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  Details, free course sample, and more: learntruehealth.com/coach https://learntruehealth.com/coach Coupon Code LTH for all IIN courses gets you a BIG listener special discount!   Check Out My Latest Book: Addicted To Wellness https://www.learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness   Get The Minerals Your Body Needs: TakeYourSupplements.com https://takeyoursupplements.com

Check Out My Latest Book: Addicted To Wellness https://www.learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness   Get The Minerals Your Body Needs: TakeYourSupplements.com https://takeyoursupplements.com   John Gusty's websites: https://theredpillrevolution.com Special Audience Giveaway:   NaturallyBetter4you.com   Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the guest speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the host or podcast.   528: Reclaiming Health Sovereignty and Freedom https://learntruehealth.com/reclaiming-health-sovereignty-and-freedom   Mainstream health beliefs are crumbling under the weight of profit-driven agendas. Join us as we challenge the status quo with John Gusty, co-author of “Red Pill Revolution,” who exposes the hidden priorities of industries from healthcare to music. By embracing the radical philosophy of anarchy, John redefines personal sovereignty and health autonomy, encouraging us to break free from the societal structures that prioritize conformity over well-being. His journey, including working with music legends like Bon Jovi and Kanye West, reveals the double-edged sword of fame's allure and its darker undercurrents. Highlights: Challenging Mainstream Health Beliefs Navigating Fame, Fortune, and Integrity Examining Societal Narcissism and Anarchy Uncovering Medical Misconceptions and Realities Navigating Medical Misconceptions and Realities Navigating Healthcare Costs and Corruption Awakening to Systematic Corruption Choosing Natural Health Over Pharmaceuticals Uncovering Healthcare Industry Corruption Empowering Health Choices for Change Preparing for Systemic Vulnerabilities Building Holistic Health Networks Unlocking Optimal Health Through Supplements Intro: Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast.  Today we have a really interesting and fun conversation with John Gusty, co-author of the book Red Pill Revolution. If that rings a bell for you that’s because I had another one of the authors of that book on the show recently.  Episode 526, Proof Versus Toxic Propaganda: Navigating the Lies of Modern Medicine and How to Break Free to Achieve True Health with Dr. Jeremy Ayres. If you haven't already, check out that interview. This interview is a little bit of a different perspective. We have with us John Gusty, who is not a doctor, but he is  you and I and that he is disenfranchised with the mainstream medical system. He takes a little bit of a different approach to it. He's a proud anarchist, which I always assumed that anarchy meant violence, that it was disrespectful, that it was chaotic, that it was something that tore things down, that it didn't promote love and peace. My viewpoint of anarchy is, of course, what I have seen in the media, as we all have, and John talks about that from the philosophical standpoint of anarchy, which I think actually a lot of us could agree on a lot of the points that he brings up today. It's always good to do thought exercises. It's always good to stretch our own belief system, challenge our belief system or even strengthen our belief system by hearing what we don't agree with, and that's okay too. It's okay. It doesn't hurt us to listen to different viewpoints.  What John shares today, though, is about helping people have their anonymity, helping people have their sovereignty, especially when it comes to their health, and how the mainstream medical establishment, the pharmaceutical industry, the food industry, even the music industry, which is where he originally comes from how it all is designed to control you, to profit from you and, in many cases, profit from your illness. I know I'm preaching to the choir. He does have some great ideas for solutions, and you can check out his book, the Red Pill Revolution, as well as what Dr. Ayers discussed two episodes ago on the membership site, where they actually do have doctors that are holistic doctors that discuss natural solutions, their website being  naturallybetterforyou.com. I want to make sure you know about my book. It's not just any book. It's not going to sit on yourself, it's not going to collect dust. My book is where rubber meets the road. It's action. It builds you up and gets you quick results. So if you're tired of waking up cranky, sore, exhausted, if you're tired of having poor sleep, if you're tired of having brain fog, poor digestion, if you're tired of having that excess weight that kind of almost feels like water, just like your fingers might be hard to squeeze, your fingers and your toes and your ankles, at the end of the day, your body retains water.  There’s so many things that I could mention, simple, actionable steps in my book will help you to get to the root cause of and alleviate, because the actions taken in my book the 33 different challenges that you can take on even in a busy life, will support your body's ability to come back into balance and heal itself. You will have more energy, more mental clarity, better sleep, better digestion, better sex. You will feel excellent after going through my book and you can skip challenges. You don't have to do all 33, but I do recommend that you take on at least one of the challenges each week and you could take a week off. You could do one week a month. You could do it for eight days. You don't have to do it for seven, like it's up to you. I lay out what I have seen work after working with thousands of people for over 12 years, after I have interviewed over 500 holistic health doctors, and what I have seen work to support your body's ability to heal itself, I put in this book and I made sure it was an action-oriented book so that you can get results  away.    Go ahead and go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness, or go to Amazon and type in Addicted to Wellness by Ashley James. Get the book and start doing the challenges. Please feel free to join me in my Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook group, and share with me your experience, your journey. I'd love to hear from you and if you're looking for answers that are more personalized, please feel free to reach out to me. I do free 15-minute consultations. I do health coaching. I get results and if I don't feel that I'm a good fit for you, I will refer you. I've got a wide list of amazing healthcare professionals that are holistic, that get results as well in different specialties. If I don't feel like I can help you or I know someone who's better suited for you, I will send you to them.  So please feel free to reach out and chat with me. I want to help you. Go to learntruehealth.com and in the menu you can select Work with Ashley James and you will see the options at the very top for free consultations or, if you'd rather spend a 90 minute one session with me, you can do that. If you'd like to hire me as your health coach, you can do that there as well.  Thank you so much for being a listener and thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. Together, we're going to help as many people as possible to learn true health. If this podcast has made a difference for you at any point in time in your life, please consider leaving a five-star review on Spotify and/or iTunes. That really helps me. A written review as well, if you can, on any of the podcast directories that you listen to my podcast on, mainly iTunes. I know they let you leave a written review and I have hundreds of written reviews, but every time someone subscribes, downloads, leaves a five-star review and also a written review. It boosts my podcast, which helps me to reach more people, and that's my mission, is to help as many people as possible to learn true health.  So thank you so much for helping me by sharing and also by leaving a positive five-star review. Thank you, enjoy today's episode.  Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 528. Ashley James (0:07:53.282) I am so excited for today's guest. This is gonna be a really interesting conversation. John Gusty was in the entertainment industry for over 30 years, working with some of music's biggest names, and his wife was originally diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Was this a misdiagnosis, the way your bio says originally diagnosed?  John Gusty (0:08:18.184) Well, first of all, thank you for having me, Ashley. I think this is going to be a fantastic conversation as well. We could probably kill the entire episode just talking about the word diagnose because that's a huge subject. I think any diagnosis should be treated like an opinion because that's true, at least when we're talking about the medical industrial complex. If anyone is getting diagnosed within the medical industrial complex, I would take it as one man's or one woman's opinion. It's always best to seek multiple opinions before making an informed decision. Ashley James (0:09:03.422) We're definitely going to talk about that more. So you were in the music industry for over 30 years. Do some name dropping. What are some bands that I'd be impressed that you worked with?  John Gusty (0:09:13.228) Oh, my goodness. Well, I was blessed to be in the Bon Jovi inner circle for a good while. Worked on the Keith Urban team, worked a little bit with Kanye West around the Graduation album period, worked on the Dolly Parton team for a good while. I'm kind of the “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” of rock and roll. If I told you some of the people I've counted as friends and neighbors who went on to international fame, it would sound like I was name-dropping. I came out of a pretty vibrant music scene in Tempe, Arizona, so you've probably heard of names like the Gin Blossoms, the Meat Puppets, and the Refreshments. Then I moved to Athens, Georgia, which was another very rich musical scene. The guys from REM were very good to me, my projects, and my friends. The B-52s hail from there as well. I've seen it happen to many people. I've seen people go from unknown to internationally known, and it's interesting how that affects even the most stable people. The unstable people? I think we all know what happens to them. But fame and fortune is a funny thing. Ashley James (0:10:58.640) Well, and is it just the getting fame and fortune causes some mental hiccups, or is it also that the industry is incredibly toxic? It's both, yes.  John Gusty (0:11:11.966) It's both, yes. I think especially these days where society is just marinating in narcissism.  Sometimes you're just drowning in narcissism. It's hard to get away from it. Now everybody's a star, everyone's a public figure, but pre-internet, it was a powerful thing to stand up on a stage, do the Jesus Christ pose, and have thousands of people literally screaming for you. Even the most stable person—I'll tell you, the guys in REM could not be more normal, stable, just good people—and I watched the toll it took on them. It will mess with your mind, and how could it not?  Jon Bon Jovi started when he was 17 years old, and since the age of 17, he's lived the life of a good-looking, talented man who has had everything he's ever wanted. He's a good, solid dude. There's actually an interesting documentary series on Hulu  now that chronicles Jon Bon Jovi. I just watched it the other night, and I think he did a really good, honest job with it. There's a lot of that interview where he talks about the mental toll that fame, that kind of attention, and that kind of ego takes on a person—even the most sane people. So yes, fame and fortune is a weird thing. Ashley James (0:13:03.093) So that in itself, ? On top of that, you have a very toxic industry that's looking to profit off of these artists. I see what comes out of Hollywood, for example. Now we have a lot of actors who started as children talking about how they were sexually abused in order to get a role, how even teenagers or those in their early 20s, both women and men, were asked to perform sexual acts on the director or somebody else in order to get a role. It's coming out just how disgusting and sick it is. There's a lot of manipulation, and the carrot at the end of the stick is this fame and fortune they're holding out in front of them. So yes, I can imagine that the music industry is equally as corrupt.   John Gusty (0:14:02.969) Well, as is the medical industry, as is the food industry, as any. I mean, it really comes down to this, and this is something that, once I accepted it as a reality, it really helped me move forward in this wacky world that we live in without being angry all the time. The realization is this: anytime there's an audience, anything or anyone that garners an audience—whether it's a singer, a brand of lemonade, a TV show, or a band—anybody or anything that can command and garner an audience, that audience's attention is powerful stuff. I guarantee you  now, Ashley, you and I could make a blood pact and go, “We're going to try to garner an audience and keep the evil forces from attacking us or coming after us.” I swear, if we get an audience that reaches a certain size, dark—let's just call it dark—dark people and dark energies start becoming attracted to your power to pull that audience. They need that attention; they need that reach. So entertainment, by definition, is going to be filled with sick, dark, predatory energies, people, and intentions, by the nature of the fact that anything that pulls an audience is going to be co-opted or attempted to be co-opted by those dark forces at some point. Ashley James (0:15:59.245) I have a personal belief that we're in a spiritual war, and I've seen it. I see it in the medical industrial complex. I see it in every aspect. We are bathed in this milieu of trying to take over your life and your mind and have you vote. The evil of the world is constantly trying to gain your focus and get you off course. Their biggest strategy now is to get you to believe it's no big deal—it's no big deal that there are artists on stage at concerts dancing in demon costumes and performing satanic ritual things. It's no big deal, it's just for fun, it's no big deal. John Gusty (0:16:50.981) That's the essence of gaslighting. I'll tell you, years ago, I think I was probably born this way and just didn’t know. I didn’t know the terms or the directions to find these things. But earlier in life, I discovered an amazing community of people that identified as anarchists, and I really fell into that community. That was the first time I was around people who, if you refer to yourself as an anarchist, you're really just adhering to two principles: no masters, no servants—which I think we can all agree on. I mean, if you believe in masters and servants, then you believe in slavery, and I don’t think many people actually believe in slavery. So, no masters, no servants and you have to adhere to the non-aggression principle where unless you’re defending your own life or the life of someone else, there’s no reason to become physically aggressive with anyone. There’s always a better way to work things out than through force. When you are amongst other anarchists, the whole essence is you want to be accepted for your beliefs, and so you have to accept other people for their beliefs. Immediately, there's no walls between anybody, because you can have two people standing in a room, and if they're both anarchists and they just disagree on everything, they're going to peacefully disagree. When I started taking that more anarchistic approach to life, which was boiled down in modern-day terms, it's you do you, and I'll do me, and unless we're hurting each other, truly hurting, I'm not talking about offending or inconveniencing, I'm talking about hurt, if I'm causing you harm or you're causing me, unless that's happening, then you do you, I'll do me, and we can peacefully coexist. The only place that I see that happening is within the anarchist community. But it also let me let go of a lot of anger, because I think a lot of us are or were or will continue to be angry because we're just wanting to be heard and understood, and I think that's the essence of the narcissism that you see with social media. Social media by definition is narcissistic. Because I'm telling you, Ashley, let's go back 15, 20 years ago, if you and I were friends and I showed up at your front door at 10:30 at night, knocking on your front door, and you answered it, and you're what? I had a picture of my dinner, and I was, hey, I just wanted to show you this picture of the dinner that I ate tonight. You'd be, dude, it's 10:30 at night. I don't care. I love you, but I don't care what you ate for dinner. But people do that all the time on social media. It's, hey, look what I ate for dinner, look where I'm at that you're not. Look at my feet with the beach in the background, and you're not. I know people will go, oh, it's a great way to connect with family and stuff, and you're , it is. But that's not 90% of the reason why people put stuff up on social media. People put stuff up on social media because, if we're all being honest, we're wanting people to go read me, look at me, watch me. And, okay, sometimes in marketing you want to do that, but in everyday life, when you're doing that, that's just pure narcissism, and we're marinating in it. Ashley James (0:20:49.356) I've never thought of anarchy in that way. I always consider maybe I have to go look up the definition of anarchy, but I always thought it meant people who want to create chaos. I'm thinking the Dungeons and Dragons version of your chaotic neutral and your chaotic good, and I'm just thinking anything with the word chaos to me is anarchy. That's just how the mainstream media creates it. John Gusty (0:20:11.300) That's how your Fox News, your CNNs, your cable news religions, that's how they portray it. Because the last thing in the world that they want, and when I say they, I mean the statists, the corporate statists, their biggest enemy, is individuality and personal creativity. So they need you to conform. They need you to fall in line and do what they want you to do. You can't. Anarchy is their biggest fear or enemy, because in anarchy there isn't—again, I'll phrase it another way. I'll just ask you a really simple question, Ashley: do you think that person A has the right to walk up to person B and declare non-consensual authority over that person? No, of course not. Of course not. But we're going to watch it in just six short months. We're going to watch our friends and family all take part in the next season of America’s Next Top President and they’re going to willingly go back into this. It's an abusive relationship. It really is. Let's stick with the abusive relationship analogy—how many times does he have to cheat on you? How many times does he have to hit you? How many times are they going to talk about education, the economy, foreign policy? Nothing, ever. The religion of statism—I dare you to cite one example that the religion of statism has improved. Name anything that ‘s improved. Has food gotten cheaper or healthier? Is water cleaner or free? We're the only species that I know of that puts a paywall between us and water, which is essential to even be alive. But I mean, nothing ever gets better. But we're going to watch. We're going to watch our friends and family go and ask for more of that abusive relationship. Ashley James (0:23:51.496) When I was about 11 years old, I was sitting in the back seat. I actually have a memory of this. She popped this tape that her friend lent her, and it was a health lecture by this doctor, and my eyes were opened that day. My eyes were opened, and I didn't know this guy's name. For years I didn't know his name, but what he said stuck with me. He grew up on a beef farm in Missouri, and he watched as him and his family fed nutritional pellets to the calves and to the cows that contained many vitamins and minerals in order to keep those animals super healthy so they never got sick. He said to his dad, why do we give animals nutrition to keep them healthy, but we don't eat them ourselves? His dad said something like, shut up, boy, and get back to work. But he ended up actually putting the calf pellets in his pockets and munching on them, and he found that some of his health issues at a young age went away when he started to eat the calf pellets because he had a nutrient deficiency. He wasn't really aware; he was just going, well, if it's good for the calf, why can't I have it? Then he started to see stuff get better. He went on to become a naturopathic doctor and a research scientist and a large animal vet, and he has a degree in pathology and soil agriculture. Just a really amazing research scientist. I found him—this is God's path for me—I found him years later, and he became my mentor, but I heard his lecture when I was 11, and it shaped how I saw the world because he said the system is corrupt. It is designed on purpose. We keep animals healthy so that your burger only costs $2. If we treated animals the same way we treated humans, your burger would be $100. So it's a for-profit industry. Both systems are for-profit. Keep animals healthy for profit. Keep humans sick for profit. Everything is designed for profit, and as long as you understand that, if it's profitable to keep you sick, you will never find healthy food, you will never find doctors that are even trained to help you be healthy healthy, because, since over 100 years, doctors' education has been dictated by the pharmaceutical industry, and this isn't whack job. This is proven history. John Gusty (0:26:36.978) No, I mean Rockefeller. Rockefeller came in. In fact, if you haven't seen it, one of my favorite documentarians is a gentleman by the name of James Corbett and he has done many documentaries but he has one called Rockefeller Medicine where he meticulously goes through the timeline and it's all referenced. It's not conjecture. It's all factual stuff and you can go see it for yourself.  But I mean, he absolutely came in with the intention of setting up the allopathic system because, let's remember, these people were oil people to begin with, and the pharmaceutical industry is all oil-based products—it's all petroleum. He bought his way onto university boards to where, today, you will not find a university that isn't plugged into the Rockefeller system. So he kind of single-handedly created this allopathic system and squashed everything else—all the natural, homeopathic, traditional stuff that worked. That's the key  there: it worked. But he set up a system that has only three tools in its tool belt. They're going to cut you, they're going to burn you, or they're going to drug you. It's surgery, pharmaceuticals, or radiation. That's all they’ve got. You could go into a doctor today with a sore elbow and just say, “Hey, my elbow hurts,” and I guarantee you're at least going to get drugged. You may not get cut or burned, but they're going to drug you, as opposed to trying to figure out, well, why does your elbow hurt? Ashley James (0:28:36.348) They're not trained to support the body's ability to heal itself. Now, doctors—a lot of them have their hearts in the  place—but their training has shifted the lens through which they view the body and medicine. In college, one of my professors was a retired surgeon, and he up and down adamantly talked about how the body cannot regrow cartilage once you have arthritis. He got so angry, and I thought it was super interesting because, at that point, I didn't really have an opinion either way, but he was so adamant: “You cannot regrow your cartilage when you have arthritis. Just remember that.” I’m like, “OK, weird, but OK.” The guy I was dating at the time had a really bad injury when he was a kid. He shouldn't have been able to walk, yet he was. It was a biking injury that left him with no ligaments in his knee. He shouldn't have been able to walk, but he did martial arts and strengthened his legs so much that it was his tendons that kept him going. He could twist around on his knee, which was really gross. He had lost a lot of cartilage from that accident, but he took copious amounts of glucosamine, chondroitin, and any kind of joint support he could get his hands on. I watched him get better. I watched his knee get better. I'm, oh, that's interesting. Why is this doctor so angry about this and so adamant? You cannot heal yourself, you cannot heal yourself. He just, over and over again, wanted to pound into our heads that we couldn't heal ourselves. Then I watched it happen. Now I've had many, many of my clients over the last almost 13 years regrow their cartilage and their body. Your body can heal itself, but doctors are taught that your body cannot heal itself on many levels, and so they want to pass that on to you. John Gusty (0:30:42.573) Yes. They only know what they know, and they're coming at it. I take issue with the whole being told you have something. I mean, I got told you have arthritis. I don't believe that arthritis is a thing that you have. Everything is balance and toxicity. I'll give you another dumb analogy. If you had a wall in your home that you could tell was compromised, something was up with it, sagging or whatever, and you call in a professional and I come in as the professional, okay. Now, if I told you that your wall had termititis, and we had to go through this whole big protocol to address your wall's termititis, your wall doesn't have a condition, it doesn't have termititis, it has termites, and you have to go in and address the termites, which is not a long-term thing. You address the problem and then what. You don't have termites anymore, but a doctor would tell you that that wall has termititis, and so now, for the rest of your wall's life, you're going to be thinking of it as having this condition, and you see what I'm saying. That kind of circles back to the topic of diagnosis. People get told that they have these conditions, and I'm not saying that conditions don't exist, but I hope my wall analogy made sense. The wall didn't have termititis. Termititis isn't a thing. Having termites is a thing, but termititis is not a thing. It's just a word that I made up. Ashley James (0:32:30.455) We have symptoms. Actually, that's the language of the body. The body is expressing to us, “Hey, there's an imbalance here. Here's the symptoms,” and if you could read the symptoms—which my doctor that is my mentor, he talks a lot about this—the body speaks in symptoms, and we need to give it the nutrients it needs. We need to stop doing the things that are causing more damage. There's certain foods that cause more damage, certain lifestyle choices that cause more damage. We got to stop doing that. So stop putting fuel on the fire. Give the body all the nutrients it needs, healthy food, and start doing the lifestyle changes that support the body's ability to heal itself. Then get out of your own way because the body wants to heal itself. And don't identify—I think with diagnosis, the problem is we identify as the diagnosis. Like I'm an alcoholic. Well, how long was your last drink? Thirty years ago. OK. So if you have to wake up every day—I mean, if this keeps you sober, then keep saying you're an alcoholic—but you haven't touched alcohol in 30 years. It's saying, “I'm a diabetic.” Well, what's your A1C? Well, my A1C has been a 4.9 for the last 15 years, but I cured my diabetes 15 years ago, but I”m still diabetic. It’s not your personality. It doesn’t define who you are. John Gusty (0:33:51.263) I think it's even worse than that. Ashley, I'm sure you can appreciate, if somebody gets told they're ugly, rare is the person that can shake that off. For the rest of that person's life, it's always going to be there. That someone told them that they were ugly, and they're going to wear that internally, and some people may become obsessed with it and really start to believe that they're ugly. That's what happens when someone gets told, “You have cancer.” I don't advocate violence, but I'll tell you what: I would love to line up every doctor ever that looked another human being in the eyes and told them that they have X number of days or months to live or years to live. The audacity of putting that in somebody's head is beyond cruel, mean—I mean, it's, again, the audacity. So people wear that, and it’d be one thing to be told that you're ugly or you're dumb. Okay, well, that's going to stick with you a long time. But if you get told you have cancer, you’ve got six months to live, imagine. You’re never going to shake that. People will wear that. Any of us, and for being honest, we know how powerful the mind is. If you get told  something, that you have something, you become obsessed with it, and you can't shake it, and you start wearing that internally—you’re going to manifest it. If you believe that you have a stomach ache hard enough, you're going to have a stomachache. You'll eventually get a stomachache. So, again, it's so cruel that people get told they have things. That wall didn't have termititis. It had a problem with termites, and it's easily fixed, and you can fix that problem. Then what? That wall is perfectly fine. Using that wall as an analogy for a person—that wall doesn't have to walk around for the rest of its life thinking that it has something, because it didn't. It had a temporary situation that needed to be addressed, fixed, balanced out, and nurtured. Ashley James (0:36:17.119) When you went from working in the entertainment industry to having your wife be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. What happened that had you completely shift gears and now you work on in this world of helping people to to wake up, to choosing natural health?  John Gusty (0:36:40.534) I think I've always been the way that I'm wired. I'll put it this way—I just don't like BS. I really don't like it. If you're going to take part in the art of BSing, at least be good at it, because there are some people who are really, really good at it. There are some politicians, preachers, and others who are really good at getting up in front of people and just BSing them, and it's a gift. Salesmen have to do that all the time. I got to the point where I've been a relatively healthy person my entire life. I definitely would never go to a doctor at this point. I'd never put myself inside of a hospital. But earlier in life, I didn't have any issues, so I didn't interface with the medical industrial complex at all. Then, when I got involved with my wife, Dawn—she's my girl—we became a couple, and her issues became my issues. I'm also a digger and a question-asker. I'll get in and start digging and asking questions. My wife is completely the opposite. My wife is a used car salesman's dream come true, and I love her to death. She's very trusting. She just trusts. I started going to her medical appointments with her because she was walking with a cane at the time, and things were kind of getting progressively worse. Partly because I'm her husband, and partly because I am who I am, I saw her not asking questions. So, I started asking questions. I quickly became her general contractor. I went to every appointment, kept all the notes, asked the questions, and led the initiatives. It became very apparent, very quickly. You mentioned earlier that there are very good, well-intended people who work inside the medical industrial complex—I get it. I think there are very good, well-intended people who work inside the government school system that really just want to teach and take care of kids. But once you get inside those systems, you realize, “I'm not allowed to teach, I'm not allowed to discipline. I just have to read this script.” That's exactly what people inside the medical industrial complex are doing. They're just reading the script. You don't even see a medical professional anymore without a tablet in their hands because they sit down with you and go through these algorithms. If this, then this, then this. Their diagnosis is whatever that algorithm spits out. They have to for legal reasons, stay in certain lanes. They're not allowed to be creative, adventurous, or bold. They have to stick to these pre-drafted narratives and lanes. Mostly, it's for legal reasons because you can't just have doctors doing crazy stuff, and nobody wants to get sued. I saw that, and it just made me mad. When you take your car to a mechanic, the goal is to get your car fixed. We can all relate to that. We're all over that mechanic in the garage. Yes, I want my car fixed. The mechanic comes back and goes, “Well, I told you it was this problem, but once we got in there, we found another problem.” They can take you over, show you the carburetor, and you can make a decision whether you want to replace it. We treat cars and car repairs that way, but we don't treat our body and our body repair and maintenance that way. At least here in the States, we've been raised and programmed, if you will, to just blindly trust the people with white coats and letters after their name, as if they have some divine bit of knowledge that you or I don't have. I said earlier in this podcast that I wish people would treat diagnosis more as an opinion. Dr. A may diagnose you with this, but Dr. B might see something completely different. Ashley James (0:41:47.635) Misdiagnosis is very common. They've done studies on this. It's so common that you should seek multiple—not just a second opinion—multiple opinions. A really important thing to say is to go outside of the network, because a lot of times people get a second opinion by a doctor in the same clinic, hospital, or the same clinic or hospital network. That second opinion doctor will never contradict a doctor who is basically being paid by the same boss. John Gusty (0:42:19.711) Well, I'll tell you another trick too, and this is something that I've done for years: just go in as a cash pay. First of all, it's way cheaper. I mean, whenever you see dollar amounts on any sort of medical bills, those are insurance numbers. Let me tell you a quick story. I've got two boys, and both of them were avid soccer players. One of my sons, one time his knee got twisted up and we had to go get an x-ray. I knew where the radiology place was, so I called them up and said, “I need to make an appointment.” They asked, “Who's the referring doctor?” I said, “There is no referring doctor. You're a radiology place, ? That's the service you provide.” “Yep, okay, well, I want to make an appointment.” So they made the appointment. We went in there. First thing they asked me when I got in for the appointment was, “Can I see your insurance card?” I said, “There is no insurance card involved in this. This is an x-ray. Do you use your auto insurance to buy new tires or put gas in your car or get your oil changed?” No, the insurance is for major, catastrophic things. So we go and get the x-ray done. I come back out, go to pay the lady, and ask her for the price. She has to look up the price, because, of course, they don't have a menu of prices. They don't actually deal with the prices; they just pass it all on through the insurance. So she comes up with the price: $39.95 to get an x-ray done. Then, after I pay her, I said, “Hey, let me ask you something. If I had whipped out a Blue Cross Blue Shield card or whatever, what would have been the copay on that?” She said $75. It's $39.99 cash, but if you had insurance, it was only $75. I could tie you up for the next hour telling you similar stories that have happened to me. So, pay cash. Not only is it cheaper, but when you pay cash, you are in charge. Once you put something through insurance, you're not in charge. The insurance company dictates what you're going to have, when you're going to have it, how much of it you're going to have, if you're going to have it at all. So keep the insurance out of the equation. Pay cash, you're the boss, and it's cheaper. Ashley James (0:44:43.247) Oh my gosh, I've had that experience too. I called up a local clinic and started asking about their cash prices. I was amazed compared to what insurance charges, and then you're paying every month. I also like that there are health shares out there for big stuff. They're cheaper. I have a whole episode actually on health shares. It's definitely worth getting when you want to unplug from the corrupt system but also be protected in the event of big things. I'm very discerning when it comes to allopathic medicine. If, God forbid, I broke an arm, I want to get it casted. I want to get it. The hospital shine is putting you back together in the event of an accident. There are a few types of infections they do really good at. But the problem is that we're taking our bodies to them for everything, and they are not trained to help you get optimal health. That is not in their wheelhouse. So it's like you're taking your car to your plumber for everything. It's like you take everything to your plumber. Sometimes the plumber fixes it because it's plumbing problems, but we're going to the same type of doctor and type of medical system, in which they're only really good at emergency medicine. That's where they have the best outcomes, but they have the worst outcomes in reversing heart disease to the point where someone doesn't have heart disease anymore, reversing diabetes, reversing all kinds of major, major chronic issues. They don't do that, they just medicate. John Gusty (0:46:41.539) If you look up, use whatever search engine you prefer. If you look up, the leading cause of death, now, when you take out medical malpractice and hospitals, which are always going to be the leading cause of death, when you take those out of the list, whatever list comes up, look at what's up there. It's either heart stuff or respiratory stuff. If we—I'm not going to say we, because I'm not part of them and I don't think you are either—but if they're so gifted, if they're so knowledgeable, if they're so skilled, how come the leading causes of death are what they are? If none of this stuff is getting any better? They're just like the politician's state. Nothing gets better. In fact, it gets worse. We are in mass. Not healthier than we were 10 years ago.  Ashley James (0:48:05.848) As a society even less healthy, it’s going downhill.  I could use cholesterol as an example. Back when I was a kid, they started bringing out these cholesterol meds and started saying fat's bad, cholesterol's bad, must lower cholesterol. I watched an interview really interesting documentary. There were two doctors that were responsible for deciding what the new healthy level of cholesterol, total cholesterol, should be. What's the new healthy level?  They had to choose a number so low that they could convince the majority of the population, the adult population, to get on statins in order to perform the experiment in the United States. So they made an arbitrary number. They actually looked  much lower and they didn't go and say well, what happens if we lower someone's cholesterol too much? What happens then?  Because we've been brainwashed for over 30 years that cholesterol is bad, cholesterol is bad. Well, cholesterol is a catch-all phrase for many different types of lipids. There's good, there's bad. But what we don't understand is why is it bad and what causes it to be bad. There's this whole other area of cholesterol that if we don't have it, we gain dementia, because 70 percent of the white matter of the brain is cholesterol. The cells, every cell in your body, every cell wall is made of cholesterol. Your sex hormones and stress hormones are made of cholesterol. So to say that we need to lower all total cholesterol in order to prevent heart disease. Well, how did that experiment work? We now have way more dementia, we have way more neurological problems and we have more heart disease, not less. John Gusty (0:49:43.776) Ashley, are you suggesting that the corporate complex would do something intentionally to dumb people down.  They would actually. You talked about those two doctors, they were straight up forming a marketing plan. That was a marketing plan. A marketing plan to push statins. So that's a double win for them because they get to sell more product. But in doing so, they're literally dumbing and causing the population to take part in practices that damage their brain. Ashley James (0:50:23.877) Up until I believe it was 2012. So, I mean, 2012 was three blinks of an eye ago. People who were on statins either every three months or every six months, needed to get regular blood tests to make sure that the statins they were taking weren't damaging their liver too much. See how statins work if they bruise the liver. So, when you take statins, they're supposed to lower your cholesterol. Well, people, unless you're vegan, which I’m whole food, plant-based, along with my husband. So, we don’t eat animal fat. But here’s the cool thing: my body makes cholesterol, my body makes it, my liver makes it. I could go on a potato diet. There was this one guy who ate potatoes for a year. His body made cholesterol the entire time. So, we make cholesterol, whether we eat it or not. Your liver? It's so vital, it's such a vital nutrient to your body. Your liver produces it. We have these people who now, they're eating burgers, so they're eating eggs or whatever, so they're gaining cholesterol in their diet, also on top of their liver making it. Their doctor says, well, we need to lower your cholesterol. They could eat less cholesterol, but no, let's just continue eating the same amount. Here you have a pill. So, what the pill does is it bruises, it punches. Imagine just punching your liver to the point where your liver ceases to function correctly, damaging the liver so it stops producing as much cholesterol. They had to have you go back and get blood work on a regular basis to make sure that we’re not killing you too much. When I heard that, my brain exploded. Then, knowing that most people who are on cholesterol meds die sooner, die younger, have dementia way early on, and neuropathy is one of the very common side effects. Once you’re in your fifties, they start pushing the cholesterol meds on you regardless. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it pushed on people who had healthy cholesterol. Well, let’s prevent it from happening in the future. Let’s just lower your cholesterol more. It is one of the biggest scams that is right in front of our face. In the last four years, they didn’t even try to hide it. They’ve been so blatant. It’s been disgusting to watch them push experimental drugs on us and we see the results now, but they’re trying to cover that up and pretend it never happened. But here we have cholesterol, it causes the seniors. So after, let’s say, you're in your 60s, you're on cholesterol. You’ve been on cholesterol for five years, 10 years. You no longer can feel your feet because you have peripheral neuropathy. What happens when you can't feel your feet? You fall more. When you fall more, you break. Maybe you can break a hip and yay, then they get to make money off of you because they get to replace your hip. It just goes on and on and on. One intervention leads to another, leads to another. They’re banking on you having side effects that can give you more drugs for those side effects.  John Gusty (0:53:37.362) Another interesting thing, because we'll always end up back at talking about the pharmaceutical companies. Another interesting search that you can do is do a search for the top criminal fines paid of all time. Look at the list, and you’ll see I think Pfizer’s on there three times, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, it's all pharmaceutical companies, which by definition, pharmaceutical companies are criminal. Go and search for top criminal fines paid, and every single pharmaceutical company you see on that list is, by definition, a criminal organization, or they wouldn’t be paying criminal fines. I mean, Johnson & Johnson's talc powder has been causing newborn baby girls to have ovarian cancer since the '40s, and that stuff is still on the shelves to this day. It's cheaper for them to just pay those lawsuits off, the ones that are tenacious enough to even keep those lawsuits going, because after a while, most people just give up or they run out of money. But I don't understand how there can be many of us left. Ashley James (0:55:12.298) Who are awake?  John Gusty (0:55:13.904) I haven't bought food. I don't buy my meat, my produce, or my dairy from stores. I haven't bought food from stores in many, many years. It was a decision I made when I really wanted to start eating as clean as possible. But I do go into stores. You’ve got to buy paper products and stuff like that. So I go into stores quite often, and I always pay attention to the crowd at the pharmacy. I do not understand. I was just in there yesterday, and there was a big old line at the pharmacy. It's 2024. After what took place from 2020 forward, I don't understand how there can be many people left who would even want to walk up to a pharmaceutical counter, knowing what we know now. I mean, all of the lawsuits and how blatant they've become. They don't care at this point. They know that there are enough people out there—call it still being asleep, whatever term you want to put on it. They know that there are still enough people out there who feel that they need those pharmaceuticals to get them through the day. I don't know. To me, I've always noticed that the reason why most people take pharmaceuticals is for pain, for anxiety, or to sleep. Those seem to be the big three reasons. Ashley James (0:56:49.387) This really frustrates me because within one month, I can help my clients that come to me with those problems. We can get you within a month. You'll be either in significantly less pain or out of pain if you do what I say. I'm going to give you a list of things to do. You're going to go do them, you're not going to be in pain, you're going to be sleeping amazing, and you're going to have lots of energy. We're going to solve that depression problem and especially anxiety. I have a technique I teach. I can help you turn off your anxiety in less than 90 seconds. I mean, if you Google my name and anxiety, you'll find lots of interviews where I teach the technique for free. I have a whole system that can get people out of anxiety, feeling amazing, sleeping great, lots of energy, no pain, and there's zero drugs involved. But we're masking the symptoms. The body is speaking. Imagine if you took a child and the child was saying, “I'm hungry” or “I'm tired,” and instead of you feeding it when it's hungry and letting it sleep when it's tired, you told it to shut up and shoved a pill in its mouth. That's what our body is crying out—like a little child saying, “I need this, and I need that.” You're saying, “Shut up, take this pill.” We're going to suppress that symptom, we're going to suppress it and keep suppressing it. But the problem is people don't know. They don't know because they've been raised in a system, and it's Plato's allegory of the cave. If you're raised in a system where we trust the white coats, it's a really feel-good, warm, fuzzy feeling. It’s like we're still children, looking for a parental figure. It's such a warm, fuzzy feeling: “If something happens to my body and I'm afraid because I don't know what to do, I can just go to this doctor, and they're going to take care of me because they know what to do. John Gusty (0:58:47.933) Why do you think that there's still people at this point? I'm just curious if you had to put some sort of explanation. What do you think might be going through the mind of someone who still trusts that after?  Ashley James (0:59:05.470) I believe people choose what's cognitive dissonance. I believe they’re choosing their reality because the alternative is too traumatizing to actually wake up to—that every system of government, every system that we are surrounded by, that controls our lives, can’t be trusted. It’s too scary. When you start waking up to how corrupt governments are, and especially the military-industrial complex, it’s not just our government; it’s every government. It will bring you to tears if you really are fully aware of the atrocities to humanity, in education, and we can go down that rabbit hole, just like the medical complex, our education industry has been rigged for about 100 years as well. It is designed to separate the children from the family and have the government raise the children instead of the family unit. We’re breaking up the family unit on purpose because we are controlled sheep, we are controlled cattle, if they can take the children away, they are away from their parents and being taught in these brick-and-mortar buildings. They spend more time with strangers raising your kids than you do. You get to raise your kids and influence your kids. I have a friend who says, “I’m okay with putting my daughter in public school because we have a really good relationship, and I believe that the time I spend with her, I can help shape her.” Okay, so the hour you spend at night with her, the quality of the one hour versus the seven to eight hours she’s with strangers, and then your weekends where you’re doing chores and catching up on life—that’s when you get to influence your child, versus what they’re going to learn from their peers. It sounds like I’m going off-topic, but what I’m trying to say is they’ve replaced their God with worshiping this system that they live in. When you realize that everything is corrupt and everything is evil, for me, it’s like going to Mexico. Here, you’re innocent until proven guilty. You go to Mexico, and you’re guilty until proven innocent. You need to switch your thinking. Every system is guilty until proven innocent.. It’s a bit freeing once you come to that realization that you have to stand up for yourself. You have to be a label reader, an investigator. You have to research things. There’s this one guy—I don’t remember his name, but I love his videos. He takes pictures of aisles at Walmart or Target, and like for example toothpaste, he does this one video analyzing the toothpaste aisle. “Let’s see what is actually healthy versus pharmaceutical.” When you go through every single aisle, the pharmaceutical companies that you say are the criminal organizations that pay out the most criminal fines are the ones that are also producing everything you’re putting on your body—your shampoo, your conditioner, your lotions. Unless, like me, you shop with very independent and very healthy companies, you cannot go walk into Target or Walmart and buy anything to put on your body. It is made by a pharmaceutical company, and it is full of petroleum, and it’s disgusting. I’ll tell you a quick story that’s super interesting. My husband’s uncle is a PhD, was a professor, and he’s from Boulder University, he invented a mass spectrophotometer. I’m sure I’m saying that wrong. Let’s say add a company that’s making pharmaceuticals. There’s this powder, and they’re like, “Oh no, which powder is this? We don’t remember. Is this powder to make Tylenol pills? Is this powder to make statins? We don’t know.” It would be able to tell you. You could have it touch or read out any pill, and it could tell you what it was because it reads the molecular structure of it and could tell you exactly what it is. He designed it to sell it to pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies as a way to stop accidentally overdosing, misdosing, or giving the wrong drugs, because that is one of the things that kills people. They said after he met with the lawyers—literally every single pharmacy and every single pharmaceutical company—they all said the same thing: “We realize that if we implemented your machine, we would significantly reduce deaths and injuries because we will catch the mistakes. But we don’t want to because it is cheaper for us to wait until someone sues us and pay that than prevent the deaths.” When he saw that, it was like, “Oh, okay, the system doesn’t actually care about preventing deaths or helping people; they just care about profits.” He ended up selling it to the pulp and paper industry, and it significantly reduced the amount of chemicals they use in making paper. So he helped the environment, which was neat. But he designed it to help save lives, and the pharmaceutical industry said, “No thanks.” They’d rather wait for someone to die and then pay the lawsuit. John Gusty (1:05:11.037) Back to that Johnson & Johnson example I cited earlier with the talc powder. Since the 1940s, it's been known that stuff causes ovarian cancer, and it's just cheaper for them to pay the lawsuits. So why in the world? I will always go back to the abusive relationship example. Why would anyone want to continue in that abusive relationship? Unless, like you said, it's just easier to turn a blind eye to it and go, “He's not cheating on me, he loves me.” Ashley James (1:05:52.983) There's certain personalities who just couldn't be bothered. That sounds like, oh, not going to the store to buy your food. No, I'd rather just go to the store, buy my food. I know that I'm eating some chemicals. It's okay, I just couldn't be bothered. I have friends like that. Not a lot, most of my friends are like me, but I have friends like that. I have family members like that who are awake a little bit, but no, that's too hard. I don't have enough time, energy, or mental capacity. I'm okay living in this corrupt world and just kind of going about my business. You and I, there's about 10% of the people that we're called mismatchers. You tell us not to turn left. We feel compulse to turn left. You know what I mean. We're like the salmon swimming upstream. You have to be the salmon these days to not become a statistic.  I've said this dozens of times on my show. But if you're tuning in for the first time, look at the statistics. One in three people have cancer. One in three people have diabetes or prediabetes. Look at the rates of diseases. If you want to get that Darwin Award to become one of those statistics, go ahead and keep doing what the masses are doing. Statistics are what the average person is doing. Go through that drive-thru, go eat that fried food. Definitely don't exercise. Stay up late, drink beer. Do what everyone else is doing, and you will become a statistic. Congratulations, there's your reward. I can talk about that because I did it. I did all that, and I gave myself diabetes. Then I got to ungive myself diabetes and reverse it. I had five other medical issues that I resolved using lifestyle and natural medicine. I see that you can turn this quote-unquote diagnosis, this disease, on and off based on your choices. But you have to be a salmon, you have to swim upstream, you have to do the opposite of what the average person is doing. You are more likely to not become a statistic. Go to bed early and wake up early. Go for that run, jog, or walk. Drink plenty of water instead of coffee. By the way, if you drink plenty of water, you won't need coffee. You'll be on top of the world because reduced water intake leads to reduced energy production. Then we end up going for caffeine, alcohol, and sugar, which reduces our ability to produce energy even more. That keeps us on that vicious cycle of being addicted to these over-the-counter substances that are socially acceptable to be addicted to but that deteriorate our health even more. I know I'm on my soapbox because this is one of my favorite topics, which I see is yours as well—helping people awaken to the fact that they have the power. The power is in their hands. But this starts with our thinking. It starts with that mental shift that you are in control. Yes, it's hard, but you can. There's a wonderful actress, and it's funny, her name is escaping me right now. She was in Taxi. She has red hair and a photographic memory. I met her twice. She's amazing. It's so funny I'm forgetting her name because she has a photographic memory. She's red-haired, and she was in Taxi. She has this great speech about this: choose your hard. Sitting on the couch drinking your beer, you're choosing your hard. Your hard is giving yourself disease. Because if you're sitting there thinking, “I don't have enough energy to go for a walk,” Mitochondria produce more energy when they're stimulated by movement. If you go for that walk around the block, you'll actually be stimulating more energy, and you'll have more energy afterward. You might be fatigued from going for a walk, but if you do it every day, twice a day, for seven days, you're going to feel like a new person. It's also an antidepressant. So choose your hard. If your hard is getting your butt up and going for that walk, that's your hard. Choose your hard. If you're choosing not to do healthy things and just go with the status quo, the hard you're choosing is the diabetes or heart disease that you're choosing. You’re choosing your hard. If it's too hard for you to shop organic or to source healthy food, then the hard you're choosing is disease. There's always a hard. Choose your hard, and it creates mental toughness. I'm in the middle of doing the 75 hard, and it is amazing. I highly recommend it. It's choosing a transformation. So we talked about the mind shift. Now let's talk about, well, what can we do instead? How's your wife? Let's talk about this story. This opened this up for you. Seeing your wife's diagnosis opened this up for you, and you went down the road of how can we heal our bodies naturally? How can we take control and stop giving away our personal power to these industries that want to leech money out of us and keep us sick? So what happened? Tell us the story. What happened? How did you help your wife, and how is she now? John Gusty (1:11:13.664) Her situation is really complex because, unfortunately, for too much of her life, she was one of those people who trusted and listened. I do believe that a lot of what we are dealing with, even to this day, is damage caused mostly by pharmaceuticals. So we're having to go in on top of whatever was the original issue. We're dealing with a lot of damage caused by her not knowing better and just listening early on. It is breathtaking the amount of pharmaceuticals that were thrown at her. I started to save all the prescriptions that we never went and filled. I had a stack of them. It didn't take long for me to realize and see the abusive relationship that she was in with the medical-industrial complex. What I did was whatever I could to help her out of that relationship. We got to the point where she wasn't taking any of their pharmaceuticals, she wasn't seeing any of their doctors, she wasn't eating any of their commercial corporate food, and she wasn't drinking any of their commercial corporate water. Like you said—I love the whole “Choose your hard.” I think the hard that I chose was to go towards the simple and natural in everything. I'm in the middle of writing a piece now, and it's called Are You a House Cat? I'll just give you a brief summary of what it's about because it kind of answers this whole thing in one, hopefully entertaining, little story. Think about it. Let's use the example of a house cat. Do you know how many house cats there are in this world that have never been exposed to natural sunlight? The only sunlight they get is what's coming in through the windows, and the windows have UV coating on them, so they're not getting natural sunlight. How many house cats have ever in their lives, had natural, living water? If they're a house cat, they're only drinking tap water or, at best—or worse—bottled water. How many house cats have never actually touched the ground? Those cute little pads on the bottom of their paws aren't for fashion purposes. Those are connection points, just like the bottoms of our feet or the bottoms of anything’s feet. They've never touched the ground because they've been in the house all their lives and have never actually gone and touched the grass or some actual wet ground. So you've got situations where there are these animals that have never been exposed to natural light, never drank natural water, never touched natural ground, and, to top it all off, they're not eating food, they're eating feed. There's a difference. A cat would be eating meat, cartilage, muscles, and soft bones. It would be eating squirrels, mice, or birds. It wouldn’t be eating corn-based cat chow. Ashley James (1:15:15.591) What they would be eating would be raw and have the probiotics in it.  John Gusty (1:15:21.797) So using that example of a house cat that's never had natural light, natural water, natural food, or touched the ground, if you can imagine that house cat situation, imagine how many humans are in that exact same situation. We've been taught that the sun is bad, so we wear sunglasses, and we tint our windows. We've been taught that the sun can give you cancer—that's a whole other topic, and we don't have to get into that. But people aren't exposed to natural light, they're not drinking natural water, and they're not consuming natural food. We are walking human batteries. We are electrical beings. We have to discharge. We're holding charge all day long because we're like an antenna. We have to discharge, which is why anybody that's ever walked on a beach or stuck their feet in some water can almost feel their body just going, “Ah,” because you're discharging. You're gathering charge because of all the electronics and frequencies that exist in the airwaves around all of us at all times. Especially people living in really densely populated metropolitan areas are just in charge. For us, really, we chose our hard, and our hard was going passionately towards the simple and the natural. Do you want vitamin D? There's this thing in the sky called the sun, and we try to be in it as much as possible. We have lots of ground, and we touch it all the time. When we do eat, we eat natural things in their natural form. I don't eat things that come out of packages. I had a wise person tell me one time, before you shove something down your pie hole, take a look at the shape and the configuration. If you're about to put a triangle chip that is fluorescent orange, ask yourself, “Does that exist in nature?” Well, of course, it doesn't. So you probably shouldn't put it in your mouth because it's not natural. That's helped a lot by what we didn't do, improve her situation probably more than anything. It's probably the reason why she's still alive today—we stopped with all pharmaceuticals and we didn't listen to the corporate narratives. We listened to the natural narratives. When I say scientific, I know—that science is a discipline. Science is not a group of people. Science is no different than fidelity or honesty. It's a discipline, and there is a way to do something scientifically. So we run things through that metric: is it scientifically and biologically sound, what we're doing? We just don't listen to the corporate narratives—for food, for medical, for anything. Really, not listening to them. Or, I think you've heard this probably a million times in a million different ways: if you want to know what to do, listen to what they're telling you to do and do exactly the opposite. You will most certainly be better off for it each and every time. But in all seriousness, it was really what we didn’t do and what we stopped doing that started to turn things in a better direction for her. Ashley James (1:19:32.756) I love it and everything you said, though, because if someone's hearing this for the first time, you sound whack-job crazy because they're hearing it for the first time. But my listeners, this probably isn't the first time they've heard that we should get our bare feet out on grass and touch. We should actually be in contact with sunlight, direct sunlight, and be in contact with the ground every day because there's actual science behind it. I have several interviews, one with a cardiologist, talking about the benefits of getting in touch with the earth. We release excess electrons that are stored artificially when we are constantly grounded by wearing shoes, being on carpeting, and being in a car. We are so far removed from our natural environment, and we think our artificial environment is our natural environment because we were raised in it. It's like a lab rat trusting a lab more than it would a forest. We trust our artificially man-made environment, which is riddled with toxic things that are not healthy for us. When we look at EMF, we look at off-gassing. All our furniture, carpets, flooring, and paint are off-gassing for years. If you can't smell it—”Oh, I can't smell the paint anymore, so it's fine.” No. The stuff in your house is off-gassing formaldehyde and many other chemicals, and you're breathing it in. If you can smell something, your liver is processing it. If you inhale and smell a scent, like when you go through a nail salon, you're smelling acetone. Your liver, within 15 minutes, is having to break it down and having to process it. What you inhale through your nose, it's actually being absorbed into your bloodstream. So we have to understand that our artificial environment is hurting us. Like you said, the water we drink, the air we breathe inside our home, which is 10 times more pollution than being outside and in your downtown area, and then we've got mold. The list just goes on and on and on. We need to look at every aspect of our lives, become that detective. Choose the hard, but make it fun. It can actually be really fun to detoxify your life and question everything.  you said, question everything. In some cases, do the opposite of what they're telling you to do.  John Gusty (1:22:18.518) Well, I think you mentioned it earlier—the body does not know how to work against itself. All the body is doing is trying to recover from all the crap that we do to it and expose it to. So, again, if you move towards the simple and you move towards the natural—back to that house cat scenario. I think most people that have cats, when their cat starts getting to be about 10 or 11 years old, they start thinking of their cat as old. Most people get 10 years or so out of a cat. The cats that I have had—and I'm not a cat person; I'm definitely a dog person—but I have taken a few cats in my time, taken them out of bad situations, and brought them onto my property. They're indoor-outer. They come and go when they want to, and I'll tell you what—they're outside most of the time. They only come inside at night to sleep, and first thing when the sun's up, they're out. What they're doing is laying in the grass and, interestingly enough, facing the sun. That early morning sun is super healthy, and animals know it—dogs know it, cats know it, cows know it, insects know it. I haven't had a cat that hasn't made it. Well, the last cat I had made it to 24—nice—and probably would have kept going. But it was a cat that we had gotten from somewhere else, and if I'd had it since birth, I bet we could have been closing in on 30. Ashley James (1:24:03.994) So you started waking up when you were following your wife through her health journey and started making these changes. But now, this is what you're doing. You're helping awaken people to their body's ability to heal itself. Tell us about it. Tell us, what is your message? What are you here to share? You've got a few websites we want to mention. What do you do? Are you a consultant? Do people hire you? Or what are you to sell us? John Gusty (1:24:42.000) I'm not here to sell you anything. I am a content creator. I love to create content. I can do audio, video, and graphic design. I'm a writer, and that's just coming out of the entertainment industry. I just kind of became a jack of all trades because I got tired of waiting on creative departments to get stuff done, so I started learning the skills to do it myself. I love to create content, and I think we have to choose your hard. I talked about that. I think we also have to choose our purpose, and I've come to realize that my purpose is to help continue the art of conversation. Especially in the past three, four years, there's been a lot of us that have been made to feel that we're not allowed to talk about certain things or say certain things, and there's massive worldwide peer pressure—social peer pressure. A lot of people are afraid to express things that they feel, but they don't want to be publicly shamed for feeling these things. If they just let it out, they'd realize there's millions of others that feel the exact same way. That's why I think the whole worship of the state is very dangerous, because they prey on that dynamic. So I create content. With my wife's journey, I developed what's turned out to be a lifelong friendship, relationship, and business partnership with a gentleman by the name of Dr. Jeremy Ayers, who I believe you're going to be talking to, if my notes are correct. Jeremy's over in the UK, and he is someone that I encountered. I was at a convention in Acapulco years ago and crossed paths, and we just had enough common ground that when you meet somebody, and it just clicks. Well, we just clicked. He fully invested himself in my wife's situation and has never let up. It's probably been 10 years now that we've been together as friends and business partners, and he has helped a lot of people deal with dis-ease. A couple of years back, we started a company called Naturally Better. If you go to naturallybetter4u.com, and you can spell that however you want—however, I prefer the way Prince would have done it, with the number four and the letter u.com. But naturallybetter4u.com, there's a little taste of our world and what we do. Earlier, you'd mentioned what are some things that you can do to take back some of the sovereignty and individuality. If you go to that page, there are a couple of downloads there, and one of them is the Naturally Better Red Pill Revolution Anti-Dependency Suggestion Guide. I had a lot of fun putting this together, and it is chock full of things. My goal with this was to have even the most seasoned skeptic look at this and go, oh, I didn't know that, or oh, that's interesting, that's cool, I hadn't heard that one before. Hopefully there’s lots of that in this guide. It's just things that any of us can do in our everyday life to stop giving away our power, our attention, and our money. We are so much more powerful as individuals than a lot of us give ourselves credit for. I think one of the biggest things that people need to hear—they need to hear other people say it, so I try to say it a lot—it is okay to say no. It's totally okay to say no. You can be tolerant of lots of things, but tolerance does not mean acceptance. There's lots of things that I'm tolerant of, but I will not accept them. I'm tolerant of hospitals, but you will never catch me in a hospital. Not even if you were in a car accident. Ashley James (1:29:26.539) Not even if you were in a car accident? John Gusty (1:29:30.751) Then I would have to be unconscious, and someone else would have to bring me in there. Ashley James (1:29:34.087) I mean, on one hand, I think that might be a little extreme because you might be putting yourself in danger if you have internal bleeding or broken bones, stuff like that. But on the other hand, there's a part of me that's, yes, I get it, because you increase your risk of other interventions. You get put on that conveyor belt, and it's harder to get off—MRSA and all the kinds of things that you can catch while you're at a hospital. But also, I have watched hospitals kill my loved ones. It was the hospital that did it. But at the same time, if you are internally bleeding, I'd want a surgeon to try to save your life. It's better than just accepting death. But that's just me. John Gusty (1:30:23.132) Yes, if that was the case, then I would hope that my conscious self or maybe, if I was unconscious, those around me that know me would hire the services of someone to do that. Maybe those services would be performed in a hospital, but they would be performed in a hospital that I'm paying cash for. See, I think my biggest aversion to hospitals, and maybe this is new information to some of your listeners, is that when you enter a hospital, you're literally entering another legal jurisdiction, and you're giving up. You are literally giving up all of your rights. That's why you have to be discharged from the hospital. You are legally admitting that. You're admitting yourself into a hospital. So you are now there, you're in their care and their legal jurisdiction, and I will never give up. I will never give up the rights to me and my body and my decisions to anyone else. I would only enter a hospital if I had my legal ducks in a row and that the hospital was well aware of it before I even walked in through the front doors. Ashley James (1:31:38.345) More people need to know that I did an interview with, oh gosh, I'm forgetting his name, Grace's dad, Scott. Oh sorry, it's slipping into my brain, but it's Grace. If you google Learn True Health, or if you do an internet search or go to learntruehealth.com and search Grace, the hospital killed his daughter, and he has proof. He is now on a rampage to hold them accountable and to share this information because senior citizens and the disabled are far more likely to be killed by hospitals intentionally. I know that sounds crazy because it's like, who is out there killing grannies? It is proven. John Gusty (1:32:34.949) It's insurance company driven. You've already identified me to your audience as nutbag crazy, so why not continue in that direction? But I implore anyone to research this. The insurance companies—if you noticed during the nonsense of 2020 forward—the biggest casualty rate was in the older demographic. There is enough, and I'm sure that the gentleman you cited earlier, the Grace one, is aware of this too. The insurance companies—a very sound and logical case can be made—at least in part, used this event and have for a while now, although not as blatant as it's been lately, but have been using the hospital apparatus to see to it that the older demographic is killed off, if you will. They got paid because of the payouts. Ashley James (1:33:47.445) Yes, they got paid too. That's exactly what we talked about in episode 476. I looked it up—it's Scott Shara, episode 476 of Learn True Health Podcast. But that's not news to those who have had it done, who've seen it. You are so susceptible. Just like with pregnancy, you are more susceptible walking into a hospital than with a home birth. As long as there are no complications beforehand, you are more likely to have an intervention-free birth. But when you walk into a hospital in labor, one intervention is designed to lead to another, which is designed to lead to another, and it's all designed to make money for the hospital, not for the best outcome of the child. We spend the most on health care—the United States spends the most on health care—and we have some of the worst outcomes. Tell me how that is still even acceptable. But you and I are pulling our hair out because we see the truth. We've run out of Plato's cave, and so many are still entertained by the shadows in Plato's cave and unwilling to come out and break their chains and come out. John Gusty (1:34:59.136) You know what, Ashley? I have confidence that our friends and family, if they just vote a little harder in November, all of this will get fixed. I'm sure of it. Don't you have hope?  Ashley James (1:35:10.217) Now I'm starting to see why anarchy is so appealing. Not from the standpoint of the mainstream anarchy. I don't believe in violence. I definitely believe in being vocal and standing. Vote with your fork, vote with your dollar, use your choices to vote with where you want. So don't see an MD. See an ND, a naturopath, an old-school one, not one that's been trained in the last 15 years. Go find a 70-year-old naturopath, a 60-year-old naturopath. Find holistic doctors. Choose to set yourself up with, just as you would research and find the best plumber, the best mechanic. Find your holistic team that supports you and educates you. The root word for doctor is doceri, which means teacher. Your doctor is supposed to be your teacher, not the prescription pad holder. The word doctor doesn't mean drug dealer. It means teacher. When was the last time your MD sat down and educated you and taught you how to support your body's ability to heal itself? Well, that's why you're listening to this podcast. I'm not a doctor, but I just play one on TV, so I love this conversation, and I know you and I could keep talking for hours about it. But what I want is to have the audience walk away with some actionable steps. It's like the movie They Live where you take the glasses, you put the glasses on, you see the aliens. That's basically it. You're going to walk around and start questioning everything. I was raised watching TV in the 80s and the 90s and watching the commercials for fast food. If there's a commercial for the food you're eating, stop eating it. That's one thing. If they ever had to market something to you, stop doing it, stop buying it, stop eating it. I told my son, never, ever buy laundry detergents. If they have to spend money marketing something, never buy it. It's not healthy for you. There's no money in making you healthy and creating health things. So you have to, just for one, never buy something that they market to you. But think about the marketing that made you feel so good and that got into your subconscious as a child—Tony the Tiger and all the sugary cereals we got marketed to. We walk down those aisles and we have a trust. We look at General Mills and we look at Nestle Quick. We look at all these companies and we trust them. Why? Because they pumped garbage into our heads since day one to trust them. We have to start to question the marketing that they used when we didn't have critical thinking. So it got past our critical thinking into our subconscious. Now we're walking around trusting the system, and we have to pull ourselves out. So you have to start questioning everything. Don't eat or use products that are marketed to you. Broccoli doesn't need a commercial, so it's healthy. It passes. Give us some actionable steps now. We've got naturallybetterforyou.com. You've got some great giveaways—the anti-dependency and post-vaccine detox protocol. I know a lot of people want to know about that because I have a lot of listeners who have shared with me they regret getting a few of the shots, and now they want to prevent whatever or help their body detox. When people come to me and ask, “What can I do? I just got this shot, what can I do to detox?” I'm like, “A time machine.” Because, as far as I know, that's the only way to prevent the destruction that we allowed to our bodies—or those people did, not me. I would never let them come at me. They would have to hold me down, kicking and screaming, which they actually did to several children and teenagers. There are videos of teenagers kicking and screaming, and it's disgusting, and it's so sad. Then we want to just shut down, and we want to go back into our safe matrix. We want to go back into the matrix and stop questioning everything because it's too painful. It's too painful when you open your eyes to see the atrocities that are all around us. But we have to just move through it and go, “I have to choose, on a daily basis, everything that could support my body and the bodies of all my family, the ability to heal ourselves.” That is everything you eat, breathe, wear, drive—everything. Every aspect of your life can be looked at, and you can make healthier choices. Oh, you also have a Facebook group, the Red Pill Revolution Facebook group. I'm sure that would be interesting to go join. Tell us, what's some homework? Give us some advice on actionable steps we can take. I know you're not big into telling people what to do, but suggesting—giving some suggestions. John Gusty (1:40:38.956) No, I don't like telling people what to do, but I love sharing knowledge, especially knowledge that I know has worked for me, and if it has worked for me, then there's got to be at least somebody else out there that it would be helpful for. I would say this: two things. One, although it might sound strange at the moment, I would make it a goal to get to the point where you can someday walk into a grocery store and just be offended by what you're seeing. I'm not a prude or anything, and I don't spend time in adult bookstores, but you could put me in the raunchiest adult bookstore, and it still is not going to offend me as much as standing in your average grocery store and looking around at what is there. It's food porn—it's toxic food porn—and it's not even good. If it was good, that'd be one thing, but it's not. Then you see what people are putting in their carts. Look at the stuff, and I happen to think it is okay to be judgmental. It's human to be judgmental. We're judgmental all the time. You use good judgment, or you can use bad judgment, but being judgmental is a human quality. Look at the people that are pushing these carts that have soda hanging off the side and Little Debbie boxes and stuff, and take a look at the person pushing that cart. Again, it sounds a little rough, but usually, those two situations match up. The person pushing the cart full of crap usually looks like what you would think would be the result of putting all that garbage in you. Get to the point where you can walk into your average store and just be offended. This is probably one of the biggest things that shaped the way that I live, is to pick something—something easy. I think I've said it in the past. An easy thing would be eggs. Pick one thing. Let's use eggs as the example and just say, from this day forward, I am never going to purchase eggs from any store ever again. I mean eggs, regardless of where you live. You live around somebody who's doing chickens, and it's not that hard to find. So go and find the best eggs that you can find and pay attention to not just the eggs or how they're packaged or how cute the little shop is that you're buying them from. Go even further than that. What were the chickens eating? What were they raised on? Where are those chickens? What does the farm look like? Who are the farmers? Start really going to the source on things—produce, meat, eggs. When you do that, you absolutely will end up with a better, healthier product that you are exposing yourself and your body to. But the big thing is you are going to start forming relationships with the producers, the people who are doing the work, who are growing the food or raising the animals or making the soaps or baking the breads. You have a chance to go and ask them questions. Well, what are you using, or how are you doing that? You can get to the point where you are 100% confident. These eggs that I'm eating, I know where they came from, and I know that they are nourishing my body. There's no chemical. You know because you've gone and you've taken the time, you've chosen your path, and you've made those relationships. Those relationships, I'm telling you now—I don't buy eggs anymore. I go see my friends. Buying the eggs is just a secondary part of the trip. I go see my friends, I go to their beautiful farm, I see their children, and I pet their animals. You could just go into a Kroger and buy a pack of crappy eggs that are going to hurt you. Would you rather do that, or would you rather have this?  It's such a much more enriching experience. Buying eggs for me anymore turns into going to a beautiful farm and seeing these people that I love very much, that I've known for years, who have become family to me and I to them. What started out as an egg purchase has turned into just so much more in my life—new people, new friends, new family, new knowledge that I have. Just through the people that I buy my eggs from, I learned about beekeeping, which I had no knowledge of before, but they also have hives, and so I got to watch that process. Now I know that, and I would have never known about beekeeping had I not been purchasing my eggs from these people. You see what I'm saying? It's the gift that just keeps giving. At some point, whether it's a natural occurrence or whether our friends at the state do it on purpose, at some point those electronic devices that we all love so much and those little plastic cards that we have in our wallets—because nobody uses cash anymore—those things aren't going to work. It’s not going to take a natural disaster. It’s not going to take much; it's just going to take the systems going down, or what if they get intentionally shut off and you can't go get your crappy eggs from your crappy store or your crappy meat from your crappy store? What if you can't do that? I'll never have that problem because I know where my eggs are coming from, and the farm never closes. Ashley James (1:47:02.971) Exactly, and you've got those relationships. That's smart. It's smart. You don't have to build an underground bunker. I mean, you can if you want. You don't have to become a prepper. Just start building a community and stop relying so heavily on a system that is very vulnerable. Our our food system can break so easily, and we've seen it teeter a few times. All it takes is a strike—the truckers stop trucking. I've seen this in Canada twice. I'm originally from Canada. I live in the States now, but I've seen it twice in Canada in recent years where the ATM machines stopped working for a day. You could not use your card, you could not take money out, could not use your card for a day. There was a big system blackout or whatever. Americans aren’t really tuned in to what happens in other countries.You guys may not know but there's been a huge movement in Canada in the last year and a half where millions of Canadians went to Quebec, the capital of Canada, and were protesting—very calmly protesting. There were children. They brought bouncy houses. It was the coolest thing. Who brings bouncy houses to a protest? Canadians do. I was so proud of Canada. There were millions of people. There were over 100,000 truckers there. They brought all their trucks. They completely clogged up all of Ottawa. It was because the Canadian government was forcing vaccines on truckers. Truckers aren't ever around anyone. Even if you believed for a moment that these vaccines could prevent the spread of COVID—which we knew the whole time, those of us who were aware of this information, and I have amazing guests including PhDs, research scientists, and doctors who were all screaming from the rooftops and were being shot down and silenced. They were saying, “This is unproven, unsafe, and will not prevent the spread of covid and we’re saying it. We know now it’s true—the devastation is true, unfortunately. For the last four years, we were shut down and silenced for spreading the truth. The truckers and many Canadians stood up and said it's not fair that you force this upon us, it's not fair that you force this upon the truckers. There was this massive shutdown in Canada because Canada was protesting. John Gusty (1:49:59.410) What the banks did in fixing the money? Ashley James (1:50:03.978) This is exactly what I'm getting to. Trudeau, the Prime Minister, actually, at one point, he's on camera saying, “I know I'm going against the Canadian constitution, and I don't care.” He shut down. There are moms who donated. If you donated any money, it wasn't just shutting down the banks of the people who protested. If you were a mom who had a mortgage to pay—say, a single mom with four kids, had a mortgage to pay, donated $50 to one of the truckers for food or gas or whatever, just because she believed in the cause—her bank account and everything was frozen. This was thousands and thousands of Canadians who had their bank accounts just frozen overnight for donating to a good cause or for saying something on social media that showed they supported this. This is just what's happening with China. If you think it's never going to happen here, I want to say something so lovingly to you: please pull your head out of the sand. We can't blindly just trust. We see it in other countries happening, and it is coming our way. The only way it doesn't is if we stand up and fight. But we have to be awake enough to stand up and fight. So I love your idea of making sure that you have set up relationships that support you. I have naturopaths that, if I needed to go see them or text them or contact them, I don't have to just jump on an antibiotic at the first sign of an infection. I've got herbs and homeopathy. I've got a network of homeopaths, herbalists, acupuncturists, and naturopaths, and my system is set up there. I love that you set up your food system so you have relationships with people that grow food. So in the event of anything, you have a network. You're not just going to be completely reliant on the local grocery store that could lose their food supply for many reasons. It's a very fragile system. John Gusty (1:52:10.298) Yes, I think again you kind of get back to that whole concept. I keep pushing about being in an abusive relationship. I went through the entire nonsense of 2020 and forward, and I just kept doing whatever it was that I was doing. My life literally didn't change one bit. I kept a smile on my face, and I went wherever I would normally have gone. I did whatever I normally would have done. Interestingly enough, it probably was because I kept a smile on my face and I wasn't out looking for confrontation either, but to this day, I've never worn a mask. I certainly didn't get the MAGA jab or any of the Brandon boosters. I didn't play into any of that nonsense because I'm not part of that religion. So, in my mind, it didn't apply to me, and I just went on about my business. I don't have any Karen stories to tell you. I had one person, one time, ask me if I would put on a mask, and I just said, “No, thank you.” Ashley James (1:53:21.198) Well, I think you lived in a state in which that was much more easy. I lived in Washington. Washington and New York, I think, were among the worst. It was pretty crazy. John Gusty (1:53:33.126) I'm in Tennessee—in Middle Tennessee, so I'm outside the Nashville area. Nashville's a big city like any other place, and if you went into Nashville, you noticed people masking and social distancing and all, but Nashville's real easy to get out of, and so, you go 20 minutes in any direction, and you're in the wide open spaces, and this is just a simple thought, and maybe it's something, it's kind of a little nugget that I've carried with me since then.  Every single time that I looked around and watched how the humans were behaving, the staying six feet apart and wearing their face diapers and getting all jabbed up and everything, the birds kept being birds, the dogs and cats kept being dogs and cats, cows, everything, trees, everything else carried on as if just another day. Because what? It was just another day. It was all that. What we witnessed was proof positive of one, how powerful fear is and, two, just how easily herded some human beings can be, because it was very visual. You could see the people who were being compliant. I was in a Home Depot during the middle of this, and they had these big plexiglass barriers between the cashier and you, but there's a big hole in the middle of it so you could use the card machine. The lady that was ringing me up had two masks on, so she was real serious about this, and I asked her, I was joking, but I didn't think she caught the joke until after I tapped on the plastic thing and I said, “Hey, I said these are kind of handy. Do you guys sell these?” She goes, “No, why would you want one of those?” I said, “Oh, well, for fleas, flea control, flea and pest control.” She goes, “They're going to climb over the top of it,” and I went, “Exactly,”  I was trying to be sarcastic and jabber in a lighthearted way, but she answered it for herself, but I don't know that it ever connected. I don't know. Anyways, but we saw it. It was visual, and so it's again, going back, if I could leave the listener with anything, it's do your best to go back to this, try to get back to simple and natural, and you're going to find a lot of truth there, and you're going to find a lot of effectiveness there, and you're also going to find a lot of safety there, because most of the things that cause human beings harm or peril are toxic, man made things, and I've never heard of anyone dying of broccoli. Ashley James (1:57:00.851) Being offended by grocery stores, a good friend of mine texted me a few months ago, just angry, just livid, because she got it. She woke up in that grocery store that day and had that epiphany and was just pissed off. She was shopping for her kids and everything has sugar and artificial dye, everything is laced with MSG, everything has dairy, and she's just going down the list. When I say dairy, there's a big difference between getting raw milk from your neighbor's cow and what they process with the pasteurized process, homogenized, powdered, all that stuff. I'm sorry, but there's a certain percentage of people that can handle cow dairy or goat dairy, if it's from your own goat that you love so much and you raised and you have a great relationship with that goat and you want to drink its milk and you find you're healthier for it, then do it, go ahead. But thinking that the dairy you're drinking and getting from your grocery store is healthy, it's not healthy for the cow, it's not healthy for the environment, it's definitely not healthy for you. It's so disgustingly processed.  I have whole episodes. I actually have two whole episodes on that subject alone, but I can get off on so many tangents. She was livid by all of the chemical crap in the food. Most food in the grocery store is not food. It was Mary Lou Henner, by the way, who said, “Choose your heart.” I'm sure you could find a YouTube video of her if you type “Choose your heart” and Mary Lou Henner. She gives a great, great talk on that. So she got angry and she texted me. She goes, “How do you do it? I am livid, how do you do it?” I'm like, yes, I get it. You have to shop the perimeter of the grocery store. If you're going to be in grocery stores. I actually shop around to a lot of different, more natural stores. I also order a box from farms that gets delivered straight to me. So that's fun too. But shop the perimeter of the grocery store. Don't go down the aisles. Don't buy processed food. If you want to have bread, make your own. That's a big fad now. If you want to, I make my own yogurt with cashew. I make a cultured cashew. If I want yogurt, you get interested in making your own products. Think about the pioneers. They had to make literally everything, and it would be great if we started developing our own skills to be able to do more for ourselves instead of relying on a manufacturer to make the lowest quality product. Eating at restaurants is another thing. Restaurants choose the lowest quality ingredient. They're paying the least amount that they can pay and it's not healthy at all. It's designed to taste good and jack up your dopamine. It's a drug. It's  going into an opium den.  John Gusty (2:00:22.167) Regardless of what restaurant you eat at, with very few exceptions, it all comes off of a Cisco truck. All of it.  It doesn't matter whether you're at restaurant A or restaurant B, all that stuff came off of a Cisco truck. Speaking of gross, you were talking about pasteurized dairy. I heard somebody one time refer to once milk that you buy in the stores. Pasteurized, some of it's ultra-pasteurized. At that point, when pasteurization is just not enough, ultra-pasteurization. But you get to that point and it's just pus and mucus. I was never a big dairy guy anyways, but that's all I needed to hear is… hmm, yes, pus and mucus. Well, enjoy that and enjoy your nice tall glass of pus and mucus. Oh, thank you, Louis Pasteur, you just gave us so many gifts. Ashley James (2:01:22.776) Well, the industry ran with it, of course, because if they can shelf-stabilize something and make it last longer, of course killing all of the healthy microbes in the process, they're all for it because it makes them money. So we have to question everything, and that's the takeaway. Question everything. Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. You'll probably end up living much longer and much healthier. John Gusty (2:01:50.275) It is okay to do that because I'll give people under 30 a break. But if you're over 30 years old, none of us have ever lived a day. We've never spent one day of our lives when we haven't known. We were literally born into the meme that we know corporations and politicians are dishonest, self-serving, and profit-driven. We've known that. The dishonest politician and the profiteering corporation, those are memes. Again, we were born into that, so we know it. We know it instinctively. Why do we continue to not just trust them, but we let them nourish us, we let them medicate us? We've turned over. I'm even against the term healthcare.  Ashley James (2:02:47.298) Oh yes. That's the marketing  there.  John Gusty (2:02:50.634) You know what healthcare is, being alive. Do you think a bird wakes up in the morning and thinks about its healthcare? Its healthcare is staying alive that day. Stay alive, get some water, get some food and stay alive—that's healthcare and it's that simple. Get some water. Make sure it's good water and doesn't come out of a tap or a bottle. Make sure it's good living water. Get some good living food and stay alive. You do those two things. Chances are you'll stay alive Ashley James (2:03:28.786) Thank you so much for coming on the show. So many directions. We could do this for hours and I have a lot of interviews that touch on these different topics, going down these different rabbit holes. So listeners can definitely keep listening to the episodes but also plug into John and go to his Facebook group. I find it ironic that you have a Facebook group. John Gusty (2:03:53.792) I don't. To be perfectly honest with you, I lead a Zuckerberg free life.  Ashley James (2:04:01.398) Oh, you don't. So who runs your group?  John Gusty (2:04:04.274) Well, we have a team, the Red Pill and the Naturally Better team. There are those that jump in that cesspool because there are still people that exist in that cesspool that are truly looking for good information.  Ashley James (2:04:23.750) Yes, exactly. It's okay to use the system as long as you understand. The system is evil, corrupt, and out to suck your money from you and your life force. Great, so listeners could go to theredpillrevolution.com or naturallybetter4you.com and check it out. Thank you for this fun conversation, in which I hope everyone remembered their tinfoil hat. I know I certainly did, and I say that jokingly. 2005 was when I learned about Codex Alimentarius, and that kind of sent me down this rabbit hole. In 2008, I learned about 9/11 and fluoride and kept going down the road, and then GMO, and it just kept going deeper and deeper. So, almost 20 years now, I've been awakening to the atrocities and the toxicity around us, and I see that this system is designed to suppress us, keep us sick, and keep us cattle, and I am not a cattle. I rage against that, and I hope you do too. I hope you become the salmon swimming against the cattle, and that you look into how to make every aspect of your life healthy and maintain your anonymity. So that's what we're going for. Yes, creating those communities to support each other, which I think is a good suggestion. John Gusty (2:06:10.974) Thank you. Thank you, and next time we talk we can dive into—I think tinfoil is a conspiracy because I've never seen it on the shelf. I've only ever seen aluminum foil. I've never seen tinfoil on the shelf. Ashley James (2:06:29.538) Awesome, John. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been fun.  John Gusty (2:06:32.357) Ashley, thank you so much. This has been fun. You run a tight ship and I love your show and I hope something in all of this was helpful to your listeners, and I'm just super proud to be a part of it.  Outro: Imagine a life where you feel vibrant and full of energy. Now make it a reality with TakeYourSupplements.com. Ditch the endless trial and error of supplement selection. Our trained health coaches are here to craft a personalized health regimen that truly works for you. Visit TakeYourSupplements.com and learn how easy it is to start feeling better today. Your health is an investment, not an expense. Visit TakeYourSupplements.com today and get a free health consultation. When I heard about these specific supplements over 12 years ago, I heard about them back in 2010. The first thing that went through my mind was that sounds too expensive, and at that time I didn't have a lot of money. But I also had a ton of health problems. It wasn't until years later that I finally gave it a try, and I couldn't believe that I had stopped myself, that I had limited myself because I had decided somewhere that it sounded too expensive without even doing the research. It turns out I was able to fit it into my budget and I started feeling better immediately. Within five days of taking these supplements, I began to get my energy back. My chronic adrenal fatigue began to go away. Within three months, I no longer had type 2 diabetes. Within two years, I no longer had polycystic ovarian syndrome, and I was able to conceive naturally. I was told I'd never be able to have kids when I was 19, after a battery of tests with an endocrinologist. So when you have these health goals and dreams, but they've been crushed by a doctor, crushed by family members, or crushed by your own belief system, I invite you to break through that and challenge anyone, including yourself, who's ever told you that you can't have perfect health, that you can't have optimal health. Because at TakeYourSupplements.com, we have some amazing health coaches that want to show you the way to support your body's ability to heal itself. Your body is amazing and miraculous. We grew from these tiny cells into 37.2 trillion cells. Your body has a God-given ability to heal itself, and what we have to do is give it the raw building blocks it needs to build healthy cells. That's what the coaches at TakeYourSupplements.com are here for. They're here to show you the foods to avoid and the foods to eat to nourish your body, and the supplements to fill in those gaps, those nutrient gaps, so that your body's getting, and every cell is getting, every key nutrient it needs to create optimal health. I've been working with these supplements for over 12 years now, with my clients, with my family, and with myself, and I can't believe how many illnesses and how many health challenges I have seen people overcome. You can, too. Go to TakeYourSupplements.com. Give it a try. The only thing you have to lose is all of your health complaints.   Get Connected with John Gusty Special Audience Giveaway: Giveaway Title: The Anti-Dependency Guide & Post-Vaccination Detox Protocol  Giveaway URL:  NaturallyBetter4you.com Website – The Red Pill Revolution Facebook Group – The Red Pill Revolution Book by John Gusty The Red Pill Revolution

Get The Minerals Your Body Needs: TakeYourSupplements.com https://takeyoursupplements.com   Check Out My Latest Book: Addicted To Wellness https://www.learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness   Adam Sud's website: https://www.adamsud.com   527: Breaking Free From Addiction: Adam Sud’s 150lb Health Transformation   https://learntruehealth.com/breaking-free-from-addiction-adam-suds-150lb-health-transformation   In this episode, Adam Sud opens up about his inspiring recovery journey from addiction, obesity, and illness through the transformative power of a plant-based diet. He dives into the emotional drivers of addiction—pain, loneliness, and disconnection—and how a life-changing Whole Foods retreat with Rip Esselstyn sparked his lifestyle shift. Adam shares how understanding the “pleasure trap” concept, reversing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and shedding 150 pounds in just 10 months helped him create a healthier, more fulfilling life. His story highlights the importance of simplifying eating, building supportive environments, and fostering community connections in the recovery process. Tune in for an uplifting conversation on the power of resilience, gratitude, and the daily commitment to better health. Highlights: Adam Sud shares his recovery journey from addiction, obesity, and illness using a plant-based diet. Pain, loneliness, and disconnection are key drivers of addiction. A Whole Foods retreat with Rip Esselstyn inspired Adam's lifestyle change. The “pleasure trap” concept helped him understand addiction and recovery. Reversed type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and lost 150 pounds in 10 months. Simplified eating and supportive environments were crucial to success. Recovery is creating a safe, hopeful life that makes substance use unattractive. Community and meaningful connections are vital for resilience. Two-week dietary experiments build motivation and habits. Gratitude for the family's unconditional support shaped his recovery. Treat everyone as if it's their last day to inspire kindness and connection. Intro: Hello true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast.  Today is going to blow your mind. We have Adam Sud sharing his story. It’s something that so many people need to hear. I needed to hear it. It’s really wonderful getting his perspective if you have anyone in your life that is sick, that is suffering, that is struggling, please share this episode with them. I want to help end the needless suffering of millions of people and this is another episode that will help us accomplish that. If you are a new listener, welcome. I recently published a book called, Addicted to Wellness. This is a fun, inspiring, motivating, workbook that will help you to take your health wherever your health is. It will help you take your health to a new level. Check it out. Go to Amazon and type in Addicted to Wellness by Ashley James or you can go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness.  I encourage you to buy it and go through the weekly challenges at your own pace. You will find that these simple and doable challenges bring you more energy, more mental clarity, better sleep, deeper sleep, and throughout the day you will feel more fulfillment, enjoy better digestion, the list of benefits goes on and on.  This book is an accumulation of everything I’ve learned working with so many clients for over 12 years as well interviewing over 500 health experts. So it really does have the key fundamentals that make the biggest difference. The smallest effort on your part to make the biggest difference to your overall health and well-being. And no matter how busy you are, it’s easy to implement into your life, 5, 10 minutes a day in the morning, 5, 10 minutes in the evening, and just watch as you get the results. So this is my labor of love to you, to the wonderful listeners, I love you guys so much.  I was sick and suffering for many years. I transformed my health and I turned around and said, I got to help others. This is why I do what I do. Together we can help as many people as possible to learn true health. Through sharing this podcast, sharing my book, together we can help those to stop the needless suffering. MDs have brainwashed us and the mainstream media has brainwashed us to believe that we cannot heal. That our bodies are stuck this way because of genetics or stuck this way, you will always have to be on these drugs. And they sell us this bill of goods that robs us of our vitality and joy and our true purpose in life. It’s actually quite maniacal. And I’m here to tell you that you have an amazing God-given ability to heal–that your body can heal. That you can get so healthy that you get taken off of all those drugs. Listen to today’s interview with an open mind and know that your body can heal itself. Check out my book, Addicted to Wellness. If you have questions, I’d love to see you in the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook Group. Of course, go to my website, learntruehealth.com. You can use the search function there and search other topics you are interested in. We’ve covered so many topics about how to restore health and well-being to our physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and energetic body.  Check out my book. Share this episode please with as many people as you can so we can help them. And those you share it with can then share with their friends and so on and so on and we can really make a big difference.  One-third of the population is diabetic or pre-diabetic that means one-third of the people you know need this information. Just share it with as many people as you can so we can make a huge difference. I’ve helped so many people to reverse type 2 diabetes within months! And they were told they’d be on drugs their whole life and that they’d be sick and suffering their whole life, and it’s such a lie. Together, we’re going to help people to restore them to the health that they deserve. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for sharing. Enjoy today’s episode. Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 527.  Ashley James (0:05:21.588) I am so excited for today's guest. We have on the show a very special guest on the show, Adam Sud from AdamSud.com. It's spelled S-U-D—super easy. Adam Sud, I met you through a mutual friend, Robin Openshaw, who is amazing. I also know the guys who wrote Mastering Diabetes. I've had them both on my show, love them, and refer back to their program when coaching my clients. I’m so impressed with their work. If anyone is struggling with any kind of blood sugar-related issue, you’re going to love today’s episode. But also weight loss, hormone balance, getting your energy back, reversing and preventing heart disease. We’re going to cover some amazing topics, and also addiction, something near and dear to my heart. I’ve been very openly vulnerable on this show that I’ve struggled with food addiction for many years. I’m grateful that I don’t struggle with drug or alcohol addiction, but I can definitely sympathize with those who do because I’ve worked really hard to overcome food addiction. I adopted a whole-food, plant-based diet and, over the course of several years, I lost 80 pounds. I’m still on my journey, but I’ve reversed type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic infections, and polycystic ovarian syndrome. I was told I’d never have children after a battery of tests with an endocrinologist. That should be illegal. It should be illegal for an endocrinologist to tell a 19-year-old woman she’ll never have children based on labs at nineteen, when there’s so much evidence that a diet-adapted lifestyle can completely change your life. And because of supplementing with certain nutrients that I was depleted of, especially minerals and adopting a healthy, whole-food lifestyle, I was able to reverse that. We conceived our son naturally, and now we have an amazing nine-year-old son, super healthy. I’m so grateful for that and for this health journey. That’s why I do this podcast. Today, we have Adam Sud on the show, who’s going to share his story of how he overcame some major challenges like many, many listeners are struggling with. I want you to listen not only for yourself but also for those you love in your life. You may not know that there is someone you care about who goes to sleep crying every night like I did. Crying because they feel like they're trapped a prisoner in their body. They wish for a better way, for answers, but the doctor only gives them drug after drug and the media is saying diets just eat the carnivore diet, go Atkins, or whatever the media is pushing and they feel sicker and sicker instead of reversing their diseases and getting back to a point where they feel healthy and some people never felt healthy, like I said go back to where you feel healthy. Some people have never experienced that. Five-year-olds that are now morbidly obese. It’s so sad that so many of us suffer needlessly. Adam, today you're going to share your story and you're going to share some answers, what people can do today to change their lives, to take back control and to reverse these major diseases just like you did, just like I did. So we can learn true health. So thank you so much for coming on the show today. Adam Sud (0:08:54.440) It's my absolute pleasure. I'm so excited to be here. Ashley James (0:08:57.316) Awesome. Well, let's start off. Let's go all the way back to the beginning. Tell your story. Adam Sud (0:09:01.852) Yes. Okay, well, let’s go back to the beginning then. I was born in Houston, Texas, in 1982. I am a seventh-generation Texan. I grew up eating burgers and barbecue every single day—it was the diet of my culture, my parents, their parents, my friends, and their parents. It was everywhere that I was. To be fair, I had a pretty awesome childhood. I was born with an identical twin brother, so I was born with a best friend. I got another best friend a couple of years later—my younger sister, Jewel. We lived in an amazing middle-class neighborhood with all our friends. We rode our bikes to and from school every single day. My mom was a person who really compelled me to lean into my creativity and to inspire my imagination. My dad taught me how to play every sport under the sun, and it was great. But around the time I was 11 years old. I’m not really sure what was going on, but things started to change. I can remember the summer, it was 1993 or 1994—I was 11 or 12 years old. Let me tell you what you did in Houston, Texas, in the summer of ’93, when you were 11 or 12 years old. You got up in the morning, put on a bathing suit, go outside, run through the sprinklers in your house, go to your friend’s front yard and run across their slip-and-slide, then went to another friend’s house to jump in their pool. You’d go outside, find another sprinkler, ride your bikes, do that until noon. You go and have lunch, you’d go and do it all over again until you can’t walk anymore because you’d had the best day of your life. That’s how I spent my summers. I remember one day I came running into the house, and my dad stopped me and asked me how and why I already had love handles. Now, I'm 11 years old. I don't know what love handles are. I don't know how you get them. I don't know how you get rid of them. But what I'm very aware of is that my dad is not approving of this about me. I can remember before that moment, I was very accepting of myself, both physically and emotionally. I had a very good relationship with who I was, how I felt, and how I thought I looked. In that moment, everything kind of changed because what I began to believe was that there were now conditions upon which I was allowed to accept and love myself completely. If there's one condition, are there others? Why do I not know what they are? My gosh, am I not meeting them? I remember that was the first day I felt anxiety, and it was overwhelming. I felt unsafe in the presence of my father. My dad, I will say, is my superhero. My dad is the most incredible human on earth. To me, when I was growing up, he was Captain America. Coming in running eight miles, shirt off, six-pack abs, and he would walk right past us at the breakfast table. He would go stand in front of the refrigerator, and I would listen to him criticize his own body in front of me. I'm going to tell you, equally as damaging as hearing him criticize my body, hearing my father tell himself that he didn't love himself—that weren't those words, but that's what he was saying. When he looked the way that he looked—when I'm looking at him, the person who I thought was the greatest human alive—and he doesn't even think he's deserving of loving himself, that really, I believe, planted a seed in me. My gosh, if that is not worthy of acceptance, I'm never going to get there. How shameful must I be to myself, to my parents, to my friends? So I began to hide who I actually was. That's where I really started to notice these feelings of inadequacy, these feelings of depression and anxiety. I became a class clown. I didn't want people to look at me anymore. I started high school, and I started to be very, very self-critical, very socially anxious, even though I had a lot of friends. So my parents took me to go see a doctor. I was acting up in school, and the school had suggested that I go meet with someone. This doctor diagnosed me with ADHD. Now I have a person of authority, a person in a white coat who my parents have taken me to for the sole purpose of finding out, is there something else about our son that's unlovable? Not what they were actually doing, but that's the perception that I had. It turns out they found something. These aren't the exact words that the doctor used, but the doctor essentially said, “Adam, we found something else about you that's broken. Something else about you that's unacceptable to the world. Something about you that no one wants to see. In fact, it's a burden to have this be a part of you and have you be around people like you.” But don't you worry about it because we're going to medicate you for it. We're going to put you on this pill. It's called Ritalin. What this is going to do is it's going to insult that part of you so greatly that no one will notice it. Let's hope that that makes everything okay. Again, that's not the words that the doctor used. However, that is how I felt. Now, we moved from Houston, Texas, to Austin, Texas, before I started high school. I had gained weight in middle school. I was shy, insecure. I was really looking forward to going to high school with my friends in Houston. But I got taken away from that, and I got put into this big Texas football high school where I didn't know anybody. I'm going to tell you, I was very worried. Number one, am I going to be able to make friends? Number two, is it going to be difficult for me to feel safe in this school? I experienced relentless bullying my freshman year. The bullying was so bad, in fact, that halfway through my freshman year, when my parents would drop me off at school, the assistant principals would have to get their eyes on me to make sure that I made it into the school safely. I'm going to explain to you what my life felt like at that time. I would get up every single day living inside of a body that I had been conditioned to believe wasn't a safe, secure, or hopeful place to be. I would find myself in front of parents who are, without question, the most supportive and loving parents on earth but I didn't always feel a safe, secure, and hopeful place to be. I would go to school where physically, verbally, and emotionally, it certainly did not feel like a safe, secure, or hopeful place to be. I always had the sense that tomorrow was going to be equally unsafe. Now, that experience is a breeding ground for depression and anxiety. That is the appropriate psychological response to that situation, but no one had told me that that's how I was supposed to feel. People made me feel, not intentionally, but it just happened—that there was something wrong with me for not being happy and excited about going to school. Something gone wrong with me that I was always nervous, anxious, and hypervigilant. But I really appreciate the perspective of a British journalist named Johann Hari. Johann Hari says that depression is a form of grief for your life not being as it should. I like the perspective of anxiety being a signal. It's an alarm bell letting you know that there's something in the not-too-distant future, likely some point today, certainly tomorrow, that doesn't feel physically safe. Doesn't feel like a safe place to be. In fact, you should be worried about it. In fact, you should be so aware of this that you should be trying to fix it to make sure that tomorrow finally feels safe. These are all psychologically reasonable responses, but to me, they were overwhelming. They were debilitating. About this time, my prescription for Ritalin got changed to a new medication called Adderall. I'm sure everybody who's listening to this has heard of the medication called Adderall. But if you haven't, it's simply a stimulant-based form of medication used to treat ADHD and other psychological conditions. I can remember I would take one dose in the morning before I went to school, and I would take another dose halfway through school. So, I'd have my pill bottle with me. I remember I would take it in the middle of class. As I walked out of that classroom, I would normally turn right because if I went to the left, I would go past some lockers that belonged to kids I didn't want to go past. As I walked out of the class, I'm trying to turn right and somebody grabs me and pulls me to the left. It's one of the students that would routinely bully me. Here I am. I'm waiting for them. I'm preparing for the worst. But this was slightly different when his arm went around my neck. It wasn't in a harmful manner. It was more of a “buddy, come on over here. I want to talk to you.” He says, “Hey, listen, I want you to know that all that bullying, the hazing that we've been doing to you, it's all over. I mean, listen, you're new. You understand this, right? Nothing personal here. In fact, why don't you come to this party this weekend? Just bring that Adderall with you.” Now look, I may have been an awkward freshman, which I was. I may have been shy and quote-unquote unpopular, which I was, but I was not stupid. I knew exactly what was taking place. Do you want to know what I felt? I felt relief because I thought perhaps maybe I had found a way to feel a little bit safer in a world that didn't feel safe. So, I went to that party. I brought my Adderall with me, and I gave it to the guys at the party. In fact, I remember that's the first night I ever used Adderall as a recreational drug. I'm going to tell you that the moment that that high dose took effect, it was, boom. I cannot explain to you the feeling that took over me in that moment. Adderall is amphetamine. As a shy, insecure, scared kid, being flooded with amphetamine makes you feel like you're in charge. It makes you feel like you have superpowers, unbelievable confidence, and it does this with ease and repeatability. That's attractive. I noticed that as the weeks went by, I was able to lose weight with ease and repeatability. That's attractive. I was noticing I was able to make friends. I was able to go up to people and talk to them. I was able to study in a way that I'd never studied before, with ease and repeatability. That's incredibly attractive. I also noticed that my dad was engaging with me differently. It's likely because, with ease and repeatability, I found a way for school to not feel unsafe. So, I wasn't complaining about going to school anymore. I wasn't trying to skip school anymore. I was studying like someone who actually cared about school. So, my dad was engaging with me as if I had figured it out. Believe me, I thought I had. So, what I want you all to understand is that more so than a chemical hook in the substance if your life looked and felt like mine, if you were me and your life looked and felt like mine and you were to use, what you would notice is that that use looked and felt exactly like self-care. That's what I believe addiction actually is. It is misguided self-care. It's extremely misguided, but it is. It's misguided survival instincts, misguided emotional signals, misguided psychological signals— all that stimulate a sense that somehow you figured it out. Somehow, right now, you feel safe and tomorrow feels like a safe, exciting place to be. When you can flip a switch from your life feeling unsafe, insecure, and hopeless to safe, secure, and exciting, you will bond with whatever it is that does that for you. That is exactly what I did. And it worked for me. I lost the weight, I had friends, I had girlfriends, I got a scholarship to the college that I wanted to go to. Everything was finally feeling the way I thought life was supposed to feel like. The more Adderall I took, the more life became what I was hoping it would always become. Until eventually, more just became never enough. This is the problem that most people who struggle with substance abuse find themselves in. Because not everyone who uses is a substance abuser. Some people are just substance users. So we're not in the same category, and that's okay. But as a substance abuser, I got to a point where more became not enough and not enough became an ever-constant overwhelming problem. How much do I have left? How long will it last? Where will I get more? How much is it going to cost? Where am I going to get the money to pay for it? These five things overwhelmed every single moment of my life. They displaced my ability to care for the meaningful bonds in life that give you the experience of feeling alive. This is where substance abuse became substance use disorder. As it completely disordered my ability to care for myself, I decided what I was going to do was drop out of school. Now, I told my parents that the reason I was doing that was, “Hey, listen, I want to take a year off. I'd like to come back to Austin, and I'd like to work for a year. The school thing I'm having trouble with, maybe I just need to get a little experience in the real world and see what's going on.” What I really wanted to do was move back to Austin and connect with all the dealers that I knew and start scamming doctors, and that is exactly what I started doing. I became a criminal drug addict. I was doctor shopping. I was forging prescriptions, both of which are felonies. I was buying and selling drugs on the street. I was stealing from people. I started to treat my family like absolute garbage. The only time I would really start to interact with them at this point was to get money or things from them or to blame them and shame them for everything that was going wrong in my life because it couldn't be the drugs. Because you don't know what it felt like when it worked. You don't know the relief that I got. You don't know what it felt like when I first used, and I can figure this thing out. If I could just get a little bit more, if I could just have a little bit more for a little bit longer, I can get it back the way it was. You just don't understand. That was the feeling, and I was insulted and offended if you ever suggested my drugs were a problem because you don't know how well they worked when they worked. My life fell apart. I was using so much that I would run out of drugs within two weeks. I needed some kind of substance that could disconnect me from the experience of being present because I couldn't bear to be present in my life. I found fast food to be a phenomenal substitute. Easy, accessible, repeatable. My goodness, what an attractive thing that was for my psychology. I bonded with that. I would get up every single day and I’d consumed somewhere between five and 10 thousand calories of fast food a day. I would do that for about seven to 10 days straight. Everything from McDonald's, Whataburger, Torchy's Tacos. I would probably drink 15 sodas a day. Then I would get a hold of my drug of choice, which was Adderall, cocaine, and opiates. The average prescription for Adderall is about 10 milligrams for every 24 hours. The last five years or so of my substance use problem, I was doing a minimum of 450 milligrams every 24 hours, upwards of a thousand milligrams a day, and I would do that for seven to eight days straight. Five or so of those days, I wouldn't even sleep or eat, and by the end of that, I would end up in the beginning stages of drug-induced psychosis. I'd be hallucinating, I'd be very paranoid, and I'd develop obsessive-compulsive tics that were very debilitating.  The only way I could get myself out of this was to convince myself to take massive amounts of opiates so that I could finally fall asleep, wake up, and start that whole process all over again. My life was completely falling apart. I was over 300 pounds. I was nearly broke. I wasn't talking to my family. My family had every reason to give up on me. This is when my dad came to me with an opportunity. My dad is the founding investor of Whole Foods Market. At the time, Whole Foods Market had partnered with a man named Rip Esselstyn. Rip Esselstyn is the author at the time of the Engine 2 diet, now called Plant Strong. Whole Foods had decided that they were going to work with this man, Rip, to create a six-day retreat that they could send 100 of their team members to in order to learn how to adopt a plant-based Whole Foods diet in order to take charge of their health.  So instead of just offering health insurance, offer their team members, their employees, the opportunity to learn how to never be dependent upon it. There were a few spots open. This was the first or second time they had ever done this with the company. My dad says, “Adam, I'm begging you to go. I'm begging you, please do this.” Now, I didn't know who Rip was. I didn't want to know who Rip Esselstyn was. I didn't know what a plant-based diet was, and I didn't want to know. What I was certain of was that if I could convince my dad that I actually cared about this stupid retreat he was talking about, and I could go to it, I could get him to keep giving me money. So I said, “Yes, absolutely. Sounds like a really nice thing to do, and probably right, probably could be very helpful.” He said, “Well, here's the thing, Adam, you’ve got to come to the headquarters of Whole Foods. You’ve got to meet with Rip because you're not a team member of Whole Foods, and this is technically his deal. So you have to tell him that this is for real, and he’s got to believe you, and then he’ll give you a spot.” So I go down to Whole Foods headquarters and go up to Rip's office, and there’s Captain America number two, my dad, standing next to Rip Esselstyn, who was a former triathlete, former firefighter, and a legend of the plant-based movement. I do what I did best. I do what every drug addict does really well: I lied. Listen, one thing I know about myself is that every single day that I went out in public, I was putting on a show. It’s very exhausting. It’s very effortful to be dealing with substance use disorder. Everything that you do and every time you interact with someone, you have to be completely fake. You have to fake it. So I knew how to put on a show, and I knew exactly what to say. “Yes, Rip, I actually read some of your book, and it’s really exciting stuff. I'm not sure if I understand all of it, but man, this really seems like it will be the thing for me. Gosh, I'd really appreciate it if I could have a spot in your retreat. If you give me this, man, I'm going to do this better than anybody.” So, being the amazing human that he is, he gives me the opportunity to come. What do I do? I show up high out of my mind. In fact, by this time, I was closing in on 320 pounds. I was very diaphoretic, which means I was flush red, I would sweat through about three shirts a day, and I was very toxic. I actually lived like a hoarder at this time. I wasn’t showering for months at a time. I barely brushed my teeth, so my appearance, my presence, was very disruptive. In fact, it was so disruptive that there were talks about whether or not I should be removed from the program within about 36 hours of being there. Now, I’m actually not privy to the conversations that took place, but I have a feeling that the reason why I didn’t leave and wasn’t asked to leave is because Rip is now a very good friend of mine. So I know who he is. I know his character. I can tell you Rip took one look at me and said, “That is the guy who needs to be here the most. He is not leaving. He can sit at the back, do whatever, but he’s not going anywhere.” I went to every single lecture. I listened to everything that was being said. I heard from luminary thought leaders, luminary researchers, people like Ann and Essie, Dr. Esselstyn, Rip’s dad, Rip himself, Dr. Michael Clapper, Dr. Doug Lyle, Jeff Novick—people who are spreading this message that there is a real opportunity that exists within reorganizing your calories. If you were to reorganize your caloric environment to look like a plant-based environment, you have the capacity for remarkable change. It all made sense to me. It really did. I wish I could tell you that after six days of this retreat, and even noticing some of the effects of living in this very specific caloric environment—like noticing the effect it had on me, feeling I’d lost a little weight, sleeping better, and obviously my digestion feeling a hundred times better—I was motivated enough to change. I wish I could tell you that that was day one of my journey of recapturing my health. But here’s the thing: I simply wasn’t willing to give up what was allowing me to escape a life that was too painful of a place to be, on the gamble that this diet might work for me in one year. I was lonely. I was scared, and I just didn’t have the courage to do it. So I left, and my life got worse. By 2012, it was the worst it had ever been. I was nearly 350 pounds. I was two weeks away from being homeless. My family had cut me off. I hadn’t talked to my sister in over a year. I had no friends, and living hurt in every single sense of the word—physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Every single day that I was alive was the worst day of my life. I lived every day in full confidence that tomorrow was always going to be worse. When you live there long enough, eventually tomorrow just isn’t a place that you want to be a part of. I had been battling suicidal thoughts for six months, but I never really had a plan. On August 21st, 2012, I’m in my apartment, I’m high out of my mind, and I’ve been up for five days straight. Not thinking straight, I don’t really know where I am. I just kept taking more pills. Now, I’ve been abusing substances for over 10 years, so I’d had overdoses before, but I can remember feeling something distinctly unique. I felt very unwell, and I tried to stand up off of the couch. As I did, it felt like I got stabbed in the right side with a hot knife. My entire side of my body cramped, and I started to fall forward. As I do, I can see my vision going black, and I can tell you in that moment, that the feeling that I had—I’m not talking about the physical description that I just described, I’m talking about the feeling of, I’ll say it like thisy: I don’t know what it feels like to die, but I do know what it feels like to believe that you’re dying with a life full of regret. That is the most painful place that I’ve ever been. I can remember thinking to myself, as though my vision went black, “Just give me one more second.” I woke up on the floor of my apartment in a puddle of vomit and a pile of fast food garbage, surrounded by empty pill bottles. After a couple of moments realizing what had taken place, I was overwhelmed with immense relief. To be honest, I found it confusing because I really believed that I didn’t want to live anymore. I really believed that life was something I was no longer desiring to be a part of. However, that relief that was radiating from every single cell of my body that could only take place if there was something about myself and my life that I loved enough. Something about myself, my life, that was meaningful enough that I was relieved to still be a part of it. I’m going to tell you that that was the moment that I realized I don’t need to know exactly why I want to be here. I don’t need to know exactly why I feel I should go another day. But I knew exactly in that moment that I didn’t want this to end. I was determined to reconnect to whatever it was that made me excited that I didn’t die that day. I picked up the phone, I called my parents, and I asked for help. Two weeks later, they helped me check into a rehab hospital. Now, I’m going to tell you, checking into rehab is a very difficult experience. I remember walking through the front doors. As you look down the hallway, there are these two big double doors, and above them, there are the letters M-A-S. Medically Assisted, I can’t remember what the S stands for, but they just called it M-A-S, but it’s essentially the detox wing. The doors open, and this nurse comes out. She’s walking down the hallway, and she’s looking at me. I know she’s coming to take me. I’d never been to rehab before. To be honest, I didn’t have any friends that had ever been to rehab before, but I’d seen in the movies the dramatic experience of what a detox is, and I was very afraid. I was also afraid for other reasons. I was afraid: What if I fail at this? What if I actually do find a way to be sober, and I don’t like life without drugs? All of these worries, these fears, were just begging me to turn around and run out the door. My mom and my dad were at my side. The nurse comes, and she grabs my hand and starts leading me down the hallway. I know that whatever I’m about to experience is going to be very, very difficult. I look back, and my mom has her arms around my dad, and I can see my dad crying. I had only ever seen my dad cry once in his life. That was when his mom died in an accident. Watching him be so affected by it, kind of forced me to reconsider who I thought my dad was for me, and maybe he wasn’t this horrible adversary that I made him out to be. Because I had made him out to be my enemy. I was entitled, arrogant, and mean. I was very cruel to him. This man loved me anyway. He never gave up on me.  I walked into the detox wing, and went through the whole experience. They searched for belongings. They searched you. It puts you through a whole host of psychological evaluations and medical testing. It's a very dehumanizing experience. I felt like a criminal. I felt like a science experiment. I felt embarrassed and ashamed. What I’m aware of now in what was taking place, is there was a group of people that was caring for me. They want to make sure that I don’t have anything on me that can harm me, or other people. Was I trying to bring drugs in with me? Because, listen, rehab is an extraordinary effort. Trying to go 28 days without using. I know how to not use it until noon. So of course, it would be very reasonable to assume these people might be trying to bring some drugs with them, not to be malicious or break the rules. Because that’s the thing that makes them feel safe in a life that doesn’t feel safe. So they’re just looking for that.  They want to find out if there is anything medically going on with you. Most people who engage in substance use disorder to the degree that I did are engaging in a lot of behaviors that put their health at risk. So they want to know what else is going on with you. They want to get a sense of where you are psychologically, emotionally. They want to know who and what they are dealing with so they can care for that person the best way that they can.  I got a note from the doctor about 72 hours later saying that I needed to come with him. I walked in, I’m the most arrogant human ever. I really believe I’m about to get a clean bill of health. I got diagnosed with advanced type 2 diabetes. My A1C is a 12. My cholesterol is over 300. My blood pressure was 210/120. My resting heart rate was 105 to 115, somewhere in there. I got diagnosed with erectile dysfunction which I knew that I had. Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, anxiety disorder, sleep disorder, attention deficit disorder, suicidal depression. I got put on a whole host of medication for life. I can remember sitting across the desk from this doctor. This doctor is listing off all the things that are going to happen to me. Adam, you know you have very advanced type 2 diabetes and we're going to put you on the highest dose of all medication. It’s very likely that before you leave here we have to put you on insulin. There’s nothing you’re going to do about this. It’s genetic. What you are at risk for is that you are at risk for losing your sight, hearing, and limbs. So, there is a very real risk for you in the future.  You have a cholesterol of over 300; this is likely due to both your genetics and your lifestyle. You have cardiovascular disease, and so we’re going to medicate you for it. It’s not a lot you’re going to do about this. You’re going to be on medication for the rest of your life. You are at risk for a cardiovascular event. We’re going to monitor you for that. You have class 3 obesity. The success rate around weight loss is miserable. What we're going to do is medicate these conditions and hope for the best here, and we're going to medicate you for all the psychological and emotional and behavioral issues that you have as well.  But Adam, listen, if you want your life to get better, you have to stop using drugs. I remember sitting there thinking, that's the worst advice I've ever heard in my life. I mean, I knew that my future wasn't pretty. But this doctor just painted a picture of a future that was far more terrifying than I had ever imagined, and he painted it with certainty. If that's the case, what urgency now do I have to care about changing anything about my life? If, regardless of what and how I do it, I am destined to that future, my gosh, I should double down on my use. That future that he painted is far more terrifying, unsafe, and unsecure and hopeless than anything I had imagined. I thought to myself, my goodness, if I'm really going to do this thing, if I really want to do well, I need to reverse engineer aliveness. I need to become the architect of a life that, over the course of time, will feel like such a safe, secure, and hopeful place to be that use will no longer be necessary. I didn't have the authority to believe anything differently about what they were saying about depression and addiction and anxiety, that it's a genetic thing and that the chemical hooks. Your problem is your drugs and to stop using drugs. It just rubbed me the wrong way. It really rubbed me the wrong way. I thought I'm just going to get radical and fanatical about solving this problem. I was immediately transported back to those six days that I spent with Rip Esselstyn and his team. I said, wow, sounds like a reasonable plan to start. Why don't I just start there? Why don't I start by changing what I put on my plate? I don't understand that much about addiction, depression, anxiety, but my goodness, one thing I'm really good at is putting food on my plate. Why don't I just put that food on my plate? They didn't allow me to change my diet in the rehab hospital, but I moved into a sober living facility in Santa Monica. After 37 days in a rehab hospital. In this sober living facility, you actually have the authority to decide what you want to eat. It's a great place on the beach in Santa Monica called Transcend. I was living there with about 12 other guys who were all trying to move forward in their recovery. For some people, this is step one. For most people, it's the second step. You go into a sober living facility after rehab and you do this in combination with some kind of intensive outpatient therapy program. The way that it works is: you live there, you have people that oversee you, they make sure to give you your medications if you're on them, they take you to your meetings and to your therapy, and it's like your next step into living your life. It's really where you learn how to care for yourself again.  Rehab Hospital is an enclosed, locked-down hospital that safely divorces you from your substance. That's what it is. The real work starts afterwards. I remember that the way that they did the food in this place was you would go up to the house manager and you would write out a list of foods that you wanted for the week. You would hand him this list and he would send a driver to the grocery store and they would get everything you wanted and everyone else everything that they wanted, and they would stock the kitchen for you and everyone in the house. I said, okay, well, there's probably some healthy stuff in here, and I go to the kitchen, open up the cabinet, and sure enough, it looks like it's been stocked by nothing but teenagers who've been watching Nickelodeon commercials from the 90s. I mean, this place was an absolute joke. Everything you can imagine: hot pockets, pizza rolls, Doritos, you name it. You know what it is. Everything was in there. I said that look I might leave here in 30, 60, 90 days, however long I stay sober. But if I allow this to be my environment, I will not leave here feeling any better about life, and I can't let that happen. So I started to think to myself, all right, what did they serve at that retreat? I couldn't remember any of the recipes. I just remember there always being these main foods. There's always oats in the morning. Rice and beans were talked about all the time. Potatoes were talked about all the time. Fruit was completely fine. So I said, all right, great. I wrote out a list: oatmeal, rice, beans, potatoes, fruit. That was the entire list. I walked up to the house manager, whose last name is actually Hamburger. And I said, here's my list of foods. He said, Adam, there's like five things on here. I said, I'm aware. Can you just get me enough of those to last a week? He said, yes, are you sure you don't want anything else? I said, here's the thing. I'm trying to do something called a plant-based diet. To be honest, the only greens I ever really eat are the occasional piece of lettuce they forgot to take off my burger at McDonald's. This is all that I can remember from this thing I went to a couple of years ago. So I want to try this. He looked at me and said, Adam, if this is what you want to try, then this is what we're going to get for you. I wake up the next day. I am the most determined human you have ever seen in your life. I walk into that kitchen. I am so ready for this oatmeal, and I open up the cabinet, and there it is. There's the container of oats that I asked for. They put it right next to a box of fruity pebbles, which is the greatest cereal of all time. I do not really remember what happened next. I know what they told me.  Apparently I went berserk. I started throwing a fit. I threw a towel at someone and I ran out of the house and I just started running down the Santa Monica boardwalk until the assistant house manager, an amazing guy named Luke Chittick, who is equally responsible for me being alive today, ran after me and he grabs me and he says, Adam, what just happened? Because let me tell you what we all saw. We were sitting at the kitchen table. Everyone was having coffee or eating their breakfast. You walked out of the bedroom, walked into the kitchen, opened the cabinet and lost your mind. Like you just started yelling. You're cussing at people. You ran out of the house. What just happened? I probably said something really mean back to him. I can't really remember. I'm sure if I did, I apologize. I was just so upset, but he calmed me down and he walked me back to the house. I go into my bedroom and I'm sitting there thinking to myself. I was thinking about that question. He asked me what just happened. I got very curious about that because here's what was making me upset. Why couldn't this whole thing be a matter of intellect and will? Why can't I just know what to do, want to do it, end of story. What was going on in between those things that made it impossible for me at that moment? That's when I remembered a lecture by an evolutionary psychologist named Dr. Doug Lyle. This lecture is called the pleasure trap and the pleasure trap explains the biological mechanisms that compel behavior, right? Essentially, he asks a question: why, if we know what to do to be happy and healthy, why is it impossible to do it? Why does it feel so difficult to do it? Inside all of us, we have a psychological and motivational architecture that compels behavior. This architecture is designed really well to work within a very specific environment. That is an environment that looks like the environment that we have spent 99% of our evolutionary story surviving. That environment is one of scarcity and competition. Where what we need to survive and survive well are scarce. We are not the only ones looking for those things. Some of those things that are looking for it as well can be dangerous. Scarce, competitive and dangerous environment. In order to survive well in that environment, we have to be very efficient. We have to have some way of figuring out what's the right move to make with unbelievable efficiency and accuracy. In order to do that, we have a guidance system inside of us. That guidance system is our dopamine neuro pathway. Dopamine is a phenomenal neurotransmitter because it's not just a neurotransmitter that gives us an excited euphoria of pleasure, but it is an excited euphoria of pleasure that signals to our psychology that whatever we've just done is good for our survival. It's rewarding our survival. It's letting us know that if we do that more often, tomorrow is a safe place to get to, that we're going to survive, we're going to make it to tomorrow. Does that make sense?  So, I want everyone to think about pleasure as a signal. It's a signal to your psychology that something is either good for your genes and good for survival or bad for your genes and bad for survival. There's a range of experiencing pleasure that is appropriate for our psychology. Meaning that when we do it, whatever it is, if it's good for us, it will give us just enough pleasure to be compelled and attracted to do it again when we need it, but not so great that we would risk our lives consistently to do it. So if we were in the natural environment, right? The natural world, Ashley, you and I were in a village. The village leader said, hey, Adam, Ashley, here's the job for you both today. I need you to go into that unexplored area of woods over there. I want you to find the best food in that area. Go. Now, here's what we're doing. We're walking out into a very unsafe environment. We don't know what's there. This is a dangerous thing that we're doing. It's also very expensive. It costs us a lot of time and energy to do it, right? So we've got to have some kind of way of figuring out what's the best food choice to pick up and bring home. We don't have a phone. We don't have Google. Can't look it up. This is 100,000 years ago. We go out into these woods and in a clearing, just for the sake of this argument, we're going to see two options. One is a blueberry bush and the other is a plantain tree. Now, we look at the blueberry bush. It's very low to the ground. That's already attractive to us. We walk up to the blueberries, we bite into them. We notice that there's a small lift in the dopamine circuitry. There's a signal that says, hey, these are calories that are good for our survival. It seems like a good idea. The plantain tree, we know there's food, but it's up in the tree. So it's going to cost us a lot of time and energy to get it. We don't pay attention to it. But then Ashley looks over to the right and she notices that some of those plantains have fallen on the floor. She picks one up and she bites into it and there's nearly 10 times as many calories per bite in that plantain than in the blueberry. The lift in her dopamine circuitry is 10 times higher. She gets a signal immediately that says, do not waste a second on those blueberries. This is clearly the better choice. You need to pick up as many of these as you can and take them back to the village. That's exactly what we do. The more calorie density option, the greater the pleasure response. But the calorie density is never too great that it's harmful for our survival over the course of time. So now let's fast forward to modern day, we find ourselves in Times Square. We are surrounded by an environment that has shifted so far away from what is indicative and what is representative of our natural history and our natural behavior. There are now foods that are far more calories per bite than have ever existed in human history, that exist with greater ease and repeatability than have ever existed in human history, and our internal guidance system, our psychology has no understanding that this shift has occurred. Our guidance system is still operating as if it is in that scarce and competitive environment and every instinct in you is looking for the greatest pleasure for the least amount of pain and the least amount of energy. When we do that in Times Square, we end up making really poor decisions, but we're thinking and feeling like they're very, very good. I'll explain really quickly with this analogy. I love the way that Doug Lyle explains this. Imagine if you were to go out at night and you were to leave your porch light on. What you would notice is that there are moths and they're attracted to the light. The reason why they are attracted to the light is because they are actually designed by nature to use the brightest lights in the sky, in fact, celestial objects for navigation. It's how they figure out how to survive, how to move through the night and make the right choice. But when the brightest light in the sky is no longer the stars and the moon, when the brightest light in the sky is now your artificial porch light, it confuses their guidance system. It confuses their survival instincts. They're attracted to it. They hit that light. They flutter down. They hit it again. They hit it again. They hit it again. Eventually they die. You would look at that moth and you go, my goodness, there must be something wrong with that moth. Something must be wrong with the psychology. Why in the world would I do that? Not only why in the world would that moth do it, why would all these other moths that just witnessed this thing take place do the exact same thing? This doesn't make any sense. But what you want to do is pause and consider from a subjective point of view, what's actually taking place inside that animal's mind. By introducing a supernormal stimulus, a stimulus that isn't supposed to be there, that was never supposed to exist, that animal will now always run the threat of making poor decisions, potentially even fatal ones, all the while thinking and feeling like it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do. That is exactly what is happening with the modern food environment. That is exactly what is happening with the modern drug environment. They are all supernormal stimuli. They elicit a dopamine response that goes way outside the bounds of what is appropriate for our psychology. They look like bright shining lights of salvation. Every instinct in you is designed to be attracted to that thing. Unfortunately, that thing was never supposed to be here. Once I understood this, I felt all of the shame lifted from my shoulders because I really thought that the reason why the minute I saw that fruity pebbles and thought all I want to do is eat those fruity pebbles knowing I was already sick it was gonna make me sicker, I thought that was because I was weak, I had no willpower, I had no character, I had no discipline. But the reality is the reason why I responded the way that I did is because that is the exact appropriate response my psychology should be having to a stimulus that is not supposed to be there, especially when my life is painful and nothing about my life feels successful. I'm going to look for any stimulus that can give me a sense of feeling biologically and psychologically successful. I also learned from Doug Lyle that if I want to reset my dopamine neurotransmitters, if I want to recalibrate my guidance system, I had to be willing to do one simple thing, be comfortable being uncomfortable. If I could simply decide to make the right choice long enough, I would give my dopamine neurotransmitters the opportunity to regain their sensitivity, recalibrate themselves to what is appropriate to my psychology. In fact, what we know is that the journey of regaining your dopamine sensitivity is about a four-month journey. However, 80% of that journey occurs within the first two weeks. So if I was willing to spend the next 14 days making the right choice, I would wake up and it wouldn't feel like a chore anymore. If I could go just a little bit longer, I might actually look forward to it. So why would I be willing to do this? A lot of people would say, well, that's pretty obvious. You were 350 pounds, you nearly died from substance abuse, had diabetes, heart disease, and erectile dysfunction. What else could it be? It's true. Every single one of those things was occurring. But none of them were my motivation and that is because human beings are not motivated by negative consequences.  Negative consequences do one phenomenal thing for people. They let you know that there are loving and meaningful bonds in your life that are being threatened. Those loving and irreplaceable parts of your life that give you the sense that life is something you want to be a part of. Those things that when threatened enough, you would fight like hell to protect. Whatever those things are, that's why you do anything that you do in life. It's why you do what you already do. It's why you're compelled to learn to do new things. It's why you're compelled to learn the things you do better. They are an act of service to whatever it is in your life that gives you the sense that life is meaningful. I told myself I was going to spend zero time focusing on what was the matter with me and spend every single moment of my day focusing on what matters to me. Let that be what guides me to choose one thing over another. I didn't want to spend a second avoiding meat, eggs, dairy, and drugs. I wanted to spend every moment of my day actively choosing a whole food plant-based diet, movement, and recovery.  I wanted those choices to be acts of service to me and my life because I had spent my entire life believing that my body was my adversary. Starting when I was a kid, unknowingly my parents conditioned me to believe that my body was an adversary. It was a shameful thing that I would have to restrict and over exert every single day in the hopes that I could finally make it something lovable. The bullies in my high school confirmed it again and then I confirmed it to myself later in life. But the best thing about surviving a near-death experience is the knowledge that the reason why you didn't die is because your body didn't let you. To realize that every single day you've been alive is because your body is your greatest ally. Your body has been fighting for you since the day you were born. Whatever it is you've gone through, whatever it is you're going through right now, the reason why you're going through it and are going another day is because your body is fighting for you. It's the greatest ally you'll ever have in your entire life. Once I came to realize that, all of a sudden, I decided it's my turn to take care of my body. My body wants me to thrive. My body wants me to be healthy. I didn't know how to take care of it. I didn't know how to be a loving caretaker of a body whose entire purpose for existing is to keep me alive one more day. I got up every single day, I prepared a meal on a plate. That was about health and wellness. It's an affirmation of recovery. It was an act of service to myself and my life. Within four months, I completely reversed my type 2 diabetes, my heart disease, and my erectile dysfunction. Within 10 months, I lost 150 pounds, and within one year, I was off of every single medication I was put on in rehab, including the antidepressants, the mood stabilizers, the sleeping medications, the anxiety medications, and the ADHD medications. I've been in active recovery. Continuous active recovery for 12 years I've experienced a lot of amazing things. I've realized that food is a vehicle. It's a vehicle that has allowed me to rediscover how unbroken I actually am. I've become very passionate about figuring out how I can design my environment to meet my needs. In the beginning, I really thought that this whole thing was a matter of willpower and determination. How do I out-compete the bad choices? That was kind of exhausting. Within the first three, four months, that's kind how I did it. What I realized after studying more of Doug Lyle's work is that, I came up with this quote, it's so funny, I gave this quote at a presentation and he was in the audience and he came up to me he said, I've been studying evolutionary psychology for like 20 years and I've been looking for a way to give people an answer in one sentence and you finally said it. I said, if you want to be successful, don't try to out-compete the wrong environment. Make your environment look like your goals. Make your environment look like the life you want to live by simply being in that environment. It will encourage the behaviors that will give you the life that you want. I became meticulous about that lifestyle. I became meticulous about that perspective. I crafted and cultivated a physical environment, the clothes that I wore, the place that I lived. A caloric environment, the foods that I've kept in my house, and the social environment.  This is really important for those of you who are starting your journey. You don't have to get rid of your friends that don't live the life that you live, but you might have to spend a little less time with them. It's very important that your social circle looks enough like the life that you want. They don't have to look exactly like it, but they need to look enough like it. The reason for this is what you want is to be in a situation where by being in their presence, they offer you the opportunity to engage in the habits you're looking for. Rather than having to explain your habits to people who don't agree with you. You should also be a person who offers your circle the opportunity to engage in the habits that they want. It's important that you all be a meaningful part of the goings on of what is important to each other. This creates a sense of being valuable, of having a sense of esteem within a community of shared respect. That is a very large part of what it means to be part of recovery. It's to see yourself as something important to the goings on in the world around you. I know that when I tell this story, it seems like I did this whole thing very easily and with no help. That couldn't be further from the truth. I'm very privileged to have a family that I have. There were a lot of days when I didn't want to go when I didn't want go another day in recovery. There were days where I thought about quitting. I would call my parents, I would call my dad, and I would say, I don't think I can do this anymore, this is too hard. He'd say, that's okay. If you knew how to do this, you would have done it already. It's not about getting it right. My dad said, if there's something about your life that you don't like, and you can't do anything about it, then it's not a problem. It's just the way things are. If there's something in your life that you don't like and you can do something about it, it's also not a problem. You just need to think about it differently. My dad really helped me reorganize how I thought about approaching recovery. I thought I had to get it right every single day. My dad gave me permission to learn every single day and he picked me up when I fell down. My brother would be there for me. My mom, my sister. I treated my parents terribly in recovery and now they are my best friends. My dad is a mentor to me and I'll tell you that how they treated me when I was at my worst is the model for how I want to treat myself. I can't imagine what it must be like to love someone so much that even though this person says the most horrible things to you, does the most horrible things to you, treats you the way that he does. You love him unconditionally anyways. My gosh, what it must be, what it must feel like to love someone like that. What if I could learn to love myself that way? I also know that I'm here because of Rip Esselstyn. When I met Rip, I was in survival mode. I would get up every single day, I put any toxic substance I could into my body, food or drugs, because all I wanted to do was numb myself up and escape life. That's an exhausting way to live. But from what RIP offered me in terms of nutrition, I've been able to stop surviving my day and start living my day. When I get to live my day, my life is something that I want to be a part of. Now, people see before and after photos of me and they think, wow, that's really some remarkable change there. I'm very proud of what I've been able to achieve physically. My physique and my health, I haven't reversed all the conditions, no medications, really excited about fitness. I work out five days a week, I play a lot of pickleball, that's great. But that's just before and after photos, that's not a profound change. Profound change is waking up every single day and knowing that I have the best friends in the world. If I was to pick up the phone right now and call any one of my friends, they would answer the phone. They would answer and they'd be excited to hear what I have to say. That's because they wanted me to be a part of the goings on of their life. I want them to be a part of the goings on of my life. I want us to share in a meaningful experience of being alive. In 2020, I had the opportunity to talk to this incredible naturopathic doctor named Dr. Laura Gouge. She is probably the smartest human I've ever met. She has an incredible understanding of neuro-atypical brains and things like mast cell activation syndrome, histamine intolerance. Absolutely brilliant. I also saw a photo of her. I was like, wow, that not only a brilliant woman, she's the most beautiful woman in the world. Like I could look at that photo all day long, but I don't have to because I married her in December of 2022. If you want to know what profound change really feels like, profound change is waking up one day, having spent half of your life being convinced that you're unlovable and that you could never imagine anyone truly loving you to knowing that in about one hour you're going to be standing in front of the love of your life and hearing her say I do, I love you so much, I want to partner my life with you. That's a profound change. And I can remember thinking to myself that day. Wow, I can't believe I almost ended my life before the best part ever began. To those people who are on that edge, I just want you to know I know how you feel. I want you to know I've been where you are. I'm going to tell you that there are far more solutions in making it just one more day than there are in ending it right now. I may not know what you're going through. But I see you and I'm rooting for you. I've lost six friends to suicide and overdose since getting into recovery. It's unfortunate. Recovery is a world that you get into and you make friends and they don't all make it out with you. One of the things I like to do is really honor my friends who wanted to be alive as much as I did. They just didn't make it. One of them had probably the best quote I've ever heard, and I try to live this way every single day. He said, well, you've all heard the quote: if you want to be happy, you should just live like it's the last day of your life. Ashley, you probably heard that quote. He said, that's really terrible advice because if you were to actually live like it's the last day of your life, you wouldn't really do anything important to care for your future. You probably wouldn't go to work. Probably wouldn't go to the grocery store. You wouldn't clean your house. You might not brush your teeth. You might not eat well. These are things that are important to your life, and you probably wouldn't care so much about them. He said, if you'd really like to be happy, just treat everyone you meet as if they're living the last day of their life. I try to carry that message with me everywhere that I go. I always end the story part of my podcast recordings with that quote so that he stays around a little bit longer.  Ashley James (1:11:48.114) When my mom passed away, my dad and I, we had a regular type of relationship, grew closer. I grew up afraid of him, sort of similar to you. I knew he loved me conceptually, but I was afraid of him. He was a really big guy, very loud, could get explosive and angry at times. After my mom died, it was just the two of us, and we spent six years becoming best friends. We both agreed that we would say everything that needed to be said and that we wouldn't have any regrets. When I got the phone call from the sheriff saying they found him not alive, it was devastating. I also lost my dad with no regrets and with everything said, and that was such a beautiful gift. My dad wasn't a healthy person. My mom was the healthy person, which was so odd that she died so young at 55, and he died of a broken heart six years later. We always expected him to go first because he never took care of himself, and she always took care of herself. But the gift that it gave us was that he and I said everything and became so close to each other. That concept of living like every single person in your life is living their last day means you will say the unsaid things and make sure they know you love them. You're not going to get petty. You're not going to be stupid and egotistical. That is such great relationship advice for friends, even for business colleagues. Don't take people for granted. Don't be petty. Don't be egotistical. Make sure that if you get a phone call tomorrow that they're no longer here on this plane of existence, yes, of course, you'll be sad, but you won't live with the regret of not saying what needed to be said and not caring the way you wanted to care for them. I just love that you said that. That is such beautiful advice to live like it's their last day, not yours. Adam Sud (1:14:28.368) Yes, treat everyone you meet like it's the last day of their life. Ashley James (1:14:31.374) Right. It really puts things in perspective and lets you treat them without regrets, as opposed to just being so freaking petty. We can get so wrapped up in our own stuff. We can be so me, me, me first. If that person's not going to be here tomorrow, then that really just snaps us back into our senses. Thank you so much for elaborating your story in a beautiful way and taking us on your journey. I want to go back to the first few months. When you were in rehab, the doctor placed you on all kinds of medication. I'm guessing it was blood pressure, cholesterol, metformin, insulin, you said maybe antidepressants, maybe some sleep pills.  So you've got maybe some proton pump inhibitors or something for digestion. He probably went down the list and prescribed you the 10 most common drugs. In the first few months, you're still learning how to eat this way. You're still very much learning, but the fact that you didn't reach for those fruity pebbles. I'm so proud of you because that's the one thing with addiction that people don't realize that when you're in recovery, alcohol, example, if everyone's ever gone to an AA meeting or if you've just watched Fight Club or some Hollywood bastardized version of what an AA meeting looks like, there's donuts. There's always donuts. There's never not donuts. In any kind of typical recovery program, you're going to see sugar. That's because they're just trading one addiction for another. You're not really sober if you're eating processed food. Adam Sud (1:16:34.288) So I'll say that the typical model for recovery is really a flawed one in my opinion. The typical model for recovery suggests that the solution to addiction is to not use. Well, yes, of course. I understand that the substance is a threat to this individual's life and is a behavior that is destroying their ability to care for themselves and their future. But let's just look at it from the perspective of what's actually taking place. Let's say someone was to walk into recovery, a rehab hospital, and say, I have a problem. I'm an addict. I'm suffering from addiction and I need help, and they say okay. Well, what are you addicted to? They say, Well, I use heroin every single day. This person who's in charge says, Well, okay. Your problem is heroin. So we need you to just not use heroin. What we need you to do is we need you to own the identity that you are an addict. That's who and what you are. You can't do anything about that. So what you're going to do is you're going to will yourself through your life. You're going to avoid and abstain from use for the rest of your life. We'll call that recovery. What we're going to hope for is that over the course of time, your life gets better as a result of just being abstinent.  Okay. Here's what I don't appreciate about that perspective. I appreciate abstinence has its place in recovery and that there's an important part that requires abstinence. But recovery isn't found in the singular pursuit of abstinence. When you tell that person who comes in, I have a problem, I use heroin every single day. You tell them that their problem is heroin. That the reason why they use it is because when they first use heroin, the chemical hooks in that substance grab a hold of them, and that's why they can't stop using it. There's a genetic problem. They have addiction in their genes, it's part of their history, it's who they are. What you're telling them is that their pain means nothing. What you're telling them is that whatever hurts them, whatever it is that makes their life miserable, whatever it is that is causing them to not want to be a part of life, is not a variable in this equation. When you do that, you also say what you love is irrelevant. That is a very dangerous thing to do. I want people to think about addiction not as an indication of biology and psychology gone wrong, but rather the appropriate and expected biological and psychological response to environments, physically, socially, and emotionally gone terribly wrong. Addiction makes complete sense. It is the appropriate response to things gone terribly wrong in your life, and you are seeking some kind of way through ease and repeatability to feel like you figured it out. Substances—heroin, cocaine, fast food—give you an immediate rush of a dopamine cascade that gives you some sense, it's not a complete sense, but it's a pretty strong sense, that somehow, you don't really know how, life just got better. It doesn't hurt anymore, and that's what you're seeking. I’d like to say it like this, when someone is in pain or when someone is suffering and they're suffering enough, they will do almost anything to be anything other than what they are, which is a human being in pain. Addicts are not criminals. They're human beings in pain. Depressed people are not sick. They're human beings in pain. Suicidal people are not crazy. They're human beings in pain. Maybe if we stopped so desperately trying to define everybody by what it is they struggle with, maybe we'll see that their pain makes sense.  I think that we need to approach recovery from the same perspective. If I were that person—that person who's out there now on the street trying to get a fix of heroin or whatever it is—if I was them and my life looked and felt exactly like theirs, would I be equally compelled to numb myself? Likely, yes. Which means their behavior isn't pathology. Their behavior is appropriate. Their life has gone terribly wrong. What we need to do is help them figure out how they can write themselves. They can correct the path of their life. They can get to a point where their life feels safe, secure, and hopeful enough that use is no longer attractive to them in the same way it is today. Unfortunately, these substances are very, very powerful. The draw to use will likely always be there to some degree—not the way it is now, but to some degree. Some sense of being a part of a movement of people who are equally excited about this thing. There's a great quote, another quote by Johann Hari, that says, loneliness is not the physical absence of people. It's the sense that you have nothing of value to share with anyone. Therefore, the solution to loneliness isn't necessarily more people. But it's being in it together, finding something that is important and meaningful to you and other people. Whatever it is, you can be a part of it together. I think that's one of the things that the recovery community does really well, is they create community. A sense that you're all in this thing together, you know exactly what it is, and it is important to all of you. That is how you have a sense of belonging, and that's something that recovery communities do really well. The story about addiction is terribly wrong, but that part I really appreciate about the recovery community. Ashley James (1:22:36.450) So, Johan Hari, I had him on the show back all the way back in episode 240. It was amazing having him on the show. He talked about his first book and his second book. I was honored to have him on the show. So I recommend listeners go back and check out episode 240. I also had the honor of having Rip Esselstyn on the show episode 448 and his dad, which really was, these are the life-changing episodes. You've quoted some of my most favorite episodes, Cadwell Esselstyn, episode 232. I have yet to have Dr. Lyle on the show, although I really want to. I have had his business partner, Dr. Goldhamer, talking about pleasure trap and fasting. That one was super transformative for me. That was episode 230. You'll hear if you listen. The only way I remember 230 is this: my husband's corny joke is, when's the best time to go to the dentist? Tooth hurting, tooth hurting. Like your tooth hurts, tooth hurting. Okay, okay. It's so bad. But that's how I remember that one episode. I can never forget 230 is the episode with Dr. Goldhamer. I've done over 500 episodes, and this was back several years ago. When I did my episode with Dr. Goldhamer, I was still very much in the keto diet is the healthiest diet out there. I had had several keto doctors on the show. Although when I did keto, it destroyed my liver and it almost destroyed my husband's kidneys. We had some major health problems arise from, we were doing doctor-led keto. We went to a naturopath every week. We were very strict, and my liver gotten so inflamed. You could see it. It was pushing my ribs, flailing my ribs out on my side. We were doing it, clean keto, quote unquote, clean keto. It made my husband's kidneys almost go into kidney failure. So this was doctor-led, and the whole kind of diet within a month. We were doing it less. It was about a month where we were maybe a little bit more than a month. It was around 30 days into that diet. If we'd kept going, we would probably have ended up in liver failure and kidney failure. That's not healthy at all. I've done over 30 diets in my life. A lot of them have studies around them, seemingly super healthy. Constantly searching for what's the best healthy version of how you're supposed to eat. Having him on the show, it was just a really great slap in the face because he said the right things that made me go, wait, what? Start questioning my belief system, which I believe we should always question our belief systems. Have your head so open your brain will fall out. It's a dichotomy though. Use critical thinking, but come at it with a beginner mind. Some people are better than others. Make sure you question your own belief system so you can learn. Because if your mind is closed, you've already made up your mind about something, you will not take in new knowledge. So that's in my seeking and my constant curiosity around health and wellness, I've discovered I don't have diet dogma. I just coached someone the other day who's been a raw vegan for many years, and now they can't feel their hands, they can't feel their feet. Hands are starting to tingle. I said to them, listen, as healthy as we perceive raw vegan to be, you should probably look into being fat deficient. It's unhealthy. Vegan isn't healthy. Oreos are vegan. Fried Oreos are vegan. Adam Sud (1:26:44.155) I tell people all the time, veganism doesn't tell you what you eat, it only tells people what you don't eat. The thing is, I went back to school, I studied nutritional biochemistry, I became an expert in insulin resistance reversal. I was the lead food addiction and insulin resistance coach for Mastering Diabetes from when they started the company, and I went on to lead the first controlled trial to investigate the effects of nutrition on addiction recovery outcomes. I published that in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine and then it was featured in Forbes and Psychology Today. I've coached probably a thousand people on how to take charge of their health and I have been plant exclusive for 12 years. Here's the thing, here's what I know to be true. First and foremost, I care very little about being right. I want to be helpful and accurate.  So in my pursuit to be helpful and accurate, when we look at the dietary patterns across the board and you look at human health outcome data, not mechanistic speculation, but looking at human health outcome data, what becomes very clear is that there really is no one best diet.  However, there are four very clear themes that we see in the dietary patterns that do the best for humans over the course of time. Simon Hill, who’s a very dear friend of mine, speaks about this a few times, and says these themes are very clear. First, high in fiber. The best dietary patterns across the board are all high in fiber. Number two, low in saturated fat. Now that doesn’t mean low in fat. Doesn’t have to be a low fat diet, but it certainly means replacing saturated fat-rich foods like cheese, butter, and animal products with either polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, so nuts, seeds, avocados, olive oil, or carbohydrate-rich plant foods or protein-rich plant foods. The third theme is prioritizing plant protein over animal protein. Right now in Western cultures, 70% of the protein consumed by each person per day comes from animal products and only 30% comes from plants. You should start by at least flipping that. At least flipping it and then trying to move yourself forward a little bit more towards maybe 90 or 100% if it works for you. The last theme is the removal of ultra-processed foods. However you organize your diet, whether you want to be slightly higher fat, slightly lower fat, slightly higher carbs, slightly lower carbs, slightly higher protein, slightly lower protein, depending on your preferred lifestyle and activities, as long as you meet those four themes, that is the best place to start. Get your energy balance appropriate and figure out what you’re fueling your life for. What makes you feel alive? What gives you the sense that tomorrow is somewhere you want to be a part of and you’re looking forward to it? When I did my research study and we noticed that the plant-based group, this is really interesting. This was the first time ever that a study was done on the effects of nutrition on addiction recovery outcomes in treatment centers. So we had a completely plant-based diet compared to the diet being served in the treatment facility, which actually was a very high-quality diet. It just included meat, eggs, and dairy and some processed foods. What we discovered is that by week 10, there was a statistically significant increase in self-esteem, resilience, and self-compassion within the plant-based group. We did every other measurable outcome you could: all biometric outcomes, microbiome study, vitamin levels, anxiety, depression, mania, obsessive-compulsive drug use. Our primary outcomes we’re looking at were resilience and self-esteem. That is because when you look at the biggest predictors for long-term recovery, resilience and self-esteem tend to stand out the most. People are always asking, why do you think a plant-based diet increased resilience and self-esteem? In fact, this was the first time diet has ever been linked to resilience. People always want to say, do you think it’s the microbiome? I said, well, I mean, of course, some of it, yes sure, why not? I mean, everyone wants to throw out the statistic that 90% of your serotonin and 50% of your dopamine is produced in the gut, but it’s important to remember that none of those transmitters cross the blood-brain barrier. They’re all involved in digestive processes. But your gut health does help in the manufacturing of short-chain fatty acids that do cross the blood-brain barrier that are important to your optimal brain health.  However, what I really think is taking place is you take someone like myself who checked into treatment day one, the sickest, most disconnected I’ve ever been in my entire life. I got diagnosed with metabolic conditions and chronic diseases while in rehab. If you were to ask me, how do you feel after getting diagnosed with all those conditions? I would have said to you, I don’t know what my future looks like. It doesn’t make sense to me anymore. I’m afraid to be there, and I’m not sure I want to be there at all. All of a sudden, what I’m going to start experiencing after saying those things out loud is huge amounts of depression and anxiety. I don’t feel like there’s anything I want to wake up and be present for. Being present in my life is difficult. I have to take medications. Being alive hurts physically and emotionally. When I think about tomorrow, it’s not a pretty picture. I’m actually anxious. I’m worried about what it’s going to be like because I can’t make sense of it. You put that person, me, into a plant-based environment and you say, live there. Just stay there. Live and eat in that environment and also practice gratitude. We’ll come check on you in three months. Come back and check on them. How do you feel? Well, I noticed that my body feels, for the first time in a long time, a good place to be. I’m not sick anymore. My diseases have gone away. The trajectory of my future has shifted.  I’m actually kind of excited to see what the next six months are going to be. I’m actually excited to see what my life is going to be tomorrow. Tomorrow feels a safe, secure, and hopeful place to be. That’s the biggest role, I think, that nutrition plays for people in recovery. It gives them the opportunity to correct the trajectory of their physical and biological future. If you don’t think that plays a role in you psychologically, I don’t know how else to convince you. It plays a massive role. I know sitting here now at 42 years old, that when I’m 82 years old, I have a pretty confident stance that I’m going to be okay. That I’m going to be mobile, that I’ll play with my grandkids, that my wife will be healthy, that my friends who take their health seriously will be there. That’s a safe feeling. That’s a sense of relief.  Nutrition is an act of service in protecting that future. I think teaching nutrition in recovery appropriately and accurately can do nothing but be an act of service to every single person who’s there. I think it should be taken seriously and not used as a moment of escape from a day that’s always going to be difficult no matter what you feed the person. That’s my thought.  Ashley James (1:34:12.977) I love that. Thank you so much for sharing about that study. Are there any other key takeaways from the study? It sounds like it was pretty comprehensive. Adam Sud (1:34:24.091) So what we noticed was when you look at the two groups, the highest performing group and the lowest performing group. First, let me just say, there wasn't a single outcome in either group that didn't increase. So that says two things. One. The diet that they serve at the treatment facility where we did it, Infinite Recovery, is pretty good. Number two, the program is really good. So that every single outcome, whether psychological or biological, everybody did well. Ashley James (1:34:57.897) You mean people who ate meat versus not meat. Everyone was doing well because their recovery program was good. Adam Sud (1:35:03.833) Yes, actually, the diet, while it did have meat, eggs, and dairy, was still a very high fiber diet. It was still really well done; it wasn't a traditional Western diet. So all their psychological outcomes got better while they were there, so everybody did well. However, the only group that showed outcomes that did better than the other was the plant-based group. The plant-based group, everyone else did really well, but the plant-based group was the one that did better. This says two things. Number one, first and foremost, that at the very least, a plant-based diet is in no way a hindrance to anyone's recovery. Number two, it might be the best dietary pattern for people in recovery.  The second thing is that when we compared the lowest performing group to the highest performing group, what we noticed is that there was somewhere around a 5X difference in fiber intake between the lowest performing individual and the highest performing individual. That's useful. What that means is instead of throwing down these diet dogma words—carnivore, keto, paleo, vegan—all these words that are just outfits that don't make any sense. Instead of doing that, just focus on how much fiber is this person getting per day? Are they getting any? If they are, is it coming from real food or is it coming from processed foods? How can we start to change that scenario? Because starting there isn't really that offensive to anyone. If I was to say to somebody, hey, you want to eat meat, eggs, and dairy? Okay, fine, but here's what I want you to do. I want you to do that while getting 45 to 60 grams of fiber per day. What happens is, as this person starts to approach that task of getting 45 to 60 grams of fiber from real foods, they notice that in order to do that, they can't eat very much, if any, meat, eggs, and dairy. They're so focused on the goal of eating fiber and seeing the benefit of fiber consumption that they're not offended by the ideas thrown at them on social media about what's the best diet. So I think that's a really good way to approach it. Ashley James (1:37:10.709) I love it. The variety of fiber. When you say fiber, you're not talking about Metamucil or some kind of real food, real whole. So, black beans are high in fiber, and if you take chia seed, I want you to be cautious. I have a friend who perforated her colon because she just took scoops and scoops and scoops of chia seed, put it in a smoothie, and immediately drank it. She gunged up.  The thing is don't be extreme. I have that built into my personality. Like I moved to Vegas from Canada before settling just north of Seattle. That's where I met my husband in Vegas. I was never a gambler, but I think addiction, personality and gambling kind of go hand in hand. It was far too easy to lose a lot of money there. So I quickly learned not to go to the casinos. I don't know if you've ever been in front of a gambling machine, where it's all the bells and whistles and things are spinning. There's a button there called Max Bet. That Max Bet might be $5, it might be $20, it might be $100. It's betting everything. So my husband and I have this joke in our relationship where we go max bet. You're going all in, but usually, it also could mean something unhealthy. You're overdoing something in an unhealthy way. We should really examine, hey, if you're max betting this, is that actually healthy? You can overeat something that is healthy. Two bananas are healthy, but 50 bananas could kill you in one sitting. Too much water and you die. So when you look for how much fiber can I get, it's how much fiber can I get from a variety? I think eating that rainbow—I love that analogy of eating the rainbow—really trying to fill your plate every day with as many colors as you can. Berries are high in fiber, greens are high in fiber, and it's not all just salads. We can make great oil-free stir fries. There's so much fun we can have in the kitchen, and we can make it delicious. My husband, he was a steak and potatoes person, only ate meat. I couldn't feed him vegetables. He would maybe have a beef burrito. He loved beef and cheese, and maybe there were some vegetables in his burrito. Or he loved carne asada nachos—that was a big thing for him. He would sit down and eat a quart of ice cream over the course of a weekend, or no, wait, a gallon? What are those giant tubs that are so big they need a handle? I'm sorry, I'm from Canada. I'm all liters over here, but it's a gallon, right? Four quarts. This was 16 years ago. My husband and I were dating, and he said, “Let me introduce you to this.” I was dairy-free at the time, and he brought dairy back into my life, which we have since, many years ago, stepped away from dairy it’s incredibly addictive. I have a great interview actually with Dr. Neal Barnard, and if that's the one thing you can remove from your diet, start there. Cheese is addictive. Start with removing all dairy products and see the transformation. He went from that, to six years ago, my husband woke up one day and said, “I'm never eating an animal again.” He just snapped. Something in him snapped. He said he'd been struggling with it internally for a while. He's a pacifist. He doesn't kill spiders for me. I took that as, “He doesn't love me as a husband,” but he carries the spiders outside. He's the six-foot-seven guy who always breaks up fights because people think he just stands between guys. I've seen him do it. He'll stand between guys fighting and stop them. He's such a pacifist, actively pacifist. He said, “I just can't, I couldn't come to terms with that. I'm part of murder. Who am I to take someone's life? Who am I to take an animal's life?” He loves animals. Animals love him. Something in him just snapped. So I had to learn very quickly how to cook plant-based. Because I was doing the podcast I was already learning and sort of implementing more and more fiber. I'd done interviews where they said, “Try to eat 100 grams of fiber a day. Try to eat 50 different types of food.” You're hard-pressed to even find a variety of fruits and vegetables. You have to go to the farms. There's a farm just north of us where you will find foods they don't have in the grocery store. You can pick and eat foods that are just amazing in variety. So very quickly, I started cooking whole food plant-based, and we were already oil-free for several years. He turned to me on day three and said—now this is a guy I could not get to eat a vegetable—”. He turned to me and said, “If you had told me that the food would taste this good, I would have done this years ago. It tastes so good. It tastes so much better than meat.” I mean, yes, you have to learn a little bit of cooking. There are plenty of guides out there, plenty of videos if you're willing to give it a try. I love your sole focus. You have to remember, though, when you increase fiber, you have to increase your water intake also because the fiber binds to water. You don't want to be dehydrated. People are chronically dehydrated. Just drink more water throughout the day, spread it throughout the day, and make your focus be how many grams of fiber you can get from a variety of sources. I tell people, you can give some advice around this, but don't go from five grams to 50 grams overnight because you're going to have a lot of bloating. Your microbiome isn't used to it. As you eat a variety of cooked and raw foods, you will actually impregnate your gut microbiome with new healthy bacteria that helps you digest and assimilate your nutrients. So I tell people, increase by five grams a week. If you're starting out at five to 10 grams already—the average American eats 15—it's hard for the average American, if you're eating processed food, to even get 15 grams in. Then if you could just increase by five grams a week, you will prevent that digestive distress that people get at the beginning if their microbiome is really shot. Adam Sud (01:38:42.952) Yes, another thing I would say is don't try to tell yourself that this is how you're going to live for the rest of your life. The reason for that is, number one, the human psychology can't conceptualize beyond about three to four weeks. So let's take, for example, Ashley, let's just say for the sake of this conversation that you're a new coaching client of mine. You come to me and say, I want to learn how to eat healthy, I eat a very Western diet, I eat a lot of processed foods, I don't know what I'm doing. I say to you, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to put you on a whole food, plant-based diet, and that's going to be what you're going to eat for the rest of your life. Here's all the recipes, go. What is actually taking place inside of your psychology is that your psychology is trying to figure the amount of time and energy required to complete this task. How are you going to eat this way for the rest of your life? It's trying to figure out how to make this for breakfast. How do I do this for lunch? I don't know. How much food do I get? I don't know. How much of this do I get? I don't know.  As you go about your day trying to do this, every time you step outside the guidelines of a plant-based diet, your psychology is going to go, see, you can't do this for the rest of your life. I just showed you that. You just showed me that you can't do this for the rest of your life. There's no way we can do this. This feels impossible. If I was to say to you, hey Ashley, here's what I'd like for you to do. Every morning for breakfast, I'd like you to make a bowl of oatmeal with a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds, your favorite food on top, and if you want to put a little maple syrup on there, that's fine. What's happening now is your brain is going, okay, seven days, oatmeal every morning, probably need about two containers of oats, that's probably more than enough. Oatmeal takes about five minutes to make, unless I want to do it in the crock pot and I can do it at night. I could probably get all the other toppings at the store, and I know exactly how much to get. This will probably take me about 20 minutes to eat and maybe five minutes to clean. Your psychology has a very clear understanding of the time and energy required to complete this task, and now it feels safe. It says, I know what to do. This is very doable. So if we were to look at it from the perspective of saying, you're not trying to do this for the rest of your life, but say, what I want to do is run a series of two-week experiments. What you're going to do is you're going to slowly implement this lifestyle into your life over the course of two-week experiments, where what you're trying to do is discover the value that this is going to offer you. If I was to say, what I want you to do is eat a plant-based diet for breakfast for seven days. Just see how you feel. Then after those seven days, you're going to do breakfast and lunch, and it'll be whatever it is that we prescribe for lunch. Do that for another week. At the end of those 10 weeks, I just want you to take notice of what took place. Did you lose any weight? Did you sleep better? Did your energy change? Did your joint pain go away? Did anything positive happen for you? Blood pressure comes down, blood glucose comes down, does anything happen? You're going to take note of it, you're going to go, wow, I lost three pounds, my blood pressure came down, my blood glucose came down. That's really attractive. Seems I might be onto something here. I'm now motivated. I'm now motivated to run this experiment again and add a slightly new addition to it. I'm going to change dinner. I want you to think of motivation not as something that you get on day one, but it's a return on an investment. You actually can't be motivated on day one. You can be inspired. But motivation requires your time and energy. You have to put your time and energy into something and get a sense of the value available to you. Once you get a sense of what's possible, then you're motivated to find out if it's true. You're motivated to see how far does this go? How much more value is there? Taking it in these sort of two-week experiment modalities gives you a sense of, what? You're just trying to figure this thing out. You don't know what it's going to look like in four months, and that's okay. You only got to focus on the next two weeks. It's not that person's diet. It's not that person's life. This is your diet. This is your life. This is your race. You don't need to finish first, you don't need to finish last, you're the only one doing it. Enjoy it. You get to do this maybe once in your life. Figure out how to completely reorganize how you live, that's exciting. That's really exciting stuff. If you approach it from a perspective of a researcher or an explorer where you're, I'm just so excited to figure anything out. I want to know what works, and I want to know what doesn't work. I want to know these things, I want to understand them. If you can approach it from that perspective, it can be a really wonderful thing to do. Think about it as the 1969 Apollo mission to the moon. In 1969, we took humans and we trained them to be astronauts, and we put them on a rocket, we launched them into space, and they landed on the moon, and then they got out and walked on the moon. No one had ever done this before. That's one of the most extraordinary feats in human history. It's also a very dangerous thing to do. Very dangerous thing to do. They must have known how to do it. They must have known how to get there? Why would they go if they didn't? Ashley, do you know what percentage of the flight time they were actually on course to the moon? It was 2%. They were only on course 2% of the time. Now from a content standpoint alone, you go, well, my gosh, they spent 98% of the time going the wrong way. Another failure of a mission. Just must have been by sheer luck that they landed there safely. If you were to actually put it in the context of the subjective point of view of the person on the mission, what you would notice is they spent 98% of the time course-correcting. They spent 98% of the time figuring out how to get to the moon safely.  If you approach your journey in the same way, get up every single day, be excited to figure it out, hey, I need to make a little course correction here. We're going to course-correct today, we're going to course-correct tomorrow. In the beginning, the course corrections are bigger, but as we get towards the end, they're a little bit smaller. Once you get there, you've blazed a path and know how to get there a little bit better the next time. This is your extraordinary journey. If you approach it with the excitement and the thrill, and sure, the concern and the fears that it warrants, you can probably have one of the most incredible experiences of your life doing this thing, but you have to be excited about it. Ashley James (1:50:41.649) I love it. I love it so much. I want to come back to wrap things up. I want to come back to my question. I know I'd asked a few questions in there, and there's one that I wanted to cover, and that is when you first started this journey, you definitely had a lot of course corrections going on. Like you said, you just told him, fruits, potatoes, vegetables, beans, rice. He's like, this isn't a grocery list. You're like, I know, just bring it, just bring those things. I think I remember that's what's on the list. You were placed on a ton of drugs, a ton of prescription medication. Talk to us about those first three months, going back to, tell us about your first experience going back to the doctor and getting off the medications. Adam Sud (1:51:29.653) Yes. So, when it comes to the diet, I remember when I got the food, I was going to write a meal plan for myself. I even think about it now, writing a meal plan out of five foods. I was like, oatmeal with fruit for breakfast, rice and bean bowl for lunch with some kind of sauce on top. There was like a barbecue sauce. It wasn't the healthiest barbecue sauce, but I just put it on there. Then dinner would be potatoes and beans for dinner. Then I would snack on fruit. That was my meal plan. Then I was like, great. Day one done. I looked at the rest of the week. I was like, shoot, I have no idea what else to do. So I drew an arrow through the rest of the week, and above that arrow, I wrote the word repeat. I just said, well, what I'm going to do for the next week is just eat those meals every single day for seven straight days. At the end of those seven days, my blood glucose went from 390, that's where it was when it started, to 200 in one week. I was like, holy moly, this is amazing. This seems like I might have this thing figured out. Like I said before, I'm super motivated, super motivated to run that seven-day experiment again. So I just did that same meal again for two weeks. Now at two weeks, very similar results. My blood glucose went down to 150. I noticed I was losing some weight. My blood pressure was coming down. I was like, this is unbelievable. I think I've got this thing solved. I want to see how far this thing goes. So I literally ate those same meals every single day for 10 straight months, which people don't have to do. But what I realized was that I made it so simple and obvious to do the healing thing that it was nearly impossible not to do it. I knew exactly what I was going to do when I was going to do it, that it was easy to do. That's unbelievably valuable in recovery. I think that variety is a trap. It's a very attractive idea. It'd be great if I could have every recipe in the world, but remember, my goal at the time was not to eat every recipe in the plant-based world. My goal was to live a plant-based diet long enough to find out what my body was capable of.  So in fact, simplicity was a superpower for me. By about month two and a half, I started to experience something called hypoglycemia, where your blood glucose goes below 70 milligrams per deciliter, and you don't feel well when this happens. You get very shaky, you sweat a lot, you feel faint. It's not a good experience. This is because the medication that I was on in combination with the diet was too powerful. So the medication was not safe for me anymore. So I took myself off of the medication and made an appointment with the doctor. I go to see the doctor about a couple of weeks later, this was now about month four, and they do blood work. My A1C comes back 5.5. So my A1C went from 12 to 5.5 in four months, technically in five months, but four months on the diet. The doctor comes in and says, well, according to this, we're going to lower your medication. I said, well, hang on a second, doctor, I haven't taken my medication for about two and a half weeks. He says, well, then according to these charts, you're no longer diabetic. I remember looking at the doctor and saying, hey, doctor, I just want to thank you so much because as of today, I no longer need your services. I walked out of the office, and I felt this unbelievable amount of self-esteem rise in me. It's because it seemed like I had figured out something incredibly valuable that I could offer myself and potentially anyone else that I loved that needed it. That sense of value that can be shared within a community of shared respect. So I ended up getting off the blood pressure medications and the cholesterol medications and the antidepressants and the mood stabilizers. Over the course of some, those had to be taken off slowly. So some of them took six months, seven months, eight months to get off of, but I was able to get off of all of them within one year. I want to go back to one last thing about why it makes so much sense that at the end of this, drug use was not that attractive to me anymore. If you were to look at me 12 years ago, 12 years ago in October actually will be when I checked into treatment. So I'm not technically at 12 years yet, but I'm on my way. If you were to go back 12 years ago, you would find a person at the end stage of substance use disorder. He is a person who has no loving and meaningful bond with himself physically or emotionally that he wants to show up and be present for. He has no loving and meaningful connection with people in his life that he wants to show up and be present for. He has no loving and meaningful bond with a purpose that he wants to show up and be present for. He has no loving and meaningful bond with the natural world. He has no loving and meaningful bond with a future that feels safe that he wants to show up and work for every single day. This person is completely disconnected from the sense of feeling meaningfully alive. This person is very attracted to anything that can disconnect him from being present. Drug use is very attractive to this individual. You look at that person one year later. He has reestablished a loving and meaningful bond with himself physically and emotionally. He wants to show up and be present for himself every single day. He's reconnecting to people in his life in a way that he can actively want to show up and be present for every single day. He's discovering a purpose that he wants to actively show up and be present for every single day. He's rediscovering the joy of moving his body in nature that he wants to show up and be present for every single day. He's getting a sense that his future is a safe place to be, that he wants to show up and work for every single day. This is a person who has every reason to want to be present, and being present requires sobriety. When you look at it from that perspective, addiction makes sense, and you can see the role that nutrition can play in reconnecting someone to the experience of wanting to be present in their life. That's all I want to say. Ashley James (1:57:58.803) I love it. Adam Sud from adamsud.com. Anyone who's listening who wants to take that journey, you can reach out to him at adamsud.com. You do coaching and you help people. That's great.  I'm  also a coach and we have a lot of crossover, a lot of similarities. I feel  we could do some kind of panel together.  Adam Sud (1:58:23.902) I would love to do that. Just consider me a friend of yours. I'd love to do any and more things with you. Ashley James (1:58:30.046) Yes. That'd be awesome. Very cool. It was such a pleasure having you on the show. I do this podcast because I was sick and suffering for many years. You have a similar situation in which you know what it is to be sick and suffering. When you get on the other side of that and you build your health up and you look around, you go, my gosh, there's people who are needlessly suffering. That's why I started the podcast because I have to get this information out there. But this podcast has also been my journey as well. When I started the podcast, I had reversed many health issues, and I was still working on myself. I am still working on myself now. I like to say there's no Mount Everest, the peak of Mount Everest of health where you're like, okay, done, stick your flag on the top of Mount Everest of health and then you walk away. That's not what health is. Health is constantly emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, energetic, and we're working on it every day. Course correction. I love, love that metaphor that we are working on it every day and that if you're not working on it, you go unconscious. If you go unconscious, maybe you haven't had this experience, but some people have this experience where they go unconscious on their bank account and then they go check in on it, and they're really surprised. Either there's more money than they expected, or there's far less money than they expected. When we go unconscious with our health, it's the same as going unconscious with your finances. Most often times, we're pretty surprised with the labs. When we do get lab work, we're like, just, you kind of expected a clean bill of health when you walked in at 300 and something pounds and having eaten fast food and been taking drugs, and you kind of trick yourself into thinking, I'm healthy. We feel very sick inside, and we don't realize. Just like the fish can't see the water, we don't realize that there's this whole next level of health. No matter how healthy you are now or wherever your health is, there's always the next level of somewhere we can grow, expand, and learn. Once you've achieved this great homeostasis, it still is course correction because every day we're still working on it. You still got to eat. You still got to move. You still got to hydrate. You still got to love and communicate. Life throws oopsies at us. Stress comes at us, and then we have to handle it and work with it. As life happens, we're course correcting. I love the work that you do because you teach people how to navigate to optimize emotional and mental health and well-being through optimizing what's on their plate. Thank you so much for sharing your story and being vulnerable with us. Adam Sud (2:01:14.349) Yes. My pleasure. My pleasure. Anytime. Ashley James (2:01:16.871) This was such a pleasure. Well, please come back to the show. We'd love to have you back anytime you want to share more or teach more. We'd love to have you.  Adam Sud (2:01:23.138) I would love that, that would be fantastic. My pleasure. This was great. 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 Adam Sud! Website- Adam Sud Facebook Instagram

Check Out My Latest Book: Addicted To Wellness https://www.learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness   Get The Minerals Your Body Needs: TakeYourSupplements.com https://takeyoursupplements.com   Dr. Jeremy Ayres's Websites: https://theredpillrevolution.com https://jeremyayres.com   Special Audience Giveaway:   NaturallyBetter4you.com   Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the guest speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the host or podcast.   526: Red Pill Revolution: Navigating the Lies of Modern Medicine https://learntruehealth.com/red-pill-revolution-navigating-the-lies-of-modern-medicine   In this episode of the Learn True Health podcast, Ashley James interviews Dr. Jeremy Ayres in a thought-provoking and controversial discussion that challenges conventional health narratives. Dr. Ayres shares insights designed to inspire listeners to question deeply held beliefs and explore alternative perspectives on wellness and healing. With a focus on evidence-based approaches, this episode offers an opportunity to rethink modern medicine and consider empowering paths to true health. Highlights: Profit Over Health in Modern Medicine Spanish Flu and Vaccinations Polio and DDT Role of Pharmaceutical Industry Views on COVID-19: Environmental Factors (EMFs, Graphene, 5G Frequencies) vs. Viral Infection True Medicine vs. Conventional Approaches The Problem with Western Diets Holistic Healing Approaches for Modern Health Challenges Intro: Hello true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. We have a very controversial and interesting, thought-provoking deep-dive today with Dr. Jeremy Ayres. He’s going to say some things that I think are going to shake up some belief systems. I think some of his topics are so controversial that some people may find themselves upset or may find themselves deciding to question their own belief system and go deeper.  I just want to say that anything that he says that goes completely against your current knowledge or belief system, approach it with an open mind, ask yourself, am I upset because it’s challenging my dogma, or am I upset because I think it is hurtful, or am I upset because I’ve never heard this before that it’s completely opposite to what everyone around me believes.  We just question our own belief system. I’m not saying that I believe everything he says. I’m saying that it’s worth having thought exercises. I believe it’s part of personal growth to listen to an opinion different from yours and to just keep your mind open and then go deeper and see what evidence is there for that. Is it true? Is this the truth? Can I find evidence to support this? Why does he say these things? He does a lot more information. We didn’t go super deep on some things he says. I love to have him back and have him explained why he said the things he said. Although there are his books you can dive into. There’s plenty of videos of him online and articles. He’s been a doctor for many years. He doesn’t say anything without a basis. He doesn't just state something that’s an opinion. He comes to conclusions based on enough evidence. You can find this same evidence that he’s found and I'm sure you can reach out to him as well and he will provide you with that evidence.  This is a wonderful exercise to challenge our belief system. I’ve had my belief system changed doing this podcast for the last eight years and it’s really enriched my life. I’ve allowed old beliefs to be shed away in light of new evidence, new information, and I find that it actually builds us up.  I hope this information builds you up. I hope the information exposes you to ideas that empower you and that give you a path to building yourself up. I want to let you know that if you are new to seeking true health that I have published a book that I’d love for you to do. It's called Addicted to Wellness. It’s a workbook so it’s where rubber meets the road. It provides you with the foundations of health in a way that is fun and doable even for the busiest of people. Please check it out. You can go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness or type in Addicted to Wellness by Ashley James on Amazon. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast for those you care about. I have a feeling this is one of those very shareable episodes because we’re going to start to think about friends and family and colleagues that need to hear this information, especially those who have been lied to by their doctors.  the doctors don’t even know they’re lying. Again, this is what we’re going to be talking about today. But if you’ve a friend or a family member who is sick and is suffering, who’s sick of suffering, who just doesn't’ want to suffer anymore but they are on multiple medications and the medications are making it even worse not better and they’re not getting to the root cause, their doctor’s not helping heal themselves. This is going to be a wonderful introduction to why it is the way it is and that there is a different way how we can guide people there. I encourage you to check out my book because there’s a lot of evidence-based actionable steps to building our health up and I’d love for you to have those tools on your tool belt. Learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness is the book. Enjoy today’s episode.  Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 526. Ashley James (0:05:02.426) I am so excited for today's guest. We have on the show with us, Dr. Jeremy Ayres. naturallybetterforyou.com is his website, spelt anyway, that's really smart. naturallybetterforyou.com. Dr. Ayres is an osteopathic physician who combines the best of naturopathic, chiropractic, and osteopathic care. He's famous for the book he co-authored, The Red Pill Revolution. It's criminal how the medical industry and the food industry has taken us prisoner and it's like the Matrix, you can't see the Matrix, but you're a prisoner of the Matrix. This is where we live. We live in a world where our health is controlled by major corporations who profit from us being sick. Of course, if you're listening to this, you are interested in stepping outside of the mainstream to look for how to achieve true health. I know with our guests oday, this is a missing piece that has been missing for you and for all of us. Dr. Ayres is gonna fill us in on what we need to know in order to help our body's ability to heal itself. Welcome to the show. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:06:24.430) Well thank you very much for finally getting me on here because we've had some technical issues a few times but we're here now. Ashley James (0:06:32.636) Yes, I'm very happy to have you on. We have been trying to get this interview for a while and today we did it. I'm so committed to getting this information out there. I've been screaming from the rooftops for years and then I come across your message and it was so refreshing to see another person saying almost the exact same thing I've been saying, but you also have been in the trenches as a doctor.  so you have a unique perspective. I’ve interviewed over 500 doctors the last eight years, and many of them are actually medical doctors, MDs. I was always surprised, what does it take for an MD to wake up, reject the system that they spent over half a million dollars investing in their education, and then move towards holistic plant -based or, herbal-based medicine, functional medicine, and almost reject the drug-based medical industry.  So often I'll ask them, what happened in your life? Every single one of them said, I got sick or my wife or my dad or someone in their life is either themselves personally or someone that they dearly loved. They realized that the allopathic drug-based, pharmaceutical-based medical doctor system had zero answers to helping support the body's ability to heal itself and had zero capacity to reverse disease and get someone out of a disease state and live their optimal life, optimally healthy. That's when they went, my gosh, I can't believe I've been lied to because they all said the same thing. They said, many, many years of medical school that we're taught all the answers. If it's not taught in medical school, it's not even worth knowing. What a bunch of lies and manipulation that there's so many doctors out there that their hearts are in the right place, but they've been brainwashed by the medical industry. So I'm so excited to have you on the show today because I want to go deeper and have people understand the history of the modern medical system that it's only about 130 or less years. It hasn't been around that long. When we look at how we think it's always been this way, we're born into this system. It hasn't always been this way and we have to understand that we have been lied to since birth. So I'm very excited to go down that rabbit hole with you. Then we're going to talk about the problem, unpack that problem. Then we want to talk of course about the solution, which you have a wonderful solution.  Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:09:12.348) Where to begin with all that? Because what you've said is profoundly right. Probably most of your audience is aware that you are profoundly right. If there's anyone listening for the first time by chance and just listened to you and thought, what a wacko, let's start there. I'm 55 years young and I didn't one day wake up and decide to pick every controversial subject and do the opposite to what everybody else has been told or thought was correct and right  so that it would make me more money and win me more popularity and friends because as you know the opposite is true. I could have made myself a great fortune if I'd have gone a different route for example. So there is a reason why doctors like myself have chosen this path, which has been bumpy and arduous and challenging at times. The bottom line to that is I was brought up by a wonderful mother who passed away last year, accelerated by certain medical interventions that have happened in the last few years. Maybe we can touch on that. But, nonetheless, I was brought up by a wonderful woman, a very simple woman in many ways, and she hated bullies and liars. I didn't realize she was prepping me for my adult life, and certainly she didn't either, but prepping me for my adult life when I realized that the system per se is the bullies and liars. I was brought up like most of you, so-called educated, believing that the politicians, what they're saying were true and how things were run and that doctors were there to help you and so forth.  At 12 years old, cancer came to our family for the first time. It was my brother's wife's mother who had breast cancer and she went on to pass with that. Now at the time, I was told that she died from breast cancer and I probably think my brother and his wife would still say that. What I saw was the fear and as a 12 year old boy, the fear and the grief and the upset and the anger and how it caused problems with relationships as her mother went through what she did and then finally passed. At 12 years old, I remember thinking, this is just wrong. Something's got to be done about this. This is terrible. Then I went off on my merry way, growing up until I was about 21, 22, where I represented Great Britain in canoeing in the Olympic training squad. I hurt my back very badly and I've never liked doctors. I don't know what it was. I just didn't feel comfortable ever going to a doctor, talking to a doctor, being in a doctor's office.  So I hurt my back very badly. It was the Olympic year. There was this portly chap, who looked more like a British butcher than an osteopath or a healthcare professional. He was an osteopath and I didn't know what the hell that was at the time, but he wasn't charging very much. He said, well, I can help you come along to my clinic.  So off I went, well, struggled to get in my car and drive there, could hardly walk. He had a sort of production line clinic, which was lots of booths with separated by curtains and lots of student osteopaths. It was a bit like a commercial factory really, nonetheless, I came into there and he asked me to take my clothes off down to my boxers, and I wasn't ready for that one, examined me and then handed me over to an Eastern European woman with more muscles and facial hair than me at the time, who then proceeded to massage me into near tears, of course, I'm English, so we don't complain. We construct a carefully written letter the next day, rather than like Americans or Canadians who might speak up. So there I am laying, crying, thinking, when will this torturous thing end? Then in came Ron Johnson, this osteopath, and put me in what I thought was a pseudo sexual position at the time, no explanation, and adjusted my back and this loud crack and all the pain went away. That was it. I went, I've got to do this. That was the moment. It was from there on in these memories of 12 years old and the cancer that came into my family came back and I went off with this determination that I must become an osteopath and something's got to be done about this terrible disease. It was as naive as that, thinking that there would be some university course or something that will teach you. As I expand on the story, but as you well know, the more I studied and as I became an osteopath and the more I researched, the more I realized the opposite was true. The closer you got to the information, especially the closer you got to speaking about it, the more trouble you got in. So very quickly, by my mid 30s, I realized that this game is rigged. I think the first book I came across that explained it well was Dirty Medicine. The author had had several attempts on his life. Me at that time, it was like, no, this has got to be exaggerated. But when you pull the layers back and you apply the original journalist method of following the money, we're talking about medicine, the biggest business on the planet by a mile. According to the Fortune 500, they're way ahead of any other company and profits and money generation. When you are asking, if anybody says, well, come on, that's just rubbish. You have to just go and ask anybody in any country where you have lived in the last 50 years, have you become healthier or sicker as a people? Everybody this is pre-convid, and that's what I call it, and I'm willing to explain why I call it convid, but pre-convid, everybody would say, well, we're sicker, much sicker. If you go back to follow the money, who gains? So what you have to at least start to be open to looking into rather than accepting is that this is not a healthcare system. It's a business model. It's an extremely successful business model. It's a bloody dirty one too, because they have done everything possible to silence and ruin critics and any medical doctor that has woken up and come to realize what they're actually in will know what I'm talking about because they're absolutely professionally crucified till they shut up and tow the line or go off and do something else. So I don't think it takes that much for people to realize that this is actually a business and not a healthcare system. Ashley James (0:16:35.741) That book, Dirty Medicine, is that Martin Walker who wrote it? Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:16:42.408) Honestly, it was 30 years ago, I'd have to go and check, but it was just the beginning of many, many books that started to show me. In fact, most of the best stuff was written a hundred years ago, which is about the time that the Rockefellers who were into oil were being basically investigated for a monopoly on the oil.  Actually, they had a monopoly on the petrol and pumping station. That's where their monopoly was, selling it once it was refined.  so they decided to diversify into pharmaceutical drugs, which weren't really abundant then. The doctors and naturopaths and chiropractors, and osteopaths and herbalists and homeopaths were sort of level pegings. If anybody was the snake oil salesman, it was the allopaths and the chemists at the time, actually. Rockefeller employed Flexner and began to produce the Flexner Report, which basically did a classic hatchet job of saying, well, some of it was true, I must say, but basically a classic hatchet job of we must standardize all education always for the patient's benefit. They love that marketing line. But what they actually did was create a situation with a lot of backhanders and bribes and upfront and behind the scenes to create a situation where only those with enough money could comply with the new regulations to educate people, whether it be chiropractors, osteopathy or what have you. So you had to go to them for a handout. If you took one of their grants, you had to take one of their members onto your board. So it didn't take very long before so-called natural medicine was pretty much eradicated It was turned into a poor man's cousin of what it used to be.  so-called modern medicine, allopathic medicine, correctly, became the market leader legally, protected, financially funded, and that's how it became and established the world leader all around the world as so-called primary healthcare. Ashley James (0:18:56.912) Let's go deeper. Let's unpack this because not everyone knows about the Flexner report. Not everyone knows about this history. This is the history of modern medicine that we need people to understand because if you understand the history, you'll understand that we have been manipulated and lied to our entire lives.  So what did medicine in America and Britain and Canada, let's say all the Commonwealth countries and in the United States, what did medicine look like before the Flexon report, before allopathic, the drug-based medicine, the drugs being coming from the petrol industry? Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:19:44.652) Well, it was a pretty level playing field and probably you could say a true free market existed. So if you were good at what you did. People got to hear about it. If a medicine was good, people got to hear about it. You can trace this all the way back even to Dr. Jennifer Daniels work and the slave medicine, particularly pure gum turpentine. Today pure gum turpentine is sold as a paint stripper. Back in the day, it was used as a very effective parasitical medicine and it earned its reputation by being effective and people doing this work and they didn't really need to know why it just worked. I think a best example is if you go to something like the Spanish flu, which to this very day is in every website and history book as a foreign virus that came and killed 50 to 100 million people, which is absolute nonsense, by the way. The actual truth of the matter is that they didn't have the technology nor do they now, either, but they certainly didn't have the technology to find a virus.  It's always foreign because that's scary to Western people, some dirty foreign thing. At the end, World War I had ended early.  so there were a lot of very toxic vaccination vials left.  so the largest marketing pre-covid or convid, the largest marketing campaign to scare the world into taking all these going out of date vaccinations because all their men and women were coming back from foreign dirty foreign countries and you're to need to be protected and it was actually the mass vaccination that started all these differing symptoms of very serious illness and the allopaths of the time were treating them with aspirin and arsenic based medications which then put them into sepsis and also pressed their organs of detoxification and that's what killed 50 to 100 million people. Homeopaths had about a 0.1% fatality using homeopathy. So they were actually extremely popular and a true free market as people started to see the way. As you will see, history has recorded that a flu virus came, this invisible thing, and that was the cause and it couldn't be further from the truth. Ashley James (0:22:23.738) This reminds me of when we look at polio and I apologize for not knowing the exact dates, in the fifties? I think the children were being doused and showered in DDT. They're fogged. There's pictures of children dancing with DDT, like being thrown around like flowers. They were being doused in it, showered in it. DDT was being dropped from airplanes and it was horrible. DDT poisoning mimics the exact same symptoms as polio. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:23:06.160) Because it’s polio.  One of my most famous sayings whenever I do a podcast, I’m trying to plant seeds that stay there. You’re not sick, you’re tox-sick. T-O-X-$-I-C-K. When you start to critically look at things without an agenda of being right or wrong and especially being open to being wrong and when you remove the outcome from your investigations, particularly if it's financially beneficial to you, when you remove all those barriers and you look at it, once we started spraying DDT,  fogging on these children and people, polio came along. What it was, it was these incredibly toxic neurological chemicals going into these children. I actually like the polio one because it's the one that people with angry countenance attack you over with vaccination science, which is also another joke when they go, well, what about polio? They show you a graph where the vaccination started and polio was eradicated. What they don't realize is one of the most common tricks of this very dirty business is once the polio had begun to set in, which was caused primarily by DDT, and was eradicated when they stopped using it and sold it to third world countries instead. When they stopped using it, polio symptoms started going down. Plus, they ordered the doctors to give five other different diagnoses other than polio. So when you look at a graph and it looks like it's radically going down because of the vaccinations, it's because they stopped spraying DDT and they weren't allowed to call it polio unless they reached a very, very strict criteria. So five other different diagnoses came in. Bob's your auntie, especially this time Bob's your auntie. Bob's your auntie. You've got this beautiful graph to show the world and shut up quacks. You're all stupid and just go and do something more interesting. Ashley James (0:25:22.266) I heard another thing about the Spanish flu and that at the time they were still dialing in aspirin. They had no idea what dose to give people. Now, for those who don't know, aspirin is an extract from willow bark. So, and then of course they've done something chemical to it to be able to patent something, I don't know. This is your wheelhouse, not mine.  What I do understand is if you were to take enough willow bark, make a tea out of it or a tincture. If you take enough willow bark, there's a constituent naturally in nature. This is why natural medicine is so cool. That if you took too much, it would cause you to purge. You would start throwing up. You would expel too much willow bark but they figured out how to isolate the thing in willow bark that blocks pain and remove the thing that causes you to throw up if you take too much of it, if you take the toxic amount. They took that out, they took the safeguard, the natural safeguard built in nature. They took that out and they had no idea how much dose they should give someone. So at the time they were giving people toxic doses of aspirin. I have a client, he had an abscess. It was Friday and his dentist couldn't see him till Monday. He took a whole bottle of aspirin, because he just doesn't read bottles and thinks it's fine. He had called me and said, I can't see and I can barely hear, I've almost have no hearing. I'm like, okay, you need to go to the emergency room, natural medicine is not going to help you at this point.  You took a whole bottle that is lethal. That's what I learned about how dangerous it is that you could go into a pharmacy or even into Costco and buy a bottle of aspirin or a bottle of cough syrup. If you complete that entire bottle in a weekend, you can die. You can easily die. They sell things over the counter that if someone took the whole bottle or most of the whole bottle, they could die.  Back in the Spanish flu, MDs were giving people as much aspirin as they wanted to because they had no idea what the dose was. They were essentially playing with us and using us as guinea pigs. A lot of the negative outcomes from quote unquote the Spanish flu, were also contributed to the fact that they overdosed people on aspirin.  like you said, that shuts down the among three systems, such down detox pathways. They were using us back then like guinea pigs. Interesting how we can kind of look through history over the last hundred years and see how they have used us or just over a hundred years now and see how they have used us as guinea pigs in medical experiments. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:28:25.415) Yes, well, as I said, if you put yourself in a critical thinking mind and look at the actual evidence, which is pretty well hidden now. You have to use a search engine like Yandex, which is a Russian search engine to go and even find a lot of the documented stuff now, because corporate Google and Brave and all the rest of them are so controlled. Perhaps even the time machine couldn’t go and find these documents. The evidence is overwhelmingly there. The aspirin, which of course is Solicilates, was suppressing their organ of detoxification from the already poison of all these multiple vaccinations that they'd put into these people. So it was adding injury to insult. That's what they would die for. Very often, sepsis, which is where they would turn black and things, but most of the deaths were actually pneumonia as they suppressed the lungs and fluid build up and they died from that but it was all toxic shock.   When you see this, or you see the evidence where this is absolutely accurate, and then you look at every single modern day history book or medical book that is still sprouting the same, you have to ask yourself why. Then when you come back into the well, follow the money, it becomes very, very evident that these are not talking about the good people that are trying to be doctors and nurses and don't know what I'm talking about yet. You have to start realizing that doctors have been deliberately designed to be drug dealers.  Those drugs are very, very toxic. I mean, you can't be deficient in aspirin. Most people, the word medicine is a positive word, if a medicine makes a healthy man sick, it can't make a sick man healthy. So we've got to start sort of once again teaching people and that's what I do on my membership site at naturallybetterforyou.com but we've got to start teaching people how to think again. I don't want anyone believing me. That's how my mentors taught me. They taught me how to think. They taught me how to ask better questions and they taught me where to look. After 30 years of looking at, I would imagine just about every alleged previous pandemic. I can hand on heart tell you it was caused by either chemicals or heavy metals or vaccinations or medical whatever and then killed off by the intervention, the treatment. Ashley James (0:31:03.059) My mother died because of drug-based medicine. So I know how you feel when you share with us that your mom's death was accelerated by what we are exposed to when we enter our body into the mainstream medical system, you said you might share with us a bit about what happened to your mom.  Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:31:29.071) Yes, well, my parents were ordinary folk, good folk, hardworking folk, decent folk. They found it very difficult. They're of the generation of trust the doctor. So they found it very difficult to embrace anything I had to say because if what I was saying was correct, why doesn't my doctor know it? That kind of attitude. So I had to learn to have a relationship with them that allowed them to do obviously whatever they choose to do, even if I believe it to be wrong or know it to be wrong. So I watched them. When my mother went, for example, 10, 15 years before she passed, I think it was 20 years actually now. She was diagnosed with osteoporosis like most postmenopausal women. They haven't got the  hormones. They haven't got the  fats. She'd bought into the low fat diet. So she had weakened bones and she said, doctors put me on calcium supplements. I said to her, well, if you take those, you'll end up with a calcified heart or valves. Sure enough, five years later she did and she had to have open heart surgery, which she nearly died and somehow she pulled through. It was never again the same. Then she went on a load of drugs, the old favorite statins and hot blood pressure. They also put her on a PPI, a proton pump inhibitor, which you shouldn't put them on for more than 12 weeks. She was on it for 10 years. So it ripped even more calcium out of her body. My father, my mother fed him. So he got brought into the low fat diet. He loved his fat. We grew up with fat, animal fat and things and he got sold on that myth and I saw his brain start to deteriorate and then they put him on statins and I saw his brain radically deteriorate into diabetes and dementia and then they put him on those drugs and then of course, convid came along and my brother who's a good man, we're estranged from each other for reasons of kind of things I'm talking about now but he did his duty what he thought was good. He made sure that they both got their vaccinations for the COVID. That's when I saw them radically decline. My mom had a stroke, sorry, a massive clot soon after. My father's dementia exponentially increased or deteriorated, I should say. Then my mother finally had a massive stroke as well. You know I'm sure, Ashley, we are seeing post these vaccinations, which aren't even legally vaccinations, we are seeing more strokes, heart disease and so-called turbo cancers and other complications that we've ever seen in history. Ashley James (0:34:13.226) It is disgusting what they have done to us. It is criminal. So many people can't see it though. They can't see it because, and you said like, trust the doctors. Your parents were brought up to trust the doctors. I'd like to dive into that. Did you uncover through the last hundred years, the PR marketing that they did to brainwash entire generations of people to blindly trust doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:34:47.702) Well, as I started my research, and dove deep and had several good mentors, including Harry Hawes, a brilliant original osteopath in his 70s was my first mentor and then Barbara Wren, a just genius of her time, naturopath, where she was able to show me that we're not dealing with disease, we're dealing with dis-ease. She explained it in such a clear way of how you accumulate toxicity and as the body attempts to get rid of it, if it can't, it throws up fevers and it creates an environment where bacteria can be found and the bacteria is not an infection, it's actually more like a janitor trying to clear it up.  So if you start, and it's very simplistic, of course, at this point, but if you start trying to suppress that and using toxic drugs to take away those symptoms and the body's ability to cleanse, the body will have several attempts at doing that. Finally it will go, well, I can't do it. I've got to do something with it. I'll dump it over here in a tumor or a cyst or dump it in the joints and you got arthritis or rheumatoid or dump it In this tissue. When, as you go and start to investigate this and you start to see how doctors and nurses have been trained and you start taking case histories, and I've taken tens of thousands over 30 years, you come to see without doubt that their dis -ease progressed as they had more and more quote unquote treatment. Then when you do a case history and show people that they can start to see that actually it hasn't been good medicine.  Now I want to say before I go any further, I worked for a few years with a brilliant pharmacist called Graham Atkinson who woke up to use such terms during convid when he was actually a UK government advisor. So very high up in pharmaceuticals and he thought the pandemic had truly arrived and that many people were going to die from it. He was involved in setting up protocols and a vaccination center. He was sitting there as a proper data scientist, realizing that what the government and it's the same around every country, but what the UK government and what the UK tell a live vision, quote unquote, media were saying was not playing out in real life in what he was seeing. As a data scientist, the data wasn't what they were saying. So he stepped forward to speak about that. As we know, those kinds of people got absolutely professionally crucified, not welcomed and all that's interesting, show me the data, but absolutely crucified professionally to the extent that he had to leave his profession and was very ill. That's when he came to me and I helped him recover from that.  We did a lot of work together and he started writing a book which unfortunately hasn't finished and he sort of stepped back for a while because he's had quite a battering as you can imagine.  He was going to write a book that I was going to write the forward to called The Baby and the Bathwater. Now the baby is what's good about modern medicine and the pharmaceutical industry and of course there are some good things. It's a small and beautiful baby but the bathwater is more like a filthy sewer. There's a lot and that's what was a lot to let go of.  Doctors and nurses and many of them are wonderful people trying to do wonderful things. They have been put into a system that they didn't realize how trapped they were going to become. For example, prior to the HIV and AIDS deception, I'll call it that for the moment. They had quite a lot of autonomy when things came in to look at and get tests and make different decisions and second opinions and that sort of thing. They had quite a lot of autonomy and old school doctors were still there and were pretty good as a whole. Around about that time, so-called evidence medicine, evidence-based medicine started to sort of rear its marketing head. They were trying to create protocols and standardizing and computerizing diagnosis and records. So what happened is, and this is certainly what's going on in modern day, if you have a certain amount, it's test, test, test, test, give a label, a diagnosis.  By the way, diagnosis is made up of three words. DI means to, AG means not, and NOSIS means to know. So it literally means two people not knowing what the hell's going on.  That's very, very advantageous to them and very, very scary for you because people write to me from all over the world, my clients are worldwide, and they write to me, what's the cure or remedy for this?  My answer is always the same, knowledge. The very, very first thing that I'm doing with them is undoing what I believe is a very powerful spell because they say, I have, and then they fill in the blanks of what disease label or syndrome they've been given. What's happened is once you put that label in the system, the system is now coded and it has protocol. So the doctors are restricted to this protocol or this protocol and they're very limited. If they go out of that, they'll lose their license. So they're really becoming autonomous. I can't pronounce that word properly, but they basically almost lost their autonomy of making decisions and they got more and more restricted. That's the wet dream of the pharmaceutical industry, that you won't even need doctors at some point. That's what AI more coding is trying to achieve that you won't need them. You can go straight to an AI and put in your symptoms and have a blood test or whatever it is and it pops out this label and here's the medication. Thank you very much.  That's the trajectory that they want to get to.  Ashley James (0:40:50.430) There's two lenses we can look through. We were raised to look through the lens of allopathic drug-based medicine. We wait to get sick and we go to the doctor on high that's on a pedestal and he's going to save us. We've given them a savior complex that every doctor is Jesus Christ and the pharmaceutical industry is God and we are the lowly sinners. It's a religion that they bow down to. It's complete dogma. We've bought into it because when we are sick, we are terrified, we are scared. It is such a relief to think that there's some big hospital or some big clinic that I could go to, that you could go to, and that the saviors will save us or take our children to it, or take our husband or loved ones to their mom. That they're gonna save us. So it's a child-like mentality that the adults will save us.  We've been raised in this system.  Look at Hollywood. Hollywood, all the media that we were raised in, all the movies, the TV shows, it glorifies drug-based medicine, that it's our savior. They shine this beautiful light upon drug-based medicine and all the miracles of modern medicine. Then they poo-poo and coined alternative medicine, the vast majority of therapies out there that were here before the pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical drug-based medicine is largely derived from petroleum. These chemicals do not belong in our bodies whatsoever. What drugs do? Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:42:38.617) Correct. Shock Horror? How many people know that most medicines are derived from petroleum? They don't. Ashley James (0:42:46.093) No, they don't. So, I like that you pointed out there is a baby. Listen, of course, of course, of course, of course, there's a baby. I'd rather you get on some drug that temporarily saves your life rather than you die. I'd rather you go, obviously you're in a car crash, please, please go, go to the ER. Don't go to your acupuncture. There's of course, in intelligence to this, when you take a body that has chronic illness to an MD, they don't have the answers for you. They do not, because drugs suppress, manipulate, alter the body. They do not help the body come back into balance. There's life-saving drug-based medicine and I appreciate that it exists.  When you take a chronic illness to an MD, it's like you're taking your car to your plumber. It’s just like the old saying, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail and that is exactly what an MD has. I looked at the way MDs are trained because if you look at the last hundred years and you see it, it's been very methodical how they developed the MD training system. It is almost identical to how they train soldiers. Think about doctors when they go and they have 24 hour shifts. So we've deprived them. This comes back to MKUltra and looking at how do you brainwash people? How do you train out the old behaviors out of someone and train them with new behaviors and new ways of thinking? They are sleep deprived. They feed them really crappy food. Think about hospital cafeteria food.  There's absolutely no good reason why doctors should, while they're getting trained, work on 24 hour shifts. It is inefficient. Our brain doesn't work optimally. Would you want to be in a hospital bed and a doctor's been awake for 23 hours? Do you really want someone being awake for 23 hours talking to you? I mean, truckers aren't even allowed to drive for 23 hours. You're not allowed to drive for like, I think something more than 16 hours because they can cause accidents on the highway. Do we really trust an MD who's been awake for 23 hours to be able to take care of us when a trucker would cause a car crash? It is ridiculous. Maybe they get a little nap here and there, but they're not optimal. So it's completely inefficient. If you think about it from a standpoint of like, well, doctors are supposed to heal us. Then why do they have this system set up the way it is? It's because that's how they train them and manipulate their brains just like they do with soldiers to get them to become good little soldiers, good little MDs. So we look at how they're trained and then we look at what they're trained, what they're trained in, what are they're taught? They are taught, for example, you cannot regrow cartilage once you have arthritis, you always will have arthritis, you can't reverse it. Once you have dementia, you can't reverse it. Once you have these issues, you have to go on a drug, you can't reverse it. Over and over and over again, they are taught that once someone is sick, they can't reverse it, they need drugs, they need drugs, they need drugs, they need drugs. They're taught that diet is just, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you eat. Over and over again, I've heard this from doctors, it doesn't matter what you eat. From my clients who are their patients, they go in, I had a client with colitis go into the hospital and they said, you should eat pizza and milkshakes because you need to gain some weight. They fed him, he's colitis, he has inflammation throughout his entire digestive tract, which is likely caused by his diet. And they gave him the very thing, because they want to remove half his intestines. They gave him the very food that exacerbates the problem, then put him on steroids for the rest of his life. It's ludicrous. The thing is, this is education. Now, who designed their education?  That's where we have to crawl back and go. The people who invented these drugs in the first place, the companies that sell the drugs, were the ones that created the education, just over a hundred years ago. That's why it's so important. You can tell us the exact timeline, but around the Flexner report, that's when it all began. They only funded the colleges and the universities. They only funded them.  Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:47:17.055) Correct. It was an aggressive business model takeover. There's no doubt in my mind or anyone's mind when you look at it. I mean, just to share something with you and then I'll expand on what you just said. I had a very frightened woman, a single mother with a nine year old come to me four weeks ago that had just been in hospital for two weeks with gallstones and jaundice. She was going to have her gallbladder removed on Thursday. It was a Monday.   The words from the surgeon were, if you don't have this removed, you'll die. We went through her case history and of course they'd put her on completely the wrong diet, no fat and high carbohydrate and high grains. Anyway, I dispelled the fear, made sense of how she got there, that also she'd harbored a lot of anger. The liver in Chinese medicine is a lot of resentment and holding onto anger. That's what the Chinese say, gallstones are. By the way,  we're four weeks in, she's lost two stones, never felt better, never looked better. I asked her the other day, if you hadn't had this episode that you went into the hospital scared literally nearly to death, would you go and see a doctor today? The answer is no, I feel fantastic, better than I've ever felt. We're only four weeks in.  So when you get back to what they're taught and how they're taught, and you're absolutely right, they are overwhelmed with study. It's quite well understood that most medical students are cheating. I understand from Clive Decarle that the first lecture at Harvard Medical School is 50% of what we're going to teach is wrong. We just don't know which 50% that is. I believe it is the Lancet, and I'll have to double check my facts on this, but one of the major medical journals, the main editor, I'm pretty sure it is the Lancet, but the main editor two years ago said, he's now convinced that 50 % of the studies, if not more, are completely false. Most doctors and nurses and what have you go in with maybe a career more than a vocation, but certainly with honorable intentions to help people then before they know it, they're in massive debt, they're under massive pressure, there's a huge social status to becoming a doctor or a nurse and they very quickly learn, I know because a lot of doctors have spoken to me, that if they start asking the wrong questions, they get very heavily chastised and you quickly learn shut up and do your job and just shut up. Otherwise you're out before you even become a quote unquote doctor or nurse. The facts are, and you're absolutely , by the time they actually get into the job, they've been sort of like a soldier traumatised into a certain behaviour. They disassociate with human beings and they just become patients, not everyone but mostly, because they have to see too many of them in a short period of time and basically they become drug dealers. Ashley James (0:50:26.535) That having the debt over their head, I mean, once money is involved, people's morals are challenged. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:50:26.535) They're compromised. During the convid area, we discovered that on average a local GP was making about 50 to 60,000 pounds extra on the vaccination program. That almost doubled their income. Now, my first mentor taught me the great Harry Hawes. It's a rare man or woman, but it's a rare man that will make the right decision when money is involved for someone else. I'm not saying they're bad people, but human nature is going to go, thank you very much. This is what through my 30 plus years, the horror of discovering how dirty it is and how loaded it is, although that's changed many, many doctors and nurses since convid. Seeing what went on there and the reality of what that really was and what it certainly wasn't, many, many are starting to see and talk to us. What we want is we want people to have open conversations. I'm internationally known for getting people for the most part. We don't succeed with every case because sometimes they've just been too damaged usually by medicine, but mostly we get people well and we teach them how to get well. What we want is people to come up to us, doctors, nurses and go, that's interesting. How did you do that? We had a conversation. I interviewed, she's a great fan of mine, a great, great advocate of mine, Valerie Warwick. She was a whistleblower, an American whistleblower oncologist nurse of 18 years. I interviewed her about 10 years ago, I think it was now. She was fresh out of waking up and seeing what modern oncology really was. She actually got a lot of heat for becoming a whistleblower for quite some time even the FBI were looking for it at the time. I asked her a question, why did it take you so long to see what you're actually doing, which is not treating people. You are literally poisoning them to death. She said, because you apps, and I know people that are in, if there's doctors and nurses listening, I know they will relate to this because I've spoken to so many of them. She said, you believe you're in the best of the best. You believe you have the cutting edge evidence -based science and knowledge. If there was something outside of you would have been told or heard about it. They're also equally told that anything outside of that is quackery. So she was happily, I mean, really happily an oncology nurse, even though, all these people were passing and those that appear to survive, I think survive in spite of the treatment. Usually those that actually do have treatment and survive, they change a lot of things in their life. That's at least what I've found. She said it was one patient one day, she looked at him and he had all the symptoms of scurvy, vitamin C deficiency. She went up to the nutritionist, or I think it was, and all the dermatologist wanted to, can't remember now, but she said, isn't that scurvy? He said, yes. She said, well, why don't we give him some vitamin C? We're not allowed. That was the first straw. The second straw was when she found out that oncologists make most of their money from prescribing chemo. That was the final straw because she realized, and it was well known on the oncology wards, when someone wasn't going to make it, like this person's going to die. They would prescribe more chemo frequently, which makes no sense unless you're looking at it for financial gain. If you knew, if the whole ward knew, if the family knew, this person ain't going to make it. What you would do is make them more comfortable. You would entertain them, prepare them for their death and have their family around them and their priest or whatever it is and just prepare them for this rite of passage to the other side that does exist. But they wouldn't. They'd prescribe more chemo. So that was the second straw that broke her very rapidly. She saw what she'd been doing. Of course, she had a lot of guilt to process and she's a wonderful woman Valerie Warwick. Ashley James (0:55:17.474) Actually, I had her on my show episode 141. This was years ago and I loved talking to her and her experience where she actually saw a few people who were sent home to die and then they came back a few months later, totally cancer-free. That's what woke her up because she's like, wait a second, what did you do? They're like, we went to Tijuana or we went to some clinic somewhere else. I did all these different alternative therapies and she had gone back to her bosses, the chemo doctors and said, hey, what did they do? They got better. Shouldn't we do that? They were all just, no, no, we're going to keep cut burning and cut burning poison. We don't want to know. They're like, la la la la la, like putting their hands over their eyes and ears. When they see someone reverse their cancer naturally, they don't want to know about it.  It's wild. I've coached many people to get so healthy they no longer have type 2 diabetes. That's something that I overcame and that's one of the reasons why I do health coaching because it's like, Type 2 diabetes is so easy to reverse naturally. It's so easy to reverse naturally. It really is.  It's so worth investing the effort into doing it for yourself. It's amazing. It actually transforms when you stabilize your blood sugar. It's not just okay to stabilize blood sugar. Your inflammation goes away. Your sleep gets better. Your sex gets better. Your mental health gets better. Emotional health gets better. You wake up, you jump out of bed full of energy. Your eyesight gets better. Every aspect of your life. Then you've increased your longevity and decreased your chances of heart disease. I mean, it's wild. So I can't tell you how many times I've lost count that my clients go back to their doctors. They no longer have Type 2 diabetes. They're throwing away the insulin or the metformin or whatever. They are going back to the doctor for some blood work. The doctor who's been quote unquote treating their diabetes for many, many years now sees that their A1C is amazing, like 4.7 or something, just amazing. Every blood marker is wonderful.   When the patient says, do you want to know what I did? I'm not taking any of your drugs anymore. I'm not following your advice anymore. It didn't work for me. Do you want to know what I did? The doctors don't want to know. They do not. They just put their hands over their eyes and ears and say, nope, good day. Go away. They don't want to know. They don't want to know. The money motivation. The fact that they're into a system now, they're so deep in a system. How much guilt and shame would have to come up for them if they realize that they've been doing the wrong thing for thousands of patients. If they've been profiting off of keeping their patients sick, the people they actually care about. A lot of doctors like their patients and they've been keeping them sick because they've been poisoning them because they have the wrong tool because they themselves have been deceived. Can you imagine how much humble pie you'd have to eat to be able to come to terms with that, people can't come to terms with that.  Dr. Jeremy Ayres (0:58:43.008) We all will meet our maker and we all have a soul whether you believe it or not, you're going to find out you do. It's interesting that oncologists were interviewed apparently and 90% of them wouldn't take the prescriptions that they give to their oncology patients, and I think that's very, very telling. I think it's a very positive time actually, Ashley. I think there is since convid and I probably should define that for people because you there might be someone listening going but my mum died or my dad died or my aunt does it and it's and it's almost certainly not from a virus that didn't exist and that may come as a great shock but any virus but certainly no SARS- CoV -2 virus has ever been properly isolated.  It's all computer models called silica which is shocking to most people when they hear this but and the pandemic which wasn't was driven by false data from a pcr test and it's not pcr has never been a test Kary Mullis, the inventor, nobel prize winner, made that very clear who conveniently died as covid-19 begun but he was very clear this is not a test and if you amplify it which they cycle it several times past 25, it becomes science fiction. The data that was provided for the media and the authorities on the pandemic was cycled 45 or more times. So it was complete utter nonsense.   Even at 45 cycles, it doesn't show a virus or an infection. It just pings certain markers and then that was a positive test and that got put down as a pandemic, but it wasn't. That's why I call it.  During that time, at the beginning, many of the doctors and nurses believed wholeheartedly there was a pandemic, even though strangely enough, the hospitals were almost empty.  This is why you saw all these incredibly well choreographed and practiced dance routines that the doctors and nurses found time to do during the hospital.  This is also what woke up Graham Atkinson because just the doctor surgeries and the hospitals and the paramedics were sitting around, twiddling their fingers. It wasn't overloaded, quite the opposite. Actually I'm jumping ahead here, but that's the beautiful thing about now, the actual data that's coming out, the true data, that's what's actually gonna hang these criminals by their own data and true science. Nonetheless, what it has given, at the beginning, I would argue 90, 95% of medical professionals would have probably lynched us for talking how we were talking during then, even though we've been historically proven and time stamped to be correct.  Now there is a huge groundswell of doctors and nurses talking, knowing what happened. They've realized, and I know they're listening and watching podcasts similar to this and Dr. Jack Cruz's and the Dr. Kemper's and Dr. Chaffee's and Dr. Saladino's and similar like doctors that have basically stood up and started being true doctors. I think we're in a very exciting time. I mean, it's said that no army can defeat a thought that's time that's come. I believe, worldwide and because of technology like this and this beautiful platform that we can talk on with each other in different countries, I think the world is very much waking up and coming together and starting to see that some very nefarious stuff has gone on and I don't think you can defeat that because it seems to me, enormous energy is being employed to try and quell, this shall we say red pill revolution which of consciousness which is why we named the book, The Red Pill Revolution.  It's a consciousness revolution. People are listening and thinking and they're starting to take action. Are there a lot of people that are not on this page? Of course there are. Historically, it's always been that way. In traditional revolutions, not that we want a traditional revolution that is violent and forceful, but in traditional revolutions, it's well documented that only 10% of a population stood up and said, we're not having any more of this and did something. The 60 -70% of the population followed them, outed a regime and then went back to following the next regime or the next religion or the next political ideology. Where we're at now, hence the Red Pill Revolution and we also wrote the Red Pill Food Revolution, which is equally brilliant, where we're at now is people are around the world getting onto the same page. I would say from a numbers point of which is always in motion, it is way past 20 -30% of the world population have worked out that we've just lived through the greatest crime ever perpetrated against human beings and I believe very positive things politically and medically and legally and humanitarily are going to come together. I certainly don't believe we're gonna build back better. If we are gonna build back better, it's gonna be without them, the parasites, the criminals and the liars. Ashley James (1:04:20.053) It's a tall order, but that's why I'm here. I'm here to call them out and to educate the masses that you don't need to be sick, that suffering is optional, that there are answers for you that have been suppressed, you've been lied to about the quote unquote alternative medicine out there. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:04:48.055) Yes, their words, I hate that term. True medicine. Well, true medical philosophy, because there's a lot of really good people out there practicing allopathically with true medicine, but they're misguided. Once you have the true philosophy, which is fundamentally, your body doesn't know how to work against you. You can prove this, even if you're a complete dumb ass. If you cut yourself, your body immediately goes to work to try and stop the bleeding and start knitting together that wound as it does in nature for animals in the wild and short of infection, there's lovely remedies, both pharmaceutical and natural to deal with that. Short of that, the body is trying to deal with it. It only knows how to protect you. If you look at so-called autoimmune diseases, which don't exist because the body doesn't know how to attack itself. It does attack foreign particles that are in the cells and tissues, but these conditions don't exist in nature. You don't have lions walking around with rheumatoid arthritis. These are man-made diseases or modern man-made diseases. When we start with a philosophy, how many people out there have lost people to horrible illnesses? When I say something like the body doesn't know how to work against you, you wouldn't blame them for going, “what?” When you start to look at how poisoned, and we've talked about a few things like polio, when you start looking at all the chemicals and poisons that have gone into people, and we've been through a time where people don't even know what food is. We have to define what food is overfed. I mean, we're the only animal on the planet that doesn't know what to eat. So when we take the philosophy, which is really robust, and describe medication or medicine as nurturing, nourishing and healing, then it's quite easy to start putting together what is true medicine, even pharmaceutical and what isn't. I mean, you wouldn't study a poor man to get rich. You'd study a healthy man to get healthy. So we've been studying sick and sickness. No wonder we've gone wrong. Ashley James (1:07:03.050) Well, that's even with labs. The MDs look at lab results differently than a naturopathic physician does because the MDs are looking for, are you sick enough for me to give you a drug? There's normal parameters they look at. So are you in the normal parameters? What are the normal parameters are a consensus of the average American. So the average American is not healthy. If we took across, it took all the Americans, I'm just using America because this is where I live. You could say Canada, you could say Great Britain. As long as there's a country that's exposed to feed instead of food and the American diet and lifestyle and media, then they have the same problems. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:07:57.457) Yes. Well, the Western world is calorie rich and nutrient starving. Ashley James (1:08:02.794) Yes, our food's anemic. It's anemic. First of all, the farming practices over the last hundred years have made it so that the soil is depleted. We don't have the key nutrients. If you eat a plant, a lot of times it's hydroponically grown. There's zero minerals. Our body needs 60 essential minerals. We're not getting the nutrients we need. People don't sit down and eat fruits and vegetables every single day. They're not getting access to wonderful vitamins. If you ate a conventional apple for example, because you think an apple a day keeps the doctor away. The average conventionally grown apple has 50 different chemicals on it. 50 different man-made petroleum-based garbage toxic junk that is killing us. It's killing our microbiome and our gut. It's causing cancer. Just as an example, I keep saying United States. Most of my listeners are in the US anyway. Look, turn around and look at statistics. One in three people have cancer, one in three people have heart disease, one in three people have diabetes or pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome or obesity. You're looking at around 70% of the adult population is on at least one prescription medication. Don't even get me started on pain meds.  Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:09:23.800) I want to get you on pain meds. I love listening to you. You go girl.  Ashley James (1:09:29.636) Our bodies are on fire. Even if you try to eat healthy, if you're to eat a conventional, quote unquote conventional, this is just like saying, we have to choose organic and organic isn't even clean. There are less chemicals sprayed in organic, but there's not zero. You have to grow your own food or find a biodynamic farm somewhere to try to get the cleanest food you can. Point being, if it comes from a factory, if it comes from a package, if there's a list of ingredients, you're likely killing yourself. Seed oils are one of the worst things to ever be added to the food chain. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:10:11.456) Yes, catastrophic seed oils. For those listening, I'm sure they do know, commonly marketed as vegetable oils, and they've never come near a vegetable. Ashley James (1:10:23.686) Can you imagine? This is my zucchini oil. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:10:25.892) Well, let's just do that one quickly in case your audience doesn't know. America, even if this is controversial to your current view or understanding, but America was thriving as we over here in Europe on animal fats and dairy fats. Butter and lard and tallow or beef dripping as some people know. McDonalds cooked in beef dripping and KFC or Kentucky Fried Chicken cooked in tallow.  The sugar industry heavily, because they were starting to get some flack because they are a major culprit in causing so much problem, paid a lot of money for the lipid hypothesis. I'm jumping around a bit in timelines here, but the lipid hypothesis and Ancel Keys that saturated fat causes heart disease and high cholesterol cause heart disease which is absolute nonsense. Ancel Keys then went off to live in the Mediterranean, eating an almost carnivore diet and died just over 100 years old. What happened was Procter and Gamble got hold of the rights to take cottonseed oil and turn it into what they call Crisco. Now, prior to that, cottonseed oil was a byproduct of obviously cottonseed manufacturing and processing, and the animals wouldn't eat it, so they were making lamps and soaps from it. As that industry changed, they weren't making much money. So Procter & Gamble took it, hygienated it, and made it look like lard and called it Crisco. I would imagine everyone in America has heard of Crisco. Then they did another magic marketing trick where they produced a color cookery book, a recipe book, and gave it away for free. Well, that was unheard of in those times. Every food that the traditional American housewife was making with tallow beef dripping or lard was replaced with Crisco and it was modern and it was clean and it was portrayed that granny was a bit old fashioned and this is the new way. Slowly but surely, they moved away from those fats into this absolute poison. We saw this massive skyrocket in heart disease and cancers and autoimmune and the seed oils. If I had to take one thing out right now, it would be seed oil. Sugar is not great, but don't get me wrong, it is a major contributor to the massive increase in consumption in a hundred years. It's ridiculous. The consumption, yes, in everything and the consumption is just huge, but the seed oils have got to take a huge responsibility for the decline in Western health and the profits of the petroleum pharmaceutical monopoly. Ashley James (1:13:25.222) What about cholesterol? It's bad for you. We can't have cholesterol. We should all have low cholesterol. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:13:34.428) Well, I know you by your tone, that's not true, but this is again, what Ancel Keys did, and he was paid to do it. Again, we don't have science. We have scientism for the most part going on BS science, bad science is what it is. What's the new religion? I mean, during convid, it was trust the science. Well, that's an oxymoron. The very nature of science is to challenge science and come up with something better if you can disprove it. So to say trust the science shows we've moved into a religion.  Ashley James (1:14:07.733) Trusting science is what the bullies said. It's they're saying, shut up, get in line, take our shots, eat our food, do what we say, don't be a tall poppy, don't step out of line or else we will cancel you so publicly and so hard. So trusting science was a threat from bullies.  Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:14:29.160) Well, hence my mother raising me right. Naturally better for you and the whole naturally better ethos is to ask questions. Do not trust what I'm saying. How healthy is that? Anyway, back to Ancel Keys, as you well know, he cherry picked data to produce a graph with some sort of lineal line which he used to show the countries that eat fats. He didn't even define the fats, by the way, from seed oils to vegetable oils or olive oil to animal oils, just cherry picked it, came up with a look here, here's the proof, and the lipid hypothesis and saturated fat and cholesterol causes heart disease was born. As I said, he went off and ate practically a carnivore diet and lived to over 100 in the Mediterranean. If you put his data back in that he took out, there's no correlation. There's no evidence. There never has been. They actually picked and this is the, you got to love these people and many things, but stupid is not one of them. They literally plucked a number for cholesterol out of the air and said, if your number this, you need to go on cholesterol lowering drugs, which is one of the biggest selling drugs and profits of all time. Every five years they lower that number. So they increase their market share. Ashley James (1:15:54.464) Exactly and I've heard the interview from the scientists who had to come up with this number, they said, we needed enough of the population in the United States to be on statins to see if we could make a difference. So we looked at the average, like how many Americans do we have?  So they looked at the average cholesterol levels and they said, okay, if we say it's 200, then we get this many millions of people on this drug, just to back up, cholesterol is so important that every cell in your body that has a nucleus makes it. Even if you were on the potato diet, even if you're a raw vegan and you're not eating any animal sources of cholesterol, of course, don't touch any oil with a 10-foot pole. If you didn't eat any, only ate, let me say walnuts or something, your body will make cholesterol, not only does your liver produce it, because everyone thought it was just the liver, it's every cell in your body that has a nucleus. It is needed for your brain. 70% of the white matter of your brain is cholesterol. The myelin sheath that protects your nerves is made of cholesterol. Every cell wall, 37.2 trillion cells in your body, every cell wall is made of cholesterol. Sex hormones and stress hormones are made of cholesterol. Bile is made of cholesterol. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:17:12.315) Well, let me just jump in there actually, because you said something really critical that I don't want to be missed because you're so knowledgeable and passionate. I love it. Just take the sex hormones. Sex is a big thing to people. If you don't have enough cholesterol coming in, you can't go through the hormonal pathways to get over to making the sex hormones in the first place. So all these problems that have manifested in the Western world from infertility to not knowing even what bloody gender you are can be connected to the lack of cholesterol and saturated fat and these hormonal pathways being interrupted. So when you put those back in, quite profound things can happen to people. If you don't put them back in, the body will take the cholesterol from you. So 60, 70 years ago, dementia, Parkinson's, these sort of things, which are really type three diabetes and a lack of having cholesterol. The body will take it from your brain. That's why we see all this dementia and this neurological decline as you get older. It's starving for cholesterol. When you injure yourself and the body is injuring itself constantly, the first emergency response is cholesterol. I know you know this is an analogy, but some people may not have heard it. It's like seeing houses on fire and there's always firemen there putting it out and making the assumption or the association that the firemen are the problem. Get rid of the firemen, no more house fires. It's the opposite.  I know  you know this. Again, back to the philosophy and simple critical thinking, if you apply that without a financial tag to the end result and only a benevolent tag to the result, you've opened yourself up to being a real human being again. See, doctor, the word doctor originally means teacher. We were supposed to teach humans where they've gone wrong and correct it. That's what we've got to get back to. That's why we're called naturally better, by the way. We've literally got to go back to a naturally better future. We've got to go back to go forward. Ashley James (1:19:33.324) So naturallybetterforyou.com is the membership. I definitely want to talk about that because I want my listeners to keep learning from you. You are docere, the doctor meaning teacher.  I love that you brought that up. That is the original root word, docere, which means that you go to your doctor so you can learn. How much have you learned from your MD? How much have they sat down with you? That's why when I go see my naturopathic physician, it's an hour long health lecture in a good way. I love it. I like absorbing wonderful knowledge from them. I have never seen an MD for more than 15 minutes, probably five minutes. Come in, I think it's absurd. I'm a little jaded. They come in holding the prescription pad, staring at the chart, not even looking up from the chart because the nurse weighed me and took my blood pressure and they're looking at the labs, looking at the chart, holding their prescription pad in one hand and asking me if I want a drug today. That was my last experience with an MD. I really try to avoid them at all costs. Your doctor should be your teacher. Be willing to fire your doctor and seek a better one. Don't be like our parents and grandparents, the silent generation, just trust authority, blindly trust authority, don't shake the boat, don't make waves. I don't want my doctor to not like me.  First of all, they work for you. Be willing to walk away from them and find a better one. I abhor the fact that now, because of how certain states have these medical charts that they log into—I know with Washington state, I don’t know about other states—I’m in Washington—that now, any doctor you go to logs in and sees my chart and can see all what the other doctors say about you. They might say that you're difficult because you ask questions. You're not even hurting them, but you're not challenging them. These are almost like bully tactics. It's like you ask questions, and now you're a difficult patient. So this follows you.  Seek out holistic doctors. This is my biggest set of advice when doing a little head hunting for your team of holistic health practitioners that are going to support your body's ability to heal itself. You want to ask them questions like, do you believe my body can heal itself? Have you helped other people get so healthy they get off these drugs if you're on drugs? What is your philosophy of healing? You want to ask them questions and listen and here are they coming from this reductionist way where we have to, well, first we have to look at your liver and we have to see how’s that, and then we have to look at this lab and then we have to look at this, like they're putting you under a microscope and they're not looking at you as a whole.  If your doctor doesn't ask you what you eat, go find another doctor because what you put in your mouth, it's just ludicrous. Let's say you put I don't know, you put six cups of food in your mouth a day, six to eight cups of food. Let's say just measuring a certain volume. They think that has nothing to do with your health, but a tiny, tiny little pill the size of a pea—that's the fix? So something this tiny is going to fix everything? But all the stuff you're putting in your body, shoving in your face hole, has nothing to do with your health. If you don't see a doctor who is concerned about what you eat and wants to help you, get your body to the point where it is really healing itself Supporting the body's ability to heal itself, getting out of its own way, and stopping throwing fuel on the fire—to continue the analogy of the fire—the body's on fire. Help those firemen inside you, give it what it needs, and then stop doing what hurts it. Get out of its own way. The two philosophies we've talked about: either you've got the MD, drug-based allopathic medical system philosophy, which is that you've been reduced to parts that we look at and we have to wait to get sick and then put you on a drug or the other philosophy, which is where Dr. Ayres is coming from and what he teaches in his membership, which is naturallybetterforyou.com and his book, Red Pill Revolution. I'm excited to actually dive into it, I haven't read your Red Pill Food Revolution. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:23:54.259) Yes. The Red Pill Food Revolution, I think it's, and I would say this, of course, but I honestly believe it's the best book ever written on food, the history of food, how we got here and the important crossroads we're at. Ashley James (1:24:09.800) I'm very excited to read it. I definitely want to read it. The other lens that doctors look through—which we've talked about—is your body as a whole. Everything affects your body: how you sleep, how you move, the people around you, and the things you put in your mouth. Every aspect of your life is your health. That’s what true health is. That’s why the podcast is called Learn True Health. It’s mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical. It’s energetic; it’s everything. A holistic doctor looks at every aspect of your life and helps your body come back into balance. A holistic doctor believes your body can heal itself. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:24:47.782) Well, because it's the truth, and I’d rather use the term ‘a true doctor.' Their job is to get rid of you in the nicest possible way, of course. I love the old Chinese philosophy: you pay your doctor to keep you well, and you stop paying them when you're sick. Now, if we applied that philosophy to America, Canada, and the UK tomorrow, watch them change. Ashley James (1:25:14.058) My mentor, Dr. Joel Wallach, was raised on a beef farm. He saw that his dad would feed the calves pellets packed with supercharged nutrition—vitamins and minerals. He looked at the ingredients and would actually put the calf pellets in his pockets and munch on them because he observed something. This man is so intelligent; he said, we keep the animals so healthy they don't get sick to lower the cost of your hamburger or steak, right? If we took agriculture and applied the same approach to medicine that we use on our own bodies, your steak would cost $3,000. You’d have to wait, not give the cow any nutrients—just give it junk, wait for it to get sick, and then treat it with a bunch of drugs and allopathic, drug-based medicine. That would be incredibly expensive. Now, I'm not saying the farming industry is perfect; there are many unhealthy practices. Back then, 70 years ago—he’s in his 80s now, I think 85 or 86—what he saw was that there are two systems of medicine. One system keeps costs down by keeping animals healthy to avoid the doctor. The other, the human medical system, keeps profits high by keeping people sick and away from being healthy. Two very, very different systems. That influenced him growing up and becoming the naturopathic physician, veterinarian, and researcher that he is. He saved my life. That’s why I’m so passionate about this. I’ve interviewed him twice on the show because I was sick and suffering under the drug-based medical system, as many people are. I was able to escape—like Pavlov's allegory of the cave—I escaped, and now I’m coming back into the cave to help others. I know I’ve probably upset some people because they still want to stay in the cave. Dr. Ayres, I’m sure you have people upset with you all the time. I really appreciate that you’re willing to run back into the cave with me and help wake people up. Tell us about naturallybetterforyou.com and your membership. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:27:38.994) Well, I will do the work because, in the membership, we’ve got over 1,200 people from all over the world, and the word ‘community' is spoken about all the time. When I started the membership two years ago—because I normally do one-to-one consultations and packages that way—I thought I was going to unleash a mental asylum. When you work with someone, there are layers of trauma and toxicity that surface, and there’s a lot to guide them through. I thought if I did this on a larger scale, it would be chaotic, like unleashing a mental asylum. The opposite has happened. It’s a fantastic community. The membership site and our forum, where they can actually speak and video chat with each other, has been formed. I work with someone called Graham Norbury, commonly known as Norbs. He’s a Jack Cruz specialist, deciphering the work around EMFs, light, and circadian rhythms. Together, we’ve combined 30 years of my work into what is called the ALL CAPS protocol, which they follow in a 90-day challenge. Graham and I have produced over 60 vlogs, where we walk in the beautiful Lake District—one of the most stunning parts of England—and talk for 30 minutes on various subjects, much like we’ve done today. These vlogs have become known as epic, very entertaining, interesting, and helpful to people. As well as live Q&As every other week and a host of other things that we also do there and other functions. It’s a beautiful place where we can privately teach what I can’t always teach publicly. We’re witnessing immense healing worldwide. As you’ve experienced in your own journey, it’s profoundly life-changing Ashley James (1:29:33.334) I'm so excited. What kind of results? Can you share any testimonials, or what kind of results do people see from learning and following you in your membership? Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:29:47.210) Yes, well, there are testimonials, and actually betterforyou.com is sort of a landing page for the podcast because people can remember it. Most of my testimonials are on jeremyayres.com, which is also where you can join the membership. I've got 30 years of testimonials, and you name it, it's been healed. I suppose most of the people coming into the membership have chronic dis-ease, named conditions, auto-immunes, weight problems, type 2 diabetes—all the things that are addressed once you start teaching people that you're not sick, you're toxic, and that food is medicine, being outside and light is medicine, and that trauma gets trapped in the body and that's why you've manifested. Once you start teaching them these things and they start applying and following it, we just see miracles over and over again because, as I say, and as I was taught, and as I teach here, your body doesn't know how to work against you, and anything that it's manifested with a scary label is still it trying to protect you. Ashley James (1:30:55.234) I know we're wrapping up, and I'll definitely make sure all the links to everything that you shared are in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com. I want to make sure that you explain—you touched on, but didn't really follow up with—the explanation of that: the COVID virus, which has never been isolated, neither has any other virus out there been isolated. If we don't know that it's a virus, what was it that people had? I had, quote-unquote, covid a few times in the last four years, which I treated naturally, very successfully, with the exact things that were being banned. I had great outcomes. I know many people had the sore throats, coughs, fever, hard breathing, sudden plummets in blood pressure, and in oxygen saturation. So, what were we experiencing if it wasn't that? Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:32:10.446) Well, first of all, there were actually so many varied symptoms and conditions in the beginning when the media started to explain it. Same thing that happened in the Spanish flu. There were just so many different types of manifestations. I would suggest to you that the ones that actually had breathing problems because the oxygen wasn't getting to the right place were caused by metals, mainly graphene, which are arguably being sprayed in the air, getting in, and then the amplification of either 4G or 5G networks. The hotspots of people getting sick initially where 4G—and there's another one, I think it's called 3C, I can't remember—which is a very horrid frequency that is transmitted from these towers, but certainly 5G. What it did was cause the hemoglobin not molecule to not fully form, and so it wasn't carrying the oxygen properly. This is why hydroxychloroquine worked in many cases, sometimes within minutes for people, because hydroxychloroquine, which isn't an antiviral drug—which is why you had professors of virology going on the tele-live vision and saying to people, ‘This can't be a proper medicine because it's not an antiviral'—because it wasn't viral. What the hydroxychloroquine was doing when the hemoglobin was damaged by electrical EMF frequencies was repairing that hemoglobin molecule so the oxygen could be carried again. Now, if you didn't get that kind of medication and it was that problem, they then ventilated you, intubated you, and under the pressure of the oxygen, they damaged the lungs and upped the oxygen further until the lungs basically were destroyed. That's where you had a lot of the deaths, on average 13 to 15 days. If you were on a ventilator, you died, but you were labeled covid-19. If you had terminal cancer and died and had a PCR test at your death, you were labeled a covid-19 death. If you were in a car accident and died and had a positive PCR test for covid-19, you went on the books as a covid-19 death. So many crimes of data have been deliberately and knowingly perpetrated, at least by a certain fraction of the people, certainly the politicians as well, that we have to now undo all of those lies and all of those poor people that lost loved ones under circumstances like every other pandemic that we've witnessed, that probably could have been prevented. And if they were already terminal or had comorbidities that were going to end their life, they certainly didn't die from a virus that's only ever been found in a computer. Ashley James (1:35:13.846) Episode 445, The Invisible Rainbow, that interview I did talks about how every single major sickness, either an epidemic or pandemic or even localized major illnesses like that of Manhattan—the day they switched over from analog to digital back in, I think it was the late '90s, early 2000s, around there—the island of Manhattan. The entire island experienced sickness, and many people had several serious symptoms like migraines, dizziness, pain, and flu-like symptoms. He actually goes back and shares in his book. It's fascinating. The book is super—I could not put that book down. It was, and you'll gain some muscle carrying it around. I think it's something like four pounds. The book—it's such a good book. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:36:14.222) Yes. It's a brilliant book. Yes, it's a historical book because it has shown every development, and we didn’t touch it today, but I’m glad you brought it up. Every development of modern illness and certainly pandemics has been linked to an upgrade, shall we call it, in technology. Ashley James (1:36:30.958) Wild. Of course, I mean, every cell in our body is affected by frequency. Why wouldn't our cells be affected by radio waves, microwaves, and cell phone towers? Why wouldn't we be? We have an electrical system in our body–and we're mostly water, which carries the signal. It's just very ignorant to think that our bodies wouldn't be affected. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I'd love to have you back if you want to kind of go down a rabbit hole of any of these topics. We could dive in deeper. I'd really love to have you back on the show. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:37:13.190) Sure. Well, firstly, thank you for inviting me. Thank you for sorting out the technological problems that we endured, and I'd love to come back, Ashley, you're clearly passionate, and you're clearly knowledgeable. Thank you for all the work you've done. Ashley James (1:37:27.272) Absolutely. Please go and check out naturallybetterforyou.com. Of course, I'm going to make sure all those links are in the show notes of today's podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. There was something though—you did have an audience giveaway, which is probably on that website: the Anti-Dependency Guide and Post-Vaccination Detox Protocol. Just want to say that again: Anti-Dependency Guide and Post-Vaccination Detox Protocol. I can't tell you how many people have reached out to me and said, ‘How do I detox from this?' My answer has been a time machine, because I don't know how to help you once you have become a GMO. I just feel so bad for the people who regret what they did in the last three years. You have a post-vaccination detox protocol that you're giving away to listeners. How do they access it? Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:38:18.884) Well, if you go to naturallybetterforyou.com, the downloads for those documents are there. I may update it in the near future as we become even clearer. What I wrote is correct on the causes and what was causing these terrible problems. We have a task ahead of us. Ashley James (1:38:37.539) Yes. For listeners who found certain things that we said that’s interesting or off-putting and they want to know, they want to know sources, they want to know, give me some proof, give me the sauce, point me in the direction. I invite you to reach out to Dr. Ayres. He's been a doctor for many years and he could definitely point you in the direction of the evidence. We question. Science is to challenge and question and then look at the evidence without having your own belief system in the way. Put the belief system to the side. Come at it with an open mind, willing to let your belief system be challenged. If you're not willing to let your belief system be challenged, then that's dogma. That's a religion. That's not science.  So be willing to look at new evidence. I wish we approached politics the same way. We all just stop saying like all one party is good, all one party is bad? It's like the world doesn't exist like that. The world's made up of people with good intentions and people with nefarious intentions. I wish that we would hold politicians to the same, to the fire. Just don't trust them just because they're in your party. That's ludicrous. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:40:04.145) I think that time, I honestly think that time's coming. I'm actually writing a book at the moment called Make America Healthy Again. If anyone is out there unwell, you can contact me on any of those websites for a Zoom consultation and Ashley, you're doing a fantastic job. Ashley James (1:40:23.221) Thank you so much. I can't wait to have you back on the show. Please, everyone check out naturallybetterforyou.com. When you reach out to Dr. Ayres, make sure you mention that you're one of my listeners because he'll know that you're a good one. Dr. Jeremy Ayres (1:40:36.433) For sure. Thank you so much. Outro: Are you tired of guessing your way through supplements, feeling like each choice is just another shot in the dark? Unlock your health potential at takeyoursupplements.com. Here we don't just sell supplements, we customize wellness. Connect with a true health coach who tailors your nutritional path based on your unique health goals and challenges. From fatigue to vitality, from confusion to clarity. Start your transformation today. Visit takeyoursupplements.com and discover how feeling amazing is just one free consultation away. That's takeyoursupplements.com.    Get Connected with Dr. Jeremy Ayres Website- Naturally Better For You Website- The Red Pill Revolution Website- Dr. Jeremy Ayres Book by Dr. Jeremy Ayres The Red Pill Revolution

Check Out My Latest Book: Addicted To Wellness https://www.learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness   Get The Minerals Your Body Needs: TakeYourSupplements.com https://takeyoursupplements.com   525: How Seeking Holistic Health Saved My Life, David DeHaas https://learntruehealth.com/how-seeking-holistic-health-saved-my-life-david-dehaas   Grab Ashley James's book Addicted to Wellness and transform your health! Get it here: learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness When I was 19, my health hit rock bottom—I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and infertility, conditions I never imagined facing so young. This pivotal moment propelled me into the world of holistic health, a journey that led to incredible transformations not just for me but for countless others. Join me, Ashley James, as I chat with David DeHaas from the Whole Body Detox Show about my new book, "Addicted to Wellness," and the magic of holistic healing.   Highlights: Healing Holistically With David DeHaas  From Illness to Wellness Journey  Early Interest in Holistic Health  Impact of Antibiotics on Lactobacillus Reuteri  Supporting Gut Health With Microbes  Addicted to Wellness Book Discussion  Functional Medicine and Holistic Healing Content Creation Challenges and Collaboration  Intro:  Hello True Health Seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. Today's a fun episode because I'm the one in the hot seat. David DeHaas from the Whole Body Detox Show interviews me on Episode 179 of his show. So I have taken that Episode 179 from the Whole Body Detox Show, David DeHaas being the host and I am placing it here so that y'all can listen to our interview. I was just jumping on his show and I was checking it out this morning and his latest interview, which he published earlier this month, was with Andy Wakefield.  I had Andy Wakefield on my show a few years ago. Be fun to have him back because Dr. Wakefield certainly has some more information and he's been in, I think, a few more documentaries since, so that'd be fun to have him back. I love when I get to come together with like-minded people like David DeHaas. David DeHaas has also been on my show. He runs an amazing detox clinic. I think it's in Idaho. Forgive me, I'm pretty sure it's like it's so close. Idaho is like next door to Washington state, but people actually fly in from out of state, from out of country. They fly in to do, he has a week long and I think he has like a 10 day or two week long detox where they feed you and they do a whole series of colonics and they rebuild your gut, and him and I have had some really interesting off air conversations about how people have come back from the brink and he's had some really interesting experiences with doctors. When doctors wake up when their own medicine fails them and I have a lot of those interviews. If you've been listening, over 500 interviews, I have a lot of holistic doctors who started out as medical doctors in the allopathic, drug-based medical field and then they themselves came up against some illness and their system of medicine couldn't help them and that's when their brain exploded and they went  my gosh, we've been taught a lie. We've been taught this lie which is prevalent. We are all bathed in this lie and that is that the MD drug based medicine is the only legitimate medicine out there, that you should always go to an MD. That type of doctor and every other type of doctor is a quack, or every other type of doctor is a quote unquote, and I'm doing little air quotes, alternative, meaning something less than not helpful, something less than and , maybe those alternative doctors might like massage you or something, but they're not legitimate because they don't give you drugs and it's been a lie that they've been feeding us. It's PR marketing that they've been feeding us for over 100 years.  I'm not going to go deep down this rabbit hole today, but you can. It's a pretty interesting rabbit hole to go down.  So these doctors wake up when they realize that their system of medicine doesn't have all the answers. Not every system does. That's the point. We should not give the power to any one system, and I'm pretty sure that applies to everything in life. Don't give all the power to one type of school system, to one type of food manufacturer, to one type of government. Don't give the power and all the control and all the attention to one system, because that's not how life works. We should have access to, and the freedom to have access to, many types of therapies and healing.  So MDs that wake up and go, wow, I need to go outside of my system of medicine to find the answers. Then they find holistic medicine or functional medicine and then they heal their body and then they become a born again holistic health expert and they jump on podcasts like mine. Well, David DeHaas, the host of the interview you're about to listen to, he's had several of these experiences where very prominent MDs come to him unable to eat almost anything. Their gut is totally destroyed, they have eliminated most foods in their diet because they no longer can tolerate food and they get transformed by going to his clinic. They do something like 10 days of colonics and juicing and all the other wonderful therapies to rebuild the microbiome at David DeHaas' clinic and they're able to then walk away after ten days or two weeks, able to eat almost anything and tolerate it, and it's so cool. It's so cool that we can do that level of intense healing. So, anyways, there's my plug for David's clinic and his podcast, the Whole Body Detox Show. You can also check out David DeHaas' episode on my podcast as well. I had him on a few years ago and it was wonderful to have him on.  then it was great to reconnect when he saw that I had published my book recently this year and he said come on my show and let's talk about it. So this interview today is a great conversation about holistic health and we dive into some wonderful ways in which we can help support the body and healing itself.  If you haven't seen my book yet, please check it out. Go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness that's all one word learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness or you can just go to Amazon and type in Addicted to Wellness by Ashley James. It's a workbook. It's a lot of fun.  I have taken the accumulation of the last 12 years of working in this industry, in the holistic health field, working with thousands of clients. Before, I worked in the holistic health field, I worked with clients for 20 years. I can't believe that. You kind of like look back and you go,  my gosh, like in my mind the 90’s were 10 years ago. I'm an 80s baby and it's just wild to think that I've been working with clients that long. I was working, as I want to call it, life coach. I was doing breakthrough sessions with people using neuro linguistic programming and timeline therapy. So I've been working with clients for a long time and this book is an accumulation of all my knowledge from 20 years of working with people and over 500 episodes talking in depth with holistic health experts.  The book I made it fun. I made it light and I made it impactful. So if you want to take your health to the next level, no matter where you are, this book meets you where you are and you will be able to, through a series of fun challenges, take your health to the next level. So Invite you to jump on it, to try it. Even if you have five minutes a day, even if you have 10 minutes a day, you can do this book. If you have a busy schedule, you can do this book.  I wanted to make it so that every single person could fit it into their life. So get it Addicted to Wellness. Get my book. It's a workbook, so you get to actually do things. That's where rubber meets the road. You get to experience health changes as you build up your body, and that's what we talk about today in today's episode, among other things. So enjoy today's episode. Please check out David DeHaas' podcast, the Whole Body Detox Show, and please share my podcast with those you care about. This is a grassroots movement. My goal is to help over a million people to get their health back, and I can't do it without your help. So you are part of that. You're the ripple that helps turn this ripple into a tidal wave to 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 525.  David DeHaas (0:08:34.737) Good morning everyone. David DeHaas, your host of the Whole Body Detox show from Living Waters Wellness Center, where miracles begin by healing from within, and today I have a very kindred spirit on the show today Ms. Ashley James. Ms. Ashley James has a podcast of her own called Learn True Health. You've done what some over 516 plus episodes and growing, does a fantastic job, so you can check that out. She's an entrepreneur, podcaster, author and we're having on because she just wrote an amazing book called, Addicted to Wellness. Ashley is a bit like me. You went through a lot of a health journey. There's a picture of it right there. A journey, much like myself, and we had to figure out how to save our lives, and she did.  So we're here teaching others. Amazing! She's also a massage therapist, a Reiki master, trained in neuro holistic programming, timeline therapy, hypnosis, nutritional coach. She went after it and grabbed all the different things to put them in her toolbox or wellness toolbox so she can help others, which is awesome. Ashley James, welcome to the show.  Ashley James (0:09:44.683) Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.  David DeHaas (0:09:46.763) Everyone has their unique story, from sickness to wellness, and you've got one amazing story. So maybe give us a little bit of background and we'll get into your book here a little bit.  Ashley James (0:10:00.718) It's like rags to riches to rags to riches. So when I was six, when I was really young, I didn't know any better and I thought this is just how life is, but I would always have a sore throat, I was always tired and I'd wake up in the morning unable to open my eyes because my eyes were crusted over and I'd have to peel away the crust in my eyes. They were sealed shut.  I just remember being really tired and the constant sore throats and that was my life until I was about six years old.  then my mom, she had been put on antibiotics for the common cold, basically, and ended up staying on antibiotics for several months, because this is just in the 80s, what doctors did, and I guess some doctors to this day still do that.  So she ran her own business and didn't take the time like a weekend just to relax or a week just to like let her body recover. So she went to prescription after prescription to overcome an infection and gave herself a wicked case of candida. She finally discovered a naturopathic doctor who actually did colon hydrotherapy in his clinic. This is Dr. D'Adamo the original, not his son, but Dr. D'Adamo back in the eighties had a clinic in Toronto, Canada, where I'm from, and my mom went to him, got some colon hydrotherapy and also cleaned up her diet and she started to get better. So she intuitively said, well, if it's good for me, it's probably good for my daughter.   I remember, at six years old, being in his clinic. I remember looking him in the face as he took a drop of my blood and figured out I was an O blood type, looked at my eyes for urology, looked in my ear, examined my throat because I had that constant sore throat.  he looked at me and he said you are allergic to milk, yeast, wheat and sugar. Stay away from them. Now, even at the age of six I knew that were the ingredients. Those were the ingredients in my favorite chocolate bar, Coffee Crisp. If you're from Canada, you know Coffee Crisp. To this day I can still remember what it tastes like. It tastes like what it sounds. It's crunchy, it's chocolatey, it's coffee flavored. Who wouldn't love that?  I said to him, when can I eat a Coffee Crisp?  he said once every blue moon. At the time I thought a blue moon was every month.  So I got excited, but I soon found out it meant once in a very long while. We came home and my mom tore through the kitchen, got rid of all the processed food, all the wheat, all the dairy, all the sugar, and we ate basically paleo, like what Dr. D'Adamo coined the O blood type diet, and overnight my sore throat went away. My energy, I couldn't even say it came back. I had it for the first time and I no longer woke up feeling sick. I no longer woke up with sore throats, I no longer woke up with sleep in my eyes. I would wake up, jump out of bed and just go, go, go, go go, just twelve hours straight and then go right to sleep and I had amazing health. That was from six to thirteen.  At thirteen, I rebelled and I started eating like all my friends. My mom was really strict around food, and out of love, but also coming from fear and just as a parent now I see how important it is to teach children why that food is good or bad and not just restrict without knowledge. So I ran towards all the food I was allowed to eat, and I gave myself chronic infections, type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, polycystic ovarian syndrome. Did I mention type 2 diabetes, and infertility. By the time I was nineteen, I was infertile and the doctor said, after doing a battery of tests, that I'd never have kids. So I was so sick from thirteen to nineteen. I created all these illnesses in my body and I was just feeling so horrible.  David DeHaas (0:14:06.600) Were you seeing Dr. D’Adamo then?  Ashley James (0:14:08.606) No, my mom switched back to an MD and that MD ended up killing my mom and that was a big wake up call for me. I don't know why she didn't. I guess he got so famous. He ended up not being in the Toronto clinic and so she started seeing another naturopathic clinic and maybe didn't like that guy as much.  I really wish she had stuck with holistic medicine, because she'd still be here today and my life would have been very different. I wouldn't be sitting here with you. But this is my story. We have to learn from our past and also appreciate our story so that we can appreciate who we are, where we are now and then build the future we want. So let's learn from the past.  Processed foods are how I develop those illnesses, and eating clean and then lifestyle changes and finding the right supplements. So supplements are like the mortar but the bricks. You can't out-supplement a bad diet. You can't out-exercise a bad diet right. You can't give yourself enough colon hydrotherapy when you have a bad diet.  It all comes down to using your food as medicine. You're building your body. You're building every cell in your body with what you're eating. So I had to dial in how I ate.  I had to go through emotionally, mentally, spiritually and physically the transformation to be able to shed those illnesses.  I did. I learned what I needed to do. There were many dark years where I would cry myself to sleep, where I was constantly hungry, just going on, the blood sugar swings, feeling out of control, and my liver was so inflamed that anytime I did go on a diet my liver would just stick out. It would be painful.    David DeHaas (0:16:00.329) Oh wow, I was like that at one time I didn't know what was going on. Ashley James (0:16:08.465) I finally figured out that it was heavy metal toxicity, probably because my body had a really hard time detoxifying. I've been MTHFR and so I had to really support gentle liver detox, support my liver and in doing that. But every time I went to lose weight, I could taste heavy metals in my mouth and that and my eyes would burn. I could taste heavy metals in my mouth. I think it's from the accumulation of secondhand smoke and drinking soda. I don't know, just any kind of exposure to heavy metals. We have so much exposure to heavy metals we don't even realize. If you also have a problem with detoxifying, then they get accumulated in the body. I had accumulated a lot and I’ve spent the last seven years working on detoxifying the heavy metals. I have a sauna, Sunlighten Sauna, which I absolutely adore and that we can sweat out the heavy metals gently. I have a PES, which is an ionic foot spa, a Platinum Energy System. I've had people on my show, Learn True Health Podcast discussing how they work, very gentle detox without having to do things like chelators. I do also love Chlorella, which there's only a handful of companies I'd recommend. One of them is EnergyBits, and I did have Catherine Arnston, the creator of EnergyBits, on my show as well. So those are really good episodes to check out.  so just through these different modalities I was able to detox the heavy metals.  But before that, back in 2008, when I was at the peak of my illness, my husband and I watched a documentary and he wanted to help me, but we just didn't know. You get to this point where you're sick, of being sick, but all you know is MD medicine, all you know is go to the doctor, they maybe do blood work and then they give you a drug and that just wasn't cutting it. I was just getting sicker and sicker under the watch of the MD.  I'd remembered when I was six, I went to holistic medicine. I had to go back before my rebellious era and remember what I had learned when I was very young from the naturopath. When we watched this documentary, it was about eating whole foods, avoiding processed foods, and eating organic. They had interviewed the original CEO of Whole Foods and he said vote with your fork, shop the perimeter of the grocery store, eat organic.  We did that. We didn't give up dairy yet, we didn't give up meat yet. We just shopped the perimeter so we stopped going down the aisles and we chose only organic. So some would call that like the pseudo paleo diet. You're just eating fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds. We were doing meat and dairy, but we chose organic and dairy, but we chose organic.  In that one month of primarily cutting up processed food and eating organic, my chronic infections went away. I still felt like crap, but I no longer needed constant antibiotics and I thought, wow, we did one change and one of my major problems went away. So what's the next step? We just took these baby steps where we did one change, kind of like a challenge, okay, for the next few days we're going to do this, for the next week or next month we're going to do this. We did one challenge of another and some things didn't work and some things did, but that's how we figured it out and we eventually cut out all dairy.  Dairy is the hardest, because we're actually chemically addicted to dairy, many people know this. For those who don’t, mother's milk,  cow milk for a calf, goat milk for a kid, in order to make the infant want to drink it, put forth the effort to find the nipple and suckle. God in his infinite wisdom made breast milk addictive. Then we take milk from another species, we concentrate it into cheese. The thing that triggers the brain, the addiction in the brain, is in cheese, in concentrated form. So we are addicted to dairy and that's the hardest thing out of all the animal products to kick is cheese and dairy.  So we decided to go dairy free, reluctantly, and overnight my husband's adult acne went away within three days. He had cystic acne covered his entire back. It was really gross. It was constantly exploding and painful and he was ashamed and never went shirtless because of it and he had pitting all over his back, his face, but it was mostly in his back and in his chest too. A hundred percent of his acne, within three days of removing dairy, went away. He had never in his entire life not drunk dairy or eaten cheese. So that’s a little challenge.  David DeHaas (0:21:39.233) We were supposed to have raw milk and of course there was Hershey's chocolate which was advertised heavily on the tv and I love my milk with my Hershey's chocolate. So you got pus with sugar and I always had acne, I had allergies, I had all this stuff and no wonder I had all these allergies. No wonder I had all this problem. My mother took me to what I call a drill, fill and build dentist, from age five on he's got two more cavities, Mrs. DeHaas.  Ashley James (0:22:10.520) Oh, you mean, you have a boat payment, Mr. Dentist.  David DeHaas (0:22:14.396) Yes, and here, have a lollipop on the way out. Some more sugar. Food is even worse today. It's really bad chemicals, just pure chemicals. Ashley James (0:22:34.067) We go down the cereal aisle. My mom was super strict about cereal in our household. There couldn't be any sugar in it and we had options like there were a lot of options for zero added sugar. I challenge you to find a zero added sugar cereal. I can only find one that's gluten free, also, because we don't eat barley and oats in our home. My son is actually allergic to them, but that's what Dr. D'Adamo told me: Don't eat those.  What I've seen with my mentors, I've been trained by several naturopathic doctors and they say 100% of their clients benefit from removing those grains because we're not cows. We don't have the stomach processing power to process, just like eating dairy. Eating cheese is not necessarily healthy for you, but we feel good eating it because we're addicted. So we keep doing it and we're habituated to the damage. You have to remove it for a while before you go. Oh wow, my migraines are gone. Oh wow, my stiff joints are gone. Oh wow, my vision's getting better. You start to see things clear up, the inflammation goes away and things you thought were completely unrelated, like, oh, my dry eye is gone, completely unrelated, but that's a sign of inflammation and you remove that food that is constantly insulting the body.  David DeHaas (0:23:56.078) When you went to Peter D’Adamo, did he offer colonics? Did he offer them to you as a child?  Ashley James (0:24:02.368) No, I was a child, no, he didn't offer. I’m really actually was interested in it. My mom would tell me stories because she'd come home from her colonics and I'd be super interested. I have actually interested in holistic health since I was six. My mom had a newsletter from Dr. D'Adamo and I would sit on my mom's bed and she would read it to me and I remember in the 80’s she read me an article he wrote about probiotics and I was fascinated. Acidophilus was like the only thing they knew about back then. I was super fascinated. She read another one about antioxidants and oxidative stress. I imagine the bullet pierces, the loose molecule bouncing through the body just like harming the DNA. He wrote this beautiful article about it and I was just fascinated. I was fascinated about how the body works in health, from that holistic standpoint.  David DeHaas (0:24:59.600) Think about this, in 1992, Newsweek, on its cover I was selling nutritional supplements and they were just starting to talk about free radicals. People would say, DeHaas, you're just a free radical yourself, that's a rock band, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean they just dismissed it like that's stupid. What are you talking about, free radicals? What's an oxidant? Of course now it's common knowledge. Most people do know what an antioxidant is, but it is very interesting how, in 40 years, 30 years, basically, we finally got to accept this.  Ashley James (0:25:35.297) The mainstream will catch up very slowly.  David DeHaas (0:25:39.903) The community, basically slamming it, saying, there's nothing to that, you don't want those vitamins, that's just a waste. That was crazy!  Ashley James (0:25:47.096) The same doctors only a few years before were recommending camel cigarettes. So we just have to remember how far we've come since our grandparents or since our parents' generation. The American Medical Association was fine with recommending camel cigarettes. So just got to like, take their advice with a grain of salt and then question everything, question everything.  One thing that Dr. D'Adamo did in his colonics that I haven't seen done anywhere else is he added a cactus enzyme that would break down the biofilm, and I was always fascinated about that and I haven't seen anyone else do that. So my mom told me I was like I'd ask her what they add to the water? One of her friends was from Japan, because there's a little viewing window to see what's coming out of you and they watched a giant worm come out of her, I guess from eating sushi or something.  David DeHaas (0:26:46.611) Yes, all the time, all the time. Wild Hookworms, liver flukes. We got a whole manual down here. A book of pictures of clients have snapped the picture when they're doing their colonic and as they've seen the bugs, or at home in the toilet a lot of time it comes out, we loosen them up and they go home and they poop. It’s fascinating.  You go do a test. If you go to a doctor and get a test, 98% of the time it's going to be negative because they only test for five. The bugs don't want to come out on a poop and say hey, here I am. They've buried themselves in the coastal lining and they're attached. You got to go after them with all things zippers, herbs, our pulse frequency machine and then the colonics to flush them out.  Ashley James (0:27:32.817) I wonder why they don't show up on colonic or colonoscopies, or do they? David DeHaas (0:27:41.224) I don’t know. I've never done a colonoscopy.  Ashley James (0:27:45.179) Right and nor should you. There's a lot of people that die doing just regular colonoscopies. You turn that camera the wrong way, they're piercing your colon. Also the anesthesia, you could die from the anesthesia there's complications.  David DeHaas (0:28:04.451) We've had clients come back and say, my friend, they did it, they pierced it or I don't know why, but they can't get it totally sterilized and they got a bug from a foreign country from the equipment and it killed it.  That was a my gosh story number of years ago, not four years ago, I guess not too long ago, anyway, yes, so there are some risks with that, but we do have clients now that come and do colonics, colon hydrotherapy before they go do colonoscopy, because it's just so much easier than sitting on a toilet all night drinking the toxic goop that they give you so that's good So you went on your healing path. Of course you said you're taking antibiotics constantly. Oh, that's so bad for the gut.  Ashley James (0:29:00.895) It is. Actually, Dr. Joel Fuhrman has a really good book. I had him on my show and he talked about this one fact that's in his book. I'm going to remember the name of it it's fast food genocide. Within the first few chapters of the book he talks about the cancer rates go up with every dose of antibiotics.  David DeHaas (0:29:26.646) Yes, we had a doctor here who went through our 10-day healing retreat. She has 10 straight years of antibiotics. She can only drink what I'm drinking today during this interview, cucumber juice. It tastes great too, but that's all she could eat. When she got done with the 10-day healing retreat, she could actually eat. She said, David, I ate a steak. Last night it tasted so good.  She’s doing colonics, a lot of colonics. In fact, when she moved to Boise, she told her husband I'll only move to a city that's got a good colon hydrotherapist. So they scouted out cities, they scouted us out first, but how sad.  I mean so many people have been like that, like you, they've been on constant antibiotics. My dad recently had a kidney infection like kidney stone last year and he had a stroke and he had some things going on and they just started giving him antibiotics.  I said and of course I'm not there, I'm five hours away and of course now what he's pooping? He's got diarrhea all the time. When I finally just got that changed around. Now we've got a constipation issue but he was like he was shitting his. I mean, he was just David. I crap my pants all the time.  He's so upset and he's afraid to go out in public, so he doesn't. and hasn't been out in public for a while and about six months and because of that he said, hey, I was able to fart today and I didn't poop my pants.  Good win dad.  <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:31:05.431) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So I have a family member who was on several courses of antibiotics and then got chronic diarrhea to the point where she also couldn't go outside, and the times that we had to take her to a doctor's room or something, it was like running down her leg. It was so sad and you lost all your dignity. It's just so sad. I had an interview about lactobacillus reuteri with Dr William Davis, who wrote the book Wheat Belly. I've had him on my show three times. It was the second interview I did and at the time I was recovering from PTSD, from losing my daughter, and I figured out, through the help of a friend who was a psychologist, what I was experiencing was PTSD. I'm interviewing him and he's talking about how lactobacillus reuteri is native to humans and should be in your gut but it is not in your gut in the modern world because one course of antibiotics wipes it completely from your system for the rest of your life.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And it gets passed down through mother's milk. So if your mother was on one course of antibiotics before you, let's say you've never had antibiotics, but your mom had antibiotics, then you don't have lactobacillus reuteri. So just think about how many people who are living in the modern world, who are not living in Nepal, in the mountains. They've never had antibiotics. I don't think we could find someone whose generations you could count, all the generations going up, who's not had antibiotics. So it's very rare to have lactobacillus reuteri naturally in your system, but it should be there. Not having it means that we naturally don't make as much serotonin for the whole body. Serotonin converts to melatonin. Melatonin is an antioxidant for all the cells, not just the brain, and that's just one of the effects. It also increases collagen production. So now we have a lot less collagen production. So it goes down the list. So if you take it and how you take it, is you make a yogurt out of it. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I figured out I have made over 200 batches of this yogurt with cashews. I figured out if you're allergic to cashews, you can try it with other like, it does not taste good. I'm sorry. The coconut version, the soy version, doesn't taste good. The cashew version tastes amazing. It tastes awesome and it's a 36 hour ferment. I have it. It's free on my website, just lactobacillus reuteri yogurt, cashew yogurt, on learntruehealth.com.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I made it for this family member and three days later she called me up and she said make me more because this is the only thing that stopped my diarrhea. It ended her diarrhea. So I went and did a little bit more digging and I found out that, obviously, we know your good microbiome gets wiped out when you do antibiotics. Well, one of the side effects is that chronic diarrhea and one of the solutions is lactobacillus reuteri. So we reintroduce the lactobacillus reuteri into the gut and it calms everything down. It gets the gut making serotonin again, gets the gut making collagen again, like it's helping so much. So it ended the diarrhea for her.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Then it had for me, surprise, surprise, it helped me overcome the depression. I noticed that within the same day I took it. The first one I made was out of soy milk, because I had a hermetically sealed soy milk so I just fermented that it tasted horrible but I drank it and I've never taken an antidepressant but I told my friend who's a mental health counselor after three days of drinking, I go, if antidepressants worked, I feel like I'm on one right now. I am feeling happy for the first time in over a year, I was just feeling happy in my body. So there's something to that lactobacillus reuteri and it's just one, one of the thousands of healthy gut microbes that we're supposed to have in our gut. So  there's so much to support the gut.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:image {"id":21264,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <!-- /wp:image -->  <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:35:33.815) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Think about the colon, five to seven feet, small intestine, about 25 to 30 feet, the surface area the size of a tennis court. There's so much surface area and all these little bugs, good bugs, bad bugs, and it gets tipped out of balance so easily by. You go to one doctor, you got a little infection, here's an antibiotic. Next thing you know, you've taken six rounds and in some cases people get C diff and they actually die from C diff. So now, there's actually companies paying you for good poop. Now they're making tablets.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> When I first got into this business, I met a doctor and he was so excited about what I was doing. True story. I've talked about this before on the show. His dad was dying in the hospital in California and he worked at the hospital here in Boise and his dad had C diff and his dad was just, just get me home, Mark, just get me home I just want to die at home.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So he's doing some research and he discovered I could put an implant back in his colon intestinal tract. Maybe that makes a difference. So he went to the hospital and he made his proposal. He says let's do a fecal implant. There's one doctor there from Europe that says, hey, no problem, I'd be happy to do it. We do that in Europe all the time. The doctor there says no, it's too much risk, infection, blah, blah, blah. He says darn it.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So he went home and he got a very healthy person, his daughter. She pooped in a bag and he took it to California, put it in a blender, blended it up and put it down his dad's feeding tube. He says, David, it was instantaneous, like bam, he was like a different guy. He says it was incredible. He's like you just saw a wilted plant in the dirt, dirt over it, and this thing just pops up like a plant staring at the sun.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> We went back home and he said he lived six or seven more months. He lived at home. He did die. He says too bad, I didn't get to it sooner.  Then that was 2009, we haven't been open very long since 2010 probably and within about two years, I started seeing more and more on the internet. Now you can actually buy poop pills. I saw an advertisement on, I think, instagram one day hey, we'll pay you for your poop if it's good enough, right, yes, yes.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:37:51.846) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So I interviewed Sarica Cernohous on my show many years ago. I've been doing this show for nine years, so this is probably like six, seven, eight years ago and Sarica is wonderful, she's still practicing. So she was down in Arizona I think Flagstaff and she was so sick, couldn't eat any food. You hear it time and time again, just have to do the elimination diet, then they can't eat anything, and she learned about how important the microbiome is. So she started to eat tiny, tiny, tiny doses, micro dosing, different live culture fermented foods and a variety. Variety is the key. You're talking, like less than a teaspoon at each meal sauerkraut, kimchi, whatever she made. You can ferment almost anything. I have an amazing salsa recipe in my book. Amazing salsa recipe little plug for my book. That's a three-day pico de gallo ferment and it is delicious. So she was fermenting everything.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:38:55.257) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Addicted to Wellness is the book. Where can I get the book, Ashley?  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:38:55.257) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> They can go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness. That'll take them to the Amazon link where they can purchase it. And they could just go search Addicted to Wellness on Amazon.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:39:12.708) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, keep going. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:39:15.314) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So Sarica Cernohous, she rebuilt her gut microbiome and now her people are trying to pay her for her poop. She won't sell it. They're offering her thousands of dollars per bowel movement and I'm like she's making three bowel movements a day like she could just poop and be a millionaire and I don't know why she's not selling her poop because, in a way she's helping people. I can also see her standpoint because she's giving into the system, that's not actually helping people. What's really helping people is teaching them that they can do the same thing that she did. So now her gut microbiome is in the top 99 percentile for the most diverse gut microbiome and what we have the average American has the Homer Simpson of gut microbiomes. There's very little diversity and our gut microbiome is actually making us stupid. It is dumbing us down.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:40:20.466) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ding, ding, ding ding. I've been saying that, preaching that, for the last couple of years. On the Talk Radio show we're on here, KIDO Talk Radio. You watch all the crazy liberals, republicans, all of them. I mean there's so much stupid being said everywhere and I've been saying it's our food, we got glyphosate that's killed our soils. We had Jim Zamzow on not too long ago talking about how we recover soils because they destroyed the microbiome. You see what's coming out of people's mouths. They can't think.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I remember we covered a gal speaking of that, to your point. She dropped out of college. She had a hard time studying. We meant to retain memory. We'd have to make notes for her Happiest gal ever. We'd make a nice list. She would do great work, smile, happy, glad to be here. She was going off. She's an LDS member and she was going to go on a mission.  I told my wife, I said this gal is sick, not sick. We're not sending a letter to go away until we do a 10-day cleanse for her.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So I gave her a 10-day cleanse. I remember day eight, she had to speak at her church and she was really nervous. She hated this. She did not want to speak in front of it. She was so nervous. She came back. I said hey, how'd your speech go? She goes, it went amazing. She goes, David. People come up to me and they say, "Whoa, where'd you learn to speak like that? You're better than any of the missionaries. She goes, “David, I can think”. She cleaned out her body, got her colon, small intestine healed and started restoring, got that transverse colon that's where 90% of your serotonin gets made. She’s a different person, different person full time.   <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:41:55.740) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I love it. I love it. Yes, so we can rebuild our gut, eat small amounts of fermented foods. I have a whole chapter in my book on rebuilding the gut  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> have you ship me some of your salsa and your ferment.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:42:08.143) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Have you ship me some of your salsa and your ferment. So are you shipping now?  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:42:12.750) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> It's easier for you to make it in your own kitchen because you can regulate, like, how much of each, if you want it to be spicier or not. It's super easy to make. It's crazy easy. The hardest part about fermenting is mentally getting over the fact that you're leaving things out of the fridge. You're not hurting yourself. The salt slows down any bad microbes, but the good microbes thrive. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:42:43.835) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Do you get a little like a little yogurt maker and use that? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:42:47.042) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Are you talking about the lactobacillus reuteri yogurt? Yes, so there's a type of instant pot that not all instant pot models. There's one instant pot model where you can manually adjust the temperature, because it has to be under 109, ideally between 100 and 108 Fahrenheit. So I set mine to about 203. I have a yogurt thermometer and I check the batch. Sometimes I have to, like, up the temperature, down the temperature. You don't want it to hit over 109 because then it kills the lactobacillus reuteri. You just want it to be over. If it's 100, good. If it's 107, good, so just that range.   <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> It has to ferment for 36 hours. In the last hour of fermenting it, the population doubles. At 36 hours, don't stop at 35. You got to be 36. I actually find it's easier to do it because I do these really large batches, and then it lasts for several weeks for the whole family, and so it's yes, it's delicious. Then, as far as making the salsa, you put the contents in a mason jar, put like a mesh over the lid and leave it for three days and it is the most delicious thing you've ever tasted and it's full of wonderful gut microbes.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:44:11.564) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, that's a big thing. We had a lady on our show. Clearwater Cultures met her in the show. She actually lives in Idaho County, where I grew up, and she makes soaps and different things. I went to her house where her little manufacturing facility is and she's got all these different big old pots fermenting, all these different things, a lot of different products you can buy from her.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> We interviewed her way back. That's been a couple of years, three years ago, I think, Clearwater Cultures, shout out to her. It came to her, divine intervention that we need to keep our microbiome on our skin as well. We think about our gut. That's fascinating, and that's your book, Addicted to Wellness, get it at learntruehealth.com? <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:44:52.616) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes. Learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness. If they go to my website also, learntruehealth.com, they'll see a little link to go get the book?  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:45:05.083) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> They can buy it directly from you rather than giving money to Jeff.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:45:10.220) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Actually it does. It directs straight to Amazon, because I publish through Amazon, which just makes it super easy for me and I like that we can use these days, like Amazon KDP, which is how you self-publish through Amazon. It makes it really easy to allow anyone to publish a book and then we get this information out there.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:45:35.564) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> It's sad we've got all the information at our fingertips today. I mean we got so much. We have these smartphones, so much information. I mean I go to bed at night. I'm trying to keep my eyes open and my ears open. I fall asleep listening to podcasts and educational information. I'm just an information junkie, but it's just so sad where most people are unable to learn everything I've learned. I've self-learned throughout my life, learned throughout my life. Back in the day, before fax machines, you actually went to a library but no, it is what we've got. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:46:11.468) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> We have information overload. And the problem is knowing what direction; because, for example, one of the things I do is I show people how to reverse diabetes and no longer have insulin resistance so I can guide you to no longer have type 2 diabetes and within three to four months you will not be diabetic on your blood work. You'll feel like a million bucks. You'll feel amazing. But then it takes about a year to completely correct the insulin resistance so that you now have insulin sensitivity and you can eat whatever carbs you want. You can eat bananas all day long. You can eat potatoes all day long. Your blood sugar will be amazing. You'll feel like a million bucks.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> You listen to my podcast. I will show you how to do that.  Then you go listen to someone else's podcast who tells you to be a carnivore and eat nothing but meat. Do the meat diet. Poop once a week. Carnivore diet is where it's at.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> The only way to reverse diabetes is to not eat carbs. So you get completely opposite information and the problem is that there's conflicting information for every single thing out there. So health is confusing. I believe there's also a concerted effort on the pharmaceutical front to confuse people because if we knew how to heal our bodies, we wouldn't need the most of the time   <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> My biggest advice is to question everything, no matter how good someone sounds, no matter how good I sound. Question everything. Be the most open minded skeptic you can be. If it sounds weird don't throw it away. Listen to it.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I dive into the information, dive into the studies, and then find the doctor saying the opposite.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Dive into their studies. It's wonderful to really look and think for yourself and keep that open mind. It's OK to look at the opposing information, just like I wish Republicans looked at the Democratic information. Democrats looked at the Republican information with an open mind.  We should all come together as humans wanting to build a better world, not just like. Well, I'm right, because my mom told me I should be a Democrat. It's just religion. People are buying into dogma without allowing themselves to learn.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So open your mind, take in new information and then be willing to try and experiment. I did over 30 diets, I experimented on my body and I noticed the result. I can tell you that carnivore diet looks really enchanting and it's so foul. I know a few people who now can only eat meat because of how they've eliminated everything and now they're stuck, they don't have the microbiome to handle themselves like they've got parasites and they're stuck and they don't know how to get out. The problem is, a lot of people get stuck in when you go down that rabbit hole of elimination and they don't know how to come out the other side and heal themselves. So best thing to do is to take in different sources of information and then be willing to experiment, write down your results and then try the different thing   <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So in my book I give challenges every week for 13 weeks. There are one to four challenges that you can try and then you write down and every day, morning and night, it still takes like five minutes in the morning, five minutes a night. You write down your results. It's guided questions. So there's 32, 33 health challenges. Each one builds a foundation of health and you try it and you experience it for yourself and you write down your results and you watch over seven days as your body transforms with that health challenge, and then you could choose to continue doing that health challenge or you could say, hey, this isn't for me, but each one it will transform you.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So my one, for example, is proper hydration, and everyone kind of just glazes over when you start talking about drinking water because it's free, because everyone thinks they are drinking enough water but most Americans are chronically dehydrated and most of the symptoms of chronic dehydration are being people are taking either over the counter drugs for or being prescribed drugs for.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So I give a hydration challenge and in that seven days every cell in your body will be fully hydrated. By the end of the seven days you will see miracles happen and one of them is, a 25% increase in cellular energy production. So if you go to stimulants, coffee, or sugar for energy at any point in your day, you likely are dehydrated. So do that one challenge in my book and notice that you will have a 25% increase in energy production. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:image {"id":21265,"sizeSlug":"full","linkDestination":"none"} --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:51:23.986) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I’m a little tired, my wife says to me, do you need some amino acids? Have some water. I go, my brain’s awake now okay, alright. Let’s go! <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> One of the things we do here, Ashley, we teach people how to muscle test. People call me. They always call me hey, Dave! Such and such is going on, says yes, and, remember, muscle test, yes, yes, that's power. I tell people the first day, you can walk away now and you can start figuring things out, if you embrace this.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I love having the book. You start out, Good morning. Today, I'm grateful for- you have gratitude. Gratitude is so important that our cleanse as well, and your goal intentions. So you have this journal, because what we all do is we forget I don't know.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:52:21.774) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> This is the page every morning during a challenge and every night during a challenge. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:52:25.575) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> What choices did not serve me, what challenged me the most. Good choices I made. You rank yourself good, better, best, what you had for lunch and dinner. We forget, we get going and we forget and I love it. Change your thoughts, change your world and this is not an overwhelming book, folks. This is really nice. I love the font size.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:52:48.309) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, I made it so you don't have to put on your readers.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:52:50.846) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I love it, especially since  I don't like straining my eyes, and it's very simple and you get into just going through week two, week three, week four, just a couple steps forward. If you miss a week, so what, just pick back up,  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:53:05.317) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes. Do it at your own pace.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:53:06.854) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Great explanation about high antioxidant foods. You did a really nice job of laying this book out. Other sweeteners, what's other choices you could use for sweeteners, cause we all like to have a little sweet taste.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:53:21.668) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, so every week we're choosing a different challenge, and you're talking about the week where we challenge ourselves to either go completely sugar-free or switch to healthier sweeteners as one of the four challenges in that week. Not every week is a physical thing, we have weeks that are about mental health, emotional health, in some cases, spiritual health. So there's physical health challenges, but then there's also mental, emotional health challenges as well.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:53:51.472) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, and you've got back here at Restored Home Hydrotherapy. You've got power showers, the cold contrasting showers, so you got a little bit for everyone. I mean I would say to listeners, you probably won't do everything, some things resonate, some things won't, but, in this health journey we didn't come with a manual when we were born, unfortunately, we needed a manual.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> This is a good way to start on that track and, of course, listen to podcasts, like what Ashley and I do is a great way to quickly and easily. I think back in the 90s if I would have had just a few of the podcasts were out there, I know I spent so much money. I probably spent 200 grand plus all the money I lost because I was sick.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Every Friday I would go away and go see my guru and go to the hot springs. Friday was just toast, non-productive, not to mention how tired I was. I remember how Huggins looked at me when I was doing my dentistry and he says I don't understand why you're even awake, David, your blood chemistry says you shouldn't be awake that.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:54:53.345) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> That was me too. That was me too. I had a holistic functional doctor in 2009 who did my cortisol levels.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> They always spit in the tubes all day long and she had been to the Olympics twice and her and I are still friends. She's in her 80s and she runs marathons in the desert in Las Vegas. She's amazing, I love her. That is normal, right, being able to run marathons in the desert is normal in your 80s and that's what we all should be aiming for.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> She looked at my cortisol levels and she said, your highest cortisol during the day is everyone else's cortisol when they're sleeping.  The only time I've ever seen cortisol this low was right after I did the Olympics.  She bounced back. That was my normal. She was one of my guides to help me get back on track and she actually gave up her medical license when she realized that being a doctor was a drug dealer. She wanted to be a functional doctor, so she decided to give up her license so that she could practice functional medicine.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:56:12.152) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> They're addicted to the standard of care.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:56:13.219) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Exactly. Her husband is a chiropractor and they run a clinic together and they're wonderful. Shout out to Dr. Jenny Ross Wilkinson. She's awesome. She showed me that my normal energy levels were everyone's energy levels when they were sleeping. I also couldn't process human language in the morning. I was so depleted, so exhausted. My husband talked to me and I actually couldn't understand what he was saying.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> So that was right around the time that we were doing that challenge where we went organic, but it wasn't until I met Dr. Wallach and he showed me minerals, and then I woke up within five days of taking the essential nutrients my body was missing and also cutting out. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> He has 12 foods that he had me remove which are the cause of stress to the body and also stop blocking proper digestion absorption. Then he got me on the right minerals, so just cleaned up how I was eating, guided me that way, and then everything came back online and that's when I decided to turn around.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> This is about 2011. I turned around and said I want to do this as my career. I want to help people get better, and yes, so it's been wonderful. So before 2011, I was doing neuro linguistic programming and timeline therapy with people doing coaching, largely helping people to end chronic pain and also end anxiety. I have a technique where I turn off. I teach people how to turn off anxiety, completely, turn off anxiety by getting to the root cause in 90 seconds and then so for many years I was helping people on the emotional, mental level, but I didn't have the tools for physical. So that's the book. The book is everything that I learned, that it builds the foundations of your health, and done in a way that's so fun. No matter how busy you are, you can plug into this book five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, whatever you have, and you will be able to build your health as a result.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:58:22.883) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> And you can't complete a journey if you don't start taking a step, guys, and you've only got one body, one time on earth, to make this journey. How well do you want to live?  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Live your best life, and this is a great tool to put in your wellness toolbox, as we call it, is having a little guide here to guide you through this, with some great suggestions about hydration and everything. It’s very complete. This thing about  keeping yourself accountable because we all forget  we get busy, we get stressed. This thing about keeping yourself accountable because we all forget  we get busy, we get stressed. Next thing you know, you're grabbing a soda or a beer and sucking down some glyphosate or whatever, because you get stressed.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Well, what if there was a tool? What if you had a tool in your toolbox you could pull out to counteract that? You're all going to mess up, but I did many, many times.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (0:59:15.378) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Also because you track your symptoms in this book easily. It's a fun and easy way of doing it. You'll see your progress every month. We do a monthly check-in and you actually see your progress. I have had two clients on separate occasions both forget that they had chronic migraines because once I helped them get healthy again, they forgot. That's why they came to me in the first place and then I asked them both two different people on separate occasions. I said how, how are your migraines? They said what migraines? I got their migraines gone by them following the steps. So we forget sometimes.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (0:56:53.431) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I've interviewed people after 10 days and I said well, what did you experience? They go through all these things. I said wasn't there something else? Was there something else? This one gal I remember the reason why she came to me because she couldn't squeeze her hands. I say remember this. I'm squeezing my hands. She goes  yes, I forgot about that one. That was really big.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (1:00:13.995) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Wow! Can’t write, can’t drive, couldn't open doors, couldn't put on clothing, but then she forgot because it came back. This is what happened. The part of the book is like checking in and being like, for example, this water challenge really is working because, wow, now I'm pooping three times a day or now my headaches are gone or now my stiff joints are gone. Now I have more energy. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> You look back, can you remember what you felt like seven days ago? No, can you remember when you ate two days ago? No, like we don't. We don't necessarily remember how we felt. So when we make health changes, a lot of times it's like throwing arrows in the dark and we forget to keep doing the healthy thing. Keep doing the new habit, because we forget how good it made us feel and how it's helping our body be healthy. So that's why the book is so important to help you track that, so you can check back and go, Oh, I really should keep doing this new health habit, because it is making such a profound difference.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (1:01:17.248) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, it's awesome. Addicted to Wellness. The healthy addiction 12-week workbook for creating a lifelong love of wellbeing. Guys, once you go two or three steps forward, half a step back, no big deal, just keep trudging forward.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Have yourself a way to kind of keep yourself accountable. Learn something new every day and let's get those bodies detoxed and back to wellness. Ashley, thanks for being on the show. Is there anything you want to add?  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (1:01:40.848) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Oh, I love being here. I also think listeners should check out the interview that you had on my show, which was amazing and I loved it. So listeners can go to learntruehealth.com, use the search function, anything you want to search. I think I just published 520. So, yes, we've got lots of interviews with amazing experts. <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (1:02:03.587) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I’ve around 200 something <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (1:02:06.924) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Well, just keep going, just keep chugging along. I had a mentor who when I started had over a thousand. So I was like, oh, thousands, a good number to aim for. I'm halfway there.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (1:02:21.078) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I couldn't believe how many I've done. It seems like yesterday I started, now, each week it's always a scramble. I don't interview everybody every week like you do. I go solo a lot, so it's always coming up. I've heard myself speak and say this stuff over and over and over and over. So you're sitting here alone in the studio talking to yourself, always trying to keep something fresh and new and always staying up on it. A lot of good episodes over there, for sure.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (1:02:47.904) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I think, since you have clients in your clinic, even if they could come up with questions for you to answer, that would be great content. They could give you questions and then you could answer it in the podcast or you could even have them interview you and pick your brain, live. That would be cool. They don't necessarily have to be on video if they don't want to, they could be on the other side of the camera asking you questions and then you basically go live in a little classroom because everyone would be different. Then you don't have to preplan.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I know I would be curious to hear, like, how you answer things if it's coming from a client who's sitting there. The best interviewer is someone who's genuinely curious, and that has been my gift, apart from God's divine guidance, when I interview people, I'm just genuinely interested because I was sick and suffering and I got that my health got better, and I'm always looking to learn and help myself.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> The purpose of my show, as is the purpose of your show, is to reach as many people as possible and to help them learn what it is to achieve true health, and that's why I named my podcast Learn True Health, because it is about this journey of learning what it is to achieve true health and how to get there and how to build your true health, and that's mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> As a fun side note, I had a client who says he was born with the gift of seeing angels and guides and he's Catholic and he says he would be in church and he would see angels in the church. I think it's phenomenal and he has some amazing information. We were actually I did a live interview with him and I was in his office, and when I hit record, he goes like you were just surrounded by angels guiding you.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> He goes like all of a sudden they just came and I was like you know what so many times people compliment me and being a good interview, I don't even think like I'm there. I feel like I'm just a listener of my own show and I'm a fan of my own show, but when I'm sitting there interviewing, I feel like I'm being guided when it comes to asking questions. So the questions pull out the information, and the information is what we're here for, right. So you're a great interviewer and a great guest and it was wonderful having you on my show and it was wonderful being on your show, so thank you.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (1:05:22.714) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Yes, thank you as well. So, yes, I always just say a prayer. Give me the right words. That's my prayer. Give me the right words I need to say, and then I just go.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I love it pretty well, I do. I love making notes, I do. Now I've started scripting more  things.  you'll be, I'll be laying there at night and things will pop to my head go, oh, that'd be a great one, that's some great questions, then y'all remember that one and of course, no, don't remember you will not remember it, I've got better speaking the phone like no, and we got it.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Ashley James (1:05:54.414) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I don't actually prepare ahead of time for my interviews because when I'm scripted or when I have a bunch of questions written down, I'm too much in my head, I get discombobulated. When I'm present in the moment with a guest, I'm just super curious. I just want to pull the information out of them. I want us to extract and learn as much as we can from that person, so I'm way more present to them. Then the questions come to me and so many times my listeners say that was you just asked the question that I was on my mind. You said exactly my question. I can't tell you how many times people have said that to me. That's where divine guidance comes in which is really exciting.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> David DeHaas (1:06:34.356) <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I just did an interview not too long ago and I read the book and I read everything and I wrote down all kinds of questions and then, of course, I got an interview and then the questions were there and we just started rolling.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> I got done. I looked down and went, oh, I hit them all. I didn't even look at them. Well, what a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you so much. Ashley James, Addicted to Wellness. Get it at learntruehealth.com for a slice of Addicted Wellness, or go to Amazon and put in the search terms. Get the book and start your journey towards wellness. Until next week, my friends have a blessed week.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Outro: <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Are you tired of guessing your way through supplements, feeling like each choice is just another shot in the dark? Unlock your health potential at takeyoursupplements.com. Here, we don't just sell supplements; we customize wellness. Connect with a true health coach who tailors your nutritional path based on your unique health goals and challenges. From fatigue to vitality, from confusion to clarity. Start your transformation today. Visit takeyoursupplements.com and discover how feeling amazing is just one free consultation away. That's takeyoursupplements.com.  <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Get Connected with Ashley James <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Addicted to Wellness book <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Website <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Facebook <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Facebook Group <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Instagram <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> TikTok <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> Twitter <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> YouTube <!-- /wp:paragraph -->

Check Out My Latest Book: Addicted To Wellness https://www.learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness   Get The Minerals Your Body Needs: TakeYourSupplements.com https://takeyoursupplements.com   Dr. Glenn Livingston's Free Book Defeat Your Cravings: https://www.learntruehealth.com/defeatyourcravings   Check out Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson's Free Masterclass: https://brightlineeating.com brightlineeating.com   524: Achieve Peace Over Food with Neuroscience https://learntruehealth.com/achieve-peace-over-food-with-neuroscience   Susan Peirce Thompson, Ph.D. is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester and a renowned expert in the psychology of eating. She is President of the Institute for Sustainable Weight Loss and the founder of the worldwide Bright Line Eating movement. Her first two books, "Bright Line Eating: The Science of Living Happy, Thin, and Free," became New York Times bestsellers and instant Hay House favorites. Her work weaves the neuroscience of food addiction with powerful insights from Positive Psychology, IFS, and 12-step Recovery to outline a roadmap for achieving true integrity and self-authorship around food. The Bright Line Eating mission is to help one million people around the globe discover lasting food freedom and have their "Bright Transformations" by 2025.      Join us for an enlightening journey with Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson as we explore the intricacies of overcoming food addiction and achieving wellness. This episode provides a wealth of insights and practical tools to help you gain control over eating habits and cultivate a healthier relationship with food. We discuss the concept of Bright Line Eating, a program that emphasizes clear, unambiguous rules to resist temptation and maintain a structured approach to eating. Discover how this method, inspired by Roy Baumeister's work on willpower, can help you achieve consistent results and prevent the shame spiral often associated with poor eating choices.   Highlights: Establishing Bright Line Eating Guidelines  Qualifications vs. Appearance in Natural Medicine  Understanding Food Addiction Patterns  Silencing Addiction Brain During Cooking  Teaching Healthy Food Choices to Children  Food as a Poor Proxy  Food Temptations and Self-Control Self-Soothing and Addiction Differentiation  Thyroid Issues and Weight Loss Success  Intro: Hello True Health Seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I have some quick things I need to share with you in regards to this episode. So for those listeners, I do the exact same thing, so I don't blame you. For those who like to skip it, skip the intro, let's just jump  into the interview. Don't do it. I'm here to share something with you.  So this episode today I actually recorded it a while ago and then Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson and her team reached out to me and asked me to hold off on publishing it because they were about to launch and they hadn't launched the membership yet, or there was something. There was something that they were going to launch with a book or something, and it kind of got put to the side and I just kept going and kept doing interviews and publishing. Then she reached out to me and said, hey, I'd love to do another interview.  I was, oh well, we haven't published the first one. I've been actually really excited for a while to publish this one, and so I'm publishing this one first and then I'm going to publish the one I just did with her, which both of them are valid and they build on each other.  If you are looking for real results-based tools to overcome food cravings, food addiction, at any time where you feel you're not in control of your cravings or your eating, or if you have been struggling with weight loss and if you feel  sometimes you can control food, but then there's other times where you end up getting two dinners or you kind of think back and you go geez, I actually ate multiple meals today, more than three. I had two lunches, two dinners and then a snack or some.  Food addiction shows up in different ways for different people. But if you don't feel in control and it doesn't have to be all the time but if there's some time where sometimes it's late night eating, sometimes we choose to skip meals and then we feel we're stuffing our faces late at night. So if you ever feel  this lack of control or that you're constantly thinking about food and you'd feel you don't have peace around food and peace in your body and you want to get to a healthy weight and a healthy relationship with food, this episode is for you.  In addition to this episode, definitely tune in for my part two of this interview with Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson, which will be published soon, and I also want to share that I have a few other resources. This is something that I'm very open about in the show that I have for years. Been working on my relationship with food and I've come a long way actually, just editing the show today and cleaning it up in order to publish it.  I was listening to what I shared and some problems I'm still struggling with and some problems I've actually overcome even in the last few months since we had this episode. So it was really neat to hear that I have made strides and we're always growing, and sometimes it's hard to recognize how much we have grown just because we're always thinking about what we don't have. When you take an account of where you were and where you are now, you actually see how much, how far you have come, and that's something that I focus on in my book and I'd love for you to get my book. I love the title because I've been healing and growing from my own addiction brain and what I love about my book is that we harness the power of addiction in a positive way and get addicted to wellness in a good way, in a way that is sustainable and balanced and healthy and really motivating.  So my book is fun and light and super informative and you can pick it up and do it five minutes a day, ten minutes a day. I just today had a reader tell me that they picked up the book and just in the introduction it motivated them to go from walking to jogging and they increased their miles and they feel they're back on track in their fitness routine just by reading the introduction. They found it so rewiring for their mindset and that's so cool. It's exactly what I intended.  So definitely check out my book, learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness because as we're working on reframing and restoring the negative addictions, we can also build positive ones, ones that get you jumping out of bed, going, man, I am craving that walk or that swim or that bike ride, or I'm craving that green smoothie, or I'm craving my mental wellness and the things I do for my emotional, mental, spiritual or physical wellness.  That's such a positive mindset to move towards and focus on what you want versus constantly battling what you don't want. That's the thing we kind of get bogged down into when we're learning to heal from addiction. We focus on a lot of what we don't want. I don't want to be tired, I don't want to be cranky, I don't want to be craving, I don't want to be constantly saying no, I don't want to. I wish I could just have peace, , I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't. So anyone who is looking to work on addiction or has been working on addiction, you'll find that it just kind of gets exhausting and we tend to really beat ourselves up and when you get my book, Addicted to Wellness, it's so much positive reinforcement, but not that sickly sweet, just kind of sugarcoating a mud pie. It's legit getting deep inside yourself and realigning your focus to be on what you want and moving towards what you want and then having these small wins that really build momentum and get great dopamine hits from those small wins. So check out my book. I'd love to actually hear what you think of it as you go through it. Please feel free to reach out to me. You can email me ashley@learntruehealth.com. You can also come to the Facebook group Learn True Health Facebook group. You can also leave me a five-star review on Amazon. I will totally read that and to get the book you can go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness. There's another book I really want you to know about and it's free, one of my favorite guests of all time, Dr. Glenn Livingston. He also teaches overcoming food cravings and food addiction in a slightly different way, but it's interesting how there's crossover between Dr. Glenn Livingston and today's guest and yet I think it's really a good idea to learn from both of them. So you're going to get the message on a deeper level and I feel that they really complement each other. You can check out his free book called Defeat your Cravings and it is a great book. It's a workbook. There's no space in the book to fill out anything, but you can have a journal beside you as you read it and you could even just be reading it on your phone, digitally, and you could go to learntruehealth.com/defeatyourcravings to get that free book.  I love his interviews. We've had him on the show several times. I've been on his show, so that's Dr. Glenn Livingston, and I have several other episodes with different guests touching on this subject of ending food addiction and healing that part of us. But it is the ongoing process where we're building our strengths and I love that all the guests that I've had give us different tools that fill this wonderful tool belt. So you can go to learntruehealth.com and type in addiction or you can type in food addiction and you'll see a lot of episodes pop up. Chef AJ is one of my wonderful guests where she shares her story of overcoming and what she did to get there and what she teaches. She teaches a way of cooking and eating for those who have food addiction. So all those guests I feel complement this picture and Dr. Susan Pierce Thompson, coming from the neuroscience background, has figured out a way that gets such great results. You're going to love today's interview and be sure, obviously, to keep listening. Make sure you're subscribed and getting notifications so when my next episode comes out with her with the updates that you will have it. Enjoy today's interview. Please share it with those that you know want to have inner peace when it comes to their relationship with food and their relationship with their body.  Ashley James (0:08:56.892) Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 524. I am so excited for today's guest. We're handling a topic today that most of at least America, most modern countries are struggling with this problem. So pretty much you throw a rock, you're going to hit someone who's going to want to hear what our guest has today.  Reading about everything you do, and especially the research, I got to tell you there's a part of me that's like, this really sounds too good to be true. So I can't wait for you to show us that it actually is true and how amazing it is the work that you're doing.  Dr. Susan Pierce Thompson, welcome to the show. Now you have a PhD and you're a professor and you're a researcher. I want to dive  in. What is this amazing thing that you have created that is going to help impact over a million lives?  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:10:06.525) Yes, Ashley, thanks, it's so great to be with you. It's called Bright Line Eating, and it's an approach to food and eating and life that it's pretty radical, it's pretty unusual, and I basically take everything you ever heard about how to lose weight and I turn it on its head, which if you just think about it even superficially makes so much sense because if you look out there, half of Americans are trying to get their eating in check and lose wait. Obesity keeps climbing unchecked and just climbing and climbing, and climbing, with a ferocity that's just horrifying and our collective solution to it is, let's normalize bigger bodies, and just stop hating ourselves and fat shaming each other but really the problem is bad, health-wise, mobility-wise and nothing is working, nothing is working. People are trying all kinds of things and nothing is working. I've just got a very different approach and the research shows it's phenomenally effective. So, yes, I look forward to talking about it with you, and I know you go deep in these, in these episodes. So, yes, yes, exactly, here we go.  Ashley James (0:11:24.969) Yes, well, let's start by understanding a bit more about you and how you and so are you the inventor of bright line eating? Did you name it?  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:11:34.414) Yes. Well, I mean, I don't know what your spiritual beliefs are, but it felt to me like it named itself. I don't know if God named it or whatever. I was in my morning meditation, 18, 19 years now. I've been meditating for 30 minutes every morning, and I was meditating on January 26th, 2014 and  suddenly, a booming, clear mandate, was it just filled my meditation, write a book called Bright Line Eating, and I'd never heard the words in that order before. I don't think anyone had.  I knew what they meant, though, because I had been reading a book recently before that called Willpower, by Roy Baumeister, who's a very venerated psychologist just a really well-published, well-cited psychologist and he wrote this book called Willpower, and toward the end of the book, there was a chapter on using bright lines to resist temptation. So he was talking about Eric Clapton and sobriety and a bright line for alcohol. So a bright line is a legal term. It's a clear, unambiguous rule that you just don't cross. It's a standard that you apply consistently to get consistent and reliable results. So, in the temptation domain, if you're going to be the designated driver, you'll be better off that night saying I'm not going to drink any alcohol. That's a bright line. As opposed to gee golly shucks. I'll be sure to drink moderately tonight, which is a very fuzzy line and you never really know if you've crossed it , and so you could end up getting in trouble with the I'll be sure to drink moderately approach.  Ashley James (0:13:18.461) Yes, so after dinner I brush my teeth and floss and then, three hours later, if I'm hungry, I say, nope, I brushed my teeth. I'm not eating anymore because I'd rather go to bed on an empty stomach and actually let myself sleep, and I feel so much better the next day than if I go, well, I can brush my teeth again. I'm going to go back downstairs and go to the kitchen and fix up a 9pm second dinner. Then the next day I feel UGH, it could be a super healthy meal, it could be, I'm going to go down and make a salad, whatever it is. I'm still digesting. When I go to bed, my body doesn't go into that deep, deep healing mode and restorative mode. So then the next morning I just feel it yes. Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:14:08.203) So you have a bright line. Ashley James (0:14:09.928) I have a bright line, I brush my teeth, I floss. Because flossing is a real pain in the butt, but also having to get, I mean, thank God I'm knocking on many items that I think are made of wood  now. I've never had a dental procedure, like drilling deep into a tooth and  root canal. I saw my husband get a root canal and that cured me of never flossing. That is my bright line now I will floss because I saw a root canal. You should just go on YouTube and watch a root canal. You will floss twice a day.  Then I say to myself I brushed my teeth, I spent the 15, 20 minutes it takes to floss and now I am not eating, after 6 or 7 PM and that's really helped me. The next day I feel better about myself. I woke up. I have more energy because, when I wake up, feeling gross because I ate late in the night, I beat myself up and that self talk, and then you want to go and eat things that are not as good for you to make you feel better. That little kid in you wants to go and and put your hand in the cookie jar to self soothe from all the negative self talk about the bad day you had before. So, yes, crazy spiral.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:15:35.115) It's a shame spiral, yes, and then you eat more to assuage that shame and comfort yourself and numb it out. Yes, I think that's a cycle that a lot of people get in with their eating. I also noticed that if I eat later into the evening, I don't sleep as well. My aura ring tells me. So I wear an aura ring and I like it. My stats aren't good and my brain will say, did something disturb your sleep last night? My heart rate will be up and it'll gradually come down over the night. But it takes hours for it to come down. I like to eat my dinner pretty early, I eat around five usually, sometimes six. Life gets lifey and sometimes I eat later. I don't care particularly, but I will notice I never eat after dinner. I'm like  you. I eat three meals a day with nothing in between. So meals are a bright line. The four bright lines, just so people know, are sugar, flour, meals and quantities and quantities so that you eat enough. Actually a lot of people if they're trying to clean up their eating they make the mistake of way undereating, and that's terrible. I help people lose weight, but I make sure that they eat enough, and enough of the  food. So I actually advocate a digital food scale, believe it or not, and I think I'm crazy, but, oh my gosh, look at the people, the bodybuilders and stuff people whose physiques are noteworthy. They're all weighing their food. I promise you. It's so easy to get off track, unless you're pretty clear. So, yes, those are the bright lines, but, I came real, if you asked about how I came to all this, and it really goes way back before that moment in 2014. That was the birth of Bright Line Eating, but there was a lot that came to that point, so we probably should go back.  Ashley James (0:17:27.093) Yes, let's go all the way back. Well, you have a PhD, let's go. Let's go all the way back. What motivated you? What happened in your life that made you want to go down this road through education and research?  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:17:38.899) I was into school as a kid. I had dreams when I was a kid of visions of going to Harvard and so forth, but what happened was I went off the track when I was a teenager by getting into drugs.  I like drugs because Iike to party and Iike to experiment, and my first drugs were psychedelics and I had a great,  mind opening, incredible experience that way. But I also  drugs because they would keep my weight off and solve my eating problem, which I already had. I already had a very addictive relationship with food as a kid and I didn't think of it in those terms, but absolutely I was addicted to sugar as a kid and eating in general. I weighed more when I was 11 than I weigh  now and I started to get concerned about it in high school. So I started doing drugs and the drugs escalated.  So by the time I was 16, I was addicted to crystal meth and that resulted in me dropping out of high school. Yes, a lot of drug induced psychosis, like real schizophrenia, real intense psychiatric issues. I stopped crystal meth, thank God that's the devil's drug right  there. It's really really nasty stuff and I never went back to it. But then I just got into cocaine, and then freebasing, and then crack cocaine, and so by the time I was 19, I was a high paid call girl prostitute and I was smoking up the proceeds in the crack house regularly, just smoking away my life. I hadn't been in school in years and I was pretty far from a PhD in anything. I hadn't even graduated high school.  So I had a moment of clarity in the crack house on August 9th 1994. I had my head shaved, Sinead O'Connor buzzed short and I had a blonde wig on my head and it was a Tuesday morning actually I'd been there in the crack house smoking crack all weekend long, and now it was Tuesday morning. So I'd been up awake for days, smoking and I just had this moment where suddenly I came to consciousness. I'd been awake, but I wasn't conscious, really, not really. I wasn't aware and I came to awareness and suddenly I just looked around. I was in San Francisco, where I'm from, and I was in this seedy, pay by the hour or day or week or month type hotel, just  really a nasty place. It wasn't my room, it was this guy, Joe Brown's room, and there was a couple kicking heroin over to my side. They were  twitching, like a fish on the deck of a boat. They were just flopping out from heroin withdrawal and there was still more crack rock on the table. So it wasn't that we were out of drugs or anything like that. I was paying for it for everybody like we had. I had a lot of money in that, we had a lot of drugs and my consciousness opened up into a clear awareness of who I was and what I was doing and what my life had become and it felt like such a creeping non-choice.  My life had just kind of gone that way. I think the drugs just gradually took over more and more of my life and I didn't really choose in the way we typically think of choices. I didn't really choose to end up there, it was just sort of, there I was and anyway, what happened was, I got the gift of a deep knowing that if I didn't get up and get out of there  that second, that is all my life would ever be. I would just go through cycles of addiction and drug use and prostitution and that was going to be the rest of my life. Not that I would die, but there's that I would keep living  that and try to quit and go back to it. I just knew if I didn't get up and get out of there  then that was it for me and I just grabbed my jacket and I walked out the door. The thing about addiction is it's so pernicious, and I didn't have any tools for recovering. But I now believe in a very benevolent, higher power, mysterious force of the universe. I don't know how it works or what to call it or whatever.  But by a fluke that night or by a miracle, depending on your point of view that night I had a date, a first date, with this super cute guy that I'd met at a gas station at three in the morning a few nights prior and he took me to a 12-step meeting for drug and alcohol recovery that night on our first date. I'm not kidding, this guy was a sex addict. He was four years, clean and sober, and he knew I was a call girl. He used to drive as a chauffeur for a call girl and so that's. He saw my pager and he knew what I was up to. So he was a sex addict. He wanted to go out with me and he took me to this meeting and I'd never been to such a thing before. But I got a 24-hour coin because at that time I was  28 hours off the crack pipe and I've been clean and sober since that day, so I haven't had a drink or a drug in 27 years, thank you God. What happened then actually was I just got really fat really fast,  I just my addiction, just hopscotch to food and before I knew it I was hitting Taco Bell and 7-11 for pints of ice cream and Safeway for boxes of pasta and English muffins and candy bars and I just ate my way into obesity by my mid 20s.  Meanwhile, I dove into academia. So I went to San Jose City College and crushed it there and transferred to UC Berkeley and crushed it there. 4.0 spoke at the graduation and I majored in Cognitive Science because I wanted to study the mind and the brain and I yes, I wanted to learn what was up with my brain, how my brain took me so far off the rails. So when I finished at UC Berkeley, I got into every graduate school I applied to. I wasn't done. I was still fascinated by the mind and the brain and I got into every PhD program I applied to and I ended up with a PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences in one of the top schools in the world, with a PhD in brain and cognitive sciences in one of the top schools in the world.  I did a postdoc in psychology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, for two years, and then I came back to the States and I was a psychology professor for 16 years and I taught a course. I became an expert in the neuroscience of addiction, and food addiction in particular, and for many, many, many years I taught a course on the psychology of eating and the neuroscience of food addiction. I lost my excess weight and finally, started my real food addiction recovery journey when I was 28, right on as I was graduating from finishing my PhD and moving to Australia for the postdoc right at that juncture is when I lost my weight, I was 28.  So I've been in a slender, right-sized body for me. I have no judgment about what size anyone else wants to be, but for me I had a lot of weight to lose to be in a body that felt right -sized for me.  I've been in a  in a right-size body, or I’d like to call it a bright body, for 18 years now and I published studies and I help people lose their excess weight and I teach people about the neuroscience of food addiction and then when my morning meditation, when God said, or the universe said, or I thought, whatever it was, however, the idea came to write a book called Bright Line Eating. That started the Bright Line Eating movement and since then I think 1.8 million people have joined the Bright Line Eating email list and we have a membership where people join and the program, the success plan, just  guides them on their journey. It's brilliant, it's really effective. So there, that's the story.  Ashley James (0:26:09.398) I was crying through part of that. I don't know if you could hear me.  Here it’s like, oh, we have this PhD. She’s like, okay, I was a crack whore. I love you, I love you. Okay, I went to this clinic with these three different naturopaths and one was maybe 30 pounds overweight, had a bunch of tattoos, dyed hair and she was super fun, she was dressed, super fun, and she kind of got the most clients. Then there was one that was a bombshell. She's a size zero. She's an athlete. There's not an ounce of fat on her, she's perfect, she dresses perfect, she looks perfect and all three of them were highly qualified doctors but she'd get the least amount of clients.  Then our doctor was kind of in the middle. She was kind of in the middle between the two of them and we talked about this dynamic and what “in the middle”, she told us, it's really interesting, but the reason why women would gravitate towards the woman that was had the tats and was a little heavyset I mean not unhealthy by any means, she was still within the range of healthy, because she was tall and she was muscular, but she wasn't  the petite athlete, which is what we perceive as the healthiest. The women wanted to work with her because they wouldn't feel judged and they'd feel that they were understood, because they're working with someone who understands them and who's struggled and or been through the ringer, and she's lost 50 pounds and kept it off. That's the doctor that they wanted to work with, more than the doctor who's never been fat never, never looked to have ever struggled with a body issue, and what's funny is that the skinny one was, I worked my ass off, I got up at 5:38. I spend 90 minutes in the gym, I prepare all my food. I work so hard. I've worked so hard my entire life to maintain this, but she looks like on the outside that she's never struggled, and so it's just interesting that from the outside, oh, this PhD, what's this PhD who is so uppity in the world of education? What's she know about my struggle, and here you are, I've been there and your struggles have probably been worse than the average listener, and so, now we can really relate . Gosh, I hope so. I mean now we can really really relate. Now we're like, okay, now she knows my struggle. If I struggle with cookie addiction here, you've had every street drug I'm like  okay, I can listen to her. Your struggle gives you credibility.  What really hit me was just yesterday I was listening to I don't know if Jacob Israel on YouTube. My husband turned me on to his really interesting Christian perspective. He's kind of if you were into conspiracy theories, research, looking for signs and Christianity and he pulls things and gives really interesting perspectives in a beautiful way, like very heartfelt messages. But he said something yesterday and it really struck me as you were talking. He says your low point, the lowest point, if someone who's listening is struggling and at their really low point. You have to remember that is your testimonial, because some people are suicidal and in this last year and a half I've been through one of my lowest points in my life. Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:29:47.533) Yes, I think a lot of us have. The last couple of years have been hard.  Ashley James (0:29:51.539) I lost my daughter during childbirth and she died. She died four minutes before she was born and I got to hold her for hours. The medical examiner came and was going to take her away and I'm like, nope, I got to hold her for hours and hours and I can still feel her and hold her in my arms and she'd be 15 months old  now.  So in this last year, I gained 40 pounds with struggling with the hurt and working through it. I'm working through it. Then, since about March, I've lost, I think, 11 or 12 of those 40 pounds. So I'm on my way back down and I'm being intentional and making that bright line, brushing my teeth and then saying, nope, no more food. Because at night, when things are quiet, that's when the emotions kick in. I've just and I've noticed this with my clients as well, but that's really when we do most of our comfort eating because during the day, I can not eat all day long. I get super busy. I'm a crazy busy mom  and then it's at night that it's where we can eat three dinners through the course of four hours .  So, yes, when he said your lowest points are testimonies you have to remember, for those who are struggling or maybe in your future struggles, when you're at your lowest point, you can't see a bright future, you can't. So when you were in that crack house or whatever you were in that moment, those low points, that's your testimonial to the people now that you're helping, so that for me like, I'm coming out of my low point, I can help people. I can help people because I can share where I've been and where I am now. Look, we're going to have a bright future. You just have to know that. Your testimonials now, so rise up.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:31:53.573) Yes, I love that. It's so important. I think it's the 12 step model of like you tell the story of going down and hitting bottom, and it's not just a story of, like you said, perfection, and look at me, I'm perfect. It's really struggling profoundly with something, hurting yourself, falling down again and again and again and then triumphing. It's the transformation journey, the point where things change and then you're heading back in a positive direction. I feel it's really what people need to hear is that people suffer. Life is difficult. I think that's the first line of M. Scott Peck's amazing book, The Road Less Traveled. Life is difficult. Period.  I think you're so right about that people and what we struggle most with is where our medicine is for others. It's that special medicine that's given only to those who've experienced that same difficulty in all its tragic fullness. Those are the ones that have the medicine for others, because you can't relate to someone who's never had that particular struggle. I have three children. I have never lost a child and so I don't have that medicine in that way for what you've been through. I had twins who were born at one pound and I went through one pound each and I went through four months in the NICU, with one of them almost dying all the time from health complications due to that prematurity, and so I have experience for someone who's going through that of okay, I know what it's  to to show up in the NICU every day and stare at your baby through a little glass box, and so I'm so with you. I so agree. Ashley James (0:33:50.914) Mary Lou Henner, I don't know if you know her. She's this iconic red headed actress. She was in Taxi. She has a photographic memory. She actually has not only photographic memory. She can remember the date. Let's say, you met her 19 years ago. She'll tell you the date and the time, what you were wearing, where you met, the weather, what was in the news with the headlines.  It's crazy! But I've actually spent some time with her, a few times, and she has this great story which, I'll sum it up, is choose your heart. No matter what you're going to do, it's hard. It's hard to like going out and eating junk food is hard, it's the instant gratification, but then, the next day, I feel poopy and that's that's hard, and then I beat myself up and so it's, choosing the foods that you're addicted to is hard, just like choosing the drugs.  Going out and buying drugs and alcohol and getting sloshed, that's hard. You're choosing instant gratification, but you're hurting yourself, so that's hard. Choosing not to do it, that's hard. So she goes, it's going to be hard. All your choices are hard. Choose your hard. Be cognizant of choosing the hard that's going to lead you down the path you want to go and that there's so much more reward and internal satisfaction when we choose our heart.  Your program, which I want to get into the research because you could say you cure everything, but the proof's in the pudding. Prove it to me. What is it, Missouri? The Show-Me State? Prove it to me. But first I want to talk about this idea that people have lasting results. Anyone can lose weight on the grapefruit diet. Anyone can lose weight on the “I only eat three pieces of cheese a day”, I don't know, whatever but that's not lasting, that's not sustainable, and that's not healthy.  Most of the diets out there are not healthy or sustainable. But your program is designed to help people get to a point where they have lasting results. So why is your program different from every other diet out there?  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:36:13.087) Yes, great question. It's different in some pretty major ways, major ways. So first of all, we educate people about addiction and I just need to say food addiction is real. You'll hear out there that it's controversial, blah, blah, blah. It's really not to neuroscientists who study addiction in the brain, you can just hold the brain scans up. Here's the brain that's been eating too much processed food. Here's the brain that's addicted to heroin. Here's the brain that's addicted to cocaine. Here's the brain that's addicted to alcohol. It's the same. It's dopamine downregulation in the nucleus accumbens. So when you eat things like donuts, for example, what happens is too much dopamine floods into the brain and the receptors thin out, they down-regulate, they get less numerous, less responsive, and then you have to keep eating like that in order to feel normal, just in order to get through the day without your skin crawling.  So I teach people about addiction and the reality is actually not everyone is susceptible to addiction even at all. One third of people and one third of rats, one third of mammals in general are not susceptible to addiction, meaning they won't even get addicted to heroin. You can inject them with heroin over and over again, you can send them home after back surgery with opiate prescription pills and they won't have any trouble weaning off as soon as the pain is gone. Then other people get hooked. So one third of people are highly susceptible to addiction. Addictions of all kinds. One third are moderately susceptible and one third are not susceptible.  I teach people about food addiction, which is the same, it follows the same profile. So I have a quiz people can take on a scale from 1 to 10. It tells them how susceptible they are to the pull of these addictive foods. I'm a 10, God bless me. You might have guessed that already. But if you're higher on that scale, from 1 to 10, if you're up there on that scale, you're going to need a different approach. What you'll find is that when these people actually, that they eat one bite of dessert and they put their fork down or their spoon down and they're, oh, they just savor it.  They're like that, hit the spot, that's all I need. I kind of my head cocks to the side like a dog  and I'm just like, what, because for me I need to eat the whole thing and then some. The one bite of dessert experiment, it never works for me. It does not hit the spot.  Ashley James (0:38:57.621) Does it open up a gateway where let’s say you're at a restaurant, you have a little dessert, and then you go home and now you're making dessert because you don't have anything in the cupboard. So now you're like, because I don't keep junk food in the house, so I've invented. I'm going to take a banana and I’m going to microwave it or heat it or whatever. Then I’m going to put some peanut butter on it. I have these sugar-free chocolate nibs, like the ones that I use when I bake for my son. I’m going to put that in it. Now you put maple syrup on it. Now I’m going to microwave it. I just take a bunch of pseudo healthy things and I’m like, I have to make a dessert.  Well, I used to be addicted to sugar until I did a massive sugar fast. I would read labels. I wouldn't even buy a hot sauce if it had sugar in it and it was about 30 or so days. Then I noticed  the draw wasn't there for me anymore and now I can do the one taste.  I used to be the, I have to eat the whole thing and then some, and now I can have one taste and be okay. But if there was a piece of cake and I had one taste, I told myself I'm just going to have a taste and I had a taste, and if it got taken away I'd be okay, it's not in my eyesight, but if it kept sitting there, 20, 15 minutes later, I'd be okay, now I have to have another bite. But I noticed that my need, that urge, has almost gone away, a hundred percent, whereas it used to be. I used to be a 10 out of 10 for needing sugar, and now I could take it or leave it. It's weird. So I feel I've almost healed that part of my brain. Can you do that? Can someone recover to the point where these substances, no longer are a draw to them?  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:40:40.713) Yes, great question. So the way it works, Ashley, is that yes and no, or yes with an asterisk. So when you take the quiz so you go to foodaddictionquiz.com, you'll notice the instructions say I want you to think back to a time in your life when your eating was at its worst not a day, but  a stretch of time, a few weeks or whatever, and I want you to answer the questions as if it were that time, and so you would maybe test out as a 10. But you could take the quiz again as you are today and you might test out as a six or something, and so that would measure the degree of healing. But here's the thing, they say, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.  It is true, once a food addict, always a food addict. What that means is you will always have to be more vigilant than someone who never had the issue to begin with. For example, not keeping a cake in the house, because if it's there, you're going to eat it and then eat some more, and then you're going to rewire your brain before you know it for that pattern. So the way it works in the brain is that behaviors and addictions wire up slowly over time with neural energy. It's electricity and it forms fiber tracks in the brain, so it wires up the brain kind of like the electricity is water flowing over dry land and it's grooving a riverbed in the brain. So like the water flows and eventually it grooves a river and it can be the Grand Canyon. It can groove a massive swath of land away. Now, if you dam the water upstream, you can dry out the riverbed absolutely and not have any activity flowing through that old pattern at all anymore. But what happens is the dry riverbed is still there. So if you let water through, it doesn't take hardly any time at all to clear away whatever bushes or grasses have grown up and before you know it you have a Russian river again. So you need to be careful. There's a lot of lines of research that show this, that the brain remembers, and so you're going to have to be more vigilant.  But recovery is absolutely possible and I live in the world right now,  someone who has no food issue at all, I just have to follow a few simple rules to keep like the rules of the sort of I don't eat after dinner, I don't keep cake in the house, things like that, my bright lines. I follow my bright lines and I have utter freedom. I have three kids. I serve cupcakes and cake at my kid's birthday party and, Sir, I'll cut the cake, I'll get frosting on my hands and it’s like I have paint on my hands.  I don't have any urge to lick my fingers. I go to the sink, I wash it off, no issue at all, and it looks  like plastic to me. I don't have any draw toward it, but that's because I follow my bright lines. If I started to get involved again in a world where I ate cake and ice cream, I would be absolutely obsessed by it.  Ashley James (0:44:02.146) Now, something you pointed out earlier is that if we give up a substance. I'm just going to say substance, because it could be alcohol, drugs or food or pornography or sex or whatever.  If we give up the substance that we're addicted to. Oftentimes people trade it for another substance and they don't realize it, because it's socially acceptable for an alcoholic to then start eating donuts every day. Every alcoholic who's clean and sober I have known, is incredibly addicted to baked goods and sugar. This one man who was the boyfriend I had 20 plus years ago was a super, super nice dad, and he was always surrounded by halloween candy. It was January, how do you have Halloween candy? It’s August, how do you have Halloween candy?  He'd buy enough Halloween candy to last him a whole year and he'd be surrounded by at least  those giant bags of Halloween candy. He'd have at least two of them right by the couch and he'd always be sitting on the couch watching some kind of sports. He was a really sweet man. He'd smoked like a chimney. He was a destructive alcoholic, abusive, destructive alcoholic. He gave it up because he realized he was destroying his family's life and his life and he never drank another drop until the day he died. But every day he did copious amounts of caffeine, sugar and cigarettes, and so these other substances, just, from the neuroscience standpoint. He was still running the same program, just choosing different substances that were destroying his body in a slightly different way. It wasn't destroying his life because he was sober, but even when you're on that much sugar, you're not actually sober, you don't truly have control of your brain.  I had Dr Joan Ifland on the show, who talks about processed food addiction. What I thought was really interesting is that she talked about when we're in addiction, maybe you can elaborate on this, people have characteristics and they don't realize it. I'll just speak to me, let's say when I have PMS and I'm snapping at my family. I feel normal. There's nothing wrong with me, but all of you are suddenly pushing my buttons and incredibly irritable, you're irritating, all of you people are irritating me. Then a few days later, I’m oh okay, I was the one that was hypersensitive and everyone was acting normal. People who are within addiction get quick to anger, quick to blow a fuse, and it could be just that they have traded alcohol for sugar and now they're sober from alcohol, but they're still running the same neural programs of addiction. They're still chasing the dopamine having these highs and lows of dopamine, and they're still highly irritable, short fused with anger. That's what I grew up with. My parents, my mom especially, was incredibly short fused and so I grew up in a household where there was addiction, they were sober, but she'd be addicted to the weirdest things like red jujubes and then she'd come home and have some alcohol, but it was never to the point of slurred speech or anything like that, but she'd have red jujubes all the time, and my dad definitely had food addiction. So the two of them I'd see their personalities and the amount of quick to anger, quick to being irritable, snapping, so there's an experience that your family has around you when you're in that addiction brain.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:48:00.560) Yes, well, what you're talking about is cross addiction and it's a very real thing. I mean the dopamine receptors.They want their excess dopamine and they can get it from drugs or alcohol or food or pornography or gambling or any number of things. I think a lot of people, like  you say, quit alcohol and they go to sugar. I mean, if you think of the molecular composition there, what's alcohol made out of but sugar and grain really so the sugar and flour of baked goods is very molecularly similar. In the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous it even says a lot of us have found that some sugar will do the trick if you're having an alcohol craving, and so that's encouraged.    For some people, depending on how bad their alcoholism is, that can be a harm reduction approach. I'll just eat sugar. But you’re very right that it's triggering the same receptors and, yes, they want their hit from somewhere. I've been in recovery now for 27 years and the reality is that recovery is real and it's a long, slow process. Those receptors will heal faster if you don't deluge them with anything. If you don't drink caffeine, if you don't smoke cigarettes, if you don't eat sugar and you don't get into relationships with a bunch of infatuation, and new relationship energy hitting those receptors, that'll do it too. You don't watch pornography. But I certainly haven't managed to do that and I don't know very many people who have. But over time you can kind of step yourself down and wean yourself off. I'm in a place today where I am mercifully free from all addictions. I don't smoke cigarettes. I don't drink caffeine. I'm just in a state of freedom, but I'm not always there. Sometimes I'll be back on caffeine. My God, a few years ago I started smoking cigarettes again. I was outside a meeting and there were all these young, good looking people in a circle smoking a cigarette and I just bummed a cigarette. God bless me. I have three kids at home. My husband hates cigarette smoke and suddenly I had to buy a pack after that meeting and I smoked up most of that pack within the next 24 hours, I'd smoked up that pack. It felt like I wanted to puke. Now I was in a state where I was sneaking out of the house to smoke cigarettes and to get back in the house.  I had to sneak in the house, strip down my clothes, throw them into the washing machine, go into the bathroom, get into the shower, wash my hair, brush my teeth, just to emerge to see my family, and I would do that multiple times a day and my life got so unmanageable. Then I'm  out in the middle of the night smoking cigarettes in the snow, snowflakes falling on my head and I'm smoking eight cigarettes and then going back in and showering and washing my clothes, and then I quit. Here's the kicker, Ashley. I quit a few weeks and a month or two off cigarettes, free, mercifully and then I'm outside a meeting and I bum another cigarette and I went through that cycle four or five times over a year or two. I finally quit for what I hope, god willing, will be the last time, on April 7th of 2018. So over four years now without a cigarette, merciful, so grateful.  Ashley James (0:51:43.712) What kind of bright line could you create to not hang out outside of your meetings and bum cigarettes?  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:51:49.924) No, no, not a puff of a drag of a cigarette. None. The bright line is no cigarettes. So meetings are important and healthy and I still go to them, but no cigarettes. I read a book, I think it's Alan Carr's, The Easy Way to Stop Smoking, I think, and it really really helped me psychologically to just remember that what a drag of a cigarette does is it predisposes you to need the next puff of a cigarette, that there's nothing relaxing about it. Cigarette people who smoke cigarettes are more anxious, more agitated, all it does is make you need the next cigarette. So the part of me that looks at people smoking and thinking, oh, they have it good, they're just hanging out and smoking I think, no, no, no, they're tortured, they're going to leave that social circle and need another cigarette and another one and another one. I'm the one who's free. Thank God I'm free. That switch helps me.  Ashley James (0:52:41.120) If you look into how they used PR to transform smoking from being back in the golden era of Hollywood when everything was black and white. It was Edward Bernays and he's fascinating. People should definitely watch documentaries on Edward Bernays. I believe he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. Don't quote me on that. I think he was related somehow, maybe a cousin of Sigmund Freud, but Edward Bernays, he is the modern father of PR and back I don't know, maybe it was the 40s somewhere, this is before I was born. So this was back in black and white everything, and they don't have TVs yet.  Only the bad guys would smoke. So you go to the movies, it would be a Western and the bad guy, the bad guys with guns, chasing down the other cowboys with the Indians and all that stuff. The bad guys would be the ones smoking and I don't know, maybe the Indians would have peace pipes or something in the movies, but it was always this macho bad guy thing. Or maybe there'd be a movie about these car racers and it would always be just these cool bad guys, and so men were, oh, it's this macho thing.  Women were, ew, I don't know, I'm not going to smoke. That's manly, that's gross. Edward Bernays was hired because the tobacco industry realized they were pretty much missing out on half of the population. The women wouldn't smoke. Then what he did was he linked smoking to the women's freedom movement. You are free because women, they didn't have careers.  You could be a teacher, you could be a nurse, or you could be a homemaker, you could be a secretary, but yes, but until you have kids, then you have to be a homemaker and so, he linked it to you are free, you're a woman, hear me roar, you're so sexy, you're like Marilyn Monroe, you're so sexy, sexy women.  So in Hollywood, all of a sudden, all the sexy women who are free and jet setting and shaving their legs was a new thing, because women didn't shave their legs either and the razor companies wanted to literally double their sales. So all of a sudden they made women look like they were prepubescent by shaving their legs. Women never shaved their legs before that and they got to double their sales of razors, double the sales of cigarettes. Because they tricked, they brainwashed an entire civilization into thinking these were sexy ideals. But if you go a few years before, just a few years before, women had hairy legs and that was considered sexy, hairy armpits, that was normal and sexy. Women didn't smoke. I mean, this was in America. I'm sure women smoked in Europe, but it was just in our culture.  Because I don't drink alcohol and it's not because I was ever an alcoholic. I've never really done it. I was a bartender and taking care of drunk people just really turned me off alcohol. I mean, I was a bartender. I can appreciate a good drink, but I don't like it. This is nothing about alcohol. When I'm on vacation, I go to the bar or like you're at a restaurant or whatever and there's a bar there, I'll look at the pretty shiny bottles, and then I'll look at the menu and there's these fun looking drinks and I'm almost glamorized by the PR of alcohol. You're going to look cooler, you're going to feel cooler, you're going to be one of the hips. You're going to be in.  This is what's going to make you one of the cool kids, and I'm almost glamorized by the PR of alcohol and I snap out of it and I go, well, that's gross, it's not good for my liver. I start listing off this as my bright line. I can start listing off all the chemicals in a cigarette, all the bad things, how my body has to detox the alcohol. I could talk myself out of those things. But that little part of my brain is, ooh, that'll be fun, let's go on a bender. That doesn't sound fun to the rest of my body. But how much of addiction is influenced by the media? Like you said, I look at these cool kids smoking in a circle. I'm like, oh, that looks fun. That's the marketing you grew up with.  You don't realize it, but when you were a kid, the shows you watched had all the cool kids smoking. The movies you watched, I mean, when I watch old stuff with our son and old movies that I used to watch when I was a kid, and all of a sudden people are smoking and I just want to  turn it off because I can't believe how much smoking there was in the 80s or the 70s. And all the cool and hip kids and everything, I don't want that getting into my seven-year-old son’s brain but that's what we grew up with. How much addiction have you seen in terms of neuroscience is affected by, because it's like mirror neurons? It's controlled brainwashing by marketing.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (0:58:06.534) It is, and Ashley, I love the cigarette analogy. Then let's think about it in terms of food, because our society is in a collective food addiction trance. We have been so conditioned by the big food industry to think of food as celebration, as fun, as entertainment, as relaxation, as self care, as indulgence, as everything that's good in life. We're under the spell. They are pouring billions of dollars into our orientation toward food in that way so that when someone moves into your neighborhood, you bake them cookies or bring them a pie or bring over some food to say welcome to the neighborhood if you're a good neighbor.  We don't think about bringing over flowers, or fresh cut flowers from our garden, or apples off our tree, or anything like that. We think of bringing over processed foods. Just think about birthday parties and what you have to serve at a birthday party, or kids menus in a restaurant. The kids' menu is absolutely the most processed food, and we've gotten to the point where now two thirds of the calories that our kids are consuming are classified as ultra processed foods. They were born in factories, made out of chemical industrial ingredients and poured into bags. Two thirds of the foods that they are eating are ultra processed, and we've got a long way to go in terms of detoxing our minds about what food is and the role that it should play.  The reality is that food isn't the best connection, celebration or entertainment. As a matter of fact, it's distracting from the real connection, like when you're just eating and they're eating, and you're eating and everybody's just face down in the food. There's less laughter, there's less eye contact, there's less genuine connection. We're just all eating together, and yet most gatherings focus around food as opposed to things that would foster real human connection. We've got a ways to go, Ashley.  If you think about the role of food in the media, and especially commercials. The addiction piece comes in around cues. The addiction reward centers of the brain focus on the cues that predict rewards, the cues that predict a hit, the sights, the sounds, the times of day, the brand name, outlets and so forth and anyone with an addictive brain is going to wire up and be drawn toward those cues and then get their hit after that. So the media giants know it, the food companies know it and they market their materials. Basically, they put people in fMRI machines to make sure that both the taste formulations and the commercials advertising their products hit the addiction centers in the brain optimally, that's what they're testing for. They know they're hooking us and they've got us by the short hairs really.  Ashley James (1:01:34.244) I actually interviewed a food chemist. I think she helped make one of the Doritos, one of the flavors of Doritos, and she explained, because I was like, how evil are you guys, do you guys have  a secret evil cackle like an evil scientist? Do you put your fingers together, you clasp your hands and put your fingers together, they go, (evil laugh), that's what I imagine they're doing, and she goes, no, none of us have that in the culture. In the lab, we all geek out on how we can make these chemicals hyper palatable. How much sodium can we pack in? How much sugar can we pack in to get that balance, like you said, to hit those dopamine receptors to absolutely do maximum damage, to do maximum addiction, iImpact, and do it in a new way, in a new flavor.  She left that industry realizing how much damage she was doing, and now she basically teaches people how bad all the processed food is, just like Edward Bernays did to smoking, cigarettes were already highly addictive, now, the chemicals that they spray on it are even worse.  My husband said something yesterday about quitting. He said quitting Marlboros is harder than any other brand. I said why, he goes, because the chemicals they use, it’s like you're not just detoxing from just tobacco, you're coming off of whatever, all the stuff they put on. They get to put chemicals in those cigarettes in addition to the tobacco. It blows my mind because they need to make them hyper, hyper addictive, as addictive as possible. Your food is the same if you buy it. You need to eat plants, not food that comes from plants. If it came from a plant. There's a room with a bunch of evil food scientists that want to make the food so crazy that it tricks your brain into needing more of it. That is sick because you said the cross addiction, let's say you get that bag of Doritos and now you've had the bag of Doritos and a few hours later now you need to come up with something to now get your dopamine up, because that jacked up your dopamine. Now it comes crashing down. Maybe it's 10 hours later, I don't know how long it would take. But now you're going to go for another substance. It's not necessarily to go for Doritos every time, but you might cross addict over to now you're going to pick up a pack of cigarettes, if you haven't smoked since college but now you're going to go get a pack of cigarettes, or you haven't had any while you have some sugar and now you're off buying some ice cream. Now the next day you're getting some alcohol. So that's the slippery slope is that when we use processed food, even if we're thinking we're using it in moderation, it is designed to mess with our brain so much that we're more likely to cross addiction into other substances.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:04:51.042) Yes, totally, and it's interesting what you said about plants. If you think about it, heroin, cocaine, sugar and flour, they're made the same way. Think about what a drug is, what makes something a drug. Where does heroin come from, Ashley? Pop quiz. Where does heroin come from?  Ashley James (1:05:08.952) I'm going to really get this wrong, but I think it's gasoline in the coca plant? Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:05:14.041) No, so cocaine comes from the coca leaf.  Ashley James (1:05:18.179) Poppies Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:05:21.622) Yes, yes, exactly. So cocaine comes from the coca leaf, which is a bush in the Andes mountains and hikers pluck off the leaves and put them in their cheek and chew them. There's literally a published scientific paper saying it's not addictive. It does make the inside of the cheek a little numb and it gives people a little bit of a lift, maybe, like drinking half a cup of caffeinated tea or something but it's not addictive when you just chew coca leaves. However, if you take the inner essence of that plant and then refine and purify it down into a fine white powder, you've taken a harmless plant and you've turned it into a drug. It's the same with the poppies. You can eat poppy seed bagels. If you eat a few poppy seed bagels, you will fail a drug test. You will fail a drug test, but  you won't get addicted, it won't harm you. But when you take the inner essence of that poppy plant and you refine and purify it into a fine brown powder, you've created heroin. This is what sugar and flour are too. I eat corn, I eat beets, I eat wheat, like wheat berries and boil them and it's like rice kind of. I eat wheat, I eat rice. But you take the inner essence of any of these plants and you refine and purify it down into a fine powder and you've created a drug out of a healthy plant. So that's what a drug is  by definition. That's how we make them.  Ashley James (1:06:56.029) We have to look at everything that goes into our body and ask ourselves, was this processed to make it more addictive? Or is this in its whole plant form? Because you could eat two to four cups of broccoli a day. I mean, besides getting a little gassy, you're going to feel great, and there's no negative impact on the brain. In fact, there's lots of positive impacts on eating, on eating vegetables. Okay, so we want to set up some bright lines in our life. Let's say not eat things that are made from flour, which is my addiction. I think right now it is pasta, and I'm gluten free, so it's brown rice pasta. It sounds so innocent, but it's made from flour and I know that is my addiction now, because when I think about cooking, I'm like okay, well, I'm going to start with the pasta and I'm like no, let's just eat brown rice and vegetables.  So I know I definitely get an addiction hit, when I get to have pasta and then when I just do the brown rice and vegetables, I don't get any hit. In the process of cooking food, I love cooking and I make these great stir-fried vegetables. I'm whole food, plant based, so I'm making these vegetable stir fries and the brown rice and everything, and my brain the whole time is telling me this isn't going to be fun.  I've got fresh ginger grated in there and I love using some stuff that makes it spicy. I like spicy food or I love curry. I put curry in there and I don't cook with oil. I'll put a little bit of broth at the beginning to saute or water, and then a spoonful of arrowroot powder at the end. It's made with stir fries but it gives a great mouthfeel and it's a prebiotic, so it's really good for the gut.  But the whole time I'm making it, my brain is telling me this isn't fun, let's go make some pasta to put with this, or this isn't fun let's go add all these other things that aren't good for you. The whole time my brain's like this isn't going to be satisfying, this isn't going to be fun. It's the addiction brain talking to me, yes, but when I sit down and actually eat it, it's delicious, I'm happy, and when I'm finished eating, I'm satisfied. Does your program address that? As you're following your bright lines, your addiction brains are doing its best to get you to break those lines. What can you do to quiet that chatter?  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:09:45.519) Yes, great question. So, way back in this conversation you asked what's different about Bright Line Eating? So I started talking about first, we teach people about the addiction and I think we've covered that food addiction is real. Not everyone is equally affected. But now I think we've come to the point where it's like, what do you do if you are affected and you've got that brain that's trying to hijack your eating pretty much at every turn? The answer is that a structured approach to eating is going to be the road to freedom. For people who don't need it, putting a bunch of structure on their eating feels just unnecessary and if you have an addictive brain, you might really balk at making your eating structure. But when you do it you'll find that you have freedom. So, just like you said, when I actually sit down and I eat the meal, I'm satisfied and I totally enjoy it and it feels great.  So in Bright Line Eating we have a food plan and we write down our food the night before. This is a big kicker. You write down your food the night before. Now we don't do this alone, we do this in the Bright Line Eating community. There's a membership. It's just a monthly membership. It's super affordable and it's really, really effective. So you get with a group of people. Every health attempt that is done with others is way more likely to succeed.  so you write down your food the night before and then you commit it. You can commit it to a buddy, you can commit it into the Bright Line Eating group community. We have mastermind groups and just different ways that people can connect up with others.  But you commit what you're going to eat and your food plan is categories and quantities. So, for example, you're plant-based and you're talking about cooking stir fry for dinner. You would have vegetables, you would have a protein in there, so you could have tofu or tempeh or beans or what have you? Nuts or whatever, and once you've lost the weight you need to lose, you would have a grain of brown rice or whatever as well, and a fat. So you could do nuts for your fat serving. You don't have to do oil or anything like that. But you've got these categories and certain quantities and that, so you would commit the night before. Actually, you'd be writing down I'm going to have 14 ounces of stir fry vegetables, I'm going to have four ounces of tofu, I'm going to have four ounces of brown rice and I'm going to have half an ounce of sesame seeds for my fat and sesame seeds are great in a stir fry, you'd have written that down the night before. What happens is, at first it feels like you could feel the parts of you really wanting to break out of that structure and balking against it.  Ashley James (1:12:43.909) It's like an unbroken horse, an untamed horse. My brain now is like, I'm not going to do that. You can't tell me what to eat tomorrow. I want the freedom to choose. That addiction brain is giving you the middle finger now.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:13:00.629) Totally, and that is a rebel part and usually if you have a strong rebel part of you, often that comes we get that, honestly. I don't know if you had a parent that was rather (inaudible – 1:13:13.353) Ashley James (1:13:17.420) Maybe you haven't listened to my episode, but I love my mother and she was nicknamed and I hope no one is offended by this and I love my mother. She passed away when I was 22. She was my best friend but she was nicknamed by other members of our family as the Nazi because she was so controlling. It was insane growing up in my household and I thought that was normal because as a kid you think your household is normal until you visit other people's households and all the other moms I'd visited. I was like, you guys are like aliens. This is so weird.  But my mom was so controlling around food. It was scary. She actually stood up in a restaurant once and screamed at me in front of everyone. It was very uncomfortable. I was 12, and I thought I made the  selection. I ordered the grilled fish with a side of steamed vegetables and a side of rice, because that sounds like something you'd order in a restaurant, and that's what it came with. I just said I'll take the fish, and she stood up and yelled at me. I was athletic. I did not have an ounce of fat on me. I did sports every day when I was 12. I was incredibly fit. She was so scared I'd be overweight because that was her mental thing for herself. So she projected it onto me. Carl Jung teaches us, we project our unresolved material onto our people closest to us in our life.  I get how much pain she had in order to treat her family this way, but for a 12-year-old who's already insecure, going through puberty, she stood up and yelled at me because there was rice on my plate, and it took me years before I was comfortable with eating rice. In whole food plant-based, they're like, eat as much rice as you want, especially if it's brown rice. This is healthy for you. I'm  okay, are you sure, though? Because I was told that rice was literally made by the devil. Incredibly controlling. So it's just the fact that I'm this highly rebellious part of me, which I recognize in a lot of my friends too. So it's interesting, the pendulum swings. If our parents are really really strict with something, then we kind of swing the other direction and become really lackadaisical with our children, and then the lackadaisical children then swing the other way and become very strict with their children. So we need to heal. We really need to heal so that we are more balanced with our children. I'm consciously doing that with food around my son, because I’m constantly catching myself being my mother, who isn't when they're a parent?  But at the same time, I want him to make good food choices for himself, and so I let him have a little bit of sugar and then we talk about it. What is it doing to your body? How do you feel? He doesn’t like how he feels when he eats too much sugar, and so he chooses not to eat too much sugar because he hates feeling sick. So, yes at age seven he's got it. That took me into my 30’s to get but being conscious of it.  So the fact that you said that because I've got this rebellious thing, it's because of how I was raised I imagine a lot of listeners do as well, and that's why I am so vulnerable on the show, sharing my what I go through, because I want I want you to be able to to come out and share how this works and how we can heal, because I know the listeners are going through the same or something similar.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:16:49.821) Totally, and this is probably a good place to mention that in Bright Line Eating we do our inner work on this stuff we eat over. There are reasons we eat. We're eating often as a coping strategy to handle emotions and life, and we do something called internal family systems work. So I don't know if you've heard of IFS, Ashley? Ashley James (1:17:13.295) I've heard of it, but I don't know much about it, so please go on.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:17:18.099) Yes, so it's often called parts work. So the idea here is that we have parts of us. We're not just one unified consciousness with one unified desire and one unified way of reacting to the world. We have a highest self, our authentic self, which is we know we're operating from that place.  They call it the eight C's when we're calm and clear and compassionate and confident and connected and curious and courageous and creative, that's when we're in our authentic self. When we're anything other than that, calm, clear, connected, compassionate place when we're anything else, we're in a part of us. So when there was a part of you that was raising up giving me the middle finger for talking about writing down food the night before, that's a part that's not calm, clear, connected, curious, compassionate. It's rebellious.  So there are different parts. There's wounded parts, which we can all relate to, wounded parts, and then there's protective parts. The rebel part is a protective part. It's protecting the wounded, the wounded child who was over controlled as a kid, and a rebel protector part came in. So we have protective parts that are trying to get ahead of our wounding. So a rebel part would be a manager part that's trying to make us not be wounded in the future by over controlling influences, and other types of manager parts are controlling, trying to organize life and the world to be just so a lot of us with food issues have a food controller part that tries to restrict or control our food to the extreme, get all the ducks in a row, in order to help us lose weight or to get our food together and that controlling part is often in polarization with a food indulging part, and the indulger protectors are swooping in after we're wounded, trying to numb us, distract us, soothe us, comfort us.  Ashley James (1:19:30.431) That was my dad.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:19:31.584) Okay, there you go, you had the controller and the adulterer in your mom and your dad. Ashley James (1:19:36.623) Absolutely. It would happen just like that, my mom would come down on me for food, my dad would take me out for ice cream. It was like, here, let me, let me soothe you and at the same time he was soothing himself.  It was a beautiful dynamic and so I have this really big love for food because when I was three years old, my dad took me. It was one of my first memories with my dad just spending time with him. I think it was the first time I ever just spent time with him. On my third birthday, he took me out to an authentic sushi restaurant and I fell in love with Japanese food.  Then he took me out to dim sum and he wanted to share with me his world of food addiction and so he brought me to these really unique restaurants and I completely fell in love with the food and, at the same time, I was feeling love from my dad, because that was where we connected and we also had our little dopamine hits at the same time. So we're shooting up heroin together.  So we're using together and so these foods, especially really greasy foods and typically Asian foods he gravitated towards and greasy chicken. For me. I realized it was actually on the show as an episode with a woman who kind of decodes food addiction much different from you. She doesn't talk about bright lines or anything like that, but she did talk about understanding our stories and our family stories around food. I realized that at the time I wasn't whole food plant-based, I was still very addicted to chicken, eating it every day, and that wasn't helping with my weight. It's really funny about chicken.  They say eat chicken breast for weight loss, but at the same time they also tell bodybuilders to eat chicken breast to gain weight. So I'm like, oh well, that is contradictory,  which one is it? But for me, if I eat chicken, I just start gaining weight like crazy. It's really weird. But I was addicted to it and I didn't understand why. She asked that question and all of a sudden I was like snapped back to every happy memory with my dad and even a few with my mom, and there was always chicken in my mouth and in my hands or chicken wings or something, and it was, oh, I associate because both my parents died in my 20s and I miss them both.  I was the only child. I love my parents  and I sympathize now with their pain, because I can look back and see, especially as a parent, their flawed behaviors were really their cries for help and their pain. They were beautiful, complex and incredibly intelligent, incredibly successful. They both had their own businesses, separate from each other. They both independently became millionaires and they both built beautiful businesses when I was a teenager, and in my 20s, I watched them become incredibly successful but also very self-destructive.  I see that the specific foods that I had the greatest addiction around, chicken and Asian food that it would bring me right back to the emotions of feeling safe and loved by my parents, who I missed, and so I had that addiction brain going on, but I also had that anchoring, that association with those past emotions.  Glenn Livingston, who I had on the show and he also asks questions to help people make food rules, his program is great and your program also seems much more complex. So different but similar, which is beautiful because you're seeing that these bright lines work and he asked questions like, well, what can you do in your life besides eat chicken and still have the same emotions and get the same outcome.  So, yes, I can sit here and  meditate in a happy memory, remembering my parents and just feeling my love for them, and I don't need to have food in my hands or my mouth to do it. So I can still recreate and fill that need or I can go spend family time, bonding time with my family, not around food, because you talked about how when we all kind of get together and eat, it's   we're at a feeding trough. I look up at my husband, my son and my mother-in-law and we're not talking, we're not connecting, our eyes are down. I feel like we're a bunch of cows at a feeding trough during our family meals. There's no emotional connection here, whereas if we played a board game together or went for a walk or nature, bird watching or something together that didn't involve food, it's much more emotionally satisfying to do a conversation together.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:24:12.066) Yes, food is a poor proxy for most of the things we use it for. Food is a poor proxy for connection. It's a poor proxy for entertainment. It's a poor proxy for comfort. It can fill those needs to some degree, but not, well, I just want to say, for the listeners who feel I'm an ascetic around food, that I'm into denial and purity, and not enjoying food. That couldn't be further from the truth. I love my meals, I enjoy my food and what I do, though, is I eat, because I follow this structured way of eating.  I'm in alignment with my eating. I'm in alignment with my body. I'm not obsessed or owned by food anymore, and my meals are like a hot shower. I love taking a hot shower, but I don't think about it obsessively before or after. I'm not looking forward to it all day long. If I think to really enjoy it, which I often do while I'm in there, I take a very long hot shower. I live in a part of the country where we have ample water, which I'm really grateful for. I live near the Great Lakes, where there's  a big chunk of the world's fresh water and, yes, I take a long hot shower every day and that’s like my breakfast, lunch and dinner. I sit down with my meal, take a deep breath, and just think, oh, this is awesome! I love this food, I savor it, it’s delicious, it hits the spot. I’m satisfied afterwards and then I move on with my life and I’m not thinking about it in between. For me, that's food neutrality. For me, that’s a healthy relationship with food and that’s what I help people achieve. I used to teach this college course on the psychology of eating and I used to draw a big circle up on the board and I would say imagine, this is a pie chart, everyone. This is a pie chart and I want you to carve out a slice that represents the proportion of your life focus, your thinking, your energy, everything you're about, like your thinking and your focus and your energy that relates to your food. You're eating, your weight, your exercise, what you've eaten or not eaten, whether you're on your plan or off your plan, how many miles, how many calories, how many pounds, what percentage of your life is not. And Ashley, I’d tell you I would have slender, regular weight, lovely, college gals start to cry. I would just say I noticed you're having a reaction to this exercise. What's happening for you? She would just carve out almost all but this tiny sliver and she would say 95%.  So the way we eat in Bright Line Eating is the antidote to that. If I do that pie now. I don't know what it would be. 10%, 15%. It takes some effort. I got to focus. Do I have enough blah in the fridge? I got to go to the grocery store and I worked out and blah, blah. But mostly my life is about my life now. I have my life back. I don't need to be thinking about making my food sexier. I don't need to. It's in its place.  Ashley James (1:27:39.695) Yes, I'm not there, I want to get there. The needing to make the food sexier. I know this food’s delicious because I love shiitake mushrooms. They are so delicious I put them in everything. I'm looking forward to those shiitake mushrooms and I got some lion's mane mushrooms. My gosh, the mouthfeel of these things is insane. I love them and they're also really good for your brain.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:28:05.412) Mushrooms are so healthy, ridiculously healthy.  Ashley James (1:28:08.097) That's what I made for dinner yesterday. I did a three-mushroom, I did oysters, and what's cool about oysters is when you cut them, they're like little scallops, you cut them so they're circular. It kind of tastes  like scallops, not taste, but it has that mouthfeel. It's a little meaty, yes.  So I did a three-mushroom, I did oyster, lion's mane and shiitake stir fry with onion and tofu, and then my hot sauce because I'm addicted to hot sauce. I read this study that it's really good for you on many levels and I'm down for it. It's  anti-parasitic, it helps the body. Anyways, so many good things about hot sauce and I'm sold. So now I realize I actually can't eat a meal without hot sauce. Now, I'm wondering if that's an okay addiction or not, but it's fun, it's fun to put on food, and in moderation, I guess. It's so delicious.  But there's that part of my brain that's saying the whole time, so I'm in a part this isn't going to be good enough, this is going to be yummy enough, and it won't. That part wouldn't be satisfied until there's, I don’t know, peanut sauce, and noodles, or chicken. That stuff that's not optimal for me and I know the next day I'm not going to feel good having eaten that meal. So there's this part of my brain that isn't happy until I've adulterated a healthy meal to make it unhealthy and I just tell it to buzz off. I tell it to buzz off. But I'm really looking forward to the day that I can cook a meal in peace, because now I'm not cooking in peace. But I've come a long way because I look back to where I was in 2010, living off of the dollar menu at fast food restaurants, we hit a rough streak financially and we thought that we would save money eating at the dollar menu and turns out you actually have to eat way more. We'd end up buying like 10 burgers, we each have five, dollar meal burgers. We'd feel horrible then. Very soon after, we really hit a good stride with healing foods. It was good that we hit that bottom and experienced that. Also just how crazy addictive the dollar menu is, that at pretty much any fast food restaurant. Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:30:38.644) I did a study recently that you can eat for way cheaper than the dollar menu on Bright Line Eating. People say that healthy food is expensive but not all. For example, in Bright Line Eating, you have a serving of fruit at breakfast and a serving of fruit at lunch, in addition to, obviously, a lot of other things. But for serving a fruit, you can have a pint of organic raspberries out of season for $7 or you can have a banana for 12 cents or whatever.   Beans and rice and bananas and cabbage, oh my god, cabbage can be so good. You get the whole cabbage and you slice it up and you cook it in some vinegar with some salt and pepper and it cooks down and this really cheap cabbage can yield  a whole week's worth of vegetables, practically. There's so many ways to eat inexpensively. The dollar menu is not. It's not the way to go.  Ashley James (1:31:40.816) It's not. But the person I was back then highly, highly addicted to processed foods could not say no to sugar. It was a daily thing. My blood sugar was out of balance. I was incredibly sick. It kind of ramped up to my late 20s and early 30s. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome. I was told by an endocrinologist I'd never have kids. And the thing is, every MD I've ever been to, said you can't cure that. I'm like, watch me, and my last few blood tests I've had showed everything's normal and I had really bad polycystic ovarian syndrome. I'd had three cycles a year, infertility. I was told I'd never have kids and I conceived naturally twice and we have our son. I also had out of control diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and I had pica or cribbing, so my body was completely void of minerals. Then, I got on this healing journey. I got on these really fantastic supplements that filled those gaps. I started eating healthy. I cut out processed foods and I just watched as things transformed.  Just the first month of all I did was shop the perimeter of the grocery store and eat organic. I wasn't even avoiding things I'm allergic to like dairy, and I was eating meat. I was eating dairy, but I was only shopping the perimeter of the grocery store, so I wouldn't buy anything in a package and then a cereal box, none of that, and I chose organic. That first month my chronic infections that I was on monthly antibiotics for went away, and that was in 2008. That was my first big health wake up. That was like, oh, I can solve something with food. It's interesting because all the doctors I've gone to say I have to be on all these drugs for the rest of my life. But look, I can make a health change. One, one change, well, two. I chose organic and shopped the perimeter of the grocery store, still wasn't eating healthy, frying up big steaks and stuff like  that but it was  steak and vegetables as opposed to a bunch of packaged foods, and choosing organic and so, just getting the process, getting the pesticides out of my life, boom, all my infections went away.  I also had chronic adrenal fatigue, so bad that in the morning, I couldn't process human language. It took me about an hour to two hours before my husband could speak to me. I couldn't even understand what people were saying. It was really weird. My cortisol levels were incredibly bottomed out, but it was food.  Then, like  I said, supplements just to fill in the gaps. But it was food changes. Everything melted away and MDs told me I would have these problems for the rest of my life.  Of course, in addition to all these health problems, then I would have food addiction. But I didn't even know because I was self-soothing, because I was in so much pain from out of control diabetes, from polycystic ovarian syndrome, from chronic infections, from chronic inflammation. I was in so much pain that food was just what I could use to soothe. Thank God I don't like alcohol because I would have become an alcoholic just to numb the pain. So I understand people out there, because 70% of the adult population is on at least one prescription medication. They don't need to be on and so we've got at least 70% of the population feeling so sick in their body they're turning to processed food to self-soothe. So it's like you said some one third of the people aren't necessarily susceptible to addiction, but that doesn't mean they're not going out and self-soothing.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:35:27.755) Yes, bad habits. I mean you can eat a lot of processed food just out of liking the taste and mouthfeel and out of bad habits, and the difference there is that without necessarily getting a lot of support around it, if you just really make up your mind to do differently, you can. So addiction is where you're really trying and you still continue to harm yourself in the same way.  Ashley James (1:36:02.561) That's a good distinction to understand. My father-in-law was an alcoholic and he smoked cigarettes and then one day I think he got into a minor car accident or maybe he drove home drunk, and that was his wake up call. He was always drunk and always had a cigarette in his mouth. This was I don't know in the 70s, when it was  acceptable, and he just snapped. He just goes, I'm not going to drink anymore. Boom! No backlash. No addiction. Then he decided he was going to stop smoking because I think it was affecting his cycling times. He was kind of a professional cyclist. He just went boom! He just stopped and anything he had ever been seemingly addictive to other people. He could just stop and have no cravings and be done with it. So I thought he was really weird. But you're telling me one third of the population is like that. Okay, because that's definitely not my experience of life.  It's interesting because listeners who are those people where the addiction brain isn't a thing for them. Please have compassion for your family members who are struggling with addiction, who say they're going to stop and they can't and they say they're going to stop and they can't because it's easy to get angry at them and say, well, you're not trying hard enough, you're just lazy, but they're having an internal fight that is so hard. They don't want to destroy their lives and their family. So please have compassion and even though you don't personally understand that, you could put yourselves in the shoes of understanding that there's an internal struggle going on.  So you have these people who have food addiction. They try to diet over and over and over again, and that keeps failing. Then they blame themselves. But because the underlying problem is processed food or food addiction in general, mostly processed food is the culprit and so they've got food addiction. Now they hear about Bright Line Eating, is this a 12-step program? What are the first few steps? Someone's coming in. They're not even 24 hours sober yet, they just finished their last bag of Doritos and they log into brightlineeating.com. Walk us through the first week of food sobriety.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:38:26.684) Yes, sure. So someone goes to brightlineeating.com, they sign up for the membership, they do a free trial, so they haven't paid a dime and they're just going to give it a try, and the first thing that happens is they'll get a warm welcome message from me and they'll get to create their password and log into the system, which is super easy, and then we'll walk them through getting started. They'll get to download the food plan, they'll need to buy some supplies, they'll need to get a digital food scale, a food journal, some things like that, and they'll need to clean out their kitchen, like really clean out the cupboards, clean out the kitchen. There's guidance on that. It's fine if you live with people who eat differently than you. They don't have to do Bright Line Eating but then maybe have a conversation about like, okay, can we keep the pies off the counter? Maybe we could put them in this cupboard or here's a place where all those foods can live and you can access them freely, and then they just won't be out for me on the counter. That kind of thing.  Two or three or four or five days, for some people, one day, they're all set up and they're ready to start. Then, we have like a day one experience where, it's kind of ceremonial, you start and we have a meditation called the Crossing the Line Meditation, where we guide them to really step over the line and step into a world where they're committed on their Bright Line Eating journey and they really begin. They write down day one in their food journal. They write down what they're going to eat the next day and they start their day one. The game is really you write down your food the night before and the next day you eat only and exactly that, and then you start setting up morning routines and evening routines to support that. You start to form your place in the community. You find a buddy. You join a mastermind group. You start to get connected in a community. After the first couple weeks, what will happen, Ashley, is someone will have lost if they have weight to lose when they come in and not everybody does but they'll have lost a significant amount of weight. Often they'll be stunned by how much they lose in just those first couple weeks and their brain will have already healed so much that their hunger will be lower even though they're losing weight. Their hunger will be down statistically. Their cravings will have already subsided significantly and they'll start to have this automaticity that comes in.  What's happening, Ashley, is we're wiring their brain so that the part of the brain that governs eating is no longer the, what do I feel like I want? something sexy? or what am I choosing at the moment? Part of the brain which is very vulnerable to willpower depletion and looking for a fix from our food and we're starting to use the same part of the brain that executes brushing teeth for most of us, which is a part of the brain that just kind of does it. Whether you're tired or in the mood doesn't really matter whether you're traveling or you're sick or whatever, you just brush your teeth. That's the part of the brain that we start to access by this pattern of writing down the food the night before and then the next day eating only in exactly that. It's kind of like you’re starting that habit of after dinner I brush and floss and that pattern starts to get really anchored in.  Two months after they've started, what happens is they've now lost one and a half times clinically significant weight loss after two months and then after a few more months it's three times clinically significant weight loss. So we measure it typically as a percentage of starting body weight, but we're talking about enough weight that their joints aren't hurting anymore. Their inflammation is way down. You were talking about all manners and I can't make medical promises or whatever according to the regulatory bodies, but what we see is people who are on insulin are getting off their insulin. What we see on average is that people who are on all manner of medications are starting to phase off their medications. That's not a promise to anyone, it's just a prediction on average from what we see. Cravings go down after the first two months to levels of little to no cravings anymore ever. Hunger goes down to little or no hunger ever. This is published research that we've published in peer reviewed scientific journals. We also see people at every age of the lifespan losing weight equivalently like in those first two months, women in their 50s, 60s and 70s are losing the same amount of weight as women in their 20s and 30s, which you might think. Well, that's not possible, because it's harder to lose weight as you age, and everybody knows that. Well, the reason it's harder to lose weight as you age is that estrogen, which goes down in both men and women. In the 50s and 60s it plummets in both men and women, but because women had more estrogen to begin with, the difference is more striking for a woman's body. Estrogen has a facilitating effect on insulin, which helps to smooth out the edges as you eat processed foods made out of sugar and flour as you eliminate sugar and flour from your diet, it doesn't matter as much anymore whether you have the estrogen to facilitate your insulin and so with sugar and flour out of the equation, what that does is, it levels the playing field. Women in their 50s and 60s postmenopausal women are losing weight just like they were 20 and 30. Again. So that's really exciting.  A lot of people come with thyroid issues. They think they can't lose weight just like they were 20 and 30. Again, so that's really exciting. A lot of people come with thyroid issues. They think they can't lose weight, or autoimmune conditions or PCOS, like you and I had. I have Hashimoto's thyroid too, and it really works across the board. Within two or three months, people are on their way, they're hooked, this is their life, and what we call them are bright lifers. Bright lifers, they're just doing it for life. We published results showing that two years later, they're maintaining every pound on average, on average every pound that they lost when they started Bright Line Eating two years later, published in the Journal of Nutrition and Weight Loss in 2001.  Ashley James (1:45:29.694) Wow, congratulations.  I read a study once where they took people who've always been of the healthiest weight possible and people who are obese and I think kind of being  a neuroscience study people who have always been of the best body weight for them, the healthiest they have almost no pleasure derived from thinking of food before they eat it, and when they ate food the pleasure was high, high, high, high. And then they went on with their day. It was like, I don't know, I don't think about it.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:46:17.248) It was like my hot shower analogy.  Ashley James (1:46:22.835) You don't sit there like getting off on thinking about your hot shower that's coming up. Although, I could think about a nice hot bath and I can't wait for that. I have this tongue scraper and I love using it, I can't believe the stuff. I use it twice a day. Everyone needs a tongue scraper. Go, run, buy it now.  I had a listener ask me in our Facebook group, why can't I just brush? I'm  no, no, no.  Someone else said because you're just brushing all the bacteria around, you're not actually removing it, but you're removing this biofilm that the bacteria lives in on your tongue. It's pretty crazy and I love doing it. It's the best part of brushing teeth, but I don't think of it throughout the day.  I gain maximum pleasure while I'm doing it, like for the 30 seconds I'm doing it to get, let's see all the crap coming off my tongue twice a day. It's really cool, and how clean my tongue is afterwards. It feels like your mouth doesn't feel good until you've cleaned your tongue. Go do it. It's amazing. But it's just this metal, round, u-shaped thing you just scrape your tongue with, but I don't think about it throughout the day.  So the study, they found that, the ideal weight people who've never had obesity issues don't derive pleasure from thinking about food, but when they're eating it it's orgasmic. The obese people, they poked them up to machines, looked at brain scans and saw that they derive quite a bit of pleasure. Not as much pleasure as the skinny people did from eating food, they would drive, but still substantial pleasure just from thinking about the meals they could have, like chicken wings, hot dogs, whatever. But when they went to eat it, the obese people were disappointed because the fantasy was better than reality.  My husband told me a long time ago, when you're not married and you're dating around, let me tell you, he goes. He's a happily married man. The fantasy of what you can do with women as a man, because in their mind you're the God of the bedroom, and if you live in that fantasy world, you're always disappointed from reality. So that's the same with pornography. If you avoid pornography and you avoid this fantasy world, then the actual real thing is amazing and when you actually get to go do it in the bedroom with your spouse, it's amazing.  That hit me because first of all, I thought everyone thought about food throughout the day, I thought that was normal. That's what made me go, wow, I really do think about what am I going to cook later? It's pleasurable. I love cooking, but it's making up these meals in my mind and I realized, wow, I do get more pleasure from the fantasy of what the food is than when I sit down to the meal. So your program gets us to the point where now we've rewired the brain to be  all the skinny people.  We have the preset of what we're eating that day, and then we don't fantasize about it and then we start to drive more pleasure when we're sitting down to eat. So it’s as if you're getting people to rewire their brain to become skinny people. Have you ever heard of, they take the mice, who are always, always skinny, and they take obese mice and then they give the fecal transplant of the skinny mice to the obese mice.  They all eat the same and get the same exercise. But the obese mice become skinny and the skinny mice become obese just because the microbiome changes. It's like you're taking a fat person but giving them a skinny brain way of making their brain be skinny brain people and having skinny brain habits.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:50:25.236) Yes, totally, and the research you were talking about is what addiction scientists would call the distinction between liking and wanting.  So, the liking and the wanting systems are very different in the brain and as addiction wires up, what happens is your wanting goes up and up and up, but your liking, once you have it, goes down and down and down and that changes over development as you wire up an addiction and it is its own kind of torturous hell.   To live in a world where you're wanting food, wanting food, wanting food, but then when you eat it it doesn't give the payoff and then you're thinking, oh well, now I need something sweet, now I need something salty and you're eating but you're not even liking it that much. But you still want it and the elbow wants to bend and the mouth wants to chew and you still want to be eating and you're wanting and wanting but not even liking. If you haven't had an addiction it doesn't make sense but that is the experience of it and that is exactly what Bright Line Eating does. It heals that. It heals it and it's rigorous and it's not for everybody, but it works. If you have weight to lose and you want to have a brain that doesn't torture you about food anymore, it works.  Ashley James (1:51:41.050) It sounds very empowering. In terms of getting people back into their place of feeling freedom in their body, freedom in their life, freedom in their brain.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:52:03.764) What else can you be doing in the world? Ashley is the person who's going to solve cold fusion like it isn't even working on those equations right now because they're starting Atkins for the third time this year. Think about how much wasted potential is buried underneath all of this obsession about what we've eaten or not eaten, whether we're on our plan or off our plan, how many miles, how many calories, how many pounds, what we're cooking, what we're eating. The food that we're wanting to eat. There are so many. I mean it's like  two billion people now in this world are overweight or obese and food obsessed.  Ashley James (1:52:41.900) I'm very, very, very grateful. My son, his body shape is just like me as a kid. I was thin and muscular and athletic, and he is the same way and he could take or leave food. In fact, when he's playing with his friends, I'm like, can you please eat your lunch? He's like, no, I'm busy playing. It's only when the world has calmed down there's nothing more fun to do. He keeps asking like, okay, are we doing something more fun? I'm like, no, now it's quiet time and let's eat our meal. Then he's hungry. He's not hungry until there's no nothing else to do in the world, whereas me now, as an adult, I'm like, well, the food is the fun. What are you talking about? Let's go, let's go eat, but as a kid I watched him. He is just go, go, go, fun is fun all the time. He could take or leave food, so I'm so grateful for that.  But clothing doesn't fit him and I think this is crazy because I have to go out of my way. I go to kids clothing stores and I have to order online their special sizes for, quote unquote, skinny and slim, the skinny, slim fit, because I am telling you, he is not. We go to an amazing pediatrician,  a naturopathic pediatrician. She measures him, she says he's healthy and healthy rangers, he's not unhealthy weight or anything. He's growing, he's so tall now I can't believe it. He just grew up to now he's in eight-year-old clothing. He's seven and he just went another size up. Yet I have to go out of my way to find clothing that fits him, because the average child now is obese and he has a lot of friends that have more weight than I saw as a kid in the 80’s.  And that is because, like you said, most kids now eat processed food. When I was a kid it was kind of an oddity, I didn't know I had a choice. The parents go, my kids only eat macaroni and cheese, or my kids only eat hotdogs. When I was a kid I didn't even know I had a choice. I had to eat what my parents ate, and so we sat down and we'd have grilled fish and we'd have wild rice or we'd have legumes, we'd have grilled chicken, we'd have a Caesar salad with grilled chicken. Those were pretty much the staple meals in our house, were vegetables, some kind of lean meat and steamed vegetables and some legume or a little bit of complex carbohydrate in there, but that's how I grew up eating and I don't remember eating much processed food at all. Maybe on my birthday I could get that. Once in a blue moon was processed food, and now children are once in a blue moon having a vegetable.  Imagine this generation. Yes, we have adults who need to lose weight, but I think you need to make a bright line for the parents who want to help their kids heal, because now we have seven-year-olds with processed food addiction brain and twelve-year-olds with processed food addiction brain who are going to rebel and who are sneaking sugar. I even have a friend whose daughter steals. She's 10 or 12 years old. She will steal. When they're at Target, her mom has to pat her down because she will always find hidden candy bars that she's stealing because it's that processed food addiction brain that we've given our children, because they've grown up mostly eating foods that have hijacked their brain. So, yes, we need this for us, we need the Bright Line Eating program for us, but we also need a gentle one for the children to help the children heal and maybe the children could just heal when we start actually feeding them real food like teaching them to listen to their body. We have to be gentle.  So my husband once a year does a fast and he's aiming for 40 days. This time he's done 28 day fasts and it's water only fast and he's fantastic at them. But today's day eight, and what I noticed, because I've been more conscious, I would say actually since my interview with Jonah Flynn, so this was maybe March or February and because of the last year, I really did turn to food as one of my mechanisms for handling grief and then I acknowledged that on the scale.  Now, I'm coming back down and being much more conscious of how I'm eating and I wasn't going off the rails either last year. If I'd gone off the rails it would have been 80 pounds, not 40 pounds, but my husband has been fasting for the last eight days.  I have observed myself and I realized it has been so much easier emotionally to cook healthy. The thing is he also eats whole food, plant based, and he will eat whatever I eat. So he's sitting there like, oh let's crack out the whatever processed food, but just having to be responsible to feed multiple people, cause I mean I'm feeding our son, I know what to feed him, but just to be responsible for, or sometimes it has to be like, oh, let's just go eat out and then giving into that.  It's kind of being with the person you used to be with, because he and I used to have food addiction together, go to the dollar menu, get off on that together many years ago. He showed me his sugar addiction back when we were dating. We sat down to watch a movie while we were dating at his house, and he cracked open the family-size, family-size, this is a thing of ice cream so big that it requires a handle. Have you seen those? It has a big round lid and it's a tub of ice cream. The tub has a handle that's like a bucket of ice cream.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (1:58:56.137) No, no Ashley James (1:58:57.543) It’s in Albertson’s. It’s crazy. He told me every weekend he'd polish one off single-handedly and he was so excited to share it with me. I did not do dairy, so then I did dairy with him and that was a disaster. But it made me see, wow, this is an addiction. He's inviting me into it.  Sometimes he'll pull me into that and be, let's go eat out at a restaurant. Yay! It's easy to give in. If he had said let's go get a pack of cigarettes or let's go do this addictive party together, when you've got an accomplice. So now that he's not eating for over a week, I haven't had an accomplice and it's just been me and it's been so much easier. I just want to talk about this,  how does your program help people who have a spouse or have kids that they have to cook food for, that isn't on the program. How do they heal their addiction and have to be surrounded by the substances that they're craving? Because you said there's a point of willpower that your program helps to remove by planning what you're going to cook the next day. But now let's say you've got the spouse who wants the bad food and you have to cook for them also.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (2:00:22.286) Well, I won't lie, sometimes that can be hard. What I have found is that if you're cooking for a family, typically you can prepare what you're going to eat, which in the initial weight loss phase, for dinner, for example, is going to be some protein, some vegetable, some salad, some fat on that, and you can prepare that and then also add, for example, a big pot of pasta and some bread and butter for the family,  and they can eat that, and you're having the protein vegetable salad that you've also made. So you don't need to cook a whole separate meal. Typically you can just add, typically, a big pot of starch of some kind for the family to add to that. So that's typically what I recommend.  This isn't 1950 anymore. Other people can also cook for themselves as well. But I mean, that's the way I always did. It is have done it, and I have three kids and a husband who none of them eat the Bright Line Eating way, and so these days we do some sort of mix, because my kids are older and my husband can cook, and so we do some mix of I'll cook or, or everyone will fend for themselves, or we'll go out to dinner, or if I'm cooking, I'll cook what I'm going to eat and I'll add,  I said, another component or two for other folks.  Ashley James (2:01:52.292) In your program when you're planning for the next day. Can you plan for eating out and would you look at the restaurants, choose a restaurant, let's say, your family's going out because we're getting together with friends or other family members. Would you choose the restaurant, look at the menu and already choose what you're going to order and how are you going to order it to be on program?   Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (2:02:12.244) Yes. So you can pretty much eat out in any restaurant and do Bright Line Eating and you're still looking for the same categories of food. I don't always choose in advance what I'm going to eat, because sometimes you arrive and the menu's changed or whatever, and so I would just commit a Bright Meal out, but in the restaurant I'd be looking for the same,  protein, vegetable salad kind of thing. If it's a Thai restaurant, I'm ordering vegetables and tofu or whatever.   Ashley James (2:02:47.478) Well with Thai restaurants, I love that if you don't see anything you like, you can order, the side menu always has steamed vegetables and brown rice, and I've done that where I've said can I please have a big thing of steamed vegetables, big thing of brown rice, and then bring me soy sauce or something, or sometimes even they'll steam tofu, which I mean steamed tofu, to me is delicious, but I'm I'm one of those people.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (2:03:11.466) Yes, me too.  Ashley James (2:03:14.742) It’s Bragg's liquid aminos and I'm all good. Okay, we've been teasing the listener the whole time because we've been saying we would talk about the statistics. I want to talk about statistics. Let's wrap this up by really talking about your studies, because you even said that your hunger goes down statistically, and you emphasize the word statistically, meaning you are tracking people's results. Do you have any more data or more studies to share with us about your program? Also that people have lasting weight loss, because what I said earlier anyone can do any diet, but how do we have lasting success to being as healthy as possible? This isn't about weight loss. This is being as healthy as possible and feeling mentally and emotionally healthy, along with physical healthy.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (2:04:11.058) Sure. I've mentioned the studies before, but I've got one additional one to mention, but I can give you the numbers. By two months after doing Bright Line Eating, not only have people lost weight, but I just want to emphasize,  when most people lose weight in most ways, their hunger and their cravings go up. Because that's what happens when you deprive the brain and the body of enough food to survive. The brain compensates by making you hungrier and crave more, but not when you do it the Bright Line Eating way.  The difference is you're not eating processed foods, you're not eating sugar and flour, and you're eating enough whole foods and vegetables to create enough bulk and you're weighing it. People typically don't eat enough vegetables unless they weigh it. So know you're good. The amounts and the fact that you're using a digital food scale to make sure you're eating enough it's not about restricting quantities. It's about making sure you're eating enough. It dupes the brain into feeling you're getting ample food, so you're losing weight. By two months in your hunger ratings on average are down to 1.5 out of five, that's average,  little to no hunger anymore, ever, and craving levels are below that, below 1.5 out of five. So hunger and cravings go down.  I mentioned that people at every age are losing weight equivalently, which is just a miracle and a blessing. If you're over 50, you're just like, yay! So after two months, people on average are losing 13 to 17 pounds after the first two months and three months after that, that's doubled. Those weight loss results are maintained years later, literally two years later, on average, zero pounds regained. We have people in our Bright Line Eating who have been around now for about seven years. Our first program rolled out a little over seven years ago and we have people maintaining their weight loss all that time.  Then the study that I didn't mention actually has to do with a study we did after COVID hit, where we looked at the well-being metrics of someone, psychosocial metrics, things like  energy, perceived social support, which means like, are you feeling lonely in the world or are you feeling deeply supported and connected? If you had an emergency, do you have people who would come over to your house to help? Do you have enough support in life?  We looked at depression, days of bad mental health versus good mental health, levels of depression. We looked at these metrics and what we found is that after two months of doing Bright Line Eating, people have more energy, less depression, fewer days of bad mental health and their feeling of feeling loved and connected and supported in the world has gone way up. But then we looked at that during COVID, I'm talking about the heat of when COVID was first rocking the world. We're talking April, May, June of 2020.  We looked at those months versus before COVID hit and versus after COVID had been around for a while, and what we found was that those effects were actually heightened during the worst catastrophe. So, in other words, people experienced a lifting of their depression, but even to a greater degree. During the worst of COVID, people experienced more energy, but to a greater degree. People experienced feeling more loved and connected in the world, but to a greater degree, meaning that Bright Line Eating as a community and as a way of life is so conducive to well-being that during a catastrophe or an emergency. The effect was amplified because people had a community to lean into all the more and a program to lean on to get them through the worst times. Ashley, I've been thinking about you over the last year. Food can help us cope to some degree but we've been talking about it, it's a poor proxy for real support and connection and coping. When people have Bright Line Eating to lean into, they flourish extra during the hardest times. It's quite remarkable.  Ashley James (2:08:54.512) I love it. I love your program. I love that it's science-based. I love that it's holistic, because it's looking at every aspect of your life and you're showing that it brings in that joy and satisfaction throughout someone's life. So that is truly holistic. That is what true health is. To me, that's the definition. My husband, he's the one that titled the podcast. But the idea of it being true health, the True Health Podcast, the true health is all aspects of your life are in that balance, that have joy and that have health. So it's not just physical, it's not just mental, it's everything. It's emotional, it's social, it's spiritual, it's every aspect. So the fact that you have this very well-rounded result is beautiful.  I'm so excited that we brought this information to the listeners today because, just statistically, we have helped some lives today and even if we help one person to get out of that torturous suffering, this has been an incredible success. So I feel so blessed that you came here today to share this information. Thank you so much.  Of course, the links to everything that Dr. Thompson does is going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com, including brightlineeating.com and the link to the membership. Is there anything you'd like to say to wrap up today's interview and please, I want to say, come back on the show when you have more studies, more information. We'd love to have an ongoing conversation, because what it sounds like is you are always refining and making this even better as you study this further. We're never done. We're always developing and you've developed a fantastic system through this constant evolution with your community and being totally geeking out on neuroscience. I can appreciate that. So definitely come back on the show, but is there anything you'd like to say to the listener to wrap up today's interview?  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (2:10:59.806) Yes, I guess I just want to say there are a lot of people out there and maybe you, dear listener, are one of them who really have tried so hard to change the way you eat, to turn the corner with your health, to start taking care of yourself better, but the food just keeps being an issue.  I just want to say you're not alone. It really is a real thing. It's addictive in the brain and you're not alone. I just want you to know that I have walked the path of that struggle and I see you, I feel you and you got this. You got this. So come check us out at brightlineeating.com. We would love to see you. There is a roadmap that works. There's a path that works.  Ashley James (2:11:44.612) Brilliant. I'm so happy that we're helping people. I say we because I was here too, but you are helping people today to end that suffering and get on that roadmap to success. I geek out on personal growth and development. That's one of my favorite things, so thank you so much for coming on the show. Let's have you back.  Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson (2:12:05.148) Thanks, Ashley. It'd be great. I'll come back anytime and it's just been delightful talking with you. Thank you so much.  Outro: Are you tired of guessing your way through supplements, feeling like each choice is just another shot in the dark? Unlock your health potential at takeyoursupplements.com. Here we don't just sell supplements, we customize wellness. Connect with a true health coach who tailors your nutritional path based on your unique health goals and challenges. From fatigue to vitality, from confusion to clarity Start your transformation today. Visit takeyoursupplements.com and discover how feeling amazing is just one free consultation away. That's takeyoursupplements.com. Get Connected with Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson! Website – Bright Line Eating Bright Line Eating Membership Facebook Instagram YouTube

Check Out My Latest Book: Addicted To Wellness https://www.learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness   Get The Minerals Your Body Needs: TakeYourSupplements.com https://takeyoursupplements.com   Dr. V's Website: www.HeadacheAdvantage.com   523: Headache & Migraine Pain: Dr. Scott Vrzal’s Guide To Root Cause Solutions https://learntruehealth.com/headache-migraine-pain-dr-scott-vrzals-guide-to-root-cause-solutions/   In today’s episode, we dive deep into the world of chronic headaches, exploring their hidden causes and pathways to relief with expert Dr. Scott Vrzal. Specializing in natural approaches to pain, Dr. Vrzal shares insights on how headaches reveal clues about our body’s health—from digestive imbalances to emotional blocks stored in physical pain. Join us as we explore the surprising connections between emotions, nutrient deficiencies, and detox pathways, uncovering how holistic health practices can not only relieve headaches but restore balance and vitality to the entire body. This episode is packed with actionable tips and wisdom for those seeking true relief and long-term health. Highlights: Headache location often indicates specific health issues (e.g., left-sided for stomach/spleen, right-sided for gallbladder). Emotions can be stored physically, leading to chronic pain and health issues. Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) helps release stored emotions to aid physical healing. Magnesium and zinc deficiencies are linked to stress, pain sensitivity, and immune health. Gallbladder and liver are essential for detoxification and proper digestion. High homocysteine is a stronger cardiovascular risk marker than cholesterol. Organic, mineral-rich foods improve emotional resilience and physical health. Glyphosate exposure inhibits bile production, affecting gallbladder health. Hormonal imbalance, especially with estrogen, can cause headaches and other symptoms. Physical pain often relates to deficiencies or imbalances in specific nutrients. Intro:  Imagine a life vibrant and full of energy. Now make it a reality with takeyoursupplements.com. Ditch the trial and error of supplement selection. Our trained health coaches are here to craft personalized health regimen that truly works for you. Visit takeyoursupplements.com and learn how easy it is to start feeling better today. Your health is an investment not an expense. Visit takeyoursupplements.com today and get a health free consultation.  When I heard about these specific supplements over 12 years ago. I heard about them back in 2010 and the first thing that went through my mind was, “That sounds too expensive!” That time I didn’t have a lot of money but I also had a ton of health problems. It wasn’t until years later that I finally gave it a try and I couldn’t believe I limited myself because I had decided somewhere that it sounded too expensive without even doing the research. It turns out I was able to fit it into my budget and I started feeling better immediately. Within five days of taking these supplements I began to get my energy back, my chronic adrenal fatigue began to go away, within three months, I no longer have Type 2 diabetes, within two years I no longer have polycystic ovarian syndrome, and I was able to conceive naturally. I was told I’d never be able to have kids when I was nineteen after a battery of tests with an endocrinologist.  When you have these health goals and have these health dreams and they’ve been crushed by a doctor or crushed by family members, or crushed by your own belief system, I invite you to break through that, and to challenge anyone including yourself who’s ever told you that you can't have perfect health, that you can’t have optimal health, because at  takeyoursupplements.com, we have some amazing health coaches that want to show you the way to support your body’s ability to heal itself.  Your body is amazing and miraculous. We grew from these tiny cells into 37.2 trillion cells. Your body has a God-given ability to heal itself and what we have to do is give it the raw building blocks it needs to build healthy cells and that's what the coaches at takeyoursupplements.com are here for. They're here to show you the foods to avoid, the foods to eat to nourish your body and the supplements to fill in those nutrient gaps so your body and every cell is getting every key nutrient it needs to create optimal health. I'm working with these supplements for over 12 years now with my clients, with my family, and with myself, and I can't believe how many illnesses and how many health challenges I’ve seen people overcome, and you can too!  Go to takeyoursupplements.com. Give it a try. The only thing you have to lose is all of your health complaints. Takeyoursupplements.com Ashley James (0:03:13.690) Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host Ashley James. This is Episode 523. I am so excited for today's guest. We have with us Dr. Scott Vrzal. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and people who are sick of suffering are going to be singing your praises. My heart is so full  now because I know that some of my listeners are just so done with the suffering and the pain. Today, you're here to deliver the information that they've been praying for so that they can no longer be in pain. Welcome to the show. Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:03:57.351) Well, thank you. Yes, that's why I got into it, because I was suffering and I wanted that victory for others. Ashley James (0:04:03.427) Exactly. That's why I started the podcast also. I started this podcast eight years ago because I was suffering for so many years from several major medical issues and I used holistic medicine to get better. After being with MD medicine for so many years and under the MD's care, I got worse, not better. I felt sicker, not better, then found true holistic medicine. There's a lot of people these days that call themselves holistic that aren't. You have to buy or beware. I found my mentors and not only did they help me get better through true holistic medicine, true holistic medicine is supporting your body's ability to heal itself and getting out of your body's way. Stop doing the things that are hindering your body from achieving homeostasis, then giving your body what it's missing in order for the body to do the healing, your body wants to heal. It wants to come back into balance. These simple changes make such a profound difference, in the instance of headaches, sometimes no matter what we try, even when we go to holistic practitioners, the pain is still there and we're left so frustrated or the imbalance is still there.  That's why we want to come to Dr. Scott V. I know you like to be called Dr. V. A little plug, your website is headacheadvantage.com and we're going to get into how you help people, of course, we want to talk about your story and what led you to this but before we do, I got to share a little story about a headache in my life with you and because you had asked before we hit record, you're like, so do you have any headaches? I'm like, well, let's hit record so we can get started. My husband who has never suffered from headaches unless we lived in Las Vegas and he forgot to drink water. You do that once or twice. The dose dehydration headaches are the worst. You do that a few times, you learn your lesson. You learn to always travel with water with you, other than that, he never suffered from headaches. Two years ago, he moved in with his parents for five months and lived in a bed beside his dad and did 24-hour hospice care until his dad passed away. He and his dad didn't have the best of relationships. His dad never said, I love you. He was a very stoic person. On his deathbed, he said to my husband, my husband was 54 years old, heard I love you from his dad for the first time. It was a beautiful experience. They both bonded.  I believe it was a very healing, cathartic experience. When he passed away, we weren't all torn up. We had spent a lot of time processing it. It wasn't a sudden thing. It was slow and we pretty much did our grieving and our processing while he was going downhill.     the day he died, my husband had to get a root canal, which was botched. So they extracted the tooth. It was tooth 15 all the way back molar 15. This was about two years ago. He proceeded to develop constant chronic headaches.  Now we go to a naturopath. It's been the naturopathic doctors, we eat super clean. He goes to a really good chiropractor, acupuncturist. We went down the list, and could not figure out what was going on. We went from practitioner to practitioner. We tried everything, homeopathy, everything. Some things  worked a little bit temporarily. He had all kinds of different facial massages. He went to three different types of manipulative massages and these headaches would come on around 11am every day, almost every day. Sometimes it was every other day. Sometimes you get a break and it'd be every three days, but this was for two years.  They were so bad. I describe it like  a migraine in his neck and it would radiate.  It was a tension headache. It would radiate up into his head, typical of either a scalenes trigger point or sometimes it would move and be an upper trapezius trigger point, a very typical radiating pain pattern. Also he had ischemia in those muscles. The muscles were really hard, like hard as a rock, and we would strip them and get heat on them and everything, but we couldn't get the pain to go away. No practitioner could figure out what was wrong other than he had this problem that would come on and then release six to eight hours later. He would have this pain, but it was like a migraine because he could barely drive. He could barely talk. He'd be wincing. Then afterwards it was like an old neurological event. He would be left completely exhausted, the rest of the day could not function, like just zero function. So he was going through a migraine and that it would exhaust him. Also it would take all of his effort, all of his concentration away. I was talking to so many different naturopaths and trying to figure out what's the next course of action because I knew that there was an answer out there and one of my good naturopathic friends said, you should try going to Dr. Jeff Harris, who does prolotherapy and he also teaches it. So my husband's been seeing him and now he went from one headache every day to a headache every three days to two a month.  With the prolotherapy and we're onto something because the prolotherapy that Dr. Jeff Harris went, there's something going on with your spleen channel, tooth 15, my husband has a giant scar by his spleen because he had an accident,  he almost lost his spleen when he was nine.  Also the headaches would start at the same time in Chinese medicine as the spleen time. It's interesting because every problem a husband's ever had has always been on his left side.  That's where the headache is. That's where the spleen is. The problem is, it would add up. He's had a few sessions and just with a few sessions, it's gone from I said, one every day or one every three days to only two a month. We still don't know a hundred percent why. But I definitely feel the trigger was the botched root canal when they pulled the tooth, everything leading up to that. Now we also have explored, is it the stress of doing palliative care for several months with his dad and being in a weird bed and being in weird positions, having to pick up his dad off the floor and all the things that could go wrong there. But the headaches didn't start till after the dental stuff, so that's my headache story is that we tried everything. One thing we saw that temporarily would shift it a bit is fasting. Well, of course you're getting rid of all the kinds of foods that inflame, even though my husband eats clean, for example, corn, which I know could be inflammatory for some people, he might have it sometimes in his diet.  We don't know what's giving him inflammation. When you fast, it's like this amazing elimination diet and you're left, wow, I feel so much better. Well, you might've been eating 90% good and 10% bad and what's bad for you might be fine for someone else. It didn't 100% go to his headaches, but we saw a huge shift. We knew that  inflammation was a stressor that played a role, but it was multifaceted and it's fascinating and we couldn't quite figure it out. I'm super interested in talking to you today because I know that there are people out there suffering from headaches and a headache doesn't just have to be in the head. It can start in the neck and radiate up like I said with my husband but there's so many different ways that we can approach it to help the body. But the most important thing I feel is to listen to the body and figure it out. Why is the body speaking this language? ? Why is the body saying, Hey, I'm so out of balance, I'm creating pain and let it be a lesson. Let us learn from the body so that we can support the body to heal itself. I know that's what you do. You've unlocked the secrets to listening to the body around headaches and how we can stop them. My first burning question is, do you also help people end migraines? Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:13:14.543) Absolutely. It all comes down to the location of the headache.  In your husband's example, you said left-sided predominantly, but then a lot of what you were talking about sounded all the way up to suboccipital on both sides. Is it both sides or left? Ashley James (0:13:31.296) No, it was typically left side, and sometimes now with all the therapy he's done, it stays in the neck, but it's like a headache in the neck. But sometimes it radiates just the upper trapezius trigger point, which is on the left side of the occipital, all the way around the parietal, the temporal, and then kind of above the eye. Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:13:58.638) So a left-sided headache is going to be a stomach issue. Stomach, pancreas, and spleen in acupuncture are all related and have their own emotions. The first and foremost in there is over-sympathetic. Certainly, your husband's having to take care of his dad. There was some strain there. Praise God, they were able to kind of get some resolution. Unfortunately it was at the end, but that saves him a lifetime of challenge just solving that emotion to finally hear I love you from his dad, which we all need to hear. Dads, make sure you're doing that if you're listening. Left side of the headache is going to be a stomach potentially spleen issue. So we'd want to look at what else in his life beyond the emotions.  Clearing, treating, desensitizing for those emotional challenges are going to help the stomach and the pancreas function better and the spleen, again, they're all in acupuncture related, especially emotionally, that stomach meridian does a ramhorn around the left side of the eye and down the neck as you described into the scalenes and so on. The other potential and why I asked, whether it was all left-sided or both is the overzealous response to stress inhibits the  thyroid and can cause the suboccipital, so when it's all the way up the neck and the back of the head, what people would typically call a tension headache, tends to do with that chronic cortisol secretion and ultimately under-functioning thyroid. We want to facilitate thyroid function in that case and the consequences of the chronic stress. That make sense? Ashley James (0:15:47.478) Yes, totally, and it's so exciting that you are the expert. You're the headache guy. Everyone who has chronic headaches needs to know that you exist and then go get help from you. I was just two days ago talking to a friend of mine who is also in the holistic health space. She  was telling me about a client. She goes, I have a client who's had headaches since he was born and both his mother and father have chronic headaches also. The father now is on dialysis because he's been put on pain meds for so many years. She goes, could it be that there's mold in their house? We're trying to figure out why this whole family who lives under the same roof, why did they all have headaches? I’m like, it might be, but there's so many factors. There's so many different reasons, but it's fascinating that the whole family suffers from headaches.  Obviously we're looking at something that impacts all of them. It could be food, it could be mold, there could be so many factors. Have you ever seen a whole family have headaches? Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:17:08.709) . So our first question in that sort of situation is how is the head? How are the family doing when they're away from the house? If they go away to Disneyland for a week do all their headaches go away, symptomatically or historically, then that helps us know that yes, it's something in the house. I mean, certainly their diet's going to change when they travel. But I mean, yes, mold, there's obviously many different types of mold. But I mean, one of the most common things is mold compromises the immune system and can set up any number of symptoms.  Yes, we see that often and often with the testing that we do we can even narrow it down to where in the house, in their bedroom window there's mold, or those types of things that are compromising a person's health. Typically in that scenario obviously we want to remediate and get the mold out of the house but then strengthen the lungs because the lungs are chronically compromised from being challenged with the mold so we want to do vitamins A and vitamin C certainly are typical  anti-antioxidants to facilitate lung function, or even lung tissue, if you will, in a supplement to rebuild the lungs to help it handle the environment, especially while they're trying to remediate, while they're trying to get that mold out of their environment. Just out of two of those yesterday, clinically, that we had to address. The fun story on that I saw several of them, but one gal said, you have mold in your bedroom.  She said, no, you're crazy.  That kind of thing is often we hear. She didn't really believe it or hadn't seen it and then she went home and checked the window where it kind of narrowed it down to pulled back the drapes and realized that there's a black stripe of mold down the middle of the window that's  over their bed and realized she sneezes, she was sneezing twelve times every time she walked into the room and she'd wake up in the morning feeling doo-doo because she was sleeping with mold, inhaling mold all night. The good news is that it was an easy fix to just clean up the mold in the window and live happily ever after. Ashley James (0:19:19.321) . Also do a little bit more investigating because it might be deeper with mold. It's typically what you see is the tip of the iceberg.  I have a few really interesting interviews about mold remediation. Listeners go to learntruehealth.com typing in mold and listening to those. I have at least five episodes with mold remediators that will just blow your mind. But I was also thinking about that family and what people often don't think about is that a lot of food sensitivities are passed down genetically, food allergies, food sensitivities, but also the microbiome.  We share the same microbiome just because of exposure to one another and microbiome, which is from our mouth to our anus. It's not just in the big colon, and your microbiome is in your skin too, but as far as your digestion is concerned, it is the entire digestive tract has a microbiome. It's about six pounds of bacteria and either good or bad microbes, depending on what you feed.  You eat junk, you're feeding the bad army that lives inside you. You eat good, clean food, you're feeding the good army. But the thing is, it's so fascinating. I have two interviews about this with the Viome experts. You can type in Viome at learntruehealth.com to listen to those. That the bacteria in your gut digest your food and produce chemicals. Now, some of these chemicals are really helpful and some of them are harmful and you can actually then have a reaction. It's not necessarily that you're allergic to that food, but your microbiome is producing a chemical from that food that then makes you sick. If you're all eating the same because you're under the same roof and you share the same microbiome, it might not even show up on a blood test that you're allergic to that food. But when you remove that food, you start feeling better.   So, there's food, there's also because we typically as families eat the same or very similar, we typically also suffer from the same nutrient deficiencies, plus with genetics, your genetics can determine what nutrients you're processing more of. I just got some genetics testing back and I think it's fascinating that my body burns through B12 and folate at a much faster rate than others do. So I have to be careful and make sure that I'm on top of those nutrients for myself.   Your genetics, like, one person, and I see this all the time, I see my clients, the wives will say, my husband can eat anything and he doesn't feel sick and then I eat the same thing and I'm throwing up, I'm so sick or I feel miserable when I eat the way my husband eats. His genetics are completely different. His microbiome, if you're fairly newlywed, are completely different.  You could live under the same roof, but there's so many factors. Do you have  a checklist that you go through? How do you go through all the factors that could be leading to headaches? Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:22:29.633) So much in that statement you just had I mean first we want to kind of shine light on the fact that  that biome you're talking about the lactobacillus organisms are the main producers of B12 or methylcobalamin, which is the main nutrient along with folic acid and B6, but those are the main nutrients that drive that methylation pathway that is so often deficient in the genetic tests you're talking about. That's kind of how that correlates the whole biome with the proper detox of the liver, for example, that methylation pathway gets inhibited by stress, gets inhibited when we're deficient in B12, which again is made from the microbiome, the gut microbiome.  so that is also, methylation activates the tumor suppressor gene. The long term consequences of having say the B12 deficiency and under functioning methylation is opening the door for the big ugly stuff, unfortunately, that's how this whole body concept comes into play. We can take B12. Let's correct that. But ultimately, eat your vegetables. Your green leafies and the foods that are going to feed those lovely lactobacillus organisms that are then going to be in your bodies, if you will, to make the nutrients that you need to thrive and to flourish and to stay young.   It all comes to the whole body concept really comes together.  To tie that in, as you were asking, with headaches. The reason the book is called The Headache Advantage is because for me, clinically, a person will come in with a list of 15 symptoms, for example, one of my burning primary questions is what area of the head hurts? If they've got a whole list of say digestive related symptoms and pain in the left pectoral muscle and bicep tenderness and all these other areas that are physically related to stomach and then they have a left-sided headache, I know that stomach is going to be the be-all or the keystone to get rid of a lot of these other symptoms that are going to be tied to it. They could have colon-related symptoms and it's going to manifest as low back pain, all these other things, but if their headache is on the left side, I know that fixing their stomach is going to take care of all these other symptoms.  So, it saves me some pursuit and helps narrow down the pursuit of where the chief weakness is in that person's physiology. It makes the clinical certainty and the effectiveness of our natural healthcare just kind of go through the roof utilizing that information. Ashley James (0:25:11.647) When you say fixing the stomach, is this the metaphorical stomach? Is it the traditional Chinese version of stomach or is this the Western version of, yes, there's something literally wrong in your stomach, or are you talking about all of digestion? Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:25:30.671) Yes, great question. In this case, we're talking about stomach specifically. I talked about digestion as a whole, if they have symptoms of digestion all up and down the track, if you will. But when it's a lesson and when their pain is on the left side of the head I know as you called out, fixing the stomach and fixing means either a structural change. Chiropractors are going to adjust t5 or c1 if there's allergies related to it. So we have the structural aspect and we've got the nutritional needs. Are they eating something that's compromised in the way the stomach's functioning or do they simply need nutrients like thiamin, vitamin B1, calcium, zinc. Some of the nutrients to help make stomach acid or have they had an emotional overload of over sympathetic, low self-esteem, disgust type emotions that laid down accumulated and compromised the way the stomach functioned.  That's the fun, the art of natural health care is identifying the structural, the nutritional, the emotional triggers that are causing in this case, the stomach to not function up to par and then manifest as symptoms of a left -sided headache.  That's what I call fixing the stomach is incorporating the structural, the nutritional, supplemental, emotional triggers. Ashley James (0:26:51.844) A lot of people discredit emotion as having anything to do with physical health. But as you just pointed out, that emotion directly impacts whether we're in that sympathetic fight or flight response, in which case when we're in that response, the body is shunting blood away from our core, away from our organs, and it's limiting the acid production. What I tell people when I'm explaining the stress response, I'm like, have you ever been stressed out and either you're not hungry or if you force yourself to eat, it's  sitting  a lump in your stomach. Some people when they're under stress, they'll even throw up because their stomach, it just shuts down. It's shunting all your resources to your limbs and we're supposed to run away from the bear and then it's supposed to shut off. But now we're constantly triggering that stress response and our emotions trigger it. We could be sitting safely in our home, but we start watching TV or looking on our phone or even just thinking about something stressful and we trigger that response. We don't even realize we're turning our digestion off and that wreaks havoc on the whole body. Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:28:06.605) Absolutely, and every organ has associated emotions. A lot of those come from acupuncture thousands of years old that correlated all of that. We talked about the stomach with over sympathetic, low self-esteem, disgust, gallbladder, which tends to relate to -sided headaches.  Those are going to be more your liver emotions of anger, frustration, resentment.  So that's where chronic illness really becomes a challenge and becomes more chronic, if you will, because they've got chronic stomach weakness, for example, then they're going to store more emotions in that area, in that now weak link, if you will. To give you kind of an example of emotions, they totally affect it.  I mean, I see every week people or new patients that have seen other chiropractors and blame ever since I've had, I got rear ended 20 years ago, I've got this chronic neck pain and it's just my plight and becomes their identity.  Unfortunately that's because nobody had addressed the emotional component. they'll get adjusted, get their chiropractic or their massage and feel good for a bit. Then when they see another Red Honda or whatever car rear ended them, it brings back that emotion and puts them back into that fight or flight weakness that then causes again, the weakness of say the neck extensors and leaving them back into their headaches or back into their neck problems.  We want to have tools to release that.  Even if it's thinking about the accident or the first thing you remember here in skid marks or whatever, think about that as a person gets adjusted or as they're getting their massage. Your listeners that are doing bodywork, how often do they see a person break into tears for no quote known reason? Ashley James (0:29:53.916) What do you recommend for people that recognize that a major issue is trapped unresolved negative emotion from the past? What tools do you recommend they use to gain resolution and release those trapped emotions? Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:30:16.049) There are a lot of great tools. The tool I use clinically is an approach called neuro emotional technique or NET, super well documented, proven out approach on the ONE foundation, O-N-E ONE foundation.  They've done the research of pain patterns and even tested cholesterol and inflammatory markers and watched them go down by desensitizing people to these chronic effects or the physical manifestation of emotions. That's what we use clinically on my Dr. Scott Vrzal Instagram page I've shown a couple videos of how I kind of apply that so that a person can clear their own emotions by touching over the pulse points on the wrist. They'll basically help a person cover every organ and then doing a gentle flexing of the chin with the hand on the forehead That's a way to clear clear emotions for you the person the consumer that has the emotional triggers in other words if you feel your blood pressure going up when your spouse says something that  rubbed you the wrong way you can do this approach by again touching the pulse points, putting the other hand on the forehead and doing each side of the pulse points. That clears in general every organ.  There's also tapping approaches and other approaches that people can use to self-desensitize to these emotional manifestations because unfortunately, the body physically stores emotions. Let's talk about the nutritional component that goes along with that though. In general, my statement is you want to be more rock-like than sponge-like. So to be more rock-like, we want to keep our minerals up. Minerals come from rocks, so minerals make us more emotionally resilient to shed off the back of a duck.  When those emotions come along, having a good mineral reserve will help us shed those emotions and not physically store them. Whereas if we're eating sugar that leeches zinc, that leeches minerals, our system's acidic, we're going to be a lot more prone to physically store those emotions. Then, you're going to be more sponge-like.  If you're eating the sad, standard American diet that has a lot of processed foods and trans fats, then that person's going to be a lot more prone to store every emotion that comes down the pike and they end up with that chronic physical illness. Whereas the person that's eating a lot of organic food eats organic because it has thousands of times the amount of minerals in it, literally thousands of times the amount of minerals in it.  Pesticides also are the toxic metals that compromise mineral status. When we eat organic, we don't get pesticides, we get those minerals. That can help us be more rock-like and resilient when the emotional stress happens. Think of the calmness of a person that seems totally chill, even though their dad died, their mom died, that sort of stuff or the work goes bananas then that person that's eating calm and alkaline is going to handle that emotion much better. The other obvious kind of trigger is exercise.  Exercise allows us to raise dopamine levels at runner's high that we get with exercise. Exercise raises dopamine that tells us, hey, everything's okay. This is a good season. We're cool. It also allows us to sort out and collect our emotions, if you will.  I'm a crazy avid cyclist.  When I'm out on my bike, I'm listening to books, I'm listening to your podcast, things that feed my mind with healthy, beneficial stuff but it also gives me the opportunity to sort through the triggers, the stressors that have happened and kind of categorize them, if you will, and solve them mentally.  Exercise and organic vegetables are a great way to prevent the physical storage of emotions. Ashley James (0:34:15.864) Oh my gosh. I love everything you said. I have a few things to share as well. I lost my mom back in 2002 and I wanted to grieve healthfully. I was devastated by losing her. She was my best friend and I was 22 and I didn't know how to grieve healthfully. I really woke up to this realization that we are not given tools to process emotions healthfully to have conflict resolution healthfully.  I looked back on my years from K through 12. I grew up in Ontario. Actually at the time we had in high school, Grade 13, can you imagine being held back the entire province of Ontario for many years. We graduated when we were 19 from high school because we did, it was called OAC, which was grade 13 but so for my 13 years, this is before I went to college, I was in college when my mom died, but just looking back on  the standard 13 years that kids are in or 12 or 13 years, kids are in school and realizing that not one class, it wasn't mandatory. It's not even known. It's so off the radar that we could be teaching children how to process emotions healthfully, how to grieve healthfully, what happens when there's loss in the family, and now they're introducing new things that are teaching children, but they're not teaching them real emotional life skills. They're still not teaching them how to. You're going to eventually lose someone, how to grieve healthfully, how to gain conflict resolution. You're going to have a fight with your friend or your spouse or a family member, eventually, or, a gas attendant,  you're going to eventually have a conflict with someone. How do you manage that? How do you do it healthfully? How do you maturely de-escalate, communicate?  These are things that I had to go and find. I had to seek.  I went on this excursion and I discovered, well, Landmark Education, which is a company I highly recommend. Now they're all online. They used to be all in person, which is cool because no matter where you are in the world, you can take their live training. They teach amazing life skills for communication.  I took all their courses and it helped me improve so much my abilities to communicate and process emotions.  I just think it should be taught to everyone. Then I discovered as a result of Landmark Education, I discovered neuro-linguistic programming. I went into that. I became a master practitioner and trainer of neuro-linguistic programming, but I was lucky enough to have found the creator of timeline therapy and studied under him.  Timeline therapy, I have not found something that's more effective than timeline therapy at helping people to consciously have an experience of the unconscious mind of going back to the root cause of the event, gaining resolution and releasing the emotion.  I'm excited to look into your NET because I'm always interested and I believe that the more tools, the better. I highly recommend you check out Timeline Therapy because it is phenomenal. Within 15 minutes someone can have, I'm just saying 15 minutes arbitrarily, it could be 5, it could be 45, it depends on the person, but in one sitting, someone can go back and even the most horrific, tragic, what they think they could never resolve, they can walk out of your office having 100% resolution, feeling so good about that memory and no longer having the negative emotion when they think about that memory but actually positively gaining these skills and these positive lessons from the memory, and that's what helps resolve.  When we get a new perspective and we learn the strengths that we gained from that, the body lets go, and we no longer have negative emotions. That's so freeing because holding onto anything negative, especially when you perceive someone's done something to you, it's like shooting yourself in the foot. You're hurting yourself. You're not hurting them. You're not hurting the person that hurt you. You're just hurting yourself by holding on. We don't let go until we gain that resolution.  Those three systems helped me to fully heal from losing my mom. In doing so, I was able to help clients because that's why I got to start. I can't believe it. Everyone needs to know this.  That's what led me down the path of working with people. Then that's when I found holistic medicine because I was suffering physically and there's got to be more to life than just  an MD telling me to get on drugs and that's what led me to the podcast, but I see that, what we need, what everyone needs to know is that there's a direct connection between your emotions and your physical health and that they're not separate. I just love that you're shedding light on that and that sometimes headaches can even manifest because there's unresolved emotional conflict inside. Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:40:05.546) There's so much to talk about in that statement. I mean, for starters, the lung, the emotions associated with the lung are grief, sadness, yearning.  A lot of the stuff we go through and I share your emotional thing. I lost my mom in January. She went into the hospital just before the holidays, just before her 79th birthday.  It was a very short three week challenge for her and she was done. I had a lot of stress with that, but I was okay with it in the fact that I knew I was confident that she left no strange relationships and I was able to get to her and be there to say goodbye and that sort of stuff.  Again, taking care of myself and having these tools to get through the grieving process, kind of tie that back to your situation as I've kind of listened to your podcast and stuff. It sounds like the loss of your mom was about the time you were transitioning from your younger years. Sounds like you grew up in a pretty healthy environment and then started kind of going wayward if you will and eating more of the processed foods. That situation was then used in your life to redirect and now look at the tens of thousands of people that are benefiting from that change, that shift in trajectory in your life. So that kind of brings us back to one of my favorite statements that really will help us shape the paradigm of when these stressors happen.  I look at everything happens for us and nothing happens to us. If we look at these challenges, you lost your mom. Obviously it hurts. The other statement that goes along with that is pain is intended to elicit change. If we've got the pain of loss of our mom and our mutual experiences there.  I was already a nutcase about changing lives but I told my mom 25 years ago how it was going to go for her based on the diet sodas that she was living on and the lifestyle choices that she was making. They were not conducive to a healthy life and she was following the medical model and getting her methotrexate shots and all the other craziness for her arthritis and brain was starting to go. She totaled three cars in 18 months with driving the wrong way on an on-ramp and just kind of losing it that way. Fortunately she was super adamant about not being dependent on anybody and she went out quick. Other than the three weeks stay in the hospital, it was quick for her.  Having that resolution in my mind that, hey, it kind of went the way she wanted to, but there were predictive factors in there that just strengthened my resolve to be.  People that are making these choices, this is the consequence, this is the outcome. Learn from The Headache Advantage. Learn from where your pain is and learn to listen to that pain because your body's telling you to make a change in your life. Every pain physically in the body is going to relate to an organ system that is trying to get your attention.  Every muscle has associated glands or organs, so we can use that physical pain, whether that's back pain that's associated with the quadratus lumborum and bottom muscle that kind of attaches from the ribs to the pelvis, that muscle spasms out, the intestine is not happy. The thumb will get sore when the intestine is not happy. When you have those pains, then is there a grief situation? Am I eating too much corn or wheat or dairy that's compromised the intestine? Then maybe it's a food journal. You realize, okay, every time I eat pizza, my back hurts, or whatever that situation is.  Learn from the pain that, again, your body's trying to elicit change with that pain. Learn from what your body's trying to tell you so that we can change the trajectory and flourish and have the quality life that is intended. Ashley James (0:44:09.941) I want to say that when you experience pain, even just to view it as a gift, because pain is temporary and it's as horrible and uncomfortable as it is, it is the largest motivator,  like you said, for change. It's shining a light on something and if you act fast enough and find the right  holistic doctor like Dr. V, get his book, it's coming out soon, The Headache Advantage. Your website also is headacheadvantage.com, by gaining this understanding and then diving into, okay, where's this pain located? What's triggering it? Going through and figuring out what the root cause is, make the correction quickly instead of it going deeper because if it's a nutrient deficiency, it only gets worse. If it's stress, things only get worse.  We want to listen to pain when it first comes up and not wait because the longer we prolong it, the harder it is to support the body in recovering. Catch it quickly, listen to the body.  I love that you're exposing that there's a way that we can hear the body. Listen to the symptoms of the body. This is what I was taught by one of my mentors is the body speaks in symptoms.  If we listen to those symptoms, we can catch things really early and make small corrections instead of waiting for the really big problems then you have to make really big corrections. I've met so many people who develop cancer and they're always surprised. But then when they started really going down the rabbit hole of healing, there were warning signs that they ignored.  I can only speak to what it is to be a woman, but I know women ignore, I think men do too, not everyone, but women ignore because they put everyone else first. They’re like, I don't have enough time for this. I'm taking care of my husband. I'm taking care of my kids. I got to drive them to soccer. I've got to cook dinner. I've got to clean. I just came home from work.  I get it. You have taken on the responsibility of other people. You are the executive function of an entire household of people. But if you stop functioning, everything grinds to a halt. You really do need to prioritize you. Listen to those symptoms. If your body is crying out, it's time to put the pause button, ask for some help from friends or family members to take over some of your tasks so that you can carve out the time that's needed to take care of you.  You had mentioned nutrient deficiency, and I think that's really important to bring up the minerals. In fact, I have two interviews, one Kristen Bowen episode all the way back in 294 and an episode with Dr. Joel Wallach, one of my mentors who's absolutely amazing, episode 435. With Kristen Bowen, she sells a magnesium soak where you absorb grams of magnesium from it. It is phenomenal. 76% of people reach full cell saturation within a month of soaking daily in this magnesium soak. She offers listeners a discount. Her website's really cute, livingthegoodlifenaturally.com and use coupon code LTH as in Learn True Health. Use coupon code LTH to get the listener discount. She gives us a great discount. Get the magnesium soak, do it every day. Just get a basin, just put your feet in it. When you're watching TV, reading a book, even when you're at your desk, just put your feet in it and soak every day for 30 days. Within the first day, you'll notice a difference.  Most people have amazingly deep sleep and then such great energy. One of the things I learned from her, and I've learned many things, she's come back on the show about four times so you can listen to her, all the episodes I did with Kristen Bowen. But she said that if we're magnesium deficient, pain receptors cannot turn off. That we need magnesium for the pain receptors to even close.  I had pain in my foot the other day. I was , I know what I got to do. Did a foot soak, immediately the pain resolved. This is so cool. Magnesium is so cool.  it's the most needed of all the minerals. There's 60 minerals the body needs, but it's the most needed.  We always think calcium is the most important. It's not. It's not. Magnesium and zinc are more important than calcium in terms of how many enzymatic processes are used. The body needs magnesium to make over 300 hormones and proteins and 1800 enzymatic processes.  It's crazy. People are walking around completely deficient in minerals, especially in magnesium, because the farming practices of over the last hundred years have depleted. Our food supply of minerals. I love that you're stressing, eating organic, and finding farms. If you can find a local farm that does biodynamic farming, that remineralizes their soil, that also is so helpful. Dr. Joel Wallach has amazing books that'll blow your mind on utilizing minerals to support the body's ability to heal itself. That was episode 435. I love that you brought that up because when we're deficient in one of the 90 essential nutrients, the body just starts to break down. I described this to my clients. It's like the workmen showed up to build the house, but the lumber didn't get delivered. Your body wants to heal itself, but if the lumber doesn't show up,  your job is to deliver the lumber, your body or the workmen,  they want to rebuild. They want to build healthy cells. If you don't deliver the lumber, they're not rebuilding healthy cells and you begin to break down and then pain. Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:50:24.894) I agree 100%. You just called out the two primary mineral deficiencies. You talked a lot about- magnesium is so calming. I often have people doing that soak or take a magnesium supplement at bedtime so that'll help colon function and the calmness as you so eloquently described. But then zinc that you mentioned, we also need to talk about that. Our soils are depleted in zinc, sugar leaches zinc, stress leaches zinc. Zinc helps us break down that stress hormone. It helps us make stomach acid. I alluded to that earlier. Helps us make and break down most of the estrogens, most of the hormones and it's prolific in the immune system. With the whole viral challenge that we went through over these last few years zinc got a lot of press. Fortunately people are starting to recognize that zinc deficiency is real. So a physical symptom of zinc deficiency is the white clouds in the fingernails. Those listeners look at your fingernails if you have the white clouds it takes two months to grow out from cuticle to tip. If you were sick or super stressed or eating too much sugar two months ago, you'll have a white cloud near the cuticle of one or multiple fingernails. That's a sign that you've got really significant zinc deficiency. We want to load up on good quality forms of zinc made from organic vegetables, obviously, so pumpkin seeds are a simple solution. Pumpkin seeds are beneficial for most blood types. There's a whole nother discussion, but pumpkin seeds are great for A blood types and O blood types, which is 84 % of the population. They're great for the prostate gentlemen. I mean, pumpkin seeds is an easy snack to kind of start bringing that zinc level back up. But most people need to supplement because it's so profoundly deficient in current living. Ashley James (0:52:13.261) That's if the pumpkins were grown in zinc rich soil. I like to tell people when you think of spinach,  we think of Popeye, Popeye the sailor man, and he ate his spinach. What nutrients do you think of? What  element do you think of when you think of spinach? Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:52:33.533) Great point. Yes, iron, folic acid, yes. Ashley James (0:52:39.809) Folic acid or folate we should say can be there. Folic acid is not in nature but we think of iron. Most spinach is grown hydroponically. So there's actually zero minerals, almost zero. I don't know if you noticed, though, if you're older, if you consider yourself a seasoned person on this planet. I'm not going to put an age out there, but there are people who are old enough to remember what a carrot and a tomato tasted like. They taste like carrots and now they taste  like cardboard. You have to go back in your memory when you were a kid. You remember biting into something and being like, I could sit here and eat carrots all day. I go to a local farm and I get them  fresh out of the ground and they taste like back in the 80s when carrots taste like carrots. They're candy. I just sit there and I eat them raw like candy. I just can't stop. It's so delicious. It's so good for you. If your produce tastes cardboard, guess what? Probably no minerals in it. I'm just going to say if it's grown in minerally rich soil, you want to become a raw vegan. You just can't get enough. It's so good. It tastes so good. You just want to eat it raw right  out of the ground. I love pumpkin seeds for many reasons. They're also anti-parasitic and they're a really good source of protein and a really good source of healthy fats, but whether there's going to be enough zinc in them, I don't know. It just depends on whether that soil even has zinc in the first place. Because plants can grow. All they need is NPK. Plants can grow without most of the minerals, but you can't as a human, we need 60 minerals. Plants don't need them to grow produce. I have grown a vegetable garden. I remineralized the soil and it's like the garden of Eden. These things grow like I poured steroids into the ground. They grow beautifully. There's different kinds of zinc. There's the picolinate. There's the, I'm going to totally butcher this, the bisglycinate. What do you recommend is the best type of zinc if someone were to buy us a zinc supplement? Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:55:03.870) Yes, I use whole food based supplements that are basically going to be, if you will, organic pumpkin seeds vacuum dried into a zinc supplement. It's more as it would be found in your former garden.  Ashley James (0:55:20.198) Got it. Digested by the plant. It's plant derived and digested by the plant. But the company that you sell, do they test to make sure that there's actually zinc in the pumpkin seed? Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:55:34.134) Absolutely, I mean, it may not be pumpkin seed. They're using high zinc vegetables that they grow in their own organic farm to produce the supplements that I typically would recommend for zinc. Ashley James (0:55:47.870) Got it. You can't say exactly what kind of zinc, because it's the kind that comes out of the ground. It's not picolinate or any of those. Okay. Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:56:00.752) Right. I hate to say, but call it lab grown almost, if you will, so taking zinc that we're going to want to balance it with the copper and the magnesium chromium that all helps it synergistically function. That's part of why I prefer supplements that come from the organic farm, ultimately. Because it's going to digest better, it's going to not create other deficiencies. If we over consume zinc in a synthetic form, it can create deficiencies of other nutrients. Vitamin E is a great example of that. Vitamin E is found in walnuts and organic nuts and that stuff. But if we extract it out and do d-alpha-tocopherol, then it creates a functional E deficiency and then that person is going to have back pain or potentially cardiovascular weakness from creating a functional deficiency by not having the selenium and other synergistic nutrients that go along with E in that case or zinc as we described. Ashley James (0:57:07.426) We've touched on some important subjects. Your environment that you live in can play a role, like, mold, for example. There's also EMF exposure. I have several episodes about that. There's environmental, there's emotional, there's whether the food you're eating can play a role, the nutrient deficiency can play a role. There's these different layers.  When someone comes to you and you've talked about this, they come to you and the first thing is, well, where's the headache? We talked about the left side. Let's talk about the right side. If someone comes in and they have headaches always on the right side, what is that an indicator of? Dr. Scott Vrzal (0:57:51.579) The gallbladder is a right-sided organ, similar to the stomach meridian, but the gallbladder starts right behind the eye where the V, on the outside of the eye, goes down the side of the head. It goes down both sides, but again, the gallbladder is a right-sided organ. When the gallbladder doesn't function, when it's congested or, if emotionally we talked about anger, frustration, resentment, if that's been stuffed away, compromisingly the gallbladder functions, then that's going to set the stage for a right-sided headache.  Physically, the muscle that sports the back of the knee, there's a little tiny muscle called the popliteus muscle, that gets weak and tender and creates instability in the knee when the gallbladder simultaneously is compromised. These are other areas that would physically manifest, if you will, when the gallbladder is not functioning properly. Then we want to look at food triggers potentially, glyphosate. I mean, here comes a whole other episode. Glyphosate inhibits bile production so then they end up with bile stasis or congestion, which is a very common trigger to set up right-sided gallbladder headaches.  Glyphosate is the toxin within Roundup that is used to kill wheat, the crops of wheat, corn, soy, oats right before harvest so that they can harvest it all at the same time. It all comes back to the manufacturing processes, but that inhibits bile production. That also obliterates the intestinal lining. That is the most common trigger I see to set up right-sided headaches. Certainly then we've got the balance of omega-3s to omega-6 fatty acids. There's some ratio in there that a typical, sad, standard American diet tends to have more omega-6s as opposed to the omega-3s that the body really needs for anti -inflammatory. Omega-6s are good, nuts and seeds, we need them, but most diets have too much of those, and so that inverse ratio can also congest the gallbladder, which then leads to constipation and other things that go along with poor fat metabolism, even nutrient-wise. B6, pyridoxal 5-phosphates, the active form, functional form of B6, that also helps facilitate methylation again where a lot of the bile is made and facilitates the functioning of the bile. If a person's had chronic gallbladder problems, and they've had their gallbladder removed, typically we want to replace that bile. My canned joke is until the gallbladder goes back.  Ashley James (1:00:20.939) Yes. So, the rest of their lives. When I have a client and they start telling me about certain issues that sound like a fat deficiency, a healthy fat deficiency, I'm like, do you still have your gallbladder? Almost always they say no.  Then I'm like, okay, so let's, we need to back this up. Your gallbladder was so important.  God gave you a gallbladder for a reason that it would store all the bile and then when you ate food, the fat in your food was not water soluble fat. You see oil kind of floating on top of water? It's not mixing together. Even though your stomach would produce the enzymes to break down the lipase, to break down the lipids, to break down the fat in your food, whether you're vegan, there's even fat in apples and potatoes. t's in small amounts and it's a different kind of fat, but there's fat in plants. There's fat obviously in animal products, but regardless of what you're eating, there's going to be some amount of fat and that fat is important for the body. There's a good kind, like you said, pumpkin seeds, great.  then there's bad kind, anything fried, not good for you. Fried, bad, just giving you an example, there's a big spectrum of fats that are not really helpful and then fats that are extremely unhealthy and very damaging.   Then there's fats that are super healthy for you. But you can't digest them because they're not water soluble. The stomach then empties the small intestine. The bile is supposed to then empty out the blood is supposed to squeeze and let all that bile mix with the contents, those liquid contents now of what you just ate. It emulsifies sort of what a soap does. The digestive enzymes that break down fat allows them to then blend with the fat. If that process doesn't happen, no matter how much fat you eat, you're digesting one hundredth of what, I don't know, because the liver, is just dripping, just drip, drip, drip instead of squeezing a tablespoon or an ounce or whatever it was, however much bile it was squeezing into the contents. It's doing such a small amount of bile now that you're barely able to digest. Here's the kicker. What I've learned from naturopaths is that usually a bile problem was already a healthy fat deficiency to begin with because we need healthy cholesterol to make healthy bile and buildup of gallstones is a lack of healthy cholesterol. What I've seen naturopaths do is actually help the body slowly increase through supporting the digestion and healthfully increase the healthy cholesterol production, which then breaks down the gallstones in the gallbladder, and then that restores function. If you can catch this early enough, this is again where the pain matters. If you start to have little aches and pains or, I ate a fried egg and then I get a little gallbladder attack,  it's small. If it's small, you run to a naturopath. You run or run to an amazing chiropractor with an extensive knowledge such as yourself. We run and we do what we can to support saving the gallbladder because if once you've had it removed, you need to be on and your surgeon will not tell you, which is a crime. Every surgeon who's ever removed a gallbladder that doesn't tell their patient that they need to support their body with basically exogenous someone else's bile or an ox bile or whatever, or sometimes people get, I think  there's  papaya enzymes or something, but I haven't seen that work as well. I don't know. I'd like to hear your feedback on that. But basically you have to take it exogenously. You have to take it from outside your body instead of your body making it for the rest of your life because that was removed. MD medicine does not tell you that.  I think it's, I really do think it's on purpose. I don't think the surgeon is doing it on purpose, but I think the whole system, the education system is designed to not have the surgeon tell them and then they go home and get sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker and get on more drugs and more drugs and more drugs and more drugs and just more hospital stays and they become a cash cow for the mainstream medical system, which I'm on my soapbox again raving about how angry I am that this system is designed to keep you sick and make your loved ones suffer when it's needless and it doesn't have to be that way. When you have a client come in, they've got  right-sided headaches and you're beginning to detect gallbladder problems. You're there quickly to help them make some nutritional changes, make some dietary changes to get that back on track. But when someone comes to you and they no longer have their gallbladder, what kind of supplementation have you seen works best? Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:05:45.736) Yes, so replacing the bile salts so they no longer have the storage mechanism of the bile. Typically I have a person taking one to two a night of I use a product called Cola Cal, but something that, or we have several others as well that physically contain bile salts.  Unfortunately people have probably known the taste of bile salts when they've drank too much and threw up. That's bile actually that they're tasting. We need to replace those because it's not being stored. Typically bile is recycled from pre-absorbed back up through the intestine into the liver and recycled. Part of the other part of the mechanism with bile is that it's taking the toxin. The liver takes the toxins that it's taking out of the bloodstream, puts it into the bile to then eject into the colon to get rid of when we eat good fats. That's another mechanism that we need to consider that those toxins are potentially part of the reason that the gallbladder is congested. Another mechanism that takes place is as bile squirts down the bile duct, there's actually a release of eosinophils, an immune modulator that helps kind of antibacterial, if you will. I kept finding that gallbladder was helping people's immune systems. How's this working? and Dr. Goodheart, the founder of Applied Kinesiology often talked about bio being the most dense antioxidant available. There's that benefit of antioxidants that also facilitate the immune system.  We've got all these little interplays that go along, go in the body that is just so profound and exciting as we start learning these mechanisms and how they all interplay. Ashley James (1:07:27.335) I geek out. I'm so excited. It's so interesting. I had a guy on my show a few years ago. I've had him on a few times and he's a really interesting fellow. He was an acupuncturist who became a high school teacher. He doesn't have a ton of money, but he has invested about, I think $40,000 of his own money into lab tests that he does on himself before and after 30 day fasts. Every year he does it during the summer, because he’s a teacher so he can take the summer off. He does a 30-day fast and he's really trained in fast. He's been doing it for a long time. I don't recommend someone jump into a 30 day fast if they've never fasted before. Listen to episode 230 to learn more about fasting and how to do it healthfully. Dr. Alan Goldhamer is an amazing guest on episode 230.  This is why it costs so much money. He tests for the things that are not normally tested for. He tests for obesogens and forever chemicals, microplastics, all the things and glyphosate, all the pesticides, everything that is incredibly harmful that we've been wondering how can we get this out of our body? How can we detox this? Because it just is stored in our fat. He's not an overweight person to begin with. He doesn't have a lot, but even people who are skinny still have fat and their body is trying to store all these chemicals. He would do this every year and he would experiment. One year he just did fasting and then he puts it up on this website just so people can see. Then the next year he incorporated sauna in some supplements.  Then he put those results up. The time that he has had the single handedly, the best result with permanently removing and lowering the needle, permanently removing all across the board, all these very harmful man made chemicals that are get stored up in our body that cause cancer and epigenetically change our gene expressions for really nasty stuff is when he added a binder. It was explained to him by a camera where some PhD guy goes, bile. The bile we've been talking about. Bile is a wonderful thing that digests our fat like you've said, a wonderful antioxidant, has so many properties. It is also the mechanism in which the liver uses to remove all these chemicals from the body. But bile is so precious, it gets reabsorbed in the intestines, most of it gets reabsorbed. Now our body thinks that we're living in the Garden of Eden. We're eating super clean. There are no such things as chemicals. So if that were the case, if you were never exposed to these chemicals, most of it would get reabsorbed and then through the fiber that you're eating, some of those toxins get out, because we pretty much everyone, unless there are listeners, everyone eats crap. Everyone eats 15 grams or less of fiber. Everyone's constipated. People are reabsorbing the forever chemicals right back up into their body and  also the estrogens, the estrogens are broken down and then reabsorbed because people are constipated and they don't eat enough fiber, they don't eat enough binders. During his 30 day fast, he took binders so that with the bile, which your liver's always, even if you're not eating, the liver is going to still have to get rid of stuff. It's still pumping bile out. He took binders and it lowered significantly across the board, all of these chemicals, which just goes to show bile is very important. Digestion is super important. If you're constipated you are reabsorbing toxins. Fiber is so important because it's helping bind, helping get rid of those toxins from the liver all the way out of your body without being reabsorbed and I thought that was fascinating because we don't think about how we get rid of this? We're eating glyphosate. Even if you go out once a month and you eat some kind of fast food or restaurant food, you're eating tons of manmade chemicals. Even if you eat clean most of the time, and then some of the time you go eat from a restaurant, you are absorbing these chemicals. So it's so important to consider. We've got to help the body get it all the way out of the body. It’s wild.  Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:12:16.459) Absolutely. It's such an intricate mechanism and it reminds me of a gal that I actually evaluated up on stage at a seminar I was teaching and then she kind of hit me up a year later that she was about to have her gallbladder removed. Yes, and this is a health practitioner. This is a qualified natural doctor and she tried everything else and was trying to figure out what was going on. I ran a quick evaluation and it turned out her ovary was dysfunctional. So the body was overproducing cholesterol to compensate for the hormonal problems and the hormonal deficiencies. We put her on a supplement to rebuild that ovary and her cholesterol stabilized, her gallbladder corrected. I kind of wondered what happened with this gal because I hadn't had follow up with her again.  Then she came up on my Facebook page where she hit me up and did this whole testimony about how we saved her gallbladder, hormones corrected, and so on.  It kind of brings it back to the cholesterol we were talking about a minute ago. A couple of things that are often missed as far as triggers for high cholesterol are hormonal deficiencies because that cholesterol is the building blocks for most of those hormones, including the stress hormones and, the girl hormones. So if those are deficient in the body, then the liver's going to overproduce cholesterol as a compensation to correct them.  It’s not so much that it's plaquing up the arteries or those things that most of us have been led to believe it's the deficiency of hormones that the body's trying to compensate for. Hypothyroid, low thyroid is another very common trigger for the body to overproduce cholesterol as a compensatory mechanism to try and find homeostasis when things are out of balance. Ashley James (1:14:12.749) Yes, cholesterol is really important. Most people have taken on the mainstream just because, listen, we need to question everything. We've been taught cholesterol is bad, it causes heart disease. I'm not going to because I want to hear from you, the guest, but I could talk for at least an hour on how that is such a sham, such a lie. Cholesterol is needed because 70% of the white matter of the brain is made of cholesterol. Every cell in your body that has a nucleus makes cholesterol, not just the liver, the liver only makes about 30%. It is such an important nutrient for your body that  every cell wall is made of cholesterol. You said, sex and stress hormones are made of cholesterol. The myelin sheath of the nerves that protect the nerves are made of cholesterol.  It's so, so vastly important and also bile is made of cholesterol, to emulsify fats so we can absorb them.  Many reasons why we need just  any nutrient, too much, not good. Too little, not good. Goldilocks. We need to have that Goldilocks. Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:15:26.497) Perfect bottle of boiler porridge. Ashley James (1:15:28.633) Yes, we got to have that Goldilocks for every nutrient in the body. We're kind of running around  stressed out. I don't know, just  whatever animal you could think of. We're just running around  very animalistic, being stressed out and kind of ignoring our body then self-medicating with either over-the-counter pain meds, coffee, alcohol, sugar. I was just talking to a woman yesterday. She wanted an example of how a very simple change can make a profound difference. I said, I'm going to take water. Everyone ignores the importance of water. If you drink 5% less water than your body needs, you have a 25% reduction in your energy production in ATP. Cellular energy production goes down and then you're tired.  What do you do?  You probably have headaches.  What do you do? You pop some  Tylenol or Advil and then you drink some coffee while you dehydrate yourself further. Then you have another slump. Then you eat some sugar or maybe go for some sugary frappuccino. Then you're completely tired, wired, super stressed out cortisol through the roof. You drink alcohol at night because it's a socially acceptable way to “calm down”. Now you're in a vicious cycle every day of doing tasks that dehydrate you. Sugar, alcohol, caffeine, sugar, alcohol, caffeine every single day. You're setting yourself up for exhaustion, burnout, poor sleep, tired wired, and then you're stressed out. Then you lose your capacity to handle stress. So you start snapping at people, but you don't realize you're the problem. You think everyone else is a jerk and then you're affecting your hormones and your digestion and your hair starts falling out. Every single aspect of this in the mainstream is acceptable. Go, go get over the counter meds too, to medicate, self-medicate, go do sugar, alcohol, caffeine to self-medicate. If we just got off that bandwagon and started drinking enough water, all those things would be thrown away and we'd have great skin, great sleep, great energy. Our joints would stop aching. That's a simple one change. I know you teach us hundreds of things. One change, one little change can change your life and that takes calming down, taking some breaths, calming down and starting to listen to the body connect in and ask, what does my body need? What is my body asking for?  Okay. We talked about left-sided headaches, right-sided headaches. What if the headaches are on both sides, right in front of the eyes or behind the eyes, I should say. Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:18:10.928) Great question. I'd like to go back just to finish up the conclusion or conclude the discussion on cholesterol. If people are listening to this and they're truly concerned about cardiovascular risk, a much better thing to look at is going to be high homocysteine. That's an inflammatory marker that can be tested in lab tests. Homocysteine is something that should be recycled and broken down, kind of  we're talking about with bile, but it should be broken down. It breaks down into pathways in the liver called methylation and sulfation to keep pathways that are often compromised in people.  Physically, if you're concerned about cardiovascular risk, when homocysteine is high or elevated, physically on the body, it's going to manifest as the little red petechiae, they're called cherry angiomas. If it looks like somebody took a red felt pen and polka dotted here and there, or you see those starting to manifest on the body, they may even be as profound as a mole size or raised red dot. It's not cancer answer risk per se, I mean the dermatologist is not going to say, we need to remove this. But that is a sign that your body's overproducing homocysteine and that is way more directly related to cardiovascular risk.  So when homocysteine levels are up above nine, nine, five, the higher that is, the more relevant, the more risk there is for cardiovascular disease and the more likely it is to be a fatal event. If you're truly concerned, you've got the family history of cardiovascular challenges, look at your homocysteine, it's so much more directly related to risk than cholesterol. Is cholesterol 50% or half the people with high cholesterol don't have any cardiovascular problems. You don't have to have low cholesterol, but still have cardiovascular problems. Homo-assisting is almost a guarantee based on that number of what the risk is. It's very modifiable. The reason we don't see it in the big pharma world, is because it's nutrients like B6 and B12 that help break that homo-assisting down to reduce the potential of plaquing. What that, again, those red dots, the petechia, the cherry angiomas, those are indicators that you're setting down. You're setting the stage for plaque in the arteries and that's way more relevant to what the risk is going to be long term for cardiovascular problems. Just to kind of give the listener a to do, to know something else to look for to have that long term quality of life. Now to take it back to your question, the bitemporal headache, if they've got pain on both sides, that is a hormonal issue that typically most of the time tends to have to do with estrogen metabolism.  Again, we go back to some of those liver pathways, methylation, sulfation. There's another pathway called P450. Sorry to use terms like that, but these are key pathways in the liver that break down estrogen when we're done with it.  So if one of those pathways in the liver isn't functioning properly, then the person doesn't break down estrogen, then they're going to be a lot more prone to cancers, and to these other hormonal swings and high cholesterol and temporal headaches. The muscle that physically will get weak and tender when estrogen metabolism is compromised, or in other words, the ovary is not functioning properly, it's called the gluteus medius. It's kind of the top of the butt region. That muscle will get weak when the ovary or in the male, the gonads are not functioning properly and so that'll affect the way they walk in kind of a shuffle if you will, a lateral list during their walk. There's an acupuncture point right on the outside of the elbow that's going to get very tender, think tennis elbow. That is a sign that hormonal regulation is out of balance and so we want to look at mechanisms to break down estrogen more appropriately. Nutritionally, it might be that corn, we mentioned corn earlier in the podcast, that corn is a massive trigger for ovarian cysts and it will literally create damage in the ovary. Sorry, this might rub some people, but from a blood type perspective, O blood type females that are drinking coffee, another massive trigger for ovarian dysregulation and setting the stage for some bigger problems to come.  Coffee is fine for other blood types for the most part, but corn and coffee are the most common triggers I see to set the stage for this bitemporal headache showing up on both sides. Ashley James (1:22:44.942) Oh my goodness. That just blows my mind. Going back to what you said about homocysteine,  just, we got to go a little bit deeper there. What nutrients would be good to make sure that we're getting. I know folate, B12, what's really important to help the body to, is it to break down homocysteine or just lower the production of it? What are we supporting to get it lower? What causes it? What's the most common cause to be high? Just walk us through this since you kind of presented us with this. The most important thing to look at for heart health, it's this little truth bomb. Yes. Let's unpack that truth bomb. Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:23:40.679) You laid the stage talking about, we call it energy drinks, sodas, things like that are going to leach alcohol. A hangover is the functional deficiency of B6. Pyridoxal 5-phosphate is the active form of B6 that drives the methylation and sulfation pathways. Again, homocysteine is something that should be recycled through the body. These two pathways in the liver that don't function properly, when they don't break it down, then it continues to elevate. That's where the plaquing, the big risk comes from if we're doing things again, sodas or sugars that leach the B vitamins. Zinc is another nutrient that helps drive these pathways. Methionine, the best sources of methionine are beef, tuna and eggs. If we're eating beef, tuna and eggs, then we have the methionine amino acid to facilitate that methylation pathway to then break down this homocysteine, to break down the estrogens so that we are less prone to have this significant cardiovascular risk. Ashley James (1:24:51.482) Do you happen to know any vegan sources just for those listeners who don't eat those animal products? Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:24:58.219) That is a great question and I run into that often. Unfortunately, it's only found in those foods as far as I know.  Often, I mean, my favorite example of this is a third generation hardcore vegan that unfortunately had MS and was in a wheelchair and was unable to walk, she had ulcerations all up on her feet and shins and everything. What we had to do for her was give her a methionine supplement to offset that significant methionine deficiency. She was an O blood type. I mean from a blood type perspective, an A blood type will do much better that way. An O blood type is more dependent on the methionine. Again, because it's beef and that's a big need, in the O blood type for that detoxification process. Often it ends up being taken an amino acid supplement that has that methionine in it if it's a vegan. Ashley James (1:25:55.791) Got it. I think it's really important to recognize that food is medicine. We should be using it as medicine. The body goes through seasons. I've had a few interviews where the doctors talk about how they'll use a vegan, very clean vegan diet. Listen, oreos are vegan. I'm not saying all vegans are healthy but to call it a whole food plant based diet where whole food, meaning it's a single ingredient, like there's broccoli. You can recognize everything on your plate. There's no chemicals, there's no weird stuff. You could actually pronounce every single ingredient that's on your plate. It came from a farm, not a manufacturing facility. No lab grown stuff.  Whole food plant-based, very nutrient dense, lots of good fiber.  There's a lot of benefits to a whole food plant based on a mix of raw and cooked for those varieties of the enzymes and the different types of fiber. Because when you cook something, it changes the fiber. You're feeding a different gut bacteria. There's lots of fun stuff that you can play with. What I've heard from several doctors is that they use it like a cleanse, like a season. You might do this for a few months, few weeks, few months, few years. Then there's a time where some people require animal products or you could, like you said, find it from a supplement. But if we're using food as medicine and we're being pragmatic, not dogmatic around diet, but pragmatic, I want to give my body exactly what it needs. A lot of people just run around and shove the food in their mouth that tastes the best. If you're allowing your taste buds and your dopamine response to guide your diet, you're going to end up  a statistic. We have to be more calculated. You wouldn't just put any fluid into your gas tank. Why are you doing that to your body? Sorry to give you a little  shame session there, but not calling anyone out in particular, but just  do a little internal check and go, because I do this to myself every day. What do I feel  for dinner?  Wait a second. It's not about what I feel. What's fun? It's what my body was asking for. Sometimes it's a big smoothie. Sometimes it's a big salad. Sometimes it's something else. But  listening to my body and going, what is my body asking me for? What nutrients should I be giving my body? I'm not saying that everyone should be vegan or everyone should eat meat. I'm not dogmatic when it comes to diet but a lot of people haven't explored the healing benefits of a whole food plant-based diet or as Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Joel Fuhrman will point out, eat mostly plants, just Nutritarian style, eat mostly plants, eat a variety. If anything, treat animal products as a condiment rather than the main event.  So many people gain such benefits from that. But thank you for pointing out that we don't see multiple generation vegans, if they're not being smart about their nutrients, we don't see them have great outcomes. But we also don't see Americans in the South that eat fried food for multiple generations of good outcomes either. It goes both ways. We have to be cautious about how we cook our food, what we cook our food in, whether it's nonstick Teflon or plastic, in the microwave, that matters too.   Again, I'm on my soapbox raving about, it's kind of, once you wake up to this, it's everything's trying to kill me. Everything's dangerous. My friend just literally woke up when she was in a grocery store reading packages and she had that aha moment. She texted me angrily. She's like, how do you do this? Everything's dangerous. Everything's killing us. How do you do it? How do you not get angry every time you go into a grocery store? It's liberating when you learn what's healthy for you and what your body needs. I am super excited for what we're learning from you. I have to have you back on the show because you're a true holistic doctor.  I've had a string of interviews where they claim to be holistic and then they talk about, well, you could get this drug. I'm like, are you kidding me? Or they're treating supplements like it's a drug?  There's a big difference in the philosophical lens that you view the body. We have a God-given ability to heal. That our body is constantly wanting to heal and let's make sure we're delivering the lumber, then also getting out of our own way. Stop feeding it what hurts it. Stop putting us in an environment that hurts it. Do the responsible thing of cleaning up the emotions, lowering the stress, making those lifestyle changes, and then delivering to the body the nutrients it does need within the Goldilocks zone, and also doing the right  labs just to check in. But you know  what? You could probably listen to the language of the symptoms,  the language of the body speaking. You said, if you start to have those little red dots on you, or those little things that look freckles or look  moles, but they're red, hey, that's high homocysteine, that's early warning signs of heart disease. Let's catch it when it's a whisper. Let's catch it when it's that first pain before it's the big nasty. Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:31:38.655) Can I add a little thing to kind of follow what you're saying? One of the symptoms of zinc deficiency is lack of smell or taste. A lot of people had that during the virus we just went through.  The person that eats the sugar, for example, and then ends up zinc deficient, they need more sugar to offset, to give flavor to their food. Whereas a person like us that's eating a plant-based diet and getting proper zinc levels, that food, the organic vegetables are actually going to taste good and taste better to us. The child, for example, the mom's allowing them to eat crackers and sugar and junk for food, they're going to be zinc deficient. So those plants are not going to taste good to them. One of my solutions, moms, we carry a couple of different forms of liquid zinc. To then start getting that child's zinc levels up, their immune system's going to function better, they're going to handle stress better, and their palate's going to expand, and they're going to start actually appreciating those good, healthy foods that actually you consumed when you were in your youth, that your mom was feeding you. Those are foods that are going to flourish and thrive and build health. Similarly, adults, if we're eating trans fats and a lot of fried type foods, the liver being stressed out will actually crave more of that and it creates that whole conundrum, that vicious cycle of pursuing the things that are making a person more and more unhealthy.  That's how that vicious cycle goes where a person just starts going downhill because they get so far disconnected from their body that they start craving the things that are making them worse. That's part of our job, as clinicians is to help break that cycle, get them eating the healthier foods and kind of suck it up if you will initially to eat the healthier foods and start redeveloping that taste for the things that are going to allow us to flourish instead of taking us down that ugly, terrible quality of life road that Ken and Sue. Ashley James (1:33:43.743) We just touched the surface. We just discussed a few different headaches. We didn't even go into what if it's the back of the occiput? There's so many different types of headaches. We didn't even really get into migraines. I want to definitely have you back on the show. It would be so cool. Now you've got a book coming out. You got a website for people to check out. Let's talk a bit about how my listeners who want to stop suffering, how do they connect with you? Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:34:12.895) Thank you. Last name is Vrzal, V-R-Z-A-L. I post things on social media, on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Periodically little one minute quippy fun triggers about this type of stuff that we've discussed today. Certainly the most beneficial aspect or an area is headacheadvantage.com, headacheadvantage.com on that site. It's neo. It's young but on that site there are links to the seven different patterns of headaches and you can click on that link and it'll list out some of the food triggers or some of the potential supplements that you can take to hand in each of those patterns. I put kind of a little Q&A to help direct to what the best supplement would be to solve those headache problems that's there and then you put your email on there then I can let you know when the book is officially available which is at the timing of this recording about a month away. Ashley James (1:35:12.381) Yes, I'm going to be publishing this today. In about a month, your book's going to come out, which is really exciting. It's going to be called Headache Advantage. We're going to be able to see it then. Now you have something called How to Handle Stress Better. Tell us a bit about that. Do we sign up for your email and get it or is that just on your website? Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:35:13.291) That's one of the chapters, the frontal headaches typically have to do with chronic cortisol production. Either the body's not breaking that cortisol down properly, which opened up another Pandora's box, but often things like Lyme disease can compromise the body's ability to break down that stress hormone and set the stage for a frontal headache. What a person would get when they enter their email is a link to that chapter going into how to modulate that stress response a little more healthfully. Ashley James (1:36:12.833) Cool. You know what? I personally have some people I'm going to be sending to you the second we get off of this recording. I know my listeners. I bet you guys are thinking of some friends, some family, some coworkers, or like hey, my cousin's mom. Everyone knows someone who has headaches. Now, do you also work with people that have chronic pain in other areas of their body, or do you just specialize in headaches? Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:36:43.639) Chronic pain, the whole body tells a story. The reason I focused the book on headaches is when I started out trying to write a book that covered the whole body, but it was way too all encompassing, ominous. The book would never be done because I'm learning every day. When I kind of realized I got into healthcare because of my own headaches, unfortunately, about 50% of the population suffers with headaches. When I did the research, unfortunately, no one talked about headaches in this regard. We mentioned migraines. For me, migraine ultimately, as far as everything I've seen in the literature, migraine ultimately just means it's debilitating or it's gnarly. It all comes down to the location. I mean, my original title for the book was Headaches, Location, Location, Location, because location is everything. Where the position on the head that the pain is, that tells us the story of what the trigger is. But yes, that relates to the head, then there's all these other physical manifestations in the body or on the body in the body that are going to also relate to that same area. That's how we think. L5 does central low back pain goes along with that frontal headache, overzealous stress response we talked about, knee pain, weakness in the inside of the knee or ankle weakness, plantar fasciitis or bunions, those are all signs of chronic cortisol secretion. We can pull all that together. I guess that's the long answer of yes, I deal with chronic illness, the whole body. I got into healthcare because I'm a fitness junkie. That's how I lab test everything on myself. But by default, I mean, chronically ill people are talking to chronically ill people about what's going on.  That's our niche. It’s helping those people that need it so desperately. Ashley James (1:38:38.728) Can you be my new best friend? You're speaking my language. Yes. Okay. I've got one for you. I recently, a month ago started doing two workouts a day and, I guess maybe I didn't stretch enough, which I'm totally ashamed of, but I developed something super weird. I have a friend who's a podiatrist. I saw him, he's an amazing sports podiatrist. If there's any listeners in the Seattle area that have a foot problem, I got you, I got a guy for you and he's okay. This is not common, but what's happened is the muscle that lifts the toe is getting entrapped on the interior.  The inside, not the outside, the inside part of the ankle, I’ll take a few steps and then all of a sudden it's excruciating pain because it feels like my joint is crushing my tendon.  He’s like yes, it is. I'm like okay. I've been doing more stretching, which is helping. Obviously seeing my chiropractors, great. I've been doing all kinds of stuff, anti-inflammatory stuff, phototherapy, that's all helping, but it's not gone 100% away. I'm going to seek out physical therapy, but I was wondering, you talked about ankle, high cortisol. What would you say to someone or me? What would you say to me? What did I do? 1:40:10.999 Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:40:11.166) Is the pain in the big toe specifically? Ashley James (1:40:15.502) I don't feel any pain just sitting here. I'll just be walking and then the joint will crush the tendon.  Also what's developed, because I started walking on the outside of my foot, which shortens that tendon, so it stops happening, but don't ever do that. Don't walk on the outside of your foot, because now I'm getting a shooting nervy pain, around the big toe. Everyone told me not to do that, and then I did it.  I'm not doing that anymore. It's such a bummer because now I can only do the bike for cardio because even the pool messes it up and he's like you can't do the treadmill. You can't walk. You can't go do the pool.  I'm just stuck doing the bike, which is a bummer because I like the variety. Also I can't be more active. I have to kind of like not do things until I really heal this. That is a good lesson to learn. Don't go zero to 60 in any fitness protocol whatsoever. Just slowly ramp up. I thought I was there. I thought I was ready to do two a day and apparently I wasn't. Yes. I'm super motivated. Yes, but my body was nope, a little too motivated. Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:41:38.079) Good on you. I love your motivation. That's all great.  We have good news for you. Liver two is an acupuncture point at the area you were talking about in between the two between the big toe and the second toe. Typically it's a liver problem that causes that big toe to hurt. What I was referring to was bunions and plantar fasciitis. That's all an adrenal problem or adrenal fatigue, a typical mechanism that sets most of those problems up. But when it's specifically the big toe, it's poor functioning of the liver. I found it to be specifically related to glutathione production. There's a key pathway in that liver that functions to help the detoxification and immune function and it's very antioxidant dependent.  I'm just confident that what I do know of you my new best friend is that I imagine you're getting plenty of those but we'd want to look at things to facilitate that glutathione reduction technically or but glutathione production you do the right thing and that toe pain literally would go away in minutes, that's the good news and the beauty. I've had that kind of toe off tenderness on my big toe in the past. I have a liquid glutathione product I've used and literally the minute it touches my tongue, the pain is gone in my toe.  That's how profound this kind of stuff can be. Ashley James (1:42:58.831) Interesting. I have a phototherapy patch. I don't know if you heard about this. I've had a few interviews about it. Is the liver channel up by the chest. Is it? Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:43:20.902) Yes, there's a glutathione point.  Ashley James (1:43:24.407) It's LV14. I know LV3 and that's by my foot, which I've been stimulating, but I have a patch that stimulates the body to produce more glutathione. I typically put it up by LV14 because that's like this gateway for the liver, but I'll try putting it down in between those two toes, that little tender spot. Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:43:54.807) There's a glutathione reflex over the liver. If you put your left hand over the liver, so your long finger's going to be  at the spleen 21. Your second knuckle is probably going to be probably that LV14 point you were talking about. That is kind of where the body refers pain when glutathione is not functioning properly.  I would think putting that patch there should be super, I mean you'll know, you put it there, within minutes your toe's going to tell you whether it's the right place or not. Ashley James (1:44:27.879) I'm going to try it. This is so much fun. You see, this is why people want to dive into this and advocate for themselves and learn this because stuff happens. Maybe you sprained an ankle or something, and then all of a sudden so many things that you can do and homeopathy is another fascinating thing.  One of my family members has a symptom in the middle of the night. I get up, turn my flashlight on, because I want to turn the lights on, turn my flashlight on, and run to the bathroom. I have this big cabinet full of homeopathic remedies. I grab one and give it to them and then boom, it's better. It's the coolest. I'm half awake doing it. I'm, yup, that worked. Okay, go to bed. You only needed one dose. My husband once had this trapped gas feeling. He woke up in the middle of the night and this was a few years ago, but he was just like, I can't come out on both ends. It's just trapped gas. He felt so weird. I'm okay. I looked it up, grabbed the homeopathic, gave it to him and immediately it just came out both ends. I feel so much better. You burped and farted. How cool is this?  Homeopathy is amazing and weird and almost instant for so many people. Then that's the least invasive, least toxic thing. If it doesn't work, you got the wrong remedy and that's okay too, because it's not hurtful. The body's going to just come back into balance. This is what I love about holistic medicine. We can go down all kinds of rabbit holes. You could do acupressure. You said, you can push on these points on the body and you can stimulate a specific response. You can change the little things in your diet specifically and shift the body. We can do things gently to make profound changes.  Dr. V, I want to have you back. This has been a true pleasure. I'd love for you to come back and teach.  Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:46:30.986) I love to. Can I throw a quick thing out just to make sure listeners don't miss the fact that sweet wonderful Ashley listeners just confirmed that she can do this in your sleep. Don't miss that aspect, huh? Ashley James (1:46:41.295) Well, I was half asleep. I got my little phone out and I know what websites to go to and look up the remedies and I have the remedies here and am half asleep. Well, I don't know about you, but as a mom, I always got one ear listening if my son's going to cough or my husband's going to snore or whatever. We're just wired to be the herbalist, the healer of the whole house? So we're just listening for everyone.  It might be annoying to people, but the second my friends do come to me and they're like, what do you think I should do for this? I give them  a whole health lecture. They're like, I can't believe that. How do you remember these things? I'm passionate. I'm so passionate. But I think at the end of the day, this is the gift God gave me. It took me a long time to find it. I think everyone is born with a gift and this is the gift that God gave me as my passion for helping people to help their body to come back into balance. Now my new best friend, it also is the exact same. God gave you the same gift too. How cool is that? Love it. Love it.  Thank you for coming on the show. Definitely going to have you back, especially when you launch the book in about a month. We'll have a big book party. So, headacheadvantage.com listeners, definitely check it out.   Can you work with clients like telemedicine?  How does that work if they want to work with you? Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:48:13.891) I do, yes. In fact, the gallbladder gal doctor that I was telling you about, we actually did telemedicine while she was the passenger in a car, of all things, and was able to figure out that it was her gallbladder, and we solved that. Yes, I do telemedicine. I have several docs in my office as well that are all doing the same work, and most of them came to me as interns and kind of came up through the ranks that way.  I say that because at this point, I tend to be booking about two months out, which is good news bad news. But yes, I still very actively treat people all day, every day, and try to do this book stuff on the side. Ashley James (1:48:55.367) Nice, nice. Well, good for you for duplicating yourself and for finding true holistic-minded doctors who want to support the body's ability to heal itself. I’m kudos to you. If they go to your website, headacheadvantage.com, is that where they can find information about doing the telemedicine at your clinic or is there a different website? Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:49:20.979) My office website is drvrzal.com. That's the office website. Ashley James (1:49:28.715) I'll make sure that the links to everything that Dr. Vrzal does is in the show notes of today's podcast at learntruehealth.com. It's been such a pleasure having you. Is there anything left unsaid that you just really want to make sure you leave us with? Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:49:43.949) It comes down to listening to your body. Listeners, your body's trying to tell you a story. Pain is intended to elicit change.  When you have pain, it's not a deficiency of aspirin or Advil or Tylenol. It's your body yelling at you to go forth and learn. Listen to what it's trying to tell you so that you can thrive. I mean, it's your early warning that God forbid you've got a cardiovascular incident not pending, looming. Your hormones are not functioning, so you're going to create mutated cells. Learn from what your body's trying to tell you so that you can thrive and enjoy this blessed life we have. Ashley James (1:50:31.037) Love it. Awesome. Well, can't wait to have you back on the show. It's been such a pleasure. Dr. Scott Vrzal (1:50:35.443) So fun. Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity, 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. 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