Learn True Health with Ashley James

Use coupon code LTH for the listener discount at www.energybits.com  Energy Bits = Spirulina (for energy and nutrition) Recovery Bits = Chlorella (for sleep and detox) Vitality Bits = Spirulina/Chlorella combo Coupon code LTH at energybits.com www.energybits.com  Articles: Protect Your Mitochondria and Longevity with Algae: https://www.energybits.com/blog/protect-your-mitochondria-and-longevity-with-algae Algae Outperforms Collagen for a Better You and a Healthier Earth: https://www.energybits.com/blog/algae-outperforms-collagen-for-a-better-you-and-a-healthier-earth Gut Healing with Algae: https://www.energybits.com/blog/get-gutsy-with-algae Surprise! Your Best Biohack is Algae! https://www.energybits.com/blog/surprise-your-best-biohack-is-algae   Mitochondrial Self-Healing Superfoods: High Potency Chlorella & Spirulina https://www.learntruehealth.com/mitochondrial-self-healing-superfoods-high-potency-chlorella-spirulina Imagine feeling stronger, more alert, and more energized than ever. How? By taking in spirulina and chlorella. These miracle health superfoods contain all the nutrients that will protect your mitochondria, the powerhouse of your cells, from damage. In this episode, Catharine Arnston explains how it works in your body and offers tips on how to use this vital food product.   Highlights: Macroalgae and microalgae Spirulina Chlorella Ascorbic acid Chlorophyll ENERGYbits RECOVERYbits BEAUTYbits VITALITYbits Superoxide dismutase Intro: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 487. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show Catharine Arnston who was in episodes 234, 265, 266, and 357—all about studying, actually, the most studied food in the world that is used as a medicine. It’s a very medicinal food, a superfood. And today, we’re going to talk about mitochondrial health and healing the mitochondria. I’m really, really excited to dive into this topic. But first, for those who haven’t gone back and listened to those four episodes, Catharine, I’m excited that you're going to give them a quick recap for those who haven’t heard that information because it’s really important information. Listeners can go to EnergyBits.com and use coupon code LTH (as in Learn True Health) at EnergyBits.com for Catharine’s amazing superfood algae. I’ve tried a bunch of different algae on the market, and there are a lot of companies out there. There's only a handful that I know of that strive to make sure there’s no lead and heavy metals in their algae. But out of all the companies that are sort of the highest quality and do the most testing, the rigorous testing to make sure that they are the cleanest, ENERGYbits is by far my favorite flavor. I’ve tried those other ones that the naturopaths push, and they kind of taste and smell fishy to me and chalky. And I don’t like them. I don’t know what it is about your chlorella and spirulina, but to me, it’s the best tasting. Yeah, I enjoy the flavor. But the real litmus test was getting our son to eat it, and he’s been eating your stuff since he was a toddler. We call it green crackers in our household. [00:02:03] Catharine Arnston: Yeah, right. I remember that.  [00:02:05] Ashley James: And it makes your tongue turn green, and we stick our tongues out at each other. And he loves it as a little snack. But I have some great anecdotal stories for detox. I’m having a great experience for the last few years using it in conjunction with my sauna therapy for detox. And then, I have a friend who eats it regularly, and she says her hair started growing and thick—thick, wonderful hair instead of having the hair loss that she was experiencing or the thinning hair. She started growing back thick, thick, thick. And her hair is thick and beautiful and lustrous. She said her skin cleared up and was just healthier. She just notices not only does she feel good while every day eating your spirulina and chlorella, but she sees it. She looks it on the outside. So, that is true health, is when we’re so healthy on the inside, it comes out on the outside. [00:02:54] Catharine Arnston: Exactly. [00:02:55] Ashley James: So, I love your ENERGYbits. EnergyBits.com coupon code “LTH“. So, let’s dive in. Give us the recap for those that haven’t listened to those previous episodes, and then we’re going to jump into mitochondrial health. So, welcome back to the show. It’s been a few years. [00:03:08] Catharine Arnston: Thank you. Before I do that, I just want to share with your community that I’m so thrilled just to hear about our algae tablets. I do too. But 99.9 percent, so that's virtually everyone else, swallows them. Because the chlorella does I think taste better, but the spirulina is very much an acquired taste. It’s very earthy, and it’s very chewy because of the very high protein and essential fatty acids. So, virtually, everybody else swallows them. And when you swallow them, there is no green flavor. There is no repeat like you would have with fish oil. So it’s an easy, fast, and effortless way to get your nutrients and protect your health and your mitochondria, and we’ll dive into that. But I’m so thrilled that you and your son chew them because I do too. But I’m used to eating them because I’ve been eating them for 12 years, which is how long I’ve been running the company. [00:04:06] Ashley James: I like chewing them. I like chewing them because I feel like I’m eating a snack. [00:04:09] Catharine Arnston: Exactly. [00:04:10] Ashley James: It’s a snack. And then I drink water with it because it’s dehydrated. So obviously, you need to rehydrate it. But I like the flavor. At first, you don’t know what to expect. Right? So, in the first few mouthfuls, you don’t know what to expect. But after a while, you're like, “Oh!” Your body starts to crave it, and you start to really enjoy it. I like to drink water with it. I’ve tried throwing like 30 little tablets in my smoothie. Swallowing it? I don’t know. There's something satisfying about chewing it. [00:04:39] Catharine Arnston: I agree. But for those who don’t like the flavor, it seems to be most people, swallowing is the easiest thing. But I do want to get into what algae is and I want to segue from something that you just said, which is that it’s food. The first thing people need to understand is that algae is food. It is not a supplement. Our tablets are about the size of a baby aspirin, and they may look like a supplement or a vitamin or a pill, but they are not. We actually call them, or I call them “bits” because they are bits of nutrition. And first of all, algae was the first life on earth almost 4 billion years ago and there is algae everywhere. Macroalgae is basically seaweed which is high in fiber and high in iodine because it’s come from the sea, with virtually no nutrition. But what we’re talking about is microalgae, which is microscopic in size. Something like a million microalgae cells could fit on the head of a pin. That's how tiny they are. And microalgae is everywhere. Macroalgae is only in the sea; hence, the word “seaweed”. Microalgae is in the lakes, the rivers, the streams, the soil, yes, the oceans, what feeds the whales. It’s probably in your swimming pool, your aquarium. But the two that we’re going to talk about today, spirulina and chlorella, are not from the ocean. They are harvested as food crops in fresh water. This is really important because we’re constantly getting emails from people asking, “Well, is your algae tested for microplastics?” Well, there are no microplastics because that would be something from the ocean. Spirulina and chlorella, whether it’s ours or whether you buy it from Target or Whole Foods, it’s all grown in fresh water. It’s called hydroponic. We’re well known for our high quality, as you mentioned, and part of that comes from the fact that our water is triple-filtered spring mountain water. We don’t use high heat to dry it. It’s actually not dehydrated. It’s just dried. And this will become very important when we talk about the mitochondria health issue. Because there are some very important enzymes. I’ll give you a little spoiler. One’s called (it’s a mouthful) superoxide dismutase, which stops the free radical damage of your mitochondria DNA. And that is essential for health and longevity. Anyways, it’s an enzyme. So, if you use high heat like everybody else, it kills that enzyme, so you don’t get the benefits of that particular enzyme as you would with our algae. Then, of course, we don’t use any binders when we press them into these little tablets. And we do third-party lab tests here in the United States. So, we grew ours in Taiwan, which is world-renowned for having the highest quality algae. But the number one thing is, A, algae is a food crop. You’ll be surprised to know that algae as a food crop in Asia is as big of an industry as the cattle industry is here in the United States. It is enormous. It is a multibillion-dollar agricultural crop. Now, people outside of Asia don’t know about algae. Why? Because it’s just not grown here. In Japan, you can’t ride your bicycle, you can’t go in your car without going by an algae farm. It is everywhere. Here, we drive by cornfields or wheatfields, neither of which are good healthy crops to be consuming. But in Asia, it’s algae. Now, if I do my job right and I help the world outside of Asia learn more about the healing benefits of algae and you’ll find that there are some that cannot be duplicated by anything else in the world. If I do my job right, we will be growing algae here in America. I have identified Florida as a subtropical environment where we can grow it similar to Taiwan. That won’t be for another 5 or 10 years, but that is the long-term plan. So, number one, a food crop. Number two, as you mentioned, it is a superfood. I actually call it a super-duper food because it has nutrients, as I mentioned, that are not found in any other food in the world. And some of them are these antioxidants, which we’re going to talk about, that are found in the highest quantity in algae that are essential for your mitochondria health because they are the only four that can get into that mitochondria and remembering which we’ll talk about in a minute. Algae, by the way, is also the most studied food in the world, as you mentioned. There are 60,000 studies on spirulina, and about 40,000 on chlorella. And in a minute, I’ll just go over briefly the differences between the two algae and what they do differently in your body. This is amazing. So, these studies are from America, from universities, from PhD’s in India, Taiwan. Every single country in the world has contributed research to the study of algae and have determined through all these peer-review studies that it does things like stops cancer, stops Alzheimer’s, improves your gut biome, reduces inflammation, protects your mitochondria, is great for pregnant moms, nursing moms, children, energy, focus. You’d almost think it’s unbelievable if it wasn’t so science-based. When I started the company, quite honestly, it’s because my sister had breast cancer, and her oncologist in Canada recommended that she change her diet to an alkaline diet because she said it would help with her healing. They didn’t tell her what an alkaline diet was and why it was good for her, so my sister called me, and I did some research. I had no nutrition background at the time, but I discovered that an alkaline diet was a plant-based diet, which led me to algae, and then I discovered that it was endorsed by NASA as the most nutrient-dense food in the world, endorsed by the United Nations as the answer to world hunger because it has three times the amount of protein than steak. A hundred thousand studies document it as a multibillion-dollar industry in Asia. And the only thing wrong with algae is nobody outside of Asia knew about it. So, I decided that I would dedicate my life 12 years ago to helping anyone and particularly in North America, but anyone who’s listening, to understand what algae is, why it is so critical for you and your family and the earth at this juncture in our world, and how to enjoy the benefits of it. It is the most effortless, concentrated, simple, safe, pure food in the world and a gift to us from Mother Nature, and to ignore it any longer is something you will do at the risk of your health. It’s really that simple. So, it is my honor to be representing Mother Nature here. It’s her concoction. I’m just the voice of algae. I can’t claim that I made this stuff up. And the tablets, by the way, that we sell, as I mentioned, most of you will swallow them, but you can certainly eat them or add them to a smoothie or the chlorella tastes great—we’ll talk about that in a second—when you add it to your salads as a garnish or as in trail mix. But they’re made like this in these tablet forms in Asia. The company that grows it for us, they’ve been making this for 50 years. So, I remind people when I get on these podcasts that algae isn’t new. It’s just new to you. And just as you didn’t know about chia or quinoa or matcha or CBD or probably collagen powder until maybe 5 or 10 years ago, I’m here to help you understand what algae is and why it is better than any of those things and will basically help you regain and reclaim your health and longevity and your children’s as well. But it’s not new. It was used by the Egyptians 2000 years ago. They used to wrap themselves up in it for health and skin benefits. So, that’s a little bit of a summary, a little quick history of where algae came from and why you don’t know about it. So, let me segue into now the two algae we’re going to talk about, spirulina and chlorella. Before I do that, I want to mention that spirulina is a blue-green algae. It is one of thousands of blue-green algae that exist. And chlorella is a green algae, one of thousands of green algae that exist. There also is red algae. Red algae is what makes, by the way, salmon pink and flamingos pink because they eat these particular algae. But I mention this because many of you may go to the internet at some point and Google blue-green algae and be horrified when you see some notice about blue-green algae closing your favorite beach. It’s not spirulina. Blue-green algae is a strain of algae and there are thousands and thousands of strains of it. Spirulina is one of them, and it is the one that is harvested, as I mentioned, in fresh water as a food crop. It is not the one that’s closing your beach. And by the way, I want to mention that poor algae get a bum rap because algae will show up only when there are toxins because algae kills bacteria. Now, the reason it showed up to close your beach is because somebody or something has poured toxins into your water. Now, they could have been run off from an agricultural situation or chemicals from a plant or just more people peeing in the water. Who knows? But you didn’t see the toxins. But you do see the algae. But algae is the clean-up crew. It’s there to protect you. It kills bacteria on your beach and in your body. When you take algae, as we’ll talk about in a minute, internally as we do here with these tablets, it’s killing the bacteria internally just like algae would kill bacteria on your beach. And the good thing is usually, many of it, especially chlorella, it does it while you're sleeping. While you’re getting your beauty rest, you got the cleanup crew in there getting rid of toxins, and helping regenerate healthy cells, so it’s really an effortless way to improve your health and everything else. So, that being said, spirulina, blue-green algae. First life on earth. Spirulina, drumroll, is actually a bacteria. It’s called cyanobacteria. Chlorella does belong to the plant kingdom. Now, you may say yourself, “What’s so important about it being a bacteria?” Well, when we get to the mitochondria conversation, you’ll find out it’s very important. But in terms of what it does for you now, because there is no cellulose wall because it’s a bacteria, spirulina gets absorbed into your bloodstream virtually instantly, certainly instantly if you chew it because it gets absorbed sublingually through your mouth into your bloodstream. And because spirulina is known as an energizing algae, that’s why we call ours ENERGYbits, and it has the highest concentration of protein in the world. Now, all the protein in both the algae, spirulina and chlorella, are in amino acid form. This is important because this allows your body to get access to the aminos, again instantly, because there is no cellulose wall to break down, no protein to break down, and attached to the aminos are all the B vitamins. B vitamins are what convert protein and glucose into energy. That's why when you take spirulina, your mind and your body and your mitochondria—and we’ll explain that in a minute—are energized. Now, it’s not like lightning bolts from the sky because that kind of energy is a rush and then you have a crash. It’s based on a stimulant, a sugar or caffeine. The energy you get from spirulina is from the nutrition. You might not even notice it. It’s very quiet energy. You just suddenly realize hey, you're not tired, you're not hungry, you can focus, you can get through your day. You can have a great workout.  And by the way, you’ll need a minimum probably of 10 tablets. I mean, you could start with 5, but you won’t really experience much. Ten tablets is kind our suggested entry-level amount to take. Most people do take the spirulina tablets in the morning or the afternoon or before a workout. Basically, any time you’re hungry, tired, fatigued, want energy or focus, if you're going on a long trip, or running an exam, we have brain surgeons, students, soccer moms using them. They're great for kids. It’s the safest, purest food you’ll ever put in your body or your children’s body. It’s great for pets. Pets love them. For children, we recommend either 1 or ½ tablet per their age. So if they're 2, give them 1 tablet a day, half of one or 1. If they're 4, give them maybe 2 or up to 4. But there is no upper limit. We have NHL players who put 75 spirulina in their smoothie before a game because they want all that access to that energy while they're doing rapid spurts on the ice. So, you can’t have too much salad and you can’t have too much spirulina. By the way, I’m the one that discovered spirulina’s nutrient profile, particularly the amino acid profile. It’s virtually identical to mother’s breast milk. Same aminos and same proportions. And we know that mother’s breast milk is the perfect food. Well, algae and spirulina in particular is the next perfect food. Since spirulina and chlorella were given to us by mother nature, I consider it—and she’s a mother—it’s her version of mother’s breast milk. It’s quite remarkable how the nutrients are so similar. So, that's why spirulina is very energizing. The B vitamins, the access to the aminos. By the way, it’s a complete protein. It has 18 of the 20 aminos, all nine that your body can’t make, which is different from collagen powder which is not a complete protein that's missing tryptophan.  Spirulina also is very high in iron, which is what carries oxygen in your blood, so that's energizing. It’s known as a vasodilator that opens up your blood vessels so that more blood can flow to your brain. It’s loaded with essential fatty acids like omega-3 and GLA, which reduce inflammation and also support brain function. It has boron that helps brain function. So, again, very energizing at the mental and physical levels. And when we get to the mitochondria discussion, I’ll elaborate more on the benefits of spirulina and why it is energizing at the cellular level. In fact, when you take spirulina, some people take it before bed because it balances your blood sugar and the energy, again, is at a cellular level. What you do once you take it is up to you. You could have 10 tablets before bed, and it would still help you sleep because the energy is at the cellular level. If you take 10 tablets before you go on a workout, you’ll have a better workout because now you're using that cellular energy to propel your workout. So, it’s sort of like if someone gives you $10, it’s up to you how you spend that $10, right? Somebody might put it in the bank, somebody might go have a great lunch, somebody might buy themselves a nice little bauble or something. So, think of spirulina as being given the gift of energy, and it’s up to you and your lifestyle how you use that energy. You could sit and still be enjoying the benefits of it and still be energized at the cellular level. So, it’s pretty cool stuff. By the way, there are actually two spirulina products on our website EnergyBits.com. The second one is called BEAUTYbits. The reason why there are two is because as I’ve mentioned earlier, I started the company because my sister had breast cancer. By the way, she’s completely cancer-free, 12 years cancer-free. We celebrate every year. I saw her a couple of months ago. So, women’s cells has always been a big priority for me. And I noticed when I first started the company that women were not purchasing ENERGYbits spirulina, and my girlfriends literally said, “Well, you got to make it pink and give it a cute name.” Because spirulina has more collagen than collagen powder, up to 400 percent by the way, and so it builds your skin and your hair, and it has the highest antioxidants in the world which stopped free radicals so it prevents wrinkles, I thought, “Well, the heck, let’s make a pretty version and call it BEAUTYbits.” So, there are two spirulina on our website. They are absolutely identical. I’m not trying to fool anybody. I just want women to feel comfortable. Because it’s very happy packaging. I design everything. But I can’t help you or your skin or your health if I can’t get the algae into you. Just holding it outside of your body isn’t going to help you. So, that’s why there are two. Whatever strikes your fancy to make you feel comfortable because some people, if they think about algae at all, they think of it as pond scum or something that's closing their favorite beach. But they don’t think of it as something that is a remarkable nutritional beauty ingestible. So, all the things we do here at ENERGYbits is to take away the weirdness of algae, help you feel comfortable with it, help you learn the science, and understand there is no woo-woo. It’s just something that you’re not familiar with and we’re trying to make it more familiar for you and more comfortable because it really does amazing things, and it’s all science-based. [00:22:54] Ashley James: And also, your company ensures the quality and the safety. Because it really is buy or beware out there. You can go on Amazon and buy some spirulina but it’s made in … I don’t mean to bash China. Unfortunately, there has been a history of toxic things coming out of China like melamine plastics in baby formula, as an example. Right? And the man that did that was put to death in China. China doesn’t condone this behavior. You know, it’s buy or beware out there, and it could be a different country that is producing something. It could just be some kind of green plastic powder claiming it’s spirulina. Right? As consumers, we need to do our due diligence and choose a company that does the third-party testing, doesn’t do skip batch testing. They test every batch. They will provide the test results to the public. They’re showing their integrity. And your company shows its integrity and that's why I trust that when I eat the spirulina and chlorella from your company, I know that it’s lead-free. I know that it’s heavy metal free. I know that it’s not filled with a bunch of fillers like these other companies, and it really is buy or beware. So, yeah, I’ve heard a few people go, “Well, I can go to, like you said, I can go to Target. I can go to Ride Aid and pick up some.” But, I actually do know some, they're not college kids anymore, they graduated, but back about 10 years ago or so, I knew some college students that decided to do a study on their own of the different things in vitamin C that was on the shelf. And so, they went to every Rite Aid, Walgreens, Walmart, Target, and some supplement stores, generic supplement stores, and they buy all the vitamin C brands they could find and then they test it to see how much vitamin C was actually in it. Right? [00:25:15] Catharine Arnston: I know the results. [00:25:16] Ashley James: So, there’s some chewable vitamin C’s. They didn’t have gummies back then. They had some chewable vitamin C’s, they had some tablets, and then they had some capsules. Sometimes it’s powder, sometimes it’s like a hard-pressed tablet. So let’s say a tablet says it has a thousand milligrams, so 1 gram of vitamin C, ascorbic acid or whatever form they were saying the vitamin C was in. Most of the time it’s ascorbic acid derived from corn. And so what they did was they picked apart each one in their lab at the college. They discovered that there was not one brand, not one brand that they could find that was over-the-counter that sold what they claimed had in it. So, if they said it was 1000 milligrams a capsule, maybe it was only 200. Right? There were some that were 100 percent filler, 0 vitamin C could be found. And most of them had some vitamin C but never was it accurate to the label. And this is a good thing and a bad thing. I know that sounds weird when I say it, but here’s the thing. It’s a good thing that the industry is not regulated. Here’s why: If the FDA actually took over, we would be in deep yogurt.  [00:26:38] Catharine Arnston: You’d never have anything.  [00:26:39] Ashley James: You would never have supplements again. And the FDA’s constantly under pressure from big pharma to shut down supplements. Now, there are certain health concerns when someone like takes too much of an herb and they have a negative effect and then all of a sudden now that herb is banned. Those are unfortunate. We don’t want the supplement industry being regulated because then big pharma will control the entire industry and then we won’t have access to things that are actually healthy for us. I know that kind of sounds like I got a tinfoil hat on and the thing is, I have so much more information on this topic and so I have been informed. And how it’s been laid out is that what we need to do instead is we need to do our own due diligence. We still want it to be the wild, wild west, but we need to find companies that will put the money and the time into ensuring the highest quality and stand behind the quality and not be these fly-by-night companies that get big and then get sold to Nestle. I am so disappointed that companies like Pure Encapsulations were sold to Nestle, like I can’t trust them anymore. And I’ve seen this with like Garden of Life and other supplement companies where they used to have good products, they got sold to a big company and now the quality is gone in the toilet. So, please don’t ever get bought by a big company. [00:28:10] Catharine Arnston: I’ll tell you. The little company, it’s a grind. I mean, I’ve been at this 12 years, 12-hour days 7 days a week for 12 years. And it’s a grind. Eventually, you run out of energy because you think “why don’t people understand this, what am I doing wrong?” The trouble is, these big companies, they have all the distribution channels. They can get to the product to places where us little companies just can’t go. So, I feel the empathy of other fellow entrepreneurs who have done their best to make sure they have a high-quality product. But at one point, you just run out of steam because it’s not easy. I’ll tell you this has been a labor of love for me. I mean, I just thought if I could stop one more person from getting cancer, I will die happy. But I’m 12 years in, I probably got another 12 years to go. And I do love still what I’m doing, but it’s not easy. It’s really, really hard to bring a high-quality product consistently to the world. I’ve seen pictures of other algae companies, capsules and they got ground up wrong because like you said, filler. If there were ever a requirement of me to sort of get involved with a larger company, you can set standards of regulations. These things will not happen when you acquire the company. Or, you will file a lawsuit. And there are situations where that has happened and the quality has been maintained. But you have to do this because you love it. And I do love it. But it is not easy. You were talking about vitamin C and just on that note, everyone thinks ascorbic acid is vitamin C. And I point out ascorbic acid is just one component. There's 200 components to vitamin C. Ascorbic acid is just one of 200, and yet, all the supplement companies make their vitamin C out of ascorbic acid and this is why they are so poorly absorbed because your body is looking for the other 199 pieces in order for it to absorb it. I tell people it’s like going to work with just your shoes on. You can’t just take ascorbic acid and think that you're getting vitamin C because it doesn’t exist in nature like that. When you eat vitamin C from an orange or from broccoli, there’s more vitamin C, by the way, in broccoli than there is in oranges, it has all those other components. This is one of the many reasons why algae is so far better for you than supplements because supplements are made from extracts, and extracts do not exist in nature. And so, when your body is trying to figure out what to do with it, it kind of gives up at some point, and you only absorb about 10 percent of it. There are some exceptions because there are a handful of really high-quality supplement companies that are making their supplements from food. But it’s a very rare situation and that's why I’m so proud that algae is food and why I really take great lengths to help people understand that it is food and it’s unprocessed food. Again, we do not use high heat to dry our algae like everybody else does because as soon as you use high heat, not only do you kill the enzymes, you change the chemical structure of the nutrients. So, they aren’t as powerful, and they’re a little more difficult to absorb. So, there's lots of less expensive algae tablets on the internet or on Amazon. And lots of times, we have people saying, “Oh, I’m going to go try another brand.” They always come back because they say, “Well, I didn’t get the energy that I had from yours or it just didn’t seem to make a difference.” We have mothers whose kids are ADHD and have been reading statistics that in like within the next 10 years, 1 out of 2 children are going to be on the spectrum. I mean, it’s just insane what’s going on in our world these days. And algae literally is the answer for almost everything, and we’ll get into some of those details in a minute. But yeah, we do go to great lengths. And these lab tests are not cheap. They're like $15,000 to $20,000, and they will only test what we tell them to do. So, I’ve got a long shopping list of things. Every time we do test, we do more tests. They’re very long and lengthy, complicated lab tests. We get labs from our suppliers in Taiwan, but we do a full set here in the United States. I think we’re the only company that I’m aware of that does that because we sell through doctor’s offices, chiropractors, functional medicine. And they need to know for sure that the algae has in it what we say it has, as you said. And we are only allowed to put a nutritional chart on our products that labeling requirements of the FDA. They don’t allow us to put all the nutrients. I mean, how crazy is that? So, we have the nutritional chart that's found on all our packaging, but then we have a QR code that you can scan that gives you everything because we’re not allowed to put everything on. To me, that’s insane. Right? And we often get people saying, why does your nutrition chart on your website or the QR code not match the nutrition chart? This is why. Because we are just not allowed to put everything on there according to the FDA regulations. The FDA labeling is so stringent that if you have a line between the different nutrients that’s like 1/16 of a millimeter thicker than what they tell you it should be, they will not allow you to sell. I mean, it’s crazy. The regulations are so strict on labeling. So, anyways, I just want to throw that out there.  [00:34:20] Ashley James: It’s just silly. It’s like on the one hand I can see how they want to help, but on the other hand, I see they're definitely not helping. I think my listeners are sort of really well-educated or at least they’re more into the health space than the standard American populace, the people who are asleep and just going with the flow. Right? And I say this on the show often that we need to be like a salmon swimming upstream. We need to go against. We need to be the black sheep. We need to go against the flow of the world if we want to not be a statistic. [00:35:03] Catharine Arnston: Exactly. [00:35:04] Ashley James: So, look at the statistics out there. 1 in 3 people are diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. That's insane. That is so sad. My mom died of cancer, and I’ve made it my life’s mission as with this podcast to help save other people’s moms so that if we can help some people not lose their family members to cancer, and my dad died of heart disease, and those are the two big ones, the two big killers. But he died six years later, and he really died of a broken heart of losing the love of his life. She died at 55, and she was the healthiest woman I knew and then just very, very quickly died of cancer. That's a whole episode in and of itself to get into. I can see now what the lifestyle that leads to that. This is why I teach. This is why I get guests like you, and we teach how we can prevent this. [00:36:02] Catharine Arnston: It’s absolutely preventable. Absolutely. [00:36:04] Ashley James: It is. But if you go with the flow and you eat the way everyone else eats, and you think the way everyone else thinks, and you just do what everyone else does, then you will be a statistic. 1 in 3 people have type 2 diabetes or are pre-diabetic. Seventy percent of the adult population in the United States is on at least one prescription medication, so that’s pain meds, high blood pressure meds, and antidepressants. The list goes on and on. This is a result of the body being out of balance, right? When we look at the body from a holistic standpoint, which is a different lens than the mainstream. So, for the listener who was brought up, like we all were, under the lens of the mainstream, you wait to get sick, and then you go to the doctor, the doctor gives you something that manages your symptoms, and you shop down the aisles of the grocery store, buying the junky cereal that has dye and has sugar as the first or second ingredient, and you just go with the flow, you get your annual flu shot, you take antibiotics the second you have a sore throat or whatever, just like whatever people are doing out there. They eat mostly food that is processed that are factory-made, that was made in a factory, or go out to restaurants, eat fried food, don’t really ever see just whole foods, meaning this is a vegetable, look there’s a vegetable with nothing on it, not altered in any way. That is the standard American lifestyle that has encapsulated most of the world.  As a result, we can see even in, for example, they have studies, just incredible studies where they see the descendants of because we think how much of this is genetic, right? Well, when we look at heart disease, anything below the Mason-Dixon line is there's just super high rates of diabetes and heart disease and arteriosclerosis, especially in African-American males. They die much younger than their white male counterparts, and we’re like, “What’s going on? Is this genetic?” Well, we look at the cultural diet in that area, and then we look at their cousins not genetically any different in Africa eating a different diet. Completely different outcomes. The heart disease is not there. So, it’s the diet is what I’m saying, not the genes. Then we look at Japan in Okinawa and how they had very, very, very low rates of disease, incredibly long lifespans. It’s very typical to live to 90 or 100 or even a little bit past 100, disease-free, still gardening out in the garden. Now, the McDonald’s and American lifestyle and processed food has become more glamorous in that area. In one generation, cardiologists saw a shift. And now, Japan is catching up with America in terms of cancer and heart diseases. Catching up. It’s not there yet 100 percent, but it is definitely not where it was 50 to 100 years ago. If we do not want to live the last 30 years of our life suffering in disease—and if you’ve watched your grandparents or your parents go through it or great aunts and uncles, if you’ve watched anyone suffer in the later years of their life, it should be the biggest motivator for you to pick up that fork and eat that salad instead of a drive through the drive-thru. [00:39:43] Catharine Arnston: I was just going to say if you don’t like salad, algae is your answer. Men and children, in particular, are well known for not wanting to eat vegetables. I’m here to tell you. You don’t need to eat another vegetable in your life as long as you take at least 10 algae tablets a day and just swallow them and you're done. But we can get to that later on.  [00:40:04] Ashley James: Well, I believe in the power of eating a variety of whole foods, I love that. But if you can’t get them in, I know my son is super picky, I figured out sneaky ways. And he’ll eat some vegetable. He only wants to eat raw vegetables, which it could be a challenge sometimes, but he only wants raw. There's only a certain kind he wants. So anyways, I think he eats more vegetables than any other kid I know, but I’m still not satisfied because I want him to be more flexible. But you know, he’s 7 and this is what kids do. But I love that he will any day of the week pick up your chlorella or spirulina and chew them up and swallow. It’s so reassuring to me that a neurotic mom such as myself who is so deeply concerned with the health of my child and wants to make sure that he has the best nutrition possible that at the end of the day, I could give him some spirulina and even some chlorella and that he is getting that nutrition. But back to my point is that we need to be the salmon. We have to. I know it’s a little exhausting to go against the grain, but we need to be the ones to figure out how to do home-cooked meals. And I’m right there with you, figuring it out and doing it. Home-cooked meals, eating healthy food, walking every day even just to reduce stress, go get in nature, go walk through a park, walking every day, doing deep breathing, bringing down your stress levels, getting nutrition, getting the super-duper food like spirulina in you. And all these daily activities will make it so that you are divergent from the mainstream, the status quo, from the 1/3 of the population being incredibly, incredibly sick. You will diverge from those statistics, and you will be the outlier with true health. And that’s what I want for you. So yeah, it does take time and energy every day, but you have to make choices different from the masses. And sometimes, it looks like grabbing your bag of ENERGYbits and throwing it in your purse or your gym bag or the car. That's a great place, as long as the car is not too hot. But that's a great place to always have it because you know how you're hungry or hangry in the car, instead of the drive-thru, grab 15 ENERGYbits and chew them. For me, I chew them and drink some water while you do it, or just swallow them if you don’t want to chew them. And within minutes, your body is digesting and absorbing that nutrition, and you really don’t feel hungry anymore. I love how it stops the hunger and it gets me to the point where now I can wait until after I cooked dinner. But instead of reaching for something unhealthy or even spending money, I don’t want to spend money out. I want to go home; I got groceries at home. I know that I’m giving my body nutrition. And so, it is a really great snack. [00:43:02] Catharine Arnston: It’s really your lifeline. It’s a nutritional lifeline. I call it also your nutrition insurance. People know about health insurance. Well, this is your nutrition insurance. Because if you take these every day and if I do my job right, everybody in the world will be taking them every day, then your body is nourished in a way that will allow you to not just survive but to thrive. The sad thing is, most people know more about their cellphones than they do about their bodies. And once you understand what your body needs and the way that it operates, and we’ll get to that once we get to the mitochondria discussion, now you start to understand what it needs. It’s easier for you to give it what it needs because now you know the rules of the road. If you don’t know how to read a map and you’re driving to a distant location, you're kind of out of luck. You have to teach yourself how to read a map. And then, it’s easy. You just follow the road. So, once you have a roadmap of how your body works, the algae makes that journey effortless because it gives you what you need, gets you where you want to go. You may take the spirulina because you want it for energy, but you’re going to find out that your digestion improves or maybe you’ll take it because you want improved mitochondria health. Maybe you’re taking the chlorella because you want to pull out toxins but you’ll find that you’re sleeping better at night. So, it will take you wherever you go, want to go, and then there’ll be some bonus trips along there as well. [00:44:43] Ashley James: Love it. I had heard of it, but I hadn’t really gone and tried algae until I want to say about 4 years ago, maybe 5 years ago. I interviewed Dr. Klinghardt. He’s local to me, which is crazy, because people fly from around the world to see this man. He’s been a holistic MD for over 45 years, I believe now. And he has designed a system that detoxifies the body so well that he takes children who are non-verbal and, I think, misdiagnosed on the spectrum. This is my hypothesis. I hypothesize that most autism is misdiagnosed heavy metals in the brain. That hypothesis is based on my observations of several holistic doctors that are able to take these children who have been diagnosed extensively. And they're non-verbal, they're agitated, they're not making eye contact, they’re beating their head against a wall, or they're beating their hands against their head, they're rocking. They look like their brain is on fire, and they're trying to soothe themselves. And they also have digestive issues. There's a lot going on. And Dr. Klinghardt takes them and does a very gentle but rigorous heavy metal detox, and he can get these children to the point where they’re happy, calm, making eye contact, talking, going to school, and he says he has had children now, one of them has graduated, become a composer, several have become PhD’s. They’re essentially no longer considered on the spectrum. And the biggest thing is heavy metal detox and he explains that the heavy metals are in the brain, for whatever reason their bodies didn’t detoxify like others do, and this is how it shows up. [00:46:48] Catharine Arnston: I think a lot of it is heavy metals—and when we get to the mitochondria—but it’s also mitochondria dysfunction. Because the highest concentration of mitochondria is in the brain. There are 2 million mitochondria per cell in your brain. It’s the highest concentration of mitochondria in your entire body. But I don’t want to jump the gun. We’ll get to that in a few minutes. [00:47:12] Ashley James: So exciting. He uses chlorella as part of his package, as part of his detox with these children and with adults because adults will come to him. Unfortunately, he attracts people who this is their last-ditch effort, like they have tried every single doctor, every single method in their country. Because people fly from around the world to see him and they’re so sick of suffering, they’ve probably been suffering for 7 or more years, and then they come to see him. And yes, it’s expensive because he does a lot with them, and at the end of the day, people get better and mostly, he’s doing detox with them. So, he’s doing sauna, he’s doing the Platinum Energy System foot detox. Yeah, he’s doing all that. And he’s using the chlorella as part of the pulling out of the heavy metals. So, I remember listening because I was having heavy metal issues. I learned from him in my interview with him. I did my research. I got a Platinum Energy System foot detox machine, I got a sauna, and I was eating your chlorella. Well, I’d throw 30 in my mouth, chew them and drink water, and then go jump in the sauna. When I take it, like it mops up the heavy metals and I don’t have, I don’t know, some people are really sensitive like I am to detoxing and they get like that kind of flu sensation from detoxing. And chlorella mops it up, so I don’t have that, which is really exciting. So, I know the next thing we’re going to talk about is chlorella. [00:48:46] Catharine Arnston: Yes, chlorella. So that's a great segue. [00:48:49] Ashley James: That was my introduction and then I found you. I can’t remember if I found you or you found me, but I tried the company that Dr. Klinghardt likes and they’re a high-quality company, and honestly, I couldn’t even get through a whole bag. I felt bad because I bought, you know, their bags are maybe like $140. And I couldn’t even get through a whole bag because it just smells like dead fish. And I’m like, this is so gross. And then I tried yours because actually, I think I remember you sent me a sample pack and I’m like, “This is amazing!” I think you’re experimenting with like macadamia nuts because it was like a trail mix. And I’m like, “This is delicious! This doesn’t smell weird and fishy. This tastes good to me.” I like healthy-tasting things, but yours is totally different from the other high-quality company that I had tried from Dr. Klinghardt, and I said, man, I don’t know what it is with the Klinghardt one, but yours is way better, and I was getting great results. So, then I started like singing ENERGYbits from the rooftop and giving them out to all my friends. I couldn’t believe our little toddler at the time was loving them and now he’s 7, and we’ll eat them and even though he’s very picky. So yeah, it’s exciting. [00:50:02] Catharine Arnston: I remember that was when he was about 2. So, we’ve been connecting for almost 5 years. Wow! It’s really great. [00:50:06] Ashley James: Yeah, I know. Time just flies, right? It’s just crazy. I’ll be serving ENERGYbits at his wedding. [00:50:13] Catharine Arnston: Oh, there you go. Yeah, we have to sort of airdrop them from the sky. Instead of confetti, we’ll have RECOVERYbits.  [00:50:23] Ashley James: Love it. [00:50:24] Catharine Arnston: Well, that's a nice testimonial. And we will talk now about chlorella. And the great thing about chlorella is that it does taste pretty good especially, as you’ve mentioned, if you have it with pistachio nuts or macadamia nuts are the best. What we call our chlorella, it’s really a wellness algae. Spirulina is an energizing, nourishing algae. Chlorella, we call ours RECOVERYbits because it helps you recover your health. So, when you mix it with macadamia nuts, honestly, you close your eyes, you think you're eating potato chips. It's that delicious. And I still do plan to do a trail mix with chlorella and macadamia nuts and also, we’re working a lot now with pistachios and there's a brand that has a salt & vinegar flavor, and it is, again, ultra-delicious. Not only are these very good nuts for you, they're very soft, so they’re good for your teeth. They're very low in lectin, so they're really good for your gut biome. Dr. Gundry points out that a lot of nuts like almonds are very high in lectins and oxalates, and they can be very damaging to your stomach lining, and these two nuts are very low in both lectins and oxalates. So, I’m very happy that they're the two that we’ve settled on for our trail mix when we finally get that out there. [00:51:41] Ashley James: Nice. [00:51:42] Catharine Arnston: So, chlorella showed up on the earth a billion years after spirulina, and as I mentioned, it is a green algae. It does belong to the plant kingdom and so it has fiber in it and a fibrous and cellulose wall. Now, remember I said spirulina’s claim to fame had the highest protein in the world? Chlorella’s claim to fame is it has the highest chlorophyll in the world. Now, chlorophyll is very, very cleansing and healing. If you go online, if this was a visual, I would have shown you a picture, but you can go online to see this, and we’ll send you a bunch of articles that you can link to in the notes. But the chemical composition of chlorophyll is virtually identical to the chemical composition of your hemoglobin, your red blood cells. Now, this is important because chlorophyll builds your blood. It’s that simple. And so when you have healthy blood, you're going to have healthy organs. You're going to have a healthier body, a healthier brain. So, it’s very, very cleansing. Up until World War II and even as recent as World War II, they would give the injured liquid chlorophyll because it would help them heal from injuries if they’d run out of blood transfusions for this very reason. And it’s been used for centuries this way. It’s only since the pharmaceutical industry has got their hands around us that people have forgotten about the cleansing, blood-building capabilities of chlorophyll, and there is nothing with more chlorophyll than chlorella algae. It has 500 times more chlorophyll than arugula and 25 times more chlorophyll than liquid chlorophyll. Nothing in the world has more chlorophyll than chlorella algae. You could fill a room with arugula and you wouldn’t even come close to the same amount of chlorophyll as in 30 tablets of chlorella, so that's pretty cool. Now, the other amazing thing about chlorophyll, of course, as you know, chlorophyll is what makes plants green, is that chlorophyll is a fat-based pigment. The blue that's in the spirulina, which is called phycocyanine, it is a water-based pigment. Now, this explains to me why the blue pigment in spirulina stops the growth of blood vessels to tumors. It’s called antiangiogenesis which in its own right is very important to know about. But the chlorophyll, because it’s fat-based, what it does is it heals your cell walls. Now, we will get eventually to mitochondria, but all of your health issues start at the cellular level. Everything. Whether you're healthy or unhealthy. And it’s not just the mitochondria inside the cell, it’s the cell wall itself. Now, we’ve all been told we need things like omega-3 and D3 and vitamin A because those are fats. Your cell walls are fat-based. They're called lipids. And you need to keep them nourished and moist because that’s how nutrients can get in and toxins can get out. And if they are not healthy with healthy fats, we’re not talking about the rancid, awful, poisonous, toxic, damaging omega-6’s like canola oil, please, if you do nothing else, stop eating canola oil. It should have crossbones on it. That and sugar are the two things that are making ill, diabetic, heart disease, we can go on. That's another podcast in its own way. Anyways, so chlorophyll is just as healing to your cell wall as omega-3 because it’s a fat-based pigment. And I don’t take fish oil and I would encourage everybody not to because it goes rancid even before you buy it. And by the way, where do you think the fish get the omega-3 from? Because, of course, the fish oil has omega-3 in it, they get it from algae. I remind people to save themselves, save the oceans, save their health, save their cell walls, and get the healthy fats from algae, especially spirulina, it has the higher omega-3 in it. But the chlorophyll is fat-based. So, even if you don’t take fish oil or even if you don’t take D3, you're still getting the benefits of growing and building your cell walls from the chlorophyll. So, not only is chlorella the highest chlorophyll and we now know it builds your blood and it builds your cell walls, chlorophyll is also very cleansing. And chlorella has a hard cell wall. Now, that hard cell wall not only has fiber, remember spirulina has no fiber because it’s a bacteria, chlorella has the fiber so it feeds the bacteria in your gut biome. And that hard cell wall attaches to toxins, as you talked about earlier with Dr. Klinghardt. It attaches to all heavy metals—lead, mercury, radiation, aluminum, toxins from mold. It also attaches to alcohol, lactic acid, and it will chelate them out of your body. This is very, very, very powerful. I read a statistic a couple of years ago that said the average American has 800 toxins in their bodies. 800. That's crazy! Our immune systems were not built to sustain that kind of toxic load. And even if you lived in bubble, and even if you had no exposure to any toxins, which of course we know it’s impossible, you need to know the good news is our bodies are constantly regenerating on a daily basis every single second. Cells die and cells grow. Now, we have 30 trillion cells in our body. And literally every day, cells die, new cells grow. But where do you think those old cells go? Well, if you don’t get rid of them by pulling them out with something like chlorella, they sit there and they clog up your lymphatic system and they attract bacteria. And they cause disease. And I remind people, you know, if you didn’t take your garbage out from your house for a couple of days, it would get pretty smelly in there, right? Well, your body is the same way. If you do not get rid of the dead cells, they're called senescent cells, they're zombie cells, they're clogging up your body. This is why you do things like fasting to trigger autophagy, to get rid of all these dead cells that are either mutated or just dead and not gone, you need to pull them out. And chlorella is the best way to do it.  In fact, I personally feel it’s far better than activated charcoal, which a lot of people use, but activated charcoal pulls out all minerals. The good ones and the bad ones. Chlorella only pulls out toxins and it has 40 vitamins and minerals as does spirulina. So, it introduces all the electrolytes—magnesium, potassium, manganese, and salt so that you don’t lose your minerals. It just pulls out the toxins. That's the big difference between activated charcoal and using chlorella algae. So, with chlorella, because your body goes through a detox and repair cycle when you are sleeping. We generally recommend people take chlorella before bed. Now, you can take it any time of day. I eat them all day long. I have them for breakfast, lunch, snacks. I eat them with pistachio nuts, macadamia nuts. But I definitely have them before bed. But you could have them any time of day, but if you were only going to take them one time a day, I would recommend before bed because now, when you're getting your beauty rest and you’re getting your deep repair, you have chlorella which will A, facilitate sleep because both algae have the highest concentration of melatonin in the world, so it helps you sleep and know melatonin does not make you sleepy during the day, it’s only triggered by night. We’ll talk about melatonin more in a minute when we talk about mitochondria. It has the highest tryptophan in the world which is a precursor of melatonin. It has your daily requirement of vitamin K2, which pulls out excess calcium from soft tissue. This would have been very valuable for your father. Arteriosclerosis which is the hardening of arteries. I remind people, “You know what’s hardening?” It’s calcium. We’re all taking D3 and we’re taking calcium, but it’s going to our soft tissue. It is not going to our bones because most of us are deficit in vitamin K2, which moves excess calcium from our soft tissue like our blood vessels and our heart, and our skin, and our brain, and moves it into your bones. And chlorella has your daily requirement of K2, so it automatically does that. Kidney stones, you know what they are? It’s a calcification gathering with your gas. So, all of these things, the high chlorophyll which stimulates peristalsis, highest RNA and DNA in the world, all of these things contribute to a great repair while you are getting your beauty rest. Chlorella, because your body goes through this detox and repair and because chlorella has all the nutrients that facilitate the repair, we definitely recommend taking it before bed. And so, you can just leave it at your bedside and have it as your snack before you go off to your Lalaland and you wake up refreshed. If you had a cocktail or a glass of wine, same thing happens. Now, in terms of quantity, just like we said with spirulina, 10 tablets of spirulina will give you a slight improvement in your energy and your focus and satisfy your hunger. If you wanted it as a meal replacement, you’d probably want 20 or 30 tablets. Same with chlorella. You could take 10 tablets and you’d enjoy all the wellness benefits from the chlorophyll and all the other nutrients. But for detox, you need closer to 20 or 30 tablets. And you’ll find they're so tiny and as you would start to enjoy eating them, it’s not a hardship. In fact, you’ll probably start looking forward to having your chlorella even if you put maybe a little bit of sea salt on it if you don’t want nuts. It can be your bedtime snack, much better for you than cookies and milk. And if you don’t want to take that many all of the time, you can do maybe 10 tablets for a week and then 20 or 30 for a couple of weeks and then get back to 10 at night or do 20 or 30 for a month and then do 10 tablets for a month, so you can cycle in and out just like people cycle in and out of doing keto. So, the chlorella, we call it RECOVERYbits because it’s very much a recovery algae that has so many benefits that there's nothing like it. And remember, it’s food. It's not a pill. It’s not a vitamin. It’s not a supplement. Now, when you take chlorella on a daily basis and we would certainly recommend you do, if you don’t like vegetables or you don’t have time to eat vegetables, or you're traveling, or you want a fast recovery from sports, this is your answer. You just swallow 10 or 20 or whatever many you have or chew them, and you're done. No carrying groceries, the heavy vegetables from the grocery store, stuffing them into your fridge, cleaning them, cooking them, arguing with your kids or your husbands, and then throwing half of them out. None of that. It just goes away. And we sell the tablets in bags of a thousand tablets. And I use the quote from NASA that “1 gram of algae has the same nutrition as 1000 grams of fruits and vegetables.” And I did the math. I realized one bag of our algae tablets, it doesn’t matter which one it is, has the same nutrition as 551 pounds of vegetables.  [01:03:55] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. [01:03:57] Catharine Arnston: And at $3 a pound, that's like $1500. Normally the bag is $125. With your discount code LTH, it brings it down to $100. If you took 10 a day, the bag would last you about three months. That’s efficient nutrition. Right? It not only saves you money, it saves you time and it saves you arguing and now you’ve got something when you're traveling or going to the gym or going to school, or you're a soccer mom and you're stuck in traffic and you don’t want to eat any of those crappy carbs, here you go. You’ve just nailed. I call it the ultimate fast food. [01:04:33] Ashley James: Well, I certainly enjoy the idea that it is such a, like you said, super duper superfood. I wouldn’t say don’t eat any vegetables or fruit, but like you said, if someone can’t, and actually there's a listener who has a … I don’t know if they call it a nursing home or a skilled nursing home where they host elderly people in their own home. They’ve got like 10 rooms and they take care of them, and they feed them the ENERGYbits. And how amazing is that? Because they want their clients to be healthy and for some, there's certain people who you can’t feed enough fruits and vegetables, too, right? So, it can be children, seniors, when we’re super busy, when we’re traveling. I know there's days where I’m traveling and I’m hungry and I’m like, okay, I’m just going to skip a meal and I’m going to fast, or I can take my ENERGYbits. I’d rather do that than go through a drive-thru for multiple reasons. [01:05:41] Catharine Arnston: Exactly. And I’m with you. Because I love vegetables, but I know a lot of people especially as they get older, they don’t have the enzymes for digesting fiber and so they avoid fiber, which means they avoid nutrition. And white mushy stuff just doesn’t have any nutrition in it. So, for those people, or we work with a lot of bariatric surgeons and their patients have such small stomachs. They cannot physically put a lot of food in their stomach. So, they love the algae tablets because they're so tiny and yet they’re so tiny but mighty is what they say, they give them all the nutrition that they need. Or children who are just, let’s face it, kids love pasta, but again, not a lot of nutrition in pasta. We don’t want parents to have to worry. And if you turn the tablets into a bit of a game like you did with your son, they think it’s fun. Their tongues turn green. And now you've turned you eating healthy into something pleasurable. So, whatever it takes to get. And for older people who don’t eat very well, even if they took two tablets, there's probably more nutrition than they're having all week. So, we just want to help people get the nourishment that they need. [01:06:58] Ashley James: Now, you’ve mentioned earlier that I know it’s going to spirulina, but you mentioned earlier how you’ve discovered that has the same like a really similar nutrient profile to mother’s breast milk. Have you ever thought about formulating a baby formula? [01:07:13] Catharine Arnston: Oh, I mean, there's no end to the things that we can do, but we’re still such a tiny company. We’re so understaffed and we’re so underfunded. We’re self-funded. The number of things that we could do is limitless. But I have to help people first understand what algae is because those are all very what’s called vertical markets and there's hypersensitivity with mothers and with children and formulas. And the food companies have a stranglehold on that. I couldn’t even attempt to get to that community until we’d established algae as the nutritional… [01:07:56] Ashley James: Safe. It’s safe, it’s nutritious. I mean, there are so many benefits. And we have four other episodes that listeners can go to. We actually talk about, well, what are the downsides. Are there downsides? And we talked about debunking the algae myths and you bring up a lot of science in episode 357. That was a fantastic interview. I highly recommend listeners who have been listening so far and going okay, well, like they're waiting for another shoe to drop. They're like, what’s the downside to eating this. There's got to be a hook. There's got to be a side effect. Right? We’re used to do that. We’re used to the side effects mindset because everyone’s used to drugs. This is a food. You don’t go, “What’s the downside to eating an apple?” I mean, I don’t know. Maybe you're full. I don’t know. And the thing is, a conventionally grown apple has upwards of 50 different manmade chemicals on it and in it. So, that is why we choose organic and that's why your spirulina and chlorella are essentially organic. They're very clean. There's no pesticides and those chemicals in it. But we do talk about addressing those concerns in episode 357, so I recommend listeners go back and check that out. I definitely want to make sure that we do get into … [01:09:13] Catharine Arnston: Cover mitochondria, yeah. [01:09:15] Ashley James: The mitochondria. One thing I’d like to say is before we move forward, with the amount of chlorophyll, chlorophyll is like a deodorant for the insides. Right? Your poop does not smell when you do chlorella. So, if your husband has particularly horrible bowel movements or farts, give him the RECOVERYbits. It’s like a deodorant for the inside. It’s helping him detox and it’s also saving your marriage and saving your nose. That's one thing. [01:09:50] Catharine Arnston: And same with people who are they're eating just meat. What’s it called? [01:09:55] Ashley James: Oh, the carnivore diet? [01:09:56] Catharine Arnston: Carnivores. Because I ran into some at this keto conference I was at last week and their breath was just it knocks you over. This will get rid of breath issues. That's the same with dogs and cats. You might not notice it with your cats, but with dogs. So, anybody who’s eating meat, the bad breath is from bacteria in your mouth. This kills bacteria. Remember I said algae blooms show up wherever there’s bacteria? Same within your mouth. Same within your colon. That's why they’ve used chlorella for decades for IBS, for Crohn’s disease, any kind of gut, abdominal issues at all, and laughingly, when I was at this conference, I held up a bag of my ENERGYbits on my head and I put my chlorella bag down by my gut. And I said the blue one, ENERGYbits, is for AM, and the chlorella which is the green bag is for PM, but if you need another visual, think of the ENERGYbits which is spirulina with all the nourishment for your brain and the chlorella which cleans out your gut and stops any kind of bacteria and deodorizes your lower part of your body. So, your brain and your gut. If you need simple things to remember what they do and when to take them, that hopefully helps. [01:11:13] Ashley James: I do. I love it, yes. You mentioned that it’s better than activated charcoal. Would you consider taking the RECOVERYbits when someone has food poisoning? Would it help in that way as well?  [01:11:29] Catharine Arnston: That's a good question. I don’t know about food poisoning. I guess it’s bacteria that’s caused the food poisoning like salmonella. [01:11:40] Ashley James: But it’s like the toxins left behind from the bacteria is what I understand. I’m just wondering because people will typically take activated charcoal during food poisoning to help mop it up, and I’m wondering if, well, I guess you could take activated charcoal and chlorella just to see if it would help more. [01:12:00] Catharine Arnston: But it’d be certainly cleansing. I’ve never had that question come up before, that's very interesting. I can only think that would help.  [01:12:08] Ashley James: There you go. Okay, so we’ve laid down a good groundwork, although listeners can still go back and listen to the previous episodes because we really, really dove even deeper. But we’ve laid it out. Everyone now is excited and probably going to ENERGYbits.com using coupon code “LTH” and already buying their bags of RECOVERYbits and ENERGYbits. And then one thing I wanted you to mention is if someone wants to try chlorella and spirulina, they can get the 50-50 bag. And what’s that bag called? [01:12:37] Catharine Arnston: That’s called VITALITYbits. [01:12:38] Ashley James: That's right. VITALITYbits. [01:12:40] Catharine Arnston: It’s a blend of the two of them. [01:12:41] Ashley James: You want half chlorella and half spirulina, get the VITALITYbits. Okay, so let’s dive into this. The superoxide dismutase (SOD), I am so excited about. I’ve had guests come on the show talking about how it is like the fountain of youth. We need more of it. And I’m so excited that your crop, your super-duper food is going to help us get more superoxide dismutase for our mitochondria. Okay, so let’s dive into this. [01:13:12] Catharine Arnston: All right, well, let me first explain what mitochondria are, why they're so critical for your life full-stop and why algae contains all the nutrients that will protect your mitochondria from damage. [j1] And when the mitochondria are protected, then you have more life. And one of those antioxidants is superoxide dismutase. It’s also known as SOD, so I’ll use the terms interchangeably because it’s easier to say SOD than superoxide dismutase. So, here’s the deal. Think of your body as a building. Okay? Like a skyscraper. And inside the building are offices. Think of those offices like your cells. And in the offices are lights. Think of the lights as your mitochondria. Now, you can’t do any work in your office without lights. And your building doesn’t function without offices and people in the offices. Your body is the same way. The mitochondria are the fuel, the thing that keeps the lights on in your cells. And the problem is, those mitochondria are getting damaged. The mitochondria, they're little organelles. If you look at any drawings, they're sort of like peanut-shaped things that are inside the cells and they generate energy for everything in your body. Everything from breathing. And the currency of energy is called ATP. We have electricity that is the energy for our homes or our phones, and we have gasoline for the energy for our cars and although soon to be electricity. ATP is what energizes your body. It’s what helps your blood to flow, your lymphatic system to function, your heart to beat, your brain to think. It fuels everything. So, your mitochondria play a pretty important role just like in the building. Without any lights, you can’t really do anything. The trouble is, your mitochondria are located exactly where … actually, your mitochondria have their own DNA, I’ll say that first. We know that we have about 25,000 DNA and those DNA last a lifetime. The mitochondria have their own DNA. And interestingly, they all come from the female, which is quite different from your regular DNA. Half comes from the male, half comes from the female. All of your mitochondria DNA come from the female. I just have a sort of interesting note to put in there. Now, there's only 37 of them. But these mitochondria DNA control all of your DNA. They control all of the communication on your cell wall. They control everything that goes on in your body. So, the analogy I like to help people so you can understand how powerful these mitochondria DNA are. They're like the air controller at an airport. An air controller controls absolutely everything that’s coming in and go on out. And if they are ill or not on their job, planes crash. When your mitochondria DNA are ill and they get damaged, your health crashes. It is that simple. Now, the good news is, we can change that trajectory because as you age, you have fewer mitochondria, you have more mitochondria being damaged and mutated and these mutated mitochondria send the wrong signals. It’s like an air controller telling a plane to land on a runway when someone’s taken off. So, when the mitochondria are damaged, they're sending wrong signals and so things, your tissues start to literally rust, that's what free radicals do and your health deteriorates. Now, the reason why the mitochondria get so damaged and mutated is because the mitochondria DNA, they're located exactly where the ATP is produced. Now, the ATP is good. The problem is, when ATP is produced, a byproduct is something called free radicals. Free radicals are molecules that are missing an electron, and so what they do is they steal electrons from other tissues, from other molecules. It basically is the equivalent of rust. If you’ve ever seen boats on a dock or an old car left on a yard, you see how there’s rusty holes that appear and they get bigger and bigger because of oxidation. That's what’s causing the holes, is oxidation. Free radicals cause oxidation, damage, and rusting of your cells. Not a good thing. So, because the mitochondria DNA are located exactly where the ATP is and exactly where the free radicals are, they are constantly getting damaged and dying. The average lifespan of your mitochondria DNA is 10 to 20 days, whereas your regular DNA lasts a lifetime. When you're born and when you are about 30, your body creates antioxidants that can get into the mitochondria to stop this free radical damage. But the problem is, there’s only four of them that can get into the mitochondria inner membrane. They are glutathione, melatonin, superoxide dismutase, and also chlorophyll. I know your body doesn’t make chlorophyll, but we’ll talk about that in a minute. So, those are the only four antioxidants that can stop from the free radical damage. And you go, “Well, wait a second. Blueberries have antioxidants. Oranges have antioxidants. What’s wrong with them?” Here is the problem. Those antioxidants are fine for all the other cells in your body to stop free radical damage. But the problem is, your mitochondria, unlike any other cell in your entire body, have two cell membranes. Every other cell has one. Remember we talked about it earlier and it’s a fat-based membrane and nutrients go in and go out. Well, there's one of those around the mitochondria for sure. But there is a second inner membrane that is impenetrable by virtually anything. Certainly none of the traditional antioxidants, and I’ll explain that in a minute why. In your regular membranes including the outside one of the mitochondria, these nutrients that get in and out, and proteins, and antioxidants, they go through something called a porin. Now, porins are like little channels that open up and allow things to flow in and out. But that inner membrane of the mitochondria does not have any porins. The only four that can get through that inner membrane and they're not through porins, are these four antioxidants – glutathione, melatonin, superoxide dismutase, and chlorophyll. Now, you mentioned superoxide dismutase, so let me start with it. It is heralded as the answer to longevity. And here’s why. The most damaging free radical that is produced in your body and it’s all at the mitochondria level, is something called superoxide. And I was curious I read all this literature. Hundreds of NIH articles talking about the super damage of superoxide. And then we’re like, why? Why is it so damaging? And here’s why. Most free radicals have just one electron that is by itself and so it steals one electron from another molecule, which damages that molecule which then becomes a free radical, which damages the next molecule. And that's how the cascading effect of damaged tissue occurs.  But superoxide has three of these unpaired electrons. So, it steals three times as many electrons from the next molecule, which causes three times as much damage to the next molecule. So that's why it’s known as the most damaging free radical, because it requires three electrons to stabilize. So, superoxide dismutase, what it does is it encounters this superoxide and turns it into water. Harmless water. Imagine a fireman with a hose. Just hosing down all that superoxide dismutase and protecting your mitochondria. The reason why this is so powerful is because again, when you're talking about the free radicals being produced as a result of ATP, if anyone’s ever sat by a bonfire or a fireplace and you got too close to it and sparks would fly, you know that those sparks could burn you. And that's what’s happening at the mitochondria level with all this ATP. It’s generating a fire but the results are free radicals, which are like the sparks. And what’s getting burned is the mitochondria DNA. And so, you’ve got to find a way to protect those mitochondria DNA because when they're damaged, then again, they die or they send the wrong signals. Now, the other two antioxidants that can get into the mitochondria, as I mentioned, is melatonin and glutathione. And algae has the highest concentration of superoxide dismutase in the world, the highest concentration of glutathione in the world, and the highest concentration of chlorophyll in the world. All four are the four that can get into that inner membrane to stop this free radical damage. Now there's two ways to stop the free radical damage. One is to reduce the number of free radicals being produced. And the second way is to neutralize them like superoxide dismutase. The first way is easy for anybody to do because carbs and sugar generate the most free radicals in your mitochondria. So, removing processed carbs, anything white, rice, bread, sugar, and replacing it either with a keto diet or at least a low-carb diet, that's number one, because you're going to have fewer free radicals being produced that will then produce less damage. Now, the best way, the thing that produces virtually no free radicals is fasting, either intermittent fasting or long-term water fasting and algae. Algae creates virtually no free radicals because there are no carbs. The remarkable thing about algae is scientific discoveries that if you take chlorophyll and expose your body to red light, either red light therapy or the sunlight, the chlorophyll regenerates the CoQ10 molecule, which is part of the cycle of producing ATP and it creates energy without free radicals. So, now you're taking algae that's full of the four antioxidants that neutralize the free radicals and it’s giving your body, your brain, your organs nourishment, and it's generating ATP without free radicals. So, that's number one. Reduce the number of free radicals that are damaging to the mitochondria DNA, and the second one, which is getting these four antioxidants that can neutralize them like superoxide dismutase. Now, the catch is superoxide dismutase, as I mentioned, is an enzyme. And virtually all the other algae companies that are lower priced, higher volume, they use high heat to dry their algae. Why? Because they have to get to market quickly, to sell quickly, to make money quickly. Now, when I started the company, as I mentioned, it was just to help my sister. And so, twelve years ago I learned that high heat kills enzymes. To be honest, I knew nothing about superoxide dismutase 12 years ago, but I knew if you got over 118 degrees Fahrenheit, it killed enzymes. And I knew enzymes were important for digestion. So I said, well, we can’t use high heat. We can’t use high heat when we dry it. So, we never have. So, that's why when you use our algae, the superoxide dismutase which has been heralded as the answer. And by the way, there's 50,000 studies that have been done on the healing properties of superoxide dismutase. It has been proven to stop cancer, proven to stop heart disease, proven to stop brain disease. And 50,000 is a big number just like there's 100,000 on algae. So now you’ve got something that's been proven to stop these diseases and reinstate health at the cellular level. And yet, everybody else is killing it except us. There is one other source that you could use, I want to point out, and it would be frozen spirulina. Chlorella, by the way, does have superoxide dismutase in it as well, but spirulina has the highest. It has four times as much as chlorella. Now, frozen algae because, again, has not been exposed to high heat would have all the superoxide dismutase still alive and well. Same with such a thing as frozen chlorella. I’ve never found anybody that sells it. The problem with frozen spirulina is that it has a very short lifespan, it’s messy, you can’t travel with it, and it’s even more expensive. But it is an option for those of you who do want to search that out. So, superoxide dismutase is unbelievable for preserving your mitochondria[j2] . Now, as I mentioned earlier, the highest concentration of mitochondria are in the parts of your body where there are the highest energy needs. Number one, your brain. They have found there are two million of these mitochondria per cell in your brain. That's why they're realizing autism, ADHA, dementia, Alzheimer’s, any brain issue. Any brain issue. Brain fog is a mitochondria dysfunction, a mitochondria disease. We have people writing in who have had dementia. They’re in their 70s. Within two days, they started being able to focus again. One gentleman said he couldn’t even figure out how to turn his microwave on. And within two days of using the spirulina, he was being able to focus again. The power of these antioxidants cannot be understated. It is crucial that you get these into your body because after the age of 30, your body, which normally makes superoxide dismutase, glutathione, and melatonin drops, and it drops, and it drops. By the time you are 60 and certainly in your older years, it is producing virtually none. This is why when you're 20, in your teens, in your 20s, you have energy. You might get a cold, you bounce back in two days, but once you get into your 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s, you’re not sleeping, you're not recovering, you're getting chronic illness, you're getting cancer diagnoses, heart disease diagnoses, your brain fog is increasing. It’s because your mitochondria, which used to be protected when you were younger by these antioxidants, the three that your body makes plus chlorophyll, it is not producing them anymore. And I’m not telling you anything that's not scientifically proven. This is the reality. So, as your mitochondria get damaged and as you have fewer of these antioxidants to protect you, your inflammation level goes up and up, and your mitochondria and your health goes down and down and down. We can change that trajectory simply with algae. It’s un-freaking-believable. I have the lab tests that prove that algae has the highest superoxide dismutase in the world. There’s a teeny, teeny, teeny amount in cabbage. It has 28,000 times more superoxide dismutase than cabbage. It has more melatonin. It has 1400 times more glutathione than avocado or beef. I can’t remember the number but some crazy number, more melatonin and melatonin, they're realizing there's way more than help you with your sleep and manage your circadian rhythm. It’s an antioxidant that, by the way, is produced in all of your mitochondria and used by all your mitochondria. These are essential antioxidants that preserve your mitochondria DNA which therefore preserve your health. But I want to walk you through where the other concentrations of mitochondria are. First, as I mentioned, is your brain. The second highest, you’ll never believe this one, is women’s eggs. There are 600,000 mitochondria per cell in a woman’s eggs, in every single egg. For infertility, is a mitochondria dysfunction. You get this back into your body, it will be so much easier for you to have a baby, carry the baby, nourish the baby because it takes a lot. And why is there so many mitochondria in women’s eggs? Because it takes a lot of energy to create another human being. The third highest is your heart. Once again, they’re realizing heart disease is a mitochondria disease. It’s anywhere between 5,000 to 7,000 mitochondria per cell in your heart. After that, it’s the rest of your organs and your muscles, which have an average of 5,000 mitochondria per cell. So any athletes who are listening, you want muscle for performance, but you need mitochondria for a long-lasting performance because that’s where your energy is coming from, from the mitochondria in your muscles. Now, just as a comparison, a fat cell or a skin cell has an average of only 100 mitochondria per cell, because there's not a high need for energy there. But the things that go first when we are aging is our brain and our heart and, of course, our immune system as well. So, the fact the algae, both the spirulina and the chlorella have the four antioxidants that can get into that inner membrane to stop the free radical damage that is like sparks flying off a fire and damaging the DNA, which is what causes the cascading effect of decreased energy, brain focus, cancer, immune health issues, algae does provide that ability to protect the DNA and at the same time, generate ATP without free radicals. Now I’m going to tell you why there are two membranes in the mitochondria and why algae is such a remarkable thing and basically saves your mitochondria. So, remember at the very beginning I mentioned that algae was the first life on earth almost 4 billion years ago. And this is all documented in science, by the way, so we’ll send you all the links so you can check it out yourself. So, the first cell was cyanobacteria. And it was an anaerobic cell because before algae, there was no oxygen on earth. There was just gas and water. No one knows why this little tiny anaerobic cell, cyanobacteria, started growing, and of course, spirulina is a cyanobacteria, so it’s effectively spirulina was the first life on earth 4 billion years ago. And after a billion years of it growing, of these little cells growing, and they generated ATP and released oxygen in the process, which always happens, now there's a lot of oxygen on earth. But now this little anaerobic cell is struggling because it did better when there wasn’t any oxygen on earth, and at the same time, larger cells that were aerobic started growing. But they weren’t generating ATP as well. So, I can imagine the conversation that went on between the two of them because this is exactly what happened. The big cell says to the little cell, “Hey, little guy. I see you’re struggling there with all that oxygen, and we love oxygen. But we’re not doing so well generating ATP. So, how about you come and join us? And we’ll protect you from the oxygen and you can generate ATP for us.” And basically, that's what happened. The big cell engulfed the little cell but did not digest the little cell. That little cell, that little cyanobacteria became mitochondria. Your mitochondria evolved from spirulina, well, from cyanobacteria, which spirulina is a cyanobacteria. Crazy, right? That is why there are two membranes on your mitochondria. The original membrane is when it was out by itself 4 billion years ago as an anaerobic cell. Then when it got engulfed by the big cell, the big cell put a second membrane around it as occurs in all of the cells in your body that have these porins and allow things to go in and out. But the original membrane was retained. And that is why algae has everything that can get into mitochondria inner membrane where nothing else can get in there because it’s the same thing. There are different processes that allow the absorption to get through the cells. Nothing else can get in there. Your mitochondria and spirulina are family. [01:36:11] Ashley James: It is so cool. I did a whole interview on mitochondria back in episode 297 with Dr. Warren Cargal. And I feel like I should connect the two of you because he published a book on mitochondria. He’s all about mitochondria. He said exactly what you said, which is really cool. It’s cool to hear it from multiple sources, right? And it’d be cool to hook you guys up. I’m going to do that. I’m going to hook you guys up. [01:36:38] Catharine Arnston: What’s his name again? [01:36:39] Ashley James: It’s Dr. Warren Cargal. Anyways, that's episode 297. I’ll make sure I’ll hook you guys up. I’ve had another, Dr. Jack Kruse has been on the show talking about mitochondrial health. He’s a cardiologist that … pretty sure. I’m going by memory. No, maybe he’s not a cardiologist. I think he’s a cardiologist. You know, when you do 500 interviews … [01:37:04] Catharine Arnston: Oh, I know. I know. God bless you if you're even remembering. [01:37:09] Ashley James: Yeah. [01:37:10] Catharine Arnston: I’m the same way. I meet so many people. But when I discovered that mitochondria evolved from cyanobacteria. [01:37:17] Ashley James: It’s just fascinating. [01:37:19] Catharine Arnston: It’s called endosymbiosis, which is the scientific terminology that's used. And I tell people it makes me sort of chuckle because it reminds me of, let’s say you had a friend who got kicked off out of their apartment, and they come to you, and they go, “Hey, can I come and stay with you for a few days?” And you go, “Okay, fine.” Then they come and stay with you, and they do your laundry, they pick up your groceries, they pick up your dry cleaning, and you go, “Hey, this is working pretty good for me.” So you tell your friend, “Hey, stay forever.” So it’s sort of what happened with the little single-cell cyanobacteria that kind of took up shop with the bigger bacteria, and instead of digesting it, the big bacteria said, “Hey, you're doing such a great job generating ATP for us. Why don’t you just stay forever?” It flipped me out when I realized that we came from algae. This endosymbiotic theory was discovered, by the way, in the ‘60s by a female professor who was at MIT at the time. And she was ridiculed by her peers for almost 10 years until they realized she was right. So, any article that you read at the NIH library, the National Institute of Health library on mitochondria, they all reference this thing. That's why I was so comfortable telling you about this because it starts to make complete sense. The mitochondria is where everything in your health starts and ends. Everything. You cannot get any further down the food chain, so to speak, in your health than mitochondria. And algae, you can’t get any further down the food chain. It is the original life on earth. It is the original ancestral, paleo, historic food. And here we are looking at all these people getting sick and taking all these medications and dramatic surgery. The answer to all this for prevention and for maintenance and for excelling in health and vitality for you, the earth, and your children, has been sitting in front of us for billions of years, but it’s not sexy. It’s not cool. No one’s explained it to you. [01:39:40] Ashley James: I think it’s sexy. I think, like mushrooms and algae, I think it’s incredibly sexy. So, I have deep faith, and I believe in God, and so many who study the Bible go, “Well, okay, but you're saying something that happened a billion years ago, but the Bible doesn’t say that. The Bible’s only …” you know. Some people take it literally and say 5,000 years. And what’s interesting, as you transcribe the Bible, and we’ve sort of changed definitions of words as you transcribe it from one language to another, but in the Old Testament, where “day” actually is transcribed into a literal day 24-hour around the sun, which, I mean, I think God can do anything; however, it was originally said and remember also Bible stories were spoken before they were written for a long time. It was the original language. And I’m open to being wrong about this, but this is after talking to like rabbis and ministers and priests and stuff like that, and having these wonderful theological discussions. When it comes to theology, I don’t take the stance where I’m infallible and I’m right. I’m open to being completely wrong because I’m listening for God to show me. Show me what you want me to see. And so, I think we should all have this open mind, like show me, God, what is the truth, show me what you want me to see and what you want me to understand about my healing and about life and how I can help others and how I can be in service to you. What they said is that the word “day” actually means event. On the first event, God made this. On the second event, you know. It was not a literal 24 hours, which is really fascinating, because we’ve taken it as 24 hours. Because I believe God made the universe, and the more you study science, it’s actually really fascinating. Go look under a microscope, under a really, really intense microscope. Go look at a single-cell organism. And when you see how complex a single-cell organism is, it will move you to tears. It is so beautiful. There's more happening. If you study biology, there's more happening in a single cell than in New York City. There's more happening than in a city with millions of people and all their lives. It is so beautiful, and scientists have never discovered something created out of nothing. Anyways, this is just me. I’m not pushing my beliefs on anyone. But try it on. Try on this concept that there's a beautiful higher power that loves you and created this whole universe. And this has been my philosophy since I was a kid that God is the world’s biggest scientist, that He’s the world’s coolest scientist. Right? And I say He, it’s God, it’s everything. Everything, this beautiful universal energy that there's something behind life. There's something after life. There's something behind everything that's a universal life force. There's more energy in us than there's matter. So, you get into studying quantum physics. Just study any of these scientists, and you just start to see God show up in these beautiful ways. At least He does for me. [01:42:55] Catharine Arnston: I completely agree. I totally agree. [01:42:57] Ashley James: And He gives us what we need. So, it just makes so much sense that here He’s given us the mitochondria, this beautiful relationship between this interesting bacteria-like object that then is now in our cells, making energy for us. And that makes so much sense because now that we’re just starting to crack open or just starting to go down the rabbit hole. We’re just starting to crack open that pandora’s box. I know pandora maybe isn’t the best reference, but this beautiful deep, deep, deep rabbit hole of understanding how good bacteria plays a role in our health. Right? And there's about six pounds of good bacteria in your gut that digest your food, that make neurochemicals for you, that your gut bacteria is making about 70 percent of your serotonin for your brain, and we’re just scratching the surface. So, it just makes so much sense that here we have chlorella and spirulina, these crops that God has given us that is here in nature, nature has given us that is healing and healthy for our body. Just like when you go into nature and you find a plant that's poisonous, you will always find the cure nearby. That there is a balance, in a balanced ecosystem. And I wouldn’t say like go into like a state park, might not be a balanced ecosystem or your city park. But in a balanced ecosystem, herbalists, when they go out, and they wildcraft and forage, they will point out. They will say here’s the poison, and here’s the remedy. They're nearby. There's a balance in nature. And here we have this balance and especially now when the world is more and more and more toxic, we need to go back and find what are the cures that are showing up. Like you said, it shows up in a beach when the beach is toxic to help mop it up. We need to bring this into our body and mop up all the damage we’re doing from living in a toxic world. I absolutely love it. Now, you said it kills bacteria. But what does it do to the good bacteria? [01:44:58] Catharine Arnston: Oh, it helps it multiply because it’s a prebiotic, so it supports the healthy bacteria and kills the bad bacteria. It’s an adaptogen, so it can identify which team it wants to play with.  Speaking of teams, it’s also keto, vegan, paleo, carnivore, no lectins, algae is not technically a plant. It’s certainly not an animal. It will work with every lifestyle group. It has zero sugar, zero caffeine. One calorie per tablet, 40 vitamins and minerals, highest protein in the world, highest glutathione, melatonin and superoxide dismutase in the world. And just to go back to you referencing God, two things, they now think that in the passage where Jesus is feeding the masses manna from heaven, they now think it was algae because he was scraping stuff from the rocks and now algae grows on rocks. And if it’s exposed to light, the chlorophyll is pulled out. But all the protein and the polysaccharides remain, so you’ll see it on rocks like this white crystal stuff. That’s algae. But it’s still nourishing. You can live on algae forever. It’s that nourishing. So, that's one of those sorts of things I want to mention. Because algae is so healing and because it is really truly a gift to us from God from nature, from the universe, whatever you want to call it, anybody who is on a spiritual quest or wants to at least find themselves and get out of the crazy world that we live in, you have to be quiet. You have to step back, listen to your own soul, listen to your own voice because your soul and your spirit whisper. It never shouts. You know who shouts? People and companies that are trying to get your attention to sell you stuff. So, I tell people whoever is advertising the most on TV, run the other way. Because they’re loud and they're pushy. Your soul and your spirit are never loud or pushy. It will just whisper to you. And algae has been sitting around waiting for us to take notice of it. By the way, the agents have figured it out like 60 years ago. And there was no legitimate reason for me to get involved with algae. I have an MBA, I was doing international economic development, then my sister got sick, and that I just helped her, and then I wanted to help more people. And I kept going. I had no science background at all. I’m completely self-taught. I call myself a citizen scientist, which I was going to mention this at the very beginning. Everybody who’s listening, you need to consider yourself a citizen scientist. It is your job to find out how your body works and find out what you need to give it so that you do not have to be a statistic. You can turn around that trajectory that you are on if you do not do something like this, an algae intervention, because your body is not giving you the antioxidants you need to protect yourself from free radical damage and the world that you live in is too toxic, it’s dumping on your body and your immune system things that you just cannot continue to get access to and expect to live a healthy life. It’s just impossible. So, I have no science background. I’ve tried to do as much heavy lifting for you as possible. I’ve probably read 3,000 NIH articles at this point. I’ve been on over 200 podcasts. I speak nationwide. I’ve written about 500 papers. I’m in the process of getting a book. I’m going to do a TED Talk. I will do as much as I can to help you understand the science of algae and the science of your body. We write a blog on our website. You could just come to our website. Don’t even buy anything. Just educate yourself. But be careful on the internet in general because nobody understands algae like I do, and so there's a lot of stuff that’s out there that's actually incorrect. And I’m here to help you learn from my 12 years, I’ve given you a bit of a brain dump, and you can listen to this multiple times, and we’ll send you a lot of articles that you can link to. But I can promise you, if you start taking both the spirulina and the chlorella, you, your children, your pets, your family, your health will improve, and so will the world, because it’s also the most eco-friendly, sustainable crop in the world. The earth is begging you to wake up and help it because it needs help, and it doesn’t need a voice. [01:49:43] Ashley James: I love it. And especially as you dive in, first of all, you have a PhD in algae. [01:49:49] Catharine Arnston: Algae. I do. [01:49:51] Ashley James: Well, you’ve been studying it for 12 years as a scholar. Harvard would give you an honorary PhD at this point. Listeners can go to episode 357 to learn about debunking algae myths, especially for those listeners who consider themselves citizen scientists and want to dive into the research. Episode 357 is great for that. Episode 266, we talk about vitamin K2 and the importance of that in relation to algae. Then episodes 234 and 265. We did an even deeper dive than what we did today about these crops and understanding how these crops are made. So, if you want to go back and sort of have the behind-the-scenes tour of how these crops are turned into these wonderful little tablets and all that. You can go back to those episodes, and we’ll link these previous four interviews in today’s episode along with all the articles that Catharine’s going to give us to start diving in and digesting ourselves. And I love it. You can go to ENERGYbits.com and just start poring through the information there, and of course, use coupon code LTH any time to get the listener discount. Okay, so listeners at this point are sold. They want their mitochondria to be healed. They want all the benefits you just mentioned. I’m especially thinking about heart health and brain health. I’m so, so, so excited about helping listeners to protect their mitochondria, to heal their mitochondria. Which one would be the best bag to buy if they're just starting out and they're like, “There’s four different bags. I don’t know which one to buy.” Which one should they buy? [01:51:36] Catharine Arnston: Well, because VITALITYbits is a blend of both the spirulina and the chlorella, that might be the way to go. It’s interesting, spirulina has the highest superoxide dismutase and the highest glutathione and then the chlorella has the highest chlorophyll and the highest melatonin. As I said, they do different things. But both of them have the highest of all four antioxidants. But if you take the VITALITYbits, it gives you a nice mix of the two of them. So, that would be my suggestion if you can only buy one bag. And if you are able to buy two, then I would get the ENERGYbits. Well, someone joked and they said you have a boy spirulina and a girl spirulina. Remember, ENERGYbits and BEAUTYbits are identical. So, that would be what you would take in the morning. I personally love the BEAUTYbits, so that's what I have on my countertop because I’m a girl.  And it’s a very attractive packaging. I design everything, it’s my homage to Mother Nature. The ENERGYbits is blue because spirulina came from the ocean and so it’s in a blue ocean color package. The BEAUTYbits is a gorgeous pink rose in it which Mother Nature knows beauty is healing, and so there's no shame in wanting to improve your own beauty. I mean, Mother Nature does it every day with the gorgeous flowers that she provides for us. The chlorella has a green leaf on it, and of course, chlorella does belong to the plant kingdom, so it’s a green package. And the VITALITYbits is in a bold red, sort of a fuchsia red color because it’s a blend of the two colors, the green and the blue, and it’s almost a purpley color. I used to have friends say “I want two blue bags and a couple of green bags.” Some people buy it by the color. But the spirulina is generally the best in the morning, the afternoon when you're hungry and tired, and the chlorella which is the healing RECOVERYbits definitely before bed, but anytime that you want. And most people, as I said, do swallow the spirulina, the blue, and the pink one, and they do enjoy eating the chlorella with either macadamia nuts or sea salt or pistachio nuts. The VITALITYbits is a blend, so it’s kind of up to you in your flavor, but there's no shame in swallowing them. You can swallow them, chew them, add them to smoothies, or grind them up first. They don’t dissolve because they're very concentrated. And just so you know, each tablet has the same nutrition as an entire plate of vegetables. One tablet. So, again, if you have parents, grandparents, who aren’t eating well, just get even a couple of these and if you take one or both of the algae, you could eliminate a multivitamin, especially spirulina, a multivitamin, eliminate your fish oil, eliminate CoQ10, biotin. You can clean up the clutter on your countertop with something that is nourishing and food, and chlorella because of the high chlorophyll, you don’t need to if you don’t like them or can’t get to them, you don’t need to be preparing vegetables as frequently because it gives you all the nourishment that you would find in greens. It’s a one-stop shop. [01:55:00] Ashley James: I’m an overachiever. I just want more. So, I’m going to eat my vegetables and I’m going to take this because I want to do both. But I can appreciate that people have gaps. There's some people that have gaps in their nutrition, and this is fantastic for feeling it, and for me, I’m like, I want that optimal true health. I want the best of the best, so I’m adding this in addition to my vegetables. But at times when I can’t get a good meal, this is a fantastic quick food on the go that also happens to be the most concentrated amount of food nutrition I can get, which is super, super, super exciting. [01:55:41] Catharine Arnston: One last thing I want to mention. Because cancer and heart disease and all these other illnesses, Alzheimer’s is so prevalent, when I mentioned 10 tablets a day, that's kind of for adults who are healthy. If anyone listening or you have any family members and we all do who are experiencing cancer or heart disease, Alzheimer’s, please double the amounts, I promise, triple the amount. There is no upper limit. [01:56:07] Ashley James: It’s a crop, it’s food. [01:56:08] Catharine Arnston: It’s a crop; it’s a vegetable. Your poop might be a little green, drink a little extra water because there's high protein and that your body needs water to process protein. Please, please, please get them on this stuff. I promise you, it will make a difference. Cancer cannot exist in an alkaline environment. Algae is the most alkaline food in the world. That's how I got started. My sister’s oncologist told her to eat an alkaline diet when she was preparing for chemo. And I will send you a link to a PowerPoint that will give you lots of other references. It’s hundreds and hundreds of science references in my presentation that we’ll send you. Trust me when I tell you this is the most natural, effortless, non-invasive way to nourish and heal your cell and your mitochondria and your health. I’m so grateful for the opportunity, Ashley, to help people understand this. [01:57:03] Ashley James: Absolutely. Well, I don’t want to use the word “desperation,” but I hear your passion and I hear almost like the tone of your voice, first of all, you have even more information than the last time I interviewed you. But I hear an essence in your voice and, you know what, the word “desperation” is completely wrong. That's not it. It’s urgency. [01:57:25] Catharine Arnston: Yeah, urgency. [01:57:29] Ashley James: There is a level of urgency that this deserves because people’s lives are at stake. For me having suddenly lost my mom at 55 and my dad at 62, young ages. It’s so sad that some people are just like drop-dead in their 40s of a heart attack out of nowhere, like young. I have a mom friend of mine who died of cancer. I have another mom friend who’s fighting cancer. These diseases that were maybe diseases of 80-year-olds are now diseases of 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds. [01:58:10] Catharine Arnston: It’s unacceptable. [01:58:11] Ashley James: It is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable that teenage athletes drop dead of all of a sudden, a heart attack. It’s unacceptable, right? So, we need to take matters into our own hands. There is a level of urgency and you have an urgency that we need to get the algae to be accepted en masse and widely. You converted us. We’re believers. We’re excited. I know my listeners who haven’t tried your algae are doing a jump and try it. Please come into the Learn True Health Facebook group and let’s talk about it, listeners, those who have tried the algae, tried the ENERGYbits. Please come into the Learn True Health Facebook group and tell the listeners what your experience has been. Those who haven’t tried it, come ask, tell me about it. Let’s start a conversation about it. I want to hear your testimonials and your stories around it. And then those who are new to it, as you try it, please come to the Facebook group and share. One thing I wanted to say is, and we’ve talked about this in previous episodes, those who are very sensitive like I am to detox and to toxins, I’m one of those people and the second I start detoxing, I feel it hugely. And I found that when I eat 30 of the tablets of the RECOVERYbits, which is the chlorella, that is the magic number for me to not feel detox effects when I’m going through a heavy metal detox. That for me is the magic number. Dr. Klinghardt said that's about the amount like a good handful, is what you want to take when you're doing heavy metal detox. If you take less and you're doing a heavy metal detox, you kind of are dusting in a room with no windows open and no air filter on. You're just kicking up the toxins inside the stores because toxins will store up. When I say toxins, I mean, man-made toxins and heavy metals. I mean like by-products of cellular waste, natural by-products of cellular waste. That's normal. I mean, the 80,000 manmade chemicals over the last 40,000 years that we’re now exposed to that our body has to figure out how to process, plus heavy metals that are in our air, food, medications, and soil, and water. It gets stored in adipose tissue. Even if you're skinny, you still have some fat. It gets stored in that. And then when we do any kind of detoxing or weight loss, it gets thrown back into the  blood system for your body to have to figure out how to get rid of and if you're like me and my liver’s not really great with detoxing, then it’s just going to re-damage everything and get back into the fat cells until I do more weight loss or I do more detoxing, then it comes back out. It damages everything and then it goes back in instead of getting out of my body. So, eating 30 of the RECOVERYbits is what mops it up and allows it to leave my body without feeling any ill effects of detox. So, that was my thing. And Dr. Klinghardt said, and he confirmed this that if you eat less than 30 and you're doing detox, you’re going to still feel sick if you're like me. So, eat 30. Don’t be shy. Just a handful. Every day, if you’re going to do detox like doing sauna or other detoxing things. Because I’ve heard from a handful of people, not a lot of people, I’ve seen people eat 5 and have had no problem, but people who are also sensitive like me, if they're doing a detox and they eat less, they’ll then feel sick and they go, “Oh, this algae made me sick.” And I’m like, no, it’s not the algae that made you sick. You didn’t take enough of it to mop up. Then, they trust me enough to try again, and they're like, “You're right. I tried 30 and I don’t feel anything at all. But if I eat 10, I feel sick. But if I ate 30, don’t feel sick.” And like, see, there you go. It mops it up at 30, but you don’t get enough of the mopping up effect if you eat 10. So, that's been my experience. [02:02:02] Catharine Arnston: And I agree. That's why you’ll get the wellness benefits from 5 or 10, but just so you know, and I’m not boasting about this, I probably eat 100-150 chlorella a day and have every day for 12 years. I mean, I love this stuff. It’s a main food for me. Probably eggs and algae are the two things. As ironic, when I first started the company, I didn’t have any money and the only things I could afford were eggs and algae. And here I am, I am finally not desperate again like I was 12 years ago. But my favorite foods are eggs and algae. And I’m not suggesting you need to eat 100, but I just share that with you to show you that there is no upper limit. So, if you can eat take the 30, that is the magic number. In fact, we sell them in boxes on our website in pouches with 30 tablets in it. So, for those of you who can, it makes it so easy because all you do is you start your day with a pouch of spirulina with the 30 tablets and you end your day with a little pouch of chlorella with the 30 tablets. You don’t even have to think about it. We also sell them in canisters that come with a bag inside. You open the bag, you put it in the canister and then you just leave it on your countertop, and then you just shake out the tablets through the little opening in the canister. It’s adorable. It’s beautiful, it’s effortless and then when you run out of tablets, you just buy another bag and you fill a bag up with a canister because we found people were sticking their hand in the bags and they're getting green powder on their hands and it was messy. So, we’ve done our best to make it as effortless for you. The little pouches that we call them travel single-servings are just the best. Just buy a bunch of boxes of those. If you want to learn more too, we’re very active on social media. ENERGYbits is the main handle on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. And BEAUTYbits has their own Instagram handle if you want to see the girly stuff. It’s just that, BEAUTYbits. They're like kids, right? They have complete different personalities. [02:04:02] Ashley James: So funny. I’m not one of those, a pink, you know. I’m kind of like, why, why is everything pink? Like, I’m not a pink girl, but I appreciate you do that for the girls, for the women who like it. I personally don’t. I don’t know. I liked climbing trees when I was a kid. And I believe that as a female, we have such a beautiful spectrum of what being a woman is. Being a woman is anything that we say we are. We are strong. We are so amazingly strong. And I have this wonderful naturopathic physician who’s been practicing for close to 40 years now. She’s delivered over a thousand babies and she used to be the dean of the naturopathic college Bastyr University just outside of Seattle. Her name’s Dr. Molly Niedermeyer. She says that women, they're so strong. Like blood tests show that they should be dead, you know what I mean? It’s like your energy levels through the floor or your cortisol or through or through the roof. But man, and I’m not putting you guys down but just as a comparison, we drag our bodies through the mud. We have a willpower and a determination to be the most amazing mothers, the most amazing wives, the most amazing businesswomen and students. And whatever we put our minds to, our physiology will keep us going. Just our mindset, our willpower. But we will drag our bodies through the mud and a lot of times put ourselves last because we are taking care of everyone we love and then finally, our body breaks. Then, we finally have to take care of ourselves. And I really don’t want, because I hit that breaking point 15 years ago, and I was incredibly sick. Now, I’ve spent the last 15 years recovering my health from that and going, okay, I put my oxygen mask on first in order to take care of those I love. So, we have to flip that mindset and go, for example, I buy ENERGYbits to take care of myself so I can take care of my loved ones. Feed them to your kids and feed them to you. Feed them to your husband, feed them to the whole family. I know that there are some listeners right now going, “I can’t wait to give this to my kids,” but it’s like, “Oh, money is tight, I’m going to buy this for my kids but not for me.” Or, “I’m going to buy for my husband but not for me.” I know you’re thinking that. I’m in your brain. And here’s the thing. If you get sick, who’s taking care of the ones you love? You’ve got to take care of yourself. Please, please, please. Putting yourself first isn’t selfish. Putting yourself equal to your kids and husband in terms of the importance of health is necessary to take care of those you love. So, please try it, do yourself that service and try it. [02:07:06] Catharine Arnston: My final sort of comment is I saw a great quote on the internet and it said self-love is giving the world the best of you, not what’s left of you. And that really resonated with me and I hope it resonates with you. [02:07:21] Ashley James: I love it. [02:07:22] Catharine Arnston: I need to run but … [02:07:24] Ashley James: Oh, thank you so much, Catharine, for coming on the show. This has been wonderful. [02:07:27] Catharine Arnston: Thank you for having me, Ashely. This is so great and I’m so grateful to share again with your community. And like I said, this is a labor of love for me and I’ve got to get people using this so they can regain their health naturally. It’s possible. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. But you’ve got to do it. [02:07:47] Ashley James: Love it. [02:07:48] Catharine Arnston: Citizen scientists, reunite. [02:07:50] Ashley James: Yes, absolutely. Well, come back on the show when you discover more information. Just keep going down that rabbit hole. Listeners, go to LearnTrueHealth.com to get all the show notes, get all the links to everything that Catharine Arnston is going to link to us, all those articles, so you can dive down into the science. And please go to ENERGYbits.com, try the chlorella and the spirulina, and use the coupon code LTH to get the listener discount that Catharine so generously gives us. Thank you so much. I’m just so excited to hear the feedback from the listeners as they go down this rabbit hole with us and they notice that their health becomes even better and better from it. So, thank you so much. [02:08:30] Catharine Arnston: Thank you. Thank you so much. All the best to everybody.   Get Connected With Catharine Arnston!   Official Website Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn   Recommended Book by Catharine Arnston   Vitamin K2 And The Calcium Paradox by Kate Rheaume – Bleue Recommended Links:   Learn True Health – Episode 357 Learn True Health – Episode 265 Learn True Health – Episode 218 Learn True Health – Episode 227   Downloadable Information About Chlorella And Spirulina: why is our spirulina and chlorella the safest and best mothers milk and spirulina-have the same nutritional profile chart and explanation 3 pages chlorophyll content in sprirulina and chlorella compared to other vegetables- one page (2) Vitamin K2 is found in RECOVERYbits chlorella helps prevent heart disease, Alzheimers and osteoporosis

Dr. Biamonte's website: www.health-truth.com  Join the Learn True Health Facebook group: learntruehealth.com/group Check out our new site! https://www.learntruehealth.com 486: Learn From The Expert, Dr. Michael Biamonte on Candida Elimination and Recovery https://www.learntruehealth.com/learn-from-the-expert-dr-michael-biamonte-on-candida-elimination-and-recovery Do you ever wonder if you're suffering from candida? Maybe you hear about it in media and don't even know what it is. Or maybe you’re struggling with candida, but that doesn’t mean you have to give in and let it take over. Candida is a fungal infection that could affect your digestive, urinary, and reproductive systems. It can be tricky if you don’t know what it is and how to treat it. Check it out on this podcast as Dr. Michael Biamonte and I discuss candida, its effects on your body, and how to eliminate it.   Highlights: What you see in bloodwork when you have candida Causes of candida overgrowth Candida as a possible etiology of autism Vitamins that aggravate candida Toxic elements that suppress your intestinal immunity Biofilm Intro: Hello, true health seekers, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. I'm so excited for you to hear today’s interview. If you’ve been struggling with candida, if you think maybe you have candida, or if you know you have some kind of gut dysbiosis, then this is the interview for you. This is only going to be part 1 because, unfortunately, my guest was short on time, but he’s coming back in a few days and we’re going to finish this interview. Listening to part 1 though is going to lay the foundation. I learned so many new things about candida and this has been a very important topic to me. So, the fact that I learned so many new things, I know you’re going to learn so many new things. Your eyes are going to be wide open, you’re going to be on the edge of your seat, then you’re going to, just like me, can’t wait for part 2. I’m so excited to have him back. In a few days, we’re going to finish this interview, so that’ll be part 2, so just watch for that. But in the meantime, strap yourselves in, enjoy today’s interview. And if you have any questions for him, this is actually really exciting. We’ve got a great opportunity. You can listen to part 1 today right now and then come to the Learn True Health Facebook group and type in any questions you have for him and I’ll be sure to include those in my interview that’s happening in a few days. So, join the Learn True Health Facebook group. Come on down. Come on down to the Learn True Health Facebook group. We’re all friends there. The water’s nice. Come on in, jump in, and ask your gut healing questions, especially about combatting and completely eliminating and resolving candida. I’m so excited to be diving deep into this topic because so many people are suffering from candida that don’t have to be. And it’s so fascinating that we get to pick the brain of the world’s leading expert on resolving and healing candida infections. So, enjoy today’s interview. Please share it with all your friends and family and loved ones and coworkers. Just everyone who you know might be interested in gaining better gut health. Have yourselves a fantastic rest of your day and I’ll see you in the Learn True Health Facebook group. [00:02:10] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 486. I am so excited for today’s guest. This is a very interesting topic, and in almost 500 episodes, I cannot believe that we have not covered this topic yet. Dr. Biamonte is an expert in several areas, but one which we’re going to talk about today is candida. I am really interested in learning about diving into this subject, and I’m so excited to have you on the show. Welcome. [00:02:49] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Thank you. I’m very happy to be with you. I’ve heard some of your work, and I’m very pleased that you’ve chosen me to speak to today. [00:02:58] Ashley James: Absolutely. So, the reason why candida, to me, is so fascinating is I was six years old, this was back in the ‘80s, my mom ran her own business, so she was gone 10 to 12 hours a day easily 5 days a week and she had a cold one day, and she went to the MD, and the MD put her on antibiotics probably for something that was like a virus, who knows. But she was on antibiotics and then the cold wouldn’t go away and looking at it now from the holistic lens, she was running herself ragged. Of course, her body was worn down and her body was trying to tell her to rest. But she wouldn’t take one day off work. So, six months later, she was on non-stop antibiotics for six months to handle basically a little cold that wouldn’t go away, which we know now of course is crazy, but back then, I guess they were playing it real loosey-goosey with the antibiotics and, as a result, it totally wiped out all her good bacteria and she developed a horrible candida inside her gut and outside. And I just remember her going and finding a naturopathic doctor, and he got her on the anti-candida diet, this is 1986. And subsequently, I was also very sick, but not with candida. I didn’t know; we didn’t know I had a dairy allergy. She took me to the same doctor, and he said stop doing dairy, stop doing sugar, stop eating processed food, and basically told us to eat the anti-candida diet that was close to what we would consider paleo today. But they had all these weird rules like you're not allowed to eat leftovers and it has to be fresh. And you can’t have anything with vinegar in it and no condiments. The list went on and on. Well, sure enough, she got better and so did I. The rest of my childhood was eating super clean, no sugar was allowed in the house, no flour was allowed in the house. It was a totally different life after that until I rebelled in my teenage years. I went back to eating junk food because I was as a teenager and I had to rebel with something. And I watched my health from bad to good to bad to good every time I chose to eat what I was told by this naturopath was good versus what everyone else around me was eating. But I watched my mom diligently stick with that anti-candida diet for years and the candida never returned. And it stuck in my brain how amazing is that, that she went to a medical doctor which gave her candida, and the medical doctors could not help her solve the problem, but a naturopath who told her about how healing food can be if you choose the right foods. Eventually, she’s able to overcome it.  So, when I saw your work and how much advanced are we now in the last 36 years, so much more has been discovered and understood. That's why I’m really excited for you to teach us today about candida now in 2022 as opposed to 1986. So much has happened. And you’ve been a practitioner for over 30 years, so you’ve really seen the science in how we can really understand how to heal the body using food and, in some cases, nutraceuticals, and to support the body’s ability to heal itself and to stave off candida. So, that's why I’m excited about the work that you do and I’m really, really excited for my listeners to hear how they can heal their body and prevent candida and remove it from their body should they have it. [00:06:44] Dr. Michael Biamonte: I started practicing in 1984.  [00:06:47] Ashley James: Oh! There you go. [00:06:49] Dr. Michael Biamonte: In those days, things were very limited. People asked me what college I went to and I said I went to the College of Hard Knocks because I learned a lot of things the hard way. We didn’t have tests back then. So, when I first encountered candida, I had been out of naturopathic school for a few years, and I was working with some aerospace engineers at Grumman on Long Island because that's where I was from. I was from Long Island. And I ran into those aerospace engineers who were working at Grumman. They were working on a computer model of the human body that NASA approached them to design. They wanted this computer software so that they could use it to analyze or interpret the astronaut’s bloodwork when they were in the space station for long periods of time because they were concerned about negative calcium balance and nitrogen balance. When you're in space and you're weightless for that amount of time, you can start having muscle loss, and you can start having bone loss. Fortunately, one of the people who was the head of the project that I was working with and I became very close with was the same man who designed the life support systems on the lunar module, Dr. Robert Santoro, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago. I worked with him on constructing this model for about 3 or 4 years. And unfortunately, Grumman cancelled when NASA cancelled the project on us because it was getting a bit expensive, and they weren’t anticipating that they were going to get back the amount of investment that they were putting in. That was partially our fault because we had an expense budget, and we were flying doctors into Long Island from all over the world, all famous nutritionists who were all adding to the model. Everyone had their own data and research that was sort of privy to them. So, we asked them at this point because we almost had the model complete. Now what this model could do, this was computer software that was designed in they called it table-driven. Table-driven software allows you to take up datum and insert it a different spot, so that you don’t have to rewrite the whole program. So, we were almost finished with this and we asked them, “Well, what are we going to do this? I mean, this project is almost done but you're not going to complete it.” They said, “We don’t care what you do, you can keep it.” So, we took the model and we started to offer it to physicians, and what a physician would do, they drew some blood on their patients, have an SMA-24 or 26 which is pretty standard bloodwork done. Then we’d ask them to do a tissue mineral analysis on their patients which was typically hair or nails, but it’s commercially hair nowadays. And then whatever other test they wanted to do. If it was a chiropractor, they could tell us what particular subluxations their patient usually had, so we gave them a diagram of the spine and they would circle like L1, T4, C2, or whatever typically came up and then we would input this data in the computer, and the computer would actually run a simulated version of their body and it would look for errors. Then from the product module we had that was loaded with different supplements like from standard process or Metagenics or Nutri-West, all these different companies, the computer would then select supplements that it would recommend to fix whatever was wrong, and it would then recommend the diet based on their blood type and other things. And we had a lot of doctors using it back in those days. A lot of people were getting really good results. But there was this certain population of people and I estimated it was about 30 to 35 percent of the people who would run through the model that got crazy results like they would take the vitamins and get worse. Or they would take the supplements and have crazy reactions. So, I volunteered to figure out what was going on with that group of people. And it took a while. I studied all their folders. When my wife tells the story, she always talks about walking into the room and seeing this big stack of folders on the desk that were higher than I was. And here I am going through this and what I eventually found out was that all these people had some kind of disturbance in their digestive system. I found that their intestinal tract was fighting something. There was some type of immune response going on there. And they were also having a lot of allergies to the supplements they were taking. Eventually, I found out that what it was, was candida. Now, I didn’t know really much about candida. I thought it was some fad from California for all I know. And I remember the pop song Candida, that was really all I knew. So, I hit the textbooks and I studied and I understood what it was. And I told the people, “You have candida. Go to your medical doctor. Tell them you have this. Let him clear it up and then come back and we’ll put you back on the program, and it should work.” That's how stupid I was. The people came back and they said the doctor says he doesn’t know what candida is, or he doesn’t know how to treat it, or some doctors were saying, “We don’t know anything about it at all.” So, I told them, what you have to do then is find a doctor who knows about this. And then so I looked it up, and I found Dr. Atkins at the time and Ronald Hoffman and Dr. Teplitsky and these different alternative functional doctors in New York City. And I said, “Well, go to those guys. They know about this.” So, they went and then they came back to me, and they said, “Well, yeah, they said you were right. I did have candida, and they put me on a treatment and I got better for a while, then I kept relapsing.” So then I said, “Jeez, I got to figure this out.” So, I spent the next 30 years studying candida and unraveling all its tricks. Then eventually, I wrote my book The Candida Chronicles, which we took the name from our newsletter that we had for many years, which was giving out information on all my discoveries about candida. And it was very interesting because, sure enough, when we cleared these people up of candida and put them back on the programs, they did fine. That experience was empirical to a degree. I mean, there was a lot that I’ve learned from the textbooks, but I essentially reverse-engineered the whole thing in order to figure it out. So, I would listen to the patients and I would listen to what they said worked and didn’t work, and then I would go and look in the textbooks to figure out why that was. And that's essentially how I developed my candida treatment. I didn’t do it based on dogmatic laws that I thought had to be followed or data that was old or whatnot or insisting on certain things had to be a certain way. It was more by listening to people figuring out why something would work and wouldn’t work and then understanding through the existing knowledge that we had. One of the first datums I came across was in The Merck Manual, which is a book that most doctors have in their offices. And The Merck Manual regarding candidiasis said that candida is caused by the indiscriminate use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and that if you continue to treat candida only vaginally, you will not get a result, the patient will not recover. You would need to treat it concurrently also in the intestinal tract. When I read that, it all made sense. That’s when I understood what it was I was seeing in their lab work. Because in the lab work of these people, there was a pattern in their white blood cells that was indicating an intestinal infection. So, that's where a lot of it started for me. Then I just began to continue to deconstruct and reconstruct it and reverse engineer it until I got the program correct, and then at that point, I wrote the book several years ago. Once I felt I had enough of the secrets and the tricks that it plays, where someone could read the book and then have a workable solution, that's when I decided I was actually going to write the book. So, that's from when I first started studying candida in 1987 to like let’s say 2016. So, there you go, that's a little bit of time. But that's how confusing candida can be. [00:15:29] Ashley James: I’m fascinated you said that when you looked at their bloodwork you could tell that the white blood cells, there was like a storm going on inside the intestines. You could see that based on blood work? Can you talk a bit about that? [00:15:41] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Oh yes, it’s very simple. When your neutrophils are low, approaching below normal and your lymphocytes are high approaching above normal, that pattern of low neutrophils and high lymphocytes is the pattern for an intestinal infection. [00:15:58] Ashley James: Whoa! Do all doctors know that? [00:16:02] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No, they don’t.  [00:16:05] Ashley James: This drives me crazy. And so, how did you know that?  [00:16:09] Dr. Michael Biamonte: There were some additives you can put on that. Also, very commonly elevated monocytes in eosinophils at the same time. [00:16:19] Ashley James: So, did you learn that through this trial and error, like listening to the patient then going back and looking into textbooks? Is that how you discovered this? [00:16:26] Dr. Michael Biamonte: No, that actual pattern I learned from Dr. Ken Brockman who was a barnstorming chiropractor back in the ‘80s, who was working on interpreting bloodwork using a combination of kinesiology in the bloodwork. So, what he would do is Brockman would take a guy, he would use kinesiology to figure out what was wrong and then he would look in the bloodwork to spot it in the bloodwork, and then he would duplicate this in enough people where he knew that that pattern in the bloodwork meant whatever it was. [00:17:00] Ashley James: That is fascinating. From an outsider’s perspective, someone who’s raised in the mainstream medical system to believe that you wait to get sick and then go to an MD and get put on a drug, like that mentality, that lens that they see health through which is actually disease management, not health, you look at kinesiology and you think this is total witchcraft. It’s quackery, it’s snake oil. But then, if you go and have a session and do kinesiology several times with many different practitioners and then you can see it. Whatever they find in the kinesiology, they can then back up by looking in other places like you said lab work, and they can find it. It is absolutely fascinating. But from a quantum perspective, we are more energy than we are matter. Right? So, of course, there’s a way to communicate with the body other than physical, other than what we see is what we get. I love that. That is so fascinating. [00:18:05] Dr. Michael Biamonte: And this is where you’re going to find the validity in Vega testing or the Rife machine, and so many of these other tests have existed that have advanced over the years that are based on frequencies in the body. I’ve used them all including kinesiology. They all have validity and they all work and they all helped me to understand what I understand today. The problem is, they’re not exacting. In the field of engineering which I heavily rely on because when I was growing up as a little baby doctor, all the people that I was surrounded by were all engineers. When I worked at Grumman Aerospace on that project, I worked with a group of doctors who were all systems analysis engineers, and they all had degrees in physiology. So, I learned to view the body as an engineer, which is the way all health practitioners should be studying. And this is where holistic medicine tries to come in. But because they don’t follow engineering doctrines, let’s say, they can fall short. But this is where it comes from. The body as a system, a large collection of systems and subsystems, which all work back and forth. And where we got the name actually “biocybernetics”, biocybernetics refers to the study of self-regulating mechanisms, biological self-regulating mechanisms. This is also where the word “homeostasis” would come from. This is the body’s ability to try to maintain a balance. But when the body gets off balance, it then seeks to hold on to a balance which may not be correct because that’s what it knows. Many times, what chiropractors and doctors are doing is they're trying to reeducate the system, sort of like rebooting your computer to come back to a normal maintenance level, a normal balance. This is where candida comes in because candida, like many other infections or illnesses, continues to throw that balance off. The body continues to try to compensate for the presence of this organism. This is what makes it so interesting. [00:20:21] Ashley James: So, when you say the body keeps adjusting, what kind of symptoms? [00:20:27] Dr. Michael Biamonte: First off, the first thing to establish is that candida is normal in the body. Candida is a fungus or a yeast. It’s a chameleon-like organism. It’s sometimes called dimorphic. Dimorphic means to live in two different states. So, candida can be in your body as a yeast which women experience vaginally or it can be in your intestinal tract as a fungus which is part of your normal flora. It’s part of the normal aggregate of all the microbes in your intestinal, your biome which has become a popular term nowadays. The problem is, is if you take antibiotics or if you take different medications, it kills the friendly bacteria which balance the candida out in the food chain. There is a food chain in your intestinal tract when it comes to microbes, and the food chain basically is that the friendly gram-negative E. coli bacteria act as a neutral area and the gram-positive bacteria which is the Lactobacillus bifidus and Lactobacillus acidophilus species are the more aggressive bacteria that actually use candida as a food and stimulate your immune system, help your body manufacture vitamins, help you absorb nutrients, etc. When you take something, an antibiotic for instance, or a steroid drug, or chemotherapy, or even antacid pills like Tums, they can kill your friendly bacteria and that allows candida then to go unchecked. The candida no longer has a governor there to balance it. So, it grows and it becomes dominant where it’s not supposed to become dominant, that grows out of control. And once candida grows to a population more than it should be or as a dominant part of your flora, now it’s excreting alcohols into your body because it’s a yeast. So, what does yeast do? When you give yeast sugar, it ferments and produces alcohol. So, now you have alcohol levels in your body rising where they shouldn’t be. You have mycotoxins which are toxins that are formed by yeast and fungus going into your nervous system. You have all types of other … I think total there's over 50 different toxins we can identify that can releases into your body and they affect you neurologically which is why you find so many children with autism have candida. And children with autism, the prerequisites for a child to be autistic, as far as I’m concerned, are number one, he’s got to be born with a set of genes that make him a really bad detoxifier and then he happens to get an overload of toxins from the old vaccines that have thimerosal or from the mercury in his fillings, and that affects him neurologically. But back to the person here, the person now has this candida overgrown in his body and it’s releasing all these toxins. The toxins are causing multiple problems. They're causing him to have brain fog, he loses his memory, he gets rashes, he gets asthma, he gets digestive problems, he’s bloating, he’s burping, he’s farting, he’s doing all these things. And the guy is saying, “Where did all this come from?” Because it’s the symptoms you wouldn’t necessarily associate having lower gas with brain fog, you see. So, the symptoms that candida can produce are of such a spectrum that it can be very confusing and you would never think that this was all coming from the same place. Then, when you have the fact that diet changes, so if the guy eats sugar or too many carbs that feeds the candida, and now you have more toxins forming, he goes into a toxic environment where his body absorbs mercury or copper or a lead or something, well then that further makes the candida worse, you see. He goes up to a hot humid environment, well think about fungus and molds and hot humid environments, well, that’s going to make it worse. See, so all these things are going on around him and he can’t quite put his finger on what’s happening but he knows that all of these different changes—changes in his diet, changes when he takes medicines or vitamins, because vitamins aggravate candida. It’s one of the things a lot of people don’t know. B-Complex vitamins taken in the presence of sugar or carbohydrate would drive candida crazy. Because what do B-Complex do? B-Complex break down carbs into simpler forms of sugar for your body to absorb. Well, guess who’s standing right there waiting to absorb those sugars? It’s the candida. Vitamin CoQ10 is going to aggravate candida. Vitamin D and iron can spread candida. In fact, some of the pharmaceuticals, the common ones like ketoconazole and nystatin, how they actually work is by blocking the candida’s ability to absorb iron and vitamin D so you can kill the candida. So, you have all these things going on and this is what makes it such a mystery. This is why this mystery of candida probably could have only been solved by someone like myself who was looking at it from the viewpoint of an engineer. [00:25:43] Ashley James: And you're not looking to wipe candida out because again, that's more of the medical doctor; the MD system is let’s throw a nuclear bomb at the body and wipe something out. But that is also just leaving the body susceptible to whatever is going to kind of grow in its place. And we need candida, like you said, it’s food for those good bacteria. [00:26:05] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Right. You need a certain amount of it and you couldn’t knock it out totally even if you tried. I’ve never found that to be even possible because it’s so intrinsic to the gut, that you got to have some, so it’s not even possible to do that. But yeah, that would be a more allopathic viewpoint. But it doesn’t work if you're trying to do that. So, here you have the person now, they have all these symptoms going on and there all these different causation points and they're utterly confused as to what it’s all about, what’s happening. Now if they go on the internet, I don’t know if that's good or bad, they're going to learn something about it, but then there's the old adage that a little knowledge can be dangerous when it’s incomplete. And you're going to get people who start self-treating. I’ve heard of a few people but I’ve never actually met anybody who actually self-treated and got rid of their candida. The best I’ve been able to ascertain that people have done is by staying forever on a very strict diet—a diet so strict that most people wouldn’t want to do it, they’ve managed to maintain their symptoms. See, because candida is literally a plant and as a plant, it grows roots, and these roots permeate your tiny blood vessels and your intestinal tract to draw glucose, to draw sugar out so that candida can stay alive. So, if you go on a very strict diet, an anti-candida diet, you can starve the candida down to the point where like a wilted plant, it has not so much activity, but those roots are still there. So once you go off the diet, within a few weeks the candida grows right back and blooms to its former glory and it’s going to spew out all kinds of toxins once again, and you're right back in the same boat. [00:28:04] Ashley James: So, in order to bring it back into balance, you must bring what eats candida back into balance. [00:28:10] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, that is the goal. I preach this to my patients. The whole goal of my treatment plan is to reduce the candida enough to where we can get the friendly bacteria to take over again. And that sounds easy, but it’s not as simple as just giving the person a probiotic. On the step of my program where we reintroduce probiotics, in order to get to that step, the person has to have reduced their amount of candida, their total amount, by at least like 90 percent. And we have ways of measuring that with the urine test that we do. [00:28:44] Ashley James: Really? [00:28:45] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah. They’ve got to have it down by at least 90 percent, and they need to take a series of prebiotics. Now, a probiotic is the actual good bacteria like the acidophilus or the bifidus. The prebiotic, theoretically, could be any substance that aids the probiotic in returning or in multiplying or attaching itself back to the lining of the intestine. And while candida does not do permanent damage to people, there is something that candida does to the intestinal tract. And we never figured out exactly what that is, but it does do something that makes it harder for the bacteria to come back. I speculated that something to alter the collagen in the intestinal lining, it makes it a little harder for the friendly bacteria to reattach or reinoculate, as we would say. [00:29:36] Ashley James: Wow! [00:29:37] Dr. Michael Biamonte: But nonetheless, that’s the whole game. The whole game is get your candida low enough to where the probiotics will come back. And very rarely does anybody accomplish that because you have to handle the candida like peeling an onion that's layers. The step that we do right before we put the person on the probiotics is we give them antifungals which are fatty acid-based because those fatty acid-based antifungals are the only thing that can kill the candida deep enough in its roots to then allow the space for the probiotics to come back where the candida won’t repel. Because the average person with candida who takes probiotics, the probiotics will lower the pH of their intestines, which is a good thing. The candida loves the pH of your intestinal tract to be like over 7.4. Your body wants it to be between 6 to 7.2. When you take the probiotics, the probiotics acidify your intestinal tract. That's where we get the word “acidophilus” from. Acidophilus. Because the acidophilus releases acids, hydrogen peroxides and different things which lower the pH. So, when your pH lowers in your intestinal tract, a lot of the candida symptoms stop. But once you stop taking the acidophilus or the probiotic, the pH comes right back up again and then you have the same story. But that is the goal. The goal is to take the probiotics and the prebiotics and get that re-established. Then, once that’s reestablished, then you can go and look at other aspects of what’s going on like does the candida produce different vitamin deficiencies or candida as a causative agent might be involved with mercury toxicity. Once you’ve reestablished your prebiotics, then you're free and clear to go and handle all those other issues. But if you try to do it the other way around … like there is a doctor I won’t mention his name. He’s very famous, and he’s in the Midwest. His whole gig that he preaches to people is you’ve got to get rid of the mercury; otherwise, the candida is going to come back, you’ll never get rid of it. So, he takes everybody and he puts one on mercury detox. And over the years, I’ve gotten so many patients from this doctor who have come to me because they couldn’t handle his program that it’s embarrassing. And it doesn’t work because when you start to pull mercury out of somebody who has candida, that mercury comes through your intestinal tract. Your liver dumps it into your intestinal tract as a way to try to get rid of it and wants to put it in your stool. But guess who’s sitting right there with its arms open? The candida’s right there saying “give me the mercury.” Somebody even came up with this wild theory that your body produced candida as a protective mechanism to help against mercury toxicity. Well, that's total nonsense. Candida absorbs mercury and it uses it as kind of like a nutrient, but mercury depresses fecal IgE and IgA, so no wonder if you have mercury, you get candida, so it dampens your intestinal immune response. It’s not there helping; it’s not what it’s doing. Mercury and copper and other toxic elements, when they're in your intestinal tract will actually lower and suppress your intestinal immunity, and that allows the candida to grow. [00:32:59] Ashley James: So, if someone has like I have this problem I have been working on detoxing heavy metals and I’m one of those people you mentioned that just is not great at detoxing. I’ve got MTHFR, my liver came in last in the race. And I’m doing everything I can naturally to support my body’s ability to detox heavy metals and it really helps. All the natural stuff I do really helps. But what you're saying is that when our body, our liver removes these heavy metals, puts it in the bile to be placed into the intestine, so we poop it out. We’re not pooping it out because if there's candida overgrowth, which so many people have, it’s really, really common, which is just crazy. Those drugs you mentioned—steroids, antacids, even chemotherapy and antibiotics, everyone’s taking at least an antacid or an antibiotic or a steroid. It’s very, very, very rare that someone’s not had any of those drugs. So, there's so many people walking around with candida imbalance, and then if they're like me and they are overly toxic with heavy metals, if they start doing some kind of heavy metal detox, then the liver is pumping it into the intestines to be released, and then the candida is right there sucking it up and basically keeping it in your body even though it’s not inside your body, it’s inside your intestines, which is then, like you said, lowering the immune system to support the body in fighting off infection. The candida is almost protecting its own environment by sucking up the heavy metals. It’s like they're wearing a coat of armor protecting themselves against our immune system. [00:34:48] Dr. Michael Biamonte: And this is what you’ll occasionally hear of doctors who will tell their patients that when you go on this candida elimination program, don’t be surprised if you start re-experiencing symptoms of toxic metals or a toxic metal detox because when the candida dies, it releases the metal. This is why in my Phase 0 program, my Phase 0 program is very specifically designed to be able to absorb toxic metals that come from the candida when we first start to eliminate this.  [00:35:16] Ashley James: I definitely wanted to get into the discussion, but before we do that, I wanted to go back because you had mentioned something. It sounded like biofilm. When you hypothesized that candida creates its own collagen to protect itself, to create its own little environment that not only protects itself but uses up the space so that the other healthy bacteria can kind of get in there and start eating up the candida. Is that biofilm? [00:35:45] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yes, it is. That is what biofilm does. Biofilm is produced by a particular type of bacteria. It’s not all bacteria but it’s certain bacteria, and these bacteria release this mucus, slimy substance to cover themselves, to cover parasites, to cover candida in order to protect them and to protect itself. Even before we knew about biofilm, we knew that these phenomena existed of cluster bacteria. If you were in a little ship and you could drive through your intestinal tract and look around with cameras and lights whatnot, you would see that candida doesn’t grow in a uniform manner. Candida grows in a splotchy, uneven format. And this is why people will have candida, and you’ll find in those clusters of candida, you will also find harmful bacteria and parasites. They’re all synergistic and symbiotic, so they all tend to cluster together. We knew that before we knew that also biofilm was being produced in those areas. [00:36:49] Ashley James: Is part of your program to strip away biofilm in the intestine? [00:36:55] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Yeah, it has to be. Our Phase 0 program addresses that, the biofilm. [00:37:00] Ashley James: Very cool. Yeah, that is such a big deal. I have so many questions for you, and I definitely want to have you back on my show. I know that you are really crunched on time right now, and we have just begun to open up this pandora’s box of candida. I’m going to make sure the links to all your websites and your book is in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. We’re definitely going to have you back because I’ve got like 10 more questions and then I want to dive into how we can start to fight this. But just letting people know that this exists, they're going to start listening to the symptoms of their body and going, “Wait a second. I really need to read The Candida Chronicles and I really need to look into this further.” So, you do have at-home tests. Could you please let the listeners know? You have three websites, and you have at-home tests. Please let the listeners know what are the websites and what steps should they take to follow you and start learning from you. [00:37:53] Dr. Michael Biamonte: The main website is Health-truth.com. The two other websites are The New York City Candida Doctor. It might be The New York City Yeast Doctor. I think they might have changed the domain. But it’s either The New York City Yeast Doctor or Candida Doctor, and The New York City Thyroid Doctor. Why we have the thyroid website is because candida hits your thyroid and your adrenals the hardest, and the one thing you’d be guaranteed is after you handle a candida patient and you got the acute phase of candida, you're going to need to do something to restore thyroid and adrenal function. Many people treat themselves for candida forever because they still think they have it even though they have it suppressed or in remission. What they’re experiencing now is adrenal and thyroid exhaustion, and they confuse it with still having candida, so that’s why we have to separate those things out. [00:38:45] Ashley James: Fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We’re definitely going to have you back because we’ve got to dive in. We’ve just sort of opened up pandora’s box and we’re going to dive in with the next episode. And I know you’re crunched on time, so I really appreciate that you took the time today to talk to us and we’ll have you back on soon to continue this discussion.  [00:39:04] Dr. Michael Biamonte: Okay, great. [00:39:05] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Biamonte. Wasn’t that amazing? And this is just the beginning. We just have scratched the surface. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group, ask your questions about candida. I know some questions have bubbled up for you after hearing just this first part. And oh man, I have my list of questions. I am so excited to dig into him next time. I’ve got him on the schedule for early October. So jump in to the Learn True Health Facebook group and let me know what questions you have for him. Let’s tap into the community and to the hive mind, and let’s come up with some really great ones for him. In my next interview with him we’ll just be digging in deep, figuring out all the why’s and the how’s and getting the plan of action that we can take so that we can take each step to resolving candida. But please, ask away. I’m sure you guys have got some great questions as do I. Let’s all join heads and think of what we can say to him. If you don’t have Facebook and you're not able to come on the Learn True Health Facebook group, you can always email me ashley@learntruehealth.com, although you're missing out because the Learn True Health Facebook group is pretty awesome.  Have yourselves a fantastic rest of your day. And stay tuned. Make sure that you subscribe. Wherever you listen, if you listen on iTunes, or Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Podbean, wherever you're listening from or even just LearnTrueHealth.com, you could be listening on my website, whatever app you're using, make sure you subscribe and make sure that you’ve got your notifications. So when I do list part 2, that it will be up there for you. And please, give us a 5-star rating and review. If you love my show, if it’s made a difference for you, I absolutely love it when I hear back from listeners and I see your reviews. It means so much to me. It warms my heart, it motivates me to keep going when I know that I’m helping you guys. So, you can help me in return by leaving a 5-start rating and review. I’d love to see that. And also, if you haven’t already, come check out the LearnTrueHealth.com website. We spent all summer long revamping it and it looks totally different. It’s super cool. There's a Choose Your Own Self-Healing journey on the home page. Just scroll down and you’ll see that. And you’ll find all kinds of really cool content there. So, go to LearnTrueHealth.com, check out our new website. Let me know what you think about. And hopefully, I’ll see you in the Learn True Health Facebook group soon. If you don’t know how to find that, you can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/group, and it’ll take you there. Awesome. Have yourselves a great day and I’ll see you in part two of this interview soon.   Get Connected with Dr. Michael Biamonte!   Website Facebook Linkedin YouTube Pinterest   Book by Dr. Michael Biamonte   The Candida Chronicles

MUSHROOM TINCTURE learntruehealth.com/mushroom GREEN 85 JUICE FORMULA learntruehealth.com/green85 TOXIN DETOX learntruehealth.com/toxindetox ULTRA ENZYMES learntruehealth.com/ultraenzymes   485: Medicinal Mushrooms That Heal Brain & Immune Function, Tim James https://www.learntruehealth.com/medicinal-mushrooms-that-heal-brain-immune-function-tim-james For thousands of years, people have been consuming mushrooms as food and natural remedies. In this episode, Tim James talks about the science behind medicinal mushrooms and how he has used that knowledge to create a tincture designed to bring you closer to your ideal state of well-being. He also takes you through the facts about each mushroom and provides an overview of some of the products that he specially and intentionally formulated.   Highlights: Ayurveda and Siddha medicine Green 85 MultiShroom Naturally-occurring citric acid Xanthan gum Chaga Lion’s mane Cordyceps Reishi, shiitake, and maitake mushrooms Intro: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 485. [00:00:15] Ashley James: I am so excited for today’s guest. We have back on the show with us, Tim James of no relation, but honestly, I feel like we were twins separated at birth and tragically separated at birth. We both are incredibly passionate about holistic health and healing and so many other topics that are affecting all of our lives. Honestly, it’s like, Tim, if I was a guy, I’d be you. I really feel like if you were a lady, you’d be me. It’s just so funny how we both have fantastic health podcasts and we’re both incredibly passionate about spreading this information. We both have the same last name, which is really funny. I feel like we should start a podcast together, which might be a little confusing. The Tim and Ashley James Show of No Relation. It’s so great having you back on the show. I loved our interview, episode 442 where you shared how you overcome some major health obstacles and went on to have helped now thousands and thousands of people to recover their health. Even very difficult to heal issues, things where doctors have said that you’ll always have this problem, you always need to be on these drugs, or you’ll definitely never recover from this because XYZ, it’s genetic, or this is just how it is, or this is just because you’re aging. And yet, when people listen to you and do what you say, they heal in ways that no doctor would ever expect. So, I’m so excited to have you back on the show. Welcome! [00:01:49] Tim James: Ashley, it's absolutely my pleasure. I'm happy to be back on. I just want to be really clear about one thing, is like I don't heal anybody. That's very important. So, it's like I healed myself. That’s the only person that I’ve healed. What I try to just show people is, like, my journey, what I did, and changing their environment and reducing stress and cleaning up the body and getting the chemicals and toxins out and flooding the body with nature, which we are nature, and allowing the body’s immune system and its natural responses to just take over. And I’m kind of really good at getting people, I guess, motivated or inspired now to put their health as a priority because it’s just a lot of people are struggling out there with their health today. [00:02:35] Ashley James: And Tim, that is such a clear distinction because we are our own healer. Our bodies know how to heal. We just really need to get out of our way. We need to stop putting stuff in our body that’s hurtful, give our body the nutrients it really needs, make some lifestyle changes that are really simple but really powerful, and boom, the body starts healing itself. So, that’s a really clear distinction. No one does healing to you. And we have to put the power back into the listener’s hands because it’s their body that’s going to do the healing. We’re here to guide them and give them new information. Perfect. It’s really, really well-said. Tim, since having you on the show, you have formulated some amazing products. You have a drink. We talked about it in episode 442. And listeners, if they want to go get it, they can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/green85 and check it out. It’s delicious. In fact, I have a glass of it right now. I’m drinking it currently. It’s so good; it’s so delicious. And it also gives me a buzzing energy in the morning. I feel like the oxygen is just penetrating into my cells at a better rate when I drink it. I could really feel it. So, I’m drinking your juice right now. You have this amazing healing story which we talked about, so definitely want to go back and listen to episode 442. But since then, you’ve made some amazing discoveries. And I’m really surprised about other companies because you’re a one-man show. Right? You’re not this giant company which I really like because you’re all about the quality of the product. You design your products for you first and you take your products daily for you first, and then you’re helping others at the same time. But you figured something out that these big companies are just really looking to make a profit and they kind of get the lowest quality stuff and throw things on the shelf that in some cases, they’ll say, for example, there’s a certain amount of vitamin C in this and then when tested, it shows there’s absolutely no vitamin C in this. Right? Because it’s buyer beware. We don’t know what’s out there on the supplement shelves. We don’t really know if there’s gingko biloba in those gingko biloba capsules or vitamin C in those vitamin C capsules. Because they can say whatever they want and then just put filler in because it’s not a regulated industry. Whereas I know, working with you, everything that you do is incredibly high quality. So, you figured something out and I’m really excited to talk about it today because when you first told me about it, and my husband and I tried it, it’s so cliché to say life-changing, but I want you to talk about it. [00:05:30] Tim James: Well, some of the stuff actually is because we’re just so detached from nature. But let me backpedal just for a little bit. Number one, just the size of our company. It started with me. I have a full-time assistant. I have a full-time web and designer type person. I’ve got coaches that work underneath me now. We have Dr. Scott Treadway who is our formulator, and he is the bedrock foundation for the formulations. And I just want to be clear on this because this was a gentleman who was groomed to go to medical school. His whole family expected him to go, so he did. He went to Cornell University and as a young man in his 20s, he walked away and said this is not medicine. For somebody to do that at that age, it’s just mindboggling to have that awareness. Then, he went into naturopathic school, and he said this isn’t even good enough, and he walked out of that too. Now, I’m not here to bash naturopaths because I have a lot of them that I work with all over the United States with clients that I partner with because I look at myself like a general contractor of health. I just kind of help people organize their team. Especially if they're dealing with stage IV of this or that or they got fibromyalgia, they got something, seriously bad arthritis or whatever gout, and they're trying to fix themselves up. You got to get a good team around. You got to get really good at putting teams together for people in their local areas, right? So, Dr. Treadway gets on a plane and he flies to India. And this is really cool. He actually meets one of like the foremost healers in India. A big name, everything, the guy had herbal shops all over, so the family was pretty wealthy. He was asked to speak at the scientific universities and stuff all the time on the immune system and health. You have to understand that the Ayurvedic traditions over in India of medicine and in the northern area, so it’s all Ayurvedic, but the northern hemisphere it’s Ayurveda and then the southern hemisphere it’s called Siddhar healers. So, there’s two different factions of them, but they’re doing similar stuff. All of Ayurvedic traditional medicine is steeped in system science, biological system science. So, they have literally taken an engineering systems approach to health and wellness. What does that mean? For a layperson like me, if somebody had said that 12 years ago, I’d be like, “What? What are you talking about?” You know, I’d be like watching peanuts and the teacher’s like “wah, wah, wah,” doing that deal. So, what this means is, is like what do engineers do in other capacities? Well, engineers build planes. And they kind of have to be perfect on that, right? Otherwise, the wing falls off and we crash and people die. Engineers build bridges and they have to be perfect. They do trusses for buildings. They have to have stronger snow capacity in areas where there’s more snow; otherwise, in the middle of the winter, your house could crush you and kill your kids. So, engineers literally can’t make mistakes. And yet, sometimes through society, they are. There’s actually a really interesting story, Ashley. There’s a guy named Allan McDonald. Now, I don’t know if you remember the Space Shuttle Challenger. Remember that? When it launched and blew up and killed those people. They were rushed. Because what happened was they launched on a very cold day in the winter. Allan McDonald, I think he was one of the head engineers of the program in the launch. He said, “We cannot launch. We have not tested this one little O-ring in those cold conditions. We do not know how it’s going to perform. So until we do, I cannot sign off on this.” Another guy, another engineer wouldn’t sign off on it either. But the rest of the engineers signed off on it probably because they just want a paycheck and they were under pressure. Right? And they went ahead and launched, and guess what, that O-ring failed and those people died. And millions of dollars. But forget it. People died. So, my point is, from an engineering standpoint, this is the one profession where you can’t hide from your efforts. You see what I’m saying? There’s no gray area. There’s no like, well, maybe next time. From an engineering standpoint, they can’t make mistakes, like electrical engineers. Like think about, oh, well, yeah, just put the wire over there, and then the house burns down. You just can’t do that. People get sued, people die. Okay, I’ve made a big point about engineers. Right? So, when you look at a system, a basic system which is called an open system, has five components. Now, if any engineers are listening out there, they're going to know exactly what I’m talking about. This is basics. That has five parts to that system. It’s got input, it’s got an output, in the middle it’s got transport, conversion, and storage. Very interesting, right? So if you look at a light bulb. What’s the input? You flip the switch, the electricity goes in. It’s transporting. Then you’ve got the bulb that houses the filament, that’s the storage component. Then the conversion is the electric goes through the filament, creates heat and then creates light. And the output is light. Right? So there’s a basic system right there. It’s either called an opener AKA dumb system. It just works. Okay? Now, when you go to Ayurvedic medicine, and traditional herbal healers and what they're doing over there, they have something called karma and karma-phal. Well, that’s what karma is. People think karma is what you do is what you get back. Actually, that’s not what it means. Karma is input. Karma-phal is output. In the middle, vita, pitta, kapha; transport, conversion, storage. Now, Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai, he left MIT after four degrees of MIT. His grandmother was a Siddhar healer back in the village. She used to work six days a week, 16 hours in the field and then one day a week, there’d be 20-30 people at her door and she would help them heal through mixing up herbs, certain massage, touch, working through things, giving them certain yoga positions to go home and practice so these people could heal themselves. So, he grew up and he saw his grandmother as a young child healing people. He went back to India with four degrees from MIT as an engineer, and he kind of made the Rosetta stone and made this whole connection. What I’m sharing with you right now is what I learned from him and his work. When he had a Fulbright scholarship and he went over to MIT, people were like “What are you doing? You could be billing at $2500 to $3500 an hour. And you’re over here trying to fodder around with herbs and stuff.” Well, he was interested in that. He’s one of the top immune system experts in the world. So, what you have to understand is that for the folks listening, is that Ayurvedic medicine is not like they're trying to figure it out. It’s engineering principles. The medicine is steeped in engineering principles over 10,000 years. They know what’s going to work. My formulator talks to one of the most gurus of all gurus in India and he walks up to me and he’s like, “Will you train me?” And the guy said yes. So, his training began. Long story short, Dr. Scott Treadway became a master herbalist in Indian herbology, trained in the ways of engineering system science and medicine over there in Ayurvedic technologies basically. So, then he came back and he went on to become a master herbalist not just in Indian herbology but also in Chinese herbology and Western herbology. The only one he hasn’t mastered was the aboriginal herbology in Australia just because the aboriginals over there are kind of keeping their medicines tight to their chest because they don’t want big pharma to go over and start raping their lands for this stuff and synthesizing it and doing all this stuff. And there’s other indigenous places around the world—South America, North America with Native Americans here. There’s medicines and stuff they’ve been using for thousands and thousands and thousands of years that works. Just to give people an example. Because sometimes people are questioning like oh, that’s woo-woo medicine man stuff. It’s like, no dude, they’ve been doing this stuff for tens of thousands of years, it works. So, I’ll give you a good example. And people can look this up. I like to give examples so people can cross-check me. Paul McCartney. You heard of that dude? I think he was with a band called The Beatles. They had a couple of songs or something. Well, he was dating this supermodel named Heather Mills. So, he’s dating a supermodel and she gets in a horrible accident. I think it was some type of car accident or a motorcycle went by really fast or something and cut her leg off. She lost her leg. She went in the hospital, I believe, over in Europe and got an infection in her stump. It got worse and so they gave her antibiotics. But they weren’t working. So they had to cut off more of her stump after they just fixed it. It got infected again and so they were trying more antibiotics and different types and higher amounts. It didn’t work. They had to cut more of her leg off. Then it got infected again. Then her friends said, “Hey look, Heather, you need to do something different or you’re going to die. This is very bad. These antibiotics things are not working.” And she said “You need to go to The Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida and see what they have for you” because she had a great experience there. Just happens to be that’s where I started my health journey when my friend Charles got diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Like you said in that past episode, pretty much went into the whole journey and everything. It’s quite remarkable. I just saw Charles this weekend by the way and got to hang out with him. We’re friends and he’s playing guitar and he’s got his cancer handled. He healed himself. He made his health a priority. He healed himself. So, it’s really interesting that Heather went to the same institute that I went to, that I think is cool. Originally started by Ann Wigmore who healed herself with stage IV colon cancer. A gal from Lithuania. So that’s a whole another story we can get into today which is amazing. And she goes over there and guess what they did? They said, “Oh, you have an infection, a topical infection. Here, let’s show you how to take care of that. We're going to take 100 percent raw organic garlic clove and you’re going to press that. You’re going to put that in a dish. One-thirds that, two-thirds organic olive oil.” So, one part fresh pressed organic garlic and two parts cold-pressed organic olive oil and then mix it together. Then you have to let it stand for about 30 minutes. Why? Because garlic is very caustic on the pH scale. It’s about a 3.3, so it’s highly acid. Now I’ve actually seen a video, a zoom-in type of video of where you can see bacteria on a table, then you have the garlic oil stuff. Just the fumes when you zoom in the fumes, it’s almost like a nuclear bomb is wiping out all the bacteria. It’s 100 percent kill zone. It kills the bad bacteria. But here’s the cool thing. It doesn’t kill the good bacteria on your skin that’s going to stitch you up and heal you, which is very important. Hydrogen peroxide is a great way to go as a disinfectant because it’s going to go in there and it’s going to kill the bad bacteria, but it’s also knocking out the good as well a little bit. And that’s why you don’t want to use stuff like hand sanitizers. In those cases, not 100 percent kill zone. They kill 99.8 or 99.7 or 99.9, so that .01 or .02 or .03 stays behind, becomes stronger and more resilient, starts breeding, get stronger stronger and stronger, and you’re actually killing your immune system when you put Purell and that kind of crap on your body, like literally. Anyway, back to the garlic story. They taught her, like literally, imagine she just got her leg whacked off. She’s about ready to die. She had her leg whacked off once in an accident, two more times at the hospital, and now she’s at Hippocrates. They showed her how to make this mixture and then let it sit for 30 minutes and then apply it to her stump and put some gauze on it and change the gauze and bandage three times a day. Guess what happened? In two weeks, she was running around the Institute on her prosthetic. Go look it up. Heather Mills. And you know what happened since then? When I was a kid, I got ingrown toenails. Have you ever had those? [00:18:29] Ashley James: I’ve had like an infected toenail. It was like ingrown and infected, and it was really bad. I was in Florida walking around barefoot. I couldn’t figure out whether it was something I did just walking around barefoot or because it was ingrown, but it was so bad. It was my big toe and it got so infected, the entire toenail fell off, and it was incredibly painful. Then I just tea tree oil every day and a bunch of other essential oils. I wish I had known about the garlic. But I just used a bunch of essential oils to get over it. The healing didn’t happen as fast as I would have hoped, but I bet that garlic would have… [00:19:10] Tim James: Check this out. This is so cool. So, I had an ingrown toenail when I was 16 and it prevented me from playing a baseball game. And I was totally into baseball. So what ends up happening is when you have an ingrown toenail, typically, what they have to do is they got to numb the toe first thing because what they're going to have to do is they’re going to have to cut. If they do it properly, they're going to take scissors and they're going to go a third of the nail and they're going to angle it in towards the corner, just a slight angle so as it grows out, it doesn’t catch again. So they literally take scissors and cut your nail down to the nailbed, tear it off and then take silver nitrate on a stick and then burn the cuticle down there with silver nitrate on a stick, then they bandage you up. Well, that sounds horrible. Imagine how painful that would be. So that’s why you have to have an anesthetic, right? To administer the anesthetic, they have to take that little needle and they have to stick it into the nerve bundles on the tip of your big toe. This is what was used in wartime. They would take bamboo splinters over in Vietnam or whatever, and they would shove them down the toe because it’s one of those painful things in the planet. So, they would give me something to bite on, and then they would jam that antiseptic in which is a toxin, basically. But they got to numb the toe. Then they cut it off, and then they send you home, and you’re on Vicodin, and they're destroying your liver. Your toe is like thump, thump, thump, and it’s painful for a day or two, and it slowly gets better, and voila, then you’re finally better and thank God. I had been through that process three times in my life. It’s one of the most painful things I’ve been through. My son, he’s about 16 too, I think, he got an infected toenail, and I was like “Aha! We’re going to do garlic and olive oil.” You know what it’s like, you can’t even touch it, right? It’s so hot and it’s just so painful. I was like, yeah, your toenail is ingrown. So we bandaged it two to three times a day, changed the bandage, and within two days, the infection was completely gone, no pain, and we’re able to get in there and get under the nail and start packing cotton underneath it and allow it to grow out. That’s what we do. And he never had to have that nails jammed out of his toe. He never had to have the anesthesia which is a toxin in his body that his body had to chelate out. And he never had to take any pain meds. He did it himself at home. And my question is, is that with Heather Mills and my son, how expensive was that? [00:21:30] Ashley James: Like, 30 cents.  [00:21:32] Tim James: Yeah. And if you have that stuff at your house, which you probably should if you’re kind of eating healthy and you’re into it, you didn’t have to go anywhere. You just handle it right there. Now, maybe you had to make a trip to the store. But you didn’t have to go to a doctor’s office, waste their time on something you can handle yourself literally, right? And it’d be a much better process for you and you don’t have to wait in the waiting room and do all that stuff and put on masks and all the crazy stuff. They make you put Purell on your body as you go into these places and lower your immune system, first thing they do. So anyway, my point is, is that these herbal technologies work and they’ve been working for thousands and thousands of years. This is why our products work so well, is because they’re steeped in engineering system science. That’s number one. Number two, we already know how they're going to work on the human body. Number two, it’s the quality of ingredients. Dr. Treadway has been sourcing ingredients for well over 40 years. He said it took him over 20 years to get all the right sources in place. Imagine his main job is like sourcing ingredients for 20 years. So, I’m piggybacking off of that as well. Right? The source and the quality of the materials that are going into the products. Right? So, those are two main things. Now, the third thing is how it’s processed. The third thing is very important because if you process stuff like with too much heat or too fast, it could create heat, it’s going to oxidize it even more. Any time you’re processing anything, you’re going to lose nutrient value at some level. It’s just going to happen. Right? So, we want minimal processing. One thing we didn’t talk about, I don’t think in the last episode, because you brought up Green 85 which is our first product and it’s our number one seller, is that our products actually have life force in them. They have energy, they have enzyme activity. What does that mean? So, have you heard of Kirlian photography? [00:23:22] Ashley James: We talked about it on episode 442. [00:23:25] Tim James: Sweet. Okay, quick recap. Kirlian photography measures the energy that emits from any living thing or even rocks and stuff. You could see how much it puts off. You can take a picture with it or you can shoot a video with it. When I was looking for a lab to make my stuff, that was one of my criteria. They had to know about the energetics, not just the quality of the nutrients and stuff. I wanted it when it was finally packaged and done that I could open a capsule up and take a photo and it’s glowing, or take the greens and put them on a table and played it or something, videotaped it or take a picture with Kirlian photography, and I’ve got all this energy emitting out of it. Over 30 labs and none of them even knew what I was talking about. Like I said before, they tilt their head sideways like there’s a dog here and a weird noise. But when I talked to Dr. Treadway, I said, “You know about Kirlian photography?” He’s like, “Oh yes, we have two of those cameras here at the lab.” That’s when I knew I had my dude. Then he’s become like one of my best friends, like a surrogate father, a mentor. He’s one of the top supplement consultants in the industry. But the cool thing is when he told me, he’s like, my company is one of the few companies that allows him to make it the way it’s supposed to be made and then they don’t change the ingredients or modify parts of it or put in some type of excipient binder, filler, or flow agent that is not good for you for speed of manufacturing. So we’re one of the very few places on the planet that do all that. That’s why everything works so well and I build everything for me. All this stuff, all these products, I’m building for myself. I want the absolute best because I was on a slippery slope, and I do not ever want to go back to the health I had that created a lot of contrast for me, and I want to move forward in life and I want to wake up and feel so good and have so much energy and not buy into oh, you know, you’re 49 years old and you’re getting older. Screw that. I want to keep learning how to have my cellular age be younger and younger and younger every year, and I’m learning these things and this is what I’m up to. So, that’s the whole backstory on the products, the quality and the ingredients, and the history. It’s literally steeped in system science over 10,000 years and we just don’t compromise because I put this stuff in myself. [00:25:49] Ashley James: Yeah. That’s exactly what I meant by one-man show. I didn’t mean there’s only you sitting in a room alone. I’m sorry. [00:25:56] Tim James: A mad scientist. No, I have the vision and I have assembled a team of the right people. And Dr. Treadway is a very instrumental part in this. But like I said, how many people that want to start a supplement company are going to go around to 30 labs plus. And most people don’t even really know what they're looking for. Because there’s good people out there. I’ve helped over a dozen other companies get their supplements right. Just because I met them and I got to know them, like, wow, he or she really has a good heart. I’m like, are you open if I could share something with you about your products because I see you have seven products here, but there’s five of them that I wouldn’t put in my body. Do you want to know why? They're like, “Yes, please tell me.” And I would share with them and they're like, “Oh my God, I had no idea.” Right? They're not bad people. In some of these cases, other places, the bigger companies, they don’t care. You’re just a number. If you ever want to find out if a supplement is good or not, an easy litmus test. If it’s in a great big grocery box store, it’s probably not. It’s 99 percent chance. But what you can do is you can type in the name of the company, XYZ company, and then type in who purchased and then put the name of the company. Then if something like Nestle or Procter & Gamble shows up, in my opinion, you probably wouldn’t want to buy that. [00:27:11] Ashley James: There are so many companies I used to buy from that got bought up and you just know it’s not the same. I go on forums and stuff like that and people will say it’s not the same, they changed the formula, that kind of thing. But that’s what I love about the first product, which is what you created, the Green 85, and have gone on to formulate a few others. Amazing stuff. Which we’re going to talk about today, the one that had a profound impact on my mental health and on my husband as well. So, this one product, frankly I don’t want to say skeptical, but I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I’m going to try it. Because you told me, hey, this is good for the immune system. Like, well, my immune system is okay, I don’t really have any major issues there, but I’m going to take it. I’ll just tell a story. So, last year, many of my listeners know that last year, we lost our daughter during childbirth and she passed away four minutes before delivery. And we don’t know why the autopsy was inconclusive. No one knows why. I was incredibly distraught beyond measure and then days later had COVID. I had it really, really bad. Of course, my immune system shot, my stress is through the roof, my blood pressure was through the roof because I’m grieving and I’m post-partum. And then, my immune system shot, and then the doctors were like, “Well, we think maybe,” because I couldn’t breathe, well I couldn’t breathe for many reasons, one being I was fighting a lung infection, but they were worried it was a blood clot and so I went to the hospital. They tried to get me on these experimental meds which was a real trip to watch the medical feeder happening before me, knowing the right questions to ask and I looked into their studies. I wasn’t going to take it but I was just like, well, they're offering me this experimental drug that they're not sure if my insurance will cover, but they have really high hopes because they think I’m going to die, I’m going to look at it and just see what the studies say. And it showed that I had 1 percent greater chance of dying in the hospital should I take this med that if I were to not take this med. I’m like, there’s your first clue. So, I went home and interesting the doctor said between day 8 and day 9 is sort of that’s when most people enter the hospital. It’s kind of like the tipping point. He goes, “If you can get over day 9, you’ll be fine, you’ll be back on the mend. So you really came in at the worst time.” And I could have stayed home had I known for sure it wasn’t a blood clot that it entered my lungs from just having given birth. So anyways, they cleared me for the clots. I went home. The next day, I was doing much better. Of course, I’m taking all my homeopathy, all my herbs; I’m taking everything that I possibly can and I’m getting better and better. Since then, fast forward a few months later, we had to move out of our home of seven years. So, it was like a tremendous amount of stress and grief and then unfortunately, a family member was passing away and my husband left us to go take care of them, so now I’m alone homeschooling our son, managing the household kind of thing alone. And I started getting PTSD attacks daily. And I don’t know what’s going on with me. I don’t know why. I enter the kitchen and I cannot put a meal together. I love cooking but I didn’t understand why can I not complete a task. So, I sat down with Dr. Glenn Livingston. I just love the man. I’ve had him on the show multiple times. He’s a PhD psychologist and he primarily deals with helping people to heal emotionally with eating and overeating. But I reached out to him, I said I don’t know what’s going on with me, like maybe it’s COVID brain, like long-haul COVID brain; I feel like my brain is Swiss cheese. I explained to him everything that was going on, waking up five or more times in the night. Really getting broken sleep, can’t even complete basic tasks. I walk into the kitchen, I could maybe start to cook but I just couldn’t even have the brainpower to complete things. I used to do three episodes a week of my show. I was doing one a month. Everything was just incredibly difficult. At the drop of a pen, I would just burst into tears. And I’m a very strong person, like it’s not that I’m like this, I don’t know, I’m not weak emotionally, mentally, or physically. I’m a strong-willed person. And I explained everything to him, and Glenn goes, “Ashley, you have post-traumatic stress. You are experiencing post-traumatic stress.” I was like, oh, this makes sense. And he explained to me what it meant. So, this was back in January, February and March. And I feel so bad for our son. He would, I don’t know, talk too loud and all of a sudden I’d burst into tears. It was just any kind of stimulus and I couldn’t control it at the time. But I was looking to heal. So, I was reaching out to different experts that I knew that could help me, starting with Glenn Livingston. I started seeing a fantastic therapist that was a friend of mine. He was giving me some great pointers. I was doing all kinds of stuff. Then comes along Dr. William Davis. He came back on the show. This is in, I can’t remember, it was like February maybe of this year. He talks about the Lactobacillus Reuteri yogurt which he says increases serotonin and helps with depression. I’m like, oh this sounds great, I’m going to try this. So, I made a batch. The day I started eating it, those breakdowns where I could cry at the drop of a hat stopped. I’ve never been on antidepressants but I felt like I was on an antidepressant. I was all of a sudden like wow, it’s not like any part of my life circumstances have changed but I feel like the cloud is lifting. And I feel like now, I can manage things. Now I can go into the kitchen and actually start a task and finish a task. Things started being a bit more manageable. But I still was waking up about five times a night. Then, we had to move again. So there’s another stressor. So now we have to move again. And then you tell me, you and I get in contact with each other and as we do every few months, and you say, “Hey, you’ve got to try this product I’ve made and I want you to try it before I launch it.” You start telling me all about the immune stuff and I’m like, okay. Immune wasn’t sort of on my list. My list was more mental and emotional health. So you send us a bottle. Your bottle says take one dropper full. I got to tell you, I’m one of those people who’s going to take two droppers full. So, I take two droppers full thinking it’s no big deal. Right? Just two droppers full.  And I lie down to go to sleep fully expecting to wake up five times that night because I have since our daughter died. And I close my eyes, fall asleep and all of a sudden, it’s light in the room. I open my eyes and I’m really confused why is it light in the room, what’s going on. And I come to and I realize it is the morning, I have slept the entire night first time since she died. Since then, since starting taking this, I have had such sound sleep, and I really feel like you know how the Lactobacillus Reuteri yogurt helped me, it immediately took the edge off, increasing serotonin in the brain. But this stuff, your MultiShroom, what it did, it healed something in my brain. Some kind of stress levels, it decreased the stress levels in my brain to the point where I slept soundly and then I just noticed I was way more rested jumping out of bed and it was directly related to the ambient stress that my body was holding at from the grief and the stressors from losing another family member and the stressors from the two moves in the last year. Just all that. That ambient stress was disrupting my sleep. And I take all kinds of stuff and I do all kinds of things. I’m very, very crunchy. But this singlehandedly fixed that for me. So, that was me. My husband who’s never dreamt, like we’ve known each other for 14 years, we’re now in our fifteenth year of marriage. He doesn’t remember his dreams and when he started taking this, maybe he’ll come on the microphone and share. [00:36:55] Ashley James’ husband: Just not being a dreamer and then taking this and then having really vivid dreams, it’s just been a huge change in how I function. [00:37:10] Ashley James: He’s never remembered his dreams or dreamt in color or any of that, and since taking it, he will not run out. He’s like, “Get me another bottle of this.” We’re ordering another bottle because he now just has these really long intense dreams that are full of color and then the next day he’s telling them to me. It’s just like this whole new experience in his life. So, I want to know how does this work. [00:37:39] Tim James:  First off, that’s pretty awesome because that’s telling me, like for me, I always look at things as in order of importance. So, oxygen is number one because without it, we’re dead in 4 to 7 minutes. Air is pretty big deal, and we know the air quality in people’s homes is terrible and the air quality outside is bad, so this is why we teach people to clean their air. You get an air purification system or at least start cracking your windows at night at least when you’re sleeping to get fresher air in the house. So, we take 20,000 breaths a day. Air is important.  Number two, water. Without water, you’re dead in 11 days. Right? So, water is very important. You got to get your water right, clean it up, restructure it and all that jazz, especially with tap water. Then number three, which is actually a tie for number two, is sleep. Because without sleep, you die in 11 days. So, water and sleep are equivalent—think about that—in my opinion. Because without it, without water or sleep, either one, you will die in 11 days. So they're kind of a tie for the silver medal. The gold medal is the oxygen deal. But number two is water and sleep. So, everybody listening, sleep is so important. It’s just as important as drinking water. Your body is mostly made up, what, water. Right? What it’s telling me is he’s dreaming, he’s getting into those deep rapid eye movements. He’s getting into a deeper state where actually his body can rest and restore itself properly. So, this is really huge for boosting immune system, helping people lose weight and their suffering, because there’s a thing called shallow sleep syndrome where people are sleeping, they might even be sleeping eight hours but they're not getting into the deep restorative sleep and their body doesn’t have a chance to really balance its hormones out and do all the things it needs to do. So, this is a very important thing. And since you’ve mentioned it on the MultiShroom, we’ve had other people starting to reach out and talk about the sleep aspect too. It wasn’t built for that. It really wasn’t. I built it because it was another pathway for me to build my immune system. I was buying chaga, as an example, in chunks from another company and then I would make tea out of it. There were different powders where I was getting lion’s mane or cordyceps and reishi and shiitake and maitake, and just putting all that stuff together. Then I just decided that I’m going to build a mushroom product so I can just get all of it in one squirt basically and make my life easier and help people with it. So, we built it for me, to build for another pathway of immunity, but it’s really, really, really good for mood, mind, and mental clarity. We have a lot of people who are taking it that have anxiety and depression and also, like I said, it’s an immune system boost. The sleep thing was just like this added massive side benefit that people are starting to get. [00:40:34] Ashley James: And listeners can go check it out. And actually, you have a ton of science on your website. If they scroll down, they’ll see. I love it, you titled it “Science” below it. So listeners, you can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/mushrooms and it will take you to the page and then just scroll down. We’re going to talk about some of that science today because I really want to get into why this is different then. Because my husband even said at one point when we were running low, he’s like, “Can you just go downstairs and get your dried mushrooms and just like make me a juice or something so I can keep having these benefits?” And I said, “No, it’s actually Tim’s product. It’s different and you can’t just make it in your kitchen.” If we took all these mushrooms, we can’t just make it in our kitchen because of… and I don’t remember the name of it but can you explain how it’s broken down so that we actually absorb it in our mouth? [00:41:34] Tim James: Yeah, so this is huge. What happened was I literally feel like I found a treasure chest full of gold. Literally. Imagine you’re on an island with your friends and somebody gives you a map and you’re digging around and you literally find it. You find a big old thing and it’s worth billions of dollars or something. But I’m talking about billions of dollars of health equity is what I found. A few years ago, I was reading a study on turmeric where they were able to increase the anti-inflammatory response in turmeric by 185-fold. Think about that. Not 185 percent, 185-fold it says in 63 people that they had. What they did was is they took the curcuminoid, the curcumin, which is active in turmeric, that’s the anti-inflammatory, curcuminoids. They mechanically made it very tiny. It’s almost like nano particle size, but it’s not been messed around with the lab. This is a mechanically made deal. So they just take their raw materials and basically just visualize that they get ground down to super tiny particles. Okay? What that does then is they become hyperabsorbable. Then you have to suspend them in a liquid, which makes them even more absorbable. So they actually fed these curcuminoids that were make in this manner to these people and they noticed 185-fold more reduction in inflammation. So, anybody listening out there that’s got knee pain, joint pain, back pain, arthritis pain, all this kind of stuff, turmeric should be in your daily regimen. But for me, I did want that, but I knew cellular inflammation was a big problem. So, when your cells are inflamed, you can’t get nutrients into the cell as well and you can’t get the toxins out. So, I wanted to reduce cellular inflammation so I could have better response in my whole body and then I knew the pain thing, any aches and pains, or recovery from workouts would just improve. Which it did. It reduced my inflammation from workouts by 50 percent. It was quite remarkable. So, that process, we bought the machine. It was very expensive and we built Turmeric 100. That was our first product where we used for this proprietary cellular absorption system. Well, like I said, we’re a small mom and pop company basically and I’ve got lots of products that I want to launch, but it’s just a matter of having the funds to do it. So, as more and more people learn about this stuff and get on the products and consume them and use them and tell their friends about it, we’ll just keep coming out with new stuff, which we got a whole bunch of cool stuff coming out anyway. Because that is happening. All right. So, that system now, we used on MultiShroom because we have the machine already. What we did was we took the highest quality Chaga, lion’s mane, cordyceps, reishi, shiitake, and maitake (there’s six of them) and we put those altogether. Now, I told Dr. Treadway, I said, “Look, dude. I want this to boost my immune system and I also want it to be good for mind, mood and immunity because I know about depression and anxiety out there, because I’m dealing with them as a coach all the time.” And even my clients are telling me, friends, relatives and kids, and everybody’s saying the depression medication stuff, it’s terrible. So, those are the six that he came up with, once again, based on Ayurvedic system science using his master herbalism background from those three different places around the world. He came up with those six in certain percentages and then what we did was we actually added a complete multimineral to it because it jacks up the efficacy on all this stuff. It works together. Everybody’s deficient in minerals anyway, so it just makes sense and helps build strong cell walls and all this other stuff. So there’s a lot of good folic’s and humic’s in here and pretty much every mineral under the elemental chart, but they're all from plant-based sources. So, not only are you getting a mushroom product, but you’re also getting a complete multimineral. It’s literally 7 products in 1, if you want to really look at it that way because we have 7 different things. So, what happens is, we take that, we run it through that process where we mechanically make the particles very tiny, we suspend it in a liquid, and we don’t use emulsifiers. What’s an emulsifier? An emulsifier is something that will keep the particles from separating. We don’t do that. Because a lot of the emulsifiers like Xanthan gum, and you probably learned this from, those listeners who are listening, from Dr. William Davis, he talked about Xanthan gum and gellan gum. They actually eat your intestinal lining. And it’s in a lot of most of the products out there. I mean, even the plant-based milks. Almost all of them have those two things. So, you’re getting off of dairy but then you’re putting something in there that’s eating your digestive lining. It’s silly. So, we don’t put that in there. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to shake this really good every time before you take it, but that’s just the way it is. I’m not going to put that crop in the bottle. So you just have to shake it really, really good because the constituents will settle, so you just shake it up, squirt one in your mouth one time and swish it around. You want to get maximum coverage on the mucus membrane in the skin inside of your mouth and just hold it for 15 to 30 seconds. It will literally disappear through the mucus membrane. If there’s anything left, swallow it. As it’s going down through your throat, it’s still going through the mucus membrane in your throat into your body. Very little is actually going to make it to the digestive tract. It literally goes directly into the bloodstream and because it’s so small, it goes directly into the cell. It’s so small that these constituents can go through the blood-brain barrier. So, this is very, very powerful stuff. Now, why do we do this? Well, because we know that people are having digestion issues today. Over 90 percent of people have leaky gut syndrome at some level where you got these microscopic tears in the intestinal lining and undigested food particles and microbes are getting in there and they're wreaking havoc on the body all over the place. So, the digestive tract is compromised. Any food that you’re eating today or supplements that you’re taking, you’re probably only going to get about 10 to 30 percent absorption rate. It’s just the way it is. So, 70 to 90 percent of what you’re consuming whether it’d be food, drinks, or supplements, is it’s going to go through and you’re going to poop it out. Which is okay. So, my whole mission for the last 11 years has been to help people improve digestion, improve that process, and up their game so they're getting more of what they're consuming because it’s smarter, it costs less money, you’ll eat less, and it’s healthier. And we need more nutrients. We’re definitely deficient. That’s been my whole project and that’s one of the reasons that turmeric product came, was to increase that ability. We are bypassing all of those problems by doing this. It doesn’t matter how bad your digestive tract is on absorption levels. It can be down at the 10 percent range. It doesn’t matter. This stuff is going right into your cell through the mucus membrane in the mouth via the blood. So, this is why it’s so powerful, Ashley, is because we’re bypassing the problems that have been created from the amount of stress that we have in modern society, the amount of toxic pollution the body has built up in the cells, the fat and the muscle tissue, and the lack of nutrition that’s weakened us, especially on the microlevel. So, we’re actually able to literally hand the cell what it needs very quickly. And within five minutes, the entire cardiovascular system, the blood system transports all these nutrients of whatever we put into that, and within five minutes, your entire blood is doused with these things and it’s going everywhere it needs to go, and whatever it doesn’t need because it’s naturally occurring, the body will just get rid of it. [00:49:22] Ashley James: Can you talk about the size of the molecules before versus after it goes through that process? [00:49:29] Tim James: I actually don’t know. I don’t know. I just know they're really tiny. [00:49:33] Ashley James: Tiny. Micro. Well, I notice that when I put it in my mouth, I usually hold it for a minute and I notice that it’s almost gone. Then I swallow what’s ever left. It tastes good. It tastes kind of like chocolate. What I like also is that there’s no alcohol in it. So many herbal tinctures, it burns the mouth and it’s alcohol. Because of the process that you’ve put this through, it doesn’t need to be alcohol-based. I find that interesting. [00:50:04] Tim James: It’s a good thing but it’s also unfortunate because for years, one of the things we use is we use naturally-occurring citric acid, and that’s a preservative. Now with that said, it’s naturally occurring, which means it’s from like an orange. So when it comes into the body, it’s coming in with all of its bioflavonoids and its cofactors and its buffer. Kind of like coffee, right? If you actually found a shade-grown coffee that wasn’t processed, that took out the L-theanine, as an example, which buffers the coffee, that’s why if people are just drinking black coffee, it’s been the way it’s made today in the modern world, you should be squirting L-theanine in there to buffer it so it’s not like eating away at your cells, basically. And your nerve endings eating that myelin sheath. That’s why people get jittery. It’s because the coffee is eating the myelin sheath and you’re exposing nerves. It’s like pouring acid on your nerve endings. That’s why when people drink coffee, they’re “eh, eh, eh”, but if you had L-theanine in there, it’s a buffer. But see, it’s been stripped out. So I have to say this because if anybody listens to me talk at some other planet far, far away or I’m just talking about a few years ago or whatever, sometimes I’ll be talking about citric acid and it’s not good. But I’m talking about the citric acid that’s been stripped of all of its stuff. Okay? Because our gut has got all these different bacteria and one of them is called Citrobacter. So, if you’re actually putting citric acids in your body, you’re actually feeding a bad bacteria and it could cause an overgrowth and cause a problem. Ours won’t do that because it’s naturally-occurring. So I just want to make that distinction because it’s very important because some of these hearers may go “Citric acid is bad!” and they look at the label and it’s like “He’s got citric acid here!” No, it’s naturally-occurring citric acid, but it was the best thing. And I told Dr. Treadway, I was like, can we find something else that works just as good? He’s like, “No, this is what works the best.” I was like, okay, well, we just have to tell people about it then, because I just don’t want them thinking one thing. You got to explain stuff because people will challenge me on that stuff. Which I don’t blame them because I was Sherlock Holmes too. I want to get to the bottom of this stuff and I’m just tired of being lied to. [00:52:17] Ashley James: Let’s go through the list. And thank you for clarifying because we just don’t know where the source is from and we’ll hear it’s from black mold, it’s from GMO corn. So, it’s good to know that not all citric acid is made equal and that you’re sourcing the best quality. You and I off air have talked about the different ingredients, the different plants that you source and the level at which you will strive to get the highest quality because you are designing for your health first. Because imagine if we all as the community listening to this, if we had a magic wand and we could formulate our own products for ourselves like go down the list of our own health issues and go, okay, I want to take a drink or I want to take some kind of supplement or tincture that is going to be filled with these herbs or these plants, and I want to supercharge my cells with this, and we could formulate our own stuff and we have all the resources at our fingertips. That’s what you do. You sit there and go, “What do I want for my own body? And, oh, it’s going to be so good I can also provide so other people can purchase it and try it and help their bodies heal.” So, I love that. And that’s again what I meant by the one-man show is that you have a team but you’re sitting there going, you’re not some big corporation looking to get low-quality stuff and make a big profit. Of course, we want you to be profitable because you’re taking those profits and putting them back into more and more fantastic, incredibly medicinal and healing products. You’re looking to change lives and help people. And I love your ethics. So, I am so happy that we came across each other’s paths is because this is what I want. I want to find more Tim Jameses out there, the people out there who are striving to make incredibly ethical companies and ethical products to really help people. [00:54:35] Tim James: Yeah, I really appreciate that. Originally, a lot of the stuff was the reason I started formulating with Dr. Treadway, is because I started looking. I was just getting frustrated as a coach. When you become Sherlock Holmes and you start researching every single ingredient which nobody does, I would go down these rabbit holes and I’m like, well, I can’t eat that anymore and then I can’t eat that anymore. It was like almost everything I was eating was jeopardized at some level. Then you’d finally find this product and you’re like, “Oh my God, I can eat this, this is great. Woo-hoo! Check that off the list.” Okay, now I’ve got my protein powder. I don’t do protein powders anymore but back in the day I did. And then all of a sudden, that’s one of the reasons because they put Xanthan gum in a protein powder I was taking and I had to look it up and I’m like “What is Xanthan gum?” I looked it up, it’s like mutated corn syrup fermented in bacteria, used as an emulsifier to stop things from separating. And I’m just like, what? And then you find out it eats the intestinal lining and I’m like, why would I ever put that in my gut? I had gut issues. I was bleeding rectally for years when I pooped. My vacation was ruined because I had appendicitis and I had it removed and I almost died on a trip to Peru with my wife and dad and ruined the vacation for them. I don’t want any more gut issues. I’m trying to heal my gut. I’ve learned about those little villi hair-like structures. I want to take care of them. They’re my little buddies. I want them to hang out and be in the best environment possible. Why would I consume something daily that’s going to erode them? I’m not going to. Just because it’s in a store, it’s okay? It’s unfortunate that we even have to be having this conversation. It’s actually quite silly that we’re at a point in a time where we’re supposedly so evolved yet human beings are the sickest we’ve ever been in the history of the planet and then we don’t get it why we’re sick and then we go into a medical system that was designed in crisis care during wartime and take care of people getting their arms blown off or shrapnel or get shot in the shoulder. And the answer is a synthetic people that has 37 side effects. It only works on 10 percent of the people that take it and the other 90 percent have mild to severe all the way up to death. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Like, when are we just going to wake up as adults and say hey, look, this isn’t good. We have children today that are being born with diabetes. We have children today that are being born that are overweight and now even obese. And now, if this one doesn’t get people, we are having children today that are being born with cancer. They come out of the womb and chemo, they go right into that kind of stuff. Like, what are we doing? Working-class people listening to this episode right now, we need to take the reins back of our health. We need to learn how to become our own doctors. We need to learn how to self-heal because nobody else is going to do it for you. There is no top-down approach that’s going to happen. It has to be us. We have to unite once again and fight for what’s true and real and has actual results. Everything is always nature-based because people forget we’re from nature. Anyway, I get a little passionate about it, but that’s where we're at. [00:57:56] Ashley James: I’m right there on the soapbox with you. We have to remind ourselves that. Healing is easy in that the body will heal itself. That will happen. The hard part is the mindset. It’s sort of like the hardest part of going to the gym is getting your shoes on. If you can just get that gym clothing on, get your shoes on, get in the car, you’re good. For whatever reason, the mindset that gets you to put your shoes on and just start driving to the gym or if you’re going to go for a run or whatever it is, the hardest part is those first few actions that lead you into that habit. That’s because when it comes to being healthy, we're swimming against the stream. We are the salmon. We’re swimming against the stream. Because if we go with the flow and we eat what everyone else is eating and we live the lifestyle that the majority is doing, then we will be a statistic. And 70 percent of adult Americans are on at least one prescription medication; most of them, they don’t need to be on those. Right? There are some life-saving medications and I appreciate medication when it saves someone’s life. The majority of medications are unneeded and could be replaced with an herb. And I have Dr. Klinghardt on the show who has been medical doctor for over 40 years and he practices holistic medicine. He takes very sick people like Lyme Disease and some unknown diagnosis that these people have been to every single doctor and they finally find Dr. Klinghardt and they fly around the world to come see him here. He’s just in my backyard out in Woodinville, Washington. But people come from around the world to see him and he says his favorite thing to do is to figure out what drug someone needs and then give them the herb that is even better than that drug. He goes very, very seldom he has to prescribe a drug because he’ll get better results time after time after time; he’ll get better results with the herb or the combination of herbs that that drug was modeled after. So, what are we doing going after petroleum-based synthetic drugs that suppress the body from healing itself and manage symptoms and then create a lot more symptoms? Why are we on this conveyor belt? We’re born into a system that if we don’t think for ourselves, we’ll be on a conveyor belt of disease. And I’m quoting statistics in America, many countries around the world are following closely behind, but 1 in 3 people to 1 in 4 people, depending on whether you’re male or female, will have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. One in 3 people is obese, prediabetic or diabetic. The top killers are all like, you know, heart disease, for example, stroke and cardiovascular disease. That’s one of the top things that people die of. My dad should not have died in his early 60s. My mom who to me was always an example of health should not have died at age 55 with cancer.  These were preventable, and they are preventable but we have to completely go against the grain. We have to choose drive past all those restaurants and all the drive-thrus and go home and make our own food. We have to choose to source where we get our food, choose to go to bed instead of watching Netflix till two in the morning, choose to move our body in a way that brings us joy, choose to take time to balance and bring joy to each aspect of our life. We have to be really proactive. Sometimes it’s exhausting and hard because all we want to do is just eat how everyone else is eating and go with the flow, nut that backslides us into those statistics. So, if you can have the stubbornness and the mindset that “no, I will not put crap in my body no matter how easy it is to do it,” then you’re on the right path. So it’s the mindset. The mindset comes first. If you put your foot down, you say “I will be Sherlock Holmes in the grocery store. I will read labels. I will be a label reader.” My husband, God bless him, he will beg me when we go into a grocery store, he’ll be like, “Please don’t read labels today,” because it takes us so long. Now I know what brands I like now and I don’t buy processed food nearly as much as I did, but 10 years ago when I was really getting into health stuff, it would take 90 minutes. I would sit there and I would just read. I was just trying to buy a clean hot sauce. I’m looking at all the organic hot sauces. And I am like, “I can’t believe what’s in this. Why would they put this ingredient in this hot sauce?” And it turns out there’s only two hot sauces out of the entire shelf of hot sauces that passed my test of clean ingredients. My husband was like, “We’ve been standing in front of the hot sauces for 45 minutes. Stop reading labels. Let’s just go home.” But this is what it took. It took being a food detective really time and time and time again. [01:03:22] Tim James: I was going to tell you a little quick one story. When I was at Hippocrates the first time, they take you on a field trip to a local really good mom-and-pop health food store, like a good one. It was an awesome store, it was homey. It was just very small town-ish. This wasn’t West Palm Beach, Florida. We went to a very good health food store. They showed us how 85 percent of everything in that store was not fit for human consumption. And this was a good one. So this is what you’re finding. You go into the bigger box stores, it’s probably 2 percent of the stuff you’d want to eat. It’s just the way it is. So, all those things, guys, remember inputs. Inputs. We talked about that earlier. That’s part of an open or dumb system where the inputs just come in. We want to be intelligent systems. And intelligent systems have a few more components. They have a goal, which Ashley is talking about. The goal is to put your health as a priority, love yourself and demand good things for yourself. Another thing that an intelligent system has is it can read disturbances, so it knows when it’s off course. And then, it can also, as a controller, to adjust. So if something’s not working, it can make a switch and change. So, we definitely want to be intelligent systems. So, rather than just be in a dumb system and just throwing down our throat whatever is handed to us, we become gatekeepers. Because those inputs are going to go into your system and they're going to dictate your output which is your energy levels, your mental clarity levels, your recovery ability from workouts or whatever, and your sleep, and your overall quality of life, and how you feel on a daily basis, and how you interact with other people. So, those inputs are very important. [01:05:11] Ashley James: I love it. And we have to be conscious. That’s the thing. I’m kind of posing this question to everyone, like not you specifically, but everyone who’s listening, have you ever gone unconscious with your bank account for example and all of a sudden, maybe 20 years ago, maybe not now but maybe when you were younger, you go unconscious with your finances and all of a sudden, your card declines and you’re like, “what?” And you just weren’t paying attention. You weren’t paying attention at your spending or you weren’t paying attention to your bank account. I know not everyone can relate to that, but I’m sometimes very unconscious about things I should be conscious of. And often it pronounces you. Or, it could be gas. I’ve never, thank goodness, ran out of gas in a vehicle. I’m pretty conscious and luckily, I have a husband who always tops off the tank. But I see people on the side of the road occasionally, and I’m like, “How did that person run out of gas?” There’s all these kinds of alarms and it’s telling you its’ running out of gas. But sometimes, we go unconscious. We go unconscious with the gas tank or we go unconscious with the finances and all of a sudden, we’re surprised. Or maybe you thought there was broccoli or bread or whatever in the drawer of the fridge, you open the fridge and it’s empty. You’re like, “Oh, I forgot to restock that.”  Plenty of times we get busy and we go unconscious and then we’re surprised. This is one of those things, is we can’t go unconscious around the intelligent inputs we put into our health. Just like we really shouldn’t go unconscious with our finances because we might not be able to pay the rent or the mortgage or buy food. Right? Or we’ll get bounced checks or whatever, or you’ll end up with no gas in your car because you went unconscious with the gas in the car. So, that level of maintaining awareness is really important, until you’ve developed enough health habits. Like I said, I used to read labels all the time but now I’ve got my brands and things I trust, so I don’t have to sit there although I should once in a while recheck because sometimes companies will change the ingredients on you. But now, I have my methods, I have my habits, I have my methods and so it’s become unconscious because I’ve set up a system. But when we're first creating new health habits, we have to be very conscious of the inputs. So, that’s my thing is I’ve seen so many people where they're like, “Well, I used to be healthy and I don’t know what happened. I just stopped paying attention and all of a sudden now years had gone by and I’ve been eating out every day.” That’s one of my first things, is I’ll have clients fill out on the intake form what percentage of meals is homebased and so many of my clients will write, “Oh yeah, 70 percent of my meals are cooked at home.” Then a week later, because then we actually start tracking it and we start having them cook at home, they’re like, “Yeah, actually it was more like 70 to 80 percent I was eating out, not cooking in.” That’s just because we go unconscious. You drive around, you go through the Starbucks, you get the sandwich and the coffee for, I don’t know, $15 or something crazy like that. We’re draining our bank accounts by eating out, by the way. It’s convenient, we go unconscious but then we’re destroying our body because it’s a dumb input like you said. It’s a dumb input, it’s costing our body and it’s costing our bank account. So, even though people look at organic food, you know, the groceries you need to buy, “Oh, it’s so expensive. I spent $200 at the grocery store. It’s so expensive.” I’m like, well $200 is like going to the restaurant maybe once or twice for my family. So, that $200 is going to be groceries for over a week for us. [01:09:07] Tim James: On that, there’s something that’s important that people understand, is that the lower you eat on the food chain, the less expensive the food gets. You can start buying things in bulk. So if you’re also concerned about prepping or things might go really bad someday, which is possible, there might be a power outage or something, you know, if there’s a power outage in four days, all the food is gone. Right? Or if truckers aren’t running in four days, that’s it. So if you’re in the city and you’re going to the store every day to get your food and you have nothing saved up. That’s why I have a trailer full of nut seeds, grains, beans. I would recommend that and an edible food wild foraging book for your local area. That would be a very important book to have if something happened. When you make these changes, there may be some new utensils you get. Maybe you buy a juicer and a blender and you didn’t do that before. There might be some setup cost and when you buy seeds, you buy them in bulk and it can add up to a lot, but over time it’s pennies. You’re literally eating for pennies. So for people that are thinking “Oh I couldn’t do this” or “Oh I couldn’t change my diet because it’s going to be more expensive.” Well, yeah, if you go down to Whole Foods and you’re getting all this pre-packaged stuff and shopping at those types of places, it’s going to cost more. But if you go to local farmers markets, you grow your own stuff, you stock up your own seeds, nuts, grains and beans, you develop some new pathways and buy in bulk, it’s literally going to eat for pennies. And if you learn how to detox your digestive tract and heal it and get it maximized for absorption stuff, and you do things like we take like the greens—Ashley and I take the greens, we do certain things—literally, you only need about half as much food that’s going through you because your cells are getting the nutrients they need. So your grocery bill gets cut in half right there.  [01:10:47] Ashley James: Yes! Okay, this. This right here. I’ve been wondering why is it that my fridge is still full. I’m worried about wasting. If it looks like these vegetables are about to go bad, I chop them up and I put them in the freezer. We have a giant freezer. And I totally agree with you on the storable food. I like Azure Standard. I get some bulk seeds and nuts I have from them and then also legumes, beans, and brown rice in bulk. That’s great because I use it in the kitchen also. But like you said, if there’s ever a power outage or something. Here in the Pacific Northwest we’re always worried about the next giant earthquake which will knock out everything for months and I’ve got enough storable food. As long as we can start a fire and cook it, we’re good. Or I can take the legumes and sprout it and making really nutrient dense sprouts. But what I’ve noticed is because we are eating nutrient dense foods, we’re eating less. There’s more food left over in the fridge than there used to be. So, I thought that was really interesting. I noticed that lately. Though we are eating less. [01:11:59] Tim James: Yeah. When you eat less, which means your body, the rental car you’ve been given for this life, is you don’t have to pedal down so much. Imagine if you have to process 100 pounds of food in a month versus 50 pounds of food. Which one is going to be a lighter burden on the body? Well, it’s going to take a lot more for the person that has to process 100 pounds of nutrient-deficient foods than the person who is processing 50 pounds of nutrient-dense foods. So, where does that energy that was going to break down those extra 50 pounds of nutrient-deficient foods go? Well, it goes back to you for your activities of daily living. And you think. Your brain starts working better and your immune system. So, you become stronger and you start building back up the walls of the castle so the viruses, the bacteria, the mold, the yeast, the fungus, the parasites, and the cancers, they can’t get over the wall anymore. Right? That’s I think a very important thing just to have an understanding about. [01:12:59] Ashley James: And one of the things that they discovered with longevity, and when I say longevity, I mean not just living longer because living longer with disease would suck. Longevity actually means people who are in their 90s able to go for walks and garden and still function, like people who are even living into their 100s still walking around and being functional. There are people in Okinawa, for example, who are 95 years old and they look like our 65-year-olds. They act like our 65-year-olds and they're 95. One of their principles, they don’t eat processed food nearly as much as American food, so they're eating more like Japanese yams. These beautiful purple yams are filled with antioxidants. They're growing their own foods, more whole food diet. But they also have this principle of eating to 70 or 80 percent full. Whereas in America, it’s like every meal is like Thanksgiving. You’re not done until you’re stuffed. I love this, this idea of just eating. And watch children, they’ll do this. Children will eat until they’re no longer hungry. Adults eat their full. I think it’s the hypothalamus, it takes about 20 minutes for the stomach to tell the hypothalamus that we’re full. “We’re full, you can stop now.” But in those 20 minutes where we’ve been eating for more, so we’re overstuffing ourselves. In that practice in Okinawa, they just eat until they’re no longer hungry. [01:14:39] Tim James: There’s also some emotional stuff too. Because my parents are in their 80’s and they didn’t have food. They had to make cabbage soup and stuff. So, finish your plate was that was they were taught. It’s like if you got stuff on your plate, you better well finish it. They would have liked to have seconds or thirds but a lot of times, they didn’t do it. So there’s a mentality there of scarcity, that drives it as well. What you said actually reminds me of I picked up a book on Benjamin Franklin when I was a kid. I remember the quote vividly. He said never eat to dullness or drink to elevation. Which coincides exactly with what you said. I don’t know what his health was like. The pictures I saw, he had a big belly so maybe he wasn’t paying attention or they just drew him wrong, I don’t know. [01:15:27] Ashley James: Well, I do know about Benjamin Franklin, is that he went vegetarian and then at one point he decided something along the lines of fish don’t have feelings, so he could eat them. So, he was pescatarian. But he’s a really interesting guy to research. But yeah, early on he decided to not eat animals anymore. I have come across his story a few times in regards to his health habits at least in his earlier years which might have led to many of his inventions because he had the mental clarity to do so.  [01:16:03] Tim James: He got his brain working better. [01:16:04] Ashley James: Right, exactly. I want to get into intelligent inputs in this mushroom tincture. LearnTrueHealth.com/mushrooms—check it out. I want to talk about the specific mushrooms because you said you can talk forever on Chaga. You know what’s funny. I just started seeing a new doctor of acupuncture. I was telling him about this stuff and he kind of leans in. Because after I told him the results that I got and the results that Duffy got, he leans and he goes, “Is it psychedelic?” I’m like, “No, it’s medicinal mushrooms.” And he’s like, “Oh!” I’m like, “Yeah!” It’s funny. Here is a doctor of acupuncture and that’s where he goes. Because what I described, the results that I got and the results that Duffy got, he thought we were like microdosing psilocybin, like we are microdosing magic mushrooms to get these results. I’m like, no, we’re getting these results with just basic medicinal, not like street drug mushrooms. I thought that was funny. [01:17:11] Tim James: Well they’re synthesizing a lot of that stuff. Again, they're not doing natural. But the psilocybin, those are in nature and I’ve seen tons of people that are microdosing them solve their depression issues as well. So, it’s not that they're bad. It’s just things get bad raps and they can be misused, overused and abused sometimes, and that’s where we have to be just intelligent adults and find out what actually works and produces results. [01:17:36] Ashley James: Yes. What I meant was it’s more of a compliment to your product because thought it would have to take a magic mushroom in order to get those results. And I’m like, no, it’s not. It doesn’t have to be a magic mushroom. We’re getting these results with medicinal mushrooms. [01:17:54] Tim James: Well, maybe you can send him this episode and then he’ll have a deeper understanding of why it’s working so well. [01:17:56] Ashley James: I will. Absolutely. [01:18:00] Tim James: The delivery method and the quality of ingredients and all that stuff. [01:18:04] Ashley James: Let’s talk about the intelligent inputs that are inside this stuff. You said you have some really cool things to share about chaga.  [01:18:11] Tim James: Yeah. Chaga, it’s funny because chaga mushroom, it’s not actually a mushroom. It’s not strictly a mushroom. It’s rather a unique fungus that’s similar to mushrooms but people call it a mushroom. Usually they find it growing on birch trees. It’s called Inonotus obliquus. Anyway, chaga is a traditional Native American medicine. It’s been used for hundreds of years. Here are just some benefits that people have been using for hundreds of years for chaga: Supports the cardiovascular health. Well, that’s good. You just said the number one killer, heart disease.  Supports immune health. That was the reason I built it. I wanted a new pathway of immunity through mushrooms. Maintains blood sugar for people that already have it within healthy limits. Enhances liver, stomach, and skin health. I’m all about all that stuff especially the skin and the liver, all of it, stomach. Counteracts tiredness. So it helps with that. Maybe because you’re sleeping better, I don’t know. Enables free and easy breathing. So, a lot of respiratory issues especially around seasonal stuff. You got pet allergies and food allergies and you got seasonal allergies. Encourages a healthy inflammation response and supports purification of the blood. So, my formulator said that many people have experienced chaga as an essential part of their immune-supporting protocols and they used it daily for that reason. So, here’s some of the deeper dive on these benefits of chaga, this wonderful fungus. Number one, it’s a major antioxidant booster. We know that there’s oxidative stress to the cells that lead to cell damage in all the components of the cells including the DNA. So, cell death also known as apoptosis, and disruptions in cellular signaling which is the communication between the cells happens. So, oxidative stress is known to be involved in aging, which I don’t want to age like that, and in the development of many age-related ailments and conditions. So, antioxidants like chaga can help prevent this oxidative stress. Chaga produces an impressive array of metabolites as well. These are capable of acting as potent free radical scavengers. These little metabolites in chaga can protect DNA from being damaged by oxidative stress. One study demonstrated that the cells that are pre-treated with chaga mushroom extracts, this is huge. If you pre-treated the cells with chaga mushroom extracts before being treated with a free radical, it showed 40 percent less DNA damage to those that weren’t pre-treated. That’s pretty huge. So, chaga is also one of the highest ORAC values out there. That’s really important. That’s that oxygen radical absorbance capacity, it’s called ORAC. It’s claimed to be one of the highest out there. Many websites claim it’s one of the highest. Chaga is a powerhouse of trace minerals like zinc, copper, iron, manganese. These can also stimulate production of these SODs which is short for superoxide dismutase. These SODs and the enzymes that form the first line of antioxidant defense against damage caused by free radicals. This is all chaga. And that’s just talking about the antioxidant boost. Now let’s talk about chaga as far as digestion. Chaga has been used traditionally to encourage gastrointestinal health and digestive comfort. Modern research is confirming this, that the gastroprotective properties that it has helps to regulate the gut microflora and the gut bacteria. Extracts of chaga have helped to protect the integrity of the stomach wall when given to rats. In another study, mice were fed chaga extracts, and the results showed that by regulating the release of cytokines, with everybody that’s been through this whole COVID thing might have heard about the cytokine storm which is an inflammation response, chaga supported the health of the colonic mucosa. So, we’re talking about the mucus membrane in the colon. It supported that. So, the antioxidant activity of these polysaccharides in chaga was also found to support pancreatic health and regulate gut microbiome and the composition. Also, it’s been used for centuries to alleviate gastrointestinal discomfort. And again, modern science is confirming the potential of chaga to promote gut health. Alright, there’s number two—gut health. What about immunomodulation? So, many of you, since you follow Ashley, there’s probably a lot of scientific folks on here, you might have read or heard the term ‘adaptogen’. It’s a biological response modifier or BRM in reference to certain herbs and functional mushrooms. As the name implies, these BRMs are substances that can modulate the immune system’s response by either turning it up or down. An adaptogen is a type of biologic response modifier that must meet three criteria. It must be, number one, nonspecific. It’s got to be general and it must be able to assist the body in handling a wide variety or range of stressors. It must be able to help maintain the body’s homeostasis or body balance. Number three, very important, it must not harm the normal functions of the body. Essentially, adaptogens help your body adapt to stress and restore the balance within your body. With chaga’s rich polysaccharide content, it’s considered a highly effective adaptogen. Chaga is basically an immune system adaptogen. Remember that’s one of the reasons I built a product was I wanted a new pathway for building my immunity. While the immune system is designed to protect the body against foreign invaders, it can also overact to harmless substances. This is happening more and more today as the chemical burden that people have, the lack of nutrients, bodies are just going wonky and people are having these crazy responses that can affect your sinuses, your lungs, your eyes, all kinds of stuff. Even though allergies aren’t always harmless, some individuals may experience almost like an anaphylactic shock. It could be a severe, sometimes life-threatening allergic reaction. So, as an adaptogen, chaga can help balance an overactive immune system. The last thing as far as immunomodulation goes, there’s a substance in chaga called—I can’t even pronounce it—inotodiol. Anyway, it’s a triterpenoid, active that’s unique in chaga. It’s very unique. So it acts as a mast cell stabilizer and can support eye and nasal comfort. Chaga can promote the secretion of certain cytokines to modulate immune responses and in an animal study, it also showed that chaga mushroom extracts prevented chemically induced immune system overactions. My company is called Chemical Free Body. Everybody that’s listening has chemicals in their blood, fat and muscle tissue. Chaga mushroom extracts, when I read this I was so excited, can prevent chemically induced immune system overreactions. This is happening to everybody listening. Your immune system is overacting to all the chemicals that you’re being exposed to. The air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat, the clothing you’re wearing, all this stuff, personal care products that aren’t clean. So it’s demonstrated its potential as a useful adaptogenic functional food basically. And studies have shown that the active compounds in chaga may help selectively and actively against many types of malignant cells as well. So, that’s an immunomodulator. Now, another thing is blood sugar balancing. So, insulin is the hormone responsible for moving glucose in the bloodstream and into your muscle and your fat cells where it’s stored for energy production. Healthy blood sugar levels are linked to good heart, blood vessel, nerve, kidney, skin, and brain health. So, chaga is very good for blood glucose levels. There’s been multiple animal studies that suggest that chaga may be able to support balanced blood sugar levels. In one study, they found mice fed the chaga extract for three weeks, they were better able to maintain healthy blood glucose levels as well as total cholesterol, triglycerides and low-density lipid proteins (the cholesterol LDLs, bad cholesterol levels). Most notably, the research team found that feeding chaga supported healthy pancreatic tissue in the mice. So, the pancreas is the organ that secretes insulin. A follow-up study confirmed that these effects on blood sugar and cholesterol. Mice treated with either 30 or 60 mg per kg body weight of chaga extract for 21 days had similar results as in the first study. So, part of chaga’s effects on blood sugar may be attributed to the inhibition of the enzyme that breaks down the starch by its polysaccharides. Blocking this enzyme helps slow down glucose absorption in the digestive organs, and research performed in vitro showed that the polysaccharides in chaga inhibit this enzyme. So, pretty cool stuff on blood sugar levels especially for those diabetic folks out there. Now, how about our athletes out there? Or just people are getting tired. Muscle fatigue. Okay, these polysaccharides in chaga also surprising scientists with their benefits. So, as an adaptogen, it has the capacity to bring balance to your entire body including your energy levels and your muscle endurance. So, a study showed that chaga may help increase exercise endurance and these subjects were given the chaga extract for 14 days. Some of them got none, some of them got 100, some got 200, some got 300 mg per kg of their body weight. They were able to swim for longer periods of time than those given just none, which is distilled water. Scientists noted that these subjects given chaga also had significantly more glycogen, the predominant storage form of glucose for energy production in their liver and muscles. So, this is why when I teach people if you want to build muscle and you want to triple your muscle growth, we use resistance bands for a physical reason, but we only do one set and we do at least 15 reps, but we go to failure, but you have to get at least 15 in. When you start doing the second set of reps or the third or the fourth, you’re actually just burning out all this glycogen. That’s why your muscles are getting so damn sore. So, glycogen storage directly affects exercise endurance and the results of the study suggested might increase the time before glycogen is depleted. So, these chaga polysaccharides also greatly reduce blood lactate levels in subjects. You know, when you build up that acid in your body. Muscles produce high levels of lactate during high-intensity exercise, which contributes to fatigue and thereby if you can remove the lactate very quickly, it’s beneficial to prevent that daily fatigue. Chaga is just amazing and it shows great potential as a supplement for athletic endurance. A lot of these recent studies demonstrate its capacity to increase the storage of glycogen in muscles and decrease blood lactate levels leading to less muscle fatigue. So, there’s that one. As far as immunity goes, we talked about a lot of that, but the immune-supporting activity is believed to be due to the diverse bioactive compounds found in chaga like betulin, hispidulin, hispidin, lupeol and these mycosterols. And betulinic acid which is unique to chaga, very unique. And chaga’s other bio compounds are being investigated by a scientific community as potential agents to protect the body against various foreign invaders. For me, at this point, you can go down rabbit holes, Ashley, all you want but it’s like, if I take it and I feel freaking amazing and it’s working for me, and I know indigenous people have been using it for centuries, it’s like thousands of years. You know what I mean? It’s like, why wouldn’t I do this as long as it’s working for me, right? It’s also good for skin repair and protection. Beta-glucans and the betulinic acid in chaga may help slow down signs of aging in your skin. Guys out there that want to have beautiful skin, I do the ladies do. You might have like a huge mortgage payment and credit card debt, but by God, you’re going to have a boatload of skincare on your table. It’s going to happen. I know, I’ve seen it. I know that skin repair is important to you. Chaga infusions have been used to comfort irritated skin, reduce redness and dryness. In a case study of 50 people, they found after taking chaga for 9 to 12 weeks, individuals actually experienced improved skin health as demonstrated by increased skin comfort, smoothness and moisturization. Melanin also plays an important role in skin health. Now, melanin like that found in chaga is thought to protect human skin against DNA damage by absorbing UV radiation. So, one in vitro study found that melanin increased the sun’s protector factor (SPF) of gel sunscreens, as an example. Another study found that melanin functions as a free radical scavenger, which can also help keep your skin looking younger for longer. Sounds good to me. Right? Then the last thing is brain function enhancement. All this oxidative stress is a major contributor to mild memory problems associated with aging. Dementia, memory loss, Alzheimer’s, all this stuff. A team of researchers investigated if chaga had any protective effects in these subjects, again, with the chemically-induced cognitive decline. So, think about what I just said there. Chemically-induced cognitive decline. We know chemicals are basically messing up our brains. And the older we are, the more time we’ve had to bioaccumulate these toxins. So, these researchers found that in chaga, the subjects given chaga for 7 days had significantly improved learning and memory compared to those that did not receive the fungus. It’s just that simple. Okay, that’s just one mushroom that’s not a mushroom, the fungus, and there’s five more. Right? There’s five more. I mean, I don’t know if we need to go into that detail on like lion’s mane or is there any that you wanted me to talk about?   [01:32:36] Ashley James: Yeah. Before we get to that, I looked up the ORAC and it’s incredibly high, it’s pretty ridiculous. [01:32:44] Tim James: I think it was like 52,000, wasn’t it? [01:32:46] Ashley James: Yeah, that’s what it says. But it depends on what they're measuring it against like is it 1 gram, 100 grams. Usually, they measure in 100 grams, so 52,000 per 100 grams, which is incredibly, incredibly high. Dr. Joel Wallach who’s one of my mentors, when he treats someone who has a neurodegenerative disease like Parkinson’s, ALS, that kind of thing, or MS, he treats them all the same because he sees it’s neurodegeneration. And he says it is oxidative stress on the nervous system. He wants to fill them up with the good nutrients so the body can heal the nervous system, stop putting fuel on the fire in the diet and maybe bad supplements like you said. There are certain components even in supplements that can away at the myelin sheath. What he says is so important, is eating or getting in you 100,000 ORAC a day. So, anyone who has a neurodegenerative disease or any kind of oxidative stress disease, he puts them on 100,000 ORAC a day. Just the fact that chaga is that high is incredibly impressive. Also, I just happen to find this. Chaga has 50 times more SOD (superoxide dismutase) than any other medicinal mushroom. I’ve had guests come on and talk about SOD and how it’s like the key to life that if we don’t have it, we’re not functioning. We need it. There are so many benefits to making sure that we have increased SOD in our body. So, yeah, the list just goes on and on. [01:34:30] Tim James: Well, think about what you just said. It was like, again, 50 times more superoxide dismutase. Not 50 percent; it’s 50 times. [01:34:42] Ashley James: Fifty times. [01:34:43] Tim James: This is like why I get so excited about sprouts. Sprouts are 10 to 30 times more nutrient dense than a fresh picked vegetable out of your garden. The best ones. Like mustard greens or kale greens. I mean, 10 to 30 times more nutritious. So, when you get multiples like this, this is huge stuff. It’s just smart because you can take very little amount especially in the delivery system that we have for this and get super massive results, and whenever the body doesn’t need it, it just gets rid of it. [01:35:13] Ashley James: What’s your favorite thing about lion’s mane? Because like you said, we don’t need to go into each one at that level. I mean, chaga deserves. Chaga is amazing. It’s so medicinal, it deserves everything and all the time we’ve put into it. But we can talk about just the high-level ones. [01:35:30] Tim James: Well, lion’s mane is like another Hercules. I mean, all of these are. So, it’s really known as the mind mushroom. And it’s been used, again, thousands of years to support healthy brain functioning and neuro regeneration of nerve tissues. You just mentioned earlier about people with Alzheimer’s, dementia, and Parkinson’s and that kind of stuff. It’s really good for memory support. It has the ability to help reduce brain fog and improve memory through two essential compounds known as hericenones and erinacines. Those compounds directly act in your hippocampus and as a result, they can regenerate the neural links and build new neurons. Lion’s mane mushrooms also have the ability to decrease inflammation, which is associated with conditions that are known to cause brain fog, so it’s also an anti-inflammatory. What I like about lion’s mane is it’s really good for the brain; it supports stress relief, which I know everybody is stressed out like crazy; repairs nerve damage. It reduces anxiety and depression symptoms, which is huge. And I know so many people have depression today. It’s a lot. I looked it up, it was like 30 million people or something like that. It’s a lot. Or 60 million. And these are the ones that are just saying “Yeah, I’m depressed.” How many people are walking around just not telling anybody? [01:37:04] Ashley James: Or not even knowing that this is what depression is. Because I didn’t know I was having PTSD attacks. People could just be like low-grade depression and they think this is just what life is. Have you ever had that where you have a client and you get them to eat healthy and all of a sudden like 1 week into it, they're like, “Wait a second. This is how I’m supposed to feel all the time? I feel amazing. I can’t believe I thought health was before I changed my ways in this last week. I thought I was healthy but now this whole new level I didn’t even know existed.” It’s like you don’t know you’re supposed to have three arms and it’s missing. You don’t even know it’s missing. Right? You just get to that new level. So people are walking around depressed not even knowing they have depression, not even knowing there’s this whole way that they could be, this whole elevated way that mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically they could be in this better health, and they don’t even know that exists. [01:38:01] Tim James: I keep surprising myself every year. I finally realize I keep thinking I have reached a new level and I couldn’t get any better. But every year, through all my research and the people that I’m associated with now and the new people coming into my life, I usually find one or two really badass things that I add into my life that takes my health up another level or two or three. So, I guess one thing I would say about lion’s mane that might be important especially if we have any menopausal women that are listening, is that there was a study done that showed that lion’s mane mushrooms can aid with depression and anxiety caused by all of that. So, that could be something too. The women that were given the mushroom were less irritated and anxious in that study and they had less difficulty concentrating than those in the placebo group. So that’s just something about lion’s mane. [01:38:58] Ashley James: What did you notice when you started taking your mushroom tincture? I had a tremendous experience and sometimes people take mushrooms and they don’t notice this immediate result right away, but it’s something like after 7 weeks or 9 weeks of taking it, they’re like “Oh yeah, my skin is amazing,” or, “Oh yeah, I do mentally feel better.” Sometimes it takes a while for the mushrooms to heal the brain and that kind of thing. But what changes did you notice? You’re the cleanest-eating person I know. You’re the gold standard. You were already incredibly healthy. You didn’t have this massive inflammation to overcome or anything. But what changes did you notice in yourself? [01:39:41] Tim James: Well, out of the gate my mind clarity improved—way more clear. And to say the same thing. This is one of the things we get from a lot of people. They say they feel a wave of calmness over them. And that’s what I felt. I’m like, I could relate to that. Even though I’m working more and more and more on my spiritual practice all the time, being able to meditate and breath work and stay in the eye of the storm no matter what’s going on around me and looking at everything in life as something that’s serving me and giving me contrast, and you know what, just a different way I’m looking at life now. I feel less stressed. It’s just like it’s not there and even though nothing’s really changed, in fact, I’ve got more stuff going on right now, I haven’t told you, but I’m writing a book. [01:40:27] Ashley James: Yay! [01:40:31] Tim James: People are, you know, “You should write a book! You should write a book! You should write a book!” and I’m like, “Nah, I don’t want to write a book. What am I going to talk about?” Then, now it’s like, oh, I know what I want to tell people. I want to share this with people. And I want to put it in a freaking book. So, it’s there for folks. So, I’m about halfway through writing it. And you think with stuff like that, e-books and all this stuff, and the growth in our company, it’d be more stress, but I actually feel less stressed. [01:40:57] Ashley James: Nice. You’re on your path. [01:40:58] Tim James: Yeah. And I just feel good because I know I’m building my immunity with another source from nature which is mushrooms, and I’m doing it in a very specific way. And I’m doing it in a very intelligent way. I’m delivering it through the mouth directly into the cell. And I like that, and it’s simple. I just shake it, squirt it, swish it, wait, done. It’s just so easy to do it. So for my busy lifestyle, it fits in very well. [01:41:23] Ashley James: Love it. What are the highlights of the cordyceps mushroom that you want to make sure we know about? [01:41:30] Tim James: Okay, cordyceps. Well, it’s been used in Asian medicine for centuries. So, once again, Chinese herbology and stuff like that have been using it for a long time. It’s really good for energy and performance. So, people that want to have more energy or athletes that want to improve themselves. Cordyceps contain cordyceptin which is an active compound known for its ability to improve oxygen absorption—which is what, it’s our number one nutrient, remember that 20,000 breaths a day—and to support the production of ATP, which provides energy within the cells. So, cordyceps support increased energy levels and they improve athletic performance. One study on cordyceps indicated that there is close to a 50 percent increase in cellular energy levels after supplementing with cordyceptin which is contained in cordyceps. In fact, in the 1993 Olympics, many Chinese runners shattered world records after supplementing with cordyceps.  So, there you go. It’s also good for heart health, has anti-malignancy properties, so if anybody is dealing with that cancer-type thing, I’d be taking some cordyceps, no question, as one more layer or one more card in my deck of health that I’d be stacking up. It supports immune system and supports a healthy liver and kidneys as well. So, lots of good stuff about cordyceps. [01:42:59] Ashley James: Now you have reishi mushroom which is one of my favorite medicinal mushrooms. I remember back in my 20s I would drink the reishi mushroom coffee that was kind of really popular back then. My friend turned me onto it. They also had like a reishi mushroom dark hot chocolate kind of healthy drink. [01:43:18] Tim James: Nice. [01:43:19] Ashley James: Oh yeah! Really, that was my favorite out of all of them. But I noticed that I would feel this buzz and I don’t know, maybe it was from chocolate, who knows, but I became very interested in learning more and more about reishi and discovering that they’ve been using it for a very long time in Asia. [01:43:40] Tim James: Long time, yeah. [01:43:41] Ashley James: Very long time. And it’s supposed to be really good for the immune system. But beyond the immune system, what else is reishi good for? [01:43:50] Tim James: So the reishi mushroom, also known as Ganoderma lucidum, this is a very popular and famous mushroom. They’re putting reishi in everything nowadays. People are buying it because of the marketing behind it. So, that’s good. It’s bringing some awareness there. So, again, it’s a traditional Asian mushroom. It’s been an elixir for long life. It has lots of health benefits. One of them is it reduces stress. So, for me, that’s one of the big three, which is reducing stress and giving tools for that. Breath work. Meditation. Getting outside. Getting your feet naked. Touching the ground. Grounding. Earthing. Sleeping on earthing and grounding mats. Going to the beach. Getting in the forest. These are things to reduce and calm the nervous system so that you’re going to live a healthier life and your body is going to communicate better and you’re going to stop blowing out your adrenal glands and producing all this cortisol that’s killing you. Stress reduction, so huge. Reishi, very powerful for that.  Number two. It supports immune function, which again, that’s what you want. You want to build your body’s defenses and build up those walls so in those pathogens that are always out there, keeping them in balance, the viruses, the bacteria, mold, yeast, fungus, mutagens, all this stuff, and you just keep them down. So you’re having your immune system up, it protects you from that kind of stuff. Again, it has anti-malignancy properties just like some of the other mushrooms. It’s got inflammation reduction. And maybe this is it, I don’t know, but it helps support sleep and reduces insomnia. So reishi can provide a calming effect which supports your healthy sleep patterns. So maybe it’s the reishi in there. [01:45:33] Ashley James: Maybe. [01:45:35] Tim James: Maybe. I don’t know. Or combination. But it could be the delivery system that’s delivering such high amounts to your cells that you’re finally getting enough to help you. [01:45:44] Ashley James: Right. Well, that’s what I feel is that because I’m absorbing it into my lymph system through my mouth, it’s getting right into my body, bypassing the digestive process, so I’m getting like the supercharged powerhouse of this mushroom elixir straight into me. And we’ve talked about this before that let’s say your bottle was 1 mg of vitamin C. We can all understand vitamin C. But if you took a pill that was 1 mg vitamin C, you would only be getting 30 percent of that actually into your body because it has to go through the process of digestion and absorption. Whereas if it’s in this tincture, because it’s broken down into such a small particle, absorbs through the tissue in your mouth into your body, you’re getting all of it or close to all of it. And so, for me that’s why when I started out taking them, I’m like I’m just going to do two droppers full because I’m thinking myself I need more for it to work, but really, you’re getting all of it. Right? So I just love that and it really does that have calming effect on my brain and my nervous system to the point where, like I said, I slept through the night, and the level of stress that I had diminished went down, that ambient stress. Dr. Joel Fuhrman who I have had on the show and I love his work, I’ve been really inspired by his books and his work. He talks about eating a nutritarian diet, specifically designed to look for foods that are medicinal and science-based in a way that will prevent cancer, for example, prevent all disease. I mean, let’s prevent cancer, right? My mom died of cancer. Let’s prevent it. He says every day, I think he says about a cup of mushrooms, a cup of onions, start every stir-fry and I do water saute basically with no oil, and it tastes delicious. Any kind of mushroom. He’s like even just the cheaper, obviously organic. Because I had a naturopathic friend of mine go, “I just went to a mushroom farm and you don’t want to know what they use on the non-organic mushrooms. You just don’t even want to go there.” So with organic mushrooms, he said even the cheapest organic mushrooms which are the little white ones, the button ones, he goes those ones actually have more medicinal property than those cremini mushrooms, the more expensive-looking ones at the store. Chop it up, saute it with onion, the two combined will stop if there’s ever a tumor that’s just kind of taking root in your body, tiny, tiny, tiny tumor taking root. Because we have cancer every day in our body and our body is clearing out or our immune system is clearing it out. But if we have a bit of it taking root, it needs new vasculature and it will send a signal to your body to start sending it new blood vessels. There’s all kinds of reasons why you want to eat it with a bit of onion too, but mushrooms tell the body to not make new vasculature. And so, it won’t send these little highways of nutrients to the tumor, so the tumors can’t start growing at a rapid rate because they can’t get the vasculature, they can’t trick the body into giving them new blood vessels because there’s some component in mushrooms that stop that process. [01:49:28] Tim James: I want to share something that’s really important. By taking this formula that we’ve put together, I’m not saying don’t eat mushrooms. I think you should still eat mushrooms for sure, enjoy them and get the benefits just like you normally would through the digestive process. This is just to make sure you’re getting everything you need. But it’s very important you should not consume raw mushrooms. No, do not do that. Raw mushrooms are pretty much indigestible because their cell walls are very tough. They’re composed of chitin. So it’s very important to cook the cell walls of the mushrooms, the heating… this is weird but they’ll actually release the nutrients they contain, all the proteins, the B vitamins, the minerals, the wide range of compounds we just talked about. Now you mentioned something else that Dr. Joel Fuhrman said to eat, which was onions. Onions on the other hand, you don’t want to cook them. [01:50:26] Ashley James: Oh, interesting.  [01:50:27] Tim James: Do not want to cook them. Because this goes back to back in, when was it, oh God, 1991 I believe. Do you remember when there was the big push, when the researchers at Johns Hopkins, the cancer researchers, the top researchers that have been researching cancer for 50 years came out and said that sulforaphane, the main ingredient in broccoli was the biggest discovery ever in the history of cancer. Those researchers named it phytochemo or plant chemo. Because it was just destroying cancer cells in the petri dishes. They’ve never seen anything like it. And because of that blip got out on national news and George Bush, Sr. was president at the time, he said “I don’t like broccoli.” And somebody dumped 600 pounds of broccoli or 200 pounds broccoli on the White House steps. It made national news. And because of that little blip, just goes to show how powerful the media is. It could be used for good, but it’s not in most cases. The broccoli seeds have doubled in price since then and they never went down because of the awareness of broccoli. Right? Now, they were just using broccoli. They weren’t using broccoli sprouts, which are 30 to 50 times more anti-cancer than the broccoli because the sulforaphane count was higher. But guess what else is very high and even higher than broccoli? Garlic and onions. Garlic and onions have tremendous amounts of sulforaphane in them. So, when you cook an onion, if you cook it, you’re killing the anti-cancer compound. But in mushrooms, you need to cook it. So I just want to be clear on that for people because they might be like eating raw mushrooms and cooking their onions and you don’t want to do that. It should be vice versa. [01:52:05] Ashley James: Thank you. Now I’m going to have to figure out how to enjoy raw onions. Okay, I could do this. [01:52:11] Tim James: Well, maybe you just cook it a little bit, and then throw the raw ones in there too. You got the baby steps. [01:52:16] Ashley James: Right. Yeah, I can chop it up and put it on as a garnish or something. I’m always playing in the kitchen. I’d never stopped eating mushrooms. I eat them every day. Every day mushrooms. Then I started taking your tincture and I had that result. So, I know that mushrooms, for me, I eat it because I know it’s healthy. But mushrooms I cook in the kitchen didn’t have the effects on my brain that your tincture does. So there’s something maybe like you said, maybe it was the reishi that did it for me. You also have shitake which I actually cook shitake mushrooms daily. Love them. What’s medicinal about shiitake? I just like it because of the flavor. [01:52:56] Tim James: Again, it’s another medicine that’s been used in Asian cultures for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. It’s got a really impressive nutrient profile. It’s rich in choline, copper, potassium, vitamin D, zinc. They also boast all 8 essential amino acids found in meats. So I know you have a lot of plant-based eaters listening, so that’s cool. It’s got a bunch of just good stuff in it. I mean, shiitake mushrooms are big for supporting immune function. They’re high in antioxidants. They’re anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial. They have antiviral properties that support a healthy immune response. I’m just trying to think.  For example, there’s a substance called lentinan. It’s an active compound found in shiitakes that protects against a variety of bacterial, viral, and parasitic infections, which is pretty cool. Let’s see what else. There was a four-week trial involving 52 healthy volunteers between the ages of 21 and 41, and they found that by consuming dried shiitakes mushrooms daily, it improved their gut immunity. Specifically, blood samples found that the mushrooms increased the production of two important types of T cells, which is our natural killer cells that go out there and attack stuff. So, we’re talking about massive immune system boosting here. Shiitakes also promote heart health. Shiitake mushrooms have also been found to reduce triglyceride levels by as much as 55 percent, so that’s good for the heart. Let’s see. Oh how about bone health. So many people today are dealing with osteoporosis, osteopenia, weak bones. Number one thing to help you with that is weight resistance exercise. Number two is get off of dairy. And then number three would be eat things that are going to support healthy bones like arjuna tree bark, products made from that, or shiitake mushrooms. It can support healthy bones. There’s a lot of vitamin D present in mushrooms, so it’s good for bone strengthening. It aids in absorption of calcium and it actually inhibits bones from getting weak.  Let’s see what else. It also supports healthy gums which is really good. British researchers have reported that the antibacterial compounds in shiitake extract reduce harmful bacteria that causes gingivitis. So it helps you get your oral microbiome back in balance. [01:55:35] Ashley James: And you’re holding it in your mouth for like a minute, so that’s good. [01:55:38] Tim James: Oh yeah. There was actually another study that appeared in the Journal of Pharma… I can’t even pronounce it. It’s a review. They found the same compounds inhibit plaque-building bacteria that can lead to cavities as well. So, it’s good for your teeth, good for your gums, and supports weight management. So, this is why a lot of different companies are taking and putting shiitake in their protein shakes or their weight loss things because there’s an active component in there that helps support healthy weight. Studies have found that subjects fed a diet high in shiitake mushrooms had 35 percent less weight gain than those eating a diet low in the fungus. [01:56:27] Ashley James: Love it. And it’s just super delicious. You know what, your tincture, I just realized because shiitake is a very strong flavor and people either love it or hate it. It has a very strong flavor but your tincture does not taste like mushrooms. To me, it tastes like chocolate. It doesn’t have a bad flavor. It has an enjoyable flavor. [01:56:46] Tim James: Well, we’ve actually improved it. What you’ve got now is the first run. I’m always trying to improve stuff. Just wait, like just keep enjoying the benefits and stuff, but eventually, you’ll call me and say, “Dude, I got one of the new ones.” Because when the new ones come out eventually, we haven’t even ordered them yet, but when we get to that point, we’ll reorder, it’s going to taste like chocolate. You’re going to be blown away. [01:57:07] Ashley James: Cool. Well, it already tastes good to me.  [01:57:11] Tim James: Well, it’s going to the next level, baby. It’s going to be awesome.  [01:57:15] Ashley James: Nice. I’ve given some drops to our son just to see what he thought of the flavor and he liked it. And he’s picky.  [01:57:21] Tim James: Oh good, good. [01:57:22] Ashley James: Picky child likes it. Mikey likes it, everyone’s going to like it. The last one is maitake mushroom. I admit, I know nothing about this mushroom. [01:57:34] Tim James: It’s just another traditional medicinal shroom that’s been used in foods for thousands of years. Anti-malignancy support, antiviral support, blood pressure balancing, energy support, supports cholesterol regulation, blood sugar balancing, supports healthy immunity. A lot of the same stuff that the other one did. Maitake mushrooms are a perfect combination for health and even taste, so people love eating these. You should get them, they’re delicious. When you dive deep into their health properties, you’re going to find out that they contain lots of potassium, calcium, magnesium, amino acids, fibers, vitamins like B2, D and many more. There’s just a lot of nutrition in a maitake mushroom. And it helps boost immune system. [01:58:27] Ashley James: And of course, the last ingredient was the fulvic and humic acid, and that’s trace minerals and elements. But because it’s broken down, like all the mushrooms is broken down, it’s highly absorbed into the body. One of the naturopaths I learned from in the past used to be a formulator and he said trace minerals make everything work better and he said it’s really interesting that pharmaceutical companies do not add small amounts of trace minerals into their drugs because it would actually increase the effectiveness of the drugs. So, it helps the body regulate everything and get everything working. But to add that is just making it so that everything is running better. [01:59:24] Tim James: We actually experienced this years ago when we came out with our ultra enzyme formula. So that was the one thing that I took away from the Hippocrates Health Institute was taking your enzymes. Right? And I know a lot of people like me, they're super, super geeks on this stuff, and a lot of them have been at it a lot longer than me, you know, 30, 40, 50 years into this process. And they're also enzyme aficionados. They know their enzymes. When they tried out my enzymes, they're like, “Dude, these things are amazing. What the heck? I noticed that your amounts were very high compared to the other one.” So, I spared no expense. Our digestive enzyme formula is packed.  But what we did was, because of Dr. Treadway, we added something similar to this to the formula which is a mineral complex. And I’ve had these guys reach out to me. They’re like, “Dude, I don’t know what you’re doing to these enzymes, but there’s nothing like them.” And these people, they know what it does in the body and they know how they feel. I got a guy up in Canada that buys them by the case. He just buys them by the case for him and this other dude, and they consume it like crazy. So anyway, these natural sources of fulvic and humic acids from this mineral pitch, this is like a plant-based natural gum. It’s found in like super ancient mountainous granite formations. So, picture this. For millions and millions and billions of years, plants, the roots, and the bark, and the stems, and the trunk, and the limbs, and the leaves, and the flowers and everything, it dies and it goes into soil and it goes down, but it slips down through the cracks. And as the tectonic plates move and mountains move, you don’t see it, but over millions of years these plant-based materials have worked their way down into the granite, and the granite has been down there, you know, it heats up in the summer and it gets cold in the winter but it keeps moving. That movement is like it’s been stirring it in these cracks of granite. On hot summer days this stuff will ooze out the side of this granite formations, and this stuff could be in there millions of years. So, what we do, oh not me, but what people do is they’ll go scrape that stuff off and then our lab or the source that we get it from will then clean it, which is very important because it needs to be cleaned, because there could also be heavy metals in it. This is very important when people are consuming fulvics and humics that they're getting a clean source. So I don’t want heavy metals. I try to educate everybody about them and get them out because of all the 5G and the stuff going on, because we turn into radiation zappers when we have all that stuff in us, so we want to get that heavy metals out. So, what you basically have is every element in the elemental chart in this formula. So, you’re getting everything. It’s all there. [02:02:13] Ashley James: Love it. And before people go, “Oh that sounds like tinfoil hat,” what Tim just said, Dr. Klinghardt, he takes children who are non-verbal, who are displaying symptoms of autism. Let’s say they’ve been told they have autism but let’s pretend they don’t and it was a misdiagnosis because they're beating their heads against the wall, they're non-verbal children. If you didn’t know what autism was and you look at these kids, you’d say they have fire ants crawling in their head, that they look like they're in pain. Dr. Klinghardt will take them and put them on as natural as possible chelation for heavy metals. He’ll get them drinking these green drinks like with herbs to help the body. Maybe he’ll get them on homeopathy to help with the chelation. In really, really, really rough cases, he’ll have to use a pharmaceutical chelator, but most of the time, he does it naturally. And I talk about that, you can listen to that interview with Dr. Klinghardt, where he goes through his process of how he does heavy metal detox. But he gets these kids who are beating their heads against the wall, non-verbal, they don’t show affection, they don’t show love, they don’t make eye contact, and he gets them where they are communicating and essentially look like different children. They’re hugging their parents, they're saying “I love you”, they’re playing, they’re making eye contact, they're no longer in pain. Because he’s been doing this for over 40 years, he goes “I have children who came to me like this and now they're PhDs. One of them is a famous composer.” He says this was heavy metal toxicity in the brain. [02:03:59] Tim James: Totally.  [02:04:01] Ashley James: The first thing he does is he says get your children away from electromagnetic radiation and turn off the WI-FI. He explains that WI-FI resonates at a certain Hertz that vibrates the heavy metals in these children’s brains, basically making their brain feel as if it’s in a microwave cooking. So, the parents have to take their kid and move somewhere where there’s no WI-FI. If you’re going to have a computer and internet, you just have to hardwire it. And it’s just their entire nervous system calms down from that.  [02:04:36] Tim James: Well, let’s be clear on this. A microwave is 2.4 GHz. If you have a smart meter installed outside your home and your neighbors do too, that’s 2.4 GHz. It’s the same as a microwave. So, you literally are cooking your brain regardless and if there’s heavy metals in there, it’s exponentially worse. So, folics and humics are very important. [02:05:01] Ashley James: Right. As crazy this sounds, these doctors like Dr. Klinghardt and also like Tim who’s been doing this and uncovering this—Tim, you’ve got a great podcast, you definitely want to make sure we plug it and we’re going to have the link to it in the show notes of the podcast here. But the doctors who are uncovering it are getting results because they get the heavy metals out, they get the kids away from the WI-FI, the smart meters, the EMFs, and they get better. So, I’m all about the results. I know this sounds crazy. It sounds just nutty. “Oh 5G, that’s something a conspiracy theorist will say.” Well, how about you take these children who are incredibly sick, get them away from these frequencies and watch what happens. [02:05:44] Tim James: Well, 5G is right below military-grade weaponry as far as the frequency goes. Just go look it up. I had some clients on. I had Dan and Ashley Claxton on my show. It was episode… I think it was in the 80’s or something. He’s a K9 policeman. His wife is ah airdresser. They had a son, raised him up normal and everything. Got the next son, got a new kid. Well they have to say it, but the son got jabbed and then all of a sudden, he lost eye contact and became autistic. After 3 ½ years of hell, as they put it, people can go listen to the episode, they finally decided to take the reins and figure it out because it was creating a tremendous amount of stress on the older child, because this kid will bang his head on the concrete and just go nuts. Up until that point, he wasn’t totally normal and they said there’s nothing you can do about it, you just live with it. And so, 3 ½ years of hell. Finally, this guy listens to a lot of podcasts. He learned that it could help to get his son off of dairy, so they got him off of dairy products. And that helped a little bit. Then they learned that you want to get him a good probiotic. So, they did that and that helped a little bit. And then they found out that you could put him on a good quality CBD. They did that and that helped a little bit.  Then he was listening to a podcast and he said that it’s the heavy metals that are in the environment and in the jabs that can cause this. What you just said. Too much heavy metals go in the brain. He was already a client of mine. He was already taking our toxin detox product. So, he started all this research and he found all these different ingredients that help pull heavy metals out of the body. All of them were in our product. So, he was already taking and he’s like, well, he did this on his own, didn’t contact us or nothing, and instead of giving him 3 capsules which is the normal dose for an adult, he gave his son 1. His son, he only spoke two words up to this point. Within 30 days, his son started talking again and six months later, they said they had their son completely back. What they did was is they stacked and I was like “whoa!” because everything he was writing off is like protocols we’ve learned for autism. Get him off of dairy. Oh, get him off of wheat too. One of them was get off of wheat. Obviously, wheat and dairy is just for everybody, just get off that crap. Get off of wheat, get off of dairy, high quality CBD, good bacteria, start working on the probiotics and that kind of stuff, and then start chelating. The foot spas like with Kellyanne, toxin detox, eating cilantro, all the things that you can do to get heavy metals out of the body and then stop putting them in. And people are getting results. I was just like, “Hey Dan, would you and Ashley like to come on and do this show with me?” I’ve tried many times to have parents that we’ve worked with that have helped with autism, but nobody wants to do it because they’re scared. And he’s like, “Yeah, we’ll do it.” So they came on and they told their story. So this isn’t like woo-woo stuff. We actually have real-life examples of people recorded on tape that actually they're just working-class people like Ashley and me that have figured out what we’re figuring out and what you’re figuring out, and then they just went and applied it and tried and see if it worked for them, and a lot of them are getting good results. That’s what we’re about. We’re just about like, hey, it might sound really simple, but it’s kind of working. Why does everything have to be so damn complicated? And you don’t have to get into the level of beta-glucans and knowing all this crap if you don’t want to. You can just like, “Okay, that sounds good, I’ll try it out.” And if it works for you, keep doing it and then maybe add something else in and just kind of keep gleaning information off from shows like this and if something resonates with you, the most important thing to do is just go take action and see if it works. Then, you’ll have your own first-person experience. It won’t matter what I say or what some doctor says or what Ashley says. You’re going to know in your heart and your soul, “Hey, this works for me. I’m going to keep doing this.” Or, “Didn’t work for me, I won’t do that and I’ll try something else.” Having a can-do attitude is very important instead of like “Well, I can’t do this and I can’t do that.” It’s like no, we’re going to figure it out, I’m making my health a priority, I’m tired of waking up and not feeling good, whatever, I want better relationships, I want more finance, I want better health. You can have all of that. You just have to put yourself as a priority and start loving yourself, and all that stuff can fall into place for you. [02:10:20] Ashley James: Yeah, I love that. Be willing to turn over every stone. Be willing to try new things. Be willing to try, give it an honest try. There is this mom, an amazing video. And she’s something like a PhD or doctor or something, and her daughter was nonverbal. She started with, like you said, “Oh, probiotics, good.” Started with probiotics, did no dairy, no gluten, that kind of thing. She was doing all this stuff. Then, she came across some research and her daughter was still having issues. She went from no eyesight and just no communication at all. To be able to communicate, she’d have these tantrums that would be two hours long like, again, the brain on fire. Then she came across some research about… you know monosodium glutamate, right? MSG is hidden in food. You’ve got to know there’s dozens of different ways they say it. Like they’ll say natural flavoring and that actually means MSG. Well, what she found out was that the glutamate in some people gets built up kind of like heavy metals in some people gets built up, whereas other people, maybe because of MTHFR or maybe because of how their liver works or isn’t working great. Some people can clear heavy metals based on just the regular everyday stressors of it being in your food and it being in the air and the water. And some people can’t, so it builds up in their body. Well, glutamate is another one of those things where if you eat lots of grains especially gluten grains, you can get high levels of glutamate if you eat lots of processed food. There’s hidden MSG in all these foods. So, she went on this Sherlock Holmes for food and found all the different sources of glutamate and gave her daughter. Typically, these children are also incredibly picky, so she had to dial that in. But she was able to get glutamate incredibly low in her daughter’s diet. And now, her daughter is just like any other kid, just laughing and communicating and looking in everyone’s eye and just happy and living a normal life not in pain. Not in that agony and that discomfort and the constant inner turmoil that you could see she was going through. So, the Frankenfoods that are out there disguised as regular food, processed food, it’s hijacking our nervous system. We have to be aware of that. So, we talked about that, just getting back to eating down on the food chain. Like, eat the nuts and seeds, the gluten-free grains, like the grains that are naturally… So, don’t eat barley, wheat rye and in some cases, oats because oats contain gliadin, which is very similar. Make sure you buy organic. Look into eating as much plants as possible, but learn from Tim. Know when to cook them and when to eat them raw. I didn’t know that about raw onions, and I’m excited to add some raw onions to my diet to get those benefits. [02:13:30] Tim James: Just make sure to definitely eat some too; otherwise, you might have a hard time getting kisses. [02:13:36] Ashley James: Oh, I don’t have a hard time. [02:13:39] Tim James: You’re going to have onion breath. [02:13:40] Ashley James: Yeah. I could eat raw garlic and he’d still come after me. I love that man. [02:13:45] Tim James: That’s awesome.  [02:13:48] Ashley James: He’s something else. I’m blessed. I’m blessed in many ways and I want to pass this blessing on to the listeners by sharing this information and continuing to get this information out there. So, we’re going to keep uncovering with every interview, especially with Tim, but with every interview we do, we’re uncovering these steps so we can take away today to gain better health. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing just your wealth of knowledge. We’re definitely going to have you back. I want to kind of uncover each and every product that you’ve made because you’ve made it with some intentionality. There’s so much behind it. There’s so much science behind it. There’s a need that’s filling and I want to be able to go through and learn from you and learn about each product. So, I can’t wait to have you back. But thank you for sharing about the mushroom tincture that’s made such a big difference in my life and in my husband’s life. Like he’s never dreamed in color and remember them.  [02:14:47] Tim James: That’s cool. [02:14:48] Ashley James: He’s having this whole world. He’s in his 50’s and he’s now for the first time ever just experiencing what dreams are like. That’s just amazing. I love dreaming. I love waking up and be like, wow! Like Alice in Wonderland for the last 8 hours or whatever. I love dreaming. And he never had that until your tincture. It’s just so cool. Listeners can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/mushrooms and check it out. Tim, thank you so much for coming on the show. Why don’t you plug your podcast and make sure that listeners check it out? [02:15:19] Tim James: Sure. Well, I just want to say this has been really a new experience for me because normally when people have me on, they want me to tell my story or go over a specific topic. I usually don’t really get into the products that deep at all because number one, everybody’s trying to sell everybody something and I don’t want to come across as some salesperson. But it was really fun to be able to actually do a deep dive and completely geek out or share everything I’ve been geeking out on. It’s like this is why I built this product and this is what we found out, and these are all these side benefits that are happening for people. And just giving a really deep dive on one product, I never got to do this before. So, I just want to thank you. Maybe it’s more understandable for people just the level of why this stuff works so good and why we have a double your money back guarantee because I already know based on system science that I’ve got a 98 percent chance it’s going to work really well. My podcast is called the Health Hero Show. It’s on all the major platforms. I don’t have as many episodes as Ashley, but we’re about 130 out the door so far at this point in time. Who knows when people are going to be listening to this. But I had a lot of fun with it. I do solo episodes and I also have guests on like Ashley and other cool people that are getting results in their life or maybe they got a really cool product or a system they put together and just trying to share things that I have incorporated in my life for the benefit of me or benefit of others. It’s just a similar mission to what you’ve got going on, Ashley, and I just appreciate you letting me get this information out to more people. [02:17:06] Ashley James: Absolutely. And I love telling your story. Especially when I come across, like I’ll be talking to one of the husbands of my friends, I’m like, oh, you need to listen to, if there’s one interview you’re ever going to listen to, it’s episode 442 with Tim James. Because you started off as that typical American cowboy kind of just meat and potatoes and then you went on to this journey. And the amount of mom friends that I have, they're like “Oh, I wish my husband would get on board or I wish my husband would choose to eat healthy or I just wish he would, you know, he has his health issues but he says his fine.” I’m like, “Oh just one episode. Just one. Just get the stubborn man to listen to episode 442.” Because even just 30 minutes of listening, 30 minutes in, they’ll be hooked. Listening to Tim’s story, they’ll be hooked. Listeners definitely want to go back and check that out. Of course, the links to everything that we talked about today is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. Tim, thank you so much. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview? [02:18:11] Tim James: Same stuff I always say, which is put yourself first and lead by example. and be your own doctor and learn how to heal. and wake up and feel good. It’s your birthright. Creation doesn’t make mistakes. So if you’re here, unless you think that you’re going to doubt creation, then you have a purpose; otherwise, you wouldn’t be part of all that is. So, you’re here. Even if you might be a down state or you’re not feeling good with your health or whatever, and maybe you came here to try to glean some stuff to feel better, just understand that you have a purpose and we need you to be fully activated and doing whatever that is. Whatever brings you the most joy and excitement, you should be doing that. And the more that we do that, the more synchronicities that will start happening in your life and in my life and in Ashley’s life as more and more life raise their consciousness and do what brings them the most excitement. So, thanks again for having me and I appreciate it. And I appreciate the listeners for taking time to listen to this show.  [02:19:12] Ashley James: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Tim. I can’t wait to have you back on. I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Tim James. Isn’t he amazing? If you haven’t already, go back to episode 442 and check out his story. He tells such a good story of his life and his health transformation. And he was one of those guys and you know those guys, maybe you used to be one of those guys, but he was one of those guys who like would not eat a vegetable. He would not even look at a vegetable. They thought salsa on their chips out of a jar was a vegetable. He was one of those guys. And now, he is a raw and living foods, sprouted foods, vegan chef and supplement formulator and health coach and just all the different things that he does to help people to get on the other side of major health issues. I absolutely love his mission. It’s so on par with me and I resonate so much with everything he does. I just think it’s so funny that the two of us, I feel like we're just twins, it’s so great. So if you love my show, I know you’ll definitely love listening to his show and you should absolutely go check it out. Of course, the links to everything are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com. But if you’re driving and you just want to remember the link really quick, go to LearnTrueHealth.com/mushrooms or mushroom. Go to LearnTrueHealth.com/mushroom and it’s going to take you straight to check out the MultiShroom tincture which we talked about in the last 2+ hours. This very medicinal tincture, not psychedelic, although the name “shroom” is in it, so some people think that’s what it is. But not, it’s not psychedelic but it does have fantastic health benefits that are noticeable. So that’s LearnTrueHealth.com/mushroom. If you want to check out Tim’s drink that I love drinking, and my husband and I, we drink it all the time, it is called Green 85. It has 85 superfoods in there and it’s like fresh squeezed juice practically. My body just buzzes when I drink it. If you want to try that, it’s great as I wouldn’t say a meal replacement, but if you just need to take the edge off, like you’re hungry but you’re super busy and you don’t want to do something bad for you, you want to do something good for you, drink it. I do 2 scoops in a 32-ounce mason jar, I have a special lid. I can link it if you want. I’ll link it in the Facebook group. Actually, I should link it in the Facebook group. I love drinking out of glass instead of plastic or metal. So, we’ve got into the habit a few years ago of drinking out of mason jars. It’s funny once in a while, I’ll bump into someone else that drinks out of mason jars. We’ll be out in public, I’ll be carrying my mason jar and someone else will be carrying their mason jar and we cheers each other, “Hey, mason jar drinkers!” But yeah, we just put two scoops in a big mason jar and sip on it for an hour or so and it gets us through our day. Today, I didn’t even eat breakfast. I just got super busy. I just drink my green juice and I think it was about 2 PM that I made this huge salad, I’m going to post it on Instagram. It’s super delicious. Actually, I was inspired by Tim talking about raw onions and I’m sitting here going, I really don’t like eating raw onions, but I remember I blended them before and made really good salad dressings. So, I ran downstairs, I cut up half an onion, put it in the Vitamix with about a quarter of a cucumber, some Italian seasoning and then the brine from my homemade live, cultured, fermented pickles, and I put that in there. I don’t know, I just splash in there and then I blended it and I put that over a bunch of greens with some avocado. It was so good. My husband and I both went back for seconds because I made this big bowl. We each ate a bowl and then he looks to me and he goes, “Do you want some more?” kind of like if there’s any left, can I have the rest of it. It was that good. So then we fought over the leftovers. That was super delicious. Yeah, that was 2 PM. I was like, wow, I was not hungry all day. I just had a big thing of the green juice and I got busy in my day. I drink water, I drink my green juice. So even though I don’t consider it necessarily a meal replacement, it definitely just took the hunger away and gave me lots of energy and I kept moving on with my day until I was able to prepare a healthy meal. So if that’s what you’re looking for, you should definitely check it out. Of course, we talk more about it in episode 442, which you can find by going to LearnTrueHealth.com and searching Tim James or just like Googling his name, internet searching his name, Tim James in the Learn True Health podcast. Then yeah, if you want to check out the drink, go to LearnTrueHealth.com/green85. Yeah, check it out. He also has a double your money back guarantee which he briefly mentioned and we didn’t really get into it, but you should read his double your money back guarantee. I’ve never seen a company do this. I’ve never seen a company so boldly stand behind their products that they will give you your money back and then double that, double the amount of money. So they give you all the money you paid and then again, they give you it again. Like here, we believe in it so much that we will give you not only the money you spend, but twice the money you spend, which blows my mind. That also goes to show that he has a very low return rate, which for me, the proof is in the pudding. So people try it and if they love it, they keep drinking it. If a bunch of people didn’t like it and asked double their money back, he had been already out of business. So for me, that’s a no-brainer. I love his ethics. I love the quality of his products and that’s why I love sharing it because I believe in it, I take it myself. And I think it might help you too, so you should give it a try. LearnTrueHealth.com/mushroom and LearnTrueHealth.com/green85 – check out his two products. Let me know what you think. Come join the Learn True Health Facebook group. Just search Learn True Health in Facebook or you can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/group, come join the group. We’d love to see you there. We’d love to chat. Our fantastic listeners are in there chatting with each other, chatting with me, we’re all just helping each other and getting great advice, great input, great insights. I learn things all the time from you guys and I share my knowledge with you. There’s just a lot of love going around in that group. So, come join it. Awesome. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. This is a mission to help people to get so healthy that they no longer have to suffer. Suffering should be optional, especially when it comes to health, and we can help each other to learn true health. Thank you so much and enjoy the rest of your day. Go out there and figure out how to get some raw onions into your diet and some delicious mushrooms. Get Connected with Tim James!   Website Podcast Facebook Instagram Twitter   Recommended Readings by Tim James   Supplements Exposed – Dr. Brian Clement Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle    

Check out the inventions that Eileen talks about in this interview: https://www.learntruehealth.com/ozone For the coffee enema: https://www.learntruehealth.com/enema At Home Ozone Therapy for Immune & Mitochondrial Health, Eileen Durfee https://www.learntruehealth.com/at-home-ozone-therapy-for-immune-mitochondrial-health-eileen-durfee Highlights: Silver amalgam fillings and mercury Toxicity What ozone is Types of ozone generators Ozonated water and its many applications Glutathione Coffee enemas If you’re looking to detox your body, try incorporating ozonated water into your daily intake. In this episode, Eileen Durfee discusses a host of benefits and uses for ozonated water. Get your energy back, feel healthy, and discover how it can help you on many different levels. Plus, Eileen’s got a treat for you, guys! Listen to this podcast, learn something new, and get an exclusive discount code for her ozone generator and other products. Intro: Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. Today, we have a mind-blowing episode. A former nuclear powerplant engineer needed to become a health inventor in order to save her life and heal her body, and in doing so, has created some amazing inventions, which we talk about today on the show, and has gone on to save many people’s lives and improve the quality of life for everyone. After I did this interview, I came to the realization that every single household should have this device — that is that important. It’s like everyone should have a water filter, everyone should have an air filter. Those are important things. Everyone should have access to a furnace if they're living in an area that gets a cold climate, sort of like essentials, a hot water tank in your house. These things we take for granted. We think that it’s standard to come in a house, and I think her invention should be standard in everyone’s home that it would prevent so much illness and increase health dramatically. Just one thing. There’s over 10 things that this device does for you. But the one thing is that it kills infections in the teeth, so it stops cavities before they become cavities. And if you use it every day just like a mouthwash, so you just rinse with it and you could spit it out or swallow, it prevents cavities. In fact, dentists use this, a holistic dentist uses this to even treat cavities instead of having to do a lot of drilling and filling with God-knows-what. Some dentists are actually still using metal amalgams which are so detrimental to our health. If you’ve been a long-time listener, you’ve heard of a lot of our holistic doctors talk about the importance of preventing, not using amalgams, metal amalgams, or mercury amalgams. Just who in the right mind thought it was safe to put mercury in the body that would live in your body for the rest of your life. Like, who said “Oh, well, I know mercury is dangerous, but let’s shove it in someone’s mouth”? Like, who does that? This is just such a crazy toxic world we live in, and common sense is not common. That’s why you’re listening to this show. We have to be the outliers. One in three people in the United States have pre-diabetes or diabetic or have heart disease. It is so common. And 1 in 3 to 1 in 4, depending on whether you’re male or female, will have a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime. If you’re in a room with three or four people, one of you is going to have cancer. One of you already has heart disease. One of you has pre-diabetes or is diabetic. And one of you is obese. And I love you all, and I don’t want you to suffer and suffer. You should not have to suffer this way. But we have bowed down to the altar of modern medicine, which is Orwellian. I’m going to put my tin foil hat on. So everyone, get your origami tin foil hat for a moment. George Orwell back in, you know, wrote the book in 1984, right? He talks about how everything is the opposite, right? If you call it healthcare, people will think it’s good. But really, look at our system, look at the state of health our country is in. Is this healthcare? Is this really healthcare or is this disease management where we’re waiting to get sick and then get on a drug that gives us more symptoms and puts more stressors on the body? Now, I believe that allopathic drug-based medicine has its places. Amazing in emergency care. But if you’re listening to this show, you probably have one or more chronic conditions, and you don’t feel good and you want to feel better and you want to get healthier. So, we need to go outside the box of “modern medicine”, right? We need to go to holistic medicine, which is science-based. But what it does, instead of saying “what drug can I give you,” it says “what can I give your body so your body can heal itself.”  So, today’s interview is about exactly this. What can we give our body to help our body heal itself? And sometimes, we need to lean on the latest in science and technology in the holistic space to be able to prevent infections like tooth cavities. Can you imagine if you had a machine for your whole family, all you had to do is slosh water in your mouth once or twice a day? And this kind of supercharged mouthwash was only discriminatory to the bad bacteria. And it had no ill health effects. It’s not a chemical, there are ill health effects. And your entire family, as long as you used it, would never have cavities. Do you know how much money you’d save? I have a friend who has three boys and all three of them, she’s constantly taking them to the dentist. It is costing her just crazy amounts of money to treat her sons’ constant tooth decay. Some people, no matter how they eat, they have this. And my holistic dentist says it has more to do with the microbiome of the mouth. So, if we can balance the microbiome of the mouth, we can support not only our digestion, and as you listened to in a recent previous episode, we can support the cardiovascular system because the good bacteria in the mouth digest our food and creates nitric oxide, which is needed for heart health. So, if we take just regular Listerine or regular mouthwash, we're actually killing and wiping away all the good bacteria along with the bad. And that ends up increasing heart disease, which this doctor I’d interviewed before on nitric oxide, talked about those studies. So, here we have a guest today who’s going to teach us what we can do in our home to increase our liver function, our detox, increase glutathione, increase superoxide dismutase, and it naturally kills and goes after infected tissue and sick tissue, but it does not damage the healthy tissue and the healthy bacteria. One of those machines I think is actually quite affordable. There’s two machines; there’s like an at-home one of them and there’s like a professional one that large industries are using. The professional one is totally affordable, which I was really excited. I was surprised. When I went on their website, I was expecting it to be thousands of dollars. I’m like, “This is only a few hundred dollars. What?” So, I was really excited to see that. This is something we can all use to prevent so much illness but also support our body’s ability to heal itself. So, strap yourselves in, and enjoy today’s show. Please share this with a friend of yours who is struggling with dental issues or detox issues because this episode is really going to help them. Awesome. Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. Together, we’re going to help our friends and family and those we care about to learn true health and create true health. Awesome. Have yourself a fantastic day, and enjoy today’s interview!  Oh, and one last thing before I forget. She’s giving us a discount – a coupon code. I asked her, “Could you please give my listeners a discount?” So, the coupon code is LTH which is I’m just so grateful that she’s giving us a discount. And you can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/ozone. That’s LearnTrueHealth.com/ozone and use coupon code “LTH”. The other thing we talked about, she’s an engineer so she’s invented some amazing stuff to help her save her life, which we’ll talk about in the interview. But the other link is LearnTrueHealth.com/enema where you can do coffee enemas and ozone enemas and other kinds of enemas, and we get into that a bit.  And we’ve talked about it. Dr. Patrick Vickers. You can listen to my previous episode with him. He has a cancer clinic where people go to do the Gerson therapy method and they reverse their cancer. And coffee enemas are essential as part of the protocol because it supports the liver’s detox and also it makes the liver produce a lot of glutathione which is our master antioxidant.  So, for those who are excited after hearing Dr. Patrick Vickers’ interview and wanting to know more about coffee enemas, she invented a no-mess, there’s zero mess, easy, easy, easy enema system that makes it super easy to do it without all the mess and the weird stuff. So, check that out. You can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/enema. That’s LearnTrueHealth.com/enema. And the links, of course, are going to be in the show notes on today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com and any podcast directory, wherever you’re listening from, go to the show notes in there, and you’ll see those links. LearnTrueHealth.com/ozone and LearnTrueHealth.com/enema, and make sure you use the coupon code “LTH” when you’re going to LearnTrueHealth.com/ozone. Have yourself a fantastic day and enjoy today’s interview! [00:09:39] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 484. I am so excited for today’s guest. We have on with us the master of health recovery, anti-aging, get our bodies to a point where we’re feeling amazing and looking 10 years younger. I’m chomping at the bit. I can’t wait to get in and dive in. We’ve got about 10 topics I want to cover, but we're going to do one at a time.  Eileen Durfee, it’s so wonderful having you on the show. You’re covering things that I’ve been wanting to cover for years and today, we’re going to talk about ozone. But I want to have you back on the show to dive into very simple ways that we can detox like you have simplified coffee enemas to maximize the benefits without all the mess. And you’ve got a way to increase oxygen and immunity, to help with increasing nutrition and detoxification through our skincare. The list goes on and on. I’m so excited to have you on the show. Welcome! [00:10:54] Eileen Durfee: Well, thank you, Ashley. It’s a pleasure. [00:10:56] Ashley James: And you were saying before we have recorded, you said, “You should have seen a picture of me 10 years ago.” And I got to see you, we were on video together, and I got to see. You’re gorgeous, of course. But in the last 10 years, you have actually shed 10 years instead of looked 10 years older. You look 10 years younger. You could do like the 10-year challenge on social media and people would get it wrong. Unless if they knew you, they’d get it right. But people who didn’t know you would be like, “Wait a second. These are like 20-year-old, not 10-year-old challenge,” because you’ve actually lost 10 years when you’re 10 years older. So, let’s just dive right into your story. What was going on with your health in your life that had you dig deep and discover how to restore the body and how to nurture the body to where it is getting healthier and healthier and looking younger and younger as you age? [00:11:53] Eileen Durfee: Well, unfortunately, I’ve been sick my whole life. I’m 60 years old, and it started when the doctor ripped me out of my mom with forceps. Then as I started walking, my hips were twisted. The doctors x-rayed me and said, “She doesn’t have any abnormalities,” but I had to wear special shoes because one knee banged into the other knee. I was in pain all the time. I grew 9 inches in three months in the summer of the eighth grade. Then, I was run over by a car in a parking lot. It was like daggers being stabbed in my chest every time I took a breath. I couldn’t raise my arms, just very painful. Then, when I was 19 years old, I got a silver amalgam filling in my mouth. And that was the downfall. I mean, became allergic to everything, was having hives all over my body, had psoriasis. My hair started falling out. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t remember anything. So, I started going down this rabbit hole. I mean, they had me on antihistamines which made me tired.  Then, I started having problems with candida and cystitis, and they had me on antibiotics constantly. Then, I became allergic to every antibiotic and I didn’t find out until the mid-'80s from a doctor in Kansas that was going to do some allergy testing. He said, “Oh! You have leaky gut and candida. So, I went on nystatin and ketoconazole, drugs of course that keep that somewhat in check but do damage as well. And I just couldn’t accept the fact that my body had to have all this medication. So, I started reading and learning and trying a variety of things where I was my own guinea pig. I did the Bernard Jensen, you know, Tissue Cleansing Through Bowel Management, where it’s colonics. I ate paleo before paleo existed. I did the avoidance where I wouldn’t eat the same thing within 72 hours or I’d become allergic to it. I would do the pulse test so I could tell if I became allergic to something because I had to carry an EpiPen, my lungs would close up. I had to crawl around because my feet were so swollen from hives. And it was very miserable – very miserable to say the least.  And so, I started all kinds of things. I even got into electronic equipment, Rife machines, the multiple wave oscillator that was developed by a French man named Lakhovsky. He was friends with Nikola Tesla who helped him develop that. And, you know, the Hulda Clark zappers and just everything, the Bob Beck pulsers and zappers, and pulsed electromagnetic frequency machines. I must have had $50,000 invested in all these machines. And I was much better. But it took about an hour and a half a day to do my zapping, I called it. One day, I was reading about hair analysis. So, it was just one more thing that I was going to try and that was the turning point in changing my life. But I had been through so much pain and suffering that it did, it caused me to dig deep. Not all hair analyses are created equal by the way, but the one that I chose, they don’t wash the hair at the lavatory because if you do, it takes away those water-soluble minerals, so the readings are not accurate. But I went on a diet. I was pretty about 80 percent on the recommended diet and then the supplements. Now, lo and behold, I found out that some of the supplements that I was chasing my symptoms and medicating for the constipation, for not sleeping and all that, were further suppressing my adrenal gland and my thyroid gland and actually causing the joint pain that had been increasing. So, it’s really kind of like Russian roulette when you start a supplement regimen because the wellness revolution does not look at the table of elements charts and how like, for instance, zinc lowers sodium and raises potassium, magnesium lowers sodium. The body is just like a plant. The farmers, for instance, to pick out what kind of fertilizer, they do a soil test and they don’t put nitrogen on the soil to raise nitrogen in the plant. With COVID, everybody’s going, oh yeah, zinc, let’s take zinc. Well, nitrogen releases calcium bioavailability in the tissues. Likewise, when we take any vitamin or mineral, it has this give and take where you move one, they all move. So, if somebody already has, for instance, too low of sodium in comparison to potassium and you’re taking excessive amounts of zinc, then they can actually become very susceptible to chronic infections. So, that was amazing. I started feeling my anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia, and all these things were improving. I found myself not having to go sit in that multiple wave oscillator for 30 minutes to be pain-free. I could go days and even weeks without it. So, I was just amazed. Then they said, “Oh, get a retest,” and I thought, I’m feeling good, I’m not going to get a retest. Then after five months of taking those same supplements, almost all my symptoms came back and I’m going, what the heck? So, I did a retest, and the only change was instead of taking two tablets of this one supplement three times a day, we only want you to take one three times a day. You wouldn’t think that would be much of a change, right? Well, all the symptoms within three days went away and gone, and then I was horrified. It’s like these cupboards full of vitamins that I was using. What did I do to myself? But the interesting thing, how all my inventions and all these things that I’ve created since then was because when your body has the right minerals and the cells at the cell level, these ratios, these homeostatic balances, that certain things can flow and happen, it will freely give up junk that it’s been using to survive. Like, the body will use aluminum for magnesium or cadmium for zinc, but those are very toxic. So, this process removed the reason why I had to be a jalopy, why I had to use a junkyard part like duct tape and baling wire to get from point A to point B.  My body freely gave all that up and if anybody goes on a cleanse, everybody gets warned about, oh man, you can have Herxheimer reaction, you’re going to feel terrible, you know, you just got to tough through it. Well, that would happen. Your body would think it won the lottery and it would get rid of all these toxins. And so, there’s detoxification protocols that you can do to speed up that, get that, because it leaves the organs and tissues then it travels in the bloodstream. When it’s in the bloodstream, if you have insomnia, you might have worse insomnia. Then people give up. But that’s not what I did because I knew that I had to get it out, I had to get the preferred minerals in my cells for me to be like a new car with new car parts. So, I upped the things I was doing to help my body escort poisons out like jumping out of a trampoline, dry skin brushing, drinking ozonated water which we’re going to talk about today, and doing near infrared sauna therapy. Just all these things to help the body.  It’s just been kind of a journey because I was a former nuclear powerplant engineer, auditor, and trainer who then went into real estate development, and I designed and built houses and ran construction crews, managed non-profit organizations. When I started regaining my health and just had this passion and desire to share what worked for me, I started my business in 2010. [00:21:39] Ashley James: I love it. When you were working in the nuclear power plant, were you exposed to anything? Do you feel like your health deteriorated in that environment? [00:21:52] Eileen Durfee: I believe it deteriorated in that environment a lot of times because you worked 6-7 days a week, 12 hours a day, so the massive amount of stress. But also back then, when they were welding and when they were doing all these kinds of stuff, they didn’t give us fresh air or oxygen hoods or protect the workers like they do now. They really weren’t up on that. So, there was lot of exposure during those times to all sorts of chemicals and fumes. That was right about the time when I got the silver amalgam filling and it was just all downhill from there. Long working hours, stressing out the adrenal glands, then you’re going to be more susceptible to accumulating toxins. See, if your endocrine system converts your food into energy pretty efficiently, then the body is going to be less likely to use the junk that it’s exposed to. So yes, that was the downfall. [00:23:09] Ashley James: You had mentioned that the body when it’s missing nutrients, so the body needs the 90+ essential nutrients, the body needs to build the 37.2 trillion cells in your body, and if you’re not getting enough of one nutrient, like you said, it’ll use duct tape, it’ll use something that is not a great alternative. But it’s better than not being able to produce any cells anyway, right? We don’t see people just dropping dead of a vitamin C deficiency. The body kind of chugs along and it starts to develop symptoms.  So, maybe your gums bleed every time you brush your teeth when you spit out and after you brush your teeth, it’s pink. You have a vitamin C deficiency and you could have other deficiencies along with that because people don’t normally have just one. It’s a pack. They travel in packs. Nutrients are like wolves. You don’t find them alone; they travel in packs. Because there are co-factors and we don’t eat single nutrients. When we eat a meal, it either has like very little nutrients because it’s junk food or highly processed food. But if you’re eating, let’s say, a beautiful salad that you grew yourself, that’s got all those wonderful enzymes, it’s got wonderful vitamins. If you have mineral-rich soil, it has wonderful minerals in it that have been digested by the plant so they are colloidal and your body is able to assimilate it assuming that you don’t have digestive issues and absorption issues. But when we are deficient in certain nutrients, the body’s going to look to try to put the body together. You mentioned a few. Ones that I’ve heard so often are the halogens. Like, there’s fluoride in our water and our body will use that in place of like chlorine or chloride in water I think it is. We’ll use it in place of the healthier ones. Is there any other sort of replacement ones that you can talk about or touch on just how deficient we are and how out of balance we are when we just go around eating a bunch of processed food? In our past, we did a lot of processed food eating before we realized that we really needed to focus on foods that contained nutrients. [00:25:31] Eileen Durfee: Even organic food grown today, I read a study comparing minerals. Yeah, I didn’t have the pesticides or herbicides on it. It wasn’t genetically modified. But it really didn’t have the nutrient values of food grown in like the 1920s. I mean, the USDA even says that our foods supplied today have 40 percent less nutrients in it. So when your body doesn’t have the nutrients it needs being a mineral or vitamins or what have you, it has to do something, and that’s called an adaptation. Because it’s like the key to the front door isn’t there so it has to go around to the backyard, climb up a ladder and break in a window. Why are we all fatigued? Because we have so many darn adaptations going on. The body has a lot of pathways to accomplish the same thing. It’s like a backup of a backup of a backup. And every cell in the body has an enzyme-binding site. Enzymes don’t do anything new, but you can’t bat your eyelashes without enzymes. I mean, I do take digestive enzymes with my food, but if we had the right minerals and our body could get it to the cell-enzyme binding site, the cell would make enzymes for us, and then we’d be more energetic. It’s like the sparkplugs of life.  So, a common toxicity that I see, that I’d really like people educated on is mercury. Now, that’s the worst one, in my opinion, because mercury will substitute for selenium and our thyroid gland has more selenium than any organ in the body. Our thyroid can become dysfunctional because we have mercury, and it doesn’t let the cell function. Like cadmium, it almost is like drinking caffeine. It will cause the cell to work, but yeah, it makes it brittle and causes all these other diseases, but at least the cell is functioning, where mercury permanently disables, it distorts the enzyme-binding site or it goes alongside the cell and makes it impossible for the right mineral to get in the enzyme-binding site, so it’s just like a cell that’s there that can’t function. Mercury is so toxic and you would not believe how many people have high mercury in their hair, and they don’t have silver amalgam fillings. But they eat high amounts of fish. So, fish, you have to be really careful about sourcing the types of fish or getting ones that are certified not to have all that mercury because it is just so toxic. Now, I will eat, like, brisling is a species of sardines. Instead of just getting a can of sardines that any small fish can fit into, they’re half the size, the brisling species, and then they’ve got a lot of bioavailable calcium, good omega-3’s, and they taste good. But they don’t eat other fish and they don’t live very long, so they're not toxic. And likewise, I’ll always eat wild-caught fish, and I will do sockeye salmon. But other than that, if I’m eating halibut, bass, especially tuna, the mercury is so poisonous and it just gets in our body and does havoc. So, that’s one of the most problematic toxicities that I see in people. [00:29:36] Ashley James: Tony Robbins, many people know him. He was at one point homeless, and now he’s a billionaire. He is a motivational speaker. A wonderful guy. I’ve listened to his work for many, many, many years. Recently in the last few years, he almost died. He was kind of pushing himself. He was on stage though, because he’ll be on stage for 8-12 hours doing these really intense weekend workshops with people where there’s like 2000 people in a giant stadium. He was feeling sicker and sicker and sicker until he was collapsing. They tested him and they figured out that his mercury was in the deadly, deadly range.  Luckily, someone connected with him with a PhD. I’ve had him on the show. Chris Shade, PhD, who developed a type of mercury test that tested mercury and it’s three different forms in the body. Then they were able to get him on chelation and detox. They had to get it done very quickly. Chelation is not something for everyone because of how it often strips other minerals, it strips the body. But he was at the point where he needed immediate detox and emunctory support there. So, he has just become this huge advocate support for really being careful. Now, he’s a billionaire, he’s a biohacker. He eats impeccably clean. He does not eat out. He has a personal chef. He eats incredibly clean. And he thought it was safe to eat, I think it was swordfish three times a day. I think it was swordfish. It was one of those big fish. And he doesn’t have amalgams. He didn’t work in a mine. He hasn’t been exposed to mercury other than he ate fish a few times a week.  Now, people can just go out for sushi a few times a week or just go eat fish because they like fish or eat the Mediterranean diet a few times with fish a few times a week because they hear that’s healthy. They can develop incredibly scary toxic heavy metals and mercury in their body. And you might end up in the ER with all these crazy symptoms, that doesn’t necessarily mean the doctors will know what to look for because they’re not always thinking, “Oh, this must be a heavy metal problem, it must be mercury.” So, they’ll see that the thyroid is not working but they're not necessarily going to know that it’s mercury. That’s why we have to go to holistic doctors who are going to look at everything and understand the early warning signs. So, I love that you pointed this out. Now, we’re talking today about ozone, but I know that ozone helps us in this way and supports us within this realm. Ozone really changed my life. I had really, really bad long-haul COVID symptoms. I had muscle weakness. I had to take one stair at a time, like I would put my foot up and then pull the other leg up to that step and then put one foot up, and I was grabbing the railing, pulling my body up. I didn’t really understand that this muscle weakness was from long-haul COVID because at the same time, I had lost my daughter last year during childbirth and then got COVID really, really bad all at once. So, the recovery, here I was six months later still recovering, but I noticed the brain fog was so bad I couldn’t remember nouns. It was like pass the thing on the thing was how I would talk because my brain wasn’t functioning. And I thought, okay, this must be grief and then I realized, you know what, this is more than that. So, I went to a naturopath here that does ozone IV and we did one session. It was a three-hour session of ozone. They would take my blood, put some ozone in it and then put it back in me and they did that ten times, so it’s called a 10-Pass. When I walked up, because there’s a bunch of concrete steps going up into the clinic, it was the same thing, I had to walk one foot at a time. One foot and then bring that other foot up to the same step, so one step at a time going up into the clinic. Also in the place where I picked up Azure Standard, which is like this organic bulk food place, they ship direct to an area, and then you can pick it up instead of having to pay for shipping. So, I had two 25-pound bags of I can’t remember what it was, it was like lentils and brown rice or something. And when I was finished with my session, I was like, oh yeah, here let me pick up my order. I grabbed both bags and ran down the stairs, put it in my car, ran back up the stairs, and I nearly started crying. I’m like, my strength is back! My strength is back! My muscle weakness is gone. It’s like I got my body back. For about three days after, it’s like all the stress was gone and my body, I was in healing mode for three days straight. I was laughing with my son for the first time in six months. We were just having fun. We’re having like tickle fights. I was resting and sleeping deep. It was like my body finally let go of the stress and was in healing mode for three days straight.  It was amazing. Then, the doctor told me that ozone, one of the things it does is it helps heal the mitochondria, and so she was going on and on about all the wonderful things which I want you to get into today. Because not everyone can go find a naturopath that does ozone IV 10-Pass, but there are ways that we can use it in our homes and get the benefits of it. So, for me, I was so excited when I found out that you’re this expert on how to incorporate ozone at home safely and gain the benefits. Because for me, it helped me overcome something that I didn’t even know that that was as big of a problem as it was until I overcame it. I was like, wow, that’s such a huge difference. And I only needed one session. So, it didn’t come back; that muscle weakness didn’t come back. That brain fog didn’t come back. It was done, it was gone. Another thing is my friend had cervical cancer, and she went down to Mexico and had 7 or 10 sessions every day of ozone IV and in a week, in a cervical cancer had gone away and she raved about it. She said that the doctor down there says that it explodes all the microbes in the body, allowing the immune system to finally do its work because it doesn’t have to constantly fight off all the sort of dormant and the microbes that are hanging around, waiting to take hold. So, it takes all that stuff out of the body, allows the immune system to focus on what it needs to focus on. So, I’ve always been super curious about ozone and how it helps us on all these different levels. It’s not just one thing. It’s not just mitochondria. It’s not just microbes. It helps us in many ways. So, I’d love to go through and start learning all these different benefits. [00:37:11] Eileen Durfee: Sure. It was one of the first things that I started on the natural side of taking care of my health. I learned about drinking ozonated water back in the 1990s. And I had an ozone generator which is different than the ones used for ozonating blood or another treatment that they do with people is they’ll have bags of ozone gas that they put up direct down in the vagina, in the orifices of the body. Now, the type of ozone generator for those treatments must be fed with oxygen tanks, so that they’re ultra, ultra, ultrapure. But for water ozonators, a good affordable option is a Corona Discharge machine that uses ambient air as the source. Because we have about 15 to 20 percent oxygen in the air then nitrogen and with this Corona Discharge, it converts that into a strong ozone gas. Some people might not even know what ozone is, but it’s just three singlets, O1 + O1 + O1 of oxygen. Now, in nature, things that are in pairs, positive and negative, are strong and stable. But like with three O1 molecules, the two are great but that third one is like a third wheel, it’s going to break off real soon. And that is one of the two miracles of ozone gas, is the O1 breaks off and it’s got a high oxidation potential where Ashley referred to her doctor about killing the microbes or the pathogens.  The awesome thing about ozone oxidation, it’s not like an antibiotic where you create superbugs and they become resistant to it. It actually in the cell surface of the pathogen, it blows a hole and it oxidizes it, it destroys it, it breaks it down and it kills it. There is no mutating to survive oxidation. So, the miracle of ozone is its oxidation potential.  One molecule of ozone, we’ll talk in the form of dissolved ozone because the ozonators that we're going to talk about dissolve ozone gas into water, so it’s like a liquid that we can use. We can drink, we can clean with it. But one molecule of dissolved ozone in water is like up to 10,000 molecules of bleach. So, immediately, your mind should be thinking “I can’t drink bleach. How can I drink ozonated water if it’s even more powerful?” The answer is this: ozone is smart. In your body, healthy cells have an enzyme coating around them. So, ozone is selective. When you drink ozonated water or if you went to the doctor and they use the ozone in your blood or gave you ozone insufflation, that’s the gas like in the rectum or whatever, it does not destroy healthy cells. It will only attack the weak cells, the infected cells that don’t have that enzyme coating on them. Because every day, your body is making millions and millions of cells and recycling them. So, ozone whether you’re drinking it or getting your blood done or whatever modality of using ozone, it’s helping your body recycle those cells to build healthy cells. It’s anti-inflammatory. There’s all kinds of benefits of it. But one of the other benefits that’s not really commonly thought about is the oxygen levels in the body. So, there’s water allocation mechanisms in the body, there’s oxygen mechanisms to allocate oxygen in the body. Because our body to survive has this minimum of what we need to keep ourselves healthy and, unfortunately, with most of us being indoors where the climate is controlled, with heating, ventilation and air conditioning system that’s stripping oxygen, negative ions out of the air, so when we're indoors working, we're breathing less levels of oxygen. But also, if you’re not active, you know, they talk about the sitting disease, people are sitting and working too many hours that’s why our fitness reminders are telling us to get up and move so many steps every hour. So, with sedentary lives, we can have lower levels of oxygen.  The body actually allocates oxygen. It’s smart. It says okay, I’m going to protect the bone marrow over joint cartilage. I’m going to protect the brain over different other kinds of cells. So, cells actually when they don’t have enough oxygen lose the enzyme coating. And what that does is it makes the cell susceptible to infection by a pathogen. So, not only is the oxidation of ozone so fantastic that it’s going to help your body recycle those cells so they don’t go rouge into cancer or something like that, the byproduct after that O1 breaks off is, guess what, pure O2. Drinking ozonated water boosts your body’s oxygen levels, so then it can protect more cells to make sure they have the enzyme coating around them, so that your immune system is stronger. Another aspect. I guess there’s three things of ozonated water that are just absolutely phenomenal. It will be something if it only did one of them. We got two. Now, here’s the third bonus. The EPA, when there’s contaminated ground water, they drill wells and they have giant ozone generators and they inject ozonated water into the aquifer to break down heavy metals and pollutants. Now, think about it. How much of your body is water? [00:45:21] Ashley James: It’s 70 percent. [00:45:23] Eileen Durfee: That’s huge. So, here’s another benefit. By drinking ozonated water, you can help decontaminate the liquid toxins in your body. It’s just so amazing. I don’t know of anything that’s this powerful at all. [00:45:48] Ashley James: Can you dig in a little bit as to how ozone decontaminates? [00:45:55] Eileen Durfee: It’s through the oxidation again. If the cell doesn’t have the enzyme coating, it will break it down. But when it’s exposed to petrochemicals and hydrocarbons and just all these different chemicals, because everything is just about the number of electrons spinning around the nucleus. Right? That’s all matter is. So, ozone gets in there and disrupts that structure and breaks it apart so it’s no longer what it was and it’s less harmful. [00:46:35] Ashley James: Got it. For those who don’t know, ozone is three oxygen molecules where it’s normally air that we breathe is two oxygen molecules. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Ozone is less stable, right? [00:46:53] Eileen Durfee: Yes. [00:46:54] Ashley James: It’s less stable and so that third oxygen is kind of like shaking around, going, “Ah! I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to do something.” It’s unstable, it’s active. And this was my understanding, so please, please correct me or explain deeper. We have loose hydrogens jumping around in our body, which are free radicals, so they're piercing through, they're kind of like bullets in the body — piercing through the nucleus of the cells, damaging DNA.  Just imagine if you’re shooting up these tiny, tiny, tiny bullets that are jumping through the body and just piercing holes into cells. And along comes this ozone, there’s this third oxygen molecule which is unstable and looking to create stability because there’s this magnetic pull. It will part from the two. So, the three oxygen, one will leave, and then now the two is now two oxygens, right? So then that’s what we breathe, that’s oxygen. And that one oxygen molecule will mop up two hydrogens, making water and, therefore, stabilizing. It’s like an antioxidant in and of itself. It’s mopping up those free radicals. Then now, you’ve got oxygen in your body and more water in your body. And those are two things that are wonderful for your cells.  So, is that an accurate description? [00:48:28] Eileen Durfee: Yes. There’s additional studies on NIH.gov under PubMed articles that confirm the benefits of ozonated water. It increases glutathione, peroxidase, superoxide dismutase, catalase, prostacyclin, red blood cell glycolysis rate, and of course, we talked about the oxygen metabolism and it inactivates bacteria, virus, fungi, yeast, and protozoa. It’s like everyone should be using ozonated water, and I know that it’s not very popular because of people talking about our ozone layer, but, also, because breathing ozone is very dangerous. So, it’s hard to use this in your home and that’s why I created an easy-to-use degasser to make it safe. [00:49:37] Ashley James: So, let’s back up. I want to touch on all those things you just said because it is really important that something that is incredibly healthy for you can also be dangerous used in the wrong way. Right? Like water can kill you if you drown in it. Water can kill you if you drink too much of it. But also, not having enough water will kill you. Right? So, water is incredibly good for you, you bathe in it. It’s absolutely essential for human life but used wrong, it is dangerous. Ozone – incredibly healthy. One of the tools every single one of us should be using on a daily basis to create health and healing, and if used wrong can hurt us, just like water. So, I want to go on that, but I’d like to back up because I’d like to unpack that list that you talked about from the NIH studies starting with glutathione. A lot of my listeners know glutathione is the master antioxidant that the liver makes. It is so vitally important and I’ve used it before in the past as a supplement. I had taken it before just to see what it would be like, just to go hey, this is interesting because I’m into detox. I’ve had a real hard time with heavy metals in my past and I’ve been healing that through all these different modalities. And I can tell you that when I took glutathione, really, really high-quality glutathione, I felt like a different person. I’m like, wow! I can’t imagine like so. And then that’s when I went I really need to focus on my liver health and focusing on giving my body what it needs to up my glutathione because I should be feeling this way all the time. We should be feeling like on top of the world all the time. So, let’s dive into how is it that ozone helps glutathione and why is glutathione absolutely so crucial to make sure that we have enough of it? [00:51:31] Eileen Durfee: Well, after the oxidation and the oxygen boost, I don’t know how to explain why ozonated water increases glutathione production. I don’t know the biochemical, I’d have to ask my son who’s a biologist and a chemist to explain that. But I do know that it’s documented clearly in multiple studies that people can Google on the PubMed and read benefits of ozonated water. I do know another hack to increase the body’s production of glutathione 600 percent, which we’ll have to talk about another time is coffee enemas. [00:52:21] Ashley James: Yes, definitely. We had Dr. Patrick Vickers on a few episodes ago and he has a cancer clinic where he helps people with the Gerson method. Gerson plus, I would say, because he has added on some things since Dr. Gerson’s time that amplify the results he gets, where he helps people’s bodies. He supports the structure and function of their bodies to get rid of their own cancer and just feel absolutely amazing. They do six coffee enemas a day and it’s necessary because of the huge amount of detox you need to support the body. When you are killing trillions of cancer cells, when you’re killing all those cancer cells off, your billions and millions — [00:53:07] Eileen Durfee: The toxins will kill you, not the cancer. [00:53:09] Ashley James: Exactly. That’s what Dr. Gerson saw back in the ‘50s. He saw that people, if they didn’t do the coffee enemas, they would die of the toxins that would build up from killing cancer too quickly. So, we have to support the emunctory systems to release the heavy burden on the body, and of course, now, our bodies are more burdened than ever. We have 80,000 man-made chemicals in our air, our soil, our water, and our food. These are forever chemicals, they're endocrine disruptors, they’re obesogens; they are harming us for generations. They actually epigenetically change our gene expressions. We are totally messed up as a race. We are completely messed up from the last 40 years of all the damage that’s been done to our environment and to our food. And so, we need to take matters into our own hands. We need to be very diligent with our food, but we also need to be incredibly diligent and double down on our detox protocols. That’s why I love coffee enemas. But also, I love ozone. And I’ve only scratched the surface in my research but I do know that it helps with the Krebs cycle. I think that has something to do both with the energy in helping the mitochondria heal. I think there’s something about the glutathione. These things, again, we should talk to your son because I studied biology, but I’m like 101 level biology, and we need to get into like PhD level biology to really dig in. What were those other points you talked about? [00:54:46] Eileen Durfee: The superoxide dismutase. Back when I was allergic to everything, I had these Sod pills, superoxide dismutase, because it would cut the reactions, those enzymes. It’s just amazing. Catalase, prostacyclin, red blood cell glycolysis rate. It’s just everything that our immune system needs to function and to survive, that’s what ozonated water can do for us. And one thing that I don’t know, probably dates me, but I think it was back in the 1980s, there was this Alpine ozone machine. Everybody was using these ozone generators to clean the air and finally, the FTC made them quit selling them because a lot of people, including myself, I’d be breathing large amounts of ozone gas and not knowing that I was actually harming myself. At the time, I had a lot of gut problems where I had bloating and indigestion, which is a direct result of inhaling ozone gas in too high of a level. I still run across people who say, “Oh, I love the smell of it. It makes me breathe deeper.” I was talking with my son about, well, what’s going on? Why is it bad to breath over .1 part per million ozone in the air? After a while, we had another discussion. He says, “Well, mom, it’s competing with the oxygen receptor sites in the lungs.” So number one, that deep breathing that people are doing is a homeostatic survival response mechanism, so it’s not that their breathing is improving; it’s like trying to overcome that life-threatening circumstance of lower oxygen levels. [00:56:58] Ashley James: Kind of like carbon dioxide. You’re starting to breathe heavier because you’re trying to get the oxygen in, so it’s competing with the oxygen. That is interesting. I love the smell of ozone. When there’s a thunderstorm, you could smell it in the air. Like there’s certain times when there’s a naturally occurring ozone and you could just smell a little bit of it. But that is really interesting. Yeah, I was told once that ozone, when you breathe it in, it is like an oxidant for the lungs. Even though it’s an antioxidant for the body, when it gets in the bloodstream or when it gets inside the body, but inside the lungs it’s going to attack the lungs in a negative way, so best not to inhale it. Our dentist, we have an amazing holistic dentist and he treats cavities and things like that with ozone. The first thing they do, they take a scraping of our mouth and then put it up on a big screen under a little microscope so we can see all the spirochetes and the bacteria, and he can point out what kind of bacteria and whether they cause heart disease and that kind of thing. So, he points out all the different kinds of bacteria and then encourages us to brush twice a day and floss twice a day to get rid of the biofilm that these guys basically build the condo buildings in between your teeth that we got to get out with the dental floss. Then he has us rinse with ozone water because it destroys the bad bacteria before he starts doing any work on the mouth. Like let’s say he scraped the gums as he’s cleaning, he doesn’t want that bad bacteria to get into your body, so he has us rinse with ozone water often and then he uses ozone to treat small cavities and if there’s ever any kind of dental surgery they need to do, they're using ozone before, during and after to increase healing time and significantly decrease infection rates. My husband had a root canal and when they opened up the root canal to do the work they needed to do, they're like, this doesn’t smell at all. They're like if you go to any other dentist that doesn’t use ozone, it will smell like garbage, it will smell like decaying death. Because all they do is use antibiotics. They don’t use ozone to clean it out first. And our dentist was like, it doesn’t smell like anything. That’s because they use ozone to clean it out. So, it should be used by every dentist. It should be used in so many industries. So, I’m a really big fan. Superoxide dismutase. I had a guest on recently who said that it’s like one of the keys to life. It’s one of the keys to everything. And he just geeked out on how important superoxide dismutase is to our existence, to our healing, to our health that for him it was one of the major factors. So, just the fact that this is just one of the many things that ozone does for the body is really exciting. Let’s go back down that list. Was there anything else that you could dive deeper into that helps with? [01:00:07] Eileen Durfee: As part of the immune system. I’m more of like creating the better widget to get the job done that we’re going to use and making it safe and making sure that it’s nontoxic. And just knowing that it did that was good enough for me, so I did not dive deeper into that. I mean, I explained about the oxygen metabolism and how it prioritizes to protect certain cells and with the enzyme coating, so that’s pretty much part of what it does there. Of course, any of the bacteria, virus, fungi, yeast, and protozoa, it is actually blowing a hole in the cell structure to kill it so it can’t mutate against it. The one thing about ozonated water is like literally for the city of Los Angeles, they ozonate the sewage water and it’ll end up being as clear as drinking water. So, every pathogen has a concentration and a duration that’s required to kill it. Like E. coli for instance, we’re talking about let’s have good food supply. Well, let’s clean our food before we eat it because everything is grown in dirt so we’re not getting E. coli, listeria, salmonella from our chicken and those kinds of things that can cause food poisoning because the ozonated water, like at .1 part per million, can kill E. coli in 15 seconds. [01:01:44] Ashley James: What? [01:01:45] Eileen Durfee: My ozone generator produces 1.5 part per million. I mean, literally, practically on contact, washing your vegetables in ozonated water will kill it. You can take a black light. You know how they say don’t rinse chicken, you’re going to get salmonella everywhere. I always rinse my chicken in ozonated water. You take a black light and it’s crawling with salmonella before, and then it’s gone kind of like your dentist putting it up on the screen, showing you. So, you can make your food safe. I did want to touch on why it damages the lungs. I do know about that. See, the lung tissue is full of lipids. So, the oxidation of lipids is very sensitive to ozone. It doesn’t take very much of it all and it’s oxidizing that tissue. It’s kind of like getting a sunburn. So what inhaling ozone gas does immediate to the lungs is it causes permanent lung damage. It’s like a sunburn on your lungs. [01:02:59] Ashley James: Oh, wow! [01:03:01] Eileen Durfee: Then, when it goes through your body, it causes the gastric bloating, upset, those kinds of things where these people that brag about they love the smell of ozone, it makes them breathe deeper, I go, “Oh, do you have problems with indigestion and bloating?” Oh, yeah. And I go, well, stop breathing ozone gas and see if that goes away. I had this one person get back to me and say, “Oh, my gosh! That’s gone. You mean I caused my own problem?” I’m going, yeah. That’s why the EPA says not to breathe it. [01:03:40] Ashley James: When you talked about the enzyme coating on the cells, the healthy cells which protect it from the oxidative stress of ozone, so ozone only attacks things that are infected or pathogens, so viruses, bacteria, fungus, mold, all that stuff, so it’s going to attack, it’s going to go after those, it’s going to go after infected cells and weak cells. What about cancer cells? Do cancer cells lack the enzyme coating? [01:04:10] Eileen Durfee: Yes, they do. [01:04:14] Ashley James: So by drinking ozonated water every day, would we be feeding ourselves with that additional support system that attacks the cells that don’t have enzyme coating?  [01:04:25] Eileen Durfee: Yes. Before they can go rogue, it’s going to help your body recycle them because you get these Frankencells that start growing really fast instead of being recycled. Because every day, every single one of us have cells that are like pre-cancer cells, but our immune system recycles them. So, this is just giving us a leg up. It’s helping us do the job. Besides your doctor had told you that it’s killing the microbes, the level, the load of microbes so then your immune system is free to do the job of keeping your body from having cancer or recovering from cancer. [01:05:21] Ashley James: I love it. [01:05:22] Eileen Durfee: So, ozonated water is great. You definitely need to use a degasser so you’re not breathing it. And I made a simple gizmo that can hook up to any typestyle of ozone generator to get the job done. I got the utility patent for it and yeah, it’s just amazing to be able to make some ozone water and not have to leave. Because I used to just turn out the exhaust fan and leave and then come back after it was safe. But then it’s like I’ll forget that I ozonated water because I get doing something else. And ozone in water, that’s the other thing. You can’t go to the store and buy a bottle of ozonated water. Because depending on temperature, pH, and total dissolved solids in the water, that reaction where that third singlet breaks off could be anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes, and then it’s done. It’s done. [01:06:38] Ashley James: Bottled water companies that are saying you’re buying ozonated water. So, a friend of mine, she just moved her clinic, and she was ordering like a new Culligan service that was going to like Crystal Springs or something that was going to deliver her a bottle or two, these giant bottles each week so that her and her clients could drink the water. She goes, “Should I get the kind that is pH and ozonated?” I’m like, sure, why not? I mean, I’m all about the pH water as long as you’re not eating, like you don’t want to drink alkaline water while you’re eating because you don’t want to alkalize your stomach acid. Alkaline water is great in between meals. And I said, you know, I don’t know. I was honest. I don’t know much about ozonated water but I think ozone’s really cool. And I thought in the back of my mind, I wonder how stable that is. Because they do it in their factory and then it gets shipped to her, what, a week later, two weeks later, a month later. [01:07:39] Eileen Durfee: All bottled water companies have ozonation and it is simply to keep the microbes so it passes their bacterial test. It’s just for sanitation during. There is no way. There is one company who has a patented pressurized type container that can keep the ozone active from breaking down. It’s a special technology. But just your bottled water and Culligan, I mean, I’m a fan of Mountain Valley Spring Water that I get delivered in 5-gallon glass bottles because it’s got the natural minerals in it, and it’s got the sacred geometry, the surface tension in the water so that it’s more hydrating to my cells versus purified water that’s been ozonated and maybe some minerals added back in there, but it’s not alive like spring water just going through those rocks and creating the structure and the sound from all of that is like life in water. Water is so important for the body. [01:09:01] Ashley James: I had a doctor on the show who swears by that same water and he has it delivered it to him. He says it’s the only water he drinks. He said something about the depth and the structure of the water was so superior to everything else that it hydrated the body better. He had the scientific explanation for it but I was like, water is water, right? It’s like, wrong. [01:09:24] Eileen Durfee: No. [01:09:25] Ashley James: I mean, I believe obviously in filtered water but the water that comes out of your tap is actually structured differently than water that comes out of deep springs or artesian wells. [01:09:35] Eileen Durfee: Yeah. And the energy, you know, it is dead. You look at it under a microscope and it’s like dead water. In reverse osmosis and distilled water, just rip minerals from the body, it’s worse. So, a lot of people are drinking the wrong kind of water. But yeah, water is so important. Oxygen is so important, and that’s why utilizing an ozone generator in your home can just really help with the body hydrating and getting the oxygen. Because oxygen is going to help your body hydrate, too.  [01:10:16] Ashley James: I’m a big fan of glutathione, the killing of any kind of cell that’s not healthy for the body like cancer and infected cells, the killing of microbes. Does it disrupt parasites at all? [01:10:32] Eileen Durfee: Yes, it does. Parasites is kind of like there’s not really a silver bullet. I’m a fan of telling people to do their coffee enemas because how it changes the pH and all that, bile that gets produced makes it harder for them to live, and obviously, having oxygen-rich because the hypoxic areas of the body are where these things are going to thrive. So, if you can reduce the amount of low oxygen areas in the body, then you’re obviously to reduce the amount of parasites. Really, digestive enzymes, having enough stomach acid to kill some of these things, but making your food safe. I’m a big fan of breathing clean air so you don’t have to detoxify what you just inhaled. Likewise, prepping your food, so you’re not ingesting parasite larvae to complete its life cycle in your body. Let’s minimize the amount that we got to have to try to go on a cleanse to get rid of. In Europe, in a lot of the other different places, people will go on antiparasitic cleanses and things like that. In America, it’s like, who does it? Maybe some of the people in the biohacking community, but I imagine the general population are just full of parasites. [01:12:09] Ashley James: Yes. I’ve had several doctors, the holistic health professionals that say that easily at 1/3 of the world’s population, including Americans have parasites, easily 1 of 3 people. So, it’s definitely something. And we used to do – we used to do annual parasite cleanses a hundred years ago. That was the thing up until about 100 years ago. We’re really blind to the health practices that we have been doing for the last 10,000 years — the health practices that we’ve developed in the west. I’d say in the east, there’s certain practices they’ve been doing for over 5000 years because they work. Right? Like annual parasite cleanses. And we’re completely blind because in one generation they were able to switch people through great marketing. They were able to switch us from doing our own herbal medicine and homeopathy which there was homeopathic hospitals in 1918. There were herbal hospitals/herbal medicine. These were places that you could go and get natural proven, safe and effective treatments. Then along came pharmaceutical-based patented medicine that is derived from the petroleum industry and the byproducts of petroleum, and they saw a market and they went in for great amounts of marketing and developed this style of medicine. And through the brainwashing of marketing and PR, they were able to make us forget that we ever did these things on a regular basis to help ourselves. If we could all go back and talk to our great-great grandparents, oh my gosh, the amount. I wish we could all go back in a time machine and learn from our great-great and great-great-great grandparents. And those young men and women could teach us how to grow healthy food, how to eat healthy, the herbs and the plants we could go into the forest and pick and heal our bodies with, but those were the things that they did and they had to do. Now, we wait to get sick and then get put on a drug that manages symptoms and doesn’t help our body heal from the root cause, like heal from the ground up. Right? So, that’s why all the listeners are super excited to learn how they can heal their body because we have to take matters into our own hands. So let’s say we have some water, we have an ozone machine, we have your device that makes it so that we can make our own ozonated water in a safe way, so we're not inhaling it. We could put it, what, in a spray bottle and spray down our counters. You say it lasts about up to 30 minutes, so we have to make some and then put in like a glass bottle and then spray down all our counters. How does it work to use it as a cleaner? [01:15:20] Eileen Durfee: Yeah, you can put it in a spray bottle and spray it down or you can just take a clean rag, have that wet and then just wipe things down. So, there’s several ways of doing it. I’ve got a large model that farmers use that screw a hose in, screw a hose out, and put like a mister on the end of it and they’ll mist plants because it kills powdery mildew and this and that. Or they’ll spray down grow rooms because it kills everything better than bleach does. I’ve got people using it to bathe their pets in. One 4-H farmer sprays down his pig pens every day when he slops the hogs and no flies in the pig pen, if you can believe it, because it killed the larvae. And now, he doesn’t have to put miticide on any of the animal’s eyes. [01:16:30] Ashley James: Wow! So you’re talking about farmers spraying down plants because it’s killing the bad stuff. But my question is, what about good bacteria? So, we have good bacteria in our mouth, in our gut. The whole lining of our intestines has good bacteria that aids in different functions. The good bacteria in our mouth helps us to make nitric oxide. And I had a whole episode on nitric oxide and people who use mouthwash which indiscriminately kills all the bacteria, the good and the bad. They have higher rates, significantly higher rates of heart disease because they have lower nitric oxide. So, we want to do everything we can to support the body’s ability to make nitric oxide and, in some cases, even supplement with it. Then, of course, there’s bacteria all throughout the lining, the entire intestines from mouth to anus, and it helps us to digest and assimilate our nutrition and it’s even like a pharmacy. I’ve had several episodes where we talk about that six pounds of bacteria in your gut is like a pharmacy that actually makes these compounds, these healthy chemicals take our food, makes stuff for us, and then we uptake those chemicals like a healthy pharmaceutical and our body uses it. So, we have this wonderful relationship with this six pounds of health bacteria in our gut. Does ozone disrupt healthy bacteria? [01:17:58] Eileen Durfee: I was on a doctor symposium about two months ago and one of the researchers there that uses ozone did a study, and ozone did not kill the good bacteria. Now, that’s been up for debate for a long time and so, I’m waiting to be able to get my hands on this study once he publishes it. Now, personally, I rinse my mouth with ozonated water. I brush my teeth in ozonated water every day. I haven’t had a cavity since I was 19 years old and I don’t have any gum disease and my gums are healthy. I’ve been doing the ozonated water thing since about 1996. I wash my face in ozonated water. And I drink one glass of ozonated water on an empty stomach in the morning. Not with vitamins because that can break down the goodness of the vitamins and stuff like that. I know that CancerTutor.com, they recommend cancer patients drinking up to two liters of ozonated water a day, it’s not a standalone cancer protocol. It’s just something that helps raise the body oxygen levels. I mean, I take a good bacteria capsule morning and night just because of how important the gut bacteria and stuff are. But there’s going to be more and more studies coming out about how selective ozone is, how it doesn’t damage the cell with an enzyme coating and how it doesn’t hurt the beneficial bacteria. So, these are going to be exciting things.  [01:20:01] Ashley James: Just thinking about like for example, children who have a sore throat or children who have ear infections gargling with it, like how you would say okay, you take colloidal silver or gargle with salt water to help kill the bacteria, kill the infection. You could gargle with it. Could you take a few drops and put it in an ear if there’s an outer ear infection? Can you put it on, if there’s a rash or if there’s an infection in the skin or like cystic acne, does it help in those kinds of applications? [01:20:37] Eileen Durfee: Yeah, I actually had a customer, her legs were so bad and infected that they were almost ready to amputate them. And she was using my first instant on-demand ozone generator and she would run ozone water on her legs and then in little strips and she’d saturate it with ozonated water and then she would wrap them on her legs. The before and after was incredible because all of the lesions and the deep infections in her legs were healed. She had smooth skin. So, you’re going to want to do something with besides just washing it if you’ve got something really going on with your skin, you could create same bandages and keep the moisture of the ozonated water while it’s active on the problem area. Now, there’s a lot of people who sell like ozonated olive oil in a paste that you can put on your skin for things like that. My ozone generator is not set up for that because that actually literally takes over a week of constant ozonation to turn an oil into a paste. But those are very healthy for skin issues. I mean, we have our own skincare line with tallows and stuff, they’re very, very, very healing. That’s kind of like on a different nutrient nourishing level. But yes, ozone on the skin, I think that’s why my skin looks so good is I’ve washed my face in ozonated water for many years. [01:22:34] Ashley James: So every day, we could just wake up in the morning, hit the button, make ourselves some ozone water, drink it, use it, slosh it around our mouth, use it when we brush our teeth, wash our face and clean down our counters, water our houseplants to get rid of the bugs. You could feed it or bathe the dog in it, feed it to the animals, put it on our garden outside. The list goes on. I’m starting to think about all the different applications. [01:23:08] Eileen Durfee: Yeah, well, I had one rancher that had chickens. He hooked up the bigger unit on a timer to dispense ozonated water in the troughs of the birds. So, the first thing that happened is he never had to clean algae out of the troughs anymore. The second thing that happened is the birds started drinking more water. And they were healthier because normally, from hatching chickens to growth in adults, you just have some birds that die. Ever since he put in the ozonators, he didn’t have any birds die. It kills bird flu on contact. [01:23:57] Ashley James: Oh my gosh! [01:23:59] Eileen Durfee: So, literally, they had a washing machine with the one that has the venturi injection where they would clean the rags and stuff, because that stuff is very contagious, so any of the work overalls or anything like that to have it cleaned there to keep things in check. And they started spraying the fly pens because a lot of the chickens too will get lice and different things on their legs and things like that. So with this constant spraying kind of like the pig farmer, any of the eggs, it would cause not as many of them to hatch. So, the populations of just all the stuff that you’d have to deal with reduced. Then as far as watering ozone plant roots, the one big machine that I’ve got has a dial on it so you can go maximum for foliar feeding. Because foliar feeding, they did a study on onions and cucumbers. It got rid of powdery mildew, mold, but the side effect was the same crop area produced 40 percent more. So, the plants love it when they uptake it through their leaves and so then you’re not having to put stuff to deal with the mold and the mildew and things like that. But then the plants are healthier, they grow more, but for the roots, you really have to dial down the ozone so that the soil microbes stay good and balanced, but yet then it’s up-taking the oxygen. So, there’s just so many ways and industries where ozonated water can be used, and now, you could do it at home. [01:26:17] Ashley James: Just the bird flu. My family’s plant-based but I have a lot of friends who rely on chicken and eggs as part of their diet. Several of my friends are freaking out because the bird flu is wiping entire farms across the states, just wiping them out. And there’s a deep concern. I mean, we’ve already seen like a bit of a food crisis in that the prices have gone up, inflation, and that the supply change has been disrupted for the last two years. There’s many farms that have stopped growing crops for various reasons. We’re seeing issues. And then, now, we’re seeing the bird flu. Just crazy. I don’t know if you know about this but in the last few years, they had to cull more pigs than the entire population of China. It was some wild number of pigs. They had to cull because of the swine flu that it’s like Ebola for pigs. They had to cull so much that it disrupted their food supply and they stopped exporting many of their key foods in the last few years. There’s all these disruptions, right? We’ve got the crops in Ukraine and in Russia disrupted from the war. So, we have all these disruptions and then to add on, in addition to that, in the United States entire chicken farms and egg farms completely destroyed and decimated from the bird flu/the avian flu. And so, if we were to get this ozonated water in all of the farms, it’s leading to a better quality of life. [01:28:11] Eileen Durfee: This machine that I have has a handle on it with folding legs. You screw a hose in from your faucet and you want the hose to be no longer than 10 feet long. Then, you screw a hose on the outset of it and if you have that more than 10 feet long, you need an inline pumper. You can get that 3/8 inch. It’s like a coiled hose with the sprayer you see on it. Then you’ll have enough pressure to spray and mist and I tell you what, the chicken farmers that I have, one of them just breathing, that’s one that I was talking about, and there’s other ones that are doing the 4H and the home thing. But it’s normally like these big industrial type ozone machines, they’re making and spraying in the vineyards and all that, most small farms, they don’t have $25,000 to $30,000 for that. And this little machine, it’s a little over $2,000 and you could have this machine and take it and use it wherever you need it. And it produces up to 6 parts per million. It’s a bad boy man. It is powerful. They did a study where they scrubbed cow feces on the walls. There’s like 50 different pathogens that can grow out of cow feces. They took different concentrations of ozone and sprayed it on there and figured out what it would take to kill it, and you need 4 parts per million. So, my big Tri-Oxy Complete Machine, it makes 6 parts per million. It is just like an annihilator man. So, that’s meant for using outdoors or in larger areas where you don’t have to worry about breathing too much ozone gas. The growers that are using it in greenhouses, what they do, is like the painters who paint houses, they have that airless paint sprayer, they just fill up a 5-gallon bucket of ozonated water, and they hook it up to their airless paint sprayer, and they’re spraying the plants with ozonated water that way so it coats them completely. So, there’s ways around not having to be in fear about that stuff and protect yourself. [01:31:05] Ashley James: And all the chemicals. That just eliminated so many chemicals from our air, from our water, from our food, and from our soil. What if every farmer used your machine? We’d be able to eliminate so many chemicals. It’s just amazing. [01:31:23] Eileen Durfee: I read a study on strawberries, where not only did they not spoil it as much, but their nutrient concentration of ozonated strawberry plants, the produce, the berries actually was higher. It’s just like, is this a miracle or what? [01:31:46] Ashley James: Well, it makes sense, right? So the plant loves it; the plant uptakes it more and it disrupts the bad microbiome, allowing the healthy tissue to grow. Then because the plant is so happy absorbing all that, it’s absorbing more nutrients as a result. So, that just makes so much sense. Now, ozone kills mold. So, someone could use it in their bathrooms when they clean, on their windowsills. Like when they see mold in their home, they could be using this as a nontoxic way to combat mold. [01:32:20] Eileen Durfee: Yes. But also, the ionic refresher, I have a plug-in gizmo that kills 99 percent of pathogens in the air. And every time you flush the toilet, you’re sending E. coli everywhere in the air. And keeping those in your bathroom really reduces molds, spores, and everything else in the air. But yeah, you go at it from because you don’t want mold spores in the air, but you got to clean mold off of surfaces too. One in two homes have a moisture problem according to the government. And I used to build 12 houses a year and ran construction crews, so I’m very informed about moisture problems in buildings and things that people need to create a safe home. [01:33:13] Ashley James: And your machine helps us do that. I’m really, really excited because the problem is, is we are using so many chemicals in our environment just to clean. People that don’t know, right? They're using like baking soda or vinegar or something, like spraying down the house with vinegar and then the house attracts flies and smells like something fermented. But that’s what we deal with. We’re realizing everything under our kitchen sink is dangerous for us. An early interview I did a few years ago was with a woman who puts a device in your home and it’s like an air filter that captures particles. Then, she takes the machine and plugs it into a computer and based on the particle – so this is just air that’s in your home, like you’re walking around breathing in your home. You don’t smell stuff unless you have like Febreze plug-in thing. You’re not smelling anything, right? So she has this machine, you put it in your living room and basically breathe your air just like you breathe your air, and when you breathe, there’s fine particles of chemicals in your air that’s floating around. Your air is not pure unless you have these amazing HEPA air filters all around. So, you’re breathing in chemicals in the air. And we don’t smell it, we don’t see it, we don’t taste it. We don’t realize that what it does is when it gets into our nasal cavity and then we swallow it and it goes down into our stomach and we absorb it, then it gets into our body, our liver has to process it, it gets into our adipose tissue and hangs out basically until we get overly toxic and then maybe we lose a little bit of weight and something happens. And now it’s released again into the body and the liver has to do something with it again. It just kind of keeps cycling through the body over and over and building up and building up and building up. But it’s so small and we don’t see it or taste it that we don’t realize it’s there. So, this little machine breathes in our air just like we do. And then, she analyzes it and she can tell you, get this, this has just freaked me out, she goes, “I can tell you which Mr. Clean you are using based on the chemical readout.” The Mr. Clean that is in your cupboard, in your kitchen or down the hallway in your bathroom because every plastic bottle in your house, and if you have an attached garage, every can or jar or bottle of chemicals. So think about if you have an attached garage, all the stuff for automotive, all the paint stuff. Just everything you’ve got in there. All of your stuff you got under every single sink in your house is off gassing all the time. Your liver is processing every chemical that’s in a bottle in your house all the time. Because these are not like her medically sealed bottles, they’re plastic. And so, it actually leaks through slowly. But it’s this constant slow drip of toxicity and as we’ve heard from many people, many experts that our indoor air population is ten times worse than outdoor air population. You live in New York City? Go outside and breathe the exhaust out there. It’s probably better than what’s trapped in your house because of everything that’s off gassing. So, if we can get rid of all the junk, all the chemicals and the junk that’s under your sink, and replace it with something that actually works better as a cleaning agent that actually works better as a disinfectant agent that’s safe to wash our produce with, to wash our counters with, to wash our floors with and everything, and wash our face with, and is incredibly effective, that decreases the toxicity in your life while at the same time increasing your health. So, I just think it’s a much-needed device on all those ends. For those who are excited to dive in and look into it, they can go to LearnTrueHealth.com/ozone. Tell us about the different devices. Once they go there and they’re seeing your systems — you’ve talked about farms versus the home — is it sort of one size fits all or are there different ones that you would explain that people could get based on their needs? [01:37:47] Eileen Durfee: I have two ozone generators. One that’s called the Tri-Oxy FRESH. It’s a countertop model. I have a nice video on that. And that uses diffusion where we give you the silicon tube with the different diffusers, balls, cylinders that you submerge in water and you can turn on the machine. It’s got a touch panel and a remote control, timer, and all that kind of stuff. Then, we have the bigger one that has folding legs, it’s all stainless steel with the handle. It’s kind of like the monster that you screw a hose in and screw a hose out that’s got the adjustable from 0 part per million to 6 parts per million. See, the smaller one is 800 mg/hr. So, it’s just under 1 versus this other one producing 6 parts per million. Basically, you can use the big one with the hose. I have people hooking it up to their washing machines. I have people hooking it up for the farming needs, for watering systems. Then the one for the countertop model, that also comes in a kit. You save money when you buy the kit. There’s this ozone water sterilizer, food, and enema prep kit. It doesn’t have your enema kit in it but it’s got the degasser and the Tri-Oxy FRESH generator. So, you save money buying that together. And you can buy them individually. If somebody already has their ozone generator, they can get the degassing kit. And that’s it. So, there’s really just the two systems. The big one uses venturi injection. The difference between diffusion, which we didn’t get into, that’s what you use in the water bottle plants. They use diffusion where they’ll have bubbles going up these towers to ozonate the water. So, the smaller the bubble, the quicker it dissolves into water because it’s got more surface area. It’s like versus sand in a container versus rocks in a container. There’s more surface area in sand than the bigger rocks.  With the FRESH, you’re given multiple different diffusers that have a variety of hole sizes, so you can dissolve ozone gas really fast, which is nice because the ozone generators that I used to buy when I’d use it every day would wear out in a year. I’d have to buy a new machine and when I designed mine, it’s like, man, I don’t want that to happen. So, I have the 8000-hour ozone generator so it’s going to last years and years and years, but still, if I can ozonate water, dissolve the ozone gas in the water faster, that’s better. Because diffusion, only 15 percent of the gas that the machine makes dissolves in the water; 85 percent of it goes to the air. And it’s the absolute reverse for the diffusion, the big guy, 85 percent dissolves and only 15 percent goes in the air. So, with that degasser, you’re going to get some diffusers that instead of having to run it with the container of water for 30 minutes, you can ozonate that container for 5 minutes. It’s going to extend the life of your ozone generator besides protect your lungs. [01:37:47] Ashley James: Fascinating. With the countertop one that does 1 part per million in an hour, is that enough to use therapeutically? [01:42:11] Eileen Durfee: Well, if you ozonate cold water for instance, I have had a meter and measured, it’d all make up to 1.5 parts per million. And that is like the oxygen-fed ozone generators produce less ozone concentration than the corona discharge. So, this is way sufficient for anything that you would want to do with your drinking water doing an enema with ozonated water. Another comment I wanted to make is that corona discharge still has .003 percent nitrous oxide, and that’s why you cannot use it for ozonating your blood or doing the insufflation with the gas. So, don’t think you’re saving money by buying this unit and not having to have the prescription for the ozone tanks. You can only use this for ozonating the water that you would drink or maybe follow up with an enema or cleaning your food or sterilizing your counters. That’s what this machine was created for – to be easy to use, with the degasser of course. The degasser is just a 32-ounce glass jar with a handle that has a filter cap that you screw on and the filter media that you put in there one time, which I have a video on how to do it, it will last you 10 years. You only have to put it in there once, screw it on, and then it just basically is copper manganese pallets that when ozone gas interacts with it, it causes that O1 molecule to immediately break off. So then, the only thing left that comes out in the air is nonflammable concentrations of oxygen. So, it’s totally safe. I had one of those ambient meter tests, and sure enough, it degasses 100 percent, so it’s very effective. [01:44:35] Ashley James: Very cool. I had a man who he healed his own cancer and has gone on to help others do the same and he swears by doing daily enemas with ozonated water or the other way, which is basically getting a bag of ozone gas and holding it up your rectum like a reverse fart. You just have to hold it up there and then it gets into your lymph system and into your venous blood flow system the same way with the coffee enemas, so it gets in you. But it’s not straight IV. Right? That’s something different and a different machine. He swears by that. He also said we really should look at other countries to see what they're doing and which countries have better rates of success. Because when we compare America, for example, has one of the highest death rates for infant mortality of the industrialized the world, has the worst outcomes for chronic disease. We spend the most money. We’re the number one. The only thing we’re number one in health is we’re the number one spenders of money for a healthcare system that doesn’t work. It’s a healthcare system that’s broken, that has some of the worst outcomes in the world for, when I say industrialized nations, other countries that have access to the same pharmaceutical medicine. So, the problem is, why are we continually going back to the system that is broken that is continually keeping us sick? It’s because again, it’s like the wolves of our eyes. We don’t know that there’s a better way out there. In the UK, in the EU, in the European Union, it is allowable to give a cancer patient ozone. It’s allowable to do hyperbaric chambers to do treatments where they bring the body up to 109 degrees while protecting the vasculature to the brain. They bring the body up into a state of fever, like getting in a sauna but even higher. With the heat shock protein, it helps kill most cancers. Same with ozone that it’s used and it’s allowed. In the United States, oncologists are not allowed to use those medicines. They are only allowed to do surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and now, there’s been a few immune drugs that still fall under the category of chemotherapy as far as I’m concerned. But they're not allowed to go, oh hey, let’s do a hyperbaric chamber, let’s raise your oxygen levels, let’s do some ozone. They're not allowed to do that.  Why do we have to go down to Tijuana, Mexico to cancer clinics? There’s cancer clinics lining the border with American doctors who have to go across the border to give you medicines that you can get in hospitals in Europe. Why do we have to feel like we're criminals going across the border to Tijuana, Mexico to do something illegal in the States. Why is finding a better solution illegal in our country. We have to start questioning the status quo because the status quo is killing us. Right? So, that’s why I love your machines. This is something we should all have access to, and people in other countries do. So, I absolutely am so excited for the solutions that you bring. Of course, listeners, go to LearnTrueHealth.com/ozone, you’re going to see that. Then, you had said to me before we hit record that you wanted to make sure our listeners got a discount, so please give us some more information on that and anything else in terms of buying this that people should know about. [01:48:41] Eileen Durfee: I would definitely buy the ozone water sterilizer prep kit because that’s $399.99 versus paying $249 for one and $219 for the other. But I’m going to give Ashley a special coupon code that she’s going to have on her ozone page that you can use for the next 30 days to buy anything on the ozone page and get your discount. [01:49:13] Ashley James: Thank you for giving us a discount. I really appreciate it when guests do that for us. So, in terms of the enema kit, you said that there’s all these different kits. Just break it down for us to make it real simple. What should we get when we want to treat our bodies to get better health, to get optimal health. We also want to make sure we’re washing our food, cleaning our counters, that kind of thing, but we also want to do the stuff that helps our body detox and get all the benefits that we talked about throughout the whole episode. [01:49:46] Eileen Durfee: Yes. We have a standup no-mess coffee enema kit. I call it “the enema fix.” I always gave my clients the two-week coffee enema challenge. If I could just get a person to do it daily for two weeks, I’d never have to ask them again to do it, but the common complaints are… and some of them weren’t excuses. People had back pain or they have problems with their knees, and it was too difficult for them to lay down. Then the people that could, when they would get up, when they had to eliminate, then fecal water matter would go everywhere and make a mess, and so people weren’t too fond of doing the coffee enemas just because it was such a mess, even though it made them feel fantastic. So, I had a client that was bound and determined to do the coffee enemas. This is back when I had a bag that you could turn inside out to clean because the bags, you couldn’t clean them, so I got one that I could turn inside out. He wouldn’t lay down, but he stood up and he painstakingly rolled the bag so it pumped the fluid up inside him, so he was doing the coffee enemas standing up. That gave me an idea to get like a pump. And I had a little pump bottle, I would have to fill it up multiple times and the hose was kind of short, and so, I created an adaptor to fit on a glass jar, and by the way, not all glass even though it’s food-safe is toxin-free. So, my glass jar that I had made for both the enema fix and the degasser is SGS certified, and I put all my product testing on the website, too, so there’s transparency there. But I created a jar with a handle that’s 32 ounces, so you can pour. I use my spring water. Then I brew up some coffee and just pour a little bit of that in there. That way, I’m taking room temperature water with hot fresh brewed coffee, pour it in. That way, there’s no waiting. It’s just perfect tepid temperature. Then there’s an adaptor with a pump. So, you can prime out the liquid and you can stand in your shower, and you can fill up with half of it or whatever is comfortable, then you can just massage up your ascending colon across your transfers. Then, when you need to eliminate, you just sit on the toilet.  So, it just took all the medicine. I was one of those people that I spent $300 and I had a Climaboard. As a matter of fact, I bought three because I was going to make a better one because I didn’t like all of them. But that’s a lot of money for people to have to invest in and after I created the pump, I don’t even use my Climaboard anymore. I put it up. Because this, it’s just cleaning the bottle, not scrubbing the laying surface and all that kind of stuff. But go to the enema page and there’s the standup no-mess kit. It removes every excuse and you can just enjoy yourself, meditate, you could work on your fascia while you’re in the shower. You can do a lot of different things. I always try to stack my hacks because how else are we going to fit all these wonderful into our daily life? [01:53:43] Ashley James: Yes, right. I love that idea that we could be using like a fascia brush or we could use a lymph brush and be moving our lymph flow while we’re doing it. We could do some stretches. Well, as long as you’re holding that Kegel, you could do some light stretches. You could be singing in the shower. The acoustics are fantastic. So, there’s all kinds of fun you could do. How long do you do a coffee enema for? Five to 15 minutes? Or is there like a sweet spot? [01:54:13] Eileen Durfee: The sweet spot in those studies when Hitler’s army was cut off from supplies and they were operating on soldiers without anesthetics and the pain relief was so unbelievable, that’s for a university study, and they found that all of the caffeine and palmitic acid was gone from the rectal solution in 12 minutes. So, I always tell people, I mean nobody’s going to be able to hold it for 12 minutes the first time. You just don’t have those rectal muscles to balance. So, that’s part of that two-week challenge. By the end of two weeks, I bet you can. But I just tell people don’t sweat it. If you can hold it a minute, great. Or three or whatever it is. That’s the purpose of that nice 32-ounce glass jar because you could do half. And then, when you’re done eliminating, you can fill up again. You know, whatever total hold time, our goal is to get to 12 minutes. [01:55:17] Ashley James: Yes. I like that you said you could do half. Because you don’t have to use all 32 ounces at once. Really, you just need a little bit of liquid in the rectum. This isn’t the American “if some is good, more is better.” I always have to remind myself. We’re not filling the entire colon with coffee. This is a little like one cup, half a cup, one cup to start. Just a little bit, right? I notice that I would do is first of all, I would do an enema just with warm water just to clean out and then I would do half of the coffee and sometimes I would be able to last one minute, two minutes, and then sit on the toilet. Then that next go, I could go for 15 minutes. As long as I did my little cleanout beforehand and kind of psych my body up with the first installment of coffee, which this coffee is not like Starbucks. It’s very different. And we’ve talked about it with Dr. Patrick Vickers but I’d love to have you back on the show t go into more detail because it is so important as a regular health regimen, as something you could do daily, or weekly to support your body and your liver in detoxification and getting rid of parasites. There are so many benefits to this. For people who are facing major illness, they want to do it more often. For someone who just wants to maintain health or just a little bit of a leg up, it’s a wonderful solution. I always feel amazing after I do it. And it does become a little addictive simply because of how good you feel afterwards and how good you feel for the rest of the day. You can really feel the difference it makes. I’m going to make sure that the links to everything are in the show notes of today’s podcast at LearnTrueHealth.com/ozone. I’ll also do just to make it easy, I’ll make a link, so LearnTrueHealth.com/enema. That’ll go straight to the coffee enema solution that you’ve made it tremendously easy because man, I can’t tell you. I’ve spent a lot of money on different enema kits and they all are frustrating, and so I’m really excited to try yours because you figured out how to take the mess out of the whole process and make it easy. If you can make something quick and easy, just as easy as brewing a cup of tea or coffee, then we’re going to do it. But if there’s like 20 steps like these other coffee enema kits out there, then the harder it is, the less likely we are to do it. So, you’ve taken the work out of it, made it so that we can easily integrate it into our daily habits for health. And I really appreciate that. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate you being here today and I can’t wait to have you back on the show. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview? [01:58:31] Eileen Durfee: Just that trying something new is going to get you different results. With the ozonated water, don’t do it at night because it’s going to give you a bunch of energy. People don’t realize how lacking of oxygen they are and when their body has it, you’re just all energized. So, you maybe find yourself drinking too much coffee in the morning. That’s why doing ozonated water in the morning is so fantastic because it just gives you that natural energy that your body is looking for. [01:59:14] Ashley James: Love it. So there’s that and then there’s also the coffee enemas. Then, you can take the coffee enema kit and use ozonated water, right?  [01:59:25] Eileen Durfee: Yes! [01:59:26] Ashley James: So we can also gain the benefits of that. [01:59:27] Eileen Durfee: Yes! And don’t mix. Don’t mix. Okay, this is the other thing. Remember, ozone oxidizes and breaks everything down. It changes their structure. So we want caffeine and palmitic acid to remain intact. We don’t want the ozone using up its power by breaking down the goodness out of the coffee. So, you have to do them separate. [01:59:56] Ashley James: Got it, got it. Could you be brewing or simmering the water like that’s kind of getting ready, and you go and you grab the ozone water, and you run into the bathroom and do an ozonated water enema, and then you sit on the toilet, clear out, and then go grab the coffee and then do it? [02:00:21] Eileen Durfee: Yes, you can. [02:00:22] Ashley James: So it could be part of the whole routine. How long should we hold the water in the rectum, the ozonated water? Again, this is, what, like a cup of water. It’s again not like a colonic where you’re filling your entire colon. We just need a little bit, so a few ounces of water. How much water is good and how long is good given that the machine, like you said, can make 1 to 1 ½ parts per million?  [02:00:55] Eileen Durfee: So your body temperature, the higher the temperature, the quicker it oxidizes. So, as you put the ozonated water in your rectum, you’re going to find that it’s oxidizing quite quickly. So, five minutes should give you a lot of benefits. [02:01:20] Ashley James: Got it. Do we need to use cold water, or can we heat the water? [02:01:26] Eileen Durfee: Well, it’s up to you. I have a meter that measures ozone, and I actually have an ozone generator set up on my shower. [02:01:43] Ashley James: Nice. [02:01:45] Eileen Durfee: So, cold water, I had it at 1 part per million. The hot water, like a hot shower, is .3 part per million. So, you’ll be able to achieve higher concentrations of ozone in the water when it’s cooler. But I would just recommend the tepid because that’ll be somewhere in between. It’s not a hot shower. It’s not ice cold. So, it’s going to be somewhere in between. Like room temperature water, you could get it to 1 part per million very easily. [02:02:21] Ashley James: And that should be fine. I mean, people who are new to enemas though, maybe start with internal body temperature. I think for those who are not used to enemas, then they put cold water in the rectum, it can cause cramping and kind of shocks them a little bit. So, it’s just like drinking a really, really cold ice water when you’re hot and you weren’t expecting it to be cold and you’re like “ooh!” and the body reacts. So, you want to ease into it. Everything should be easing into it slowly.  Great. I love that whole idea, that process that we could use the ozonated water for an enema for a few minutes while the coffee water is preparing and then go get the coffee water and do that enema. And the whole process is going to take about half an hour because again, you’re not holding it for a very long time. But this, although half an hour out of someone’s day when they're very busy seems like a lot, something you can do in the morning, wake up a little earlier, go to bed a little earlier, wake up a little earlier. Then, the entire rest of the day, all your cells are singing. Everything is working better that it’s just so exciting to think about your liver is functioning better, it’s making the glutathione, all the antioxidants are going through the body, all the pathogens are exploding and your body is able to recycle those damaged cells. Just all the benefits go on and on. So, thank you so much for coming on the show. Please come back and continue sharing about the things that we can do to incorporate into our life that we’re not taught, that we should be taught. This should be something that’s in everyone’s home. In Vegas you buy a house and there’s water softener just already there and there’s reverse osmosis just already under the sink. That’s kind of standard for certain parts of America. There should be an ozone machine inside people’s home. This should be something that we have access to because of all the numerous benefits. But it’s up to us – it’s up to us to do it. So go to LearnTrueHealth.com/ozone, check it out. I can’t wait to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for all this information today. [02:04:30] Eileen Durfee: Thank you for having me, Ashley. [02:04:32] Ashley James: I hope you enjoyed today’s interview. I am so excited to get myself one of these ozone machines. I’ve been thinking about everything I’m going to use it for. Our family doesn’t have a lot of cavities. We’re better than most. But just the thought that we could prevent cavities for the next 10-20 years or more, that we could have better oral health, just that alone is really exciting. And to be able to use ozonated water to treat scrapes and little skin infections and maybe my son in 10 years will start developing acne as he goes through puberty, who knows, and just be able to wash our face with that. Of course, everything is about balancing the microbiome. And so the idea that we can support ourselves in this way, support our liver and support our bodies in detoxification, use ozone to mop up those free radicals, those extra hydrogen. Here’s something you might not know. A former guest recently explained this. You know pH, right? Everyone knows alkaline versus acidic. I’m sure you’ve heard, if you’re listening to a holistic health podcast, you’ve heard, “Oh, we want to eat alkaline. We want to make sure that our body is in a state of alkalinity. The alkaline diet and drink alkaline water.” Of course, don’t drink it while you’re eating. You actually want your stomach to be acidic. There are times when certain parts of your body need to be acidic like your stomach when you’re digesting. The first 75 percent of time that you’re digesting is acidic and then right before the stomach dumps its contents into the small intestines, it neutralizes. So, about an hour or two, maybe two hours after you’ve eaten, you can start drinking alkaline water. If that’s your thing, cool. But here’s the thing: pH is actually the measurement. So the H is hydrogen. It’s the measurement of loose hydrogen bombarding the body, like I had said, like bullets bombarding the body. So, if we have more acidity, we actually have more loose hydrogen bombarding the body, like bullets piercing through our cells, damaging DNA, which you might know that damaged DNA can turn into or it’s hypothesized that damaged DNA turns into cancer. But also, the more damage we have to cells, we have premature aging, that’s not good. The more damage we have to cells, the more our body has to use up its resources to heal and repair and restore rather than fight off illness and rather than create optimal health, so our body is always just sort of maintaining like rebuilding after a war instead of getting to that next level of health. So, if we can mop up those free radicals and prevent those free radicals, then our body goes into a state of balance and then it can use all of its resources, enzymes and energy towards becoming even healthier. I’m just so excited for all of us to know this, to use it, to experience it. Please come to the Facebook group. If you’re going to get one of these machines or if you have already gotten one, come to the Facebook group and please, please, please share your experience. Now, she’s only giving the coupon code for the next 30 days, so I hope you’ve listened to this episode in the first 30 days. After 30 days I’m going to ask her if she could extend that, so I’m hoping she does. So, still try it out, go to LearnTrueHealth.com/ozone, try the coupon code “LTH”. I’m going to go back to her and see if I can get her to permanently extend or something, give us something because I really like giving you guys specials from my guests that I have on and extending that to you guys. So, if you’re going to use the machine, come to the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook Group. You can go to it by searching LearnTrueHealth.com/group. Come to the Facebook group and share with us your experience. I want to know, I want to hear, what you’re using it for, what’s your health benefit. Let’s talk about this machine. I have had guests on the show that talk about using this style of machine for their personal cancer protocols and immune boosting protocols. So it’s interesting to hear about the other applications which we talked about throughout the podcast. And I’d love to hear why you’re going to use it and what you’re using it for. So please, come to the Facebook group and share. Or if you have any questions, let’s start conversation and I can see if I can get her to come into the Facebook group and answer those for you. So, come to the Facebook group, let’s start the discussion about today’s episode and I’d love to see you there. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. It’s through sharing that we’re going to get the word out and help as many of our friends as possible to end their suffering. You know, about 10 or so, actually it’s been longer than that, 11 years ago when I started to get my health back, which is really exciting. So, let’s say about 15 years ago. Fifteen years ago, I was crying myself to sleep almost every night. I was tortured by a sick body and I wanted out, but I didn’t know how. It wasn’t until I found this naturopath I started to discover this information and it was one step that led to another. And you don’t know in your life the people you care about, because I didn’t tell anyone how miserable I was. I didn’t. Buy you could have looked at me and you could have seen that I was not doing well. I did not look healthy. I did not feel healthy. Look at your friends and family and those you care about. If there’s something that just might look off, like maybe they're not happy, maybe they're living in a body they're not happy with, maybe they're feeling symptoms and they're not telling you, share my podcast with them because you don’t know that might be the one friend who’s crying themselves to sleep in their pillow so sick of the suffering, living inside the prison of a sick body. And they don’t even know this information exists. So, please, be that hero in their life. Be that angel in their life and share with them an episode that may give them the hope that may open the crack in that door that shows them a whole world of healing.  I had chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic infections in which I was on monthly antibiotics for. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome. I was told I was infertile after a battery of tests by an endocrinologist that I’d never have kids. I was so sick that every morning I couldn’t get out of bed until about 11. I couldn’t process human language in the morning. The brain fog was so severe. I was constantly hungry; I had to eat every 45 minutes. It drove me nuts. I was so sick. It was agony being in my body. And how many people did I bump into or come across that knew about holistic medicine that knew about these answers but were too shy to tell me? I finally, finally, finally found it. And you can have someone in your life that might be suffering and may have been told just like me by their doctors that they’ll always have this illness.  Here’s the thing. My doctors told me you just have to take these drugs, you’ll always have type 2 diabetes, you’ll always have chronic adrenal fatigue, you’ll always have these chronic infections, you’ll always have polycystic ovarian syndrome. When I discovered naturopathic medicine and true holistic naturopathic medicine, and I went down that rabbit hole of changing my diet, changing my lifestyle, taking really, really high-quality supplements from TakeYourSupplements.com, when I did that, that’s when within three months I no longer had diabetes, my chronic adrenal fatigue started to go away within 5 days. I woke up on day 5 feeling like a million bucks. And I had been sick for years. My chronic infections went away the moment that I shopped the perimeter of the grocery store, meaning don’t go in the aisles and buy processed food. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store and choose organic. I was just doing an experiment. My chronic infections went away. That’s how important going organic and not eating processed food is to the immune system. And I thought, holy crow, what else can I heal just by making one change? So that’s what my whole podcast is about. This one change at a time that you can make, that you can say hey, what your doctor has told you is a lie. Because all those doctors that said to me I’d be on these meds my whole life, I’d always have these problems, you know, my bloodwork has shown for the last two years that I no longer have polycystic ovarian syndrome. It’s actually been longer than two years, but I’m just remembering back to the last few doctor’s appointments. All my blood work shows I no longer have it. My A1c is 4.7. For those who understand diabetes, that’s amazing blood sugar. I have outstanding blood sugar. Type 2 diabetes is reversible within three months. It’s just crazy that doctors are going on and saying you have to be on metformin and insulin the rest of your life when it is lifestyle and diet, and in some cases, it’s a mineral deficiency as well. So, we address that. TakeYourSupplements.com has an amazing blood sugar protocol for increasing insulin sensitivity. So my point being, that we can heal. And you, our listeners, so I’m already preaching to the choir, but you might have someone in your life who’s suffering and they don’t have to suffer anymore and you have the answers, but maybe you’re afraid to share it, please know there are people in your life just like me who are crying themselves to sleep suffering deeply. And it takes a little bit of courage on your part to say, “Hey, do you want to listen to this podcast I’m really, really enjoying? They might have some answers for you.” So, I’m just putting it out there because my goal is to end the suffering of millions of people that no longer need to suffer. Eventually, I’m going to get on the radar of big pharma. I am praying to stay under the radar here. But I want to make a difference in millions of people’s lives. And you’re part of that. You’re part of that. I have talked to listeners who are like “I tell everyone!” I had a listener who printed out laminated cards like business cards with Learn True Health podcast and how to listen to it and every single person she came into. I was like, I love her. This is it. Because she understands that people no longer need to suffer. We are able to heal. We are able to heal the body. The body is able to heal itself. We just have to give it what it needs and get out of its way. That’s what my goal is with each episode, is to extract that information for you and condense it so that you can walk away after each episode going “Okay! I got an action in plan. I’ve got some steps I can take.” So, please share it, come to the Facebook group if you haven’t already. We have very active conversations about health and healing, it’s wonderful. So many people are helping each other and I try to answer every single one. I’m pretty sure I do. It’s every single post we have between 1 and 8 questions a day that come in. I’m in there and we’re all in there answering each other’s questions and helping each other. And I’m discovering resources too. We’re all helping each other in the Learn True Health Facebook group. So, come join it, share with your friends. Thank you so much for being a listener. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day.   Get Connected with Eileen Durfee! Website Facebook Instagram Twitter YouTube TikTok

Get your free sample class for IIN's Health Coach Training Program that Ashley loves: Learntruehealth.com/coach Get Dr. Mark's free download: www.sherwood.tv   Your Quest To Wellness: How To Self-Heal Through Food, Dr. Mark Sherwood https://www.learntruehealth.com/483-your-quest-to-wellness-how-to-self-heal-through-food-dr-mark-sherwood   Highlights: Diseases and the two major causes of death in the United States Allopathic versus naturopathic/holistic medicine Sleep dysregulation and emotional trauma Inflammation in the body and its effects Cortisol Metformin Foods that cause inflammation and what to cut out in your diet Cytokines Broccoli is good for you Nutrition has a tremendous effect on our lives. Some foods harm, and some foods help. In today's episode, Dr. Mark Sherwood speaks about how our emotional health, spiritual health, and lifestyle play a role along with the foods we eat. He also shares tips on healing and getting our health back or taking it to the next level. Intro: Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. You're going to love today's interview with Dr. Mark Sherwood. He brings some amazing information to help us heal and help get our health to the next level. He said at the end of the interview, “This felt like I was just chatting with my bud and it was such a great conversation.” It's interesting that he said that because a lot of listeners say to me that they feel like they're sitting in the living room with us, chatting with us, and just learning from our guests, asking the questions that they wanted me to ask, so it feels like they're a part of the conversation. Learning from him in this interview reminded me of my experience with IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. When I went through their year-long health coach training program, I learned from the world's best holistic health experts and functional medicine experts. It was phenomenal. And then, I ended up interviewing many of them on the show. I had Andrea Beaman, Dr. Mark Hyman, and Dr. Joel Fuhrman. And I loved them all and I had many more. You can go to my website LearnTrueHealth.com and type in “Institute for Integrative Nutrition” in the search function. You'll find all my episodes where I interviewed many of the graduates, the staff, the founder and the CEO, also health coaches that have come through their program and many of their teachers. Now, when I was considering doing the course, considering going through the year-long health coach training program with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, I had two problems, two dilemmas in my mind. I didn't have enough time, and I didn't have enough money. What I was really surprised about is that they broke it down so the year-long program, even incredibly busy people can do it because it's about 20 minutes a day. So, sometimes a little bit longer, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, but it averages out to be about 20 minutes a day. I did it while I was washing the dishes, cooking, and doing the laundry; I just have it playing. I'd be driving and I'd listen to it. I'd be at the gym listening to it. I would just listen to it whenever I could; I would turn it on just kind of like you're listening to this show, you fit it in maybe while you're driving. If you can listen to a podcast, you can do the program. You can go through their program. So, that eliminated that first dilemma for me. Then the second dilemma was I didn't have enough money. And it is an incredibly rich program, so of course, it costs money, right? It's not cheap, but also, they deliver so much value that at the end of it, I was like, this was worth every penny. And what I love is they give a discount to my listeners, which is amazing because I talked to the founder and I talked to the CEO, and I talked to some managers there, and I asked them if they could please give a discount to the listeners of my show, and they do. So, if you do want to go forward and check it out, make sure you get the discount from the Learn True Health Podcast with Ashley James. Make sure you get the discount. But what was great was that I signed up with a payment plan. I was like, okay, that eliminated my last barrier to entry for me, and I was able to jump in and do it because I had a toddler at the time, I was working full-time, go, go, go, go. I was so busy, and yet, I was able to afford it on a payment plan. I was able to do it about 20 minutes a day; I was able to fit it in. And I got so much out of it. Imagine how great the content is on my show and condense that into TED Talks like how great some TED Talks are. Every time I would sit down to learn, it would just be these amazing, amazing health lecturers that were so well thought out and so well-taught that I got so much information out of it. And I was really surprised at how much my life transformed, and then I was able to spill that over and help my friends and family and, of course, go on to help others. About half the people that take the program don't ever intend to work with clients and be an actual health coach. They just want the tools for themselves and their family and their friends, or they just want those tools because that is for themselves alone, and then maybe it'll be a great addition to whatever they're doing in life. You learn to help people on so many levels. You learn how to communicate with people and really listen to people and help people on so many levels. It's incredibly rewarding. So if you'd like to check out IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, you can get a free sample class by going to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach. That's LearnTrueHealth.com/coach. Check it out, and see if it's for you. If it's for you, you can give them a call, or I believe you just go to the IIN, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition's website, and I think they have like an ability to chat with them there. But go ahead and just check it out for free, first of all. Just go get the sample class and see if it's for you, and just dive in and look at it. It was amazing for me. Now, if you have more time on your hands, let's say about 40 minutes to an hour a day, you'd like to become a health coach sooner, they have a six months program. And recently, in the last year, they spent the year really working at this, and they have completely revamped their whole program. It's so exciting. It's just amazing. So if you geek out on health stuff just like I do and you're also into personal growth and development, this class is for you. And I love that people do it all around the world. You get this big sense of community because you actually participate with people around the world. There's nothing quite like it. I actually remember crying, just bawling my eyes out like good tears, good happy tears the entire first day I was taking the class because I felt like I had finally found my tribe, like I had finally found the people that would understand me. It was such a good feeling to be a part of that and part of that experience. And at one point, you actually get to do coaching calls with a group of people, and you can connect with people locally in your state or province or your territory or your area that are going through the program as well. So, you can make friends, and you feel like, wow, you're not the black sheep anymore, like there's a bunch of other people who are also just totally geeking out on health stuff and personal growth stuff and emotional healing stuff. It's just fascinating. So, check it out. In this interview today, Dr. Mark Sherwood just reminded me so much of how much I got out of IIN, and so if you just love this interview, you'd probably also love their program. Make sure you go to LearnTrueHealth.com/coach, sign up for the free program and just see if you even like it. Even if you're not interested in signing up, you get a free sample class. Go get it. Maybe you'll get something out of it. Anyways, I know you're going to get something out of this episode, so enjoy today's interview. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you care about. Hey, if this interview or if any of my interviews were shared to you by one of my listeners, they really care about you, and that's saying something. Because we have to help each other, right? There's too many people sick out there. Seventy percent of the adult population is on at least one prescription medication. We're walking around thinking that health is disease management. And that's not the case. Up is down, left is right; everything is backward in this world. Because true health is being symptom-free and off of drugs, true health is feeling amazing, jumping out of bed full of energy. True health is having longevity. And if you do get sick, you recover like that. You recover so fast. That's true health. I want you to have that, and you can have that. I've watched people heal from things that they were told by doctors they could never heal from including myself. And I want you to have that. So, keep listening, and keep sharing the episodes with those you care about. Let's help our friends and family to learn true health and to experience true health. Enjoy today's episode! [00:08:06] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is episode 483. I am so excited for today's guest! We have Dr. Mark Sherwood on the show. The website to go to is Sherwood.tv. And I just want to point out that he has a great free download. It's an e-book, it's about 27 pages. And it has some fantastic protocols in there and it also will show you what is possible, the healing that is possible for you. Mark, I'm such a huge fan of the work that you and your wife do because your mission statement is right on par with my mission statement: to eliminate all unnecessary usage of medication, to eradicate all self-imposed choice-driven disease. The thing is, a lot of people are walking around not knowing that their choices have led to their disease. That's what happened to me in my 20's. I developed a lot of diseases, and then I, in my 30's, eradicated them all with my choices. But I was walking around like going with the flow, not being a salmon. I was a good hillstream. I was doing what everyone else was doing, and I developed a bunch of diseases. Then I had to turn around and be a salmon and go totally against the flow, and that's when I eradicated my diseases. So, a lot of people don't know, and sometimes they might get offended like “I didn't give myself fibromyalgia,” or, “I didn't give myself MS. I didn't give myself autoimmune disease.” We're not saying that people consciously chose to give themselves that, but their choices have led to the state that they're in, and that also allows them to step into their power when they realize that they are now in control. And Today, Dr. Sherwood is going to teach us that you are in control. All your MDs have been giving you drugs and telling you that you are going to have that disease for the rest of your life, and it's not true. You can heal, and your choices really do make a difference. Welcome to the show! It's so exciting to have you here today. [00:10:20] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Ashley, thank you. It's an honor to be here. I appreciate what you do, I appreciate your show, and I appreciate the audience that you draw. I know people want to learn. So, I'm excited and it's going to be great. [00:10:29] Ashley James: Absolutely. Can you start by sharing your story? What happened in your life that led you to become the doctor that you are today? [00:10:39] Dr. Mark Sherwood: My story's quite unique, actually. During my childhood years, I was not brought up in a healthy environment at all. I didn't know anything about it. As a matter of fact, it was so unhealthy physically and emotionally that I went through a tragedy in my life, the early 2000s, unexplainable, but it was the suicide of my own mother. It was that traumatic. But during the trauma, I was determined to learn a few things on how not to do that in my own life. Even though I didn't learn it, it didn't really come to full fruition until probably the late '80s, when I found myself on the other side of the world in the country of Australia playing professional baseball. I had nothing to do during the day except sit around and wait for the games in the evening, but I decided to start exercising, and before I knew it, I realized there was something to this. Then shortly thereafter, I joined the police department in Tulsa, Oklahoma and was put in charge of a wellness program. I'm speeding up the story, but you get the idea. And I didn't know what I knew now. I wondered why my colleagues were dying so quickly and I wanted to figure that out. So, I started to really get into the idea of does stress really have to have this much effect on us and what effect does nutrition have in our lives? And how do those two relate? Do they relate? So, I went on that quest, if you will, Ashley, to determine the answers to those questions. Is our lifestyle creating this increase, this thing I call “sick span”? That led me down the pathway of naturopathic study. I was always a fan of that because it made sense. I thought, okay, if we can take care of ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually, what does that mean? Because I knew enough at the time that conventional medicines and allopathic medicine wasn't working. It was a measurable failure, and it has been for, what, 60 years now. We can look at that simply based upon evidence. We are now growing diseases much, much faster than we're growing people. We have seen disease processes like heart disease, type 2 diabetes and autoimmune conditions, as you were speaking of earlier, that have absolutely skyrocketed. So, when I look at the system, and I looked at the system then, I realized that doesn't work, and I wasn't going to continue to practice insanity. As Einstein said, to continue to go on the same pathway, do the same thing, expect a different result. So, I went on a mission to find out what I could learn about the human body and its interaction with the environment we live in and other people and nutrition and medicine that's put inside food. I really wanted to understand why. Why? That “why” question was the thing that drove me, and it still does. And so, that kind of began the journey, and now, all these years later, we're still learning, we're asking why. But the most important thing to understand is we're seeing literally thousands of people around the world get well, and I can't be more grateful than that. I'm thankful to God that He gives us the wisdom, the knowledge, and the ability to do that. I'm so happy for people to get well. That's what drives us every day. [00:14:17] Ashley James: What were your colleagues dying of when you were in the police force, and you started to notice that they were dropping like flies? [00:14:24] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, this is an interesting statistic that's been around for probably five decades that a few people are aware. This is an FBI study: the average male police officer, it's 20 years of service, and this is back in I believe the '70s that was done, the average age of death was 66 years of age. Which is substantially lower than the expected age, right? [00:14:48] Ashley James: Oh, my gosh. [00:14:50] Dr. Mark Sherwood: So, in my own city, and this brings me back to the early 2000s, I did a study of the officers that had died, and I did the same analyses that the FBI did, just a smaller group. And I found that the average life expectancy for a 20-year retired male officer was 65. So, I thought to myself, something is wrong with this, but basically, because of shift work, you get a lot of cortisol, you get a lot of blood pressure issues, weight issues, metabolic disorders, blood sugar issues, depression, sleep issues. They were on all these medications, and eventually, they ended up dying of things like cancers or heart disease, so that was predominantly the two causes. [00:15:36] Ashley James: Which are the two major causes of death in the United States. [00:15:38] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right. So that led me, as you've picked up there, I looked at the major two causes of death in the US. I found that same thing, and I said, “Okay, well, this must be hitting everybody,” because I used to think that only police officers and the military had PTSD. Right? Then I realized, wait a minute, it's everybody that's had trauma and drama in their lives. All that put together in a big mesh bucket, if you will, was one of the things that I said, “You know what, I can do something about this.” I'm going to believe that if people knew the information, that they know how to do this, they know how to reverse, they're going to do it. So, with this information quest, I learned as much as I could to communicate then in an effective manner this concept of hope. Now, we've kind of coined the phrase, if you will, my wife Michele and I, who I get to work with every day, we are hope dealers. A hope dealer. We give that away every day, and I pray that the listeners will, during the course of time, gather and grab on to that hope. [00:16:50] Ashley James: So, MDs are “drug dealers”. [laughs] [00:16:53] Dr. Mark Sherwood: They are. They really are. [00:16:54] Ashley James: And Michele and Mark Sherwood are hope dealers. [00:16:58] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right. And it's funny, my wife, and this is interesting; she came from the conventional system because she's an osteopath as well. So, interestingly enough, she had a drug rep actually call her a “drug whore”. That was the word. We still look back at that in shock and awe and horror, but also, we looked at it like, you know what, that's exactly what that is. And I want everybody to kind of get this. When you go to that conventional doctor, they are looking for what's wrong. “What's wrong?” There's something wrong with that question. When people come in here, they want to know what's wrong. I say, “Wait a minute. Let's turn this around. Let's first look at all the things that are right about you.” So, we don't let them go down that pathway; so, therefore, our diagnostics are not looking for diseases. They are going upstream to look for the root causes of symptoms that are named diseases or disease categories. [00:18:07] Ashley James: Right. Well, MDs break the body down; allopathic medicine is breaking the body down into its parts and then treating it with a drug. So they're not seeing the body as a whole or finding the root cause. The problem is that philosophically, the lens that they look through is so different from a naturopathic standpoint. Right? The lens that they look through governs their choices — what tests they're going to run and how they're going to interpret those tests. If you took the same tests to an MD that you took to an ND, a naturopathic physician or a functional medicine practitioner, a holistic practitioner, the MD will say, “Oh, your vitamin D is at 35. Okay, we're good with that,” whereas “As long as it's below 30, I'm fine,” that's what the MD says. Or if it was above 60, they go, “Oh, you're toxic. You have to stop taking your vitamin D.” They don't have any training around nutrition. They don't have that training on how to prevent disease and how to reverse disease. Their training lies in pharmacology. They're wonderful diagnosticians; they're fantastic at diagnosing. And treating symptoms or making sure the body shifts into like with drugs, it pushes the body in one direction. Right? But they are not trained in reversing disease and supporting the body's ability to heal itself. [00:19:45] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That is a very good statement. I agree with all of that. Additionally, we need to understand that all drugs, for the most part, have these are not side effects. These are actual effects. But they will pull out various vitamins and minerals and nutrients, and therefore, when you look at that, you say, okay, well, for example, let's use one drug – the drug metformin. It's always given to people for blood sugar issues to create more insulin sensitivity, in other words. So, somebody's hemoglobin A1c is running at 6 or 7 or whatever or 6.1, slightly over the “normal range,” and so they're going to go on metformin. Well, when you go on metformin, it may help with blood sugar, but it also pulls out vitamin B12 and also folate. Now, vitamin B12 and folate are critical factors in the methylation cycle. So, if you pull those out of the methylation cycle, again, metformin is looked at as this anti-aging product but let's think about this from a holistic standpoint. If we pull out vitamin B12 and folate from the methylation cycle, we render the methylation cycle ineffective in creating methyl groups. Methyl groups are in charge of, in a nutshell, repairing DNA, maybe helping create neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, and also driving down the transsulfuration cycle, which is going to be creating glutathione. We would be in effect inhibiting glutathione production and neurotransmitter production that could be leading to toxicity issues, oxidative stress issues, or even depression issues. [00:21:33] Ashley James: Cancer. [00:21:34] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Cancer. That's right. Something has got to change in the paradigm over the course of time, or we're doomed to be stuck in that system. And that system is not going to create wellness because it's like a male going to a suit store. I'm going to buy a suit, I'm going to go over here, and the first thing we're going to do is try on a pair of pants. Well, then you're going to go over here from the pants department, they go to the jacket department, but the jacket department person is going to say, “I don't care what the pants department said. That's their department.” They're going to get a mismatch, right? And you get the idea it's going to go from the shirt to the tie to the shoes, and you're going to have just a mishmash of stuff that looks terrible. That's what the body looks like when it goes through that system. It looks terrible. I could go on and on with examples such as that. [00:22:24] Ashley James: It reminds me of a story I just heard about. I think it's one of my listeners who shared with me that her mom has kidney problems and heart problems. The doctor said, “You have to eat less meat,” and the kidney doctor said, “You have to eat more meat.” So it's like okay, one diet is going to cause her kidneys to fail, but her heart will be better, and the other diet is going to cause her kidneys to be healthy but her heart, you know, so anyway, it's just back and forth. And so the doctors, she said, “Wait a second, you guys are giving me the opposite diets.” Now, medical doctors are not trained in nutrition. They get something like 20 hours of nutrition unless they, after graduating medical school, go on to take further courses and actually dive into the studies, which we'd hope that doctors would continue to look at the latest science and studies around diet because it makes sense that everything we put in our mouth is either hurting us or healing us. So, there's the dilemma. Right? There is a lot of confusion around diet. Now you mentioned heart disease and cancer being the two top killers of police officers after they retire but also, that's what the two major causes of disease are in the United States or the causes of death are. I recently had Dr. Richard Fleming on the show, episode 463. He's a research cardiologist. He's not a holistic doctor at all. He's 100 percent all about the drugs. What I love about his work is he dives into the research. For the last 30 years, he's been looking at the root cause of cardiovascular disease, and he also did studies on cancer and heart disease and found that really the root cause was inflammation. Years, years, years before cancer will appear on a scan, you can see the inflammation that's there beforehand, same with heart disease. So, really what we're doing is we're looking to decrease, to mitigate all the things in our life that cause the inflammation. My question, because we could definitely talk about foods that harm and foods that help, we could definitely talk about herbs and supplements, but you mentioned the emotional aspect, and my question is, like sleep, the police who are on altered schedules, I'm sure there are lots of listeners who have to do the second or third shift so their sleep is disrupted or maybe they go to bed at 1 in the morning. Does sleep dysregulation and also emotional trauma, do those play a significant role in increasing inflammation in the body? [00:25:16] Dr. Mark Sherwood: They do. Let me explain to people in a way they'll understand this concept. So, let's look at both of those. When you have trauma or drama or you perceive stress, now stress doesn't have to be real to create this response. You can have this perceived stress. Because you can think about something, it creates the same response as if you're going through it, so we all understand that. So, let's key into the hormone called cortisol, which comes in second after the short-acting adrenalin goes and does its things, and then cortisol is produced. So, cortisol, known as the stress hormone, is produced. When we have these stressful occurrences, that's originating from the sympathetic nervous system arousal side as opposed to the parasympathetic nervous system arousal side, which is relaxation. So, this yin and yang, if you will, this rest-stress should be balanced, but when we're living perpetually in a cortisol-driven mode which can come through stress and emotional lack of resilience or non-resilience, we combine this with the lack of sleep. Now, lack of sleep, let's think about this whether you're shift work or just not sleeping, we have this opposite effect of melatonin and cortisol. So if you're not sleeping, melatonin should be up but it's not. Cortisol is up. So, cortisol is elevated when we don't sleep as well. In both cases, cortisol being a glucocorticoid (kind of sounds like glucose), it will elevate glucose because the body can't digest food when you're under stress like that. Our genes have changed 2 percent. That's it, Ashley, in 10,000 years. Two percent. So, when the body is perceiving stress or going through stress and synthesizing cortisol from the adrenals, the body's going to interpret that as if it's being chased by a saber-toothed tiger, trying to eat. So, there are several things that happen in that. We see blood pressure going up, of course, muscle tension going up, perspiration going up, tightness going up, and we see digestion going down. This is a big deal right here because when we see that glucocorticoid coming up, it's going to create some sort of blood sugar because it has to drive the body because you can't get it from food digestion. You don't have time to stop and eat while a saber-toothed tiger is chasing you. So, what happens is glucocorticoid comes up, blood sugar, the pancreas secretes the insulin to match it, and insulin becomes perpetually elevating, creating, fat-storing all the time. This constant stress creates a lot of fat, belly fat called cortisol belly. Too much fat tissue on the frame is a home for toxins. Too much fat tissue also creates this endocrine disruption creating more inflammation. And the beat goes on. When you look at this whole metabolic process, this whole obesity crisis that we're having, you can drive at least in part back to this emotional lack of resilience and even lack of sufficient sleep, and of course, that leads us into this idea of comfort food eating which everybody can relate to that, eating the classic standard American diet which perpetuates the same thing. It kind of is a snowball, if you get my drift. [00:28:46] Ashley James: I remember that snowball so well. I remember I was working towards my black belt, and I was going to the dojo four days a week, sometimes five days a week. Sometimes I'd do it on the weekends also. We do clinics, like all-day Saturday kind of thing. I just remember I was working like crazy. So, I was raised in a household to eat the way a naturopath told us to eat. I was super healthy until I rebelled as a teenager. But while I was studying and I was 19, I was studying karate, I started eating like all the black belts because I wanted to mimic them, I wanted to model them. We'd all go to Subway. And this was my first time eating wheat and cheese before I had seen a naturopath when I was five years old. Also, I'm eating white bread or I think they did whole bread, whole wheat, but whatever the difference is isn't really that great. It's processed bread, cheese, processed meat, and maybe some lettuce and some tomatoes. I remember, for the first time in my life, having heartburn. But I was just planning on eating exactly like how my Sensei and Shihan and all the black belts and brown belts were eating because I just wanted to model them and be excellent. And I just started to pack on the pounds. I gained about 50 pounds a year very quickly, and I was exercising like mad, and I thought, what is going on here? My mom passed away of cancer two years later, so I didn't really sit down to think this through like my diet had caused this. I was just in go, go, go mode. But it got worse and worse. I developed chronic adrenal fatigue, type 2 diabetes, and chronic monthly infections for which I was on antibiotics for. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome and infertility. I was told after a battery of tests by an endocrinologist that I'd never have children. I then spent years just eating takeout and whatever, totally forgetting that I had all this wonderful health because in my early years, I ate just like our naturopath told us to. Until 2008 when I watched with my husband, it was one of the first streaming movies on Netflix in 2008, they just started streaming and watched Forks Over Knives and all those health ones. What stuck for me was: shop the perimeter of the grocery store and eat organic. In our first month of doing that, my chronic infections went away. And I still was miserable, I still felt horrible in my body, but at least I was off of antibiotics. So, I just kept searching and searching and searching, and that's when I found naturopaths that became my mentors; and switching my diet, taking the right supplements, changing my mindset, all of that. I eradicated all those diseases and conceived naturally. For me, that's why I started the show. I started the show because everyone who's suffering doesn't need to be suffering. Seventy percent of the US adult population is on at least one prescription medication. They've been told they have to be on it, but the thing is, most prescriptions, we don't have to be on it. We can get so healthy, that we don't need it. That's why I love the work that you do because you want to show people that they can get so healthy and absolutely it's possible to get so health that they no longer need drugs. Now, you brought up metformin. And I want to point out that one of my friends who often comes to me for help, she was in and out of the hospital. She lived in a hospital more. This was about two years ago. She spent more time in a hospital than she did out for acute pancreatitis. She lost 80 pounds, she was on a liquid diet, and she was in such bad shape from pancreatitis. I didn't think she was on any meds; I didn't know. Then I said, “Hey, just tell me. What are you taking? Are you taking anything? Let's figure this out. Why do you have pancreatitis?” That's when she told me she was on metformin. I'm like, “Why are you on metformin?” She doesn't have diabetes. What's going on here? And her doctor did that thing, “Oh, it's good for longevity. It'll prevent it later on.” Oh, my gosh. This is what I say to all my clients: go to the actual drug's website. Go to the website that manufactures that drug and go to the full list of side effects. Not the little WebMD like here's the common ones. Go to the one that shows you the entire list of side effects. Again, they're not side effects; they're effects that you may or may not get. Then, read through them. And sure enough, acute pancreatitis was one of the causes. But here's what surprised me. Do you know that a side effect of metformin can be hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia? The very reason why they gave it to you, it actually can cause those problems, which blows my mind. And it changes all those pathways in the body, it depletes us of all the nutrition, making us more sick so then we need to be on more drugs. So, I just have a very big distrust. Now, drugs have their place when they can save my life, and I want people to always use the best tool in the toolbox. I'm not crazy. If there's a tool that's going to save my life, I'm going to use it. The problem is, MDs are only taught to use hammers so everything looks like a nail. [00:34:56] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right. [00:34:57] Ashley James: We have to make sure that we hire a whole team of professionals to support us, so that's why I love the work you do. I would hire you, I would hire a chiropractor, and I would hire an acupuncturist. I'd hire a whole team. And then all of them would inform me on what choices I should make for my body instead of just going to an MD. Going to an MD to tell me what to eat is like asking my plumber to the wiring in my house. [00:35:30] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's awesome. I love that. [00:35:32] Ashley James: You could keep that one. So, your wife is an osteopath. I'd love to hear a bit about her journey through seeing holistic medicine through the lens that you see it through. When I went to an osteopath for the first time, I think maybe an ovarian cyst was popping or something, I don't know. But I had excruciating pain and I was worried something was wrong with me, like maybe I was having ectopic pregnancy or something. I went to an osteopath, and he stood there, holding his prescription pad, ready to prescribe me a pain med. Now, I'm from Canada. I live in the States now, but I'm from Canada. In Canada, they don't give out pain meds like candy. I realized they didn't when I was growing up. So, he was like, “Okay, so we're going to give you a pain med.” I'm like, “I'm not here for a pain med. I'm in pain, but pain tells me that there's something wrong. I don't want to just numb it.” I was really surprised. I thought going to an osteopath would have been more holistic. But he was just ready to write me a prescription and make me comfortable. Your wife is an osteopath. What happened that had her see the holistic medicine versus allopathic medicine in terms of how she can help her patients? [00:36:51] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Her story is quite unique. She was homeless, believe it or not, at one time, and working as a massage therapist trying to get by. Her story, by the way, is depicted in a just-released movie, believe it or not, called The Prayer List. So, I encourage people to go there. I didn't think about that before we went live, but that's a cool movie. It's called The Prayer List. A wonderful story. During that time, she had a massage client say, “You got more to your life. Come on. Not that massage is bad,” but she paid for her first year of school. My wife had this healing in her mind in the background and thought, “I'm going to go back and be a doctor and really heal people.” So, she graduates with honors, it turns out she's the valedictorian in her class. Just a wonderful comeback story. She was in martial arts too, by the way. But she got into the system. This was back in the early 2000s. She had been in the system for a couple of years. And she began to show her patients how to cook, how to eat and all that stuff, and then she was chastised by her fellow clinicians and even her bosses about how that's not how we do it here. She still persisted not because she was rebelling at them, but she just knew it was right. What turns out after being in the system for about three years, she was fired. She was let go because she wasn't contributing adequately to the payer mix. People didn't need to see her as much because she had that kind of a healing mindset going in, and so they fired her. She couldn't find a job anywhere for like six months. It really put her in a tailspin and then, hence, the birth of the Functional Medical Institute. So, she went into that kind of backwards. And it's been interesting because some of her colleagues that she went to school with come to see us as patients. [00:38:55] Ashley James: Oh my gosh. [00:38:57] Dr. Mark Sherwood: The irony of it all. [00:39:04] Ashley James: How did you two meet? She had her own path leading to holistic medicine, as did you. How did the two of you come together to work together? [00:39:14] Dr. Mark Sherwood: When she started, she got into medicine basically because of those reasons I stated. But she had really bad experiences with men, quite frankly, like a lot of women have. She was abused and treated badly. The whole story is in the movie. And basically, swore off men because men hadn't treated her well at all. With that said, I had come through a very horrific divorce where I became the sole custodian for my two-, four- and six-year-old child, respectively. Basically, I swore off women, and I'm not going back to that anymore. So, about 10 years go by where I'm just kind of like doing my thing and she's doing her thing. Then one day, we met, and it was the very first meeting we met, and I saw something in her. Actually, it was just unique and there was a draw there. There were people around, and I said to her, “Dr. Neil,” that's her maiden name, “Dr. Neil, I appreciate the conversation with you. Definitely enjoyed it,” and I stuck out my hand to shake her hand because chivalry is not dead in my world. And so, when I shook her hand, and it truly happened, I couldn't let go of her hand. It was the oddest thing in the world. Couldn't let go of her hand, and she couldn't let go of mine. It was this really awkward few moments there, and it was so awkward that other people were looking at us, and we were looking at each other, and we're like, I don't know what's going on but for some reason, my hand is glued to your hand. So, I just heard this voice inside me say, “Mark, would you please have some courage for once in your life, dude? Seriously? Ask her out.” So, I did. I asked her if she would go to dinner with me and she said yes, and so we exchanged numbers, and we really, since that first dinner, have not been apart since. It was truly love at first sight. Since then, it was like that equally yoked, that common theme, that healer mentality, that healer gift that we all have. It just multiplied, and we just feed off of each other. We encourage one another and she's my best friend. And I call her my queen. We have this interaction. We work together in the clinic, and people love that. I will show public display of affection. I will give her a hug and a kiss right in the middle of the work day multiple times. It is interesting because we can't imagine not working together. It's been kind of cool because people come here, and they come here because we're a couple. Right? It's inspiring to them because today, obviously, there's a lot of horrible relationships that people are in and decisions they made that have affected their lives, much like the few moments ago we were talking about the stress, trauma and drama. Well, many times that comes from a relationship, doesn't it? We give them a sense of hope in that area, too. And every time I'm speaking, literally whether it'd be in front of 5000 people live or a podcast that's audio-only to millions of people around the world, I'm always going to one, thank God for the opportunity to be here, and number two, honor my wife because she is my backbone. I say she's not my spare rib; she's my prime rib. So, that's kind of how we've met. The long story short. [00:43:02] Ashley James: I love it. That's beautiful. It makes a difference in the work that you do. You both bring your backgrounds to the medicine that you practice. So, let's dive in now that we have an understanding of the philosophy, the lens in which you see our body, our human body, that our spiritual or emotional health and our lifestyle, like when we go to bed really does play a role in our health along with what we eat. Let's talk about how we can eliminate the usage of unnecessary medication and how we can eradicate all self-imposed choice-driven diseases. [00:43:50] Dr. Mark Sherwood: As you mentioned earlier, the main issue that we see within heart disease and really all other disease conditions is this thing called inflammation, and it's chronic systemic inflammation. If people can grasp just one concept I'm going to share right now, it will absolutely set you free. Because the immune system is unique, the immune system is one that's like surveillance. It's like the army, navy, air force, marine, coast guards, and space force all combined, magnified. So, it has internal surveillance and external surveillance. It's always looking for something that might be an intruder. We all understand the inducement of the immune system being from the idea of parasites, bacteria, and certainly, in today's world, virus. We understand that. The immune system will respond. And the immune system when it responds like that, it will send out signals or another word for that is cytokines. And some of the cytokines are inflammatory cytokines. So, that's how we get this idea of inflammation. We also know that when we have an injury or something like that, like a cut or a bruise or a broken bone, we get inflammation. But the greatest inducer of the immune system that creates the most inflammation is the standard American diet because it's got chemicals, it's got genetic modification and all kinds of pollutants in it that the body looks at as foreign. So, just the very intake of a burger and fries is something that the body looks at as like “holy crap, I haven't seen that before. What is that?” That's sending a shockwave to the system, and it's not food. It's an enemy invader. So therefore, we have this chronic bombardment of this inflammatory-driving system that contributes to all these diseases we see. In our clinic, when we get people off of that, we bring back just the concept of real food. If God packs it like this, it's probably how you eat it. And we don't give people dietary restrictions. We don't even tell them to count calories. We just say if it's on this list of anti-inflammatory foods that we generally believe, then eat it as much as you want. If it's on this list of inflammatory foods, don't eat it, any of it. And guess what? One hundred percent of the people get better. They're like, “Well, that was easy.” Yeah, it's not that hard. So, that's kind of our philosophy in practice, and that's the very first place we go. [00:46:24] Ashley James: Can you give us homework to help decrease inflammation? Let's dive into the actionable steps we can take. [00:46:33] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Let's first of all look at a list, and I hope everybody gets their pen and paper out or your phone and just begin to take this down. What are some known inflammatory foods? Well, some of these are going to be really obvious, and some of them not so obvious, and I'll explain why. The obvious ones are going to be like processed foods, fried foods, artificial sweeteners, sugars, and MSG. We know those things are going to be inflammatory. We would include sodas in there. But let's look at corn, soy, and grains. [00:47:11] Ashley James: What about non-GMO organic corn or soy grown in our own backyard? Is that going to also be inflammatory no matter what? Or like a store-bought, not organic, non-GMO? Is there a difference? Or should we avoid soy and corn no matter what? [00:47:35] Dr. Mark Sherwood: There is a difference. And in your case with a non-GMO soy and a non-GMO organic corn, those will be just fine and beneficial because they're in their natural state. What makes corn, soy, and grain so damaging is really multiple things inclusive of the following: the genetic modification is one of them, specifically in the wheat crop, the grains. They've been genetically modified to avoid the effects of the herbicide Roundup. Roundup is sprayed on the soy, the corn, and the grains. And those are subsidized by the US government. So, you got to think about this from that standpoint. If the government tells you to do something in regard to your health, you probably need to do the opposite. So, with the genetic modification, we have problem number one that's glaring. When these grains specifically come into our body, even though they're going to be genetically modified at a small percentage, the genes again haven't changed but 2% in 10,000 years, so it's still looking at this newfound genetically-modified seed grain crop different. So, it looks at as a foreigner, so therefore we get that immune system inducement, and that's why so many people have so much problem with grains creating this idea of leaky gut or hyperpermeability of the gut, leading to autoimmunity. We also see when those genetically modified grains are digested, they become exorphins, which turn around and bind to the opioid receptors in our brain, creating a chemical addiction. This is why people have a hard time giving up the bread and the grains because we're talking about real, live, genuine addiction. That's problem number one. [00:49:30] Ashley James: Same with dairy. [00:49:32] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right. Dairy. [00:49:33] Ashley James: There's sugars in dairy that also trigger that same opioid response, the dopamine. Mammal milk is meant for the baby. And the baby, we got to trick the brain into wanting to keep eating, so it grows, so a baby's brain is hooked on its mother's breast milk for a very good reason. God is smart. [00:50:01] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. It creates comfort and peace, and that's when a baby can be crying until the baby latches on to that nipple and it's like, “Oh!” That makes them happy. It's not just the milk. It's the chemistry within the process. That's why it's interesting. They were saying that milk does the body good. No, it doesn't. Don't drink it. Period. You got a double whammy there with milk because the cows in the confined animal feeding operations are fed these corn, soy, and wheat products to get fat fast, the antibiotics and the hormones, so we're selling them by weight, not by health. Therefore, when they put out that milk, I mean, that's fat, so this stuff is carried in the fat, and toxins are stored in the fat, so you have this milieu of just a mess that's subsidized. Again, the government subsidizes dairy. But all that is problem sort of number one. Problem number two is you got Roundup. I mean, in itself, think about the concept of glyphosate and atrazine, a known carcinogen, known estrogenic compound. Why are people getting so fat so fast? Why are we seeing the feminization of our world in front of us? It's because of these compounds, the chemicals binding to the estrogen receptors creating the same mimicking effect of estrogen. So, we see this troubling trend across our country in the United States specifically, but it's lending itself across the world as well. So, these things are as bad as I just described, as inflammatory as I just described, and even much, much more. When we talk about this with other people, we're just saying stay away from it. I know what you heard. You can take this argument over here to an allopathic side and the majority of them are going to say, “Oh, that's nonsense.” But it is true. Everything I just said is true, and folks, you can look it up out there, and there's all kinds of studies on that that you can see and the way it works. It's out there. It's not hidden from you. Just search it out and see that it's actually accurate. [00:52:15] Ashley James: I just read a recent study. Really fascinating. I'm not an advocate for Frankenfoods, for highly processed foods. But this one study took two groups of people, and one group of people, they just said keep eating meat at every meal like just keep eating what you normally eat, get your burgers and your fries and whatever you do. Then the other group, they said keep eating what you eat, keep eating the standard American diet, but you're going to replace five meals a week. And five meals a week is nothing, right? And five meals a week with some non-meat Frankenfood like beyond burger or whatever impossible burger. Then, they took their stool samples for a month. I don't know, maybe it was six weeks. I think it was six weeks, but it was a short study. So yeah, it was six weeks. They looked at the microbiome and what they found is that eating the Frankenfoods, because there's fiber, even though they're not healthy at all, they have canola oil and all kinds of GMOs and stuff, they're not healthy foods. But what's interesting is that by switching out some meat with something that had fiber, now these people weren't eating the way you and I eat. They weren't eating fresh fruits and vegetables. They weren't getting proper fiber from whole food sources, to begin with. But just adding in something that wasn't meat and instead had fiber in it increased the butyrate that was made, which helps to digest and absorb. It also has other functions in terms of lowering heart disease. So, I thought that was incredible like just kind of blew my mind. I thought, well, okay, we're not taking blood because I want to see like maybe eating these Frankenmeats is going to increase inflammation because now they're getting more canola oil. But they were told to just keep eating the standard American diet, just replace some meat with something that has fiber in it, the Frankenmeats. So, I thought that was really interesting. I'm a big advocate of telling everyone to get fiber up to 40-50 grams a day from whole food sources for a variety of reasons. Yeah, the first few weeks maybe you're going to fart more. Your microbiome is going to catch up and get used to it. But oh my gosh, the difference it makes. The difference. It's such a huge, huge difference. Then just to see that that study shows that even just replacing meat with something that has fiber in it for a few meals a week was noticeable in the microbiome within six weeks. It kind of gets exciting that you can make a health change, something small like a baby step. Some people choose to eat vegetarian dinners, or they choose to eat more plants until 6:00 PM, and then their dinner has meat in it or something. So, I personally have found, because I have done over 30 diets to try to find what works for my body, and I believe, I've come to the conclusion that diet is a moving target because your body's needs change as we age under different circumstances and stress levels. So, you got to listen to your body, right? And also, my body really resonates with the most whole food plant-based possible. The more whole food and plant-based, the less processed food I eat, the more health my body gains. But I don't believe in diet dogma, and I don't tell everyone to eat the same way. But I do want you to share what you've seen promotes the most health and makes the biggest difference. If everyone followed what you said, like avoid these foods and instead eat these foods for the next six weeks, you're going to see a big shift. So, can you give us sort of what is the biggest bang for our buck in terms of changing? So you've already said cut out, obviously GMO foods, obviously non-organic GMO foods, all the processed foods, the fried foods, the processed meats, the sugar, and the corn and soy. What else has a really big impact in terms of cutting out of the diet? [00:56:55] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Well, I think you nailed them a moment ago. You bring in more plants with more fiber. It's interestingly enough, the idea of gut health, digestion, and assimilation is very key, and the short-chain fatty acid butyrate that is increased with good fiber intake is going to help heal the leaky gut, and it works to bring about more repair to the tight junctions that get spread apart with the increase of that protein zonulin. All that said, people can expect, and we tracked that for a long time and we've got thousands of people in our database, this is what we've seen in only 30 days, and we measure what's called body fat percentage. We're trying to get ladies down somewhere in the low 20's more or less percent body fat. Men, I want them below 15, or 15 or somewhere less than that. We see in one month, the percent body fat dropped 2 to 4 percent with ladies. We've seen this consistently. The percent body fat went down 3 to 5 percent in one month with men. We've watched this occur over and over and over again. Really, it's about our body composition adjustment. We know people have a hard time for 4-5 days if they have heavy addiction to this sugar-grain thing. But once they get past that 4-5 days, their energy level goes up higher, their sleep gets more effective and functional, the clothes fit differently, and the confidence goes through the roof. And that correlates well with the reduction of stress because we now have confidence which is a precursor for resilience, which is required to deal with stress. [00:58:53] Ashley James: Now, to be clear, you are not promoting a vegan diet. I looked on your website. I saw that one of your smoothies had beef protein powder in it. So, what way of eating are you promoting that gets these great results? [00:59:14] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah, we are not promoting a vegan diet. As a matter of fact, vegan diets typically lead to deficiencies in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin B12, many times even iron as well. To that end, we promote more of the quasi-Mediterranean diet, I would say without breads and grains. If you keep that parameter there, a lot of plants, a lot of fruits and vegetables of course. I want to stay away from the white potato more or less, the majority of the time, especially if you have had blood sugar issues and you have metabolic issues. And the white potato is the most polluted vegetable consumed in the United States today. We consume more of that. Then, you think about nuts and seeds. We want to get nuts and seeds that are not cut or raw, not rolled and roasted in a lot of hot oils. That's not healthy. With proteins, I want to pick organic grass-fed, wild-caught, and free-range. Those kinds of things like that. Grass-fed is a cool double-term there to think about. But as long as you do that, you're going to have good results. Even further, if you say, “Well, I'm going to have a hard time doing that just off the bat, I'm going to have a hard time flipping that light switch on,” okay, well, do one meal a day that's right. One meal a day under these guidelines and you will feel better, much like you cited in the study that just adds a little bit of fiber to a meat diet. One meal a day can change the microbiome. And we know that mood can change because the neurotransmitter serotonin is produced primarily in the gut, so people feel better, they're more calm, and they're more confident. You say it like this. Small victories and small successes lead to more successes and more victories. If we just take these steps one at a time and just commit to doing one baby step every day to benefit us physically, emotionally, spiritually, just one thing, it's going to lead to two things. It's going to lead to a lifetime of those things that are perpetual and habitual, and we will have a higher quality of life with the concept of wellness not being just a pipedream but being realized. [01:01:43] Ashley James: For someone who doesn't want to eat meat, can they eat beans, legumes, and then supplement? Like you said, they might end up with a deficiency. And there are meat eaters that have B12 deficiency, too. So, saying that a vegan diet leads to that, I know plenty of meat eaters that are incredibly deficient in their B12 but also in their intrinsic factor, which leads to B12 and iron deficiency. It all starts with the gut, right? We have to heal the gut. They could supplement with omega 3 to fill in the gap there. I do though say if you're going to eat any bean or lentil to cook it in the Instant Pot because under pressure, it breaks down the lectins. And then you don't fart as much. So, it's easier to cook it in the Instant Pot and just walk away from it. So, there's that. Do you have any superfoods that are just like if you add this, people are going to get sort of for brownie points, some extra points there? Do you have any super, super, superfoods? Let's say someone is walking around totally feeling inflamed. I've done it. Like once in a blue moon, I'm going to go out, and I think maybe five times in the last 11 years I've been gluten-free, I've had a slice of cake at a party or something and a glass of wine. I drink once a year. I go somewhere, a birthday somewhere, and that happens. Then the next day, I'm walking around feeling a little poopy, a little inflamed. And I own it. I'm like, okay, I'm going to get back on my eating healthy. I'll go to something like quercetin, turmeric, resveratrol, a big green smoothie, something that I know is going to kick that inflammation in the butt. What do you have that kicks inflammation in the butt? [01:03:45] Dr. Mark Sherwood: I really like the broccoli. If you can take in broccoli. And this is why – because broccoli, and even broccoli sprouts if you can take in broccoli sprouts, that would be number one of those two because a sprout has 100 times more density of nutrients than a full-grown plant. What happens is when that broccoli sprout comes — and this is why I like it because it does so many things — there are two compartments in the broccoli. One has something called glucoraphanin. The other has an enzyme called myrosinase. When you choose this or digest this, these two compartments bust apart, combine together, and we get this wonderful compound called sulforaphane that is yielded inside the body. Sulforaphane upregulates the nerve II pathway genetically, which will increase the antioxidant enzymes and your detox enzymes. You're talking about a triple whammy in the ability to conquer this chronic systemic inflammation caused by the toxicity that is driven by the standard American diet. So, think yielding sulforaphane, and to get that, broccoli sprouts or broccoli. [01:05:03] Ashley James: I love it. Now, cooked broccoli has the same effect, or does it have to be raw? [01:05:08] Dr. Mark Sherwood: The more you cook things, the more the degradation occurs with anything. Obviously, if you can find some sprouts. Like raw broccoli can give some people gas. [01:05:22] Ashley James: Yeah, I just live with it. I know. I love broccoli. I just have to be careful. If I'm going to go and do a meeting with someone, I'm not eating broccoli before that meeting. [01:05:35] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Oh yeah, you don't want to do that because you're going to have awful gas pains and you let it out, it's probably going to smell bad. That's not cool. But honestly, if you can find a way to grow some broccoli sprouts, those aren't bad at all, and you can put those things on salads. And I haven't seen them cause that gas nearly as much as a full-grown stalk. It's really interesting. So yes, on the one hand, you want to cook less. But I get it. I'd rather somebody eat/cook broccoli than none/no broccoli. [01:06:09] Ashley James: I have this health book and I got to find it somewhere. We just moved, so my books are unpacked yet. But it's from, I don't know, the '50s or something. It's this old health book and it's all about juicing for wellness, like way back before its time. It has a whole section on sprouting and how whenever you sprout, either you can sprout lentils, you can sprout beans like mung beans, not all beans, and then seeds. I've been really into sprouting seeds lately. I'll post a picture of last night's dinner. It was brown rice cake, that's my little guilty pleasure. The Ashley in her 20s would not think that that was some little cheap food. But my brown rice cakes with avocado and piles and piles of sprouts on top, it's really delicious. To me, avocado mixed with sprouts is so good. I get like a dopamine high from eating it. It's so delicious. Sprouting is actually really easy. Go on YouTube, and look it up. Different types of seeds or beans or different types call for sort of different times, but I found it really, really easy. In the Learn True Health Facebook group I'll make sure I'll post how I do it, so listeners that want to try it can do it for themselves. It's so great because even in the winter you can have fresh food. I had a guy on the show recently, Tim James, who said 70 percent of the food he eats, he grows in his house because he sprouts like no one's business. He has a whole wall of sprouts and he mostly eats that. That's how he cured a lot of diseases he had and his friend cured his cancer with it. He's a big proponent of eating live food. But just having sprouts in your house, it's so easy. You don't need sunlight. You just need a dark cupboard. I put it in the oven. You just got to remember it's in the oven and not start the oven. [01:08:22] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That's right. [01:08:23] Ashley James: That was a kitchen fire a year and a half ago. My husband and I now understand to always check the oven before we turn it on. One thing I wanted to bring up. You talked about MSG, and I think it's really important that we not gloss over that. Because just last night, my friends told me about this video, Dr. Katherine Reid. It was a TEDx Talk, “Unblind Your Mind.” It's a great video. I highly recommend everyone listen to it. She shows clips of her autistic daughter, who is in her own world. In the first video, in her own world and not making eye contact. Then they chose to go gluten-free and do a green smoothie every morning. They saw neurological changes. They also went casein-free, so all dairy. All dairy, all gluten. And do a green smoothie. So now we've upped the fiber, gotten a bit better gut health, and now she's able to make eye contact but she's having two-hour meltdowns where she's stuck in a yes-no loop. I saw when my kid was younger, he did yes-no loops a little bit and we would give him chamomilla homeopathic and it would take him out of it. But I noticed that. Then, she was stuck in these loops. That's when she figured out. Dr. Reid figured out the problem was MSG and that the glutamate is so excessive in our processed food diet that then she went through and made her child's diet 100 percent processed food free in order to eliminate MSG. There are 40 different words for MSG. When you read the packaging, it can say soy protein, but that actually means MSG. There are all these different words for it, right? We might look at a package and think it's clean, but there's actually monosodium glutamate in it. The problem is glutamate is good for us, but the problem is too much, right? So, she eliminated that. Then the last video, my jaw was on the floor, is of a healthy, happy child making eye contact, speaking clearly and calmly, and having a wonderful discussion about her kindergarten class. She was kicked out of her special needs class and put into a regular class. Her daughter is no longer on the spectrum. Her daughter was diagnosed on the spectrum, moderate autism, and now she has zero autism. And it was 100 percent done with diet. [01:10:58] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Wow! [01:11:00] Ashley James: And it was all about the doctor figuring out that eating wheat, barley and rye, and in my opinion, oats as well because oats contain gliadin which is similar enough to gluten. It's kind of a lie when they say gluten-free oats. I'm like, yes, but it has gliadin in it, so don't eat it. By avoiding those grains, we are reducing glutamate. By taking out processed food, we're reducing glutamate. And that affects the brain. It also affects the gut. So, that is this sort of huge wake-up. I've never heard of this — this standpoint because I've been dairy and gluten-free for so long. But a lot of people see a benefit because they've reduced the free glutamate. [01:11:48] Dr. Mark Sherwood: That is so right. You think about glutamate being a neuroexcitatory hormone. So we're talking about affecting brain health. You think about an inflamed brain where you think of excess glutamate. So, think brain inflammation. If you don't feel good in the brain, you're not going to make good decisions. Again, as we've talked about at the top of our conversation, everything is connected. It's not segregated. It's connected. And because of that, just like you said correctly, we have to think about all these different effects it has all around our body. And they are significant, to say the least. [01:12:28] Ashley James: Amazing. This has been so much fun having you on the show. I absolutely would love to have you back to dive in deeper. I feel like this has been an introduction to the work you do, and I'd really love to get specific, especially specific on how to lower high blood pressure. A lot of patients are like, “Okay, I get it. I don't want to be on meds, but my blood pressure is 160/110, and I'm taking medication. So yeah, what do I do?” I'd love to have you on the show again. We can discuss how to lower high blood pressure. Think about the most commonly prescribed drugs that we can heal the body by doing these changes like doing these lifestyle and diet changes, to the point where the body is so healthy, it doesn't need the drugs anymore. I'd really love to have you back on the show and dive into the most common drugs that you get your patients off of because you get them so healthy, that they no longer are a candidate for them. [01:13:33] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah, I would love to come back. Let's do that and talk about high blood pressure. We can talk about osteoporosis, that kind of stuff as well. That's huge. Certainly, we can talk about autoimmunity and reducing the ability to depend on those immunosuppressants. There's all kinds of things, etc. etc. that we can talk about. [01:13:51] Ashley James: Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, so let's come up with a list of the most common drugs that you get people off of. And let's go down that list and talk about the protocols. Wonderful. All listeners can go to Sherwood.tv of course. It links to Dr. Mark Sherwood and everything that he does and his wonderful wife does, Michele. It's going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at Learntruehealth.com. When you go to Sherwood.tv, go to the free download e-book. Didn't you say it was like 27 pages or something? But it gives you some great protocols to start today. I love that your mission is to continue to spread this information. I also want to let listeners know you do have some great books. We didn't even get to talk about them today. We can definitely dive into that next time. I'd love to know maybe some tips from each of your books Quest for Wellness, Fork Your Diet, Surviving The Garden of Eatin‘. That's cute. I love it. Then, of course, watch the movie, the newly released movie, The Prayer List, which sounds fantastic. Mark, can you give us some homework to do between now and the next time we have you on the show? [01:15:02] Dr. Mark Sherwood: Yeah. I want people to make a list of what I'm going to give you right now, and I want you to do these couple of things. It's not going to be much, but again, let's celebrate small victories. I want people to work on having at least a 15-minute walk every day. That's number one. Okay? Number two, I want people to work on 7 to 8 hours of sleep every night. That's very important. I want people to work on having a salad once a day. Just one salad once a day. That's beautiful. Number four, I would like to challenge people to come up with a two or three-sentence positive affirmation that they speak out loud over their life twice a day. For example, it can be “I am a loving being. I am worthy. I am successful.” There you go. There's three things right there. Say that out loud twice a day, every day. Do those couple of things that I just named off. Do them between now and the next time we talk and watch your life change. Watch how those small little things lead to bigger changes. No matter where you are in your health journey whether you're just getting going on, whether you've just been into this, look, we all have improvement. So, you can take those things right there and you can improve them based on where you are. But I've given you a little bit of homework that you can do every day. It doesn't take much time. You're talking just a little bit of time and thought. We get 1,440 minutes a day. Why can't we spend a little bit of time on self-development so we can make the world a better place? [01:16:52] Ashley James: Beautiful. We're starting with ourselves, and then we expand out to our friends, our family, our neighborhood or community, our county, our state or province, our country, and the world. We have to think of all of our choices in that ecological way because if our choice is harming ourselves, it's trickling down, and it's harming our children. I always pick on McDonald's. They're such an easy target. Going to a fast food restaurant in the moment, it's easy because “I'm tired. I'm hungry. My kids are hungry. I'm just going to go through the drive-thru.” That easy choice, right? We have to choose our hearts. We have to just choose our heart. Maybe our heart is getting that salad and doing it. But once we do it, it's going to fill you with so much energy that then you're going to want to do it again and again. But choosing out your heart, the good choices are trickling down to those you love. And the bad choices are also trickling down to those you love. We have to remember that, especially as women, because we like to put our kids first and put everyone first and then we're left just hungry and tired and just doing takeout. I've been there. Just trust me, I get it. And ultimately, harming ourselves harms those we love. You don't want to imagine a world where you're not here anymore and your children don't have you or your spouse doesn't have you or your family and friends don't have you because we kept putting ourselves last. So, I love these little things. A 15-minute walk and 8 hours of sleep. Also, it matters when you go to bed. I just want to point out that if you go to bed at 1:00 in the morning versus 10:00 at night. So at 10:30 at night, we get a cortisol spike and that makes it hard to stay in a deep sleep all night long. It'll actually affect the depth of our sleep and when we wake up. Maybe you notice this with your children. If you let them stay up late, they'll actually wake up early in the morning. You're like, “Why didn't you sleep in?” But same with us. We'll have a lighter, restless sleep. You got to make sure you fall asleep by 10 so that you don't have that second wind, and you don't have that cortisol spike. Then, you have a deeper and most restful sleep. You wake up 7 to 8 hours later feeling way more rested. So yeah, I love that. Then you want us to eat one salad a day filled with lots of wonderful vegetables and hopefully some broccoli sprouts. And then using that positive affirmation is beautiful. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Can't wait to have you back. This has been wonderful. [01:19:33] Dr. Mark Sherwood: I can't wait to come back here. It's an honor to be here with you today. And I look forward to it, I truly do.   Get Connected with Dr. Mark Sherwood!   Website Facebook Instagram YouTube Twitter   Books by Dr. Mark Sherwood   The Quest For Wellness Fork Your Diet Surviving the Garden of Eatin’

Check out more articles, science, benefits and studes on heat and full-spectrum light therapy using Sunlighten Saunas and light devises: LearnTrueHealth.com/sunlightensauna Dr. Wendie's gift to you: www.fivejourneys.com/promo   Detox, Self-Healing from Mold & Stress with Dr. Wendie Trubow https://www.learntruehealth.com/detox-self-healing-from-mold-stress-with-dr-wendie-trubow   Highlights: The importance of detoxing The impact of stress on body functions Mycotoxins Genetics is not a death sentence Microbiome health and leaky gut trifectas Why toxicity testing is important in improving our health Stress has tremendous effects on our bodies. It can affect our ability to detox, digest food, ovulate, have sex, uptake nutrients, and even control our food cravings! In this episode, Dr. Wendie Trubow shares how we can recover from stress and other health issues just by changing our diet and lifestyle! Intro: Hello, true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health Podcast. Today’s episode is really awesome. We have Dr. Wendie Trubow with us today, who, through her own healing journey, discovered a unique way of focusing on supporting the body’s ability to detox, heal the thyroid, balance hormones, especially for women going perimenopause or menopause and just how they get on the other side of feeling poopie and to the point where you’re feeling awesome. Another big thing we talked about is that these toxins can lead to abdominal fat and can lead to depression, and can lead to fatigue. And so many of us are running around getting our coffee fix in the morning, getting our sugar fix in the afternoon, so it’s a self-medicating fatigue, not realizing that fatigue is a symptom of toxicity overload and that by doing daily simple things with our lifestyle and our diet and our nutrition, little fun life hacks that we can maximize our body’s ability to heal itself, maximize the body’s ability to detox and balance hormones and feel amazing. Wendie, after our interview, said, oh no, I forgot to tell everyone about this freebie that I’m giving away. So I want you to know to go to her website fivejourneys.com/promo, and I’ll make sure that the link for that is in the show notes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. If you are listening on a podcast directory, just click details or show notes and it’ll all show up there. I’ll make sure that’s there. Another thing we talked about is one of my absolute favorite tools that I’ve used to help my healing journey because I realized that a lot of my health issues were from toxins, specifically heavy metals, and that’s something we talked about in the interview, so you going to love learning about that. But the thing we both, Wendie and I both used is a Sunlighten Sauna. Now, I’ve been raving about Sunlighten Saunas for about four, five years now, and the reason why is I kept having these really weird episodes where I taste heavy metals in my mouth. My liver will become distended. I’d feel very toxic and very sick. And finally, one of my doctors, one of my naturopaths, just turned to me and said, you know you should really use a sauna because you sweat out these toxins, and it bypasses the liver and the kidneys, so I thought, this is amazing! So when I started to dive into studying the Sunlighten Sauna specifically, because I was looking at all the saunas and I kept hearing Sunlighten. But why the Sunlighten Sauna over every other sauna system out there is it has this incredible patent to technology that allows the full spectrum infrared to be absorbed by your body efficiently. There’s actually receptors on your cells. We talked about this in my interview with Dr. Kahn, who’s a cardiologist, and he uses Sunlighten Saunas with his patients. And he says that on each cell on the body, there’s receptors for light which just like, boggles my mind, right? Because you can’t, like, pour me a cup of sunlight, right?  Or like pour me a cup of infrared, right? You can’t drink it, right? You can’t take it. And so we always think that something physical like things you eat, things you drink, is a physical, tangible thing that you can hold that something that the trillions of cells in your body would absorb and utilize. But then, there’s this medium that our body absorbs and utilizes that is a light spectrum, and that isn’t that just wild. Well if you think about light is energy, and our body is made up of energy, so that makes total sense. Well, in looking at the studies, and there’s so many studies, and then Sunlighten also has worked with doctors and researchers to come up with some studies of their own. But the Journal of Athletic Enhancement published a study of ten national-power level athletes, and they found that the infrared improved the neuromuscular performance during intense training and that balanced and increased the testosterone to cortisol ratio, and they found that these athletes recovered faster, built more muscle, and could train harder, every day using the infrared system. There’s another study published by a top researcher in infrared technology, Dr. Michael Hamblin, and he says that after looking at muscle mass and muscle gain, they did find that with the Sunlighten System that there’s increased muscle gain after training and decreased inflammation and oxidative stress, which is exciting! Because the other day, so normally I’ve just been using my Sunlighten for heavy and metal detox has all these other benefits I kept hearing about but but mainly I was like I feel really good when I get out of my sauna, and for hours later I feel really good like I got a massage good. I’ve been using it to detox heavy metals gently out of the body, so it’s good me time, I feel amazing, I know it decreases stress, I know there’s all these health benefits, but that’s pretty much been my focus. Well, the other day, I did two workouts back to back at the gym, it was like Tuesday and Wednesday, and I did a lot of leg work, and my legs were really sore. It’s kind of hard to walk up the stairs, and I remembered, oh yeah, I’ve heard these studies about using a Sunlighten system to recover faster from athletics. So I jumped in my system that night, and I set it to the relaxation program because I was about to go to bed, I didn’t want to like because sometimes when I do the certain programs, I’m like more awake. So it’s good to do it in the morning for some programs but this one I just want a gentle sweat, I just hit the relaxation, and it was very gentle, it’s easy to breathe, it’s not very hot, it’s warm, you feel nice and warm like you’re in a cocoon. And I enjoyed it, it was very gentle it had the full spectrum, so it’s near, mid and far-infrared, and afterward I felt great, and as I was walking around, I took a shower, and I went to bed, I notice oh I don’t have pain in my muscles anymore, that’s good! But the next day I woke up, and I should have, normally, I would have had more soreness cause you know 2 days after an exercise, I worked out really hard that Tuesday so by Thursday I should have really felt because Tuesday and Wednesday I was doing a lot of work so by Thursday and Friday I should have really had more muscle soreness, I had zero muscle soreness after being in a sauna, and I thought, oh my gosh now I’m definitely going to use the system after every workout. I’ve seen these studies but I never had that personal experience until now. So I thought that was really cool. It also helps with weight loss, and I always heard that like, oh, it’s good, because you know you’re sweating and you’re burning calories, but I’ve read the study, fascinating! That it increases a type of protein that stimulates the breakdown of fats, of these lipids with inside the fat cells- the adipose tissue. It stimulates the breakdown of that, so can be transported to the liver, and then the body can convert that fat and get rid of it. So I thought that was really needed because it’s actually stimulating the chemistry of the body to go to the process of burning fat. And then with the anti-aging, it stimulates collagen production. A lot of women love, I mean, you know, and men that want to look great too. It stimulates the collagen production, so women noticed they have less fine lines and wrinkles. My big, big rave about the Sunlighten System is that it decreases stress significantly, so it helps with mental and emotional health as well, especially, in the last year I’ve been going through a ton of stuff emotionally, and using it has greatly helped me to just calm myself down. Have you ever been so stressed out, and the thing is stress is not an emotion, so you just walking around but you know your stress because someone does something and you just snap at them, it’s like you’re incredibly irritable and you have a short fuse, that is a symptom of being in a high state of stress. That’s why I noticed that after using the Sunlighten Sauna every day once a day I notice that, whew, it just brought it down, so my fuse is longer, I’m more patient, I don't snap at people, I’m very slow to anger, we’re supposed to quick to anger, so those are signs that you’ve decreased stress in the body and as Dr. Wendie points out today in our interview, the body cannot tell the difference between a mental stress, emotional stress, physical stress, all the kinds of stressors in the body it’s just a super stress. So whether you’re having physical stress or whether you’re having really hard time emotionally or mentally sometimes even spiritual stress. The body takes it to heart, and it’s all the same to the body. The body’s going to go through a state of stress no matter what. So doing things to decrease stress like walking, prayer, meditation, Sunlighten Sauna, awesome, they all help the body to decrease them. But what I really like about the Sunlighten compared to other saunas because I’ve been in the sauna at my gym, which is way too hot, it feels like I’m trying to breathe in Vegas in July, it’s just way too hot. It’s hard to breathe. What I like about the Sunlighten is you can sweat at low temperatures. When I said low temperatures, I mean low temperatures for a sauna. When I breathe in a Sunlighten, I’m always surprised, I don’t sense any hot air going into my lungs, right? It’s not hot. It’s a very comfortable temperature, and you could ask my husband, I do not like feeling hot. I immediately turn the AC on when I get in the car. I’m just one of those people. I don’t like feeling hot, but there’s something about the Sunlighten that’s different. So if you’re one of those people who is like, Why, I don’t like feeling hot! You might actually really enjoy the Sunlighten because it’s very gentle, it’s just warm, and then all of a sudden you’re sweating because the infrared technology – the near, mid, and far infrared technology, is getting into the cells and warming you up from the inside. Your core temperature goes up one degree for an hour after your session. So it’s doing all this fantastic work inside you even after you leave the sauna, and they see that for 24 hours, it has this protective response for the whole body and for the cardiovascular system. This is such a cool information and Dr. Wendie agrees with me that it’s so great to use this type of therapy to detox the body from stress and from toxins in a natural way. When I interviewed Connie Zack the founder of Sunlighten, I ask for her to give my listeners a really good discount and she did and she’s honored that for years. I think it’s been five years now so she gives free shipping and she throws in some extra gifts. Call the company and ask them and find out what really great deal that they’re providing for listeners because they always make sure that they take care of you guys, and if you want to go to the link learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna that’s learntruehealth.com/sunlightensauna. If you have any questions for me, I’d love to answer them, come join the Facebook group The Learn True Health Facebook group, where like fifty people away from reaching five thousand people, it doesn’t sound like a lot of people, we’ve a lot more listeners, I guess not everyone is on Facebook we’ve a lot more listeners than that but what’s cool about our Facebook group is people are so active and helpful. It’s a fun community where people are really supporting each other. So if you want to join our Facebook group, it’s not toxic, we do not attract that kind of person, it’s very supportive, very loving, very understanding, healing community that everyone’s sharing their information and asking questions, learning from each other and I’m very active on that group. So if you have questions about the Sunlighten System or anything that Dr. Wendie shares today or anything about my experience with detox and transformation, please come, join the Facebook group, you can do that by going to learntruehealth.com/group, or you can just search Learn True Health on Facebook. And if you’ve been a long-time listener, you may have noticed that this last week we launched our new and improved website. It was a big endeavor. I wanted to make the website even more accessible for you. So we completely revamped it and updated it. The search function is working a lot better than before. So please take your questions to the search function on the website. Type in the topics you’re interested in, find your episodes, we’re almost at five hundred episodes. It’s so exciting that your answers are there for you, and we’re here to help. So join the Learn True Health Facebook group, and I look forward to seeing you there. Thank you so much for sharing this episode with those you care about. By sharing, we’re spreading this information. My goal is to help as many people as possible to learn true health. I’d love to turn this ripple into a tidal wave and help millions of people to transform their lives, and you’re a part of that; we’re all part of this ripple effect to help as many people as possible. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day, and enjoy today’s interview. [00:14:01] Ashley James: Welcome to the Learn True Health Podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 482. I am so excited for today’s guest! We have with us today, Dr. Wendie Trubow who specializes in detox but I have a feeling that this detox is going to be a totally different conversation than what we’re used to. You know, we’ve talked about detox, dozens of times, from many different angles, and this angle, and I love this because Dr. Trubow started off specializing in women’s health, right? And we’re going to hear your story but what I do know is that your personal experience led you to dive in to holistic medicine and discover that detox was the most important thing we really, really need to focus on, and supporting those systems of our body so that we can get on the other side of ill health. So, I’m really excited to jump in to this. Welcome to the show! [00:15:05] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Thank you and feel free to call me Wendie during the show you don’t have to call me doctor. [00:15:10] Ashley James: Well, it’s a hardened title, but I’m happy to call you Wendie. I know that as a medical doctor you went through excruciating years of higher education and indoctrination into the pharmaceutical industry. And somehow you managed to unbrainwash yourself to the point where you realized that there’s this whole world of healing out here beyond drugs, so, congratulations you’re one of the few amazing medical doctors that made it out  the other side. [00:15:38] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Thank you. I think there should be a bumper sticker, like, I survived med school and residency. I think that should be a bumper sticker because I lived through it but I did not thrive through it. I can’t say that I thought I survived. That’s all I get. [00:15:54] Ashley James: Well, it’s really not an environment for thriving, is it? It’s really is excruciating what they do and it definitely a lot of doctors end up jaded, right, through residency, they have kind of going to becoming a doctor like with beautiful dreams of helping people and then through residency they are just completely torn apart. But something happened in your life, and I really want to dive into this, because I think your story will resonate with all of us. Something happened in your life that had you need to go beyond your medical school training to find out how to heal. So I’d love to dive right in and learn more about what happened to you. [00:16:41] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I’d love sharing the story because what it really underscores, so first I’ll say is Ashley is it my health story has two peaks. The first one, well, let me back up and stop. I want to underscore, it’s really hard to recognize when you are going off the cliff, unless you have a particular world view that only accepts optimal health, okay? So I didn’t have that world view when I went off the cliff for the first time. And so it literally took me years to recognize that all was not right in Wendie Land, until, I got to a point where I thought to myself, oh my god, I have to get up today. I have to get up every day, but I’m so tired. And I got up because I was the primary breadwinner. That’s why I got up the bed, otherwise, uh-uh I would have stayed in bed. Sex drive, forget about it. I had head-to-toe issues. I was losing my hair. My brain wasn’t working. I had anxiety, no, I’m high-strung. I’m not anxious. I’m just happened to be like go, go, go high energy. I had a thyroid dysfunction where it was totally normal. I had heart palpitations, asthma, bloating gas, diarrhea, constipation, sometimes all in the same day, right? I’d be having diarrhea then be constipated then of diarrhea later, like, go figure. I had really heavy periods, I had difficulty conceiving – I made up for that one. And I had wasting in nutritional deficiencies, so I was really a mess, and that happened when I was 35. I was a year and a half out of residency. And I did go off the cliff in residency but again, world view, I didn’t have the view that I was supposed to feel amazing so I can’t just tolerate and feeling all these things. And the other thing of it all, highlight, Ashley, is it doesn’t happen overnight for most of us. It’s not like Monday I feel amazing. Tuesday I feel terrible. What happened? I’m going to look into this? Now, it was this, slow, slow, deterioration of my health, okay? So I’m 35. I’m barely getting out of my bed and my husband says to me, why don’t you go and see my mentor who was one of the old time functional medicine doctors in Massachusetts? He was mentoring my husband. And our insurance was changing and he took our insurance that we were leaving so we kind of rushed it and got me in for an appointment and he did what I considered at that time a ridiculous work up. He has his proof before functional medicine in my world and he worked it. Fruit sensitivities, minerals, nutrients, and one thing that he did that he didn’t even talked me about was he tested me for Celiac, and it was positive. And on the car right up, I’m six weeks post-partum, I’m like about to lose my mind, I said to my husband, call him. I need to know what’s wrong. I can’t wait any longer. Now, I’ve read it six weeks mind you but it can’t wait another minute. And I said to him, you going to call him. So my husband calls him and says, alright, I’m sorry, but Wendie is freaking out here. Is there anything major that we should know about before we walk into the office? And he’s like, yeah, she’s Celiac disease. And I said, oh my dad has celiac disease! And he says, well it’s genetic. You probably should have been tested. I was like, oops. So at 35 I got diagnosed with Celiac disease and went gluten-free. I want to pause there because sometimes that’s a lot to unpack, and we haven’t even really gotten to peak two. That’s just peak one. [00:20:23] Ashley James: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really important to look at our family history not from the standpoint of, oh, because my dad had heart disease that means I’m going to have heart disease, or  because my grandma had diabetes, I’m going to have diabetes. But it’s really important to look at it as, genetics don’t necessarily cause, it’s only the trigger that pulls the gun, right? It’s the nutrient deficiencies, the foods you’re exposed to, you’re typically eat about the same way, with typically have the same nutrient deficiencies as your family and so if your family has these issues, it’s really, really good to eat a diet that is corrective, to do lifestyle that is corrective, and preventive of those issues and what I’ve heard over and over again is, not only Celiac but gluten intolerance. So the intolerance, it’s not necessarily Celiac but it’s just the intolerance to it, is often, more than not often seen, if the mother has it all the kids have it. Same with dairy, dairy intolerance, something like 51 or 52% of the population of the earth should not, in any way, she’d perform be drinking the breastmilk from any animal, right? So any kind of milk from any animal, and yet we do. And so, if there’s one person, like, I see these moms, who are like, well little Johnny is allergic to milk so we don’t give him milk but the rest of the family does, and I’m like, that doesn’t make sense because if he has dairy intolerance or if you know you had dairy intolerance as a kid it’s more likely that all your children have it and sometimes their symptoms are masked because they’re also eating a bunch of sugar, they’re also, you know, there’s a bunch of other allergens and it takes time you’re going to remove  these food sensitivities, right? Remove those grains and the dairy and the eggs those are the most common ones, right? Remove them for quite a while. I believe that a certain immunoglobulin responses, hyper responses have a 60-day, half-life, some of them, some of them are 30 days, some of them are 60 days. So, it’s like it takes a while to really calm the body down. And it’s not that big of a deal like I know some parents freak out, I wouldn’t know what to feed them if I can’t feed them sugar, right? If I can’t feed them a bunch of cereal and dairy every day, so you’ll figure that out. I don’t know, try fruit. But this is so common that we overlook that our major, major health issues could be something, that’s like, oh yeah my mom is allergic to that, or my mom had to avoid that, or my dad had to avoid that maybe I should, right? And this is what drives me off the wall is that, you’re a doctor, right? But how many doctors did you see? And you yourself are a doctor so you saw yourself? It’s kind of hard to treat yourself, right? [00:23:25] Dr. Wendie Trubow: You can’t treat yourself. No, you can’t treat yourself. That’s very hard. [00:23:29] Ashley James: What drives me off the wall is that in all your medial training there wasn’t a class that was like, okay we’re going to talk about food sensitivities and allergies and how we can help our patients to dial in their diet for the most optimal healing, right? That class doesn’t exist. [00:23:46] Dr. Wendie Trubow: No. And we’d like 2 hours of nutrition training that was it. [00:23:49] Ashley James: Drives me crazy. [00:23:51] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah, so it’s not. [00:23:52] Ashley James: Okay, so you’re in the car. You’ve been given this and also the light bulb goes on. Did you have a glimmer of hope? Did you have a feeling, like, hey maybe this is the answer? [00:24:00] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I don’t think of things like that. It’s so funny, you know, I’m 51 and a half and I look at those years like a blur because I was in the midst of so many really all-encompassing projects, so the biggest project was reproducing, so I was either pregnant or nursing for 11 years. [00:24:26] Ashley James: Hmm. Wow. [00:24:28] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I know. So, and I have four kids. So you all can do the Math. [00:24:32] Ashley James: Congratulations! [00:24:28] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Thank you! So, that’s why I say I made up for them, infertility stuff or fertility challenges we should say. So that was kind of in my face, right? I’m trying to grow and feed and raise a lot of little people. So that was really encompassing. Then, the next part to that is I was a new attending doctor so I had to prove myself. Then the next layer to that is my husband, about, let me think about this. What is the timeline? About four years into my career as an attending, my husband decided he wanted to open a functional medicine centre, and so we opened this huge place that grew to be one of the largest functional medicine providers in the country. [00:25:16] Ashley James: Cool! [00:24:28] Dr. Wendie Trubow: And we’re on that rollercoaster for seven years and that closed in 2015 and that I feel like when I woke up, you know, because my kids, all of them were weaned. So I was no longer the human food slot machine? [00:25:33] Ashley James: Creator? [00:24:35] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I was no longer the human vending machine, like, oh I’ll have a snack now! And it’s free! It’s open 24/7! [00:25:43] Ashley James: She doesn’t need to sleep! [00:25:46] Dr. Wendie Trubow: No. I remember craving unbroken sleep in those days. So I didn’t look at it, honestly Ashley, on those early days I was just trying to survive. I was on the rollercoaster of life. I had zero brain space. I could gauge how overwhelmed I was by how long it took me to book an appointment for something, and I remember saying to my hairdresser, if you don’t make me book an appointment before I leave, you will literally won’t see me for nine months, because I’m just too overwhelmed to even think of calling you. So that was sort of the barometer for my life, and one thing hits the max right? You don’t feel well so it’s hard to then take care of yourself, and if you don’t take care of yourself then you’re not going to feel well, so you circle the drain, and that was me, circling the drain. So getting rid of gluten is very impactful because I noticed tremendous improvement head-to-toe immediately. But I’ll always say to patients, it’s like that shark’s mouth. Sharks have seven rows of teeth and when one tooth falls out the next tooth moves forward to takes its place, and that’s when it’s like you’re untangling your health. So, you have layer number one, cool, gluten. Guess what? Layer number two, was candida. And layer number three was dysbiosis. So I’m kind of work through those, and worked on my gut, for tsk, let’s think about this, thirteen years! And I was doing pretty good! I had gotten to a place where I was still extremely, and I still am extremely reactive to gluten. But I felt pretty good. Okay? So fast forward from age 35 to 48 when peak two happens, and peak two, we go on a trip of a lifetime. Now, just so you know, I have four kids, and we travel with both of our mothers. So it’s not just a romantic getaway, it’s like a soccer team that will show up! There was all of us! So we go in this amazing vacation in 2019 to Paris and we spend the week right around Notre dame and, whenever I go on vacation, I work really hard to stay on the eating plan that works for me so I generally don’t gain weight on vacation. So, I came home, same weight, fine, but a month after I came home, I gained 9 pounds. And half the hair on my head started falling out in droves, like, crazy amounts. [00:28:14] Ashley James: Wow! [00:28:15] Dr. Wendie Trubow: And I had a rash on my face that would not quit. And what do women care about – hair, skin, weight. Those weren’t ok for a doctor, right? You could’ve a blood pressure of 200 over 100, but you’re like, yeah, it’s been that high before but I just gained 6 pounds! Doc, I need an appointment tomorrow, right? So I freaked, and of course what’s the number one thing when you gain weight? Thyroid. So here’s where you can treat yourself but you can’t treat yourself. So I start to do my test, and by the way, I’m 48 at that point, so I’m perimenopausal. Damn, hormones! So I check my hormones, they’re perfect! I checked my thyroid, its perfect! And now, I’m like, hmm, maybe I’ll do a stool test! Maybe cause you got to run through your body right? So, I start to do a stool test, it looks for me really darn good! So I’m totally stymied. And I spent a month or so sort of flailing around like what am I doing? What’s wrong in here? Maybe it’s just perimenopause, right? Chalk it up! And I’m listening to the radio one day and I hear this report about how when Notre dame burned down it released five hundred pounds of lead dust into the air and the closer you were to Notre dame the more lead exposure you got the further away the less you got, make sense right? [00:29:35] Ashley James: No. [00:28:36] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes! And I looked at my husband and I was like, we spend a week there right after it burned! I got a lead exposure! And that threw me off the cliff! And he was like, maybe? I’m like, don’t maybe me! That’s what happened! So I did the testing. Doctors are bad patients. That’s all I have to say. Bad doctor! I had previously done a lead and mercury, heavy metals testing on myself and it was mildly positive. So we, in our practice, treat when the levels are over 8. And I tested at 9 for lead a million of years before and I was like, it’s kind of a pain in the butt program I’m not going to treat for a just slightly positive level knowing what I didn’t know then is that often the first numbers you get when you’re someone that doesn’t detox well, the first numbers you get are often just the tip of the iceberg, and I didn’t realize that then so I blew it off, okay. So my number was 9 years ago and then I do this test after going to Notre dame and my level was 25% higher. That got my attention because I will treat at 12. So I said to my husband, oh my god, I’ve lead! Oh, and mercury by the way. Why go for just half of the bad ones, I’ll go for everything! I didn’t have cadmium, I didn’t have arsenic, and I didn’t have thallium those are really the ones we look at, all five of those. And then I started to think about what other toxins are there. So I did mycotoxins, which are the mold toxins that when you get exposed to mold it puts out toxins in your body those are called mycotoxins. So I did the testing for that. And I had four strains of mycotoxins. Tsk. And now I’m really thick. And I start treatment, I got so much better, like my hair loss slowed, my rash quieted down, I got, here’s the really cool part, I used to be the canary in a coal mine for gluten, so, I never went out to eat because I got so sick, anywhere. And so I don’t know why it has tested out, and instead of having a 3-month recovery to gluten I started to notice that my recovery was instead of 3 months, 6 weeks! And then it was 2 weeks, and then it was 10 days and then it was 5 and then it was 2 and then it was 24 hours and then it was like 12 hours which sounds pretty awful when you think about like brain fog and diarrhea but on the other hand when you compare it to, I used to do it for 3 months, it was such a different world. [00:32:23] Ashley James: Yep. [00:32:24] Dr. Wendie Trubow: So I did these treatments from mycotoxins and heavy metals and it’s hard honestly, like, my whole life was organized around detox. Get up, do something, do something an hour later, I did something throughout the day for months and when I was re-tested, I was like, oh my, because the levels of lead were so much higher and mercury was so much higher, and that’s really when we started to dive into, right, if you’re not detoxing it’s just a tip of the iceberg that your body’s able to start to sort of squeeze out, luckily, squeeze out, and then the last part of this was when I re-tested my mycotoxins after a year sort of occur to me like, oh, they also have environmental toxins testing and testing for pesticides so why don’t I do that at the same time, in for a penny, in for a pound, let’s just do it all. So my re-test when I did that I did the other and I was like, oh my, it’s never good news here, and I’ve got all bunch of those things to deal with. So I’ve been systematically addressing and removing things and so what I’ll say is, it’s a long process, A, B, it’s a rewarding process, C, I’d lost more weight than I gained, right? So I gained 9 pounds and I lost 15 pounds when my weight finally shifted, but it took two and a half years into the process before my weight shifted and I think that’s really important for the listeners because whenever someone comes and says, I can’t lose weight and my thyroids are normal. I’m like, great, you’ve most likely got toxins but it’s going to be a couple of years before your body quiets down, it’s not immediate. [00:34:08] Ashley James: That’s been my experience with my own health. Every doctor I’ve gone through and I go to naturopaths and like holistic doctors. Every doctors, like, I walked in the door, oh, thyroid, you are thyroid, classic thyroid ha-ha-ha and I’m like no actually every test I’ve ever done my thyroid’s fantastic and they kind of look at me like they’re going to be the doctor that fixes my thyroid. Then the blood work comes back and they’re like, oh, okay, you’re right. I showed them all the previous lab tests and my thyroid is fine everything’s fine everything in all my blood tests are fine and when I finally figured out was I have major heavy metals to the point where everything I did like weight loss I’d feel, I could taste heavy metals I’d wake up tasting them in my mouth kind of like an ash tray whatever you imagine that would taste like it was horrible and then my body would exude a smell of burning rubber like when cars are spinning out the burning rubber’s smell like burning garbage that’s what my body would smell like and then my liver would distend to the point where you could see it pushing out from behind the rib cage and it was hard as a rock and one of my doctors wanted to do a biopsy we did the ultrasound and they’re like your liver’s just pissed of there’s nothing wrong we couldn’t find anything wrong here it’s just pissed of,f my gall bladder is fine but my liver was as hard as a rock and pushing out and that’s when it all clicked because I had to do my own sleuthing cause every doctor that I went to was like oh thyroid and I’m like are you kidding me and when it finally clicked my I’m like wow, I’m tasting heavy metals my liver is pissed off and I have MTHFR that’s just one of the many things and I’m sure attribute to.. [00:36:04] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Me too! [00:34:08] Ashley James: …poor detox, which is what I want to talk about is why there some people can detox, like it’s so funny, there’s this one woman I know whose very similar story to you, if she was in the same room as gluten she’d be in bed for 6 months like she’s just everything she’s so reactive she’s constantly having to work on her health, constantly, constantly, constantly. Her husband, all he eats is pizza all he drinks is beer. He is fine he is the picture of health why is it that some people are easily over burned with toxins unable to like the liver’s unable to process them and seemingly no matter how healthy they feel they eat they’re still it’s just like this uphill battle with detox why are some people like that way and other people could spend their entire lives thru drive in or drive thru and like rarely got a cold, so, what is this? I’ve always heard it’s a microbiome, the microbiome is everything if you have a good microbiome then you are good but there’s so much more than that. [00:37:15] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Okay before I answer that question I have to ask you something, can I call you Ash? [00:37:20] Ashley James: Oh yeah, sure. [00:37:22] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Okay Ash. So we were privileged enough to interview Alessio Fasano for our podcast and legit when I first read one of his papers I said to my husband this dude’s going to get the Nobel prize and I was like I’ve been a groupie for the last ten years of his. I love him to pieces and he’s  this like beautiful Italian man with the accent and he does great research and It’s all about gluten and so one of the things he said he talks about is yes it is your microbiome and it’s a triad so you have the triad of the microbiome health which really is a term for gut permeability okay that’s what we’re looking at it’s the permeability of the gut and lets come back to that because I want to make sure we talk about the triad and then we will talk about each component. The gut permeability combined with a genetic susceptibility combined with a trigger – that’s your triad. So 40% of the population has the MTHFR gene and like 40% of the people have the gene for Celiac but very few people were actually are diagnosed of Celiac although the numbers much higher than suspect basically there’s more people with Celiac than know they have Celiac they just haven’t been diagnosed but basically when you put that together the thing that seems to set it off is not your genetics its actually your gut permeability so this is where the science gets so cool and so in your gut if your someone who carries a gene for Celiac that’s DQ2 or DQ8 positive it’s on the HLA subtype of antigens. If you have that then you upregulate these receptors called CXCR3 I don’t know why they named it that but that’s the name now when you eat gluten as someone with the gene and now the upregulation of these receptors, you have more receptors that bind to the gluten particles so it’s actually gliadin and the gluten and that upregulates something called zonulins. Zonulins are a substance, now in order to tell you what they do I have to tell you the significance, so zonulins dissolve the tight junction in your gut. [00:39:48] Ashley James: Yes! [00:39:50] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Okay. So your gut from your mouth to your anus is essentially one cell wall thick which is crazy to think you think you have this whole big barrier between you and the outside world but no there’s one cell wall that’s each cell is stuck tightly to its neighbour and that lines your entire GI tract now if you have the genes for Celiac and you eat gluten you upregulate the receptors and then zonulin gets pumped out zonulin dissolves the tight junctions and now the outside world is being exposed to your inside world, okay are you with me so far? [00:40:32] Ashley James: Hmm-hmm [00:40:34] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Now what’s really interesting is anyone who eats gluten opens up their tight junctions for about 15 minutes anyone genes are not but if you have the genes you open your tight junctions for like 4 hours and so what that means is that when you look at people eating a standard American diet, what’d you eat for breakfast? Huh, bagel, cereal, okay, what’d you eat for lunch? Sandwich what’d you eat for dinner? Pasta with chicken and broccoli, or lasagna or pizza, you basically, if you’re someone who’s genetically at risk you’ve opened your tight junctions for the entire day. So the outside world meaning bacteria, toxins, hormones, whatever, right? Food particles, you can pretty much start naming them all of those things you’re getting into your bloodstream, and your bloodstreams like what in the holy name of you know what is this? This is not me? This is not part of what I want to do. This is not normal. Your body starts to generate an immune response, and then things go haywire. So your body starts to attack everything because it’s like confused basically, okay? So one major part of the triad is genetic susceptibility combined with the gut permeability and then anything that gets through the gut serves as a trigger. Unless you went to Notre dame right after it burned and got a huge lead load and here’s where those three things don’t adequately explain everything, okay. Because the next layer to it I will just describe it like your health is the sandwich, the gluten-free sandwich, between of a bun, a gluten-free bun  and that bun is your environment and your genetics and epigenetics and we can talk about epigenetics in a minute, the meat of that sandwich or if you’re vegetarian the vegetables of that sandwich are your sleep, your thoughts, your gut health, your nutrients status, your ability to move your body, your intimacy with others, how often you poop, all the stuff about you is the meat or vegetables of that sandwich put that all together and all of that is influencing whether you’re going to be someone who can do drive thru for their life eat Dunkin’ Donu.. I’m in Boston, so it’s Dunkies, it’s been Dunkies since I was a kid, so if you could go to Dunkies every day and get a coffee and a donut or if you’re someone who’s just driving by Dunkies is gonna make you sick like me, so it all kind of re-smooshed in and I’ll always say to people it’s hard to taste out the exact thing because think of yourself like a blended soup you can no longer pull out one ingredient because it’s already been blended together. [00:43:22] Ashley James: Right [00:40:23] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  That’s your health. Okay. [00:43:26] Ashley James: Before you move forward I really want to unpack what you said because I think it’s the most impactful, I want every single listener to really, really sit with, including myself to sit with what you just said for a moment and just really unpack it. So when you say from your mouth to your anus which is one long tube right so we’re kind of like a donut if you think about it because we always think that when you put stuff in your mouth and you swallow your quote unquote inside of your body but it’s actually not inside your body it’s a tube, that tube is kind of like the outside world in a sense, right? Because we’re like a pull noodle, we’re a pull noodle, and so when you say that from your mouth to your anus the only protection we have from the outside world I mean besides things like stomach acid hopefully kill things right is this one layer of epithelial tissue, right,  like it’s a type of skin. Can we just get an image in our mind is it like the thickness of a hair or is it… [00:44:39] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Thinner. [00:44:42] Ashley James: It’s thinner than that? Is it so thin we can’t visibly see with the human eye? [00:44:45] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Correct. [00:44:47] Ashley James: So we have a layer protecting us from all the craziness of the world, that’s thinner than what we can perceive with the human eye, and when we eat barley, wheat, rye, I’m going to say oats because they contain gliadin. [00:45:05] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  They’re often cross-contaminated too. [00:45:07] Ashley James: Right. So let’s just like throw out this notion of marketing which is gluten-free oats, just throw it out, because oats do the damage too. So barley, wheat, rye and oats if we eat anything even if we don’t have celiac let’s say you are the luckiest person, you won the genetic lottery and you have perfect, perfect, perfect genes, perfect digestion, it’s still even with perfect genes and perfect digestion causes leaky gut for 15 minutes so that tiny imperceivable with the human eye barrier between your insides like your bloodstream and your lymph system, your immune system and while you’re eating that barrier is dissolves slightly like the junctions are weakened and food particles that are not fully digested are allowed to enter into your body and then your immune system freaks out has to attack it then it causes this cascade of inflammation your lymph system freaking out and that could trigger all kinds of things and that’s for the healthy people. [00:46:18] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Hmm. Hmm. Don’t forget, not just food. It’s food and bacteria, and molds, and toxins, and something that you walked by a perfume that you inhaled anything you swallowed, any chemicals on your water, it’s any chemical and toxin, not just food. [00:46:37] Ashley James: Can we also dare to say parasites? [00:46:43] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Yup! Have at it! Anything that you can ingest you can absorb. [00:46:48] Ashley James: Alright. So, basically the outside world, the crazy, crazy toxic outside world is getting into our bloodstream and our body has to deal with it and our liver has no idea what’s going on and now has to figure out how to deal with it, and that’s for the healthy people. [00:47:02] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Yup! [00:47:03] Ashley James: And the unfortunate people, likely if you are listening to our podcast you’re not one of those people who is always healthy never sick, right. Like those people aren’t motivated necessarily to listen. [00:47:14] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Right. [00:47:15] Ashley James: It’s all of us who are like working on ourselves right, like, I’m on a health journey, I’ve healed a lot, you’ve healed a lot, when I’m done healing we’re still getting better and better. All my listeners I know still getting better and better. So we can’t be gluten-free once in a while, because that once in a while is still enough to cause this triggering, right,  so we need to be really diligent and even more when in a restaurant we need to be hyper hyper diligent and not consume this because it causes even 15 minutes of that tiny, tiny, tiny layer of protection like removing that, I mean that’s really blows my mind I’ve talked to so many doctors about being gluten-free and why but you explained it in such a way that is so understandable and I think of so many people who are like, oh yes! I’m gluten-free but you know once a week I couldn’t, but that whole week your body is still cascading from inflammation, having to clean up the damage of one meal, like you said, one meal really worth that? Okay I’m getting of my gluten soapbox. So thank you. Is there anything else that you want to say that really have us fully grasp the necessity of a 100% of the population removing barley, wheat, rye, and oats because of how damaging it is to everyone. [00:48:45] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Honestly Ashley, I think that’s a stronger statement than I would make even as a Celiac. What I would say is, there’s so many layers to this okay, so back like in the 1940’s, 1950’s there were food shortages and gluten, wheat, is not genetically modified okay, but I don’t really understand the difference, okay between hybridization and genetic modification because basically the end result is that they bred it so that it grows faster, it will stand drought, it will stand pests, and it doesn’t fall over in heavy rains or winds. That’s genetic modification in my world but it’s called hybridization. [00:49:25] Ashley James: But what happens in the lab, right? With there like where going to take the genes of a fish, and we’re going to put it into a tomato, right? That’s GMO, right? Or we’re going to take this wheat and we’re going to make it so it’s resistant to, we’re going to actually create it Bt toxin so that the wheat itself kills bugs. I don’t like some crazy nonsense, now you’re like eating something that has the genes of something else. But breeding something when wheat even a hundred years ago is not even recognizable to the wheat we have today or even in the 40’s the amount of gluten is so much more it’s crazy it’s used to just be like a handful of little seeds at the end of the stalk and now it’s like a hundred seeds right on the end of the stalk it’s completely different and they also increased the amount of gluten in wheat, but yes, you’re right that overtime these crops were bred and now they bred to produce so much more gluten that people are reacting to that but don’t react to like ancient grains [00:50:33] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Right. Right. So that’s one part of it and then the next part of it is that, as Americans we often are eating it much more frequently so we’re not necessarily cooking breakfast and cooking lunch and cooking dinner so faster food has become needed and that faster food is typically gluten so here you have the layer of where it’s more allergenic we’re eating it more, we’re eating more of it, you know, my god, I remember being a kid I found a dress of my mom’s. My mom was born in 1944 and I remember finding like I think it was her wedding dress, it’s kind of a midi, white dress it’s like a size 0. People are eating more we’re actually bigger than we were 50 years ago, we’re physically bigger, so we eat more and then the next layer of that is that you mention stomach acid there’s a really cool association between stomach acid and gluten sensitivity so if you have the gene for gluten sensitivity or celiac that you see more likely to have low stomach acid it’s not clear which is the chicken and which is the egg and which came first but there’s some kind of association okay, so the next layer is our lives are much more chaotic and so we aren’t taking the time to slow down and eat properly, chew our food, so there’s always layers to what we eat, we eat with  stress that suppresses our stomach acid, that makes us more likely to let bacteria and not breakdown our food properly, into the next phase which is the small intestine so there’s all these layers to it, Ashley that just keep propagating but I don’t know that I would say everybody shouldn’t eat gluten period what I would say is the best and healthiest way to eat is a way that has a minimum amount if any of processed food and food from a package and if you start with that that becomes sort of naturally a gluten-free diet but it’s not gluten-free for the purpose of gluten-free it’s gluten-free for the purpose of getting higher quality nutrients that do more for your body and sustain the mitochondria and the telomeres and your DNA and your vitality that’s the reason not just to do gluten-free for the sake of it because of how you’re feeling as a result. [00:53:04] Ashley James: Got it, got it. The mycotoxins you talked about I’ve been excited to uncover that can we jumped into that? [00:53:18] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Definitely! Mycotoxins are nasty little bookers. [00:53:20] Ashley James: Yup! So what are they and where did they come from and how do we avoid them? [00:53:25] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Well, step into my office. So the most common sources are water damaged buildings and when you say this to someone have you been in a water damaged building? Most people are like I don’t know, not that I know of. That thing that you drill into, okay did you go to school? In a school? And they will, yes, okay schools are typically moldy. Did you go to college and live in a dorm? Yes. Okay, dorms are typically moldy, oh okay. A lot of government buildings are typically moldy. Old homes are typically moldy. Homes that are built in wet climates are typically moldy. Homes that have water damage like I live in Massachusetts and we had the snowmageddon winter in 2015 and a million and one people had ice dams which essentially opened up their roof to the outside world and then they have water in their walls so that kind of stuff is really hard to remediate so if you got water in your walls you got to fix it. So all of these layers, right, that’s the big exposure. I did randomly have a patient who had mold in her car that’s not the most common but she said when I diagnosed her she was like I know my car is moldy and she tested it and it was so that’s another possibility. And then there’s food. There are number of foods that are particularly moldy including all grains and that’s because when you think of how grains are harvested they cut them now I’m not that familiar with honestly harvesting but I know that they get cut, they get threshed, they get stored and that storage process they’re often wet so here’s where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t because if you eat organic grains they’re not sprayed with glyphosate which is a good thing you don’t what glyphosate in your body it’s terrible for you, actually I just had a whole long call with Michael Antoniou, Antoniou who’s a British researcher and has published some really landmark studies on glyphosate because I’m giving a talk on glyphosate and I was like I really want to dig into this with him and he was kind enough to do the data with me and the ultimate upshot is that glyphosate was developed as a, it was actually discovered as a chelating agent and then in 2006 Monsanto patented it as antibiotic and how it works is to inhibit certain enzymes in bacteria and other microorganisms and that inhibition throws off the function and creates lead cell death and its going on around us so if you’re grains sprayed with glyphosate you’re getting glyphosate you don’t want to do that. But if you’re getting organic, the glyphosate helps dry out the crops that’s why it’s helpful. But if you’re getting organic grains that haven’t been sprayed there is chance they’re moldy because they are sitting around waiting to be processed, and if it rained the day before they got processed they are sitting around so and there’s mold spores in the environment. Often for people in Massachusetts I will always find my patients are flaring in April and September, they’re like what’s going on? It’s the mold. It’s the rainy season. In our rainy season people flare in our neighbourhood. So mycotoxins when you got exposed to them again it comes down to genetics if you’re someone who’s sensitive and obviously I’ve got the gene because I’m really reactive to mold and once it gets into your body it just kind of hangs  out and if you’re not a good detoxer it just hangs out. Then if you layer on, you eat a standard American diet and don’t get enough fibre to bind them or don’t do detoxing or stress the body and your body just stores it and hangs on to it because it’s got no other option it’s kind of backed into a corner. [00:57:12] Ashley James: Can mold live inside our body like in our bloodstream or our lymph system? [00:57:25] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Hmm. That’s a good question, Ashley. I normally think that the mycotoxins which are the toxins that molds put out as what’s stored in our fat and our organs but what you do bring up, you know, candida is a strain of mold, candida is a yeast and mold they’re related so you can have candida in the bloodstream its less common you can have antibodies to candida which is very common you can have candida in the gut so you can have it in your body but typically it’s the mycotoxins not necessarily the mold itself [00:57:59] Ashley James: So if someone is having a mycotoxin you know exposure and I don’t want to talk about how you’d figured that out but let’s say they’re having exposure, they realize it’s their office let’s say and they moved offices to a place that is clean now the exposure’s gone! So eventually, the mycotoxins get cleared out or we now concerned that there’s mold living inside them? Because I’ve heard from some people that like if they’ve had a cinema mold exposure that mold is now like continuing to live inside them but this is environmental mold like not internal mold like you’re saying candida that lives inside you it continually produces mycotoxins now we’ve got to do a candida detox replenishing of the gut in the good way and rethink our diet for removing candida and so then that gets rid of the mycotoxins cause you’re not addressing the mycotoxins you’re addressing the cause of them. Is that my understanding? [00:59:08] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  It’s kind of both. So certainly you wanted to get out of the exposure, no questions, it is sort of schizophrenic to try to heal from mold when you are continuing to be exposed that doesn’t make sense now on the flip side I will say Ashley I always say to people who have silver fillings if you have mercury let’s start getting you detox and take your fillings out in the middle of the detox so that you’re protected from any mercury that gets into your system because we’re already binding it, right,  but mycotoxins it’s more like we want to get you out of the scenario were you’re being exposed to mycotoxins so you stopped the madness because it’s just throwing off your body and jacking up your immune system and it really throws people off you want to get them out of the scenario wherever it is and then start to remove the mycotoxins that they have stored in their body. [01:00:05] Ashley James: You know we haven’t even plugged your book at this point as a listener I’ll be like okay I’m sold how do I do this? How do I work with Wendie? How do I do this? Oh my gosh! I’m going to make sure that the links to everything is in the shownotes of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com including the book, Dirty Girl, Ditch the Toxins Look Great and Feel Freaking Amazing. I definitely want to talk more about your book but I really want to understand the mycotoxins so either it could be in our food and you know I’ve seen this actually with coffee, back then my husband and I were on coffee we switched to mold-free like certified mold-free coffee and noticed the difference I was like what, what, like I really noticed the difference, I was like that is crazy, and so it could be in our food which freaks me out because I have brown rice in bulk you know I buy it in bulk I’m just thinking like is this moldy? How do we know? [01:01:15] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  It’s typically the oats, the barley, the wheat, the rye, it’s the grains, rice is a funny one because it sort of lumped in but it’s not so much rice, it lasts, it’s more of the I think of grains, not sure I let you get it that well [01:01:34] Ashley James: So, okay, well, no, barley, wheat, rye, oats that kind of stuff right? [01:01:35] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Yeah, yeah [01:01:37] Ashley James: So we should look into foods that are more likely to contain mold and coffee is the big one because of how they processed coffee so if you’re heavy coffee drinker really get mold free coffee I know Bulletproof coffee is one of those brands that are there that prides themselves you don’t have to put like MCT oil and butter or bacon fat or whatever they put in bullet-proof drinks you don’t have to do that you can buy the actual bag that says Bulletproof and give that a try. [01:02:09] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah. Purity, purity is also, and there was a third one that I just hear about that I’m blanking on but there’s another brand I think if you do a Google search it’s like mold plus free plus beans you should get it. [01:02:16] Ashley James: Yeah, there you go. So we want to make sure it’s not in our food, make sure it’s not in our home, in our car, we had a beautiful truck we still miss it but man it was full of mold because an animal had chewed through the barrier and gone into the cab because the way they make these trucks now they lined it like a soy lining it’s made from soy so it’s basically edible so you made an edible truck for the animal and because we live in a forest we live in western Washington lots of animals and an animal made its home, its cute little home inside the dashboard and all of a sudden, one day, I look at them and why is there moisture inside the truck? And this is like a newer truck, we opened the door and there was like three inches of fuzz it looks like shag carpeting on every surface especially the areas where the babyseat was because that’s like CSI where you like shine the black light over like that the mold was insane over by the babyseat I’m like what, that’s where he threw up and that’s where he spilled his drink or whatever but the whole thing was mold and our insurance you got to love AllState, our insurance totalled the car and paid us for it, which it sucks I’d rather have a truck than have a paid-off truck but I have paid off not truck, but yeah, that was our experience with it, AllState were like this is unsafe to drive at this point because of all the mold. [01:03:55] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Well think about it, you know, Katrina, hurricane Katrina in what 2014 all those literally people were submerged up to the top of the first floor which includes cars and so a few of the cars that was in any hurricane, but hurricane Katrina I have pictures of where you can’t imagine see the cars because they are submerged so if that’s your car that has mold you should not be driving that car get rid of it. [01:04:19] Ashley James: Yes and what if you bought a car, that’s why car facts are so important.  [01:04:22] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I know. [01:04:22] Ashley James: Because if you bought a car that’s used you don’t know if that was in Katrina like you don’t know right and I did a few interviews of Green Homes Solutions I don’t know have you been part of them [01:04:32] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I have. [01:04:33] Ashley James: Sweet! So I’d interviewed the head scientist and then the CEO slash founder whatever, they are amazing guys but they created an enzyme that digests mold safely so it doesn’t allow for all the toxins to continue to build the spores or whatever to continue to be removed in the environment and then they also test to make sure they’ll comeback to test for years to make sure that it’s safe but Green Homes Solutions that’s my plug for them because I was so impressed with their treatment, we had mold in our bathroom and that I was so impressed with it and I love interviewing them because I got so much information but I can’t believe how many people I’ve talked to friends, friends family and also through the podcast and clients of mine and mold is so common it’s such a common problem and it’s so overlooked so once we removed ourselves from the molds what is the most important thing we should do to help ourselves recover from that exposure. [01:05:44] Dr. Wendie Trubow: See a functional medicine provider who’s senior I used to be like see a functional medicine provider but it’s really see a senior functional medicine provider who’s comfortable doing toxins testing that’s the criteria right and then tests and then target your treatment to get rid of those strains from you. [01:06:04] Ashley James: How do we test? Are we testing for mycotoxins or are we testing for mold? What is the testing? [01:06:09] Dr. Wendie Trubow: You test for mycotoxins. You test your house for mold and you test your body for mycotoxins. [01:06:15] Ashley James: Got it. And let’s say we removed the mold or removed ourselves from mold, like we got rid of the car, or we moved offices or whatever and we now know where no longer in the mold environment how long do we wait until we test for the mycotoxins because isn’t it gonna clear up of our system? [01:06:31] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah I think this is really a nuanced question Ashley, so there are people who are not sensitive to mold so it’s so funny as I said that I thought huh I’m not sure if the studies have been done to look at because mold is implicated in to degenerative diseases, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, all of the toxins are pre-strongly implicated in those diseases so I’m thinking about I don’t know the answer too so I’m completely hypothesizing here, okay  this is the part where you’re like it’s not data I’m thinking. [01:07:07] Ashley James: Right, or it’s the stubborn husband that says I’m fine, I’m fine, I don’t feel anything. [01:06:31] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Right but the thing about it is there are people who are not genetically susceptible to mycotoxins or mold so what I honestly don’t know is what percentage of people with dementia don’t have mycotoxin genes I don’t know that okay I don’t know so I’m just thinking about if you are exposed to mold yes so you want to get out with it but if you are exposed to mold and you feel amazing that’s different when you’re exposed to mold and you feel terrible, right, so the behaviours are different if you’re someone who really is reactive to mold, you don’t do well in moldy environments you have a reaction then I’d say you’re someone who wants to then test and treat, if you get out of the moldy environment and you feel amazing I don’t know that I would go down to spend lots of time and energy and money on functional medicine visits and testing because maybe you don’t need it but the thing that  I’ll say is amazing meaning vital vibrant healthy able to and interested in intimacy able to move your body bring working well not noticing any body system because its functioning optimally your weight is optimal you cardiovascular and metabolic status is perfect if that’s you cool you don’t have to do anything but if that’s not you then I will recommend testing and targeting your treatment. [01:08:34] Ashley James: You answered my next question which is what the symptoms we should look for and that was awesome! Give us some more, give us some more symptoms of mycotoxin exposure. [01:08:48] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Sure, so hair loss all things skin mycotoxins cause a lot of skin stuff so rashes, acne, itchiness just sort of being like god my skin just really not right, asthma, all respiratory disorders, weight issues, difficulty losing weight, I personally found that my gut got a lot more regulated when I started to deal with the mycotoxins. The mycotoxins was the most impactful thing that I did to quiet down my celiac canary in a coal mine stuff cause I started that first actually and so gut health… [01:09:26] Ashley James: I’m sorry to interrupt I’m thinking about what you said, about hair loss, and about skin, and your story where you came home from Notre dame, were you also exposed to mold as well as lead like when the building burned I imagined parts of the building were moldy did that exposed you to mycotoxins [01:09:44] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I may have. No, the burning building did not expose me to mycotoxins but I mean we stayed; we stayed in the historical French region. Like who knows, right, I have no idea where I got exposed to but it’s very possible but I already knew that I have a mycotoxin issue but it was like the sum total of all the exposures sent me over the edge, right, and the most pressing exposure that I got was a clear lead exposure, but I already you know theres so much we haven’t talked about Ashley I am a child of the 70’s, I had pneumonia when I was 6 months old which means I got antibiotic when I was a 6-month old I had multiple ear infections and strepthroat growing up it was sort of a path I was a poster child for food sensitivities but I didn’t know it and I’ve two genes for celiac and I had what occurred to me was a very stressful events in childhood and then I went to med school I couldn’t simply do a family practice no I had to OB-GYN cause it was hard and I got to stay up at night delivering babies sounds great until something goes wrong right and we forgot about the part where I grew up in the 80’s and microwaves came out and we had those pre-packaged meals in plastic and we took advantage of them and I have a whole bunch of fillings in my mouth, I had, I should I say so when you really start to look at my toxin package I was the whole package man I had everything so because the time when I got to the lead exposure I had mercury some existing lead, mycotoxins, environmental toxins, and now a little bit of lead that I got from being in Notre dame was the straw that broke my back that was it. [01:11:47] Ashley James: So you were just waiting. Your body was just waiting to have that one additional stressor and for some people it’s not a physical stressor like leads for some people it’s an emotional event. [01:11:58] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah or perimenopause hormone changes can absolutely be a stressor but you’re right on emotional event is a hugely stressful it’s a life changing something happens a breakup a death a traumatic loss and ending a friendship whatever that is a terrible boss who just keeps chipping away your self-esteem these are all massive stressors and can have a tremendous effect on our body’s ability to detox and I’ll be happy to dive in to that one cause that’s a great conversation. [01:12:31] Ashley James: Ooh yeah, because I’ve had stories of people where it’s like I don’t know what happened but I had this emotional event and my health was never the same, their memory was like their health was so much better before but you’re saying that they could have been just on a precipice right they could have just been slightly over toxic or just you know had a little bit too much of the lead or just had a little bit of candy that sort of had this everything just sort on that edge and maybe they woke up tired 3x a week instead of everyday, right, and so they’re just on the edge and then they had an event and for someone then it’s pregnancy because that is emotionally stressful that is physically stressful and then there’s the possibly four five years of breastfeeding I know of a mom that went up to seven years of breastfeeding mostly people do two or three years but if you have several kids in a row like you can be eleven years or breastfeeding so that’s the broken up sleep and then we just say oh it’s just because I’m not sleeping it’s just because and we don’t listen to our body and we negate because we go oh it’s just because I didn’t have enough sleep or didn’t eat well or I’m running around chasing the kids or I’m stressed out because of the kids and we don’t take the time to go wait a second I never recovered from that pregnancy I never recovered from that and that could have been when we’re at that breaking point even the emotional stress was enough so yeah let’s talk just about something that is so  intangible as emotional or mental stress could have a physiological effect on setting us over the edge especially when it comes to detox. [01:14:21] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I love talking about this. So, it’s pretty cool the body does not distinguish between types of stress so the body doesn’t have a bucket for Madame Boss or that darn Massachusetts drivers, that’s not another bucket or the bucket of my spouse’s irking me or my kids are driving me crazy, none are those were separate buckets in the body whatever you say to me I’m going to say to you it’s all going into the stress bucket. So your adrenals are these tiny little organs that sit on top of your kidneys and they are magical they literally determine whether you live or die and under these tiny little things, important things come in small packages so they sit here and they are responsible for a number of behaviors and when you go ten thousand feet, big picture, the primary goal of your adrenals is fight, flight, freeze and maintaining your blood pressure so that’s your life or death pathway and your adrenals are going to do that at any cost and then your nice to have pathway is your hormone balance which becomes particularly important specially if you’re woman when you start to transition into menopause and the ovaries no longer do the job of making the estrogen your adrenals pick it up, okay, but if you have any stress in that bucket your adrenals interpret it in a particular way. So I call it the trinity I apparently like things of three but that’s just how it’s been presented. So there’s your adrenals, when your adrenals experienced that they are being stressed or something stressful is occurring to your body and that could be anything you interpret it at a cellular level like a lion is going to eat you that’s how primitive we are and when a lion is about to eat you it is not important to, digest your food, have sex, ovulate, uptake your nutrients, detox, none of that stuff happens it’s not important because what is happening  your body is experiencing an existential crisis, like I’m going to die we need to focus here and what happens is a really cool cascade so the adrenals signals to the liver, liver, don’t you detox because what we really need to do is focus on getting sugar to the muscles so two things happened at that point your lives takes the sugar that it stores called glycogen out of the liver and makes it into glucose so you have glucose in the bloodstream and simultaneously your body will signal you, I really need some quick sugar, so you’re going to start craving carbs, usually carbs and candy are typically what people like I’m craving and I’m like oh alright you’re stressed so your body is telling you. [01:17:23] Ashley James: Yes, just think about our society you have a breakup you go for ice cream you have a stressful moment you go for the chocolate bar like how many times is that reinforced that we go for sugar in times of stress. [01:17:43] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yeah at least the ice cream has some fat hopefully but yeah so you craved sugar and you take sugar out of your liver now simultaneously what’s happening in your gut and that sugar goes to your muscles in your legs by the way so you can run cause ultimately your body is primed to run from a lion okay we haven’t kept up with the technology our bodies haven’t evolved that the same pace the technology has so then in your gut your adrenal signal the gut you know right now digestion and absorption is not our priority stop so if you just had a big meal that made its way to your intestines it sits there and it rots and then the bacteria that are anaerobic that are there to digest you when you die they are psyched cause they are like, oh a meal and they get going and those are the bacteria that make you bloat and gassy and gross that really disgusting cause those are dysbiotic bacteria okay and the other part of it is when you eat that sugar candida in your system you know it’s common to have candida and I would say even a small is normal but if you have a large amount it starts to run the show and when you eat sugar it gets fed and then it needs to eat more cause it just reproduced so it makes you crave more so now you are on the rat wheel of OGs I’ve just increased my candida in the system along with my stress so all those things are going on simultaneously right and in the adrenals you start to use up the raw materials that you have to make cortisol you start to use them up because you are constantly turning now this is what happens in the short term, in the long term, your body starts to go into long term crisis management because it’s like wait a minute obviously we’re not running and instead of starting to sort of increase your metabolism and burning and put sugar where it belongs you start to actually collect your calories and depose fat and usually that fat is called the angry fat and its full of interleukins and inflammatory mediators that are seating right in your gut. So people are like oh it came all this way right in my mid-section, I’m like yup that’s your stressed gut and so this is what starts to happen long-term issue you hold on to every calorie the metabolism starts to slow and you go down the inflammation pathway because you’ve deposited all of these fat around your intestines, then you will get fatty liver because you’re now in a dysfunctional pattern it’s pretty creepy actually. [01:20:09] Ashley James:  So you’re saying that the fat around the mid-section so like pear-shaped people or like Bart Simpson got or does it look like you’re pregnant like that shape where it’s just a bunch of fat deposited right there that is more likely than not stress gut deposits of angry fat from long term being in fight or flight mode? [01:20:51] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes and, It felt like I’m on in broad, yes and, and because when you’ve shut down detox your liver’s no longer doing the job what’s happening is I mean we’re exposed to thousands of chemicals every day humans have created over a hundred forty thousand unique chemicals and we created an additional unique fifteen hundred chemicals every year so as we moved for a day we’re exposed to thousand of chemicals and it’s like death by a thousand cuts because obviously none of them are in  amounts that are going to kill us but they are in amounts that are high enough to torture us and so what’s happening is instead of your liver working on those and by the way alcohol is a toxin and it isn’t a cute toxin. So if you’re get exposed to alcohol you’re going processed that because it will kill you directly so you start to store this toxins in your fat and so if you’re having trouble losing weight and your thyroid is normal where I go is toxins cause it’s been about four years and I’ve been in this stance and it’s like everything kind of comes down to toxins and food and inflammation. [01:22:13] Ashley James:  Hmm-hmm toxins, food and inflammation. Seriously? [01:22:18] Dr. Wendie Trubow: In a nutshell that’s your health [01:22:20] Ashley James:  So when you talked about the trifecta where you’re saying adrenals liver gut? [01:22:29] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes, yes [01:22:30] Ashley James:  Got it. [01:22:31] Dr. Wendie Trubow: On top of the trifecta of leaky gut trigger and genetics slash epigenetics that’s another trifecta. I really like the word trifecta much better than trinity because I feel it was a religious reference and it’s not. [01:22:48] Ashley James:  That really sounds such a positive thing to be like the trinity that’s killing you, you know like, ha! [01:22:53] Dr. Wendie Trubow: The trifecta. Actually the perfect storm and the trifecta of- I love that language it’s great I’m going to steal that blindly. [01:23:00] Ashley James:  You should do that. It’s yours now with bow on it. So, to wrap that up it’s very important to the emotional work and emotional healing and check in with yourself and it’s as important to makes sure you’re regulating your emotional stress and mental stress as it is your physical stress and your environmental stressors they’re all equally important because your body cannot distinguish between your emotional stress and the burger you ate to the drive thru or the plastics you’re exposed to or the lead you’re exposed to like stress, stress, stress but more importantly when our body is under threat, right, when you feel anxiety. Anxiety is the message, it’s like the red warning light on the dashboard saying hey we’re under attack were under attack and we can be totally safe but if we’re imagining something even just sitting there because the body’s always listening to our thoughts even if you are sitting there imagining something we don’t want to have happen is enough to trigger the stress response. So we’d have to be really careful, clear, we have to be very clear unintentional with our thoughts and do the emotional work, the emotional healing I’ve got great interviews on that but that is as important as the other stuff because if we trigger the fight or flight response we go into that cascade like you said and long term our body were fermenting or rotting food in our stomach, we’re feeding bad bacteria, we’re getting more mycotoxins in our body like that’s horrible, that’s all from just being careless with our thoughts and allowing the let’s say the mainstream media go somewhere there’s cable tv and watch it, not in my house, but go somewhere there’s cable tv and just turn to any news channel watch it for five minutes and you’re going to be rotting your food instead of digesting and absorbing your food right and then your body’s going to like what you’ve said in the long term you’d gain weight in the mid-section and that weight is also carrying with it a lot of toxins so we need to reverse that let’s err you know turn around make a U-turn go back and let’s go back to where we’re every day taking time to check-in within ourselves emotionally, mentally, spiritually, physically and really be responsible for our state of stress and our state of triggering the autonomic nervous system parasympathetic response of our rest and digest you know it takes going for that walk five minutes three times a day just getting out there and breaking up your day doing deep breathing doing five minutes of meditation doing a few breaths and chewing your food slowly and making sure you sit, you sit before you eat and you’re in a calm state you know so all these little things add up hugely and that’s been my journey as well and I’ve seen this with so many of my clients like just making sure we’re taking ourselves out of the stress response so I loved that you associate that and you showed us, it’s like you see those crime shows where they show you the board and there’s a bunch of like these pins and strings on the board. You’re like the crazy detective that no one’s listening to until they finally realized that your crazy conspiracy board was actually true and you’re like look look you know you’re stressed out because your job is actually causing you to gain weight and also causing your candida which causing your brain fog and they’re all connected. So you got this great way of putting it all together and [01:26:46] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Yes, truly! [01:26:49] Ashley James:  So you’ve got the great way of putting it all together and allowing us to really see it. So thank you for the pin board. That’s wonderful. So we want to make sure that we’re checking off all these boxes are we go through. You want to talk about this epigenetics and I love this conversation because so many people are told by their well-intention doctors who are not trained in functional medicine or holistic medicine that’s like oh well you have diabetes because its genetic take this pill for the rest of your life, goodbye! You know it’s like what wait a second that’s totally not the case, epigenetics is a beautiful dance where the body can express in certain ways and due to nutrients or due to toxins could express in a different way so I love for you to enlighten us why it’s so important for us to understand our epigenetic tendencies and how we can utilize them to best detox and regain our health back [01:27:51] Dr. Wendie Trubow: I’m going to use myself as an example because it’s such a clear example honestly so epigenetics is this, think of it like a small supporting cast of genetics that’s support your DNA and depending on what happens in your life, your parents life, your grandparents life, okay so we go back pretty far whatever happens on those three I guess you think of it the other way whatever happens on your grandparents life and your parents life and then your life influence whether your genes are going to turn on or not turn on, are you with me so far? Because this is really epigenetics insane it’s really cool so when I said I will share about myself I essentially come from a line of celiacs because my dad has celiac and I have celiac and my two brothers they’re half-brothers genetically to me my two half-brothers genetically who I consider emotionally my full brothers but really genetically they’re my half-brothers they have celiac and then when you go up the line my grandmother died of dementia which is strongly implicated in celiac and gluten sensitivity and then my uncle I’m pretty sure he’s got celiac but he won’t get tested and then his three kids out of the three two of them are sensitive to gluten and one of them has ADHD which is implicated in gluten sensitivity okay so and  by the way of my four kids two of them are fairly sensitive to gluten we figured out that I have two copies of the celiac gene, a dubious genetic overachiever, I’ve got two copies for celiac, two copies for MTHFR, and two copies for Vitamin D deficiency. So I by default… [01:29:51] Ashley James:  Oh geez! [01:29:53] Dr. Wendie Trubow: Right? At that point I stopped counting I was like I’m not looking at anything else so by default I passed that along to all my kids and we allowed my older two to have gluten at preschool and by that time they were done with preschool they were both sensitive to gluten so by the time we have this like second generation of kids you know  we call them the bigs and the littles, the bigs were sensitive and the littles we were like no you’re not getting any gluten because we have epigenetically enhanced nasty genes for celiac and now let me talk to you about some things, so my dad was like pretty sick in his 20’s and this is before he had me his dad was very sick his whole life and was an immigrant, my grandmother she was intimate and immigrant but her parents were both immigrants and they lived a pretty successful life but they always lived in fear okay and then on the other side of my family my grandmother was an immigrant my grandfather was an immigrant and so my mom was the first generation born in the country and so those stressors acted to turn on those genes okay and so when you then layer on this is why it becomes a blended soup when you then  layer on yes I eat sloppy Joe’s as a kid I had the microwave food and all the antibiotics that messed with my gut permeability and my microbiome by the time you get to med school when I’m super stressed and eating on the run and eating a lot of gluten my ability to fight this off has really been diminished and deteriorated and so epigenetics is what turns on or off these genes and sometimes they’re carved before you even born so you’re at the affective other peoples choices which kind of stinks but the  good news is you’re only 15% right if I have lived a life of not eating gluten or if I have lived a life of not honestly not abusing myself in terms of putting myself in stressful situations I may not be where I was until I am now in terms of being so sensitive to gluten right knowing now what I did not know then but I didn’t know those things. Can I share a really cool study? [01:32:15] Ashley James:  Yes! [01:32:16] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  I want to share a really cool study. I heard about it on NPR I was driving from Western Mass to Eastern Mass where I live and I have my kids in the car and for once they were quiet I was like shh we got to listen to this so it’s such a really cool study of this tiny town in Sweden I’m pretty sure it’s Sweden they keep meticulous records on their inhabitants of their town and their records went back to like the 17th or 18th hundreds, it was a couple of hundred years and these 2 epidemiologists went there I don’t know why they did this but they went there and they started just combing through the records of this town and here’s what they found that was so so creepy and yet so such a huge thing for us to be able to make choices about our health that what they found was that if your grandparent when they were going through puberty experienced a feast meaning they had a good crop they had lots of food they ate a lot then their offspring two generations down this is the impact of epigenetics their offspring two generations down were significantly more likely to have diabetes and heart disease and on average died six years earlier than the general population and if you’re grandparent went thru a famine when they hit puberty their offspring two generations down were significantly less likely to experience diabetes and cardiovascular disease and on average lived twenty-five years more than the general population so there this spread of 30 years based on what happened to your grandparent when they went thru puberty. [01:34:05] Ashley James:  Can you explain why? I’m trying to wrap my brain around it. Is that because they were fasting and that has protective properties? I would’ve imagined a famine would cause stress on the body but why did that actually worked to their favour? [01:34:24] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  I have no idea. Honestly. This is what’s being studied now. So some of the reasons how do I say this it’s easy to feel victimized right because we can’t do anything about it it’s done it happened and the stuff that happened to my grandparents to my dad is seventy-five years to a hundred fifty years old and so we don’t have any control over that but your genetics again are 10 to15% of the total mix and we do have control over the 85 to 90% of it, meaning you have control over your eating, your sleeping, your pooping, your relationships,your intimacy your thoughts , how much you exercise, you have control over all of that and so that work is inspiring because you’re not your genetics. Yes, they put you at risk and it’s helpful to know what you are at risk for but you are not your genetics. [01:35:29] Ashley James:  That really makes me wonder if the protective properties of fasting went in to play and if so if you chose let’s say you do a 5-day fast every quarter or 3-5 day fast or 3-day fast there’s so many like that, when someone fasts for months and months and months they actually see the benefits of those fast when they continue to do blood work and check up on the person so there’s protective properties that happen when we fast and I’m just wondering if it then now were seeing evidence that it’s actually goes down a few generations, which boggles my mind. [01:36:18] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  It’s amazing. [01:36:19] Ashley James:  Right? So amazing. Cause we also see on the other side of that people who like for example were in the holocaust or you know very very traumatic experiences during the war that they’re able to see higher levels just observed ambient natural stress like higher level of natural stress hormones in the grand children of holocaust survivors and they talked about how people who like have normal stress lives versus incredibly stressful lives that even two generations there it’s seen in their genetic makeup which means it’s even more important if you know your grandparents your parents or your grandparents went thru really really, really, really, really, really hard times it’s even more important for you to take it seriously to check yourself to lower your stress levels or it’s even more important to get Wendie’s book and detox the stress levels and focus on you know ditching those toxins Dirty Girl Ditch the Toxins I’m excited for your book cause the way you teach, you handle this information in such an easy visual way right that’s what I love I want the science I want you to tell us the science but I also want people to understand it and be able to use it you know everyone must have walk away from this interview going okay now I know how to tackle that those 15 pounds on my stomach that I can never get rid of no matter what I do now I know  now I get to look into my stress levels my mycotoxins all the stuff right the go down the checklist.   [01:38:04] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Yeah, I mean look. I co-wrote it with my husband. I co-wrote it reading the book is like talking to me basically and it’s meant to be a roadmap right because you know if you think about how many toxins we’re exposed to it’s paralyzing and so we’re not going to tell you that you’re going to be toxin-free what I’m going to tell you is it you want to get your body burning of toxins down enough that it’s not messing you up so you can live a vital vibrant healthy life able to be interested in intimacy until you are at least a  hundred, that you get better every decade, that is my philosophy and I will go to the Math, fighting for that one because that is my why, something you said earlier we have to talk about the why you have to know why you are doing this right it’s not because you have an event coming up and you want to look good for it, nope, it’s because you want to be healthy enough to see your great grandchildren and play with them and have them remember you in fifty years, right, or you make a legacy impact that is felt by millions you got to find some why that is massive because if it’s like I want to look better for the wedding I am going in to September after September you’ve no more future that pulls you forward this powerful enough, so you want to pick a big, big scary goal that you can accomplish in your lifetime but it gives you strength when you like oh, I really wish I could eat that, I really feel left out, oh I used to eat that at Thanksgiving, right, there’s a lot of emotion around food so when you are stripped to feel that emotion to get something bigger like yeah I did always used to do that and remember how I felt and here is  what I want to do with this new found health. [01:40:01] Ashley James:  Uhumm-uhumm… you know it really helps me I’ve cut a lot of foods I used to eat and I imagine how it’s going to make me feel and I go I don’t want to feel that tomorrow and then I could imagine the way it’s doing to the tiny, tiny very less than paper thin lining of my gut and how eating for example fried food is a bunch of free radicals that’s like punching holes like bullets through the nucleus of my cells and causing all kinds of havoc just inflammation and havoc and craziness and then the oil, the fried oil in the food is suffocating the good bacteria in my gut and creating an anaerobic environment for all the bad stuff to takeover, because there’s this war that means there’s this real war going on your gut all the time and it’s the good versus the evil right they should make a movie there’s a war and there’s 6 pounds of bacteria in your gut it’s like there’s a Chihuahua or like I don’t know baby kangaroo living in your gut and there’s a war between like 2 or 3 pounds of bad bacteria and 2 or 3 pounds of good bacteria and they’re going at it and hopefully you have less than 30 pounds of bad bacteria but for all the people who are sick and so every single meal and every single decision could be is it going tip the scales for the bad guys or the good guys right, and then there’s the bad stuff in your gut that’s making the mycotoxins and you eat a little bit of gluten and all those mycotoxins are (slurps) sucked up into your body and affecting your brain. Do mycotoxins crossed the blood brain barrier? [01:41:46] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Ooh, I don’t know the answer to that. I know that when you have a patient with dementia and get rid of the mycotoxins it improves brain functions so I have to say yes but I don’t know for sure, speculation. [01:41:59] Ashley James:  Both my grandfathers died of dementia I mean you can’t’ really figure out their Alzheimer’s until after right so they just called it dementia I was really young and this was in the 80’s when they died and when you said that likely people who passed away of dementia likely there’s a relationship between that and barley, wheat, rye, and oats right so likely right so that’s another thing is if you know of direct relatives that passed away of dementia or have dementia that you, yourself and people related to them could benefit from cutting out those grains right to prevent them. Our genetics is not a death sentence which is  what you said, right, they’re not a death sentence. So if everyone in your family got a heart disease it doesn’t mean you have to as well it means that that’s the thing to circle on the chalkboard for you I need to live a life preventing this and I need to live a life creating heart health, focusing on heart health don’t focus on dying of our disease focus on everything that you can do, you wake up in the morning your feet at the ground you go, good what I’m going to do to create heart health today? I’m going to go for a walk, I’m going to drink my water, I’m going do my meditation or my prayer, I’m going to eat bowls and bowls of greens and beans and a little bit of balsamic vinegar for the nitric oxide you know so you build up this list in your mind of all these wonderful things and if you follow this daily habit of I’m going to create this health for me then that 15% genetic factor isn’t going to do you under right because we have to live a life of this actionable steps. And your book has a bunch of actionable steps can you share I mean you taught us so much but can you give us some homework some tidbits from your book you know tantalize us with the tidbits from your book because we’re all going to run out and buy it and afterwards and starts following it diligently but like set us a separate now what we can do starting today to improve our health [01:44:15] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  I love this question. I really encourage people to always start with food because you do it 2 to 3x a day at least and it’s the cornerstone of what we do so you have to take stock of what you are and get real so if you’re someone who’s eating a relatively standard American diet meaning something processed for breakfast lunch and dinner then action item #1 is to pick a meal and get rid of the processed food at that meal once you’ve won go on to the next meal, and once you’ve won at both of those both meals go to the third meal. So that the food you are eating generally is devoid of processed food yes you can have special occasions yes you can have a treat and what you want to watch out for is it’s not a slippery slope meaning you have it once in a while but then you start having them every day and then you are like oops, sorry, so it’s important to start with food and that is actionable right? And no matter where you live and I’m cognizant that not everyone has the same financial resources so ideally in a world where you have all choices you would go for no processed and organic and then do your best you can get frozen foods that are organic that are often much cheaper than fresh and those are pretty good so if it’s a choice between something that has pesticides versus something that is frozen that has no pesticides I would go for the frozen especially because it’s fresh frozen so it’s preserved all the nutrients in it and don’t cook it to death because then you’ll get rid of all the nutrients, so lightly cooked it. It’s so funny in our book what we go through is like if this is where you are starting for food do this and if this is what you are starting do this because we recognize you could be on a huge spectrum of places for food. So we start with figure out where you are and then start to level up.  Now I always say to people most of the people, well actually all people that see me our female because I’m a gynecologist so I always see females but my husband’s partner sees men also and I always say to my patients watch your language, language is really critical and so this isn’t a diet, a. it’s is a lifestyle and b. there’s no cheating on your lifestyle there’s just what you do and whether or does or doesn’t work for you because you know they call me we have these calls since like, bless me Dr. T, I have sinned, oh my god, I’m not a confessional booth, you have not sinned you are perfect, incomplete and sometimes you do things that don’t work for you move on but then the question is let’s Monday morning quarterback this did you eat that at that party because you were a. hungry b. forget to prepare c. left out d. acting out what was the source of it, let’s get down to the source of it so next time you can have a win when you go to the party that you at the end of it say oh, I actually ate in a  way that I’d feel good the next day, so we really look a lot of that in our book, are you sleeping, are you moving your body, what is your genetic risk, all of that. All of the stuff we talked about today or things that we talked about in our book, and we’re really drilling to it, is like one per chapter, we got a whole chapter on each of these things. [01:47:37] Ashley James:  Nice. I love it. [01:47:40] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  And you may want to cut this out, this is the part where if you want to cut it out I’m totally fine with but my experiences as a perimenopausal woman lead me to say to my husband we need to write a book about how to navigate perimenopause in a way that is empowering and so that book we’re starting tomorrow actually and that would be out in 2023 [01:48:00] Ashley James: Congratulations! I’m not cutting this out. That is a fantastic thing and I can’t wait to have you back. [01:47:06] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Thank you!  [01:48:07] Ashley James: Talking about this I’ve a girlfriend of mine and she is a listener so it’s so funny when like my legit friends in real life then became my fans of my show, I heard that episode! Oh my gosh, this is cool, but kind of crazy and so we’ve known each other for years and she started becoming a listener, and I’m not preachy to my  friends, I kind of can’t help myself so if I listen to any their conversation and I’m like oh I did an interview with this doctor and then I’ll catch myself because I’m like I’m sorry guys I know I’m like this I act like this you know like Lisa Simpson about health stuff but it’s kind of my thing I truly do geek out all the time 24/7  this is who I am and so a friend of mine didn’t tell me she had this health issues she’s had 7 kids, 7 kids, she knows at least 2 languages that I know, lived in several countries and just really had this very eclectic life at times incredibly stressful, really beautiful life, they do ministry where they opened their home to people who are recovering drug and alcohol addicts they are sober but they’re going thru their program, and they opened their home with their children opened their home and they bring them in because now this is a clean and sober environment so they for many years have ministered to these people who are like it so hard to recover from like fentanyl addiction like these crazy street drug addiction their kind of like their side gig is they constantly helping these people to get back on their feet and they’re called to do that and they also run a construction business so she’s like one thing or another and she said to me, oh I listen to this episode now I don’t have migraines anymore because I did what this top doctor told me to do, like just a major life thing, and then I did this, she’s done several things from several different guests but what she’d told me which I can’t wait for her to hear this episode so she’s listening. Hello! [01:50:24] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Shout out! Shout out! [01:50:26] Ashley James: Shout out! Yeah, she said to me something really interesting because she’s like really really healthy she looks really healthy and she goes, I hit a total wall and I don’t know where she’s in her 40’s I don’t know where her energy drops down to the floor like I don’t know where and I’ve heard people talk about it and but you say things several times in this interview you said things it’s like I’ve heard it but it never landed and you had these tidbits really land in my listening and I’m hoping for all the listeners too I bet it has and so for her I think because she’s at that moment where you said if your adrenals are taxed  which I bet hers are because she’s lived such an amazing life, just beautiful, brilliant life so far her adrenals are taxed and then her ovaries were like well guess what we’re plucking out! Perimenopause. Welcome, welcome to the beginning of menopause and so now she’s like boom hits the wall completely slides all the way down to the floor so I can’t wait for her to read you book also because I bet that’s really going to help her. [01:51:43] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Late spring 2023! It’s coming. [01:51:45] Ashley James: Oh awesome! Welcome back on the show, can’t wait to have you back. I’d said earlier that I had that distended liver tasting heavy metals like I was crazy and I had switched over to a very healthy very clean totally no processed diet in an attempt to heal because anytime I was actually doing keto and meat and everything but that was made it all come flaring out, that was made it all, it was keto with a doctor we’re following and every week working with this doctor and it was so bad like three months of keto with this doctor my liver was crazy I was going through all this tests my liver enzymes were through the roof they’re very concerned they want to do  biopsy and I was like, no no no then I did an interview that really turned me around and had me do 100% unprocessed whole food plant based very healing like a lot of raw food also one of my doctors said you really need to sweat because that is one of your emunctory systems that’s where your detox system that allows you to bypass the liver so I looked around and looked around talked to a bunch of doctors and finally settled on Sunlighten Sauna, have you heard of the Sunlighten? [01:53:04] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  I have one. I love it. [01:53:05] Ashley James: You have one! Yes! So I have the 3-in-1 it says it’s about the size of a small closet I’m actually sitting right beside it right now that’s my Sunlighten and it’s in the office in the corner of the office, and my husband and I can actually fit in it even though it’s for one person we can both fit in it on a bench although, you know what it’s not as fun as it sounds to be sitting with your husband sweating that was fun for the first few times but I’d just like to just spread a little bit and have my space so we go back to back but what I thought that’s really interesting is my  electricity bill didn’t go up well we turn off the heat because it’s the summer time and I just check the electricity bill so we’ve probably using the sauna a lot and it didn’t change so its about as much as having the heat on in which we didn’t have heat on much cause we’re in a very neutral area, Seattle, we hardly ever have the heat on but with the detox I started with the sauna and I noticed that everything slowly got better my liver went down within a few weeks my liver went down I stopped tasting heavy metals I’m sweating almost everyday in the sauna I would sweat everyday but if I didn’t really stay on top of my hydration then I wouldn’t do it that day it’s my reward at the end of the day for being hydrated all day long and that was about four years, four, was it four years ago it’s like time is sort of crazy, 2018 I think and what happened  was for the first time in my life I successfully lost weight and kept it off it was 80 pounds and that was over the course of two years but you’re right the weight didn’t just start coming off right away it was gradual and it was definitely after the first few months like a little bit of first because that was inflammation but using the Sunlighten consistently was one of my best tools for detox and then I was introduced to other stuff as well I’m never going to say that it’s just one thing [01:55:14] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  No, it’s never just one thing. [01:55:15] Ashley James: Right. It’s never just one thing that’s why getting your book is so important because what if it’s 10 things or 12 things and maybe we’re doing 3 of them and we need to add the rest that’s why you’re book is so important because it’s going to let us know about all the stuff we’re not doing that we could be doing to take ourselves to the next level so here I am I’ve come so far but I know there’s more for me to do and that’s why I’m excited for your book, I’m so excited for all your books all the books that you’re going to come out for the future but this one thank you for writing it I really appreciate that you came here today to share this and I just know that you’re helping so many people so many women but I think that this message can help men as well just like you wrote it with your husband and your addressing everyone so thank you, thank you for the future generations cause imagine the parents or let’s say people who are listening who aren’t parents yet make this changes and that’s a trickle effect down generations after generations so when you get up in the morning I just want you to think about all the generations that you are touching based because you’re sliding this information so thank you. [01:56:23] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Oh it’s really a privilege. I think I love how you put that out there. It’s not that just for you it’s for future generations. That’s where the magic lives. [01:56:34] Ashley James: And even let that be the motivator for not eating that thing at the party because I know some dads are like super endearing dads also but I can only say for my experiences as a woman because that’s what I am, in the moment, I want to eat that whatever that blank that’s going to be tasty really good in the moment but if I were think that this would harm future generations, my unborn generations, like my grandchildren or if you know if I have that idea in my mind, and even if I’m done having kids my health impacts my children my mom died when I was 22 and she was 55 and she was the epitome of health to me until she died, that was devastating to my life and what if I die young and how that impacts my son these are lifestyle choices that we can make their little tiny ones that add up every day and that is the difference between being around for you grandkids or not every listener you are important your life matters and the impact you have on your family on your future generations matter so you’re worth it to say no in the moment there’s temptations for the long term benefit of future generations they get to be with you and I think that is really beautiful and so we should remember that our life choices and every life choice we make does have even a small impact on those we care about. [01:58:09] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Yes, small changes add up to huge impact over the course of the year. It’s really impactful. [01:58:18] Ashley James: Thank you so much for coming on the show. Please come back when you have your sexy book written. [01:58:26] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  It’s going to be a fun one. Once we embargo the title I’ll share it with you. The first one is Dirty Girl you can kind of imagine what the second one might mean. You probably can’t imagine the title but it’s certainly not going to be tame and boring. [01:58:40] Ashley James: Okay good, good, I mean we’re talking about sex and health right so we need to make this fun. [01:58:48] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  We should. Not just fun but accessible we can do this we’ve got this we’ve got the tools, and no, it’s not normal to experience these things it’s fixable. [01:58:40] Ashley James: I love that, I love that. Thank you so much Dr. Wendie Trubow this has been such a pleasure having you on the show and oh, I want to make sure that listeners also know that your website now I have fivejourneys.com is that the best for you or is there another website you want them to know about. [01:59:17] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Well, I’m into world domination so that’s our clinic it’s fivejourneys.com the book is on Amazon that’s the best place you’ll get it for the least price we have my Instagram at wendietrubow.md and we have our own podcast which is five journeys podcast live like you matter. [01:59:34] Ashley James:  Nice definitely check that podcast. Awesome. Well thank you so much have yourself a fantastic day and I can’t wait for you to comeback on the show. [01:59:42] Dr. Wendie Trubow:  Me too, thank you so much Ashley, this has been great! [01:59:46] Ashley James:  I hope you enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Wendie Trubow. She was amazing, wasn’t she? And you know what, right after I recorded this I realized there’s 2 more studies I didn’t tell you about that I’m really excited about when it comes to utilizing light and heat therapy found in the Sunlighten Sauna System which offers the full spectrum the near mid and far infrared there’s two really incredible things and that’s increasing nitric oxide in the body and also the heat shock protein so the Sunlighten system when you use it on a daily basis it increases cardiovascular health and decreases high blood pressure actually there was a study I just read recently that it increases nitric oxide and if you’ve been an avid listener you know we talked about nitric oxide in the past because it is directly related to preventing cardiovascular events preventing like heart attacks and supporting longevity and the health of the cardiovascular system so we want to have a healthy level of nitric oxide in the body now there’s something called heat shock protein and we talked about this in episode 410 that’s really important cause Marcus Friedmann talks about the natural treatments for cancer that some countries are freely using in hospitals for whatever reason we get into that episode before, for whatever reason are not being used in this country but have been highly, highly studied in other countries so the use of heat therapy stimulates heat shock protein and there are some types of cancers that are unable to survive in the higher heat and so they find out that when you stimulate heat shock protein they’re also seeing that some cancers can’t survive in that and that’s why we have other certain countries they’re using a heat therapy as an adjunct with the other cancer treatments very successfully so episode 410 is really good to listen to about that but that’s what I love about the Sunlighten System is that it helps your body to increase the heat shock protein which heat shock protein and there’s tons of studies on it, it helps the body maintain homeostasis by forming new proteins reactivating misfolded proteins and it works as a chaperon to stabilize unfolded proteins and deformed cells which helps the body to prevent type 2 diabetes, obesity, arteriosclerosis and of course cancer, because we’ve seen some that cancers are DNA’s gone awry in some cases but there are many other diseases that we see where DNA’s gone awry thru oxidative stress so this is helps greatly to reduce oxidative stress there’s whole component of our innate immune system that heat shock proteins stimulates and boosts reduce free radicals and heat shock protein alone also aids in faster muscle recovery and repair and then heart protection as well there’s many studies I read but I just want to highlight a few of the ones I thought we’re really interesting heat shock protein also helps in relieving chronic pain and depression and in the studies they saw that people who were depressed reported that they had increased appetite they had a sensation of a relaxed mood and they had an alleviation from their depression which is amazing and it goes back to the fact that when we reduce stress in the body we could be we were doing something physical we’re sitting in the sauna our body is sweating it actually affecting our emotional state our mental state it’s helping us detox it’s having this anti-aging effect it’s having this really positive effect on the immune system and in our cardiovascular system so it’s always wonderful things happening all at once as far as all the healing tools that I have collected over the years it’s the Sunlighten Sauna System is the one tool that does the most things it’s like the Swiss army knife of holistic tools that I have in my arsenal that I use on a regular basis sometimes I’m going to use an oral health example it was kind of life changing for my oral health when I started using the tongue scraper and I realize that your mouth has never been cleaned until you’ve used the tongue scraper it’s a game changer the stuff that comes off your tongue twice a day is amazing you should definitely get a metal tongue scraper it does one thing it just that one thing and it does that very well and that’s effective and I like it and I have all kinds of health tools and bio hacking health tools to help me just optimize my life that I use all the time but the Sunlighten Sauna does over 20 things to the body and I’m learning more and more every time I look into it I’m learning more and more about what this light and heat therapy does for my health and so as far as investing in your health you’re going to get the biggest bang for your buck by using a tool on a daily basis that accomplishes all these different health results at once just like shifting your diet all of a sudden, oh all of these wonderful things are coming online epigenetically your gene starts expressing differently when you changed your diet when you lower stress your genes actually starts expressing differently your different enzymes start happening your body goes into this huge healing mode where it’s able to finally deliver resources to healing and to repair and to restoring and regenerating when you make this one time, you make this one change just one switch all of these things come on line and that’s what I’ve noticed with the Sunlighten System I just want a detox but I’ve got so much more so there’s my 2 cents and then some with inflation I don’t know here’s my 2 dollars on the Sunlighten System. Please if you haven’t already joined our Facebook group I’d love to see you there, I’d love to chat with you, if you have any questions or if you just want to share about your healing journey so many of us are on our healing journeys together and it’s so great to come in to a community and feel like you are not alone so please join the Facebook group say hi to me and thank you for being a listener thank you for sharing this episode to those you care about and I can’t wait for you to hear what’s coming up we’ve got some great interviews in the pipeline that we’re going to be publishing in the next month or so, so watch out for those and have yourself a fantastic rest of your day and please do something today to love yourself. Get Connected with Dr. Wendie Trubow!   Website Facebok Instagram YouTube Twitter Book by Dr. Wendie Trubow:   Dirty Girl: Ditch the Toxins, Look Great, and Feel Freaking Amazing!

Visit Sunlighten Sunlighten.com to see the different infared technologies and how they can help you lower your stress levels and support optimal health and healing.

https://brookehazen.com Book  https://amzn.to/3zqzWX9 "You Are Not Broken: A Holistic Guide for Men and Women to Heal the Pathways of Sexual Dysfunction and Restore Relational Harmony Together"   Pornography-Induced Erectile Dysfunction – Treatment and Intervention https://www.learntruehealth.com/pornography-induced-erectile-dysfunction-treatment-and-intervention Understanding Erectile Dysfunction (ED) What are the three different kinds of ED What is Chelation Therapy Bad effects of pornography and semen release addiction Dopamine Addiction   Erectile Dysfunction, commonly referred to as ED, is when it is hard to get or keep an erection firm enough for sex. ED is often a symptom of another health problem or made worse by emotional problems. In this episode, Brooke Hazen shares his wisdom on the causes of Erectile Dysfunction and how to heal the devastating effects without relying on medication.   Intro:  Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 480. I am so excited to have Brooke Hazen on the show. Brooke is an organic farmer, lifelong athlete, physical coach, health and fitness enthusiast, and an author. I’m really excited to talk about our subject today which is a deep dive into ED, and uncovering what’s going on in your health that is obstructing your sexual health. So what I love to look at is the body speaks to us its symptoms. And this is something I was been taught by many of my naturopathic mentors over the years that the body– we were born with a manual. Right? But if we listen really closely to the symptoms of our body, we can begin to hear the messages our body’s trying to tell us.  In Erectile Dysfunction both in men and women or I should back up sexual dysfunction in men or women, anyone, any adult who notices that they have a difficult time being aroused or painful sex or just all the issues around that or not even wanting it. Any of that is a great indication of hormone imbalance, of pelvic floor dysfunction, of nutrient deficiency, and the list goes on and on. In fact, Erectile Dysfunction just for men, as an example is an early sign of diabetes and heart disease as a result because it’s a cardiovascular issue. One of the actual issues is cardiovascular. Brooke, what I love is that you’re really going to dive down deep into it and show us the different aspects of this dysfunction and how we can heal our body holistically as a whole to have a healthy sexual life because that means it’s a symptom. Right? It means, if you have a healthy sexual life, it means that your hormones are balanced, your cardiovascular system is healthy. There’s a lot of great things going on. Your pelvic floor is healthy. So we’re going to dive into all those things up, but first, I’m just so curious about your organic farming company. I want to learn more about that as well. Can we talk about that first?    [00:02:40] Brooke Hazen:  Yes. Thank you for having me on. Sure.    [00:02:42] Ashley James:  Yeah, absolutely. So you have this beautiful organic farm in California. And you make, you cultivate medicinal herbs and a special type of olives that are high in healing properties. How can we buy your products? Because I know you’ve got this little organic farm to help people gain access to these medicinal products that aren’t just in the grocery stores.    [00:03:15] Brooke Hazen:  Well, I’m moving largely direct to customer at this point. So my website has all the information for getting engaged with my organic farming, part of myself besides my author first and it’s called goldridgeorganicfarms.com.   [00:03:32] Ashley James: goldridgeorganicfarms.com. Great. Well, of course, the links to everything that Brooke does is going to be on the show of today’s podcast at learntruehealth.com. And of course the link to your book, You Are Not Broken: A Holistic Guide For Men And Women To Heal The Pathways Of Sexual Dysfunction And Restore Relational Harmony Together. That’s a mouthful.    [00:03:55] Brooke Hazen:  Yes, it is.    [00:03:56] Ashley James:  Absolutely. Well, I’ve been seeing a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist, healing from my last two pregnancies and just I’m learning so much about how for both men and women. In men, it just goes so much more undiagnosed than women. And that, if there’s an imbalance in the pelvic floor, it can lead to all kinds of pain or sexual dysfunctions and they might not even think to look there.  So but that’s just one aspect, right? The majority of it is diet and nutrition. Which of course, being an organic farmer and being really interested in medicinal foods, you’re seeing that there’s a difference that when you consume medicinal quality foods versus just going and eating conventionally grown foods. You see a big difference in your health. What led you because you’re such an enthusiast around health and fitness. What led you to become an organic farmer and dive into this world?   [00:04:58] Brooke Hazen:  Well, I just love to be connected to nature and I wanted to do something with my hands that I could see the results of my work. And so I was interested in natural resources at first and then over time, I came a bit down to earth and started getting into organic farming.   [00:05:18] Ashley James:  And how many years have you been doing it?   [00:05:21] Brooke Hazen:  My whole adult life. I studied it in college and ever since I got out in evening college I started apprenticing and afterwards, I eventually started my own farm.   [00:05:32] Ashley James:  Love it. Now a little bit off-topic, but I’m really curious with this state of affairs going on. Are you being affected by the global fertilizer shortages?   [00:05:45] Brooke Hazen:  No. I believe that’s more synthetic fertilizers and I’m organic and so those are usually natural materials. They aren’t natural materials.   [00:05:57] Ashley James:  Fascinating. So we’re going to see sort of a bump in the organic farming world because they aren’t reliant on the fertilizers that now we have a massive shortage of.   [00:06:09] Brooke Hazen:  Yeah. Yeah, we should. Hopefully.    [00:06:12] Ashley James:  Cool. Well, keep buying organic. Keep supporting those local farmers that are doing such good for our bodies and for the world. I love it.    [00:06:19] Brooke Hazen: Thank you.   [00:06:20] Ashley James: Okay, so tell your story. So what happened to you, when you went to school to become a farmer? You got super excited about organic farming. What led you down this path that had you write this book?   [00:06:33] Brooke Hazen:  Well, this beautiful journey started several years ago when I started noticing the symptoms of Erectile Dysfunction. I don’t even like to use that word, Erectile Dysfunction because that’s really a word that’s meant to sort of cast a veil of mysticism and disempowerment over us. When I’m going to end up breaking it down for you, it’s really nothing that could be further from the truth. We have a very simple and easy solutions for all the different types of ED unidentified whether that’s organic, or neurological, or energetic, and I actually had more of an arousal issue that’s neurologically based.  So that’s Dopamine, mainly. I also had an energetic ED from releasing my semen too often and I was doing this because I was addicted to pornography. It really isn’t an addiction and I’ll tell you why, when we get into this further. So what I did at that time I had no idea what all this was. And I did what everyone else thought which was to reach out to Western Medicine. And they, of course, they prescribed me the only remedy they have which is a very specific pharmaceutical for cardiovascular blood flow.  And I actually had in millions of men actually, and women, actually have porn-induced Erectile Dysfunction, which is the neurologically-based form of Erectile Dysfunction or really an arousal dysfunction where we become desensitized to sex, to our partner, and to life. And it can escalate to the point where eventually you no longer could get aroused to not only your partner, a real-life partner. Which is what was happening to me– but also your favorite pornography. Eventually, you become fully desensitized to life completely on every level. So, I didn’t know all of this, so I was experiencing debilitating side effects because I was being misdiagnosed and misprescribed. Just like millions of men right now with blood flow-inducing pharmaceutical drugs. When I actually had something that was easily fixable and curable that was neurologically based.  So we don’t realize how the immense burdens that men are under when they’re addicted to pornography. There’s a few different things happening all at once. There’s this unneeded burden of debilitating side effects from the Erectile Dysfunction drugs I just mentioned, which causes fatigue and all kinds of horrible symptoms. But there’s also, what I found out later was debilitating side effects of being addicted to pornography, which is perpetual dopamine crashes and associated fatigue, and mood imbalance, and distancing in the relationships that takes place.  Furthermore, we have this undue burden of The Scarlet Letter that Western Medicine places on men which is the word Erectile Dysfunction, and all the associated loss of identity, and confidence, and confusion, and disempowerment that comes with it. So I was going through all these burdens at the time and the reason I wrote this book because I want to help others avoid this and there are millions going through this right now. The fastest-growing segment of ED is Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction and this energetic form of semen release through pornography.  So, as I was going through this process, I was going through so much. I’ll never forget that I felt like a gerbil on an experimental wheel with all these different types of pharmaceutical EDs and they were debilitating, they were exacting and mechanical and I was dependent on them. It was not in resonance with who I am, my heart, and my soul. But during this time, I was praying to God and I was praying for a natural drug which could not have side effects and works. And I was never going to get that prayer answered because God had so much more in store for me besides a drug that I was dependent on, whether that’s natural or that’s pharmaceutical. As I ran out of options, there was nothing left for me in the pharmaceutical realm. I fell into a deep depression for weeks at a time. And now, it’s when I began to let go of my control and release myself completely into God’s arms and pray for a true healing miracle.  It was at that time, God actually did hear me and gave me a true healing miracle. And God decided to start the journey that I was to take place of restoring not only the most incredible sexual health beyond what I ever could have imagined, but also my overall physical health, my relational health, and my mental and emotional health. And God also showed me how this is all intertwined. God is the ultimate, holistic healer, the power behind all holistic healing. If we just let God in, we can unleash all the power, unlimited potential of our minds. And the key to doing that, I have found and I’ll never forget why God led me first to Your Brain On Porn website by Gary Wilson, was to show myself and everyone that this key, this foundation, all starts with our neurology. Having healthy neurology meaning balanced dopamine levels, as well as our overall chi sexual energy by simply getting rid of our addictions to pornography and semen release. That is really where we must start and that’s where is the foundation for really launching us into massive transformation on every level. It’s all intertwined and connected. It is all holistic.   [00:12:45] Ashley James: I love it. You were led to this website, Your Brain On Porn and how long did it take to reverse this issue and be healed?      [00:13:01] Brooke Hazen: Yeah, that’s a great question. So this process of rewiring, and rebuilding, and regrooving our neuro chemistry, these neurotransmitter hormones of dopamine because this is a dopamine addiction when you’re addicted to pornography, on par with actually the same level as cocaine and morphine addicts. In fact, the dopamine levels have been measured to be just as low as cocaine and morphine addicts. But this process takes anywhere from, it takes at least months but sometimes a year. It could go as long as two years but what I’ve found is this process of rewiring and re-sensitizing ourselves to life, actually can take a couple of years and I’m still seeing increased sensitivity to everything around me. And this includes also sort of refraining from virtual type of imagery, not just pornography, but this whole fantasy of pixels on a screen because it’s really our neurology is getting desensitized to life by this whole fantasy of what’s going on in our brain.  And our brain cannot actually tell the difference between a fantasy and a real life. So men actually believe they’re on this successful campaign with meeting a wide range of novel needs, which is getting into the mating behaviors that is so prominent in pornography and in relationships today that is really poisonous to long-term sustainable relationships.  But there’s really three different kinds of ED and I want to demystify them. I want to educate us about it because I believe that there’s so much myths and misconceptions around it that really Western Medicine sort of promotes indirectly because they really have one tool for resolving it and that is this one form of medication. They have no idea what to do with the fastest-growing segment of ED which is neurologically based ED. And they’re never going to give you a holistic approach that’s curative and preventative. You can try as much as you want, they will never give that to you. They only have this one tool and even that one tool does not actually resolve organic ED which is physical source of ED, which was everyone talks about.  You were talking about Kegels and I get into all that deeply in the book. The second half of my book covers all of organic ED. But first, we have to really focus on the real problem. We have to go to neurologically-based ED and energetic ED first. And those are the first two that I’ve found are the preprominent source of EDs taking place today and where we must go first.  And we’re actually the only ones capable—we’re so empowered. We’re the only ones capable of actually resolving the first two major types of ED which is neurologically-based and energetic-based by simply refraining from pornography and semen release. Mainstream Western Medicine can’t do that for us. Nobody can do that for us. Except each individual has to do that, that has this addiction. So the three types are PIED, Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction. Which we don’t talk enough about neurology but we need our neurology for getting aroused, knowing to sex in our partner back to life. And the second form is Energetic ED, which is has to do with our semen release, releasing our semen too often and that just causes a depletion in our chi sexual energy.  Our chi sexual energy cannot be separated from our overall energy because chi is really our life force. It’s God within us. And dopamine is our drive or inspiration, determination, and the will of God for us to become our ideal selves. God has given us this gift of neuro chemistry and energies that we’re simply abusing. And Eastern traditions are totally familiar with this. It’s just in the West we aren’t and we are simply abusing these gifts that had been given by God and the answer is really easy and simple. It’s to give up this addiction to pornography and semen release. That’s the answer. And then, Organic ED is the third one. That’s the one that we always go to. And we’re sort of brainwashed to go to automatically. We gets so focused on Organic ED and I’m not saying that we shouldn’t. I’m saying at first, we need to focus on the first two because the reason is that you can have even if Western Medicine does prescribe, if they look out and that one little slippery tool that they have for ED does actually land our selves on someone that has Blood Flow Restricted ED. They still maybe watching pornography and releasing semen in pornography and they will not resolve their ED until they first resolved those two. And then, we can look at whether we have a blood flow issue or we have a hormonal issue and all this is Physical Organic ED is definitely resolvable naturally without side effects.  I go into it in my book with the Chelation IVs for arteriosclerosis. Western Medicine doesn’t even with their ED medication, Viagra, and all that, the blood flow inducing nitric oxide, inducing medications, doesn’t actually cure anything. I just saw it clear. I know, you know this Ashley, but those listening, it doesn’t cure a thing. It actually just bypasses the real underlying source of vision which is what I get into my book in my exploration that God led me on.  I got the real source of what is causing blood flow ED which is arteriosclerosis. But even deeper than that, it’s not just arteriosclerosis. Arteriosclerosis is a symptom. What actually is causing nitric oxide dysfunction that Western Medicine is jumpstarting with nitric oxide-inducing pharmaceutical ED medication. Well, the answer is what goes in our mouths. It’s what we drink or breathe through the form of heavy metals. It’s what we eat with an animal-based diet which is full of saturated fats, carcinogens, and free radicals, as well as pollutants, and smoking. That’s the source of arteriosclerosis. Arteriosclerosis is really a symptom. It’s a conglomeration of plaque, calcification, and heavy metals. And we have ways to get rid of all this through Chelation IV therapy, Plaque X IV therapy, and we can break up that conglomeration. I did it myself, actually.  There’s numerous studies which also that I’ll cite later that show that we do not need to have people dying anymore of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks. We do not need to have people suffering with this The Scarlet Letter of Erectile Dysfunction. I have solutions in my book that God has given me to give to everyone that I pulled together all aspects of holistic health related to sexual health. Because sexual health is intertwined with everything else, our neurology, our cardiovascular, our hormonal in our nervous system, as well as our mental health, emotional health, and our relationships. It’s all intertwined and I think Western Medicine wants to make us think you can isolate sexuality, sexual dysfunction to simply the genital pelvic region can take one pill. One little pill that’s going to resolve it. That pill will never replace true healing.   [00:21:35] Ashley James: Right. You just summed up my entire podcast.   [00:21:42] Brooke Hazen: I knew, you’ve loved that.   [00:21:44] Ashley James: Drug-based medicine has its place. If you’re looking for results, if you’re looking for getting to the root cause, if you’re looking for true health, pharmaceutical-based medicine is a very small slice of the pie. Very, very small. But what we’ve been raised to believe is that it’s the whole pie or 95% of the pie and then there is some alternative pie you can go explore. But really first, you should get into a bunch of drugs. So the first thing we have to do is we have to pull ourselves out of the matrix that we’ve been born and raised in. We have been brainwashed since birth to believe that the medical industry is the best, and has all the answers, and the MD with their little prescription pad has all the answers. Right?  And if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably have a clue that they don’t. I’ve had so many doctors on my show who went through the medical system and spent half a million dollars and 8-12 years to become these amazing doctors, only to find that they are just paid for and education on how to sell drugs. And that they weren’t getting results. They were actually helping their patients. And so many of the doctors that interviewed them had health issues of their own and their own style of medicine couldn’t heal them. So then they had to find natural medicine and that’s what healed them. And then they woke up and they went, oh my gosh, I was brainwashed in a system.  This drug-based system, again, is a very small slice of the pie, but the problem is we’ve been brainwashed to believe, it’s the pie, its the whole pie. Once we wake up and realized, we have to advocate for ourselves. We have to do things like listen to podcasts and read books. Learn from people like Brooke Hazen, who’s showing us that the mainstream medical system will never ever talk to you about your dopamine levels, about porn addiction, about your energetic health, about your pelvic floor health, about ways that you can reverse heart disease, and the diet, and the chelation. All the things that you can do to reverse heart disease, your doctors won’t going to talk to you about that. You have to go out. You have to find the right holistic doctor. You have to find the books. You have to find the information yourself. We have to advocate and we have to be the conductor of our orchestra. Right? It’s the orchestra is the holistic people that we go to. The chiropractor, and the homeopath, and the acupuncturist, and naturopath like our whole orchestra are there to help us and we’re the conductor. We have to take matters into our own hands and be willing to explore different things like be willing to throw out, unplug the TV, unplug it, stop watching the news. Like you said, stop watching the screen and put the cell phone away. Stop watching porn and address the dopamine imbalance. And this is for men and women. I know, statistically, largely more men than women watch porn but this is not just a male issue. I believe that all people, all adults. And the problem now is children have access to it, younger and younger and younger. In my state of Washington, they’re teaching masturbation to fourth-graders in our public school system. It’s getting kind of weirder and weirder out here. But what we have to get is that addiction.  I had a great interview with Dr. Joan Ifland and we talked about this addiction brain is not just alcohol, or methamphetamines, or cocaine. It can be porn, right? It can be alcohol. Yes, but it could also be something that’s more socially acceptable. Right? It could be sugar, it could be drinking wine, but it could be porn, it could be whatever you’re addicted to, whatever that causing this dopamine imbalance. And then, the dopamine balance gives you this plethora of effects, of side effects which one is your sexual dysfunction but the other is like you said, you have distance with your partner. Maybe you’re quick to anger, maybe you’re depressed, maybe you’re unmotivated or agitated. It’ll show up in your work performance. It’ll show up even in your willingness to live, willingness to like go out there and live a life, and your enthusiasm or your zest for life, starts just to deplete. And from, I don’t know, but it’s more of a spiritual sense. It’s almost like demonic energies, demonic vampires are sucking the life out of us when we plug into these little outlets that gives us temporary pleasure but then so drain us. They suck us dry of the vital life force. So we have to be really protective of where we go to get our pleasure. Go get your pleasure from walking with your partner, holding their hand, and looking at a sunset, or go play with your kids, or grandkids, or either your nieces or nephews at the park. Get pleasure from something that’s wholesome and protects you from these outlets that might give you a temporary boost and pleasure but then completely suck you dry of your vital life force. So I see, you’re talking about is part of this grand scheme to keep as rats just so preoccupied, running around preoccupied and we don’t wake up. Let’s advocate for ourselves.   [00:27:58] Brooke Hazen: It’s kind of amazing because the elephants in the room are so in front of us but nobody’s talking about it in Western Medicine with blood flow issues related to ED. Nobody’s talking about diet when it comes to arteriosclerosis. Nobody talks about the root cause of it. Heavy metals have been shown to be a very big factor now, but also, what we’re eating. The food what we’re eating is what’s causing it, as well as smoking and environmental pollutants.  The other elephant in the room nobody talks about with ED is this pornography epidemic. We’re at the end of a two-decade-long massive experiment on the global population with free internet porn. And the results are in and they are harrowing. There’s an entire generation of young men who are unable to perform sexually with a real partner and engage with any connected, intimate relationship. It’s really a dopamine addiction. And I want to tell you why this is. We don’t understand in the West but Eastern traditions are well aware for millennia is the enormous tool in ejaculation really is semen release. That’s why I don’t say it as ejaculation but I say semen release because we can still ejaculate and have full-body orgasms. It’s the semen release that causes this intense dopamine drop where dopamine crashes and prolactin rises. And this intense refractory period and period of replenishment takes place where the body pulls all the most precious resources of growth factor hormones and nutrients from all the parts of our body with the sole purpose of replacing that vital sperm. That’s really is our liquid gold. So the pornography and semen release is a super stimulus and it because it combines the two. It combines the semen release with that dopamine effect that I just mentioned, which causes massive mood swings, fatigue, and distancing in our relationship. But it’s also the super stimulus of the novelty. The constant novelty that takes place with pornography, where we’re just desensitizing and building these neural pathways in our brain that’s specific to just gets us aroused. And this is what slowly replaces our partners in real life. That’s actually what’s happening.  So this super stimulus that’s taking place and actually the brain cannot tell the difference between a chemical addiction like alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and in neurological addiction which is pornography. And so, what happens is the brain actually is completely overwhelmed with this super stimulus of the imagery, combined with the dopamine crashes and the semen release. And the brain starts canceling out dopamine receptor sites and dopamine levels, and they crash to very low levels. And so, as I mentioned, these are gifts we’ve been given. This affects not just our sexual performance, but our arousal to life really, to everything because our physical selves, our physical health is completely inseparable from sexual health.  Millennia is the protruding member of a vast orchestra, as you mentioned of neurological, nervous, cardiovascular, or hormonal health. It’s really the canary in the coal mine that will shout out what our level of health or disease is currently within those systems. But again, the key to unlocking and to making it easier for us to make massive transformations physically lies in this neurology, the balanced neurology, and the balanced energy levels. And people freak out around the concept of semen retention but really it’s such a misconception. It’s actually, the opposite of what we think.  The benefits of semen retention is so enormous. First, you have increased sensitivity and potency, sexually. Then, you also have a prolonged sexual experience where you’re actually able to cum into alignment with your partner. And women are usually just getting warmed up at the moment and the man is finished. So this gets us in alignment where we can have a much more connective relationship. And most importantly, is we avoid the poison and the decency that takes place through this mating behavior of releasing semen with the sole goal of getting to climax.  We can cope through Karezza, Tao, and Tantra for Millennia. Eastern cultures have been aware of this, that has been supplanting that’s mating behavior with moaning behaviors. And this actually can build long-term relationships through eye gazing, caressing, deep connective sensual play, and respecting, honoring, communication, embracing, and holding, all these behaviors build connection through oxytocin. Mating behaviors are focused really driven by dopamine. We wanted to skip that imbalance. We’d have balanced dopamine levels by disengaging in any form of pornography and we want to get balance energy through semen retention. And we want to have connective relationships through building oxytocin-based behaviors.   [00:33:58] Ashley James: Can you give us examples of behaviors that would help us to balance this in our day-to-day lives?   [00:34:07] Brooke Hazen: Yeah. Well, mating and bonding behaviors- this is something that Marnia Robinson, who wrote a review for my book because she went into detail about in her book, Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow. My book actually draws together all the different types, the neurology of pornography, the neurology of relationships, and then, also organic ED, and overall physical and mental, emotional health, and spiritual health. I tie it all together, but she talks about in there how through studies have shown that over hundreds of thousands of years, the brain has developed these neural pathways of either bonding or mating-based behaviors. We have both.  And we’re able to actually talk about biohacking. Biohacking is reclaiming our vitality, vibrancy, and youthful vigor. This is actually a big biohack is supplanting mating behaviors with bonding behaviors. And these bonding behaviors are built over 100,000 years through family, friends, through our immediate culture, through our babies, through our immediate family. These are the kind of behaviors that are extremely connected and build oxytocin. So the mating brain, the mating behavior, which pornography fits perfectly into is actually incredibly poisonous and destructive to long-term relationships because the real sole goal of the mating brain and mating behavior is to spread maximum genetic diversity to a wide range of novel mates. And there’s really no end to this search. There’s no end to this dopamine addiction of this novel search and this dopamine crashes. In fact, as I mentioned, the dopamine crashes, when we have this semen release, the brain’s dopamine levels crash. This process of replenishment and the refractory period lasts for up to two weeks.  In fact, the largest reverberations can take place at the two-week level. I can tell you as a man that when we’re addicted to pornography and even just in masturbation in general, but usually pornography is involved almost all the time. Men are releasing their semen not just every few days, definitely not every two weeks, but they’re doing it daily usually, and sometimes multiple times per day. Now what that means is we’re getting a perpetual state of chronic fatigue, mood imbalance, and distancing in the relationship. It’s truly poisonous to relationships and that’s where sexual health crosses into relational health.   [00:37:15] Ashley James: What is interesting, this concept is that by overstimulating yourself with pornography or over masturbation that the brain is in this mindset of wanting to spread the seed as opposed to grow roots in a relationship. And so they become restless within the relationship, they’re become agitated, they’re not bonded, they’re not connected to emotionally to their partner. And are they looking around? Are they looking to cheat? Is this pornography lead to infidelity?   [00:38:07] Brooke Hazen: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. At least, it’s going to inevitably lead a partner towards finding a new novel mate in the relationship. Just like it’s happening with pornography, it’s an escalating addiction where men and women, that actually women are also can get addicted to pornography. It’s just that, women, she has more connective behavior. So only 26% of women end up watching pornography weekly, whereas men are at 80%. I think it’s probably more.   [00:38:45] Ashley James: You talked about this two week, it takes up to two weeks after one ejaculation for dopamine to rebalance. Can you keep and dive into that and explain that a bit more?   [00:38:57] Brooke Hazen: Yeah. So, science shows that when a semen is released, that this refractory period. This period of replenishment where prolactin rises and dopamine crashes, continues in that sort of ratio for up to two weeks, and it weaves up and down. So maybe, in a few days, it’ll sort of you’ll come out the overwhelming haze of the first few days can tend to be more intense, but this does continue for up to two weeks that has been shown. So what we’re getting is overlapping cycles of dopamine crashes and prolactin rising.  I mean, forget it, if men are releasing semen multiple times per day, or once a day, or even every few days. They’re in a chronic perpetual state of crashed dopamine levels. And again, dopamine is our driver, inspiration, our determination. That’s how we become our ideal selves. It’s that motivation to be the best we can be. We don’t have that anymore.  And it’s entertainment about pornography, this is also new to people that don’t understand this in the West. But this is a new experiment that is coming too. But we don’t understand what men are going through. Prolactin is actually going back to the replenishment cycle. Prolactin is actually what causes fatigue. It’s a chemical that causes fatigue. And the dopamine is that important, what’s we need for life. And so, well, I think, as I’m gonna say is that we don’t realize that this truly is an addiction that like if we had a cocaine or morphine addict or an alcoholic, per se, and that was our partner in real life, we would not expect them to be fully capable of having an intimate, beautiful—that’s the relationship that can possibly have to be at their peak of physical conditioning and to have balanced neurology. Would we? We could expect that.   [00:41:18] Ashley James: While they’re fighting the addiction or while they’re in the addiction or while they’re using?   [00:41:23] Brooke Hazen: While they’re in addiction. While they’re aware of addiction. Even while they’re still in the grips of it. Even if they’re aware that they want to get out of it.    [00:41:29] Ashley James: Right.    [00:41:30] Brooke Hazen: We wouldn’t expect that but with pornography, we’re completely unaware that this is the same as an addiction, the brain cannot tell any difference between an alcohol, cocaine, or morphine addiction, and a porn addiction because these are all dopamine addictions that even we have food addictions that are dopamine-driven also. All these are dopamine and that’s why I get into organic ED which I want to get into. Diet is so important. I mean, we could end up using Chelation therapy and get rid of our symptom, arteriosclerosis as is a symptom. Which is we can get rid of the free radical damage. We can get rid of calcification, and plaque buildup, and heavy metals. But if we’re continuing to eat an animal-based diet, which is the source of this free radical damage, oxidation through saturated fats, and carcinogens. As we continue to not to deal with the heavy metal buildup in our bodies which is so important and collate that out. Work through the diet. We’re going to continue just to keep creating the same problem. We’ll never resolve the source of organic ED through cardiovascular. There’s really a few different markers that neurologists just look at with organic ED which is the physical ED that’s where we always jump. We’re always like, oh my god, oh my god, physical ED.  Well, first we got to deal with neurological and energetic but we can also heighten up even if we don’t have organic ED. We can increase our sexual health and prevent further possible organic ED in the future by looking at hormonal. That’s what they look at first and that or they look in addition to blood flow. They don’t really look at blood flow, they just prescribe medications. But hormonal, we can resolve easily with Bio-identical Pellet Therapy, TRT-Testosterone Replacement Therapy. It’s bio-identical and it’s natural. It’s a pellet that mimic as best as we can find the natural cycles of hormones, testosterone within our body. They’ll look at blood flow and that’s where I get to the root source of it. And that’s where, if we don’t look at this holistically, where we’re looking at diet too. We’re going to just continue to have the same problem because there’s this big elephant in the room that is standing right in the middle of our living room that Western Medicine and Western culture is not willing to talk about, which is what we’re eating, this heavy metal exposure we have, environmental pollutants, smoking, pornography, and too much semen release.   [00:44:32] Ashley James: So it’s like all lifestyle. I mean, it’s all lifestyle and then we go to the doctor and they want to give us a drug. I love the meme. I keep seeing it on Facebook. I love the meme, you know, I keep trying to follow the science but it keeps leading me to the money. And the pharmaceutical industry which is petroleum-based — and please if you want to go down to a fun rabbit hole, go down the rabbit hole of the history of the modern medical system beginning with petroleum-based pharmaceuticals. I’ve had a few guests on that talk about it. But it is a wild trip to go down the understanding last 150,120 years and what’s led us up to where we are now. When you go to a doctor and we put them on such a pedestal, and then they give us a drug that it’s not in anyway like giving you an Advil or a Bandaid. It’s not in any way figuring out why you had the headache in the first place. It’s just that not fixing the problem whatsoever. The problem like you said it’s neurological. We have such a dopamine addiction epidemic. If you don’t watching porn, look in your life, where you have a compulsion or an addiction. Do you have to watch cooking segmented TV or sugar or like I have a friend, who, she has to drink alcohol on the weekends. Like she’ll not drink alcohol on Monday through Friday, but on the weekend, she has to drink alcohol. And it’s just like, I’m not saying you’re an alcoholic. Right? Because you and I think, maybe an alcoholic is someone who’s like shaking up if they’re not drinking alcohol. Right? I talked to her because we’re talking about doing a long-term fast and she’s like, I can’t fast. I have to drink alcohol on the weekends. I have to. I have to drink alcohol on the weekends. So I’m like, you can’t skip a weekend? Because we’re talking about doing it like a seven-day or longer fast. Absolutely not an option. She has to drink alcohol on the weekend. And if you have there’s like, I have to do this and you’re not flexible then there’s an addiction there. If the substance is controlling your life and you can’t leave that substance, like I dated a guy when I was a teenager who couldn’t fly on airplanes because he wasn’t able to smoke on the airplane. Like he wasn’t willing to not have a cigarette for two hours to take a flight somewhere.  So if a substance is controlling your life, that’s an obvious answer. But there’s less obvious ones and sometimes our dopamine addictions are really in our blind spots. So talking to someone who’s in your life that you really and trust you get vulnerable with to uncover what’s going on but like food is a big one. Right? Food is a really big one. Do you get upset if you don’t have access to the food you want? Like if you don’t get to have dessert or if you don’t get to have there’s some kind of food you want that you don’t have access to it. Do you get angry or irritated? You have to have it. Right? That’s just an example. There’s a food addiction that can be obvious that you know like you’re binge eating. There could be less obvious ones like you always, always have to have a certain thing in your house because you have to eat it every day. So looking at how we can uncover this.  I had a friend, unfortunately passed away, a really nice guy who was a raging alcoholic. And then he quit cold turkey because his family was losing everything including his family. So he quit cold turkey, and he was amazing after that. Sober for 20 years. But every time I visited him, he had a cigarette in one hand and a candy bar in the other. He absolutely traded one addiction for another. Now he was sober and he was paying the bills and loving on his family. But he always had Halloween candy all year round. It was amazing. How many bags of Halloween candy he buy because he always had giant bags of Halloween candy surrounding him when inside the couch. And a cigarette in one hand, and like just constant candy and sugar in the other. And if he go to a meeting, you’ll see always he have copious amounts of sugar. Yes, I’m so proud of them for gaining sobriety from alcohol but they actually didn’t stop. They did not conquer the addiction. They didn’t bounce their dopamine levels, they’re still using. They’re just traded in one drug for another.  So when someone stopped porn, the first thing the brain was going to do is trade in one addiction for another and that’s what we want. Make sure we set ourselves up for a success so we don’t do that. We want ourselves up so that we heal—like what you’ve said, heal the nervous system, heal the dopamine levels. Dopamine is not the only chemical going on in our brain like my interview with Joan Iffland, who’s a Ph.D. in addiction. And she talks about bouncing different brain chemicals by love.  Brooke, you are a shining light on this taboo subject because we really want to take – so men, and again, women are affected by this two indifferent way. Like I believe they’re affected in a similar way, I should say. But men in our society still are taught and not allowed to be vulnerable. They have to be strong and tough and not allowed to have emotions, that they are not allowed to have breakdowns, and there’s a lot of shame and hidden shame. And so for you to shine a light on such a taboo subject where men feel so like they cannot talk about it, right? So you’re bringing healing to a part of humanity. Where humanity has not been allowed to shine light on this and heal. So I love the work that you’re doing.   [00:50:36] Brooke Hazen: Thank you. Well, dopamine is a cycle that builds further dopamine addictions. It’s cyclical. So that’s why I said, and God really is telling us that the gateway to allowing God into our lives and for massive transformation on healing level holistically, opening that door to that massive change in our life really starts with balancing the neurology and the energies that we have within us. Those gifts we have, it has to start there.    [00:51:08] Ashley James: You’re going to mention some studies, that you said, you talk about later. Do you have these studies?   [00:51:14] Brooke Hazen:  Yeah. I do want to get into that also. I just want to say to about, I mean, my books were full of biohacks. I mean, the mother of all biohacks is what I just said is that nobody that talks about is, balanced neurology and energy. That’s the launching pad for that I’ve experienced. I can tell you firsthand, this is how I went through this incredible transformation. I believe that’s why God led me to this and had me write this book. I promised God to write this book. But I also want to get into the organic further and talk about when I mentioned the plant-based diet, or I mentioned the animal-based diet, and how that’s elephant in the room. We can have a plant-based diet and this is really the pinnacle of all diets is a plant-based diet, but if we’re not careful, we can still have problems with a plant-based diet.   [00:52:10] Ashley James: You know, Oreos are vegan. The Oreos are vegan.    [00:52:13] Brooke Hazen: Yeah. Right.    [00:52:14] Ashley James: You going to watch out this plant-based. If you buy packaged foods and it says plant-based on it like just walk away. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store. Don’t go down the aisles. Like these Frankenfoods, they’re not healthy. They’re full of oil like full of these processed oils, polyunsaturated, fatty, whatever, like all that stuff. You don’t want to eat it. You don’t want to eat the canola oil and all that stuff, right? You want to eat real food.   [00:52:40] Brooke Hazen:  Yeah, because if we eat like lots of flours, not all flours, but grain flours. We’re going to end up having a lot of obesity take place which I’ve experienced myself in the past. So I’ll call it a light, plant-based diet meaning it’s full of light, like high-end vegetables and fruits in different forms, how we prepare it, nuts. If we’re going to have grains just have a small amount of quinoa or whole grains but stay away from processed flours, but that’s really important. I also want to talk about, before we get into your question about the Chelation therapy and those studies. I want to mention that something that really amazing which is another biohack is donating blood.  You never would have guessed this but donating blood decreases the chance of heart attack by 88% which is one donation per year. Now, we should be practicing this on every level but Western Medicine doesn’t clearly not telling us about this, but I’m telling you now, donate blood. It’s like an oil change for your body. It reduces iron stores and oxygens in our body and increases antioxidant capacity. And when going back to when I mentioned earlier about the source of arteriosclerosis, a source of blood flow ED at which we’re also scared of because that’s the only tool that Western Medicine has. They really don’t know what they’re doing. So that’s all they can do is prescribe that one medicine because it’s money driven. But the source is free radical damage.  So the different ways to get to that is to get rid of the free radicals which is the heavy metals through the IV Chelation Therapy block x which gets rid of–it’s a natural source from soybean, which gets rid of the plaque buildup that gets rid of that, that breaks apart the arteriosclerosis. But we also can add in antioxidants, both IV as well as orally. It’s just that IVs are much more transformative than oral because it bypasses the digestive tract in 100% of these chelations, nutrients and antioxidants are able to go to every cell of our body as opposed to a fraction through oral and actually holistic health sector of our medicine is moving more and more in this direction. We can heal cancers, arteriosclerosis, immune system issues through Myers’ cocktail. I’ve seen an enormous boost in my immune system. And I had NED which NED is anti-aging. It’s another biohack that these are incredible biohacks.  NED increases the length of our DNA strands which is literally anti-aging and happening in front of our eyes increases energy levels, clarity, mental clarity and also rebuilds receptor sites like dopamine that have been and we can rebuild chemically, neuro chemically from ED, from addiction to pornography, or dopamine crash levels. But the studies for the Chelation therapy are astounding. There was a study in 1991, well, there’s been a TACT one study and a TACT in two study that’s recent but this other study from 1991 involved 22,765 patients, and 87% of them had market improvement and vascular disease which is one course of disodium EDTA. Now, in this podcast, I’ll tell you, I recommend calcium EDTA does the same thing as disodium EDTA but back then they were using disodium EDTA for the study in there. They estimated that in 1991 that 363,000 of the 407,000 bypass surgeries that year could have been avoided saving an estimated 8 billion dollars. Yeah, 8 billion dollars. With a B.   [00:56:56] Ashley James: When you say saving, you have to remember, no, no, no, it was making them 8 billion dollars. It was profit.   [00:57:04] Brooke Hazen: Exactly. And that’s the politics. This is astounding. So the TACT one study which is the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy. It’s a government-based study showed a 51% reduction in cardiac events and a 43% reduction in mortality in patients with diabetes. And I’ll repeat that again, a 51% reduction of cardiac events and a 43% reduction in mortality in patients with diabetes after receiving one course of disodium EDTA which is I believe it’s around, it can be anywhere from 20 to 30 different IVs but when you combine black x with this, as I mentioned before, this is sort of a trifecta of getting rid of this heavy metal calcification and plaque x which causes arteriosclerosis. Now we should be practicing this in on a massive scale and actually as holistic health people, we need to be demanding this because right now we’re at war with the FDA and the different political bodies and insurance companies and pharmaceutical industries, who are selling statins. And they are trying to hinder and harass this process of obtaining these. So we should demand this. We should absolutely demand that they need to stop killing people because statins are actually been shown to increase deaths from cancer and heart attack because they’re actually lowering our LDL cholesterol artificially, while again, they’re missing the entire picture. LDL is a symptom. LDL cholesterol is produced in increasing amounts. It’s an antioxidant, antiviral, anti-cancer. And it’s our only source to protection other than these Chelation IV therapies from free radical damage. They’re missing the entire picture that the source of arteriosclerosis is free radical damage. Arteriosclerosis is a symptom of what they’re trying to sell us with these statins, these pharmaceuticals, and they’re actually doing the opposite. They’re actually killing people by giving them the statins.   [00:59:20] Ashley James: So, I’m going to get on my soapbox for a little sec to do that.   [00:59:24] Brooke Hazen: Yeah, go for it.   [00:59:25] Ashley James: So statins, and so for those who don’t know, because this is so monumentally important. I was taught this by my naturopathic physician mentors. Statins, so that they believe that cholesterol causes heart disease because they looked at let’s say, your heart and they said, Oh, look, there’s a clog in the heart. There’s cholesterol in that clog, therefore, cholesterol causes heart attacks. That is like saying showing up to a house fire seeing that there’s firemen there and saying, there’s always firemen when I see a fire, so firemen cause fires.    [01:00:01] Brooke Hazen: Exactly.   [01:00:03] Ashley James: That is, so cholesterol, the blockage is not the cause, it is a symptom of a problem.   [01:00:10] Brooke Hazen: Yes.    [01:00:11] Ashley James: What they decided to do is the pharmaceutical industry just like the pharmaceutical industry decided to “treat or cure ED” by like giving you Viagra or some kind of vaso, something that increases the vasculature when we know it’s actually seldom just a blood flow problem. It’s seldom a blood flow problem, but they’ve got a pill and they’re treating all forms of Erectile Dysfunction with a pill that only forces the body to do one thing. Right?  So the same with “preventing heart disease.” Right? They give you a statin and what statin do? And this is very enlightening. Cholesterol is so important for your health, that your liver makes it. I could be eating a raw food vegan diet where I’m only eating salads and fruit, occasionally some nuts. There’s many people out there that eat that way. I could be eating that diet and I still have cholesterol in my body. Right? My liver makes it. It’s so important. Your liver makes it. It’s protective of every cell in the body. Every cell, 37 trillion cells in the body have a fat layer that is the cell wall. Your nervous system has insulation just like your house, all the wires in your house have insulation, so there’s not a electrical fire. So to your nervous system has insulation and the insulation is made of cholesterol. So made of healthy fats.  So your brain has cholesterol. Your sex hormones and stress hormones, both of them very important for your optimal health are derived from these healthy fats, of this type of cholesterol. So your body needs this. I’m not saying go out there and eat a keto diet or like always eating fat. I’m not saying consume high amounts of fat. I’m just saying that is so important.   [01:02:11] Brooke Hazen: Yeah, that could be dangerous.   [01:02:13] Ashley James: Yes, it’s so important that I can eat a very sort of clean and not eat any cholesterol. Right? No cholesterol at all. Right? I’m not eating any animals. I can eat no animals, just like salads and apples and some seeds and my liver will make all the cholesterol my body needs. Now, statins, what they do is they bruise the liver so much. They damage the liver that the liver ceases to produce the amount of cholesterol it was producing. That’s all statins do. So the doctor says to you, oh, your our cholesterol is high. I’d like you to have more cholesterol. Here, please take this drug. Now back until I was up until I think it was 2012, then you can go and it’s actually a wiki. It’s like on mainstream websites. You can find the history of the statins but up until 2012, you had to go in for regular blood tests as either every three months or every six months but regular like more regular than once a year. If you’re on statin, you had to go for regular blood tests to test your liver enzymes to make sure that those statins were not over damaging your liver and basically over-compromising your body because the drug is designed to punch your liver to the point where your liver stops functioning enough that’s what statins do. Now, as a side effect of hurting the liver so much, as a side effect, you then develop neuropathy. How many and just raise your hand if you have a family member who has been on statins and now can’t feel their hands or feet and starts falling because I have three family members who won’t listen to me. I mean, this is the problem that because the doctor has the plaque behind that and the half a million-dollar medical degree that says they know better and that these people are now, they’re elderly, so their body doesn’t have enough cholesterol, it’s damage their liver now, it’s damaged their sex hormones. Now, it’s damaged their nervous system, their Myelin sheath is being eaten away because you don’t have enough for this healthy cholesterol. And you get neuropathy, and you also have neuropathy from other things too. But statins are known to long term effect caused neuropathy, so that you can feel your feet and then you can’t, you end up falling.  So I actually have three family members who were constantly falling and hurting themselves because of the neuropathy because of the long term use of statins. Very frustrating that statins are still being recommended on a regular basis when it is like saying, we have to get rid of firemen. We need to defund the fire department because firemen cause fires. That’s the same logic. I’ve had, I believe five cardiologists on my show, award-winning cardiologists on my show and all of them say, statins should not be on you, got to throw them out. Well, don’t move down the toilet but really take it back to the pharmacy and have them dispose of correctly. Throw them, throw them out. They do not work.  I had Dr. Esselstyn on my show and he wrote the book, How to Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease. And he shows that with a very clean whole food plant-based diet, very specific. He has a specific, so he lays it out, a plan, and when you follow it, people’s Erectile Dysfunction goes away but their heart disease goes away within tears, all clogs, all arteries are gone. So you can mop up and clean up the cardiovascular system with a clean, healthy diet. And it’s something to look into and I often have guests on the show that boast the benefits of the whole food plant-based diet and then listeners think that I’m being biased and this is a vegan show.  Listen, I have also have had guests that talk about the benefits of eating organ meats. Just the fact is look at the proof. If you take someone who has heart disease and you put them on Dr. Esselstyn diet, three months down the road, their angina is gone. They’re not winded anymore. Now, they can walk long distances, whereas they couldn’t before. The blood clots they had in their legs are gone. Like you don’t get that from any other.   [01:06:35] Brooke Hazen: Even more than that, you can literally just drink water and you can cure yourself of all this and get off those medications. I mean, the elephant in the room that they will not talk about, and really none of us really talk about is an animal-based diet that’s causing these problems and heavy metals and other things. But this gets back to the pressure, the peer pressure and I want to encourage everyone to let go of our fears, our myths and misconceptions, the addictions and negative habits that keep us bound and the peer pressure from family, friends, cultural pressure and corporate peer pressure. Let go of all that. Because that is what is going to continue to keep us harming ourselves. We need to throw all that away.  Really, I don’t believe that Western Medicine has any other place other than emergencies. Where they really it’s a sick care system. They’re waiting for a symptom that serious to come up and then they just patch it up with these pharmaceuticals and surgeries. That’s all the habits but as you said one podcast and loved it. You said that’s one sliver of medicine. But really for ED and for cardiovascular health, all this, our physical health, Holistic Health is the only way to practice curative and preventative natural modalities without side effects. Side effects are just a symptom that we we’re reducing things too much. We’re not looking at everything. And that’s why we get side effects. They’re looking at one process within one process within one process. They’re not looking at the whole. They never will look at the whole if you expect anything like that from Western Medicine, you will not get it. I guarantee you. You could ask any Western Medicine doctor that truly believes in Western Medicine.  They will not provide any natural holistic curative and preventative types of healing modalities, period. Only pharmaceutical surgeries. That’s it because that’s what it’s built on. It’s built on sand. It’s got huge limitations. That we need to recognize and stop giving all our power away to corporations with—I even feel pressure to bring up a plant-based diet. Why there’s so much pressure around it? There’s corporations through Big Pharma and animal industry are pressuring us and they’re causing us to pressure each other. And I feel closed down and I’m not allowed to bring it up. That’s not right, because the science shows we should live by the science. Everything I have in my book is 111 scientific studies that are firsthand studies that back it up. We should go by the science. It shows that plant-based diet protects us from the 15 leading causes of death in the world. It actually protects us from cancers and from cardiovascular disease. It fights against that instead of gives it to us.  I also want to talk quickly before our time ends about a couple more really important biohacks. There’s intermittent fasting which has to do with diet. This burns visceral fat. Visceral fat is the most harmful form of fat. It wraps around our organs. It’s linked with all kinds of diseases, neurodegenerative, cardiovascular diseases, cancers. But when you go from to deeper hours like if you go to 18 to 24 hours of fasting, you start to burn off misshapen cellular components that cause neurodegenerative diseases and cancers. So, that’s an incredible bio-hack I found. I practice it every day. I’ve been doing it for two years. And another bio-hack that I really love is, well, I mentioned donating blood, there’s stem cell PRP for ED. PRP is Platelet, I’m sorry, PRP, it’s where you spend your blood, your own blood at for 15 minutes and it yields a golden nectar for growth factors, and that can be used internally as well as in the lingam. Also want to dimension EPAT which is Extracorporeal Pulse Activation Technology. That’s a ultrasound that is used on the lingam and can be used anywhere in your body. It’s actually used primarily to for any sort of pains in the body for and what it’s used for erectile health, and for can be used for anyone, men and women, is for breaking up plaque on the outside. So now we have ability to not only break up plaque and calcification of our blood vessels on the inside through Chelation IV Therapy and plaque acts. But on the outside in we can actually break it up EPAT, with Extracorporeal Pulse Activation Technique. And you mentioned Kegels, too. Kegels are highly effective too as a monotherapy for ED, for Organic ED. Again, we get so hyper focused on organic ED. I like to think of it more as we’re rejuvenating and enhancing our sexual function. But Kegels practice, I have in my book where there’s certain practices where you do it twice a day. And they’ve been shown to be incredibly effective at increasing basically sexual function. And can also, I wanted to tell people that, one thing I discovered was something in the East they’ve been trying to, for millennia, figure out ways to block semen release during sex. I found that Kegels are actually the easiest way to do it. During the process of intercourse, when you can pull out and allow and slow things down and prolong the experience and get fully embody this experience. But then, when that moment does arise, where for men there’s this point of no return, where this automatic process of semen release starts, you can just do the Kegel technique, which is flexing the muscles. There’s three different points, there’s sort of the anus around the lingam, and then in between a coccyx. Now, you can flex that and it’ll keep your semen from going out. I mean, there might be a teeny bit or like it took me a little while to learn this technique, but basically, the main goal is to avoid full climactic semen release as well as partial semen release. And I was at first, experience a lot of partial semen release, but the Kegels were what really fit perfectly for avoiding semen release because again, avoiding semen release is so critical. It’s keeping all of our life force inside of our body, all those incredible growth factors, hormones and nutrients, cycles throughout our body during lovemaking. And instead of distancing after sex, we’re actually able to stay close to each other in bonds, in timeless, breathless union.   [01:14:16] Ashley James: Cuddle time.   [01:14:20] Brooke Hazen: Yeah, like pass out time where you go into this other state.   [01:14:23] Ashley James: Yeah. Oh, man, I love that. When you nap together in each other’s arms. So good. Right. So it’s so great.   [01:14:28] Brooke Hazen: You both in heaven.   [01:14:31] Ashley James: Right. So, it’s so great.    [01:14:33] Brooke Hazen: Just for sex, we should we need to honor sex. Sex is part of God. That’s why I wrote this book. We shouldn’t shy away from it. I’m not afraid to talk about it. And I asked everyone to let go of their fears. The only way that you’re going to experience transformation like I’ve gone through and what hundreds of thousands of people are doing now through the NoFap movement, of giving up pornography and addiction, and anything in life. If you want to transform your overall physical health, neurology, your relationships is to let go of those fears because I just want to end this my portion by saying asking each person out there. What is it that is blocking us from becoming the ideal versions of ourselves? I mean, really, look at it. What exactly is it? Just break it down? What is the thing that is keeping you from becoming that ideal version of yourself and working towards that right now? There’s something that’s doing it. And I ask that we just let ourselves go completely to all these misconceptions that our culture has been teaching us and let ourselves go to God and allow God to transform us.   [01:15:42] Ashley James: I love it. I love that you brought up the NoFap movement. I learned that from my husband because he’s been on his own journey and he gave me permission to share this, his whole life he struggled and he thought there was like a mental emotional block. But he felt, he internalized so much shame. And for him, it wasn’t an Erectile Dysfunction issue. It was a completion issue. It’s like he was like he couldn’t. It was, he was desensitized, and so there wasn’t as much pleasure and there was a lot of frustration. And then he just felt like he just internalized so much and he thought it was sort of his fault and there’s some you know.    [01:16:27] Brooke Hazen: Yes right.   [01:16:29] Ashley James: And so there’s a lot of emotions. So when we married each other, 14 years ago, I was kind of surprised. I’m like, is it me? And he’s like, no, it’s not you. So, of course, at first, I thought, so how many like the other partner thinks it’s them? Right?    [01:16:43] Brooke Hazen: Yes. Exactly that’s what happens.   [01:16:45] Ashley James: Right. And he opened up and started sharing. I’m like, Okay, well, let’s work through this because I’m very passionate about personal growth, and I believe if you’re not growing you’re dying. Right? So, we’re like, let’s dive into this. Let’s figure out. So we did a lot of emotional work and we talked through and we were looking at different stuff and he got into looking at how harmful pornography is, and he was like really blown away by that, the NoFap movement. He looked into that and he was telling me about it. One of the biggest things and that of course, it blew his mind when he joined like the NoFap movement and removed pornography and when he did that, huge, huge success around that. But the biggest breakthrough for him was– this was I want to say five or six years ago, maybe a little bit longer. It was right around when medium.com came out, and it was just brand new. And he’s like, hey, you should write on medium.com and I’m like, what is this? He’s like, it’s kind of like a blog but said you have your own blog, everyone, right?  So everyone writes their own article on this thing. And I’m like, okay, well, let’s look into it. And so I clicked on the health section, because I wanted to see what was in there and the number one health article was on regrowing your foreskin. And at first, we laughed. But then, we realized they’re being serious and we clicked on it and it was this very long and detailed explanation of how to regrow your foreskin. Now, I have had an entire interview on circumcision and also we talked about foreskin restoration, but on circumcision and everything you do lose there’s– it’s actually part of your immune system. There’s over 40,000, I think it’s 40,000 or more nerve endings like there’s a lot that is being removed from you that you’re never get back. But one thing the foreskin does do is it protects because without a foreskin it becomes completely desensitized. The head. And so, I mean, imagine for women, imagine if your clitoral hood was removed, your clitoris would be raw and become desensitized over time. So it’s the same thing that happens to men. It’s genital mutilation. And so, he regrew most of his foreskin. It took a few years but once he just wore a device, and it wasn’t painful at all, and he was very excited about it. What we discovered that most of his problems from teenage hood up, most of his problems was that and this is a very common thing, they botch over 200,000 circumcisions in America. You’re a botched. And you don’t know, sometimes you know it because it’s obvious, but sometimes it’s too tight and the doctor just does. You don’t know, right? And so, it was too tight. All the scar tissue was too tight, for him and so once he regrew some foreskin, it loosened up and also that it protected it.  So there’s less desensitization and it was like he could finally breathe. It was so healing for him because he let go of a lot of that shame and a lot of the negativity or when he realized this was a physiological problem. That he’s not broken. Right? And then, in addition to doing the NoFap, and no porn, he’s like, for him, he’s like a new person. And so he was so excited.  So although, he’s a very private and introverted person, he gave me permission to share this because it could help others even if it’s just one other person. It’s worth it to share. So, again, there’s so many avenues out there, and you’re not going to find the answers by going to one doctor. Right? And this is what we’re taught in a doctor’s office. You have to dive in and dig in and explore. I definitely recommend that listeners get your book, You Are Not Broken. Just like my husband found out that he was not broken. You Are Not Broken: A Holistic Guide for Men and Women to Heal the Pathways of Sexual Dysfunction and Restore Relational Harmony Together. A beautiful book. The links to that book are going to be on the show of today’s podcast learntruehealth.com. But also, you can just go to brookehazen.com which has so much information there as well.    [01:21:33] Brooke Hazen: Thank You.   [01:21:34] Ashley James: Is there anything that you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?   [01:21:40] Brooke Hazen: Yes. The point you just made, I agree. I look around and it seems like people are just sort of waiting to die like they’re afraid to truly live. And that’s the real message God wants to bring through my book is that we’re actually able to revitalize ourselves to gain that youthful vigor and vitality back in our lives. And I have techniques on every level both spiritual, neurological, energetic, physical, relational that can help us to do this. I just encourage everyone to be open and stay open and let go. Let go of all these myths and misconceptions these fears so that we can actually start living again because I was sort of dead myself before this. I was in the deepest darkness. In the deepest darkness, I’ve found the brightest light and that’s what I want to encourage all of you to do is to live life fully. Don’t be scared of living life. Don’t just wait to die and I do believe that our culture is corporate culture is really caused us to both do and believe things that are slowly killing us. And we need to look out for ourselves now because we don’t want to die because we’re following some mistaken, leadless, corporate monsters that are being given to us and that we’re exerting on others as peer pressure. We want to follow our own hearts and God and in lead what, follow the science and do what it actually is going to lead us to vitality, vibrancy and life.    [01:23:26] Ashley James: Love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing with us today and shining a light. We can help men and women lead fulfilled lives and empower them. Letting them know that they can find answers, they’re going to keep digging, they can find answers. And that if a doctor says, well, you’re going to have diabetes for the rest of your life, you just have to learn to deal with it. It’s so not the truth. I had Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York City on my show, and they sent him home with a bag full of prescriptions and told me he’d be sick for the rest of his life. Like he have diabetes, high blood pressure, cholesterol problems and heart disease for the rest of his life. And he said, nope. And he turned to a whole foods diet, he turned to natural medicine, and now he’s on no prescriptions, and he’s super healthy. And that’s just one example of thousands and thousands of examples of that. If your doctor says, you have to be sick. It’s genetic! Whatever they say, do give it a grain of salt. That’s it. Just take it with a grain of salt and go. I’m going to find the answers to my health. Keep digging.   [01:24:38] Brooke Hazen: All you have to do is just drink water and literally he’ll be better off than taking the pharmaceuticals. Just stop eating so much animal based foods and stop watching pornography. Stop releasing your semen all the time. Don’t eat blood. Let go. All these things are free. They don’t make them any money. And that’s why they are not interested in telling you about these things. But it’s so simple and easy. We just need to wake up and see the elephants in the room.    [01:25:09] Ashley James: And I’d say, find a holistic doctor as part of your team, naturopath, holistic doctor that believes in looking at all aspects of your life and helping you achieve that balance. It’s really great to have a naturopathic doctor on your team or holistic doctor. Now, there’s some doctors that are greenwashed, they’ll say their holistic but then, they like, they have their prescription pad in their hand ready to–you want a doctor that for 90 minutes of naturopathic are just great. They’ll sit with you for an hour to two hours. Go through your entire life, every aspect of your life and look at what they can do to help you in every way not just what drug can I give you? They’re looking to help you uncover all these different aspects of your life.  And then hopefully they offer things, like you said, like the Myers’ push or the Chelation therapy and those are the kind of doctors I like that they are on the cutting edge of the holistic science. So, go find one in your area and interview them. Go interview like 15-minute free consultation. Go interview a bunch of holistic doctors and work with the ones who sort of pass your litmus test ask them of what they think of cholesterol meds and see what they say. Like that’s a good litmus test. What do you think of cholesterol meds if I have high cholesterol would you put me on them? And see what they say or what changes would you make for me if I have high cholesterol and see what they say. And that’s a good litmus test. But make sure that you have the right tools for the job and the right tools being the right practitioners to help guide you.   [01:26:53] Brooke Hazen: There’s all these scientific studies from really brilliant scientists that we can also, I actually wrote this whole book and researched this whole book with God’s help and through intense research with scientific studies and through experience and experiential evidence from others. We also have the power. Don’t give away our power to Western Medicine, and think that we can’t do anything. I did it. I heal that naturally. I had nobody leading me. They didn’t know what to do with ED. In fact, ED, even naturopaths– I totally encourage naturopath– but even naturopaths don’t necessarily know how to deal with ED. So sometimes you have to just realize that you have the power within you. Don’t give your power away.   [01:27:45] Ashley James: Exactly. I love it. Don’t give your power away. You have the  power within you. Keep digging. Keep exploring. Thank you so much for coming on the show and giving us all these little nuggets of your wisdom. I really appreciate you coming today and I hope that this podcast helps so many people. And please come back on the show if you uncover any new science that you want to share about healing Erectile Dysfunction.   [01:28:12] Brooke Hazen: Absolutely. I wish everyone the most beautiful life full of journey ahead for you.   Get Connected with Brooke Hazen! Website – Brooke Hazen Website – Goldridge Organic Farms Facebook Instagram YouTube Book by Brooke Hazen You Are Not Broken: A Holistic Guide for Men and Women to Heal the Pathways of Sexual Dysfunction and Restore Relational Harmony Together

More info on Grace and her story: www.ouramazinggrace.net Below you will find more information and the links From Former House of Reps Dean Michele Bachmann referenced on the topic of the Biden Administration signing over US sovereignty on public health to the World Health Organization: Take action: https://takeactionforfreedom.com/stop-who https://leohohmann.com/2022/04/25/global-govt-alert-threat-to-national-sovereignty-set-to-go-down-may-22-28-at-who-world-health-assembly/   https://www.americaoutloud.com/biden-handing-over-u-s-sovereignty-to-who/   https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18534/who-death-trap   "Some Senators are pushing back against this story of the proposed Biden amendments to be voted on May 22-28, 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland, at the World Health Assembly (the UN governing body of the WHO), because it’s hard to believe. But I’ve examined the amendments. One objection is that the International Health Rules of the World Health Assembly (which the US signed onto in 2005), contains an “out” clause that allows a member nation to withdraw from the rules. Formerly, nations could choose to comply with International Health Rules or they could opt out.    The original opt out clause still remains in the current rules document, even if the Biden amendments are adopted, but the new amendments proposed by Biden completely undermine that opt out clause. Article 12 section 2 line 6 strikes the 194 nations' healthcare officers as decision makers over healthcare decisions within their nations, and instead transfers that decision making authority to the Director General of The UN’s healthcare agency, the World Health Organization—(WHO).    The Biden amendments strengthen the WHO and undermine US sovereignty.  We've just lived through 2 1/2 years of medical authoritarianism in the US, including forcing us to stay locked up for 15 days, shutting down businesses, throwing people out of work, forcing vaccines on people involuntarily, and mask wearing. We witnessed mandating school and public and private closures, denying people standard healthcare procedures, all in the name of Covid. The US CDC issued a recommendation, and Biden told people they no longer had to pay rent, leaving landlords with bills to pay, but no income to pay them. The Congress did not vote for any of these actions.    Biden just issued orders, (and Trump did, too), on the basis of emergency powers.  We are still living under emergency powers declared by Biden, with no ending date.    These actions were not voted on by Congress. These were just recommendations made by Fauci and the CDC, but these recommendations were portrayed to the public as though they were law when they were not. This includes forced vaccines under pain of losing employment. We continue to experience complete violations of our first amendment rights.    Authoritarian actions could easily happen on a global scale by empowering the Director General of WHO, as the Biden amendments seek to do.    The proposed Biden amendments to the International Health Rules, weakens US and other nations’ authority over healthcare decisions and strengthens global authority through the World Health Organization, Director General at the UN.    Could a nation technically say they won't follow the WHO Director General's orders?    Yes, but ask yourself, why is the Biden administration seeking to pass amendments at the governing body of the WHA to singularly empower the Director General of the WHO and undermine the authority of US healthcare officials?    The amendments are intended to show the policy orientation of the Biden administration toward global decision making and undermine US sovereignty over healthcare.    If everyone can get these links and information to their representatives, and demand they vote on these amendments, that would help." - Michele Bachmann   Our Amazing Grace: Whistleblower Reveals How He Lost His Daughter to Medical Malpractice https://www.learntruehealth.com/our-amazing-grace-whistleblower-reveals-how-he-lost-his-daughter-to-medical-malpractice   Highlights What did Scott Schara find out about the hospital’s anomaly? Why did Scott think that his daughter Grace wasn’t given the proper care? What drugs did they put in Grace’s body to cause her sudden death? How much money does the hospital make out of COVID patients?   Heartbreaking, but this story needs to be told. This gut-wrenching story of what Scott’s daughter, Grace, went through will not be easy to listen to. . In this episode, Scott Schara will share the intentional deaths happening in the hospitals after losing his loving daughter, Grace.   Intro:  Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 479. I am so honored today to have Scott Schara on the show. Scott has a very powerful message for you. And for all of us. This is something that my naturopathic mentors have been warning me about for over ten years that I’ve been studying with them. They’ve kept saying to me the number one cause of death in the United States is done at the hands of doctors on hospitals. And that sounded so outlandish when they first started proposing this, and then they showed me the statistics, and they showed me the literature, they showed me the numbers, and they said—no look, it’s not just accidents that happened, like, “Oh, I meant to give you five milligrams, not 50 milligrams.” It’s not just those. And those do happen. It’s actual effects, not side effects but effects from drugs. It’s mismanagement. I don’t want to say it’s intentional, but there are certain hospitals, when we look at the statistics, they look as though they’re more interested in how many scans they can do, how many tests they can run instead of the health of the patient. They’re looking at the cash cow of the patient. And when we look at the overall picture of the medical system, we see that the medical system is designed for profit. It’s not designed to heal. I love the doctors out there who want to do good. Who spent so many years of their life going to school because their hearts were in the right place. They want to do good. They’re in a system that is broken because it’s intentionally designed for profit. One of my naturopathic mentors was raised on a farm, very young, when he was feeding the calves with calf pellets. He looked at the ingredients, and he said—“Dad, why do we feed all the calves the vitamins, minerals, all these nutrients? Why are we feeding them all these nutrients with calf pellets? Why don’t we take these nutrients ourselves?” Because he understood even as a child. He understood the veterinary medicine aspect of farming that when you give an animal very good nutrition, it prevents disease. And if we can prevent disease in an animal, it makes the hamburger cost less. And for humans, it’s the opposite. We wait to get sick and then go to the doctor and get put on very expensive meds. So it’s a backward world where we try to prevent disease in animals to keep them healthy and keep the cost down. But when it comes to our health, we’re not trying to keep the cost down by preventing medicine? So the whole system is just wackadoo. So when my mentor showed me, without a shadow of a doubt, they showed me all the evidence that hospitals and so many shady things go on that lead to the number one cause of death in the United States, and it is actually at the hands of the medical system. So, Scott, you have a story that really echoes this message I keep hearing, and I’m very excited to have you on the show today because your message will save lives. So, welcome to the show.   [00:03:52] Scott Schara:  Thanks for having me. That was a great introduction. I just have a couple of quick comments before you start asking me questions. But what’s interesting, your introduction was well done, and it sets the table and what’s happened in the research only about a month ago. I crossed over to say that Grace’s death was intentional, and it was through research. When you’re at the point where you’re thinking maybe this is unintentional and I’ve come to the point of saying it is. So the urgency my daughter put it this way which I think is a good way to put it, if you shot somebody on the street, they would put you in jail as soon as possible to stop you from killing more people. And that same thought process has to be applied to the medical professionals who are doing this type of thing like they did to our daughter Grace. And I’m not talking about just the people involved in Grace’s situation– this is running rampant in our country.   [00:05:00] Ashley James:  Right, especially in the last two years. We can do a whole talk just on the last two years and what we’ve seen hospitals do because they would get $5,000 or more per COVID patient. And then they would get this huge chunk of money from the government every time they put someone on a ventilator, so they were monetarily motivated. And again, I believe there’s good people in the system, but when we look at the outcomes, the outcomes were so horrendous. Doctors kept doing the same thing, even though they saw a very slim chance that people would survive once they put them on the ventilator. And that their hands were tied, and they weren’t allowed to use certain medications that they saw or other doctors saw were working. But when we look at all the hospitals, we see that there’s a pattern of looking to monetize and maximize the money from each patient and not necessarily looking for the best outcome for each patient. And this is just the very sick part of the medical system is when someone’s monetarily motivated, they’re not going to make the best ethical choices for our health. So let’s dive into your story. Tell us about Grace.   [00:06:26] Scott Schara:  So Grace, I could talk about it for hours and hours. And I’m attempting to give a picture of Grace in a short time. She’s the whole motivation for doing this. There are some days that are exceptionally hard. She was my best buddy. You know when your best buddy is killed, and you know a lot of things happen in your mind. I missed her terribly just this last weekend. For example, we went on an annual fishing trip with Grace and our two grandsons, and I took the two grandsons this year without Grace. So that was tough. You relive what we did last year, and you can’t stop thinking about it. Well, it’s a joy to go on a fishing trip, but also it was so sad. I cried multiple times over the weekend. It’s easy to do a podcast like this and all the ones we’ve been doing because she was a great kid. She had a love for our Lord that is different than anything I’ve ever seen. She called me earthly dad. And she represented God’s love the way that it’s supposed to be, and I can’t love that way. She did it because she loved me, even when I was a jerk. It gives me the motivation to do these stories and tell about Grace. And tell what happens, so it doesn’t happen to other people. Grace was 19 when she died. She had Down syndrome. She was on the Down Syndrome scale of people. She was very high functioning, and my wife homeschooled her. She taught her how to read and write, and she could. She played violin at my daughter Jessica’s wedding. She rode horses. I taught her how to drive. She had a sense of humor second to none. She was a funny kid. She saw things through the lens of humor. If she met you for the first time, she would be encouraging. She would share a sense of humor right at the get-go. If she’d met you for the first time, she’d say, ” Well, nice to meet you, beautiful Ashley.” And then she would say– would you like to hear my dirty jokes? Of course, you would say, “Well, and I couldn’t wait to hear them.” And then she would say, “Well, why didn’t the toilet paper cross the road?” So then you’d say, “I don’t know.” “What she would tell you, “because it was stuck in the crack.” And you would say, “well, what about your second one? She would say, “have you read the book Under the Bleachers”? And you’d say no, “I’ve never read that book”. And she said, “Would you like to know who’s written it by?“ “And, of course, you’d say, “yes”. And she’d say, “well, it was written by Seymour Butts.” We have a website that we started, ouramazinggrace.net. There’s hundreds of pictures, videos, all kinds of cool stuff about Grace and her life, and obviously the stories on the website. You can get to know Grace that way. I get emails every day from people who go to the website and they see how special she was. She was very unique. We see her now as an angel. God gives us an angel to walk around with us for 19 years. And the only way to make sense out of it is with understanding that God’s sovereign. He basically had her unloan to us, and He had a different purpose for Grace.   [00:10:28] Ashley James: What is your mission by coming on this podcast and sharing Grace’s story and the website ouramazinggrace.net. What is your desire, your wish, your hope that comes out of all this?   [00:10:46] Scott Schara: There’s two very specific things we decided to do this early on, right after the hospital decided to not meet with us. We had written up all of the research that we had done. We had known by November 8 that they killed Grace but at that point, we thought it was an anomaly. So we took all the research that we did, and we were probably over 100 hours at that time. Now, it’s over $600 of research, and we codified it, put it all on documents, and sent it to the hospital requesting a meeting. So, it sounds dumb when you think about it now. I really thought it was just an exception. So, they would want to know and change the protocol, so they don’t do this to somebody else. And when they said, no, we don’t want to meet. We realized, oh my gosh, this is deeper than that. So then we decided to go public with the story and for two reasons. Number one is to save lives. So that’s the easy one. I mean, you’re going to be motivated to save lives. You don’t want this to happen to anybody else. And when you hear the details, you’ll see what I’m talking about. We want to stop this. So when we started to go on podcasts, then you realized the national media is not going to pick up the story because it’s too out there. So then, the website was developed to post the research so people cannot just believe some dead that’s telling the story. But actually see the documents and see the research, so then they see, oh my gosh, this is true to save lives. So that’s number one. And I just want to drill that down just a little bit because there’s two very specific pieces of that. Number one is if you need to go to the hospital, look at what is the need to check-in. So go to the emergency room visit for a true emergency which at the time when we took Grace, we thought it was a true emergency in it probably was because her oxygen level could not be maintained above 90%. We did not have to checked her in the hospital if I would had known then what I know now we would have checked her in. We would have said, no, we’re not going to admit her, and they would have sent us home with a prescription for oxygen and steroid, and Grace would be alive today. And I say that with 100% confidence because I went into different hospitals three days after Grace died with symptoms three to four times worse. I was about to die the first night, and they turned me around in 24 hours with a completely different protocol than what was followed with Grace. Then the second piece of this physical component of saving people’s lives is a lot of the hospitals have been bought, and I don’t mean legally bought. But they’ve been practically bought by the government through a money trail, and they used COVID as an excuse. So Grace died at a hospital in Appleton, Wisconsin. I went to a different hospital in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and by God’s Grace, that hospital, we didn’t know, that hospital chose to do what’s right and follow the hippocratic oath versus doing what’s wrong. And that fact pattern, I think God used it so I could tell the story objectively. But that fact pattern is the second component of the physical piece of the message, which is check out your hospitals in your local area and vet them before the need arises because when you’re sitting in the emergency room, that isn’t the time to figure out if they been bought by the government or not. You need to know which hospitals are the good ones and which one are the bad ones ahead of time. And then, the second component of what we want to do is the spiritual piece which we thought early on that Grace’s story may be used by God to prepare people’s hearts that they’ve been duped. That the government had duped our entire population, and if that does that to you, when you listened, you realize God wants to bring everybody back to himself and if that causes you to start searching, don’t turn it off. He wants you to search and find the only person who ever walked the face of the earth and who didn’t duped anybody, which is His Son, Jesus Christ.   [00:15:26] Ashley James: Thank you. How can we vet hospitals? I’ve got several in the area, but there’s only one I really like in my area. Actually, they publish, and it’s really interesting. This is the most honest hospital in the area.  They published all their statistics. So, for example, around COVID, what surprises me is that they’re being so honest with their statistics that if you look at month to month, the people who have been admitted in the last several months, significantly higher percentage are those who are fully vaccinated with the boosters, so they’ve got three shots. Some of them decided to get four shots, but the ones who are zero shots have a significantly less percentage of being admitted and even coming to the hospital with COVID. They’re publishing all these statistics. They’re just being, here’s our statistics for this month, this is how many people are in the ICU, this is how many people were admitted. This is how many people who just came into the ER or tested positive. Eventhough, they are tested positive while not having any symptoms. They came in like a broken arm, and they have tested positive like they’re just showing where they’re at. And I thought that was a clue that maybe this hospital would be better than going to other hospitals because they’re being honest. But besides what they’re just showing, how can we question a hospital to know that they are not going to put money in front of my health?   [00:17:05] Scott Schara: That’s a great question. I would tell you the common sense approach. I don’t have any checklist, but just add a little critical thinking to your questions, and you can come up with an answer. So the first thing I would do is find out if they are part of a national chain or not. So with Grace’s hospital, St. Elizabeth, it’s part of a section that is a 142 hospital system. That’s big. They’re one of the largest in the country. So the bigger they are, the more likely they’re bought by the government versus the hospital system. I went into a small region with five hospitals, that doesn’t make it good or bad. But that’s just a first cut. Medical professionals that you already know that are not generally bought by the system—chiropractors for example, dentists–if you have a trusted relationship with them, you can ask some questions to find out. But then ultimately, you’re going to find out their position on things. So, on a bright light question, obvious is, what’s your position on the vaccine? Because that will tell you an awful oath of tons of stories that I’ve heard about people that they went into their regular doctor who they trusted for years, and now he’s pushing the vaccine. Well, what does that tell you? He could be naive if you in the best-case scenario, but in the worst-case scenario, he is one that bought by the government because this thing is no good. And so, to me, the vaccination position is a bright light task. They’re pushing the vaccine. They’re pushing the narrative that’s no good. So they’ve been bought.   [00:19:03] Ashley James: It’s so overwhelming. When you think about it, we’re just us as individuals, and it’s this big system and we have to navigate this big system. When we start to go down the rabbit hole, the corruption is endless. So I’ve been looking into, observing, and picking through, and understanding the history of the modern medical system. So I urge everyone to look into that because this system is new in the scope of humanity, it’s been constructed in the last 115 years. Before that, you could go to a homeopath. You could go to an herbal medicine practitioner. Allopathic medicine is a very new pharmaceutical-based medicine which is very new and most of their medications were made from herbs anyway. We had so many choices. And then, what happened was the entire system and the colleges and the universities were bought by the one person who owned the pharmaceutical company at the time. He made sure what was taught in the schools to the doctors was only pharmaceutical-based medicine. So, there’s been a slander campaign against all other forms of medicine for over 100 years. Back in the 1980s, the American Chiropractic Association won a huge lawsuit against the AMA force, years and years of slander but the damage was done. There’s a whole generations of Americans and people from other countries who have been told by their primary care physician that chiropractors are quacks because that’s what they told by the AMA to say, but it’s not true. They won in the 80s, but it’s still to this day; people still believe what their doctor told them. The same things with there’s a huge PR slander campaigns around midwives because they wanted everyone to be born in a hospital and die in a hospital to increase their profits. So, when you see that over the last 100-plus years, the medical system has been built upon the premise of making as much money as possible from each customer, not a patient. A patient is someone you want to heal, and help survive, live, and thrive and not suffer. A customer is someone you want to get as much money out of. There’s individuals in the system that are service to others that want to help, but the system is not designed to help. So you’ve been looking into this. Can you explain how much money does each hospital gets? Let’s use this COVID as an example. I know others who’ve gone into the system and even before COVID and their care has been mismanaged significantly out of a desire to make more money for the hospital. Could you explain how much money does a hospital get when someone comes in and tests positive for COVID or dies from COVID? Or gets put on a ventilator? How much money are they being incentivized or being given by the government?   [00:22:40] Scott Schara:  Good question. I do want your last discussion. I want to just comment on it because it’s critical. You’ve laid it out perfectly. And if people don’t believe Ashley, Mikki Willis did a great job with the Plandemic tool. He laid this out in an hour and five minutes. It lays out this whole setup. So, COVID is just a bluff on the screen. It’s been used as an excuse to implement a whole bunch of stuff that’s been going on for, as you said, 115 years. So it’s important to realize that this COVID is simply being used as the excuse to open up Pandora’s box to this absolute craziness that is heading our way that Grace’s case just emphasizes. So back to your question about the money. The Center for Medicaid Services has come out with some whistleblowers who have said that the average hospital bonus, this is not the hospital’s profit, this is just a bonus from the government for COVID patients is a hundred thousand. That’s bonus money, and I want to walk through an example so people can grasp how deep this system is being aligned or blocked by the government. So when a person checks into the hospital with COVID, they get a bonus for testing positive. I just want to walk through a ventilator as an example. So most people are pushed to be put on a ventilator, and this is by design, and the money fits the crime. So, a ventilator, when it’s put in the patient, yields a $39,000 bonus. To set that up, they started the patient on a sedation med, typically Precedex, and that classifies the room as ICU, which is another bonus. That patient will eventually die, 85% of people put on a ventilator for COVID die, that’s a $13,000 bonus for death.   [00:24:53] Ashley James: Sorry, hold on. How much money does the hospital make if you die from COVID on a ventilator?   [00:25:00] Scott Schara: Just like COVID, death is $13,000.   [00:25:05] Ashley James: So COVID death is $13,000. If you had a car accident and you died in the ER, and you happen to test positive for COVID, do they get $13,000?   [00:25:19] Scott Schara: Correct, as long as they put it on the death certificate that way. Which their motivation is to do that. They convince the patient–not the patient at that time because they’re dead but they convince the advocate to do that because the government will reimburse your funeral cost of $9,000 for COVID death. So, if they have this way, just think about the government caused the COVID death and they make it, so they have this whole media campaign that it’s released from China and all this crazy stuff that our governments are involved with it. They want to make you think that they’re being your friend by giving you a $9,000 funeral cost reimbursement. My wife wisely said we’re not taking their dirty money as we never took that in Grace’s case. We just felt that if we did that, we basically agreed that Grace’s death was COVID. It has nothing to do with COVID. So even though her death certificate says COVID, Grace didn’t die of COVID. So anyway, going back to how this plays out. So I just went through the bonuses that they get. The patient was probably already in a Remdesevir, so that’s another bonus. And then, they get an overall 20% bonus on top of a bonus as an added bonus for the entire state. But then, with the ventilator, the average amount of time for patients to keep them alive, they max this out. The average amount of time for patients to be alive on a ventilator is 22 days. So then you get the daily room charge which is the insurance payment and the patient’s payment. It’s approximately 300 grand for a ventilator patient. So you can see why they pushed to put somebody on a ventilator. In Grace’s case, she was never on a ventilator because we denied it. Thankfully, we got wise to ventilators while we were in the hospital and we denied that push. They wanted us to give them a pre-approval or pre-authorization to put Grace on a ventilator whenever they wanted to, and, ultimately, I believe that because we denied that. They had to figure out a different way to take Grace out. So Grace’s case is extremely unique, not only because we were there, but the way they did it, it’s unbelievable.   [00:27:49] Ashley James: Let’s talk about that. What’s the evidence that you have that they maliciously killed your daughter?   [00:28:01] Scott Schara: There’s an overabundance of evidence. Again, I would point people to the website and then look at the tragedy tab. Roughly 70% of the research that I’ve done is posted in that tab, so that will point you to evidence. I’ll go through some other pieces that are not on the tab so then you can see–oh my gosh, this is unbelievable. We’ll go through the evidence first if you want to talk about the quality of care because that really sets this up. Because you might think, oh my gosh, how did this all even happen? What was the hospital stay alike?   [00:28:40] Ashley James: Why don’t we walk through it? So, her oxygen is lower than 90%. So you bring her into the hospital, and you check her in. Walk us through it.   [00:28:52] Scott Schara: So, right in the emergency room when they suggested that we should have met Grace, I just said well, then I’ll be staying with her. And immediately, the attending nurse said, we can’t. And I said, what’s the reason? And she said we don’t allow visitors in the COVID wing. And I said, then I’ll be taking Grace home. Unfortunately, at that point, they came back two hours later, and they said, we had a meeting, and they said, you can stay. So, I say unfortunately because, obviously at that time, I was in the mindset to take her home. I wasn’t going to be an advocate. That’s crazy that I will be going to leave my Down Syndrome daughter in the hospital alone, and no one’s going to do that. So, they allowed me to stay, and we waited 10 hours in the emergency room for a room to open up. What I believe happened and you can make your own judgment after hearing the details. I believe, basically, we were waiting for somebody else to die. And specifically for them to take somebody else out because the hospital was at maximum capacity at this point with the Delta variant in the emergency room was also at maximum capacity. So when we waited in the emergency room for 10 hours. So about midnight on the 7th, we got in the room. My expectation at that point was that Grace and I were gonna have a mini-vacation for three or four days. It was on the first day, it was like that. So we just goofed and hopped in. They had a great menu. We could order food off the menu and it was really fun. Towards the end of the day, they put Grace on a high-flow cannula, which is a regular cannula, what’s you see people have with the hose wrapped around their ears, with the tool inserts in the nostrils, and they’re just breathing oxygen. That’s outmost of what Grace needed, but they insisted on a high-flow cannula. Grace’s really got agitated with that shooting air up your nostrils at 40 miles an hour. So it’s a big deal. So then, thinking oxygen is paramount here and I thought they know better. There’s an attitude that I had, unfortunately, to trust the white coat. And that’s another take-home message is let them earn your trust. Don’t just automatically blindly trust the white coat. And ultimately, based on these examples that I really didn’t trust the white coat because I was taken out of the armed guard. I may still have an overall trust for the white coat, but then they try to harm your daughter.  So ultimately, I worked with the nurses for a couple of hours to get a BiPAP situated with Grace, and then she calmed down, and everything was fine. On that next morning, on the 8th of October, the doctor came in at eight o’clock and said, you’re going to need to put your daughter on a ventilator in the next two hours. So, I said, what is that recommendation based on? He said we did a blood gas draw the night before. So I said, what time? He said 11:30, and I told him the story about what just happened with the oxygen. And I said, I was watching the monitors. I said at that point when you guys did that, Grace’s blood pressure was 235 over 135, and her heart was racing a hundred beats a minute. So I don’t think that a blood gas draw is subjective. So I’ll let you take another one. So, they did, and Grace’s fine. We dodged the ventilator bullet, but at that moment, I got educated mentally because I asked what’s the prognosis. I still think the majority of people will—like what you have said with chiropractors who won the lawsuit for defamation but the damage was already done. So, with ventilators, I think the damage was already done too but in a different situation. Something was  said, I think President Trump unknowingly convinced the country that we had a ventilator shortage and that ventilators are a necessary tool in the tool chest. So I thought that just based on that paradigm that was sold to us at the beginning of COVID. At that point, I asked the doctor what the prognosis is, and he said only 20% of people walk out alive after being put on a ventilator. The attending nurse started crying and I talked with her. She has a daughter named Grace and she knew if I made this decision, Grace would going to die. So I started looking stuff up on my laptop. I had it there in the room. I talked with a doctor friend who’s helping us and we came to the base looking at home. We came to a conclusion, only 15% of people walk out alive and those 15% of people do walk out alive and most of them die in the first year from damage done to their lungs. So we decided then that Grace is not going on a ventilator and that would be crazy. They pushed us four different times to give them that this doctor thought he had the evidence, but the other four times they pushed for a ventilator was coached in a way that they want us to give up pre-approval or pre-authorization just in case. Just in case, meaning when they decided that they would frame it this way. They said these things tend to happen in the middle of the night when we can’t get the whole family. So if we would have decided this, I mean Grace will be on a ventilator, 30 seconds after we gave him the pre-authorization because of the financial motivation. The next example I would share with you is half on the very next day on October 9th. There’s probably 50 examples I can share with you. But these two kinds will give you a perspective of what was going on. So, on October 9th, which is a Saturday, Grace and I got up. She was hungry. I ordered food, and I started feeding her.  Grace, obviously could feed herself, but she had a BiPAP mask on. The nurse came running in and said, you can’t do that. I said, what’s the reason? She said, Grace’s oxygen saturation was only at 85%. So, I processed that for about 15 minutes, and I thought this is impossible. She was at 95% in the emergency room with a regular cannula. Now, we had a BiPAP mask on, and then she should be near 100%. At all my COVID materials in the room, but one thing was an oxygen saturation finger monitor. So, I put it on Grace’s finger, and it read 95%. So I called the nurse back in, and I asked her if my finger meter was accurate, and she said, yes, it is. So, why is my $50 meter more accurate than your $50,000 machine? And she said, well because the lids get sweaty. Well, if you know this, I said, why don’t you proactively change out those lids or whatever you need to do every three, four hours, or whatever it takes so you have an accurate reading. Isn’t this the primary tool you’re using to manage my daughter’s care? And she’s not really responded to me. You should just be thankful you caught this and we got wise to this one.  I’ve shared this particular example because this hospital is not the exception. I think this hospital has the rule, and they are arbitrarily lowering the oxygen saturation numbers to justify ventilators. So if anybody is wise enough to get the records after they get the call that Uncle Joe just died, and he was on a ventilator, and you started digging into the oxygen numbers, and you see, oh boy, I see where they had to put them on a ventilator is actually when he’s only at 80%. They can make these numbers anything they want and this example shows that. And now, we started monitoring Grace’s oxygen regularly. When I say we, myself when I was there, and then my daughter Jess who became the replacement. On Grace’s last day, death was at 6:02 pm, which was an hour and 25 minutes before Grace died. Grace’s oxygen was at 93%, but the meter that hospital was using was 49% lower. That’s how sick this is.   [00:37:12] Ashley James: The machine you’re talking about, the $50 machine called a Pulse Ox.    [00:37:15] Brooke Hazen: Yes.   [00:37:17] Ashley James: I have three of them, I think which are scattered around the house because our son has asthma. When he was a toddler, actually, I had a pediatric-sized one as well for his little fingers. You can get them for $35. I just got the other one, and it had the best reviews on Amazon. And I’ve used them whenever my son has beating problems, just to check in, and then, of course, I have other ways I check his breathing like the volume of his breath and it’s allergy-induced asthma. So, we had to figure out all the allergens which are really weird stuff. But that’s when I got introduced to a Pulse Ox and how interesting it is. When my family and I had COVID, we also used the Pulse Ox, and it’s just a little thing that clips onto your finger and sends a beam of light through your finger and It monitors your heart rate and blood oxygen saturation, which was a really great tool for me when I was going through COVID. I had just lost our daughter, and so I was going through incredible grief and also healing from birth. And then, around day 8 of having COVID, my blood pressure was like, I think it was like  80 over 60. It was some crazy low number. I remember trying to breathe heavily and feeling tightness in my chest, almost like asthma. Breathing heavily and still feeling very lightheaded, I used the Pulse Ox, and I don’t know, I was  86 or something. I talked to a telemedicine doctor, and he said, you know what I’m not concerned about your problems that you’re having with COVID but I’m concerned that it might be a blood clot in your lungs from the birth. So, you should go in just to get checked. Thank God I’ve never had a blood clotting issue. I had just had a birth, and that is a possibility. So I did go in, and the moment I went in, I felt as if I was a prey. It was the weirdest feeling that the doctors wanted me on experimental drugs. And they said to me basically, I would not live if I don’t get these drugs. And I looked at there’s one doctor, who seemed like, yes he reminded me of my dad. So I felt like this immediate connection to him, and he felt like very kind and concern. I really felt like he had a genuine concern. I can’t feel he was like, haha, I can’t wait to get money out of this patient. Because he doesn’t like to take home the money, it’s the hospital. But he was so convinced that I would not make it like I’d be dead within 24 hours if I didn’t get on this experimental drug. So, it’s the middle of the night, and I’m texting with my midwife, who is really good at reading research as well, and we go through and I actually asked her for informed consent. So I said, could you please give me your printout, your literature, anything on this? And they gave me a marketing pamphlet basically, I was like, this is the most amazing stuff ever. It’s not FDA-approved yet. So I said, like I’m going into my interview brain and thinking of all the interview questions I’d be asking a doctor about this, I said, what’s your experience using it? And he immediately starts telling me about the doctors on the East Coast and– oh, we’re seeing really promising results on the East Coast in the hospitals there. And I’m like, have you ever used it? What have you seen with your patients? And it turned out that their hospital just started using it and just joined the medical trial? But he didn’t have any experience using it. So he’s just citing. He’s basically the drug rep or whatever has convinced him with little talking points, the marketing points. So, we go on the pharmaceutical’s website, it’s all the way to the bottom. And you have to scroll for days to get all the way to the bottom. I see one study that shows and this is again on the East Coast they did the study, where they showed that you have a higher percentage of dying if you’re hospitalized, and the only way you can get on this medication is if you’re hospitalized. So basically, those who get on the medication, more of them die than those who get hospitalized with COVID and don’t get on the medication. And that was enough for me. First of all, it’s an experimental medication. I’m not a guinea pig. No, thank you. So that’s absolutely, no. There’s no way I would ever get on an experimental drug. I like drugs that have been around for like 50 years. You don’t show me a long track record of safety before you put me on anything. And so I’m looking at this and seeing that they really bury. They have to publish these, these studies, but they buried them away at the bottom. Like, how obvious can you get? Just scroll the bottom at the first place, and then more people die. If I were just not get on it, I would have a better outcome. This doctor was pushing it, pushing it and he was convinced. Now I said to him, I don’t have diabetes. I don’t have gestational diabetes, and I was like very clear about my medical history. When I came into the hospital, I said it, i mean, grief, so my blood pressure has been higher, like just from anxiety but it’s extremely low right now due to COVID. I was just worried about it. Listen, it’s kind of hard to breathe. Can you give me some like Albuterol or give me something for breathing? Give me some oxygen. They wouldn’t send me home with oxygen, but what they did do–because I refuse to be on this medication that they want to put me on. So I said, listen, I’m not going to get admitted. I just want some help with breathing. And they handed me an Albuterol like inhaler. Inhaler that it is the exact same kind of inhaler my son has for asthma. All this is interesting that I could have stayed home–although that’s not legal I think to take someone else’s medication. But I mean, just jokingly, could have I just stayed home and hand me the hospital bill just by taking my son’s inhaler? But what they did was they handed me this inhaler and then they handed me the discharge papers. They’re like, oh welcome, he’s like I’m so worried about you, and you need to come right back to the hospital because the second you start to get worse, because you gonna get worse and you’ve got to get on this medication. I’m like, listen, dude, I’m going to be fine. I just need a little help breathing. I wish they would have sent me home with lots of oxygen, but at least he gave me an inhaler. It started to work right away. I took a few puffs, my lungs sort of loosened up, and I’ve never had asthma, but it really helped. I was like, wow, I feel more stable already. And I look at my discharge papers, I’m looking because I want to see, and I’ve seen discharge papers before it shows the medication and how to take the medication and its side effects, like everything about the medication. And I looked through everything, and there’s not one mention of the Albuterol they handed me. And I asked the discharge nurse, can you please get the doctor or talk to the doctor like he doesn’t even say on the Albuterol bottle. Should I be doing four puffs or just as needed or four puffs or two puffs or what? And what’s really interesting is that none of my medical records it shows that he prescribed Albuterol because he doesn’t want to be seen as treating COVID with the medication. So, they handed me basically under the table and sent me on my way. So it’s not in any of my records. It’s a day and a half later, because that’s the middle of the night. So a day and a half later, I’m sitting up, I’m on the couch, and I’m no longer in bed. I’m feeling great. Besides, like once in a while, I get on the Albuterol still because I’m still shaky, and I’m still recovering from COVID. I’m also  taking all my supplements, and I remember sitting up, but I’m helping organize because we’re actually in the middle of packing on top of everything. We’re in the middle of moving, and I get a call from the hospital. And it’s the pharmacist at the hospital and he says, you have to come back and get on this medication. Your records show that you are at high risk because you have multiple comorbidities. I’m like, what comorbidities are you talking about? He said, because you have diabetes. I specifically said I don’t have diabetes. I don’t know how they got that. But he was looking at my record and decided that– you have to get on his medication and it was a sales call. That was the weirdest and I thought was feel like it was in a twilight zone. So the hospital was calling me a day and a half later, begging me to come back and get on their drug that’s a trial medication. It’s like a twilight zone, and the more I looked into it, I don’t even think this medication has gotten FDA approval, and it just ended up killing too many people. I’m wondering how much money that this hospital get for each patient they convinced to get on this trial. This experimental COVID treatment that was a failure. I mean, I’ve never heard of a hospital calling someone when they’re better days later. It’s not just so much checking–hey, how are you doing? No, it was the pharmacist, like you need to come back and get on this medication, and you’re going to die. I’m looking at my Pulse Ox right now, I’m 98% and I’m great. So, that’s really good, I know, I’ve gone off a little on my own tangent, but it’s a really great idea to own. Every home should own a thermometer. Every home should own a sphygmomanometer, like a blood pressure cuff, get one for the wrist or get one for the arm, check your blood pressure regularly. That’s a good thing to know and everyone should own a pulse ox. These are the tools that allow us to check in with ourselves. But when you’re in a hospital, do you actually need to bring your own tools in the hospital to verify that their machines are accurate?   [00:47:26] Scott Schara: Thats sick, I know. I mean, I thank God we had that because we have so much evidence and it’s an overabundance. But I mean, you can’t orchestrate these coincidences without God being involved. I’m glad we have it.   [00:47:48] Ashley James: I am so thankful that you have such strong faith because it has been my faith that had helped me survive the grief of losing my daughter. Although not in any of the same circumstances. It has been drawing myself closer to the Lord, what has saved me mentally and emotionally. I’m so glad that you also have that strong relationship. And anyone who’s ever grieving, turning to the Lord, I highly recommended. It’s been something that’s been so grounding and reassuring. So let’s keep going through Grace’s story. You were checking her oxygen that you mentioned, you could jump ahead and talk about your daughter taking over for you. Why don’t we go back? Walk us through. What happened before you left the hospital?   [00:48:52] Scott Schara: So on Sunday morning, that 10th, seven o’clock in the morning, the head nurse came in with an armed guard and told me I need to leave immediately.   [00:49:00] Ashley James: Excuse me?   [00:49:03] Scott Schara: So then I said, what is that based on? And she said three things. Interestingly, the official excuse that we received from the hospital was only the third thing. Which is she said the third thing is we suspect you of COVID. And that excuse was so laughable because they’re the ones who told me I was going to get COVID. And if they were so concerned about it, why then they ask me. I tested myself on October 7th, Grace’s first day, because I had a fever at about one o’clock, so I tested myself, and I was positive. I had COVID already for three days before they kicked me out. And if you were also concerned, you could have tested me if I gave you the approval. I mean, that wasn’t the reason. Then, she said, well  you’ve been shutting off the alarms at night. I said, because that’s how nurses trained me how to do it. The alarms are going off constantly, which is a strange thing. It seems minor in the scheme of things when you hear the whole story, but it isn’t minor. We live in the 21st century, these alarms can go off at the nurse’s station. So I asked her, why can’t you have these go off to the nurse’s station and they lied to me, saying he can’t. The reason I said they lied, it’s because when I went into the hospital three days after Grace died, they asked, what would you like to happen? And I said, I don’t want any alarms going off, and I don’t want anybody coming in the room. I’ll buzz you if I need you, and they honor that request. Whereas with Grace, I mean, I had to help them train me to shut off the non-essential alarms because they’re going off 20,30 times a night. Many times, it was over 20 minutes before they come in and shut them off. And then the third thing she said was that the last three shifts of nurses, I don’t want you in the room. Which of course, these stories I was telling earlier. I wasn’t doing any wrong, but I wanted to make sure my daughter was taken care of, so I was challenging everything, like with the alarms going off. I challenge right away. So, what’s the reason these alarms are going off so much? And they said, well, every time Grace–just think about these answers. They’re so dumb. So the nurse, when I asked her this, she says, every time Grace moves her arm, it sets off an alarm. So I said, what’s the reason? She said, well we put the IV in the crux of her elbow. I said, so what’s the reason you did that at? And she said, well it was easier for us. So I said, you got to be kidding me. And of course, I’m challenging all this crazy staff, and they had such an arrogant attitude. They look down on us. They said that we were following the frontline doctors’ misinformation campaign. When they were looking, one of the doctors recommended that Grace gets on Tocilizumab, which may have been the experimental drug they wanted you to go on. So I looked this up and I found out the placebo group did better than the group on the drug. So the doctor comes in the next day asking, what’s your decision on Tocilizumab? Then I said, well, the New England Journal of Medicine has a published study that shows that the placebo group does better than the group on the med, and the med has umpteen side effects. When you see his report– we got to report after the fact. He makes me look like a complete dummy. I mean, I’m not going to put my daughter on a drug that has a better chance of killing her than not. I mean, that’s insane. Who would do that?   [00:52:53] Ashley James: You were advocating, I think, what you were doing was the right thing. The hospital kicking you out. I mean, that’s ridiculous. You are allowed ethically and legally. Your patient is allowed an advocate. The hospitals that want a patient to be alone, want an easy job. It’s not about making their job easy. It needs to be– we have one focus. When we go into a hospital, the person, the patient going in comes out alive and better than in the condition that they went in. And also that they don’t have long-term side effects of the treatment. Right? That is the goal. There’s so many good nurses out there. I’m not ripping on nurses, but there’s good people and there’s bad people. Again, I see the system’s broken, but it’s not an accident. The system is built this way. It is not built to make people healthy. So when nurses are taxed, there’s a nurse shortage, they’re working long shifts, extra shifts, overtime, they’re exhausted. Of course, we would want to do things to make it a little easier. The cutting off those corners takes away from the person’s ability to survive is not acceptable. You want to go into a hospital that wants the advocate. I remember, I lived with my mom in the hospital in the last two weeks of her life. We brought her in, and she was dying. She had cancer. And I was her advocate, and I stayed by her side, lived with her, and this is at Toronto General. And the nurses, for the most part, very happy I was there. I got blankets, and I got water. I actually made their job a lot easier. We didn’t know we were going in to have my mom died. We didn’t know she was at the end of her life. She died very suddenly and it was a big shock. I just remember that the hospital staff—again I was 22, I didn’t have the perspective I have now. Maybe I would have seen it differently. But what I do remember that the staff were very accommodating for me and excited to have an advocate there because they saw they made their job easier. When my son has been in the hospital and I turned to the doctor in the ER, and I say, stop what you’re doing, I need informed consent. I was expecting a fight. At the time, he was about two and a half. They were hooking him up to an IV, they’re about to pump some unknown liquid into him and I’m like, wait a second. You don’t even look at me or ask me for permission like I get we’re trying to save his life, but I need to know what’s going on. And that doctor got excited. She turned to me and she said, “Oh good, and you want informed consent? Okay, here’s what’s going on.” She explained everything. She explained the good, the bad, and the alternatives. And that’s what informed consent is. What they’re putting in him was magnesium, so like, oh okay, sure, no problem. I’m very happy that you’re going to start using something more natural or what the body needs. Magnesium relaxes the lungs and helps them breathe, and that’s the first route. I’m not saying every children’s hospital is amazing, but my own experiences with Seattle Children’s Hospitals have been better than any other hospital I’ve been to. So there are exceptions where it’s good. If you go into a hospital and they don’t want an advocate, that is a red flag. That the staff or any of the staff or any of the nurses are frustrated that you’re asking questions that you’re advocating, that you’re there to ask for informed consent, if they are resisting informed consent, or they’re making fun of you, oh, you look something up on Google? If they’re making fun of you or talking down to being condescending or trying to go around or pressure you into something, that is a red flag. That’s a huge red flag. So at that moment when the secured guard was there, could you have taken your daughter and left the hospital?   [00:57:24] Scott Schara: Outstanding question. Technically no. I didn’t know that at the time. I learned that afterward. That’s one of the things that the first couple of months, I woke up several times a week with that question. I should have taken Grace with me, I should have taken Grace with me. And ultimately, I would have been able to, but it wouldn’t have been automatic. And the reason is we didn’t understand at that time. They had already studied Grace on the sedation drug on October 9th called Precedex and that fits into the last day when we get into that. But once a patient’s on Precedex, their room gets classified as ICU. So then, it’s one motivation they would the hospital has to get a patient get sedated because it’s not just financial, the room classified as ICU. If you want to take the patient home because you see the care is so bad, it’s not automatic anymore. It’s called against medical advice. So now, you’ve got to sign off that you’re responsible for the patient—we didn’t ever jump through those hoops. But the way I understand it is you’ve got to sign off that you’re taking responsibility if the patient dies under your care because you’re not following the hospital’s advice anymore, that you’re responsible for the death, etcetera. Which of course, that would have been a no-brainer. But we didn’t know any of this at the time. When we walk through these details, I try to interject the things that we learned after the fact versus what we knew live because it’s important. If you knew all this stuff live, of course, we would have taken Grace out and we had never checked her in. There were multiple times we would have taken her out. When the oxygen readings are different, and she’s not totally responds, that’s terrible care. Right? That’s an F. You don’t see it as part of an agenda at that time. Now I see it crystal clear, but at that time, I didn’t see any of those.   [00:59:35] Ashley James: Their arms have the same octopus, right? So how the staff treats you? It might not be like, oh, that one nurse was really nice and that nurse was not. Okay well, I guess they’re just exhausted. Look at any red flag as a symptom of how the entire complex works because it’s how they’re trained. It’s how they’re taught to work, and it’s the attitude that is alive in that hospital. So you have to really be aware of each red flag. I know a friend of mine had to transfer her baby in the NICU. She advocated her midwife, and there’s big red flags. They’re doing things to their baby that is so out of the norm. I’m very concerned and so is the mother. She had just given birth. The baby’s in the NICU and she’s like, everything about their care was wrong and all the red flags are going off in her mind. And she goes, I’m transferring care. And they found a different hospital that would take them and that hospital did not want to release them. She’s like, too bad. So she got her baby to a different hospital and that hospital said I cannot believe what the other hospital did to your baby. So they did stuff like putting her on antibiotics with no reason to put her on antibiotics—all these kinds of things they did to a brand new baby, that there’s no medical reason why. The other second hospital said, that hospital should be sued for things they were overmedicating. There was no reason for it. This happens over and over and over again. And it’s so frustrating and in between countries. I have a family member who got a pacemaker in Chile and he comes back, and everything’s fine. He does pacemakers and doing his thing. He notices that every time he walks, he faints practically. And he came back. When he came back, he saw his cardiologist here, a good reputable cardiologist who’s been seeing him for years. For some reason, hadn’t caught that he had needed a quintuple bypass. And of course, his cardiologist will just put him on medication and doesn’t tell him to change his diet or anything. I don’t know how good of a cardiologist it is.   [01:02:01] Scott Schara: Right.   [01:02:02] Ashley James: So anyway, he’s fainting, and falling down, and hurting himself for over a year. Until we advocate for him, and we’re like, you got to go back and tell your cardiologist that something’s wrong. And he finally does, after we really push him to and it turns out they had in Chile they set the heart rate to 60 beats a minute. So, basically when you have a pacemaker and certain pacemakers are like it’s beating your heart for you. And can you imagine like 60 beats a minute like when you’re sitting? If you’re an elite athlete, and you’re just walking, but if you’re in your 80s and you need to walk downstairs, you need more than 60 beats a minute to get enough oxygen to your muscles and your brain to walk up and downstairs. So, the cardiologist never caught this. Never looked at it. It’s something so simple, and she’s like  if she knew about—oh yeah, Chile sets it to 60 beats per minute. He‘s been telling you for over a year that he’s been falling down, bleeding everywhere. So she had to go into a program with the pacemaker to beats higher beats a minute on average. Then he saw fainting and saw falling down. This isn’t even a life-saving event. But how many really and critically and important things fall through the cracks if you don’t advocate, if you don’t question, if you don’t push and if you don’t get a second opinion? How many critical qualities of your life, critical things fall through the quacks in medicine? We cannot look to those who wear a white medical coat as gods that are infallible. The organizations are being incentivized and paid. I think that originally the government wanted to help because– oh, the pressure would be on the medical system. So we better make sure we help and take care of it. Maybe it was out of good intentions. But it’s been like any system that monetizes, it will become an incentive for a goal. A monetary goal.   [01:04:20] Scott Schara: Well, you’re extending a lot more Grace than I am extending them. I don’t think they had good intentions at all to start with. And I say that with a fair degree of confidence, not because my daughter died, but Dr. Peter McCullough came out and stated the blinding flash of the obvious. Which is why isn’t there a research component to this virus? Why is it all going to bonus payments to hospitals for killing people? In any normal situation, the government would be putting its money behind the research, but that’s not happening with this one.   [01:04:58] Ashley James: Well, what has been talked about is that if they did the research, and they uncovered a treatment for COVID that was effective, then the pharmaceutical companies with loosey emergency use authorization for the experimental vaccines, so there’s pressure, there’s lobbying to not have a research because they want their cash cow. I saw a meme the other day and it made me giggle, but it’s also incredibly sad and demonic. You know how they keep saying follow the science, just follow the science. And the meme says, why keep following the science, but it keeps leading me to the money?   [01:05:51] Scott Schara: That’s good. That’s great.   [01:05:59] Ashley James: I’m putting myself in your shoes. If my son was in a hospital, and armed guards came to kick me out. Oh my gosh! It would take more than armed guards to rip me from my son. I can’t imagine the intensity of emotions that was going on for you at the time.   [01:06:17] Scott Schara: That was quite an event. The armed guard was there the whole time. I argued with this nurse for about an hour. Ultimately, she said, if you don’t leave now we’re calling the Appleton Police Department. So then, I called an attorney who’s a friend and asked his perspective. He suggested leaving peacefully and so I did.   [01:06:48] Ashley James: Wrong advice.   [01:06:50] Scott Schara: I know, but I did. I gave my buddy a hug and the last time I saw her physically alive was on FaceTime calls. After that, the look in her eye that I will never forget. The armed guard walked me out to the truck and he said, Scott, you need to take this to a higher level. It was encouraging. I mean, he saw what was happening and it was wrong. Thankfully, Grace’s special needs’ attorney was available. This is a Sunday. I called one attorney and I know these people and I had their cell numbers and fortunately picked up. So, Grace’s special needs’ attorney was available and we started planning on how are we going to get an advocate replacement. My wife, Cindy couldn’t be the advocate because she had COVID. So, I called Jess and asked her, “Will you be an advocate for Grace?” And she said, “Yes, I will dad.” We have 44 hours without coverage because we had to negotiate with the hospital attorney to let Jessica in. Second, during that 44 hours I mentioned earlier, they started Grace on the sedation med called Precedex.   [01:08:08] Ashley James:  Did they ask permission to do that?   [01:08:12] Scott Schara: To put Grace on Precedex?   [01:08:14] Ashley James: Yes.   [01:08:15] Scott Schara: No.   [01:08:17] Ashley James: So, they were giving her meds without anyone’s consent. I know the whole thing when you go to a hospital, they’re allowed to treat you with whatever because they’re trying to save you’re life, but not exactly, you are allowed informed consent. So do you feel that they went behind your back, went behind her back, and were doing some treatment plan that they didn’t talk to you guys about?   [01:06:41] Scott Schara: Absolutely. I mean, the Precedex could maybe make an exception for, but not when you see it in the light of everything.   [01:08:50] Ashley James: Why does she need to be sedated? I’m sorry to interrupt. Was she rebellious and throwing things? Was she biting nurses? Why did she need to be sedated?   [01:08:57] Scott Schara: There’s absolutely no reason. So the one minor exception you could say would be that first night when Grace had an issue when I was working with her to get the BiPap situation with the nurses. I actually suggested at that time that she needed to be sedated but that was because of that situation, my mind, oxygen was the emergency we had to get this done. I don’t know anything about sedation, but in my mind, we just need to sedate her to get her calm. Let’s get this situated, and then she’ll be fine. So, I actually recommended it down, but that was for that specific instance. So then, if you look at the records, you see that they did that at that time and then they took her off of it. Well, then they put her back on it. There was absolutely no reason. Grace was a super calm kid. She didn’t have anxiety over anything. What they did, so, they put her back on it on October 9th when I’m still in the room. October 10th, they had her on it and I’m now out of the room during that window of 44 hours. So from eight o’clock in the morning on the 10th, during that 44 hours, subsequent, they increased the dosage seven times, and that’s ridiculous. There would be only one reason to increase the dosage, and that is because you don’t want to invest in your patient to take care of him or her. Otherwise, there’s no reason to have anybody on it. But as we’ve learned in studying, not just the records, but studying what is going on with COVID, Precedex is used as a way to set up the ventilator. So they want these patients on Precedex, just steady drips, then once they decide or the patient agrees to or the advocate agrees to a ventilator, it’s automatic. Boom! The ventilator can be done instantly. So Precedex sets the table for the ventilator. So, your question as to why. It would be all excuses because there’s no justification to put somebody on a med when the package inserts says specifically to not use it for more than 24 hours. It’s right on the front page of the package insert and this drug is used for anesthesia, for surgery. And the anesthesia nurse that we’ve talked to say that it should never be used for more than three hours. And they had Grace on it for four full days before her last day. So, if we walk into the last day, as I set this up with the Precedex already, then Jessica was in the room with Grace the entire day on the 12th. Grace died on the 13th of October. On the 12th, it was another good day for Grace, inspite of Grace being sedated. Grace was still herself joking around with Jessica right before they went to bed. Jessica called her two boys, Grace’s nephews, on a FaceTime call. Grace sat up in the bed and hollered through the BiPAP, “hi boys.” Just normal. She’s tickling Jess. Jess tells the story about, so she didn’t climb in bed with Grace but she would grab the chair next to the bed and lay her head on the bed, so she was holding Grace the whole time. She had her head next to Grace’s butt. Grace was tooting [inaudible 1:12:31] sorry Jess, sorry Jess. Oh, it’s just so cute. For me, that’s typical Grace. She was a very calm person, and there’s no reason to sedate her on top of that. Jess and I were there other than the 44 hours. There were reasons to sedate when we’re not there is to not to do their job. You’ll see that as we now walk through the last day which is even pretty egregious.   [01:13:58] Ashley James: Your daughter Jess, how old was she at that time?   [01:13:03] Scott Schara: 31. Yes 32, she’ll be 32 coming up here in June.   [01:13:08] Ashley James: So, a 31-year-old woman, who’s your older daughter is taking care of her 19-year-old sister with high functioning Down Syndrome in the hospital. She’s being put on more and more and more sedation, although there’s no reason for it. While she’s using your $50 pulse ox to check Grace’s levels of oxygen saturation to see how different they were from the hospital, and she was maintaining that Grace was at high oxygen saturation the whole time?   [01:13:43] Scott Schara: In fact, that last night, Grace was at 98-99% the entire night.   [01:13:47] Ashley James: So why would she still be in the hospital?   [01:13:51] Scott Schara: Great question. I would say because they can. I mean, we weren’t wise enough to get her out. There’s multiple times when you could ask that question. The medical malpractice nurse who reviewed the records basically said that they used Precedex as the way to set up Grace’s death. She called it chemically restraining Grace. So they chemically restrained her to set up the the last day. The doctor called us at eight o’clock in the morning in Grace’s last day. He had talked with us the evening before asking for the fourth time to pre-approve a ventilator. So he wanted our decision. We told him, no again. Then he made that comment that Grace had such a good day yesterday. We should put in a feeding tube.    [01:14:39] Ashley James: What?   [01:14:40] Scott Schara: So Cindy and I foolishly agreed to this.   [01:14:45] Ashley James: Wait. I don’t understand. Her oxygen is in the high 90s. Why does she need to be put on a feeding tube?   [01:14:51] Scott Schara: Well, she was malnutritioned at this same. So remember the story I told you when they wouldn’t let me feed Grace. Well, the same thing that happened with Jess. They wouldn’t let us feed her. That story gets deeper because I even told them, I said, there’s no reason we cannot feed Grace. So I said, I watched. When Grace was on a BiPap, they went through a series multiple times a day, where people would come in, remove the BiPap and then get Grace’s mouth moist because it would dry her mouth out. And I watched how they did it and I’m just right there. Okay, so they put in the high-flow cannula and they turned it down to low pressure, so it’s not at 40 miles an hour. Grace was actually stable the whole time. So, when these nurses would say we can’t feed her. I said, we could feed her and you could do it too, I told them exactly. This is what happens when the ladies come in and the nurses come into what Grace’s mouth. They said, well the doctor says, we got to have the high flow BiPap at 40 miles an hour. It doesn’t have to be there. They would not listen to me. They have just dump that. So ultimately, Grace by this time is seven days into malnutrition. She’s malnutritioned because they chose not to listen and not do their job. So we foolishly agreed to this. And ultimately, it plays out until this last day and you’ll see, he called us at eight o’clock and we approved this. Now eight-thirty or so. There’s a 14-year ICU nurse in charge of Grace’s care this day. Very significant because when you start wondering, was this premeditated, was it intentional, all these facts matter. And so your listeners are going to have to make that decision and don’t just believe me. Look at what I’m saying and then look at the research on Grace’s website. Everything I’m talking about now is under the tragedy tab, under Thou Shall Not Kill and I have a slide called Grace’s Last Day. It’s all documented there. This is straight out of the records. Then Jess says to this 14-year ICU nurse that she must take a shower. And she says, you can’t take a shower here. So when I was there, they insisted and I leave. There’s a shower right in the room. And they said you can’t take a shower here. Jess was afraid to not obey because I was kicked out. She doesn’t want to be kicked out. So she goes home and takes a shower. She was back inside an hour. When she comes back, she started going up. She overhears the doctor and the 14-year ICU nurse talking in the hallway, saying the family’s not going to like this. So she said, “what are they not going to like?” They said, “we had to restrain Grace, while you’re gone.” So she said, “what’s the reason?” So restrain, meaning to strap Grace right down to the bed. So she said, “what’s the reason?” “Well, she wanted to get up and go to the bathroom.” So they made Grace poop in the bed while Jess was gone. So just process this. One of the attorneys we work with he said, “Scott, do you think that you would have been restrained?” I said, “absolutely not. I would have made the nurses do their job.” But Grace was an obedient kid. She was the greatest kid you could ever have. So one of the people who interviewed me when they heard this, they just said, Grace died a murderous death. I think she did die a murderous death. She was obedient until death, just like Jesus was on the cross. But, of course, it wasn’t as dramatic as Jesus’ death. Just think through. She was just obedient. So now, they use that as an excuse to ratchet up the Precedex further than instead of waiting for Grace’s numbers to rebound. Now, they insert the feeding tube and this is over. The attending nurse challenged the ICU nurse, I don’t think we should be doing this now. We should wait for Grace’s numbers to rebound. She wouldn’t listen. So they do that. They do the feeding tube next and now they take the Precedex up to max dose. This is at 10:48 in the morning, and Grace was in the max dose of Precedex. This is the equivalent of being knocked out for surgery. Grace was knocked out. For the rest of the day, she was knocked out. Inspite of Grace being knocked out, at 11:25, they gave her a dose of Lorazepam, which an anti-anxiety med. At 5:46, they gave her another dose, and at 5:49, another dose three minutes later. At 6:15, they gave her Morphine as an IV push, which means instantaneously. The package insert for Morphine says to not combine those meds. She’s on a max dose of Precedex, two doses of Lorazepam, and Morphine, all in 29 minutes.   [01:19:46] Ashley James: What was the reason behind Morphine? Was she in pain?   [01:19:51] Scott Schara: She wasn’t. How can you be in pain when you’re knocked out?    [01:19:55] Ashley James: Exactly.   [01:19:57] Scott Schara: She’s not in any pain.   [01:19:59] Ashley James: I’ve been wanting to mention this. And so I think this is actually the most appropriate time. For me, it’s a common knowledge in Canada, but I wouldn’t say everyone in Canada knows this, but many do. In the Canadian medical system– so I’m from Canada and moved to the States when I was in my 20s. So I had enough experience with the medical system there. It’s very different and yet very similar. And the differences are it is for-profit and not it is to save money. So I just thought it was hilarious. When I hurt my ankle, I was travelling in Nevada, and I tripped on a hose at a gas station and my ankle blew up to like the size of a softball, but I thought for sure I had broken my ankle. So I went to the hospital and I could hardly walk. And I could not believe the amount of X-rays they took. I was like are you kidding me? I think they took 20 X-rays. You don’t need that many X-rays, and it hit me. This is for America’s profit system. In Canada, I never got more than two X-rays. I broke an ankle doing sports when I was 12 and actually was the growth plate in my ankle and I fractured it. I remember two X-rays and that’s all you get. The system in Canada is about saving money. Right? So how much money can we save with each patient? Not spend on each patient. They don’t just like offer you drugs willy-nilly. It’s different. When I came to the States, all of a sudden the doctors were offering me pain meds because I said I had cramps. When I had my period and I’m like, no, I don’t need prescription medication. That’s crazy. Whereas in Canada, a doctor would never have done that. So very, very different experiences in terms of like show me the money, follow the money. It is common knowledge that they use Morphine to speed up the process of death in Canada. It’s an unwritten rule when someone is in Palliative Care Hospice, and they’re sleeping away at the end of their life. So let’s make it that nurses, and it’s their mercy. It’s their mercy that they would, or the doctors would give them little or doses of Morphine to gently speed up the process of death, and that’s what they did to my mom. I didn’t know, I didn’t understand this at the time and since I’ve talked to many others and this is just a common practice. Maybe it’s a common practice here in the States. They use IV morphine just to speed up death. I’m kinda doing air quotes as you can’t see it obviously, I’m doing air quotes, in a humanitarian way just to speed up death. Maybe some people would appreciate that knock me out and fill me out with so many pain meds and I croak. If someone’s at the end of their life from a terminal illness, that’s what they do in Canada. They did that to my mom. I watched them do it and she was in a coma at the end of her life. And  they’re like— okay, we just going to keep increasing the Morphine. So they told me, and the nurse told me we’re going to keep increasing it and help her transition faster in a more peaceful way.   [01:23:25] Scott Schara: In Grace’s case, I have become convinced that it wasn’t to transition in a more peaceful way. It was transition to transition period because they had a higher pain patient waiting for them in the emergency room. The hospital was at max capacity the day Grace died, and so was the emergency room. Then since, we didn’t approve the ventilator, they had to figure out a different way to take her out. How can you go from 98-99% oxygen saturation, and doing good? And even so much so that the doctor comments on it, to be dead less than 12 hours later. It gets substantially worse as we keep going. So now, Jessica, remember she’s in the room. The package insert for Morphine says to not combine these drugs because it causes death. Similarly, the package insert says that the reversal drug is supposed to be bedside and they’re supposed to monitor the patient. After they gave this dose of Morphine, not one medical professional stepped in that room. They didn’t monitor the patient. They didn’t have the reversal drug bedside. They didn’t step in the room until they called Grace’s death. So Jess is now in the room alone with Grace the entire time. She’s sensing Grace is getting cold. So she goes to the hallway to ask the 14-year ICU nurse. “Is this normal?” Because she wanted to have her take her temperature, she said, “yes, it’s normal, just cover with a blanket.”   [01:24:58] Ashley James: So she had a maximum dose of a sedative?   [01:25:04] Scott Schara: Yes.   [01:25:05] Ashley James: So she’s already out cold, she’s asleep, and she’s completely sedated. Then they begin to give her several doses of anxiety meds. Which is like why? And then they give her an IV Morphine on top of that, all within a matter of minutes. Is it like one doctor, or they’re like a bunch of doctors not looking at her chart doing whatever they want?   [01:25:25] Scott Schara: Well, we’ve learned subsequently that not only did a doctor have to order that, but a second doctor had to signed off. And on top of that, their alarm system in their computer, when they’d have the combination of meds, would have went off, and they would have had to override the alarm. Then a 14-year ICU nurse is the one who deliver the meds. So you put that combination together. The doctor who helped us review the records, she went right to intent right away, and she said it’s not even a question. This is intentional. The intensivist who reviewed the records and that intensivist is a doctor who specializes in med combinations. It took him minutes to discern and he wrote me that the meds that killed your daughter is sort of taken out of anybody on the planet. So that’s how severe this is.   [01:26:14] Ashley James: How much does your daughter weigh?   [01:26:15] Scott Schara: She weighs about 180 pounds.   [01:26:17] Ashley James: Okay, in the dosages that they gave, did they give it based on her weight?   [01:26:24] Scott Schara: I can’t answer that.    [01:57:26] Ashley James: Okay.   [00:57:27] Scott Schara: Right now, I would question if anything was thought through that way because, I would say, it sounded so crazy, but it’s not crazy anymore. I’m going to use that word on this podcast. I would say it’s malicious. I can’t even entertain a logical question like that because none of these fits.   [01:26:55] Ashley James: None of it fits.    [01:26:57] Ashley James: Intentionally, in the United States, in the hospital system, there’s no protocol for treating COVID and they’re not allowed to treat. They’re not allowed to treat with certain medications like Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin, Z-packs. They’re still certain things that they’re being pressured not to use, although like I had Dr. Fleming on my show who’s a PhD, an amazing cardiologist, whose also a research scientist. He developed the Fleming method. Please listeners, go to my website, learntruehealth.com, type in Dr. Fleming. Find that interview and listen to it. It’s outstanding. He doesn’t know anything about holistic medicine. It’s very rare, I get something on the show that doesn’t know anything but holistic medicine. He’s 100% all about the science and he’s not anti-vaccine. He’s one of those doctors that got all of them except for the experimental ones because he shows and he has a four-hour lecture on his website, which is outstanding. He shows all the science. He had to go to different countries. So he’s a research scientist. He could not study COVID in the United States because it was banned to study a cure. This is how crazy it is. So he had to go to other countries to study the cure or the best treatment. And he did a study on 1800 COVID-positive patients and he found a combination of drugs that had 100% success. So he says, we put a million people through it, maybe a few will fall through the cracks. But so far, they’ve had a 100% success rate with this combination of three drugs, but the hospitals are not using those three drugs. They’re being told not to. So instead, they’re moving towards using what they’re monetarily incentivized to use, which is having the worst outcomes.   [01:29:02] Scott Schara: Absolutely. The next piece of this story is even worse than what I told you so far. So now, Jessica starts panicking. She can’t get any nurse in. She called Cindy, and I on a FaceTime call at 7:20 and said, “Dad, Grace’s numbers are dropping like crazy.” I said, “get the nurses in.” She said, “I can’t, and they won’t come in.” She estimated that 30 nurses are in the hallway at this time because of shift change. Cindy and I started screaming through the FaceTime call. “Save our daughter!” The nurses holler back. “She’s DNR! Don’t resuscitate.” This is the first we knew that she’s DNR. So we holler back. “She’s not DNR! Save our daughter!” They would not come into that room. So we watch Grace die on that FaceTime call at 7:27. This DNR thing is so bad. We found out in our references medical malpractice nurse previously when she reviewed the records that we had requested. She told me, “Scott, there’s at least a thousand pages missing.” I said, “How can that be? We requested everything.” She said, “That’s how what they do.” So she helped write out a request to get the missing pages. There was 948 pages missing. On page 853 is the smoking gun. At 10:56 in the morning, remember I told you at 10:48 was max dose Precedex. Then, at 10:56, the doctor put the illegal DNR order in the computer. During this time, that’s seven minutes when we were on a FaceTime call with Jess. She ran out on the hall to find out what was going on. A nurse had to write up on her computer screen and read off. The doctor put a DNR on Grace, and we can’t do anything about it. That specific fact violated at least seven state statutes. Just common sense would tell you a doctor can’t put a DNR on somebody. That would be illegal. It is illegal. The patient or the patient advocate, which was my wife Cindy, has to request for DNR. But we never requested the DNR. Why would we request the DNR? He tells us how great Grace is doing. We expected Grace to get out of there and not die there. Then he’s supposed to explain it to us and then have us, it would be my wife Cindy come and sign the DNR order, none of that happened. He put it on or her or himself. What’s the coincidence of eight minutes after the max dose Precedex? One of the attorneys made the observation which I think is true. They expected the Precedex to take Grace out. So they needed to have that DNR order in place to accomplish the dirty deed that they intended to do. What’s even stranger is that at 12:57 that afternoon, the doctor did his notes for the day. He never did them at 12:57 in the afternoon before. Every other day, he did them after his shift was over. These notes are dated and timestamped. So the medical malpractice nurse wisely pointed out that if it was such an issue to get this DNR, that this was important, and you guys agreed to it or whatever excuse they’re going to use. Why he didn’t have you guys come in and sign it? Because that’s required by law.   [01:32:35] Ashley James: Yeah,  there’s a signature.   [01:32:38] Scott Schara: So, it’s terrible. We find out then when a couple of things happen after Grace died which really helped us to get a sense that this was something we needed to look into and research on our own. One thing was Jess told us afterward that there was an armed guard outside the room. When she went out in the hallway, there was an armed guard. We presume, to prevent any nurse with a conscience from coming in and saving Grace. We know it was an anomaly that he was there because Jess laid down in the bed with Grace after she was pronounced dead.  And the armed guard stood outside and watched Jess in the bed the whole time. Jess stayed in the bed and waited until Cindy got into the hospital. I took Cindy into the hospital afterward, obviously after Grace died. Then after Cindy and Jess cleaned Grace up, I had to wait in the truck because I had COVID. Our Pastor Matt is there. The funeral director and the Pastor was walking Cindy out in a wheelchair. And one of the nurses had Grace’s belongings on a cart and leaned down and said to Cindy, me and several of the other nurses don’t think that Grace should have died today?   [01:34:58] Ashley James: The armed guard that had you, had they escorted you?   [01:34:03] Scott Schara: I don’t know if it was the same one.   [01:34:05] Ashley James: No, no, I was going to say, he knew something was up?   [01:34:09] Scott Schara:  Absolutely.   [01:34:12] Ashley James: How much money this hospital or a hospital get from having a patient on their death certificate that says it died out of COVID? How much money do they get in subsidies from the government?   [01:34:28] Scott Schara: It’s $13000.   [01:34:31] Ashley James: Your daughter’s life. There’s no child’s life that’s worth any amount of money. Do you feel there’s any discrimination against her because she has Down Syndrome? Do you feel like this is a discriminatory act?   [01:34:52] Scott Schara: I do. I do believe that and I have some proof. I actually have multiple things. So the first one is I review all of the reports that the doctors submitted. There were 22 reports on Grace’s seven days in the hospital. And I reviewed those one Sunday morning, looking for Down Syndrome and they referenced the fact that Grace had Down Syndrome 36 different times in 22 reports. The other discrimination was they referenced that Grace was not vaccinated six times. They referenced that we were Christian three times. They referenced that we were found in the frontline doctor’s misinformation campaign four times. So this is all the stuff that I found in the research. The most recent thing is I’ve done stirred to looking at Grace’s death as genocide. The statistics are starting to come out with what actually happened to disabled versus non-disabled, the elderly, the non-elderly and a disabled woman going into the hospital with COVID, and also Grace was disabled, a Down Syndrome is a disability, and a disabled woman is 11 times more likely to die if they entered the hospital with COVID than a non-disabled woman.   [01:36:18] Ashley James: I’ve also seen that those African Americans are treated differently. African American women are specially treated differently. They’re not listened to. They’re written officer, oh, that she’s hysterical, their symptoms and what they’re explaining, I mean, this is in every case but statistically, there’s a bias going on. It’s not the same level of care for everyone.   [01:36:52] Scott Schara: I agree 100%. This is when the lead could get completely taken off of this as if we have enough time. I think, we’re going to see this is all part of a bigger agenda to depopulate the world and just had a financial payoff. In the United States, the financial payoff is to take out the elderly and the disabled. The elderly and disabled on Medicaid and Medicare are also on social security, that accounts for 39% of the federal budget. So with the average $100,000 bonus paid to the hospital, take out one of these people that costs the taxpayer $32,000 a year. So there’s a three-year payback period in business. Anytime you could do a three-year payback period on any asset, you would do it. You’d buy it because you want your money back in three years. So that’s a 33% rate of return on your investment. Just from a financial perspective, this fits like a glove.   [01:37:55] Ashley James: I know that there’s definitely listeners are going, this is crazy. The government isn’t bad. The government wouldn’t intentionally harm us. Maybe the source of thinking, yes, okay, this brat hospital was mismanaging her care, but the government, that’s not some giant conspiracy. That’s absurd. When we have to look back at history, I don’t want to pick on just the United States. I love living here. I love this country. There’s so many good people here. There’s so many good. Can you think of any other country in the world that was founded on the Christian values? What I just learned, which is so interesting, when the pilgrims came. The Mayflower was the first round of pilgrims, for the first 50 years, there was no war. There’s peace. They got along incredibly well with those who were already here. And they had peace for the first 50 years, and that’s something that is not taught. If you go back and you dig through the actual history, you find out that those people who were actually radicals. They left their Christian church because they were radicals who believed in the Holy Spirit, and they believed within the Holy Spirit, sort of what’s Pentecostal now. They’re like the Pentecostals of the 1600s. I think it was 1620 or something like. So when they came here, the first 50 years was peace. I was watching them. I was doing a lecture on understanding of America’s history and in Christianity. It was really interesting. So there’s a lot of misinformation when it comes to this country and history. But when we look back, the government took African Americans and said they would give them free health care. But instead, what they were doing was they were giving them a venereal disease. So they could observe how they died from this disease. And this is well documented. What’s also well documented is this government, it’s not the same people, but when I say this government, it’s not the same officials, it’s not the same people, but it’s the system. So the system isn’t perfect, and within the system, we have lied to and harmed the black community by purposely giving them venereal disease. Then we took Indigenous women, and we would say, we’re giving them free health care instead, we would make them infertile by putting X-ray machines on their pelvises for 10 minutes, running for 10 minutes to make them infertile. These are just some of the examples of the things that have gone on within the government over the last 100 years or so. So now, the military took– and again, I’m not bashing the entire system, but we have to sort of pull the wool from our eyes. The military took hundreds of young, beautiful men and put them on the bow of these giant ships, brought them out into the middle of the ocean and set off nuclear bombs, atom bombs, miles from where they were, as a science experiment. So that they could see what would happen to these men, who all develop cancer and horrible things, and post-traumatic stress. They said, that although their eyes were closed, their hands–they were told to sit on the bows with their hands over their eyes and they said, when the atom bomb went off, they could see even though their eyes were closed and their hands over their eyes, they could see because of the X-rays. They could see the bones of their hands, and we could see everyone else’s skeletons. So these are just three examples of hundreds. I believe there’s good people in this world. I’m not saying that everyone was out to get us. When you actually look at the definition of conspiracy, it’s a group of people that are conspiring to do something that’s illegal, or elicit, or harmful. So, when we say that this is a conspiracy theory, it’s not a theory, these are actual recorded periods of history. We need to not repeat the history. We need not let history be repeated. We need to stop organizations that use us as guinea pigs or practice genocide for the profit. We need as individuals empower ourselves by listening to stories like yours and learn from Grace and learn what she went through and pass this information on and be an advocate for your family and for your friends. So you do not succumb to the medical system, which is not perfect and it’s designed for profit. Again, I believe there’s a good people in the medical system. But the system is designed for profit, even at the expense of your life. And that’s what we have to remember. And the takeaway here is to question everything, advocate, advocate, advocate. And if there’s red flags, you might need to fire your doctor. You might need to go get a second or third, or fourth opinion. Make sure those opinions are outside of the same—like if you’re going in a hospital, okay, can I have a second opinion on a different doctor of the same hospital in the same network? You need to go outside the network. You need to go to a completely different network to get an actual honest, maybe an honest opinion. Robin Openshaw has been on my show. I’ve been on her. She’s a wonderful, outspoken advocate for hope not only holistic health but for human rights. In the last two years, for really understanding the politics of what’s going on, and she said, she has uncovered scams in dental as an example. When she dug deep, she found that dentists will regularly, not all of them but many, will say you have a cavity when you don’t. You’re a cash cow. You’re in there. How do you know? You’re looking at a screen. They’re pointing at something on-screen and saying that’s a cavity. And you have to go to a second opinion. Take your mouth to a different dentist and say, okay, do I have any cavities? You might need to go to a few different dentists. And she says, when she’s heard back from so many people that have done this, she couldn’t believe how many dentists were trying to scam them and this is just dental work. Imagine,all the other forms of– they have both payments too. This isn’t life or death, but this is just an example. Money motivates people. If there’s money involved, and then if there’s livelihood involved, they might choose to do the wrong thing. Right? So we have to really advocate for ourselves. There’s one more thing I want to bring up because it’s timed. One thing I love about America—there’s so many things, but there’s one thing I love is that we can go to the state that has our values. If you don’t like the state you’re in, you can go to a different state. Each governor’s or manages like a little island, each state serves its own country in that. So the governor could say, let’s say pandemic, and you love masks, and you want everyone to be vaccinated. You should have gone to New York, or Washington, or California. Right? But if you’re the opposite, I think masks are dumb. I can’t wear them for whatever reason. I’m never going to submit myself to an experimental vaccine. You should have gone to Florida or Texas. So we just knew and we just saw this very clear that these last two years had never seen it so clearly before. It really matters who was in the governor’s seat because here in Washington State, Governor Inslee shut down our state so many times for so long that almost half of the small businesses went under. I cannot tell you how many restaurants and how many businesses are shut down permanently. Overnight, it was something like 40,000 people went on unemployment. Now the numbers are out and it shows that you could compare every state to the state that did no shutdowns to the states that had the most shutdowns. The states that had mandates to the states that had no mandates. We have the same level of cases. We can’t really tell whether the fatalities are accurate. Like what you’ve said, someone can go in and they’re incentivized that write on the death certificate that it is COVID. So both the same amount of cases are reported from state to state. So it was a big experiment. Right? What I really love about the state is that you can go to a different state. If you’re like, hey, I don’t want to live in a state that it’s forcing my family to do a medical procedure that I don’t feel comfortable with. Right? So you can go to that state that you could move. It’s about people, but you could move where you have a choice. The choice is the freedom. What’s happening this week, it’s very crucial. I’m going to publish this episode right away. I’m going to have the links in the show notes because I’m not going to explain it. I’m not going to give the level of explanation it deserves. But President Biden is right now signing into with the World Health Organization, which is like an arm of the UN. Right? He is signing so that he’s giving our sovereign medical freedom, medical choices over to the World Health Organization. It’s not a treaty. But many other countries, the big countries, the top, and known countries have signed it. This is a weird thing. Once we’ve signed it, the only way to get out is to let the countries agree. And basically, what’s happening is it doesn’t matter what state you go to. It’ll be federal. If America signs this, if Joe Biden signs us into this, the World Health Organization will be able to control all health decisions in all states. They could say every single vaccine is mandated. You can’t even go to the grocery store without having all your papers. The World Health Organization could say that. It would be in law, and it wouldn’t matter what state we are in. This is something that sounds so bizarre. I’m sure people think I’m absolutely nuts, and I’m just the messenger. But I’ve learned this from several politicians that this is happening. So I have links to this and I’m going to put them in the notes. The only thing we can do is call our local representatives and all the links to that will be in the show notes of today’s podcast called A Local Reps and tell them we’ve got to go up the chain and say no. We need to protect our freedom to choose. I’m not saying you should be anti or force something. I want you to have the freedom to choose. Scott, I want you and everyone in America, and in the world– but we’re in America we’re talking about– I want everyone to have the freedom to be able to say I didn’t like this hospital. I’m going to a different hospital because a different hospital practices medicine differently. Under this, we will not have a choice. These hospitals will be not have a choice to practice differently. So this is a big deal.   [01:50:44] Scott Schara: I saw that in Steve Castor’s newsletter last week. It is a big deal to our church.   [01:50:50] Ashley James: Yes. I will make sure that the links– everyone listening need just to take five minutes. We need to write and call our elected officials, and we’ve got to cry out to try to stop this. And also, please, if you’re a follower of Jesus or a faith that believes in prayer to God, please pray over this. That we do not succumb to signing over our sovereignty to the UN and the World Health Organization. We need to keep our freedoms. This is unprecedented and it’s never happened in America. This is completely unprecedented that America would give over its sovereignty. It boggles my mind what’s been going on over the last two years. We have to get back to you. I love Scott that you are getting active, that you’re sharing, and advocating because the information you share today will save lives. So thank you. Is there anything else you could share to wrap up today’s interview? Standing assurance to teach us how to be the most alert, watchful advocates that we can be for ourselves or for our loved ones.   [01:52:12] Scott Schara: Sure. How I would summarize? It would be to compare it to what we are becoming familiar with in the public school system. So I was born in 1963. So people my age who went through the public school system everybody believed in God. We did the pledge of allegiance. It was pretty normal, and now they’re teaching critical race theory. So my paradigm of a public school system has changed. So, I would not send the child to the public school system, period.   [01:52:52] Ashley James: In Washington State, they’re teaching Sex Ed. I believe in Sex Ed for like teenagers. To teach them like, “Hey, how about you abstain from having sex because that’s going to stop. If you don’t have sex, you’re not going to get STDs!” “You’re not going to have unwanted pregnancies!” I remember being taught, starting in grade seven and being taught how to have sex? What’s the penis? What’s the female reproductive system? What’s the male reproductive system? How does this all happen? How does babies happen? How does STDs happen? I remember being taught from grade seven all the way up. I also remember a few students opting out because they were Muslim or they had a different faith. The parents felt that their 13-year-old shouldn’t be learning this. I think, I was grateful for the Sex Ed I got in high school because it taught and helped me make good decisions. We want to help teenagers make good decisions. What they’re doing now is they’re teaching it in Washington State, and they started in pre-kindergarten. They’re starting to teach children– I’m sorry to be crass– but how to pleasure themselves by touching themselves at a very young age. There’s pictures like the fourth graders are being shown how to do this to themselves and others– and it’s grooming! This level of education, we have a literacy problem, right? We don’t need to teach children how to touch themselves. I like to teach children how to stop adults from touching them. Right? Like no, you’re not allowed to touch or my bathing suit touches me, right? I want to teach children to say no, but teach children how to read and write. So we have a huge literacy problem and yet in Washington State, there’s a lot of funding going into this new level of sex education in the public school system. I’ve talked to several parents who have shown me the literature as it’s in the school system. It would make your blood boil and freeze at the same time. It feels like grooming. We have to remember the public school system is government controlled essentially. Read any of the books by John Taylor Gatto. One of his books is Weapons of Mass Instruction. Fascinating books explain the history of the modern education system, which is called the Prussian Education System. It was very intentionally designed to make good little factory workers. They on purpose to stop teaching, the critical thinking in the education system that we have now on purpose. So the education system is designed on purpose to shape and model citizens in the way the government wants us to be shaped and modeled. So we have to remember that. I’m sorry for interrupting and going on my little tangent, but this is something that is really we started to see ramp up. It’s breaking the family unit apart with the public school system is doing now. It shouldn’t be called a public school. It should be called government schooling, government brainwashing.   [01:56:14] Scott Schara: Of course, right on to the point. So my paradigm of the public school system has completely changed and I think there’s a lot of people that’s happened to. My paradigm of the hospital system didn’t change fast enough. Of course, it’s changed now. Until your paradigm or your belief about something changes, there can’t be change in actions because beliefs motivate all actions. So my closing statement would be if you believe what I’m saying, that should cause you to change your belief relative to the hospital systems. If that changes your belief, it’ll save your life.   [01:56:54] Ashley James: And there’s times when we want to take our bodies, or a loved one’s body takes us into a hospital system and we should be prepared ahead of time. Like you said, do the research around local hospitals. Find the ones that are small networks that have the best outcomes. Don’t go to a doctor that’s “the top doctor in the state” or “the top doctor in the city”. What I learned from one of my naturopathic mentors is he said, “you know that big billboard that has this picture of this oncologist and it says, top oncologist in Seattle or top oncologist in Washington State, you know how they measure that? Because I thought it was an outcome.” So I was like, oh, that oncologist must be amazing and helping people survive cancer. No! When they say top doctor, it is the doctor makes that hospital the most money. They build the most money, that’s what makes them the top-rated doctor. It’s not be rated in outcomes. So you don’t want to go to the top-rated doctor because they’re just going to put you through the wringer. They’re going to put unnecessary tests and unnecessary medications, and attempt to make more money. You really have to question that, you want to go to the doctor who has the best outcomes and long-term outcomes as well.  Scott, thank you so much for what you do. Thank you for continuing to add to your website, ouramazinggrace.net. So, are you suing? What are we looking at in terms of legal outcomes?   [01:58:31] Scott Schara: We haven’t sued yet. The doors are opening up at a fairly rapid pace. I can’t talk about some of the things that are happening just because we’re at that point. So I would believe that’s going to happen. Time will tell. It’s a lawsuit. It’s very tough in this environment because there’s no immunity from liability under the prep act. But we have enough things in Grace’s case that we believe will prevail. But we’re just waiting patiently for these doors to open up.   [01:59:06] Ashley James: Hopefully, you don’t get a corrupt judge. That’s another thing. How far does this go, right? Would you close this interview off with a prayer for all of us?   [01:59:20] Scott Schara: I’d love to do that. Heavenly Father, we come to You knowing that you don’t change. We can always come to You with our problems, and You will always provide a steady rocking solution for us. Thank You for opening up our eyes and to shine light on evil. Thank You for the opportunity today for Ashley’s interview. Please help this time to be able to change people’s hearts to call. You want everybody to be called back to You and get closer to You. I hope that this time that we have just done will do that for everybody listening and that people will share the message so that we can have more people believe in Your Son Jesus Christ. I pray all these things and many more things Lord, in Your Name. Amen.   [02:00:30] Ashley James: Amen. And I pray that we put the armor of God on and the robes of faith, and that we look to truth, veritas, we look to truth, we listen for truth, and that we can see through the lies. Satan is the king of lies and he spreads lies and that is his work. He works for his lies. I pray that we can all see through the lies and hear through the lies and cut through like a flaming sword. We cut through the lies until we can see the truth and that the truth is exposed to everyone. Thank you, God. In Jesus’ Name, we pray. Amen.   [02:01:18] Scott Schara: Amen. Thank you, Ashley.   [02:01:20] Ashley James: Thank you, Scott. I appreciate everything you do. Keep up the fight. And please can you stay in touch with us or come back on the show when you’ve got a verdict and when you’ve got more to share? We want to hear your story as you continue to spread this ripple like a tidal wave and help save so many lives. So thank you.   [02:01:46] Scott Schara: You’re very welcome.    Get Connected with Scott Schara! Website Facebook Vimeo

Coupon Code LTH at www.n1o1.com for the listener discount!   Nitric Oxide for Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease with Dr. Nathan Bryan https://www.learntruehealth.com/nitric-oxide-for-preventing-and-reversing-heart-disease-with-dr-nathan-bryan   Highlights The importance of nitric oxide in our body What is Nitric Oxide Deficiency and its causes What is nitric oxide’s role in our heart health? Why mouthwash could raise the risk of heart disease? How does face cream increase nitric oxide production? What are the two main signs of toxicity of nitric oxide?   Nitric oxide is one of the most important molecules produced in the human body that controls and regulates most cellular functions. In this episode, Dr. Nathan Bryan shares how nitric oxide helps promote proper blood flow, which may improve exercise performance, lower blood pressure, and improve the function of the brain. Intro: Hello, true health seeker and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast. So this is going to be a fun one. We have an amazing doctor on, Dr. Nathan Bryan. He’s over 20 years of experience in studying nitric oxide. I first heard about nitric oxide in my interview with Dr. Essylstyn. When he talks about how he took– I believe 24, 26 patients who are on their deathbeds. The cardiologist said we’ve given you everything, go home to die. There’s nothing we can do for you. Your heart disease is so far gone. Your moments away from death. And Dr. Esselstyn took these people and put them on a whole food plant-based diet. So put them on food that significantly increased the body’s nitric oxide, and they all bounced back. It was absolutely amazing. And of course, he went on to publish this and publish other studies and then write his book, How to Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease.  So when I heard about how he uses certain foods, like leafy greens and balsamic. And you can do some really delicious things or some really delicious balsamic stuff out there. I particularly love this one balsamic and I’m not a fan of that strong vinegar taste but this balsamic doesn’t taste like that at all. It has a hint of maple and fig to it and it’s so delicious. And you use that to cover your cooked vegetables and your steamed vegetables, which increases nitric oxide. And there are other foods we’ll talk about in today’s interview, where you will learn how to increase nitric oxide naturally in the body. And why it is the key to preventing and reversing disease and anti-aging.  Now Dr. Nathan Bryan just talks about a product he developed and did. And also developed a few pharmaceuticals that increase nitric oxide that has now, they’re doing studies, they’re doing trials, and they’ve saved people’s lives in ER. So that is very exciting. Of course, we want to prevent ourselves from ever needing to be in the ER in the first place by increasing nitric oxide naturally. He also developed a way supplement that can help you as well. And he talks about that. He also developed a really interesting skincare line because nitric oxide would put on the skin. It cures things like rosacea and fine lines and wrinkles and helps pushes oxygen into these newly constructed cells. Then they appear younger and healthier and healthier.  And I had this rosacea. My grandmother had it. My mom had some. I always thought it was just part of the women in my family. I’ve been using the cream and so I love it. It’s very high quality and I really like it. So I’m noticing that my rosacea is starting to get better, which I thought was really interesting. So I am noticing now that I’m eating more foods with nitric oxide and knowing I’ve got more energy. This is great. I can’t wait to put it to the test and do some heavy hiking this summer.  But what I have noticed by using his products since I did the interview is I have seen a difference and that’s really exciting. And he does say some things that I think are really important to take the heart and share with everyone you love, especially when he talks about certain habits that we have that can decrease your nitric oxide so much that they’re significantly important in increasing heart disease. So we want to make sure that none of our friends and family are doing these activities that are noted to decrease nitric oxide in the body, increase heart disease, and shorten people’s lifespan. So this will be an episode you want to share with everyone. I’ve already told so many of my friends. I can’t wait for you guys to listen to this episode because if you follow the simple tools he gives you today. The simple lifestyle habits that he gives you today. You’re going to increase the nitric oxide and substantially increase the quality and your life as a result. So definitely want to share this with your friends and family.  Thank you so much for being a listener of the show and if you’re interested in getting any of his products, including his book, Dr. Nathan Bryan’s book. You will go to his website, which is n1o1.com. It’s a chemical formula for nitric oxide. So that’s N, in the letter N, one, the number one and then the letter O, the number one.com And of course, use the coupon code LTH, that’s Learn True Health code. LTH will give you a discount. I made sure that my wonderful listeners were going to get a great discount when they went to the website by Dr. Nathan Bryan’s book. Or his nitric oxide-based skincare line or his special supplement, which increases nitric oxide in the body. And of course, the links to everything that Dr. Nathan Bryan does is going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast on learntruehealth.com. So come and join the Facebook group so we can talk about all this stuff after you listen to the episode. I can’t wait to hear from you guys in the Learn True Health Facebook group. And I’m so grateful that we’re here today. To be able to learn together and grow together. So we’re on a health journey together on Learn True Health. I’m glad you’re here. Have yourself a fantastic rest of your day. And enjoy today’s interview.   [00:05:37] Ashley James:  Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 478. I am so excited for today’s guest. This topic is going to be so cool. I love geeking out with the science. Dr. Nathan Bryan, I know I just got introduced to you recently and I’m surprised I haven’t heard of you sooner because we can navigate the same circles. I’ve had Chef AJ on the show a few times, and I absolutely love her. She introduced you to me. And man, I’m thrilled to just dive into what you’re doing, especially this idea that we can heal the endothelial lining of our cardiovascular system and lower blood pressure naturally.  My husband had to be at one point in his life. He had to be on blood pressure meds. It was considered that we go to a naturopathic physician and do all this healthy stuff. It was kind of a shock. He had chronic blood pressure problems his whole life and we finally addressed it and his doctor listened. You’ve tried all this other stuff and let’s get you on meds. And that’s only lowered at about eight points. Like it wasn’t anything substantial yet. All these side effects happen, lowering your life expectancy the more meds you’re on. So, I don’t know if that’s exactly direct causation. I know that medication makes the body have to burn through its nutrient store faster. So it burdens the body to have to metabolize drugs. So, there’s this give and take. Here we have a population; 1/3 of the population is obese, pre-diabetic, or diabetic.  Heart disease is one of the top killers, along with cancer. And, of course, the statistics now cancer is on the rise. And so we have the roulette of what you want to suffer from the last 20 years of your life. Diabetes, cancer, heart disease, but that’s if we go with the flow. If we eat the standard American diet, we watch mainstream media and do what everyone else is doing. So we follow Hollywood basically and follow the mainstream media diet and agenda. So we do what everyone else is doing. Go to the doctor, just let her prescriptions at you. And if you just go with the flow, you’re guaranteed to be a statistic. So now you’re going against the green and figured out a way to help people lower blood pressure naturally. So to heal their heart and prevent disease in a really exciting way. I’m just bubbling. I’m so excited. Welcome to the show. I can’t wait for our listeners to learn how we can take control of our health with the latest science that you’re involved in. So welcome.   [00:08:37] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Thank you Ashley. It’s a pleasure to be with you.    [00:08:39] Ashley James: Absolutely. Well let’s start by hearing about you, your story and what led you to decipher this information.   [00:08:47] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Well, it’s like a journey, right? So I think the longer I lived, the clearer the more I realized how little influence I had. I think God puts people in our lives at certain points and forces us to pivot. We have some of the grand plans when we’re early starting in our careers. So it’s not where we end up. I live up with no regrets and everything that’s happened, the good and the bad, that got us to where we are today. But I grew up in small-town Texas and went to the University of Texas at Austin, where I got a degree in ministry. I had an opportunity to do undergraduate research there and I fell in love with discovery. I mean that was a time in the early 90s when we were overexpressing protein and bacteria. And then isolating those proteins, then being able to do structure-function analysis. So I try to figure out how does an intact protein work and what goes wrong in certain diseases.  So then, after a degree in biochemistry, I do a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry in the job market, isn’t that great? So I knew I had to go on and extend my education. I went to LSU School of Medicine, where I got a Ph.D. in Molecular Cellular Physiology. There I was introduced to nitric oxide. It was a little early 2000s, right after a Nobel Prize was awarded for its discovery. And so that’s when I just really got entrenched in the science of nitric oxide. We knew it was important, but at that time, there were no methods to detect nitric oxide in biological systems. It was really well known about the science of what goes wrong and people that can’t make it. What are the clinical symptoms of such and there certainly weren’t getting knowledge or science around any create or recreate nitric oxide in the human body? So that was an exciting time. We developed methods that allowed us to detect nitric oxide in biological samples, whether blood or tissue biopsies. I found a number or published a number of papers during that time and then left there. I went to the Boston University Medical Center in Boston at the Cardiovascular Institute. I had a fellowship in cardiology and vascular biology, and again, I had some pretty profound discoveries. And I made a name for myself as a young investigator. I was recruited to join the faculty at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston by Fred Murad, who was the department chair there. He was one of the gentlemen that shared the Nobel Prize. I found a home because it was a nitric oxide-centric department at the Institute of Molecular Medicine.  For the first couple of years, all I did was do experiments and try to enable patents. At that point, we had enough information and the methods available that I could figure out and produce nitric oxide in biological systems. So for the first two years, I did nothing but experiments and patents to the University of Texas. Those patents were soon issued after that and then the next stage of my career was to make sure that discoveries and technology saw the light of day to retire from full-time academia in 2015.  And I’ve been an entrepreneur since and on the number of companies commercializing nitric oxide technology. So my objective today is to introduce nitric oxide-based product technology and every major market segment around the world, including drug therapy, where we have drugs in phase three clinical trials for COVID. With some drug applications going in for ischemic heart disease and topical drugs for diabetic ulcers. The exciting thing is that nitric oxide does so much and is so important in human disease that there’s really no indication that we could not go after any type of drug therapy. So that’s kind of a 20-year story in that two minutes.   [00:12:58] Ashley James: Maybe we let’s back it up to the basics for someone who’s never heard of the term nitric oxide. Why is it so important? What is it do? Why is it so exciting that you’ve been able to figure out a way to increase it in the human body?    [00:13:14] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Well, it was discovered about 30 years ago, so it’s still a new discovery in the medical sciences. But it’s a signaling molecule. It tells how cells in the body communicate with one another. It is mostly recognized as vasodilation, meaning that it dilates the blood vessels throughout the body and increases oxygen and nutrient delivery. But it’s a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. Our immune cells actually generate nitric oxide to prevent the virus from replicating and proliferating throughout the body. It shuts down bacterial respiration. So it’s part of our host defense. Understanding that and all that nitric oxide does, it becomes obvious that if you lose the ability to produce nitric oxide, which occurs as we age and are really dependent upon like diet and lifestyle. A lot of bad things happen you lose the regulation of blood flow. You can no longer dilate blood vessels, so you develop sexual dysfunction. You develop vascular dementia develop high blood pressure, which two out of three Americans have an unsafe elevation and blood pressure. You develop them. You become immunocompromised. So if you’re exposed to a virus-like Coronavirus, or like the flu, you get sick from it and develop the neurological disease.  I thought the science was very clear at the time that the older you get, the less nitric oxide you make. That is what’s responsible for the age-related disease, including cardiovascular disease, the number one killer of men and women worldwide. So that’s what science has told us over the past 20 years. That’s the missing part– the science is clear, but how do you fix it? And that’s been my contribution to the field because we figured out how to develop a shelf-stable, solid form with nitric oxide. And perhaps I’ll take a step back because maybe your listeners don’t realize that nitric oxide is a gas. So it is produced in the lining of the blood vessels. When this gas was produced, it was gone in less than a second. To be able to develop drug therapy or any type of product technology shelf-stable that recapitulates nitric oxide signaling in the human body has been very, very challenging. In fact, big pharmaceutical companies have tried to do this for the past 30 years. They’ve been largely unsuccessful. But through our research program and kind of thinking differently, thinking outside the box, we figured this out and they’ll have. So I think over two dozen issued patents claim to fame as we know how to make nitric oxide that’s extremely valuable and profound in the way that I think people are going to be healed over the next 40-50 years.   [00:16:00] Ashley James: The first time I heard about nitric oxide was when I interviewed Dr. Cadwell Esselstyn and I’m sure you know of his work. He’s also a friend of Chef AJ. He came on the show and explained that he takes people who are basically at death’s door. Their doctors have given up on them. They have multiple clogs in their heart. They’re even too sick for bypass surgery. The doctors say just go home and die. Unfortunately, when people usually find Cadwell Esselstyn and his book, How to Reverse and Prevent Heart Disease and he gets them on a whole food plant-based diet with no salt, sugar, and oil. Incredibly strict. He lately added a factor, which every few hours, like every four hours, he has the meat of a bowl of steamed greens, just any kind of leafy greens, like 12 of them. Pick a leafy green, steam it and then cover it in as much balsamic as you want. Any kind of balsamic. There are all kinds of flavors out there. And he says that balsamic vinegar and greens increase if, especially balsamic vinegar, it increases nitric oxide and helps heal the endothelial lining of the cardiovascular system. And I thought that was fascinating.  And then I heard it again when I watched the movie, The Game Changers, where they follow these athletes like the Olympic athletes who have gotten plant-based. And there’s this one woman who was 29 or 30 years old. She beat people almost half her age and won the gold in cycling at an almost age of 30 which is like an 80-year-old beating a 40-year-old in a marathon, right? So she said that her biggest thing was beats– because before and after exercise would increase the nitric oxide and help with lactic acid clearance. She found her recovery to be faster and she had her endurance higher up just by eating whole food plant-based, avoiding salt, sugar, and oil, and making sure she’s getting enough beats and enough greens in her diet.  So I hear that there are certain nutrients the body loves in order to make nitric oxide. You said that as we age, we make less. Is it because we’re age and we’re older like our telomeres are shorter or is it because as we age, we beat up our body so much, it’s like failing us and we’re not eating healthy, right? Eating enough nutrients like what is it about aging that has us make it less? And is it really about age? Or is it about lifestyle and diet?   [00:18:53] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Well, those are very good questions. And yes, I’m friends with Dr. Esselstyn and he made an enormous contribution to medicine. His observations are what led them through that being able to reverse heart disease. And it was our science that basically provided a mechanism for his observation. So to understand this age-related loss of nitric oxide production, there are two ways the body makes mycotoxin. The first one to be discovered was an enzyme called nitric oxide synthase. And that’s the enzyme that’s found in our endothelial cells. Like every second upon me, that’s what produces nitric oxide when you need to increase blood flow. For instance, if you’re trying to remember where you parked your car. Part of the memory recall is you got to increase blood flow to the prefrontal cortex to recall memory. If you can’t dilate the blood vessels to get improved blood flow and perfusion to that area, you develop cognitive disorders and become forgetful. Same thing if you want to perform sexually, you get to dilate those blood vessels to get engorged, and you get increased blood flow. You can’t make nitric oxide and you can’t.  So that’s the pathway. This becomes more compromised the older we get. The biochemistry in the enzymology is well understood that it’s basically due to oxidation of a molecule called tetrahydrobiopterin or BH4 that leads to enzyme uncoupling and endothelial dysfunction. So that is what we lose with age. The other pathway that Dr. Esselstyn exploits is that you can use a diet thru green leafy vegetables, and then there’s a molecule called nitrate. It’s inorganic nitrate. It’s found primarily in dark green leafy vegetables. So when you consume those, about 90 minutes after you consume, let’s say spinach or beets or kale or any green leafy vegetable that is concentrated, that nitrate is taken up in our guts and put it in our salivary glands.  This has been known since the late 70s. And then each time we salivate now for the next five or six hours, our secreting nitrate in our saliva, in our oral cavity. And then, under normal conditions, we have nitrate-reducing bacteria that live on the crypts of the tongue in our mouth. Then these bacteria reduce the nitrate to nitrite and nitric oxide. This happens for the next six or eight hours. When we swallow our own saliva, it’s enriched in nitrite. The nitrite becomes nitric oxide as long as there’s stomach acid being produced. So Dr. Esselstyn is very correct in the fact that if you eat green leafy vegetables and put balsamic vinegar, which is basically acetic acid. So you’re acidifying the lumen of the stomach to allow that nitric oxide being produced when it’s broken down by the bacteria and then digested in your stomach. So mechanistically, that’s how it’s designed to work.  The problem is that if you’re using mouthwash to kill the bacteria in your mouth because of bad breath or just because of habit, then you disrupt this pathway. Or, if you’re using antacid to prevent stomach acid production, you shut down nitric oxide production. And this was really the epiphany when I first had a conversation with Dr. Esselstyn. Like with any clinician, you have patients who get better and you use the same protocol on another patient and don’t get better. So why is it that one patient responds beautifully and the other patient doesn’t respond at all? The explanation for that is because Nathan goes and never asks my patients if they’re using mouthwash. I’ve never asked my patients that I put on a plant-based diet if they’re using acids because clearly, if they are on that plant-based diet, it’s not going to work for them because there’s no nitric oxide being produced by that plant-based diet. So that was the epiphany to him and I think to a lot of people, it’s because it’s the microbiome, right? A lot of people are focused on the microbiome of the gut and how important that is. There are very few people besides us who ever focused on the oral microbiome or if there’s dysbiosis in the gut. So you get symptoms and human disease if dysbiosis in the mouth becomes nitric oxide deficient. And there’s clear evidence now. We’ve published on a number of others that people who use mouthwash have a higher blood pressure than those who don’t.  We’ve also published on the fact that if we take normal tensive healthy people and the only thing we do is we don’t change their diet, don’t change any other aspects of them. We just give them a mouthwash twice a day for seven days. In some patients, we see as much as a 26-millimeter increase in their blood pressure in one week. And that’s the effects on blood pressure. There’s also evidence now that if people use mouthwash and exercise, he loses the cardioprotective benefits of exercise. I mean, that is earth-shattering because for the most part, people try to do the right thing with good intentions. They exercise, they eat a plant-based diet, their dentist has told them at some point in life, that they should use mouthwash to keep gum disease and gingivitis away. So they use mouthwash. But yet, when they do that, they eliminate the benefits of their diets. They eliminate the benefits of exercise, and they’re basically putting themselves at risk for the advanced progression of cardiovascular disease.  So 200 million Americans use mouthwash every day and 200 million Americans have an unsafe elevation of blood pressure. That’s not a coincidence. There’s a clear causal relationship between the oral bacterium and steady-state blood pressure. So if you’re using mouthwash, you have to stop.   [00:24:54] Ashley James: I want to back up and unpack that because I’m in shock and my listeners are too. So you said if you don’t have the microbiome in your mouth and you exercise, you’re losing the cardiovascular protection of nitric oxide. I’m a little confused, though. I thought you said that it was also produced in the endothelial lining. So, if you don’t have the bacteria in your mouth, does that mean your endothelial lining of the cardiovascular system doesn’t produce it or do you get less because the bacteria also produce it?   [00:25:33] Dr. Nathan Bryan: We thought early on, probably 15 years ago, these were two mutually exclusive events. So they were completely separated so one could compensate for the other. So that’s why young kids can get away with not eating a lot of vegetables or could die because they have good in the single function. And that endothelial functions are the nitric oxide is produced. The blood vessel lining can compensate and overcome a lack of a good die. But the older you get, we know that we get the less functional. Our endothelial becomes the less nitric oxide we make. So we have to compensate for that through the diet. But this evidence points to the fact that the benefits of exercise are improvement and endothelial function. But the issue is if you’re in moderately good shape and you begin to exercise, that creates some shear stress in that skeletal muscle, whether it’s in the legs if you’re running or biking or if it’s in the biceps if you’re doing curls. So the muscle tells, I need more oxygen and nutrients being delivered because you’re working me harder. So the only way to do that, especially in the heart, is to dilate the blood vessels production of nitric oxide.  So if your body can make sufficient nitric oxide, it does. And then there’s an adaptive response where it actually improves the ability. So if you’re stressing your body and your body goes, I need to up my game because I need to be ready for the next stressful event. There’s an improvement in nitric oxide. The problem is when you have endothelial dysfunction, like older patients who have chest pain or shortness of breath. They go to a cardiologist, put them on a treadmill, and come up with some leads on EKG. As they increase the workload, and if the coronary arteries can’t produce nitric oxide to dilate the coronary arteries, then that heart becomes hypoxic because it can increase the oxygen delivery to meet the increased metabolic demand. So there are changes in electrical activity. So they failed an exercise stress test.  So your ability to produce nitric oxide predicts how well you can perform. So there’s a clear association between, if you’re using mouthwash, there’s an association with endothelial dysfunction. So you’re losing the protective benefits of exercise. There’s a bit of an explanation for that because when you produce nitric oxide, it’s oxidized almost immediately to nitrite and nitrate. Then your body’s kind of the biomarkers we look at or plasma levels of nitrite and nitrate. So when you’re exercising and that’s where things like beetroot extract or titrating up your nitric oxide levels prior to sports performance because it is when oxygen is needed to make nitric oxide and the lining in the blood vessels.  So when you reach that anaerobic threshold and oxygen becomes limiting, your nitric oxide production stops from the enzyme that makes nitric oxide. If you’ve created a pool of nitrites because you’ve generated a lot of nitric oxides prior to the anaerobic threshold. The nitrite under those low oxygen conditions actually generates nitric oxide in an enzyme-independent manner.   [00:28:57] Ashley James: Does your body take the nitrite and then in an anaerobic state, turning into nitric oxide?   [00:29:07] Dr. Nathan Bryan: That’s right. So what happens? The pKa of nitrites is about 3.4. So they’re mammalian enzymes that, specifically as the pH of the muscle decreases or the tissue decreases, that nitride becomes nitric oxide. So then, what does that nitric oxide do? It does a lot of things. Number one, it binds to cytochrome c oxidase and mitochondria so that you get oxygen diffusing further into tissue. And you push that anaerobic threshold back, so you get less lactic acid buildup. You can oxygenate that tissue to where you can turn the nitric oxide back on. It’s a self-feeding or feed-forward mechanism that’s all dependent upon your steady-state levels of nitrite. And your ability to titrate up these nitrite stores prior to reaching that anaerobic threshold.    [00:29:54] Ashley James: Now, we don’t need to get smoked bacon with potassium nitrite in it to get our nitrites. It’s a different kind of nitrite and nitrate. I’ve always thought if people knew what they put in deli meat to preserve the meat, so the meat didn’t look gray. How it affects the kidneys and how it affects the circulation in the body that they would not eat that. Those preservatives in that state are not what you’re talking about. Can you explain how do we help the body? Where are we getting the nitrites and nitrates from our food? Is it more leafy greens and the beet? Is that the best thing to do to get it from our food as the best source?    [00:30:50] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Well, yes. So it’s been a misconception and this may not be surprising to you but the media and big Pharma have not always told the truth. In terms of what’s good for us and what’s bad for us. So the nitrites and nitrates found in green leafy vegetables are the exact same molecule they used to cure hotdogs. So there are a lot of other preservatives in those curing processed meats that probably aren’t good for you. But nitrate and nitrite are protected.  If you think about the science of curing, what are they doing? Well, you’re preventing lipid oxidation, but that’s pretty important in human physiology. So nitrite has that. So that they end up in processed meat, it prevents listeria clostridium along with these foodborne pathogens. Well, that’s pretty important in human physiology as you can prevent bacterial outbreaks, and then it binds to the iron of myoglobin, turning into a nice pink color. It does the same thing to hemoglobin. It binds to hemoglobin and allows oxygen to be delivered throughout the body. So the same chemistry involved in meat curing is the same chemistry that we’re utilizing in human physiology to prevent oxidative stress, prevent inflammation, and improve oxygen delivery to a working muscle.  So here’s where the misconception came and I don’t deny the data on the fact that there’s an increased relative risk on people who eat curing processed meats and have a slight increase in the risk of certain gastrointestinal cancers. That’s called an association, but it’s certainly not causation. In order for you to establish causation, you have to have a biologically plausible mechanism that explains that observation. So in the 1960s and early 70s, they go– oh, well, it has to be nitrite and nitrate in the curing processed meats because of those form nitrosamine and nitrosamine cause cancer. So there’s their biologically plausible mechanism.  That stood for about 40 years until the discovery of nitric oxide. Then it was realized, well, nitrite and nitrate are actually produced and obviously, why would our bodies naturally produce carcinogens? And then, the national government, the National Institute of Health and Public Health and Human safety, did long-term safety studies on nitrite and nitrate in our food supply. What they found was the National Toxicology Program, that’s the Gold Standard in Toxicology. So they did those escalations for both nitrite and nitrate in male and female mice, rats, and rabbits. Do you know what they found? They prevented cancer. They didn’t cause cancer. Actually, in many cases they prevented cancer.  So that story began to fall apart, and then if that were true because 85% of the nitrate and nitrite exposure we get from our diet is from green leafy vegetables. Only 5% comes from cured and processed meats. The other 10% comes from swallowing their own saliva. It’s 10% because the nitric oxide produced endogenously is oxidized to nitrate. That nitrate in the body doesn’t discriminate the nitrate that comes from spinach versus on which is formed from enzymatic NO production. So then our body puts the nitrate in our salivary glands, we salivate, generate nitrite, swallow the nitrite, and become nitric oxide gas. So if that were the case, vegetarians or people who had a plant-based diet would have about a 10 times higher incidence of cancer and heart disease than non-vegetarians and we know it’s just the opposite.   [00:34:33] Ashley James: Right. If nitrates and nitrites were the cause. So interesting, though. We want the benefits that you’re talking about having plentiful amounts, adequate enough amounts with as much nitric oxide as the body needs, right? We want that and it doesn’t sound like we’d get it from eating a lot of cured meats. You might get like you said, 5% and you’re not getting all the benefits on all the other nutrients that come from eating plants. So there’s a significant percentage when you eat plants versus the cured meats, but also really important. Its 10% is from your oral health and having a healthy microbiome in your mouth, and not using mouthwash. It makes me think about people who are on antibiotics, and if that’s wipe-out those good bacteria, they immediately wipe out 10% of their nitric oxide production. I know you’d blow my mind in this interview, and we’re just warming up. I only knew about vasodilation and that’s why I was excited. I knew that people reported that it helps with endurance and recovery. So it helped lower lactic acid buildup and vasodilation which is so important. Can you talk a bit more about the signaling of it? These new discoveries about how nitric oxide is used to help the parts of the body signal and talk to each other.   [00:36:10] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Well, one of the most profound discoveries and realizations in nitric oxide signaling was in 2015 with Jonathan Stamler, a good friend and colleague in Case Western, who published a paper that revealed that nitric oxide is required for oxygen delivery. As part of its signaling, nitric oxide can bind the metals or activate second messenger systems. But it can also bind to tiles on proteins. These are the sulfur-containing amino acids on proteins. So in oxygen delivery, when you breathe, you pick up oxygen and exhale CO2. And when the red blood cells go from the arterial side to the venous side through the capillaries, they release oxygen. That’s where oxygen and CO2 exchange occurred in a small red blood vessel. In order for oxygen to come off hemoglobin, nitric oxide has to be bound. If we don’t have nitric oxide bound to hemoglobin, it doesn’t undergo that structural change, which is called the Bohr Effect, and oxygen doesn’t come off. This became obvious over the last two years in COVID because the problem with COVID is a loss of blood oxygen saturation. So they become hypoxemic and put them on oxygen. If they don’t improve their oxygen saturation, they put on a ventilator and 90% of people put on a ventilator and die. That’s the root cause of COVID.  In 2020, we got an investigational new drug application approved by the FDA, where we started our nitric oxide drug and phase three clinical trials for COVID. We see the importance of nitric oxide and oxygen uptake and oxygen delivery. In our drug study, we’re seeing COVID patients that get sick and they get blood oxygen saturation in their below 80, sometimes in their high 70s. Typically, that patient would be put on vent immediately. But they take our nitric oxide drug, and within eight minutes, we see blood oxygen saturation goes to the high 90s.  And that explains everything we know about COVID over the past two years and that 15 years was the first SARS COV-1. The people who get sick and hospitalized from COVID are the ones that can make nitric oxide. Who are those? Those are the elderly African Americans, people with underlying cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and smokers. Is that patient population this nitric oxide deficient? And few are nitric oxide deficient and you get exposed to COVID. The virus rapidly replicates and proliferates throughout the body. You get the systemic disease, you lose oxygen saturation, and in the hospital, you are put on a bed and you die. The simple fix is simply taking our nitric oxide drug, improving signaling, preventing vascular inflammation, improving oxygenation and you kill the virus. In 2005 papers were published showing that nitric oxide prevents Coronavirus replication. So that’s probably one of the most important aspects of signaling. In the other aspects of signaling, you said earlier that loss of nitric oxide production causes telomere shortening. The signaling aspect is that you need nitric oxide to transcribe and make the telomeres enzyme, preventing telomere shortening. It co-localizes with nitric oxide synthase. If you can’t make nitric oxide, you don’t get to the polymerase, and you get telomere shortening. The other important component may be the most important is stem cell function. Nitric oxide is what tells our own body and tells our own stem cells in need to mobilize and differentiate. If you have a cough or an injury, nitric oxide is the signal that says, hey, I’m getting an injury. We need to mobilize our immune system and increase blood flow to that side of injury. And we need to make new cardiac myocytes, for example, or we need to make new neurons because we had a stroke. And if you can’t make nitric oxide in the body, it doesn’t get the signal to go there and repair any damaged tissue. The result is you don’t recover from injury. If you have a heart attack or stroke, typically, you lose neurological function. You lose cardiac function unless you do stem cells or stimulate your body’s own stem cells. And you can only do that through improving nitric oxide.   [00:40:48] Ashley James: I see that application for your drug for the emergency room. Someone comes in with a stroke, they just had one, and it would make sense to give it to them. Someone just comes in having a heart attack, and it makes sense to give it to them. You want to do everything you can to increase oxygen to oxygen-starved tissues because of a stroke or a heart attack. But, of course, my goal in this podcast is to help people prevent illness in the first place and help people reverse illness wherever they are. Whether they’re in early stage or even late stage. As long as your heart’s beating and you’re breathing and you’re able to take action for yourself, then there’s hope. And there are things you can do to help your body heal itself. But even if someone were to go to the emergency room, this was available to them. And they didn’t know about natural medicine and then they got sick. So that would be a fantastic emergency medicine at that moment to help them have a better outcome. So I’m really excited about your drug.  As a society, we overuse drugs, but drugs aren’t all inherently bad. There are some amazing lifesaving drugs and the problem is that if you only go to the doctor, they throw drugs at you and don’t help you change your lifestyle and diet. And doesn’t look into the latest science of things. Then there were just throwing a bunch of drugs at a problem that might have been a diet or nutrient deficiency or diet problem or a lifestyle problem. So it’s really good, my listeners know. Does anybody have new listeners that haven’t thought of it this way? You don’t take your broken-down car to a plumber. I mean, that’s not plumbers, it’s a mechanic, right? So you take your car to a mechanic. Don’t take your health, always to the same doctor who only has a limited world view on health right? I remember I’m from Canada. I remember I’m coming to the states and I picked out that I thought it was a good doctor. He was an osteopath, so I thought it was more holistic-minded. This is back, and we lived in Vegas, I lived in Henderson. So I went to an osteopath, really great guy. He was referred to me by my chiropractor’s wife, who’s a functional medicine practitioner and she thought that this would be good. I go to him and I’m complaining about this pain in my ovary and I don’t know if I’m having a cyst or what’s going on. I just want an ultrasound. I just want to make sure everything’s okay. I’m kind of nervous about it. And he walks into the office holding his prescription pad, writing a prescription for pain, and he’s walking in. I’m like– I don’t want pain medicine. I’m in pain, but that’s okay because pain is like notifying me that there’s something wrong and as a Canadian, it’s harder to get pain medicines that I don’t know.  It’s different now, this is back in 2008, but it’s harder to get paid for medicines in Canada. But in the States, all I had to do was say I’m in pain and they’re like– oh, how many pain prescriptions do you want? I remember I went to a doctor, doesn’t stick to the sore throat. It’s just a sore throat, but it’s not going away. I just want to get it checked out. I’m feeling a little nervous about it. And this was before I was into Holistic Health. She wrote me a prescription for some cough syrup that had a bunch of pain meds in it. I thought this was crazy. Like I’ve never taken a cough syrup with pain meds before. Of course, it numbs my throat and everything. But it’s just this idea that we’re over-drugging ourselves.  So we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. If there’s a drug and you’re developing a drug that can increase nitric oxide that can save lives at the moment, that’s amazing. And then, of course, in the long term, I’d love for everyone to learn what they can do to increase nitric oxide in their lifestyle and in their diet as much as possible. But, as you’ve already mentioned, eating leafy green vegetables helps hugely and making sure to take care of your oral microbiome. Don’t do things that kill the microbiome in your mouth. So we’ve got two very easy to follow and very effective tips. Are there any other lifestyle tips for ensuring the protection of our nitric oxide production and in anything else we can do to enhance nitric oxide production?   [00:45:20] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Yes, there’s a lot. So let me go back because you make some very important points there. Interestingly, when I first found the patents and some medical school faculty, we had access to the hospital and patients. Actually, Jim Wilson, who’s a famous cardiologist who unfortunately passed away last year, his idea was to use it for heart attack. So if you’ve got what’s called an ischemic patient, [inaudible 00:45:47] which is ischemia, then the problem is they have an acute obstruction in a coronary artery so we could dose them in the field, bring them back and see if we can protect the heart from injury. So, it made perfect sense. But obviously, that’s a high-risk patient population. People are going to die and so we just made the decision well. With this early technology, let’s not put it in high-risk patients. But you hit the nail right on the head. So whether it’s an ischemic stroke or heart attack, it’s a very important application. But as you also said, prevention is much easier than treatment. So we have to address it before you have a heart attack. Then going back to drugs, I’m trained as a drug discovery chemist that’s designed to understand human disease to the extent that we can rationally design drugs. My philosophy is much different than major drug manufacturers because what they do is create a synthetic compound. It’s typically, probably 90% of the drugs out there what’s called enzyme inhibitors preventing the activity of a certain enzyme. That’s called pharmacology and there are always consequences that cause side effects or body is not designed to inhibit an enzyme for the rest of our lives, which is what drug therapy does. So what we’ve done is called restorative physiology. We understand the enzymology of many different proteins and enzymes, primarily nitric oxide-producing enzymes. We know what goes wrong in people and we can restore the function of that enzyme. So when the drug therapy that we develop is restorative in nature. It’s not an inhibitor. It’s basically giving back to the body what’s missing in terms of nitric oxide. So we know how much nitric oxide a healthy human makes, and we basically deliver that and recapitulate nitric oxide-based signaling in the human body. So drugs or anything that goes through FDA-approved clinical trials, and their prescription. Although we do have a drug discovery program and biotech company through, nitric oxide innovations are different than the drugs on the market. For most people and probably many holistic people, drugs are bad words. But what we’re doing is really a drug intended to give the body what it needs. The body heals itself. So that’s our drug discovery platform. Trying to get these different drugs through the FDA-approved clinical trial, which by the way, is a very heavy lift, especially competing against people like Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J. Government employees doing their clinical trials for them. But you don’t need that.  Going back to what we can do to stimulate our own nitric oxide production or prevent the age-related decline. You do two things, you stop doing the things that disrupt nitric oxide production and start doing the things that stimulate it. So we can address both of those. So number one, if you’re using mouthwash, you have to stop. The evidence is clear. I was in the Doctor Show last year where we revealed that mouthwash makes the blood pressure goes up. With mouthwash, you lose the benefits of exercise. So if you’re using mouthwash, you have to stop. Don’t overtake antibiotics. Over 200 million prescriptions are written every year for antibiotics. If you get an active infection, the antibiotics are very important but don’t overdo it because you’re killing the bad guys, but you’re also killing the good guys.  The other thing is fluoride toothpaste or fluoride rinses, Fluoride to antiseptic. It’s a neurotoxin, and it kills your thyroid function. So if you’re using fluoride toothpaste, throw that away. Never buy fluoride toothpaste again. There’s a reason we have an epidemic of hypothyroidism. Fluoride competes with iodine binding to thyroid hormone can’t convert T4 to T3 with Iodine. Then the other thing is antacids. In over 200 million prescriptions are written for antacid every year and that’s not even counting the number of over-the-counter purchases. You have to have stomach acid and as Dr. Esselstyn says, take some apple cider vinegar before each meal. Acidify the stomach to get a better breakdown of proteins. You get your nitric oxide being produced. So those are the three things that will really make a huge difference in people’s health. Throw out the Fluoride, stop using mouthwash, and stop using an antacid. So those are the three things you must do to get out of your body’s waste that can make nitric oxide. And then do the things that stimulate more green leafy vegetables, moderate physical exercise, and 20 to 30 minutes of sunlight a day. For those that live in the North and there are long winters, you have to get an infrared sauna or infrared light.   [00:50:30] Ashley James: I have Sunlighten Sauna and it’s the coolest thing ever. It’s near, mid, and far-infrared. I feel like a new person. I love using it. I live out in the Pacific Northwest and it’s 4:30. The sun goes down at night and doesn’t come back until 7:30. So we got those long winters, but I feel like a new person since I got that Sunlighten Sauna and I absolutely love it. I interviewed the founder of Sunlighten and it was a great interview. She started the company because her brother was dying of cancer and doing everything he could to fight it. Maybe it was cancer because it was a few years ago when we did the interview. I’m pretty sure it’s cancer but he was very sick. I can’t remember what it was. It might have been cancer or might have been Lyme Disease but he was basically laid out flat on the couch. He was super sick. And then he found out that infrared could help him and it gave him a leg up. Then she developed that company and it’s all non-toxic. My listeners get a great discount when they check out Sunlighten Sauna. I absolutely love Sunlighten Sauna technology. Now, I know another reason why I love it. It increases nitric oxide production and helps my body to do that. So you talk about Fluoride, my question is, what about Fluoride and Chlorine in that drinking water? We should do our best to drink water that doesn’t have Fluoride in it and Chlorine. Does Chlorine also affect nitric oxide and does it not also disrupt the microbiome?   [00:52:06] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Chlorine and Fluoride. If you go back to the periodic table, these are a group of elements called halogens. There’s Fluoride, Chlorine, Iodine, and Bromine– I don’t have in front of me, but those are the major ones. The biggest thing with Fluoride, Chlorine, and chloride is they compete with Iodine, binding the thyroid hormone. So most Americans are deficient in Iodine, 95% of Americans because the only dietary sources of Iodine are typically seaweed or iodized salt. So we don’t get enough Iodine in the body, yet we’re exposed to Fluoride in our drinking water. Fluoride in toothpaste. Most humans have more Fluoride and chloride in their blood-streaming cells than Iodine. They’re the same type of chemistry with the same halogen properties on that one row on the periodic table. They have similar functions and similar chemistry. So they act as competitors in binding Iodine to thyroid hormone. So, you become hypothyroid. I tell people that everybody has to supplement with Iodine. Everybody’s deficient in Iodine.  Going back to your question, the municipal waters are probably the worst thing in the world you can drink. Not only does it have Fluoride and Chlorine, but it has drug metabolites in it. So you have to have a pump filtration system to remove all these toxins from the water supply. People think it’s bad to drink it. What’s worse, it’s bad to cook in it. So it’s even worse to bathe in it because you’re heating the bathwater up to sometimes 104, 110 degrees, then you volatilize and there are chloramines and you inhale it. So you get better absorption, transdermal through inhaling it. Volatilize by heating the water and people get sick and get a chronic illness. So you have to eat, drink and bathe in good clean water and not municipal water coming out of the pipes of major metropolitan areas.    [00:54:12] Ashley James: I absolutely agree with you. I felt amazing when I lived in a place with the well water. It makes such a difference to bathe in water, drink water, and cook with water that is from the ground that doesn’t have any fluoride, Chlorine, or any chemicals in it. Oh, so good. I recently found a water filter that’s affordable, that removes everything. It’s called Zero water. I’ve been meeting to contact the company and see if they could get whether science guys to come on and explain how it works. But it’s better than any other filter I found and it’s like 30 bucks, and it looks like any other kind of picture. They have the bigger ones, like a 23 cup one, and that’s the one I got. But it comes with a tester that tests the total dissolved solids of parts per million. And sure, it sets to zero and they give you the little machine that tests the water for you.  So that you know when it starts showing numbers on it and when to replace the filter. It takes for me about every two months to replace the filter. I’m sure up it works as well as a four hundred dollars in reverse osmosis and it’s only like 30 bucks. So lately, I found out a few months ago and the water tastes so good coming out. Now that we’re living in a place with municipal water, I need to find something better, even better than my Berkey. My Berkey wasn’t removing everything. But it [inaudible 55:45] everything. So I thought that was really cool. You’ve given us so much information and I keep thinking. You’ve created some products that we can use because I’m going to do everything you said. And in addition to that, I want to take it to the next level. I’m sure my listeners are the same, or they’re like—well, what else I can do.  You’ve given us the life hacks and things that we can make sure that we’re doing, which are simple enough. Clean water, clean toothpaste, no mouthwash, take care of the microbiome, eat foods like nice leafy greens, and eat food that increases nitric oxide. But in addition to that, what else can we do to take it to the next level and get the maximum benefit considering that nitric oxide does so much more than I thought that it helps. If it’s helping with telomeres, it’s helping extend life. It’s helping literally tell your DNA to live longer. I heard you mentioned how it helps mitochondrial function. I don’t quite understand exactly what you said and how it affects viral or suppresses viral production in bacterial production. I understood that it is fundamental to the immune system that your immune cells help make it and the signaling within the cells. Vasodilation like there are so many aspects. One point alone, it increases oxygen, drives deeper into the tissue and pushes back lactic acid. When I go to exercise, I hate it when I’m getting started and my muscles are already fatigued, burning and I’m already anaerobic.  I look at my son, who’s about to be seven. I remember having energy for days. I can take this kid to play areas and I’m waiting for him; my butt gets numb, or my feet get cold. Something like my body is hanging out and chilling with other moms. I’m waiting for my kid to get tired—three and a half hours into a play area. I’m bored and cold and ready to go home and he’s just like—go, go, go. To have that fitness level again, anything to increase that ability to go longer and feel like you’re seven again.  So tell us about the products you’ve created and offer a fantastic discount to the listeners. We are so grateful for giving us 10% off. Every little bit helps these days. The coupon code, of course, we’re all everything when we get a discount. We always ask for the coupon code LTH, which is Learn True Health podcast. So LTH is a discount. You have several websites, but the best website for all our listeners to go to and the easiest one is n as in the letter n, one, o, one dot com. It’s n1o1.com. I’m sure there’s a reason for that. Is that the nitric oxide molecule?   [00:59:17] Dr. Nathan Bryan: That’s one Nitrogen and one Oxygen.    [00:59:20] Ashley James: Yes, like H2O is water. So it’s n1o1.com, and that one does not spell out n1o1.com. But, of course, the links to everything that we’re talking about today was going to be in the show in today’s podcast in learntruehealth.com. But when we went to n1o1.com, I was surprised about the products because the first thing I saw was some face creams. And I’m all about looking good. But here you are, scientists, about how to increase nitric oxide production. So let’s start with the obvious, what’s up with the face creams?   [00:59:55] Dr. Nathan Bryan: This has been an evolution. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and as I mentioned early on, when we started going and when we solved the riddle on how to create nitric oxide in a safe and effective manner, it changes everything. So when we started developing product technology, we first launched in the dietary supplement space, and we set good results there. And then I get to think, what else that is people forget the skins and organs. Like the heart, if you have an interruption of blood supply to the heart, what happens? The heart fails. If you have a disruption in the blood supply to the brain, well, the brain fails. Just like any other organ, if you have decreased blood flow to the skin, what happens? It fails. What does the failing skin look like? When you lose collagen and you lose hydration, fine lines and wrinkles start to appear and the skin hangs and drupes, you get dermatitis, and you get age spots, and that’s aging.  What is the root cause of aging? Well, it’s a lack of nitric oxide production. So we figured out how to deliver a solid dose form of nitric oxide in the form of a lozenge. So we created a door chamber serum that when you mix these two components together, you basically take one pump from one side, one pump from the other. So you mix it together, then chemistry starts as normally would on the skin’s surface and we generate nitric oxide gas. This is the coolest show in the history of any product technology. Aesthetics and skincare’s multibillion-dollar. People buy a lot of stuff and most cosmetic skincare products are masking. They hide the blemishes, and they hide the fine lines and wrinkles. They don’t get to the root cause.  When you apply this to the skin, you’ll see it turned pink. What is that? That’s the infusion of blood and oxygen to that area. The nitric oxide is the gas part that diffuses above the skin, but part of it diffuses into the dermis and opens up capillaries. It gives blood oxygen which is blood, into the cells, just like everything we’ve discussed. What does that mean when you get oxygen nutrient deliveries? Stem cells begin to turn on, so you get to regenerative cells, so they slough off the old cells. We regenerate new cells, and we do biopsies. We’ve seen improvement in collagen deposition, cellular hydration, infections, whether it’s some dermatitis or acne. We kill the bacteria, fine lines and wrinkles disappear, and so just like we can recover.  Our nitric oxide can make a heart attack, but there’s injury and reduced blood supply to the heart. We can overcome the effects of loss of fusion to the skin by providing a source of mycotoxins in the body. Otherwise, it didn’t make it. The result is that we’ve got four published clinical trials on that and see improvements from fine lines and wrinkles to scar remediation, acne, eczema, and any type of dermatitis. Again, it doesn’t mask. We’re getting to the root cause of that underlying skin disorder or just preventing the looks of aging. So that was the N101 serum and then we created an entire line. We had a glycolic wash that helps remove the old cells because we’re improving cellular turnover like a colic wash that gets rid of the old cells so that the new cells can come forward. We got an eye cream and a face cream that contains peptides and growth factors. It’s a really remarkable system and as they said, you don’t have to guess if this product is working. You can see it working right between your eyes. We call it the pink glow, the Pneuma glow.   [01:03:46] Ashley James: So it’s helping increase oxygen to the cells that aren’t getting enough oxygen, which is then all the cells are just functioning better. It sounds like the fountain of youth. It sounds like it’s going to pour the fountain of youth on my face. I’m really excited about that. Luckily, I don’t have any major skin issues. But I hit my 40s now and I want to prevent looking like a leather boot in 10 years. I’m excited about that. I have a little bit of rosacea that my grandmother and my mom had. I’m not going to blame my genes. I’m sure that there’s something I can do to change. I’ve always been figuring out things in my diet and my lifestyle to improve. But it would be neat if it helped with that. Does it help reduce acne because the bacteria are anaerobic bacteria? The bacteria that causes acne, is it basically killed because the tissues are oxygen?   [01:04:54] Dr. Nathan Bryan:  It does two things. There’s clear evidence of a mechanism of how nitric oxide kills bacteria. It binds to the iron-sulfur centers, which are the respiratory sites of bacteria. So basically, it suffocates the bacteria. So there are clear antimicrobial, antibacterial effects of nitric oxide. So in acne, it’s doing two things. It kills the bacteria’s active infection in the pustules but also calms the inflammation and mobile and gets the blood supply there. So you shut down the immune response because the immune system doesn’t need to be activated. There are no bacteria and then you suppress the inflammatory response. That’s how you get rid of acne.   [01:05:35] Ashley James: I apologize if you said this before. I just really want to be clear about it. Does nitric oxide in every tissue of the body decrease inflammatory response?   [01:05:53] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Yes. I mean, that’s part of nitric oxide drops. In acute inflammation, whether it’s an injury, whether it’s a cut or whether it’s an exposure to an infection. An acute inflammatory response is necessary for our survival and part of that is mediated through nitric oxide. So you have to mobilize your immune system, dilate the blood vessels, and then go and isolate that source of infection or injury to the immune cells. So it generates a lot of nitric oxide at the site of injury. And that happens for four or five hours and then the inflammatory immune cascade goes away.  The problem with chronic inflammation, there’s no off switch. So what nitric oxide does, when you have whether it’s acute inflammation in the gut, whether it’s ulcerative colitis or inflammatory bowel disease or rheumatoid arthritis or lupus or any autoimmune disease with chronic inflammation, it shuts down systemic nitric oxide production. So nitric oxide, one of its roles is to shut down the inflammatory response and inflammation. The earliest stages of that are what’s called microvascular inflammation.  When you get monocytes and neutrophils that stick to the lining of the blood vessel, they migrate through. They elicit an immune response. And that’s the inflammation, oxidative stress and immune dysfunction that occur in every inflammatory condition. If you restore nitric oxide production, primarily endothelial nitric oxide production, you prevent that entire inflammatory cascade. You suppress inflammation. You suppress the immune dysfunction or shut down the oxidative stress associated with all of it. One of my patents is on a method of reducing inflammation as measured by C-reactive protein. So when we improve nitric oxide production in the human body, we decrease C-reactive protein, which is an acute-phase marker of inflammation.   [01:07:50] Ashley James: That is so cool because so many doctors say inflammation is the root cause of the problem and it’s like– no, you’re going to go deeper.   [01:08:03] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Inflammation is the consequence of loss of nitric oxide.   [01:08:05] Ashley James:  Right. I’ve interviewed several doctors that say too much lactic acid is the cause of all diseases. It’s like they all have a piece of an elephant. Have you heard that? I don’t know if it’s a parable. You’ve heard the story of 12 Blind Men is all touching a part of an elephant. And they’re all arguing like– no, describe the elephant. Well, it feels large and leathery. No, it feels like a rope. No, it feels like a very thin thing. No, it feels round like a hose. So each person is touching a different part of the elephant. So we have to be careful not to treat the smoke but go after the fire. Imagine every time you show up to a fire, and we saw firemen putting it out, and we’re like—aha, firemen caused the fire because every time we see a fire, there’s firemen. Or oh, let’s start treating the smoke. See the smoke? There’s smoke. We should treat it and what’s causing the fire and how to put it out.  So inflammation is a byproduct. Lactic acid is a byproduct where we need to keep going deeper. Yes, everyone wants to address decreasing inflammation. Everyone wants to eat a low inflammatory diet. Doesn’t want to do anything in your lifestyle, your diet that increases inflammation, just like you don’t want to have too much lactic acid. And you want to make sure you have enough oxygen for yourself and this is all very important. But what is the root? Get to the root. We’re seeing that nitric oxide is the absolute root. We have to make sure we have enough of it or else everything just becomes the standard American statistic. One in three people is dying of something right now and 70% of our population is on at least one prescription medication. I would say 70% of people in America probably have low nitric oxide, given what we’re hearing today.   [01:10:10] Dr. Nathan Bryan: You made a very good point. I just want to expound because I get questions and everybody can research now. They can go to Google and put it in and find anything they’re looking for. You can get the answer to whatever you’re looking for, whether it’s right or wrong. There’s an answer out there. I read a paper that says in chronic inflammation, and nitric oxide contributes to tissue damage during that inflammation. So nitric oxide should be contraindicated inflammatory disease. If you read the literature, we looked in lupus or Parkinson’s disease or ulcerative colitis in these scientific papers. In the tissue pathology reports, we found an increase in nitrotyrosine and peroxynitrite. So nitric oxide is causing that damage. So it’s the exact same analogy you use. When there’s a crime, the police show up at the crime scene. The interpretation isn’t that the police cause the crime. But, of course, nitric oxide is there in that inflammatory. That’s its job because it’s there doesn’t mean that it’s contributed to the crime or caused the disease. So it’s there to clean up the mess. So you have to be careful on how you interpret data. And scientists are famous for this. You give the data and there’s a misinterpretation of the data. Most of the data out there can sometimes be misinterpreted by the authors of the paper and even by the people who read it.  So it’s clear that low nitric oxide is bad. Too much nitric oxide is bad. Too little water is bad, too much water– obviously, if you drink too much water in a short period of time, your [inaudible 01:11:55] and you’ll die. So everything in moderation. It’s very important to realize that you have to figure it out and generate the right amount of nitric oxide at the right time and in the right place. That’s what we’ve been able to figure it out over the past 20 years and nobody else has been able to figure this out.   [01:12:13] Ashley James: Okay, that brings me to the question. How much is nitric oxide too much? How do we know if we’re reaching toxic levels of nitric oxide? To eat four cups of leafy greens a day, you’re not going to kill yourself. If you try to eat four grocery bags a day, probably you would explode. Could we get toxic with nitric oxide through– you’ve got nitric oxide lozenges. I’m excited about learning about that. It is my next and I want to explore that. But we’re doing okay. So we’re going to do everything you’ve already said, eat healthily, and make sure we’re not killing the bacteria in our mouths. And, of course, under natural intervention, we wouldn’t have too much nitric oxide, at least. I’m guessing. Let me know if I’m wrong. In addition to that, I want to increase my nitric oxide more and I want to take your lozenges. Could I become nitric oxide toxic?   [01:13:13] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Yes, very good questions. Now, let me go back and hit on the points that you brought up earlier again. So you mentioned green leafy vegetables and eating a good clean diet. Here’s the challenge. We did this and we published this in 2015. We wanted to answer that same question you asked. How much broccoli or celery would I need to eat? How much spinach do I need to eat in one serving to get enough nitrate in that food to normalize my blood pressure and improve nitric oxide production? A very important question because if we can answer that question, we can change the strict guidelines. We can get people off blood pressure medicine simply through dietary intervention.  And we can recapitulate Dr. Esselstyn’s work in patients with full-blown coronary artery disease. So in order to answer that question, we went to five different cities across the US. We went to the same retail grocery, we bought the same vegetables and brought them back to the lab and analyzed them. So what we found was pretty striking. We found that if you lived, for instance, in Dallas or Chicago, and you went to what’s called [inaudible 01:14:29] or some retail grocery. So you bought six stalks of celery and you consume those six stalks within 20 minutes, which would give you enough nitric to normalize your blood pressure.  If you lived in New York, you’d have to eat about 40 stalks of celery. So there are regional differences in the nitrate content of vegetables, and it’s all across the US. So we went to New York, and we went to Raleigh, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles. There’s as much as 50-fold difference in the nitrate content of broccoli or celery in New York, as there in Dallas or Los Angeles. It holds true for lettuce, spinach, and every vegetable we measure. So the point of that is that there’s no way in hell we can make recommendations because it depends on where you live and how your vegetables are grown. By the way, those were conventionally grown vegetables. We also compared it to organically grown vegetables and found that organically grown vegetables across the board have as much as the five to 10 times less nitrate than conventionally grown. The variation is much higher, maybe a hundredfold difference in nitrate content of organically grown vegetables from different regions of the US. So the point is, you cannot eat enough, just like you can’t eat enough curing processed meats to get enough nitrite/nitrate to lower your blood pressure. You can’t eat enough organic vegetables to get enough nitrate because to have an organic label, and you’re not allowed to add nitrogen-based fertilizers to the soil. So as a consequence, the soil is nitrogen deficient, and the vegetables that are grown in it don’t accumulate nitrate. Without nitrate or nitrogen, they don’t assimilate other vitamins and minerals. So organically grown vegetables are healthy simply because they’re not exposed to herbicides or pesticides. But they’re depleted of most nutrients, including nitrate.  So, that adds another level of complexity to trying to do the right thing. Yet not getting what we are designed to be and I’ve seen data. Since the 1940s, there’s been a 90% decline in the trace minerals and nutrients in the food that’s grown in the US. So we have to feed a growing planet, and that increased deficiency of food production has led to a decrease in nutrient absorption and assimilation. So we’re producing a less nutritious product globally.    [01:16:58] Ashley James: Exactly. And then we’re getting all these nutrient deficiency diseases, and someone can be obese and nutrient deficient at the same time. And one of my mentors, Dr. Joel Wallach, talks about his first degree was in soil agriculture. And then, he was a veterinarian, pathologist, and research scientist and later became a naturopathic physician. So here’s a fun story. You should check out his story of it. He saw early on like calf pellets of all these great vitamins and minerals. So he started eating calf pellets as a kid because he looked at the package and asked his dad– Dad, why are we giving all these minerals and vitamins? He’s in his 80s, so like it was 70 years ago. So why are we giving all these nutrients? Why are we taking these nutrients? It was explained to him that– we’ll if we use a human medicine which is a way to get sick and go to the doctor and take a bunch of tests and be put on drugs, right? Human medicine. If you use human medicine for cattle, for beef farming, right? The steak would be $500 or $1,000 like a burger with beef, $50 or more. That’s because it’s for profit medicine. But with the poultry, pork, and beef, they need to keep the costs down while keeping the animals alive and making big animals. So what do they do? They try to prevent disease and they do that by making sure that there’s enough nutrition in their feed. Yet they make sure there’s enough nutrition in our food.  So Dr. Wallach jokes about it, but he says that your chickens are being treated better than you are in terms of the amount of nutrients. In terms of the amount of nutrition there, the food industry is not interested in making sure you have 60 essentials, meaning the body needs these things to function. It’s 60 minerals the body needs, and there are 77 trace minerals and elements that we thrive on. They’re not in our food, and yet we’re giving vitamins and minerals to animals to help prevent disease and make nice big animals so they can make a profit. So it just drives me nuts hearing about that.  Someone in Texas eats a few stalks of celery, lowers their blood pressure and is great. But someone is listening in Wisconsin, or Seattle or New York, or in a different country altogether. No matter how many stalks they can fit in their mouth, they are not really getting the results and that’s super frustrating. But that goes to say when selenium. People will say– off to sleep and don’t have to be grown in selenium-rich soil just like– oh, my iron is low. I’m going to have more spinach. I love spinach. Most spinach is hydroponically grown. It only needs NPK water and sunlight to grow that can be completely void of 50 or more minerals. So there doesn’t have to be minerals in your food for them to grow food anymore. Even if you look at Franken foods that are packaged foods, these foods don’t have to have nutrients that your body needs. Which now we know is directly related to your nitric oxide production.  So, what’s the solution? Obviously, still eating a clean and healthy diet, try not to get pesticides and all that. I mean, growing our own food and making sure we put in blood meat or whatever it has high nitrogen in the soil as we grow our own food. That would be one solution. But what’s the solution for someone who is done feeling sick and wants the benefits that you spend over 40 minutes talking about all the benefits of nitric oxide. What’s the solution? If it is your lozenges that you’ve created. The next concern is what’s the good amount to take because that person in Texas is actually eating just accidentally getting enough nitrates and nitrites to produce nitric oxide. They could take two lozenges versus someone in New York who can be taken few. How do we gauge this?   [01:21:23] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Yes. A very, very good question and very important question. And that’s where the innovation comes in because we realized a long time ago that very few people do through diet, work, or lifestyle or getting enough nitric oxide. So you almost have to have product technology. You almost have to supplement with trace minerals and nutrients, which I do every day. Because we’re not getting it from our food supply and I live on hundreds of acres in Texas. We grow our own food. We raise our own beef in the food we eat. So even if we’re still not getting all the trace minerals we need, you have to supplement.  There are two main causes or two main signs of toxicity for nitric oxide. There are only two. So one is methemoglobinemia which means that you take so much that you oxidize the iron and your red blood cells and you can no longer transport oxygen. So what that looks like is cyanosis. The people get blue around the lips, and they basically suffocate like cyanide poisoning. You would have to take a hundred of those lozenges to see any changes in methemoglobinemia. The other is low blood pressure. But you take too much nitric oxide, you’ll see systemic vasodilation, and you’ll see a drop in blood pressure. You’ll get sick of it. You get lightheaded because you can’t profuse the brain because of low blood pressure. Those are the only signs of toxicity based on the chemistry of nitric oxide.  So the trick has been– how do you restore? Again, the keyword is restore. We don’t want to give the body more than what it’s used to seeing or what it would normally produce. And that’s what we’ve learned over the past 20 years. How much nitric oxide to generate over a certain period of time to recapitulate it basically. The only way to do that is through a lozenge because we generate. If your body can’t make nitric oxide, we do it for you. That lozenge is designed to have a resonant time of about six or seven minutes. You put it in your mouth. It’s activated by your saliva in regenerating nitric oxide gas. And that nitric oxide is absorbed in the oral cavity. It’s oxidized to nitrite. It’s transported to bind to the glutathione and transported as an S-nitrosoglutathione. And that extends the biological activity from one millisecond out to hours.  Again through research, we know what normal plasma levels of these biomarkers are. We know what normal salivary levels of these biomarkers are. We give back what the body’s missing. It’s no different than anything else. If you’re low in vitamin D, what do you do? You take vitamin D. How do you know you have enough? Where do you get your blood labs drawn? If your vitamin D is 80, you’re vital right on the spot. So keep doing what you’re doing.  Same thing with this. There’s no clinical measure of nitric oxide. Unfortunately, there are no labs that you can tell, like vitamin D or cholesterol, or triglycerides. So what do we have to do? We have to test our saliva, which there are salivary test strips out there that I developed over 12 years ago. They can tell you what your nitric oxide levels are. Or the best measure is check your blood pressure. It’s easy. It’s not invasive and you know if your blood pressure’s normal. The beauty of what we do is, for instance, my blood pressure runs about 116 over 68 or 72. So when I take a lozenge, it doesn’t trump my blood pressure and that’s called homeostasis. If your blood pressure’s high, you take it and it normalizes it. If blood pressure is normal or low, you won’t further reduce your blood pressure. So it’s a very important safety aspect about what we do because we don’t want to lower blood pressure more in people with already low blood pressure.   [01:25:18] Ashley James: Some people have low blood pressure. By the way, Dr. Wallach says that the first thing he goes to is the calcium deficiency, but that doesn’t mean you eat more dairy. You want to make sure you’re getting an absorbable form of calcium that is useful to the body. I have a family member who was fainting from standing up. He was bedridden just recently. He tries to stand up with a walker and immediately, his blood pressure drops so low that he is fainting. So I gave him the liquid calcium and multi-mineral from takeyoursupplements.com. I read about them and so many interviews. Within days, he’s able to stand without fainting. And that’s so cool.  There are always other reasons that can cause low blood pressure, but for him, it’s the first thing to try when you hear some good information from a holistic doctor. You try it and you get some results. I just love that. I’m so excited to get these lozenges. We used to be on for about seven years. We moved last year, but we have been drinking nitrites for seven years. There are high levels of nitrites in our well water. It wasn’t high enough to cause Blue Baby Syndrome. That’s what I was concerned about. When my son was a baby, I was concerned about that. It was naturally high in our area. There was no agricultural area and it was kind of weird. And I was concerned about it.  My husband’s blood pressure was really under control in those seven years. He was getting nitrites and one of the sources was from our well water. They would test it often and it was high. It’s high normal but not dangerous, but still high. I thought to myself, that’s interesting. Maybe think back to when we were cavemen and we’re drinking water that naturally has nitrites in it, maybe because of the breakdown of stuff. One of the reasons it’s in well water is the breakdown of vegetation and things like that. And that can be dangerously high and toxic because if you’re getting unclean well water from the farmland, that leech to it. One of the sources that someone could get it from. So it’s interesting. I’m excited to get these lozenges because I want to give it to my husband. Lately, his blood pressure has been creeping up, which can also be from stress. We’re under high stress right now because of taking care of sick family members. I’m just really excited and I’m already on your website buying the lozenges right now. I’m very excited to get him on it and I will come back and share it with the listeners after my husband takes it in and let them know what happens with his blood pressure. So I’m going to take some too and then work out at the gym and I’m going to let everyone know what I felt. If I noticed a difference in my ability to keep going at the gym or if I gave up after five curl-ups.    [01:28:43] Dr. Nathan Bryan: It involves science. We’ve learned a lot over the past 20 years and continue to pivot and improve. We’ve learned over the 20 years that nitric oxide is clinically important, but it’s not a silver bullet. It’s not an end-all, be-all, and cure-all. But what’s clear is that your body cannot and will not heal or perform optimally unless you have sufficient nitric oxide being produced. Going back to what you said earlier about these mineral deficiencies, I’ve been in basic science for almost 25 years. What’s clear to me is that people get sick for two weeks in two weeks only. It didn’t matter if it was cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, or Diabetes. So the body is missing something that it needs, or it’s exposed to something that it doesn’t need.  In that model, in that paradigm, there’s no room for drug therapy. If you’re deficient in the mineral, you’ll get sick. If we supplement and give back what’s missing, we remove any toxin, whether it’s fluoride or herbicides or pesticides or EMF or infections from root canals. If we remove the source of exposure to toxins and give back what the body’s missing, the body heals itself. That’s the only way people are going to get better. It’s not through drug therapy. It’s not putting band-aids on and not getting to the root cause. So the end result of all that, whether you are toxic or your mineral deficient, leads to a loss of nitric oxide production. They reduce blood flow, increase inflammation, oxidative stress and immune dysfunction and that’s the hallmark of every single chronic disease.    [01:30:30] Ashley James: Fascinating. Do you have any information about cancer and nitric oxide?   [01:30:40] Dr. Nathan Bryan: When nitric oxide is known to regulate cell cycle and cell proliferation, this goes back to the 1940s, and this is called the Warburg effect that cancer cells only respire and proliferate in low oxygen, in low pH environment. So it’s a mitochondrial disease. It’s mitochondrial dysfunction. So it’s typically caused by some toxins. So it got to remove the source– and this is what frustrates me about oncologists. It does not matter if it’s breast cancer, prostate cancer, or brain cancer. They only have three tools– surgery, chemo, and radiation. The frustration is the oncologist never asked the patient, why did you have cancer? How can you treat something if you don’t know why you got it? To throw into those three responses to every single cancer case that they see. Nobody’s ever been cured of cancer from surgery, chemo, or radiation. It’s never happened.  If they put them in regression, it may extend their life, but it’s never cured cancer. It’s never in the history of the world that cancer has been cured with standard chemo, radiation, and surgery because they don’t understand the etiology of cancer. What’s poisoned the mitochondria to allow them to what’s called anaerobic fermentation and to disrupt normal cellular metabolism. That’s the root cause of cancer. We have to figure out what’s poisoning the mitochondria. It’s usually some toxins and usually, it’s a toxin from some infections that you have in the body. Whether it’s a brown section or whether it’s bacterial on asymptomatic bacterial infection in root canals. We’re finding most solid tumors can be traced back to an infection in a root canal tooth. So we have to remove the source of infection, extract the root canal teeth, clean up the infection, and then support the body so it can basically heal. Get some voltage, an oxygen increase, while pH increases oxygen delivery. So you do that partly through nitric oxide and then the body heals itself. It’s really very clear to me.    [01:32:57] Ashley James: I love it. I’m just so excited about what you’re delivering today to the listeners and how it can help them. Those who are suffering from major diseases. Those who want to prevent major disease or want to reverse the disease or those who want to feel better. Wherever they are, they just want to feel better. This some very, very, very excited. So when we started taking lozenges, we started slow. I’m going to take it once a day and see how it goes. Then maybe once or twice a day and see how it goes. Is there anything about body weights, like a 100-pound woman and a 350-pound man taking different amounts?   [01:33:40] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Regarding what we do, whether it’s in dietary supplements, the only thing we have to do is demonstrate safety. Obviously we can’t make drug claims. But everything we do is tailored toward a 70 to an 80-kilogram person, which is 130 to 160-pounds human. And that’s the benchmark. So that’s how drugs are developed. So obviously, if you got a 60,70-pound kid, take half. If you’re older than that, our total body volume is more than that. So the pharmacokinetics are going to be much different than a 120-pound person.  But I think what we have nitric oxide and what we do in that lozenge, technology is nitric oxide over a certain period of time and people typically get the same response. So that doesn’t mean that a 240-pound person should put two lozenges into their mouth at one time. I wouldn’t recommend that. We found that one wasn’t like for me. I’m 48 years old and the vascular age of a 28-year-old. I’m in pretty good health. I don’t have any issues with blood pressure. Labs are pretty good, actually, very normal for a 48-year-old. So I take one lozenge a day because it gives me that support I need. But I try to eat and I go to the gym every day. I send an infrared sauna and every day. I’m in a hyperbaric chamber every night when I’m at home. I’m not at home pretty much because I travel a lot.  So I do everything that my body needs to optimize nitric oxide production. So I don’t need that much more health. Everybody’s busy. People don’t always eat a good diet, and certainly, most people don’t have time or the discipline to go to the gym everyday and get modern physical exercise. So those are the people that need the most support. Not us that are health conscious and try to do the things. Watch what we eat and take on the discipline to do the right things even though it’s hard work and very time-consuming to stay healthy. But for me, it’s worth it because the last thing I want to do if you’re unhealthy– our health is our greatest asset. We can’t enjoy life if we don’t have good health. It’s worth the hard work, and your body will thank you for it.   [01:35:57] Ashley James: If you have paid good money to buy a house, you have to replace the roof every 10 years with one of those really cool roofs for every 40 years. You’ve made all this money and put all this effort into buying a house and paying off a mortgage. You’re not going to let the roof rot. Then just completely destroy your investments and where you live. Your body is where you live. Yes, it’s a pain in the butt to make lifestyle changes and make habit changes and make diet changes.  I have a little brat inside me that she’s like about six and she just wants, what she wants, what she wants. She wants to go to the drive-thru. She wants to eat all the junk they sell at the movie theater. Like she just wants what she wants, what she wants it and that’s what she wants that dopamine spikes. She wants those feel-good chemicals that happen in the brain when she gets her way. She gets to eat fried foods, sugary, greasy, whatever kind of food. We all have that brat inside of us that is drug-addicted. Addicted to processed food that wants that rush.  For some people, it’s potato chips. For some people, it’s fast food. For some people, it’s alcohol, right? Alcohol is something I bet decreases nitric oxide production. So I’m just going to guess. Am I right? Does that have any effect on nitric oxide production?    [01:37:24] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Well, it does but increasingly not. We published data probably 15 years ago. Moderate alcohol consumption is cardioprotective. So meaning that there are observational data that if you have a heart attack after one or two drinks, the heart suffers less injury from a heart attack than people who say they didn’t have a drink. So mechanistically, we know that a moderate alcohol consumption upregulates some enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase. It also causes an aldehyde dehydrogenase and extends the biological half-life of nitric oxide.  That’s moderate and it’s called ethanol preconditioning. Again, there’s a very narrow opportunity there to do that. So you can quickly overdo it and then you overburden the liver. You upregulate p450 enzymes and it leads to a number of problems. But moderate alcohol consumption is actually cardioprotective.   [01:38:22] Ashley James: You have those two glasses of wine and then have a heart attack. Can’t you have two glasses of wine yesterday and have a heart attack right? Are you saying it’s just after moderate alcohol consumption?   [01:38:38] Dr. Nathan Bryan: That’s right.    [01:38:40] Ashley James: Everyone’s walking around with a glass of wine like I’m going to sip just in case, moderately protective of my heart. What’s better is eating super clean, super healthy, and getting some good nitric oxide. So let’s prevent damage to our heart by preventing heart disease in the first place. It’s been so much fun having you on the show. I’m really excited to dive in and also you have this great book on your website. So when listeners go to your websites, it’s very easy, it’s very clean and not cluttered. It’s n1o1.com. There’s the cool skincare stuff. There are the little lozenges and then there’s your book. So very simple. To rapid up, tell us about your book. What would we get into your book more than what we got today in this great interview? What more would we get if we got your book? Should we even get your book? Is your book is something we should dive into?    [01:39:36] Dr. Nathan Bryan: I mean, this is in rapid-fire and this is 30 years of research and distilled down into 90 minutes. Most people learn through repetition. So the book is called Functional Nitric Oxide Nutrition. It basically distills down a very complex, complicated science into a story that’s easily digested and easily understood. The plan and digestive. It’s how you can use diet and lifestyle to restore your nitric oxide production. It’s an easy read. It takes about an hour and 15,20 minutes, depending on how fast a reader you are. It’s a good reference because you can go back and mark pages then over time, this is all going to make sense. So the point is simple strategies. Start to see changes in your own health and wellness.    [01:40:32] Ashley James: Yes. I’m seeing nitric oxide now—you’re like Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. You’re way ahead of your time. That song is like he’s way ahead of his time. These are early pioneering stages and think back to 100 years ago when they discover something about health. It’s like– oh my gosh, there’s a single vitamin C. It’s amazing. We just discovered this but today, we take it for granted. We take vitamins for granted when they were first discover to prevent scurvy and all these other diseases. It’s amazing. Vitamin C, it’s revolutionary. We take it for granted, but 100 years from now, everyone’s going to be like– yes, don’t get your nitric oxide check, what’s wrong with you? You’re completely low nitric oxide. Like– oh, you’re low in vitamin C, get some even though this is not very new to us. So 100 years from now, no doubt, we need nitric oxide. This is something your lozenges are going to be on every shelf. It’s going to be very needed and also common. Right now, it’s not common because it’s just the only groundbreaking field that’s growing. I’m so excited to see the body of work as a science dive deeper into understanding human physiology and how to support the body in reversing and preventing disease.  We can do so much of it from diet lifestyle, but also understanding their diet is compromised. It doesn’t mean that they give up and go to McDonald’s. Our diet is compromised because even no matter how healthy you eat, our farming practices over 100 years have messed up our food. So if you can grow your own food, it’s great. If you can make a relationship with a farmer and that grows really clean, healthy, and re-mineralizes the soil and uses a nitrogen-based fertilizer. It’s awesome. You can eat that food too.  Check out the website of Dr. Nathan Bryan, which is n1o1.com. Use the coupon code LTH to get the awesome stuff. I’m going to share my results as I said and as I go forward using your stuff. Check out the book. I love the idea of real repetition, taking your 30 years of work and humility down to something that we can understand and absorb. And then take that to heart because this is the root. This is something so important. I don’t want to overlook that if we can increase nitric oxide to healthy levels. We can have a healthy immune system, cardiovascular system, mitochondria, and healthy signaling in the body, and the list went on and on. So you guys are still discovering more benefits to it as well. Is there anything you’d like to say to wrap up today’s interview?   [01:43:30] Dr. Nathan Bryan: No, I think just to touch on what you said, we’re way ahead of our time. Nitric oxide is today where fish oil was 30 years ago. And now official is ubiquitous. Everybody knows. Most people supplement with it. But now, the science is very clear that your body cannot and will not heal without nitric oxide. So we have to start employing strategies and understand what are we doing on a daily basis that’s disrupting our body’s ability to produce nitric oxide. So we have to stop that and start doing the clinically proven things to promote it. I will share that I got an educational website. I’m not a big promoter of products and more on providing education and awareness. So you and your listeners can make informed decisions. So I’ve got an educational website called drnathansbryan.com. There’s a six-minute video on there. I do a monthly blog. I try to provide some timely and practical tips that people can employ and hopefully, you can learn something. You can follow me on Instagram, Dr. Nathan S Bryan.com or LinkedIn.   [01:44:40] Ashley James: Love it. And of course, the links to everything you just mentioned will be in the show notes of today’s podcast, learntruehealth.com or the description wherever you’re listening from. It’s been such a pleasure having you on the show. Please come back on the show when you have more breakthroughs. We’d love to be updated as you continue to innovate and dive into this. When your drug is full, all the testing is done, all these studies have been completed and it’s now approved for FDA use. I’d love to also hear more stories about that.  Again, I’m not a fan of drugs, but I’m a big fan of drugs that will save someone’s life. I’d rather be on a drug alive. So if we can have saved your life with a drug, let’s do everything we can to get your healthy again. Just do everything to get you healthy, so you don’t need the drug. But I’m so glad that emergency medicine is available to us. It shouldn’t be the only medicine we go. We don’t want to wait until we get sick and then go to the emergency room. So let’s do everything we can to prevent never having to go there in the first place. But still, when your drug is totally approved, in, and available in ERs. I’d love to have you back on the show to hear more about the studies, the success, and the results. Of course, with anything that you’re innovating around this, please come back. We’d love to hear more.    [01:45:57] Dr. Nathan Bryan: Thank you so much.    [01:45:59] Ashley James: I hope you had a fantastic time listening to today’s interview. Wasn’t that mind-blowing? I look forward to the next few interviews because I have some more mind-blowing fantastic interviews in the pipeline. I want to make sure you know to go to Dr. Nathan Bryan’s website and use the coupon code LTH as in Learn True Health for the amazing discount he’s giving all the listeners. You can go there by going to n1o1.com. Look for the show notes of today’s podcast learntruhealth.com to get all of the details of all the links for Dr. Nathan Bryan. Please come join the Facebook group if you haven’t already. It’s a very supportive group. We’ve got thousands of listeners there who love asking questions, answering them, and sharing their information, experiences, and testimonials. You can use the search function in the Facebook group. We’ve had the Facebook group for years. You can use the search function and dig through and read so many resources. There are so many wonderful resources in the Facebook group. And you might not know this, but you can go to learntruehealth.com, my website and use the search function there as well. So we’re coming up on 500 episodes soon.  We have a lot of resources there. You can read the transcripts of the interviews as well. Should you want to peruse through other topics. We cover everything from emotional health, mental health, spiritual health, energetic health, and physical health. Even episodes on lifestyle and improving lifestyle, improving building healthy habits that stick and decreasing anxiety. All kinds of wonderful topics to explore in learntruehealth.com.  Thank you so much for being a listener. Thank you so much for sharing this podcast with those you love. My goal is to help as many people as possible to Learn True Health. Unfortunately, there is suffering that is not mandatory. Suffering is optional. That’s why I want to help people who are suffering as I suffered for so many years because the doctors I went to didn’t have the tools to help me. The doctors on my show, the holistic doctors, have the tools. They get the results. So I bring people on the show who get results that you don’t need to suffer anymore. So your mom, your dad, your sister, your friends, and your children don’t need to suffer anymore.  And it’s a matter of finding the information, finding the right doctors, and applying it to lives. And that’s why I’m so grateful that you continue to share my podcasts with those you care about because together, we can help end suffering. So suffering shouldn’t be mandatory. It should be optional. There’s so much information out there. People have reversed Diabetes, reversed cancer, and reversed heart disease. People have reversed that they’ve suffered from reversed depression and addiction. They have done that. And we can help those you care about. We have the resources. So I suffered for so many years until I found holistic medicine and applied it to my life. I found the doctors that help and that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. We can take this information to those we care about and help them heal and help them no longer suffer. So let’s end the suffering of those we care about. Continue to share this information. If you have any feedback and if you have any doctors you want me to interview that helped you, I love to hear from you. Come to join in the Facebook group and let me know. Come and feel free to email me at ashley@learntruehealth.com. We’d love to hear from you. Thank you so much. Enjoy and have a wonderful rest of the day.   Get Connected with Dr. Nathan Bryan! Website – Dr. Nathan Bryan Website – NO2U Website – N101 Facebook YouTube Twitter Book by Dr. Nathan Bryan Functional Nitric Oxide Nutrition: Dietary Strategies to Prevent and Treat Chronic Disease