Learn True Health with Ashley James

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Get my ebook and audiobook here: https://learntruehealth.com/op/addicted-to-wellness-ebook.   Get my course, The 7 Foundations of Health, here: https://learntruehealth.com/sp/7-foundations-of-optimal-health   Get a physical copy of my book here: https://learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness.   The Vibe: https://learntruehealth.com/vibe coupon code LTH - LearnTrueHealth.com/vibe   Dr. Ellen Kamhi's website: http://www.naturalnurse.com   537: Your Natural Medicine Chest: HPA Axis Balance https://learntruehealth.com/your-natural-medicine-chest-hpa-axis-balance/ In today’s episode of the Learn True Health Podcast, Dr. Ellen Kamhi returns for part two of our powerful conversation on natural healing. We dive deep into understanding the HPA axis—how your hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands work together to regulate stress, energy, sleep, weight, digestion, and so much more. You'll learn how chronic stress throws the entire body out of balance—and how simple, natural tools like herbal medicine, better sleep habits, and plant-based remedies can help restore true health. Dr. Kamhi shares practical, time-tested solutions you can start using right away to support your body's innate ability to heal itself. If you’ve ever struggled with fatigue, brain fog, thyroid issues, gut problems, or low immunity, this is a must-listen episode! Highlights: Dr. Ellen Kamhi highlights that hundreds of health issues—like migraines, weight gain, and insomnia—are linked to an imbalanced HPA axis. The HPA axis (hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal) controls stress response, digestion, immune function, mood, and energy levels. Chronic stress keeps cortisol levels elevated long-term, weakening the immune system and leading to fatigue, obesity, thyroid issues, and gut problems. Getting deep, dark sleep—by blocking out all light and minimizing screen exposure at night—is essential for balancing the HPA axis. Mimosa (Albizia) flower is called the “Tree of Happiness” and naturally boosts mood, calms the nervous system, and supports endocrine balance. Magnolia bark lowers cortisol, reduces inflammation, and binds to serotonin receptors, helping relieve anxiety and emotional tension. Castor oil packs applied over the adrenal glands or thyroid help stimulate natural healing and restore hormonal balance. Valerian root helps promote deep sleep, but individual reactions vary—some feel calm, while others may feel stimulated. Passionflower is excellent for calming the mind during the day without sedation, making it ideal for stress-related HPA dysfunction. Lifestyle habits like prayer, meditation, rest, and limiting light exposure at night are simple yet powerful ways to heal the body naturally. Intro: Hello True Health Seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. We have an amazing episode for you today, with Dr. Ellen Kamhi coming back on the show. She was with us in last episode 536, part one, where we discussed using herbal medicine to support our immune health and to eliminate or control pain, and also support the body's ability to heal itself while we're going through injury or illness. Today, we're diving into understanding the HPA axis—the hypothalamic, pituitary, adrenal axis—and how that plays a major role in everything from migraines, obesity, digestion, back pain, insomnia, energy—the list goes on and on. A lot of times when we go to a doctor with symptoms, the doctor starts treating the symptoms instead of going upstream to the root cause of the problem. There are hundreds of problems that are all caused by a dysregulated HPA axis, so today you're going to learn about how to support your HPA axis and how to support your body's ability to come back into balance and your body's ability to heal itself. Here at Learn True Health, we believe in the body's innate and God-given ability to heal itself. We grew ourselves from a single cell into over 32.7 trillion cells that are a symphony within a symphony. In fact, a biologist once said that the single human cell is more complex. There's more things going on in one human cell than all of Manhattan. If you can imagine how busy it is in New York City, let alone Manhattan, you think about Manhattan, you think about just everything that's happening, imagine one human cell is more busy than that. It's more busy than all of New York. There's more things going on, and we're just scratching the surface. Every day we're just learning more and more and more. Yet there's this ancient medicine, long before pharmaceutical, drug-based, chemically patented pharmaceutical interventions. I'm not saying we should ignore those. I'm saying we should look at the whole picture. If you needed an entire toolbox to fix a car but I only let you have access to one of the shelves of that toolbox, how effective would you be at repairing that car? Maybe you could change a tire, but you couldn't change the oil. I don't know. Point being, if we want to take care of ourselves, we really should have access to and an understanding of the full plethora of what is available for us. Holistic, plant-based medicine—so herbal medicine, for example—was used even by medical doctors up until about the 1950s when, because of the way their education was manipulated by the pharmaceutical industries, those practices fell by the wayside. Yet we have effective, easy-to-use herbal remedies to support the body's ability to heal itself. We have access to so much now. Because you're listening to this, because we have the internet, we can start exploring. We can start finding practitioners. Doesn't have to be even in our town or our city. They don't even have to be in our state or our country. We can connect with people worldwide and learn how to support a body's ability to heal itself. I highly recommend checking out our previous episode 536, where we began this talk with Dr. Kamhi. You can listen to it out of order. You can continue listening to this, then go back to the last episode if you haven't already, because it's a wonderful journey to learn from her. I also encourage you to go to my website. My name's Ashley James. If you are new to this podcast, welcome. I've been doing this podcast now coming up on 10 years. It's amazing, I can't believe it. Together we are learning how to heal our bodies and learning how to create true health, which is a balance of emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical health. You can go to LearnTrueHealth.com and use the search function to find dozens of episodes on topics that you're interested in. You can also schedule a free phone call with me. I'd love to help you. I've been a holistic, integrative health coach for many years. I am now a proud author. I published a book last year called Addicted to Wellness. You can check it out by going to LearnTrueHealth.com/addictedtowellness. I'm also an anxiety cessation expert. That's something that I do talk about, but not as often. I think I should talk about it more, because so many people suffer with anxiety, and I've been teaching people since 2005 how to eliminate anxiety. Can you believe it's been 20 years? What? That's crazy. I have been helping people for two decades to completely eliminate anxiety from their life, and I have these amazingly powerful tools that I can teach you. If you want to work one-on-one with me, I'd love for you to hire me as your health coach. You can also sign up for a free consultation if you'd like to have a chat with me. I love talking to you guys. I love, love, love connecting with you. I have so many resources. If you're sick of suffering from physical ailments or if you just really want to have that peace of mind and you've been struggling with anxiety or insomnia or depression, or struggling with food and not knowing how to eat healthy or get on the right track to getting your energy back—just any of these things—please book a free consultation with me. I'd love to help you. I have some amazing resources that I can send your way, one of them being the phototherapy patches, which have been so life-changing. I've got some amazing tools that I could point you in the right direction. If you want to hire me, you are absolutely welcome to. If you want someone to hold your hand and guide you through, I'd love to be there for you as well. I also really recommend checking out TakeYourSupplements.com. It's a fantastic resource if you're ready to take your health back and take your life back. The supplements there, the protocols that they have, saved my life coming up on 13, 14 years ago. It was right around 2011. That's when I got on their protocols, and they helped me to reverse what I was told was irreversible PCOS and infertility. I have an amazing son to prove it, that we conceived naturally after getting on these supplements. They helped me to reverse my type 2 diabetes and my chronic adrenal fatigue, which was amazing to have vanished as a result of nutrition, natural supplements, and diet changes. What I'm saying is that there's so much suffering going on out there, and I was in it. I suffered for years while being cared for by MDs, by medical doctors, and they really didn't have any answers for me. Now I believe that drugs and the medical system—the hospitals and those clinics—are good tools. When we break our arm or when we get into an accident, we want to have them at our disposal. They really fail us when it comes to supporting our body's ability to heal itself. They just don't have those tools. So this episode, this entire podcast, my over 500 and now 37 episodes, are dedicated to showing you that there's a world out there that isn't in the mainstream media. That's a whole other topic as to why, but it's here for you, and it's been around for a long time, and it's proven itself. It's proven itself effective, and it's also gentle, and it is something that it's about coming back to ourselves and nourishing ourselves and supporting what our body actually needs to heal itself. So dive down this rabbit hole with me. Enjoy the ride. It's a lot of fun. If you're new, welcome. If you've been a health nut for a while, I know I'm preaching to the choir. Please share this episode with those you care about. We are going to help end the suffering of millions of people through helping them learn true health. Enjoy today's episode. Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 537. Ashley James (0:09:06.042) I am so excited for today's guests and to have back on the show Dr. Ellen Kamhi. Your website is naturalnurse.com. We had Dr. Ellen back in episode 536. That was part one. I feel we're just going to jump right into part two. We talked about some amazing things about herbal medicine. You should be a national treasure. There should be a Secret Service guarding you. The amount of information you have, it's life-changing. I'm so happy that we have you here today because you are going to change lives today with the information you're sharing. We're going to dive into understanding how we can get out of that stress response to then help the body go into that healing mode through balancing the HPA, the hypothalamus-adrenal-pituitary access. That's so cool. But first, I really want to talk about the fact that you have very affordable online courses. One coming up in March. I'm so excited. I'm joining it. I'm going to be one of your students. I'm inviting my listeners to come join. It's such life-changing information. So affordable, so accessible. Tell us a little bit about your course that's coming up in March. Naturalnurse.com Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:10:29.173) Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. I've been doing herbal medicine since 1964. What has been so exciting about that is seeing people really get well. They seem when they're just put on pharmaceuticals during a two-minute visit or eight minutes if they get a whole long time with their doctor, all that happens is they're given a prescription drug, which sometimes can be useful. But does not usually heal the situation. In fact, I would say it almost never does. That's unfortunate because people then get on a roundabout. Well, when we use a natural intervention such as herbal medicine, now herbal medicine, of course, was always used even by physicians until very, very recently. So even in the 1950s in the United States, and all other countries. Herbal medicine was what anything that might be called a pharmaceutical and was found in a pharmacy. Those were all herbal medicines.  Only after a big political agenda, and I write all about that in my book, The Natural Medicine Chest, The history of Natural Medicine, there was something called the Flexner Report that was actually commissioned by the Rockefellers and was part of a discussion of the AMA, the American Medical Association, as it came into being. That is when purposefully and politically there was a move to restrict both access and information about herbal medicine and other natural healing modalities such as homeopathy and other things that can be very useful that we use in integrative and functional medicine. There was a movement to actually stop the teaching of any of those things. It was called Irregular Medicine. To actually stop the teaching of that to physicians in medical schools. To restrict the teachings to physicians to only one source of information that had to do with only two modalities. One is pharmaceuticals and one is surgery. So when people say, how come my doctor did not tell me about this? It worked so great and it was so inexpensive and it had no adverse effects. Why didn't my doctor tell me about this particular natural healing modality, such as herbs, which we'll be talking about now? The answer is unfortunate because it's actually politically maneuvered. That's a topic for another whole show.  But as I came into my understanding of natural medicine, which actually happened for the first time when I fell off a horse and had a very severe back injury, which doesn't heal on its own, and I was told I needed surgery, which would be appropriate in most cases, but I sort of had a little bird talk to me, I would say a spiritual revelation. So look into that because the doctor had told me I would never walk again without surgery, but I did not believe it. So I went to the local library and looked through the card catalog. For those of you old enough to remember those things, they're little drawers that you pull out. Remember, there was no internet. There were no credit cards. This is a long time ago. But I looked through the card catalog about natural therapeutics for a hurt back, which I had. I found so much information and I actually got in touch with all those places I read about such as Dr. Bernard Jensen was one. All of his writings are still worth diving into by any of our listeners today, as well as I myself wrote 18 books. They're all listed on my website at naturalnurse.com books.  So Dr. Bernard Jensen and many other people that I studied with all talked about using herbs for healing. So that is really where I got my start. One thing that I have noticed over many years, because I'm very involved with the American Herbalist Guild. The American Herbalist Guild is an excellent place to get information about herbal medicine, but I do notice that many of the in-depth training that are offered to the public are very, very, very expensive.  So therefore, it's going to be limited only to those people of high means to be able to take some of those courses. So I specifically decided to give back to society to have a basic class in herbal medicine so people can do any one of the above.  They could either be able to intelligently decide what herb or group of herbs, an herbal protocol, would be the right thing for them and their family, just locally for themselves, their family. Then also, the course incorporates for health care professionals who are already doing something that is now being called integrative or functional medicine, which means natural health suggestions for their clients, how a professional also could intelligently and correctly put together herbal protocols. So that's why I started this class. I think it's been going on for about 15 years. So it's new next to some of the things I've been doing for 57 years or more since 1964 in terms of herbal medicine.  So this class I think is wonderful and I love to share it with people. It's given through the Florida School of Holistic Living, which is a wonderful organization in Florida that does both online training as well as in-person training. I do a lot of in-person as well where we go out in the field and identify plants and actually make them into medicine. That's part of herbal medicine. So in this class, the Natural Nurse Basics of Herbal Medicine actually also offers 18 CEUs for anyone who does have a license. So that might be a nurse or a massage therapist or a holistic practitioner of some kind who is also a licensed health professional. So that's why we put this class together, to be useful for anybody who really wants to study herbal medicine. It's broken into four classes. We have one class a month. The first one is called the Basics of Herbal Medicine. Here we learn the fundamentals and essential terminology that is relevant to herbalism. Just like nurses, which I'm also a nurse, I'm a PhD RN, nurses have a, I say, a cliquish language. Everyone does. Hairdressers do. Everybody has their own little cliquish language. In the first class, we have assignments. So we meet for an hour and a half. It's usually on a Sunday for an hour and a half in the morning. You're also given tons and tons of handouts that you're given to actually download and keep forever in your computer. They're given as PDFs. That would be both what I use to lecture from and discuss from, as well as many other handouts about that topic. There is quite a bit of homework. Now, if you want to just listen in and not do the homework, that's fine. But if you want a beautiful certificate given by the Florida School of Holistic Medicine and also the CE units, those are only necessary for someone who already has a license. If you want to get those, then you have to do the homework. The homeworks are very in-depth because the homeworks are where you learn. So you would look up all these special words for herbal medicine so you could talk to another herbalist. What is a cologog? Do you know? If you do, you're probably pretty well versed in herbal medicine. What is a mucilaginous agent? When would you use that? So that's the kind of thing that we learn in the Natural Nurse class. So if anybody wants to take it, you can just go online to naturalnurse.com, Classes and Events. The second class is Botany and Botanical Nomenclature. Because if you want to talk about herbs, then you really should understand a little bit about the actual plants that you're talking about. So the botany class covers the importance of Latin names when communicating with other herbalists. Something very special called the Doctrine of Signatures. The Doctrine of Signatures is a very special thing that has to do with the fact that a plant, when you actually look at the plant, can tell you because of its shape and its size and its function and its color, it can actually tell you what it is used for in the body. So that's a fantastic aspect of the Doctrine of Signatures. We go deeply into that spiritual signature that a plant has. Also identifying plant families and how we decide if a plant is edible, medicinal, or a very important topic is plants that are poisonous. It's a real good thing to study before you go out and gather plants for food and medicine.  So if you do not come on board with the class when we have it at that time, you can always get it on the archive. Once you sign up for the class, you will get a link to come to the live sessions and you will get all the handouts for you to download. Then you also get an archive link so you can join us anytime. If you don't come in when we're doing it live, you can come in basically anytime at your convenience to finish the course. You have about a year to hand in all the assignments. The third class is very specific. It's called Using Herbs for Yourself and Your Family. Now, any of these classes, by the way, you can take just that one class rather than the full series. You can always take just one class. Each class gives three CE units for professionals. Well, if you take the whole class, the whole course and do all the homework, then you get 18 CEUs. But the third class is using herbs for yourself and your family. This covers common herbal first aid that people might use for colds and flus and ear infections, upset stomach, skin rashes, and other mild daily health issues that can be handled at home.  Actually, herbs are much better than let's say the over-the-counter pharmaceuticals, where if you read some of them, they still have a long list of possible adverse effects, as well as dyes and coloring agents and all kinds of things like that. So even if you just want to know how to use herbs for yourself and your family and put together your own protocol and have me review it and go, that's pretty good, or not, and why not, and where you could look for better information. So that's class three, which is Using Herbs for Yourself and Your Family.  Then we wrap it up with the fourth class. The fourth class is actually about our very deep spiritual connection to plants. This is called actually feeling the consciousness of plants. Because since ancient times, people have experienced plant communication. Almost anybody can walk outside their door and there's a tree that lives there and the tree might be living there a lot longer than you're living there. It will validate the reality of that feeling that you have. Most people have that feeling. What's so interesting is that scientific investigation now completely supports the fact that plants do communicate. In fact, there are cellular structures on every single cell in our body. There are specific structures for what's called interdimensional communication and intra and even among species. There are specific cellular parts of each and every cell that are for communicating with your own species.  So with humans, that would be called intraspecies communication if we're speaking to another human. But let's say your dog comes over and he or she can tell you that they want to go for a walk. That is intraspecies communication. We're communicating with a different species. Guess what? We have those same receptors for the messages that plants put out and now they're actually being measured.  The actual ancient shamans as always were able to tune into that. So can we, if you learn those techniques, as well as learning dowsing. That's another great technique to communicate. Besides that, getting back to more scientific-based stuff, you definitely want to know exactly how to do herb-drug communication in terms of herb-drug interactions. Before you take any herbs, or suggest any herbs for any particular person or even a pet, you really need to know what possible herb-drug interaction would happen. So in terms of plant dowsing, there are definitely techniques to use, and then when we're talking about herb-drug interactions, it's very important to know which are the best websites to use, and before you're going to start bringing a lot of herbs into your routine or suggest that someone else does, you really have to take a list of their drugs and then look up herb-drug interactions, because sometimes that can actually be dangerous. I'll give you one example here. Let's say you're working with an elderly person, and unfortunately, unlike myself, let's say my mom, my mom's 96 and she's on exactly zero pharmaceuticals, but that's very unusual. In fact, when I do take her for a checkup or something, the doctor will send in four people because the first person he came in, there was nothing on the list of her pharmaceuticals. So they send someone else and say, my dear, I guess you don't understand this question. Let's look at your list of drugs. Oh, you don't have it? Okay, let's ask your daughter. Maybe she knows them. I'll back her up and say zero is the answer. She is not on any pharmaceuticals. It's a shocking thing when I think it should be really the normal thing.  However, when you have slight imbalances of one kind or another, an herb usually can help bring it back. It should be the remedy of first choice. Later, if or else fails, you need to look at things like exercise, stress reduction therapeutics, all kinds of natural remedies, and then you might want to consider a pharmaceutical. But really, most people should get through their entire life with not one single pharmaceutical. That's actually my belief. As a PhD RN, I think that even more so because we understand the science. So those are what those four classes are. Again, if you are an acupuncturist, a massage therapist, an RD, a midwife or nurse, or anyone who has a license, then you can get the 18 CE units that are through the Florida Department of Education. Other people in other states take it and also have submitted it to their licensing bureaus, and it is accepted. But if you don't have a license, then you just take the class for your own edification and you also still get a certificate saying that you completed the course. It's nice for people who are herbalists, such as an RH. An RH is a registered herbalist. If anyone's interesting in becoming an RH, I am a mentor who bring people through that whole process, which this class, the Natural Nurse Herbal Certification course, can be used towards your RH. The RH is more comprehensive than just this class and involves quite a bit of study. It's really in the United States one of the only recognized certifications so that it's standardized, meaning anyone who's an RH, which is a registered herbalist through the American Herbalist Guild, they all have to complete the same kind of educational processes. So anyone within RH is definitely a knowledgeable herbalist. So that's the class called the Natural Nurse Herbal Certification Course. You can find it at naturalnurse.com and then go to classes and events because we have lots of other things going on, sort of everyday lectures, et cetera. Ashley James (0:29:25.632) I love it. If someone wanted to hire a registered herbalist to work with them, what's the best way to find one, either local or online? Are you available to work with people or do you have a website you can refer people to, a directory? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:29:42.368) I do. So I personally did one-on-one, where we made and we set up an herbal protocol for an individual. I did that for 57 years, but no more because I am way too busy. I am really way too busy. So my focus now is if an individual wants to walk the path of becoming an herbalist, I do a lot of one-on-one education. Walking them through the process that I do. But not, you have a cold or flu, take these herbs. That I did.  Now, I did write 18 books. So we have all kinds of books with very specific protocols in them, as well as lectures, individual lectures, what you do for colds and flus. You can take that from my on-demand site. That's Natural Nurse Academy. Those are only $35. So we're talking about really low-cost information. But to become an RH, you can work with a mentor. I do that one-on-one. That is through a specific organization, which is called the American Herbalist Guild. The American Herbalist Guild is who grants the RH, which is a registered herbalist. That's my favorite, let's say, certification for people to get who would like to call themselves an herbalist because there are many, many programs around who grant something called master herbalist.  When you look into the different programs who teach it and then it goes to master herbalist when you're done with their program, there's no coherence necessarily. Some of them are excellent and in-depth. Some of them are, a three-hour class and all of a sudden you're a master herbalist. Kind of like other things, a holistic health counselor. There are some that are excellent, a health coach. Someone who has a certification as a nurse health coach is deeply qualified. Other people who call themselves a health coach because they took an online course for a week and never even took anatomy and physiology are not well trained. So that's the difference. An RH is a very well trained, knowledgeable herbalist who has gone through all the requirements of the American Herbalist Guild. Ashley James (24:22.37) So the American Herbalist Guild, if we were to look that up, do they have a directory so anyone who's listening could find someone who is certified by them and local to them, for example. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:32:23.662) That's an excellently stated question to make it clear. So people can just go to the American Herbalist Guild, type that into your browser, American Herbalist Guild, and once you get to their site, they do have a directory of registered herbalists. Then I do think it's set up maybe by state, so you could find someone local if you want to work locally. Of course, nowadays, one of the positive things that I think happens because of that whole COVID incident was it really opened up people being able to work with people at a distance. A lot of people are much more comfortable with that now. So you might find an herbalist right down the street, or you may find one anywhere in the world that you vibe with, that you would like to work with. So that is a good place to find an herbalist. If someone is an RH, I can't promise you that you will love that person or work well with them, just like any doctor that you work with. But I can guarantee that they are well-trained, knowledgeable herbalists, because to become an RH, they have to go through quite a bit of training. Ashley James (0:33:34.798) Wonderful, and I'm very excited to take your classes. So I'm going to be going to naturalnurse.com and I'm going to be signing up it starts in March so I'm going to make sure I sign up before March and  of course, this is evergreen, people can be listening to this years from now go to naturalnurse.com and sign up for for whenever the next class is. Just to check it out. Just to continue our own education and of course all your books and let's go back and listen to episode 536 if you haven't already. We learned so much and I'm so excited to dive in. Before we do, I want to let  what you shared with us about the immune stuff helped so much.  My whole family, going through the holidays, we were around people who had the crud, and several times I woke up in the middle of the night throughout the last few months—just a few times where I woke up and was like, okay, I feel maybe there's something in my throat or a sore throat's coming on. I immediately took that homeopathic you recommended, put it under my tongue, went back to bed, woke up fine, no problem. It was just the first sign of any kind of symptom. I was actively around people who were coughing, and my friends had fevers, and I was running over to their house to deliver goodies to them, natural stuff to help them, including that homeopathic. When my son got sick, I gave him all the remedies that you suggested and he just blew it out of his system. We saw it made such a difference. So episode 536 is worth its weight in gold because it is so great. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:35:19.350) Thank you. That's why I called one of my books The Natural Medicine Chest, because everyone should set that up in their house ahead of time, especially for anything that people get—sore throats and little colds and things like that, upset stomach. You should have that all there ahead of time, both herbal and homeopathic. So when someone in the family needs it, it's right there. To stock the whole entire chest with high-quality remedies is not terribly expensive. Also, a good herbal extract never goes bad. So if you buy it now and you need it four years from now, it doesn't go bad. So you can use it then. The same with homeopathics. Ashley James (0:36:04.271) Same with homeopathy. Exactly. Yes. So after literally moments after we hung up from our last interview, I went and I purchased everything you recommended and I had it ready. No one was sick then, but I was like, I am going to be prepared. We were prepared and we used them throughout the crud, the crud season. It was great. Of course, all of us, we talked about how a lot of people get sick because they actually eat way too much sugar, they overindulge in alcohol and sugar, staying up late, the stress, and just everything that we do between Thanksgiving and New Year's lowers the immune system. Then we kind of blame the pharmaceutical industry created the PR campaign of its flu season, get your flu shot. We're really not taking as great care of ourselves during that time. So my focus for my family was to make sure that we take care of ourselves. If we do get exposed to some germs that our body starts to respond to, we can dive into those natural remedies quickly at the first sign of symptom to help our bodies overcome very quickly. And it worked. It was wonderful. So I thank you for that guidance. I bet you've helped so many of my listeners with that. So I'm just equally as excited to dive in today to learn more about what herbs we can do for the HPA axis. Of course, maybe we start by talking about what is this HPA axis and why is it so important that we have some herbal remedies for it? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:37:45.943) Yes, we will do that. But I just want to say, just now, since you did bring up everything about dealing with these various seasonal challenges, the FDA just today decided that the new vaccines have to have stronger warnings because a lot of them cause a beret syndrome, which is a neurological problem, and that has to do with what we're talking about today. So this is very much being watched. So the more you're prepared naturally, the less you come in contact with some of those very harmful kinds of therapeutics. So that's a great idea to talk about stress, like you said, and support for the HPA axis, and we'll talk about what that is. I will say I have an article that I wrote, which is in several major journals, and it's called Herbal Support for the HPA Axis. So if anybody wants a copy of that full article, I can actually email it to them if they request it, and it'll have a lot of what we're talking about today. It was published in the Journal of Integrative Medicine way back in fact in December of 2016, but everything in it is still physiologically correct. So we talk about things like yeast and microorganisms and all the things that can cause stress in your body. Then looking at how the HPA axis, which really has to do with your endocrine organs. So some of the organs that are involved in this axis are the pituitary gland, the pineal, the hypothalamus—that's the H—also the pancreas, the gonads, the adrenals, the adrenals, we're going to talk about the thyroid gland, and also the parathyroid gland. So all of these glands in our system work together in an energy connection that is like a dance. When one pushes, the other one pulls. They are found all throughout our body. So some of these things are in our brain—the hypothalamus and the pituitary. Those are in the brain. The thyroid gland, anyone can look these up now. It's so easy to find. You don't have to go to medical school to take a look at it. It looks just like a bow tie, which is really interesting in a spiritual aspect when you think about someone wearing a bow tie. Where did that shape come from and exactly where it's placed. Did you ever look at that? The thyroid gland is right where a bow tie would be if a gentleman uses it on his collar, and it's that exact shape. So all these representations for me always have a spiritual significance. When we see how they play together, a symphony and the different hormones that are involved with each. For instance, in the hypothalamus, there's a lot of different hormones—dopamine and growth hormone and gonadotropin, which has to do with sexual action, oxytocin, all kinds of hormones—and they play in an intimate dance with the pineal gland, the thyroid, the pituitary, but each one has kind of a special focus. If we look at the HPA and we look at the hypothalamus for the H, it controls things like body temperature, hunger and thirst, and also, interestingly, parenting and attachment behaviors. When you feel like you're in love with someone, it's really monitored by hypothalamus activities, as well as fatigue, sleep, and circadian rhythms, which are the rhythms that go on on a daily basis in our body. So it's really interesting to see how they interact. The pituitary gland, which is just a little protrusion under the hypothalamus, has to do with growth and blood pressure, which we'll discuss another time, sexual function, how your thyroid works, as well as aspects of pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing. It's not like you can actually divide these things up into one or another. The adrenal gland is very interesting because one thing is the adrenal gland has an outer covering. The outer covering of the adrenal gland is called the adrenal cortex. That releases certain hormones, which we're going to be talking about—cortisol, because cortisol is also known as the stress hormone, and also DHEA. Those both come from the cortex, which is the outer covering on the adrenal gland. Then there's the inside of the adrenal gland, which is called the adrenal medulla, and that releases epinephrine and norepinephrine, which maybe some people have heard of. For instance, they actually use that at the dentist in an injection when you're going to get your teeth worked on in terms of the epinephrine. It works, it's helpful for pain reduction, but it also causes some people to get heart palpitations, so everything has two sides. So where are the adrenal glands? Everybody can actually massage their adrenal glands because if you know where your kidneys are, which are in the small of your back, if you just round your back and put your two fists back there, and you will feel what's called the small of your back—right in there is your adrenal glands. They are sitting right on top of your kidneys. Many people, if they reach back there and massage that area, they'll find that there's a soreness there. So it's really a good thing to pay attention to because the adrenal cortex releases cortisol and cortisone. This has to do with stress, physical activity, low blood glucose levels, and also there's a difference with short-term cortisol release and long-term cortisol release. People could probably even sort of know when that's going on.  For instance, short-term cortisol release is when, let's say, you step off a curb and a car is coming fast and it doesn't hit you but it almost does, you jump back from it, you will feel that cortisol. Anybody has felt this at some time. Something happens that's worrisome, but it puts you into what's called that fight or flight response. When you're in that flight or fight response, you get that rush. It's called, sometimes they call it an adrenaline rush, but it's actually linked to that cortisol release. Different things happen, it narrows the arteries while then the epinephrine, which is also released, causes the heart to beat faster and you'll feel that heart palpitation when you're in a stressful situation. But then very often the stressful situation is resolved. You jump back out of the traffic, you go, he wasn't going to hit me anyway, it's okay. My child is okay. Take a few deep breaths and before you know it, you kind of back to normal. That's different than long-term cortisol release. Many disease processes are linked more to that long-term cortisol release that doesn't shut off appropriately. It sort of stays on, lower dose release of cortisol, but it doesn't go off. That's when you're experiencing things like insomnia, migraine headaches, even obesity and GI complaints. Usually have a long-term cortisol release part of it. It weakens the immune system and you have imbalanced emotions, low resistance where you kind of catch everything that goes around. So stress in the adrenal glands are very, very intimate in terms of how well we feel. The pancreas is involved, the thyroid is involved, all of them are sort of turned on and off by this cortisol and also DHEA. Ashley James (0:46:48.783) You talked about how the thyroid is involved. It's so fascinating. Is someone with long-term stress, that long-term cortisol release where it's kind of can't shut off, do they tend to become more hypothyroid or hyper? Does that come together? Do you see thyroid function being impacted directly from long-term cortisol being kept on? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:47:18.674) Absolutely, I'll talk about that in terms of T3 and T4. But first, I just want to bring in where we had mentioned about the parenting aspect with cortisol, because it's so interesting that specific studies have been done showing maternal stress and elevated cortisol during the child's infancy relates to anxiety and depression, particularly in teenage girls. So that is really, really interesting that because of the mother's stress, even after the child is born, we find a higher level of anxiety and depression in teenage girls. Studies are so interesting when they find things that we know anyway. So yes, let's talk about the thyroid gland. That's another whole gland. I said, it's shaped like a bow tie. There's two biologically active thyroid hormones. One is called T4. It's also often called thyroxine. It's another name for it. Then there's T3. There's more, but the two important ones that are often measured are T3 and T4. They're both derived from an amino acid called tyrosine. So if you don't get enough tyrosine, you often will have thyroid problems. So the tyrosine is converted in the body into T4 and T3. Those are the main thyroid hormones. Here's the difference between them. During a normal day, your thyroid will secrete about 80 micrograms of T4 and only five micrograms of T3. So you see there's much, much more T4 that your body generates. It generates just a little bit of T3.  However, T3 is much more important in terms of biological activity. So it's interesting because the body will then convert some of that T4, which it has lots of, into T3. It will do that if it has all the nutritional support needed and all the enzymes that might be needed to do that to keep the thyroid functioning better. So there is a whole lot of conversion of T4 to T3 that takes place in the liver and the kidneys. Then the T3 is released into the bloodstream and floats around and does its actions. But if any of those things are interfered with, such as liver toxicity or kidney toxicity, then there's not going to be enough conversion, which means you won't have enough of that really active T3. So the body is just incredibly complex and beautiful. This is where a lot of people hear that they may be deficient in iodine. This is where that comes in because iodine is important in the thyroid gland and also in the uptake in the energy cycle. How do we make energy in our body? Some people may have heard of this. It's called ATP, adenosine triphosphate and ADP, adenosine diphosphate. This is where the thyroid gland has a lot to do with how much energy you have. How good does that transfer happen? But this is interesting. Adenosine tri. What does the word tri mean? Adenosine di. What does the word di mean? You can guess. So it goes to three phosphate molecules, that's adenosine triphosphate. It releases a phosphate molecule and becomes adenosine diphosphate, which has two phosphate molecules.  But let's think about what phosphate is. Phosphate, if you think about a match, if you strike a match, what you see there on that flame is linked to phosphate because phosphate is something that gives off light. So to me, that's really amazing because this entire HPC access that we're talking about and HPA axis with the adrenal glands has to do with how well our intracellular light-releasing mechanisms are. So we look at that both from a physical aspect of the phosphorylation action, which has to do with the release of a phosphate molecule from ATP to ADP, releasing energy. That's how we walk around. That's how we think. That's how we do everything. So we are actually light energy beings. So when people say, that's just kind of a new age, floppy concept of some sort, it really isn't. It is actually how we work. We work energetically on light. That's not just a philosophical, new agey kind of statement. That's an actual statement. In terms of how our body releases energy in this HPA axis. So these hypothalamus and the anterior pituitary, the thyroid, they all work together. Then, what do they do then? In the cardiovascular system, it increases heart rate and how well you have vasodilation, which is your veins and arteries as they open and close, how they affect blood flow. In your central nervous system, If somebody feels all kinds of mentally sluggish and anxious, well, that has to do with this thyroid hormone not working well. It's kind of all across the body where we can feel these things. So then another gland I'd love to go into here is the pineal, because the pineal then moves into a very, very interesting thing because it works by light. The pineal gland in humans depends on the light-dark cycle. Right now, in our modern culture, we are way over-inundated with light. When you're inundated with too much light, the pineal gland can no longer produce melatonin. That's why many people have sleeping difficulties, because of the melatonin interference. So, it all fits together in terms of how well we feel, how much energy we have. That HPA axis is incredibly important. We could talk about some herbs that can be useful to help balance it. Ashley James (0:54:35.321) I'd absolutely love that. Just really curious about how many people are walking around with a diagnosis of one or another, that it actually all comes back to, I don't know how to put it in the correct way, but an unhealthy or an imbalanced HPA axis. People are walking around being put on all kinds of drugs from blood pressure to weight loss to blood sugar to thyroid to adrenal. So many different issues in the body. This is my frustration, I'm sure yours as well, that so many MDs and because of their training, they're not taught to go upstream and support the body's ability to heal itself. That's what we really need. Need to stop looking at drugs as the answer and look inward at the body is the answer. The body wants to heal itself. We got to give it what it needs and get it of its own way. Could you name a few illnesses that people suffer, common ones that people suffer from, that when they balance their HPA? Of course, obviously make sure they're doing all the appropriate lifestyle, lifestyle medicine things as well. But when they balance the HPA with herbal medicine, those issues resolve. What are the more common issues that we would be able to see resolve by helping the body heal its HPA axis? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:56:18.475) Definitely, I'll just name a few. Insomnia is very big. Migraine headaches. Obesity in general, having too much weight that you can't get rid of. Any kind of GI complaint, ongoing things that are called Crohn's or this, that, or the other name that they give them. Would you believe when you go to a gastrointestinal doctor, they do not do a food diary? That is criminal because lining your gastrointestinal tract is actually the biggest part of your immune system. It's called IgG. There's different parts of our immune system, which would be a topic for another day. But IgG is the part of the immune system that completely lines the whole entire gastrointestinal tract. So if you want to do a test for food allergies, a good test would be an IgG food allergy panel. So you can see when that food hits your gut, how it reacts. Now that's linked into the cortisol, because when too much cortisol is there, then the IgG cannot function correctly. It gets turned off. It gets turned off because your body is put into a fight or flight mode, even though it's a slower long-term one. So then your body decides, well, it's not so important to digest properly because I might have to run at any minute, so let's keep it so that my muscles can run. So all of that is true. All of those things are linked to this specific axis of hormones dancing together. Also, a weak immune system, which of course leads to every illness. Just on a daily level, having low energy, imbalanced emotions, low resistance, and just a general low level of well-being are all linked into this particular group of hormones, which when they work well together are in constant communication and they kind of talk to each other, they turn each other on or they turn each other off. Even things like having a very strict vegan diet can definitely interfere with the amount of tyrosine that you have. If your tyrosine is too low, then you're going to have trouble keeping up with the T4, T3. So we talked about T4, T3, that is your thyroid hormone. So all of them are in balance, you're feeling better than when they're out of balance. Taking one pharmaceutical or other is probably not, like you said, going to back and balance all of those things. Neither is just taking any herb, either. I just like herbal interventions because they will often deal with what's going wrong. They're like food. They have different nutrients in them that can address various parts that you might be missing. Then there are specific diseases that happen. Graves' disease. That's a condition caused by excessive production of thyroid hormone. That's where you see an enlarged thyroid gland. People actually get a lump in their neck or protrusion sometimes of eyeballs that kind of stick out a little bit as well as a rapid heartbeat and being very excitable in terms of nervousness. So those are things that can be really recognized even by a doctor. Then, of course, with the thyroid, there's hypothyroidism, which has to do with not having enough, or hyperthyroidism, where you're having too much of those thyroid hormones. But there are many herbal remedies that can help address this. Ashley James (1:00:26.875) Well, I know so many people just generally complain about wanting better sleep, more mental clarity, and more energy. Those are major, major issues. If you can resolve, if you can give everyone better sleep, better mental clarity, better energy, you're sold. Everyone's going to take my money, just tell me what to do.  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:00:51.411) Well, but I don't find that they actually will often do it because one of the first things you have to do is get more dark in your life because light is one of the main things that throws the HPA axis off because it's actually scheduled to have a lot of dark. I mean real dark. I don't mean looking at your phone dark. I don't mean having the TV and lights on in the room, or the little lights that are even on the clock, or the little light on the modem, all of that interrupts the production of melatonin, which has everything to do with sleep. Just popping some extra melatonin is definitely not a good idea either, because melatonin itself can be toxic when it's in an unnatural, irregular form. Ashley James (1:01:45.823) So the solution is lights out, put a mask, eye mask over your eyes? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:01:53.629) That is a good idea. Meditate. Meditation actually naturally increases melatonin. Deep meditation, it could be just prayer. Doesn't have to be meditation with one guru or another or saying some mantra. It can just be deep prayer. In other words, getting into that deep state of quiet mind, and there's some very good studies on that as well, that can help your body produce more melatonin. So there are natural things you can do. First, recognizing that it's a problem. Then there is self-awareness that's so important, but also the ability to change habits. It sounds easy. Oh, eat healthy. But how do we do that? Get more rest. Well, how do we do that? If you're raising three kids and everybody's got to get to school and you're having a full-time job, it's not necessarily so easy. Ashley James (1:02:51.035) Going to sleep when you put your kids to sleep. I know it sounds crazy because so many moms but that's my me time. If you go to bed when your kids go to bed, you will have your me time in the morning before the kids wake up. I had an amazing morning before my son woke up this morning. My whole personality has always been a night night person. I had to train myself. I had to basically protect my sleep, get very protective, a pit bull, get very protective of my sleep. Do that little switch in your head that goes, my health is more important than scrolling through whatever social media or whatever I was going to do on a screen at 10 at night and protect your sleep. I do notice deeper sleep, better sleep when I wear an eye mask, even just because you want to block out even the tiny little light that might be coming in through the street lamp, just tiny little light block, totally block it out. I get much deeper sleep and I feel so much better in the morning when I protect my sleep and keep the light out. They said get darker, the moment you said that I thought, are we going to talk about dark, leafy green vegetables? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:04:07.911) That's part of it. But definitely that eye mask is great and there are different ones. The one I always recommend is, you put it over your eyes but it's not flat on your eyes. It's almost cups. But then it goes around and it has a specific brand and a specific name but there's several of them. The reason is because then when you go into different sleep stages, REM sleep and the various sleep stages, which is another whole discussion in and of itself. When you have the ones that press right on your eye, it stops your eyes from fluttering because it squishes in your eyelashes. So they don't have their natural movement because your eyes actually do flutter when you're in that deep, deep sleep. But if you have the right kind of mask, it doesn't interfere with it, but it completely blocks the light. Ashley James (1:04:57.847) That's such a good point to make. Because so many people just have those eye masks that do touch the eyes. I have long eyelashes, and I don't want anything. I couldn't stand the feeling of something pushing up against them. But you're right. You've got to get the ones that are cupped. I can't believe that it blocks the deeper sleep. That's amazing if you don't have the cupped kind. So, we have a good understanding of the different issues. I've actually been diving into studying the hypothalamus when it comes to metabolism, which is really interesting, how it regulates hunger, how it regulates that whole obesity thing and how it plays a really big role in that. Our diet, for example, saturated fat crosses the blood-brain barrier and impacts the hypothalamus and causes inflammation and it impacts our desire to eat more and gain more weight. Whereas eating a cleaner, healthier diet and there's certain lifestyle things we can do actually impact metabolism. But from that standpoint, if we are balancing the whole system, it's exciting to know that if someone's suffering from one or more of those things you mentioned, that they'll have some really good results to look forward to. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:06:30.183) They do. That's right, Ashley. It has to do with a commitment to oneself and really reversing that concept that, if I just go to this doctor or that doctor, then it will be taken care of. But, with the big movement towards those GLP-1 drugs, the weight loss drugs that are becoming so popular, they definitely do help people lose weight. They do address some of these issues, but they do it in a way that has quite a bit of negative impact and side effects. What they actually do is make people have less of an appetite so they eat less. But there's lots of natural ways to do that. When you exercise more, you have a lower appetite, for example. Ashley James (1:07:17.319) Is it black cumin? Is something that lowers appetite? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:07:24.595) Yes, in fact, black cumin, which is an oil, that's one thing that I really love. There's a combination of omega-3 fatty acids along with black seed oil. Black seed oil is black cumin oil. Black seed is another name. It's for the seed of the cumin. Now, it's really amazing because it's also highly antimicrobial. That is a really good thing to add into your diet, black seed oil. Ashley James (1:07:53.201) Interesting. I actually just bought the actual seeds because I was going to grind it up myself and add it to my food. So, I'm going to play around with it. It is not wild that something we can take so naturally can have it in our own kitchen and can make such a positive difference. I feel very sorry for the people who are those doctors who are getting them on the GLP drugs because studies are showing that people not only lose some fat, but they lose muscle mass. We're seeing they actually lose heart muscle. That is, you want to protect your heart, your skeletal muscle, and your skeleton at all costs. This is your longevity. This is your health in the second half of your life. If you are wasting that for 20, 30 pounds of fat loss, you're robbing Peter to pay Paul and you're actually going to end up coming up short basically by robbing yourself of the parts of your body that are going to take you healthfully into the rest of your life. It’s very scary, and you never get on a drug that's new. You just don't. Don't be a guinea pig. It's so sad. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:09:18.413) You're right. It's hardly tested. So we'll see what happens with that one in 20 years. But there certainly are a lot of herbs that have been used for thousands of years. One that I love to share about is mimosa. If anyone has ever seen a mimosa tree, in the spring it gets these feathery, beautiful pink flowers. The name of the plant is albizia, the mimosa tree. It's called the tree of happiness because it calms the spirit and relieves constrained emotions.  So when we go deeper into how does this work, we know that it's very high in specific active medicinal constituents called subponins, such as triterpenes and flavosubponins. They're also very high in quercetin. Quercetin is definitely a known nutrient that helps with staying calm. Helps the adrenals and helps the heart. So all of these are found in the mimosa tree, in particular the flowers. So of course you can only get it when the flowers are out, but you can purchase a product that might be made with it. It's a nervine, which means it calms our nervous system with both immune regulating and cancer inhibiting effects. We even know how it works. By binding to the 5-HTP receptor, and that influences depression, anxiety, and irritability. So how great is that? Because it has an effect on GABA, dopamine, and serotonin. GABA, dopamine, and serotonin are those chemicals actually in our system that have to do with staying calm or feeling really stressed out with being able to sleep well or not, with feeling you're in a good mood or not. People with low blood pressure, low mood, low thyroid, or anxiety and poor energy are very much helped by mimosa.  It also has no known adverse effects. So it's an absolutely wonderful link to the whole endocrine system that we've been talking about. It works via the pituitary gland. So mimosa is one that is a really good adjunct to staying healthy. You don't need a lot. If you get a liquid mimosa extract, you can use a few dropperfuls a day. They have it in capsules. There's actually no reports of adverse effects or interactions. So mimosa is a really good one to look into.  But of course, if you start any herb for the first time, you want to check your reaction. Don't take 15 new herbs all at once. Take one, take it for a week or two, go, it feels a little good. Then you might want to add in another one. For our discussion today with the HPA axis, another really great one to add in is magnolia, which is another gorgeous flower. It's interesting how much flowers actually are linked to human mood, anxiety, and happiness. But magnolia actually binds to a lot of important targets that are mood regulating, such as serotonin. That's one that it binds to. It has to do with cortisol, which we've been talking about. That whole stress hormone cortisol, magnolia lowers it. It also suppresses NF-kappa B. NF-kappa B is one of the things that makes us have inflammation. So very, very good herb to add to your herbal thing. Then, castor oil pack, which is another whole discussion that we could go into at another time. But putting the castor oil pack on your adrenal glands and on your thyroid gland, switching it off one day on one, one day on another, maybe twice a week, can really make your body make its own stress-supportive hormones. So that's another great thing to do. Ashley James (1:13:30.118) So that would be  a castor oil pack on the lumbar spine while you're sleeping?  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:13:35.054) Yes, you can put it there or could put it on your thyroid gland, which is remember that bow tie right on your neck. Ashley James (1:13:41.990) For the magnolia, what's the good dosage to start with? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:13:47.266) Well, I can give it to you, but I always say you have to, if you're purchasing a product, read the label because it depends. Is it standardized? Is it a capsule? Is it a liquid? But the amount that is usually recommended is 160 to 500 milligrams depending on the weight and condition of the person using it. Also, if it is standardized to one of the active constituents that are known, such as Magnylalol, or Hanakyal, then it's usually about 1 to 10 percent of the basic bark extract. So I would just always say when you're going to get an herbal product, read the label. Of course, if you gather your own and make your own, then you're not going to know the exact milligram amount, and that's okay. Ashley James (1:14:36.542) Would someone make a tea out of magnolia flowers? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:14:41.218) You could. You can make tea out of it. It was named originally by a person who first named it. His name is Pierre Magnol. So he was a French botanist, which is often the case. There's some really great studies. If any of our listeners go to PubMed, P-U-B-M-E-D, PubMed, you can just plug in to PubMed anything you want to know about any herb. If you want to know about magnolia, just plug it in there and you'll get tons of studies. There's one called Magnolia and Mood. There's all these studies about every single plant, every single one, anything you want to know. You can look it up and find out for yourself. Print it out, bring it to your doctor, see what he says. They'll usually go, no, I don't know. If your doctor says, I don't know about natural remedies, then I like that because they don't know because remember we talked right at the beginning about the interruption of medical education because of the Flexner Report with them specifically taking out any knowledge about natural medicine. That's honorable. If your doctor says, I don't know because I didn't study it, but I will work with you, you can take it, just report back to me. Do you feel calmer? I'll do some blood work to make sure everything's okay. I'll listen to your heart to make sure it didn't make your heart, that kind of thing. They can be supportive with what they do best while you're working on a natural protocol. Ashley James (1:16:16.533) It's okay to fire a doctor if your doctor isn't supporting you and find a doctor who studies holistic medicine, a naturopath, an osteopath, even a functional medicine doctor or a doctor who just woke up and realized that there's more to medicine than drugs. So many of these MDs come on the show and they all have that revelation. They realize that their profession really is limited in supporting people's ability to heal themselves and they want to dive deeper. You deserve to have a team of practitioners that want to support you in getting as healthy as you can be. There are doctors out there who limit their patients with their own belief system. So don't let a doctor think just if a doctor says, well, you have to be on this drug for the rest of your life because you're a or, you no, you can't heal your Type 2 diabetes. If they say these ridiculous things, or when you have arthritis, you'll always have arthritis. These are just ridiculous limitations. They're limiting you. You got to find a doctor who believes in your body's ability to heal itself and wants to support you. Now you got to do the work, but you got to find doctors who want to support you and also have the experience to back them. I love that you said, print out the PubMed studies, show them to your doctors, and then gauge your doctor's response. Because we want to surround ourselves with practitioners who are there to support our healing journey. That's really exciting. Is Mimosa the same as Mimosa Puruka? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:17:52.545) Yes. It's a tree with beautiful pink fluffy flowers. I always think it looks, since you have kids, maybe you look at Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss has a trifle tree as one of its characters that always looks to me like it. But the genus and species is albesia, albesia julebricen. So that what you're talking about might be just the common name of a mimosa tree. It's got beautiful leaves and it gets these gorgeous pink parachute-flowers only in the spring. So if you're going to use the flowers, you have to think about gathering them while they're there. Also the bark. The bark is used as well. Ashley James (1:18:37.330) I actually know a mimosa tree in my area. So I'm excited this spring to go look at its flowers and maybe I can get my really tall husband to help me harvest some. He's really tall. The mimosa pudica seeds are used in, I believe, Ayurvedic medicine as one of the anti-parasitic. They have anti-parasitic properties. That's how I know it from. But it's really cool how you take a plant, like a tree, and the bark does one thing, the leaves do another, the roots do another thing, the flowers do another thing. I love that part of herbal medicine, that it's so beautiful in that way. So we have three things to start with, the mimosa, the magnolia, and the castor oils. Is anything else that would be really good to know to bring the HPA axis into balance? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:19:38.336) Well, we did talk about other things, like getting enough darkness. That is so important. in our common life right now, it's actually difficult. You have to make a specific effort, because just going to bed and kind of shutting the light off, like you said, does not do it. So I would say that's a good place to start.  People do use melatonin as a supplement. For some people, that's really helpful. But I don't particularly like the use of melatonin as a supplement because unlike an herb, melatonin is a specific hormone and it's produced as a chemical when you take it. So I'm not a big fan of actually taking it unless you get it measured and your doctor can measure your melatonin level and if it's actually low, then it might be worthwhile to take it. But it's being overused even in the natural products industry. In almost every natural herbal combination for rest, they'll throw in some melatonin, and I'm not a fan of that.  There's a lot of other herbs that can be useful, Valerian, passionflower, really great passionflower, by the way, although it does create rest and calmness and is very supportive for the HPA axis. How it's got its name, people think it's a sexual enhancer. That's another whole show, and I did write a book on that called The Natural Guide to Great Sex. But it's actually not about passion. It was named because the Jesuit priests, when they came to the New World and saw these gorgeous passion flowers growing, thought that it was the doctrine of signatures, another thing we mentioned earlier, of the passion of Christ. Because the petals inside and the little stigmas are in the shape of five nails. So that's how Passion Flower got its name. Not having anything to do with love and lust passion, but actually having to do with the Passion of Christ. Most people don't know that. Passion Flower is a really excellent carminative, calming the system, but without making you sleepy. So if you're someone who just needs a little bit more stability and calmness because of the HPA dysregulation or for any other reason, during the day while you are going about your daily chores, passion flower is a very good one to use. Ashley James (1:22:11.614) Cool. I was going to ask about when the best timing would be. Valerian is maybe better in the afternoon or evening. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:22:20.890) That will knock you out. No. Valerian, you want to take, maybe an hour before you really want to go to sleep. Another thing you can use it for is if you wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep, Valerian can be useful. But the first time you take Valerian, you have to gauge your personal reaction because while it does act to calm many people and even act as a sedative and help them sleep, some people, it has the opposite reaction, to where it actually is agitating and makes them not sleep. That does happen at times, depending on a person's wiring. So it's a good thing to try it by itself once and see how it does for you. I have it by my bedside. I don't take it every single day. But if it's one of those days there's a lot on my mind and I'm having some trouble falling asleep, I will take it. It definitely helps. But I'll combine it with a homeopathic also that's helpful for sleep. I always combine homeopathics and herbs. Ashley James (1:23:25.610) Do you have a specific homeopathic for sleep you'd recommend or is it more individual?  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:23:31.822) I have one. No, I have one that's a branded product, but I'll tell you the name of it. It's called Combs Forte, the word comb with an s, Combs Forte. It is very mild and gentle. I've used it on my kids when they were little. It's really, really helpful without any kind of side effect. Ashley James (1:23:52.536) I love it. How much Valerian is a good place to start for people? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:24:00.412) So it depends again on what kind of extract you are going to use. Is it going to be standardized to where how much active you're going to get, or is it going to be, let's say, a Nature's Answer alcohol-free full plant, in which case you want to take about 1,000 milligrams, which would be one dropper full. So what you want to do is actually read the bottle if you're not growing your own. Just follow the recommendations there. Sometimes it's about 450 milligrams. That's something that you'll often see. Ashley James (1:24:36.418) Got it. Passionflower, same question. Do we just follow the bottle or is there a range of milligrams we'd like to try? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:24:48.754) Again, that is because is it one that's going to be standardized to an active constituent or is it going to be a full plant? It's usually between 500 and 1,000 depending on the one that you get. It will say on the bottle. If it's a capsule, it'll tell you the milligram amount or if it's a liquid, it depends on if it's an extract or a tincture because extracts are much more highly concentrated than tincture. Ashley James (1:25:16.036) Now, in our previous episode, you had mentioned you don't publicly pick sides when it comes to brands. I totally respect that. But we want to make sure, what are the things to look for in the label to make sure that it is a high quality, good brand? Is it organic, wild crafted? You said, standardized. What are the words that we should see on the label to know that this is probably a good brand to try? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:25:46.772) Right. Well, what I would say is definitely read the label and see how many, let's say, registrations that company has, because the herbal industry in particular is definitely a wild west and a lot of people are in the business when they don't have the right kind of facility. So what you want to know is that they are what's called a GMP registered facility. That means they're doing testing in terms of what's going in. What kind of raw ingredients are they using? What's coming out? Then also, what kind of adulteration is there? Are there microorganisms when they're done? Are you sure there's not? So those are some of the things I would test for. Also, how long has the company been in business? Because some herb companies have been around for over 50 years. That's going to be one that has been able to stand the test of time. So that's a good indicator as well. Also, if you're Jewish, do they have kosher products? If you're a Muslim, is it halal? That might be important to some people as well. Ashley James (1:26:58.778) God and vegan, most, most herbs are vegan. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:27:05.660) Well, I think all herbs are vegan. I never met an herb that's an animal. I mean, yes and no, when you go in, the capsule itself, that's right. The capsule itself, if you're using capsules, might be a bovine or a porcine, which is from PIC. That's absolutely true. Or it might be a vegan capsule. So if that's important to you, that's another thing to consider. I just want to take back that, because when we delve into Chinese medicine, they do use animals and plant parts as part of the medicinal components. So sometimes they do, you're right. Ashley James (1:27:41.866) Right. We talked about that in our last interview, a really interesting muscle that actually decreases pain. I was just floored. Thought it was cool, just an interesting thing. Listeners, if you haven't gone back, check out 536, episode 536 for that information. I love what you've laid out for us. We've got the going to sleep with an eye mask on, and do some deep prayer meditation. Do some deep breathing. It's okay to go to bed early and then you have a beautiful day. Wake up with the sunrise and you'll be full of energy. The thing is you actually feel better in the morning and you have more energy and then you're more productive and everything feels better when you get that deep sleep and that deep sleep does require us to have a little bit of self-discipline later in the evening to keep things you said dark and we've got the mimosa and the magnolia. All of these things are going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. All these notes, I'll make sure are there. Of course, we transcribe all episodes at LearnTrueHealth.com. I'm really excited to try some of these with my son who's 10. Is there any counter indications for children? Obviously smaller doses, but Valerian tea, one of those night time teas with Valerian, is that safe for children? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:29:10.414) If it's a tea, I would say yes. How old is your child? Ashley James (1:29:12.690) He's almost 10. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:29:14.166) So how much does he weigh? That's what we really go more on. He might be over 100. Ashley James (1:29:19.747) Oh, probably not. No, he's 85, 90 pounds. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:29:23.823) Right, so he's getting close to 100. So at that point, it's not the same as a five-year-old, who weighs 40 pounds or a three, so with that kind of weight, there's very little herb that you need to be worried about, especially if you're talking about buying just tea and making tea. That would not be a high concentration, so it's not a problem. You could try it. Ashley James (1:29:47.299) For people who have, let's say, five-year-olds who are really hyperactive and that it's hard to get them to go to sleep at night, would making a small amount of Valerian tea be safe? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:29:56.635) I know when we're getting down in the four- and five-year-olds, I would go more with a combination of very relaxing herbs: chamomile, hops, those would be good ones for younger children. Chamomile, hops, and peppermint, that might be a nice combination. There's something called Sleepy Thyme Tea, which is specifically for children, that would be a nice combination to use. Ashley James (1:30:20.041) Got it.  they could also try the combs forte homeopathic blend that you had mentioned. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:30:28.393) Yes. That is. That you can use also for children. Ashley James (1:30:31.390) Awesome. It has been, again, amazing to have you on the show. I really want to have you back so many times because it is just beautiful learning from you. I can't wait to jump into naturalnurse.com, your website, and sign up for your upcoming courses starting in March. But of course, no matter when you're listening, go to naturalnurse.com and check out the courses.  We also talked about in the last episode that you do eco tours where people can actually plan their next vacation with you and they get to go and have this beautiful vacation where they're learning the indigenous herbal remedies and making them and harvesting them and just having such an adventure. So don't go to Disney. Don't go to Fort Lauderdale or something. Don't go to some beach. Go on an eco tour with Dr. Ellen Kamhi. It would be amazing. That's on my bucket list. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Can't wait to have you back. This has been wonderful. You've already given us so much homework, is there anything you want to say to wrap up today's interview? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:31:42.018) Thank you so much, Ashley. It was a pleasure. I just want to thank everyone for joining us. Be self-critical a little bit. Look at your life and see if you can make changes, not when I have enough money to go to a holistic doctor. Don't wait for that. Basically, what can you do? Can you eat a little healthier? Can you cut out wheat from your diet as a first step? That's a really good first step.  We talked about coddling yourself to sleep with these really natural things. So that's a good place to start, I would say, with self-care, but also with self-responsibility. Ashley James (1:32:17.170) I love it. Thank you so much. Again, naturalnurse.com. I'm excited to join you in March for your classes and I hope to see everyone there. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:32:28.046) Very good. Be well. Outro: I hope you enjoyed today's interview. It was just so mind blowing. I absolutely love Dr. Kamhi. I want to let you know that if you haven't already made an appointment, it's a free consultation with Jennifer Saltzman. Go to TakeYourSupplements.com. Jennifer Saltzman is absolutely phenomenal and the supplements that she works with are the same ones that helped me get my health back 13 years ago, coming on 14 years. They're the reason why I was able to conceive. I was told I'd never be able to have kids. They're the reason why I don't have type two diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, why I don't have infertility, why I don't have PCOS, and just got my life back.  So go to TakeYourSupplements.com. She has a wonderful program and she works with you. It's an individualized system. They do have wonderful protocols for immune support for people who are suffering with more chronic immune issues and chronic digestion issues, anything from hair loss, from skin, hair and nails to supporting your heart health, your brain health, your liver health. They have wonderful programs, wonderful supplement programs, and also recommendations with how to adjust your diet to best support your health. I really like their immune support stuff and especially bigger immune things that you're facing. They have some pretty cool, pretty cool things, so check her out. I know if you thought that this episode was interesting, you would think talking to Jennifer Saltzman would be very interesting. It's wild that she gives a free session and it doesn't cost any more to buy the supplements than if you bought them on your own, but these aren't in the stores directly. She helps you order the right ones for you, based on your needs, based on your budget, based on your weight. It's all measured by body weight and dosed by body weight, and she gives you a wealth of resources as well. So it's a really great rabbit hole to go down. I highly recommend going to TakeYourSupplements.com and chatting with Jennifer Saltzman. She's absolutely phenomenal. Thank you so much for being a listener and thank you so much for sharing my podcast so we can end the needless suffering of millions and millions of people, and you are a part of that by sharing. Thank you.   Get Connected with Dr. Ellen Kamhi Website – Natural Nurse Facebook YouTube Instagram   Books by Dr. Ellen Kamhi The Natural Medicine Chest Arthritis Supplements For Pain

Get my ebook and audiobook here: https://learntruehealth.com/op/addicted-to-wellness-ebook.   Get my course, The 7 Foundations of Health, here: https://learntruehealth.com/sp/7-foundations-of-optimal-health   Get a physical copy of my book here: https://learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness.   The Vibe: https://learntruehealth.com/vibe coupon code LTH - LearnTrueHealth.com/vibe   Get the NEW free IIN sample class and health coach experience: https://learntruehealth.com/coach Enroll in the next Health Coach Training Program! Use coupon code LTH when signing up to become a health coach.   Dr. Ellen Kamhi PhD  RN AHN-BC RH(AHG) provides CE eligible certification educational modules in Herbal Medicine, Essential Oil Therapy, Homeopathy, Energy Medicine, and all aspects of holistic medicine, and supports individuals on their path to incorporate Herbal and Natural Therapies into their Life and Career. She is a respected Consultant in the Nutraceutical Industry providing Formulation, Education and Regulatory Review. Ellen  Kamhi is actively involved, along with Dr. Eugene Zampieron, ND, with Natural Alternatives Health, Education and Multimedia Services, and leads EcoTours For Cures™, which brings participants to indigenous areas to experience the ancient healing arts of traditional cultures. Dr.  Kamhi is available as a speaker and consultant.  for your organization.   For details, call (954) 418-2388 or http://www.naturalnurse.com/contact   536: Your Natural Medicine Chest: Immune Support https://learntruehealth.com/your-natural-medicine-chest-immune-support/   In this empowering episode of the Learn True Health podcast, Ashley James sits down with Dr. Ellen Kamhi, also known as the Natural Nurse, who brings over five decades of experience in holistic and herbal medicine. From healing her own debilitating back injury without surgery to teaching thousands how to build their own natural medicine chests, Dr. Kamhi shares powerful, practical tools for addressing pain, boosting immunity, and living in vibrant health. Whether you're looking to support your family naturally through cold and flu season or take charge of your own healing journey, this interview is packed with must-know insights and remedies you’ll want to keep in your back pocket—literally. Highlights:  Dr. Ellen Kamhi healed a severe back injury using herbs instead of surgery, sparking her lifelong passion for natural medicine. She’s been practicing and teaching holistic medicine since 1964 and has written 18 books. Vitamin C (especially in powder form) and elderberry syrup are top immune-boosting tools she recommends having on hand. Oscillococcinum is a must-have homeopathic remedy for early flu symptoms—take at the very first sign. Oil of oregano is a powerful natural antimicrobial but can be too strong for children and some adults. Garlic also acts as a natural antibiotic but should be followed with probiotics like sauerkraut to rebuild gut flora. Food should be whole and unlabeled; eliminating wheat helps reduce inflammation and pain. Homeopathy and herbs work best when used at the first sign of illness, not once symptoms become severe. She recommends building a natural medicine chest at home so you're ready when symptoms arise. Joy, spirituality, and lifestyle habits like rest and connection are vital components of true health. Intro: Hello True Health Seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. Today we have with us Dr. Ellen Kamhi. She has been teaching natural, holistic, and herbal medicine for 52 years. It's amazing. Since the 70s she's been helping people to get so healthy that they're no longer in pain, they're no longer sick and suffering and just a wonderful wealth of knowledge. We have such a great interview for you today. This is going to be definitely one of those interviews that you're going to want to share with so many of your friends. So many of your friends maybe just  copy the link to it and store it somewhere in your phone. I use them. I have an Android, my husband has an iPhone, so I understand there's two totally different types of phones out there, but both types of phones have somewhere where you can store notes. I use the Keep App and I love it. I keep tons of notes and then you can pin them to the top if they're really important. As I was interviewing her, I jotted down all the really important points and, of course, I'm going to make sure that this is in the show notes of today's podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com, along with all the links to everything she does. I've stored those in my little Keep App where you can keep notes. If you have never done that, it is a game changer. So definitely check out a note-keeping app on your phone. Whether you have an Android or an Apple, you will find that you can be able to store some notes and quickly access them. It's been so helpful because I can't tell you how many listeners in our Facebook group, Learn True Health Facebook group, and also friends and family, have come to me saying, oh, I've got a sore throat or I'm starting to have a cold, what should I do? Oh no, my kid is spiking a fever, or my kid's feeling sick, or I'm feeling sick, my husband's feeling sick, which I do. I grabbed the notes that I wrote down during my interview with Dr. Kamhi and they have been such a game changer. My family has also had quite the experience. I interviewed her a few weeks ago, several weeks ago, so we've had this experience. Since interviewing her, I ordered everything that she recommended and I've had it in my little medicine cabinet, or how she phrases it, the natural medicine chest. I definitely have a big natural medicine chest with a lot of cool herbs and homeopathy and phototherapy patches and now the vibe which I run to. Anytime someone in my family or a close friend who's visiting feels any symptom under the weather, we run to those and just blow it out of our system quickly. Get rid of pain, get rid of a headache, get rid of a little sore throat or a cough. It's just been amazing. My life, the last over 10 years. My first instinct is to go to natural medicine before going to a pharmaceutical and now myself and my family so rarely need a pharmaceutical, and I just love that. It was such a 180 that there was a time in my life where I was on constant medication, 20 years ago, and now it is so wonderful to have this reversal where it is so odd and weird and rare to even think of having a pharmaceutical either over the counter or prescribed. But of course these are tools. We have to be pragmatic. So have the tools in your tool belt so that when you get a scratchy throat in the middle of the night you can go to them instead of waiting to get super sick. This is what happened to us. We used her recommendations, several of us. One of us would have a little sore throat or the other one would kind of start feeling fluish, and we use them. The moment we started feeling that and we were able to blow stuff out of our system so fast. It was really cool, instead of having it take hold. Of course, eating healthy and all the lifestyle things you can do, but even super healthy people get sick. What I love is this concept that it's not that you don't get sick, it's how quickly your body can bounce back, and that is the true testament to health. How quickly can you blow it out of your system? How quickly can you bounce back? Are you still feeling sick weeks after a cold or flu, or do you just, within 24 hours, blow it out of your system and then you're moving on to the next thing and feeling great? We can always improve. No matter where we are, we can always improve. Today is one of those interviews that you're going to want to take the link to this interview, store it in the little notebook app on your phone, whichever one you use like I said, I use the Keep one, and I love that. You're going to share this episode. I bet you're going to share this episode at least 10 times this winter. This is the episode that is going to help so many of your friends and family. Before we get to this episode, I want to let you know of a few other things that have been so, so, so helpful for pain and for immune, because this episode is about helping with natural ways to reverse pain and also, really important, how to blow out a cold or flu out of your system and get healthier and get back to life faster than if you just, I don't know, waited, just stayed at home and waited to get better. These interventions are super helpful, the things that I have turned to that have really helped—the phototherapy patches. If you want to learn more about them, you can listen to my two interviews, episodes 496 and 517, and you can also book a free phone call with me where I can talk to you about them. I can help you order them and order the right ones for you, and I can teach you how to use them. They are a real game changer. One thing that I accomplished by using them is I used them for an adrenal and kidney tonification protocol that gave me the energy that I had back when I was a kid. I don't know if you ever have thought, like what happened to me? I used to be able to get up and get on my bicycle on a Saturday morning and just go, go, go, go, go, and then not come home until the streetlights came on. I was full of energy when I was a kid and then something happened in my 30s or 40s or 50s and now I'm just super tired. If you're thinking, when did I lose that youthful, unlimited energy? You're going to love the phototherapy patches. I use them specifically with that protocol and we have over 80 protocols. I did it for about six weeks and I noticed that I was able to get a lot more out in the gym, like I went from five minutes on the rower to twenty-three minutes on the rower, virtually overnight, having a lot more endurance. There are a lot of athletes. There are a ton of pictures we have of all the Olympic athletes wearing the phototherapy patches. RFK Jr—we have pictures of him. We see him in the gym wearing them and that's because there's results. There are over 80 studies showing that it increases muscle output and recovery time, but it also increases healthy bone tissue, so bone density. We've had great experiences with that, where people go back and get their DEXA scans and show that they have healthier bones. There's increased muscle mass and increased output and recovery for athletes. For me, I got that energy back. I used to watch my child—he's nine now, almost 10—but right around when he was about six or seven I had this aha moment where I lost that. I lost that ability to just go, go, go, go, go at some point in my life and I couldn't keep up with him. I did this protocol for about six weeks. Somewhere around the second month, I just realized it was maybe seven at night and I was, go, go, go all day with my son. We do activities all day. We homeschool, so we just do activity after activity and I hadn't sat the whole day and I wasn't tired. I'm like, oh, I got it back. It's really cool because I did that protocol about two years ago and I only needed to do it for just around two months or just under two months, and I still have it. It helped me. It corrected something and it's so intriguing. So listen to those two episodes, 496 and 517, and then book a free phone call with me because I'd love to chat with you. I absolutely love helping the listeners, helping you guys. I have the most amazing experiences chatting with you guys. If you're a little intimidated or shy, please don't be. I love talking to you. I'd be so honored and so excited to be part of your healing journey and to talk to you. You just share with me what's going on and I have so many resources that I can point you to. If you're suffering in any way, I'm offering you something for free. Just please talk to me for free. It's a free phone call and I'll point you to a bunch of resources. If you want to try the patches, you can absolutely try. They have an amazing money-back guarantee. I have over 200 clients using them successfully, having great results, and the good news is that there's no risk. If you don't like it, you can get your money back. I don't have any experience with returns because people get results with them, but it's good to know that there's no risk. Just try it. Go ahead and go to learntruehealth.com and click on “Work With Ashley James” in the menu, and then the very first option is scheduling a free phone call with me. It can be about 20 minutes long, but if you have a ton of questions it'll go longer. I'm just there with you to help you and I can point you to a lot of great resources. So that's the phototherapy patches. They're amazing, especially for if a cold or flu is coming on. We have a protocol for that and it really does work. At the height of a head cold, when you're all stuffed up, we put patches, these specific patches, on the sinuses and they will drain them within minutes. I had a friend kind of yelp because I put them on her and then she goes, oh my gosh, it worked. I'm like, of course it worked. She's like, I didn't think it would work. I'm like, well, what did you think I was doing putting these things on you? She's like, I can't believe that works.  At the height of a head cold, you will be able to breathe through your nose while you're sleeping. Even if you just use them as part of your medicine cabinet, your medicine chest. It's an amazing tool to have something that's drug free, that's all natural, that's not going to hurt you, that's even safe for children and babies. It's so neat. The other thing I wanted to share with you is the Vibe. You can listen to episode 532 with Mark Fox. He's amazing. He invented a machine that is a pocket PEMF and frequency-specific microcurrent machine. My family and I have been using it for several months. We've shared it with several of our friends and we are getting outstanding results. It is one of the coolest things I've ever experienced. It's right up there with the phototherapy patches. It's so neat. It's turned off headaches. It has turned off EMS pain. It actually helped me have an emotional mental breakthrough. It helped me significantly with my PTSD. There's a PTSD setting and it is virtually gone. I've just had such great emotional healing from it. It helps with sleep. I think I spent the first hour of the interview talking to him about all the results that everyone has been getting, that I was sharing it with and it just keeps going and going. It's really neat. So out of all the Christmas gifts you could get someone. If you're getting a Hanukkah or Christmas gift or just a holiday gift or a birthday gift, I know we always have these family members who are like, I don't know what to get them. They have everything they need. I don't know what I could get them that would add to their life because we just have so much clutter. We don't want to just give nonsense, just another knickknack, another candle, just something that is going to collect dust. It's not going to really add value to their life. This will add value. This is the gift you give people that you think have everything. They don't have this and it will add quality to their life and it will add health to their life. It's so easy to use, especially men. I've noticed husbands or boyfriends or whatever—men or brothers, dads—are not necessarily going to sit down and eat healthy and take a supplement, but they have the aches and pains and they're not necessarily going to make these big health changes. You want to help them in some way. They just press a button on this machine, they select one of the different programs, and they put it in their pocket. The programs are about a half an hour to 45 minutes to an hour, just depending on the program. It makes a difference. People notice a difference. They also have a money-back guarantee. They're a great company. Mark Fox is amazing, so listen to episode 532. What you want to do to purchase it is go to learntruehealth.com/vibe. That's V-I-B-E. Learntruehealth.com/vibe. That's V-I-B-E. Learntruehealth.com/vibe. Mark so graciously gave us a wonderful discount for ordering the Vibe. Get it now, because it will ship and get on time to your house for Christmas. If you are international, even Canada, for Canada, because the Canadian Post is on strike, he is shipping FedEx and he is not charging extra for that, he's amazing. He's like, yes, I'm eating the costs and I'm just shipping the fastest way I can so that it can get to my Canadian listeners. If you are in Canada, order it. If you're anywhere around the world, he says he ships worldwide, he will ship quickly. I'm not sure if he'll get to you by Christmas, but I know that in the US you absolutely can get it by Christmas if you order now because he does ship fast. So that's learntruehealth.com/vibe. That is the Christmas gift to get people. It is amazing. Tell your friend, hey, you use this, you've got to use it. But if you don't, just give me that gift back, because I'll use it for myself. Maybe that'll motivate them to use it. Have them listen to my interview, episode 532 with Mark Fox, where he shares the technology and why it works and it does. There are studies. He's been conducting studies—amazing studies on PTSD and sleep. He's in the middle of conducting a study with blood sugar and with diabetics.  Diabetics are noticing a significant shift in their blood sugar regulation, which is so cool. We also have really good results with people with Lyme. Lyme and the co-infections and also MS. Just amazing. There are so many, so many applications for this thing because it's frequency medicine, just like homeopathy is frequency medicine and the phototherapy patches are frequency medicine. This is where we're going. This is where we're heading: frequency medicine. Thank you so much for being a listener and, more importantly, thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. You want to help your friends and family and those you love and care about to get healthy and that's why you share. I do this podcast because I want to end the needless suffering of millions. So, with your help—and I can only do it with your help—please share it with as many people as possible, because we are helping to change the quality of people's lives. You don't know who you know that last night went to bed crying themselves to sleep because they're suffering. You don't know. A lot of times when we find out a loved one has ended their life, we were unaware of how desperate they were and how much pain they were in and how much they were hurting. You just don't know the people who are closest to you. You don't know if they're suffering. So, first of all, love them, hug them, ask them how they're doing, then ask them how they're really doing. If they're suffering from physical issues, mental, emotional issues, any aspect of health—because true health is mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, and energetic—then, sharing this episode and our other episodes. We have a lot of episodes on mental, emotional health and healing that you can use the search function on learntruehealth.com. I was that person. I was that person sick and suffering. I was that person lying in bed in my 20s feeling I was dying, having these just horrible episodes, where I was gripping the bed, feeling I was about to just disintegrate into the world. I remember feeling so sick and crying, literally crying myself to sleep, begging God to help me. There's too many people out there that are going through that right now, and you could be. You don't even know that you could be the person that is delivering the answer to their prayers. God works through us. If you feel any inkling to share an episode, maybe it's with your boss and you're like, this is awkward, I don't. Ashley says to share with your loved ones. I don't want my boss to think I love them. Or this is awkward because this is so personal and I know they're going through health stuff, and we got to keep it professional. Listen, come from a place of caring, come from a place just of heartfelt caring and wanting to end suffering, and it will be delivered in a beautiful way. Say hey, I don't know why I thought of you, but when I was listening to this I thought of you and I just wanted to share. Maybe it's for you, maybe you, maybe my intuition is for you, maybe it's for someone you know. Just have a listen to this because it really is impactful and just share it. If you feel any inkling to share this episode or one of the episodes with someone you care about, if there's any intuition to share, do it, because you could actually be creating a ripple effect, changing one person's life and that one person. Then it changes their family's life and their family goes on to change multiple generations and all the friends and family they know. It just takes that bravery, that deep level of caring and bravery, which I think we need more than ever right now to reach out because we're so disconnected from each other. To reach out and say, hey, I listened to this, I care and I want to share this with you. This episode is going to make a profound difference in so many people's lives. I'm so excited that you're sharing it. Let's reach over a million people. Actually, we've had well over many millions of downloads, but let's really reach millions of people. Let's get this to where we're actually making a difference. If you reach 10% of the population, it's a tipping point. So that's my next goal—10% of the world's population. Let's get to that tipping point and share it with as many people as possible to learn true health. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Happy Holidays. Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 536. Ashley James (0:19:03.829) I am so excited for today's guest and I know you're just going to love that I'm introducing you to Dr. Ellen Kamhi. Thank you so much for coming on the show. You are naturalnurse.com. You have two podcasts and you've been teaching holistic and herbal medicine and you've been practicing since 1964. You are a wealth of knowledge and I love that you've published 18 books. You teach regular courses, including, and I understand that you also teach a continued education eligible certification for practitioners in the holistic health space. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:19:43.641) Well, actually, any practitioners, they don't have to be in the holistic health space. Anyone with a license who needs ongoing CE units, so that might be nurses, massage therapists, naturopathic physicians, acupuncturists, anyone with one of those licenses where they need CE units can take classes which have a natural focus, because that's what I teach, and use them towards their regular licensure, but people can take it just for their own knowledge. They don't have to need CEUs to take our classes. Ashley James (0:20:17.585) Love it. I've watched videos of you and I definitely recommend listeners go and check out. There's so many videos on YouTube. When I look at you, you're who I want to be when I grow up. You look so vibrant and so healthy and you walk the walk, you talk the talk. That's what we really want to see in our practitioners, in our mentors, we want to see that they're teaching us the path, but they're also walking the path. Now you have a PhD and you're also an RN and then there's this alphabet soup after your name. It's wonderful. I love it. You specialize in herbal medicine and also homeopathy, energy medicine, essential oils, which to me essential oils are herbal medicine, but it's that wonderful branch all into itself. I love that you teach in such an eloquent way how we can support our body's ability to heal itself and to maintain optimal health. I'm really excited today because in doing our pre-interview talk, we're like, okay, what do you want to talk about today? There's so many things you can talk about. You started listing off some things that I'm like, yes, I want to talk about that. I want to talk about that. So we nailed it down to three things, although we could dig into each one of these for hours.  You have really effective herbs for pain which I think is really important, especially because a lot of times pain is exacerbated by inflammation. So as we know, herbs are so wonderful at helping the body regulate that inflammation. Then you have an amazing immune protocol that you've dialed in in the last four years when people were really up against it. I don't have to say what happened in the last four years. Everyone knows the last four years, but you've had over 5,000 people successfully do this herbal protocol. When they were struck with a cold or flu and had great results.  Then I love that you also teach how we can nourish the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis and really help our body to get into that healing mode and out of that constant stress mode, which then helps regulate so many of our functions of our body. I believe women, we suffer because we drag our bodies through the mud and we believe the lies the MD tells us, those symptoms are just because of your age. I rebel against that because you can be super healthy at any age and don't tell me I'm unhealthy because of my age. That's just total cop out BS. So I'm really excited to dive in, but I'd love for you to share a bit about yourself so the listener can start to learn how you came about loving herbal medicine and loving to share it with the world. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:23:10.300) Sure, well yes, going back to years ago, I really was loving just nature in general. I was teaching horseback riding at a camp. Then what happened was I fell off the horse during teaching horseback riding. It was very, very severe. I was told by, again, the doctor, and I don't think they were lying, and I don't think the doctors are lying to you either. I think that's just the best knowledge they have, which is incorrect. I was told that I would not walk again unless I had surgery. That's what I was told. That's the only way out of this, and I'm going to have to have surgery in order to walk again. However, I just was always into, some people might call it talking to God, but basically, doing deep dives spiritually. I actually got a very clear message that no, that's not the case and you can use various plant medicines and natural medicines to be able to walk again. So I started looking around and what I did was go to the library and at the time we had something which some people may not remember. It's called the card catalog. Do you even know what a card catalog is? Ashley James (0:24:43.852) Is it the Dewey Decimal System? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:24:45.458) Well, I'd say it's related to that. Basically, it's in the libraries. That's the only place they were. They actually had a drawer. You pulled out the drawer. There was, you could look up things. So in fact, I was looking up natural remedies for an injury, a back injury, which is what I had. There was so much information. Right away, I was taken aback. I said, how is it possible that there's so much information that the doctor did not recommend any of these things? How is that even possible? Nonetheless, what I did was I dug into it and I got in touch with a lot of the people who wrote books that were in the library about what to do, for instance, a castor oil pack. It's interesting that I learned about a castor oil pack from Edgar Casey's Institute, which is still there in Virginia Beach. He taught all about how to use a castor oil pack. Just recently, over the last year or so, it's become all the rage. It's tik-toking on TikTok and various places. Everybody has to have a castor oil pack. Truthfully, I do think that it's an excellent idea. To have castor oil packs available, to learn how to use them correctly, and they are extremely, extremely useful and helpful. So that's one of the things I did. Then I also learned about various really well-known herbalists at the time, such as Dr. Bernard Jensen. I started getting all his books and writing away for many of the herbal therapeutics that he discussed, such as White Willow Bark would be one. Each and everything I did, thank God I had a dad. He didn't believe in any of this, but more or less I knew how to kind of manipulate him, how kids do that with their parents. I wasn't going to leave him alone unless he helped me out. Because at the time, there was no internet. There were no credit cards. Okay, this is another world. A lot of people don't remember. So the only way I could access any of these things was to call them on the phone. Then my father, God bless him, went along with me, not so happily, but he did it. He had to actually write checks and mail the checks to these various places. There were no health food stores yet. Then I got all those things mailed to me. I used them. With each thing I used, I felt better. I felt a little less pain after a while. I was able to stand up. After a while, I was able to walk. When you're going to get surgery, you cannot schedule it right away. There has to be a cooling off period. So by the time I went back to the doctor, I walked into his office. I also wrote down all the whole entire protocol that I had developed on my own to get rid of this issue that was supposedly going to need surgery, which was a very severely injured back from a horseback riding accident. I thought he would be so happy, so happy that I walked in so I wouldn't need surgery. He was not at all happy, quite the contrary. He looked very upset to see me walk in. Of course, I didn't know anything about how much you get paid to perform surgery or any of these things. I think that's how he was looking at it. That's not good. We can't schedule her. Then I showed him this whole list of everything I had developed that really helped. I thought he'd be so excited to see it so he could tell all his patients how they can get out of doing surgery. Truthfully, that was not the case. He was rather upset, I would say. Then he held that paper where I wrote the protocol far away from his eyes and sort of looked at it. This is really awful. He just dismissed me, basically dismissed me. It was what set me on the path that I am on to this day, every day, all day, and what I have done my whole entire life. Which is to learn about natural remedies. It's taken me all over the world. I've lived with indigenous cultures in many different places in the world. Then, since I am also scientifically oriented, I have taken those natural therapeutics into the laboratory to not prove that they work. I know they do. Anything that is really a herbal remedy, an old-fashioned herbal remedy, it wouldn't get to be that if it didn't work. So I don't question if it works, but I do want to show through science the mechanism of action of exactly where the various receptors fit in, let's say, to that inflammatory response and lower it. Where does it bring it down? Is it reducing one of the immunomodulatory cytokines that cause pain, or is it just turning off receptors? How does it work? So I've done a lot of work in various universities around the world with that. So I've been very, very busy with herbal medicine for really my entire life. Ashley James (0:30:43.369) I love that. I love that so much. You do eco tours for cures. That would be amazing to travel with you where you take participants to indigenous areas to experience the ancient healing arts of the traditional cultures. How do we find out about the eco tours for cures? Would that be on your website, naturalnurse.com? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:31:05.375) Well, a good place to go is naturalnurse.com and then look at classes and events. Under that, we have the Eco-Tours for Cures listed where you could click on that and find out all about them. We've been doing that. Maybe this is perhaps our 40th year of taking people into live actually in indigenous areas around the world for a week and study with not only ourselves, but indigenous healers. We also do local tours like that, for instance, in Long Island, we do many walks in the summer where we take a walk. This is only a one-day event. We gather wild, edible, and medicinal plants and then make them into medicine. We also do eco-tours right in Chinatown in New York City to learn about Chinese medicine. So we have a vast array of ways people can work with us to learn more. Ashley James (0:32:02.647) My gosh. That would be the best for me. That's an ideal vacation. It does. I now put that on my bucket list. If anyone wants to send me a gift, send me on one of these eco tours because that sounds so much fun. I love that. I've had a few walks with naturopathic doctors here, there's forests around Bastyr then certain forests locally to where I am in the greater Seattle area up in Snohomish County. I've had some experiences walking with naturopaths and they'll pick herbs and tell me about it. I just think it looks, they all look like plants to me. They're just, it's a big green mess of weeds. They're, no, this is so good for you and try this and eat that. Yes. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:32:48.325) Well, they are plants. They certainly are plants. Weed really, that's an interesting word, because weed really kind of means a plant that you don't know what to do with it. It's interesting, because last year Bastyr actually had our event through them. So we did it in coordination with Bastyr, and we took a lot of people on that trip, and they got course credits through Bastyr for attending our Eco-Tours for Cures. Ashley James (0:33:18.861) Nice. That's so cool. It's so empowering to learn about your local foliage and learn that you can go outside, go walk in a forest close by, and you can start finding your own cures, finding your own medicinals, wildcrafting obviously being best. If you don't live in an area that close, you can start growing your own herbs. I know there's a naturopath here. I had her on my show and her name is escaping me for a moment. I'll remember, but I had her on my show years ago and she has a huge garden in her clinic, beside her clinic, and her patients grow their own therapeutics. They talk together about what they need. They go out into the garden and she shows them how to plant their own herbs and tend to them and then come and pick them and harvest them and make their own medicine.  I love that, getting right back to the earth because God gave us the therapies that we need. God gave us the nutrition we need. We, when we go back and look at the way modern medicine came about, they really did this wonderful 100 year, wonderful meaning, horrific, a hundred year PR campaign to make us forget, to make us lose touch with, so that they could just sell us drugs and tell us that that's the only answer when we know our great grandparents, our great great grandparents had more of a grasp of natural healing than we did. Because they've made us forget, we've all fallen asleep. So we have to wake up and start remembering and start learning before this is lost. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:35:11.413) That's true. That's one of the assignments that everyone gets. I do teach a class called Natural Nurse Herbal Certification Course, and that's one of my favorite courses. It has 18 CEUs for anyone who needs CEUs, but anyone can take it. Once you complete that, you are on your way to be an herbalist. By the time you complete that course, you can actually know the right way to use herbal remedies for yourself and your family. As well as being apprised of our herbal language, what's a collar gargle and what's a demulcent and what do those words mean that herbalists would use to discuss a variety of things about plant medicine. It's super affordable and super accessible. So that's a good class to take if you want to start on a path of knowing herbal medicine. That I teach once a year. You can find that at naturalnurse.com under Classes and Events as well. Ashley James (0:36:14.549) Love it. Love it so much. Okay. So let's dive in because I want to just squeeze your brain out and get as much out of you as possible.  I'm really excited for us to start talking about herbs for pain. We're going to talk about that immune stuff later and also get into the HPA stuff. So touching on something that everyone needs to know.  What I love is where it all started for you was healing your back, but also I'm sure managing the pain that came from your injury. So these are some of the herbs you've been using and improved work to yourself first. Then you see how much they've helped thousands of people to get out of pain. Of course, when we're talking about pain, we're also wanting from a holistic standpoint, we're wanting to help the body heal itself.  So it's not just taking an Advil or taking a Tylenol just to suppress it. Herbs aren't just a bandaid. We want to help the body come back into balance. Of course, we want to take people out of suffering. So I'm excited to hear what you have to say about herbs for pain. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:37:19.609) Well, certainly that became a very large focus because that's what really brought me into studying all of this. So two of the main books that I wrote about that, one is called Arthritis, the Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide. It's reversing underlying causes of arthritis with clinically proven natural therapies. Of course, that involves relieved pain naturally without drug side effects, as well as actually rebuilding joints that are damaged from osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, Lyme disease, and other problems, as well as regaining an active lifestyle.  So those are all very important things, and this book is a best seller called Arthritis. Then what we did is just to make an easier, quicker reference journal, we also wrote a shorter book called Supplements for Pain, and that's also available as an e-book. That's really comprehensive natural help for all these inflammatory processes. What's so amazing and wonderful about all these natural therapies is the amount of scientific inquiry, because I am very active now with the NIH. The NIH is the National Institute of Health, and they have an office for complementary and integrative therapy. Every month, by the way, people can join this for free. You can actually listen in on these amazing presentations that are done by top doctors at major universities throughout the United States and the world about these topics. They are recommending that because the evidence shows that natural therapeutics are not only just as efficacious, they often work better, but equally or perhaps more importantly, with a much higher level of safety. While the pharmaceuticals really can be very helpful in the short-term situation, but often bring your overall health and wellness down and sometimes are deadly. So there really should not be the first and only choice which conventional medicine seems limited to. Ashley James (0:39:47.627) I think some people have a significant mistrust. There's mistrust for doctors, there's mistrust for organizations, even the NIH has increased in the last four years, just given what we've seen, and it's really frustrating because so many doctors suppressed or poo-pooed the natural remedies or even there were some long standing drug-based therapeutics that were helping people get over COVID in the last four years. There's a lot of misinformation.  What I would say for those listeners who feel they have a distrust of doctors and of organizations, there's a coalition of holistic healers, yourself, who are educators, and they're just taking the word doctor, which the root word is doserian, that means teacher. Our doctor is supposed to teach us, we're supposed to learn how to support our body's ability to heal itself. The modern MD is not living up to that. They're not living up to even their Hippocratic oath. There are people, like you, even in these organizations, that are doing good. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, find these amazing healers and listen to them, especially you, because it's all integrated. It's just this big clump of different therapeutics. The more we can get the mainstream people to start listening to this and going, hey, don't just run to the drugs. This is actually quite dangerous to only go to drug-based medicine.  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:41:35.612) It's fast and easy. If only it really worked. The vision is to do whatever I want, not eat healthy, not exercise, not pay attention to any of that. Do whatever I want and when something starts to break down, take yet another pill and it'll all be fine. That would be great if it worked, but it doesn't, unfortunately. Ashley James (0:41:58.548) Yes. It's the Jetsons. You think back to the jet. It's just like the Jetsons, you live in your little spaceship houses and you have robots do things for you and you get to be super lazy and then just pop a pill for your nutrition and pop a pill for if your back hurts and you're good. That's just not how it works. It's not how health works. We've been really fed this PR campaign of lies and medical myths.  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:42:21.381) However, it's also true with natural therapeutics. Since I've been in this field, as mentioned, since 1964, and I was also the head nurse at a major integrative medical center in Manhattan on the corner of 57th and 7th, right next to Carnegie Hall, a big fancy place. I was the head nurse there for 23 years. The doctor was Serafina Corcello. We actually literally saw many thousands of patients. Everyone who came in got a lot of testing. I think that there's under testing done in mainstream medicine. Everybody should really have a complete analysis of their nutritional status, every nutrient, because that's where you can then actually put together an excellent diet that supports those things that you're low in, as well as using targeted supplements when needed, which is a very different approach than do whatever you want and then take a drug. Ashley James (0:43:21.923) Right. The amount of micronutrients that we get in those phytochemicals that we get from herbs, you can measure in labs, but you see the results.  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:43:32.017) You can measure it in labs. That's why it's so good. You have to get the right kind of laboratory that does a full micronutrient assessment. A regular laboratory will often not do that. Truthfully, it costs money to do it because it's not going to be the kind of test that's under health insurance. You can get quite an intense view even down to what micronutrients are missing from your Krebs cycle from a lot of these modern laboratories. So it's really worth looking into because sometimes you can find, wow, that's the missing link. I'm low on this micronutrient, which is not found in a conventional drug, not drug test, but blood test. Then you can use herbs, foods, et cetera, that actually fill in those missing links. Ashley James (0:44:25.693) Love it. Let's get into the specifics of using herbs for pain. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:44:31.899) Great, there's so many and I know people know some of them, but I'll let you know some information about ones that might be a little bit more obscure, but that I have actually done case studies on how well they work. So one I would talk about is the green lipped mussel. Actually it's an edible shellfish that's native to New Zealand and it's very high in a very unique kind of fatty acid known to reduce inflammation.  It's a previously unidentified omega-3 fatty acid. So a lot of people have not heard about it. Green lip mussels also contain amino acids, trace minerals, glucose amino glycans, which are all things that fill in joint tissue because it's a component of cartilage. It's a really, really good thing to incorporate if you're looking for pain reduction. People don't know about that one too much. That's a really interesting one. Ashley James (0:45:32.775) So how would they take it? Is that encapsulated? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:45:36.251) Yes, nowadays, yes, absolutely. If you have a kind of area that has traditional Chinese medicine nearby, which I know Seattle does, as well as New York City, we have a very in-depth Chinatown area, as well as in Flushing. So that's an easy thing to get in those kinds of areas because they're familiar with it, green lip mussel. Nowadays, as you said before we went on, you can get anything on the internet. It's actually a very easy thing to find. Ashley James (0:45:36.251) Really interesting. So I'm surprised because I think of herbal medicine and being only plant-based or vegan and your first thing is an animal, is a crustacean. That's just looking for our nutrients in our food and supporting our body's ability to heal itself by finding whole foods that contain the healing properties our body needs. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:46:37.063) Well, certainly, lots of plant-based nutrients are. For instance, bitter melon, which is also called memortica torrentia. It's also known as sericea. A very interesting thing, because sericea, the leaves on that plant, bring down blood sugar. So it's often used for things like diabetes and also arthritis. So it's helpful for psoriatic arthritis in particular. When we dig into that mechanism of action that I mentioned before, we find out that it slows the rapid cellular proliferation that causes that buildup of scaly skin that people have when they have psoriatic conditions, such as psoriatic arthritis. I would combine that with homeopathics too, because I always use in my protocols homeopathics, foods, exercise, herbal remedies all together. Some people just use herbs, or some people like to use just food, et cetera. I'm someone who really looks across the board. Also, I don't develop protocols for individuals at this point. I've done so many thousands, and I find my time is better used to teach other holistic or just conventional people who are already using remedies for people. How to integrate natural therapeutics, which are so much better, so much safer, and actually better outcomes. So you have a happier client, and then you have a happier professional who feels really good about the information that they're sharing, as well as seeing people get better, which is very exciting. I would say almost every doctor and nurse went into that field because they wanted to help people. But because of mostly the influence of the pharmaceutical companies, and this, by the way, in my book, The Natural Medicine Chest, I have a full chapter on the history of natural medicine, and it's very focused on the politics of natural medicine. It didn't just happen, happenstance, that doctors do not know about natural remedies, other than, of course, naturopathic physicians at Bastyr and others at naturopathic colleges are highly trained in natural remedies. It's not a mistake. It was actually a specific coup and takeover of even medical schools so that the only thing doctors learn about really is very little. They just mostly learn about pharmaceuticals and surgery, of course. So those two things are great. I wouldn't say we should throw them out, but I would say they should be used very little. My own parents, my mom's alive, 96, never took a pharmaceutical. My father lived to 95, never took a pharmaceutical. So it's not that he didn't die. He died in 95 one day after running around all day, which he always ran around all day, after going out and drinking, out to eat and drinking and driving, which I kept telling him you shouldn't do. He told me when I get older than him, that's when I can tell him what to do. Then he did have a sudden stroke and passed away, so it's not natural things will make you live forever. The thing is it extends your wellness, because he was well till that day. Then, bye, good way to go. So the thing is there's so much overuse. Almost every individual I know is on five or six pharmaceuticals, and they all interact together and make you overall less well and do very little other than cover up whatever symptom you're taking it for. So I'm not a big fan. Ashley James (0:50:33.269) In the last few years, a lot of people participated in the mass medical experiment known as the COVID vaccine. It was an experiment and you shouldn't even call it a vaccine. It manipulated our own RNA. I'm close friends with several people who dropped dead. I know several children whose parents just thought they were doing the best they could with the information they had and now their children are permanently damaged or so far permanently damaged. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:51:07.099) It is sad. If we're going to go there, my own children who are in their 50s were never vaccinated. Ashley James (0:51:13.035) They, I'm guessing, stayed away from the medical experiment? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:51:18.519) Yes, I'm saying they were never vaccinated, even as children.  Ashley James (0:51:22.942) And they are healthy and happy? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:51:22.942) So the thing is not necessarily. It doesn't assure health and happiness. It's just that I never actually was too thrilled about those vaccines. Now, there's so much information about why it's a really bad idea, in particular, the new varieties that they are developing. Ashley James (0:51:47.148) I just think we need to really take it slow and use critical thinking and not be so trusting with the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:51:54.554) That's true. Well, it can be helpful sometimes.  Ashley James (0:52:00.690) No, of course not, not throw it out. You said, don't throw it out, but don't be so trusting, especially when they want to provide something that they think is a prophylactic, when what we have is a rich range of natural medicine and herbal medicine that we can use to support our body's ability to heal itself and protect itself.  Going back to pain, because I want to get into the immune. I know we're easing into that immune topic and I want to talk about it, but I just want to make sure for anyone listening that's in pain. You've talked about bitter melon, you've talked about the green lip mussels, which is super interesting. I hadn't heard about them before. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:52:33.896) Well, know what is funny? There are some of these things on TV that say it's going to get rid of all pain. When you look into it, they're super expensive. Then when you actually read the supplement facts box about what's in there, they'll call it something super pain away or whatever they call it, a lot of illegal names and facts. Then when you look in there, it's a green mussel. Then you can get just that from a much more reputable source, much less expensive as well. So it's always good to read those supplement facts boxes to find out. Then there's so many things, Boswellia, which is a tree sap. That's one of the most effective natural remedies to bring down inflammation. Ashley James (0:53:21.464) How do people take that? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:53:24.740) So, Boswellia is the same thing, if you've ever heard of frankincense and myrrh, that's what it is. What it is is a tree sap. So, they have to have you gather it, unless you have a Boswellia tree, you're not going to be gathering it by your house, because how you do it is you actually slice the tree, and then this white sticky exudate comes out, and then that is scraped off and dried. That is frankincense that was used thousands of years ago. Boswellia contains high levels of gum resins and they are really, really useful, and have been used for Ayurvedic medicine, which is a wonderful system from India, specifically for arthritis. It contains Boswellic acid, which is a very powerful anti-inflammatory and analgesic. So that really brings down that whole experience of pain while it's healing the joints or whatever irritated area that you may have. So that's another really, really good one. Ashley James (0:54:27.152) So how do they take it? Do they chew it or make tea out of it? How do they take that? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:54:32.181) So, Boswellia is widely available and now they just ground that resin and they either make it into a liquid herbal extract or in a capsule. So, it's a very, very easy thing to find. Ashley James (0:54:44.787) Okay. Got it. Before we move on to the immune, because I'm excited to get there, is there anything else you want to make sure that you mention about taking these remedies for pain? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:54:55.793) Well, one thing is it's really better to work with a holistic provider, which if you can find a naturopathic physician and be sure they actually went to a naturopathic college or someone else who you get good news about them, that they are very knowledgeable. Because if you're already on a lot of medication, particularly drugs, and you just start popping all these other pills, albeit that they're natural, it's really not a good idea because these things can interact with each other as well. Ashley James (0:55:30.469) Right, so if someone's not on any medication and they're in pain or they had an injury, they could try one or more of these things, but better to connect with a holistic practitioner that can help them navigate this. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:55:47.405) Yes, it's always better to do that because then you have somebody on your side who's knowledgeable. Whether you are on medication or not on medication, you don't have to worry so much. But truthfully, natural remedies, although they're not free of side effects, have a much lower incidence. For instance, pharmaceutical drugs used as indicated, and this is right from the New England Journal of Medicine, is the fourth leading cause of death, I mean, of death in the United States. That's pharmaceutical drugs used as indicated.  Ashley James (0:56:27.617) It's worth saying again, that the doctor tells you how to use it, you use it, and it's the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. I'm sure around the world has similar results, because many countries follow the quote unquote modern medical system that the United States started. It is not off script. It is not off-label. I've seen doctors regularly prescribe off-label.  I had a neighbor once, with this was years ago. Young woman had Lyme disease or sorry had lupus and her doctor was giving her chemotherapy off script chemotherapy to try to get her lupus under control. I just wept for her, she was 21 years old. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:57:07.530) Yes, that's usually methotrexate is used that way quite a bit. Yes, and it has this huge litany of side effects. It's amazing. It's worse than the disease that it's treating. Ashley James (0:57:16.072) Right. We're not even talking about off script. How many times doctors use off script. We're talking about as prescribed. These are drugs that are approved and every drug that's been taken off the market for killing too many people, including my mom, was once approved. So we have to remember that all drugs that have been horrific at hurting people were all approved and then they eventually get taken off.  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:57:42.478) Anyone can just get it if they have it at their house while they're listening to our podcast today. They just go if they have Tylenol, or any other over-the-counter nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on the label now, there's a horrendous black label warning about liver damage and dropping dead from taking it once. This is on the labels. That's how bad it is. So it's not something to play with. Ashley James (0:58:16.48) I love that you're pointing this out because it's so important to recognize. I feel as adults, we have a very child, almost nursery rhyme relationship with the medical system. It's the big protector that when I get sick, it's like having parents when we're kids, I'm just going to go to them and they're going to make me all better. They're just going to give me the right drug. I'm having an infection. I just need to get some antibiotics and I'm going to be good. Yes. The medical system, the emergency medicine, drug-based medicine has its place, but to trust it blindly is where we really lose our health, is where we really go downhill. So to recognize that it is the fourth leading cause of death when it's used appropriately. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (0:59:02.960) So I just want to read this. Anybody can look it up. I'm looking it up right now. Black label warning. This is for any kind of NSAID, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory. Causes an increased risk of serious gastrointestinal adverse events, including bleeding, ulceration, and perforation of the stomach or intestines, which can be fatal. These events can occur at any time during use and without warning symptoms. This is from the NIH. I told you the NIH is doing quite a bit. So, hey, do we really want to pop those or do we want to take some Boswellia, which is super safe that we just spoke about, or white willow bark is another one that you actually can get yourself, which is a great pain medicine, or making a ginger tea and then also using it as a ginger compress. These are all things we talk about both in our book Arthritis and in our book Supplements for Pain and how to use them and how to use them safely. Because, not that you maybe want to never use drugs, maybe you want to as a last ditch, not as a first choice. Ashley James (1:00:16.228) Exactly. I love that. Thank you for pointing that out. Before you went into that library and took the catalog card and started looking through it and before you had that big revelation, why didn't the doctors tell me about these remedies? Why didn't they even know that this world existed? It's like pulling back the curtain. I think about that moment in The Wizard of Oz when it goes from gray to color, when it goes from black and white to color. It's this whole world that we don't know about because we're never taught. It's not taught in mainstream. It's not taught in movies, TV shows. It is always about drug-based medicine in movies and TV shows. Not to get super into conspiracy, which I will. The pharmaceutical industry funds Hollywood, funds all the media you consume, unless it's independent media like this podcast. What you've read, what you've seen on TV, what you've seen in newspapers, your entire life has been shaped by this giant PR campaign. It is Orwellian. It is like big brother. There's this whole world and luckily we don't live in a country where it's banned and it's hidden from us. I feel we're constantly fighting for our right to continue keeping this information available. There's this whole world you're pulling back the curtain and showing that we could have in our medicine cabinet these herbs and tinctures. If you have a headache or you have a bruise, a bump, an injury that you could reach into the medicine cabinet and find your natural remedies and support your body's ability to come back into balance. Then reserve those over-the-counter pharmaceuticals for your last ditch, I'm sick of being in pain and this isn't working. So many times I've seen that these natural remedies work so well and then you don't have the very scary side effects of sudden death. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:02:27.992) How about that? It's true. Ashley James (1:02:30.998) Get into the immune. I'm very, very excited. I hate to feed into the propaganda, but we're coming into flu season as they call it. I just want to point out that people get the flu all year round. This isn't just because we're indoors a bit more and have less sunlight. That doesn't mean you have to get sick for sure. Please don't buy into the mass hypnosis that you will get sick. I'm just using the term flu season, but I'm not buying into it. I believe that we can all be healthy and maintain our health all year, all winter long. I'd love for you to share what can we do first preventively? What herbs should we want to take starting now and all through the winter? What are the most important things to do to prevent, to keep the immune system very healthy and keep ourselves healthy.  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:03:28.734) I actually believe that everyone should create for their home, I have a book by this name, the name of the book is The Natural Medicine Chest. I actually think everyone should have in their home a natural medicine chest already set up. Because many of the remedies we're about to discuss in terms of offsetting things like colds and flus, you have to use them at first sign. So it's not like if any of us have ever experienced that little sore throat at night and you go to bed and when you wake up in the morning, now you're coughing and sneezing. When you have that first little tickle, that's when you have to start this stuff. By the time you get up the next day and get in the car and drive to the health food store or the store is closed or you have to ship it from Amazon, it's not going to get there. I guess they're pretty fast by Amazon. I might get there the next minute, is what I find. Nonetheless, you're better off having this in your house. That's when it works best at the very first sign. So we will talk about some of those things that people should have in their natural medicine chest. This was actually the protocol I put together during that very challenging time. Thousands of people used it and actually had basically no problems at all, which is great. So the first thing is a very easy remedy to have around, and that's vitamin C. Vitamin C is super easy to get. I would actually recommend that people get powdered vitamin C, because then it has no additives, it doesn't have the capsuling agents, it's just pure vitamin C. There are vitamin Cs around that you can get that are sourced from natural things, such as rose hips. In fact, you can make your own vitamin C by collecting rose hips. Rose hips are the fruit that's on roses. After the flower falls off, there's a round ball there. That's the rose hip. So you collect the rose hips, let them dry completely till they're really dry. Then you can just pound them with a mortar and pestle. All herbalists have to have a mortar and pestle. Use that powder. Just mix it into a little water or any other kind of drink. You also, of course, can very easily just buy vitamin C. That's usually going to be ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is usually sourced from corn. It might be GMO corn or it might be non-GMO corn. Some of the brands will list that it's non-GMO, which would be a better choice. Nonetheless, vitamin C. Now, taking about 500 milligrams of vitamin C daily is a great idea. But when you think that you're starting to come down with something, you can take up to 10,000 milligrams a day. In fact, you can check yourself how high you have to go by seeing when you get to bowel tolerance. Bowel tolerance means you've taken so much vitamin C that you're starting to have loose stools. Then you back off a little bit. That's not something you do ongoingly all the time. That's only for when you feel you're being challenged. You need to have it around. So that's one of the best remedies to have around all the time, vitamin C. It's a great place to start. Now another remedy that I would never be without is sometimes called elderberry syrup, but it's from a particular plant. The genus and species of the plant is Sambucas nigra, which is black elderberry and grows in many areas. If it grows by you, you should actually collect it, but you have to collect it when the berries are there. Because if you go to collect it in the middle of the winter and there's no more berries there, you're out of luck. So that's not the time to get it. It's so widely available now. So many brands. I definitely have my favorite brands. I don't like to name favorite brands when we're on a non-commercial podcast, but if anybody wants to know. You can just email me through Natural Nurse, all one word, naturalnurse.com, and I'll tell you some of my favorite brands. There are several excellent Sambucas on the market, and they're just called Sambucas Liquid. Sometimes they're called Sambucas Immune. They have various names. Something to determine which ones are best is read the supplement facts box, because you can get Sambucas, which has tons of sugar in it.  You can find Sambucas that have artificial sweeteners in it that I don't recommend. You can get Sambucas that are very thick and black with no negative additives and where you get a very high level of concentrated berry in every teaspoon. Normally you don't take this every day. At that first sign, you take about a teaspoon of this. It's actually delicious. So it's great to use for kids too. Every two hours or so. You don't have to wake up at night to take it, but for every couple hours and then you could go to sleep and if you wake up at night, you throw it, store it, you take it again and that can really stop you from ever getting sick ever. Ashley James (1:08:55.916) Love that. When we look at the supplement facts, sometimes it'll say how many milligrams of it, a concentration of the Sambucas. What would you say, 500 or is there a number we're kind of looking for? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:09:13.922) Well, it's really widespread out over the commercially available products. So in general, when you need it, high is better, because you can't just get a few milligrams of this. This has to be concentrated. Some of them have up to 12,000 milligrams per dose. Those are some of the better ones. You see the difference, because instead of being a watery liquid with preservatives and sugar in it, it will be a thick, black, herbal liquid. That's what you actually want.  So also, as I mentioned, I'm very into herbs, we can get back to other really special herbs specifically for this, but I also want to recommend homeopathics, because in this case, nobody should not have right now within our listening audience, everyone should have this in their house, in their purse if they're a woman or a guy who carries a purse. In your glove compartment if you're a driver who goes places in your car, and this is called Oscillococcinum. Oscillococcinum is one of the most important remedies to have on hand when you need it. It literally stops the development of any kind of flu infection in its tracks but the trick is you must take it at the very first sign. You can't wait, not three days later, and then you're coughing and sneezing and a runny nose. It's not that helpful at that time. If you catch it right at the beginning, Oscillococcinum, that's a homeopathic, not an herb. Super to have on hand. It has become so popular. When it first came out, we were importing it into my clinic directly from Germany, where it was being made. Now you can get it at Walgreens, CVS, anywhere. It's not an odd thing to get. It's super easy to get, super inexpensive, and super effective. No one should be without that. Ashley James (1:11:14.264) I love that. So they take it, they put some of the pellets under their tongue. We should never touch homeopathy. Just put it on your tongue away from food. You can drink water, but it can get a few minutes away from food and let it dissolve under your tongue. How many times would you want them to take it? Is it every 15 minutes? Is it every hour? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:11:33.800) Okay, so with that particular thing with Oscillococcinum, if you purchase it or if you have it, you will see the directions for use printed on the box will say, take a whole tube, and it'll say something every few hours, but you don't need to do that. All you have to do is it comes in little tubes. You can unscrew the plastic top off the tube and just pour from the tube. However many of those little teeny balls, which is what they are, tiny pellets, fit in the top. Then you dump that under your tongue. You pick up your tongue and you dump it in the well under your tongue and just let it dissolve. I would say you could do that every two or three hours until you forget to do it. Because after a while you go, was I getting a cold or flu? I guess not. Because it just goes away. Then, I would not again say, it's two hours and I have to wake myself up at two in the morning to take it again. No. Just while you're up and then go to sleep and then in the morning if you're still having issues or if you do wake up in the middle of the night, you do it again. In most cases, that's going to be the end. You won't get the cold or flu. That's how phenomenal Oscillococcinum is. Ashley James (1:12:55.206) I love it. I love homeopathy so much. Obviously you want to talk to your own pediatrician, hopefully a holistic one. My son only sees naturopathic pediatricians unless he's in an emergency situation, you're going to a children's hospital. Other than that, he's only seeing naturopaths and we've used homeopathy since he was an infant, since he was a baby. That's what I love. There's no placebo effect there because I have a colic baby crying from gas pain and I put something, a little homeopathy under his tongue and he just smiles. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:13:35.316) Homeopathy is definitely one of the best interventions and it works very well along with herbs and it is currently being massively attacked by the FDA and FTC. So if you think that you might want to learn about homeopathy in the future, I suggest you purchase. I'm not selling them, I'm just saying, find one, buy a homeopathic first aid kit today because they're really aggressively making it not available anymore. Why? Why not? Because they're saying if you take apart a homeopathic remedy and it says, let's say, from chamomile flowers, which might have been the original mother tincture, and if they take apart the homeopathy, there's no chamomile in that pill. That's right, because that's the definition of homeopathy. It's not a substance. It's beyond substance. It's within the realm of energy medicine. It's just being not allowed and it is so inexpensive, so super effective and excellent for children.  I don't know that I could have raised my kids who are getting to be 50 year old age now without homeopathics. It's really great and not only that, children take them more easily because it's little teeny sweet sugar pills rather than herbs. Sometimes it's hard to get them down. Thinking of my kids running under the table when I was trying to give them herbs. They wound up getting them anyway because my house was a benevolent dictatorship, not that the kids get their way. I got my way and they had to do what I wanted. When they were teenagers, I put a sign on the refrigerator saying, move out now while you still know everything. Nonetheless, they managed to grow up somehow. Ashley James (1:15:24.123) I love that. I love that you mentioned homeopathy. It's not molecular medicine, it's energetic medicine. That is pooh-poohed by the mainstream medical system. First of all, you can see that it works, you just see that homeopathy works. There's around the world so many, so many studies, but I've personally seen it in my own life.  What is so great is that it is so gentle on the body. Talk about side effects, very, very minimal, if any. There's something called proofing, in which you can prove that that wasn't the right remedy. You might experience some discomfort temporarily. It's very rare. I actually have never seen it personally. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:16:08.935) Very rare, not with the dosing that you would get in a homeopathic first aid kit. When you start to get into, and we're not going to talk about what this means, but maybe you'll know. When you start going up into the 200C range of things, and you're going after very deep genetic issues, then that's where those proofing often come out. You don't have to worry about it. Just get simple homeopathics that are widely available. Of course, one amazing, amazing thing, how old is your son? Ashley James (1:16:35.565) He's nine and a half now. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:16:37.371) So he might be the right age, because if you're a soccer mom at all, you should never go to any sport without arnica cream. Because I can't tell you on the soccer field, as not only my son, but all the kids would run over every time they twisted or bumped something and they had black and blue whatever, you put arnica cream on it and everybody's amazed to watch it disappear in front of your eyes. Ashley James (1:17:00.707) Yes. When I played softball, I got a softball to the eye. I feel really fortunate that my mom was into natural medicine and I grew up seeing a chiropractor and a naturopathic doctor. My chiropractor had given me arnica cream and I put the arnica cream on and I got a softball in the eye. It was a fly ball. I should have had the world's biggest black eye. I put arnica cream on that and you wouldn't have known that I got hit in the face with the softball. It was so amazing. It's so amazing. Attached to my purse is a little first aid kit and I have Arnica pellets in there and a few other homeopathics. I definitely have the cream at home. My son runs up to me and gets the Arnica pellets if he ever bumps himself. It's so wonderful and so easy to use. It's so cheap. It's so effective. The thing with homeopathy is if you didn't get a result, go to a practitioner, get them to help you. Because sometimes it just takes a little bit of knowledge, just a little bit of diving in and learning. Then you really start to get results with it. I have a friend who has a family and three kids, none of them are vaccinated. She was never vaccinated. Her mother was never vaccinated. Her mother who passed away a few years ago, very, very old, had a wonderful healthy life, helped bring homeopathy to Washington state and the entire family. That's the first thing they go to. They just, they blow any time a little cold comes on, they just blow it right out. Take, take their homeopathy, blow it right out. Any bumps, bruises, take some homeopathy. Just it brings the body back in about so that it comes back to frequency medicine. We have to acknowledge that we're not just physical matter. We're not just meat sacks, that we are more energy and that we are more vibration and more frequency than we are molecules, than we are solid.  Homeopathy works on that plane. So I think it's brilliant. I think it's more brilliant than the pharmaceutical industry, than those synthetic drugs. I think it's more brilliant. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:19:09.578) So do I, it really should be just commonly available, commonly used. Every physician, this is what the NIH is now saying. By the way, the first line of intervention for every single patient should be food, exercise, some kind of relaxation technique to support healthy sleep, and the use of botanical medicine first before any pharmaceuticals are prescribed. That would make everybody feel so much better. It would really bring down the cost of healthcare as well as much more positive outcomes for everyone. Ashley James (1:19:50.184) Let's say someone didn't reach for their elderberry or their homeopathy and they feel they've got a full on flu. What do we do? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:20:05.526) Well, there's other things where we go with that. First of all, besides those, there's some very good herbs that actually are antibiotics, okay? Yet, it is illegal to say herbs are antibiotics. Ashley James (1:20:19.893 Isn't that wild? Isn't that kind of gross? That's why I say it's so Orwellian. It's such a manipulation. We've been using herbs for thousands of years, that they're natural antimicrobial agents in them, that they help us to kill bad bacteria in our body. Yet a synthetic man made patented product can only be called a cure. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:20:43.029) That is true. Then comes another thing that I do a lot besides teaching other practitioners how to incorporate natural remedies into their protocol. I work a lot with natural product companies because they are so regulated by the FDA and FTC about what they can say. Especially when somebody might make their own herbal remedy and it works really well and they get excited so they decide to offer it to others, let's say on Etsy. Before you know it, the FDA and FTC are pounding on their door with a $3 million fine, taking their computer, all the herbs they made. They really wind up in terrible trouble. I suggest you do not do that. We might not agree with this overregulation, but you better believe it's there. The thing is, you can say something—oil of oregano, echinacea, and goldenseal—we're going to talk about now.  I can tell you right here on our podcast today that these actually kill microorganisms as well as increase the speed that our white blood cells move through our system, recognizing and gobbling up any kind of invading bacteria or viruses. I can tell you that in an educational way. I can write about it in my book. I can have it on my website because I do not sell it. As soon as you are selling it as a product, let's say Echinacea or Goldenseal, or an Echinacea-Goldenseal combination, you have a nice little bottle of it, and there you say on your website that it's antimicrobial, that's when it becomes illegal to say it. If you're not selling anything, you have a lot more latitude in terms of sharing this information. So that's one that's really good to have in your house that does what you just mentioned, actually kill microorganisms once you're already having something that's beyond that first issue. So echinacea and goldenseal are excellent. Another one is oil of oregano. Oil of oregano is a very strong antibiotic. Now, as an herb company, people can't say that on their label. So they say, it supports immune function, even though it doesn't do one single thing for the immune system. It kills microorganisms, but you cannot say that. So that's why so many things will say immune support on them, because that's a fairy dance. We find that the FDA does not go after that immune support word, so they just slam dunk it on everything, even though that's not what it does. Ashley James (1:23:32.324) I'd love to understand. Is it kind of a nuclear bomb that just kills indiscriminately all the bacteria inside us, wherever it touches or so?  So our good bacteria is also harmed. Okay. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:23:49.530) Yes, yes, it does. Will also be destroyed. That is right. You can go ahead and then replenish with different kinds of microorganisms that are more healthy. You certainly can do that. Yes, that's one that really does actually kill microorganisms, as does garlic, as a matter of fact. Garlic doesn't make a decision about whether this is good bacteria or bad bacteria, it kills all the bacteria. So if you overdo it, while it's good to do heavy amounts while you have a cold or flu, you may also want to do something with probiotics or prebiotics. A good way to do that, I think the best way to do that is sauerkraut. Ashley James (1:24:31.436) Yes. Live culture though, fermented live culture. Got to look on the label, make sure there's no vinegar in there. That's not the real stuff. You want the real probiotic, just water and salt. So brine, usually a refrigerated section. You can make your own. So easy. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:24:50.642) Yes, making your own is pretty easy. They have these really good makers of it that you can get again anywhere. They're just a heavy, old-fashioned ceramic. Then there's a heavy weight that you put on top of your cabbage if you're making it out of cabbage. It's really not a big deal to do that. Sauerkraut really, I think, is really one of the best ways, rather than buying all these very expensive dried probiotics or prebiotics, that might be okay, too, but I think it's really preferable. Another thing I really love is BioStraft, which is an old-fashioned Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It's been on the market since 1962, and that really acts as a postbiotic as well as a prebiotic. So, reestablishing that healthy microbe is important, but that's not our first consideration when we're dealing with an immediate cold or flu. That's going to be the plan later. Ashley James (1:25:49.400) Right, the rebuilding. Yes, so the rebuilding. I think it's really important to talk about that there's a rebuilding after you're sick, whether it's a little bug, a little head cold or something greater, a virus or a bacteria, that there's a period of time where you're focusing on the acute issue. You're kind of throwing everything at it, supporting the body, but also taking some natural killers, garlic and oregano, natural killers. Then we have to acknowledge that when you start to feel better, just when you start to feel better, you have to be your mom telling yourself, no, you have to still go to bed early. I know everyone listening has had this, you start to feel better, you go back to your regular routine and then it relapses and you start to feel tired again. You're not done. Just because the acute symptoms have diminished does not mean this isn't again, we're not in the Jetsons. You didn't just take a pill and all of a sudden you're better again. So there's that rebuilding phase. So actually, I feel it's three phases. It's the acute and then it's the okay, you feel better, but actually you're still, your body's still fighting it. You might not have these massive acute symptoms, your body's still fighting it. So give yourself a few more days of grace, just give yourself permission to be more restful. Maybe go for gentle walks or something, but rest. Don't eat sugar. Don't eat dairy. Eat whole foods. Nourish your body. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:27:10.352) Well, here's some great food. Another one that we haven't mentioned, which is really helpful to have in the house, is colloidal silver. Colloidal silver is strongly antimicrobial. It's not something you really want to take lots of every day, some of them recommend. No. Have it in the house because it really is a very effective antimicrobial. Then, you said, food is so important. In my protocol that I gave to so many people, homemade soup is really important. If you're vegan, you can just make a vegetarian soup. If you're not, you can use organic chicken in the soup, which of course has actually been scientifically studied, to reduce the length of colds and flus. You can limit solid foods, especially dairy and wheat. In fact, it's a good idea to not eat much of that ever, as a matter of fact. The less you eat of it, the less aggressive the infections are to begin with. Always have lemon around because you squeeze about a half a lemon into a cup and then you can add garlic to that as well, just crush some garlic in it and a pinch of cayenne pepper and honey to taste and you have about a cup of that every two to three hours and it gets rid of that entire infection super fast. You can feel your sinuses opening up and your throat not being as sore. So there's a lot that we can do with self-care and these natural remedies that really make a huge difference, much better than anything they have, pharmaceutically. Ashley James (1:28:45.628) My mom, she wasn't much of a cook, but whenever I had a sore throat, she would boil water with fresh ginger, crush the fresh ginger, chop it up, put it in there and boil it, boil the ginger for a while, put in a few sprinkles of cayenne. I was a kid, so I couldn't take that much cayenne, but she'd put some in and then she'd turn the heat off and then she'd squeeze lemon in there and stir some honey in. I would drink that all day and it would just blow that sore throat right out. I just loved it. More recently in the last few years, I think the last 10 years, I was turned on to thyme. I started getting fresh thyme from the grocery store, but I take a whole handful of fresh thyme and take hot water, have it boil, but then take it off the stove, put it in four cups of water, put it in and leave the lid on for 10 minutes. Then just drink that with a little bit of honey when you're congested. Because of how congested you are, I can't believe it. Just all of a sudden you are draining. It's amazing. One thing I learned the hard way, don't do it too late at night because it would cause me to cough because it was draining so well, but I'm lying down because I'm sleeping. So that's more of a do it during the day, but not late at night. It's amazing. It was better than, I really do not do over-the-counter drugs, but I have in the past a long time ago and it worked for me, better than any over-the-counter pharmaceutical decongestant. It worked faster. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:30:20.046) Right, well there's a difference, like you said Ashley, sometimes when we're dealing with coughs, we need to know even in terms of herbs, which we teach in our course, of course the Natural Nurse Herbal Certification course, is this a decongestant or is it an expectorant or is it a cough suppressant? Even herbs have different actions along those lines. Sometimes you take something that is natural and has something to do with coughs. When you take it, it's actually an expectorant, something like a horehound. That's going to make you cough more because you're coughing up that congested solidifying mucus, which is great, but maybe not overnight when you're trying to sleep. You're so right about that. Ashley James (1:31:03.382) So at night, what would you want? You want to help sleep, but you want to kind of almost dry out a bit.  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:31:11.394) Yes, you want to take something that's not going to be an expectorant. You want to take something that's going to be a relaxant, even chamomile or some herb that relaxes all the muscles so you don't cough as much overnight. Ashley James (1:31:26.400) Thinking magnesium. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:31:28.806) Well, magnesium's a great, a very, very good relaxant, even when people have muscle cramps or, almost everybody could use some magnesium. Of those, I really prefer magnesium glycinate if you're going to take a form of magnesium as a supplement. Ashley James (1:31:45.155) You mentioned, so the echinacea and goldenseal. Do you like that better in a tincture, pill form, dry form, or tea form? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:31:54.231) My favorite kind is a liquid extract, which is very different from a tincture. The only people who would know that difference are herbalists, because the word tincture has to do with extracting out using alcohol as what's called the menstruum, which is the soaking agent that you put the herbs in. That will make a tincture. A tincture will usually give you a certain milligram amount per drop or full if it is one of those little liquid bottles. If you get an extract, a liquid herbal extract, that means every dropperful has 1,000 milligrams of concentrated herb. So I would prefer a liquid extract in terms of Echinacea and Goldenseal. Ashley James (1:32:37.707) Wonderful. How often would they take that thousand milligram dropper while they're sick? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:32:43.319) So if you're well, not at all. It's not something that you want to do daily. If you start to come down with something, you can take that much, maybe three, four times a day. If you're already in the midst of it, a dropperful an hour ongoing all day. You don't wake up and do it again, just while you're up. Ashley James (1:33:04.255) Got it, love it. Any side of, sort of overdose or negative effects? If you take too much, you get diarrhea, that kind of thing? There anything we should know? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:33:16.191) Yes, that's the main of most of these specific things that we're talking about today in terms of using it for an acute cold or flu. Yes, if you overdo it, a common effect of that, which we'll call an unwanted effect, would be loose stools. On the other hand, sometimes that's exactly what you want because you get rid of the infection more quickly. You can determine, well, I don't want to go that much. Then all you have to do is back off and that reaction will be gone. Ashley James (1:33:45.667) Got it, so don't be afraid of it. If you get loose stools, tone it down a bit. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:33:50.473) Exactly. Then you definitely do decrease the amount as you're getting better and then there'll be a certain day you kind of forget to take it and that's when you're done. Ashley James (1:34:02.071) I love it. I love it. We talked about oregano oil of oregano, but we didn't really talk about how much that is that nuclear bomb that we should have when we're done taking it and we're in that recovery phase of building back. My thing is no matter how long you were sick, take a few weeks, even though you feel good, take a few weeks after you've recovered to just be more gentle with yourself and rebuild. So eat that prebiotic, wonderful prebiotic foods, eat some probiotic-rich live culture fermented foods. It doesn't have to be a lot, just a spoonful with each meal. It doesn't have to be a huge amount. I know some people don't like the taste of sauerkraut. It's okay. There's other foods you can ferment also, but the variety, the better the variety. I've been told that there's more prebiotic probiotic culture in one spoonful of sauerkraut than there is in a whole $50 bottle of probiotics. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:34:52.714) Yes, not just more, but much more bioavailable. It's so far better than taking anyone a pill, truthfully. Ashley James (1:35:01.590) So good. I interviewed an amazing man a few years ago who has had HIV since I think the '80s. He says that because he eats fermented food every day, because his gut is so rich and so diverse, the microbiome, he knows his immune system is so much better off than all his other friends who unfortunately have passed away from it. He says it's, when we support ourselves with this food, we're supporting our immune system as well. I love that. We can see it. We can clearly see it in his health and in others. How do we take the oil of oregano? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:35:40.746) So oil of oregano, you have to get a really good brand. Again, then you're not going to be just getting oregano and distilling it yourself unless you are. That's another whole distillation process. Most people will be purchasing already available oil of oregano. They vary greatly in terms of quality. So that's another one. If you want to give me a call or text me or email me through naturalnurse.com, I'll give you some really good brands. But it's usually a little teeny bottle with a dropper top. It's often a liquid. Much better to take that as a liquid than a capsule or a tablet. Then you just turn the bottle upside down and let two drops fall out onto your tongue. I would say around every two hours when you're ill, not all the time, because this is something that's aggressive against good probiotic type bacteria as well as negative. But it's a really good thing to use for that cold or flu season. Ashley James (1:36:41.688) Love it. Is there anything else that is really important that we are aware of? I think if we did all of this, we'd be really good. Everything you just mentioned, I think we're set. Is there anything else that you want to make sure we know about? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:36:58.295) Wonderful Chinese herb that I have found amazingly reverse any of these things, especially if used early on. That's a Chinese medicine called Gan Mao Ling. It's G-A-N-M-A-O-L-I-N-G. It is an herbal, and it is a mixture of several different Chinese herbs, including Isitis which is strongly antimicrobial as well as supporting the immune system. So I would say those are a very, very good thing to use. Ashley James (1:37:32.307) Is this  a compressed herb pill?  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:37:35.843) Yes. They have it in Chinatown. You can get them with no coating. Sometimes they have a coating, but they often don't. It would just be a black combination of herbs. That really works amazingly well if you catch it at the beginning. Ashley James (1:37:51.179) How much and how often will we take it? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:37:54.715) So usually those come in little pellets or tablets. So you actually take five per dose for an adult, and you would take five every two hours or so. Again, you don't wake up at night and do it until, basically the symptoms go away. Now if you're already in the raging state, that's not too helpful a remedy. Ashley James (1:38:16.372) Got it, got it. So yes, a lot of this is catching it early and I love that. You had mentioned colloidal silver. I interviewed Dr. Keith Moeller, who's a naturopath that talks about nano silver and the difference between colloidal silver and nano silver, which is really interesting. A good, good interview to go back on. There's over 400 studies on nano silver and supporting immune function and also just how wonderful it is at killing even MRSA. They have great results with it. So I love that. then you'd mentioned vitamin C powder. What do you think about acerola cherry powder?  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:38:50.001) Great, good choice. You have to check the brand because some people might have acerola cherry powder but then they're adding in maltodextrin and all these other additives that you may not want. That is a good choice. I said, if you make it yourself, because acerola cherries, we can gather them here in Florida. They remind me a lot of rose hips, which are also very high in vitamin C. Ashley James (1:39:12.386) Nice, love it. So, a lot of this is safe for children. Are there any warnings or what wouldn't we do for kids?  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:39:26.965) Well, oil of oregano is a little rough. I wouldn't necessarily drop oil of oregano into a child's mouth. I mean, in fact, a lot of people, even an adult, once you're going to try good quality concentrated oil of oregano, I would just use one drop and put it in water first. It's very intense. It does kill microorganisms. I have seen more than one person have to be hospitalized because they had a sensitivity or an allergic reaction to it in which their entire mouth blew up, very serious. So it's not something to play with and I would not use that for children. Ashley James (1:40:03.292) What's up with the elderberry? Usually that's all I have to pull out for my son. That thick elderberry, not the gummies, not the little candies that they call, the things you suck on. Why am I forgetting the word for that? Lozenges. Not those. Give them the syrup. Just go straight for the good stuff. Yes, it's expensive, but that's just it. You want to get the good stuff. Usually shoving that in my kid's mouth a few times a day when he's first starting to have flu symptoms. That's usually what kills it, what brings us right back. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:40:45.939) Well, we know why, again, that mechanism of action. What elderberry does is it is not an antibiotic, like oil of oregano and some of the other things we discussed, goldenseal. How elderberry works is it interferes with viruses having a mechanism of reproduction. Because why do you feel a little not so okay first, and by the next morning if you don't do none of these things we talked about. The next day you're all swollen in your throat, it’s because overnight, in particular viruses, reproduce a lot. So now there's millions of them instead of a little of them but it's amazing, the research has shown that elderberry specifically interferes with viral duplication. That's how it works. Ashley James (1:41:36.577) I love that. I think that's how zinc works also. They talk about increasing zinc. It does something. It interferes with the virus in some way, whether it's getting into the cell or replication. Can't remember which one. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:41:48.274) Zinc is amazing and there's actually been so many studies on it now that you actually can claim that zinc is antiviral, which is amazing, but it has been so well documented. Ashley James (1:42:00.750) I love that. This is my frustration. The doctor, as in the lie we've been told, not your doctor specifically, but the lie we've been told is, wait to get sick and then come get a drug or let's give you a shot of a bunch of chemicals and that's going to train your immune system to be healthy. Both take away your power and both train you to believe that your body cannot heal itself, you cannot trust your body. It's almost anti-God. God gave us the ability to heal and He gave us everything on this planet to support our body's ability to heal itself. I'm not saying never go to drug-based medicine, but learn about what you can do and then you will almost never, if not never need that type of medicine, the drug-based medicine, because almost all the time, everything you need in this natural world, which is so much more diverse and supportive. So I'm on my soapbox. I get excited because I suffered for so many years. I was sick for so many years. I was on constant antibiotics for so many years and it was food. Then it was natural medicine that got my health back. That's why I do the podcast, because I suffered for so long and I reversed all these health issues. I want to help those who are suffering needlessly to know that this information is out there.  Also I'm really excited about your courses. I think my listeners will be as well. I'm very interested in taking your herbal medicine course. I've just been self-taught for the most part. I like to pick people's brains, as you can tell. I just think that this is something we all should dedicate time and energy to learning, especially moms, because we're the head of the household, especially when it comes to everyone's health. I was just reminded this week, as a wife, I am kind of in charge of my husband's health. I know I cook, I cook healthy for him, but I also kind of have to check in on him, a mom does a child. That's what we do. We have to take care of each other. So it's good for us to know, to know this information. Do you have anything else you want to say about the immune before we go to the next topic?  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:44:35.492) No, other than that, I have no more time today. Ashley James (1:44:37.262) Okay. Well, we can wrap it up then. That's no problem. I would love to have you back on the show. I would love to dive in deeper. Thank you so much for spending all the time you did with us. I know we had some internet issues that we had to overcome, which cut into our time, unfortunately, but we did go through some great information. Some of these things you talked about are those that we take temporarily, just while we're sick. Then there's certain things we could take all the time. You said, you could take vitamin C, you could drink acerola cherry powder every day, 500 milligrams every day just for overall health.  To wrap up today's interview, is there anything you would want us to know about what is good for us to look into for general overall everyday health? What are some things that are just really important to have kicking around that we use every day? Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:45:33.014) Yes, I would say a very simple thing is first of all, eat whole food. For instance, in my refrigerator, there's nothing with a label on it. So what's there? Food. Not packaged food, not processed food, not ultra-processed food, none of that. Cut down on wheat. Almost everybody, they eliminate wheat, except maybe once a week as a little treat or even not at all, will feel better. Because it reduces inflammation. Remember, we started our conversation with pain. Pain is usually due to some kind of inflammatory process. So that would be a really good place to start, as well as looking at your spiritual life.  How are you connected to joy? What supports your overall healthy brain in a way that just makes you happy? Do more of that, even if you have to not do some of the other things that you think you have to do. So those would be good places to start. Ashley James (1:46:34.750) I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. I would absolutely love to have you back.  Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:46:42.626) Thank you for inviting me, Ashley. The best place for people to find me is just naturalnurse.com. Ashley James (1:46:48.432) Wonderful. I'm very excited. I'm definitely going to dive in and check out your courses because I am always looking to learn more as my listeners are as well. I'd love to have you back on the show. This has been wonderful. Dr. Ellen Kamhi (1:47:01.768) Thank you. Have a great rest of the day. Outro:  I hope you enjoyed today's interview. It was just so mind-blowing. I absolutely love Dr. Kamhi and we're going to have her back on the show for part two. In this episode we got to talk about pain. We got to talk about helping the body to repair from injury and, of course, cold and flu. The next time we have her on we're going to dive into helping the body to get out of fight or flight and to go deeper in healing mode through stimulating the HPA axis and the vagal nerve and all the things that I don't even know because we haven't done the interview yet, but we're going to go. We're going to dive down those rabbit holes and see where we land, and I know I definitely want to talk to her more about her courses that she teaches and I'm so excited for her upcoming course. Definitely check it out. I want to let you know that if you haven't already made an appointment it's a free consultation with Jennifer Saltzman. Go to TakeYourSupplements.com. Jennifer Saltzman is absolutely phenomenal and the supplements that she works with are the same ones that helped me get my health back 13 years ago. Coming on 14 years, they're the reason why I was able to conceive. I was told I'd never be able to have kids. They're the reason why I don't have type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, why I don't have infertility, why I don't have PCOS and just got my life back. So go to TakeYourSupplements.com. She has a wonderful program and she works with you. It's an individualized system. Now they do have wonderful protocols for immune support for people who are suffering with more chronic immune issues and chronic digestion issues—anything from hair loss, from skin, hair, and nails, to supporting your heart health, your brain health, your liver health. They have wonderful programs, wonderful supplement programs and also recommendations with how to adjust your diet to best support your health. I really like their immune support stuff and especially bigger immune things that you're facing. They have some pretty cool, pretty cool things. So check her out. I know if you thought that this episode was interesting, you would think talking to Jennifer Saltzman would be very interesting. So go to LearnTrueHealth.com. It's wild that she gives a free session and it doesn't cost any more to buy the supplements than if you bought them on your own. But these aren't in the stores directly. She helps you order the right ones for you based on your needs, based on your budget, based on your weight. It's all measured by body weight and dosed by body weight, and she gives you a wealth of resources as well. So it's a really great rabbit hole to go down. So I highly recommend going to TakeYourSupplements.com and chatting with Jennifer Saltzman. She's absolutely phenomenal. I hope you have a wonderful rest of 2024. Of course, you might be listening to this eight years or ten years in the future. I've been doing this podcast. We're coming up on ten years and I still have people listening to episodes I did ten years ago and this is evergreen. This content, this is true health content. So wherever you are in your life, whatever year it is, I hope you're having a wonderful, wonderful, blessed, amazing experience, and thank you so much for being a listener and thank you so much for sharing my podcast so we can end needless suffering of millions and millions of people, and you are a part of that by sharing. Thank you.   Get Connected with Dr. Ellen Kamhi Website – Natural Nurse Facebook YouTube Instagram   Books by Dr. Ellen Kamhi The Natural Medicine Chest Arthritis Supplements For Pain

FINAL CYBER SALES UPDATE! Get these 5 holistic cyber sales before hey are gone!   Analemma Structured Water Devices (whole house unit, gardening unit, personal size unit) End of the promotion: Friday 6th, December https://learntruehealth.com/structuredwater Discount code rate: 25% Discount code: lth25 (applicable to all products)   My Two Interviews About This Structured Water: Listen to Episode 498 https://learntruehealth.com/rejuvenate-cells-with-structured-water-mario-brainovic Listen to Episode 508 https://learntruehealth.com/healing-waters-science-of-structured-analemma-water-with-dr-eric-laarakker   MY FAVORITE DETOX & RECOVERY SAUNA: Use coupon code LTH at https://learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna Cyber Week December 2-6 Up to $1,000 off, including FREE shipping Listen to Episode 245: https://learntruehealth.com/sunlighten-saunas   BEST ORGANIC MATTRESS FOR THE BEST SLEEP OF YOUR LIFE! Organix Bed's Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale 20% off mattresses + free white glove delivery (up to $2,018.60 in savings). 30% off bundles of 4+ accessories with free standard shipping. Discounts auto-apply with this think organixbed.com/learntruehealth Sale Dates: November 27th - December 4th   Life Spa Ayurvedic Supplements: Starting Wednesday, November 27th through Thursday, December 5th will be 20% off site wide at https://learntruehealth.com/lifespa   Listen to Episode 505: https://learntruehealth.com/quantum-healing-bridging-ancient-wisdom-with-modern-science-dr-john-douillard   IIN: Institute For Integrative Nutrition HUGE CYBER SALE! Get 30% off when you enroll in any IIN course using LTH discount code! https://learntruehealth.com/coach   535: Good Fat vs. Bad Fat: Cooking Oils Explained https://learntruehealth.com/good-fat-vs-bad-fat-cooking-oils-explained/ After a personal health crisis in the 1980s, Udo Erasmus went deep into the science of nutrition and came out with a radical revelation: not all fats are bad—in fact, some are absolutely essential for life. In this episode, he shares how essential fatty acids impact everything from brain function to skin health, why most of the oils on our supermarket shelves are doing more harm than good, and what it really means to nourish the body at the cellular level. If you’ve ever been confused about what’s healthy when it comes to oils, or if you’re on a journey to feel more energized, focused, and well—this one’s for you. Highlights Udo Erasmus, is a health educator and author of Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, shares groundbreaking insights on the importance of healthy fats in human nutrition. Udo emphasizes that good fats—particularly omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids—are vital for brain function, energy, skin health, and overall cellular integrity. He explains that essential fatty acids cannot be produced by the body and must come from the diet, ideally from unrefined, cold-pressed oils. The modern diet often contains damaged, toxic fats due to processing methods like refining, bleaching, and heating, which compromise health and contribute to disease. Udo describes how his personal experience with pesticide poisoning led him to research fats extensively, eventually producing his own line of health-conscious oils. He advocates for oils to be stored in dark glass bottles, refrigerated, and protected from light, heat, and oxygen to prevent oxidation and maintain nutritional quality. Udo criticizes the food industry's treatment of oils and urges consumers to be more informed about the fats they consume. He discusses how fats are foundational for mental and emotional well-being, and that fat deficiency can lead to mood disorders and cognitive decline. Udo believes health starts at the cellular level, and by consuming clean, undamaged oils, people can significantly improve their quality of life. His mission is rooted in a holistic view of health—nurturing body, mind, and spirit through proper nutrition and conscious living. Intro: Hello True Health Seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I am so excited for you to dive into today's episode. I want to make sure you know about the amazing cyber sales that are about to wrap up. They're about to end, but you still have time to jump in and take advantage of these really great savings. So I'll be really quick, I'm going to let you know about them and I'm also going to put the details in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com and wherever you're listening from, whether it's Spotify or iTunes, wherever you're listening from, there should be a little area that shows the details, more details, and you click on that and you should see all this information there. So, number one, we have Analemma, the structured water device that I use daily. I have some interviews about it, interview 498 and episode 508. So go back and check those ones out. If you're , huh, structured water, that sounds interesting. Let me tell you, it is. It increases your gut microbe health. It increases your cardiovascular health. They've done studies and it increases the health of plants, and they actually can see that it increases the output of the mitochondria, so it helps our mitochondrial health. It's really fascinating. I noticed after the first three days of drinking the structured water that this low-grade depression I had experienced for a few years after losing our daughter. It dissipated. I just noticed it was replaced by this constant low-grade humming of happiness. I'm like, wow, that's really interesting. What an interesting shift to have,  an emotional shift, from integrating something as simple as just taking 90 seconds every time you fill up your water bottle, taking 90 seconds to structure it with the device. You just have a plumber install it into your house, and then all the water coming into your house is structured, or the gardening unit if you are an avid gardener. My plants, my house plants, doubled in size really quickly after I began to use it. I had to move them. I had them by the window, and they grew too big too fast. It was pretty interesting, but the health of these plants went out of control—out of control in a good way, super healthy, when I started using the Analemma structured water device. When it structures the water, it doesn't then go chaotic again. It's really interesting. So listen to those two episodes, 498 and 508. But right now, until Friday, the 6th of December, we have a special promo code. It's LTH25. So when you go to learntruehealth.com/structuredwater, that's all one word, learntruehealth.com/structuredwater, and then use coupon code LTH25, as in Learn True Health and then the number 25, you're going to get 25% off all of their products. So the whole house unit, the gardening unit, or just the little personal size unit which is affordable. It's also a really, really cool gift to give at Christmas. So if you have a friend who's a biohacker, into health stuff, this is one of those easy things. It's also a fun magic trick if you have guests over, you have friends over, or you're going over to a friend's house. I love doing it. I take my little Anilema structured water device and I structure a glass of water and then have a glass of water that's not structured and then I tell them okay, don't look, I'm going to switch them up and only I know which one's structured and I have them sip each one and a hundred percent of the time people can tell a difference. They say it tastes different, it feels different. In my mouth it feels better, it feels like it's easier to drink. It just feels silkier. It's really interesting. I've had friends say this feels like my body's absorbing it better. It's really interesting that you can actually feel the difference and you can even see the difference as you use the device. You stir the device in the water for about 60 to 90 seconds and you can watch the water change viscosity. It actually shifts and changes. It's really interesting. There's a lot of really cool science around it. Go listen to episodes 498 and 508 and get the coupon code LTH25 happening right now for 25% off. They normally do give us a bit of a discount, so use coupon code LTH if it's after Friday, the 6th of December. If it's after that date, don't worry. You can still use coupon code LTH all year long and get the nice discount that they give us. But right now it's 25% off, which is really cool. My next favorite thing is my sauna. I have my sauna right here. I don't know if you can hear that, but there's a nice wooden sauna in my small office. It's quite a small office, and what's cool about the Sunlighten sauna is it's kind of like a TARDIS. If you ever watched Doctor Who, it doesn't take up a lot of room on the outside, but you sit in it and you're like, wow, this is really roomy. It doesn't look like it's this big. My husband and I can both fit in the single-person sauna, and it's a three-in-one sauna, meaning it's far infrared, near infrared, and mid-infrared. That helps your body produce collagen, it helps with skin health, it helps with recovery, and it helps with pain and decreases inflammation. The reason why I got it is because I had heavy metal toxicity and I had liver problems. I wanted to detox and get rid of the gunk out of my body through my skin because your skin helps you detox all those obesogens and forever chemicals and microplastics, all the processed crap that is out there, all the chemicals. Your body sweats it out, so I use the Sunlighten and I get rid of it through the sweat. It also has all these other benefits, including cardiovascular health. I have episode 245. I have several episodes with cardiologists talking about the benefits of the Sunlighten Sauna. You can type in “Sunlighten Sauna” on my website, learntruehealth.com, to find those. Episode 245 is with the creator of Sunlighten Sauna, and she's wonderful. They're giving us such a cool special from now until December 6th—$1,000 off, including free shipping. You can go to learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna. That's learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna, and you can purchase it through that, or you can call them and talk to them. They're wonderful people, really great. They also do payment plans. That's how I bought mine, and I was able to do it on a payment plan, making it affordable. You can have a wonderful sauna, and they even have a personal-sized one that packs up, so you can put it in the closet when you're not using it. That one's also a great choice if you don't have a ton of room. Mine takes up just a very small fraction of my small office, and I love it and highly recommend it. I use it all year round. Wintertime is super nice to get into a hot sauna. It's also very easy to breathe in there, because of the way the near, mid, and far infrared work. You feel hot, but it feels comfortable. It's not one of those saunas where it's 160 or 180 degrees. It's 130 degrees, but it actually is really comfortable to breathe in there and sweat because it's heating your body up on the inside. You also have light receptors, and we talk about that, so it really feeds the body that light that we're missing. My next favorite thing is the organic mattresses. You will get the best sleep of your life. We got one. I think it's been seven years now, seven or eight years, and I absolutely love the Organix mattress. I am in love with it. I've had three interviews about it. It's wonderful, and they're giving a massive discount. They also have a really great return policy because I think this is the big question—if I'm ordering a mattress online, what if I don't like it? What if I lie on it and I don't like it? They have this amazing return policy, and I think it's something like 180 days. It is a very long time that you are given to try it out. Let yourself get used to it. Give it a few weeks. I fell in love with this mattress. It is absolutely amazing. My husband and I joke that we don't like going on vacations because we miss our mattress too much. We even had an RV once. We brought our mattress in the RV with us because it's that comfortable. We just don't want to be without it. They're doing a great sale right now, so if you're thinking, oh man, the mattress we're sleeping on is making me stiff every day, by the way, mattresses usually deteriorate after five years of use. Most people are sleeping on a mattress that is in some way unhealthy for their back. It's bent, pushing on their pressure points, and doing more damage to their back. If you're in that position where you're thinking, I really wish I could have a better mattress that's actually healthy for me—20% off the mattresses plus free white glove delivery, that's $2,000 in savings. They also have 30% off bundles with four accessories with free standard shipping, and it just depends on which mattress you're buying. Go to organixbed.com/learntruehealth. That's Organix with an X, organixbed.com/learntruehealth. You can also give them a call. They're really sweet people. They're really great. I love their bed. I highly recommend it. That sale is ending soon, so you want to give them a call. No matter what time of year, they offer a great discount, a great savings for my listeners. Even if you're listening to this and the sale's ended, they offer a really sweet deal, and it's worth trying because, in the next five years, your mattress is going to start wearing out. Think of your next mattress. Get the Organix mattress and let me know what you think. Every listener that's ever gotten one told me it was life-changing, and it's life-changing for me. It's also fun when other people report to me, saying, oh my gosh, I love my Organix mattress. Check it out—organixbed.com/learntruehealth. Okay, two more left. Lifespa Ayurvedic Supplements. Learntruehealth.com/Lifespa is now, until December 5th, 20% off site-wide. I love their Ayurvedic herbs, the turmeric blends, and they've got wonderful herbs for digestion. Just check it out. You can listen to my interview, episode 505, about using that ancient wisdom and modern science to help the body heal through these healing herbs.  Okay, last thing I got to let you know about is the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. That's where I went and got my year long health coach training program. Absolutely love them. Well, they have more than just health coach training they have. So you don't have to become a health coach to go take their trainings. You can go take their trainings if you just want to learn how to balance your hormones or heal your gut or manage your stress. They have these micro classes that are phenomenal and I love the teachers there. You can go to learntruehealth.com/coach and get a free sample class, learntruehealth.com/coach, and right now, they have a 30% off site wide.  You want to check that out soon because that is definitely going away, that cyber sale. So jump in. If you're like, man, I would love to learn how to correct my gut and take my gut health to the next level, or I'd love to balance my hormones. Just look at they have at least 12 different courses that are super interesting, in addition to their flagship, which is the health coach training program. So a lot of people take the classes just for their own personal benefit or just to add more tools to their tool belt. So you can check that out 30% off right now and use the coupon code LTH to get that discount. So 30% off coupon code LTH.  Thank you so much for being amazing listeners, sharing my episodes with those you care about. This is going to be one of those episodes you're going to want to share with your friends and family. Share this episode with those you care about, because it is definitely a life changer. So thank you for sharing and have yourself a wonderful rest of this holiday season.  Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 535. Ashley James (0:12:14.786) I am so excited for today's guest. We have kind of a celebrity on our hands today. Udo Erasmus, you've been in this industry for, I think, over 40 years. Back when I was first exploring health on my own as a young adult, I think it was in my late teens. When you're around 18 years old, 19, 20, you start making your own health choices. I worked summer jobs, so I had my own income, and I gravitated towards the health food store—those really authentic health food stores where you walk in and smell herbs, and that musky herbal smell hits you. I haven't found one of those true health stores in many years, but this was up in Bracebridge, Muskoka, in Ontario, Canada. I walked into the only health food store in 100 kilometers, and I loved that smell. Right there in the refrigerated section, they had the Udo's Oil 3-6-9 blend. I was newly into discovering what I wanted to do to rebuild my health because I had torn down my health through making really bad choices as a teenager, eating the same way all my friends ate. I was starting to try to reclaim my health, and I found this Omega-3 oil. I ended up making curry dressings with it—not heating it, of course, but making salad dressings with it. In my mind, I can still taste it. It tastes so good. There was something that just buzzed for me. I don't know if it was that flax oil taste combined with the curry and turmeric, of course, it's a healthy flavor—but my cells started buzzing. Over 20 years later, I can still taste it in my mind, that flavor of me first attempting to get my health back, the beginnings of my own health journey. Through the years, every time I see your product in the health food stores and grocery stores that I go to, I tend to go to the grocery stores that carry your line because I'm looking for local, organic, and more healthy choices. It always just brings a smile to my face. When I found out I had the opportunity to interview you, I thought that would be really fun. I think there's a lot of confusion around oil. I've interviewed a lot of doctors, and one of my mentors who helped me so much with my health tells people to stay away from oil. But what he's referring to is cooking oil. When it comes to Omega-3, 6, and 9—flaxseed—he doesn't say stay away from it. He says we have to make sure that it's not exposed to oxygen, that it's not damaged by that exposure to oxygen and light, and that it hasn't gone rancid. Oil, the moment we remove fat from fiber, can begin to oxidize as it's exposed to oxygen. There are a lot of nuances when it comes to using oils, but I think that the majority of Americans, and those around the world—not just America, but Canada and those around the world—are using oil in an unhealthy way. We definitely still have a nutrient deficiency epidemic going on where we're consuming calories but not nutrition. I can't wait to dive into this topic with you today about how we can nutrify the body and make sure we're getting enough of the omega fatty acids without damaging our body from the more damaging oils. Udo, welcome to the show. Udo Erasmus (0:16:16.928) Well, glad to be on. It's going to be fun. Ashley James (0:16:20.134) Yes, absolutely. I'm really curious about your journey. Take us all the way back to the beginning and what led you to want to create the Udo's Choice brand? Udo Erasmus (0:16:33.476) Well, the long story is I was born during the Second World War, and I was a war baby. We were refugees, and I was an orphan for a short time because of all the craziness that is still going on in Europe and the same craziness that goes on everywhere where people don't pay attention to peace and cooperation, and then they drift towards war. That really formed me to always be asking questions, to question everything, and to try and understand how can you make life better. I started that when I was six. I listened to people arguing, and it just made me really uneasy. I was very, very sensitive as a kid. I listened to an argument, and this thought came and said, there must be a way that people can live in harmony. This little cocky voice of a six-year-old who doesn't know how complicated everything is—I’m going to find out how. So I was a born scientist, always figuring out how things work. It was also good for security because I was pretty insecure. I never knew what I could trust. Didn't feel safe.  Science is really good because it gives you predictability and control. So I got into science, and long story short, got into science, then biological science and psychology, then medicine. Only lasted a year because we were told to lie to people. They said a doctor should sound as though he knows what's going on even when he doesn't. We call that lying on the farm. I thought I was going to learn about health and life and soul and all of that because that's what those words mean—biology, psychology, medicine is about healthcare. Never learned about life, never learned about soul, never learned about health in university. I spent eight years there. Then I left. Then I took a whole lot of different trade jobs because I wanted to know what it was like to be in the shoes of the people doing those jobs. So I got a lot of practical experience—carpentry, painting, logging, mining, and all that kind of stuff. Eventually, I got married, and we had three kids. My marriage broke up, and I was really angry. So I took a job as a pesticide sprayer because the only reason we make pesticides is to kill living things. I wanted to kill something. So I took this job, and three years later, I was really careless and I got poisoned by pesticides. At that point, because I had a really good background in biochemistry, genetics, and biological sciences, I got really interested in health. When I went to the doctor and said, what do you have for pesticide poisoning? She said nothing. So I said, okay, I'm on my own. I used my background to dig into the research about nutrition and health, nutrition and disease, because the body's made out of food. It's also water and air, but I was just thinking food at that time. If the body's made out of food and something goes wrong, then if you raise your standard within one year, you can have rebuilt 98% of your body to a higher standard.  That's what healing is. That's what healing is. That's why healing is possible because your body is always turning over. The atoms in your body, 98% of the atoms in your body today, will have been removed and replaced if we meet on this date next year. 98%. The body is a major construction site, and you improve the construction by improving the building material. So I was looking at everything—minerals, vitamins, amino acids, fatty acids. Those are the essential nutrients that the body can't make and has to get from outside. There are 42 of them. I got stuck on fats because it was really contradictory, just like it is now. People saying, don't use C-DOLs, don't use omega-6s. I got a study that said omega-6 is an essential nutrient, which means you can't make it, you have to have it, it has to come in from outside. If you don't get enough long enough, you die. These are really important building blocks for health and body construction. But if your health is deteriorating because you're not getting enough, and you bring enough back before you die, then all of the problems that come from not getting enough are reversed because life knows how to use them to build a body that works, provided we take responsibility at our mouth to make sure they land in our body so life can use them. That's what essential means. The very next study I read says omega-6 gives you cancer and kills you. Literally, my head exploded. I was like, wait, it's essential for me to take so that it can give me cancer and kill me? There's got to be something wrong here. You can't have it both ways. So it was that contradiction that made me say, I must be missing something. This can't be. How can those both be true? There's something going on here. That made me look deeper into how oils are made. I found out that when oils are made, the way industry makes them, and this is true for all of the colorless, odorless, tasteless oils that you buy everywhere, they treat the oil with harsh chemicals, and then they heat the oil to frying temperature for half an hour. So this oil has been fried before it goes in the bottle, before they put it on the shelf for you to buy.  In that process, they treat them with sodium hydroxide and phosphoric acid, which are very corrosive—base and acid—then they bleach them with bleaching clays and deodorize them to get rid of the bad odor that develops. They do that at frying temperature for half an hour. So about half to one percent of the molecules of the oil are damaged by the processing. That was news. So I called the Oil Chemist Society, which is the umbrella organization for the oil industry, and said I want to talk to a researcher. They put him on the line, and I said to him, when you know that the way you process oil does damage to it, why do you do that? He said, well, one of the reasons we deodorize the oil—that's the high-temperature process for half an hour—is we can get rid of half the pesticides in the oil. My head exploded again because I got poisoned by pesticides, so this is not good news. I didn't even know at that time that there were pesticides in oils. Most people probably don't because they don't think about it. So I'm thinking to myself, what do you mean, the other half of the pesticides stay in the oil? I didn't say that to him, but I said, why don't you start with organically grown seeds? Then you don't have a pesticide poison problem that you need to deal with. I got a long silence at the other end of the phone. I waited. I don't know, it might have been only three seconds, but it seemed like three hours. Then he got back to me, and he was really angry. He said, I don't know what your problem is. The oil is 99% good. It's only 1% damaged. If you got 99% on an exam, you'd be damn happy, wouldn't you? He just went on a total power trip. So now I'm back in my office thinking, well, it's only 1%. Maybe I'm overreacting. I decided we had a saying in science when I studied it. When in doubt, do the math. Numbers don't lie, right? So I said, okay, if I have a tablespoon of an oil that is 1% damaged by the processing, how many damaged molecules will be in that tablespoon? I want to ask you that question because most people don't have a basis for making the estimate. Ashley James (0:25:14.528) I don't know how many molecules are in a tablespoon or a teaspoon of oil. Udo Erasmus (0:25:21.264) Exactly. And so give it a shot because you'll see why this is going to be very useful. Ashley James (0:25:26.800) Okay, ten million. Udo Erasmus (0:25:31.076) Okay, good job. 10 million has seven zeros, right? Okay. Would you like to know the actual number? You would have to add a six in the front and then you would have to add another 12 zeros. So it's 60 quintillion damaged molecules, which amounts to more than a million damaged molecules for every one of your body's 16 trillion cells in one tablespoon of an oil that is 1% damaged. Now, people use two to four tablespoons a day. There's pesticides in the oil. There's plastic in the oil because oil swells plastic, and plastic leaches into oils quicker than into water. Then if you use the oil for frying, you have to multiply that number by another three to six times because in the frying pan, you damage the oil further by oxygen, light, and heat all at the same time. Then you do that for 30 years. So you have to multiply that by another 11,000, the number of days in 30 years. That's how many damaged molecules that did not exist in nature you introduced to your body in those 30 years. Then the research says this damage increases inflammation and the risk of cancer. Then you get something and you say, I don't know why I got that. I always ate good. Because you never knew that, because the industry has never given that airtime. Nobody talks about the damage done by processing. So then out of that comes, we use these oils to do research—these damaged oils, the 1% damaged oils, right? Then we get negative effects in some of the research. Then instead of blaming the negative effects on the damage done to the oil by processing, people who haven't done all their homework blame that on the seed oils or the omega-6s. Then they go around and say, don't use seed oils, don't use omega-6s. Now, there's a lot of people saying that. None of those people have ever talked to me, and I have not been hiding. They make assumptions about what I'm doing that are completely off the wall. Then all the people who don't know either hear what somebody says who's loud. There's some very big loudmouths in the industry. They make noise, and then everybody who hasn't done their homework will parrot them. That's why right now everybody's saying don't use seed oils, don't use omega-6s. There haven’t been any books about them. Over the 40 years that I've been doing this work, there have probably been 15 books like that. Right now, there are several books like that, and they're making a lot of noise.  Fundamentally, you have to say these guys are blaming the oil for what should be blamed on the damage done either by processing or by food preparation because we wrecked them ourselves in a frying pan. None of these people have done their homework to look into why they're getting these negative effects. There's other issues too. We've lowered our omega-3 intake down to 1 sixth of what people got 150 years ago, and we've raised our omega-6 intake at least double, but maybe even 10 times as much as what people got 150 years ago. And so the balance between those two, they're both essential. You have to have them. The balance between them has to be right because they compete in your body. The body converts them into a whole bunch of really important molecules. But they use the same enzyme system to do that. So if you get too much of one, it will crowd out the other. Then you'll become functionally deficient in the one that's being crowded out. It's called function deficiency, which means you have it, but it ain't doing the work because it's being crowded out. It's being prevented from doing its work by the other one that you have so much of. If you have too much of the other one, then it'll crowd out the one. So they both have to be in the right ratio. Ashley James (0:30:18.118) I want to slow down for people who don't know what EFAs are, what essential fatty acids are. We've mentioned essential fatty acids. You use the word essential, and you said there are nutrients the body needs. There are 90 essential nutrients. We need omega-3 and omega-6. Those are the EFAs, essential fatty acids. The body can convert, if it has enough omega-3 and 6, it can convert to 9. I know you've got 3, 6, 9 as the EFAs. I'd love clarification on that because this is my understanding. Udo Erasmus (0:30:50.078) Essential fatty acids are two, omega-3 and omega-6. They're called alpha-linolenic acid—that's the omega-3—and linoleic acid—that's the omega-6. Out of those, the body makes a whole bunch of derivatives that we call essential fatty acid derivatives. Those include EPA and DHA that you find in fish oil and krill oil.  Fish oil is seriously damaged because those omega-3 derivatives are even more sensitive to damage by light, oxygen, and heat than the plant-based essential fatty acids themselves. The body makes omega-9 out of sugar and starch. The body can make saturated fats out of sugar and starch. So those are not essential. That's why they're not called essential. Ashley James (0:31:39.539) Got it. Essential because the body isn't deficient in it because those are something that's going to be in your diet no matter what, so it's not something you can become deficient in. Udo Erasmus (0:31:49.075) Well, no, no, no, no, no, it's not like that. It's that the body can make them out of other stuff. Essential, essential, yes, essential, exactly. Essential means that your body can't make it from anything else. So you have to get that thing from outside. Ashley James (0:31:56.538) Okay. So if the body can synthesize it, it's not as essential?  Udo Erasmus (0:31:59.731) Exactly. Essential means that your body can't make it from anything else. So you have to get that thing from outside. Ashley James (0:32:08.566) Vitamin C, like, cats, goats, and wolves can make their own vitamin C, and their body makes vitamin C. They'll never have scurvy. They're not going to be deficient in vitamin C. They don't need to get it in their diet. We can't make vitamin C. It's an essential vitamin. We have to get it from our diet. Udo Erasmus (0:32:25.572) Correct. And I was just going to say that plants don't need essential fatty acids because they can make them from scratch. They make them out of carbon dioxide and water. That's all you need, right? Carbon dioxide and water to make fats and plants make them from scratch. So we depend on plants to get them because we can't make them. Ashley James (0:32:47.578) Yes, and that's an important point because a lot of times people think, well, I get it from my salmon, but the salmon don't make them. The plants the salmon eat or the smaller fish. The smaller fish eat the algae, so the algae is a plant, and the plants in the ocean, and then the smaller fish eat that, and then the bigger fish eat them, and so on. The animals don't synthesize these omegas, they get them from the plants. So let's skip the middleman, go straight to the plant. Udo Erasmus (0:33:20.790) Yes, there are some fish that can make EPA and DHA out of alpha-linolenic acid, out of the plant omega-3. Those are usually plant-eating fish. The carnivorous fish get them from their diet. It's algae at the bottom of the food chain that make EPA and DHA. The krill eat the algae, the little fish eat the krill, and the big fish eat the little fish. The EPA and DHA made by plants work their way through the entire food chain by getting eaten by different creatures. The plants actually are the foundation of most of the fish oil too. Ashley James (0:34:14.487) There are other essential nutrients. You talked about minerals, vitamins, and amino acids, but you settled on oils because there's so much controversy and confusion. I want you to explain what the body does. Why is this so important? What does the body use these oils to make, and why is it so important that we make sure we get the healthy forms of oil and not the unhealthy forms of oil? We don't want to gunk up the system. You said if you eat the wrong kinds of fat, you end up starving your body of the healthy fats because it uses up the same enzymatic system. So what does the body need this fat for? Udo Erasmus (0:35:06.763) Okay, so let me go through that. Eighteen minerals, thirteen vitamins, nine essential amino acids that come from proteins, and two essential fatty acids are the forty-two essential nutrients. Again, you can't make them; you have to have them. They have to come in from outside. If you don't get enough for long enough, you die. If you're missing any one of these and you bring them back in adequate quantities while your health is deteriorating from getting too little, then all those problems will be reversed because your body knows—or life knows—how to make a body that works, provided you optimize your intake of all the essential nutrients that it requires, that life requires to make your body workable. So that's the essential nutrients. I was looking at all of that, but I got stuck on oils because of the contradictions. There was just so much misinformation, confusion, and I felt I needed to know it to get healthy. So what the body does with the essential fatty acids—once you have alpha-linolenic acid and linoleic acid, undamaged, made with health in mind, in the right ratio—your body makes derivatives from both of them. Some of them are hormone-regulating substances called eicosanoids or prostaglandins, prostacyclins, thromboxanes, and leukotrienes, and they regulate cell activity on a moment-to-moment basis from conception to demise. These are super important in the regulation of functions in all of your cells.  Not only that, the body also, especially out of omega-3s, makes substances called resolvins, which are very powerful anti-inflammatories. Resolvins resolve inflammation, meaning they make inflammation go away. Also, protectins, which are antioxidants that protect your cells from damage done by free radicals. Then there are maresins, which play a role in immune function, and endocannabinoids, which play a role in mood regulation. If you get your fats optimized—your intake optimized—and you get the essential fatty acids in the right ratio, they've been shown to increase IQ by three to nine points. They are required for mineral transport in your cells. They make your skin soft, smooth, and velvety because together, when you get them right, they form a barrier in the skin against moisture loss, which makes your skin soft, smooth, and velvety. If your skin is dry, you need more oil. You need more oil in winter than in summer because people notice their skin gets drier in winter. This happens because you burn more of these oils for heat in winter. Brain function—they're super important in brain function. If you take the dry weight of your brain, which means your brain with all the water pulled out of it, more than 60% of what remains is fat and it's omega-3 and six derivatives. DHA is the omega-3 derivative and arachidonic acid is the omega-6 derivatives. And those are part of brain structure and brain function. Let's see what else. They are super important in vision. The retina has a lot of DHA in it. That's the omega-3 derivative, and those are important for vision. Important in sperm formation. Super important in pregnancy because when a woman is pregnant, she needs to build  two brains. She needs to maintain her brain, and she needs to build a new brain in her womb because there's so much fat in the brain, if a woman isn't getting enough omega-3—and 99% of the population does not get enough omega-3 for optimum health—what happens? Women who don't get enough omega-3 in their diet, the child will take them out of her brain because nature says the child is the future, and mom is the past. So if we have to sacrifice mom for the kid, or the past for the future, then we will do that. And so that's one of the reasons why women get baby brain after they have a kid, or they get depression. And they've shown that every child depletes the mother further. Each child gets less than the previous child. That's why they think the oldest children, on average, have the highest IQ, and IQ goes down with birth order. And they also think it's why women get two to fifteen times more depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, collagen, inflammatory, and autoimmune diseases than men do. They think the depletion of essential fatty acids, particularly omega-3, that is the reason why women get those conditions so much more often. So they say it's super important for a woman to have enough essential fatty acids in her diet, both for her own health and for the health of her children. So it goes on and on. It makes your hair and your nails grow better. They'll grow about 25% faster if you optimize your intake. We've worked with athletes. If you give them a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day of the blend that we did the study with, which is Udo's Oil, within a month—within 30 days—if they did their sport to exhaustion, their performance improved by 40 to 60 percent on average. Then we took them off the oil to see what would happen, and they lost that extra edge. Then we put them back on, and they got the edge back. Then we were going to take them off again one more time, and they quit because they liked the energy they were getting—because they were competitive athletes. And so that ended the study. So we ran it, and we saw it twice—how taking the oil improved their performance, and going off the oil made their performance decrease. Especially in endurance sports, you want to run those. You want to do those on oil because if you carb load for a marathon, for instance, the carbs will only get you 20 miles, and a marathon is 26 miles. The person who did the most miles run in 24 hours—which was, I think, 152 miles—that's six marathons. One guy did that in 24 hours. He did that using that oil. Let's see, what else do they do? They're good for bone strength because they inhibit the bone breakdown cells. They help people build muscle faster. They increase stamina, but they also speed healing to a third to a half the time. They decrease inflammation very consistently. When people have joint pains, they get benefits from it. They increase energy metabolism and oxygen turnover. That's what gets you most of your energy, and your mitochondria. So they're super important for mitochondrial function. And if you damage the oils—and this is why the idea of making oils with health in mind is a big deal. The industry doesn't do that. But when you damage the oils, the damaged molecules never existed in nature. So they'll go where these oils are supposed to go in your body, and wherever they take up space in your body, they interfere with what's supposed to be going on there. And because they're everywhere—in your cells, in your cell membranes, in your organelles, and as an energy source—they're everywhere in your body. So they interfere with everything when you damage them. And 1% damage gets you more than a million damaged oil molecules for every cell in your body. That's a lot of cells. That'll change gene expression in the direction of disease. That's what oils do. The essential fatty acids also regulate gene function—probably 10% of the genes. So that’d be 2,300 genes. And when you damage the oils, you regulate gene expression in the wrong direction. So, I don’t know, have I missed any part of the body? Ashley James (0:44:56.246) Yes! Every cell wall in the entire body is made of this healthy fat. We have to think about the body—the body, as you said, makes the brain. It makes the myelin sheath, which is the insulation of the nervous system. Udo Erasmus (0:45:12.322) Yes, yes, yes. It's part of it. It's not the whole thing because you get saturated fats and monounsaturated fats in your membranes, in your myelin sheath as well. They play a very important role in all of that. Ashley James (0:45:24.022) Well, without it, it's incomplete. The body can't make healthy myelin if we're deficient in the omega fatty acids. Then the cell wall. So if you think about how, you said, if you're consuming the standard American diet, or even if you're just trying to consume a healthier version of the standard American diet, and maybe you're eating out once a week, and you're still eating some processed and packaged foods, you're going to be eating canola oil and safflower oil and some other soybean oil, whatever, all these oils, they're damaged. These damaged oils, if it is a million damaged molecules, we're going to put aside, we're just wiping aside the fact that there is a tremendous amount of manmade chemicals in these oils, plastics, hormone-disrupting, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, obesogens, all that stuff, we're just going to put that aside. Also, these chemicals drastically negatively impact the immune system and cause cancer. So we're just going to put that aside. Just let's talk about, let's say you're being health conscious and you focus on organic. It's organic canola oil. Okay. Well, still it goes through this process that they do when they make this canola oil or whatever, soybean oil, all these seed oils. Even I want to bring up avocado oil, but I'm going to finish this thought first, and that's that you have a cell, and I'm imagining one of your 37.2 trillion cells in your body. I'm just imagining one beautiful, brilliant cell in your body. Maybe it's a heart cell, maybe it's a liver cell, but the cell is really important. Here we have the membrane that the body needs to make. Make the membrane, and it needs to make the membrane, which is the outer shell of the cell, to protect the cell, make it healthy, keep it healthy. To keep a cell healthy, it has to be able to have those healthy receptors that it can take in the groceries and it can bring out the garbage. Cells that can't take in the groceries and bring out the garbage, and cells that can't have insulin attached to it and other hormones attached to it because the cell wall is damaged or inflamed because for every cell, there's a million damaged oil molecules floating around that it's trying to build. I love that you said construction site, because that's how I describe the body too. The body shows up every day and the workers show up to build the body. But if you don't bring the materials to the work site, the body is just going to build whatever you give it. It's going to try to build healthy cells. If you give it McDonald's, you're building the Homer Simpson of a body. You're building the stupidest, the worst health possible because you gave it, you gave it silly putty instead of lumber to build your house. Udo Erasmus (0:48:18.698) Yes, or you sent the workers to the construction site without the tools they need to do the construction. Ashley James (0:48:25.834) They just don't. They showed up, and the materials weren't there, and the tools weren't there. So you have the cell, and then there's the unhealthy fats. Back in episode 475, I had Dr. Patrick Vickers on. He has a cancer clinic, and he specializes in more holistic lifestyle medicine for supporting people who are choosing to go that route. A lot of times, unfortunately, people go the cut, burn, poison route, and it didn't work. Then they're a Hail Mary, they go to his clinic. But it's better to clean the body up first before you get that diagnosis. He talks about how important it is to choose the right kind of omega-3. He actually talks about flax oil and that flax oil has the correct charge that when you make a cell, when you make the cell membrane, and you give it, for example, unadulterated flax oil, it's never been heated, it's raw, hasn't been exposed to oxygen, really healthy flax oil, that it has the correct charge that the cell pulls in nutrients, but that the unhealthy fats have the opposite charge and they repel nutrients. I know I'm not being very scientific in my description of my memory of his explanation, but can you speak to that? I'd love for you to maybe explain that in a deeper sense. Udo Erasmus (0:49:46.246) Yes. So, okay. So one thing I forgot to mention, the essential fatty acids, especially the omega-3 that's too low in 99% of the population, also makes hormones work more effectively at the cell receptor level. They increase the speed at which the transfers of the hormones are done to have their regulating effects in the body. Also, that means when a person gets older and their glands become less efficient, they still maintain normal function for longer because with the essential fatty acids, the hormones just function better at the cell receptor level. That's actually a pretty big function.  The issue of the right and wrong fats, I want to say it differently than the way he said it. They're part of the structure of the membrane. They also, by the way, improve the absorption of oil-soluble nutrients, and they enhance flavors of foods. So it's another good reason why you want to have oil in your food. But you don't want to fry them. You want to add them to foods after they come off the heat. By the way, flax oil was the first oil I developed in 1986 after I developed a method for making oils with health in mind. That's really my claim to fame. I developed a method for making oils with health in mind so that light, oxygen, and heat don't damage the oils while they're being pressed, filtered, settled, and filled. Then we put them in glass bottles and put a box around them to cut the light out, and they're in the refrigerator. So we're giving oils that need the most care, the care they need. What we usually do with oils, the most sensitive nutrients, we throw them in the frying pan. So we actually give them the least care of any of our nutrients. Ashley James (0:51:54.252) Well, you and I don't throw them in the frying pan, but the average person uses oil to cook. I've been cooking oil-free for 13 years. I have so many friends ask me, how do you do that? They'll come over to my house and watch me cook dinner. They're like, how do you do that? How do you cook with no oil? It's so easy. Back when I started doing it 13 years ago, there weren't a lot of YouTube videos teaching you how to cook with no oil, but now they're everywhere. Just Google oil-free and then whatever recipe or oil-free cooking on YouTube. There are tons of recipes, but it's super, super simple. You can cook, yes, you can. I sauté, I get a good caramelization on my onions. I sauté, it's just a medium heat, and then you can add a spoonful of water at a time, and then you stir. There's just a way of getting the right heat, whether you're using cast iron, stainless, or ceramic, getting the right kind of heat. I don't use any kind of nonstick. I'm sure there are listeners who've never heard this before. You want to throw out, humanely recycle, or donate your nonstick pans. Anything that says nonstick or nonstick coating is incredibly unhealthy. It's better to use stainless steel, cast iron, or certain types of healthy ceramics that don't off-gas negative things. Udo Erasmus (0:53:18.639) Yes I tell people, get your frying pan, turn it upside down, hit yourself up the side of the head with it, then throw that stupid thing out, go back to cooking in water, and add oils to the food after it comes off the heat source.  Ashley James (0:53:34.375) Yes, or you could put it in a salad, or for the people who are athletes, they probably were just taking spoonfuls of it, drinking it right out of the bottle. Udo Erasmus (0:53:44.781) I don't recommend that because oil is usually with foods, but there are lots of people who take it by the spoon. I tell you why I don't recommend it. Occasionally, somebody will get in touch with me and say, I don't like the taste of your oil. I say to them, okay, how'd you take it? Well, I take it off a spoon. So then I say, when was the last time you took cooking oil off a spoon? I never do that. Well, why are you doing it with mine? Oils will never taste like ice cream. Ashley James (0:54:14.057) That's funny. I mixed it with a little bit of curry powder, and it was the most delicious thing ever. I can imagine putting it on a potato would be really good. But if you're putting it on hot food, isn't that hurting the oil, or does it matter? It's all going to the same place, your stomach. Udo Erasmus (0:54:30.263) Well, yes, the idea is you put the oil in the food just before you eat it. The heat of the food is not enough heat to do damage. When you do high temperature without oxygen and light present, if you do frying temperature, you actually turn the oil into trans fatty acids. But the heat of your food when you can eat your food, when it's cool enough to eat, you don't create trans fatty acids from that heat. All you do is speed up the rate at which light and oxygen damage the oil molecules. That's why you put it on before you eat it. You don't let it sit around. You don't keep it. You could make a soup and have oil floating on top of the soup, and you could keep it on the stove, and the oil would be damaged by the light and the heat. So you don't want to do that. You cook your food in water, then you take it off and put it in what you're going to serve it in. Then you put the oil on, then you serve it, then you eat it. Ashley James (0:55:41.339) The concept is that this is you're supplementing with a nutrient that your body is missing. But it's derived from food. It's a food source. So I'm going to be a little bit controversial and ask, cause this is what I, when I coach my clients, I say, try to get your healthy fats straight from a whole food source. Take flax, eat flax, chia, and eat some healthy seeds. So I'm just going to be a little controversial and ask, why take Udo's oil? Why not just eat flax seeds or chia seeds? Udo Erasmus (0:56:14.988) I have the perfect answer for you. People have said to me, we should just eat whole foods and we shouldn't do oils because that's how nature did it. Nature knows best. So then the question becomes, well, is optimum health nature's mandate? You can argue that. Here's how I looked at it. Nature wants you healthy enough to grow up. It wants you healthy enough to have kids. It wants you healthy enough to take care of the kids until the kids don't need you anymore. When the kids don't need you anymore, nature doesn't need you anymore. So you might be 40 at that point. If you want to cheat nature and live longer, then you might have to high-grade some of the essential nutrients. In order to test this thought, somebody saying, nature knows best, nature mandates longevity, so you do it with whole foods, I did a test on myself. I was in California for the summer, and I decided to get all of my oil from whole foods. So I was taking five tablespoons of flax and about three tablespoons of sunflower and sesame seeds. That gave me the same ratio that we have in the oil. But I was getting it only from whole foods, and I couldn't eat more seeds than that because flax will actually absorb water and swell to six times its size. So my five tablespoons or 30 tablespoons, that's a meal. Then I had my other three tablespoons. So I was getting the oil from that. Even in summer, when I need less oil than in winter, my skin was getting dry from just doing whole foods. So my deal is, listen, I'm not saying you should all take my oil and stop eating seeds and nuts. Seeds and nuts are good foods. Eat them. But if your skin is still dry, then add the oil to that. In winter, I couldn't even do it in summer. Some people might be able to because people's metabolism is different. But I couldn't even do it in summer. In winter, I need about four tablespoons. In summer, two to three. Even in summer, I couldn't keep my skin from drying out. If your skin is dry, you need more oil. You need more of the right kind of oil because skin gets it last and loses it first because it has super important functions in your heart, your liver, and your brain.  They get priority on the oil, and only when you have enough in all of those organs does it make it to your skin. So skin gets it last and loses it first. It's a good way to measure optimum. If your skin is soft, smooth, and velvety, you got enough. You don't need any outside gunk. People who use oil that way have remarkably beautiful skin. There are a lot of people in the beauty industry and the acting industry that use the oil just because it's really helpful for beauty as well as health. Ashley James (0:59:49.524) You brought up that the skin gets the nutrient last and loses it first because this is what I observed. I've been doing health coaching for 13 years, and I was mentored by two amazing naturopathic physicians and worked underneath them for the first few years with clients. What we observed was that when we took someone who was sick, for example, a heart condition or liver condition, and then we gave them all the essential nutrients and got them eating a healthier diet, their hair, skin, and nails did not improve immediately. It would be three to six months before they began to see any improvements in their hair, skin, and nails. It was consistent that we'd always see this. I thought that was interesting in how what they described to me was that the body does triage work. The body is so intelligent. It's this beautiful, innate intelligence. I love how God made us, that the body is not stupid. I mean, we're stupid. We think we're smarter than our body. We go out and eat McDonald's. I always pick on McDonald's, but honestly, if it has a drive-through window, don't go there because there's no place that's serving you homemade soup and steamed broccoli through a drive-through. If they were, I would be the first in line. There's zero healthy food you are going to find. I like that Wendy's has baked potatoes. When you try to build your body—and I love, I love—I almost started crying when you said at the beginning, you go, the body is made out of food, raise your standards. That is the most impactful thing out of over 500 episodes that anyone has ever said. You just summed up what true health is in one phrase. So what we have is we're going around thinking we're smart, thinking we're smarter than the body, and the body does this beautiful triage work. So when you start giving it the essential fatty acids, it's going to repair the heart first. It's going to repair the brain first. It's going to repair the vital organs first, and then the leftovers afterwards are going to go to the hair, skin, and nails. Skin's an important barrier to our health, but it's not beating our heart. It's not doing the work of the liver, the heart, or the things that are keeping us alive right now. So when all the vital organs have been fully saturated, have been fully bathed in these nutrients, then the leftovers get to the skin. The skin is this amazing mirror of what's going on. When your skin starts to get better, that means all the other organs got it too, got all those nutrients too. With skin, I like to talk about how there's skin on the outside of the body, but think about all the skin on the inside that we don't see. Our lungs are made of epithelial tissue. Our entire digestive system, from our lips all the way to the other end, is made of epithelial-type tissue. So if you have this kind of dermatitis or you have rashes and inflammation and scratchy, itchy skin on the outside just imagine what's going on the inside. I've actually had a client. We 100% reversed her out-of-control adult-onset asthma by increasing her omegas, increasing her omega fatty acids. That is the true testament to increasing your healthy omega-3 and, as you said, the healthy ratios of three, six, and nine.  The body didn't have a deficiency in drugs. The body had a deficiency in the raw building blocks. When we get those raw building blocks back in, then the body can come back into balance. But if you go to an MD, we have to remember they've been trained by the pharmaceutical company. The pharmaceutical companies developed their education over the last 100-plus years. Udo Erasmus (1:03:48.618) Yes, they write the medical curriculum, and they basically train doctors to be drug pushers. But no one has ever died of a pharmaceutical drug deficiency. The body in nature was always made out of food, water, air, and light. That's it. There were no drugs. How did the plants stay healthy? How did the animals stay healthy? Because the plants made the protective molecules. When you eat the plants, you get the protection that the plant made for itself. They didn't know that it protects you as well. We came out of nature. We're still part of nature. That's never going to change. We are never going to be adapted to get better health from unnatural molecules than from natural molecules. That's crazy. Going to say something about the skin. Dry skin—skin gets it last and loses it first. Yes, the reason why the skin gets it last is that you can live with dry skin, but if your liver, kidneys, or heart dried out, you'd be history. So you can live with dry skin. That's why the skin gets it last, and that's why the body dies from the outside in, in that sense. Optimizing intake is so easy to measure. How does my skin feel? Skin feels good. Yes, I noticed the cold weather came. My skin is dry. Okay, take a little more oil. It's always by that that we measure optimal intake. Ashley James (1:05:39.512) Now, not all fat is created equal. We've sort of scratched the surface of that. But there are people who are doing the carnivore diet, which I'm just going to say, if we really look at the history of dieting, it is a recycled Atkins diet. Every 20 years or so, we kind of recycle this concept of low carb, low carb. We also have in the diet movement, again, at least 10,000 diet books out there. It's just madness. I really love the book How Not to Diet by Dr. Michael Greger because it's not a diet book. He goes through about 5,000 studies, and it is wonderful. I've spent months going through this book. I'm still not done because it is so detailed and so wonderful, but it's all about, let's look at the science. Don't listen to fads. Let's look at the science and let the science do the talking. Let's also compare the science when the science doesn't make sense. When there are two opposing studies, let's go deeper. That's what he does with that book. I had him on the show a few years ago, and a really good book to dive into—is Proteinaholic by Dr. Garth Davis. Wonderful, very cathartic for me to go through. It cleared up a lot of misunderstandings around the diet industry. There are some people who are finding that, for example, keto, Atkins, restricted paleo, low-carb paleo, and now carnivore are all very similar. Majorly restrictive, not 100% restrict, anything to do with plants, and eat 90 to 100% animals. They're getting a lot of fats. They're getting a lot of animal fats. They're cooking sometimes on high heat—think barbecue or roasting—these animal fats. Because you're an expert in understanding fats from the nutritional standpoint, what's the difference between an animal fat—taking a steak and maybe cooking it on a somewhat high heat with butter and getting a nice caramel, how you can get those heterocyclic amines and acrylamides going with the high heat—so eating that, or eating that bacon and those eggs, cooking, maybe getting the eggs a little crispy, getting the bacon a little crispy. So you're eating that fat versus a cold-pressed organic flax oil that hasn't been adulterated by heat, oxygen, or light. What's the difference to the body? Udo Erasmus (1:08:20.196) Well, first of all, if you get your fat from steak, it's mostly saturated and monounsaturated. Steak is not a good source of essential fatty acids. A cow has some essential fatty acids in her brain, but you're not eating the brain. You're eating the muscle. So that's not a good source of essential fatty acids. The thing is, you can live without saturated fats because your body can make them and the monounsaturated because your body can make those, the omega-9s, your body can make those.  To me, the carnivore diet and the high-protein diets, I know some people who claim that that's all they eat and that's what keeps them healthy and that's what cured them of some problems they had. I don't argue with that. If it gives you results, go for it. But I'd like to talk to those people who claim to do that. First of all, I'd like to see if they're really doing that. The second thing is because people lie about stuff too. The second thing is I'd like to see them in five years or 10 years or 20 years because it might be for a short time that might actually be useful and could be therapeutic for certain people with certain conditions. But long-term sustainable, I have some doubts. I know I can't do it. But I don't argue with results. If they're getting results, good for you. People are different in how well they metabolize protein and how well they metabolize fats and how well they metabolize carbs. I would say that the keto diet doesn't work long-term sustainable, mainly because they don't pay attention to the essential fatty acids. Because all the keto diets, and even the coffee fat diet, yes, what are they using? They're using butter, which is mostly saturated, monounsaturated, and then they're using coconut oil, and it's a fraction of it. Those fats are okay, but not instead of essential fatty acids, because essential fatty acids are the only thing from fats that you have to have. So you need to give that priority. Once you've optimized your intake of the essential fatty acids, undamaged and in the right ratio, then you can add other fats, and they just become fuel for you, but they're not required. If you look at nature's mandate for creatures that eat fresh, whole, raw, organic, local, and probably for human beings, more plant-based than animal-based. That wasn't true everywhere in the world because where they had herds of buffalo, they ate a lot of meat. But generally speaking, the high-animal food diets are not associated with longevity. Ashley James (1:11:35.411) The important point is how our ancestors ate. Why do we think that how we ate 2,000 or 5,000 or more years ago is somehow better? Maybe because they didn't have McDonald's then, but that doesn't mean that they were living longer or they were living with less disease. Udo Erasmus (1:11:56.710) Well, the Inuit had a pretty short life, and they were eating pretty much just meat diets. But in those meat diets, the animals had a little bit of vitamin C in them, but they had no plants. So they probably died of strokes and heart, burst blood vessel strokes. Well, vitamin C is very important to make your connective tissue strong. So they died from scurvy basically. What is a diet that works? When we were subsistence living, we were just starving half the time. You had to learn to be able to digest whatever you got. Plants were easier to get than animals because animals run away or they fight. When the hunters had only rocks to hunt with, they came home without meat most of the time. So then if they came home without meat, they ate vegetables because vegetables don't run away, they don't fight, so they're easy to hunt down and kill. So you have to take into consideration what life was before we became food affluent. Now what we do is we're stupid. 70% of the food that people eat in North America is ultra-processed food. Ashley James (1:13:26.186) It's not even food. It's so weird. You look at the packet. I dare you to bring your reading glasses. I'm sorry I'm calling you guys out. My husband has to wear reading glasses now. I have needed glasses since I was 16 to see long distances. I am so grateful that I can see close up because I am the label reader, and I challenge you, if you need to bring a magnifying glass with you to the grocery store, just attach it to your purse or whatever, attach it to your keychain, bring it into the grocery store with you. If anything you put in your cart has more than one ingredient, for example, this is a bag of broccoli. I don't need to check the ingredients. It's broccoli. So single-ingredient foods, you don't have to check anything. In a package that has more than one ingredient, look at the ingredients. If you don't know what that is, if it's monosodium glutamate and hydroxy, lalalala, and just these weird words, if there are weird words that your eight-year-old can't pronounce when they're reading the label, don't put it in your cart. Why are we eating things that we don't know? These are like Latin words. They're not describing broccoli in Latin terms. These are chemicals that were made in a factory. Why do we think that's okay to give the workers in our body, to give the carpenters these building blocks that the body doesn't know what to do with? The body's like, what is this? It kind of looks like that, but it doesn't function like that. Okay, well, we're going to put it there, and then the house falls down. Udo Erasmus (1:15:08.393) I'm 82, so I should be an old guy who's drooling onto his lap. I'm not. But I pretty much have gone gradually in the direction of fresh, whole, raw, organic. I eat most everything raw. Not everything. I eat lots of seeds and nuts. So I don't just use oil, I use seeds and nuts, but I tank up with the oil. I actually mix it in tahini, my oil in tahini. I dump the tahini oil, and then I put a ton of spices in it like cloves, and you were talking about curry, cinnamon, and cayenne. I have all kinds of herbs and spices because they are nature's medicine. Some of those spices—turmeric, cloves, amla, garlic, I use them all the time. Some of those spices are anti-inflammatory, anti-cardiovascular, anti-cancer, anti-diabetes, and antioxidant. I mean, they have so many health-giving properties. Antiviral, antimicrobial, antibacterial. I mean, honestly, dare the medicine. I only came to that much later than I came to oils. But my God, I have lots of energy, and I still work all day, and I have these conversations all the time, and I'm still doing research, and I'm actually writing two books—one on the nature of human nature and the other one on total global sacred sexy health. Ashley James (1:17:19.935) My gosh. I want you to come back on this show. Got to have you come back, and we got to talk more about your books. Udo Erasmus (1:17:28.071) Yes, based on nature and human nature. It's always from health is based on nature and human nature. If you live out of line with nature, you're going to not do well. If you're going to live out of line with your nature, you're not going to do well. That's where illness comes from. It's being out of line with nature and or your nature. We've been here for 200,000 years. We still do not have a teachable field of health because our healthcare is actually not healthcare. It's disease management misrepresented as healthcare. So when I was in medical school for that one year, I went to the Dean because we were only learning about disease. I went there because it's healthcare. I want to know what health is. Because if I know what health is, I know what to do to help somebody get healthy. Seemed a pretty good way to spend your life, getting people healthy. I said to him, what is health? He said, we don't know, we're working on it. But they're not working on it because they're always focused on disease. Ashley James (1:18:35.283) Because that's where the money is. There's no money in making and keeping people healthy and preventing disease. I grew up in Canada. I know you're in Canada. It's socialized medicine. My gosh, there are people in America that want socialized medicine. I got to tell you, both systems are broken and on purpose. In Canada, the whole system is how do we save the most amount of money? So they might reject certain procedures. For example, anytime I had an accident growing up that we suspected a break. Once I broke my growth plate in my ankle when I was 12 or 13 years old, and I think I was about 12, I had to get some x-rays. I got two x-rays, two only. In Canada, you only need two x-rays. Anytime they suspected a bone break, because I was a very active kid, being active, so of course I fell down, I got bumps, I injured myself, and I bounced back really fast. I got a lot of x-rays as a kid. I just loved being physically active. I was hanging upside down on the monkey bars and doing all the stuff. So anyway, the point being, anytime in Canada that we thought it was a break, it was two x-rays only, never three, never more than three. Came down to the States. I was in my early twenties. I tripped in a gas station. It was really weird how all the hoses were everywhere and I didn't see the hose. I tripped. I felt really bad, twisted my ankle, and thought, for sure, this is a broken ankle. It's so painful. This is in the States now. They took me to the hospital. I lost count of how many times they took x-rays. It's just an ankle. I grew up going, two x-rays. One, you get the top side, and you get the side. That's all you get. They must have taken over 12. I was like, what is going on? Then it occurred to me, okay, America's for-profit system, they're going to profit off of how many x-rays they take of my foot. It's not about getting the appropriate amount. It was really the 12th one that we figured out it wasn't a break. In Canada, it's how can we save money, also not necessarily serving the person because they're looking at cutting costs. Neither system helps you because they're not putting you first. Udo Erasmus (1:20:56.146) I think there's another issue. Okay, so we have socialized medicine in Canada, and in the U.S., some people want socialized medicine. But the thing is, it's not healthcare. It's all disease management. We don't need socialized disease management. We need healthcare. If it was real healthcare based on a definition of health that is practical and can be put into action, then I think socialized medicine that keeps everybody healthy and when somebody gets some big problem, everybody helps to make them healthy again. I'm comfortable with that. It's a socialist thing. But honestly, there are certain things. Education is kind of socialist anyway. But I'm good for certain things that everybody gets covered. But it's got to be the truth. It can't be some bullshit that parades as truth. When disease management is called healthcare, you're getting lied to by the people who do disease management. Ashley James (1:22:07.758) When the drug companies are the ones that can lobby, and I've seen, I don't know a ton about politics, but I loosely watch it. I remember when Bill Clinton came in and his wife, Hillary, tried to do something good around children's health and getting the school lunches healthier. She tried. Then all of a sudden, all the lobbyists came in. How dare you try to take pizza and chocolate milk? How dare you reduce sugar and candy from the diet of these school children? It got vetoed. I saw it happen again and again. I know Michelle Obama tried to do it, and every single presidency, they try with good intentions. Someone tries to lower the sugar that's being sold to children in the school lunches, and the lobbyists come in and make sure that all the sugar stays in there. We're not serving our population. We're not actually helping our population because we allow for corporations where profit comes first over health. Why do we have to have commercials for food? That's something that I brought up. You'll never see a commercial for broccoli, right? Broccoli is so good for you. No, it's always “milk does a body good.” We have been lied to. I grew up taking in this information without question, without a critical faculty to block it. Children take in this information, and they go through the aisles trusting that what's in their cereal box is good and what's being served to them—this ultra-pasteurized milk is good. What's being served to them in the schools is healthy when it is absolute garbage. It's destroying their health.  The same goes for our healthcare system when we can't know the truth about our health because there's lobbying. That's why we have to come to the podcast and listen to interviews like this with guests like you to start Learn and question. We can't trust what we're fed by the media and by the government because the corporations that profit from us buying what they sell and profit from us staying sick are going to push that information.  Tell me about how we can dive deeper with you. You have your website. I wanted to ask also, do you have any recipes? Because you talked about what you do with tahini and your Udo's Choice Oil. The Omega oil, and you mix it with your tahini and add some seasoning. Do you have recipes on your website? Do you have other books that you'd recommend? What other kind of resources can we start to go down this rabbit hole with you? Udo Erasmus (1:25:07.500) I have a book that's called Omega-3 Cuisine: Recipes for Health and Pleasure. I worked with a chef to put that together. He did most of the work, actually. But he made recipes using Udo's oil. I think there's 140 recipes, and only one doesn't use Udo's oil. So that book is the only book I have that's easily available. I kind of just tinker in the kitchen. It's play. The only advice your mother gave you that you should not follow is “don't play with your food.” Because if you don't play with your food, how are you going to find out what works for you and what doesn't work for you? So play with your food. If you mix two spices and it doesn't work, your tongue will let you know. Then you won't do it twice. Ashley James (1:26:13.436) Don't give up; I think that's really important because I love the Instant Pot. It's my favorite kitchen appliance. I think my second favorite is the Vitamix. I've been using Vitamix since I was eight years old. We had the original one growing up in our household. I love my Vitamix. We had the metal one. I don't know if it was the very first Vitamix, but it was the 80s version. I remember making soups in it. I just loved it. I love playing with it, but I have a Vitamix today and the Instant Pot. I love the Instant Pot. I tell people, get it, try it. So many people come back to me and say, I burned something once and I just gave up. I burned things too when I started, but I didn't give up. It's okay, you just find different recipes. Try it. Just start with something simple. Try making lentils. Go find a recipe. Make lentils, just do something simple, and then you can build from there.  I've made the coolest stuff in that Instant Pot. For me, I'm multitasking, and then I walk away from the stove, and all of a sudden, I smell burning. No, I forgot we were cooking something on the stove. With the Instant Pot, that doesn't happen because you set it and forget it, then you've got a meal. At one point, I had three Instant Pots back when we had a bigger kitchen, a bigger house. I had three Instant Pots. I did most of my cooking because I had a whole grain in one or a starch, I should say, because I do sweet potatoes, potatoes, yams, brown rice, white rice, millet, quinoa. I'd pick a starch, so I'd rotate all the different kinds of starches. Then I'd have a protein in the other. It could be any kind of bean or any kind of lentil. Again, dozens of varieties, so it never gets boring. Then the third, I would quickly steam some kind of vegetable or sauté some kind of mixture of vegetables. Then I would have some kind of topper. You could mix some Udo's oil with some tahini, lemon, garlic, cayenne, and ginger and call that good, or add a bit of curry powder and call that good. There are all kinds of different things that I'd top it with. That was it. That was called bowls. We would open up the Instant Pots and have some kind of topping. Maybe the topping was just salsa. I do a three-day fermented pico de gallo. The recipe's in my book I'm Addicted to Wellness. I'll send you the recipe if you want. It's amazing. But I would top it with something like that. It was the easiest way to cook dinner. Usually, what I would do is make enough for lunch and dinner. You don't get bored of it, especially if you have a few options for toppers. But that was it. All you have to do is have a smoothie or some fruit for breakfast, then throw things in the Instant Pot, and you've got lunch and dinner. Then you've got some leftovers to travel with the next day if you're leaving the house. It was the simplest way. I ended up losing 80 pounds doing that. It was the quickest, easiest way to cook in the kitchen. I didn't have to use my brain. It didn't take up a lot of energy, yet the whole family loved it, and it was super nutritious, super dense nutrition. I didn't have to buy packaged foods.  So there's a way that you can figure out how to cook that serves you, but you have to be willing to burn a few things. You have to be willing to play in the kitchen. That doesn't taste good? Okay, I'm not going to do that again. It's okay. Don't let that failure dictate your future. Let it motivate you to find the flavors that are good together. I was prone to burning things in the kitchen until I dialed it in. You can too. It's just a matter of playing. I love that you said that. It's funny—my son does that. He plays in the kitchen. He invents things. Udo Erasmus (1:30:10.986) Cooking is like learning to walk. When you were a little kid, first you were just rolling on your stomach, then you turned over on your back, then you got on all fours, then you started to stand up, and you fell down. You didn't quit. So cooking is like that. You're going to fall into schnoz. I saw one of the television cooks. She made something on the show, then she tasted it and said it didn't taste good, and she just dumped it in the garbage. On the show! Why is there so much variety in taste? Well, it's for your entertainment. Nature is so kind to you that you can play with it. Play with it. Different people have different preferences in taste. You figure out what is yours. In India, everybody has a different curry recipe. Every family has their own curry recipe, and some of them are really very different from each other. Ashley James (1:31:23.062) So true. You'd mentioned that you're 82. I just want to say that my mother-in-law, my dear mother-in-law, and we moved to live close to her. We were a three-minute walk from her house. She is turning 82 today. So I'm just wishing her a happy birthday. We're actually, after this interview, going to go and spend the rest of the day with her. But I just love that you guys are the same age, and that I'm going to have her listen to this episode because I want her to hear wisdom. I'm definitely going to gift her a bottle of your 369, the Udo's 369. So the only product I think I've ever used of yours is the Udo’s, the Omega blends, but you have different products. What are your most favorite that you have observed make the biggest difference in people's lives? Udo Erasmus (1:32:22.738) Well, after I did oils, I said, okay, what's next? I went to digestion because everybody's got stuff going on with the digestive system. So how do you make it work? Digestive enzymes, probiotics, fiber, and bitters. That was the next thing that I looked at. I work with digestive enzymes and probiotics, and take them every day. Even though I eat raw food, I still take enzymes because even people who eat just raw foods found that when they took enzymes with their raw food, they worked better for them than if they did the raw foods without enzymes. Raw foods already have enzymes in them that do part of the digestion for you. So that's why it's good. Ashley James (1:33:04.890) I like what you're pointing out is that there are two ways of thinking. One way is don't think at all, just go eat McDonald's, and then you live to maybe 65, have a heart attack, die. I tell my listeners, if you want to be a statistic, look at what people are dying from, look at how, and before they die, look at the quality of their life. I have a friend whose husband is in his early 40s. This year, he suffered a heart attack and then he just broke his hip. He's in his 40s. He also has unmanaged diabetes and he's miserable. He's miserable. The doctors were really scared. They're saying, you're not recovering. You're acting like someone in your 80s or 90s, someone really sick. You're a very healthy 80-year-old. This man never took care of himself and he has a food addiction, unfortunately. But this is what's happening to those who are just not thinking—the unconscious. Udo Erasmus (1:34:08.152) Yes, well, when I was 38, I got poisoned by pesticides. That was 38. Literally, if I walked around a city block, I had to sit down and rest. I was an 80-year-old at that point. I had arthritis in my knees. I got no problem with any of my joints. I'm 82 now. What came from it when I got poisoned, that was my wake-up call. So I started paying attention and put things into practice over the course of a few years. Now I pay attention to what my body tells me and what I know about how nature works. I'm 82 and I have no pain in my elbows, no pain in my shoulders, no pain in my knees, no pain in my hips. You can be 82 and not have any degenerative conditions, any pain, or any inflammation. I have lots of energy. Still do gardening jobs. I take trees down. In the city where I live, I have quite a bit of—it's a co-op that I live in. I do quite a bit of the gardening whenever it's needed. Ashley James (1:35:19.358) Love it. So the three schools of thought around food. Don't think about it. Just eat the way everyone's eating and basically suffer the way everyone's suffering. Get on a bunch of drugs. That's the unconscious people or the people who say my doctor knows what's best. Udo Erasmus (1:35:32.551) Or the people who think that suffering will open the door to heaven for them and  maybe we shouldn't close the door on them. Ashley James (1:35:40.357) Well, I think there's something to learn from our suffering, but I think we need to make better choices because suffering is optional. The second choice is, well, I should eat as close to nature as possible because that's the key. Your third choice, and I love this idea, is to eat as close to nature as possible and then optimize it. You bring in the enzymes, bring in the minerals and the vitamins, bring in the things that optimize. The bricks are the food, and the mortar is the addition of everything we can do to optimize. To call it biohacking, I'm sure you've heard that term, but optimize without adding too much that it then hinders the body. I have a friend who for years had to avoid gluten only to find out she wasn't allergic. She had highly allergic reactions. She finally figured out it wasn't the gluten; it was the folic acid, the man-made synthetic folic acid that she was incredibly allergic to. She can eat wheat berries, for example. Organic wheat berries have zero health problems, but if she ate some fortified bread, which most flours are fortified with, even gluten-free flours, they're fortified with folic acid, then she'd become very unhealthy. We have to take into account that if we're adding things, even if we're buying processed food that has additives, even though it's quote-unquote fortified, it can be fortified in a way that's not helping you.  Udo Erasmus (1:37:15.493) Yes, and some gluten sensitivities, some wheat sensitivities are actually from the glyphosate that they put on the grains. Ashley James (1:37:23.369) Exactly. Yes, we have to understand that sometimes there are things in the product that aren't necessarily on the label, like glyphosate. They're not going to disclose how much Roundup is in your flour, or there are anti-caking agents, like bromine or bromide. They don't necessarily disclose that because it's an industry standard. In ice cream, when you buy ice cream from the store, there is a food-grade antifreeze that they add to ice cream. That's why, have you ever made your own homemade ice cream and you put it in the freezer and it's rock solid? You're hammering it with a spoon, and you have to leave it out on the counter before you can scoop it. Whereas if you go to the grocery store, even out of a deep freezer, and you start scooping ice cream, even if it's coconut ice cream, it's going to immediately turn into this beautiful scoop. It doesn't freeze. That's because they put food-grade antifreeze. Well, I don't want to eat food-grade antifreeze. That doesn't sound like something my body 5,000 or 10,000 years ago went through, like the garden of Eden, picked an apple, and then drank some food-grade antifreeze with that. The body doesn't know what to do with all this crap. We're basically trash pandas. If you think about how we treat our body, we're dumpster diving. The cells of our body are, what, are we in a dumpster? We're just dumpster diving, just random chemicals. But this is how we eat. If we come back to eating as close to nature as possible and then supplementing, I love that you talked about enzymes and bitters. I love bitters. I love how my body reacts to bitters in such a positive way because it gets that liver and the pancreas going, gets the digestive system activated. I love that you brought up enzymes. I've helped so many clients get their digestion back simply by adding enzymes and then getting in the minerals and adjusting the diet. Then everything comes back online. A lot of times, heartburn goes away because it was a lack of the body's ability to make pepsinogen and excrete pepsinogen. So when you get everything back online, then the heartburn goes away. Udo Erasmus (1:39:32.175) Yes, well, how it goes. It's health. Health is the result of living in line with nature and your nature. When you get out of line, it shows up. When you get back in line, you get your health back. It's not that complicated. Ashley James (1:39:45.451) There's a big craze. We talked a little bit about how the MCT oil, that's coconut oil, is fractionated, and it's not a great source of omega-3s, but avocado oil. Udo Erasmus (1:39:57.387) There's no omega-3s in it at all. Ashley James (1:39:59.463) Right. So avocado oil has come on the market the last few years, and now everyone's saying that's the new olive oil. You got to cook with your coconut oil. Can you speak to what avocado oil is and why we shouldn't be cooking with it? In general, why we shouldn't be taking in avocado oil? Udo Erasmus (1:40:17.939) We shouldn't be cooking with oils because oils cook at a high temperature. You burn the food. The burnt is toxic. So if you burn carbs or you burn protein or you burn oil, all three of them get you increased inflammation and increased risk factor independent of each other. Okay. So overheating food is bad for you. So fried oils fry health. That's my slogan. Fried oils fry health. You go to a football game and you chant, fried oils fry health, fried oils fry health, fried foods fry health, fried foods fry health. That's why I say to people, bang yourself on the head with your frying pan and throw that stupid thing out because it's going to kill you. Frying is the worst thing we've ever invented to do to food as long as we've been on the planet. It is the dumbest thing we've ever invented if health is the goal. Obviously, then people say, I love the taste of burnt food. No, you don't. If you scrape that burnt stuff off of the food you burnt and you eat it, it's bitter, scratchy, acrid, and it tastes disgusting. When you fry your foods, usually, how do you get the taste into those burnt foods? Well, you add spices that are mostly from vegetables. I think it's really dumb. Raw is nature's mandate. If you cook in water, you already lose something. If you fry, you not only lose some of your nutrients, you actually create poisons that never existed in nature. So frying is the worst. Then head in the direction of frying less, cooking more. Cooking, by the way, when I was a kid, meant in water. Now when we say cooking, we usually mean in oil. One was called frying and deep frying—that was with oil. Cooking was with water. It's now that when you say cooking, it includes frying. So go from frying to cooking in water, and then go from cooking in water to more raw. Make sure it's not contaminated because if it's contaminated, you have to cook it, or you should throw it out.  Ashley James (1:42:46.702) What do mean by contaminated? Udo Erasmus (1:42:48.343) Bacteria Ashley James (1:42:50.819) How do you choose what you cook and what you don't cook and what you eat raw? Udo Erasmus (1:42:58.295) What I do is I get organic and I wash it under water. If I have broccoli, I eat my broccoli raw. I dip it in the tahini, and I run it under hot water. So it gets a little bit of heating that actually improves its nutritional value. A short, short heating. And if it's organic and I've washed it under hot water, I've never had a problem with contamination. But if you have—especially meat—when the cows stand in their own feces and urine in a feedlot and only get corn for food, and then they get antibiotics and pesticides and other gunk that they put into the animals, then the meat is very easily contaminated. So meat is more of an issue for making sure that it's not contaminated. Ashley James (1:44:07.701) There's an amazing documentary to watch on Netflix called Poisoned: The Dirty Truth About Your Food. It came out last year. I saw it with my family, and we were in shock. It's really, really worth watching. I know it sounds kind of depressing, but it was actually really interesting. Udo Erasmus (1:44:24.437) It's always better to know than not to know. Ashley James (1:44:27.243) Absolutely. I've never had food poisoning from vegetables. I mean, knock on my sunlight and sauna. It's made of wood here. But in my past, I've had food poisoning from seafood or pork. I eat plant-based now, and it's been years. Again, I'm going to praise God that I have not. I am staying healthy. I'm not having food poisoning, but yes, there's always a chance. They talk about some spinach being taken off the market or something, and you have to wash your food. There are ways of doing it. I did an interview a few years ago with a woman who sells these, and I bought one. It's great. I use it. You can make your own ozone water safely and then rinse your plants in ozone water. There are different things you can do. I kind of do what you do—I rinse my foods, and then that's it. Udo Erasmus (1:45:28.995) Yes, and again, the spices that I use with the food help also, right? Yes. Ashley James (1:45:34.331) True, because when you think about India, there's definitely a medicinal reason why the food is so spicy there. There’s such depth of flavor, and so many medicinal spices. Is that because they're antimicrobial? So should the meat have some bacteria overgrowth, you're combating it with that. It's kind of like if we were to take antibiotics every time we ate some food. You ate some pork, and then you took some drug to counteract the potential bacteria or the bacteria's toxins. But instead of going drug-based, I'm so glad that pharmaceutical companies haven't figured that out yet—how to insist that we need to take some drug every time we eat meat to prevent food poisoning, because you know they would, because they love to sell you some kind of drug every day. But that's what India does, right? They use all these wonderful spices that enhance. Udo Erasmus (1:46:30.073) Yes, and India never built the hygiene that we built in the West, so they're much more prone to it, but they live,  they don't have outbreaks of food poisoning, and why is that? Because of the way they prepare their foods. It's simple. It's lentils and dal and lots of vegetables and lots of spices. Turmeric is probably the world's best spice. It's in the ginger family. So turmeric and ginger are huge.  So avocado, my view is to eat the avocados. Try and get them organic if you can. The oil is very popular now. I think they make it out of rotten avocados, and there are no standards for it. There are standards for oils, but they're bad standards. If you read the research, standards have been suggested for avocado oil, but the avocado oil industry has not set standards.  Ashley James (1:47:44.730) Do they still do the thing that you talked about where they heat it for half an hour and add chemicals to it? Can you talk about that? Udo Erasmus (1:47:50.206) Yes, yes, well, it's the same with all the oils. They treat them with sodium hydroxide, which we know as Drano in our house. That's what we burn the clogged sink pipes with. So sodium hydroxide, then phosphoric acid, which is used to clean windows commercially. Then we bleach them with bleaching clay. So then they go rancid and smell bad. Then we have to deodorize them or de-stinkerize them because they smell bad. Then you have an oil, colorless, odorless, tasteless. You can't tell what it came from because all the flavor molecules of whatever made the oil, whatever seed or nut made the oil, the flavor molecules are gone. The color molecules are gone. Colorless, odorless, tasteless. Then they say, yes, and you can use it for frying. So it's already wrecked, and now you wreck it more. So I eat avocados pretty much every day. I really love them. I never use the oil. I don't have, actually, the only oil I have in my house is my oil. Because I know what's in there. I know what it is. I know the quality. I trust the quality because literally, nobody takes care of oils the way we do. And it's just, why is that? Because they need the oil. If you want a really good oil, you need to care for it, to protect it from light, oxygen, and heat. In glass, in a box, in the fridge, in the factory, in the store, in the fridge, in the fridge at home, and you basically use it on foods after they come off the heat. Ashley James (1:49:32.825) You have three different oil blends. Can we talk about the difference between the three? Also, I don't know if this is a patented process, but could you walk us through what you can share? Could you share what you do differently that other supplement companies don't do? For example, do you do it in a nitrogen chamber? Do you process? I understand there's probably some proprietary information, but get into the details of what you can share. What makes Udo's Oil different from other supplement companies? Udo Erasmus (1:50:03.501) When I realized how much damage is done to oils after I got poisoned, I said, I can't get healthy on oils like that. We should make them with health in mind because the industry makes the oils with shelf life in mind. Oils by nature have a short shelf life because they're super sensitive to damage by light, oxygen, and heat. So they figured out if they take out parts of it, they can stabilize the oil. Then they nitrogen flush it. Everybody does that. So you don't have oxygen in the headspace in the bottle in the oil because the oil will react with the molecules and make them rancid. The industry did that. I said, well, I can't get healthy on damaged oils. We should make them with health in mind. How do you do that? Well, if they're damaged by light, oxygen, and heat, you have to make sure that no light, oxygen, or heat or high temperature is— I can explain that in a second— gets to the oil from the time it's close to the seed in nature's packaging, which is pretty good. They found flax seeds 5,000 years old in caves in Switzerland, got those oils out, planted them, and they grew into flax plants. 5,000 years. So nature's packaging is pretty good. So from the time it's in nature's packaging through the whole process until it's in the brown glass bottle, nitrogen flushed with a box around it in the fridge, no light, no oxygen should be able to get to the oil, and the heat needs to be low. The reason for that is that you have to get to 160 degrees Celsius or 320 degrees Fahrenheit before the heat damages the oil and starts creating trans fatty acids. Then exponentially makes more of them as the temperature goes up from there. So you want to keep it below 160, and we actually do it somewhere between 60 and 80 degrees Celsius. But no light and oxygen is present, so you're not doing damage with that heat. So fundamentally, what you have to do is produce a really, really tight system. The industry doesn't do that because what they say is, we can make a mess at the front end and then clean up the mess with chemical processing at the back end. We said, why don't we not make a mess at the front end? Then we don't have a mess to clean up at the back end. Why don't we start with organically grown seeds? Then we don't have to heat the oil to frying temperature to get rid of half of the pesticides. Ashley James (1:53:02.310) And the seeds, I'm guessing the seeds are raw, they're organic, but they're also raw, right? Udo Erasmus (1:53:07.116) Well, they're always raw. Ashley James (1:53:09.818) They're not roasted? Udo Erasmus (1:53:12.509) No, hell no, hell no. No, God. No, no, they have to be raw. They have to be fresh, raw, organic seeds. Then you put them through the thing, but you have to have it so tight that no light, no oxygen, and no temperature over 100 gets to the oil anywhere in the process. That requires a very tight system. So my claim to fame, I'm in the Canadian Health Food Association's Hall of Fame for starting the industry of making oils with health in mind. It requires that kind of tightness simply because the oils are so sensitive to damage done by light, oxygen, and heat. So I created that. We started making flaxseed oil because omega-3s are too low in 99% of the population. Then I became omega-6 deficient in flax oil because it has a lot of omega-3, not enough omega-6. That's what prompted me to make the blend because you have to get the balance right, and that's important. Ashley James (1:54:21.845) Would you say though that people who are still eating meat, if they want to add your oil but they're still eating meat, are getting a lot of Omega-6? So you don't strictly sell flax-only oil? With someone who's still eating, maybe they're eating more whole foods, but they're incorporating eggs, chicken, meat in their diet, they're getting more Omega-6. Is your blend going to help them? Udo Erasmus (1:54:51.327) The Omega-6s in meat, they're not in beef, they're not in sheep, they're not in goats because those animals actually knock down the Omega-6s and Omega-3s in grass and turn them into saturated, monounsaturated, a little bit of trans fatty acids. So that part is not true. Pork will have Omega-3s in it, but only if you feed it a source of Omega-3s because pork doesn't make Omega-3s, neither do the other animals. Chicken, most of the Omega-6s in chicken are in the skin, most people throw that out. The meat itself doesn't have a lot of Omega-6s in it.  Ashley James (1:55:39.453) So what in the average American diet is omega-6? Udo Erasmus (1:55:43.389) Most people get their omega-6s from all the cooking oils. They all have omega-6s in them. They all have omega-6s. A few of them have a little bit of omega-3. Most of them just have omega-6s. Most of the oil that people are saying is coming from the foods is actually coming from the oils they fry them in. That's another mistake that the people who say no omega-6s, no seed oils are making. They're doing half the homework. They're not doing all the homework. So they're blaming things on the oils that should be blamed on the damage done to them. They’re even inaccurate about the source of omega-6. It's mostly from seeds, nuts, which people don't eat that much of, but mainly from oils. So, in that sense, they're right if you say don't use those oils. But they're wrong when they say that omega-6s cause cancer and kill you because omega-6s are essential nutrients. Ashley James (1:56:52.312) What's causing cancer? So it's correlation, not causation, because what's causing the cancer is eating the burnt meat. When you say burnt, it's more caramelized. They go, ooh, that char on the meat. Udo Erasmus (1:57:06.788) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. When you turn it from green to yellow, from yellow to light brown, from light brown to dark brown, from dark brown to black, and from black into smoke, you're doing damage to it all the way along. Ashley James (1:57:19.270) So getting that char, that caramelization on the meat is the acrylamides, the heterocyclic amines, or even the potatoes. Udo Erasmus (1:57:28.876) Yes, then the industry says, what do they call it? We're something in the flavor. We're frying in the flavor. No, you're not. You're burning the damn meat. You're turning the meat into poison and you're poisoning yourself with the poisoned meat. Ashley James (1:57:46.352) Yes. So the correlation between high omega-6 and cancer is the high omega-6 cooking oils, cooking in high heat, and especially cooking meat in high heat, but also certain vegetables in high heat, potato skins, frying potatoes. Udo Erasmus (1:58:05.358) Yes, the burnt part is burnt. Yes. But anything, you can get cancer. You can get cancer from thinking stupid too, from negativity and depression. So anything that knocks down the immune system. But in the physical realm, any molecule that doesn't belong in the body, that isn't natural to nature, could. They don't all, but could interfere with the immune function because the immune function goes in there and says, what the hell is this? Then it swells, it lowers circulation to try and isolate while it's trying to figure out, can't figure out what to do about it because we don't have genes to break down burnt oils. Then it figures it out, figures it out, and you get chronic inflammation, chronic circulation problems, and chronic lack of oxygen. And that's what cancer cells like. So any molecule that is not natural could have some effects like that. They don't all do that, but any of them could. And the ones that are burnt clearly do—acrylamides and all of those molecules. Those are being isolated and studied, and we know that they cause cancer. They've done studies, they've given them to animals, and they cause cancer in animals. So we know a lot about that, but we're not acting on it and doing what we ought to be doing, which is don't do that to your food and don't eat food that's been done to. Ashley James (1:59:50.164) I think a really important thing to remember, and I love your perspective because you've been around the block long enough to have observed this shift. Udo Erasmus (2:00:03.068) Is there an F in that word you just said? No, no, shift. Yes, take the F out and then it may be more accurate. Ashley James (2:00:14.680) Well, it's definitely gone down the toilet the last 30 years. I have this unique perspective. Hey, we're a family show. Okay. So I have this unique perspective where I remember life before, and I guess living in Canada kind of happened a little later, fast food wasn't as big of a deal. When I moved to the States in 2005, 2006, I was a kid in a candy store. Couldn't believe how much accessibility there was to fast food. It was definitely a shift. It wasn't on every single city block in Canada, it was down when I moved down to the States. If we go back in time, and of course you remember this, but I think we need to learn from that wisdom of time. There was a time when food wasn't convenient and fast, where we had to think ahead when it came to cooking because we really had limited processed food. Most of our food was whole food. Also, if you think about it now, they call it organic versus conventionally grown. I hate that Orwellian marketing. Udo Erasmus (2:01:35.422) When I was a kid, organic was not even a term. All the food was organic. Ashley James (2:01:41.410) Our old food was organic and that was conventional. They're using the term conventional to make poisoned food sound good. It's ridiculous. Udo Erasmus (2:01:51.816) Yes, just like they do in medicine. Conventional healthcare is the doctor and the pharmaceuticals. They call the other one alternative healthcare. No, no, no, no, no. Ashley James (2:02:02.492) Alternative medicine or complementary medicine. No, this was the original medicine and what you're doing is chemical crap, right?  Udo Erasmus (2:02:07.427) Exactly. So, even the way the words are being used, we're being lied to and being misled. Ashley James (2:02:14.503) We have to start to question our own belief system because we've been raised in the milieu of marketing. Udo Erasmus (2:02:24.109) Yes, or you look at nature, how was it in nature? If you ever see a squirrel with a frying pan, then this is a natural process. You might see a squirrel in a frying pan, but you're never going to see one with a frying pan, cooking its nuts.    Ashley James (2:02:42.267) I hope not. So when we go back far enough though, I remember when cigarette companies got to advertise and then that sort of changed and they made it illegal for cigarette companies to advertise. The cigarette companies saw their profits going down as people became at least marginally health conscious. Smoking went from “my doctor recommended it” to “my doctor doesn't recommend it anymore.” What the cigarette companies did back in, I'm thinking it was around the 90s, is that they began to invest in food companies. A lot of people don't understand this history, but those of us who are old enough remember before the cigarette companies owned food companies, our grocery stores, there were a lot fewer options. There was a lot less processed food. There was a lot less convenient fried food on every corner.   They invested in food companies and they took their same scientists, whose entire job was how to make us addicted to things. They took food scientists to figure out how to make processed food addictive, creating these cheap oils, using the cheapest ingredients to make the largest margins, and they don't care if they're hurting us. If you open a package, you have to think this was made in a factory. This didn't come from the farm. It came from a factory. So opening a package, and if there are ingredients you don't recognize, these are man-made chemicals that food scientists were paid to figure out how to trigger your dopamine receptors and make you highly addicted to these foods and snacking. The disease epidemic we've seen, since the 90s, has taken off largely because we are just now, instead of buying cigarettes, we're buying from the same companies, but you're doing a pack a day, but it's Doritos instead. Udo Erasmus (2:04:43.729) Yes, there's two problems. They're lying, and we're not thinking. Those are the two problems. I always go back to nature. What was it like in nature before we got civilized? How does nature work? Nature's mandate for every creature: fresh, raw, local, that's it. That's a stand. That's nature's standard for health. For the creatures that eat in nature, fresh, whole, raw, organic, local, and then probably seasonal, sun-ripe. For us, probably more plant-based than animal-based, and you can argue some of that, but you can't really argue that in nature every creature except the animals we feed got all its food fresh, whole, raw, organic. You can't even argue that. Why is it? Why? with all creatures in nature, are we the only creatures that supposedly can be healthy frying the hell out of our food? Or frying the heaven out of our foods? Ashley James (2:05:57.205) We're the only animal that cooks our food. One of my mentors, and he helped me recover my health. I had type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic infections. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, and I was infertile. He helped me reverse all my health issues. Udo Erasmus (2:06:12.020) You were 80 pounds overweight, right? Ashley James (2:06:14.062) I had a lot more health issues going on. I had liver disease. I had a lot of stuff going on, but the major thing is that he helped me clean up my diet. He got me on some supplements, cleaned up my diet. That perspective of the foods and how we've been raised to think about food really needs to shift. I want to ask about two more things. I want to go to olive oil because I feel people are thinking, well, isn't olive oil healthy? This mentor that I had, one of the first things he had me do is cut out all cooking oils, 100% no cooking oils, not even a drop of cooking oils, even olive oil. He said, eat the olive, don't eat the olive oil, and for many reasons. Then he had me stop cooking in high heat. It's kind of crazy to think that we're the only animal that cooks food on a regular basis. Can you think of the last time, not you, but the listener, when's the last time you ate a fully raw meal? I'm not saying you have to be 100% raw, but very few of us choose to eat a percentage of our foods raw. Eat a cucumber, eat an apple, eat some sprouts. Eat a tomato, have some just raw, like what you do with the wonderful broccoli. just eating it raw. I love it that way. I love dipping broccoli into a dip and eating it and preserving the enzymes in it. Most people go years without eating a fully raw meal or adding some raw foods to their meal because they just don't think about it. We've been raised in a system, so we have to start to question the system we were raised in. Udo Erasmus (2:08:06.738) So what happens is if you eat your food raw, there are enzymes in the food that when you chew it properly, they will do on average 60% of the digestion of the food for you. It's from 10 to 90% depending on the food. So 60%. If you cook it, you destroy those enzymes. Now your digestive system has to do more than twice as much work. Because now that 60% that the enzymes self-digest, your body has to deal with it. Your body was made for raw foods coming out of nature. So you more than double the load on your digestive system. Then your immune system has to get involved. Your immune system is not as free to go after its other jobs, knocking out cancer cells and dealing with viruses and bacteria. So you've put a huge load on your digestive system. There are some people who say all disease starts in your digestive tract because of that. Fundamentally, if you're going to cook your food, then replace the enzymes you destroyed when you cooked the food and replace the probiotics that you killed when you cooked the food. In nature, creatures get their probiotics on plants. That's where a cow gets them, on the grass. There's probiotics on it. So the cow doesn't need to take a probiotic supplement as long as it eats raw grass. If you kill the probiotics and you destroy the enzymes when you cook, you need to replace them. Otherwise, you put a load into your digestive system that it can't handle, and that will catch up with you. That's why people have so many digestion problems. Then you add fiber for bowel regularity and stabilizing blood sugar and feeding the probiotics. Then you add bitters that help with digestion and liver function. The liver deals with a lot of what you absorb from digestion. That solves most of the digestive problems. I said, people who eat mostly raw foods still get benefits from adding enzymes to it. Now they're getting more enzymes than they would have gotten in nature. They say that works better for them. This is just about taking steps to get back in line with how it was in nature before we got civilized. Ashley James (2:10:44.706) We have to remember, we have to start to question everything we've been taught, at least test everything we've been taught. We've been marketed to that olive oil is healthy. They talk about how the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest diet. They say it's because they drink a lot of olive oil. Can you talk about that? Udo Erasmus (2:11:03.182) No, it's not. The Mediterranean diet is healthy because there are lots of good vegetables in it. It also comes from a time—the Mediterranean diet wasn't invented yesterday. That's a long historical tradition. So their meat was cleaner, because they weren't fattening them up with grains and they weren't shooting them full of probiotics, antibiotics, pesticides, and hormones. In Europe, they tend not to do things as crazily as we do in North America either. They're a little bit more, and maybe it's the culture, because they have that culture. They still remember some of that stuff. So olive oil is good because it's not damaged by the processing. If it's an extra virgin olive oil and they're not lying about it. I'll tell you why I say that in a second. So that's a good thing. Because there are two issues. One is you got to get the essential fatty acids undamaged in the right ratio and you need to get them both. The other issue is you need your oils undamaged. While extra virgin olive oil, if it's really extra virgin, hasn't been damaged by processing because they squish the olive, it comes out of the flesh of the olives and it floats off on water, and they don't put it through the chemical feast. The chemical feast or the heating. That's right. So it's good from that perspective. But from the perspective of essential fatty acids, it has no omega-3s in it or less than 1%. It only has 10% omega-6. Those are the two essentials. 80% is monounsaturated, and your body can make that out of potatoes. So you don't need that. The other 10% is saturated, and again, your body can make that out of potatoes. Ashley James (2:13:01.356) The medicinal benefits—just eat actual olives. Because they talk about the flavonoids and all that. They're throwing most of that away. That's in the water. If anything, they should be selling olive water and let us drink the stuff they throw away because that's where the flavonoids and the medicinal stuff—it's in there. Udo Erasmus (2:13:21.583) Yes, you would get more of that, although you will get them in extra virgin unrefined olive oil. You will get some of those benefits. So that's okay.  Ashley James (2:13:31.119) But you can't heat it, and you have to make sure there was no oxygen and it was stored in a glass bottle with zero oxygen. Udo Erasmus (2:13:37.255) Well, that mostly is not so bad. You get a little scratchy taste that can be from rancidity or free fatty acids. But the other thing is that hasn't gotten as much attention is that olive oil became very popular 20 years ago and the demand for olive oil skyrocketed. But olive trees grow really slowly. So what happened is the demand exceeded the supply. So what many olive oil makers started to do is they started to dilute the olive oil with canola or soybean oil and then called it olive oil. Then you're talking about all the processing damage again. The way you find out, the way I do it, is if you get a bottle of olive oil and you stick it in your fridge, it should go solid or it should at least form crystals. But even it should really go solid. If it doesn't go solid, there may be something else in it. Ashley James (2:14:49.870) I noticed that recently at the local health food grocery store called PCC, the Puget Sound Co-op down here. PCC probably, because your products are there. Well, the next time you come down to give talks, I want to shake your hand and give you a hug. So here with PCC, the local grocery store, healthy grocery store, they, I'll read, sometimes I'll look at the, it looks healthy packaged food. They'll make it there in-house. I'll be looking at a lentil soup. I'm so I'll grab the lentil soup and I'm reading the ingredients to see if I want to take that home if I'm really busy. I noticed, because if it says oil, I won't buy it, but I noticed it used to just say olive oil and I put it back on the shelf. I'm not buying it. Okay. So, because sometimes once in a while they do oil-free stuff. Then I picked it up lately. It says olive oil, canola oil. Right after olive oil or it says olive oil blend and then in brackets it says olive oil, canola oil, something else. I'm like, are you kidding me? They're cutting costs, but they're at least putting it on the label. I noticed that that canola oil was being wrapped up in and they call it an olive oil blend, which sounds so innocent. They're just cutting corners. Udo Erasmus (2:16:05.146) Yes, right. By the way, the olive oil is pretty expensive and canola oil is really cheap. So they're doing it for that reason as well. I think that started because there was a supply issue because a lot of people started talking about olive oil being a good oil, and the deal was it's because it's not damaged by the processing, but they didn't make that clear. Ashley James (2:16:30.682) Well, it's going to get damaged when you start cooking with it. People use olive oil, they start cooking on high heat. They're going to create the negative health effects because they're cooking with olive oil. Udo Erasmus (2:16:43.570) If you're cooking with oil or fat, if you use hard fats, saturated fats, coconut butter, that kind of stuff, you get less damage, but you still get damaged because you're still burning the food. So you're still turning, making toxic molecules. But the more omega-3 and 6 you have in an oil, the more damage is done in the frying pan to that oil. So the more toxic those oils become. So if you're going to be stupid and fry, then use the hardest fat you can find and use the shortest time possible. But my view is people say, well, what can I fry with? Yes, that's the Russian roulette question. You want to know what you can get away with. You don't get away with anything. So when they say, is there a good oil to fry with? No, but there's a less bad one. So the saturated fats are less bad, but they're not good. And if they're rich in omega, no, of course, because you're not getting the omega-3s and 6s. You're not getting the omega threes particularly. Single most omega-3 deficiency, the single most widespread nutrient deficiency of our time. 99 % of the population does not get enough for optimum health. Ashley James (2:18:05.140) That's from both ends because they're not consuming things that are high in omega-3 and healthy omega-6, but they're also eating other types of fats that are then preventing the body from absorbing and using healthy fats. Udo Erasmus (2:18:27.416) Yes, can get function deficient from having too much omega-6. Ashley James (2:18:30.492) Functional deficient. So that's why you want a supplement with the omega-3 and the omega-6 blend, but at the same time, you need to decrease or eliminate the other types of fat, the processed fat, like canola oil. Udo Erasmus (2:18:45.098) Yes, we tell people to get off those oils because they're toxic. So you want to get your omega-6s also made with Health & Mind. So when we do the blend, the omega-3s are missing. So we're bringing the omega-3s in, made with Health & Mind. We're saying to people, get off those cooking oils and get your omega-3s also made with Health & Mind. We're doing both in the blend. Ashley James (2:19:11.574) You have three blends. Can you explain? Udo Erasmus (2:19:15.986) Yes, I use the basic one, 369. The second blend has DHA in it. There's some research that says that people over 50 or maybe pregnant women might be able to benefit from having DHA pre-formed. Ashley James (2:19:35.722) Especially women and men too, they notice they have lower progesterone or estrogen or testosterone, DHA is that wonderful precursor that the body can use to help balance that out, as well as support the brain. Udo Erasmus (2:19:57.336) DHA is not DHEA, DHEA turns into testosterone and progesterone and DHA is an omega-3 essential fatty acid derivative. Ashley James (2:20:10.342) So the body can make DHEA from omega-3? Udo Erasmus (2:20:14.574) No. The body can make DHA from alpha-linolenic acid. DHEA is a precursor. It's a steroid precursor for testosterone. They're completely different things. The body does not make DHEA out of omega-3s. Ashley James (2:20:33.850) Got it. It does make it out of cholesterol. And the body needs healthy fats to make cholesterol. Is that correct? Udo Erasmus (2:20:42.152) No, the cholesterol is made, you can make cholesterol out of sugar. Ashley James (2:20:46.688) I want to have you back on the show because I love that topic because a lot of people, they’re told they have to take cholesterol medicine. Why didn’t your doctor tell you that you can balance and get a healthy balance from diet? Udo Erasmus (2:21:01.720) The problem with cholesterol is? Your body can make cholesterol out of two carbon fragments and then you can get those from fats and you can get those from carbs. But the body can't break it down once it's made. So if you don't have enough fiber to escort it through the liver, through the gallbladder, into the gut, into the toilet, then up to 94% of the cholesterol can get reabsorbed and you lose your exit mechanism. Then you get stressed, that increases cholesterol production and between not enough fiber and stress is the most simple, probably the most widespread reason for why people have high cholesterol. Ashley James (2:21:44.463) Yes, start eating more plants and see what happens. Udo Erasmus (2:21:47.959) It's always about being out of line with nature. Okay. So now the second blend has DHA in it. That's for older people. I don't use it because they say that your brain shrinks after 50. I don't think my brain is shrinking. I'm letting my body make the DHA itself but I make sure I take enough oil for that to happen. Then the third one is called high lignan and that has some seed material in the oil. They don't let the seed material all settle out. That was a copy of something somebody else did. They gave you less oil and charged you more for it because they said they got lignans in it. But if you want lignans, just eat the flax seeds, grind the flaxseed up and eat the flax seeds. So I use the basic blend. It's the least expensive and it does the job. Yes, don't take it off a spoon, mix it in foods. It enhances flavors and improves the absorption of oil-soluble nutrients. Ashley James (2:23:02.435) And we just have to remember that not all fat is created equal, not all oils are created equal, and that we're using a food extract basically as a nutrient that we're highly deficient in. Udo Erasmus (2:23:13.577) Yes. By the way, it's not a supplement. It's a food oil. You use Udo's oil instead of the cooking oils, but you don't cook with it. You use it. You use it in food preparation and you take about a tablespoon per 50 pounds of body weight per day in winter and maybe a half to two thirds of that in summer. You need more in winter than in summer. Ashley James (2:23:39.513) It has been such a pleasure having you on the show. I really want to have you back, especially to talk about your books and just to go deeper with you. I just think it's really important that we understand the nuances of nutrition and that we start to question everything we've been taught. Because if you're not happy with your health, and a lot of people aren't, 70% of adult Americans are on at least one prescription medication. That means at least 70% of the population is unhappy with their health. Udo Erasmus (2:24:06.983) That's the same percentage that's eating ultra processed foods, isn't it? It's the same number of people who are overweight and obese. I wonder if that means something. Ashley James (2:24:21.259) So there's a lot of complexity, but there's also a lot of simplicity in that. You've definitely cleared up some things today. Coming back to nature and being willing to start to question our own belief system around food. Don't have diet dogma. I think it's really important. I even say that—don't have diet dogma. Start to question how you eat and also just begin to make certain changes, start to add and take away. Get closer to nature and then notice what happens and check out Udo's Oil. Your website, the link to your website is going to be in the show notes of today's podcast. Udo Erasmus (2:24:58.315) Yes, udoschoice.ie and udoerasmus.com are my two websites. But I'm on Facebook and Instagram and I got a YouTube channel and I mean, I'm not hard to find. Ashley James (2:25:08.321) Yes, we'll make sure all the links are in the show notes of today's podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. Thank you, Udo. It's been such a pleasure having you. I can't wait to have you back. Udo Erasmus (2:25:17.663) Okay, let's do it. Thanks Ashley. Outro: These are the same supplements that I have been using myself personally, my family and my clients for the last twelve and a half years. This is the same supplement that helped me to overcome my chronic diseases. I used to have type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic infections, polycystic ovarian syndrome, infertility, and I don't have any of those things anymore infertility, and I don't have any of those things anymore. The holistic doctors that informed these supplements discovered that the root cause of disease is a lack of key nutrients. There are 90 essential nutrients the body needs and we're not getting them from our food anymore because of the farming practices of the last hundred years. So, no matter how healthy we eat, we're still missing what our body needs to create optimal health. Because you listen to this health podcast and you're looking for health solutions, you will love working with the team at takeyoursupplements.com. These are health coaches that overcame just like me, overcame their own health issues using, of course, eating healthy, healthy lifestyle. But the key, fundamental thing that they added were these supplements. These supplements encompass all 90 essential nutrients and when you talk to your health coach, they will help to customize a plan specifically to your needs and your health goals. You will start feeling amazing right away. Within the first month of taking these supplements, everyone notices better sleep, more mental clarity, better energy, overall sense of well-being that takes over their life, and they are so happy that they got on these supplements. I want you to give it a try. There's a money-back guarantee and there's amazing health coaches waiting to help you at takeyoursupplements.com and it's free to talk to them. So what are you waiting for? Go to takeyoursupplements.com right now. Sign up for a free consultation and in a month, you could be feeling on top of the world, just like I did.  I was so sick, I felt so horrible and I overcame that. I had to obviously make healthy choices around every area of my life. I had to change my diet, I had to change my lifestyle, but I needed to fill in those nutrient gaps, and that's where takeyoursupplements.com comes in. They help you to make sure that you're getting all 90 essential nutrients, so every cell in your body, all 37.2 trillion cells in your body, will be bathed in all the nutrients that they need so that you can live an optimal life full of health and vitality at any age. Go to takeyoursupplements.com and talk to one of them today. They can help you right now to begin to make that health transformation. That's takeyoursupplements.com.    Get Connected with Udo Erasmus Website – Udo's Choice Website – Udo Erasmus Facebook Instagram   Book by Udo Erasmus Fats that Heal, Fats that Kills

Get my ebook and audiobook here: https://learntruehealth.com/op/addicted-to-wellness-ebook.   Get my course, The 7 Foundations of Health, here: https://learntruehealth.com/sp/7-foundations-of-optimal-health   Get a physical copy of my book here: https://learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness.   The Vibe: https://learntruehealth.com/vibe coupon code LTH - LearnTrueHealth.com/vibe   Get the NEW free IIN sample class and health coach experience: https://learntruehealth.com/coach Enroll in the next Health Coach Training Program! Use coupon code LTH when signing up to become a health coach.   Dr. Jodie Meschuk's Website: www.thewarriorcenter.com   534: Getting Off The Spectrum: Jodie Meschuk’s Path to Helping Kids Overcome Autism, ADHD, Allergies, Heavy Metals, and Vaccine Injury https://learntruehealth.com/getting-off-the-spectrum-jodie-meschuks-path-to-helping-kids-overcome-autism-adhd-allergies-heavy-metals-and-vaccine-injury   Is autism really a lifelong condition, or can it be reversed? In this episode of the Learn True Health podcast, Jodie Meschuk shares her powerful journey of helping her child recover from an autism diagnosis using holistic methods. She reveals how brain inflammation, heavy metal toxicity, and gut dysfunction are often misdiagnosed as autism—and how detox, nutrition, and natural healing can bring incredible results. Jodie also exposes the flaws in conventional pediatric care, the hidden dangers of vaccines, and the importance of informed medical decisions. If you're looking for real answers and hope beyond mainstream medicine, this episode is a must-listen! Highlights: Jodie Meschuk shares her journey of helping her child recover from an autism diagnosis through holistic healing. Autism is often misdiagnosed when the real issue is brain inflammation, heavy metal toxicity, and gut dysfunction. The rapid rise in autism rates suggests environmental and medical interventions, not genetics, are to blame. Vaccines contain harmful ingredients like aluminum and formaldehyde, which can contribute to neurological damage. Parents are often gaslighted by the medical system and not given informed consent about vaccine risks. Conventional pediatric care follows a rigid “standard of care” that prioritizes pharmaceutical solutions over holistic healing. Jodie emphasizes the importance of detoxing heavy metals, healing the gut, and strengthening the immune system. Natural healing methods, including dietary changes and detox protocols, helped her child regain speech, eye contact, and social skills. She advocates for parental empowerment, informed medical decisions, and questioning mainstream health narratives. The medical industry profits from chronic illness, making it crucial for parents to seek alternative healing approaches. Intro: Hello, True Health Seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. Strap on your seat belt. Today’s going to be a bumpy ride. It's an amazing conversation. I'm so excited for you to hear today's episode. Before we do, I want to let you know that if you are struggling with detoxing, especially heavy metals, I have some amazing interviews for you to listen to. Also, I have some amazing resources. You can go to learntruehealth.com, type in heavy metals. You can also type in vaccine or vaccines. Use the search function on my website, learntruehealth.com. You’ll find some really great interviews. Kellyann Andrews comes on several times, talking about heavy metal detox. I have Dr. Klinghardt on the show as well, a great heavy metal detox expert. He regularly takes children who are on the spectrum, gets them so healthy that they no longer are on the spectrum, and then we question whether that diagnosis was accurate in the first place. This is one of the things that we discussed today, that so many children over the course of the last 34 years went from one in 10,000 kids being on the spectrum to one in 32, between 28 and 32. That’s not genetic. Something genetic doesn’t just, within four years, become that prolific. So we have to ask ourselves, what’s really going on? This discussion today answers that question. As far as answers are concerned, there are so many holistic ways to support the body. It’s constantly trying to come back to homeostasis. That’s why I love some of the tools that I have. If you’d like to know some of the tools that work really well with my clients, with heavy metal detox, especially in myself personally—if you've been a long-time listener, you know that I struggle with heavy metal toxicity and I have overcome it using several different modalities—I’d love to share them with you. Please feel free to book a free phone call with me. I want to talk to you. I love talking to the listeners, and we have so much fun on our phone calls. Just go to learntruehealth.com, in the menu, select Work with Ashley James, and it’s the very first thing that you click from there. It’s a free 20-minute or so phone call. Sometimes the phone calls go longer. If you have more questions, I will stay on the phone with you and answer them. We have a really great time. I highly recommend the phototherapy patches that I've talked about on the show with Trina Hammack and David Schmidt. I’ve had clients use them successfully. We have a detox protocol, and it works so well because it increases the body's function to produce more glutathione. Within 24 hours, you will produce 300% more glutathione. There’s actually a study out of South Korea with several patients of this doctor—I think it was 40 or 60 patients—who, over the course of 12 weeks, used this particular patch to increase their body's ability to create glutathione. What they found was a 75% improvement in their cognition, quality of life, and all their symptoms, and this was rated by the parents. So the parents saw this. Some children went from nonverbal to verbal, from not making eye contact to making eye contact and hugging, from rocking and holding themselves or being held against the wall to playing with the other kids. This is wild, and this is just one of the many things that we can do naturally. It’s non-invasive, no negative side effects. There are gentle things that we can incorporate to support our body’s ability to heal itself. That’s why I’m so excited to introduce this to you. If you are new to this world of holistic medicine, there are so many little things that we can add, and each one is profound. Together, they help us gain true health. As our guest today shares, she helped her child get off the spectrum. Here’s the thing—is it truly autism, or is it heavy metal toxicity and damage from pesticides, from environmental pollutants, from the chemicals that are injected into us? So that’s the question—what’s going on? If you’re here and you're listening because your child has been sick and has been socially poisoned by some form of chemicals out there, whether it’s injected or through food, we can support the body's ability to heal itself. That’s the exciting thing. The power goes back to your court. We feel so powerless when we go to the MD and they write us prescriptions, and they just don’t have answers for us when it comes to chronic illness. They do not have the pathway to true health. We have to take it upon ourselves to learn how to eat to heal our body, what we can do throughout our day to support our body. This is holistic lifestyle medicine. That’s what we’re here to teach you by listening to the Learn True Health Podcast. So please sign up for a free phone call with me. I’d love to talk with you and share some of the resources that have made a huge impact on the thousands of clients that I’ve worked with over the last 13+ years. I’m in this to help people and to help people get the true health that they deserve. So go to learntruehealth.com, sign up to talk with me. I’d love to help you. Use the search function on my website to search for the things that you are most interested in. So go to learntruehealth.com, sign up to talk with me. I'd love to help you and use the search function on my website to search for the things that you're most interested in, because we have wonderful episodes. We have over 500 episodes, and so many of them offer real step-by-step activities that you can do today, that you can start doing today to immediately improve your health and to feel the improvement right away. If you're not feeling full of energy, having great sleep, mental clarity, if you're not feeling amazing every day, then take on the challenge of listening to these episodes and doing the activities. Another thing you can do is get my book, because I have over 500 interviews in. I wrote my book a few months ago and published it. It's called Addicted to Wellness. You can go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness, and it's a compilation of the most effective steps, and it's done in challenge form. So you take on between one and four challenges a week, and you get to journal what you learn from it and how your body feels going through the process of these challenges. It's an accumulation of the most important steps, the fundamental keys to true health, and if you're missing these, these are the pillars of health. If you're missing them and then going out for a prescription drug, your body is missing what it needs, and then we're just drugging ourselves. I know you don't do that, but this is what a lot of people do and a lot of doctors do—we're missing the foundations of health. So please check out my book Addicted to Wellness. You can get it on Amazon or go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness. Sign up for a free chat with me. Love to chat with you, love to help you, and point you in the direction of some great resources. Use the search function on my website, learntruehealth.com, and find the specific episodes for the things you're really interested in so that you can start feeling amazing. I've been on an amazing health journey. I've healed over five diseases, and that's why I do what I do—because I don't want you to suffer anymore. The needless suffering, needs to end. We're turning our health around as a nation and as a world. Please share this episode with all those you care about so that we can turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help as many people as possible to learn true health. Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 534. Ashley James (0:08:26.066) I am so excited for today's guest. I have Jodie Meschuk, who is a board-certified naturopathic doctor, author, activist, coach, and just amazing, amazing. I love your story. I love that you are here to help parents navigate this crazy world when their child has an illness or has a diagnosis, is on a spectrum. Just pick a spectrum, any spectrum. You are there to help and to navigate. I just interviewed a doctor yesterday. She's unfortunately more allopathic than I'm used to interviewing. She used the word need drugs when it came to something that wasn't like a life-saving thing. She said need drugs. I'm like, Hmm? and then I brought up herbs. I'm like, well, what about this, this, this, and that? What about these other options? This is how MDs, medical doctors, go through an indoctrination system throughout their college, throughout their university, and they're taught how to use drugs as their tools. They're not taught how to help the body get so healthy that it no longer has these symptoms or that it gets to the stage of absolute optimal health. They have not been taught that. Now they have their place, obviously, emergency medicine, saving lives. When it comes to chronic illness, they are horrible, and their tools are horrible. Not they themselves are horrible, their tools are horrible. What they've been taught is horrible. So I'm so excited to have you on the show today because you have an amazing track record of helping parents get their kids so healthy that they're no longer on spectrums. So welcome to the show. Jodie Meschuk (0:10:16.547) Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Every day is a good day to just speak truth and give parents hope. As you mentioned with doctors in the system, or as I like to refer a lot of times to the system, kind of quote-unquote, the system is, it's very one-dimensional. You would think it would be the opposite of the way medicine was years and years ago with house calls, and you had one doctor who could handle many different things that were going on in the body because they looked at the body holistically.  Unfortunately, now we are in a day and age where everything is compartmentalized, and you have 10 or 20 or 30 different specialists for different parts of the body, and nobody's speaking to each other. Anyways, all of that just creates a whole lot of, I think, paralyzation and confusion for parents, especially when you're dealing with maybe a new diagnosis that their child has received.  I think also, we can look and just kind of call the elephant out in the room, which is that this autism epidemic and really the chronic illness epidemic in children that we see today, it doesn't have to be that way. There's actual truth behind what's really going on. But unfortunately, a lot of these parents just don't have a chance to hear that truth because everything is so censored or relying on the system. So you're relying on those doctors who aren't really looking at the body holistically. All that to say is I'm very passionate about this kind of topic because we have lived it, we've gone through it, we've seen the other side, and I just want to do everything in my power to help end this epidemic that we see happening today. Ashley James (0:12:06.089) Absolutely. I'd love for listeners to know why I found you, why I think you're so amazing is your story, your initial story about how you helped a child of yours to reverse a diagnosis. Would you care to share that story with us? Jodie Meschuk (0:12:27.965) Yes, absolutely. I will say the story has kind of, the way that I share it obviously has changed a little bit over the years because our children get older. There are things that we reflect on. There are things that we look at. I think that's just part of the process. But the foundation of that story, it's interesting because it still holds very true today. If you would have asked me 15 years ago,14 years ago, even 13 years ago when we were in the depths of this reversal and healing the body and just kind of reversing all the damage that had happened to my child, I would have thought that many years ago this would not still be an epidemic today but the sad part is that it still is, and it's actually getting worse. So that's very alarming to me in terms of like how did we even get to this place as a society where, for example, with autism, you have this term that has just become this umbrella for basically inflammation happening in the brain and body. I think it's really important that we call things what they are, but what you're going to find is that when you take a new parent, or even when I go back to the beginning of my story with my own child, you have these symptoms and these things happening, but they want to just lump it into this label or this diagnosis to make you feel better. But it doesn't really make you feel better because all you want is for your child to be happy and healthy. So if I go back to when it first started for us, I was a new mom. It was my first child. As a new mom, you're trying to figure everything out, and you're trying to listen to the experts and have the best pediatrician and do really the best things that you can for your baby.  I think if I look back when I was even just pregnant, you want the best for your child. So you go and you find all the things that are supposed to help your child be healthy. At the end of the day, the ironic part is our babies actually really don't need anything at all. They don't need these interventions or vaccines. They don't need a medicalized birth. They don't need the eye gel. They don't need all this stuff that has been basically shoved down our throats for years, that if you don't do these things for your child, your child is not going to be healthy. I never realized that. As a new mom, I just trusted the system, and you're feared every step of the way that if you do not vaccinate your child, for some reason, your child is just going to die of measles. There's so much fear put into you. So that's really where I was caught, honestly. I was trying to do the best I could for my child. I wanted them to be happy and healthy. But because of that blind trust that I had in the system, we ended up paying a really big price for that. So I can kind of take you back to the beginning if you want and sort of set up our story, which I think is probably very similar to what a lot of women go through, especially when you're looking at the medicalized birth system that we have in this country today. It's also in a lot of other countries. Because a lot of things in the U.S. end up bleeding over into other countries as well. But it's very prominent here if you think about how people want convenience. They want quick fixes. They don't want to feel pain. So you have this medicalized birth system, and I'll kind of say, the first straw that sort of led up to the straw that broke the camel's back is when I was diagnosed with strep B. So a lot of women are diagnosed with strep B, which is a pretty normal bacteria that exists. Whether or not that actually causes problems, the data is not actually super clear on that. But of course, the standard of care is that you just get antibiotics, and that's it. That is literally the standard of care. So when you're looking at the standard of care, that means there's no deviation. That's really important for mothers to understand, that standard of care is just all the system has been taught. It's their way of medicalizing everything. If you ask a question or if you try to see if there's another option or another way, you're often met with a lot of gaslighting, a lot of shaming. You're an irresponsible mother, an irresponsible parent. So that was me. I was told I had to get antibiotics, which means that while I was delivering my child, they also got exposed to antibiotics. I had no idea the repercussions that would occur in my child's health with having an immediate exposure to antibiotics before they even entered this world. I think that was just really one of the first things that if I look back on, I go, what? That's such a simple thing to reverse. That's such a simple thing to look at differently, where you don't have to necessarily take those antibiotics if you don't want to. There's another path, but you're never given that choice. You're just told what to do, and you have to fall in line, or again, you get shamed, and you get all the nasty things said at you. So that was really the beginning of the birth. It's the epidural, it's the strep B, the antibiotics. My amazing, healthy, beautiful baby is born, and it's the Hep B shot immediately within minutes. It's the eye gel. It's the Johnson & Johnson toxic baby wash on the skin. It's cutting the cord within seconds. It's all of this medicalization that, if you think about it, doesn't set up the baby for health. Your baby is not born deficient in hepatitis B vaccine. They're not born deficient in eye gel. They don't need that stuff. So I kind of went along with it. There was something inside of me that felt very uncomfortable, but because I didn't have my confidence at that time, I just didn't know how to speak up. I think again, what is often so ignored is the fear that they have sown in mothers for so long that you truly do not know how to even use your voice in a setting like that  because all they do is fear you, that something's going to happen if you don't do what they say.  So that was kind of the beginning, which, basically again, looking back, I don't know that my child was necessarily set up for health at that point because they already had three or four assaults to their body. Every assault it takes time to come back from. Every assault could cause a domino effect in something else. I don't know that a lot of parents realize that hepatitis B vaccine is full of a chemical that affects the liver, which can cause jaundice and the kidneys too. So you think about all these babies that end up with jaundice, and there's an absolute connection between what is in that hepatitis B vaccine and how their baby is responding to that. But they're never told that. They're just told, well, that's normal. We'll just put them under some lights and we'll watch them instead of maybe they're having a reaction to that hepatitis B vaccine. So it gets ignored. It gets pushed under the rug. Ashley James (0:21:12.048) And they get to make more money because they get to do more interventions. Jodie Meschuk (0:21:15.384) Yes, absolutely. It's just all about the money. I mean, think about the amount of babies that end up in the NICU simply because they had a reaction to the hepatitis B vaccine, but now they're in the NICU.  Ashley James (0:21:15.384) Well, let's just pause the story to talk about this because you and I know the hepatitis B vaccine. So those who listen who have been told and believe, and I, at one point in my life, I was one of them. I just want to say I hate the term. Hate is a very strong word. I hate the term anti-vaxxer. I just want to be very clear. Everyone who is an anti-vaxxer was once a pro-vaxxer, and then they had the negative experiences, and then their eyes were opened. So don't call anyone an anti-vaxxer. Call them an ex-vaxxer for a very good reason—because of the experiences we've had, but also because our eyes have been opened and we see the truth. Tell us about this particular vaccine they give a baby on their very first day within hours of being born. New baby, six, seven, eight pounds, and they give them this vaccine. This vaccine, only a decade or so ago—maybe two decades ago, but I just remember it. I'm from Canada, so our schedule is a bit different, but I live in the States now. I remember that the vaccine was made available while I was in high school. It was newly made available to teenagers. I remember getting it, and it was not given to babies. This is in the late nineties. It was not given to babies, before the late nineties, it was only available to sex workers, nurses, doctors, and people who would be vulnerable or have exposure to hepatitis B because it spread through sex, sharing needles, and dirty blood transfusions. Which one of those three things is your newborn baby participating in? Is your newborn baby having unprotected sex? Is your newborn baby having dirty blood transfusions? Is your newborn baby sharing needles with someone down the street? No? Why is your newborn baby being given a vaccine for a disease they would have zero exposure to? Sorry, I'm getting a little angry there. There's my soapbox—getting off of it. This is ridiculous. But here's the thing—we question it, but people who haven't been given that little set of information go, “Of course, I want to protect my child from hepatitis.” Of course, yes, but they have zero chance of exposure. Why are we giving this one vaccine? They're not giving them the polio vaccine on the first day of birth. They're not giving them measles, mumps, or rubella on the first day of birth. Why is it so important that that baby not leave the hospital on the first day of birth without being given a vaccination for something that they have zero chance of exposure to? Jodie Meschuk (0:24:26.932) It's called standard of care, and a lot of money is the reason why. I mean, again, it's such a simple answer, but I think it's something that's very hard for the majority of the population to comprehend. I think we're getting there. Obviously, there's going to be, in my opinion, so much that's going to come to the surface in the next few years. That's really exciting because, for me personally, I've been fighting for this ever since it happened to my child, ever since my child sustained a very severe vaccine injury. I'm sure we'll get into that. You just look at the hepatitis B vaccine, and again, it's standard of care. History-wise, instead of going and trying to identify the mothers who maybe are at risk, they have a drug history, or they were sexually active, a prostitute, whatever, they're in the high-risk category. Instead of taking the time to identify those, they decided, let's just give it to all babies. Think about how, on just a common-sense level, how ridiculous that is. But what they realized was that it was also a lot of money and profit that they could make. One thing that I find to be so interesting is how people will blindly accept. Again, I was one of those. So you're right. We believed in vaccines at one point until our eyes were opened, and now we see the truth, and now we reject those vaccines. But I think if you think about the average person, it's very hard for them to comprehend that there would actually be an evil entity behind all this that actually really doesn't care about the health of your child. They only care about the bottom line, and they care about profit. That's really where we are today. That's why the vaccine schedule has blown up the way that it has—solely because of profit and a lot of evil behind that industry. Parents just need to understand that these vaccines have other things in them. When you're looking at what's in them, especially hepatitis B, you have things like formaldehyde, you have sodium borate, you have sodium chloride, which, by the way, sodium chloride is not like taking Celtic sea salt. This immediately messes up the electrolyte balance in your baby and can cause jaundice because it's affecting the kidneys, it's affecting the liver. You have yeast proteins in it. We wonder why we have the amount of allergies that we have today in children when that never existed 20, 30 years ago. They're getting injected with yeast proteins. They're getting injected with vaccines that have been grown in eggs. Why do we have such a huge egg allergy? All of these things are because of the assault that is happening every second of every day in this country on babies with needles. You have aluminum. I mean, not in hepatitis B, you don't have mercury—that's still present in flu vaccines, certain ones. So we have to understand what's actually in these. If you think about your minutes-old baby, why are they so excited to inject them right away? To your point, why would a baby be sexually active? Why would a baby be exposed to a dirty needle, drug abuse? Instead, identify those people, and maybe they need something if there's a risk, but not 100% of the babies in this population. Ashley James (0:28:17.355) Well, let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard of a pandemic of babies having this illness? In the United States in your lifetime, anyone going, oh no, my baby has hepatitis B? Ever, ever, ever, ever before. It shocks me. Then the amount of aluminum, because they say it's for the adjuvant, we have to aggravate the immune system so it takes it, so it takes hold or whatever. But the amount of aluminum is, it was something not even safe for a 200-pound man. It was crazy, it's really high. Then there's an eight, this is a little eight-pound baby. You're immediately injecting them with a heavy metal that harms the brain and harms the kidneys, harms the nervous system. It's just, yes, it is, it's barbaric. Well, remember, standard of care a few hundred years ago was not washing your hands and bloodletting, losing leeches.  You talked about your experience being in the hospital and that they have this standard of care, but what they're not practicing, which is, in my opinion, it's unethical. They're not practicing informed consent. True informed consent is explaining to you the benefits of that procedure, all the risks of that medication or procedure, and all the alternatives. When was the last time a doctor sat you down, especially while you were going through the birthing process, and said, okay, well, here's the benefits, here's the risks, here's all the alternatives. Never. They're just, no, you need this. Your baby needs this. Jodie Meschuk (0:30:15.015) Right, exactly. I do have hope that hopefully that will change soon. I think unfortunately the change is going to come because they're going to be forced to change. That's where you look at the medical system and you look at, obviously, I'm very passionate about babies and children and autism and these labels and this chronic disease epidemic and all of these things that can be prevented. I want parents to remember that it can be prevented. Now, if somebody's in that position and they didn't know, trust me, I know exactly how you feel. You also can heal, your child can heal. But we have to also educate and continue to talk about this so that parents who are just starting this process know that they have a voice. They're the ones that hire and fire these doctors. They're the ones that make the choice of what route they want to go. They're the ones that, if let’s say your wife is on that table and they're giving birth and you have specifically said, do not cut that cord for 20 minutes, your husband is there to say, do not cut that cord for 20 minutes. We mean it. Being an advocate is incredibly important. Unfortunately, we are in a day and age where you would think the advocate would be the medical system, but it's not. The advocate has to be you. So you have to know what your rights are. You have to know what other options there are. It is hard to find some of that information nowadays because of censorship, but that's why your platform and these podcasts are so important because you can't censor them. We have to be able to get that information out to people.  Ashley James (0:32:10.351) Well, YouTube still censors me. I put my podcast out everywhere, but YouTube will take down. I mean, I can't put any kind of vaccine episode, they will take down. So I'm looking forward to that no longer happening because they're being watched now.  It's unfortunate. It's unfortunate. Yes, it's unfortunate how they've been. You've heard of last month, a five-year-old—he had never gotten any vaccines before. This is in Tennessee. I'll link it in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com. I'll link this article. Five-year-old develops autism after being forced to get 18 vaccines in one day as part of a custody battle. A Tennessee judge ordered a family to vaccinate all three of their children, all whom had never been vaccinated. Five-year-old Isaac immediately became ill and was eventually diagnosed with severe regressive autism. People say, well, there's been studies that prove that autism is not caused by vaccines. Yet we have this child who did not have autism until he was given 18 vaccines in one day, and now he has severe regressive autism. There's the proof right there. This is standard of care—18 in one day—there are no safety studies on that. Jodie Meschuk (0:33:41.711) Correct. So there's a few lessons I think that this story brings up. There's quite a few actually. The first one is, I'll play devil's advocate here. I'll play the shoot. I'll pretend I'm a standard pediatrician. So let's say I'm a mom and I go into my well visit and I've got my little toddler with me, let's say, and it's ready for the next scheduled vaccines. Number one, parents remember, your well visits line up with the vaccine schedule. So you need to think about that first. Why are the well visits spaced out the way that they are? Because it lines up with the vaccine schedule. It has nothing to do with keeping your child well. It has everything to do with getting them in and getting them a vaccine. So that's number one. But you look at this and let's say I were to go in and we're there for our scheduled appointment and I ask a question of the pediatrician and I go, hey, I heard this story. I read this thing on the news where this child got vaccines, got 18, and they got autism. What’s that pediatrician going to say? First of all, that pediatrician's going to say, well, they could say, yes, that was a one-off thing. I mean, they got 18. I don't know if the story's true. I haven't read it. They're going to deflect. But it's very well possible that that pediatrician could say, well, I mean, if they got 18, that's kind of a lot or your pediatrician most likely is going to say, yes, I don't know about the validity of that story. I think it was probably made up. I mean, what did you find on social media? They're going to basically gaslight you. They're not going to say that that is valid. They're literally going to gaslight that mother. The next thing that will happen too is, when you come into these studies that supposedly have proven that vaccines do not cause autism, if you look at those studies, they weren't even done properly. Look who funded the study. You have to always look at who funded the study and what was the outcome that they were trying to receive from that study. A lot of people don't realize that most of the studies done across the board are funded by Big Pharma, and who is the one making the profit from vaccines? Big Pharma. But if you take a step back and you look at just as a common sense, hey, this family over here, they never vaccinate their children. Their kids are always healthy. This family over here, they follow the schedule. Their kids are always sick. You can literally do your own double-blind placebo just right there. You know what I mean? I look at my children and obviously we've learned so much since what we went through with a vaccine injury. One of my children has never been vaccinated, never has received a round of antibiotics, never has been to a well visit. By all intents and purposes, the medical system would say my child should be dead. But my child who has never received any of that is the healthiest one of the entire family. So a lot of it is just common sense. Now, the other lesson I think that we can learn from this story, and this is kind of a sad part of it, but I think it's where we are at as a culture is, there's a lesson here that we need to really be on the same page with our spouse when it comes to vaccines before we decide to have children. What I have seen happen a lot in my own practice when I'm working with clients and I'm helping children heal from these labels and I'm walking hand in hand with these parents through the ups and downs is, the worst stories, meaning the hardest ones, are the ones where all of a sudden the mom decided to do her research and the husband refuses to believe it and wants the kids to get vaccinated. It creates such a wedge in that marriage and that relationship. Before you got married, you just wanted to make sure that you had the same goals and dreams and maybe the same faith or whatever. But I'm going to tell you right now, you better have a conversation with that future spouse and make sure that you are both on the same page with vaccines because so many of these stories end up in the courts. You know what the court's going to do? Side with Big Pharma. Period. They're going to side with the standard of care because that's what a court does. So that's also just a really sad part of the story. Whatever happened in the court system, whatever happened with custody, all of that stuff, it's something that we need to be very aware of before we enter into having children. Ashley James (0:38:43.788) Yes, and hopefully be able to have those deep conversations with your family, with even your in-laws, because that's the thing where maybe the parents are 100 percent, but then the in-laws or the grandparents are freaking out and just be able to ask them to keep an open mind and not be so naive and so trusting of the mainstream medical system. It's a for-profit industry. It's not this parental figure that loves you, that wants the best for you. This is what we do—we put it on a pedestal. When we start to go down this rabbit hole, the cognitive dissonance, some people just can't, it's so uncomfortable for them to accept because they were raised to believe that government agencies are their friend, are their loving, caring, almost their God, their loving, caring deity that wants the best for them. My pediatrician's so nice. They want the best for me. They wouldn't hurt me or lie to me. The thing is, it's bigger. It's bigger than the nice man or the nice woman you've been seeing. It's bigger than the one doctor. It's a huge juggernaut. The industry is financially driven, and they suppress data, and we've seen it over and over again. You just have to be willing to go there. You have to be willing. You can't find this in the mainstream media because the legacy media is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. If you don't believe me, go watch regular TV and count how many pharmaceutical commercials you see. It's pretty crazy. It's a pharmaceutical commercial because, at the end, they talk about anal leakage and death. It's always death. Okay. It's always death. There's your clue. So you can't trust your news source from any legacy, any company that gets money from Big Pharma isn't going to rat them out. We've seen this. So you have to go deeper. You have to dig deep. I love the Children's Health Defense. I love the documentaries they put out. But you have to be willing to kind of go to alternative media, this podcast, to be willing to go and seek out information. Yes. Jodie Meschuk (0:41:18.264) Well, I think we've definitely seen that shift. I mean, if you look at even the most recent election, it was only because of independent media that things had a chance, even had a chance versus without that independent media, there would be no chance. You look at COVID, look at how much was suppressed in COVID. I wrote about this the other day in one of my stories. I don't know that the population, and we can relate this to parents. We can relate this to what that experience is like when you're in a pediatrician's office. When you're trying to navigate this medical system, which by the way, I would say don't even try to navigate it. Just exit it because you don't need it. If you're worried about a broken bone, you can go get urgent care and emergency care anytime you want, but you need to exit that system. That's a trap. Basically, what's happening is that the entire population, it's almost as if they are married to a narcissistic, abusive spouse because that is exactly what the media has been doing to people for years. It's interesting because you saw this so clearly in 2020. I mean, I was the only one without a mask. I was the only one going opposite sides of the arrows on purpose. I was the only one. My children never put a mask on. I'm not going to do it. You look at how many people fell in line, and it was as if they were in a relationship with an abuser and they didn't know how to get out of it. They didn't realize that they were actually being abused. That's the thing. I don't think that parents as a whole realize, unless you're awake to it already. But if you're just the average person moving through life, you do not realize that the very system is just mentally abusing you every single day to keep you in line. Until you realize that, you're not going to break free of that relationship. Ashley James (0:43:24.751) But what might make you break free is how much you love and care for your children and want them to be healthy. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes a vaccine injury. I've had so many friends where their first child was vaccine injured, and then that's what woke them up. But they had to see it with their own eyes. They had to see the gaslighting over and over again. “Hey, my kid was walking, and now they can't walk anymore after their well visit.” Or, “My child was making eye contact, and now they can't. Now they're just a floppy baby after their well visit.” Really, really sad and scary. I know this is a very complex answer, but give us a bit of the rundown. Why do vaccines cause neurological issues? Jodie Meschuk (0:44:21.487) So I'm glad you bring this up because I want, number one, we're gonna kind of take this back to autism for a second because it is an absolute exploding epidemic and it should not be. You can look at autism, you can look at ADHD, you can look at sensory processing, you can look at eczema, you can look at asthma, you can look at insulin resistance that we are now seeing in six-year-olds, obesity, all of these things. Yes, they wanna put six-year-olds on Ozempic, just wait, it's coming. It's already in the works. Big Pharma wants to make their money. So I want people to start looking at things for what they really are. This took me time, by the way. Again, I had the blinders on, I blindly trusted the system. We paid the price for that. So I never trusted it again. Now, caveat, if I need emergency care, great. That is what they're good at. Save my life, then let me take care of it from there. But this whole system of healthcare is corrupt at its core. Going back to your question with the vaccine, if you look across the board at this epidemic of autism, for example, what really is it? This is the question I want people to ask because if you go to the neurologist, what will happen is your child will be vaccine injured. Maybe you don't realize it's a vaccine injury at the time because there's sometimes a slow regression that happens. Sometimes there's a quick regression. It depends on how many the child receives. It depends on their body's ability to detox itself, their body's ability to have a strong defense system. So every child's a little bit different in how this can show up. But what we see most is that it shows up right around 20 to 24 months. A little bit right at that age two mark. So what really is it? It's brain inflammation. It's body inflammation. Why are we calling it autism? Because it's easy to call it that. Because it's easy for that neurologist to just look at that parent and say, “Your child has autism. I'm so sorry. Here's resources for you. All we can do is just hope that they get a little bit better and maybe talk one day.” You're literally given no hope either, by the way, no hope whatsoever. There's no talk about healing. There's no talk about what the root cause was and what the trigger was, which was the vaccine. Also could be environmental issues, damages. Look at our environment, look at our food supply, look at what's in it, look at the fluoride, look at all of the assaults that happen on the population. Vaccines being one of the most and the biggest because if you look at the vaccine schedule, it's massive and it's massive what these babies and these children are receiving. So what does a vaccine do? Well, it's supposed to help, they say, to prevent disease. But what else is in there and how is that acting in the body? Again, you go back to those ingredients. You go back to formaldehyde, aluminum—aluminum being the most common over mercury nowadays, but again, mercury is still present in some. You have preservatives, polysorbate 80. You have formaldehyde like I mentioned. You have aborted fetal cells. Some people will go, “That was a long time ago.” No, no, no. They're still using aborted fetal cells. They still are. Do you know what gender that aborted fetal cell is that's being injected into your child? Is your child a boy and they're getting a girl? Is your child a girl and they're getting a boy? I don't know. Think about that for a minute and how many they receive and how many assaults that are to their body with aborted fetal cells. But what happens? I want to take you guys through, okay? So I'll take you through a little piece of my story to kind of highlight this, which is here I am with my about 13-month-old child, and I'm pregnant with my second, very pregnant. We go in for the well visit. Now, standard well visit, I was supposed to see our standard pediatrician, which we had an agreement at the time that I was going to be spacing out vaccines. So in the very beginning, when I first became a mom, I felt very uncomfortable about vaccines, but I just didn't know how to advocate for myself. Then over the course of the first year of my child's life, after repeated ear infections, repeated, 10 rounds of antibiotics, chronic illness, chronic diarrhea, all of these problems, which absolutely pointed to vaccine injury. So I started to space them out because something inside me was screaming, but I just didn't know how to say it. I just didn't know how to stand in my power enough to walk away from it completely. So we were kind of half in the system, half out of the system. So we went in for a well visit, and the normal one, the normal pediatrician we had this agreement with wasn't there. I didn't know that. So the on-call pediatrician came in. Still to this day, I have such guilt and shame over not just getting up and walking out because something felt so wrong. But again, I just, I was paralyzed. I didn't have the confidence then that I have now. So the pediatrician comes in and looks at my child's chart. He's like, “Boy, they're really behind, really behind on their vaccines.” I go, “Well, that's fine. We're spacing them out. I don't want to do too many.” He launched very quickly into this fear and gaslighting routine, which is what most parents will experience. Now again, I'm very pregnant with my second, did not have my husband with me. So maybe it would have been a different story if he was there, but I felt very backed into a corner. He proceeded to say things like, “Well, you wouldn't want your child to die of measles or polio or these things.” Imagine that question from a pediatrician. “You wouldn't want your child to die, would you?” How do you feel as a mom? So I go, “Well, no, but I just don't know that I trust all these. I don't know that they're safe.” Then it's, “Don't tell me you're one of those moms. Don't tell me you're one of those moms that goes to Google and listens to quack doctors, and all of a sudden you think vaccines are unsafe. I'll tell you right now, vaccines don't cause autism.” It's the line that they've been taught to say. They all say the same thing. We kind of had this conversation back and forth, and I'm sweating, literally sweating in this freezing cold pediatrician's office, holding my child. He then says, “Well, it's really irresponsible of you not to do this, and you have to do this. We have to catch him up today.” I was like, “Well, I don't, I just, don't know.” “Would you give your child that many vaccines?” Because he was talking about giving my child nine vaccines, nine. Now, that's not 18, but I want parents to remember nine. Nine is not okay. Nine is not normal, but nine is very common today. It is not uncommon for a child to receive nine at a well visit because a three-in-one is three shots, you guys. It's not one shot, it's three. So if you have the MMR, that's three shots, but they make it sound like it's just one. So you could very well get a three-in-one, a three-in-one, and a couple other ones. So he said, “Gosh, no, if I was you, I mean, I would give my child this in a heartbeat. They're totally safe. I would have no reservations whatsoever.” I just kept hemming and hawing, and I'm sweating, and I'm like, I feel like I want to throw up, and my child's crying already. He says, “Well, if you're going to continue to give me a problem, then I'm going to have to call child services on you for being a negligent parent.” Yes. People think that's crazy. The amount of mothers that I speak to and have spoken to in the last 14 years, it is very common for a pediatrician to threaten that. He threatened me. That is another reason why mothers cave, because they're threatened, and they don't know the truth, and they don't know what else to do, and you're backed into a corner. That was me. That was me. I got backed into a corner. Everything in my body told me this is wrong. Just get out of the office. Just walk away. But I was paralyzed. I felt like I was in an alternate universe and I couldn't move my body. Of course, then the nurse comes in, because the doctor doesn't inject your baby. No, no, no, no, no. The nurse does. The nurse gets to do it. She comes in with her tray of vaccines, and she proceeds to inject a three-in-one, a three-in-one, and then three separate ones. Nine vaccines.  Meanwhile, my child is screaming bloody murder on the table. It's very common. Because what does a baby do when a needle comes at them and something hurts and it pokes? They scream. So this is what I want parents to understand, this visualization, which I had no idea was happening to my child on that table at that time, which was when that child is in fight and flight. I want you to think about when you're in fight and flight. When something happens, a car stops in front of you, and you slam on your brakes, and you get this flush of blood running through your body, and you get this tingly feeling. That's fight and flight. That's cortisol. That's protecting your body so it doesn't die in that moment, basically. When that happens, the blood-brain barrier opens for a very specific purpose to flush. I want you to picture that little baby or that toddler on that table, and they are screaming, and that blood-brain barrier opens. Where do we think that aluminum is going to go? Where do we think that formaldehyde is going to go? It's going to go to the brain. And that blood-brain barrier that is supposed to stop that from happening, it can't, because that child is screaming, and they don't know what's happening, and they're scared. This is exactly what happens as a precursor to these neurological issues that we see in epidemic proportions today. This is autism. We need to stop calling it autism. I'll be honest with you. I'm very passionate. I'm very passionate about this topic, and in fact, the book I'm working on right now, because I'm redoing my original book Autism Reimagined, the book I'm working on right now, which is going to come out next spring, goes into this in great detail, which is the entire population is being lied to and manipulated right now as to what their children really have. They don't have autism. Your child does not have autism. Your child has brain inflammation. Your child has metals in their body. Your child is not proficiently detoxing this poison. So once you understand what it really is, all of a sudden, it makes sense. This bucket, this label, all of these labels, they come up with new labels every day, Ashley. Every day, there's a new label, because it takes the responsibility off of them.  It puts the spotlight on this label of autism or whatever it is that you're going to call it so that it takes the guilt off of the mother, and it's just genetic. It's just the way it was. Then you're just told it's genetic. It's not genetic. How do genes change in epidemic proportions? They don't. It's impossible. Down syndrome never changes. Genetic malformations never change in their percentages. How is it then that autism is genetic when it has exploded from one in 10,000 years ago to one in 22? How is that genetic? So we have to really start going back to the drawing board and looking at things for what they really are. That's how it begins. It begins with that child on that table getting injected when they're in fight and flight. Where do we think that poison's going to go? Ashley James (0:57:30.305) Well, I had Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride on episode 385. I’ve had several other doctors on the show who talk about doing a very specific healthy diet and heavy metal detox for the children who are diagnosed with autism, and they get so healthy now they're not on the spectrum. Was that ever truly autism? You can't—true, true, true autism, the one that was one in 10,000 kids, the one that was the savants you'd hear about, a Rain Man—though, you can't just heavy metal detox that person, and they're no longer autistic. But when we take dozens and just hundreds, hundreds and thousands of kids who've gone through the GAPS diet, who've gone through these heavy metal detoxes, then they're no longer on the spectrum. They're no longer in pain. They're starting to talk. They're starting to hug their parents. They're starting to look them in the eye. That's why they call it spectrum, not every child with autism has this level of brain inflammation that they're beating their head against a wall or punching their head or rocking, but their brain hurts so much. They're in so much pain. Their brain is on fire. What was described to me, really interesting, the heavy metals that get in the brain, they vibrate with certain frequencies like WiFi. WiFi is at a frequency that vibrates the heavy metals, heating the brain up. It's like you're putting the brain in the microwave. So if you take a child with heavy metals in the brain and you put them in a no-WiFi environment, they're much more comfortable. It doesn't get rid of the problem. The heavy metals are still there, the inflammation is still there. Immediately remove them from a WiFi environment, immediately get them on a healthier diet, for example, the GAPS, and start doing gentle heavy metal detox. I have so many episodes on that, where we talk about all the ways that you can support a child in detoxing. First of all, the human body was never designed to have that many chemicals be injected at any point in your life, no matter how big or small you are. But then some are more susceptible than others because MTHFR, just one example, the liver’s ability to detox or their detox pathways are compromised because foods are fortified with chemical artificial vitamins that are not great. They're the opposite. What is it? Folic acid actually blocks folate absorption. So if you're feeding your kid Cheerios, and there's folic acid in it, it blocks folate, which is the natural form. Then your liver has problems detoxing. Glyphosate is really high in these cereals. Glyphosate binds to heavy metals and then releases them in parts of the body where pH changes. So it actually helps deliver heavy metals. So if you got an injection of aluminum or if you get the mercury from a flu shot or whatever, it's going to grab onto these heavy metals and then release them in the kidneys and in the brain. It is a delivery system. So we have to clean up everything. Clean up the diet. Stop feeding processed food. Stop everything that feeds that inflammation. But as early as we can, start to question the standard practices because tell me, as a doctor, how many safety studies have you seen any pharmaceutical industry or the CDC produce or any company produce? Showing the safety of incorporating multiple vaccines, of taking one vaccine and putting three together? Any safety studies on taking three or more vaccines at the same time? Jodie Meschuk (1:02:08.393) That's just it, there aren't actual legitimate studies that show there's not a single study that follows the schedule the way that it is. That's a really big problem because they try to isolate things. So what they do is they isolate one vaccine, and they take a very small sample size, and they do it for a very short time. We watched them for a month, they were fine. What they're not studying and they refuse to study because they know what it will show is the bioaccumulation. It's the long-term ramification of the way that the childhood schedule is set up today. There's also some really good studies that show unvaccinated versus vaccinated populations and how much healthier the unvaccinated population of children are. But those aren't the ones funded by big pharma, of course.  So they're hard to find, the really good ones, because they don't want you to find them. But then when you look at the studies that they try to shove down your throat all the time, or you go into that pediatrician's office as the typical mom and you just want the best for your kid, and you're asking some very normal questions that any mother would ask, which is, hey doc, are you sure these are safe? I heard these could cause autism, or I heard that my child could have a reaction. What they will say is, I've never seen a study that shows that because all they've read are faulty studies. All they have been fed is this garbage that vaccines are safe. So they believe that. I really truly like to believe, though, that there are good pediatricians out there. I know that there are because obviously I know who some of them are. What you're gonna find, first of all, is that most of those pediatricians, if not all of them, don't operate within the insurance industry. They don't take insurance for a reason because the minute you start taking insurance, you're beholden to what they deem to be appropriate healthcare.  So what you'll find is a lot of these good, well-meaning doctors, they actually are forced out of the system because if you speak up, you're fined. If you speak up, you get your license taken away. Look at California. You have doctors who are literally scared for their lives and their livelihoods because they can only write a handful of medical exemptions a year. If they go over that, they get their license taken away. They're under fire. So are these doctors, are these pediatricians actually operating from a place of truth? Are they operating from a place of fear? Unfortunately, a lot of them are operating from a place of fear. So they just toe the line and they just do what they're told. But again, you'll find the good ones. It's just that most of them don't take insurance, and that's why they don't take insurance. But yes, I mean, across the board, you have to really understand at a very deep level what goes on behind the scenes. Even the fact that pediatricians get bonuses for vaccines. If you ask a pediatrician that is very deep into their love of vaccines, there's a couple that will come across my desk from time to time with things that they say, information that they're promoting out there. It's just so clear how brainwashed they are, that they literally are acting like the legacy media. You watch the news during the election cycle, I watch it, and I go, do they even realize the lies that are coming out of their mouth? The fact of the matter is, I think they do, but they do it anyway. It's the same thing with pediatricians who are very deep into the system. You go and you observe, and you go, they just said that vaccines are safe and they don't cause autism. Do they even realize what they're saying? Do they even realize what a lie that is and how it's very clear because it's literally listed on the insert as a side effect? So why are they saying this? At the end of the day, we can never really truly get into the mind of someone other than the fact that I think a lot of them are in fear. Some of them actually really believe this stuff because they've been taught it in medical school. It's too hard to believe that they've been lied to. So they just continue to lie. Ask pediatricians, well, don't you get bonuses for having this fully vaccinated childhood population in your practice? No, no, no, I don't get bonuses. Really? Because I'm kind of looking at Blue Cross Insurance right now. You actually do get a bonus if you have a certain percentage of children who get vaccines in your office. So why are you lying? But it's just an interesting landscape out there. We just go back to, it's up to the parents. It's up to us to really see the truth. It's up to us to do the digging. It's up to us to stand up and advocate for our children, because at the end of the day, the system will not. You might come across a diamond in the rough, needle in a haystack, maybe. I mean, we did. We eventually came across a pediatrician who actually believed me and who helped me in my early years of healing my child and doing some things that were well outside his experience, but he was willing to do it because he believed me and he understood the heart of a mother. He was willing to put his practice on the line to help me heal my child. They're far and few between. So at the end of the day, we just have to know this information and know how to stand up for our kids. Sorry, I got off track there a little bit. Ashley James (1:07:59.399) No, no, not at all. You're absolutely right. Okay. We went down a nice side conversation because we had to unpack this whole, you were there in the hospital feeling uncomfortable. They were doing all these things, and we talked about that vaccine. We just had to unpack that vaccine. It's kind of the most ridiculous, of all the vaccines they give your child, they give it at the most ridiculous time. This has to wake you up. This has to wake people up. It's a vaccine, it was only given to prostitutes and people at high risk. Was it even available to the public? They're giving it to a newborn seven-pound baby. That doesn't make sense, and it's standard of care. We have to start questioning the standard of care.  Jodie Meschuk (1:08:57.405) Not only that, but a week later, what do you get? The DTaP, the Hib, you get more. Literally a week later, then a few weeks later after that, then a month later after that. You guys just take a step back and see. You have a vaccine schedule that is upwards of 90 vaccines at this point, almost from birth to age five. They just quietly added the COVID vaccine without telling anyone, without telling anyone. So if somebody were to do all the optional ones, flu vaccine, which again, depending on who you go to and what climate you live in, meaning what kind of area type of thing, flu should be optional, but it's not really told to you that it's optional. But if you look at the entire schedule, plus COVID now, you're looking at upwards of 90. That's a hell of a lot of injections into a child. How is their body supposed to process that? This is interesting because we'll always have the people that say, well, I was fine. You mentioned food quality, all of the garbage that's in food, the glyphosate, the hybrid wheat, the atrazine, the food coloring, all of the preservatives, all of this stuff. Now granted, I grew up on some of that stuff. But I also only received about four vaccines in my life. I mean, my mom probably could have done more, but I think my parents were probably just kind of, yes, we'll do a few. They weren't overly medical, meaning they didn't fear things. I didn't go to the doctor for every cold. We see what is happening today in kids. A lot of stuff was just, drink some chicken soup and watch The Price Is Right and lay on the couch. Even if you grew up eating garbage food, we're trying to basically make a straw man argument here, which is number one, the vaccine schedule wasn't the same as it is now. Even in the 90s, it wasn't the same as it is now. Even it was ballooning in the 90s, but it's still not the same. The amount of chemicals in food were not the same as today. So any person saying, well, I'm fine, I had vaccines, I ate garbage food. It's not the same. That's the problem, it's not the same. You can't compare an orange to an apple. Ashley James (1:11:25.980) If the grandparents of your kid are going, well, I'm fine. I got vaccines. They got three. Polio, smallpox, and DTP. That's it. In 1962, they got five doses in total. They had five doses. Now it's, you said, it's over 70 doses. Back in 1983, it was 24 doses over the period of 15 years. Jodie Meschuk (1:11:53.297) They also didn't have chemtrails. They also didn't have fluoride in their water. They also didn't have glyphosate, and they didn't have food dyes. Ashley James (1:12:00.773) Yes, 80,000 man-made chemicals created in the last 40 years that are in our air, food, water, soil. Jodie Meschuk (1:12:08.249) We wonder why we have an epidemic today. I'll also get parents that will say, well, my child didn't receive any vaccines and they have autism. I go, okay, tell me about all the other stuff. Because although vaccines are a very big root cause for a lot of the things that we see today, there's also, what was the mother's state of health? Did they get a flu shot? Did they get a Tdap? They pushed that Tdap like crazy on mothers. Now COVID and flu shots together. What was the state of their oral health? Did they have metal fillings in their mouth? Did you know that it leach into their bloodstream and cause a problem with their baby? We live in a world where they want so desperately for you to just look at one thing and that's it. Autism isn't genetic at all. Vaccines don't cause autism, but what about all the other things? So there's just so many factors at play that although I will say it's a lot rarer for a child to have autism when they have not received any vaccines, meaning a child who is on the typical schedule, they're just waiting for something to happen to their body. It can be a wide range of things. It can be chronic eczema. It could be ADHD, could be sensory processing, could be gut dysfunction, or just gut dysbiosis. It could then go into autism. There are so many things, but all they care about is that the entire world thinks autism is genetic. That's literally all they care about, but they can't prove it. Ashley James (1:13:53.855) My gosh, if it's genetic, then how common like three generations who went from one in 10,000 to one in every single classroom. Jodie Meschuk (1:14:04.061) Right. The data doesn't lie, but they want you to look at skewed data.  Ashley James (1:14:10.549) Okay, so there you were. Your child received nine shots. Then what happened? Your child was crying. Then what happened? What did you first notice that made you think there was something wrong? Jodie Meschuk (1:14:32.485) The first thing was honestly, it's one of those traumatic memories that never goes away. I've done a lot of work, emotional healing, obviously. I have been willing to look at the truth and all the anger that I had back then about what happened. The most important thing that I look back on that I did was instead of sitting in that anger and not doing anything, I used that anger to heal my child. I used that anger to prove the system wrong. I put myself back in that place, and I can still see it very clearly today. That trauma will never go away. Meaning that guilt I feel as a mother will never go away, that I allowed that to happen to my child. Which is why I wake up today, every morning I wake up and I go, I've got to save all the babies. That's literally my mission in life. I want to save all the babies. One day, when I die, I want my legacy to be that I played a hand in stopping this autism epidemic because it's so brutal. It's so brutal to watch children go through this. So there were nine vaccines and crying, which is obviously any child is going to cry when they get poked, but I just remember feeling paralyzed, crying. I was literally crying as the nurse was doing it. How sad that that nurse just kept doing it and didn't stop and go, honey, what's wrong? How sad. What a terrible bedside manner. But there I am crying, quickly picking up my child, and I run out of that office because I knew—I just knew that what I did was wrong, and I couldn't take it back. I think that's another thing that if parents can just remember that once you do it, you can't take it back. It's not like trying to flush an antibiotic out of the system, which is obviously a lot easier than a vaccine. You literally can't take it back. There's no “oops, now get it out of the system.” No, that's not how it works with a vaccine. So I got in my car, and we were supposed to go to a playdate, a park playdate. There I am just driving, crying in the car. I think I called my mom and just felt horrible. What's my mom going to say? She's the best mom in the world, but she's just like, “It'll be okay, honey. They'll be fine. Everything's okay.” She's just reassuring me. But I just knew in my heart of hearts that what I did was going to have consequences. He just never stopped crying. I know for a fact that brain inflammation started pretty quickly. I went to the park. My friends also tried to console me, like good friends do. It was interesting because I would say at the time half of my friends—we were all in the same stage of life, having our first babies and starting families. We were in MOPS together and Bible study. We went to the park all the time. Half of them were not vaccinating because they were already awake to it. Half of them were. I do remember distinctly having some of these conversations with my friends, and I know that they were trying gently to kind of open my eyes, but I just wasn't there yet. So we got to the park, and my child just never stopped crying. That night, there was this shrieking cry. So it turned into—you think about your child crying, and there's the normal fussy cry, there's the “I'm hungry” cry, there's the “I'm overly tired” cry. This was a shrieking cry that I had never heard come out of my child before. It got so bad that night. I called the urgent line for the pediatrician, and I said, “I think my child's having a reaction. I don't know what to do. They have a fever. They're having the shrieking cry.” They just said, “Give him Tylenol and Motrin. Just rotate Tylenol and Motrin.” So that's what I did. Yes. Ashley James (1:18:55.970) Okay. Let's pause. Let's pause. You're a naturopath. Now, is there a class action lawsuit against Tylenol? So, OK, why is it the worst thing to give a child after a vaccine? Why is Tylenol the worst thing? Jodie Meschuk (1:19:18.828) Well, the most simple explanation, I always like to keep things very simple for people because I don't think that the average mother needs to go into the weeds. You just need to understand why something is bad. So I know, I know, simple, yes. Ashley James (1:19:35.696) I want to go into the weeds. Okay, so keep it simple. if you could  go, go, go deep, feel free to go deep. We have a lot of very, very intelligent listeners here. All the intelligent listeners come to this podcast.  Jodie Meschuk (1:19:43.302) That's awesome. Well, I think really one of the simplest explanations and what is most important to remember is that when you dose Tylenol and even when you dose it for a fever, it's doing a kind of fake effect in the body. So it's fake bringing that fever down or making that child feel more comfortable, but it's not actually doing anything to heal the root cause. So if you look at brain inflammation and if my child was, their body is going to go into a natural fight mode because that's truly how God has designed our bodies. Our bodies are designed beautifully and intelligently with no mistake to fight a fever, to fight pollutants that come into our body. Now, yes, we're going to have those very small percentage of times where we may need some emergency care, but you guys, you have to remember, that percentage is so tiny. They just want you to believe that it's everything. Go to the ER when your child has coughing, go to the ER when your child has 104. We don't have to do that. But anyways, I digress.  So when the body is trying to naturally fight something, which is the case of my child, probably going into, how do I mitigate this? How do I get rid of this metal? So we go into the brain inflammation, the encephalitis basically, and you dose Tylenol. What Tylenol does is it depletes the body's glutathione levels. Okay, so glutathione is just really important when it comes to this natural response that the body has with its immune system to help clear infection, to help clear toxicity. So if that is diminished from Tylenol, now the body doesn't have that natural ability to be able to do what it needs to do. It's hampered. Without the proper amount of glutathione to be able to clear what was going on or at least help it in some way. Now again, I can't go back to my story and go, well, if I didn't do Tylenol, everything would have been fine. I think the damage was done, honestly. I think dosing the Tylenol made it worse. So anytime that Tylenol is used, we just have to remember that your body's glutathione is its natural ability to fight infection. If that is depleted from Tylenol, then the body can't naturally fight what it wants to fight.  Glutathione is important. It's an antioxidant. It's important for cellular repair, disease prevention. It's your basic immune support antioxidant, but it's also for brain health. Glutathione protects the cells of the hippocampus. It's responsible for memory and learning, but it's also responsible for your brain cells in general and keeping them healthy. So that was a very, very detrimental thing that I think. Again, I can't go back to my story and go, well, they would have been fine, but it certainly didn't help. It made it worse in terms of how my child's body was unable to try at any measure to try to repair itself and to try to repair the brain. Ashley James (1:23:08.920) So they said give it Tylenol, which then suppresses the ability to detox further. Did your baby stop crying? Jodie Meschuk (1:23:28.796) No, it was days and days of this kind of shrieking cry. Now the fever, again, here's what a parent's gonna be told. It's totally normal after a vaccine for your baby to get a fever. It's just the body building immunity to the infection that it was injected with. No, my friends, the fever is because there's poison in the body. The fever is because the body does not know what to do with this foreign stuff that has come in. Now, it'd be great. You wanna try to make a vaccine that supposedly spurs an immune response in the body, try to make it without those poisons. I think more people would probably be open to, like okay but what that is? That's homeopathy, basically. That's homeoprophylaxis. So that's kind of your way that you gently introduce these diseases to the body to help build immunity because we're also in a state as well today where children are not getting natural infections. They're not getting chickenpox like they're supposed to. They're not getting measles like they're supposed to. They're getting these fake infections. So that response that happens in the body is not because the body's just trying to make some antibodies. It's like, what the hell is this aluminum? What the hell is this formaldehyde? What do you want me to do with this? We need to understand that too, because you're going to be gaslighted at every angle when you take your baby in or you call. I called. I was not told that that was a vaccine reaction. I said on the phone, I think my child's having a reaction. No, it's normal. Your child's not having a reaction. It's very normal to get a fever. It's very normal for them to be fussy. Just give them Tylenol and rotate Motrin with it. You're not even told the truth that it is a reaction. All of this eczema that we see pop up in babies, that's actually a vaccine reaction. But you're gaslighted into, no, it's normal, babies get eczema, here, slap this steroid cream on it. It just happens all the time. So that was us, which dosed the Tylenol and the Motrin. Over time, obviously, the fever started to get better, the screaming started to get better, but it turned into a brain injury, basically. It turned into my child was never the same until we got my child back and we healed them. Loss of words, unable to have eye contact, just all of those classic symptoms that again, what are they gonna do? They're gonna go, it's autism. We've made this list of symptoms. So if they fall into that, it's autism. No, it's brain inflammation. It's poison in the body. It's heavy metals. It's the body cannot detox very well. Now, oops, you have gut dysfunction. It's all of that, but let's just call it autism. It's crazy. Ashley James (1:26:34.985) So. How did you find the answers? To helping your child heal from this and now no longer be on a spectrum. Jodie Meschuk (1:26:51.661) Yes, so it took a while, but I will say my turning point. So my first turning point where I opened my eyes was when I was in that pediatrician's office. I vowed at that point, I will never be in this position again. It took time to gain my confidence with that, but I never went back. Okay, that's very important. It's when you are in those moments, that's a teachable moment. We need to listen to that voice inside of us. We need to heed that warning and we need to stand in our power. So it was when I took my child to see the neurologist, because at that time where I was at in California, it felt very apparent that you needed to have something on paper in order to get help. Now, I didn't know what help that I was looking for at the time because it was all new to me. So it was kind of like, okay, let's take one step at a time here and see where the road takes us in the system. All in the system, because I wasn't yet very awake to, I could actually reverse this damage in my child. That was kind of in the back of my mind, but I didn't really believe that that was possible at that moment. So I went to the neurologist and this was the turning point. So I'm there with my child and my newborn that I had recently, because remember I was pregnant when all this happened.  So I have my newborn baby and I have my other child. She goes in and does all the testing on him and all the standard things. I'm sitting there waiting and I'm kind of looking through the mirror, because it was one of those two-sided mirrors where you can look into the evaluation room. I kind of chuckled a little bit because my child wanted nothing to do with this neurologist. They knew that this person was bad news. So they just wanted nothing to do with them.  Anyways, did the testing, comes out, we sit down, and she looks at me very matter of factly. She goes, well, looks like, everything on the checklist, everything that I went through, I think it's safe to say we can just give your child this diagnosis of autism. Very matter of fact, no emotion, no feeling, no empathy, nothing. So I go, okay. I mean, it really wasn't a surprise to me because obviously I saw what happened to my child. I saw what happened from the point that they received those nine vaccines to where we were at that point. At that point, he was almost two. So I said, okay, I just have a question though, because I've been doing a little bit of research. She rolled her eyes at me, research, here it comes. I said, I've kind of been looking at changing the diet. Do you think it would be valuable to remove gluten, maybe do some probiotics? Just very basic stuff that I was researching. Very basic things, by the way, that would help any child be healthy. They're not like controversial things. Don't eat hybrid wheat, take some probiotics. This should not be controversial. She looks at me and she says, well, you're one of those, huh? First of all, all that stuff you're reading is garbage. I'm kind of summarizing here, but basically she told me what I was reading was garbage, that I can't go to Google to find information. That changing the diet will do nothing, that this is genetic. There's just nothing I can do. I go, okay, well, I mean, it might be worth a try at least. She's, well, yes, I mean, I guess if you want to, but honestly, don't waste your time. I mean, she was just so rude, the worst bedside manner. She then went to say, well, I have two sons. I have two boys, they have autism. Let me tell you, it's genetic, there's nothing you can do. Then she points at my newborn and says, you really should be prepared that your other child will probably have autism too, because it's genetic. My baby was four months old, maybe I'm, what? What do you mean? Then she pointed at my belly and said, you really should consider not having any more children. So that's when I really woke up. That's when the anger came over me that I wanted to punch her. I'll be honest. I wanted to do bodily harm, but I would never do that. But I was so angry that I left that office and I drove home white knuckling my steering wheel, crying like I've never cried before. I got home and that is when I vowed to prove her wrong. So really I can thank her because she was the reason we are where we are today. If she did not tell me that, if she would have said, yes, I mean, you can maybe try a few things. I'm so sorry you're going through this. Here's some options for therapy. It maybe would have been a different story. I don't know. But she crossed the line and it was exactly what I needed to have happened in that moment for me to turn that anger that had been festering inside of me for months, because I was angry. I was angry at what happened in that office when he got nine vaccines. I was mad at myself for allowing it to happen. I think this is a part of the story that so many mothers are in if they have a child right now that has a child with any type of label, but in particular autism, because it's just so, it's just so detrimental walking through it. It's so hard. It's so difficult and emotional. I felt shame. I felt literal shame for months that I could never really point the finger that it was shame. Shame is very interesting because it's not guilt. Guilt is, oops, I did something wrong. So I think I felt guilt first, but then the shame consumed me that I was a bad mother for what I did. That's not talked about enough. You have so many mothers who are in this position and they're paralyzed because they feel shame. They feel they are the worst mother in the world because they allowed this to happen to their child. Then at every turn in the medical system, they're just gaslighted, which only makes the shame worse and paralyzes them more. So for me, there was something inside of me that was, screw you, lady, I'm proving you wrong. That's what I did. Then I vowed at that moment, I will uncover everything I can. I will turn over every rock. I don't know how many sleepless nights I had researching stuff, trying different things, changing our lifestyle, just completely becoming an entirely different human being and family and never looking back. But the good news is, it took about five years, but my child is back. They are amazing. They don't have that damage anymore. We reversed it. We healed them. You would never know the history of what we went through. So it can be done. But I think the problem is, I always ask myself this question too, why are more parents not doing this? Why are more parents not believing that they can heal their child? Why do I have parents, mothers come onto my social media, let's say, and say nasty things? You're crazy, it's genetic, there's nothing you can do, my child was born this way, I celebrate this diagnosis, I celebrate my child. Why do they do that? Because they're in shame. They literally don't feel there's any path forward and it's too hard to look in the mirror and say, okay, I didn't know, but now I know and I'm gonna do something about it. Then every turn that they go, the school district, the neurologist, the pediatrician, big pharma, every article they read that is carefully crafted on Google, says it's genetic and you should celebrate the diagnosis. So what do we expect? It's just such an evil system. Ashley James (1:36:22.343) Once you become awake to this, then you start to see it everywhere. Then you start to see, there's no corporation that's out for my health. I have to start to really question everything. Every food product, you have to take responsibility and start to question everything and start to learn how you can protect your family. This is a very toxic world, and you have to learn how to navigate it in a way that protects your family. Jodie Meschuk (1:37:03.250) I think that can be very overwhelming to people, honestly. I think that's actually another reason why I observe that there's parents who don't do anything when they could be doing something is that it just feels too hard, which I understand that. It's easier to understand the, don't do anything because it feels overwhelming versus the, I don't do anything because I refuse to, and I just want to sit here and believe that this is genetic and celebrate this diagnosis, wear the blue puzzle piece, and put the sign in the front lawn and all of that stuff. We're in this culture that literally celebrates disease.  Literally, you go onto these social media sites and it's gross what you see out there. The adults that are, my gosh, I have ADHD, ha ha ha, no. Why are we celebrating this? Why are we wearing these diseases like a badge of honor? It's gross. But I think you have two different camps. You have the ones that just don't know what to do, and they're overwhelmed. So we need to just make it easier for them to understand that and say, okay, start here like literally start here. Let's start with changing the diet. Let's start with making sure that you get the right therapy because if you're doing ABA, you're in the system, honey, and your child's not going to improve. ABA is training a puppy, and your child is not a puppy. So let's get you the right therapy. Let's make sure you have an advocate for the right IEP so that you can fight the school district. They're giving you one hour of speech a week. No, honey, you deserve five. We're going to fight for you to get that. Start somewhere. Start with simple things. Then you have your other camp, which just wants to celebrate because they get attention. Ashley James (1:38:52.056) Yes. How about getting attention from a different community that wants to celebrate you winning your child's health back? Because I will be right there to celebrate with you. Jodie Meschuk (1:39:07.132) Exactly. I will celebrate that too. I get to do that. Mean, that's the cool, for years, I mean, again, I'm in a different place today because it's been years down the road, but there were many, many years that I kind of just sat in like, why did this happen to me? Why did this happen to us? Why did we have to go through this? I finally realized it's because God, first of all, doesn't give us more than we can handle. Second of all, God does give us hardships in life so that we can use that for His good. So for me, my passion is now helping other kids heal, walking with parents. I get to see these kids heal firsthand. I get to get the texts and the phone calls and get on a Zoom session with these parents who are, Jodi, I never thought my child was going to talk again. I get to hear the tears from mothers who are like, my gosh, my child just said mama. Do you know what that feels like to a mother to have your child say mama? You've never heard that before? That will break you. I get to see these kids thrive and heal and change. Instead of just staying where they were. But it's the fact though that these parents were willing to do it. These parents were willing to do the hard. They were willing to buck the system. They were willing to just say, you know what? I've got nothing to lose. That was me. I told myself in a very dark moment, I think my child was probably about three at the time and we were maybe a year into doing some healing stuff. I told myself, I will not look back 20 years from now and say, I could have, I should have, but I didn't. I won't do it. That's when I really got serious about healing. Ashley James (1:41:17.280) Yes. So obviously you can't give us all the answers in just sitting down in a podcast, but guide us in the right direction. Of course, we want to make sure we read your books and follow you on your great social media, great Instagram account. You've got this wonderful website. Where's a good place to start? What are some key things that parents can do right now, starting today, to help their child detox, to help bring down the inflammation, and help their brain heal? Jodie Meschuk (1:41:55.886) Yes, so here's what I would say. Keeping it very simple, because I think it is important to keep things simple initially, because small things actually make really big impacts. So the first step is we have to turn the tap off, which means no more vaccines. It's really hard when I'm working with parents and they're still one foot in the system and one foot out. It's, well, I'm spacing them out now, or I just did one. It's, nope, they're literally all poison. Nope, turn the tap off. If you're really worried about disease, let's have that conversation and talk about terrain and talk about what disease really means and talk about, hey, if your child were to happen to get something random and maybe their body had a difficult time with it, okay, great, let's talk about emergency care and what can happen there. But we gotta turn the tap off. So that means, doing an overhaul of the home. What toxins are in the home? Let's get those out of the home. No more well visits, just turn the tap off of the poison coming in. Then, let's take some steps now to see where we can make the biggest movements based off of the child. So with the autism spectrum, and I know we're using this one as an example a lot today only because really my passion is very much into autism healing and telling the truth about it. But you can apply this across the board to any chronic disease or illness.  So there's a wide range of what some children experience. Some children are very, very picky with what they eat. So we have to start there. Some children are not as picky, but they're struggling with more verbal language or they're struggling with eye contact. You have to start with, what's the thing and the door that is a little bit open right now that we can work with?  So I will say when it comes to food, this can be one of the most challenging pieces of a healing program. Here's why, if you think about it, you have a child that is very self-limiting with their diet. Now you have Dr. Natasha on, I love her. We did the GAPS diet. I will tell you right now, the GAPS diet is the gold standard, literally the gold standard. If any child with any chronic illness did the GAPS diet, they would heal. Hands down, no question about it. The problem is, you have a mother, and I know how this feels, because my own child was eating yogurt and McDonald's chicken nuggets, and that's it. That's it. So put yourself in the position of a mother that is, they already feel guilt and shame, regret. They're emotional, they're in fight and flight. They're just trying to survive. Their child won't eat anything but McDonald's chicken nuggets and yogurt.  This is the first barrier, is it's this emotional barrier we have to break through with the mother, because if I'm in fight and flight and I have all these emotions, and I try to give my child a cup of bone broth, and they throw it across the room, because of course they are, and why are they gonna do that? They have brain inflammation, they have gut dysbiosis. They're like a cocaine addict. They literally want their next hit of gluten and dairy and MSG. Ashley James (1:45:30.202) MSG, we have to remember it's a high glutamate. A lot of times it's a high glutamate diet that exacerbates it as well. Any fast food you're going to get, there's MSG in it. That includes Chick-fil-A. There's actually three different kinds of MSG in Chick-fil-A. It was crazy. Read the ingredients. The biggest thing that helped me go eat super clean and feed clean food to my child is, if you can't read small print, bring your readers, bring your little reader glasses or whatever you got from the dollar store, from the pharmacy or whatever.  It's worth it to sit and read the ingredients. If you're going to eat out at a fast food restaurant, all the ingredients are online. If you read the ingredients, you are more likely to say, no thanks. I actually don't want that. There's multiple kinds of sugar. There's multiple kinds of oil that are incredibly unhealthy oils. The MSG that is crack cocaine to the brain. It's an excitotoxin, it is not healthy, especially for children on the spectrum. You're right. They have a food addiction. But very quickly, you will be able to detox, and you can detox a child very quickly. Take screens away from a kid. The first three days, they're so pissed off at you because they're detoxing. The fourth day, you have a little angel on your hands. It really is just hunker down for the first few days if you're going to help your child detox from food or from screens, and in seven days off of those processed foods or seven days off the screens, you're going to see such a shift in their mental well-being and in their emotional well-being. It's really worth that detox. So it's kind of like in Trainspotting, I think it was, where they have to lock themselves in a room. That heroin addict locks themselves in a room with two buckets basically. They have to ride it out. That's you. You have to ride it out, but it's short. It doesn't take that long to detox from the food you're addicted to. So, okay, it does take sitting down going, I'm just going to just try it, just try it. It's not going to be as bad as it is on the first day. I promise you it won't be that bad on the seventh day. You know what I mean?  Jodie Meschuk (1:47:49.026) That's just it, it's willpower. I think again, you take a mom who's already in such disarray, their child maybe just got a diagnosis. They've just gone through all this trauma. This is why it's so difficult for parents and mothers especially to break through that diet wall or that food wall is because the first few days are going to be horrendous as your child is basically having a withdrawal of gluten. But that needs to happen. So, I mean, I remember our story, it was the first three days I was, my gosh, this is torture. I don't know if I can do this. Then all of a sudden, magically put that bone broth down, they start to drink it because the brain is letting go of those addictions. It's again, think about a drug addict coming off of a withdrawal.  The first, however long, is horrendous, but then it's like, the veil lifts. So that piece is very important. I cannot stress enough the GAPS diet, the healing piece of food, but again, we have to help. This is what I especially love is helping walk parents and mothers through, you can do this, I promise, stay strong. Here's what you can give your child in the meantime. Here's how we're gonna get them through this. You're going to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but so many people that I've had conversations with, the very first thing they say to me is, well, I've tried that diet, it didn't work. Okay, explain to me what you mean by you tried. Well, my child threw a fit on the first day, they didn't want to do this, and I felt they were gonna starve, so I quit. That's not trying, that's not trying. But I get it because it's very emotional. So I understand and I empathize with that. I've walked through it but this is why we have so many people out there also, well, there's no healing. I've tried it. It's genetic. Now I'm just gonna believe what the system says. It's genetic. It's because this wall is so hard to break through, but it is possible. So food is very important. Again, I can't recommend the GAPS diet enough. Just get the book and read her book. It's incredible. It opens your eyes so much to stuff. Then the next piece is therapy. So the very first thing a child is gonna be ushered into is ABA, Applied Behavioral Analysis. This is the most wretched form of therapy in my opinion. It's basically abuse in my opinion. You're training a child like they're a puppy. They're sitting down and you're saying, do this, knock, knock, here's your treat. Do this, knock, knock, here's your treat. This is not how we help a child heal.  So when it comes to therapy, a couple of things that parents need to understand, which is you're going to get what the system determines that you deserve, which is going to be the bare minimum. It's going to be ABA because it's cheap and it has become the standard of care. So what you need to do is you need to fight back. Oftentimes you have to have an advocate to do this that really knows the legal language, knows the system. It'll probably cost you a few hundred bucks, but it is well worth it to have that advocate type up a letter for you in legal language. That person on the other end of, let's say it's the regional center. So most states have something called a regional center, which is where the child will be put first before they turn three. That regional center will often test them and then they will determine what they qualify for. Again, you're gonna get the bare minimum and you're gonna get ABA. So what you need to do is you need to fight back and say, nope, I actually want five hours of speech therapy and I actually want floortime therapy. Ashley James (1:51:31.883) What kind of therapy? Jodie Meschuk (1:51:32.449) Floor time. Stanley Greenspan is the father of floor time therapy, and it's phenomenal. It literally helps bring the child's personality back out. It gets on their level of play. It's play therapy. So it brings skills out, and it develops their brain versus ABA, which is rote. Total difference in therapy in terms of the approach for a child. So I always tell parents, no, you need to get floor time therapy.  So that's going to be, again, it's going to take a little while because what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to keep fighting with the system. You're going to have to keep looking for therapists. You're going to fire some therapists along the way, but you're going to find that really good one that understands floor time therapy. That's where your child needs to be. So therapy is kind of a beast in a bucket in itself, but what I would recommend right off the bat, is to know that you are the one as the parent that drives the conversation, not the other way around. You as the parent are telling them what your child needs and what your child deserves. You do not stop until you get that. So when you're looking at healing across the board, you're doing some of these other building blocks like changing diet, healing the gut, probably doing a little bit of a detox. The detox is totally different depending on what the triggers were, what the poison is basically in the body. But when you're doing those things and therapy that actually matters, all of those things kind of come together, and they support each other. There's a happy domino effect that happens. I've seen children who have been in ABA for years, years they've been in ABA, no other healing that they're doing, meaning no detox, no diet changes, they're still eating garbage, they're still getting vaccines, they're still getting antibiotics for every ear infection. They get worse. They get worse.  I've also seen kids who are doing some healing stuff, but they're still doing ABA, and they're not making any improvements. So that therapy piece is still very, very important. I'm a huge fan of it, but it just has to be the right kind. You gotta hit it really hard in the beginning. So those first years, up until a child is about five and a half or six, matter a lot when that brain is open to receiving information, and the brain is still developing and doing a lot of leveling up in that timeframe of the child. That is one of the most important periods to hit it really hard with good therapy. But those are kind of the buckets I look at. So there's the first bucket of turn the tap off, stop with the toxicities coming in. Then there's the detox. Again, that's going to depend upon the child. I do different detoxes depending on health history, all that stuff. There's no single one detox that every child is going to heal on. There are some pieces that are the same, but you just kind of adjust it slightly for the child. Then there's the food piece, which to me, the food piece is incorporating the gut healing part of it because food and all of that stuff really do make a difference in terms of sealing the lining of the gut. So that leaky gut or that gut dysbiosis, that's where the GAPS diet is really crucial for that. Then outlier things. Most of these children are very deficient. They're deficient in minerals. They're deficient in crucial vitamins, antioxidants because of gut dysbiosis. Their body is not processing anything. So there is a supplement-type regimen. There are important pieces there. But I'm also really a big fan of not overwhelming parents. I don't think that a child needs to be on 50 different supplements. I think that it needs to be a very intentional program where you're gonna get the most bang for your buck, so to speak. So that's really where you're looking at those core pieces, most important for the brain. What does the brain need? The brain needs fats and minerals. Again, that's where the GAPS diet comes in, but then that's also where minerals come in. So they're very deficient in minerals, which means their brain's not really going to respond as well to things if they don't have enough minerals in them. So just, yes, things like that. Ashley James (1:56:07.281) Yes, absolutely. We are all minerally deficient because of the farming practices of the last hundred years. Now, even if you did eat a vegetable, there's so many, I get iron from spinach. I could bet you money there's no iron in, excuse me, there's no iron in your spinach because it's grown hydroponically. Plants can grow in water, hydroponically with unnatural sunlight, with artificial sunlight, with NPK and that's it. They can be absolutely void of the 60 essential minerals.  It's really sad. A lot of the farmlands have been over-farmed, and the farming practices, the chemicals they use, and the way they till have leached all the minerals out of the soil. So we are, as a nation, minerally deficient. Then you take a child who has been stressed. The body, when you put a stressor on it, has to use up its resources, use up its nutrients in order to combat that. So you're a child who has gone through that, who's gone through vaccine injury, is nutrient deficient because their body has had to use up whatever it has. Then you're feeding them chicken nuggets and yogurt, not just you, but it's common. They're very particular about what they eat. So then they're just being given a mono diet that is really void of the 90 essential nutrients. But we don't want to overwhelm them by giving them a bunch of synthetic supplements. I believe in supplements, but I believe in natural plant-derived supplements, not in the synthetic kind. There's a lot of chemicals in these supplements, especially over-the-counter, store-bought, you go to Walmart to buy your Flintstone vitamins for your kid or the chewable gummies. They are solvents. Jodie Meschuk (1:58:07.123) Yes, I call it expensive pee. It's toxicity, but also, if the body is not actually absorbing things, even if somebody is using a good quality supplement, it can just end up being expensive pee. So we have to work on those core basics of gut health. Especially when you're looking at children across the board, that root cause is that their gut is just simply unable to absorb nutrients. So we have to work on that for sure. Ashley James (1:58:39.259) Well, that'd be utilizing the nutrients. If it was in their pee, they absorbed it. They absorbed it in the gut. It bathed their body, but it didn't maybe necessarily get utilized because there need to be the cofactors in the right ratios. A lot of times these vitamin companies, the store-bought vitamin companies, they're high dose, but they're not in the right ratios, and they're not dosed by body weight. I believe in supplements. Supplements really helped me, but the thing is, supplements are the mortar, not the bricks. So if you're going to go build a house, like build your body, like you're building a house, and the only thing you have is mortar, you're not building a house. The bricks are your diet. Every day your body shows up, the carpenters show up to the work site to build the house because we are always breaking down. From the moment we were conceived, our body is building up and being broken down at the same time. Our goal is to help our body build up more than it's breaking down. But our lifestyle has been breaking our body down more than it's able to build up. The carpenters show up every day to rebuild and build your body. If you're feeding it frickin' McDonald's nuggets, the carpenters are there, but none of the building materials showed up to the site. So they're like, well, I don't have all the materials to build the house. Simply put, we have to clean up our diet so that every day we bring all the materials for the carpenters to build the house, especially for your child. The thing is, we get emotionally attached to food, and there's definitely food addiction, and it's like alcoholism. If you were to tell your friends you're stopping drinking, how many of your friends would be angry or offended? The people who are angry or offended that you're stopping drinking, those are the alcoholics. Same with food. If you told your in-laws or told your friends and family that you're no longer feeding cow dairy to your children, for example, or you're no longer feeding ice cream or sugar or McNuggets to your kids, the friends and family that get angry might come across as concerned or belittling. “Your kids need dairy, they need that. That's unhealthy to take that away” or “They're not going to have a normal childhood. What do you mean they're not giving them sugar? That's not a normal childhood.” Those people who are defending processed food have food addiction, just like the alcoholic got offended when you said you're going to quit drinking. So that's about them and their food addiction. They don't have a nutrition degree.  Jodie Meschuk (2:01:22.972) Well, most nutritionists are trained by the system and they're still following the food pyramid. So that's a whole other issue. Ashley James (2:01:28.308) I went to a nutritionist once. It was sort of down the hallway from my OBGYN. This is when I was pregnant with my son. I'm okay, fine, whatever. It's paid by insurance. I'll go entertain this idea. I sit down and I go, I don't eat any processed food. I eat all organic. She proceeds to pull out a pamphlet of how I can eat healthy at McDonald's. I'm looking at her. I'm gluten-free, I'm oil-free, I eat all organic food. She did not comprehend how to guide someone how to eat. She couldn't improve what I was doing because she wanted me to eat at McDonald's. So point being, when you start to change your child's diet, you have to bust through your own negative beliefs or belief system. But then you're going to deal with the world out there that is going to be angry because you're triggering their addiction. Jodie Meschuk (2:02:34.320) Yes, I'm so glad you brought that up because the one thing that I do want to let parents out there know is, they may have already experienced this and we experienced it, is you get the backlash from people who should be by your side. The family, the close friends, the ones that just don't understand. What I find is it's oftentimes it's either with food. So if you are like, hey, mom and dad, Grandma and grandpa, from now on, this is all my child can have. What do you normally get back? No, they're my grandbaby. No, of course, I'm going to spoil them. It was just a little sugar. It was just a little gluten. It was just a little goldfish crackers. It's not having that understanding of, no, no, no, this is actually really important. We're trying to heal. There can be none of that. Some of it is they just don't understand because they're not down that rabbit hole that you might be, and they don't take it seriously. You're taking it seriously. But I find that the worst is when all of a sudden you stop vaccinating and then all hell breaks loose. Because if they think totally differently and they are still so bought into the system and they fear illness, they don't understand terrain, they just don't get it.  It's really hard. What I'm saying. You have to be prepared for that, and you have to stand your ground, and you have to take a step back and just go, what? That's fine. If you want to get that COVID shot, obviously don't come around me anytime soon if you're going to get that, but that's not what we're doing. I need you to respect what I'm doing for my child.  It's learning how to use your voice. It's learning how to stand in your power. So I think what is missed most in this conversation of healing children is there's the practical, which is, okay, Jodi, just tell me what to do and what supplements to give them. Great, I can do that all day long. But if you are not willing to move through that emotional stuff and get stronger and more confident and really work through that shame and guilt, it's going to be a lot harder. Because then what happens when grandma's like, I just gave them some goldfish, they'll be fine. We have to really be respectful, but it's, no, these are our boundaries. This is what we've decided for our child, and we need you to respect that. That's it, conversation over because it's my child. Ashley James (2:05:24.802) With enforcing boundaries, you don't have to enforce boundaries with emotion, anger, whatever, but there has to be a consequence. Otherwise, they're not boundaries. People will try to bulldoze your boundaries. That's the thing about boundaries is when you enforce them, the first thing people are going to do is, and I say people because children do it all the time, but adults do it too. They're going to test them. Not only will they test them, they will bulldoze straight over them.  You have to show a consequence in a loving, respectful way. It's, hey, if you keep doing this, this is the consequence. So, hey, grandma, if you do this, if you keep doing it, you don't get to have unsupervised time with my children. You don't get to be with your grandchildren unsupervised if you keep feeding them something that hurts them. This is the consequence. You have to show me that I can trust you with my children. Jodie Meschuk (2:06:17.338) It sounds really harsh. Again, there's people. It's worth it though. Ashley James (2:06:25.344) It's worth it though. It is worth it because you will have a child come out on the other side healed. That is worth it. That is worth fighting for.  Sure people are going to be angry, but what? Those are their emotions, not yours. They need to own their own emotions. You're being loving and you're being the mama bear or the bear dad or whatever the dad version of mama bear is. You're being the protection for this child.  I think what's the hardest part is the beginning. But when you get momentum, when you start to see all of a sudden your kid stops rocking or starts looking in the eye or starts talking again, when you start to see that they're out of pain, a neurological pain, it's the lights come on again and they start connecting with the world. That is going to motivate you to be stronger, to keep fighting; but in the beginning, you don't have any evidence that your choices are right. So you have to look at other people's stories—like your story. Jodie Meschuk (2:07:23.686) Yes, and you know what? We went through a lot of that with relationships and I always just came back to, get one shot at this and this is so important to me and this is my child, that this is the way it's going to be. There's no, again, you're saying, it's my boundary and I need you to respect that and you may not agree with me, but it was interesting too because some of the people in my life at the time who I would say I was most closest to, they were very skeptical at the beginning, which I understand, because somebody who doesn't know is going to be skeptical. Somebody who has only learned one train of thought their whole life is going to be skeptical. Somebody who Googles is going to be skeptical because they're just going to Google information that is highly censored and crafted.  But it's interesting because as we got about a year and a half into our healing program and my child started speaking and eye contact and they started to see these changes. Now, I will say it was harder for me to see the changes because I was in it. It's always harder for the mother because you're so close to it. So it was really cool that some of these people would say things to me like, my gosh, Jodi, they are so different from when I saw them last. I cannot believe it. What are you doing? That is just the ultimate compliment and the ultimate affirmation that a mother needs to keep going. You may not get that. I will say there's going to be people listening to your podcast. You may not have a supportive family. You may not ever experience that. You need to continue to push through because it is your child and we get one shot at it. But it was kind of cool. They came around after seeing what I was doing and they became believers. Now guess what? Some of those people, now they don't vaccinate. They didn't get the COVID shot. They didn't fall for it. So that impact we can have on other people through our own story, we don't always have to verbalize it, but there's people watching. The family members, they're watching and seeing the improvements. It's something where you never know that impact that it can have on them. Ashley James (2:09:37.260) I love it. I lost really close friends who got the COVID shot. One of my best friends died of it. I have a friend, she's so intelligent. She's a lawyer, really, really intelligent people fell for the hoax, really intelligent. She gave her daughter the COVID shot and her daughter spent a month at Children's Hospital seizing more than 30 times a day, just having these horrible seizures, brain-damaging seizures. They would not admit it. The top pediatric neurologist in Washington state would not admit that it was due to the vaccine and that she's vaccine injured. There's just, these things happen sometimes. She, well, she didn't have epilepsy before. She traveled America, going to several other top hospitals for this. None of them had answers other than more drugs. But none of them, actually, I had to say to her, this was vaccine injury because no doctor would admit it. I had to show her what VAERS was. She didn't know what the vaccine adverse events reporting system was. She didn't know about that. Most families don't. We've seen so many kids, so many teenagers die of the COVID shot and they're still pushing it. I'm so looking forward to the next few years and seeing the changes. We're going to see positive changes and hopefully, cognitive dissonance. I still feel that people, there'll be some people who believe the old ways and this is why it's like we need to think for ourselves. We need to really look, dive down and look at the facts. I did two interviews with Dr. Paul Thomas and I definitely recommend listeners go check that out. Go to learntruehealth.com. You could type in vaccines and listen to all the different episodes. I have over 500 episodes, but I probably have 20 where we're specifically talking about vaccines, detoxification and supporting the body and other professionals who help children in one way or another heal.  Dr. Paul Thomas is a pediatrician who has clear, clear evidence that vaccines actually damage 100% of children. It's not always autism. That's the question, why?  Do you have a good explanation? Again, this is such a deep, we could spend hours and hours, we could spend multi-day unpacking this, because you love to simplify things to help people really begin to grok it. Do you have an explanation as to why? Why do vaccines affect different children in different ways? I understand that everyone's at a different nutrient level. Of course, there's genetics. But there's also nutrition, there's also what stressors the baby was under in the womb or whatever, nutrients. But is there a clear way of understanding why one in whatever, what, 32 kids or something get autism, but other kids get asthma, peanut allergies, eczema, psoriasis, ADHD? There's all these different issues that come up. Now, because of vaccines, we see a huge rise in autoimmune issues in children. Then we put them on, and this is what Dr. Paul Thomas said, which just blew my mind. He goes, so you give people, you give babies and children something that ramps up and kind of hyper, makes their immune system hyper-reactive. Then we put them on something that suppresses the immune system to calm it down. Then we develop childhood cancers. It's like the system gets to triple dip. They get to make money from the vaccines. They get to make money from the steroids and then they get to make money from the cancer treatments for children. Of course, this is standard of care. The standard of care makes the pharmaceutical industry more money and the CDC makes money from vaccines. How is it ethical that the government agency that's supposed to oversee our health is profiting from pushing the thing that's causing us to be sick? Give us the idea, why is it that not everyone has sort of the same side effects from vaccines? Why do we have different ones? Jodie Meschuk (2:14:39.516) Well, your first thing is any vaccine is basically playing Russian roulette. So it's really important that parents understand it's like a poke and pray. I call it a poke and pray. We can't poke and pray. Literally, you're playing Russian roulette. So to lead up to it, it's like, are there different things that happen with different kids? Because it's Russian roulette and you don't know. So a lot of it to me and what I see, comes down to how adept their body is at clearing things out, how open their detox pathways are, how robust their terrain is in the very beginning, how adept their immune system is in spurring into action. I think when you're looking at the different vaccines, there are a lot of factors at play because you could have people who follow the schedule completely. I know kids who technically have followed the schedule, they've gotten everything and they seem healthy, but are they really healthy? I think that's just it. When you look under the hood to Dr. Thomas's, what he was saying, which I agree with, there's actually, 100% of the people out there who have received vaccines that have a side effect inside of them. They just may not know it right away. So there's a reaction to every vaccine. It's just when is it going to show up and how is it going to show up? Sometimes it doesn't show up until years later. Sometimes it does show up earlier. Sometimes these kids have immediate regression and you see it immediately and they're gone, just from one set of vaccines. Sometimes it's eczema. So you look at just how the human body is made and it's like, how do we answer the question of why some people live to be 120 and they have a garbage diet and why some don't? They have a garbage diet or they eat healthy. You could take somebody who is a health nut, wheatgrass drink, yogi, all the things, and they are more sick than somebody who eats garbage, and treats their body poorly and they drink and all the things. At the end of the day though, if you look under the hood, there are certainly things happening, but are they apparent enough for somebody to be able to connect the dots? Then also I think something that we don't look at is we don't look at emotions and emotional trauma enough. That really does play a role. Somebody might say, well, how does emotional trauma play a role in a baby? Well, it does because they're a product of their environment. Ashley James (2:17:21.816) Well, but also we've seen genetically emotional trauma passed down five generations that they can actually detect trauma in the descendants of those who were in Auschwitz and survived or those during the Holocaust. They've done this in mice studies where they traumatized mice to be afraid of this certain scent. Then they would breed them with mice that had never been hurt when they smelled this scent, it took five generations of diluting it 50% each time before the fifth generation was—the sixth generation is no longer afraid of that scent. We can see it in humans too, that there is an amount of emotional memory that holds onto trauma. We have to heal generational trauma. So that baby could be sort of, their baseline stress levels are higher. Jodie Meschuk (02:10:11.552) Absolutely, and that's why when you think about how there are some kids that display these symptoms of autism, now again, I want everyone to go back to what we talked about in the beginning. Stop calling it autism, call the symptoms for what they are. That alone would change the landscape of how we look at things if we just called things for the symptoms that they are versus labeling them autism or a diagnosis. But think about what kind of emotional health the mother had. If they are carrying a bunch of generational trauma, if they themselves are dealing with emotional trauma or self-regulation issues or any of that, that is going to impact the baby. So now again, maybe that baby is born into an environment where maybe they don't receive any vaccines, but there's still that emotional trauma there. So their body is not going to respond in the same way to things that a child who isn't exposed to that would. I laughed in 2020 when you had all of your health nuts, like the vegan community. They were the first to line up for the COVID vax. I mean, it was mind-blowing to me because you're supposed to be healthy and into all of that. But to my point though, you can take somebody who supposedly does all the right things and they end up getting breast cancer and dying. There's an emotional root to that. That's not talked about enough and mainstream medicine won't talk about that because you can't see that under a microscope necessarily. Ashley James (2:20:07.362) Well, Dr. Hammer proved it. Dr. Hammer, a German doctor, did over 30,000 case studies and proved the root of cancer and other illnesses was in trauma. He proved it, and they call it German New Medicine or Meta Medicine, but it's worth looking into. Yes, so that's Dr. Hammer, Dr. Hammer's work. It's worth looking into because we have to understand, we don't live in a meat sack. God gave us this amazing temple we live in. We want to take care of our temple, but it's not just physical because when we look at quantum physics, every atom, every molecule is both a particle and a wave. So we are both frequency and matter. Inside of us, we have our emotional body, mental body, spiritual body, energetic body, and physical body. If we're just looking at physical, you're missing four other parts of your body, like four other layers of your body. So you're saying that understanding why certain toxins affect others. I know a man who's an ex-husband of my friend and a good friend of mine. He is breathing alcohol. I have never seen someone drink this much alcohol. He wakes up at seven in the morning, cracks open a beer. I have never seen him sober. He is drunk. He drives drunk. He drives his kids drunk in the car. He is always drunk. He looks so healthy. This is what drives me crazy. He never gets sick. All he eats is garbage. Apparently, he is super healthy. He is not mentally healthy. No. Emotionally healthy. No. He is incredibly unhealthy mentally and emotionally. But physically, all he does every day is drink alcohol. He hasn't drank water. He just drinks alcohol every day. It's going to catch up to him eventually, but the thing is, if I drink even one beer, I would feel so gross. I can't do that. It's a blessing that I have more of a sensitive constitution because I take care of myself. Jodie Meschuk (2:22:16.974) I think also there is this piece of it, which is that there's a lot of people out there, and you could even say with kids too, because of this epidemic rise of illness and labels and all these things in children. 50% of children have some type of chronic illness today. People have been so used to how they feel, they think that's normal. For us, I remember what I felt like before I changed my lifestyle and before I started learning about things. I thought I was healthy, but I was inflamed. I was sick all the time. I'd get strep throat. But again, what does culture want you to believe? That's normal. It's normal. It's just common. Everyone's getting sick, strep throat all the time. It's just normal. It's because it's common. So you start to believe that, and then you don't realize that you're actually very sick until you start to change and you detox. Now I'm the same as you. If I have one sip of alcohol, which I don't drink at all, if I have one sip, I feel absolutely horrific. But that's not how I felt when I was in my early 20s. I thought that health felt normal, to feel yucky all the time. I think you have a lot of people that are in that position where they just think that that's how health feels because they have no idea what it feels like to really be healthy. Ashley James (2:23:44.450) Health is symptom-free, and health is also how quickly you bounce back from a stressor, from an injury or illness, or from a more stressful event like running a marathon or something. Health is how quickly you bounce back, but also, day to day, you should have no symptoms. You should wake up, bounce out of bed, immediately feel energy, and have a good amount of hunger. You should be able to have sustained, healthy energy and mental clarity through the whole day. Then you should feel tired at night, go to bed, and fall asleep within 20 minutes of lying down. You should not wake up in the night to pee. You should be able to go four hours between each meal. You should have three bowel movements a day. You should not have headaches. If that doesn't sound like you, then you don't have health. That is what we all should work towards. That is what health looks like. Jodie Meschuk (2:24:34.398) Yes, apply that to kids nowadays. I mean, again, you have the kids with the chronic ear infections. It's normal. Now get your tonsils and adenoids out. That'll fix it. Ashley James (2:24:43.674) It is not. It is not. I rage against this. This is when I hear that it's normal for a child to be sick. It infuriates me more because I've got that mama bear. I want to protect these children. I want to help the parents understand that having your child go for major surgery, they have to be put under. I know a 12-year-old that died. Died. It is a needless death. It's so sad because she died of the anesthesia. Most of the time just removing cow dairy from their diet stops the infections. That's one of the big things. Obviously, remove sugar, processed sugar, but cow dairy is another big cause. Before the doctor recommended major surgery for your child, why didn't the doctor recommend any dietary intervention first, which we've known is proven that cutting out sugar and cow dairy is 90% of the time or more decreases or eliminates those chronic infections? Jodie Meschuk (2:25:42.610) Exactly. Yes. So I guess the answer to your question is, I firmly believe every vaccine causes damage in the body. When that shows up and how that shows up is going to be dependent on a wide variety of factors. But you can't discount how emotions play into it, how energy plays into it, all of that stuff too. So I think there's a ton of kids walking around with vaccine damage. It may not show up in a full-blown neurological problem, but just go around and start looking at kids' mouths. If you see a little droopy side on the mouth, that's a vaccine injury. You have a ton of kids walking around with that. It's part of a vaccine reaction. It's a nerve reaction. It's called a crooked mouth. You just literally go people-watch and look for people with crooked mouths. That's a vaccine injury. It's insane the amount of people and then, well, the amount of kids too. But yes, even the little things. Guess what? If your child receives a vaccine, a week later, two weeks later, maybe three weeks later, they have an ear infection. That's actually a vaccine reaction. But we're not connecting the dots because they don't allow you to connect the dots. Ashley James (2:27:04.946) Yes. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I mean, I just want to have you here for hours and hours. This was so wonderful. Jodie Meschuk (2:27:15.282) It was, I mean, it's three hours. It's awesome. We were having so much fun. Two and a half hours. Ashley James (2:27:20.818) Yes, this is so great. I definitely want you to come back. So you're right now revising your book and you're going to publish it soon. Come back? Please, please, please come back. I'd love to continue to go down this rabbit hole. There's so much to talk about. But I love what we covered today. See, I never know what we're going to actually cover. This is just that wonderful weave of the conversation that we get to have. But what I really do feel that there's divine intervention. I really feel God guides us and guides me in my questions and guides us in our conversation to reach the people that need to hear this, the answer to our prayers, because God uses us.  God uses all of us to answer the prayers of other people. So be willing to sort of follow that little nudge when you get it and to speak up, because sometimes God's asking you to speak up to help. I've had that experience where it's like, no, go talk to that person. I get this hit, go. You have this message to deliver to this person, go do it. Don't let yourself be a coward, go do it. So if you see someone who's about to go vaccinate their kids, expose them to this information. The worst that can happen is they get upset at you, big deal. No one got hurt really. But the best thing is that you could be actually helping them protect their kids. What we covered here today was the mindset piece of going into helping your child heal after they've been vaccine injured, which is everyone who's received a vaccine. But going in to help your child, have that courage to make the changes, to go down this rabbit hole, to make the diet changes, to clean up the environment of the house, to help your child support their brain and stop being on fire, bring down the inflammation, help them detox the heavy metals. Help them heal their gut because there's known gut dysbiosis that happens with vaccines and often people who follow the traditional route of getting vaccines also have had a lot of antibiotics. So we definitely have dysbiosis, but helping their child be healthier. Along the path, the first steps are the hardest because you're making new neural connections. You're also having to establish boundaries, but it is so worth it. You will be encouraged by the health you see reflected in your child as they get brighter and brighter and healthier and healthier and more vibrant and they feel better, and you will be rewarded by that. So it is worth doing. I definitely recommend going to Jodie Meschuk's website, which is thewarriorcenter.com and checking out her books. Then of course, we're definitely going to want to have you back when your latest book gets published. Jodie Meschuk (2:30:14.206) Thank you so much. This was such fun. I just love getting this information out there. You summarized it perfectly. I mean, I just have such a heart and a passion for helping parents to see that there's another way and literally saving one baby at a time, literally saving one baby at a time. It's worth it. Ashley James (2:30:33.812) It's so worth it. It's so worth it, those children, I'm sure it's such a moving experience when you get to help the parents help their children and then get to see the outcome. I've had that in a lesser extent. I've helped a few friends help their children detox and I've watched the children begin to speak clearly again, just the lights come back on. It is so rewarding and it's so worth it. So yes, just fight the fight, help your children to be healthy. Follow Jodie to learn more about what you can do. Of course, you can also, I said, type in autism in learntruehealth.com and you'll see all the episodes come up and listen to my episode 385 about the GAPS diet and listen to the Paul Thomas episode and follow Jodie and listen to all her stuff too, because there's answers out there, but the answers won't be found in the mainstream media. It will be found at your doctor's office unless you're seeking a holistic doctor. So that's why you have to do your own research and you have to do your own digging. Jodie Meschuk (2:31:45.894) Amen to that.  Ashley James (2:31:47.700) Yes, thank you so much for coming on the show. This was great. 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