Unconventional Wellness Radio

Hey Y'all!

I know now what I am to do on this earth. I have been experienced both personally and through friends and family members in trauma. I want to help you.

Just listen to this Podcast for more!

Enjoy!

Here is Part 2!

Hey y'all! This Podcast is a re-broadcast from my friends over at the Renewed People Podcast.

Those guys are a bunch of fun - and have a HUGE heart for loving on people. Please go check out their Podcast - it is amazing and will move you!

On this Podcast, I flay myself open and discuss my struggles with sexual sin and how I have been delivered. Through my insecurities, I struggled for years - even almost lost my marriage...3 times!

Please have a listen and watch Him move!

Hey y'all! This Podcast is a re-broadcast from my friends over at the Renewed People Podcast.

Those guys are a bunch of fun - and have a HUGE heart for loving on people. Please go check out their Podcast - it is amazing and will move you!

On this Podcast, I flay myself open and discuss my struggles with sexual sin and how I have been delivered. Through my insecurities, I struggled for years - even almost lost my marriage...3 times!

Please have a listen and watch Him move!

Have a wonderful week! Part 2 will drop next Monday!

Hey y'all!

It's giveaway time! We hit a milestone on our page and I want to give something away, but you have to listen to the Podcast, do what it says to enter!

By the way: something HILARIOUS happened on the Podcast - listen to the end to hear it!!

On today's podcast we discuss:

• The 4 Love Types
• Updates to Unconventional Wellness
• Graduates of the 1st rotation of Unconventional Wellness
• The BIG giveaway!

Enjoy!

Here are the shownotes from today!

Frank: (00:00)
Welcome to unconventional wellness. I am Frank, I am your host. On today's episode we are going to discuss why do we need love. Love conquers all. All you need is love, but really why do you actually need love? So stay tuned. We're going to talk about that. We have some updates to unconventional wellness and a really special giveaway that you want to make sure that you get the details for because of all of your love and support. I want to pay it back as well. So stay tuned. Episode four coming up. We'll talk to you guys very soon. 

Frank: (00:34)
what's up wellness warriors. You have found yourself on unconventional wellness radio and I am your host, Frank Ritz. I'm a physician assistant with 10 years of experience in both medicine as well as alternative therapies to help you get the holistic healthcare that you've always wanted. You know, over the past 10 years I've had the opportunity to learn what I now deem as the five pillars of unconventional wellness and they are nutrition movement, getting better sleep, reducing your stress and anxiety and being able to remove toxins from your living environment. And through these five pillars, I myself have been able to be a product of the product and I want to share with you both my personal testimony and the research that is starting to come out regarding a lot of these things that we look at in preventative medicine. So hear from experts and all the individuals that I've had the pleasure of working with throughout the years in unconventional wellness. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show. 

Frank: (01:48)
Hey, what's going on on conventional wellness? I am trying to do the live like I normally do on my page and I'm gonna tell you right now, I don't know what's going on with Facebook on my computer, but it is not going to hold me back and I am going to still talk to you guys here on live today. I know that it's been a little while since I've had an opportunity to, and I'm sorry for that. Um, but a couple of weeks ago on January 26th, I got the message that, uh, I had another buddy, another veteran buddy, become a part of the 22. So we've, uh, unfortunately suffered another casualty from the invisible wounds of war. And, and we'll talk a little bit more about my buddy and a couple of moments, but it brings me to the camp conversation of today. Um, so we'll talk about that a little bit more. 

Frank: (02:37)
But, uh, what I wanted to do was to come on here and give you guys some updates and uh, and talk to you about a couple of different things. And then of course, make good on a promise. Yes. And actually have my giveaway. So, uh, we have the hit, like, I mean, we, we've hit like 50 more likes since, but I said, once we get the 500 likes, I was going to do a giveaway. Well, here's, here's what we have to do. We're going to do a giveaway. Uh, we're now, uh, almost at like 550 likes or over 550 likes or something like that. And so first of all, thank you. Um, I'm also super excited before I tell you what the details of the giveaway are. I'm super excited because my first, uh, group of folks have gone through my unconventional wellness program. And actually my, uh, the results have been fantastic. 

Frank: (03:22)
Um, everybody is saying that you're doing really well. I'm so sorry that my little pug is barking his face off. Hey, Cedric, please. Um, I'm going to go ahead and simultaneously upload this by the way as a podcast. So if you're listening to us on a podcast, welcome. I'm sorry, it's been two weeks since we've last had an opportunity to bring you some content, but I am here and uh, and we're back. Okay. Um, but anyway, the details of the program are really great and I'm going to bring some updates and uh, and, and I have a bigger mission now. And so, um, it involves all of you and I want to make sure that we actually bring a fantastic pro, uh, product out and really help people feel, um, the, the wellness and the healing that they possibly can. And so anyway, um, graduated our first class. 

Frank: (04:13)
Congratulations to you guys. Um, thank you so much for joining me on this crazy journey. And, uh, what we're gonna do is we're going to talk about, uh, really the way ahead for unconventional Walnut. So I'm gonna just start off with that. So, and then we'll talk about how to enter the giveaway because I know that you're here for that too. Uh, but, uh, the details of the program are that, you know, it's based off of five pillars and I've had the special privilege to talk to the, to the U S veterans chamber of commerce and they are very interested in getting my program to veterans for free. And so over the course of the next five, I don't know, maybe 10 days, I'm going to be recording information and putting together a mini class. And so for those of you that have maybe checked out the program in the past, when I had the launch open, um, for just that short period of time, um, I am going to now be releasing a mini course in which if you are a veteran, I'm going to give you that mini course for free. 

Frank: (05:12)
It's going to talk about my same five pillars. It's going to talk about nutrition. Hey Angie, how are you? It's good to talk about nutrition. It's going to talk about movement, a, how to get better sleep, how to detoxify, and then also how to combat stress and anxiety, which is like a lot more important than we really give her credit to be because that could be the true thing that is holding a lot of us back from, uh, really wanting to do some positive change in our lives. And so anyway, I'm going to be releasing this, uh, in the next couple of weeks to, uh, especially veterans for furry. Um, I'll be releasing it shortly to everybody else too, of course. Um, but, uh, but I want to make sure that you tag your friends or share this with your, uh, veteran friends to let them know that I'm going to be offering this course to them for free. 

Frank: (05:58)
Um, so it'll be like, I don't know, probably Oh hour, hour and a half worth of content that they'll totally have for themselves. And so that's one of the first big updates and we're planning on rolling that out across the nation, um, to make that, uh, available to all of our, uh, veteran brothers and sisters. And I appreciate your service. I really truly do. Uh, the next thing is, is like, you know, let's talk about giveaways, right? So I did say a 500 likes that we would do a giveaway. Well, uh, some things have happened and I haven't been able to do that. And so, um, it's time for our giveaway. Now our giveaway is going to be this, I am going to give away a full version of the top tier of my program. It's like $2,500 in value. I'm also going to be giving you a couple of books and then I am writing a book on hemp and CBD and all the protocols and all the things that it can do for you. 

Frank: (06:53)
I'm going to be writing in that book and it's going to be published this year. And so I want to give you a copy in the rights to that book as well. And so, um, I will be giving all of that together and I will be doing my giveaway probably by the end of the month. So how do you enter, well, I need to know that you have watched this and I need to know that you have shared this particular video. I need to have a rating and review written by you either on our Facebook page or podcast or both because that'll get you a double entry and uh, make sure that you are sharing like I said and uh, an email me at Frank at Ritz essentials to let me know that you have entered. The reason why is because it is a massive giveaway, lots of value and a, and I'm super excited for whoever is able to win that. 

Frank: (07:38)
So make sure you like share whatever, send it to a friend, let them know about it as well because it's super important that we do that. Um, so that's the giveaway. And so I, I, I'm kind of stalling here cause I don't really want to get into our talk for today, but, um, let's just say that this one absolutely hits home and it really does physically hit home is that our twenties on the 26th of January I lost my friend. Um, I lost him to, to, to, to suicide. And um, this one was special. Um, he was becoming a really good friend of mine. He was becoming a very good, um, a very good brother. I, I've had the opportunity to meet him about three years ago. He moved into my local area, started this beautiful, what is now beautiful wellness center. Um, blood, sweat and tears. 

Frank: (08:27)
Fantastic with his hands, built cabins, built decks. I mean, just gorgeous and has been doing that now for the past couple of years. Uh, both he and his wife and, uh, all of a sudden just, I don't know, proud of the bullet of just like this sort of thing affects any one of us. Um, so it came to the invisible wounds of war and, uh, and unfortunately committed suicide. So, um, I want to urge you that it's extraordinarily important that especially this day and age, I want to hit you with the statistic. And this is a, this is a statistic that you know, is only here for America by the way, for those of you that are listening, uh, and the over 200 countries on this planet, I think like half of the countries, at least one person has listened to these podcasts that I've been doing, which is pretty incredible and pretty awesome. 

Frank: (09:19)
So hello to our international brothers and sisters. Um, thank you so much for listening to, uh, unconventional wellness with us. But, um, I, I it hits home when this new study that just pinged into my phone about a week or two ago said that, uh, two out of every three Americans are now reporting, uh, being extraordinarily lonely. Two out of three guys that is 66%, or if you have three people in the room with you or if you have three people in your family, that's, that's one out of three in your family that's reporting loneliness. And so it's an epidemic. It is probably the epidemic that is the most critically, critically like detrimental to our generations that are alive right now. Um, it is a staggering statistic and it probably will only continue to get worse unless we specifically do. There's something about that. And so the thing that conquers all is summated in one word and that one word is love. 

Frank: (10:21)
That is the thing that overcomes anything. My buddy left a legacy of love. Um, everybody who knew him, I, everybody had the pleasure of meeting him, was definitely one that would say that he loved a lot. Um, he was the type of guy, big smile, big braids where like, you know, like one of those like movie star smiles could walk into a, could walk into a room and warm it up immediately. By the way, I'm gonna let my little buggy say hi, here's my little buddy. So I'm gonna let him say hi for just a second. But, uh, but anyway, uh, he was, he had a legacy of love. Okay. And so, uh, I want to dedicate this podcast to him because of, of that love. And I really, you know, I talked about the international brothers and sisters that we have because I really love the Greek language. Um, it is so much more, will you stop Cedric, et cetera. 

Frank: (11:17)
So, uh, the, the Greek language does a much better job of capturing all the different forms of love, uh, rather than just our English word love. Now our English word love is really just one particular word, right? It's just love. But it really does have a bunch of different connotations. Like for example, I really love bacon. I'm sorry if you're a vegan and you're watching this, but I love bacon. Um, and I also love my wife, right? So I really, really love bacon. I really, really love my wife, but obviously within the context of those two sentences, my love is an entirely different thing, although I really do love bacon a lot. Sorry honey. I just, I know you love bacon too, but uh, but that connotation has only grown from context. What was beautiful about the Greek language is that there's at least four different types of love. 

Frank: (12:11)
Some say seven, some say eight, but there's four specific types of love that are really prominent and very important in each, each one of our lives. And I'd like to go over those with you if I could. So the first one that we're going to start off with is Felita lover, P, H, I, L, I a or filet O. You'll actually see that as well. Uh, it's a different, just a different ending to it, but for Layo love is a brotherly love. All right. Think of the city of Philadelphia. It's perfectly Nang. Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love. Shout out to my folks in Philly, but Philadelphia, the word means the city of brotherly love. So for Layo is that, it's that bond that we share with one another. It's the communal tribal friendships that we have with one another. The next type of love that I want to talk to you about is store gay love or stores love, but you can pronounce it I guess either way, but it's story gay and story. 

Frank: (13:10)
Gay love is a little bit different story. Gay love is something that is a little bit more of a fondness. Um, it's a familiarity type of love. It's a love that you see in families, right? It's a love between a parent and their children. It's a love between you and your parents. Um, this type of love is because of a like, like, like an actual bond that is above those types of causal relationships, if that makes sense. It's a, it's almost like a, a, some, some would describe it as like a, uh, uh, forced love in terms of like you're forced into their relationship and you have absolutely no control over who your brothers and sisters are or over who your parents are. Right. So, um, I don't mean it like a forced relationship, like you have to have it right, but it's a relationship in which we have no control. 

Frank: (14:05)
And so story gay love is totally a love of family. Okay. Um, the next type of love that I want to talk to you about is what is called Eros love. E R O. S. now eeros. Um, I love the roots of words and stuff like that, but I really want to look at Eros love more so than eeros as the, as the root because that means love as well. Um, it also has a couple of really negative connotations. Of course they were not going to talk about, but it is a type of love that has considered romantic. It is a romantic love. It is the love that two people share, you know, when they are in love or it's the feeling of being in love or the feeling of desiring another person that is Eero, Slav. So like take like the most Gushi like, you know, um, romantic movie ever, right? 

Frank: (14:56)
And multiply times a billion. This is the type of love that I pray that every person on planet earth can experience at least once and once in their lifetime because it is an amazing type of love. It is the type of love that you know, it's not gonna ever end. Um, because it is the type of love that that two people can take with each other until the moment that they both die and so it's a romantic love. Okay. Then the last type of love is actually known as a God Bay love. Now God Bay love is also known as godlike love or the love of God and the God by love is an unconditional love. It is absolutely the type of love that is described in first Corinthians chapter 13, which is traditionally known as the love chapter. The reason why a Gopal love is one of the is, is the greatest type of love is because it doesn't matter the object who is receiving the love. 

Frank: (15:54)
It matters from the subject of which the love is coming from. And so if I am showing you a GAAP, a love, I don't care where you come from, I don't care how you act, I don't care what your opinions are. I don't care at all about any of those things. To me, those are superficial. I love you because you're another human being. I love you because it is something that comes from me. It is a choice that I make to love unconditionally. This is the law. Excuse me. This is the type of love that conquers all. This is the type of love that just all the other emotions, every single one of them can be trumped by love, right by this type of love, which is a copy of love. This is the love that supersedes all. This is the love that, uh, that we should have for one another. 

Frank: (16:49)
This is the love that the humankind should have for humankind. And this is the type of love that is necessary in tribes. Um, when it comes to bringing new people in, regardless of where they're coming from, regardless of what they stand for. It's the type of love that brings him in and says, I love you because of the fact that I want to love you and because of the fact that you deserve to be loved. So this is what is critical in our society and what's critical in our communities is that we start showing this type of love to one another more so than what we're doing. Um, you know, I, I, I'm extraordinarily, uh, happy that I have the medium of what I'm using right now to be able to reach you. I mean, of course, but the fact that the matter is, is that we need to create these physical relationships. 

Frank: (17:35)
And so I charge you and give you a, a, an action step, uh, to take from this, which is call at least one person this week or touch base with one person this week and ask them how they are truly feeling like it beyond get beyond the, Oh, I'm okay. Um, you know, things are fine. I've just been really busy. Don't believe any of that because her wife's a really fantastic message, uh, between Steven Furtick. And I do believe that the, the middle or the, the, the, the end of the name of the Bishop that wrote this book, I think his name is digs and he wrote a book called crushing. And that's the thing is that with these relationships that we had these very impractical and in shallow relationships that we see across our society, we're really not determining how that person is actually feeling. Um, deep down in something truly could be crushing them. 

Frank: (18:31)
And so, uh, uh, this book is one that I'm going to go get my hands on because it is something that we all need to be aware of is that on the, on the face, on the mask, the way that somebody presents themselves, we may not necessarily know what's truly going on in their life. And so I urge you as somebody get past that facade, get past that mask and ask people how they're actually doing. Don't, don't accept these, these, these typical kind of canned responses of I'm fine, things are really busy. I'm good. Right? Like, like look at him and go, no, how are you really feeling? And, and, and let them open up. Let them know that anything that they're going to tell you, if they do tell you when they do open up, um, there's a lot of healing in that. But let them know of course, that it's not going to go anywhere. 

Frank: (19:20)
There's just going to stay between the two of you guys because we're all about personas these days. Unfortunately, like we all put up these facades. And so I just really want to urge you to do that because you never know when, when something drastic may happen to a person's life just because they needed a friend just cause they needed somebody to ask them how they're doing. And so I offer you the same. If you need somebody to reach out to reach out to me. Um, just send me a message. If you're watching this on, um, on, on Facebook live, or if you're catching this on a podcast, email [email protected] and let me know what's up. You know what I mean? If you just need somebody to just start talking to, uh, to get connected with somebody, um, I'd love to talk to you. So, um, I, I wanted to leave you with a hope and a promise, which is found in, uh, one of my favorite passages in scripture. 

Frank: (20:12)
It's out of the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah was this prophet amongst a bunch of other profits that you can see in the old Testament. I'm so sorry that my dog is ridiculous right now. Um, but, uh, amongst other profits that you can read in the old Testament, but Jeremiah is a, somebody who, uh, wrote this beautiful passage, Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11. And it says, for, uh, no, the plans that I have for you says the Lord of declares the Lord plans to, uh, to give you a prosper, to prosper you, to not harm you. But the biggest part of this is the fact that he wants to give you a hope and a future. And so I want you to be that hope and that future for somebody else today. Um, you know, ask them, give me just one second. He, he needs some special love for themselves. 

Frank: (21:06)
Sounds like you need some love. Okay. All right. We'll give you some love really quick. Okay. You Christmas. Wow. Oh, you jumped on big too fast. All right. It all of a sudden became a comedy show. I literally did not play that. But anyway, I want you to love on somebody today, love on somebody this week and absolutely make sure, please that we share that hope and that future with somebody. Okay. Um, for those of you that watched that, I promise this isn't a comedy routine. Um, I am glad though that we can share and laughs. I hope I made you laugh because usually the most spontaneous things are always the best. But be the hope, be the future for summer to this week. Reach out as people are doing and contact me if you need somebody. Okay. You really, really need to contact me. If you need somebody, I'm here for yourself. Until then, I will be coming to you every Monday. Please make sure that you enter my giveaway and a, an absolutely, uh, love on somebody this week. Share this video because that was absolutely awesome. You can't plan that. Okay? That is truly life happening, which is really, really funny. So until then, I'm Frank. This is unconventional wellness. Thank you so much for all your support and, uh, and I've got something special coming for you next week. Um, so make sure that you stay tuned. All right, y'all take care. Now. Have a wonderful day.

Hey everyone - let's get real. There is plenty of information out there about nutrition and exercise, but does anyone really talk about the quiet things that can cause illness and poor health. The everyday things around you?

That is the purpose of today's podcast. To talk about the hidden toxins in food, water, and our homes.

Here is what we discuss:

• Toxins in our food
• Toxins in our water
• Toxins in our homes
• Toxins in our environment
• Toxins: radiation and EMFs

Plus, we have a special order for you! This is the link I was talkign about to get my wife's book: The Home Apothecary for FREE (just pay shipping)!

https://thepaleomama.clickfunnels.com/product-launch-order-form

Enjoy!

Here is the shownotes for today:

Frank: (00:00)
Five toxins that you need to get out of your life right now. We're going to talk about different toxins that all of us have come across and the top five that you need to work on in order to improve your health here in the year of 2020 I am Frank, your host of unconventional on this radio and I welcome you to episode three of our podcast. Give us a like, give us a subscribe and stay tuned for those five toxins that we should get out of our lives right now. 

Frank: (00:32)
What's up wellness warriors? You have found yourself on unconventional wellness radio and I am your host, Frank Ritz. I'm a physician assistant with 10 years of experience in both medicine as well as alternative therapies to help you get the holistic healthcare that you've always wanted. You know, over the past 10 years I've had the opportunity to learn what I now deem as the five pillars of unconventional wellness and they are nutrition movement, getting better sleep, reducing your stress and anxiety and being able to remove toxins from your living environment. And through these five pillars, I myself have been able to be a product of the product and I want to share with you both my personal testimony and the research that is starting to come out regarding a lot of these things that we look at in preventative medicine. So hear from experts and all the individuals that I've had the pleasure of working with throughout the years in unconventional wellness. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show. 

Frank: (01:37)
[inaudible] 

Frank: (01:46)
Hey, what's going on? Wellness warriors, happy Monday. Happy Martin Luther King day as well. Uh, I hope that you are having a fantastic start to your day. Uh, actually we're about 12 o'clock now, so, um, yeah, I'm going to date this. Uh, you're, if you're joining us on the podcast, hello and welcome to unconventional 

Frank: (02:05)
wellness radio as well. I am Frank, your host, and I wanted to jump right in and really quick and talk about five toxins that you need to get out of your life right now. We're going to talk about, and these are in no particular order, but let me tell you a little bit of a backstory as to how I uncapped a really silent killer, if you will, in my home and in my life, in the terms of toxins. These toxins are so not conspicuous that you have no idea that they are actually doing some detriment to your health every single day. So if you're joining [inaudible], I guess I'm alive by the way. Hello. Tell me where you're from. Uh, you know, tell me what you're up to today and uh, and yeah, give us a, like it was a shout and give us a share. If you listen to us on the podcast, um, make sure that you leave us a rating and review because we always appreciate those and know that our content is exactly what you would like it to be. 

Frank: (03:06)
And if not, give us also suggestions. Uh, you can email [email protected] and give me those assent. Give me those things that you would like me to discuss. By the way, we hit 500 likes on the Facebook page and we are doing a giveaway. I am going to hold myself accountable and post it on our Facebook page, uh, and we will set it up for Friday, uh, in terms of what we need to do in order to get ourselves into the running for the giveaway. Okay? I promise you you're going to love it. Uh, the other thing is, is like we are ramping up a really great book sale that I'm going to let you know about at the end of this podcast as well. So anyway, without further ado, let's jump in and talk about toxins. Okay. So first and foremost is going to be food. 

Frank: (03:57)
All right? Food is a toxin that you may have already thought about. Uh, but the thing is, is that there are so many different chemicals that are in our food these days that we don't even know what food really is. And I'm going to go ahead and be the first person to say it is that as a farmer we strive for organic, you know, quality. Okay? But the problem is is this, there's a lot of lobbying going on right now in which there are pesticides that are considered organic approved. There are chemicals that are being considered organic approved. When I, when I grow things or when we raise things on my farm, organic means poop. It means manure. It means natural soil that we put some amendments like some green material or some Brown material. Maybe it will be composting some old vegetables of ours and making our own compost, but these are the things that we put into our soil. 

Frank: (04:53)
We don't add anything else, and so organic can be something that you need to be very aware of in terms of its labeling. We want you to eat organic food. Don't get me wrong, it is organic is still best, but just be a little bit more mindful of some of the things that you find in organic food. Now, that's me going off on a tangent, but what I want to talk about in terms of issues that we have with our food is all the preservatives, okay? Preservatives are these substances that food manufacturers can put into their food in order to improve the shelf stability. Okay. Now, if you're eating lots of vegetables and you're eating lots of really good meats, [inaudible] excuse me, you should have virtually no preservatives on them. Okay. Especially if they're good, high quality organic pieces of produce. These things are ugly and they don't have any of the preservatives on or in them that a lot of other prepared things do. 

Frank: (05:53)
So one of the most natural preservatives is salt. The thing is is that we don't understand the amount of sodium that is truly in our pre prepared foods. These are the things that cause people to have things like high blood pressure or having issues with cardiovascular issues later on in life. So a couple of the things that we really want to pay attention to are the laundry list of things. Like if I pick up a package, right, and I look at the back of it, this just so happens to be a bag of premade organic coconut chips. We're not going to tell you what the brand is. Sorry, I'm going to turn it really fast and cover it up so you can't see it. But we have, um, I'm going to make it like Uber fast. That way you can say it, but on the back of this, I look at the ingredients. 

Frank: (06:34)
This bag has literally one thing. Are you ready? Coconut, organic coconut. Now if I was to go get another bag of say these coconut chips and I started seeing things that are preservatives, words that I can't even describe, well then we got ourselves a problem. Okay. Um, so we want our food to be less than five ingredients. Honestly, when we actually go on PR and we go and we purchase it, look out of course for H F C ass or high fructose corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup. It's like the superhero of toxic foods, okay? It is made extraordinarily simply out of corn. It takes all the super sweetener out of the corn and it is like the ultra superhero of sugar, okay? If you think processed sugar is detrimental, high fructose corn syrup as being linked to various chronic conditions that are just absolutely destroying our economy, destroying our society, and destroying our people because it is found virtually in everything now. 

Frank: (07:37)
Okay, so watch out for high fructose corn syrup. Get that out of your toxic life immediately. Okay, let's move on to number two. Number two are some of these toxic things that are found in our water. If you are using tap water, I want you to be extremely cautious and this is the reason why water is known as the universal solvent. Okay? What I didn't realize is that when I was drinking tap water, I didn't know this years ago, but I am actually drinking people's old medications that they flushed on the toilet. I'm drinking lots and lots of chloride, which is a, you know, a way of like, you know, water treatment facilities use this stuff to, to, to purify the water. But the problem is, is that we shouldn't be drinking chloride on the regular, okay? There's a lot of metals that, you know, older homes and stuff like that, uh, with these different metal led, or excuse me, there's metal line pipes and things like that. 

Frank: (08:36)
This is all leaching into your water within also being a solvent, depending upon where the water is getting sourced from. There's a lot of things that might be sitting in the earth and the soil that is being picked up by the water and being put into the water supply. That way when we go and we turn on the tap, we're drinking water that has all of these dissolved components in it. Okay. And so what I offered to you is get your water tested. Most places will test your water. If you contact, you know, your local municipal or your local municipality, they can actually give you water testing ability. Don't spend a lot of money on it or start simple, get yourself a filter. I am not going to make any money with saying that you should go out and go get a Berkey filter. But that is the one that we use. 

Frank: (09:21)
We enjoy the, um, the economy of it in terms of its, its protocol on how it cleanses the water. I mean, I, I feel at times I could literally take the water out of my Creek, stick it inside of this filter and get pure water on the other side of it. Okay. So do your research. Be prudent. We also have a water filter system in our home. Um, we are on a well because we're out in the country, uh, but we know that we are getting pure water that is critical. It's 65% up to 65% of our bodies are made of water. So you gotta make sure that you're getting pure water into your body. So that's number two toxin. Then we need change immediately. So we talk about food, talking about water. We're going to move on to number three, which is talking about the household toxins that may be inside of our home, mainly of which number one is mold. 

Frank: (10:08)
That is the uninvited. That is the number one uninvited household guest ever. Okay. And the thing is, is that is a perfect timing for this because in our houses right now, we want to stay warm, okay? So we're doing all of these different things that we do to be able to block out, you know, little air that might be escaping from around the windows, putting towels or weather stripping or whatever around our doors. You know, we're purchasing space heaters, all this kind of stuff, right? The thing is though is that there are like just what is called volatile compounds. VOC is okay, volatile organic compounds being set out around our home and with it being buttoned up so tightly there aren't able to escape, okay? And these VOC is, can be then brought into our system through just us breathing. They become dissolved into our bloodstream and put around our body. 

Frank: (11:05)
Here's the thing about VOC is a lot of them that we recognize actually can disrupt hormones. Okay? And that's a whole nother talk. But the long story short is that your body, your metabolism could eventually start working against you and you could start having some chronic illnesses that could pop up because of chronic hyperactivity of your HPA access and especially the chronic hyperactivity of your, uh, your hormones not operating the way they should because a lot of these things will block your hormones that are created from your body and your body just won't operate the way that it's supposed to. And that eventually, of course can lead toward chronic illnesses. Okay. So be very mindful of the air in which we breathe inside of our button to home. The other thing, like I said, was mold. Black mold runs rampant and coal. Cool dark places. 

Frank: (11:56)
That's a lot of our houses. Okay. Um, I will tell you right now, we've got a really wonderfully, uh, uh, just unbelievably well insulated home. But the problem is, is that I can look at my windows and I can see the condensation from our breath and from the other ways that it just gets out into the air. And the problem is, is that mold loves and adores that. So what we've got going on in every room in the home is we have some dehumidifiers happening to pull that extra moisture out of the air, drop us to a relative humidity of at least, I think it's like 40% or whatever in our home. And it, uh, it really, really helps keep all of these weird upper respiratory like symptoms that can happen because a black mold, black mold can cause stuff like pneumonia. Um, and it's making people sick and can cause chronic illness. 

Frank: (12:42)
So we have got to dehumidify our home and get the VOC out. If you can afford the opportunity to be able to open windows during the winter to help off gas some of this stuff in your house, please do it. Open doors, open windows if you can. If it's a nicer day outside and you can do it for just an hour, then go ahead and do it. Okay. Um, and then come back and you can reheat your home and all that kind of stuff, but you gotta let fresher into your home, wipe out those VOC that come from like stuff like this furniture behind me. I actually made that, but I let that thing sit outside for like a month before I brought it inside the house because it's got, as you can see, lacquer and uh, it's got some, uh, a stain on it. You know, I try not to stay in with too heavy a stain, but long story short is that like all of those aromas that you smell when you repaint or put something on your walls or anything like that, open up a box. 

Frank: (13:31)
It's gonna let off these volatile organic compounds and you've got to get that stuff out of your home. Okay. A really good air filters are another really good thing, like wa like these HEPA filters or changing your filters on the regular at least once monthly. Really great way to keep your air clean. Okay. Number four, let's move on to number four so we can keep this a little bit less. You know, uh, uh, crazy. But these naturally occurring toxins. Okay. Naturally occurring toxins like out in the environment. Toxins. Okay. We come across these things all the time. Um, I, I find it interesting that some of these toxins were like, around when dinosaurs were decomposing. It's the craziest thing, right? But if you think about it, we're in a closed system. There's a little bit of transfer, a few where between say us and the outer atmosphere, but we're talking about like, mainly more so like just gases. 

Frank: (14:25)
Okay. Like things that are in the earth, stay in the earth, you know, like, this is something wild that I heard. Uh, was it a geologist or a paleontologist or maybe it was just a, I don't know, an archeologist or something said that like, our water today is dinosaur PF yesterday. And I was like, I'll be done. And that's right. Like we're not creating new water, right? Like we're able to like have the, the world naturally should filter out the water in order for it to go up into the atmosphere, come back down as rain, and then give us fresh water again. Right. But the thing is, is that it's leaving all that stuff inside of our earth and the onset of our soil and stuff like that. And so explosions and uh, you know, drilling for things and all that kind of stuff or leases and allows this water to sort of seep through it and it will actually cause the water to pick these things up and uh, and we can come across them that way. 

Frank: (15:17)
There's a lot of plastics and, and things instead of our air that are kind of like occurring out there that we really need to watch out for. So, you know, it's important to, to get away from those environments as best as you can. Get yourself out into nature, get some sun. All right, sun is our wonderful detox. I mean like, look what it does. Do a it boy I was when I was growing up in Florida, if I left something out there that had any type of like a, a coloration to it, I could leave it out for like a weekend in the Florida sun. It would normally bleach that white. And so like getting out and getting the sun, getting your vitamin D, getting out in nature, breathing that wonderful oxygen that those trees and all those plants make can do a really great job because there's a lot of toxins out there in our natural occurring environment that we really have to watch out for. 

Frank: (16:06)
Okay. And then last but not least is number five. So we've talked about, we've talked about our food, we've talked about our water, we've talked about uninvited household guests and we've talked about some of a naturally occurring toxins. The last thing I wanted to talk about was a electromagnetic frequency and stuff like that. Now there are two sides to this. Okay. And both of them bring up really good points. The science is saying that EMF doesn't cause cancer. Then there's other people that are like, EMF does cause cancer. So I'm not taking a stance on this. What I am saying is I want to talk about total radiation. Okay. And being the physician assistant that I am, I always made sure that I took in consideration when I saw my patients as I would ask them if I felt like it was necessary, if it was clinically necessary for me to do an X Ray or a CT scan or something like that that I asked the patient what was the last time you had these completed? 

Frank: (16:58)
Okay. A lot of people lose track of like maybe wanting to go see one provider and then to go see another provider and I go see another provider. They don't remember how many x-rays they've had. Right. Your dentist every year does x-rays and so you just got to make sure that you keep mindful of the amount of radiating materials you are around over the course of at least a year. A CT scan is like getting like hundreds of x-rays. Okay. So if you get a CT scan, be very mindful of the necessity of another CT scan in a short proximity window of another one. I'm not saying don't see, I'm not saying, you know, you have a, um, an ailment or an acute illness in which it requires a CT scan to skip your CT scan, but just be mindful of the amount of, of those types of procedures that have been done over the course of a year because you really want to make sure that you are keeping in consideration all of the sources of radiation, you know, not just necessarily extras and CT scans and such like that. 

Frank: (17:56)
Um, but you want to make sure that you keep all that consideration. Okay. Um, you know, the things that we do is we just preventatively, we like to turn off our wifi at night. Um, there's no reason to have wifi. Um, everything that operates is hardwired, if you will. Um, you know, the thing about smart meters is, uh, you know, if you, if you have to have a smart meter, there's ways to block it. You can do research on that. Um, you know, cell phone use. I try to use a speaker phone as much as possible. I try to keep my cell phone clean and all that good stuff. Who's that pretty lady on the cell phone by the way? Yeah, she's, she's, she's the best. Um, but I try to do things like that to help sort of like just keep my body flowing. I do a lot of key lighting agents, right? 

Frank: (18:38)
Like I do a lot of spirulina and chlorella. I like these because they do a great job of detoxifying your blood. Okay. Irradiation is almost inevitable, right? Going out into the sun alone, you're radiating your body. But the fact is is that you want to make sure that you keep those radiative levels within reasonable limits over the course of the year. Okay. So that's my five ways to get toxins out of your life. Guys. I just gave you like ridiculous value of years of my life, uh, all in a short period of time. Okay. So bear with me for just a couple more moments cause I want to tell you about something really special that's going on. My wife, Jackie, that you may know as the paleo mama. I was looking up on our, um, on our bookshelf cause I should have grabbed the other book as well. But it's okay. Her first book, well actually this book, her second book that she wrote, which is called the home apothecary. Uh, home crafted recipes, herbs and essential oils. She is making this available for free [inaudible] 

Frank: (19:39)
pay shipping. Okay. I will see if, um, um, I will put, matter of fact in the comments on Facebook lies, uh, look over here on the side guys. I will put the link to be able to get us, but she is giving away this book for free. All you gotta do is pay shipping. Okay. It is chock full of so many different do it yourself recipes. Let me just name a couple of the really awesome ones that we like. Uh, so he's got a bunch of medicinal tea blends in here, body butters and creams, sugar scrubs, magnesium cream lip foams. What is the oil cleansing method and how can you use it? Uh, nasal cleaning, uh, gosh, garlic, ear oil, hot onion packs, herbs in the kitchen, uh, herbal cleaning recipe. So these are like a great way to like swap out those really nasty cleaners that we have in our home. 

Frank: (20:28)
Uh, she's got an Astro glass cleaner in there. Burner furniture, Polish, drool, wool, dryer balls, all of them, whatever it is. Like I think, gosh, 80 pages or something like that. It's 80 pages of like the stuff that she's developed over the last like seven, eight years. So this book will be offered for free. Uh, and there was a couple of other goodies in there. You can add her first book, uh, everyday natural as a bundle. And then you can also add, uh, a digital company, a digital copy of this book as well if you so wish. Okay. So check it out. I will put the uh, on the podcast notes, go check out the show notes. I will put the link in there for you guys that are listening. And then I will also put, uh, I will also put it into, uh, the Facebook live. 

Frank: (21:17)
So you can actually tell, sorry, I am dinging cause like I said, we just launched this today. So, unfortunately we are getting a dinging messages and whatever, whatever. But anyway, long story short is please go get a copy of this book. We would really appreciate it and have the everyday natural if you want in the us limited time offers. So, um, that's all I got for today. Hopefully this podcast and Facebook live brought you massive value. Uh, I want to wish you guys the best of luck this whole week. Reach out to me, let me know. Share this with somebody who, you know, could need it and yeah, hope you guys have a wonderful week and we will definitely look forward to seeing you again on our podcast next week. Take care everybody. This is unconventional on this radio. I am Frank and I will talk to you again very soon. Bye bye now.

Transparent warning! I get real and share my story again...but it is to your benefit!

PTS(D) changed me back in 2004. I was not the same. I had suicidal tendencies and did not think I needed to be around anymore.

...but, something happened and I found hope.

I want to share that same hope with you!

On today's podcast we talk about:

• My story of trauma
• My 3 steps to help you get started to heal
• My desire to help you tell your own story

Here are the shownotes for today's Podcast:

Frank: (00:01)
What's up wellness warriors. You have found yourself on unconventional wellness radio and I am your host, Frank Ritz. I'm a physician assistant with 10 years of experience in both medicine as well as alternative therapies to help you get the holistic healthcare that you've always wanted. You know, over the past 10 years I've had the opportunity to learn what I now deem as the five pillars of unconventional wellness and they are nutrition movement, getting better sleep, reducing your stress and anxiety and being able to remove toxins from your living environment. And through these five pillars, I myself have been able to be a product of the product and I want to share with you both my personal testimony and the research that is starting to come out regarding a lot of these things that we look at in preventative medicine. So hear from experts and all the individuals that I've had the pleasure of working with throughout the years in unconventional wellness. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show. 

Frank: (01:13)

Frank: (01:16)
Hey, what's going on Facebook live, what's up wellness warriors and what is going on on the unconventional wellness radio podcast. Frank, here I am your host and I have the distinct pleasure of being able to talk to you on this podcast, on this Facebook live, whatever way you're listening. And uh, today is going to, is going 

Frank: (01:35)
to be a different one. But the more that I talk about it, actually the easier that it's become to talk about it is that I wanted to talk to you about how trauma has changed me and how I have learned how to adapt and change and not allow it to control my life anymore. I also am going to be doing a giveaway because our Facebook page, by the way, if you're listening to us on iTunes or Spotify, Stitcher, Google play, whatever, and you have not gone over to my Facebook page and given us a like on the page unconventional wellness with Frank Ritz, please do so because I am doing a absolute giveaway. I don't know how crazy it's going to be. I'm still kind of formulating it, but I'm super excited because we've just hit a certain milestone on the page and it's incredible that you guys are all flocking the unconventional walnuts. 

Frank: (02:29)
And I'm so grateful for it. So it's time to do a giveaway cause that's just what I like to do. I don't know why. And so, uh, go ahead and get on over there. Give us a like on Facebook, uh, absolutely. Give us a, uh, like a rating review if you will on this podcast as well because, uh, this will enter you into the giveaway and I promise I'm going to announce that giveaway here very, very soon. If you're joining us on Facebook live, let us know just like Diane did, where you are at and I'm so sorry that you're cold up there in, in the new England area. Diane, uh, you know, it's, it's surprisingly and weirdly warm here where I'm at. I'm in the, I'm the Western side of North Carolina and uh, the, the high yesterday was like 68 degrees or something. I was wild and it's supposed to stay like high sixties for the next couple of days. 

Frank: (03:20)
So I dunno what that's all about. But um, winter has decided that it wanted to take a quick break and I guess allow spring to take over for a week. But anyway, um, let's dive right in. And, uh, enough about all of that and let's talk about how trauma changed me and how I have learned how to adapt and change again. So it's a little transparent, but, uh, you know, it's a, it's a story that needs to be told because, uh, it may be able to help just even one person, then it's helped somebody. Okay. So like, share this and let's get started. Excuse me. So there I was on my first deployment in the United States army. Uh, I had become a newly commissioned, well, actually I wasn't newly commissioned, but I was an officer in the army and, uh, I was a first Lieutenant, uh, who was going out to do a job as a maintenance officer. 

Frank: (04:15)
And that maintenance officer role landed me in the middle East, uh, because I was actually in Korea for one year learning how to be a, an officer as a platoon leader and a, what's up Dave on. And so, uh, you know, learning how to be a platoon leader in Korea was cool because it was like an overseas tour, but it was an opportunity to really learn how the army works and everything like that. But, uh, the, the, the war really kicked off in the middle East by then. And, uh, and when that happened, uh, you know, I just had that sense of, you know, cause I'm, I'm a part of what they refer to as the nine 11 generation. So it was nine 11 that actually put me into the military. Um, I graduated from college after I had lost my father two months after nine 11. And, uh, and I didn't want to be the only member of my family who had not joined. 

Frank: (05:06)
And so I went and did a civilian job for a little while and I decided to say, you know what, I'm going to go join the military. And so I landed myself in the army and I, uh, I was in Korea finishing up with that tour and I talked to somebody called a branch manager and I said, I just, I gotta get to a, what is called a highly deployable unit. This is the reason why I joined the military. So this is the reason why I am here and I need to literally throw my hat in the ring and get, get over there. So anyway, I went to join the a hundred and first, uh, if you knew, if you know of the a hundred first airborne division, they're out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Uh, they are the air assault, uh, division. They are the ones that were also made very popular, again from the documentary on HBO called band of brothers. 

Frank: (05:58)
And so I needed to be with a unit that had a legacy like that. And I really wanted to be my thrusted myself into the middle East in that way. So I put my name in the, in the hat, if you will, and got my reassignment to Fort Campbell. And within six months I found myself in Iraq. And so I was a first Lieutenant at a time. I took over for a maintenance operation, which was, uh, we were in a line unit and, uh, and I was a maintenance platoon leader. I was also the executive officer of the same unit and found myself going out on different styles of missions quite often during the, uh, during the, the time that I had spent over there during that first deployment. Um, I also, uh, well I went on many different missions, if you will. And one in particular that I remember was the one that was the Sentinel event. 

Frank: (06:51)
So let's talk about post traumatic stress. I don't really like the D because it's really not a disorder. Um, I would just say that you don't have to be in the military to suffer from post traumatic stress. Uh, it could be any traumatic situation that you've experienced where either you, yourself or somebody very close to you was either had a near death experience or death was unfortunately suffered during that event. We call that event a Sentinel event. That Sentinel event is something that people can usually remember. The vast majority of the details, but they have a lot of blurring of a lot of the other details that would specifically describe it almost to help describe like a haze that happens. Okay. So my Sentinel event was when, when I was out on one mission and there was a bunch of different things, but there's one that in particular that I do remember. 

Frank: (07:41)
And, uh, and what had happened was, is we were about to go out on a mission to, uh, re-employ some Jersey barriers and kind of redirect traffic and things like that. And so we rolled out on this mission and as we were coming back, or excuse me, as we were leaving the forward operating base, um, we came to where we needed to stop to check our communications and things like that between all the different vehicles. Well, when we did that, we desk mountain, um, like you're always supposed to do and you're pulling security around your vehicles and things like that. And my lead gun truck had noticed that there were some wires that had been out of the sticking out of the ground and those wires. Um, for some strange reason, here's where the like weird, mystical, you don't remember what happens sort of stuff happened. 

Frank: (08:29)
And hindsight being 20, 20, I never would have traced those wires with that leak. Untracked because we ended up coming across an improvised explosive device that was buried on the ground. Well, um, unbeknownst to us it was actually a dud. Um, thank God it was because I wouldn't be able to sit here and tell you this story if it actually was not. The reason why is because, um, finally some sense of some, some sense of I'm putting, I just put myself into a super dangerous situation. Why am I doing this? Sort of finally came across and I just grabbed a hold of this NCO that was Whitman to Sergeant and I pulled him back to the gun Trek and I said, why are we doing what we're doing? Um, let's call this thing up. So we did and ended up, uh, having a pretty good stroke of good luck because the engineering folks, the ones that were specifically trained to go and figure out where these roadside bombs were, were coming back off of a mission while we flagged them down and ask them to use their machine, uh, called a Buffalo to start digging into the ground and figure out what this thing was. 

Frank: (09:27)
And sure enough, it was a improvised explosive device. So at that point, uh, we had to continue to pull security so we can call in the bomb folks to come in, dismantle the bomb. Um, so fast forward about a couple of hours or something like that, cause it took them a little while to get out there and, uh, they interrogated and found out that it was a one five, five round. Now, if you're not familiar with the size of rounds, one, five, five rounds are probably the largest explosive projectile that is currently being made for a lot of these ground vehicles that can shoot them. Um, it's, it's shot out of a vehicle traditionally known as a Paladin, which is a really large, uh, field artillery style of tank. And these one five, five rounds are really, really, really big. Um, and so they're full of lots and lots of, uh, explosive material. 

Frank: (10:19)
And this was what was buried in the ground, um, as the, as the team that was going into detonate the bomb or to disarm the bomb, whichever they could do, uh, was going over it, they found out that there was a pressure plate, uh, that was attached to this improvised explosive device. And this improvised explosive device pressure plate was said to trip and create the connection. Like you put enough weight on it. It creates the connection in order to set an electric charge to another charge that was placed on the IED in order to get that one 55 round to explode. And so what we ended up finding out was something was happening with the pressure plate, uh, to where the connection was not made. And the fact of the matter is, is that that was the same pressure plate that that NCO, that Sergeant and I were standing upon. 

Frank: (11:08)
And so due to let it be grace of God, let it be some sort of other divine intervention, whatever you want to make it out to be. Uh, personally I believe it definitely was the favor of God. Uh, that pressure plate IED did not explode. Uh, if it would have, we would have been involved in a very large explosion. Why do I say that? How would I know that it was gonna be a large explosion while the same bomb folks that found out that it was a pressure plated, improvised explosive device where the same ones that attached another piece of detonating materials, some C for composite to that, uh, round and actually blew it up. And, uh, it wasn't all until then that I realized the significance of what had happened when I saw that gigantic mushroom cloud from the, uh, from the detonated, you know, round that was exploded because of that material. 

Frank: (12:01)
Realizing then that it could have been me that was inside of that, uh, mushroom cloud as well. And so from that point forward, there was a lot of other different things that had happened on that deployment as well that sort of just kind of added fuel to that fire. And when I came back from, uh, that deployment, uh, after all those things, you know, to include that event, that sort of kind of started things off. Um, I definitely wasn't the same. And I know that I'm not speaking in reference to just myself when I say this, that we live in world now where traumatic events are happening, unfortunately on a multiple occurrences throughout the day. And the downside is, is that you are not alone. You are not somebody who has to allow these traumatic experiences to ever, um, define who you are as a person. 

Frank: (12:52)
If you are still alive, if there is air still going inside of your lungs, there is a purpose for you. And that is what the whole purpose of this podcast and Facebook live is about. So I want you to know that you have a purpose. I want you to share this with somebody who, you know, closely that may have also experienced something that has been traumatic for them. And I wanted to let you know that there is hope. It took me awhile to find out what that hope was. I remember that I was an absolute wreck for some reason. I still was alive, even though I had a lot of suicidal tendencies and, uh, come, uh, come, come times that I had a couple of times where I was making those thoughts of, um, uh, just be better off. If I wasn't around, I'd just be better off dead. 

Frank: (13:34)
And so, um, something sustain me. And like I said, that's something was, um, that's something was God to me. And uh, God showed up in a really big way. Showed up as my wife. My wife showed up on the scene, uh, during that deployment and I met her in person when meeting online was not cool back in like the early two thousands. It was you were a nerd if you met somebody online, even though that's now the way that most of us, I believe most of us, excuse me, most people nowadays, cause I've been happily married for 13 years, uh, but most people date now meeting somebody that they find online first. And that was what we did back in the early 2000. But we had this really great story that we used to concoct about, um, how we actually had met. And you know, it was a little bit of truth, but a lot of, you know, dirt covered up the truth because we didn't want to be labeled as nerds. 

Frank: (14:29)
But anyway, I can now tell you that I met her online, excuse me, and say that with complete confidence. But, uh, but I had met her while we were, while I was on my deployment. And subsequently after I got back within a month, I finally got the opportunity to meet this gal face to face. And, uh, my life had changed forever. And so, um, like I said, God showed up in a way, in a really big way with my wife because, uh, I was still away from her dating. Uh, we had a long distance relationship and there was plenty of times where I had contemplated, um, you know, early on like, why am I here? Why am I doing what I'm doing? And so, uh, she gave me a purpose, she gave me hope and, uh, and I want to tell you that that is probably the best way to start finding that same hope for yourself. 

Frank: (15:12)
Especially if I'm talking to you and you've had a traumatic situation that you have lived with for, you know, just a couple of months or men maybe many years, is that you've got to find someone, okay, you got to find someone to share your story with. And I want to give you all the opportunity to do that with me. Um, there has been healing in, in, in that because the first thing that we all want to do and the thing that a lot of us will do is when we have a traumatic situation, we usually try to keep it to ourselves and that is actually the best way to give it power. When we keep it to ourselves and we do not share that story with others, there is no healing. The only way that we can actually start healing from something like this is we have to start telling our story. 

Frank: (15:53)
And I appreciate you all to allow me to tell my story here on the online space and so I want to pay that forward. I want to let you start sharing your stories as well. And so if you feel like you just want to share your story simply by putting your story here in the comments of this Facebook live or emailing [email protected] you are very, very welcome to share your story. Okay. Um, this is what you need to do. You need to start by telling your story to yourself. That is actually a way that I really, really started finding healing was I started to find myself comfortable with starting to tell that story to myself. All right, so action step number one for helping you in your healing journey is to start telling you that story, that story yourself, and what's your experience? That wasn't normal, okay? 

Frank: (16:45)
That wasn't something that anyone should have gone through. Okay? Like I said, we're talking about either near death or death, like experiences that have happened either to you, yourself or somebody that was close to you. Um, these are where or where somebody was in like imminent danger. Okay? So these aren't normal experiences. You can't tell me by all those new Yorkers that had a firsthand witness of what happened on nine 11 with those towers going down that they didn't suffer some sort of post traumatic stress. I mean, I would be extremely ignorant if those individuals did not suffer from post traumatic stress. And so I offered to you is that uh, if the statistics of posttraumatic stress are a one out of every eight Americans which is now known, um, one out of every eight Americans may suffer some sort of a traumatic experience that leads itself into post traumatic stress. 

Frank: (17:40)
Um, the way that things are happening in this world and the way that information is available to us on the daily. Um, you can't tell me that that is probably not less or more so frequent than one out of eight now. And so the first thing you need to do, like I said, action step number one and start telling your story to yourself and start realizing that it is not something that is normal. Okay? But recovery from it can be okay. And now a action step number moving in action step number two is you've got to start telling someone about it. All right? Whether that'd be a significant other that you are living with or a counselor or you know, if it needs to be somebody like me that you just start telling your story too, that is completely fine. Number two. It can also be a telling your story to uh, you know, a hotline of some sort. 

Frank: (18:26)
There's a lot of online resources that are available, a lot of people that are making themselves available that want to talk to you about post traumatic stress and things that have happened to you, okay? Number three, and these are in no particular order. Number three is, uh, you know, once you find that person to start talking to, number three is, uh, develop an understanding of the truth. And the truth is, is that people have suffered for post traumatic stress for years. All right? Throughout history, you can read about all the different people who have had traumatic situations happen throughout the years. And so I offered to you is that you've got to find truth, find truth, find the truth in how to recover and give that truth to. Uh, what I found massive power is I gave that truth to God and I said that I do not want to carry these symptoms anymore and I want to make sure that I am able to find this new normal because you won't ever be the same. 

Frank: (19:25)
The situation or the experiences have absolutely changed you. And so you have to understand that there is a new normal that needs to be discovered. Well, I found mine by being able to get into scripture and finding the truth. And so I offer that to you as well is that my story is not a story of, Oh, woe was me. My story is a story of hope and of discovering and to eventually give him glory. And that's exactly what I want to tell my story for. So, um, I didn't want to make this a super lengthy, uh, Facebook live. I didn't want to make this a super lengthy, uh, podcast today. We're right at about the 20 minute Mark, which is perfect for those that are traveling to and from work. But like I said, start telling your story. Start by telling your story to yourself. Share in like this, give it to a friend and a, and let's start really helping one another in 2020 to recover and find our new normal because it absolutely can be out there for you. So 

Frank: (20:21)
share this like this. Give me a rating and review on the podcast, but most of all you have stuck around for the last 20 minutes. And now let's talk about the giveaway. So, um, the giveaway is going to be announced on my Facebook page. I'll do it this week and it's because we just hit a certain number of likes on my Facebook page and I really appreciate all of you guys and gals out there that have done that, uh, to try to help share unconventional wellness with everybody. If you guys know what unconventional on that says, let me just wrap it up in a nutshell really quick, is that it's a program that I've designed that over the course of the 10 years of me being a physician assistant and a, and going through a lot of the different things that I have, uh, you know, in a, in health regard, I have realized that there are some really nonconventional ways to be able to address a lot of our health and wellness concerns, uh, things through the right type of nutrition and movement and getting better sleep and removing toxins and talking about what we talked about in this podcast, which is, uh, how to combat stress and anxiety. 

Frank: (21:23)
Well, I wrapped up all five of these things in the modules that I can deliver over the course of a 90 day period could help you find real change, real and holistic change in 90 days. And so that's what unconventional wellness is all about. And so, uh, it requires a community. It requires a tribe of warriors to help one another out. So come join us and become one of these wellness warriors. And, uh, and help let us change the world one person at a time because we want to help you reach the Heights of health and Heights wellness that you have never even done anything except for dream. I teach you how to put the create traction and to be able to actually, uh, really do something for yourself and really be able to change, uh, your life in 90 days. And so help me by spreading the word. 

Frank: (22:10)
So I will do a giveaway. So go on there and go like the Facebook page. It's called unconventional wellness with Frank reds. And, uh, and that's it. That's all I've got for you guys on this Columbia little Monday that I've got about, uh, love talking to you all. I want to let you know that there's hope and I want to help you get there. So, um, if you need to send me your story, do so Frank at [inaudible] dot com and let's, uh, let's start telling our stories guys, because there is Oh and power and being able to do that. So take care and we will talk to you again on another podcast or Facebook live very soon. 

Speaker 5: (22:42)
Bye bye now.

Hey Wellness Warriors!

WELCOME to Season 3! Happy New Year!

In today's episode we will kick off this season with a review of YOU! What are your resolutions? Health goals?

We discuss the most popular trends in health and wellness and also the Five Pillars of Uncoventional Wellness:

• Nutrition;
• Movement (don't like the word "exercise");
• Getting Better Sleep;
• Combatting Stress/Anxiety;
• Removing Toxins from your Life

I look forward to what this season brings!

Here are the shownotes:

Frank: (00:00)
[inaudible] 

Frank: (00:09)
what's up y'all? Welcome to season three of unconventional wellness radio. I am Frank. I am a physician assistant and your host on this journey of unconventional wellness, right? I talk to you about my five pillars that have brought me the type of holistic health care that I've always wanted. I talked to you about diet plans. I talked to you about nutrition. I talked to you about how to get better sleep, how to remove those toxins in your life, including the social ones, and I talked to you about how to combat stress and anxiety and so much more over my 10 years of experience as a physician assistant and as a person who really enjoys preventative health. I have spoke with so many different bodywork experts and different individuals who have been able to provide holistic and actual alternative medicine for others and it's been such an incredible journey and so I just cannot wait until what season three brings for us. Stay tuned. The first episode is coming very soon. 

Frank: (01:11)
[inaudible] 

Frank: (01:13)
what's up? Wellness warriors. You have found yourself on unconventional wellness radio and I am your host. Frank Ritz. I'm a physician assistant with 10 years of experience in both medicine as well as alternative therapies to help you get the holistic healthcare that you've always wanted. You know, over the past 10 years I've had the opportunity to learn what I now deem as the five pillars of unconventional wellness and they are nutrition movement, getting better sleep, reducing your stress and anxiety and being able to remove toxins from your living environment. And through these five pillars, I myself have been able to be a product of the product and I want to share with you both my personal testimony and the research that is starting to come out regarding a lot of these things that we look at in preventative medicine. So hear from experts and all the individuals that I've had the pleasure of working with throughout the years in unconventional wellness. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show. 

Frank: (02:18)
Hey, welcome and happy new year is 2020 I mean, are you kidding me? What happened in 2019 by the way? Is that not crazy? Well, just like I said, we're onto a new season of our podcast as well as bringing you this Facebook live for another simulcast because it is all about being able to refresh. Uh, I don't like the word reboot. I think that rebooting is, is not the right terminology because it's like this whole concept of what I titled, this is new year, new year, so I don't really, I don't really want it to be a new you per se, because that means that you're losing the identity of your old you, right? Like if you're new, then I really don't see the fact of calling it that because then you're losing, like I said, you're losing your identity. And so I wanted to talk about more of like a renewing of you rather than it being a new you, if that makes sense. 

Frank: (03:24)
It's just that it's more so I love to, to, to look at people's, uh, methods of these fancy cliches and stuff like that that they come up with. And quite honestly, I'm just, I'm, I'm over it. And, uh, and I just wanted to be real with you and let you know that you are absolutely, exactly the way that you're supposed to be. And that it's all about progress. It's not about perfection and it's not about, um, all of these feel good things and that honestly, it's about making the right choices and doing the right things in order to help you. So that's why I want to talk about, I want to talk about some different topics during this conversation today. And, uh, and, and yeah, let's just, let's just jump right in. Okay. So first and foremost is that, um, I like to, at the end of the year, I love to get on here and talk about the trends that we see throughout the health industry and stuff like that. 

Frank: (04:22)
And, uh, and if you were like, probably under a rock, you didn't realize that there is some movement happening in diet plans in a very good way and a more clean way of eating, if that makes sense. So, uh, you know, there's different diet plans that we'd like to follow. Um, some of them even have their own little realm of how they break these diet plans down and they can even be like two or three different subtypes. Right? But the fact of the matter is, is that the end of the day, our genetics have really been the same for thousands of years. And so when it comes to eating, what we want to do is we want to make sure that we get as close to natural as we possibly can. We want to eat organic food, we want to eat food that is not grown in a greenhouse using a bunch of different chemicals in order to get it to look the prettiest, right? 

Frank: (05:16)
We want to make sure that we're eating lots and lots of plants. You know, when it comes to eating the rainbow, that really is important. And so when whatever diet plan you decide that you want to follow, the fact is, is that there are still foundational things that will dictate if it's a good healthy diet plan or not. You know, even just in particular, if I think about the number one one, excuse me, like top three diets that were looked at. Um, actually even the top, like it just expanded out to the top 10 diets that were looked at. They're all based on clean eating, right? So there's a plant based diet, there is the Dubrow diet, there is the key to genic diet. There is intermittent fasting, the Mediterranean diet. These are all still diets that still show that they are the top trending diets even in 2019 where do they rank is irrelevant in terms of what their foundational principles are. 

Frank: (06:17)
And so what we are failing to do with our diets is we're not looking at the particular types of quality food that we're getting, right? So like people, by and far the number one reason why people want to start a diet plan is because they want to lose weight. And so these diets that are out there, they can tell decent weight loss. I mean intermittent fasting. For example, if you look at intermittent fasting, you're going to lose weight because you are looking at being able to decrease your diet, caloric intake. Okay. And by doing so it really will help you lose weight. But there a lot more science involved, uh, to that. Okay. There is being able to look at the overall aspects of what that diet brings in the new renewing change that brings in you. So like I said, if we're eating processed foods or for eating foods that are quick, if we're eating foods that can stay preserved for a long time sitting on a shelf, then you know, we're really not doing the best for ourselves that we possibly can. 

Frank: (07:20)
Okay. And so we want to renew our sense of how we eat and then more so about how we eat. I am starting to become a big proponent and also when we eat is just as important. Okay. So just for example, most diets in America, most people who eat in America eat actually most of the time that they're awake. And with the business of our schedules, we can be upwards of 14 and 16 hours a week per day awake. Okay. So wait 14 to 16 hours per day. So when we look at that with this concept of grazing or eating, that is a lot of calories that we're consuming throughout the day. I mean, we're looking at eating for a 1416 hour window. That's a lot of calories. That's a lot of food energy that we're putting into our bodies that our body has to be able to say, okay, what do you want me to do with all of this? 

Frank: (08:15)
Okay. In addition to if we're putting a bunch of chemicals and preservatives and nonorganic styles of food into our body, our body only knows one thing. I'm going to turn that into fat because I don't recognize how to process that food in order to be able to actually do anything with it. Okay. So that by and far is the foundation of good health is we want to eat as many kinds of foods as we can. We want to have as many plants as we possibly can and we want to be able to eat in a particular window of when we are supposed to eat. Okay. So that by and far will relate to why the top diets of 2019 are the top diets of 2019, uh, top on the list, intermittent fasting, lots of, lots of people. Google, intermittent fasting. I absolutely am a proponent of intermittent fasting and I would love to help you out with your intermittent fasting journey as well. 

Frank: (09:06)
So give me a comment if you're actually interested in intermittent fasting just in terms of information. Matter of fact, let me know by either giving me a thumbs up or saying yes in the comments as well. If you would like me to do a webinar on intermittent fasting and I will dive deep into intermittent fasting in and really talk about it, uh, at great length because it has been revolutionary for, uh, my diet or my, my needs in particular because, um, of course, you know, losing weight is a massive benefit. But the real big thing is, is like all of the other symptoms that I have are a lot of the other chronic things I've got going on in my life had been touched by intermittent fasting in a very positive way. So, um, I would love to let me know by putting in the comments yes. 

Frank: (09:49)
That you would be totally hip for a webinar. I would love to lead a webinar and intermittent fasting alone. There's a couple of different ways that people intermittent fast. Then we could talk about there's a 16 eight method and a five two method and the way that you're going to be able to get, uh, the, the understanding about that is also make sure that you let me know if you want to do a webinar. So very, very good diet plan that has actually been backed by research. Really love it. So ketogenic paleo is still up there. Ketogenic more so than paleo reason why is because the ketogenic diet is sort of like paleo plus. Um, so with paleo there are certain types of uh, grains that you can actually eat, um, that are considered Oh K. um, but with, uh, and when I say grains, I'm talking about like what paleo diet grains. 

Frank: (10:33)
We're talking like super, you know, non lagoon type grains. Um, you know, most of the time you want to stay away from those fans. But there are certain sugars also allowed in the paleo diet that are absolutely, um, not, not really, you know, the nuances of it are very close, but quite honestly, Quito is a step in the direction of eating more fats. It's a high fat diet where you're literally cutting as many carbs as you possibly can to put your body into a state of ketosis in order to burn the existing fat. So you go from a sugar burner to a fat burner and that's exactly what you want to portray. When it comes to that sort of a diet. So Quito still remains very good and then people are getting kind of lazy or a non strict with their KIDO and so they don't track their macros or anything like that and they believe that eating processed non starchy food, it's actually going to provide good health benefit. 

Frank: (11:28)
And quite honestly that is a slippery slope because when we're still eating processed food, we're staying away from those tenants that I talked about earlier with the proper nutrition and proper clean eating and things like that. And so unfortunately, um, we might be traveling up the slippers, slippery slope. Then there's other diets that are out there, you know, plant based diets, moving vegetarian, things like that, um, that are all well and good if weight loss is your and things like that, they are held heart-healthy and things like that. But really a well rounded die to beating as many organic foods as we possibly can is, is what we really want to be able to, um, to, to focus on. Okay. So those are the top, top, uh, you know, trending diet plan is 2019, sort of like the top two or three. But then I also wanted to like wrap up this slide by talking about some mental health and things like that. 

Frank: (12:16)
Um, a lot of people when it comes to renewing themselves, they think of like a new year's resolution as to something physical. Okay. But we often negate the, the mental health aspect of trying to refresh ourselves as well in a new year. And I would offer to you that it's very important to consider, uh, you know, some sort of a mental health resolution as well, whether that be, um, you know, trying to remove some of the natural stress and anxiety and do stirs in your life trying to simplify your life. Uh, you know, these are things that we should be thinking about as well. And quite honestly, it's, it's very, uh, pertinent that we focus on mental health because, uh, I can tell you about how, you know, mental health, you know, anxiety and stress still relate to a high propensity of causing issues with people with cardiovascular disease. 

Frank: (13:12)
I mean, uh, it, you know, we all understand that that's tobacco cessation is extremely important. We all understand that eating the right way is extremely important. Um, but the fact is is that we sort of negate the stress and anxiety and, and we don't think about how detrimental to our health over the course of time that can really be, especially with like cardiovascular health. It remains one of the top, uh, predictors of people who have strokes and heart attacks is, excuse me, your stress and anxiety levels, um, those, uh, improve or excuse me, those increase inflammation in the body. And when the, when the, when the inflammation in the body rises, your body will respond to that and it'll respond to that usually in a positive way in the, in the beginning because, you know, fight or flight is extraordinarily important, but over a longterm, uh, that will absolutely wreak, uh, massive, uh, down. 

Frank: (14:07)
You know, it will, it will really wreak havoc in your system. And so a lot of people don't really think about stress and anxiety in the new year. And so I wanted to talk about how you need to refresh and renew yourself. Uh, mental health wise as well. Like consider starting some form of yoga meditation, get into the word. Uh, you know, like surround yourself with really good friends. Don't be isolated in 20, 20, because I used to elation leads to massive problems with stress and anxiety. And so we really wanna talk about mental health as well. Another thing that we want to do is maybe update, um, our living environment, right. And update the toxins that might be in our environment that would be extraordinarily nice as a resolution to have as well as to refresh our home, renew our home. Okay. Um, look at the things that we use that are toxic that we clean our homes with. 

Frank: (15:00)
We want to eradicate those things from a home and bring in fresh things. Maybe move toward, you know, utilizing essential oils for cleaning or utilizing, uh, just simply other natural substances like a citrus, uh, or, or lemon to freshen up the home. Um, get investments into purifying our air in our home. Um, so like, make sure that we get like the correct type of filters for our air conditioners and things like that. Um, make sure that we look toward the humidifying our home to eradicate the opportunity for mold to grow, which can wreak massive havoc on our bodies. Uh, not only in the, in the lungs, but throughout the body. Our body will react to the various molds and things like that as well. So think about like, refreshing and renewing your home. Okay. Think about getting restorative sleep. How great would it be to be able to get eight delicious hours of sleep per evening? 

Frank: (15:54)
Right? So we want to like talk about all of these aspects of the unconventional wellness. We all, um, in order to be able to like really renew ourselves in 2020. Okay. 2020 is, uh, if you, if you have ever had your eyes examined, 2020 means perfect vision. Well, I say that we help set the path for perfect vision this year in 2020 by looking at our diet plans, uh, getting out, moving more, getting more sunshine, um, getting better sleep, removing toxins, and even also combating stress and anxiety and really grabbing from hold of our mental health in 2019 so it doesn't require just 

Frank: (16:39)
particular puzzle piece. We want to come into the unconventional wellness world and, uh, and be a warrior in these five pillars every single day. So, um, we want to revolutionize all of those aspects so we make sure that we don't necessarily leave out something that could be extraordinarily important, um, to our, to our overall health. And by all means that'll help us eradicate a lot of these issues that we have, uh, whether it comes to health concerns or health goals, things like that. So let me know what your visions are. Uh, email [email protected] or, uh, you know, leave me a comment, uh, here in our Facebook live or, um, leave me a comment even on wherever you're listening to with our podcast. If you're listening to us through iTunes or Stitcher or even Spotify, um, let me know as well what's your new year's resolutions are in these five pillars. 

Frank: (17:33)
Let's talk, you know, your diet plan stuff, your uh, your mental health things, your getting better sleep, you're removing toxins and your movement. I want to hear what your resolutions are and all of those and break them down just like that. Leave me those comments. Let me, if you want me to do this webinar as well on intermittent fasting, I'll even pop in there. Ketogenic if you want to. And yeah, let's, let's really spring forth in 2020 with an amazing, great vision that we have. Uh, that way we can set the standard and really kick some major button in 2020. So anyway, I wanted to make this kind of short, just re-introduction. Welcome to season three. We're going to be bringing you some amazing content both through my unconventional wellness platform as well as unconventional on us radio. So I'm Frank, I am looking forward to spending 2020 with you. I hope you guys have a great day. And we will talk to you again very soon. Bye bye now.

Hey everyone! Welcome to the final episode of Season 2 of the Podcast!

We are going to discuss how YOU MEAN SOMETHING! Break free of the chains that bind you up and hold you back! I give practical information about addiction and how to learn to "put off/put on" old and new habits!

Here are the shownotes for today's Podcast (there is too much information to break down in here!)

Frank: (00:00)
Welcome to unconventional wellness radio. I am Frank, your host, and we are doing a season to wrap up on episode 46. Today we're going to talk about how you are going to be able to create the best you in 2020 and break free some from some chains that are actually binding you up and be able to break free from those in 2020. We are also going to do a podcast episode wrap up. So stay tuned and we will talk to you on this podcast very soon. Hey, what's going on everybody? I'm a little bit late today, but better late than never. I usually try to go live on a, on a Facebook post here in the morning on Monday, but uh, but a lot of things happening today, a lot of moving and shaking, um, selling motor homes and had to go get a bunch of stuff for the animals on the farm. 

Frank: (00:57)
So, uh, having a little bit of a late start, but Hey, you're here and in the world of podcast land, if you're joining us through podcasts, then of course that is, uh, something that you can be listening to them and recording anyway. So what day of the week you listen to it doesn't really matter. Right? So, um, I wanted to do a wrap up and also talk about a couple of things that were heavy on my heart, uh, in my readings and that sort of stuff from this week. And if you are joining us on the Facebook live, uh, please let me know that you're here. Let me know where you're from. Tell me what you got going on. And today in reference to what we're going to talk about, I want you to make known. I want you to make a proclamation as to something in your life that you feel that you need to be set free from. 

Frank: (01:47)
Whether that be a problems with addiction, whether that'd be problems with financial, uh, snares that you might be in, like debt, uh, whether you be, uh, you know, wanting to restore a relationship that means a lot to you. I want you to put in those comments. Sky's the limit and I want you to write about those things that you want to break free from this year. Okay. Uh, in addition to if you're on the podcast cause we're doing a song O cast right now, I want you to also comment and let me know what those are as well. So make sure you give me the love on Facebook. Give us some love on the podcast world, whether you're tuning in through iTunes or Stitcher or Google play or you know, even Spotify. Let me know you're here. So I'd love to, I'd love to know that you're listening. 

Frank: (02:34)
So, uh, anyway, I want to kind of dive right in. And the title of this podcast, uh, is, or the title is podcast and Facebook live is a couple of things, uh, first of which it's a season wrap up. So I will be not broadcasting a podcast for roughly a month. Okay. And that is so I can fully appreciate the wonderful rest of this Christmas season and then be able to enjoy the beginning of the new year with my family. I'm also actually doing a, a a challenge for my individuals that are on unconventional wellness right now. Shout out to you guys, uh, in, in we are doing a whole 30 challenge. So also if you want to join us on this whole 30 challenge, um, big shout out to Melissa Hartwig. Thank you so much for bringing us the whole 30. And I want to do a whole 30 at the beginning of the year so we can get the year started out. 

Frank: (03:24)
Right. Okay. By the way, I represent Florida Gator, sorry if you're not a Florida Gator fan, that's okay. Um, but anyway, if you want to join us in that whole 30, let me know and we'll get you set up with how that's going to look as well. So, uh, anyway, getting into this and then the season wrap up. Uh, I wanted to just kind of dive right in. I, I named this podcast Facebook live. I've named it freedom from what binds you or freedom of what makes you captive or freedom from your, your issue that you have been dragging along with you for maybe days, months or even years. Okay. I myself, uh, I am very, very transparent now in reference to an addiction that I had, which was, uh, my pornography addiction. I'm just gonna filet myself wide open for you and uh, you know, if you are wanting to hear this, maybe this is for you, but if you're not wanting to hear this and this doesn't affect you whatsoever, I get it. 

Frank: (04:26)
Okay. Move on. Click away and you're welcome to do that. But I'm going to go ahead and fly myself wide open because I just want to make sure that I let you know of the power that's available to you to be able to like be able to break it, to have those chains broken. Okay. Because the good news is that we don't have to break up. Okay. Like the keys are literally setting in front of us. And so if we have an opportunity to just reach out and kind of grab those keys, we can be freed from these things that bind us up, right? Where it could be a, it can be an addiction to food, it can be an issue with a relationship that you want to have mended here. Uh, maybe late 2019, you know, it's Christmas time and lots and lots of things kind of bubble up and [inaudible] and sometimes bubble over with families and there's very strain relationships and things like that during this time as well. 

Frank: (05:18)
So I just want to come out here and kind of just speak into that. I'm letting you know that, you know, I don't know your situation and sense of what is exactly going on with you, but I know that it absolutely is a burden because I'm at a burden as well. Uh, it could be an issue with that, right? So like a, if you haven't caught it, go to the paleo mama.com and my wife did a wonderful thing about how we were able to pay off like over $50,000 in debt in like 10 months using the uh, the financial peace university plan, which is, which is made by Dave Ramsey. Um, so anyway, just wanted to kind of come on here and speak over this stuff and uh, and have an opportunity to let you know that these things don't define you and that you have a purpose and you can break free from these this year. 

Frank: (06:06)
Okay. It's all about mindset and it's all about looking forward to 20, 20. How cool is it that I have an opportunity right now on this podcast, on this Facebook live to be able to actually like cast vision for 2020. Do you catch my pond right there? 2020. You know what 2020 stands for? If you're thinking about something called visual acuity, that 2020 means that you have perfect vision is that I'm going to just let that settle in for a second, that you have the opportunity. Then in the year of 2020, you have an ability to see a perfect vision for the year of 2020 and beyond. Okay? And so that's what we're aiming to do today and I've got a couple of things that I wanted to go over as a framework. Um, I want to tell you my story a little bit. I'm not going to get bogged down humongously in the details, but I'm going to kind of put it out there for you to let you know that there is an ability to overcome these things and these things don't have to defy you anymore. 

Frank: (07:03)
So I just want to give you some statistics. Okay? And these are some statistics that I heard recently, uh, in my church. I heard about these and it astounded me. Okay? Uh, we have a very rampant society that is, uh, very bogged down with sexual addiction. Okay? There is actually two out of three people in and out. Let me say that again. There's two out of three people that are engaging in sexual addiction, both in the church and out of the church. And I found out to be unbelievable. So it's like if it was a group of myself and two other guys, we're talking like two of those guys out of those three actually are dealing with this, this issue. Okay. And that's a significant issue. It stifles all right, ruins, relationships, all that kind of stuff. Um, in addition to nine out of 10, now this, I don't have any teenage kids yet, but they're coming up very quickly and I've got one that's like within a couple of years she'll be a teenager and it's actually nine out of 10 teenage boys and six out of 10 teenage girls have been exposed to bad pictures, bad movies, all that kind of stuff, right? 

Frank: (08:16)
So, um, it's pretty unbelievable. It's pretty rampant. And the reason why I say this because that really hits home with me, uh, for easily an excess of 25 years. Sometimes I think even 30 years, I struggle with this a lot. Okay. And it ruined me. I almost got divorced from my, from my wife Jackie, who is a amazing person. I got almost divorced from her, not once, not twice, but three separate times. I almost been divorced from her and every single time she forgave me and we were able to move on. And I actually don't understand why. All right. I still will not understand why somebody who had the absolute rights to end everything with me decided to continue and uh, and we actually resolved our relationship and now we have one of the most, um, just we have been through the fire, if that makes sense. 

Frank: (09:17)
And we absolutely have broken through some really amazingly bad. Sorry, am I, I'm sorry for the choppiness just now I just realized this because my computer auto checks email and yeah. Anyway. Um, so it should be better now, but regardless is that like our breakthroughs or whatever and we have been through the fire and we are like, I am super grateful for the relationship I have with her. It's, it's incredible. But I say that because I might be speaking directly to you. You might be having some issues with what this, and I want to let you know that you can break free of this. Okay. Debt, let's move on to debt. Debt is another thing that is like stifling people, right? Like vast majority of people are in some form of debt. A lot of us are in credit card debt. A lot of us may be in a, you know, a school debt. 

Frank: (10:10)
I mean, like I carried a school debt. Uh, I actually, well here's the ironic thing. I went to school and I had a, I had a full ride scholarship. It was offered down in Florida and it's still offered down there. It's uh, it's called the Florida bright future scholarship, which is like 100% tuition. And, uh, I think it pays for books and it's, it's a very fancy, wonderful scholarship and I'm super grateful that I ever received it. Problem is though, is that like, I didn't know about money when I was younger and so I took on debt anyway. And so like I, I just, it was unbelievable. Like I, I, I walked out with a $25,000 amount that as a 22 year old, I was like, how am I ever going to pay this thing off? And there's people that are like in six figure college tuition are college, uh, alone issues and stuff like that. 

Frank: (11:07)
And so I want to let you know that there are resources out there, check out financial peace university and you can actually get help to get out of that debt and with a really strategic plan starting with exactly the resources that you currently have because financial issues are, are just stifling and they really keep us from being the person that we want to really be or the person that really should be. Okay. Um, the next thing is that I want to talk about is food addiction. So food addiction, you never realize this, but food these days is actually more addictive then really a lot of the medications or a lot of the drugs that are out there and hear me out when I say this I, it sounds like it might be a crazy claim, but the reason why is because there is a study in particular shows that sugar is up to eight times more addictive than cocaine. 

Frank: (12:01)
I mean that is an incredible figure to me is that sugar is more addictive than cocaine. And the thing is is that sugar in our foods is extraordinarily, readily accessible and so we can end up doing really bad damage to ourselves with like chronic obesity and type two diabetes and, and, and heart disease and gastrointestinal issues and stuff like that just because of the amount of sugar that we're consuming. If you couple that with the fact that most Americans eat up to 14 to 16 hours per day with all of the, the, the snacks and all the meals and stuff like that that are made with refined sugars, um, that's not even like saying like fast food bad. I mean like that's just saying, even the foods that we have in our stores that we can prepare and all that kind of stuff that are chocolate or preservatives and whatever, all are full of like hidden sugars. 

Frank: (12:57)
And they are addictive too. Because the way that it works is that you feel good when you eat. All right. All of those hormones that help you feel good while you eat are released. It actually releases neurotransmitters as well in your brain that correspond to pleasure. And then you couple that with, um, the fact that you get hungry quick because this food is very quickly digested. Like it doesn't even have to get through most of the small intestine before it's actually absorbed into your bloodstream as food, energy, and then meth. And then also add that to the fact that we snack a lot. And so when we do all of those things together, we set ourselves up for really having some drama, uh, in terms of our, our, our issues that, you know, sugar can really, really create. Okay. So, um, I say all that because there's also help for that as well. 

Frank: (13:55)
Now I talk about that extensively, not only through my podcast, but I also talk about that on my program unconventional wellness. And the reason why I make mention of that is because if you go back and check out this podcast, we want to do a season wrap up. Okay. And then we're going to finish up with some different thoughts and stuff like that. And I'm going to wish you guys a Merry Christmas so you can get on with what you're doing. Okay. My podcast is chock full of forties, up to 45 episodes now over the course of this year. Uh, I actually, I think even dating back to last year where I have hopefully some really great content for you. Okay. Um, most recently I had the opportunity of talking with the creator of the Prairie homestead. Uh, you may know her as Joe winger and she is a phenomenal, uh, homesteader and mom and uh, she's got all of her life on Instagram, more power to you, stuff on Facebook. 

Frank: (14:54)
She has created a book of handcrafted recipes that you can make. That's a part of her traditional cooking idea that she has come out with. She's just a phenomenal person. And so I had a two part interview with her, uh, in my podcast. It was episodes 44 and 40. I'm sorry, 43 and 44. All right. I talk about the keto diet. I talk about bone broth. I talk about intermittent fasting. Talk about the burden of health care. I mean, I, I talk about, uh, you know, whole 30 anxiety, attend anxiety busting natural remedies, uh, three tricks, three tricks to remember before you go to the grocery store so you don't get trapped and all of that kind of stuff. Seven, back to school. Healthy trade secrets. I talk about, uh, hemp oil, getting better sleep. I talk about acupuncture guys. I mean, I lay it all out on this, uh, on this podcast and I've got like tons and tons of content RA wrapped up in the 45 episodes. 

Frank: (15:58)
And so I just want you and I urge you to please go and check out my podcast on iTunes. It's on Stitcher, it's on Google play. It's also on Spotify. If you just go to Spotify, open the app and type in, um, you type in, uh, unconventional wellness radio is what it's called. I'll put a link here in the comments, but if you type that in there, you will be immediately linked to my podcast and you'll be able to check out all of that content. Okay guys, it is a, I mean it is like heart and soul stuff poured out on there because I just want you to have all of this information that I can in order for you to be able to understand how to live that, that lifestyle that you've always wanted and live an unconventional lifestyle. Okay. Um, so I will, I'm grabbing the link right now to put the link on this Facebook live, so please check out the podcast. 

Frank: (16:56)
Okay. It is just I, I put out all of my knowledge that I possibly can into it in order to like help you navigate this crazy world of refined processed foods, not getting good sleep, way to stray, too much stress, way too much anxiety, way too many toxins. I talk about that all throughout the podcast. So please go check out the podcast and let me just bless you with all of that information. That way you understand everything that there is to know that I can get out as fast as I possibly can to be able to actually help you. Okay. Um, so we were talking about, you know, some of the things that bog us down and, and how to break free this year. OK. I, I said I started off with, with addiction and I want to kind of go back to that is that I want you to know that there is hope. 

Frank: (17:48)
Okay? Like you aren't defined by these things that you find yourself addicted to. We by nature are creatures of habit. Okay. We as human beings are going to choose those things that actually we enjoy. They bring us pleasure. And when we do that, that is a typical response that we have to things like we are pleasure seeking creatures and, and there's nothing wrong with that. Like who doesn't enjoy a great comforting meal who doesn't enjoy a time spent with good friends, right? Who doesn't enjoy a great workout or good sleep? Um, these are things that are totally fine. It's when we take those things that bring us pleasure and we go beyond what we are, what we are needing in terms of those pleasures, and we're seeking those things that really stretch us and make us uncomfortable. And then we start becoming emotionally addicted to those things psychologically addicted. 

Frank: (18:49)
We know a physical addiction to certain things. And I just want you to know that there is a way to break free of addiction addiction simply as put, I don't know who said it, but it is voluntary slavery. All right? That's what addiction is all about. I feel that addictions do not allow us to be the best versions of ourselves that we possibly can be. And so I want you to break free of those addictions this year. And like I said, they don't have to be things that are like, you know, uh, over the top illegal stuff. Okay. I mean like things that we do in our lives that we may not necessarily believe are really an addictive type of thing. We want to be able to break free of that so we can be the best version of ourself that we possibly can. Like I was addicted to a symptoms related to post traumatic stress. 

Frank: (19:39)
Like I use those all the time and saying like, well, I'm just going to be anxious for the rest of my life or I'm going to be stressed out all the time and so therefore I'm not going to get good sleep. Now if you are somebody who has suffered from trauma or, or suffer from more symptoms from posttraumatic stress, I mean I get it. Okay. And, and by all means, I am not trying to downplay a symptomatology that you might be having. But what I am saying though is that I had to figure out in my heart of hearts the fact that it didn't feel like it was the right Frank. Like, I didn't feel like I was being the best version of myself in this world and I didn't want to feel stifled anymore because of that. And so I want you to understand that there is an opportunity for you to break free from that and to be able to actually move forward in this life, uh, where you feel like you have purpose. 

Frank: (20:33)
Y'all, it's taken me 40 over 40 years to realize what my purpose on this planet is. And what I have realized is that my purpose is to help my purposes educate folks about natural health care in order to help them break free of the things that I have had to go through also myself and also with the addition of my patients in order to break free of what we believe to actually have, uh, you know, these, these, these lifestyles that we can be fully satisfied in. Okay. So that's exactly what I do. I mean, it has taken me time as a trained PA and you know, I worked as a, as a DJ for crying out loud and you know, worked as a personal trainer and you know, all these things, excuse me, it took me 40 years to assemble the puzzle pieces together to see the big picture of the support and the, and the purpose that I want to help you find out about yourself. 

Frank: (21:36)
And so that is what drives me. That's what wakes me up every single day and gets me excited about talking about to you is because I want you to find your purpose as well. And so mental, uh, you know, mental concerns are stifling in themselves. I mean, we can become very focused on our mental concerns and not be the best version of ourselves. So remember that addiction, uh, get out and get some help. The best and first step that you can take is just to simply say, it is totally fine that I have had a history with this. Okay. Because the road to recovery is recognizing the fact that there is something that you're addicted to. Uh, and so therefore the concept is, is that, uh, that I look about when I read, uh, when I do my readings and stuff like that in scripture is that, you know, you look at it as we're addictive creatures. 

Frank: (22:34)
And so therefore, if we just want to break an addiction that really never works, there is no power in that whatsoever. Okay. What we do need to do though, is we need to replace those addictive tendencies that we find to be bad and we want to put those off. And what we want to do is we want to turn around and put on the addictive things that are good, that are wholesome, that are pure, that are true, okay. And so that's what I had to do is over the course of a, gosh, I mean, the past couple of years I have continued to work on taking those things that I don't want to do, right. And putting those things off. All right? And then would it be willing to accept the things that I do want to put on? And so let's just say generosity. Okay. I didn't realize this, but I'm kind of a hoarder of money. 

Frank: (23:19)
Like I didn't realize that like I guess, you know, there's lots of folks who are different preppers, if you will. Uh, my prepper, my, my concern was, uh, I'm going to hurry up and run out of money. Like I'm going to go broke tomorrow. Like I like know, it may seem silly but no joke. I truly have always had that fear. And it comes from a very long childhood and everything. But the long story short about what I did was I said, okay, I don't want to, I don't wanna feel like this anymore. And then I didn't start realizing like, I've been alive for 41 years and stuff has always been provided and like, I'm, I'm fine. You know what I mean? Like, I've got clothes and you know, I've got, I've got my health and all that kind of stuff. Like I just need to stop believing this lie of the fear of running out of money and instead put on the fear, or excuse me, put on the reality and the truth of saying like, it's all good. 

Frank: (24:10)
I've been sustained for this long. I mean we're, we're fine. OK. like, like, like we're good. We'll always be able to find a way if, uh, if we need to in a way we'll always be provided, right? So I just had to start changing my mindset about that and putting off the negative tendencies and then put on the good ones. And so there has been a large mind shift for me, um, in reference to this whole putting off and then putting on concept of how to replace habits rather than eliminating habits. Like we, I mean, when I first came up and back in the nineties, eighties, nineties, and maybe even earlier than that, it was like a matter of, well, if you want to break a habit, just make it to the three week Mark. You know, like, like if you could make it to three weeks, you're good. 

Frank: (24:59)
Like, if you want to stop spitting, stop spinning for three weeks, you know, maybe chew on some gum or drink some water or whatever and you'll be fine. And that is true and an extent. But the thing is, is that the addictive personality could come back and it could come back even stronger than when it did when you first were able to beat it. That was sort of like how it was for me and my sexual addiction is like, I was like, I got this beat. I'm like, yeah, I made it like, you know, a month now admitted two months now I made a two and a half months. And then unfortunately, man, it hit me hard and the temptation was real bad and um, you know, ended up absorbing the, the habit again and uh, and it was really stifling again. Okay. So like I say that to you is that like, you know, if you want to start eating better, right, I'm gonna just kinda, you know, dynamically talk about a bunch of different little hemispheres. 

Frank: (25:49)
Here are a bunch of different little spheres here is that maybe you want to create a different habit of eating per se in, in 2020. What you need to do is you need to take those baby steps moving toward those things that you don't like about how you eat, put off the bad habits and start small, start practical, make them realistic goals, and then start replacing those with what you want to put on. Does that make sense? Right. I can't just drop everything and expect that everything's going to be all good. All right? Like if I've been eating in a way that, you know, it's caused a lot of complications with my health, I can't just simply just cut all that off and say that's it. I'm gonna do all of these hundred things starting tomorrow. It doesn't work like that. Like we all know that that's what causes fad diets, crash diets, all that kind of stuff. 

Frank: (26:40)
Right? Instead, we have to work toward that. Okay. So like if my goal is to like maybe do the ketogenic diet with intermittent fasting, um, there was only a few select people that might be able to have the willpower, which is another concept that I don't necessarily want to dive into this whole willpower concept, but I want to tell you that it takes baby steps to get to that point. So you know, if you've been eating as conventional lifestyle for a while, you know, you might have to start off simple with saying like, I'm not going to eat as much often as I used to or I'm not going to eat as much during my meal as I used to start off like that. Just portion control, I want to drink more water, you know, those sorts of things. Okay. And then we can start getting into the concepts of, okay, now how can I start maybe working out different types of sugars, whether they be simple sugars or complex sugars and all that sort of thing. 

Frank: (27:34)
And start working down toward, okay now I want to get myself to 50 grams of carbohydrates a day and then 20 grams of carbohydrates a day and all that kind of stuff. Okay. That's how we have to transition. And then by all means with me with intermittent fasting, if I want to do it with a ketogenic diet, you know it's like I should start small and like short my window of eating, you know, and don't like go to like a thing where I'm doing like a three day fast, you know, from like eating the way that I was to doing it three day fast. Cause that is just probably too much chaos for really anybody to actually be able to do so. So I'm just saying that you know, you want to take these baby steps, you want to start putting off the old habits and be able to put on the new ones, the ones that you find acceptable and you'll find a lot of power in that ability alone. 

Frank: (28:23)
So we don't like to remove a habit. We want to replace bad habits with good ones. Okay. Big, big point that I wanted to make today. And lastly is this, these, or excuse me, not lastly, like, uh, when I was sort of last, we'll start wrapping up here and we'll kind of go over some different topics that I have on my podcast because this is supposed to be like a, like a season ender until I start back up in 2020. But I want you to understand please this, this thing that people like to refer to as a generational curse. And that is like something that really hits home with me. Okay. Like I came from a family that it was like a patriarchal family. Okay. Like, um, if you don't know what I mean, it was like very, very, uh, father centric and you know, everything was just sort of surrounding that entire situation. 

Frank: (29:18)
Um, excuse me. So I say that because, um, that's just not how I believe we need to be interacting with one another. Okay. Like, I feel like we need to be interacting out of support and leadership and you know, having these ways of like allowing individual family members to also be the best versions of themselves. And so I, I grew up in a, I grew up in a situation where it was this top down approach, right? In terms of the leadership. It was like the top makes rules, the bottom has to follow. Okay. Um, whereas now it's like there's guidelines and love and understanding and, and, and, and I, I might be the leader of the home, but the way that I see my leadership role now is that my leadership role is to support the members of my family so I can help lift them to be the best that they possibly can. 

Frank: (30:11)
So it might be more of a bottom up approach, right? Because as they get better, I get better. Okay. And so, um, it works I think much better that way. Um, just not only in the family set, but like maybe our society as well. Like we need to start being more servant leaders and we need to start looking to be able to serve one another a lot more than what we do. Man, I never found as much joy and as much satisfaction in things as the, when I started saying like, I'm not perfect but I'm going to give you the best that I possibly can. And I started looking at people kinda kind of like, how can I support you rather than doing this. So I started doing a lot more of this. Then I started doing this and what's crazy about it? And I promise you if you need to challenge yourself with something, you'll start realizing the more that you do this, it is wild how much more of that really happens and you receive so much more in terms of joy and satisfaction and love. 

Frank: (31:15)
Uh, when you start giving more and start being more generous with you, like you can help someone, okay, you have the influence to help someone. And that's, that's sort of like one of our things that we got going on with, you know, this, this T these statistics of 20 plus veterans a day are committing suicide and you know, there's a lot of other people also committing ish or excuse me, committing suicide outside of the military and it's just, we need to start doing this more, right? Just showing up, being present, not having a word of advice, but just letting people know you you're loved and I'm going to give you the best that I possibly can no matter what. Okay. Um, it is evident, uh, especially at the end of the year that we start being more generous during the holiday season. While I challenge you after Christmas, after the, the, the presence are unwrapped and put away after the tree is taken down. 

Frank: (32:16)
If the lights are put away for a year, I challenge you to be more generous starting in January. And I'll tell you right now the fulfillment that comes on the other side of that, it's insane. Okay. Um, I have been doing that now for, I can't even, I don't even know. But once I finally started applying that in my life, it was incredible to watch these people grow. And then the cool thing was as I was watching the joy come up in my life, right? So like I can actually be joyful when people are making millions of dollars or I can be joyful when people lose 50 pounds or I can be joyful when people are just simply getting along with one another in their family better. I mean like I am incredibly full of joy because of that. So I offered to you, you're not perfect. No one is okay. 

Frank: (33:15)
Give the best that you possibly can. The the, the mantra is progress, not perfection, right? Like as long as we are moving toward that and having a heart of generosity, I guarantee you good things can happen. I have said it before and I'll say it again. Could you imagine we have a, we have a population of 350 million Americans. All right? In our great society. If everybody would wake up and want to do just two, two acts of service for somebody, whether they know them or not. Could you imagine the amount of generosity that can be palpated in one day? I mean, could you just imagine 350 million people doing two separate acts and they don't have to be gigantic acts? I'm not saying like, you know, give $100 million to something. Um, although if you can do that, then don't let me stop you if that's what you want to do. 

Frank: (34:11)
But buying a coffee or holding a door open or saying hello to someone right in a coffee shop or while you're walking or whatever, uh, these acts can bring tremendous, tremendous enrichment to people's lives. And so I think that if we can, if you're one of the folks who are following this page, let's pay it forward by sharing this video. Okay? Or sharing this podcast. Let someone know about the joy that you want to experience because of your generosity and your outpouring of you. You are the greatest gift. Like, I failed to say that earlier, but let me say that now is that you, we want the gift of you. We don't care about stuff. We don't need financial resources, if you will. We don't need money. We don't need any of that other stuff. You know, the bias cars, whatever, whatever. We just need you. 

Frank: (35:06)
Okay? If you show up and give us the best version of yourself that you possibly can, I tell you what, you are going to have an amazing 2021 and affirmation that I do every single morning while I'm in my, while I'm in my quiet time in the morning is I tell myself, or actually I pray and I go help me just be the best version of me that I can be today. Okay? I might be, I mean, like I even, I even said that when my back was killing me. I said that, you know, my back isn't so bad right now. Uh, my knee is whatever, whatever. Like I tell myself, even if I have the, the burdens of the world are on my shoulders today, help me be the best version of myself that I possibly can be. And I will tell you, I started doing that about a year and a half, maybe two years ago. 

Frank: (35:56)
And guys, it has like, I've just noticed that like, it's not just linearly going up, like it's like exponentially going up. It's pretty incredible that I've just been doing that affirmation every single morning about just be the best version of you that you possibly can be today. And it has just been, I mean, like, it's just been phenomenal. Okay. And so I say that to you because I want you guys to experience the exact same thing. It's all about mental health in terms of helping you have a better 20, 20. Okay. So let's go over, like, let's wrap this up and talk about the rest of the episodes that we have on this podcast. I know that I talked a lot about what we've got going on. Um, yeah, I've got some of that in there. So mystery symptoms, um, episode 24, mystery Sims symptoms could be adrenal fatigue. 

Frank: (36:45)
If you're interested about learning a little bit about adrenal fatigue, hop on there and go check that out. Okay. I'm trying to look at my really early episodes to see like what those were. Um, because I've got some ones on there that are just like insane. Uh, crazy. Let's see. One of my, Oh yeah, we talked to a gastrointestinal doctor out of the university of Chicago on my podcast forever and a day ago and same, uh, back in late 2018 of last year. Great, great things coming out of that podcast. Um, we talk about, uh, hormone disruption. Okay. There's a big thing on that and how you can utilize different types of natural resources for hormone health. Uh, what is disrupting health [inaudible]. Uh, how can you use tumeric and Magnolia and all that kind of stuff, how to naturally cope with bedwetting. I mean, these are all like individuals that I brought. And then in 2019 I plan on bringing in even more influencers onto the podcast to help give you 

Speaker 2: (37:44)
content that is just going to blow your mind and allow you to have action steps to actually place these things in your life immediately in order to be able to have the help today. Because I'll be honest with you, we need help as soon as possible, right? Like no reason to wait another 20 years for help that we can be applying today. Okay, so pay attention please to the podcast in 2020 I plan on doing really big things with it. Check out my program on conventional wellness on the podcast. By the way, it's called unconventional wireless radio. Um, check out the checkout, the, the program unconventional wellness. Um, I've got a special surprise coming up also a January class. So please stay tuned, share this video, share this podcast. Someone if you may not need it, someone might. So please share this podcast. Share this, a Facebook live with somebody because I want to see the most people help in 2020 as I possibly can. 

Speaker 2: (38:39)
Okay. There is a gift of freedom and it's up to you to just simply reach forward and be able to receive that gift. Okay? So absolutely do it. This, these generational curses and all that kind of stuff, those are for the firs, there is no such thing as a generational curse. It's all about servant leadership. It's all about being generous, being the best version of yourself and being able to be present for those individuals that desperately need you out in this world. Okay? So I urge you share this video because it can absolutely help someone. Okay? Um, that's all I got for now. I wish you all the best of Christmases, whatever holiday spirit you, uh, have in terms of your festivities, uh, whether you are, uh, whatever holiday that you celebrate, right? Like I hope that it is the best holiday that you've ever asked for. I wish you a wonderful new year and I just cannot wait to be able to get, 

Frank: (39:40)
send you to help all of you in the year 2020, and then beyond. Okay. So y'all take care. Um, I hope this podcast and this Facebook live has been a value to you. Let me know. I can help and we will catch you again on the flip side, in the year 2020, take care, everyone.

What's up everyone! I am very excited to talk about the HPA Axis and how we overwork it too much and how it causes chronic illness and disease.

On today's Podcast, we discuss:

• The HPA (Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal) Axis
• How the HPA Axis functions
• How does chronic stress (fight or flight) contribute to chronic illness?
• What can you do about it to help return to homeostasis
• You have a purpose!

Check out the show notes from today's episode:

Frank: (00:00)
Are you overstressed and not sleeping really good and are you like super anxious about everything? Let's face it, are you putting on a little bit of weight and you just kinda don't understand why? Well, pay attention to this podcast because this podcast is going to describe something called the HP a access and how it is lending itself to frantic inflammation, chronic disease, and a lot of symptoms that we really just can't put our finger on and why we are getting those symptoms. So stay tuned. New episode, coming up on unconventional wellness radio. I am Frank, I am your host. I'm excited to bring you this information, so stick around and we'll talk soon.

Frank: (00:38)
Hey everyone. Welcome to unconventional wellness radio. It's a powerful and inspiring podcast set to revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's time to put you in the driver's seat. That'd be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted.

Frank: (00:53)
Hey everyone. I know it's been a little while since we've done a Facebook live or even a podcast and I apologize for that actually. I think it's been like one week, but the reason why is because I had the grateful opportunity to be able to attend this conference. There was a stakeholder conference down for the farmer veteran coalition down in Austin, Texas. And I was there for, I think it was like three or four days. And quite honestly, whenever you do something like that, you just, I know you kind of fall off the map. But anyway, we're back and we're here to talk about unconventional wellness and uh, and yeah, I am extremely excited to talk about this topic. Why? Because I'm a bit of a nerd and I sure do love talking about science. And so, uh, I feel that if we, if we discuss that, by the way, let me show you this mug.

Frank: (01:40)
This was actually like one of my, I'm going to start doing all of my like fun. I'm going to start doing all of my like fun holiday mugs now. Yes, I know it's not quite Thanksgiving yet and darn, and I've already pulled out a Christmas bug, but here's the deal. This is my, this is my rationale for awhile. Okay. Please don't think under any circumstances. I want to like overshadow Thanksgiving just because, um, I'm looking at Christmas instead. Instead, I had the conscious discussion with my wife and the reason why we decided to slowly trickle out some of the Christmas stuff is because of the fact that Thanksgiving was late this month, this year. Right. So like, I mean it's on the 28th. So yes, I am not decorating the outside of the home, I believe until after Thanksgiving as well. No Christmas music has been played, at least not yet.

Frank: (02:33)
So, and I'm not to say I can't speak for myself, I know I'm not going to, but maybe the kids might want a Christmas song before we get in the Thanksgiving. But needless to say, um, we're here, we're excited and we're going to talk about the HPA axis. First of all, what in the heck does the HPA access cause well, what should overstimulation in the XP HPA access cause? Well, this is where a lot of people don't realize that this system, if it becomes burdened, might in fact actually lead itself to chronic health conditions. And what do I mean by that? Well, when we look at the HPA axis, bottom line is, is what it's supposed to do is it is supposed to, Hey Angie, how are you by the way? I'm seeing the chat come through by the way. Um, no we have not and we probably need to take a look if you could put a link for that pug Christmas shirt.

Frank: (03:28)
Um, on this thread. I will definitely go check it out. I'd love to, uh, anyway, so what the bottom line of what the HPA access can do for us is, is it, it is responsible for our fight or flight response. Okay. The HPA, HPA stands for hippocampus, or excuse me, I apologize. The hypothalamus pituitary adrenal access, that's where the H, the P and the a come from. And what this system, it's a neuro endocrine system, meaning that there is both neurological as well as endocrine or hormone function involved in this particular access. And so what his entire job is, is to do various things to the body in order to have it prepared, either fight or flight. Okay. And that's the two ways the human beings react to stress. You can actually watch some of the fun social experiments, uh, in terms of a stressful situation where somebody will dress up in like an outfit or whatever and uh, and you'll see the various reactions of the people, uh, responding to fear because it's something that they are unaware of.

Frank: (04:38)
I think one of the ones that I think of is, uh, the guy or the gal that was dressed up in like a Bush and like literally just sitting there and then people were like, I guess leaving a museum and then the Bush would jump up and scare somebody. What would, the thing is, is that the vast majority of [inaudible] people we know are actually flighters. Okay? They're not actually fighters. Now, there are some people who they will fight. Okay. And then as a natural reaction is you're either going to run away from the stimulus or you're going to engage in the stimulus. But here's the thing. We have a chronic over expression of stress in our co and our culture and in our society. Can I, can I absolutely get an amen on that one because that is happening to all of us. Okay. It can be as subtle as you looking at a Facebook newsfeed and it causing stress or anxiety to you or it can be something more traumatic and it can be something more catastrophic that personally happens in your life, whether it be the loss of a loved one or some other kind of stressful situation.

Frank: (05:41)
The fact of the matter is is that our bodies are supposed to react to that stress, right? And then we're supposed to be able to respond and be able to come out of that stressful situation and everything kind of goes back what we call homeostasis, but the fact is is that in our culture, there is a chronic excitation of that stress and anxiety loop of the HPA axis and it's causing us to become fatigued. A lot of people actually talk about this as adrenal fatigue. You'll see like people talk about if you do a Google search on adrenal fatigue, it causes all of these like really weird symptoms and it causes lack of energy. It causes weight gain. It causes you to be stressed, it cause you to be able to not sleep. All of these things, while that is a chronic overexpression of our age, yeah, access.

Frank: (06:33)
So let's talk about what the HPA access is. Okay. What happens is your, uh, you know, your, your sense of touch, your sense of sight, your sense of sound, whatever those all become stimulated and then no, send the impulses to your brain while the brain responds to the hypothalamus to, to create a hormone that responds down, or excuse me, that's created expressing in the pituitary response to that. I'm going to save you from the big long names of those hormones, but there's two hormones. Then there's one hormone in particular that goes from the pituitary down to the adrenal glands, which sit on top of our kidneys. Okay. The hormone that I will talk about there is called cortisol. All right? It is, it is expressed from the cortex of the adrenal glands with these little caps. They give them like little hats that sit on top of the kidneys and they release cortisol in response to the stress.

Frank: (07:29)
As cortisol begins to increase negative feedback loops will tell the hypothalamus there's plenty of cortisol in the bloodstream in order to be able to respond to this stressor and it will shut off its creation of its hormone that continues on the cascade. Right? So here's the problem is that when we actually, we have an overexpression and we continuously have lots of cortisol inside of our bloodstream, we are causing chronic issues that actually will cause a unwanted symptoms of a, of a, of a chronic state of inflammation. Okay? The thing about cortisol is this, and the reason why I talk about inflammation as this is that cortisol actually can, uh, can, can cause drama with our immune system. Okay? If we have an overexpression of cortisol that might in fact actually suppress or it actually does immunosuppress our bodies. And so it sets us up for chronic inflammation and chronic inflammation.

Frank: (08:33)
Now guys are this pro inflammation that a lot of researchers and providers talk about is setting us up for disease. Like we are chronic, glee, inflamed. And then that sound funny that that perfectly corresponds to be chronically stressed out as well. And so this chronic inflammation can lead to disease. It can lead to cardiovascular disease, it can lead to gastrointestinal, it can lead to musculoskeletal problems, name any of them, right? Like autoimmune disorders are probably more rampant in my opinion today than they probably have been in many, many years. Now. It's not to say that we haven't had auto immune disease for as long as human beings have been around. Of course we have. You can actually read various passages in the Bible that talk about people who probably had some sort of an auto immune disorder. So they've been around as long as human beings had been alive.

Frank: (09:22)
But the fact is is that between our nutrition and our lack of sleep and all these other things, we're creating this like perfect downward spiral of our overall health that subsequently makes all of these symptoms even worse over time. Because what we're doing is we're not trying to heal the body by getting to the root problems that are causing the situations in the first place. Are you feeling me on this one? So like what we're doing is we're focusing on, Hey Kathy, how are you? Um, we're focusing on the overall symptoms that are going on and we're not focusing on the underlying problems that are actually causing the symptoms. Right? And so I offer it to you is this, if you could take home, one thing from this discussion is that we have chronic expression of this HPA axis, which is a thing that is genetically in our DNA.

Frank: (10:15)
All of our bodies have. One is that since we are seriously hitting the go button on this cortisol issue all the time with all of this stress and anxiety that we feel because of our society and because of just life in general, our symptoms should actually not surprise us as much because we are absolutely seeing now what is the underlying problem. And so like a lot of us may need to actually approach a health and wellness lifestyle to actually being one that is actively taking a role in decreasing the stress and anxiety in our life. Right? That might be your start. Like I talk about, you know, people say that, uh, that, that, that I'm going to say it, that uh, you know, there's a particular thing that is out there known as the gateway drug. Well, I like to refer to uh, this lifestyle wellness wheel as sort of like the gateway in the sense of whatever way that you work yourself into this wheel.

Frank: (11:14)
It becomes a habit that you want to start helping yourself in other ways as well, right? So like most people enter this wheel through the path of nutrition. They want to probably lose weight. Their physician or their primary care providers told them that it's time to lose weight or else you're going to continue on this pathway of the possibility of say, some sort of a, some sort of a cardiovascular problem, right? Whether it be a heart attack or a stroke or something like that, or you've got high blood pressure, yada, yada, yada. Okay. The thing is is that that is how most get in, but this a chronic overage, maybe you're satisfied with your weight, maybe you're satisfied with the way that you know things are going with sleep. And stuff like that. Although, to be honest with you, if you're having problems with your HPA access, maybe you probably are not getting good sleep.

Frank: (12:00)
But needless to say is that, you know, this could be your Avenue and all right, this was my Avenue. As a matter of fact, if I look at it in retrospect effectively is that my, you know, cause coming out of the military, um, I was forced to stay physically active. I was, I, you know, I had my nutrition down because even at that point I was eating like a paleo lifestyle. So I understood the value of eating fresh fruits and vegetables and you know, getting the right sources of meat. I mean, I understand this guys 10 years ago, but the thing was is that like I was a provider in medical, uh, in the army and like my job was to like invest my time and my resources into my soldiers. Right? And so like that caused a lot of stress and anxiety. I do remember like often I would come home and it would be hard for me to decompress because I put so much time in so much effort in to helping my soldiers that, you know, just quite honestly, it just fatigue me.

Frank: (13:02)
Okay. And I definitely know that like it was my sleep was being affected because of it and all those sorts of things. And so I say all that to say that maybe this is your Avenue in to this circle. Okay. So the problem is, is like I want to get more healthy. I want to get more, uh, better attuned to my lifestyle. But how do I go about getting inside this wheel? While it could be methods to be able to reduce your stress and anxiety, and let me give you one of the ones that has helped me tremendously is mindfulness. Okay? I have started to be extraordinarily mindful of stress and anxiety. Let's face it. Stress and adversity are two entirely different things. At first city by definition is whatever we experience in our external environment that has the ability to become stress. When you internalize it, that's when it becomes stress.

Frank: (14:00)
Okay? We experienced a turtle external stress all the time. Um, if you're a parent, right? Like just simply the virtue of getting up and getting your children dressed, getting all of those tasks taken care of. If you give them a lunch, you've got to prepare the lunch, ya, you know, whatever, whatever. And getting them out the door, it can be stress in itself. Okay. Or you can look at it in a mindful approach and say, look, I'm blessed that I have children and I'm getting them to school and then I'm offering the opportunity to be able to give myself in the morning to be able to ensure that they have a great day. Right? That's my mindful approach with my kids. Okay. And I'm just using that as an example. And so what I started to do as I started I to wake up every single morning and I said to myself, this one particular thing, and I offer this to you right now.

Frank: (14:51)
I woke up and I said, um, I want to be the best version of myself that I could possibly be today. Okay, let that sink in for a second. I want to be the best version of myself that I can possibly be today. And by doing that, I realized that there was massive power in that over the course of time because there is no on off switch when it comes to health, wellness, or even your mindset, right? It is a gradual change. I mean, for you to be unhealthy, you have to make choices too, right? Like you end up making the choices that make you unhealthy. Well, it's the same thing that you got to do to make choices every single day in order to get yourself healthy as well. It's not like people like all of a sudden can be 50 pounds overweight and then tomorrow dropped 50 pounds and be on the cover of muscle and fitness magazine.

Frank: (15:41)
It just doesn't happen. Okay. It's a gradual thing and the way that it works is over the course of a period of time, change can happen. And so I woke up every single day and I told myself what can I do to be the best version of myself that I possibly could be today? Write that down, put it on a post it note, slap it on a refrigerator, put it next to a bathroom mirror, whatever you want to remind yourself. I am not perfect, but darn it, I am progressing toward trying to achieve that goal. Okay? I may not ever get there, but every single day I am going to try to make myself better than I was the day before, okay, and over time you will notice that you know you might have some peaks and valleys, right? You might have some days that are a little bit worse than other days.

Frank: (16:27)
You might have a good high, but then unfortunately a couple of days later you have a good low. But over the course of time, what I would offer to you is you're going to notice that that chart will start going up, okay? Have you plot that? Like I said versus time. You will see your mindset is beginning to shift and you are starting to be a better version of yourself because you have told yourself every single day that I'm going to be a better version of myself today than I used to be. Okay, that's exactly what I want you to do. I also want you to practice the ability to calm yourself throughout the day. Okay? Take breaks throughout the day and these can be mini micro breaks like these do not need to be gigantic one hour long meditations sessions, right? Pause for 30 seconds and tell yourself, I've got this. Everything is going this particular way.

Frank: (17:20)
I'm going to have a positive outlook upon this and I'm going to try to improve myself throughout the rest of my day. Okay. I did that with posttraumatic stress guys. I've got post-traumatic trust. It is one of my laundry list of diagnosis and so I said, I am not going to allow this diagnosis to define me. Instead of what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn it on its head and I'm going to utilize it as as mental acuity thought or and try to be able to use it to actually launch out and be more positive. Instead of allowing myself to focus on the negative symptoms and guess what? My anxiety, my, my restlessness, my hyper activity, you know, all of these sidebars of post traumatic stress actually been utilized now by me in order to be able to inject myself in the lives of others in order to be able to say, you know what, you've got this and you can do it and it's because of the fact that you've been empowered and you take your struggles and you take your downsides and you take care of what seems to be your defeats and you turn them on their head and you create the upside down opportunity to be able to use those negative things for good.

Frank: (18:34)
You take the negative, you turn it into a positive and you influence people and you're able to actually create positive change in this otherwise chaotic world. And guess what folks? That stuff works. And so it's all about a mindset and it's all about understanding what is the physiology of ourselves and then how can I mind body, spirit, this thing and overcome it in order to be able to hear I have a more positive mindset. Okay. And stress and anxiety I offer to you. Well will always remain there, but we don't start internalizing that instead of we fight it right there and don't allow it to influence the HPA access that we're actually have been discussing. And instead we turn that around and we create that more of a motivating factor in order for us to be able to say, I'm not going to allow this into my life.

Frank: (19:21)
Instead I'm going to meet it face on and I'm going to have that build up character and I'm going to be able to overcome what could stress me out or what can cause all of these anxious feelings. I'm going to just let it sit right there. Okay. I don't think I need to necessarily go any further into that. Um, we're coming up on the 20 minute Mark, which is what I usually try to do. That way you guys can get back onto your life. But realize you've got people behind you. I am here. I would love to help. Let me know on this thread, what types of things am I pointing right to it right now? Let me know on this thread right now if you're watching this, whether it be live or on replay. Matter of fact, if it's on a replay, I expect that you will do this.

Frank: (19:59)
Put it on there and let me know what are the things that stress you out? What are the things that make you anxious? That way you can get it out into the open and start telling your story. Okay? That brings power because when you're transparent and when we have this community of individuals who are taking a stand and saying, I don't want stress and I go in anxiety to rule my life anymore. Instead, I want to put it in its place and meet it where it's tries to meet me and create positive change in my life because of it. That's when you realize that the power will be uncapped from that reason. So do me a favor, tell me your story right now. Okay, and let's Edify one another and let's believe in one another and let's absolutely create the change that we want to have in our lives by this community of people that we have surrounding us.

Frank: (20:49)
Okay? I got nothing but love for you guys. Please take advantage of that. Okay. Tell me your story and so I leave it at that. I love you guys. I love doing these Facebook lives. I promise. Excuse me, that they will definitely be kicking back off again. Excuse me for the month of December, but I will be quiet right now so you can enjoy your Thanksgiving week. I hope that this was something that you would appreciate on a Monday. Going into Thanksgiving. We'd be thankful for your family, be thankful for your friends and you know what? Be thankful for you because of the fact that you are here is the reason why you are here is because there's still a purpose for himself. Anyway, I love you guys. Have a Thanksgiving. That is one to remember and I will talk to you again very, very soon and reach out to me any way you need to email me if you need to, but most of all, once again, put that story there in those comments, okay? But like to at all, right? Because you are amazing and I want to make sure that your story gets told. So anyway, y'all take care. Have a great day and we will definitely talk to you again very, very soon. Bye. Bye now.

Enjoy Part 2!

Shownotes for this Podcast episode:

Frank: (00:00)
Hey guys, how are you? Happy belated veteran's day. I myself, I had a great time being able to celebrate veteran's day with my family. We did a really cool observance and had a great veteran's day dinner yesterday, so a lot of fun. Um, what I'm most especially proud of his a family all chipped in. My daughter was serving the veterans of Vietnam and world war II and I tell you what, I was just a really great night. Anyway, it's a episode. Gosh, I think 44 and the most important thing is that it's part two of my conversation with Jill winger of the Prairie homestead. I really had a lot of fun doing this interview and I want to let you folks know that next week I will be taking a quick break on my podcast for one week and I will bring you the next episode during Thanksgiving holiday week. 

Frank: (00:53)
The reason being is because I'd be heading out to Austin, Texas to go interact with a lot of really great veterans and farmers at the national farmer veteran coalition conference that is going to be held in Austin, Texas. It's a great time to be able to speak with other veterans and what they're doing in farming. Be able to get a lot of really great resources. And really the biggest thing is just to be able to network with other individuals who are doing exactly the same thing that we are here on our farm. So enjoy part two of my conversation with Joe winger and we will catch you guys in a couple of weeks on another podcast and it'll be coming to you very, very soon. Talk soon. 

Speaker 2: (01:35)
Hey everyone, and welcome to unconventional wellness, radio, powerful and inspiring podcast, such a revolutionize and disrupt healthcare. It's time to put you in the driver's seat and be the force of change necessary for the lifestyle you've always wanted. 

Frank: (01:49)
And now if I could shift gears a little bit, um, because of the fact that you know, folks that listen to this podcast, what we tried to do is of course we try to focus on the a, the five pillars of unconventional wellness. Um, so what I'm going to do is kind of transitioned into over the course of your time growing in the agricultural understanding of homesteading that you guys have. It probably has woke you up to saying, um, since we're moving more traditionally now and we're doing things with, um, you know, just an understanding of sort of heritage and, and bringing up our kids that way and all that kind of stuff. Where did the transition of, now that I'm going to homestead, I want to homestead in such a way that's going to be beneficial and healthy for my family. Do you know whereabouts that started in your homesteading journey? 

Jill: (02:38)
Yeah. Let me think when that was that the chicken or the egg, which came first. So I think it was after, I think the homestead came first because I remember when we first bought our property or we were in the process of purchasing it, I was actually not only not paying attention to my health or eating right or exercising, I was actually belligerent about it, but I would make fun of people who were, Oh, you want organic celery? Okay. Whatever. And like I would make fun of green things and recycling. Um, so I was actually kind of a jerk, but when I got into the whole setting idea and I'm like, I want goats and compost piles, I think, I think what happened next is I started reading blogs. I was reading different natural homemaker blogs because YouTube really wasn't a thing back then or what weren't really podcasts. 

Jill: (03:30)
And so they were talking about you know, how to cook with different sweeteners and how do you know why you shouldn't use Crisco and coconut oil and all these no butter. And I'm like, mind blown. This is new. And I really started to dig in deep and I, you know, of course we all started, many of us with nourishing traditions, that whole thing and kind of went on that route. So that team, I'd say almost in tandem with the homesteading vision, maybe a little bit afterwards, but then not, you know, it, it works well together. Eating better because you're growing whole foods. You have to figure out how to cook them and then wanting to clean out all the toxins in our bath products. And our laundry detergent and all that. So it was kind of a domino effect. 

Frank: (04:10)
Oh, that's so good. Okay. So then, since we're already kind of naturally going off of food and we know that, you know, nutrition is like crucially important and foundational for improving your health. Can you tell me like, how about like three different ways that you guys personally started implementing a different way of not only eating but also maybe some cooking tips about how you were able to create, uh, just a, an understanding of wellness in your home? 

Jill: (04:41)
Sure. So I'd say with the food realm, which is one of my favorite things to talk about, three things we do, let me think. Okay. So number one, we got rid of the fats, bad fats, not all the fat, sorry, let me rephrase that. We got rid of the bad fats, good fats. So things like margarine, Crisco and vegetable oils were gone and we replaced them with things like butter, coconut oil and lard. Like lard is magical. So that was a big one. Um, I stopped buying a lot of canned and boxed things. So like cream of mushroom soup was out a boxes of pudding and jello were out. Uh, cool whip was out. And I replaced those with homemade options, which are not as complicated as you might think. And then I think the third thing would be I just started making more of our bread products, whether it's pie CROs or biscuits or things like that from scratch. So I would just use simple ingredients to make those instead of buying the, you know, pop and fresh biscuits or the, the refrigerated pie crusts and so on, that not only don't taste that great, but they really have a lot of junk in there. 

Frank: (05:55)
Well, yeah, because you know, we, we, you would probably echo what I'm saying here is that like, you know, you flip those things over and you're paying for convenience, but the problem is, is that a lot of your dollars are going toward preservatives and they have to keep things shelf stable. And so you flip it over and it's kind of like 20 ingredients where I'm pretty certain that like your pie crust probably has like what, four or five ingredients. 

Jill: (06:18)
Totally. Absolutely. Yeah. The preservatives, you know, they have to do it right. Like we bashed them Oh there. So these horrible companies will, they're, they're trying to make to their food doesn't spoil. But unfortunately a lot of those preservatives and things that make it taste better and keep it from spoiling her body bodies don't really love. So it's a catch 22. 

Frank: (06:35)
It really is. Those things that you often flip over and look at on the other side of a, you know, an ingredient package, if you can't pronounce them, your body probably doesn't understand what they even are. And so it just automatically converts those things in the fat guys. Um, so it is like the fat is like the most stable thing that you can have in your body. It's like if your body doesn't recognize what it is, Oh let me just turn it into fat cause we think it's food and we probably could use it one day, but let's just turn it into fat because that's nice. That's nice and safe. Um, but okay, so, so moving on then from tradition cause I want to definitely circle back around and really expand on that whole heritage cooking concept that you've created. Um, let's move on into like, you know, besides the fact that like not all, not all homesteaders, thank like, let me just hurry up and we're going to move in and like exercise a movement being our second pillar that we're going to talk about. But you know, there is a lot of hard work on a farm and this is true, but is there please help me demystify this myth is that homesteaders are in like incredible shape because they exercise a lot. Would you agree with that? 

Jill: (07:40)
Yeah, that is that, that is a myth on the can on occasion. So, um, I found when, and this is kind of tricky with my career, it's kind of a double edge sword. So back in the day when all I had to do, I had one child and I wasn't homeschooling yet because she was a baby and I didn't have a blog. And so literally all I had to do to occupy myself was running around the yard all day and piddle with the flowers and the vegetables. Um, it was easier for me to be more active, but I actually struggle now, even with all the homestead jobs we have to do. Sometimes I still struggle to be as active as I would like to be, um, because we're homeschooling in the morning. And then I find that I end up working at my desk in the afternoon. And so sometimes I still am like, man, it's, you know, five 30 in the app in the evening and I have sat all day long and I need to move my body. Um, so it's for sure. Yeah, it depends on what you're doing, but home setting doesn't necessarily give you every single bit of physical activity you need. Sometimes you have to be a little bit creative and adding that in. 

Frank: (08:46)
Okay. So what are like two or three things that you have done in the past or that you're maybe currently doing now that has kept you active physically? 

Jill: (08:54)
Yeah. So we actually, 

Frank: (08:56)
um, I don't know, a lot of people know this. I don't really talk about it. I don't really have a reason to talk about it. Um, online. But we've had that, we built a gym in our shop, um, because especially we have long winters here and they're dark and town is a long ways away. So there would be times, you know, it's snowing outside and I'm not going to go out, there's not a lot of chores to do that I'm going to be spending, you know, four hours out there doing something cause it's freezing and it would be dark in the evenings. And I'm like I've got to move cause I'm like feeling antsy and I've been sitting all day and so we have some treadmill or a treadmill and a few pieces of equipment and some weights. So I'll go do that sometimes. Um, my preference of course is cause I'm a very efficient person. 

Frank: (09:37)
I like to do physical act activity and get a job done. So if I have a preference, I'm going to pick stacking firewood over running on a treadmill or I'm cleaning out a pin and you know, it needs a deep clean with a Pitchfork. I'm going to pick that over lifting weights. But sometimes that doesn't always work out with scheduling. So you gotta make sure you fill in those gaps. Yeah, totally. And, and most of what's really funny is that, like, I, I kind of giggle when I say this is that like, you know, so many CrossFit moves are literally appropriately fulfilled when you form. You know what I mean? Like there's one CrossFit modem in particular, it's called the farmer's carry and you literally just take a dumbbell or kettlebells or whatever and you put them next to you and you carry them for a distance. 

Frank: (10:23)
Yes. The strike me, strike me as if you've never done that before. Yeah, exactly. You know, so, so guys get creative. The most important things are, you know, what I've talked about on previous episodes are, you know, your functional movements I think is what gel is describing. Is that like, it's nice to be able to functionally move, but you know, you do have to still get decent exercise and movement available during your day. So you gotta get creative. You know, we're not w we don't have the opportunity, at least I know that I don't, you know, gel does it. Christian doesn't. Jackie doesn't to go to a gym, we can't spend two, three hours with going to a gym, going to work out and then coming home from the gym and all the other things in between. And so just get creative and be able to move on even a farm, you know what I mean? 

Frank: (11:11)
Because you can even still be out of shape if you're a farmer. Very, very possible. So, um, alright, so let's, let's move on then to stuff that's going to be a little bit more in what I know is definitely going to be more of your wheelhouse. Let's talk about toxins, right? So like how did now that you were shaping your food and your movement, you know, when did you start thinking about like, what am I using in my home to clean up? What am I using a cook with? What am I using too? I mean, just using our in and around our bodies. When did that start happening? If you wouldn't mind just kind of explain that a little bit as well. 

Jill: (11:44)
Yeah, I think that happened once I kinda got in the groove with my food stuff, then I started to look at, wow, this house, you know, the spray cleaner I'm buying is really crappy ingredients or this shampoo I'm using is not great. So we started to kind of shift our sights over there. Um, the, I guess the good slash bad news back then we were on a super strict budget, so I was forced to be frugal and I kind of saw it as a challenge. And so thankfully when you make a lot of your own ingredient or a lot of your products, rather, it's cheaper for the most part. So I started experimenting with lots of homemade things. Um, you know, I did the whole vinegar, no poo shampoo stuff. That was not my favorite. Um, but no, I did shampoo bars and homemade laundry detergent and homemade based creams and homemade cleaners. 

Jill: (12:34)
And so no, I found that was really, um, really enjoyable. And then I eventually came across essential oils. And so essential oils were a way that I could add a little more pep into some of these recipes. They smelled better, they had a little more cleaning power. And now fast forward to today, I still make a lot of my own cleaners. Um, sometimes I just using natural products with central oils infused into them and I just go with those. But yeah, that definitely was kind of like food first and then all the talks and stuff came right after that. 

Frank: (13:04)
Gotcha. And now you're also like, you even taking it one step further and of course you're using different types of natural remedies around the farm itself, right? Like inside of like your coops and you do stuff with your animals and all that sort of stuff as well. Right? 

Jill: (13:18)
Absolutely. We use essential oils on the animals. I have a fly spray cause like why sprays contains some pretty rough chemicals. And so we do a essential oil fly spray. And I had a horse who cut her foot a couple of weeks ago. So we used Melaleuca oil on that. So they definitely have, um, gravitated out of the house and into the barnyard and the Garvey. 

Frank: (13:37)
Yeah, I mean, and what's funny guys is that like these sorts of things like, you know, if you don't know what essential oils are, um, it's really just the [inaudible] to kind of give you a very quick five second reason for essential oils is that they're the things that plants make in order to protect themselves. And so we've realized that there is very good therapeutic benefits of using, um, these essential oils as well. And so, um, I, I would much rather use something that has like just orange essential oil in it. Then I went to go grab an old school conventional bottle of whatever to clean one of my surfaces in my kitchen that has another 23 ingredients in it. I mean that I have no idea what some of the things that are inside of these products actually are, let alone be able to pronounce them. 

Frank: (14:20)
And so, um, I, it's really nice when it's water vinegar and maybe some essential oil that's orange, you know, it just makes so much of a better difference guys. And I didn't want to get into the science of it, but it can be just as convenient not only to use those things, but also it's so much more natural and it actually does in fact help eradicate a lot of the things that are on these surfaces as well. So, um, awesome. Well, what about Alice with like, you know, um, different types of toxins you've come across with like, you know, like let's dive more so into like water and like maybe like what are some of the ways that you're able to protect yourself against like some of these issues with water? Like what about your farm? Like is there any kind of like, you know, chemicals or anything like that that you avoid with raising these animals? Like how have you started making swaps? Are those things as well? And have you become more of like a holistic, natural farmer? 

Jill: (15:16)
Hm. Um, so thankfully we have, well, water water is pretty good. If we lived in town, I would definitely use a Berkey or something like that. But we don't have chlorine, thankfully in our water. So that's a relief. Um, as far as our animals go, you know, like the fly's phrase, that's a big one. I use homemade utter bomb on my cows and goats, so we don't have petroleum based products on them. Um, we do still use some conventional dewormers just because we have a very large herd and we haven't been able to experiment yet with a deal. That was kind of a process. You have to kind of go with what parasites you have in your area and you have to fecals. And so it's kind of a, a process. But um, yeah, we definitely try to keep, we'd go grass fed as much as possible or will actually almost a hundred percent with our milk cows and our beef cattle. The exception would be every once in a while if a milk cow was getting a little skinny, I'll give her some grain. But other than that, it's, it's grass fed. It's simple. I like to give them some kelp out in their mineral feeder and just keep it really easy. 

Frank: (16:22)
And it's actually funny how much more simplified life is as an a gentleman with like, yeah, it just makes it so much easier. It's like, you know, when I, when I deal with so many chemicals, it's like what's going to cross with what and then, Oh by the way, is this going to cause a side effect that needs to be taken care of with this new chemical? Right. Like all that kind of stuff. It's like I get too confused. And so when I simplify things, not only am I saving money, but it's also like, it makes it easier for me to be able to, to focus on what I feel like truly matters. 

Jill: (16:51)
Yeah. 

Frank: (16:53)
So how's everybody sleeping in the house? Because that's obviously important. You know, we've been talking about all these really wonderful tips and stuff like that to remove, uh, you know, toxins and to be able to eat really good nourishing food. Like how's everybody sleeping and what are some of your tricks to help people get sound sleep with you? Having, you know, a family of five. My how's that all 

Jill: (17:12)
working out for you? Yeah, we did pretty good on sleep. I'd say, um, we, the biggest thing for us is we, I'm pretty routine driven. Like I kind of was boring like that. It has to I think have to be on a schedule. So, you know, the kids were pretty religious about they go to bed at the same time, they get up at the same time and I try to be pretty careful with myself as well. Like, um, there are times I do push my own boundaries of okay Dell you need to turn off the TV or the phone or whatever and go to bed. Um, but most of the time I'm like, no, we're going to bed, you know, getting in bed by 10. We have my little shutdown rituals. Um, I've found that of course it's always better for my brain to not be on my phone right before bed and read a book instead and not do the screen time. So that definitely helps. I think for me when I, whenever I find that I am struggling with sleep, it's usually related to not getting enough physical movement. So if I find that I've been like up and down in the, in the nighttime and our, I'm tossing and turning the next day, I just really try to get outside, get some fresh air, move my body. Um, and that's the biggest one for me. 

Frank: (18:18)
Do you see what she was just able to do guys? Do you notice how um, just rolled out of her tongue, rolled off of the tip of her tongue that she said if she's feeling like she doesn't get adequate sleep, that maybe she needs to actually focus on movement more. Do you under, are you, I hope you guys are getting the fact that these are all intertwined and they're all just as important. Um, you know, by, by convention, if we only focus on one or two of these pillars, we're not going to be able to understand the whole picture. And so, you know, Joe gets it and Jill realizes starting to come into her own and be able to say like, well, if I feel like I'm lacking here, then maybe it's because I'm not focusing on this as well. And so I really appreciate you actually saying that Joe, that actually is, that's actually such a wonderful tip guys is that like you've got to look at kind of all of them. 

Frank: (19:05)
You know, you have to be a Jack of all trades when it comes to this or a Jill of all trades. You've got to be able to do that. So, and then lastly, let's close things out with like, you know, stress and anxiety. I mean like I can only imagine with trying to homestead and then traveling and doing the things that you do with your business. Um, what are some of the like two or three past ways that you've been able to sort of mitigate that stress and anxiousness and not let it over overcome you? 

Jill: (19:30)
Yeah. So, um, number, well, just to go back to our previous point, when I'm tired, everything stresses me out more. Like, it'll be later at night and I'll be like having a meltdown. I'm like, this is, everything's bad. Everything's horrible. It's all falling apart. And then I magically go to bed and it doesn't, all the anxiety just doesn't exist this morning. So I'm like, Oh, that was tired of the odds. So that's a big one. I know when I get burned out then I don't create as well. I don't show up in my businesses as, but I don't show up as good as a mom. So, um, rest is really important. We try to take off Sundays, like so for example, this last Sunday I did absolutely nothing. Like I literally sat in a pile and I forced myself to sit in a pile. Even though I had this urge to like get up and do something, I'm like, Nope, you're going to read a book, you're going to chill. 

Jill: (20:20)
You're going to just do things that relax you. And you know, Monday came around and I was ready to roll. So rest is really important to deal with stress and anxiety. Beyond that I think, and this is like do as I say, not as I do because people laugh at me who know me well cause I'm not really good at this, like not taking on too much and knowing when to say no. Um, usually when I'm in a rage tantrum and Christian seeing me like freaking out all this stuff I have to do, it's because I am trying to please other people and I'm, I said yes too much in an effort to keep everyone happy, so saying no keeping things to a minimum and um, I also hire help and that's one that I feel like, um, a lot of homesteaders are surprised to learn or there's a little, sometimes there's a little pushback when I say that, but I hire help in my business. I hire help in my house and I could not do what I do if I was literally trying to be super woman cause I'm not super woman and I need a support team. So that really makes a huge difference for me. 

Frank: (21:21)
Yup. I think community, you know, surrounding yourself with both professional and personal community is really, really important. Um, so thank you so much. I mean like that was also like good. I hope you guys took notes on all of that stuff because as you can see, every one of us can put these things into practice. And what's really cool is that like we're all unique in our approach and so you got to figure out what works for you. You know, if you are somebody who wants to go and spend three hours at a gym, then by all means do it. If that's what makes you happy. So this is just a matter of you got to find out you and then like you've heard that cliche. You do. You and I really think that that's immensely important. And so, um, Jill, I just, I am like just overwhelmed. 

Frank: (22:03)
I really appreciate you taking the time and explaining all these things to us. And um, we are just so excited about, um, being able to share this information because guys, we're, we may be walking this, but it helps us walk it even better because we're able to share it with others. And, uh, and, and I said I was gonna start our, excuse me, I was going to circle back so I didn't forget about it, but why don't you tell me a little bit about this movement that you have now with heritage cooking and how you're empowering people on how to be able to start doing that again for themselves. I absolutely love this guy. So Joel, please, please enlighten us. 

Jill: (22:42)
Yes. So it all goes back to when I started to improve our diets and I, you know, got rid of the bad fats and I started cooking from scratch and it was this process and as I got better at it, I have a lot of mistakes, a lot of mess ups in the love learning curves. But as I got into a groove and I got more comfortable with it, I started to realize how happy it made me, not just the food tasted good, which it did. I made my family happy and we were feeling healthier cause we were getting rid of junk in our bodies. But it made me feel so fulfilled to be creating things with my hands. And I started to realize like I wasn't the only one and humans have this intense need to create and a wonderful way to create is in the kitchen because we got to eat anyway and there's a lot of benefits to from scratch foods you don't, it makes us feel connected to our families. 

Jill: (23:35)
It feeds our family's healthier food. And so I started this idea of expanding this idea of heritage cooking because everybody likes to wax about how grandma cooked or how great out Wanda cooked. But then I would hear people talk about it and they're like acting like it was this extinct concept. And I'm like, wait a second. Yeah, grandma might've had good pie crust. You can have good bite cross too. So let's stop acting like it's this thing that belongs in a museum. And so the heritage cooking concept is literally just taking these time honored kitchen skills like canning and making your own bread and fermenting foods and teaching modern folks how to do that with their busy schedules, with their modern kitchens because it's not near as hard as a lot of people think. 

Frank: (24:26)
Now you, um, correct me, correct me if I'm wrong, but have you not created a course that uh, that surrounds heritage cooking in some of these concepts that you just talked about? 

Jill: (24:35)
Yes. So we, I launched the cookbook this spring and we created a course, a video course around it, cause I knew a lot of people wanted to see the recipes being created or see the techniques, not just read about them. So yeah, it's called the heritage cooking crash course. And you can literally watch me make the pie crust Chan that vegetables, do the things in the kitchen and get all the little tips in the process. 

Frank: (24:57)
And if I was excited enough to like, cause I am excited enough, where would I actually go find that? At. 

Jill: (25:02)
So you would just go to heritage cooking class.com and you can get the scoop on that there 

Frank: (25:08)
and we'll make sure that we actually put a link guys in this podcast. That way you can click on that and go get yourself started with heritage cooking because, um, I love how you brought up the fact that there is such a wonderful social aspect to it. I mean, it really is a matter of a family or significant others or whatever. Um, one of the diets that I truly love is the Mediterranean diet because the, there's such a focus on the social aspect of food. Um, it's not something that we were intended to eat inside of a cubicle by ourselves. You know what I mean? We get so much more important for us to be able to share it with those that we love and those that we really appreciate in our lives. And so, um, please go check out Jill's a heritage, a cooking course because it is definitely something that we really, really need. It meets such a wonderful need that we have. And once again, if you are interested in all of the recipes that Joel has put together regarding all of the different things that she does on her homestead, that once again is the Prairie homestead cookbook and it is simple recipes for heritage cooking in any kitchen. And so please go check that out. Go to Amazon, go to our website. You can pick up a copy of the book, uh, either one of those places I think 

Speaker 4: (26:22)
and Barnes and noble now too, aren't you? Is that just like everywhere the book is easily available everywhere. Yep. Anywhere books are sold, you should be able to find it. Yeah, there you go. So please go get a copy of that as well and absolutely. At the very least, uh, as soon as you are done listening to this podcast, go check out her website, the Prairie homestead.com and you weren't going to be extraordinarily happy with how you follow website. It is and it has some, all of her musings and all of her blogs over the years and a, and you won't be inspired. I'm just looking at all of the work that Joe has done. And so Joe, I don't think I've forgotten anything that I good. No, I think you did good. She is my, she's my friend folks. And so that's why I wanted to make sure that I sing her praises because she absolutely deserves every single one of them. 

Speaker 4: (27:09)
She is such an inspirational person. Her and her family are just so fantastic and we're so grateful to know you guys. And uh, we just, we, we wish you nothing but continued success and for you to be able to touch as many lives as you already have through the medium of technology and being able to have them in your home literally because of our wonderful methods of smart phones or computers and all this other stuff that we can see you peel the layers back and be as transparent as you are. Absolutely. My pleasure. And same to you and Jackie because you guys are doing some big fun things too. So [inaudible] we're trying to do what we can. So you know, uh, like, like, uh, like helps. Like, so that's what this entire thing is about. So like I said, guys, go check her out. Joe winger, uh, her and Christian will absolutely inspire you guys. 

Speaker 4: (27:56)
And so, Jo, I just, as I started off, I want to finish it the same way. I'm so grateful that you took some time out of your busy schedule to be able to join me on today's podcast and I really, really, really appreciate it. You are so welcome. It's my pleasure. All right, y'all take care. And like I said, go check that stuff out and just stop what you're doing and make sure that you go check out gel in the very top step. So until then, we will catch you again on another episode of [inaudible]. I can bet you on this radio on Frank and we will talk to you guys very soon. Thank you so much.