Get your free sample class for IIN's Health Coach Training Program that Ashley loves:

Learntruehealth.com/coach

Get Dr. Mark's free download: www.sherwood.tv

 

Your Quest To Wellness: How To Self-Heal Through Food, Dr. Mark Sherwood

https://www.learntruehealth.com/483-your-quest-to-wellness-how-to-self-heal-through-food-dr-mark-sherwood

 

Highlights:

• Diseases and the two major causes of death in the United States
• Allopathic versus naturopathic/holistic medicine
• Sleep dysregulation and emotional trauma
• Inflammation in the body and its effects
• Cortisol
• Metformin
• Foods that cause inflammation and what to cut out in your diet
• Cytokines
• Broccoli is good for you

Nutrition has a tremendous effect on our lives. Some foods harm, and some foods help. In today's episode, Dr. Mark Sherwood speaks about how our emotional health, spiritual health, and lifestyle play a role along with the foods we eat. He also shares tips on healing and getting our health back or taking it to the next level.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. You're going to love today's interview with Dr. Mark Sherwood. He brings some amazing information to help us heal and help get our health to the next level. He said at the end of the interview, “This felt like I was just chatting with my bud and it was such a great conversation.” It's interesting that he said that because a lot of listeners say to me that they feel like they're sitting in the living room with us, chatting with us, and just learning from our guests, asking the questions that they wanted me to ask, so it feels like they're a part of the conversation.

Learning from him in this interview reminded me of my experience with IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. When I went through their year-long health coach training program, I learned from the world's best holistic health experts and functional medicine experts. It was phenomenal. And then, I ended up interviewing many of them on the show. I had Andrea Beaman, Dr. Mark Hyman, and Dr. Joel Fuhrman. And I loved them all and I had many more. You can go to my website LearnTrueHealth.com and type in “Institute for Integrative Nutrition” in the search function. You'll find all my episodes where I interviewed many of the graduates, the staff, the founder and the CEO, also health coaches that have come through their program and many of their teachers.

Now, when I was considering doing the course, considering going through the year-long health coach training program with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, I had two problems, two dilemmas in my mind. I didn't have enough time, and I didn't have enough money. What I was really surprised about is that they broke it down so the year-long program, even incredibly busy people can do it because it's about 20 minutes a day. So, sometimes a little bit longer, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but it averages out to be about 20 minutes a day. I did it while I was washing the dishes, cooking, and doing the laundry; I just have it playing. I'd be driving and I'd listen to it. I'd be at the gym listening to it. I would just listen to it whenever I could; I would turn it on just kind of like you're listening to this show, you fit it in maybe while you're driving. If you can listen to a podcast, you can do the program. You can go through their program. So, that eliminated that first dilemma for me.

Then the second dilemma was I didn't have enough money. And it is an incredibly rich program, so of course, it costs money, right? It's not cheap, but also, they deliver so much value that at the end of it, I was like, this was worth every penny. And what I love is they give a discount to my listeners, which is amazing because I talked to the founder and I talked to the CEO, and I talked to some managers there, and I asked them if they could please give a discount to the listeners of my show, and they do. So, if you do want to go forward and check it out, make sure you get the discount from the Learn True Health Podcast with Ashley James. Make sure you get the discount.

But what was great was that I signed up with a payment plan. I was like, okay, that eliminated my last barrier to entry for me, and I was able to jump in and do it because I had a toddler at the time, I was working full-time, go, go, go, go. I was so busy, and yet, I was able to afford it on a payment plan. I was able to do it about 20 minutes a day; I was able to fit it in. And I got so much out of it. Imagine how great the content is on my show and condense that into TED Talks like how great some TED Talks are. Every time I would sit down to learn, it would just be these amazing, amazing health lecturers that were so well thought out and so well-taught that I got so much information out of it. And I was really surprised at how much my life transformed, and then I was able to spill that over and help my friends and family and, of course, go on to help others.

About half the people that take the program don't ever intend to work with clients and be an actual health coach. They just want the tools for themselves and their family and their friends, or they just want those tools because that is for themselves alone, and then maybe it'll be a great addition to whatever they're doing in life. You learn to help people on so many levels. You learn how to communicate with people and really listen to people and help people on so many levels. It's incredibly rewarding.

So if you'd like to check out IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, you can get a free sample class by going to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach. That's LearnTrueHealth.com/coach. Check it out, and see if it's for you. If it's for you, you can give them a call, or I believe you just go to the IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition's website, and I think they have like an ability to chat with them there. But go ahead and just check it out for free, first of all. Just go get the sample class and see if it's for you, and just dive in and look at it. It was amazing for me.

Now, if you have more time on your hands, let's say about 40 minutes to an hour a day, you'd like to become a health coach sooner, they have a six months program. And recently, in the last year, they spent the year really working at this, and they have completely revamped their whole program. It's so exciting. It's just amazing. So if you geek out on health stuff just like I do and you're also into personal growth and development, this class is for you. And I love that people do it all around the world. You get this big sense of community because you actually participate with people around the world. There's nothing quite like it. I actually remember crying, just bawling my eyes out like good tears, good happy tears the entire first day I was taking the class because I felt like I had finally found my tribe, like I had finally found the people that would understand me. It was such a good feeling to be a part of that and part of that experience. And at one point, you actually get to do coaching calls with a group of people, and you can connect with people locally in your state or province or your territory or your area that are going through the program as well. So, you can make friends, and you feel like, wow, you're not the black sheep anymore, like there's a bunch of other people who are also just totally geeking out on health stuff and personal growth stuff and emotional healing stuff. It's just fascinating. So, check it out.

In this interview today, Dr. Mark Sherwood just reminded me so much of how much I got out of IIN, and so if you just love this interview, you'd probably also love their program. Make sure you go to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach, sign up for the free program and just see if you even like it. Even if you're not interested in signing up, you get a free sample class. Go get it. Maybe you'll get something out of it. Anyways, I know you're going to get something out of this episode, so enjoy today's interview. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. Hey, if this interview or if any of my interviews were shared to you by one of my listeners, they really care about you, and that's saying something. Because we have to help each other, right? There's too many people sick out there.

Seventy percent of the adult population is on at least one prescription medication. We're walking around thinking that health is disease management. And that's not the case. Up is down, left is right; everything is backward in this world. Because true health is being symptom-free and off of drugs, true health is feeling amazing, jumping out of bed full of energy. True health is having longevity. And if you do get sick, you recover like that. You recover so fast. That's true health. I want you to have that, and you can have that. I've watched people heal from things that they were told by doctors they could never heal from including myself. And I want you to have that.

So, keep listening, and keep sharing the episodes with those you care about. Let's help our friends and family to learn true health and to experience true health. Enjoy today's episode!

[00:08:06] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 483.

I am so excited for today's guest! We have Dr. Mark Sherwood on the show. The website to go to is Sherwood.tv. And I just want to point out that he has a great free download. It's an e-book, it's about 27 pages. And it has some fantastic protocols in there and it also will show you what is possible, the healing that is possible for you.

Mark, I'm such a huge fan of the work that you and your wife do because your mission statement is right on par with my mission statement: to eliminate all unnecessary usage of medication, to eradicate all self-imposed choice-driven disease. The thing is, a lot of people are walking around not knowing that their choices have led to their disease. That's what happened to me in my 20's. I developed a lot of diseases, and then I, in my 30's, eradicated them all with my choices. But I was walking around like going with the flow, not being a salmon. I was a good hillstream. I was doing what everyone else was doing, and I developed a bunch of diseases. Then I had to turn around and be a salmon and go totally against the flow, and that's when I eradicated my diseases.

So, a lot of people don't know, and sometimes they might get offended like “I didn't give myself fibromyalgia,” or, “I didn't give myself MS. I didn't give myself autoimmune disease.” We're not saying that people consciously chose to give themselves that, but their choices have led to the state that they're in, and that also allows them to step into their power when they realize that they are now in control. And

Today, Dr. Sherwood is going to teach us that you are in control. All your MDs have been giving you drugs and telling you that you are going to have that disease for the rest of your life, and it's not true. You can heal, and your choices really do make a difference. Welcome to the show! It's so exciting to have you here today.

[00:10:20] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Ashley, thank you. It's an honor to be here. I appreciate what you do, I appreciate your show, and I appreciate the audience that you draw. I know people want to learn. So, I'm excited and it's going to be great.

[00:10:29] Ashley James: Absolutely. Can you start by sharing your story? What happened in your life that led you to become the doctor that you are today?

[00:10:39] Dr. Mark Sherwood: My story's quite unique, actually. During my childhood years, I was not brought up in a healthy environment at all. I didn't know anything about it. As a matter of fact, it was so unhealthy physically and emotionally that I went through a tragedy in my life, the early 2000s, unexplainable, but it was the suicide of my own mother. It was that traumatic. But during the trauma, I was determined to learn a few things on how not to do that in my own life. Even though I didn't learn it, it didn't really come to full fruition until probably the late '80s, when I found myself on the other side of the world in the country of Australia playing professional baseball. I had nothing to do during the day except sit around and wait for the games in the evening, but I decided to start exercising, and before I knew it, I realized there was something to this.

Then shortly thereafter, I joined the police department in Tulsa, Oklahoma and was put in charge of a wellness program. I'm speeding up the story, but you get the idea. And I didn't know what I knew now. I wondered why my colleagues were dying so quickly and I wanted to figure that out.

So, I started to really get into the idea of does stress really have to have this much effect on us and what effect does nutrition have in our lives? And how do those two relate? Do they relate? So, I went on that quest, if you will, Ashley, to determine the answers to those questions. Is our lifestyle creating this increase, this thing I call “sick span”? That led me down the pathway of naturopathic study. I was always a fan of that because it made sense. I thought, okay, if we can take care of ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually, what does that mean? Because I knew enough at the time that conventional medicines and allopathic medicine wasn't working. It was a measurable failure, and it has been for, what, 60 years now. We can look at that simply based upon evidence. We are now growing diseases much, much faster than we're growing people. We have seen disease processes like heart disease, type 2 diabetes and autoimmune conditions, as you were speaking of earlier, that have absolutely skyrocketed. So, when I look at the system, and I looked at the system then, I realized that doesn't work, and I wasn't going to continue to practice insanity. As Einstein said, to continue to go on the same pathway, do the same thing, expect a different result.

So, I went on a mission to find out what I could learn about the human body and its interaction with the environment we live in and other people and nutrition and medicine that's put inside food. I really wanted to understand why. Why? That “why” question was the thing that drove me, and it still does. And so, that kind of began the journey, and now, all these years later, we're still learning, we're asking why. But the most important thing to understand is we're seeing literally thousands of people around the world get well, and I can't be more grateful than that. I'm thankful to God that He gives us the wisdom, the knowledge, and the ability to do that. I'm so happy for people to get well. That's what drives us every day.

[00:14:17] Ashley James: What were your colleagues dying of when you were in the police force, and you started to notice that they were dropping like flies?

[00:14:24] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, this is an interesting statistic that's been around for probably five decades that a few people are aware. This is an FBI study: the average male police officer, it's 20 years of service, and this is back in I believe the '70s that was done, the average age of death was 66 years of age. Which is substantially lower than the expected age, right?

[00:14:48] Ashley James: Oh, my gosh.

[00:14:50] Dr. Mark Sherwood: So, in my own city, and this brings me back to the early 2000s, I did a study of the officers that had died, and I did the same analyses that the FBI did, just a smaller group. And I found that the average life expectancy for a 20-year retired male officer was 65. So, I thought to myself, something is wrong with this, but basically, because of shift work, you get a lot of cortisol, you get a lot of blood pressure issues, weight issues, metabolic disorders, blood sugar issues, depression, sleep issues. They were on all these medications, and eventually, they ended up dying of things like cancers or heart disease, so that was predominantly the two causes.

[00:15:36] Ashley James: Which are the two major causes of death in the United States.

[00:15:38] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right. So that led me, as you've picked up there, I looked at the major two causes of death in the US. I found that same thing, and I said, “Okay, well, this must be hitting everybody,” because I used to think that only police officers and the military had PTSD. Right? Then I realized, wait a minute, it's everybody that's had trauma and drama in their lives. All that put together in a big mesh bucket, if you will, was one of the things that I said, “You know what, I can do something about this.” I'm going to believe that if people knew the information, that they know how to do this, they know how to reverse, they're going to do it.

So, with this information quest, I learned as much as I could to communicate then in an effective manner this concept of hope. Now, we've kind of coined the phrase, if you will, my wife Michele and I, who I get to work with every day, we are hope dealers. A hope dealer. We give that away every day, and I pray that the listeners will, during the course of time, gather and grab on to that hope.

[00:16:50] Ashley James: So, MDs are “drug dealers”. [laughs]

[00:16:53] Dr. Mark Sherwood: They are. They really are.

[00:16:54] Ashley James: And Michele and Mark Sherwood are hope dealers.

[00:16:58] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right. And it's funny, my wife, and this is interesting; she came from the conventional system because she's an osteopath as well. So, interestingly enough, she had a drug rep actually call her a “drug whore”. That was the word. We still look back at that in shock and awe and horror, but also, we looked at it like, you know what, that's exactly what that is. And I want everybody to kind of get this. When you go to that conventional doctor, they are looking for what's wrong. “What's wrong?” There's something wrong with that question. When people come in here, they want to know what's wrong. I say, “Wait a minute. Let's turn this around. Let's first look at all the things that are right about you.” So, we don't let them go down that pathway; so, therefore, our diagnostics are not looking for diseases. They are going upstream to look for the root causes of symptoms that are named diseases or disease categories.

[00:18:07] Ashley James: Right. Well, MDs break the body down; allopathic medicine is breaking the body down into its parts and then treating it with a drug. So they're not seeing the body as a whole or finding the root cause. The problem is that philosophically, the lens that they look through is so different from a naturopathic standpoint. Right? The lens that they look through governs their choices — what tests they're going to run and how they're going to interpret those tests. If you took the same tests to an MD that you took to an ND, a naturopathic physician or a functional medicine practitioner, a holistic practitioner, the MD will say, “Oh, your vitamin D is at 35. Okay, we're good with that,” whereas “As long as it's below 30, I'm fine,” that's what the MD says. Or if it was above 60, they go, “Oh, you're toxic. You have to stop taking your vitamin D.” They don't have any training around nutrition. They don't have that training on how to prevent disease and how to reverse disease. Their training lies in pharmacology. They're wonderful diagnosticians; they're fantastic at diagnosing. And treating symptoms or making sure the body shifts into like with drugs, it pushes the body in one direction. Right? But they are not trained in reversing disease and supporting the body's ability to heal itself.

[00:19:45] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That is a very good statement. I agree with all of that. Additionally, we need to understand that all drugs, for the most part, have these are not side effects. These are actual effects. But they will pull out various vitamins and minerals and nutrients, and therefore, when you look at that, you say, okay, well, for example, let's use one drug – the drug metformin. It's always given to people for blood sugar issues to create more insulin sensitivity, in other words. So, somebody's hemoglobin A1c is running at 6 or 7 or whatever or 6.1, slightly over the “normal range,” and so they're going to go on metformin. Well, when you go on metformin, it may help with blood sugar, but it also pulls out vitamin B12 and also folate.

Now, vitamin B12 and folate are critical factors in the methylation cycle. So, if you pull those out of the methylation cycle, again, metformin is looked at as this anti-aging product but let's think about this from a holistic standpoint. If we pull out vitamin B12 and folate from the methylation cycle, we render the methylation cycle ineffective in creating methyl groups. Methyl groups are in charge of, in a nutshell, repairing DNA, maybe helping create neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, and also driving down the transsulfuration cycle, which is going to be creating glutathione. We would be in effect inhibiting glutathione production and neurotransmitter production that could be leading to toxicity issues, oxidative stress issues, or even depression issues.

[00:21:33] Ashley James: Cancer.

[00:21:34] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Cancer. That's right. Something has got to change in the paradigm over the course of time, or we're doomed to be stuck in that system. And that system is not going to create wellness because it's like a male going to a suit store. I'm going to buy a suit, I'm going to go over here, and the first thing we're going to do is try on a pair of pants. Well, then you're going to go over here from the pants department, they go to the jacket department, but the jacket department person is going to say, “I don't care what the pants department said. That's their department.” They're going to get a mismatch, right? And you get the idea it's going to go from the shirt to the tie to the shoes, and you're going to have just a mishmash of stuff that looks terrible.

That's what the body looks like when it goes through that system. It looks terrible. I could go on and on with examples such as that.

[00:22:24] Ashley James: It reminds me of a story I just heard about. I think it's one of my listeners who shared with me that her mom has kidney problems and heart problems. The doctor said, “You have to eat less meat,” and the kidney doctor said, “You have to eat more meat.”

So it's like okay, one diet is going to cause her kidneys to fail, but her heart will be better, and the other diet is going to cause her kidneys to be healthy but her heart, you know, so anyway, it's just back and forth. And so the doctors, she said, “Wait a second, you guys are giving me the opposite diets.”

Now, medical doctors are not trained in nutrition. They get something like 20 hours of nutrition unless they, after graduating medical school, go on to take further courses and actually dive into the studies, which we'd hope that doctors would continue to look at the latest science and studies around diet because it makes sense that everything we put in our mouth is either hurting us or healing us. So, there's the dilemma. Right? There is a lot of confusion around diet.

Now you mentioned heart disease and cancer being the two top killers of police officers after they retire but also, that's what the two major causes of disease are in the United States or the causes of death are. I recently had Dr. Richard Fleming on the show, episode 463. He's a research cardiologist. He's not a holistic doctor at all. He's 100 percent all about the drugs. What I love about his work is he dives into the research. For the last 30 years, he's been looking at the root cause of cardiovascular disease, and he also did studies on cancer and heart disease and found that really the root cause was inflammation. Years, years, years before cancer will appear on a scan, you can see the inflammation that's there beforehand, same with heart disease.

So, really what we're doing is we're looking to decrease, to mitigate all the things in our life that cause the inflammation. My question, because we could definitely talk about foods that harm and foods that help, we could definitely talk about herbs and supplements, but you mentioned the emotional aspect, and my question is, like sleep, the police who are on altered schedules, I'm sure there are lots of listeners who have to do the second or third shift so their sleep is disrupted or maybe they go to bed at 1 in the morning. Does sleep dysregulation and also emotional trauma, do those play a significant role in increasing inflammation in the body?

[00:25:16] Dr. Mark Sherwood: They do. Let me explain to people in a way they'll understand this concept. So, let's look at both of those. When you have trauma or drama or you perceive stress, now stress doesn't have to be real to create this response. You can have this perceived stress. Because you can think about something, it creates the same response as if you're going through it, so we all understand that. So, let's key into the hormone called cortisol, which comes in second after the short-acting adrenalin goes and does its things, and then cortisol is produced. So, cortisol, known as the stress hormone, is produced.

When we have these stressful occurrences, that's originating from the sympathetic nervous system arousal side as opposed to the parasympathetic nervous system arousal side, which is relaxation. So, this yin and yang, if you will, this rest-stress should be balanced, but when we're living perpetually in a cortisol-driven mode which can come through stress and emotional lack of resilience or non-resilience, we combine this with the lack of sleep. Now, lack of sleep, let's think about this whether you're shift work or just not sleeping, we have this opposite effect of melatonin and cortisol. So if you're not sleeping, melatonin should be up but it's not. Cortisol is up. So, cortisol is elevated when we don't sleep as well.

In both cases, cortisol being a glucocorticoid (kind of sounds like glucose), it will elevate glucose because the body can't digest food when you're under stress like that. Our genes have changed 2 percent. That's it, Ashley, in 10,000 years. Two percent. So, when the body is perceiving stress or going through stress and synthesizing cortisol from the adrenals, the body's going to interpret that as if it's being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, trying to eat. So, there are several things that happen in that. We see blood pressure going up, of course, muscle tension going up, perspiration going up, tightness going up, and we see digestion going down. This is a big deal right here because when we see that glucocorticoid coming up, it's going to create some sort of blood sugar because it has to drive the body because you can't get it from food digestion. You don't have time to stop and eat while a saber-toothed tiger is chasing you.

So, what happens is glucocorticoid comes up, blood sugar, the pancreas secretes the insulin to match it, and insulin becomes perpetually elevating, creating, fat-storing all the time. This constant stress creates a lot of fat, belly fat called cortisol belly. Too much fat tissue on the frame is a home for toxins. Too much fat tissue also creates this endocrine disruption creating more inflammation. And the beat goes on.

When you look at this whole metabolic process, this whole obesity crisis that we're having, you can drive at least in part back to this emotional lack of resilience and even lack of sufficient sleep, and of course, that leads us into this idea of comfort food eating which everybody can relate to that, eating the classic standard American diet which perpetuates the same thing. It kind of is a snowball, if you get my drift.

[00:28:46] Ashley James: I remember that snowball so well. I remember I was working towards my black belt, and I was going to the dojo four days a week, sometimes five days a week. Sometimes I'd do it on the weekends also. We do clinics, like all-day Saturday kind of thing. I just remember I was working like crazy. So, I was raised in a household to eat the way a naturopath told us to eat. I was super healthy until I rebelled as a teenager.

But while I was studying and I was 19, I was studying karate, I started eating like all the black belts because I wanted to mimic them, I wanted to model them. We'd all go to Subway. And this was my first time eating wheat and cheese before I had seen a naturopath when I was five years old. Also, I'm eating white bread or I think they did whole bread, whole wheat, but whatever the difference is isn't really that great. It's processed bread, cheese, processed meat, and maybe some lettuce and some tomatoes. I remember, for the first time in my life, having heartburn. But I was just planning on eating exactly like how my Sensei and Shihan and all the black belts and brown belts were eating because I just wanted to model them and be excellent.

And I just started to pack on the pounds. I gained about 50 pounds a year very quickly, and I was exercising like mad, and I thought, what is going on here? My mom passed away of cancer two years later, so I didn't really sit down to think this through like my diet had caused this. I was just in go, go, go mode. But it got worse and worse. I developed chronic adrenal fatigue, type 2 diabetes, and chronic monthly infections for which I was on antibiotics for. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome and infertility. I was told after a battery of tests by an endocrinologist that I'd never have children.

I then spent years just eating takeout and whatever, totally forgetting that I had all this wonderful health because in my early years, I ate just like our naturopath told us to. Until 2008 when I watched with my husband, it was one of the first streaming movies on Netflix in 2008, they just started streaming and watched Forks Over Knives and all those health ones. What stuck for me was: shop the perimeter of the grocery store and eat organic. In our first month of doing that, my chronic infections went away. And I still was miserable, I still felt horrible in my body, but at least I was off of antibiotics. So, I just kept searching and searching and searching, and that's when I found naturopaths that became my mentors; and switching my diet, taking the right supplements, changing my mindset, all of that. I eradicated all those diseases and conceived naturally.

For me, that's why I started the show. I started the show because everyone who's suffering doesn't need to be suffering. Seventy percent of the US adult population is on at least one prescription medication. They've been told they have to be on it, but the thing is, most prescriptions, we don't have to be on it. We can get so healthy, that we don't need it. That's why I love the work that you do because you want to show people that they can get so healthy and absolutely it's possible to get so health that they no longer need drugs.

Now, you brought up metformin. And I want to point out that one of my friends who often comes to me for help, she was in and out of the hospital. She lived in a hospital more. This was about two years ago. She spent more time in a hospital than she did out for acute pancreatitis. She lost 80 pounds, she was on a liquid diet, and she was in such bad shape from pancreatitis. I didn't think she was on any meds; I didn't know. Then I said, “Hey, just tell me. What are you taking? Are you taking anything? Let's figure this out. Why do you have pancreatitis?” That's when she told me she was on metformin. I'm like, “Why are you on metformin?” She doesn't have diabetes. What's going on here? And her doctor did that thing, “Oh, it's good for longevity. It'll prevent it later on.” Oh, my gosh.

This is what I say to all my clients: go to the actual drug's website. Go to the website that manufactures that drug and go to the full list of side effects. Not the little WebMD like here's the common ones. Go to the one that shows you the entire list of side effects. Again, they're not side effects; they're effects that you may or may not get. Then, read through them. And sure enough, acute pancreatitis was one of the causes.

But here's what surprised me. Do you know that a side effect of metformin can be hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia? The very reason why they gave it to you, it actually can cause those problems, which blows my mind. And it changes all those pathways in the body, it depletes us of all the nutrition, making us more sick so then we need to be on more drugs. So, I just have a very big distrust.

Now, drugs have their place when they can save my life, and I want people to always use the best tool in the toolbox. I'm not crazy. If there's a tool that's going to save my life, I'm going to use it. The problem is, MDs are only taught to use hammers so everything looks like a nail.

[00:34:56] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right.

[00:34:57] Ashley James: We have to make sure that we hire a whole team of professionals to support us, so that's why I love the work you do. I would hire you, I would hire a chiropractor, and I would hire an acupuncturist. I'd hire a whole team. And then all of them would inform me on what choices I should make for my body instead of just going to an MD. Going to an MD to tell me what to eat is like asking my plumber to the wiring in my house.

[00:35:30] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's awesome. I love that.

[00:35:32] Ashley James: You could keep that one. So, your wife is an osteopath. I'd love to hear a bit about her journey through seeing holistic medicine through the lens that you see it through. When I went to an osteopath for the first time, I think maybe an ovarian cyst was popping or something, I don't know. But I had excruciating pain and I was worried something was wrong with me, like maybe I was having ectopic pregnancy or something. I went to an osteopath, and he stood there, holding his prescription pad, ready to prescribe me a pain med.

Now, I'm from Canada. I live in the States now, but I'm from Canada. In Canada, they don't give out pain meds like candy. I realized they didn't when I was growing up. So, he was like, “Okay, so we're going to give you a pain med.” I'm like, “I'm not here for a pain med. I'm in pain, but pain tells me that there's something wrong. I don't want to just numb it.” I was really surprised. I thought going to an osteopath would have been more holistic. But he was just ready to write me a prescription and make me comfortable.

Your wife is an osteopath. What happened that had her see the holistic medicine versus allopathic medicine in terms of how she can help her patients?

[00:36:51] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Her story is quite unique. She was homeless, believe it or not, at one time, and working as a massage therapist trying to get by. Her story, by the way, is depicted in a just-released movie, believe it or not, called The Prayer List. So, I encourage people to go there. I didn't think about that before we went live, but that's a cool movie. It's called The Prayer List. A wonderful story.

During that time, she had a massage client say, “You got more to your life. Come on. Not that massage is bad,” but she paid for her first year of school. My wife had this healing in her mind in the background and thought, “I'm going to go back and be a doctor and really heal people.” So, she graduates with honors, it turns out she's the valedictorian in her class. Just a wonderful comeback story. She was in martial arts too, by the way. But she got into the system. This was back in the early 2000s. She had been in the system for a couple of years. And she began to show her patients how to cook, how to eat and all that stuff, and then she was chastised by her fellow clinicians and even her bosses about how that's not how we do it here. She still persisted not because she was rebelling at them, but she just knew it was right.

What turns out after being in the system for about three years, she was fired. She was let go because she wasn't contributing adequately to the payer mix. People didn't need to see her as much because she had that kind of a healing mindset going in, and so they fired her. She couldn't find a job anywhere for like six months. It really put her in a tailspin and then, hence, the birth of the Functional Medical Institute. So, she went into that kind of backwards.

And it's been interesting because some of her colleagues that she went to school with come to see us as patients.

[00:38:55] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

[00:38:57] Dr. Mark Sherwood: The irony of it all.

[00:39:04] Ashley James: How did you two meet? She had her own path leading to holistic medicine, as did you. How did the two of you come together to work together?

[00:39:14] Dr. Mark Sherwood: When she started, she got into medicine basically because of those reasons I stated. But she had really bad experiences with men, quite frankly, like a lot of women have. She was abused and treated badly. The whole story is in the movie. And basically, swore off men because men hadn't treated her well at all.

With that said, I had come through a very horrific divorce where I became the sole custodian for my two-, four- and six-year-old child, respectively. Basically, I swore off women, and I'm not going back to that anymore. So, about 10 years go by where I'm just kind of like doing my thing and she's doing her thing. Then one day, we met, and it was the very first meeting we met, and I saw something in her. Actually, it was just unique and there was a draw there. There were people around, and I said to her, “Dr. Neil,” that's her maiden name, “Dr. Neil, I appreciate the conversation with you. Definitely enjoyed it,” and I stuck out my hand to shake her hand because chivalry is not dead in my world.

And so, when I shook her hand, and it truly happened, I couldn't let go of her hand. It was the oddest thing in the world. Couldn't let go of her hand, and she couldn't let go of mine. It was this really awkward few moments there, and it was so awkward that other people were looking at us, and we were looking at each other, and we're like, I don't know what's going on but for some reason, my hand is glued to your hand. So, I just heard this voice inside me say, “Mark, would you please have some courage for once in your life, dude? Seriously? Ask her out.”

So, I did. I asked her if she would go to dinner with me and she said yes, and so we exchanged numbers, and we really, since that first dinner, have not been apart since. It was truly love at first sight. Since then, it was like that equally yoked, that common theme, that healer mentality, that healer gift that we all have. It just multiplied, and we just feed off of each other. We encourage one another and she's my best friend. And I call her my queen. We have this interaction. We work together in the clinic, and people love that. I will show public display of affection. I will give her a hug and a kiss right in the middle of the work day multiple times. It is interesting because we can't imagine not working together. It's been kind of cool because people come here, and they come here because we're a couple. Right? It's inspiring to them because today, obviously, there's a lot of horrible relationships that people are in and decisions they made that have affected their lives, much like the few moments ago we were talking about the stress, trauma and drama. Well, many times that comes from a relationship, doesn't it?

We give them a sense of hope in that area, too. And every time I'm speaking, literally whether it'd be in front of 5000 people live or a podcast that's audio-only to millions of people around the world, I'm always going to one, thank God for the opportunity to be here, and number two, honor my wife because she is my backbone. I say she's not my spare rib; she's my prime rib. So, that's kind of how we've met. The long story short.

[00:43:02] Ashley James: I love it. That's beautiful. It makes a difference in the work that you do. You both bring your backgrounds to the medicine that you practice. So, let's dive in now that we have an understanding of the philosophy, the lens in which you see our body, our human body, that our spiritual or emotional health and our lifestyle, like when we go to bed really does play a role in our health along with what we eat. Let's talk about how we can eliminate the usage of unnecessary medication and how we can eradicate all self-imposed choice-driven diseases.

[00:43:50] Dr. Mark Sherwood: As you mentioned earlier, the main issue that we see within heart disease and really all other disease conditions is this thing called inflammation, and it's chronic systemic inflammation.

If people can grasp just one concept I'm going to share right now, it will absolutely set you free. Because the immune system is unique, the immune system is one that's like surveillance. It's like the army, navy, air force, marine, coast guards, and space force all combined, magnified. So, it has internal surveillance and external surveillance. It's always looking for something that might be an intruder. We all understand the inducement of the immune system being from the idea of parasites, bacteria, and certainly, in today's world, virus. We understand that. The immune system will respond. And the immune system when it responds like that, it will send out signals or another word for that is cytokines. And some of the cytokines are inflammatory cytokines. So, that's how we get this idea of inflammation. We also know that when we have an injury or something like that, like a cut or a bruise or a broken bone, we get inflammation.

But the greatest inducer of the immune system that creates the most inflammation is the standard American diet because it's got chemicals, it's got genetic modification and all kinds of pollutants in it that the body looks at as foreign. So, just the very intake of a burger and fries is something that the body looks at as like “holy crap, I haven't seen that before. What is that?” That's sending a shockwave to the system, and it's not food. It's an enemy invader. So therefore, we have this chronic bombardment of this inflammatory-driving system that contributes to all these diseases we see.

In our clinic, when we get people off of that, we bring back just the concept of real food. If God packs it like this, it's probably how you eat it. And we don't give people dietary restrictions. We don't even tell them to count calories. We just say if it's on this list of anti-inflammatory foods that we generally believe, then eat it as much as you want. If it's on this list of inflammatory foods, don't eat it, any of it. And guess what? One hundred percent of the people get better. They're like, “Well, that was easy.” Yeah, it's not that hard. So, that's kind of our philosophy in practice, and that's the very first place we go.

[00:46:24] Ashley James: Can you give us homework to help decrease inflammation? Let's dive into the actionable steps we can take.

[00:46:33] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Let's first of all look at a list, and I hope everybody gets their pen and paper out or your phone and just begin to take this down. What are some known inflammatory foods? Well, some of these are going to be really obvious, and some of them not so obvious, and I'll explain why.

The obvious ones are going to be like processed foods, fried foods, artificial sweeteners, sugars, and MSG. We know those things are going to be inflammatory. We would include sodas in there. But let's look at corn, soy, and grains.

[00:47:11] Ashley James: What about non-GMO organic corn or soy grown in our own backyard? Is that going to also be inflammatory no matter what? Or like a store-bought, not organic, non-GMO? Is there a difference? Or should we avoid soy and corn no matter what?

[00:47:35] Dr. Mark Sherwood: There is a difference. And in your case with a non-GMO soy and a non-GMO organic corn, those will be just fine and beneficial because they're in their natural state. What makes corn, soy, and grain so damaging is really multiple things inclusive of the following: the genetic modification is one of them, specifically in the wheat crop, the grains. They've been genetically modified to avoid the effects of the herbicide Roundup. Roundup is sprayed on the soy, the corn, and the grains. And those are subsidized by the US government. So, you got to think about this from that standpoint. If the government tells you to do something in regard to your health, you probably need to do the opposite.

So, with the genetic modification, we have problem number one that's glaring. When these grains specifically come into our body, even though they're going to be genetically modified at a small percentage, the genes again haven't changed but 2% in 10,000 years, so it's still looking at this newfound genetically-modified seed grain crop different. So, it looks at as a foreigner, so therefore we get that immune system inducement, and that's why so many people have so much problem with grains creating this idea of leaky gut or hyperpermeability of the gut, leading to autoimmunity.

We also see when those genetically modified grains are digested, they become exorphins, which turn around and bind to the opioid receptors in our brain, creating a chemical addiction. This is why people have a hard time giving up the bread and the grains because we're talking about real, live, genuine addiction. That's problem number one.

[00:49:30] Ashley James: Same with dairy.

[00:49:32] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right. Dairy.

[00:49:33] Ashley James: There's sugars in dairy that also trigger that same opioid response, the dopamine. Mammal milk is meant for the baby. And the baby, we got to trick the brain into wanting to keep eating, so it grows, so a baby's brain is hooked on its mother's breast milk for a very good reason. God is smart.

[00:50:01] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. It creates comfort and peace, and that's when a baby can be crying until the baby latches on to that nipple and it's like, “Oh!” That makes them happy. It's not just the milk. It's the chemistry within the process.

That's why it's interesting. They were saying that milk does the body good. No, it doesn't. Don't drink it. Period. You got a double whammy there with milk because the cows in the confined animal feeding operations are fed these corn, soy, and wheat products to get fat fast, the antibiotics and the hormones, so we're selling them by weight, not by health. Therefore, when they put out that milk, I mean, that's fat, so this stuff is carried in the fat, and toxins are stored in the fat, so you have this milieu of just a mess that's subsidized. Again, the government subsidizes dairy. But all that is problem sort of number one.

Problem number two is you got Roundup. I mean, in itself, think about the concept of glyphosate and atrazine, a known carcinogen, known estrogenic compound. Why are people getting so fat so fast? Why are we seeing the feminization of our world in front of us? It's because of these compounds, the chemicals binding to the estrogen receptors creating the same mimicking effect of estrogen. So, we see this troubling trend across our country in the United States specifically, but it's lending itself across the world as well. So, these things are as bad as I just described, as inflammatory as I just described, and even much, much more.

When we talk about this with other people, we're just saying stay away from it. I know what you heard. You can take this argument over here to an allopathic side and the majority of them are going to say, “Oh, that's nonsense.” But it is true. Everything I just said is true, and folks, you can look it up out there, and there's all kinds of studies on that that you can see and the way it works. It's out there. It's not hidden from you. Just search it out and see that it's actually accurate.

[00:52:15] Ashley James: I just read a recent study. Really fascinating. I'm not an advocate for Frankenfoods, for highly processed foods. But this one study took two groups of people, and one group of people, they just said keep eating meat at every meal like just keep eating what you normally eat, get your burgers and your fries and whatever you do. Then the other group, they said keep eating what you eat, keep eating the standard American diet, but you're going to replace five meals a week. And five meals a week is nothing, right? And five meals a week with some non-meat Frankenfood like beyond burger or whatever impossible burger.

Then, they took their stool samples for a month. I don't know, maybe it was six weeks. I think it was six weeks, but it was a short study. So yeah, it was six weeks. They looked at the microbiome and what they found is that eating the Frankenfoods, because there's fiber, even though they're not healthy at all, they have canola oil and all kinds of GMOs and stuff, they're not healthy foods. But what's interesting is that by switching out some meat with something that had fiber, now these people weren't eating the way you and I eat. They weren't eating fresh fruits and vegetables. They weren't getting proper fiber from whole food sources, to begin with. But just adding in something that wasn't meat and instead had fiber in it increased the butyrate that was made, which helps to digest and absorb. It also has other functions in terms of lowering heart disease.

So, I thought that was incredible like just kind of blew my mind. I thought, well, okay, we're not taking blood because I want to see like maybe eating these Frankenmeats is going to increase inflammation because now they're getting more canola oil. But they were told to just keep eating the standard American diet, just replace some meat with something that has fiber in it, the Frankenmeats.

So, I thought that was really interesting. I'm a big advocate of telling everyone to get fiber up to 40-50 grams a day from whole food sources for a variety of reasons. Yeah, the first few weeks maybe you're going to fart more. Your microbiome is going to catch up and get used to it. But oh my gosh, the difference it makes. The difference. It's such a huge, huge difference. Then just to see that that study shows that even just replacing meat with something that has fiber in it for a few meals a week was noticeable in the microbiome within six weeks.

It kind of gets exciting that you can make a health change, something small like a baby step. Some people choose to eat vegetarian dinners, or they choose to eat more plants until 6:00 PM, and then their dinner has meat in it or something. So, I personally have found, because I have done over 30 diets to try to find what works for my body, and I believe, I've come to the conclusion that diet is a moving target because your body's needs change as we age under different circumstances and stress levels. So, you got to listen to your body, right? And also, my body really resonates with the most whole food plant-based possible. The more whole food and plant-based, the less processed food I eat, the more health my body gains. But I don't believe in diet dogma, and I don't tell everyone to eat the same way.

But I do want you to share what you've seen promotes the most health and makes the biggest difference. If everyone followed what you said, like avoid these foods and instead eat these foods for the next six weeks, you're going to see a big shift. So, can you give us sort of what is the biggest bang for our buck in terms of changing? So you've already said cut out, obviously GMO foods, obviously non-organic GMO foods, all the processed foods, the fried foods, the processed meats, the sugar, and the corn and soy. What else has a really big impact in terms of cutting out of the diet?

[00:56:55] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, I think you nailed them a moment ago. You bring in more plants with more fiber. It's interestingly enough, the idea of gut health, digestion, and assimilation is very key, and the short-chain fatty acid butyrate that is increased with good fiber intake is going to help heal the leaky gut, and it works to bring about more repair to the tight junctions that get spread apart with the increase of that protein zonulin.

All that said, people can expect, and we tracked that for a long time and we've got thousands of people in our database, this is what we've seen in only 30 days, and we measure what's called body fat percentage. We're trying to get ladies down somewhere in the low 20's more or less percent body fat. Men, I want them below 15, or 15 or somewhere less than that. We see in one month, the percent body fat dropped 2 to 4 percent with ladies. We've seen this consistently. The percent body fat went down 3 to 5 percent in one month with men. We've watched this occur over and over and over again.

Really, it's about our body composition adjustment. We know people have a hard time for 4-5 days if they have heavy addiction to this sugar-grain thing. But once they get past that 4-5 days, their energy level goes up higher, their sleep gets more effective and functional, the clothes fit differently, and the confidence goes through the roof. And that correlates well with the reduction of stress because we now have confidence which is a precursor for resilience, which is required to deal with stress.

[00:58:53] Ashley James: Now, to be clear, you are not promoting a vegan diet. I looked on your website. I saw that one of your smoothies had beef protein powder in it. So, what way of eating are you promoting that gets these great results?

[00:59:14] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah, we are not promoting a vegan diet. As a matter of fact, vegan diets typically lead to deficiencies in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin B12, many times even iron as well. To that end, we promote more of the quasi-Mediterranean diet, I would say without breads and grains. If you keep that parameter there, a lot of plants, a lot of fruits and vegetables of course. I want to stay away from the white potato more or less, the majority of the time, especially if you have had blood sugar issues and you have metabolic issues. And the white potato is the most polluted vegetable consumed in the United States today. We consume more of that.

Then, you think about nuts and seeds. We want to get nuts and seeds that are not cut or raw, not rolled and roasted in a lot of hot oils. That's not healthy.

With proteins, I want to pick organic grass-fed, wild-caught, and free-range. Those kinds of things like that. Grass-fed is a cool double-term there to think about. But as long as you do that, you're going to have good results. Even further, if you say, “Well, I'm going to have a hard time doing that just off the bat, I'm going to have a hard time flipping that light switch on,” okay, well, do one meal a day that's right. One meal a day under these guidelines and you will feel better, much like you cited in the study that just adds a little bit of fiber to a meat diet. One meal a day can change the microbiome. And we know that mood can change because the neurotransmitter serotonin is produced primarily in the gut, so people feel better, they're more calm, and they're more confident.

You say it like this. Small victories and small successes lead to more successes and more victories. If we just take these steps one at a time and just commit to doing one baby step every day to benefit us physically, emotionally, spiritually, just one thing, it's going to lead to two things. It's going to lead to a lifetime of those things that are perpetual and habitual, and we will have a higher quality of life with the concept of wellness not being just a pipedream but being realized.

[01:01:43] Ashley James: For someone who doesn't want to eat meat, can they eat beans, legumes, and then supplement? Like you said, they might end up with a deficiency. And there are meat eaters that have B12 deficiency, too. So, saying that a vegan diet leads to that, I know plenty of meat eaters that are incredibly deficient in their B12 but also in their intrinsic factor, which leads to B12 and iron deficiency. It all starts with the gut, right? We have to heal the gut. They could supplement with omega 3 to fill in the gap there. I do though say if you're going to eat any bean or lentil to cook it in the Instant Pot because under pressure, it breaks down the lectins. And then you don't fart as much. So, it's easier to cook it in the Instant Pot and just walk away from it. So, there's that.

Do you have any superfoods that are just like if you add this, people are going to get sort of for brownie points, some extra points there? Do you have any super, super, superfoods? Let's say someone is walking around totally feeling inflamed. I've done it. Like once in a blue moon, I'm going to go out, and I think maybe five times in the last 11 years I've been gluten-free, I've had a slice of cake at a party or something and a glass of wine. I drink once a year. I go somewhere, a birthday somewhere, and that happens. Then the next day, I'm walking around feeling a little poopy, a little inflamed. And I own it. I'm like, okay, I'm going to get back on my eating healthy. I'll go to something like quercetin, turmeric, resveratrol, a big green smoothie, something that I know is going to kick that inflammation in the butt. What do you have that kicks inflammation in the butt?

[01:03:45] Dr. Mark Sherwood: I really like the broccoli. If you can take in broccoli. And this is why – because broccoli, and even broccoli sprouts if you can take in broccoli sprouts, that would be number one of those two because a sprout has 100 times more density of nutrients than a full-grown plant. What happens is when that broccoli sprout comes — and this is why I like it because it does so many things — there are two compartments in the broccoli. One has something called glucoraphanin. The other has an enzyme called myrosinase. When you choose this or digest this, these two compartments bust apart, combine together, and we get this wonderful compound called sulforaphane that is yielded inside the body. Sulforaphane upregulates the nerve II pathway genetically, which will increase the antioxidant enzymes and your detox enzymes. You're talking about a triple whammy in the ability to conquer this chronic systemic inflammation caused by the toxicity that is driven by the standard American diet. So, think yielding sulforaphane, and to get that, broccoli sprouts or broccoli.

[01:05:03] Ashley James: I love it. Now, cooked broccoli has the same effect, or does it have to be raw?

[01:05:08] Dr. Mark Sherwood: The more you cook things, the more the degradation occurs with anything. Obviously, if you can find some sprouts. Like raw broccoli can give some people gas.

[01:05:22] Ashley James: Yeah, I just live with it. I know. I love broccoli. I just have to be careful. If I'm going to go and do a meeting with someone, I'm not eating broccoli before that meeting.

[01:05:35] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Oh yeah, you don't want to do that because you're going to have awful gas pains and you let it out, it's probably going to smell bad. That's not cool. But honestly, if you can find a way to grow some broccoli sprouts, those aren't bad at all, and you can put those things on salads. And I haven't seen them cause that gas nearly as much as a full-grown stalk. It's really interesting.

So yes, on the one hand, you want to cook less. But I get it. I'd rather somebody eat/cook broccoli than none/no broccoli.

[01:06:09] Ashley James: I have this health book and I got to find it somewhere. We just moved, so my books are unpacked yet. But it's from, I don't know, the '50s or something. It's this old health book and it's all about juicing for wellness, like way back before its time. It has a whole section on sprouting and how whenever you sprout, either you can sprout lentils, you can sprout beans like mung beans, not all beans, and then seeds. I've been really into sprouting seeds lately. I'll post a picture of last night's dinner. It was brown rice cake, that's my little guilty pleasure. The Ashley in her 20s would not think that that was some little cheap food. But my brown rice cakes with avocado and piles and piles of sprouts on top, it's really delicious. To me, avocado mixed with sprouts is so good. I get like a dopamine high from eating it. It's so delicious.

Sprouting is actually really easy. Go on YouTube, and look it up. Different types of seeds or beans or different types call for sort of different times, but I found it really, really easy. In the Learn True Health Facebook group I'll make sure I'll post how I do it, so listeners that want to try it can do it for themselves. It's so great because even in the winter you can have fresh food. I had a guy on the show recently, Tim James, who said 70 percent of the food he eats, he grows in his house because he sprouts like no one's business. He has a whole wall of sprouts and he mostly eats that. That's how he cured a lot of diseases he had and his friend cured his cancer with it. He's a big proponent of eating live food. But just having sprouts in your house, it's so easy. You don't need sunlight. You just need a dark cupboard. I put it in the oven. You just got to remember it's in the oven and not start the oven.

[01:08:22] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right.

[01:08:23] Ashley James: That was a kitchen fire a year and a half ago. My husband and I now understand to always check the oven before we turn it on.

One thing I wanted to bring up. You talked about MSG, and I think it's really important that we not gloss over that. Because just last night, my friends told me about this video, Dr. Katherine Reid. It was a TEDx Talk, “Unblind Your Mind.” It's a great video. I highly recommend everyone listen to it. She shows clips of her autistic daughter, who is in her own world. In the first video, in her own world and not making eye contact. Then they chose to go gluten-free and do a green smoothie every morning. They saw neurological changes. They also went casein-free, so all dairy. All dairy, all gluten. And do a green smoothie. So now we've upped the fiber, gotten a bit better gut health, and now she's able to make eye contact but she's having two-hour meltdowns where she's stuck in a yes-no loop.

I saw when my kid was younger, he did yes-no loops a little bit and we would give him chamomilla homeopathic and it would take him out of it. But I noticed that. Then, she was stuck in these loops. That's when she figured out. Dr. Reid figured out the problem was MSG and that the glutamate is so excessive in our processed food diet that then she went through and made her child's diet 100 percent processed food free in order to eliminate MSG. There are 40 different words for MSG. When you read the packaging, it can say soy protein, but that actually means MSG. There are all these different words for it, right? We might look at a package and think it's clean, but there's actually monosodium glutamate in it. The problem is glutamate is good for us, but the problem is too much, right? So, she eliminated that.

Then the last video, my jaw was on the floor, is of a healthy, happy child making eye contact, speaking clearly and calmly, and having a wonderful discussion about her kindergarten class. She was kicked out of her special needs class and put into a regular class. Her daughter is no longer on the spectrum. Her daughter was diagnosed on the spectrum, moderate autism, and now she has zero autism. And it was 100 percent done with diet.

[01:10:58] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Wow!

[01:11:00] Ashley James: And it was all about the doctor figuring out that eating wheat, barley and rye, and in my opinion, oats as well because oats contain gliadin which is similar enough to gluten. It's kind of a lie when they say gluten-free oats. I'm like, yes, but it has gliadin in it, so don't eat it. By avoiding those grains, we are reducing glutamate. By taking out processed food, we're reducing glutamate. And that affects the brain. It also affects the gut.

So, that is this sort of huge wake-up. I've never heard of this — this standpoint because I've been dairy and gluten-free for so long. But a lot of people see a benefit because they've reduced the free glutamate.

[01:11:48] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That is so right. You think about glutamate being a neuroexcitatory hormone. So we're talking about affecting brain health. You think about an inflamed brain where you think of excess glutamate. So, think brain inflammation. If you don't feel good in the brain, you're not going to make good decisions.

Again, as we've talked about at the top of our conversation, everything is connected. It's not segregated. It's connected. And because of that, just like you said correctly, we have to think about all these different effects it has all around our body. And they are significant, to say the least.

[01:12:28] Ashley James: Amazing. This has been so much fun having you on the show. I absolutely would love to have you back to dive in deeper. I feel like this has been an introduction to the work you do, and I'd really love to get specific, especially specific on how to lower high blood pressure. A lot of patients are like, “Okay, I get it. I don't want to be on meds, but my blood pressure is 160/110, and I'm taking medication. So yeah, what do I do?”

I'd love to have you on the show again. We can discuss how to lower high blood pressure. Think about the most commonly prescribed drugs that we can heal the body by doing these changes like doing these lifestyle and diet changes, to the point where the body is so healthy, it doesn't need the drugs anymore. I'd really love to have you back on the show and dive into the most common drugs that you get your patients off of because you get them so healthy, that they no longer are a candidate for them.

[01:13:33] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah, I would love to come back. Let's do that and talk about high blood pressure. We can talk about osteoporosis, that kind of stuff as well. That's huge. Certainly, we can talk about autoimmunity and reducing the ability to depend on those immunosuppressants. There's all kinds of things, etc. etc. that we can talk about.

[01:13:51] Ashley James: Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, so let's come up with a list of the most common drugs that you get people off of. And let's go down that list and talk about the protocols. Wonderful. All listeners can go to Sherwood.tv of course. It links to Dr. Mark Sherwood and everything that he does and his wonderful wife does, Michele. It's going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at Learntruehealth.com. When you go to Sherwood.tv, go to the free download e-book. Didn't you say it was like 27 pages or something? But it gives you some great protocols to start today. I love that your mission is to continue to spread this information. I also want to let listeners know you do have some great books. We didn't even get to talk about them today. We can definitely dive into that next time. I'd love to know maybe some tips from each of your books Quest for Wellness, Fork Your Diet, Surviving The Garden of Eatin‘. That's cute. I love it. Then, of course, watch the movie, the newly released movie, The Prayer List, which sounds fantastic.

Mark, can you give us some homework to do between now and the next time we have you on the show?

[01:15:02] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. I want people to make a list of what I'm going to give you right now, and I want you to do these couple of things. It's not going to be much, but again, let's celebrate small victories.

I want people to work on having at least a 15-minute walk every day. That's number one. Okay? Number two, I want people to work on 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night. That's very important. I want people to work on having a salad once a day. Just one salad once a day. That's beautiful. Number four, I would like to challenge people to come up with a two or three-sentence positive affirmation that they speak out loud over their life twice a day. For example, it can be “I am a loving being. I am worthy. I am successful.” There you go. There's three things right there. Say that out loud twice a day, every day.

Do those couple of things that I just named off. Do them between now and the next time we talk and watch your life change. Watch how those small little things lead to bigger changes. No matter where you are in your health journey whether you're just getting going on, whether you've just been into this, look, we all have improvement. So, you can take those things right there and you can improve them based on where you are. But I've given you a little bit of homework that you can do every day. It doesn't take much time. You're talking just a little bit of time and thought. We get 1,440 minutes a day. Why can't we spend a little bit of time on self-development so we can make the world a better place?

[01:16:52] Ashley James: Beautiful. We're starting with ourselves, and then we expand out to our friends, our family, our neighborhood or community, our county, our state or province, our country, and the world. We have to think of all of our choices in that ecological way because if our choice is harming ourselves, it's trickling down, and it's harming our children.

I always pick on McDonald's. They're such an easy target. Going to a fast food restaurant in the moment, it's easy because “I'm tired. I'm hungry. My kids are hungry. I'm just going to go through the drive-thru.” That easy choice, right? We have to choose our hearts. We have to just choose our heart. Maybe our heart is getting that salad and doing it. But once we do it, it's going to fill you with so much energy that then you're going to want to do it again and again. But choosing out your heart, the good choices are trickling down to those you love. And the bad choices are also trickling down to those you love.

We have to remember that, especially as women, because we like to put our kids first and put everyone first and then we're left just hungry and tired and just doing takeout. I've been there. Just trust me, I get it. And ultimately, harming ourselves harms those we love. You don't want to imagine a world where you're not here anymore and your children don't have you or your spouse doesn't have you or your family and friends don't have you because we kept putting ourselves last.

So, I love these little things. A 15-minute walk and 8 hours of sleep. Also, it matters when you go to bed. I just want to point out that if you go to bed at 1:00 in the morning versus 10:00 at night. So at 10:30 at night, we get a cortisol spike and that makes it hard to stay in a deep sleep all night long. It'll actually affect the depth of our sleep and when we wake up. Maybe you notice this with your children. If you let them stay up late, they'll actually wake up early in the morning. You're like, “Why didn't you sleep in?” But same with us. We'll have a lighter, restless sleep. You got to make sure you fall asleep by 10 so that you don't have that second wind, and you don't have that cortisol spike. Then, you have a deeper and most restful sleep. You wake up 7 to 8 hours later feeling way more rested. So yeah, I love that.

Then you want us to eat one salad a day filled with lots of wonderful vegetables and hopefully some broccoli sprouts. And then using that positive affirmation is beautiful.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Can't wait to have you back. This has been wonderful.

[01:19:33] Dr. Mark Sherwood: I can't wait to come back here. It's an honor to be here with you today. And I look forward to it, I truly do.

 

Get Connected with Dr. Mark Sherwood!

 

Website

Facebook

Instagram

YouTube

Twitter

 

Books by Dr. Mark Sherwood

 

The Quest For Wellness

Fork Your Diet

Surviving the Garden of Eatin’

Robyn's site: https://www.robynyoukilis.com

The infrared oven I recommend:
https://amzn.to/2XH6GGj

Join the Learn True Self live workshop coming up!
Release negative emotions and limiting decisions from your past.
http://learntrueself.com for more info.

Become a Health Coach like Ashley and Robyn! Get a free sample class here: https://learntruehealth.com/coach
Listeners of the Learn True Health podcast get $1500 off their IIN tuition!

 

Intuitive Eating

https://www.learntruehealth.com/intuitive-eating-robyn-youkilis

Many of you have heard the power of intuition. That power of intuition we all have can also apply in eating intuitively to heal our gut and improve our digestive health. To explain how we can develop our intuition towards making the right food choices, my guest, Author of Thin From Within and The Go with Your Gut Way to Lose Weight, Robyn Youkilis will dive into that and more in this episode.

Ideal Figure

Robyn Youkilis’ journey began when she was just 13 years old. It was a time when her body started to have a defined shape. Hence, she started getting conscious especially because magazines featured women who supposedly had the ideal form.

It ended up that Robyn Youkilis thought there was something wrong with her body and that she needed to fix her body. Because of this, she started looking into the diet culture.

“At the same time, my mother was always an incredible cook, whipping up wonderful dishes. So, I always had a deep love and appreciation for food. However, it also led to the torment,” recalls Robyn Youkilis.

It eventually confused Robyn Youkilis through her teenage years until her 20s. But when she started dating her then boyfriend who is now her husband, Robyn Youkilis learned how to buy her food at the Farmer’s Market.

Turning Points

Another turning point was when Robyn Youkilis went to the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. She enrolled in the school as she started getting into cooking more for herself and her boyfriend. It was here when Robyn Youkilis made the connection between how she ate and how it was making her feel.

But the real turning point was when Robyn Youkilis and her husband talked about starting a family. Little by little, she shed more of that obsession and more of that unhealthy view of self. Robyn Youkilis eventually brought in more nourishing food, cooking for herself and connecting to who she already was.

Create Your Space

Robyn Youkilis’ job as a health practitioner and an individual is to create a little space. She advises people to create some support and some lightness around showing up for yourself in that change.

“Create a space so you can have this consistent conversation with yourself. When you have these little turning points along the way, they can serve you instead of taking you down,” Robyn Youkilis said.

She adds, “Everyone deserves to feel amazing in their body. And your body wants that for you. No matter what you feed it, your body will digest it for you. We can’t have our focus on so many different things. You have to think about it and feel it as well.”

Listening To Your Intuition

First, Robyn Youkilis says we must understand that it’s going to be a winding path and it may take some time. She usually likes to teach this practice to clients where you put one hand on your lower abdominal wall and let that go.

“A lot of us spend a lot of our day sucking it in, especially women. And it’s really about giving yourself a moment to breathe into that space. At that point, ask yourself what would make you feel most supported,” said Robyn Youkilis. 

She adds, “You have the answer already. Often, we’ll hear a little helpful voice from our intuition.” 

Robyn Youkilis says journaling is also good because it means your thoughts have space and they feel valid. You may not do anything with those thoughts. But just having a place for that helps, rather than turning to food to experience comfort, space or a place.

“In learning to listen to your intuition, you would learn to figure out what feels more supportive in a given situation,” Robyn Youkilis said. “For example, having a grounding practice like taking a bath when you go home for the day can help you feel supported instead of turning to food.”

Understanding Your Cravings

According to Robyn Youkilis, a healthy craving feels like it’s something nice to have. And a craving that you might want to gather a little more information on is one that feels like you have to have it.

There might be a nutritional deficiency going on there, or it might be something around your day. Ultimately, Robyn Youkilis says it takes little moments from our day where we can start to have that conversation more deeply with ourselves.

Eating Using Intuition

Robyn Youkilis loves all kinds of food. But it doesn’t have a grip on her because she says her diet now is much more supportive of her gut and her body.

“Focus on the gut because that is the center of your body. Our digestive system is responsible for so many things on even more than just digesting food,” explains Robyn Youkilis.

Having A Healthy Gut

A healthy gut better absorbs the nutrients from the food you’re eating. Robyn Youkilis believes you get more out of what you’re consuming. You’re going to feel better from that food. A healthy gut also means a happier you because 90% of our serotonin is produced in your gut. And 80% of our immune tissue is in our gut.

“Aside from the mental conversation going on, there’s a lot at play. Something that may serve you this month may be different next month,” said Robyn Youkilis. “So, know that there’s never going to be the one thing that’s going to fix all the things. It’s always going to be a lot of parts of this conversation.”

To have a healthy digestive system, Robyn Youkilis also reveals that it is ideal for releasing waste at least once a day.  She recommends a huge glass of water first thing in the morning and gives your system a chance to flush itself out. For others, it may be a dehydration issue for our colon.

Importance Of Hydration

Juicing organic celery first thing in the morning is quite trendy. Robyn Youkilis says there are some medicinal benefits, but she believes that part of the reason why it’s working so well for so many people is that it’s hydrating their body on a cellular level.

Robyn Youkilis says adding chia seeds to water is also helpful. Chia seeds act as a lubricant and essentially allow your organs and the cells of your body to integrate the hydration into your body. A pinch of Himalayan sea salt or lemon water can also help with hydration.

“The ultimate goal is to connect to our intuition more so that we can digest not just our food, but we can digest our lives,” said Robyn Youkilis.

Importance Of Chewing

Robyn Youkilis stresses that another important thing is how you chew your food. Take time to eat your food well. It’s a miracle worker.

“The science behind that is because our stomach does not have teeth. It wasn’t designed to break down whole chunks of food the way we usually do it,” Robyn Youkilis explained. 

Robyn Youkilis also says some foods are harder to digest like nuts, dried fruit or some leafy greens. That’s why raw, dense, leafy greens are going to cause a little bit of bloating or stomach upset. Red meat is also hard to break down.

Meal Prep

Meal prep for Robyn Youkilis means making some basics ahead of time. A lot of people take this further and meal prep specific meals. But in Robyn Youkilis’ book, she teaches readers first to boil an egg and roast two trays of vegetables.

“Prep your greens and keep in the fridge, ready to go. Once you have done these basic items, I also talk about a power parfait in the book. It’s like an amped up yogurt bowl so that you feel full longer,” said Robyn Youkilis.

Robyn Youkilis does meal preps for the week, and when it’s time to put it together, she will use a basic template. The Rule of Five Plates is part of what she teaches in her book.

“I would have the power parfait in the morning, mix and match based on this little light template for lunch. Dinner will be some prepped things. Keep it simple and get real with your meal prep. It’s about having these staples ready in the fridge,” advises Robyn Youkilis.

For me, the Panasonic infrared oven significantly made meal prep easier. The oven heats things fast like two to three minutes. I use glass containers without the lid. It heats up way more than a microwave would, so you have to use a mitt.

Rule Of Five Plates

Robyn Youkilis has a meal prep class showing how she meal preps and walks you through it. She does the templates from the Rule of Five Plates mostly for lunches.

One template is greens. Raw or steamed is fine. Mix up the greens. The next template is healthy fats like avocados, olive oil, butter, coconut oil or some good healthy fat. Sliced almonds or goat cheese is also good.

The third template is protein. Wild salmon, grass-fed beef, organic chicken, lentils, trout, sardines, smoked mussels are sustainable options. Know what you have and know what your resources are.

Number four is fermented foods. That is where the gut health comes in, and it’s going to be the food that helps you digest the other foods better. Fermented foods can be raw fermented sauerkraut, fermented carrots, radishes or kimchi.

“I have some recipes in the book that’s easy to do. Fermented food is rich in live probiotic bacteria which will feed on the good bacteria in your gut and create a happy, healthy microbiome,” Robyn Youkilis said.

The last template is a cooked vegetable. This is where the meal prep comes back into play. It could be anything from cubed sweet potatoes, roasted zucchini or roasted carrots. Ultimately, you can do so many different things using the templates.

“For dinner, you can have a bean pasta with some tuna and kale. And then I would eat some of my fermented radishes on the side,” said Robyn Youkilis. “I’m always thinking more greens, healthy fats and fermented food. Also, know when you need new inspiration to shift things up.”

She adds, “I don’t want you to feel bad about what you’re doing or not doing. You got this. Life is always changing, but you can do it. You are designed to thrive, heal and to feel good.”

Bio

Robyn Youkilis is changing the way thousands of women and men around the world relate with food, and she’s redefining what it means to eat and be healthy. 

Robyn Youkilis is a Certified Wellness Expert, TV personality, and author. She’s frequently featured as the go-to expert on The Today Show, in People Magazine, + Redbook. And she is the founder of her health coaching company Your Healthiest You. 

Robyn Youkilis has been featured by The Cooking Channel, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Fitness, The Huffington Post, CBS News, and more. Known for her straightforward yet supportive coaching style, Robyn Youkilis helps clients break free of the craziness of dieting and connect to their truest and best selves-through practical action steps. 

Robyn Youkilis’ first book, Go with Your Gut: The Insider’s Guide to Banishing the Bloat with 75 Digestion-Friendly Recipes is now available in bookstores. 

Robyn Youkilis is changing the way thousands of women and men around the world relate with food and she’s redefining what it means to eat and be healthy. 

Robyn Youkilis is a Certified Wellness Expert, TV personality, and author. She’s frequently featured as the go-to expert on The Today Show, in People Magazine, + Redbook. And she is the founder of her health coaching company Your Healthiest You. 

Robyn Youkilis has been featured by The Cooking Channel, The Wall Street Journal, Men’s Fitness, The Huffington Post, CBS News, and more. Known for her straightforward yet supportive coaching style, Robyn Youkilis helps clients break free of the craziness of dieting and connect to their truest and best selves-through no-nonsense action steps. 

Robyn Youkilis’ first book, Go with Your Gut: The Insider’s Guide to Banishing the Bloat with 75 Digestion-Friendly Recipes is now available everywhere books are sold. 

Get Connected With Robyn Youkilis!

Official Website

The Chewing Challenge

Meal Prep Workshop

Books by Robyn Youkilis

Thin From Within Book

Go With Your Gut Book

Recommended Link:

Panasonic Infrared Oven

https://www.fitlandiafitness.com/story/
https://www.fitlandiafitness.com/strategic-vitality/

Reframing Negative Thoughts

http://learntruehealth.com/reframe-negative-thoughts

How To Reframe Negative Thoughts  

Life can get crazy and stressful. And sometimes, things can bring us into a downward spiral. For some, it may be emotional. But for others, it may be something physical like leaning on comfort food or dealing with weight issues. However, regardless of what situation we are in, my guest, Christa King, says we can weather through all that if we just know how to develop a positive attitude.   

Christa's Fitness Journey  

All success stories come from a sincere motivation to improve and be better. As for Christa King, her journey to a positive attitude revolved around weight issues.   

"Five years ago, I was 50 pounds overweight. My relationships were suffering. I held a Vice President position at work and dealt with a lot of office politics which gave me stress," shares Christa King.  

Unfortunately, Christa King did not learn the best ways to cope with stress. Relying on sugar, alcohol and refined carbs, she thought it was the best solution to handling stress. However, because of that unhealthy pattern, it led her to gain a lot of weight. Her body, mind, and soul were simply out of balance.   

Finally reaching an all-time high of 192 pounds, Christa King decided enough is enough. Signing up with experts to help her develop a positive attitude, Christa King spent five days with 11 different practitioners. She also reveals that for those who are dealing with weight issues, it is best to keep a food journal to keep track of what you are eating.  

Now motivated to maintain her healthy lifestyle, Christa King left her corporate career behind and became a certified hypnotherapist within four months.  She went on to pursue training to become a health coach as well as a nutritional therapist.   

Cracking The Code  

Looking back, Christa King realized that the diet and fitness industry lacks a holistic approach to dealing with weight issues. Society has long ingrained in our minds that being unhealthy is our fault. Hence, making it hard for us to develop a positive attitude.  

"Through my health journey, not only did I crack the code for my own body. But I also found what was missing," said Christa King. "What is missing is being able to address the deep neuropathways in the brain that drive 90% of our behavior."

According to Christa King, shame is one of the causes of why we fail to develop a positive attitude. We must learn not to let shame control us. Otherwise, it would be hard for us to have a healthy relationship with ourselves.   

"Shame comes from all the myths that add up to tell us that we have failed," Christa King explains. "When it is the diet and fitness industry that failed us. Hence, we must focus on positive thought patterns."

And just how can we focus on thought patterns? We can do it by releasing the shame and tell ourselves that it is not our fault. Christa King says this is because our body is wired to make us feel safe.  

Handling Stress  

Learning how to conquer stress will greatly help you develop a positive attitude. Just as long as you are in tune to what your mind and body needs, we could quickly identify what are the things that stress us out.   

"Every single body is different. So you want to model optimum health for yourself by thinking of ways on how you can manage your stress," said Christa King.

Now, I know most of you have heard this before --- Exercise is good for you. And it's true! More than the physical benefits, exercising does make us stronger mentally as well. Christa King also says it is best to exercise in the morning.  

"When we workout in the morning, we are getting all those endorphins," says Christa King. "Pumping our brain full of oxygen helps carry us through our day. It helps in concentration, productivity and managing our stress."  

Mindzoning 

Christa King offers a program called Mindzoning. It is a series of audio recordings which are identical to a guided meditation. Ranging from 5 to 45 minutes, most of the recordings are Christa King's voice and mixed with spa music.   

According to Christa King, Mindzoning helps you develop a positive attitude by changing your thought patterns. You will just be amazed at the power of what your mind can do!  

"Over time, you start to take on those thoughts and suggestions," said Christa King. "But a lot of the Mindzoning are geared to tap into the deep part of your mind. Having a conscious mind creates new thought patterns."  

Ideally, listening to the audio recordings are best done in the morning. Christa King says that this way, you get to feel energized the whole day. Once the mind is relaxed, we can quickly take on a new thought pattern.   

Strategic Vitality Book  

This is an amazing e-book wherein Christa King expounds on the 11 steps on how to transform yourself. It teaches you how to reframe negative thoughts into positive ones. Best of all, you don't have to do it by yourself. If you are struggling with the process, you may do this with a friend. Now, that's fun!  

"We all have a negative bias. It's how our primal brain is wired. It served us well back in caveman days. We were always on alert for danger," Christa King said. "Unfortunately, we are presented with so much stress in our modern day and doesn't serve us well."

After surviving a high-stress corporate career, Christa King set out on a journey to find balance, joy and to get her healthy-self back. She went from being 50 lbs. overweight to becoming a certified hypnotherapist, health coach, nutritional therapist, and the founder of Fitlandia.  

Get Connected With Christa King:  

Official Website  

Instagram

Facebook

Facebook Group

Twitter

Mindzoning App

Strategic Vitality Book

Recommended Reading By Christa King

Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss

 

 

The Links You Are Looking For:

Do you have a blood sugar issue? I can help you achieve healthy, normal and balanced blood sugar naturally!

Visit BloodSugarCoach.com for your free 30min coaching call with Ashley James!

http://www.BloodSugarCoach.com
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Learn More About The Institute for Integrative Nutrition's Health Coaching Certification Program by checking out these four resources:

1) Integrative Nutrition's Curriculum Guide:
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2) The IIN Curriculum Syllabus:
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3) Module One of the IIN curriculum:
http://geti.in/2cmWPl8

4) Get three free chapters of Joshua Rosenthal's book:
http://geti.in/2cksU87

Watch my little video on how to become a Certified Health Coach!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDDnofnSldI

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Ashley James
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Black Friday / Cyber Deals: If you listen to this after the end of the sales, visit LearnTrueHealth.com/awesome to get the latest discounts I secure for my listeners on my top favorite health things!

Analemma

learntruehealth.com/structuredwater

November 17th until November 26th 

25% on all products using coupon code LTH25 

Sunlighten

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Pre-Black Friday / Black Friday

• Nov 13-25th
• Save up to $1,149 (Includes free shipping on Amplify and Signature models)

 

Cyber Monday

• Nov 27th-Dec 1st
• Save up to $950 (biggest savings on Amplify)

Mag Soak

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Medicinal Aloe Drink

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BFLTH for 7% beginning Monday 20th and ending Sunday 26th at the end of day.

 

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10% off, free shipping, free mattress protector, free bamboo sheets, OR two non-toxic/chemical-free healthy pillows PLUS a copy of my latest book. 

 

IIN

IIN: 45% off IIN's Health Coach Training Program! (with coupon code "ASHLEYJAMES20")

Visit https://www.learntruehealth.com/healthcoachtraining to learn more and see all the courses!

Curious but want to learn more before you dive in? Get a free sample class here: https://www.learntruehealth.com/coach

The 45% off sale ends on the 25th!

 

513: Psychophysiology Breakthrough Cure For Long Haul and Pain

https://www.learntruehealth.com/psychophysiology-breakthrough-cure-for-long-haul-and-pain

Unlock the secrets to overcoming chronic pain and illness as Dr. David Clarke, a trailblazer in psychophysiologic disorders, reveals a revolutionary, drug-free path to recovery. Our latest episode goes beyond the surface of physical ailments, exploring the deep-seated emotional traumas that often fuel persistent health challenges. Dr. Clarke's expertise shines as we traverse the landscape of mind-body therapies, offering hope and transformative healing practices for those afflicted by conditions like long-haul COVID, chronic pain, and unexplained medical symptoms.

 

Highlights:

• Treatment for Chronic Pain and Illnesses
• Mind-Body Connection in Chronic Pain
• Discovering the Mind-Body Connection
• Long-term Impacts of Childhood Stress
• Top Therapies for Chronic Pain
• Understanding and Treating Chronic Pain
• ACEs' Impact and Coping Strategies
• Childhood Trauma and Its Physical Impact
• Effective Therapy and Preventing Chronic Stress
• Combined Therapies and Introduction to Timeline Therapy

Intro:

Hello True Health Seekers and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I am so excited. If you listen to today's interview with Dr. David Clarke, it's possibly one of the most important interviews I have ever done in the last seven years and will ever do. 

He presents today the now proven treatment that is drug-free, that very quickly helps people to recover from chronic pain, from unexplained illness, from those mystery illnesses. Right. When the doctors are like, well, we've done everything we can do and you still are sick, those kind of things get resolved and even long haul covid. It's restoring people back to their true health and I'm just so thrilled that we can get this information out there. Please share this with those you care about, share this with everyone, because we've got to get this out there. This one interview, the information that Dr. David Clarke has the potential to completely change the entire world of medicine, the entire world of healthcare. That's how exciting it is, and before we get to that, I'm going to blast through six sales that are coming up or have just started that I want you to know about, because these are my favorite health companies and they're giving us huge discounts for Black Friday for the Thanksgiving 2023. 

But if you're listening to this and it's no longer Thanksgiving, I want you to go to learntruehealth.com/awesome. That's learntruehealth.com/awesome to get the latest discounts that I secure for my listeners. All my top favorite health things that I want you guys to know about. The list is always there and it's always going to get updated to the latest stuff, so go check that out. But right now, if you're listening and you just dropped this episode and you're just listening during November 2023, here's the sales I want you to know about. I'm going to go through this list really fast and then we're going to get to the episode. Analemma, which is the structured water device. I did two interviews on it. Fascinating. I've been using it with my family for a whole year. We absolutely love it and love the health effects that we get from it. The discount is 25% off all their products, including they have a whole house unit, and there's some great studies coming out about how bathing in this structured water, significantly, improves heart health and other biomarkers, even your cellular energy production, the ATP production, and your mitochondrial health is improved and your microbiome of your gut is improved. It's very cool. So listeners can use the coupon code LTH25. LTH is Learn True Health 25 and that's going on from November 17th until November 26th. Use the link learntruehealth.com/structuredwater to get there and check it out. That's coupon code LTH25. 

Sunlighten is my favorite sauna. I've got my sauna right here beside me in the office and I absolutely love using it, especially in the fall and winter time. But even in the summer I'll jump in there because there's nothing more refreshing than detoxing in the sauna any time of year. Learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna.Pre-Black Friday sale goes from November 13th to the 25th, so that's already started. You save up to $1,149. That includes free shipping on certain models. You just want to call them really and just say, Hey, Ashley James sent me from Learn True Health podcast. You guys give us a special discount because they do, and they specifically give my listeners a special deal and I talk to them about that. And then after the November 27th to December 1st, they are doing the biggest savings on the Amplify, which is one of their models, and it's going to be over $950 off. And I believe that also includes free shipping, because that's what we get for my listeners. 

The next one my favorite Magnesium Soak. I've been raving about this for about six years now, along with the magnesium cream and the magnesium muscle cream. Right now, when you go to livingthegoodlifenaturally.com, it says 25% off. However, at the checkout, use coupon code LTH. Make sure you always use coupon code LTH on that website and it'll add an additional 10% off, bringing it to a total of 35% off. I always stock up every year when it comes to this big, big sale that she does and she gives us an extra discount, and that's really nice of her. 

Now the Aloe Drink. The medicinal aloe drink. I have three interviews about this. The medicinal aloe drink you can go to learntruehealth.com/aloe. Make sure you use the coupon code and this is going to expire on the 26th of November. BFLTH as in Black Friday, Learn True Health, so BFLTH. That gives you 7% off. I know that's not much, but he has really low margins and this is the best medicinal aloe drink I have ever found, so I'll take it. I'll take the savings. And also, before the Learn True Health listeners use that link, he does throw in his amazing aloe cream and I absolutely love it. It's my favorite hand cream. 

Okay, second to last Organix Bed. I've been sleeping on this for several years, and I will never sleep on another mattress again, if I can help it. When we go on vacations, we actually like, really don't look forward to any beds and except our own, and we love coming back for our vacations because of how amazing this mattress is. This mattress is healing for the back. I've done several interviews about this. I've raved about it before. 

You can go to learntruehealth.com/organix with an X O-R-G-A-N-I-X learntruehealth.com/organix. Now here's the new deal, because they already give us a really great discount and everything we get 10% off, free shipping. We get a free mattress protector, free bamboo sheets, you can choose the sheets, or you can choose two non-toxic, chemical free, healthy pillows. Plus, I'm going to give you the latest copy of my book, which is about to be published. 

If you do decide to go for the Organix mattress right now and that deal is ending soon so if you are up for a new mattress, we're supposed to replace it every five years. If you can believe that it's kind of crazy. Organix mattress lasts for over 25 years. You will be buying this mattress and it's possibly sleep on it the rest of your life. It's that amazing and it doesn't break down like regular mattresses. It's paying for two mattresses but then you're getting six mattresses out of it. It is so like heaven sleeping on this thing. 

Lastly, the InSuit for Integrative Nutrition, which is where I went to become a health coach. They're offering the biggest sale I've ever seen them do. They recently merged with Dr Chopra. All of his courses are also offered there. If you're like I'm not interested in being a health coach, well, they have other courses. 

You got to go check it out. Please go to learntruehealth.com/healthcoachtraining. That's learntruehealth.com/healthcoachtraining. Be sure to use the coupon code AshleyJames20. I couldn't get them to do LTH, just their system needed more letters or whatever. AshleyJames20. In total, you're getting 45% off their health coach training program right now and the sale ends on the 25th. That is huge. I've never seen them do that significant of a discount. It is an amazing program. I highly recommend checking it out. If you're curious and you just want to see more and get a sample class, go to learntruehealth.com/coach. That gets you a sample class. It's 45% off for the health coach training program with coupon code AshleyJames20. When you go to learntruehealth.com/healthcoachtraining, it's 35% off, I believe for their other trainings. They've got a ton of them. Go check it out. It's really cool. 

There's a few other health-related Black Friday sales that I'm seeing coming up that I'm going to possibly be talking about next week, just to let you guys know but these are the major ones. Thank you so much for sticking around and listening to them.

Today's interview is mind-blowing and I'm so excited to bring it to you. Please come join the Facebook group, the LearnTrue Health Facebook group, so we can have a discussion about this afterwards. I just really think it's important that we get together as a community to talk about this, to share our thoughts on it and to learn from other people's thoughts and experiences. Come join the community. Let's chat about this. You can always reach out to me. You can email me, ashley@learntruehealthcom. I'd love to hear from you if you have any questions or comments, but, really, the Facebook group is where we all get together as a community. The listeners get to learn from each other and share and feel a part of something. It's kind of a lonely world out there. When I'm just talking into a mic and you're just sitting there listening. It kind of feels lonely. But I'm reaching through the mic, I'm giving you a hug and I'm saying we're here, we're all in this together and I support you and we support each other. Come join the Facebook group so we can do that with each other. 

Also, go to my website, learntruehealth.com, and sign up for my newsletter, if you haven't already. It's not really a newsletter. I just like maybe send one or two emails out a month on average, just sharing the latest news in this arena when it comes to helping you achieve true health. With that being said, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving in America. To all my American friends a wonderful Thanksgiving, and, around the world, I wish all of you true health. Enjoy today's interview. 

Ashley James (09:58.011)

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 513. 

I am so excited for today's guest. We have Dr. David Clarke on the show endchronicpainorg. This is such a fascinating topic to get into. The mind, is something we're just beginning to understand, we're just beginning to explore. I kind of imagine us like we're in the 1500s and we're discovering the Americas and we're discovering all these new areas around the world. That's where we are when it comes to understanding the mind. We know so little and we're always amazed by how much we can learn. And when I saw the study that you're here to talk about today, where they have such a powerful breakthrough when it came to long haul covid, I just had to have you on the show. Now, you are the president of and let's see if I can even say this correctly Psychophysiological Disorders Association. Is that correct? 

Dr. David Clarke (11:05.409)

Almost, yes. We dropped that little AL at the end because it's got way too many syllables as it is, so we call it the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association, and the easiest way to think about it is that it's a blend of psychology and physiology.

Ashley James (11:22.683)

Which makes perfect sense because when we go to the doctor, the doctor says, oh, it must be in your head, go to the shrink. And we feel really hurt by that because it's like, no, my pain is real, my suffering is real, and you're telling me I'm just making it up. And that's not necessarily what they're saying. They're saying that the mind and the body are intimately connected and that the mind does impact the physical body and vice versa. And it's so interesting that you get to explore this area. It's so unchartered, right? It's worth learning new and new things every day about the mind-body connection, how powerful it is. I have been fascinated by this subject my entire life. I remember a teenager reading books on the mind-body connection. And here we have your studies showing how you can turn off chronic pain, like endchronicpain.org. And now with your new study on how we can help those who are suffering from long covid. I'm so excited to have you come and teach us today. 

Dr. David Clarke (12:34.152)

Thank you, I'm delighted to be here. And you know, patients should be angry when they hear that something is supposedly all in their head because that's the last thing it is. We've found real anatomic changes in the brain in people that have these conditions. That's why we have physiology in our name because those are the processes of the body. And there are anatomic differences that have come about because of stress.

And the stress is largely unrecognized. When you would think that a stress that was severe enough to produce physical illness in somebody's body, pain or otherwise, that the stress would be obvious, but actually it's not. And the stresses can come from the remote past, from adversity in childhood, they can be going on in the present day, but just simply not recognized for how powerful they are. But all of this turns out to be good news because if we can identify what those stresses are, and we know how to do that in 2023, we can almost always treat them successfully. And when we do that, as was shown in this study, people's physical symptoms, even severe, long-lasting, multiple symptoms can respond dramatically. And the long covid study was a group of people who had been suffering for an average of nine months. They had 23 adults under the age of 60 that were studied. And this was done at Harvard, but it's just one more example of what psychophysiologic work can accomplish. So these patients had been very ill with their long covid, and they were treated with exactly the approach I was just outlining, uncovering the sources of stress, which can include emotions, it can include things that are triggering for you in the present day, it can include long-term impacts from the past, such as personality traits that are stressful, and they help people identify these, work through them, and in a matter of weeks, there was dramatic improvement, 80% improvement in shortness of breath, 77% improvement in how pain was interfering with their activity, 74% in pain anxiety, 67% improvement in brain fog. Other body symptoms improved 60% and on down the line with physical limitations, average pain through the day, gastrointestinal symptoms, and even fatigue was 44% better. And the other dramatic finding that was a standout to me is that a majority of the patients had experienced that exercise made their symptoms worse. But after eight weeks of treatment, only 4% was that still the case.

Ashley James (15:35.715)

Oh my gosh, that is so cool. Because long haul covid, there's all these different symptoms and we think this virus destroyed my body and I'm left ravaged. And there's over 8 million people suffering from it. We know it's a real thing. And they're just wondering, do I ever get my body back? Is this something like mono where we have to wait a whole year? Do I ever get my body back? And that was so stressful. I mean, the last few years have been stressful for everyone. But people who have suffered from covid and survived, it was such a traumatic event for so many people, myself included, and then to then have day-to-day suffering compounds the stress. So, it's this catch-22 because the past was stressful. Now the present is even more stressful because they're stressing about their current symptoms. And then you're saying that finding the causes of stress and helping to relieve them and solve them was the key to helping their body get on the other side of long haul covid.

Dr. David Clarke (16:44.593)

Yes, absolutely. It's a perfectly natural assumption that if you are feeling something in your body, if you've got pain or illness, that there must be a disease or injury going on that is causing it. And that if only you can find the right doctor or the right diagnostic test or the right treatment, that you're going to be able to do something about that disease or injury. And people go from doctor to doctor, they get specialty evaluations, they go see alternative health clinicians, they try different diets, they try medications, they try supplements, sometimes depending on the symptom, they will try various manufactured devices, all with this intense focus on there must be something structurally wrong with the body. But it turns out that you can have just as severe symptoms, just as long lasting, even multiple symptoms that are generated by the brain. The classic example that's kind of an analogy for all this is what's called phantom limb pain, where a person has had an amputation, but they feel pain in the location of the missing limb. Now, obviously, the limb isn't doing that because it's not there anymore. The only place this can be coming from is in the brain.

And it turns out that the brain can do this literally from head to toe in people who've never come close to having an amputation. And the reason why the brain is doing that is again because of this stress. So that means the whole focus of diagnosis has to shift, that we need to move our attention from what's going on in our bodies to what is going on in our brains. And from there,

to what's happening in our lives or happened in the past. And when we do that, that's when the solutions begin to appear. 

One of my patients, I'll just give you an example of how dramatically this can turn around. She was hospitalized at a major university medical center on the West Coast 60 times in 15 years. And no diagnosis. She had her attacks were nausea, vomiting, and extreme dizziness, just to describe her symptoms. And she saw gastroenterologists like myself. She saw a neurologist. She saw ear, nose, and throat specialists. And when they all were unsuccessful, and she saw a dozen of them, they had her see a psychiatrist in the third year of her illness. And he evaluated her according to the normal approach that mental health professionals are taught, looking for depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, personality disorders, and she didn't have any of those things. And so he sent her back to the medical doctors and said, she's fine mentally, which is true from the vast majority of my patients. They're very strong people actually. But she happened to have one of her attacks when she was in Portland, Oregon, which is where I'm based.

When I went to see her, she said something I'd never heard from any other patient, which was, thank you for coming, doctor, but you're wasting your time. You'd be better off seeing your other patients. She was in such despair. But you can imagine, 15 years, major university hospital, no answers. But even though this was early in my career, I knew what to look for, which was to find a stress, either in the present day or the past. And it turned out she had significant amounts of both that were directly linked to her attacks of these dizziness and vomiting episodes. And just by showing her that connection, she was well on the spot, just bringing the stress into her conscious awareness when she could see it, think about it, do something about it. She went home from the hospital the next day. She called me a year later. She'd gone the entire year without a single attack.

Ashley James (20:57.941)

Oh my gosh, this doesn't make sense when we think about the brain, its job is supposed to help us survive, right? The brain's job is supposed to get us through life and, anything that's not conscious, right? All the autonomic functions, everything about the brain is to keep the heart beating, to keep the blood flowing, to keep us hunting or gathering and for another day, mating, right? It's supposed to keep going. And yet now we're seeing when we have a certain amount of stress, it could be emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, we've got some kind of stressor or unresolved stress from the past that we're bringing into the now, that the body is just manifesting things physically. It's breaking down and manifesting things physically. And that doesn't make sense because isn't the brain's job intended to protect us and keep us in, keep us living.

Dr. David Clarke (22:00.071)

Yes, and you're talking about the fight or flight nervous system and that absolutely the sympathetic nervous system absolutely is designed to keep us alive in a stressful situation. But the reaction to that is when the stress goes away, your fight or flight nervous system can settle down and then the rest and digest nervous system can take over. So it's natural to have a back and forth between the two.

But if you are feeling like you are constantly under threat, then your sympathetic nervous system is turned on all the time and it begins to have its impact on the body. And you're constantly under threat when there is a stress going on in your life that you're not recognizing. It's impacting you, but you don't know how to make it go away because you don't know where it's coming from. And until you recognize it and bring it into your conscious awareness and get some help in reducing it, it's going to be impacting your sympathetic nervous system. Everybody's had a psychophysiologic stress at one time or another, or psychophysiologic symptom at one time or another. A classic example is blushing with embarrassment. That's a mind-to-body reaction. Same with feeling a knot in your abdomen when you're in a tense situation. That's a mind to body reaction. There are countless expressions in our language that wouldn't exist without there being a brain to body or mind to body connection. And that's something like a spine tingling excitement or heart pounding thrills, for example. There's scores of those. But the good news is that if you know what to look for, we can uncover what's going on, bring it out into the open where we can see it, think about it and do something about it. And then people get better like that patient who was hospitalized so many times. I wish I could say I get people better that quickly in every case. I certainly don't. There are many patients who need up to several years of psychotherapy to achieve the same outcome. But even those patients once they've identified the stress, they can see that they're on a pathway toward recovery. They can see that they've found the source of the problem, that it wasn't in their body, and that they can use their cognitive skills to overcome it.

Ashley James (24:40.342)

So before you became a doctor, you received a degree in psychology. Is that where you started to see this, that it was so important to look at the stressors in someone's life? Did you have an aha moment or is it something you pieced together over time?

Dr. David Clarke (24:55.946)

No, there was definitely an aha moment. My degree in psychology was just a bachelor's degree and it didn't really include a lot of information about individuals who were struggling with these issues. It was more just general background. Honestly, I never expected to use it again. I was on a pathway toward becoming a garden variety gastrointestinal specialist. We put camera tubes inside people and do all kinds of interesting things in their GI tract. That's what I was headed for. And I was having a good career up to that point. My formal training years were going very well. I got an award for excellence in medical school. I was at a top training program at Harbor UCLA Medical Center. I was passing my board examinations with excellent scores. So I was completely unprepared to run into a patient that I didn't know the first thing about diagnosing or treating because this isn't taught in medical school, even to this day. This huge issue that affects 40% of people who come to see the doctor in outpatient care is just simply not taught. So when I met this patient, she was a 37-year-old woman who had been referred from another university because she was having an average of one bowel movement per month. And…yes, that's what I said. I mean, I'd never heard of such a severe disruption. And she had already had almost every diagnostic test. The reason that she was sent to us is that we did very specialized testing of the muscle contractions and the nerve impulses in the large intestine. And my department chair and I were completely convinced that test was going to be abnormal because what other explanation was possible or so we thought. And this woman was taking four different laxatives at double the usual doses and it wasn't doing a thing. So we knew this test was going to be abnormal. But we were very surprised and perplexed when that test was perfectly normal also. And we just threw up our hands and it was left to me to do the exit interview with this woman and just basically tell her she was going to have to live with it.

I didn't want to just walk in and tell her she was going to have to live with it and walk out. So I asked her about stress, knowing it was going to be a waste of time because everybody else had asked her about stress and she didn't have any. She was happily married, she had two nice kids, she enjoyed her job. And then I asked her about, well, were you under any stress earlier? Thinking, well, maybe something happened two years ago when her illness first started.

And she interpreted the question to mean way earlier. And she said, well, my father molested me. And when I heard that, I didn't know what to say because I had no training in asking people about childhood abuse. I had no experience with it. I was worried that if I asked her too many questions about it, it might make her very emotional and cause her a lot of pain to have to discuss that. But I didn't know what else to do. And so I fell back on my early training, which was take a history, find out the details, get the exact story of what happened. So that's what I did. And she seemed to be perfectly calm about it. I mean, she was describing what happened to her in the same tone of voice you'd use to read a grocery list.

And it turned out that her father had sexually abused her hundreds of times, up to the age of 12. And then he stopped. And for the next 25 years, nobody touched her against her will. So I'm sitting there thinking, this can't possibly be relevant. I mean, she's been away from this horrible, horrible event for 25 years how can it possibly be connected to this very severe physical illness that she has? I didn't think that was possible, but I knew of a psychiatrist at UCLA that was certified in internal medicine as well that had an interest in patients like this. So I thought at least I've got something I can do for this patient. At least we can maybe help her live with this condition a little better.

So I arranged for the patient to see the psychiatrist, Harriet Kaplan, and forgot all about her for the next several months, until I ran into Dr. Kaplan in an elevator. And just to make conversation, I said, whatever happened to that patient that I referred to you? And she said, oh, I haven't seen her in a few weeks. She's fine now. And that just upended my world.

Because the idea that you could alleviate a really serious physical condition just by talking to somebody for, in her case, an hour a week for 10 weeks is what it worked out to be. That was impossible as far as I was concerned. I was in the eighth year of my formal training and nobody had ever mentioned that such a thing was possible- just completely shocked me. But I decided, if I want to be a complete doctor, I should know a little more about this because if I've seen one patient with this condition, I might see a few more over the course of my career. So I prevailed on Dr. Kaplan to teach me her framework for how she thought about this kind of illness and how she approached it, what kinds of questions she asked, and over the next year and a half of my training before I went into private practice in Oregon, learned the basics, never thinking I would use it very much. And now we're 7,000 plus patients later.

Ashley James (31:21.962)

Did you follow up with that patient to hear her side of the story or like how do we know that she is having healthy bowel movements now?

Dr. David Clarke (31:33.769)

Well, that's a good question, but she was welcome to return either to me or to Dr. Kaplan at any time and never needed it. She was, according to Dr. Kaplan, she was even able to stop taking all of the laxatives. It basically went all the way back to normal. It was like my patient with the attacks of severe dizziness and vomiting, who in her case, didn't even need 10 weeks. I mean, just in the course of, one 50-minute conversation, that was the end of her condition.

Ashley James (32.12:990)

God bless you. Just the intuition you had to listen, even though it was uncomfortable, and to get curious and ask questions and to want to explore this. There's so many doctors out there that would have shied away from that. And you leaned in towards it and look what it's achieved. Look how many people you've helped and how many people you're helping. I'm just so ecstatic for the work that you're doing.

Dr. David Clarke (32:41.931)

Thank you. Well, it turned out to be among the most rewarding in my practice, to be able to alleviate someone's serious physical condition just by talking to them. Sometimes your best medical instrument is your brain and what it knows. And we don't necessarily always need the high technology that was, frankly, heavily used in two-thirds of my practice.

But the other one third, being able to see people recognize what was happening, being able to make the connections to stresses that were often not obvious at all. We had to do some real searching to find what the connections were that were making people ill. But it was just tremendous to be able to do that. And I've seen this with other doctors too.

We have a course on our website, the endchronicpain.org that you mentioned earlier that some doctors in a medium-sized city that I worked with, took the course, just three of them and their psychologist they collaborated with. Took the course at first, and it just transformed their practice. They suddenly the 40% of patients who had been a tremendous source of frustration for them.

They couldn't help them, they didn't know what to do. The patients were truly physically ill in a variety of ways, but the doctors, after looking for biological explanations and not finding any, didn't know what to do next. So after they took the course, then they knew what to look for, just as I'd learned from Dr. Kaplan. And all of a sudden, these patients started getting better. And one of the doctors took me aside at a conference and said, these ideas, have put the joy back into my work. That was wonderful to hear. And then three years later, it had spread. They had such enthusiasm for this that it spread from the original three doctors to now, as of a year ago, 72 doctors are using these ideas.

Ashley James (34.55.521)

Well, I want to keep spreading that. Everyone who's listening, share this with your doctor. This is something they could also be trained in. I think every doctor should be trained in this. What did you say the percentage was of people who come into the doctor's office? What percentage was psychophysiologic?

Dr. David Clarke (35:18.093)

A review article that looked at that question in 32 different studies from two dozen countries around the world and the average was about 40% that had real body symptoms but no organ disease or structural injury to explain it. So it's about 20% of the adult population or 50 million people in the United States alone.

Ashley James (35:45.756)

Well, the pharmaceutical companies do not want that to get out because they would get a significant pay cut if like 20% of adults were able to resolve their issues by getting to the root cause of their stress and managing it.

Dr. David Clarke (36:04.832)

Yes, it's definitely going to change medical practice once these ideas become common knowledge. Even better news is now that we have gold standard science that backs up the anecdotes that I'm sharing with you. We have randomized controlled trials. In addition to the long covid study, there are studies of pain patients from Harvard, from Detroit, from the Boulder back pain study is a great one. And there was one of older male veterans, usually a very difficult group to treat successfully for chronic pain. And they got dramatic results in Los Angeles. And these are controlled trials. This is very solid gold standard science that is showing that if you know how to talk to patients, what issues to bring up and how to discuss them, that you can make a huge difference. The Boulder back pain study, they had three groups of 50 patients each, and the 50 that got the pain relief psychology, which is the sort of umbrella term for this kind of work, they just got eight sessions, two sessions a week for four weeks, and their pain scores dropped dramatically. After an average of 10 years these people had been suffering with low back pain, their pain scores dropped from over four down to one on average in four weeks. It was just astounding. Nothing like this from talk therapy alone had ever been seen in a randomized controlled trial. But it's just exactly what I saw in my office every day.

Ashley James (37:54.738)

And that is so exciting. A lot of the listeners, are familiar with the concept of fight or flight, the sympathetic nervous system response, and then rest and digest, the parasympathetic. But we're not all aware of what are the physiological changes that take place when we get stuck in the sympathetic nervous system response. So like we shunt blood away from the core, away from our organs, our digestion kind of like goes on hiatus, shunt blood away from the logic centers of the brain, but could you kind of walk us through, like, let's say we're stuck for one day, one week, one month, what begins to break down in the body? There's even epigenetic changes that can take place when we are stuck in that stress response for too long.

Dr. David Clarke (38:48.544)

Yes, the differences over time can be, let's say, significant and profound. All the details haven't been completely worked out, but it definitely has long-term impacts. There's increased rates of a variety of conditions.

One of the places you can get the hard and fast data is from the ACEs study. And I should say ACEs studies because there are now scores of them where the stress was inflicted on people as children. ACEs stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences. And these were categorized into 10 different groups in the original paper from 1998. And the more of the 10 that you had the more likely you were to suffer long-term consequences. So some of the long-term consequences are psychological and behavioral. For example, depression, suicide, intravenous drug abuse, alcoholism, obesity. But there are also organ disease impacts as well. There's higher incidences of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune disease. And the working theory at this point is that stress in children turns on the inflammatory system in the body, has effects on the immune system, and that chronic inflammation is what leads to the damage in what we call the end organs, the heart, the circulatory system, the fat tissue, and produces these long-term effects on the body. My particular focus is not so much the organ diseases as it is the processing of signals that are coming from the body and being interpreted as painful by the brain. Again, coming back to that idea of the phantom limb syndrome that the brain is interpreting signals from the body as being painful. And that if we can help people understand the stresses that have changed the circuits in the brain, we can change them back. The Boulder Back Pain Study included, as part of the work that they did, scans of the brain. And what they found was that the pain relief psychotherapy actually changed the brain back to a healthy pattern. It rearranged those circuits so that was why the pain was relieved.

Ashley James (41:43.710)

Many years ago, I read the book Healing Back Pain by Dr. John Sarno, who is just fascinating. I'm sure he would have loved the work you're doing. Back pain that was not explained by scans. There was nothing on the scan to say that it could be causing his back pain. And what he saw was that the brain was creating ischemia. For example, the quadriceps lumborum, which is like the low back muscles would be grabbing. And so ischemia, for those who don't know, it's like cutting off blood flow. So you can imagine if like maybe you sit on the toilet too long, you get pins and needles, it's really painful, right? If you continue to sit there, and then when you get up that pins and needles, it can be like very, very painful. But what he saw was that there was definitely something going on where the brain was grabbing ahold of and squeezing and making almost like a spasm in muscles like the quadriceps lumborum. And to the touch, when you examine it would feel cold. Like it would seem like almost white and cold, like there was less blood flow in the area. And this definitely sounds like stress to me, but specifically when they were shoulding themselves, like I should like my job, I should like this, and even though they hated it. So if they really hated something, it was very stressful in their life, but they were kind of suppressing their feelings around it, and when they suppressed their emotions around it, wouldn't listen, that's when it would present as this ischemia in the muscles. And if they could just listen and ask their body, like what is this, I'm listening, what emotion is present, what emotion is present.

And as they began to feel it, the pain would subside and the muscle would release. And I ended up using that technique with my clients and a lot of them had a really great success, which was just mind blowing. But again, the brain is in the body are affecting each other and this is exactly what you do in your work. And I love that there's so much science now behind it that we can get

other doctors on board, because man, if we could help that, like between 20 and 40% of those people that you talked about that are, you know, coming to the doctor, going to the clinic and they have pain or discomfort or disease or they have symptoms and there's no physiological explanation, then instead of just putting, here's some pills, go home, I have nothing for you, instead of giving up on them we can actually go deeper and find the root cause.

Dr. David Clarke (44:39.772)

Yes, it's very exciting. I should mention that on that same website, the endchronicpain.org, there is a 12 item self-assessment quiz for people that are listening and wondering if perhaps they might have this condition themselves. It's arranged so that the more questions to which you answer yes, the more likely it is that a psychophysiologic disorder or PPD for short is responsible for your symptoms. So that's something easy that people can do. But you're absolutely right in the approach that you took. Many of my patients have, probably a majority of them have experienced adverse childhood experiences and we can't go back and change those, but we can change the long-term impacts. We can make a difference for the effects that those ACEs have had on people in the present day. One of those effects has to do with the emotions. Many of my patients have had anger, fear, shame, grief, or guilt that they're not fully aware of because they've repressed it. But if we can help people connect with those emotions, put them into words, then they can alleviate them. The more of those emotions that are put into words, either written or spoken, the less they need to express themselves via the body. And that's an approach that's helped a lot of people. One of the techniques that I use to help people connect with these unrecognized emotions is to have them imagine themselves as a butterfly on the wall of their childhood home. And to imagine also that a child they care about, whether it's their own child or someone else's, is in that home and is having to cope with whatever adversity there is in that home, while the patient, as a butterfly on the wall, is only allowed to watch and to see what's happening. And this is a very difficult exercise, as you can imagine, but it helps people recognize much more accurately the reality of what they went through because so many people, when they look back, they have a strong tendency to minimize how bad it was. And until they see the reality of it, until they're able to feel the emotions that would be appropriate for someone who is going through this adversity, then those emotions are going to be locked away with the only outlet being into their bodies.

Ashley James (47:32.108)

Wow. I just totally went there. I had my son in my childhood home and I'm already seeing some stuff. I haven't seen before. That's a very interesting exercise. 

Dr. David Clarke (47:43.045)

It’s been very, very useful for my patients, that one. And it's not easy and I see the facial expressions of my patients often change dramatically when I ask them to do this, but it is so useful in cutting through the layers of repression.

Ashley James (48:06.343)

Repression, like you said, we minimize it, or justify it. But if we put someone we care about as like a child in that situation that we were in, and then watch, and then we have empathy for that child, it's like, oh, that empathy is actually for me when I was going through it. Right.

Dr. David Clarke (48:27.585)

That's exactly right.

Ashley James (48:29.884)

Right. Do you have any other exercises that you like to share?

Dr. David Clarke (48:34.165)

Yes, for reaching the emotions, there's one that's kind of completely different, that you cast your mind back to a difficult person or event or situation from the past and just think about that for a moment and then start writing down words and phrases that come to mind about that person, event or situation, just as fast as you can, trying not to worry about spelling or grammar or syntax or whether it makes any sense, just to scribble down every word or phrase that comes to mind about this past event. And keep writing for five or ten minutes, however long it takes, until you feel like you've got every conceivable idea out of your head. And the reason for writing them down so fast is to bypass your cognitive brain. We don't want you thinking about this. We wanna reach into your subconscious and just pull out whatever is boiling and bubbling away in there and get it onto the page. And then once you're done with that, take a look at it, think about it, and start writing complete sentences about what it all means. Try to figure out why those particular words and phrases wound up on the page and start writing complete sentences about the meaning of what you scribbled down. And that is another way to tap into emotions that you might not have been aware of before.

Ashley James (50:16.378)

There are so many different kinds of therapy out there, right? Some types of therapies might be better suited for certain personalities, but as far as your experience with helping people, for example, with chronic pain or PPD, psycho-physiologic issues, do you have like a top three or top five types of therapy, like cognitive behavioral therapy, or, can you say like, oh, these ones have the best results in helping people get to the other side of it and then they resolve their symptoms.

Dr. David Clarke (51:03.323)

Yes, that's a really important question because the new form of treatment that's been developed by a number of us around the country and overseas, what I call pain relief psychotherapy, basically covers three very closely related types of treatment. 

The first is pain reprocessing therapy, which is relatively new, but also straightforward. Straightforward for patients to apply to themselves and for psychotherapists to learn. And then the next one is emotional awareness and expression therapy, which is what I use in combination with the pain reprocessing therapy, but it's emotional awareness and expression is the one that I rely on the most heavily, particularly since the patients that I see tend to be the most complex and severely afflicted and they need kind of a higher level of delving into those repressed emotions and then the third closely related type is intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy or ISTDP, which is strongly associated with Clinicians based in Halifax, Nova Scotia and it's not as widely available in the United States.

But all three of those share a lot of characteristics. There are chapters about them in our textbook, Psychophysiologic Disorders, that I edited with three other people. And that book is written without jargon. So people who like to read about science even if they're not a healthcare professional, can perfectly easily read that and learn about these forms of treatment.

And it turns out that because we are shifting people's attention toward, from their bodies to stress, because we are delving into repressed emotions, and there are two other whole categories we haven't talked about yet, but because we are focusing on those things, the results are far better than they are with other forms of psychotherapy, because you're right, there are hundreds of different kinds of psychotherapy. 

The dominant one is cognitive behavioral therapy, but it has been scientifically compared with these new forms of treatment and it falls far short, unfortunately. The Los Angeles Veterans Hospital Pain Study, for example, with cognitive behavioral therapy was given to those veterans, only 5% reached the goal for pain relief that they had set before doing the study.

With emotional awareness and expression therapy, it was 42% achieved the goal. So a vast difference, an eightfold difference, just because of a different kind of talking that the patients were getting, that it was delving into emotions and getting people to focus on sources of stress. This is really new. This is not widely available, but there are books about it, as I mentioned, my first book is called They Can't Find Anything Wrong. The Psychophysiologic Disorders textbook is written by 16 different people that had found their way to these same principles. And there's an app now called Curable that I highly recommend. It's taken all of the best ideas in this field and put them into a user interface that you can have on your smartphone or computer.

Ashley James (54:53.346)

Oh, very cool. Well, I'm going to make sure the links to everything that you just discussed is going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com. Curable app. That's really neat. So someone's listening to this somewhere in the world, not in Canada, like not on the East coast of Canada, so they wouldn't necessarily have access to the ISTDP. Is that what you say? Yep. And how would they get access to all this? Do you have a list of practitioners that can work with them remotely?

Dr. David Clarke (55:29.456)

Yes, we do. On the endchronicpain.org website, we have a practitioner directory and there are practitioners there from around the world who have found their way to these concepts and have taken the available training in it. And there are lots of resources now for professionals who want to learn how to do this. We have the online webinar course on the website. There are other practitioners who provide training in this. The Dr. Abbass who does the ISTDP is regularly traveling around the world giving trainings to professionals. I do presentations on this topic for professionals all the time. A couple of weeks ago, I did 13 hours of presentations in four cities in seven days. So we are definitely trying to get the word out.

And there's going to be a new course in January. I'm very excited about this one. I finished filming for it in late September and the video production company is furiously working away on editing all the footage and we're planning to release it in January. It's going to be a really advanced course about challenging cases, but again, going to be done completely without jargon so that anybody can comprehend it.

Ashley James (56:55.605)

So this course, anyone can take it, but any kind of doctor or practitioner should definitely take it.

Dr. David Clarke (57:05.872)

Yes, I think not only medical professionals, but mental health professionals, because the medical professionals don't learn the psychology of this condition, and the mental health professionals are not taught the particular kinds of issues that can make people physically ill as opposed to having mental health challenges. That's why the psychiatrist at the West Coast University failed to diagnose my patient with the extreme dizziness and vomiting because he didn't know the kinds of issues to look for in somebody who was physically ill. So that's what we teach in the courses. And that's why it's a giant blind spot in the healthcare system that 50 million Americans fall into, because they don't have a biomedical cause for the doctors to find. They don't have a classical mental health condition for the mental health professionals to find and deal with. They kind of fall right in the middle and neither group of professionals really feels like they have the expertise to deal with it. But that absolutely can change and we've seen it change in numerous locations around the world.

Ashley James (58:24.879)

But it's important to grasp that this happens to relatively healthy people. Someone who's listening might go, I don't think I have any trauma. I feel normal. I feel emotionally normal, day to day. But someone could be bumping along in life and then there might be a trigger they're not aware of and then they start having these symptoms and they could be relatively healthy people. And like you said, your patients are strong. They're resilient people. And it just happens, it just starts. It can just start, like for the long haul people, there was like a very known trigger, but when you go deeper, there might've also been adverse childhood experiences. There might also have been stress that they were suppressing emotions that they were suppressing and it compounds.

Dr. David Clarke (59:28.120)

Yes, this is a condition that can happen to anybody. Most of my patients were not aware of the level of stress that they were coping with, mostly because they'd been coping with stress their whole lives. And so it just didn't seem like it was out of the ordinary. I've had countless, countless patients who have told me that their childhood wasn't really that bad. And then when we get into the discussion about it, we begin to see that, well, yes, there were some things that were pretty bad. And then when I do the exercise of having them imagine themselves watching their own kid try to cope with the same stuff, and they get this horrified expression on their faces because they've never truly appreciated before just how tough it really was. I think of my patients like champion weightlifters who are suddenly being asked to carry a weight that's 50 million Americans fall into, because they don't have a biomedical cause for the doctors to find.

They don't have a classical mental health condition for the mental health professionals to find and deal with. They kind of fall right in the middle and neither group of professionals really feels like they have the expertise to deal with it. But that absolutely can change and we've seen it change in numerous locations around the world.

Ashley James (58:24.879)

But it's important to grasp that this happens to relatively healthy people. Someone who's listening might go, I don't think I have any trauma. I feel normal. I feel emotionally normal, day to day. But someone could be bumping along in life and then there might be a trigger they're not aware of and then they start having these symptoms and they could be relatively healthy people. And like you said, your patients are strong. They're resilient people. And it just happens, it just starts. It can just start, like for the long haul people, there was like a very known trigger, but when you go deeper, there might've also been adverse childhood experiences. There might also have been stress that they were suppressing emotions that they were suppressing and it compounds.

Dr. David Clarke (59:28.120)

Yes, this is a condition that can happen to anybody. Most of my patients were not aware of the level of stress that they were coping with, mostly because they'd been coping with stress their whole lives. And so it just didn't seem like it was out of the ordinary. I've had countless, countless patients who have told me that their childhood wasn't really that bad. And then when we get into the discussion about it, we begin to see that, well, yes, there were some things that were pretty bad. And then when I do the exercise of having them imagine themselves watching their own kid try to cope with the same stuff, and they get this horrified expression on their faces because they've never truly appreciated before just how tough it really was. I think of my patients like champion weightlifters who are suddenly being asked to carry a weight that's 50 pounds more than the world record for their weight class, that would break down the strongest person. Their bodies would break down, they would feel like failures, they would not know why they couldn't carry the load anymore. It comes as a big surprise that there's stress involved. 

People have trouble imagining that stress alone could make you physically ill like this. So yes, it comes as a big surprise to people. And the level of illness that you can get from this, that's one of the myths is that it's going to be mild. Absolutely not. I've had many patients in the hospital with this. One of my patients I was asked to see after she'd been in the hospital 70 days, she was getting morphine around the clock, in doses you would normally give to somebody with widespread cancer. You would never convince her in a million years that her pain was due to stress, but it was, we uncovered the stress. She was out of the hospital in a week, and she was off of all the opioids in 30 days.

Ashley James (1:01:44.794)

Amazing. I have friends in my life, I'm thinking of two of them specifically who have had surgeries because of chronic pain, multiple surgeries, and the pain persists beyond. And I've, you know, I'm going to be sharing this episode with them. And I can imagine those who are listening are thinking of their friends and family who have chronic pain. And it's not just chronic pain. Like you said, that there could be the woman who had the vomiting or had another woman who had the constipation. It can be these odd illnesses that don't have an explanation. And but sometimes they get a doctor who says, I know what to do. Let's cut this body part out. That's the problem. And then the problem continues to persist and now they have less body parts.

Dr. David Clarke (1:02:35.068)

Yes, that's unfortunately true. And there are lots of non-pain symptoms, dizziness, trouble swallowing, visual disturbances, seizures that are not due to epilepsy, chronic coughing, difficulty breathing, all kinds of gastrointestinal symptoms, as we mentioned, problems with the pelvis, with the menstrual cycle, with the genitals, with bladder spasms, numbness and tingling, certain kinds of rashes can happen from this. The only common denominator tends to be that people with this condition have more than one symptom at a time, more than one location in the body, or the symptoms can move from place to place. They don't have to, some people just have the one symptom, but the more symptoms you have and the more different locations they are, the more likely it is that PPD is responsible.

Ashley James (1:03:33.542)

Do you have any way to measure stress? Like for example, heart rate variability, is there any way that you could hook someone up to a machine? I know there's blood tests that measure cortisol, but is there any way that you would say you could measure their chronic stress and go, oh right, now we can put this device on you and we can see your stress lowering?

Dr. David Clarke (1:03:57.216)

Yes, I really wish there was. I wish there was a blood test for this condition. If we had a blood test for this, then you can bet that every health care professional would learn how to diagnose and treat this condition, because we could get a blood test for it. And we could see, oh, your PPD level is high. We need to find your stresses, and we're going to make you better because of that. But unfortunately, we don't have that. And I don't expect to see that anytime soon. But when you think about it, because we don't have a blood test, it means that we should spend even more time training healthcare professionals how to figure out what's going on, because it's not so simple without the blood test. But people who have had stress for a long period of time, they get accustomed to it. And when you ask them, do you feel stressed or depressed or anxious, frequently they say no, because they've been living with this for years.

One of my patients, my personal record patient, had PPD symptoms for 79 years. And even that patient, once we uncovered the stress and helped her with it, she got about 60 or 70% better, even after all those years.

Ashley James (1:05:17.027)

Amazing, but, yes, you become habituated to your stress. You become habituated to your environment. So, yes, of course. 

Now this pain, the typical chronic pain that persists, does it come and go? Is there any commonalities? Is it always there? Does it come and go? Does it act almost like a migraine that comes on and there's telltale signs that's coming, or all of the above?

Dr. David Clarke (1:05:45.867)

Yes, all of the above. Everybody's different. And migraines definitely are part of this, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel, all of those are part of this spectrum. But everybody's different. But we definitely, if the patient's symptoms are moving around, if they're highly variable, from with respect to any kind of triggers, then we get suspicious that PPD is responsible. It's really hard to have an organ disease or structural damage cause symptoms that migrate from place to place, or that are highly variable in terms of what triggers them. But I should go back to the point you made earlier about having surgery for this. It comes up most frequently in low back pain because a majority of people over 40 and a large number of people younger than 40 have abnormalities in their spine on an MRI. And this is in people with no symptoms whatsoever, it's just part of the normal aging process. But if you have PPD related back pain and you go to the doctor and they image your spine one way or another, and they find these age-related abnormalities, it is very tempting to say, okay, you've got pain, you've got this abnormality there, let's go in and do surgery and fix this and that's probably going to alleviate your pain. But it turns out that the success rate of surgery for pain is about 30%. If you have evidence of nerve damage, then it's better. But most patients don't have any evidence that they have a damaged nerve. And if they get surgery for back pain, the success rates are terrible. And there was a study from the 90s where they took a whole bunch of patients, I think it was 87 patients who had lumbar spine surgery, low back surgery, and looked at the success rate of the surgery. And they compared it with their ACE score, the adverse childhood experience burden that these individuals had suffered. And it turned out that if you had no ACEs, your success rate from the surgery was pretty good. It was about 95%. But if you were in the top range of people with a lot of ACEs, the success rate for the surgery fell to 15%.

Ashley James (1:08:23.029)

I've never opt into a surgery that had only a 15% success rate, but I guess if you're in chronic pain, you might roll the dice, you know, if it meant, if that was the only answer, right. And now, now you have the answer and we need to get this information out there. Please, everyone listening.

Share endchronicpain.org with your doctors, with your practitioners, with your friends and family. Share this episode with those you care about and everyone. If we can get this out, we could be part of the movement to completely change the way medicine is practiced and the way people are helped. We got to get this information out there. I am so, so thankful for what you do. And I said earlier, God bless you. And I mean it. God bless you for the work that you're doing.

Dr. David Clarke (1:09:20.637)

Thank you.

Ashley James (1:09:21.704)

Absolutely. Now you had said that there's two other categories we haven't even touched on. Can we, can we touch on those?

Dr. David Clarke (1:09:28.571)

You bet. This is a long-term impact of ACEs. And the first category that we did talk about was repressed emotions. That turns out to be the most challenging to diagnose in most cases. But the other two are stressful personality traits that grow directly out of the child's attempts to cope with their adversity. And the third one is triggers that are going on in the present day that are in some way linked to the traumas or stressors of the past. And the personality traits that can be stressful include the most fundamental and important is low self-esteem. This is the common denominator, and my patients who've survived ACEs is that they are made to feel like second-rate human beings, or in some cases, made to feel like worthless pieces of crap. Other personality traits that are kind of linked to that include being excessively self-critical, much more critical of yourself than you would be of others, for example. Having limited self-care skills, people who are devoted to the care of everybody else in their world, but have difficulty putting themselves on the list of those they take care of. So if you ask them, what do they do for fun? They have trouble coming up with very much.

People who are perfectionists, people who are living on high alert all the time, people who suffer from anxiety or depression, people who are focused on pleasing others, who tend to choose narcissistic partners to be in relationships with, or partners who have significant issues or problems that need to be solved. That's, a direct outgrowth from growing up in a home where there were problems in that home and the child trying to survive, trying to make the best of that situation, ends up focusing on trying to solve those problems. So it's not a big surprise when they end up choosing relationship partners for themselves that need a lot of support and they end up in relationships that are not mutually supportive, not balanced, but where the giving from them is not balanced by getting back from the partner. Other ones, self-sacrificing to an excessive degree, difficulty setting boundaries, not being very assertive for your needs, fear of abandonment, need for external validation. And in more extreme cases, you get into coping mechanisms to try to deal with the emotional pain of all this.

And those can include eating disorders, can include self-mutilation behavior, can include all kinds of addictions, not just to substances, but to behaviors like work, sex, food, gambling, exercise, even shopping I've seen in one or two cases. So all of these, as you can imagine, are highly stressful.

And people struggle to make changes. A lot of psychotherapists just accept them as largely a given and don't even try to intervene. But when people see where these came from, that one of the questions I'll ask people is, who taught you these false assumptions about yourself that you need to be the caregiver for everybody, for example, or that you are a second-rate human being. Who taught you this and how did they teach you? And when people can understand where that came from, it truly facilitates making changes.

Ashley James (01:13:36.226)

Oh, man, that is such a good question. Wow. You describe so many people I know and some of me, I was feeling called out there for a sec. I was like, wow. I've done a lot of personal growth work through the years and I can see where I have overcome actually a lot of that. And my parents did the best they could, but I definitely had to go back and work on stuff and heal stuff and I mean, I'm seeing so much of this, exactly what you described, in so many people. 

Dr. David Clarke (01:14:13.071)

Yes, those are the most difficult. I was just working with a patient last week. Her parents clearly meant well, meant the best, but they created an environment of extreme pressure without realizing what it was doing to their child.

Ashley James (01:14:37.175)

Yes. It's not always obvious, right? Emotional abuse or mental abuse. That's the hardest because it doesn't leave a bruise, a broken bone. You know, we can say, Oh, I didn't have abuse as a child. My childhood was fine because there wasn't an alcoholic throwing bottles at my head, like it's not always like Hollywood style, right? And like you said, we do a lot of times we'll repress, we'll justify, well kind of almost blank out. I've talked to people who they sort of don't remember most of their childhood, like big chunks of it, until you start really talking about it and then they start remembering.

Dr. David Clarke (01:15:21.962)

Yes, it can be very difficult to recognize. And so many of my patients have told me, no, my childhood was okay, and then we start talking about it and they start remembering. 

We just have this conversation. One of my patients, we talked for well into my lunch hour because I wasn't finding the stress. And he finally just stopped and said, the only time I ever got praise from my parents was when I did something better than my brothers and sisters could do it. And he had three siblings and they were all very accomplished kids, academically, extracurriculars, athletically. It was not easy to do something better than those siblings could do it. So he ended up rarely, if ever, being made to feel good about himself. And it had a lot of those consequences that I mentioned. He was in a very bad relationship. He was addicted to his work. And he was having all kinds of physical symptoms.

Ashley James (01:16:30.773)

If we were friends with that kid growing up, we wouldn't think, oh, my friend's really abused. Like that's a really bad household. We wouldn't imagine that's abuse, but internally, what's going on? The stress levels over time and that self judgment and like you said, the poor self esteem. So, so I think it's worth it for anyone, especially if they're having health issues, right? And you said this even affects immune. So if someone is having immune problems, always sick, always catching every cold, it's worth diving in and doing the work. I mean, what's the work? It's not going to hurt, right? There's no negative side effect of self-personal growth, other than you might have to shake up a few relationships, learn how to enforce healthy boundaries. But transformation, at the end, only good comes from it.

Dr. David Clarke (01:17:29.395)

Yes, all these issues are worth assessing and treating for their own sake. And I have patients who say, well, I'm not sure that these issues are contributing to my pain or other symptoms. And I'll just say, well, let's work on them anyway. They deserve attention for their own sake. And we'll see if your physical symptoms improve in response to that. And a very large number of patients will experience physical improvement as well.

Ashley James (01:18:04.282)

Is this something that you're going to be able to have colleges, universities start to teach? Is this something that we can get into the curriculum?

Dr. David Clarke (01:18:14.488)

We are working on it. I taught a class at the University of Rochester last year and I've just been invited to teach it again. I taught for 10 years at Arizona State. I taught at Cummings Graduate Institute in Arizona. I've taught a class on this since the late 1990s at Pacific University here in Oregon. So I'm teaching in the medical school now, short module on this topic. So it's growing. I mean, when I think back to 15 years ago, in terms of widespread acceptance in the healthcare community, especially the educational community, we were really nowhere. But today, 2023, it seems to be growing exponentially, to be honest.

Ashley James (01:19:06.164)

Good. Well, we need to get it to where it's in the meme, to where it's common. 

Dr. David Clarke (01:19:12.807)

Now you are helping with that Ashley, I appreciate it.

Ashley James (1:19:15.743)

Absolutely. And I hope my listeners will as well. I mean, I am on fire about this.

Dr. David Clarke (01:19:20.419)

I should finish before I forget about that third long-term impact of the ACEs, which are the triggers. Just say a few words about that. These triggers are people, situations, or events in the present day that are in some way linked to the past. And the most common example is someone who was an ACE perpetrator, someone who created the adversity for my patient as a child who is still in the patient's life today. And because of some of the other personality traits that I mentioned, it can be very difficult to set boundaries with such a person, to assert yourself with such a person, and to limit your interactions with that individual to the point where they're not making you physically ill. But it starts with just realizing that this person is still creating issues for you and is triggering for you. It turns out that patient who was having the attacks of dizziness and vomiting, who was hospitalized so many times, it was her emotionally and verbally abusive mother that was responsible for the attacks. All of the attacks, it turned out, were linked to interactions with that mother who had been verbally and emotionally abusive, starting at the age of three with that patient and continuing for the next 47 years. The patient is now 50 years old, mom is in her 70s, and mom is still doing it. But the patient, having experienced mom doing this since she was three, it just felt normal to her. She was completely blind to the idea that it was triggering her episodes, even though there were giant screaming clues that were saying exactly that, which is what made it so straightforward to diagnose her, let's put it that way.

Ashley James (01:21:24.955)

Well, that's the habituation. When I remember that moment somewhere in my early teenage years, when I realized that my household that I grew up in isn't a carbon copy around the world. I thought everyone did what my parents did and lived like we lived. And then started to go over at friend's house to see. Wow, other parents act really differently, have different rules, have different boundaries or no boundaries and different communication styles. Some are abusive, some aren't, some are very more loving than my parents are outwardly loving, some are less. And just realizing that the person you have in your whole life, if it's an abuser, we go, this is normal. This is who they are. This is normal. 

Dr. David Clarke (01:22:18.799)

Yes, none of us has a parallel life to compare ourselves with.

Ashley James (01:22:21.355)

Right, exactly, and I love that exercise with the butterfly where you're putting someone else in your shoes, because then you go, wait a second, if you have a child, you can do this. If not, you can think of someone you really care about as a child, but putting them in that situation that you were in, oh man, I just wanna go save that child as soon as possible.

Dr. David Clarke (01:22:46.013)

Yes, one of my favorite stories about that is I get some interesting consultations because my name is out there and one of them was a Hollywood type actress and I found myself in a very pleasant bar having a conversation with this impossibly good looking person who was telling me she had suffered physical symptoms in many locations in her body for 20 years.

We got around to talking about her childhood and it turned out that her parents were verbally and emotionally abusive of each other but not her and she was the peacemaker and she was the only child so it kind of fell on her to try to keep the peace. When she's eight years old the parents get divorced but unfortunately, they kept living in the same house They slept in separate bedrooms, but they lived in the same house.

So for her, nothing changed. But she was telling me this story and every other sentence was, this didn't bother me, it wasn't that bad, there was no abuse, they didn't drink too much, I could deal with it, I'm over it now, I'm out of that household for a long time. And she just was not accepting that this situation was sufficient to account for her 20 years of illness. Until I told her to do the butterfly on the wall experiment with her beloved niece, whom she spent a lot of time with, who was six years old at the time, and just said, imagine your niece is in this household, and you're there watching your niece try to cope with your parents for, let's say, just a week, how is that going to be for you? And she just stopped talking and stared at me for probably two minutes, but it seemed like longer than that because she was a very verbal person, as you can imagine, and just stared at me. And I just let her stare. You know, I was going to let her process this thought experiment. And then finally she said, ‘At the end of that week, I would shoot myself.' And that was the first time that she realized just how bad it had really been.

Ashley James (01:25:10.501)

We love our parents. And if it's not that outwardly like, all the alcoholics throwing bottles at your head or whatever, like if it isn't this very stereotypical, that's definitely abuse, right? But if it's something like she said, well, they weren't yelling at me, I know they loved me and they meant well, as children, and then when we grow up, we love our parents and we in some ways want to protect them because we don't want to necessarily say, oh, they were abusers, that they're the cause of my pain. Like that would almost feel like betrayal, saying something that negative to someone you care about. And the thing is, what we have to get is they're human. They did the best they could with the resources they had. Of course they didn't mean to hurt you. Unfortunately there's some very sick people out there, not the majority, but there are some who actually did mean to hurt people. However, if you love your parents and you know they loved you, we want to say they did the best they could. They loved you the way they could. And unfortunately, the way it turned out, it was a stress on the body. And there's stuff to process. There's ways that our mind protected ourselves. We justified, we coped, we suppressed, but we have to process it, and we can do therapy and still love our parents and honor and respect them while also admitting that the experiences we had were traumatic and that they hurt us.

Dr. David Clarke (01:26:53.943)

Yes, and that leads directly into a key idea that I think a lot of therapists don't emphasize nearly as much as they should, which is that when you finally recognize the reality of what you went through, you have to also give yourself credit for having gone through that. I like to use the analogy of being born on the far side of Mount Everest or born in the middle of a dangerous jungle, that through no fault of your own, you found yourself in this very difficult place. And again, even when the parents are doing this from a place of love or doing the best that they can, from the child's perspective, it can be, far side of the Himalayas or middle of the Amazon. And I want my patients to give themselves credit for having endured that. It takes truly heroic levels of perseverance to pull yourself through these situations when you're a child. And you need to respect that. You need to recognize that you're truly meeting the dictionary definition of heroic when you've come through an environment like this. A hero in our society is somebody who's overcome a difficult mental or physical challenge for a good cause. And my ace surviving patients have done exactly that. And it is a truly critical foundation for their future recovery that they be able to think of themselves in these terms, that they respect what that kid did to get through that situation. And once they can do that, once they can engineer that 180 degree flip in their self-image, all kinds of other things change. It makes it vastly easier, for example, to make changes in those stressful personality traits that I was mentioning earlier. My patient who was the actress, she was in a dysfunctional relationship with a boyfriend at that time, one of those unbalanced, giving way more than you're getting back kind of relationships. She dumped that guy the next day. She began building her self-esteem. And a year and a half later, she met the love of her life.

Ashley James (01:29:20.439)

Oh, that's awesome.

Coming back to this idea that it's not all in your head, there's physical experiences, the body has been changed physically, but the stressors are something we need to process. So it's the heart and the mind and that we can see and now measure results. So we can see and measure, like for example, with the long haul, that they had shortness of breath. It's hard to measure brain fog and fatigue, but you can measure shortness of breath. You can measure, there's certain things that you could measure before the study began to see that they were physiologically impaired by the long haul and other people like that woman you talked about that sparked much of this, the woman who pooped once a month, which I can't even imagine. And it was very clear, you could definitely measure that. It is a physical thing that's happening. And by healing the heart and the mind and going through the process of that.

So it's not taking a drug, it's not taking another antidepressant, it's not another, just one drug after another, one surgery after another. Those are bringing the wrong tools to the table, right? Like they say, a carpenter, every problem is going to be handled with a hammer, right? Like so when you come to a doctor, he's going to use the tools he has.

Dr. David Clarke (01:31:12.199)

That's right, when your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Ashley James (01:31:16.075)

Right, but this 40% of the people, and you said it was somewhere around 20% of adults, at the time, it's not a nail. Don't bring your hammer anywhere near me, it's not a nail. So the long haul covid sufferers who went through the study and went through the therapy, how much therapy did they receive?

Dr. David Clarke (01:31:45.287)

Well, most of their improvement took place after just four weeks. So these are people who had been ill for an average of 40 weeks. And after four weeks of treatment, they achieved the majority of the results that I mentioned earlier. But yes, you're right. It's not that often that we are able to document real biological changes in the body as a result of this. It's more a subjective, internal to the brain, a kind of perception that's going on. But one of my patients had a completely paralyzed stomach. There's a special test called the gastric emptying test or the stomach emptying test where we have them swallow a very slightly radioactive material and we just watch it with a specialized camera and see if the stomach empties it. And we know how fast the stomach is supposed to empty it. And when we did this test on this gentleman, it didn't move at all. It just sat there for two hours and they said, well, we don't need to watch this anymore. We know it's abnormal. So they stopped the test. But I had never seen or heard of somebody with a psychophysiologic complete paralysis of their stomach.

His symptom was vomiting naturally. I mean, if nothing was emptying in the forward direction, it would eventually empty in the backward direction. And I know that it was psychophysiologic because we uncovered the stress in his case, successfully treated it, and his eating and digestion went back to normal.

Ashley James (01:33:31.111)

Oh, that's so exciting. But just that we have cases where you can demonstrate through imaging, you can measure and show here's an impairment. We go through four weeks of very specific therapy that's proven to be the most effective so far, right, until something better comes out. But so far, this is the best we've found. And we're always striving for excellence, right? That's the thing, especially in the case of mental health, and I'm just so disappointed that people still practice archaic mental health techniques that have been proven to be insufficient.

I know that not everything's for everyone, right? Sometimes you got to pull out different tools for different personalities, but you found something that is incredibly effective and in a short period of time. 

Dr. David Clarke (01:34:31.329)

Yes, it's really dramatic. I mean, I'm a bit of a statistics nut and there's a statistic that really captures the power of this new pain relief psychology and it's called effect size. And basically what it means is when you apply a treatment to a group, how big an effect did you have? And normally with things like cognitive behavioral therapy or mindfulness-based stress reduction, you get an effect size that gives you a number of 0.2 to 0.5. Those are just the numbers that are associated with this and those are considered small to moderate effects. Rarely do you see anything better than moderate. A large effect would get you a number of 0.8.

The effect size in the Boulder back pain study for Pain Relief Psychology was 1.5. I don't know, if it was a football game, the score would be 150 to 30, something like that. The lead researcher for this was very skeptical. I met with him. Some other people in my organization met with him. And we said, we truly believe, based on our clinical experience, that you are going to get excellent results from this. And he's a psychologist, he knows about pain. He'd been researching pain for several years. And he said, I don't really believe that this is going to happen, but I'm willing to do the study and we'll see what kind of results you get. And he was just blown away.

Ashley James (01:36:26.273)

That's so exciting. So we've talked about people who have this and the things they can do, especially going to your website, endchronicpain.org and check that out, do the quiz, they can find a practitioner, they could take your courses, they could read your books. What about prevention?

So everyone, it would be good for everyone across the world. We already discussed this to do personal growth work, to dive into our childhood, just learn and forgive and process. It's a joke, life is crazy, can't get it alive. None of us are going to survive this, right? We've all been through something. It's good to process.

So let's just assume everyone is going to take this really seriously and go do some really great therapy and get super healthy mentally, emotionally. What can we do starting today and for the rest of our life to prevent chronic stress? What are the top things? Like you love statistics, so what are the things that are the most impactful? Is it meditation, exercise, breathing, deep breathing? Is it hugging everyone you love for 90 seconds every day? What are the things that are the most important? What are the things that you do to make sure that you stay on top of managing your stress so that it doesn't become this big problem?

Dr. David Clarke (01:38:07.267)

Yes, that's a great question. You can go on the internet and find all kinds of highly valid techniques for reducing your personal stress level. And I have no issue with any of those. I do them myself. I go for walks with my wife along the river that we have here in Portland.

I played soccer as an adult on up to three teams at a time for over 20 years. That was a great one. I ride a bicycle. I do photography. I play chess with my grandchildren. My wife is a fabulous cook. Her meals alone are wonderful for just general stress reduction. All of those things are great and I absolutely recommend them. 

But if you have what could be called deep stress, if you have issues that are the result of long-term impacts of adverse childhood experiences and those have not been recognized, then you are essentially swimming against the tide in trying to reduce your own stress level. There is this tide of long-term impacts that is going to limit your success with all of the stress techniques that I just mentioned. So it's worth the exercise of looking back and taking a serious review of how you might've been impacted as a kid, doing some of the exercises that we've discussed earlier today, and figuring out what some of those long-term impacts might've been. 

The two biggest, the self-esteem, having a realistic sense of your own value in the world, contrary to what you might have been taught as a kid, is very important. And that in turn facilitates the second important part that gets the tide working with you instead of against you, and that is to set aside regular time for self-care. Regular time, every week, ideally several hours if possible, for activity with no purpose but your own joy. What we're looking for is the moral equivalent of finger paints for a four-year-old. The four-year-old doesn't care who sees the finger paintings, that doesn't care about the quality of the work, doesn't care about how many pictures per hour they produce. They just know they're having fun and everybody needs that. 

One of my patients was a champion athlete as a girl, but she did her sport before school, after school, on weekends, starting at the age of four. And she never really got to be a kid. I mean, there was no time to just self-indulgently play, which every child needs. And by missing out on that, she never really learned self-care skills. So now she's in the emergency room at seven in the morning, where I'm looking over her records, where she'd been the entire night getting tested for sudden abdominal pain. Everything was normal. So I'm talking to her about her lifestyle, and she's working full-time. Her husband's working full-time. She's got two kids. She coaches the kids in her sport. She's on the athletic club board of directors. She's driving kids to out-of-state competitions.

She's coaching other people's kids. And I asked her, what do you do for fun? And she had to really think about it. She said, well, you know, maybe every other month I go out to the movies with my husband. That was it. So her treatment was to carve out a regular block of time and her family was 100% behind this idea where she would just do trial and error to learn how to play.

And at first, she's just looking at me, what am I going to do? Because she, age 32, she had no idea how to go out and have fun because she never had in her entire life. But what she ended up doing was going for walks in a park. And that wasn't enough, but while she was walking, she was thinking. And one day she hit on the idea of taking piano lessons, which came as a surprise because she'd never done anything musical before, but she absolutely loved it and her physical symptoms just melted away once she started doing that.

Ashley James (01:43:02.309)

Wow. I love it. I love it so much. Oh, Dr. Clark, you are a godsend to this world in this day and age. So I don't know if you know about me, but I was sick for many years. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, type two diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue. So bad. I couldn't process human language in the morning. It was really odd. My husband would talk to me first thing in the morning and it would be like being on Charlie Brown and hearing the parents, he would just be like, whoom, and I would just put my hand up, I can't even understand what you're saying, just hand me four cups of coffee. It was bad, I suffered for many years, and also had chronic infections, and it was wicked. And that's where I found natural medicine and resolved these issues. Also been big into, like I said before, personal growth and working on myself, right? Working through all this stuff. I've been through the wringer when it came to doctors. One doctor after the other told me, I'll never have kids after a battery of tests when I was 19, the endocrinologist said, I'll never have kids. I wait with this beautiful eight-and-a-half year old boy who is our whole world and he impresses me.

I look into his eyes and I recognize that God exists because of how amazing this child is and how life is so beautiful. Life is filled with so many beautiful things. And being a mom is so amazing. And I'm so grateful that I was able to overcome. If I had believed that doctor, if I had just believed her and had not taken the steps, I would have never had my child in my life. And just the impact that the words doctors have when they say you can never do this or you'll never be able to do that is sickening. I was told I'd always have diabetes. I was told I'd always have these problems and I overcame them and I don't have them anymore. And that's why I started the podcast is I suffered, I cried daily, I was suffering in my body. I felt like a prisoner trapped in a sick body every day. And I created this podcast because I wanna reach out to all those people who are crying, they're suffering. And they don't need to. And this podcast is for them. It's a lifeline. I'm throwing the lifeline, the giant flotation device, I'm throwing it and hopefully reaching them. And we can help them. And you have the answer to millions and millions of people suffering. If all the doctors I had been to were trained in your work, I wouldn't have had to suffer as long as I did. Let's just put it that way. And so you're going to help so many people. 

So everyone listening is going to share this with those they care about. And frankly, share this with those you don't care about. Jesus talks about how we need to treat the least of us is how we actually treat Him. So just like, share this with your enemy. Let's mend some bridges. Let's share this with everyone.

Dr. David Clarke (01:46:14.971)

They might become a nicer person too.

Ashley James (01:46:18.377)

If someone has shared this with you, they're going to be like, well, wait a second, do they like me or am I their enemy? Share this with everyone. We've got to get this out there. The impact of what you're doing is so important. And I'm so honored to have you here today. I want to make sure that we've covered everything you wanted to cover. I know you've already shared a lot, but is there any homework? Is there anything to wrap up? Is there anything that you didn't get to say?

Dr. David Clarke (01:46:48.671)

You did a great job with asking questions, and I think we covered a huge amount of material. I can point out that these ideas that we're sharing aren't especially new, but they are largely unknown to the healthcare professionals of this world, and that's why my colleagues and I created the nonprofit, and why I do teaching all over North America and Europe and speak on wonderful podcasts like yours. 

There was a Harvard professor named Francis Peabody who gave a speech in 1925 and it became one of the most famous speeches in American medicine. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1927. It's easy to find on the internet. It's a 6,000 word speech. He covers a lot of the same ideas that you and I have covered today. This was 100 years ago almost. This was before the discovery of penicillin is how old that speech is. And all those ideas that we've discussed today are in his speech. So this is kind of timeless wisdom that we're trying to bring back amid the tsunami of technology that has overtaken medicine today. We need the technology. I used it in my practice for 30 years. I've benefited from it myself. I'm all in favor of technology, but we absolutely don't need to lose the humanistic side of medicine in response to the technology.

Ashley James (01:48:39.311)

Right, exactly. This should be foundation. This should be something dealt with first, not last. Unfortunately. I'm sure you've heard it, that people come to you after they've already been through a battery of tests and trials and, wouldn't it be wonderful if this was the first thing we tried and not the last thing we tried.

Dr. David Clarke (01:49:00.723)

Oh, absolutely. It makes doctors happy when they learn how to do this. It saves a ton of money. It saves complications from diagnostic tests. It alleviates vast amounts of human suffering. 

Now, one of my patients had been ill for 55 years. Volume three of his paper chart was three inches thick, and he was cured in less than 30 days, just by bringing these issues to the surface.

Ashley James (01:49:32.475)

Oh my goodness. I would love nothing more than to watch like a documentary of following people's lives. Did you have that in the works? I know you've been a producer of three films. Do you have the intention of covering this in a documentary?

Dr. David Clarke (01:49:49.411)

It is covered in three different documentaries. I participated as a producer and helped as a consultant with the editing. The first was All the Rage, and the second was This Might Hurt, and the third was Pain Brain, and links to these are on our website, and you can easily track them down through the titles on the internet. They're all different. But they're all excellent and provide information about different aspects of this. So yes, those are great. You pay a few bucks to watch them, but the filmmakers did outstanding work.

Ashley James (01:50:33.938)

Very cool. Well, holidays are coming up. I think one of your books would be make an excellent stocking stuffer. I think listeners should go and check them out. I keep saying share this episode, but also get the books, watch the movies, check out endchronicpain.org. I'm very excited, even though this is like you said, timeless wisdom. It wasn't really until recently that you have been able to put together the three types of therapies in that order that were the most effective, right? So it took many of you to come together and create the system that is working and be able to measure the system that is working, which I'm so grateful for, cause it's one thing to be, cerebral about it and it's another thing to put, where rubber meets the road, right? Where we actually have to go do it. So we can be cerebral and go, just knowing that this is the cause of your chronic pain isn't going to solve anything until you get into action and do it and do the therapies and do the work. But what's showing across the board is in a very short period of time, sometimes as little as one month, you can have tremendous results, which is really exciting. 

Dr. David Clarke (01:51:58.432)

Yes it’s. People get the insight into it, and even if they don't experience complete relief right away, they can usually see that they are on a pathway toward recovering, and that's tremendously reassuring for people.

Ashley James (01:52:12.568)

Oh yes, especially if they've been through the wringer for many years. One therapy I definitely want you to check out, cause there's so many out there is a Timeline Therapy. It was created by Tad James and I studied underneath him of no relation. We just happened to have the same last name but Timeline Therapy is a wonderful tool and I'd love for you to look into it and see if it's something that, you'd like to add.

I did have a client with chronic back pain. I was able to do a Timeline Therapy session with them, took one session over eight hours over one day. We did an intense session. And I'm a master practitioner and trainer of NLP and Timeline Therapy. And we were able to resolve her chronic pain in that one day. I mean, that's just one person, but for her, it was her whole world. But Timeline Therapy incredibly amazing as a technique for resolving trauma. And it would be great for you to check it out and see if it's something you'd wanted to add to your repertoire, if it helps, if it advances your cause.

Dr. David Clarke (01:53:23.644)

Yes, I'm happy to take a look at it. I hadn't been familiar, but especially if the timeline goes back to day one, I can imagine a lot of ideas that would overlap with the work that I do.

Ashley James (01:53:35.580)

Yes, so actually, so with Timeline Therapy, you're in a light state of trance, so you're conscious of the unconscious mind and you're conscious the whole time because it's a light state of trance. And then we go back to the root cause, the very beginning, and kind of do the fly on the wall thing so they're not completely immersed in the emotion and they're able to then get a non-mirror image reverse of the event because we go above and beyond it, but it's a little hard to explain without a visual, but the way in which they're visualizing the beginning of the trauma and then they gain positive learnings from the experience, very quickly they're able to then go into the event and the emotion is gone, it's resolved, and they've gained positive learnings and they're seeing things from different perspectives. So it's very cool.

But like I wouldn't say it's the only thing to do. I would just say I'd love to add it to your tool belt because I think everything you're doing is wonderful and in addition to what you're doing, I think it'd be really cool for you to have Timeline Therapy. I think it's just timelinetherapy.com or the Tad James company that teaches it and there's many practitioners out there now. I studied it with Tad back in 2005 and 2006.

Dr. David Clarke (01:54:56.086)

Very cool, I'll check it out.

Ashley James (01:54:58.562)

Dr. David Clark it has been a pleasure having you on the show. I'd love to have you back or any of your colleagues. Anytime there's new advancements, you guys want to come back and share more as things develop. You are always welcome back. And I will definitely be just like screaming from the rooftops for everyone to go to endchronicpain.org.

Dr. David Clarke (01:55:20.774)

Yes, thank you. The research that I described today has opened the floodgates for money from National Institute of Health and other places to do even more research. So I'm sure those will be published in the next couple of years and is just going to help accelerate this snowball rolling downhill for more and more people to become aware of this.

Ashley James (01:55:44.450)

Beautiful. That's so exciting. Awesome. Well, it was been a pleasure having you on the show and please come back anytime.

Dr. David Clarke (01:55:51.660)

Thank you.

Get Connected with Dr. David Clarke

Website – Psychophysiologic Disorders Association

 

Books by Dr. David Clarke:

Psychophysiologic Disorders

They Can't Find Anything Wrong

Sign up to watch the film "Real Immunity" for FREE! www.realimmunity.org

Homeoprophylaxis - www.worldwidechoice.org

TO WATCH REAL IMMUNITY: CLICK HERE

Homeopathy 

http://learntruehealth.com/homeopathy/

Homeopathy effectively treats fever and several other conditions. To teach us more about what homeopathy is, I’m so thrilled Cilla Whatcott is again on the show for the third time to explain to us everything you need to know about this amazing method of natural healing.

Discovering Homeopathy

Cilla Whatcott has guested on episode 137 and episode 155 where she elaborated on how her homeopathy journey started. She describes herself as a classical Homeopath who has four children — three were adopted from Russia, China, and Taiwan, and one is biological.

She recalls all three kids had problems like asthma, kidney reflux, and migraines. One of her daughters, in particular, had a vaccine injury and suffered from aseptic meningitis.  So early on, Cilla Whatcott realized that it was ultimately up to her to take care of her kids.

A ray of hope happened when Cilla Whatcott’s pediatrician sent her to a Homeopath. Eventually, her children’s health improved considerably. Because of that, Cilla Whatcott decided to study homeopathy. So instead of pursuing a career in dance after applying for a Fullbright scholarship in Europe, she studied in homeopathic school for four years. 

“Initial research just led me into vaccine science. Looking at the studies and attending conferences, it was just asking all the deeper questions about vaccines,” said Cilla Whatcott. “After I attended homeopathy school, I discovered homeoprophylaxis and recognized an amazing alternative to educate the immune system.”

What A Fever Means

Cilla Whatcott has a new video documentary coming out called Real Immunity.  The 2-part documentary one of the topics extensively covered is the subject regarding fever.

Among the experts, Cilla Whatcott included in the film is Dr. Debra Gambrell who I have guested on my podcast’s episode 164. I generally know to have a fever is good because it is a distinct signal to warn you that something is going on in your body.

Some people deal with fevers by soaking in an ice bath. And some people wrap themselves up to sweat out the heat which was what my father used to do. In my episode with Debra Gambrell, she links fevers to neurological development, and that is a necessary function of development.

And when we suppress a fever, we’re inhibiting the brain and all the nerves in the body. Heavy metals in the body also do the same thing. That’s why we end up dealing with memory issues.

Cilla Whatcott also shares that Naturopath Dr. Kendra Becker is also in the film. And she gives the cutest example of first-time fever with the baby and how the parents are ready to lose their mind. She narrates that once parents come out of the clinic after 72 hours, they usually look like they walked on fire.

“Fever is a natural mechanism that nature put in place, for us to create natural viral antibodies. So when you have a fever, your body is producing national antibodies to fight whatever the infection is. And then provide you with lifelong immunity to that particular virus,” said Cilla Whatcott. 

What A Fever Does

Cilla Whatcott adds that a fever also resets the gut. A fever resets our system, develops antibodies, and discharges toxins. It is a keynote of that circular process exercising the immune system. It is the basis of building a lifelong immunity.

Fever And Drugs

To suppress a fever with drugs, Cilla Whatcott says we’re only driving the pathology deeper into the organism. So in the film, Cilla Whatcott featured something she calls the health helix which offers a lot of information and knowledge value about fevers and how to treat it.

“If you suppress the fever, discharge, and the symptoms, it is driven deeper into the system, and you see a deeper pathology,” explains Cilla Whatcott.

Other Conditions

Cilla Whatcott says that another issue is how we commonly deal with asthma and respiratory symptoms. She said we might see it go deeper into behavioral symptoms like ADHD, depression, and anxiety. We will eventually see the trajectory of health going downwards.

“If you remove suppressive toxins and have clean water, air, food and an emotional environment that is supportive, then you have all the components to regenerate,” said Cilla Whatcott.

Homeoprophylaxis

Like what Cilla Whatcott stressed in two of our past episodes, homeoprophylaxis is a subset of homeopathy where they use different remedies. It is utilized for a lot of health conditions in many countries. Highly effective with no side effects, it has no deaths, and it doesn’t compromise innate immunity.

“It is completely unprofitable for pharma, inexpensive to make and easy to distribute. Even unlicensed personnel can distribute it,” Cilla Whatcott said. “It applies to all genders, all ages, all species and mutated viruses. So when something mutates and a new vaccine has to be developed, it’s not the same compared to homeoprophylaxis. Between effectiveness, safety, and eco-suitable, you can’t beat it.”

My past guest, Dr. Carolyn Dean on episode 227, has the same conviction. She encourages people to continue the fight in implementing safe and natural alternatives to treat various health conditions. 

Truth About Vaccines

Those who have been following my podcast would recall that I mention Ty Bollinger’s “The Truth About Vaccines” video documentary. A lot of people are afraid to watch it, perhaps because they aren’t emotionally ready to learn the truth.

But the documentary is something everyone should watch because it teaches us how to build immunity. In my opinion, Ty Bollinger did a fabulous job. The video includes interviews with celebrated experts.

Educating people to veer away from vaccines is hard work, but some doctors strive to push that cause. I had Dr. Paul Thomas in episode 224, who has over 13,000 patients in his Portland, Oregon practice. He says most of his patients are unvaccinated.

Dr. Paul Thomas shared that during the most massive influenza outbreak they had recently, not one of his kids got the flu. He teaches the patients what food to eat and not to eat.

And to help oversee his patients, he has pediatrician Dr. Linda Baker in his office who does homeoprophylaxis, who incidentally, is a colleague of Cilla Whatcott.

“Ten or twelve years ago, I was teaching Vaccine Information. It was so non-controversial at that time when a local community college allowed me to teach the course,” recalls Cilla Whatcott. “Along came a time when the community college said we couldn’t hold this class anymore. Because they were getting pressure from the health department.

So now, when Cilla Whatcott teaches in different venues, it is a welcome surprise that more parents now know a lot of information. Apparently, more parents now do their research.

“The societal shift was fascinating. It’s a result of the internet, a result of people seeing injuries, and being motivated to step and do what best for their kids. Things are changing,” said Cilla Whatcott.

Mission Behind Real Immunity Documentary

To be able to provide more information to the public, Cilla Whatcott also made a 2-part video documentary called Real Immunity. Her goal was to make something empowering and supportive because she genuinely believes that to raise consciousness, you need to associate with others on the same wavelength as you are. And that strengthens us in such a way as to bring others up.

“And fear is one of the lowest rungs on the ladder of consciousness. Fear doesn’t motivate us and instead, squelches us,” said Cilla Whatcott. “So what I wanted to do is make a film that first and foremost, dispelled fear and teach people how to access that inner wisdom, the intelligence of life or spirit.”

Cilla Whatcott also wanted to provide method tools through her film. She says everybody’s toolkit is unique to them. So to do that, we need to do the research. The underlying theme of the movie means that we can’t rely on someone else to take care of our health because we are born with the gift of immunity.

First part of the documentary is called, “Quested for Real Immunity,” while the second part is called, “Passage To Real Immunity.” The video will be free for 36 hours, and it will be available in DVD form.

There is also an opportunity for people to bring the film to their hometown through the Real Immunity website. People can input their zip code to search for the nearest local theater. A theater screening of the film can be organized provided it reaches the minimum number ticket sales. Plus, the one who was able to raise the minimum ticket sales will be given 5% of the proceeds.

Making The Film

Cilla Whatcott says that the visual and auditory message has a powerful impact. She has taught for years in the community. But she realized there is no way she could educate in the same way compared to making a film. That became her motivation to teach through a new medium.

She originally planned to divide the documentary to seven or ten parts. Then the series shifted to four parts and now finalized to two parts. The first episode is what Cilla Whatcott described as a foundation episode and scheduled to launch on February 22 this year. It dispels the fear and talks about intuition. It also takes a more in-depth look at what makes a competent practitioner and a good patient.

The second episode coming out later this year dives into methods. Cilla Whatcott clarifies that she’s not going to tell the viewer what to do but instead utilize interviews with experts to talk about Chinese medicine, functional medicine, gemmotherapy, homeopathy, and homeoprophylaxis.

“It’s up to the viewer to explore and make those choices. I feel strongly about free urgency. Rather than expecting people to look towards someone else, and say you need to do it. Providing choices is better,” Cilla Whatcott said.

Cilla Whatcott also made a special mention of Dr. Jeanne Ohm from the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association. According to Cilla Whatcott, Dr. Jeanne Ohm dives into what is the intelligence of life. She is an excellent resource person if anyone wants to get more information on making the right medical choices for kids.

“More than anything, I want to give parents support as the experts for their child. And that they can trust their choices because they have their child’s welfare at heart,” said Cilla Whatcott. 

Challenges In Making The Film

Cilla Whatcott shares that there are a lot of hits and misses in the making of the film. She went as far as taking an online film course and took time to look for videographers. It was hard soliciting funds, getting the right videographer and marketing team but Cilla Whatcott says the effort was worth it.

“I had great relationships with really fabulous people that I respected. That was the easy part. And it is exciting to know that I completed something I envisioned,” said Cilla Whatcott.

Power Of Film

Among the experts Cilla Whatcott included in the film, she said the interviews with Dr. Andrew Wakefield was most interesting. British gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield earned the media moniker, “Father of Anti-Vaccine Movement,” after his controversial research linking MMR vaccine and autism came out.

In Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s paper, he mentioned his discovery of measles virus in the bowels of children and testimonials of mothers who saw changes in their kids after being vaccinated with the MMR vaccine. His paper suggested the need for more studies and recommended that the vaccine is given separately.

A series of events occurred and Dr. Andrew Wakefield eventually lost his license to practice in the United Kingdom. He eventually moved to the United States and began other types of research on autism apart from making films. One of the films Dr. Andrew Wakefield made was titled, “Vaxed.” It exposed the fraud that took place within the CDC and the MMR study.

Dr. Andrew Wakefield also made the film, “Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis,” which is about an autistic teenager who was given medication for his condition and the hospital would not take him off the medication even if it had adverse effects. To end the suffering, the mother finally killed her child and tried to kill herself.

The mother was later on charged in court for first-degree murder. During the progression of the case, the prosecuting attorney found out Dr. Andrew Wakefield was filming the child the whole time. The lawyer asked for footage and eventually, the charges were dropped against the mother.

Bio

Cilla Whatcott is a board-certified classical homeopath with a B.A. from Arizona State University, a diploma from the four-year professional program at Northwestern Academy of Homeopathy, and a Ph.D. in Homeopathy. 

She is an instructor at Normandale Community College and the author of“There Is a Choice: Homeoprophylaxis,” and co-author of “The Solution – Homeoprophylaxis.”

Whatcott is also the executive director of Worldwide Choice. She likewise offers individualized homeoprophylaxis programs for adults and children. 

Whatcott has been a guest lecturer in France, Scotland, Ireland, Indonesia, the USA, and Canada, and featured in episode 7 of The Truth about Vaccines. She has organized and directed international conferences in 2015 and 2016 about homeoprophylaxis. 

Whatcott also has published articles in several periodicals and magazines. She likewise has a certification as a CEASE therapist for reversing vaccine injury.

Get Connected With Dr. Cilla Whatcott!

World Wide Choice

Real Immunity Documentary

Family Homeopathy Care

Twitter

Book by Dr. Cilla Whatcott

There Is A Choice – Homeoprophylaxis

 

Recommended Readings by Dr. Cilla Whatcott

Dissolving Illusions by Suzanne Humphries

Miller’s Review of Critical Vaccine Studies by Neil Miller

Impossible Cure by Amy Lansky

 

The Complete Homeopathy Handbook by Miranda Castro

Recommended Links:

Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis

Vaxxed

ICPA

Learn True Health – vaccines

Learn True Health – Episode 137

Learn True Health – Episode 155

Learn True Health – Episode 164

Learn True Health – Episode 224

Learn True Health – Episode 227

 

 

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How To Co-Create With The Cosmos And Re-Align Self With Nature

https://www.learntruehealth.com/how-to-co-create-with-the-cosmos-and-re-align-self-with-nature

 

Highlights:

• Lunar cycle in a nutshell
• Yoga’s purpose is to achieve mastery over the mind
• Ayurveda body types: vata, pitta, kapha
• Eliminate toxic elements
• Importance of breathing

 

How does the moon affect our lives? In this episode, Jenny Fenig explains the lunar cycle and how we can incorporate it into our lives. Jenny shares how we can manage our time better daily. She also explains the importance of breathing, grounding, and listening to the body.

 

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today we have entrepreneur, coach, and homeschooling mom, Jenny Fenig. What I love about her message is she is a very successful, busy entrepreneur, busy mom, busy homeschooling mom, and also a fantastic coach. She figured out how to pack in all these activities while working from home, while taking care of her kids in homeschooling. She figured out how to do it, and she loves teaching others how to make this transition. I thought it’d be great to get some wonderful guidance from her.

As you’re listening to Jenny, if you think to yourself, I would love to be a coach. I would love to help others mentally, emotionally, and physically become healthier, become more fulfilled in their lives, and be able to gain more joy. I’d love to work with clients to help them achieve their life and health goals; then I highly recommend checking out IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I took IIN’s program. It’s a year-long health coach training program. It’s 100% done online. They also have an accelerated 6-month program for those that want to be full-time students.

The year-long program is designed for busy people, and you can fit it in about 20 minutes a day. I’d like to do it in the evenings or sometimes I’d listen and do the coursework while I was driving, exercising, folding laundry, or cooking dinner, but I was able to get it in with my busy schedule. It’s absolutely fantastic. IIN’s program is life-changing. About half the students that do it do it for personal growth, which is pretty phenomenal. You could do it for your own personal growth, but of course, I did it because I also wanted to help my clients. I want to gain new tools to help them as a health coach, and they even train you on how to start your own business and become a successful health coach, which is really exciting. So not only do they teach you how to help your clients with mental, emotional, and physical health; gaining life goals; and increasing joy and fulfillment in every aspect of their lives. You’re also taught how to find clients that would resonate with your coaching style, and that clients you would just feel incredibly fulfilled and happy to work with. It’s a wonderful program. 

I partnered up with IIN and they give a huge discount to the listeners of the Learn True Health podcast. So you can just google IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and when you give them a call, most of their staff have actually gone through the program and become integrative health coaches. What you can do is you can talk to them. They’ll help you work out your goals in terms of becoming a health coach and joining their program and then when you mention my name, Ashley James with the Learn True Health podcast, you will be given a huge discount. A few times a year, they do have some great specials as well, so always be on the lookout for that.

If you’d like to try their program for free, there’s a module that they give you for free. Go to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learntruehealth.com/coach. Sign up, put your name and email, and then you’ll be given a module for free. You can just put your toe in the water, try it out, and see if it’s something that resonates with you. See if it’s something that’s right for you. It was absolutely incredible when I did it. I highly recommend it. There have been over 100 of the listeners that I know of that have reached out to me that have told me that they’ve been through the program. A lot of them, because they heard about it through me through the podcast, so I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me and share that they’ve absolutely loved their experience with IIN. It’s a wonderful stepping stone because you can go and specialize in other things. You can specialize in gut health or mental health. There are just so many ways so that you can specialize as a health coach, which is really exciting.

You become a health coach, but there are so many tools that they teach you around life coaching because health encompasses every aspect of our life. IIN is not about counting calories or teaching you how many grams of protein are in something. That’s not what IIN is about. It’s about giving you the real tools to help make huge differences in people’s lives, in working with clients to help them become more fulfilled in every aspect of their life. Check it out. Go to learntruehealth.com/coach. Get your free module. And when you call IIN, make sure you mention my name Ashley James and Learn True Health podcast so you can get access to the great special that they give all the listeners.

Thank you so much for being a listener of the Learn True Health podcast. Please come join our Facebook group. It’s a wonderfully supportive community for holistic-minded people. Just search Learn True Health on Facebook. Thank you for sharing these episodes with those you care about so we can help everyone to Learn True Health.

 

[00:05:26] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 444. I’m so excited for today’s guest. We have Jenny Fenig. Her website is jennyfenig.com. All the links that Jenny has are going to be the show notes with today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Jenny’s going to teach us today how to co-create with the cosmos and align ourselves with the energy of nature to help us achieve what we want to achieve in life. Also, there’s a bit of—from what I understand—tapping into your human potential, tapping into your life purpose. It’s going to be a really fun and light-hearted episode. I’m looking forward to it. Welcome to the show.

 

[00:06:15] Jenny Fenig: Thanks so much. I’m excited to be here, Ashley.

 

[00:06:18] Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. What led you down the path to becoming an expert at co-creating with the cosmos?

 

[00:06:26] Jenny Fenig: Well, that’s a good question. I think the larger conversation is looking at how I’ve experienced so much loss in my life and so much death. We’re just going to go there. I mean life is death is life is death is life. We go through so many deaths in a lifetime. Death of an identity, a particular career path, a place that you used to live that isn’t working for you anymore, or what have you. For me, when I was 16 years old, I experienced the death of a significant person in my life. That person was my sister Julie—still is my sister Julie. Energy is energy. I absolutely have a strong connection with her still to this day. It’s been over 25 years since she died. But that experience of wow, life is so mysterious and it’s not “fair.” It’s not what you thought it was going to be, yet it all is lining up for your biggest opportunities to grow, to learn, to be who you came here to be, and do what you came here to do.

With that death of my sister when she was 12 and I was 16—she died of cancer—I just skyrocketed into this experience of grief, loss, and what just happened? This isn’t supposed to happen. This goes against the natural order. And then six months later, my best friend’s brother died. That was just another example of what? These things aren’t supposed to be happening. At that point, we were seniors in high school. You’ve been looking forward to this moment your whole life. I grew up in the south in Georgia and Florida. At that point, I was living in Florida. This friend and I had just gotten onto homecoming court, which is this dream that we had. It felt like such a big deal.

My sister had died earlier that year and then her brother dies that fall, and it was just this bizarre experience of this feeling that I hadn’t ever felt before ever, and then no one can prepare you for it. It allowed me to go really deep into my own process, my own faith, and my own questioning of all of it, really all of it. My sister was quite connected to God, and that was not anything that I really knew much about, to be honest with you. That was her thing. It was my dad’s thing, but it just was something I witnessed from afar like what’s that all about? I don’t really understand what you all are talking about. And then once my sister died and I had this huge pain and then my best friend’s brother died, you go deeper into this hole. That’s what it felt like just sitting with this and trying to understand something that can’t really be understood in a logical rational way.

As I journey forward going on to college and just doing my best to keep showing up—keep showing up for the work, keep showing up for my talent, keep showing up for my ambition—I kept being led to the places I was supposed to be, the people I was supposed to meet, the experiences I was supposed to have so that I could do what I’m here to do. What was fascinating was early on in my sophomore year—that best friend whose brother had died our senior year of high school—that best friend died. 

I basically had three deaths in three years from the time I was 16 to 19. I wouldn’t wish that on people. It’s very, very challenging as you can imagine, but it cracked me wide open and it allowed me to really come to this place of I am still here because my work is not done. I am going to really feel the energy of these people who meant so much to me. I know that they’re guiding me on because this work that I’m here to do, you’re here to do, and we’re all here to do, it requires all of us. It requires all of us to be awake. It requires all of us to be courageous. It requires all of us to approach each day like it is a gift because it is, and to go after the things that you’re most meant to do.

Once I moved on into my career, I moved to New York City after I graduated from the University of Florida. I found my way into the career of public relations. I thought I had struck gold. This was a thing I was here to do. I’m working at this major agency, on these big clients, and eventually traveling globally on these big projects. Although it was exciting and I felt like I was at a good place and working on interesting projects and with interesting people, I had this feeling inside, which was really me connecting with that small still voice within to come face to face with the truth. The truth was this isn’t what I was supposed to be doing.

It was such a tough pill to swallow because it looked good on paper. It looked really good on paper. You try to ignore it. You try to just push it away, push it down, and question yourself. I thought there was something wrong with me. I wondered why I couldn’t be satisfied or I couldn’t be happy when other people might think this was fine or awesome. But that small still voice within just kept nudging me along, nudging me along to say, Jenny, this isn’t it. You got to keep going. You got to keep looking. And most importantly, you’ve got to take care of yourself. 

That environment that I was in, I graduated from college in 1999. You can go back to that point in time. The internet was very new, so there were no social media. That wasn’t taking our time, but when you worked on these big projects, I had to be at work a lot and I worked a lot. I was under a tremendous amount of pressure and stress. It’s not something that I found to be healthy, sustainable, or desirable.

A big breakthrough for me was that I realized I had to start taking better care of myself. I really needed to learn how to mother myself, nurture myself, take a pause, take time, and not feel like I was racing all the time. You asked the question of how did I really find this work. I found the work by diving headfirst into the work that I felt I was here for and was talented at but then realizing that it didn’t quite hit the mark. 

The way that I had to like deconstruct it and figure out what was a better path for me was to choose health, to choose vitality, and to choose to trust that small still voice within, which has continuously guided me on. It guided me to eventually quit that job, move into a different job, which is a thing I didn’t even know was a thing until I found it. I moved out of public relations and into conference producing, which again it just kind of fell in my lap when I was in sheer desperation to get me out of here, I can’t do this anymore. 

That opened me up to interesting thinkers, thinking like an entrepreneur, acting like an entrepreneur, putting on these big events, solving problems in the market, and just understanding that I really can do anything that I want to do. I just have to decide what that is. I believe that’s true for your listeners as well. We are in a choice. We can come into this place of I have these distinct skills. I have these gifts. I have these talents. When we can really blend everything up and understand what problems we solve in the market and then communicate with an audience that is excited for us to help them solve that problem, then amazing things happen.

A big pathway for me—I know your show is really a lot about health, vitality, and all the different ways—was I dove headfirst into yoga those first few years in New York. Once I could afford to belong to a gym, I started taking yoga classes. I took my first one in college. I thought it was the weirdest thing ever, and I wasn’t ready for it. But then once I was ready for it, in those New York City days, I realized it was a source of comfort and a source of peace. It made my body feel so good. I allowed myself to just feel that and to come to this place of oh my goodness. When you’re in a yoga class, you’re not competing at all. I thought so much of my life I had been competing. That was the game, you competed. When you’re in yoga, it’s not about competition. It’s really about being present with yourself, what’s going on that particular day, and honoring that.

By following that path to yoga, eventually, I got this download to train to become a yoga teacher. I didn’t know where that was going to take me, but I trusted it. Again, that small still voice within, I trusted it. I said, okay, let’s see. Let’s see what happens when I commit myself to 200 hours of training on anatomy, on yoga philosophy, on the different asanas on meditation on just that whole realm. Once I did that, the next level of my career opened up, and I discovered the field of coaching. That has just taken me on this incredible path, this incredible journey. I realized that serving women was my passion. 

As I got deeper into my study and work with women, I remembered how connected we are to the moon and the way our bodies are designed. They’re so intelligently designed. The way the lunar cycle is designed, the way nature is designed, there’s such intelligence and such wisdom in that. When we can tap into that wisdom, we come into that place of alignment. That is something I practice. That is something I teach. And that is something I want to remind everyone of. It’s very much been taken away. We live in such a society with technology and go, go, go, you’re falling behind, and all of it. Nature’s never behind, you know what I’m saying? It’s not behind. When I look outside, my trees aren’t like oh my gosh, I don’t have enough leaves yet. Or this tree is bigger than me and I must be less than. Nature is just so sure of who it is, and it’s always right on time. I find there’s such wisdom in that. It’s something I love talking about.

 

[00:18:27] Ashley James: Can you take us back to the moment when you realize that there was an energy of the moon to tap into? And explain how you figured it out and how it helped you.

 

[00:18:41] Jenny Fenig: Well, it’s interesting because my mom, growing up, would often say to me, look up at the moon. Since the time I was in college, I have lived away from where she was living and then beyond. She often would plant that seed with me and sometimes I thought she was a little wacky for going all right. But that has stuck with me. What’s so fascinating, no matter where you are located on this planet, every single one of us is looking at the same moon. It’s not different in the Philippines, in the United States, in Canada, in Spain, and in Antarctica. It’s the same moon. It’s the exact same moon. I just think that’s so cool. We live on such a giant planet, we’re all looking up at that same ball of light.

When it really became clearer for me was when I just started reading various books about women, history, energy, and our creative process. Women are natural creators or creatrixes. A creatrix is the female term of a creator. We just naturally do it. We naturally create. Some of us are called for motherhood where we create a child inside, or we adopt a child. However that comes to be, or somehow a child comes into our life. I think I got deeper into it when I became a mother. My oldest child is 11 years old now, my youngest is 6. I also have a 9-year-old. When I became pregnant for that first time, which was so interesting because for a lot of years I didn’t want to become pregnant. That wasn’t something I was ready for. And then once I became ready for that and wanting that, I saw my body in a whole new way.

As women cycle, a lot of us have had a menstrual cycle. We know what that is. Menstrual cycles are the same as the lunar cycle. It’s around 29 and ½ days. Think about that. Those are the things I wish I would have been taught in school. When I was growing up, it was very much like when you’re on your period, that’s dirty. That’s dirty. It’s something you want to hide. Maybe you were made fun of, especially if the boys knew you’re on your period somehow in school because you took your purse to the bathroom. It was something that almost felt shameful. There wasn’t a real big rite of passage around it when I was growing up.

I will tell you, when my daughter moves into that phase of her life, I will do it differently with her. I will give her something that I didn’t have that I’ve had to learn for myself. When you really tune into the fact that we cycle, our body cycles the same as the moon, that’s something to take note of. With the moon—what I’ve come to learn through practice, study, and just applying this in my own personal life, in my business, and helping my clients do this—is that if you really want to understand how to work with the energy of the moon. When you are menstruating, there is energy. You might have read the book The Red Tent. I read that many, many years ago. It’s a fantastic book. It’s really that energy of being still, resting, renewing, and not go go go. You’re just receiving it. Your body is doing the work, your body’s cleansing, and that’s the energy of the new moon. That’s the energy of that new moon.

If you were to start tracking the lunar cycle—and most calendars have this represented on the calendar. If you have a wall calendar, if you have a printed calendar. I still use those. I mean, I have a business. We have a lot of digital things going on, but I have a printed calendar that I keep on my desk and often in my purse. I’m not going as many places these days as I once did pre-COVID, but I’ve got my printed calendar, and I’ve got my calendar in my kitchen that I keep up on the wall. The moon phases are represented there. Take note of those. Some people have no idea where the moon is right now in terms of the phase of the cycle, and I suggest that you start paying attention—if you haven’t already—and just tracking your own energy around what’s going on in the moon.

Sometimes, as women, our bodies might be in that same phase. If you’re still in your bleeding years, you might bleed at the same time as the new moon. If so, the energy is really synced up. If not, there’s still a lot that you can glean from the moon. And you really want to understand what’s happening out there so you can better take care of yourself. That’s the whole thing. Isn’t that what true health is all about is you know how to take care of yourself, and you know how to have others help take care of you if you have other people in your life—really helping to nourish you and support you?

So that new moon is all about rest, renewal, and ultra-vision. And then about a week later, we move into the first quarter moon. That’s when you look up in the sky, and just last night it was the first quarter moon. I looked up and it was just like magic. It was so captivating, and it looks like a half-moon where that right side is glowing. And you don’t see the light on the left side. It’s just that right side of the moon. That is the energy of growth, action, and commitment. What you can do at the new moon, as well as resting and renewing, is that you get the vision for what you want to focus on in this upcoming cycle.

With moons, there are 13 moons in a year. There are 12 months in a year, but there are 13 moons in a year. You have an opportunity 13 times in a year to really set your intention, and it doesn’t always happen at the first of the month. That’s not how it works. It happens when it happens based on that lunar cycle, and the lunar cycle is set. You could go look ahead a few years and you’ll go see the lunar cycle like when the new moon of 2025 will be. Scientists have this down. It’s really extraordinary what can be tracked and looked at as you move forward.

What I like to do at each new moon is set my intention. What is my intention? What do I want my energy and my focus to go to for this lunar cycle so that as I take my steps forward? As I put my energy out there, my actions out there, and my words out there, I can see the seeds that I’m planting blossom. 

I’m setting my intention. I’m establishing some goals to support that intention at the new moon, so when I get to that first-quarter moon I’m really quickening my steps. I’m like okay, let’s go. Have I sent out that email? Have I talked to that person? Have I gone to get that thing? Have I planted my seeds, and if not, what seeds do I really want to be planting now or in the next few days? Because then, about a week later, we’re going to get to that full moon. And that’s when you look up in the sky. Everybody knows what a full moon looks like.

There tends to be a pretty powerful energy at the full moon. There’s just such powerful sensations that are happening right there, and we’re all feeling it. We’re all feeling it. There’s a lot of data to support that hospitals and emergency rooms in particular have a lot more action around the full moon. There’s just this heightened intensity that’s going on. And when we can understand that, we don’t have to be blindsided by it and going like why do I feel all this? You understand. You understand it intuitively, and you can really make space for it. 

What I know at full moon is that’s when I’m in my fullest power. That’s when I’m going for it. As women, that’s when we would be ovulating. That’s when we could conceive a child. You think about that, and there are only a few days in a woman’s cycle that that could happen okay. When you then understand your own energy at that point, the energy of the full moon at that point, you can harness some things. 

In my business, I might have some big activity going on at the full moon where I am putting something out there. I have hosted lots of retreats all around the world and tied that into the full moon. Where I will look ahead and go, all right, I’m going to have this event in November. I’d like to bring the women together around the full moon. When’s that full moon going to be? Okay, it’s this point. Let me check with my retreat center and see if they have space available at that time. You see, that’s how you can really line it up. Some people might decide that they’re going to have some special thing there, they’re going to put this thing out there, they’re going to whatever. You just know. That is maybe you want to go camping, like there’s just something that you want to do around the full moon.

And I do a lot of this with my kids, especially my daughter. She’s super into it. We really talk about the moon together. If I take my dog for a walk around the property at night, I’m always looking for the moon. What’s interesting is you don’t know where she’s going to be. The moon is a feminine energy, p.s. So you don’t know where the moon is going to be. I can’t always look up over this particular tree and see her. It’s not how she works. She’s very mysterious, and I love that. I just love that energy. I love that idea that she’s always there, I just don’t know where she is all the time. I know what’s up. I know if she’s at this phase or that phase, but I can’t always find her in the sky. It’s just an interesting thing to play with, and it also helps you deepen into your faith. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Get it? And that we have to trust. We have to trust. And we have to trust planting these seeds. I’ll give you an example and I’ll tell you about the last phase of the moon.

A few months back, as we were really in the throes of COVID here in Massachusetts. I know that you have listeners all over. Everyone is being impacted in different places, and it’s just horrible. It’s this horrible thing. A few months back, we really weren’t leaving our house. Except I was able to go to the garden store and be outside, and I eventually got these seeds—these sunflower seeds. Now I have never planted seeds. I just recently have gotten into gardening. A few years back, I kind of just all right. Let me try this, let me try that. But I’d always buy plants that were already formed. They were in the pots, and I could transfer them into my land into the earth.

Well, I decided to just see what happens when I would plant seeds, and sunflower seeds in particular, which is really interesting because that was my favorite flower in high school. I campaigned for it to become our senior class flower, and it did, which is very exciting because we had had the rose for 20 years straight. My whole thing was okay, rose is a great flower, but can we just have a different flower? Let’s be creative. So we got the sunflower. 

I decided to get these seeds, and I put them on the earth. I remember thinking to myself is this going to work? These things are really small. Is this really going to work? I’m going to follow the directions. I’m going to space them the number of inches they’re supposed to be spaced apart. I’ll water them. Okay. But I had that doubt in my head like really, could something as big as sunflowers grow out of these little things?

Oh my gosh, Ashley, if you could look outside my window right now, these things are so huge. These stalks are taller than me, and I’ve been checking on them. There’s one in particular that I can see the yellow starting to peek through. I’m like oh my goodness, I think this week the flowers are going to come out. Because at this point, it’s been the giant stalks. Then I still know, within the stalks, the flowers in there. It’s just not ready. It’s not ripe yet. It’s not time yet, but can I still believe? Can I still believe? For everyone, can you still believe? Even if you can’t see it, you have to believe it to see it. Some people have it backward like I’ll see it when I believe it, or I believe it when I see it. Okay, I’ll believe it when I see it. No, you will see it when you believe it.

That’s really how I feel what the moon allows us to do. She’s so consistent. As I’ve used her energy and really worked with her energy and co-created it, I’ve been able to come into deeper communion with my own body, with my own wellness, with my own groundedness and connection to the earth, and to my place on this earth. Then I’ve helped my people really tap into this wisdom as well. 

So the last phase of the cycle is called the last quarter moon, and that is when you look up and you see the light on the left side. So you don’t see the light on the right side, and that’s how you can always know. When you look up, if it’s on the right side, the moon is waxing. It’s getting bigger in the sky. And if the light is on the left side, it’s called waning. The energy is waning and it’s getting smaller. Eventually going back to that new moon and then starting the cycle again.

So with the last quarter moon, that is the energy of letting go. Letting go to rise higher. That is when you have seen what has started growing. What has become real? You’ve put in the effort, you’ve put in actions, you set that intention back at the new moon, you set those goals, and you work towards them. And some of them were meant to happen the way that you hoped they would or the way that you semi-envisioned that they would. Others you realize you know what, that wasn’t aligned, maybe not yet, maybe I need to simply be more patient, or maybe I need to let that go because this other thing is freaking growing and it looks really exciting. I want to align my energy with that. I know that I can’t do all the things all the time, so I’m going to double down on that, and I’m going to let go of these other things that can’t come with me into the next cycle.

That is the lunar cycle in a nutshell. I’m actually looking up at this gorgeous lunar calendar. In addition to the ones that I mentioned that come printed in a lot of these calendars you might buy, I had my designer on my team—we collaborated on this really cool one sheet and it just says Lunar Calendar 2020. What was so interesting is that I had her put all the names of the months at the top of the paper, so going across horizontally, and then the numbers go down vertically. 

January there’s 1 to 31, February 1 to 29, and they’re just these long rows of numbers going down the page. And then she would go in and plot out each phase of the cycle and go across the page. What is the full moon in January, February, December? And it looks like—if you ever had or ever saw those really cool beads that you could hang in a doorway, they’re kind of like circa the 1970s, but they’re cool. You could hang these beads in a doorway and then open the beads and move into another room. They kind of look like those beads. They’re so pretty when you look at it. To me, it’s just exquisite art the way that nature was designed. And the more that we understand that, the more that we understand ourselves.

 

[00:34:57] Ashley James: Beautiful. It’s amazing how there’s so much in nature that really affects us, and we often just don’t think about it. I mean the moon is powerful. If you think about it, the moon is strong enough to change the tides and pull the water, the ocean in one direction and then in another and create the tide. We’re made of water. Why wouldn’t the moon have some kind of pull if it can pull the water in the ocean? Why wouldn’t it have some kind of effect on us? I mean, it’s not a huge effect, but it can be felt, and we can see it. You can see it when we go to the ocean, and we see the tide come in and out. What other instances in nature do you keep your awareness of and tap into?

 

[00:35:51] Jenny Fenig: Well, I look at where I am each season. Really honoring seasonal shifts and planning around that. I didn’t realize how important honestly nature was to me until I did. I grew up in the south, as I mentioned. When I lived in Florida, I lived near the beach, and that was really nice having that ocean near me—speaking of tides and oceans. And then once I lived in New York, you’re in a concrete jungle. We had Central Park. We had some trees there, but typically you had a tree carved out in a little plot on the sidewalk and cement. I did have the Hudson River, thank goodness. I lived on West End Avenue, which was overlooking the Hudson River. Oh, that brought me such a sense of calm.

But once I moved to the country 10 years ago. I left New York City. I now live in the country, Western Massachusetts. I felt like I could exhale. It was something I really needed but didn’t know that I needed it. New York was so wonderful for my career. I met my husband there. I had my first child there. I got pregnant with my second child when we lived there, but it didn’t provide me with enough nature. Now I have it. I look around these windows and the office that I’m speaking to you from and all I see are trees. That’s it. I see the trees. I live in a forest. I consider the trees my friends, which may sound funny but it’s true, and I take such cues from these trees. We have nature here, and we have four seasons here. Not every place has four seasons, but we have that here.

I’ve learned to really be seasonal in my approach. My energy in the summer is different than my energy in the fall is different than my energy in winter is different than my energy in spring. And I encourage you all to really tap into that for yourselves as well. How are you in summer versus winter? And what changes do you need to make or modifications do you need to make so that your body stays in a natural state? I enjoy being warm. Cold is hard for me so winter here is hard. It’s really, really challenging. And I learned to layer. I learned that clothing really matters. Wool matters. I wear lots of layers of wool pretty much since it gets cold until it’s not cold anymore, I have a layer of wool on my skin. And that makes a massive, massive difference. What I’m eating during wintertime, in particular, are warm foods because my body is cold. And my body gets anxious when I’m cold.

There’s something that I studied, which is pretty cool. It’s an ancient science and an ancient practice really. I went to India a few years ago, and I went through my yoga teacher training back in 2007. When I did that and I was reading all these books around yoga philosophy and really understanding the mind. The purpose of yoga is to achieve mastery over the mind. It’s not to contort yourself into these shapes, although the shapes help you achieve the mastery of the mind. So when I went through all that, I just had this pact I made with myself that I would go to India. I didn’t know when I would go to India or how that trip would come into being. It was like a seed. I planted the seed, and about 10 years later, the wish came true. The opportunity presented itself, and I walked through the door and I said I’m going to go on that trip.

I had the opportunity to study something called Ayurveda. There are ayurvedic doctors. This is a form of medicine, and it’s a very natural form of medicine with the usage of herbs, being intelligent about what you eat, and understanding your body constitution. In Ayurveda, there are three body types: vata, pitta, and kapha. You can just dig into this if anyone’s interested. You can look around and see what you find here. There are these assessments you can take. You can answer questions and get a better read on what your constitution is. We all are a mix of all three, but you’ll have one that’s dominant and one that’s a clear secondary. 

For me, I’m vata pitta. Vata is very airy. We are predisposed to being cold. My husband’s pitta so he’s predisposed to being hot. So you can imagine that we battle over the thermostat. He wants it to be on the colder side and I’m making it warmer. If you know that your body is predisposed to certain things, then you need to be prepared. 

If my body gets too cold and I’m not prepared through the foods that I’m eating, through being mindful of me waking up first thing, I shouldn’t drink an ice-cold glass of water ever first thing. It’s going to throw me out of alignment. I’m going to just head into a place I don’t need to be, which is anxiety which is just too cold. I start just getting too amped up, and I’m not grounded. I’m kind of floating, and not in a way that’s super peaceful blissful. I’m just too out there. And I need to come back to this place of groundedness. So for me, understanding this, me going to India, studying with an ayurvedic teacher, working with ayurvedic doctors there, and staying at this really amazing Ayurveda retreat center in a town called Gokarna, which is just out of this world. I’ll never forget it. It was one of those incredible experiences. I understand now what I need to do.

So when I wake up, my go-to ritual is I fill my kettle with water, turn on the stove, and then I pour myself two cups. One, warm water. It’s hot water when it goes into the cup. I wait so it cools off a little bit and I put lemon in there. And then I have my second cup and I fill that with my favorite jasmine green tea. And then of course with my lemon. One of my clients makes this really cool chai concoction. She’s just this herbalist and she gives me these batches of what she makes. So I stir a little bit of that in there and it just is this magical blend, and it gets me going on the right foot. My body starts really waking up. I’m moving. Things are really good, and I feel connected. I feel grounded because I haven’t gone to that ice-cold thing.

You all can study that. You can really look at how your body is designed. Our body wants to feel good. We want to feel healthy, but things are set up right now that you forget all that. And if you’re on your computer all day, your cortisol levels get jacked up. You’re looking at this screen, your eyes are getting fatigued, and you’re out of touch with nature because you’re just looking at these machines. 

I’m grateful for all my technology, but I’m not living my life in technology because that’s not where I want to live my life. I want to live my life out there, and then I come to tech to connect with people. Like connecting with you today, Ashley, knowing this podcast is going to go out and serve people. I will connect on social media with my people, but I’m doing that from a place of wellness. I’m doing that from a place of understanding how I need to take care of myself every day with the moves I need to make with what I’m drinking, what I’m eating, and then how I move through nature.

You all can really look around and check on your own energy levels that each season you might decide that in the wintertime, in particular, you want to bring more fire into your life to warm you up. Maybe in the fall, you’re looking around—where I live, the leaves change colors. You might tap in at that point, what kind of transformation are you undergoing at that point? What are you shedding? What leaves are dropping for you? 

And can you come into that place of faith knowing that winter is coming, but you’re strong enough to handle winter? Not just handle it, but really enjoy it. What do you need to do to prepare for each season? And then can you take a page from the playbook of trees, if you will, and say yeah, I know. And then my leaves are going to grow again. And then they’ll be green again. And then eventually they’ll fall again. The leaves will drop or they’ll change colors. I just think it’s so interesting. The whole thing is so interesting.

This pandemic has given me an opportunity, as I mentioned, I never thought I’d be a gardener ever. You have no idea. Before this interview, Ashley, I went to my local hardware store and made the first-ever purchase. Do you want to know what I bought?

 

[00:45:08] Ashley James: What’d you buy?

 

[00:45:09] Jenny Fenig: A chainsaw.

 

[00:45:13] Ashley James: Electric or gas?

 

[00:45:17] Jenny Fenig: I went with the gas. I have an electric lawnmower, weed whacker, leaf blower, but they explained to me that I really need the gas to do the work that needs to be done. I think it looks like we’re going to be cutting our own firewood. I never thought ever. But as I was building out this one particular place of my land with this garden, the tools that I had weren’t adequate enough to get through this particular—it’s like this vine thing. We have these vines on the property that kind of wrap around trees and hurt the trees. There’s this one spot, this has to go and my tools aren’t enough. They’re not adequate. Sure, I could go hire someone to do it, but it’s really cool.

You come into your power, I do anyway. When I say I can do that. I can do that. I felt a sense of pride. There are all guys helping me in that section of the store, but I’m like yep, first-ever chainsaw purchase. They were so excited for me, and I’m so excited for myself to come in and say we can do that. We can do that. When the temperature, when the weather is nice to be able to do this, I feel like such a responsibility to the land, and something I want to teach my kids how to take care of that. How to take care of things. How to really work with this land. 

Even before the pandemic, we were homeschooling, and we’ll continue on that path. This is something I want us all to learn together, how do we do this? Once you know how to do a lot of these things, I know for me, I feel proud. I feel like, hey, I could get some help with this, and there’s nothing wrong with getting help. But gosh, what a wonderful feeling to know the things that you can do.

 

[00:47:05] Ashley James: Brilliant. Now one of your claims to fame is your ability to homeschool, manage your business, manage your household, and just be so busy juggling everything. Many people are overwhelmed right now. It’s a new experience for them homeschooling in the light of the COVID lockdown. Many parents have chosen not to send their kids back to school because of the restrictions and requirements. But instead of choosing to homeschool, many people work from home now like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. They’re keeping a lot of their staff at home. So it’s a new dynamic for many Americans, Canadians, and people around the world. 

A new dynamic where many families are working from home and homeschooling at the same time. And they’re not used to juggling all these things, or they’re planning on it because it’s still the summertime. They’re planning on it. And even for those who are going back to school, many districts are only doing two days a week. So for public school, they’re still going to be home for three school days. And if parents are home with them, potentially working from home, then it’s just a whole new dynamic. Can you walk us through and teach us how we can be more effective at getting all this done? I think you talk about how you can get more done by doing less. What are some ways that you can really prepare the listeners who are stepping into a whole new routine, a whole new reality?

 

[00:49:04] Jenny Fenig: Yeah. I really like talking about this. Thank you. Well what we talked about obviously understanding the moon in particular and just what’s happening out in nature, that’s tremendously helpful. That just becomes your way of living. The more that you practice that, the more you’ll understand. You’ll understand, and it makes your life so much simpler. It really, really does. All right. So there’s that.

The other things that I practice are what I call time chunking and task batching. So you become so intelligent and efficient with your moves and your time. I’ve always been pretty strong with time. It was interesting. Even in those first New York City jobs I had, I was like 22. My managers must have seen my ability to do this because myself and this other colleague of mine, she was also about 22, 23, I’d say. We were tapped to lead a time management training for the entire organization. I looked back at that, we were young, but we had something going on. 

I think some of that is probably connected to the deaths that I experienced at such a young age because I knew right away—time is not guaranteed. It’s not. It’s not. Every day is an absolute gift, so don’t squander it. Don’t squander it. This is going to require you to be super disciplined to have very strong boundaries to know how to say no, not now, or let’s look to do that in a different way. You really want to understand, if someone’s asking you to do something, what that looks like. Because I think too many people just give their time away, and it’s often because they’re afraid of being perceived as mean or rude if they say no, ask for things to be a bit different, can we do it next week, or whatever. I think some people really like that word busy. I actually don’t consider myself busy. I don’t use that word. I don’t believe that is something that we have to subscribe to. I think being busy makes a lot of people sick, really.

 

[00:51:18] Ashley James: Well, absolutely. If we’re just talking about the stress response, the idea of busy is creating the autonomic nervous system fight or flight. Being in the sympathetic nervous system response of fight or flight, which turns off the healing mode in the body. If the story you tell yourself is I’m busy, I’m busy, I’m busy, then you’re triggering fight or flight. And that is a very unhealthy state to be in chronically.

 

[00:51:47] Jenny Fenig: Chronically, absolutely. I think it’s so interesting, especially for people who are trying to figure out if they’re in a reinvention right now. Which I know many people are that COVID has given people the opportunity to go is this what I really want? When my regular life is stripped away, all the things that I typically did, is my work—is this good? Is this what I want? Is this framework for this working? What’s interesting is you can look back at your life and go wait, I’ve always been fascinated by this particular thing. What was that through line? What’s the through-line?

So for me, I was always stressed growing up. I remember feeling this immense pressure. In college, I took a stress management class. A whole semester, I took a stress management class because I wanted to understand. I mean, no one had taught me that in high school. There was no class that was like okay kids, let’s help you all be less stressed. It was like be stressed. Join the club, everyone’s stressed. No. So I took a class in college. I wanted to understand what stress really is and how to work with it. It’s the number one cause of death. I mean, it really is. It leads to so many issues. We don’t have to subscribe to it. It’s not just something that is a given because we’re human. We can reclaim being versus doing, and then when we do things, that those can be intelligent actions.

What you can look at is how you can organize your day, your week, again, working with the lunar cycle if you’re going to play with that, so that you’re getting the maximum results from your efforts. And that you don’t do it maybe in the way that you used to do it. So I had to really retrain myself when I left my last corporate job. Once I set out on my own and became an entrepreneur without even knowing that that was what I was going to do when I quit that last job, I applied for other jobs and nothing was exciting. I was like I don’t want to do any of these things. Oh no. 

And then I just discovered coaching and just kept okay, I’m going to stay on this path. And then before I knew it, I had a business, and here we are all these years later. I had to train myself to do it differently. It was not required. There was no rule that said I had to sit at a desk Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM or beyond. There was no rule that said that, but at first, I thought I would be in trouble. I mean it sounds silly to say it, but I really was like who’s going to come? Who’s going to knock on my door to see that I’m not here. That I’m at a yoga class at 11:00 AM on a Wednesday. 

You know what was so interesting, there were other people at the yoga class at 11:00 AM on a Wednesday. And I’m going, oh my gosh. It’s not just me. Well, okay. What do they do for work? And I just saw that I wanted to have a different kind of existence where I could know my natural creation times or my mind was really sharp when my body had a lot of energy. And I could provide a tremendous amount of value in terms of writing, speaking, working with clients, and strategizing. It didn’t need to be all day because my body really isn’t designed for that. My mind isn’t designed for that, and I have a family. I have three kids. I can’t do all the things I need to do with that old framework, with that old dynamic.

Listen, I know a lot of people are still in that space where that’s the rule, that’s the protocol. You are responsible for being on the computer or being at this physical location from this time to this time. I would simply challenge you or encourage you to be willing to shake things up a bit and look at how you can look at productivity and see. Okay, if I were to batch all my meetings on one particular day, batch my writing on my mornings on these days, or my client work on these days. 

Now, this might be really provocative to some people and make you nervous to even consider doing this or having a conversation with someone who might be more senior to you that you need to get this through, but there’s plenty of organizations that have done this with extraordinary results. There are places especially abroad, I’ve seen studies where they just decided that people would work Monday through Thursday, not Monday through Friday. And productivity went up through the roof. Efficiency went through the roof because you weren’t just wasting your time going, well, I can’t leave before this time. So I might as well just shoot the breeze, you know what I’m saying?

This is about reclaiming our time and reclaiming that energy. This is how I homeschool. I’m very fortunate my husband and I both work from home. We have relatively flexible schedules. I get to decide when my client calls are, when these group calls are, when I’m going to do a podcast interview, and then when I’m focused on the children, and when I might be working with my daughter on something. My boys are at an age where we’ve been working with tutors in the last few years. Pre-COVID we’d have tutors coming into the home. Right now, we’re going to have a pause on that and we’re going to do online classes and tutors. 

We’ll just schedule things in a way that everyone gets what they need, but even within their schooling, it’s not 9:00 AM to blah blah they’re in classes back to back to back. I don’t believe in that. We need space. We need space to creatively come up with ideas to go outside and work in the garden. To go on a hike, bring your art supplies, and create something that you see. To be bored. The best ideas come through boredom. We try so hard to avoid boredom like it’s this horrible thing. That we’re a bad parent if our kids are bored. That’s really going to come up with a great idea. We don’t need to over-schedule them to the point where they don’t even know how to think.

As you all are considering how you’re going to move forward, keep that all into account. Again, it goes against the systems that we thought were unbreakable, but they’ve all broken.

 

[00:58:18] Ashley James: No kidding.

 

[00:58:20] Jenny Fenig: They’ve all broken. And I say that with love but with all certainty because I know for many people, you’re still in this state of it’s hard and you might be grieving. I’ve been homeschooling for a few years now so I’m not freaked out. I’m sad that we are where we are. It’s horrible, it makes me mad, and all the things. I think we should feel our feelings. I feel for educators, I feel for schools, and I feel for administrators. I mean this is not fun, and there’s no playbook really. 

The last time we had a global pandemic was more than 100 years ago, and the world looked very different at that point. So here we are, luckily we have more technology that can support us. But I would suggest—especially for those of you who are looking into homeschooling, how distance learning is going to look, or what you want to do—to be really mindful of what system you want to be a part of. Because whatever system you’re choosing, you’re choosing for your child as well. They are experiencing the energy of that system.

I’m very grateful for homeschooling because we get to design our own system, really. We have the blessing of our local school district. We submit end of year reports. We submit a plan at the beginning of the school year to say here’s where we’re going, and we have very supportive public school principals and superintendents who have our back every year because they know that we have our heart in the right place with what we’re doing, with what’s best for our kids, and the way that we see it. And they’re learning the things that they need to learn.

I actually just did a workshop on this a few days ago called charting your path as a homeschooler. I just want to make sure everyone knows too, distance learning is not homeschooling. It’s not. It’s not, okay. You are still in that system. If you like distance learning and it’s working well, then do it. But that’s not homeschooling. Homeschooling is when you unenroll your child from that school and you really set out on a different path. You have a lot more flexibility, a lot more freedom. Your kids aren’t going to be absent if you decide to go on a trip. And they’re not going to be logging in at a certain time. It’s a whole different deal. I’m very grateful for it. It’s not for everybody, but it’s for more people than people might think. I could talk about it all day. 

I feel like where we are now as a society is one where, again, you have an opportunity to choose the system that you’re going to be operating in. And make sure that you can be healthy within the system. For me, Ashley, in that corporate existence—and this again was in the late ‘90s almost all the way through the 2000s. I quit that last corporate job in November 2007. I realized that system was making me sick, and I remember being so afraid to leave because well, I get health care. My husband and I got health insurance through my job because, at that point, he was freelance in his work. 

We got health insurance through my job, but I remember that small still voice within was saying, but Jenny, you’re getting sick so you can keep your health insurance. And it was just this whole thing of this is backward. This is so twisted. So I had to get that courage up to quit my job. I went on COBRA for 18 months as long as we could, then we found private insurance. We were so blessed and grateful. My husband ended up getting a full-time position, and so we do have health insurance through his company now. The way his company is designed, he’s not getting sick by working there. I’m not getting sick doing the work I’m doing. My work keeps me healthy because my work keeps me honest.

 

[01:02:17] Ashley James: Beautiful. Do you have any other lessons, homework, or techniques that you’d like to teach those who are stepping into this new world?

 

[01:02:34] Jenny Fenig: Yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. I’ve loved having this conversation. It’s been really special. As much as you can, remember that you’re breathing. This is another thing that we take for granted and we forget. Breathing, it’s the first thing we do when we’re born. We take that breath, and ah, rejoice. And then the last thing we’re going to do as we exit the body is we will take that final breath. So it’s a profound process—breathing. 

For many people, and I know for me too before I discovered conscious breathing. In the yogic realm, it’s called pranayama. Prana is that life force energy. All right, so prana. We have this life force energy moving through our body, moving through our veins, our blood. It just keeps everything just beautifully connected. Oh my goodness. We often move through life—if you’re unconscious of it—and you’re in that whole busy trap, you’re just eating fast food on the go, you’re constantly out of touch with nature and really with your truth, and you’ve said yes to lots of things that you’re like, ugh, I don’t even want to do this but I have to do it. You’re in the shoulds and the obligatory stuff. That we’ve come out of connection with our own breath, and then you’re often breathing shallow. So it’s just from that upper lung capacity. You’re just breathing to the heart and up, but the lungs and the body can hold so much more.

If you were to take some time and really sit with yourself, and we could do it right now. We could just breathe very deeply together, and you can count your breaths. You can count just the beats of the breath. We could play right now and simply come into this breathing exercise where we are mindfully inhaling, and just breathing as full as you can on the inhale. And then going as high up as you can in the body. Then as you exhale, slow methodical trusting that exhale. And then as you inhale the next time, feel that you’re pulling the inhale up from the core of the earth just bringing it all the way up the body, all the way up to the body, and can you come to the top of your head, the crown of your head. And as you exhale down from the crown of your head, putting that breath back into the earth.

You’re recycling the breath over and over again, remembering that the earth gives us so much. I mean so much. It gives us food, it gives us sustenance, it gives us air to breathe, oxygen. So bring yourself into that place of just conscious breathing, especially if you find yourself getting stressed or anxious. Can you come to that place of breathwork, and it’s breathwork like there’s actual work involved in the breath, instead of that just unconscious, I don’t even know. I’m shallow breathing. You’ll find yourself feeling a lot of pressure and a lot of tension, which let’s be real, even the most experienced those of us are with breathing, with exercise, or mindfulness techniques—coronavirus COVID will test us all. This is the work. This is really the thing that we’re meant to see how deep our practices are, and where we still have work to do, blind spots, or where we might be falling in certain holes.

Practice isn’t something that we’re here to become perfect at. It’s something that we just show up for every day. So whether it’s you when you go for your run, you get on your yoga mat, you just sit outside and look at nature, or you do this deep breathwork. They’re all the other things that you do. You play tennis, you’re into baseball, or you’re into all the wonderful things that we can do with our bodies. It’s knowing that we can come into this place of that quiet, and you can access that small still voice within, and just breathe. That’s it. 

If it’s newer to you, there are apps you can get into. There’s that Insight Timer app. I use that for years. I have that on my phone. I’m a Peloton owner and user. I have the Peloton app on my phone. And often, if I’m preparing for—let’s say I’m going to lead a training for clients, I’m going to give a presentation, I will turn on meditation, even though I know how to meditate. I lead meditations, but it’s really nice for someone to tell me what to do. I like to be told what to do sometimes and to be guided through an experience. 

So I’ll just open up the app, whatever app you want. There are so many that are available to you these days, and you can just pick one. If you have three minutes, it’ll be 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 30 minutes and beyond, and you can tune in and receive. Just tune in and receive. Allow yourself to be in that moment. Don’t worry about what just happened or what you’ve got next. Just come into that place of, I’m taking five minutes. I am not going to feel guilty for taking these five minutes, and I’m going to breathe. That’s it. 

And if it’s a guided meditation, you’ll listen to the words that are being spoken. You’ll listen to maybe the music or the sounds of nature that might be on that meditation track, and you’ll go where you go. You’ll go where you go. And you might find that you’ll get the answer to something that you’ve been struggling with. Some kind of feeling will come over your body. You’ll get what I call an intuitive hit, and you’ll realize, oh my goodness. That’s it. I’m going to go call that person later, I’m going to go sign up for that thing, or I’m going to go make that decision.

It comes to you in those moments of stillness, and then your job is to then respond. To do something with it. That’s something that I know that you all will get so much from just that conscious breath and that coming back to that thing that is so special. Talk to anybody who is having trouble breathing, or has some kind of illness where their breathing is affected. They will tell you how they wish it could be different. So when we have this gift, use it. Really use it. And take note of how it allows you to show up differently for the important people in your life. I think this is an opportunity for all of us to really honor the relationships that we have.

We are living in a very hard time. There are lots of challenges now, and I know that many people are experiencing hard things at home, in their work, or with people in their lives. Maybe you can’t see the important people in your life right now, which is heartbreaking. Totally, totally heartbreaking. But can you come into this place of stillness so that as you show up for the relationships, you can show up from a place of groundedness, kindness, and compassion? Even though you might see some craziness happening on social media. Anytime you go there it’s loaded. You’re like, okay. Am I ready for this?

So we’ve got to come back. We have to do our own work. And then if you have kids, can you teach them how to do this stuff? Can you model it? But the way you teach is to do it. It’s to be it. Can you show it to your partner? Can you embody this with the important people in your life? It’s such a simple tool, but so few people actually use it. And if you were to use it, it would change your life.

 

[01:11:06] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insights. Another website of yours is magicmakerscoach.com, and you have a Magic Maker’s Coach Certification. What’s that all about?

 

[01:11:27] Jenny Fenig: Yeah. I’m really passionate about serving women, coaches, therapists, wellness professionals, fitness professionals, and those who might have come from that corporate background like I am. Women who know that they’re here to guide their people to their greatest potential. They do that through transformative coaching and really working with a lot of the concepts that we talked about today. It’s listening skills, it’s understanding energy, it’s understanding how to work with the lunar cycle, understanding how to help your clients move through energetic blocks, and just old patterns that aren’t healthy or sustainable. Really look for old stories that they’ve outgrown and aren’t serving them and aren’t serving this beautiful life that they’ve been blessed with.

Once I became a coach all those years ago and then set out on my path to create this business and help people, I then realized there was a huge gap in the market for a coach certification that blended up how to honor the craft of coaching in this particular style of coaching. Which is very much about working with your intuition, your body, and energy, and then how to have a great business doing this? How to have an online business doing this? And that’s what our coach certification is dedicated to. 

I feel so grateful that especially in these days, often women were in careers that were really important and valuable, but often they might get to a point where they have to choose. If they decided to become mothers or have families, that it became a real sense of tension and stress because that old system meant okay well you’re in this office, then your kids are over here, and then you’re dealing with who’s with them after school. If you really want to go far in your career, it can come at odds with the desire you might have to spend time with your family. Or you might be in a career that is so valuable, but for some silly reason, it’s not valuable from a financial compensation perspective. So that has also held women back.

We’re in a new era now. Online has very much put us on different terrain. Women have an opportunity to earn really well, and to do incredible things with these gifts and talents that they might have used again in that corporate space. What was so interesting, Ashley, I didn’t even know what coaching was really. I had sports coaches growing up, but once I discovered it after my yoga teacher training, it was like a huge light bulb went on. I said I’ve been doing this my whole life. I didn’t know this was a job. This is the part that I liked most about all my jobs. The other things I had to do I didn’t enjoy, but I just thought that’s how it was.

So once I discovered that coaching was this wonderful way to use these gifts and talents that I have, and so many women are naturally blessed with this. And then once they really are given the tools, the guidance, the training, and the community to really honor the craft and come forward with confidence as they work with their clients, and then understand how to create an incredible business. Mostly have it online, if that’s their desire. That’s the way I do it in my business. They don’t have to choose between motherhood and a lucrative career. It can be something that they can really integrate, and it can evolve with them. It can evolve with their family. It can evolve with the seasons as we talked about.

That’s why we’ve created Magic Makers Coach Certification. I’m really proud of the work that we do. And if this calls out to anyone tuning in, I’d love for you to check it out and submit an application if you feel called.

 

[01:15:29] Ashley James: Wonderful. In closing, I’d like you to give us some homework. I know you told us before to breathe, pay attention to the lunar cycles. What kind of homework can you give us? Perhaps homework that would help people to better tap into their life purpose, tap into why they’re here and feel purposeful. Some people are feeling a little untethered right now. So what kind of homework can help to empower us?

 

[01:16:02] Jenny Fenig: Yeah, oh my goodness. That’s such a great question. Really to come into that place of purpose. If possible, and it should be because we’re in summer. It’s warm, in most places. If you’re in the southern hemisphere, I know you’re in a different season, but play with me on this. Go walk outside barefoot.

 

[01:16:26] Ashley James: Yes.

 

[01:16:30] Jenny Fenig: So simple, but goodness, it gets you back into that place of, oh, this is how my feet feel on grass, on the sand, or even on concrete. Just the warmth from the sun that’s being pulled up. Or maybe if you can, go jump in some water. Get in a pool. Go to a lake. Go to an ocean. As much as you can connect and with nature—the natural elements: fire, water, air, and earth—the more you are going to feel good in your body. And it feels good to feel good. You are allowed to feel good. That right there could be this monumental breakthrough for some of you. Oh, I’m allowed to feel good more often than not, right? What would happen if you felt good more than you do right now? What would happen?

I also encourage you to get honest with yourself about what you’re putting in your body—when it comes to your thoughts, when it comes to what you’re looking at. Your digital diet. Do you need to unfollow some people on social media? Do you need to scroll less? Do you need to be more intentional about the information that you’re taking in? Again, not to go into a bubble. I believe in being informed. And I think now, more than ever, we need to keep our eyes open about what’s happening in the world, but be really mindful of what you’re subjecting yourself to. Just know maybe reading things is better than watching videos for you because you’re way too impacted by some of the scenes. I have subscriptions to certain publications that keep me informed.

Also, look at what your body is telling you about what is good for you and what’s not. Is there something that you are consuming right now that really is toxic for you? A few years ago, I received a strong message from that small still voice within, that it was time for me to let go of alcohol and not drink anymore. If you would have known me as a teenager, Ashley, or during my collegiate career, you would have not believed that I would one day not drink because that was just so part of my identity. That’s what I thought you did to have a good time. 

My body made it very clear as I had been those years of practicing yoga, having my children, and I wanted a natural birth with them. I did that with two out of the three. My middle child was breech, and so I had a c-section with him. So I’ve had all these different experiences with my body. I’ve come to appreciate her in ways that I never did before. I look back and I know I was horrible to her for many years with how I treated her, what I said to her, and what I put inside of her. I don’t do that anymore. I’m not perfect, but each day, I commit to being more in tune with what she needs in terms of fuel sources. So we need this fuel to go all the places we’re meant to go in this life, help the people we’re meant to help, and be there for our family. Be here as long as we can in vitality with our people.

In my case, I realized that alcohol just didn’t have a role for me anymore. It couldn’t be a character in my movie any longer. I was ready to move into a new chapter, so I let it go. For other people, they can have it. But there are others who can’t eat gluten, they can’t have sugar, or they can’t have whatever. The certain people in your life, they’re just holding you back. This requires a lot of discipline, a tremendous amount of honesty, and some grief of oh my goodness, this thing that I’ve known for so long—or this person I’ve known for so long—we just can’t do this thing anymore. 

I encourage you to have those honest conversations with yourself and just get curious about what might be on the other side. Just be curious. Sometimes you can make a decision, and it might be well let me just try this for a month or a lunar cycle. We play with that, or a season, and just see. Run experiments. Run more experiments. Be curious. When you find, you know what, my life is better. My body feels better without this or with this, then run with that until it doesn’t make sense anymore. And then you’ll redesign something from there.

 

[01:21:24] Ashley James: Alcohol, it’s an interesting thing. We go to alcohol, sugar. There are over-the-counter things like sugar and dairy. The very stereotypical woman sitting with a pint of ice cream crying or something like that. When COVID first came about—and I saw this in our grocery stores—were completely sold out of baking goods, materials for baking. All the baker’s yeast was gone. All the flour and the sugar. People just sat at home, baked, and ate their feelings. I get it. I only stock healthy food in the house, but I definitely caught myself eating my feelings in the first few months of this crazy year. Alcohol is something that I cut out of my life really young.

I was a bartender when I was 19 because, in Canada, the drinking age could be 18 or 19, depending on what province. As a bartender, I was great as a bartender. I’m such an extrovert. I love people, and I love talking to people. It was fun. I didn’t think I’m serving people poison. At 19, I’m having fun. After a season of babysitting drunk people, it just turned me off so much. I just stopped drinking. I just didn’t like it. I don’t like feeling out of control. It didn’t give me any pleasure, but I watched my parents growing up. My mom would come home and take the vodka out of the freezer and have a shot just to calm her nerves. And then a few hours later, my dad would come home and they’d split a bottle of wine. They’d sit together at the dinner table, and they’d drink their wine.

Sometimes, on special occasions, they’d put a little wine in a glass and fill it with water. They thought it was fun, they’re sharing it with me. It became their way of de-stressing, just grounding or unwinding from the day. In looking at physiology, we know that the moment you drink even one serving of alcohol, your body goes into a state of stress for 24 hours. You can actually measure your heart rate variability, which is the most accurate indicator of stress. And that your heart rate variability becomes very poor for 24 hours after drinking even just one serving of alcohol. 

If it’s doing that to us, then it is affecting the depth of sleep, the depth of being able to regenerate your body through sleep. And then the next day, psychologically, it changes the brain chemistry so we’re more narcissistic. We’re less able to be empathetic. We actually have a harder time with emotional quotient or emotional intelligence being able to delay gratification. So we become people who need more instant gratification. This is all from one glass of wine.

 

[01:24:42] Jenny Fenig: One glass, yeah.

 

[01:24:43] Ashley James: Because now we are less likely to delay gratification, we would tend to then have another one. And we would tend to have another the next night, and the next night. It becomes a habit, and then we live a story. The story is I need this to unwind, or I deserve this to just have a break. This is going to make me feel good. Well, I can say that about sugar. I can say that about ice cream, right? We can say that about a lot of things that are over the counter, right? This is going to make me feel good. 

Now you can say that about street drugs too, but most people who are listening are not currently choosing street drugs to relax at the end of a stressful day. But most people who are even very health-conscious do find that they have their—I don’t want to call them vices, but they have—self-medication. We have to look at it, not from a point of guilt and shame because that then just perpetuates the vicious cycle, but to break out of the vicious cycle and go, what? So what are my deeper needs? If I’m trying to fulfill a need with alcohol, with sugar, with flour, or with dairy, if there’s something that is ultimately not healthy for me, but I’m using it to kind of band-aid a need, what’s that deeper need and how can I serve it in a healthier way? How can I get to the root cause? 

I used to work with a woman who was into personal growth and development and yet she couldn’t quit smoking until she finally realized why she couldn’t quit smoking. When she ever did quit smoking for periods of time, she would never take a break. She would work at her desk. She owned her own business, and she’d work out her desk from morning until night, never once getting up to stretch. Just never eating. Just really never taking care of herself. And then she would go downhill very quickly. But smoking, she caught herself and realized that it made her get off her desk, go to the balcony, take between 5 and 15 minutes and just relax, and breathe. Even though it’s breathing in a cigarette it’s still breathing

 

[01:27:05] Jenny Fenig: Breathing in nicotine, yeah.

 

[01:27:07] Ashley James: And then she would maybe grab a drink and grab a bite. And then she’d go back to the desk, and she was just as effective at her work because there comes a point when you push yourself so hard that you don’t have efficiency, as you talked about. But she used cigarettes as a way of mandating breaks. In order to successfully quit—and she did eventually—she implemented mandatory breaks without cigarettes. So she’d go outside and just breathe air without the cigarettes. She’d go for a walk, or she’d just do something else to stand up, stretch, walk around, get a glass of water, and take mandatory breaks. And then the deeper need that was being met by the cigarettes as a Band-Aid was no longer there.

I just think that if we can choose to, like you said, do a lunar cycle with no alcohol in the house, with no alcohol in your life. And instead, ask yourself what’s this deeper need? If what you really need is something to relax and de-stress, knowing that alcohol temporarily makes you kind of feel out of it and disconnected, we think it’s relaxing us, but it’s actually stressing our body more for 24 hours. And if we can get outside, like you said, and do grounding or earthing—and I have some great—I was about to say great documentaries. 

I do have a great documentary actually on that linked in the Learn True Health Facebook group under announcements. There’s an amazing documentary that we have uploaded into our Facebook group that we got permission to upload. But I have a few episodes on earthing and grounding. The importance of it, and that there are 26 studies that prove that by getting out in nature and putting your feet on the ground, or using a grounding mat if you live in a condo and you have no access to grass. By releasing those excess electrons, it decreases stress in the body, and it decreases inflammation in the body. Even people with MS and other autoimmune disorders that are triggered by inflammation see great success.

I love your very powerful and doable advice of breathing, of tuning into yourself, and of walking as much as you can out in nature—barefoot so that you can earth and ground. And then try cutting out alcohol, or try taking what’s in your diet that that little voice that you talked about, that wise but quiet voice inside you that knows that it really is time to stop drinking the coffee and switch to green tea. Switch to nut-based milk instead of cow milk because it’s affecting your immune system. Or give up the alcohol for some kombucha. Or some herbal tea.

 

[01:30:06] Jenny Fenig: Oh my gosh, I love kombucha.

 

[01:30:07] Ashley James: Right, so good. It’s so good

 

[01:30:09] Jenny Fenig: Oh, yeah. I have one on my desk right now. Jalapeño-kiwi-cucumber blend.

 

[01:30:14] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

 

[01:30:14] Jenny Fenig: I just recently discovered that one. It’s that Health-Ade kombucha brand and they have a jalapeño-kiwi-cucumber. Those of you who might experiment with no alcohol or you love kombucha, I highly recommend that variety.

 

[01:30:27] Ashley James: Yeah, switch to kombucha.

 

[01:30:30] Jenny Fenig: That jalapeño has that little kick. You still want the kick in your life, that’s the thing. You thought alcohol gave you the kick, but you can get kicks in other ways.

 

[01:30:37] Ashley James: Absolutely. I go to the farmer’s market and there’s a local company. They fill up my big glass bottle with it. They have the most delicious strawberry one. They also have a pineapple one, and a ginger one. I love it. My husband’s addicted to the cayenne.

 

[01:30:56] Jenny Fenig: Cayenne pepper? Cayenne cleanse?

 

[01:30:58] Ashley James: Yeah. I think it’s the cayenne and ginger or something. There are so many out there. There are just fun things to swap out. But at the root of it, I want us to just ask ourselves, is this serving me? Is this really serving me on a deeper level? Or is this masking something? Is this really fulfilling a need? Or is this just masking some symptoms? If you had a headache and you just take Advil, you’re not really serving yourself in the long run because that headache is your body trying to say something.

 

[01:31:35] Jenny Fenig: Exactly.

 

[01:31:36] Ashley James: I think your life is going to express in different ways to show you that there’s some deep healing you can do, but you have to stop masking things. I don’t think we can truly do deep healing if we’re drinking alcohol every day.

 

[01:31:50] Jenny Fenig: Totally. That’s the thing is we’ve been fed a narrative that we aren’t strong enough to feel things. So the way through that is through drugs, through some kind of numbing technique, or some kind of numbing substance. Alcohol numbs you. I experimented with plenty of drugs growing up. I numbed out from feeling things, from feeling stuff that felt very, very hard to feel. 

The same thing when I went through childbirth, and I did so much study. I actually want to feel it. It’s okay, every woman can decide what’s right for her, but I wanted to feel the contractions. I wanted to feel the birth happening. I trusted my body. I didn’t need to numb out on that. You reclaim your power when you know that you can feel things. There are people who can help you feel things. I’ve worked with plenty of healers, therapists, and all the things. But gosh, there is liberation on the other side of feeling that stuff and knowing that it won’t kill you. It’s just going to make you stronger. You’re going to be reminded about who you are, and it will prepare you for all the other journeys you’re going to take in your life.

 

[01:33:12] Ashley James: Beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. It has been such a pleasure to have this conversation with you, Jenny. I look forward to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. We’re all seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but I look forward to implementing everything that we learned here today and possibly having you back on the show to see how things are progressing and have you come to share more with us.

 

[01:33:41] Jenny Fenig: That would be lovely. Thank you so much. It’s been a really, really powerful conversation. I send so much love and courage to everyone. We’re really creating the future today. We’re living it, and we’re living in a really fascinating time. I know it’s hard, but I also keep reminding myself when I say it to others, what a fascinating time to be alive. We could have chosen different times, you know what I mean? And we’re here now. Okay. Let’s show up, and let’s just do our best. Let’s keep choosing health. Let’s keep choosing the healthy path as best we can.

 

[01:34:24] Ashley James: An ancient Chinese proverb, “May you live in interesting times.” And that can be taken many ways. I love that. Let’s just keep choosing health and keep choosing the healthy path no matter what. Thank you so much, Jenny. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show.

 

[01:34:40] Jenny Fenig: Thank you.

 

[01:34:42] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Jenny Fenig. Please check out IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition by going to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learnturehealth.com/coach, sign up for a free module, and see if it’s right for you. See if taking the Institute for Integrative Nutrition’s health coach training program is the path that you want to take either for your own personal growth to help yourself, your family, or your friends, or adding tools to your tool belt, or having a career. This is the career that you can do from home. Now is the time to invest in our own education and experience. Now is the time to dive into personal growth.

I don’t want to say we could turn these lemons into lemonade, but sugar-free lemonade. We can take the hand we’ve been dealt right now, and we can turn it around and figure out how we can gain the most benefit. If you have to be at home right now, then find ways of enriching your life, enriching your experiences. Things like doing online school. It’s a fantastic way to spend your time to grow and to learn. If your kids are doing school from home, why not you as well?

So check out IIN. And you know what, I’ve heard a lot of parents have shared the IIN course with their whole family. My husband watched some of the videos and some of the training modules with me and really enjoyed it. I know that older kids often love learning from it as well. It’s something that you can share with your children and maybe make it part of your homeschooling. So go to iin.com, check it out, and give them a call. Make sure you mention Ashley James and Learn True Health podcast for the listener discount.

Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing these episodes. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group, and have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.

 

 

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Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

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www.mainstreammentalhealth.org

 

Ketamine and Mental Health

https://www.learntruehealth.com/ketamine-mental-health

 

 Highlights:

• What Mainstream Mental Health does
• DNA testing for psychotropic medicine
• What electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is
• What ketamine treatment is
• Dangers of using ketamine
• Different kinds of therapies
• Signs that someone is a psychopath

 

In this episode, Dr. John Huber shares with us how he is increasing mental health awareness by doing interviews and going on different shows. He shares various stories on how he has helped people deal with different mental health issues using different therapy techniques depending on what he thinks would be beneficial to the patient. He also shares that it is beneficial to go see a therapist once in a while so that the therapist has a record of how a patient is when he’s doing well and how he is when he’s not doing well.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another episode of the Learn True Health podcast. You’re going to love today’s interview. I thought it was a very interesting interview and I think this information needs to get out there. Thank you for sharing this episode with your friends and people you care about. We need to spread this information so that people can learn that there are more tools available to them to achieve mental health, emotional health and overall a happier life. We all deserve that.

I would love for you to join my new membership that I’ve spent the last four months creating. I’ve filmed a bunch of wonderful videos and every week I upload new videos teaching you how to cook in a way that heals your body and also cook and prepare food in a way that your kids will love, your spouse will love. It’s delicious food but it is whole foods and that there’s no processed foods, minimally processed and it tastes delicious. So if you want to learn some amazing recipes even if you could just improve your health by adding more nutrition in the form of food to your life please come join, come check out the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. I would love to see you there. The community so far is loving it. One of our members said that within five days of applying some of the things that she learned in the membership, her chronic headaches went away. That she noticed she had more energy and she was actually feeling like she could sleep at night. That’s just one of the members. We’ve had amazing results.

Naomi’s mom, after eating this way for six weeks, completely lost her arthritis. She no longer has arthritis. There’s so many things that you can do with food to heal your body. So if you would love to increase your health and even mental-emotional health is affected by food. There’s many reasons for that. Come join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen and learn how to use food as your medicine to eat delicious food that also heals your body. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. You can join as a monthly member. It’s $9.97 for a whole month. You can come check it out. You can join as an annual member and use the coupon code LTH for a big discount. I wanted to make this affordable so everyone could gain access to this information that I’ve cultivated, I brought together to help you to achieve true health. Come learn how to make delicious food that is also healing for your body, learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. I hope to see you there. Enjoy today’s interview.

 

[0:03:04] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 413. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have on the show with us Dr. John Huber. Oh my gosh. This is going to be such a fantastic interview. Dr. Huber’s website is mainstreammentalhealth.org. His mission is to increase awareness about mental health. I think that’s really important because, as you just said before we hit record, you can take all the vitamins and you could do the perfect diet and you could do the perfect exercise and do absolutely everything perfect for physical health but if you don’t have your mental-emotional health you don’t actually have health. So Dr. John’s mission is to get us healthy in a mental and emotional way. You have so many years of experience so I’m really looking forward to tapping into that brain of yours so we can all learn how to be healthier mentally and emotionally. Welcome to the show.

 

[0:04:12] Dr. John Huber: Well, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Anytime I can talk about mental health it just brings so much joy to my heart because we’ve got to do this. We’ve got to take this silent illness and make people realize that it’s not because you’re broken, it’s because you’re human. We need to be out there standing up for that.

 

[0:04:35] Ashley James: Yeah. I love that you said that. People feel often like there’s something wrong with them, that they’re incomplete, that they’re not whole and that they feel this guilt and shame when it’s totally human. It’s absolutely human. I was really amazed to hear in the history of Hawaii, which the ancient Polynesians took little canoes across the ocean to get to Hawaii. They’re pretty awesome people. But there was zero recorded history of mental illness until the Christian, Catholic people came in their ships and told them they should feel ashamed for being naked. But there was zero mental health issues. It was just amazing. After they changed their diet and took on religion and started to feel guilt and shame about their bodies and their culture, changed basically everything about what they were doing. All of a sudden then there was recorded events of schizophrenia. That it had never happened before in their culture and other mental illness.

So, it’s just really interesting that when we’re in perfect harmony with ourselves that were we’re really like going with the flow and everything’s good. But when we’re out of harmony with ourselves, I think mental illness is a symptom like our brain is saying, “Hey something’s wrong here. Something isn’t right.” So I just thought that was really interesting about the history of the Hawaiians. Now, you have many years of experience and you taught clinical forensic psychology. What was that like?

 

[0:06:18] Dr. John Huber: Well, I taught a lot of classes, but I’m a forensic psychologist, clinical forensic psychologist. I was lucky enough to be in a university that actually had brought in as I was becoming part of the faculty a forensic minor in psychology. Now, an undergraduate level that just kind of gives you some introductory stuff.  You don’t have a license or you’re not skilled to go out and be able to do work for a police department or anything like that, but it starts getting people’s you know fingers and feet wet in what’s going on. Because when I got into this there was three schools in the United States at the doctorate level that didn’t require you to get a law degree and a Ph.D. to be a clinical forensic psychologist. I didn’t want to be an attorney. I wanted to be a practitioner that I could help people. One of the things I know about myself and I’ve known it since I was a young child, I get bored really easy. So I have to kind of create my own environment you know that I function in. One of those things is I need to be able to, okay if I start to feel myself getting tired or bored with something I need to move on and do something else for a day or two and then I can come back to that other thing if I have to continue working on a project or something like that.

So, for example, right now I’ve got my nonprofit. I do 1,100-1,200 radio interviews every year. I do approximately three to four hundred television interviews every year. I have my own podcast. Several hundred podcasts out there, I haven’t actually stopped to count them. I’m working on a book that I want to get out there. So, that’s just my nonprofit part right there. Then I have privileges at two medical hospitals where people get surgeries and they don’t understand why we have to cut a foot off or they’ve come to you and say, “I’d rather have my life go and be dead than have no leg.” I’m sitting there go, “Look at your grandkid right here, he’s three months old. Do you want him to remember you?

I get really bizarre answers from that because people have these preconceived notions about how everybody else sees them. It’s kind of like stage fright you know. People don’t like to get up in front of the audience and talk, but when people realize whether you’re singing, playing music, talking; that if somebody else wanted to come up there and talk they could talk to. You’re not keeping them from talking if you’re up there talking. Everybody has their own choices to make. A lot of people would rather sit back and listen and in some cases criticize after the fact. That’s okay because their opinions don’t change my opinion. If they bring me facts and research and data, then I look at the data and I do that. But an opinion, that’s just an opinion. They have a right to it, I have a right to mine.

I’m no better than they are there, they’re no better than me. If they’re willing to come listen to me, well I’m definitely going to give them an earful. I mean, that’s what I do. I’ve had people challenge me. I’ve had students challenge me. You get 500 students in there and a student asks you a question and you don’t know the answer to it. The student, “Well, you’re the professor. Don’t you know everything about psychology?” I’m like, “You know, there’s so much in psychology I wish I really did because I wouldn’t need to be here teaching you guys. I’d be teaching the teachers to teach you guys.” That kind of thing. This guy one day would just not leave it alone. He kept asking me about déjà vu, déjà vu, déjà vu and it was about the time the Matrix had come out. Finally, I just turned it, “You really want to know about déjà vu?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” I go, “It’s the Matrix resetting.” And the whole class, the whole class just like, “Did the professor just say that. He quoted the Matrix?” This kid is like, he’s dumbfounded. He doesn’t know what to say because he doesn’t have a rhetoric to that. I gave him an answer.

 

[0:10:28] Ashley James: That’s funny.

 

[0:10:29] Dr. John Huber: The rest of the class got it. He just kind of sat down and didn’t say anything else. About three weeks later he raised his hand and he goes, “Dude,” and the whole class turns around and looks at him like, “Did you just call the professor dude?” Then they turn around to look at me. I had corrected him. I said, “Excuse me, that’s Dr. Dude.” It’s not my ego. I’m there to teach them. I want them to learn. We know a lot of things about learning. If you put an emotion with learning, you remember it much better. I know professors who believe that, “Well, I’ll just make all the class angry at me because it’s easy.” I’m like, “No. I’d rather have them be laughing and enjoying the conversation because they remember that good feeling and they keep that with them when they study psychology from then on and out.” To this day, I’ve got students that are doing you know they’re residencies in thoracic surgery in New York State and all over the United States. I get emails and calls. I’m going to be in New York next week and I’ve got a couple of them going to introduce me to some of their surgery supervisors and want to go out to dinner and all this kind of stuff. You know how that makes me feel? It makes me feel like I did my job and I’m proud of those kids.

If you knew some of the stories and I see the successes. I mean these kids that were failing out of school and I pulled them into my office and, “Hey, I need you to do something for me,” and I give them a responsibility in the class. All of a sudden, their grade comes up to an A in my class. Then they’re like, “Man, I’m struggling in this class.” “Well, have you tried this? Go talk to the professor.” Then they end up graduating with 3.8-3.9 four years later. They’re telling me I’m the reason why they finish school.

 

[0:12:13] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[0:12:14] Dr. John Huber: Because I just give them a little bit of support. I give them some skills, some coping skills which is what I try to do in therapy. I want to create a patient who comes in and needs help a set of coping skills, a set of management, life management tools that they don’t ever have to come back to me. That’s my goal. They still do. They come back. I might not see one for three or four years and they call me. “Oh, hey. Can I get in next week?” “Sure, let’s come on in.” They just wanted to touch base. That’s awesome. I love that. Yeah.

 

[0:12:49] Ashley James: That’s so cool. It sounds brilliant that you have had that impact for so many years with thousands, thousands of young professionals that have gone on to help so many people. I love that ripple effect. That’s really beautiful. You mentioned this one thing about being on stage. This worry we have sometimes about what will other people think of us. I think sometimes it’s so ingrained that it’s like second nature this fear of what other people think of us or that person that would rather die than have them be an amputee. He couldn’t get over the hump, like in his mind like he needs a little bit of help getting over the hump of like you’ve got a whole life like you’ve got people that love you and you could have a really fulfilling life. Who cares you don’t have a leg.

 

[0:13:50] Dr. John Huber: Well they care.

 

[0:13:51] Ashley James: Yeah, of course.

 

[0:13:52] Dr. John Huber: But they care.

 

[0:13:53] Ashley James: But look at how much life you could have. They can’t even see past the no leg to all the love and joy and fulfillment that they could have.

 

[0:14:05] Dr. John Huber: Oh, but I have my ways. I have not lost the patient because they wouldn’t have an amputation.

 

[0:14:11] Ashley James: Well, that’s really cool.

 

[0:14:12] Dr. John Huber: In almost 10 years. It depends. I can remember specifically I had this one lady, 40 years old her daughter was 20 expecting her first baby. So grandma, she going to be a first grandma at 40 years old. She had uncontrolled diabetes and she ended up with gangrene on both her feet. We were going to have to amputate her feet. She’s like, “Let me die. I don’t want to bring a new baby up to look up to a gimp in a wheelchair the rest of their lives.” “A gimp?” “Yeah.” I go, “Okay, so you’re ready to die. I’ve got some friends that are really interested in the end of life thought processes and death and dying. Can I bring them in here? They’re actually here.” “Oh, yeah. Sure.” I ran down to the outpatient rehab department because there were three gentlemen in there who are double amputees who have amazing abilities on their prosthetics. They run around no canes nothing. They can run and jog and walk. You never know they have amputations. I’d met them because I’ve been at the hospital for a while and they’ve been in and out and now they were in outpatient.

I go, “Hey guys, I can’t tell you the patient’s name but she wants to die and I want you guys to act like you’re interested in dying and death and that kind of stuff.” “What? What?” “Well. She doesn’t think anybody can have a normal life with prosthetics,” and they just started laughing. “Sure. We can do that.” These are guys, 60-70 years old. They’re happy to be alive. They got their families. Literally, we’re walking down the hallway and we got one more room to go and one of the guys stop for a second, bent down on one knee and untied a shoe and walked in there. So they start asking her about death and dying. “So, you’re going to have an amputation here?” “No. I’d rather die. I don’t want to be a gimp.” The guy who untied his shoes was a little bit further away. “Oh man,” and he made a big deal about his shoe being untied. He propped that foot up there on there and his pant leg came up and you saw the steel rod of the prosthetic. “Well, okay. Well, maybe you know but they want both of my feet. You’ve only lost one.” He reached over and pulled up the pant leg on the other leg. She’s like, “What?” All three of the guys go, “Yeah, we’re all amputees, double amputees.” Let’s just say she was there for her grand baby’s birth.

 

[0:16:41] Ashley James: That’s awesome.

 

[0:16:44] Dr. John Huber: Changed her perspective, give her a different point of view. We get so stuck and this is the way things are and it’s not that way. Everybody has two eyes, hopefully, they’re functional to some extent, but we all see different things.

 

[0:16:59] Ashley James: Yeah. We all perceive the world in a different way. You and I could go to the same movie and walk away with a different experience.

 

[0:17:06] Dr. John Huber: Exactly. Me and my wife did that with, what was that, the Twilight series. She’s like, “Oh, man. It’s fantasy and it’s Beauty and the Beast and the vampire,” and I go, “No. It’s an emo girl who’s trying to decide if she’s going to experience bestiality or necrophilia.” Yeah. My wife didn’t think I was that funny.

 

[0:17:31] Ashley James: That’s exactly it. You mentioned that we’re worried about what other people think. I had a recent experience a few months ago where someone I’m really close to, I found out that she had a very negative viewpoint of me and of things I’ve done. Actually, it was completely untrue. It was just a completely untrue viewpoint. At first, I was very, very hurt because I had poured a lot of time energy and money into supporting her and helping her and doing everything I could to help her get over a certain difficulty in her life and she turned around and she made it mean. So many nasty horrible things. So at first, I was just kind of taken aback. Then I felt like my brain broke, like something in my brain snapped. I started laughing because I could have never in a million years predicted the things that she would have come up with.

I’ve spent my whole life worrying about what other people think of me, but no one has really ever actually come up to me and fulfilled my worry. I’m worried about what people think about my shape or my hair color or whatever. Like, “Oh, I’ve got some gray hairs,” or “I didn’t pluck the hairs on my chin,” or whatever. Whatever I’m worried about. No one has ever actually come up to me and fulfilled my worry, but people come up with the things like I could never even imagine, right? Something in my brain snapped because I got that no matter how much I worry, I could spend the rest of my life worrying about what other people think but those people will never actually think the things I’m worried about because they’re going to come up with their own stuff that is so weird that I could not possibly predict worrying about those things.

 

[0:19:33] Dr. John Huber: Oh, you know that reminds me. I was doing a presentation once with about 600 people there. My daughter was about two and a half, my son was about six but he was sick so I had to bring her with me. She’d been to the auditorium before and she picked the seat she wanted to sit at right down the middle, middle aisle. So people have their assigned tickets and all that kind of stuff. They come in there and here comes the person for that seat. She informed them that that was her seat. She walked them down to actually where we had a seat for her on the front row, this person got a front-row ticket. So they weren’t mad. They sat there. But I I’m one of those speakers, I can’t stand behind a podium. So I’ve got my wireless mic and I’m running circles, laps around this place while I’m doing my presentation. Finally, my daughter gets up while I’m talking and she kind of meets me at a crossroads. She grabs me by the hand and I got this wireless mic on and she goes, “Look, dad, you’ve got to calm down or these people aren’t going to be able to follow you.” She walks me up to the front and sits me down on the chair that’s right up next to the podium.

The place went crazy. It was hilarious. Yeah. Then she actually asked somebody for paper so she could keep taking notes while she was listening to my presentation.

 

[0:20:55] Ashley James: That’s funny. Well, of course, that was her perception.

 

[0:20:58] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. Absolutely.

 

[0:21:00] Ashley James: Right. Because if no one was following you everyone would have been stir-crazy.

 

[0:21:05] Dr. John Huber: Right, but I love the fact that with that mic, I can walk up and I can put my hand on anybody’s shoulder and go, “So what do you think about…” and I don’t lose anybody that way because I do that. I’m one of those guys.

 

[0:21:17] Ashley James: I can tell. So, you have Mainstream Mental Health Radio, that’s your show. Is that the name of your podcast?

 

[0:21:29] Dr. John Huber: Mainstream Mental Health Radio, yes that is the name of my podcast. The website is mainstreammentalhealth.org, but we also have an extra way to get there by going to drpsycho.org. That’s DRPSYCHO.ORG  and people remember that one. The minute I started using that man.

 

[0:21:49] Ashley James: Dr. Psycho.

 

[0:21:50] Dr. John Huber: Yes. We get slammed on our bandwidth there, but that’s fine. That’s what it’s for. We talk about anything mental health. I mean, I’ve had porn stars on. I’ve had the president of the APA. I’ve had professional wrestlers, actors, politicians, accountants, massage therapist, therapists. I’m trying to think. Man, I mean, just about anything. American Indians. Man, probably my most unexpected most exciting show I did was with Gerry Cooney, the boxer.

My dad passed away in 1994. So he never got to see me doing any of this stuff, but I remember my dad and I were big sports fans together, football. My dad really loved boxing so I would watch it. I didn’t necessarily care too much about it at that point in my life. I didn’t really see the skill I just saw the brutality. I know football’s brutal, but I could see the skill. I could see the athleticism in that. Now, I’m a third-degree black belt and I do see the skill because I have had to develop some stuff, some skills. But they offered, they say, “Hey. This guy Gerry Cooney wanted to come on and do your show.” I’m like, “Gerry Cooney, oh my God. I remember watching him fight when it was like 1980 or something.” He won. The first time I saw a fight finishing in less than a minute. I mean, I think it was 54, 56 seconds. I may be wrong but I think it was Leon Spinks. He walked in. It was in Vegas and bam, the whole thing was over. We planned on being there like three hours for 15 rounds. It was like, “Oh, okay. So now we get a listen to sportscasters hem and haw for the next two hours.” Yeah.

Now, 20 years later, 30 years later I get to interview this guy. I’m like my dad would be so excited. So I was excited and we start talking. Not three minutes into that interview, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and it stayed that way the whole time. This guy was amazing. He was so brutally honest. After that fight, he got offered a chance because he became the US heavyweight champion. He got offered a chance to fight for the world heavyweight champion. I want to say it was Muhammad Ali at that time but don’t get me on the actual statistics, but he had such a problem with alcohol. He had 180 days to sign the contract and he was too drunk those 180 days to sign the contract.

 

[0:24:29] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[0:24:31] Dr. John Huber: He then explained to me the way he was able to fight was he would go out in the ring and they would bump gloves and he would go back to his corner. When that bell would ring, he would turn around and it was his dad’s face on that boxer.

 

[0:24:44] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[0:24:45] Dr. John Huber: He would go pummel his dad’s face.

 

[0:24:49] Ashley James: Geez.

 

[0:24:50] Dr. John Huber: Then we started talking about it exploring his alcoholism and all this kind of stuff. He’s a recovering alcoholic. He’s got an amazing show on Friday and Monday nights on XM radio doing all the fight game and all this kind of stuff. He’s an amazing guy. I had dinner with him this past summer when I was up in New York. He came back on my show again. He always teased me, “Okay, you’re a black belt. Let’s spar.” I’m like, “Okay if you’re willing to make it a fundraiser for my nonprofit, I’ll let you knock the crap out of me.” Then I actually got to meet him and his hands made my hands look like I was a three-year-old. I’m like, “Okay. Well, maybe I could do a spit.” No. His arms were longer than my legs. I’m just dead. He’s like, “Oh, come on. I’m 14-15 years older than you.” I go, “Yeah. It don’t matter. I know better. I got a lot of education.”

 

[0:25:48] Ashley James: No kidding. What does your charity do? What does your nonprofit do?

 

[0:25:54] Dr. John Huber: Well, we’re kind of in phase one, which is we want to get people talking about mental health. I think we’re doing a really good job. I mean, I’ve been on Jenny McCarthy show. I’ve been on your show. I’ve talked with Dr. Drew several times on his show. It’s funny. All summer long, I had politicians calling me from Washington DC, from other states calling me up, “What’s your opinion on this? I got to go talk to these people. It’s like wait, people are actually talking about it now and they’re hearing me. I feel like I’m finally getting to that point. Our next goal is we want to do something for our first responders and our veterans. What I mean by doing something for them, we have a lot of great practitioners in the VA, for example, but we don’t have enough. We’re underfunded. They throw money in there but then they got to build infrastructure before they can put more therapists in there, more psychologists. It’s just, man, we’re fighting an uphill battle.

What I’d like to do is create some sort of system. We’ve got a model ready to go. When we get to this point, we would like to create a website where basically the veteran would log in and they would create an account. Within that account verify that they’re a veteran for sure. Then they get a code number. They take that code number to any licensed therapist in their community and that code number is what they log in with. It pairs them up. They send me the HIPAA consent from the patient and a summary of the notes. I don’t want details, just a summary of the notes so our auditors can make sure they’re actually doing psychotherapy. We pay them for their therapy services. For Central Texas, we think that if we had about 13 million a year, we could take away enough of the therapy from the VA that there would not be any delays at the VA in Central Texas. Nationwide, we’re looking at somewhere between $160-$180 million dollars and that’s nothing. I mean, it really is.

When you think about Planned Parenthood, it gets 800 million from Congress. Then they get 800 million from donations, another 600 million or 307 million from corporate America and they’re giving birth control pills out. I want to go out and stop what we have right now is 20 to 22 veterans killing themselves every day. We had one here in Austin two months ago. He walked in, he needed therapy. Now, to get a veteran to say, “I need therapy.” Think about the environment that they lived in as a military personnel where you are dysfunctional, you are a threat to the unit if you have mental health issues. So they hide everything, but that veteran finally gets to a place where his life is so distraught, so much in upheaval that they’re willing to go to the organization that’s supposed to be helping them and say, “I need a therapist.” They usually go when it’s at that dire point and they get told, “Oh, we’ll get you in 120 days. We got you an appointment set up with Dr. Smith.” That patient here in Austin, Texas walked over sat in the waiting room for a couple hours. The waiting room was full. He pulled out a gun and blew his head out. That is not unusual.

I’ve had veterans call me and say, at different parts of the United States, at different times I’ve been doing this now for four or five years. At one point there was an area the United States where there was a 13-month wait when you walked in and said, “I need a therapist,” before they could actually see one. That is, I mean, is so disgusting in so many different levels.

 

[0:29:40] Ashley James: Yeah.

 

[0:29:41] Dr. John Huber: These veterans put their lives on the line so we can have our independence, have our safety, have our freedoms and we can’t even get them a therapist. That’s phase two. That’s what I want to do. Right now, we’re making some headway, we’re getting some airplay. I think we’re starting to stir things up. Like I said, this past summer I was amazed at how many phone calls I was getting from politicians and things like that. I’ll tell you something. Also amazing, Bob Salter who is a sports broadcaster for WFAN in New York City, the largest all-sports radio station in the nation. The first NBC’s benchmark studio. He had me in this summer. He introduced me for five minutes and he opened up the mics and we talked mental health for two hours straight. Not one question about sports and the fans were asking the questions. I got home and for the next four months, I was getting handwritten letters from people thanking me. Thanking me for going. I didn’t get one derogatory statement. I didn’t get one person saying, “Hey, why didn’t we talk about the Giants?” I’m back on the air in two weeks on Sunday morning and they’re giving me two hours again.

 

[0:31:04] Ashley James: Oh, I love it.

 

[0:31:05] Dr. John Huber: So, it’s exciting and people are listening. People are taking a hit. That’s the first step. We got to get this. If you think about it, go back to the 80s, early 80’s. Childhood cancer, it was shameful what we were doing. We had a 15% survival rate. That means 85% were dying. There were some specific cancers that we cured better than others, but in general, 15% overall, 85% death rate. Today we have a 15% death rate and an 85% survival rate. What did we do? We started getting the histories of these kids. What was going on in their lives? What type of activities were they doing when they were six months old, when they were two months old, when they were two years old? Then they got their cancer at 6, 7, 8, 9 years of age, they had this really great history. We’ve been able to sit there and see, “Hey, these are some signs that we need to start watching these kids.” So, when they go in their pediatric checkups the pediatricians are going, “Hey, how is he doing? Is he turning over? Is he doing? Wait, let me go check this out.” And they start looking for things. You catch it before it ever becomes a terminal situation.

I know because I’ve worked with kids. I started my career as a school psychologist working with preemies, 16-18 months old, three years old before they ever get to school. Seeing these people dealing with developmental delays and how we are so underprepared for how to treat and interact with those kids. Then, historically we’ve just kind of thrown them in the classroom.

 

[0:32:43] Ashley James: Yeah.

 

[0:32:45] Dr. John Huber: And we’re playing catch-up. In the late 90s, they turn around, “Oh, we have to do research-based.” Well, there wasn’t a lot of research-based interventions actually. Everybody’s like, “Oh, it’s out there.” Well, where is it? Show me the math. Show me. What do we know? Drill and practice worked really well, but people hate drill and practice. So schools don’t like to do that, but if you go into a special education classroom you’re going to get drill in practice. That will breakthrough because you do the same problems over and over and over and it becomes automaticity. They don’t have to think about it. They know that one plus one equals two or you divide this fraction by this and this is what you get because they’ve done it enough. That all of a sudden makes the rest of the math easy. So, we start doing that and we break it down into really simple steps. All of a sudden these kids start having good lives at school. They actually like being in class. They’re not afraid if the teacher calls on them because they got some kind of answer, whereas before they would hide and they didn’t want to be known because the teacher was going to call on somebody to read in front of everybody. Well, I don’t have any sound-symbol relationships so I’m going to sound like a baby. What happens is people would rather be and a mean person who is a bully than somebody who’s considered dumb. That’s a shame.

 

[0:34:07] Ashley James: To clarify what you said before was it a $153 million a year to be able to cover the psychotherapy for all veterans?

 

[0:34:17] Dr. John Huber: Well, it’s not for all but it’s a big enough chunk that the VA would be able to take care of the rest. Actually, nationwide what we’re looking at is between $160 and $180 million. Somewhere in there. Because there’s a lot of management of audits and making sure people are following up and actually doing what they purport to do because I don’t want people to not help our veterans. So we have to have a mechanism in place. It’s kind of self-serving. Once the veterans register, they can basically go to anybody. They just have to present to us a copy of their license and their liability insurance so we know that they’re covered. Then we want them to submit a summary of their treatment and the billing information and we’d like to be able to pay them.

You think about that, that sounds like a lot of money and it is to an individual, but to this nation, it’s not. When we spend how many billions every year $1.2-$1.3 billion in Planned Parenthood. The tax dollars we give to Planned Parenthood’s about 800 million, between $600-$800 million every year. I don’t know what it is this year. I didn’t look at the budget. But just thinking about that, think about what they give for dry cleaning uniforms in the Navy. I mean, hey, wear them one more time before you dry clean them and save a little bit that way and use that money for your budget. Yeah. When you talk about trillions and trillions of spending in this country, less than $200 million dollars is a drop in the bucket. It’s a shameful experience to sit back and know that we have veterans that are asking for help and not able to get it because we don’t have enough therapists. When we try to hire new therapists, we don’t have the physical space for them. Then they go to a culture, the military culture, where mental health issues are considered so taboo that you’re broken, you’re a liability then to your platoon. Nobody wants to be around you so nobody admits to having any of those issues.

The strangest thing, in real life, in civilian life, men and women, they say men have about half, for example, depression that women do. I think what happens is I think about half the men aren’t willing to admit to it. They end up with anger issues, which is one of the ways that men tend to express depression. They have anger issues. Then they have adult-onset attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They can’t focus, they can’t attend and guess, what? Those are symptoms that kids exhibit when they have depression. So, does it make sense that maybe adults might have depression? You notice, the pediatricians in my community they start going, “I’m not going to give him Ritalin. Let’s give them some Zoloft and see how they work first.” So why give them pharmaceutical grade crystal meth when their behavior will improve, it’s a Band-Aid. It’s not going to actually kind of fix what’s the underlying problem.

So, I think men actually have just as much depression and mental health issues as women. We’ve just been taught that there’s one emotion that is okay for us men to have and that’s anger. So, we turn everything into anger and nobody questions whether we are mentally healthy or not. He’s just mad. It’s a hard life being a man. It is. It’s a hard life being human period male or female across the board. I think we end up with a lot of people who should be getting help that aren’t. Women go and get help except the female veterans. They’re actually as resistant as male veterans are at getting psychotherapy. The female veterans are 10-20 times more resistant to getting psychotherapy.

 

[0:38:21] Ashley James: Sure. That makes sense because they have something to prove.

 

[0:38:23] Dr. John Huber: They have something to prove and not one of them that I’ve talked to, they’ve all said this one way or another, they don’t want to be the poster child for why women should not be able to go to combat because they wanted to go fight for their country.

 

[0:38:36] Ashley James: A really good friend of mine was held hostage at knifepoint by her friend, female veteran, who had seen horrific, horrific things. Dead children, just really, really horrific things in the Middle East. She just snapped one day and she held my friend hostage at knifepoint until the cops were able to calmly talk her down and get her admitted for help. There was a lot of signs that she was ramping in that direction. She wasn’t willing to get help. Luckily they were all able to talk her down and get her calm. It’s making it normal to seek help is the first step. I love that that’s what you want to do, you want to normalize that it’s human and normal to go get mental health, to seek it, to seek mental health. That it’s okay if you’re having suicidal thoughts if you’re depressed. If something is off, you’re not broken, you’re not wrong and bad, there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

The most healthy thing you can do for yourself is go get help. Like you said, the female veterans don’t want other women to be deterred from going into combat. You know what, by holding on to your mental illness you’re actually going to deter other women, but by seeking help, you are showing that you are strong and that you knew what you needed when you needed it. Because you’re going to come out of therapy, maybe months or years later, you’re going to come out the other end strong, sure of yourself, healthy. You’re going to come out the person you know you are in deep inside and you will be a prime example of what a healthy veteran does for other veterans.

In the moment, when we’re in mental illness, we’re so afraid of what other people think. We have to remember like the lesson that I got a few months ago. We have to remember, people will never actually be thinking about what you’re worried they’re going to think about. Because they’re coming up with their own stuff.

 

[0:41:03] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely.

 

[0:41:04] Ashley James: They’re going to be like making fun of you because your eyebrows are too close together. The stuff that you’re worried about they’ll never actually think about.

 

[0:41:13] Dr. John Huber: Not at all.

 

[0:41:14] Ashley James: But they’re going to come up with stuff that even you can’t even predict and you can’t even prevent because everyone’s got their own filters but all you can do is make sure that you are the healthiest person that you can be for yourself and for your loved ones. You mentioned that there’s a deficit of therapists. Is this just in the VA or is it across the board? Are we seeing that the United States and possibly other countries just don’t have enough mental health counselors?

 

[0:41:41] Dr. John Huber: Well, it’s hard to be a mental health counselor education-wise. Then you turn around and in the health care industry, it’s one of the lowest-paid areas. I mean, you’re sitting there talking with somebody. So the insurance companies that are driven by the funding of the drug companies don’t see any value in that.

 

[0:42:03] Ashley James: Because you’re trying to keep people off drugs.

 

[0:42:05] Dr. John Huber: Well, yeah. I used to be a hard no, no way, but man I’ve seen so many miracles happen from the right medication. That’s a whole another topic. I think we’ve got a new industry in the DNA testing. I’ve seen it over the last four or five years. I’ve had patients that struggled for decades, couldn’t find the right medication. Hey, let’s go get one of these DNA tests for psychotropic meds. Literally, me and his psychiatrists were like, this is like the drug it’s recommending is one we wouldn’t give to our cat because we’ve never had a patient be efficacious on it and have it benefit. But we did it and amazing. There was no six to eight-week turnaround for this person. In 48 hours they were like, “Wow. This is what normal is supposed to feel like?” They’re calling us and leaving messages going, “This is awesome.”

So, I think having that access to our DNA and that human genome and knowing that hey you don’t have enough receptor sites for this or you don’t have enough glands that are making the right neurotransmitter for you so we need to use the reuptake inhibitors so that there’s more of it floating around in your central nervous system and your body can use it. Man, that is amazing. Right now, I don’t know of any insurance company that actually pays for the test. The test is right around $300, but the patients who do it are usually at their wit’s end or their family is. They pay out of pocket for it. Four out of five patients that have used it it was a life-changing event for them.

 

[0:43:43] Ashley James: How does someone know when they would benefit from a drug or when it’s simply something they need to process and work through? I’m getting that drugs are a tool in our tool belt but they’re also a last resort, not a first resort.

 

[0:44:01] Dr. John Huber: Well, I think there’s other drugs that are further down the road. I think ECT is a last resort. We use it. I’ve seen it work, but what I like to see actually because I’m kind of weathered I’ve done this for a while and I’ve worked with a lot of different patients. I’ll come in and I’ll start working with a patient without drugs if they don’t want that, but there comes a point when I see, okay, the pathway they’re on is a pathway to failure. What I need them to do is even if it’s just for six or eight or ten months so I can get them on the right path to let me get them on the right medication with their physician so that they can kind of get a break and they can quit struggling with that depression all on their own and that is all-encompassing of them. Then we can start changing on the effects of changing how you think, your cognitive, reframing restructuring and develop skills that hey, if I go this way if I talk about this and I don’t separate myself and compartmentalize myself from this I’m going to get encapsulated in it and I’m going to fall into a deep depression. So I either should not be talking about it or I need to prepare myself and find a way to train myself through that conversation so I realize it’s not personal to me.

 

[0:45:20] Ashley James: So you’re helping them with the skills and you see that there’s certain people that are just trapped and that the medication is going to help them. You don’t want to put someone on meds for their so life necessarily, but you really want to use it as a tool to help them get over that. What’s ECT?

 

[0:45:35] Dr. John Huber: Electroconvulsive therapy. If you ever watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s still done. I know my experience here in the state of Texas when I was at the State Hospital, we went through and all of the doctors had to sign off on it before. If anybody was dissenting it wasn’t going to happen basically. Then we sent it up to the Department of Health and let them sign off on it, the medical doctor at the top there. We didn’t do it a lot, but we had people who would walk in and have file charts that if you stood him up on it would be six-eight feet high. They’ve been getting every type of therapy known, every type of drug and nothing seemed to work. They were just miserably depressed. It was a last resort.

Now, along those lines in more recent history, I’ve been working with a gentleman, Dr. Carl Bonnett. He is the clinical director at Klarisana, which is a ketamine clinic. Starts with a K, klarisana.com. We have, over the years, been doing different treatments. We started primarily with our veterans. Dr. Bonnett was an emergency room director and physician for the VA for several decades and had access to a lot of data. We would sit there and look and watch these gentlemen come through there with PTSD. When they were given ketamine for something else they were better. So we started and worked and now we’re probably doing 400-500 veterans a year between all the clinics. Clinic in Denver, San Antonio, Austin, there was one in New Mexico and Wyoming I believe at this point now. We have a program where we give them an infusion. I know there are other clinics out there and some of them use intramuscular like just a shot in the shoulder or whatever. We have a lot of success with the IV pump where it’s just kind of free-floating. We monitor exactly how much ketamine is going into them for a certain amount of time. We don’t want them ketamine as used as anesthesia medication. We’re not putting it in a bolus type setting where they’re going to be knocked unconscious. That is not our goal. In fact, our facilities are not set up for any kind of sedation type stuff. We are there treating and using that medication psychotropically, like a psychotropic, like an antidepressant or antipsychotic.

The whole idea when we bring in the therapist side of it is we’re able to drop those individuals’ self-defense mechanisms and we can get right to the heart of the matter. But with the PTSD, the post-traumatic stress disorder, the advantages we have with that is one of the advantages it has as an anesthesia is that it has an amnestic quality to it. In other words, it helps people forget things they don’t want to remember.

 

[0:48:45] Ashley James: Permanently or temporarily?

 

[0:48:47] Dr. John Huber: Well, if you just get one or two infusions it’s going to do temporarily at that moment and I’ll talk a little bit more about this in a minute, but we do a series of them. We have a program designed. We talk about it being a 30-day but it’s actually more of a 12-month program and that we like to have the patients and do most of the work in the first 30 days. Then we have them come back once the next month. Based on that interaction we predict do they need to come back in four weeks or five weeks or six weeks the next time. We see them sporadically over the rest of the year. What we see is a permanent change for most of these individuals. It’s in my opinion, it’s kind of miraculous in fact. Why do I say that?

Well, think about your memory. When you use your memory you go in and you think of a childhood memory, in elementary school or whatever. You pull that out of that memory storage center. Only one part of your brain can use that memory at a time. No other part of your brain is doing it but your recall and you’re trying to focus on that, but as you recall that you remember the emotions and you start feeling those emotions and you remember the smells and you start having those smells. Then you start maybe somebody is standing there that you like maybe one of your kids and so you start telling them your story. Your kids kind of look at you and they ask you a question you never thought of and you go back to that memory and you change that memory just a little bit because of that input.

Now, what that’s like is going into an old analog Dewey Decimal System library and you’re looking for this book and you find the book and you pull it off and you stand there in the middle of the stacks and you flip the pages and you read this little chapter right there and, “Oh, wow. But that reminds me.” Then you write a little note in the margin. Then you put that book right back up in the library space when you’re through reading it. The next person comes and checks that book out, but this time they read your note as well because you’ve changed that memory. That book will never be the same because you added that in there and maybe they’ll add some to that memory. Then they put it up in the bookshelf again until you go back and pull that memory off again.

We can go through that process with the patients about their trauma event and get them to change that trauma event, their perspective on it to essentially, in some cases, have them you know drive part of the negative stuff out of their memory. Now, we can recover that memory. It’s not like they’ll never have that again ever again, but now they can function. Because when they think about being at a marketplace in Kabul, they don’t think about that IED blowing their friend’s leg off.

 

[0:51:58] Ashley James: What do they think about?

 

[0:51:59] Dr. John Huber: Well, everybody’s different. Everybody’s different. That’s part of the beauty of that. They remember that there was a firefight there maybe and they just don’t remember the specifics. Then when they see their friend then they remember it at that moment but then they go back to living their life. When they talk about it, they talk about the firefight, not their friend getting his leg blown off. So we alter their memories, but it’s not under my control really it’s under the patient’s control. They’re like, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this.” Well, the drug doesn’t care. That’s what I like about ketamine. Ketamine doesn’t care whether you think you can or not. It’s going to help you do it. One of the things we use it for, and this is what convinced me, is pain management, chronic pain management. Now, I broke my shoulder playing football in high school and trying to play in college. At 18 years of age, I have still pins in my shoulder, my left shoulder. I’ve had chronic pain since I was 18.

Well, when Dr. Bonnett and I got together, we were talking about all these different things. He started mentioning pain. I go, “Oh, man. My shoulder over 20-something years I’ve had this chronic pain.” Well, he’s a smart guy and he’s like, “Well, why don’t you come down the clinic and watch some of my patients go through the infusion and just monitor things. Maybe it’s something you want to do, maybe it’s not.” So I watched the day and there were some people in there for pain management. I came in the next day and one of them was a 20-something girl who had a degenerative bone disease that started affecting her about 14. By the time she was 16, she couldn’t sleep without heavy opiates every night because pain was so great. She walks in the front door, we’re sitting there you know having our little cup of coffee out of the Keurig. She walks in and she’s crying. I’m thinking, “Wow. This isn’t good.” Bonnett is just like, “Hey, how you doing? Pretty powerful experience yeah?” Like this is normal. So she starts saying, “Oh my God. It’s the first time since I was 16 years old I slept through the night without one narcotic.”

 

[0:54:10] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[0:54:11] Dr. John Huber: She came in and she got it. We do follow up with little microdosing and things like that. You don’t always have to keep coming back for these heavy infusions. But after I watched all that, Bonnett’s like, “Well, you want to try it for your shoulder?” I took one infusion and my chronic pain stopped.

 

[0:54:33] Ashley James: Forever?

 

[0:54:34] Dr. John Huber: Well, I take microdoses every once in a while. I’m a third-degree black belt. I do stupid things that somebody my age probably shouldn’t be doing, jumping off things and smashing things with my fists and my feet and knees and things like that, playing with swords and six-foot fighting staffs and like that. Then turning around and some sixth or eighth-degree black belt who’s you know pushing seven he knocks me on my backside. I’m like, “Oh, what? You’re a skinny old man. Why did you do that? How did you do that?” So I get some bumps and bruises and most of them go away or I set my hot tub for 20 minutes and it goes away, but when it gets back to my shoulder and I heard something there it starts bugging me. So I take one of the microdoses and I go to bed. I wake up in the morning and it’s like, “Wow. My pain doesn’t hurt. It’s gone.”

What we found out, and we’ve gotten the research on this from I think it was Johns Hopkins did this, they found out what happens. When you do those infusions in the right timing, your brain takes those nerve signals from your peripheral nervous system and feeds them through the lower brain stem. There’s a filter process in there that says, “Okay. This is pain, this is pain. Nope, this is normal. This is pain. This is pain.” And it sends them to the right places. Well, the ketamine resets that and says, “Oh, this is a chronic pain.” Every time you had this infusion you’ve had this pain and there’s no new damage there.

So it gets that homeostatic mechanism to actually no longer receive that as pain. It just says, “This is normal pain.” But if you rehurt yourself, that new pain is there and you know it’s there. Whereas an opiate would just kind of block the pain and you could go and get hurt by continuing to play with a bad torn muscle or something like that. It actually makes the pain go away too. My experience with opiates whether it was OxyContin or Norco or any of those things is what happened was, I just didn’t care about the pain it didn’t ever really go away but with the ketamine, it actually went away.

 

[0:56:47] Ashley James: What’s the mechanism of this drug, of ketamine? I mean, what is it? Can you explain a bit more about how it affects the brain? How it’s working on us?

 

[0:57:02] Dr. John Huber: I’m not a neurobiologist and a neuroscientist. I’ve sat through. We’ve had two medical ketamine conferences. The first one ever on ketamine for physicians in the United States was in Austin Texas two years ago in September. The last one was 2019 in Denver. Present for both of those and amazing research that’s been out there. Amazing thing. Most of the research has been done since the late 60s, early 70s is actually from Russia, but most of that technology and the ability to convert technical Russian language into technical English there aren’t people who can do that. So people haven’t had access to it. So Dr. Bonnett and myself were sitting there going, “What are we going to do?” and Bonnett is like, “Well, let’s try and call them.” So we got to hold of them and they speak fluent English and they were able to tell us what it was. It was like, “Wow.”

So, actually, we have a couple of them sitting on our board of directors, some of these researchers. They’ve told us some of the issues with their government because they’re trying to become more capitalists. Nobody owns a patent for the general ketamine. So, they’re not fostering research in that area because none of the drug companies are going to be able to capitalize on it so to speak.

So, they basically kind of had their research ended, but they have so much experience on it. We’ve been able to detox alcoholics, other drugs. We’ve detoxed heroin addicts with their help. We’ve been able to do heroin addicts without any significant withdrawal effects at all using the ketamine because the receptor sites that are used by heroin are also used by the ketamine. So they drop in there and then we basically replace that with the ketamine. Then we can easily wean them off the ketamine because it doesn’t have the withdrawal effects.

 

[0:59:07] Ashley James: That was my next question was about I’ve heard that ketamine has been used successfully for addiction. Besides withdrawal, how does it help people on the mental and emotional level with addiction, with overcoming addiction?

 

[0:59:22] Dr. John Huber: Well, you got to think about a lot of addiction. One of my patients was telling me that he had some bad things happen to him. He’s really depressed. He casually drank pretty much his whole life. Then one night, he was really depressed. He poured himself a drink and he took that drink and when he finished that drink he felt normal. For the first time in weeks, he felt normal. So he spent the rest of the night trying to duplicate that feeling and finished off a bottle and woke up three days later. He got up and what he wanted to do is feel normal again. So he went after that. Went down and got him another bottle. That first drink felt good but then he chased that first drink the rest of the night, that feeling. Okay. Then it got to a point where he became physiologically addicted to the alcohol. Then it became a 20-year issue and end up losing jobs, divorce, all this kind of stuff. So it took over his life.

Now, not everybody is specifically that way. There are people who just have that addictive personality. We know a lot of things about alcohol and drug use and drinking. For example, something like 94% of college students, at some point, in their college career go into binge drinking. We know that about 3% of those people continue binge drinking 10-15 years after they’re out of college and they’ve got an alcohol problem. So binge drinking might have happened one semester for you, “Wow. I’m not going to be able to finish college if I keep drinking like that,” and you get your drinking under control and you go on. But for some people, that’s how they feel normal. It could be because of some trauma whether it’s abuse, watching some horrific thing happen, living in a house where the parents are very violent with each other, violent towards the kids, maybe there’s sexual abuse that neither of the parents know about or maybe they both do. There’s so many reasons. The reality of it is I can’t say there’s one thing, but I could say trauma because all of these things that we’re talking about are some form of trauma. Whether you’ve seen somebody get hurt or somebody’s violated you or abused you or you’ve watched somebody else’s being abused. It’s all a form of trauma.

So there’s some trauma somewhere in there. The alcohol was allowing this individual, when they had the right amount, to not feel that and actually feel normal, but then they chase that normal feeling with the next 15 drinks.

 

[1:02:05] Ashley James: Right. The same could be said for food.

 

[1:02:10] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely.

 

[1:02:11] Ashley James: Look at chasing the dopamine. Eating food is the only time I feel happy, normal, safe, secure. It’s socially acceptable. It is socially acceptable to drink alcohol, but it’s socially acceptable obviously to eat. Less socially acceptable to do meth but that still doesn’t stop people from seeking it, and I have a client who is in and out of rehab because she says it is the only time she feels normal is when she’s on meth. Any other time, she feels incredibly depressed to the point of just not wanting to be here. She’s fighting it. She’s fighting it. She’s sober, but it just it really for me I’ve never done meth so I don’t know. I don’t know this. She said the first time it was amazing, but then it made it so that any other time she was sober, it was her life had lost all of its luster.

 

[1:03:09] Dr. John Huber: That’s what of my patients said about heroin. He’d been detoxed 13 or 14 times. We went through the detox with him and used the ketamine. He said, “This is the first time. Somebody jacked with my mind.” We’re like, “What do you mean jacked with your mind?” He used other profanity words and stuff but I’m like, “What do you mean?” He goes, “This is the first time when I got off the heroin that I didn’t even think about I need more heroin. All the other times I wanted more heroin.”

 

[1:03:43] Ashley James: That’s really fascinating. I prefer to do things holistically not with drugs but I see that this is really a powerful tool that can help people get to the other side. I would rather see someone on a drug and alive than not on a drug and dead, obviously. So, it’s like get the best tools for the job.

 

[1:04:09] Dr. John Huber: Get the best tools because you could do methadone but now you have a harder physiological addiction. What I see with the ketamine is that it changes their thought process. It changes how their brain takes those stimuli on. For example, last year we had about 14 alcoholics come through our program. All but one of them 100% sober. The 14th one just for lack of a number, he fell off the wagon. Now he’s, as of yesterday’s, five months sober. We got him back. We gave him a few booster bumps with the ketamine and he’s five months sober. I can tell you that because we have truck drivers, their companies can put those breathalyzers on their trucks and stuff like that. Well, we got him a portable one and said, “If you want to stay on our program you have to blow on this anytime it blows off.” It goes off randomly, anytime. Sometimes it’ll go off three times in an hour other times it’ll go off five times in 24 hours. It wakes him up at 2:00 in the morning to blow. He doesn’t know when it’s going to happen but he agreed to that because we’re trying to support our stuff with research. So we’ve got this stuff going on and it’s working for him. It takes a nice little picture of him. So we know it’s him blowing into the machine and he didn’t train his dog to blow into it or anything like that, which I kind of like to see. He’s now five months. He actually sat down with me yesterday. He said, “You know the last time I was five months sober or longer?” I’m like, “No when?” He goes, “I was in middle school.” This guy is 60 years old.

 

[1:06:00] Ashley James: Geez. Talk about achieving some mental clarity.

 

[1:06:06] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. It’s so funny because like the last three months, his thought process has started to become, for lack of a better word, more adult-like and less ten-year-old like.

 

[1:06:17] Ashley James: Yeah. I bet.

 

[1:06:18] Dr. John Huber: It’s just amazing what’s going on with him. I had to wait until he left. I mean, I had tears on my eyes. I was like, “Oh my god. This guy’s finding his life back. He’s getting it back.” He actually said he’d gotten a new job. He went out and got some new clothes. His first day at the job, he got up to go get dressed and everything else his wife have gotten out before him and pressed everything. He goes, “In whole marriage, she never once did anything like that for him.” She was so proud of him being sober. He decided he didn’t like that other job because it was reminding him of drinking stuff so he made a change. He goes, “I got home and there were notes all over the house how proud she was of me.” He even goes, “That was amazing.” He goes, “You just don’t know when you’ve never gotten that before from anybody.

 

[1:07:21] Ashley James: So, for people who’ve struggled with depression, post-traumatic stress, chronic pain or some form of addiction and other forms of therapy they’ve tried it’s not worked, they’re struggling. You’re seeing really great results with ketamine. Also coupling ketamine with mental health counseling. You’re not just giving ketamine to people and then they just leave and that’s it. You’re actually you’re addressing the underlying issues as well, right?

 

[1:08:00] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. That’s so much a part of it. Now, we’ve treated I think last year I treated, not me specifically but the clinic. We treated about 400 veterans with PTSD. They all didn’t get psychotherapy counseling. I mean, that’s a hard thing to push when we’re talking about that culture. If we couch it right, if they do it right, they don’t necessarily have to have the therapist right there, okay. Now some of them go in there and they’re all, “I’m not going to need a therapist.” They go find and they do halfway through it and then we get a call and one of us needs to go in and work with them. Because either they’re not getting the results they want or they’re getting results and they know that they need to, they’re putting this money in this and they need to take advantage of it and so let’s go ahead and get the therapist in there. It facilitates things much, much more quickly.

 

[1:08:57] Ashley James: Interesting. Are there any side effects of ketamine that people should be aware of? Obviously, they should do it under the care of a physician.

 

[1:09:08] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely.

 

[1:09:09] Ashley James: The clinic that you work with where it’s a lots of experience but are there things we should know in terms of the dangers of using it because it is a drug?

 

[1:09:21] Dr. John Huber: It is a drug. It’s actually an extremely safe drug, but just like water, there are problems. You can drown with water. So, we lose 1,200-1,300 people every year to bathtub drownings. So water can be dangerous even though we have to have it for life. So, taking that into consideration, ketamine was a drug that was designed originally the government, the federal government, went in and sent their laboratories to work to make a synthetic opiate and ended up creating this drug called PCP. It had some really great advantages but had some really bad things going on with it too. So bad on the street that’s called angel dust. So, they went back to the laboratories and they started cleaving off parts of these molecules and testing them and seeing what they could find out. One of them happened to be ketamine.

It has a very short half-life, 15 to 30-minute half-life. So, when we stop the IV or if you take the microdosing, let’s say. You put it on your tongue, it dissolves, you swallow it. Anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes later, you start feeling the effects of the ketamine. When you start feeling those effects, it’s going to be done in about 40 minutes. So whatever goes on, and one of the things that goes on actually are you start misperceiving the environment. You start hallucinating, okay, but it’s not out of your control. What we find is that if you start feeling like you’re losing control and it scares you, if you open your eyes the visual ground around you the visual images are strong enough that it’s a mild, relatively mild hallucinogen. You can actually even stop the hallucinations all together just by focusing on say a picture frame in a room. We also think what we call the shamanic experience, kind of letting that hallucination go through, allows you to roleplay some of those traumas.

So we want to encourage them to do that. We know though that less than an hour it’s going to be over. Once the patient gets that and they realize, “Okay, I’m going to let go of that. I’m not going to fight that. I’m going to let my brain weed this stuff out and get rid of the chaff. I’m going to sit there keep my eyes closed. If it gets too scary for me I can always open my eyes.” Then all of a sudden the experience is over. Now, Timothy Leary pushed LSD that, “Oh, we can do this with LSD.” The problem with LSD, it has a minimum, a four-hour half-life. That means you’re going to be going for eight hours. You’re going to be physically, emotionally exhausted. From the moment they take their microdoses until it’s no longer creating that shamanic experience for them they’re not reliving that trauma. We have this expectation of them that they’re going to let this thing roll. Because we’ve done it in the clinic with them and when we do it with an IV push, we keep that push going for at least an hour. So when we stop at that point it’s going to continue for that 15 to 30 minutes until the rest of it’s gone off, okay. But what happens along the way is you have some severe psychomotor retardation, your balance is completely off.

 

[1:12:57] Ashley James: You’re talking about LSD?

 

[1:12:59] Dr. John Huber: No. I’m talking about the ketamine.

 

[1:13:00] Ashley James: Okay, you’re talking about the ketamine now. Got it.

 

[1:13:02] Dr. John Huber: So, until that has been able to flush out of your system, we’ve got to wheelchair you there, we’ll take you to the bathroom and all this kind of stuff. We have some rules. After you get the ketamine, whether it’s a microdose, you’re not allowed to make any kind of decision. No financial decisions, no relationship decisions whatsoever. When we’re doing the IV push in that in that initial treatment dates, we make you sign a commitment that you will not watch news: cell phone news, internet news, television news, radio news. No news. Because by taking this ketamine, you’re letting your defense mechanisms down and we don’t want you to incorporate the negativity of news, because that’s how they sell it, in you. So, we prefer to have them in one of our facilities where we have massage therapists there and we have cordon bleu wannabe chefs who are going to the school doing their internships and cooking for and things like that. Got a nice hot tub and a pool and they can relax and we do yoga and we don’t have TVs there. They’re like, “Why you got everything else but there’s no TV?” Because you don’t need them.

 

[1:14:16] Ashley James: You take their cellphones away from them?

 

[1:14:18] Dr. John Huber: They get one hour a day and it’s supervised because we don’t want them going to the news, but that’s part of the thing. We pick them up at the airport. We want to have a car for them. They can Uber. They could if they wanted to, but again, we have their phone for an hour day so we would know about it. We want them to just chill. We want to teach them how to be human and that’s not being attached to a computer whether it’s a flat-screen TV or your computer. The interesting thing is most drug rehab programs, they want 45 to 90 days. Well, the average person can’t take three months off for vacation, unless they have a drug addiction then you get permission for their business then everybody knows their business.

So, we get CEOs who can take a 30-day vacation and they’ll take it with us and we’ll get them off their alcohol. Then they can come out for their follow-up one-day visit on a weekend or whatever and they’re set and they’re good to go. We’re having really good success rate about, 80% success rate for alcoholism, which if you talk to Dr. Drew Pinsky, I’ve talked to him several times. Been on his show several times, he’ll tell you that the best, at average success rate, for a regular 12-step intervention for alcohol rehab is 8%.

 

[1:15:43] Ashley James: Geez.

 

[1:15:45] Dr. John Huber: That’s what the research shows. Some of it shows as low as 2% or 3%. I’ve seen a few studies that went as high as 16%, but Dr. Drew told me on the air it is 8% as far as he’s concerned. So that means there’s 92% failure in that system. They know whether it’s this rehab or your rehab, that 92% of the patients are going to be back within three years.

 

[1:16:09] Ashley James: Well, that’s a lucrative business.

 

[1:16:10] Dr. John Huber: It is a lucrative business. So, people don’t really want us doing our business because we had 14 patients last year one of them fell off the wagon and now he’s at almost six months. A little over five months right now. We just did a little jumpstart with him and he’s there. So, our data shows about an 80% success rate. When our patients come in, for example, for PTSD one of the things they do is self-medicate. Whether it’s heroin, cocaine, marijuana, alcohol. We get that report. We’re not there to file charges on them and it’s not our job, but it’s funny when we go back and look at our raw data, those patients who weren’t even there for alcohol or cocaine or marijuana, 80% of them stopped.

 

[1:16:59] Ashley James: Wow. That’s huge. So your program is a 30-day program always or just for alcohol? How does that work?

 

[1:17:09] Dr. John Huber: No. It’s very specific. There’s reasons why ketamine is not appropriate for you. So one of the things we want to do is we want to do a psych eval on you. We can do a quick one and know within 24 hours whether this is an appropriate treatment for you. It costs us money so we charge you for that eval. You get your deposit for the rest of the 30 days back if you’re not appropriate, but the cost of that actually incurs some cost for us. We’ve learned what’s not appropriate. One of the things that obviously is not appropriate for ketamine treatment is if you have a history of psychosis, active psychosis especially if you have drug-induced psychosis it depends one of the drugs and how you were using and things like that. Just regular schizophrenia active psychosis or maybe bipolar disorder with psychotic episodes during your mania phase and things like that are not good indications that you’re appropriate for that. We have some cut-offs levels on you know the MMPI and the MCMI and like that that we use that have turned pretty good for us. We get pretty good shot at it. We don’t want to put anybody into a bad situation, but we also know that a lot of people are coming to us because nothing else has worked. So we want to try and get as many people as we can too.

We know, like okay, everybody who’s had these scores when we gave them they were not any better. Now they were out the $35,000-$40,000. They’re hurting because of that so it’s not appropriate for us to follow through with that. So, here’s your money minus the psychological evaluation. We’ll write you a nice report. You can take that with you if you’d like. Then we follow up with an evaluation at the end. We see pre and post-treatment intervention effects and it’s just amazing. We talked about that before the show, before we started taping. I really can’t get into too much of that, but it’s totally floored me. It’s made me go back and look at my 21 years of teaching graduate students and undergraduate students. Wow. If I’d only know then what I know now.

 

[1:19:37] Ashley James: Yeah. There’s some stories you can’t tell right now for legal reasons, but there will come a day when you can and I wanted to have you back on the show for sure because those stories need to be told. The listeners need to hear them. They’re pretty amazing, but for legal reasons right now, we can’t. We can’t talk about it unfortunately on the air, but one day you will be able to share these beautiful, beautiful stories. For listeners who are interested in going to the clinic, you work with that uses ketamine, what website would be best for them to look into that further?

 

[1:20:14] Dr. John Huber: KLARISANA.com. We have one in San Antonio. We have one in Austin. I’m doing more work with the Austin one. San Antonio is a really long drive for me. I have gone down there and done it. I know everybody in that clinic who works there. I know all the clinic here. My staff works up at this one mostly. We do occasionally again go down there. There is a Klarisana in Denver. That’s kind of become Dr. Bonnett’s home clinic. We all kind of bounce around between the three places as needed. We have Dr. Bonnett’s license in all the states that we’ve got. The therapy team here only does actual therapy in the states where we’re licensed, but we can supervise and teach therapists in other areas where we’re not licensed in different states how to do the appropriate intervention and stuff with that. We do supervise that.

 

[1:21:21] Ashley James: There are so many different, just coming back to your wanting to normalize mental health.

 

[1:21:27] Dr. John Huber: Yes.

 

[1:21:28] Ashley James: One of the first steps is also people understanding that the services that are available to them. On my show, I’ve had many Naturopathic physicians on the show. I’ve actually had listeners write to me and say to me, “I never knew that there was anything other than an MD that I could go to. I didn’t know that there was an osteopath and a chiropractor. I didn’t know that they could do the things they do.” Also, Naturopathic physician. So, I’ve actually had several listeners write to me and say that they were in pre-med and they switched to becoming a Naturopath because they didn’t even know a Naturopathy existed. Sometimes it’s a matter of letting people know that their services are out there. That there’s more than just the thing they’ve always been going to.

So, I know that there’s many different kinds of therapy, but maybe the listener doesn’t actually know that because we learn a lot from the mainstream media. Everyone’s heard of Freud so we think that the Hollywood version of therapy is we’re just lying on a couch complaining and sort of worrying about being judged by this person with a notepad. We haven’t really been given a very fair viewpoint of what therapy actually is by Hollywood or by the media. People who haven’t been to therapy don’t know what it’s like and what kinds of therapy there is out there besides the very stereotypical Freudian therapy. Could you go through and talk about what kind of therapies are out there? Especially talk about the ones that have better success rates.

 

[1:23:16] Dr. John Huber: Well, there’s a lot of different types of therapies out there. One of the interesting things, I’m currently working on a book right now on what it’s like to go to therapy for the first time. Because a lot of people are afraid to go to therapy, “They’re going to brainwash me. They’re going to have some kind of mind control over me.” The book will get into that, but the problem with that is it’s got to be a short read because if you’re depressed, you need to go see a therapist. You don’t want to sit there and read a novel. So, it’s been really a challenge. It’s coming along though. I’ve got a game plan. We’re working on making some adjustments. Maybe I can send you a copy of that and you can see if you want to have me on. We can talk about that as well too, but what we know is that there’s cognitive therapies.

The cognitive therapies are there to change framework, change positions, change language. For example, using absolutes. There’s no real absolute in this world is there except for what? You’re going to die. You can try and avoid taxes, but if you get caught, but you know you’re going to die. I mean that’s an absolute. We use things like everybody hates me. One of my favorite things, you know the seven billion people on this planet? That’s pretty amazing. How do you know all seven billion people? You know they hate you and then all the languages you’d have to master. So, we know that’s a fallacy, but we have to get the person to stop using absolute language. Because absolute language is very destructive to our psyche especially if you’ve got some bad things that have happened to you. If the dominoes have fallen just right in the recent past or maybe in distant past, but they continue. Little ones keep falling and it keeps reinforcing that belief set that you’ve created. So we want to change that cognitive restructuring.

Then we also have different types of psychoanalytic. Of course, we know Freud. Why is Freud so important? Why is he something that we always bring up? Well, Freud basically, he believes that everything resorts back to these unconscious conflicts between sex and aggression. So that becomes very seductive in storytelling when you can use aggression or sex. I mean it’s just we think about the good in the dark. The dark side is very seductive and the light side is it’s nice and warm and loving and it’s got its own seduction for that piece that we want to have there too. So, it’s seductive also but we all openly discuss wanting peace. We don’t all openly discuss that, “I wonder what it feels like to do something evil to somebody.” Everybody goes, “Oh, you’re sick.” “I didn’t do it. I just talked about it. Does that make me sick? You were telling me the other day how that person cut you off on the road and if you’d had a gun you were going to shoot him, but you didn’t have a gun so you didn’t shoot him. Does that make yours sick?”

Thoughts are not inherently sick. Your actions when you actually take action on them can be. So we have to kind of watch what that is, but we also then, they’re in between those two that cognitive you have other things like behavioral where we don’t really care what you’re thinking. We just want to reinforce certain behaviors so we can get those things to change.

Then we have blends, cognitive-behavioral. Now cognitive-behavioral and behavioral work really good. Insurance companies love them as a therapist because you can count and measure really well and you can make progress and we know. “Hey, they’re making progress. They’ve made three out of seven goals. We’re going to make two more in the next week and we’ll be done here in four weeks.” They love that. They don’t complain and argue with that, but at the same time, with the right patient and the right situation, I’ve had insurance companies say, “No. You do as much therapy as you want with those patients.” It was all the right things.

I had a young lady who was mauled by a pit bull and had peeled her face back and chewed her nose. They got there, got the dog off her, got her an ambulance and the plastic surgeon rebuilt her face. From that day forward, every day she looked in the mirror there was somebody else in the morning looking back at her. The insurance company’s, “Nope. Do all the therapy you need.” When I first saw her we were going three days a week. We ended up getting it down to once a month over a period of years. Then we stretched it out and then she did a couple of six-month checkups. Then the last time I heard from her she sent me an invitation to her wedding.

 

[1:28:09] Ashley James: Nice.

 

[1:28:11] Dr. John Huber: Exactly. Man, we had to use a very eclectic kind of thing because she was having all these intrusive thoughts because this is a stranger looking back at me at the mirror, but she was also having all these Freudian things about aggression. “I’m not mad. I love dogs.” It took me about 18 months for her to on her own decide she needed to get rid of the big dogs that she got after she got mauled trying to prove to herself she wasn’t afraid of dogs.

 

[1:28:41] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[1:28:44] Dr. John Huber: That changed her whole life perspective. Just one thing after another, I have to give it to that insurance company. They never once balked at any extension at all. Not one time. They didn’t give me a hard time. They didn’t say, “Oh, we need a copy every one of your notes.” It’s like, “Give us a summary what you’ve done so far.” That’s the way it’s supposed to be, but if you come into to my office because all your kids have gone off to college. Now you have no meaning in life. You were taking care of the hamster, but the hamster died. Now you just want to go commit suicide because a hamster died. It’s like, “Okay, first of all, you can get a new hamster. They have about three-year life expectancy anyway.” It doesn’t symbolize those children that left. They feel like that they’re not there anymore. So there’s some connections there.

Freud does all that symbology and how it replaces one thing for another and then you go to Carl Jung and all the images and the patriarchal matriarchal models and things like that and the collective unconscious. All these things that seem very mystical, but it’s really funny. I did my last doctorate degree, I did it at a school that had one of the researchers who had worked with Hermann Rorschach putting together a Rorschach test. He was not a young man, but he made me push my boundaries and made me learn the Rorschach test probably better than I wanted to be at it. When I have patients who come in and the cognitive stuff doesn’t work, the behavioral stuff, the cognitive-behavioral doesn’t work. When I start using thought stopping and Albert Ellis and all these and nothing’s working, I pull out some Freud and all of a sudden this person’s life changes in a matter of weeks.

 

[1:30:48] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[1:30:49] Dr. John Huber: It’s like whoa. This was right. This was right for this person. I had a guy who was very suicidal. He dropped out of school right before his senior year. His family knew the school board. I was working in Miami Dade County Public Schools then. They sent him into my office. They called me, “Can you see him?” Three out of the eight people on the school board and knew this person, the family personally. I’m like, “Okay. I cleared my plate. Get him here on Friday.” He comes in and he’s just like stone cold. There’s walls all around this guy. I pulled out the Rorschach chart or flats and I started using them therapeutically. About halfway through them, I knew exactly what had happened. This man had been sexually assaulted.

 

[1:31:39] Ashley James: What’s the Rorschach thing you’re talking about?

 

[1:31:42] Dr. John Huber: The inkblot test.

 

[1:31:43] Ashley James: Oh, inkblot. Okay. Really? You knew. So you’re holding up weird inkblots and he says, “I see a giraffe. I see a lizard.”

 

[1:31:50] Dr. John Huber: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said all the things and I’m like, “This guy’s been violated.” So I put the cards down and I said, “So when were you raped?” The guy turned white I thought I was going to call an ambulance. He’s like, “Who told you?” He goes, “I told nobody. Nobody knows this. How do you?” He just kind of freaked out for a few minutes. I let him vent. I go, “Well, that’s why they pay me the big bucks. I got all these. See all those degrees on the wall? They’re actually good for something.” I was able to get this guy to give us a shot.

Miami Dade, as big as it is and all the problems it has with being big, that has some amazing things. For example, they have high school campuses on some of the community college campuses there. Adults can go there and get a high school degree through their Community College. It has a community college transcript and all that kind of stuff, but they’re actually working for high school degree. Then they can take their college credits to their bosses. So adults who didn’t finish high school are going back and finish high school.

Well, I picked up the phone. One of the psychologists I worked with who was stationed at one of those schools inside one of the college campuses. I’m like, “Hey, here’s what’s going on. If his parents find out what happened to him he’s gone.” I mean this kid, he had demonstrated that he would do it. I mean there was some history there.

 

[1:33:17] Ashley James: He’d commit suicide?

 

[1:33:18] Dr. John Huber: Yeah. So, the guy goes, “Let me talk to my principal.” We sat and talked to the principal. Principal said, “If you two psychologists are willing to this, I’ll do everything I can. I don’t need to know what has happened with this young man as long as this is the right placement for him.” So we had our admission review and dismissal meeting. We went through and we figured it was just going to be the parents, him and a couple teachers. We walked in and there’s almost 30 people in there because it’s a college campus. These college professors don’t know what’s going on. “I want to see this.” We’re like, “Oh my goodness.” So, me and the other psychologists sat next to each other. We just kind of mumbled through stuff and just started signing paperwork and passed it around. Everybody acted like they knew what they were doing. They signed the paperwork. We got the kid in. He graduated. I got a phone message left on my answering machine in my office that next summer. It was about seven minutes long. He started off by telling me, “I planned on killing myself the weekend after I met you.” He went from there to, “I can’t thank you enough. I just got a full ride to a major university.” He gave me the major university and all that kind of stuff. “You gave me my life back.”

 

[1:34:33] Ashley James: Yeah.

 

[1:34:34] Dr. John Huber: So when people criticize psychoanalysis, man it’s not right for everybody but when it works it works. The Freudian inkblot tests and all that kind of stuff. There’s a place for that and we need to need to show it respect. The reason why though that we really push that and you see it so much besides us being seductive it was the first time somebody had put together and organized theoretical orientation for psychotherapy. What went on before then was there was this guy called Emmanuel Church. He would go around and he was kind of the Oprah of the day. He would go to town theaters and people would come in there. People would come up and talk and their families would go up and he’d do family therapy in front of the audience.

 

[1:35:23] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[1:35:24] Dr. John Huber: Of course, who could afford to go? You got all your doctors and attorneys and your businessman and all this kind of stuff. So they were paying this guy tons of money. People would volunteer and be a victim and he would actually help them work through things. The doctors were sitting and going, “Man, look at how much money I could be making,” but the Hippocratic Oath says we either have to have research proof or we have to have strong theoretical orientation and we had neither one of them. So this guy could do it as entertainment and made lots of money. Then all sudden we had this book that come translated from German called Interpretation of Dreams by a guy named Sigmund Freud. He’d written a theoretical orientation for talk therapy. Now doctors could go do that. He was the game-changer.

 

[1:36:16] Ashley James: Yeah.

 

[1:36:17] Dr. John Huber: We went from there to okay let’s break this down. What if this is really working? We found out some specific things. Even if you go to a psychoanalytic school where they’re going to teach you psychoanalysis, the first techniques they show you are Carl Rogers’ person-centered therapy because if you can’t get your patient coming back to therapy, it doesn’t matter if you’re the best therapist in the world if they’re not there to do therapy. What do we know about Carl Rogers is that he makes that person feel valued and empowered and they want to come back. So you start with that and then you go do your orientation, whatever you do best at that point. So, it’s just a lot of skill. The best predictor though of whether you’re going to be successful in therapy is not what orientation the therapist has.

 

[1:37:03] Ashley James: Really.

 

[1:37:04] Dr. John Huber: It’s how long the therapist has been doing therapy.

 

[1:37:07] Ashley James: Really.

 

[1:37:09] Dr. John Huber: Because just like I told you, when people say what is my orientation? I’m a cognitive-behavioral therapist when it comes to therapy, but I know how to use eclectic psychotherapy. I can use Freud. I can use Jungian therapy. I can use Gestalt therapy, but I don’t start with that. I start with my patient. What is my patient going to respond to the best? How do I know that? Experience. I find out through my structure of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy that okay, this isn’t working, that’s not working, this get a little bit of benefit from here so we’re not going to throw that out but I need to tweak it a little bit. I have to keep the same goals in mind the whole time. The cool thing with, again cognitive behavior, I can count and measure and I can make progress. So, I tend to keep part of that cognitive-behavioral perspective in there even if I pull in psychoanalysis or hypnosis or something like that into my treatment of the patient. Because then I’ve still got that benchmark that I can say, “He’s making progress,” or “He’s not making programs.”

 

[1:38:19] Ashley James: I imagine hypnotherapy or any of your therapy actually would be really positive while working with someone who’s doing the ketamine because their resistance has been dropped.

 

[1:38:34] Dr. John Huber: Their defense mechanisms have been dropped. I use that word specifically because that’s one of the things Freud talks about, our defense mechanisms. We lie to ourselves. Even in cognitive behavioral therapy, we lie to ourselves. We lie to ourselves that, “You know, I’ve been smoking for 15 years. I’m not going to get cancer.” We lie to ourselves, “Oh, it’s not going to happen to me. Those rules don’t apply to me. I’m John. It’s not going to happen.” It will. It’ll catch up. You play the game long, enough you’re going to get hit with a flag.

 

[1:39:09] Ashley James: My friend is in marriage counseling and her husband is coming up with these lies. She’s just staring at him. She’s kind of dumbfounded. She doesn’t even know what to say to the therapist. She’s just so, in the moment, she’s not a type of person to fight or argue. She’s just observing and kind of shocked because he believes his lies. He’s saying these lies that are just like totally not true, like measurable. He said, “We’ve gone on seven family vacations,” or whatever he’s mentioned. She’s like she can count three. She’s like, “No.” He says, “I always take the kids to the park on the weekends.” He’s done it three times in seven years like that kind of thing. He believes his lies. It’s just really amazing to sit back and then go, yeah, how much do we lie to ourselves and believe it? “I’m going to go to the gym tomorrow.” “Just one chocolate bar.”

 

[1:40:06] Dr. John Huber: Yeah, exactly. That’s the crazy thing about lie detector test because if you believe your lies you’re not going to show up as lying.

 

[1:40:12] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[1:40:14] Dr. John Huber: So that’s why that’s not what we should be using. With the best lie detector test we have is that jury of your peers and that judge up there not some machine. Because you get all these other perspectives. You don’t just get yours when you go into court. We have other witnesses there. We have DNA testing there. We have drug testing. We have alcohol testing. We have fingerprints, whatever. We got all this other stuff there. It’s not just you and that machine, because again if you truly believe or heaven forbid you’re a truly antisocial personality disorder, a true sociopath and don’t mind the fact that you may have harmed somebody significantly, you’re not going to have a physiological reaction to that. So a sociopath is less likely to fail a lie-detector test. That’s who we want to try and catch, right? Then why do we keep using them? Well, we keep using them because the whole game is we want to scare the person enough to make them think that we really can tell they’re lying so they just cop a plea and tell us what really happened.

 

[1:41:27] Ashley James: Wow. I did not know that about lie-detector test that if you believe the lie that you won’t get caught. Right. I guess, yeah. Because it’s measuring the stress response.

 

[1:41:40] Dr. John Huber: Exactly. Your heart rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response, respiratory. Yes.

 

[1:41:46] Ashley James: Psychopaths would not have that.

 

[1:41:49] Dr. John Huber: Yeah. Unless you maybe hurt their car and then you’ll see a physiological response.

 

[1:41:56] Ashley James: Right. Don’t they believe that they own people like inanimate objects like a car?

 

[1:42:04] Dr. John Huber: Well, the inanimate objects have value to them. People are just objects to be used to get certain things they want. So when you’re through getting what you can get out of that person you throw them away. It doesn’t matter what happens to them.

 

[1:42:16] Ashley James: How do we know we’re dealing with a psychopath? What if someone goes, “I wonder if I’m married to one or I wonder if my boss is one or what if my coworker is a psychopath?” What are the signs to be aware of?

 

[1:42:28] Dr. John Huber: Why don’t you just him bring down in my office and for a specific sum I’ll just figure that out for you. I’m pretty good at it. What you want to look at, what I told my college students, the people when they’re dating whether a man or a woman if they let their friends call you all sorts of names and put you down and demean you but they blow up if they touched their car wrong or they slammed the door too hard on their car or they have a favorite hunting knife or a gun or something that they treat like it’s the Holy Grail, red flag. Don’t walk away, run away. Because that inanimate object is more valuable to them than a living person. Run away. Another thing, it’s funny how it happens, dogs. Not just one dog but every dog this person comes around doesn’t really like that person, red flag. Dogs pick up on our physiology. That’s why seizure dogs, true helping dogs that are trained, can pick up on your seizure thirty to forty-five minutes before it actually happens.

 

[1:43:48] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[1:43:50] Dr. John Huber: You’ll be safe. You got a seizure dog, oh, it’s time to go. So they’ll take you and sit you downtime. Go lay down on the couch over here. They got their patterns of behavior so we have to train the people to read the dog’s movements too, but it’s pretty amazing when that happens. You get patients that are no longer slamming their heads on the corner of the coffee tables because they started having a seizure and were expecting it.

 

[1:44:15] Ashley James: Right. Very interesting. Dr. Huber, I could talk to you all day long. Yes, I definitely want to have you back on the show, but you knew that. You’re such a pro. Every show you’re on they want to have you back. You’re very entertaining and educating. That’s the perfect combination, right? To be entertained while you’re learning. So, you’re an excellent guest. I definitely want to have you back especially when you published your book, especially when you can share more formation about ketamine that after some things have happened in the near future, hopefully. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the show. I love your mission that your nonprofit is here to normalize mental health. That going to a counselor should be like we take a shower, we want to have physical hygiene, we go to a mental health counselor to make sure we have mental hygiene, right?

 

[1:45:22] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely.

 

[1:45:24] Ashley James: Just make it normal. Normal, healthy people can go to therapy.

 

[1:45:27] Dr. John Huber: They should, even if it’s just a check-up. I tell people that. “Why? I don’t have any problem.” Think about it, your world is going great. If you go see a therapist just to kind of know what you look like when world’s going great and then the bottom falls out, that therapists already has a history with you and they know where you need to be. But more important than that, if you’re one of those people who tend to not have problems for real and you cope and you manage, your friends come to you all the time for help. There’s been more than one time in most of those people’s lives where they go, “Hey, buddy. Why don’t you go see a therapist?” They’re going, “Oh, okay.” But instead of saying that, “Why don’t you go to my friend John? I’ve talked to him a couple of times.” They’re more likely to go see me then instead of let’s just pull up a phonebook and find a therapist here.

 

[1:46:15] Ashley James: Ah. So get a relationship with a therapist so that you could even help your friends and send them to your friend the therapist you’ve been seeing. It’s good to have one in your pocket.

 

[1:46:26] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. One more therapeutic tool for you to help function and cope. I’m not saying you have to see them. You can go in there and meet them one time. You feel comfortable with him, you talk a little bit, you just want to, “Hey, things are going pretty good right now, but if something happens I want to have it. I know my kids are getting ready to graduate from college. My daughter is talking about getting married. I just don’t know how I’m going to react to all that. So I want somebody who kind of I already know. I don’t want to have an introductory session that’s been three sessions trying to figure out what my life looks like normal before we start therapy.”

 

[1:47:02] Ashley James: I have a friend who’s a personal chef in Seattle, very busy woman. She has a boyfriend and she has a daughter with this boyfriend. The daughter’s about four or five years old and she’s a very busy woman. She’s a busy mom. Every day is driving to a different person’s house and cooking for them. That she cooks five-days-worth of food in one afternoon. She’ll have maybe two clients a day. So it’s just like go, go, go, go, go. She made a post on Facebook that was really beautiful. To all her friends she said, “Listen, you guys say I’m a great mom. You say I’m a great entrepreneur. You say like wow you’ve got your whole life together. How do you do this? How do you pull it all together? How do you have a successful career and have a great relationship and you’re also like a really attentive as a mom? How do you do this all?”

She goes, “Listen, I do it because I see my therapist three times a week. I sometimes see them more than three times a week. My therapist helps me stay successful and stay sane.” She goes, “Everyone should have a therapist. Everyone should have a mental health counselor. It should be like going to the gym. You go to the gym three times a week. You go to your therapist.” She goes, “That’s why I don’t explode at my boyfriend and that’s why I don’t completely like go off the rails with my kid. When my kid’s frustrating, when my boyfriend’s being crazy and when my life is being insane I don’t take it out on the wrong people. I don’t take it out on people. I don’t blow up at people because I am able to like deal with it and work through it with my therapist. Then I am a loving attentive mom that is present to my daughter. I don’t bring my work home with me. I’m able to be intimate and loving and vulnerable partner with my boyfriend because I don’t take my frustrations out on him.”

So she just basically said to all our friends the same mission that you have. She wants everyone to know that healthy human beings go to therapy. That if we’re not going to therapy it’s sort of like not taking a shower and not going to the gym. If you’re not really having that like checking in with yourself a mentally and emotionally, then there’s like some like dirty laundry being built up in your closet basically. So, I love that she pointed out that we could use therapy like a mental gym and just keep ourselves fit and healthy mentally and emotionally.

 

[1:49:46] Dr. John Huber: Absolutely. That is what we’ve got to do. I take my own advice. I tell my patients, “Look, you’re spending too much time on your cell phone.” Two years ago I took a 60-day break from internet on my cell phone and all that. It’s hard doing what we do and not having connections online. I can do it, you can do it.

 

[1:50:14] Ashley James: I love that. Yes. I know you have a whole talk about the phone and how it increases, it’s been shown to increase anxiety and depression. We want to, even though people are probably listening to this on their phone, but we want to spend less time with electronics and spend more time with real people, more time with connecting with ourselves. Before we hit record though you said something beautiful about going outside. Would you like to wrap up today’s interview with that?

 

[1:50:40] Dr. John Huber: Well, that’s where I was going to go.

 

[1:50:41] Ashley James: Is that where you’re going. I knew that’s where you’re going. Awesome.

 

[1:50:42] Dr. John Huber: That’s where I was going to go. One of the best things, we have to get connected. We have to get back to being human. I do it. I mean it’s 28 degrees outside and my wife just thinks I’m nuts. I go outside, I take my shoes and socks off and I put my feet on the ground. I just breathe, focus on the stars, focus on the possum running across the fence line down the road. Just be and breathe.

There’s research out there about being in physical contact with the ground and what it does to your neurochemistry and your brain. My goal is to make about 20 minutes. Sometimes it’s really cold, but cold and rainy is the worst. I don’t know if I do five minutes on some of those days, but I try to do it every day. I got my little chairs sitting out there right next to my hot tub so if it gets real cold I can jump in a hot tub and keep my feet on the ground. Sometimes I’m out there for an hour and a half with my feet in the ground. My dogs love it. They come curl up around my feet. It’s really funny because when I first started doing it they didn’t know what was going on. We have rescue puppies who’ve been abused and stuff like that. Now, man, they come in they get between our legs and kind of wrap themselves around us. It’s like they’re trying to help us make that connection, it’s like they picked up on what we’re doing.

 

[1:52:10] Ashley James: I want you to listen to, I’ll send it to you. I have an interview with Clint Ober on grounding and earthing. He did, I believe it was 24 scientific studies where they prove that –

 

[1:52:23] Dr. John Huber: Yeah, I read some of his studies. I haven’t read all of it.

 

[1:52:24] Ashley James: You did? Okay. Awesome.

 

[1:52:27] Dr. John Huber: I would love to hear the interview.

 

[1:52:28] Ashley James: Yeah. He has a great story that when we ground ourselves or you could use a grounding mat if you don’t want to go outside, but the going outside part is fantastic. You’re connecting with the Schumann resonance, you’re connecting with the earth energy, but when you put your bare feet on the ground you’re releasing electrons. So there’s an actual measurable anti-inflammatory effect that happens because we’re releasing all these excess electrons that are causing damage. That’s the connection between the mental and emotional body. The physical body and this energetic body that we have. You’re bringing it all together in that moment when you’re spending time outside in nature breathing, feeling your body, connecting back with the earth just releasing and letting go of all that excess energy and connecting with the universe. Then you can start to process your day in a way that is cathartic.

So, it’s beautiful. I love that advice. I think we should all do it. We should all get out in nature more and put our feet in the ground and just breathe. Thank you so much, Dr. John Huber, for coming on the show today. Listeners can go to mainstreammentalhealth.org to check out your nonprofit. Of course, all the links to everything that Dr. John does is going to be on the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?

 

[1:54:02] Dr. John Huber: I always like to say and remind people that you should always leave something for somebody and a good something. For example, the things I’ve learned today about your interview style made me feel extremely comfortable. I think it helped me open up a lot. So I really appreciate you giving me that during the interview. I want to remind everybody that life is really what happens while we’re making plans so just buckle up.

 

[1:54:31] Ashley James: Buckle up and love yourself and love each other. Thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. I can’t wait to have you back on the show.

 

[1:54:40] Dr. John Huber: Awesome. I can’t wait to be back.

 

[1:54:43] Outro: Are you in to optimize your health? Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price? For high-quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price. That’s takeyoursupplements.com, takeyoursupplements.com. That’s takeyoursupplements.com. Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program.

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How To Prevent And Treat Mold Naturally

https://www.learntruehealth.com/how-to-prevent-and-treat-mold-naturally

Highlights

• VOCs and particulates are the most common household air pollutants
• Dangers of burning candles
• Best air filter combination
• Molds accumulating indoor
• Indoor moisture problem can be serious
• Radon – a harmful, naturally occurring gas
• Environmental mold
• Prevent mld growth inside the home
• The importance of proper ventilation
• House treatment after a flood

 

Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James.

This is Episode 364.

We have a very interesting guest for today’s show, David Bloom. I’m so excited to finally have you on the show. I’ve been a really big fan of Green Home Solutions which has created a revolutionary technique for removing mold that is both non-toxic and permanent. It’s something that no other company has. I have personally experienced the benefits of what you’ve created. I had black mold in our bathroom and it was making sick. I didn’t even know it was making me sick. It basically shot my immune system and I was catching everything, and then I finally used your services and it removed the mold, and I stopped catching the germs. I thought this is amazing. I spent probably a year just catching every single cold and flu and just feeling like my immune system had hit rock bottom and it was because of the mold in our house that I was being exposed to everytime I went to our bathroom which is right off our bedroom. So I was basically breathing in these mold spores all the time.

Other companies will use harsh chemicals. They won’t actually get rid of 100% of the mold, and I’m really looking forward to you teaching us today more about how to create indoor air quality; what to look for and the science behind this technology that you’ve developed. So welcome to the show.

 

0:01:56.0 David Bloom: Thank you very much for having me, Ashley. It’s a privilege to be with you. You’ve done some great work. I’ve listened to several of your podcasts. Just to give you an idea of how this all got started. About late 90’s to early 2000, I had just completed finishing my basement turning it into a living space. We had had a sewage backup or a blockage and the plumber came out with the septic system. He was running a snake from the tank back towards the house to clear the blockage. What I forgot was above the ceiling in that newly finished basement space was a standpipe for water [inaudible 0:02:36.1]. So everytime the plumber is pushing the snake there is ethylic coming over that pipe into the basement which had just been completed into a living space.

So I started to freak out and called my local DP and they said get rid of everything, get somebody in there. Called environmental protection with the same issue. But I remember meeting a gentleman at the Atlanta airport who had created a particular product that was rather unique. Back at that time, I live in Connecticut northeast, and most homes or a lot of the homes up here are heated using heating oil. And the oil tanks had historically always been buried in the ground. They found that around that time that most of these tanks started leaking. And if you had a tank in the ground you couldn’t sell your house. You would have to remove it first, and if you removed it and they found any evidence of leakage that was considered hazardous waste – that had to be hold away.

So he had come up with a combination of microbes that would be injected into the ground prior to the tanks being dug up a few days ahead of time. And these microbes would actually digest the oil in the ground and then when you dig the tank up there’s no hazardous waste left. It was brilliant. So I got his card and I said, “Stephen, will this stuff work with what I’m doing?” He said, “I have no idea, but why don’t you try it.” So we did. We dried the space out ourselves, we used his product as a spray, we used it on the carpet, we used it as a wipe down. We used it for everything. Now, it wasn’t a big mess. It came in a quarter, maybe a 6 by 6 area, but it was a carpeted space. They told us we’d have to get rid of all that and everything. Bottomline was we spent a couple of days playing around with the stuff. I had somebody come in and test my house and there was no evidence of mold and there was no evidence of bacteria.

That actually stayed that way. The only thing we got rid of – there was a wood bookcase that had a particleboard core. So that swelled up a little bit. I got rid of that. Everything else stayed there until about two years ago when we finally re-did the space. I test my house regularly, usually about every six months. Never have had an issue. So, Steve and I got together and we formed the company and we started looking at other alternatives. So we worked on this particular product for mold remediation specifically because at that time they’re a good industry to get into and we expanded it off of that with other cleaning products. We have odor neutralization technologies we developed, we do biogas desulfurization for anaerobic digesters which is to clean the gas up so it can be burned in a generator from plants or using a fuel cell.

So what happened was I went back to school at roughly 50 years old for microbiology because I had to know what I was talking about and everything took off from there. I come from a family of scientists. I actually took a wrong turn when I went to college and thought that law looked pretty good. My uncle is a very well-known research chemist in the Boston area. I used to work for him during the summer. As a matter of fact, I had a better chemistry set in my house when I was a teenager than my highschool had. It just thrilled me to death to get back and become a scientist. My daughter is finishing up her PhD in neuroscience. I mean we’re a science type of family. We love what we do because we’re helping people. We’re not breaking things down. We’re just helping people get healthy the best way we can.

It took us a couple of years to get the formula perfected and it needed to get through an EPA registration which is not an easy process. You have to prove your efficacy, you have to prove the safety. it really comes down to having a registered product means that the EPA has looked at our data which is generated from third-party laboratories and it matched what we say it does. So, it does what we say it does. It’s the safest we say it is. That’s a big deal. In the mold remediation industry there’s a lot of cowboys out there. We call them “spray and pray.” They go in to somebody’s house with God knows what? I mean they’re gonna tell you, “Oh it’s all natural. It’s safe. Everything’s fine.” But if it’s not EPA registered, there’s no way of verifying that and you just really don’t know what you’re getting. Unfortunately it’s giving the industry a pretty bad rep.

With Green Home, I got involved with them 2015. They have an exclusive – mostly the products that I make now. We have a couple of things we do for the industry but most of the products we make. I had been responsible for training their remediators. They all have to get accredited by the American Council for Accredited Certification whose own programs are created by the council of engineering and scientific specialty branch which is the only one like it. There’s a lot of people that have [inaudible 0:08:03.0] after their name in the mold industry, but usually it’s a paid up plaque. You pay them a fee, you answer some questions and you get a certification. ACAC does not offer any kind of training. All they do is they do proctored exams. So it’s really a great way to do it and it puts us ahead of a lot of the other people that are out there and much more reputable.

We’re actually getting into a lot more things than just mold. In fact, I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the two most common indoor pollutants are VOCs and particulates. People don’t realize it. There is an article recently in one of the journals where they analyze the air in a home after they had cooked the roast in their oven. It was a gas oven, I think that would probably make a little bit of a difference. The air quality was equal to New Delhi India which is about the 6th most polluted air in the world – off from that roast.

 

0:09:05.9 Ashley James: Yeah. I believe that. I had a doctor on who wrote the book Dirty Genes and his whole thing is teaching people how to help their body through epigenetics. Because when we’re exposed to different chemicals, it can actually trigger genes to turn on and off – basically genes to be suppressed or expressed themselves. And when we are cooking with gas, when we’re breathing and we don’t have the hood on to suck all the byproduct or the waste of burning gas away from us, it can change our genetics. Because there are chemicals like formaldehyde in the gas that comes to our stove and so people often will turn the oven on and not think to turn the hood on and their whole house is being filled with formaldehyde.

 

0:10:01.5 David Bloom: Yes. The electric stove still have the issue from the particulates from the cooking process itself, but obviously not from the gas. And while we’re talking about gas, one of the other major pollutants are the pilot lights that are in gas fireplaces. A lot of people still have pilot lights instead of electronic ignition. Those are very inefficient – they way they burn. They let something that’s not used very often. When it’s on it gets complete combustion. You don’t get the same particulate matter, but when it’s not operating and just the pilot light is on – then you’re putting particulates in. And along those same things, the next one that everybody should be avoiding is burning candles. Candles are atrocious for putting particulates into the air, especially paraffin candles. Soy-based candles are better, and if you had to burn a candle and you could keep your wick short under about half an inch – that’s even better.

We did a test where we hooked up a sort of like a radon fan in a filtration system. We burn a single candle for 20 minutes, the filter was as black as black could be from that one candle. Nobody realizes it and then you go into somebody’s home and they can’t understand why they don’t feel well and they got 25 candles burning everywhere – not a good idea.

 

0:11:28.4 Ashley James: Wow. We have one air filter that we keep running in our bedroom. I turn it on a few hours before we go into the bedroom to sleep. I turn it on high and when I walk in there, it is like I’m walking into a fresh forest. The air smells amazing. Not that our house smells bad, but it’s just there’s something totally different about the quality of the air. It smells clean and fresh and it feels different when I walk into our bedroom after having turn the air filter on high and we have it running all night long with us. I just notice a difference. I thought that was really interesting that the rest of our house is so different from this one room that has an air filter in it.

 

0:12:18.6 David Bloom: I’m guessing you have charcoal filter in that filter also. Activated charcoal is unbelievably good at absorbing some VOCs and gasses. So typically the best combination that I would ever recommend is a HEPA filter with an activated charcoal pre-filter and that will take care of a lot of the pollutants that we would normally see. A HEPA filter is down to .3 microns so you’re getting most anything that could get down deeper, you’re not getting really tiny stuff, but you’re getting a good portion of it.

 

0:12:51.3 Ashley James: Is Green Home Solutions planning on designing and providing air filters that are effective?

 

0:13:03.4 David Bloom: Actually we’re in the middle of looking at that now. There’s a lot of them out in the market. There’s a big discrepancy between what the lab results on a lot of these filters are versus what you actually get in real life. In fact, Wire Cutter which is a division of the New York Times published an article just recently where they did real life experiences with a bunch of different air filters and made some strong recommendations. There’s some really good ones. So we’re not necessarily to re-invent, we’re looking to see if we can find the one that does what we want. If we had to, we will. But I think we’re gonna find a manufactured product that we can recommend based on the design and how it works.

 

0:13:43.8 Ashley James: Very cool.

 

0:13:46.1 David Bloom: But I would recommend that article for your listeners.

 

0:13:48.5 Ashley James: Great. I will make sure that we link it. Is there a particular brand that you have in your home right now that you like?

 

0:13:56.4 David Bloom: No. [Laughter]

 

0:13:59.1 Ashley James: The jury is still out?

 

0:14:01.0 David Bloom: I actually have a commercial unit that I was still learning remediation business for a number of years before I decided I didn’t wanna do the work anymore and just make the stuff that other people use and train people how to do it. So I’ve got air scrubbers that will move anywhere between 500 and 2000 cubic feet of air per minute.

 

0:14:19.7 Ashley James: I bet your house smells amazing.

 

0:14:22.0 David Bloom: Well, we’ve got dogs and cats. So, got to take that into consideration. But I’ll run those periodically for a couple of hours especially if we’re not home during the day, I’ll let it run. I have activated carbon pre-filters on those also. So that’s what I do use.

Getting back to the VOCs, what a lot of people don’t realize, I mean formaldehyde is bigger. Formaldehyde can come from building materials, particle boards, new carpet smells – typically formaldehyde. But most of the VOCs that we find when we test homes are actually from personal care and cleaning products. So the typical house if you open a cabinet under the sink is just a zestful of VOC producing chemicals and people don’t realize that that could be affecting your health in the home.

Personal care products – I had a client that I was visiting and she was undergoing chemotherapy. She thought she had mold in the house and it tested negative for that. So we looked for bacteria, we didn’t find anything. So we did the VOC test and there was some sort of a funny smell and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it when I was in there. So when the test results came back, she had two major sources – one was under her sink and the other was she had a perfume that she would put on when people are coming over. It was a very light scent, it had a perfumey type of smell but I didn’t really detect it on her, but that was putting a tremendous amount of VOCs into the air. And so here she is sitting getting chemotherapy but she is making herself ill. So once we got her to change, things got better of course.

The other thing that people don’t realize is when they store – if you have an attached garage and you store chemicals, pesticides, gasoline. All of those things can generate gasses that then can get sucked in to the house. Most homes are under a slight negative pressure. Ideally we’d have them under positive pressure, but most are under negative pressure and that comes back to what’s called the [inaudible 0:16:42.0]. Assuming you’re in the basement or crawlspace, air will flow from that cooler space below all the way up through the attic. One of the things just on a side note is if I walked into somebody’s attic and I see that they’ve got mold there, the first thing I would look for is a wet base in their crawl space because that’s typically where it comes from. Second would be lack of ventilation.

 

0:17:07.0 Ashley James: So an attic can have mold because there’s like a leak in some other part of the house but that the moisture is travelling upwards into the attic.

 

0:17:17.0 David Bloom: That’s correct. So if moisture generates below is always gonna go up and you reach middle pressure, somewhere towards the top of the house and then you get a little bit of negative pressure in the attic. So it is all going in that one flow. It’s a very common known issue. Nowadays they typically try to air seal attics from the rest of the house so that you don’t get anything going up and then if you can condition your house to take care of that moisture, you’re fine. But here in New England we typically all have basements here, but if you don’t have a dehumidifier in your basement, you’re gonna have a mold issue. Because in the summer time it gets very hot and humid and you get a tremendous amount of moisture because that cooler space down below, you get hot air infiltrating into the house reaches that cools space and you get moisture. Ventilated crawl spaces are a big issue. Same thing, you have hot humid air coming in, it gets the cooler surface of the dirt or the floor in the crawl space and it condenses and you end up with a moisture problem.

In fact some people would fans in there because they think if they move more air through their crawl space it makes sense, but the reality is you’re really just bringing in more moisture and allowing it to condense. So I’d like to say, seal the crawl spaces.

 

0:18:45.1 Ashley James: Oh okay. I was gonna say what the solution? So the solution is to seal them.

 

0:18:48.1 David Bloom: Yeah. That’s the best thing you can do. Seal it. If you don’t have combustion appliances in the crawl space then we would actually recommend sealing the entire thing. You should probably put a dehumidifier in there, but you’d seal between the crawl space and the living space and obviously you’re gonna seal between the outside and the crawl space itself in the ground. If you do have combustion appliances, you have to be careful because those typically require either a draft for the gas to get up the chimney plus the air for combustion. So there you have to have some alternative ways to doing it.

Modern day furnaces, condensing furnaces, gas units have their own air supply. For other types of units – oil; here they do something where they bring in we call a fan in a can, but it’s a little fan that turns on when your furnace turns on. So it has enough air for combustion. But sealing them up is one of the best things they could do. It improves the whole indoor air quality of the house.

 

0:19:50.4 Ashley James: So Green Home Solutions franchises. So you teach, you’re one of the main educators at Green Home Solutions and you teach these franchisees how to do these things and I know they go through extensive education with you. Do you teach them how to detect these kinds of problems? Sort of beyond mold, but looking at what should be – like where the VOCs and particulates are coming from, what should be sealed off, is this something that if one of our listeners called Green Home Solutions and have one of their local people come out to their house they could inspect this and see if they could find these problems?

 

0:20:35.4 David Bloom: Yes. We spend several days just teaching building sciences. So we teach them about proper construction techniques to manage moisture so that when they go to look at a property and if it doesn’t look like they way it’s supposed to look, you know you’ve got a potential issue there. As far as testing for these, we’re just really getting into it. I’ve been doing it for a while. I’ve got several franchisees that are preferably qualified and we’re slowly getting everybody.

So originally we go in and test for mold. If that came back negative, then we’re sort of out of luck because we’re not helping anybody. We just tell them they don’t have mold issue, they have some other issue. And actually mold is really isn’t the problem. Mold is a symptom of a problem. Moisture is the issue. So mold is just a symptom of a moisture problem. That’s why we spend so much time at the building sciences is because they have to be able to identify where the source of moisture is coming from. And we do that, we use thermal imaging, moisture meters, we have[ inaudible  0:21:40.9] so they can look inside walls. We have a number of tools available to help us do these inspections, but there’s really no substitute for your eyes and your nose actually – of just looking around.

We can test for molds, we’ll test for bacteria, we can test for VOCs, formaldehyde – we test for separately because it doesn’t always show up on a standard VOC test. If there were spray foam insulation, we’ll do a different type of aldehyde test. Spray foam – if it isn’t put in perfectly, it can off-gas and the half-life is like 50 years. It never goes away.

 

0:22:16.7 Ashley James: Oh my gosh. I know so many people who thought they were really smart to use spray foam for insulation. They do it themselves.

 

0:22:24.3 David Bloom: I used to recommend it. I don’t any longer. Although in some situations it’s okay, and if they’re doing it themselves and they’re using a single-part system, that’s okay too. But when it’s done professionally, there’s two separate components to it that get mixed together, and if everything is not perfect it doesn’t cure properly and then it has the potential to off-gas for an extended period of time. But in some areas you have to do it, we talked to some people up in Boston that had bought a new condo and they’re renovating it and they only had about nine inches of sealing space, but Boston requires an R60 I think it was for insulation in the roof. The only way you can get that level is with spray foam. So if it’s done properly – somebody described it to me as this, somebody smarter than I. He said it’s like playing Russian Roulette with a revolver that’s got 50 chambers. 49 out of 50 times it’s gonna be fine, but when it’s not, it’s catastrophic.

I did several spray foam insulation remediation projects or managed them a few years back and I couldn’t do it anymore.It was just awful. The first one, we literally cut the roof off the people’s house. Cut it off where the rafters meet the ceiling bush. Take it with a crane, we built them a new roof.

Second one I did, they tore the house down because there’s no way to fix it. If it’s a mild issue, you can bring in more fresh air. I did one where we put in something that brought in an extra 7,000 cubic feet of fresh air, conditioned it and it kept the house in a positive pressure so it held the gas in the wall. That’s why positive pressure is always good. When you end up at negative pressure you can suck pollutants in places you didn’t even know you had.

 

0:24:23.3 Ashley James: I need to unpack that. My mind is about to explode. So many people have homes that have this spray foam. Maybe they moved in to a house and someone else had done the spray foam and they’re sitting here going, “Oh my gosh I have spray foam in my attic. I have no idea whether my house is positive or negative.” Or whether the draft is coming down from the attic and I don’t know whether it’s off-gassing. Can we talk a bit about what are the symptoms, what’s the harm in having the spray foam off-gas for 50 years to our whole family in our house?

 

0:24:58.7 David Bloom: If it’s off-gassing, that’s a big if. Like I said 49 out of 50 times it’s probably just fine. If it’s off-gassing, there’s usually a little bit of an odor that you detect, but not everybody is sensitive to it. That first house I mentioned where we took the roof off, the two other people that live there had no symptoms at all and one of them is actually one of their children couldn’t stay there. He just would get headaches, migraines, he’d feel awful and as soon as he left the house he felt better. So obviously there’s some sort of a correlation there.

Now, if somebody wanted to check and see if it’s cured properly, you could actually cut a little sample out. Put it in a mason jar and set it out in the sun for a little bit, then open it up and take up and take a big whiff. If it has sort of a sweet fishy smell, that would be an aldehyde – one of the gasses that’s pretty common that’s not right. Formaldehyde is an aldehyde. There are other aldehydes – glutaraldehyde, formaldehyde, but they’re aldehydes. Often you have acetic acid which is like a vinegary kind of smell. This is not a scientific test by any way, but it is simple that somebody could do. To do it properly you would have to have sorbent tubes in a pump it runs for about 24 hours and that then gets analyzed specifically for gasses that could be present in spray foam.

There’s not a lot of places that do that. In fact, I’m only aware of one laboratory that does that kind of analysis specifically for spray foam. There’s a lot of really good labs that can test for various VOCs, but they have a very nice panel of all the potential gasses that could come out of spray foam insulation.

 

0:26:59.9 Ashley James: We didn’t define VOCs. So for those who don’t know what VOCs are, can you just define it and explain why they’re harmful?

 

0:27:10.4 David Bloom: VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds. They’re essentially gasses that are given off by various organics through their life cycle so to speak. Now, a lot of them will off-gas fairly quickly and dissipate quite quick. We had new carpet put in as I mentioned when I redid my basement living space not long ago and that stunk. It was awful and I have a way of getting rid of it, but I wanted to see how long it would take to actually dissipate on its own using. We weren’t using the space, so I figured it would fine. And it took almost four weeks before it completely off-gassed. So it’s just such an off-gassing from a chemical compound. It usually gets more intense when it’s heated. So that actually is one of the methods of trying to get rid of VOCs in the house. You could turn your heat up as high as it’ll go. Let it run that way for eight or nine hours and then ventilate the heck out of it. So the idea is to get as much of that gas you can into the air and then get it out of the house.

 

0:28:21.8 Ashley James: And don’t stay in the house while it’s happening. [Laughter]

 

0:28:26.0 David Bloom: No, because you’re gonna put more of it into the air. The other thing that people forget about is just open your windows. I mean this is gonna sound silly but I tell people this all the time. Dilution can be the solution for pollution. Just diluting that air, so the concentration now is lower makes a big difference. And as houses get build tighter and tighter and tighter for energy efficiency, if there’s not enough fresh air make-up, you’re carbon dioxide levels go way up because as humans are exhaling a lot of carbon dioxide. The moisture levels go up because we as humans have a lot of moisture and it’s got nowhere to go which is also why we see more instances of mold growth nowadays than we did in the older homes.

 

0:29:16.9 Ashley James: Right.

 

0:29:18.3 David Bloom: My first house I bought was built in 1865 I think. It leaked like a sieve but I never had a mold issue because it could breathe. It had the ability to dry if it got wet. It could dry to the exterior. It could dry to the interior. Now, when we build these things so tight, there’s no ability for them to breath. So there are units that are either energy recovery ventilators or heat recovery ventilators – ERVs or HRVs. Those are pretty standard issue today in modern homes. What they do is they take and equal amount of outdoor air and exit an equal amount of indoor air. So you always have some fresh air coming in. The problem I see is they don’t seem to be enough in a lot of cases. The house is really tight but just not enough of it, and it needs to be increases. There are ways to doing that, but as I mentioned open your windows and take a deep breath.

Now, granted you’re exposed to a lot more mold outside than you are inside normally, but getting that air diluted especially for any of these other things we’re talking about particular to VOCs – let’s dilute it and make it not such a big deal. Getting back to the things that we test for, we can also test for settled allergen. We’ll take a dust sample and have it analyzed for pet dander, dog and cat dander, dust mite matter, rodent excrement – there’s a lot of things they can look for and they can actually look for actual particles too. I had an instance where an old woman wasn’t feeling well in her home and she said that she’s had an abnormal amount of dust lately. We had the dust analyzed and it was silica. So I took a drive around, in about a mile away from her home, there was a place that they were demolishing a building and they were generating a lot of silica dust and that was carrying into her home and that’s what was causing the issue.

So it really becomes sort of an investigation. It’s a lot of fun actually. The other thing too is radon – is the second leading cause of lung cancer after cigarettes in this country. People would test for radon when they buy their home and never think of it again. it really should be tested every three or four years. It’s a simple test, non-invasive. And your water should be tested on a regular basis, especially if you’re on a well system.

 

0:31:59.3 Ashley James: Oh absolutely. I want to talk about the radon for second. What in the home could generate radon?

 

0:32:05.9 David Bloom: Radon is a naturally occurring gas from the ground. It comes from rocks similar to uranium actually. It’s naturally occurring. It’s much stronger in certain parts of the country. The northeast has pretty high radon because we have a lot of rock and that tends to be where it is coming from.

 

0:32:29.0 Ashley James: Because of the bedrock, the Precambrian Shield, I think it’s what’s called.

 

0:32:34.1 David Bloom: Yeah. Other parts of the country, it’s not nearly as big of a deal, but certain parts on the East Coast is pretty good. Getting down south, we don’t see it as much because the sand is more sandier and it’s not anywhere near as much rock. But the EPA has a map on their website that shows where the highest instances of radon are. I would certainly recommend to your listeners that they take a look at that and if they’re in one of the red areas, get it checked if you hadn’t done it in a couple of years. It’s odorless, colorless gas. you’ll never know if you have it.

 

0:33:09.5 Ashley James: But it can cause lung cancer.

 

0:33:12.4 David Bloom: It can cause lung cancer.

 

0:33:13.4 Ashley James: Very interesting. Yeah because we’re always thinking that these things in our home might be from like you said, carpet or a mattress off-gassing, or mold – but we don’t think that something totally natural coming from the ground would be harmful. So remember to test radon. It can shift, so when you first buy your home radon might not be present, but five years in the future it could start happening. Like shifts in the earth and then it just starts off-gassing?

 

0:33:48.3 David Bloom: A construction project can do it. Our well water has always been perfect. I was in a fairly rural area. They were building a new house maybe a quarter mile from me on my street and all of a sudden I started getting iron in my water and it came from the construction that they were doing and when they had a blast because again, we have so much bedrock – they had a blast to actually get their well dug drilled, it disturbed the aquifer and all of a sudden it started with a relatively high iron content. We had to put a fairly sophisticated filter system to take care of that.

 

0:34:36.2 Ashley James: I just had the exact same thing happened. We’re on a well and we’ve been living here for five years, the water has been perfect. We were joking about bottling it in glass bottles and selling it to Europe or something. I mean it’s just like the best water. We have friends come from all around to bottle out water and take it home with them and all of a sudden our water become murky, it taste like heavy metal, it taste very metallic and it had an odor to it. Out of nowhere, just one day it’s fine next day it’s not and we got a water filter, but we’re waiting back from the lab right now. They said it will take like 10 days because they’re testing all these things. It feels like it’s taking a million years to get these results back because I wanna know with our water. Is it even safe to bathe in it. We were like bathing in a friend’s house. But yeah, that made me realize that I hadn’t actually had our well water tested since our son was born because we had it tested to see if the nitrates were high – that’s one thing because we had to substitute with some formula and I didn’t wanna make the formula with water that’s high in nitrates because it can cause blue baby syndrome. For adults too, it makes our red blood cell not be able to carry oxygen, and so people can feel really lethargic and sort of just down if their drinking well water that’s high in nitrates, and most filters cannot filter out nitrates. I discovered this, that most filters in the market – you have to get a specific filter that filters nitrates.

So really being careful if we have a well and making sure that we test our water every year is really important. Time just flew by and I’m like, “Oh my gosh. What are we doing to drink this water that we don’t test every year.” So yeah, being really careful testing for radon every few years. if you have a well, most people don’t, but if you do – get that water tested.

You mentioned that one of the things that your franchisees do with Green home solutions is test the home for bacteria. Why test the home for bacteria? Is bacteria growing inside the home?

 

0:37:08.7 David Bloom: bacteria is growing everywhere. There’s a book by a guy named Rob Dunn called “Never Home Alone” and it’s about the microbial bio [inaudible 0:37:17.2] all the time. It’s creepy, but it exists. We need them. Most of the bacteria is healthy and it’s fine, but we just don’t need bacteria. So when I was back there before I got involved with Green Home, we found a number of instances where we would test for mold and it would come back negative. So we would test for airborne bacteria levels and if those were elevated, we would take care of it in the same way because the product works equally as well in bacteria as it does in mold. Bacteria is actually much easier to get rid off. Bacteria just have a single cell wall whereas mold spores can have two or three membranes you have to get through before you can get to the nucleus, and I’ll get into that in a minute.

So airborne bacteria levels which a lot people take slobs on the surface. It’s [inaudible 0:38:08.3] bacteria when it should in most cases. But elevated airborne bacteria levels sometimes could be an issue. It’s not as common, we don’t do airborne bacteria very often but it is a test that’s available.

Now, for surface – one of the things we do we’re using something that’s out of the food service industry which is called and ATP test. This is used to determine cleanliness. ATP is a particular enzyme that is present in all organic matter, and this is an instant test. We do it with a meter and a slob. I can take samples in numerous locations around the house ad if the levels are elevated, I don’t necessarily know that it’s bacteria, but it does indicate a general level of uncleanliness I guess, which could easily be bacteria. It could be peanut butter for all I know, but there’s something. So it’s just an overall level of cleanliness, but if you have a clean home you typically don’t have much of these other issues with bacteria that you don’t want in particular.

 

0:39:23.4 Ashley James: So when you met Steve at the Atlanta airport, I think that’s such divine intervention to have the two of you meet with your love of science and that problem that you had in your home. Did you look back at your life and see how, it’s sort of like all the stars were aligned. You had to have that bad thing happened to you in your home in order to be intrigued. So when you met Steve you had this problem to solve and then that led you to want to solve this problem for other people.

 

0:39:54.6 David Bloom: Yes. That was life-changing for me. I switched careers. I was a small business owner for a number of years. I completely switched careers in the middle of my life and I just fell in love with the fact that I was able to help people. I like the fact that Green Home being a relatively new company, a lot of people that I work with are half my age which is terrific. I love it. And I love sort of getting the next generation involved in the same kind of work. I’ve never been happier. I can’t imagine why I would ever want to retire. I love what I’m doing.

 

0:40:41.8 Ashley James: Yes. That’s exactly it. You know you’re doing what you should do when you don’t wanna retire. Like when I interviewed Dr. Esselstyn, he’s in his 80s. I think he’s 87, and he still is an active cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic and he still takes phone calls. If you call him up, he’ll answer the phone. He talks to people all day long for free. He’s amazing. but he’s the kind of person that he’s gonna be like 110 years old and he’s still gonna be a cardiologist helping people. So, when you find your life’s calling, you find your purpose in life, you do it for free – you know when you absolutely love what you do, especially when it comes to helping people.

David, I know you’re passionate about what you do, but you’re also really helping people. You’re helping the business owners, those who choose to be a franchisee of Green Home Solutions – you’re helping them to help other people and then ultimately you’re helping all these homeowners through what you’re doing as the Chief Science Officer at Green Home Solutions.

When you met Steve and he talked about this enzyme that he created to breakdown the oil, how did you figure out that it could also be effective at basically destroying and demolishing mold? Can you take us back to that moment, that conversation you were first having with Steve, was it a light bulb moment? How did you come to that conclusion?

 

0:42:19.2 David Bloom: It’s actually by chance because I’d met him and learned a little bit about what he was doing with the oil stuff. So I had enzymes in my brain to start with, and when you look at what enzymes do, enzymes can either break things apart or they can build things up. We have about 3,000 different kind of enzymes in our bodies. We would not be alive without them, because what they do is the speed up the reactions that are required to keep us alive, and the reactions wouldn’t occur fast enough without them. They are in our RNA and DNA and various enzymes in there. They’re in almost everything. So when he was talking about using the enzymes to essentially digest the oil molecules I said, “Why couldn’t we do this…” And then of course when I tried it, we had no idea whether it would do anything or not. It did actually worked pretty good. Not as good as what we have now, but it did work pretty good.

The concept of breaking something down by using itself so to speak, so the enzymes that are present in our mold product are actually from molds. They are harvested from other molds. So molds have a very very strong protective mechanism and they have these things we call acceptors that open and close. They are like channels that allow material to get in. That’s how they get their food, energy, and moisture. When they come in contact with something that’s foreign, they typically sort of like close up and don’t allow anything to enter. When we attack the mold spore with our product, it’s like a homecoming and they welcome it with open arms. So it actually gets in and destroy the mold spores from the inside out.

 

0:44:10.8 Ashley James: That’s so cool.

 

0:44:12.9 David Bloom: And then the enzymes themselves are specific types to breakdown various parts of the mold spores. So there would be one type that would go after the membranes, one type that goes after the fatty lipid layer between the membranes. The nucleus is typically a protein, so we use a protease which breaks the bond. Proteins are just strings of amino acids held together by a peptide bond. By breaking the protease, it breaks that bond and actually digest it. So all that’s left is amino acids, and typically when most people have a reaction to molds, your typical reaction – I’m not talking about people that have very serious diseases, but just your typical sort of sinus type reactions. That’s a reaction to the proteins. So by breaking down the protein’s amino acids – there’s no protein, there’s no allergy. So mold is essentially a histamine, that’s why if you get a cold or a stuffy head, you’re gonna take an antihistamine to try to get rid of that. So molds has the same symptoms as histamine, that’s the trigger. So by breaking down the components so that you don’t have an allergen left makes all the difference in the world.

 

0:45:23.6 Ashley James: Does inhaling mold or mold spores increase histamine in the body?

 

0:45:30.5 David Bloom: I don’t know, to be honest. I’m not a medical professional. That would be a question sure I could find out. It’s just nobody asked me that question before. [Laughter]

 

0:45:45.3 Ashley James: If in itself is a histamine, is it as we’re inhaling it, is it the same as our own histamines? I know our bodies react to it. It is like breathing in pollen and their histamine levels go up. Or someone eating a food they’re allergic to and their histamine levels go up or even under stress our histamine levels go up.

 

0:46:08.2 David Bloom: I would assume it’s the same kind of trigger.

 

0:46:10.7 Ashley James: This is so fascinating. One thing that was explained to me – I had a health coach on the show and she’s the one that introduced me to you guys, and it was life changing for her to have find your company. She bought a home with her family in California and for six months she could not live in their new home. She had to live at a tent in the backyard because she was sick everytime she went into their new home, because it had mold. And they finally found your company and so they went in and they sprayed everything. And she said it was like a miracle, she was able to live in their home after that. She’s had a lot of her clients use the Green Home Solutions services very successfully. When I interviewed her she told me about it, because at the time I was telling her about my immune system was shot and I didn’t know why because I eat super healthy, I have a really healthy lifestyle, like what’s going on. And something that you wrote to me that basically health requires three things; it requires that we take into account – lifestyle, genetics, and our environment. She pointed out that my environment probably had mold in it and told me about you guys.

How she explained how it works – she basically said a lot of companies will say they’re mold remediators and they go ahead and just use something like bleach which just kills the molds but does not get rid of the mold spores. So even though it’s “dead” is actually now more toxic because now it releases these mold spores and it can still harm your body. Is that an accurate description? Like if I went to Home Depot and bought some kind of natural mold remediator or bleach which is so common. I’ve heard landlords use bleach all the time. The different between those chemicals and the enzymes that you use, can you explain the difference?

 

0:48:22.5 David Bloom: Sure. It’s actually pretty simple. Most of those products – a lot of them are oxidizers, and oxidizers can work a couple of different ways. An oxidizer can literally shake a molecule to break it apart and then essentially the guts leak out, it’s dead, but you still have the residual. Others are DNA disruptors – they actually don’t kill the spore, they just make it so it can’t reproduce. So you still have the spore left, it’s still intact and could still trigger an allergic reaction which is the most common response.

Bleach is a really good example of this. If you have mold on a wall in our home, the roots of the molds are into the paper. What you see on the surface is topical. So bleach let’s say it reacts with that mold. It’s what we call a stoichiometric reaction, it’s a one on one reaction and all the energy in that chemical is consumed instantly. It’s used up instantly. So even if it kills the mold on the surface, the byproduct of that reaction is water, and water is now gonna feed the roots that are still in the wall. So that’s why, often when people use bleach – it looks like they got rid of it for a short period of time, but it comes back because they actually fed the roots.

Enzymes on the other hand are catalyst. So a catalyst enables a reaction to occur but it’s not consumed in the reaction, so it will continue working as long as there’s something for it to work on. The best analogy I can give you is men’s facial hair. If I were to shave, that’s sort of like using a bleach. if I would have laser hair removal, that’s using our product.

 

0:50:10.0 Ashley James: Because you’re getting the root.

 

0:50:13.9 David Bloom:  We’re getting the root. That’s what makes the difference.

 

0:50:15.0 Ashley James: It’s so fascinating.

 

0:50:17.1 David Bloom: It’s not an exact salience, but there is some evidence that molds, when it’s killed or reactions occur – some molds can give off toxins, they’re known as mycotoxins which can be harmful. The problem is that not all molds produce mycotoxins and even the ones that do, don’t do it all the time and there’s no real easy way to measure for them. A lot of people will test for mycotoxins in their urine, but I would challenge that everyone of us has evidence of mycotoxins in our urine because it’s on our foods. If you are to open your refrigerator door and close it because you had somebody take an air sample for mold, you would dramatically skew those results even though you have no visible mold in your refrigerator. Trust me, there’s mold on your food. So that’s where it comes from.

So, it makes it a little bit difficult. Going back to your air filtration – activated carbon is pretty good at working with mycotoxins. So that’s why I talk about activated carbon a lot. You can even buy these bags now that you just sit out and they absorb some odors and things like that. That kind of stuff could be helpful for someone.

The other thing that we found when we started working with doctors, and that’s where that whole three-part thing was. It was to try to convince a doctor that, “Look, if you’re looking at genetics lifestyle and environment, if we can take your environment on the picture, even if it’s not the problem, at least we eliminated one leg. Now, it makes it easier for you to do your diagnosis.” Several of the doctors we worked with did discover a correlation between a treatment for lyme disease and moldy homes. So what they’re trying to use the normal treatments they would do for lyme weren’t working on a number of their patients. When we got them to look at the environment then we cleaned up the environment, all of a sudden they started responding to their treatment.

 

0:52:37.7 Ashley James: Yes. So What kind of things were common? Did you find that everyone that had lyme also had mold in their home? Or was there some kind of commonality?

 

0:52:47.6 David Bloom: The commonality for us was the particular practice that started us on this path because they had a lot of lyme patients, and they were trying to figure out what could it be, why are these people not reacting. The commonality was the fact that had mold in their homes.

 

0:53:03.4 Ashley James: Ok. That’s what I meant. So, you had all these lyme patients given to you by this practice and you went into their homes and all of them had mold in their homes?

 

0:53:11.7 David Bloom: All the ones that weren’t reacting to the treatment. Yes.

 

0:53:16.3 Ashley James: That’s what I meant.

 

0:53:17.9 David Bloom: Yeah.

 

0:53:18.5 Ashley James: So all the lyme patients who weren’t reacting to the treatment, all of them had mold in their homes.

 

0:53:23.5 David Bloom: That’s correct.

 

0:53:24.2 Ashley James: And when the mold was removed all of them started responding to the treatment?

 

0:53:29.7 David Bloom: I can’t say that every single one is good because I didn’t know.

 

0:53:36.1 Ashley James: You didn’t stick around to follow up with the doctor.

 

0:53:38.6 David Bloom: Yeah. I didn’t stick around to follow up long enough, but this particular practice in Virginia have us referred to patients. And that has actually spread, so we’ve made some really strong inroads. And that what’s made us get into all those additional testing things because we’re gonna look at the environment home, we decided that mold is one piece of the puzzle, but look at all of these other potentials. The downside is lab fees can add up quickly. So when we go in to look at a home, we wanna know what we’re looking for. I don’t wanna just go in and test. I want to get a hypothesis and device a testing strategy that will either prove or disprove that hypothesis. So often, we’ll do a couple of basic test first to rule out the most obvious and then. it gets a little bit more detailed if that’s not the answer.

And I have to admit, there are some times when we’ve been stumped. I have one of Green Home franchisees not far from me has a particular client that we just can’t figure it out. I’ve done a fair amount of testing and all kinds of different things. His doctors don’t have any clue. Occasionally there is some syndrome and for the life of me I can’t remember where your brain gets wired a little bit differently. It’s not a hypochondriac because the symptoms are real, but they’re caused by the brain not necessarily by an external force. There is an actual name for it. I just can’t recall what it was.

There’s other people out there that do mold remediation in a number of different ways. The old way was just what we call “Bash and Trash.” You go in, you just physically remove everything. Now, we do follow IICRC S520 standards – that’s the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration certification. They came up with a guideline on basic standards. So they have five specific principles that we follow as part of what we do. So to say that we don’t remove building materials would be a missed number, we do. We just try to preserve as much as possible because of our method. We’re typically able to preserve more which makes it a more economical project instead of just going in and just ripping everything out and putting it all back together.

So there’s a lot of that going on there. We had a client that I got a wonderful letter from just recently where she was in the Atlanta area and they found mold in her home and her doctor told her she had to leave the house and get rid of all her possessions and she did. She moved into an apartment. She had Green Home test the apartment, it had mold. So then, they said, “Well, we gotta get out of here.” So they looked at four or five different other places and they all had mold. It’s in the south, it’s humid, it’s hot, there’s mold. So, when I talked to her I said, “Look, why don’t you let us see if we can get you back into your home. There’s a number of things that we can do and if it doesn’t work, don’t pay.”

 

0:57:11.7 Ashley James: That’s nice.

 

0:57:11.9 David Bloom: Let’s give it a shot. So we did. We went it. We treated it for mold. We have a device that uses a very low level of hydrogen peroxide but yet gets a 99.999% kill. Which is a lot of reduction on bacteria. And we did that in a couple of areas that were problematic just sort of her insurance and I believe you are aware that we also have this probiotic treatment. We put that back in there. They moved back into the house and she said it was like the place is brand new. So the letter I got said that I saved her marriage, I saved her life, I saved her kids happiness, I saved their dog. It’s just crazy but we got her back into her own house because all the properties are gonna have an issue, let’s just fix the one we’ve got. But I fear that happening time and time again. I was meeting with a doctor in Peabody Massachusetts who had a client that had just built a $5 million dream home on a lake and the same thing, whoever her prior doctor was told her, “You’re house is killing you. You gotta leave.” She got out of the house, went somewhere else and she didn’t get any better. So it wasn’t necessarily the home and that’s what we try to avoid.

There is a lot of testing that’s being done now called ERMI – Environmental Relative Moldiness Index. ERMI was developed in early 2000 to be used as a research tool to see if there was any correlation between water-damaged properties in the Detroit area and childhood asthma. So they came up with. It’s actually PCR testing which is measuring DNA. So it had a very specific design. We took a 6 by 3 area in the main living room and we vacuum that with a special attachment for exactly five minutes. We repeated the same thing in the main bedroom. And then it gets analyzed for mold DNA and what they did is they had a list of 36 molds; 26 that were potential water damage indicators and 10 that were typical environmental molds. They subtract the environmental molds from the water damage molds and it come up with a score.

What the score shows is sort of a history of that building, that’s why they did it on carpeting. Carpet is designed to hide dirt. So it traps stuff deep down, and that’s how they look clean. So it’s getting that stuff, but you don’t know if it’s something, and as I mentioned mold is a symptom, moisture is the issue. We don’t know if there was a moisture problem in that property 25 years ago or yesterday. So what happens is nowadays there’s a lot of people recommending that particular type of testing and it does serve its purpose. Don’t get me wrong, not that I don’t like it. But they’re making decisions on whether they should remediate or not based on it and they’re not following the test, but most of these are getting advise and take a swiffer cloth and just go pick up some settled dust that are on there. But that’s not how the test was designed, it was never meant to be done that way. So they’re not sampling properly and then they come back with a high score and they’ll spend thousands and thousands of dollars chasing something that doesn’t exist because there is no moisture issue – it’s really at that point housekeeping. Getting rid of all that dust.

 

1:00:40.9 Ashley James: So just to elaborate on what you said earlier on, mold is a problem. Mold is dangerous for our health, we should not live in a home with mold. But it’s not the root cause, and you don’t chase symptoms. So if you go to an MD with a headache they might chase symptoms and prescribe something instead of asking deeper questions. Where you go to a naturopath, they’re gonna go, “Ok. What’s going on? Let’s find out what the root cause is because a headache is a symptom.” So you’re saying mold in a house is a symptom of a problem. Moisture and looking at whether you need to make the house pressurized, whether you need to ventilate properly, or whether you need to seal off certain areas, but when you solve the root cause and of course take care of the mold. You solve the root cause, the mold doesn’t come back.

 

1:01:35.0 David Bloom: Correct.

 

1:01:37.3 Ashley James: So if other companies test incorrectly, they could be testing for a mold problem that no longer exist and then paying thousands of dollars to treat something that’s not there.

 

1:01:50.3 David Bloom: Correct.

 

1:01:51.7 Ashley James: Got it.

 

1:01:51.8 David Bloom: So the Inspector General of EPA came out with a position statement a couple of years ago and said exactly that, that this was designed solely as a research tool. It was never intended to be used to determine whether a property needed remediation nor should it be used to determine if remediation was done properly.

One of the more interesting things thought, if you look at the numbers – so if I had an individual that was mold sensitive, I would think the overall mold exposure is gonna be very important. We wanna limit that as much as we can. Let’s say you had a very small amount of the water damage indicator molds, but you had a ton of environmental molds, you’re overall exposure would be quite high, but your ERMI score is gonna be very low and vice versa if it’s true. So if you really cleaned the place well so that there’s absolute, almost none of the environmental molds but there’s a couple of fragments of the other ones, you can have high ERMI score because there’s nothing to subtract from it.

So, when we see people using ERMI to confirm remediation, typically they’ve got to wait 30 to 45 days to let that house settle down and equalize and then ERMI is where it comes down. But instead they’ll spend, again they sometimes get into that trap of spending thousands and thousands of dollars. It kills me when I see that happen.

One of more interesting things thought, if you look at the numbers – so if I had an individual that was mold sensitive, I would think the overall mold exposure is gonna be very important. We wanna limit that as much as we can. Let’s say you had a very small amount of the water damage indicator molds, but you had a ton of environmental molds, you’re overall exposure would be quite high, but your ERMI score is gonna be very low and vice versa if it’s true. So if you really cleaned the place well so that there’s absolute, almost none of the environmental molds but there’s a couple of fragments of the other ones, you can have high ERMI score because there’s nothing to subtract from it.

So, when we see people using ERMI to confirm remediation, typically they’ve got to wait 30 to 45 days to let that house settle down and equalize and then ERMI is where it comes down. But instead they’ll spend, again they sometimes get into that trap of spending thousands and thousands of dollars. It kills me when I see that happen.

 

1:03:25.5 Ashley James: Thank you for warning us about that. I know that Green Home Solutions is in a lot of places, but it’s not everywhere. So if someone’s in an area where Green Home Solutions just isn’t there and they have to use a different company, it’s really good to know to make sure you don’t use the company that uses the ERMI score to test your mold.

 

1:03:46.8 David Bloom: Again, don’t get me wrong. ERMI does have a place and it could be a very useful tool especially if you’re looking for historical idea of what’s going on in the property. It just shouldn’t be the only thing used to determine if you need remediation. You could get a false positive. Fortunately a lot of the medical community has gotten involved. I mean the idea of having a standardized test is brilliant because the other types of testing for mold, either air sampling or surface sampling – it’s not an exact science. Typically we look to compare suspect areas to non-suspect areas. So if you tell me that you feel okay in the bedroom but you don’t feel good in the living room, I’m gonna sample both and see what the difference is.

If it’s not that situation, typically we look and see what the outdoors is, because once you open your windows or your door, you’re gonna start to equalize whatever you have outside. We’re never gonna make the house completely mold-free. What we’re looking for is just to make sure that there’s nothing actively growing in the home.

 

1:04:49.1 Ashley James: I was about to ask, you mentioned environmental molds versus the sort of the black mold growing in my bathroom. So. environmental molds, maybe someone walks into the house after going for a walk and they don’t take their shoes off and they’re tracking something to the house or our groceries come into the house or a dog walks into the house and the dog tracks in something. So environmental molds are just things that would come from outside from nature?

 

1:05:19.9 David Bloom: Yes. If you’re sensitive to molds, any kind of mold could bother you potentially, but these are molds that we would commonly see in our everyday life and you don’t even have to bring it in with you, just open the door and you feel that little breeze? Yup, that’s all coming inside. So we can’t escape it, but we try to keep the house as clean as it can and make sure that it’s not actively growing.

 

1:05:51.4 Ashley James: So environmental mold comes from the outside, it’s not growing, it’s not taking hold of the wood or the drywall and like replicating itself.

 

1:06:05.0 David Bloom: Well, it could if you had a food source which is complex polysaccharides  – is what they love which is like paper cellulose and a moisture source. So yeah, it could grow.

Often you’ll see windows that get condensation, you will see a little bit of black mold all the way around them? That’s actually cladosporium – is the king of leaves and grass. It’s a very common outdoor mold and it’s probably the most common mold there is. That you can just wipe off. It’s coming because your windows have condensation on. You see in southern areas particularly because a lot of times they have metal window frames, you have hot humid weather outdoors so they keep the inside really cold, and that temperature difference will cause condensation. Just like if you take a bottle of water outside in the summer and it starts to sweat, that’s the same reaction. And then you’re getting your typical environmental mold growing on it.

A lot of molds are black by the way. When people talk about the black mold, they’re usually talking about a species of stachybotrys chartarum which happens to be a particularly nasty mold to a lot of people. Which brings me to another thing, I just want to mention why mold testing can be valuable. If I got called into a home and there’s some mold growing because the washing machine hose broke two weeks ago. And I look at that with blinders on and got rid of it. I may be doing that client a disservice. If we take samples for examples, and I see that there’s chaetomium  or stachybotrys – those are what we call tertiary molds. So you have three classes of molds essentially; primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary molds will show first after a water event and sometimes it’s fast as 24 to 48 hours. Penicillium is a good example of a primary mold. Secondary molds typically take three or four weeks of that moisture exposure before they grow. And then your tertiary molds can take months. So if I’d look at this damage that occurred two weeks ago but I picked up stachybotrys or I find some stachybotrys, I know that something else is going in that property, it’s been going on for a long time. And I would be doing them a disservice if we don’t try to track down what that long term even was. Often, it’s just chronic high humidity. That’s a big cause of a lot of issues. People just don’t seen to dehumidify. And again, in the southern half, often the air conditioning system weren’t sized properly, so they’ll cool a place down before it gets the chance to fry itself out and that’s the recipe for mold growth.

So there’s a lot of things that can contribute to that, but chronic humidity is a big one which is why you see mold in the bathroom. Again, one of the things that’s out of sequence, but we were talking about mold in an attic. In this area, I’m not sure if it’s the same all over the country, a lot of people have pull-down stairways to get up into their attic, and they’re typically located in the hallway, and that hallway is typically pretty close to a bathroom. So, if somebody get out of the shower and let’s assume you have an exhaust fan, not everybody’s fat. Assuming there’s an exhaust fan in the bathroom, they shut it off and leave the door open as soon as they leave. All that moisture is gonna get sucked right up through where that stairway is because they’re not sealed. It’s on top of the attic side that keeps a tight air seal, but sometimes they’re called blankets. There’s a number of different ways of doing that, but the normal thing for a shower is when you take a shower, the door should be closed, the fan should be on, the fan should stay on for about 10 minutes with the door closed after you vacate it. That’s what it takes to get rid of that moisture, but when you open it and release it, now you’re dumping moisture into the house.

 

1:10:14.1 Ashley James: And it’ll go where the air in the house is pushing. Like you said, into the crawl space, up in the attic, down in the crawl space. It’s gonna push somewhere in that airway.

 

1:10:28.3 David Bloom: It’s typically gonna go up.

 

1:10:30.4 Ashley James: It’s gonna go up and push. The hot air rises, cold air falls and so the moisture is gonna go with the hot air up into the attic and create the mold and we’re not looking. So we don’t really know. We’re just experiencing the spores which can really harm our immune system, seriously.

 

1:10:56.1 David Bloom: One of the other things that is typically is often we’ll see bathroom vents vented into the attic space itself which should always go up to the roof. Or we see multiple vents connected to each other and then they go up. So what happens is when one vent is running and the other isn’t, you’re actually pulling air from one bathroom to the other bathroom as opposed to get rid of it.

 

1:11:20.8 Ashley James: I interviewed a woman in the last few months who’s a health coach who is in Florida and had to have their home mold remediated and it was a major deal. Apparently it’s only in the bathroom, so they have to seal off the whole house and they said, “Okay. We’ll work on it in the bathroom, but it’s totally sealed off while we’re spraying. You guys just hang out in the living room.” So she’s in her living room with her young kids and it definitely affected her health living in a home with mold, and as she’s sitting there and they’re doing all this work on the bathroom she’s starts smelling the chemicals. So she’s like, “What’s going on?” And she comes in and said, “Hey. I thought you guys sealed this off? Is it okay for us inhaling this? And we’re now inhaling the mold because they are doing construction to remove it.” It turns out how the house was built – the venting for the bathroom went into the living room. It’s the most ridiculous thing. So now they’re sitting there and the first company she hired was just a complete joke – ended up causing them to be exposed to more mold and the chemicals which were not safe. So they breathe them in and they started to feel sick. So they ended up having to get another company to come in and they had to do construction and make proper venting for the bathroom and it was just this whole ordeal, but the first company was so irresponsible with their health.

It’s just amazing that a house would be built in Florida where the bathroom would vent into the living room – it’s just beyond me. Just like we have to advocate for our own health, we really need to advocate for ourselves and look into how our home is built whether we’re renting or we own it. We need to know, what’s the ventilation system like, have we had our ducts cleaned properly, do we have mold, let’s test for radon, let’s look at the insulation – make sure it cured properly, let’s test the VOCs and make sure we’re not being exposed to particulates and off-gassing that’s harming us. We need to take our home environment into our own hands. I love that you’ve mentioned that when a family cooks a turkey in the oven, that the pollution inside the home is like being in New Delhi, like breathing in the air of New Delhi. And we are sitting here thinking that, “I live in such a wonderful neighborhood where the air quality is so clean.” Or like, “Here I am living in Washington state where it rains so often and that we always feel like the air is really clean here.” But not inside the house, because these newer homes are designed to be energy efficient, so the more energy efficient the home is, the more it becomes like a balloon where the air is trapped inside and it traps all of these VOCs, particulates, mold. It traps everything inside and so our home air can become toxic over time.

I had a woman on the show who said she had this machine, it’s like a little box, and she leaves it in a home for 24 hours. I’m sure you probably heard of them, and then it captures all the VOCs and then she tests it. And she said that she could tell you what brand of cleaners you have in your home. There’s this one Mr. Clean Wipes – because of the specific carcinogenic chemicals that she would see on this list that was captured from the air quality in the home, because she said everything under your sink off-gasses including all your cosmetics. And we think that we’re safe because they’re in a metal container, if it’s a spray – like Lysol or something. “Well, it’s in a metal container. What do you mean?” Or if it’s in a plastic container, we’re safe it’s in a plastic container. But all these things off-gas even through their containers and pollute over time the air we breathe. So we have to look at every single thing and create a home environment that supports our immune system, our overall health.

Just like you said with the lyme patients, they were responding to the treatments after the mold was remediated. They weren’t responding to their treatments because they all had mold. I mean, that is right there a big wake up call for people who are listening to the show going, “I’ve tried everything. I don’t know why I’m still sick.” Just like me with catching every cold when I know I eat really healthy. It was because my home environment was destroying my immune system.

 

1:16:22.2 David Bloom: I’ll tell you an amazing story. I got called into a job where somebody went in and did some mold testing and it came back negative. They guy didn’t believe him. So I went down to take a look at the property. The house was pretty clean. It did have a little bit of an odor to it. The wife has been horribly sick. She swore that they had tons of mold. I went down to the basement and there’s a 6 by 3 shelving rack and it is 5 or 6 shelves. Everyone of the shelves was stocked with Lysol floral scent something. And I said, “What is all these for?” He said, “My wife sprays it everyday, everywhere because she thinks she’s got mold.” But what she was doing was contaminating the environment because there’s a lot of chemicals in propellants – number one, depending on what they’re using. it could be bad for you. Who knows what other additives are there. I mean the active ingredients they have to list, but you don’t know what else is in there. She was using so much of it, that’s what was making her sick, and after she stopped using it, within a week or two she felt fine.

 

1:17:29.4 Ashley James: Oh my gosh. She thought she had a mold problem and she was causing her health problems with the Lysol.

 

1:17:38.1 David Bloom: Yup. Too much of a good thing just doesn’t work.

 

1:17:42.4 Ashley James: We need to be really careful with those chemical cleaners and also really careful with those things that “Kills 99.99% of germs.” It’s like we do actually need, like you said there are beneficial bacteria in our environment and we don’t want to live in a sterile environment. We need to have the good bacteria, the good microbiome. I know everyone in the last 18 years has been talking about the microbiome of the gut. You know, “Eat yogurt because it’s good for your gut.” Or. “Eat fermented food because it’s good for your gut.” And now in the last few years, everyone’s raving about that there’s a microbiome on our skin and on every surface of our body and in so many more areas of our body than we knew and it’s beneficial bacteria. And so, we’re home which I find fascinating also has beneficial bacteria.

 

Tell us a bit about this device that you guys created to spray, to spread beneficial beneficial bacteria into the home. Why did you guys create it and what are the positive results of it?

 

1:18:48.1 David Bloom: Actually we can’t take credit for creating it. Environmental probiotics have been around for a while. There is several companies in Europe that have been on to this technology for quite some time. The device is designed to spray every 30 minutes for 20 seconds. Essentially it’s fermented bacillus and what that does is it’s very unfriendly to the bacteria we don’t want and much more friendly to the bacteria that you do want. So the way that it works essentially is, a lot of bacteria is transferred on skin cells. We all shed thousands and thousands of skin cells everyday. If you ever used a facial scrub, part of that uses a keratinase which is a particular enzyme that’s formed when bacillus is fermented. And keratinase is present in our nails, our skin, animal clubs, horns, and things like that. But the keratinase sort of softens up that piece so that it’s not conducive for bad bacteria to attach to, and it’s also slightly acidic which makes it much more unfriendly to bad bacteria while encouraging the growth of good bacteria. So it’s sort of like probiotic and people take probiotics as a supplement. If you’re taking antibiotics, they typically tell you to take a probiotic so that you can keep that balance going as the antibiotics are not selective of what they’re getting rid of.

So the idea is just a sort of filling the environment with bacteria that’s not harmful. Bacillus is the same bacteria that if you are a kid playing in the dirt, that’s what you would get that on you, which is one of the other interesting things I have too. If little kids nowadays will spend more time outside and eat a little dirt once in a while, they’d be a lot healthier as when they’re grow up. But they’re just not exposed to it, well certainly like I was or people my generation anyway, and so this is a sort of supplementing that. So it’s not an air purifier – it doesn’t filter anything out. The idea is just to get a healthier biome. Results on that have been pretty good. I have one on my bedroom. I don’t really notice much of a difference, but I also have a 70 pound dog that sleeps between my wife. Wonderful birth control by the way. [Laughter] And we don’t seem to have had any issues. So I’m guessing it’s helping, but a lot of the people that we put it in especially the ones that have had serious mold swear by. The pricing on the units has come down, it’s not as expensive than it used to be. But it’s an interesting concept. Because it doesn’t get rid of any particulates, it’s not a replacement for a good air filter.

 

1:22:02.6 Ashley James: Yeah, it’s just designed to support the microbiome of the home and discourage bad bacteria, encourage good bacteria. Can you share any of the anecdotal testimonials from using that?

 

1:22:19.7 David Bloom: Yeah. But one thing I did fail to mention, the one thing that it does do and this is pure review literature on this. There are two particular enzymes on dust mite matter that are very strong allergen triggers. And the bacillus neutralizes those two enzymes. So dust mite matter is a huge allergen trigger. It’s a little bit different bow because mattresses aren’t quite made the same. But years ago, your mattress could gain half of its weight again after 10 years and that was all because of bugs so to speak, from dust mites. So that’s a very very strong environmental trigger and it does definitely negates that along with helping crowd out that bacteria and provide a healthier biome.

We had one woman here in Connecticut. She had very severe mold illnesses. We went through the whole situation and we treated her house, we put in the better air units and she was feeling pretty good. Then she would leave and go visit, I don’t know if it was her son or daughter, and say that she just didn’t feel well. So the second time she took the machine with her – it’s only the size of a half loaf of bread. She took the machine with her and she was fine. So is it in her head or did it really make that much of a difference? I can’t answer that, but it seems to work very well for her.

The people who have them like them because they have to replace the cartridge every three months. So we certainly would know if they stopped replacing cartridges. They love them. There are some units actually go into an HVAC system and treat the whole house as opposed to the unit but they’re considerably more expensive.

 

1:24:14.7 Ashley James: My son is allergic to dust mites and it causes him to have asthma. And we again, eat super clean. he doesn’t eat processed foods, no sugar. Like we eat so clean so when he was getting asthma, I’m like what’s going on? He doesn’t have nutrient deficiencies, he eats super healthy, he gets outside, you know everything. His health is perfect and then all of a sudden he was just getting this asthma. And we finally did all these allergy tests and we figured out he was allergic or sensitive to about five different foods that would increase his histamine, but that dust mites was through the roof. Like he was really really allergic to dust mites. So of course, we’re vacuuming like crazy and we have the special dust mite covers on the mattresses and we’re washing all everything really often. I even saw this really cool study where they’re able to kill most of the dust mites, it was something like 96.7% something like that with washing and soaking linens, blankets, and pillows with eucalyptus oil. And we’re just going like gang-busters, washing everything with eucalyptus oil like crazy. And so he doesn’t have his asthma right now, but if he goes to a friend’s house and he plays in their playroom on the floor for half an hour, he comes home and has an asthma attack. So we really noticed that when he is at other people’s homes and they might not vacuum as diligently as we do, he’ll have asthma attacks from being around dust mites for even half an hour.

So we’re looking for anything we can do to mitigate dust mights. And what you’re saying is that this device that you have that releases the bacteria healthy microbiome into the bedroom, that it somehow neutralizes dust mites?

 

1:26:26.4 David Bloom: It neutralizes the two allergenic triggers that dust mites have. The reaction that you have to dust mites is as an allergen and that allergen is caused by I think  it’s an F1 or F2 enzyme – it totally neutralizes that so that you shouldn’t have that allergen. You could also use that in a spray, a personal spray and spray some of it on his clothes before he goes to play somewhere and see if it makes a difference for him.  I don’t know if it would or not honestly, but it might.

 

1:27:02.1 Ashley James: Or bring the small box, because you said it is very reasonable, I could travel with it to a friend’s home and plug it in their playroom. Does it act that fast or does it take time?

 

1:27:17.3 David Bloom: No. It takes a little bit of time to build up. When we install these, typically what we’ll do is we’ll actually spray just like we would for mold. We’ll spray all the surfaces with sort of a boost to give it a head start and then it starts working from day one, but otherwise, it can take a week or two before it builds up enough where you would notice a difference.

 

1:27:40.4 Ashley James: Interesting. And what about the enzyme that Steve brought to you that breaks down mold, and of course he was using it to break down the oil in the soil. Do these enzymes also destroy dust mites or kill them? Do you have any experience with that?

 

1:28:06.5 David Bloom: No. Again, we’d have to be very careful because when you start to make claims, your product has to be registered for that purpose. So these enzymes are different than the ones that are digesting oil. The concept is the same, but the enzymes are much different. But even if it did, I couldn’t say it does because the registration is not one of the intended uses when we registered the product. So we’ve never actually done that same rigorous amount of testing on bugs as we did with bacteria and molds.

We did come up with something for bed bugs that we developed, would have been what’s called the 25 B Exempt Pesticide. 25 Bs were very limited and what you could use for the ingredients is very select list. But if you stay within that list, it doesn’t require a federal registration. Although it typically does in the States, because that’s what we are trying to do – to get something really really safe that would help bed bugs. it worked terrific, but the problem is it didn’t have any walk-over kill. So in other words, if I sprayed at bed bugs, it would kill them. If I sprayed a surface and a bed bug walked over it, the kill rates are very low. So we just couldn’t decide and just forget it about it at that time because it was too difficult.

 

1:29:36.3 Ashley James: Got it.

 

1:29:36.7 David Bloom: But that’s the difference. I mean most soaps will work. Because if you spray something in a soap, you’re gonna suffocate it essentially. Or in cases like with ants for example, the way that ant’s circulatory system works – there’s no actual vein system, but it sort of breaks the bond and literally their guts leak out. But a soap could do that because it’s a surfactant. It’s more slippery than water and so by decreasing the surface tension, it can kill bugs. So that’s why people use it on plants for small bugs all the time and they’re pretty harmless.

 

1:30:18.6 Ashley James: Right. And that’s a natural way to go about it.

 

1:30:25.1 David Bloom: So that won’t work with dust mites, it would have to be a direct contact. That’s the difference.

 

1:30:34.2 Ashley James: I just love it. Now what about cat or dog urine. The smell – I’ve heard of people using sprays that have enzymes that break it down. Does Green Home Solutions have a solution that helps to breakdown the smell of cat urine?

 

1:30:54.6 David Bloom: Yes. Cat urine and tobacco are the two worst odors to try to get rid off. Green Homes’ order technique and it incorporates a product that I made, that is an actual  odor neutralizer. So most of the things you have, air fresheners and things like that mess with the receptors in your nose. So it’s not that the odor necessarily went away, it’s just you can’t smell it anymore. Either that or it substitutes a different fragrance for the fragrance that exited. A lot of times the use of molecule called cyclodextrin which is sort of like a seashell shape and it typically have a lot of solvents in the product and you gotta break it up into small pieces and it gets trapped in that molecule and that molecule would be coated with a masking odor. So again, the odor is still there, you just can’t tell because it’s being masked and it tricks your nose.

Neutralization, we actually change the physical characteristics of the odor molecule so it no longer has an odor. Most [inaudible 1:31:58.9] have a charge to it and the product has the opposite charge, it becomes neutral. Once it’s neutral it has no odor. So it works really well. Dog urine is not a problem, dogs are fine. Cat urine though. Cat urine is made up of several different things. Initially when the urine is fresh it’s a bacterial odor. So at that point, anything that’s antibacterial would actually get rid of the odor because you’d kill the bacteria, you’ll get rid of the odor, but it has to be relatively fresh. But when you come into a home that had cats for a long time and it’s old, eventually the urine will form uric acid crystals and uric acid crystals are not water soluble. It takes about 15,000 grams of water to breakdown one gram of uric acid. So that’s where the enzymes come in, but when you do add that water, it actually releases more of the odor. So everytime you try to clean up with something that’s water-based it seems like it’s getting stronger. So enzymes will breakdown that particular odor. But you gotta be able to get to the source and that sometimes is tough because it soaks into things quite deeply.

So we have a procedure that takes a number of steps. It’s a little bit time consuming but it’s been proven to work. We do use a little bit of hydrogen peroxide and depending on the situation, I mean if there’s a carpet, the carpet is gonna have to go. Unless you want to keep cleaning the same spot over and over again which would be somewhat labor intensive and too expensive. It really has to go. Because then you can get to see if it got into the sub floor and a lot of times on a real estate job that we do a lot of work with realtors from the house they’re changing hands and the owner will say, “Well my cat only messes this one room.” And then you’ll pull out a black light and you see this orange and greenish blotches everywhere – that’s where all the cat pee is. And if they’re male cats, they spray – you’re talking about going up about two feet on the drywall. Source revealing is the best think you can do. We can neutralize it once we get the source of it. If it’s on concrete in a basement for example, often we can get rid of it but then we have to seal it. Because you’re not gonna necessarily get down far enough into that concrete. Concretes are very porous to be able to pull everything out, but there is a process for it.

Tobacco, it’s the same thing. If you are in a room and somebody smoked in the room, we could spray that room to go away instantly. But if somebody has been smoking for 20 years, there is what we call third hand smoke which is everything that builds up on the walls  There are 4,000 different chemical compounds in tobacco smoke. The problem with neutralization technology is the chemistry is different depending on what you’re trying to neutralize. So we came up with a formula that works on most everything. There’s no way I’m gonna cover 4,000 different chemicals, but if the smoke is new, it’s fine.

There is a study in [inaudible 1:35:14.0]? they had people smoke in a room for four hours. They measured the gas level. They went back and 10 hours later and measured the gas, then they went back 10 hours after that which is 24 hours later and measured the gas levels. The gas levels were high at the 24 hour period. So that was because everything that got onto the walls was giving back. So in a tobacco remediation, those walls, ceilings, floors, all have to be physically cleaned first. You got to get rid of that source. Again, if I just sprayed it I would neutralize what’s on the surface but eventually whatever is buried in the paper is gonna emanate back up. So you’ve got to clean that all off first and then you treat it and it will work fine. We’ve been very successful. But it’s not as simple as we’d like. But it’s really only those two odors that cause that issue.

 

1:36:04.2 Ashley James: It’s amazing to think about like if someone buys a home from a smoker, they’re being exposed to 4,000 chemicals that’s off-gassing out of the walls.

 

1:36:14.4 David Bloom: Yes. They may not all be there but they are going to be exposed to a significant amount.  I’ve gone into homes were the person moved out and the walls were yellow and when all the pictures are gone, you could see that the walls are really white and the difference is dramatic. I mean it looks like there’s a ghost in there because that’s how heavy it got built up.

 

1:36:41.1 Ashley James: Amazing. I like talking about these different things your company does. I mean obviously removing cat urine is not gonna be sort of life changing to someone who has health issues. But it is the reality of being a homeowner and also being a pet owner and your company can save people a lot of headaches.

 

1:37:02.4 David Bloom: Yeah.

 

1:37:03.8 Ashley James: And save money – I like that your company tries to do it the smartest way instead of like, “Ok we have to tear out everything.” You’re gonna do it the smartest way and try to save the homeowner money.

 

1:37:19.8 David Bloom: 90% of the work that we on those two in particular – cat urine and tobacco, are done because of a real estate transaction. Somebody wants to sell their house, they have an open house, people walk in the door, turn around and walk out if the house smells like smoke – that kind of thing. Most of the time the people that have the cats don’t necessarily realize that there’s an odor and maybe there is. I mean I’ve got cats, I don’t think my house smells. Typically if you’re trying to sell your house, you’re looking to buy a house that has that type of an issue, that’s when we can really make a difference.

 

1:37:59.7 Ashley James: So a lot of real estate agents use your services?

 

1:38:04.4 David Bloom: Correct. For a number of reasons, number one – we’re pretty quick. We’re really good at what we do. But because we can preserve most of the building materials or certainly more than conventional remediation, the turnaround is much quicker. So often we can be done in a house in a day, but it really depends on the extent of it. In the northeast, I’d say a good 75% of their real estate work is just attics because they all have problems. The probably 15% is basements and 10% is somewhere else in the house. Our whole goal is to help them preserve their deal, not waste a sale. And they are excellent referral source of course.

 

1:38:53.3 Ashley James: Speaking of preserving, I know that your company also works with a lot of victims of floods. We’ve had some really crazy floods the last two years. I’m just remembering hurricane Harvey, I had friends in it and their house was so damaged. And so I’m just thinking about the floods we’ve had and are currently having now in the  United States, tell me about how Green Home Solutions helps people who have just had a flood to basically preserve their home.

 

1:39:36.1 David Bloom: Floods are different and the reason they’re different is the water – when you get rising water like that, you don’t know where it came from, you don’t know what it traveled through. So it’s considered category 3 water. Anytime you have category 3 water, anything that touches has to be physically removed, unless it can be cleaned. So drywall has to go. Normally we can clean drywall and preserve it, but in case of a flood you can’t. Because you can’t be 100% sure that there’s not something in the middle of that drywall that could kill you and you just can’t take that risk. So any kind of rising water, flood waters, sideways rain is considered category 3 water – so if you get a tornado type of thing or you get the wind whipping the rain around sideways, again, you don’t know what that water could have gone through before it reached you.

Normally, our work is done with either category 1 or 2 which is category 1 is potable water and category 2 is, I wanna say gray water, but it’s water that isn’t perfect, you wouldn’t wanna drink it, but if you did, you’re not gonna die. Category 3, you could die. So that has to be treated considerably different. Not all of our franchisees do water dry outs. A number of them do, especially the ones on the West Coast and we do have a group in Houston that got started in Harvey. They preserve as much as they can, but you’re gonna lose a lot because you just can’t. It’s not worth the risk in those kind of situations.

 

1:41:19.2 Ashley James: And so, can you walk us through. Let’s say someone has just gone through a flood, can you walk us through, like what are the steps that Green Home Solution takes to ensure that, that home is gonna be safe to live in.

 

1:41:34.0 David Bloom: First thing you’re gonna do is you’re gonna get rid of the water – that’s gonna get pumped out. You’re gonna dry everything as fast as you can, because you can dry it quick enough using commercial dehumidifiers, a lot of air movers – you can at least limit any kind of mold growth. And then often if there’s a lot of debris left behind, you have muddy things – there’s a piece of equipment that’s almost like a carpet steam cleaner that it’s made to clean this type of work – to clean all those surfaces off and getting down to where there’s no contaminated materials. Normally you’re gonna have to test it, make sure there’s no bacteria, make sure there’s no mold growth.

 

1:42:21.8 Ashley James: Is that where you use the ATP device?

 

1:42:25.5 David Bloom: No. It would that as a screen, but if it came back positive, you would definitely check and make sure it’s bacteria. You’d wanna know what was going on in there.

Like I said, not a lot of our franchisees get involved in the heavy flood stuff. There are some decent water restoration companies. It takes a lot of equipment. The capital investment to be in that end of the business is substantial and you also have to be on-call 24 hours a day. Not everybody who gets involved in the business wants to be a 24 hour a day business, they like their 9 to 5.

 

1:43:14.3 Ashley James: Sure. That makes sense.

 

1:43:17.4 David Bloom: So we don’t do a lot of that, except most of the guys in California and the ones in Texas do water restoration.

 

1:43:25.3 Ashley James: Got it. So let’s say someone has done the water restoration side, could they have Green Home Solutions come in and just test to make sure that there’s no mold?

 

1:43:41.4 David Bloom: Yeah. We actually work with some of the water restoration companies where they’ll go in. They’ll do the demo, whatever needs to be taken out. They’ll get the place dry and we go in and we’ll typically treat it even if it’s just preventative to make sure that there’s not gonna be any bacterial growth or mold growth, but it’s after it’s been dried out. So we let them do the heavy lifting and then we go in and take care of the house like we normally do.

 

1:44:08.8 Ashley James: So the enzymes that you have that you use to kill mold, it can also be used preventively?

 

1:44:15.9 David Bloom: Yeah. It can. It’s sort of an insurance policy. So it’s really prophylactic to try and prevent growth by making sure there’s nothing there that can grow. So if the house sits for a couple of days or something and it’s humid, we’re hoping to run and prevent that growth from occurring. Ideally we would do it again when all the walls that are up in the house is in back condition. We do a lot of work with Habitat for Humanity, we’re one of their major sponsors. And in their situation, a lot of times they build a home, it doesn’t get occupied for maybe three or four weeks and it sits there and they have the potential for mold growth. So for them, we go in and test. If it’s not obvious, we can’t say anything, then we’ll test. We’re gonna clean the house, if they feel comfortable turning a house over to their [inaudible 1:45:14.8] So it would be something similar to that.

 

1:45:20.3 Ashley James: Ok. I was curious whether the enzymes that you spray to kill the mold, if you spray an area, let’s say a bathroom, it doesn’t have mold but you sprayed it. Do the enzymes stick around and then if mold were to enter the area kill it later on? Like does it have a half-life or shelf life that it kills what enters the area for a certain period of time?

 

1:45:51.3 David Bloom: You know I get asked that question quite often and to be honest, I don’t know. Because we’ve never been able to get a scenario where we could actually test that. That being said, if you go and treat an area, obviously it’s gonna kill anything that’s there, so you’re not gonna have any mold. And if you did that in some sort of a reoccuring timeframe, then you’re never gonna allow it to grow. By the time you can see it, you’ve got a lot of it. So when you have a square inch of moldy wall board for example, that could be anywhere between 10,000 and a million spores. So you can’t see it until it’s already got its little fragments that are gonna start to grow into things. So spraying periodically would be helpful to keep it away. Now, can I tell you how long in between? No, I really don’t know.

We got a school that we did in West Virginia that was sitting in a flood plain. So they would get water under the building quite frequently and there is a lot of mold growth under the building. We treated the school, we actually broke through the foundation to treat in there one time. And then the idea was that we would come back, they would have the school tested every three months, I think it was. And we had figured that we’d probably have to come back about every six months and re-treat it. They ended up closing the school. I mean they kept it for that school year and then close it. So we actually never did go back, but it did keep it away for nine months or so.

 

1:47:38.1 Ashley James: And I like that your whole philosophy as a company is to get to the root anyway. Your philosophy isn’t let’s just spray all the time and keep coming back and spraying, let’s try to prevent it. In the school’s case, you couldn’t prevent the recurrence of flooding.

 

1:47:57.0 David Bloom: Correct.

 

1:47:58.4 Ashley James: But in most residential areas, your company looks for the root cause and make sure – whether it’s putting a dehumidifier in and making sure the bathroom is ventilating correctly or the other steps you take. You’re making sure that the home doesn’t have sort of that perfect environment to create mold and then you spray to kill it. But you’re not necessarily spraying – coming back and spraying preventively because there would be no need if you got rid of the moisture problem.

 

1:48:27.2 David Bloom: Right. If we can get the homeowner to address the moisture issue or at least we’ll do it. Somebody’s got to address it. If we can do that and we get rid of the mold that they have now, they should never need us again. Because without the moisture, you shouldn’t have a mold issue. Now, at some places there are areas that you can’t just avoid it, but there’s a lot of things that can be done. When I look at a property, when I approach a client’s property, I’ll look at the outside of the building first and I’m saying, “Ok. If I’m a raindrop, where am I going?” Are there gutters that are gonna take the water away from the foundation? Or is it dumping it straight down along the foundation? Is the grading such so that water is gonna drain towards the house or drain away from the house?

Because when you think about it, it’s really pretty simple. There’s only four places that water can from from. It’s either gonna come down from the top, it’s gonna come up from the bottom, it’s gonna be a pipe leak or some sort of a leak, or it’s gonna be high humidity. So when you break into those simple things and look at what you’re dealing with, it’s not that complicated. Sometimes you have buildings that have a convolution of factors. One in particular was in the clubhouse for an over 55 housing community and the exercise room – the pictures in the room started falling off the walls because they’re are so wet. This was in Maryland, and what happened here was a whole bunch of different things. So for example Maryland for some reason, they love their mulch and they mount everything up really high. In fact a couple of trees were dying because they were drowning, they were just holding so much moisture. So because they love their mulch, they had splash blocks which is a gutter comes down, goes into a splash bx and lead their water away from the building – turned around backwards because they didn’t want it to wash the mulch away. So the water is just going back towards the building. They had sprinkler heads that had a 360 degrees spray pattern, six inches away from the building which had a brick facade and brick is very porous. The rest of the building was vinyl sided and there was no vapor barrier.

In Maryland that’s not uncommon because half the year the vapor barrier would be in the wrong side anyway, pretty much even heating included. But the inside of that exercise room which was kept cold had vinyl wallpaper which is a vapor barrier. So now, vapor pressure is driving moisture in the humid summers into that room, and it’s going from hot to cold, and it hits that cold paper, condenses in the vinyl wallpaper but it can’t get out because it can’t get through the vinyl. Vinyls are impervious, so it just collected in the wall. And it was all of those things together that caused that problem we had.

That’s why you can’t just look at the obvious and a good visual inspection is the best thing you could do. Your eyes and your nose are far better than any testing. Testing can confirm, but your eyes and your nose are really what you need. That’s why we have to train our people so well.

 

1:51:54.7 Ashley James: And I love that because these tests were really expensive and if someone just comes in and doesn’t take the time to look at the outside of the house. What happens if they came in the winter, they may not think to think about the sprinkler system in the summer for example, or if they came during the dry season they might not be thinking about the gutters of the house. In Canada we call them eavestrough, but here in the States you call them gutters. But basically to see the water coming off of the roof and where does it go and what’s the gradient of the landscape. There’s this one corner of our house where it kind of floods outside and we have a pump underneath the house pumping water out, but that failed one year. It didn’t get in our house but it was underneath our house – there was water. And just to think about, like wow. That could be mold under our house you know, coming up like you said. In our bedroom, in our walk-in closet we have a trap door with stairs going down into the crawl space underneath which is is just dirt and that was flooded a few years ago until the pump was replaced. I haven’t even been down there, but it’s not a vapor barrier, so mold could be down there coming up potentially. So having the visual, looking around and see where is it coming from, what’s going on in this home inside and outside before you even spend thousands of dollars testing, because then now, like you said, you know what to test. Your company really helps people save a lot of money. Whereas another company might wanna come in and just start testing mully nelly and wracking up that bill.

 

1:53:43.5 David Bloom: Well basic mold testing is not that expensive, depending on how many samples you have to take. It could be $300 to $400 maybe.

 

1:53:56.8 Ashley James: Ok. That’s reasonable.

 

1:53:58.2 David Bloom: It’s when you start going into all those other types of tests. The VOC testing is a little bit pricey. The lab fees on that are pricey because you’re using a $3,000 piece of equipment. But yeah, testing for the sake of testing makes no sense. I mean you really need to get an idea what’s going on. So if they go up in an attic, they know how to check and make sure there’s enough ventilation. It’s very simple for limited use, they’d make sure that they have ventilation. And again in the Northeast you get a lot of ice in the winter. If your ventilation is improper, you don’t have enough insulation in your attic and that could be like a waterfall coming into the house. It’s a very ugly situation, but they’re not uncommon. So it’s those kind of things we look for and you know we certainly don’t want to scare anybody. We try to put everybody at ease like, “You know, it’s not as bad as you think and we’ll take care of it. Don’t worry about it.”

 

1:54:59.0 Ashley James: We need to advocate. We need to look into these things to make sure that our home  environment is as important as our diet and exercise and reducing stress like that is really important. There’s this hot yoga studio that went out of business or moved or something out of this building in Woodinville which I live close to and we watched them moved into the building, start their business and a few years later they moved out and for weeks there was construction. So we went by just out of curiosity and I looked inside and I couldn’t believe that the construction workers all had masks on and they were removing the drywall and they were removing the insulation. They had to gut the entire building that the hot yoga studio had been renting. They had to gut it and as I looked in the entire building was black, I mean black mold. And the light bulb went off my head, I’m like, “Oh my gosh. How many people do hot yoga and not realize that it is behind the walls, it’s all black mold.” They’re breathing in and they’re going into a sanctuary where they think they’re getting healthier or like you said into a gym – someone thinks they’re getting healthier in this room for an hour a day and they’re actually being exposed to toxins that are making their health worse.

 

1:56:25.5 David Bloom: There’s that. I mean how many times you would drive by a site where they’re building a house and the lumber sits outside for a couple of weeks in the rain?

 

1:56:32.5 Ashley James: Yeah. In the rain.

 

1:56:35.9 David Bloom: That’s not uncommon. Lumber yards typically, a lot of their lumbers are stored outdoors anyway, they’re covered but it’s outdoors. When we first started making our product, we did some testing to determine long term efficacy. We bought sheetrock and plywood off the shelf at Home Depot and some of the samples we inoculated with molds and then treat it. Some of them inoculated and didn’t treat and then we had our controls which we didn’t do anything to. The control pieces which were just the way it came from the store under the same humid conditions that we created for this test actually grew more mold than the stuff we put mold on.

 

1:57:17.7 Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

 

1:57:19.9 David Bloom: Because it came that way, and you’ve got to be aware of this kind of stuff But I’ll tell you one thing though. The most satisfying thing that we can do from Green Homes perspective, and this is part of our culture – is go into a property, do an investigation and tell them they don’t need us. It is the best feeling in the world to do that and it’s worth so much in goodwill. The industry itself doesn’t have a good reputation, we really pride ourselves on that and if you don’t need us, we’re gonna tell you, you don’t need us. Nobody in this company needs money bad enough that they would do work that wasn’t necessary.

 

1:57:59.4 Ashley James: And then they’ve earned the trust of that customer, that customer’s gonna refer to them or maybe use them in the future. It’s so good to do a relationship with a company that we can trust. That’s why I love you guys and I want my listeners to know about your services because I want my listeners to live in healthy homes and have a healthy air quality and to know the things that you’ve shared today. You’ve given us a lot of really great tips that we can all apply today – to our living space, including something as simple as have a dehumidifier, turn the fan on in the bathroom and leave it on, make sure that it vents out correctly outside of the home. You know these kind of things that we can test for.

It’s been wonderful having you on the show and having you share all these great information. Before we wrap up, there’s one last thing that I wanted to ask. Would you like to explain a bit about a bit about Green Home Solutions franchise. Maybe there’s someone listening how has been looking for another career or wants to help people in some way and wants to stop being an employee and own their own business. Can you tell us a bit about the business side of it?

 

1:59:17.9 David Bloom: The business is actually pretty simple. It’s really about establishing relationships. Most of our work comes from referrals. Initially when a new franchisee gets started, we typically have them visit with their local real estate agents, go to some of their real estate sales meetings, make a presentation in front of them, start joining some networking groups, and just make sure that people know that you’re there. We cannot create a demand for our service. It’s sort of like, I’m liking it to a Funeral Director.

 

1:59:56.6 Ashley James: [Laughter] You’re good at murdering people?

 

1:59:59.7 David Bloom: [Laughter] No. But you wanna make sure that everybody knows what you do because when they time comes you want them to come to you. So it’s really a lot of just building relationships. I don’t know all that much on the franchise side, I mean I know the franchisees individually because I work with them everyday and train them. I don’t know as much about that side of the business as I do with the science and the actual work that we do. But we’ve had people from all walks of life. We’ve had numerous people that change careers. I had one recently, I think it’s a couple of years I guess. He was a highschool music teacher and he just saw that were numbered because the school budgets are getting lower and lower and they’re cutting out some of the arts and music programs, and he has a very successful franchise. Well it takes a little while to get going, but it doesn’t require a big capital investment, obviously there is some franchise fees and there’s equipment that you need to buy. But if somebody likes to work, it’s not easy work. I mean that much I have to say, there’s some hard labor involved especially if you’re working in attics and basements. But the thing that I can emphasize enough it’s in incredibly satisfying because when you do this work for somebody, I mean they wholeheartedly thank you and you’ve got a friend for life.

 

2:01:27.0 Ashley James: I bet. You had mentioned that making connections with never can groups and real estate agents and I would say you should add to the list since you know all the franchisees, that they should really connect with health coaches, naturopathic physicians, chiropractors, like all kinds of healthcare professionals in the holistic field that are aware that mold is a big problem and that’s exactly how I found out about you guys. So I love it.

 

2:01:55.1 David Bloom: Actually that is one of our focuses now. We’ve been gearing more towards it. I do speak to doctors groups periodically because if I can get them to listen and I’ll make sense to them, they at least would give us a shot and all we got to take is one patient that’s feeling better and it works out terrific and they’re great people to work with. Some of the people that they have – patients are a little bit more needy, we had them take their time, but it’s a wonderful feeling when you see somebody who was absolutely miserable and all of a sudden feeling better.

 

2:02:30.6 Ashley James: I bet it is. David, it’s been so lovely having you on the show. Is there anything you’d like to share or say to wrap up today’s interview. Was there any story left unsaid or any of your bullet points that really wanted to cover?

 

2:02:43.8 David Bloom: Well I think we’ve covered probably more than expected.

 

2:02:47.5 Ashley James: I know. Right at the beginning before we hit record you’re like, “I don’t know what we’re gonna talk about.”  And I was like, “You just leave it to me.” [Laughter]

 

2:02:55.8 David Bloom: I do wanna thank you for providing the platform and from what you’re doing for the same type of people that we are helping, which is absolutely tremendous. I was unaware of who you were until I believe it was after you’re meeting with Jeff and started looking into it and I’m just astounded at some of the guests you’ve had. I mean it’s a treasure trove of good information for a healthy lifestyle.

 

2:03:24.0 Ashley James Thank you so much. This is just like you are doing what you do that you’ll never wanna retire because you love what you do. I love what I do and I love learning from these guests like yourself and also helping all my listeners and my listeners love sharing these episodes with their friends and family. So we can spread this information and help as many people as possible to learn how to develop true health. It’s where the name came from, Learn True Health. So we’re all in this together. We’re all becoming healthier and healthier together.

David, it’s been such a pleasure having you on the show. You are welcome back anytime you wanna come and teach more. I love that you’re constantly striving – you’re a scientist and you’re curious and you want to help people, so you’re in a really good space where you can take that science and apply it to real life situations. And if you guys come up with anything new that’s groundbreaking that’s really helping people, I’d love for you to come back and share it with us.

 

2:04:20.6 David Bloom: Thank you very much and again, if your listeners have questions that are appropriate for what we discussed today, I’d be happy for you to share my contact information with them.

 

2:04:32.9 Ashley James: Great. I will make sure I put it in the show notes to today’s podcast at www.learntruehealth.com so that people can reach David Bloom and also they can go to www.greenhomesolutions.com to check out more about the services and see if there’s a local franchisee in their area that they could get in contact with, but I’ll make sure that your email address is in the show notes as well.

 

2:04:55.2 David Bloom: Thank you very much, Ashley.

 

2:04:56.4 Ashley James: Thank you.

—

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

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out The Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program and it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition, but from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their lives and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health, I definitely recommend you check them out.

You can Google, Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call or you can go to www.learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in.

Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible.

I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program and I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are. getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic office, doctors offices.you can work in hospitals, you can work online through Skype and help people around the world. you can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. you can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals.

There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal.  Give them a call and they;ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you.

Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re gonna wanna call them and check it out.

And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

—

Are you looking to get the best supplements at the lowest price?

For high quality supplements and to talk to someone about what supplements are best for you, go to www.takeyoursupplements.com and one of our fantastic true health coaches will help you pick out the right supplements for you that are the highest quality and the best price.

That’s www.takeyoursupplements.com

Be sure to ask about free shipping and our awesome referral program

Get Connected with David Bloom!

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Learn True Health Episode 306 – Molds

Dr. Megan Saunders returns to Learn True Health to discuss Chronic Adrenal Fatigue and why almost everyone has it.

If you have any of these symptoms your body may be suffering from Chronic Adrenal Fatigue:

Drops in blood pressure (occasional dizziness)
Trouble falling asleep
Waking up in the middle of the night
Anxiety / panic attacks
Mental fog
Exhaustion
Sex hormones out of balance
Thyroid issues
Decrease immune function
Chronic infections
Spikes of energy followed by periods of crashing
Need multiple cups of coffee or energy drinks just to function
Sugar addiction / cravings

After listening to this podcast you will want to take action towards decreasing your stress and improving the healthy balance of your stress hormones.  At learntruehealth.com you will find videos on sleep, nutrition, meditation and breathing techniques that will enhance your night’s rest, decrease your stress and help you on the road to healing your adrenals.

Here’s What You’ll Discover:

What is Nature Cure
What do Adrenal Glands do
What role a cortisol imbalance has on our long term health.

Health AH-HA Moment:
Take time to go barefoot in the grass. Connect with nature. This daily practice will help decrease your stress hormones, boost your immune system and mental clarity.

Your Challenge:

Speak with a True Health Coach at takeyoursupplements.com and give the adrenal support supplements a chance for 3 months.  Most people notice more energy, mental clarity and better sleep within days of beginning their supplement program!

Your True Health Coach will also support you in the other diet and lifestyle changes that Naturopathic Doctors recommend for optimizing your adrenal function and healing the body naturally.


Resource:
Excellent Book: Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome by James L. Wilson: http://amzn.to/1WaBfhU

American Association of Naturopathic Physicians: http://www.naturopathic.org/

To buy excellent supplement that will help you overcome chronic fatigue and give you healthy energy and mental clarity visit takeyoursupplements.com

A trained True Health Coach will be happy to help you order the right supplements for you.

 

 

 

 

Get on the new Learn True Health newsletter by scrolling to the bottom of my site LearnTrueHealth.com

https://learntruehealth.com

 

Check Out My Latest Book: Addicted To Wellness

https://www.learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness

 

Get The Minerals Your Body Needs: TakeYourSupplements.com

 

Dr. Tyler's Website: https://www.drtylerpanzner.com

Theresa's Sites:
Free Manifestation Class:
https://coach.theresavigarino.com/sales-page-1205983817068544

Main site:
www.TheresaVigarino.com

Brand new Masterclass Series:
https://theresavigarino.clickfunnels.com/the-empowered-soul-mentorship-program

New Charity:
www.MomsHouseForChildren.Org

 

 

Ayahuasca

https://www.learntruehealth.com/ayahuasca

 

Highlights:

• Theresa’s journey into the Amazon jungle.
• The Vomativo.
• The spiritual and energetic connection to everything.
• How to keep your energy clean.
• Theresa’s masterclass series.

 

Let’s listen in to this episode where Theresa Vigarino takes us to her Amazon jungle journey where she experienced healing, and gained her knowingness. Get to know Ayahuasca and how it promotes soul enlightenment and physical healing.

 

0:03 Intro: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 379.

 

 0:13 Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show Theresa Vigarino. Theresa was in episode 88 almost two years ago. And Theresa and I have stayed connected and stayed friends since then. I loved our interview back in Episode 88. And Theresa has so much to share with us. I am really excited to hear the story. She started trying to tell me over Skype the other day and I was like, “No, no, no, I want the listeners to hear it too.” I really want to hear what’s happened. And she started just giving little tidbits of the last two years and I got so excited that I have to record this. So let’s just save it for the interview. So this is going to be new information for me too. Theresa, your life last two years has been quite amazing. Welcome back.

 

 

1:06 Theresa Vigarino: Oh, yeah. It has. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ashley. I love being here. And I love the people that I’ve met that reached out to me two years ago through the podcast interview we did back then and you know, I have nothing but love for you and being brave. And I’m just so honored to be here because I know you have such a beautiful tribe of listeners and people that are really ready to awaken to who they really are.

 

1:36 Ashley James: Exactly.

 

 

1:36 Theresa Vigarino: So I’m happy to be part of that process even just a little bit.

 

 

1:40 Ashley James: Oh, wonderful. Awaken to who you really are. And isn’t that what it’s all about? Now you have a free giveaway for the listeners. You’re so funny, you’re like podcasters expect us to give things away. And I’m just like, isn’t your presence enough? We’re going to give something cool to the listeners. Okay, so you have a gift for the listeners. It’s free, three people. And you created it a while ago, but it’s still very relevant. And it’s a free audio course on manifesting in your life. And so the link to that is going to be in the show of today’s podcast at www.learntruehealth.com and then listeners can go to that and they sign up for your free audio course where you teach techniques for designing your life in a way that manifests the miraculous.

 

 

2:33 Theresa Vigarino: Absolutely. And I just love teaching this because so often in life we walk around feeling victim to our circumstances, when in actuality we manifest all the time. And so understanding this and that literally when you look around your life experience you are the creator of what you’re seeing around you. And that’s the beginning actually. And what I’ve learned in the past two years is there’s so much more and there’s always more to learn and grow and experience and expand and I’ve been going to school, I’ve gone to spiritual school, if you will, the last couple of years, man. Wow is all I can say.

 

 

3:12 Ashley James: The spiritual school of hard knocks, right?

 

 

3:15 Theresa Vigarino: A little bit, some intense growth because it was life or death for me quite frankly. And I was brought to my knees. If only I could have bent my knees, I would have been on my knees. But at the time I was turning into a stiff lady with scleroderma. And it was really a divine unfoldment although it was extremely uncomfortable. And I was extremely ill. It took me to my knees so that I could grow.

 

 

3:44 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

3:46 Theresa Vigarino: And I could really learn what healing was all about.

 

 

3:49  Ashley James: It’s in the hardest times that we can gain the most growth.

 

 

3:54 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, and I’m still learning and it’s a forever deal for all of us. But what I went through in the past two years since we last spoke was basically the heroine’s journey of my life. A solo journey into the depths of my being, into the depths of what I was creating, into the depths of disease, into the depths of emotional healing, into the depths of energy and vibration, and ancient plant medicine and Shamanism.

 

 

4:22 Ashley James: In the depths of the jungle. I can’t wait to get to that part of the story.

 

 

4:25 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Into the depth, depth, depths of the jungle.

 

 

4:28 Ashley James: So take us back. So after our interview you told me that you ended up falling sick, is that with scleroderma? And you ended up in the hospital? Can you tell us about that?

 

 

4:40 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. Well, 2017. In 2016, at the end of the year, I was very, very sick. And that’s whenever I had an evening. And there were so many things that were happening, including an adrenal crisis that literally could have taken me out. Like at any point, I remember lying bed, we had just gone through the holidays. So it was January 2017. And I had just moved, I was in an area that I didn’t know anyone except my husband and he was actually out of town. I had no family around me. And I was very, very, very ill and I was lying in bed ready to call him to come home from a meeting or 911. And at the time my kidneys were shutting down. The scleroderma was so wrapped around the linings of my lungs that I was having bad EKGs. I was feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I was struggling to move my body. I was crawling to the bathroom, I’m only not being able to urinate that evening. And I mean, I just wanted to go. I was so sick, I crawled back in bed, and I will never forget this as long as I live. And I said, “God, I’m ready.” And all of a sudden, deep in this meditative space, so I was struggling both dimensions I saw the face of Yeshua, the Christ say to me, “Really? Are you sure about that?” And then immediately, like a snapshot picture of my husband’s face, a snapshot picture of my daughter’s face, then my son’s face, and then a room full of people. It was like a giant auditorium and all these people looking at me that I did not recognize. And I said, “No, of course I’m not ready. I’ll stay. I know I’m not done yet.” And so he began to show me along with some archangels that were in my room that night how to self-heal.

 

So at the time we knew I had a mass in my lung. We knew I was in adrenal crisis, we knew my kidneys were inflamed, we knew that I was really in bad shape. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen to my heart through the scleroderma process. And he was showing me how to self heal. And so immediately the next day, I started feeling a little bit better. What happened after that, now It took me, I wasn’t fully healed after that, and I ended up spiraling down in a different way later in the year. But what happened was, he told me to start praying for my clients. Now at the time, I was always the spiritual warrior, right? But I wasn’t always praying for people outside of my family, friends and people I was very close to. And so I started actually praying for people and they started having miraculous results; a healing of Crohn’s disease, a pain in the knee, you know, migraines, financial woes, relationship problems, it didn’t matter what the subject matter was. And I would hear him say, pray. And the prayers were always channeled. I could not not remember any of them afterwards. And so I then began to discover this part of me that I had been told that I was resistant into allowing to unfold in my life, because of the ego and fear of what people would think and what if it didn’t work, and all of this right? That I projected, that was amazing, miraculous, miraculous experience for me. And it was just so humbling. And after that, later in the year, I again began to plummet in my health. And so I got an invitation to go to the jungle of the Amazon to partake in the plant medicine from a friend.

 

 

8:22 Ashley James: Okay, first, can you just take us back to that invitation? So was it kind of like out of the blue?

 

 

8:30 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah. So yes, it was, and yet it wasn’t. So I have a mentor who was helping me understand maybe in a clear conscious conduit, you know, medium of sorts, spiritual teacher and accessing and amplifying these gifts and understanding it more. And she said to me, “Theresa, you really need to investigate plant medicine.” So I began a search in my area in the Bay Area, south of San Francisco, and I was looking into Shamanism and plant medicine, but I didn’t know anything about it quite frankly. I had heard of it a little bit, but really had not researched it prior to that, and didn’t know, didn’t understand it at all. So out of the blue. But you know, the universe works this way. Right? I get this blessing dropped in my lap. In November, the week before Thanksgiving, I get a call from a friend of mine who I knew from a business group, not a spiritual group, he wasn’t a client or anything just from a business coach that I was involved with for a while. And I met him at an event and we became friends and out of the blue, hadn’t spoken to him in a year. He calls me up and he says, “Theresa, I am running a retreat to the depths of the jungle in Peru to the Amazon. And I have an opening that just came available. We leave in two days and for some reason I just know you’re supposed to be there.” Now this guy had no idea of my physical struggles. I just wasn’t talking about it with everybody all the time, working on rewriting my story. And I was just about fell out of my chair. He said, “Just buy your ticket. Meet me in Iquitos. This is when you need to meet me.” And it was in two days.

 

 

10:15 Ashley James: In Peru. Iquitos, Peru.

 

 

10:17 Theresa Vigarino: In Peru. Yeah.

 

 

10:18 Ashley James: So fly from San Francisco to Peru in two days and you’ve been like on your deathbed twice in the last year.

 

 

10:26 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. And actually just days before that, had been back to the hospital for heart pain, chronic heart pain that wasn’t going away and I did have a bad EKG and they didn’t really know what was causing it and so I was really not feeling well and I actually was on lockdown with my connective tissues, so I wasn’t able to move my joints very easily. And so I was really struggling, Ashley, and I was in a lot of pain and I didn’t understand what was happening actually.

 

 

10:57 Ashley James: So scleroderma which you’ve had over a long time…

 

 

11:02 Theresa Vigarino: Since I was four, yeah.

 

 

11:03 Ashley James: Is that an autoimmune condition of the connective tissue?

 

 

11:06 Theresa Vigarino: It is and so the way they describe it is autoimmune vascular because it’s also in the blood vessels, arthritic, because a soft tissue arthritis, inflammatory because it inflames organs.

 

 

11:24 Ashley James: So, everything but bones?

 

 

11:26 Theresa Vigarino: Everything but bones and lipid.

 

 

11:28 Ashley James: Wow. Okay, so yeah, so you’re in rough shape, but you gotta get to Peru two days to go into the jungle.

 

 

11:34 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. And I got off the phone with him. And I said to Victor, my husband, I was like, “Babe, you aren’t gonna believe this.” But now we don’t say this to each other. “You’re not gonna believe this.” Because we believe just about anything after everything we’ve gone through. We are not surprised by surprises. You know, and he didn’t know this person at the time. And I said, “Jimmy invited me to go, he’s the guy from this event. And we became friends, invited me to go with him to do plant medicine.” And he was like, “Well, you gotta go. You gotta go.”

 

 

12:06 Ashley James: I love your husband. I’ve never met him, but I love him. Just the fact he was supportive. How many spouses would be like, “No, you’re too sick. What do you mean? You’re not going to the jungle, with a complete strange man I’ve never met.” Like, oh my gosh. And he’s like, “Go, you have to. It’s your journey.” I just love him.

 

 

12:24 Theresa Vigarino: He is so amazing. And he’s also been to the jungle three times, and we’ll go into that.

 

 

12:28 Ashley James: Not before this point and after this point. So he had never been to the jungle. He didn’t know Jimmy. He knows that you’re struggling physically. But he said go. So okay, so there you go. So two days later, you’ve managed to figure out your life and get to Peru, then what happened.

 

 

12:46  Theresa Vigarino: So we meet at the airport and we begin our journey into the jungle. So Iquitos is you fly to Lima, we met in Lima. And then we take the two and a half hour flight, there’s the only way to Iquitos is by boat or airplane. You’re really locked in the jungle there and it’s on the river. And so it’s really the gateway to Shamanism, because even if you decide to go into Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, it’s up in that corridor where those countries all kind of meet, and it is the gateway to traditional plant medicine. So yeah, I land in Lima, we meet with our group, I think we were a group of like 11 of us and we take the smaller plane over the mountains and into the jungle. And then we take about a two hour bus ride, and an hour boat ride to this oasis of beauty because this woman that owns this lodge for plant medicine, and so she also has people that just want to come and experience the jungle. But mostly it’s a healing retreat center. And it is absolutely, well, it’s my second home now, one of the most beautiful places you can imagine. And you know, even though it’s beautifully appointed, you’re still in the jungle, so there’s a lot of jungle that goes with it that you have to acclimate to, and that a lot of people are fearful of and you face those fears, because you’re there.

 

 

14:11 Ashley James: Right. Like spiders.

 

 

14:15 Theresa Vigarino: Like spiders. Like everything and, and you know, my husband and I adventurous as we are, we really got into that show Naked and Afraid. And the ones that always tapped out were the ones that were in the Amazon. So I did have a little bit of fear. I’ll be honest, you know, it was a little scary for me of the critters. And now I know they’re just my friends coming to say hi.

 

 

14:40 Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

 

 

14:41 Theresa Vigarino: I love more than others like the butterflies and dragonflies and the birds, you know, and the lady bugs but you know, there’s some that I’m like, “Okay, hi.” From afar, right?

 

 

14:51 Ashley James: Yes.

 

 

14:52 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah. So it was quite a personal growing experience into the realm of other life forms, because there are more different types of life forms in the Amazon jungle than anywhere on Earth.

 

 

15:06 Ashley James: Oh, I bet and it’s such a shame that they’ve been burning parts of it down. And I mean, it just breaks my heart. But this idea of getting out of your comfort zone, just, I mean, step one, right? You took a leap of faith. Step two, you’re out of your comfort zone, because you’re surrounded by animals and insects. And you know, it’s a foreign language, a foreign geography, foreign weather. I mean, every everything is foreign.

 

 

15:37 Theresa Vigarino: And foreign medicine.

 

 

15:38 Ashley James: Sure. So everything’s different. You’re really thrown out of your comfort zone, which I think is also can be very cathartic to break out of old patterns. So tell us about your first experience there. How long did you stay? Walk us through it.

 

 

15:55 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah, so I was there for 10 days. And in those 10 days we were led through some group workshops with my friend and he was explaining what we were embarking upon, because most of us that were there had never experienced plant medicine and in particular, Ayahuasca. So I knew nothing about Ayahuasca, other than it was some some kind of medicine that the shamans drink with you. And then they sing the songs. That’s all I knew. And I did not have time to investigate or research and thank God I didn’t because I literally was going in blind. And you know, at this point, ignorance was bliss for me. And so I just did what I was told to do. And we began our journey. I think we got to the lodge in the evening. And so the plant medicine started the next morning with a prerogative.

So we got up early in the morning, we rallied in the grass around each other, we had to drink this green, this one glass of this green drink that tasted like lemongrass, actually. And then we had to drink like a gallon of water, just glasses, glasses and glasses of water, which caused a purging. So in traditional plant medicine, you do go through a purging process of the body, which we purge in only so many ways, you know, vomiting, sneezing, blowing your nose, you know, evacuation through urination, defecation, sweating, some people sneeze, cough, laugh, you know, there’s lots of ways emotionally that we purge. But you do begin with the physical body. And what I’ve learned is, the medicine works better when you’re cleaner physically. So since we live in a toxic environment, you do go through some of that. So we did do this. It’s called Vomativo.

We drank the prerogative, we did the Vomitivo. And actually, you feel clean afterwards. Then that evening, we began our journey into the visionary for some, but the deeper work of Ayahuasca, which they call the grandmother of all medicine, like all medicine. And that is a journey, that is the heroine and the hero’s journey. And, you know, so I went through that experience six times in those 10 days, and also another plant medicine called San Pedro. And so we can talk if you’d like to about what the ceremony is like, and what you go through.

 

 

18:16 Ashley James: Yeah, please. Yeah, I saw a documentary think it’s still in Netflix about Ayahuasca and how they’re using Or people go into the jungle and do this, who’ve come back for more time who have post traumatic stress. And they, oh my gosh, so many of them end up healing and resolving an it’s like completing. They’re complete with the post traumatic stress, and they go back, you know, I mean, sometimes they visit the jungle a few more times, but they can reenter society, and they don’t have those wounds, those scars, those triggers from the war time. So there’s a lot of benefits that they’re seeing.

 

 

19:00 Theresa Vigarino: Absolutely.

 

 

19:00 Ashley James: And obviously, it’s a medicine that has been practiced for a very long time. This isn’t like, you know, some trippy street drug. I mean, this is very responsible and the shamans are leading it.

 

 

19:11 Theresa Vigarino: And it’s very respected in South America. You know, I just read an article last year about how in Brazil, they’re using this plant medicine to rehabilitate hardened criminals, the worst of the worst. So there is so much about this medicine that science is now researching. There’s so many researchers were there, you know, people are drinking the medicine and they’re scanning brains while on the medicine and seeing how it activates parts of the brain. It is really helping people with chronic depression and mental illness. For me, I was the only person that was really there for physical illness, that first time. And so what happened to me was really intense. And they said it would be after a few rounds of it, that for someone who was as sick as I was in the physical realm, that I was going to go through a lot. And so they have in the ceremony, the ceremonies are always in the evening, at night in the dark and you’re in a special ceremony room that’s blessed and the shamans are there.

And they make this brew and the tea they call it, is a mix of traditionally, and it’s important I want to reiterate, you want to know who your shamans are. And you want to know how they’re making the medicine. There are shamans in America that are distributing this medicine and there are a lot of reputable people. I personally have had several shamans now because I’ve been down there several times and I have found my shamans and I will only work with them. Because this medicine also works on the energy of the individual, their personal energy matters as well. Their lives matter as well because they’re part of your healing process. And so the first two times that I went down there, so I’ve been four times. The first two times I went was different shamans, this last two times and most recently, I spent the month of June, this year, so just two months ago with a mother and a son. They work together and mother son shaman and I won’t go to anybody else. They are who I will work with.

They are who helped transform me, the others – the medicine worked great, but they just didn’t have the healing gifts that these other shamans have. So that’s why I found my shamans, right? So anyways, so back to the original time that I went there. So we get ready, we stop eating at 2pm. And we go into ceremony in about 7pm. And in the jungle, it literally gets dark by seven. I don’t care what time of the year, I’ve been there all times of year now it’s dark by seven. So we’re dressed in white typically. And we head off into what’s called a Maloca. And it is a sacred ceremony space. It’s a round room and you see them all over the jungle with a pitch thatch roof. And you know it’s nicely appointed. There’s restrooms outside, bathroom number one they call is mama bears bathroom. That’s me. Because I’m the one that spent some time in the restroom. It’s laughable. They’re like, “Oh, she’s in there again. Put her baby wipes in there.” So yes, I spent a lot of time purging that way and it was unbelievable what came out of my body. Old infections and I won’t go into more detail about that.

 

 

22:35 Ashley James: Oh, my gosh. I’m so curious. Did you see parasites?

 

 

22:40 Theresa Vigarino: Oh my gosh, okay.

 

 

22:43 Ashley James: Okay listeners who’ve been listeners for a while are laughing probably because I’m so obsessed. I want to know, I want to know the details. Give me the details. Parasites, did you see the parasites?

 

 

22:57 Theresa Vigarino: This is how I saw the parasites. So the first two nights, what would happen is my belly would just blow up like a balloon. So I’ll go back into the detail of how the ceremony plays out. So we’re sitting on these mats, everybody has a bowl and some toilet paper or napkins, you know, because some people do purge through vomiting. And I have, but not as much as the other way. What we’ve discovered is I’m extremely sensitive to the medicine. So I need the least amount. The original shamans were giving me full doses. And it was too much, quite frankly, for me. And I was oh boy, the first two nights. I didn’t have, I saw some visions. So I’m very visionary person. And some people experience the visionary journey and some don’t. Now, Westerners like to call this a psychedelic hallucinatory experience, however, and they call it a drug. It’s a misconception.

This is a very powerful strong medicine. And the reason why they call it the grandmother of all medicines is because it works on every part of your being; your mind body, your emotional body, your energetic body, your physical body, your spirit body. It’s like having the best doctor, Psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, all in the same room in one night. It’s like 20 years of therapy, a 20 years of toxins coming out of your body, 20 years of stuck emotion coming out of your body in one night.

 

 

24:29 Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That’s so cool.

 

 

24:31 Theresa Vigarino: That’s so powerful.

 

 

24:31 Ashley James: Yeah, when I watched the documentary, I believe someone said one of the people is going through it, said it was really, it was like you face the mirror. It’s like your soul faces the mirror of yourself and I can really see why criminals would find healing through it because they actually have to then face the actions and then feel what they did to others and face that. And so people were in denial. I mean, you can’t be in denial, you face all your stuff. Is that accurate?

 

 

25:10 Theresa Vigarino: It’s so accurate. And I want to say, and it is in the kindest way possible. Because I saw the mistakes that I had made over my life. And the part I played even if the other party, whatever circumstance it was, just, you know, in my views and terrible things to me, or what have you, right? I also played a part in some of that. I also realized my portion of it and I grieve that part of myself. It’s also a great shame release, because the most negative vibration, it’s totally a vibratory medicine. The darkest emotional vibration, and we know that we’re all energetic beings, and that we resonate to a vibration. The one that stays the deepest stuck inside of ourselves is shame.

 

 

26:02 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

26:04 Theresa Vigarino: And so this helps bring the shame up, and you see it and you release it. So you not just have forgiveness for others, but for yourself, for the things that you’ve done. Because none of us are perfect, you know, those without and I don’t like to word, the word sin means miss the mark, you know, cast the first stone. In other words, we shouldn’t be judging each other because we’re not perfect. We’re all a work in progress. Yet, we are perfect because we have the spirit of the great creator living within us. And we’re here to emerge as that. But in the process, we have the human aspect of our life experience. And, you know, we’ve all done things that we’re not proud of, or said things or engaged in things that we wish we wouldn’t have in hindsight, right? So this helps you access those places of stuck guilt, shame, remorse, resentment, anger, guilt, all of those negative emotions, and it bubbles up to the surface and you’re able to get it out of your body.

 

 

27:01 Ashley James: So take us back to the first night. Take us back to the ceremony and tell us what happened.

 

 

27:06 Theresa Vigarino: First of all, it I thought it was freaky as all get out because I’m like, “What are we doing in the dark?” Because I really didn’t know what was going on.

 

 

27:12 Ashley James: They guy didn’t explain to you everything?

 

 

27:15 Theresa Vigarino: A little bit. But it’s still like, it’s still an experience to have to actually go do it, right? We walk in we’re like, I’m next to my roomie, this beautiful and she’s like one of the dearest souls in my life now. We became best friends, because neither one of us had experienced the jungle before and she was even more scared than me of jungle critters. And so we picked mats next to each other and talking to each other. “Hey, are you okay?” You know, it’s nice to have a little buddy your first night. So yes, we didn’t understand it. But there’s still something different about doing it. Right? We did have an explanation of what we’d experienced. But so and what happens is the shamans, there’s a light at the beginning and they’re pouring the brew and a cup and come up, set your intention.

You sit before the shamans, you drink the brew, you go back to your mat, and we’re in silence at that point. They go around the room, everybody drinks it, and then they drink it and there was two shamans there, and two females and they drink the medicine and then the lights go out and they smoke a sacred tobacco called Mapacho, which Mapacho is for clearing energy. And if you notice most ancient tribes from Africa to Australia to North America, the indigenous tribal ceremonies always have smoke involved either through a fire, or they’re smoking some sacred tobacco. And because it’s a master plant, and it is a medicine, and it clears spiritual energy. Okay, because part of the ceremony is you’re opening up energetically.

So it’s about your safety. So that’s why you want to know that you’re with a powerful shaman. And that we could go into the details of that later. So they begin smoking. And then you start after a while feeling the effects of the medicine and it can be different for everyone. The medicine is brewed between a vine and a leaf. The vine is called Ayahuasca and the leaf is called Chacruna. Now, there are lesser evolved, lesser enlightened people that serve medicine. And a lot of Westerners want the visionary experience and so they go for that and these shamans they just pick randomly who to work with at the airport sometimes, come to find out. And they will add a third ingredient for the hallucinatory experience and so that they have this trip, if you will. That’s not what I’m interested in. I’m interested in healing. And many people come away with it with a different experience than what is truly the medicine and traditional witches those two ingredients only

 

 

29:52 Ashley James: Giving Ayahuasca a poor rep.

 

 

29:54 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, yes. So you know a reputable shaman, a reputable Lodge and you know, truly, truly if any of your listeners want to know the place that I went with the shamans, I am best friends with the lady that owns the lodge now and they are the most healing, loving, authentic, integris group of people I’ve ever worked with. They cared for me during my darkest nights of my soul.

 

 

30:18 Ashley James: So listeners can reach you www.theresavigarino.com and get that information about the lodge and all that. So on your first night you’re lying on your mat. Now you must be hearing the sounds of the jungle outside.

 

 

30:33 Theresa Vigarino: Oh, the symphony of the jungle is unlike any other sounds you’ve ever heard.

 

30:39 Ashley James: It’s very loud.

 

 

30:40 Theresa Vigarino: It’s very loud, it’s very loud and it’s very dark. Because of where we are situated there’s no electricity, they run off generators in the evenings. And by 10pm, the generators are off. And they have to boat everything into this place, right? So the generators are in the evening. So you can charge your phone, but you have very limited access to the phone, there’s no internet, no TV, you’re away from work, you’re away from everything. So because of the lack of distraction, you really get to face these parts of you that really need to be faced so that you can have freedom and liberation. And so the first couple of nights, I would see the sacred geometry, you know, in black and white and so I would see some things that affected my experience, my visionary experience. But what happened to me was my belly just blew up to where I was like eight or nine months pregnant. And I was in the pooper, I call it and I was in the bathroom just evacuating like I had never in my life.

 

 

31:39 Ashley James: How do you get through if it’s dark?

 

 

 31:42 Theresa Vigarino: Oh, they have facilitators there.

 

 

31:43 Ashley James: Do you have flashlights?

 

 

31:45 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah, and you bring your own flashlight. So you have a list of things to bring for your experience; headlamp, little flashlight, and they have facilitators. So, this one his name was Alex. I call him my jungle son. I’d be like, “Alex.” And he would come and get me and escort me outside into the facilities and wait for me until I wash my hands and come back and guide me back to my mat. Because you are under the effects of the medicine. So you do feel woozyness, you definitely feel different, right? But you have full consciousness and full awareness while the medicine is working.

So for me the first two days, because I went at the last minute, I did not have any. Most people that go, they have a couple weeks where they are cleaning up their diet. And even though I eat really clean, no oil, no butter, no caffeine, spices, salt, no pork, no red meat. There’s a specific diet that you eat to cleanse yourself so that you don’t have to go through as much detoxing while you’re there. So taken into account that I had just been in no medicines, right? I had been in the hospital, I had had steroids in my system till right before I came. I had IV anti inflammatories, I had a lot of things in my system that I was not cleared out of, so the medicine worked as a detox on me immediately. And boy did I feel it. By the third ceremony, my visionary experience just kicked my butt. I did not know what was happening to me. And it was extremely scary for me because I had never had that kind of experience. I am not a user of psychedelics. And I had never experienced something like this before. The colors and the patterns and the things, I mean, I just didn’t even know what was going on. So I got really afraid because we know what the brain, Ashley, if you’re having a new experience and you don’t have a frame of reference for it, it really triggers fear.

And what I learned from that scary night, scariest night of my life, and I had to be in the bathroom of course and it hit me within five minutes. Usually it takes 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, sometimes people don’t. The medicines working but they don’t have that experience at all. Because I’m so open and because I’m such a visionary and I’m so spiritual and energetically connected, it was like bam! Five minutes in, okay, and I’m like, “Oh my God, what’s going on? I end up literally on the jungle ground, fear of critters, didn’t care, had my friend. My friend with me, the owner of the lodge, five facilitators, another shaman came out and I thought literally, I thought I was going to die. Now I did have a death that night. The fear of death and I didn’t realize as spiritual being as I was and knowing where I’m going afterwards, there is still the egoic attachment of the greatest fear that we walk around with that even in your mind you think you don’t have, it’s still stuck in the body. We learned at five years old, you know what I’m saying?

 

 

34:57 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

34:58 Theresa Vigarino: Even though intellectually we go, “Oh we’re energy, we’re just going to transform. We’re faithful beings. Many of us know we’re going to enter into full consciousness.” If you’re a Christian then you know you’re going to meet the face of Jesus and etc etc etc. This night I was begging them to lie flight me out of there and then they started saying to me, I just said this is really funny now that I look back on it. But at the moment I didn’t know what was happening and the reason why I ended up in the grass was because you know there’s a little distance between the Maloca the ceremony room, and restrooms and on my way back into the Maloca I’m like, “Lay me down right here.” And I ended up off the little pathway and into the grass and you know, my friend is like, “Get her mat.” You know, I said I can’t go back in there because I need to be close to the bathroom because it was really pretty profuse a time, and my jungle son, they said, get her some sugar water so there is a way that when it’s intense for you to bring down the effects and he ran back to the main lodge and brought me sugar water. I’m drinking sugar water then he ran back again to bring me limes with salt and so basically the electrolytes brings you back and then they went and got me bananas. I said I just need a banana. I just need a banana and this poor kid because it’s a long way back to the lodge and it became a big joke.

Meanwhile, everybody in the Maloca is yelling out at me, “Mama Bear we love you.” I was the mom of all that trip and those people, as the oldest one there I think but those people ended up becoming like all my children and great dear loves of my life and I was getting the support of everyone and it did ease. And after that experience, I heard, I was able to communicate with the spirits so profoundly that the spirit said to me when I was in the toilet the next night I was like, what is going on? And the spirit said this is cancer leaving your body because medical intuitive said I had a lot of cancer in my body. This is cancer leaving your body, this is virus leaving your body, this is bacteria and toxins leaving your body, and these are the curses that were spoken over you leaving your body from past relationships and experiences. And so that said, sit with this because I was like opening up the door because it was the vileness that left my body that I couldn’t handle. It was making me feel sicker and the spirit said, no you close the door because I was like sticking my head out the door. This is really graphic.

 

 

37:38 Ashley James: It was like a porta potty or something? You just like open the door and stick your head out.

 

 

37:45 Theresa Vigarino: Oh no, but they’re smaller. You know, I was able to, but no they’re full working flushing toilets, running water back and everything. Yeah, beautifully appointed and you know still people are saying we love you and they can hear me and I can hear them and at this point and you know you do hear people purging, you do hear people crying some people are crying because they’re there for an emotional release. Which I got later in my month long journey that I just went on but those but my initial visit to the jungle, because you know my health was so dire and that first trip wasn’t enough. I ended up having to come back, but because my health was in such bad shape. So you know, I will say this even after just three ceremonies, my joints were able to loosen up and I literally was like stiff man walking around, not able to bend my knees or ankles or move my hips in either direction. And I was able to move in all directions without pain and suffering and that never came back.

 

 

38:49 Ashley James: Well. Okay, like you just told me you teach yoga at IBM every week. In San Francisco and then you had to miss yesterday because you we’re flying across the country. And so, here I am sitting here thinking like she’s a yoga teacher now. Like, she has to go back, when I first met you, you had scleroderma. You were stiff man couldn’t bend your knees.

 

 

39:14 Theresa Vigarino: Yes.

 

 

39:15 Ashley James: And now you’re teaching yoga to IBM employees.

 

 

39:20 Theresa Vigarino: It was my knees. My knees were so bad. And you know when I say I was brought to my knees? I was brought to my knees. Literally.

 

 

39:32 Ashley James: So do you still have scleroderma, are you completely in remission? Or is that completely gone from your body?

 

 

39:39 Theresa Vigarino: Well, the month that I spent, so this is what happened. So I wasn’t working with the best shaman and at the beginning, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. I ended up coming back that following March with my husband and with my friend and another group of people and was working with the same shaman. And so went through more, more deep healing, more deep healing, and the iron he is that I caught hepatitis A in my travels earlier that year. And so that’s why we went back in March and I had caught hepatitis A and I had been in the hospital and almost died in January of 2018. So I also discovered that I had parasitic infections from travels to Asia years before that had infiltrated my liver, my kidneys, my ducts, everywhere in my body and I couldn’t get rid of it. And that seemed to progress no matter how many cleanses I did and yes I saw many parasites and some of it was a spiritual thing.

And when you learn about that, when you learn that there’s a spiritual and energetic connection to everything I had I won’t go into detail, but I had of who or where it came from, but I had a dark energetic you know, a curse I don’t know what else to call it, that was attached to me – entity, being. I’m not sure if it was an energy or being, it doesn’t matter. But the shaman that I ended up working with, they cleared that from my energetic body. And that was the whole the opening of my work field. And because I had been so weakened from disease my whole life, I didn’t have that force field. And I didn’t know because if you’re not aware of it, you can’t really pray against it or whatever. Because I’m a strong spiritual person. How did this happen? And it was another strong spiritual person. That it was actually one of the original shamans that had some dark energy and it had because I was in a weakened state attached to me and that is a whole another story, right?

 

 

41:44 Ashley James: A whole another story. You know, Eric Throton talks about that, the guy I told you about that I’ve interviewed before. He talks about that kind of stuff. And my first session with him, he helped me remove some stuff that was like that. That was with me since I was nine. That had me hearing voices. And I thought it was my voice until I realized that those voices were totally out of alignment. Like these voices wanted me to eat McDonald’s. I’m like, I haven’t eat McDonald’s in nine years. What are you talking about? And so that’s when I got the cravings I kept having or not, were not physical cravings. They were like a voice in my head saying, “Let’s eat this, let’s eat that, or whatever.” Or it would make these the negative entity or whatever you could call it would make me question. Like when someone says something nice would be like, she didn’t really mean that, she doesn’t like you or whatever, it’s like having a mean girl in my head basically.

 

 

42:46 Theresa Vigarino: And really causing you to feel negative. And what that does is that attracts more negativity. So this is what I’ve learned energetically and vibrationally. This is where we live, we know that there are energies, entities, beings that are amongst us, and some are light, and some are the opposite of light. And so you know, I learned so much on this solitary journey. So I have so much to tell you on this call all day. So what I learned in June, and I’ve known a lot about this, but what I’ve learned is that we’re all here to clean our vibration, right? Through our beliefs, through our faith or trust, through our opening to spirit, through our intentions. And so when we know that there is negative influence, we can detach ourselves from that, right? And we can say, “But wait a minute, that’s not true.” That’s not true.

Because what happens is there’s these negative energies and these entities and these beings that are roaming on earth, and their entry point is when you’ve dropped your faith, your trust of the truth, which is you were created as an intentional being and as a divine express an extension of the Most High, you are one with the source of all things. And when you believe less or of that of yourself, that is an entry point, right? Also our behavior patterns. If there is addiction, it is not your true essence that’s addicted. It is a negative influence that is being fed from that addiction. It’s the negative one that has the addiction and living off that addiction through you. Does that make sense?

 

 

44:25 Ashley James: Yes, absolutely.

 

 

44:28 Theresa Vigarino: So some of these are spirits that haven’t crossed over. And that’s a whole another topic of discussion. I’ll have to come back for about this. But I saw it, I learned it. And the thing about Ayahuasca that I want to share with everyone is that while the greatest part of it wasn’t getting disease out of my body. The best part of it is the amplification, the expansion of infinite intelligence and knowledge and connection that doesn’t leave or just doesn’t live in the jungle, it comes with back with you. So that’s why so many people repeat going back, they want to go back for deeper knowledge. So there are people that go back once a year, once every two years, you know, you’ll hear people that are podcasting about it all the time. Because the knowledge that they gained, the cosmic knowledge that they gained. I actually gained a lot of galactical knowledge and cosmic knowledge and connection to these very, very, very high dimensional beings. The connection to Yeshua, and the angelic realm was so profound. And it’s with me now all the time.

 

 

45:42 Ashley James: So when you’re lying on the mat in between the trips to the bathroom, in the dark hearing the intense noise of the jungle, how do you receive this information? Like you said, you take this information home with you, this connection, this information. How do you receive it? You’re lying again, like I want to paint that picture. We’re lying on the mat in a thatched hut that’s round, pitch dark with the very loud jungle noises. And we’re sweating, possibly vomiting, going to the bathroom, but in between that, we’re seeing colors, we’re receiving information. So how did you receive it? Can you take us back to that, like give us a play by play?

 

 

46:30 Theresa Vigarino: Absolutely. So you know typically for most people, it’s about 30 minutes to an hour in that they feel the effect of the medicine except for yours truly. I’m like five minutes in and everybody goes, “Oh, there she goes.” But that was you know, the medicine at the time I was probably partaking in too much medicine. Now they give me like a tablespoon. They say, “No, no, no, no. No mas para Teresita.” “No more for Theresa.” I’m like the little baby, you know what I mean, I have no resistance. And for some people, they have to drink two full cups. But it just depends, and I don’t know the explanation of that. So what happens is when it goes dark, in other words the lights go out, the shamans have partaken in their medicine. And part of at the beginning of the ceremony, they are coming around with the Mapacho, and they are blessing you with the Mapacho and the space, they are clearing it and clearing it and clearing it and clearing it. So only the divine is there.

All right, because we all bring some negative in there. And they’re clearing it out for you constantly. They’re saying their prayers, and then when they partake in the medicine, out go the lights. So you’re sitting there and that you’re just waiting, right and you’re feeling the medicine. And at first you’re feeling some effects in the stomach or what have you. And you know, I’ve learned not to fear whatever my body is feeling. And I just go into the medicine is working. The medicine is working. And that becomes my mantra, I’m always in prayer. I’m always talking to Yeshua, I’m always talking to God and the angels. And then the shamans start singing the sacred songs of the medicine called the Icaros. The Icaros and that’s when they are in the medicine. And the icaros is what activates the medicine deeper in you and into the dimensions of your energetic body and into the spirit realm. So they are actually able to see what’s going on with you through the Icaros. And they’ll say, “Concentrado.” Concentrate on the Icaros and you’re listening to the song.

Since I’ve started talking about this, I am getting chills up and down my spine in my body, I don’t know if you’re feeling this but I am. It is so sacred, the Icaros, and this Ancient Medicine that’s been going on, they don’t even know when it started or exactly where, but all of the tribes along the Amazon and in South America, and in Central America, literally do the same thing, but they may have a little bit of different tradition with how they serve it or what have you. But they all know about this medicine. And they all sing these songs. And they had no communication with each other. They believe that the divine source of all things taught their ancestors about this medicine, so that you can connect deeper to the spirit realm and into the multiverse, the multi dimensional space where you have infinite knowledge and infinite healing and infinite connection. And so all these tribes they’ve been doing it forever.

And so, this tribe is called the Shipibo Tribe, and the Shipibo Tribe they have their Shipibo language, and they’re singing these songs and it is music that you’ve never heard before, words you’ve never heard before. And you stay connected to the shamans through the Icaros. So no matter what your journey is, and I will say sometimes you do see some things that are not necessarily pleasant and beautiful. And you allow it to pass through, a lot of times it’s your own fear showing up that has been locked away, locked away, locked away in your subconscious mind and in your energetic body that finds its way out through the medicine and through the Shamanism and through the sacred songs of the Icaros.

The Icaros are blessings and they then, so there’s different rounds of it. So when it begins and it builds an intensity, and then after a while there’s a turning point. Sometimes though, I’ve had experiences where it got more profound as the night went on. And you are together in the ceremony room until the shamans close the ceremony and then for some time afterwards, because the medicine is still working and they’re still working, but they’re not singing the Icaros anymore. And then there’s a lightness that takes over a lot of times, and there could be giggling, celebrating and then eventually you make your way with the facilitators back to your cottage.

 

 

48:38 Ashley James: What time is it by then?

 

 

51:25 Theresa Vigarino: It really just depends on the size of the how many people are in the ceremony, because the last portion of it is the shamans come to your mat individually. And oh my God, that is just the most profound experience that I could even begin to try to explain and especially when you’re working with these, the ones that really helped me heal; the mother and the son, and one is on one side and one is on the other. And they’re holding your hand and you feel their beauty and their love. And literally the feeling of love, universal love that comes through them for you, that you then have in turn for them and everything on earth and for God is just life changing that you will never forget for the rest of your life.

 

 

52:14 Ashley James: So obviously, they don’t speak English, or do they speak English?

 

 

52:20 Theresa Vigarino: They speak Spanish.

 

 

52:21 Ashley James: Is there a translator there ?

 

 

52:23 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, the owner is, she’s Peruvian, but she’s lived the last 28 years or something in Miami. So she speaks English. And also my friend that took us down there, he’s fluent in Spanish and English. And so he’s an amazing translator. And they also have facilitators that they bring, so there’s always someone that’s not under the influence of the medicine that’s there and they translate, they help you to the bathroom, they give you the sugar water if you need it or whatever you need, they’re there for you.

Listen, I have never been taken care of the way that I’ve been taken care of down there. They are with you on the journey. And they know what you’re going through. So they’re there for you and you know, they call me Mama Teresita down there as I just have this mother energy right for everybody. And so they love on me and literally when I left there at the end of June, I was in tears because these people, the people that work there that cook your food, that bring you what you need in your room, that help you no matter what, they serve you out of love. And it is one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had. And I’ve traveled the world. And the beauty of these people trying to help you through your healing process is a selflessness that is an extension of love from the universe. And you leave feeling loved.

 

 

53:59 Ashley James: That’s brilliant. So depending on how large the group is, I’m trying to paint that picture in my mind. When do you get back to your room to actually sleep and do you sleep that night?

 

 

54:13 Theresa Vigarino: You know, maybe a little bit, but you’re really in the effects of the medicine still. And you may have dreams or more visionary experience or you know, and you’re talking to your roomie or whatever, but you do rest. There’s a lot of resting that goes on. And what I noticed when you come back from the jungle is the high pace we live here. And the toxic environment that we’re in. It is such a profound difference from in the jungle to coming back to the States. So as I recommend everybody get to nature as often as possible because the plants here and the trees here they have a healing vibration to them that we don’t have in the concrete jungle. Now you live in nature. So you know, thank God, right. But we do have a lot of stuff that keeps us from deep healing here when you live in a city, like where my husband and I live now. But so it depends, like we had groups of 10 up to 18 and the several times that I’ve gone there, and we would probably get back to the room at 1:00 am.

 

 

55:12 Ashley James: Okay, that’s not bad. I was thinking it would be like an all nighter or something.

 

 

55:17 Theresa Vigarino: There are some that choose to stay. If you choose to stay or the medicine is still working, these shamans that we work with will not leave you, they will stay with you till the sun comes up. If you want to go back to the bed and they release you to go back to your bed, because I have a funny curvature in my spine, my tailbone sticks out and the mat on the ground is uncomfortable for me after a while. So I like to go back to the bed myself personally. But I have stayed in the Maloca till the sun came up. And then other times I’m like, I want to go back to my bed. It’s because more comfortable for me, my body.

But many people stay all night there and go back when the sun comes up. So it just depends. When I was there and it was just the shamans and me, our ceremony would be over at 10, started at 8, over at 10. Other times when there’s lots of people because remember, they go around to each person individually that takes longer. And so sometimes the ceremony will be over at 1am. And then you still have a period of where they won’t let you leave the Maloca. Where you need to stay there for the effects, because you’re still under the medicine. Does that make sense?

 

 

56:32 Ashley James: Sure. Sure. So your first time, the first 10 day trip, when you came back to the States, what was your biggest takeaway? What was the biggest healing? Did you notice that your scleroderma was getting better? Like what was the definite “This is what I got from my first trip to the jungle?”

 

 

56:52 Theresa Vigarino: Oh my gosh. Well, there was some confusion because I had old, old religious dogmatic interference, that first trip at some points, you know what I mean? Like, Oh, my God. Is this the right thing? I had a lot of…

 

 

57:11 Ashley James: Are you letting the devil in?

 

 

57:12 Theresa Vigarino: Totally, totally. I had some of that. And that was great that I faced that because oh my God, I saw the face of Jesus so many times, and angels and him showing me things. And later in the other trips that I went. But I came back. So that happened during the experience. But I came back going, this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life. And I’ve done a lot of things. And I told my husband, we’re going back and you’re coming with me. And I told everybody I knew, you guys got to come, you got to come, you got to come, you got to come. I literally have lost friends over this because there’s so much fear in them and they got tired of hearing it. I was so on fire for this because I had this connection to like downloads, constant downloads, because when you get home, that’s when the journey really begins.

 

 

58:08 Ashley James: Yeah, I bet.

 

 

58:09 Theresa Vigarino: So you are like in boot camp while you’re there. But when you get home, that’s where you are really reconnecting to it, connecting to it, connecting to it. And you do over time, like some of the effects because the medicine stays in you and still works with you, right. So you do and especially once you’ve been there for as long of a time and had as much medicine, like I’ve had 27 nights. 27 experiences with Ayahuasca and that’s a lot in a year and a half. Wow, I think it was like 15 months, 27 ceremonies, that’s a lot. And especially this last time when I went for my 28 day excursion, I had 12 nights of Ayahuasca.

When you’re there for a longer period the dose is less, it’s more like micro dosing because it’s more about the healing effects of the actual medicine. So this last journey that I went on by myself, because I had been one other time with this mother, daughter, son, I mean mother, son, shaman family, she said to me, “You need to come by yourself, and you need to come for at least a month.” And so when this parasitic infection wouldn’t go away that I’ve had for years, I had just didn’t have enough medicine. I wasn’t there long enough. So I had to go deep. And I had to be there for the month. And I thank God for the parasites. Because it forced me to say to my husband, I gotta go. And he said, “Go.” So when I got back at the end of June, I said to my husband, you’re next and arranged his ticket, made the arrangements and one month later, my husband left for the jungle for a month and he got back at the end of August.

 

 

59:51 Ashley James: And he went without you.

 

 

59:53 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. Solo journey is… You know, I love it that we went with group, that I went by myself with a group and that we went twice together with a group. And then we went on our solo journey. And it’s changed him as much as it’s changed me. And by changing what I mean is, it’s almost like all these layers of falsities of teachings of culture. Things that are programmed, literally peel off of you so that you become this lighter, vibratory being that has connection to the truth and what really matters.

 

 

1:00:39 Ashley James: Yeah. So tell me about your physical your physical healing, removing these parasites and everything. Because it sounds like your scleroderma gone? Is it in remission?

 

 

1:00:54 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah. So halfway through in June. That’s why I went. So each time I went, I had profound experiences, visionary experiences, and you asked me, how is it that you learn? I see things, okay. So I see, I saw things that were yet to come, that came to pass, I saw how things about my children, I was brought to my children in the spirit realm. And there was one visionary experience that was the most beautiful thing because you know, my children went through some trauma in their past in their childhood. And I was dressed as a priestess in this one vision where I was dressing and blessing my daughter and my son, both as a priest and a priestess. And I saw my little doggy and I’d be blessing her, I saw things about my husband and I, I saw things about my relationship with my parents, my siblings, friends, I saw people that I was to let go of, then I saw relationships that I was to heal deeper. I was brought to an understanding of how to heal relationships. And that came to pass.

I saw what to do in my business. I saw how I was to be a hands on healer and that I would pray over people and they would be healed through my connection to the source and through the divine beings, Yeshua, the angels in these other high dimensional beings, that would work through me, I just became a more open vessel as a result of it. And I was to do it. And I said, “Okay, I trust you.” And then simple things like, you know, take up the piano again, that’s going to enrich your life, take up the pottery, start sewing again, because I had become so focused on my health, on others, on my husband, on my business, and on everything else, when I had lost taking the time to be the creative person that I always was since I was a little girl. So when I was there in June, and I remember walking around in my bare feet, now I’m in my bare feet in the jungle, you know what I’m saying? I’m not scared. I’m walking around in the jungle in my bare feet. And I was brought back to when I was a really, really small little child at five years old. And I was always the barefoot one in the yard. And I was brought back to that to the joy of being barefoot in the grass.

And I remembered and I reconnected to the inner child so much that I’m playing the piano every day again, I’m doing creative things. And I make a point every day to do something creative for the fun of it. For the joy of it. And as entrepreneurs, and you know, I do six different things. Yoga is a creative outlet for me, I’m business development for my husband, I’m writing a book, I’ve got this new class I’m launching, I’ve just started a charity, I’ve got lots of things that I’m doing, I’m helping with my mom. You know, there’s many different projects I have ongoing, but I’m taking time every day, even if it’s just 30 minutes, to do the thing just for the sake of creativity, because the Creator is creative. And as an expression of the Creator, when we create, we are accessing that vibration of creation. Which is the step beyond manifestation is creation.

And that is something for us all. And I encourage and challenge everyone, what is the thing that you love that you don’t think you have time for because it’s not, you know, making you money, or, you know, the bathroom needs to be cleaned, or so and so wants to talk to you on the phone? Or there’s a Netflix show. You know, take some time on the daily, even if it’s 15 20 minutes, and you’re going to find that your vibration is going to lift and your vitality will lift. Your energy will lift. More creative ideas come, and actually you know what comes? Happiness and joy. Because we can get bogged down with oh my gosh, is that marketing working? Oh my gosh, what are the analytics Duffy? Am I right?

 

1:05:36 Ashley James: We can definitely get bogged down with the day to day and lose that connection.

 

 

1:05:42 Theresa Vigarino: And you would think maybe an empty nester, right? And not running the kids here and not running the kids there that I would have had more energy toward that. But what happened was, you know, my husband and I became really focused on business. And that’s not my mindset. That was more his mindset. And I absorbed that. And I molded myself to that. And the more I did that, the sicker I got.

 

 

1:06:12 Ashley James: Sure.

 

 

1:06:14 Theresa Vigarino: And so and it’s so funny, because he came home going… And when I came home, and while he was gone, because we traveled and we traveled in July, and then my dog got sick. And I had like three weeks of just caring for my little doggy and bringing her back from the brink. And he was gone during that time, I started playing the piano again. And it was like the message was so clear, creativity is your way, Theresa. So I started painting and I started you know, I’m going to do needlepoint and just little things I can do in the evenings rather than just sitting doing nothing or watching TV or whatever, you know, because my energy is still coming back and I’m still under the influence of a lot of the plant medicine. And I’ll go back to that experience of the plant medicine but, and my husband came home saying, “We gotta get you a pottery class and you need to play the piano.” And we started giggling it’s like your way, Teresa to health is creativity.

 

 

1:07:05 Ashley James: He came from the jungle and that’s what he told you?

 

 

1:07:08 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah.

 

 

1:07:09  Ashley James: And he didn’t know that you spent the last month playing the piano and doing all that. So he got the message you got. That’s funny.

 

 

1:07:16 Theresa Vigarino: Yes.

 

 

1:07:18  Ashley James: I love it.

 

 

1:07:18 Theresa Vigarino: And totally supportive, not like Theresa where you clean the apartment. You know? No. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful, because he went through the journey himself. And he knows what he needs to do for himself now.

 

 

1:07:32 Ashley James: So you receive messages for yourself and your loved ones. And you just get clarity. Do you think it’s that we all have the ability to be intuitive and get in touch with it, and that the medicine just pulls the ego aside and pulls all the business aside so that we can actually receive the intuition we always have?

 

 

1:07:55 Theresa Vigarino: We are born this way. However, through teachings, culture, wounds, ego, everything that happens it gets clouded. And we run on these programs a lot of times under the radar and you know, a big proponent of changing your belief systems through your neural pathways. But there are some wounds that stay stuck that you don’t know that they’re there. That you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know.” And so that’s what the medicine brings to light are the things that are so deeply embedded that you’re not even aware. There was one night when we were with the group and the shamans were like, “No. Muy poquito, Teresita.” Where I got like a teaspoon and everybody else’s… And I’m like, la la la, I’m just having a good time. You know what I mean? And when people started going through their experience, I started worrying about everybody. And the message that I got from that experience was see what happens if we don’t kick your butt and make you down the toilet and face down, you won’t concentrate on yourself, you are so used to carrying so much more about everybody else. That one of your lessons is, now is the time to care for you.

 

 

1:09:16 Ashley James: Very good.

 

 

1:09:17 Theresa Vigarino: And that happens to a lot of moms in the world. And a lot of people pleasers in the world. And one of the messages I got while I was in the jungle and my father appeared, not in ceremony. But my father who’s… a cross over appeared. There was another guest there and she’s a medium and a clairvoyant. And, you know, she said, “Look, I know we just met, we just met like 30 minutes before.” She goes, “Where’s your dad?” And I said, “Well, he’s crossed over.” And she said, “Well, he’s here and he’s standing right behind you.” Describe him to a tee. And said to me, “I really want to tell you that your dad is here, and he has messages for you.” And I was like, awesome, what’s the saying? And she said, “He wants you to know that he approves. And apparently that was a big deal for you. And that in your life, you’ve sought approval from others because you wanted his approval. And you didn’t feel like you ever got it.” He was a critical man in the human form. And how true words were never spoken over my life and seeking that approval became this people pleasing aspect of my personality. And so when people didn’t approve of me, it was a really deep, deep, deep pain. Well, people that I loved and cared about. Okay, and so friends, and when people didn’t approve of it, and it’s really interesting, when I came back from my Ayahuasca journeys, many people have left me including somebody that was my very best friend for many, many, many years.

 

 

1:10:50 Ashley James: Wow.

 

 

1:10:52 Theresa Vigarino: And that has been super painful for me to digest. But again, it’s like right now I’m on this path. And they’re gonna be some people that it’s going to be polarizing. And I want to say to the listeners, however, whatever path you decide to take towards your own healing and enlightenment, there are going to be people that are going to not like it. And I saw, I think like Denzel Washington said it or maybe Morgan Freeman or somebody that, you know, it’s basically I’m summarizing, I don’t remember exactly, but you know, it’s the light in me is disturbing the darkness of you. And that’s okay. And not to make me better than anybody else. I’m just, you know, a little bit down the pike right? Down the path, because I said yes, and because I surrendered.

And because I said I am here on earth to be all that God created me to be. And so I surrender to that, even if it meant having to move from Lake Tahoe my favorite place on Earth, even if it meant I had to go through the depths of suffering in order to release and be brought to my knees. So I can say in a deeper way, because I’ve said this prayer my whole life. But this is a newness, and a true, I am nothing without the breath of God inside me. And I learned that deeper than ever, and the rest of these false fears that we have of rejection and abandonment. And what are people going to think of me? And and the old ego wants to come out even with this class that my husband, you know, my husband’s in the tech world and deals with professionals at a very high level that run billion dollar companies. And he’s now posting about channeled messages from Jesus through my wife. He said to me this week, he’s like, “Oh, my gosh, babe, I’ve really grown.” He’s like, and I realized there was still a little piece of me like, “Oh, my God, are people gonna think we’re nuts.”

 

 

1:12:50 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:12:51 Theresa Vigarino: Listen, what could be better? This is what we’re here for. This is what we’re all here for. And I I’m so dizzy in the spirit right now. Because, you know, there’s going to be a healing vibration to this in this podcast. Even my toe is tingling. Because it’s true. And by the way, I learned to Yeshua. It really is. And that’s what’s going to be explained on this masterclass series for people that were raised in the Christian faith or not, and it’s not about how you were raised and it’s not about religion. And I saw in the multiverse, I saw in other dimensions and so what happened with the healing in June, so I went back, the minute that I got there, they knew I was coming. Everybody’s greeting me, they knew in advance I had a two week notice. Well, no, I think I had, no not two weeks, it was about nine days. And I had been on a four month parasite cleanse and literally the level of parasites that were coming out of me and it wasn’t stopping.

Okay, so I couldn’t get rid of it on my own and with many, many, many holistic therapies, and drinks, and Western medicine, anti parasitic, it didn’t matter what I was taking, it was not getting better, it was only getting worse. And really, the parasites were trying to take me out. And I had a lot to do with that whole dark energy thing. It had a hold on me. And so when I got there, the shaman said you were very close to dying. And so this was an intervention. And I knew it. I told my husband five days before I left, I said I don’t, or maybe it was 10 days before I left I don’t remember exactly, it might have been right before I said I got to go for the month. I said I don’t think I’m going to live past this. And he said go, so we did I called Nancy the owner and I said I gotta go for the month. She goes good. I’m going to then. And let’s go. We met in Iquitos, went to her place in the jungle, walked up the stairs together, I video documented my entire experience. There will be a documentary about it coming out soon and I’m writing a book about it ‘Dreaming With The Shaman: The Unlikely Love Affair Between an Amazon and an American Woman.

 

1:15:06 Ashley James: Oh, beautiful. I love it.

 

 

1:15:08 Theresa Vigarino: Because it’s the last place I ever wanted to go on earth. And at least I thought now I have this grand love affair with it, I can’t wait to go back. And so the minute I stepped foot on the grounds, I knew my healing would happen and I walked up those stairs to the lodge and greeted the people that know me as mama Teresita and started drinking medicine right then. So there’s thousands of medicines and when they know what you need, okay, when they assess you, these shamans through ceremony, they will put you through what you’re going through, you do this, you know that you have these conversations with Nancy the owner ahead of time, so when you get there, they have medicine waiting for you and how did they get the medicine? They go out in the jungle, they dig up a route they cut down some bark they trim a plant whatever and they come and they make these tinctures or if it’s something external, these these sabs or drinks, right and so some are hot, some are room temperature, some are boiled, some are leaves that they grind down in a mortar and pestle and steep it different ways for different medicines. And I was on about seven different medicines during the day. And then I had 12 ceremonies with Ayahuasca which was the most beautiful thing ever. I’m now godmother to the mother shaman there to her granddaughter, and the son sharman to his daughter. And they are my family now. And about halfway through she said the root of your disease is gone.

 

 

1:16:49 Ashley James: Did you feel it?

 

 

1:16:50 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. Because I wasn’t able to eat, I wasn’t able to go to the bathroom before I left. I wasn’t able to breathe before I left. The minute I was was there I was breathing and I was going to the bathroom. I wasn’t able to urinate. My kidneys were that inflamed. And food was hard for me. I was I was down to hardly eating anything. And I was eating massive amounts of food while I was down there, they had a food, specific foods, but I was definitely on the diet that they were giving me specifics and delicious. The food tastes better down there. The soil is so rich in South America. So and she said but the wounds are still there. So this is the most fascinating part. She didn’t know what scleroderma was. They don’t have anatomy books, and they don’t go to medical school. They see your body from an energetic standpoint, okay. And what she said to me was, the wounds are still there. And I said, “Well, what are the wounds look like to you?” And you know, the translation is going and she said, they look like and she said they’re from your brain all over your brain to the bottom of your feet. I can testify to the brain because I had had a neurological event after you and I spoke and I was in the ER for that. And I had white matter and some growths in my brain and all of that, that I never really did, you know, go down that path was allopathically for it. And so she said, “They look like scabs that have come off. And there’s a scar that’s left, big ones.” And it’s my whole entire body. And that is exactly what scleroderma does. Its scars.

 

 

1:18:32 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:18:35 Theresa Vigarino: And so the healing is taking place, right? And so while she was down in the jungle with Victor, one night, because I was still you know, I wasn’t feeling that great about a month ago, still I’m in the healing process, right? So I have to be patient with that. And I have to be very fine tuned to my diet. And what I’m taking in and negative energy and what happens is, you become super open energetically and man oh man, oh, man. Do you become acutely aware of negative energy in your life, through the television, through the computer, through who you talk to, people you’re around, what you’re eating, what you’re drinking, you become aware of energy. So your job and what I realized, is our job is to keep our energy clean. How do you do it? Lots of techniques to clean in your energy, right? There’s lots of things; grounding, visuals, meditations, prayers, but I would say right away, what I learned is cleaning your physical body is essential. And it’s step one, because that’s what they do in Shamanism. The cleaner your body is the less purging that you go through really, because honestly in those 12 ceremonies I purged from the medicine during the day that they were giving me and I purged through so much of that, right? That my ceremonies were easy. Easier than I ever imagined. There were a couple nights that were hard. When the night that I faced this dark entity. Because I said to the shaman when we discovered it, and they told me about it, and we know who it came from. And it was powerful because it came through another shaman. And that’s why it’s important to know your shamans. And I said tonight’s the night. I didn’t come here for this when I first came down here. I came here to get healing and I want it gone tonight. And the minute that I said it, I started feeling a choking feeling and pressure on me and I started doing my own prayer work and calling in beings to help me. And that night was a hard night. And after that it got easier. So what other questions do you have? You were asking me what it’s like? Like, how do you get the information. So it’s visual, sometimes. Sometimes it’s feeling. And you’ll get the thoughts in your head associated with the feeling. And you won’t actually see a picture right in your in your mind’s eye. And sometimes it’s just this clairsentience and claircognizance where it’s a knowingness. And that stays with you after you leave, you will just know things. And you will just go. I just know it and I trust it. So you become more confident in your intuitive abilities.

 

 

1:21:24 Ashley James: Very cool. So after the shaman saw that your scleroderma, the root of the scleroderma was gone, what did she say about healing the scar tissue?

 

 

1:21:37 Theresa Vigarino: Oh, she said, it’s just going to take time, the medicine will keep working. And it’s just going to take a few months for the damage to be healed. And you know, watch my diet, go back to some regular foods, because you’re without salt, you’re without sugar, you’re without fats, you’re without a lot of things that you need for your body. And so when you’re done with the dieta, when you come home, you stay on it for a while, and then you start adding some things back slowly. Because it becomes like a shock to the system and you cannot feel well. And I think that happened to me.

And we know like for some people, you have to stay on the diet more strict for a longer period of time than others. And because I’m so sensitive personally, and I would recommend that people do that when they come back if you’re there for a long period of time. And so she just kept saying to me, it’s your mind now, relax, rest your mind. Because energetically you know, our mind races around. And you really when you’re in the jungle, you become very attuned to that. And so when you unplug, and you don’t have this visual stimuli with our screens that we do, and that causes our brains to really speed up its activity, traffic, stress of money, whatever, it speeds up the brain. And so then when you’re there, it’s like, everything comes to a stop. But you become finally acutely attuned to how rapid your brain is moving and worrying and wanting going down rabbit holes of excuse my language. And what would happen is, I would get a bad headache from it. And she would have to do during the day, she’d have to do these things over my head.

She’s like, rest your mind, quit worrying, quit worrying, shut demanding about it, it’s pointing that made, stop it. For them, they’re in such a peaceful state. See, they don’t worry. They’re so connected to the present. And you know, as a coach about reducing anxiety and getting over panic, that it comes from the mind, and then it gets triggered in the body. So then we have those physiological responses. And I would say it is the silent chronic disease of America and Western culture.

 

 

1:24:09 Ashley James: Absolutely.

 

 

1:24:13 Theresa Vigarino: I guarantee nine out of 10 people, even people that are in the business that we’re in, still have anxiety at some low level that maybe they’re not completely aware of, or that they’re picking up from the community around them vibrationally, because when you go down there, and you’ll be like, wait a minute, what’s that pot and I was like, well, you just shut up, I was so mad at my mind. But it was really the medicine was showing me how overactive it is. And that when I come home, it was going to be essential for me to kick up the yoga to kick up the prayers to kick up the meditations and to catch myself from the old habit of rabbit hole thinking you know, what happens if this, this, this, this, in six months from now and and we’re really taught that with this movement of manifesting, which I’ve taught, right? With self development and personal development and writing your goals down. And I’m going to manifest the hundred thousand dollars a year this year with the online coaching world with that, right?

Now, I’m not saying what are your desires, there’s a difference between focusing on what you want to manifest and it occurred to me and my husband from these downloads. I’m like, “Oh my gosh, we got this wrong.” And I’m not saying it’s a good step to learn that you’re a powerful manifestor, right? But we’re manifesting all the time. And when you’re putting out the vibration of I want this, my husband and I, we want this ranch, either in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, on the Tahoe side, maybe California, I don’t know. We want a ranch with a space where we can bring people in for masterminds and retreats. And we want it to be our home and a retreat place and horses and nature and blah, blah, blah.

We were so focused on what we didn’t have and working at manifesting that we were putting out unknowingly the vibration, even though we were coming at it from and we had this ranch, well, we know we don’t have it really. And we were constantly focused on what we didn’t have, that we were still putting out that vibration of what we didn’t have, even though we were coming at it from a manifestation standpoint. And so now, and now we realize that with the divine creator, we surrender now, if that isn’t the highest will and it’s a vision of the highest will for our life, as we’re becoming all that we were created to be as a divine unique expression of God, then yes, but we’re going to be okay, if it’s something else too.

 

 

1:27:03 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:27:03 Theresa Vigarino: We’re going to, we’re going to be like the wind. So we’ve released our attachment. And that moves us into a state of trust. And that we’re going to know, because we’re going to be divinely guided. And so when that becomes your focus, when you focus on the big desire, which is to be all that we were created to be through this unconditional love and guidance, and through the help of helpers like Yeshua, like the angels, like other dimensional beings, Therapists Bay that works with me, which is the divine architect that takes things from an energetic standpoint and helps you manifest it into physical matter here on Earth. I discovered him this last time in June that he was working through me or for me, and because of me, and how great is that? And I’m humbled by it.

And those many others, and Yogananda as well I didn’t realized he was one of my guides and no wonder I’m doing yoga again, you know, and oh my gosh, it was just so beautiful. And connecting with these energies of these beings, these Christ Consciousness beings. And knowing that all is okay, just like it is right now. And that is the key to letting go of the anxiety, the monkey brain, the worry, the stress is really becoming focused right now in your senses and knowing that that truth of who you are will emerge and is emerging, that you were coming here to be all that you were created to be and that as a divine unique expression of the Most High God I say God, people can say whatever they want; source, energy, vibration, creator, just a word, right, for the meaning of a being, of a truth, of an energetic reality.

 

 

1:28:52 Ashley James: I love it.

 

 

1:28:53 Theresa Vigarino: I love that gets wrapped with that one.

 

 

1:28:55 Ashley James: Yeah, I love that you have…

 

 

1:28:58 Theresa Vigarino: Theresa the preacher.

 

 

1:29:01 Ashley James: But I love that you have had tremendous physical healing along with energetic, spiritual, mental, emotional, with this herbal medicine journey, but that you put your spiritual healing at the forefront. And your physical healing came along with it that it was a package deal. I love that you shared that.

And you’ve got quite the mission that you’re working on. So you’ve got two things right now that you’ve launched. One, is a charity, I want to hear about that. And another is a mastermind that’s coming up. So let’s talk about your charity, it does come from one of your journeys to the jungle through Ayahuasca, did you have a vision to do this charity?

  

1:29:30 Theresa Vigarino: It is. It really is. And you know, but like I said, in order to really cleanse yourself so that you can energetically vibrate with this resonance, you have to clean the body too. Because we’re in the body right now. We’re not of the body, but we’re in the body, right? We’re more than that. We’re spirit living in a human physical reality at the moment. But the true reality is, is that we’re always connected to that energetic place. We have to clean the body too, it is a package deal. It’s hard to do good work from a sick bed. And let me tell you, it’s hard when you can’t move, and you don’t have the energy to get out of bed to be able to complete the mission.

The vision was put on my heart since I was a little girl. So this is about 45 years in the making. Honestly, this is a soul yearning and calling that I came here to do. This is the deepest part of my calling, I believe, because it’s been with me my whole life. When I was little, and I share this when I was five years old. And out in the yard in my bare feet by myself, I had  this beautiful experience of being a mother to millions of children. And so my poor parents, you know, hearing things in the attic, and people around us and how many people are replaying with Theresa and I’d say millions, they’re like, what the heck, most kids have one imaginary friend. Theresa’s got millions of them. God only knows what they were thinking. But I would go out to this special place in the yard and I had dug this hole by the tree. It’s beautiful maple tree and I would throw in acorns and blades of grass and leaves. I had a stick and I would stir it up and I was making stew which is so like me, right? It’s so like me in the kitchen. And I was feeding everybody. And they would say, “Who are you feeding?” I would say, “Well, my children.” And they would say, “How many children do you have?” And I would say millions. And with an underbite and a list.

And fast forward when I was over enough to really care about watching TV, because I wasn’t at the time I was really little. And I remember seeing maybe 10 years old, eight years old something, a news clips of the famine in Ethiopia and other places in Africa. And I remember crying. And I remember asking my mom why was this happening? And seeing starving children and it just left a mark and, and my mother remembers me saying and she told me this last year that I was maybe 10 or 11. And there was more famine and more shows. And I remember, she remembers me saying to her, I’m gonna do something about this. We have to do something, I would say. And so then I remember the one picture that we all have seen that was on the cover of Time Magazine or Life or something with a little boy that was crouched over, a starving African beautiful little boy and a vulture standing behind him. And I never forgot that picture.

I remember crying and I cried a lot over the plight of these starving children. So this was a work in progress. And then in 2004, when I traveled to South Africa, and I was in the bush and some of these places where it wasn’t so much of that starvation, although they were hungry children. And I was there, I was there on a business trip with my ex husband. And I took my children and my ex mother-in law, beautiful woman that she is that I adore and another child that was with us. And we went out on this excursion to be able to visit these villages where they have very little resources and HIV has wiped out a generation of people, okay. And so these children are living with children or you know, they’re completely orphaned. And so there’s the elderly and children, and not a lot in between. And it’s so rampant. It’s the worst HIV population in the continent of Africa as in South Africa.

And I made a vow. And I said, I’m going to come back and I’m going to help. And I’m going to build orphanages for these children, so they’re not sleeping outside. And 15 years later, I’m making good on that promise. And we already have the village, it’s the villages I went to, I’ve reconnected to the man that drove me that day, who was working for a conservation group that was no longer in existence. And last year after a trip to the jungle, this is how this works. I went to bed one night and the image in the end, the voice said to me, the spirit said to me, “Find him.” The one that drove me around. I was like what? Well, I seen him that one day, but I fell in love with his soul. And he said find this man and he’s going to be your boots on the ground, so to speak, for lack of a better term, you need someone that’s a local that knows how to get this done. You need to find him. I knew his name was Lotus. I knew where he worked in 2004. He was a representative of this conservation group. Well, that group was no longer in existence. He didn’t work at the one lodge I knew, and I went on a hunt.

And about a month of emailing and making phone calls. Ashley, I get an email from Lotus, beautiful name for a man huh, Lotus. And he told me where he was working with, organization called the Africa Foundation. And we connected and we are partnering with this well established, they know how to get the job done, they know how to get employee salaries, they know how to get counselors in, they know how to get medical care in. And we are about to break ground this year. Our fundraising is beginning. We’re becoming legalized. In the meantime, we are partnered with AfricaFoundation.org. And they are going to help us build our first facility in the bush outside of Kruger National Park in South Africa. And so it’s coming to pass and the name of our group is MomsHouseForChildren.org.

 

 

1:36:07 Ashley James: Beautiful and so is it Mom’s House is the charity?

 

 

1:36:11 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. Yes. Mom’s House For Children is the charity.

 

 

1:36:14 Ashley James: Mom’s House For Children. Love it.

 

 

1:36:17 Theresa Vigarino: And we have a website up. We’re a work in progress. We’re grassroots. It’s a family deal. My husband and children are involved. And we’re building our team, many of them are people I’ve sat in the jungle with and we’ve held each other’s hands through some of our most intense moments in life and have emerged fearless, the greatest gift of the jungle. And we’re ready to eradicate homelessness in the most vulnerable locations because there are 200 million homeless children where there are no resources, where there are no resources. And if we want to change this world, what do we do? We love the children, reunite the world. And that is our mission statement.

 

 

1:37:09 Ashley James: I can’t even fathom 200 million children homeless.

 

 

1:37:15 Theresa Vigarino: Yes. And in vulnerable locations, where criminal behavior happens, right? Because they need to feed them. So you know, starvation leads to many things, doing things these children would never do otherwise, or getting caught up with criminalization, or they’re they’re just doing whatever they can. Many 12 year olds are raising six siblings. So they’re not going to school, none of the kids are really able to go to school or not a lot of them. They’re having to find work. So it’s really, really severe plight and that isn’t even talking about, you know, other locales in the world where more sex trafficking and human trafficking takes place. So we solve a lot of problems by eradicating homelessness for the vulnerable children of the world.

 

 

1:38:12 Ashley James: Yeah, because then they don’t get into the drug trade and the sex trade and so they become child soldiers and all guerrilla warfare. And yeah, that makes sense. Get it at its root. Well, I love it. Congratulation.

 

 

1:38:30 Theresa Vigarino: Thank you so much. So it’s been, it’s been one of my lifelong dreams, and now is the time because they’re waiting. So I welcome all helpers of all varieties, into our movement of let’s put the children first. And what’s amazing is, is that it takes very little US dollars to create great change in these places. And, by the way, I’m a supporter of UNICEF, I’m a supporter of local charities for the homeless, the Homeless Coalition, No Kid Hungry program, we just signed up for them, Feeding America. So you know, also involved in Rotary and I do a lot of charity work, I feed the homeless over holiday seasons, my husband and I do just personally, we give, give, give, give, give all the time. So we do care about America. We care about Silicon Valley which has a great homeless population. We’re very involved in all of those things. I personally have a calling on me for Africa and some of these other world locations where the largest number of,vulnerable children live with with extremely little resources, including drinking water.

 

 

1:40:02 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:40:04 Theresa Vigarino: So that’s where my heart’s going. Yeah. That’s where God’s leading me to go.

 

 

1:40:08 Ashley James: MomsHouseForChildren.org?

 

 

1:40:11 Theresa Vigarino: Yes.

 

 

1:40:12 Ashley James: So M-O-M-S, MomsHouseForChildren.org.

 

 

1:40:16 Theresa Vigarino: Yeah, I’ll send you the link.

 

 

1:40:18 Ashley James: The link to that will be in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com as well as everything that Theresa does. Now, you are launching a new mentorship program, mastermind program and it is divinely inspired. I know you are so excited about it. Can you tell us more about this program? And what we’ll learn from it?

 

 

1:40:43 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, absolutely. So this came to me about a week and a half ago. And I said, yes, it’s one of those things, you know, like, two days before I go on to the Amazon, I said, Yes. So when the spirit moves you, I surrender. And I said, I said yes to this because I didn’t really plan on doing this right now. Because I know the time the energy and the effort that it takes to put together something like this. But yet, when you’re really operating from that soul driven place, and the spirits working through you, it becomes less effort, you know, and it becomes easier for us. And there’s a lot more grace, and I’m not worried about it.

So it’s only for 20. It’s 20 other souls that want to go on this journey with me through the rest of the year. So that 2020 because we know with creation, with manifestation, we have to clear up the vibration. And we have to do things to set in motion what we desire to experience. And so that’s when it came to me, it’s like now’s the time, we’re not just ending a year, we’re ending a decade. And 2020, I believe is going to be a year of great expansion for many of us, and a great transformation. And so helping others through the spirit working through me will guide you through teach people how to cleanse their vibration, how to reconnect to your deepest part of your own spiritual gifts, to amplify your own gifts, how to become the healer of your own life, all of these things, including your money story, your relationship story, all of that. How to really align into that place of surrender, so that the spirit can work more profoundly in your life, right and bring you…

The thing about South Africa, it blows me away, there’s not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t have a new connection, or I read something or like, I’m not even thinking about it. Now, somebody will invite me to a party, and there’s a bunch of South Africans there. I mean, it happens all the time. And we just smile, and I say thank you. And that’s the kind of level of creation I would like for the students to have in their own life. Now, this is not for beginners, person on this spiritual opening process, these are going to be more advanced teaching. So what happens is, you click on the link, and it’ll take you to a very short application process of about six questions, and it’s yes or no. And then you and I spend 20 minutes on the phone. So this is going to happen over the course of the next 13 days or something. And then we decide if now’s the right time for you, and the spirit is going to guide me into it being yes or no.

So I believe that most people that are going to go through this process, it is yes, because I believe that we are magnets to our experience, right. And I’ve already prayed for those 20 that would come and it would be the right time. But it’s just good to feel each other out. And then we get you set up to start on the 24th of September. Now, these are going to be Zoom calls. And there are a ton of bonuses, which we lay out that so it’s going to be so much offering here, I am just really honored to be in a position to be able to bring in other experts, and also offer some of the other healing things that I’ve been taught to do over the last three years. And all of that is going to be between the 24th and the end of December so that we all emerge 2020 a better, more awakened version of ourselves.

 

 

1:44:19 Ashley James: Beautiful, I’m very excited for you and for your students. I love it. You were telling me a bit about one of the lessons in it is going to be about acknowledging the ego and and helping it have more of you know, having healthy boundaries through ego I guess is the best way to do it. Because when we let our ego kind of run our life, it’s like I don’t know, for those who have had a toddler, they have no boundaries, and they will not respect yours. Right? And if you don’t know how to enforce them, they won’t respect any boundaries. So, we ere at my father in law’s 78th birthday dinner last night at a nice restaurant, and my son decides that he’s going to wash his hands in his glass of water.

You know. So no, there’s no boundaries. But your ego is much like your toddler, your inner toddler, and that it will cross over and take over everything if we don’t kind of enforce our own boundaries with our ego, right? So you’re talking a bit about that with me and how one of the things that people are going to learn with you in this mastermind is how to do that. And then another thing you told me about is that when you were on your Ayahuasca journey, you saw energy, you had an experience where you saw the vibration of the jungle and the vibration, you got to see energy and feel it, you had that experience of not only feeling energy, but seeing it and experiencing a whole new level. And so you took lessons away from the jungle, and you’re incorporating that into your mastermind. Is there anything that you’d like to teach today to the listeners that you’re going to be including in your mastermind, anything, any kind of lessons that you’d like to… homework or lessons or teachings that you’d like to give to listeners? So they can maybe walk away with something to work on today?

 

 

1:46:35 Theresa Vigarino: Sure, first I’ll address the ego questions. So you know, the ego is here for a reason. And we actually created it as a human collective long time ago. So it’s here, and it’s here to stay because we’re in the physical body. There are a lot of good things that the ego does for us, like trigger fear whenever we’re in a dark alley, and there’s an element there that we don’t want to interact with, right? So there are some components that we absolutely utilize this for our benefit of the ego. Having a sense of pride in your being, that is an ego driven thing to a certain degree, right? When you couple that with being all that you can be that God created you to be, they have those kinds of things work hand in hand.

Now where the ego drops our vibration is through judgment, it is through fear of judgment, fear of lack, fear of not being good enough, worry, old limiting beliefs about who you really are, judgment on other people’s behaviors, all of that, that is where from a spiritual component, it drops you down. Okay, so learning the voice of the ego, and why don’t we just curtail this into the homework or the assignment or, you know, an intention for the listeners, which is to learn to be the observer of when your ego is triggered based upon fear and judgment, because fear and judgment are what keep us from that soul alignment. They keep us out of compassion, they keep us out of forgiveness, which keeps us out of that unconditional love, that we are to be and as an expression of. And so when we’re judging, even when it seems like it’s something so terrible, you know, and we want to judge that person, “Oh they are just rotten to the core.” Or whatever. We are projecting that judgment. And in that moment that we judge another, that means that we judge ourselves, number one, so we automatically have, we know that we have shame, guilt, all of that still stuck in our vibration, right? It also removes you, you also step out of that soul alignment of the vibration of love that God is. And that really we’re an extension of, and so ever so briefly, we’re away from that.

And we actually can feel the effects of that, you will feel, maybe you were happy before that. Maybe you felt expansive before that, maybe you were in joy, and you were in the moment, and you felt at peace. And then the minute judgment came in, even for yourself, oh my gosh, I shouldn’t be doing this, I should be doing that. And even if it looks that it might be more productive, but you’re judging yourself, and I don’t mean like for the better. Like, let’s say you’re doing something creative, and you’re playing or whatever, right. And there’s this voice that’s like, you better not be enjoying that, you better go work on your finances. So, or, you know, you’re trying to pray and meditate, and you get the thing, oh, change the laundry over. When you work from home, those are easy distractions. So it’s subtle, it’s subtle, sometimes sometimes they’re big, but oftentimes, they’re subtle.

 

And by being the observer of the difference between when you’re operating from the mind of God and when you’re operating from the ego mind, and the difference between them. Which is not an easy thing to do, because the ego will try to confuse that. But just if you take a global perspective, as you know, we’re both on NLP people, right? That global perspective, you will be able to decipher when you’re operating from the ego and when you’re operating from all that is, and the truth of who you are. You know, when you want to pick up the phone and make an important phone call, like I’m going to be doing here soon for somebody to be on my board of directors. And there’s a part of me that, or sending out emails for some big donations. And there’s part of me that’s like, “Yeah, but our 501 C3  is pending. It’s not done yet.” And I have all these reasons. Well, what is that? That’s not the truth. The truth is that all things are possible. The truth is I’m an extension of divine love and unconditional love. And so I’m going into it feeling like oh, my little organization or me or whatever is not good enough. Yeah.

 

 

1:51:18 Ashley James: Who am I to do this? I’m just this little, tiny person, who am I to be big and brilliant and bold?

 

 

Theresa Vigarino  1:51:25: Yes. Yes. And I’m faced with it all the time. And like I told you early on about my husband, who’s dealing with all of these very high level tech people in the world, right? And he’s putting on there about my masterclass series, which is going to have a lot of all focus on energy and spirit. And he’s ready to emerge that for himself, too. So we all come to a place where it’s like, “Oh, really?” Yeah. And the quiet confines of your own mind and in your own little comfort zone in your cocoon of safety. You’re saying, “Yeah, I’m going to do this. And I’m going to do that. And I’m going to put it out there because the spirit is moving through me.” Oh, yeah, let’s do it. The spirit is saying do it, then. Now’s the time. What you waiting for? Nothing to fear. And so when those resistance is happen, then oftentimes, it is the ego going, “Oh, yeah. But what if you’re going to lose more friends?” “What if it’s going to flop?” What if, this was a big one for me. “What if you’re going to get sick during that commitment?”

 

 

1:52:40 Ashley James: Yeah.

 

 

1:52:43 Theresa Vigarino: You know, what if you’re not spending enough time on making more money, right? But the big one more for me was, you know, what if, what if people aren’t going to like you as much? What if they’re going to laugh at you? That was a big one that I used to get. And still a little bit you know, what if someone so laughs about ? What if you’re made fun of? Right? So I think we’ve all been made fun of when we were little, and I was made fun of a lot. I was a real heavy kid. And you know, that’s an old thing, right? So the ego goes what if they’re going to make fun of you. I was the girl that never got picked for the kickball team or anything athletic because I was the chunky monkey. And, you know, I ended up being the most outstanding female athlete one year later in the school. Take that kickball captain leaders, no, no I’m just kidding.

It’s kind of funny now when I look back on it, but you know, and that is a muscle that I can access too by the way. Hey, wait a minute, people laughed at me before. That wasn’t the truth of who I was, who I am. And really, we know now from a higher perspective when people are laughing at somebody else, when people are making fun of you or people leave you because of something that your soul is driving you to do and aching and longing for and that is where your personal fulfillment is. The rest of it doesn’t even matter. And again, the light in you upsetting the non light we can say around you is a good thing.

 

 

1:54:27 Ashley James: Sometimes we create those situations to test our resolve. In the Tarot, it’s the archetype the devil, the devil card is the archetype. It’s not the actual devil from Christianity. It’s an archetype of us testing our own resolve. And so, someone says, I don’t know, I’m going to quit smoking cigarettes and five minutes later, as you know, someone walks by and lights a cigarette in front of us. You know, it’s testing our resolve, or, you know, if you said I’m going to go do this charity, and then that little voice goes, that gives you a million reasons and excuses not to, and sometimes it looks like, sometimes people go well, how can it be me testing my resolve when it’s external things like someone saying or laughing at me, right? It’s external. But it’s how we react to it. You might have someone laugh at you every day. And you never even noticed, never noticed, your brain just deleted, generalize, said it doesn’t matter. It’s information that doesn’t, it doesn’t even matter. But the one day you go to do something new, it’s this little part in ourselves that wants to test our resolve. And so then the brain because the brain generalizes so much information. And the reticular activating system of the brain goes all right now you’re looking for people laughing at you.

 

 

1:56:01 Theresa Vigarino: Absolutely.

 

 

1:56:06 Ashley James: So, we test our resolve, when we go to push outside of our boundaries and it’s uncomfortable, right, but so we got to take on like if we’re deciding to like for a friend of mine, who’s a listener, she has taken on the diet, the whole food plant based, no salt, sugar oil diet to heal her body in hurt because it’s the most restorative diet for her heart health, the cardiologist, Dr. Esselstyn I’ve had on the show, he’s in his 80s, and he’s still an active cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic and he heals, like four blockages in the heart with this diet alone, like unbelievable results.

 

 

1:56:49 Theresa Vigarino: I absolutely believe in it.

 

 

1:56:51 Ashley James: Yeah. And so she started the diet. And now it’s every naysayers come up to to challenge her, you know, her parents, her husband, friends, coworkers, everyone is kind of like coming out of the woodwork to test her resolve.

 

 

1:57:10 Theresa Vigarino: Yes.

 

 

1:57:11 Ashley James: And we and it’s how we perceive that conflict, will we give up and give in and kind of settled back down into status quo, or will be rise above it? And so I feel that sometimes that that challenge that we face, where we are seeing either external or internal, it’s our own little voice, like the ego saying, but this and but this, what about this? And if it’s external people, like you’re losing friends over it, whatever, whether it’s internal or external, when there’s a push to that it would be more comfortable to go back to status quo, it actually wouldn’t, because living a status quo is living in purgatory, we’re not evolving as a person. And so when we go, “Bring it on, bring it on world, bring it on.” You want to bring on conflict, okay. Bring on my parents challenging my diet, and my kids and my husband. Bring it on, because I am sticking to my guns, this is how I’m going to heal my body. And there’s no external or internal conflict that’s going to make me go back to status quo, because I’m going to go over this mountain. And help propel us further because the testing of our resolve actually makes us stronger in our resolve. So it’s that we have to have that 30,000 foot view, where we get that the things that we think are bogging us down are actually helping launch us forward.

 

 

1:58:47 Theresa Vigarino: It’s really changing that perspective, isn’t it? It is really about perspective. And I love what you said about that. I’m going to employ that more in my life. So thank you, Ashley. I love that viewpoint because it is the truth.

 

 

1:59:03 Ashley James: Right, I do this course as you know, where I teach people how to eliminate anxiety and part of the course is I teach them to get excited when anxiety comes up. Because they’ve spent years being afraid of it. And when anxiety comes up, it starts in the mind. But then ends up physically in the body when we’re physically feeling symptoms. Our hands are shaking. When we were dizzy, we’re about to pass out, we feel like yeah, die, you know, the body is perceiving a threat and we’re having a huge adrenaline response. So, cortisol is going through the roof. And the body is really having a physical reaction. So they’re afraid of it.

So the second we start to feel anxiety, they then have a huge fear response, because they’re afraid they’re going to go into that. So then they’re resisting it. And as you know, everything we resist then we’re not able to… Yeah it gets stronger. We’re not out to actually face it and rise above it. And so I teach in my course to get really excited once they’ve learned the tools because I have the few tools I teach them that immediately eliminate anxiety in the moment, it takes about 30 seconds, and it completely shuts off anxiety. So once they learn the tool, then every time anxiety comes up in their life, instead of getting fearful because of all the past triggers, and worried that their body is going to go through a panic attack, they get excited, because it’s like, “Oh, awesome. It’s another opportunity for me to practice this technique.” And every time we practice it, it goes deeper into neurology, it rewires the brain even better.

And so if we could get excited about when conflict comes up in our life especially conflict that is testing our resolve, if we could get excited, like, “Oh, awesome. Another friend is challenging me on my belief system. This is great.” Or another friend or a person is challenging my new health goals or my diet or whatever, or whatever we’ve decided, right? Whenever an external or internal, if there’s like, you know, the ego saying, what about this? Or you’re not good enough? How could you do that? Whatever, we get excited, instead of frustrated, we get excited, because anytime we’re being challenged internally or externally to test our resolve, it when we stick to our resolve, it will make it stronger, and it’ll help us to propel us forward. So that’s that was my little…

 

2:01:43 Theresa Vigarino: And then there’s a tipping point, right? Where that doesn’t show up in your reality.

 

 

2:01:46 Ashley James: Right. Exactly. It’s at the beginning. It’s right out beginning. The testing of the resolve happens at the beginning. And then you enforce your boundaries enough with yourself and with others and eventually everyone gets it, your brain gets it. Everyone, your in it gets it. You know, now, like I’ve been gluten free for eight, nine years now, there’s no one that’s going to talk me out of it, and I don’t care. You can roll your eyes all you want when we’re at a restaurant together, you know, whoever I’m with, right? And it’s like, I’m not going to waver. But when I first started being gluten free, it’s like, oh, you know, oh, I don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. Well, not me. But other people. Other people go through that when they go gluten free. And so I’m not.

 

 

2:02:35 Theresa Vigarino: Or vegan, You go to your friends house and not eat their BBQ and just eat the salad. Trust me, I’ve been through that, too.

 

 

2:02:42 Ashley James: Well, my husband and I are plant based now. And so, but I’m not going to apologize for who I am. I’m almost 40 By the way, and I really had an epiphany that I am not going to apologize for who I am.

 

 

2:02:58 Theresa Vigarino: Good for you. I am what I am.  That’s what I always say, right? Like it or not, I am what I am. And when people don’t like it, it’s okay. It’s their choice, right? But that doesn’t have to affect us. And what we know is what’s in our best and highest good.

 

 

2:03:13 Ashley James: We gotta stick to it. And it’s lonely. Yeah, it will be lonely. When we make a new commitment. It is lonely, because sometimes we don’t have that support. Sometimes even internally, we don’t have the support.

 

 

2:03:26 Theresa Vigarino: Oh my gosh, absolutely.

 

 

2:03:28 Ashley James: We gotta stick to it. And the more we stick to it, the stronger it becomes. And then we get to propel ourselves forward. So I love that you have an awesome journey the last two years and  you’re taking everything that you’ve learned, and that you’re incorporating. And now you’ve been a coach for years. You told me I talked the other day, you said you know something to the effect of you don’t identify as a coach anymore, you’re a healer. You really get that you’re a healer, but that you’ve been a coach for many years, and that you help people, for many years you’ve helped people, coach them to get to that place in their life that they want to be.

 

 

2:04:08 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, absolutely. And it really did come with the jungle experience that I really am more of a conduit and why I am a conduit, and it’s the messages come through. And the spirit comes through and the healing comes through. And so I had to really differentiate, because as I kept calling myself coach, I wasn’t really accessing what I’m here for, actually. And it was a stepping stone and I loved coaching. And it was really wonderful. It’s just different now and it’s coming more from this, it comes through me, not from me, if that makes sense.

And so I’ve just surrendered to it. And the more of the surrendering process, which we will talk a lot about during this masterclass series, the more we’re in the vibration of surrender, the more powerful the healing comes through, the messages come through, your life unfolds, like the South Africa thing, you know what I mean? Like, everywhere I go, I thought I mean, it’s just unbelievable. My husband, we just look at each other, and just this amazement about how much South Africa is in our reality. And so when we are in that place of surrender, and we trust, we move into a state of trust through that surrender, then we are able to really let go and quiet that ego and live more in the realm of faith, that all things are well, that everything is working for your good. And you can rest in that and you actually quiet the mind down, the parasympathetic nervous system quiets down, and you have that state of peace. Even just for a little bit until you got to go through the process again, until it becomes your natural way of being. And then you’ll get triggered. And we’re always, because of free will. And we’re not robots, we always have that choice to make.

And I, of course I’m a believer in prayer and intention, and meditation, and we incorporate that in our daily lives to help us stay in that vibration. And there’s lots of other things that will go through in the masterclass series for there to be visceral techniques, right? Visceral techniques, and then you know, I will, of course, be doing a lot of work ahead of time before each class. And that’s why it’s going to be small, because every person along with the class gets what’s called the soul alchemy deep healing session with me, which is a transformational, it takes about three days. And that in and of itself is like $1,000 normally, and that is a bonus. And that has been transformational for a lot of people. And it’s a shocker balancing a crystalline body upgrade. It’s all very etheric and energetic healing that takes place in the other realm that you will feel the effects of instantly. It’s amazing what happens after those and, you know, I’m going to do that for you, Ashley.

 

2:07:10 Ashley James: Oh, I’d love that. I’m all about it.

 

 

2:07:16 Theresa Vigarino: Yes, I know you are, I know you are. And, I just thank you so much for having me on, so that I can share this experience and encourage others that maybe have a chronic illness that, you know, my husband really has had a panic disorder. I don’t know if I shared that with you. Ashley, we didn’t realize that that’s what it was until the jungle, and he would be great for you to talk to about this anxiety, and what he learned, you know, and it was a download that he learned from the family and maybe even genetic and the reason why he went for the month and what he learned as a result of it, and how to be that energy. Yeah, so I’ll connect the two of you. But in the meantime, you know, I just want everyone to know that you’re doing better than you think you are. And that you are a unique and divine personal on purpose, being of light that is here to express the divine through your life.

 

2:08:19 Ashley James: Beautiful, thank you so much.

 

 

2:08:21 Theresa Vigarino: End of Story.

 

 

2:08:23 Ashley James: For now. To be continued.

 

 

2:08:27 Theresa Vigarino: Thank you so much. I just love you. I love what you’re doing, your podcast is amazing. You’re an awesome interviewer and I love that you’re helping people through what they’re going through. And anxiety, like I said, it’s a big deal here in America. And, you know, kudos to you, Ashley for being a voice.

 

 

2:08:44 Ashley James: Awesome. And likewise, thank you so much, Theresa Vigarino for coming on the show. And all the way back from Episode 88. Coming back to give us the updates in the download. I love it. Listeners can go to TheresaVigarino.com, of course the links and everything Theresa does is going to be the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. Theresa, it’s been such a pleasure. We’ll have to keep having you back on every two years.

 

 

2:09:11 Theresa Vigarino: That sounds amazing. We’ll see what’s next. Right?

 

 

2:09:14 Ashley James: Awesome. Thank you so much.

 

 

2:09:17 Theresa Vigarino: You’re welcome.

 

 

—

 

Outro:

 

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

You might be the perfect candidate to become a health coach. I highly recommend checking out The Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

I just spent the last year in their health coaching certification program and it really blew me away. It was so amazing. I learned over a hundred dietary theories. I learned all about nutrition, but from a standpoint of how we can help people to shift their lives and shift their lifestyle to gain true holistic health, I definitely recommend you check them out.

You can Google, Institute for Integrative Nutrition or IIN and give them a call or you can go to www.learntruehealth.com/coach and you can receive a free module of their training to check it out and see if it’s something that you’d be interested in.

Be sure to mention my name Ashley James and the Learn True Health Podcast because I made a deal with them that they will give you the best price possible.

I highly recommend checking it out. It really changed my life to be in their program and I’m such a big advocate that I wanted to spread this information. We need more health coaches. In fact, health coaching is the largest growing career right now in the health field. So many health coaches are. getting in and helping people because you can work in chiropractic office, doctors offices.you can work in hospitals, you can work online through Skype and help people around the world. you can become an author. You can go into the school system and help your local schools shift their programs to help children be healthier. you can go into senior centers and help them to shift their diet and lifestyle to best support them in their success and their health goals.

There’s so many different available options for you when you become a certified health coach.

So check out IIN. Check out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Mention my name, get the best deal. Give them a call and they;ll give you lots of free information and help you to see if this is the right move for you.

Classes are starting soon. The next round of classes are starting at the end of the month. So you’re gonna wanna call them now and check it out.

And if you know anyone in your life who would be an amazing coach, please tell them about it. Being a health coach is so rewarding and you get to help so many people.

—

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Get Connected With Theresa Viagrino!

Website

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Recommended Readings by Theresa Viagrino

The Way of Mastery – by The Shanti Cristo Foundation

A Course in Miracles – by the Foundation For Inner Peace

Dr. Phil Carson is a pharmacist who thinks outside the box of traditional medicine. He believes in helping people find natural alternatives and integrative medicine solutions to their health problems.

He is committed to lead people to find the root cause of their health problems and not just treating the symptoms. Phil is passionate about encouraging and teaching people how to live more balanced, healthier and vibrant lives.

A registered pharmacist and Doctor of Pharmacy, with licenses in MS and TN, Phil is a 1985 graduate of the University of MS School of Pharmacy. Since earning his doctorate in pharmacy Phil has been certified as a Compounding Pharmacist, a Diabetes Care Pharmacist, and most recently a Consulting Pharmacist. Phil has also earned certifications in Lipid Management and Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD). He has earned numerous certifications in Natural and Alternative Medicine Therapies for weight loss, fibromyalgia, ADD/ADHD, and many other health conditions.
- Founder of Carson Natural Health
- Co-founder of the Life Transformation Medical Center
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MyKidCuresCancer.com

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My Kid Cures Cancer

http://learntruehealth.com/my-kid-cures-cancer/

My Kid Cures Cancer is an excellent resource for parents who have a child with cancer.  It’s never easy when your child is suffering from the disease, and some parents go into panic mode. The journey wasn’t easy for my guests Ryan and Teddy Sternagel. This episode is all about how they weathered that storm.

How It All Began

The My Kid Cures Cancer bandwagon has been around for almost four years now.  It traces its roots back to when Teddy Sternagel got pregnant with son Ryder who is turning five years old this May.

The Sternagels describe themselves to be health-conscious parents.  Ryder was born at a birth center, and the Sternagel couple has long before already agreed not to vaccinate their child. The couple both ate healthily and Teddy even breastfed Ryder for two and a half years.

The Lump

Teddy Sternagel recalls that leading up to his first birthday; there were some things about Ryder that didn’t feel right. He had a hard time sitting up on his own. And from being a very chunky baby, he rapidly dropped down the growth chart.

Ryder was turning one that month and was nowhere near even being able to crawl much less even turn over. He had stopped growing at around six months of age. After being born above the 90th percentile in both height and weight, he had dropped down to the 25th.

“I was told by a Naturopath that it’s because I was breastfeeding him. Looking back, I felt that’s not true at all,” relates Teddy Sternagel. “One night in May 2014, I was getting Ryder ready for bed. As I was nursing him, I noticed a lump in Ryder’s back right next to his spine.” 

More Red Flags

The Sternagels started to realize there were more symptoms to be worried other than the lump on Ryder’s back. Ryder could not handle any solid food and would gag whenever he was fed anything. He also suffered from constipation. But doctors initially brushed off these concerns.

“We were told just to keep an eye on the lump and begin physical therapy for walking and speech therapy for eating,” said Teddy Sternagel. “The whole speech and physical therapy did not set right with us because we wanted to know why does he have a lump in his back and figure it out before doing anything else.”

The Official Diagnosis

After several weeks of hospital visits and tests, the official diagnosis finally came out before Ryder’s first birthday. Results showed that Ryder had a growing tumor larger than his kidney and out of his spinal canal. There were also two secondary tumors which had metastasized into his bones.

Tests also showed Ryder had been born with a double aortic arch. It was not life-threatening, but a heart surgery would be needed to correct it. This was why Ryder had a hard time swallowing solid foods.

Finding The Right Doctor

Finding the right doctor is not easy. It takes a lot of research. Initially, the Sternagels didn’t have much choice but to go ahead with conventional treatment. 

“With the FDA, you don’t have much choice. You have to do conventional treatment,” said Teddy Sternagel. “The chemotherapy did its job. It shrunk Ryder’s tumor very quickly. So we thought of not doing the entire protocol, stop early and take Ryder the rest of the way holistically.”

Moving To Utah

The Sternagels decided to move to Utah to continue Ryder’s treatment.  They were still on a conventional protocol but chose to seek alternative treatment after the fourth round of chemotherapy.

The couple felt blessed to have Naturopathic Oncologist Dr. Paul Anderson on their team. Their doctor respected their decision to seek an alternative route. Hence, the Sternagels felt lucky because not everyone was fortunate enough to have the right support system.

“Naturopaths are like doctors. There are good and bad. You have to take each person as an individual. And I think people get into trouble when they just put all of their faith into one group of people,” said Teddy Sternagel.

Researching On Alternative Treatments

The Sternagels researched continuously on alternative treatments for several years. One useful treatment is to have Ryder do saunas to sweat out the toxins from his body.

“Cancer cells can’t stand the heat as well as regular cells can. We sauna almost every night for at least half an hour because it takes at least 15 minutes before we can sweat,” Ryan Sternagel said. 

He adds, “There are a lot of different alternative treatments and different theories of cancer. So you want to be addressing all of those theories and system of the body.”

I agree with the effectiveness of saunas.  Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt was on my show recently where he explained the benefits of sweating and taking a cooling shower after the sauna to rise out the toxins.

Incidentally, Ryan Sternagel also revealed that his sauna unit is also from Sunlighten.  For those interested in getting a sauna, you can get $150 discount just by mentioning My Kid Cures Cancer upon purchase. 

Cause Of Ryder’s Cancer

Cancer is caused by many factors. In fact, a past guest of mine, Dr. Tullio Simoncini, said during his interview in episode 136 that all cancer is from fungus.

In Ryder’s case, Teddy Sternagel believes that being so stressed from work while she was pregnant played a significant factor. She handled it poorly, and she hardly got any exercise.

Teddy Sternagel also believes that being around wi-fi and so many gadgets as well as being in a toxic environment has adverse effects. That is why she advises pregnant women to make sure they get enough exercise, relax, eat right and make sure to detox once in a while.

Extra Resources

The My Kid Cures Cancer website is an excellent resource for alternative treatments for kids who have cancer.  The Sternagels have taken the initiative to enumerate a complete and comprehensive list on the My Kid Cures Cancer website containing supplements, essential oils, anti-cancer products, and cancer-fighting tools that helped Ryder recover.

Aside from the My Kid Cures Cancer website, the Sternagels also have a podcast. Listeners can tune in to learn more about their journey as well as learn several ways of living a healthy, cancer-free life.

Additional Tips

The Sternagels also provided the following tips to help may sure your stays in tip-top shape:

1. Have a prep day. One day each week where you set aside a couple of hours. Start a few jars of sprouts. Just start fermenting something. Make a huge batch of juice and freeze half of it. And make a big healthy dip for veggies.
2. Take stock of your supplements, fill capsules. Fill your pantry and order dry goods (better selection and prices online). Plan out meals and make a shopping list for produce. Make it a family event and have kids hands on.
3. Incorporate hot and cold into your whole family’s life. Do contrast showers for yourself and your kids. Get a sauna. Go outside in the cold in minimal clothes. Do ice baths. Make it a fun thing.
4. Have proper light at proper times. Get red light bulbs for your lamps and turn them on and overhead lights off when the sun goes down. Get blue blocking glasses for screen time. Again, make it fun for the family.

Ryder In Remission

Ryder is currently in remission. After stopping chemotherapy, he takes scans every three months. It’s a wait-and-see approach. 

“You don’t necessarily have to have all the answers and be the expert in every different category. There’s a lot of experts in a lot of different things, but you’re the only expert in your kid as a whole,” said Ryan Sternagel. 

Teddy Sternagel adds, “We as parents have an intuitive gift. It’s there for a reason, and you just have to follow it.” 

Bio

Ryan and Teddy Sternagel started My Kid Cures Cancer one year after their son Ryder was diagnosed in 2014 with stage four neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer of the nervous system.

Wanting to do everything they could for their son The Sternagels dove deep into integrative research and as a result, today Ryder is a happy, healthy little boy. 

Early on in the journey, however, it had become apparent that practically no information of this kind existed written in a way that parents could understand if and how it would apply to their children. 

After consulting with doctors and health experts all over the world, and a whole lot of trial and error, My Kid Cures Cancer was born to make finding this information accessible to other parents that need it. 

Through its videos, podcast and in-depth articles, My Kid Cures Cancer provides parents with information both on integrative approaches to cancer treatment for those that need it and how to make sure cancer never afflicts their family in the first place for everyone else. 

With his incredible attitude and willingness to eat the healthiest of foods and take as many supplements as Ryan and Teddy hand him, Ryder now inspires children all over the world to take their health seriously. “If Ryder can do it, so can I!”

Get Connected With Ryan and Teddy Sternagel!

Official Website

Facebook

Instagram

Youtube

Sunlighten Sauna

Recommended Reading by Ryan and Teddy Sternagel!

The Metabolic Approach to Cancer  by Dr. Nasha Winters

Recommended Links:

What Causes Cancer – Episode 136

Heavy Metals Detox – Episode 218

 

The Links You Are Looking For:

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Become A Health Coach

Learn More About The Institute for Integrative Nutrition's Health Coaching Certification Program by checking out these four resources:

1) Integrative Nutrition's Curriculum Guide:
http://geti.in/2cmUMxb

2) The IIN Curriculum Syllabus:
http://geti.in/2miXTej

3) Module One of the IIN curriculum:
http://geti.in/2cmWPl8

4) Get three free chapters of Joshua Rosenthal's book:
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Watch my little video on how to become a Certified Health Coach!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDDnofnSldI

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Do You Have Anxiety? End Anxiety Now! Learn Two Powerful Mind Tricks for Removing Anxiety, Ending Worry, & Controlling Fear So It Stops Controlling You! Attend my FREE Webinar that Will Teach You How! Click Here!

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To receive 10% off your first order from Randy's company vitalchoice.com use coupon code LTH2018 at checkout.

 

Wild Salmon 

http://learntruehealth.com/wild-salmon/

Many of you have probably heard that eating fish is good for your health.  But not all fish can give you maximum health benefits. Salmon for one, is a favorite preference apart from tuna or halibut. But according to my guest, Randy Hartnell, not all salmon are the same. To educate us further on this topic, he explains the difference between wild salmon and farm salmon in this episode.

Discovering Fishing

Randy Hartnell discovered a love for fishing during his college years while he was earning a degree in English at the University of California in Berkley. Taking on a summer job, it led him to discover fishing in Alaska. 

Randy Hartnell fell in love with commercial fishing and continued after graduating from college. He bought boats, hired a crew and dived into commercial fishing for 20 years in Alaska. Every spring and summer was devoted to catching herring and salmon.

“It was a great lifestyle. I would have still been doing it except for the rise of industrial farm salmon in the world market,” said Randy Hartnell. “In the late 90s, farm salmon exploded despite the nutritional and environmental disadvantages. At that time few consumers knew the difference.”

He adds, “What grocery stores and chefs understood was that farm salmon was now available 24/7, it was cheap and consistent. So, in a couple of years, the price collapsed. That’s why I had to figure out something else to do.”

Vital Choice

Randy Hartnell had a friend call him one day. Together they discussed the factors surrounding the demand for either wild salmon or farm salmon. And because people loved wild salmon, it was an excellent opportunity to make wild salmon more available to consumers.

Randy Hartnell initially hired friends and family members.  He launched the company in 2002 and had grown every year since then. One of the favorite things the company offers is their Vital Box subs program, containing the company’s greatest hits. It includes the most popular Vital Choice products that consumers can customize.

“We enjoy educating people that fish is yummy and easy to prepare and healthy, too. Always go for quality,” Randy Hartnell advises. “Those healthy omega three fats in the fish is unstable. It is prone to oxidation. That’s one reason why chefs prefer farm salmon. Because wild salmon goes bad quickly.” 

Looming Problems

According to Randy Hartnell, the most significant problems fall into two categories. One is environmental, particularly the impact of the farm salmon on the local ecosystem. Everything you’re putting into those cages to feed those fish, a lot of that ends up in the surrounding environment. That in turn, can have a profound impact on the local species.

To get the bigger picture, Randy Hartnell says that salmon farming first started in Norway. The farms there have devastated the wild salmon stocks. In fact, Randy Hartnell talked to a scientist there a few years ago. And that scientist said that British Columbia is insane to put salmon farms along wild salmon migration routes.

You see, Randy Hartnell reveals that in British Columbia, fisheries placed hundreds of farm salmon pans along the migration routes of five different species of wild Pacific salmon. And this scenario attracts diseases and parasites.

“The solution is to move those pens onto land and do closed containment tanks. But the problem is you don’t have mother nature subsidizing your processing of sewage, pumping, and water. That’s why farm salmon that is raised sustainably is more expensive. So, unfortunately, there is not much market for it,” shares Randy Hartnell.

Randy Hartnell says the other issue is the nutritional side. Some are fed wild fish which are turned into pellets and fed to farm salmon. The problem is, the fish might end up having trace levels of contaminants.

“Plus, when you start feeding these farm salmons a lot of grains, you have way more omega 6 to omega 3. Wild salmon has more omega three compared to omega 6,” said Randy Hartnell.

Randy Hartnell also shares that now there is a big mining consortium, that is trying to build a massive open-pit mine right at the headwater. It’s called the Pebble Mine Project, and many are stopping it. 

“There are always going to be bad actors out there. And the best way to put them out of business is to educate consumers to look for and choose sustainably sourced alternatives,” said Randy Hartnell.

Alaska’s Solution

Randy Hartnell fished in Alaska for 20 years.  He shares that based on the state constitution, it states that fisheries will be managed on a sustainable basis.

This means a scientist manages every river that has fish coming up to it. His primary goal is to make sure that every season there is a sustainable yield basis. It’s monitoring the passage of fish into the river and making sure there is harvestable surplus.

Alaska’s “fish cops” primarily protect the habitat. There are no big tourism establishments, logging or dams to destroy the natural environment.  In fact, they are currently expecting fifty to sixty million salmon are coming back to spawn.

Reputable Organizations

Randy Hartnell reveals that consumers are now demanding sustainable seafood. To date, there are 30 NGOs now focusing on ocean sustainability and fisheries around the world. There’s still a lot of work to do.

To those who aren’t aware, a fishery is primarily a defined by its region, the fishing method it uses and the type of fish it catches. Generally, most of the seafood and salmon in the United States come from Alaska because it is sustainable.

Randy Hartnell says the gold standard of organizations is called the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) where he is a member. They are rigorous in evaluating fisheries especially since over 130 species rely on wild salmon throughout their lives, from bacteria to killer whales.

It takes thorough scrutiny before one company gets that coveted MSC logo on their packaged products.  And Randy Hartnell says the nutrition packages that those fish represent is some of the healthiest food on the planet, not to mention sustainable, too.

Benefits of Wild Salmon

According to Randy Hartnell, wild salmon and seafood in general, is one of the last wild, natural organic foods that we have on the planet. They are just about the most nutrient-dense food you can find. And they have way more than the RDI of many of our essential amino acids or healthy fats.

“We all need omega 3 and omega 6 in our diet. They are precursors to all kinds of different hormones that allow ourselves to communicate with one another,” said Randy Hartnell. “So, when you have an imbalance of these two types, it causes a lot of problems like chronic diseases.” 

Seafood Prescription

Randy Hartnell has an upcoming book coming up, called the Seafood Prescription.  It explains the nutrients in seafood and how it addresses so many needs that we have on a biochemical level.

“The fatter the fish, the more omega three it has. Alaskan king salmon or British Columbia king salmon are going to have the most, approximately two grams on a six-ounce portion,” Randy Hartnell said. “Don’t worry too much about the number. Just incorporate more fish into your diet. It’s not about getting the omega three but rather also about restricting the omega 6.”

He narrates that his wife had chronic allergies, skin issues, and inflammatory eye condition before. When he started this company, Randy Hartnell met Dr. William Lands, who was a pioneer in this field and discovered a lot of this biochemistry.

After being educated about fish, the omega 6 factor and how prevalent it is, Randy Hartnell and his wife started cutting out omega 6.  It wasn’t long before his wife was cured of her health problems and Randy Hartnell’s family history of eczema and psoriasis was cured as well.

Fresh Vs. Frozen

Randy Hartnell says that most people will say fresh is superior to frozen. But there was a study before regarding this. From the study, 80% wanted fresh, not frozen fish. Both kinds were cooked side by side, and in the end, the frozen fish tasted better.

“Currently, there’s also a tool to measure cellular damage from freezing and quality degradation,” shares Randy Hartnell. “Freezing is like nature’s preservative. You protect those unstable oils from the air and protect them from oxidation. It will taste like it just came out of the water as long as it is frozen properly.”

Canned Fish

The commonly canned fishes are tuna and salmon. But Randy Hartnell says many are poorly canned because some companies pack lower quality fish into the can. As a result, Randy Hartnell makes sure partner with a company that puts the best fish in the can.

Vital Choices Products

Randy Hartnell assures that his company only buys domestically processed seafood in Alaska or Washington. It costs more, but it’s an excellent avenue to support jobs.

Some other excellent Vital Choices products worth trying are their burgers and sausages. It took quite a while to develop their wild salmon sausages that come in three delicious flavors.

Randy Hartnell also believes that a healthy mom delivers healthy babies. That’s why Vital Choice also has a healthy diet option that caters to pregnant women. In fact, Randy Hartnell shares that there was a study conducted over a span of twenty to thirty years involving 14,000 moms and kids.

“The study looked into the impact on fish consumption and impact on neurological health on children. It also identified that the risks of not eating fish are much greater than those with trace levels of mercury.”

Out of Balance

There are many success stories of people who made the switch to incorporating more fish or fish oil products into their diet. Randy Hartnell says there was one case wherein a patient had omega three therapy. It involved intravenous fish oil to repair the brain which worked.

Randy Hartnell also had a personal experience with omega three therapy when his daughter was hospitalized for bacterial meningitis, severe, and brain swelling. It benefited his daughter as well, and the recovery was faster.

To further get some additional resource, do check out Randy Hartnell’s Out of Balance video on his website, where he interviews five well-known authorities talking about the importance of balancing omega 3.

Randy Hartnell’s website is a wealth of information and even has an online store.  As a bonus, he’s giving all you listeners a 10% discount so be sure to type in LTH2018 for the coupon code upon checkout. 

Bio

Randy Hartnell is the president of Vital Choice Wild Seafood & Organics, the leading online seafood company he and wife Carla founded in 2001. He is responsible for guiding the company on its mission of helping consumers source high-quality, sustainable seafood while educating them about the impact of food choices on their health, the environment, and the commercial fishing community. 

Randy Hartnell is the public face of Vital Choice, fostering relationships with environmentally minded, health-conscious consumers and nutrition-oriented health and wellness advocates. Before founding Vital Choice, Randy Hartnell spent more than twenty years as a commercial salmon fisherman in Alaska. He is a Washington state native and holds a degree in English Literature from the UC Berkeley.

Get Connected With Randy Hartnell:

Vital Choice

Randy Hartnell Website

Marine Stewardship Council

EFA Education

Out of Balance Video

YouTube

 

If this episode made a difference in your life, please leave me a tip in the virtual tip jar by giving my podcast a great rating and review in iTunes!
http://bit.ly/learntruehealth-itunes

Thank you!
Ashley James
http://bit.ly/learntruehealth-itunes

************************************
Enjoyed this podcast episode? Visit my website Learn True Health with Ashley James so you can gain access to all of my episodes and more! LearnTrueHealth.com
http://learntruehealth.com

************************************
Need Help Ordering The Right Supplements For You?

Visit TakeYourSupplements.com, and a FREE health coach will help you!
http://takeyoursupplements.com

************************************
Learn How To Achieve Optimal Health From Naturopathic Doctors!

Get Learn True Health's Seven-Day Course For FREE! Visit go.learntruehealth.com
http://go.learntruehealth.com/gw-oi

************************************

Become A Health Coach-Learn More About The Institute for Integrative Nutrition's Health Coaching Certification Program by checking out these four resources:

1) Integrative Nutrition's Curriculum Guide:
http://geti.in/2cmUMxb

2) The IIN Curriculum Syllabus:
http://geti.in/2miXTej

3) Module One of the IIN curriculum:
http://geti.in/2cmWPl8

4) Get three free chapters of Joshua Rosenthal's book:
http://geti.in/2cksU87

Watch my little video on how to become a Certified Health Coach!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDDnofnSldI

************************************

Do You Have Anxiety? End Anxiety Now! Learn Two Powerful Mind Tricks for Removing Anxiety, Ending Worry, & Controlling Fear So It Stops Controlling You! Attend my FREE Webinar that Will Teach You How! Click Here!

http://FreeYourAnxiety.com/webinar

************************************

Do you have a blood sugar issue? I can help you achieve healthy, normal and balanced blood sugar naturally!

Visit BloodSugarCoach.com for your free 30min coaching call with Ashley James!

http://www.BloodSugarCoach.com
************************************
I made a low-carb, gluten-free cookbook just for you!

Download your FREE copy today!

Visit learntruehealth.com/free-health-cookbook
http://learntruehealth.com/free-health-cookbook

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Join Learn True Health's Facebook community group!
Visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/LearnTrueHealth
or search Learn True Health on Facebook!

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Follow the Learn True Health podcast on social media! Share with your friends and spread the word! Let's all get healthier & happier together!

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Adam's site and goodies for LTH listeners! https://www.transformationcoach.me/blog/learn

FREE steaming tickets to The Truth About Cancer LIVE: http://LearnTrueHealth.com/live

Sustainable Weight Loss

http://learntruehealth.com/sustainable-weight-loss

Achieving Sustainable Weight Loss

Achieving sustainable weight loss is the primary challenge for everyone who has tried dieting. Chances are, we enthusiastically get on that fitness bandwagon, but we tend to stray for so many reasons. Well, you're in for a treat today because my guest Adam Schaeuble will reveal the secret to achieving sustainable weight loss.

Previously Heavy Dude

Adam Schaeuble amusingly uses the abbreviation 'Ph.D.,' to describe himself. Ph.D. really stands for a degree awarded to people who have gained the highest level of learning. However, Adam Schaeuble uses it to refer to himself as 'Previously Heavy Dude.'

You see, Adam Schaeuble wasn't always the fit guy that he is today. A decade ago at 27 years old, he weighed a whopping 327 pounds!

He was at rock bottom during those times. However, fed up with his weight issues, he remembered that one day at the grocery wherein he resolved to change. He was determined to do something about his weight.

Incidentally, it was also around that time that a friend suggested some personal growth materials. Those reference materials focused on Laws of Attraction which gave Adam Schaeuble the foundation to his mission of achieving sustainable weight loss.

Setting Goals

Like most life planning methods, setting your goals is an essential factor. And wanting to lose weight loss is no different. Adam Schaeuble knew he had to set personal goals to achieve sustainable weight loss.

Adam Schaeuble set five years of goals and set a date---July 9. One goal was to lose 100 pounds. His other goals were getting out of debt, getting married, having kids and establish a thriving business. Adam Schaeuble was a week late from achieving his goal, but nevertheless, he was able to fulfill his weight loss target.

"I read my goals every night, and it took five years to achieve every single goal," recalls Adam Schaeuble. "I realized I had to change. And when I succeed, I wanted to lead by example."

Opening A Fitness Studio

Adam Schaeuble says that what you focus on is essential to achieving sustainable weight loss. It apparently worked for him because being able to keep the weight off motivated him to open a fitness studio to help people.

"I like to help people visualize the transformation process," said Adam Schaeuble. "People are obsessed with diet and fitness hacks. We lose sight of working hard. My stuff works because it has no tricks."

Consistency Is The Key

Adam Schaeuble says that achieving sustainable weight loss is more than the hard work and eating clean. Being focused and consistent is the secret to keeping the weight off.

Consequently, Adam Schaeuble applied this principle when he developed his Amazing Results Formula which comprises his boot camp program. According to him, his philosophy changed his whole town. Combining all the weight his clients lost, it totaled to 35,000 pounds!

Now that his program has proved it works, Adam Schaeuble's new goal is to make his hometown lose a total of a million pounds. According to Adam Schaeuble, people who have failed weight loss programs gravitate towards him. Under his watch, Adam Schaeuble initially teaches people how to apply strategic thinking to the transformation process.

"I put them through what I did, and I created a boot camp," reveals Adam Schaeuble. "I'm big on accountability, and I help develop a develop strong 'why' behind your goal."

Four Phase Cycle

Adam Schaeuble further expounds that this program has four components. These four elements are starting a new program, getting initial results, overcoming challenges and giving up.

To avoid giving up on a weight loss program, Adam Schaeuble says that developing the right mindset can help motivate you to stay on a diet. Apparently, people tend to get excited about starting a diet and then slack off when the program isn't working.

"People need to stop focusing on the first phase and dominate situations. Only then can you can make progress," explains Adam Schaeuble. "Every trip through the cycle, you decrease your willpower."

Typical Diet

Adam Schaeuble's basic plan is eating whole foods five times a day, drinking a lot of water and sweating by doing exercises. He describes his diet as more of Paleo nowadays, comprising proteins, eggs, fish, healthy fats and vegetables.

He considers breakfast as the most important meal of the day. Hence, a typical breakfast would be one scoop dry whey protein, one scoop collagen protein; one can of organic coconut cream, one teaspoon of almond butter and mixed with a little water like pudding.

"My philosophy is you want to use the right tool for the job. I experiment with all sorts of diet regimens," said Adam Schaeuble. "Pick a diet right for you and stick to it. It all comes down to consistency and hard work. Then adapt as we go."

Adam Schaeuble likewise does fasting for 24 hours at least once a week. Apparently, Adam Schaeuble's strategy is to fast only during the day when he is the busiest. This way, he wouldn't be tempted to break the fast.

The Third Component Book

Adam Schaeuble's book is all about the real secret to achieving sustainable weight loss. This fantastic reference material will teach you how to apply his "Amazing Results Formula" as part of your transformation process.

He also believes in what he calls a 'Lifestyle Rehabilitation.' This is all about educating you on the importance of accountability and the ability to plan.

Transformation Website

Going through Adam Schaeuble's website, you'll see a lot of testimonials from Adam Schaeuble's former clients who have lost weight. These are the same people who are in Adam Schaeuble's fitness videos wherein you'll learn the proper exercises for your daily routine.

Other services that Adam Schaeuble offers on his website aside from coaching calls are nutrition protocols, strategic thinking, and lifestyle audit. You will also learn to create a battleplan workbook and be part of his weight loss community.

Support System

Adam Schaeuble continually stresses the need for you to find a good support system to help you achieve your goals. He likewise advises people to do away with being obsessed about the number on their weighing scale.

"People live and die by that scale. The scale is one of my enemies," Adam Schaeuble said. "It's one of the least reliable assessment tools. The scale makes intelligent people say dumb things."

Essentially, Adam Schaeuble says we must never give in to social pressure. More often than not, social pressure is a significant factor on why most people fail to achieve their weight goals.

"Tell your family the reason behind your goal. It's not weird wanting to be healthy, " assures Adam Schaeuble. "Find someone who has done what you want to do and learn from them. Attach yourself to them as an accountability anchor point."

Adam Schaeuble is a former Ph.D. (Pretty Heavy Dude). He once weighed 327 pounds, and after losing 100 pounds himself, he opened up a gym in his hometown of Bloomington, IN. Adam Schaeuble took what he learned from his 100-pound weight loss experience and applied it to his hometown clients. In a five year period, his hometown clients lost over 35,000 lbs.!

One Million Pound Mission

Now Adam Schaeuble is on his One Million Pound Mission. He is taking all of his successful programs and strategies that he has used for his transformation and his hometown clients, and he's putting them online with the hopes of producing a one million pound impact across the globe.

Adam Schaeuble has a bachelor's degree in Exercise Science from Indiana University and has the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist certification from the NSCA. At his company, TransformationCoach.Me, he holds the positions of Head Coach and Lead Transformologist.

He is also the host of The TransformationCoach.Me podcast where he dives into his best transformation tips and strategies, and he interviews people that have had amazing transformation results to extract their best tips and motivation for the audience.

Get Connected With Adam Schaeuble!

Official Website

Transformation Coach Podcast

Facebook

Instagram

Facebook Group

Recommended Readings By Adam Schaeuble

The Power Of Habit  by Charles Duhigg

The One Thing by Jay Papisan

 

 

 

 

The Links You Are Looking For:

200 High Vibration Foods Shopping List:

http://learntruehealth.com/vibelist

Limited Number of FREE BOOKS!
http://learntruehealth.com/vibe

Free $69 value 3-video course on raising your vibration!
http://learntruehealth.com/reboot

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you have a blood sugar issue? I can help you achieve healthy, normal and balanced blood sugar naturally!

Visit BloodSugarCoach.com for your free 30min coaching call with Ashley James!

http://www.BloodSugarCoach.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Become A Health Coach

Learn More About The Institute for Integrative Nutrition's Health Coaching Certification Program by checking out these four resources:

1) Integrative Nutrition's Curriculum Guide:
http://geti.in/2cmUMxb

2) The IIN Curriculum Syllabus:
http://geti.in/2miXTej

3) Module One of the IIN curriculum:
http://geti.in/2cmWPl8

4) Get three free chapters of Joshua Rosenthal's book:
http://geti.in/2cksU87

Watch my little video on how to become a Certified Health Coach!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDDnofnSldI

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this episode made a difference in your life, please leave me a tip in the virtual tip jar by giving my podcast a great rating and review in iTunes!
http://bit.ly/learntruehealth-itunes

Thank you!
Ashley James
http://bit.ly/learntruehealth-itunes

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enjoyed this podcast episode? Visit my website Learn True Health with Ashley James so you can gain access to all of my episodes and more! LearnTrueHealth.com
http://learntruehealth.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Need Help Ordering The Right Supplements For You?

Visit TakeYourSupplements.com, and a FREE health coach will help you!
http://takeyoursupplements.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learn How To Achieve Optimal Health From Naturopathic Doctors!

Get Learn True Health's Seven-Day Course For FREE! Visit go.learntruehealth.com
http://go.learntruehealth.com/gw-oi

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I made a low-carb, gluten-free cookbook just for you!

Download your FREE copy today!

Visit learntruehealth.com/free-health-cookbook
http://learntruehealth.com/free-health-cookbook

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Learn True Health's Facebook community group!
Visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/LearnTrueHealth
or search Learn True Health on Facebook!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Follow the Learn True Health podcast on social media! Share with your friends and spread the word! Let's all get healthier & happier together!

Learn True Health - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2LearnTrueHealth
Learn True Health - Twitter: https://twitter.com/learntruehealth
Learn True Health - Medium: https://medium.com/@unstoppable_ashley
Learn True Health - Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/healthpodcast
Learn True Health - YouTube: http://bit.ly/LTH-YouTube-Subscribe

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2LearnTrueHealth
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Medium: https://medium.com/@unstoppable_ashley
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Music: bensound.com

SEO and Marketing by BraveSEOMarketing.com

More info on Grace and her story:
www.ouramazinggrace.net

Below you will find more information and the links From Former House of Reps Dean Michele Bachmann referenced on the topic of the Biden Administration signing over US sovereignty on public health to the World Health Organization:

Take action: https://takeactionforfreedom.com/stop-who

Ashley’s guest today is Dr. Jenna Jorgensen, a licensed Naturopathic Physician.  Today Dr. Jenna discusses how we can naturally:
-    Eliminate Anxiety
-    Lose Weight
-    Decrease Inflammation
-    Increase Healthy Hormones

Dr. Jenna lives by the philosophy “Life is medicine. How do you want to live your life?” meaning every choice we make, the environment we chose to live in, our job, our relationships, our diet and every day-to-day activity all add up to either improving our health...or not.

Dr. Jenna helps her patients learn and implement new choices that overall make a big difference in their health and vitality. She works to help them restore balance back to their body through physical medicine, diet, lifestyle and supplementation.

Here’s What You’ll Discover:

•    Why visceral manipulation and Craniosacral therapy (CST) are so effective.
•    How to train your body to burn fat for fuel
•    How to support your liver in eliminating toxins while losing weight
•    Most people’s diets are lacking enough healthy fats to sustain their body and hormones.
•    Why an ND is more specialized as a doctor than an MD is.
•    More about NDs and why it’s so important to see an ND vs. an MD.

Health AH-HA Moment:

When the terrain of your body is out of balance your body presents symptoms. When you balance the terrain of your body, those symptoms go away.

Your Challenge:    

Increase The Healthy Fats In Your Diet By Eating More:
Organic nuts and seeds
Organic Avocado
Organic Eggs
Organic Grass-fed butter or Ghee (I Totally Recommend Trying This Out. It’s The Worlds Most Amazing Ghee  http://amzn.to/1UVCKkO)

And Eat Much Less (or none at all):
Grains
Processed foods (packaged foods)
Sugar
Any form of sweetener

For Bonus Points:
Eat 5 – 6 cups of leafy green organic veggies a day!
Check your local Costco for affordable fresh organic veggies.

Resource:
http://www.livelifemedicine.com

http://drjennajorgensen.com

 

Lyn's Book: You Are Not Your Diagnosis https://amzn.to/2nyXyTh
Lyn's website: https://bodytalkportland.com

 

BodyTalk Access

http://learntruehealth.com/bodytalk-access

BodyTalk Access is such a fantastic tool that everyone should learn. Through BodyTalk Access, you’d be able to be more present and aware of what’s going on in your body. And Lyn Delmastro-Thomson is the perfect guest to talk about BodyTalk Access and the techniques behind BodyTalk Access, in this episode.

Personal Journey

Like many other experts who have taken control of their health and shifted away from healing treatments through medication, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson’s journey towards true health began when she was pursuing her academic degree.

From college, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson went on to graduate school. She initially thought she wanted to be in the world of academia as a Professor of History.

Looking back, she realized it was because she was scared to be a grown-up. By the time she got into her graduate program, it felt like a mismatch but went on to pursue studies for three years.

The Misdiagnosis

At 25 years old, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson was supposed to have elective surgery during the summer of 2004. But the night before surgery, her doctor called and reported that her pre-op bloodwork showed abnormalities.

Postponing the surgery, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson was instructed to see a primary doctor who diagnosed her with leukemia.  She was fearful and overwhelmed with the news.

Things took a drastic turn when two years later, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson found out it was a misdiagnosis. However, by that time, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson had already been taking medication wherein she was given a pill to target whatever the genetic abnormality was. And one of the side effects of the pill was nausea. 

Taking Control

Because nobody listened to her, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson began to emerge from the dark cloud that hung over her.  As a result, she began to seek alternative ways of healing her body.

Lyn Delmastro-Thomson got a different primary doctor outside the student health clinic. This what when the new doctor said she was misdiagnosed with leukemia. It wasn’t long before Lyn Delmastro-Thomson filed a medical malpractice case against her previous doctor. But it didn’t end the way she liked it. Nevertheless, she didn’t regret filing a case because all she wanted was to hold the doctor accountable for his actions.

As for her new diagnosis, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson’s new doctor reported that she had a different type of blood disorder. Her body was making too many different cells in the blood. This includes platelets, white cells, and blood cells.

Coping With Depression

When Lyn Delmastro-Thomson was trying to recover her health, she returned to getting weekly biofeedback sessions. According to her, it was something she was exposed to at the age of 12 when horrific migraines took over her life.

To heal, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson began attending a “yoga for healing” class at a local studio in Santa Barbara. She used therapy to help her process grief, fear and overwhelming especially since it was around this time that her best friend suddenly passed away the following year.

Lyn Delmastro-Thomson realized life is short. She realized she could no longer pursue something that brought her no joy. So she quit her program and got a job while trying to figure things out.

She recalls that it was during one of her my weekly biofeedback sessions, that she realized what she wanted to do. She saw herself learning the approach and eventually helping others. Because of that. She found herself enjoying yoga for healing class more, and became excited to train to teach therapeutic yoga as well.

“After I got over depression, I realized I was just terrified. Because I didn’t know how to process any of the things that happened for the past year and a half,” said Lyn Delmastro-Thomson. “It felt everything in my life was falling apart. At one point I wanted to die, but I realized I didn’t want to die.”

She adds, “I didn’t know how to handle everything because I had no tools to process it. Part of it is going to a therapist and talking to them about how I was healing. I was fortunate to have a therapist who introduced yoga for healing.”

Benefits Of Yoga

According to Lyn Delmastro-Thomson yoga helped her find things that felt positive and good. Her yoga teacher worked a lot with people with cancer. That’s why her focus was on assisting people to find ease and comfort in their body.

“One of the breakthroughs for me was when I was in a biofeedback session. I saw myself as the practitioner and doing this with somebody else. I see the same way about yoga because I found it beneficial for myself and eventually my clients,” said Lyn Delmastro-Thomson. 

Pivotal Year

Lyn Delmastro-Thomson says 2007 was a pivotal year. She stepped out of the graduate program, had a job and had help insurance. Then she decided to take up a psychology program, where she studied for two years to get her Masters’ degree.

Ultimately, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson learned a lot from the program.  It was primarily about honoring the fact that there is an interconnection between the body and the mind. Plus, it also got she intrigued with the concept of combining dance and therapy.

When Lyn Delmastro-Thomson started practicing, she encountered something called BodyTalk Access at a networking event. It was through a woman who was a practitioner. Lyn Delmastro-Thomson remembered her a year later when she developed a pain on her left knee.

Despite trying Holistic approaches, nothing worked.  Until Lyn Delmastro-Thomson got in touch with the woman who quickly got the root of what was going on.

“She facilitated something which was active memory techniques. It helps the brain process and dissociates whatever trauma and emotion are blocked from that experience,” said Lyn Delmastro-Thomson.

BodyTalk Access

According to Lyn Delmastro-Thomson, BodyTalk Access is created by Dr. John Veltheim who is from Australia. Dr. John Veltheim is a chiropractor, acupuncturist, philosopher, Reiki Master, lecturer, and teacher.

It was in the 90’s when Dr. John Veltheim first developed BodyTalk Access. Like Lyn Delmastro-Thomson, he developed the program in an attempt to resolve his health issues.

Dr. John Veltheim eventually found a simple technique to correct his condition.  Because of this breakthrough, he improved it and started training instructors so the system could be taught to people who needed to be treated.

Listening To Your Body

Lyn Delmastro-Thomson says that to understand your body, it entails listening to anything from the immune system, allergy and energetic part of your body. And her role is helping clients understand the situation.

“The body is telling its story to the practitioner, and then I’m sharing that story. This is what your body is communicating to me about why you’re having these particular issues. It’s a layer by layer process,” said Lyn Delmastro-Thomson.

Client’s Progress

Lyn Delmastro-Thomson says that the end point of her program depends on her clients. Because each person is different, and the program is customized, it isn’t possible to achieve results within the same time frame.

“Personally, this was my health care. Even if I’m not working on some big issue, I would need some maintenance like occasional acupuncture or massage,” said Lyn Delmastro-Thomson.

She adds, “I typically work with clients for six months to a year. This applies to most of my clients with chronic illness or autoimmune disease. I speak to people twice a month since it is a period for integration between sessions of the body.”

You Are Not Your Diagnosis

Lyn Delmastro-Thomson’s book You Are Not Your Diagnosis is a memoir of what she went through.  It also contains tips on being cautious about what language we use because our words are powerful.

“It’s like you’re claiming ownership. There are tips on how to talk about chronic illness or chronic diagnosis without reinforcing it into your reality with the words that you use,” said Lyn Delmastro-Thomson.

Aside from that, the book also contains strategies for people to implement, to take control of their health and heal without band-aids or pills. Her book is an excellent resource for people trying to recover.

She cites another excellent book, The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton.  The book will help you understand the importance of positive thinking, so you can truly heal.

BodyTalk Access Class

For those who are in the Portland, Oregon area, you’re in for a treat! Because on September 14, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson is conducting a self-care protocol from 9 am to 5 pm.

The protocol is pretty simple. It only takes around ten minutes a day and involves five techniques. First is the Cortices, which is a Brain-Balancing Technique. It is followed by Switching or Stress Level Balance.

The third technique is learning to balance hydration. The fourth is about Body Chemistry, to help balance the immune system. Last but not the least is Reciprocals, to help re-establish the integrity of the body’s structures, improve postural alignment, increase flexibility and circulation of fluids and energy.

Simple Technique

Here’s how to condition your body to heal.  According to Lyn Delmastro-Thomson, this can be done in ten minutes or less.

1. Breathe deeply. Inhale and exhale while being present and aware.

2. Do a body scan from top of the head all the way down. Notice the areas where there is tension anywhere in the body.

3. Ask is there anything that area wants from you or asking for.

Power Of The Mind

Like many experts, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson says our brain is powerful.  To get well, you have to believe that it will work.

“When somebody is dealing with something like chronic illness, the first thing that’s important is realizing that it doesn’t have to be your reality,” said Lyn Delmastro-Thomson. “Doctors come from a perspective of what they observed and learned in medical school, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will happen to you. You can shape things by believing your body can heal.” 

Bio

Lyn Delmastro-Thomson has a master’s degree in somatic psychology and is a Certified BodyTalk Practitioner and BodyTalk Access Trainer. After being misdiagnosed with leukemia at the age of 25, she became a curious explorer of a wide variety alternative medicine approaches. 

In this process, Lyn Delmastro-Thomson discovered her life’s work: supporting women living with life-changing diagnoses to find true healing so they may thrive beyond their diagnoses. She lives in the Portland, Oregon area and is an avid ballroom and Latin dancer, pianist, wife, and a proud mom to a puppy (Chico) and kitten (Cannoli).

Get Connected With Lyn Delmastro-Thomson!

Official Website

BodyTalk Access

You Are Not Your Diagnosis Book

Facebook

Recommended Reading by Lyn Delmastro-Thomson

The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton

 

 

************************************
Need Help Ordering The Right Supplements For You?

Visit TakeYourSupplements.com, and a FREE health coach will help you!
http://takeyoursupplements.com

************************************
Learn How To Achieve Optimal Health From Naturopathic Doctors!

Get Learn True Health's Seven-Day Course For FREE! Visit go.learntruehealth.com
http://go.learntruehealth.com/gw-oi

************************************

Become A Health Coach-Learn More About The Institute for Integrative Nutrition's Health Coaching Certification Program by checking out these four resources:

1) Integrative Nutrition's Curriculum Guide:
http://geti.in/2cmUMxb

2) The IIN Curriculum Syllabus:
http://geti.in/2miXTej

3) Module One of the IIN curriculum:
http://geti.in/2cmWPl8

4) Get three free chapters of Joshua Rosenthal's book:
https://bit.ly/2wgkLOU

Watch my little video on how to become a Certified Health Coach!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDDnofnSldI

************************************

Do You Have Anxiety? End Anxiety Now! Learn Two Powerful Mind Tricks for Removing Anxiety, Ending Worry, & Controlling Fear So It Stops Controlling You! Attend my FREE Webinar that Will Teach You How! Click Here!

http://FreeYourAnxiety.com/webinar

************************************

Do you have a blood sugar issue? I can help you achieve healthy, normal and balanced blood sugar naturally!

Visit BloodSugarCoach.com for your free 30min coaching call with Ashley James!

http://www.BloodSugarCoach.com
************************************
I made a low-carb, gluten-free cookbook just for you!

Download your FREE copy today!

Visit learntruehealth.com/free-health-cookbook
http://learntruehealth.com/free-health-cookbook

************************************
Join Learn True Health's Facebook community group!
Visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/LearnTrueHealth
or search Learn True Health on Facebook!

************************************

If this episode made a difference in your life, please leave me a tip in the virtual tip jar by giving my podcast a great rating and review in iTunes!
http://bit.ly/learntruehealth-itunes

Thank you!
Ashley James
http://bit.ly/learntruehealth-itunes

************************************
Enjoyed this podcast episode? Visit my website Learn True Health with Ashley James so you can gain access to all of my episodes and more! LearnTrueHealth.com
http://learntruehealth.com

************************************
Follow the Learn True Health podcast on social media! Share with your friends and spread the word! Let's all get healthier & happier together!

Learn True Health - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2LearnTrueHealth
Learn True Health - Twitter: https://twitter.com/learntruehealth
Learn True Health - Medium: https://medium.com/@unstoppable_ashley
Learn True Health - Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/healthpodcast
Learn True Health - YouTube: http://bit.ly/LTH-YouTube-Subscribe

************************************
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2LearnTrueHealth
Twitter: https://twitter.com/learntruehealth
Medium: https://medium.com/@unstoppable_ashley
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/healthpodcast
YouTube: http://bit.ly/LTH-YouTube-Subscribe

Get on the new Learn True Health newsletter by scrolling to the bottom of my site LearnTrueHealth.com

https://learntruehealth.com

 

Check Out My Latest Book: Addicted To Wellness

https://www.learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness

 

Get The Minerals Your Body Needs: TakeYourSupplements.com

https://takeyoursupplements.com

 

Join Troy for his free weekly Zoom calls by getting on his newsletter at:
Startorganic.org

404 Nine Things You Can Do Now To Have Fantastic Hormone Health In The Second Half of Your Life, Perimenopause Redefined and Preparing For A Healthy Menopause with Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner Jill Chmielewski

"As a registered nurse, certified functional medicine practitioner, and mom of four, I bring together a unique blend of clinical, holistic, and personal experience to guide midlife mamas to greater wellbeing, one tiny edit at a time.
Even the subtlest of symptoms are your body's way of telling you that something needs attention. I'm on a mission to help you get to know your body, balance your hormones, and to address the root cause of your symptoms so that you can master the wild ride from peri to menopause with greater ease."

Get your free module from IIN learntruehealth.com/coach
Jill's Website - https://www.jillchmielewski.com

 

Perimenopause and Menopause

https://www.learntruehealth.com/perimenopause-and-menopause

Highlights:

• Perimenopause and menopause
• Addressing hormone issues would make the symptoms go away
• Food and lifestyle perspective are going to shift our hormones in different ways
• Detoxification is a huge part of hormones and hormone balance
• Good circadian rhythm help with hormonal rhythm
• Direct correlation between lack of sleep and hormone imbalances
• Hormone building happens at night when we sleep
• Stress has a domino effect on every other hormone in our body
• There is no quick fix for health and hormone balance issues
• Periods are now considered the fifth vital sign
• Hormonal decline with your period is normal
• Estrogen and progesterone need to be balanced in order for women to feel good
• Balanced hormones are just as critical in midlife and late life as they were in reproductive years
• Hormones are needed in every cell of the body
• There’s a direct link between healthy hormones and longevity and also degenerative disease
• Perimenopause begins in the mid to late 30s

 

In this episode, we will talk about hormones and hormonal changes in the body (perimenopause and menopause). Know how stress and sleep affects the hormone levels in our body.

 

[00:00:00] Ashley James: Hello, true health seeker. And welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast.

Oh, my gosh. This was such a good interview. I’m really excited for you to hear it today. Jill is phenomenal. I’m not going to give too much away. But basically, every woman needs to listen to this. And men who are very interested in women’s health. But you know what? All the advice she gives, which is incredible for women’s health, it also applies to men. So just so you know, this is a wonderful podcast for everyone even though the topic is specifically on perimenopause and menopause. These lessons are applicable to creating health at any part in our lives. But even more important, the older we get.

I want to let you know about IIN. Jill and I discussed it briefly. This is one of the trainings that she took. She’s a nurse and she has her master’s. And then she did IIN to become a health coach., the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. This is the same online school that I went to, to become a health coach. And then she went on to do other programs because she wanted to dive deeper specifically into hormone health and functional medicine and functional nutrition. If you are interested in deeply exploring food as medicine, and emotional, mental, and physical health, and balancing your life, then take IIN’s course. You know half the people that take it -and I think it’s over 10,000 people a year take their course. Half the people that take it do it for their own personal growth. And I would have done it for my own personal growth as well. But I also did it to deepen my career and my ability to do these interviews. And also, work with clients and help them. But I see that. I see that I would have just done it for my own personal growth. So if you want to really dive into something to get your health to the next level, emotionally and mentally, and also physically, consider doing IIN. It’s a wonderful year of your life. It’s about 20 minutes a day, basically. So it’s totally doable even for busy people, about 20 minutes a day. You can listen to the lectures. You don’t have to watch them. You can listen to them while you’re driving, while you’re exercising, while you’re doing laundry, or cooking. And you can absorb all that wonderful information and apply it to your life. It’s an entire year to transform your life.

So I highly recommend checking out the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. My listeners get $1,500 dollars off. That’s a huge chunk of the tuition. And you can go to learntruehealth.com/coach. That’s learntruehealth.com/coach to get a free module and see if it’s right for you. You can also Google IIN and give them a call. All the people you talked to on the phone are graduates. That’s been my experience. Many of their staff are graduates. I’ve interviewed their CEO. And I’ve interviewed several of their staff members. All have wonderful stories. So if you’re interested in becoming a health coach, you should absolutely do IIN.

But if you’re not interested in becoming a health coach and you just really are focusing on your health and your family’s health, IIN is also great for that. It’s a wonderful way to really deepen your knowledge and apply it to your life. So check it out. Go to learntruehealth.com/coach and get your free module. See if it’s right for you. See if it’s something that would enrich your life. It enriched mine. That’s why I love sharing it with my listeners. There’s been over a hundred listeners who have gone through IIN and have shared with me the amazing changes in their life. Some of them went on to become health coaches. Or some of them were already in the health field and they added this like a tool to their tool belt. And others used it to help themselves and their family. So it’s wonderful. And it’s not only food. Although they do teach a hundred dietary theories and show you how to use food as medicine. But it’s also learning, emotional, mental, spiritual health, and figuring out how to get that balance in your life so that you can increase the joy in your life. Decrease the stress. And feel happy about every aspect of your life.  Feel satisfied and fulfilled and passionate about every aspect of your life. So if you feel like that’s missing in your life right now, then consider checking it out. It’s a wonderful personal growth and health program.

IIN, Google it or go to learntruehealth.com/coach and check it out.

Awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast. Please share it with everyone, all your girlfriends, especially those in their 30s and beyond, 30s and 40s and beyond. Because we want to do everything that Jill teaches us today right now. Even if you’re in your 20s, this is going to help you. Start doing all the steps. She teaches nine points today. And if you do these nine points, you absolutely will see a positive shift in your hormone health and in the golden years of your life. We want to have high, high quality of life for the second half of our life. But we have to prepare for it now. And build a strong foundation of health now. That’s what you’re going to learn today in today’s interview. So enjoy and have a wonderful, wonderful rest of your day

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 404.

I am so excited for today’s guest. We have with us Jill Chmielewski. Her website is jillchmielewski.com. Don’t worry, the correct spelling of that will be in the show notes of today’s podcasts at learntruehealth.com.

Jill I’m so excited for today’s interview. You have some amazing credentials. Your focus is on helping women to prepare for menopause and to have the healthiest perimenopause possible. And really looking at that later life. I’m about to be 40. So this is, like, definitely on my mind. But looking at starting in our late 30s preparing for how to have a really healthy hormone balance for the rest of our life. And that you teach us how to do that. I know you’re launching a new digital course providing support for a whole community of women to help them with all the steps they need to achieve the healthiest hormone balance possible for the second half of their life. And I think that’s brilliant. This is a topic that really, really, really needs to get out there.

Especially, because so many doctors, when you go to them, will tell you, “Oh, your symptoms are normal.” Dry vagina or weird PMS symptoms, or weight gain even though you’re exercising like crazy, headaches, just the list goes on and on and on. And doctors will just say, “Oh, this is normal.” Or, “Here, take the pill.” And just they’ll kind of sweep it under the rug or try to give you a drug instead of really – because they’re not truly educated on how to support us in achieving optimal health. They’re good at handling infections, they’re good at handling emergency medicine. But they’re really, really not good at helping us to achieve optimal health.

And you are a specialized in helping women to balance hormones and have absolutely optimal hormone levels their entire lives. So, Jill, welcome to the show. And I’m so excited. You’re here today to teach us how to be super duper healthy women.

 

[00:07:46] Jill Chmielewski: Oh, my gosh. Thank you for that awesome introduction. I’m so excited to be here as well. And I think you said everything. I mean, you nailed it. It’s not that doctors don’t care. It’s just that they don’t know. I think that in their medical training. they’re focusing, especially our OBGYNs, are focusing on the reproductive years and helping women have babies or helping them with postpartum. But when it comes to that sort of second half, for most of us it’s probably about a third of our lives, that will spend in perimenopause or menopause. They just don’t have the education or the expertise to, maybe, help walk women through that period of life or prepare them for that period of life. So I think everything you said is right on point. 

 

 

[00:08:25] Ashley James: But even though it’s like the last third of our life – and you know what? If we ate super healthy, we have the genetic potential to live to be 120. So it could be like more than half. But think about it, I love that your message and your approach is to prepare. Like preparing our 30s for things like the foundations of health, eating healthy, making sure we are fully nutrified, making sure we’re checking in on our emotional and mental health, getting enough sleep. Just these everyday little tiny things will prepare us for better health in the second half of our life. And in our 30s is when we tend to really throw our body under the bus and not listen to the symptoms of our body. And just self medicate with caffeine and alcohol and over the counter medication. Because we want to go, go, go, go, go. And we’re robbing ourselves of the quality of life in the second half of our life by neglecting ourselves now.

And so I love that your message is there’s lots we can do now.  Even if we’re in our 20s and 30s and 40s, there’s lots we can do now to ensure that we have amazing hormone health later on.

 

 

[00:09:37] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. I mean, that’s so true. And that’s something that I don’t think even as a nurse – and I’ve been a nurse for almost 27 years. And I’ve you know worked primarily in women’s health. And this notion that we can do something to actually help support our hormones really never came up in any of my training until I went into the functional medicine realm. And you and I were talking before the show, I mean food has a huge impact. Our lifestyle choices have a huge impact. But I think with physicians, oftentimes, we’re looking to our physician for education about what’s next. And we kind of see the reproductive years as one segment of life. And then menopause as the next phase. And that doesn’t come until we’re, you know, 50 or 60.

Well, for most of us, the hormonal changes start to happen in our mid to late 30s. We may be even still getting pregnant in our mid to late 30s. But the hormone changes are starting then that start to kick off perimenopause. And so yeah, there’s a whole lot that we can do that we need to start paying attention to much, much earlier than when actual menopause, the point at which we no longer get periods happen. So we’ll talk about, I think, a lot of it today during the show.

 

 

[00:10:47] Ashley James: Yay. Now, you were a nurse for many years. And then I really want to get into your story. Just before we get into the education part, I want to understand a bit more about your background. And what happened to have you want to become an expert in balancing hormones? So there you were a nurse for so many years. And I know you also have your masters as well. Walk us through your professional life. What happened that had you want to go into health coaching and functional nutrition coaching?

 

 

[00:11:22] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. Thanks. So I think early on, I mean, I can remember even way back in my 20s when I was working in medicine. I was working as a neonatal ICU nurse. And then I sort of transitioned into women’s health and infertility, reproductive endocrinology and infertility. And I can remember thinking at the time, that there was just such a huge disconnect. I mean, I felt the disconnect that there was, on one hand, we were just treating women who had infertility with medication. And behind the scenes, we didn’t talk about nutrition. We didn’t talk about lifestyle. We didn’t talk about any of the other things that kind of come into play with hormones. I think that was the first moment where I started to have some of those aha moments about that this was an area that I knew that prevention, and education, and looking at things beyond traditional medicine might be helpful.

And I went on to have four kids really close together. I stayed home for a few years. And then I went back to work and went back into nursing for a while for several years. And what really kicked me off into going into this realm sort of alternative medicine or integrative medicine is my oldest daughter, who’s now going to be 20 this year. Struggled her whole life with asthma, and allergies, and digestive issues. And when I was pursuing conventional medicine physicians to get some help for her, it wasn’t that they didn’t want to help her. I think they didn’t know how to help her. They ran a test for celiac disease and said, “Well, you know, she doesn’t have celiac.” So kind of like sent us on our way. “She has digestive issues. We’ll just kind of send you on your way.” And so I think the mama bear in me started doing some research. And it sort of opened Pandora’s box where I knew I needed to know more and learn more to help her.

And once I did and was able to help her, I started wanting to get deeper and deeper into integrative medicine. And so I started actually took my training to a formal venue. And so I went back to school. And I went to the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. And when I was there, I would say about halfway through my training there, I had a lecture by Dr. Robin Berzin. And I don’t know if you know her, but she’s a functional medicine practitioner. She’s the founder of Parsley Health, which is an amazing medical practice. And she was the one that really connected the dots for me in terms of what functional medicine was. Which is I know you’ve had guests on your podcast before that have talked about functional medicine. But for listeners that don’t know, it’s really just looking at the root cause of symptoms as opposed to just treating symptom by symptom. It’s sort of looking at like, what is really causing symptoms in the body. And so she turned me on to functional medicine. And I started down that path and sort of couldn’t get enough. And I think just by default, because I was working with clients and I tended to attract women as clients, I started to see over and over and over again that when I was doing their intakes and we would sit and talk through symptoms and health histories, hormones were really at the core of the bulk of their problems and symptoms. And most of these women happen to be in that 35, 40, 45, 50 kind of that perimenopausal-menopausal range. And I started to really, I guess, just get really excited about the fact that, well, just addressing hormone issues would make these symptoms go away.

And so I sort of started to, I want to say, kind of put myself in that hormone specialist bucket. But it’s something that I just love. And I think that physicians don’t always see the connection when women are being seen. They’re often looking at symptoms in a different way. Rather than looking at how a deficiency in one hormone can affect all different systems in the body. And so for me, it just sort of, I think, when I talk about hormones or think about hormones, for me, it sort of brings everything together. And you can see how hormones work so deeply in the body. And so I’ve really – this is where I feel I where I work with clients and I think that this is where I’ll probably hang my hat is really in the hormone world.

 

 

[00:15:26] Ashley James: So went to IIN. I went to IIN.

 

 

[00:15:30] Jill Chmielewski: I know you went to IIN. That’s awesome.

 

 

[00:15:32] Ashley James: Yeah. So that was that was your first. Now, you’ve done other – you have other training that you’ve taken since IIN. I think IIN is a wonderful school like as a launching pad for people who want to become health coaches. I feel like it’s the first thing people should do. And then go specialize in something. So I love that that’s what you did. So halfway through the first six weeks in IIN, like halfway through it, that’s when you saw this lecture. Was it was it a lecture in IIN or was it something you stumbled upon?

 

 

[00:16:08] Jill Chmielewski: It was. It was in IIN. I don’t know if you remembered, you probably had the same lecture, I think. It’s Dr. Robin Berzin. I think there were multiple practitioners at IIN who presented who talked about functional medicine. But for some reason, something about her and maybe because she had been more of a mainstream physician first. I don’t know, everything she talked about really resonate. All of a sudden I was like, “Oh, my gosh.” It was like all the stars aligned. And I feel like the last 20 years, 20 plus years of conventional medicine all made sense or just the body. Just it all came together.

 

 

[00:16:40] Ashley James: Yes. I feel like when I did IIN, that’s what happened to me too. So much stuff. So many of these separate pieces in my mind just came together and started making sense in a whole new way. It was really cool. I jumped into IIN because of an interview I did. It was within the first few months of launching the podcast. I was interviewing at a health coach. And it’s so funny because I never really heard of health coaches. And I’m like. “Who is this guy? He wants to be on the show. He calls himself a health coach.” And I thought that was so hokey. I thought this was something made up. Like, you just call yourself a health coach. And he was great. It was a really, really good interview. And then I said,” Well, how did you become one?” During the interview, I said, “How do you become one?” And he started talking about IIN.

And by the end of it after we got off Skype, I called up IIN. I went to the website. I was really impressed by all the teachers that they listed. And then I called them and after talking to my husband, he’s like, “Go for it. Go for it.” I signed him that same day. I was like, “Dang.” I signed up that same day. And I immediately jumped into sort of watching the foundation, like the pre-course that they give you. And I was bawling my eyes out. I felt so inspired. In every single video, I felt like I had found my people. I felt like “Oh my gosh. I belong. This is so great.” So it pulled together a lot of pieces for me.

And what’s really neat is during it, because every week you want to try a different diet because you’re learning about all these different diets. Food as medicine. But during it, my husband was listening kind of in the background. And he chose to go 100 percent whole food plant based vegan. He was a carnivore. He would only eat meat pretty much. And somewhere during my journey through IIN, he said to me, “I’m no longer eating meat.”

 

 

[00:18:30] Jill Chmielewski: Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh.

 

 

[00:18:31] Ashley James: So our lives have really changed. That was two years ago. And so our lives have really changed since IIN. Ad I’ve interviewed a lot of people -a lot of the lectures. So I’m going to have to get Robin on the show now that you say that,

 

 

[00:18:43] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. She’s wonderful. Oh, my gosh. She’s wonderful.

 

 

[00:18:46] Ashley James: So there you were. You watched Robin. And all the pieces came together for you. And then you went on to take some more courses in functional medicine – or functional nutrition specifically. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

 

 

[00:19:06] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. You know, it’s funny. And you probably – this probably resonates with you having gone through IIN. Once you know sort of this other side of the world and the side of learning the body and all these things, you just want to know more. I mean, it’s almost like you can’t stop. And I think a lot of health coaches would say, “It’s almost hard to put the brakes on learning.” Even though it’s so fun to be a lifelong learner, sometimes you just want to stop and digest and sit with it for a little while. But I think at the point I was at, I was so excited about what I had learned with IIN that I went on. Do you know Andrea Nakayama? I can never say her name quite right.

 

 

[00:19:39] Ashley James: Gosh. That sounds really familiar.

 

 

[00:19:41] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. So she has a functional nutrition program. And I did her program almost right after IIN. And I really enjoyed it. I think it was very nutrition focused. Definitely, very, obviously, a lot of biology, physiology, all that stuff. But I had heard about the School of Applied Functional Medicine somewhere in the midst of all this. And so I took just sort of like IIN, a little sample class at the School of Applied Functional Medicine. And that’s where I felt like, “Okay. This is it.” Because I think having been a nurse for as long as I have been, I have a pretty – I’ve been in the medical world for a long time. So I wanted a deeper understanding. Where I think there are people that take these courses who do not have a medical background. But it would be difficult. It’s a really big learning curve if you don’t have a medical background.

 

 

[00:20:27] Ashley James: Right. Whereas IIN, you don’t need a medical background at all. But when you get into functional nutrition, definitely you want a medical background or it would help.

 

 

[00:20:38] Jill Chmielewski: It helps. That’s right. It helps. I think if you’re a really dedicated learner, you can do it. But you’re listening to lectures over and over and over. And even I have to say, I still go back to lectures that I learned when I was at the School of Applied Functional Medicine just to get one more nugget or piece of information to kind of help me maybe solidify some of my learnings So yeah, I’ve sort of halted it now. I’m certified in functional medicine from the School of Applied Functional Medicine. And now I’m just taking it and really – I do some hormone – I definitely have done some specialty hormone courses there. And I’ve done sort of one off hormone trainings. And will continue to do that. But as they say, I think when you are trying to teach other people or educate other people, you just have to be a few steps ahead of them to hold the lantern. I meant that sort of I know a lot. I don’t know everything. But I know enough to definitely help women prepare for this time of life and to start to understand what they need to do. It’s sort of like what to expect what you’re expecting. But we don’t think about it that way.

It’s like, we’ll do everything to prepare for a baby that’s coming. Or even a puppy, if we’re going to get a new puppy. But when it comes to this period of life, I don’t think we think about what we need to do to prepare for this next phase in life. So that’s sort of where I step in is really trying to help women understand the changes that are coming so that they can prepare for them. And then helping them to understand what can they do from a food and lifestyle perspective, from a hormone perspective, maybe a hormone replacement perspective. Although I’m not an expert in it but I definitely know quite a bit about hormone replacement. And also, how to find a practitioner that can help guide you through this next chapter of life.

 

 

[00:22:22] Ashley James: Do you do any lab tests?

 

 

[00:22:26] Jill Chmielewski: I kind of walk a fine line with that because it’s a scope of practice issue, where clients will bring me labs and we’ll talk about them. I can educate them on generally what labs mean. You know, “Hey, if your white blood count is this, sometimes it can be this.” Or, “If your fasting glucose is elevated, it’s probably time to start making some changes in your diet.” So I can do some – I know the information. It’s sort of like I need to practice within my scope of practice as a health coach and also as a nurse. So nurses, part of our job is to really educate patients on what’s happening in their body. And so I’m very well versed in working with labs. But again, I try to sort of keep the deep lab work to the physicians because I think that’s just – from a liability perspective, it’s just a better place to be.

 

 

[00:23:18] Ashley James: Got it. I’m in the middle of taking this course from Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. I have a feeling this might be the next one you’re going to take.

 

 

[00:23:25] Jill Chmielewski: Uh-huh. I know that program. I mean, I haven’t taken it but I know what you’re talking about.

 

 

[00:23:28] Ashley James: Yeah. Yeah. I just paused. I was doing it for a few months and then I paused it to launch the Learn True Health Home Kitchen that I was telling you about. Because we’ve been filming all these great cooking videos and we’re going to be launching it really soon. And then I’ll go back to complete the FDN. I like that it’s student led. But yeah, they teach you how to read labs. Functional labs, like not the regular ones but the hormones and stuff like that. But there’s so much you can do without labs. Because you’re looking at the lifestyle of the person and you’re helping them to fill in those gaps and help them find what’s missing.

So let’s get into that. Because you got nine steps, the nine different points that we want to make sure we get to that really, really will help set us up for better health. So no matter who’s listening – the men that are still here, I love you. I have to say that. The men that are still listening are really awesome because they’re probably listening because they’re just curious. But they’re also probably listening because they want to help the women in their life, which I think is just really admirable and I love you for it. And all the women that are listening, no matter what age you are, you’re going to take some great information away. So maybe even if you’re postmenopausal or you’re 17, it doesn’t matter because the stuff that Jill teaches really is applicable to all women. But specifically, it’s really going to help women prepare for perimenopause and menopause. So take it away. What things should we make sure that we do or know to best prepare ourselves to have healthy hormones?

 

 

[00:25:16] Jill Chmielewski: Well, I think the first thing is just kind of pausing for a second and for women to understand that they are going to have to be advocates for themselves. I mean, healthcare has changed so much since I started as a nurse. And it had already sort of started its transition even back then. But long gone are the days where you sit with your doctor for 45 minutes and have conversations about your health and your mental health and your wellbeing and other things. Unless, you’re working with a functional medicine physician and they do design their visits that way. But I think these days the visits are very limited with physicians. It’s really not their fault. It’s like a ten minute slot. And I have a lot of Physician friends who are, you know, they’re burnt out. And they know that they are not able to provide their patients with the care that they need because they’re so limited by insurance and other things that dictate care.

But I think women need to know, you have to be an advocate for yourself. And that means you have to start educating yourself. And you don’t have to get – it can be confusing. And I think that’s the hard part of this time in life that we’re so fortunate to have so many resources health-wise and wellness-wise. But there’s a lot of wellness noise. And so you get a little bit like, “Okay. Which diet? You know, which -” there’s so much going on. You really don’t know which way to go. So I think find, I guess, somebody who resonates with you. It could be me, it could be somebody else, who really is geared toward women. And start to learn about what’s going to happen in this next phase of life. And to your point, you can start doing this in your 20s, in your teens, just to kind of get prepared for the next step.

But I think women when they feel – women are very intuitive, as you know. And so if you go to your doctor and you feel like something isn’t quite right and they tell you, “You know what? Hey, it’s part of aging.” And I hear that all the time from my clients who say, “I went to my doctor. I told them I was tired. I told them that my hair was falling out.” Or, “I’m gaining weight.” Or whatever it might be. And they’re just told, “You know what? Hey, it’s part of aging.” And I think if you understand what potentially could be happening in your body at this period of life, you’ll be a much better advocate for yourself. You’ll feel more confident standing up for yourself. And you’ll feel more confidence saying to your doctor, “You know what? I know there’s something else going on. Can you help me with this?” So I would say number one is just having women be strong advocates for themselves.

 

 

[00:27:38] Ashley James: I love that you bring up to advocate for ourselves and to build our team. I think we were raised to put doctors on a pedestal and to genuflect to them, to to bow down, and to give over our power. And especially as women, we have to look at where do we lose our power? Where do we give over our bodies to medical professionals? And where do we feel helpless? Because I think in our society, we’ve been trained to feel helpless. And that’s something that we’re breaking now. We’re breaking through that. It’s still left. Like, it’s still – there’s just a little bit of residual. So we need to look at like, are there ever any times with medical professionals where we feel helpless or we feel like we’re children again? I think it’s why we feel so warm and fuzzy about hospitals, like they’ll just take care of me. Because there’s like a child inside us that just wants our parents to take care of us. And I think that’s what we do is we project onto doctors this parental role. Like, “Just take my temperature and just give me the medicine, Mommy, Daddy. And just tell me what to do and I’ll be fine.”

And this giving up of our power is  something that’s reinforced in society because of media, because of the way the AMA wants it. They want – the way the marketing is they want – and this is very setup. This has been set up for over a hundred years, if you look at the history of the AMA and modern medicine in all of their marketing, they want us to put doctors and hospitals on a pedestal. Do not question them. Even if you watch mainstream media and you watch TV shows, they’ll make fun of patients who question, patients who step outside the box. And they’re just little jabs because they want to continue this narrative that people who advocate for themselves are bad, disagreeable patients. That’s actually what they’ll put on your chart. You’re a disagreeable patient.

You want to be a disagreeable patient and here’s why. If you look at the statistics of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, they are ridiculous. They’re on the rise. One in three people has diabetes or pre-diabetes. One in three people will have a diagnosis of cancer in their lifetime. I mean, it’s astronomical the amount of disease. The number one killer is heart disease. If you want to be a statistic, keep doing what everyone’s doing. If you don’t want to be a statistic, you have to swim upstream, you have to be a salmon. And that means you have to advocate for yourself. And that doesn’t mean we have to be rude. Because I think that we’re really afraid as women to be – there’s a B word. We’re afraid of that. And again, that’s society. That’s the narrative to keep women in their place. And you do not have to be rude to be assertive. You can be kind, and gentle, and loving, and stand up for yourself, and be firm because you’re worth it.

And you’re allowed to fire your doctor and go find another one. You are allowed to. And you’re allowed to find a team and build the team of experts that are in alignment with your values. And that practice informed consent. And what that means i,s the doctor does not pressure you into a therapy or a medicine. If you ever feel guilted or shamed or pressured into anything by a doctor, then you need to leave that doctor and go find one that actually practices informed consent. Which means, they inform you of the positives and the negatives of the treatment, or of the procedure, or drug, or whatever avenue you’re choosing to take. They give you the entire story and they let you make the decision for you. And building a team of holistic health professionals and your MD, the whole team together and your OBGYN, building the team that empowers you and that they get that they’re not on a pedestal, then you are empowered the entire time. And then that way, you’ll also be informed the entire time. Because you can go to them and ask them questions and get them to inform you. And you can bring information to them that you hear on podcasts, or books, or read,studies and things like that. And you bring that information to them. And then if you’ve chosen your team well, they’ll be receptive to that information. Because they’re science minded, they’ll look at it and help you to decipher whether that’s a good approach for you or not based on the science.

So it does take an effort to build our team. But once you have, it’s just so wonderful. It feels so great to have these health care professionals who are empowering you towards better health than just giving up your power I’ve seen so many people put on the wrong medications and they suffered for it because they gave up their power and they didn’t advocate for themselves. So I love that this is your first point.

 

 

[00:33:10] Jill Chmielewski: I mean, you said it so well. And I think it’s a partnership. So I think, thinking about it that way that it really isn’t meant to be, like you said, somebody is on a pedestal and somebody is sort of down here. We’re equal trying to – I mean the goal at the end of the day is always that this person can be healthier and can be their best self. And if you have a Physician who is open and willing, they’re going to be working with you in partnership as opposed to trying to strong arm you or tell you what to do. So I couldn’t have said it better myself. I think that was great.

 

 

[00:33:44] Ashley James: Awesome. Well, I love it’s your first step. So now step number two.

 

 

[00:33:48] Jill Chmielewski: Okay. So step number two is probably the one that is, I think women are the most resistant to, and that is lifestyle. And I mean, I kind of will buck it. Lifestyle, food, all of that stuff, kind of into one. I think that women have this very unrealistic expectation that we can skip on sleep, we can eat crappy food, we’re going to keep, exposing ourselves to toxins, we’re going to over schedule ourselves, we’re going to be 24/7 on our devices, we’re going to eat inner minivans on the go, we’re going to be stressed all the time. And at the same time, we’re going to be thin, we’re going to have great se, we’re going to beautiful hair, we’re going to have great relationships, we’re going to have this really smooth transition into perimenopause and menopause, and everything’s going to be great.

You can’t have both. And I think you were talking earlier about kind of that giving somebody a pill to fix something. That we’re looking a lot of times women are saying, “What pill can I take for something?” And I think this is where lifestyle comes into play deeply. Because hormones, even if you give someone, let’s say, hormone replacement or something that may help to boost hormones. At the end of the day, biochemically in the body, the body is always trying to find a balance in hormones. So it’s going to shift hormones in the direction that it thinks it should go, regardless of what you give somebody. So sugar causes women oftentimes to make more testosterone. So different things that we do from a food and lifestyle perspective are going to shift our hormones in different ways. So we can’t just take a pill. We can’t just take supplements. We can’t just say, “I’m going to ignore the natural rhythm of my body.” Especially at this point in life and I think this is really that key point in life where everything comes to a head. If you’ve been ignoring these signs and symptoms along the way – and women often say to me, “Well, I just didn’t really pay attention.” And the thing is if you were to stop and listen, our body is constantly communicating with us. And it’s constantly sort of tapping us on the shoulder, giving us little whispers. Maybe not saying it outright but it is telling us in different forms. Like when we gained weight and we’ve changed nothing else, that’s telling us that something is happening in the body. When we’re fatigued, that’s telling us that something needs attention. If our hair is falling out, if we have really irregular periods, if we have really cloudy periods, heavy periods, terrible PMS, whatever it may be, that’s a sign that something is happening. And that’s how our body communicates with us. And it’s trying to say, “Hey, listen, I need help.” And if we keep ignoring it, which is what women often do.

And I think you said that in sort of your opening remarks that, we’re running around and we just kind of ignore ourselves. We ignore it. We put everybody else first. The kids come first. The kid’s schedules. We’ll sign the kids up for a million different things. But we won’t take time for ourselves. We won’t pay attention to our symptoms. We won’t actually make – we don’t have time for those lifestyle changes. And, unfortunately, we’re going to have to make time for those lifestyle changes if we want to feel good in perimenopause and menopause. It’s truly a must. I mean, there’s no way to actually make it through perimenopause and menopause well-unscathed to the other side and feel good and actually remain with our health intact without making some lifestyle changes. So that’s a big one. And I’m sure that’s probably a hard one for, maybe, your listeners to hear. But it’s something I think we’re – perimenopause is a five to 15 year transition. And I think that’s nature’s way of giving us a very generous window of time to kind of get our act together, slow it down, start to really think about what we need to prepare for this next phase in life.

 

 

[00:37:28] Ashley James: Yeah. What we need versus what we want. I want to stay up late but what I need is to go to bed.

 

 

[00:37:36] Jill Chmielewski: Exactly. And we all do it, right? We all do it at certain times. We just have to not do it daily.

 

 

[00:37:40] Ashley James: Totally. Totally. Like, you know what? The binging Netflix or Hulu, keep it to once a month or something. The staying up until 2:00 in the morning, maybe keep it to like – you know, limit that. I think it’s really easy to put the kids to bed and then be like, “Oh, now It’s me time.” And I’m totally guilty a bit. But I see so many of my mom friends up at midnight because this is the time when it’s like, “The house is quiet, we can do things.” Or just stay awake not doing anything but just have fun. And I know that on the days that I go to bed even with my son, if we go to bed early, even go to bed like at 9:00 or at 7:00, we go to bed really early, we are so much more productive and then so much happier the next day.

And I think that when we tend to stay up late and binge TV or whatever, that that shows that there’s – and I’m talking totally from personal experience – that shows that we feel like there’s a deficiency in joy in our life. You know what I mean? Because I think – what I would I do is I go, “Oh, this is my me time.” Or, “I’m going to have some fun now.” Or I’ll stay up like I did last night I stayed up working on this membership site that we’re launching really soon. And it’s temporary because we’re going to get it launched and then I don’t have to stay up really late working on it. And I’ll be able to work on it on normal business hours. So there’s times when we do it. But just this idea in my head I had to figure out, “Why am I staying up late every night?” I had to ask myself this. Like, “Why is it that I’m not going to bed at 9:00 or 10:00?” We really want to be asleep by 10:00.

They show that if you can be asleep by 10:00, you get the most amount of healing done, like the lungs. I think it’s between 10:00 and 1:00 or midnight where the lungs heal. And then other parts of the body are healing. And the brain really needs to go through two full sleep cycles. And if we go to bed at like midnight, we’re not getting those two sleep cycles. And I don’t I don’t set an alarm clock anymore because my son is our alarm clock. So I don’t get to sleep in. So a lot of families don’t get to sleep in. So really, if you go to bed early – and I did this with one of my clients who would stay up late working on her business after she put the kids to bed and then be exhausted the next day. And then it was really hard for her to make healthy choices or have enough energy to cook healthy food. And it compounded and it all started with making one change. And I said, “What if you went to bed with your kids.” Because, obviously as adults, we’ll wake up before the kids. And then you did all this work. Although the busy work like the emails and stuff you were going to do late at night. You do them at 5:00 in the morning with your tea or your coffee in the morning when you’re waking up. And she did that one change. And it was the domino effect that put everything in place in her life. She had more energy. She had more mental clarity. She actually began to lose weight. And of course, inflammation. She lost all that brain fog. She found that she was more productive in the morning. Like all the work that would take her two hours to do at night, actually took over a half-an-hour In the morning. Because she was fresh.

And so there’s so much to say about when you say that changing your lifestyle, like just these little changes. Like, what if you went to bed like two hours earlier and did everything you wanted to do. Just rearrange it and really put your sleep as priority. What if you just did this one change this month and just made sleep your priority? And then you could see what’s the ripple effect for the rest of your life. Because if you have the energy, then you might eat a little bit better, then you might exercise a little bit more, then you might be a little happier. And it can just compound from there. So I think that just saying something as simple as making sleep a priority, step one. So great.

And then like you said, not eat crap food. But you know what? When we’re tired, it’s really hard – it’s harder – I should say, it’s harder to make better health food choices when we’re walking zombies. So I really do think it starts with the sleep. And then after you’ve got sleep under control, then it’s the eating healthier. And then you said, limit exposure to toxins. And then don’t over schedule yourself. So ask yourself, what do you what do you need instead of what do you want. And then and then don’t stay connected 24/7. Put the phone down. And go for a walk in the forest with your kids. Do that on a regular basis. Like, get disconnected. So I love that you talked about that. Because that chronic stress – stress isn’t an emotion. But that chronic stress we’re putting on our body, we don’t feel it as an emotion. But we’ll feel it when our body is at its breaking point. So we have to address the stressors. Knowing that we actually don’t feel it. We don’t feel it necessarily. But you know what we do? We do feel it when it’s gone. Like when you’re on vacation, you’re like, “Oh, my gosh. This is so amazing.” You just feel so good. That’s because the stressors aren’t there. So we can feel it when it’s not there. But when we’re habituated, were adapted to constant chronic stress, that’s our new norm. So then we’re like – I’ve had so many people say to me, “I’m not stressed. I don’t feel stressed.” But they make these changes and then they’re like, “Wow. I can’t believe how much stress I was under. I didn’t know that.”

So I love that you pointed that out that this makes a big difference. Can you talk a little bit about why – biochemically, why does sleep and toxins and food and stress, why does that affect hormones and hormone health specifically?

 

 

[00:43:40] Jill Chmielewski: Well, I mean I love that you brought up sleep is that kind of first step. Because typically, when I work with clients, that’s always the first step. And I should say to that it can take – there’s no commitment. I think sometimes when you say to somebody lifestyle is something – we need to kind of work at lifestyle. They get like, “Oh, my gosh. She’s going to ask me to make a million changes at once.” And I think,like you said, slow, simple changes are really the best way to start. Because they sort of get themselves. You start one and then you do the other. I think sleep is one of the number one factors. Because sleep is when we do our critical metabolic waste cleanup of the day. We build hormones at nighttime while we’re sleeping. I mean, we’re making hormones, we’re detoxifying, we’re getting rid of things.  And detoxification is a huge part of hormones and hormone balance. We need to have really efficient detoxification to have really good hormone balance. And we need sleep – really adequate deep sleep. Really that sort of, I mean – ideally, we are – you know, this doesn’t happen. But ideally, we’re really sort of mimicking this – have a really good circadian rhythm where we are rising with the sun and sort of going to bed with sunset. Now, we don’t do that anymore. But the closer we can get to that, that’s going to definitely help with hormonal rhythm.

So the women that you were just alluding to – and I have a lot of friends too, where I’ll all get emails from them. I’ll look and it’s like 1:30 in the morning, “What is she doing up?” And it’s the same – I always get emails from her at 1:30. Every night to be cutting into sleep like that, you’re really just sort of wrecking the hormonal rhythm of the day. Cortisol – there’s a lot of different hormones that are involved. And they follow that sort of circadian rhythms. So when you’re cutting into sleep, that’s a big reason why sleep in and of itself, I mean, studies – there’s probably now hundreds, if not thousands, of studies that show a direct correlation between lack of sleep and hormone imbalances. There’s so many different reasons. But I would say, just the fact that we’re detoxifying and that we’ve got just so much going on with our circadian rhythm during the day and at night has a huge impact on our hormonal balance.

 

 

[00:45:59] Ashley James: You said that we make hormones at night. Do we make more hormones when we’re sleeping? I mean, if someone were to pull an all nighter, do they make less hormones? 

 

 

[00:46:08] Jill Chmielewski: They make less hormones. We make hormones at all different times, obviously, throughout the day. I mean, it’s a 24/7 type of situation. But a lot of the building happens at night when we sleep. Because our bodies are at rest. And so our body can focus on more important things. During the day, we’re running around like fools. And so nighttime is when our body can actually sort of – it’s like this workshop that’s kind of happening behind the scenes where we’re able to actually work on building hormones. A lot of our appetite hormones. Like you alluded to earlier, the appetite hormones, ghrelin and leptin, are critical that we get sleep at night. Otherwise, you do end up the next day with this sort of – we’ve all experienced that we’re up all night and you walk to the fridge every hour or the pantry looking for something to eat because those hormones are not in balance. So it’s sort of the signaling is off. So we need to sleep because the signaling is off as well. So we probably would need hours to get into all of the biochemical reactions behind it all. But I would just say sleep in and of itself is huge for building hormones, and for balancing hormones, and for ensuring that communication with hormones among hormones with each other, with different tissues of the body is happening and happening well.

 

 

[00:47:27] Ashley James: I think we could do an entire episode just on this number two – this section two. Because you mentioned toxins, toxic exposure and there’s like an entire episode right there. And I’ve had other guests talk about it. But the toxins like Bisphenol A, for example, or endocrine disruptors. And now there’s obesogens and there’s microplastics in water. Like, don’t drink bottled water that’s in plastic because there’s microplastics that are obesogens. And there’s estrogen mimicking plastics and toxins. There’s over 80,000 toxins in our food and water and air. And many of them are endocrine disruptors. And it’s scary because it could be your mattress could be off gassing obesogens. Your carpet could. Your furniture, if it has the flame retardants. And all cosmetics that are in plastic bottles, artificial fragrances and household cleaners, if they’re in plastic bottles, off gas and get into our air. The air quality in our home is ten times worse than the air quality out on the streets. And we’re breathing in these chemicals that are toxic to the body. And we don’t feel it on a regular basis. But it’s slowly disrupting our hormones and increasing our chances of cancer and hurting the thyroid. There’s so many things.

So really, like you said, lifestyle is huge. And as part of that sleep, eat healthier, don’t eat crap food, and reduce your toxic exposure. Don’t  over schedule yourself. But each one of these points could be like a whole episode. But it’s so critical. So I love that you addressed this. And that this is something that takes seriously. And again, it’s that shifting our mindset as women who – I’m totally guilty of this – shifting our mindset from putting ourselves last and dragging ourselves through the mud because we have kids, because we have a husband, because we have a career, putting everyone else first because we can. And this is also what we’re taught to do in society. We don’t celebrate taking time off to nurture ourselves. In society, it’s celebrated to burn the candles at both ends. And that’s because if you look at it, women are trying to – and this is over the last, you know, 30,40 years. Women are trying to make sure that we can have a career, that we can have everything we want, and we also want to have a family. And that means the we’re still kind of like holding on to this like 1950’s idea of what being a mom is. And this like 1980’s idea of like what being a career woman is. And try to do both at the same time and it just doesn’t work. So we have to lean – what we need is we need like the 1800’s idea of what it is to be a woman where we know that we’re not an island. We’re not doing this alone. We have to do this in a village. And we need to lean on each other.

And maybe that means that all of all of your girlfriends get together and you guys take turns carpooling and you take turns cooking dinners. Maybe you get five girlfriends together and each one of you cooks for the whole group. Or you get together once a week. My friend does this. She gets together with a girlfriend and they do meal prep. They do one day of cooking together and they cook all the meals. And they prep all the meals for both their families. So there’s ways that we can do it. But we have to do it together as a community. And find the girlfriends in your life that want to get healthy together and see how you can lean on – you know, lean on family and friends but don’t do this alone. Because that’s  going to help you to reduce the stress is to not do this alone.

 

 

[00:51:32] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. I mean, it’s such a great point. And I think the supporting – women with other women – and I find this and you, too, as a mom probably have seen this. I think really when a woman says, “No. I can’t do this.” Like let’s just say, of course at school, they’re always looking for volunteers or whatever it may be or signing kids up for things. When women say no, we need to respect that they just have enough on their plate. And I hear this from women all the time that there’s just this guilt that they should be doing this, and they should be doing that, and they shouldn’t be doing this, and all these things. And I think at some point it’s not selfish to think about yourself. It’s actually selfless. Because if you’re not here in good health, your whole family’s going to suffer. So you need to worry about yourself. So I think giving each other permission – because I hear it all the time where women ask another woman, “Be on this board with me. Or can you be on this committee or coach or this?” And somebody says no, and they’re like, “Can you believe she said no?” And it’s like, you know what? We, as women, need to support each other and respect that. That might just be one too many things for her right now. And that’s okay. And so taking that pressure off of each other will help a lot of us to feel less guilt about saying yes to things that we know are really outside of our bandwidth.

 

 

[00:52:49] Ashley James: Guilt and shame are as unhealthy as smoking. We have to get that to look at what we need versus what we want. I love that you said that. Because what we want is clean the entire house and do 25 things on our to do list. That’s what we want. But by the end of the day, if we’ve only done four, then we feel kind of defeated and we feel guilty or shame. And that is like we just sat down and started smoking cigarettes. It’s shame and guilt are really unhealthy. And they actually will hurt our hormones.

Can you explain why being in stress mode, and guilt, and shame – these are emotions. They’re not tangible. They’re not like this is a desk This is real. So we often don’t think that emotions can affect something physical like hormones .But can you explain why there’s a real link between staying in an emotionally stressed state and having poor hormone health?

 

 

[00:53:47] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. So I think when you think about stress or when I talk with women about stress, I think they automatically think it’s just the stress of everyday living. Stress from your body’s perspective, I think there’s just one stress response and that is the fight or flight mode, which most of us have heard of. And all that is, there’s a huge surge of adrenaline when something stressful happens. You’re walking across the street with your three year old, a car comes out of nowhere, luckily, we have the stress mode in our body so that we can very quickly get our child out of the way and everybody is safe. And so that’s kind of that short term stress mode. When we’re in long term stress, which is the case for most of us. I mean, our bodies are designed to be in short term stress. Quick bouts of stress and then we go back to a more relaxed state. And I don’t mean relaxed, like you’re kicking your feet up. But you’re not in constant, constant stress mode. When we’re constantly stressed, which we are, we have to think about stress in a different way. It’s the same fight or flight response.

So we get this huge surge of adrenaline. We get tons and tons of cortisol, which is our long term stress hormone. And cortisol affects all of the other hormones of our body. It affects progesterone, which is one of the hormones we make when we ovulate. It affects estrogen. It affects our thyroid hormone. It really has this huge effect. Our blood sugar hormone. So it really – stress in and of itself kind of throws us into a tailspin and we don’t even know it. And I think we often think of just those kind of overt stresses, like walking in front of a car coming out of nowhere. Or, “Hey, I got a really stressful email from my boss.” But emotional stress of maybe something that you can’t let go of from, maybe a friendship, something happened and there’s this thing kind of lingering or family member. Or it could be the stress of something physical. Maybe you have a food sensitivity or, you and I, were talking about dairy before the show, maybe dairy in your body creates an immune response and inflammatory response in the body. That’s actually stressful in the body and will also produce the stress response. So there’s a multitude of things that are constantly producing the stress response in our body. And every time we release these stress hormones, it’s like a domino effect. I mean, I think of it is like, you know, if you think of a symphony playing beautifully together, all of these different instruments. If one plays out of tune, it kind of ruins the whole piece. That’s how hormones work. If cortisol is up, up, up all the time, the rest of the hormones are going to be all over the place. And they’re going to be out of whack and out of balance. That’s why when we’re working with women, when I work with women, to help balance hormones, we can’t ignore stress or sleep. But stress is such a big factor because it literally has a domino effect on every other hormone in our body. So we have to address that.

 

 

[00:56:34] Ashley James: I love it. And it starts by doing little things. I think we could like get stressed out about stress.

 

 

[00:56:40] Jill Chmielewski: Yes. Very good. That is true. That is true. Don’t do that. Don’t do that.

 

 

[00:56:44] Ashley James: Yeah. No. It takes little changes. Like I said, try to go to bed an hour earlier or two hours early and just see what happens. Or just make those little changes. But I think starting – you’re right. Starting with sleep is the best because then we’ll have a little bit more energy and mental clarity to start making better food choices. And then we can start looking at the cleaning products in our house. And then we could just go down the list. So I know that you’re giving us this sort of checklist of things to do. Okay. What’s the point number three?

 

 

[00:57:14] Jill Chmielewski: So point three is, I think just the notion that there is no quick fix for health and hormone balance issues. And that you’re probably going to have to do some investigative work if you have had long standing hormone issues. And what I mean by that is, one of the best ways to know if you’ve had hormone issues coming into perimenopause is have you had irregular periods, funky periods, heavy periods, cloudy periods, skipped periods. I mean, periods, they’re now considered the fifth vital sign. So they are literally a reflection of what’s happening on the inside of our body.

So during the reproductive years, in general, if you’re having a period pretty regularly, we’re going to assume you’re ovulating. Some people aren’t ovulating. That’s a different conversation. But in general, if you’re getting a period, let’s say, with a lot of regularity it’s pretty manageable. If you’re not getting a lot of PMS, there’s nothing really crazy and symptomatic about it. Your hormones are probably pretty balanced. Because when you come into perimenopause, your hormones are going to start changing and periods may change. And that’s actually a normal part of perimenopause. But if you are coming into it and you’ve had period issues for years and years and years and years, it’s something that requires some attention. I would say to your listeners, if you’re in your 20s, early 30s, mid-30s, and you’re having period issues and you’ve had them for a long time, you probably want to start doing some investigative work now. Because those issues are only going to get worse. In perimenopause, you can expect hormone imbalances. And again, there is no quick fix in that moment. There are things that we can do to help support hormones. It’s going to be a little tumultuous and it’s going to be a little bit rocky just like puberty was. Because we think about perimenopause as sort of like reverse puberty. It’s like in puberty, your hormones are going on the up and up. In perimenopause, they’re on this kind of slow decline. And sometimes it’s a quick decline. But in most cases, it’s a little bit of a slower decline.

But I think this is that period in life where you’re going to want it sort of investigate anything that has been going on. Understand that there are no quick fixes. And that once you’ll want to probably – I think this is where building your team even before you hit perimenopause is really important. Because you want to address things that are happening now so they don’t get worse in perimenopause. And then as perimenopausal issues arise, and they will, I think there’s – I can’t imagine there’s a woman out there that has not had some type of a symptom during perimenopause. Some women go through rather unscathed. But most women are definitely dealing with hormonal issues at certain times. Sometimes worse than others. I mean, sometimes it’s going to be worse than other times during that perimenopausal journey. But I think addressing those things when you can, and then building your team, and understanding that there isn’t a quick fix. I think that’s a really good mentality to walk into perimenopause with.

 

 

[01:00:01] Ashley James: I love it. Awesome. All right. Point four.

 

 

[01:00:04] Jill Chmielewski: Point four, so kind of along the same lines. Understand that change is inevitable. Like, this is coming and you do have to prepare. So like I talked about earlier, like the puppy or the baby that’s coming, you get car seats and you have showers. And you do all these things for this baby that’s going to come because it’s so important you read every baby book. And then once the baby comes, you’re reading sleep books. Or maybe it’s some discipline books when they’re little, how to handle temper tantrums, and things like that. We tend to really, when it comes to other people in our life, will read, read, read, read. Or if somebody is second or life, will help investigate and see. Google, anything we can about whatever diagnosis they just got. But when it comes to perimenopause, we don’t prepare. It’s back to that whole notion that everyone else comes first and we come last. And I think part of it is the inherent nature of the fact that, we really didn’t even have – I don’t know when the word perimenopause sort of came to be. But I think, traditionally, when I was growing up and going through nursing school even, there was the reproductive years and then there was menopause. And there wasn’t perimenopause. So part of the issue is that, I don’t think women understand that there’s this period of time. It’s not like you’re a reproductive aged woman and all of a sudden one day you’re menopausal and hormones dropped off. But I wonder if that is how. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe that is the perception of some women.

So I think knowing that you have this period of time is coming and you need to start preparing for it. And I think when you’re prepared, like anything else, you’re just going to do better. Because one of the symptoms that comes up a lot, I’ve had clients that will just be in panic mode about irregular periods. “All of a sudden, I had really regular periods and then they’re irregular now.” And they tell their doctor and the doctor sends them for a vaginal ultrasound and then a biopsy. And then they put them on the birth control pill and all these things. And actually, irregular periods during perimenopause is normal. It’s a sign of hormones changing. So I think if we can take some of the panic out of the things that are coming and understand that some of these things are normal. Yes, you want to investigate if something seems like it’s really out of whack. But irregular periods, for instance, that is something we would expect in perimenopause. And if you know that, you can prepare. So when that starts to happen, you’re not freaking out and feeling like you need to have these really crazy tests done and all these other things. So I would say preparation is probably your next one.

 

 

[01:02:34] Ashley James: I like that you bring that up that it’s a window. Because you mentioned, when we prepare for a baby, we’re having a baby shower. And I would just imagine having this like menopause shower or perimenopause, shower. Like, what if we celebrated it? Like, “I got the news from the doctor already. I’m going to have a party with my girlfriends because I’m in perimenopause.” But it’s a slow transition. Your body slowly transitioning over.

When I was younger back in the 90s, Oprah, I guess she was going through menopause.

 

 

[1:03:06] Jill Chmielewski: I remember that. Yeah.

 

 

[01:03:07] Ashley James: And that was unheard of, to talk about menopause on TV. It was something that was shameful that you whisper it behind closed doors. It was not celebrated. And she brought it out into the open. I mean, she exposed a lot of stuff, hoarding, rape, incest, abuse. She exposed so much that’s in our culture as women and we felt ashamed to talk about it. And I love that. I love that she brought minute pause out into the open. I really feel that she single handedly brought it out into the open like Goddess out of the dark ages. And made it so we could freaking discuss it and  not be some this point of shame. And that it is something that we can actually celebrate.

And when we look at ancient cultures, because I’ve studied ancient cultures and ancient religion, before Christianity – and I’m not bashing any religion at all. It’s just looking at the history. But before like the Crusades, before Christianity, women in many cultures were the – I don’t want to say rulers – but the older women were the healers. The grandmothers were looked to, were the elders, were the leaders, they were looked to as women who were in their power. And when a woman went into menopause or was beyond the childbearing years, in certain cultures, they were actually revered and looked at that they stepped into their power. That something happened to women when they went through menopause and post menopause where they had access to universal energy and access to healing energies. And they had stronger intuition. Stronger ability to practice healing and to guide the tribe or guide the people. So there are cultures that saw that women stepped into their power. And that was the meme that menopause meant you stepped into your power.

And I’d love for us to now make that part of our idea. You’re not losing something by going into menopause. You’re gaining something. Because I think some women are afraid of going into menopause. It means we’re getting older. We’re frail. We’re going to lose our bones. We’re going to have osteoporosis. We’re just looking at the mainstream media version of it or that narrative that we just get old and weak and frail. Instead, how about we’re these super strong women that step into our power and step into our intuition. And like the light bulb goes on in our body and we become even stronger and healthier because we’re figuring out stuff. We’re taking the wisdom of our years and we’re applying it.

So I’d like for us to shift that, yes, it takes about 15 years, like you said, ten to 15 years to shift into it. And in that time we get to prepare. And that we can actually look forward to it. Because there’s so much that good that happens that so many ancient cultures saw that there’s good that happens within us as women when we step into menopause.

 

 

[01:06:21] Jill Chmielewski: I so agree. I couldn’t agree with you more. And I think a lot of it has to do with, obviously, our society that reveres youth is beautiful. And aging is sort of like, “You’re kind of washed up and over the hill.” And tossing women to the side. When I think, like you said, a lot of these cultures have really always put aging women at the forefront and really valued all that their life experience can now be bestowed on the next generation and share it. And it would be really nice if we could see that shift here.

 

 

[01:06:50] Ashley James: Now, you have mentioned earlier that watching your periods as a vital sign is important. Like the quality of the period, whether it’s heavy or light. What about PMS? What about even like a week before the period, if cravings get stronger? Or if their boobs are more tender than normal? Or if they’re way more irritable than normal? Or just like, are really, really exhausted in the morning? These symptoms leading up to their period, what about that? Is that a sign that something is off balance or off kilter or is that normal?

 

 

[01:07:27] Jill Chmielewski: You know, typically, I mean, in the ideal – optimally, we would have uneventful periods. I mean, aside from the fact that when you get your period itself, your uterine lining sheds because your hormones, progesterone and estrogen, have really fallen. And so when we don’t have our hormones, we feel it in terms of we feel more tired, we don’t feel as energetic. We want to maybe kind of sit on the couch day one and day two or maybe even day three of our period. That part of sort of the hormonal decline with your period is normal. I would say the period leading up to that, so that transition of time where women say, “Oh, my gosh. I am just like out of my mind the week before my period.” Typically, there is a hormonal imbalance. And more times than not, it usually means that there’s not enough progesterone to balance estrogen.

So I don’t know if your listeners have heard of estrogen dominance. That word is tossed around a lot these days when we’re talking about hormones. But estrogen and progesterone really need to be balanced in order for women to feel good. And for a really uneventful period, estrogen and progesterone, need to be balanced. And oftentimes, I think alluding back to a lot of the toxins, a lot of the hormone disrupting chemicals, a lot of those chemicals contain like estrogen mimicking chemicals. So there’s a lot more estrogen in the environment than there once was. And so women tend to have higher estrogen in relation to the amount of progesterone they have. And that’s typically – typically, again, why women would have sort of eventful periods, PMS, the bloating, the moods. All that stuff is typically more related to progesterone, maybe, being on the lower side or, maybe, not being enough to balance out estrogen.

 

 

[1:09:13] Ashley James: So if women have these symptoms and then they confirm that with bloodwork that their progesterone is low, what do you recommend they do to support the body in increasing its progesterone to normal levels?

 

 

[01:09:26] Jill Chmielewski: I mean, it depends. I mean, I think with hormones, usually if somebody has really not great PMS or they really noticed that, in general, we’re doing a hormone panel. A combination of serum testing, which is lab testing, and doing a urine test at home. Typically, we do like, what we call, a 24-hour urine, where we’re actually looking at hormones and their metabolites. It gives us a lot more information. So it’s hard to say specifically without knowing what someone’s results are. In general, I would say if somebody says, “Hey, if you were just kind of saying hey [inaudible] [01:10:00].” What would you say to somebody or group of women who have really, really significant PMS? I would say, number one, you definitely want to look at the toxins in your environment. I think a big source of estrogen coming in is going to be, obviously, in dairy. Because all dairy is coming from the milk of a lactating mammal. A lot of our [inaudible] [01:10:18] because a lot of them are injected with antibiotics and hormones. Definitely, pots and pans, plastics, the microplastics as we know, our beauty products, et cetera. I mean, they’re everywhere. They’re kind of everywhere.

So doing your best to kind of start decreasing estrogen coming in that way. Because our bodies are smart. Our bodies really probably know. They know how much hormone is needed and how much should be released. So if we have imbalanced hormones, oftentimes with estrogen. it’s coming from an outside source or it has more to do with detoxification, really sluggish detoxification. Because we’re not, maybe, breaking down estrogen properly. And so we’re holding on to some of it and recycling it. For women who are constipated and they’re going to the bathroom every three days, your livers breaking down estrogen. It has to get out of your body. And the only way can do that is for you to go to the bathroom. Well, that’s going to be a problem. You’re definitely going to be holding on and recirculating estrogen in the body.

So I always tell women, look at some of those kind of food factors. First, look at kind of your gut health, see what’s happening there. There are supplements that can be taken. But they’re very, very targeted to what’s happening once we see the hormone panel. From a progesterone side, you’re going to want to do things that are going to optimize isolation. And that would be things like there’s definitely herbs that will do that. But I think from a lifestyle perspective, stress is going to be huge for ovulating. I mean, our bodies are not going to want to bring a baby into this world if it’s stressed out. And even if you don’t want a baby, your body’s purpose of ovulation is to create a baby. I mean, that’s we’re primarily designed so that’s why we ovulate. So from your body’s perspective, it’s always thinking how to procreate and how am I going to bring a baby into this world. Well, if you’re stressed, it’s not going to do that very well. Hormones are going to be off. So anything you can do to decrease stress is going to improve progesterone. That includes things like exercise. Because I think we think of exercise is good. But I find with this kind of type A mentality we have and the go, go, go. And then we go to orange theory – and I’m not picking on orange theory. But we tend to be in this rush state all the time. And then we go in our workouts or like maniac workouts that actually stresses us more. We may feel relief when we leave. But from our bodies perspective, it’s just more stress. Too much exercise can definitely impede progesterone as well. So I always tell women, you definitely want to look at what you’re doing to support optimal progesterone, optimal ovulation, and things like that. And then there’s also, obviously, some herbs and nutrients. Getting the right vitamins and the right diet on board to make sure that you’re optimizing hormones will really go a long way to help with your period health.

 

 

[01:13:08] Ashley James: All right. Next point, number five.

 

 

[01:13:10] Jill Chmielewski: Okay. So this is probably my biggest beef, I think, with practitioners. Sorry, practitioners. But balanced hormones are just as critical in midlife and late life as they were in reproductive years. So I think, this is where conventional medicine and functional medicine sort of part ways. And in fact, I just received my North American Menopause Society Clinicians Guide. The Menopause Practice Clinicians Guide this year. And still, I mean, it’s 2020 – and I guess, it was the 2019 release. They’re still talking about the advice to clinicians, you know, conventional clinicians, is hormone therapy is just for symptom relief during perimenopause and not to be considered. Essentially, we really don’t need it later in life. And I think, you know – and we won’t don’t have to get into the hormone replacement discussion today But I guess the point is, hormones are needed in every cell of the body. I mean, it’s sort of absurd to think that we only need hormones for making babies. And so that’s been this sort of the conventional way of thinking. Well, you don’t really need your hormones anymore. I mean, you probably had friends as well or you know people who’ve had a hysterectomy and they’re told, “Hey, you know what? It’s fine. Just take it out. You don’t need in any way.” Well, that’s absurd. That’s absolutely absurd. You’re like castrating someone when you take their ovaries out. So it’s that same notion that these hormones, we have hormones work like – hormones work with receptors. And so it’s sort of like a lock and key type of system. So within our body, hormones swim in our bloodstream to different receptors. And they kind of wiggle into receptor. And then that causes an action to happen in the body. Whether that is, maybe, it’s swimming into a uterine lining receptor and it’s building the uterine lining, maybe it’s estrogen that’s gone there to build the uterine lining, or maybe it’s swimming up to the breast and it’s growing breast cells, or to the brain and it’s helping the brain to think more clearly.

I mean, we have hormone receptors all over our body from head to toe, from our brain to our heart, to our skin, to our vagina, to our urinary tract, our blood vessels, our bones, everywhere. So the notion that once we hit this phase of life, we no longer need hormones so we’re just kind of ignore people that are having hormone imbalances is really insane when you think about the systemic effects that hormones have on the body. And we know from looking at hormones that having balanced hormones, they systemically protect our brain, our heart, our bones, our bladder, our skin, our gut, and I mean so much more in our body. So keeping that in mind, it’s not just about making babies. You knew that didn’t you?

 

 

[01:15:50] Ashley James: Well, I love that you’re saying this because we want to live as long as possible, as healthfully as possible. We want the golden years to be super healthy. Just as healthy as when we were 30. When I lived in Las Vegas with my husband back in 2009-ish, I had this functional doctor. She’s awesome. She was in her 70s and she did not look like she was in her 70s. She’s the doctor who diagnosed me with chronic adrenal fatigue. I had been feeling so guilty and so shame – like I felt so much shame for how exhausted I was. And I thought I was just lazy. Because if you looked at me, you’d think I was lazy. But really, my adrenal fatigue was so bad. And I did the saliva test with her, where you spit in a tube all day long – different tubes and then they send it off to the lab. And she had been in the Olympics twice in the summer – Winter Olympics. She had been in the Winter Olympics twice. And she said, “The only time I’ve ever seen cortisol levels this low was right after I finished the Olympics.”  And she said, “You are walking dead.” And she showed me the chart – the graph where, normally, it’s supposed to start really high in the day and go down. I would start the day lower than when people are sleeping. My cortisol at the beginning of day was lower than people who are sleeping. And it would just sort of creep up and then just barely creep up to what you would have as normal levels at the most tired part of your day was my maximum amount of energy, basically. And she showed me that and she goes, “You know,no wonder you actually have some energy and some mental clarity about like 6:00 p.m. And then it’s hard for you to sleep at night because your body is just struggling all day long to make some cortisol. And you finally have some at night.”

But I was really messed up and she was the first one to show me and affirm that, “Yeah. You’re not lazy. Your hormones are way out of balance.” And what I loved about learning from her is that she became this example of health to me. She was like mid-70s. She would run – she did Iron Man’s in the desert. She would do triathlons in the 115 degree heat. She looked absolutely amazing. And she did not prescribe to the idea that when we’re older, we need to be frail. She’s in her 80s now and she just moved to Illinois to start a ranch. And she’s not ever going to stop. She’s super healthy. We’re friends on Facebook, still connected. And she believes that food is medicine. And take supplements when needed to fill in the gaps of nutrition, like minerals. And use your body in a way that builds health.

And so having an example, I think it’s really good to find someone – find an older woman who’s in their 70s or 80s that is an example of prime health. And then just model that and look at her and help you shift your belief system that you can be active and healthy. And not catching the flu, not at risk of dying of influenza because you’re a senior, not a risk of having your hip break. But really, that’s not – and shift our belief system. Look in your mind and go, “What do I look like in my mind’s eye? What is my belief system about being 85 years old?” And if you see yourself in like a home in a wheelchair, that thing need to change. If that’s your belief system, if that’s sort of this carrot you’ve dangled out in front of you, you want to be imagining yourself running marathons at age 99. Because there are women out there. Go on YouTube and look up 100 year old woman running marathons. There are women that do that. And I love these videos of these women in their 90s that run these marathons. And they say, “Oh yeah. When I was 75, I started running.” It’s just like they weren’t doing it their whole lives.

But shifting our mindset to have the idea that when we are 80, 90, and 100, that we are healthy and active and still using food as medicine and still getting out there. And that is the norm. That’s the idea we want in our mind to move towards. Because I think if we have a belief system that when we’re older, we become frail. Then we just kind of give in when your medical professional says, “Okay. Well, you’re in menopause so, you know, we don’t really have to look at this anymore. It doesn’t matter what kind of estrogen you have. You’re in menopause.” It’s ridiculous. Because estrogen and progesterone actually play a role in longevity. And if we have healthy hormones in our 50, 60, 70s, 80s, 90s, 100s, we’ll live longer and not die of a degenerative disease. And women who have poor hormone levels will die of a degenerative diseases. You just look at the statistics and see. So there’s a direct link between healthy hormones and longevity and also degenerative disease.

I know a woman in her 70s who got her period back and actually got pregnant. What happened was, so this doctor – one of the doctors that trained me as a Naturopath. And he’s an old school Naturopath. I think he’s in his 80s now. But he’s an old school Naturopath. And he got this woman on supplements and changed her diet. And he said to her – she was 70. H said to her, “Now watch out.” What happened was she told him, “Hey, I had a period. That was weird.” And she said, “Watch out, you’re fertile now.” And she laughed at him. She’s like, “I’m 70. There’s no way”. And he said, “You got to start using protection with your husband.” Because he’d seen it before. Because some women, when they get so healthy, that you can actually reignite your hormones again. And it’s totally possible. And so she didn’t listen to him. She got pregnant and she had a completely healthy child.

 

 

[01:22:25] Jill Chmielewski: Wow.

 

 

[01:22:26] Ashley James: It is absolutely possible to, I guess, reverse to come out of menopause. So the thing is, I agree with you, it takes like 15 years or whatever. And we kind of go into and then we’re in menopause. But at the same time, I have this idea in the back of my head that we could – we’re seeing women get into menopause in their 40s now because they’re triggering it too early. So I’m not saying menopause is bad. But I think that menopause is bad when it’s too early.

 

 

[01:23:03] Jill Chmielewski: Yes.

 

 

[01:23:04] Ashley James: And it’s kind of like the body goes, “Oh, well. I’m kind of exhausted. I don’t have the nutrients. I’m stressed out. And now, I have to go into this phase because I’m depleted.”  And so we kind of want to stave off menopause as long as possible and keep our hormones as healthy as possible so we could be in pre-menopause for longer. And maybe go into menopause in our 60s instead of our 40s. But more and more practitioners are seeing women in their 40s go into menopause, not because it’s not healthy menopause. It’s premature unhealthy menopause because they’re depleted.

And so I kind of want to have you talk a little bit about how can we support our health now to delay menopause until when it’s actually healthy to have it? Does that make sense?

 

 

[01:23:56] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it. I mean, it sort of sounds a little bit redundant but I think it comes down to, it’s really the food and lifestyle choices that we make. I mean, even food as we know, so much of our soil is depleted. And even if we’re eating the right foods, they may not have all the nutrients that they should have because of whatever, the farming, whatever it may be, whatever is happening. So oftentimes, we do need some targeted supplementation to help bridge that gap, like you alluded to earlier. So I think, balanced hormones are all about nutrients. Nutrients are the building block of hormones. So in theory, if we can get those building blocks of hormones in place, we will at least be able to build hormones for as long as possible.

And you talked about I know with adrenal – going into adrenal fatigue. I think that’s been a really big one even if it’s not a full blown adrenal fatigue diagnosis. A lot of women are having trouble with their adrenal glands because of all the stress that we’re under. And again, not just the stress of everyday life but the exposure to toxins which is seen as stressful from the body’s perspective. Or I think there’s a lot coming out now about electromagnetic fields in our cellphones, in our computers. And we have to kind of stand back and say, “Here’s how our body was designed.” It was really designed to, again, be in this sort of – we’re still kind of primarily designed, where we have not evolved as quickly as society is about, especially in the last – oh, my gosh – think about the last even 25 years or even the last ten years. I think it was 2007 when the iPhone came out . So that’s what not – my math is not very good right now, 12 years. Just knowing that our lives have changed so dramatically since the iPhone came out where we have 24/7 accessibility, and computers, and internet, and all these things. So I think a big part of it is going to come down to food and lifestyle is probably the best thing to help support hormones and perpetuate our own internal hormone production for as long as possible before our body kind of says, “Okay. You know what? Now, it’s sort of done.”

Genetics play a role, for sure. I mean, a lot of women will sort of follow suit with what happened to their mom. If their mom was 52 when she went through menopause, they may be 52. So we do see that genetics play a role there. But I think we’re seeing girls in their early 20s that have hormones of a 50 year old. I mean, it’s because of the way that we’re living. I think we’re seeing such drastic issues with hormones, probably early menopause, like you alluded to as well.

 

 

[1:26:36] Ashley James: Number six.

 

 

[01:26:38] Jill Chmielewski: So number six – we won’t go into great detail here because it’s kind of a very long topic. But I just want to myth bust the notion that estrogen is bad. I think we are – I don’t know if your listeners are familiar with the Women’s Health Initiative. But it’s a study that was done many, many years ago, that sort of put a really negative spin on estrogen. And it did not – the study did not – it was a long term study with thousands and thousands of women who were studied, really, probably for the first time. It’s one of the first studies that was done looking at hormone replacement therapy. And essentially, there was a really negative result as a result of this study. And in fact, the study was stopped early. And the women in this study had more heart disease, breast cancer, strokes, blood clots, et cetera. They were placed on estrogen but it was a synthetic form of estrogen. Not the estrogen that we make in our body, which we call bioidentical estrogen, which is available through compounding pharmacies. It was not that. It was an estrogen that’s made from the urine of pregnant horses. And it was combined –

 

 

[01:27:44] Ashley James: Sorry to interrupt. But I just want to say one thing about that, about Premarin and any kind of hormone that comes from horses. If you knew the conditions – mostly it’s made in Canada. I’ve been told about the conditions because I was a practitioner who went and saw where it was made. But they keep these horses in a factory. They’re never allowed outside. They’re not allowed to move. They’re hooked up. And they’re constantly pregnant. And then they take their babies away from them and they’re not allowed to see their babies. And if their male horses, they just slaughter them right away. And they’re tortured for their urine. So they keep the horses pregnant for their urine so they can make hormones out of them for us. And it is disgusting and deplorable to know that these hormone drugs are coming from the suffering of these beautiful horses. So it’s really, really, really bad. And if everyone saw this, no one would buy this stuff. And there are other ways. So you’re saying there are other ways. I want to point that out because a lot of women go and get Premarin or Gambino, get hormone replacement stuff that comes from horse urine. And just know that if you actually knew the conditions that lead to making it, you would not want to take this. You wouldn’t even want it in your body.

 

 

[01:29:13] Jill Chmielewski: No. One hundred percent. It’s not even – I mean, the other thing is, aside from the terrible conditions of the horses, absolutely. And I’ve read a lot about that as well. It’s made from – again, it’s the horse’ss estrogen, not human estrogen. So it doesn’t – we’re always looking for – anytime we replace hormones in the body, we want to use something that is what we call bioidentical. And that just means that the chemical and molecular structure looks just like our own hormones and acts just like our own hormones, if they came in the body. So when you bring a bioidentical estrogen on board, it knows exactly what to do. It swims to that estrogen receptor. It knows exactly what to do. I kind of consider these – I don’t even call them hormones. They’re synthetic chemicals. It’s probably the best word for them. But this study, unfortunately, sort of it had some really, really poor results but it had nothing to do with bioidentical hormones whatsoever. And unfortunately, the publicity and the fallout of that was sort of like, estrogen is bad, estrogen is bad, estrogen is bad. And so practitioners, even still Physicians – not all. I’m not bucketing all physicians. But there are still Physicians where this has been perpetuated, and they still think estrogen replacement is bad. And they’re thinking about the Women’s Health Initiative that used this fake estrogen.

So kind of putting that aside, our bodies – we make estrogen and we make progesterone. So our bodies would never make something that was harmful, right? That’s part – so you just have to kind of think about it logically. So I just want to bust that myth just because I think women oftentimes will say, “Okay. I’m suffering deeply with symptoms in perimenopause.” And I can definitely relate to this because I’m 48. I’ll be 49 this year. I’ve been in perimenopause for a while. I’m kind of on the tail end. I saw a huge kind of decline last year. And my hormones are very normal for this period in time. And I chose to use bioidentical hormone replacement because I saw the numbers. I know my symptoms. I’m working with a functional medicine practitioner. Point being that, when these hormones decline, you’re going to feel it in your body. It’s not just about periods. It’s about your brain health, your bone health, everything else, bladder health, vaginal health, you name it, your blood vessels. So it’s okay to consider hormone replacement. I think there’s a lot of sort of this black cloud hanging over estrogen because of this study. And if estrogen replacement, bioidentical hormone replacement, estrogen replacement, which should never be used without progesterone. They’re always used together even if you don’t have a uterus. If they’re used properly and you are monitored properly, you can really reap the benefits. But I think a lot of women just don’t even want to go there with the conversation. They’ll just suffer through the symptoms even if they’ve made a lot of the food and lifestyle changes and nothing else has changed. And perhaps it’s time to consider hormone replacement, the word estrogen just makes them think cancer. And there’s a lot more that goes into cancer or other types of negative outcomes from estrogen or the wrong kind of estrogen than estrogen itself.

So I just want women to understand that we’re not  – when we’re talking about hormone replacement, we’re talking about estrogen is not bad. Progesterone is not bad. You have huge amounts when you’re pregnant. Huge amounts during the reproductive years. So if they were bad, we would all have cancer when we were pregnant. You know what I mean? So keep that in mind.

 

 

[01:32:44] Ashley James: Well, one thing is the estrogen is a catch all. It’s a catch all for many different hormones. So we think estrogen is one thing. It’s actually not. It’s a bunch of different – like, there’s estradiol. There’s a bunch of different estrogens. I’m sure you know way more about that than I do. But I thought it was fascinating that there’s many estrogens. And that when the body wants to get – when the body is sort of like, “Okay. We’re going to clear out this estrogen.” It’s been used or whatever. The levels need to be cleared out. The liver takes the estrogen and then converts it into an inert form and puts it into the bile to be released into the poop. So we’re going to poop it out. Really interesting though. And I thought this was fascinating.

I learned this from one of the guests that I interviewed that when we have constipation – and most people in westernized nations who are eating the standard American diet have constipation and don’t know it. And when you have constipation, actually the gut reabsorbs and reactivate some of that estrogen and can lead to estrogen dominance. And it’s a type of estrogen that is unhealthy now. It’s become – it’s an imbalance of the estrogens, basically. It’s now not healthy version of the estrogens within us from doing that. And so we can get estrogen dominance in an unhealthy way. You know, tummy fat can lead to increased estrogen dominance, those other things, blood sugar dysregulation. But constipation, if we don’t poop two to three times a day, we’re not actually getting the hormones out of us. That they’re getting reabsorbed in an unhealthy way. And the toxins as well. So getting enough fiber to go to the bathroom two to three times a day – I’ve got a whole episode on how to have the perfect poop. It’s a big topic.

But just something as simple as making sure that we’re having healthy bowel movements will help us support balance hormones. So I thought that was really fascinating. But I love that you’re saying that estrogen is not unhealthy. Yes, you can have estrogen dominance. And that’s a different – that doesn’t mean estrogen is unhealthy. That means that there’s – it’s like the smoke, not the fire. Estrogen dominance isn’t the fire. It’s not the problem. It’s a symptom of a lot of stuff that’s out of balance.

 

 

[01:35:17] Jill Chmielewski: Yes. Exactly. Yeah. You said it perfectly. So I think just know – for women not to be scared of estrogen is probably just a huge factor right now. Because it’s important to, I think, consider and be open to all options when you’re going through perimenopause and menopause. And just get educated about it. And there’s a lot of good information out there that will help you to do that.

 

 

[01:35:40] Ashley James: I’ve had several listener – so we have a Facebook Group. There’s 3,500 listeners right now in the Facebook Group. And we have a lot more listeners that download the show. So I’m like, “What are you guys doing? Join the Facebook Group. Come on. Like, you guys are just listening. So the people who haven’t joined the group yet, join the group. It’s a lot of fun.” So there’s 3,500 very active and wonderful people in the Facebook Group. And several women have asked over the last year about hysterectomies. Several women have had either partial or full hysterectomy and they’re wondering if they should get on hormones. And I thought that I didn’t – I said I can’t offer advice about this but you should definitely find a functional medicine practitioner. And if you’re going to get on bioidentical – but people with full hysterectomies – women with full hysterectomies no matter what age, do you believe they should get on bioidentical hormones?

 

 

[01:36:29] Jill Chmielewski: I do. I do. Yeah.

 

 

[01:36:30] Ashley James: Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

 

[01:36:32] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. We really we produce the bulk of our hormones before menopause in our ovaries. Once we hit menopause, that sort of shifts. So we go from ovarian production of hormones to adrenal production of hormones, which is why – and it probably gets a little bit too deep. But that’s why, especially when we’re hitting this time in life, when we’re stressed to the max and our adrenals are already tasked with producing stress hormones. Okay. Now they got to take over whatever sex hormone production they can. It gets a little dicey. Something is going to suffer. So that’s why it can be really, really dicey to have a lot of stress at this point in life. But my point being is our ovaries are really responsible for the bulk of our hormone production. So when they’re taken out – now, there are studies that show even if you just had your uterus taken out, and let’s say, you’re able to keep your ovaries, still you got to think about it. I mean, there’s still been a pretty big shift with your sex organs that, typically, hormone production goes down a little bit. By how much? I don’t know. And I can’t recall. I don’t have the studies offhand. I’ll have to maybe dig for those a little bit. But that’s something that, typically, if you’re going to have a full hysterectomy with your ovaries removed, absolutely. Even progesterone.

And a lot of practitioners will say, “Well, you don’t need progesterone anymore because you don’t have a uterus.” Well, again, if we go back to – if we understand that hormones have systemic effects in the body, just because you don’t have a uterus doesn’t mean you don’t want progesterone for your brain, and your blood vessels, and your bones, and for other places in the body. So I typically – I mean, I’m a fan of really doing hormone replacement for both estrogen and progesterone even if you don’t have a uterus. And, again, doing really good follow up. So it can take a while. I think, for your listeners to know, that when you start hormone replacement, it’s not a one and done kind of scenario. You build up – the ideal scenario is you go really slow hormones. You always want to go low and slow and build up over time. So you’ll probably need a few follow up visits. A few extra lab tests with your doctor and whatnot until you get to kind of the right level. So people kind of have to be patient and understand that it’s a little bit of a process to get hormones right. But yes, absolutely, especially in the case of a hysterectomy.

 

 

[01:38:48] Ashley James: Back when I lived in Vegas, so this is like ten -12 years ago, someone gave me a CD. It actually might have been that doctor I talked about. Gave me a CD of a lecture back when we had CDs, right? Gave me a CD of a lecture of a doctor who has since passed. And I think he was in his 80s. But he was kind of like the grandfather of hormone replacement therapy, Dr. John R. Lee.

 

 

[01:39:17] Jill Chmielewski: Oh, my gosh. Yes.

 

 

[01:39:18 ]Ashley James: So I highly recommend, like, YouTubing Dr. Lee and progesterone and see if you can find his lecture. It was like an hour long. And it was it was really interesting. I’d love to a hold a [inaudible] [01:39:32] or a time machine or something to interview this guy. Because he was really interesting. But what I loved about his story is he was a conventional doctor for, like – I think it was over 40 years. And he was the kind of old school doctor that would sit down with his patients and spend a lot of time with them. And he had this joke, because he graduated top of his class from Harvard. And he worked his butt off because his family was very poor. And he got scholarships and he worked his butt off. And he said, “What do you call the guy in medical school who came in last?” And you say, “What?” And he says, “A doctor.” He said, there’s so many doctors out there that are – even you think about it, the doctor that just barely passed who isn’t really smart versus the doctor who worked his butt off and is super smart, they’re both doctors, right? So you don’t know if you got the dud or the stud. Like, you just don’t know. And the reason why he was kind of bashing his own colleagues was that he was seeing that back then they were poopooing progesterone and putting women on estrogen only. And he actually did the opposite.

Because one of his patients came to him who was in amazing health and had reversed many of her symptoms and she was using progesterone cream. And he went, “Wait a second, what’s going on?” And so he started using progesterone cream and he poured through the research and the science. And he saw that it helped so much to do progesterone cream. And then he started talking in conferences. And all of the doctors were like, “You’re crazy. What you’re doing?” And it’s frustrating because when one of the doctors or scientists figure something out, their profession will pull them back like crab in the bucket. The profession marches slowly. This is a quote from a Naturopath I’ve learned from. He says, “The medical profession progresses slowly one death at a time.” It does not learn very easily from its mistakes. And it really progresses slowly.

So that’s why we have – going back to, I think, it was point one or point – yeah, point one. We have to advocate for ourselves because this profession is way behind and does not learn well from all of the information. A good example is the book Proteinaholic. I absolutely love it. I highly recommend downloading and listening to it on Audible. Proteinaholic is probably the best book I’ve ever listened to. And he cites over 50 pages – because I also bought the book. He has over 50 pages in the back in small print of references. Because he pulls together all the science about using food as medicine and why we’re actually eating too much protein. We’re actually toxic levels of protein and how it contributes to the diseases of today. So I thought it was really interesting that these doctors who are seeing the science, like Dr. Lee and Dr. Garth Davis, the one that wrote the Proteinaholic. They’re seeing the science. They’re pulling it together. And then their colleagues are poopooing it. Because they’re stuck to what they learned in school 20 years ago and what the textbook said. And they’re not actually spending time looking over the latest studies. Or even analyzing the studies to the point where it’s like, “Well, who funded the study? And what kind of study was it? What was the quality of the study?” So we really have to be careful about the cognitive dissonance that our health professionals may have, because we’re all human. And we all make mistakes.

But I love that I learned that from Dr. Lee. I love that he showed me that many doctors are stuck in some way. You know, we all have blinders, right? We’re all here. We all have blinders. But that when we give up our health over – we give our health and our body over to a medical professional, we assume that they know the latest information and the best information. And Dr. Lee taught me they don’t. That most don’t. And so that’s why we have to advocate. And then he also said that, progesterone cream is like God’s gift to women. And he thought it was the world’s best thing. So I just thought that was really interesting. But we don’t want to be allopathic, which is reductionistic. So he’s reductionistic. And he was like, “Okay. This one thing is the best thing in the world.” We can’t be reductionistic and think that one thing is going to solve our problems. But we want that tool in our tool belt. So I like that you brought that up that, estrogen is not dangerous. Progesterone is great too. But we want to do the hormone testing, the appropriate hormone testing, like you said. But we shouldn’t just do it willy nilly. Don’t just go to the store, buy a bunch of hormone creams, and start slathering yourself. Because too much is just as dangerous as too little.

 

 

[01:44:40] Jill Chmielewski: Yeah. And you know, hormones, I think people don’t realize that you can give somebody hormones but our body is smart. It’s going to always do what it can to regulate the hormones. So if you give somebody too many hormones, it’s going to shut down some of these receptors. It will find – there’s different proteins that can increase that kind of locks some of the hormone up. So more isn’t always better. That’s why I think it’s always – my approach is always the Goldilocks principle of hormones, which is not too much, not too little, just right. And it’s different for everyone. So it’s different for you than it is for your neighbor that it is for your best friend. Which is why you really want to work with someone who really, really understands hormones and understands the testing and the follow up and what’s really needed to kind of – and is willing to work with you to make sure that you get to a place where you feel really, really good.

 

 

[01:45:27] Ashley James: I’m really excited for point seven because so many, so many listeners in the Learn True Health Facebook Group have asked this question. So take it away, point seven.

 

 

[01:45:38] Jill Chmielewski: Okay. So the point seven, I almost have to like take a deep breath before I say this.

 

 

[01:45:43] Ashley James: Everyone just take a deep breath.

 

 

[01:45:45] Jill Chmielewski: It’s kind of my contention points with my Physician. So the pill is not – and whenever I’m saying “the pill,” I’m talking about the birth control pill. It is not a good solution to worsening PMS or erratic periods during perimenopause. We’re going back to the pill in and of itself. Patients are always told, “Here’s the pill. It has estrogen, it has progesterone.” The pill has neither. The pill has synthetic chemicals in it that are nothing like the estrogen and progesterone in your body. And in fact, most sort of functional medicine folks would kind of characterize the pill as putting you into chemical menopause. It’s essentially shutting down your hormone production. And bringing in synthetic chemicals that do not have the same actions that your own hormones do in your body

So when I’m explaining hormones to people, I kind of explain – and I think I read this – I thought it was a good explanation from Dr. Lindsey Berkson, who I love. She’s a hormone scholar. She’s just awesome. And she always explains this hormone and receptor as, think about your hormone receptors as being very promiscuous. And they will kind of let anybody wiggle in on them including toxins, like estrogen mimicking chemicals. They look a little like estrogen so they can wiggle in. Those receptors are like, “Okay. You look okay.” And that’s how the pill is. They’re the same thing. It’s these chemicals that look a little bit like our hormones but they’re not our hormones. And so they wiggle in and they take an effect on ourselves, and our tissues, and our organs of our body. But not necessarily an effect that we want.

I think that conventional medicine physicians like the pill because, basically, it manages “a period.” It will regulate the period. They like the certainty and the predictability of this every 30 day cycle. But what we’re missing here and what women are missing is that, it’s not a real period. It’s a fake period. It’s not the real thing. It’s not the result of your hormones. It’s really a withdrawal bleed from hormones. That’s all it is. It has nothing to do with the uterine lining and the natural hormonal actions that are happening in your body. So I think the idea here is we want to perpetuate our own hormones or our own in internal hormone production as long as possible so that we can get systemic benefits for as long as possible before deciding what we want to do in terms of do we want hormone replacement? Do we not? Do we want to do food and lifestyle choices? What do we want to do? And the pill essentially puts you into chemical menopause. So you don’t get the benefits. You won’t get the systemic benefits of progesterone and estrogen like you would if they were your own.

And I think women to, back to kind of one of the earlier points, it’s like, we want this quick fix. We don’t want to deal with erratic periods. We don’t want to deal with a heavy period. It’s too cumbersome for us with our very busy life. When, again, the period is your fifth vital signs. So it’s telling you something’s up. And while it’s natural and normal in perimenopause to start having longer periods, or shorter periods, or skip periods, or heavier periods, or lighter periods because there’s hormonal fluctuations happening. It is smart to do a little bit of investigative work. And if you’re having really significant symptoms, you need to see somebody. A functional medicine practitioner who really gets it. There are ways to help, I want to say, control your period. But really help you get a better period, a less eventful period, even in perimenopause without going on the pill. So I think the pill is not the route to go.

And you know, people go on the pill – I don’t want to bash all pill users – you want to weigh the risks versus the benefits. For some people, it’s more about birth control than anything else. But if it’s about period – and there’s other much better, I think, birth control options out there if you’re trying not to muck with hormones. But we won’t get into that today. But I think if we’re talking about period management and just – it’s just this irritating period that I have and recursing our periods, the pill is not the way to go. And I think, but doctors kind of tell us it is so that’s what we do. And that’s definitely –

 

 

[01:49:45] Ashley James: And they don’t practice informed consent. They do not practice. So they just put you on the pill. Informed consent, they would actually tell you all of the side effects and all of the long term, very detrimental effects the pill has. I am not bashing anyone on the pill. But I am bashing the pill. I think it is a toxic and harmful thing to put women on. And most of the time, doctors will put 15 year olds on it because they have acne or they have out of control – they have got really bad PMS or whatever. And that is not – I don’t think the pill should be used in any event. And I understand the need for birth control. Like you said, there are many really good options for birth control.

And I’ve had other guests talk about this and there’s great books out there on all the different forms of birth control. The pill is probably the most toxic out of all of them. There is an IUD that has hormones that’s probably up there. But the pill has been proven to be incredibly toxic. It has heavy metals in it. So it’ll increase the heavy metals in your body. It changes the biochemistry of your brain. You become a different person. It actually changes your personality. And there have been people who got a divorce after they got off the pill. Because it actually changes your brain, people have gotten married – fallen in love and got married on the pill. Going off the pill, back to who they were before being on the pill. And realized that they married – they didn’t marry that person. Because the pill artificially makes you attracted to different things. Really. it hijacks your personality. It can send women into a different set of emotions and emotional responses. So people see complete personality changes. But when you’re the taker of the pill, you don’t notice it. The other people around you go, “She is not herself.” Because it hijacks the brain. It’s artificial. Its chemical. It’s like castration in a chemical castration in a sense. It’s very harmful to the body and very toxic. And taking it long term can increase cancer, blood clotting, you could die of a stroke. I mean, there’s a lot.

 

So if you could practice a different form of birth control that is non-toxic than the pill – oh, my gosh – please go for that. And please, I would just say for everyone listening who’s on the pill, look into true informed consent is seeing all of the side effects. Because most doctors are not practicing informed consent. And they are not even aware of all the negative effects. And then look at an alternative that can complement what you want to achieve. And whether it’s getting rid of acne, controlling your PMS, or actually not getting pregnant, there’s so many other options out there that are healthy. So I just hear over and over again how devastating pill is for people. And so many clients and also guests on the show have told me their horror stories that started with being on the pill. And that that actually led them to being unhealthy. And for me, I got on the pill as a teenager. And I can say that it’s one of the factors that triggered many of my health issues. So I’ve seen it in myself. I’ve seen it in others. So I’m kind of warning – I want to warn people because I don’t feel like we’re being warned enough. And this is again, that point where we have to advocate and stand up for women. This is where I feel like I’m a feminist in a sense where I feel like – I never identified as a feminist at all but this is where I feel like women need a voice. And they need to be advocated for. And this is one of those points the birth control pill is toxic and damaging. And it’s being sold to us as this, like, wonderful thing.

And the morning after pill – that’s another one – is very, very harmful and detrimental to the body. And of course, there’s times when a woman needs to make their choice. And I don’t think that choice should be taken away from them. But I think that informed consent needs to be practiced where we need to know all of the very long term and harmful side effects that can occur. So we want to know everything up front. And so I think that when you’re messing with your hormones, you’re messing with your brain, you’re messing with your future, your chances of other diseases, you’re messing with your personality, your quality of life. It’s not as simple as just take a pill and not have a period or not ovulate. It’s not that simple. So thank you for advocating for us.

 

 

[01:54:43] Jill Chmielewski: Well, thanks for your chiming in. Because I think everything you said is really right on to. It is. It’s all about informed consent. And we need to know what we’re getting ourselves into so that we can make a really good decision.

 

 

[01:54:54] Ashley James: Yeah. Yeah. Let’s make really good decisions. Let’s inform ourselves. Okay. Point number eight.

 

 

[01:55:01] Jill Chmielewski: Okay.  So just sort of as an FYI, perimenopausal symptoms hide in plain sight. I think that is something where, I think, a lot of women get missed. It’s little things. It’s going to come as soft whispers initially. It’ll be in the form of, “In my mid-30s, all of a sudden I’m not sleeping quite as well.” But it’s not something that necessarily you would make an appointment to go see your doctor for. But I want your listeners to kind of start taking note that hormones start to decline. Progesterone, in particular, starts its decline in our mid-30s. So that’s the hormone that’s going to go first, followed by estrogen. And estrogen will typically go on kind of a wild ride, soaring sky high one minute and then they rock bottom the next for a while before it starts to make it steady decline down. So you’re kind of dealing with a bunch of different sort of hormonal changes that are going to happen over a period of time. The period of time will be different for everyone. So the symptoms will start at different points for different people. And they will kind of pop up. And I think they have pop up ever so slowly where, like I said, it starts with a sleepless night or two. Then maybe it’s, “You know what? I can’t lose weight.” Or, “I’m gaining weight and I’m not doing anything differently.” Then maybe it’s fatigue. Maybe it’s a libido issue. Maybe your hair is thinning out a little bit. Maybe you feel a little bit more weepy or you have a little more anxiety or a little more depression. I mean, all of these things really point to changes in hormones.

But I think what we end up doing is, maybe we get to a point where we say, “You know, I’m really tired now. I’ll go see my doctor.” And we don’t even really mention the other stuff because we don’t think it’s related. Or maybe we feel like we have some anxiety so we go and we see somebody in the mental health group. And yes, there are treatments in that route. But I think if you look at hormones, they have a lot to do with our mental health state. So I think, just for your listeners to know that, these symptoms will start to creep up slowly and they matter. And so when you’re talking with your doctor, make sure you’re mentioning sort of the collective. Even if they don’t seem like they’re related, a lot of times, they are related. They may be in different body organs and different systems. And you might think, “Well, this one I should go to the orthopedic for. And this one, I should go to the endocrinologist for. And this one to the OB.” But really, functional medicine will look at you as a whole person. All of your systems are connected. And so these symptoms probably have a lot to do with hormonal decline or hormonal changes overall.

 

 

[01:57:27] Ashley James: All right. We’re in the homestretch.

 

 

[01:57:29] Jill Chmielewski: I know. We’re almost there. We’re at the final point.

 

 

[01:57:32] Ashley James: We’re almost there We’re almost there. Yes. I like it. And I like that you brought that up that it’s, again, reaffirming that we need to advocate for ourselves. And don’t just sweep these symptoms under the rug. Listen to your body. Listen to the changes in your body and don’t be afraid of them. But advocate for yourself. So I like that you – if you’re coming at it from different angles, to help us shift our mindset into a healthier mindset. I like it. Okay. Last point. Number nine.

 

 

[01:58:00] Jill Chmielewski: Okay.  Number nine. Last point is, perimenopause begins in the mid to late 30s. I think that’s super critical to understand. And we talked about it earlier. But understand that even when it comes to hormone replacement, a lot of women will say, “No way.” But Dr. John Lee was probably one of the first ones to say, “You know what? Even women in their mid to late 30s would benefit from a little bit of progesterone.” A lot of doctors will say, “We’re not even going to address hormone replacement until you hit actual menopause.” Which means you haven’t had a period in a year. Well, by that time, you’ve been going through – you’ve been on this perimenopausal journey for a long time. Hormones have been declining, symptoms may be really heating up. So understand that even though you may be just getting pregnant at 35 or 37 or 38 or 40, you can be pregnant and still be going through perimenopause. You can be just going through perimenopause. For most women, it is those hormonal shifts will begin with, like, a couple of cycles where you don’t ovulate. That’s where it kicks things off. So you can still have a period very regularly and be in perimenopause.

So that’s why I really just want women to be aware that this period of life will kind of start. You almost think I just finished having babies or I’m just about to have a baby. But it does happen. It seems like it’s too soon. But the studies show that this is when hormones start to shift. So just know that so that you can start to kind of keep track of symptoms. See if you need something sooner. Maybe you need that functional practitioner sooner. I would recommend most women to start meeting with someone earlier rather than later so they can kind of help walk them through and guide them through this perimenopausal journey.

 

[01:59:43] Ashley James: I love it. Yes. Wherever you are, start now. Start building your health up with all these points that we brought up today. Start building your team of holistic and integrative practitioners today. Start advocating for yourself today. Start everything and little steps no matter where you are, you’re going to build up better hormone health. And hormones, like you said, I love that you pointed out, hormone receptors are on every part of your body. So estrogen levels affect your brain, affect your breasts, affect your calves. I mean affect every part of your body. Awesome.

So I want to ask you is – we’ve gone through so much and this is really jam packed. But is there a question that I haven’t asked that you would love to answer?

 

 

[02:00:40] Jill Chmielewski: I mean, I think that we hit – I really do think that we’ve hit most of it. I don’t know. I can’t think of anything.

 

 

[02:00:46] Ashley James: Yeah, well, I got you to empty out. So I totally emptied out your brain. And I tapped you for all this great information. It’s been wonderful. I had you talk for almost two hours straight. This is fantastic. I know. So let’s make sure that listeners know how they can follow you. How they can keep learning from you.

 

 

[02:01:06] Jill Chmielewski: Sure. Yeah. So I know you mentioned the website. So I would say I’m very active on Instagram and my handle is just jill.chmielewski, so my last name. I do a lot of education. I really use Instagram as sort of those quick snippets of information. I do have a website. It’s just www.jillchmielewski.com. I used to do – I just really stopped seeing one-to-one clients as of just this past year. I’m shifting to – I’m going to be launching a course called Perimenopause Redefined later this year. I do on my website. I also have – I very frequently write blog articles. Very educational in nature. A lot of the stuff that we talked about today but I really try to address women’s biggest symptoms and biggest issues. I recently created a private Facebook Group that if people get on the mailing list, they’ll get that information. And that’s for just some more deep dive hormonal stuff. I kind of call it like, All Things Puzzle. We’re going to talk about everything that has to do with anything that’s puzzle related.

And then I have a shop tab on my site that has – I’ve got some downloadable freebies. I’ve got a couple of paid really pretty low entry types of paid things that people can get. But I also have links to products. I’m always looking for resources and things for women because I think when we talk about, especially, toxins, women don’t know where to go. So I have links to cleaner beauty, to better cleaning supplies, to laundry detergent, to different things. I’m always adding more resources in lab testing so that women know sort of where to go to get some products that are a little bit more trusted and are clean and aren’t going to be mucking with their hormones. So they can find all of that on the website. That’s probably the best place to go for sort of everything. And there’s a tab where they’ll see they can sign up to get on my email list. And I just do about one email a week. I try not to overload anyone’s inbox because I know how busy women are. But I do try to provide some really targeted important information about once a week to the people in my community.

 

 

[02:03:08] Ashley James: Great. And I’m going to have all those links in the show notes to today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. But I will spell it for those who have a pen right now. Get your pen. Get your pen. J-I-L-L-C-H-M-I-E-L-E-W-S-K-I.com.

 

 

[02:03:26] Jill Chmielewski: Awesome. Thank you. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for having me.

 

 

[02:03:32] Ashley James: This was great. And you should totally come back. Come back and teach us more.

 

 

[02:03:34] Jill Chmielewski: I’d love to. I’d love to.

 

 

[02:03:36] Ashley James: Wonderful. Awesome. Well, I’m excited to move gracefully into my puzzle years. So thank you. I appreciate that.

 

 

[02:03:43] Jill Chmielewski: [Inaudible] [02:03:42] if you have any questions.

 

 

[02:03:45] Ashley James: I’m sure. I’m sure I will.

 

 

[02:03:47] Jill Chmielewski: We covered everything, right?

 

 

[02:03:49] Ashley James: Yeah. Okay. Well, you’ll come back on the show and we’ll go, like, part two. We’ll dive even deeper. That would be great. Awesome.

 

 

[02:03:56] Jill Chmielewski: That sounds great. Okay. Good. Thanks so much.

 

 

[02:04:01] Ashley James: Thanks.

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Colon Hydrotherapy

https://www.learntruehealth.com/colon-hydrotherapy

 

Highlights:

• What colon hydrotherapy is
• What happens on their 10-day cleanse
• Benefits of doing colon hydrotherapy
• Importance of eating organic food
• What liver cleanse is
• Contraindications for colon hydrotherapy
• Two types of colon hydrotherapy: open and closed

 

In this episode, David DeHaas shares with us what colon hydrotherapy is. He shares different stories and testimonials of people that have undergone colon hydrotherapy. He shares how the health of the people who have undergone colon hydrotherapy has improved.

Intro:

Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. When it comes to building true health, no stone should be left unturned. Today’s episode is going to turn over a few stones that might not have been on your radar and it’s very exciting. Colon hydrotherapy is something that for some people is the missing link, the key, the final step to helping them get to the next level in their healing. So, it’s very exciting that we have on the show with us a man who specializes in colon hydrotherapy. He teaches us everything we could possibly want to know about cleansing detoxifying and restoring our health using colon hydrotherapy. We just jump right into the interview. So when we start, it’s just jumping straight in. We just start going, hitting the ground running so I know that you’ll really enjoy this wonderful conversational interview today.

I want to let you know, if you’re interested in becoming a health coach and it’s something I’m very passionate about. I think everyone can benefit from going through the training that IIN provides, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. They have an excellent special going on right now and for listeners, they give us a significant discount. I negotiated with them. I asked them to give the Learn True Health listeners a great discount. So they do provide and a wonderful discount. Now, starting next month, starting in March, the price of admission for their online year long and also accelerated six-month health coach training program goes up by $800. So the best time to join is now. If you join by payment plan you receive $1,500 off by mentioning the Learn True Health podcast. If you sign up as a paid in full for your admissions you get two thousand dollars off. So that’s a very big count.

They also have other sales going on. So just when you call IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, talk to the salespeople there. They’re low pressure. They don’t pressure you. Most of them are health coaches. In fact every time I’ve talking to someone on the phone there they are health coaches themselves and so they love talking to people and helping them to plan out their goals. So if you just want to plan, a goal planning session with one of the admissions staff there, you can talk to them and plan it out and see how becoming a health coach either for personal development, personal growth reasons or for professional reasons or both can benefit you. So you can pick their brains, you can ask for more information.

You can also go to learntruehealth.com/coaching. That’s learntruehealth.com/coaching, which gives you access to a free module of IIN so you can get a feel for their program and see if it’s right for you. I highly recommend just googling IIN. That’s just the letters IIN and then calling them and talking to them and just getting more information from them and picking their brains and have them help you to see if health coaching is right for you and if the health coach training program is right for you. Because they are wonderful people. This entire program is designed to help us understand how to heal the body physically with food as medicine, mentally and emotionally help you do it for yourself and for others. So the best time to join is now. The best savings is now.

If you want to know my personal experience of going through their program or you have any questions for me, please feel free to reach out to me. You can reach out to me on Facebook. Come join the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group or you can email me ashley@learntruehealth.com. I’d love to hear from you. Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. It makes a really big difference to our friends of family to help them, to give them all the tools, to help them achieve true health. Let’s turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to Learn True Health. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.

 

[0:04:40] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 412. I have been on your site but I forget, what town are you in?

 

[0:04:54] David DeHaas: Boise, Idaho.

 

[0:04:55] Ashley James: Boise, right. Idaho, that’s not too far from me.

 

[0:04:58] David DeHaas: Where are you at? You’re in Seattle aren’t you?

 

[0:04:59] Ashley James: Yeah, yeah. I mean it’s still a day. I could drive there in a day.

 

[0:05:06] David DeHaas: 19 hours. Yeah. You’ve been doing this a while. You’ve been doing this for what? You got about 300 something episodes?

 

[0:05:13] Ashley James: Yeah. We have 407, I’m publishing 407 today. I started four years ago in March.

 

[0:05:22] David DeHaas: Wow.

 

[0:05:24] Ashley James: Yup. 2016. March 2016.

 

[0:05:27] David DeHaas: So, I just started a podcast a bit ago. Had some of couple of cool people on. You know who Ann Louise Gittleman is?

 

[0:05:35] Ashley James: Yeah, yeah. I’ve interviewed her. She’s awesome and her husband. You got to interview him too.

 

[0:05:39] David DeHaas: What? I don’t know anything about him.

 

[0:05:41] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I interviewed him too. You got to definitely check him out. He beat cancer. You should listen to my interview with him because it’s wild. He escaped the hospital. They were killing him with the chemo. He actually broke out of the hospital and drove away. He’s like, “I am never going back there.” Anyway, so he healed his cancer after that. His journey of health is what led him to meet Ann Louise. So now they’re together, but he now interviews people on YouTube who have beat cancer. He has this one interview that is wild and will blow your mind. This guy healed his cancer with an $8 deworming medication used in animals. Apparently, it really works. A ton of people, tens of thousands of people have used it and reported that their cancer went away. So they figured out there’s five reasons. It actually turns back on the body’s, the immune system’s ability to detect the cancer. But the pharmaceutical knees don’t want you doing it because it only costs $8 and it’s over the counter.

 

[0:06:51] David DeHaas: Well, it’s kind of like me. I used red salve. Cost me what, $10.

 

[0:06:57] Ashley James: Well we should get into that in the interview. That would be interesting. So anyway, yeah Ann Louise Gittleman. That’s great. You got her on the show. Now that you’ve had her on your show you should interview her husband because he’s wild. Well I mean you could contact them and get his information, but I can give it to you too. Yeah. James Templeton is his name.

 

[0:07:17] David DeHaas: Yeah. When I had Nicholas reaching out to people, reaching out to you for example, yeah. I didn’t get to talk to him of course. She was a blast. I mean I’ve watched her on because I think she’s a member of I think I-ACT. I’ve spoken there many time International Association of Colon Hydrotherapy.

 

[0:07:37] Ashley James: Well, I knew her because when I was like 10 years old or nine years old or something like that, our family got worms. So we got tested. The test show that we got one parasite from Mexico and two parasites from owning cats and dogs. My mom brought home her book Guess What Came to Dinner. We read it and we got on a cleanse. Isn’t that funny? So, I’ve known her for so many years. So to interview her was kind of a trip.

 

[0:08:09] David DeHaas: Yeah. I’ve had that book forever. In fact I thought the book – yeah I’ve had it for a long time. Did you know that when she was a young gal, she was in New York City and she was telling me in the podcast she said, “So I was at New York City. I was working in this hospital, this kid come in. He had leukemia and I determined he had whipworms and heavy metal poisoning.” She says, “We did a lot of colon hydrotherapy, a lot of cleansing,” and I go, “Whoa, whoa, who. You mean the hospital had a colon hydrotherapy?” She goes, “Oh no. They didn’t.” I had to go and search really hard to find a colon hydrotherapist because this was in the 1970s. She says, “So he got completely cured,” and she says, “And I got fired.”

 

[0:08:48] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. Of course she would get fired.

 

[0:08:51] David DeHaas: It devastated her. She went away for a year and then she said, “I’m going to go back into this field. I’m going to get back on the horse,” so to speak. Yeah, isn’t that wild?

 

[0:09:00] Ashley James: Oh, that’s so wild. What’s the name of your podcast?

 

[0:09:03] David DeHaas: Detox with whole body cleansing.

 

[0:09:06] Ashley James: Great. Well, we’ll make sure the links to your podcast is in the show notes. Yeah. In the show notes of this episode. So listeners can check it out. Normally I do a really formal start to an interview, but since you and I just got chatting and it was so cool I think I’m just going to include our chat in the interview. So, we already got started. David DeHaas, it’s so good to have you on the show this is going to be so much fun. I know you’ve listened to my show. You know my interview style is a casual conversation where we get to really dive into some interesting information. When your office reached out to me to come on the show, I was thrilled. I love colon hydrotherapy. It’s a tool that not many people know about. I think a lot of people are really afraid of and there’s a lot of misconceptions. So I’m really happy that you can demystify colon hydrotherapy and show us that it’s actually a very powerful tool that we can use for healing and it’s safe and effective and gentle. So, welcome to the show.

 

[0:10:15] David DeHaas: I’m glad to be here.

 

[0:10:17] Ashley James: Absolutely. You’re really passionate about holistic health. You yourself have a story. Can you share with us your journey that led you to want to specialize in colon hydrotherapy and Naturopathic medicine and helping people to heal their body naturally?

 

[0:10:36] David DeHaas: Yeah. I didn’t choose to be here. I think I’m more of got chosen, but backing up years ago when I was a young lad, I started having children. We had an issue with my daughter. She had been vaccine injured. Our house cleaner says, “Go check out this guy. He’s a homeopath.” I go, “What’s that?” This is 1991-ish, somewhere in there. So it began there and then it was like, “Oh, there’s a whole another world here.” I was always kind of sick, not sick. I mean, if you looked at my physique you’d say, “Okay, this guy is really healthy,” and doctors would tell me that, but yet I was always tired, aches and pains, walk like an old man in the morning. I mean, I hurt all the time. I love to play basketball. I was just, it take me an hour to warm up to play. It was like, “What’s going on with me? I’m 30 years of age.”

So, eventually I met a gal and get this, she had no credentials. She was learning iridology and herbology. She was in a little farm in Dietrich, Idaho and a little a single-wide trailer house on a little dairy farm, seven kids. I went and sat on her couch and she looked at my eyes she says, “Oh my gosh.” She says, “How often do you go to the bathroom?” I go, “I don’t know. Maybe once a day, once every three days sometimes. Why?” She goes, “Well, you need to cleanse. You need to do some colonics.” I go like, “What’s a colonic?”

So, she shared with me. So, I said, “Okay.” I mean I’m always been the guy that’s, “Okay, what else is out there?” I’m always the curious cat. I’ll try anything once, maybe twice. So, I was looking to get better. So then I met a lot of cool natural, like all-natural healers. Many of them didn’t have any degrees, no backup but they were very very wise, very very sharp. So that’s where I began with colon hydrotherapy model myself and I actually started in my own home. In the meantime I was transitioning from a real estate career to a career in network marketing talking about nutritional supplements. So that path kind of led me to explore, got me to traveling. I got to travel around the world and I got to meet a lot of really cool people that knew a lot more than I did and other people did.

I mean one time, I had fungus on my feet so bad my feet were black, it itched like crazy. I was like, “What am I going to do about this?” The doctors looked at me and says, “I don’t know what that is. It’s not fungus.” I’m going like, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s fungus.” So finally I realized, I got to figure this out on my own. I had to become the master of my health. So I’m a voracious reader. I read all the time. I fall asleep at night reading all I can about health and nutrition because I had to get well. I knew that one day I might have cancer. I’m lying in bed at 38 years of age thinking like, “Am I going to live to see my kids graduate from high school? Am I going to be able? Am I going to be on earth in 10 years?”

Eventually I found out I did have cancer. By the time I knew I had it, I already knew what I would do if I had cancer. So I didn’t go the medical route, I went David’s route. Part of that was doing deep tissue cleansing with colon hydrotherapy. So, long story short, eventually I thought I set this business up for my daughter to run, which we did, but I was only going to be referring people to her. I was going to be involved at all. That was not my path, I thought. Anyway, long story short I was just watching the amazing changes. I got all of Dr. Bernard Jensen’s books. I was reading about Dr. Bernard Jensen. In fact, I just interviewed Dr. Ellen Tart Jensen a few weeks ago. Oh my gosh, amazing stories. Anyway, divine intervention basically inspired me to stick around here and do more than just be the connector. I mean, I’ve always been a networker. I’ve always been the connector, the one who’s telling the story, who’s getting people involved in whatever it may be. So, now here I am teaching and leading the world to understand that colon hydrotherapy is an easy, effective, it’s not embarrassing, it’s very private, it’s easy to do. Once you do it, it’s no different than showering. It’s just basically a shower on the inside. Here we are.

 

[0:14:41] Ashley James: Right. A lot of people who are don’t realize that the gut is on the outside of us. We think that when we put something in our mouth it’s now inside our body. Anatomically really, the gut is just another part of us that’s outside of us because it hasn’t been absorbed into the bloodstream yet so it’s still technically outside of us. It’s an interesting way to think about it like the inside of a doughnut is still outside of the doughnut not inside the doughnut. Thus, cleansing the colon, you could think of it like washing your skin. Cleanse your colon. People who have eaten the standard American diet often have the fecal matter caked on. It dried up and caked on. There’s a very unhealthy biofilm that can accumulate parasites and be an environment for unhealthy things to thrive in our intestines.

So I love that you said, you take a shower on the outside then we should do some colon hydrotherapy. Can you tell us a bit more about the history of colon hydrotherapy? Because obviously, cavemen weren’t washing their colon. So, how did this get started?

 

[0:16:06] David DeHaas: Well, doing enemas and cleansing actually goes back into the age of the Egyptians, in the Essene Gospel of Peace back in Jesus’ time. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, they actually discovered that back in that day the Essenes advocated for cleansing. I don’t have the script in front of me, but basically it said this, go out and find a long trailing gourd the height of a man, clean out its inwards and fill it full of water warmed by the sun and stick it in your hinder parts. Let it run every day until the water runs as clear as the rivers foam. You will see every evil foul-smelling thing of fear come out of you. Fear, false emotions appearing real. So, there’s a whole emotional connection to this as well. So, 2,000 plus years ago there was not 80,000 chemicals, right? There wasn’t cars and automobiles. Why were they saying you should need to cleanse? Because we have fear and our autonomic nervous system runs 95+ percent of our innards, our insides. That colon in the small intestine can get twisted and distorted. The average person listening to this podcast, that’s you out there, is packing 12 to 15 pounds just extra gunk plus parasites.

What’s amazing about the intestinal tract is you have the surface area the size of his tennis court in your intestinal tracts. It’s about 30 some feet long. More neurons in it than your spinal column. Every organ and part in your body, whether it be your eyes, your ears, your spleen, your heart, your kidney, your liver, your legs, your arms, your ears, connects to the intestinal tract. So basically, how it lives is how you live. If you’re packing around parasites, which every one of us are. If you’ve eaten pork you got parasites. If you’ve had sushi, you definitely got parasites. Have you walked barefoot, have pets, have sexual relations you’re just passing parasites back and forth. So, we all have parasites. They outnumber us. You cannot avoid them, but we want to minimize the amount that we have. They’re pooping and peeing in us and maybe create their own energy. You definitely get rid of them.

I mean, think about full moon. Full moon, those parasites are birthing new babies. What happens on full moon? Well, if you ask the hospitals, the police departments, the fire departments they’re busy because people are doing things they normally wouldn’t do because the parasites, their beings, their energy and they will make you do some crazy stuff. Some more than others. So, it’s really important to understand that that 30 to 36 feet of intestinal tract is very important to know how to manage it. Back in the early 1900’s you had two amazing pioneers, Dr. Harvey Kellogg who was a gastroenterologist himself. Who after doing 20,000 surgeries says, “You know what? There’s got to be a better way. Well, what if we do cleansing?” So, he’d bring people to Battle Creek Michigan where he would do enemas and do all his cleansing and teach them how to eat right. After that, most of his patients all but after 40,000 treatments, all but a handful needed surgery.

So you’ve run 20,000 surgeries to just a handful after doing 40,000 treatments. Then he have Dr. Bernard Jensen. Dr. Bernard Jensen was very sick and he discovered cleansing and was one of the developers of developing the current day Colema Boards and Colon Hydrotherapy systems. So, it saved him from his disease. So he began teaching others. Here, he became a chiropractor and of course became known to create the iridology charts. He treated over 350,000 people in his day. Most amazing story about all this is at age 88, Dr. Bernard Jensen got prostate cancer. Now, I have seen many people who through bowel management and deep tissue cleansing using colon hydrotherapy have healed their prostate cancer including my dad, which I’ll share that story in a bit.

So anyway, he gets at 88 years of age. He gets down to 88 pounds after having prostate cancer and he gets hit by a car. He’s paralyzed in the waist down. Now, when you get down to 88 pounds at age 88 the doctors told him chemo wouldn’t work. Well, first he healed himself from prostate cancer then he got smashed by the car. So, now he’s down to 88 pounds and the guy says, “Okay, well it’s going to be a lucky boy for you to live.” He says, “Okay, I’m a lucky boy.” So he went, get this, he went to North Idaho. Sought out a doctor friend of his to help him out and be his coach. Now, the moral of this story is that everyone needs a coach even everyone who knows what to do. Basically, this guy coached him through Jensen’s own process. He needed to get away. He need to get to Southern California where his ranch was. He get away from everyone to just focus on healing his body. He healed it, he did. He went back to work. I have met some of his students who in the early 2000s, prior to him passing at the age of 93, took classes from him in iridology.

So he completely healed. His daughter-in-law, Dr. Ellen Tart Jensen, told me that she says, “Yeah. I think he would live to be far older than that but he had so much he wanted to express, so much he wanted to get done. He began teaching. He was a tireless worker. He just worked all the time.” But anyway, he recovered and lived until 93. God bless him. Amazing person that brought this technology to us. Of course since then, the colonic beds had become really very sophisticated and very easy to use, very private. Much easier than what they used to do in the old days. So, pretty cool story.

 

[0:21:54] Ashley James: I bet. Very cool. One of my mentors, Dr. Wallach, who was a veterinarian and a pathologist before becoming a Naturopath says that prostate cancer, men who die from prostate cancer die from the treatments not from the cancer. It is such a benign form of cancer that is so, it’s one of the most easily reversible forms of cancer. The best thing to do is to wait and watch and not let them poke it and prod it and administer the chemo and surgery and all that. He says that if you have it, that’s the kind of cancer you go really slowly into any form of treatment like you just sit and wait and watch and do natural medicine because he has seen so many men reverse it. That the men that give in to the chemoradiation, surgery will die within five years. The men who don’t do that and do natural medicine survive. He says you could live years with prostate cancer because it’s not it’s one of those ones that are very benign. It doesn’t metastasize quickly.

So, he really warns people to just slow down and don’t jump into the chemoradiation, surgery route, the cut, burn and poison route, but to slow down and look at all your options and see if you can use natural medicine. Of course now there’s Naturopathic oncologists out there who will work with their patients and help them to navigate natural medicine. You mentioned that you had cancer yourself and you healed it. I didn’t catch, what kind of cancer did you have?

 

[0:23:40] David DeHaas: So my cancer showed signs of exiting on my back in the form of a mole, but it also was connected around into my liver. Let’s go back to prostate for a hot moment. I got two great stories to share with you. The first was when we were just getting involved in this, there was a guy that came and he had his PSA number was over 42. He’d been measured by the University of Utah at least three times. He was trying herbs and different things, parasite cleanses and so forth, which is all fantastic. He did the deep tissue cleansing with the colon hydrotherapy and he went back and he got measured and his PSA number had dropped to zero. So, the doctors looked and says, “Must have made a mistake. Let’s measure him again.” So they measured him three different times. They say, “Well, either our machines were all wrong the last three times you were in or you’re a miracle.” He says, “Yeah. I guess I am.” He didn’t tell them what he did.

My dad’s story though, my dad was amazing. My dad knew something was up, went to a doctor, doctor says, “Yeah, your PSA is about 13.” Within about a month it’s up to 38. So of course they say, “Well, it’s fast-acting…” I talked to my dad and I say, “Well, yeah there’s an oncologist here, but I think what you need to do dad is you need to get back on and do some more cleansing.” So, he’d already done some cleansing. I think he had already done a couple of 10-day treatments, but he went to the oncologist and says, “Yeah, with spot radiation we could probably get it down to about seven-eight but it’s going to come back. When it does, nothing we can do.” So my dad says, “Okay. All right.” So he started the spot radiation and he started cleansing same day.

Before he was finished with his 10-day protocol, the numbers had already dropped significantly. The doctors looked at him every day going like, “This guy’s just changing so fast.” They gave him two years to live. My dad has lived 12+ more years. Very healthy, very active. He can do anything a 50-year-old can. In fact, he and my sister put up 10 cord of wood in three days last fall. His PSA number has been 0.00347 ever since. He just did another 10-day cleanse. He’s 86 years of age and he’s looking great.

 

[0:26:04] Ashley James: That’s cool. It would have been interesting if he had done the cleanse and then waited to do the radiation to see if he even needed it. Because now it’s like someone could argue, “Oh, the radiation was what did it and everything else is just placebo.” The fact that he is still here 12 years later and still super healthy. I could not do that. I couldn’t cut that many cords of wood. So, he’s definitely healthier or more physically fit than I am right now.

 

[0:26:32] David DeHaas: Yeah. The doctor looked at him and says, “Do you want to just do your own thing?” Dad says, “Well, maybe I should do both.” Anyway, it was a hard decision for him to make.

 

[0:26:42] Ashley James: Yeah, it is. A hindsight, yes, but you know what, he made the right call. He’s still here today. He’s still healthy. So, he listened to his gut. I think that’s really important to listen. Don’t go to a doctor that tries to pressure you into anything but instead educates you on all your choices and allows you to listen to your own intuition after giving you fully informed consent. So, the fact that he wasn’t pressured into anything and that he was given his choices and he got to make his own choices and he was empowered as a patient is really important. I think that also helps with outcome, patient outcome when they believe in the process that they’re going and they’re actively part of choosing it. So, I love that you shared that.

Interesting about PSA numbers for the men listening and for the women with men in their life, Dr. Wallach says that now, this is something they didn’t always used to do, but just watch when a man who’s about 40 or 50 years of age, that’s when they start to get their prostate tested by their doctor. You bend over and cough and all that. What Dr. Wallach says is now, doctors will test. Basically put the finger up the rectum to palpate the prostate, which irritates the prostate. Then they take their blood work. He says that artificially will elevate PSA levels because you stimulated the prostate. So he says to get accurate levels, get your blood work done before you have your prostate checked. So, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that, but I thought that was really interesting because you can get some false positives from taking the blood work after getting the physical exam or falsely elevated.

So, yeah. Can you just explain what a colon hydrotherapy session is for those who have never heard of a colonic before?

 

[0:28:45] David DeHaas: Yes. So most people have heard of an enema. So, this is a lot more than an enema. An enema you’re going to put a little tube with a bag full of about to two pints of water, maybe a quart. You’re going to get on the floor and insert the tube in your rectum and you’re going to put the water in there. Then you’re going to go, “Oh my gosh, I got to get on the toilet and let go of this.” Now, in a clinic session you’re in the privacy of your own room and you’re on a specially made bed. There are two filters that filter the water and kill all any bad things that should be in the water. There’s a rectal tube, it’s going to be inserted into your rectum about an inch, inch and a half. The farthest that tube can go in is about three and a half, four inches at best so it can’t hurt you, it won’t harm, it can’t poke a hole in you. There’s no danger.

 

[0:29:31] Ashley James: It’s the size of a pencil so it doesn’t hurt.

 

[0:29:33] David DeHaas: Size of a pencil, yeah. Size of a pencil. Then you’re going to turn on the water and you have on there, our systems we use you have control if you want to turn it off but now that water comes in. In a session, about 45 minutes to an hour, you’ll have about 15 gallons of water that’s going to gently go in and go out. So it’s kind of a washing machine action if you will. So water is going to go in and the fecal matter is, anything that’s in there very hard, if you’ve got pockets of diverticula for example, that’s going to help dissolve that. Those can pop out of there. You’ll begin basically to create peristalsis. Most people, is listening, are constipated. Now, they may go once a day well the problem is, that’s not enough. If you eat, what’s that food doing? If you eat three times a day you should be pooping three times a day. If you’re eating twice a day you should be eating and evacuating. Most people do not and so what happens is because of stress, the colon gets distorted, twisted. The colon should be about three inches in diameter. It get as big as sixteen.

 

[0:30:36] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

 

[0:30:37] David DeHaas: It can also become what we call spastic colon, which it can get down to maybe half-inch, inch. So now we’ve got a blockage especially if you’ve got hard stuff. We’ve had clients come in I mean regularly. This is a regular deal we’re doing. Have them go in once every three or four days, once a week, once every two weeks. I’ve had a client that came in here, once a month. I mean that’s just shocking to me. How do you go once a month?

 

[0:31:07] Ashley James: Wait a second. They only pooped once a month?

 

[0:31:11] David DeHaas: Once a month.

 

[0:31:12] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. That’s really dangerous.

 

[0:31:16] David DeHaas: Especially in women, a lot of women got taught that you shouldn’t fart, you shouldn’t have anybody smells. So they will hold on. When you do that holding on, which is what I used to do that’s what created my constipation I think, part of it. Now you’ve taught that colon to constrict and you get constriction in your colon. Some people are embarrassed to go poop in public. I’ve known schools where teachers go, “No, you can’t use a bathroom until we go to recess. You got to wait until you go to lunchtime.” Of course lunchtime where they give you 15 minutes to quickly eat, go out to recess and get back and sit in the seat. So, you don’t have time to properly go evacuate. So we create this from 3our children the taboo of not going in public, not going using a public restroom. I know many people I’ve interviewed that said, “I’m embarrassed to go poop at work or when I was going to school.” That’s usually when it starts. A lot of people for severe constipation started sometime as a young child or maybe in their teen years or a lot of people in their college years when they had some emotional traumatic event happening. Maybe it was a bad deal with a boyfriend or a lot of stress in the classes at college.

It’s pretty amazing to see people get on the colonic bed. What that’s going to do, that whooshing action is going to re-get that muscle start to push back and recreate peristalsis. First, you got to clean out that 12 to 15 pounds. The average person on a 10-day cleanse loses about 12 pounds, the average.

 

[0:32:48] Ashley James: That weight loss, you’re not saying is fat. You’re saying it’s caked in fecal matter that is toxic and fermenting and decomposing inside of them causing toxic buildup. 

 

[0:33:01] David DeHaas: Right. So think about the neurons. You have more neurons in your gut than your spinal column. Neurons are like little cellphones. What would happen, Ashley, if you cover up your cellphone with poop? Would you be able to get a call? Well, no. So, in your gut these neurons aren’t firing and wiring the nerves. So, if those nerves aren’t firing and wiring, you’re going to have an issue in your body. So it’s triggered by there. Give you an example, I referee a lot. I had what I thought was a groin pull. My left leg hurt. Now if you look on an iridology chart, the connection to the groin is just on the, if you feeling your left side of your body down low on the left by your leg, that’s the connection in the colon to the groin. So I think like, “Dang it. I can’t referee this week and I got nine games coming up. This kind of bummer.” I had to lift my leg in and out of bed. It really hurts. So I thought, “You know what, I’m going to do a colonic.” I did a colonic. I got it done and I went home and thought, “Wow, 85% of my pain is gone. I think I could referee.” So I went out two days later and I refereed. I refereed nine games. I was like, “Wow. That’s amazing.”

I had a hip pointer same thing. Those aren’t very sore. I was refereeing one night then, “Oh gosh, I can’t run anymore.” Same thing. Came to the office late at night, did a colonic, pain next day was gone. So it’s amazing to see the connections. I’ll give you another example. I had a contractor. Been swinging a hammer with his left arm and shoulder for 40 years. Now he couldn’t do it. So for four months he went away and he did parasite cleansing, which is great. He did some chelation therapy. That’s all fine, but the problem was he had an issue in his colon. I said, “Look, until you clean this out, it’s not going to get better.” He says, “Well.” He’s just so embarrassed to come in. He’s just so embarrassed. So he didn’t want his friends to find out. So I talked into doing three colonics. Did three colonics and says, “Oh, I get it. I’m feeling starting to feel better.” Five days later, he walked in the office and he could swing his shoulder and swing a hammer again. 

 

[0:35:07] Ashley James: I love it. That’s really interesting that there’s this connection between the colon health and the health of the rest of the musculature and the nervous system.

 

[0:35:19] David DeHaas: We’ll watch face color change as we’re going around that. We take 10 days to do our 10-day wellness retreat. Each day they’re getting deeper and deeper and deeper. We’ll literally watch the color on the face change like the sun coming up in the morning. We’ll see it go all the way around the face. It’s pretty amazing.

 

[0:35:36] Ashley James: Wow.

 

[0:35:37] David DeHaas: So a little bit more about digestive. So people don’t realize this, but in your small intestine, well first of all most people don’t chew well enough, right? That’s where everything starts. Your mouth should be your blender. I got a little ditty. I say, “No. The thing you got to do is chew, chew, chew because it’s the right thing to do. Chew, chew, chew cause it’s right thing to do.” Make your mouth be your blender. Masticate that food, the saliva comes up. Now starting to the digest. Enzymes are being created down below. The pancreas is getting fired up saying, “Hey, I got some stuff coming my way.” The gut acids are starting to be produced. Now, when the gut or the stomach receives, it’s starting to do its thing.

People who have acid reflux, for example. What do the doctors give them? Stuff just to decrease acids. You want more acids. You want those digestive acids, juices to help break down the food and then flow into the duodenum and then to the small intestine. Once it gets in the small intestine, now we got the food. What happens, it breaks down further. The gallbladder, if you still had your gallbladder, has squeezed out some bile to break down fats. Things are breaking down. Now you have about the surface area the size of a tennis court of what I call shag carpet.

So shag carpet is what is called a villi. Villi is what absorbs the vitamins and minerals that have been broken down from the food you eat, into the bloodstream to go the cells. Because at the end of the day, what we got to heal? We got to heal the cells. Let’s heal the cells. But the highways to get there, the small intestine, the colon and the blood, the blood if you’re getting stuff dropping into the blood that shouldn’t be there, well you’ve got a problem in your intestinal on tract. They call that leaky get, in other words the junctures between those shag carpets, the villi, gets really big and now stuff drops in there and the body says, “What the heck? This is bad,” and attacks. Now you get a label called leaky gut or I’ve got food allergies or food sensitivities or I’ve got lupus or fibromyalgia. No. What you’ve got, you got a very toxic body.

Let’s reduce those toxins. Let’s clean up the blood. Who cleans up the blood? The liver, but the poor liver, the poor thing, it’s like the furnace filter. If you never change your furnace filter in your home pretty soon that furnace is going to blow up because there’s no airflow. If you don’t change the oil filter in your car, guess what, eventually the car’s going to break down. So that liver does about 2,000 different transactions and one of us cleaning up the blood. So people now are changing, “Well, I got a thyroid issue. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, my hormones are out of balance.” Yeah. They are because your blood is dirty. The poor old liver can’t do everything it needs to do.

So pretty soon you’ve got, and I see this in young kids today, teenager, young adults. I’ve got fatty liver. Well, a fatty liver is a toxic liver. In other words, your body is really toxic. Pretty soon the liver says, “Well, geez, I’m full. Let’s see, what else I can do here. Oh, I know. I’ll create fat. I’m going to create some fat stores.” Now people are gaining fat. They’re going like, “Oh my gosh, I need to go into weight loss. Maybe I’ll do this diet or that diet.” Maybe they’ll lose some weight and they gain it back. They go, “Why am I gaining my weight back?” I tell you why, you’re toxic. I’ve seen people with gastric bypass. Oh my gosh. They come in here they go, “Yeah. I did well. I lost 180 pounds, but now I’ve gained back 30.” I’m looking at them with their dark circles under their eyes and their skin is very patchy and greyish. I’d be like, “Yeah. It doesn’t surprise me at all. You’re really, really toxic. We got to drop the toxic load. You’re never going to be able to keep off fat.”

So, I always say first order protocol, the amount of heavy metals and pesticides and all these parasites pooping and peeing in you all this toxicity, let’s clean out that. Let’s clean that stuff out. You’ll feel better. You’ll have more energy. Your joints won’t hurt. It’s just going to change. I remember when I first cut to do my first one, I walked onto the court, played basketball. The thing that hit me was like, “Oh my God I didn’t have to stretch out for 45 minutes.” I didn’t have to jog for a while. I just went out and played. When I got done I had no body odor. I went, “Whoa, no body odor. Wow. That’s amazing.” So, yeah. Getting this deep tissue cleansing is the best amazing gift. The coolest thing is, because I see people come in here all the time and they’ve got arthritis.

So let’s just take Megan. This a great case. Megan came in, 32 years of age, about a year ago. Deep dark circles under her eyes. Had two kids, basketball player in college, amazing athlete, but now, all of a sudden, she started getting fatigued and not feeling well. Gets married and has two kids, she’s teaching school and she could just barely get through the day. Her dad’s a physician. He tried everything. They put her on Adderall at one time to give her energy. Of course, they gave her the diagnosis, “It’s all in your head. You’re depressed.” Well, heck yeah she’s depressed. No one can figure out what’s going on. She tried all kinds of different things. I mean long list. I walked in, I looked at her. Of course I knew right away. She filled out her intake form. I looked at it. Of course the first question we ask is, “How do you poop? What’s it look like? What’s the smell like? What shape is it in? Is it diarrhea-type? Is it fluffy-like? Is it little rabbit pellets?” So, she of course explained that to me. I go, “Yeah. No one’s ever ask you how you poop before have they?” All these years she goes, “No.” I say, “Yeah. Basically Megan, you’re full of poop and you need to do some cleansing.”

So she did. Everyone wants to stick their toe in the water and say, “Okay. I’m kind of nervous. Should I do this?” Then they go and they do their first colonic. They come down and go, “Okay. It feels a little better.” They do a couple more. She did our 10-day protocol a year ago. Oh my gosh. She went from pooping once every 3 to 4 days to pooping daily. Dark circles went away. We then nicknamed her Miss Sparkle. Her mother and father looked and went, “Whoa. What happened to you?” Kids had their mom back. She’s able to get through the day easier. I mean before, she told me when she went to the zoo with her kids for a day she’d have to sleep for three days. At age 32. There’s lots and lots of people like Megan. So if you’re like Megan listen to this. You got to find a colon hydrotherapist. You got to do some deep tissue cleansing and not just one or two. You need to do more than one or two. When you’re constipated, I tell people that you’re going to have to do 7 to 10 immediately and then it’s going to take a while to rebuild that muscle and get that back. You’re going to get it back. Everyone’s different. I don’t know how long it’s going to take you. But I can tell you this, I did a bunch of colonics early on and then we figured out this whole 10-day process. I have now done 500 colonics. Someone say, “David, why have you done 500 colonics?” Because I keep feeling better and better. I’m 62 years of age and I’m doing stuff I couldn’t do when I was 30.

 

[0:42:16] Ashley James: I love it.

 

[0:42:17] David DeHaas: Four years ago I refereed 55 basketball games in the span of three weeks, 21 days. I figured I ran about 15 plus miles a day and went skiing on Sunday”. I thought, “Oh my gosh. That is such amazing that at 58 I could do that.” I know. I’m like this old miracle. I’ve done a lot of research of course throughout the years. I’ve met people who’ve been in the industry a long time. We all get reinfected of course with the ball of pollution we have. You’re going to get reinfected, it’s just life. So, think about it, the Essenes were saying 2,000 years ago, “Let’s cleanse.” I say to you today, if you want to be well, your first protocol, bowel management. What’s the bowels look like? How do you poop? Let’s get that well first? Because what if it does work? It’s so cheap. It’s so inexpensive compared to everything else. I mean everyone comes in here they spent, like I did I spent lots and lots of money, hundreds and thousands of dollars to try to figure out how to get well. You can do some colonics for very, very inexpensive. Average cost of colonic across the country is probably around $100-$125.

 

[0:43:23] Ashley James: It’s a lot cheaper than getting on medications and needing a surgery and being depressed and sick.

 

[0:43:30] David DeHaas: Oh my gosh. I had a gal come in here. Oh my god. This is a cool story too. So she came in on a Monday. I showed her around. She says, “Okay, I want to do your 10-day wellness retreat.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “But I got seven doctor’s appointments this week.” I said, “Okay.” She says, “Can we work around this?” I said, “Well, are they really necessary?” She says, “Well, they’re all checkups.” I say, “Well, your choice but if it was me, I’d probably hold off. I mean, that’s about 14 hours of your time. Wait 10 days. Let’s see what happens.” She says, “Okay. I’m in.” So she jumps in, 10 days later different lady. Didn’t have to go to the doctors, which doctors don’t want to hear that.

I always say to people, “Look, this might not be a totally a 100% fix, but if we get your gut clean, if we get the body functioning, you’re able to absorb the nutrition then you’re going to be able to change. If you go to your Naturopath or whatever, you’re going to give absorb those nutrients. The amount of money you spend is going to be a lot less and you’re going to make your Naturopath, your homeopath look like a champ because you’re getting absorbed. Chiropractors, same thing. I got some chiropractors in town who know what we do. They’ll talk to their clients, they’ll find out, “Oh yeah, the adjustments aren’t working, right?” He says, “Hey, well how often do you go poop?” They’ll tell them, “Oh you got to go see the poop guy,” which is me. Dr. Rosie calls me Dr. Pooper, the poop daddy, yeah.

 

[0:45:00] Ashley James: That is so funny.

 

[0:45:01] David DeHaas: Anyway, so we get them in here. Then they go back to her or their chiropractor and guess what, the adjustments work because neurons are firing and wiring. You got to get things firing and wiring. If you’ve got toxic gut, it’s not going to fire and wire properly. We got to get that clean, get the gut clean.

Lymphatic fluid. How many people that you’ve interviewed have talked about breast cancer? People don’t understand that lymphatic, taking out lymph nodes. Lymph nodes are not an accessory. They are a very important part of your anatomy. So think about lymphatic. To paint a picture, you’ve got about 800 lymph nodes in your body. What it does is it basically, think of it kind of as a fancy sponge with a kind of suction tubes and there’s these little nodes. They’re kind of a one-way flusher. Then what they do is they pick up the intestinal fluids from around the capillaries of your body. It sweeps it up and it takes it up and it dumps it in your vein. Now, for it to get there there’s no pump. The pump is us jumping up and down and running and moving. Most of us don’t do that enough.

So, we have a machine, we have a vibration machine. We put people on and help move that lymphatic fluid. Most people get done they start itching. I go, “Yup, that’s a sign. Your bucket’s full. Your toxic bucket’s really full.” So now that dumps that fluid, 45 pints. Now you got 10 pints of blood, so put that into perspective. The blood’s got to pump, it’s got the heart. Lymphatic doesn’t have that luxury. So we got to be moving. Most of us don’t move. So it’ll be a mini-tramp, these vibration plates like what we sell here and use here, awesome. Two minutes on that is like one hour of work. So, they’re great. So we put them on there, we’re moving that, we’re getting that lymphatic fluid cleared out, it’s dumping into the blood, poor liver’s getting hit with more toxic soup, but as we do that those lymph nodes are not going to get stagnant.

We had a guy come in and he had, I mean, really a lot of blockage and his lymph nodes under his left arm. So we put on that vibration plate and had him basically wipe his hand across his armpit and in five minutes he had stuff moved out of there. Of course you need to do some liver cleansing. So, that’s the other part of what is really important to be doing but you can’t do liver cleansing until you’ve done colon cleansing. Because if you’re doing coffee enemas for example which, is pretty popular today, what that does, coffee enemas basically help you stimulate the liver to kick out bile, which is great but if your colon, small intestine’s toxic, guess what, the liver says, “Oh my god. There’s some toxic stuff down there in the colon. I better reabsorb that.” Now you could get sick.

 

[0:47:29] Ashley James: Let’s break that down though. I think you’ve hit so many important points and you spoke so quickly. Those that have never heard this before may not have fully gotten the lesson. The liver removes toxins from the body. Actually, we’ve had a few guests discuss this in detail, but there’s a really interesting system where it’s almost like part of the immune system that tags, like attach a tag to a toxic chemical to be removed from the body like pesticides and also even hormones. When women are finished with estrogen, the liver converts it into a non-active form of estrogen to get rid of it. Too much of that though can become a toxic level of estrogen and have estrogen dominance. So we have hormones that the liver has to get rid of. We have metabolites the liver has to get rid of. Then we have all of the 80,000 chemicals in our food, water and air plus the artificial crap that’s in our food today the liver needs to get rid of it.

So the liver is getting rid of healthy, though doing healthy functions, but then also all the unhealthy stuff that’s in our diet the body tags it, the liver detects it, the liver pulls it out of the blood, puts it in the bile to then be released into the small intestine and to hopefully exit the body quickly through our poop. But if we’re constipated, meaning if we are not pooping three times a day, we’re constipated. If the poop slows down then it gets reabsorbed because bile is a very costly thing for the body to make. So the body is really smart, it will reabsorb as much bile as it can. The problem is that when we were invented, when God invented us or however we arrived here, there weren’t all these chemicals so it was safe for our body to reabsorb some bile. Now, there’s obesogens and Bisphenol A and microplastics. All of these horrible chemicals, 80,000 plus chemicals in our environment and in our food and water, that the colon cannot tell the difference between healthy bile that it’s allowed to reabsorb and bile that actually has attached into it these toxins.

So by having a slower poop basically, having slower bowel movements, we are now reabsorbing these toxins. If we are really constipated as women, we can reabsorb toxic form of estrogen that it gets reactivated and it’s an unhealthy form. So there’s a lot of bad stuff that can go on by the bowel not moving healthfully enough. So we’re obviously, most people are not eating enough fiber, that’s one thing. Most people are chronically dehydrated, that’s another. But then you’re saying most people don’t have a really great diet, most people don’t have a great microbiome, a healthy microbiome, most people have dysbiosis of some way like bacteria, parasites, fungus, yeast. They’ve got some kind of overgrowth, some kind of imbalance. If you’ve gone on antibiotics you likely don’t have a healthy gut biome, unless you really, really, really worked at building a healthy gut biome. So we have that going against us, then they have years and years of eating highly processed crap food, the standard American crap diet like dairy and meat, will rot in the intestines especially if they have constipation on top of that.

So, we have toxic foods. We have toxins getting reabsorbed into the body. We have gut dysbiosis. Now, the colon itself, the muscles have been overstretched, like you said, don’t have tonicity. So now physically we have a problem plus all of the nerves that are around the gut and 70% of the immune system that surrounds the gut that has now been compromised. The microvilli that you mention or the finger-like projections like a shag carpet that help absorb nutrients are not functioning because they’ve been whittled down. Also the small gaps in between them, those junctions in between them, have been compromised. So now there’s leaky guts. We are absorbing partially digested particles, which the immune system is reacting to creating these illnesses like you mention, creating the immune system to overreact to foods and create allergies.

I know many people that heal their seasonal allergies after changing their diet and cleansing. So, all of these things domino. Changing one thing may not make a huge difference like, “Oh, I ate more fiber,” or “I drink more water.” You’ll notice actually people do notice some positive results, but it’s really this is accumulation of a lifetime of toxic colon that has just tipped over. Now the person is in pain and stiff and feels like they’re 90 when they’re 30 and is fatigued and just downing the Starbucks every day because they have to just get through the day. They don’t know what’s wrong with them and they go to their doctor, which MDs have almost zero training in nutrition. They have something like five hours of training. They don’t have the tools to teach you what to do. They never ask you how your poop is unless they want to give you a drug. Meanwhile, this is the beginning of health. The beginning, the root cause, the beginning of health is in the gut. So I love that you’re painting this picture that it all starts here, but it also all dominoes here.

So we have to look at all of those factors. If you have had a lifetime of this, then changing everything but not doing colon hydrotherapy is really you’re missing a big key. You’re missing a big component of healing if you still have a toxic colon. So that’s why I think this so important because for some people, it is the last missing key that puts everything back in place.

 

[0:54:16] David DeHaas: Yeah. The picture I always paint is imagine if you left food in your refrigerator that got moldy and rotted for maybe two or three months or two or three years or how about twenty years or thirty years, right? You can’t just throw a probiotic in there or fresh food and expect it to change. I mean, “I’m taking probiotics.” That’s great, but the problem is, I mean, it’s not going to help much because you’re so toxic. Well, we got to clean out the refrigerator. You mentioned some good points. Most people are dehydrated. I was one of those. Makes a huge difference. Give you another great example of a story. A lady came to see us 84 years of age. Her poop problem started when she was in her 20s. In between children, she had her gallbladder out. Next child she had her appendix out. They did a hernia. So hernias, appendix, tonsils the trifecta there says to me you are constipated and of course she was. I remember after her second colonic she called me and she says, “Oh my gosh.” So she just got done cleansing, right? But she went home and she had to poop. She says, “David, that’s shocking.” Because she goes once every four or five days. All she could do all day long is just sit in a chair. She said, “I can get up make breakfast, the rest of the day I’m just sitting there.” When she was done she goes, “You know what, I’m 84, I’m going to go back taking up painting. I’m going to start doing some fun stuff.”

It’s funny too, I get people come in and they go and they’re kind of hunched over and they’re shuffling and their joints hurt and they’ll tell me, “Well, I really don’t have anything wrong.” They got arthritis, they got brain fog. I look at them I go like, “Oh man, you’re only living part of your life.” I mean they say, “I’m normal.” What’s normal? Jack LaLanne, in my opinion, that’s the normal I want to be, right? I want to be able to pull a rowboat across the San Francisco Bay with my teeth at 72. I want to be still strutting around and working my buns off at 90 something years of age. I mean, that should be the normal. Dr. Jensen, he had people hired all around the world and interview and really research who’s living long and why are they living long. Of course he did truly determine, it was all because of nutrition value they were getting. Their teeth weren’t falling out because they were getting proper nutrition. We don’t get proper nutrition. We’re buying stuff in boxes and our stores are a 100,000 square feet when we basically need about 3,000 square feet for produce and a few meats. We’re eating out of the wrong kind of cookware. We’re eating out of the wrong type of containers. You should be drinking out of glass. You shouldn’t be drinking out of plastic. You need to throw away your Teflon pans, those non-stick pans are one of most toxic killers. I mean that stuff is just – when I got cleansed, when I got my body cleaned out, what’s really amazing, now here’s a guy I mean as a kid I raised hogs. I loved pork, I love bacon. Everyone loves bacon, right? So, what I noticed after getting clean is if I eat a food that’s bad for me, if I eat pork, I begin to sweat. If I eat out of a pan, if the food’s been cooked in Teflon, I break out in a sweat. I literally get a, I guess you might say a fever. My body or my teeth will hurt. My body will tell me, “Bingo. Dude, you just put something that they shouldn’t put in.”

When your teeth are well, they’re secreting a fluid. When they’re not well they’re taking it in. That’s why we get cavities. So, if your body is really at homeostasis it’s going to give you a sign. So, I don’t even go close to touching any of those foods anymore like I used to.

 

[0:58:24] Ashley James: I love that you brought up plastics. Don’t eat out of plastics or drink out of plastics. I interviewed a Naturopath that was, oh shoot. What’s one of the Beatles that’s still alive? Not Ringo, the other one. Paul McCartney.

 

[0:58:40] David DeHaas: Yeah, Paul McCartney.

 

[0:58:41] Ashley James: Paul McCartney’s wife and Paul McCartney were big vegan activists. She would travel with them and she would bring all of her own food with her. She ate a whole plant-based diet. So when she got breast cancer it was really curious. She was eating so healthy, why’d she got breast cancer? Well, unfortunately she came to this Naturopath and I interviewed him. It was really fascinating because he does a lot of work with cancer. I think he’s in Arizona. He’s a really old school. He’s been, I think, practicing for 40 years. He said, “Let’s test.” He figured it out. He actually figured it out. He goes, “Tell me about your routine for the last 50 years. Tell me about your routine. Paint the picture.” He figured out that she was bringing all of her own food. She’d cooked beautiful, beautiful vegan food and put it in Tupperware containers and bring it on tour and heat it all up in the microwave. Then eat her food heated up in plastic. Well, they tested her tumor. They found the exact, he said, “Bring me your Tupperware.” They tested the Tupperware and they tested her tumor. The plastic in her Tupperware was in her tumor. Unfortunately, she came to him too late to save her life, but they got to the root of it. Because there’s so much now we know, so much more now than back then that plastics are endocrine disrupters. The body does not know how to handle them. So, if the colon is backed up and the liver is backed up, the body really doesn’t know how to handle it and also can’t eliminate it. It gets built up and built up.

So, what happens is the body then puts it in our fat cells and stores it there and it disrupts our endocrine system. So it’s just so bad. We have to definitely be cautious. I keep saying this in the podcast. If you want to be a statistic, if you want to – one in three people will have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. That’s the truth in the United States and in all the industrialized countries, it’s very similar statistic. One in three people are diabetic or pre-diabetic, one in three people have obesity. The number one cause of death is heart disease. So, here we have these statistics. If you want to be a statistic, keep doing what everyone else is doing. Keep doing what the masses are doing. But if you want to beat the odds and not be a statistic, you have to be a salmon and swim upstream and be the oddball weirdo that doesn’t drink out of plastic, that doesn’t have Teflon that doesn’t do what everyone else is doing. I have right here beside me, you could hear this, this my mason jar. I drink my water out of a mason jar. I like drinking a lot of water.

 

[1:01:42] David DeHaas: Awesome.

 

[1:01:43] Ashley James: So, I got my mason jar here. We travel with all of our food in the glass version of Tupperware basically. My husband bought me as a gift because I told him I wanted it. So, a big purse that’s actually a thermos. You could get them at Bed Bath & Beyond. I cook all my food at home. We pack it up in these glass containers and bring our own. We don’t you do one-use plastics so we bring our own utensils. When we go out for the day, we bring snacks and bring healthy food with us. We just went to the zoo with our son the other day. We sat by the zebras and I had brown rice, steamed green beans, instant pot sweet potatoes. We just sat there and ate that. I think we had some fruit also. But you have to be kind of oddball. You have to be the black sheep. Yeah. Some people are going to think you’re weird or criticize you. You might lose some friends but those people weren’t going to support you in your health goals. You’ll find new friends and find a new community that are totally into wanting to be healthy.

I just got to this point where it’s like I rose above it. I’m like, “Yeah, this who I am. I’m that oddball health nut that won’t eat something that isn’t organic. You know what? Because my body notices the difference.” Because when I ate the standard American crap diet, I was so sick. I was in my 20s. I lost my 20s. I did not get to enjoy my 20s. I was so sick. I was a prisoner trapped in my body and I was incredibly ill. I’m in so much pain emotionally and physically from being sick. I had to really make some big changes. I’m still making changes. I’m still adjusting. I’m still growing. I’m still gaining health.

You’re never done with this. You’re never done learning to be healthy, but it does start with this mindset. I think that when you shift to this mindset of I’m going to do the opposite of what the masses is doing and look towards natural medicine, then going and sticking a tiny tube up your butt and washing your colon with water really isn’t that far-fetched.

 

[1:04:05] David DeHaas: Well, exactly. I was like everyone else. I was the addicted two Reese’s peanut butter cups, two Snickers bars, 5-6 Coca Cola’s a day, hardly drank water.

 

[1:04:21] Ashley James: Well, you only ate two Reese’s? Isn’t there three Reese’s in a package?

 

[1:04:24] David DeHaas: Well, back in the day it was two.

 

[1:04:26] Ashley James: Oh, okay. I was going to say what happened to the third one man? It’s three Reese’s for me.

 

[1:04:29] David DeHaas: I got gypped. Anyway, of course there’s Big Macs, fries, Burger King, Wendy’s. Yup, that’s all the fast-food. That was the life that I knew. I remember people telling me, “You need to drink more water.” Why do I need to drink more water, I’m drinking Coke, right? So, when things get bad enough you got to start making some changes. I always convey to people, look at it, whether you’re a meth addict, a heroin addict we’ve had smoking people coming here that’s been smoking for 40 years can’t quit. It’s all the chemicals. What happens now is your autonomic nervous system it goes like, “Yeah, we want those chemicals, David. You know what, we’re going to turn things on to make you go get those chemicals. We want that Snickers. We want that Reese’s. We want that dose of heroin. We want that cigarette.” It’s all the same. The addiction’s an addiction. It’s just that your body’s been conditioned to fire and wire based upon what the chemicals you’ve given it.

So, when we start detoxifying the body, I’ve had people smoked for 40 years and in three or four days they’re like, “You know I had no craving this morning to smoke, David,” or “My sugar, I tried to eat sugar and they didn’t taste so good,” after the fourth or fifth, sixth day when they’re in here. Sometimes the first day we were getting them organic soups and juices. In the first day, “Oh, I didn’t like that so much.” But day three or four they’re like, “Oh, that was really good. What was it?” I go, “Same food we had the first day.”

So, your autonomic nervous system, look at it, it’s telling you, “Dude, give me a cigarette.” You’re going like, “Well, I don’t want to.” Of course there’s people that will, “Just do mantras and look in the mirror and say I am smoker-free and I am going to run and blah blah.” Anyway, you can say that all you want to your brain. Your autonomic nervous saying, “Dude, it ain’t going to happen dude. We got you wired. We got you where we want you. Give us some sugar. Give us some smokers. Give us give us whatever.” So, the transformation, you know it’s a couple steps forward. Maybe it’s half a step back and you keep going forward, you keep doing more cleansing and the toxins start pouring out. Those skin issues you had, the can’t sleep at night, you got the frequent urination going on, you’re walking like an old man. All these things can be healed and changed but we’ve got to begin within. Chasing it with chemicals is not going to chase it long-term. So we’ve got to get this cleaned out well. When you do that, when you get the parasites out, you get the heavy metals start to flowing out. Now your hormones start humming a little better. You start getting, “Oh, I’m making some progress.”

So then, things begin to change. But yes, it’s a process. You got to begin someplace and begin doing it and just don’t stop, keep going.

 

[1:07:19] Ashley James: I have a fun, fun story. My experience with colon hydrotherapy, when I was a kid I was totally grossed out by it. My mom brought me to Dr. D’Adamo, the man who wrote the book Eat Right for Your Blood Type. He was our Naturopath when I was six, not his son. He’s passed away because he lived a ripe old age. His son now has continued on the legacy. So there’s Peter D’Adamo and James D’Adamo. So the father, the original D’Adamo, he was my Naturopath growing up. I went from being very sick to being incredibly healthy overnight. It was amazing. He looked at my eyes and my ears and took my blood. He said to me, “You are allergic to milk, yeast, wheat and sugar. Stay away from them.” I looked at him and I knew those were the ingredients of chocolate bars because my favorite chocolate bar was a Coffee Crisp, which isn’t sold here, it’s a Canadian chocolate bar, at age six. I said, “Well, when can I have a chocolate bar?” He said, “Once every blue moon.” I thought that meant once a month so I was pretty happy about that. Little did I know my life was totally going to change. We came home and she threw out everything in the pantry. We basically ate a more whole foods diet, switched to soy milk, really gross thick soy milk because there wasn’t really cool options like there are now. We went wheat-free. So, we didn’t eat much gluten because we were wheat-free. They didn’t know what gluten, gluten wasn’t a thing back in the 80s.

So we just ate a lot of real food: brown rice, legumes. We did have meat because he said O blood type should eat it and lots of vegetables and I took his supplements. Overnight I went from being sick all the time to not being sick once. If I caught a flu, it lasted 12 hours. If I’d get a fever, I go to sleep, I’d wake up I’d be fine. I even had German measles and it was kind of like a three-day cold. It wasn’t that big of a deal. I just sat around and watched some movies and then it was over. It was pretty interesting that my body was buzzing with health. Then I hit 13 and I rebelled. I stopped the supplements and I started eating all the cafeteria food at school. I totally rebelled against my mom and all her hippy woodoo, voodoo health stuff because she was totally into it. I spent my teenage years totally rebelling. I paid for it in my 20s and then I had to spend all my 30s up until now reclaiming my health. So, I’ve had the experience, it’s sort of like rags to riches to rags to riches again.

In that, in my childhood, my mom would go for colonics. She’d come home and tell me how amazing it was. I think she was a wackjob, crazy and thought that was the grossest thing in the world. Of course a 7-year-old or a 9-year-old or a 12-year old doesn’t want to hear that a doctor is putting a tube up their butt and water and all that stuff, but my mom would say, “You can see your poop and you can see what’s coming out of you. It’s so cool. There’s this little viewing tube and you could see stuff.” My mom totally thought it was the coolest thing. Her girl friend who’s Japanese saw a giant tapeworm because the water comes out slowly and there was this viewing tube. She saw a giant tapeworm as long as her intestines and she stopped eating sushi that day. I was just like, “Are you kidding me?”

Interesting that Dr. D’Adamo’s clinic when it was in Toronto, they would use an enzyme in the water from a cactus. Have you ever heard of this? It wasn’t just pure water, it was water plus an enzyme that they said would also help to break down the stuff that was kind of caked on. Have you heard of that?

 

[1:11:07] David DeHaas: No, I haven’t.

 

[1:11:08] Ashley James: Yeah. I’ve talked to a lot of other colon hydrotherapist and no one’s ever heard about it. So, I was just really curious that they would do that in the water along with everything. So, my first experience was my mom basically telling me it’s cool. Of course I’m a kid so I think everything my mom tells me is not cool. That I had to come back around and realize how cool it actually was. I wish my mom was alive today and I could go back and tell her, “Oh my gosh, everything you said it was right.” It’s so funny. We come around. We come full circle and we realize our parents were right.

When I was really, really sick in my 20s I had some sessions of colon hydrotherapy. It felt as though I got some relief from it, but I hadn’t changed my diet, I hadn’t changed anything else so it wasn’t a permanent lasting change. I think I did about 10 sessions in my 20s. I got bought like a punch card with this woman, like a whole package and kept coming back every few weeks. Like I said, I didn’t change anything else. So, you can’t just do it and keep eating crap food and keep smoking and keep drinking alcohol and still think that it’s going to save your life. It’s really helpful but you have to also make the changes throughout your whole life.

Then back in 2011, I was probably at the peak of my, well almost at the peak of my sickness. I had gone organic. We had figured out to eat organic food, which stopped my constant chronic infections. I thought that was really neat that just by switching to organic, my body responded really quickly to that. I still had polycystic ovarian syndrome. I was still type 2 diabetic. I still had chronic, chronic adrenal fatigue. I was exhausted all the time. I couldn’t lose weight. No matter what I did I was constantly dieting and constantly felt like I was a failure because I would fail every diet. What happened was I get really sick every time I lost weight. Well, I didn’t realize until years later my liver was so backed up that every time I lost weight my liver couldn’t process all the toxins being released from the fat. Then I would get very sick and I’d have an over toxic reaction.

Well, in 2011 I met a Naturopath who got me on supplements and told me to go gluten-free. He told me to eat more whole foods. Within days of doing that I started to drop pounds of water like just pounds of water came off of me from cutting out some bad foods. What’s really interesting is that I noticed that my body put off an odor and my stool put off an odor, a heavy, heavy burning rubber. Like if you ever smelled tires, like car tires that were burning. It was a stench so putrid and it was coming off of my breath, off of my body odor, but mostly out of my bowels. I was feeling really off. So I called this Naturopath and I told him what was going on and he said, “You need a colon hydrotherapy session now.” So I called up the one in Seattle. It’s called Tummy Temple. I called them up and I was their last appointment of the day and I went in and it was like amazing. It was amazing. So I had already, I changed my diet. I was on supplements. I was moving in a healthy direction but then adding the colon hydrotherapy was exactly what I needed. The funny thing is, you know it’s serendipity. The colon hydrotherapist, it turned out she used to be the neighbor of my Naturopath. They actually knew each other on Vashon Island. So, it was just really neat how it all came. It all kind of was confirmation. She’s like, “Yeah, who sent you?” Then I told her and then she goes, “Oh my gosh, we used to be neighbors. I’m friends with his wife”

So, I just thought that was interesting because he was in a different state so I didn’t think like, “Why would they know each other?” But that was confirmation. So I did about 10 sessions. In addition to the eating healthier way, in addition to supplements, in addition to everything I was doing, it was the final sort of key. I dropped 25 pounds in that month, between the water weight that I lost. My ring size went down one-and-a-half ring sizes so I know I lost water weight. My rings went flying off my hands. Six months later they were still flying off my hands so we got them resized and that was nine years ago and my rings still fit fine. So I really lost a ton of water weight kind of edema and inflammation. I know I also lost whatever was caked on in there in my gut.

My husband, his bowel movements for his whole life were between one poop every week sometimes two poops a week. I didn’t know that about him until we started working with Naturopaths because they asked. That’s something I didn’t know about him. Because it’s not like you follow your husband around and want to know like what he’s doing in the bathroom. I thought that was really crazy because for me at least I went every day. I knew I did but he was going like once a week. So he had some colon hydrotherapy sessions, which were great. What really helped him though was eating a gut-healing soup and I have the recipe on my website. It’s just a soup that is just filled with cabbage and beets and other gut-healing vegetables and we made into a puree. He drank it every day for one meal a day. So he still ate all the other food he ate but he just added it. So for one meal a day he had the soup. After seven days, and that was coming up on six years ago, he now goes three times a day.

 

[1:17:14] David DeHaas: Woohoo.

 

[1:17:15] Ashley James: I know. So, food can also heal the gut. The food could harm the gut and food can heal the gut. But colon hydrotherapy was we both used it at this moment in our life when we made the shift. We shifted our diet to eat heating healthy food. We shifted supplement. We shifted our lifestyle. We started drinking water instead of crap. Shifting everything and then adding colon hydrotherapy was like I don’t think we would have gotten the same results if we hadn’t added it, if that hadn’t been part of shift.

 

[1:17:49] David DeHaas: Speeds up everything, yeah. I’ve got a couple of chemo doctors who are patients that went through chemo and they’re sending people here to now detox and clean out the body afterward. So some people are going to choose that. Yeah. So, let’s get those chemicals out of the blood and out of the liver. That’s awesome though. I mean, what a big win. Actually, the dairy industry they’ve got a slogan, “Three a day, your yogurt your cheese and your milk. You got to have three a day,” which of course going to make you have asthma and plug up things. I’m thinking, “No, no.” We even have a shirt that says, “Three poops a day.” “Poop like a boss.”

 

[1:18:28] Ashley James: If a food has to market to you, don’t eat it. When they have to promote something to force you, there’s no commercials for broccoli or kale. The really good healthy foods, the advertising dollars come from an industry that wants to make sure you eat it. So, just don’t take your nutrient nutritional advice from marketing. You know what I mean? That’s just…

 

[1:18:59] David DeHaas: Exactly. Well, right now I mean, so people are on a celery stick right now, which is celery’s great but it’s got to be organic. If you eat non-organic celery you are just speeding up the amount of pesticides and chemicals in your body. You’re just getting a straighter shot of pesticides, really. So, yeah it’s going to make things, “Well, but I can’t afford it, David.” I say, “Well, you’re going to be spending some money here in the future.” “Oh, but I have insurance that covers it.” “Yeah, but you’re going to be sick and you’re going to die earlier.” So, choose how you pay, choose when you’re going to pay, but an investment now in good food and it’s not that much more. It’s really not that much more. I mean, I tell people. They’ll employ people I said, “Look.” I had a gal come in if I have to call her employer to tell him what she would be doing. She already missed two months of work. She had to cover one eye to be able to see the screen. She couldn’t squeeze her hand to hold the remote. I’m thinking, okay, he’s paying her $10 an hour. I go, “No, you’re not. You’re paying her about $60 an hour because she’s only working, you’re not getting a full day out of her. So I mean about 30% of your employees I mean they’re brain fog. The lack of critical thinking, the no energy to get things done. Everything that slows down and it’s costing the employers in this country. Billions of dollars just in lost time and wages because people are, “I got to get coffee and a doughnut so I can stay awake,” or “Oh, I’m sorry I missed that order. I couldn’t finish that sale because I wasn’t thinking clearly enough. Oh, I forgot to dot the Is there on that contract. Whoops.”

So, this goes deep. I mean, not being able to function and be cognitive is affecting a whole host of industry and businesses.

 

[1:20:52] Ashley James: But it’s profiting. It’s profiting some businesses and industries.

 

[1:20:55] David DeHaas: Well, the chemical industries love it, but if you’re an employer and you got people working for you, spend the money. Don’t spend it on insurance. Spend it on getting your body detoxed and cleansed and some nutrition in people. Rip out those Coca-Cola and Pepsi machines. Rip out the microwave, throw that away and let’s get whole food in the gut. Let’s get the gut well.

 

[1:21:20] Ashley James: Yeah. I had the CEO of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition on my show recently.

 

[1:21:24] David DeHaas: Yeah, I listened to that.

 

[1:21:25] Ashley James: You did? Yeah. They have free avocados.

 

[1:21:27] David DeHaas: I got bowls of avocados. Yeah. Avocados. I was going like, “Awesome.”

 

[1:21:32] Ashley James: Right, because if someone owns a business and they have employees, “They’re thinking, man free avocados. That’s going to add up. But if you have your employee eating healthy fats, healthy whole foods, that’s a healthy snack instead of some kind of packaged food with MSG that’s going to jack up their brain. The quality of their work is going to be better if they’re eating healthy. That just makes sense. I mean, to paint the picture of the contrast between my life now, the quality of my life now and the quality of my life five years ago, I was on a health kick five years ago. I’ve been on a health kick since 2008. I’ve been desperately seeking health actively, daily every minute of my life and every moment of my life since 2008. The contrast, even five years ago to now, I wake up and my brain is on. I am jumping out of bed. I am effortlessly going to the gym. I was just thinking that this morning in the gym when I was doing cardio, I’m like, “This is effortless. I could not do this five years ago. The feeling of ease in my body and my brain and my brain’s ability to be here with me. Even at night, it’ll be 7:00 at night now. I won’t want to wind down, although I know it’s healthy, I know I should be winding down. I still have my full cognitive ability to be here and to keep going if I needed it.

I thought that was really cool because five years ago, I even then felt really strained in the morning. Brain fog would happen. I’d have to really push myself to motivate myself or I’d need a substance like some kind of beverage to get me going. I don’t have that anymore. That makes a huge difference in the quality of a worker, right? In both respects, I was still on my health path. I was still doing healthy things, but the changes I’ve made in the last few years have made it so that I am like always on. So I’m just thinking, imagine if all of the employees out there were at their 100% capacity? How much more profitable would an employer be? So it really is in the best interest of an employer to invest in the health and the environment, the health of the environment and the health of the individual employee. That makes total sense. What would you say? You think employers should pay for their employees to come do your 10-day detox?

 

[1:24:15] David DeHaas: Yeah, definitely. If you think about, every business has got their ROI, the return on investment, right?” If you’re missing out on sales. You’re missing on getting things done properly in your business that money is leaking. It’s seeping out of your business. I see it all the time. I’ll give you a great couple of other stories. This gal was about 21 years of age. College wasn’t great for her. She had a hard time with college. So, she was working here part-time and working someplace else. She’d come in here. She’s always smiling happy. Her church sent her on a mission. I’m thinking, “Oh, man. She’s going to go to Boston Massachusetts.” Yeah, go away from home. There’s going to be stress. She’s kind of in that sick not sick state. I told her, “So McKenzie, we’re going to give you a 10-day cleanse.” She was so excited.

So, before they go on this mission I guess they have a talk at the church. She was like, “Oh my gosh. I never talk. I escape talking. I don’t want to be in front of the public.” Now she’s got to go on a mission she’s going to be talking to a lot of people. So, she does her cleanse and during this cleanse, she had to give her talk. On day eight, she’d just done her liver cleanse. She comes in, of course her skin’s looking brilliant. She comes in the door and she’s smiling. I go, “McKenzie, how’d it go?” She goes, “Oh my gosh, it was amazing.” I said, “Well, tell me about it.” She says, “People come up to me after. I talked.” Then they say, “Oh my gosh. McKenzie, where have you been? That was an amazing speech. That was incredible. We’ve never heard you speak like that ever.” She goes, “You know what, David?” I go, “What?” She goes, “I can’t think.” I went a couple of weeks later and she had to speak again. I listened to this and she like knocked it out of the park. The missionaries that have been away for a year or two years, some of them came back. They’ve been out two years. They came back, they talked. She nailed it. I mean, here’s a gal who struggled with school.

So, if you got kids out there struggling with school, you might want to give him some colonics, you might want to start thinking about, “I need to detox and cleanse to get those neurons.” Because brain, let’s talk about brain. Where does the brain connect? Transverse colon. If you got headaches, migraines, brain fog, bipolar all the transverse colon. Our colon hydrotherapist Chandra, she came to us in 2013 and she had been having migraines once a month for 12 years since 9/11/2001, interestingly enough. This put her out for about a week. For a week. 144, and my wife looks at her and says, “Oh yeah, you got parasites.” My wife’s amazingly intuitive. She goes, “I do?” She says, “Yep.” So she does the 10-day process. Guess what, it’s been six years, no migraines.

 

[1:27:10] Ashley James: Love it.

 

[1:27:11] David DeHaas: I know. I mean, it’s just firing and wiring neurons to nerves. Let’s detoxify the body. If you’re not pooping like we’ve talked about, three times a day. If you eat and you don’t poop, you’ve got a problem. So, let’s poop. Poop well.

 

[1:27:28] Ashley James: Okay. Well, this idea of parasites being in the biofilm of the gut. The biofilm is like this film that coats the gut. When we have a colon hydrotherapy session we’re washing the colon. Do we lose good bacteria? Does it wipe out the microbiome that’s housing the good bacteria? How does it get rid of the bad stuff but not get rid of the good stuff?

 

[1:28:01] David DeHaas: Great question. Okay. I’m getting back to my refrigerator analogy. If you’ve got old rotting gunky stuff in your trunk, in your colon guess what, your microbiome is already destroyed. If you’ve had antibiotics, your microbiome has been destroyed. We’ve got to clean it out and re-establish. So, you’re not going to get out all the bacteria. I mean, this colon hydrotherapy session is going to go into your colon. It will not going to go into your small intestine, but once we get the colon working right, guess what’s pulling it’s creating peristalsis and then stuffs coming out of your small intestine. We’re doing some other things up top to push things through. Once you start cleaning that out and getting that well and you give it a way to move, then you can put again like putting fresh fruit in the refrigerator that’s been cleaned, there’s no molding anymore. Then that microbiome is going to be reestablished. Look at it, my feet were totally black. I had fungus, severe Candida `yeast and I was able to use cleansing to reestablishment. I had psoriasis. My arms, it blew up. Oh my gosh, it was so horrible.

Let’s think about what happened to old David? Well, when I was young kid my mother says, “Oh, I think I should have the kids. I think I should take them to the dentist. I think I’ll go take him to Dr. so-and-so, okay.” So, of course he was one of those that was the drill fill-in bill and next thing you know I’ve got a cavity. Every time I went to him I had a new cavity. I got what in my mouth? I got mercury? Then later, “Let’s put a gold filling in there, David, that’ll be better.” No. So mercury, and I met Dr. Hal Huggins in 2004, I had 13 amalgam fillings and a root canal. I got them all removed at once. Had to go out of the country to do it up to Toronto. He supervised it. But what was amazing is that when you have mercury leaking yeast Candida is there to protect your body from mercury from converting to methyl mercury, which is far worse. So, of course I had yeast Candida, which means I’m craving carbohydrates. So if you’re craving carbohydrates and you’ve had mercury in your body and by the way, there’s so many sources of mercury. If you’ve had them out and you didn’t have them out properly and even if you did, there’s still mercury in your tissues of your body.

So it’s a process of continuing to cleanse out the body and using chelators and herbs and things to help pull those out the whole time. But again, if the pathway is blocked things aren’t sailing out like they should be. But I got those mercury fillings out and I went to Huggins the next day and I say, “Oh my god. Doc, I dreamt last night. I saw movies in full cinematic color. It was like freaking awesome.” I used to have frequent urination at night. I’d go to the bathroom seven-eight times a night, which means I wasn’t really sleeping. That went away. That went away.

 

[1:31:04] Ashley James: Interesting.

 

[1:31:05] David DeHaas: I know. Of course, most people had antibiotics. What do antibiotics do? They destroy everything. So you’ve had your antibiotics, I just had a customer here to cleanse, he had tons of antibiotics every day for a long time. It’s amazing. So, antibiotics are destroying your microbiome. So most people have probably already destroyed it, but we got to clean everything out and let’s reestablish it. You can do that pretty quickly through nutrition supplements and through foods and so forth, but until you get the old gunk out and get that those heavy metals out, it’s a tough go.

 

[1:31:43] Ashley James: So you, for example, have been doing cleansing for a long time so you don’t have this rotting gunk for 20 years in you. So when you get a colon hydrotherapy session, does that wipe out your good bacteria? How does that work? How do you maintain a really healthy bacterial colony, a diverse bacterial colony in your gut and use colon hydrotherapy on a regular basis?

 

[1:32:08] David DeHaas: Yeah, good question. So there’s a couple of ways we do that. So we do that with what we call reforestation with proper nutrition. We can do it also with foods, but again, if you’ve got old stuff sitting in there and every once in a while, David will go off and maybe eat some things he probably shouldn’t be, maybe travel, a little stress. So, I come do a colonic and oh my gosh, it feels so much better. So yes, through prebiotics, probiotics, foods, sauerkraut, kimchi. All those things going to help reestablish. You got to work here with your Naturopath or your chiropractor who’s versed in this and your colon hydrotherapist of course.

So, on our 10-day protocol when we people come here and spend 10 days with us, they’ve got about 50 hours of being in our office because we’re doing a lot of education. We’re giving you lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of education. In fact, one gal speaks to me. “Oh my god.” She goes, I would have gone to how many umpteen seminars to even get close to all and spend how much money but I’ve gotten these last 10 days.” So we were to give you a lot of education so you really understand what’s going on so when you leave you really understand how your body works, why you want to be eating those foods. Again, you get rid of the chemicals,­ now you’re not craving the things you used to crave. We teach you how to muscle test so when you go to the store, hey, people call me “Well, David, should I take this?” I go, “You know what, what’s your body say?” Your body knows. So we teach them how to muscle test so they can go to the store. People always laugh. I always see people looking at me when I’m ­­­­­­­­­­­muscle testing for something. But they do it. They’ll pick up an apple or an orange or they’ll pick up some food in a box and it goes, my body want this, is this safe for my body? They go, “Oops, no. Well, maybe not have that.”

 

[1:33:55] Ashley James: I love it. It’s so funny. Yeah, kinesiology is really interesting. There’s this gluten-free market. I don’t go there often but once I a while my son wants something processed that’s gluten-free. So we go there for some certain, there’s this vegan bread that’s gluten-free or whatever. So once in a while a treat for him. I was in there looking at some new stuff they had. This woman was poring over these different brands of bread. She’s like, “I don’t know.” She goes, “I normally don’t eat bread. I just really want to try one. I don’t know which one’s going to help me or which one’s going to harm me.” I said, “Have you muscle tested? The guy who works there looked at me like I had two heads. He was horrified. He was just silently horrified I could tell. Somewhere along my life I gave up that embarrassment should bother me. I’m going to be myself no matter what. I can’t control other people or what they think of me. So, I I’m just okay with that. I’m not going to let embarrassment stop me from helping someone.

So she put her stuff down and I showed her. I said, “Have you ever muscle tested?” She didn’t, had never heard of it before. I said, “Put your arm out.” I did the experiment. It’s like think about something you really, really don’t like and just hold your arm, try to keep her arm up. I just push on her arm like with four ounces of pressure. She can’t even keep her arm up. She was like, “What.” I said “I just take two fingers and just push on her arm.” I said, “Okay, now think about someone you love, think about love.” I pushed down on her arm as hard as I could and it wouldn’t budge, I couldn’t move it. I said, “Okay. So now, close your eyes so you don’t know which package I’m giving you. So like your conscious mind can in your fear and just hold it into your energy field and then hold your arm up.” So just with two fingers I’m just gently pushing on her arm. We tested all three and there was clearly one was a very strong. She could keep her arm up. I said, “Okay. This is the one.” She felt it. She could feel. When she really got quiet and felt her energy and felt her body and felt the tension or the relaxation in her body when she held that item, she could feel that there was strength or that there was a weakness that would overtake her depending on which package she was holding. So she thanked me and got that package.

I thought that was really neat that we can use this when we kind of come to a crossroads. Obviously we should use our cognition, read the label. That’s my first step is use my conscious recognition of ingredients. If I don’t recognize, if an ingredient looks suspicious, I don’t need to eat that. If I read it and there’s tons of ingredients in it that aren’t really meant for human consumption, I don’t need that. If it comes to whether I should have an apple or banana, not a banana because I’m allergic to bananas, but whatever an apple or an orange then yeah it can be fun to do muscle testing to choose as one of the tools in our tool belt. I think the most important thing is that we start listening to our own intuition and use muscle testing as sort of like after we’ve checked in with our intuition, after we’ve checked with our conscious mind let’s just check with our neurology and see what our neurology is saying about this item as a third check. So I think that’s really cool that you teach that.

Can you walk us through and pretend like we are coming to your clinic for a 10-day detox and wellness retreat in Boise, Idaho. Beautiful Boise, right? Tell us what it looks like. So do we stay at a hotel? What do we eat? Just tell us the whole thing like we’re preparing to come to your clinic.

 

[1:37:51] David DeHaas: Sure. So prior to arriving, you’re going to get a book and some videos you’re going to watch. You’re going to get about three and a half hours of just understanding some basic things that you need to be aware of before you come in. The power of the mind, what you eat the supplements you’re going to take and so forth. We give you all the supplements that you need for this cleanse. So everything is inclusive. Then when you come in, so the first morning you come in you probably go back and grab a juice, organic juice. If you’re coming in midday you might decide to have some organic soup. Then you’ll go off and you’ll meet with my lovely wife Wendy, who is an amazing intuitive healer. We have a pulse frequency machine that is called the on-demand. I don’t know if you’re aware of it but we use it and we start muscle testing right away. We want to get the body back to balance. So it’s using pulsed frequency to help, as I say, clear the blockages so that the energy grid in your body is now unblocked so that the power lines are running true.

 

[1:38:51] Ashley James: Is this machine, you put it on the wrists and on the head?

 

[1:38:57] David DeHaas: No. Well, there’s a couple of devices. You can put it a couple different ways, but basically there’s one that goes around your neck, there’s one you can hold and there’s one that goes around your belly or your knee or wherever you’re working on. So, you’ve taken your supplements that that morning, there’s going to help there. Then they’re there to move stuff through. Then you’re going to go and you may watch an educational video. For example we are going to teach you a bunch of emotional tools. So we all got our emotional stuff and at the end of the day what create all this disease is your emotional stuff. I mean we pick up stuff from when we were little kids and most of us have got cell memory that we locked on to that bad event that happened maybe it’s someone at recess that said, “Hey, you’re stupid,” or “I think you’re ugly,” or the teacher says, “You’re not going to be very good,” or whatever it was. Maybe you saw a horrific accident or something. So we have cell memory and these patterns keep rolling and we keep creating. So we’re going to teach you a bunch of tools to help break that pattern.

Then you’re going to maybe get on our whole body vibration machine, which is going to help move lymphatic fluid and while you’re on it you’re going to watch another video, another educational piece. Then you may go away on our infrared biomat for a half hour. On some days we may be doing some energy work on you or you may just be in there in a meditative state. You may then go back to my wife for some more instruction. There’s some reading material every day. We give you a lot of emotional tools, we give you a lot of stuff to look at. Some things may resonate with you really, really well and other things not so much. It’s all good because it’s your cleanse and every cleanse we tailor to that person. So, occasionally I get someone says, “Well, what are you going to put my mind? Are you going to like woo?” or people, you better be careful if you go there maybe they might have some religious thing that they do.

No. So, this is your cleanse. When you come here it’s all about you. I don’t care what your religion is or what your beliefs are. It doesn’t matter to us. This journey is for you and you’re going to go through it. We don’t get caught up in religions and all that stuff.

 

[1:41:03] Ashley James: You yourself are Christian. I saw a cross behind you. So, I know I have a lot of Christian listeners. So you’re a Christian though and if someone came in there Christian you honor their religion. If someone came and they’re of a different religion you honor them like Christ would. You respect people for who they are and where they are. You’re just there to help them heal and love on them.

 

[1:41:28] David DeHaas: Exactly. It’s all about self-love. We teach you how to self-love yourself. Most people would begin there. We give you the exercise. Let’s say mirror work every day. I love myself. I love myself love. A lot of people, that’s really hard to begin with. I’ve had every religion, non-religion, atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, cults. I mean, I’ve had everyone come here. When they come to get done they go, “Oh my gosh.” I’ve had one gal and she’s been everywhere with cleanses and in yoga retreats and all this stuff. She found us somehow and she came here from, she passed like 100 colon hydrotherapist to get to us including her own in California. She comes to us, she said, “I just went. My dad died. I wanted to get away. I want to get rebooted.” She says, “I had no clue all this stuff you did.” I said, “Well, what do you get out of it? She goes, “Oh David.” I go, “What?” She goes, “I’m now, at 66 years of age, I get it.” I say, “What do you get?” She says, “I get the connection between me and God.” I go, “Really?” Now, we don’t necessarily teach that but just because of all the cleansing, getting rid of parasites, getting that toxic load out of the body. We serve up all this information, right? I’m going to tell people, “You’re going to gravitate to whatever you need to gravitate to and you’re going to pull from that and you’re going to get what you need to get. I’m not going to get in the way of that. You are going to pick that out.” I always tell people, “When you come here, don’t get overwhelmed because we give you a lot of stuff but be like Nemo.” Remember the movie Nemo? He had to get to Australia to find his dad, right? He’s out there, he’s swimming so hard. H­­e go, “Hey Nemo, get in the flow.” He goes, “Flow, yeah. Get in this current and it’s going to be easy.” So Nemo jumps in the current. Poof, easy path to Australia.

So, that’s the way it is in our journey is that at the time when we’re ready, the information you need and like I say, we serve up a big buffet of information and tools. I’ve had people sometimes like, “No. I don’t want to do that.” I’m like, “Okay, don’t do that.” They’ll be like, “Wow, this is awesome. I’m going to do this, this, this and this.” So, it’s a buffet table of those tools, emotional tools. It’s interesting, at the end of the day as we start, like this gal just said to me, “David, I came here purely for a physical cleanse.” I go, “Yeah, what did you get?” She goes, “I’ve been doing emotional work for years and years.” I go, “Yeah?” She goes, “I just did so much in 10 days. It’s amazing. She couldn’t even put it in words,” So, I hear that all the time. Again, it’s not something we dish up and say, “Hey, you’re going to come here and cleanse emotionally.” Because some people kind of freak out and get worried about that. But the reality is is that if you’re open to it you and you’re willing, it may happen.

It’s been pretty cool watching the happenings. The reason why I’m so excited about this is I get to watch these miracles happen. Not only physically. We have people fill out an exit form where they’ll go put a Google review. It’s really interesting to me how many people say, “Not only did I heal, my eyesight’s better,” or “my Lyme disease is not like it was, it’s gone” or “my joints feel better, I’m walking,” whatever that is, they’ll say, “Not only do I feel physically better but emotionally, mentally and spiritually.”

So, anyway. So you’ll do that. You’ll do [unintelligible], you’ll get in the colonic bed. Usually people say, “That colonic, I really love being on the colonic bed.” So, even if they come in nervous and kind of scared about it they get done and they go, “Yeah, that’s awesome. Give me some more of that.”

 

[1:44:58] Ashley James: How many colonics do they do in the 10-day cleanse?

 

[1:45:01] David DeHaas: 10 days.

 

[1:45:01] Ashley James: Oh. So they get a colonic every day.

 

[1:45:04] David DeHaas: Every single day. All these tools I mentioned to you, they do every single day. That’s why they’re here five hours. Then they’ll go to their hotel. In the middle of that session they may go get some more organic soup and juice and so forth and hang out. People tell us that they can feel the love. I think we got a really good environment. They feel safe and they’re really able to let go. At the end of the day it’s about letting go, letting God and just boom, letting it happen.

 

[1:45:34] Ashley James: Yeah. Do they only eat when at your clinic because they’re on a cleanse or do they also eat out at restaurants? What does that look like?

 

[1:45:43] David DeHaas: Most people do not eat at restaurants. I’ve had a few that that feast for days. They were like, wanted to go have something. But no, they will at the Candlewood Suites is where we recommend most people stay. They’ve got a little place you can cook stuff or they’ll take the soup home from us. So they may have a little something, something, maybe an organic hard-boiled egg or they’ll have some soup. It’s a soft food diet so you’re not fasting. So soft food means what? It means, hey, if you have a yam don’t eat the peeling, don’t have an apple and eat the peeling. Don’t have nuts or seeds, don’t have a salad. We want you to be very soft food diet. We want to give the digestive system a break because you’re pushing things through and moving things through and we want that carpet to re-heal and rebuild and regenerate and it will do it very, very fast. It’s amazing how fast that.

So if you got nuts and seeds you don’t want to put a carpet down over nuts and seeds. You want to make sure that pathway’s clear and open. So, you don’t starve, the food’s good and if you want to eat something else when you leave here, we coach you up on what to eat. So just basically the soft food diet. So that could be some scrambled eggs. That could be anything soft food. But again, we teach people first of all, anything you put in your mouth, you got to masticate. C­hew it until it’s juice.

 

[1:47:00] Ashley James: Chew everything. Everyone all the time should chew their food more. That’s a really great advice because it stimulates the liver and the pancreas to immediately create digestive enzymes and tells the stomach to get digestive enzymes going. We do not chew our food enough. There was a listener, we have a great Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group. We had a listener once say or once type into the Facebook group something along the lines of, “Do I have digestive problems? I can see the food I ate like maybe it was olives or corn or something but in the toilet basically.” It was funny how many people wrote back like, “You’re not chewing enough. You need to chew your food.”

 

[1:47:45] David DeHaas: Here’s the song you need in your brain, chew, chew, chew, because it’s the right thing to do. Chew, chew, chew, because it’s the right thing to do. Yeah.

 

[1:47:54] Ashley James: And you just keep going.

 

[1:47:55] David DeHaas: Keep chewing. I had a gal. Oh my gosh. She told me she had last eaten popcorn eight years ago and what came out during the cleanse? Popcorn seeds.

 

[1:48:06] Ashley James: Oh my gosh.

 

[1:48:08] David DeHaas: My mom had eaten cilantro, I remember this, it came out. There’s a parasite that came out and it had cilantro. I go, “Did you eat cilantro last night?” She goes, “The last time I had cilantro was like three months ago,” but yet this parasite had had it.

 

[1:48:21] Ashley James: Had what? The parasite was like attached to some cilantro?

 

[1:48:25] David DeHaas: Yeah. We had, speaking of parasites, oh my gosh. We had a gal that spent about $72,000 over the period of four years taking nutrition and supplements to help get rid of her parasites. She said to me, “David,” and she appear like sick or unhealthy but she says, “God, if I could cut this down,” I said, “Well, let’s just jump on the cleanse.” So she did. She spent fifteen days with us. She had amazing buckets of rope worms. It’s on our Youtube channel. That’s probably the most viewed video.

 

[1:48:55] Ashley James: I watched some of the videos on your YouTube channel of the parasites coming out of people. It’s pretty awesome.

 

[1:49:01] David DeHaas: Yeah. Anyway, she took it back to her Naturopath and the Naturopath goes, “What are you guys doing? What’s happening here?” So, yeah. She got out a bunch of them. What’s amazing to me is it’s not the big guys. I get these 4’9”, 117-pound women in here and they’ve got tapeworm 6’, 10’, 12’, 20’ long. It’s like, what? Or nests. I mean nests like softball-sized nests that look like spaghetti coming out. It’s amazing. They’ve been in there for a long time. Don’t think that you have to go to a foreign country to get your parasites guys. They’re around us.

 

[1:49:39] Ashley James: They certainly are. We started this conversation talking about Ann Louise Gittleman. That was my experience when I was around 10. Our family got parasites and we read her book, Guess What Came to Dinner. It was just amazing to me that people assume that because we’re in a first world country, we have really clean water and we have shoes on our feet that we don’t have any that we’re like, we live in a sterile environment. That we’re sterile. It’s just not the case. Life is dirty and we are animals. We have to get that we’re equal to, we’re on the same level as cows and monkeys that we are animals. We’re animals and so of course we’re going to get parasites because all animals get it because that’s just how it works. It’s our job to deworm ourselves. That’s something that we knew as humans to do and animals naturally do it. In the wild they’ll eat certain foods to help deworm themselves. They just know what to do, but we don’t because we’ve given up our power to the medical establishment. We’ve handed over all of our thinking over to this idea that we go to a doctor and the doctor just takes care of our body like a car mechanic.

I remember something was wrong with our car and my husband just handed it over the car mechanic. Then afterward, my husband was kicking himself going, because he went to school for mechanics way back in the day and he goes, “Well, why did I do that? I know exactly how to fix that. Why did I totally just give over my power and just assume that a mechanic would know, that I don’t know anything and a mechanic knows everything. I know this stuff. I could have done something about it.” That’s the mindset. We get into this mindset that MDs are all-knowing and that we know nothing and that they’ll know everything to fix us, but they’re not taught everything. So giving over our bodies and waiting to get sick and then going to the doctor and not taking any action, not advocating for ourselves that’s the perfect storm to become a statistic.

So, listening to the podcast like this and learning and then implementing everything you learn, that’s how we’re going to get as healthy as possible because we have to be our own mechanic, right? We have to listen to our body and go, what’s going on? Like you said, people say, “I’m healthy. I don’t have anything wrong with me. I’m healthy, but I have headaches and stiff joints and I’m tired all the time and I need coffee to get started in the day and I go only poop once a week.” Well, that’s not healthy. Any symptom means you’re not healthy and 70% of that of the adults in the United States are on at least one prescription medication, meaning at least 70%, at least 70% of the adult population in the United States is sick. Because they’re so unhealthy they need a medication. They’ve gotten to the point where their body is breaking down and is toxic. A medication is fantastic and life-saving when we need it. Unfortunately though, most people wait to get sick and not take the actions needed. So I love, all the listeners here are turning their life around and learning from people like you so they can be the salmon and go swim upstream, go against the grain and turn their life around and be an example of optimal health. Let’s live like Jack LaLanne and we could all live well into our 90s being physically fit. I love that idea. You mentioned liver cleanse in your 10-day detox. What does a liver cleanse look like?

 

[1:53:36] David DeHaas: Well, the way we do it, we start teaching to you about day four. It’s about a three-day process that we had to go. So you’re going to be taking some things, some supplements and some herbs and so forth. Then you’re going to have a night where you go through a process where you’re going to help clear out the liver. You may see a bunch of bile stones come out, usually most people do. What’s also interesting about that is that usually after liver cleanse day, Ashley, parasites are starting to really jump out. I think a couple of things really happen during that process is that people finally get to day seven or eight and they realize that, “Oh my gosh, I can let go. It’s safe to let go.” So when now the liver is saying, “Oh, wow. We’re cleansing out.” The colon is saying, “Yeah, baby. Let’s go.” Really, that’s the next three or four days they’re on the cleanse it’s more than the previous seven days. It’s amazing.

So, we’ve really got to that point even though we may say, “Yeah. Well, why would I block letting go?” Well, emotionally, remember your autonomic nervous system, the guy that’s out there jacking you up because they’re still wanting those chemicals to be coming, right? So that’s gradually changing. As you’re mentally, emotionally and spiritually letting go, then more things let go. One of the other things we really are cognitive is about teaching how powerful we are and how we can use our own energy to heal. I mean, what do I want people leave here? I want them to be able to go back and understand that they can use their energy to help other people heal as well. I mean, we’re all-powerful beings. It’s just not someone that’s got the special gift. People tell me, “My hands are really hot,” which they are. I can feel energy and I can help boost energy in people. But it’s the person themselves that are doing it.

So, we’re teaching heart coherence, we’re teaching the mind-stuff, we’re giving them as experts what Bruce Lipton has taught us and Gregg Braden and all these. So we’re giving all this these, like I say, buffet table of stuff so that people can really start putting the whole. When I spent 20 years fumbling around, reading all these books and going here and there, we’re giving it to you, serving it up all at once so that you can understand that, “Oh my gosh. You mean, I can go home and lay my hands on my son?” For example, I had a gal that came in. This the wart story I call this.

So, she says, “David, my son’s got warts.” I go, “Oh. Kids are so easy. Get this. This is what’s going to work.” So go home and have your son do these affirmations at night before you go to bed. Just tell him, “I love myself. I love myself. I love myself. I love myself.” Let’s see what happens in a few days. I tried this with my son. My son had got warts and he had warts for like a couple years. We tried all the stuff, natural stuff, unnatural. We tried everything. Finally one day we got the book from Louise Hay and we pulled up what the cause was and she started saying that information and three days later he had warts and he had one on his foot. He’s a very active boy and of course now it hurts to walk. Guess what, the warts were gone in a few days. This gal’s son, same thing. Warts were gone in five days. Kids are so easy. Kids just boom, pick it up because they haven’t been so programmed like us adults, but yeah that’s cool.

 

[1:56:55] Ashley James: Is it because it turns off the sympathetic nervous response to say the affirmations?

 

[1:57:03] David DeHaas: Well, okay. I don’t know exactly technically what is happening there. I just do know that when we are putting our energy, our feeling – so Gregg Braden in his book he has the Isaiah Effect. Here’s the story, so Gregg was up in these monasteries in Tibet and he’s asking the abbots, “How do you pray?” The abbot looked at him with a twinkle in his eye, oh my god. Here’s the best question ever, right” Because most people ask the question like, “What do you eat? What do you do? How long you pray?” No, he says, “How do you pray?” Here’s where we all screw up, right” We go to church and let’s pray for Billy Joe. Her husband’s got cancer and she’s not feeling well and we’re saying, “Oh, yeah. Too bad.” We’re sitting there and we’re praying with, “Oh my gosh, so sad.” The abbot looked at Greg and he says, “With feelings.” So if you’ve got the feeling in your body, you change your cells. When you’re happy and joyous and have gratitude and gratefulness and happiness, those feelings change chemistry. So, when you’re saying I love myself, you cannot test negatively when you say I love myself.

When you do a muscle test and say, “I’m going to try to do something.” What’s something you love to do, Ashley? What’s just something you love to do?

 

[1:58:25] Ashley James: Interviews, podcasts interviews.

 

[1:58:28] David DeHaas: Okay. So, when you say, “I love doing interviews,” you’re going to test positive for this. When you say, “I try to do an interview. I hope to do an interview. I want to do an interview. Someday I’m going to.” You test negatively. So, boom. All that energy through your cells changes. So when we’re praying or we have a setting an intention and it’s an intention with sorrowness, unhappiness, wishfulness. Look at it, things aren’t going to change. I’ve got a group, this is just something I do on the side, is I’ve read Lynne McTaggart’s book and I’ve taken her courses and we do an intention. We’ve got people on the phone.

[1:59:08] Ashley James: Is that the Power of Eight?

 

[1:59:10] David DeHaas: Yeah. Power of Eight.

 

[1:59:11] Ashley James: I’m going to interview her.

 

[1:59:12] David DeHaas: Oh, awesome.

 

[1:59:13] Ashley James: Yeah, I’m really excited.

 

[1:59:14] David DeHaas: Yeah. I’ve been doing it since last summer. We just set an intention. We put the person in the circle and we’re just sending positive energy. Some people feel it and all of a sudden, “Oh my gosh, that pain is gone,” or “This has helped.” So we get into a state of coherence where we’re happy. The reality is, when we get sick, we’re not happy. We don’t have joy. But what if we set the intention like, “I’m healed. I feel great.” You put that joy in your heart, put that happiness, that gratefulness, that relief. Put that through your heart center and express that into happiness. You’re going to change. You’re changing chemically. Now, you may not be healed right then, but over time that you’re changing energy throughout your whole body and things began to change. I’ve had people walk come in here bankrupt or have emotionally bad relationships or pissed at somebody.

I had one gal, she was so mad at men. She’d had a bad divorce. She had men stalking her. She was attracting the negative energy. She comes to the cleanse and she gets done. The job that she was trying to get all of a sudden, boom, they’re calling her. They say, “Hey, we want to interview tomorrow.” Then I go, “You tell me that they haven’t returned a call for six months and now they want to interview you tomorrow?” That happened. She walks out of here and six months later stalking went away, six months later she found the love of her life, got married, had another child.

I had another guy he was cirrhosis of the liver. Get this amazing story, oh my gosh. His face was purple. My son called him Santa Claus. He’d played a little bit too much in his earlier life. I needed some plumbing done. I say, “Dennis, you’re a dead man walking. I need some plumbing, you need some plumbing too.” I said, “Let’s trade.” So he comes over and we put him on the cleanse. I said, “Just be aware,” because the color in his face changed. The purple redness, you see people with a lot of redness around their skin, that’s all liver. That’s usually a lot of heavy metals and stuff. So that all went down and started decreasing. He walks out of here in 10 days later and he calls me says, “David,” I say, “I don’t know what’s happened,” he says, “but my phone wasn’t ringing before that cleanse and now it’s ringing every day. Not only that, I could spend maybe five hours working or some days not working at all. Now I just did 10 hours under a house all day I got energy.” How cool is that?

Recently, get this. Recently Ashley, he says, “David,” speaking of liver cleanses, I remember when he says, “I need to keep doing these and I haven’t. I went in to get some life insurance and they say, “Oh, so yeah. Your cirrhosis,” do they say in remission? I don’t know if that’s the right words or not but he goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold it. Hold it. What did you just say?” They go, “Yeah, yeah. It’s paused, it’s in remission. It’s not getting worse.” He goes, “You guys told me that would never change. You told me always it would be getting worse, worse, worse.” They just looked at him. They don’t say a word. Dennis comes in and he says, “I got to do another liver cleanse. I need this colonics. I need to keep doing this.” I mean, that was a pretty cool story.

 

[2:02:34] Ashley James: What’s he look like now?

 

[2:02:35] David DeHaas: Oh it looks great. Pink face, he’s not a Santa Claus anymore. He’s had some cancers and he’s treated that alternative as well on his own. So he came in here he got empowered. He got the belief that he could heal himself. You give people some belief, you give them the ability to understand that they’re the powerful beings. At the end of the day, David DeHaas can’t change you. You got to change you. I can give you some suggestions. I always think of myself as a cheerleader. I’m going to help coach you through this. I’m going to cheer you up to get through this. Because you go through this and sometimes people have a healing crisis where they, you get a little worse before they get better. That’s the time where I got to get on the pom-poms and say, “Let’s go. Let’s keep doing this.” Your body’s going to detox and you may get a little worse. Every once in a while I have someone who starts, they throw up. They go, “Oh my gosh, that’s not good.” Then I go, “No, it’s great. Your body is saying, hey, let’s get the stuff out. It’s going to do whatever it can to move it out and it just happen to be you not only pooping it out but you’re also vomiting it out. This is going to go away in a bit. It’s going to be okay. You don’t want to suppress it.” The problem is that too many times we suppress it like Nicole.

Nicole was 22, worked for me part-time. I gave her a three-day cloning cleanse after she worked with me that summer. I didn’t know this at the time but she went home and she threw up, I mean a lot. She says, “I’m not going back. I’m doing that. I’m not doing that anymore. I wasn’t aware of this. Well, three days later she’s one semester away from graduating and all of a sudden she’s got severe migraines. In fact, they were constant, 24-hour a day, no medications would cut the pain. When she sat up, she would blackout for five minutes. The doctors did a spinal tap then they say, “Okay, we need to put a shunt in your brain.” That’s when I heard about it. I go, “What? What do you mean? No, no, no. Why isn’t she in here?” Her mom says, “Well, the last time she was here she threw up.” I said, “Well, there was your sign. That’s a severely toxic body at age 21. To do a colonic and then throw up, there’s your sign.” So I called her up. She came in, she spent 18 days. Now, the doctors had told her that, “Look at it, you’re going to be on medication. You’re not going to be able to eat Boise, Idaho.” She couldn’t look at a computer screen. If she did that would cause problems. She couldn’t look at a TV or anything. They say, “Basically, you’re going to be on medication for the rest of your life. We’ll put a shunt in your brain. We’ll help you manage this but you’d have to stay here little girl. This is your life.” I said, “Come on.”

So, she came in. I filmed her just about every day. Eighteen days later she was back at school and she graduated, went out to get her master’s and she now works in College of Idaho and is doing great. Pretty cool story.

 

[2:05:29] Ashley James: She’s off all those meds and she doesn’t have any migraines?

 

[2:05:32] David DeHaas: No meds, no migraines. Travels the world, does what she wants to do. Yeah.

 

[2:05:38] Ashley James: So sometimes you got to push through. It’s like maybe the first colonic stirred some stuff up but that means you got to keep going.

 

[2:05:45] David DeHaas: Yeah. You don’t go into your refrigerator and you go, “That stinks all that rotting food.” You don’t stop, right? You clean all of it out. We’ll dirty it first, right?

 

[2:05:54] Ashley James: Are there any contraindications? When should someone not have a colonic?

 

[2:06:01] David DeHaas: Yeah, there are. There’s two types of colon hydrotherapy bed systems, there’s open and closed. We use the open gravity-fed very gentle small tube. The closed system is a tube about five inches in diameter. They’re pressurizing the system. A lot more contraindications for them. The association puts out contraindications and they got a list. But what I have found to be true over the years is that, I can’t remember all of them right now off the top my head, but yeah. There are a few. They’re on our intake form. But anyway, I’m drawing a blank right now. There’s a list of them. But what I found to be true over the years is that, well hemorrhoids, for example, are one of them. I’ve had people tell me, “I don’t care. I’m plugged up. I need a colonic.” I mean, I’ve had pretty severe, but you get a hemorrhoid. What’s a hemorrhoid or a cyst or a tumor? It’s just a place for your body put toxins. I remember those people that shows on their own volition to ignore those contraindications and that the hemorrhoids went down and actually pretty quickly, pretty surprising.

 

[2:07:10] Ashley James: Interesting.

 

[2:07:12] David DeHaas: Yeah. You can only do that with the open system. You couldn’t do it on a closed. The tube’s too big.

 

[2:07:17] Ashley James: That was my next question. What is the difference between an open and closed? Because I’ve done both. I enjoyed both for different reasons.

 

[2:07:24] David DeHaas: Yeah. The closed system is, again therapist is in the room, again for some people that’s a little uncomfortable having someone there watching you poop. They’re going to fill you very slowly, gently. Then now the process are there, they can swish your belly around. That’s all great. Then when the poop goes out, you got a 5/8 inch tube. If the poop’s bigger than that, they have to either squeeze that tube and help squeeze that water and hopefully break up that hard. If you got poop as big as your fist, which many people who are constipated do, you may end up getting off that table because they’re not on a table that you can just poop on it’s a massage table. You go to a toilet and release. Now on the beds that we used, it’s a toilet if you will. It’s not a toilet, but it’s a bed where you just poop.

 

[2:08:09] Ashley James: It’s like a lie-down toilet.

 

[2:08:10] David DeHaas: Yes and you just let her go. Tubes very tiny, like you say, it’s tiny the size of a pencil. The poop just goes around that rectal tube. I mean, I’ve had people fill our three-inch tube like rock-solid poop as big as that three-inch diameter tube all the way full where I’ve had to, especially people with opioid, induced constipation, where they filled it, plugged it up. We have a flusher jet. There was one time, the gal, my gosh. We ran that jet the whole time but she was just solid. Now, on a closed system, usually the closest to people –

 

[2:08:46] Ashley James: You can’t do that.

 

[2:08:48] David DeHaas: Yeah, they’ll send them to me. Then you’re going to have constant release. So the beauty of that is it’s again, what we want to do when we get peristalsis happening. So think of peristalsis as a squeezing of the colon. That’s what helps move the poop. When the small intestine dumps into the large intestine on the right site or just above your hip, that’s liquid and then it’s going to go up move up. So what moves that up as peristalsis, the squeezing action of the colon. It goes up, moves across your transverse colon and drops down and begins to dry out. So, now the problem is is that stuff can get stuck down there and it could get very constipated. It gets as big as 16 inches. That’s stuff’s traveling through pretty slow. So, when we’re when you’re hydrating with colon hydrotherapy, that’s going to help begin to dissolve that. The cool thing about an open system is that, if you just relax and let the water do its work that colons going to start taking directions. It will go, “Oh, I’m going to push now. I got enough water, I’m going to push automatically on your own.” Whereas the closed, you can’t push back. You got to let the person turn it off, release it. You might have three releases, wherein an open system it’s just constant in-and-out. You’re releasing all the time. You might have 30, 40, 50 releases.

 

[2:10:00] Ashley James: Very cool.

 

[2:10:03] David DeHaas: Yeah. So, it’s fun. It’s fun, it’s relaxing. Most people, they get done, they come in of course they’re nervous, everyone is. I was too. I get done and I say, “Well, how’d it go?” They go, “Oh, you know what? I feel lighter and refreshed.” Yeah. That’s most. Now, every once in a while you get someone that goes, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got nausea.” I go, “Yup.” I tell people, “Look at it, if the next day you’re feeling nausea and you feel like you don’t want to come in, you want to come back in because your body is saying let’s go and there’s just a lot of maybe heavy metals or whatever toxins that are moving past. Your body’s picking that that’s why you don’t feel good. Don’t wait. Let’s get back on the bed. Let’s keep cleaning it out. That will pass faster than then if you keep it in.”

 

[2:10:49] Ashley James: Yeah. There’s one of the videos on your YouTube channel where a guy had kept coming in. He wasn’t feeling good at the beginning then he kept coming in. He passed the microbiome. The entire microfilm, I should say, the biofilm. Biofilm was this like leathery thick mucus that was coating his colon. It released and it came out. Then he felt so much better. I’ve heard that from many people who either do water-only fasting or juice fasts or like a series of colon hydrotherapy sessions. When they pass, the body finally lets go and releases the biofilm. They were feeling really sick before and then they pass it and they feel amazing afterward. I’ve also heard that from people who are on, like Dr. Jay Davidson who I’ve had on the show, his parasite cleanse. So it’s like when you release it though, when it leaves your body, because it’s just so diseased and it’s housing the parasites that are giving off all these toxins on their own. So, when you release it you feel so much better. Can you tell us a bit about this, the biofilm and releasing it using colon hydrotherapy?

 

[2:12:09] David DeHaas: Yeah. So, colon hydrotherapy is hydrating. What we like to also have you be using is some bentonite and slim at the same time to help kind of stimulate that action to get things moving through. But think about this, again, I always like going back to the refrigerator analogy. You’ve got this stuff that’s been trapped in there and things are passing very slowly through your system. Like you say, you’ve got parasites in there you may have heavy metals you have all this gunk. So that’s going to come off and you’re going to re-establish, as I call it, the new carpet. Now you’re going to be able to absorb the micronutrients into your bloodstream, because remember the end of the day, we got to get stuff into the blood to get to the cells. You have 50 trillion cells. So we got to get that nutrition there. So, again, you got to let that old stuff go. It builds up over time. I haven’t got a good analogy right now to use. The other thing that people need to understand, here’s what people get kind of weirded out too, diarrhea. People are having constant diarrhea or they’ll have a lot of diarrhea or they go from diarrhea to rabbit pellets. What’s diarrhea? Diarrhea is a body’s amazing, it’s the fire hose of the body. You recycle two and a half gallons of water per day in your colon.

Well, when you get a bug in there the body says, “Whoa, dude. We don’t want this bug in here. Let’s get it out.” Well, how are we getting it out? Let’s turn on the jets. Let’s just give him some diarrhea. Let’s blow this out of here. Okay. Let’s go. Now you’re sitting on the toilet, you go, “Oh my God, this just feels horrible.” You think, what can I take to stop diarrhea? No. You should probably come in and do a colonic. Hence, that action, clear out that bug, whatever is in there and change it. So, that’s usually a severe microbiome dysfunction. You’ve probably got a lot of yeast Candida with it. Everything is out of balance. Look at it, we got to clean it up, reestablish. The sooner you get all that toxicity out of there the faster that will heal and repair. Then again back to your micronutrients, back to the foods you’re eating and getting that restored. The body’s amazing. I looked back at Dr. Jensen and the work that he did. I’ve met some of his sons and daughters of the parents that he helped heal. We’ve seen them here at Living Waters as well.

I mean, I had a guy come in, just to give an example, severely constipated, in and out of the hospital, on meds of course for six months. When you’re on meds, okay again, the brain connections transverse colon. How do we cut pain? Okay, we got to cut those signals. So, now your colons not working when you’re on these pain meds. So, we get constipated. I experienced that with my wife. My wife had fell and broke a bunch of bones. She was in the hospital 24 days. We’re like, “Sheesh, I wish we had a colon hydrotherapy bed down here.” But he comes in and he had severe fatty liver. He had had a shunt putting in his bile duct, but he’s plugged up. He couldn’t walk and he wasn’t very cognitive either. We had to lift him to put him on the colonic bed. We did that. We did three colonics, he says, “I’m going to do your 10-day thing.” I said, “Okay.” His wish was to get home for Christmas, which is five hours north of us. He couldn’t. No way he’d be in a car at that time for five hours.

Anyway, so he kept and in five days he was actually walking with a walker. Next thing you know he’s able to get up on his own, we don’t have to lift him. His skin color changed from gray to pink. On the last day I filmed him. On the last day he gets up and sits down, gets up and sits down on his own unaided. Of all the people I’ve seen, he had two feet in the grave. I looked at him and I say, “Well, as I see it, you’re either going to live or you’re going to die. You’re definitely closer to dying right now. It’s your choice, what do you want to do here?” Of course he’s severely backed up and he said, “I can’t poop. Yeah, let’s go.” So, they jumped on the cleanse and went forward. It’s pretty cool.

 

[2:16:28] Ashley James: So, how is he doing now?

 

[2:16:30] David DeHaas: He lived another year. He actually got so he could walk unaided. I don’t think he would have made Christmas that year but he got another year of life. He had some other heart issues going on. I sent him home with instructions and so forth. They’re pretty happy with what happened, but again probably a little too late coming to us. But hey, he got another year.

 

[2:16:58] Ashley James: Man, he got to go home for Christmas which was his wish.

 

[2:17:00] David DeHaas: He got to go home for Christmas. He got to see his kids. He got to resolve some things that emotionally he needed to resolve, which was pretty doggone cool. There were some things that he was hanging on to take care of and he met us. He bought that time basically. I’ve had Parkinson’s people come in and dragging on their feet. Then we’re learning more now. I mean, we’ve learned so much about the microbiome in the gut in the last 10 years. There are now tons of evidence about how Parkinson’s is definitely a gut issue. I remember, oh my gosh, this one guy comes in first day and again, what caused it? “Well, David, back in the 50s I was putting my arms up in DDT up to my elbows. I was growing these root crops.” So he had a lot of chemical toxicity, DDT. To get up out of a chair someone had to pull him up. He’d shuffle. First, he stayed with his daughter here in Boise. He says, “David, the first night it took me a half-hour to get those stairs, thirteen steps.” He says in three or four days I think it was he says, “I went up and down like I should normal person. On the fifth day here, again, I always had to lift him up off the clinic bed, pull him up off the massage table. Fifth day, he sits up on his own, flips his round and stands up and he go, “Dang.”

This is so interesting, human behavior is so funny. Great guy, awesome guy. I mean, very wealthy. Hands-on lots of businesses, in his late 70s. He had this big real estate project going on. He says, “David, I got to break away from here for a few days. I just got to go do this. I got to take care of transaction. It’s a $4 million transaction.” I say, “Well, I think it’ll wait a few more days,” but he got, “I’m feeling really good though.” So he got driven here by someone else. Shuffles in. He goes out there hops in his truck he says, “I’ll be back, I promise. I’ll be back.” Hops in his truck, takes off like and I look at him and go, “Amazing.” So anyway, you can’t get everyone. I mean you can only coach people so far but he was like, “Hey, this has been awesome dude. This has been really great. I really appreciate everything. I have to take care of this.” I mean, he’s in late 70s. The guy’s probably worth millions.

 

[2:19:30] Ashley James: Did he come back?

 

[2:19:31] David DeHaas: He did not come back.

 

[2:19:33] Ashley James: That’s so funny. So, he was just hobbling. He was hobbling in and then you just got him to the point where he was healthy enough so he could go out and work again. Then he’s like, “Okay, I’m good.”

 

[2:19:45] David DeHaas: Right. Of course, what happens to us human beings we’ve all did this, I did this, right? Oh well, I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m not that bad. I mean, okay. I’m tired, I’m fatigued, I can just kind of push through this. Yeah, it hurts the morning when I wake up, but maybe tomorrow, right? We all, us human beings we’re so, we’re crazy most of the time. We think, “Oh well, we should take care of this first.” We don’t really look in the mirror and say, look at it, “I need to be selfish and take care of me first.” Especially moms. Moms will take care of everybody first even when they’re sick and they can barely move. That’s just human nature. But my goal as a cheerleader is to get people to take, hey, self-love. Be selfish. It’s okay. Take care of you first especially you moms. Look at it, if you’re not well, no one else is going to be happy. Take care of you. On the airplane they say, look at it, “Parents, put your oxygen mask on first before you put it to on your children, okay.” Take care of yourself first. You’re going to have a happier household. When mamas are well and dads are well, you know what, everything else is going to be a lot happier. It’s just human nature. I see it all the time. You know what, I do the best to – again, from where he was, he was 1,000% better. So, I can’t blame him. I mean, he was like, “This is great. I don’t need to be any better,” is what he’s thinking, right, and I’ll get back to it. Of course, you got for him, he had like several businesses and so he’s taking care of this and this and this and yeah.

 

[2:21:29] Ashley James: Not taking care of himself. That’s a really good lesson because we get to this point, even with injuries or with getting over a cold, like you just, the second you feel better, you overexert yourself and then you feel worse again. I’ve had so many times where people come to me, I get them on a really healing protocol, supplements. Get them on a really great protocol and they’re doing amazing. The first week they feel like a million bucks. Then they come to me sometime the second week and they’re like, “Oh, I’m in so much pain.” This happened so many times, I know exactly why. I say, “Well, tell me what you did this week. What activities did you do?” “Well, I ran through the yard playing with my grandchildren. I went for a walk with the ladies. I gardened” and they started listing off all these things. I’m like, “Before you started working with me, what was your activity level like?” “Well, I sat all day and I watch TV.”

 It’s like the second people feel good they just, when the pain is gone, we totally overexert ourselves. Then of course you are aches and pains, you just did more activity in the last week than you have done in the last five years. Of course you have. That’s just normal, but you’ll still have a long road of wonderful healing and building a foundation of health. This is what I do, is if I have the cold, a head cold or whatever, then the next day I’m feeling good then I’m like, “Okay. Great. I’m done. It’s over. Let’s go,” and I go 100% again that my body’s like, “Nope. You have to rest still. After you’re recovered from a cold or flu, you should really take two weeks to slow, like really go to bed early. Even earlier than you should and drink lots of healing soups. Even if you’re not feeling sick anymore, your body has to recover from that and you need to do extra self-care.

So, it’s interesting that people get to this point where the second they feel a little better, they’re just like, “Oh, I don’t have to do any work anymore. I’m good.” That’s when they should double down because its money in the bank. Every activity that is building a foundation of health is money in the bank. Every glass of water you drink, every colon hydrotherapy session you get, every vitamin or eating an apple or a whole food, going to bed early is your depositing money in your health bank. The best time to do it is when you don’t feel like you need it. The same goes money for actual money in a bank. When you need money and you haven’t been depositing any into your bank account, that’s when you need it the most, but when you should have been doing it the most was when you didn’t need that money and you just put it away, tuck it away in the bank account.

So, when we don’t have ill health is when we should be building our health to prevent it, to prevent illness. We can really clearly see that when we spend time every day doing emotional self-care, mental self-care, spiritual self-care, physical self-care, energetic self-care; when we spend the time, carve out time for ourselves that we will see for years to come the positive ramifications of that. You can see people in your life who neglected themselves and they are now experiencing the result of that. I keep coming back to that the body is like a garden. You tend to the garden all year long and you fertilize and you mineralize those soil. There’s a microbiome in the soil. There’s so many things we can do to constantly create a healthy garden. Our body and our gut is really, there’s a lot of similarities between a healthy garden and a healthy gut. It does take constantly helping it and avoiding things that harm it. I love that this another tool, colon hydrotherapy is another tool we can add to our tool belt.

Robyn Openshaw was a guest I’ve had on the show before. She’s green smoothie girl. She is vegan. She does promote a whole food plant-based lifestyle. Although, I think she does things once in a while like bone broth. She’s not against it but she does eat whole foods and lots and lots and lots of plants. Just recently her boyfriend did her cleanse, which is a whole food plant-based eating basically where you’re not eating processed food you’re just eating lots of plants, a variety of plants. I think he’s about two weeks into it. She just posted this on Facebook. She posted it publicly so people can see it, but she said, “My boyfriend just, he never believed me when I said that your poop shouldn’t smell. That if your poop smells, that you’re actually toxic and your diet is wrong. Because when you’re really healthy and you’re eating a really healthy diet your poop shouldn’t smell. He didn’t believe me. Two weeks into this whole food plant-based eating, his poop doesn’t smell and he couldn’t believe it.” I made a comment in that thread about, yeah. It’s interesting that people eat dead decaying flesh and dairy products, which contain infected pus. This is proven. It’s not conspiracy. The USDA, they allow a certain amount of particles of blood and pus from infected cows in dairy. I know that sounds really gross, but if someone is consuming dairy, they have to understand that it’s not clean at all. Also, us humans are not meant to consume the milk of any animal at all. We’re not meant to consume milk after we’re an infant let alone the milk of another animal. Although we have adapted to in times of survival, humans have used dairy because they had to. I’d rather have someone trick dairy than die of starvation. So in those terms we did, but we don’t need to anymore. It’s not healthy.

So, there’s a lot of evidence that dairy is really unhealthy for us, but the marketing in the food industry would tell you otherwise. That eating rotting decaying flesh of animals is very toxic for the colon. Now, you’ve mentioned eggs a few times. So you are not promoting a whole food plant-based or a vegan diet. You have a lot of experience around colon health. What kind of a diet do you see is the most healing and healthy for the gut?

 

[2:28:40] David DeHaas: Yeah. You said you interviewed Peter, Eat Right for Your Blood Type. Peter D’Adamo.

 

[2:28:47] Ashley James: I haven’t interviewed him. He was my Naturopath growing up. Yeah.

 

[2:28:53] David DeHaas: He wrote the book Eat Right for your Blood Type. So, we have found that, we typically ask people what the blood type is. We have found that to be pretty much true. Every once in a while I get an A, if you’re type A that usually means you should be plant-based. Dr. Huggins was pretty big. He was a guy that did a lot of studying. He inherited all of Dr. Weston Price’s research and did a lot of studies on his own. He was pretty big on eating what’s right for your blood type. He says if you’re Type O, you need a lot of protein he says, “You need to get it from a hoof.” So, we have found, I’m a B+, my wife is O. She takes some supplements, some extra protein, amino-based supplements as well, which really helped her. So we found that to be pretty accurate over the years. Again, I tell people look at it, muscle test. What’s your body telling you?

So, yeah. I do. I’ve always been an egg guy. I love eggs. I do. I don’t eat near as much steak as I used to. Lamb, for B guys, that’s B+ people, because we’re so positive. Lamb’s good for us. I noticed that to be true for me. So, I always say to people, “Again, at the end of the day, let’s clear out your body. Let’s see what you’re testing for and go with that and understand. Your body knows. Once you understand how to do this, you can choose. That will serve you. If someone’s saying, “Hey, you know what, everyone has to be a vegan. Everyone has to be a vegetarian,” whatever. No. I don’t get on that bandwagon. I have found some people that go on that sometimes they’re having some issues later on, but again, you know what, you know you. You do you. Muscle test. Understand what you need and I think you’ll be okay.

 

[2:30:55] Ashley James: Yeah. I always thought, because I was O blood type and I was raised to just almost only eat meat and vegetables are a garnish, when I did so much to correct my health, like I just couldn’t get over the hump and then I interviewed so many people that said the most healing, cleansing thing for the body is whole food plant-based no processed foods. So I tried it, and I thought, now I was of the mindset that I had to have meat at every meal. So even the thought of having a one meatless meal was just absurd, like my brain couldn’t wrap my, didn’t make sense. But I tried. I did a 21-day challenge, 21-day cleanse where I ate lots of salad, steamed vegetables, two pounds of steamed vegetables a day, lots of starchy vegetables and also non-starchy vegetables, brown rice, tons of legumes, nuts and seeds. Basically lentils, beans, peas. So all plant-based protein. I was getting around 50 to 70 grams of protein, but it was from plants. I was getting 50 to actually between 50 and 70 grams of fiber a day, which was amazing. So good and I couldn’t believe it. Because before that I struggled to get even 15 grams of fiber. I felt full and I could not believe, within days I had more energy, more mental clarity than I ever had. I had already been on eating organic, eating whole foods. I had done paleo and keto. I’ve tried everything, but this, this for me has been revolutionary. I don’t have cravings anymore. I don’t have the feeling of being weak. I used to feel weak if I didn’t eat meat. I don’t get that. I just thought that was really neat that I feel very strong in my core.

So, even if someone were to just eat more vegetables or just get a variety of legumes and nuts and seeds and just eat more plants and learn how to cook. That’s why I started this membership called Learn True Health Home Kitchen. It was to teach people how to eat more plants. Some people don’t want to cut out meat, but eating more plants is healthier and is healing. Would you find that you help people to eat more plants because people just are not eating enough fiber? What kind of diet changes that you help people that you see helps a 100% the population?

 

[2:33:37] David DeHaas: Yeah. So again, I go back to when of course when they’re here we’re teaching lots and lots of things. Like for example you mentioned eating lots of beans, my wife, beans she can’t touch beans at all. So, she stays away from those. So again, I talk to people about, “Okay. Let’s definitely fruits, vegetables.” I’ve got people here in Boise that advocate for being a fruitarian. That doesn’t resonate for a lot of clients especially if you’ve got heavy metals and you got yeast candida and you’re doing a lot of fruits. Some people go, “Oh fruits, yeah.” So you’re going to have more sugars and that’s probably not going to serve you well. So, there’s a balance and I think that people need to, that’s why I always have them start out with, “If you want, here’s some education. Eat right for your type, look at that, see what resonates. Let’s start muscle testing yourself. See what you are resonating with.” Then I think that is something people need to become empowered and begin to figure out what is best for them. But again, I always start first of all, organic only. You got to have organic. You can’t eat the non-food. Well, you can but you’re going to be sick. Usually people get on that as you probably experienced as well, after a while, guess what, your body you eat something that you used to think you liked and you eat it now, you got a reaction. You’re not going to feel as well. So, yeah. God gave us fruits and vegetables. I think it’s why I like Thai food so much. I like a little spiciness to it.

 

[2:35:21] Ashley James: Yum.

 

[2:35:22] David DeHaas: Yeah. Turmeric and cayenne. Cayenne is a wonderful ingredient. Cayenne is so amazing. Amazing thing. I’ll tell you my first experience with cayenne, because I had a lot of allergies. I had severe allergies. One of the things that my in-law says, “Well, you know, cayenne is great for allergies.” So I started taking a little bit and they told me a story. I didn’t really believe them because he told me the story of my father-in-law was out logging one part in his life. His chainsaw bucked and hit him in the cheek. He’s three hours from a hospital. So he had a whole bag of cayenne because his mother drank cayenne pepper every morning. Every single morning she’d have some cayenne in water and she lived all-natural until 105.

 

[2:36:09] Ashley James: Nice.

 

[2:36:10] David DeHaas: So, he takes the cayenne, puts it in that wound and butterfly bandages it and goes back to work and no scar. My brother-in-law says, “Yeah, David.” He says, “It was bad.” He was telling me chainsaw bucks and hits you in the face, it’s not going to be pretty. No scar. I go, “Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.” He says, “Yeah. I got in this car accident and I cut my hand here and I put cayenne in it, butterfly bandaged it and I didn’t have stitches.” “Yeah. Yeah. Sure.” So one day I’m out, this back in the 80s and I had the old mobile phones where it had the big box in the trunk and a phone handle upfront. I’m taking it out and I raised up and I hit my head on the edge of the car lid. I got blood spurting everywhere. My in-laws were there so I say, I walked in and of course blood’s everywhere, “Should we go to the hospital?” He says, “Well, hold it. What the hell. Let’s try to this cayenne thing. Let’s just cut this back and throw some cayenne in there.” It was bleeding pretty good. So, we did it, we put cayenne in it, cut my hair back and put a butterfly bandage over it. I don’t know, for some reason about a week later I was at a doctor’s office. He goes, “What did you do to your head? So, I cracked it open. He goes, “Wow.” I go, “Yeah.” I said, “How’s it look?” He goes, “Looks really good.” I say, “Yeah, all I did is I put cayenne pepper in it and put a butterfly bandage in. He goes, “Well, that didn’t anything.” I say, “Well, you’re looking at it and you tell me it looks great.” I said, “Dude, I had blood everywhere.”

 

[2:37:42] Ashley James: That’s so funny.

 

[2:37:43] David DeHaas: So, anyway, that was just part of the learning experience that I had. Anyway, I don’t know how we got off on cayenne pepper but great thing to be –

 

[2:37:53] Ashley James: To add to your food?

 

[2:37:55] David DeHaas: I just had another great guy in here who’s very well known for, speaking of soils. He runs some garden centers here in the area. He was telling me some of his cayenne stories. Pretty interesting stories, but yeah, cayenne’s awesome. Everyone have that little cayenne. If I went back on the day when I used to get sick, I don’t get sick anymore but I get really sick. If I ever got a sore throat I would take some cayenne, put it in some water juice and I would juggle it down. Of course you’re going to feel the heat against your throat, but I did it every two hours with vitamin C in between and another product called Immune Formula which has Echinacea and goldenseal and some other products in it. I can alternate every two hours. Cayenne just cut that pain in the throat. I’d heal that day.

 

[2:38:34] Ashley James: Yeah. My mom taught me fresh lemon juice, hot water, cayenne and some maple syrup or honey. We would drink that all day long if we had a sore throat or if we were coming down with a cold and then it would just blow itself right out.

 

[2:38:50] David DeHaas: She was too kind to you giving you the honey, I just take her straight.

 

[2:38:53] Ashley James: Well, I was a kid. She had to figure out how to get it in me. Yeah, the cayenne and between the cayenne, I think we also put ginger in it. Yeah, that’s right. We put ginger in it and the lemon juice for the vitamin C and the ginger for the tummy and then the cayenne for the throat and then the honey because I’m a kid. Yeah. That was the home remedy. Absolutely.

 

[2:39:16] David DeHaas: That’s going to help move out that mucus too. So if you’ve got some mucus, that will help it. The other thing too, I’ve had a guy come in with pneumonia. In fact, his daughter was on the 10-day cleanse and she was having this amazing changes. She says, “Yeah, my dad was at the hospital last night.” I go, “What for?” She says, “Well, he’s got pneumonia.” I say, “Well, why is he in here?” He had never done colonics yet, right? So he sends his daughter but he hasn’t come in. I go, “Tell him get down here.” So he comes down and he comes in. After the first colonic he said to me, “David, I have not slept through the night in years. I slept like a baby. I can’t believe how much better I feel.” I say, “You’ve only done one day.” He goes, “I know. What’s going to happen today?” I say, “Oh, it’s going to get better.” So yeah, he did I think three or four colonics in a row. His eyes got clear and all that. Yeah, getting that mucus out, getting that gunk out of the trunk. Again, what you’re doing with cayenne and the lemon juice another great thing to help move that out. We also use ginger here and lemon on the cleanse as well. Good stuff.

 

[2:40:16] Ashley James: Fun. Awesome. Do you add anything to the water when they’re doing colonics like at the end? I’ve been to places where the last sort of water flow into the colon contains probiotics. Do you do anything like that where you add stuff to the water?

 

[2:40:34] David DeHaas: Yeah. So we don’t generally add some stuff to the water but we do add some stuff that you can and you muscle test to see what exactly you need. So, again giving your body the ability to drink that from the hinder parts is a cool thing.

 

[2:40:51] Ashley James: Awesome, Is there anything that we didn’t cover today that you just really want to make sure that we cover?

 

[2:40:57] David DeHaas: If people really want to do a deep dive, I did a webinar that goes into a deep dive on how the colon works. I even bring on Dr. Charina Holmes and she talks about what’s going on in the gut. That’s at healingtheincurables.com, healingtheincurables.com. So, people could go watch that and really get an education on colon hydrotherapy and how the gut works and how all those nerves, I have pictures on there of how the nerves connect to the gut. I go into a whole and its very layman’s terms so people can understand. I think everyone from first grade up should probably watch that webinar just to understand.

 

[2:41:35] Ashley James: Oh, cool. We homeschool our four-year-old so he’s about to be five. He’s already doing first-grade level stuff. So we’ll watch it together because he’s really interested in anatomy. He likes to draw and color the body, like the anatomy of the body.

 

[2:41:51] David DeHaas: Awesome.

 

[2:41:52] Ashley James: So, yeah. Neat. I know we have a lot of parents that listen to the podcast with their children, actually. That’s why we keep it a clean show with no swearing, friendly for the whole family. Some topics though, when it comes to like some kind of health things maybe should be PG-13, but other than that, it’s a safe podcast to listen to for the whole family. So your webinar healingtheincurables.com. Is it incurable?

 

[2:42:22] David DeHaas: Incurables.

 

[2:42:23] Ashley James: Incurables, with an S.

 

[2:42:24] David DeHaas: Healingtheincurables.com. I teach a thing called the four natural laws of healing. Thank you V.E. Irons for that and Dr. Bernhard Jensen. So, yeah. There’s a lot of good stuff in that. Of course we got stuff on our website as well at livingwaterscleanse.com so a lot of good, in fact we have a video on there on how a colonic is done. So if you go to livingwaterscleanse.com, you’ll actually see my wife show you how a colonic is done.

 

[2:42:55] Ashley James: Yeah. I’ve watched that video.

 

[2:42:57] David DeHaas: Ten minutes long.

 

[2:42:58] Ashley James: Yeah. A lot of your videos. They’re fun. Just go watch the videos and see the testimonials and see the stuff that comes out of people because that’s like crazy. That’s so crazy. Then you really want that stuff to come out of you too. I know my listeners are really into parasite cleanses or at least I am, and then the ones that are interested, they talk in the Facebook group about it. So yeah, if you think you’ve got parasites, if you’ve never done a parasite cleanse and you’re an adult, you have parasites. That’s basically what it is.

 

[2:43:30] David DeHaas: Parasites don’t like the warm water. They don’t like that. They hate it. I mean, that’s what really helps all the herbs and all that stuff and using zappers and pulse frequency. All that’s great. People come in and have done all that over the years they come here and they add the water by doing the colonics. Those guys can only hang on so long.

 

[2:43:52] Ashley James: It’s like a tidal wave. It just pulls them out.

 

[2:43:54] David DeHaas: Whoosh.

 

[2:43:55] Ashley James: Yes. Nice. Awesome. David, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing all this great information. It’s been wonderful. Livingwaterscleanse.com is your website. Of course, the links to everything that David does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. Is there a final message that you’d like to leave listeners with to wrap up today’s interview?

 

[2:44:21] David DeHaas: Oh, final message. Well, I think the important thing is you need to poop like a boss. If you’re sick, get a colonic, come on. Guys, it’s really simple, really easy. It’s going to cut your sick-care costs and it’s going to improve your well-being. Find a colon hydrotherapist. I mean, we’d love to have you come to Boise, Idaho and join us. But look at it, there’s great colon hydrotherapists throughout the country. My mission is to make colon hydrotherapy as popular as those little stand-up pharmacies on the corner.

 

[2:44:54] Ashley James: Very good, very nice.

 

[2:44:56] David DeHaas: Bring your friend. I always tell couples, there was a couple that came in yesterday and I say, “Are you guys boyfriend and girlfriend?” They say, “Yeah.” She had done colonics and he hadn’t. I say, “You can’t date him until he’s cleaned up. We can’t date the unclean.” He looked at her and like, “Oh, I guess I got to get some colonics.” I say, “Yeah, because what he has, you’re going to have.” So, yeah.

 

[2:45:18] Ashley James: Very interesting. Bring a friend. All right. Thank you so much, David. This has been a pleasure to have you today.

 

[2:45:26] David DeHaas: All right. I appreciate it. I appreciate what you’ve been doing. I’ve listened to quite a few your podcasts. They’re awesome.

 

[2:45:32] Ashley James: Oh, thanks.

 

[2:45:34] Outro: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview, I know I did. It’s such a wonderful journey to be on this health journey with you, learning alongside you. I’ve been so into health for so many years building my health back. To be able to share it with you is a real blessing. Come join the Facebook group the Learn True Health Facebook Group if you haven’t already because it’s such a wonderful community to be part of a supportive community of people like you who are looking to build their health and gain their health back and be as healthy as possible. Sometimes we feel like black sheep but our own family or in our own social circles, but when you come join the Learn True Health Facebook group you feel supported and you feel like you’re not alone.

Another place you’ll feel supported is my new membership, the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. Whether you don’t know how to cook at all or you cook all the time, you are going to get so much out of our membership. I paired with a really good friend of mine, Naomi, who’s an amazing cook and is a total health advocate. She figures out how to cook in a way that makes children happy, that makes the whole family happy and that’s healing using healing ingredients, healing foods that can be adapted for all different kinds of diets and lifestyles.

So come join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen. That’s learntruehealth.com/homekitchen and use the coupon code LTH. I made it affordable for everyone because I want you to join me. You can support the Learn True Health Facebook group, support me in continuing to do these interviews by joining the membership. Also support you to gain more recipes and more ideas more lifestyle tips and tricks. I put a ton of work and a ton of effort into the Learn True Health Home Kitchen to teach so that I can empower you to get your health to the next level and to always be cultivating true health.

Every week I add new lessons so you’ll continue to gain more and more and more. There’s well over seven hours of content that you can pour through right now and I add new lessons every single week. So please, come join the Learn True Health Home Kitchen, support the Learn True Health podcast, support me and what I’m doing. My mission to continue to bring you these interviews and support you and your family in optimal health. Go to learntruehealth.com/homekitchen and use the coupon code LTH. Thank you so much for being a listener and thank you so much for supporting the Learn True Health podcast. Have yourself an excellent rest of your day.

 

Get Connected with David DeHaas!

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Recommended Readings by David DeHaas

Guess What Came To Dinner: Parasites and Your Health – Ann Louise Gittleman

Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management – Dr. Bernard Jensen

Dr. Jensen’s Guide To Better Bowel Care – Dr. Bernard Jensen

Today we will learn:

1. How and why anxiety affects your whole life
2. How to effectively form new habits
3. 3 techniques to eliminate anxiety, whether it’s around a specific event, the outlook of your day or the span of your life

Check out this episode and it's show notes on MindLove's Site:

https://mindlove.com/033

The MindLove podcast’s Instagram and Twitter is: @mindlovepodcast

 

Eliminating Anxiety

http://learntruehealth.com/eliminating-anxiety

Eliminating anxiety is such an essential component for achieving success and happiness. But a lot of people still have no idea that anxiety is a significant deterrent.

Anxiety has become the number 1 mental health issue in the United States. Studies show that one-third of the American adult population usually experience anxiety-related issues. And the results are not surprising because anxiety affects a lot of things. 

I guested recently on Melissa Monte’s Mind Love Podcast where I talked about eliminating anxiety techniques as well as tips on creating healthy habits and rewiring your brain. This episode will teach you how to rewire our brain, form positive habits, think happy thoughts, react better and learn faster.

Childhood Years

I was a very sickly child when I was about six years old during the 80s. That time, my mother was working hard and tended to take a lot of antibiotics or medicines instead of resting.

My mother ended up getting candida and yeast overgrowth. She felt horrible and irritable aside from dealing with brain fog. That usually happens when we take a lot of antibiotics because it kills all this good biome and bacteria.

Discovering Natural Medicine

Soon enough, my mother found a Naturopathic Doctor and took me along as well. After a battery of tests, that doctor declared that I was allergic to milk, wheat, yeast, and sugar.

There were supplements that he created and got both my mother and me on a diet. Our new diet was gluten-free, grain-free, sugar-free, dairy-free and had lots of vegetables.

The new diet would consist of anything from fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, beans, some fish, and some chicken. It sounds boring, but my health improved significantly. In fact, I had so much energy and didn’t get sick anymore. 

Rebel Years

Like the typical teenager, I decided to rebel when I was 13 years old. It was not long after that I lost my health. By the time I was 19 years old, I was pre-diabetic. I also developed PCOS and was told that I’d never have kids.

By the time I was 26 years old, I was suffering from monthly chronic infections that needed antibiotics.  I also had chronic adrenal fatigue and became a full-blown diabetic.

It was a hard time for me because it was also during this period that my mother passed away. I lost myself, my emotional body and mental body. In an attempt to find a way to heal, I discovered Neuro-linguistic programming.

Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP)

Neuro-linguistic programming is a way of communicating, psychotherapy and personal development that started in the 1970s. It has incredible tools that can make you mentally stronger.

You can become stronger by letting go of negative emotions. Let go of limiting decisions and create the person you know you are without all the garbage and baggage. Neuro-linguistic programming helps you let go of a lot of guilt and shame.

A Better Place

So, in becoming a Master Practitioner and Trainer of Neuro-linguistic programming, Timeline Therapy, Hypnosis, and Health Coaching, I healed my heart. As far as dieting is concerned, I tried a lot of diets and failed because I realize the nutrition factor was missing.

Then I found Natural Medicine again seven years ago. Becoming a Health Coach was very fulfilling because I helped clients heal naturally and work on things like eliminating anxiety. In fact, I personally never realized I had anxiety until I learned not to have it anymore.

My life is different now.  I was able to conceive naturally to a healthy baby boy who is now three years old. And doing this podcast gives me so much joy knowing I am helping to educate a lot of people.

Understanding Anxiety

Some techniques can help change things to achieve specific goals in life. Such as treating phobias, depression, learning disorders and eliminating anxiety.

Anxiety, in particular, can be different for everybody because we are so different from our belief system.  But remember, anxiety is not a negative emotion.

Sometimes, anxiety is associated with anger.  And anger is healthy when it is anger at the moment. Why? Because it helps us get motivated to do something somehow. So, it’s healthy to process it and let it go immediately. Looking at it from another perspective, an unconscious mind is communicating emotions to us.

In Touch With Emotions

Sometimes, our emotions come from unresolved memories from the past. It can also be negative beliefs about ourselves which we have to resolve. Anxiety helps us focus on what we want.

You see, the body cannot tell the difference between what is imagined and what is real. There’s a study conducted wherein there were three controlled groups of people.

The first group was taught simple 5-finger piano exercises. Those people never played the piano before. The second group was tasked to imagine playing the piano with one hand. Then the third group was made to play the piano without any prior lessons. Each exercise lasted for thirty minutes.

For the first two groups, results showed that they were three times more expressive than people who just aimlessly played the piano. Those who imagined playing the song and those who played the song to the body and the brain happened to produce the same result. The study proved that those who just imagined over and over again, have just as much improvement as those who practiced.

Now the problem with anxiety is that people who don’t understand why we have anxiety, go to a doctor.  The doctor would then and put patients on drugs which eventually alters the chemistry of the body.

But then people would usually say they still felt anxious. This is because they always focus on what they don’t want. And when this happens, you are triggering your stress response over and over. That’s why our body can’t heal. And when stress isn’t adequately addressed, it can sometimes lead to cancer. 

Being Aware Of Symptoms

Physical symptoms should be regarded as a warning signal to investigate the root of whatever is going on. Because people aren’t just born with anxiety. Relief from some things doesn’t mean that any actual feeling has occurred. It’s usually just suppressing it.

I firmly believe we can reverse almost everything with Natural Medicine. Although I appreciate drugs for emergency medicine, there are some situations when drugs are not necessary. For example, for chronic illness, you should not see a medical doctor. This also goes for the time when we have emotions we want to resolve.

Anxiety Freedom Relief Technique

This particular eliminating anxiety technique focuses on what you do want. Mainly, you want to send a message to your body that we are now at a safe place. It is actually what NLP is, which is understanding how our neurology works.

First of all, think of about that future event that stresses you out and get in touch with that. Gauge it on a scale of 1 to 10, with one being the lowest. Then imagine how much anxiety do you feel right now.

Close your eyes and float above your timeline. Float for 15 minutes past the successful completion of the event to which you have anxiety from. You need to imagine the successful completion.

Then think about what level is your anxiety now. Usually, 95% of listeners at this point no longer have anxiety. Because they were obvious on what they were anxious about. They went through 15 minutes past the successful completion which told their body that the threat is gone now. That’s how you turn off that stress response.

As for the remaining 5%, those are usually the people who didn’t imagine the success. Some people imagine the completion. They did not envision the root reason why they have anxiety in the first place.

So, an effective way of eliminating anxiety is by going 15 minutes past the completion of your life.  And have a positive mindset. Motivate yourself to think that your life is going to work out.

Duration

Usually, it takes between 21 and 60 days to make or break a habit. Learn the art of habit stacking. One way is to pick something you do every day and stick to that. It’s a lot easier adding to your routine than it was to create it in the beginning. Intentionally focus on what you want.

And why does it happen?  Well, because there’s part of the brain called the reticular activating system. It’s part of our brain’s filter system that allows us to get what we want. Plus, it can’t tell the difference between a negative and a positive. In other words, it helps us get what we don’t want.

Hakalau

Hakalau means Peripheral Vision and Expanded Awareness in the Hawaiian language.  It is also known as The Learning State. It’s all about becoming aware of your peripheral vision.

There are exercises you can do every day to develop your peripheral vision and your awareness. It teaches you to step away and become an observer, to learn to slow things down and think before reacting. 

Free Your Anxiety Webinar

To know more about techniques for eliminating anxiety, do check out my website and click on the link to join my free webinar. It’s a great resource if you want to dive deeper into learning long-term techniques in eliminating anxiety, fear, and stress for good.

Mind Love Podcast – Eliminating Anxiety episode

Mind Love Website

Learn True Health – Free Your Anxiety Webinar

Get Connected With Melissa Monte ( Mind Love Podcast)!

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Mind Love Listeners Facebook Group

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Become A Health Coach-Learn More About The Institute for Integrative Nutrition's Health Coaching Certification Program by checking out these four resources:

1) Integrative Nutrition's Curriculum Guide:
http://geti.in/2cmUMxb

2) The IIN Curriculum Syllabus:
http://geti.in/2miXTej

3) Module One of the IIN curriculum:
http://geti.in/2cmWPl8

4) Get three free chapters of Joshua Rosenthal's book:
http://geti.in/2cksU87

Watch my little video on how to become a Certified Health Coach!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDDnofnSldI

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Do You Have Anxiety? End Anxiety Now! Learn Two Powerful Mind Tricks for Removing Anxiety, Ending Worry, & Controlling Fear So It Stops Controlling You! Attend my FREE Webinar that Will Teach You How! Click Here!

http://FreeYourAnxiety.com/webinar

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Visit BloodSugarCoach.com for your free 30min coaching call with Ashley James!

http://www.BloodSugarCoach.com
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Ashley James
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Download your FREE copy today!

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