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

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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, [email protected] 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.com. takeyoursupplements.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

 

 

My three favorite holistic health products:

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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!

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.com. Gingernash.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.

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Recommended Readings:

Our Bodies, Ourselves – Judy Norsigian

Wild Feminine – Tami Lynn Kent

Pussy: A Reclamation – Regina Thomashauer

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Sauna Therapy and Heart Health with Dr. Joel Kahn

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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, [email protected]. 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!

Website

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Books by Dr. Joel Kahn

The Plant Based Solution

The Whole Heart Solution

The No B.S. Diet

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.

 

 

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.

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

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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Recommended Reading by Kristen Bowen

Healing Is Voltage by Jerry L. Tennant 

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!

Official Website

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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

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

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

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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

 

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:

 

Eyeing 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 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, www.takeyoursupplements.com. That’s www.takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

 

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Book by Dr. Greg Eckel

Shake It Off: A FAN-C Approach to Parkinson’s Disease

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https://learntruehealth.com/FDN

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Functional Lab Testing And Holistic Lifestyle Medicine https://www.learntruehealth.com/functional-lab-testing-and-holistic-lifestyle-medicine

Highlights:

• What is functional diagnostic nutrition?
• Getting information, identifying the key phrase and healing opportunities
• Focus on is underlying causes and conditions
• Catabolic and anabolic stress and how you can do lab testing to find out if you have it
• HIDDEN stressors and dysfunctions in the body
• Running lab tests to discover healing opportunities
• Investigating and looking at these critical markers for balance in your body
• looking for the hidden contributors to metabolic chaos and to the degree that the root causes are discoverable to work on it 

 

They say “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” but we all know that it’s not just an apple that we have to get in order to have a healthy body. Diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction and supplements can play a big role too. Listen to today’s podcast and listen to what Reed Davis has to say about things that you should know about to help you to optimize your health and your way to functional nutrition.

 

[0:00] Ashley James: Hello, True Health seekers and welcome to another exciting episode of Learn True Health podcast. I’m very excited for you to hear our interview today with Reed Davis, the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition.  A few months ago, I interviewed one of his graduates who practice as a health coach with this unique ability to do functional lab testing and then help their clients to find those healing opportunities that the labs present. It’s a different philosophy. A different lens that these health coaches look through to see how they can best serve their clients to finally resolve the metabolic chaos that’s been going on. We often treat symptoms and our medical system even someone has a thyroid condition for example and they think that that’s the root cause and so they’re treating the thyroid but thyroid dysfunction covers from something else. What causes the thyroid to have a dysfunction? And there are dozens of root causes. Functional Diagnostic Nutrition looks to solve that. Today we’re going to dive into what is Functional Diagnostic Nutrition and how can it help you to achieve the best health possible. Those who are already health coaches or in the holistic health field you’re going to love learning about Reed’s program. He has a wonderful online certification program where he teaches you how to do these labs. How to interpret them and how to then help the clients to get the results we’re looking for through lifestyle, diet and when needed, supplementation. If you’re not in the holistic health space and you’re not interested in making a career in helping people like becoming a health coach, you will still enjoy today’s interview because he does teach a lot of wonderful things. He’s told me that some people even take his course just to learn these tools for themselves which I thought was very valuable. After interviewing him, I enrolled in his program and I jumped in and I’m already in module two and I’m loving it. I’m absolutely loving it. I’m learning so much. What I really like about his program is it’s all “rubber hits the road.” There’s no fluff. You jump straight in and you begin learning. I’ve been studying with Naturopaths and doctors and reading tons of books and going to health lectures and obviously doing 300 interviews with doctors and in my first few days of being in his course I have learned stuff I have never heard off before. It’s really exciting. If you’re a health coach I hugely recommend checking out his course because as you know I’m a health coach, I’ve been doing this for several years. I’ve always felt that there’s a piece missing. This piece of looking at things objectively through the lens of proper labs. Reed talks about this today in the show. You’re going to really like the kinds of labs that he does. It’s not the kind of labs that you’re ever used to going to your doctor. These are totally different and it allows us to see where the metabolic chaos is. In some cases, actually, let us find the root cause but regardless of whether we find the root cause or not, they will allow us to see what we need to see in order to make the appropriate changes to support the body in coming back into balance. That’s very exciting. Enjoy today’s interview and please, check out the link. Learntruehealth.com/FDN.  As in Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. That’s Learntruehealth.com/FDN. Excellent. Enjoy today’s interview.

 

 

[04:01] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 376. I’m very excited for today’s guest, we have with us, Reed Davis. He’s the founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. An amazing company that helps people to become certified in functional nutrition. I definitely want to dive into that because we have a lot of health coaches that listen and this is a wonderful adjunct to those who are in the holistic health space or for people who want to get into the holistic health space, it’s a wonderful course that they can take. For those who aren’t, who just want to get their own health back and that’s why they’re listening. This episode is also perfect for you because we’re going to be talking about lab testing and the things that you should know about to help you to optimize your health. The things that going to a mainstream medical doctor, practitioner they just wouldn’t know to provide you and so Reed’s going to enlighten us today. Reed, welcome to the show.

 

[05:09] Reed Davis: Welcome. Thanks so much for having me here Ashley. It’s a real pleasure. Looking forward to trying to help some people.

 

[05:16] Ashley James:  Before we get started, you were telling me a bit about where you live which is a paradise up in the mountains. You’re living off a grid and you’re using a satellite phone. So far the connection’s been wonderful and every time we hear a little bit of a delay on the line we’ll just remember that you’re living in absolute paradise on a lake in the mountains. Totally off the grid and we so appreciate that you’re taking the time to educate us today.

 

[05:45] Reed Davis: Thanks again. I’m happy to answer anything I can. Tell you the history. It’s about helping people and trying to walk the talk. I’m here for you and your pleasure.

 

[05:57] Ashley James: Absolutely. I’d love to start by hearing your story. You are a certified nutritional therapist. You’re a holistic health practitioner. You founded this wonderful company that helps people to learn how they can do these lab tests for themselves and for their clients. Then what to do once they have the lab results, which I think the most important thing about. Right? It’s good to have the lab testing but then what do we do? Okay, so now I see that my liver enzymes are high but what do we do? You have wonderful course that helps people to learn functional nutrition. How did you start? What happened in your life that lead you to want to do this?

 

[06:41] Reed Davis: Yes. Thanks so much. It’s an amazing course in lab work and natural protocols to fix what you find. But it was a long time coming. Back in the 90s, I was doing environmental law. I came out of a law program at the University of San Diego. Went right to work saving the planet, birds, bees, air, water, trees. What can we do to clean up the planet and it’s very rewarding work. Frankly, I made millions of dollars for the owners but not for myself. As I increase therapist, my income didn’t grow up that much and southern California’s a very expensive place to live. So I was looking around for a way where I could be my own boss, work for myself but also continue the work. I turned my attention from saving the planet to people like what’s this environment if it’s killing off the bird and bees and air and water and trees and things. What’s it doing to people including myself? What’s it doing to me? I’m getting older too right? Back then I was probably in my 40s but I was again working hard and I went to work, changed jobs. I went to work at a clinic. It’s a wellness clinic or a wellness center in Southern California in San Diego area. It’s beautiful. People were lovely. I was really hired to run the business and help expand the business. But the owner who was a chiropractor. She allowed me to go with her kind of as an assistant. She was getting a diploma in nutrition for her chiropractic work. And said, “Hey, you can come along and you can get certified too.” Not a physician but I did that. This was remarkable, Ashley. You’ll love this. She let me work in her patients in between classes. I’d go into a lesson. Let’s say in detoxification come back and I had access to her patients to talk to them about their health and find out what’s going on and see if I can help them with this training that I was getting. I’ve had many other trainings since was you mentioned. Kind of been a certificate collector of sorts. I think everyone listening probably will see this in a way a learn freak. Just never satisfied with what you know. I know there’s a deeper layer. There’s something else I can learn. I was like that too but also, in the clinic, this is remarkable. Again, I had the ability to help clients and I fell in love with that side of it. I turn my attention instead of just running the clinic and helping to grow and things like that but I still had to do that but I fell in love with the clinical side that means working face to face with people. One of the things I noticed right away was that almost everybody walking to the door for their pain or whatever it was, they had multiple complaints and they’ve been to multiple practitioners trying to get some resolution or solutions to their problem. Some of them 10 doctors already. That just blew my mind. Even though I was neophyte that was 20 years ago, I said to myself and to them even ”Look, I’m going to be the last person you need to see. We’re going to figure this out.” I’ve been very good that the legal research and writing and I could understand fairly complex things and try to make it easy for people. That was another part of my job at that time we’ll just call it patient educator. I got to look at very complex things break it down and try to explain it people so that they could go out and do the things that took to get well.

I could just again, very fortunate with the stars lined up or whatever you want to put it. I met doctors who are running alternative lab work. Back then, 20 years ago, there was just standard medicine and alternative also known as quackery. Some of these doctors, I’ve learned from were not very low respected at that time. They were pioneering doing really important work especially with some of the labs that were coming out. The saliva testing, the urine testing, the stool testing. Things I would say above and beyond normal blood chemistry. Some of these people come in and they’re really sick. They just feel lousy all that time. Things about the way they look and the way they feel that they’re not happy with. Their physicians were saying, “Your bloodwork looks normal. Everything looks fine. You’re just getting old.” Or you’ve heard that before, right?

 

[11:28] Ashley James: Right. We’ll definitely get into this. Like what is normal? because they’re waiting until you’re in a disease state so they can give you a drug. If you’re unhealthy but you’re not yet sick enough not to be put on a drug to manage the disease, then they’re going to tell you that you’re fine. That’s if you go to a mainstream medical doctor.

 

[11:54] Reed Davis: Right. You’re considered by them to be sub-clinical. You haven’t reached that point where your bloodwork looks so out of whack that they can diagnose you. This is another the beauty of our work. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, Ashley. There is no medical diagnosis or treatment for that specific thing. Just for feeling lousy and you’re overweight and you’re tired or maybe there’s stuff going on with your sinuses, allergies, moodiness, irritability, digestive problem and all these things but you’re not at that point where you need to be referred to a gastroenterologist there’s something in a way standard measure. Back to the story, I’m seeing people in the office now, I started going into the public and recruiting. I bought a bone density testing machine. I started doing that two days a week. Clinic was open Monday, Wednesday, Friday and I work very hard. I do 12-14 hours a day easily or to a lot of weekends. A couple of days a week. I would go out and for 5 years, I’m going to go twice a week to these grocery stores. Some small chain about 30 stores. I would just go from one to the next, test people for their bone density and this is mostly women between I’d say 40 and 60 because that’s who gets checked and they’re getting early checks. I’d get certified in that part to use that machine kind of radiology limited tech certificate and I was doing this testing and then I was helping those women with that problem like they had low bone density and I got into the hormones and the immune systems and digest and detoxification. I learned how to run the labs. Again, I was very fortunate to be working with some physicians who let me run labs under their license as their protégé is you will. Actually as their alter ego because their licensure restricted them from what they could do let’s say for a person. This is still happening today that it- yes, you’re laughing but even just last week I was [Inaudible 13:58] I was at Medfit tour at the Washington athletic club in Seattle. I was speaking to a group up there about a hundred personal trainers and some physicians and one physician said, “I feel like my medical license are handcuffs. I’m just about ready to give up my license because I want to do what’s really right for people.” 20 years ago, it was worse. Doctors were just tied up to these model of diagnose-treat-diagnose-treat. Very small specific thing. It’s almost always it’s writing a prescription. I was actually like an alter ego.

I got to say to these people anything. Forget the diagnosis, what’s really wrong. Again the saliva testing, urine testing, stool testing, looking at hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification, energy production, and autonomic balance. The sympathetic para-sympathetic. I ran thousands of those labs on thousands of people. Mostly women because that seem most interested but then when we got some good results and actually some miracle cases early on. Just unbelievable things happened that told me I was on the right track. Then they would refer, they bring in their husbands, they bring in their kids. If you want I could tell you a quick story about an early case that gave me tremendous faith and hope and belief in what I was doing. A lady comes into the chiropractic office and you know, I would walk the patients back to the treatment room. I was also trained, took a course in Myo-fascia release. I could do a specialized trigger point therapy on their necks and upper shoulders and things before they got their chiropractic adjustment. One day I was taken aback and I could just tell she as not feeling right, she was depressed and I asked what’s wrong.  She said, “Reed, it’s this weight. This 40 pounds and I’m really depressed about it.” “What are you doing?” “Well, I can’t do anything because I’m on this medication for the hives. It was a steroid that makes me fat. So I talked to my doctor yesterday” and she said, “he said, Lady, you have your choice. you’re going to be overweight or you’re going to have the hives. Take your pick.” So yes, you can imagine. She’s just distraught. She said, “And I told him that was really depressing and he offered me to write a prescription for anti-depressants.”

 

[16:27] Ashley James:  Oh, of course!

 

[16:29] Reed Davis: Yes. So check this out. Again, this is a long time ago. I didn’t know really exactly I was doing. I was learning but I didn’t know I was doing but I was doing awfully a lot too. I said, “Susan, did anyone ever try to find out why you get the hives?” Her neck just about snapped, her head just about snapped out of her neck. You know she was, “Well, what do you mean”?” I said, “There’s a test you can find out. Are you sensitive to something? Is there something in your environment? There’s all kind of ways to investigate that. That’s what I do. I’m like a health detective.” She goes, ”No. No one’s ever mentioned that.” Anyway, to get to the chase, we get her take home some test kits. Found out that some things she was very sensitive to, got her off of those things. Mostly dietary and within two weeks, she was off her medication and she told her doctor, “I’m never going back on it again”. I found what the problem is and I’m avoiding it. Then 2 weeks after that she was off her medication. She was doing two things that she hadn’t done in a couple of years. One was take a hot shower because even on the meds she got the hives. The other is working out to the point of perspiration because even on the meds she got the hives. It completely changed her life. She became a happy person. She started losing weight. She started feeling like her old self. Now I have to add that there’s some other labs and the hormones and immune and digestion. There a lot of things you could tune up on a person. That just told me then that I was on the right track. So many stories like that where early on I did not know at all but I was figuring out a system of investigation. Where to look for these underlying causes and conditions instead of, “Here’s something for the hives and the depressants because you’ve gained 40 pounds. Here’s something for the depression.” It’s such a contrast as you will know.

 

[18:36] Ashley James: I love it. That was your early on experience which got you so excited about helping people that you were shocked to find out that when people go to their mainstream doctor, they wait until they’re sick, put them on a drug and then when they have a side effect. They put them on another drug for the side effect and so on and so forth. Instead of trying to figure out how to solve it. If we look back at the history of allopathic medicine, about a 150 years ago and start to look back to the beginning of what is now MD medicine. Right? If we look at the history we see that. This is not conspiracy theory. This is fact. We see that a large, a person, it was Carnegie who owned a pharmaceutical company is that one that invested in making sure that the education, he invested in all the universities that taught medical doctors to only teach basically how to prescribe drugs. To this day, the education of doctors is largely manipulated by the pharmaceutical companies. They don’t want doctors to learn how to get to the root cause of chronic illness. I love allopathic medicine for emergencies, for some surgeries, when it’s necessary especially emergency medicine. For some infections, that’s where they shine but take a chronic illness to an MD their wheelhouse, their toolset is drugs that manage symptoms not most of them not getting to the root cause especially when it comes to more sensitive tests like you said. Things like food sensitivities or understanding genetics, understanding diet and nutrition. They don’t have an education around that. Unfortunately, they have a hubris, not all of them but some of them have a hubris to assume that they know everything about health because they paid so much for their education, right? I have had a few MDs on the show who said to me, “I really thought I know everything.” And they really do. They think they know everything so when you come to them with hives, they don’t question what’s causing the hives. They just assume, “Okay, you have hives. You’re just going to have for the rest of your life, here’s a drug,” Same with my type II diabetes. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome and infertility all the problems I had all that. All the MDs told me was that we can manage it with drugs and I would be that way for the rest of my life and I will never have kids. I told you before we hit record because you asked me about my personal story but it was because I veered off and started to look for holistic solutions that I was able to resolve all of them. All of the things that the MDs said were my life sentences basically. I love that early on, you saw that there’s a huge need for functional diagnostic nutrition. What happened next? You were having these aha moments. Moments when you’re working with the clients in the clinic. What lead you to want to start functional diagnostic nutrition?

 

[21:11] Reed Davis: Yes, sure. You know I want to just follow up a bit on what you said first. The fact that allopathic physicians, they’re the best at what they do. They want to help it. They save lives every single day. If you get off of a plane from West Africa and your temperature is 106 and you’re bleeding out of your eyeballs or something. You don’t call your nutritionist, you go for the best standard care you possibly can find. The hospitals and doctors are full of people who could really help you at that point. Same thing if you have a car accident and your bone is sticking out of your arm bleeding. You don’t call your health coach and have it fixed, it’s so fantastic at that right? Really keep those things in mind. The next thing for me was just the sheer grind. I was just grinding for years? I didn’t stop to think about what kind of a big movement I could start or something like that. I was really enjoying myself. Earning a very good living. Building one of the busiest, we’ll call it a nutrition practice in the country, in the US. Again at San Diego. I was just doing my thing. Working in the office, really helping all the patients that were coming in. Learning how to teach them, how to educate them in plain English on the things that they could do. Which really in the big concept in the chiropractic office and wellness center. We had other doctors. Acupuncturist, we even had an osteopath but it’s not what you do in the office, its what you do at home in between office visits. That’s when I because an expert at. At least a guy with a plan, a guy with a system because it was all based on observation. If you run thousands of labs on thousands of people, you’re going to learn a few things. What I learned is where the alternative practitioners of the day we’re leaving planks.

There are this gaps in person with a health problem. There are gaps. It’s called the cycle of trial and error actually. You go to a physician he says, “All your bloodwork looks normal” or even if he says, “It looks abnormal” the answer’s just a prescription to treat the paper in most. Thyroids a perfect example. “You have a cluster of symptom sounds like thyroid.” so they run a thyroid test. Yep, pat myself in the back. “You have hyperthyroid. Here’s your medication.” It traces the paper definitely, they can adjust the doses to get the numbers on the paper that look like what they want. That doesn’t make the person any better. It’s treating the test results and the symptoms, not the person. The best blessing I had was not being able to write a prescription. Not being a doctor. You know at first I thought, I should be a doctor so I can help these people. No. Grinding it out for years and years in the office, running to labs to figure out what’s really wrong and then how to fix it. What does that person need to go home and do in between doctors’ visits? I came up with that DRESS for health success system. The D-R-E-S-S. We can get it into that what that is, that’s the lifestyle medicine that there’s now band-aid about by lots of pundits. People who might have come and got training in something. Even people that take my course, they’re much better educated once they’re done but grinning it out being on the discovery levels was happy days. Just working hard. You asked, how to finally turn that into FDN. I was out lecturing not only doing my screenings with the bone density machines. I invented other screening just to get people and get them doing some lab work. Get them running some saliva and urine testing which is easy to take home. It’s not expensive and everyone can do it, so anyone can run these labs. Getting information, identifying, this is the key phrase. Healing opportunities like what’s really wrong.

Again if you’re hormone balance, if you’re not breaking down assimilating food very well if your liver is congested, you won’t be detoxifying your body and on and on. If the immune system is overactive or underactive. These are not medical diagnosis they’re just identifying healing opportunities, things that a person can fix. Of course, it isn’t but one of the trainings I took taught us to substitute drugs with supplements. I tried that for a while and that didn’t work. It’s much more than just a naturopathic medicine should be much more than just “Here’s the test, here’s the wrong in the paper, here’s some supplements that can fix it.” versus “Here’s some drugs that’ll fix it.” That’s not what would work for me. Again, the whole entire lifestyle medicine thing. I started figuring out how do I know what is the right diet for everybody. Everyone has to eat. You’re made of food. I used to weigh 8 pounds when I was born now I weigh 198 pounds pretty big guy. Where that extra weight come from?  It came from food. You ate food and it built the body. So that’s really important. Then also, rest or sleep but rest, knowing how to really get good deep non-realm rest is critical to having a healthy body. Then the exercise, I became a personal fitness trainer and all of that learning about the physical body. Then, of course, another letter is – so that’s Diet, Rest, Exercise, D-R-E-S-S, it spells DRESS for health success. Diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction and then, of course, the supplements. I put supplements last. They’re what people want to start with but I don’t really believe that. They’re important but it’s really the D, the R and the E and the first S, stress reduction. You’ve heard that word stress before, right? You probably don’t have any but there’s so many different kinds. I learned about stress.

A matter fact I read in 2001, in an article in a naturopathic medicine that that was responsible for 50% of office visits and up to 80% of chronic degenerative disease. Some form of stress. I looked into different types of stress. Mental, emotional, physical trauma and of course, what I specialize in, is the environmental and the biological biochemical stressors, chemical stressors. It’s really a holistic lifestyle program that was developed over years of working with people, finding out what works how do you customize it. Based upon the actual healing opportunities that I discovered with the labs. If you run thousands of labs in thousands of people and you pay attention, I made observations on who got better and who didn’t. It should be no surprise to anyone listening, those people who worked closest to the underlying cause were the ones who got better but it was not so intuitive. This is where it kind of takes the twist where you really have to be observant is people with the exact same set of symptoms can have them for completely different upstream dysfunction. One person with the thyroid disorder where they’re hypothyroid, whereas their thyroids not making enough T4 or is making T4 but was not converting into T3 properly. Those are basics. Why? Instead of just giving them medication, we want to know why. What I’ve discovered in 10 people, you might find 10 different reasons why. That’s the not so intuitive part that helped me developed functional diagnostic nutrition, the entire program. Which is the investigation, which labs were on? Which observations can be capitalized on. We’re going to make some observations about healing opportunities as long as we’re given time, we can capitalize on those. Again, if you have a temperature of a 106 and you’re bleeding out of all references, don’t call me. Go get checked out first. If you have a big, blood’s on your forehead like some tumor growing. That needs a more attendant care,  emergency care. You go get that handled but then what? You come back and we do a program for you. This holistic functional diagnostic nutrition and the Dress For Health success program. That took a lot of years.

 

[31:27] Ashley James: Very cool. As you developed this, did you see when you applied DRESS, the Dress For Health success to everyone that you got even better results?

 

[31:42] Reed Davis: Well, yes. Today, 11 years ago I was asked to teach the system. It wasn’t good enough for one guy in California to be using it. How many people could I actually serve? Again, I had one of the busiest practices in the country. I was told that by my vendors. The people that I did business with especially a couple of the laboratories. They said, “Who the hell are you? No one does this much lab work.” If this was on the doctor’s office and there’s five doctors working there, “Who are you again? You’re a nutritionist? You’re doing all these lab work?” Well yes, I did it actually because I didn’t know you can’t do it. [Laughter] Like, “You can’t do that. Who are you? You can’t do that.” and I just would explain how hard I’d like to work and the number of people and the system I was developing. Finally, it’s became time to start chasing it to other practitioners. I started deputizing with just about anyone at first. There’s a lot of they didn’t call them health coaches back then now there’s a lot medical health coaches, I think we’re pioneer in that area because they’re allied practitioner we’re not medical doctors for the most part. We have personal trainers and people who do raki and nutrition and dietitians and nurses and physical therapist and you just name it, chiropractors, acupuncture. Basically not MDs. What they want to focus on is underlying causes and conditions. Ashley, really quickly we’re talking about the history. It’s really important. In 1903, Thomas Edison said a very famous quote from the great inventor who was right about a lot of things but he was wrong about this and I see people using this quote all over the place it says, “The doctor of the future would give no medicine. But will interest his patients instead in care of the human frame in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” What is wrong? Doctors are still giving medicine. It’s 113 years later? When is the future? If it’s not now, when is it? If physicians are still giving medicine, who then is going to interest the person in the care of the human frame in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease? It’s health coaches and allied practitioners. We’re the ones. We’re the army if you will saying, give the care of disease to physicians. We freely grant them full monopoly. We don’t care about disease, you’re the experts. You studied disease. You studied symptoms that might kill someone. That’s a good thing. They can do stuff that I can’t do. I can’t order a CT scan to see if you have tumors and other great things that they can do. Although some of that is a big waste of money. I had client once who, I mentioned to her she was going to take that supplement. There’s possibility of that you might get a little bit of vasodilator headache. You might get some headaches if you take too much of this stuff. So back off you go back down to the original dosage and things like that. About 3 weeks later, I’m talking to her and she goes, “I’m going in for a brain scan from my headaches.” I go, “what?” she goes, ”I called my doctor and I told him I’ve been having headaches for three weeks, she wants to give me a brain scan.” I said, “Well okay, if three weeks, how long have you been taking that supplement that I suggested to take?” she said, “About 3 weeks.” Doctors look for brain tumors or things and we work in different ways. I think you get the point I’m trying to make. It’s good to get your brain scan I guess. I can’t order that test but it’s good to have a doctor around who’s licensed to do that but we look for things in a different way. What are the healing opportunities, it’s a different set of labs.

 

[36:11] Ashley James:  It’s a different philosophy. You’re looking at that through a different lens right? Looking for the healing opportunities and doctors are looking for what drugs can I prescribe. That’s their toolset. It’s a different philosophy.

 

[36:25] Reed Davis: It’s totally different. Again, back to this idea that there’s gaps. People are caught in a cycle of trial and error. There isn’t enough health coaches and allied practitioners around. The purpose and the fact that the populations getting more unhealthy. Drug uses getting more rampant. We have people being advertised to and television. Going to the doctors and saying, “Hey, I want to try these medication for whatever.” The doctor is they’re kind of market followers. “Well like, okay.” They’re trying to meet the demand. They wouldn’t just indiscriminately do it but you get the point I’m trying to make. We see the health of people getting worse. A doctor I was talking to, a good guy, he said to me, ”Reed, you know we’re ranked 38.” He goes, “In terms of health, United States had ranked second from the bottom of 48 civilized countries or whatever. Like that.” We’re ranked second from the bottom. Why is that?

 

[37:42] Ashley James: But we spent the most as a country, we spend the most on, they call it health care but it’s disease management. Yet we are basically getting the word results. If it was a country, if we looked at each country like a company, like a business. Like Amazon as a business. If Amazon was spending the most amount of money, and getting the second to last worst results like in terms of sales retention whatever. They would fire the CEO immediately and completely restructure their business or they’d go out of business. But because it is a for-profit business, there’s no sense. They don’t want to change it because they’re profiting. They’ll say, you’ll see that statistic like if you’re a type I diabetic or if you’re an insulin-dependent type II diabetic, they’ll say the cost to be a diabetic is $12,500 on average per person per year. They make it sound like it’s a cost to the country. Its cost but in fact, it’s profit. A diabetic is profiting the industry that doesn’t serve us that is not getting results. Why would they want to change? They’re profiting? Right? But we are the people as individual we are the ones getting screwed over because we’re getting the second to least results compared to all the other countries but we could go to a different country, spend less on health but you know that would go costly to fly or drive to a different country depending on where you live. Here we are. We’re stuck. But we have to do something different, right? We don’t want to leave the country we’re in for health care although some people do called medical tourism. So here we are. We have to understand that the system we have gets the second to worst results yet we pay the most for it. We have to understand that we’re stuck with that system but we’re not stuck with needing to go to an MD for absolutely everything. We have to understand like you pointed out, wonderful people to go to for certain things and for healing opportunities go to an allied practitioner like a health coach or naturopathic chiropractor. I don’t know about calling a Naturopath an allied practitioner because they’re legitimate doctors but they see it through a different lens.

Going to someone other than a doctor that’s just going to prescribe drugs. We need to take our health into our own hands. That’s why the listeners listening right now. So they can become educated and they can be highly informed and advocate for their own health. I will say one final thing on this, I say it often but we have new listeners all the time. As I’ve done all these interviews which I’ve done over 370 interviews for the last few years, it dawned on me somewhere along the line that if you want to be a statistic, do what everyone else is doing. The statistics right now, I believe it’s 1 of 3 people would get a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. One in 3 people are obese. Or you know, overweight in an unhealthy way. One in 3 people have diabetes or pre-diabetic. And then you look at heart disease. My dad died of heart disease. My mom died of cancer so both two topics close to my heart. That we can help the listeners prevent it. Heart diseases is 100% reversible and preventable. I interviewed Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn a cardiologist who’s in his 80s who still practices today helping people reverse heart disease with diet. The point in this is that we could take action but we have to remember that we need to be summoned swimming upstream if we do what everyone else is doing, we’re going to be statistic. We have to be a little bit controversial. Right? Go get some lab tests done that a regular doctor would scoff at maybe. Change your diet, change your lifestyle. Look at that stress. Look at exercise. Look at all the things that the average person doesn’t in order to live along healthy life without disease. I’m so glad you’re going to outline some great actionable steps we can take today, you created the DRESS for success system to help people see that there are pillars of health that they could take into their own hands every day. To build their health and then using the abs, you look for healing opportunities to target what the body is saying it needs to focus on.

 

[43:23] Reed Davis: Exactly. That was a mouthful and very good. You were a change maker. Someone’s going to help change this system. Let’s just say the two systems can both exist. Again, it’s not like a wave to eliminated allopathic medicine we just can let that team have control over everything and us because they will just make us consume. We’re just going to be consumers of their stuff. The province of Ontario, we’re both from Ontario right? in Canada. I heard statics recently in the last couple of years, by 2020 60% of the entire Ontario government’s budget. 60% of the budget will go to healthcare. By 2025 or somewhere in there, another 10 years, maybe 20 30 even it will be 80% of the entire government’s budget will just go towards healthcare. Now everybody’s going to be on a the medical dole if you will. Just for all the money’s going to go. It’s a system where you’re right, there is greed and a lot of profit motivation for this. The people who are in the receiving end of the check, like government’s writing the check, who’s getting the check? Who’s getting paid? We want to change people’s thinking. I also just want to throw in that what we do is for profit also. I learned to make a living helping people. It’s an honest living though. It’s doing work, it’s very rewarding that does some good in the world. It will be a legacy, it will be passed on. You and I are of the same elk we’re working together to affect those kind of change and you don’t do it by going along with the pack. You do it by doing somewhat controversial. At least, can’t I ask some questions? Like if you go to a physician, he says, “Yes. I found your problem. You’re hypothyroid that why you’re tired and constipated and gaining weight and can’t lose it, your hairs falling out and you feel sad. It’s hypothyroid. Here’s your medication.” If you say that, “Doctor, why is my thyroid underactive?” We don’t know it’s idiopathic.

When you hear that word, idiopathic means, it means they’re not looking for the answer. It really means, “We don’t know but it means we’re not looking because that’s not how they operate. It isn’t by the way just the drug companies, it’s insurance companies play a huge part in it. That goes back to original comments Ashley about physicians feel like they’re wearing handcuffs. They can’t say anything else. They get reprimanded by their board. If they’re selling supplements, their office are doing some of these things, alternative stuff insurance doesn’t pay for it. They can get a letter to cease and desist or we’ll take your license away. How many are brave enough to say, “Go ahead. Take it. I’m going to do some good in the world and you can keep it.” They’re not just brave at this point. There’s got to be another system not to replace it but to operate side by side that can end up being a bigger system. The one that the people choose when the people go to. I’ve been a working-class here all my whole life. I’ve always admired them anyway. I actually do right to Harley Davidson through the mountains of California at least three times a week and try to do some good in the world and enjoy the lives that walk the talk. I can’t say profits are a bad things I’m just saying you can make an honest living helping people if you want to. That’s a big part of my course is showing other people to of this as a profession. Most people would sign up to their own health and their families. They just want to learn, it’s very affordable. I do this post-grad interviews and I always ask every single graduate in my program I personally interview and I have for 11 years. I have done thousands of interviews that’s “Why did you take the FDN course? What did it meant to you?” Way more than half would say, 75% say, “My own personal health challenges have been completely resolved, partially resolved. I’m working on it. I’m on my journey I felt so much better. I can’t wait to share it with others. I’m going to go out there and now I’m going to do this for a living.” Or we’ve had people start their business, augment their business or shift from whatever they were doing for living to doing this for a living. It’s okay to make money, as long as you’re doing some good in the world in my opinion. 

 

[48:22] Ashley James: It is not evil. I want every single one of my listeners to live a life that they absolutely love and be well taken care of. To have the means to have the amount of money that provides them with the ability to live their dreams. Money is not evil, it’s what you do with it. You have to give your money, I just paid my bills today so I just paid our health insurance and we don’t buy the most expensive but we don’t buy the most cheap. I always buy the one that covers holistic medicine but we’re nowhere reaching our deductible because we obviously use it a bunch but we do go to our Naturopath, to our chiropractor, acupuncture. That kind of thing. It’s $1,500 a month for the three of us for our family. Last year it was a different plan, it was $1,800. I’m like every time I pay it, I just feel resentment. I feel frustrated. I think to myself why don’t I just not have health insurance and then just save some money or put aside then there’s all these diff options and I’m so obviously like I do the podcast and I’m a very hard worker and I get this podcast to help as many people as possible. That’s a huge percentage of our income goes towards medical expenses for a system that is broken. For a system that isn’t getting results. Right? If this system was designed, if every practitioner had your course, every practitioner in the entire world, even every MD knew what you taught and they practice what you taught, our medical bills would be so small it would save us so much money. Every time I pay it I feel resentful because I’m paying a system that doesn’t work. Now I absolutely have id be overjoyed to pay a functional medicine practitioner and I want them to profit because they get results.

It’s about results. It’s evil when you have to give something or a company you have to pay some money to something that gets very poor results and you feel like you’re ripped off. It’s more about feeling ripped off whereas with functional diagnostic nutrition, I know it gets results. Just like seeing a Naturopath I know I’m going to get significantly better results than seeing an MD for certain issues. You want to go the right practitioner from the results you want. I think that’s just really important to understand that there are these allied practitioners out there. I’ve had listeners contact me that said, “I never knew that Naturopaths existed until I listen to your show.” They just didn’t know. Because that’s not part of the mainstream I guess, Hollywood right? And TV and media. The media we consume growing up is all about ER and Grey’s Anatomy and there’s no show following acupuncturists around. I think that’ll be hilarious. I definitely want to get into understanding a bit about the tests. That if you could give us some examples of lab tests that people when they take your course that they learn to order both for themselves and also for their clients and to just give us a contrast compared to like what someone would get when they go to an MD versus when they’re going to a functional diagnostic nutritionist?

 

[52:09] Reed Davis: Fantastic. The place to start the labs is how do you think about it? It’s really a state of mind or we call it FDN a methodology. Methodology is a method with a way of thinking attached to it. There’s a philosophy or a state of mind that’s required. Since for non-physician, we can’t diagnose and treat conditions. That would be practicing medicine without license. We don’t want to. We want to just get the underlying causes or conditions. They’re not always identifiable the so called root cause. You hear people talking about this. You may never find the root cause. It could be really well hidden or there just isn’t enough test. There’s no test that’s for sure. It’s not that this blood work that they’re running. We might be 50 or hundred years away to a blood test that tells you everything if it ever happens. We’re definitely not in a land of Star Trek where I don’t know if you remember Dr. Macoy had that little thing and he would wave it over the patient’s chest and then “Oh, it’s this or that here’s your shot of whatever” and that was really allopathic even though it was supposed to be way in the future. Those things don’t exist. The root cause may be very hard to determine but you can still have an effect upon it. That’s the thinking that you can have an effect upon the root if you can just get close to it. People are coming again on that second they’ve been told by their physician that there’s nothing wrong with you or you’ve got this or that and here’s your pills. Let’s treat the paper. They’re in a cycle of trial and error. Those people where they do? They go online. They’re going to get a million hits on any condition they put in. You type in diabetes or thyroid or digestion disorder. Whatever it is. You’re going to get a million of things to look at. Or you go in your neighborhood and you find there’s a guy down the street doing even Naturopaths and so they do a diet program, they’d do an exercise program, they do a supplement therapy. They do some other therapy with some gizmo and they’re making a ton of money kind of praying on people’s discomfort. People are stuck in the cycle and they get pretty desperate.

They just want someone that can help them. They’re spending a ton of money, people are making a ton of money but it’s really not filing the needs and the way we know that is people still walking around with all other problems. If something besides what we do and we’re just catching on really work then all these other people would be out of business. That would be part of my objective is to get more people doing what really works. Anyway, so you got this way of thinking that there’s an underlying cause or condition and how close can we get to it. We can’t give them medical diagnosis and we don’t want to. I have one diagnosis and you might have heard this I call it metabolic chaos. There’s just things wrong going the body. Everyone has different weak links in metabolism. There are thousands and thousands of metabolic processes going on in the body 24hrs a day. Most of them under control of the autonomic nervous system. Your sympathetic and parasympathetic balance of course and all these other things going on. There’s this idea that if symptoms incurred somewhere downstream that’s just another problem is showing up. Upstream from that is dysfunctional and misprocesses and above that is just what I call is metabolic chaos. Things are not working the way they designed it to work. The design is perfect you don’t have to teach these cells what their job is certainly. You don’t have to teach any tissue what kind of tissue it is. It knows if it’s a brain tissue or adrenal tissue or muscle tissue whatever. All the cells, tissues, organs and systems, the what their job is it’s just being interfered in some way and not supported in some way. Everyone’s so different that the opportunity for voids in that system for weak links is just really abundant. There are just millions of things that could be going on. Some of them all at once. We have one diagnosis. It’s metabolic chaos. There’s stuff going on. Our way of looking at it. This is just the discoveries that I’ve made.

Ashley, I’m answering your question now. I ran five labs in every person. And it’s because all the people I try to help, we start with a lady who had low bone density and then what helps with bone density, the hormones, we start testing hormones. What I found out just by working with people, sheer numbers. The people who had low bone density when we worked at their hormones, not only could we help them with their boned density but they felt better. They got more energy, their brain fog went away, their sex drive came back, their weight normalized, their immune system improved but still it wasn’t quite whether something else – I learned to check for hormones in every person using saliva testing and we checked the immune system. You can use saliva testing for that. Which I found out that when I ran another test, we call the metabolic assessment profile which is a urine test. We checked digestion to make sure they’re actually breaking down and absorbing food properly and that leads into dysbiosis and things going on in the gut that just aren’t right. Also detoxification. Is the liver clearing the blood that we’re supposed to? Three pints of blood a minute go through the liver. Three pints a minute? That’s a lot of blood flowing through your liver and most of that blood is supplied off of the digestive tract. There is some blood coming in the rest of the body to the liver through an artery but the rest of it comes it sort of drained off the digestive system. You got all these things going on. Again, you can make observations. You can collect saliva, you can collect urine, you can collect stool and you can collect blood of course. And start making observations.

This happened over a long period of time. I ran a ton of labs and I narrowed it down to what would give me the most healing opportunities for the money. People are going to invest, they have to pay me my professional fees and they have to pay for the lab work. It sounds like where am I going to get a lot of people who do that? they’re everywhere because people are sick. They’re sick and tired of being on it, the cycle of trial and error that they’re in and will spend out of their pocket. Last year you said you’re spending over $20,000 a year on what’s so called health care like insurance and it doesn’t even cover the kind of health care that you want. It really covers like emergencies that’s not a bad thing. Maybe you should buy insurance that only covers emergencies for $5,000 a year. That’d be reasonable. The rest of the money you spend it where you want. On care of the human frame or on diet and the causes and prevention of disease. You could spend it a little better and execute everything cover that you want for your 20 grand. That more than some people make by the way. Some families of three or four people. At least in this country. You got this mindset. It’s a methodology, it’s a step by step process. I ran those five labs in everyone. Hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification, healing opportunities, energy production, and nervous autonomic balance. Sympathetic and parasympathetic have to be balanced for your body to function, right? We look for these opportunities. Now some person we might find 10 things to work on, another person five someone else, 15. It just depends on the person. Everyone is different. Everyone has this vital voids or weak links in metabolism. Again, we’re not diagnosing or treating some specific disease look here’s what’s wrong with your body. If you fix those things, then downstream what you see in your doctor for hyperthyroidism, irritable bowel or chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia or brain fog, cloudy thinking all these things. That stuff should go away if we fix everything upstream.

As a matter of fact you can remember it like this the word hidden. I call them the hidden stressors and dysfunctions. Hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification, energy production, and nervous system balance. H-I-D-D-E-N. Easy to remember right? Yes. H-I-D-D-E-N, the hidden stressors, and dysfunctions. You ran some small handful of labs, they’re not that expensive you can get them done and you have a professional. I’ve trained almost 3,000 people. I’ve trained those for you because everyone’s an individual and it matters whose test results are these. That’s another down side to allopathic medicine is everyone’s the same. All of their studies are on what’s called a cohort. No one person that it applies to it. On a group of 50,000 people approved lifespan by 20% with this drug. Of course, 18 of those people died from the drug and another 19 are permanently braindead or something damaged. You get the point? So we don’t work with cohorts. We work with individuals. That’s the other part of the methodology. It’s a method step by step it’s a way of thinking about the human body in each person individually.

We look for this healing opportunities in the HIDDEN stressors and dysfunctions that I just determine overrunning of thousands of labs on thousands of people will get you the best results. Will get you back to sleeping well. Get up feet on the floor running. You got lost of energy to get through. If you eat your breakfast, you know you’re going to have energy to get through to lunch get a lot of stuff done. Same thing between lunch and dinner and then you’re still going to have energy and clear thinking to enjoy your kids and all the stuff that we all want to do. It’s all high-quality life. Also preventative. My theory in anti-aging using that system, you should feel 40 until you’re 80. Anti-aging isn’t, you don’t wait until you’re 65. Look I’m 66 years old, think honest 20 years ago when I was pretty much abusing my body without knowing. I call it a well-used body. I’ve done some bad things to it but I was trying to fit in this methodology and also approach as an anti-aging tool. It will get you over the things that you’re dealing with that you don’t like about the way you look or feel. Without going to physician getting medical diagnosis and treating that specific thing with drugs or worse surgery. So once you do this assessment and it will include a very careful history taking of your complaints or the main ones you want to go away. How often those things bother you, how long has it been going on, what things you tried first, what’s your motivation running your life, you have to be motivated client for us to take you on. We would run those labs and then we would individualize the protocol, design a d-r-e-s-s program. Be very happy to go into the more details on the labs if you want. Like what hormones we’ll look at or what markers or we could go towards the DRESS program. How does that work? What are the specific questions?

 

[01:04:41] Ashley James: This is good. Let’s start with because I know my listeners are probably on the edges of the seat going, “Yes, tell us more of these labs.” We have a Facebook group. The Learn True Health Facebook group and so many times people are asking about labs by we have to have the right philosophy and mindset when looking at labs. We can’t be reductionist which is like allopathic medicine just looking at one thing like I’m going to look at the liver and that’s very reductionist just to look at one organ only. We need to look at the whole system because every organ affects the other. Every hormone affects, everything affects everything right? We need to look at everything as a whole. When you’re looking at thyroid and you’re looking at cortisol and liver and digestion and energy and sleep and all these. What I’d love to know if you could give some examples of labs or what are the absolute must labs that you always run with people. Of course it’s individualized because one person comes to you and their health history is all about digestion the other comes to you and it’s all about headaches and maybe nervous system stuff. doesn’t seem related but you dive in deeper and absolutely could be related because again, everything affect everything in the body. Please explain more about these labs that people learn to run in the functional diagnostic nutrition course and learn to run on themselves and their clients.

  

[01:06:16] Reed Davis: Again, back to the early days of doing the bone density testing. One I was finding is that I should look at hormones at every person. I was doing it just specific to the bones but I realized after a while testing enough people, that “Wow. This is critical for all kinds of reason not just how it affects the body.” Just what you just said, it affects everything. We run a saliva test. We take a morning, noon, afternoon, nighttime saliva sample. We look at cortisol and DHEA. Cortisol is your stress hormone. You could look at the pattern of cortisol and DHEA which is a counter regularity to your stress hormone. You have stress hormones which are catabolic and it breaks your body down. You’re under stress and then you have the anabolic beginning with DHEA, that’s the parent of your sex hormones, so that’s your anabolic. You need catabolic and anabolic balance. The bodybuilding up and the body breaking down. There’s a normal amount of each. Does that makes sense? Let’s look at catabolism. We find people that are overly catabolic. They’re cortisol dominant. Their bodies are breaking down. It’s not like you’re going to treat the paper like “Oh, here’s something for the other side.

We’re not just going to prescribe or recommend. There’s supplements that can do that. You can treat the paper even in naturopathic medicine. We start obviously what? Looking for the stressors. Why are you in this catabolic state? Is it just mental-emotional? When I say they were stressed? What do people think? They hate their boss, their kids, god I don’t know. They have mental-emotional stress but there’s also physical trauma and things like pain. Walking around in pain is very stressful. The body responds the same to either thing if your neck hurts its response is catabolism. Cortisol dominance. If you are in a  fight with your spouse all the time it responds the same way. Also the same thing with internal hidden stressors that dysfunctions in your bodies that occur over time or parasites, bacteria, funguses, viruses or food sensitivities, and things. Environment influences, new draperies can cause hell in the household because the outgassing of chemicals and fire and other things. What we do is we look at that to assess the cortisol DHEA ratio as a marker for catabolic anabolic balance. We need to get this in balance or nothing else matters. Why treat one little thing downstream when we can go upstream to a major factor like that. Oh, by the way instead on a pathway of investigating the stressors and some of that again, requires the investigation, the intake, careful history taking and things. A person might have a hobby that’s actually hurting them.

They’re spray painting little figurines in their garage sucking up paint spray, that’s not a good thing. Anyway, you get the point, there’s investigation involved including the lab work. We can look for food sensitivities, parasites, bacteria, fungus, viruses and things that they don’t even know is there and physicians are looking for the most part. We look at a major thing like hormone balance. The catabolic anabolic hormones and also while you’re doing that. As long as you’re collecting saliva, one I look at the sex hormones because estrogen need to be in balance with progesterone in women testosterone needs to be balanced and we can even look at melatonin. That’s not a sex hormone but that’s hormone that’s important we can get that from the night time sample. We can do a morning, noon, and nighttime evening – morning noon, afternoon and night time saliva sample. Get a lot of information and frankly again, standard physicians don’t recommend tests they’re not looking for that. They’re looking for disease. They’re looking for a way, cholesterol or whatever it is that they’re looking for deepening on your complaint. That’s some pretty important test. Saliva test to cover those things. Again this was just one of the first tests I started running because I was looking for a specific thing like bone density but I found out the ramifications of it by running thousands of it and giving those same people things to do. To look at the stressors, let’s run some more labs and narrow it down to these five labs. That’s one. It’s a hypothalamic pituitary adrenal stress indicator type test. We’ll also run by the way saliva’s easy to collect at home and send in at your convenience and it’s not really expensive so it’s a good investment as is this urine testing that we do.

Again easy collecting at home. We look at that digestive marker. Are you breaking down protein? By what you collect in the urine. You can see how well a person’s breaking down protein. If you’re not breaking down protein, I see amino acids. Amino acids turn into neurotransmitters. Think of all the ramifications of having neurotransmitters are out of balance. Your moodiness, your irritability and all the other things that are going on in your body that require good neurotransmitters. The other things that amino acids are good for like they’re the building blocks of all the enzyme and tissues in your body. Things like that. It’s remarkable how important breaking down protein is. That same marker, if you’re not breaking down protein, how well do you think you’re breaking down your carbohydrates and your fats? There’s other ways to look at that but it’s a great test and on the same lab, the same urine sample, again we’re trying to get the most bang form the book. We can look at oxidative stress. What’s another indicator of excessive stress at some form toxins or something in your environment. You could be over-exercising, you could be smoking, you could be exposed to other toxins or you could get internal toxic producing organisms or processes. So we look at oxidative stress. Basically if you cut open an apple, it turns brown, right? That’s oxidative stress. Oxygen, free radicals, and excess of that is a bad sign. It’s great marker as an overall assessment of health. Something again physicians just aren’t looking at because it’s an insidious long term contributor to chronic degenerative disease.

 

[01:12:59] Ashley James:  I did not know that you could do urine testing to see your oxidative stress. That’s amazing. Just thinking about oxidative stress, one of the Naturopaths that mentored me he described, he’s a pathologist before he became a Naturopath, he says that cholesterol, the bad cholesterol is oxidized cholesterol, it’s oxidized fat. It’s not, it doesn’t cause disease in and of itself. It’s like saying, look over there there’s smoke. It’s the effect of oxidation. If you take someone who eats fries everyday like fried and deep-fried, that contributes hugely to oxidative stress to the body. Eating anything with oil and fried food. So that person would then have that. Have high levels of oxidative stress but also people are low in selenium for example because selenium recycles the body’s own glutathione which is our antioxidant and so I can see where your starting to put the puzzle pieces together because you’re looking at their diet and their lifestyle. If you see that their melatonin is low and that saliva test and that you see that their protein is low in that urine test you’re like, there you go because their melatonin’s low because they’re not getting the amino acids to the body needs to make the melatonin so you’re starting be that detective. Am I on to something there? Is that how it works?

 

[01:14:29] Reed Davis: Yes. I’m impressed with your knowledge of oxidative stress. It’s another form of stress that creates an imbalance between the free radicals and the body’s ability to counteract them. That’s why we take anti-oxidants and we include anti-oxidants in our diet. We need the vitamin C, D, and E and these things from food hopefully but if not, you can take some if you take excessive oxidative stress you want to increase the anti-oxidants but you also want to go, that started the immediate care idea. Again, we don’t want to just treat the paper or use the paper to sell supplements or supplement program. That’s another unfortunate occurrence but we want to find out why again it could be over-exercise, smoking or something else hidden. We would just use it with the detective mentality. Like here it is, here’s the problem, your oxidative versus anti-oxidative balance is off. You have an imbalance, let’s correct it. That’s a pillar as you mentioned that can be corrected with our lifestyle program.

 The diet and supplements especially the right kind of exercise, getting the right amount of sleep all these things are critical. So far, we’ve looked at saliva testing, all the hormone, anabolic and catabolic balance, the balance between the sex hormone, getting a peek at melatonin which is I could fill in the blanks in there more, that’s a great anti-oxidant by the way. Most of us made in the gut, people aren’t aware of that. They think it’s just from the penile glands at night time, not true. You do this saliva test, you do this urine test, we said we can look at how well you can breaking down protein which is reflective of how you’re breaking down other things. It’s also reflective of the dysbiotic condition we find in people’s guts. Not enough good flora vs the bad flora. That’s where a lot of your protein that comes from. It’s the bacterial breakdown. We’re looking at that for a saliva, form a urine test on the same urine test, let’s look at the oxidative stress. From the same urine test, we’re going to look at liver function. It’s not the enzymes and things that physicians look at to see if you have a disease it’s just that it congest it. If you’re spilling this it violates and sulfates over into the urine, they collected by kidneys and excreted and we can measure them. If you have a congested liver like before the recording started, we talked a little bit about this scenario that you might want to work on. We see people are overweight there’s so much fatty liver around, it’s unbelievable. Liver it does a lot of things. A couple hundred different operations but if you just look at it as a vacuum cleaner bag collecting toxins and unwanted particles off the digestive track and wherever you’ve got to change your vacuum cleaner bag don’t you?

If you ever changed a bag in a vacuum cleaner the old ones that used to have bags you know that it runs a good vacuum cleaner when you changed that bag when it gets too stuff it’s not working, you put a bag in it, you get a brand new vacuum cleaner. The liver can be assessed that way. That what’s included in this urine test. We’ve only run two tests, we haven’t spent much money but we’ve discovered a lot of healing opportunities. The catabolic anabolic imbalances, the sex hormone imbalances, the low melatonin could be real problem point to figure out, gut dysfunction and things, we’ve looked at dysbiosis and protein and other food breakdown. We’ve looked at the oxidative stress, we’ve looked at liver congestion. That’s a lot of bang for the book and we haven’t given any medical diagnosis. I’m not playing doctor. We’re just being detectives trying to help people or ourselves figure out what’s really wrong. Where can I clean myself up in these upstream functions so that downstream I have to just feel better? I have more energy and I lose the weight. I have a better ability to build muscle, sex life, whatever it is to you that is not right about. The thing about the look or feel that you want to change. That’s only two tests. Another really important one I’d run just about everybody, depending on how they come to us and people come with all these metabolic chaos, they’ve got multiple complaints hardly anyone says it’s just my hangnail, if I had a little more energy I’d be better. They’ve got multiple complaints. Some of them walk around these things for years and years and years, they’ve seen 10 people already and everyone kind of picks and chooses. Try my therapy, try my little machine or my whatever they’re doing. Individual therapies and modalities. When that doesn’t work, you’ve got to start looking upstream and that’s what my entire system is abided on. I would look at gut function a little deeper. I like running an intestinal permeability test just to make sure that your villi and microvilli are in good shape. That you don’t have excessive permeability at the gut, things like that because it’s a healing opportunity. You can call it it’s all kinds of problems for a person. Just unbelievable amount of problems. Include eventually autoimmune conditions and serious stuff. That, by the way, is another urine test do it at home. Doesn’t cost a lot and you can get these markers and start doing the things that takes to repair the damage. There’s two of more tests as a matter of fact if you just ran those three you’ve got a hell of an assessment. “Wow, look at all the stuff that I can fix. Finally, someone has figured out what’s really wrong with me. How do I fix it?” Well, there’s a couple more tests critical in that process. Now we’re ready for the DRESS program but the easy way to shortcut like diet, for instance, is to run a food sensitivity test. We can get into the DRESS program now but the story hidden stressor is the parasites, bacteria, fungus. Those are all easily detectable on stool testing. There’s different ones, there’s microscopy, there’s microscope. There’s culturing you can put the stool in Petri dishes and see what kind of pus grows on it for bacteria or even yeast. You can also run DNA testing. There’s ways to look at the stool that are very informative. More healing opportunities like if you have bugs. You’ve got to get rid of them. You can go to doctor for that or people mostly are choosing to self-treat using age-old botanical treatments. More that are less toxic less harmful to the good bacteria and things. How do you like them apples so far? 

 

[01:21:51] Ashley James: I like it. I like that its sounds really non-invasive. Saliva and urine test and stool test. All things you can do at home and mail in. There are mold and parasites, a huge problem that people aren’t aware of. Most people aren’t aware that they could live in several different states and they can actually take mold with them in their belongings and many houses in different states even out in the desert where you think, “It’s like humid here.” Absolutely, you can have mold in the dessert living in Las Vegas for example or living in the mountains. Mold is huge and it is a big problem for our health. I’ve had several experts on the show talk about it and it can cause so many different symptoms but obviously immune problems like if someone goes, “Man, I just catch every single flu and every single cold that comes around. I just feel like I’m always sick.” Something’s going on that your immune system is so taxed right now. What is going on? Parasites we think just because we have clean water and we wash our hands, we don’t live among filth like we did thousand years ago. That there is someone immune to parasites right because we live indoors where there is no mosquitoes biting us every day so we don’t think that insects, you know parasites are kind of like parasites if you think about it. Could bug us and you go outside and you can’t and you start to become aware that we are just animals.

We are animals that are a little bit more sophisticated but we are not impervious to parasites and all animals can get parasitic infections like we can get a bacterial infection. I’d love for you to just explain a little bit more about mold and parasites because even if someone had some health issues that are like persistent, it’ll be great to rule out. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they discover that the root cause was mold? Or the root cause was a chronic parasitic infection? Wouldn’t that be wonderful because it’s so easy to manage versus everything’s’ out of whack, where do I start? Of course do the DRESS. Do the diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction and supplements to fill in the gaps. Obviously a 100 % of the population would benefit from that formula but wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone suffering and it’s an easy fix, right? To dress mold and parasite rather than years of dialing stuff in and still suffering. If you could tell us a bit more about the parasite and mold testing that would be wonderful. 

 

[01:24:50] Reed Davis: Okay, sure. In context with what I was saying the investigation, looking at these critical markers for balance in your body. Moving on to than what more specifically is part of the stress takes you this metabolic chaos going on in my body and the things that you can do like some of the testing to determine. Stool testing for parasites, bacteria, and fungus is common. I mean we test everyone for that, now you find things but there’s the issue I have with it people think, “Oh, I found your problem.” there’s people who caught on to that there’s parasites for instance or bacteria like H. pylori and these different things and fungi and things. They’re thinking that they found the problem. Take you back on the whole vitalistic theory. You were already sick for the most part before your symptoms occur. Your immune system would have to be pretty compromised before some of these very common bugs, by the way, if you look at some of the literature, they’re not even considered a problem, they’re considered commercial or sort of normal to have some bacteria and parasite.

You can make a mistake easily by saying, “Oh, your problem sounds like parasites.” See some digestive issues and things like that, pain in the gut or whatever. Diarrhea and things, it sounds like a parasite then you check and you pat yourself on the back “Yes, I found your problem, it’s parasite. We’ll get rid of it and you’ll be fine.” No, you have to heal the whole person. You have to heal their entire digestive tract and bring their immune system back to balance and order. It’s not as simplistic as, “Oh I found this parasite now I’m all better.” You might feel better initially but you’re going to get the next bug that come along if you don’t really repair the whole person. Mold is a little different because – by the way you can run a test it’s called H-E-R-M-I. The hermi test for mold in your house. That’s the sort of best test for finding out if you got the kind of mold that will make you sick and there’s no good molds for us has been exposed to especially when it turns into something you can inhale. If it turns that can be inhaled that’s a bad deal for anybody. We recommend certain people with certain conditions. If you want to learn a lot about mold, I would go to survivingmold.com. Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker is probably the world’s leading expert in that area of research. He’s really specialized in water-damaged buildings and the molds and the long term chronic effects and how to remediate the building mostly you just want to get out, get ways from it. Then what happens to the body, unfortunately, what happens to the body can be really kind of diluted and the testing can be more expensive and hard to get for what it does to your immune system and inflammatory processes in your body. It really wakes up some complementary pathways and it can be really hard to detoxify molds. It’s very insistent. It loves to just re-circulate. It’s a very hard to bind to get out of the body. Because they’re mold toxins, it’s not the mold itself they’re just toxins from the mold. There is what’s called the micro toxin test, you can measure for that. but it’s not our first-line test. I don’t just run a micro toxin test to people. We have to clean them up first.

The FDN program looking at the hormone, immune, digestive, detox so on is a grounding program to get yourself cleaned up where you should be better. You should be a whole lot better. I’m talking about just three months of doing our DRESS program. Doing our customized for your test results and your history. If you do that customized DRESS program, the diet, the rest, the exercise, the stress reduction, the supplementation. 90 days you should really turn the corner or made it a few steps up the ladder so to speak. Yes, I feel a lot better. Then we start getting into more insidious things that could be in your environment. We don’t chase the mentality we still just being good health detectives. I’m not a person automatically would just pick a test like a mold test. I have some good screenings for it. There’s a nasal swab you could do for more things that’s pretty cheap. But I wouldn’t just run as a first-line. I just hate this idea, Ashley, it’s never worked for me anyway to put it that way. To try to guess what the problem is based on symptoms, remember we’re trying to get ways from that. Because people, walk-in from regular doctor, regular Naturopath you know I’ve got this traditionally reliable cluster of symptoms that sound like thyroid. Or traditionally reliable that sounds like chronic fatigue you known whatever it might be, “Oh, let’s run a test for that.” unfortunately, they find something that they say I’d the answer to your problem. It’s hyperthyroidism and the doctor would write a prescription, Naturopath would sell supplements, helping to get the test results in range. You might even get the symptoms to a bit but something there is going to come back or new set of symptoms occurs because you haven’t really sorted out the chaos upstream. When the chaos or new set of symptoms appear if you just say, “Now, it sounds like low testosterone, run that test and yes, so now you have a person, yes, it’s your low testosterone. Now you’re on your thyroid medicine and your testosterone, what’s next?” It’s a new cycle of trial and error. Unfortunately, a lot of people do with mold, they focus on that one things. They don’t really address the entire person. Including all the stressors. The mental-emotional, the physical trauma, bodies that are all banged up. That hidden I would call that a major contributor to metabolic chaos. Mold really sucks. That’s my medical diagnosis.

 

[01:31:57] Ashley James: Very technical.

 

[01:32:00] Reed Davis: Yes. We’re speaking big terms here.

 

[01:32:02] Ashley James: I heard that parasite testing could be a bit more complicated because parasites can hide in the body. How do you account for that?

 

[01:32:12] Reed Davis: Well, they do. It’s not just parasite, it’s bacteria they like to hang out together. If you go back to what I said about it, even if you find a bug if you think you’re just going to take something and kill that bug and return to normal it’s unlikely. There are called biofilms which is where they hang out together there’s what’s called comsensing. The bugs know that the other bugs are there and they start hanging out together. They start not interbreeding but that becomes fertile ground for them to replicate to grow and even to mutate like fungus mutates. You can get so called would be called normal spores and things but once it take hold it can become very invasive. Punch holes in your intestines for instance. It can get really bad. What we do generally again, this depends on the initial intake like it’s really important to take the history. We have our own intake forms of things we use. Make sure that our clients are filling out a good number of forms. It sounds like a lot of work but probably isn’t going to take more than 15 minutes per from each form, each form that we have. People threw out three or four forms. It’s a good investment in helping us to number one, take stock of where you are today. As a practitioner that’s very important. we don’t want them changing their mind about what their problem was 3 months down the road. Like, “Hey, we’ve been working on your migraines and now you said you’re complaining about your toenail are swollen.”  You’ve got to get a good history and make people stop and think where they’re at. You can grade those things too. We do that, that will have us then running labs and get people on the DRESS program and their problem start to fade away. We actually have a point system for those intake forms. Some might have 300 points or 90 days or 180 days, 6 months down the road. They’re down to like not very many points but everyone has some points in there what. So you got that which is both objective and subjective.

You got the lab work which is all objective. Periodly objective, it’s what’s really going on inside your body. Then you have progress being made. Let’s make a point here that no one sat at the top of the hill. I don’t know anyone with perfect health. I know everyone’s on a stairway towards it but I don’t know too many people that – I’ve arrived here I am on the top of the mountain but we’re all – some of us have more stairs to climb than others. We look up to the people who are sort of able to help us and guide us and we look down and we help those what more steps up we help people up. Like I personally, 66 years old. I’ve a very banged up body from sports, motorcycles and just surfing. Just things that I wrecked. Muscular skeletal mostly. Also during my 20s and 30s was exposed in a lot of chemicals in different profession. Different job I was in. I don’t know what exactly what did that to my liver. I’m always watching. I’m always working. Again, I have less stairs to climb than most of my clients and my students come along and same thing. We’re all just on a continuum of improving. I don’t know anyone at the top so just with that mentality, let’s look at what are the healing opportunities and what are the things that I can do and just I can answer more questions about the testing but I want to talk a little bit more about the DRESS program.

 

[01:36:12] Ashley James: Yes. We’ll definitely get into that. Absolutely. Before we do, I have one last question about labs and that lab companies. I’ve heard stories about how it can vary results can vary from lab to lab. Do you have one company you work with? Or do you have handful companies like Doctors Data for example? Or Great Plains labs? Do you have handful that you’re like, I really find that these labs are the best in terms of results or do you have one specific lab that is just the best? I’d love for you to shed a bit of light on that.

 

[01:36:49] Reed Davis: The answer is it depends on what you’re testing for. There’s no lab that’s a specialist in every kind of testing or for everything. They are companies all they do is genetic testing. That’s all they do. You can even just run the 23 in me and then do what’s that cheap and then you can run it through various software. There’s one called Prometheus that I like but there’s other. The hard thing about my job is that no stuff coming out all the time. It’s hard to be on top of every new discovery and research and things that are going on and half of them could be junk because there’s no end to the amount of money being spent in this industry. So I do my best to vet out things and there’s a company called Bio Health Laboratories. I’ve been using them for20 years because I think they do the best saliva testing for that HPA access stress profile. I think they’re the best. I mean the quality and the quality assurance. I’ve been working with them for 20 years and I’m actually clinical advisor on their clinical advisor team. Great Plains you mentioned them, they’re a great lab. I use them for the micro toxin testing. They also have a finger stick test for food sensitivities. It’s not the best food sensitivity test but there’s nothing else around it can be shipped anywhere in the world. You prick finger and you put drops of blood on the blotter and you send it in the company. It doesn’t have to be frozen or anything like that. It’s stable for a week in the mail would be okay. You get a rough idea of the foods you’re sensitive to, it helps fine-tune your diet. You mentioned Doctor’s Data. They’re a good lab. By the way, this bio laboratories does an excellent stool test for pathology. Is there other stuff you could run the stool test for? Yes. Bio health doesn’t run those other parts of the test. There’s DSL which is a good test. They do DNA testing on stool. So to answer your questions, it’s various labs depending on what you’re looking for.

 

[01:39:04] Ashley James: You’d want DNA lab testing on stool because you’re DNA testing not for human DNA? Your DNA testing for parasites? is that correct?

 

[01:39:11] Reed Davis: The bugs, yes.

 

[01:39:12] Ashley James: Okay.

 

[01:39:13] Reed Davis: Yes but the mere presence of their DNA this is why I like some other testing isn’t telling you really have virulent it is. When you run a stool test and you culture, they take the stool and they shake it up real good and they mix it with a couple of things and it becomes a puree and then they are able to put it in these Petri dishes. They could grow eight different dishes with different mediums or EGAR in each dish, put it in an incubator for a few days and see what grows. Depending on the medium, you get growing different pusses. If there’s little bit of pus or a lot of pus that could make it a difference in your individual assessment of that person and what they need to do next. Also microscopy. There’s sometimes just looking through these high-powered microscope just having a really good lab rat. That’s his or her job and she just sits there and looks for bugs or bug parts and that will fit. Sometimes a human being involved it’s very important. There’s various types of stool testing and DNA is branded about as the ultimate best because it’s looking for non-human material and by the way you can look for that same test looks for other markers that could be reflecting how well you’re digesting things, how much pancreatic enzymes you have. There’s a lot to skin the cat. Once you’re trained in the basics and you can start to look in the finer details and individualized the labs you choose for each individual person. Again, it’s never about the test results, really it’s whose test results are these. That’s part of the methodology and mentality. Yes, I’ve compared a lot of labs like oxford biomedical for food sensitivity testing, they run what’s called the mediator release test. Unfortunately, it’s not covered by insurance and most of this isn’t because even though that test has been used for 25 years. It’s still called experimental by insurance companies. Why? Why because they don’t want to pay for it. Remember I told you about the miracle case Susan about depression and she’s got the hives for 2 years and she has been on this anti-inflammatory that made her gain 40pounds. That’s the test I ran and found her problem. Now I ran it on every person. Do I always hit home runs out of the park by running that test? No, because people are going to have food sensitivities and it’s the major factor in their problems like migraines. I’ve seen migraines gone but no other people the food sensitivities aren’t that big of contributor to the metabolic chaos. They’re minor contributor to the metabolic chaos that is producing the symptoms downstream.

For one little boy I’ve got to tell you, this is way back in the day. A lady was in for chiropractic and we’re talking your own health says, “I just wonder if you could help my boy, Billy. He’s 9 or 10 he’s always in trouble at school. They want to put them on drugs for ADD.” They have teachers diagnosing in the classroom. They want to put him on drugs for ADD because instead of paying attention to the teacher, he’s paying attention to the gardeners working outside or something. It’s telling something with this little boy. Anyway, we just did that test on that boy, got him off certain foods. Some of them are obvious. The highly colored and sugared cereals and all that stuff. Guess what, in two weeks, the principal of the school tracked me down and said, “What did you put Billy on?” “Listen, I didn’t put him on anything.” I ran a test got him off crap and now he’s a better-behaved kid. Things like that to you and I Ashely, that’s just common sense but it’s not always common practiced. That’s why I love labs. They just get into the degree that finding is contributing to metabolic chaos is to a degree to choose full in reversing the metabolic chaos and creating order especially in that hormone, immune, digest, and detoxification and so on and those areas.

 

[01:43:50] Ashley James:  I love it. I’d love to know you mentioned earlier sometimes we’ll never find the root cause but we’ll be able to help the person. For example, my son who was having asthma, he’s so healthy and he eats so healthy and I’m thinking, “What’s going on?” We changed pediatricians. We went form, of course, naturopathic pediatricians. We changed pediatricians and the one we went to, the new one goes her first after being hospitalized twice for asthma. She goes, “Why don’t we do food testing?” That’s her first response like, “We should be testing him for allergies.” I’m like, “Wow. Thank you.” I brought it up with the first pediatrician and she was like, “Well, you know that’s down the road.” I’m like, “What is going on?” she started telling me that it’s normal for kids to be sick and to have asthma and it’s just like weird. It’s what some doctors will say and sure enough he’s allergic to 7 foods, garlic, fish, almost every single kind of fish like it will set him off. Eggs, avocado, things that we would eat every day. Like he would eat avocado, ate it every day, garlics and everything. A handful of other foods. Things that we also would avoid like Wheat, dairy and oats. He was allergic to and if he had any exposure to these food, he’d have asthma and dust mites. Dust mites are easy to manage but these like garlic is really hard. All of his food is made at home, cooked from scratch or I totally have to be diligent with looking at the ingredients but I’m wondering so now he doesn’t have any asthma by the way but if has any exposure, he starts to get a little wheezy and then we go, “Okay. Now we got to be diligent.” But that’s if there’s an early warning system. His body lets us know, he starts coughing he does a little bit of wheezing. We really make sure we vacuum twice a day. That kind of thing. Make sure that his food is 100% clean in case he accidentally ate something contaminated with eggs or with garlic. I’d love to know, what causes people to have these food allergies? Like you said, we may not ever get to that level of root cause but in your testing, do you see something that says like do you see that “Oh, here’s leaky gut, and that’s what causes.” Do you see that there is evidence for something even deeper than food sensitivities that causes them?

  

[01:46:25] Reed Davis: Yes. Again, there are inborn errors in metabolism. Their weak links in metabolism much of them are acquired but some are inborn and there’s this, you just have to use the word milieu of factors. That why I use the phrase metabolic chaos and the root cause exactly may not be known or discoverable. It’s too far upstream. There’s not a test. The test sometimes is getting off of food and seeing if you feel better. That’s a really good one.

 

[01:47:04] Ashley James: Yes, because there’s no side effects.

 

[01:47:07] Reed Davis: Yes and there’s no diagnosis in the food sensitivity. I coached football for 15 years. Youth football. And I can remember this is again, early on which made me so proud and know that I was hitting in the right direction. I didn’t have it all figured out. Same test, I have a kid, the mom always come up the boy “He can’t practice today on Wednesday.” I said, “Well, he’s not going to play Saturday then. You know if he doesn’t practice he won’t know the play. He had to sit out Saturday.” and she’s like, “Oh but he’s got asthma.” I said, “Well, what are you doing about that?” “Oh, he has an inhaler and he takes his inhaler.” “But we don’t allow those on the football field.” and I just “Did you ran him tested for food sensitivities or anything like that? This kid within a very short period of time never had asthma again. I still see that kid around time sometimes. Now he’s a big strapping grown man with no asthma. It was so miraculous she had her other kids tested. Like, “I want to test my whole family.” “Oh, yes. Maybe That’s a good idea.” There’s this ways to be it’s a mentality that I think we’ve covered pretty well here. Always looking for the hidden contributor to metabolic chaos and to the degree that the root causes are discoverable we can work on it. If it’s not discoverable if it’s just too hidden, we can still have an effect upon it, by getting what are the healing opportunities? What healing opportunities can we identify and my systems based on just years and years and years of observations. If you checked the hormones, immune system, digestion, detoxification pathways, energy production, which is I tell you about in a minute when we go to diet. Then of course again, this idea of autonomic balance. These six things that hidden stressors and dysfunctions are answering almost every case that comes in. Again, there are additional work to be done. Sometimes but they’re a little less common. So most people, all the common things that people complain about today that generally considered chronic degenerative diseases or conditions that’s our wheelhouse.

 

[01:49:39] Ashley James: I love that. And it’s such a big wheelhouse. Oh my gosh, pretty much the whole population can come see you and get results.

 

[01:49:49] Reed Davis: A guy’s called me up and he wanted to know if he should take the course. He’s a practitioner and he goes “I don’t know if I’ll find enough people to work on? Will it be enough people to work on? “ I said, “Where do you live?” He goes, “New Jersey.” I said. “No, there’s not enough sick people in New Jersey.” What a joke. There’s just you never going to ran out of customers. They’re going to pass by the way we have FDN practitioners spent the least amount in marketing because we get results and we all have referral-based practices. Too much long to talk at least about the D in the DRESS program and anything else you want. But diet is really one of the biggest questions. How many diets are there out there? A Hundred? A thousand? I don’t know. There’s no one of them that is right for every person. I guarantee you that there’s no one diet that’s right for everybody. What in the hell do you do?

By the way, this was something I spent a long time trying to overcome this question because I knew people had to go, you’re made of food how do I get people to eat right? I started off. It just happened to be the diet of the day in 1999 when I started this was Atkins diet. Everybody was on Atkins diet. Well, it’s making other people sick. Why is that? I want to know. This person does the Atkins and oh man, losing weight, feeling more energy and doing great. Another person’s like, “I got sick. I had no energy. I didn’t lose a single pound matter of fact, my skin flared up and I felt worse.” Why is that? Well, it’s because we’re all unique individuals with different, I’ll use this phrase here metabolic types. A metabolic type is simply, meeting your genetic requirements. We’re all from somewhere and if we all could go back, 500 generations which is a long time ago, you probably find your correct metabolic type and diet that goes along with it. If you’re Mediterranean, it makes sense. If you’re people today having the paleo diet which they think means eating more meat. Well, if you’re from the Anglo-Saxon, heritage eastern Europe and this kind of places where 500 generations ago, there was lots of hunting and gathering on and your people lived on deer and rabbits and muskox, mammoth or whatever. That’s just all about all they ate along with some local flora. Seasonal plant material and you ate just that and that was your heritage wasn’t mixed with any other heritage you probably would do pretty good from that. What if you’re from the island of Borneo. That diet would be horrible for you. There isn’t just one diet that is right for everyone but there is a way to discover it. There’s some principles involved in that way to eat that are really, really critical that I earned. I think it’s really important since I have the opportunity to share. There are things you need to know. You have macronutrients, protein, fats and carbohydrates. They’re the fuel that your cells burn for energy so that cell can do his job. The cells don’t have to be taught anything. They know what to do, they have innate intelligence, the same intelligence by the way that keeps the earth in alignment with the sun and the sun in alignment with the rest of the universe and everything like that. There is an innate intelligence that hangs everything together everything happening all at one time and you yourselves know that stuff. They know if their brain cells, muscle cell, adrenal gland cell of whatever. If you can fuel them properly which requires the right mixture of the macronutrients, the protein, fat, and carbohydrates.

You’ve heard of protein types and you’ve heard of Carb types and there are such things that people want to know, they’re called mix types. It had to do with the oxidative rate. The rate at which rate in quality and quantity of energy being produced on a cellular level. Energy is produced on a cellular level and it’s mostly dictated by the fat, carb and protein ratios. You can dial it in almost perfectly. There’d be some variations based on the time of the month. For women, seasonal variations for some people. Otherwise you can really dial in the correct fuel mixture for you because if it was just simple as either way your ancestors did 500 years ago, that was not available and guess what, people 12,000 years ago started roaming the world and we’re all just really interbred. These very few pure of this that or anything except of native tribes and they’ve been studied. A really big thing is protein, carb and fat ratios. Do you kind of fill me on that? 

 

[01:55:23] Ashley James: Yes, absolutely. I’ve looked at that in terms of how to get better results for people and you would change the ratios if someone was an athlete and wanted to get a different performance versus a woman who wants to lose weight that’s less active for example. You can adjust and play with those ratios, the gram of carbohydrates, fats, and protein to make the fuel mixture that your body wants. If you’re a sports car or a little minivan. Your metabolic needs are you were saying and your genitive pre-disposition but also the quality of a carbohydrates matter. Quality of protein, whether the protein is from something highly processed like whey or meat versus a protein broccoli. Just different quality of proteins and all of the nutrients that come with that food. We need to take into account as well. We need to know the highest quality of the fuel right? And the ratios are really important. But I love that you’re talking about getting those ratios in a healthy mixture for the body and not being extremist with this 80% or 90% fat diet sort of 100% meat diets where the ratios are way out of balance. Maybe in a short term someone could get good results. Anyone can lose 10 pounds changing their diets. It kind of shock the body, shock the metabolism but it’s what you see in the long-term, and I like that you’re looking at subjective and objective by looking in at how the person is feeling in their own skin. And the labs. Because over time you’re going to track a diet and see if you’re getting the results you want or not.

 

[01:57:22] Reed Davis: Well, that’s really well put. Let’s take little bit step further with this energy produced in a cellular level based on the carb, fat, protein ratios. We’re going to assume automatically that you’re eating really good high-quality food. That your beef or whatever your meat is organic. That your fruits and vegetables are organic as you can get. Not that they have so much extra nutrition in those fruits and vegetables but at least you’re not getting the herbicide, pesticide, and rodenticides all the different. You want to keep poisons to a minimum. This is what people start to write down in terms of “how do I know if that’s the right fuel mixture for me?” Number one, you’re going to be satiated. You’re going to feel satisfied. Your meal will feel like the right kind of the meal. You can start with breakfast, you can start with lunch, any day of the week you want. Just try to measure about an hour and a half or even two hours later, if you had a reasonably sized meal. What is your satiation? It is the principle of satiety.

If you’re not fully satisfied, if something’s missing, if you’re craving something then we would want to adjust ratios a little bit. No, I’m not feeling satisfied, it’s missing something. That’s not satiation. Satiation becomes a really important factor. Again, every breakfast and hour and a half, 90 minutes later, check three things. One the satiety, satiation versus cravings and hunger or something. Assuming you had a real meal in that. The next thing is energy. You need really good high-quality strong energy from your food. If it’s fuel for the cells and they’re producing energy to do their job you should feel energized and energetic. You should have enough energy to do the work or play that you plan to do until the next meal comes along. Which in case, by the way, should you feel a little bit hungry before the next meal, your blood sugar could be checked and things like that. Satiation is one, should feel satisfied. An hour and a half, two hours later you should still feel good energy. I’m not talking about the kind that you get from coffee where you feel kind of nervous to even do something but you feel tired underneath. Not that kind of energy really strong solid good energy, the third thing, these are worth writing down if you’re going to try to adjust your carb protein and fat ratios. The next one is sense of well-being. Believe it or not. You should feel good. If you feel really grumpy for not reasons that a sign that your meal may need some tweaking in terms of protein. If you’re grumpy and someone just cut you off at traffic or got fight at work, that’s kind of okay but if everything’s going wrong why do I feel grumpy or irritated or one of these negative emotions. Lack of sense of well-being in anyway, those three things are really critical and that requires you a bit of self-aware and pay attention and maybe make some notes so the next day you can adjust the ratio. There’s a lot more to diet but that’s some really critical factors. Again, assuming your food is high quality you’re not eating crap out of bags or boxes all the time. You want to eat real food. There’s stuff that’s on the outside the grocery store. I mean on the edges. Stay out of the aisles.

 

[02:00:04] Ashley James: Right. Stay out of the aisles. Go shop around the perimeter of the grocery store absolutely. I love it. Very cool. There’s so much to this but you make it simple and it’s a delight learning from you and I’d love to have you back on the show. Because we just really scratched the surface, I’d love to have you back to dive in. I know my listeners are going to love today’s interview. I know they’ll love to have you back. I want to make sure that people know more about your course. I’m going to take your course. I’m really interested and I know my listeners are right there with me. For those who want to check out the course, they can go to learntruehealth.com/FDN like as in functional diagnostic nutrition. So learntruehealth.com/FDN. Of course, that link is going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Tell us a bit about your course. I believe when they go to that link they’ll get a discount to your program. That’s what it says and I’d love for people to know a bit about the program. It’s self-paced. It’s my understanding. Because we’re all busy. It’s online it’s self-paced. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

 

[02:02:18] Reed Davis: Oh sure. It’s quite a robust course as I mentioned earlier in the program. I’ve interviewed every person that ever took it. It started as a 2-day workshop and that was 11 years ago July so long time ago. I’ve just expanded and expanded what more can I do? What can I do to make it better? And every person gets asked and I’ve had a lot of honest people who told me “What if you did this? What if you did that?” I take all of their advice and I reiterated the course. Now it’s a full-blown course and first of all obviously the labs, all the investigative processes. The hormone, immune, digestion, detoxification. I teached them the anatomy physiology and biochemistry. For those who already know some of those stuff. It’s a great review. For those who doesn’t know anything I speak in very plain language and teach you what you need to know. There’s no fluff or frills or fill in this course. It’s all practical stuff. I’ve been told by people with masters programs and program said this is the most practical thing I’ve ever done ever. Because it’s just nitty-gritty stuff, all the physiology and stuff for around the lab work. You truly understand what you are testing, what are the hormones and other markers and how to interpret them based on an individual where we focused is on the case studies and how this is an individual test results. It’s not to treat the paper. That’d be easy to teach. I can teach you that in 10 minutes.

This is again, a robust course to take so it’s about 6 months or more to get through. I’ve had people do it in less but they must’ve had nothing else to do. It’s all that. Then, of course, it’s going to be case studies and interpretation. Working with individuals and yourself. You’re going to run those labs on yourself. I pay for two of them and as part of the course, I’m paying your way some of that internal investigation on you. You could take it just for your own health if you want to. That alone would be worth the price of admission. I’ll teach you all that and then I teach you all the protocols. The D-R-E-S-S program. We just ran into diet a fraction of what you might want to know. It’s how to get the right diet for each individual and the rest program and I teach a lot about sleep that’s really important and about the exercise. You just said some people are like drag racers others were like Volkswagens. The same there is no one exercise program that works perfect for everybody. You’ve got to know some things.

You might not be a personal trainer actually put them through these things. You actually teach your client or yourself the right way to figure it out. The diet, the rest, the exercise, the stress reductions is one of the biggest modules because there’s so much varieties and the types of stressors were affected by. Some of then I go back to my early days of the environmental work I used to do and what’s in the environment, other parts where food sensitivities other part that showed the things around your house. As a matter of fact, for people who just want to taste of how to deal with that area in their life, go to environmentalworkinggroup.com. It might be .org, environmentalworkinggroup. We get a lot of stuff about the environmental toxins and pollutants for them. So it’s diet, rest, exercise, stress, reduction. How to asses an individual in various stressors and there of course supplements. I don’t own my own line which I think is to my credit because I know I’m leaving a lot of money on the table not having my own line but I just have avoided that but in all about supplements I teach you what you need to know to support the body, to stimulate the immune system, to substitute what’s missing from food. For god’s sake. These antioxidants and essential fatty acids that we talked about the vitamins and minerals. That’s really important stuff. It’s now all the lab work and assessment and how to work with individuals and yourself. It all the DRESS protocol. What fixes everything? How do you fix every cell tissue system in the body at once? That’s the DRESS modules and then, of course, there’s the business modules like how to do this for a living. How to work with people? How to intake? How to make sure you’re working with a client is going to be successful? Guess what? Don’t let them hire you. I teach you actually how to select people who are going to be successful and make a good living doing this, doing the good in the world that all of us want to do.

 

[02:07:03] Ashley James: I love it. It sounds amazing. I took the IIN course. I really appreciate it because its focus is on the emotional mental health of doing health coaching. Of course, you learn the dietary theories of a hundred different diets but you don’t learn labs you don’t learn supplements you don’t learn nutrition. I’ve been mentored by Naturopaths for the last 8 years. so I’ve learned a great big deal about nutrition and supplements but what I loved about IIN’s course is a lot of it is the emotional mental work. I see that someone who’s graduated from IIN as a health coach would love to take your program because like you said there’s no fluff it’s a hundred percent everything you want to learn to then go out and work with clients. People who have never worked with clients could take your course and do a great job and people who do currently work with clients like IIN graduates. It would complement their continued education so well. I think it’s a wonderful complement. I’m very excited to take your program. Thinking about the cost of your program and thinking about the cost of seeing a functional medicine practitioner, for example, it’s about the same.

To see someone for six months or a year to work on a problem I could pay someone else. I could find local practitioner maybe graduate for your course and I could pay them and do the testing and pay them to look at it and asses me and help me figure out what I want to do. Or I could pay to take your course to learn it myself to do the work on me and be about the same amount of money but I would have that skill set for the rest of myself to continue helping myself for the rest of my life. You know some people are just at a point where maybe they don’t have mental clarity. I remember when I was very sick with chronic adrenal fatigue. I did not have the capacity to take a course. I was just at that point, where I just wanted someone to help me and maybe people they just want to find a practitioner that’s taking your course and go and work with them. For those who want to sort of be taught how to fish instead of just be given a fish, they have that skill set for the rest of their life then taking your courses is absolutely amazing because in the long run it’s going to save them so much money years to come they can apply these lessons then their selves and their family and loved ones. Then have that background potentially doing that as a career and adding that to their repertoire. Wonderful. I love it. Is it audio? Video? Tell us a little bit about the format of experiencing your course?

 

[02:09:55] Reed Davis: Well, it’s online for the most part but here are quite a number of head to heads, one on ones with mentors. Some of my best students that’s how I’m grown by the way from the original two-day workshop at 19 people, we now have close to 3,000 that we’ve trained. The course reiterated over and over again. The latest in relation is quite remarkable if I do say so myself. So you’re going to watch the lessons, you can download them to your computer though so you don’t have to be online. You could watch them on a bus or on a plane as long as you’re on your computer. There’s turnouts I have a I think a 180 different forms I give you including the legal documents and onboarding things. Ways to complete the assessment, develop the DRESS program and apply it to a person. The coaching method. You mentioned IIN which is a good school and just every other health coaching program or institute whatever it might be out there. There’s tons of now. I remember there was two or three so we’re one of the earliest been around the longest but there’s some good ones out there but I would consider them to be if they were a bachelor’s program, we would be the master’s program. We are the next level but I break it down in such a way and again I said there’s such a thorough for those who did know a few things it will be a great review for others who hadn’t been exposed you’d be good for everybody.

The only prerequisites are that you want to help yourself and others. You’re willing to walk the talk. If you want to help people and you want to walk the talk set an example, it’s an amazing opportunity to learn. If you only work for yourself and your family, it’ll be worth the price of admission. The fact that you could turn around and recoup your investment in a very, very short period of time if you follow my business model, it’s pretty remarkable and last but not the least, it’s a community now. It took on a life of its own years ago. Even the first-class there’s some alumni that still are they’re still doing things. The alumni group which I formed, officially we have an official alumni group we started two and half years ago. There’s hundreds of members. These are people who do this seriously for a living. Like we have convention every year now where we hang out and share. It’s really remarkable. I’ve been told by some of my mastermind people don’t start a tribe and not lead it. I’m here for the rest of my life to lead the charge. In my way just like Ashley is in her way, we all know what the goal is. It’s for health and wellness and happiness of the planet. If you go back to that quote from Thomas Edison, doctors aren’t getting there. They’re not evolving. As a matter of fact, many are getting more interested than just diagnose treat model. We have to present something to go side by side with that. The people really want that really get somewhere they want to go.

 

[02:13:10] Ashley James: I love it. I’m so excited. My listeners love reaching out to me and telling me how it goes for them especially when they become a health coach. Several have become health coaches as a result of listening to my show and hearing my journey through IIN. I’ve had three people email me saying that they were going to become MDs and they quit med school and they became Naturopaths instead. Because of my shows, they found their true calling. Which is so cool that people are finding their true calling through listening. I’m really looking forward to hearing in the coming weeks and months from my listeners who take your program. Go to learntruehealth.com/FDN and take your program and then have an amazing experience and then they’ll reach out to me and say, “This is how it affect my life. Thank you.” I love that they let me know how it went for them. I’m really looking forward to hearing the stories because your program is results-based and it’s all about results. It’s why you do all the labs. So that you could move the needle. So you can get results. It’s not just so you can prescribe a drug. Right?

 

[02:14:25] Reed Davis: Exactly. Yes, and the community is amazing it is what made us what we would call today group sourced. If your feedback from people is, “Well, that was great. What if you do this, what if you do that.” You actually have people listening including me. Where else can we take this? There’s new technology come on board all the time too. There’re new labs, new parts, new things that we can play with like the big thing today is wearables. The wrist bands and the rings and different things. There’s always something new that fits right in that I can’t be the eyes and the all-seeing. It takes a group to do something like this. To make it a true movement. I hope we get some great feedback even great ideas. That’s even better.

 

[02:15:16] Ashley James: I love it. Wonderful. My listeners have always been so impressed by them that they are a people that take action. They’re action-oriented people so I’m looking forward to you hearing the wonderful feedback as am I. definitely listeners go to learntruehealth.com/FDN to look into it. See more information and see if it’s right for you. I’m really excited to take your course as well and you know, wouldn’t it be wonderful if a hundred percent of the population knew this information? Could you imagine a world where everyone knew the labs that they could take to better themselves? If everyone knew like, “Wow. I have this symptom maybe I need to look at this direction” How self-sufficient would we be? It’s a big threat to the companies that don’t want us to be self-sufficient.

 

[02:16:17] Reed Davis: Yes, I think it’s called empowerment but it comes with self-awareness first and having a space in your own head or being to be at peace. You’ve got to know what that looks like and set goals for yourself. That’s what health coaches supported to do but it has to being with us. Again, the pre-requisites are you want to help others and you be willing to walk the talk. We are pretty self regroup, pretty high level of consciousness among most. We make money but we’re not in it for the money. It’s just so rewarding.

 

[02:16:58] Ashley James: Wonderful. Excellent. Thank you so much for coming into the show. Please come back. I’d love to dive deeper. There’s so many topics that you have to teach and I’d love to dive deeper. It’s been wonderful having you on the show.

 

[02:17:09] Reed Davis: Perfect. Thanks, Ashley. Happy to be here. Glad to come back anytime.

 

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