quarter cup. And then when you test the water – because they’ll send the water to the lab – after someone soaked that four grams are left. And so we’re absorbing about 20 grams of magnesium per soak. And that the body will only absorb as much as it needs so you can’t overdose.

But when I looked at the tingling – because you’re right, I have it on all my skin directly concentrated. I’ve had that happen. Like, it splashes on my skin, it doesn’t burn, it doesn’t tingle. But I remember when I first started using it, it did. So that’s really interesting that the tingling –

 

 

[1:59:57] Kristen Bowen: It always goes away, Ashley. That is a sign of magnesium deficiency.

 

 

[2:00:02] Ashley James: So interesting.

 

 

[2:00:03] Kristen Bowen: Extreme magnesium deficiency. Not just we’re low in magnesium. But when you go and get those people their RBC tested, they’re coming in between two and three usually when it’s tingling on their skin like that. They’re the ones who need it the very, very most.

 

 

[2:00:23] Ashley James: Really cool. So that would be a great experiment for people to try. To put it directly on their skin – on a patch of skin and see do they have burning or tingling or none at all. And if they do have that sensation that their body is sucking it in really quickly.

 

Letty says, “I have a question. I finally ordered my magnesium foot soak. And the first time I did it, I had an ache in my calf and skipped the day. The next day I got a major pain on my side for at least four minutes. Not sure what the deal was with that. Any ideas?”

 

 

[2:01:00] Kristen Bowen: Usually, that’s a hydration issue. When we see the pain moving, like one time it was in their foot then it was their side, then it was their shoulder. Typically – not always but typically that’s a hydration issue. And so we’ve got to really increase her hydration when she soaks in the magnesium.

 

 

[2:01:18] Ashley James: Got it. And that’s something that I found really interesting that those who are dehydrated will have some pretty negative effects after soaking. Because magnesium – when we increase the magnesium in our body, magnesium actually uses some of our water inside of us making us more dehydrated. So we need to –

 

 

[2:01:42] Kristen Bowen: Right. I always say magnesium shines the light on the problem that you’re experiencing. So if it makes you tired, Ashley, it’s shining the light that you are low in potassium. If it makes you cramp, it just shines the light on what’s happening in your body. If we understand the communication and the language that it’s talking in.

 

 

[2:02:06] Ashley James: So if they soak in magnesium and they’re wired, they’re just like – and they were expecting to calm down and go to sleep. But now they’re just totally wired. What’s it shining a light on?

 

 

[2:02:16] Kristen Bowen: Really tired and wired adrenals. And their adrenals went crazy pulling up the magnesium and didn’t know what to do with it.

 

 

[2:02:27] Ashley James: And so when they’re really exhausted after doing – like, they just fall asleep after they soak, you’re saying that’s a potassium deficiency?

 

 

[2:02:36] Kristen Bowen: Potassium and tired adrenal. So they’ve got two things going on. Super tired adrenals and not enough potassium in their diets.

 

 

[2:02:44] Ashley James: And if they get cramps, you’re saying aches or pains or cramps that are moving in their body.

 

 

[2:02:52] Kristen Bowen: [Inaudible 2:02:51] that are moving. What I do is I just keep it, like, a Google Sheet where we transfer it all over to a Google Sheet. And we’re just keeping all of people’s experiences so that we can recognize the patterns. What are the patterns? What are happening for people? And those pains that move when we went back to them and said, “Okay. Let’s try water.” Almost all of them went away when they would increase their water and continue soaking.

 

 

[2:03:20] Ashley James: You mean water intake. Like they would drink eight ounces of water a day.

 

 

[2:03:24] Kristen Bowen: Yes. Yes. Water intake, not just the water and they’re soaking.

 

 

[2:03:26] Ashley James: Right. Right. So they had to really hydrate their body and then you notice that the aches and pains went away. What if they start soaking and then they just get leg cramps or calf cramps? And it’s not like moving pain but it’s calf cramps. Would you say that that is a –

 

 

[2:03:41] Kristen Bowen: That’s usually a synthetic calcium issue. So they’ve taken synthetic calcium before and it’s breaking up.

 

[2:03:50] Ashley James: And what’s the solution then?

 

 

[2:03:52] Kristen Bowen: That one, they need to really keep their magnesium levels up to break up that synthetic calcium and really keep their hydration up. And then they need to determine how much of the cramping they can handle. I am someone who just wants to barrel through. Once I understand, it’s like okay. If I know that that’s what’s happening, I just want to barrel through and get it done. Some people are like, “Ah. I don’t want to do that every day.” Well, determine how often you’ll do it because it’s going to be a process to get that done. And then I love having them add some chia seeds that have been soaked in water. And that seems to really help that cramping. Chia seeds are so loaded and usable calcium. And when you soak them in water, the polysaccharides that happen along with the soaking really benefit that calcium cramping from synthetic.

 

 

[2:04:48] Ashley James: So when you say chia seeds, you’re ingesting it. You’re not putting it in your foot soak. 

 

 

[2:04:52] Kristen Bowen: Yes. Yes. Ingesting. Thank you for helping me clarify.

 

 

[2:04:53] Ashley James: Sure. Sure. I just imagined, I was like, “Oh, yeah. Put chia seeds in my foot soak. It be like a day at the spa.

 

[2:05:00] Kristen Bowen: No. No. Ingesting. Yeah, ingesting.

 

 

[2:05:03] Ashley James: How much chia seeds you say? Like one tablespoon a day, ground –

 

 

[2:05:09] Kristen Bowen: I use about a tablespoon in about eight ounces of water. And they want that to sit for about 20 minutes. Because when we’re doing that, we’re really increasing the polysaccharides and the benefits of the chia. And it just gives our body more benefit. And so drinking at that point at 20 minutes out seems to really be when that helps with that synthetic calcium cramping.

 

 

[2:05:36] Ashley James: Awesome.

 

 

[2:05:36] Kristen Bowen: Oh, and then there’s one more. Sometimes people when they soak, the heels of their feet will just crack like crazy. There’s just cracks. And that shines the light on an omega-3 deficiency.

 

[2:05:53] Ashley James: Very interesting. I had that happen to me. Ha, ha, ha. So what would you do for the omega-3 deficiency? Or what have you seen help? Would you see that adding flax and chia seeds?

 

 

[2:06:08] Kristen Bowen: I do – I know a lot of people will do flax and chia seed for that. My body has never been able to uptake omega-3s from flax and chia. And so a good fit for me is cod liver oil.

 

 

[2:06:24] Ashley James: Yeah. You know, some people really respond well to the plant based healthy fats. And some people need to step it up a notch with fish. And we need to be willing to experiment with our body. And also know that the source is clean, whatever we’re taking.

 

 

[2:06:44] Kristen Bowen: I fought that one for four years. Because I wanted to get it from plants. And I just kept trying and trying and trying. And it just – I don’t understand why, but my body just does not uptake from the flax and chia. I love flax and chia. They’re super foods. And I get other benefits from them that I’ve never been able to personally convert that into an omega-3 change. And so for me, the Rosita Cod Liver Oil within three days, my body – that went away. And that omega-3 started really making a difference.

 

 

[2:07:22] Ashley James: Oh, very cool. And so the cracks went away really quickly. But you must have also noticed other benefits like hormonally as well.

 

 

[2:07:30] Kristen Bowen: Oh, definitely. Because your hormones need – and I think omega-3 is like a bridge. And they create a bridge in your body. And you can have all the hormones that you need. But if you don’t have a strong omega-3 fatty acid bridge, the hormones can’t walk on it to get to each other. And so that omega fatty acid profile connects your hormones. And so there was an incredible hormone balance that I experienced also.

 

 

[2:08:00] Ashley James: Very cool. All right. Getting to the end of the questions. Bonnie says, “If your thyroid was removed, what can you do for improved health? This might be off topic but please go over the benefits of her enzyme and cherry powder.”

 

 

[2:08:15] Kristen Bowen: Okay. So when the thyroid is gone, you really need to be working with someone who is helping you to re-balance your body with those thyroid hormones. And testing the complete picture. Not just part of it. And so that’s something that you have just got to find someone that’s helping you do that. The reason that I love enzymes is enzymes help your body to uptake and utilize more of what you’re taking in and make it think of like smaller pieces. And so it’s easier for your body to utilize the goodness of things and it’s increasing that energy factor.

And then the acerola cherry powder, I love because it’s a whole food that has a strong copper core. And that helps to re-balance that copper issue that so many of us have.

 

 

[2:09:12] Ashley James: Yes. That’s right. I remember that you said that he has the copper, which is so needed in the production of elastin and collagen. And that copper deficiency can lead to aortic aneurysms. So just some – we don’t want to take it synthetically just copper on its own. We want it a whole food source.

 

 

[2:09:36] Kristen Bowen: No. No, no, no. You know, some people will say, “Oh, magnesium is overwhelming.” And I definitely want to listen to that and understand why they’re getting overwhelmed so we can cross that bridge. But when you think about it, you soak in magnesium and we get those numbers moving. Copper is the one that – you can’t just take copper and move your numbers. It’s a much more layered process. And so getting it in foods is crucial.

So many of us are not eating because copper in the soil and there’s just lots of details. And so getting it from whole foods is crucial. And the acerola cherry that we import, it’s grown in a permaculture system. And that permaculture system means that they’re focused on the land and rebuilding the minerals and nutrients. And so because of that, it has a strong copper core. And I just love it. I love what I see it do for people. It helps convert from T4 to T3 because of that copper. It helps with the collagen. You can see a difference in people’s skin. You can see a difference in their immune system. If people’s hair is breaking because of a thyroid issue, you see that change in the first couple weeks of using it. And it’s not only valuable as a vitamin C but when you combine that copper core it has because of the way it’s grown and because of the way it’s processed, it just makes for a super food.

 

 

[2:11:13] Ashley James: And it tastes really good. I like it. I like it.

 

 

[2:11:18] Kristen Bowen: [Inaudible 2:11:18].

 

 

[2:11:19] Ashley James: Sorry?

 

 

[2:11:20] Kristen Bowen: Do you think it tastes good?

 

 

[2:11:22] Ashley James: I do think – I like it. I like the flavor.

 

 

[2:11:23] Kristen Bowen: It’s not one of my favorites. I take it and I’ve figured out a way to take it that I enjoy it. But it took me a little bit to get to that point. But some people love the taste of it.

 

 

[2:11:34] Ashley James: It’s not strong. It’s not strong. I really like the flavor. But you know, I drink a lot of water so, I guess, I dilute it. I don’t drink it super concentrated. But I really – I like the flavor. You know, compared to vitamin C powders out there, which are just so tart. It’s not tart. Anyways, I find it enjoyable. Maybe my body craves it because it knows it’s really good

Now you give us a discount and I’m so thankful. So listeners who want to try your acerola cherry powder or the magnesium soak can use coupon code LTH. Get a discount on those. And I love that you do that for us.

 

 

[2:12:12] Kristen Bowen: One last thing, can I throw out on the acerola cherry powder, Ashley? And we get a lot of questions on this one. They’ll say, “Kristen, it’s a different color than that was the last bottle I purchased.” We test our acerola cherry powder because they can actually add fillers, and they’re called stabilizers. And because they’re non-food intended, they don’t have to tell you what’s in the food. What it does is it makes the color consistent. I don’t want a non-food stabilizer added to my food to make the color consistent. And so a spring berry is going to be different than a fall berry in color. And so to me, when I see the variance, that’s the variance of nature. And I celebrate that. That means there’s not a stabilizer and the non-food additive put in my food to make it look consistently the same every single time. But we’re so used to that, that when we see something that does have variants we kind of worry. But that’s because we make sure that that non-food additive and stabilizer is never a part of the acerola cherry powder.

 

 

[2:13:22] Ashley James: Very cool. That’s such a great explanation. But the spring berry and the fall berry being different colors maybe they have a different phytonutrient profile.

 

 

[2:13:33] Kristen Bowen: Absolutely.

 

 

[2:13:35] Ashley James: But they offer the – they still are – like, you’re testing it to make sure that there’s vitamin C, and copper, and no heavy metals, and no pesticides or whatever. So you’re testing it for purity.

 

 

[2:13:47] Kristen Bowen: Yes. But the rainfall can make a difference. You know, how much rainfall that season got. And so there’s variances in nature and I want to see those in my food because that means I’m eating real food. Not food that’s been covered up and marketed to me that is one thing that it’s not.

 

 

[2:14:10] Ashley James: Very cool. Awesome. Well, thank you for that explanation.

Now Jennifer asked – and I love this question – “I’ve been doing the soaks for almost a year. I love them!!! I would like info again and why each of the ingredients needs to be added. How they work in the soak? Epsom salt, baking soda, and boron. Thanks.”

 

 

[2:14:31] Kristen Bowen: That’s a great one. So Epsom salts add sulfates. Magnesium chloride does not have sulfates. So Epsom salts – and I think it – was it the first one, Ashley, or the second one in our podcast interview that we went deeper into the Epsom salt?

 

 

[2:14:48] Ashley James: I feel like we did it in the second one, 341. But I just really want to clarify because so many people keep asking. “I’ve soaked in Epsom salts for years. Isn’t that enough? Don’t I get enough magnesium for soaking in Epsom salts?”

 

 

[2:15:00] Kristen Bowen: No, they don’t. They do not. Epsom salts are great for sulfates. And those are good for your liver. Magnesium chloride does not have sulfates. But Epsom salts cannot get your body to cell saturation. There’s not enough magnesium. So I add them and I just add a cup into my soak. Now I soak in the bathtub. So if you’re soaking in a foot bath, you may want to do a half a cup. And so that’s how much I add of the Epsom salts to make sure that I’m getting those good sulfates.

 

And then the boron, I just add a pinch, whether it’s in a foot bath or whether it’s in a bathtub. And then the baking soda, you can add anywhere from a quarter a cup to a half a cup in your foot soak. And then in my bathtub, I like to add more than that. I like the charge that I feel in the water. And so I’ll add a couple of cups in my water in the bathtub.

 

 

[2:16:03] Ashley James: Now, I didn’t do any of that.

 

 

[2:16:05] Kristen Bowen: And you don’t have to.

 

 

[2:16:07] Ashley James: I didn’t do any of that. I just soaked with the magnesium.

 

 

[2:16:10] Kristen Bowen: Keep it simple and just soak in magnesium. And that’s what I did for the first 15 years. It’s just recently we’ve learned different benefits that people have experienced. And so absolutely you can keep it simple, soak in magnesium. But if you do want to add some extra things – and please note to those people listening, I do not add them every single time. The most common soaking for me is straight magnesium. If you want to though, make sure that – like let’s say your numbers are not moving, add some baking soda in that water. It’s going to help the uptake. Add some boron in that water, it’s going to help the uptake.

 

 

[2:16:51] Ashley James: But if their numbers aren’t moving, it might be that their body’s burning. And this is we’re going to get to next. The body is burning through it quicker than it can absorb it.

 

 

[2:17:02] Kristen Bowen: Right.

 

 

[2:17:03] Ashley James: Right. I’ve also added – so I played around since learning from you about adding some stuff. I’ve added some Epsom salts sometimes because my whole thing is to support my liver. I haven’t done the baking soda yet. I’m going to try that. And then I’ve added hydrogen peroxide. Have you ever done that?

 

 

[2:17:21] Kristen Bowen: Oh, I haven’t. How has that gone?

 

 

[2:17:24] Ashley James: Well, so I heard from some people that adding hydrogen peroxide to your bath or foot soak actually will help your body increase the oxygen in your body. And I don’t know if I noticed a really big difference. Maybe a little bit of a difference. But I mean, you know, it was just a few times I tried it and just as an experiment. So I was trying that out.

 

 

[2:17:47] Kristen Bowen: [Inaudible 2:17:48] hydrogen peroxide in our – not sauna – in our jacuzzi to absorb more oxygen. But I have never even thought of doing that in my foot soak.

 

 

[2:18:00] Ashley James: Yeah. And seeing what would happen. So I played around with that. And I have put a little bit of boron in it. My friend, she uses a metal basin – and she’s a huge fan of yours, Naomi, one of the listeners. I’m doing a shout out to Naomi. The extra stuff she was adding like the baking soda and the boron or whatever, it changed the color of her basin. And so her family thought that the magnesium was going to harm the plumbing of the house because it affected the base – the metal basin. And she’s like, “No. No. It’s because I kept adding this baking soda to it.” And so for whatever reason, the metal changed color, basically.

 

 

[2:18:44] Kristen Bowen: That’s why one of the reasons that we changed so many of the metal bowls – the stainless steel bowls now are really inexpensive powder coat. And so that’s why we now recommend just soak in ceramic, stoneware, like a crock pot insert, or glass. Because so many people were having issues with the newer bowls that are just a powder coat. Not at that higher quality stainless steel from years ago. We’ve had plumbers, because I don’t want to sell something to people that’s going to harm their plumbing. And they have absolutely no concern whatsoever about magnesium causing a plumbing issue. I would not use it in jetted bathtubs.

 

 

[2:19:34] Ashley James: Don’t use magnesium in jetted bathtubs.

 

 

[2:19:36] Kristen Bowen: I wouldn’t. Because we have had some manufacturers have a concern that it would cause issues. I’ve never had anybody have feedback that it has. But where the manufacturer had concerns about the plumbing within the jetted bathtub. And so that would be a concern to me. We’ve never had that feedback. But I always want to be conservative on what I’m telling people because we don’t want to cause issues.

 

 

[2:20:06] Ashley James: Oh, sure. That makes sense. Very cool. Excellent. So to wrap up the interview, we definitely want to make sure that we fully covered how to maximize –

how to maintain. Once we’ve got – so let’s say we’ve done a 30-day soak – the 30-day challenge. We’ve gotten to 5.0 in the magnesium RBC blood test. Now, we want to get to optimal. Now, we want to get to between, like, 6 and 7. Right? And then we want to hold on to it. So we need to discover burn rate and then we need to figure out where our cracks are. And then we need to know how many times a week or a month do we soak just to maintain it. Because our bodies are constantly using up our magnesium. So walk us through that.

 

 

[2:20:52] Kristen Bowen: So what I like to have people do, if they’re interested in understanding their burn rate and how often they need to soak. After they do the 30-day challenge and they get their first number back. So let’s say, they came back at 5.4. Then soak three times a week for another 30 days. And then get tested again. And then if you went down, you know that three soaks a week was not holding your magnesium levels. If you went up, you know that that three soaks a week is going to move you to that 6.3 to 7 that we want you to be at. And so that’s going to help you determine.

And then, you know, I’ve done it for years. And so I even know -okay. In the holiday time, I know that my burn rate increases by about 20%. And so if you’re really into tracking, you can actually track during the holiday time how much you need to soak and determine during different times of your life. Because our stress levels change. Like, for example, we talked earlier with my husband and his amputations, I went back to soaking every day. I did a 30-day challenge just so that I would stay up and at my very best for him. And so understanding that burn rate and that second test of whether you go down or whether you go up.

Now, let’s say, you came in at 6 on your very first magnesium RBC test. Then only soak twice a week and see are you going to hold those numbers? Are they going down? Are they going up? And then depending on that second test, you’ll have a better idea of where you need to soak.

 

 

[2:22:44] Ashley James: How long would you wait – how many months would you wait between testing?

 

 

[2:22:48] Kristen Bowen: I like to do the first 30 -day and then do the second 30-day. So you’re doing both of those tests within a 60-day period.

 

 

[2:22:57] Ashley James: Great. And then after that, how often would you test?

 

 

[2:23:02] Kristen Bowen: You know, it just really varies. I do it because I geek out on the numbers now. And I like to have feedback loop to tell people. So that’s why I do it now as often as I do. And I only test probably about four times a year, but that’s a little excessive. I’m doing that to give people feedback and to give them that experience. I would say maybe once a year after that to be tested. After you’ve got that feel for your feedback, just to make sure that you’re maintaining. But definitely, if you wanted to do it more often or if you’re in a high crisis help situation, you definitely are going to want to do that more often.

 

 

[2:23:46] Ashley James: Now, you’ve had hundreds of customers report back to you their magnesium RBC numbers, right?

 

 

[2:23:53] Kristen Bowen: Right. Thousands now. We’re in the thousands.

 

 

[2:23:55] Ashley James: Because you’ve been collecting. You’ve been doing experiments, basically. Like clinical trials, clinical experiments with your customers, where you have them in cohorts and groups together and you do testing after the 30-day challenge. And so that’s how you were able to come to the number. I believe you shared with me 76% of people just off the street. Seventy-six percent of people after doing a 30-day challenge reached 5.0.

 

 

[2:24:22] Kristen Bowen: Yes. Most people will reach 5.0. We will have that small percentage that doesn’t. But that showing we’ve got a crack in that foundation and we need to get that figured out.

 

 

[2:24:35] Ashley James: And that’s great. It’s actually really good news to get that information. Because then we start looking where’s the crack.

 

 

[2:24:41] Kristen Bowen: And so many people will have soaked for four years and they get the benefit, which is great. But then they realize, “If I would have gotten this test four years ago, I could have dug in and really fixed this foundation.” And so I think that testing is crucial to get that.

 

 

[2:25:01] Ashley James: So that also answers Gord’s question of being frugal. The best thing to do is to go for go for the 30-day Challenge then get the blood test, see where you are. And then like you said, soak depending on where you are. If you’re still really low, we’ve got to look at the crack in the foundation. But if you’ve got to 5.0, then soak twice a week for another month and then test it. And see did it go up? Did it go down? And then adjust from there. But always look for the crack in the foundation. Because it is free to go to bed earlier. It’s free to drink more water . Like, you want to be frugal. A lot of this –

 

 

[2:25:38] Kristen Bowen: Grandma wisdom. It is grandma wisdom, baby.

 

 

[2:25:41] Ashley James: It is very affordable to eat more vegetables and eat less crap and eat less sugar. It’s free to eat less sugar or no sugar. So we can save money and save our health by looking at those –

 

 

[2:25:54] Kristen Bowen: And, Ashley, I know that my experience is really filtered by my husband’s amputation. So recognize that filter that I’m coming from. But think about it, the car that is sitting out in your driveway, you change the oil on it. You wouldn’t think of not changing the oil because of the expense of the car. Our bodies are worth so much more than that car sitting in our driveway. So much more. They’re irreplaceable. My home right now is shoved full of contraptions trying to offset that this man does not have legs. And they don’t work as well as what those beautifully design Blake’s did for him.

And so I do want to be conservative and I do want to know where every penny of my money goes. And I want to put it in the most powerful places. And building a foundation works. You stop chasing symptoms. Building a foundation reduces everything else. And so putting your money where it will build a strong foundation and taking care of my machine, that’s my body, is important and crucial to me. And coming up with and finding ways to support that, it’s where you put your importance.

You know, I was talking to a lady the other day and she said, “I just can’t afford to go get tested.” And she said, “Kristen, what do I do?” And I said, “Do you really want to know my opinion on this? Or you’re just throwing words at me?” She goes, “No. I really want to know.” I said, “Okay. As I’m looking at you, I can tell that you have very expensive hair upkeep and nail upkeep. And there are places that you’re putting your money that you’re saying this is what I value. You’re saying you want to be healthy but you’re not putting your money where you are saying you want your growth to be. And so you’ve got to determine. And maybe you’ll miss a salon day or two, take that money and put it on building that strong foundation for your body.” And because she was a good friend, she put her arms around me and said, “You’re right. I’ll of think about it.”

But you know, we put our money on what we value. Those cars, we value and we change their oil and we upkeep them. And I value my body and it took a complete health crash on my end before I really understood the value that I’d been given with my body. And so to me, I don’t see it as expensive. I see it as investing in the gift that I was given for my body.

 

 

[2:28:48] Ashley James: I’ll give you a good one. I loved it when I heard this one. I just loved it. I have a $200,000 Lamborghini brand new for sale for you. You’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t have $200,000 o put into a Lamborghini right now.” Not many listeners have $200,000 sitting in the bank account ready to hand to me for this gorgeous Lamborghini. Okay. And it’s a total deal. It’s only $200,000 for this Lamborghini. I’m selling it to you. But Kristen, if I were to say that I will sell to you for $70. Can you come up with $70?

 

 

[2:29:29] Kristen Bowen: Yeah, I can.

 

 

[2:29:30] Ashley James: To buy that Lamborghini?

 

 

[2:29:32] Kristen Bowen: Yeah.

 

 

[2:29:33] Ashley James: And I mean, I could – if people aren’t into cars, I could say, “I have $1 million house for you and Seattle. Gorgeous million dollar house. But I’m going to sell two for $70. No strings attached. No catch. It’s just $70.” So everyone listening goes, “I can come up with $70.” Because the value is this huge like, “Oh my gosh. I’m going to get a $200, whatever, big car. I’m going to get a million dollar home for $70.” Right?

But when you say do this blood test that’s $50 or $49 and it’s going to help you to dial in and figure out what’s going on. All of a sudden it’s, “I can’t afford that.” And then the next day they go to a restaurant and spend $50 on food at a restaurant. So it’s really about mindset. If we can figure out and put our priorities, like you said, in order. And I’m not saying you have to spend like millions or thousands and thousands of dollars to get healthy. There’s tons of, like you said, free things because most of the foundation –

 

 

[2:30:32] Kristen Bowen: Grandma wisdom.

 

 

[2:30:34] Ashley James: Grandma wisdom. Most of the foundation of health –

 

 

[2:30:35] Kristen Bowen: [Inaudible 2:30:35].

 

 

[2:30:35] Ashley James: Right. But that when we hear about something like a magnesium soak or sauna, whatever, it has a price tag. Or acerola cherry powder has – everything has a price tag. Mentally, if we go, “I can’t afford that. That sounds too expensive.” Because I am talking from my experiences what I used to do. “I can’t do that. That’s too expensive.” It was this little voice in my head. And that would raise my cortisol and raise my stress levels. And then inside my head I’d go, “I could never get healthy because I could never afford that.” And this little voice would just sit there on my shoulder and tell me, “I can’t do it because of this. I can’t do it because of this.”

And yet I’ll spend the money, like you said, on the oil change or on a restaurant or on these other things. And it’s like, “Wait a second. I can afford it but some little voice in my head said I can’t.” And so I figured out how to get to Sunlighten Sauna. I didn’t pay all at once. They have a payment plan system and I got on it. And it was like the cost of a credit card payment every month. And I’m paying off my sauna. But for me, it was worth it. Absolutely worth it because of the results I was getting. So we have to prioritize and figure out what is worth it for us. But just make sure that that little voice in our head that says, “I can’t afford that,” that that little voice isn’t increasing our cortisol and stopping us from taking action. Because there’s lots of free things that are really, really affordable things we can do. Like go out and put our feet in the ground every day and ground ourselves.

 

 

[2:32:06] Kristen Bowen: That light in the morning. Sleep in a dark room. That doesn’t cost anything. And literally, the emails, since I really started pressing this end to a group of women that I work with, the emails, “Kristen, of all the things we’ve talked about, this has made the biggest difference.” And so there are so many things that we can do to create that help and build that strong foundation.

 

 

[2:32:34] Ashley James: Absolutely. I love it. Thank you so much. I can’t believe it’s been two and a half hours. It feels like five minutes.

 

 

[2:32:44] Kristen Bowen: Oh my gosh. Ashley, we did it again.

 

 

[2:32:45] Ashley James: We did it again. This has been wonderful having you back. And really answering a lot of questions that a bunch of listeners have been asking. And you are so active in our Facebook Group. Thank you so much for coming into the Learn True Health Facebook Group for the last year.

It’s been over a year. I think it’s been about almost a-year-and-a-half that we’ve been working together. I’d have to go back and look when we published the first episode. But it’s definitely been over a year. And it’s been wonderful working with you. You are so loving and compassionate and authentic. And you really – you’re hurt. You truly want people to be healthy.

And please, listeners, go back and listen to Kristen’s first interview if you haven’t already, Episode 294. Because her story just moved me to tears. And it also allows us to illustrate that wherever we are, no matter how sick or unhealthy or wherever we are in our healing journey right now that there is hope. That we can heal. That the body has the amazing ability to heal itself and we can get better.

I healed my chronic adrenal fatigue, my type 2 diabetes, and my polycystic ovarian syndrome, and my infertility. I no longer have those issues. So you can heal your body too, right? It takes time. It takes that dedication. Like you said, it takes grandma wisdom. But we’re going to get there. So thank you, Kristen.

 

 

[2:34:10] Kristen Bowen: And action. Taking action.

 

 

[2:34:12] Ashley James: Yes. Right. Taking action. Knowing the grandma wisdom and taking action.

But thank you, Kristen, for coming today and answering all those questions, teaching us what we can do to hold on to our magnesium, and discover our burn rate, and maximize everything.

And listeners can go to livingthegoodlifenaturally.com Use coupon code LTH to get the discount that Kristen gives us. And once in a while Kristen gives us some really great specials as well and we announce those in the Facebook Group. So come join the Learn True Health Facebook Group because we always have something awesome going on there. And Kristen, whenever she holds a special just for Learn True Health listeners, she lets me know and then I post it in the Facebook Group. It’s been such a pleasure having you back, Kristen. Thank you so much.

 

 

[2:35:00] Kristen Bowen: The feeling is mutual. Ashley, thank you.

 

 

[2:35:01] Ashley James: This has been wonderful. And I can’t believe two-and-a-half hours went by. But you know, we will just talk all day long if I wasn’t looking at the clock. So it’s been great. And I know listeners are going to jump in the Facebook Group and ask you more questions after having you on. So everyone who’s still has questions for Kristen, come in the Facebook Group and ask them and we will continue this discussion there. Thanks so much. And go enjoy the rest of your day with your wonderful husband.

 

 

[2:35:29] Kristen Bowen: Oh, thank you.

 

 

[2:35:34] Ashley James: Awesome, that’s a wrap. How do you feel it went?

 

 

[2:35:36] Kristen Bowen: Oh, great. Hey, should we do a giveaway in the Facebook Group?

 

 

[2:35:42] Ashley James: Sure. Yes.

 

 

[2:35:44] Kristen Bowen: Okay. Let’s do a giveaway in the Facebook Group. Let’s do a magnesium soak and the muscle cream and the acerola cherry powder.

 

 

[2:35:55] Ashley James: Oh. Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you. 

 

 

[2:35:57] Kristen Bowen: And we’ll do that to people.

 

 

[2:36:00] Ashley James: So three different winners?

 

 

[2:36:02] Kristen Bowen: Yeah.

 

 

[2:36:04] Ashley James: Okay, great. Thank you so much.

 

 

[2:36:07] Kristen Bowen: Yeah. Just to jumpstart people listening to this episode. Or I don’t know. However you want to run that. But let’s do that for three people that they’ll get the muscle cream, the jug, and the acerola.

 

 

[2:36:21] Ashley James: Or not and, right?

 

 

[2:36:22] Kristen Bowen: Everything. Like each person will get all three of those.

 

 

[2:36:27] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That’s amazing. Thank you. Sorry. I thought you were saying like one person gets a cherry powder, one person gets –

 

 

[2:36:31] Kristen Bowen: No. Sorry. No. Each person. Because we want them to experience the benefits of that cherry powder at the same time that they’re soaking. It makes such a difference when they’re doing both. And then I just love that muscle cream.

 

 

[2:36:45] Ashley James: That muscle cream is best.  The muscle team is amazing. I’ve used like – I mean, not that I’m in pain all the time. But I’ve used like 12 different kinds of muscle creams from various companies. They’re all natural. And yours is amazing. And I’ve shared it with other people.

Oh, I had a friend over the other day and got her to soak. I forgot to say this. I’ll just include it. So listeners are still listening right now because I’m not going to edit this out. But I had a friend over, she has two giant six inch scars on either side of her ankle. She shattered her ankle less than a year ago. She was in a full leg – it was, like, a huge cast. She couldn’t walk. Giant scars. And she’s in constant pain. And she’s had to change her whole life because, basically, her – and she has young kids – tiny kids. And her family has to take care of her because she hasn’t been able to walk. And she just started kind of walking around. But she can’t clean the house because she’s in constant pain. So I said, “You come over here.” She sat in the magnesium soak. She could not believe it. She was almost in tears. She said her pain was gone. She’s like, “I can’t believe this.” She’s like, “I’ve been looking for something that’s natural because I don’t want to be addicted to pain meds.” And I gave her some of the muscle cream and she said it was amazing. She loves it. It’s so great for that local pain in her joint from the surgery. Now, it’s healed, but it’s still constantly in pain.

And I said to her what you said, which is that, when we’re magnesium deficient, the pain receptors can’t turn off. And she was just blown away that in one soak her pain went away. And she texted me hours later and says, “I can’t believe I’m out of pain. This is amazing.”

 

 

[2:38:25] Kristen Bowen: When you get those pain receptors communicating with the right balance of magnesium and calcium, it makes a difference.

 

 

[2:38:34] Ashley James: I love it. I love it. So fantastic for pain. And what you talked about before in the other episodes, the cream is not to get you to full cell saturation but it’s great for localized. If ever my husband I get headaches – because we’re really sensitive that way if we don’t drink enough water, if we’re sitting at the computer too long, or if we’re kind of, like, we need to go to the chiropractor, the first thing our body says, “headache” to tell us like, “oh, I’ve got some muscle tension.”

 

 

[2:39:00] Kristen Bowen: Not too much computer time. And so now what I do is I just have a little tub of it by my computer and I put it on as I get on.

 

 

[2:39:09] Ashley James: Oh. A preventive. Ha, ha, ha. Very smart.

 

 

[2:39:12] Kristen Bowen: And I just know. And I run my business from my computer and I’m on the computer a lot. And I minimize. I take breaks kind of thing.  But I’ve just started using it preventative and I like it better than waiting until the headache shows up at the end of the day.

 

 

[2:39:31] Ashley James: Yeah. Because it’s a tension – it’s a muscle tension headache from just holding your upper traps. Just holding – you know ,my mom used to say, “Don’t wear your shoulders as earrings.” Because I just noticed, I just get all that tension is right up in my shoulders. And so she’s going to drop them. Drop them. Relax.

But yeah, that muscle cream is great for that. And then soaking is great for everything else.

 

 

[2:39:52] Kristen Bowen: Permaculture olive oil is really what sets it apart, Ashley. It’s got the magnesium. And it’s got all the great – the real vitamin E, not synthetic. But that permaculture olive oil that my husband scored for us – oh my goodness – it’s literally what just sets it apart from other muscle creams.

 

 

[2:40:14] Ashley James: And you know, I’ve actually tasted it. So I read the ingredients, it’s all the stuff that would be okay with having on my tongue or in my mouth in small amounts. But I was like, “I wonder how much magnesium she actually put in this cream.” Right? And so I taste it. I’m like, “Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s in there.”

 

 

[2:40:30] Kristen Bowen: [Inaudible 2:40:31] has more than the lotion. Because the cream, the emulsification can hold more than the lotion does.

 

 

[2:40:40] Ashley James: Yeah. So I love that muscle cream. Thank you so much for doing a giveaway for the listeners. That’s awesome.

 

 

[2:40:46] Kristen Bowen: That’s my love language. I love to give gifts.

 

 

[2:40:50] Ashley James: That’s fantastic. Well, I really appreciate that. So three lucky listeners are going to win a magnesium soak, acerola cherry powder, and the muscle cream. And they’ll go to Learn True Health Facebook Group to participate in the giveaway.

 

 

[2:41:05] Kristen Bowen: And however you want to set that up, what they need to do, Ashley, I’ll just make sure when we know who the winners are that our warehouse will ship it to them.

 

 

[2:41:14] Ashley James: Yeah. Well, I’ll post it in the group. I usually like to say, “Tell me something you love learning from this episode.”  And so it’s like a little fun quiz. And then it’s great, because then everyone learns from each other’s answers.

 

 

[2:41:27] Kristen Bowen: Oh, yeah. Well, and the other thing when they articulate what they’ve learned, it puts it in a different loop in their brain and they remember it. So that’s a great way to do it.

 

 

[2:41:37] Ashley James: Absolutely. All right. Well, we’re going to do that. Thank you so much. And listeners who are still listening, you guys win extra bonus points because you’re still here listening after two-hours-and-45 minutes.

 

Thank you so much, Kristen, for coming on the show you. 

 

 

[2:41:51] Kristen Bowen: Thank you, Ashley.

 

 

[2:41:52] Ashley James: This is so wonderful. And thank you for the giveaway. This is great.

 

 

[2:41:54] Kristen Bowen: Oh, you’re welcome. That’s fun.

 

Get Connected with Kristen Bowen:

Official Website

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Instagram – Living the Good Life Naturally

Recommended Reading by Kristen Bowen

Healing Is Voltage by Jerry L. Tennant 

Sep 19, 2019

www.energybits.com and use coupon code LTH for 20% off!

Listen to all past episodes with Eric Thorton:

https://www.learntruehealth.com/?s=Eric+thorton

https://ericthorton.com

 

Understanding Your Aura

https://www.learntruehealth.com/understanding-your-aura

Highlights:

  • What is Aura and how it affects you
  • How one can do astral travel
  • How to flush out frequencies that are not yours and flush out the diseases in the aura
  • Everything affects the aura field. Past life, future life, current life in every way
  • One of the ways that you can get your body to heal is by restoring it to its innocence

 

Have you ever thought of how one’s aura affects your overall well-being of the body? Find out in today’s episode as Eric Thorton is back to teach us how to channel all the positive energies for self-betterment.

 

Ashley James: Hello, True Health seekers and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health podcast. Today, we have Eric Thorton back on the show. He is a spiritual and energetic healer. What many of us refer to as a master. He was born with all of this gifts on and was able to commune with angels and guides since he was a child. You’ll definitely want to go back and listen to our first episode with him if you haven’t already because his life story is a trip. Let me tell you. I personally worked with him as has my husband and my friends and we’ve all had really great experiences. I wanted to make sure that he was the real deal and he is certainly is. You’re going to love today’s show. He teaches about more about energy medicine. Understanding our aura or energy field which is a part of our body that is scientifically proven. Illness can occur in the aura field and he teaches also how to clear your energy. Clear your aura field. We get into some really neat discussion. Some really neat ravitals that we go down today. I want to apologize for the slight audio issue that I have in this episode after I had set up our lapel mics. I was using a new system and it turns out that my lapel mic popped out. I didn’t realize it. My voice is actually picked up by his mic. So I did a lot of editing post-production to make it sounds as good as possible. It’s totally doable. You can definitely hear and understand us. I just sound like I’m farther away from the mic than he is and he sounds great since he does most of the talking. You’ll enjoy today’s show and you’ll forgive me for the light off on audio but all other episodes are sounding much better because we have figured out what the problem was and it won’t happen again. Fingers crossed, right? Knock on wood.

I want to tell you that today’s episode if we had a sponsor, today’s episode would be brought to you by ENERGYbits. My son woke me up at four in the morning as toddlers will sometimes do. He was wide-awake and therefore I had to be wide-awake. Since my body would rather have slept for four more hours, I wouldn’t be here right now and be so perky if it wasn’t for ENERGYbits this morning. There’s no stimulants in them. There is no caffeine in them. It was just pure algae. It actually tastes really good to me. If you don’t like the flavor there’s easy ways to mask the flavor. Today I decided to take about a heaping tablespoon of the ENERGYbits and put them in the vitamix with one drop of peppermint essential oil and about 16oz of water. I blended it for about a minute until it had fully dissolved on high. Then I drink it. Within about 5 minutes, I felt it kick in and I was like, “Wow, this is better than coffee.” I don’t drink coffee anymore. I do occasionally have black or green tea but this was better than tea, better than coffee. I feel really good and it’s because it has so many nutrients bring oxygen to the cells. Perk our body up, support our adrenals, really readily available protein. I could go on and on about ENERGYbits.

You can go to learntruehealth.com and search the term algae, chlorella or ENERGYbits. Listen to those episodes. We’ve had about four or five episodes specifically about algae and their benefits and why I chose the brand energy bits over other brands that I’ve tried. Now we get a great discount. 20% off for all the listeners. So go to ENERGYbits.com, use the coupon code LTH and try a bag of ENERGYbits for yourself. Take about 30 of their little, my son calls them green crackers but they’re little tablets and you chew them or you can put them in a smoothie or put it in some water and a blender like I did or you can put them in your trail mix like my son loves. My son actually love this. It’s wonderful. Wonderful energy in the morning. Perks you right up and I did not need a coffee this morning. There you go, so this episode is brought to you by wonderful ENERGYbits. Go to energybits.com, use the coupon code LTH. Just try it. It feels great as I do after getting a hefty amount of sleep you thought you’d get using their very high-quality spirulina. energybits.com. Awesome. All right. Enjoy today’s episode. Please come join the Facebook group because next episode, Kristin Bowen is back on the show answering all of our questions about magnesium and the magnesium soak. She is giving away some awesome stuff. She’s doing three big giveaways in the Facebook group so you want to go in there to participate and that’ll be the next episode I publish. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and enjoy today’s interview.

 

[05:16] Ashely James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m you host, Ashley James. This is [0521-0525 Audio Gap] I’m so thrilled to be back here with you, Eric. We’re here with Eric Thorton in his wonderful healing studio in cottage like Washington.

 

[05:38] Eric Thorton: Thank you.

 

[05:39] Ashely James:  Yes. This is what? Our fifth interview together?

 

[05:42] Eric Thorton:  I think so.

 

[05:44] Ashely James:  It’s been wonderful having you on the show. I keep getting amazing feedback. People are saying that they love learning from you.

 

[05:52] Eric Thorton:  That’s terrific.

 

[05:53] Ashely James:  Yes. Today we’re going to dive into a topic that I think is very fascinating. People who haven’t explored this level of spirituality. They’re in for definitely a ride. I heard about the aura and their energy field and how we can clear our energy field. How that it has an impact on our physical, emotional and mental health.

 

[06:19] Eric Thorton:  Very much so. It’s pretty fascinating how it feels are.  It’s one of the most amazing things I get to watch. They’re absolutely phenomenal. How far out they reach. What they do. How they’re in a moment’s notice they change.

 

[06:36] Ashely James:  Now it’s like aura’s fields like static.

 

[06:39] Eric Thorton:  Static, yes.

[06:41] Ashely James:  I’ve gone to psychic fairs or something that taking pictures of your aura field that’s like, “Oh, your aura fields’ blue.” That’s it. [Inaudible 06:50]

 

[06:51] Eric Thorton:  Right. If you go away from that picture from getting your picture taken and you go eat something. Come back, change your outfit so that they don’t know it’s you and take a picture again. It’s now different.

 

[07:05] Ashely James:  Because you –

 

[07:06] Eric Thorton:  You ate.

 

[07:08] Ashely James:  Because you ate? Food affects your aura?

 

[07:10] Eric Thorton:  Everything affects your aura. Your aura is a reflection of every cell’s energy and the soul’s energy.

 

[07:19] Ashely James:  Is that how some people can read an aura and then actually predict or tell someone what’s going on inside their body?

 

[07:27] Eric Thorton:  Exactly. Very much so. When I’m working on someone and I put my hand on their aura field, you can feel all sorts of hot, cold, disturbing, joyous, all five just by laying your hand down their energy field. I see in a million different feelings just by running your hand from head to toe about a foot above somebody. It can tell, it reflects predatory energy. It reflects non-predatory energies, it reflects joy. It reflects everything you can imagine is in the aura field. If you take a snapshot of the aura field so to speak like the krakian photography, I think that’s what they call it. It looks steady right at that moment because you have a steady picture but if they could film the aura field, that would be something interesting. At least a part of it, because it changes so dramatically. Your hormones can change 17th of a second, it changes the aura field from happy to angry. Tell the person, “You’ve had a lot of anger.” while a few minutes before, “Oh you have nothing but joy.”

 

[08:41] Ashely James: For those who don’t know, never heard of the aura field or know very little about it. Can you explain what it is? Why we have it? Does everything have an aura field?

 

[08:51] Eric Thorton:  Everything that is reproducing – Sorry, there’s two different types of aura fields. There’s an aura field that is where they’re in a physical body at some sort, trees, bacteria, mushrooms, humans etc. that’s reproducing cells has a different, has very dynamic aura field. A rock had cellular energy or crystal has cellular energy and is very static. I have to clarify that a little bit with crystals because crystals, anything that’s clear or semi-clear takes in energy from everything else. A crystal would take energy, sound or light or other and bend it and modify it. People who feel energy or see energy limited will feel crystals are alive because it’s swirling the energy just like a shakra. By bending the energy. It’s like doctor or scientist taking a mineral and making a medicine out of it. By bending or modifying the energy, you can heal or you can kill. What that same thing might damage or someone else’s aura field, it would help them. Crystals are very powerful tool but if they’re not working it’s because it’s not in sync with your aura field. If it is working then it’s sync and then it gets in there slightly takes your energy and modifies it and feeds it back to you like an immunization. Kind of like that.

You’re giving your own immunization. It’s like giving your own energy but it’s inoculating you. Your own energy is inoculating you. Because it’s taking it, modify it, your brain goes, “Oh, I’ve got to do something about that.” But it’s your own energy but it’s slightly modified. The brain goes, your immune system will come up because of that there’s a slight modification but if you take crystals to modify the aura field, if you put two together, what are they doing to each other? How are they feeding the energy? How are they taking the energy that’s already modified slightly bring it to another crystal, modifying it again, shove it back to the other crystal and modify it again, shove it back to another crystal at the speed of light. So people can get very ill of that’s crystal aren’t tuned. That’s why we tune crystals even in the same room.

 

[11:35] Ashely James: I’ve had that experience actually. I’ve had a woman in the show I feel like sometime last year. Where she talked about using crystals in your environment to aid you on your health journey. When I was a teenager I was in Portoverdo walking around alone and I’ve been to Portoverdo a lot. I knew the streets. I was very familiar with the territory. I bought a crystal necklace. Quartz crystal necklace. Immediately put it on because at that time, I didn’t now about cleaning crystals or you know, doing them. I immediately become disoriented. Lost, I walked down the street I was acusted by a man, I was afraid for my life.

 

[12:20] Eric Thorton:  I’m so sorry.

 

[12:22] Ashely James:  It was a contrast. Everything was good. I put on the crystal, everything was chaotic and crazy. I took it off because I started to go something like I was feeling like something’s wrong in here and I took the necklace off and I immediately knew where I was and I was safe. I was like, “Okay, something’s off with this.” If I buy a crystal or receive one and it’s not tuned, that its very uncomfortable to be with it.

 

[12:50] Eric Thorton:  Most people who are sensitive to those frequencies. Some people are associated to those frequencies even though it’s helping them. Some people are consciously aware of those frequencies. I’m very aware of those frequencies. I walk into a gem store. It feels like my brain is twisting and going into a fish eye. Everything was like I’m looking into a fish eye lens. I start to get sick. It maxes out my inner ear because I got all these diverging crystals modifying the energy back and forth to each other and there’s thousands of them. I was kind of go “I’m leaving.” I just have to walk out.

 

[13:33] Ashley James: That’s funny because you see all those new age stores today. The herbs and the teas and the crystals. But real people who are sensitive who are sort of like their wheelhouse. They walk in and would feel uncomfortable if the crystals are not attuned to them. It’s affecting their aura in a distorted turbulent way.

 

[14:01] Eric Thorton:  it’s very medicinal. In energy medicine of all sorts, you’ve mentioned herbal medicine also homeopathic medicine. It’s all energy. So you put a crystal around them it can totally wipe those empty. It can put a vibration that just empties all your homeopath and empties the effectiveness of your herbs. Or you can take it and combine them and create something modified that can be really effective or can be very bad. Just in the same room.

 

[14:36] Ashley James:  Be very intentional when using crystals.

 

[14:41] Eric Thorton:  Very much so.

 

[14:43] Ashley James:  Getting back to understand the aura, to those who don’t know what an aura is. It’s an energy field around the body like you’ve said that animals and plants also have an aura and people can learn to see them. I’d love to talk a bit about that later. I was this once, I want to say it 15 years ago, I was with a friend in Toronto and we went into a workshop at the I guess Downtown Toronto’s having this big psychic fair. The day before it started, they had this workshop on auras. The man brought out these dowsing rods. Basically take two metal hangers and straighten them out and then bend them so you’re holding them at 90 degree angle and he had someone stand in the middle of the stage with their back to him and he walked towards the person and when he gone about four feet of the person, the dowsing rods moved together. He didn’t moved them. He was just holding them gently and they moved together. Then he said, “Okay, now I want you to expand your awareness out 20 feet. I just want you focus on expanding your awareness your whole energy field out 20 feet. He didn’t teach the person now he just said expand your awareness. Your attention goes your energy flows. Then he walked all the way back to the stage and proceed to slowly walk towards the person and sure enough about 20 feet, when he reached the 20-foot area, the dowsing rods just flipped forward. Flipped together and he explained that you could walk around your head with this rods. Am I saying it right? Dowsing rods? 

 

[16:31] Eric Thorton:  Yes. That’s correct. I have many different kinds. [Crosstalk]

 

[16:34] Ashley James:  Oh cool. I got super into it because it’s really exciting. You could walk around your house and anytime you walk if there’s a pipe of moving water below you so like in the floor below you –

 

[16:48] Eric Thorton:  or non-moving.

 

[16:50] Ashley James:  or non-moving? Okay. Or things like you’re going past an electrical wire that’s in the floor below you or above you, basically if you go past an energy field because water creates an energy field and electricity creates an energy field, magnetic field that’s the dowsing rods would move.

 

[17:13] Eric Thorton:  Those are really strong because their movement. It’s more subtle when it’s not moving. You take the dowsing rods and you want to find a lost wedding ring in the car that’s in the dark, then it’ll point right at it. Then you get there with the dowsing rods and that would say how deep it is. You can do. Because everything this is variation of energy a dowsing rod can pick it up and that’s part of auras.

 

[17:41] Ashley James:  Our septic tank was broken. A guy came up to fix it and he didn’t know where the tank was because it was buried and it’s digged into it. He wiped out his dowsing rods and I’m thinking, “Wait a sec, I thought dowsing rods were just for hippies to like practice aura work? Then he’s like, “Are you kidding me? This is why they’re invented. They’re invented to find wells, to find springs to find underground water basically. People use them to find water.”

 

[18:08] Eric Thorton:  I found many wells for people.

 

[18:11] Ashley James:  But the fact that that’s energy and to have an aura. Great homework for listeners at home. Go make yourselves some dowsing rods. You could look them up online and practice with your family and you’ll be able to – they’ll move in your hand. They’ll move when you walk close to and enter one of your family member’s aura fields. This is showing you that we have this robust energy filed around us. It is as real as our physical body.

 

[18:42] Eric Thorton:  Interesting thing about aura fields. There’s different name for the different layers of the aura field. The one you’re talking about we dug up the word earlier. The guide’s call it a homeostasic level. That can reach out for miles and miles. It’s literally picking up on the subtle differences in everything around you. It is the first part of your immune system. People look at me when I say that like, “What?” They think about it. If you’re out there five miles and yes, we are all intermingling. It’s picking up on this person energy, this person’s energy. Let’s say this person has an contagious cancer. It’s picking up on that. Your defense system goes to work. It starts mounting the defense if you walk by that person, they’re breathing out, you’re breathing in at the same time. You’re breathing in some if their cells. It already has your immune system go on and making sure you don’t get that cancer. It’s phenomenal.

The only time the homeostasic doesn’t work for that is if you’re holding like a shopping cart. It’s the dirtiest thing there is. It’s the shopping cart. It’s dirtier than the toilets. You touched the shopping cart and you merely touch your face, the homeostasic can’t mount that defense because you walk and grab the cart, its hasn’t had the time to mount the defense yet but if someone’s out there where you’ve got sometime for your immune system to work it’ll do it. It’s also picking up and notifying this part, the homeostatic notifies the digestive brain. The digestive brain is they’ve done huge stages in Europe with it. It shows brain materials from the tip of your tongue all the way out the back door. That brain does not have sight or sound. It only works with feeling. It is I don’t what’s the statistics are when they had fully started that but I’ve watched it and it’s 20 times faster than your brain stem. It tells the amygdala. The amygdala tells the brain stem fight or flight in 30 minutes to a second and that’s picking up through the digestive brain. It’s the one that can tell if you have bad intention or not. If someone or makes the hair on the back of your neck when you don’t even see anybody. This is what is reaching out in the aura field. The homeostasic level. It is what gives us the early warning on everything.

 

[21:23] Ashley James:  When we have a gut feeling about someone.

 

[21:27] Eric Thorton:  Pay attention, it’s the homeostasic.

 

[21:30] Ashley James: That is the part. The last layer of your aura field that reaches out it can reach out for miles, it is feeling the intentions of people. It’s feeling what’s going on with disease or illness in that environment.

 

[21:47] Eric Thorton:  everything. It’s feeling an earthquake before it happens. It’s bringing your intuition in every way. It tells the amygdala what to do. The amygdala work in 30 minutes to a second and it tells our brain stem what to do. Prior to that this is actually one of the features that a master uses within themselves. If you think, 30 minutes to a second, that frequency and you learn to use the aura field. You can go as fast as 200th of a second. What’s in the frequencies between 30 minutes on the average person and 200 minutes of a second. What’s in that? That’s the information that masters rate. That’s the information that guides pick up on and angels pick up on. That’s where they exist. Masters are so sensitive that they’ve learned to be in that space. Pick up on all of this. Now, like yourself. Everyone does this, you’re sensitive so you pick up on things that gives you an intuition and it’s correct. It’s going through the digestive brain. It’s coming in and it’s formulating for you. It’s formulating questions for you to ask your interviewees and the ones you’re interviewing.

 

[23:13] Ashley James:  interviewees, yes.

 

[23:15] Eric Thorton:  is it interviewees? yes.

 

[23:17] Ashley James: You are the interviewee.

 

[23:18] Eric Thorton:  Good. I’ve got that right. Just like to see it. Literally, that part of the brain is formulating the question from what is picking up from the aura field. From the homeostasic. It goes all the way up from miles and miles and you can project it out that like what you’re talking about the guy with the dowsing rod because most people walk around, close it really tight. When you get flow, it’s out where it needs to be. That’s how we manifest. That’s how we do all of these things with this information. It’s through that level of the homeostasic, which is so dynamic part of our aura field. It’s fascinating to watch when you’re out walking where the people are closed in like that person on the stage. Or whether they’re open and how far they are open. You can tell people that you like or you wouldn’t like just by homeostasic field. If you’re person who loves flow, you’re going to be around someone that their aura field holding tight the homeostasic level doesn’t have any flow. You’re not going to be attracted to them. Your pheromones aren’t going to say, “Hey, you need to talk to that person.” It’s not going to happen because you’re not in the same ball park so to speak or in the same frequency as you are.

Also, it what makes people look at me with the strange look in their eye when they walk by. They feel something they’re not familiar with it. So they turn to look and they’re kind of like, “What’s that?” because it’s so different in their aura field because I have a lot of flow when I’m out there along ways, it’s so different it causes them fear. Change is fear. That’s so human. That’s what changes fear but causes fear. When you watch that, when you get the privilege of watching this dynamic colors and frequencies and shapes, and information that’s out. Just was beautiful to watch. I talked about this a little before in the previous interview when you go to a movie with me, it’s fun to watch, not kind of fun to listen to me if I talk about it because I see everything before it happens. It’s in the homeostatic. Everybody’s stuff is coming through that movie screen and the sound all of the aura fields and what’s coming up next. If there’s whatever is on the stage of being people are mad at each other when the movie’s being made that’s all there. If they’re happily getting along, if there all this different things dynamics come out of this out of the film. Including the sensations of who wrote the script. It’s fascinating to the aura field is not only does it protect us, but it also creates frequencies that defend us.

 

[26:28] Ashley James:  How so? How so does the frequency defend us? You said the immune system. You said, it picks up on, gives intensions. How else does it defend us?

 

[26:39] Eric Thorton:  We have to go back to that frequency notion that light energy comes together. Yin and Yang are the opposites of the same energy. So they do come together. It’s also if you’re like your energy field in your history. Your aura field will reflect your history. Let’s say you have really wonderful parents. While you’re around someone with really rotten patients and they haven’t done any work, they haven’t grown from it, your aura fields are opposites. They don’t come together. You’re less likely to take energy on from somebody who’s opposites versus someone you empathize with. If you empathize with, “Oh, yes. I’ve been there done that.” It was just to say like energy comes together. With it comes their version of that same energy that may have predetorian energy with it and it may have thought forms with it. All these things that trigger your because you may have wonderful parents and they didn’t but it starts triggering you. That means they have wonderful parents too but it starts triggering you. Their issues same you both and maybe wonderful parents but you have this set of issues and they have this stem of issues. Issue A versus issue C. Well, this comes together because you both have wonderful parents but then so you co-miserate so to speak, or co-enjoy. They might come up against differences. Then you might pick up their parents thought forms that were different from your parents thought forms. This can be beneficial because it can make you a better parent or it can be confusing. It’s like, “No, my parents did it this way. This is the way I thought should want to do it but i feel this opposite thing” and it can confuse.

 

[28:49] Ashley James: This is on the subconciuse level?

 

[28:50] Eric Thorton:  Totally. Subconscious. It has to do with triggers all your pheromones. It triggers all your hormones. It’s a constant adjustment. The aura field’s fascinating. Everything you do, affects the aura field. It’s a dynamic tool that the body and the soul each have part of. The body has the molecular aura field. It is an animal, it is a molecular cell-producing animal. Anything that’s reproducing cells has this dynamic aura field. Or anything that’s not reproducing cells has a stagnant aura field like a rock. Like the one we’ve mentioned earlier crystals, they absorb that’s why little side note, don’t ever recommend the pendulum that’s clear or if light can come through because it picks up and it bends out light and an influence is set. I always recommend a solid stone or a piece of metal for a pendulum or a dowsing rod. It needs to be solid so it doesn’t get affected by all this stuff. Anyway, you have these, where was I? I digressed.

 

[30:16] Ashley James: Humans have a molecular animal, two kinds of auras. molecular which reminds me of quantum physics. Particle can both be a wave and a particle.

 

[30:31] Eric Thorton:  Yes. When you take that notion and you put it to practical application, that rock because it’s stagnant aura field isn’t going to be affected by intention. The same intention that someone who has a dynamic. Being that has a dynamic aura field. The rocks going to sit there. You can wish it death and it just sits there. It’s absorbing it, but it’s like an Apple computer. The hard drive system will just take things in it just sits there as long as it’s not affected by the virus. The rock takes it in and just sits there. It’s not affected by it. Let me tell you demons hate being put into rocks. They really hate that. If they’re really stubborn works great. It’s like a dynamic aura field everything you do affects it because it’s giving you information for safety, for immune system, for social behaviors. It’s just everything. We have this the bodies part which is it’s not like a rock it is still dynamic but it is different than the soul’s part. The soul’s part reaches out in a very different for different information than the body’s part. The shakra is where the soul’s and the body’s auras come together. When they’re in sync you have a very strong shakra when they’re out of sync, the shakra gets weak. If it’s out of sync long enough you get illness in the organs that are affected by the shakra. It can be very subtle. In fact, those subtle ones are the ones that create the cancer and create the illness because there’s such a low frequency. Those subtle frequencies are very low. They can create environment where your body can’t use this anti-oxidants correct. Then you develop disease. In the electromagnetic field which is part of the aura field, in electromagnetic level of the aura field, it’s a level that looks like, the closest vision I can describe it, it looks like those wall light switches that light up. Rooms which when you turn on the lights and at night they glow. Each part of the electromagnetic aura field looks like one of those lights. Except there’s one every single atom in your body. It’s not just the cells for the atom. Each one has a light switch. When those light switches are all on if you’re looking at this like a topographical map. If all the light switches are on the person healthy, if some of them are off those areas are not healthy. They’re not absorbing and being part of the dynamic of health.

That’s one of the ways you can tell illness as you look at the electromagnetic field and you look at where those lights switches are off at. They’ll be over the liver, they’ll be over the knee. They’ll be over somewhere in the middle. You maybe developing cancer from a cellphone in a pocket say. That’s not attached to anything specific except knitting away. If you could switch those back to on position which is the negative ion then the cancer will go away. The building of cancer will go away so you don’t develop the cancer. This is what we were talking earlier about electromagnetic fields. Well, it’s the same thing expect that’s generated by some power plant or is it generate by our brain. The body’s portion of it. If you have the positive ions or electromagnetic field, being bombarded at you at an endless rate, it’s going to switch those little light switches from the negative ion which is health to the positive ion which is not health. That’s one of the ways electromagnetic fields can totally bombard somebody and then like we talked about it earlier if a person has a possession. Possessions are positive ion, which is not health t the human body. That’s why when they come around us we felt repulsed and we don’t know why. It’s like a wall of ill health coming at you. Your [Inaudible 00:35:22] if it’s dramatic if it’s sudden. As it moves closer and closer more closer in there it affect the electromagnetic field more and more and more and more. That’s why I offer people an exercise in helping to clear that. Soon what you’re going to learn today so that if you do have a possession that walks in it doesn’t become yours. If it sits there for a long time, it’s going to affect your energy field enough that it could break it down and come it. Where you can move it in the beginning, it’s easy. Anybody can do it. Not your energy in the beginning you haven’t molded with it. We’ll teach people how to clear their energy field. It’s very simple. In fact it’s simple, it’s almost too simple. We’ll work with that a little later in the interview.

Anyway, the aura field also the physical aura field reflects every single cell of your body and every organized cells of your body like the liver, the kidney or the intestines, those are we call them making an organ so they’re actually organized. I guess you would call it there you go that’s good. Anyway how is the liver affected differently than the kidneys, we’ll look it up. What does the liver represent? Long-term deep anger and frustration. What do kidneys? Current anger. They’re affected by two different things. Two different frequencies because they’re different and the aura field, you put your hand over a healthy liver it’s going to feel different than you put your hand over a healthy kidney or unhealthy. That’s one of the ways people like with the different techniques of helping someone what’s that? Reiki. You’re a Reiki master, right? You’re feeling that. Your hand goes on the top of someone and you feel it. The more sensitive you are the more your radars going to pick up. Like someone is doing Reiki they’re sensitive because they’re doing Reiki but they’ll come over let’s just say they’ll go down over the stomach and they feel sudden change. They may not know why because their gift picks up the stomach there’s something wrong but they don’t pick up what it is. That’s how’s it affecting it. Why other people will come down the same person gets to the stomach and they’ll feel something wrong and they’ll get vision or they’ll get knowledge because their sensors can pick up. Say the one person that can pick up the change, maybe they can pick up the aura field, their amygdala can pick it up 40 minutes of a second. Where the one who is bringing feeling the change and then get a feeling inside their body, that maybe 50 minutes of a second I’m saying or they make it a vision that maybe 80 minutes of a second or they make it all of them that maybe 200 minutes of a second. They’re picking up on this subtle frequencies. Information’s there. That’s like the difference in practitioners. They all learn different things within their abilities and it’s valid but it’s also why some people are mistaken. Not on purpose, but they have the ability to let’s say feel that stomach, but they can’t get it like I do and get more information so the starting point technique that’s say, “Okay, do you feel this?” Now you’re come in from this angle or something like that. You start applying ego based information. It’s not innocent anymore because you’re applying technique and is the information valid? Possibly. But it can also be invalid or not necessarily invalid but incomplete which makes it less useful. It’s not, I guess it doesn’t make them valid it just makes it less useful.

 

[39:41] Ashley James: What if someone feels like the gifts to upsight or knowledge or the ability to let’s say, put their hand over someone’s aura or in their aura and receive information and they want to develop that. How do you develop it without bringing the ego in?  I mean how do you put ego aside and just be that vessel for the information?

 

[40:06] Eric Thorton:  Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of people around to help with that. It is very specifically, it is soul progression that opens up those gifts. If you’re going to learn new technique that’s not a soul progression. Soul progression is when you come to a guy like me and you start seeing what is limiting the flow of the person’s lifetime. If you can eliminate that all of a sudden, the flow speeds up and gifts that they used in the past lives or gifts that are possibly there for them start to be attainable again because they’ve gotten out those low frequencies of pride and ego and human drama. Now their energy field can reach out farther. Literally, start picking up those subtle energies more and more and more. With people that are gifted that don’t particularly know it or they’re limited by it. By doing their background work, I call it their psychology increases their ability to process the information. They’ve sought out information –

 

[41:21] Ashley James: When you say information, it’s the sixth sense?

 

[41:25] Eric Thorton:  The sixth sense. Correct.

 

[41:26] Ashley James: The information being we’re receiving a vision or receiving intuition that we’re receiving information that is not sight or sound.

 

[41:36] Eric Thorton:  Right and I mentor those people. We go back and forth with emails and things like that so that we can, the guides like doing this for people because it helps them understand what is real versus what is egoic and imagination. There’s a big difference but unless there’s a medicine woman or man around to help you discern the differences, these very subtle differences you’re going to confuse them. That for most people get stucked. The guides aren’t going to increase anyone’s gift when it’s in confusion because it causes karma. The guides just go, “Okay, that’ll work through that.” However, they work through that will be there to help them with the next level once they work through that. It can be things from everything affects the aura field. Past life, future life, current life in every way. I’m sitting next to a fish tank that’s affecting my aura field. We can sit there and look this way and feel the fish swim. I can’t anyway because it’s moving in my aura field and they have an aura field. So we pick it it’s in the matrix it’s called by the new age and it’s there. So if you can tune into that fine level, that level you can feel the fish swimming back and forth. That is why fish tanks are so calming for people. They don’t know they’re feeling it but they’re feeling it’s movement. Very subtle movement back and forth and it’s very calming to the human ego to have an innocent movement with no opinion attached to it. It’s very calming. In the aura field, we have something that’s dynamic in the aura field. It’s very agitating for some people opposite might begin possession. Four year olds can [Laughter] Yes, can’t wait to be a grandpa. Anyway, [Laughter] If they start to affecting my aura field too much I can send them home. [Laughter] That’s a bitter way to be a grandparent. Looking forward to it one day.

 

[44:01] Ashley James: [Inaudible 03:43:56] once has said, “if I knew being a grandma will be so much fun, I’d have them first.” Have grandkids first.

 

[44:08] Eric Thorton:  I like that.

 

[44:10] Ashley James: There is a trainer of NLP. You now my background is in Neuro Linguistic Programming.

 

[44:16] Eric Thorton:  I find that fascinating.

 

[44:18] Ashley James: It is. It’s cool stuff. There’s a trainer in NLP who is blind and he can point to the people, the person with their hand up in the audience and it freaks out the audience because they have 50 people in the room and he said, “Any questions? Raise your hand if you have any questions.” They laughed. They think it’s a joke, someone raises their hand and he goes, “Yes, you?” they’re like, “What? How’d he do that?” They know he’s blind. They’re like, “You’re lying here. You’re not blind.” He says, this is one thing we learned to become a trainer in NLP. We learn how to –  in NLP trainer’s training, we learn how to put our aura into expand our aura energy into the full training room so that we can feel the intension of all of these students. We can sense out which student’s going to be the troublemakers. There’s always one. Even in the classroom, there’s always going to be one trouble maker especially if you’re teaching in NLP because it could challenge the ego, right? There’s always some person that’s going to try to distract the class. And these are all outs that pay thousands of dollars to be there to take an NLP class and yet there’s always that one student. I guess see if they can shake or rattle the trainer. Right? See if they can overthrow the class in a way and go to NLP trainers will have already known exactly who they are because you could feel in it in the aura field. It’s part of my training in NLP we learned to put our aura out into the room, feel that the students and to a point where we can really feel which ones have questions, which ones are in confusion, which ones totally got the lesson. You can feel it. It’s part of being connected as a teacher to the class.

 

[46:18] Eric Thorton:  interesting thing with that is the teacher as you’ve heard me say, I don’t like to meditate or work in groups because when you expand the energy like that if your frequency is anywhere near someone else’s in the room, you have the ability to give them your problems and they have the ability to give you their problems. And so, if you can see that, and you can be, what we want is our aura field to be glass. That things that aren’t not ours just pass right through us. Most people aren’t anywhere near that and they end up getting polluted more when they do that. It starts coming into the energy field. They don’t make the association with the class because the energy they pick up from someone else is stuck to them like glue on a surface hasn’t gone in yet. Two or three weeks later, they may start feeling like crap because that energy is slowly worked its way in.

 

[47:30] Ashley James: Is that when at first year of college everyone gains 15 pounds?

 

[47:34] Eric Thorton:  Definitely help it, yes. [Laughter] You’re sharing.

 

[47:38] Ashley James: Everyone’s sharing.

 

[47:39] Eric Thorton:  Sharing that stress.

 

[47:40] Ashley James: Sharing their problems in an energetic level.

 

[47:45] Eric Thorton:  Well, they just changed their entire life. They moved from home to college. They’re like, “Woohoo! Oh my god.” all at the same time. When we feel upset, we want satiation. When we do it through food. Oftentimes.

 

[48:05] Ashley James: Coming back you said when we’re in a class. It can be any class, it can be driver’s ED, it can be in church, any group of people we can take on other people’s problems that are in thought forms, people aura, why is that? It doesn’t feel like that would be beneficial for our evolution or is it?

 

[48:34] Eric Thorton:  Well, it’s fine if you’re the teacher, healer kind of help for the individual because it’s like sometimes with people while I’m working with one on one, I’ll feel what’s going on it means I am at their frequency with that. I can sit there and I know that and I know what to do with it. I know it’s not my own body’s and I tell my body that so it doesn’t it looks at the super subtle frequencies and goes, “Okay, that’s not mine. Most can’t do that. You sit there in the energy field and light energy comes together. How many different types of frustration are there? but they’re all the same energy of frustration but then there may be a hundred thousand different types of frustration but it’s till frustration. Then in a situation like that you can very easily take on a person’s frustration because maybe you’re frustrated with something totally different but it’s the frequency of frustration. There’s also there’s thought forms with it. There’s of predatory energy and demons of frustration and depending on what your frustration is and this other person’s frustration the closer they are together the more likely and the more quickly you can absorb this other person’s information. You know when you get to someone and you’re talking with, “Wow, the same things happen in your life.” You call that co-miserating but literally you’re bouncing your energy it’s the same with each other and you can exchange energy and pretty soon you know what each other’s talking about. It’s all the aura field.

[50:12] Ashley James: My teacher, Ted James of no relation. He would say that he does not think that support groups are beneficial because for example anger management. You’re getting a bunch of people who are angry to get together and hang out and think that better at anger because they’re all talking about their anger feeling off but they’re not actually learning to heal it or resolve it. They learn strategies.

 

[50:39] Eric Thorton:  That’s the benefit of it.

 

[50:41] Ashley James: That’s the benefit of it, right when you get a bunch of angry people together. they’re all – crosstalk

 

[50:46] Eric Thorton:  They can go south.

 

[50:48] Ashley James: He says that you know, its’-

 

[50:50] Eric Thorton:  You can learn coping mechanisms as well as learning new mechanism for anger. The information isn’t specific. When you’re picking up intuition. It’s not going to, “Well, I don’t want to pick up this type but not this type.” No. You’re picking it up through intuition so if you’re going to about a group of angry people, you’re picking up the other people’s anger and their techniques.

 

[51:14] Ashley James: You really want to be very clear on who you hang out with.

 

[51:18] Eric Thorton:  Well, it is. You have depending on where you are. Like if you’re just out of prison because you beat people up, a support group would be good. Maybe you’ve got to learn you know I got them in trouble etc. and it might be a good idea to not, “Oh, I’m not the only one in the universe with this problem and this is how they’re dealing with it and they’re doing with it.” that’s great. Alcoholic Anonymous. That’s great to have the groups. People just explain their feelings. Men never explain their feelings so sometimes a man’s group will help them teach them words language for explaining their feelings but when you start getting into the detail of the subtle energies within those groups. The subtle energies within those groups, that’s when you start developing those problems. As a group develops, the more they get to know each better the more dangerous it becomes. I like AA’s. I mean I don’t need to go to AA. But I like AA, you don’t use your full name and they don’t know each other. The person who developed that was very intelligent because the more you know each other, the more you converse each other between meetings. Which they do not encourage that at all. The more you do it, the more you’re going to co-miserate and the more energies going to circulate around that’s when it keeps people stuck. This is why, AA I don’t know if they did it on purpose, intentionally or they develop that out of intuition but that not sharing your name and not being with each other between meetings, not being buddies with anybody –

 

[53:10] Ashley James: Well, it’ll be easy to go to the bar together.

 

[53:12] Eric Thorton:  Exactly.

 

[53:14] Ashley James: Right. Pull each other down. We want to be the people that are a little bit more involved. Hopefully.

 

[53:23] Eric Thorton:  Like energy comes together. People who don’t have any interest in the spiritual world they have no frequency for it. No ability to pick up on it.

 

[53:36] Ashley James: They probably aren’t listening at this point. [Crosstalk]

 

[53:40] Eric Thorton: They aren’t listening. They’re shut down. Right. You can feel that. You go, “Okay, I don’t want to hang out with you.” Then but they also don’t want to hang out with you because you’re so opposite of energies. It’s a sword. A double-edged sword this thing is because it stops and it enhances but if you know it’s there and you know you can use it the homeostasic level, the various levels of the aura field, they reflect everything that’s going on. The more fine tune you get to your own feeling, the more that your aura field the more you can help yourself.

 

[54:18] Ashley James: You give the picture of the homeostasic field and you talked about the other –

 

[54:25] Eric Thorton: Electro magnetic, one of them.

 

[54:27] Ashley James: Electromagnetic. Can you tell us about all the levels of the aura? What they’re for?

 

[54:32] Eric Thorton: Different people call them different things. Let’s get that probably right now. Semantics it’s all over the board. There’s another layer that I’ve been given a word by the photon layer. That other people use that one too.

 

[54:48] Ashley James: When you say you’re given, just to be clarify for those who hadn’t listened to all those other episodes you had with us which they should because they’re fascinating, you since birth have been able to talk to guides and the angel.

 

[54:59] Eric Thorton:  The angels and guides. Right.

 

[55:00] Ashley James: And they give you the words and talk to you and –

 

[55:05] Eric Thorton:  Right and then I love it when I see it out there because they give me universal knowledge so I should run in to the same words out there.

 

[55:14] Ashley James: Funny side story that you told me. That thing is hilarious. Your guides used to give you a book to buy. They told you what it look like and what’s the name and what’s the everything and you couldn’t find it for, what was it? Five years?

 

[55:25] Eric Thorton:  Five years, yes.

 

[55:28] Ashley James:  And then you finally found it. It’s because it hadn’t been published yet. And you were like, “Okay guys, listen here. There’s something here called timing. I know you like date using guides were on a different plain but time is relevant but for us.”

 

[55:41] Eric Thorton:  Five years looking for a book.

 

[55:43] Ashley James: Five years looking for a book that hadn’t been published yet.

 

[55:48] Eric Thorton:  It was being developed and written and they wanted me to have it. [Laughter] They were looking at the future and it’s there because someone was writing and it was going be down one day. It was the book, Animals Spirit Guides by Steven Farmer. I believe it is. Anyway, it was like, he was developing the book.

 

[56:13] Ashley James:  That’s funny. So they gave you the name by a photon which is a layer of the aura. What is it?

 

[56:20] Eric Thorton:  The bio photon affects it’s the – the reason that word is chosen it was been chosen by other people as well other guides because that’s what they’ve got. It’s the very specifically, the energy that is being radiated from the nucleus of every cell. It’s what give your body heat. Your self-producing energy using a different protein molecules. Where there’s amino acids, for example the L-Theanine, I think it is. I may have it wrong. Attaches to the end of the double helix when its ready to divide, it really plugs in like a receptacle like you’re plugging something into a wall receptacle. It feeds this the double helix and it starts to spin at the speed of light creating heat. In the bio photon, we can see that. See what is developing specifically, how the cells are dividing, what genes are being activated, what’s not and you can bring the body back to the information of something being new like you’re a newborn.

 

[57:47] Ashley James: Like the blueprints of perfect health and healing.

 

[57:52] Eric Thorton:  Right. So you take the bio photon field and you’ll see, right in there you’ll see little subtle like little switches the bio photon field I see it is more like a cloud but not negative. Not something bad. It’s telling me the health of the reproduction of every cell and every gene that’s being activated and isn’t. There’s a lot of information there. Healers can be used to modify that to bring it back to innocence. The body isn’t innocent anymore because it’s not a newborn. The body has this frequency you adjust the bio photon to bring it back to the innocent level and the body starts going, “Oh, I need to go that direction.” This is one of the ways you can get the body to heal itself is by you’re not only going in and do whatever the guide just saying on the very subtle levels and major levels but at the end of the session, we take the bio photon field and restore it to innocence. And you’ll see at the end of the session, I stand behind you and above you, you’re laying down, I stand behind your head and I literally just take this energy and wipe that bio photon field to make it innocent again. Then any healing that is in there will remain longer because the healing is also innocent like the bio photon field. If you want something like if a person has cancer, sometimes it heals overnight. Spontaneous healing with the work we do.

 

[59:43] Ashley James: Like with your brother.

 

[59:44] Eric Thorton: Like with my brother and a number of other people that we’ve been through. Sometimes it’s a progression and that bio photon field has got to remain separate in a healthy form whether it’s adopting the frequencies of the cancer. You keep that bio photon field innocent so the body starts going, “Oh, this cancer cell doesn’t belong.” It starts to recognize that that doesn’t belong and then the body will attack it and get rid of it. That’s ultimately how you have to cure cancer and if the body just won’t do it. It’s because it’s their time to go. It’s obvious and because if it’s your time to check out, if you get cancer and you’re going to check out that way, I don’t recommend it. If you’re going to check out that way that aren’t going to change it. I’m not going to allow it because that’s how you’re supposed to die. We look at that as humans and the animal parts of us looks at that as panic. The aura field would change from that. That’s the worst thing you’ll do because it puts out all that negative energy you’ll never if you learn the lesson form the cancer it won’t change because you got panic in it. You don’t own your cancer.

 

[01:01:08] Ashley James: Just to clarify. If someone has, it’s their life’s path and they chose before they came here. This is how they want to go, they want to go from cancer there’s nothing we can do. That’s how they decided it they want to go –

 

[01:01:23] Eric Thorton: In the end result.

 

[01:01:26] Ashley James: Right. But if someone has cancer and they didn’t chose but that’s how they go. You have cancer and they can live another 50 years but they’ve got to get rid of the cancer. You’re saying that if there’s panic in the aura, because the animal part of our body’s freaking out word about death and resisting and panicking about it even if they gained the positive learnings and do the emotional healing work that healing won’t take place in the body because the panic in the aura is still present.

 

[01:02:02] Eric Thorton:  Right.That’s why we have to sometimes in the work we do, we give people homework, we give people suggestions on how to get the deep subconscious to not panic.

 

[01:02:17] Ashley James: When you’re saying we, you’re talking you and the guides?

 

[01:02:20] Eric Thorton:   And the guides. Whenever I use the word we, I’m not deferring from me. I’m including me. Because a lot of times people use we as a mental illness.

 

[01:02:27] Ashley James: No. I didn’t mean that.

 

[01:02:28] Eric Thorton:   I’m using it as literally a “we”. Got myself and the guides. As a therapist, I know that can be a disassociate disorder. This isn’t that.

 

[01:02:43] Ashley James: Like “we” as in you and the person you’re healing. I’m just clarifying, or “we” as in all healer?

 

[01:02:52] Eric Thorton:   No, me and the guides and angels. Right. Their job if there’s time because if that person has cancer and they’re not able to get rid of it and they’re not really generally have to die from it. There’s still the back log of past life and learning that’s preventing them currently form being able to not own that cancer from being able to get rid of it and it’s also subconscious. One of the things science has finally discovered. Things like mushrooms and the alistine. Even MD, whatever they call it, it’s ecstasy. They have hallucigens. In therapeutic amounts, it can open up that subconscious mind.

 

[01:03:41] Ashley James: With a doctor, with a therapist.

 

[01:03:43] Eric Thorton:  With a doctor and a therapist definitely. [Crosstalk] You don’t go and do it on your own.

 

[01:03:49] Ashley James: There are therapies in which they think this is they give them therapy dose or alistine or mushrooms or ecstasy but it’s a different dose than someone probably high from it.

 

[01:04:00] Eric Thorton:   You don’t get high from it.

 

[01:04:01] Ashley James: Very minimal. It opens up the brain.

 

[01:04:06] Eric Thorton: It opens up the subconscious mind to subtleties that they’re so distant and foreign to you that you can’t go there. It just won’t allow you to go there on a personal talk therapy situation and typical healing session. This is where guides will go in and go into those levels and go, “Okay, they’ll go into those levels and they’ll go into the bio photon electromagnetic and go into what’s affecting the DNA subconsciously that’s so far back that you can’t get through it. Bring that forward and then all of a sudden physical changes take place. I’ll use me as an example. I did the therapy and the first time I did it, I saw myself canned in a jar. I was a kid it was when my brother died. It’s on my book. I took everything prior to my brother dying including my memories and I canned them. I had no idea but it’s a coping mechanism, my subconscious mind did so I could be in the moment when my brother died instead of being in the tragedy of losing this whole life. It blocked out all the joy we had, all the interaction in the family so I could be in the here and now and my brain could heal itself for this major tragedy. Here I’m 58 years old and I still have my childhood memories and I don’t know why. I’ve had many therapies worked with me, I’ve had many healers work with me. It’s just my systems wasn’t going to go there because it was content with it. It’s like scar tissues if your body doesn’t recognize it anymore, it’s content with it. It’s not up to be healed. But I still didn’t have the memories. This came up and I took this out and we did EMDR lifestyle integration etc. with it and did the other energetic work with it as well and literally all my childhood memories are back. Every single one of them. The system had taken it. The aura field had taken it in. That’s okay, right there. I don’t have to deal with that in a jar on a shelf. It’s okay.

 

[01:07:02] Ashley James: I had the same thing happen to me at my mom’s death. There’s a huge chunk of my life missing. Over time, also it’s too painful to go back, think about her before she died for a good while I’ve had a lot of emotional work. But I had a friend from childhood ask me, “Do you remember such and such..” I’m like, the entire part of my life’s like. My brain was like, “This is too painful. Putting it away for later.” Yes, you did this therapeutic mushrooms basically with a doctor and you don’t get high from it. It opens up the brain, the unconscious and let’s you work on things and heal things.

 

[01:07:51] Eric Thorton:  That we haven’t been able to get to because the body is content with it.

 

[01:07:55] Ashley James: How is that? When the brain suppresses memories, how was that related to the aura field?

 

[01:08:04] Eric Thorton:   It’s suppressing the aura field.

 

[01:08:05] Ashley James: So you could see it in your aura field or other?

 

[01:08:08] Eric Thorton:  I could see it. I could look at it. I couldn’t get the knowledge from it. I knew it was there because it’s the work I do that type of thing, I talked about it. I processed my brother death etc. it just the body say, “We don’t have to go there.” because it was a defense mechanism.

 

[01:08:32] Ashley James: When you look at someone’s aura field, can you see trauma? Emotional trauma from the past?

 

[01:08:36] Eric Thorton:  If we turn that on, yes. We have to turn on the layers and so depends whether guides lead me. Sometime they would lead me to that level in session. Sometimes they don’t. It depends they have to do the combination that’s going to unlock the person and that’s not necessary to open it up and have them become aware and enlighten the conscious. It’s not necessary to open that up.

 

[01:09:06] Ashley James:  When we clear the bio photon field within our aura, is that you’re saying that that is the level which we can hold on disease? The whole aura can hold on to the disease.

 

[01:09:20] Eric Thorton:  Yes. The whole aura can hold on to the disease. Each layer you might call it. For the sake of discussion, we call them layers. They’re all intermingled. It’s like the way the aura field works is like if you had a room full of balls. Basketballs. They’re all touching but they’re not combining. One basketball is yellow, one basketball is red, one basketball is green, one is bright green. They don’t combine. They can all exist in the same space without combining. When people say the aura is this specific color or shakra is this specific color. Well, they’re all seeing the red basketballs, they’re not seeing the green ones in it or the yellow ones in it. Our aura field is dynamic. There is no specific color to a specific anything. It depends on what is going on with it at that moment. If you’re angry, your liver’s fired up because you’re angry from something from long time ago in the current moment that’s going to have red basketballs versus green ones if you want to say it. But they’re all there but they do not combine. It’s like when we go with that bio photon, we’re taking out the I’m trying to get an analogy that would work for that. We’re taking out the stench. That’s kind of weird I get. Like the red basketballs they’re going to be angry, frustrated just like the other. While all the red basketballs but they don’t have to be active. So we wipe out the stench you may say so they’ll becomes the same smelling and everything starts working together again. They all become the same frequency but they’re also red basketballs, green basketballs, yellow basketballs. When the red ones are standing out, I hear that goes, “Oh, this person has anger. This person had a possession in this part of the aura field.” Because you’re looking at what it’s doing, what it’s reflecting. How it’s being affected by the energy. When I go through at the end of the sessions we go through and we clear that bio photon, it brings it up to date to what’s just been done in the body and in the aura field it brings all up to date and the healing will continue far longer after they leave the space. That particular dynamics of that aura field. Now the aura field also goes inward. You hear about the inner shakras.

 

[01:12:14] Ashley James: I thought shakras were in the body anyway? They’re in and out or they go through the whole body.

 

[01:12:19] Eric Thorton:  They go through the whole body but the inward shakra – Shakras are part of the energy of the body the physical energy of the body and when they join with the soul’s physical energy. Within that dynamic they’re separate from your body. The aura reaches out. Can reach out for miles and miles depending on what needs to be done. Like if you’re a scout out looking for an enemy, it‘s going to reach out for 30 miles and have you, “Oh, I need to head to that direction.” Or if you’re in the supermarket doesn’t need to go out that far.

 

[01:12:57] Ashley James: I’m looking for the pickles. [Laughter]

 

[01:12:59] Eric Thorton:  It’s not this aisle. “Oh yes, it’s right here.” It’s dynamic, it giving you information, and the clearer that is the more accurate it’s going to be. The inner shakra is the exact same thing except it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. If you think about the analogy they’ve shown it on Facebook you get this things, it shows a cell on the earth they start expanding that into the full universe.

 

[01:13:28] Ashley James: Oh, the video.

 

[01:13:31] Eric Thorton:  Right. Same thing goes inward. You’ve got to get to bio photon in the inwards side as well not just with that here. You’ve got it’s like you’ve got a horizon line in the middle of your aura field. What’s inward and what is outward. They’re both equally important. This is the part of healing that I haven’t heard anybody do at this point where they’re actually balancing both sides of this horizon line like [Inaudible 01:14:04]

 

[01:14:05] Ashley James: The aura that’s inside our body versus outside.

 

[01:14:09] Eric Thorton:  Is the same as the outside but it’s going inward.

 

[01:14:15] Ashley James:  In each cell?

 

[01:14:17] Eric Thorton:  Into each cell. This is a hard concept for humans and science to really understand because we think of things physically. The aura field exists in what science would call the non-physical space. It’s not. It’s very physical. But we think of things when they get smaller as contacting and actually being smaller. They’re not. It’s just to the human way of thinking, it’s getting smaller. It’s just as big as the universe. If you don’t work with both sides of that at some point, the healings aren’t going to hold. If they have the possibility of holding. They will not hold because you’ve got one portion that’s one frequency now that’s really healthy and the inwards portion that’s not. You have to balance the bio photon for example on both sides of the middle point where it exists. Otherwise, it’s not going to hold. so it’s not going to be as effective in changing the cells of the physical body.

 

[01:15:37] Ashley James: How do we do that? How do we make sure that our outward inward auras are balanced?

 

[01:15:46] Eric Thorton:  Well, part of my process with talking to the public is to put it out there because people have different points of view and if they know like with Reiki, if you know there’s something there you can affect it with intention. You can affect it with knowledge as well and if people start looking at that inner part you’re going to get a million people’s ideas on how to approach that and then you’re going to get a better healing process throughout the planet. I have one person’s assets of healing. I love other people’s aspect of healing. I love it, people’s aspect of healing because it’s so interesting from their point of view of the same thing. That’s how you get a body of information. The body of information so far has been on the aura field that we look outward at. So far there’s not a lot of body of information from the aura field of what is inward. I mentioned it from people from time to time so they can have it in their head so that they can start getting information for that. I don’t know how to teach that.

 

[01:16:56] Ashley James: Yet. But you do. You do teach –

 

[01:17:01] Eric Thorton:  Just putting it out there is teaching.

 

[01:17:04] Ashley James: Sure. You mentored people one on one who are healers.

 

[01:17:10] Eric Thorton:  Who are healers and I can teach them when their site opens up to that level how to use that and they will use that through their expression which is different with mine and the knowledge continues to open up to it. It’s fantastic to watch something like that develop. Because that’s what were supposed to do as healers is pulling out these different aspects and then find out the whole. That’s like I say that’s what I hope to be doing by some of this interviews and talks I do. I’m going to die. This body’s going to die.

 

[01:17:52] Ashley James: Eventually. Moving to another realm.

 

[01:17:54] Eric Thorton:  Maybe. Maybe not. You know, to me it’s great whatever happens. It’s going to do that. I’d like to come back to a better place. There’s a little bit of ego for me if I keep putting it out there people, are going to go, “Oh” and they’re going to mix in their perspective and it’s going to bring out this massive knowledge of information by all these people’s perspective. So yes, it’s a challenge to people. Let’s look at the inner auras. The inner auras of the shakras and the inner auras of every cell and the inner auras of every atom and see what can be done with that. Now things that affect all the way around are sound. Sound affects the inner and outer of auras. There’s some really dynamic people that do a lot of sound therapy. If you can find the tune for that person it really harmonizes both sides of that horizon line which we call the body. The inner and the outer. That’s fascinating to watch. I was just in talking with a guy a couple of days ago, and he does sound therapy. He thinks he has a gift. The guy was totally left brain scientific mind and he got told by a NASA engineer that he was gifted. He knew how to pull sounds together to make music that were extremely harmonizing and healing. It’s fascinating. Talk to the guy.

 

[01:19:39] Ashley James: Does he sell his music?

 

[01:19:42] Eric Thorton:  He does. I might give him your name and stuff so that you can interview him and he’s in California. I’m totally drawing a blank out of his name right now because I’d like to give him a little boost. It was this guy we used to have a couple of hours conversation and we talked and we checked see if we can work with each other things like that. The sound therapy can help get into those little packages up on the wall that the body has said, “Okay, its fine up on my wall. We’ll just leave it there.” It can help bring that out into light of day so we can deal with it. It needs to be in a professional way because if something comes out and you’re processing on your own, you have no idea how to do that. It goes right back on to the wall. You need to have someone to help you walk though it that’s trained on some level to do that. Anyway, this levels of the aura field are definitely reflecting the root base causes of the end results of illness we have. Like a sore arm, in result of all these other things. Depending on the sight, sound ability, gift ability of the practitioner is how far back you get. I can say everything affects the aura field. As we get into the what would be the right, the aspects of the aura field that affects us every single day that we all use every single day. If you bring a let’s say a person is allergic to corn. If he bring corn close to the aura field, it’s going to react or if you pull in the idea of corn, it’s going to react. This is where dowsing contest strength testing. Contest if you’re weak or strong with corn. It’s affecting the aura field. The aura of the corn is affecting your aura field and if you’re allergic to it. It makes you physically weak.

 

[01:22:08] Ashley James: I was in, I think it’s called Janell’s Gluten-Free Market in Woodinville. We were grabbing something because our whole family is gluten–free but we don’t eat processed food that often but we are getting something for our son that we couldn’t find anywhere else because they have vegan bread there because he has egg and dairy allergy and so they have gluten free vegan bread. It’s just hard to find and this one woman was saying that she’s allergic to XYZ and there’s always breads and she didn’t know which one would be good for her and I asked her, “Have you ever done muscle testing?” and she looked at me like I had two heads and she was open to it. I said, “Okay, well of course.” The clerk behind, oh man, he gave a look. He was afraid like I was about to grow two heads. [Crosstalk]

 

[01:23:05] Eric Thorton:  A big worm comes out of your stomach. [Laughter]

 

[01:23:06] Ashley James: Exactly. He was looking at me like very afraid. She put down her basket and I said, “Okay.” I showed her. I said, “Put your arm out beside you.” and I pushed on it just to show her there’s so much pressure. I’m going to push and said, “Think of something you hate.” and I pushed down and her arm becomes weak and I said, “Think about something you love.” pushed on her arm and it becomes strong. I said, “Okay now, close your eyes.” I handed her one of the loaves of bread so she couldn’t be biased, she’d know which one I handed her and I pushed on her arm and then we did it with the other one. I think we might have tested three but she was amazed that the one where her arm went weak and she was just holding her arm and also she couldn’t even hold her arm up anymore. As I was putting very little pressure on and that’s muscle testing. There’s always the concern that there’s biased because I could be pushing five pounds of weight with the other because I have unconscious biased towards what brand is better.

 

[01:24:11] Eric Thorton:  That’s why you can’t sell a product and use muscle testing. I hear biased.

 

[01:24:19] Ashley James: Because you’re biased right? Because you might believe you’re going to push more but if there’s was some way to do muscle testing where either person didn’t know what it was.

 

[01:24:29] Eric Thorton:  That’s right. Exactly. That’s why muscle testing affects the aura field so much it is unbelievable. This is where we get –

 

[01:24:36] Ashley James: You mean the aura affects muscle testing.

 

[01:24:39] Eric Thorton:  The aura affects muscle testing and the products that you’re testing for or the ideas that you’re testing for affects the aura. Which gives you the strength or the weakness. Well, let’s apply that a little farther with the aura field. If a loaf of bread, you can test a loaf of bread and this is why, I’m going to digress for a moment. This is the very reason why I do whole food plant-based.

 

[01:25:08] Ashley James: Just for those who don’t know what that is. You eat a whole food plant-based diet meaning, not only are you vegan but you choose to not eat processed foods. Because lots of vegans out there that eat beyond burger. Plant-based whole food meaning food that’s whole form not processed and plant-based meaning far from animals. I’ve had a lot of interviews about whole food plant-based  that’s what I eat and my husband eats and we do our best. Usually we have something out of a can or whatever but some processed foods the more whole food the more non adulterated –

 

[01:25:51] Eric Thorton:  You’re not sucking a nutrient out of something. Like olive oils great for you and olives.

 

[01:25:55] Ashley James: Eat the whole freaking olive. Don’t squeeze the oil out of it because you’re removing the fiber and anytime you remove the fiber –

 

[01:26:03] Eric Thorton:  But it’s not only that. Your body doesn’t know what to do with oil versus oil in the olive with the whole ingredient. Your body can digest an entire olive. The oil is water soluble, you pull the oil out of it, it is no longer water-soluble and the body doesn’t have an idea what to do with it. We need the EFAs, the DHAs and all those stuff from the olive oils the omegas but those are chemicals. They’re not oil. You can get them other ways by eating the olive one way.

 

[01:26:33] Ashley James: One of the reasons why you chose to eat whole foods plant-based?

 

[01:26:36] Eric Thorton: Right. It’s because of the aura field. If you said the vitamin C, it’s not going to work for me if I take it in pill form and you test it you’re going to be weak with the vitamin C that comes from an orange but you’d be strong with it that comes from pill. Because of your belief system.

 

[01:27:00] Ashley James: Your belief system affects your aura.

 

[01:27:04] Eric Thorton:  Correct. This is why reductionism is a vicious cycle. If you say you need magnesium for something which we do, but if you believe that you have to take it in a pill form, when you eat the mushroom which is the highest source of magnesium your body won’t use it. It’ll only use the magnesium in the – some of the magnesium you take in a capsule form but the mushroom form is a thousand times better than the capsule form. In other words, we literally change according to our thought process, our aura field changes. Reductionism which is plain, it’s taking a product and taking  specific thing out of it saying this is what’s good for you and that instead of eating the entire product. If you need vitamin C, if you eat an apple to get your vitamin C while scientifically the apple has 50mg of vitamin C in it but if you eat the whole apple because all the dynamic is in that apple for making vitamin C, when you eat the whole apple you’ll have a 1500mg raise in vitamin C in your bloodstream. Not 50 or science can only see 50mg of it because your body uses, the aura field uses all the information in the apple to produce what your body needs. Dr. Yeo something who got a Pulitzer Prize for this study over 20 years over 300,000 people watching whole food versus broken down foods does in your body. Your whole aura field changes. When you put a vitamin C pill in you, your aura field doesn’t know what to do with it or you put an apple in your aura field, your body doesn’ t know what to do with it. The whole piece of vitamin C or vitamin A or this subtle thing here, so many people are selling products to make money because if it’s vitamin C and an apple’s good for you, let’s pull it out and get it in pill form so I can make money out of it. Because there’s no money in selling apple except to farmers and middle man. There’s no money for anybody else, you sit here and reductionism takes this object and makes it foreign to your aura field and it has no idea what to do with it so your body doesn’t pay attention.

 

[01:29:41] Ashley James: 90% at the grocery store really confuses the aura field. All the processed foods.

 

[01:29:47] Eric Thorton:  Totally. That’s why you hear people saying we need to eat seasonally partially, we need to because squash digest better in the fall that it does in the spring because of the aura of the squash. It’s ripe, it’s ready, it’s fresh. You go out you kick that like your zucchini it’s so much different than something sitting around for 6 months then coming out in the spring. Squash in the spring is very different energetically than squash in the fall. Your body will get very different things from it because the aura field tells your body how to digest it. Things that are reduced your aura field has no idea what to do with it. You watch someone eat something inorganic or you watch someone eat something that is reduced and their aura field just gets confused. It has no idea. You get some of it but you don’t get that mm feeling inside of you. It just it feels so good.

 

[01:30:52] Ashley James: Like the soup I brought today?

 

[01:30:52] Eric Thorton:  Just like the soup you brought today.

 

[01:30:55] Ashley James: I’ll include the recipe. I’ve made a soup right before coming here and put it in mason jars and we’ve been drinking it before the interview and it’s amazing. No oil, no salt. It’s creamy and it’s rich and it’s so delicious.

 

[01:31:10] And it’s full of flavors.

 

[01:31:11] Ashley James: And full of nutrition.

 

[01:31:12] Eric Thorton:  And all that affects your aura field. That’s a particular one. You’ve figured out a formula for helping to wake you up. It’s just you wanted something this morning that would wake you up so your aura field tuned in to that. What was in the refrigerator and in your spice cup and everything. You start dumping it together and you came up for this elixir for the interview so were both awake and everything for the interview. That’s all aura field. It’s telling you what to put in that.

 

[01:31:44] Ashley James:  I feel like when we have that discussion of quantum physics, it’s like the chicken and the egg. Our body and our soul are producing the aura field but it feels like the aura field has a life of it’s own.

 

[01:32:03] Eric Thorton:  They both have dynamics of their own but they are dependent on when the souls portion of the body has come together it creates life. It creates the dynamic of life and the flow of that. Everything affects that flow. That maybe what you’re talking about that dynamic it’s when they’re in harmony, that’s when you are in best health. When you’re in to do something that’s into the system whether it’s a thought or a chemical or a reduced something, it just causes static. It’s telling you to alert. Your body doesn’t know what to do with it. it’s like when you get and people who aren’t sensitive don’t know this but when you take a let’s just use food, when you take food that is raised organic and raised by a living hands, it digest differently than organic, raised on a safe way, giant safe way farm versus inorganic. Yes. Better to have the safe way than to have the inorganic but you can literally feel the way it changes your mood. If you would’ve taken this lovely soup you made this morning and you would’ve put safe way zucchini in it –

[01:33:43] Ashley James: Instead of the you pick farm –

 

[01:33:44] Eric Thorton:  Yes, Exactly. It would be a different way. It affected us here today because the aura field has to deal with that. It changes it. It changes it completely. It changes the pheromones. It changes the alertness in the brain. It changes the feeling of well-being throughout your body. I tell people the closer to nature and the more loving anything is, the better it is for your body. It’s always best to eat the best quality you can possibly afford because I can say it’s better to have safe organic than not. Anyway, the aura field is part of your defense system. We talked about your immune system but it is when you have a foreign object in your aura field, foreign auras, foreign energy. Your field it can alert your immune system then it can also alert you to safety. This is why all mammals have this. Fish have a little different thing going on they’re not a mammal. Lizards and things like that. The cold blooded animals that are heated by their environment have a different type of aura field and they’re not as attuned. A fish has feelings nerve feelings but they don’t perceive things as someone’s going to cut my head off I bite that hook. It’s like, their nerve feelings if you took if you went fishing and you took the fish out of the water you’d be it’s still breathing because it still has moisture in its gills so it’s getting oxygen but it doesn’t have the ability to have fear. If you took – it’s going to get gross for a minute. kind of how we go on this subject but it’s going to get gross for a minute, if you sit there and if you’re going to behead a human, you have all this dynamic in the aura field and everything that takes place if that’s going happen versus a fish it’s like [Inaudible 01:36:08] dead. There just simply isn’t the perception and the ability that aura field to pick up on this type of thing. It still is different to damage to kill a fish than it is to cut a human.

 

[01:36:25] Ashley James: They experience it differently.

 

[01:36:27] Eric Thorton:  They experience it totally different. The aura experience it differently. The soul of the fish experiences it differently. It doesn’t hold resentment. It’s not going to affect them in the next life. They’re not going to be afraid of that fishhook in the next life as if they come back as a fish again. It’s because they never were afraid of it. That part of the aura field that brings us into memory. They don’t have a brain to do that.

 

[01:36:59] Ashley James: We can become afraid of accidents in the next life because you’re beheaded in the previous life and you can retain that.

 

[01:37:06] Eric Thorton:  We retain that very much so.

 

[01:37:09] Ashley James: Because you mentioned that our aura field also exhibits our past life experiences.

 

[01:37:14] Eric Thorton: Experiences. When you tap in the past life experiences, the aura field let’s say, a person was, I’ll go back to what I had. My brother died, I hang the stuff on the shelf, it was there I pretended I died it was still there. The next life, I come in that’s on the shelf I have no – in that life my bother may be hadn’t died and so it’s foreign object to me on that shelf. I have no way of even attaching to it but when maybe a friend’s brother dies and you start realizing your own mortality because of that then it wakes up because the aura field has now taken on the idea of death and it taps into past life. You now have unresolved death. Right around death unresolved ones and it picks up on that bottle that I had put on the shelf an all of a sudden I lose that memory of that life of the childhood. That’s how past life can affect us. It changes the aura field goes, “Oh my god, okay, stay. Keep that away. That’ll cause harm.” Memory of childhood causes harm if there’s early childhood death in the family and it’ll literally shut down off in the next life. And you go to therapist and he go, “Why?” I don’t know. No trauma’s ever happened. There must’ve been a trauma. You show all the signs of having trauma. Or I’ve never had a trauma. I’ve never anyone died never been abused. Whatever it was. Never had it and the therapist saying “You’re nuts.” because you’re literally showing all the signs of the trauma. It happens with rape situations from past life. People die when they’re being raped and then in the next life they don’t have a memory of it so the therapist will blame Dad or blame a brother when it was actually past life.

 It’s in the aura field that it was Dad or brother in the past life. A different dad or different brother in the past life. It’s brought in from the aura field as suppressed memory but it’s from different life and there’s no way to distinguish that for typical psychologist to distinguish that. The aura field it picks up on those subtleties to stay safe. This is picks up in my next life I haven’t processed this life stuff with my little brother it doesn’t want to have that pain again. The neighbor kids, the neighbor’s family, a person dies wake it up with me, “Don’t go there. You don’t want anyone to die.” he start getting this unreasonable fears we call them. So then the work we do, we can go back to that. Why they have this unreasonable fears. We’ve proven there’s nothing in this life that would cause those fears that is past life. Then you look at the aura field and you start going into the inner shakras or the other way where I’m directed to find those subtleties. They’re not for this life. They’re from the different life and then you pick those off the shelf and you look at those and you release it and you process it and then it release this current life from those feelings and you’ve processed, you’ve learned from it and it finishes that issues from past life and in that subsequent life after that life. You won’t have problems with it. Because you fully were able to deal with it.

If in this life you weren’t able to get back to it, the following life it will happen too. We call this process karma. It’s not right or wrong it’s what you need to learn. I hadn’t learned yet it was still on the shelf. So that’ll keep coming to me again and again in future lives until I learned what was on the shelf. That is karma. It’s the learning process. It is people mix the idea of person and they’re very different. Send me, you missed the boat, you screwed up. You damaged yourself for somebody else. Karma is just learning. It can be found in the aura field.

 

[01:41:37] Ashley James: Very cool. So now, we got three layers and again not layers like a parfait layer like a –

 

[01:41:44] Eric Thorton: They’re distinct layer within the same –

 

[01:41:45] Ashley James: I was going to say smoothie.

 

[01:41:46] Eric Thorton:  Layers like a smoothie. Distinct molecule within the same jar. There’s another layer we call the Etheric layer. So far, we’ve been doing with what we call the astral layers. The layer one is very connected between the soul and the body and it’s very much to do with the physical life on the planet. Etheric is the soul’s portion of the aura. That gives you a whole another set of abilities and aspect to which to draw from for healing. Like for Etheric like astral travel people are travelling within the planet, you can learn people can be taught to astral travel and they can get real time information. Third travel is when you go out into the universe. You can travel that part of your soul can travel light years in seconds, in milliseconds. That’s one of the amazing dynamic things of the human soul in that aura field. This is how people will eventually time travel or eventually hit works. You don’t bring your body with you, that stays behind, the body cannot withstand those forces. But the soul can. Literally you can travel completely across the universe in milliseconds and this is one of the things that other species you might say are very jealous of with the human existence.

 

[01:43:32] Ashley James: You didn’t want to say the word, aliens.

 

[01:43:34] Eric Thorton:  No, I didn’t. [Laughter] this is one of the things they study with humans is how do we project that way and get real time information. Now there is no way to prove it except when you’re travelling etherically with somebody. Then you’re both seeing the same things. Then you say, “Oh, yes. I see that rock over here. I see this type of plant over here.” or “I see this type of lifeform over here.” You’re both talking about the same thing.

 

[01:44:10] Ashley James: We could both travel to mars and see the –

 

[01:44:15] Eric Thorton:  The polar iced caps.

 

[01:44:16] Ashley James: Or the robot on mars and read the serial number.

 

[01:44:19] Eric Thorton:  Yes. When you get good at it, you can get down with that detail.

 

[01:44:24] Ashley James: Then you can call up NASA and see if you’re right.

 

[01:44:26] Eric Thorton:  Yes. You can. If there’s a way to verify it. It’d be very interesting. That would be the way to do it.

 

[01:44:33] Ashley James: When I was a teenager, my boyfriend Ryan, who became a really good friend, still is. He lived in Newmarket and I lived in North York which is, it’s about 45 minutes away from me in Ontario. He was reading a book or something in astral travel. I’m one of those people that kind like reads the first chapter and thinks I can do it. I don’t need to read. I got it. okay, I’m going to meditate and I’m going to do this thing. I’d sat on the floor because I thought id have to have yoga positon with my knees crossed and I closed my eyes. I imagined a big vortex of light opening above me and I went in it. I ended up floating right outside Ryan’s window. Of course, I could be just totally making this up in my head but it was really cool. I decided it was maybe 6pm, I remember it was like November because it was already dark outside and I’m floating above it outside his window. We’re teenagers so we don’t go to bed early. It was 6pm, it’s young and it’s not late at night. His lights were on in his room and he was asleep on top of his bed. He had taken a nap. I floated inside and I could smell his big citronella plant in his room and I can smell it. I liked it. He liked it. I can actually smell citronella and I floated right up over him and checked out the scene. His lights were on I could see everything in his room and then I came back and so now I called him. I came back to my body. I called him. I woke him up and I said, “Were you just sleeping?” And he’s like, “How did you know?” Sure enough. That was my verification for, “Dang. You can really astral travel can’t you?”

 

[01:46:21] Eric Thorton:  With the aura field giving you feedback. Giving your brain a feedback.

 

[01:46:27] Ashley James: Well, it’s not like I went and where it’s my aura expanded and totally –

 

[01:46:29] Eric Thorton:  Yes, your physical body didn’t go there.

 

[01:46:31] Ashley James:  Oh, no. Of course, I stayed in the bedroom. It’s not like anything left my body. It didn’t?

 

[01:46:38] Eric Thorton:  No, it didn’t. Only a part of the astral part of the aura field that has the ability to project. That does leave the body.

 

[01:46:47] Ashley James: So it didn’t just expand?

 

[01:46:48] Eric Thorton:  No, this is a specific narrow projection. And it’s connected back to you because of frequency. It’s like an emperor penguin baby can always find it’s mom even though they all look the same because it’s a frequency thing. They call it the golden quarter [Inaudible 01:47:05] It’s the frequency. It’s like there you go. You are projecting part of you and people can see your combination of your all your past lives. When people see your astral body, they’re seeing what you brought to. Your history to this body. This is why we reflect some of our genes from our family but we reflect more of past life.

 

[01:47:41] Ashley James:  That’s how, like my husband is 6 foot 7 and his father’s 6 foot 6 and every single person in the family is barely 5’10. Every person is made of 6 feet tall. It’s just really interesting that they’re, the entire family is all of the average height and this two giants and we don’t know where it came from.

 

[01:48:11] Eric Thorton:  When I was a kid, the doctor predicted the height of each of my brothers and myself. My brothers, he was right on. He said I was going to be 6 foot 2 and I went “Yes.” but my darn past life I’ve never been over 5 foot 7. So I ended up being 5 foot 6 and a half. [Laughter] And he was right on with everybody else’s but me being the major man at the joints at some point, femur like that and he was perfectly right on but no, my past lives, I have so many past lives and he was out real tall throughout history and I’m still not really tall. I was like, “Come on. Let’s go for three more reaches in the next life. Maybe four.”

 

[01:48:57] Ashley James: You’ve got to stretch you out in the inversion table.

 

[01:49:01] Eric Thorton:  But the information from past life told my body that’s how tall you’re supposed to be and we even look similar to what we have in our past life. That’s one of the reasons why we develop according to how much our history was in past life. That’s why oftentimes people like myself, I’m a little chubby I have to deal with past life when I was chubby in order to deal with the current life chubby so I have to stop gaining weight. So you have to deal with that stuff this subtle information that comes forward you have to deal with that in the aura field to get health optimal health in this life and that’s the inner and outer shakras. The astral body I can say is a very narrow section of the current aura field of the very narrow section fo the body’s aura field. It is not the soul’s aura field that projects. It’s the body’s. The soul does the etheric. The body does the astral.

 

[01:50:14] Ashley James: Astral is like travelling around [Crosstalk] what’s around the earth in time.

 

[01:50:23] Eric Thorton:  Correct. My mother wanted to actually I might have told the story before but I’m not really sure. She couldn’t light the fireplace she had a free standing stove. And her husband was asleep at that time didn’t want to wake him up, wouldn’t take chill at the house it’s winter time. She wanted to start this fire place or this free standing stove so she called me up and she goes, “Eric, how do you this?” it was a really crappy stove. She’s gotten rid of it since but they had it forever. It had to be a certain way for it to light. Very specific. I’ve never seen anything like it. I astral projected to see what she had done.

 

[01:51:10] Ashley James: While on the phone?

 

[01:51:11] Eric Thorton:  While on the phone with her. I’m standing in front of her stove in the astral body.

 

[01:51:16] Ashley James: She can’t see you?

 

[01:51:17] Eric Thorton:  She can’t see me. But remember it’s of the physical body so there’s texture to it. I’m standing there in front of the stove and I go, “Well, you stack the wood this way and you got the paper this way and it won’t do it.” I said, “And the vents aren’t right.” So I said, “Turn the vent up this way and turn the stack the end of this way and turn the lower vents open in this way.” and I said, “You need to be quiet because your husband’s behind you sleeping in the chair.” She’s asked, “How the heck do you know that?” and I go, “Well, I’m standing next to you.” And she goes, “Really?” I said, yes. Now my mom’s short you’ve got remember this is physicalness, right? Dumb me. I said, “Take your left arm.” because I was next to her left side. I said, “Walk the elbow against your body.” and I said, “Swing your arm out.” Well, she hit me in the nuts. And I go, “Ugh.” she hit my body. nope. she’s short, she hit my nuts and I went, “Ugh, got stomach ache.” and she was, “Well, it’s warm there.” I’m like, “Yes.” [Laughter] “That’s me. Can you move your hands?” she couldn’t tell where it was. Thank God because it would scar her for life but it was like, “Okay. Move that arm please.” If it weren’t for the etheric, I wouldn’t got that because it’s purely soul.

 

[01:53:08] Ashley James: The astral you can feel things?

 

[01:53:12] Eric Thorton:  You can feel things, you can smell things, you can touch things. People can see you. They can feel you because it’s actually physical energy.

 

[01:53:21] Ashley James: Not all people can see you but people who?

 

[01:53:24] Eric Thorton:  In the right light, anybody can see you just like seeing your aura field. Which is a good subject segway into teaching people how to see the aura field.

 

[01:53:34] Ashley James: We should totally do that. To clarify, so the astral bodies that you have just mentioned, the etheric soul part of our energy field you mentioned time travel not because with that part of your body like you said, clear across the universe in seconds but you could also time travel. Is that how we do past life regression?

 

[01:54:05] Eric Thorton:  Yes. Very good observation. One day, science is going to prove this.

 

[01:54:12] Ashley James: And we’re not time traveling like to go change the past but –

 

[01:54:17] Eric Thorton:  No, but you can. Very dangerous.

 

[01:54:21] Ashley James: Like you can’t stop the holocaust?

 

[01:54:23] Eric Thorton:  No. You could.

 

[01:54:23] Ashley James: Really?

 

[01:54:24] Eric Thorton:  Yes. But then you really should have the first and middle name being God, otherwise, you’re going to create karma. So masters, born masters not someone who’s trying to achieve it have the ability to change what humans call time.

 

[01:54:48] Ashley James: I do a technique called timeline therapy which people even people who don’t believe in past lives because it’s fun when we do it like, “What am I seeing?” because they’re seeing their past life. We go back to the root cause the first event of their, for example their let’s say they have anger that’s unresolved. Unconscious, unresolved anger from their past that is affecting them and now we go back to the root cause we call it the Gestalt, meaning gestalt is in German is that the chain of all of the events of anger that are unresolved they’re chained together like lights on a Christmas tree. We go back to the first one and they –

 

[01:55:29] Eric Thorton:  They are actually not going to the first one. You’re going to the first one available.

 

[01:55:33] Ashley James: The first one that’s unresolved that is –

 

[01:55:37] Eric Thorton:  Actually, it’s resolved. This is where that therapy gets a little mixed up. And it’s better if you use the right words. You’re going back where all layers. We’re going back to the next one that’s up that you can see. From that statement this is the root cause. You’re actually making a statement the next one you’re seeing you’ve got to get rid of that to get to the next one. You get improvement each time so it’s very legitimate work but you’re going back to the next one that’s available and you don’t see the other so again you think that’s the one and only. It’s not.

 

[01:56:17] Ashley James: It likes to do that. The clients likes to do that. There’s a way to guide the person because it helps people by saying first to get when I was five. Okay, well –

 

[01:56:27] Eric Thorton:  Right. You can guide the person to what is up. You can’t get rid of something before a person has done the homework. It will not be up for them. So the person angry as in your example. Maybe they’ve gone to therapist, maybe they’ve gone and they studied it they looked at it. Well then maybe when they really get there. If someone who’s hadn’t done it you can make the next same statement and try to go, “You’re not going to get there.” because they haven’t done the homework otherwise it would cause karma.

 

[01:56:56] Ashley James: So the one that’s ready to come up. We call the first event. The first event that’s ready to come up. Okay.

 

[01:57:04] Eric Thorton:  Hopefully it’s the root one because they’ve done their work. And it can be.

 

[01:57:09] Ashley James:  Yes. We do more work if there’s got issues. When we get to the one that’s the oldest one it’s getting fine. When we get to the oldest one it could be five lifetimes ago, it can also be passed genealogically. So generations ago. And so with five lifetimes ago for example and these oftentimes people don’t believe in past life so I just say, “Let’s go with it.” it’s the unconscious mind’s presenting what it presents but they gain the positive learnings and will be able to release and then get emotions and then come back to now will releasing negative emotions and gain the positive learnings. Gaining that new perspective all the way back to now. Then we work on something in this lifetime. Let’s say, something maybe a divorce that’s still being angry and they feel betrayed whatever at something that happened 15 years ago and every time they think about that time in their life, it’s always there for them. We go back. We do timeline therapy on that event and gaining a new perspective and getting the positive learnings all of a sudden when the anger’s resolved it is as if we do time travel for that person because now they’re perspective has changed so much that the memories changed. That they now see things they don’t remember were even there because it was clouded and so it’s kind of like time travel in a sense because you can have a totally different relationship with your past when you resolve things from there.

 

[01:58:48] Eric Thorton:  It is the reason why I said something a few minutes ago was because if – this is a new age peeve with me. We’ll make statements that give the new age a bad rep. Like saying we’re going to the root only and where it’s actually the next thing makes a person. Okay, they feel better for a while and then it shows up again and oh, it didn’t work but it did work but the words were used that made them think they were at the root it came back tell you the person was no good or the new age system didn’t work or it makes them doubt themselves and feel unworthy. Where If you just [crosstalk] it creates all the work exactly. Where if you say, “Okay, we’re going to the next thing’s that’s up. If you’ve done all your homework, this is the last thing on that.” if it hasn’t [crosstalk] if there’s the oldest event [crosstalk] that the homework is allowing. Then it doesn’t give the new age a bad reputation or the practitioner. That’s where I find semantics are so important to not make these blank across statements.

 

[02:00:09]Ashley James: That we’ll do mass generalizations. That’s also where we –

 

[02:00:12] Eric Thorton:  Oh, we do. And it totally guess something’s up with religion too. We make these thing and we make this up as we go instead of going, okay well, if you’re a healer in some way, and you keep coming up against the same thing with the same person and you keep making this mass statements you’ve lost this person from spirituality. Where it don’t make the mass statements. Let’s say we are  –

 

[02:00:42] Ashley James: It’s because we’re meaning making machines. We go, “Oh, this means that, this was be –

 

[02:00:47] Eric Thorton:  We’re trying to be important instead of just, “Well, this is the last thing we’re going to reach for this onion skin. Then this onion skin.” but there’s still onion skin underneath that. It’s like when they make I want to clear my karma for other people for all time. Past and future. But they just make this mass statements about getting down into clearing all the negativity for all time, for all beings, for everything else. That’s a complete ego statement of ignorance and it gives the new age a terrible reputation. We can’t get away from the fact we’re human. We have onion skins. We’ve got them coming up from past life. We’ve got them coming at us from thousand of years of not doing our energetic work and to make this mass statements just gets things back a bad name and it makes me cringe because this people have really great therapeutic abilities and they make this statements and it makes people shy away or think it’s false. So I work really big on semantics and the work we do here. I say, “Okay, this is where we’re going today.” It’s where they’re bringing us and we’ll see if there’s something behind that. It may not show up until next time, it may take two or three times being here to get to these things but it’s like your husband has bubbled up. We went in and we did this major work with him.

 

[02:02:13] Ashley James: He said he has worked with you twice and each time has been awesome and now, some stuff has come up. I’m glad the first person I thought of was you instead of the doctor or the psychologist or whatever. Right? It’s like I could’ve gone to twenty years for him before we came to you. Luckily, you’re the first person on my mind because I was like, “This is exactly the kind of stuff that Eric works on.” You know what, his first session was better with you. But the second sessions was even better. It was even cooler. Because you had to do the work. You said you had to do the onion layers.

 

[02:02:45] Eric Thorton:  Right. You have to get rid of the major crap first to evaluate the process. Then leaves you. Then it starts kind of in it.– so then the next time we saw we move its more subtle but more powerful energy and then it leaves the next layer. Then that’s bubbled up for him. See people you took your knowledge and he took his knowledge and project well maybe it was from you or maybe it’s from so and so or this guy or the other. It wasn’t it was from his history. It wasn’t his family I know it’s not his family. We’ll find out what it is.

 

[02:03:27] Ashley James: I’m really excited. I can’t wait.

 

[02:03:28] Eric Thorton:  Yes. It’ll be fun to do that because then all of a sudden it’ll change. He hasn’t have this symptoms for very long. So subtle it’ll shift rather quickly.

 

[02:03:41] Ashley James: Then once he’s done, I’ll share more details.

 

[02:03:44] Eric Thorton:  Right. You have to get Duffy’s permission too. I looked in his aura field. He asked me to look to see if he needed to come in. I was like “oh, nope that’s up.” Yes, he does and we’ll find out exactly what it is and I tell people the first session is a large over all dump over the wheelbarrow crap. The next sessions is examining why do you have the wheelbarrow and you’re holding on to everything.

 

[02:04:15] Ashley James: You talked about that a lot in our first interview.

 

[02:04:18] Eric Thorton:  Exactly. So we’re doing that with him. Let’s see, it’s fun because I get to see and they get to see the changes.

 

[02:04:29] Ashley James: Returning to the aura, are there any other layers of it that we haven’t covered?

 

[02:04:35] Eric Thorton:  There’s thousands of layers.

 

[02:04:36] Ashley James: Really?

 

[02:04:37] Eric Thorton:  Oh, yes. You can talk about aura field forever. We talked about some major sections of it that needs to be brought up to the light of day and people need to start looking for that. If they start using the actually language and they’re gifted, their guides will find out what it means and I’ll help them use those parts as well. I can talk about these stories forever but one of the things that’s really interesting that we already talked about a little bit was the biases that we all have. There’s a locally there is a group of Naturopaths that work on some very specific disease. I’m not going to name the disease because if people figure out it’ll blew the place. They do a lot of muscle testing, which is very valid if you’re not biased and you’re doing all your homework. One of the doctors I decided to see what all its all about this is when it’s –

 

[02:05:48] Ashley James: I know exactly what you’re talking about.

 

[02:05:50] Eric Thorton:  Right. I have one of the doctors work at me at their home. She brought some of the tools that they use for testing at the clinic and she brought home. I see energy, right? One of these is an amplifier. When you do muscle testing it makes it more apparent. I’m looking at that and she’s grabbing the amplifier starts testing me and I go, “Hold on.“ and she goes, “What?” I said, “Your amplifier has been in the room with people with all these diseases it’s on the amplifier. It’s going to show up in your testing in your aura field and you’re going to diagnose me the same way as you did all your other patients.” I said, “Because that disease is now in my aura field because you literally brought it to me so that I’m going to test positive for these disease when it has nothing to do with my body whatsoever. Every single one of the tools you use between patients needs to be put in deionized water. Literally well, released to the atmosphere the dead cells from the previous person you tested.” She looked at me. Now, she already done a bunch of testing on me. I said, “Go wash those.” She went to wash them came back and the testing was completely different. Aura field. It’s this is, if people don’t acknowledge this subtleties the testing is invalid. This is where your own testing for yourself gets invalid too. People strength test for themselves and I do it too. But we’re already biased. We already have the energy of whatever we’re testing of in our brain and in our energy field so you’re going to get and different result then if you take the same information and have someone else put it on a list that you have no idea what it is.

 Let’s say you have choice. Five different diseases you think you might have. You just write them down and you tell the person mixed them up and label them. One, two, three and four or one, two, three, four, five, and six. Six one of them in any order will be none of these. If it picks six, see because you don’t know. You think strength test, is it one, is it two, is it three, is it four, is it five, is it six? I see mine lose at six, it was none of them. I can’t hold that. It was six. It was none of these where the others I’m asking if I have those disease so you are strong if you do. If you don’t it’ll be weak. I got that backwards. It’ll be weak if you have it. It’ll be strong if you don’t have it. When I got to none of the above it was weak, don’t have it. I didn’t know the order so I’m innocent. There’s no bias. If your friend does it for you. Whenever you’re doing strength testing you really should have a friend do it for you and mix up your choices that makes it much more valid and clean it. Clean anything everything you can. That’s one way of cleaning up your subconscious mind by not having no attachment to the things you’re testing for. That’s how you clean up your brain. Clean up the bias. You have no bias to a list that you don’t know to the order of it. It will give you then better information. This is again, your aura field with knowledge or biases. You remove it the aura field is pure again and innocent and you get more accurate information. Anyway, in this process we have to learn to clean our aura field. This is also part of seeing auras.

 

[02:10:07] Ashley James: Oh, I wanted to say something about that. When I was 15, I read the book The Celestine Prophecy.

 

[02:10:15] Eric Thorton:  I’ve heard of it. Haven’t read it.

 

[02:10:17] Ashley James: In the book, The Celestine Prophecy they talk about learning how to see energy. They talk about energy exchange and how when we’re in flow with each other, my energy flowing to you your energy is flowing to me. We’re a circuit. Where as one of us, let’s say couples would start getting resentful cut themselves off from a flow. That anger of resentment cuts the flow off and they get disconnected and that flusters. So we have to learn to be that circuit with each other with the flowing back and forth and they practice with plants in the book. Where they sit with plants and practice giving the plant their energy that flow back and forth. They talk about when it’s a blue sky, when the sun is either early in the morning or late in the evening so the sun’s not right in your face, put your hands up you can start to see. You can actually see the energy field between your fingers if you take your thumb and finger and pinch them together and pull them apart and you can start to see and feel it. Yes, feel it. you could see you could start to see the energy coming of your body like almost like the layer of heat off of the pavement. When I was 15 –

 

[02:11:43] Eric Thorton:  That’s a hard one to see though. I have an easier way. Okay so again, time of day is a big deal. Dusk. It’s still light out but no bright sun. You need a mirror. Maybe the bathroom if you’ve got some light coming in from an angle not behind you. Light coming in from an angle so the light will come in reflect bounce off your body, reflect into the mirror that’s subtle. So it’s low light but –

 

[02:12:16] Ashley James: So you didn’t have the lights on in the bathroom?

 

[02:12:18] Eric Thorton:  No. You just want something that’s coming in through a window and you move the mirror so you get an angle that’s not directed behind you straight into the mirror. You wanted an angle of to your left or of to your right. Then you sit in there in still in the room, you’ve got the light coming in you squint your eyes and you reduce the amount of information by squinting your eyes that the brain is taking in. Your brain takes in all sorts of information for balance, for safety etc. Takes in by saying that this room is pink or that is room is white or how what it’s doing to the aura field and things like that but when you squint your eyes down you’re reducing the amount information that’s coming in and your brain has to start looking at the subtle energies. Literally, you squint your eyes like this and your start seeing the energy around somewhere. Think of all different kinds of colors. It’s not just a little wave or something. It’s actually you start seeing the colors of the aura field. Takes a little practice to let your brain actually acknowledge this thing this feeling because what you’re doing is you’re reducing that light and sound input so your digestive brain starts feeding your main brain. Then that’s when you start seeing all those little colors of the aura field. It took me well, didn’t take it, I’ve seen colors my whole life but that technique took me a time or two to do it. Takes other people maybe 10 or 15 times to start seeing that but you literally go in there one day and you know inadvertently, you go into the room and the lightings that way and you look into the mirror and it’s just all color. You don’t see you at all. Your body. You see all color in there. I used to go, “huh?” and then you look at it again and all of a sudden, your eyes open so this brain starts to work and you started seeing your body in the mirror again. But if you can maintain that where your digestive brain is taking in the material squinting the eyes down you’ll start to see those colors and it’s fascinating. People go, “Wow. I really see that.” And I go, “Okay. So that’s the part that astral travels. That’s the part that we use to project around the planet.”

 

[02:14:39] Ashley James: If someone’s astral travelling, let’s say I was sitting here eyes closed astral traveling and you looked at me, you wouldn’t see my aura because it’s gone somewhere?

 

[02:14:48] Eric Thorton:  I wouldn’t see that part of the aura. Sorry, what am I saying. Part, that’s the part that you can astral travel with I just wouldn’t see that part I would see other parts of it but not that real surface part that people begin to see when they first seeing auras. That part of the aura is what picks up on all the things we are talking about. Early warning system and things like that. That is part of the homeostasis. Homeostasic part. And that’s the part that can project out. It helps if you can see it first and then which then you can see the aura and then you can start taking in information from it. You leave your eyes squinted and just listen. It’s amazing what you find. You may see a mouse in the shed. Listen with your eyes and all of a sudden you see this, because there’s so much information there. I naturally do this dance in the work I do. In and out of the body all the time constantly. Now as far as cleaning the aura field. That’s very important because the longer something’s in the aura field the more your frequencies changes to it. We’ve talked about that several times in different ways. If you have anger in your aura field, you’re going to gravitate to it. You can be if its’ there long enough you become the angry person but if you have anger in the aura field and you know you have anger in the aura field from someone else or from your own day, you don’t want to own it, we do this thing, I do this thing called flushing.

 I use descriptive words in my exercise rather than mystical words. Because mystical is ego based thing that says I can’t reach it. but you have to be special to get to the mystical. We’re all mystical. I use the word flushing like flushing the toilet. You press the button and out goes the poop. Well, what a better place to do that than in the shower. You sit in there in the shower, what do you got running? You got water running down over your body giving you the flush and you sit there and you open up your energy field from above your head and you let the other frequencies of the other shakras above you come through, we come that from spirit. We let that flow down through our body like the flushing water out our feet and out goes with it. Everything that is not your frequency. The anger from other people. But if you’re mad about something from someone being angry at you for two or three weeks we need to find out why but if you’re going in with somebody, the person you flush that right out, your defense system is there, there’s no processing, listen to the occasion and out goes their anger completely out of your aura field. You don’t own it yet.

 

[02:18:12] Ashley James: Can you walk us with the steps?

 

[02:18:14] Eric Thorton:  Okay, yes. I will be working with someone and each day I do the flushing after each client and –

 

[02:18:21] Ashley James: You take a shower after a client?

 

[02:18:22] Eric Thorton:  No, you don’t have to shower. That’s just a good symbol for it. When you’re learning to do it, it’s really nice because you’ve got that flow and it really helps you do it and feel it in your body. But I’ll be sitting there. I’ll be sitting or standing. I don’t want their – maybe I felt their gallbladder or something during the session and my gallbladder doesn’t need to have that information. So I’ll just sit there and flush unless it comes to the gallbladder and out it goes. Out goes their energy. You can visualize this if you want you might want to see their energy as a different color than yours and out goes maybe this blob of brown at your feet. Literally, it is that simple. There isn’t, it is opening the intention and the energy you need 10 thousands of a second, it came to you in 10 thousands of a second. All you’ve got to do it is open the intention and out it will go. It’s showing your spiritual advancement because you know to do that. You’re preserving your body, you’re saying, “Hey, this gallbladder isn’t yours, so let’s get rid of it.” and out it goes. I like to think of I like physicality and I’m a Taurus. Very grounded. I like definitely water going down my body. It doesn’t have to be, it can be clouds, it can be stars, it can be anything. Just the effort of saying, “I’ve got stuff that’s not mine in my system from this person or this situation.” it is always situational with flushing, I was like “I don’t need that.” I just came from the movie it was very intense. All the information that came from the movie screen that I can see. It’s like going to a Rambo movie you come out and you go, ”Oh, yeah.” Its like great, it was great entertainment but you don’t need to go beat someone up because the Rambo movie got you all heat up. This is a way of just getting rid of that energy you’d be surprised how fast you come down.

 

[02:20:26] Ashley James: You open up the intention you said the shakras above you. Can you explain this?

 

[02:20:31] Eric Thorton:  The seven shakra is one of many that’s above your head. I’ve been showed hundreds of shakras but we use the main six in most energy work because the other follow along better. If you do something in three you’re going to get affect of the shakras above the seventh and below the first but once in a while you need to use the information from the lesser shakras. I’ve seen a 130 roughly. I don’t remember exactly but above and below combined together. I don’t know how many there are. It depends. It’s the more subtle energy centers. Technically, you can technically say each cell is a shakra. The nucleus of a cell and it really is. Therefore you’ve got billions of shakras but the more they’re away the farther they get away from the first seven because those are the ones that have the dynamic of both the spiritual and the physical. You get away from them, you get information from them.

 

[02:21:45] Ashley James: It’s like the higher self.

 

[02:21:46] Eric Thorton:  Right. You don’t want to flush someone else energy through your energy field. You want to flush your own connection to the divine. So it comes through your shakras otherwise you just open it up you just open it up to anyone’s energy.

 

[02:21:59] Ashley James: Okay, so you’re imagining all of your shakras above your head. All of this divine connection to higher self above your head and you’re imagining that energy from that is flushing down through your body and flushing it out like a shower thinking like a shower in your own divine energy. Flushing out through and just flushing out everything that’s not you out of you. Taking a bath in a shower in you.

 

[02:22:23] Eric Thorton:  Right, because it’s not your energy. If you’re bringing your energy down a massive form of it something that’s not your energy is going to be repulsed by it. It’s going to push away from it.

 

[02:22:24] Ashley James: It’s totally awesome. I just did it. It feels really good.

 

[02:22:48] Eric Thorton:  It does. Tell me what you felt in your feet when you did that. Do it again.

 

[02:22:59] Ashley James: Well, I feel warm. It was more like feeling an energetic shower in my body.

 

[02:23:09] Eric Thorton:  Right, and it comes down to your feet. How do your feet feel? Think about it for a moment.

 

[02:23:20] Ashley James: Maybe there’s like a little bit of like a buzzing underneath them.

 

[02:23:23] Eric Thorton:  Okay. Do it again. When you’re doing that, what do you feel? Do you feel the water going through your feet?

 

[02:23:37] Ashley James:  Oh, I feel it. Yes, yes.

 

[02:23:41] Eric Thorton:  That’s being grounded.

 

[02:23:44] Ashley James: I can totally. Yes, I can feel it.

 

[02:23:47] Eric Thorton:  That’s is being grounded. This is how you ground. You can literally –

 

[02:23:51] Ashley James: I’m wearing shoes right now.

 

[02:23:53] Eric Thorton:  You don’t have to wear shoes. You can wear them or not. You can be on top of the empire state building at lady liberty and do it. This is how you get your energy. Your physical energy into the planet. The planet takes away our pain and suffering and convert it to positive energy or to negative ions which is healthy for us. Negative ions is good. It’s positive energy negative ions. It’s literally when you do the flushing, you are literally grounding yourself. When you start feeling that movement in your feet it’s because you’ve come up against the earth. It’s all resistance. You feel that movement, you feel that electricity, that buzzing. You feel a weightiness. You feel kind if you have a woof. You don’t know what is.

 

[02:24:40] Ashley James:  That feeling that you got heavier.

 

[02:24:41] Eric Thorton:  Right. Like that feeling they got heavier. That’s the sign you’re grounded. If you do the flushing, you don’t feel that do it again. Until you do feel that. You won’t feel that weightiness and that buzzing if there’s still stuff in you. So you keep doing it again. If you don’t feel it, go out and ask a tree to help you.  All their roots are connected into the ground and if you stand on a root which you will if you stand next to  a tree, its connected with the entire root system. It will help clear that aura field.

 

[02:25:20] Ashley James:  I really felt it. I actually like –

 

[02:25:24] Eric Thorton:  Even people who are totally etheric can ground themselves with that technique. Totally, the reason why I say, totally etheric which is anyway, uses that word I’m going to explain it real quick. It means it’s not in their body a lot.

 

[02:25:39] Ashley James: Yes. [Inaudible 02:25:41] which I love. She writes all this books about angels. She can see them and she can see all these entities and she writes all these great books and she has a huge heart. She lives in I think Laguna Miguel or something like that and she says that she had to stop driving in LA because she’s so out of her body she’d totally crash. She’s so out of her body to constantly be in tune with all this energy and energy that her husband was a shaman who wrote that book that you found. I believe.

 

 

[02:26:18] Eric Thorton:  Farmer?

 

[02:26:19] Ashley James: Yes. I’m pretty sure that’s her husband. Who wrote that the animal talk.

 

[02:26:24] Eric Thorton:  Right. The Animal spirit guides.

 

[02:26:25] Ashley James: Animal Spirit Guides, yes. He too has to drive her because she can’t. She’s so etheric. So out there. Aries not grounded. When she did this –

 

[02:26:36] Eric Thorton:  But it’s also male.

 

[02:26:37] Ashley James: What do you mean?

 

[02:26:39] Eric Thorton:  The male animal through our history has been forced to be grounded so they can feel the lion or the enemy, even if they’re an Aries, men are physically more grounded to the earth where women are less grounded to the earth, women come in to the subtle energies faster of the etheric energies faster.

 

[02:27:06] Ashley James: Which helps us as moms to be able to be in tune to the energy of our family.

 

[02:27:12] Eric Thorton:  Exactly. That is one of the reasons, I’m saying politically incorrect. It’s not me to movement thing or anything else but it’s one of the reasons men drive more is because even if we’re more grounded  even if we’re ungrounded, even if we’re all etheric and we’re out on the universe thinking, still a part of us is essentially looking for that lion. In that more tensed driving situation the female animal will go, “Ugh” sooner than the male animal. Men can do it too but and less grounded men are going to be more, “Ugh” they can’t drive in situation like that either.

 

[02:27:53] Ashley James: If you want to be able to grounded and drive, do this exercise. Yes. I can feel it. so if she did this exercise would she be grounded and still be able to do the work she does?    

 

[02:28:07] Eric Thorton:  Yes.

 

[02:28:09] Ashley James: Very cool.

 

[02:28:10] Eric Thorton:  She must get used to the change but she can actually do her work better so because she has a place to be around and be at peace.

 

[02:28:21] Ashley James:  I like it and so I’m imagining because where your intention goes your energy flows and I’m imagining this like all of the over my head and then they all open up and just dump this shower and so it takes, it’s kind of like the filing a big bucket and then empty it. It takes a few second to like from my first intention it takes few seconds and then start feeling it in my body kind of like it took a few secondss for the bucket to empty on to me and the I could feel it going down and I could feel the feeling in my feet. I feel that weighted.

 

[02:28:59] Eric Thorton:  Weightiness I call it. it’s like a little toss down there.

 

[02:29:01] Ashley James: It was. It wasn’t continual. It’s like a bucket and then the bucket was done and then you said do it again and I had to do it again just like imagine filing this bucket and then the 170 shakras above my head just went,”- and did this shower.

 

[02:29:21] Eric Thorton:  And pulsed out the energy that wasn’t yours.

 

[02:29:22] Ashley James: Like a pulse or like being dumped.

 

[02:29:25] Eric Thorton:  I like to do it different ways. If I’m laying there in bed, I’d do the real long slow thorough cleaning if you will. If I’m just I’ve got to clear stuff. I’d go, “Poof! In 10th of a second and then different things. If I’m clearing casual energy from clients there’s poof because everyone would vibrate with it at all.

 

[02:29:51] Ashley James: You can do this with objects on your house? Could you clean your whole house or clean your whole car of energy?

 

[02:29:58] Eric Thorton:  When you clean your energy field with both people whose name everyone’s name on the house cleans, both cleaning you are cleaning your house, your house reflect your shakras. People ask me all the time, can you clear my house? Yes, I can. Really easy. Expect you’re going to pollute it again. But if we clear you, then your house clears. Some people always asking for the house to clear because they want to divert from doing their own homework. I was like, “No. If this is clear, this house is clear.”

 

[02:30:33] Ashley James: What comes up for me next is as we vibrate at a higher frequency as we are clear we could become potentially become targets for something or someone that wants to – it’s like tall puppy syndrome or you see that bright shiny person over there? Let’s go kick their dog. In life, there are these people or entities or whatever situation that wants to pull us down like crab in a bucket. Now I have this clean, wonderful squeaky clean aura and I’m about to go out the in the world where someone might be pissed off that you’re just a happy person let’s rain on their parade, how do we energetically protect ourselves?

 

[02:31:28] Eric Thorton:  Well, that is a form of protection.

 

[02:31:31] Ashley James: If someone like lashes out, I know you taught us an exercise which listeners have said they absolutely love or the chi ball where you’re just boomeranging it back to them so isn’t staying on you. If you feel like eeky like energetically someone is dumped on your parade, you just do this again?

 

[02:31:50] Eric Thorton:  Yes, do it again but what it does for you is this. When someone lets say someone is going to let’s get extreme here just for the sake of discussion, someone’s going to shoot at a crowd, if they feel someone with really good innocent energy. They might not shoot up the crowd. It’s not going to force them to do it, it’s going to make them hesitate because you’ve got to remember the subtle even possessions are part of God. And their purpose is to drive you to God. The purpose is to make you agitated so much that you search and you ultimately have to search for God. You have someone like me in a crowd and you have someone or you in a crowd, someone wants to shoot up a crowd. I was just going to stand out a bit and they’re going to be going, “Oh, maybe this isn’t the right crowd.” It doesn’t pull them to it even if it’s possessions because possession’s idea is to get you to God.

 

[02:33:03] Ashley James:  If this yes, all right. I get it now. When you said this helps us protect us because I had this idea that maybe being having an innocent energy or having a higher frequency clean energy would attract people to wanted to harm it.

 

[02:33:20] Eric Thorton:  It attracts innocence.

 

[02:33:23] Ashley James: It sees the opposite.

 

[02:33:24] Eric Thorton:  Right. It’s like a baby. The baby’s energy is clear. We all go, “Aww, isn’t that nice.” We don’t know why because they’re innocent. When someone with lack of innocence looks at people with innocence, they’re attracted to it. They don’t want to kill it. It actually does more to protect you, than it does to harm you.

 

[02:33:51] Ashley James: Should someone do this every day when they get home, like once a day?

 

[02:33:56] Eric Thorton:  Definitely. Yes. If you’re having a rough day at work, do it throughout the day. If you’re having just casual stuff after you give the energy back to the person then you want to flush the energy out because you don’t need the negative connotations that came up because someone’s in a bad mod from your own history. We create our own energy. This person’s got one negative and you start getting pissed off about instead you go, “Oh, that’s their stuff you still have the hormone, you have the reaction, you can flush that right out. Should be down early throughout the day that’s why you use the 10th of a second flush and the longer ceremonial flush. One’s very restorative and one’s just cleaning the crap out. I’ve had my reaction to their crap. That way the body stabilizes and you just don’t need them to turn your day into a bad day. It’s how you stay in the moment. So do the energy exchange with a person with the bad mood and then flush their stuff out and your reaction out to their bad mood.

 

[02:35:03] Ashley James: And for listeners to learn about what you just said about how to do the energy exchange you’ve got to go back and listen to the first and second interview that we did together. I’m going to make sure that all the interviews we’ve done together are linked to the show notes so that those who haven’t heard all of our episodes can do that. Listeners can also go to learntruehealth.com and search Eric Thorton in the search button to find every episodes that we’ve done together. Start at the beginning and listen to the first episode and the second episode. Just to give an understanding of this –

 

[02:35:40] Eric Thorton:  It was a big help. I worked for the lady yesterday that had listened to your show and she went back and listened to them all. She got my book and it saved her a lot of time in session. We got a lot deeper because she had learned about things a little bit.

 

[02:35:57] Ashley James: Nice. She’s probably listening right now.

 

[02:35:58] Eric Thorton:  She probably is.

 

[02:35:59] Ashley James: Say hi.

 

[02:36:00] Eric Thorton:  Hi! [Laughter] That’s like, she literally saved herself pain and suffering and time and cash because we finished instead of 5 or 6 hours of that first session, we finished in the actual four because she’d done a little bit of homework. Anyways, do it. Get the flushing down, do the energy exchange. It makes life way better.

 

[02:36:24] Ashley James: Awesome. This has been so much fun having you here, Eric.

 

[02:36:27] Eric Thorton:  Thanks. I love doing this too.

 

[02:36:30] Ashley James:  We’ve got a whole line up of topics that you’ve come up with. We’ve got a bunch more that we’re going to do together. This is great. Listeners go to ericthorton.com

 

[02:36:41] Eric Thorton:  Yes. Eric with a C and no middle N on the Thorton.

 

[02:36:44] Ashley James:  Yes, Eric Thorton.

 

[02:36:49] Eric Thorton:  Right. Because there is a Thornton too. He gets a lot of crazy emails. [Laughter] “I sent you the email.” “Well, I don’t have it. Look at your address, is there a middle N there?” “Yes.” “Okay, well this guy in Alabama just got your email.” They’re going, “Oh, no.” “Don’t worry. He thinks we’re nuts.” Be sure to either copy and paste it or be sure there’s no middle N.

 

[02:37:18] Ashley James: Eric Thorton and of course, to everything that Eric does is going to be at the show notes of today’s podcast at the learntruehealth.com. Eric, is there anything left unsaid covering auras? Anything, oh of course I know you could talk for days about that. In the context of this conversation helping people to fully utilize it. We taught them today. Is there anything left to wrap up today’s interview?

 

[02:37:43] Eric Thorton:  I can’t think of anything specific the reason is because with each person, that would be I would need to talk to each person to see what is in their specific situation that’s preventing them from doing this stuff. That is if a person’s does have a problem with it, they’re unable to achieve these things, we’re saying there’s some work to be done.

 

[02:38:07] Ashley James: Yes. So do the exercise and if you can’t, if you’re getting like hitting a wall, then talk to Eric. And see what’s going on in there. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Eric. I can’t wait for you to come back

 

[02:38:19] Eric Thorton:  Thanks for having me.

 

[02:38:20] Ashley James: We’ll keep doing this.

 

[02:38:21] Eric Thorton:  This is great. We’ve got list of topics forever.

 

[02:38:24] Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you.

 

[02:38:25] Eric Thorton:  All right. Take care

 

Ashley James: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition and how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health-coaching sort of vacation program and it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition but from the standpoint on how we can help people to shift their life, to shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can google Institute for Integrated Nutrition or IIN, or give them a call or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they would give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctor’s offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help with your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them and their success and their health goals. There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month, so you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. If you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

 

Are you looking to optimize your health? Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplement.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected With Eric Thorton!

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Recommended Reading by Eric Thorton

Educating the Souls, Spiritual Healing and our Eternal Psychology

 

Recommended Links:

Episode 327 – Spiritual Healing

Episode 335 – Energetic Boundaries

Episode 336 – Energetic Boundaries (Part II)

Episode 359: Lives Of Discovery

Episode 375: Spiritual Healing In The Real World

Sep 16, 2019

Theresa's Sites:
Free Manifestation Class:
https://coach.theresavigarino.com/sales-page-1205983817068544

Main site:
www.TheresaVigarino.com

Brand new Masterclass Series:
https://theresavigarino.clickfunnels.com/the-empowered-soul-mentorship-program

New Charity:
www.MomsHouseForChildren.Org

 

 

Ayahuasca

https://www.learntruehealth.com/ayahuasca

 

Highlights:

  • Theresa’s journey into the Amazon jungle.
  • The Vomativo.
  • The spiritual and energetic connection to everything.
  • How to keep your energy clean.
  • Theresa’s masterclass series.

 

Let’s listen in to this episode where Theresa Vigarino takes us to her Amazon jungle journey where she experienced healing, and gained her knowingness. Get to know Ayahuasca and how it promotes soul enlightenment and physical healing.

 

0:03 Intro: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 379.

 

 0:13 Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show Theresa Vigarino. Theresa was in episode 88 almost two years ago. And Theresa and I have stayed connected and stayed friends since then. I loved our interview back in Episode 88. And Theresa has so much to share with us. I am really excited to hear the story. She started trying to tell me over Skype the other day and I was like, “No, no, no, I want the listeners to hear it too.” I really want to hear what’s happened. And she started just giving little tidbits of the last two years and I got so excited that I have to record this. So let’s just save it for the interview. So this is going to be new information for me too. Theresa, your life last two years has been quite amazing. Welcome back.

 

 

1:06 Theresa Vigarino: Oh, yeah. It has. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley. I love being here. And I love the people that I’ve met that reached out to me two years ago through the podcast interview we did back then and you know, I have nothing but love for you and being brave. And I’m just so honored to be here because I know you have such a beautiful tribe of listeners and people that are really ready to awaken to who they really are.

 

1:36 Ashley James: Exactly.

 

 

1:36 Theresa Vigarino: So I’m happy to be part of that process even just a little bit.

 

 

1:40 Ashley James: Oh, wonderful. Awaken to who you really are. And isn’t that what it’s all about? Now you have a free giveaway for the listeners. You’re so funny, you’re like podcasters expect us to give things away. And I’m just like, isn’t your presence enough? We’re going to give something cool to the listeners. Okay, so you have a gift for the listeners. It’s free, three people. And you created it a while ago, but it’s still very relevant. And it’s a free audio course on manifesting in your life. And so the link to that is going to be in the show of today’s podcast at www.learntruehealth.com and then listeners can go to that and they sign up for your free audio course where you teach techniques for designing your life in a way that manifests the miraculous.

 

 

2:33 Theresa Vigarino: Absolutely. And I just love teaching this because so often in life we walk around feeling victim to our circumstances, when in actuality we manifest all the time. And so understanding this and that literally when you look around your life experience you are the creator of what you’re seeing around you. And that’s the beginning actually. And what I’ve learned in the past two years is there’s so much more and there’s always more to learn and grow and experience and expand and I’ve been going to school, I’ve gone to spiritual school, if you will, the last couple of years, man. Wow is all I can say.

 

 

3:12 Ashley James: The spiritual school of hard knocks, right?

 

 

3:15 Theresa Vigarino: A little bit, some intense growth because it was life or death for me quite frankly. And I was brought to my knees. If only I could have bent my knees, I would have been on my knees. But at the time I was turning into a stiff lady with scleroderma. And it was really a divine unfoldment although it was extremely uncomfortable. And I was extremely ill. It took me to my knees so that I could grow.

 

 

3:44 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

3:46 Theresa Vigarino: And I could really learn what healing was all about.

 

 

3:49  Ashley James: It’s in the hardest times that we can gain the most growth.

 

 

3:54 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, and I’m still learning and it’s a forever deal for all of us. But what I went through in the past two years since we last spoke was basically the heroine’s journey of my life. A solo journey into the depths of my being, into the depths of what I was creating, into the depths of disease, into the depths of emotional healing, into the depths of energy and vibration, and ancient plant medicine and Shamanism.

 

 

4:22 Ashley James: In the depths of the jungle. I can’t wait to get to that part of the story.

 

 

4:25 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Into the depth, depth, depths of the jungle.

 

 

4:28 Ashley James: So take us back. So after our interview you told me that you ended up falling sick, is that with scleroderma? And you ended up in the hospital? Can you tell us about that?

 

 

4:40 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. Well, 2017. In 2016, at the end of the year, I was very, very sick. And that’s whenever I had an evening. And there were so many things that were happening, including an adrenal crisis that literally could have taken me out. Like at any point, I remember lying bed, we had just gone through the holidays. So it was January 2017. And I had just moved, I was in an area that I didn’t know anyone except my husband and he was actually out of town. I had no family around me. And I was very, very, very ill and I was lying in bed ready to call him to come home from a meeting or 911. And at the time my kidneys were shutting down. The scleroderma was so wrapped around the linings of my lungs that I was having bad EKGs. I was feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I was struggling to move my body. I was crawling to the bathroom, I’m only not being able to urinate that evening. And I mean, I just wanted to go. I was so sick, I crawled back in bed, and I will never forget this as long as I live. And I said, “God, I’m ready.” And all of a sudden, deep in this meditative space, so I was struggling both dimensions I saw the face of Yeshua, the Christ say to me, “Really? Are you sure about that?” And then immediately, like a snapshot picture of my husband’s face, a snapshot picture of my daughter’s face, then my son’s face, and then a room full of people. It was like a giant auditorium and all these people looking at me that I did not recognize. And I said, “No, of course I’m not ready. I’ll stay. I know I’m not done yet.” And so he began to show me along with some archangels that were in my room that night how to self-heal.

 

So at the time we knew I had a mass in my lung. We knew I was in adrenal crisis, we knew my kidneys were inflamed, we knew that I was really in bad shape. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my heart through the scleroderma process. And he was showing me how to self heal. And so immediately the next day, I started feeling a little bit better. What happened after that, now It took me, I wasn’t fully healed after that, and I ended up spiraling down in a different way later in the year. But what happened was, he told me to start praying for my clients. Now at the time, I was always the spiritual warrior, right? But I wasn’t always praying for people outside of my family, friends and people I was very close to. And so I started actually praying for people and they started having miraculous results; a healing of Crohn’s disease, a pain in the knee, you know, migraines, financial woes, relationship problems, it didn’t matter what the subject matter was. And I would hear him say, pray. And the prayers were always channeled. I could not not remember any of them afterwards. And so I then began to discover this part of me that I had been told that I was resistant into allowing to unfold in my life, because of the ego and fear of what people would think and what if it didn’t work, and all of this right? That I projected, that was amazing, miraculous, miraculous experience for me. And it was just so humbling. And after that, later in the year, I again began to plummet in my health. And so I got an invitation to go to the jungle of the Amazon to partake in the plant medicine from a friend.

 

 

8:22 Ashley James: Okay, first, can you just take us back to that invitation? So was it kind of like out of the blue?

 

 

8:30 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah. So yes, it was, and yet it wasn’t. So I have a mentor who was helping me understand maybe in a clear conscious conduit, you know, medium of sorts, spiritual teacher and accessing and amplifying these gifts and understanding it more. And she said to me, “Theresa, you really need to investigate plant medicine.” So I began a search in my area in the Bay Area, south of San Francisco, and I was looking into Shamanism and plant medicine, but I didn’t know anything about it quite frankly. I had heard of it a little bit, but really had not researched it prior to that, and didn’t know, didn’t understand it at all. So out of the blue. But you know, the universe works this way. Right? I get this blessing dropped in my lap. In November, the week before Thanksgiving, I get a call from a friend of mine who I knew from a business group, not a spiritual group, he wasn’t a client or anything just from a business coach that I was involved with for a while. And I met him at an event and we became friends and out of the blue, hadn’t spoken to him in a year. He calls me up and he says, “Theresa, I am running a retreat to the depths of the jungle in Peru to the Amazon. And I have an opening that just came available. We leave in two days and for some reason I just know you’re supposed to be there.” Now this guy had no idea of my physical struggles. I just wasn’t talking about it with everybody all the time, working on rewriting my story. And I was just about fell out of my chair. He said, “Just buy your ticket. Meet me in Iquitos. This is when you need to meet me.” And it was in two days.

 

 

10:15 Ashley James: In Peru. Iquitos, Peru.

 

 

10:17 Theresa Vigarino: In Peru. Yeah.

 

 

10:18 Ashley James: So fly from San Francisco to Peru in two days and you’ve been like on your deathbed twice in the last year.

 

 

10:26 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. And actually just days before that, had been back to the hospital for heart pain, chronic heart pain that wasn’t going away and I did have a bad EKG and they didn’t really know what was causing it and so I was really not feeling well and I actually was on lockdown with my connective tissues, so I wasn’t able to move my joints very easily. And so I was really struggling, Ashley, and I was in a lot of pain and I didn’t understand what was happening actually.

 

 

10:57 Ashley James: So scleroderma which you’ve had over a long time…

 

 

11:02 Theresa Vigarino: Since I was four, yeah.

 

 

11:03 Ashley James: Is that an autoimmune condition of the connective tissue?

 

 

11:06 Theresa Vigarino: It is and so the way they describe it is autoimmune vascular because it’s also in the blood vessels, arthritic, because a soft tissue arthritis, inflammatory because it inflames organs.

 

 

11:24 Ashley James: So, everything but bones?

 

 

11:26 Theresa Vigarino: Everything but bones and lipid.

 

 

11:28 Ashley James: Wow. Okay, so yeah, so you’re in rough shape, but you gotta get to Peru two days to go into the jungle.

 

 

11:34 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. And I got off the phone with him. And I said to Victor, my husband, I was like, “Babe, you aren’t gonna believe this.” But now we don’t say this to each other. “You’re not gonna believe this.” Because we believe just about anything after everything we’ve gone through. We are not surprised by surprises. You know, and he didn’t know this person at the time. And I said, “Jimmy invited me to go, he’s the guy from this event. And we became friends, invited me to go with him to do plant medicine.” And he was like, “Well, you gotta go. You gotta go.”

 

 

12:06 Ashley James: I love your husband. I’ve never met him, but I love him. Just the fact he was supportive. How many spouses would be like, “No, you’re too sick. What do you mean? You’re not going to the jungle, with a complete strange man I’ve never met.” Like, oh my gosh. And he’s like, “Go, you have to. It’s your journey.” I just love him.

 

 

12:24 Theresa Vigarino: He is so amazing. And he’s also been to the jungle three times, and we’ll go into that.

 

 

12:28 Ashley James: Not before this point and after this point. So he had never been to the jungle. He didn’t know Jimmy. He knows that you’re struggling physically. But he said go. So okay, so there you go. So two days later, you’ve managed to figure out your life and get to Peru, then what happened.

 

 

12:46  Theresa Vigarino: So we meet at the airport and we begin our journey into the jungle. So Iquitos is you fly to Lima, we met in Lima. And then we take the two and a half hour flight, there’s the only way to Iquitos is by boat or airplane. You’re really locked in the jungle there and it’s on the river. And so it’s really the gateway to Shamanism, because even if you decide to go into Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, it’s up in that corridor where those countries all kind of meet, and it is the gateway to traditional plant medicine. So yeah, I land in Lima, we meet with our group, I think we were a group of like 11 of us and we take the smaller plane over the mountains and into the jungle. And then we take about a two hour bus ride, and an hour boat ride to this oasis of beauty because this woman that owns this lodge for plant medicine, and so she also has people that just want to come and experience the jungle. But mostly it’s a healing retreat center. And it is absolutely, well, it’s my second home now, one of the most beautiful places you can imagine. And you know, even though it’s beautifully appointed, you’re still in the jungle, so there’s a lot of jungle that goes with it that you have to acclimate to, and that a lot of people are fearful of and you face those fears, because you’re there.

 

 

14:11 Ashley James: Right. Like spiders.

 

 

14:15 Theresa Vigarino: Like spiders. Like everything and, and you know, my husband and I adventurous as we are, we really got into that show Naked and Afraid. And the ones that always tapped out were the ones that were in the Amazon. So I did have a little bit of fear. I’ll be honest, you know, it was a little scary for me of the critters. And now I know they’re just my friends coming to say hi.

 

 

14:40 Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

 

 

14:41 Theresa Vigarino: I love more than others like the butterflies and dragonflies and the birds, you know, and the lady bugs but you know, there’s some that I’m like, “Okay, hi.” From afar, right?

 

 

14:51 Ashley James: Yes.

 

 

14:52 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah. So it was quite a personal growing experience into the realm of other life forms, because there are more different types of life forms in the Amazon jungle than anywhere on Earth.

 

 

15:06 Ashley James: Oh, I bet and it’s such a shame that they’ve been burning parts of it down. And I mean, it just breaks my heart. But this idea of getting out of your comfort zone, just, I mean, step one, right? You took a leap of faith. Step two, you’re out of your comfort zone, because you’re surrounded by animals and insects. And you know, it’s a foreign language, a foreign geography, foreign weather. I mean, every everything is foreign.

 

 

15:37 Theresa Vigarino: And foreign medicine.

 

 

15:38 Ashley James: Sure. So everything’s different. You’re really thrown out of your comfort zone, which I think is also can be very cathartic to break out of old patterns. So tell us about your first experience there. How long did you stay? Walk us through it.

 

 

15:55 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah, so I was there for 10 days. And in those 10 days we were led through some group workshops with my friend and he was explaining what we were embarking upon, because most of us that were there had never experienced plant medicine and in particular, Ayahuasca. So I knew nothing about Ayahuasca, other than it was some some kind of medicine that the shamans drink with you. And then they sing the songs. That’s all I knew. And I did not have time to investigate or research and thank God I didn’t because I literally was going in blind. And you know, at this point, ignorance was bliss for me. And so I just did what I was told to do. And we began our journey. I think we got to the lodge in the evening. And so the plant medicine started the next morning with a prerogative.

So we got up early in the morning, we rallied in the grass around each other, we had to drink this green, this one glass of this green drink that tasted like lemongrass, actually. And then we had to drink like a gallon of water, just glasses, glasses and glasses of water, which caused a purging. So in traditional plant medicine, you do go through a purging process of the body, which we purge in only so many ways, you know, vomiting, sneezing, blowing your nose, you know, evacuation through urination, defecation, sweating, some people sneeze, cough, laugh, you know, there’s lots of ways emotionally that we purge. But you do begin with the physical body. And what I’ve learned is, the medicine works better when you’re cleaner physically. So since we live in a toxic environment, you do go through some of that. So we did do this. It’s called Vomativo.

We drank the prerogative, we did the Vomitivo. And actually, you feel clean afterwards. Then that evening, we began our journey into the visionary for some, but the deeper work of Ayahuasca, which they call the grandmother of all medicine, like all medicine. And that is a journey, that is the heroine and the hero’s journey. And, you know, so I went through that experience six times in those 10 days, and also another plant medicine called San Pedro. And so we can talk if you’d like to about what the ceremony is like, and what you go through.

 

 

18:16 Ashley James: Yeah, please. Yeah, I saw a documentary think it’s still in Netflix about Ayahuasca and how they’re using Or people go into the jungle and do this, who’ve come back for more time who have post traumatic stress. And they, oh my gosh, so many of them end up healing and resolving an it’s like completing. They’re complete with the post traumatic stress, and they go back, you know, I mean, sometimes they visit the jungle a few more times, but they can reenter society, and they don’t have those wounds, those scars, those triggers from the war time. So there’s a lot of benefits that they’re seeing.

 

 

19:00 Theresa Vigarino: Absolutely.

 

 

19:00 Ashley James: And obviously, it’s a medicine that has been practiced for a very long time. This isn’t like, you know, some trippy street drug. I mean, this is very responsible and the shamans are leading it.

 

 

19:11 Theresa Vigarino: And it’s very respected in South America. You know, I just read an article last year about how in Brazil, they’re using this plant medicine to rehabilitate hardened criminals, the worst of the worst. So there is so much about this medicine that science is now researching. There’s so many researchers were there, you know, people are drinking the medicine and they’re scanning brains while on the medicine and seeing how it activates parts of the brain. It is really helping people with chronic depression and mental illness. For me, I was the only person that was really there for physical illness, that first time. And so what happened to me was really intense. And they said it would be after a few rounds of it, that for someone who was as sick as I was in the physical realm, that I was going to go through a lot. And so they have in the ceremony, the ceremonies are always in the evening, at night in the dark and you’re in a special ceremony room that’s blessed and the shamans are there.

And they make this brew and the tea they call it, is a mix of traditionally, and it’s important I want to reiterate, you want to know who your shamans are. And you want to know how they’re making the medicine. There are shamans in America that are distributing this medicine and there are a lot of reputable people. I personally have had several shamans now because I’ve been down there several times and I have found my shamans and I will only work with them. Because this medicine also works on the energy of the individual, their personal energy matters as well. Their lives matter as well because they’re part of your healing process. And so the first two times that I went down there, so I’ve been four times. The first two times I went was different shamans, this last two times and most recently, I spent the month of June, this year, so just two months ago with a mother and a son. They work together and mother son shaman and I won’t go to anybody else. They are who I will work with.

They are who helped transform me, the others – the medicine worked great, but they just didn’t have the healing gifts that these other shamans have. So that’s why I found my shamans, right? So anyways, so back to the original time that I went there. So we get ready, we stop eating at 2pm. And we go into ceremony in about 7pm. And in the jungle, it literally gets dark by seven. I don’t care what time of the year, I’ve been there all times of year now it’s dark by seven. So we’re dressed in white typically. And we head off into what’s called a Maloca. And it is a sacred ceremony space. It’s a round room and you see them all over the jungle with a pitch thatch roof. And you know it’s nicely appointed. There’s restrooms outside, bathroom number one they call is mama bears bathroom. That’s me. Because I’m the one that spent some time in the restroom. It’s laughable. They’re like, “Oh, she’s in there again. Put her baby wipes in there.” So yes, I spent a lot of time purging that way and it was unbelievable what came out of my body. Old infections and I won’t go into more detail about that.

 

 

22:35 Ashley James: Oh, my gosh. I’m so curious. Did you see parasites?

 

 

22:40 Theresa Vigarino: Oh my gosh, okay.

 

 

22:43 Ashley James: Okay listeners who’ve been listeners for a while are laughing probably because I’m so obsessed. I want to know, I want to know the details. Give me the details. Parasites, did you see the parasites?

 

 

22:57 Theresa Vigarino: This is how I saw the parasites. So the first two nights, what would happen is my belly would just blow up like a balloon. So I’ll go back into the detail of how the ceremony plays out. So we’re sitting on these mats, everybody has a bowl and some toilet paper or napkins, you know, because some people do purge through vomiting. And I have, but not as much as the other way. What we’ve discovered is I’m extremely sensitive to the medicine. So I need the least amount. The original shamans were giving me full doses. And it was too much, quite frankly, for me. And I was oh boy, the first two nights. I didn’t have, I saw some visions. So I’m very visionary person. And some people experience the visionary journey and some don’t. Now, Westerners like to call this a psychedelic hallucinatory experience, however, and they call it a drug. It’s a misconception.

This is a very powerful strong medicine. And the reason why they call it the grandmother of all medicines is because it works on every part of your being; your mind body, your emotional body, your energetic body, your physical body, your spirit body. It’s like having the best doctor, Psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, all in the same room in one night. It’s like 20 years of therapy, a 20 years of toxins coming out of your body, 20 years of stuck emotion coming out of your body in one night.

 

 

24:29 Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That’s so cool.

 

 

24:31 Theresa Vigarino: That’s so powerful.

 

 

24:31 Ashley James: Yeah, when I watched the documentary, I believe someone said one of the people is going through it, said it was really, it was like you face the mirror. It’s like your soul faces the mirror of yourself and I can really see why criminals would find healing through it because they actually have to then face the actions and then feel what they did to others and face that. And so people were in denial. I mean, you can’t be in denial, you face all your stuff. Is that accurate?

 

 

25:10 Theresa Vigarino: It’s so accurate. And I want to say, and it is in the kindest way possible. Because I saw the mistakes that I had made over my life. And the part I played even if the other party, whatever circumstance it was, just, you know, in my views and terrible things to me, or what have you, right? I also played a part in some of that. I also realized my portion of it and I grieve that part of myself. It’s also a great shame release, because the most negative vibration, it’s totally a vibratory medicine. The darkest emotional vibration, and we know that we’re all energetic beings, and that we resonate to a vibration. The one that stays the deepest stuck inside of ourselves is shame.

 

 

26:02 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

26:04 Theresa Vigarino: And so this helps bring the shame up, and you see it and you release it. So you not just have forgiveness for others, but for yourself, for the things that you’ve done. Because none of us are perfect, you know, those without and I don’t like to word, the word sin means miss the mark, you know, cast the first stone. In other words, we shouldn’t be judging each other because we’re not perfect. We’re all a work in progress. Yet, we are perfect because we have the spirit of the great creator living within us. And we’re here to emerge as that. But in the process, we have the human aspect of our life experience. And, you know, we’ve all done things that we’re not proud of, or said things or engaged in things that we wish we wouldn’t have in hindsight, right? So this helps you access those places of stuck guilt, shame, remorse, resentment, anger, guilt, all of those negative emotions, and it bubbles up to the surface and you’re able to get it out of your body.

 

 

27:01 Ashley James: So take us back to the first night. Take us back to the ceremony and tell us what happened.

 

 

27:06 Theresa Vigarino: First of all, it I thought it was freaky as all get out because I’m like, “What are we doing in the dark?” Because I really didn’t know what was going on.

 

 

27:12 Ashley James: They guy didn’t explain to you everything?

 

 

27:15 Theresa Vigarino: A little bit. But it’s still like, it’s still an experience to have to actually go do it, right? We walk in we’re like, I’m next to my roomie, this beautiful and she’s like one of the dearest souls in my life now. We became best friends, because neither one of us had experienced the jungle before and she was even more scared than me of jungle critters. And so we picked mats next to each other and talking to each other. “Hey, are you okay?” You know, it’s nice to have a little buddy your first night. So yes, we didn’t understand it. But there’s still something different about doing it. Right? We did have an explanation of what we’d experienced. But so and what happens is the shamans, there’s a light at the beginning and they’re pouring the brew and a cup and come up, set your intention.

You sit before the shamans, you drink the brew, you go back to your mat, and we’re in silence at that point. They go around the room, everybody drinks it, and then they drink it and there was two shamans there, and two females and they drink the medicine and then the lights go out and they smoke a sacred tobacco called Mapacho, which Mapacho is for clearing energy. And if you notice most ancient tribes from Africa to Australia to North America, the indigenous tribal ceremonies always have smoke involved either through a fire, or they’re smoking some sacred tobacco. And because it’s a master plant, and it is a medicine, and it clears spiritual energy. Okay, because part of the ceremony is you’re opening up energetically.

So it’s about your safety. So that’s why you want to know that you’re with a powerful shaman. And that we could go into the details of that later. So they begin smoking. And then you start after a while feeling the effects of the medicine and it can be different for everyone. The medicine is brewed between a vine and a leaf. The vine is called Ayahuasca and the leaf is called Chacruna. Now, there are lesser evolved, lesser enlightened people that serve medicine. And a lot of Westerners want the visionary experience and so they go for that and these shamans they just pick randomly who to work with at the airport sometimes, come to find out. And they will add a third ingredient for the hallucinatory experience and so that they have this trip, if you will. That’s not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in healing. And many people come away with it with a different experience than what is truly the medicine and traditional witches those two ingredients only

 

 

29:52 Ashley James: Giving Ayahuasca a poor rep.

 

 

29:54 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, yes. So you know a reputable shaman, a reputable Lodge and you know, truly, truly if any of your listeners want to know the place that I went with the shamans, I am best friends with the lady that owns the lodge now and they are the most healing, loving, authentic, integris group of people I’ve ever worked with. They cared for me during my darkest nights of my soul.

 

 

30:18 Ashley James: So listeners can reach you www.theresavigarino.com and get that information about the lodge and all that. So on your first night you’re lying on your mat. Now you must be hearing the sounds of the jungle outside.

 

 

30:33 Theresa Vigarino: Oh, the symphony of the jungle is unlike any other sounds you’ve ever heard.

 

30:39 Ashley James: It’s very loud.

 

 

30:40 Theresa Vigarino: It’s very loud, it’s very loud and it’s very dark. Because of where we are situated there’s no electricity, they run off generators in the evenings. And by 10pm, the generators are off. And they have to boat everything into this place, right? So the generators are in the evening. So you can charge your phone, but you have very limited access to the phone, there’s no internet, no TV, you’re away from work, you’re away from everything. So because of the lack of distraction, you really get to face these parts of you that really need to be faced so that you can have freedom and liberation. And so the first couple of nights, I would see the sacred geometry, you know, in black and white and so I would see some things that affected my experience, my visionary experience. But what happened to me was my belly just blew up to where I was like eight or nine months pregnant. And I was in the pooper, I call it and I was in the bathroom just evacuating like I had never in my life.

 

 

31:39 Ashley James: How do you get through if it’s dark?

 

 

 31:42 Theresa Vigarino: Oh, they have facilitators there.

 

 

31:43 Ashley James: Do you have flashlights?

 

 

31:45 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah, and you bring your own flashlight. So you have a list of things to bring for your experience; headlamp, little flashlight, and they have facilitators. So, this one his name was Alex. I call him my jungle son. I’d be like, “Alex.” And he would come and get me and escort me outside into the facilities and wait for me until I wash my hands and come back and guide me back to my mat. Because you are under the effects of the medicine. So you do feel woozyness, you definitely feel different, right? But you have full consciousness and full awareness while the medicine is working.

So for me the first two days, because I went at the last minute, I did not have any. Most people that go, they have a couple weeks where they are cleaning up their diet. And even though I eat really clean, no oil, no butter, no caffeine, spices, salt, no pork, no red meat. There’s a specific diet that you eat to cleanse yourself so that you don’t have to go through as much detoxing while you’re there. So taken into account that I had just been in no medicines, right? I had been in the hospital, I had had steroids in my system till right before I came. I had IV anti inflammatories, I had a lot of things in my system that I was not cleared out of, so the medicine worked as a detox on me immediately. And boy did I feel it. By the third ceremony, my visionary experience just kicked my butt. I did not know what was happening to me. And it was extremely scary for me because I had never had that kind of experience. I am not a user of psychedelics. And I had never experienced something like this before. The colors and the patterns and the things, I mean, I just didn’t even know what was going on. So I got really afraid because we know what the brain, Ashley, if you’re having a new experience and you don’t have a frame of reference for it, it really triggers fear.

And what I learned from that scary night, scariest night of my life, and I had to be in the bathroom of course and it hit me within five minutes. Usually it takes 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, sometimes people don’t. The medicines working but they don’t have that experience at all. Because I’m so open and because I’m such a visionary and I’m so spiritual and energetically connected, it was like bam! Five minutes in, okay, and I’m like, “Oh my God, what’s going on? I end up literally on the jungle ground, fear of critters, didn’t care, had my friend. My friend with me, the owner of the lodge, five facilitators, another shaman came out and I thought literally, I thought I was going to die. Now I did have a death that night. The fear of death and I didn’t realize as spiritual being as I was and knowing where I’m going afterwards, there is still the egoic attachment of the greatest fear that we walk around with that even in your mind you think you don’t have, it’s still stuck in the body. We learned at five years old, you know what I’m saying?

 

 

34:57 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

34:58 Theresa Vigarino: Even though intellectually we go, “Oh we’re energy, we’re just going to transform. We’re faithful beings. Many of us know we’re going to enter into full consciousness.” If you’re a Christian then you know you’re going to meet the face of Jesus and etc etc etc. This night I was begging them to lie flight me out of there and then they started saying to me, I just said this is really funny now that I look back on it. But at the moment I didn’t know what was happening and the reason why I ended up in the grass was because you know there’s a little distance between the Maloca the ceremony room, and restrooms and on my way back into the Maloca I’m like, “Lay me down right here.” And I ended up off the little pathway and into the grass and you know, my friend is like, “Get her mat.” You know, I said I can’t go back in there because I need to be close to the bathroom because it was really pretty profuse a time, and my jungle son, they said, get her some sugar water so there is a way that when it’s intense for you to bring down the effects and he ran back to the main lodge and brought me sugar water. I’m drinking sugar water then he ran back again to bring me limes with salt and so basically the electrolytes brings you back and then they went and got me bananas. I said I just need a banana. I just need a banana and this poor kid because it’s a long way back to the lodge and it became a big joke.

Meanwhile, everybody in the Maloca is yelling out at me, “Mama Bear we love you.” I was the mom of all that trip and those people, as the oldest one there I think but those people ended up becoming like all my children and great dear loves of my life and I was getting the support of everyone and it did ease. And after that experience, I heard, I was able to communicate with the spirits so profoundly that the spirit said to me when I was in the toilet the next night I was like, what is going on? And the spirit said this is cancer leaving your body because medical intuitive said I had a lot of cancer in my body. This is cancer leaving your body, this is virus leaving your body, this is bacteria and toxins leaving your body, and these are the curses that were spoken over you leaving your body from past relationships and experiences. And so that said, sit with this because I was like opening up the door because it was the vileness that left my body that I couldn’t handle. It was making me feel sicker and the spirit said, no you close the door because I was like sticking my head out the door. This is really graphic.

 

 

37:38 Ashley James: It was like a porta potty or something? You just like open the door and stick your head out.

 

 

37:45 Theresa Vigarino: Oh no, but they’re smaller. You know, I was able to, but no they’re full working flushing toilets, running water back and everything. Yeah, beautifully appointed and you know still people are saying we love you and they can hear me and I can hear them and at this point and you know you do hear people purging, you do hear people crying some people are crying because they’re there for an emotional release. Which I got later in my month long journey that I just went on but those but my initial visit to the jungle, because you know my health was so dire and that first trip wasn’t enough. I ended up having to come back, but because my health was in such bad shape. So you know, I will say this even after just three ceremonies, my joints were able to loosen up and I literally was like stiff man walking around, not able to bend my knees or ankles or move my hips in either direction. And I was able to move in all directions without pain and suffering and that never came back.

 

 

38:49 Ashley James: Well. Okay, like you just told me you teach yoga at IBM every week. In San Francisco and then you had to miss yesterday because you we’re flying across the country. And so, here I am sitting here thinking like she’s a yoga teacher now. Like, she has to go back, when I first met you, you had scleroderma. You were stiff man couldn’t bend your knees.

 

 

39:14 Theresa Vigarino: Yes.

 

 

39:15 Ashley James: And now you’re teaching yoga to IBM employees.

 

 

39:20 Theresa Vigarino: It was my knees. My knees were so bad. And you know when I say I was brought to my knees? I was brought to my knees. Literally.

 

 

39:32 Ashley James: So do you still have scleroderma, are you completely in remission? Or is that completely gone from your body?

 

 

39:39 Theresa Vigarino: Well, the month that I spent, so this is what happened. So I wasn’t working with the best shaman and at the beginning, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. I ended up coming back that following March with my husband and with my friend and another group of people and was working with the same shaman. And so went through more, more deep healing, more deep healing, and the iron he is that I caught hepatitis A in my travels earlier that year. And so that’s why we went back in March and I had caught hepatitis A and I had been in the hospital and almost died in January of 2018. So I also discovered that I had parasitic infections from travels to Asia years before that had infiltrated my liver, my kidneys, my ducts, everywhere in my body and I couldn’t get rid of it. And that seemed to progress no matter how many cleanses I did and yes I saw many parasites and some of it was a spiritual thing.

And when you learn about that, when you learn that there’s a spiritual and energetic connection to everything I had I won’t go into detail, but I had of who or where it came from, but I had a dark energetic you know, a curse I don’t know what else to call it, that was attached to me – entity, being. I’m not sure if it was an energy or being, it doesn’t matter. But the shaman that I ended up working with, they cleared that from my energetic body. And that was the whole the opening of my work field. And because I had been so weakened from disease my whole life, I didn’t have that force field. And I didn’t know because if you’re not aware of it, you can’t really pray against it or whatever. Because I’m a strong spiritual person. How did this happen? And it was another strong spiritual person. That it was actually one of the original shamans that had some dark energy and it had because I was in a weakened state attached to me and that is a whole another story, right?

 

 

41:44 Ashley James: A whole another story. You know, Eric Throton talks about that, the guy I told you about that I’ve interviewed before. He talks about that kind of stuff. And my first session with him, he helped me remove some stuff that was like that. That was with me since I was nine. That had me hearing voices. And I thought it was my voice until I realized that those voices were totally out of alignment. Like these voices wanted me to eat McDonald’s. I’m like, I haven’t eat McDonald’s in nine years. What are you talking about? And so that’s when I got the cravings I kept having or not, were not physical cravings. They were like a voice in my head saying, “Let’s eat this, let’s eat that, or whatever.” Or it would make these the negative entity or whatever you could call it would make me question. Like when someone says something nice would be like, she didn’t really mean that, she doesn’t like you or whatever, it’s like having a mean girl in my head basically.

 

 

42:46 Theresa Vigarino: And really causing you to feel negative. And what that does is that attracts more negativity. So this is what I’ve learned energetically and vibrationally. This is where we live, we know that there are energies, entities, beings that are amongst us, and some are light, and some are the opposite of light. And so you know, I learned so much on this solitary journey. So I have so much to tell you on this call all day. So what I learned in June, and I’ve known a lot about this, but what I’ve learned is that we’re all here to clean our vibration, right? Through our beliefs, through our faith or trust, through our opening to spirit, through our intentions. And so when we know that there is negative influence, we can detach ourselves from that, right? And we can say, “But wait a minute, that’s not true.” That’s not true.

Because what happens is there’s these negative energies and these entities and these beings that are roaming on earth, and their entry point is when you’ve dropped your faith, your trust of the truth, which is you were created as an intentional being and as a divine express an extension of the Most High, you are one with the source of all things. And when you believe less or of that of yourself, that is an entry point, right? Also our behavior patterns. If there is addiction, it is not your true essence that’s addicted. It is a negative influence that is being fed from that addiction. It’s the negative one that has the addiction and living off that addiction through you. Does that make sense?

 

 

44:25 Ashley James: Yes, absolutely.

 

 

44:28 Theresa Vigarino: So some of these are spirits that haven’t crossed over. And that’s a whole another topic of discussion. I’ll have to come back for about this. But I saw it, I learned it. And the thing about Ayahuasca that I want to share with everyone is that while the greatest part of it wasn’t getting disease out of my body. The best part of it is the amplification, the expansion of infinite intelligence and knowledge and connection that doesn’t leave or just doesn’t live in the jungle, it comes with back with you. So that’s why so many people repeat going back, they want to go back for deeper knowledge. So there are people that go back once a year, once every two years, you know, you’ll hear people that are podcasting about it all the time. Because the knowledge that they gained, the cosmic knowledge that they gained. I actually gained a lot of galactical knowledge and cosmic knowledge and connection to these very, very, very high dimensional beings. The connection to Yeshua, and the angelic realm was so profound. And it’s with me now all the time.

 

 

45:42 Ashley James: So when you’re lying on the mat in between the trips to the bathroom, in the dark hearing the intense noise of the jungle, how do you receive this information? Like you said, you take this information home with you, this connection, this information. How do you receive it? You’re lying again, like I want to paint that picture. We’re lying on the mat in a thatched hut that’s round, pitch dark with the very loud jungle noises. And we’re sweating, possibly vomiting, going to the bathroom, but in between that, we’re seeing colors, we’re receiving information. So how did you receive it? Can you take us back to that, like give us a play by play?

 

 

46:30 Theresa Vigarino: Absolutely. So you know typically for most people, it’s about 30 minutes to an hour in that they feel the effect of the medicine except for yours truly. I’m like five minutes in and everybody goes, “Oh, there she goes.” But that was you know, the medicine at the time I was probably partaking in too much medicine. Now they give me like a tablespoon. They say, “No, no, no, no. No mas para Teresita.” “No more for Theresa.” I’m like the little baby, you know what I mean, I have no resistance. And for some people, they have to drink two full cups. But it just depends, and I don’t know the explanation of that. So what happens is when it goes dark, in other words the lights go out, the shamans have partaken in their medicine. And part of at the beginning of the ceremony, they are coming around with the Mapacho, and they are blessing you with the Mapacho and the space, they are clearing it and clearing it and clearing it and clearing it. So only the divine is there.

All right, because we all bring some negative in there. And they’re clearing it out for you constantly. They’re saying their prayers, and then when they partake in the medicine, out go the lights. So you’re sitting there and that you’re just waiting, right and you’re feeling the medicine. And at first you’re feeling some effects in the stomach or what have you. And you know, I’ve learned not to fear whatever my body is feeling. And I just go into the medicine is working. The medicine is working. And that becomes my mantra, I’m always in prayer. I’m always talking to Yeshua, I’m always talking to God and the angels. And then the shamans start singing the sacred songs of the medicine called the Icaros. The Icaros and that’s when they are in the medicine. And the icaros is what activates the medicine deeper in you and into the dimensions of your energetic body and into the spirit realm. So they are actually able to see what’s going on with you through the Icaros. And they’ll say, “Concentrado.” Concentrate on the Icaros and you’re listening to the song.

Since I’ve started talking about this, I am getting chills up and down my spine in my body, I don’t know if you’re feeling this but I am. It is so sacred, the Icaros, and this Ancient Medicine that’s been going on, they don’t even know when it started or exactly where, but all of the tribes along the Amazon and in South America, and in Central America, literally do the same thing, but they may have a little bit of different tradition with how they serve it or what have you. But they all know about this medicine. And they all sing these songs. And they had no communication with each other. They believe that the divine source of all things taught their ancestors about this medicine, so that you can connect deeper to the spirit realm and into the multiverse, the multi dimensional space where you have infinite knowledge and infinite healing and infinite connection. And so all these tribes they’ve been doing it forever.

And so, this tribe is called the Shipibo Tribe, and the Shipibo Tribe they have their Shipibo language, and they’re singing these songs and it is music that you’ve never heard before, words you’ve never heard before. And you stay connected to the shamans through the Icaros. So no matter what your journey is, and I will say sometimes you do see some things that are not necessarily pleasant and beautiful. And you allow it to pass through, a lot of times it’s your own fear showing up that has been locked away, locked away, locked away in your subconscious mind and in your energetic body that finds its way out through the medicine and through the Shamanism and through the sacred songs of the Icaros.

The Icaros are blessings and they then, so there’s different rounds of it. So when it begins and it builds an intensity, and then after a while there’s a turning point. Sometimes though, I’ve had experiences where it got more profound as the night went on. And you are together in the ceremony room until the shamans close the ceremony and then for some time afterwards, because the medicine is still working and they’re still working, but they’re not singing the Icaros anymore. And then there’s a lightness that takes over a lot of times, and there could be giggling, celebrating and then eventually you make your way with the facilitators back to your cottage.

 

 

48:38 Ashley James: What time is it by then?

 

 

51:25 Theresa Vigarino: It really just depends on the size of the how many people are in the ceremony, because the last portion of it is the shamans come to your mat individually. And oh my God, that is just the most profound experience that I could even begin to try to explain and especially when you’re working with these, the ones that really helped me heal; the mother and the son, and one is on one side and one is on the other. And they’re holding your hand and you feel their beauty and their love. And literally the feeling of love, universal love that comes through them for you, that you then have in turn for them and everything on earth and for God is just life changing that you will never forget for the rest of your life.

 

 

52:14 Ashley James: So obviously, they don’t speak English, or do they speak English?

 

 

52:20 Theresa Vigarino: They speak Spanish.

 

 

52:21 Ashley James: Is there a translator there ?

 

 

52:23 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, the owner is, she’s Peruvian, but she’s lived the last 28 years or something in Miami. So she speaks English. And also my friend that took us down there, he’s fluent in Spanish and English. And so he’s an amazing translator. And they also have facilitators that they bring, so there’s always someone that’s not under the influence of the medicine that’s there and they translate, they help you to the bathroom, they give you the sugar water if you need it or whatever you need, they’re there for you.

Listen, I have never been taken care of the way that I’ve been taken care of down there. They are with you on the journey. And they know what you’re going through. So they’re there for you and you know, they call me Mama Teresita down there as I just have this mother energy right for everybody. And so they love on me and literally when I left there at the end of June, I was in tears because these people, the people that work there that cook your food, that bring you what you need in your room, that help you no matter what, they serve you out of love. And it is one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had. And I’ve traveled the world. And the beauty of these people trying to help you through your healing process is a selflessness that is an extension of love from the universe. And you leave feeling loved.

 

 

53:59 Ashley James: That’s brilliant. So depending on how large the group is, I’m trying to paint that picture in my mind. When do you get back to your room to actually sleep and do you sleep that night?

 

 

54:13 Theresa Vigarino: You know, maybe a little bit, but you’re really in the effects of the medicine still. And you may have dreams or more visionary experience or you know, and you’re talking to your roomie or whatever, but you do rest. There’s a lot of resting that goes on. And what I noticed when you come back from the jungle is the high pace we live here. And the toxic environment that we’re in. It is such a profound difference from in the jungle to coming back to the States. So as I recommend everybody get to nature as often as possible because the plants here and the trees here they have a healing vibration to them that we don’t have in the concrete jungle. Now you live in nature. So you know, thank God, right. But we do have a lot of stuff that keeps us from deep healing here when you live in a city, like where my husband and I live now. But so it depends, like we had groups of 10 up to 18 and the several times that I’ve gone there, and we would probably get back to the room at 1:00 am.

 

 

55:12 Ashley James: Okay, that’s not bad. I was thinking it would be like an all nighter or something.

 

 

55:17 Theresa Vigarino: There are some that choose to stay. If you choose to stay or the medicine is still working, these shamans that we work with will not leave you, they will stay with you till the sun comes up. If you want to go back to the bed and they release you to go back to your bed, because I have a funny curvature in my spine, my tailbone sticks out and the mat on the ground is uncomfortable for me after a while. So I like to go back to the bed myself personally. But I have stayed in the Maloca till the sun came up. And then other times I’m like, I want to go back to my bed. It’s because more comfortable for me, my body.

But many people stay all night there and go back when the sun comes up. So it just depends. When I was there and it was just the shamans and me, our ceremony would be over at 10, started at 8, over at 10. Other times when there’s lots of people because remember, they go around to each person individually that takes longer. And so sometimes the ceremony will be over at 1am. And then you still have a period of where they won’t let you leave the Maloca. Where you need to stay there for the effects, because you’re still under the medicine. Does that make sense?

 

 

56:32 Ashley James: Sure. Sure. So your first time, the first 10 day trip, when you came back to the States, what was your biggest takeaway? What was the biggest healing? Did you notice that your scleroderma was getting better? Like what was the definite “This is what I got from my first trip to the jungle?”

 

 

56:52 Theresa Vigarino: Oh my gosh. Well, there was some confusion because I had old, old religious dogmatic interference, that first trip at some points, you know what I mean? Like, Oh, my God. Is this the right thing? I had a lot of…

 

 

57:11 Ashley James: Are you letting the devil in?

 

 

57:12 Theresa Vigarino: Totally, totally. I had some of that. And that was great that I faced that because oh my God, I saw the face of Jesus so many times, and angels and him showing me things. And later in the other trips that I went. But I came back. So that happened during the experience. But I came back going, this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I’ve done a lot of things. And I told my husband, we’re going back and you’re coming with me. And I told everybody I knew, you guys got to come, you got to come, you got to come, you got to come. I literally have lost friends over this because there’s so much fear in them and they got tired of hearing it. I was so on fire for this because I had this connection to like downloads, constant downloads, because when you get home, that’s when the journey really begins.

 

 

58:08 Ashley James: Yeah, I bet.

 

 

58:09 Theresa Vigarino: So you are like in boot camp while you’re there. But when you get home, that’s where you are really reconnecting to it, connecting to it, connecting to it. And you do over time, like some of the effects because the medicine stays in you and still works with you, right. So you do and especially once you’ve been there for as long of a time and had as much medicine, like I’ve had 27 nights. 27 experiences with Ayahuasca and that’s a lot in a year and a half. Wow, I think it was like 15 months, 27 ceremonies, that’s a lot. And especially this last time when I went for my 28 day excursion, I had 12 nights of Ayahuasca.

When you’re there for a longer period the dose is less, it’s more like micro dosing because it’s more about the healing effects of the actual medicine. So this last journey that I went on by myself, because I had been one other time with this mother, daughter, son, I mean mother, son, shaman family, she said to me, “You need to come by yourself, and you need to come for at least a month.” And so when this parasitic infection wouldn’t go away that I’ve had for years, I had just didn’t have enough medicine. I wasn’t there long enough. So I had to go deep. And I had to be there for the month. And I thank God for the parasites. Because it forced me to say to my husband, I gotta go. And he said, “Go.” So when I got back at the end of June, I said to my husband, you’re next and arranged his ticket, made the arrangements and one month later, my husband left for the jungle for a month and he got back at the end of August.

 

 

59:51 Ashley James: And he went without you.

 

 

59:53 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. Solo journey is… You know, I love it that we went with group, that I went by myself with a group and that we went twice together with a group. And then we went on our solo journey. And it’s changed him as much as it’s changed me. And by changing what I mean is, it’s almost like all these layers of falsities of teachings of culture. Things that are programmed, literally peel off of you so that you become this lighter, vibratory being that has connection to the truth and what really matters.

 

 

1:00:39 Ashley James: Yeah. So tell me about your physical your physical healing, removing these parasites and everything. Because it sounds like your scleroderma gone? Is it in remission?

 

 

1:00:54 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah. So halfway through in June. That’s why I went. So each time I went, I had profound experiences, visionary experiences, and you asked me, how is it that you learn? I see things, okay. So I see, I saw things that were yet to come, that came to pass, I saw how things about my children, I was brought to my children in the spirit realm. And there was one visionary experience that was the most beautiful thing because you know, my children went through some trauma in their past in their childhood. And I was dressed as a priestess in this one vision where I was dressing and blessing my daughter and my son, both as a priest and a priestess. And I saw my little doggy and I’d be blessing her, I saw things about my husband and I, I saw things about my relationship with my parents, my siblings, friends, I saw people that I was to let go of, then I saw relationships that I was to heal deeper. I was brought to an understanding of how to heal relationships. And that came to pass.

I saw what to do in my business. I saw how I was to be a hands on healer and that I would pray over people and they would be healed through my connection to the source and through the divine beings, Yeshua, the angels in these other high dimensional beings, that would work through me, I just became a more open vessel as a result of it. And I was to do it. And I said, “Okay, I trust you.” And then simple things like, you know, take up the piano again, that’s going to enrich your life, take up the pottery, start sewing again, because I had become so focused on my health, on others, on my husband, on my business, and on everything else, when I had lost taking the time to be the creative person that I always was since I was a little girl. So when I was there in June, and I remember walking around in my bare feet, now I’m in my bare feet in the jungle, you know what I’m saying? I’m not scared. I’m walking around in the jungle in my bare feet. And I was brought back to when I was a really, really small little child at five years old. And I was always the barefoot one in the yard. And I was brought back to that to the joy of being barefoot in the grass.

And I remembered and I reconnected to the inner child so much that I’m playing the piano every day again, I’m doing creative things. And I make a point every day to do something creative for the fun of it. For the joy of it. And as entrepreneurs, and you know, I do six different things. Yoga is a creative outlet for me, I’m business development for my husband, I’m writing a book, I’ve got this new class I’m launching, I’ve just started a charity, I’ve got lots of things that I’m doing, I’m helping with my mom. You know, there’s many different projects I have ongoing, but I’m taking time every day, even if it’s just 30 minutes, to do the thing just for the sake of creativity, because the Creator is creative. And as an expression of the Creator, when we create, we are accessing that vibration of creation. Which is the step beyond manifestation is creation.

And that is something for us all. And I encourage and challenge everyone, what is the thing that you love that you don’t think you have time for because it’s not, you know, making you money, or, you know, the bathroom needs to be cleaned, or so and so wants to talk to you on the phone? Or there’s a Netflix show. You know, take some time on the daily, even if it’s 15 20 minutes, and you’re going to find that your vibration is going to lift and your vitality will lift. Your energy will lift. More creative ideas come, and actually you know what comes? Happiness and joy. Because we can get bogged down with oh my gosh, is that marketing working? Oh my gosh, what are the analytics Duffy? Am I right?

 

1:05:36 Ashley James: We can definitely get bogged down with the day to day and lose that connection.

 

 

1:05:42 Theresa Vigarino: And you would think maybe an empty nester, right? And not running the kids here and not running the kids there that I would have had more energy toward that. But what happened was, you know, my husband and I became really focused on business. And that’s not my mindset. That was more his mindset. And I absorbed that. And I molded myself to that. And the more I did that, the sicker I got.

 

 

1:06:12 Ashley James: Sure.

 

 

1:06:14 Theresa Vigarino: And so and it’s so funny, because he came home going… And when I came home, and while he was gone, because we traveled and we traveled in July, and then my dog got sick. And I had like three weeks of just caring for my little doggy and bringing her back from the brink. And he was gone during that time, I started playing the piano again. And it was like the message was so clear, creativity is your way, Theresa. So I started painting and I started you know, I’m going to do needlepoint and just little things I can do in the evenings rather than just sitting doing nothing or watching TV or whatever, you know, because my energy is still coming back and I’m still under the influence of a lot of the plant medicine. And I’ll go back to that experience of the plant medicine but, and my husband came home saying, “We gotta get you a pottery class and you need to play the piano.” And we started giggling it’s like your way, Teresa to health is creativity.

 

 

1:07:05 Ashley James: He came from the jungle and that’s what he told you?

 

 

1:07:08 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah.

 

 

1:07:09  Ashley James: And he didn’t know that you spent the last month playing the piano and doing all that. So he got the message you got. That’s funny.

 

 

1:07:16 Theresa Vigarino: Yes.

 

 

1:07:18  Ashley James: I love it.

 

 

1:07:18 Theresa Vigarino: And totally supportive, not like Theresa where you clean the apartment. You know? No. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful, because he went through the journey himself. And he knows what he needs to do for himself now.

 

 

1:07:32 Ashley James: So you receive messages for yourself and your loved ones. And you just get clarity. Do you think it’s that we all have the ability to be intuitive and get in touch with it, and that the medicine just pulls the ego aside and pulls all the business aside so that we can actually receive the intuition we always have?

 

 

1:07:55 Theresa Vigarino: We are born this way. However, through teachings, culture, wounds, ego, everything that happens it gets clouded. And we run on these programs a lot of times under the radar and you know, a big proponent of changing your belief systems through your neural pathways. But there are some wounds that stay stuck that you don’t know that they’re there. That you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know.” And so that’s what the medicine brings to light are the things that are so deeply embedded that you’re not even aware. There was one night when we were with the group and the shamans were like, “No. Muy poquito, Teresita.” Where I got like a teaspoon and everybody else’s… And I’m like, la la la, I’m just having a good time. You know what I mean? And when people started going through their experience, I started worrying about everybody. And the message that I got from that experience was see what happens if we don’t kick your butt and make you down the toilet and face down, you won’t concentrate on yourself, you are so used to carrying so much more about everybody else. That one of your lessons is, now is the time to care for you.

 

 

1:09:16 Ashley James: Very good.

 

 

1:09:17 Theresa Vigarino: And that happens to a lot of moms in the world. And a lot of people pleasers in the world. And one of the messages I got while I was in the jungle and my father appeared, not in ceremony. But my father who’s… a cross over appeared. There was another guest there and she’s a medium and a clairvoyant. And, you know, she said, “Look, I know we just met, we just met like 30 minutes before.” She goes, “Where’s your dad?” And I said, “Well, he’s crossed over.” And she said, “Well, he’s here and he’s standing right behind you.” Describe him to a tee. And said to me, “I really want to tell you that your dad is here, and he has messages for you.” And I was like, awesome, what’s the saying? And she said, “He wants you to know that he approves. And apparently that was a big deal for you. And that in your life, you’ve sought approval from others because you wanted his approval. And you didn’t feel like you ever got it.” He was a critical man in the human form. And how true words were never spoken over my life and seeking that approval became this people pleasing aspect of my personality. And so when people didn’t approve of me, it was a really deep, deep, deep pain. Well, people that I loved and cared about. Okay, and so friends, and when people didn’t approve of it, and it’s really interesting, when I came back from my Ayahuasca journeys, many people have left me including somebody that was my very best friend for many, many, many years.

 

 

1:10:50 Ashley James: Wow.

 

 

1:10:52 Theresa Vigarino: And that has been super painful for me to digest. But again, it’s like right now I’m on this path. And they’re gonna be some people that it’s going to be polarizing. And I want to say to the listeners, however, whatever path you decide to take towards your own healing and enlightenment, there are going to be people that are going to not like it. And I saw, I think like Denzel Washington said it or maybe Morgan Freeman or somebody that, you know, it’s basically I’m summarizing, I don’t remember exactly, but you know, it’s the light in me is disturbing the darkness of you. And that’s okay. And not to make me better than anybody else. I’m just, you know, a little bit down the pike right? Down the path, because I said yes, and because I surrendered.

And because I said I am here on earth to be all that God created me to be. And so I surrender to that, even if it meant having to move from Lake Tahoe my favorite place on Earth, even if it meant I had to go through the depths of suffering in order to release and be brought to my knees. So I can say in a deeper way, because I’ve said this prayer my whole life. But this is a newness, and a true, I am nothing without the breath of God inside me. And I learned that deeper than ever, and the rest of these false fears that we have of rejection and abandonment. And what are people going to think of me? And and the old ego wants to come out even with this class that my husband, you know, my husband’s in the tech world and deals with professionals at a very high level that run billion dollar companies. And he’s now posting about channeled messages from Jesus through my wife. He said to me this week, he’s like, “Oh, my gosh, babe, I’ve really grown.” He’s like, and I realized there was still a little piece of me like, “Oh, my God, are people gonna think we’re nuts.”

 

 

1:12:50 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:12:51 Theresa Vigarino: Listen, what could be better? This is what we’re here for. This is what we’re all here for. And I I’m so dizzy in the spirit right now. Because, you know, there’s going to be a healing vibration to this in this podcast. Even my toe is tingling. Because it’s true. And by the way, I learned to Yeshua. It really is. And that’s what’s going to be explained on this masterclass series for people that were raised in the Christian faith or not, and it’s not about how you were raised and it’s not about religion. And I saw in the multiverse, I saw in other dimensions and so what happened with the healing in June, so I went back, the minute that I got there, they knew I was coming. Everybody’s greeting me, they knew in advance I had a two week notice. Well, no, I think I had, no not two weeks, it was about nine days. And I had been on a four month parasite cleanse and literally the level of parasites that were coming out of me and it wasn’t stopping.

Okay, so I couldn’t get rid of it on my own and with many, many, many holistic therapies, and drinks, and Western medicine, anti parasitic, it didn’t matter what I was taking, it was not getting better, it was only getting worse. And really, the parasites were trying to take me out. And I had a lot to do with that whole dark energy thing. It had a hold on me. And so when I got there, the shaman said you were very close to dying. And so this was an intervention. And I knew it. I told my husband five days before I left, I said I don’t, or maybe it was 10 days before I left I don’t remember exactly, it might have been right before I said I got to go for the month. I said I don’t think I’m going to live past this. And he said go, so we did I called Nancy the owner and I said I gotta go for the month. She goes good. I’m going to then. And let’s go. We met in Iquitos, went to her place in the jungle, walked up the stairs together, I video documented my entire experience. There will be a documentary about it coming out soon and I’m writing a book about it ‘Dreaming With The Shaman: The Unlikely Love Affair Between an Amazon and an American Woman.

 

1:15:06 Ashley James: Oh, beautiful. I love it.

 

 

1:15:08 Theresa Vigarino: Because it’s the last place I ever wanted to go on earth. And at least I thought now I have this grand love affair with it, I can’t wait to go back. And so the minute I stepped foot on the grounds, I knew my healing would happen and I walked up those stairs to the lodge and greeted the people that know me as mama Teresita and started drinking medicine right then. So there’s thousands of medicines and when they know what you need, okay, when they assess you, these shamans through ceremony, they will put you through what you’re going through, you do this, you know that you have these conversations with Nancy the owner ahead of time, so when you get there, they have medicine waiting for you and how did they get the medicine? They go out in the jungle, they dig up a route they cut down some bark they trim a plant whatever and they come and they make these tinctures or if it’s something external, these these sabs or drinks, right and so some are hot, some are room temperature, some are boiled, some are leaves that they grind down in a mortar and pestle and steep it different ways for different medicines. And I was on about seven different medicines during the day. And then I had 12 ceremonies with Ayahuasca which was the most beautiful thing ever. I’m now godmother to the mother shaman there to her granddaughter, and the son sharman to his daughter. And they are my family now. And about halfway through she said the root of your disease is gone.

 

 

1:16:49 Ashley James: Did you feel it?

 

 

1:16:50 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. Because I wasn’t able to eat, I wasn’t able to go to the bathroom before I left. I wasn’t able to breathe before I left. The minute I was was there I was breathing and I was going to the bathroom. I wasn’t able to urinate. My kidneys were that inflamed. And food was hard for me. I was I was down to hardly eating anything. And I was eating massive amounts of food while I was down there, they had a food, specific foods, but I was definitely on the diet that they were giving me specifics and delicious. The food tastes better down there. The soil is so rich in South America. So and she said but the wounds are still there. So this is the most fascinating part. She didn’t know what scleroderma was. They don’t have anatomy books, and they don’t go to medical school. They see your body from an energetic standpoint, okay. And what she said to me was, the wounds are still there. And I said, “Well, what are the wounds look like to you?” And you know, the translation is going and she said, they look like and she said they’re from your brain all over your brain to the bottom of your feet. I can testify to the brain because I had had a neurological event after you and I spoke and I was in the ER for that. And I had white matter and some growths in my brain and all of that, that I never really did, you know, go down that path was allopathically for it. And so she said, “They look like scabs that have come off. And there’s a scar that’s left, big ones.” And it’s my whole entire body. And that is exactly what scleroderma does. Its scars.

 

 

1:18:32 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:18:35 Theresa Vigarino: And so the healing is taking place, right? And so while she was down in the jungle with Victor, one night, because I was still you know, I wasn’t feeling that great about a month ago, still I’m in the healing process, right? So I have to be patient with that. And I have to be very fine tuned to my diet. And what I’m taking in and negative energy and what happens is, you become super open energetically and man oh man, oh, man. Do you become acutely aware of negative energy in your life, through the television, through the computer, through who you talk to, people you’re around, what you’re eating, what you’re drinking, you become aware of energy. So your job and what I realized, is our job is to keep our energy clean. How do you do it? Lots of techniques to clean in your energy, right? There’s lots of things; grounding, visuals, meditations, prayers, but I would say right away, what I learned is cleaning your physical body is essential. And it’s step one, because that’s what they do in Shamanism. The cleaner your body is the less purging that you go through really, because honestly in those 12 ceremonies I purged from the medicine during the day that they were giving me and I purged through so much of that, right? That my ceremonies were easy. Easier than I ever imagined. There were a couple nights that were hard. When the night that I faced this dark entity. Because I said to the shaman when we discovered it, and they told me about it, and we know who it came from. And it was powerful because it came through another shaman. And that’s why it’s important to know your shamans. And I said tonight’s the night. I didn’t come here for this when I first came down here. I came here to get healing and I want it gone tonight. And the minute that I said it, I started feeling a choking feeling and pressure on me and I started doing my own prayer work and calling in beings to help me. And that night was a hard night. And after that it got easier. So what other questions do you have? You were asking me what it’s like? Like, how do you get the information. So it’s visual, sometimes. Sometimes it’s feeling. And you’ll get the thoughts in your head associated with the feeling. And you won’t actually see a picture right in your in your mind’s eye. And sometimes it’s just this clairsentience and claircognizance where it’s a knowingness. And that stays with you after you leave, you will just know things. And you will just go. I just know it and I trust it. So you become more confident in your intuitive abilities.

 

 

1:21:24 Ashley James: Very cool. So after the shaman saw that your scleroderma, the root of the scleroderma was gone, what did she say about healing the scar tissue?

 

 

1:21:37 Theresa Vigarino: Oh, she said, it’s just going to take time, the medicine will keep working. And it’s just going to take a few months for the damage to be healed. And you know, watch my diet, go back to some regular foods, because you’re without salt, you’re without sugar, you’re without fats, you’re without a lot of things that you need for your body. And so when you’re done with the dieta, when you come home, you stay on it for a while, and then you start adding some things back slowly. Because it becomes like a shock to the system and you cannot feel well. And I think that happened to me.

And we know like for some people, you have to stay on the diet more strict for a longer period of time than others. And because I’m so sensitive personally, and I would recommend that people do that when they come back if you’re there for a long period of time. And so she just kept saying to me, it’s your mind now, relax, rest your mind. Because energetically you know, our mind races around. And you really when you’re in the jungle, you become very attuned to that. And so when you unplug, and you don’t have this visual stimuli with our screens that we do, and that causes our brains to really speed up its activity, traffic, stress of money, whatever, it speeds up the brain. And so then when you’re there, it’s like, everything comes to a stop. But you become finally acutely attuned to how rapid your brain is moving and worrying and wanting going down rabbit holes of excuse my language. And what would happen is, I would get a bad headache from it. And she would have to do during the day, she’d have to do these things over my head.

She’s like, rest your mind, quit worrying, quit worrying, shut demanding about it, it’s pointing that made, stop it. For them, they’re in such a peaceful state. See, they don’t worry. They’re so connected to the present. And you know, as a coach about reducing anxiety and getting over panic, that it comes from the mind, and then it gets triggered in the body. So then we have those physiological responses. And I would say it is the silent chronic disease of America and Western culture.

 

 

1:24:09 Ashley James: Absolutely.

 

 

1:24:13 Theresa Vigarino: I guarantee nine out of 10 people, even people that are in the business that we’re in, still have anxiety at some low level that maybe they’re not completely aware of, or that they’re picking up from the community around them vibrationally, because when you go down there, and you’ll be like, wait a minute, what’s that pot and I was like, well, you just shut up, I was so mad at my mind. But it was really the medicine was showing me how overactive it is. And that when I come home, it was going to be essential for me to kick up the yoga to kick up the prayers to kick up the meditations and to catch myself from the old habit of rabbit hole thinking you know, what happens if this, this, this, this, in six months from now and and we’re really taught that with this movement of manifesting, which I’ve taught, right? With self development and personal development and writing your goals down. And I’m going to manifest the hundred thousand dollars a year this year with the online coaching world with that, right?

Now, I’m not saying what are your desires, there’s a difference between focusing on what you want to manifest and it occurred to me and my husband from these downloads. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, we got this wrong.” And I’m not saying it’s a good step to learn that you’re a powerful manifestor, right? But we’re manifesting all the time. And when you’re putting out the vibration of I want this, my husband and I, we want this ranch, either in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, on the Tahoe side, maybe California, I don’t know. We want a ranch with a space where we can bring people in for masterminds and retreats. And we want it to be our home and a retreat place and horses and nature and blah, blah, blah.

We were so focused on what we didn’t have and working at manifesting that we were putting out unknowingly the vibration, even though we were coming at it from and we had this ranch, well, we know we don’t have it really. And we were constantly focused on what we didn’t have, that we were still putting out that vibration of what we didn’t have, even though we were coming at it from a manifestation standpoint. And so now, and now we realize that with the divine creator, we surrender now, if that isn’t the highest will and it’s a vision of the highest will for our life, as we’re becoming all that we were created to be as a divine unique expression of God, then yes, but we’re going to be okay, if it’s something else too.

 

 

1:27:03 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:27:03 Theresa Vigarino: We’re going to, we’re going to be like the wind. So we’ve released our attachment. And that moves us into a state of trust. And that we’re going to know, because we’re going to be divinely guided. And so when that becomes your focus, when you focus on the big desire, which is to be all that we were created to be through this unconditional love and guidance, and through the help of helpers like Yeshua, like the angels, like other dimensional beings, Therapists Bay that works with me, which is the divine architect that takes things from an energetic standpoint and helps you manifest it into physical matter here on Earth. I discovered him this last time in June that he was working through me or for me, and because of me, and how great is that? And I’m humbled by it.

And those many others, and Yogananda as well I didn’t realized he was one of my guides and no wonder I’m doing yoga again, you know, and oh my gosh, it was just so beautiful. And connecting with these energies of these beings, these Christ Consciousness beings. And knowing that all is okay, just like it is right now. And that is the key to letting go of the anxiety, the monkey brain, the worry, the stress is really becoming focused right now in your senses and knowing that that truth of who you are will emerge and is emerging, that you were coming here to be all that you were created to be and that as a divine unique expression of the Most High God I say God, people can say whatever they want; source, energy, vibration, creator, just a word, right, for the meaning of a being, of a truth, of an energetic reality.

 

 

1:28:52 Ashley James: I love it.

 

 

1:28:53 Theresa Vigarino: I love that gets wrapped with that one.

 

 

1:28:55 Ashley James: Yeah, I love that you have…

 

 

1:28:58 Theresa Vigarino: Theresa the preacher.

 

 

1:29:01 Ashley James: But I love that you have had tremendous physical healing along with energetic, spiritual, mental, emotional, with this herbal medicine journey, but that you put your spiritual healing at the forefront. And your physical healing came along with it that it was a package deal. I love that you shared that.

And you’ve got quite the mission that you’re working on. So you’ve got two things right now that you’ve launched. One, is a charity, I want to hear about that. And another is a mastermind that’s coming up. So let’s talk about your charity, it does come from one of your journeys to the jungle through Ayahuasca, did you have a vision to do this charity?

  

1:29:30 Theresa Vigarino: It is. It really is. And you know, but like I said, in order to really cleanse yourself so that you can energetically vibrate with this resonance, you have to clean the body too. Because we’re in the body right now. We’re not of the body, but we’re in the body, right? We’re more than that. We’re spirit living in a human physical reality at the moment. But the true reality is, is that we’re always connected to that energetic place. We have to clean the body too, it is a package deal. It’s hard to do good work from a sick bed. And let me tell you, it’s hard when you can’t move, and you don’t have the energy to get out of bed to be able to complete the mission.

The vision was put on my heart since I was a little girl. So this is about 45 years in the making. Honestly, this is a soul yearning and calling that I came here to do. This is the deepest part of my calling, I believe, because it’s been with me my whole life. When I was little, and I share this when I was five years old. And out in the yard in my bare feet by myself, I had  this beautiful experience of being a mother to millions of children. And so my poor parents, you know, hearing things in the attic, and people around us and how many people are replaying with Theresa and I’d say millions, they’re like, what the heck, most kids have one imaginary friend. Theresa’s got millions of them. God only knows what they were thinking. But I would go out to this special place in the yard and I had dug this hole by the tree. It’s beautiful maple tree and I would throw in acorns and blades of grass and leaves. I had a stick and I would stir it up and I was making stew which is so like me, right? It’s so like me in the kitchen. And I was feeding everybody. And they would say, “Who are you feeding?” I would say, “Well, my children.” And they would say, “How many children do you have?” And I would say millions. And with an underbite and a list.

And fast forward when I was over enough to really care about watching TV, because I wasn’t at the time I was really little. And I remember seeing maybe 10 years old, eight years old something, a news clips of the famine in Ethiopia and other places in Africa. And I remember crying. And I remember asking my mom why was this happening? And seeing starving children and it just left a mark and, and my mother remembers me saying and she told me this last year that I was maybe 10 or 11. And there was more famine and more shows. And I remember, she remembers me saying to her, I’m gonna do something about this. We have to do something, I would say. And so then I remember the one picture that we all have seen that was on the cover of Time Magazine or Life or something with a little boy that was crouched over, a starving African beautiful little boy and a vulture standing behind him. And I never forgot that picture.

I remember crying and I cried a lot over the plight of these starving children. So this was a work in progress. And then in 2004, when I traveled to South Africa, and I was in the bush and some of these places where it wasn’t so much of that starvation, although they were hungry children. And I was there, I was there on a business trip with my ex husband. And I took my children and my ex mother-in law, beautiful woman that she is that I adore and another child that was with us. And we went out on this excursion to be able to visit these villages where they have very little resources and HIV has wiped out a generation of people, okay. And so these children are living with children or you know, they’re completely orphaned. And so there’s the elderly and children, and not a lot in between. And it’s so rampant. It’s the worst HIV population in the continent of Africa as in South Africa.

And I made a vow. And I said, I’m going to come back and I’m going to help. And I’m going to build orphanages for these children, so they’re not sleeping outside. And 15 years later, I’m making good on that promise. And we already have the village, it’s the villages I went to, I’ve reconnected to the man that drove me that day, who was working for a conservation group that was no longer in existence. And last year after a trip to the jungle, this is how this works. I went to bed one night and the image in the end, the voice said to me, the spirit said to me, “Find him.” The one that drove me around. I was like what? Well, I seen him that one day, but I fell in love with his soul. And he said find this man and he’s going to be your boots on the ground, so to speak, for lack of a better term, you need someone that’s a local that knows how to get this done. You need to find him. I knew his name was Lotus. I knew where he worked in 2004. He was a representative of this conservation group. Well, that group was no longer in existence. He didn’t work at the one lodge I knew, and I went on a hunt.

And about a month of emailing and making phone calls. Ashley, I get an email from Lotus, beautiful name for a man huh, Lotus. And he told me where he was working with, organization called the Africa Foundation. And we connected and we are partnering with this well established, they know how to get the job done, they know how to get employee salaries, they know how to get counselors in, they know how to get medical care in. And we are about to break ground this year. Our fundraising is beginning. We’re becoming legalized. In the meantime, we are partnered with AfricaFoundation.org. And they are going to help us build our first facility in the bush outside of Kruger National Park in South Africa. And so it’s coming to pass and the name of our group is MomsHouseForChildren.org.

 

 

1:36:07 Ashley James: Beautiful and so is it Mom’s House is the charity?

 

 

1:36:11 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. Yes. Mom’s House For Children is the charity.

 

 

1:36:14 Ashley James: Mom’s House For Children. Love it.

 

 

1:36:17 Theresa Vigarino: And we have a website up. We’re a work in progress. We’re grassroots. It’s a family deal. My husband and children are involved. And we’re building our team, many of them are people I’ve sat in the jungle with and we’ve held each other’s hands through some of our most intense moments in life and have emerged fearless, the greatest gift of the jungle. And we’re ready to eradicate homelessness in the most vulnerable locations because there are 200 million homeless children where there are no resources, where there are no resources. And if we want to change this world, what do we do? We love the children, reunite the world. And that is our mission statement.

 

 

1:37:09 Ashley James: I can’t even fathom 200 million children homeless.

 

 

1:37:15 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. And in vulnerable locations, where criminal behavior happens, right? Because they need to feed them. So you know, starvation leads to many things, doing things these children would never do otherwise, or getting caught up with criminalization, or they’re they’re just doing whatever they can. Many 12 year olds are raising six siblings. So they’re not going to school, none of the kids are really able to go to school or not a lot of them. They’re having to find work. So it’s really, really severe plight and that isn’t even talking about, you know, other locales in the world where more sex trafficking and human trafficking takes place. So we solve a lot of problems by eradicating homelessness for the vulnerable children of the world.

 

 

1:38:12 Ashley James: Yeah, because then they don’t get into the drug trade and the sex trade and so they become child soldiers and all guerrilla warfare. And yeah, that makes sense. Get it at its root. Well, I love it. Congratulation.

 

 

1:38:30 Theresa Vigarino: Thank you so much. So it’s been, it’s been one of my lifelong dreams, and now is the time because they’re waiting. So I welcome all helpers of all varieties, into our movement of let’s put the children first. And what’s amazing is, is that it takes very little US dollars to create great change in these places. And, by the way, I’m a supporter of UNICEF, I’m a supporter of local charities for the homeless, the Homeless Coalition, No Kid Hungry program, we just signed up for them, Feeding America. So you know, also involved in Rotary and I do a lot of charity work, I feed the homeless over holiday seasons, my husband and I do just personally, we give, give, give, give, give all the time. So we do care about America. We care about Silicon Valley which has a great homeless population. We’re very involved in all of those things. I personally have a calling on me for Africa and some of these other world locations where the largest number of,vulnerable children live with with extremely little resources, including drinking water.

 

 

1:40:02 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:40:04 Theresa Vigarino: So that’s where my heart’s going. Yeah. That’s where God’s leading me to go.

 

 

1:40:08 Ashley James: MomsHouseForChildren.org?

 

 

1:40:11 Theresa Vigarino: Yes.

 

 

1:40:12 Ashley James: So M-O-M-S, MomsHouseForChildren.org.

 

 

1:40:16 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah, I’ll send you the link.

 

 

1:40:18 Ashley James: The link to that will be in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com as well as everything that Theresa does. Now, you are launching a new mentorship program, mastermind program and it is divinely inspired. I know you are so excited about it. Can you tell us more about this program? And what we’ll learn from it?

 

 

1:40:43 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, absolutely. So this came to me about a week and a half ago. And I said, yes, it’s one of those things, you know, like, two days before I go on to the Amazon, I said, Yes. So when the spirit moves you, I surrender. And I said, I said yes to this because I didn’t really plan on doing this right now. Because I know the time the energy and the effort that it takes to put together something like this. But yet, when you’re really operating from that soul driven place, and the spirits working through you, it becomes less effort, you know, and it becomes easier for us. And there’s a lot more grace, and I’m not worried about it.

So it’s only for 20. It’s 20 other souls that want to go on this journey with me through the rest of the year. So that 2020 because we know with creation, with manifestation, we have to clear up the vibration. And we have to do things to set in motion what we desire to experience. And so that’s when it came to me, it’s like now’s the time, we’re not just ending a year, we’re ending a decade. And 2020, I believe is going to be a year of great expansion for many of us, and a great transformation. And so helping others through the spirit working through me will guide you through teach people how to cleanse their vibration, how to reconnect to your deepest part of your own spiritual gifts, to amplify your own gifts, how to become the healer of your own life, all of these things, including your money story, your relationship story, all of that. How to really align into that place of surrender, so that the spirit can work more profoundly in your life, right and bring you…

The thing about South Africa, it blows me away, there’s not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t have a new connection, or I read something or like, I’m not even thinking about it. Now, somebody will invite me to a party, and there’s a bunch of South Africans there. I mean, it happens all the time. And we just smile, and I say thank you. And that’s the kind of level of creation I would like for the students to have in their own life. Now, this is not for beginners, person on this spiritual opening process, these are going to be more advanced teaching. So what happens is, you click on the link, and it’ll take you to a very short application process of about six questions, and it’s yes or no. And then you and I spend 20 minutes on the phone. So this is going to happen over the course of the next 13 days or something. And then we decide if now’s the right time for you, and the spirit is going to guide me into it being yes or no.

So I believe that most people that are going to go through this process, it is yes, because I believe that we are magnets to our experience, right. And I’ve already prayed for those 20 that would come and it would be the right time. But it’s just good to feel each other out. And then we get you set up to start on the 24th of September. Now, these are going to be Zoom calls. And there are a ton of bonuses, which we lay out that so it’s going to be so much offering here, I am just really honored to be in a position to be able to bring in other experts, and also offer some of the other healing things that I’ve been taught to do over the last three years. And all of that is going to be between the 24th and the end of December so that we all emerge 2020 a better, more awakened version of ourselves.

 

 

1:44:19 Ashley James: Beautiful, I’m very excited for you and for your students. I love it. You were telling me a bit about one of the lessons in it is going to be about acknowledging the ego and and helping it have more of you know, having healthy boundaries through ego I guess is the best way to do it. Because when we let our ego kind of run our life, it’s like I don’t know, for those who have had a toddler, they have no boundaries, and they will not respect yours. Right? And if you don’t know how to enforce them, they won’t respect any boundaries. So, we ere at my father in law’s 78th birthday dinner last night at a nice restaurant, and my son decides that he’s going to wash his hands in his glass of water.

You know. So no, there’s no boundaries. But your ego is much like your toddler, your inner toddler, and that it will cross over and take over everything if we don’t kind of enforce our own boundaries with our ego, right? So you’re talking a bit about that with me and how one of the things that people are going to learn with you in this mastermind is how to do that. And then another thing you told me about is that when you were on your Ayahuasca journey, you saw energy, you had an experience where you saw the vibration of the jungle and the vibration, you got to see energy and feel it, you had that experience of not only feeling energy, but seeing it and experiencing a whole new level. And so you took lessons away from the jungle, and you’re incorporating that into your mastermind. Is there anything that you’d like to teach today to the listeners that you’re going to be including in your mastermind, anything, any kind of lessons that you’d like to… homework or lessons or teachings that you’d like to give to listeners? So they can maybe walk away with something to work on today?

 

 

1:46:35 Theresa Vigarino: Sure, first I’ll address the ego questions. So you know, the ego is here for a reason. And we actually created it as a human collective long time ago. So it’s here, and it’s here to stay because we’re in the physical body. There are a lot of good things that the ego does for us, like trigger fear whenever we’re in a dark alley, and there’s an element there that we don’t want to interact with, right? So there are some components that we absolutely utilize this for our benefit of the ego. Having a sense of pride in your being, that is an ego driven thing to a certain degree, right? When you couple that with being all that you can be that God created you to be, they have those kinds of things work hand in hand.

Now where the ego drops our vibration is through judgment, it is through fear of judgment, fear of lack, fear of not being good enough, worry, old limiting beliefs about who you really are, judgment on other people’s behaviors, all of that, that is where from a spiritual component, it drops you down. Okay, so learning the voice of the ego, and why don’t we just curtail this into the homework or the assignment or, you know, an intention for the listeners, which is to learn to be the observer of when your ego is triggered based upon fear and judgment, because fear and judgment are what keep us from that soul alignment. They keep us out of compassion, they keep us out of forgiveness, which keeps us out of that unconditional love, that we are to be and as an expression of. And so when we’re judging, even when it seems like it’s something so terrible, you know, and we want to judge that person, “Oh they are just rotten to the core.” Or whatever. We are projecting that judgment. And in that moment that we judge another, that means that we judge ourselves, number one, so we automatically have, we know that we have shame, guilt, all of that still stuck in our vibration, right? It also removes you, you also step out of that soul alignment of the vibration of love that God is. And that really we’re an extension of, and so ever so briefly, we’re away from that.

And we actually can feel the effects of that, you will feel, maybe you were happy before that. Maybe you felt expansive before that, maybe you were in joy, and you were in the moment, and you felt at peace. And then the minute judgment came in, even for yourself, oh my gosh, I shouldn’t be doing this, I should be doing that. And even if it looks that it might be more productive, but you’re judging yourself, and I don’t mean like for the better. Like, let’s say you’re doing something creative, and you’re playing or whatever, right. And there’s this voice that’s like, you better not be enjoying that, you better go work on your finances. So, or, you know, you’re trying to pray and meditate, and you get the thing, oh, change the laundry over. When you work from home, those are easy distractions. So it’s subtle, it’s subtle, sometimes sometimes they’re big, but oftentimes, they’re subtle.

 

And by being the observer of the difference between when you’re operating from the mind of God and when you’re operating from the ego mind, and the difference between them. Which is not an easy thing to do, because the ego will try to confuse that. But just if you take a global perspective, as you know, we’re both on NLP people, right? That global perspective, you will be able to decipher when you’re operating from the ego and when you’re operating from all that is, and the truth of who you are. You know, when you want to pick up the phone and make an important phone call, like I’m going to be doing here soon for somebody to be on my board of directors. And there’s a part of me that, or sending out emails for some big donations. And there’s part of me that’s like, “Yeah, but our 501 C3  is pending. It’s not done yet.” And I have all these reasons. Well, what is that? That’s not the truth. The truth is that all things are possible. The truth is I’m an extension of divine love and unconditional love. And so I’m going into it feeling like oh, my little organization or me or whatever is not good enough. Yeah.

 

 

1:51:18 Ashley James: Who am I to do this? I’m just this little, tiny person, who am I to be big and brilliant and bold?

 

 

Theresa Vigarino  1:51:25: Yes. Yes. And I’m faced with it all the time. And like I told you early on about my husband, who’s dealing with all of these very high level tech people in the world, right? And he’s putting on there about my masterclass series, which is going to have a lot of all focus on energy and spirit. And he’s ready to emerge that for himself, too. So we all come to a place where it’s like, “Oh, really?” Yeah. And the quiet confines of your own mind and in your own little comfort zone in your cocoon of safety. You’re saying, “Yeah, I’m going to do this. And I’m going to do that. And I’m going to put it out there because the spirit is moving through me.” Oh, yeah, let’s do it. The spirit is saying do it, then. Now’s the time. What you waiting for? Nothing to fear. And so when those resistance is happen, then oftentimes, it is the ego going, “Oh, yeah. But what if you’re going to lose more friends?” “What if it’s going to flop?” What if, this was a big one for me. “What if you’re going to get sick during that commitment?”

 

 

1:52:40 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:52:43 Theresa Vigarino: You know, what if you’re not spending enough time on making more money, right? But the big one more for me was, you know, what if, what if people aren’t going to like you as much? What if they’re going to laugh at you? That was a big one that I used to get. And still a little bit you know, what if someone so laughs about ? What if you’re made fun of? Right? So I think we’ve all been made fun of when we were little, and I was made fun of a lot. I was a real heavy kid. And you know, that’s an old thing, right? So the ego goes what if they’re going to make fun of you. I was the girl that never got picked for the kickball team or anything athletic because I was the chunky monkey. And, you know, I ended up being the most outstanding female athlete one year later in the school. Take that kickball captain leaders, no, no I’m just kidding.

It’s kind of funny now when I look back on it, but you know, and that is a muscle that I can access too by the way. Hey, wait a minute, people laughed at me before. That wasn’t the truth of who I was, who I am. And really, we know now from a higher perspective when people are laughing at somebody else, when people are making fun of you or people leave you because of something that your soul is driving you to do and aching and longing for and that is where your personal fulfillment is. The rest of it doesn’t even matter. And again, the light in you upsetting the non light we can say around you is a good thing.

 

 

1:54:27 Ashley James: Sometimes we create those situations to test our resolve. In the Tarot, it’s the archetype the devil, the devil card is the archetype. It’s not the actual devil from Christianity. It’s an archetype of us testing our own resolve. And so, someone says, I don’t know, I’m going to quit smoking cigarettes and five minutes later, as you know, someone walks by and lights a cigarette in front of us. You know, it’s testing our resolve, or, you know, if you said I’m going to go do this charity, and then that little voice goes, that gives you a million reasons and excuses not to, and sometimes it looks like, sometimes people go well, how can it be me testing my resolve when it’s external things like someone saying or laughing at me, right? It’s external. But it’s how we react to it. You might have someone laugh at you every day. And you never even noticed, never noticed, your brain just deleted, generalize, said it doesn’t matter. It’s information that doesn’t, it doesn’t even matter. But the one day you go to do something new, it’s this little part in ourselves that wants to test our resolve. And so then the brain because the brain generalizes so much information. And the reticular activating system of the brain goes all right now you’re looking for people laughing at you.

 

 

1:56:01 Theresa Vigarino: Absolutely.

 

 

1:56:06 Ashley James: So, we test our resolve, when we go to push outside of our boundaries and it’s uncomfortable, right, but so we got to take on like if we’re deciding to like for a friend of mine, who’s a listener, she has taken on the diet, the whole food plant based, no salt, sugar oil diet to heal her body in hurt because it’s the most restorative diet for her heart health, the cardiologist, Dr. Esselstyn I’ve had on the show, he’s in his 80s, and he’s still an active cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic and he heals, like four blockages in the heart with this diet alone, like unbelievable results.

 

 

1:56:49 Theresa Vigarino: I absolutely believe in it.

 

 

1:56:51 Ashley James: Yeah. And so she started the diet. And now it’s every naysayers come up to to challenge her, you know, her parents, her husband, friends, coworkers, everyone is kind of like coming out of the woodwork to test her resolve.

 

 

1:57:10 Theresa Vigarino: Yes.

 

 

1:57:11 Ashley James: And we and it’s how we perceive that conflict, will we give up and give in and kind of settled back down into status quo, or will be rise above it? And so I feel that sometimes that that challenge that we face, where we are seeing either external or internal, it’s our own little voice, like the ego saying, but this and but this, what about this? And if it’s external people, like you’re losing friends over it, whatever, whether it’s internal or external, when there’s a push to that it would be more comfortable to go back to status quo, it actually wouldn’t, because living a status quo is living in purgatory, we’re not evolving as a person. And so when we go, “Bring it on, bring it on world, bring it on.” You want to bring on conflict, okay. Bring on my parents challenging my diet, and my kids and my husband. Bring it on, because I am sticking to my guns, this is how I’m going to heal my body. And there’s no external or internal conflict that’s going to make me go back to status quo, because I’m going to go over this mountain. And help propel us further because the testing of our resolve actually makes us stronger in our resolve. So it’s that we have to have that 30,000 foot view, where we get that the things that we think are bogging us down are actually helping launch us forward.

 

 

1:58:47 Theresa Vigarino: It’s really changing that perspective, isn’t it? It is really about perspective. And I love what you said about that. I’m going to employ that more in my life. So thank you, Ashley. I love that viewpoint because it is the truth.

 

 

1:59:03 Ashley James: Right, I do this course as you know, where I teach people how to eliminate anxiety and part of the course is I teach them to get excited when anxiety comes up. Because they’ve spent years being afraid of it. And when anxiety comes up, it starts in the mind. But then ends up physically in the body when we’re physically feeling symptoms. Our hands are shaking. When we were dizzy, we’re about to pass out, we feel like yeah, die, you know, the body is perceiving a threat and we’re having a huge adrenaline response. So, cortisol is going through the roof. And the body is really having a physical reaction. So they’re afraid of it.

So the second we start to feel anxiety, they then have a huge fear response, because they’re afraid they’re going to go into that. So then they’re resisting it. And as you know, everything we resist then we’re not able to… Yeah it gets stronger. We’re not out to actually face it and rise above it. And so I teach in my course to get really excited once they’ve learned the tools because I have the few tools I teach them that immediately eliminate anxiety in the moment, it takes about 30 seconds, and it completely shuts off anxiety. So once they learn the tool, then every time anxiety comes up in their life, instead of getting fearful because of all the past triggers, and worried that their body is going to go through a panic attack, they get excited, because it’s like, “Oh, awesome. It’s another opportunity for me to practice this technique.” And every time we practice it, it goes deeper into neurology, it rewires the brain even better.

And so if we could get excited about when conflict comes up in our life especially conflict that is testing our resolve, if we could get excited, like, “Oh, awesome. Another friend is challenging me on my belief system. This is great.” Or another friend or a person is challenging my new health goals or my diet or whatever, or whatever we’ve decided, right? Whenever an external or internal, if there’s like, you know, the ego saying, what about this? Or you’re not good enough? How could you do that? Whatever, we get excited, instead of frustrated, we get excited, because anytime we’re being challenged internally or externally to test our resolve, it when we stick to our resolve, it will make it stronger, and it’ll help us to propel us forward. So that’s that was my little…

 

2:01:43 Theresa Vigarino: And then there’s a tipping point, right? Where that doesn’t show up in your reality.

 

 

2:01:46 Ashley James: Right. Exactly. It’s at the beginning. It’s right out beginning. The testing of the resolve happens at the beginning. And then you enforce your boundaries enough with yourself and with others and eventually everyone gets it, your brain gets it. Everyone, your in it gets it. You know, now, like I’ve been gluten free for eight, nine years now, there’s no one that’s going to talk me out of it, and I don’t care. You can roll your eyes all you want when we’re at a restaurant together, you know, whoever I’m with, right? And it’s like, I’m not going to waver. But when I first started being gluten free, it’s like, oh, you know, oh, I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. Well, not me. But other people. Other people go through that when they go gluten free. And so I’m not.

 

 

2:02:35 Theresa Vigarino: Or vegan, You go to your friends house and not eat their BBQ and just eat the salad. Trust me, I’ve been through that, too.

 

 

2:02:42 Ashley James: Well, my husband and I are plant based now. And so, but I’m not going to apologize for who I am. I’m almost 40 By the way, and I really had an epiphany that I am not going to apologize for who I am.

 

 

2:02:58 Theresa Vigarino: Good for you. I am what I am.  That’s what I always say, right? Like it or not, I am what I am. And when people don’t like it, it’s okay. It’s their choice, right? But that doesn’t have to affect us. And what we know is what’s in our best and highest good.

 

 

2:03:13 Ashley James: We gotta stick to it. And it’s lonely. Yeah, it will be lonely. When we make a new commitment. It is lonely, because sometimes we don’t have that support. Sometimes even internally, we don’t have the support.

 

 

2:03:26 Theresa Vigarino: Oh my gosh, absolutely.

 

 

2:03:28 Ashley James: We gotta stick to it. And the more we stick to it, the stronger it becomes. And then we get to propel ourselves forward. So I love that you have an awesome journey the last two years and  you’re taking everything that you’ve learned, and that you’re incorporating. And now you’ve been a coach for years. You told me I talked the other day, you said you know something to the effect of you don’t identify as a coach anymore, you’re a healer. You really get that you’re a healer, but that you’ve been a coach for many years, and that you help people, for many years you’ve helped people, coach them to get to that place in their life that they want to be.

 

 

2:04:08 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, absolutely. And it really did come with the jungle experience that I really am more of a conduit and why I am a conduit, and it’s the messages come through. And the spirit comes through and the healing comes through. And so I had to really differentiate, because as I kept calling myself coach, I wasn’t really accessing what I’m here for, actually. And it was a stepping stone and I loved coaching. And it was really wonderful. It’s just different now and it’s coming more from this, it comes through me, not from me, if that makes sense.

And so I’ve just surrendered to it. And the more of the surrendering process, which we will talk a lot about during this masterclass series, the more we’re in the vibration of surrender, the more powerful the healing comes through, the messages come through, your life unfolds, like the South Africa thing, you know what I mean? Like, everywhere I go, I thought I mean, it’s just unbelievable. My husband, we just look at each other, and just this amazement about how much South Africa is in our reality. And so when we are in that place of surrender, and we trust, we move into a state of trust through that surrender, then we are able to really let go and quiet that ego and live more in the realm of faith, that all things are well, that everything is working for your good. And you can rest in that and you actually quiet the mind down, the parasympathetic nervous system quiets down, and you have that state of peace. Even just for a little bit until you got to go through the process again, until it becomes your natural way of being. And then you’ll get triggered. And we’re always, because of free will. And we’re not robots, we always have that choice to make.

And I, of course I’m a believer in prayer and intention, and meditation, and we incorporate that in our daily lives to help us stay in that vibration. And there’s lots of other things that will go through in the masterclass series for there to be visceral techniques, right? Visceral techniques, and then you know, I will, of course, be doing a lot of work ahead of time before each class. And that’s why it’s going to be small, because every person along with the class gets what’s called the soul alchemy deep healing session with me, which is a transformational, it takes about three days. And that in and of itself is like $1,000 normally, and that is a bonus. And that has been transformational for a lot of people. And it’s a shocker balancing a crystalline body upgrade. It’s all very etheric and energetic healing that takes place in the other realm that you will feel the effects of instantly. It’s amazing what happens after those and, you know, I’m going to do that for you, Ashley.

 

2:07:10 Ashley James: Oh, I’d love that. I’m all about it.

 

 

2:07:16 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, I know you are, I know you are. And, I just thank you so much for having me on, so that I can share this experience and encourage others that maybe have a chronic illness that, you know, my husband really has had a panic disorder. I don’t know if I shared that with you. Ashley, we didn’t realize that that’s what it was until the jungle, and he would be great for you to talk to about this anxiety, and what he learned, you know, and it was a download that he learned from the family and maybe even genetic and the reason why he went for the month and what he learned as a result of it, and how to be that energy. Yeah, so I’ll connect the two of you. But in the meantime, you know, I just want everyone to know that you’re doing better than you think you are. And that you are a unique and divine personal on purpose, being of light that is here to express the divine through your life.

 

2:08:19 Ashley James: Beautiful, thank you so much.

 

 

2:08:21 Theresa Vigarino: End of Story.

 

 

2:08:23 Ashley James: For now. To be continued.

 

 

2:08:27 Theresa Vigarino: Thank you so much. I just love you. I love what you’re doing, your podcast is amazing. You’re an awesome interviewer and I love that you’re helping people through what they’re going through. And anxiety, like I said, it’s a big deal here in America. And, you know, kudos to you, Ashley for being a voice.

 

 

2:08:44 Ashley James: Awesome. And likewise, thank you so much, Theresa Vigarino for coming on the show. And all the way back from Episode 88. Coming back to give us the updates in the download. I love it. Listeners can go to TheresaVigarino.com, of course the links and everything Theresa does is going to be the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. Theresa, it’s been such a pleasure. We’ll have to keep having you back on every two years.

 

 

2:09:11 Theresa Vigarino: That sounds amazing. We’ll see what’s next. Right?

 

 

2:09:14 Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much.

 

 

2:09:17 Theresa Vigarino: You’re welcome.

 

 

 

Outro:

 

Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition and how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and to figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people?

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out The Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program and it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition, but from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their lives and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health, I definitely recommend you check them out.

You can Google, Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call or you can go to www.learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in.

Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible.

I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program and I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are. getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic office, doctors offices.you can work in hospitals, you can work online through Skype and help people around the world. you can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. you can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals.

There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they;ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you.

Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re gonna wanna call them now and check it out.

And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price?

For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to www.takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price.

That’s www.takeyoursupplements.com

Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected With Theresa Viagrino!

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Recommended Readings by Theresa Viagrino

The Way of Mastery – by The Shanti Cristo Foundation

A Course in Miracles – by the Foundation For Inner Peace

Sep 11, 2019

Get in touch with Jennifer Saltzman from Take Your Supplements! Visit TakeYourSupplements.com
Listen to LTH interviews with Jennifer Saltzman:
https://www.learntruehealth.com/?s=saltzman 

Sunlighten Sauna:
Call for more info and mention the Learn True Health Podcast with Ashley James for our special listener discount!

Listen to Ashley's interviews about sauna therapy and Sunlighten:
https://www.learntruehealth.com/?s=sunlighten

Ashley's favorite CBD tincture:
Jay Hartenbach is giving Learn True Health listeners 15% off on his CBD products, so be sure to type in the discount code LTH at checkout.
https://medterracbd.com/
Listen to my interview about MedTerra CBD:
https://www.learntruehealth.com/cbd

Magnesium Soak:
Use coupon code LTH to get 10% off your jug of concentrated magnesium soak at LivingTheGoodLifeNaturally.com
Listen to Ashley's interview with Kristen Bowen about the therapeutic powers of soaking in the right kind of magnesium:
https://www.learntruehealth.com/magnesium-foot-soak

Order link for the jug of mag soak (coupon code LTH)
https://livingthegoodlifenaturally.com/product/magnesium-jug

 

Dr. Kelly Brogan's Sites:
https://kellybroganmd.com/downloads/
www.kellybroganmd.com/ownyourself - new book
www.kellybroganmd.com/amindofyourown

 

Song: Nekzlo - Found You (Vlog No Copyright Music) Music promoted by Vlog No Copyright Music. Video Link: https://youtu.be/omrqyeqEDHA

 

Heal Mental, Emotional, And Physical Ailments Without Drugs

https://www.learntruehealth.com/heal-mental-emotional-physical-ailments-without-drugs

Highlights:

  • Food as someone’s medicine as someone’s drug and how it affects the brain. How to manage physical and emotional and mental health.
  • How to support the body in restoring itself to optimal health. Mentally, emotionally, physically.
  • Bodily sovereignty – accurately refers to this process of resolving childlike programs and impulses so that we can finally identify the locust of control within us.
  • Explore the role of mindset, belief and really a kind of metaphysical orientation towards reality experience of illness and our relationship to the nature of healing.

 

Did you know that you could have full control of your body? Your mental, emotional and physical state are so important that you have to have the knowledge on how you can be able to take hold of the power to control all of these to achieve your healthiest state of being. Find out on today’s podcast how-to’s as Dr. Kelly Brogan talks about her new book.

 

[00:00] Ashley James: Hello, True Health seekers and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health podcast. I’m really excited for you to hear today’s interview. Dr. Kelly Brogan blew my mind. You’re going to love listening to her story of healing. She was an MD who was used to prescribing drugs to every single patient knowing that she was doing a lot of really good into their lives until she had Hashimoto’s. She became sick and she thought to herself, “I don’t want to be on drugs for the rest of my life.” This is what stared her journey over 10 years ago and then working with natural medicine she healed her body and has gone on to help her patients do the same thing. She goes on through her story and she teaches us some wonderful principles today. Emotional, mental, spiritual, excellent lessons that we can all learn. As I was interviewing her I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that’s a writer downer.” I’m so glad we transcribe these episodes now so you can go to learntruehealth.com in a week or two when we have these up on the site totally transcribed. Because you’re probably going to want to read through some things she say. The things that she says are so profound. So I know you’re going to really enjoy today’s interview but before we got started, I definitely want  to take a minute to introduce you to one of my nearest and dearest friends, I just want to say Dr. Jennifer Saltzman. That’s so funny I always do that.

 

 

[01:26] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman: What’s it going to be until I find another way. [Laughter]

 

 

[01:3] Ashley James: Right. Exactly. Well, so Jen Saltzman. I’ve had her on the show twice before. Sort of. Because you interviewed me and I interviewed you. Two episodes. Listener’s definitely want to go back and listen. What numbers were that?

 

 

[01:44] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman: 179 and 180 is my interviewing of you and then gosh, I’m going to say, 33 was one you did with me on maybe, supplement confusion?

 

 

[01:54] Ashley James: Way back in the day.

 

 

[01:55] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman: Early like 19 for you where you interviewed me in two episodes but I can’t remember the night off the top of my head, I can’t remember the numbers.

 

 

[02:02] Ashley James: Cool. We’ll make sure that we’ll link. You’ve been on the show more – why didn’t I think twice? Gees, you’ve been in the show like a bunch.

 

 

[02:08] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman: Because you forgot about ancient history when you first started.

 

 

[02:11] Ashley James: Right. Exactly, the early days. Well, so most of the episodes are on iTunes but the last 80 or so episodes have been bummed off because iTunes have a max of 300 and of course, this is episode 378. Listeners can go to learntruehealth.com and check out the earlier episodes, which are there. I’m going to make sure they’re on the show notes of today’s podcast. All the episodes where Jen was with me on the show is linked. She’s taught Pilates for over 20 years. Was a dancer and in the last 10 years or so, has been an expert on health coaching and supplementation. Jen and I were close together. She is the driving force behind takeyoursupplements.com. You guys keep hearing me talk about it. When you go to takeyoursupplements.com and you put in your name, email address and phone number, the person you hear from about within 24hours is Jennifer Saltzman. I wanted to introduce you guys. She’s amazing. She’s so loving, so compassionate and she will talk to you and help you to figure out exactly what supplements are right for you and help you to dial in exactly what you need within your budget but Jen, I just wanted to introduce to all the listeners. All the new ones who don’t know who you are because they should know how amazing you are so if you just want to say hi with them and let them know what it’s like working with you at takeyoursupplements.com.

 

[03:33] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman: Sure. Hi everybody out there! I’m just so incredibly grateful that I know all of you because I talk to many of you. Absolutely adore Ashley’s podcast, I get so much amazing feedback. It’s such a blessing to have this forum where the information is getting out there and I know how grateful you all are to have this. It’s such an honor to be together with Ashley and her wonderful husband Duffy here in the studio. I just wanted to say that when I work with people with the supplement program. We have the need for certain basic nutrition that we absolutely have to have. If we don’t have it I kind of equate it with drinking water and eating good food and things like that. It’s never going to be like you have  do this. We work really individually with folks to figure out what their budget is, what’s going on with their health profile and we have lots of great options. I just want to take a moment and say that when I work with people, it’s a very supportive, nurturing kind of a post process together. We figure out what’s going on with people, we do a brief free health evaluation and we move forward in what seems to be – I give my two cents as well but it’s partnership that I work with people together to I achieve their goals and to work with what kind of budget they’ve got going on. Anyway, I just adore having this relationship with Ashley and being a part of this podcast in some small way that I am. I know both she and I have amazing health recovery with the supplements that we work with and so it’s such a blessing. Anyway, it’s an honor to be here.

 

[05:15] Ashley James: And if you’re interested in taking some high quality supplements that are affordable prices or if you’re a health coach, and you’re looking to incorporate supplements into your business, Jen can actually mentor you as well in that.

 

[05:30] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman:  Right. Yes. I’ll just say a brief moment a word about that. A lot of the people that I do work with they’re very passionate in this mission as well and they’ve of course been avid listeners to the podcast. I would say at least a third of the people that I talked to expressed an interest of wanting to help other people with this information. Maybe they’re already sharing the podcast, I’m sure they are and doing a lot of other things. We also train people in a very simple fashion. It doesn’t take years or anything, it’s just as simple we train people and coach them to be able to help their friends and family or their sphere of influence with this knowledge of the essentialness of certain nutrition. I do a monthly training. There’s lots of different training that I do. Anyway, there’s a lot of opportunity to get involved in a small level or large level. Whether it’s just a passion to help others or whether somebody’s looking to change what they’re doing with their time and energy. Figuring out how to generate income in a different kind of way. There’s lots of opportunities to basically be a part of a bigger mission. It’s the way I’d like to look at it.

 

[06:33] Ashley James: Well, yes since about 20% of my listeners are holistic health experts and many of them are health coaches or work on that kind of level. I know that they are very interested of having that tool in that tool belt. You give away so much of your resources of your time and training and you are so passionate to continue to spread this information and help people on that level. I love the liquid minerals. It’s probably my favorite thing. The liquid minerals are so bio available. For listeners who don’t know my story, these supplements helped me reverse polycystic ovarian syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and chronic adrenal fatigue. I was told I’d never have kids and I was infertile. Of course, through the diet changes and through the supplements, I was able to reverse that and conceive my very healthy 4 and a half year old boy who’s 4 and a half going on 40. Yes, thank you so much, Jen for coming here. Jen’s been staying over. She lives in the middle of nowhere Washington. The state of gorgeous Washington but in the moment she came over to stay here for a few days and since I was recording a podcast, I said jump on the mic and say hi to everyone. Thanks, Jen for saying hi.

 

[07:47] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman: My pleasure. Yes.

 

[07:47] Ashley James:  It’s been great having you here. She just got out of the sunlighten sauna. Did you like that?

 

[07:51] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman: Yes, I did. I just got out the sunlighten sauna. I had the fabulous Ashley James magic stew. I’m drinking the liquid mineral magic.

 

[08:01] Ashley James: Right now, you’ve soaked in magnesium. I’m going to get you to do a platinum –

 

[08:05] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman: I’m taking some energy bits –

 

[08:08] Ashley James:  Yes, I’ve got energy bits on the dust. Right? You’re going to do a platinum energy system foot detox soak later. This is like a spa day.

 

[08:15] Dr. Jennifer Saltzman:  Right. I’m at the Ashley James spa. [Laughter]

 

[08:21] Ashley James: Awesome. Well, thank you again Jen. Guys, I know you’re just going to love today’s interview. Thank you so much for being listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with all those you care about. Today’s one of those episodes you’re going to want to share especially with all the mom friends out there because she says, Dr. Kelly says some things that just touched my heart and just made me want to get everyone to listen to this episode too. I know you’ll feel the same way. Excellent. Thank you so much and have yourself a fantastic rest of the day. Enjoy today’s episode.

 

[08:56] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 378. I am so excited to have Dr. Kelly Brogan on the show today. Her website is kellybroganmd.com. She has wonderful books and a great book coming out, Own Yourself. Kelly, it is such a pleasure to have you here today. I love the work that you do. We here at Learn True Health are about empowering the listeners and you have an amazing ability to help women, and men and children because you’ve written a children’s book. Help all of us to be able to learn how to merge the spiritual with our physical health and our metal and emotional health. How to take care of ourselves on those levels. We’re not taught that in school. We’re not taught that in society. We really need to step it up and advocate for ourselves. You are going to help us do that today. Welcome to the show.

 

[10:01] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Thank you so much. What a beautiful introduction. I appreciate it. I’m grateful to be here.                                                                                                                                                   

 

[10:06] Ashley James: Absolutely. Now, you wrote a book with your daughter, Sophia. A Time For Rain. That sounds amazing. What’s that book about?

 

 

[10:17] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Yes. We were just sitting around one afternoon and it was super rainy out. This is when I lived in the northeast before I got out of jail and made it out to Miami. She always as a child loved to write books. She wrote a book called The Power of Me. I think she was three. Anyway, she used to love to write books. We put together this story. Honestly, it was one of those experiences where it just came through. I ended up self-publishing it because I couldn’t get a book deal with any of the major publishers. It’s essentially about the power of seemingly negative emotions and their role in the greater web of existence. The connection of all beings. I know that for me, the most powerful application of work in my life is in my role as a mother. Walking the walk of my work, in my role as a mother requires me to grow myself big enough to hold emotions that scare me. In this way as I grow that capacity I am able to show up to my daughter’s through love rather than needing to control their behavior so that it conforms to my very narrow band of comfort. Emotionally and so it’s really I think in service of helping parents to create that culture in the household.

 

[11:59] Ashley James: Everything you just said, I could spend an entire week on doing these on just like unpacking what you just said. Oh my gosh, it so resonates with me as a parent and needed to put my ego aside and what I think the world should look like and go, “Do I really need to force him, our son into this mold? Or can he be his own? Is that okay?” I had to constantly ask myself, “Am I disciplining him because this is what healthy for him to do? Or is this what I think am I stein fulling him?” I’m walking that line with you. I totally get it. Is A Time for Rain, children’s book or a book written for anyone?

 

[12:45] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  It’s actually a picture book. It’s like an eastern parable. Has that kind of a flavor. It’s obviously fictional. I’ve been told that by many people who read it it’s actually probably the most accessible story for adults that delivers home the message of the work we’ll talk about today. So I guess it’s for adults and children but it is a picture book. The illustrations are extraordinary. We partnered with his incredible artist. It’s very beautiful.

 

[13:19] Ashley James:  Very cool. How old is your daughter when she wrote it with you?

 

[13:23] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  She was eight.

 

[13:25] Ashley James: Oh my gosh, I have to get this book for my son who’s four and a half on going on 30. He’s already telling me how he’s going to have wife and raise his kids. It’s so funny. Telling me –

 

[13:36] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Take care of you. I love it.

 

[13:37] Ashley James: Yes, exactly. Well, he didn’t mentioned that. He said I’m not going to live with him. He’s four and a half.

 

[13:42] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  He’s habituating. You have to support that.

 

[13:45] Ashley James: [Laughter] Already? Yes. Now your next book was, or the book that you wrote on your own not with the help of your daughter was, A Mind of Your Own. Tell us a bit about that book.

 

[13:58] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  It’s interesting because we’ll talk about how I have a second book coming out now. The energetic signature of these books is so different. Even though one is essentially a sequel to the other. I wrote A Mind of Your Own in the years following my – I guess my intellectual physical, and physic awakening. So to speak. That was really triggered when I was diagnosed with Hashimosto’s thyroiditis, post-partum my first daughter. At that time, I was specialized as a psychiatrist in prescribing to pregnant and breastfeeding women. I was in this very niche specialty. Obviously, such a diehard believer in the pharmaceutical management model that I endeavored to prescribe to this very vulnerable population. You know, thought I was helping. Of course, right? The way we do. When we just follow directives without questioning them. I think this is very common experience probably many of your listeners have had this experience where you’re trained in the conventional fold. We really only question the foundation of our education when we bump up against the glass ceiling ourselves of what that paradigm has to offer. When I was diagnosed, this voice just kind of came up to me and I said, “I don’t want to take Synthroid for the rest of my life.” Meanwhile, I’ve been writhing prescriptions for years at that point and suddenly it wasn’t acceptable to me for me. So I ended up going to a naturopath which was so unlike me, so out of character at that point. That’s when you have to believe that there are moments that you’re guided beyond your executive functioning.

 I went to a naturopath. I saw on paper my antibodies go from the high 2,000s and a TSH of 20 into the normal range in black and white and all I had done was adjust some of my lifestyle choices. Because of my temperament, I didn’t say, “Oh that’s lovely.” and just keep on. I was enraged. I was enraged. I said, “How is it, I studied my ass of. I spent every Saturday for so many years on PubMed. I read every primary paper. I’m comfortable with statistics. How was it that I have never been taught that it’s possible to put an autoimmune condition into remission. I had one hour of nutrition education in my entire Ivy League training.” I was pretty pissed. At that time as the universe would have it, a colleague gave me a book called Anatomy of an Epidemic, which had come out around that time, by Robert Whitaker investigative journalist. I read it because I was already feeling dissonance around the body of knowledge that I had worked so hard to acquire so I was open to it. When I read it, it’s so condemned. Again, through non-industry published literature. So condemned my practice of psychiatry, as I had known it up until that point that I never started a patient on a prescription ever again to this day. That was almost 10 years ago. 

 

[17:28] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[17:30] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Yes. It had that level of impact. It was life changing obviously not only for me but for many who I’ve been able to support since then. I wrote A Mind of your Own from that righteous energy and I said, “I’m a believer in informed consent. Here’s what I’ve learned about not only psychiatric medications but actually many sacred cows in the pharmaceutical kind of warehouse. Whether it’s birth control of anti-biotic or acid blockers or statins. Over the counter painkillers or vaccines. I spent endless hours. Actually I calculated something over 10,000 hours just nearly obsessively researching everything I hadn’t been told with this fire in my gut about how it could be possible that I put this much into my training and just only learned a key hole version of the scientific reality that was available to me. I thought when folks read this book, no one’s ever going to touch your mediation again right because the information is there. How could they? Of course, I matured to recognize that that’s not actually how life works. That we actually don’t change our minds through information access. What I began to see was wow, this book and the testimonials that we are getting back from the book could also not be explained through information transmission alone. I couldn’t possibly reconcile some of the disease defying, medication eliminating outcomes that we were hearing about first hand from individual simply read that book. Something more to be going on here and that’s when I began to explore the role of mindset, belief and really a kind of metaphysical orientation towards reality that I believe under pins are experience of illness and our relationship to the nature of healing.

 

[19:37] Ashley James: I love it. So now, your book that’s coming out so soon that most listeners listening to this will be able to buy it. It’s written now on pre order but it’s coming out in the next a few days, listeners could just go buy it right now. Own Yourself is that empowerment tool out of your 10 years’ experience kind of on the other side, right? From allopathic medicine. I want to just go back to that moment when you realized you would never prescribe another drug again. Did you feel naked as a doctor? All of a sudden, your tool belt was taken away.

 

[20:15] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  That’s why I feel very spiritual supported and guided on my path because had I read that, had I just been an intellectually curious individual, I’ve always been a bibliophile. I’ve always loved books. Let’s say I read it but I hadn’t had about a year of my own healing journey under my belt, you better believe I would’ve immediately dismissed that information. The way that we do when we encounter information even through the rubric of science, that is inconvenient. It’s our natural tendency to dismiss it but I didn’t and I aligned with it because I had already seen that there was more to the story than I’ve been exposed to. I felt that. I felt that in my body. Anything from when I changed my diet, in an effort to heal my Hashimoto’s. I could feel, it wasn’t just about the numbers on the paper although it did helped instill this belief system in me but I could feel the difference in my body. I didn’t even know how much was off. I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal like poop once a week. These kinds of things had never occurred to me because I didn’t have any relationship to health or wellness. I only knew about disease and I knew I didn’t have any of them so, why do I care what I eat? Or that exercising, I’ve always been naturally thin so I had no motivation to do that. Meditating, that never occurred to me. I didn’t even think I even heard the word. The concept of perhaps there being risks associated with dying my hair black for so many years or using Secret deodorant or whatever might have been. I would’ve easily dismissed the relevance on each of those concerns as being vanishingly small but it was because I had a felt experience of how these lifestyle choices, my day to day selection of foods, how they can empower me to have an experience of my health that wasn’t even offered to me by the allopathic model. I believe that that simple kind of lived experience has the capacity to disrupt an entire paradigmatic mindset and invite you into one that is fundamentally more aligned with your truth.

 

[22:46] Ashley James: Absolutely. There you were, you’ve changed your diet. You’ve changed some lifestyle. Over how many months did it take you to work with a naturopath to go from full on Hashimoto’s to full on remission?

 

[23:01] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  About 8 months.

 

[23:04] Ashley James: Okay. So in 8 months, you’re feeling better. Every month you’re starting to feel better. Almost on a daily basis, you’re noticing that the clouds are lifting.

 

[23:11] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  It happened within weeks. Clinically I felt better within weeks.

 

[23:17] Ashley James:  You really got the impact and it probably kept hitting you like, “I can’t believe it. I spent –“ however many years, you went to some major schools, you went to NYU Medical Center, MIT, Cornell. You have the best education and yet like you said, one hour of nutritional training and you didn’t know that pooping once a week isn’t normal because we give our bodies and give over our power to our primary care physician because we feel helpless. We believed that they know everything or our pediatricians. They know best for our child or our doctor knows best what’s for our body and their education is lacking. I mean their education is full of information but it’s not full of information to help us become the healthiest versions of ourselves.

 

[24:17] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  And you what? That’s okay. Right? I like to say you wouldn’t go into a butcher to learn about veganism. It’s absolutely okay that allopathic medicine is offering what it is from the belief system and mindset that it is. Right? Because the doctors live in this mindset. The doctors live in this mindset. In some way, everyone is served. The challenge arises when other paradigms are not allowed to co-exist.

 

[24:51] Ashley James: Thank you. Yes.

 

[24:53] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Right? That when we get to the totalitarianism and even fascism of the dominant medical orthodoxy.

 

[25:02] Ashley James: That’s really well put. Because our rights are being challenged state by state when it comes to our choice. Some children are being medically kidnapped because parents want to choose a different treatment. I mean it’s really scary. We need to advocate that we need to have freedom. We need to have medical freedom to be able to choose the right course for us. I don’t believe any government should impose a medicine on someone who doesn’t want it. That’s really scary when we get into that. You’re here though to teach us about self-empowerment because you went through this 10 year journey. I would have freaked out if I had gone through your education and spent years helping people with prescriptions and having this experience and realizing that my tool belt is gone. The prescriptions are not really helping. What did you do to end up helping your patients? How did you shift your education? You shifted your mindset but how did you shift your tool box to be able to then help them?

 

[26:12] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  So it was an iterative process because I first decided that I was going to offer all of my patients based on the scientific literature, I’ve been exposed to Robert Whitaker’s work to the opportunity to taper of their medication. I’ve never been taught how to do this arguably there is not a psychiatrist on the planet today who has been taught how to do this. Right? If any psychiatrist or other prescribing clinicians are offering this service to their patients it’s because they taught themselves how to do it or they were taught as I was, by grassroots activists and patients themselves who have endeavored in this territory before I applied it to my practice. I offered my patients that opportunity and that’s when I learned and began to take a deeper dive into the – I Iearned about the dependency of inducing nature of psychiatric medications. I was essentially running an outpatient rehab center. My patients were becoming medically disabled at a rate that had me filling out disability forms beyond my capacity my pager was going off all the time. My entire quality of life shifted. This was before 2014 when it appeared in the medical literature that psychotropic medications when they are prescribed for longer than about 2 months have a capacity to induce some withdrawal phenomenon that can be protracted and complex. This is not just the Benzodiazepines or barbiturates, this is the anti-depressants, this is the so called mood stabilizers. This is the so-called anti-psychotics, right? It’s actually all of the categories, the stimulants. I had several years of witnessing that.

It wasn’t until I foregrounded the basic lifestyle changes that through the scientific research I had done, I began to understand more ways to send the autonomic nervous system a profound and comprehensive 360 degree signal of safety. It wasn’t until I said, “No, this month comes first before we touch your medication.” That I began to have really robust outcomes. Then later in my process, I had the great privilege of working with the now late, Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez. Who, for those who aren’t familiar with his very important work, he’s one of the only clinicians in the world over who have 27 years of experience putting terminal cancers and degenerative illness into long term multi decade remission through a diet and detox based protocol. I was the only MD he ever mentored and the last year of his life, I had his eyes on my work and on my protocol. He offered me in addition to contextualizing the dietary approach that I take in about 12 different dietary options that are available, he helped me to understand that context but he also offered me the now and notorious coffee enemas which I have operationalized to extraordinary ends in my practice and online program but on my reset. It was because of him that I add that to the protocol and then I saw that medication tapers that are taking multi-year time frames dismissed to multi-month because of that single intervention in the way that he applied it, yes.

 

[30:08] Ashley James: He helped train you to then pass on the information to your patients about how to do healthy detoxes like using coffee enemas but also you mentioned 12 different dietary protocols. He helped you tweak those diets for detoxification?

 

[30:31] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Well, he used 12 different diets. Based on a system that was refined from his mentor William Kelly that derived from Weston Price and Pottinger and others that essentially based on leverages this understanding that we developed in such concept with the natural world that our nervous system adapt to the ecology. The temperature, the kinds of foods that are available. Now we are all on this big melting pot but then if you look at the eskimos versus the Amazonians vs the Incans vs the Swiss sheep hoarders, they all thrive on very different diets. There are people who are of these lineages not only ethnically but in terms of their also autonomic dominance, he would call it. He actually helped me understand why these very basic ancestral template that it had used in my own healing but that also worked in a little bit of a different way with my patients, why it worked and most confounding was how is it that the patients that I was working with were getting better with red meat inclusive diet. This was a bit before the paleo craze. I didn’t have the comfort of that labeling to fall back on necessarily but I did understand that the patients that I worked with in clinical practice and now see at scale in my online program that these are people who are uniquely suited on a nervous system level to heal on that kind of diet. He healed me to see that’s because they are most likely by enlarged what he called para sympathetic dominance. I go into this a little bit more in Own Yourself but simply it’s that these individuals have certain characteristics on a physical level like they’re susceptible to certain kind of cancers like liquid tumors, lymphoma or leukemia. They have a highly enervative pancreas so they are vulnerable to reactive hypoglycemia, those ups and downs of blood sugars throughout the day where they get hangry if they don’t eat within 4-6 hours but they wake up not hungry and they might wake up during the night, have sleep interruption because of that. They also have easy weight gain. He would say they look at the piece of toast and gain 5 pounds.

That they have certain disease labels that come their way. Hypothyroidism, multiple chemical sensitivity, fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety. These were the folks who were often diagnosed with ADHD, allergies, asthmas and autoimmunity although obviously that becomes so ubiquitous I imagine he would say today that this spreads across the entire chart autoimmunity. That these folks character logically have things in common, that they tend to be night people, they tend to be free thinkers and artists like he would tell me that Picasso was undoubtedly one. They have tremendous capacity for new ones and outside of the box thinking relative to the sympathetic dominance who are more rigid lines and believers kinds of people. Like everything is kind of like, “Tell me the rules and I’m going to stay within them.” It helped me to see. Wow, that describes just about every patient I had ever seen. It helps me to understand why they would light up like a Christmas tree when I would say that they can eat red meat on this diet. I think some of them would come in thinking I was going to ask them to do a juice fast or a water fast or something and they would learn to the contrary, Nick would always say, “Patients would want to eat the diet that’s going to heal them. They desire it.”

It has been my experience that we’re so clouded by so many addictive relationships to food and beverages that we don’t have a clear channel to our intuitive preferences. So my adaptation of his very nuance approach is to really start with a scalable template that controls obviously not only for inflammatory foods, including processed sugars etcetera and amplifies nutrient density but also allows you to experience addictive free eating so that you can really clear that channel and begin to understand your preferences. I remember when I engaged in this dietary change there were whole months where I would eat 15 radishes a day for like months or carry a cucumber everywhere I went. I mean this even now 10 years later I’ve been a broccoli robbed face where I eat probably eat 2 bushels of them a day. You start to get to and understanding that what you prefer is what you need. What you want is what you need. Well, you know within the parameters of whole foods. It’s actually super liberating.

 

[35:56] Ashley James: Yes. My first time doing a sugar fast like removing sugar totally from the diet. I could not believe that reset that happened. That sugar is in everything. It’s in everything. I couldn’t believe it. Then now, I’m whole foods plant-based and so I’ve been healing my relationship with food and on the show I’ve had lots of people on about over eating and emotional eating. There’s definitely an emotional component but there’s definitely physiological component too because when we start to eat hyper palatable foods with salt, sugar, and oil. anything that’s in fast food for example, it’s designed, they have scientists figuring out how to make the food more hyper palatable to excite the neuro toxins to excited the sorry, neuro chemicals to like excited the brain and the brain lights up like a Christmas tree like you’re on cocaine so that you enjoy it and you want more. It’s like going to a theme park for your mouth and your brain. It’s destroying the body in the process. When I went wholefoods plant-based it’s like going in a very small one percent experience like going off of heroin because I had to get off of the salt, sugar, oil, flour, hyper palatable foods. Foods that I wanted to over eat and foods that no matter how much I ate, like Chinese food for example. I could finish all the Chinese food and still want more. There’s no more left and I still want more. There’s no amount that would make me feel satisfied and do that’s enough times I got –it’s not, my body like it’s not healthy, my body isn’t actually thrive on this. There’s something if there’s a food that no matter what I can’t get enough of it, no matter what I eat it then I know that’s not healing food for me but like when I eat I made this vegetable stew I posted it on our Learn True Health Facebook group. I can’t believe how quickly It fills me up and satisfies me. Then I’m done. There’s no cravings. My body feels so it’s like buzzing with energy but not a bad buzz like a good buzz. My body feels calm. It totally turns in the parasympathetic for me it just gets me into that calm state. I’m not thinking about food. I’m not panicking about food. For me, I’m hearing what you’re saying because when we eat foods that our body loves like you said, two bushels of broccoli raw a day, like you probably feel full and comfortable and your body feels well. You’re not craving anymore, right?

 

[38:42] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Exactly. It part of the reclamation process. We just put out a quiz where you get your empowered. You can find out in a minute. There’s so many places in our lives where we have perhaps unconsciously given permission to an external entity or agent or person to hold the power that is ours to reclaim. I used the same example I remember when I used to live in Manhattan. I was in my training. I used to go to this pizza place on the corner as you do when you live in Manhattan. I would get two slices of pepperoni pizza put chili flakes I remember I could taste it in my mouth now. I would take one bite and I would literally be overcome by this feeling that I could eat 12,000 of those pieces of pizza. It’s actually a terrible feeling state to cope with because it’s you at war with you and there’s no winning. That’s why it was no surprise when I dove into the literature and I found okay, one method of quieting neuro inflammations to eliminate gluten and dairy. Is to eliminate the proteins gliadin and casein from your diet because they literally plug into opioid receptors in your brain. If you can detox which take sometimes about 10 days of almost going through something like a flu like experience depending on how much of those foods you were eating, I was eating all day 5 times a day probably bread and cheese. Once you’re through that window, it’s like you’re free. Now when I eat food it’s because I’m hungry ad I eat it, it tastes good, and the I move on with my life.

 

[40:40] Ashley James: Yes. It’s the freedom it’s given you. I had an interview on how addictive dairy is. It’s designed, nature’s intelligent. God, nature, universe is the intelligence is that we want the calf or the baby to suckle so milk from any mammal is addictive but milk from a cow is supposed to turn into a 60 pound calf into a 4 pound cow. So Why are we drinking something that’s supposed to make us balloon and become as a big as a cow which is think is hilarious. Yes, it’s addictive so people really fight about giving up their cheese. Cheese is just concentrated milk addiction. That was like the last thing for people to give up. I remember sitting on the weekends with my husband eating an entire brick of Tillamook cheese back in the day. We went gluten free and dairy free and it’s made world of difference and then we went on whole foods plant-based and it allowed clarity in my body. Like you said, it calms down that nervous system. It calms down that stress response and it’s amazing how much clarity I could work through emotions around food so much easier now that I have eliminated the foods that were keeping me in that excited state. I love that it’s part of your program.

 

[42:04] Dr. Kelly Brogan: I couldn’t agree more. It’s interesting because I’m often asked, I have a bit of let’s say a strict it’s probably how mystically you’ll put it but a strict approach to this month long protocol. It’s a very yang energy that I bring to it. Words like, “Go big or go home.” Really OD it. Commit to it. Every single choice is consistent with your commitment. It’s one month of your life. You’re never going to do it again but do it right. So many people are like, “This can’t be appropriate with people who have eating disorders because they’re struggling with restriction often. This concept of deprivation being very triggering to them.” I sort of  marvel over the fact that about I would say about a 3rd of the women I’ve worked over the years have identified as having eating disorder previous to our work together. As you know, the convectional model when it comes to disordered eating is to basically inure the patient to processed foods meaning that this marker of success for eating disorder treatment is that you can eat a donut and not have to purge it. If you’re restricting that you can eat a piece of pizza and not feel terrible about having eating it or not feel out of control. It’s like you’re being forced to eat junk food. It’s amazing. I don’t know how many people are familiar with conventional treatment of eating disorders. It’s quite amazing like the way in conventional psychiatrist approach it’s considered a marker of success if you eat junk food and you’re okay with it. If you don’t know the science behind the ways these processed foods interact with the nervous and inflammatory systems, what a herculean task that is of a patient. It’s quite different healing modeled to set the conditions for eating to become simply about nourishment. Then whatever else it might be is something that you can cultivate when there’s consciousness around and self-compassionate around and curiosity. How interesting that when we finish this interview I might make myself a matcha feeling like I did my job and now I can relax. How interesting that is? Right? You begin to watch the ways we can infuse even healthy foods with a certain kind of energy around like the ways we self-domesticate. We keep ourselves in line and in order we give ourselves little treats and rewards but it’s something you can look at once that foundation is underfoot. 

 

[44:56] Ashley James: Yes. Exactly because the foundation is get the body to a place where it’s nutrified and the nervous system isn’t hyper excited from those foods that are designed to really mess with the brain. As you are talking, I was just imagining someone like going into a rehab clinic because they’ve been addicted to meth and part of the rehab is, “We’re going to give you small amounts of meth. You’re going to only take one hit off that meth pipe or however people do meth.” Or I don’t know. I don’t even know how people do meth. Basically, “Take one small hit and then you have to stop and not binge in that meth. That’s your rehab.” And it’s just like, “Really? It doesn’t make sense.” What we really want to do is come to that place where like you said, where the mindset is, we’re looking at nutrifying the body. We’re looking at what foods because everything that we put in our mouth build us up or tears us down. We’re either in anabolic state or catabolic state. You’re looking at food as someone’s medicine as someone’s drug. How it affects the brain and you’re the perfect doctor to do it. Having people manage their physical and emotional and mental health for so many years. Do you do 12 different diets depending on their circumstance? Can you explain that a little bit?

 

 

[46:23] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Sure. I have one template which is the only template I’ve ever used for 10 years. I have decent amount of experience with it. What I found because when my mentor died, it was one of the greater spiritual crisis of my life. I thought, “Well, how am I supposed to proceed?” You know without his guidance and mentorship there’s so much more I could’ve learned and “How am I going to help my patients know which of the 12 diets is theirs?” I believed that the era of master-student even the doctor-patient is fast fading. That were coming into as I guessed around self–healing and self-authority, which is obviously the spirit of my new book. I have been shown that it really works. Right? It really works to take that approach. The template is meant to put you in touch with your own innate preferences. Then from there, you figure it out. I have guidelines obviously for how to do that but for the most part, it’s something that you figure out. No longer are you working within Kelly Brogan’s template, right now it’s your show. I found that the 30 days of very strict adherence and compliance work as something of a portal to that place of self-authority over nutrition and food. I will say that there – because I give permission around animal foods most of the folks who were helped by my protocol do prefer that. That can be an important indicator. I’m not saying for ethically because that’s a very complex variable here that I’m in no position to address. It’s not what I’m here to talk about. On a very kind of gut level, they do want to eat a steak. Whether they eat red meat twice a day or after the protocol they go on to eat to once a month or maybe never, is something that they determine in this self-tailoring process. Because there are other elements of the protocol that involve obviously detox and contemplative process or stress response healing. That also, I think co-conspire to create the conditions for you to be able to relate to your own body and dialogue with your body in a way that wasn’t available to you when you have brain fog and bloating, insomnia, your hair is falling out, your knee is hurting. All of the ways that our body says, “Hey, remember me? Can we please talk?” Those symptoms once they quiet down which often happens very quickly it just becomes so much easier to hear.

 

[49:29] Ashley James: This template, this guide, that’s in your book? The one that’s coming out, Own Yourself?

 

[49:36] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Yes. It’s in the A Mind of Your Own as well. That was the I guess one of the earlier iterations of it before we had scaled it in our online program which is I basically chug when I’m doing clinical practice. I put it online and thousands of people had tried it out. The outcomes that we have from there make it look like I’m doing something working in my private practice. It was actually very humbling on an ego level. For me to see like, “Okay, so the less contact that an individual has with me with the same instructions, the better?” literally, we’re just constantly in the publishing process. We just published remission of Graves’ disease through lifestyle choice in a per view index journal. We’re constantly writing up these cases because they’re so extraordinary. The case of that one paper it’s never been reported in the medical literature that’s just because nobody’s bothered to write it up obviously. It’s a pretty profound. What I’ve now taken input back into this book, Own Yourself, is the refined protocol and was finding out what’s my partner was saying the other night. He was reading the book and he was like, “Wow, you’re really giving away the goods in this book, huh?” You know, our program is a thousand dollar program. It’s for very special people I think. Who are called to heal the seemingly incurable. That’s the kind of person who’s attracted to the program. It’s a very important investment and it seems to work as designed. However, I also know that people can use this program and do it on their own because they did it with A Mind of Your Own and it was less refined then. So yes, I’ve decided to put the whole thing into the book and the copy odd being that I am a big believer that if you’re tapering off psych meds, you require community. Again, because I have done this one on one. I actually have just needed my one on one tapering practice after all these years to shift into a group model. That’s how much I know that it’s the proper way to do it. That there is a kind of existential isolation that can attend to the dark night of the soul which is what characterizes the tapering process. It’s a kind of painful awakening and the yield is extraordinary. These individuals I call them the canaries in the coal mine. They’re exquisitely sensitive people who’ve been capture by psychiatry and medicated and labeled. Learning how to work with that power, it’s like an initiation process. It’s not easy but what comes out the other side, now there’s so many of this individuals they work in this mission. They heal other people. They establish non-profit. It’s just extraordinary. I feel very strongly that that work is meant to be in community and so, the coffee enemas is really for that population in my application of the protocol and so that is reserved for the communities that we have but outside of that the entire rest of it is in there, yes

 

[52:59] Ashley James: Got it. Coffee enemas are not in the book?

 

[53:02] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  The Nick Gonzalez’ instructions are not in the book. To me that’s a very sacred offering. I’m the only person who’s ever been given that information aside from his associate, Linda Isaacs who practices still the protocol. For me, that’s for people who are up the level of dedication and I think it’s also because nobody’s coming to my protocol to treat their cancer. I don’t think. It’s really for people who are in the pharmaceutical detox realm. I don’t think they should be doing this on their own. I don’t think they need a doctor necessarily. I’m not suggesting that. It’s not that tagline like, “Please consult your medical professional.” It’s not that. I do believe that they must do it in a like-minded community honestly mine is one of the only one in the world. There are tons of other options.

 

[53:53] Ashley James: That’s wonderful. Anyone can get your book and benefit from it? Those who are on pharmaceutical medication for mental, emotional and want to detox off of it in the healthiest way possible and support the body and restoring itself to optimal health. Mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually and energetically. Do your online program because then they have that community, they get the full detox protocol. They have the ongoing support through you. Anyone can start with the book and then those who are called to, can do your online approach?

 

[54:34] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Yes. If that feels right. My last third of the book is really about navigating the awakening process. What I found is, I haven’t taken psychiatric medication myself but then my primary credential in writing this book is that I myself have encountered the dark night of the soul several times. Several turns around the spiral of my process. It looks the same. It looks the same as it does for these patients. These book obviously well, I like to think of myself as really being in the corner of those who are looking to reclaim themselves from chronic disease labels. I also know that there is an archetypal journey that those of us who are interested in healing our being called towards. I think it has more to do with adultification. This concept of I think some of us are just feeling like, “God, I’ve got to get stronger. I’ve got to level up. I’ve got to get it together.” We think that that means applying more control and force to our current circumstances but it can also mean and perhaps more accurately refers to this process of resolving childlike programs and impulses so that we can finally identify the locust of control within us. That’s where this idea we brought up earlier around bodily sovereignty. There’s a reason some people don’t believe in bodily sovereignty. There’s a reason that some people that the state for example should have control over whether medications are injected into our bodies against our will and it’s because they still believe that there is an external authority that is infallible. That knows best. That sounds a whole lot like the parent we never had, right?

We parentify these institutions. We need them to be as good as we say they are because otherwise, our entire worldview falls apart and everything gets really scary. What I hope to create is a path to navigating this adultification process that helps to mitigate the emotional wreckage that can lead you running back up into the uterus from the birth canal. Right? It’s because we all go through the same stuff as our worldview crumbles and we encounter its deficiencies and its bankruptcy it’s terrifying. It’s absolutely terrifying. If we can grow our ability to be okay with not being okay, then we will whether it with grace and we’ll come out the other side living in a world where things are meaningful inherently. Nothing is fundamentally bad. Everything is interesting and we can bring curiosity where once there was only fear. It’s just a more beautiful way to live to be honest.

 

[57:52] Ashley James: So well put. I could listen to you all day. You’re so poetic. You get right to the point and you paint this picture that’s so beautiful. I bet your book is amazing to read. [Crosstalk] If it’s anything how like you talk it’s wonderful.

 

[58:09] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Well, it should be because is wrote it.

 

[58:10] Ashley James: There you go. I know you have to go really soon because you’re going to pick your kids up from school but I wanted to ask if you could give us some homework. You said before we hit record that there’s this world changing power of self-care and that’s part of the message that you teach. Can you give us some self-care homework?

 

[58:33] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Sure. Yes. Thank you for bringing that up because I imagine that some of the people listening either had encounters with psychiatry or know people that they love who have. In keeping with this identification as of those individuals as being fundamentally very sensitive to powerful emotional states and energies then odds are that they also feel very concerned about what’s going on with this planet. There’s so many potential points of advocacy. There’s so many things that feel out of alignment. That feel wrong. So many ways that we can contribute to different causes and it can induce somehow this paralysis that is very disconnecting. It feels like you’re then disconnected from others. You’re disconnected from your community, you’re disconnected from yourself. The resolution to that in these individuals I have found is as the Zen say, to simply chop wood, carry water. To make a sacred ritual out of caring for yourself, and putting yourself as your number one priority every day. I don’t necessarily mean as some like narcissistic exercise of getting what you want all the time. I mean as if you were your own baby, how would you care for this newborn baby? How would you look at her adoringly? How would you bathe her? How would you feed her? How would you create conditions for her relaxation? How would you give her experiences of pleasure and joy? This is what a radical act self-care can represent. The way that I institute apply and recommend self-care is about two and a half hours of your day. We’re going to be focused simply in caring for the organism that is you. It also involves other practices related to tending to our emotional selves. I can give maybe one example of each.

In terms of self-care practice that gives a physical foundation. One of the very practical tools that I recommend is one that’s operationalized in my programs that we get love letters about everyday all day which is just changing your breakfast. I have a 30-day diet protocol. It’s deep dive. It’s no cheating all this but you can also just start your day with a mindful loving intention to what you’re eating for breakfast and it can change your experience of your entire day. My most popular recommendation is this smoothie. Recipe that I made up that tastes like chocolate milk basically. It’s not even a green smoothie or anything that you would typically expect. Probably part of the reason why it feels good is because it has a lot of natural fat in it and so many of the individuals who are attracted to this work have that reactive hypoglycemia. Self-care can look like that instead of grabbing a bar from your cabinet and running to your commute. It can also look like changing the way in which you reflectively respond to your own inner turmoil.

 In today’s vernacular, we’re calling it triggering. To begin to learn about the emotional and physical signature of your trigger. For me, when I am triggered meaning that somebody sets me off, either an email I get or a look I get across the room or something that my partner says or my daughter wanting to say something to me at a time when I’m working or whatever it is. I get this tightness in my chest, my heart might start to race a little bit and then I have this urgent feeling like I need to communicate my own defense. I need to engage my intellect to persuade whomever it is that I am right. I think it’s a pretty common signature but now when I have that feeling, that picture arises in my life, instead of just reflectively engaging in the other person as being the source of my problem, which is of course, natural right? We engage warfare. I have cultivate a practice and I have many examples of what that practice can look like in the book but I cultivated a practice of turning towards myself. It’s not necessarily to fix myself or to make myself feel better, it’s just to be with myself. Not abandon myself emotionally in those moments. It can look like anything from putting your arms around your waist and just sitting quietly for 30 seconds or it can look like a visualization exercise like one I had these for my patients for many years where you personify that feeling and that emotion that you’re having as being felt and experienced by a small same gendered child.

You show up to that child who’s having this experience with very simple languaging. You say something like, “oh gosh so hard what you’re feeling, I’m so sorry. It’s totally okay.” And you say that kind of stuff to yourself and it sounds ridiculous and it sounds like, “How could that help? Who has the time for that? Whatever.” Trust me I have brought literally dozens of patients from the brink of suicide with this kind of a practice. It’s at once very self-compassionate and self-forgiving but moreover it’s a powerful way to cultivate what’s often called witness consciousness. Which it is that adult consciousness that allows you to watch what’s happening rather than getting sucked up into a childlike story about the good guy and the bad guy. The cultivation of this witness consciousness is the superpower. It’s ultimately what defines I think adult psychology which has the capacity to hold the good and the bad in every single scenario in every single person. The more individuals that we have entering into this state of consciousness the closer we will come to an experience of peace on this planet. I literally believe that. It starts with self-care.

 

[01:05:37] Ashley James: This is the path to peace on the planet. We can take 30 seconds when we’re triggered and practice self-compassion, self-forgiveness and have that witness consciousness to soothe that child inside us that just wants to wage war. Can you imagine if politicians did this?

 

[01:05:58] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  I know. They don’t have to because if enough of us do, the shift will happen. I really believe that and it doesn’t mean we would be writing our legislators and everything else but it’s resonant. It’s a resonant phenomenon. Again, remember I have a big mouth and I like to think that I’m right. I like to exercise that I’m on an intellectual level go out on all my studies and all this. I didn’t have the potential impact that I might have today, simply taking care of myself. Every time I get sucked up into an issue and I feel like, “This can’t be. This is wrong.” Whatever it is. I now know. “No Kelly, chop wood. Carry water. Did you go to dance class today? Did you eat breakfast? Maybe a different meditation this morning.” It’s literally on that level that I have the confidence that I will begin to attract others to this way of being. I do think we all have to be this way in order to create this more beautiful world experience that we can all inhabit.

 

[01:07:08] Ashley James: Kelly, you are so congruent and compassionate. I love that you are the example that we can learn from. That you have that compassion because you’ve also like you said you’ve had the dark night of the soul and you’re invulnerable in sharing and then teaching us an helping us. I’d love for all of us to be you when we grow up. [Laughter]

 

[01:07:35] Dr. Kelly Brogan:  Please. I don’t know about that. That might not lead us to peace in the world.

 

[01:07:42] Ashley James: Well, we’d carry a big stick that’s for sure. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the show. Please come back on the show again. Teach us more. We’d love to have you back. It’s been wonderful. Listeners can go to kellybroganmd.com. Of course, all the links that Kelly has, everything that Kelly does is on the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Dr. Kelly Brogan, it’s been such a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you so much.

 

[01:08:09] Dr. Kelly Brogan: Thank you so much for your beautiful energy. I really appreciate it. I appreciate this conversation.

 

[01:08:15] Ashley James: Hello, true health seeker. Have you ever thought about becoming a health coach? Do you love learning about nutrition and how we can shift our lifestyle and our diet so that we can gain optimal health and happiness and longevity? Do you love helping your friends and family to solve their health problems and figure out what they can do to eat healthier? Are you interested in becoming someone who can grow their own business, support people in their success? Do you love helping people? You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. I just spent the last year in their health-coaching sort of vacation program and it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition but from the standpoint on how we can help people to shift their life, to shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health. I definitely recommend you check them out. You can google Institute for Integrated Nutrition or IIN, or give them a call or you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training. So check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in. Be sure to mention my name, Ashley James and the Learn True Health podcast because I made a deal with them that they would give you the best price possible. I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program. I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic offices, doctor’s offices, you can work in hospitals. You can work online through Skype and help people around the world. You can become an author. You can go into the school system and help with your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. You can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them and their success and their health goals. There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach. So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrated Nutrition. Mention my name. Get the best deal. Give them a call and they’ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you. Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month, so you’re going to want to call them now and check it out. If you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

Are you looking to optimize your health? Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

Get Connected With Dr. Kelly Brogan

Website

Facebook

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Books by Dr. Kelly Brogan

Own Your Self

A Mind Of Your Own

A Time For Rain

 

Recommended Reading by Dr. Kelly Brogan

Anatomy Of An Epidemic by Robert Whitaker

 

Sep 5, 2019

Sunlighten Sauna:
Call for more info and mention the Learn True Health Podcast with Ashley James for our special listener discount!

Listen to Ashley's interviews about sauna therapy and Sunlighten:
https://www.learntruehealth.com/?s=sunlighten

Ashley's favorite CBD tincture:
Jay Hartenbach is giving Learn True Health listeners 15% off on his CBD products, so be sure to type in the discount code LTH at checkout.
https://medterracbd.com/
Listen to my interview about MedTerra CBD:
https://www.learntruehealth.com/cbd

Magnesium Soak:
Use coupon code LTH to get 10% off your jug of concentrated magnesium soak at LivingTheGoodLifeNaturally.com
Listen to Ashley's interview with Kristen Bowen about the therapeutic powers of soaking in the right kind of magnesium:
https://www.learntruehealth.com/magnesium-foot-soak

Order link for the jug of mag soak (coupon code LTH)
https://livingthegoodlifenaturally.com/product/magnesium-jug

 

Healing Degenerative Disease Using Functional Medicine

https://www.learntruehealth.com/healing-degenerative-disease-using-functional-medicine

 

Highlights: 

  • Greg Eckel’s backstory
  • ADHD spectrum
  • How oxidative stress affects our brain health
  • Heavy metal toxicity and how we can detoxify our body
  • Greg Eckel’s FAN-C approach to brain health
  • Healthy habits to promote brain health

 

In this episode, Dr Greg Eckel will teach us how to maintain our brain health through his FAN-C method. He will also share with us the effects of heavy metal toxicity and its relation to ADHD, Parkinson’s, MS, and other neuro degenerative diseases.

 

0:00 Intro: Hello, true health seekers and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love today’s interview with Dr. Greg Eckel. He is a Naturopathic physician that specializes in helping people heal and support neurological conditions. We’re going to talk about Parkinson’s, ADHD, and how to support the body if someone’s experiencing any of these issues, or if you want to prevent, because prevention is the most important thing we can do. He goes through his functional program, and the things that you can start doing today to support your body’s ability to be the healthiest it can possibly be. Now, he mentions a few things. And I really want to make sure that you know about the things that I love that he sees great results working with his clients. So there’s three quick things I want to mention.

 

 

0:58 Ashley James: One, he talks about the impact and importance of using saunas, if you have heavy metal toxicity, because you can sweat in a sauna to help the body remove fat soluble toxins instead of having to tax your liver and that can have a host of problems for people, especially if they already are bombarded with toxins. So, we have an environment that has created heavy metal toxicity in many people, and if you have any neurological conditions such as ADHD, depression, any kind of imbalance, or if you know that genetically in your family, a lot of people are predisposed to developing Parkinson’s or MS, you want to support a healthy brain by doing gentle detox through sauna therapy. You can go to my website www.learntruehealth.com, type in sauna. Listen to some of my interviews that we’ve done specifically around how to use sauna therapy and how to sweat to release these toxins in a gentle way.

I got a Sunlighten Sauna almost two years ago and I have absolutely loved it. It’s played a big role in my personal healing journey. I really feel a difference. And using it has made such an impact on my life that I keep telling people about it. Sunlighten has given us a great deal. Give them a call and say that you are a listener of the Learn True Health podcast with Ashley James. And they always have a special for us, they give us free shipping and sometimes the shipping is $500, if you buy one of the wind saunas.

Now, they do have a personal sauna that’s portable, that you can tuck away into your closet. We’re not using it and it is non toxic and ultra low EMF and you get results with it. So, you don’t have to worry about having enough space. I interviewed Dr. Mark Hyman on the show and he said that he lives in a small condo, he doesn’t have enough space for a big wooden sauna. And so he has their solo system and it works wonderfully. I do have the wooden one because we did have the space and I love the three in one sauna, which gives you all three frequencies. Many saunas only do far infrared, theirs does near and mid which gives you anti aging benefits as well, and pain and inflammation reducing benefits as well.

So, check out Sunlighten Saunas, give them a call. Tell them you’re a listener of the Learn True Health podcast with Ashley James and ask about their specials on top of the free shipping. They usually have some kind of great deal in addition to that that they give us. I like it when they give $100 off their accessories because I love the non toxic bamboo pad for the wooden sauna that’s really comfortable. Excellent. So that was the first thing because he talks about the results he’s getting in his clinic with his patients using sauna therapy.

The second one is Medterra CBD, I really recommend checking out Medterra CBD, they give the listeners a great discount as well use coupon code LTH. I interviewed the founder of Medterra CBD, there’s so many CBD companies out there and there’s only a handful that are organic that will publish their tests to prove that there’s no heavy metals, that their CBD is clean. And I’ve personally used many different types of CBDs and theirs I feel in terms of a tincture, in terms of that concentrated extract, I get the best results. So that’s Medterra CBD, use the coupon code LTH because they do give us a great discount. And you can go to www.learntruehealth.com, type in CBD to listen to that interview to learn more about their farming practices and how they make it, knowing that it is a very clean form of CBD. And it’s also guaranteed that there’s no THC. So if you do drug testing, you can know that and he does talk about that in our interview.

And the third thing is the magnesium soak. And he also talks today, Dr. Eckel talks today about how important magnesium is for brain health. And know that you can soak in magnesium and gain the benefits without needing to take a supplement orally. Because many people have adverse reactions to taking an oral magnesium supplement. But when you soak in it, you can absorb grams of magnesium and get all the benefits in a very gentle way. So, listen to my interview with Kristen Bowen. I’ve done a few interviews with her, she was 78 pounds I believe and having 30 seizures a day. And soaking and magnesium was one of the most important things she did to get her health back. So, it absolutely helps with neurological conditions because the brain needs magnesium. Just like many other nutrients that Dr. Eckel talks about today. You can go to www.livingthegoodlifenaturally.com, that is the magnesium soak website, www.livingthegoodlifenaturally.com, click on the magnesium soak jug picture when it first comes up and then use the coupon code LTH as in Learn True Health. LTH gives you a discount, and then you can get that jug of magnesium.

Come into the Learn True Health Facebook group. We’d love to see you there ,you can ask questions of the other listeners who have Sunlighten saunas, who’ve tried Medterra CBD or who use the magnesium soak. Many listeners are using all three and getting some great results. And Dr. Eckel shares that and many other suggestions today. So enjoy today’s show. Thank you so much for being a listener and have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.

 

 

6:46 Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn true health podcast. I’m your host Ashley James. This is Episode 377.

We are back from this summer. Labor Day just happened. I am super stoked to get back into interviewing. Listeners who are in our Facebook group were telling me that they’ve been jonesing, they missed the show and I took a little vacation for about a week and hung out with my son and my husband and we went swimming and got lots of sun and it was wonderful. But I couldn’t wait to come back and interview Dr. Greg Eckel who’s a Naturopathic physician in Portland, Oregon, he specializes in neurology. You are going to love today’s interview. I’m so excited to have Dr. Eckel here to share with us how we can prevent and reverse and support people who are experiencing Parkinson’s, MS and other neurological conditions like migraines, traumatic brain injuries, headaches, and even post stroke recovery. This is going to be exciting. Welcome to the show.

 

 

7:56 Dr. Greg Eckel: Thank you.

 

 

7:57 Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love dive in to learn a bit more about the doctor before the doctor starts teaching us about how we can better heal our bodies. Because understanding what happened in your life that led you to become the physician and the healer that you are allows us to understand the philosophy and the lens at which you look through life and in order to help us. So what happened in your life that made you want to become a Naturopathic physician?

 

 

8:28 Dr. Greg Eckel: Well, in the early 90s in Portland, Oregon, I was a preschool teacher. And I was watching at that point, I was in the Montessori education system.

 

 

8:39 Ashley James: Nice.

 

 

8:40 Dr. Greg Eckel: And it was the beginning of the attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, you know, onslaught and big pharma had discovered, “Hey, there’s this untapped market called children, let’s drug them.” And it was really disheartening. You know, I was an assistant in a classroom. I had my poster child was this boy, Michael, and he was definitely, he was rambunctious, I like to say, included others in his learning. And, you know, he was definitely wild guy out on the playground, in the classroom, you know, in the Montessori classroom you can choose your own material and bring it back to your desk. So Michael was always kind of in at other people’s tables. The head teacher advocated to the parents, “Hey, I think Michael has some attentional issues, I think you should go get them checked out.”

They took them to the pediatrician. Lo and behold, they diagnosed him with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and then they medicated him with Ritalin. And the first day that he got back in the classroom, you know, definitely he’s slumped over in his chair. He definitely stayed put, he was in his chair and at his table, but that little light that shines shine in the eye was gone. And I just thought there’s got to be a better way to help these kids. And at that time, I also was a junk food vegetarian. And I wasn’t feeling very healthy. And a bunch of paths led me to the Naturopathic school where these people, these physicians, they treated my diet. And boy, it was it was like a light bulb went on. Like, “Wow, actually, if I went back to school, I wanted to be in service to people.”

And so many different paths led me into Naturopathic medicine. So, not a day goes by that I’m not grateful for the for the experience. And I just thought I really got into helping kids with attentional issues when I started, but that’s really what took me there was that picture of Michael just being really just drugged and slumped over and saw the sparkle gone out of his eye.

 

10:57 Ashley James: So what happened to Michael, do they just keep dragging him? Or did they try…

 

 

11:02 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah. They just basically, you know, it would be great to follow up. I got into medical school, he was my poster child and motivation for going through, in addition to family members and other people with health issues. But what I discovered, I got into neurofeedback, and that’s kind of what led me into neurology and studying the brain at that point. So that was 1996. I got my license in 2001. But we really, you look at the stats on these medications now, you know, I talked to counselors too, in the high schools, and over half the kids are on some type of attentional medication, and it’s almost like the kids have to be on them to keep up with the workload and demands. You know, these are drugs that get traded at parties to keep people awake. And I mean, it’s interesting how ubiquitous nowadays in the culture, for just having those attentional issues.

 

 

12:06 Ashley James: That’s really sad. I’ve done a few interviews with people who shared about their childhood experiences. I remember off the top of my head, with guests who shared their experiences with being put on these drugs when they were kids, and that’s what led them to want to become Holistic Health practitioners, because of the adverse side effects, and the horrible nightmares and suicidal thoughts. I mean, don’t, if a drug is going to make your teenager want to kill themselves, you know, because that’s the side effect.

I mean, there’s something serously wrong here. And then we’ll continue to let them eat Cheetos, and  whatever junk food, we’ll keep them on the standard American American diet ,or standard Canadian diet, standard Australian diet, wherever we are, it’s pretty much the standardized flour, sugar oil, hyper palatable foods that are horrible for the nervous system and just jack up the brain. And then we drug them down. It’s kind of like taking uppers and downers, the uppers are the food, the downers are the drugs. And it’s a perfect system that the big pharma gets to profit from.

But when a child like Michael, and we put them on a whole foods plant based diet and remove the flour, remove the sugar, remove the hyper palatable foods, the spark is back in their eyes, and they feel so much more grounded in their own body. I recently interviewed an expert on nootropics, and he had adult ADHD. And getting on Ritalin was life changing for him. He loved it, he was so happy to be on it. But then his body became resistant to it. And then all of a sudden his thyroid just went completely through the floor and he got dementia, because he had such low thyroid. And it turns out it was a side effect of being on Ritalin for so many years. Have you ever heard that, about that Ritalin, being on these drugs can really drastically affect our hormone system?

 

 

14:15 Dr. Greg Eckel: Well, sure, yah. You know, the medications are always counter intuitive. Like we’re giving legalize speed to kids that have hyperactivity issues. And really, when it works, it works for 5% of the population. And you know, so that gentleman that you interviewed is probably one in the 5%. I mean, the medications really do help you hyper focus, but what it’s doing is it’s waking up your prefrontal cortex. And that’s what the hyperactivity is a symptom of is, the child or the person is trying to wake themselves up because they have a low functioning cortical brainwaves. And so the medication wakes that up and is turning it back on. That’s why it helps with your focus. So you’re just taking legalized speed. So that’s speeding up of your metabolism.

So then your hypothalamus has to balance that out, kind of the switchboard operator there in the middle, which is maintaining homeostasis, kind of coordinating your nervous system and your hormones. And so that’s kind of the link of where that would come together for the individual that then kind of have thyroid issues was out of the hypothalamus level of trying to balance out because they’re getting this speed, which is ramping up the nervous system. And so the counterbalance is in the hormone realm.

 

 

15:39 Ashley James: Right, because the hypothalamus to stimulate the pituitary to create the thyroid…

 

 

15:49 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah.

 

 

15:50 Ashley James: Basically, the hypothalamus is all the way at the top going, “Okay, thyroid, make your stuff. Okay, adrenal is make your stuff. Okay. You know, gonads make your stuff.” And so if you’re taking the ADD medication, it’s affecting the part of your brain that controls all your hormones.

 

 

16:09 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah.

 

 

16:11 Ashley James: That can be very dangerous down the road. But if you go to an MD, and this is me on my soapbox, if you go to an MD, they’re treating symptoms. So we’re going to treat five different symptoms of five drugs then you’ve got lots of side effects from those when it actually is a hypothalamus issue. Because of that, it was a side effect originally of the ADD medication. And so you might end up with problems with the ability to produce your hormones, sex hormones later in life, your steroidal hormones later in life, your thyroid hormone. You might end up with all these different conditions all resulting from the ADD medication of long term use, which we don’t want. And then everyone that’s listening wants to do things naturally and support the body coming back into balance. So when someone feels like they have ADD, what they need to do is wake up the frontal cortex. What can we do to stimulate healthfully naturally the frontal cortex?

 

 

17:11 Dr. Greg Eckel: Well, that’s one piece of it, right? So attentional issues, there’s about nine different facets to attention and so when you look at it, the medication is only working for a small subset. And when you look at what the outcomes research shows is, it doesn’t change IQ, it doesn’t actually change outcomes in schooling. You know, so it is totally placating symptoms, people feel more in tune or maybe more flow and those are the folks that have that hypo functioning prefrontal cortex. So that’s a small subset of folks, but you look at what can you do naturally? Of course, eating a whole foods diet, getting the processed foods out, decreasing your sugar content, you know, the the non sexy, but vital components, which is, food is your best medicine. So looking at that, exercise, right? You get the blood flow. Well, what travels in the blood is the healing properties of the body. So you inform what’s in the blood, but then you get the circulation going as well.

One of the things that I got in on one a little bit bigger with, you know, if your child is having significant issues in the classroom, you can get into neurofeedback, so I did that in the clinic here at Nature Cures for six years, which is hooking electrodes up, you get feedback visually from a computer screen, and you are basically training certain wave frequencies, so it’s waking your brain up, and naturally you’re just doing it via a biofeedback or neurofeedback loop.

 

 

18:55 Ashley James: I love that. I did an interview, I feel like about two years ago with a man that created a biofeedback company. And he said it was like the kids are playing video games with their brain. They hook it up to their brain, and they stare at a monitor. And they’re watching, like what they do with their brain moves the things on the screen, so it feels like a video game. And then they get amazing results. And he had actually, he started it because he’s working with nonverbal children on the spectrum of autism, and doing the biofeedback, they were able to help them improve to the point of like, being able to feed themselves, clothe themselves, talk, I mean, it was amazing. The kind of results. Yeah, he was working with, I think something like big university study, and then that motivated him to go out and start his own company. And now anyone can go and do it. But it’s really fun, what we’re seeing with the brain, and with neurofeedback. And so you started doing that, it also reminds me of a Pediatric Occupational therapist I’m friends with who told me that on the playgrounds, you know, when we were kids, there are swings, and then there’s the tire swing that goes around, right?

Now, she says it’s a crime that a lot of schools are taking swings away, because she said that the children will self regulate. And you’ve probably seen children do this, where they’ll spin around in a circle, they just no to spin around till they get dizzy. Or they’ll ask you to spin them around, or they’ll get on that tire swing, or they’ll get on the you know, that merry go round that some places still have, some park still have. And they’ll just spin and spin and spin. And she says, neurologically, when they need their brain to kind of be ramped up, they know to spin themselves, and children who like to get on the swing, and just gently go back and forth. They need to calm down their nervous system. It’s funny because that’s totally me, I always went on the swing, I just needed to be calmed and brought down. And she said that children would go in recess and they would sort of self regulate their nervous system, whether they need to be ramped up or ramped down. And now they’re cutting recess times, they’re taking these things out of the playgrounds, and so children are unable to self regulate as well.

 

 

21:24 Dr. Greg Eckel: Oh, yeah, totally. That makes total sense. Or even them cutting PE class, physical education so that’s not occurring anymore, right? And then the kids get more ramped up, they’re not able to self correct. And then there’s more medication prescribed, right? Like, oh, what a catch 22 here.

 

 

21:44 Ashley James: Right. Right. So, you were mentioning the non sexy ways that children can better help themselves by eating a good diet. And you know, getting enough sleep, not allowing your children to drink caffeine, caffeinated, beverages or sugar, making sure they go to bed on time, I would say also, decreasing screen time as well is a big one, because that does really ramp up their nervous system. And then the biofeedback, can you give us a few more things that you have seen work really well for children with ADHD before we move on to talk about Parkinson’s?

 

 

22:23 Dr. Greg Eckel: Sure. Well, I want to really reiterate on the screen time as well. I mean, there was a big summit that I participated in called the Digital Dementia Summit, there’s research coming out of France showing kids gray matter of their brain is shrinking similar to dementia, with screen time greater than seven hours a day, and some kids are on screens greater than seven hours a day. And we’re seeing on imaging, on brain imaging that their brains are looking as if they have dementia of a 65 year old. So this is a significant component, of course, coming from the Naturopathic physician is getting out in nature, let them get their hands and feet dirty, have them run around without shoes, as long as that’s a safe thing to do.

You know, and really get out and actually, for the adults to go out and play with them. I think just fostering more play, more imaginative, more imagination as well, just outside in the natural world. These are big things. And we live in the northwest of the United States where it rains for a good portion of the year. But as my kids say, there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad gear. And so you should be able to get out in any climate and get out into nature. You know, it’s really important.

 

 

23:53 Ashley James: I interviewed a man who’s lost, I believe 200 pounds now, it’s more than 200 pounds. I just interviewed him a few months ago. And I think he was like close to 500 pounds three years ago. And he lives in Canada, in Alberta, where they get crazy weather. And he started walking every day no matter what, no matter the weather. And at first I mean, he was so uncomfortable being you know, 500 pounds, right? And he just did it, he’s got out and walked in negative 30 degrees, in blizzard or raining or super hot hundred degree weather. He just did it every day as much as he could. And then that end, stopping eating sugar and flour for lots of vegetables. And yeah, he just he’s so healthy now. He says he’ll never ever miss a day of walking again.

And that really inspired me, that I realized how many excuses I bring up whenever I want to go outside. I see one cloud, “Oh no, it’s too cloudy. I’m not going to go outside.” So I need to like you know, suck it up and get out there. Just this morning right before the interview I took my son to a You Pick Farm and we met some friends and we picked zucchini, and kale and corn and potatoes and all kinds of great stuff that we basically bought a week’s worth of vegetables for $30, all organic and it’s fresh out of the ground. And my son picked bugs and ate kale right off the plant. And yeah, that is unbelievable. So great. I definitely recommend people check out farmers markets and You Pick Farms and take your kids with you because it is it’s fun, and they can run around. And it’s so much better than TV. And we brought kids that never eat vegetables and they were eating vegetables. When kids can actually touch them growing out of the ground, they’ll eat them. So we had a lot of fun doing that. And it’s really allowed me to have a great appreciate for the farmers that grow our food, because it takes a lot of work to pull it out of the ground. Any other advice around ADHD for children before we move on?

 

 

26:11 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah, sure. A big one on brain nutrient, this will touch base with the neurologic discussion later, is our omega three fatty acids and in particular DHA. They’re lacking in all of our diets and DHA is that active constituent of those omega threes that feed the brain and children respond beautifully to those. They’re anti inflammatory, they soothe the brain, they hit the satiety center, they help with energy and focus. And they’re just major brain food, so that that would be a biggie to look at, investigate your diet.

 

 

26:50 Ashley James: Yeah, what’s the best way to get it in our diet? Because you know, everyone says fish oil, I’m not opposed to fish oil, it’s just, you know, there’s so many low quality fish oils out there. And since the fish get their EFAs from algae, we could just skip the murdering fish and go straight to the algae. So, I don’t know what is the best way to get DHA?

 

 

27:13 Dr. Greg Eckel: Well, the algae oil is a great way to do it. But the DHA these, the DHA and EPA are the active constituents. And so you know, as a past vegetarian for over half my life as well. You know, flax oil, etc. These are hard, they’re higher omega threes, but we’re only converting a certain percentage of those into DHA and EPA. So it’s about a 1% to 5% of total omega threes from plant based sources, 1% to 5% go into DHA, and about 5% to 15% go into EPA. And those are the ones that we have the most research on. Now I’m a whole plant practitioner, I love the whole plant. So definitely getting it that way, flax seeds, chia seeds, these have omega three fatty acids in them, it just you know, you would have to be consuming so much of those plants to get an adequate dose of EPA and DHA in particular for the brain. So I definitely, I do recommend supplementing those.

You want to know your source, a lot of companies do a really good job of screening for heavy metal toxicity, pesticides, etc. Because these fish do bio accumulate toxins and fat. So you definitely want to know your source. You know, one of the better ones out on the market, at least in the states is Nordic Naturals, I have no affiliation with the company. I just like their product. But you want to know your source for sure. So, it’s not like go to the bulk discount supplement store and and get those because, you know, you really don’t know what you’re getting. And you could do more harm than good with that.

 

 

29:06 Ashley James: There’s only a handful of companies that will make their fish oil supplements in a nitrogen chamber, which prevents the oil from oxidizing and that’s one of the companies that I get my EFAs from, does that and so that’s my big recommendation for quality is to find out if your company does it, produces the EFA in a nitrogen chamber to prevent the oxygen from oxidizing the oil. So you’re saying if children have ADHD, the best way to get DHA into them for their brain health is through fish oil, because they would have to consume so much flax and chia?

 

 

29:45 Dr. Greg Eckel: Correct. Yeah, it would be really hard for them to get adequate levels to actually make a difference there. Yeah.

 

 

29:52 Ashley James: I eat plant based and my husband’s vegan, but we’re not dogmatic. You know what I mean?

 

 

30:00 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah. Sometimes it’s a medicinal quality and that’s kind of the distinction we made in my household as well. If it’s a medicinal quality item, it might be something that you want to look at, because that’s a big, that’s a showstopper, you know, they’re called essential as essentially, we can’t make them in our bodies, we can only get them from our food. And so that’s one aspect that you want to look at.

 

 

30:29 Ashley James: And why is DHA and EPA so important? Is it because 70% of the brain is made from these healthy fats? I’ve heard that like, I think 70% of the white matter of the brain is made from cholesterol. So it’s like a major part of the brain is made from these fats. Is it because the brain is made from it, so we’re just building healthy brain? Or does it play a different role in protecting it?

 

 

30:51 Dr. Greg Eckel: We really could call each other fat heads, and it is a fat storage, and we need these really beneficial fats to help with as building blocks for more fat. So these are essential in a lot of different processes. It’s not that DHA is the substance that the brain is made of, but it is definitely the brain food of choice. Yeah.

 

 

31:15 Ashley James: Awesome. So, you must have some really great experiences helping children recover from this, like, YouTube dementia and ADHD.

 

 

31:30 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah.

 

 

31:32 Ashley James: But you’ve also have great, great experience helping adults recover from Parkinson’s and MS, and other neurological conditions. Let’s talk about that.

 

 

31:45 Dr. Greg Eckel: Sure. Well, this is more recent, so I’ve been in practice since 2001. So, I still have a very eclectic practice here at Nature Cures Clinic in Portland. And you kind of fast forward through about 15, 16 years of clinical practice. And lo and behold, my wife gets a very rare neurological condition called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease which is a preonic activity of the brain, very rare one in a million people about 300 cases a year in North America. And you know, as loving husband and physician, trying to swing for the fence of like, well, there’s no known cure for this. The diagnosis is basically wait until she dies and then we’ll do a brain autopsy and will confirm the diagnosis. It was just crazy and you know, she did pass last year.

 

 

32:54 Ashley James: I’m so sorry to hear that.

 

 

32:56  Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah, thank you. You know, it’s been, you know, life is full contact. And I think things happen for reasons and I just definitely lifted the veil for me on the illusion of our world and kind of reinstated my faith, you know, big things, like it was a big process that I’ve gone through, and what I’ve got, as a result, definitely a lot of heartfelt gratitude for this world, and our plane of existence and the physicality of our bodies and the planet and our universe. And I’d like to say as I lecture and speak, we have this illusion of separateness, and we really are all one, just pretending to be separate in this current time. And this process, this process that I went through really solidified that for me, and I’ve wound up with a bunch of gifts, what I’m calling Soraya’s gifts, that’s her name. It was her name, Soraya, and, you know, what do you say, I mean, life happens, I’m not the first person to lose the love of their life, but it definitely is humbling when it happens to you. And I’ve got just newfound energy, purpose, passion, focused to help more people, it really solidified my purpose and service to others and share what I’ve learned along the way, and so on as a practitioner, and as a being on the planet, definitely.

Sometimes I feel like I’m an ambassador for grief. You know, we don’t do grief very well as a culture and I guess I’m more comfortable with it. So as it arises, I’m fine sharing and showing and just being with it. And so I think definitely has informed me as a practitioner with more empathy for others and what they are going through. And just as a being on the planet, having a loss, and, you know, grief touches on grief for a lot of people. So it’s interesting to see what surfaces for others when you bring up a loss like this. And I went looking for solutions and remedies and it really didn’t have, there’s no known cure, and you look at chronic neurodegeneration, and there’s no known cure across the board.

We’re talking Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease  which is mad cow syndrome, and people, it’s scrappy, and goats. It’s Chronic Wasting Disease and dear. So these preonic activities, which are misfolded proteins in central nervous system and brain matter. Well, you get in on the preonic diseases textbook, which I have the second edition of that. And you realize, oh, all of these neurodegenerative states; dementia, Alzheimer’s anxiety can be categorized in here as well, can be related to preonic activity, which are misfolded proteins. And we don’t have great solutions for that, which you know, is evidence for Parkinson’s.

I started with Parkinson’s, I have a book coming out called Shake It Off: An Integrative Approach To Parkinson’s Syndrome, or Parkinson’s Solutions. And with that, we look at what can we do for these folks, and I put it in on my clinic, the different things that I was learning for Soraya. And lo and behold, we’re getting results for folks. I’m not saying I’m curing Parkinson’s, but we are showing improvement of quality of life, we’re showing reversal, stability, halting symptom development, reversal of symptom development, and improvement of functioning. And so these are very encouraging things.

We’ve got some time to put in on really perfecting the protocol, but I did develop, it’s called a FAN-C approach to Parkinson’s, capital FAN-C so FAN-C, we can talk about that in a moment. But it all comes out of my personal trials and tribulations of helping, looking for solutions and a chronic disease that doesn’t have any answers. So, I was talking to the world’s experts on preonic activities, got in touch with Case Western here in the United States, where they have the Preonic Surveillance Center of North America, didn’t even know one existed in their study, it’s an observational study. They have had 22 people enrolled in their study.

So, you know, we don’t really have a lot of great information or data and I got to live with that condition for two years. You know, it’s a rapidly progressing dementia, in two months time, Soraya, she was a certified nurse, midwife, nurse practitioner here in the clinic, and, you know, radical women’s health care provider, you know, just had such joy and love for people. And never had in a million years would you think a woman would come out of her annual exam kind of dancing and singing and laughing. And it’s like, wow, like, what a gift Soraya had for people. So, she was this sharp, sharp practitioner, and all of a sudden started having memory issues, and we wound up in the clinic staying later and she had been in practice for five years at that point. Like, “Hey, honey, what what is up?” Like, never have we stayed, you know, like, I get it, you’re being meticulous with your notes, but what is going on?

So, we started looking at maybe some perimenopause hormone changes, or maybe mold issues. You look at things that could be creating memory issues for folks, and you kind of go down these rabbit holes of most prominent issues. And after about a month of that I started taking her, it’s like, “Gosh, this is beyond what I can do here.” It’s not these things, it’s not hormone imbalance, it’s not mold toxicity. You know, it’s not a level of toxicity. So, you know, go out into Western approach just to get some ideas, and they’re all saying it’s a psychotic break, and it’s like, this is not a psychotic break. This woman was top of her game just a month ago. And so, it kind of went through that process and then the differential starts getting more ominous and ominous of like, oh, it could be autoimmune encephalitis or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

So during this time, Soraya’s in rapid decline, and then basically in two months time, she’s not able to talk like she’s gone into total dementia. And, you know, it’s like, wow, we’re nonverbal. We can’t communicate now. It’s like, what in the world is going on? So, it was really a tough, tough go and we surrounded her with lots of love and I did a little swing for the fences, a baseball analogy of, you know, let me dig deep here and see what I can come up with and the trail I’ve got this component of Soraya’s gifts of I think we can help a lot of people with chronic neurodegeneration as a result of this. Unfortunately, it didn’t help her out. But, we’ve got, you know, maybe trying to turn my personal tragedy into this gift for the world. And so that’s what we’re putting forth.

 

 

41:26 Ashley James: Now, I always thought mad cow disease or mad cow syndrome was transmissible, meaning it could be passed on from one person to another, from one animal to another. Is this something she caught?

 

 

41:41 Dr. Greg Eckel: Well, so that’s the million dollar question. And when you read about preons, they always put this infectious prion before this adjective. And I think it’s incorrect to think of it as an infectious agent. Now, I say that it’s total theory on my part, but it’s a theory on their part as well. So Stanley Prusiner out of a lab in California, he got the Nobel Prize in 1987 in medicine for the discovery of these prion. And he was really uniquely positioned to be one of the only people on the planet to be able to figure this out. He was a bench biochemist. And at the time, they thought prions were a virus like a retrovirus. And he had spent 20, 30 years in the lab studying viruses and bacteria. And he said, “You know, these are not behaving like that.” And so he stuck to his guns, but two decades of ridicule and the scientific community for him, thankfully he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for that. But, you know, he put this infectious adjective there.

So when you read any literature on it, you know, it was it’s also called “Kuru” in Papua New Guinea, there was a tradition where the grandmothers, mothers and girls would eat the brains of the ancestors that passed in honoring and in commemoration and honoring of those that passed. And I think they’ve stopped that tradition, because in the brains were these prions. And so it was a very rapid transmission of prionic activity by ingesting those brains. If it was transmissible from cow to human, in the 80s there were about 3 million pounds of tainted beef that were released in Europe. And there was a slight uptick of Creutzfeldt-Jakob but not to the level that you would expect if these were infectious agents as in something to catch.

Now, there are those scientists that still think that they are infectious, like a virus that they can spread like that. But I think it’s a little bit more complex. And these are not new proteins, I think these are archaic protein structures that have been on the planet since we began. And the reason why I say that is they are so uniquely, what they do is they misfold, these proteins misfold. And when you look at tau proteins and amyloid plaques, and [Inaudible 44:33] nucleon, these are other proteins that are misfolded disorders that are also in dementia and Alzheimer’s and ALS, Parkinson’s. So they’re found in these other conditions of misfolding. Well, what happens is, they get misconfigured and then they start signaling other proteins to start to do that. And that’s I think why they call them “infectious.” And that there’s a signaling unit that happens once they get misfolded. Now, we don’t know. And that’s the issue with these disorders and diagnosis is, is that we don’t know what the causative agent of misfolding is.

 

 

45:17 Ashley James: It’s like a domino effect.

 

 

45:19  Dr. Greg Eckel: Exactly.

 

 

45:20  Ashley James: It’s kind of like cancer. If the body can’t clear it out, well one cancer cell normally… I mean, every day our body clears cancer out. But if we don’t, that one little harmless cancer cell can become a whole tumor very quickly. So the domino effect is that one misfolded protein could trigger others to start misfolding. But why, why isn’t the body clearing them out?

 

 

45:45 Dr. Greg Eckel: Right. And they’re not unable to kill, you know, you can’t kill them really, either. So that’s the unique property of these prions is, you know, heat, autoclaving. You know, the traditional ways of denaturing proteins don’t work for these.

 

 

46:08 Ashley James: So it sounds like we’re just sort of at the beginning, the Pioneer days of understanding this. Now, you found out… I mean, your wife had a rapid decline, and you found out very deep into her diagnosis what it was. Did you any therapies to prolong her life or ease her symptoms? Did you find anything in time that helped her that you noticed that helped?

 

 

46:42 Dr. Greg Eckel: Well, not. No, no. So not in her condition. So, what I put together is a process called the FAN-C approach. So this is for all neurologic conditions, but F stands for functional, so treating whole people, not disease processes. And this is also a very profound difference between Naturopathic medicine and maybe Functional or Integrative practitioners that come from a Western training. In the Naturopathic principles is the body can heal itself, given the right information. And at the point that we’ve got this discovered with Soraya, I just feel like the process, it was so rapid and moving so quickly, that there wasn’t a way to pull it back. You know, really, I went super esoteric to very biochemical.

So, every level of treatment that you could think of, we’ve really put in just two decades in the field, definitely very eclectic practitioner. So, on that functional approach, it’s really kind of a mindset change of, I think one of the issue is, is that everybody’s focused at end stage product or disease. And if you’re only focusing at that, like for Parkinson’s, just focusing on dopamine receptors and the dopamine molecule, it’s far too late. Like we’ve really have to go upstream. And one way of doing that is looking at the assessment. So the A in FAN-C stands for assessment. And this is looking at molecular mimicry, like what else could be causing the symptoms in the body? So I look at viruses; cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex virus, epstein barr virus, these things can mimic these protein misfolding disorders.

We look at hormone balance, because the hormones as we were talking about with attention deficit disorder and stimulating the prefrontal cortex, you know, that comes with into the hypothalamus. Well, that balances the hormones and nervous system there. So hormones, you definitely want to have optimally balanced out for people. Heavy metal toxicity is another one, right? We store toxins in our fat. So we want to look at what gets stored in the fat. So you have to look at, I find cadmium, mercury, arsenic and lead are the top four that I find in my patients, especially with neuro degenerative states. So you gotta get out the proverbial lead, so to speak.

 

 

49:32 Ashley James: I have a quick question, if sure cadmium, lead, arsenic, and mercury are stored in the fat tissue of the body, how do you do accurate heavy metal testing? Because I know you can do hair analysis, which really only reflects the last three months. And blood and urine wouldn’t really do it, if it’s stored in the fat. Do you have to do a biopsy of fat?

 

 

49:57 Dr. Greg Eckel: You do a chelating agent. Yeah, so one of the things with hair analysis, also, there’s a lot of folks that have issues with metal toxicity, aren’t able to secrete them in the hair follicle, so they’re not able to get them out. And I see that a lot with kids on the autistic spectrum disorder. You know, a lot of practitioners are only doing hair analysis. Well, it doesn’t correlate well. And like you’re saying it’s only three months. And also there’s a genetic component where you’re not able to actually excrete those through the hair follicle or eliminate them yourself. And so they get trapped in the body. And that adds to the issue of the condition.

So what we do, we do a pre and post test, there are different oral chelating agents like DMSA or IV therapy with EDTA, which is the kind of a toxicology route of the agreed upon test to do, which is like a big magnet that goes into the blood that pulls metals, but it also pulls essential minerals as well. So, you know, you have to be very cautious and do that correctly. It has been around, chelation has been around for 50 years, plus done with a trained practitioner is very safe and it is super effective as well.

 

 

51:22 Ashley James: I would agree with you, we should absolutely go to a Naturopathic physician if we want to do chelation because it’s kind of like using a nuclear bomb on the body to release the heavy metal. And then you’re going to have to get a nice mineral and trace mineral supplement to help put back in what we took out. So I really agree with you there. I interviewed Dr. Klinghardt who’s local to me, and he works with a lot of children on spectrum come from all over the world to see him. And he gets children that are having very poor health problems to be able to within a year go to school, like just a huge transformation. And he says it’s almost always heavy metals, like it’s just unbelievable. Their body cannot detox the heavy metals. You know, they were probably given vaccines and you know, it’s controversial whether vaccines cause autism or not, depending on who you talk to. There’s lots of information depending on who you talk to.

But what we do know for a fact is that there’s heavy metals in vaccines, and that autistic children have a problem with detoxing. And so they have an accumulation of heavy metals in their neurology, and what Dr. Klinghardt brings up is, what we’re seeing now, one in 40 children are on the spectrum, whereas when you and I were kids, it was one in 10,000. And we’re wondering, is it actually autism? Or are we miss diagnosing a large percentage of the population? Because what they actually have is all the same symptoms of autism, but it’s their brain is full of heavy metals. And if we remove the heavy metals, they no longer are on the spectrum.

 

53:11 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah, and it’s not, I wouldn’t put it as a blanket statement for all children, or people on the spectrum have heavy metal toxicity. But there is a good portion of folks that that is the case. So I have seen folks on the spectrum that they don’t have metals in their system, because we’re tracking for that. But I have seen, you know, I’ve had moms calling me from the grocery store saying, you know, “Johnny just sang and looked in his sister’s eyes, first time ever in his life that he’s ever had any interaction, and he was vocal and verbal.” It was like, you know, true miracles like that. And for him, we were chelating him with a an oral DMPS or sorry, a topical cream that we were doing some chelation therapy with. So you know, it is definitely, you got to rule it in or rule it out.

Really the take home message is anytime you’re dealing with neurological issues, we store toxins in our fat, we can call each other fat heads because there’s so much fat in our head, you know, our brain is fat, and we store toxins there. So we definitely have to look at that. So that’s on the assessment front. There’s more on the assessment front as well and each of these are such, we can unpack each one as well. But I run an Alcat testing looking at food sensitivities, so not allergens, but sensitivity. So that’s white blood cells that get exposed to different foods, food additives, molds, etc. And we see how the body is responding to these items. And then we also run a gut microbiome test, GI maps to look at the health of the gut. Because the gut is the second brain, we manufacture all of our neurotransmitters for brain health in the gut, our digestion is so important to that.

And we’re looking at the whole microbiome and even there’s some theories around glyphosate from roundup and pesticide use, you know, killing certain gut bugs that were responsible for creating dopamine and other nutrients for our brain – neurotransmitters. So, you know, there’s more and more information coming out that way. So we got to look at the gut too. So those are the four main areas that I look at for brain health, for really all of my patients coming in with these diagnoses. And so that assessment, I just feel like people are not getting a proper assessment, because it leaves a lot of options out there rather than treating symptoms, like you were saying, you know, going Western approach and you’re gonna get put on a bunch of different medications to treat a symptom. This is one way that I found, it really trace it down to the root imbalances and address at a very deep, profound level.

 

 

56:12 Ashley James: Absolutely. I want to know why. I mean, obviously, it’s very important to check the gut flora. We wanted a healthy microbiome. When someone has a microbiome that’s out of balance, maybe they had an antibiotic in the last year and they know they’ve got really out of balanced gut flora, or maybe they have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or candida, why does that affect brain health?

 

 

56:41 Dr. Greg Eckel: So on that level, so we have the vagus nerve that comes down, it’s a cranial nerve, cranial nerve 10 that comes down innervates the gut. And there’s a lot of different theories on this, Ployvagal theory, Stephen Porges has a component around the vagus nerve, and it’s important to our health and around PTSD and anxiety and depression states. So that’s one aspect, but the vagus nerve, cranial nerve 10 comes down innervates the gut. And so there are certain things that get transmitted up and down that nerve, in addition to just the nervous system, you know, different nutrients; manganese, iron, these things get deposited in the brain, and so there’s a connection there. And then also you look at, well, there are certain probiotics, so gut bugs, that their secretion is the end product that our brains need for proper functioning. So it’s so fascinating. The research on probiotics is getting so sophisticated to look at this. And you know, I actually did a lecture to providers, I’m part of this go wellness affiliated network of about 40 clinics right now, its regenerative medicine clinics. And I gave these docs and providers the notes on, there’s research on specific neurotransmitters being produced by the gut bugs.

 

 

58:19 Ashley James: I love it.

 

 

58:20 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah.

 

 

58:21 Ashley James: So cool. I love that we need these other living beings, this amazing symbiotic relationship. And just thinking of mitochondria, the mitochondria are not us, like we had a guest talk about that they have different DNA, but they’re part of us. But it’s like, you have to think of mitochondria, it’s like a different being joined us and all the gut flora, and then all the healthy bacteria on our skin, and we just keep finding as science marches on that there’s even more importance, the rule that these healthy bacteria plays. So it’s kinda like a garden. You know, it’s amazing garden where all the healthy bugs are keeping everything in balance, but it’s in our body and on our body. And so we’ve got to think that we need to foster this healthy garden that comes back to how Naturopaths consider the whole body and the terrain of the body. We want to fertilize and balance the whole body. It’s so cool that our neurotransmitters that so many of them are made in the gut by the healthy gut bugs.

 

 

59:33 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah.

 

 

59:33 Ashley James: I love it.

 

 

59:34 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a little bit gross, too, right? If you took all the aerobic and anaerobic gut bugs out depending on the individual, about four to seven pounds of material. And, you know, it’s just like, wow, that’s a whole ecosystem unto itself. Yeah.

 

 

59:55 Ashley James: I love it. I love my gut bugs. We get along.

 

 

59:56 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah. I do too.

 

 

1:00:00 Ashley James: I have a friend, Dr. Megan Saunders and she’s been on the show many times. She used to be addicted to kombucha back when she was in the Naturopathic school. She was known as the kombucha lady and she says that it takes over your brain. She really believes that, that when you start drinking things or eating fermented foods that the gut bugs start making you crave that food more because they want more of that environment in itself.

 

 

1:00:26 Dr. Greg Eckel: Oh yeah. They secrete right into the bloodstream that goes up to your brain saying, “Feed us.”

 

 

1:00:31 Ashley James: Yeah. And so you start craving the kombucha. For me it’s the, I love the sauerkraut at Costco. They’ve got great organic sauerkraut and my Costco and my gut just craves it.

 

 

1:00:43 Dr. Greg Eckel: That’s awesome. That’s a good craving.

 

 

1:00:45 Ashley James: Yeah. Awesome. So we’ve got functional which is looking at the whole person, meaning looking at their emotional state, their sleep, their lifestyle, then looking at the assessment of all the things inside the person that could be off; heavy metals, viruses, bacteria, mold, all the stuff inside their body, their gut flora being off, what’s the N stand for?

 

 

1:01:11 Dr. Greg Eckel: N is for nerve health. So you’re looking at specific nutrients for nerve health. And you know, the most famous is B12. But you’ve got glutathione there. The DHA that we talked about EPA, there are certain nutrients that are renowned for brain health. So, we put that in making sure that you have that in your diet. Glutathione is one of those things for your mitochondria. There’s NAD as well, treatments for mitochondrial health and energy, but also nutrients for nerves. So we look at that aspect to make sure you’ve got your bases covered there.

 

 

1:01:57 Ashley James: What’s NAD?

 

 

1:01:57 Dr. Greg Eckel: NAD is derivative of vitamin B3, niacin. Yeah, and NAD is big in the longevity movement right now for energy production. It’s a specific food into the mitochondria.

 

 

1:02:20 Ashley James: Oh, got it. Because I know what NAC is. So I was like, oh what’s NAD? So that’s different. So it’s a derivative of the B vitamin that supports the mitochondria?

 

 

1:02:30 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah.

 

 

1:02:30 Ashley James: Hmm, awesome. Can we get it from whole foods or do we need to buy it as a supplement?

 

 

1:02:35 Dr. Greg Eckel: That one is tough. You know, there are some supplements with dubious claims. And you know that one, I do it via IV is the way that I get that one into the body.

 

 

1:02:57 Ashley James: When someone starts taking the NAD IV, what kind of effects do they notice?

 

 

1:03:03 Dr. Greg Eckel: They’ll notice decreased brain fog, more energy, clear thinking. Along those lines.

 

 

1:03:10 Ashley James: Whoo, sign me up. That sounds great. When you do an IV, do you normally do like a cocktail? Like a Myers push where it’s a bunch of vitamins?

 

 

1:03:21 Dr. Greg Eckel: With the NAD, it’s pretty much straight up NAD. You can include those other items in there. Before or after but the NAD goes by itself.

 

 

1:03:32 Ashley James: Got it. Very cool. Now, we’ll definitely make sure the links to everything you do is in the show notes of today’s podcast, www.naturecuresclinic.com.

 

 

1:03:42 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yes.

 

 

1:03:42 Ashley James: The listeners can go. Now, you do take clients all around the world through phone or Skype. But for them to be able to do the IV they’d have to come to the beautiful city of Portland Oregon.

 

 

1:03:54 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yes. Yeah, and Ido have people traveling from around the globe. They come to Camp Nature Cures, but there is a lot of stuff that we can do remotely. I do via Zoom, some of those telemedicine things, but you know, to get some of these therapies, I haven’t figured out how to deliver it over the internet yet.

 

 

1:04:16 Ashley James: I’m still waiting for like, smell-o-vision. Watch the TV and be able to smell it. Yeah. Very cool. Okay, so those nootropics are the N.

 

 

1:04:28 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah, exactly.

 

 

1:04:30  Ashley James: And then what’s the C?

 

 

1:04:32 Dr. Greg Eckel: C is for cellular regeneration. And so we’re living at a really interesting time, where we can do regenerative medicine with stem cells and exosomes, and these therapies to help the body create new brain tissue.

 

 

1:04:51 Ashley James: I love it. I love it. So you’re using stem cell therapy for the brain?

 

 

1:04:57 Dr. Greg Eckel: Correct.

 

 

1:04:58 Ashley James: And what kind of results are you seeing?

 

 

1:05:01 Dr. Greg Eckel: You know, we are getting folks with Parkinson’s, we’re having folks’ tremors halt and reverse. We’re having their gait, they’re walking become more stable, more fluid, we’re having their speech improve as well. So there are some big, some reversal of symptoms. Again, I’m not claiming that for everybody. But we have seen it, we’ve got clinical evidence of it, and we’re looking to improve those results for a lot of people. But, you know, my patients got sick of just being serially monitored, they’d go in to the specialist, the Neurologist and be run through a battery of tests. And then basically not even told what was going on, just see you next year. And when they would ask the doc would say, well, you’re getting worse. And they’re thinking, well, I could have told you that before I came in here. And, you know, we’re just looking to provide some options, alternatives, some hope that there are people working on it. Like, for instance, on the NAD. There’s a researcher down at Scripps University at University of Florida. And she’s doing research on NAD IVs and prionic disorders. And so, it’s too early for primetime use but I’m saying, you know, look, if we’ve got this research, we know this is a safe therapy in humans, my folks that have these diagnosis is they don’t have 30 to 40 years to wait for the definitive research to come out. It’s like you know, let’s use it now and see what we can do.

 

 

1:06:49 Ashley James: I love it. Absolutely. I have seen and heard of actually because I’ve interviewed some people about this. People with Parkinson’s getting great results using medical marijuana or CBD and hemp that when they use the CBD drops that then their shaking goes away.

 

 

1:07:10 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah.

 

 

1:07:11 Ashley James: Have you also seen that some people with Parkinson’s have great improvement?

 

 

1:07:15 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yes. So on that nerve health, CBD, cannabidiol is definitely one of those nerve health supplements. And, you know, when I went to medical school, we did not know about the endocannabinoid system. I did a lecture three years ago at American Academy of Environmental Medicine for cannabidiol for the treatment of anxiety.

And you look at Professor Mechoulam out of Israel. He’s the scientist that discovered the endocannabinoid system. And there are more receptors in the central nervous system, they’re called CB1, cannabidiol one. There are more receptors for that molecule, than all of the other neurotransmitters put together, which is just, I mean, it’s almost overwhelming to think about, like we didn’t even know about that system when I went to medical school. And now there’s discovered more receptors for that molecule than all of the other neurotransmitters put together.

So that is definitely, that endocannabinoid system, it needs toned. You know, eating endocannabinoid rich foods that feed that system. And then you know, taking CBD is definitely one of those things, again, source matters there, you want to make sure you’ve got its medical grade, it’s tested. One of the things that the hemp plant does, it will rehab toxic land, so it will pull up toxins out of the soil. So you want to just make sure you’ve got a really good source, if you are using that. Again, source matters. So for all of these items, yeah.

 

 

1:08:58 Ashley James: Yeah, same with chlorella and spirulina, they’ll just suck up. I mean, it’s great to use chlorella, spirulina to clean up waterways. And to use the hemp plant to clean soil, right? That’s good to clean up areas, but not to consume. So we have to make sure that the soil is clean and the water is clean. If we’re going to consume these crops. I thought it was really interesting that if we’re deficient in our essential fatty acids, we can’t produce enough of the… basically our body’s own CBD. And so then we’re CBD deficient, so that if someone takes CBD and gets a really great result, it’s because they were deficient in it. And if someone takes CBD, and it’s really good quality, it’s tested, we know that there’s actually CBD in it. And they don’t feel any difference, then maybe they weren’t as deficient. But the people who are really deficient, who obviously have neurological symptoms, they’ll see the biggest shift because their body was deficient. And that also then points to the fact that they are deficient in their essential fatty acids because their body can’t produce enough of their own cannabinoids.

 

 

1:10:16  Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah, yeah, that’s it. And you know, and that makes a great point in that. I haven’t found one thing to be the be all end all in any really condition. And so, you know, I think our want is like, just give me the one thing, doc. And if there’s this when you’re talking about neuro degeneration, it’s so multifactorial. You know, when we talk about possible causative agents, definitely levels of toxicity, play a role in Parkinson’s, that’s clearly defined in the literature from pesticides, metals, sometimes infections also can be triggering events for folks. And so, you got to do the multi pronged approach. But more is not better. More is more.

So oftentimes, I’ll see people come in with the laundry list of supplements or research and saying, I’m taking all of these things, there is this concept that I want to make sure I share with your listeners is that it’s called Zhang of the formula or direction. And in Chinese medicine, herbs, there’s an emperor or empress, then there’s generals, and then assistants, and everybody lines up. So imagine, the emperor or empress is at the very tip, if it was like an Arrowhead and it’s cutting through and moving in a direction. And so whatever plan or program that you get on, you want to make sure you have a direction, and that there’s a leading herb or a leading therapy, and everything else lines up behind and helps with that motion in a direction. Because otherwise, we kind of get into the shotgun approach a more is better. And I’ll see people with like, grocery bags full of supplements, like, “Ugh. You have to one, digest all of that. Two, process at all, absorb it all.” And then it’s pulling your vital force, your vitality in all of these different directions.

So the body and its inherent wisdom doesn’t really know which way to go with all of that information coming in. So, you know, sometimes we’ll break those up for folks and have them like cycle through by month or it really is on, are we getting a result or not. And then the other thing that comes off of that, when talking about the Zhang of the formula or direction, or assembling a program or protocol for an individual, you know, we all have our unique genetic platforms. And that’s when you asked about,  how does the prions get transmitted? Are they contagious? Can you “catch” them? You know, why I think we didn’t see this huge outbreak of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in Europe in the 80s was, well, maybe the genetic platform wasn’t susceptible to that. People ate tainted beef, there were 3 million pounds of beef that got released.

Now, a lot of that got recalled, but a lot of that got consumed. And we would have expected to see a bigger outbreak. Now some say, “Well, okay, it’s like a smoking gun, maybe then you’ve got these prions in there, they haven’t been totally activated, maybe traumas, maybe level of toxicity.” And then I would say those definitely influenced expression, but also then on top of a more susceptible genetic platform, which then even goes one step further is looking at, okay, well, I got even into looking at ancestral traumas turning on genes that then express today. So some of the conditions that we see in modern era aren’t even the individual’s issue, right? It was their great grandmother’s trauma that set them up for that. And it has definitely made my job as a physician so much harder, to be able to have the time to spend with somebody talking about all of these levels of care, and possible root imbalances.

So, I definitely wind up talking to my patients about their family lineage, family trees, but not just in a purely genetic sense, but in an energetic sense of getting back into communication with your lineage and your ancestors. Like, that’s why you’re here today, they were here, right? That DNA, that information got passed down through time, through your great grandparents and grandparents and parents, and now to you, and then maybe to your offspring. And so, one aspect is really giving thanks, or gratitude, being grateful for it, but then, you know, also acknowledging and letting your ancestors know, like, Hey, we’re going to stop, I’m not taking the family burden further. Like, I’m letting that down, and you know, consciously saying it, because it makes an imprint in your limbic system and amygdala and your cells, and your body is so responsive, and to be able to acknowledge and give thanks.

And then also, say, I’m not taking this burden any further. I welcome the energy and intuition, and inspiration. Like, you know, bring all of that to me ancestors, but we’re going to leave the family traumas, the burdens, you know, whatever got set up in the past, we’re going to leave that now. Like, we don’t need to carry that forward anymore. Because it does get past, it just dawned on me, like, wow, that’s where that curse of seven generations, where that comes from, it’s like, we can actually trace out 13 generations now from a trauma that occurred 13 generations ago, expressing through a family’s lineage. So, it’s doing techniques of grounding yourself and deep breathing, and I love playing with the voice and kind of frequencies and singing, all of these accessing all of the different healing modalities, and really putting those in, depending on what your specific issue is. But, you know, you can really find folks that are tying these things together, and designing a program specific to you as an individual.

 

 

1:16:49 Ashley James: You would love timeline therapy, it’s one of the techniques I’ve been using since 2005. And that’s actually the technique that I’m going to teach on your show. Dr. Eckel has a great podcast called What The Health, What The Health! So listeners are going to check out your your podcast, because they’ll love it.

And I have a technique to reverse, to eliminate, to end anxiety, to completely cut it off at the root. And it’s a timeline therapy technique. But in timeline therapy, we go back to the root cause, the beginning of the Gestalt, the chain of stored emotions in the body that are unresolved. And so the root cause of anger, sadness, fear, hurt and guilt. And we go back to generations and we’ve had so many accounts where people will go back, and it’s light state of trance. So you’re conscious of your unconscious mind, that’s the coolest part because people are a little afraid of going under hypnosis.

It’s not hypnosis, but you become aware of your unconscious. And anyone who wants to learn more about how neurology stores memories, there’s two books I love, The Heart’s Code by Paul Piersol and The Holographic Universe, I forget the author’s name. The Holographic Universe, and The Hearts Code are amazing. And they both prove that we store memories basically in our cells, holographically through the whole body. It’s not just in our brain. And we can absolutely pass down memories, that there have been numerous accounts where people have had heart transplants, and they are able to have memories of the person’s murder to the point where they were able to tell the police what the murderer looked like. And they were able to find them and put them in prison. And so when we have memories from organ transplants, I mean, it’s just amazing that the body, there’s definitely the esoteric, you know, we have to just like expand our minds, right?

 

 

1:18:59 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah.

 

 

1:19:00 Ashley James: You know, because we’re all sort of like thinking that leeches, like, you know, a hundred years ago, or 500 years ago, like, oh, everyone just needs to do bloodletting, right? I mean, just imagine, that’s kind of where we are. We’re all thinking like, memories are just stored in the brain. Right? But that’s common knowledge. But it’s not true, memories are stored holographically throughout the whole body. And in timeline therapy, when we go to release and learn from and heal the negative emotions in the body, people will have memories from their grandmother. And if the grandmother is still alive, they’ll be able to go and confirm them, or memories from their mother, and their healing stuff.  Before they were even born that they’ve never been told about that they never knew. And they’re able to go and confirm with their family members, after we do the timeline therapy that those events actually happened. So they’re stored, we store memories from our ancestors in our body. And of course, we’re storing that trauma.

So that’s like that emotional, mental, a little bit esoteric, part of healing. And then on the totally like lab science part of healing. I was fascinated to hear about this study with mice where they took these beautiful white fuzzy mice, you’ve probably heard this study, and they expose them to the levels of BPA, Bisphenol A, that we are normally exposed to on a daily basis every time we touch receipts and drink from plastic bottles with BPA. And what happened is their genes transformed, they be genetically shifted, they no longer grew beautiful soft white fur, they grew gnarly yellow fur, they became obese. And then they stopped giving them the BPA, I think it was just water, the BPA was put in their water, they stopped giving it to them. But that this genetic expression lasted I believe, three generations. So they had basically gnarly yellow mice that were obese for three generations.

So just think about the chemicals that your grandparents were exposed to, and that change their neurology, or sorry, changed their biochemistry, because it turned on these different expressions epigenetically, and you’re experiencing the result. And now we’re seeing that all the toxins that we’ve been exposed to, and our children be exposed to, like, look at now that over 70% of the population is overweight, because of all these obesogens. And all the exposure to Bisphenol A, just one of the many toxins, but that it changes our genes. So even if we completely cleaned up our environment, our genes for the next few generations might pass on, these characteristics. And that’s why we have to be extra careful and extra diligent to be clean, and also advocate for a cleaner environment. But then, like you said, do the emotional mental work as well, because we are seeing a link between decreasing stress, healing emotions, working on releasing ancestral trauma, and how our genes actually express in the now. So, it’s so cool that our body will respond to emotional healing on a physical level.

 

 

1:22:22 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah, so profound. And oftentimes, like you’re saying, does not get addressed at all.

 

 

1:22:30 Ashley James: Because there’s no profit, they can’t make a drug, right? The pharmaceutical company can’t pay someone to do research to make a drug to heal your trauma from the past, otherwise, they would have made it. So we have to go out and advocate and listen to you and your podcast and listen to the experts who are willing to teach us about how we can heal our body on a whole level; emotional, mental, spiritual and energetic and physical. Because we’re not going to get it from the mainstream media.

 

 

1:23:01 Dr. Greg Eckel: Right.

 

 

1:23:03 Ashley James: Yeah. So I love your FAN-C. I think that’s a great system.

 

 

1:23:08 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yes.

 

 

1:23:09 Ashley James: I studied with a Naturopathic physician who’s like, he’s in his 80s now and he was a Veterinarian, physician and Pathologist, and he was a Research Scientist before he became a Naturopath. And he says that most Parkinson’s and MS and ALS are a combination of too much oxidative damage to the brain. So eating fried food, standard American diet, and too much oxidative damage and oxidative stress to the brain, and not enough of the essential nutrients the body needs to heal the brain. So it’s sort of like too much fire in the body and not enough nutrients to put out the fire. And that he’s seen great results and met a woman who went on his sort of basically… his program is stop eating stuff that causes the damage and start eating the stuff that helps the body heal and take the supplements that you mentioned. And I met a woman who was in a wheelchair one month and the next month was walking, and she couldn’t believe it. So people are getting great results from avoiding the oxidative stress. How much has that played a role when you look into this research when you work with your clients? Are you seeing getting people off of fried food getting people off of, even consuming oil in a bottle? Because that is consuming oxidative stress, right? So, what can we do to prevent oxidative stress in the body so we can help heal the brain?

 

 

1:24:43 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah. Well, one component, when the symptoms have progressed to the point of tremor, I love hyperbaric oxygen, so I’ve to hyperbaric oxygen chambers here. So when it has progressed, so as a preventative component, which we all should be working towards preventative, is detoxing the body reducing oxidative stress, getting the antioxidants in there to repair from oxidative stress.

You know, we’re exposed to 80,000 chemicals a week in the United States. And so there are levels of toxicity out there. So that we’ve got to just go on the offensive of just assume this is occurring. So what do I need to do to address it, and then reverse it? And so definitely not cooking with high heat, if you ever see the oil smoking in the pan, that means you’ve oxidized it. So, you know, kind of toss that out, start over, cook a little bit lower heat, quality of your oils that you’re using, what you’re cooking in. These things really do matter.

Of course, the biggest lever is if you’re a smoker, stop smoking. If you grew up with smokers, you know if your parents smoked, like mine in the 70s. And you know, riding in the car with the windows up with mom smoking in the car, it’s like, “Oh, geez, what are we doing here?” That’s where the cadmium comes from, right? That’s where a lot of metal toxicity comes from, is that inhaled smoke. So you know, it’s really knowing where you grew up what you got exposed to, and then how to detox that? Infrared saunas, salt baths, grounding activity, deep breathing, mindfulness, meditation, all of these things do play a role there when you’re talking about oxidative stress.

You know, in Environmental Medicine, the first thing you learn, the first six items are, the first three are remove, remove, remove, and then it says magnesium, magnesium, magnesium. So when you’re talking about environmental causative agents, you first have to stop the damage. So if there’s anything that you’re consuming, or around that’s creating oxidative stress or damage, which we know just in general life living, we’re getting exposed to stuff. So we’ve got to address that. And then we’ve got to make sure we’ve got all of the nutrients for our body to detox and magnesium is a big cofactor. There are a lot of other nutrients in there. But you know, you look at the cytochrome P450 cycle, and that’s in liver detoxification, major filter for the body.

So getting the nutrients to keep those doors open is the way that I like to talk about that. B vitamins, magnesium are the big players there to keep the phase one and phase two route of elimination, open in the liver, sweating, motion activity, getting your circulation going, those things count, and then really your proper nutrition. That’s the setup for healthy living and longevity or the health span that I see working for a lot of people. Yeah.

 

 

1:28:05 Ashley James: I love it. I had a problem for many years. So I don’t know if you know my story. But in my 20s was very, very sick. I had uncontrolled type two diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic monthly infections, which I was on almost constant antibiotics for, and I was a mess. I had infertility, and I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, I was told I’d never have kids by an Endocrinologist. So I was just a mess. And the MDs want to put me on lots of drugs. And my 30s I spent building my body backup, I’m almost 40. Now at 39 and a half, I’m sort of like accepting my fate. I’m going to be 40 soon I know, I’ve psychologically had to like start preparing myself for the transition into my awesome 40s.

And so I was able to with Natural Medicine, had a Naturopath mentor me. And so the last seven years of actually work with clients, you know, working with these Naturopaths and doing this health coaching. But it all started about 10 years ago, shopping the perimeter of the grocery store, only buying organic, you know, cutting out sugar and flour, going gluten free, dairy free, going on a whole food plant based diet. So you know, stopping eating at McDonald’s basically. I think I haven’t eaten McDonalds in eight or 10 years. But I basically went from the standard American diet to a really good diet and taking these supplements, you know, changing, doing emotional healing and mindset, everything, everything. And I was able to reverse all these problems. But every time I went to lose weight, I’d wake up in the morning, I taste metal and I would smell putrid. And it was like burning rubber. I would smell burning rubber and I would taste heavy metal, I would taste like metal in my mouth. And my liver would get super inflamed. Like all my liver enzymes were like super elevated, my liver was just pissed off. And I went for ultrasounds and they’re like, yep, that’s a really big liver, it was very inflamed. And so I’d stop weight loss. And then everything would go back to normal. That was really frustrating. And I would do it again and again, I went to lose a bit more weight. After about 20 pounds it all come up, come back and I’d have to stop weight loss.

And it finally clicked, it finally dawned on me that it was the whatever junk like heavy metals was in my adipose tissue, my fat cells that when my body started releasing the fat, my liver just couldn’t handle it. And whether I mean, I have MTHFR like 25% on each end. So you know, there’s a little bit of gunk there, where my body needs a bit of help with methylation. But there was something definitely going on. And so I looked into how do I detox these heavy metals? How do I support my liver? I got a Sunlighten Sauna. It’s been just over a year. And I started sweating almost every day. Then I found a magnesium soak where your body actually absorbs grams of magnesium. And you can watch, like if you do the magnesium RBC blood test, you can watch it go up through soaking. And those two things shifted my whole world. It was amazing.

So definitely, I attest to the fact that magnesium and sweating and an infrared sauna play a huge role in detoxification. I’ve done a bunch of other stuff as well that I’ve noticed changes, but those are probably the two biggest ones for me that I saw huge, huge changes. And now when I lose weight, I don’t have that liver problem, which is really exciting. It took me a whole year of getting in the sauna and soaking in magnesium and doing all all like I said, all the other kinds of stuff. But now I don’t have that problem. So you know, we have to advocate for ourselves. We have to educate ourselves, we have to listen to our body and get really curious like what’s going on? Why is my body doing this? And then go to a wonderful doctor like you that’ll help us decipher the language our bodies trying to speak.

 

 

1:32:18 Dr. Greg Eckel: Perfect.

 

 

1:32:19 Ashley James: Yeah, awesome. So on your website, you have a summit that people can access if they have Parkinson’s or if they have neurological issues that they really want to learn more about how they can support themselves and they can go to www.naturecuresclinic.com. Tell us a bit about your website, and what kind of resources are available on it?

 

 

1:32:44 Dr. Greg Eckel: Well, I have two handouts on there. One is four signs of cognitive decline, and that’s the one that you can access through, you’ll get some more information around the Parkinson’s summit that I’m holding, interviewed seven experts in different facets of care for neurodegeneration and have had some really great feedback from folks and appreciation and just assembling this information for them. And then the other guide that I have is on pain and pain management. So the part of the Regenerative Medicine and regenerative stem cell therapies is it’s really renowned for regrowing joints; knees and hips and backs and brains and so I’ve got a guide on there as well, if you’ve got anybody that’s listening with pain or pain patterns, that is up on the site as well.

 

 

1:33:38 Ashley James: Very cool. Awesome and then people can work with you as well, www.naturecuresclinic.com. But if they want to come to you in Portland, tell us a bit about, what was this camp you have?

 

 

1:33:49 Dr. Greg Eckel: Oh, yeah. So I call it Camp Nature Cures. And so, I do have people fly in from around the globe. You know Portland is a destination city now for food and culture, it’s a really fun place to be. So, it’s kind of on the radar, but then we also have our Nature Cares Clinic. We’re right downtown at 10th and Taylor right next to the library and centrally located and we plug people into great restaurants and the arts etc. But you know, you come out for intensive, so I’ve had folks fly in from as far away as New Zealand at this point. And we’ll set people up with brain regenerative program. It’s a 10 day program, people come in for a battery of tests and treatments we’re doing stem cell regenerative therapies, acupuncture, Chinese herbs, we get them in the hyperbaric chamber twice a day.

So three hours a day of hyperbarics, we’re doing the IVs that help heal the body, they deal with that oxidative stress that you were talking about with the brain and you know really help the body. We give the body all of the information it needs to heal itself. So folks come in and coming into Camp Nature Cures because these therapies we can’t deliver them online energetically, yet. We’re looking for that thought, quantum physics and that increased curve that’s happening. But for now, we deliver them in person here at the clinic. Yeah.

 

 

1:35:32  Ashley James: I love Portland for the food scene as well. But I’m looking for the vegan and raw vegan. I get so excited. Like, yeah, let’s go to a raw vegan restaurant. And I have a raw vegan friend that used to live in Portland and he’d brag about the raw vegan scene and I’m pretty jazzed about all the healthy food that’s available  at Portland, but they do have bacon doughnuts that aren’t vegan.

 

 

1:36:00 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yes.

 

 

1:36:00 Ashley James: Yeah, they do have a lot of other kinds of foods in Portland. Well, very cool. I’m super excited that we were able to bring this information today and you’re welcome back on the show anytime because you can teach about allergies and asthma and orthopedics. I’d love to have you back on the show to dive into those topics as well.

 

 

1:36:23 Dr. Greg Eckel: Oh, that would be awesome. Thank you so much.

 

 

1:36:25 Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. Very cool. Is there anything left unsaid that you want to make sure that you convey before wrapping up today’s interview?

 

 

1:36:34 Dr. Greg Eckel: Yeah. You know, one of the big things that is a message of mine and just what I’ve been through is, it’s about love and you know, just if you haven’t, we want to spread more love and tell those around that you love them and give them big hugs and you know really look in their eyes, because we don’t know how long we’re on the planet together and it’s such a special time to have and kind of a sacred time. So, just the message of I would love to see more love out there, and so it starts with us and just go hug some people, your loved ones and make sure they know that you love them.

 

 

1:37:16 Ashley James: That’s beautiful. Thank you so much Dr. Greg Eckel. It has been such a pleasure having you here today. listeners can go to your website www.naturecuresclinic.com. Of course that link will be in the show notes for today’s podcast at www.learntruehealth.com and they can check out all those freebie, wonderful information that you’re giving away. Absolutely. They should sign up on your website to get more information from you. They should come visit Camp Nature Cures and some awesome fun treatments. And of course they can call you up and have a Zoom call with you over the internet. It’s been great having you here. Can’t wait to have you back on the show.

 

 

1:37:56 Dr. Greg Eckel: Thank you so much, Ashley.

 

 

 

Outro:

 

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Book by Dr. Greg Eckel

Shake It Off: A FAN-C Approach to Parkinson’s Disease

Recommended Reading by Dr. Greg Eckel

Anatomy Of An Illness by Norman Cousins

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