William Pullen is a psychotherapist registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. He practices Integrative therapy and specializes in the treatment of depression, anxiety, problems of self-esteem and confidence, and substance abuse.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did you get into Dynamic Running Therapy?
• Is there research done comparing exercise to drug therapies?
• Can Dynamic Running Therapy be done with running or can it be applied to other forms of exercise?
• What is mindfulness?
• What “questions” are used in Dynamic Therapy?

Key Points made by William:

• Dynamic Running Therapy is a fusion of elements of mindfulness, talk therapy, and running.
• It’s important to get moving and develop a good practice.
• Running gives a sense of competency and power.
• Movement must be seen as a medicinal enterprise, particularly for those with certain mental health conditions.
• There is more anxiety and depression among those who are not active.
• Mindfulness is a great way to address conditions like stress, high blood pressure, hypertension and anxiety.
• For thousands of years, humans have hunted, talked and moved together in small tribes for survival, mythology and relationships.
• Our DNA is primed for adventure but we have become very sedentary now.
• Dynamic Running Therapy is typically done while walking or running so they can focus on the questions for their condition and stay safe, compared to more dangerous activities like mountain climbing.
• Mindfulness is focusing the mind on self and typically on breath or you could focus on footsteps or counting trees while walking.
• To practice mindfulness, focus on your breath and count to ten and then start over.
• Mindfulness is a way of bringing yourself continually back into the living moment and away from all of your fears and concerns about the past and the future.
• The practice allows one to become present in the moment and away from the habit of a preoccupied or lazy mind and get out of the cycle of going back to the sore points of life.
• Mindfulness is about training the brain and making a choice to become somebody who can be in the moment and be present to what is around them.
• It can be argued that being overstimulated is a kind of trauma.
• Overstimulation keeps us in a state of constant arousal that is not productive.
• Our goal is to be in a fluid state where we can relax when we want to and bring our attention when it is needed by being in control of how we exist in the world.
• By constantly connecting to social media and other stimuli, our brain gets a kick with small incremental quick rewards.
• Since social media has quick rewards, other rewards that come from longer term activities like cooking, get replaced by quick rewards to make the brain lazy.
• The book gives questions for each run, which you can use if you want to while running or walking.
• The idea is that you learn to acknowledge what you really want.
• If you’re scared of what this question might bring up, acknowledge that and go when you’re ready to go. If you’re excited by it, acknowledge that, and take yourself on a journey of discovery as each question throws up new ideas and new memories and different ways of relating to who you are and the choices that you’ve made.
• Dynamic Therapy reminds you of the need to relate to yourself in a way that’s gentle and compassionate instead of that judgmental inner dialogue that doesn’t serve us.
• When we are not connected to our community then questions around personal status and purpose become even more important, which is known as status anxiety.
• To practice Dynamic Therapy, the practitioner familiarizes the reader with their particular anxiety by specific questions to understand the core issue rather than simply the fear and anxiety.
• Next step is to ask questions about the lifestyle choices, their work, relationships, substance abuse, community etc.
• The source of a lot of anxieties is the kind of relationship one has with oneself which can be destabilizing if there are layers of shame and fear.
• The core of the work is centered around one question: Must I fix or avoid every unpleasant feeling that I have or might I be better off just by acknowledging the appropriateness of some of those moments and just acknowledge it as appropriate.
• By developing a better relationship with your social anxiety, the symptoms will reduce and become of a manageable level and it works for majority of people.
• The book has chapter on how to mindfully run and mindfully walk, both of which are hugely rewarding and add to your sense of adventure,.
• The book has chapters dealing with all the mental health therapeutic conditions, questions on running with your kids to promote closeness.
• The book also has a program for running with your loved ones or people that you’re in close relationships with, to try and get close to them too.
• Dynamic Running Therapy book also shows a 4-step process on mindfulness that can be done by the readers by themselves or with others – start with sitting down for five to ten minutes before the run or walk.
• Step by step procedure – checking in with your body. You do a body scan. What’s happening from the top of my body to the bottom? What do I feel? Where are the pressure points? Where are the aches? I then ask myself, what are my senses picking up around me? We do a sort of sense scan. What can I smell? What can I see? What can I hear? etc. We then move on to, what am I feeling? I hasten to add for my clients, not “What was I feeling right before I got here?”, not “what am I feeling too much of?” What am I feeling right now? I want to get people to focus in the here and now because that’s where I want them to be.
• Fourth step is a question, “priming moment,” which is simply an opportunity to focus on what you want out of that session.
• If you do not know what you want out of the session, you go with a spirit of adventure to just explore. You may decide to move fast or slow. You may decide to seed yourself with a thought or question, or you may decide it’s just enough to travel thinking about your breath, thinking about your footfalls.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Running with Mindfulness: Dynamic Running Therapy to Improve Low Mood, Anxiety, Stress, and Depression

William’s Website

William’s Facebook Page

William’s Twitter

William’s Instagram

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Norm Robillard, Ph.D., Founder of the Digestive Health Institute is a leading gut health expert. He specializes in functional gastrointestinal disorders (i.e. heartburn, acid reflux, GERD, LPR, IBS, etc.), SIBO and dysbiosis helping his clients transition from drug and antibiotic based treatments to the Fast Tract Diet and other holistic solutions.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is SIBO and why should we care?
• What are some underlying causes for SIBO?
• What is carbohydrate intolerance and why is it so critical in SIBO?
• How can you test for intolerance to carbohydrates?
• Does the Fast Tract Diet suggest that people with SIBO must limit resistant starches until SIBO is resolved?
• Please explain the differences between diets for SIBO?

Key Points made by Dr. Norm:

• Humans have a diverse population of about 100 trillion bacteria in the gut, comprising of about a 1000 different species in the large intestine.
• The gut bacteria turn fiber and other undigested carbs into fats that nourish us.
• The small intestine develops SIBO when bacteria from our large intestine migrate into our small intestine through the ileocecal valve and grow more than 10 thousand cells per mil.
• These bacteria also start to scavenge on proteins including the digestive enzymes released by our villi and microvilli.
• Bacteria in small intestine lead to protein breakdown that further feeds the bacteria to keep growing while the body lacks nutrition.
• Some dramatic symptoms occur with SIBO – GERD, acid reflux, abdominal pain, cramps, bloating, altered bowel habits, diarrhea, constipation, nausea, dehydration and fatigue.
• The long term symptoms that occur with SIBO are weight loss, not digesting fats very well, anemia, bone pain, fractures, leaky gut syndrome, which can lead to autoimmune conditions, autoimmune reactions.
• Due to lack of absorbing nutrients properly in SIBO, there is calcium and magnesium loss, too.
• SIBO is the cause behind many diseases like IBS, Crohn’s, celiac disease, rosacea, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and a variety of liver diseases.
• SIBO is unrecognized but it affects at least half of the population at some point in their lives.
• It is important to get standardized breath testing for SIBO.
• People with SIBO have a lower pressure in the ileocecal valve, which makes it hard for the sphincter to stay closed.
• Causes for SIBO are primarily due to factors that break down the defense mechanism against these bacteria.
• Standardized testing for gut issues is still a challenge, especially with low stomach acid.
• Some underlying causes can be traced to motility problems, that could be due to many reasons, like scarring due to Crohn’s disease, surgery, Scleroderma, Hashimoto’s, diabetes, drug use, gastrointestinal infections of E.coli, Shigella, H.pylori.
• Digestive enzyme deficiency is easily treatable with supplements or eating slowly and chewing well.
• Using antibiotics reduces our own microbiome, which is meant to protect against SIBO.
• Malabsorption of carbohydrates with age can also result in SIBO.
• Breath tests can be done for specific carbohydrates that are suspected to be malabsorbed.
• The Fast Tract Diet does not focus too much on testing but has a 3 pillar approach – limit the amount of all fermentable types of carbohydrates that are hard to digest, like lactose, fructose, sorbitol, xylitol, and mannitol.
• The large intestine has the microbiome with beneficial bacteria like bifidobacteria, species of clostridia, and bacteroides.
• Bacteroides fragilis is the most populous and important microbe in our gut.
• Feeding the body with these resistant starches that are good for microbiome can actually cause problems with SIBO.
• The five starches must be limited for six months to a year, until SIBO is resolved.
• Using the mobile app for Fast Tract Diet, fermentation potential (FP) can be calculated to feed the microbiome while limiting the resistant starches.
• The Fast Tract Diet is designed especially for SIBO, while others like low carb diet, ketogenic diet, elemental diet, specific carb diet and the low FODMAP diet are not, but are good approaches.
• Specific Carb Diet designed by Elaine Gottschall limits many fermentable carbohydrates and most starches but not specifically fiber and some forms of fructose-containing sugars like honey and fruit and fruit juices.
• The low starch diet limits basically starches but not lactose, fructose, fiber or sugar alcohols.
• Low carb or ketogenic diet doesn’t list fiber or sugar alcohols, but does limit other easier to digest carbohydrates such as glucose.
• The low FODMAP Diet limits fermentables, the oligo-di-monosaccharides and sugar alcohols, but does not limit resistant starch and includes sucrose and sweets.
• Paleo diet doesn’t limit resistant starch or fiber, or naturally occurring sugars and sugar alcohols and fructose from fruits, but recommends eating in season which is hard because everything is now available 24/7.
• Fast Tract Diet is the only diet that quantitatively limits all five types of these fermentable carbs and it includes pro-digestion behaviors and practices to optimize digestion to identify and address underlying causes.
• If you consume starches, stick to the ones that have the low FP values. Limit wheat-based pastas. Rice pastas are lower in points.

Resources Mentioned:

Podcast interview – The Cure for Acid Reflux with Dr. Norman Robillard

Book – Fast Tract Digestion: Heartburn

Book – Fast Tract Digestion: IBS

Dr. Robillard’s website

Dr. Robillard’s facebook page

Join Dr. Robillard’s FB Group

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Carolyn Dean has been in the forefront of health issues for over 30 years and is the leading expert on magnesium. She is a medical doctor, a naturopath, herbalist, acupuncturist, nutritionist, and inventor who has authored and co-authored over 35 books including The Magnesium Miracle. She is passionate about helping people of all ages achieve optimal health by taking a holistic approach to wellness.

Main Questions Asked:

• How do people become magnesium deficient, and why isn’t magnesium deficiency more well-known?
• Should calcium be balanced with magnesium?
• What tests do you recommend for accurately measuring magnesium?
• What are the different forms of magnesium?
• Could you start taking magnesium and vitamin C to help detox instead of gross powders?
• How does magnesium deficiency relate to anxiety and depression?

Key Points made by Dr. Carolyn Dean:

• Magnesium is a cofactor for about 700 to 800 different enzymatic processes in the body.
• Genetic mutations can be driven epigenetically by too much or too little of a nutrient.
• Soil has become depleted of magnesium due to industrial farming.
• A hundred years ago, we would get 500 milligrams of magnesium in our daily diet – now we barely get 200 milligrams of magnesium.
• Magnesium deficiency could result in heart palpitations, leg cramps, migraine headaches, and stomach spasms that feel like heartburn.
• 65 conditions due to magnesium deficiency could be misdiagnosed as serious diseases for which doctors prescribe strong drugs.
• Proper testing for magnesium is not done in modern medicine.
• Only 1% of total body magnesium is found in veins, which is there to protect the heart.
• Measuring serum magnesium is not a good test because it gives a false normal.
• 6 of the 8 steps of the cycle that makes energy require magnesium.
• Many medications deplete magnesium and make the condition worse.
• Many drugs have fluoride to make them more powerful, like the statins, Cipro and Prozac that can cause tendon rupture.
• Athletes get depleted of minerals and magnesium and try to replace with Gatorade which is just sugar and salt.
• Mineral depletion in athletes weakens them, resulting in infections for which they get antibiotics, which can cause tendon rupture due to deposition of fluoride from drugs.
• Fluoride in drugs binds to magnesium to form an insoluble, brittle compound, magnesium fluoride which gets deposited in tendons and bones.
• If you must take Cipro, you need to take a lot of magnesium to replace the loss.
• People with stress end up with elevated blood pressure and then prescribed diuretics which further deplete them of potassium.
• Magnesium is a calcium channel blocker but instead doctors put high blood pressure patients on calcium channel blocking meds, diuretics and ACE inhibitors.
• Magnesium deficiency also leads to elevated blood sugar and cholesterol, so high blood pressure patients often end up with these conditions as well.
• Low magnesium is a risk marker for diabetes.
• High blood pressure patients on statins may end up with heart failure due to extreme magnesium depletion as a side effect of all the meds they are on.
• We should be taking an equal ratio of calcium to magnesium to prevent heart and kidney diseases that result from an imbalance of calcium to magnesium.
• Magnesium is the safest mineral – too much can just give you a laxative effect.
• Magnesium must be tested with magnesium RBC test or better still the ionized magnesium test.
• If your magnesium is 4.2, you are still deficient and need to be above 6.
• It’s best to start supplementing slowly with magnesium and see how you do.
• Magnesium chloride is a good form as it is highly absorbable and avoids the laxative effect.
• Magnesium also helps with detox because it helps the liver enzymes, specifically the CYP450 detox enzymes.
• Any type of anxiety should first be treated with magnesium, not strong drugs.
• Magnesium is the best sleep “medication”.
• Magnesium gives you energy in the day and calms you down to sleep at night.
• Magnesium relieves anxiety and depression.
• Magnesium balances serotonin and works on many levels in the body.
• An Epsom salt bath (or footbath) is another great way to get more magnesium.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Magnesium Miracle

Dr. Carolyn Dean’s website

Dr. Carolyn Dean’s podcast

Dr. Carolyn Dean’s facebook page

Free Chapter of The Magnesium Miracle

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Steven Lin is a board-registered dentist, writer, and speaker. He is a passionate whole-health advocate, focusing on the link between nutrition and dental health. His mission is to prevent dental diseases instead of treating them. His new book “The Dental Diet” is a journey of ancestral medicine, the human microbiome, and epigenetics. It explains the foods for healthy teeth based on the Weston A. Price Diet – which is the inspiration for Dr. Lin’s work.

Main Questions Asked:

• Why do so many people now have crooked teeth?
• What were the shocking things you learned about nutrition for dental health?
• Do we have immune cells in our teeth?
• Is your diet only for children or is it good for adults too?
• What exactly is the dental diet?
• How is the dental diet different from the modern diet?
• How can people find a functional dentist?

Key Points made by Dr. Lin:

• Lin learned about the work of Dr. Weston Price that showed how traditional diet could intercept the effects of modern diet on oral health.
• He discovered that crooked teeth in kids can be reversed if we can affect the diet early enough which will also correct breathing.
• “The Dental Diet” was written to show that with the right food we can grow straight dental arches and correct all the problems related to crooked teeth that have been caused by the modern diet.
• Since jaws make up our airways, malformed jaws and dental arches are leading to sleep problems in children, including apnea.
• Cranial facial growth is a holistic process.
• Fat soluble vitamins control cranial facial growth and also the immune system inside our teeth which prevent the teeth from dental decay.
• Our teeth have immune cells that come from our bone marrow and sit right at the junction of the dental pulp and dentin. These protect our teeth from decay.
• The immune cells in the dentin keep monitoring what’s happening and in case of a problem, release immune factors to repair the dentin.
• Vitamins A, D and K2 are the keys to get your odontoblasts, your inner tooth immune cells, working properly.
• It is known that sufficient levels of Vitamins A, D and K2 dictate accurate jaw growth and dental health.
• Vitamin D absorbs and directs calcium and K2 activates the proteins.
• Without K2, calcium cannot be carried into your bones and teeth. As a result you cannot activate immune cells inside your teeth.
• K2 also directs hormones and sex hormones that direct jaw growth as well.
• Price stressed eating traditional whole foods and bone broth were essential to grow healthy jaws and teeth.
• The low fat diet and the modern diet have led us to an orthodontic epidemic.
• Every chronic disease can be traced back to the mouth and eating in some way, including bad breath or oral thrush, shows signs for imbalance in the gut.
• It is shocking that out of 125 medical specialties in America, none deal with the mouth or nutrition.
• Scoliosis can be corrected by growing the dental jaw and setting the cranial facial system properly.
• When we breathe through the mouth because of jaw distortions, we miss nitric oxide, which is a very strong vasodilator and has implications for the autonomic nervous system.
• People who are not breathing through their nose while sleeping get sleep apnea.
• Most women who mouth breath end up with digestive problems, cold hands and feet, anxiety and depression due to nitric oxide imbalance.
• Kids who are not breathing through their nose while sleeping are starving their brain of oxygen and ending up with ADHD as well as distorted facial structures.
• Eating the right foods can help grow and reprogram nasal sinuses, nasal airway and upper teeth alignment.
• With the right foods, hormones will balance for correct bone growth to get the normal human face structure.
• The main principles of the Dental Diet include: breathing properly; chewing food; and eating fermented, fibrous and gelatinous foods rich in fat soluble vitamins, like organ meats, eggs, cheese, butters, sauerkraut and other fermented foods.
• Eating the right foods creates a balanced microbiome which sends the right epigenetic messages to our body and includes proper chewing and breathing.
• Functional medicine and functional dentistry go hand in hand.
• Functional dentistry goes right back to breastfeeding.
• Tongue ties to get kids swallowing and breathing properly through myofunctional orthodontics in formative years

Resources Mentioned:

Weston A. Price Foundation

Podcast – Effects of Sleep Disorders in Children with Dr. Mark Burhenne

Book – The Dental Diet: The Surprising Link between Your Teeth, Real Food, and Life-Changing Natural Health

Dr. Lin’s website

Dr. Lin’s facebook page

Dr. Lin on instagram

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Morgan is the Nurse Manager of Canada’s first Nurse Practitioner led Medical Marijuana Clinic “O Cannabis Clinic”.

She is a multi-published author, Humanitarian Award winner for exceptional nursing care, as well as an award winning Adult Educator. Morgan is passionate about helping Canadians navigate the confusing medical marijuana landscape and believes that Canadians should have affordable and timely access to medical marijuana – even if they live in the Yukon!

Main Questions Asked:

• What happens when your licensed producer runs out of your prescription or specific strain of medical cannabis?
• Can you be fired for using medical cannabis?
• What are some side effects of medical cannabis?
• What do you mean by micro-dosing?
• Do patients need to be referred to your clinic?

Key Points Made by Morgan:

• In the situation of a producer running out of a specific strain, the patient may have to wait up to three months to be able to purchase medicine again. Alternatively, they can be transferred to another producer that has the strain they are looking for but it can still take a long time. It’s a major bottleneck in the industry right now.
• Using cannabis for medical purposes is not something you can be fired for but you need to have a conversation with your boss before you use it at work. There are also plenty of cannabis products that don’t have psychoactive effects that won’t affect your work performance.
• There is a lot of work to be done in the professions that use drug tests. Having a frank conversation with your employer is a good first step.
• One of the side effects of medical cannabis is joy and increased well being.
• There hasn’t has been a single lethal dose of marijuana ever so it’s been proven to be extremely safe compared to traditional medicines.
• Practitioners encourage patients to take it low and slow when starting out with medical cannabis.
• Micro-dosing is usually done with a vaporizer. The effects typically last for a few hours and occur very quickly after being exposed.
• Edibles are better for experienced users since you can’t be certain how much of a dose you are getting, which is why they aren’t sold legally in Canada.
• There are a lot of pathways to getting medical cannabis, you have to do your research into the different producers and make sure you using the right process to register your prescription.
• Best practices include realizing that just because something is covered by OHIP, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other fees.
• Even if you have been self medicating with cannabis for years, there is still a lot of information you need to know before you can use it medically.
• Patients do not need to be referred to the O Cannabis Clinic, but they do need to be screened to make sure they have a valid medical reason to come work with them.

Resources Mentioned:

O Cannibis Clinic website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Morgan is the Nurse Manager of Canada’s first Nurse Practitioner led Medical Marijuana Clinic “O Cannabis Clinic”.

She is a multi-published author, Humanitarian Award winner for exceptional nursing care, as well as an award winning Adult Educator. Morgan is passionate about helping Canadians navigate the confusing medical marijuana landscape and believes that Canadians should have affordable and timely access to medical marijuana – even if they live in the Yukon!

Main Questions Asked:

• What got you into the medical marijuana arena?
• What are some of the most common ailments people seek medical cannabis for?
• Will medical cannabis make you high?
• What does O Cannabis Clinic do?
• What is the difference between a dispensary and street dealers?

Key Points Made by Morgan:

• Morgan’s experience with using cannabis to treat chronic pain was how she was initially exposed to the world of medical cannabis.
• The top three ailments that most people seek out cannabis for are: chronic pain, insomnia/sleep disturbances, and anxiety. It also has been applied to other issues like childhood epilepsy.
• Research is also showing that cannabis also has positive benefits for autoimmune disease and more.
• A lot of the research on medical cannabis comes out of Canada, Europe, and Israel but even one patient that benefits from it is research evidence.
• Patient experience and patient preference make up 50% of good clinical evidence. All studies of groups of people are composed of individual accounts.
• Medical marijuana can make you high but it doesn’t have to. The medicinal ingredients may not have that side effect because you can isolate the cannabinoids that have healing benefits without inhibiting you.
• People look at cannabis through the old lens of recreational drug use. It can be addictive but it has been proven to be less addictive than coffee, sugar, or caffeine.
• Our bodies are designed to receive cannabinoids.
• O Cannabis clinic is a newer clinic that is helping Canadians get medical cannabis without paying extremely high fees. Medical marijuana can be very difficult to acquire even if you have a prescription.
• Medical cannabis encourages patients to really understand how it makes them feel. Patients learn the process of taking the right dosage and understanding the different effects.
• A licensed producer is an organization that is legally allowed to sell medicine to medical cannabis patients. Dispensaries tend to pop up and close their doors quickly, since they are considered illegal. There are a lot of safeguards with licensed producers and none with dispensaries.
• Licensed producers are visited regularly by Health Canada to ensure that the medicine is sound and safe to sell.
• A licensed producer can’t physically sell you medical cannabis. There is a mailing process that you have to register for and have the cannabis shipped to you.

Resources Mentioned:

O Cannibis Clinic website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

After an undergraduate degree at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Krause studied at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine. Since graduating, he has been a licensed Naturopathic Doctor in private practice in Kitchener and Mississauga, Ontario. In addition to his education in Naturopathic Medicine, Dr. Krause is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, Certified Sports Nutritionist, and yoga instructor.

In his practice, Dr. Krause works with individuals and teams to improve their health and performance, and lectures across Eastern Canada on the topic of natural health product regulation, sports nutrition, and behavioural psychology. Dr. Krause is also a Senior Account Manager for the Ottawa-based health tech company, Fullscript.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did you get interested in supplements and natural health products?
• What makes Canadian supplement regulations different from the US?
• How do supplements get approved for sale to the general public in Canada?
• Do the differences in professional grade supplements and pharmaceutical grade supplements mean anything?
• How do you choose quality supplements for yourself and your patients?

Key Points Made by Dr. Krause:

• Krause first learned about the natural health industry from the sports side. He worked for a natural health manufacturer for three years which is where he began his deep dive into the industry and what makes it different in Canada and the United States.
• Supplements are called Natural Health Products in Canada to emphasize the health aspect – the term supplement is pretty vague.
• Every supplement sold in Canada will have a Natural Product Number or an NPN and getting the NPN is a difficult process that involves verification.
• In the States, some dietary supplements have no premarket validation before getting on the shelf. Label accuracy in Canada means that the incidence of a product not containing the ingredients on the label is extremely low.
• The term proprietary blend can disguise the exact dosages on a particular product.
• Canada also requires the manufacturer to list all non-medicinal ingredients which helps you make informed choices.
• Canada requires manufacturers to have good manufacturing practices that make sure there is no viral or bacterial contamination, which is not required in the States.
• If a supplement you are considering doesn’t have any third-party verifications, that’s a sign you should probably avoid that supplement.
• Natural health claims are allowed in Canada as long as there is proof that has been provided that the claim is true. The level of proof differs based on the claim being made. Specifically, the government is trying to limit the number of people who avoid taking a medication in favor of a supplement.
• Manufacturing a supplement in Canada requires a site license and referencing the work that the government has already learned. For new health claims, you have to provide more research. Once the claims have been proved, you get the NPN and can sell the product on the market.
• It’s important to know how a particular brand or product is made in the States because the product quality can vary wildly.
• It’s almost always better to buy a natural health product in Canada instead of the States as you’re more likely to get the product you are actually paying for.
• There is no consistent definition of professional or pharmaceutical grade products so it’s often used as a marketing term. Since we don’t really know how to evaluate the quality of a product, we use certain terms to help us make decisions about what to buy. This can leave us vulnerable to terms that don’t mean anything but sound legitimate.
• Just because a brand creates one product really well doesn’t mean that all their products are the best option. The best product for you depends specifically on your goal and what you need. Do the research on the product and ingredient first and then figure out the delivery method you want.
• The guideline for buying supplements online is whether or not you can verify the way the product is being stored or shipped. It’s best to go direct to the manufacturer if you can. Having a guarantee about the quality of a product will make a big difference.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Krause’s instagram

Fullscript

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Marilyn Glenville is the UK’s leading nutritionist, specializing in women’s health. She is an inspiring public speaker – easy to listen to and very practical in her approach. Marilyn is the former President of the Food and Health Forum at The Royal Society of Medicine.

She is the award winning author of fifteen internationally bestselling books including, “Natural Solutions for Dementia and Alzheimer’s”.

Main Questions Asked:

• What did you learn when doing research for your book?
• How do you keep your memory so sharp?
• What are your thoughts on a healthy ketogenic diet?
• Besides diet and nutrients, what else should we do to keep our brains sharp for the long term?
• Can we talk about exercise and brain health?
• Are there environmental factors that are putting us at risk for dementia?
• Are there any tests we should be doing that you think are important?

Key Points Made by Marilyn:

• There hasn’t been a new pharmaceutical drug for dementia in the last 15 years and it doesn’t look like there will be a silver bullet.
• Dementia is like a roof with 36 holes in it, finding one drug that deals with every issue is unrealistic.
• Alzheimer’s and dementia are the biggest killers of women, killing three times more than breast cancer.
• There is a 20 to 30 year gap between the first plaque that forms in your brain and the onset of dementia. You have the opportunity to put preventive steps in place well before the symptoms show up.
• The things we do to keep our body healthy will also keep our brain healthy.
• If you are in your 50’s and you find memory slipping or your concentration lacking, those are indications that your brain is degenerating.
• As soon as you notice that things are becoming more difficult, that is when you need to take steps to help your brain be more healthy.
• There is a gene that increases the risk of dementia but it does not cause it. It does seem like family history has an impact on whether or not you will develop dementia and Alzheimer’s but you have control over that. Genes can be switched on and switched off based off your diet, lifestyle, and environment.
• Food and nutrition is the foundation for health. The Mediterranean diet is linked to a reduced incidence of cognitive decline.
• Keeping your blood glucose in check has a big impact on overall cognitive health.
• Your brain can become insulin resistant. Ketones can be used as fuel for the brain.
• Omega-3 fatty acids, especially DHA, have been shown to help prevent the plaques from forming and has a positive effect on brain health.
• Doing a blood test to check your levels and supplementing for the next three months and retesting is a good strategy.
• Besides DHA, being deficient in vitamin D has also been linked to negative cognitive effects. Supplementing vitamin D is a good idea because a large number of people are deficient and it’s easy to correct.
• Exercise has been linked to a boost in brain function. The intensity of the exercise isn’t very important, it’s the total amount and the variety of activity involved. Even walking or choosing to take the stairs will make a positive difference.
• Your brain is a muscle – any activity that uses your brain will help your brain health. Play games, learn an instrument, learn another language, do something you enjoy and it will help long term.
• Some over the counter medicines for colds and flus can possibly be contributing to your odds of dementia. Speak to your doctor if you notice any memory changes and ask about alternative medications.
• Sleep is a major factor in brain health. Getting good sleep, especially on your side, allows your spine to flush waste chemicals from your brain.
• HbA1C is the simplest test you can ask for to learn about your odds of developing dementia and whether you are deficient in certain nutrients.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Natural Solutions for Dementia and Alzheimer?s: The Ultimate Guide To Prevent Short Term Memory Loss

Marilyn’s website

More resources from Marilyn

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Suzanne Perazzini is a certified nutritional therapist, a qualified teacher, award-winning author (including three low FODMAP books) and has been a teacher and a coach her whole life.

After having her life transformed by the low FODMAP diet and a bunch of changes she made to her lifestyle, she now dedicates her days to coaching others on how to implement the low FODMAP diet and eliminate their IBS symptoms once and for all.

Her greatest moments have been turning a 3-year-old Indian girl from a child curled up in the corner in pain to a happy child playing out in the yard with her friends, and helping an 83-year-old woman, who had suffered horribly all her life, discover that there is peace on earth after all. She lives in New Zealand with her husband in a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Main Questions Asked:

• How common is IBS and how do they test for it?
• What has your journey been like as a lifelong IBS sufferer?
• What does FODMAP stand for?
• What are some resources for learning which foods are high and low FODMAP?
• How do people lead a normal social life that have IBS on the low FODMAP diet?
• Do your patients have to be on the low FODMAP diet forever?

Key Points Made by Suzanne:

• IBS is fairly prevalent with somewhere around 25% to 30% of people suffering from it worldwide.
• The symptoms typically include irregular bowel movements, bloating, pain, cramping, and difficulty after eating.
• IBS is normally diagnosed through exclusion, once other tests have ruled out the other potential causes.
• The hydrogen breath test used to be a valid way to test your reaction to certain food types but it’s been found to ineffective in testing a reaction to fructose. The low FODMAP diet is more reliable.
• Suzanne’s experience with IBS has varied. Early on it didn’t affect her life very much but made her life more difficult as she got older, especially during times of stress.
• Once she started the low FODMAP diet, Suzanne discovered the foods that triggered her IBS and eventually began to feel much better. Writing about her experience online started to attract many others who suffered from the condition.
• The term FODMAP is an acronym, derived from “Fermentable, Oligo-, Di-, Mono-saccharides And Polyols”.
• It’s not just a list of food to eat and avoid, it’s important to understand what amounts to eat and what the combinations are as well.
• Discovering your personal triggers is a part of the process. You start with low FODMAP foods and gradually learn what your tolerance for each food is. It’s difficult to do on your own which is why a good coach is so important. Even one wrong food in an otherwise clean diet can make you feel quite sick.
• The foods that you use for your testing are quite important as well.
• You have to put strategies in place if you have IBS. If you are going out, do some research beforehand, talk to the chef and ask their advice. Carry a card that describes your food triggers in the local language as you travel.
• Don’t ask for gluten free bread, gluten free doesn’t mean low FODMAP compatible. Bring low FODMAP foods and snacks with you.
• Start on the elimination diet, then go into the reintroduction phase to learn what your triggers are, then you create a custom diet that’s specific to you that you stay on for life.
• The low FODMAP diet is the base for addressing IBS but it’s not the end. You have to look at other gut irritants and learn what you can tolerate while still eating healthy. Your lifestyle becomes a component of the strategy to become symptom free.

Resources Mentioned:

Suzanne’s website

Monash University Low FODMAP Diet

Free Gift from Suzanne

More low IBS resources

Even more IBS resources

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Ora Nadrich is a certified Life Coach and certified Mindfulness Meditation teacher as well as the author of the groundbreaking book, “Says Who? How One Simple Question Can Change the Way You Think Forever.” Ora’s rare combination of insight, intuition, compassion and charisma has made her one of the most effective and sought-after life coaches in Los Angeles.

Main Questions Asked:

• What prompted you to write this book?
• How do people get started with this method?
• Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you think is important?

Key Points Made by Ora:

• Ora’s first Says Who moment was at the age of fifteen when her sister had a mental breakdown. She developed an anxiety that never really went away.
• She believed a thought that wasn’t true. Ora discovered this after a deep inquiry into her thinking mind. This is where the ‘Says Who’ method began.
• We have 40 to 70 thousand negative thoughts each day. It’s the negative thoughts that hit us most that we give the majority of our attention.
• Don’t push away your negative thoughts, analyze them. Your thoughts become beliefs, which become emotion and behavior.
• Realizing a thought isn’t true is a way of releasing them. Many of the thoughts we have are not our own.
• Think about a negative thought that you have and ask yourself these seven questions:
  • Says who?
  • Have I heard someone else say this thought before?
  • Do I like this thought?
  • Does this thought make me feel better?
  • Does this thought work for me?
  • Am I in control with this thought?
  • Do I want to keep this thought or let it go?
• You are the creator and master of your internal dialogue. Release and replace your negative thoughts with thoughts that serve your well being.
• The inner journey is about peeling back the layers and being inquisitive. The Says who method is a way to get to know yourself and come to know what your thoughts are all about.
• The first step is acknowledging you need to change and are ready to change. Be the observer versus being the reactor, witness your thoughts.
• Begin today to get to know your thinking process better. Make a commitment to the transformation.
• Health is more than nutrition and exercise – you need to do some regular mental health cleaning too. Find at least 10 minutes a day to be quiet, still, and with yourself.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Says Who?: How One Simple Question Can Change the Way You Think Forever

Ora’s website

Ora’s facebook page

Ora on twitter

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Andrea Beaman is a Natural Foods Chef, health educator, thyroid expert and holistic health coach dedicated to alternative healing, and sustainable eating and living.

Andrea was a featured contestant on Bravo’s Top Chef and was recognized as one of the top 100 Most Influential People in Health and Fitness from Greatist.com, received the Award For Excellence in Health Supportive Food Education from the Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health, as well the Health Leadership Award from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

Andrea is the author of “Happy Healthy Thyroid – The Essential Steps to Healing Naturally!”

Main Questions Asked:

• Did you have a thyroid issue?
• Why is thyroid disease so much more common at this point in time?
• What other types of foods do you recommend to support the endocrine system?
• What can people who have irradiated their thyroid do to support their endocrine system?
• Are there other types of natural treatments for your thyroid?

Key Points Made by Andrea:

• Andrea was diagnosed with a hyperthyroid and a goiter at the age of 28 and the doctor recommended that they radiate her thyroid and put her on medication for the rest of her life. She believed that her diet and lifestyle were the root cause and ignored the doctor’s advice.
• After correcting her diet and lifestyle, Andrea’s goiter and hyperthyroidism disappeared after 24 months and it turned out that she was suffering from Hashimoto’s disease, which was the real issue.
• If it is an autoimmune disease, the symptoms will change from day to day. We are not taught to slow down and observe the effects on our body, but the body works at a slower pace than we would like.
• One of the main reasons hyperthyroidism is more common today is that the majority of people were not breastfed as children. The colostrum from the mother’s milk is the installation of the immune system in a child’s body which many people are missing.
• Babies that are not breastfed have higher rates of disease. We are also surrounded by manmade non-ionizing and ionizing radiation and the thyroid is very sensitive to radiation. Without enough food grade iodine in our systems, the thyroid becomes more vulnerable.
• Andrea recommends seaweed to increase the amount of iodine in your system; the slimy texture of seaweed is what coats the digestive system and allows you to observe the iodine without inflaming your condition.
• Natural fats and proteins are also good for supporting your digestive and endocrine system. The human body is a complex system and we can’t isolate a single food type and create a diet around only that. When one system is out of balance, it indicates that the whole body is out of balance because everything is connected.
• Without a thyroid, your body still needs to process the hormone which means you have to rely on the liver. One of the most important ways to support the endocrine system is by reducing stress on the whole. A high amount of stress puts pressure on every system in the body.
• Allow yourself to wake up but then put your body back into a state of relaxation; stretch and breath before starting your day.
• Herbal medicine is another natural option for treating your thyroid. Herbs and foods that are extremely nutritive give the body the energy it needs to support the underlying systems.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Happy Healthy Thyroid – The Essential Steps to Healing Naturally

Book – Health Is Wealth – Make a Delicious Investment in You!

Andrea’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Burhenne is the creator and author of AsktheDentist.com and the bestselling author of “The 8-Hour Sleep Paradox”. He is a family and sleep medicine dentist, member of the American Academy of General Dentistry (AGD) and American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine (AADSM).

Main Questions Asked:

• Why should parents be concerned with their children’s sleep and the structure of their facial bones?
• Would ADD or ADHD be considered a sign of a breathing issue?
• Once an issue is seen in a child, what is the parent’s next step?
• What are some of things that influence facial development?
• Do all dentists know about this?

Key Points Made by Dr. Burhenne:

• Everyone is susceptible to compromised breathing, including children who seemingly don’t have any reasons to suffer from it.
• Sleep disorders and breathing issues develop during our formative years when we are young, potentially prenatally and are directly related to the growth of the shape of the skull.
• Look at the lip posture of your children while sleeping. Are they a nose breather or a mouth breather? Sleep disorders in children often manifest as mouth breathing and are an early sign that your child needs help.
• Behavior is another indicator. Erratic behavior and the desire for sugar are bad signs. Snoring, which is often seen as cute by many parents, is actually a sign that they are having difficulty sleeping and need to be seen by a professional.
• Every person needs to have their sleep verified. You can do everything else perfectly but if you’re not sleeping well, none of it will matter.
• Snoring is never normal, it is a partial collapse of the airway but not snoring doesn’t necessarily mean everything is ok. Your airway can be so constricted that you’re unable to snore.
• ADD and ADHD do indicate that there are breathing issues present, but it needs to be dealt with early on. Often times once the child is diagnosed, it is too late to intervene.
• Every night a child mouth breathes affects the development of their face. There is a new product on the market that now allows you to run an assessment at home instead of a sleep study in a lab. Dr. Burhenne recommends running the assessment at least once a year until the child is 15.
• Speech came at the cost of breathing. All of the structures in the face and neck have evolved for speech and generally moved closer together. A variety of foods, bottle feeding, and many things in our environment create allergies that then make us congested. The muscle development in the face is changing and making it more difficult to breath, but it could be turned around in the course of a generation.
• The high number of the population that requires braces is an indicator that we are developing incorrectly as a society.
• The information is out there, but there are many dentists who haven’t seen it. You have to bring the information yourself and find a dentist who understands what to do with it.

Resources Mentioned:

Podcast – Ways to Help Sleep with Dr. Mark Burhenne

Book – The 8-Hour Sleep Paradox: How We Are Sleeping Our Way to Fatigue, Disease and Unhappiness

Knit Health – At Home Sleep Assessment

Tongue Tie article

Dr. Burhenne’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Cyndi O’Meara is a nutritionist, documentary film maker (What’s With Wheat?), bestselling author, international speaker and founder of Changing Habits. Cyndi graduated with a BSc in Nutrition – her special interest was ancestral foods. After graduating, she became so disillusioned by the global ‘standard’ nutritional guidelines that she paved her own path. Cyndi started Changing Habits in 1990, from her regular newspaper column on nutrition.

Her ground-breaking book Changing Habits Changing Lives became an instant best seller and from there she has grown a successful organic food company, certified online education program, a ground-breaking documentary and is currently building a 60-acre organic food bowl which will be used as an education centre for sustainable farming practices.

Main Questions Asked:

• What’s wrong with wheat?
• Can you tell us about some of the changes that have happened with wheat over the years?
• Can you tell us a little bit about Ancel Keys?
• Why has wheat gone bad?
• Where should people start in changing their diets?

Key Points Made by Cyndi:

• Cyndi always made her own bread as her kids were growing up but in her 50’s she started feeling worse and worse, after being on an elimination diet she started to feel better. After reintroducing wheat she discovered that was the issue.
• Most patients are told that their aches and pains are from getting older which is rarely the case.
• Wheat is inherently an inflammatory food and we originally fermented it in order to eat it. Like many foods in the modern diet, wheat contains anti-nutrients.
• Wheat is in many of the goods that we consume everyday including cosmetics, hair care and others.
• We have forgotten or ignored the ancient wisdom around the food that we have been eating for thousands of years.
• Wheat is processed so that the germ and the bran are removed, which leads to vitamin deficiencies, so we then add back in a variety of nutrients. We have to be very careful about synthetic vitamins.
• Ancel Keys was the originator of the theory that saturated fat consumption leads to an increase in cardiovascular heart disease. There were many issues with his research, including confirmation bias. New research has shown that it’s not the fat that’s the problem, it’s the sugar.
• It’s not an all or nothing when it comes to food; we have to look at the way we cook our food, how refined it is, and how we eat it instead of just removing something entirely.
• After we started to use Roundup on our food supply, celiac disease and wheat allergies increased in turn with the increase of the use of the pesticide. Roundup affects both the bacteria in the ecology of the soil and the bacteria in our guts.
• Don’t start with the gluten free packaged foods. Start by removing wheat from breakfast and see how it affects your hunger and mood. Progress to the other meals and eliminating wheat from your diet.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Changing Habits, Changing Lives

Functional Nutrition Academy

Documentary – What’s with Wheat?

Cyndi’s website

Cyndi’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Andrea Nakayama is a functional nutritionist and educator leading thousands of clients, students, and practitioners around the world in a revolution reclaiming ownership over one’s own health. In the curriculum of Holistic Nutrition Lab, her online school for practitioners, Andrea teaches the science and art of the functional nutrition practice through the lens of where food meets physiology.

Within her own clinic at the Functional Nutrition Alliance, Andrea and her team of nutritionists work with the chronic ailments most providers pass over, and she is regularly consulted as the nutrition expert for the toughest clinical cases in the practices of world-renowned doctors.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is functional nutrition?
• How did you get into doing functional nutrition?
• What do you consider non-negotiables and what are your favorite tools to help patients work through them?
• What are some of the most common misconceptions about genetic testing?

Key Points Made by Andrea:

• Functional medicine is about looking at the systems of the body in a holistic way. Functional nutrition is about filling in the gaps in diet and lifestyle modification.
• Functional nutrition works on the third tier of diagnosis and focuses on customizing the diet so that it’s more appropriate to your unique factors.
• The patients who see the best results are the ones that really buckle down with their nutrition. Modifying the protocol is about finding what’s best for the particular patient.
• After Andrea’s husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor while she was pregnant, she discovered her passion for making sure that the patient is seen as an individual and not just a diagnosis.
• Clearing the muddy water is about removing the most common inflammation causing foods. It’s a journey to discover your non-negotiables, the things that are particular to you in lifestyle and nutrition that you need to have optimal health. A non-negotiable can be things like bedtime and water consumption.
• Patients are usually looking for a quick fix, but the truth is it usually takes a lot of self-care and discipline to make the right changes.
• A single genetic test is not particularly useful when it comes to how to optimize your health in a functional way. Genomics takes into account the environment and the epigenetic expression, which gives a better picture. Owning your non-negotiables is how you shift your epigenetic environment.
• Lifestyle is how you manipulate your genes in a good way.
• Not all dietary recommendations are appropriate for you. You should work with an allied functional practitioner to help you make sense of what’s best for you.

Resources Mentioned:

Free gift – Food, Mood, Poop Challenge e-book

10 Tips to Master Your Genetics

Andrea’s website for practitioners

Andrea’s website for patients

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Rachna Patel has been practicing in the area of medical marijuana for over half-a-decade. She walks patients step-by-step through how to use medical marijuana for their specific medical condition without getting high off of it, without getting addicted to it, and without smoking it.

She speaks from the experience of having treated thousands of patients and having read research study upon research study on marijuana. She completed her medical studies at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did you end up in the field of medical marijuana?
• What are the big five conditions that medical marijuana is good at addressing?
• How much does medical marijuana change the quality of life?
• Are there any conditions that medical marijuana wasn’t effective?
• Are there areas of medical marijuana that the listeners should be aware of?

Key Points Made by Dr. Patel:

• Medical marijuana studies have shown that treatment can help patients lower the doses of conventional medication they are taking.
• Chronic pain and insomnia are two major issues that medical marijuana is effective at treating.
• There are a variety of different types of pain and the effectiveness of medical marijuana is determined largely by the amounts of components we are using.
• Certain types of pain are accompanied by inflammation which is treated best by CBD, but THC can be used as well.
• There is a synergistic effect between CBD and THC.
• Medical marijuana dampens the pain signals that the body sends the brain, but it also alters the perception of the pain.
• The third way medical marijuana treats pain is by attacking the cells that cause inflammation and prevents further inflammation from happening.
• There doesn’t seem to be long term side effects of marijuana use, especially when compared to traditional opiate based medication.
• In states where medical marijuana has been legalized, the rate of opiate abuse has dropped by 30% or more.
• There are a lot of people that still associate a stigma with medical marijuana due to government intervention in the early 20th and 21st century. Perception of marijuana tends to vary depending on the generation the person was raised in.
• Many medical marijuana patients have seen many improvements in their quality of life including a reduction in pain and the ability to do the activities that they love that pain was preventing them from doing. Sleep is often improved as well.
• Many patients have also seen an improvement at work due to increased clarity and focus.
• Severe cases of spinal stenosis and shingles are conditions that don’t appear to respond well to medical marijuana treatment.
• Make sure you use the right combinations of chemicals and you’re using the correct dose. Too high of a dose can actually make your pain worse. Be careful with frequency as well.

Resources Mentioned:

Podcast interview – Medical Marijuana with Dr. Carri and Dr. Rachna Patel

Medical marijuana laws

Research on medical marijuana

Dr. Patel’s website

Dr. Patel’s Youtube channel

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Karim Merani has a Masters degree in Pharmacy, from the Leicester School of Pharmacy in Leicester, UK.  He’s been a pharmacist in Canada for 6 years, and has been involved with compounding since registering.

He currently sits on the Board for the Association of Compounding Pharmacists of Canada, and has previously served as President of the association.  Karim owns and operates 4 independent pharmacies in the Ottawa area, where his main focus of practice is bioidentical hormone replacement, topical pain management, and pediatrics.

Main Questions Asked:

• What do you mean by compounding pharmacy?
• How are bioidentical hormones different from synthetic hormones?
• Are bioidentical hormones safe?
• What are the potential benefits of bioidentical hormones?
• How does a patient know if they need bioidentical hormones or not?
• Do you need a prescription to buy hormones?
• What are some possible side effects of bioidentical hormones and how would someone know they are been dosed too high?
• What makes your compounding pharmacy different?

Key Points Made by Karim:

• Compounding pharmacies focus on customized medications tailor made to meet specific needs. They often change the delivery method of a medication for those who can’t take the normal form.
• Compounded bioidentical hormones are derived from natural sources, usually yam, rather than synthetic. Bioidentical hormones are processed much more efficiently by the body.
• Many of the fears associated with hormone replacement therapy often confuse the two types of hormones – synthetic verses bioidentical.
• Bioidentical hormones that we use today are very different from the synthetic hormones used in the 1980’s.
• Generally speaking, bioidentical hormones are safe but there is some necessary work that has to be done to ensure they are safe. Start low and go slow when it comes to dosage.
• Hormone therapy is effective for menopausal or perimenopausal women, but it also has uses in treating osteoporosis and fatigue.
• Not everybody experiences the symptoms of hormone imbalance the same way.
• The primary methods for testing for hormone therapy is saliva or blood testing, with saliva testing being more accurate. There is a newer third test, a urine test, but it’s not proven to be effective yet.
• Dosing accurately is the most important aspect of hormone treatment which is why saliva testing is the most common method.
• You need a prescription to buy hormones and should definitely avoid buying hormones from sources on the internet.
• Bioidentical hormones are mainly derived from yams due to the increase in the number of people sensitive to soy.
• Topical hormone creams need to be composed of a particular base cream to ensure the medication is absorbed properly into the body.
• Progesterone is typically applied to an area of the body with a higher amount of fatty tissue; estrogen is usually applied to an area like the forearm. It’s recommended to avoid applying the cream to the abdomen area.
• High doses of progesterone can cause fatigue. High doses of estrogen can lead to irregular heart rates or hot flash type effects.
• Hormone therapy is not a wonder drug – it takes time for the treatment to work.
• Hormone therapy is sometimes covered by insurance but it will depend on the composition of the hormones in particular.
• The collaborative approach is often the best one. When the doctor, the patient, and the compounding pharmacist work together you will get the best results.

Resources Mentioned:

Karim’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Peter Borten is a doctor of Asian medicine who helps people attain whole health of body and mind. He has authored hundreds of articles, spanning topics such as stress, emotional wellness, nutrition, fitness, and our connection with nature.

He is co-author of the new book, The Well Life: How to Use Structure, Sweetness, and Space to Create Balance, Happiness, and Peace.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you tell us your book and what a well life is?
• Can you expand on “creating your world through your word”?
• Can you talk about defining your super powers?
• Can you talk about energy from a traditional Chinese medicine standpoint?
• Do you have any tips for listeners for creating a well life for themselves?
• Tell us about your new cookbook.

Key Points Made by Peter:

• The book is an outgrowth of Dr. Borten’s and his wife’s medical practices. They found that true whole life wellness needs to bring in elements of traditional medicine as well as a holistic look at life.
• There are three key elements to a well life: Structure, Sweetness, and Space.
• Structure is your life architecture that you put in place to achieve your goals. Your structure should be organic and formed consciously as well as efficient. Your Structure should allow for enjoyment while also getting you to your chosen destination.
• Sweetness is about the soul nourishing parts of life. The Sweetness elements should be prioritized and not seen as an indulgence. Building Sweetness into your schedule fortifies your ability to achieve your goals.
• Space is about opening up and being present, going beyond your own mental dialogue.
• We all have various degrees of trust in our lives, we should strive to surround ourselves with people who have integrity and focus on having integrity yourself. If you can trust yourself to have integrity, you will have confidence in your ability to achieve your goals.
• It’s possible to tap into your gifts that instill a sense of purpose to your life. Start with a life purpose statement and then try on different roles to see what resonates. Having a purpose will shift the quality of your life experience.
• Jing is the concept of essence in Chinese medicine. Acquired Jing is the energy you gain from eating quality food and getting restful sleep, you can learn how to function solely on acquired energy without depleting your reserves.
• A self care practice is the best first step to creating a well life. How much do you prioritize the Sweetness in life?
• Identify what really is important to you. If you’re not doing something that is important, whose priorities have you been living?
• Take the time to meditate and cultivate a feeling of space so that you have time to respond to life instead of reacting.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Well Life

Peters’ website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Wahls is a functional medicine practitioner, clinical researcher, and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Iowa. Though she is at the forefront of functional medicine, what sets Dr. Wahls apart is her experience using nutrition and lifestyle interventions to treat progressive health problems to heal her own MS, and later, that of others.

Within a year of beginning her Wahls Protocol, Dr. Wahls went from being bound to a zero-gravity chair to completing an 18-mile bike tour – without any disease modifying drugs or surgery.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you tell us your story of beating MS?
• Can you tell us about your protocol?
• What is the single most powerful intervention to lower all causes of mortality and morbidity?
• How do we implement your protocol on a budget?
• What advice do you have for someone whose family does not want to get involved?
• Tell us about your new cookbook.

Key Points Made by Dr. Wahls:

• Prior to being diagnosed Dr. Wahls was very skeptical of special diets and supplements.
• Once she was diagnosed with MS and taking the modern drugs in an attempt to treat her MS, her condition declined and put her on an alternative path that lead her to the Wahls protocol.
• The Wahls protocol is effective for more than just treating MS – it’s also effective in the treatment of traumatic brain injury, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and other medical and neurological problems.
• Once the research started bearing out the effectiveness of the protocol, the critics became fans.
• Eating more vegetables is the most powerful method of lowering your chance of mortality but it won’t make up for eating poorly. Food is the most powerful medication available.
• Removing the inflammatory elements of your diet, including gluten, dairy, and possibly eggs, is the first step; then ramp up the amount of vegetables. Being willing to eat small amounts of meat is important.
• To improve your quality of food you should be cooking at home and making lists and plans for your meals ahead of time.
• You can get some great results with some conventional foods and visiting farmer’s markets is a good way to save money.
• If you want to be successful, you have to control your environment. Include your family in the preparation and planning.
• Better health outcomes will result from kids learning these skills early on.
• You will be much more successful if you can bring the family into the conversations and cooking classes.
• Dr. Wahls’ new cookbook has been written specifically for people on a fixed budget.
• Dr. Wahls is working on a new MS diet study that is currently looking for participants. Email msdietstudy@healthcare.uiowa.edu to find out if you’re eligible.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Wahls Protocol Cooking for Life: The Revolutionary Modern Paleo Plan to Treat All Chronic Autoimmune Conditions

Book – The Wahls Protocol: How I Beat Progressive MS Using Paleo Principles and Functional Medicine

Dr. Terry Wahls’ Website

Dr. Terry Wahls on Twitter

Dr. Terry Wahls on Facebook

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Tatta is a doctor of physical therapy, board certified nutrition specialist and functional medicine practitioner who specializes in treating persistent pain and lifestyle related musculoskeletal, metabolic and autoimmune health issues.

His mission is to create a new paradigm around treating persistent pain and reverse our global pain epidemic. He is the creator of the Healing Pain Online Summit and the host of The Healing Pain Podcast designed to broaden the conversation around natural strategies toward solving persistent pain. Dr. Tatta is the author of the bestselling book Heal Your Pain Now; A Revolutionary Program to Reset Your Brain and Body for a Pain-Free Life.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you talk about the state of pain in North America?
• How does chronic pain get stuck in the body?
• Can you talk about movement and exercise in relation to chronic pain?
• Are there any other tools or suggestions to leverage the healing power of the mind?
• Can you talk to us about nutrition?

Key Points Made by Dr. Tatta:

• Chronic pain is the number one complaint for chiropractors and physical therapists. The most common treatments are medication and surgery.
• Painkillers are the first line of treatment and many people become addicted.
• Chronic pain is usually treated as a symptom instead of a disease in and of itself. We have to shift our mindset and treat the root cause of the problem.
• When the body is injured it has a natural inflammatory response that leads to healing. Chronic pain is when pain persists afterwards.
• Central sensitization is when your brain continues to produce pain as an alarm after your tissue is healed. It’s not to say your pain isn’t real.
• Pain can be a real needle in a haystack, but a good doctor will not give up when looking for the cause.
• Up to 50% of people with chronic pain are diagnosed with depression.
• Movement is one of the best forms of treatment when it comes to chronic pain.
• Stopping yourself from exercising can end up reducing your threshold for pain. Approach your threshold and push it further each time.
• A basic walking or yoga practice is a good way to start. Increase your activity as your pain starts to go away.
• Tai Chi and Qigong are excellent ways to reintegrate the body and mind.
• The best way to leverage the healing power of the mind is to stop believing the myths around pain. Your negative thoughts lead to a fight or flight response and can exacerbate your condition.
• Celebrate your small wins and reframe the way you see suffering. Pain is the physical response, suffering is the emotion attached to the pain.
• Nutrition should be your first step in treating chronic pain in your body. You have to address your biochemical makeup.
• Switch to a whole foods diet or elimination diet. You have to discover your food friends and your food enemies.
• Be your own advocate, ask your practitioner to treat your pain naturally first. You can always say “no thank you” and seek other treatments.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Heal Your Pain Now: The Revolutionary Program to Reset Your Brain and Body for a Pain-Free Life

Dr. Tatta’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Josh Gitalis is a Clinical Nutritionist and is a recognized expert in the fields of clinical detoxification and therapeutic supplementation. He runs a Toronto-based private practice, with a worldwide client base. As a leader in his field, Josh teaches Clinical Nutrition for several natural health colleges and is the first Canadian nutritionist to become an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner (IFMCP).

Main Questions Asked:

• Where should we start when it comes to detoxing our body and mind?
• What are some tips that you can give us to deal with the root cause?
• Do you have any other tips or suggestions for detoxing the mind?
• Is there anything we haven’t covered yet?

Key Points Made by Josh:

• We should treat the body and mind as one unit. Many people forget about how the mind can be exposed to toxins.
• Our perceptions produce a cocktail of chemicals in our bodies that can either promote healing and growth or inhibit it.
• Negative emotions like fear and anger give signals to our cells that are a function of our autonomic nervous system.
• We are often in a fight or flight state due to modern life which can prevent your body’s ability to detoxify.
• The bulk of health is getting to the root cause of the problem.
• We are bombarded with chemicals but also with emotional triggers throughout the day.
• The number one tip is to keep breathing. Thinking about breathing and deepening it allows us to tap into the sympathetic nervous system. A simple exercise of four seconds in and four seconds out is a good way to start. The best time to breath is whenever you think you will remember it.
• Heart rate variability exercises can also be useful.
• There are passive and active ways to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, it’s about finding what way works best for you.
• Relationships are an important aspect of detoxing the mind. Are you energized after spending time with someone or do you feel drained? A lot of negative emotions get locked in the body.
• “Don’t let other people live in your head rent free.”
• You can’t change the past but you can change how you perceive the past.
• Dealing with negative emotions can lead to incredible physical results.
• Look at your environment, control as many of the environmental factors as you can so that you limit the negative ways you can be affected. Calm music, dim lighting, adding nature to your artificial space can help. Get outside more often.
• Everyone either consciously or subconsciously will find ways to deal with their stress. Find a constructive way to deal with stress and add it to your day.

Resources Mentioned:

Podcast – The Two Pillars of Mental Health with Josh Gitalis

Podcast – Daily Supplements with Josh Gitalis

Josh’s website

Josh’s Facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Peter Osborne is the clinical director of Origins HealthCare in Sugar Land, TX. He is a Doctor of Pastoral Science, Board Certified in Chiropractic Medicine and a Diplomate of the American Clinical Board of Nutrition. In practice since 2001, Dr. Osborne’s clinical focus is the holistic natural treatment of chronic degenerative diseases, with a primary focus on gluten sensitivity and food allergies. He founded Gluten Free Society in 2010 to help educate patients and physicians on the far reaching effects of gluten sensitivity. He is the author of “Glutenology” – a series of digital videos and e-books designed to help educate the world about gluten.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you elaborate on gluten?
• What is the difference between a healthy and unhealthy gluten free?
• Can you elaborate more on type 2 diabetes?
• What about patients that ask “Shouldn’t I still eat grains? I thought they were healthy for me”?
• What about a little bit of whole grains?
• Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by proper testing?
• Is there anything we haven’t touched on yet that you think is important for our listeners to know?

Key Points Made by Dr. Osbourne:

• People that eat less gluten are not more susceptible to diabetes.
• Surveys aren’t always accurate and only give limited information.
• People that eat gluten actually have a greater risk of diabetes, especially diabetes type 1.
• Gluten is one of the trigger antecedents of auto-immune diabetes/diabetes type 1.
• Grains contain so much simple carbohydrates they can elevate blood sugar and increase insulin. So eating grains, and especially processed grains, can contribute to diabetes in a very large way.
• Regardless of gluten content, anyone eating a highly processed diet is going to have a greater risk of diabetes.
• You can’t get healthy, or achieve health, or maintain health, by eating food that isn’t healthy.
• Just because a label says “gluten free”, “fat free”, “sugar free”, etc, doesn’t make it healthy.
• One man’s food is another man’s poison. Don’t eat what you’re allergic to, sensitive to, or intolerant to.
• Listen to the wisdom of your body. No matter what tests say if your body is rejecting something or it causes a bad reaction such as fatigue, stomach pains, bloating, etc, stay away from it.
• Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition that destroys a person’s ability to produce their own insulin. Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle induced disease caused by lack of exercise and consuming too much sugar, no matter if it’s processed or natural.
• One of the best ways we can control blood sugar is through movement, activity and exercise.
• Grains aren’t bad for you unless they are processed, or you have a gluten sensitivity. But they are not a good staple food to base your diet off, as they contain proteins designed to protect them from predators which can cause intestinal distress.
• Soaking and sprouting seeds makes grains easier to digest, but they do not remove gluten.
• Using elimination diets aren’t anywhere near as effective as genetic testing for gluten.
• There are seven ways that your immune system can respond to a food, and six of them are delayed immune responses. It takes several tests to be able to determine all your food sensitivities and intolerances.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – No Grain, No Pain: A 30-Day Diet for Eliminating the Root Cause of Chronic Pain

Dr. Osborne’s website

Gluten Free Society

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Maya Shetreat-Klein, MD is a neurologist, herbalist, urban farmer, and author of “The Dirt Cure: Healthy Food, Healthy Gut, Happy Child”. Board certified in adult and child neurology as well as pediatrics, Dr. Maya completed the University of Arizona’s Fellowship in Integrative Medicine, and now serves on their faculty. She works and studies with indigenous communities and healers in Ecuador. In her book and her practice, she offers an integrative and spiritual approach to allow moving beyond chronic health problems in children and adults. She also founded the Terrain Institute, where she teaches Terrain Medicine, an earth-based program for transformational healing.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is the dirt cure?
• Can you tell us about the terrain and how it plays a role in our health?
• Can you explain to our listeners that this isn’t some crazy idea that you just thought up one day, about the hygiene hypothesis, and the research going on about how important bacteria is for us?
• Can we switch gears and talk about soil now, and how soil benefits our bodies?
• What are your thoughts about eating wild plants?
• Can you tell us about why bitter foods are so important for us?
• When we talk about coffee as a bitter, do you mean black coffee?
• Do you mind listing a few other bitter foods?
• How do healthy fats help the immune system and brain?
• Is there anything that we have not touched on that you think is important for our listeners to know about?

Key Points Made by Dr. Maya:

• The dirt cure is part of the three foundations of health: being exposed to germs and microbes; eating fresh food from healthy soil; and getting outdoors into nature.
• Terrain refers to our bodies and what is in and on them as our bio terrain, and our environment as our eco terrain, and the relationship between the two.
• Researchers studying the hygiene hypothesis determined that even though there were approximately the same amount of germs in both an urban apartment as on a farm, on the farm there was many more types of germs, leading them to believe our bodies crave biodiversity to maintain good health.
• Animals and pets are a good source of biodiversity.
• 25 percent of the world’s biodiversity comes from soil. There are as many organisms as there are people on this planet in just one teaspoon of soil.
• There is a microorganism in soil that actually boosts your serotonin levels and can help fight depression.
• Foraging wild plants are good for your health as long you are careful not to eat anything poisonous or that may have been sprayed with chemicals like pesticides.
• When foraging try not to take more than 30 percent of what is there so the species can continue to grow and flourish.
• Bitter foods improve motility and helps increase stomach acid which helps break down proteins. In addition, it helps improve blood sugar levels, improves detoxification and boosts the immune system in not only the stomach, but in the ear nose and throat as well.
• Coffee and beer are bitter tonics.
• Some common bitters are dark leafy greens, orange rinds, and dark chocolate.
• Every cell membrane of every cell in our body is made with over 200 different kinds of fatty acids.
• Liver and egg yolks are good sources of cholesterol which helps to give structure to the cell membrane.
• Our brains are made with significantly high amounts of fats due to all the cell membranes contained in our brains.
• Babies need cholesterol so badly that breast milk contains enzymes that help absorb the cholesterol so it can go straight to the baby’s nervous systems.
• Omega 3’s help with mood, focus and attention, preventing cancer, and preventing asthma and other autoimmune conditions.
• Although you can get Omega 3’s from some plants, it’s only 5-10%. Animal products have more bio available omega 3’s for our bodies to absorb.
• Simply being in nature has numerous health benefits like reducing stress.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Dirt Cure: Growing Healthy Kids with Food Straight from Soil

Dr. Maya’s website

Dr. Maya’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Ruscio gives smart, busy people suffering from symptoms like daily bloating, constant fatigue and unexplained weight gain simple steps to start living a healthy, enjoyable life again – no matter how long you’ve been suffering for.

Specializing in autoimmune, thyroid, and digestive disorders, Dr Ruscio has spoken at The SIBO Symposium Summit, Paleo FX, Ancestral Health Symposium, Sean Croxton’s Digestion Sessions, as well as many other international conferences and top health podcasts.

Main Questions Asked:

• What are some of the updates you’ve come across when it comes to autoimmunity; specifically thyroid autoimmunity or Hashimoto’s disease?
• Can we talk a little bit about thyroid medication?
• Are there any other gut issues that can impact the thyroid as well?
• What is your favorite way to test for H. pylori infection?
• Do low carb diets have an impact on thyroid health?
• Can you tell us about goitrogenic foods?
• Are there any other important updates that you’d like to share?

Key Points Made by Dr. Ruscio:

• Just like anything in excess, over analyzing your health can be a bad thing. Don’t stress or make drastic lifestyle changes just because your test results are slightly outside the current ideal ranges. Stress itself is actually harmful to the body.
• Not all medications are helpful to all patients. Figure out what works best for you and don’t take medication that you don’t need or isn’t helping.
• Several studies have shown evidence that for patients who have impaired absorption, a liquid thyroid hormone may be more easily absorbed compared to tablets, even with food in the stomach.
• By improving his patients’ gut health, he has found that he has to work less with the patient’s thyroid health.
• Taking several different tests for H. pylori gives more accurate results.
• Low carb diets do not damage the thyroid. They slightly perturb the way thyroid hormones are metabolized because you’re changing the energy substrate of the human body, which causes some hormones to adjust in compensation.
• A simple form of a low carb diet can be fairly impactful in improving thyroid autoimmunity.
• When looking at evidence subjectively, it’s pretty suggestive that goitrogenic foods probably aren’t that problematic.

Resources Mentioned:

Podcast  – Gut Health and Digestive Health with Dr. Michael Ruscio

Dr. Ruscio’s website

Dr. Ruscio’s podcast

Dr. Ruscio’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Lucas Rockwood is a yoga teacher, trainer, nutritional coach, writer, and serial entrepreneur. With a formal yoga training background in Hot Yoga, Ashtanga Yoga, Gravity Yoga, and the Yoga Trapeze, Lucas has studied with some of the most well-respected teachers on the planet.

Lucas founded Absolute Yoga Academy in 2006, one of the top 10 yoga teacher training schools in the world with 2,000 certified teachers. He also founded YOGABODY, an internationally-renowned nutrition, education, and publishing organization serving 81 countries. Lucas is a highly-acclaimed writer, radio show host, TV personality, business consultant, weight loss expert, and health coach.

Main Questions Asked:

• Does our breathing affect our blood pH level?
• Is there a good way to breath and a bad way to breath?
• Are there any special breathing techniques we should use before going to bed?
• What about breathing prior to exercise?
• Is there anything else important that we should think about when it comes to yoga breathing?

Key Points Made by Lucas:

• Yoga allows us in some cases to override our autonomic nervous system.
• The simplest way to affect your blood pH level is by breathing in certain ways which will affect your nervous and brain state.
• The challenge we have with breathing is our poor posture and restrictive clothing. Most people have poor biomechanics when it comes to breathing.
• The average breathing rate of 8-12 breaths per minute is slightly elevated, we should be aiming for water breathing, 4-6 breaths per minute.
• Water breath will tend to balance you out; if you’re feeling lethargic it will bring you up, if you’re excited or anxious it will bring you down.
• Your breath normally favors one nostril or the other, each indicating a certain energy state. We are always alternating between the different states of fight or flight and rest.
• You can influence which energy state your body is in by controlling your breathing rate. which can set you up for success when it comes to the activities you’ll face each day.
• Whisky breath, anything slower than 4-6 breaths per minute, is the best breathing rate to encourage sleep. Focus more time on the exhale and the rate.
• If you breathe like you’re asleep, your body will respond in kind.
• Breathing oxygen does not suddenly flood your body with oxygen. Most people are fully oxygenated most of the time, the variable we control through breathing rate is carbon dioxide. By slowing down your breathing we are increasing the amount of CO2 in our bodies which has a number of positive effects.
• Coffee breath, 20 breaths or more per minute, will reduce the CO2 in your blood stream and put your body into a sympathetic nervous state.
• Breathing shouldn’t be complex and you can use water, whisky, and coffee breath whenever you need to.

Resources Mentioned:

How to Breathe

Lucas’ website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Rene Brent is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, author of the book “How Big Is Your BUT?”, international speaker and faculty member for The Institute of Interpersonal Hypnotherapy. Rene has been an RN for over 25 years and has worked in ICU, Trauma/ER and Recovery Room.

She helps her clients use the power of the deep inner mind to release blocks and reach personal and professional goals. She is passionate about teaching people how to Practice Happy and becoming a Happiness Hunter.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is clinical hypnotherapy?
• Tell us about your book and the big BUTs.
• What are some of the more common BUTs?
• What comes next after listening to your subconscious?
• What about positive thinking?
• How do we avoid the mid-afternoon energy crash?

Key Points Made by Rene:

• The mind controls the body.
• Clinical hypnotherapy is about opening the subconscious mind.
• Every experience you have is filtered through your belief system, if you have negative or limiting beliefs it will colour everything you do.
• BUTs are blocks in the subconscious mind which are preventing you from reaching your goals. It’s hard to make changes if you are not aware of what needs to be changed
• The first words you hear after the BUT are your truth, try not to rationalize them away.
• Often your inner critic or your inner child is the voice of your subconscious. Your ego states are your subconscious mind.
• When we are young, our minds are always in an alpha state and what we hear and learn in that state becomes encoded as truth.
• Truth talk is where you ask whether what you believe is true.
• Use the moments where you are in an alpha wave state to make changes and hear what your subconscious is telling you.
• Fight for your truth.
• You can change the epigenetics of your body based on how we feel about ourselves. Every thought has a chemical reaction.
• Being stressed puts you into survival mode, positive thinking will only work when you are in a relaxed state. Take a deep breath and slow down.
• If you only take downtime when you are sick, your body will use that to cause you to slow down.
• You may need a professional to help you get past certain obstacles and false beliefs.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – How Big Is Your BUT?: Discover How To Let Go Of Blocks And Move Forward In Your Life. Big Dreams – Little BUTS

Rene’s website

Free meditation and book chapters

Rene’s facebook page

Rene’s twitter

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Leigh Stringer is a workplace strategy expert and researcher. She works for an architecture, engineering and building technology firm. She is the author of two bestselling books, “The Green Workplace: Sustainable Strategies that Benefit Employees, the Environment and the Bottom Line”, and “The Healthy Workplace: How to Improve the Well-Being of Your Employees—and Boost Your Company’s Bottom Line”.

Leigh is currently collaborating with Harvard University’s School of Public Health to create new tools to connect like minds and to blur the boundaries across industries in order to advance and improve our well-being at work.

Main Questions Asked:

• What are some of the problems in our workplace?
• Let’s start with movement and how it helps.
• Let’s talk about the food aspect.
• What about stress reduction?
• Let’s talk about sleep and it’s impact on productivity.
• How do we avoid the mid afternoon energy crash?

Key Points Made by Leigh:

• People spend a large amount of time in front of screens without moving very much – much more than the human body is built for.
• A sedentary lifestyle and work habit leads to a variety of health problems, some of them similar to the side effects of smoking.
• Movement has to happen every day – you can’t put it off to the weekend. Stand every 30 minutes and move around every hour or so.
• Research is pointing towards the need for at least 150 minutes of exercise a week. 10,000 steps a day is a good target for a healthy adult.
• Set reminders and use different work areas if you can.
• It’s important to pay attention to what you are eating. The way food is presented to us has a direct impact on how we eat. Hide the things that are not particularly healthy for you and keep the healthy foods within easy access.
• Stress and anxiety are the most common causes of loss in productivity. Movement is the easiest way to reduce stress. Surrounding yourself with plants and trees restores us psychologically as well. Our workplaces should be restorative and filled with natural surfaces.
• Being outside and exposed to natural light is beneficial for resetting your circadian rhythm and helping your sleep quality. Pick a time to begin your bedtime ritual.
• Sleep is a key component to our overall health and productivity. There is a direct correlation to the number of hours worked and commute time and sleep duration.
• You will be hungry – prepare yourself and bring reasonable snacks with you.
• As a manager people are watching you, you should model the behaviour that allows your team to become more productive.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Green Workplace: Sustainable Strategies that Benefit Employees, the Environment, and the Bottom Line

Book – The Healthy Workplace: How to Improve the Well-Being of Your Employees—and Boost Your Company’s Bottom Line

Leigh’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Stephen Lewis and Janet have a long history of helping people achieve their maximum potential. Dr. Stephen Lewis stays current on the latest research pertaining to nutritional supplements and optimal health. Janet Lewis is a Certified Natural Health Consultant with a unique perspective on alternative and complementary nutrition from studying with numerous national leading alternative health experts.

Paramount in their education was their trip to China while studying with traditional Chinese medical doctors. Dr. Stephen Lewis and Janet know the importance of proper nutrition in the healing process and maintenance of the human body. They incorporate the latest medical research into the decisions made while helping people with their nutritional decisions. After seeing a growing public need, they teamed up with Doctor’s Nutrition to offer extremely low cost blood work to determine the most appropriate nutritional products that are only available through a doctor’s office.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is inflammation?
• Where do cytokines come from?
• How does someone spot food that is non-GMO?
• What are some other ways for us to start reducing inflammation?

Key Points Made by Dr. Stephen and Janet Lewis:

• Inflammation is not necessarily “bad” – it’s the body’s natural reaction to injury.
• Certain foods will also cause inflammation due to cytokines and can lead to chronic disease.
• There are two major issues that we need to deal with: toxicity in our environment and bodies, and genetically modified foods causing inflammation.
• Soy and corn are the most modified crops in North America and they make up large portions of the average diet.
• Wheat and gluten sensitivity are major causes of chronic disease and inflammation.
• In the US non-GMO food is typically labeled USDA Certified Organic.
• In Canada non-GMO food is much harder to spot – a label that says “organic” can still contain GMO foods.
• Digestive enzymes and probiotics will help your GI tract heal.
• Filtered water, more rest, and a sense of humour can help with reducing inflammation.
• One way to tell if you’re suffering from inflammation is from your bowel movements, you should eliminate 20-30 minutes after each meal.
• Stick with the probiotics, it takes time to heal the damage done by inflammation. Many problems go away when you feed your body properly and detoxify your body.
• America is the sickest developed nation in the world.
• Increase nutrients, decrease toxins, repair the gut leakiness and replace that with friendly digestive enzymes.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Stephen and Janet Lewis’ website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Rachna Patel has been practicing in the area of medical marijuana for over half-a-decade. She walks patients step-by-step through how to use medical marijuana for their specific medical condition without getting high off of it, without getting addicted to it, and without smoking it.

She speaks from the experience of having treated thousands of patients and having read research study upon research study on marijuana. She completed her medical studies at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did you end up in the field of medical marijuana?
• What are some of the common conditions you see in your practice?
• How does medical marijuana fit into the medical system right now?
• How quickly do patients typically see results?
• Does medicinal marijuana need to be smoked?
• Is medical marijuana addictive?
• Are there people who should not use medical marijuana?
• How should someone choose a doctor if they want to look into medical marijuana?

Key Points Made by Dr. Patel:

• After seeing cases of opioid overdose and other abuses of medication, Dr. Patel started researching the field of medical marijuana which was very compelling.
• Chronic pain, anxiety, and insomnia are the most common conditions that are treated by medical marijuana, but there are a variety of other conditions like cancer, multiple sclerosis, and ADHD.
• Treatment with medical marijuana often allows the patients to come off of other pain management drugs.
• For insomnia, medical marijuana helps patients sleep and wake up feeling refreshed instead of groggy like they would with over the counter drugs.
• Medical marijuana’s place in the system is very dependent on the state you are in and the laws on the books. Some states are heavily regulated.
• As long as the dosage and composition is correct, patients could see results as early as day one.
• The world has been using marijuana incorrectly, as long as it’s used within a particular dosage and therapeutic range the effects are positive instead of negative.
• The cannabinoids mainly produced by marijuana are THC and CBD. THC is psychoactive and creates the sensation of being high; CBD does not.
• The advantage of medical marijuana is that the chemical composition is lab tested and the amounts of each chemical are known. They also test for fungus, bacteria, and pesticides.
• Medical marijuana does not need to be smoked – there are many alternatives that cater to different dietary and physical needs. Smoking tends to cause inflammation.
• Medical marijuana can become addictive, but it’s much less addictive than tobacco or alcohol. It’s roughly as addictive as caffeine for people who already use it recreationally.
• Generally people with a past history of psychotic episodes, heart conditions, or lung conditions should NOT use medical marijuana. Pregnant women should be cautious as well – the effects on an unborn baby are not known.
• A good doctor is one that gives you the information you need to use medical marijuana effectively for your condition.

Resources Mentioned:

Information on Rules and Regulations for Medical Marijuana

How to Choose a Medical Marijuana Doctor that You Can Trust

Dr. Patel’s website

Dr. Patel’s Youtube channel

Dr. Patel’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Kan is a board certified chiropractic neurologist, certified in functional medicine, and a fellow of the American Association of Integrative Medicine.  Dr. Kan is the creator of NeuroMetabolic Integration, a breakthrough approach that combines functional neurology and functional medicine to treat complex neurological, endocrine, and autoimmune disorders.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is functional neurology?
• What are the seven common causes of fatigue?
• What are some of the tests and physical exams you can do for fatigue?
• Is there a test someone can do at home?
• What are some action steps the listeners can take?

Key Points Made by Dr. Kan:

• The conventional medical approach is to treat symptoms; the functional medical approach is to treat the underlying causes of the symptoms.
• Fatigue is different from feeling ‘tired’. Fatigue is when you don’t recover with rest.
• Fatigue is a brain symptom.
• The common causes of brain fatigue include a lack of fuel the brain needs to function, inflammation/neuroinflamnmation, gut dysfunction, blood sugar dysfunction, oxygenation issues, hormones, detoxification problems, and mitochondrial dysfunction.
• Just taking a supplement to address the symptoms of fatigue is not going to address the root cause.
• The first step in diagnosing fatigue is a neurological exam to look for signs of fatigue.
• Being unable to read for more than a short period of time or feeling sleepy after driving for a few minutes are indications of brain fatigue.
• Basic balance tests like the Romberg’s test is a good way to check yourself for brain fatigue symptoms. If you begin to sway that’s an indication that you may need further, more specific testing.
• There is no drug specifically for fatigue, and without knowing the root cause it’s impossible to treat correctly. Looking for the right practitioner is very important. You may need to see someone trained in functional neurology.
• The easiest place to start is your diet by stabilizing blood sugar by reducing simple carbs and increasing proteins, fats, and veggies.
• Exercising more than basic walking everyday will help alleviate fatigue symptoms.
• We’ve been conditioned to assume that drugs are the answer for pretty much everything. Someone with a chronic health issue needs to look for the underlying causes of their issue.

Resources Mentioned:

Podcast interview – Dr. Peter Kan and Brain Health

Dr. Kan’s website

Video series on fatigue

Dr. Kan’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Janice Joneja holds a Ph.D. in medical microbiology and immunology.  She is a registered dietitian in Canada and a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in the USA. She has held faculty positions at several universities, including the University of British Columbia. For 13 years she was head of the Allergy Nutrition Clinic at the Vancouver Hospital and Health Sciences Centre.

She is also the author of eight books and dietetic practice manuals on food allergy.  Her work has been published in peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals, as well as in popular magazines.  She is a respected lecturer at universities, colleges and hospitals internationally, and regularly appears on television and radio call-in shows as an expert in her field.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is histamine?
• What is histamine intolerance?
• What are some of the symptoms that indicate histamine intolerance?
• What really causes histamine intolerance?
• Does histamine intolerance improve?
• Where can we find accurate information about histamine intolerance?

Key Points Made by Dr. Janice:

• Histamine is an important chemical within the body that protects the body when it is under threat, assists in digestion and other functions.
• The symptoms of allergy are principally due to an excess of histamine in the body.
• Histamine intolerance is the body’s inability to handle and mitigate its histamine levels. This often makes a person assume they are having an allergic reaction to something when that isn’t the case.
• Histamine intolerance symptoms include: itching, swelling, a drop in blood pressure, a heightened heart rate that can lead to feelings of an anxiety attack, runny eyes and nose, headaches, fatigue, confusion, loss of consciousness, heartburn, and reflux.
• Some people can’t produce enough of the enzyme that breaks down excess histamine – this can possibly be genetic.
• Some people produce too much histamine in response to normal circumstances.
• Chronic inflammatory infections can also lead to histamine intolerance.
• Certain foods will also contribute to an increase in histamine level. Examples include: fermented foods like cheese and yogurt, overripe vegetables, certain fruits, fish, shellfish, and certain food additives like sulfites.
• It can be difficult to diagnose histamine intolerance because of the variety of potential symptoms. You have to rule out the underlying factors first.
• The best place to start is to go to your doctor to rule out some potential causes of their symptoms, and from there try a low histamine diet.
• Depending on the root cause of a person’s histamine excess, the intolerance may be something that can be dealt with or it could be a long standing condition.
• Women going through hormone fluctuations can also trigger the symptoms associated with histamine intolerance.
• The most important thing in accessing information about histamine intolerance is to go to an expert source that has been working in the field for a number of years.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Janice’s website

More info on histamine intolerance

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

JJ Virgin is a nutrition and weight loss expert. Her newest book is called Miracle Mindset. It covers the 7 powerful lessons she learned after her 16-year-old son was in a brutal hit-and-run accident.

JJ is best known for her bestsellers The Virgin Diet and Sugar Impact Diet, but fighting for her son’s life inspired a new focus on mindset and the power of courage, strength, and resilience to help you not just survive, but thrive during life’s hardest moments.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is the Miracle Mindset and why does our mindset matter so much?
• What are the seven lessons in the Miracle Mindset?
• Do you have any other words of advice for our listeners?

Key Points Made by JJ:

• The number one thing preventing people from achieving their goals is that they don’t feel worthy – in other words they don’t have the mindset they need to be successful.
• We tend to look at the bad things in our life in a negative way. The bad things are the training that shaped us into who we are today and help us become better and deal with stress more effectively.
• If you’re feeling fear, it’s because you’re taking on a worthy challenge. The struggle brings out the strength.
• Everything in life worth having is worth fighting for and is necessary hard work.
• The people who succeed are those who go through tough times and made it past them.
• You can’t course correct standing still. You have to take action if you want to improve things.
• It’s important to ask the ‘right’ questions if you want good answers.
• Your limitations will become your life. You can approach life either believing you will fail or that you will succeed – the latter will give you much better results. You determine your limiting beliefs.
• The ‘how’ will show up if you focus on the ‘why’.
• Be present and celebrate the small victories, pay attention to the small details.
• Commit to an action. Don’t ‘try’. Be courageous instead of fearless.
• Having a support community is important. A rising tide lifts all boats.
• Forgiveness is an active process. If you’re not happy despite good things happening in your life, you probably have some forgiving to do.
• Mindset is a skill that can be developed.
• Start with the areas of your life that you’re not satisfied with and begin building that area up.
• You can create the life and impact that you want; you have to decide first to do it.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Miracle Mindset: A Mother, Her Son, and Life’s Hardest Lessons

Book – The Virgin Diet: Drop 7 Foods, Lose 7 Pounds, Just 7 Days

Book – Sugar Impact Diet

JJ’s website

JJ’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Josh Gitalis, Clinical Nutritionist, is a recognized expert in the fields of clinical detoxification and therapeutic supplementation. He runs a Toronto-based private practice, with a worldwide client base. As a leader in his field, Josh teaches Clinical Nutrition for several natural health colleges and is the first Canadian nutritionist to become an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner (IFMCP). Josh is a noted expert for various media outlets including CTV News and CityTV.

Main Questions Asked:

• What are the two pillars of mental health?
• Why is the conventional medical model of mental health missing the mark?
• What are some of the biggest mistakes and misconceptions about mental health?
• Do you have any tips on choosing the right interventions?
• What are some symptoms of low/high blood sugar?

Key Points Made by Josh:

• The first pillar is the mental, emotional, and spiritual pillar: the experiences of our early lives shape the way we perceive things.
• The second pillar is the biochemical pillar: our body’s physical health, sensitivities and general conditions.
• People will react to events differently depending on their past training and experiences – this will affect your emotional state and the chemicals within your body.
• Blood sugar imbalances can cause a number of negative effects like stress, depression, and anxiety.
• Our brain takes up 25% of the body’s circulating glucose. If the flow of energy (glucose) to the brain isn’t very regular the brain will be directly affected.
• Brain shrinkage is linked to higher blood sugars levels. Big body = little brain.
• Traditional medicine typically treats mental health too narrowly, only addressing a single symptom or neurotransmitter.
• Your diet is directly involved in the formation of certain neurotransmitters like serotonin.
• Treating inflammation is often the first step to treating depression since inflammation affects the ability of drugs to actually help.
• The root cause of mental health issues is often found in the person’s diet or inflammation levels.
• A big misconception about mental health is that there is a single cause. Sleep, physical activity, hormones, and vitamin deficiencies all contribute.
• Most people don’t believe food affects their mental health. You have three chances a day to affect the way you feel.
• Your food becomes your thoughts. The food and nutrition you eat becomes your nervous system and brain.
• What you do now has a major impact of your later brain health.
• There are three things your brain needs: oxygen, glucose, and stimulation.
• The simplest recommendation is to do what energizes you.
• The biggest lever you have to improve your mental health is to tune up your diet. Diets like Paleo and the Ketogenic Diet are popular because they are helping people.
• If your energy and mental concentration are going up and down throughout the day, your blood sugar isn’t being regulated well.
• Changing your diet involves a transition time. Small snacks can help with the effects.

Resources Mentioned:

Josh’s website

Josh’s Facebook page

Podcast Interview with Josh Gitalis – Daily Supplements

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Lyn-Genet Recitas is the NY Times and International Bestselling author of “The Plan”, a groundbreaking nutritional protocol which has been published in over 15 countries. Her newest book is “The Metabolism Plan”. She helps people reach their best health by finding their chemical responses to food, not counting calories via her book and protocol, “The Plan”, and finding the right kind of exercise for your own personal metabolism. Lyn-Genet and her team of doctors and nutritionists have helped over half a million people regain their health and reach their goal weight all while eating over 2,000 calories a day.

Main Questions Asked:

• Tell us what can be going wrong when it comes to someone’s diet?
• What is BBT?
• How does exercise cause inflammation and increase cortisol?
• What about walking as exercise?
• Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about yet that you think is important?

Key Points Made by Lyn-Genet:

• If you gain weight after eating a particular food, that’s your body’s way of saying this food is NOT good for you.
• Your body’s particular chemistry will react differently to certain foods and it’s the same function with exercise.
• You can gain weight and reduce your metabolism if you exercise too intensely for your body.
• Basal body temperature (BBT) is a measurement of your endocrine function.
• When you exercise too intensely you will increase cortisol and become more prone to fat storage and suppress your thyroid function.
• If you exercise and your BBT goes up, that’s good. If it goes down, the exercise was too intense and you should tone it down.
• Cortisol is the key. We are already stressed most of the time. Effective exercise doesn’t cause more stress to your body.
• It’s not just the intensity or style of the exercise, but also the time of day that matters most.
• Your body naturally repairs itself during sleep, and extra cortisol prevents the repair process. Cortisol tends to drop after 5pm so exercising in the evening is actually not very effective.
• Save your favourite intense exercise for the weekends when your stress levels are lower. Rotate your exercises as well.
• Walking is generally not effective, and too much walking increases stress levels.
• Test whatever it is you are doing that you think is making you healthy.
• Exercising intensely to reduce your stress can lead to a negative feedback cycle and creates more stress.
• You need to find somebody that is on your team and that can support you in becoming healthy.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Plan: Eliminate the Surprising “Healthy” Foods That Are Making You Fat–and Lose Weight Fast

Book – The Metabolism Plan: Discover the Foods and Exercises that Work for Your Body to Reduce Inflammation and Drop Pounds Fast

Lyn-Genet’s website

Lyn-Genet’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Tom O’Bryan is a world expert on gluten and considered the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ for treating chronic disease and metabolic disorders from a Functional Medicine Perspective. He holds adjunct Faculty positions with the Institute for Functional Medicine and the National University of Health Sciences. He is the visionary behind “The Gluten Summit – A Grain of Truth”, bringing together 29 of the world’s experts on the Gluten connection to diseases, disorders, and a wide-range of symptoms and ages. His 2016 critically acclaimed ground-breaking book, “The Autoimmune Fix” outlines the step-by-step development of degenerative diseases and gives us the tools to identify our disease (or dis-ease) process years before the symptoms are obvious.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you talk about some of the statistics about autoimmune disease in North America?
• What inspired you to write the book?
• Tell us about the Betrayal series?
• What should someone expect once they implement your protocol?
• Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about yet that you think is important?

Key Points Made by Dr. O’Bryan :

• When we combine the various autoimmune diseases into one statistic, it is growing rapidly and is the most common cause of many other diseases.
• Every degenerative disease is a disease of inflammation and the inflammation is caused by an autoimmune function.
• We should be treating the cause of a disease, not just the symptoms.
• There are three components to an autoimmune disease – the first is genetics; the second is an environmental trigger that sets it off; the third is damage to your intestine, or leaky gut.
• Nine out of ten newborn babies have an average of 283 toxic chemicals in their bloodstream when they are born.
• You can arrest the development of autoimmune disease by healing the gut.
• Every patient with hormone imbalances has food sensitivities that they don’t know about.
• Studies have found that wheat has a key role in autoimmune disease and is the trigger that breaks the weak link.
• Many people have elevated antibodies in their system years prior to having symptoms of autoimmune disease.
• Testing the levels of your antibodies can give you a Positive Predictive Value of developing an autoimmune disease. This will give you a chance to address the problem before it gets worse and years before it becomes a full fledged autoimmune diagnosis.
• It can take up to 17 years for cutting edge research to reach a local doctor’s office.
• A particular gene, HLDRB1 can mean that you are vulnerable to developing an autoimmune disease in response to vaccines which may be why vaccine movements have started recently.
• Autoimmune diseases can actually be reversed if you follow the correct protocols. You should be able to notice a change for the better within three weeks.
• You can’t fix what you can’t know.
• Our environment is generally so toxic, we are not only killing off the majority of the wildlife on the planet but humanity as well.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Autoimmune Fix: How to Stop the Hidden Autoimmune Damage That Keeps You Sick, Fat, and Tired Before It Turns Into Disease

Betrayal Series – The Autoimmune Disease Solution They’re Not Telling You…

The Gluten Summit – A Grain of Truth

Dr. O’Bryan’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Livingston is a psychologist disillusioned by what traditional psychology had to offer the overweight and/or food obsessed patient. He’s spent several decades researching the nature of bingeing and overeating via work with his own patients and a self-funded research program with more than 40,000 participants.  Most important, however, was his own personal journey out of obesity and food prison to a normal, healthy weight and a much more lighthearted relationship with food.

Main Questions Asked:

• What was your own personal journey with obesity like?
• Why do people in our culture have such trouble with binge eating?
• Is it possible to never binge again?
• Is there anything else the listeners should know?

Key Points Made by Dr. Glenn:

• Glenn was exercise bulimic when he was younger, as he got older and couldn’t exercise as often his eating habits began to catch up to him.
• Food can be tied directly to emotional issues like loneliness and stress.
• Addictions are linked to the survival drive we all share, you have to identify and separate the impulse in order to prevent it from dominating your behaviour.
• Name your impulses – Glenn named his “my inner pig”.
• The food industry is incentivised to put as many calories in as small a space and as enticing a product as they possibly can.
• Our culture treats addiction with uncertainty which really undermines our abilities to deal with the addiction.
• Make the decision and set a hard rule around your food; winners don’t give up, they analyze what went wrong and then get back up again.
• Create a food plan that you can own. Take responsibility for it.
• Use four categories to create your plan: Things you will never do again; things you will always do; things you will do under certain conditions; and things you can do in an unrestricted way. Start with one rule and then add more as you go along.
• Evaluate your plan and make sure it provides a nutritious but tasty diet.
• Step back and consider one food that really triggers you, make a rule based off that one food and identify the source of your impulse as your inner enemy. This will give you a chance to make a better choice.
• Stopping addictive behaviour doesn’t require you to understand everything about it. Just clarify your plan and you can begin to ignore your impulses.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Never Binge Again: Reprogram Yourself to Think Like a Permanently Thin Person. Stop Overeating and Binge Eating and Stick to the Food Plan of Your Choice!

Dr. Glenn’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Lyn-Genet Recitas is the NY Times and International Bestselling author of “The Plan”, a groundbreaking nutritional protocol which has been published in over 15 countries. Her next book, due out January 2017, is called “The Metabolism Plan” and will focus on The Plan and exercise. She helps people reach their best health by finding their chemical responses to food, not counting calories via her book and protocol, The Plan. Lyn-Genet and her team of doctors and nutritionists have helped over half a million people regain their health and reach their goal weight all while eating over 2,000 calories a day.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you talk about The Plan and how healthy foods can cause weight gain?
• Who would be a good candidate for The Plan?
• How much exercise should we be doing?
• How can The Plan help hormonal balance?
• Does The Plan mean someone won’t be able to eat the “bad” foods again?

Key Points Made by Lyn-Genet:

• Weight gain can be tied to physiological responses and can come from seemingly healthy foods.
• Your body’s particular chemistry will react differently to certain foods.
• When your body gains weight or you get sick from eating a healthy food, that’s your body’s signal that you shouldn’t eat that food.
• Weight gain after eating healthy foods is often caused by a histamine response.
• Our response to certain healthy foods changes as we age, especially over the age of 35.
• Every person is eating on average three to four foods that their body reacts badly to.
• We are taught to push through pain or weight gain; we should instead listen to what our bodies are telling us.
• Inflammation is the basis for all weight gain, serious disease, and early aging.
• When people exercise too intensely or with the wrong type for their body, tests show a possible weight gain, a decrease in thyroid and metabolic function, and an increase in blood pressure. You have to find the exercise that is right for your body.
• Intense exercise increases cortisol, so if you exercise at the wrong time it could actually cause weight gain because the body interprets the exercise as stress.
• Most people can achieve an optimal body composition with just 20 minutes of exercise every other day.
• The primary benefit of The Plan is to manage cortisol.
• By cutting a food out temporarily you can allow your body to heal. The amount of weight you gain from a food is a good indicator to how long you should be avoiding it.
• If you eat a particular food every day, you are increasing your chances of becoming sensitive to that food. Rotate your food selection, when you lose weight the foods your body reacts to will change as well.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Plan: Eliminate the Surprising “Healthy” Foods That Are Making You Fat–and Lose Weight Fast

Book – The Metabolism Plan: Discover the Foods and Exercises that Work for Your Body to Reduce Inflammation and Drop Pounds Fast

Lyn-Genet’s website

Lyn-Genet’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Osborne is the clinical director of Origins HealthCare in Sugar Land, TX. He is a Doctor of Pastoral Science, Board Certified in Chiropractic Medicine and a Diplomat of the American Clinical Board of Nutrition. In practice since 2001, Dr. Osborne’s clinical focus is the holistic natural treatment of chronic degenerative diseases, with a primary focus on gluten sensitivity and food allergies. He founded Gluten Free Society in 2010 to help educate patients and physicians on the far reaching effects of gluten sensitivity. He is the author of Glutenology, a series of digital videos and ebooks designed to help educate the world about gluten.

Main Questions Asked:

• Why does it seem like grains are only now becoming a problem?
• What is the prescription pain trap?
• Is there anything else the listeners should know?

Key Points Made by Dr. Osborne:

• The rise of cereal as a common staple food reflects the increase of diagnosed digestive disorders.
• Prior to fortifying grain products many people died from mineral deficiency.
• Grain products are often a source of mold and mycotoxins because of the way they are stored. The effect accumulates so the longer we eat grains the more likely we will experience gut problems.
• Grains have natural protective mechanisms built in that cause problems in the human GI tract.
• 92% of people diagnosed with a gluten disorder do not respond by going on a gluten free diet because their inflammation still remains.
• You need to be seed free for a time to allow your GI tract to recover.
• Properly prepared seeds can help dismantle the mechanism that causes digestive problems.
• The average diet is not very diverse – we tend to eat the same things pressed into different shapes and forms.
• Join a co-op or shop at a farmer’s market – you will find food that is good for you and tastes great too.
• Properly prescribed pain medications are responsible for killing over 35,000 people each year.
• Treating the pain is not dealing with the actual problem.
• Common pain medications can create holes in the gut lining and block vital minerals from being absorbed by the body.
• Food is a drug – you can choose the right or the wrong drugs for your body. Look for excellent, quality ingredients and foods to fuel your body.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – No Grain, No Pain: A 30-Day Diet for Eliminating the Root Cause of Chronic Pain

Dr. Osborne’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Schuler is the Director of Clinical Affairs for Integrative Therapeutics. He is a certified nutrition specialist, licensed nutritionist, and chiropractic physician board-certified in clinical nutrition. He has earned degrees in nursing and phytotherapeutics, and has a private integrative medicine practice in Hudson, Wisconsin.

Main Questions Asked:

• How often do you find that medication is a trigger for headaches?
• What are some common triggers for migraines?
• What does a family history of migraines mean?
• Is there anything else the listeners should know?

Key Points Made by Dr. Schuler:                                                                                             

• The first step is to analyze the root causes of headaches.
• Many different kinds of medication have headaches listed as a side effect.
• Low grade constant headaches are very common but are not a normal condition.
• Most headache medication available over the counter shouldn’t be used all the time.
• Dehydration is one of the most common causes of headaches.
• Headaches won’t necessarily present in a way that’s obvious to an outside observer, this can cause health care practitioners to not give you as much attention because you will appear to be generally healthy.
• Erratic blood sugar levels are also a common cause of headaches.
• For about 15% of cases, chiropractic efforts can relieve some symptoms of migraine headaches.
• Our modern lifestyle and the technology we use is giving people structural problems that result in pain.
• There’s a reason healthcare is called a practice, sometimes you have to keep trying until you find the right answer.
• Certain foods can trigger migraines, using an elimination diet you can figure out which specific foods are the main culprits.
• High histamine foods can trigger sinus related migraines.
• Genetic causes of headaches is a branch of science that is just beginning to be explored.
• Riboflavin and purple butterbur can be effective supplements you can use to combat headaches.
• Magnesium can also improve your health in regards to headaches, high doses can work rapidly.

Resources Mentioned:

Podcast Interview with Dr. Corey Schuler Part 1

Dr. Schuler’s website

Dr. Schuler’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Trevor Cates was the first woman licensed as a naturopathic doctor in the state of California and was appointed to California’s Bureau of Naturopathic Medicine Advisory Council. After working in several world-renowned spas, Dr. Cates became known as “The Spa Dr.” She sees patients in her private practice in Park City, Utah with a focus on graceful aging and glowing skin. She is also host of THE SPA DR. Podcast and the online Glowing Skin Summit. She is the author of Glowing Skin From Within. She believes the key to healthy skin is inner and outer nourishment.

Main Questions Asked:

• What does it mean for our skin to be a magic mirror?
• What are some of the common misconceptions about skin?
• What are some of the skin changes that indicate the body is not well?
• What are the best/worst foods for your skin?
• What should we be looking for when it comes to skin care products?

Key Points Made by Dr. Cates:

• The skin is our largest organ and the condition of the skin reveals the condition of the body within.
• Conventional dermatology is to treat the symptoms and not the underlying causes.
• We should address the body’s innate hormonal balance instead of making it more complicated.
• A common misconception is that by covering up the skin issue the problem will go away.
• The substances we put on our skin and the environment we are exposed to are contributing to the problem.
• You have to read the labels of the products you put on your skin.
• Suppressing the skin conditions can lead to further problems like asthma and autoimmune disease.
• If your skin starts to look dull, dry, pale, or patchy that may indicate an underlying problem. Simple things like food and stress can cause this but if they last for more than a few days there is probably another reason.
• Dairy and sugar are the most common foods that can trigger skin issues.
• The best foods contain antioxidants like berries, kale, and green leafy vegetables or omega fatty acids like wild salmon.
• Fragrance is a common problem ingredient; parabens are another ingredient that is metabolized by the human body.
• Skin problems can indicate an issue with the gut microbiome, therefore a full body and lifestyle perspective should be used to identify the root causes of skin symptoms.

Resources Mentioned:

Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

Dr. Cates’ website

Dr. Cates’ podcast

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Stephen Sinatra is known as America’s #1 integrative cardiologist. He’s also certified as a bioenergetic psychotherapist, and nutrition and anti-aging specialist. Dr. Sinatra integrates psychological, nutraceutical and electroceutical therapies in the matrix of healing. He is the founder of www.heartmdinstitute.com, an informational website dedicated to promoting public awareness of integrative medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is grounding and how long has it been around for?
• What has your research shown?
• What are the easiest ways to ground?
• Is there any reason for someone to not ground?
• Are there any resources for grounding you would recommend?

Key Points Made by Dr. Sinatra:

• Basically, grounding is putting your bare feet on the bare earth.
• The Earth is teeming with electrons, and grounding absorbs the energy of the Earth through the feet and conducts it throughout the body. The electrons function as antioxidants in the body.
• Being disconnected from the energy of the Earth could be causing the increase of the frequency of disease in North America.
• The research behind grounding has shown the connection between inflammation and being separated from the Earth.
• Heart rate variability is a message from your heart that it is out of sync with the rest of your body.
• Grounding brings the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system in sync.
• Heart rate variability is a strong indicator of cardiovascular disease.
• Grounding can also help reduce blood viscosity.
• Leather footwear is one of the simplest ways to ground. The key is to not have a nonconductive material between your feet and the Earth.
• Maybe you should avoid grounding near a power generation station.
• The electromagnetic environment is causing a lot sleep difficulties, so sleeping grounded can help promote good restorative sleep.

Resources Mentioned: 

Book – Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever!

Podcast Interview with Dr. Sinatra – Health Revelations

Podcast Interview with Tommy Rosa – Divine Revelations of Heaven

Earthing

Grounding

Vervana

Dr. Sinatra’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Sarah is the creator of www.ThePaleoMom.com; cohost of The Paleo View Podcast; and bestselling author of The Paleo Approach and The Paleo Approach Cookbook. Sarah earned her doctorate in medical biophysics and spent years doing research on critical care medicine, innate immunity, gene therapy and cell biology, earning a variety of awards for research excellence along the way.

Sarah’s transition from academic researcher to stay-at-home mom to award-winning and internationally-recognized health advocate and educator was driven by her own health journey, which included losing 120 pounds and using both diet and lifestyle to mitigate and reverse a dozen diagnosed health conditions. Sarah is deeply interested in understanding how the foods we eat interact with our gut barriers, immune systems, and hormones to influence health.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is the difference between the Paleo diet and the Autoimmune Paleo diet?
• Do you have any tips for transitioning into the Autoimmune Protocol?
• How do vegetarians and vegans work with the Autoimmune Protocol?

Key Points Made by Sarah:

• Food provides the basic building blocks our body’s need, but can also contain inflammatory and other things that undermine our health.
• Food can be broken down into food with lots of good stuff, or lots of bad stuff, and then a group somewhere in between.
• Foods with compelling nutrition may still be unfit for people with gut issues.
• Anything that stimulates the immune system is eliminated from the Autoimmune Paleo diet.
• The Autoimmune Paleo diet focuses on foods that are nutrient dense and don’t have negative effects on the immune system or gut.
• Eggs are off the menu due to the tendency for them to help certain protein fragments into the gut plus food sensitivities.
• Nuts and seeds are also off, due to some of the anti-nutrients concentrated in nuts.
• All dairy is off the table because of some proteins that can be inflammatory or feed certain bacteria. Alcohol is off the list for similar reasons.
• The overall focus is making sure your foods are the most nutrient dense possible while removing the ones that aren’t, though it’s not a permanent lifestyle change.
• Even with such a strict diet, you will have to attend to the cues your body gives you and modify accordingly.
• Gut health is built into the Autoimmune Protocol – don’t try to mix more than one diet at the same time.
• Most of the time you can take small steps when adopting a new diet, break it up into small pieces.
• When changing your diet, make sure you get enough sleep. It will make your hard choices easier and you will be able to manage your cravings more effectively.
• Vegetarian/Vegan diets will have a tough time adopting the Autoimmune Protocol. There are a lot of vitamins and minerals that are primarily found in animal foods.
• Cultures with low disease rates commonly incorporate insects into their diets.

Resources Mentioned:

The Paleo Approach

The Paleo Approach Cookbook

The Healing Kitchen

Sarah’s website

Sarah’s podcast

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Corey Schuler is the Director of Clinical Affairs for Integrative Therapeutics. He is a certified nutrition specialist, licensed nutritionist, chiropractic physician board certified in clinical nutrition, and Fellow of the American Association of Integrative Medicine. He also has earned degrees in nursing and phytotherapeutics. He has a private integrative medicine practice in Hudson, Wisconsin.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is SIBO and The Elemental Diet?
• Are there any antibiotics that can contribute to SIBO?
• What are the lab markers that indicate someone may have SIBO?
• What are the treatment options for SIBO?
• What is the 4S approach?

Key Points Made by Dr. Schuler:

• The large intestine is where fermentation happens, the small intestine is where absorption happens.
• SIBO is where certain foods will cause massive bloating in the small intestine and may be the major factor in Irritable Bowel Syndrome. SIBO is Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth.
• The conventional treatment of IBS has been terrible.
• Highly processed foods, antibiotic feed meat, and antibiotics in general can contribute and cause SIBO.
• Heartburn can be an indicator of SIBO.
• There are a variety of tests you can use to find SIBO including blood tests, stool tests, and other malabsorption tests.
• Measuring certain gases like methane and hydrogen after drinking glucose or lactulose quickly is another test.
• Getting tested and knowing for sure your body can’t process a particular type of food can be the motivation you need to make a change.
• Fructose tests can be useful but are often neglected because fructose won’t be lethal immediately.
• Patients who suffer from headaches, about 60% are positive for SIBO. The pain medication taken to treat the headache could be contributing to SIBO.
• Diet is the most reliable and effective way to treat SIBO but takes the longest time to take effect.
• Proteins can be difficult to process if you have SIBO, eliminating carbohydrates to reduce the bacterial growth is part of The Elemental Diet.
• The Elemental Diet is not very palatable but it is effective.

Resources Mentioned:

FODMAP Diet

Podcast Interview with Dr. Norman Robillard

Dr. Schuler’s website

Dr. Schuler’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. David Katz is the founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center and current President of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. He is a two-time diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and a board-certified specialist in Preventive Medicine & Public Health.

Dr. Katz has published roughly 200 scientific articles and textbook chapters, and 15 books to date, including multiple editions of leading textbooks in both Preventive Medicine, and nutrition. In 2015, Dr. Katz established the True Health Initiative to help convert what we know about lifestyle as medicine into what we do about it, in the service of adding years to lives and life to years around the globe.

 Main Questions Asked:

• If we know how to prevent chronic diseases, why aren’t we doing it?
• What is healthy eating?
• What are the other components of the true health initiative?
• Is there anything else you want to add?
• What is the 4S approach?

Key Points Made by Dr. Katz:

• Modern healthcare is a mess. Obesity and chronic disease are on the rise.
• The average person doesn’t know what a healthy diet is.
• There is enormous profit in maintaining the status quo – the food and pharmacological industries want to keep things the way they are.
• Evolution and history have made us poorly adapted to the modern environment.
• We have reliable knowledge of healthy eating – we just have to accept it.
• Confusion is very profitable.
• If your diet is mostly made up of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, legumes, plus water when you’re thirsty, you are on track.
• How strange is it that we know how to feed wild animals but not our own species?
• Changing and improving our diet will have huge impacts on human health as well as the health of the planet.
• Your diet should be around 75% plant based.
• As a culture, we eat too much beef.
• It takes over 600 litres of water to produce a single litre of soda.
• The True Health Initiative is about uniting the voices of influential people and declaring what a healthy diet is.
• Healthy living in the modern world takes skills which can be learned.

 Resources Mentioned:

Research article – Can We Say What Diet Is Best for Health?

True Health Initiative

Turn the Tide Foundation

Book – Disease-Proof: Slash Your Risk of Heart Disease, Cancer, Diabetes, and More–by 80 Percent

Dr. Katz’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Chantell Reagan is a Doctor of Pharmacy and is pursuing a certification from the Institute of Functional Medicine.  In pharmacy school she was always taught to use “non-pharmacologic” options whenever possible but didn’t quite take that to heart until her oldest son was diagnosed with ADHD. Her “ah-ha” moment happened while she was reading “The Wheat Belly Diet” by Dr. Bill Davis.  It was from this experience that she developed the “4S approach to ADHD”.

Main Questions Asked:

• How does a child get diagnosed with ADHD and what are the treatments?
• What is the functional medicine approach?
• What is a leaky gut and why is it bad?
• What are your recommendations for patients who have these symptoms?
• What is the 4S approach?

Key Points Made by Chantell:

• A questionnaire is used to diagnose ADHD and it’s conventionally treated with medication along with behavioural modification.
• One study has shown that about 50% of preschool age children are on some sort of ADHD medicine.
• The gut is usually the source of our common diseases – including ADHD.
• Leaky gut and a variety of mineral deficiencies can be mistaken for ADHD.
• Leaky gut is an issue where the junctures of the gut are not tight enough to prevent certain elements from passing through.
• Food sensitivities can have far reaching effects on your health.
• There are a fair number of links between gluten and dairy sensitivities and ADHD.
• Using an elimination diet is the best way to see what you need to modify when it comes to foods.
• Toxic chemicals that you expose your skin to can also be a source of problems.
• Probiotic foods, like kimchi and sauerkraut, can be beneficial for your gut as well.
• Being deficient in omega 3 fatty acids can lead to similar symptoms of ADHD.
• 80% of the population is often deficient in magnesium.
• 50% of children are deficient in vitamin D.
• Zinc and iron are important for your brain function and health for a variety of reasons.
• You don’t know what you don’t know – you have to test to learn what your body needs.
• The 4S program starts with stress, checking for exposure to allergens and physical stress. Breathing activities can help.
• Measure sugar intake and balance blood sugar with a healthy diet.
• Sleep is critical. Make a habit of a bedtime ritual, reduce screen time before bed.
• Supplementation, probiotics and minerals are used to make up for deficiencies discovered in testing.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

Chantell’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Dr. Kan is a board certified chiropractic neurologist, certified in functional medicine, and a fellow of the American Association of Integrative Medicine.  Dr. Kan is the creator of NeuroMetabolic Integration, a breakthrough approach that combines functional neurology and functional medicine to treat complex neurological, endocrine, and autoimmune disorders.

Main Questions Asked:

• How would you explain functional neurology in plain simple terms?
• How does fatigue factor in?
• Can you talk about the fuel the brain requires?
• What is a good blood pressure?
• What are tips for taking care of your brain health?

Key Points Made by Dr. Kan:

• Functional neurology is focused on balancing the neurology, soft lesions as opposed to hard lesions.
• The brain is integrated with the whole body.
• If your brain isn’t working properly, it can affect many different areas of the body.
• The brain is one of the least focused on areas of functional health.
• If you have digestive problems and have tried every solution without effect, it could be your brain health.
• Fatigue can be a system of your brain cells not firing.
• The next evolution of health care is the combination of functional medicine and functional neurology.
• If a lot of sensory information is coming at you and you become fatigued, you may have a brain issue that needs to be addressed.
• Without constant stimulation, your brain cells will die.
• Oxygen and glucose are all required to maintain proper neurological health.
• Proper blood sugar is very important, too high or too low or your brain won’t be getting the resources it needs to function properly.
• 120/80 is an optimal range for blood pressure. Check your blood pressure to see where you are.
• Check your insulin sensitivity and adjust your diet accordingly.
• Creative activities are a good way to promote brain health without going to see a doctor.
• Executing the same tasks over and over again can make your brain less adaptable, your day should incorporate a variety of tasks.

Resources Mentioned:

Askdrkan.com

Hope Integrative Wellness on Facebook

Dr. Kan on YouTube

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Theresa was born and raised in a log cabin on the outskirts of Seattle, fostering a love of the outdoors and an active lifestyle. After losing her mother to cancer at the age of 10, Theresa developed a resilient perseverance and determination that led to a collegiate scholarship and semi-professional softball career, top awards as a fitness competition contestant, and an appointment to Lieutenant in the Marines, where she led an entire platoon while deployed in Iraq. Her service was cut short when she was voluntarily evacuated due to an ongoing struggle with bulimia.

Theresa’s journey to wellness required the bravery to ask for help, to take care of herself first, and abandon the idea of “perfect”. She is now a Doctor of Physical Therapy and the founder of Movement Rx, a physical therapy and wellness company that offers support to wounded warriors and individuals with health and movement issues. Theresa hopes that through sharing her story, she will help inspire others to empower themselves, embrace their inner warrior and re-define and acknowledge their strength.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did your book Warrior come about?
• What are some things you can share that will empower the listeners?
• What is breathwork?
• What are some of the big life lessons you learned while writing your book?
• What made you start your business?
• What other advice do you have for the listeners?

Key Points Made by Theresa Larson:

• Writing a book can be difficult but also therapeutic.
• Having an eating disorder can be very isolating, you are not alone.
• Try not to hold yourself to impossible standards, therapy and meditation can help.
• Look at your life and identify the areas you need help with, be honest.
• Most people don’t value their health until they are sick.
• Take 30 to 60 minutes for yourself each day, start with 5 if it’s too hard.
• Breath slowly and deliberately through your belly/diaphragm for a few minutes each day.
• It can take time before you are comfortable being alone with your thoughts while being still, an app like Headspace can help. Start with 5 minutes and then work your way up. Focus on something physical like your shoulders.
• Life is a marathon, not a race. You control the pace of your life.
• Even if you don’t write a book, start a journal.
• 80% of adults have lower back pain at some point in their life.
• Focus on the five major movements to have a healthy mechanical body, hinge, push, pull, squat, and carry.
• Belief that you can change is very important.
• Be open and ready to accept help.
• You can build a lot of internal strength while building external strength.

 Resources Mentioned:

Movement-Rx.com

Lowerbackfix.com

drtheresalarson.com

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Dr. Teta is the author of “Natural Solutions for Digestive Health” and creator of the Fix Your Digestion gut restoration program—an online, do-it-yourself comprehensive system that can be used by anyone with digestive distress or digestive disorders to feel better.

Dr. Teta is the President of the North Carolina Association of Naturopathic Physicians (NCANP), and practices at the Naturopathic Health Clinic of North Carolina in Winston-Salem.

Main Questions Asked:

• What needs to be in place to have good digestion?
• What kinds of things happen to our digestive fire as we grow older and what can we do about it?
• How do bitters play a part in digestion?
• How should we eat and prepare dandelion greens?
• How does the second brain affect the digestive system and how does it change when we get older?

Key Points Made by Dr. Teta:

• The digestion system acts as a central hub and impacts the immune system, the second brain, and the endocrine system.
• The health costs associated with digestive problems in North America is huge.
• You have to eat for your unique body and take your symptoms into account.
• Your overall health can be improved by increasing the health of your GI tract.
• Your ability to create stomach acid is reduced as you age.
• Travel and stress have a greater impact on the GI tract as you age.
• Take six to ten deep breaths before eating. This stimulates the nervous system and prepares the body to consume.
• Slow down the eating process, eat with the mouth closed; put down the electronics and pay attention to what you’re eating.
• Bitter foods or apple cider vinegar can be used to supplement your digestive fire.
• Tannins found in bitter foods stimulate the production of acids and keep the body regular.
• Dandelion, apple cider vinegar, and coffee are bitter supplements.
• Raw dandelion is extremely bitter but can be sautéed to make it more appealing.
• The second brain monitors all the important factors in the digestive tract. It operates independently of the central nervous system.
• As we age, our nervous systems have less flexibility and adapt to stress differently.
• A good way to balance the second brain is to take a walk in a natural environment and practice being present, also known as forest bathing.
• Relaxing in conjunction to appropriate exercise is important to maintain flexibility in the nervous system.
• Getting adequate sleep is also very important.
• Drugs that reduce stomach acid also reduce the digestive tract’s ability to absorb nutrients and increases the risk of infection.
• Stomach acid is one of the major defenses your body has against pathogens.
• Take care of your microbiome by eating a lot of prebiotic fibres.

Resources Mentioned:

Fixyourdigestion.com

Fix Your Digestion on Facebook

@jillianteta on Twitter

Natural Solutions for Digestive Health

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Dr. Seigler is a chiropractor whose passion is to help his patients regain their health through Functional and Lifestyle Medicine. This personal quest was sparked by watching the health of his loved ones degrade over time while conventional medicine provided no real answers.

Initially starting as a personal trainer, Dr. Seigler had an insatiable appetite for knowledge on how to better the health of his clients. By helping patients identify the root cause of their disease and giving them the tools to regain their health, Dr. Seigler is able to not only compliment his patient’s current health care, but to fill the gaps left by conventional medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• How does autoimmune disease affect the brain?
• How can infections trigger autoimmune disease?
• How can we get an autoimmune system to act normally again?
• What advice can you give to parents about asking to change the vaccination schedule?
• Do you have any particular recommendations for the listeners?

Key Points Made by Dr. Jared Seigler:

• Autoimmune issues are one of the most common causes of death.
• The environment is how genes express themselves; controlling the environment is a potential option.
• Autoimmune disease may be the background cause of other issues like heart disease.
• A lot of infections like to hide in the nervous system.
• Pathogens generally attack the areas they can defeat.
• Getting a low antibody count doesn’t necessarily mean the infection is gone, it may mean the immune response is knocked out.
• Stress and pregnancy are other common causes of autoimmune disease.
• Pregnancy, when compounded with other diseases, can trigger autoimmune problems.
• Vaccinations are not the most effective way to teach the immune system how to deal with an infection.
• Children are rarely screened for their susceptibility to autoimmune disease before being vaccinated.
• Eliminate all grains and non-organic food from your diet to begin balancing the immune system.
• If the parents of a child are at risk for autoimmune problems, you should reconsider the vaccination schedule.
• There haven’t been any studies to see how safe the current vaccination schedule is.
• If possible, avoid thimerosal, aluminium and ask to have single viruses instead of multiples injected all at once.
• The blood brain barrier doesn’t develop until the child is two years old.
• The brain is generally very secure to prevent pathogens from infecting brain tissue.
• Attitude is very important: a bad attitude can lead to stress, which can trigger or exacerbate autoimmune disease.
• You have to address the environment if you want to deal with an autoimmune disease.
• Don’t wait until you are already sick to take control of your health.

Resources Mentioned:

Vaccines and Autoimmunity

Becomeproof.com

Jared Seigler on Facebook

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Dr. Eva is an internationally recognized physician, author, speaker and consultant in the fields of stress, resilience, mind-body medicine and working with the natural environment to achieve maximum health and wellbeing.

Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Dr. Eva is on staff as an adjunct scientist at Tufts University and is a Clinical Associate of the world renowned Benson Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Eva’s new book is “Your Health Destiny: How to Unlock Your Natural Ability to Overcome Illness, Feel Better, and Live Longer”.

Main Questions Asked:

• What inspired you to write this book?
• What’s the best way to respond to our body’s signals?
• What is the connection between serotonin and the gut?
• What advice can you give people who are chronically ill?
• What are some tips from the book you can share?

Key Points made by Dr. Eva:

• Your body is always changing and moving and always has the ability to heal.
• Your body is constantly communicating feedback to you.
• Whispers from the body are to communicate that a change needs to be made.
• When you aren’t attuned to your body’s signals, the underlying conditions get worse.
• Age is a factor, but it’s not the sole reason you feel bad. The better you take care of your body the less age plays a role.
• You must put your body and mind as the highest priority.
• You have to really listen to the sensations your body is giving you so you can learn what your body needs.
• Nutrition, meditation, sleep, and friendship are the structures that support a functioning body.
• Every component of your body has evolved to detect danger. Your lungs and gut are part of this defense mechanism.
• Having a strong healthy gut with a proper microbiome is key to good health.
• What we eat will raise or lower our serotonin levels.
• There are ways to minimize or eliminate the effects of chronic illness.
• Changing your mindset from ‘victim’ to ‘victor’ can help you overcome and heal.
• We can only manage the way we feel – we can’t change the world.
• A diagnosis isn’t just a label – break it down and take control.
• Pause, Optimize your knowledge, Witness, Emotion, and Release, Relieve, and Restore.
• Slow down your life and pay attention to what your body is telling you it needs.
• Approach yourself with love instead of sacrifice.
• Be honest with yourself: Are you sleeping enough and eating the right food? Are you spending time with the people who build you up or tear you down? Are you fueling your body properly?
• You are the one who knows your body best.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Your Health Destiny: How to Unlock Your Natural Ability to Overcome Illness, Feel Better, and Live Longer

Book – The Love Response: Your Prescription to Turn Off Fear, Anger, and Anxiety to Achieve Vibrant Health and Transform Your Life

Dr. Eva’s website

Dr. Eva’s twitter page

Dr. Eva’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Josh is a Clinical Nutritionist and is an expert in the fields of clinical detoxification and therapeutic supplementation. As a leader in his field, Josh teaches Clinical Nutrition for several natural health colleges and is the first Canadian nutritionist to be accepted into the Institute for Functional Medicine and is an Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner.

Main Questions Asked:

• What’s the difference between essential and nonessential nutrients?
• What are some common misconceptions about supplements?
• What can you say about junk research?
• What are the most important daily supplements we should be taking?

Key Points made by Josh:

• The traditional daily supplements are vitamins and minerals. Other supplements include probiotics, herbs, and glandulars.
• One of the first deficiencies discovered was scurvy.
• Supplements can be used for maintenance and therapeutic purposes.
• Essential nutrients must be consumed in your diet, whereas nonessential nutrients can be produced naturally within the body.
• Common misconceptions about supplements are that we don’t need them or that they don’t actually work.
• Our environments and diets have changed the way we get nutrition over the past hundred years.
• Nutritional supplements make up the deficiencies our bodies face every day.
• A single study isn’t sufficient to draw conclusions from, but the media often runs with a story if it will get viewers.
• Supplements and the effectiveness depend on the proportion in the body.
• Not all supplements are created equal. You often pay for what you get.
• The dosage on the label is usually wrong since it’s targeted towards the lowest common denominator.
• Most people require between 4,000 and 10,000 IU’s of vitamin D. The only way to know exactly what the optimal amount to take is to do a blood test. The odds are good that you are vitamin D deficient.
• Supplementation protocols should be tailored to each individual person.
• Most supplements are short term solutions. They either speed up or slow down the body’s natural processes.
• Supplementation protocols are meant to supplement a proper diet.
• Vitamin D, probiotics, a high quality multivitamin, and a balanced essential fatty acid are good supplements for everyday use.
• Consult a naturopath or functional medical doctor to schedule an assessment to learn what kind of supplements you should be taking.

Resources Mentioned:

Josh’s website

Functional Nutrition

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Maria Claps is a certified health coach and functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner. She has trained with Dr. Sarah Gottfried in order to help women balance their hormones.

Main Questions Asked:

• What test do you use to assess hormones?
• Why do you say the saliva test not effective for women over forty?
• What are some of the key foods we can eat to improve liver health?
• What can we do to better balance our blood sugar?

Key Points made by Maria:

• The saliva test has been the dominant hormone level testing method for the past twenty years but it provides an incomplete picture.
• The Dutch test shows you free cortisol as well as metabolized cortisol, indicators of adrenal fatigue.
• Very low cortisol is a reason to refer to a medical doctor. The saliva test may indicate low cortisol but the Dutch test gives a better picture of what cortisol your body is producing.
• The Dutch test also measures melatonin, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone.
• Using the Dutch test can help determine a program of supplementation and lifestyle.
• The saliva test is not a great test for women over forty due to the fact that they produce smaller amounts of estrogen.
• Liver health is the first factor to look at. The liver processes everything your body comes into contact with.
• Adrenal health is the second factor. Stress management is important here.
• Blood sugar balance is the third factor. You have a hormonal response to food that exercise alone can’t account for. A diet of refined carbohydrates can lead to blood sugar imbalance which can lead to hormone imbalance down the line.
• Appropriate movement is the fourth factor. Exercise in short, intense bursts.
• Avoid foods like supermarket meat since they add to the burden your liver must process.
• Dandelion and dandelion tea are effective foods to help your liver process hormones.
• Aim to have fat, fiber, and protein at every meal. True stomach hunger within three hours of eating indicates that you haven’t eaten a complete meal.
• Mitigating the stress in your life is the best way to balance your hormones, but it can also be the hardest. It requires meditation, yoga, or some sort of intention and mindset change.

Resources Mentioned:

Guide to Perimenopause

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Dr. Ricky Brar is a Functional Medicine Practitioner with the Living Proof Institute. His role is to empower you with the knowledge and motivation to achieve your health goals. He is passionate about helping you regain your health and get to the root cause of your issues regardless of your diagnosis.

His functional medicine journey started as a patient. After working with several practitioners, he got to the bottom of his energy and digestive issues using functional medicine and has not looked back. Now he hopes to help others recover from their health challenges effectively and efficiently.

Main Questions Asked:

• What are the blind spots we have about adrenal health?
• How do we manage our blood sugar properly?
• Why is adrenal fatigue not accepted as a diagnosis?
• How can we manage our adrenal health more effectively?

Key Points made by Dr. Ricky:

• Adrenal health is often the cause of many disorders that can be easily misdiagnosed.
• Life stress places the burden on the adrenal glands but isn’t necessarily the cause of adrenal fatigue.
• Gut overgrowth and gut infections can reduce the nutrition the body gets and may not be obviously related to adrenal function.
• Insulin resistance and blood sugar can also cause adrenal stress and issues. If you can’t skip a meal without feeling negative effects you have a problem.
• You can have a gut infection without any digestive issues.
• You can address the adrenals with supplements but it won’t affect the source of the issue which is the gut.
• The gut is the primary source of good health.
• Functional medicine is focused on the question “Why?”.
• Consuming carbs causes your body to produce insulin, but because the typical diet is so carb focused your body can become insulin resistant.
• Insulin resistance will lead to weight gain and inflammation, brain fog, and other issues.
• Insulin resistance begins becoming a problem in your twenty’s and thirty’s and can take many years to manifest on blood work.
• Your diet should reflect your lifestyle – if you’re not active in the morning don’t rely on carbs to get your day started.
• If you’re thirsty, you should have drunk water an hour ago. Same with hunger.
• Exercise alone won’t mitigate stress – adequate sleep and rest are important as well.
• Adrenal fatigue is a state – it’s a maladaptation to a particular set of conditions.
• Look for ways to reduce stress and your reliance on stimulants like caffeine.
• Stimulants should be used as a performance booster, not as a crutch to support your lifestyle.
• Find your blind spots and seek out functional testing – there is a lot going on within your body that you won’t be able to find otherwise.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Ricky’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Jonathan Roberti is a clinical practitioner, researcher, author, celebrated speaker, and consultant. His clinical and practice interests include integrative medicine, plant-based nutrition, psychoneuroimmunology and inspiring conscious living.

Dr. Jonathan advocates a ‘Back-to-Basics’ mentality that prioritizes ‘self-care’ and focuses on prevention by creating simple and sustainable strategies that eliminate barriers to health and happiness. With education and support, the conversation shifts towards empowering individuals and communities that inspire transformations and lasting change. Central to this transformation is the quality of nutrition & simple lifestyle changes that solidify healthier habits.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is vertical farming all about and how can we do it?
• What science is involved in vertical farming systems?
• What kind of work goes into vertical farming systems?
• What about during the winter or days that are overcast?
• Are there plants that don’t do well in a tower garden?
• Where can we get more information about vertical farming systems?

Key Points Made by Dr. Jonathan:

• Vertical farming is a method of farming using aeroponics within a two and half square footprint. It doesn’t use soil and can grow food in all seasons of the year.
• By 2050, the human population will be over 10 billion.
• Our current food production capabilities and processes are not sufficient to handle that growth.
• The average distance your food currently travels is over 900 miles.
• Growing your own food through vertical farming systems allows you to control the level of pesticides, chemicals, and radiation you are exposed to.
• Vertical farming systems allow you to grow food in virtually any space and any climate.
• The best foods are the ones that don’t have a label or a television commercial.
• Vertical farming systems produce food that is considerably more nutritious than soil based crops.
• If you want to get healthier, you need to take ownership of your food.
• The technology and structures involved in vertical farming are based on NASA advances; it creates food that is at its nutritional best.
• Calculate how much you are spending on fresh vegetables.
• The shorter the length of time between harvesting and consumption, the more nutritious it is.
• The weekly maintenance of a tower garden is less than 15 minutes. You have to check the water, harvesting the plants, and adding the nutrients. The tools you use are a pair of scissors and a pH meter.
• Vertical farming systems are mobile, plants can be grown indoors when it is colder than 40 degrees with a light kit and moved outdoors when it’s warmer.
• The only two types of plants you can’t really grow in a tower garden are trees and root vegetables.
• For the average family of four, the tower garden will pay for itself within six months. After the first year, the average operating cost is $1.25 a month.
• The system takes care of itself in many ways; you can leave for days at a time and have the system set up so that it continues to grow.
• Self care is the new health care.
• Growing your own food is a great way to teach kids about food and the virtues of hard work and self-reliance.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Jonathan’s website

Dr. Jonathan’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Dr. Anna Cabeca is a board certified Gynecologist and Obstetrician, as well as board certified in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine, an expert in Functional Medicine, and an expert in women’s health. She specializes in bio-identical hormone replacement therapy and natural alternatives, successful menopause and age management medicine. Her belief is that the advantages of creating health and hormone balance are that we not only improve our own health, but also improve the health of our generations to follow.

Main Questions Asked: 

• What is the difference between normal menopause symptoms and common menopause symptoms?
• How does hormone replacement work and how can it help?
• How can we get our body into the fat burning mode?
• What does alkaline mean and how does it affect the body?
• What are the most important foods we can eat to get to an alkaline state?

Key Points Made by Dr. Anna Cabeca: 

• Normal menopause symptoms include changes in temperature, skin structure, and vaginal lubrication.
• Menopause is traditionally measured from one year after your last menstrual period but isn’t always accurate.
• Severe symptoms include hot flashes, night sweats, mood changes, decrease in sex drive, and weight gain and weight loss resistance.
• Proper treatment involves simplifying your life and minimizing stress.
• Our physiology drives our behaviour.
• Getting your body into an alkaline state is how we detoxify. Being in ketosis gets the body into a fat burning state.
• Having your body in a keto/alkaline state improves your energy and hormone balance.
• Urine test strips measure the number of ketones in your urine which indicate whether your body is in ketosis and how acidic or alkaline it is.
• Blood acidity doesn’t change, but the pH of our urine changes often. Being in an alkaline state will prevent your body from leeching calcium from your bones which happens when your body is acidic.
• Leafy greens including spinach, beet greens, and kale are very alkalizing. Apple cider vinegar, lemon, and lime are alkalizing as well.
• Removing acidity and sugar is key. Being in ketosis while acidic can be difficult.
• Test, don’t guess. The first step is to find out what state your body is in right now and then go from there.
• The three main causes of disease are hormonal imbalance, adrenal dysfunction, and inflammation.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Anna Cabeca interview – What Nobody Ever Tells You about Bio-Identical Hormones

Tommy Rosa is a spiritual counselor who helps people conquer their fear of death. In 1999, Tommy was the victim of a hit and run accident which left him in a coma for several weeks. During this time, he had a near-death experience where he was taken to Heaven and met a Master Teacher. His Teacher imparted 8 health revelations that are the foundation for vibrant health and well-being. These teachings are corroborated by Dr. Stephen Sinatra, an esteemed cardiologist and co-author of the book “Health Revelations from Heaven and Earth”.

Main Questions Asked:

• What happened during your near death experience?
• What health revelations did you learn?
• What was your religious background before your near death experience?
• What can we do about lyme disease?
• Why is frankincense important?

Key Points Made by Tommy:

• Near death experiences impart information that should be taken back to the people on Earth.
• We are all connected to each other and God. Our separation is an illusion.
• Positive attitude has a positive effect on health.
• Whatever you are afraid of in life, you’re going to attract that to yourself. Also known as the Law of Attraction.
• Touching your bare feet to the earth, physically touching nature helps your body’s energy rise which has a positive effect on your health.
• Our intuition originates from the pineal gland which can be affected by a variety of contaminants we encounter in life.
• You don’t need to go to a priest to ask for forgiveness, you can go straight to God.
• Everything has a frequency that when added to your body will either lower or raise your own frequency.
• There are four viruses that 90% of the population has – herpes, shingles, HPV, and Epstein Barr. 60% have Lyme disease.
• Bacteria in the body can lead to inflammation; inflammation is the cause of all disease.
• Lyme disease is difficult to treat with antibiotics because the treatment tends to address the symptoms without fixing the primary issue.
• Frankincense is an essential oil that can raise the frequency of your energy.
• Age is caused by the mitochondria in our cells becoming unhealthy.
• Sugar and carbohydrates are the enemy and cause the energy of the body to go down.
• Kale is a high energy frequency food and can help raise your vibration – eat it every day.
• If you love yourself, the universe will love you back. Think of mistakes as lessons to learn from.
• You have the power to change – nobody else can do it except you.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Health Revelations from Heaven and Earth

Tommy’s website

Tommy’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Doc Rob is a passionate consumer advocate and educator with over 12 years of Natural Health & Natural Products Industry experience. He is a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine and Certified Natural Food Chef. His most recent passion is rooted in cannabis, cannabinoids, and the benefits they offer.

Main Questions Asked:

• What are some of the health benefits of marijuana treatment?
• What components of marijuana are medically helpful?
• What areas of research aare focusing on marijuana treatment?
• What kinds of benefits does cannabis have on sleep?
• What does it mean for our health that there are a lot of receptors for cannabis in our digestive tract?
• Is there any research that shows cannabis can help your digestive tract by treating pain?
• What are some resources we can use to educate ourselves?

Key Points Made by Doc Rob:

• Studies have shown that cannabis can help conditions like cancer, and epilepsy.
• Many cultures have used cannabis medicinally for years.
• THC is one of the most dominant cannabinoids but there are many others.
• Using the plant by juicing is a way to ingest it without getting the psychoactive effects.
• Heating marijuana is how people typically use it to get high but there are health benefits in all forms of consumption.
• In addition to cancer and epilepsy, research has shown that cannabis and opiate based medications can have a synergistic effect.
• Cannabis can be used effectively to treat pain.
• Cannabis has effects on many different cell types, not just the nervous system.
• Even small doses of cannabinoids can have beneficial effects.
• Each strain of cannabis can have different effects in different people, some respond to THC and some respond better to CBD. Cannabis can help the body adapt to stress, which can then help with sleep.
• The digestive tract is the source of much of our overall health. Cannabis can help your gut biome function better by regulating stress which can lead to more energy, better mood, and more.
• The majority of prescription medications today can have long term effects that reduce the body’s ability to cope with pain and stress. The cannabinoid approach works more effectively with the body’s natural methods of handling pain.
• Cannabis is making a comeback into common medicinal use.
• There are some side effects to be aware of with CBD.
• We shouldn’t moralize the use of cannabis when treating pain or dying patients.
• The top health 5 reasons to use cannabis:
  • It can proactively help with optimal health.
  • It can help treat cancer in conjunction with traditional therapy.
  • It can treat epilepsy and seizure type conditions.
  • It can help treat digestive disorders like Crohn’s.
  • It can help treat many forms of pain and stress.

Resources Mentioned:

Healer.com

Mycompassion.org

MedicalCannabis.com

HarborsideHealthCenter.com

Aunt Zelda’s

Doc Rob’s website

Doc Rob’s email

DocRob on Twitter

DocRob on Facebook

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Bubbs is a board-certified naturopathic doctor, author, speaker, sports nutrition lead for the Canadian men’s national basketball team and strength coach. He’s been working with athletes, active people and those striving to improve their health for over a decade and is passionate that diet, exercise and lifestyle are the MOST powerful tools for improving your overall health, body composition and performance. He is the author of “The Paleo Project: The 21st Century Guide to Looking Leaner, Getting Stronger, and Living Longer”.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you explain how to improve health through the different diets that are popular right now?
• What is the ketogenic diet?
• How do you know if you would perform better on a low carb versus a ketogenic diet?
• What is intermittent fasting and how can it help?
• How do you recommend people get through the struggle of early intermittent fasting?
• Are there any reasons why someone would not want to try intermittent fasting?

Key Points Made by Dr. Bubbs:

• Diabetes and obesity are increasing rapidly in places like America and India.
• The hormone leptin controls how hungry we are. High carb meals produce insulin and can interfere with your body’s sensation of hunger.
• Carbohydrates are the macronutrient that produces the highest insulin response.
• A ketogenic diet is an extremely low carb diet, less than 50 grams each day. Protein and fat make up the majority of the macronutrients in a ketogenic diet.
• Reducing carbohydrate intake forces the body to switch into a mode that burns the calories stored within the body rather than the food you would normally consume.
• With a person who is overweight who is wondering how to improve health, it’s best to keep it simple and just reduce the amount of carbs being consumed overall.
• Start with breakfast, and eat something that is low carb like a yogurt with some grains and seeds. You can work on the other meals of the day as you go.
• The first foods you eat in the morning have a major impact on your day.
• Studies have shown that snacking can actually cause you to gain weight as opposed to three square meals a day.
• For those who want to know how to improve health, it’s important to try different approaches to diet and to observe what works best for you.
• Intermittent fasting (IF) is simply shrinking the number of hours you will eat over the course of the day. An example of this would be to fast for 16 hours and have an eating window of 8 hours.
• IF can improve the amount of energy you have while also help your gut biome.
• IF is also in line with human evolution eating patterns.
• IF can reduce triglycerides, an indicator of your cardiovascular health.
• Coffee naturally suppresses hunger and can make a good option for the morning if you’re trying IF for the first time and are having trouble skipping breakfast.
• Drinking herbal tea at night can help you avoid snacking at night. Water and staying hydrated can help with hunger over the course of the day.
• Intermittent fasting is something that comes after you address other issues like sleep duration, stress, and poor eating.
• Intermittent fasting isn’t necessarily the best option for athletes trying to improve performance.
• All three diets, low carb, ketogenic, and intermittent fasting, are great options to lose weight.
• Moving your body correctly is the most important aspect in living a healthy lifestyle.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Paleo Project

Dr. Bubb’s website

Dr. Bubb’s twitter

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Burhenne is a bestselling author and a family and sleep medicine dentist who has been in private practice for nearly 30 years, focusing on patient-centered and preventative dental health care with patients who come to him from all over the world. He is a member of the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine.

The day his wife was diagnosed with sleep apnea was the day he began learning everything he could about sleep breathing conditions. He is a TEDx speaker. He is the creator of AsktheDentist.com, dedicated to exploring the mouth-body connection for better overall health. His latest book is “The 8-Hour Sleep Paradox: How We Are Sleeping Our Way to Fatigue, Disease and Unhappiness”.

Main Questions Asked:

• How can our teeth affect our sleep?
• What are the known side effects of sleep apnea?
• What questions should you ask your dentist or physician if you suspect you have a sleep disorder?
• What are some treatments for sleep disorders?
• Is there a way to know if you would be a good candidate for a CPAP or oral appliance?
• Can any dentist make an oral appliance or do we have to find a specialist?

Key Points Made by Dr. Burhenne:

• Dentists are capable of seeing signs of sleep apnea that other physicians may miss and can advise on ways to help sleep.
• The tongue and teeth can show different signs that you have a sleep disorder.
• Many of the common conceptions about sleeping like snoring and napping are wrong.
• Sleep hygiene is important to sleeping better but addressing the core reasons why you are tired is more important.
• Snoring is never normal and indicative of a small airway.
• The CDC considers sleep disorders an epidemic in the United States.
• 30% of people in North America have sleep apnea or another sleep breathing disorder.
• Sleep apnea can lead to high blood pressure, diabetes, fatigue, and breast cancer in women. Within three days sleep disorder breathing can damage the memory centers of your brain. It can also cause mood disorders, depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s disease, and cognitive decline among other issues.
• Your sleep ability is the foundation to your overall health.
• Some questions you should ask your dentist:
  • Do you grind your teeth at night?
  • Do you have scalloping or fissuring of the tongue?
  • Do you have sleep apnea?
• Women going through menopause may find themselves snoring suddenly because of a decline in progesterone and estrogen. The decline in those hormones can cause a shrinkage of the airway.
• A sleep partner can help you identify if you have a sleep disorder.
• An app called Sleep Analyzer can turn your smartphone into a listening device that can also help you identify if you have a sleep disorder.
• A CPAP can help snoring issues by creating a positive air pressure and keeping your airway open.
• A sleep study can help you identify how many sleep interruptions you experience per hour.
• Dentists recommend an oral appliance that prevents your jaw from falling back, which is one of the ways to help sleep.
• The difference between 0 sleep interruptions per hour and 10 – 30 is huge.
• Anyone with mild or moderate sleep apnea are good candidates for the oral appliance. A CPAP is best for more serious cases of sleep disorder. Being assessed by a skilled team of health professionals is the most important part of understanding your best sleep strategy and one of the ways to help sleep.
• A CPAP can help patients in the hospital heal faster by improving their sleep quality, you should push your doctor to get a CPAP machine if you or someone you know is in the hospital.
• Go to American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine to find a dentist in your area that is trained to create an oral appliance for the best results.
• Getting a sleep study before and after getting an oral appliance is part of the process, make sure you do both to know if your treatment is effective.
• It’s important to do a sleep study on children as well, many children go undiagnosed.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The 8-Hour Sleep Paradox: How We Are Sleeping Our Way to Fatigue, Disease and Unhappiness

American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine

Dr. Burhenne’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Kahn is a Professor of Medicine and is known as America’s Healthy Heart Doc. He has been treating patients for over 25 years and combines hi-tech and hi-touch natural therapies to reach his goal of preventing one million heart attacks starting with yours.  He is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Medicine and has advanced cardiology training. He has authored over 150 scientific papers, 3 books that all reached #1 on Amazon, and hundreds of blogs found on the Huffington Post and MindBodyGreen.

Main Questions Asked:

• What started your interest in cardiology?
• How do we detect heart disease earlier in life?
• What are the next steps for someone whose tests come back abnormal?
• What other breakthroughs in treating heart disease have happened in past few years?
• Will eating eggs affect your cholesterol?
• If you were stranded on a desert island, what are three things you would want to help your heart?

Key Points Made by Dr. Kahn:

• Cardiovascular disease is one of the most common causes of death in North America.
• Medicine starts with history. Stress, exercise, sleep, and diet can all contribute to heart disease.
• A lipoprotein-A test is a standard test for cardiovascular disease that everyone should look into. Other tests include cholesterol, homocysteine, and thyroid.
• A deep groove in the lower part of the earlobe indicates the presence of heart disease.
• Coronary calcification scoring, CAT scans, and ultra sounds of the heart can give you a better look at your heart health beyond your cholesterol count.
• Everyone should pursue a heart healthy lifestyle and follow these heart health tips.
• Check to see if your doctor can access a coronary calcium scoring test to get the best idea of the condition of your heart health.
• Vitamin D has been shown to improve cardiac parameters in at least one study.
• Statin intolerance has been shown to be an actual syndrome recently, many people feel negative effects when prescribed statins for their heart disease.
• It’s important for the medical industry to follow up and observe the long term effects of the new drugs and techniques that are being used to treat cardiovascular disease.
• Sleeping seven to eight hours a night can drastically reduce your odds of a heart attack when combined with other healthy lifestyle choices.
• Infrared Sauna Therapy tends to improve heart health indicators and correlates to better outcomes.
• Adding eggs to an average diet in the past showed an increase in cholesterol, today since the average cholesterol is higher studies haven’t been able to duplicate those results.
• Easy heart health tips – if you’re trying to reverse heart disease, eggs are something you should remove from your diet.
• Heart healthy smoothies tend to contain organic blueberries, organic greens like spinach, flaxseed or hemp, almond milk, and a lot of spices like tumeric.
• Organic spices are a great source of anti-inflammatory effects that you can use in smoothies or meals.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Whole Heart Solution: Halt Heart Disease Now with the Best Alternative and Traditional Medicine

Book – Dead Execs Don’t Get Bonuses: The Ultimate Guide to Survive Your Career With A Healthy Heart

Dr. Kahn’s website

Dr. Kahn’s twitter

Dr. Kahn’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Teta is an integrative physician, author and sought after expert in the realm of metabolism and self-development. He spent the last 25 years immersed in the study of strength and conditioning, hormonal metabolism and the psychology of change and success. He has written several books including the best sellers, “Metabolic Effect Diet” and “Metabolic Aftershock”.  He has also contributed both the exercise and sports nutrition chapters for “The Textbook of Natural Medicine”.

Main Questions Asked:

• How do most people approach their diet and metabolism and why is it incorrect?
• What does metabolism actually mean in everyday terms?
• How can you master your metabolism?
• What kind of exercise should you do in order to master your metabolism?
• How can you improve your willpower?

Key Points Made by Dr. Teta:

• Much of the information most people have about how their metabolism works is wrong.
• You need to master your metabolism first instead of the common idea of eat less/exercise more in order to master your metabolism.
• Research has indicated that popular diets do not work and in many cases will result in weight gain over time rather than weight loss. After a diet 95% of people will gain back all the weight they lost and 66% will actually gain more weight than they lost.
• Your metabolism is just the way your body seeks balance. Hormones are the tools of your metabolism.
• When you are stressed, your body produces cortisol and adrenaline which signal to your brain to react to the stress.
• Your metabolism is changeable and can be corrected. There are signals your body’s metabolism is unbalanced. HEC, your hunger, energy, and cravings are the biofeedback your body uses to indicate what state your metabolism is in.
• Ask yourself if your HEC is in check.
• Your metabolism is like a pendulum, if you push on it by exercising more and eating less your metabolism will react by making your more hungry and more tired.
• There are foods that can help suppress cravings and hunger, for example: chicken and broccoli.
• Everyone’s metabolism is different and needs to be addressed for each person in a customized way.
• Macronutrients have varying effects on your metabolism.
• Protein, fibre, and water are effective at satisfying hunger. Carbohydrates, starch, salt, and fat are effective at satisfying cravings.
• Start with protein, fibre, and water as a meal and see how your HEC reacts. Adjust based off of how your body responds.
• A good meal should satisfy you for around 4 hours.
• Any form of exercise will have an effect on your metabolism. Long term exercise like jogging is great for cardiovascular health but will directly impact your HEC.
• Your exercise has the power to stabilize your metabolism or unbalance it.
• For people who are out of shape short, intense exercise or short, low intensity exercise is most effective at lowering body weight. A mix of both is best for keeping your HEC in check.
• Intense and short exercise routines tend to suppress your appetite.
• Willpower is like a battery and can be exhausted. Your will can be trained and improved. The more you think negative thoughts about yourself, the faster your willpower will be drained.
• Train your will by exposing yourself to small doses of things like dessert. Practice eating things you are weak to by eating a few bites and leaving the rest.
• Don’t try to do everything at one time or you will drain your will and staying power rapidly.  Choose one new activity like walking and add that to your routine. Add more later, once you’ve made that a habit.

Key Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Metabolic Effect Diet: Eat More, Work Out Less, and Actually Lose Weight While You Rest

Book – Metabolic Aftershock: 15 Minutes of Sweat, 48 Hours of Burn

Jade’s website

Jade – twitter

Jade’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Tieraona Low Dog is an internationally recognized expert in dietary supplements and integrative medicine. In addition to her many years as a clinician and educator, she has been involved in national health policy and regulatory issues, serving on advisory panels for the White House and the National Institutes of Health and chairing two committees on dietary supplements for the U.S. Pharmacopoeia. She is the author of Healthy at Home, Life is Your Best Medicine, and Guide to Medicinal Herbs. Her latest book is Fortify Your Life: Your Guide to Vitamins, Minerals, and More.

Main Questions Asked:

• Tell us the story of your father and his experience with medication.
• What can listeners do to make sure the supplements they buy are effective?
• What are some questions we should be asking our doctors when we go for a visit?
• How can we be sure the supplements we buy online are legitimate?

Key Points Made by Dr. Tieraona Low Dog:

• Vitamins, minerals, and nutrients are largely off the radar of traditional medicine.
• Prescription medications can interfere with our body’s ability to absorb vitamins and minerals.
• Oftentimes medication is prescribed to people who are not well suited for it. Roughly 70% of people should not be on their medication for longer than 6-8 weeks.
• A huge number of people in North America are deficient in at least one nutrient.
• Typically, vitamins and minerals in supplemental products are not the issue. It’s the extra ingredients on the label that are a source of problems.
• Understanding what’s in the supplemental products you take can help you choose the right products.
• According to a study by the CDC, over 16 million people were very deficient in vitamin C. Vitamin C deficiency can lead to scurvy and a host of other health issues.
• A lack of nutrients can lead to health issues which can then lead to the prescription of medicine to treat the symptoms, which can then lead to more nutrient deficiencies.
• 30 million people in North America are vitamin B6 deficient which leads to depression, fatigue, anxiety, and other problems.
• Vitamin deficiencies can be difficult to identify.
• You should know what your vitamin C levels are.
• Check your lab results, ask your doctor for a copy.
• If you’re taking Metformin for diabetes, you should know what your vitamin B12 levels are.
• Don’t be afraid to talk to your doctor about your health and ask about your nutrient levels.
• You are your best health advocate – no one will have a more vested interest in your own well being and health than you.
• Buying brand name supplements can be more reliable than non brand name. Be cautious of supplements and brands you have never heard of before.
• Health is a resource that must be carefully managed.
• Listen to your instincts and the way your body feels. How you feel is the best indicator of your body’s requirements.

Key Resources Mentioned:

The Endocrine Society

Dr. Low Dog’s website

Book – Healthy at Home: Get Well and Stay Well Without Prescriptions

Book – Life Is Your Best Medicine: A Woman’s Guide to Health, Healing, and Wholeness at Every Age

Book – Fortify Your Life: Your Guide to Vitamins, Minerals, and More

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Patrick Harrison is founder and CEO of CoreChair. His degree in Kinesiology and his passion and strong vision for healthy seating solutions led him to develop the CoreChair which is an active sitting solution that was inspired by the growing number of individuals who have intuitively exchanged their office chair for an exercise ball as well as the alarming evidenced based research on the health impacts of sedentary sitting.

The media has tuned into this scientific evidence and has attracted the public’s attention with articles titled the “Sitting Disease”, “The Perils of Sitting” and “Sitting is the New Smoking”.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is “sitting disease”?
• What is the CoreChair and how does it help?
• How can the listeners ensure their office is a healthy one?
• What are five tips you can give our listeners to live a more healthy productive life?
• What is incidental movement?
• What should we keep in mind when it comes to the CoreChair?

Key Points Made by Patrick Harrison:

• Sitting disease is the term for the effects of a sedentary lifestyle.
• The average North American spends only three hours a day being physically active.
• Technology has generally exacerbated the problem.
• The economic costs of the health issues caused by sedentary lives is around $90 billion a year.
• The traditional office chair is the source of common back problems because of the shape of the chair itself.
• The CoreChair addresses the issues that the traditional office chair does not.
• It encourages the mobility of the hips, pelvis, and spine.
• Active sitting integrates mobility into a sitting position which reduces the effects of sitting still for long periods of time.
• Active sitting is potentially helpful in encouraging blood flow to key areas of the body including the brain, which could result in increases in productivity.
• The research seemed to point people towards standing instead of sitting which wasn’t necessarily the best solution.
• The important point is actually moving as opposed to just standing.
• Short intermittent breaks can help during your work day but won’t prevent all the issues.
• You have more options for your work station than you think.
• If you find yourself experiencing pain related to your desk job, do the research and try to make a change in your workplace.
• Get good quality sleep, have a good diet, drink lots of water, incorporate good exercise into your daily routine, introduce more incidental movement into your day.
• Incidental movement is adding small events and motion to your daily routine. A tiny amount of extra movement throughout the day can lead to a better metabolic effect.
• Someone who wants to be engaged in the sitting position and spends a fair portion of their day seated should consider the CoreChair.
• The CoreChair is a valuable option for users who care about their health or who have back issues.
• The CoreChair is made to last with a twelve year warranty.

Key Resources Mentioned:

The CoreChair

Email: Info@CoreChair.com

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Michele Summers Colon is the author of “Body Wisdom: 10 Weeks to Transformation So You Can Get and Feel Healthy Again”. She is a holistic podiatrist, entrepreneur, yoga instructor, and a motivational speaker offering workshops and online courses based on her book. She hopes to inspire women to live happier, healthier lives that honor their own bodies, wants, and desires.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is ayurvedic medicine?
• How did you get into ayurvedic medicine?
• Can you give advice that will help us build better, healthy habits?
• How can we be sure the supplements we buy online are legitimate?
• How can new routines make a difference?
• How should we begin meditating?

Key Points Made by Dr. Michele Summers Colon:

• Ayurvedic medicine is an ancient Indian tradition of medicine.
• There are three main body types called Doshas and their names are Vata, Pitta, Kapha.
• Each Dosha has a different ideal diet.
• Your Dosha is determined by your body’s shape and the way you tend to think and perceive the world.
• You are typically a mix of two Doshas.
• Imbalances in the Doshas can lead to illness and health problems.
• Don’t set the bar too high, too soon. Start with small habits that lead to bad behaviours.
• Don’t set yourself up for failure.
• Small steps can lead to accomplishing big goals in your life.
• Use accountability. You are far more likely to fail on your own than you are with a coach or accountability partner.
• Start with your morning routine and stick with it. One you have your morning routine hammered down, move on to other routines throughout your day.
• Listen to a guided meditation or download an app for your phone that can help you get started.
• Work meditation into your daily routine by starting small at the same time each day.
• Meditating at the same time each day can help you become consistent.
• Instead of “meditating”, focus on your breathing. Count your breaths, pay attention to how it feels, you will find yourself in the mindset automatically.
• Focusing on sensations rather than thoughts is a good way to meditate.
• Getting enough sleep is vital to optimal performance. Having an evening routine can help you get a better, deeper sleep. Eight hours is the ideal amount for the human body.
• Eat your food a few hours before you fall asleep. Having food in your stomach can reduce your body’s ability to recover and repair during sleep.
• Turn off your electronics an hour before you go to sleep.
• The last hour before sleep should be focused on connecting with your loved ones and relaxing. Avoid stimulants like caffeine or showers.
• Your morning routine shouldn’t be rushed. You should try to build a positive outlook on the coming day.
• Drink water and stay hydrated, especially in the morning.
• Try to stick to your body’s natural rhythm and internal clock.

Key Resources Mentioned:

Body Wisdom: 10 Week Coaching Program

Dr. Michele’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Razi Berry is the publisher and producer of the award winning journal NDNR: Naturopathic Doctor News and Review, the International Journal of Naturopathic Medicine, The Natural Cancer Prevention Summit, and the preventive health resource NaturalPath. Her personal journey from illness to health was the catalyst to her career of Naturopathic Medicine. She has spent the last decade educating people to live healthier more purposeful lives through publications that bring together leaders and Natural and Preventive Medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did Razi Berry get involved in naturopathic medicine?
• Tell us all about cancer and the upcoming Cancer Summit.
• What are the most common sources of radiation?
• What kind of experiments can we run ourselves to see the effects of radiation?

Key Points Made by Razi Berry:

• The body has to be understood as a whole, not as individual isolated systems.
• NDNR (Naturopathic Doctor News and Review) was created to unite Naturopathic doctors.
• Sometimes traditional medicine can’t identify the actual source of your symptoms. A naturopathic doctor can identify the causes of illness that traditional medicine may miss.
• Naturopathic medicine helps reinforce our body’s natural homeostasis.
• The modern system of traditional medicine isn’t working well for doctors or patients. A large majority of doctors would describe their practice’s morale as negative.
• In 2016, 14 million people will be diagnosed with cancer, so it is important to find out all about cancer.
• Cancer is generally caused by our environments and the things we are exposed to day to day, so knowing all about cancer is the first step in prevention.
• Vitamin D deficiency is a leading cause of cancer in our modern society.
• Wireless devices, laptops, cell phones, are common sources of radiation exposure.
• Children tend to be more susceptible to radiation than adults. Minimize the devices that your children are able to interact with.
• Grounding, where you physically touch your bare feet to the earth, can help your body naturally detox.
• You can see the effects of radiation on sprouts. Sprouts growing next to a source of radiation like a cell phone will grow slower than sprouts grown normally.
• The body is electric and is affected by different sources of energy.
• Educating yourself on using technology safely is important to protecting your body from dysfunction.
• Put your cell phone on airplane mode when not using it.
• Avoid wireless technology in your home.
• The effects of good gut health can be far reaching. If you’re experiencing headaches the source could be an imbalance in your gut bacteria.
• The Smart Meter being installed nationwide is a source of radiation that can be easily removed. A simple phone call to the hydro company can get an analog meter installed instead.
• A naturopathic doctor is an important part of your family’s health care team.

Key Resources Mentioned:

NDNR: Naturopathic Doctor News and Review

International Journal of Naturopathic Medicine

The Natural Cancer Prevention Summit

NaturalPath

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Sinatra is known as America’s #1 integrative cardiologist. He’s also certified as a bioenergetic psychotherapist, and nutrition and anti-aging specialist. Dr. Sinatra integrates psychological, nutraceutical and electroceutical therapies in the matrix of healing. His latest book, co-authored with Tommy Rosa, is called Health Revelations from Heaven and Earth.

Main Questions Asked:

• Let’s talk about how you met your co-author Tommy Rosa.
• We can discuss any of the eight revelations:  Connection, Faithfulness, Vital force, Grounding, Body temple, Positivity, Self-love, Purpose.
• What have near death experiences taught us about how to live more healthy on Earth?
• What is one thing our listeners can start doing today?

Key Points Made by Dr. Stephen Sinatra:

• I was lecturing in Florida on Earthing, about 5 1/2 years ago, and after my lecture, I went downstairs to the exhibitor’s hall and I asked somebody if anybody had any serrapeptase and Tommy’s wife said “I have some” which was amazing.
• Tommy walked over to me and said “I really enjoyed your lecture” and then he goes, “By the way, you had a hip replacement and you have an infection in your hip”.
• And I said, “How could you possibly know that?” and without blinking an eye, he said these exact words:  “Spirit told me”.
• I said “Spirit told you?” and he said “Yes” and I said “OK, you and I have to talk”, so that was sort of the introduction of Tommy and ever since that time, we have sort of become best friends.
• Tommy was run over by a car in the Bronx, NY, was killed and then came back to life, and then he was resurrected, so to speak, in the ICU and CCU, he spent 3 weeks on a ventilator, but during that time he had crossed over and went through a tunnel of light, and met Ascended Masters in Heaven.
• When Tommy got to Heaven, he was told he was there to learn about life, love and health.
• He got inculated into his brain the 8 Revelations of Healing and the most incredible thing for me, Carri, was that what Tommy learned in Heaven was sort of the same stuff that I was preaching on Earth
• Tommy learned in Heaven that sugar was the enemy of the body, which causes relentless inflammation.
• Years ago, I discovered coenzyme Q10, and I was using it in heart failure, and even as Chief of Cardiology, when I was lecturing on the benefits of Co-Q10 and I was citing the medical literature on its benefits, cardiologists were walking out of the room – they couldn’t believe that a simple nutrient could have such a profound impact on the heart.
• One of the revelations that Tommy learned in Heaven was Vital Force, and actually, he learned the mitochondrial story of aging, so to speak, and I was amazed that he actually filled me up with information that sort of validated a lot of the things that I was teaching on earth.
• The 8 Revelations is a Divine Perspective from Tommy and is a scientific perspective from me. These are the Health Revelations.
• One of the first Health Revelations that Tommy learned in Heaven was a Revelation of Connection, meaning that all human beings on Earth are connected to one another.
• The Revelation of Connection is something that involves not only individuals, but the whole planet, as well.
• Healing emotions, like love, for example, I mean, love is the most healing emotion that I’ve ever, ever experienced in my entire life, and you know, it’s one of the reasons why pets bring so much to the table.
• As a heart specialist, when I saw people who were in love or who fell in love, a lot of symptoms would vanish.
• The vibration of love is very, very healing and that’s what Tommy experienced in Heaven, the incredible vibration of being total love, and total unconditional acceptance, is absolutely again, it’s indescribable, those feelings.
• If you’re thinking positively, then you can create positive energy as a result of those positive thoughts.
• The problem is that people are so tied into negativity and the problem is, you become that negative thought and you create the matter that you are thinking about, and that can often be illness.
• Sometimes we create our own illness by negative thinking and again, these are aspects that I learned on Earth as a psychotherapist and Tommy learned in Heaven, you know, very, very quickly.
• Whenever we’re ill, we have a physical component to the illness, but there’s always an emotional component as well.
• We don’t want to become a victim of the illness, because when that happens, then it’s a steady downward course.
• The Revelation of Grounding – when you put your bare feet on the earth, and you’re taking in the energy of the earth, or you’re sleeping grounded, what you’re really doing is dousing out the fires of inflammation.
• One of the things that Earthing does for you, it balances the sympathetic nervous system by enhancing the parasympathetic limb so it puts us more into balance and it helps heal the body.
• The other thing it does, it thins the blood – it creates what we call a beta zeta potential.
• Whenever the blood becomes thinner, then we get more oxygen delivered to our tissues and we feel better, so that’s the Revelation of Grounding.
• That’s one of the Health Revelations that Tommy learned in Heaven, in fact, his Teacher told him: “I give my people ways to heal, like touching the Earth, but they don’t do it”.
• Getting back to Connection, I know Tommy was placed in my path for a reason, and I am truly blessed that God chose to place Tommy in my path because it’s totally changed my whole life.

Key Resources Mentioned:

Health Revelations from Heaven and Earth

Earthing

Dr. Sinatra’s Website

Dr. Sinatra’s Facebook Page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes

Dr. Patel founded The Living Proof Institute as a platform to showcase the benefits of functional medicine combined with lifestyle interventions.  His philosophy is that “nothing can fix your body better than it can fix itself”.  He employs his expertise as a functional medicine provider and empowers his patients to make lifestyle changes to produce long term results. His passion is to help people achieve greatness through health, because health is the vehicle that allows one to serve their family and their community.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did you get into the world of functional medicine?
• How do you answer the question – “Why didn’t my doctor tell me about this?”
• Talk about The Living Proof Method and The Six Pillars that you’re devised.
• What are some tips that you can offer listeners to immediately apply?
• Who do you consider a good candidate for functional medicine?

Key Points Made by Dr. Sachin Patel:

• I was featured on the news and the news article that they did resulted in many people calling our clinic.
• Around the same time I started learning about Functional Medicine, so since 2008, I’ve been basically doing Functional Medicine full time.
• Why didn’t my doctor tell me about this?  That’s the question I get the most often as well, and once we peel back the layers of what the patient’s problem is, we can make it very clear to them why they’re sick or why they’re unwell, or why what they were doing before wasn’t working.
• I think doctors are well-intentioned, as you would probably agree, but I just don’t think they have the training to address complex health issues.
• The Living Proof Method and The Six Pillars – This is essentially 10 years of clinical practice and thousands of hours of training and working with patients.
• We’ve distilled our patient’s health down to these Six Pillars and what we find is these pillars work really well if you’re trying to reverse somebody’s chronic health issues, or if you’re trying to promote somebody’s health, so, the beautiful thing about The Living Proof Method is that it works universally.
• Because we work at a cellular level with patients, whether you’re trying to optimize performance or whether you’re trying to reverse a chronic health issue, you want the cells to be healthy, so the six things that influence our cellular health are:
• First, the Mitochondria, which provides energy and allows for proper cell function to take place. Healing requires energy, repair requires energy, normal cell metabolism requires energy.
• The consequence of cell metabolism is waste, so the next thing we look at is Detoxification.
• The next one is Brain Health.  Brain Health is very important.  A healthy brain makes health decisions.  An unhealthy brain makes unhealthy decisions, so we want to make sure that the patient has the right mindset, the right internal dialogue, and they have the right chemistry for the brain to function optimally.
• The fourth pillar is Diet and Digestion, so it’s not just what you eat, but how you digest it, and how well you eliminate the waste products as a result of digesting and assimilating your food.
• The next one is Stress Hormones and Inflammation and the two hormones that we really focus on are Cortisol and Insulin.
• The next pillar is Lifestyle and Environment, and that’s probably the most important pillar.  Our lifestyle and the choices we make and the environment that we surround ourselves in plays a huge role in our cell signalling, which ultimately is what all six of these pillars are designed to do, it’s designed to help promote cellular health and good cell signalling.
• The first thing that people can do is take personal responsibility and by taking personal responsibility, what I mean is living more congruently and what that means is living in a way that honours your body.
• We have to learn how to keep things simple and so what we encourage our patients to do, right off the bat after their first visit before we do any testing on them, we have them keep a gratitude journal. Gratitude has been scientifically shown to make a huge impact.  We have so much as human beings to be grateful for.
• You don’t even need to see a doctor to do that and the next thing is going to be on time and aligning yourself with the sunrise and the sunset and making sure that you’re not getting too much artificial light exposure.
• Of course, exercise is a big player – we want to make sure that patients are active, that they’re mobile, they’re moving around versus being sedentary
• Just be active – just move as much as you can throughout the day.
• Who do I consider a good candidate for Functional Medicine?  Great question.  A simple answer – everyone is a good candidate for Functional Medicine.
• So I believe that Functional Medicine is a vehicle to not only restore your health, but I also believe that it’s a vehicle to promote your health and take it to another level.

Key Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Sachin Patel’s Facebook Page

The Living Proof Institute’s Website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes

Amber is the founder and creator of The Liberated Woman. She is a Free-Spirited Explorer, Holistic Health Coach, Yoga Teacher and Podcast Host. Her mission is To empower women to Escape the Ordinary, Discover Their Bliss & Find Freedom Within. She believes that every woman deserves to feel connected to her body, radiate with confidence and live the life of her dreams.

Main Questions Asked:

• Now more than ever, women are becoming busier and busier. What are some ways that they can reconnect with their inner sense of calm amidst all the chaos?
• We all know the importance of exercise in order to stay balanced and healthy in our bodies, but you like to remind women of the importance of meaningful movement, can you explain more about that for us?
• Self-love is super important – especially when it comes to creating lasting change in our lives, but you think there is a missing ingredient in the self-love equation. What is it and what is the first step to getting there?
• Many women feel so disconnected from their bodies and their sense of personal power. How can we learn to balance our lives and reconnect with our inner wisdom?
• Could you tell us more about the Liberated Woman Movement and the Liberated Woman Podcast and why it has meaning for you?
• You have a new e-book that was just released, Cultivating Calm: A modern woman’s guide to finding peace in the middle of a crazy busy world. Tell us where we can learn more about it and how we can get a copy?
• How can our listeners find out more about you?

Key Points Made by Amber Chalus:

• I like to recommend that women take time every single day to just get still. I’m talking about just sitting with your cup of tea and looking out the window for 10 minutes, or just taking a walk.  I want you to step away from all of the chaos so that you can connect with your body.  This is how to cultivate calm.
• When you get still, you can actually feel what’s happening inside of yourself, so you can hear the voice within your body that’s saying, hey, I could really use a break or, you know what?  I don’t feel comfortable saying yes to this, this and this.  You start to actually hear what’s going on and you make better decisions when you learn how to cultivate calm.
• Getting calm and still and listening to that voice is going to change your life in the long term because you’re not moving in the wrong direction when you step forward, because now you know how to cultivate calm.
• I have a lot of compassion for women and the busyness they have in their lives.  But I also know that we often look to other women who are really successful, or they seem to have it all together, or they seem to really know how to cultivate calm and we think – how can they do it?
• Here’s the thing – a lot of it has to do with priorities.
• The priority thing is such an amazing shift of focus, because, yes, what we do, what we do, is important, however, we’ve become so accustomed with what we achieve as being our value, it’s become like our golden badge, our badge of honour, it’s like, if I can be busier, I have more value in this world, and I’m here to challenge that.
• I’m here to say – It’s not what you do, it’s who you are, it’s who you’re being in every moment.
• I love that we see on-line people promoting self-love, there’s all these women who are promoting love your body, be good with who you are, stop trying to please other people, right, that achieving syndrome, but what I’ve noticed with women that I work with, and even myself, is that you tell someone to love who they are, when they don’t even know who they are, they don’t know how to cultivate calm.
• They started out a child, knowing, but as we get older, we’re convinced by other people, our teachers, our parents, our siblings, our friends, the newspaper, magazines, this is who you need to be in order to have value in society, so you change, you morph yourself according to other people’s standards.
• The body is such an amazing kind of route towards the self-discovery, but what I’ve noticed, and it’s really interesting, we reflect in our exercise what we’re doing in the outside world, which is I need to achieve more, I need to push harder, I need to look like these fitness models that I see, it’s an exterior example of fitness.
• I totally disagree with this way of moving your body because, yes, exercise is important, but what’s more important is how you feel when you’re doing it and it will empower you and strengthen you, even if you’re not lifting a massive amount of weight, and you’re not working out 10 times a week for 2 hours.
• For some women, they just need to walk more…to just take a walk and move their body that way and just maybe try a yoga class.
• I’m talking about stepping back and just going to a beginner yoga class or going to a fitness class that has dance involved, something that you can have fun doing, and lets you stay connected with how you feel in your body.
• I want you to treat it like you did when you were a child – play/  It has to be something that feels good, that you can enjoy.  If you like being with other people, going to a class because you like being with other people.  It’s about going to the gym and maybe having a trainer that you love spending time with, and working out ‘cuz it makes you feel good.
• You should move your body, but do it the way you did when you were little – because you enjoy it.
• I really recommend, I know this is going to be really difficult for a lot of people, but I’m going to ask you this – if you don’t make any changes, if you don’t do any of the things that we talk about, and you listen to Dr. Carri, and you don’t do anything, what is your life going to look like a year from now?  Is it going to look the same, is it going to look better or is it going to look worse.
• Most people are going to say, if I don’t do anything differently, it’s probably going to be worse or it’s going to be the same.
• You need to look at your schedule and notice where you’re placing your time and start to carve out time just for yourself.  I just want you to return back to you so that you’re actually moving in the right direction – so time allocated just to being instead of achieving things for other people. This is how to cultivate calm.
• I have a new e-book called Cultivating Calm: A Modern Woman’s Guide to Finding Peace in the Middle of a Crazy, Busy World.
• I’ve noticed that a lot of people aren’t taught the strategies they need to feel calm, to feel relaxed, so I created this e-book so that you literally had a list of things that would bring you back to that center.  It’s 21 beautiful rituals and practices that you can use and you can just flip to a page, you can randomly choose a page, you can read through the whole thing, but it’s bringing you back to that place, that centre.
• I have my own podcast called The Liberated Woman, which is just an interview show that I do chatting with amazing, incredible women who are living a life of freedom.
• To find that, just search The Liberated Woman on iTunes, and you can also access it and everything about me at my website: AmberChalus.com which is also the place where you can access the book and the free mini course that comes with it.
• I love Instagram.  I’m on Facebook, just search my name, Amber Chalus, and I would love to connect with you.  You can email me, you can tweet at me – I would love to hear back from all of you.

Key Resources Mentioned:

Amber Chalus Website

Amber Chalus Podcast: The Liberated Woman

Amber Chalus on Instagram

Amber Chalus on Twitter

Amber Chalus on Facebook

Cultivating Calm Book

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes

Carole is the founding director of GrassrootsHealth and the leader of the D*action project, an international project designed to solve the world’s vitamin D 3 deficiency epidemic.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is vitamin D 3 deficiency and how prevalent is it?
• What are the symptoms of vitamin D 3 deficiency?
• Why isn’t my doctor testing me?
• Who is most impacted by vitamin D 3 deficiency?
• What can we do about it?
• Vitamin D3 and K2 together?
• How can our listeners find out more about you?

Key Points made by Carole Baggerly:

• Vitamin D 3 deficiency is a world-wide problem.  Its prevalence is probably 80-90% of the world’s population everywhere and it is very serious because Vitamin D 3 is used in absolutely every cell in our body.

• One of the big questions that we always get is – “Why do we have this deficiency? How did this happen?”

• The really, really, really simple but really basic answer is – we’re out of the sun.

• If one wants to use the sun for getting Vitamin D 3, the hours at which the UVB rays that are available from the sun, is really between the hours of 10 and 2, the times when you’re told to stay out of it – and our message is that please do use the sun, but the safe message is – don’t burn.

• In general, you don’t know if you have a Vitamin D 3 deficiency.  The biggest effect that we see, though…is that within literally weeks of people starting on a Vitamin D 3 regimen that gets their serum levels up….weeks….people talk about having less pain.

• So, generally, musculoskeletal type pain or overall body pain or people who have fibromyalgia even, report considerably less pain.  That’s almost the only symptom that an individual user will notice.

• We have a video on our website done by Dr. Robert Heaney, called “Why Test?” and I encourage people to see that.

• You have to test or you don’t know what an appropriate dosage is for a given individual and even then, the way you have to test is you do a baseline test, you figure out what it is, you give some Vitamin D 3 supplement and you measure again in about 3 months to see how did this individual respond?

• I have done a lot of work in Canada and worked with many, many delightful people there and one of the reasons that I think the government stopped providing the testing was quite honestly, the doctors did not know what to do with the results.

• I think it would be very beneficial in Canada to provide a lot of education to the medical profession about: Here’s what Vitamin D 3 does, here’s what it takes, etc., etc., etc. and then to reinstitute testing across the board.

• I think we all are impacted by Vitamin D 3 deficiency in different ways.  We are running a “Protect Our Children Now” project, which is aimed at getting pregnant women to get their serum levels up to at least 40 ng/ml to help prevent pre-term births.

• I’m just amazed at what we have recently found out, by collaborating with a number of researchers, it looks like multiple sclerosis could almost go to zero if people got enough Vitamin D 3 and in pregnancy, or early childhood, it could be prevented.

• One of the other issues that we get asked about a lot is toxicity.  It’s really hard to get in a toxic range.  The actual numbers for toxicity for a serum level would be right at 200 gm/ml or 500 nmol/l, which is what they measure in Canada.

• It’s very hard to get there and the measure of toxicity would be to be hypercalcemic.  You have too much calcium in your blood or urine and the way to solve the hypercalcemic problem is to stop taking Vitamin D.

• GrassrootsHealth is engaged in quite a lot of nutrient research beyond just Vitamin D 3. There are a lot of things that impact our bodies, that work together, and one of the things that we all know about nutrients, like Vitamin D 3 and Vitamin K, is that they work together, so if you take twice as much Vitamin D 3 with Vitamin K, your results of either would be different than if you just took one of them, so you have to do that kind of balance thing.

• We have seen within our research, back again to our cohort, a reduction of about 80% of all cancers, and the dominant ones, of course, are breast and prostate and colon cancer, but an 80% reduction, so, it’s just kind of like a no-brainer. It’s cheap, it’s safe and it’s effective, so there really needs to be a massive campaign – no holds barred, saying HEY EVERYBODY – get your serum levels up!!!

• The estimate from a health stand-point is that if Vitamin D 3 deficiency were solved, we would save the world about 35% of all of its healthcare dollars.

• I would really encourage people to again, if they feel comfortable doing it, knowing that they can take anywhere between 4,000 International Units up to 10,000 International Units a day and be in a safe range – GO FOR IT!

• We started the action cohort project in 2009 because so many people around the world were saying “Hey, I’d do this, but my doctor won’t order the test for me”, and so we created a scientific project with our researchers.

• The project consists of offering to anybody who wants to pay for the test the opportunity to do a Vitamin D 3 test, twice a year, each 6 months, and fill out a health questionnaire.

Key Resources Mentioned:

GrassrootsHealth Website

Carole Baggerly’s Website

Carole Baggerly’s Facebook Page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes

Bridgit Danner runs an online women’s health community called Women’s Wellness Collaborative. She has worked extensively in the fertility field, and has worked with many professional women in helping them find health within their busy lives.  Bridgit became passionate about women’s health after her own postpartum health crisis. With the help of life coaching, holistic nutrition, functional medicine and whole food cooking, she was able to recover from postpartum depression, epstein barr virus and adrenal dysregulation. Bridgit loves to share the tools and skills she’s learned, along with the tools of other experts, to help women everywhere find the energy and balance they crave.

Main Questions Asked:

• Talk about endometriosis and painful period.

• Should women suffering with painful periods and endometriosis have hope?

• Are the hormones involved when it comes to painful periods and endometriosis?

• Talk a little bit about xenoestrogens.

• What are some of the signs and symptoms if someone has estrogen dominance?

• What are some things our listeners can start doing today to help with their hormonal balance?

• What are some of the other common sources of xenoestrogens?

• How do we get these xenoestrogens out of our bodies?

• What should our listeners know about hormonal balance?

Key Points made by Bridgit Danner:

• The most common reasons for menstrual pain have to do with nutrition and toxicity.

• If you are low in magnesium, a mineral needed for the uterus to cramp smoothly, that can be a factor.  Dehydration can be a factor.  Too much inflammation from your diet and maybe not enough Omega 3’s from fish can be an issue.

• Toxicity is a factor.  Some women find just detoxifying their diet and their lifestyle helps their hormonal balance quite a bit.

• There is hope for women who are suffering from Endometriosis and painful periods. So many women are accepting of the cramps, thinking that is just them, and their cycle – but these cases can be resolved easily to restore hormonal balance.

• In treating endometriosis, it can be a bit more complicated, but adding in some high quality turmeric, anti-inflammatory immune regulating supplements, even medicinal mushrooms can be helpful.

• Hormones can be involved in painful periods, as in the case of some teenage girls with bad periods who have very high levels of hormones.  In a case like this, hormones may play a role, but a normal amount of hormones shouldn’t make for a painful period.

• As for endometriosis, they are still trying to figure out why it happens. There is probably a genetic component, it could come from back-flow of uterine blood or it might be an autoimmune disease.  Hormones may be involved but they are not to blame.

• When talking about xenoestrogens, they are everywhere, but there is a lot that we can control.  We can control the cleaning products in our homes, we can control the quality of food, we can read labels and start to learn things.

• One thing to look for on a label is the word “Fragance”, that is always a xenoestrogen.  It looks so innocent – it’s just a word….“Fragrance”, “Perfume” “Parfum”. It’s in everything, but it is a xenoestrogen.

• The structure of some of these chemicals looks to the body, and acts in the body like a hormone, so it stimulates those receptors, and there are reactions.

• If we can’t de-tox hormones out because there are too many or because our de-tox pathways are in trouble, then we are storing those toxins in fat. This can be over-stimulating in our cycle, which can cause estrogen dominance.

• Some of the signs and symptoms of estrogen dominance are excess body weight or trouble losing weight (the body is making more estrogen and holding on to it).

• You can also have very heavy periods, or skipped cycles if you aren’t ovulating or you are under stress, and the body isn’t producing enough progesterone to balance out the estrogen.  Infertility can also be a symptom of estrogen dominance.

• To help with your hormonal balance, start with getting the toxins out, eating organic foods, hydrating, exercising, even just talking a walk in nature/

• Stress management can also be helpful. Women need to nurture themselves – learn to be with friends in a healthy way, go for walks, get up early to meditate, read a book at lunch, take a bath at night, dry brush your skin, use essential oils to relax – this should all be a part of our daily lives.

• Xenoestrogens can be also be found in canned foods (cans are lined with BPA), thermal cash register receipts (have BPS, a cousin of BPS), beauty products (make-up).

• There are two systems that support detoxing – the liver and the gut.

• The liver needs a lot of nutrition to do its job – you have to nourish the body.  Detox by eating broccoli, brussel sprouts, onions, garlic, eggs (if you tolerate them) liver, lemons (especially in the morning), and greens (leafy greens, green powder and juices).

• Lying in the sun is good for detox, because Vitamin D is good for supporting the liver and hormonal balance.

• The gut removes toxins – we need to move our bowels and not have our bowels irritated.  Having a wide variety of fibrous foods is good for the gut and hormonal balance.  Buy a leek, learn to cook fennel.

• Fermented foods are good, so having kombucha tea, kimchi, or sauerkraut is helpful. Try probiotic supplements, exercising, sweating – they are all a good way of detoxing and regaining hormonal balance.

• Our hormone system is very delicate and often our cycle is one of the first things to tell us that something isn’t right, so pay attention to the signs, like spotting, heavy periods, migraines every time you have your period.

• Using hormonal birth control depletes nutrients and is hard on the liver and can cause difficulties with fertility once you have gone off of them.  There are more and more natural birth control options available.

Resources Mentioned:

Women’s Wellness Summit

Women’s Wellness Collaborative

Bridgit Danner’s Website

Bridgit Danner’s Facebook Page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes

Michael Ruscio is a doctor, clinical researcher, author, and health enthusiast. Dr. Ruscio practices Functional Medicine and is currently performing two clinical trials in the treatment of digestive conditions. He is also writing a book on the microbiota. Dr. Ruscio gives smart, busy people who are suffering from symptoms of chronic illness simple steps to get better, and get on with life. He will also be a featured speaker at the upcoming SIBO Symposium for 2016

Main Questions Asked:

• What are the two gut types you’ve found?
• How do biofilms fit into the gut types?
• Can you speak about the brain-gut and gut-brain connection?
• What will you be speaking about at the upcoming SIBO Symposium?

Key Points Made by Dr. Ruscio:

• There are two gut types – “The Out of Shape Gut Type” and the “The Injured Gut Type”.
• The Out of Shape Gut just needs predominantly fibres and prebiotics and it gets better.
• The Injured Gut – if this person really increases their fibre intake significantly or their prebiotic intake and they get worse. There may be SIBO, or small intestinal bacteria overgrowth, or there could also be inflammatory bowel disease, something like Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis and this would impact the gut health and digestive health.
• Inflammatory Bowel Disease is one of those cases where people have a tendency to attack their own bacteria.
• It has been very well established that high fibre diets can make inflammatory bowel disease worse.
• There are certain probiotics that work really well for inflammatory bowel disease and the herbs that work really well include: Curcumin, Boswellia, and Artemisinin.
• Artemisinin has been shown to work well for inflammatory bowel disease and is antibacterial, anti-parasitic agent. But, without supervision from your functional medicine doctor it can have negative effects when used in high doses for too long, which would affect your gut health and digestive health.
• We should not say that everyone should be eating more fibre. We have to individualize it to the person.
• Biofilms fall into the injured gut category. What makes biofilms problematic is that when a bad bacteria or fungus gets into the body and is there for a prolonged period of time, it can then start to form this biofilm which makes the bacteria or fungal colony resistant to treatment and I think this is most noticeably seen with candida.
• When someone does have a biofilm they will get better from treatment, but they will relapse over the course of a few months. That’s when using a biofilm destructing agent can be helpful for your gut health and digestive health.
• If the gut was having more of an impact on the brain, then we may want to start with gut therapies first and what I’ve noticed clinically is it certainly seems to be that the gut has more of an impact on the brain.
• SIBO Symposium 2016 – I’ll be speaking about treating SIBO with biofilm agents; the use of Iberogast and its ability to prevent relapse in SIBO.

Key Resources Mentioned:

SIBO Symposium 2016

Dr. Ruscio’s Podcast

Dr. Ruscio’s Website

Dr. Ruscio’s Facebook Page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes 

Dr. Breggin is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist.  He is called “The Conscience of Psychiatry” for his many decades of successful efforts to reform the mental health field. His work provides the foundation for modern criticism of psychiatric drugs and shock treatment, and leads the way in promoting more caring and effective therapies.

Dr. Breggin’s books include “Toxic Psychiatry”, “Talking Back to Prozac”, and his newest book is “Guilt, Shame and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions”.  It presents a new theory about the origins of our most painful emotions and how to triumph over them.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you tell us about the background behind psychiatry and all their medications?
• How is a drug compared to a placebo? What does it all mean?
• Can you talk about the antidepressants? Do they work better than placebo? What are their long-term effects?
• What are the alternatives for people who need help? Can you talk about treating depression without medication?
• Can you give us an example from your private practice?

Key Points made by Dr. Breggin:

• This whole wave is fundamentally driven by the profit motive of pharmaceutical industry – including the structure of the diagnostic manuals and the scientific research written by ghost writers paid by the drug companies. It’s hard to wrap your mind around it.
• Many of the studies done on these drugs are only weeks long (example, Prozac research was 6 weeks long on the drug), and yet people are being put on these drugs for years and we have no idea about the long term effects.
• Adderall crushes a child’s spontaneity, their sparkle, their sociability. And they don’t learn, they don’t grow, and their growth is stunted.
• Often then they cannot sleep and get ‘depressed’ and are put on antidepressants.
• Drug companies can do as many studies as they want, and then choose the one or two that favor their drug to help get FDA approval.
• It doesn’t take much to get drugs approved – the standards of the FDA have become too loose.
• Long term effects of antidepressants cause a huge amount of depression; a loss of interest in life, sex, love, life, play, and occupation. This happens without you even realizing it so you should ask a close family member if this is happening to you.
• Numerous studies have shown that all the drug classes of antidepressants actually atrophy and shrink the brain. Except these effects are being ignored.
• There are no long term positive studies for any psychiatric drug. For every class of drug there are long term studies showing loss of quality of life and increased disability.
• First and foremost, it is your right to refuse to take these drugs. Just don’t start antidepressants.
• I have a book to help people understand how back their drugs are and how to get off their medications called “Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal – A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and their Families”.
• For treating depression without medication you must open your mind to all the ways you can overcome all the things that distress you, including: psychotherapy, marriage and family counseling.
• It’s very important for spouses and families to work together in counseling.
• For parents who want to help their kids: develop your sense of moral authority which most parents lack nowadays plus lavish unconditional love on them.
• You the parent hold the key to your child’s success. Be sure you are the cure for your child’s problems.
• For adults you probably have some issues from your childhood that need to be explored and dealt with.
• Other things that can help with treating depression without medication: meditation, relaxation, spirituality and connection with God, nature and immersion in nature, among others.
• Even if you have damage to your brain know that you are NOT your brain. You have a God-given spirit and being and essential human worth. You are a source of love.
• It’s important to take charge and take responsibility for your life. Become the loving person you want to become.
• My new book contains a whole new theory about guilt, shame, and anxiety in our lives, and how to become the person you want to be.
• Don’t put up with being drugged into submission. Life is about love and doing and being.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock, and Biochemical Theories of the “New Psychiatry”

Book – Talking Back to Prozac

Book – Guilt, Shame and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions

Book – Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and their Families

Dr. Breggin’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Brogan is a holistic women’s health psychiatrist and author of A Mind of Your Own. She completed her psychiatric training and fellowship at NYU Medical Center after graduating from Cornell, and has a B.S. from MIT in Brain and Cognitive Science. She is board certified in psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, and integrative holistic medicine, and is specialized in a root-cause resolution approach to psychiatric syndromes and symptoms.

Main Questions Asked:                                                                                                               

• A lot of people are having mental problems and you’re going to explain to us that when you heal your body, you heal your mind.
• Can you talk about thyroid imbalances?
• Can you talk about some of the other imbalances that masquerade as mental illness that patients should know about?
• Can you talk about the importance of healthy fats in the diet?
• Can you tell us about your program – Vital Mind Reset?

Key Points made by Dr. Brogan:

• People are waking up to the limitations of the conventional model of medicine.
• Typical symptoms like brain fog, fatigue, changes in sleep, feelings of malaise and disconnection almost always these “psychiatric” symptoms are accompanied by a host of physical symptoms whether it’s gut dysfunction, skin issues, hair loss, a number of different autoimmune-related symptoms.
• I became interested in the psychiatric pretenders which are these reversible physiologic imbalances that can masquerade as psychiatric, and in the wrong hands, garner you a psychiatric diagnosis and potentially a lifetime of treatment with psychiatric medication.
• The two that I see most in my practice with the most relevance are blood sugar imbalance and thyroid dysfunction.
• There’s a simple anecdote.  It’s cold turkey – the elimination of sugar while dramatically increasing natural fat intake.  You can shift it in a week to 10 days.  Something you’ve been doing for 40 years, you can largely heal your body in such a short period of time.
• If you look at the classic symptoms of hypothyroidism and you look at the DSM diagnostic criteria for depression, they match up almost one-to-one.
• When you heal your body, you can dramatically reduce the signal of psychiatric symptoms.
• I always start with the same interventions which are very low commitment and low risk.  It’s dietary first and always.  Then we look at what else we can do to heal your body.
• Some other big ones that mimic mental illness are food intolerance, micronutrient deficiency, and sex hormone imbalance.
• Depression is a symptom – not a diagnosis and not a disease.  If you think of it as a disease or a diagnosis, you could really miss an opportunity to discover what that symptom is telling you about your body.
• That’s all I do for my patients is hold the space for them to discover their own potential for self-healing.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – A Mind of Your Own

Dr. Brogan’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Shirley is the author of Finally… Food I Can Eat—an Inspirational Dietary Guide and Cookbook for People Affected by Food Allergies and Intolerances. She is recognized as a menu-planning expert. Shirley has given seminars on food allergies, cooking, and menu planning.

As a nutritionist and dietary designer, Shirley offers her clients and their families a rare understanding and unique expertise that few people can match. Her pleasant and caring manner, her own experience as a food-allergy sufferer and her creative design flair helps offer hope for people struggling to find the light at the end of a dark dietary tunnel.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did you come up with the idea of doing a summit?
• It fundamentally boils down to diet – either you let food be your medicine or your poison, right?
• What about for the people who think they are doing all of the right things but they still feel crappy?
• How is that even possible that you can lose weight by sitting on a chair?
• What are your predictions of the top 3 ideas people will take away from this year’s summit?

Key Points made by Shirley:

• I had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, food and environmental allergies, and adrenal fatigue.  Mainstream medicine couldn’t help me.  I started studying nutrition, the idea of how to let food be your medicine, and changed my diet.  It made a huge difference but wasn’t the only piece to the puzzle.
• What really helped me was changing my diet, embracing and going to see a functional medical specialist  – someone that studied energy medicine and the whole mind-body connection because that’s huge when you’re ill for such a long period of time.
• I started to tune into free webinars and learned so much that as I started to get better, study nutrition, and help people, I felt there was a real need for people to be able to tune in online and hear from these knowledgeable experts that literally span the globe.  I knew it was something that I could put together and I reached out to specialists around the world.  The next thing I knew I put together 40 speakers and we had this great summit last year!
• The body is brilliant.  It can heal itself – we just need the right tools.  You never know, you just might tune into the summit and hear that answer that you’ve been searching for for so long.
• You want to get to the root problem.  Why is this happening to your body?
• It’s finding a functional medicine doctor that knows which tests we need to have done.
• The beauty of the summit is that there are so many practitioners on here that you are going to figure it out.
• We also get people that are really healthy and active but they just want to know how to fuel their active lifestyle.  We have those who want to lose weight.
• At the summit we talk about juicing, how to let food be your medicine, ADD, and how we can change our genes.  We can change our genes!  We can actually turn them on and off by what we eat, the thoughts we think, the environment we surround ourselves with.
• A neat talk we have too is about sitting disease.  It contributes to many chronic illnesses.  We talk about the Core Chair which is the only active sitting chair on the market.
• There’s everything on the summit.  We have giveaways, a chance to win a Vita-Mix juicer.  You name it, it’s on the summit.
• I met with the creator of the Core Chair last year.  He’s a kinesiologist.  He took 7 years to figure out what chair is best for this.  He designed it based on the (exercise) ball but this is very different in that it wobbles but it doesn’t.  You can have it as a regular chair.  There are no arms and there’s a lower back.  So when you sit in this chair, you sit properly.  It strengthens and engages your core.
• The Mayo Clinic did a test on the Core Chair and just by sitting on it you shed calories because you are strengthening your core.  You are engaging your body which allows the blood to flow to all parts of your body so that you stay more productive during your day.
• There’s a setting on the chair that you can move so then it’s like a ball and it wobbles.  You can move and move your hips.  They have exercises that you can do on it!  I do them and I feel great!
• Some people have a standing desk or a treadmill desk but we always come back to sitting.  It’s what we do.  So why not be able to engage while you’re sitting?
• Dr. Carnahan had a personal experience with mold and dives into toxic mold and the symptoms and issues you can have if you’ve been exposed.  Proper testing is so important. You can ask your doctor about the Micotoxin Test.
• It’s just fascinating all the things that can be happening around us that can be affecting our health.
• Some “healthy” foods can sometimes just not be right for your body.  Like Dr. Lyn-Genet Racitas, author of The Plan, says “It’s not the calories, it’s the chemistry of the food”.
• At the summit we talk about sensitivities and how to determine them with Wendy Myers.
• Another interesting interview was with Dr. Jonathan Roberti.  We talk about vertical gardening.
• Another amazing speaker is David Gee.  If you are a meditator, you’ve heard of him.  He used to work with Deepak Chopra.  We talk about de-stressifying.  Stress is huge!  We all know it contributes to so many ailments and issues in our body.
• If you involve children in planting, growing, and making food, studies show that kids then eat healthier.
• This year is really going to enforce again how important food and diet are.  What we eat can be more powerful than what’s in that pill bottle (let food be your medicine!).  It’s simply realizing it then getting the tips and tools you need to make those changes.
• People will learn how important stress is and the mind-body connection and how powerful that mind-body connection is in healing the body and/or keeping yourself healthy.  And for those who are not sick but have a little chronic issue, we’ll go over how to get rid of those and stay well.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Finally… Food I Can Eat—an Inspirational Dietary Guide and Cookbook for People Affected by Food Allergies and Intolerances

Eat Real Food Health Summit

Shirley’s website

Shirley’s facebook page

Shirley on twitter

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Morrison is a practicing physician, founder of The Morrison Center for Integrative Medicine in New York City, award-winning author of Cleanse Your Body, Clear Your Mind, and Board Certified in Family Practice and Integrative Medicine.  His focus is on preventing and reversing degenerative and chronic diseases by enhancing the body’s innate ability to detoxify and heal itself.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did you get interested in detox?
• Are there any other symptoms that make you think that a person might need a detox?
• Can you tell us about the studies on how much of a burden toxins are to our body now?
• How do you detoxify your body?
• Can you give a real case example from your practice?
• What are three things our listeners can start doing today to help them to achieve more of a detox lifestyle?

Key Points made by Dr. Morrison:

• While in medical school and living on a medical student’s budget, I was eating tuna fish twice a day every day for two or three years.  I was having memory changes and difficulty concentrating, and symptoms that couldn’t be explained by any medical tests that were performed.  Fortunately, I had the opportunity to work with a doctor that did environmental medicine and he helped me to diagnose that I had mercury toxicity.
• That recognition helped me start my study in environmental medicine and also recognizing that if we can find the root cause of a person’s problems, we can make a really big impact on helping people feel great again.
• There are a lot of doctors now who are recognizing how important nutrition, environmental medicine, and detoxification are for really coming up with fantastic strategies to help people to rejuvenate themselves by identifying what these underlying causes are, to help the body work better, and then come up with some targeted strategies for rejuvenation.
• We can all take inventory when we wake up in the morning.  Are we feeling at our best self?  Once we step out of bed, symptoms are sometimes coming up.
• All of these symptoms of not performing at our best self are symptoms that the body is not functioning properly.
• What we use in our office is a Symptom Survey that helps people capture their subjective symptoms on a list and gives it a score.  We use that score as a starting point to help people go through a process to detox themselves and see how well they can feel from beginning to an end.  Usually we look at a four week cycle to see how much better a person can feel on all their symptoms after doing some very simple strategies to help their body work better.
• The CDC and the EPA do keep outcomes on the amount of chemicals that are being released into the environment.  The last time we checked, we were at 77,000 plus chemicals that are actively being manufactured in the United States and in the world but this number is being added to on an almost daily basis.
• We’ve got a load of toxins being produced in our modern civilized world that have led to lots of conveniences but at the same time has led to lots of opportunities for exposure.
• Studies have been around for 20 or 40 years about the fact that the liver has a very efficient way of handling toxins in the environment, and it goes through a two or three phase process to detoxify your body both through the liver and through the colon.
• Everyone on this planet is getting exposed.  The only issue is how well you can detoxify your body and what you can do to decrease exposure and then improve your innate capacity for that detoxification process.
• Good health begins with clean cells, clean living, and a clean mind.  It’s like a whole big package.
• The cell is literally like a microcosm of our whole body.
• We have to decrease exposures to chemicals by making the proper choices in the foods we eat, the water we drink, and even the skin care products we use.
• In addition to that there are things we can do to improve cellular oxygenation.  It’s really as simple as just moving.  Anything where the body is moving helps improve circulation to the cells.
• Even though we’re making it sound like there is a lot to it, it’s about as simple as it gets.  It all just really comes down to making the right choices with the foods we eat, the water we drink, and exercise.  And then making sure we are able to eliminate toxins properly by having a bowel movement one to three times a day and making sure we’re drinking plenty of water to flush toxins out of our kidneys.
• The other thing we’re always focusing on in our practice is the mind-body connection as it relates to detoxification.
• Nowadays we not only have the stresses from our environment but we also have emotional stresses.
• We know that in order for you to be able to detoxify your body optimally, it needs to be in the rest and relaxed state but when you are always in that fight or flight response it is not conducive to detoxification.
• Even though we help guide people to make the right choices, we also want to bring awareness of the importance of meditation practices, being mindful, and working on a process to get out of that chronic fight or flight state.
• When we get people to start shifting from a negative to a positive level of consciousness, they make tremendous strides.
• It’s very satisfying to be in a practice where patients get really enthusiastic, they feel the benefit, and people around them see the difference as well.
• The three magic things that will transform a patient’s life forever…I’m a minimalist.  I try to focus on things that are manageable, that they can do today that will make a big impact tomorrow.
• My big one is making sure that people are getting 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep a night.
• Number two is it’s important to exercise.
• It’s really important to work with an integrative holistic health care provider as a coach on the journey of the detoxification process.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Cleanse Your Body, Clear Your Mind

Dr. Morrison’s website

Dr. Morrison’s Symptom Survey

Gotmercury.org

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

She is a grief guide. She speaks on loss, grief and, most importantly, recovery from the pain of grief. Natalia uses natural grief therapy to guide people by facilitating workshops, teleseminars, and individual sessions. She also educates and supports those who want to help children, friends, neighbors and colleagues after a loss.

Natalia’s expertise is based on her firsthand experience with loss and grief. In 2010, after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer, her husband died at the age of 49. She eventually found her way through her devastating pain while raising her three young children alone.

Natalia hopes that you will walk away today with a deeper understanding of a subject we normally avoid but will all have to confront firsthand at some point in our lives. She aims to give you tools to help yourself, and others in need, to heal more quickly after a loss.

Main Questions Asked:

• How does grief and loss affect our body and our health?
• Are there any other signs or symptoms that a person might have?
• How do you know if you are still grieving or not?
• How long does it take to recover from grief and loss?
• How can we use natural grief therapy to heal from a loss?
• Can you tell us about the Relief process?
• Do some people just not grieve or are they doing it in a different way?
• For those currently suffering a loss, what can they do now to help get through this process?

Key Points made by Natalia:

• Grief is the normal and natural response to a significant loss such as death, divorce, and job loss.
• Grief is also the conflicting feelings after a change in a familiar pattern of behavior.
• We like to say “Time heals all wounds” but honestly, if we don’t grieve properly or naturally, we don’t heal from that.  I work with many people who are still grieving 10, 20, 30 years later.
• Doctors often mistreat it and we say that it looks like depression and we’re very quick to put people on anti-depressants.
• Grief can come out in heart problems.  Do we know how many heart attacks and heart problems are really related to losses?
• Cancer.  When my husband died, after 2 years of grieving, I started to panic. I was not feeling better. I didn’t know how to actually heal from my grief.  The scarier part is that I started meeting people where one young spouse died and within 2 years, the other spouse was diagnosed with cancer and died.  It scared me because I had 3 young children and I didn’t want to leave them orphaned.  I thought that this is not a coincidence that I keep hearing about these cases.
• Accidents are greatly increased.  Looking at when people had accidents, it is often within 2 years of a loss.  If we don’t heal the grief, our brain is not functioning strongly.  We’re absent-minded, our memory is weak.  We’re just not as alert.
• As part of their grief therapy, I have people make a graph of their life and note difficult times and what was happening.
• You’re still grieving if you just have lower energy and a loss of aliveness that was not something you had your whole life but after a big loss or a big change in your life, you noticed a real difference.
• Other ways you know you’re still grieving is if you feel sad or angry when you think of the person who is now gone.  Some people tell the same story of a loss again and again and again.  They just keep trying to process it.  They have not properly grieved that loss so they keep playing it over and over and over again in their head trying to come to terms with it.
• If fond memories turn to sadness.  You can’t enjoy the good parts of the relationship because they always turn to crying.  That’s a sign you have not recovered from your grief.
• If you’re getting sick a lot more since the loss or death is another sign.
• Our loss and relationship is unique and so is our grief.
• Time Magazine did research and said that the average person grieves from 4 to 8 years.  That’s not what our culture gives us.
• It doesn’t have to take that time. There are specific behaviors that can help us move our grief through us.
• Our body has everything it needs for us to live healthy.  We’re supposed to live well.  Loss is also a natural part of life.
• Let’s listen to our body and respect what it’s telling us.  In the beginning, you may feel numb or exhausted.  Then what would be the natural thing to do when you’re exhausted?  Get more sleep!
• I always tell people at the beginning to drink water, rest more, be kind to yourself.
• Later on you may feel anxious or panicky.  If you feel really anxious, get moving.  One idea is to put on music you can’t help but move to and get that energy flowing through you.
• We are social beings and we need each other to heal.
• We cannot heal from our grief when we focus on one half of the relationship.
• During grief therapy, I lead people through a number of steps that help them complete the pain around the relationship.
• In the Relief process, I help people to recognize their current thoughts and feelings associated with those thoughts.  What are the beliefs you’ve had your whole life that are affecting it?
• Recognize the thoughts and beliefs we are playing in our head over and over again and how those are coming out in those feelings.
• Express those emotions and our pain and tell our story to someone who can listen and validate it.
• Leave our old thought patterns behind and reframe our thoughts for the life we are moving toward.  You have to Identify your new self and redefine your life after a loss.
• We need to Empower ourselves through these new thoughts and realize our inner strength.
• Find Freedom through our feelings and focus on desires and take continuous small steps toward this new sense of self.
• It’s rare but for some people, they really are at peace.
• Usually grief will show itself more when we did not say the things we needed to say.
• This is my #1 tip:  Just say “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to say.  How could I help you today?”

Resources Mentioned:

Natalia’s website

Natalia’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Deanna Minich is a functional nutritionist with a unique approach to clinical medicine that combines physiology and psychology. She has trained in functional medicine for the past decade with the “father of functional medicine,” Dr. Jeffrey Bland, as her mentor, and has served on the Institute of Functional Medicine’s Nutrition Advisory Board and curriculum committee teaching nutrition in their Detox Module.

She recently hosted The Detox Summit, an online event featuring 30 experts on detox, which was attended by almost 70K people worldwide. Following the Detox Summit, she led 3000 people through The Detox Challenge, a 21-day, online, functional medicine-oriented detoxification program. Her newest book is called Whole Detox: A 21-Day Personalized Program to Break Through Barriers in Every Area of Your Life.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you explain what the 7 is all about?
• Can you gloss over what those 7 areas are?
• Can you walk us through what the 21-day program would be like?
• Can you talk about a patient who went through the program and the problems they were struggling with before and the transformation with their health and life?
• Is there anything else about your life detox program that you think is important for our listeners to hear?

Key Points made by Dr. Deanna:

• What I found in working with people all these years is that, when I would change their food, they started having changes in their lives.
• Detox is more than just changing your eating.  When we change our eating, we change our living.  When we change our living, we change our lives.
• In the book I talk about not just avoiding but what we need to bring in to nourish ourselves.  I think that’s one of the very important pieces of detox programs out there that’s missing.
• I’d rather do a yin/yang approach where we focus on one side which is of course the removal of and looking at toxicities in our lives.  On the other side of the coin, you have to think about what you’re going to put in place of those things once you remove them.
• Body-Mind-Spirit.  I started looking deeper into what it means to connect our mind with our body.  What about the effect of emotions on our health?  Relationships?  Whether or not we feel lonely versus having a community.  I found that there are 7 parts to who we are.  We have these 7 big areas into which we bucket our lives.
• To make it easy, I associate things with color.  Think of the rainbow.  Red is the Root (looking at the physical parts of us).  Orange is connected to the Flow (emotions, creativity, self-expression). Yellow is connected to the Fire (transformation).  Green is about the Heart (love).  Aquamarine is the Throat area (speaking our truth, how we take things in, mindful eating).  Indigo is connected to the Brain (insight).  White is Spirit (life force).
• In the book there are chapters that describe each of those different colors and systems within you.  As you move through the book, you get to the questionnaire which you can take to find out where you’re at.  It’s a great gauge, you can always use it.  Then you’re provided with 21 pages with different prescriptions for each day.  You actually get the 7 different things you can do every day of the 21-day life detox.
• It’s been made so it will cost you no more than 30 minutes of your day to do these things outside of the eating, of course.  If you can’t spend that 30 minutes, if you can take a part of it, something that you feel really drawn to, and go there, especially because we know that whatever you choose is going to ripple through your system and influence these 7 layers.
• All the recipes are in there and they’re all color-coded.  People like the colors.  I’ve been asked if the color can be doing something here.  Yes, it is!
• In the book, we have a colorful insert that will take you through all of the different colors, what they stand for, what they represent.  And you start thinking of yourself not just in numbers or in lab values but you start thinking of yourself as a spectrum.
• One of the things I like to do too is encourage creative expression.  When people do the life detox, they start to open up to just creative ways to live.  People start taking up painting, drawing, writing poetry, and taking pictures of their meals.
• Our goal isn’t really to have people lose weight.  It’s really to help people feel energized to live and to live to their fullest.
• Working on ourselves is the best way to heal the planet.
• If you feel like you can’t wrap your head around doing all of this, join our community experience.  Twice a year we do an online life detox program and that is absolutely powerful to be in the presence of thousands of people doing this.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Whole Detox:  A 21-Day Personalized Program to Break Through Barriers in Every Area of Your Life

Dr. Deanna’s website

Dr. Deanna’s facebook page

Dr. Deanna’s Whole Detox facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Ariane is a private chef and certified nutritionist who specializes in organic farm-to-table cuisine and creates indulgent, seemingly “normal” foods out of impeccably clean, whole food ingredients.

She has cooked for celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. She is also a survivor of Lyme disease and chemical poisoning, and recovered holistically from both. Ariane’s hit book The Bone Broth Miracle made it to the #1 cookbook spot on Amazon.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is bone broth and what makes it so miraculous?
• Is bone broth some kind of a new diet trend or is there a history behind it?
• Can you explain some of the benefits of bone broth?
• How would one make bone broth? Do you have to use organic soup bones?
• How do we consume bone broth?
• How can we use bone broth to help heal leaky gut?
• Have they done any research on bone broth?
• Do you have any other tips, suggestions, or insights about bone broth that you can give us today?

Key Points made by Ariane

• Bone broth is what stock used to be. A long time ago, we all used to make stock for food that we would eat by boiling soup bones for at least a day or two.
• It’s the concept of just really simply boiling good quality soup bones in water and reaping their health benefits.
• You can boil soup bones on the stove or in a pressure cooker or slow cooker.
• It’s been something we’ve been making since we’ve been eating meat.
• The number one aspect of it that is so healing is that it’s full of gelatin and collagen. Gelatin is actually something we used to eat a lot of culturally even in America but we just don’t anymore. That’s what your hair, your skin, your nails, your gut, so much of you is comprised of and when you consume it directly, it’s really easy for your body to use it to repair itself.
• People start noticing very quickly improvements in their joints, their skin, and their digestion from the gelatin. It has a number of other health benefits in that it’s not that bone broth is specifically high in many nutrients so much as they are very bio-available. What that means is you don’t have to do any work to absorb the good stuff in the broth.
• You begin with soup bones, water, salt to taste, and cider vinegar or lemon juice or something acidic to help pull the minerals out. You can roast the bones first if they’re not already cooked just in the pan or in the oven. That’s an optional step but it leads to a better color in the broth and a better flavor. Cook the soup bones up to two days. When it’s done, the bones have really broken down. You can add aromatics like onions, garlic, and vegetables.
• The one caveat with helping to pull out the minerals is that if you are glutamate sensitive, you’re going to be getting more of the amino acids in the bones and glutamate is one of them. So that’s a step you want to avoid.
• Use grass fed organic soup bones specifically when you’re talking about red meat. One of the best benefits of bone broth is the fact that it’s anti-inflammatory and you cannot create something anti-inflammatory out of inflammatory food.
• A lot of people drink it straight as a replacement for tea or coffee. It’s very energizing in a much more mellow way than caffeine. It’s really popular to make a tonic out of it.
• I use it as a basis for soups, stews, and sauces. Not only for foods that are specifically very healthy to begin with but when people want less healthy foods to help mitigate some of the effects of the less healthy ingredients that you might put in.
• There’s really no limit to how you can include it in your diet. If you like the taste, it’s a great thing to just have a cup of. If you don’t like the taste so much, there are a million ways to hide it in your diet, even in smoothies.
• Bone broth is one of the easiest ways to heal your gut.
• If you’re looking for bone broth to have some real therapeutic effects, you want to have 2 to 4 cups per day of it which is not that difficult.
• The gelatin, collagen, and the amino acids are incredibly reparative. You end up absorbing more of the nutrients you consume and you also end up pretty quickly just re-growing a lot of that microvilli back of your intestines
• Research has been done on the components of bone broth. There has been a lot of research on meat in general and on the different aspects of health that the quality of meat leads to.
• Conventionally raised animals’ bones would contain heavy metals, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones – you don’t want to eat pesticide hormone soup. There’s just no need.
• If you’re going to go out of your way to create and consume something for health values, you begin with ingredients that have health values.
• When you have broth in a cocktail, it’s more filling so you are less inclined to drink more.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Bone Broth Miracle

Ariane’s website

Ariane’s facebook page

Ariane on twitter

Ariane on Instagram

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Tami is a double board certified physician in Aesthetic Medicine, and Integrative & Natural Medicine. She is also on the faculty of the American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine and lectures around the world on Aesthetics and bio-identical hormones for men and women.

In her hit book The Hormone Secret: Discover Effortless Weight Loss and Renewed Energy in Just 30 Days, she talks about the impacts of testosterone deficiency and how it makes us fat, fatigued and no fun.

Main Questions Asked:

• Does testosterone have any impact at all for women?
• With most hormonal imbalances, we could see those at any period of our adult life. Is that true with testosterone as well?
• When it comes to testing testosterone levels, what’s the best way to get that checked?
• Are bio-identical hormones safe?
• If someone implements changes today to balance hormones naturally, how long does it take to start seeing changes in the hormones?
• If you’re really diligent making changes, after what period of time do you think a woman should start thinking about finding a great doctor and see if they really need bio-identical hormones?

Key Points made by Dr. Tami:

• So many of our hormone imbalances and deficiencies show up in ways that we don’t really connect them with hormones.
• Estrogen is a hormone that makes us women. If you have an estrogen deficiency, some of the more common things you might be experiencing are hot flashes, night sweats, painful intercourse, dry vaginal area, and less commonly thought of as an estrogen deficiency, is brain fog
• When our skin starts to go south, it has a lot to do with the quality and quantity of estrogen that we have in our elastin and collagen.
• Progesterone is the peaceful hormone. It’s been called the “valium that bathes the female mind”. It helps you sleep through the night.
• There are so many hormones that work together in symphony but testosterone is the one that gets left out all the time. We don’t need a lot as women but it has an outsized role in how we look, feel, and function.
• What we seek in testosterone providing women is energy and the muscle to fat ratio. It’s one of the best things for your bones. It’s so great for so many parts. We even have testosterone receptors in our brain.
• Hormones take a precipitous fall starting in our late 30s and 40s.
• Your adrenal glands become the factory of these hormones after your age of fertility which starts to happen in your late 30s.
• The adrenal glands are required to produce all of the hormones that have to deal with stress but they’re also required to produce all of the hormones that bless your life and they can’t do both.
• One way to balance hormones naturally is by using food and supplements.
• If you have access to a blood test, that’s great, but if not, you can take a quiz and there are symptoms that will help make it more likely that you have a testosterone deficiency than not. That’s the first level.
• We now have the capabilities of a blood spot test. There’s also a serum test.
• Patients are getting their total testosterone tested. We really want to know what your free testosterone is. Why? I don’t care how much testosterone you have. I care about how much testosterone you have that’s going to do work for you. It’s only the free testosterone that can bind to the receptor and do any good.
• You can also test it in the saliva. The urine is a good option if you’re looking for the testosterone metabolites.
• You really need to be under the care of a physician who’s checking your levels and the metabolites and the whole story if you’re going to have a prescription for bio-identical hormones.
• Prescription testosterone is really good for your bones. Luckily, the majority of us can actually boost and reboot our own biology and get our own body to produce more on its own.
• If you have the opportunity to do a liver cleanse, that’s great because first of all, your liver is required to activate a lot of your hormones so we want it to be working optimally. Cleaning out the filter, your liver, once or twice a year is essential and an effective way to help balance hormones naturally.
• If you’re over the age of 35, you’ve got to get your adrenals to be the focus. So what you eat and when you eat are equally important. You need to start your day with protein. You also need an afternoon snack. One of my favorites is hummus and cut up veggies. The other thing is you want to make sure you’re not going more than 3 to 4 hours without eating.
• Your adrenals are required to help keep your blood sugar stable. They perceive a drop in your blood sugar as a life or death emergency. They go into this whole production of other things rather than your hormones.
• There are some things you can do with your lifestyle. You can help balance hormones naturally by getting enough sleep. You need to get to bed by 10:00 because your cortisol levels are a part of what wake you up in the morning. There are 5 stages of sleep and you need to visit all of them for a sufficient amount of time in order to wake up refreshed and ready for the day.
• Our cortisol starts going up at about 3:00 am and bringing us back to the surface so we can wake up in the morning.
• Two herbs will help your body produce testosterone. One of them is maca. The second one is ashwagandha.
• My favorite thing for women to do when their body is wanting to produce more testosterone – there’s a study out of Harvard that shows that if you stood with your hands on your hips like Wonder Woman for 2 minutes or longer, your testosterone levels went up 20% to 30%.
• Physiology tells us that your cells live about 3 months. So if you want to see a difference, you have to wait until the old cells that have all of the old functioning and old information – they gotta die! Then a whole new set of cells that have the ashwagandha and maca and great nutritional information – all of that has to be around for them to get populated. Realistically, 3 to 6 months before you begin to see it.
• We have 2 populations. One is women that feel so horrible. We give bio-identical hormones right up front to take the pressure off the adrenal glands and then we fix the adrenal glands and wean off the bio-identical hormones. They feel better right away so they have the energy to do the nutrition and take the supplements and they’re able to do the program to get themselves better.
• The other population is they’ve tried this for 6 to 9 months and got some improvements but still don’t feel great. You might not be able to produce enough to meet your needs. Go get it checked out. If you don’t look, how can you know?

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Hormone Secret: Discover Effortless Weight Loss and Renewed Energy in Just 30 Days

Dr. Tami’s website

Dr. Tami’s Hormone Quiz

Blood Spot Test

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

She is a doctor, author, speaker, brain expert, and international leader in Chinese Sports Medicine and Chinese Sports Psychology. Her newest book is called Heal Your Concussion: How to Quickly and Effectively Get Back in the Game.

One of Dr. Joanny’s major strengths is her deep understanding of the connection between our psychology and physiology. Dr. Joanny became vitally interested in concussions due to her own adult son suffering a severe concussion that blinded him. It was with her already proven FLOW™ process that helped him take back control of his brain, his mind, and his life.

Main Questions Asked:

• What are the most common signs of a concussion and how do we know when we can just shake it off and get back in the game or when we really need expert help?
• Would a headache occur immediately or days or weeks after the concussion?
• Once we get one concussion is it easier to get another one even with a smaller injury?
• What are some of the pitfalls of typical medical treatment for a concussion?
• Is lowering stress one of the steps in treatment for a concussion?
• Can you walk us through the FLOW™ process?
• Can you give us a real case example of treatment for a concussion?

Key Points made by Dr. Joanny:

• One of the major symptoms of a concussion is headache. The headache does not always appear after being hit in the head.
• Most concussions can be handled at home with parents or some other care-giver.
• You should be looking out for things like that and nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, and sleep problems.
  Usually a concussion is a knock to the head to wake up over some particular behavior that needs to be changed.
• There is no typical treatment for a concussion in the conventional medical world. What they usually tell you is to have complete rest but unfortunately recent research is saying that if you’re forcing somebody to completely rest and do nothing, stay in a room alone, it can actually prolong the symptoms or make them worse.
• It’s not just a physical structural thing. It’s also the psychological factor because a person who is told to stop doing everything for several days at a time, what happens when somebody goes through that? They start thinking about worse case situations. They get more in a panic mode than a reassured mode and they’re more susceptible to depression.
• In order to make changes to the brain during treatment for a concussion, we have to be thinking different thoughts and feeling different ways because the brain is a highly emotional organ.
• In the case of my son, when the headaches started, he knew that he had a concussion. He decided to drop all of his extracurricular activities but the one thing he couldn’t stop doing was work.
• When he finally came to me over two weeks later, everything had gone from bad to worse.
• I told him that he would have to do everything that I told him to do because there is a process to healing a concussion.
  I want people to know that there is something that you can do for treatment of a concussion. There’s hope. You’ve got to make a decision and you’ve got to lower your stress. Stress is a major factor in brain health.
• What you think about always has an emotional reaction to it. Every thought is neutral until you apply an emotion. It’s up to you.
• When something negative sneaks into your mind – blow that thing out. Get it out of your mind immediately and you start thinking about what you want and why you want it and that will lead you to more optimism.
• Stress kills brain cells. The way I help people to lower their stress level is to build up their self-confidence and self-worthFLOW™ stands for Freedom, Learning, Optimism, Wisdom.
• For Optimism and Wisdom, they’re interrelated. The more you know about yourself, the more that you know that you are a fantastic, strong person then the more optimistic you’re going to be.
• My son had made that decision. Week by week, he got better and better, stronger and stronger, a few weeks had gone by and he was back at practices again.
• It had only been a couple of months. The reason that happened is because he was taking control of the situation, of his own healing process, with my help but he was doing most of the work. That’s what’s important – doing the work, getting it done and healing.
• It’s been more than three years. He’s had no relapses, no more headaches, no eye problems, nothing. He’s in perfect health and doing exactly what he loves.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Knock Out Concussions

Book – Heal Your Concussion: 21 Days to Brain Health

Book – Heal Your Concussion: How to Quickly and Effectively Get Back in the Game

Dr. Joanny’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Robillard is a man on a mission! Over 100 million people have SIBO-related conditions including IBS, Acid Reflux, LPR (reflux into the larynx), Rosacea, Asthma, Fibromyagia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Autoimmunity, Leaky Gut and many more. His goal is to inspire 10 million people to get off drugs and off antibiotics via holistic and dietary solutions.

He is the Founder of The Digestive Health Institute and is a gut health expert. He is the author of the Fast Tract Digestion series and creator of the science-based, non-drug and antibiotic therapy, Fast Tract Diet for SIBO and its related conditions.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is SIBO and how can it cause heartburn, reflux, and GERD?
• How do proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) cause SIBO and thereby fueling heartburn?
• Do medications actually create more SIBO?
• Can you talk about the specific diet that you put together?
• Would your diet completely eradicate SIBO and be the cure for acid reflux?
• Do you have to stay on the diet for the rest of your life?
• How long after starting the diet should you see a difference?

Key Points made by Dr. Robillard:

• You should suspect SIBO if you have abdominal pain or cramps, or altered bowel habits like diarrhea, constipation as well as gas and bloating, and reflux, flatulence, nausea, dehydration and fatigue.
• Some people have more severe symptoms like weight loss, failure to thrive for children who don’t grow as they should for their age, difficulty digesting fats, anemia, and bleeding.
• By definition, SIBO is when there’s an overgrowth of intestinal bacteria in your small intestine. When they look at these bacteria, most are strains that should be in your large intestine so they’re migrating from that area where we have a lot of bacteria to help us digest all of these complex carbohydrates to our small intestine which should have fewer bacteria.
• The biggest thing in terms of the cure for acid reflux is avoiding consuming too many hard-to-digest carbohydrates which fuel SIBO.
• I started doing research on how we digest fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. When I got to the small intestine, a light bulb went off involving gut bacteria. I remember two important points about these intestinal bacteria: they get the bulk of their energy from carbohydrates and most of them produce a lot of gas.
• A theory popped into my head: perhaps these excess dietary carbohydrates, if you consume too many, will be malabsorbed and were promoting a kind of gut dysbiosis.
• According to this idea, acid reflux occurs due to microbe induced gas pressure. Imagine a volcano in your intestines and reflux is the lava overflowing into your stomach and forcing its way into the esophagus. Stopping the pressure is the cure for acid reflux.
• When you think about your digestive tract, it is compartmentalized. So where exactly these balloons of gas producing bacteria are occurring may be different for different people.
• Some people don’t want to go through all the testing so I tell them that you can try the diet and see how you feel. Other people really want to know. You can get a lot of information from testing.
• I break it into three buckets. One type of treatment is treating the symptoms. You can use antibiotics. The last one is diet. I would preface it with science-based diet because we now have much more science going on in studying diets and how they can improve functional gastro-intestinal disorders.
• I think diet-based solutions make better sense as a cure for acid reflux.
• The Fast Tract Diet limits all fermentable carb types, not just some. It’s a quantitative approach so you’re not cutting everything out but you’re limiting it in terms of grams that you consume per day of the carbohydrates that will be available for these bacteria to use to overgrow.
• The first step is to cut back on the amount of these fermentable carbohydrates. That’s what the Fast Tract Diet does.
• I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I must say that my digestive system is very, very tolerant now. I almost never get any kind of acid reflux. Once in a while an occasional belch. Even when I eat some of the foods I shouldn’t around holidays or on occasions. I know that I can go 3 or 4 days eating the way I shouldn’t but if I persist eventually my symptoms will come back.
• Does that mean I can’t eat the way I used to? Yes, but I can on the short term because I have my digestive health intact because of the way I eat on a regular basis.
• You really have to look at what the problem is and then you can better assess how effective a dietary control would be and what’s the timeline you’re looking at.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Heartburn – Fast Tract Dtioigesn: LPR, Acid Reflux & GERD Diet Cure Without Drugs

Book – IBS – Fast Tract Digestion: Science-Based Diet to Treat and Prevent IBS and SIBO without Drugs and Antibiotics

Dr. Robillard’s website

Dr. Robillard’s facebook group page

Fast Tract Diet App: Your Gut Health – Fits In Your Pocket

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Michael Ash is an osteopathic medicine doctor, naturopath and nutritionist with 30 years of experience.

For the last 15 years he has developed expertise in the role of the mucosal immune system in health and disease. Dr. Ash is also an adjunct faculty member of the Institute for Functional Medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you explain what mucous membranes are? Why are they so important for how to improve immunity?
• What about the importance of bacteria and our mucous membranes?
• Which diseases can be caused from bacterial imbalances or this lack of diversity?
• How are the gut and brain connected?
• What are some practical suggestions that we can give our listeners that they can start doing today to nourish these bacteria?

Key Points made by Dr. Ash:

• Answering the question about how to improve immunity starts with understanding our internal skin. We refer to this as the wet tissue or the mucous membranes. The biggest area for this is found in the gastro-intestinal tract.
• We have a lot of defense molecules and chemicals lined up down there to protect us and we call that the mucosal immune system and it makes up 60% to 75% of the total immune system in our body.
• A quote from Professor Lloyd Mayer said some years ago that “In a single day, the immune system in our gastro-intestinal tract has to make more decisions than the rest of our body’s immune system makes in its lifetime.”
• There’s been a big shift in the last 15 to 20 years I’ve been researching this area to recognize these wet tissues or mucosal membranes hold many of the reasons and some of the secrets as to why people don’t feel very well for long periods of time and are the key to how to improve your immunity.
• We’re not born sterile. We’re born with a relatively modest amount of bacteria that passed from our mother. These bacteria grow in number once we emerge partly through a transfer through the delivery process then, of course, from being picked up and hugged and moved to different environments. We build a population of bacteria which begin to contribute to our ability to survive. So, from the beginning this is one of the keys of how to improve immunity.
• Think of these bacteria like you’re outsourcing some of the dull jobs that your body doesn’t want to take care of. These include the fermentation of different types of foods, the maturation of different types of immune responses, and keeping hold of metabolic health inside the body. That’s the way we handle foods and make sure they contribute to us healthily rather than as a disadvantage.
• Modern medicine, the use of antibiotics, and a change in birthing practices over the last 60 years has meant that every generation that’s now born appears to have less and less diversity and that’s now bringing complications.
• It’s a bit like having a very friendly neighborhood where everybody gets on and if there’s a problem, everyone gets together and works well to solve the problem. As time has gone on, we have lost some of those neighbors or they’ve been replaced by ones that don’t communicate very well or they give the wrong message.
• Another big key to how to improve immunity is we can use these underpaid, undernourished, poorly treated bacteria in our gut and give them a better pay rise, better home to live in, and better quality food. They will start to work more efficiently, they give better messages, they turn off inflammatory molecules, and the result is that we end up feeling much better.
• What the gastro-intestinal tract does for us is it allows for us to have a point of intervention that, once we clean it up, and make it work more efficiently, we often find symptoms associated with those different conditions either disappear or diminish. So we have a central point of intervention that’s safe, easy, and reproducible. This is the key to how to improve immunity.
• There’s increasing confidence amongst the people who’ve been involved in the study of mucosal immune system dysfunction and in early stages were looking primarily at animal models to try and see the relationship between behavior and ‘dysbiosis’ – a state of being inside the gastro-intestinal tract which is no longer harmonious in the gut.
• There is really no statistical evidence to support the fact that the utilization of serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs profit any great advantage to mild to moderate depression over and above that which can be achieved by either cognitive behavior therapy, regular exercise, social interaction, and of course, a change in diet.
• Inside our colon, we have the biggest population of bacteria. These are our outsourcing friends. If we give them a pay rise, appropriate food, and a nice warm environment, they don’t become rebellious, they don’t go on strike, and they don’t start causing a problem on the streets.
• They actually produce for us a very nice metabolite known as a ‘short chain fatty acid’. This is used by our gut to heal itself. It’s used by cells in our gastro-intestinal tract to make sure that they remain healthy, vibrant, and are quick to replace. Again, this is another key to how to improve immunity.
• These short chain fatty acids cross into blood and they migrate though your blood-brain barrier and into your brain. They change the flexibility, or plasticity, of neuronal tissue to respond to challenges.
• A typical North American and European eats between 10 and 15 grams of fiber per day and our ancestors that are still functioning eat between 100 and 120 grams a day primarily from plants.
• There are about 50,000 plants we could eat. We generally eat our food from 6 different types of food groups, and of those, grains make up the bulk of the fiber but they’re not always well digested.
• The fibers we eat should be derived from vegetables. And the best vegetables are the ones that are a bit trickier to consume. These are the ones that are key to how to improve immunity: cabbage, cauliflower, onions, carrots, peas, beet root, and squash.
• These foods turn on genes which switch off inflammation and send out special messages to our immune system to make us more tolerant of our environment which includes foods, toxins and poisons because it makes us work more efficiently, more tolerant to different types of medications, and ultimately more tolerant to other people because we don’t feel so grumpy or we don’t feel so prone to agitation.
• So if we look at vegetables, particularly cruciferous or slightly denser packed vegetables, those with a bit of bitterness to their taste, and we cook them or steam them, but don’t overcook them, then this essentially is a wage packet with a bonus for our bacteria every week.
• The second key to how to improve immunity is apples. I’ve used this for almost 30 years as a therapy. We take a Bramley cooking apple, peel about 90% of it, cook it down and add cinnamon. We add quite a lot of cinnamon because it helps to control blood sugar and it’s also a good anti-inflammatory.
• So really the answer to how to improve immunity is try to eat a bigger range of vegetables. Try to eat a modest amount of fruits, especially apples.
• The use of apples has two strong effects in humans. One is that it can change the composition of bacteria to favor an anti-inflammatory mix which has benefits both locally and elsewhere in the body.
• Food is genuinely as efficient as medicine if you know what type of food to eat and when but you also respect that at the same time the immune system in the gastro-intestinal tract and it’s bacterial composition have to be managed at the same time.
• Used correctly, a probiotic can be extremely useful. Used in conjunction with appropriate food selection then they can really leverage those bacteria.
• You would choose a cooking apple in preference to an eating apple because cooking apples have more pectin.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Ash’s website

Research on apples

More research on apples

Dr. Ash’s recipe for stewed apples

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Nadine is the author of Holistic Dental Care: The Complete Guide to Healthy Teeth and Gums. She is the creator of Living Libations, an exquisite line of serums, elixirs, and essentials oils for those seeking the purest of the pure botanical health and beauty products on the planet. Her potent dental serums are used worldwide and provide the purest oral care available.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is really in our toothpaste and mouthwash? And, what about those plastic microbeads?
• Can you talk about the microbiome and how it impacts our dental health?
• Can you explain the lymph system that’s in all our teeth?
• Is there hope for those of us with cavities and fillings? Can you explain how to stop tooth decay?
• Can you talk about your dental pack and elixirs?

Key Points made by Nadine:

• Never before have we had so many choices but still, right now, there is a staggering number of cavities, crowns, root canals, and extracted teeth. We know that something’s amiss because even though we have this whole plethora of periodontal promises, there is now more dental decay and dysbiosis than any previous century.
• One of the things we have to look at is what is going on with these commercial products that contain sodium laurel sulfate, glycerin, triclosan, plastic beads, all of these really harsh things.
• There are two root things to really understand about the mouth which is the microbiome and the dentinal lymph system which is the lymph system within the teeth. This is key to how to stop tooth decay.
• The microbiome is the term for the colonies of the trillions of microbes that live all over our skin, in our guts, and in our mouths. There are even other areas like the nose, ear canal, and for women, the vagina.
• We’re almost in a post-genomic era because what we now know is we’ve got our DNA and genes but what’s more important is the DNA and genes of the trillions of microbes that our body is dependent on. This microbiome enables endless essential body functions. Now we know we’re actually 90% microbial and only 10% mammalian. We are host to this bacterial banquet. The key to the vitality of our mouths is bacterial balance.
• What’s been going on with modern dentistry is that we’ve been disrupting the beneficial bacteria in our mouths and that many practices of dentistry and many commercial dental care products actually mutate the mouth’s microbes.
• The triple threat to our mouths is: these harmful procedures, lack of understanding of the dentinal fluid, and this periodontal scorched earth policy we have on bacteria. This trifecta is creating the perfect periodontal storm that’s fostering receding gums and dental decay. On top of this we have a system that’s creating these band-aid solutions of bleaching and gum graphs, veneers and fillings. Instead of understanding the root of the issue and befriending those bacteria, we’re literally just ignoring that and doing the bleaching, the gum graphs.
• We have other things that are taking away from our mouth’s microbes including antibiotics. Antibiotics given for one disease could affect the teeth. It’s devastating when you see the results of what that does to our teeth.
• How to stop tooth decay: Stop using fluoride. Fluoride contributes to brittle, discolored, and crumbling teeth by suppressing this dentinal lymph system and that affects bone mineralization, nerve health, saliva pH and endocrine function.
• Scientists are now figuring out that what’s making Streptococcus mutans more virulent is that it’s missing its ancestral bacterial buddies – the ones that will keep it in check.
• That pathogen is only going to cause a problem in the mouth when it can begin to form a biofilm that adheres to the tooth surface. We will always have pathogens in our bodies but when they grow in numbers, they’re able to gain traction by communicating through what scientists call quorum sensing and that enables them to colonize into these biofilms which is then where they can build communities and cause more disruptive plaque.
• Dental plaque is a biofilm that can entrap the existing pathogens. It makes the pathogens hide from the alkalinizing saliva flow. Then you start this whole snowball effect. Then the teeth can’t breathe anymore and then that prevents the saliva and this dentinal lymph from doing its job of cleansing the teeth with a protective coating.
• Going back to the ingredients in toothpaste, generally speaking, things like sodium laurel sulfate and mercury fillings make the gums bleed so then you’ve got these toxic chemicals that are mutating the microbes. They’re going into the bloodstream which is going to also then go into the gut. We might also have digestive health issues because of what we’re doing in our mouth. Obviously the mouth and the stomach are very connected.
• Even before we knew about the microbiome, we knew that these ingredients were disturbing the very thin skin in the mouth, the epithelium, which is only one cell thick.
• Since the 1940s, what the American Dental Association decided upon was the acidogenic theory – sugar and acids on the teeth create cavities. That’s not really true and has been proven as so by other dentists.
• Acid and sugar on the teeth are fine if the teeth are strong. What we really want to understand is how decay happens so we can see how our teeth are alive and that they are live bones and that we can re-mineralize them. We can change the health of our mouths no matter what state it’s in today because our mouths are alive. They’re part of our body and they’re going to respond.
• Teeth are fed by their roots by this dentinal lymph system. Just like tree roots draw up nutrients via the sap, the dentinal lymph flow is a toroidal system: The lymph liquid spins inwards and upwards into the tooth’s core. The tooth’s core is called the pulp chamber. So the dentinal lymph flows through the tooth and out onto the enamel like microscopic sweat. There are tiny droplets that coalesce on the surface of the enamel and that forms a fluid layer that prevents biofilm formation and mixes with the saliva to lubricate and communicate to the mouth’s microbiome.
• When we have this secretion and it’s properly functional and our bodies working with it, it’s like an invisible toothbrush. This is how to stop tooth decay.
• If we’re eating a diet of processed food, sugar, carbohydrates, if we have a lot of chemicals and medication in our lives, if we have a lot of stress that then takes its toll on the hormone system then the dentinal lymph flow can actually stagnate. It can get to a neutral stagnant position or it could actually fully reverse.
• When reversal happens capillaries in the tooth suck in bacteria and other microbes in the mouth into the tooth like a straw. This can cause infection and plaque formation within the pulp chamber and within the tiny dentin tubes in each tooth. What is supposed to be a self-cleansing system actually becomes a self-contaminating system. That causes a leaky tooth, like leaky gut. That is actually the genesis of cavity creation.
• A cavity is actually an infection in the tooth and like all wounds, it has the ability to heal because teeth are alive and we can change the condition of our mouths.
• How to stop tooth decay: Studies have shown that by including dietary magnesium and phosphorous into the diet, decay rate was reduced by 86%. Also when K2 and D3 were included, that also inhibited decay.
• What we can see from this is that fillings are band-aid solutions. When we put in a filling, we’re also susceptible to recurrent decay in that tooth so it’s not necessarily addressing the issue. When there is decay in the mouth that is a sign of a deficiency in the diet.
• How to stop tooth decay: When we’re able to address the underlying causes of cavities then restore our dentinal lymph and teeth re-mineralize, that tooth is more resilient to cavities in the future.
• How to stop tooth decay: First, get the mouth in order. Then you want to find your biological dentist. Once you do that, it might be years and years before you have to go back to the dentist or maybe you’ll need to get a hygienist cleaning every couple of years. Once you’ve re-mineralized and got the microbiome in your mouth happy again, you really will be seeing the dentist less. I like to call it “How to avoid the dentist without ignoring your teeth”.
• All silver fillings have mercury in them. Mercury is a cumulative toxin that actually passes through the blood-brain-placental barrier. It also tenaciously binds with tissue altering DNA, nerves, cell membranes, mitochondrial function. It’s linked to dementia, MS, Parkinson’s, and other degenerative disorders.
• Nobody needs mercury in their mouth. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims that the highest body burden of chronic mercury toxicity comes from silver fillings.
• How to stop tooth decay: Follow the eight steps to successful self dentistry.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Holistic Dental Care: The Complete Guide to Healthy Teeth and Gums

Nadine’s website

Video – The 8 Steps to Successful Self Dentistry

Article – The 8 Steps to Successful Self Dentistry

Nadine’s facebook page

Find a biological dentist – Huggins Applied Healing

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Sarah is the creator of www.ThePaleoMom.com; cohost of The Paleo View Podcast; and bestselling author of The Paleo Approach and The Paleo Approach Cookbook. Sarah earned her doctorate in medical biophysics and spent years doing research on critical care medicine, innate immunity, gene therapy and cell biology, earning a variety of awards for research excellence along the way.

Sarah’s transition from academic researcher to stay-at-home mom to award-winning and internationally-recognized health advocate and educator was driven by her own health journey, which included losing 120 pounds and using both diet and lifestyle to mitigate and reverse a dozen diagnosed health conditions. Sarah is deeply interested in understanding how the foods we eat interact with our gut barriers, immune systems, and hormones to influence health.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you go through the basics of what the Paleo diet includes?
• Is alcohol allowed on the Paleo diet?
• Can you tell us more about the history and science behind the Paleo diet? Why is going Paleo a good thing?
• Can you tell us about a successful case where going Paleo transformed someone’s health?

Key Points made by Sarah:

• People come to Paleo because they want to lose weight. They have chronic health problems and they want to use diet therapeutically to manage those problems, or they come from a performance standpoint or a mix of those things.
• People generally find that once they get through the initial transition and realize it’s not actually that hard. They start to feel good and have improved energy and moods.
• Typically people who are overweight lose weight very easily. Typically people who are underweight will gain weight very easily. It’s a weight normalization diet.
• All of a sudden hormones and hunger are being regulated, sleep is improved. All of these things just tend to come together usually in the 3 to 4 week range.
• When you start to feel good, suddenly it doesn’t require effort anymore.
• If it’s constant hard work to make those choices and we’re not getting any benefit out of it, then what’s the motivation to keep going? Whereas going Paleo is very different from that because the vast majority of people will feel better over a very short time scale.
• It’s one of those things that people try, like a 30-day challenge, to meet a short term goal but then a lot of people realize that they didn’t know that they could feel this good. They didn’t realize that what they felt before was abnormal. Then you end up with people who are committed to it as a lifestyle for the rest of their lives.
• This diet is not a set of firm rules. It’s a template, a starting place, and you’ve got all the places you can tinker and make it optimal for you. That means both what your body responds to the best and makes you feel the best but also what fits into your life the best.
• Going Paleo means a very nutrient-focused, whole foods diet. The focus is on eating really high-quality meat, seafood, tons and tons of different kinds of vegetables, fruit, eggs, nuts, and seeds. Most herbs and seasonings are included. It really hones in on the foods that have the most to offer us nutritionally and that are the most anti-inflammatory.
• The strongest dietary factor that correlates with reduced risk of osteoporosis or hip fracture is actually large vegetable consumption. It has nothing to do with dairy.
• Going Paleo means honing in on the best things we can put in our bodies and we cut out everything that is inflammatory, everything that negatively impacts the health of the gut, everything that disrupts hormones, everything that is an empty calorie.
• It surprises people to learn that grains are not nutrient-dense foods. They have very little going for them in terms of essential vitamins and minerals. Even the fiber content is no different from vegetables. Vegetables have just as much fiber, a fraction of the amount of sugar, and typically up to ten times as much vitamins and minerals. They also have all of these great phytochemicals which reduce the risk of cancer, are anti-inflammatory, and anti-aging. That sounds amazing!
• Alcohol is allowed but it’s a gray area food. When you look at if functionally, wine for example, has great polyphenol content which is a really powerful antioxidant. It’s got some good stuff to offer us.
• Gluten-free or grain-free alcohol like wine or apple cider, I would put on a Yes Moderation list.
• The Paleo diet originated with some researchers. They were anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, and others. It came from this idea that when we look at hunter-gatherer populations, they do not suffer from chronic illness the way we do in Western society. They don’t get cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and these things that have grown to epidemic proportions in our society.
• We have a fairly good idea of what they were eating. When we look at their records, they had great teeth. They were taller than us. Their bones looked amazing. There’s no indication of these chronic illnesses that are so rampant today.
• They must have been doing something right. They were eating pretty differently than how we eat. Maybe that’s it. That was the idea that really started the Paleo diet and that idea has expanded to also looking at a variety of lifestyle factors. So it’s not just what they’re eating, it’s how they’re living.
• That was the original rational for the diet. It has evolved over the last twelve years to include more data from contemporary science and more perspectives from traditional diets. What the Paleo diet is different now than it was in 2001.
• What’s propelling this movement forward now is those of us in the community who want to understand the mechanisms. It’s “Hey, they were healthy. Maybe it’s their diet. Let’s test that.”
• We can start to piece together this much more detailed story of how the compounds in food interact with the human body. How certain compounds can be inflammatory with others. What happens to our gut health, our gut microbiome? What happens to our hormone health? Our neural health?
• It’s almost like coming at Paleo from the other side. When you evaluate foods based on the nutrients they contain. You’re putting them on a scale. We want foods that have tons of nutrients that can support all of the functions of our bodies. You want foods that don’t have things that are inflammatory, things that are going to negatively impact our health.
• We’re starting to see more clinical trials that are pitting Paleo against other dietary strategies and showing that going Paleo beats out the Mediterranean diet for diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk factors.
• I used to be morbidly obese and pre-diabetes. Not wanting a leg amputated and wanting to be a good role model for my child were my big motivators. I still had weight to lose and wasn’t losing it. Every other metric of my health was getting worse. I had this moment where I thought that maybe being thin and being healthy are not the same thing. And maybe I need to figure out how to be healthy.
• Within two weeks of going Paleo, I was able to go off all 6 prescription medications, one of which I had been on for 12 years. I lost 20 more pounds, my migraines went away, my skin improved. It generally felt like all of the pieces of the puzzle were falling together.
• It’s a very functional medicine type approach. I am providing the raw materials that my body needs for all of the millions of chemical reactions that are happening in every cell in every moment. It’s a very different way of thinking about food like calories in, calories out.
• I still had psoriasis and decided to start the immune protocol. Now the missing pieces started falling into place.
• I’ve incorporated organ meats, seafood, and large servings of vegetables in my diet. I discovered just how important sleep and stress management is for my health.
• What I’ve had to learn is that it’s not just about food. Lifestyle is equally important and, actually in many ways, harder to prioritize. It’s easier to completely change the food on our plate than it is to restructure our lives so we can go to be 2 hours earlier.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Paleo Approach

Book – The Paleo Approach Cookbook

Book – The Healing Kitchen

Sarah’s website

Sarah’s podcast

Paleo Bites TV

Sarah’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again!

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Tosca is on a mission to inspire people to transform their lives – and to commit to changing for life. She’s started an Eat-Clean Revolution and she wants you to join her!

She is author of the books: Your Best Body Now and the Eat-Clean Diet series, and The Start Here Diet. Tosca is one of North America’s most renowned health and wellness experts leading the pack in the battle against obesity.

Main Questions Asked:

• How do you get clients to move beyond the fear of letting go of a food they ‘cannot live without’?
• How do we get off of sugar when it’s such an addiction for us?
• How is sugar disguised in our diet?
• Can you tell us about your 4-week program?
• Can you share with us a real case of someone you worked with?

Key Points made by Tosca:

• Nutrition is a component that is often overlooked. When people want to begin their physical transformations, they think all they need is exercise but it doesn’t work like that.  In truth, to undertake that physical transformation, 80% of how the body looks and feels has to do with what we’re eating.
• The Body Beautiful Body Healthy Formula goes like this: 80% nutrition + 10% genetics + 10% training = 100% beautiful new you.
• Science has proved that 30 minutes of exercise performed per day at a maximum heart rate of 65% to 75% or higher will promote and protect brain and blood volume, brain function. It does a thousand different things to enhance physical health, not just your blood chemistry, etc. but your muscle shape, your metabolic rate, how you feel, your flexibility, your heart – there are so many aspects of it.
• I was a self-confessed sugaraholic.
• When I learned how to eat clean, I discovered I could take my physical well-being, my health, and turn it around through positive lifestyle change.
• Strike sugar from the diet. This is the single most important activity you could do to help yourself.
• Getting rid of sugar is the hardest thing you’ll ever do but it will yield the greatest results.
• Begin by identifying where the sugar components live in your life. Then follow a program of eating clean: eat properly prepared, well-sourced, whole, nutrient-dense foods that are not packaged, processed, and refined, and contain the complete package that Mother Nature intended for you to consume to help bring you back to health.
• Any foods that are carbohydrate-based, heavily processed and refined will act like sugar in the body.
• Foods that are engineered by scientists in lab coats who have figured out how to seduce us through manipulating food and flavors and textures and then we crave these sugary, salty things that will derail us in our health.
• In short, if you can’t pronounce the ingredients and the ingredient list is as long as your arm on a packaged food, you likely shouldn’t be eating it.
• This is where the Eat-Clean, or The Revolution as Dr. Oz likes to call it, fits in. That is to eat 6 smaller meals per day based on the consumption of lean protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats all at once.  Not starving yourself.  Not counting calories.  Counting calories is completely missing the point of the quality of the food.
• Eat foods that are free of preservatives, toxins and refined goods. I want to be eating foods that will actually contribute to my health.
• Diet foods are a big myth. They’ve made us heavier than ever.
• Think about your big Why. The reason that’s big enough to get you to make changes in your diet today.  It doesn’t have to be frightening.  These can be simple adjustments we can make to get ourselves back on track.
• Sugar is not a food. It didn’t exist 400 or 500 years ago. We created it by refining the devil out of sugar cane and beet sugar.
• We have a powerful taste for sweet. That’s the way we’re programmed as human beings but we can change that.  It’s a changeable, moveable, organic thing.
• Sugar has the same addictive qualities as heroin and cocaine. It is a white crystalline substance.  You get this powerful desire, this rush.  The brain floods with chemicals but it’s temporary.  You crash and then you want more.
• I feel that sugar is more dangerous that heroin and cocaine because we intuitively know that both of those are bad for us but we’re not that clear on sugar being bad for us and yet, the American Heart Association just came out and said, “Whoops, sorry! We were wrong about all that fat.  No, it’s not the fat that’s causing heart disease.  It’s sugar.  And by the way, sugar is to blame for Type 2 Diabetes.”  And now Type 3 Diabetes which is another name for Alzheimer’s and dementia.
• We are in the grip of a food that is not a food. We need to put our glasses on and be enlightened that we can avoid it by understanding how it’s disguised, how it appears in our diet, how dangerous it is and how to move away to eating clean, nutrient-dense, whole foods instead.
• Google “sugar” and you’ll come up with a list of a hundred different names or disguises for sugar.
• A sample breakfast: a bowl of Rice Krispies, a glass of orange juice, a piece of white toast with commercial peanut butter = massive sugar load for the pancreas to mop up.
• We don’t have to make ourselves crazy about it but you can begin somewhere by making a change. My breakfast this morning was sautéed spinach greens in coconut oil with a bit of turmeric, over easy eggs, and that’s breakfast.  You can have any number of things that do not have those massive hits of sugar.
• This is a 4-week Strike Sugar Program. It’s loaded with menu plans, recipes, and there’s a light emphasis on exercise but I’m mostly helping you to reset the organs of blood sugar handling by detoxing or clearing them of all processed foods, all sugars except for a few natural ones.  We’re very tight even on natural sugars.  There are certain natural foods that are quite high in sugar.
• Some results from detoxing include: increase in libido, warding off diabetes and becoming pregnant, less headache, less back pain, skin has cleared up, less irritability, more energy to get through the day, a robust feeling, a feeling of well-being.
• I worked with one young family. Mom and dad were overweight by 150 pounds.  Both wore sleep apnea gear to go to bed.  The children were highly disordered, very irritable, moody, couldn’t sleep through the night, wild nightmares, etc.  The parents were irritable, moody, and on high blood pressure medication, heading towards Type 2 diabetes.  Really no quality of life.
• By putting them on the Eat-Clean Strike Sugar program, they lost weight. And they learned how to eat foods that don’t come out of a box and regained their health.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Eat-Clean Diet 4-Week Cleanse

Tosca’s website

Tosca’s facebook page

Tosca on Twitter

Tosca on Instagram

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Lisa is the author of the bestselling book “FINE to FAB”. She is a breakthrough expert and the creator of the cutting edge neuroscience called Neuro-Associative Programming (NAP). She created NAP for you to be able to heal in a short period of time, avoiding years of therapy with a proven model to breakthrough whatever is weighing you down.  Using this technology she has helped thousands of people overcome lifelong emotional challenges of depression, anxiety, stress, self-sabotage, emotional eating, shopping, sexual abuse and co-dependency with her proven 7 Secrets to FAB.

Main Questions Asked:

• What do you mean by FINE to FAB?
• What are the 7 Secrets to FAB?
• How can we get to the deep-rooted beliefs that are creating self-sabotage?
• What is Neuro-Associative Programming? Can you give us a real example of a session?

Key Points made by Lisa:

• FINE is how I used to feel: F’ed up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional to Fabulous, Awesome, Beautiful.
• The first step for FAB is acknowledging fear and doubt. A lot of us, in the past, might know there’s something wrong but they don’t want to own it.
• People have a lot of different things where we do things to feel familiar but not necessarily good or moving forward. Or having a lot of reasons on where we want to be but never being there.
• The second is taking inventory of my lessons and beliefs.
• The premise is that 55% of our beliefs were formed by the time we are 5 years old. So you’re not even making your decisions, 45% were formed by you.  The challenge with that is some of these beliefs might not even serve you.
• The word in the middle of belief is lie and these are the lies we tell ourselves. It all becomes our choice but taking inventory of what those lessons and beliefs are is critical in moving forward because a lot of time we’re working automatically and don’t even realize it.
• Think of how many adults in business are required to talk to people and they don’t feel comfortable doing so. Where did this belief come from that they can’t talk to strangers?
• A lot of the self-talk is the reason. Realize that our unconscious doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction.
• Whatever you’re complaining about the most is usually where your beliefs are lying.
• During a 10-week transformational program that I do, we literally go through people’s model of the world. That’s where the Neuro -Associative Program comes in. If we could program our computer to do what people do, why can’t we program people to do what other successful people do?
• Every session is different. I had one client who came to me more because of her daughter.
• She came to me to help with her daughter but when I got to know her, I realized that the problem wasn’t with her daughter, it was within mom.
• We had to start breaking through some of the toxic meanings of emotions which is Number 3 in what we do and finding out where some of this stuff came from.
• When we take something off our plate, we have to put something better back on – something that’s better and more fulfilling.
• It doesn’t have to be 1-2-3 or done in any specific order. It’s just the fact of somebody being in a position of not being happy, they’re looking for more.
• I think today there are a lot of people who choose not to be happy and use that as their means or escape or their excuse for not being where they want to be.
• A lot of the work we do is not introspective of why something happened. I don’t have an interest in Why because the Why we have is our interpretation of the truth.  It might not even be the truth.
• Understanding how our brain works, that’s where the Neuro-Associative comes in. Your brain works like a file cabinet.  It accesses everything you do.  It looks for ways to file things away.  It looks for what’s familiar. What you see in your experience is only the representation of what you believe is true.  It might not be what’s true.
• It explains when you have siblings growing up in the same house and they’re very different but they grow up with the same experience.
• Number 5 is uncovering unconscious patterns of behavior. The easiest way to do that is realizing our brain is like Freud’s Iceberg Model. Like the expression “It’s only the tip of the iceberg”.  People always see what’s on top, what’s visible, what’s happening, what people are doing
• If you look to the Belief Tree, that is your foundation, what you do and why you do it. The trunk of the tree is your values of what’s important to you, your integrity, your truth, things that will actually drive you.  What’s in the tree itself are the fruits of your labor.  Realize that the unconscious patterns and behaviors are what’s driving the fruit and what’s coming off your tree.  So if you’re very successful, it’s because you’ve kept good roots.  If you’re not where you want to be, it’s because you’ve been feeding the wrong roots.
• We have to literally eliminate the tree and plant some new ones, plant some new seeds that will give us a new result. That’s the only way it works.
• The only thing that was wrong is I was listening to the wrong people and I needed to change the stories I was telling myself. When I did that, life changed.
• The truth is that no one can fix anyone in that place. It’s the responsibility of the person who is holding these stories
• Number 6 is to stop waiting for perfection. When you’re so focused on yourself, it has to be a certain way.
• Take tons of imperfect action. Do it anyway.  Just do it!
• Number 7 is making peace. This is the big one
• Practicing gratitude is a big deal because most people are only going to be happy when….”I’ll be happy when I lose 20 pounds”, “I’ll be happy when I find the right mate”, “I’ll be happy when I make a million dollars” but it’s really reverse to what happens in the world.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – FINE to FAB: 7 Secrets of a Successful Woman’s Journey Away from Depression, Disordered Eating & Self Sabotage

Lisa’s website

Lisa’s podcast

Lisa’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Sue is the creator of the MELT Method®, a revolutionary yet simple self-treatment technique that helps people get out and stay out of chronic pain. She’s a nationally recognized educator, manual therapist, exercise physiologist, and founding member of the Fascial Research Society.

Sue is the author of the book The MELT Method®: A Breakthrough Self-Treatment System to Eliminate Chronic Pain, Erase the Signs of Aging, and Feel Fantastic in Just 10 Minutes a Day!

Main Questions Asked:

• What is fascia is and why is it so important?
• Who would benefit from MELT? Who would not be a good candidate for MELT?
• What exactly is MELT? Can you explain the details?

Key Points made by Sue:

• Fascia is connective tissue outside of all the good things like your muscles, bones, and nerves plus it’s actually a vital transportation network.
• Connective tissue is actually a 3-dimensional fluid-based architectural matrix. It’s kind of like flexible scaffolding under your skin.
• It does an incredible amount for you in a day. Not only does it keep your bones, muscles, nerves, blood vessels, and even your organs stable and supported, it’s where a lot of absorption is happening, a lot of transportation of nutrients from cell to cell exists.
• What we’re really starting to look at is just how connective tissue plays a role in our overall function and understanding that daily living is causing cellular dehydration in this tissue.
• If you’ve ever sat for long periods of time and you get up and your joints feel a little stiff or you wake up in the morning and you body is stiff for the first five minutes when you get out of bed, that’s what it feels like when connective tissue is in a state of cellular dehydration.
• The biggest problem is that if you never do anything about it and it accumulates, it’s actually one of the key causes of pain becoming chronic.
• Fascia actually penetrates from the skin all the way to the bone. It’s completely inseparable.  It’s like a grid.  If you removed everything from your body and only left the fascia, you would actually see the entire structure of the human body and all of the compartments that those particular structures would be living in.
• Anybody can do MELT. I’ve worked on literally every disorder, disease, and dysfunction known to man that the medical field either says there’s nothing that can be done about it and offers some medicine or surgery which might help but could cause more problems.
• I’ve worked with young kids, teenage athletes, older adults, people going through chemotherapy and we’re really able to help anybody learn how to apply this self-care method from day to day to help reduce those chronic pain symptoms and we’ve seen such tremendous results over the past 10 years.
• MELT simulates the hands-on techniques that I use to eliminate accumulated stress and pain and dysfunction in my own clients.
• I developed these soft rollers that are about 3 feet in length and 5 inches in circumference. It’s a softer roller than what’s used in foam rolling.
• And I developed these soft balls and rollers to teach people how to rehydrate the connective tissue and quiet the stress reflex in the nervous system so that the body’s natural ability to rest and repair, what’s called the parasympathetic state, comes back up online.
• For people who are in chronic pain, their body’s natural rest and repair state is kind of under water and the access through connective tissue is allowing the nervous system to decrease some of that stress that’s accumulated in the body that’s causing a lot of the common pain symptoms.
• The problem with connective tissue is if you never reinstate the hydration and the fluid flow of fascia, not only are your joints starting to ache, arthritis is a much bigger issue.
• The thing about accumulated stress in connective tissue is that the nervous system and the sensory nerve endings live in connective tissue. So when the connective tissue is cellularly dehydrated, it actually causes the nervous system to increase its stress response so now you’re getting symptoms that seem completely unrelated to connective tissue.  It’s not just joint pain, you’re now having trouble digesting food, you’re gaining weight, you’re feeling kind of lethargic in the middle of the day, but for as tired as you are during the day, you try to fall asleep at night, you can’t fall asleep and then you’re not staying asleep, you’re getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom a number of times and this causes a catastrophic state in the body because cellular repair in our fascial system is dominant when we’re sleeping.
• If you’re not getting restful sleep, now you’re waking up with more stress accumulating in the connective tissue and that’s overstressing the nervous system. You’re already waking up with your teeter totter so tipped to the stress level, it’s just one bad thing like somebody bumping into you and you just start screaming at them.  Now you got depression, anxiety, you’re grumpy all the time, you can’t have a relationship, you don’t want to go to work.  Your lifestyle completely declines and these are things we don’t think of connective tissue issues but, to me, connective tissue and cellular dehydration is a cause of a lot of the symptoms that we treat in the US today and around the world with medication.
• If you get your checkup and your doctor rules out diseases, then self-care should be our very first plan of action and understanding how pain becomes chronic in the body and what causes pain to become chronic and eliminating the problem before you have pain.
• I’m trying to empower people to learn more about the process of pain and that awful pain cycle that our brain can produce and deter it from happening so we don’t have to deal with chronic pain from day to day.
• It’s almost like pain is hijacking regions of the brain that we use for emotions and movement. It really does disrupt all of those other chemical processes in the body.  That is the cascade that causes pain to become a daily process in the body.
• The way that the brain works, we can actually access parts of our brain’s processes through the body instead of just doing psychotherapy and working from the mind’s level from our conscience thought. We can work into different regions of the brain to body communication systems through accessing the body.
• I’ve developed the four Rs of MELT: Reconnect, Rebalance, Rehydrate, Release.
• The first step is to draw people’s attention and get them back into their bodies because when you have pain, you just want to tune it out.
• The rebalancing techniques are ways to teach people how to actively partake in quieting the stress reflex and boosting the body’s natural repair mechanisms. It takes less than ten minutes to do it and you can literally feel your entire body revert back to a much more balanced place from where you begin the treatment.
• The rehydrate techniques are either compression or pull techniques that are global treatments. Compression and tension are what cause cellular dehydration.  It’s like squeezing all of the water out of a sponge and pulling a rubber band until it loses its elastic properties.
• The fourth R of MELT is release. It’s a way to teach people how to decompress their own neck, their low back, and the joints of their hands and feet without cracking, twisting or twerking the body to do it.
• MELT is supplemental care that people can do in between massage sessions or physical therapy sessions to prolong these powerful changes that hands-on body work can do.
• MELT is just a great complement to anything from hands-on therapy to exercise activity. You’re reducing the strain in the joints, you’re improving the neurological performance and regaining that control of you being able to empower yourself to get out and stay out of chronic problems.
• We could all benefit from a little bit of self-care. Ten minutes a day goes a long way.

Resources Mentioned:

MELT Method website

Sue’s facebook fan page

MELT Method’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Sinett is a chiropractor and author of the book 3 Weeks to a Better Back: Solutions for Healing the Structural, Nutritional and Emotional Causes of Back Pain. Inspired to develop a new core philosophy to dealing with back pain, Dr. Sinett discovered that the root cause of back pain is not limited to structural issues, nor can it be simply resolved through treatment. He also found that a person’s emotional health and nutrition are equally important to uncover and address the root causes of back pain.

Main Questions Asked:

• How common is back pain?
• What do our bowel movements say about our health?
• How can we eat to beat pain?
• What about the mental-emotional aspect of treating back pain?

Key Points made by Dr. Sinett:

• Back pain, in 2014, was named the number one reason for job disability, is the third most common hospitalization, and the fifth most common surgery.
• We spend upwards of about $80 billion per year diagnosing and treating back pain. About 85% of the world’s population will suffer from back pain at some point in their life and about 20% of the world’s population is currently suffering from back pain.
• Back pain is a true, worldwide epidemic.
• Back pain can be caused by diet. My father went from being unable to stand up and completely bedridden to going back to work and playing tennis within one month.
• Even now when I say to patients that their back pain is caused by their diet, they look at me like I’m crazy until I’m able to go over the reasoning how diet can have an impact on the back.
• Your back pain is not coming from your back. The symptom is your back but the problem is not necessarily your back.  That’s a very important concept and once you’re able to address that concept, the possibilities of diagnosis and treatment really open up very large and that’s very important.
• How your digestive system is functioning is vital to see how your muscular system is functioning. If you’re constipated, your muscles are going to be much more achy.  If you have a lot of diarrhea, your muscles are going to be very sensitive.
• In the book we have a complete bowel chart that shows you specific pictures of what the bowel movement should look like. It should be solid enough but not too hard, not too soft, and should be a fairly lightish color brown.
• How your digestive system is functioning absolutely affects your muscular system. There are reflexes in the body called visceral-somatic reactions: visceral meaning organs and somatic meaning the muscular system. So when your digestive system functions well, your back is going to function much better and when your digestive system is not functioning well, your back is not going to be functioning better.
• Patients who are diagnosed with Crohn’s or colitis or Irritable Bowel Syndrome have a much higher rate of back pain than the general population. There’s a direct correlation there.
• When it comes to diet and nutrition, you want to pay attention to see how your bowel movements are doing. Each individual person’s diet and what functions for them is integral and unique to them.  The way to uniquely evaluate is simply based off the bowel movements.
• The concept of athletes wanting to eat proper nutrition for proper muscular function is a concept everyone will subscribe to. They’ll take good vitamins, eat lean proteins and good high-quality foods to have high function.  But what happens if we flip that and said what if you’re eating not high-quality foods, what’s going to happen to your muscular function? It’s going to dramatically negatively impact your muscular function.  Where it can obviously affect the muscular function is in your back.
• I have the No More Back Pain Diet which affects the vast majority of people where we really want to clean up your diet and get you healthier and eat better.
• There are elimination diets where you want to be able to figure out specifically what could be creating the pain and discomfort. It could be something where patients keep having the same foods over and over again.  Too many salads, too much roughage, too many green drinks, too much oatmeal.  It could be where we discover someone who has a gluten, wheat, or dairy sensitivity.  You really want to evaluate what your diet looks like.  You want to look at the foods you’re eating on a regular basis. The great thing is that your body will tell you.  If you have a dairy sensitivity and you have spaghetti and meatballs or lasagna with a bunch of cheese and your digestive system feels off and you wake up the next day a bit achy, you could see a pretty good correlation that perhaps the dairy in the cheese was part of this.
• The diets in the book allow you to hone in on what your specific triggers may be that could be creating digestive upset which could then create the back pain.
• A fascinating fact about back pain is a study run by Stanford University on over 3000 Boeing employees. They really wanted to figure out the number one predictor of who’s going to have back pain and who won’t and what the main number one factor for back pain is.  The results showed that the number one cause of back pain is emotional stress and outlook.  Emotions and stress are the number one factors when it comes to back pain.  It’s not the structure, not the diet, it is emotions.
• When we’re uptight, that’s a literal definition, because what’s happening is our muscles should contract and relax and when our bodies stay stressed for so long, our muscles contract and contract giving us more and more tension to the point where we have spasms and pain.
• There have been studies that have shown that anti-depressants have worked better than anti-inflammatories for back pain which in hindsight makes sense because since emotional stress is the number one factor. I’m not saying that the way to get rid of back pain from a stress induced problem is the anti-depressants but you want to do everything you can to cut down  and stop that physiologic stress response.
• The first thing is to get in touch with your emotions to figure out what you may be stressed with and really give it some thoughts. I recommend a deep breathing technique where you’ll inhale for four seconds, hold it for four seconds then exhale for four seconds.  If you do that over two minutes, slowing down and changing your breath, it can have a profound impact.
• You want to take a look at your diet and nutrition and kick up your exercise, go out for walks. Listening to music is proven to dramatically reduce stress.  You want to dial it all back and figure out what works for you.
• Three weeks is enough time to change your habits. We’re going to take your unhealthy habits and turn them into healthy ones and your back is going to feel much better.
• Any time I examine a patient, we want to look at the whole patient. We want to get balance in the structural, look at their diet and nutrition, and their emotions and stress.
• A lot of times a patient will have all three. How much time is a patient is sitting at their desk hunched over all day, stressed out, a bit overweight, and not exercising?
• If you have poor alignment, you’re going to have poor function.
• A common factor we found with patients is called core imbalance. You need a balance between forward bending and backward bending.  We’re spending entire days bent forward.  That’s called flexions. Too much forward posture creates so much pressure on the spine so you want to put extension back into your body.  There are different extension exercises you can do.
• That was so common I designed and created a product called the Back Bridge. What that does is that puts progressive extension into one’s spine.  You lay on it two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening every day.  As you continue to improve, it has five levels.  I call it the Invisalign for the spine.
• Then we’ll get into diet and have a patient write down everything they eat and drink for a week. We’re looking for unhealthy foods and eating a lot of the same food.  We’re going to recommend they have three different types of breakfasts, three different types of lunches, and three different types of dinners.  We want to cut down on the sugars, caffeine, and alcohol and see what kind of response you get in those three weeks.
• Lastly, we want people to get out and be active and work on their stress. We do biofeedback where we measure their stress response in the office.  We want them out walking.  We want them breathing slower.  We want them getting in touch with their emotions.  Guess what happens?  The vast majority of these patients, whether they’re suffering from severe back pain or they’re just suffering from some mild chronic nagging back pain, they’re going to be better within three weeks.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – 3 Weeks to a Better Back

The BackBridge

Dr. Sinett’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Cabeca is a board certified Gynecologist and Obstetrician, as well as board certified in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine, an expert in Functional Medicine, and an expert in women’s health. She specializes in bio-identical hormone replacement therapy and natural alternatives, successful menopause and age management medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you explain what the Women’s Health Initiative was and what that did to the whole area of hormone treatment for women?
• Can you talk about some of the common myths and misconceptions about hormone replacement therapy versus bio-identical hormone replacement therapy?
• Can you explain the pros and cons of hormone testing (blood tests, saliva tests, etc) and what you actually do in your practice?
• Do you have any herbal alternatives for patients who are not comfortable with the thought of using bio-identical hormones?

Key Points made by Dr. Anna:

• What we found out from the Women’s Health Initiative study was that women on estrogen alone had no significant increase of breast cancer and may have a protective effect on colon cancer and bone health (this is using oral hormones because using transdermal is different). But the Premarin-Provera group (Prem-Pro group) showed an increase in breast cancer risk.  This created this early halting of the study, headlines everywhere, and women were told to stop their hormones.
• This whole Women’s Initiative study led us to this fear of hormone replacement. What we continue to look at in the research is the risks of bio-identical hormones.  Everything else is case specific.
• In my practice, if I have a patient who’s sedentary and going to McDonald’s three times a day, that is not a person I’m going to give any hormones to.  I need to see commitment with lifestyle changes, detoxification programmed within her dietary regimen.  I need to see therapeutic lifestyle changes because we don’t have magic pills whether they’re bio-identical or synthetic.
• Myth: Bio-identical is 100% benign and safe. Reality: Too much or too little is still a problem.  And in someone with significant inflammatory issues, diabetic issues, etc., we’re going to run into problems.  I’m not saying I haven’t used them in these situations but I have a very functional medicine practice so there are many spokes on the wheel that are being addressed at the same time.
• There was a study done in France by Dr. Fournier that looked at bio-identical progesterone compared to synthetic Progestins. What it found is that bio-identical progesterone did not increase the risk of breast cancer. However, the Progestins did have an increased risk.
• Progesterone is good for our brain, our bones, and our breasts. Progesterone in and of itself can help with fibrocystic breasts, breast tenderness, PMS.  We really need it with or without a uterus.
• Progesterone is helpful for our moods as well. It helps downregulate the brain’s GABA receptors so there’s more GABA available which is our calming neurotransmitter.
• Bio-identical progesterone supports our immune system so if we have immune diseases, we want to make sure we’re on some beneficial, helpful progesterone. It’s neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory, and a natural diuretic which helps with that estrogen dominant PMS weight gain before your period so using bio-identical progesterone can help you there.  It helps us get a natural deep sleep and when we have a uterus, it helps stabilize the endometrium.  These are all beneficial effects of progesterone.
• Say I have a 58-year old menopausal female who has been without her period for six years, feeling fatigued, low energy, anxious, heart palpitations, moodiness, has loss of sex drive, losing hair, maybe some muscle aches, mid-belly weight gain and overall feels that she’s not aging well, she hurts when she wakes up in the morning, is unable to stop the weight gain despite not changing her habits over the last decade. What do I do about this?  I would do blood testing to see what’s going on with her thyroid.  Look at total estrogens, progesterone, and testosterone.  In total look at a sex hormone binding globulin, look at DHEAs as I’m looking at it in the blood.  That would be a hormone panel in addition to some inflammatory markers that I always add in.  For example, vitamin D, hsCRP, hemoglobin H1C.
• I may do a salivary test to look at her adrenal pattern throughout the day. I’ll look at a 4-point cortisol throughout the day to see what’s going on throughout the day.
• If you’re taking hormones the testing is different. Depending on how you’re taking the hormone, we’re going to see it differently in the blood, in the saliva, in the urine. It’s important to recognize that the way we’re getting it needs to be taken into account by the measurements when we’re reading the results.  It can be really confusing and this is why you need to go to a hormone expert who is used to looking at these panels, and used to looking at the optimal blood levels.  Or what are the limitations in salivary testing?  What are the limitations in urinary testing?  And blood testing?  For example, if you’re on a transdermal estrogen patch, we’re not going to see it as significantly in the blood as we will in the saliva.
• So with that said, we do have to be careful in how we’re using our labs to adjust your dosages. That comes down to the art of medicine.  Our clinical history, our clinical physical evaluation, and your symptoms scores.
• There are plusses and minuses to each method. That’s why we say “Treat the patient, not the labs”, yet the labs will guide us and they need to be done the same way, the same point in your cycle, the same time of day, same after hormone administration each time you test if for comparison.  At least we can control that and see if there are any differences or increases.
• We’re very consistent when we take it and that’s a pet peeve when people send me lab results. I ask them when they took their hormones, what day of the cycle they were on, what time of day it was.  Sometimes I want to look at it at different points in a menstrual cycle but that’s a key importance of hormone testing.
• For those who are no comfortable with bio-identical hormones than an herbal alternative is maca.
• Maca is composed of very specific proteins called macaeens. It’s rich in arginine which increases nitric oxide which increases blood vessel health and circulation, hence, which is how Viagra works.  It’s an adrenal adaptogen and very alkalinizing.
• There are many other things that we use too but one thing is certainly detoxing the liver. So a detoxifying diet using alkalinizing foods and using healthy fish oils.  I’m a big fan of oysters as far as foods go.  Oysters, seaweed sushi, Brazil nuts.  Those are my standard food prescription because there are so many good nutrients specific to those foods that are beneficial to the menopausal and andropausal woman and man.
• Other herbs I use for the menstrual cycle is chase berry, black cohosh, soy isoflavins but I find the use of a combination approach with anti-inflammatories like tumeric and other natural anti-inflammatories like Cat’s Claws which is another great anti-inflammatory and immune supported herb. These combinational approaches will help us in a very holistic way, bring things to center and bring things to balance.
• Even if we’re giving bio-identical hormones, our body has to detox them well.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Anna’s Feel Good Look Good Secrets Webjam

Dr. Anna’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Wangen is co-founder and Medical Director of the IBS Treatment Center.  He’s a licensed and board certified physician, the award winning author of two books on solving digestive disorders: Healthier without Wheat and The Irritable Bowel Syndrome Solution.  And, he was named one of Seattle’s Top Doctors.

Main Questions Asked:

• How is IBS properly diagnosed?
• What testing do your recommend to find the root underlying causes of IBS?
• How do you help your patient get through the maze of food allergies and sensitivities? Do you recommend elimination diets or blood testing?
• How do microbes and gut health affect IBS?
• What’s new in the world of IBS? What you see coming up on the horizon for IBS treatment?
• What are three actionable tips to help those suffering from IBS?

Key Points made by Dr. Wangen:

• IBS is a giant label if you have a digestive problem whether is constipation, diarrhea, gas, bloating, or abdominal pain or in any combination and you’ve essentially ruled out other things.
• You can’t test for IBS because there is no test for it.
• We have to be really methodical about going through a giant mental checklist of all these different conditions and start putting the pieces together so we can address YOUR IBS and figure out what’s the root cause.
• A lot of patients have more than one problem occurring at the same time. That’s important to figure out and recognize.
• There are two very broad categories that we might call food allergies and sensitivities and then this microbial world. They’re both really important and there’s a lot of overlap between them as well and often a lot of confusion.
• People might chalk up digestive problems to leaky gut and try to sell that as the cause but it’s really a big fancy term that’s no more informative than IBS is. It just means that there’s a problem and inflammation. There are many things that can cause that problem.
• You can be sensitive to foods but not because of the food. It could be because of the microbial world. If we can solve that microbial problem, you might be able to get a certain food back in your diet.
• There isn’t one food that’s the evil food out there but everybody wants to find that because it’s more convenient. In reality, it doesn’t work that way because it depends on the individual and how their body and immune system responds to a certain food or how their microbial world responds to food.
• When I’m a patient, I want to go to a doctor who knows what they’re doing, knows what tests to run and which procedures to do so that we can narrow things down and find out what the answer really is as opposed to going to someone who has a one size fits all treatment that they give to all of their patients and then cross their fingers and hope it works.
• There might be certain foods that are related in one sense but there might be other foods that don’t fit any pattern.
• You can learn things from elimination diets, blood tests, stool tests, and from all kinds of other tests. You’re getting different information from each of them and trying to put it together.
• If a test comes back and it doesn’t match what the patient is telling me, people often assume that the test is bad. Not necessarily.
• The microbial aspect is really hot in the research world but there’s still a big disconnect between what’s going on in the research world and what’s really happening in clinical practice. They’ll say that there are bacteria in the gut and not think it could be good for anybody but obviously, it’s there for a reason. We had to evolve with these bacteria, so millions of years weren’t just some random accident. This is the way things need to be and our health is tied intimately with these bacteria.
• A lot of what we do when we’re treating patients is not only using stool tests to assess that. Unfortunately, we’re still at early stages with lab work and assessment tools to understand truly what’s going on in the digestive tract.
• In medicine, there’s always this temptation to come up with new technology and new procedures, and everything that’s new is better and fancier but in reality, digestive health is old. We were born to innately have a wonderful digestive tract.
• The number one thing to do, if you’ve been told there’s no answer and you feel like there’s no hope, realize that is false! There is tons of hope! You just probably haven’t seen the right doctor yet.
• Most people are led to believe that IBS is caused by stress and anxiety because in the medical system, when they can’t find anything, they usually just say that it must be stress or anxiety. In reality, about 90% of the time or more, the stress and anxiety are being caused by the IBS. When we can solve that, the rest of your life often comes together very nicely and you can get back to the things you want to do.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Wangan’s website

Dr. Wangan’s books

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Mike is working on his Masters in Clinical Nutrition and lectures on the power of Nutrition and Functional Medicine. His first book is “Belly Fat Effect: The Real Secret about How Your Diet, Intestinal Health, and Gut Bacteria Help You Burn Fat”.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is “sick fat”?
• Is there any evidence about people that have anemia or iron deficiency that they’re at more risk for a slower metabolism?
• How does leptin figure into all of this?
• Why is stevia not healthy?

Key Points made by Michael:

• We’ve viewed nutrition in a vacuum and discussed it without looking at this forgotten organ called gut bacteria.
• Gut bacteria controls our mood, emotions, immunity, and metabolic health.
• Food, emotions, exercise patterns, habits, stressors and so forth all affect your microbiome – this 100 trillion single-celled collection of microorganisms that has 6,300 plus functions…more metabolic functions than our liver.
• Simple steps to a healthier microbiome include: eat a lot of colorful foods; chew food mindfully; eat a lot of berries, herbs and spices (curcumin, tumeric, rosemary, garlic, ginger, and things like that).
• When you look at body fat under a microscope we see that it gets inflamed and sick and has a lot of immune cells that infiltrate in and these immune cells thrive on sugar, and they start releasing pro-inflammatory cytokines.
• Then we get this whole body, low-grade inflammation that skews our metabolism out of a fat-burning mode and into a sugar-burning mode.
• Not all body fat is bad. We’re really talking mostly about deep belly fat, the fat around the sides and front of the abdomen.
• There’s a reason why this fat tissue may get more sick and more inflamed: Researchers have shown that this close proximity to the gut is actually part of the reason.  We get low-grade gut permeability or leaky gut.  We get bacterial fragments coming through, they’re activating the immune system that’s creating this inflammation.
• An interesting thing that’s not discussed in the fitness community is this notion of hypoxia or reduced oxygen levels. What we see when fat tissue becomes inflamed, it becomes sick and devoid of oxygen.  When oxygen is deficient, you can’t start burning fat.
• For exercise focus on whole body movements. Movements like dead lifts, squats, even things like tai chi and yoga.  It will increase blood flow locally in the abdomen.
• Hypoxia is triggered by low levels of cellular oxygen. The focus needs to be on increasing circulation and getting more blood to that site.  Deep belly breathing is really important and stretching and doing core exercises is huge to reverse this and increase blood flow and oxygen.
• Leptin is involved in this whole process. It’s a unique molecule.  When people think of leptin, they think of this appetite suppressing and satiating hormone, which it is, but it also has a huge role in the immune system.
• A quick overview of leptin: It’s not only a metabolic endocrine hormone but it affects the immune system in a huge way. It’s released from fat tissue and it’s lowest at about midday instructing the body to refuel and eat the largest meal at lunchtime.  Then leptin, in the normal state, should slowly rise throughout the day and it will be at its highest point while we’re sleeping.  The reason for that is to help us stay asleep so that we stay satiated and not try to get up during our sleep cycle to eat.
• When people gain more and more weight, the more fat cells they have, the more leptin is released, and basically the hypothalamus is saying we’ve had too much.
• And the more fat you have, the more inflamed you’re going to be. Reducing belly fat is important for reducing leptin because what it does in the immune system is you have the good guys and the bad guys in terms of immune cells.  The ones we need and want are the T regulatory cells.  Leptin represses these so we see Hashimoto’s, depression, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.  That’s the link between excess body fat and chronic 21st century diseases that we’re seeing on the increase.
• You can restore your leptin levels with movement and getting your sleep cycle in check. It’s important to be consistent with your light exposure during the day, getting outside for natural light is huge for training your circadian rhythym and getting leptin back on track.  Avoiding artificial light at night is key.
• Also meal timing. Ensuring people are eating a small breakfast, big if you can, but making sure that lunch is the biggest meal of the day.  Once meal time is gotten on track, it has a huge effect on your energy and hormones related to fat loss.
• When you exercise more and eat less, this is shown in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), when you do that, you actually suppress these gut hormones and that’s another huge aspect of the book and of emerging research right now.
• Scientists are realizing how this procedure called bariatric surgery or gastric bypass is so effective. I’m not a fan of the procedure, I’m just talking about the biology of it for learning purposes. The reason it’s so effective for causing weight-loss is not because it restricts how much food people eat, it’s because it changes the gut ecology and the hormones (incretins) released from the GI tract.
• These gut hormones control more than 50% of insulin’s signaling and post-meal processing. These gut hormones are powerful!
• There are many ways these gut hormones become suppressed. One of which is synthetic sweeteners.  They are not only further perturbing the gut hormones but affecting the composition of the microbiome.
• Other things like eating while stressed, eating late at night. Your gut hormones are most active during the middle part of the day which is why you should eat a big lunch.
• You could play around with a glucometer, the ketone sticks and blood glucose sticks. I would encourage everyone to do this at home so you know what foods affect your blood sugar, how stress affects it.  You can really quantify it.  Having data is really important for tracking things and what you can track, you can improve.
• Stevia hasn’t been studied that it affects the gut hormones in a super negative way like Aspertame and Sucralose does but it still does affect the signaling, taste receptors and so forth.
• We need to get rid of sweeteners entirely and just eat real food. That helps to reset this entire process.  Once you do that, you’ll realize how these fake sweeteners taste chemically once you get them out of your body, even Stevia or Xylitol.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Belly Fat Effect: The Real Secret About How Your Diet, Intestinal Health, and Gut Bacteria Help You Burn Fat

Michael’s website

Michael’s facebook page

Michael on twitter

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Kalish is a pioneer and founder of The Kalish Method – a model of Functional Medicine which solves patients’ health challenges through a proven lab based program addressing the three key areas of health: hormones, the digestive tract, and detoxification. He has trained practitioners from Dr. Mercola’s medical staff to Mayo Clinic physicians to ME!

He is the author of two books, “The Kalish Method: Healing the Body, Mapping the Mind” and “Your Guide to Healthy Hormones”.  Dr. Kalish is a frequently requested speaker for health summits across the United States.

Main Questions Asked:

• What are the three big areas of health patients should look at?
• Can you describe the causation sequence of how hormonal imbalances start?
• As the gut starts to break down and you start getting these infections that will lay the groundwork for food sensitivities, how does that translate into the whole toxic mess?
• Can you give us a real world example of a case from your private practice going through the sequence of events then the sequence of treatment?

Key Points made by Dr. Kalish:

• The main thing about functional medicine is at one level, it’s quite simple. The more we can translate it into simple language, the more people can understand it and take advantage of it.
• There’s a logic to the order. People tend to get sick in a pretty specific way regardless of what the final disease is.
• People get sick because they’re stressed and they don’t take care of themselves. Their gut starts to fail and then their liver becomes toxic.  So we look at these three basic systems:  stress hormone physiology, digestive function and then toxins, and the liver and detoxification, in that order.  Or all three of them if we’re able to do all of the lab testing.
• It’s the model by which people end up developing problems but it’s also the model by which we usually treat people. We address stress and stress hormones first, then fix the gut, then detoxification, in that order.
• From a patient’s perspective, they’re just thinking about how crappy they feel today. They’re having hot flashes or night sweats or can’t get pregnant or they have PCOS or PMS or migraines or food cravings at certain times of the month.  There’s some clear sex hormone-related symptom.
• For men, it’s typically low sex drive; hence, the advent of things like Viagra. These are pretty universal problems that both men and women experience.  It’s sex hormone imbalances.  Then it’s logical to think that you’ve got a hormone imbalance and just want to fix your sex hormones and then you’ll be better.
• The problem is that there’s usually a sequence of events that’s led to the sex hormone imbalance and that usually starts with the stress response in the adrenal glands, bleeds over into the digestive tract, and ends up fulminating as a male or female hormonal imbalance.
• If you treat the sex hormones directly, initially by themselves, it usually doesn’t work very well. People and doctors get very frustrated.  If you just look at low estrogen, testosterone or progesterone, and just prescribe an individual hormone, and ignore the sequence of events that got a person there, it doesn’t work very well.
• Our model of functional medicine tries to take a step back from the symptoms and ask what the predictable reasons are why this hormonal imbalance would have occurred. A very large percentage of the time, we see it centered around digestive health.
• If you think about a slow leak in a tire, you put air in it, then a month later it looks low again. It’s pretty clear that you could put air in to temporarily solve the problem but there’s a puncture somewhere that’s causing the slow leak.  That’s how the sex hormones work.
• If you’re low in progesterone, estrogen or testosterone and you take those hormones, it’s like filling up the tire with the slow leak. Sure, it’ll work for a few weeks or even up to a year or two but eventually it’s not going to work because there’s some other problem.  Usually the slow leak is coming because of stress being placed on the adrenal hormones.  If we can test and correct the adrenal hormones, then all of a sudden, the sex hormone issues start to stabilize and are very easy to handle.
• There are three major factors that make us sick: Emotional and spiritual disconnection – this is the leading trigger of health problems; Dietary stress; Inflammatory stress
• Usually it’s a combination emotional, dietary, and inflammatory stress that throws off the adrenal hormones.
• This one adrenal hormone called cortisol skyrockets. The first thing that occurs when that happens is we start to break down the gut lining.  This is the direct connection between hormones and the gut.
• When we’re stressed, we break things down. One of the first structures we break down to try to get fuel is the gut lining.  As soon as you have some kind of emotional, dietary or inflammatory stress, your gut lining is going to be deteriorating, your immune cells aren’t going to work as well and you’re likely going to pick up a food reaction type problem or some kind of infection in the gut. As that starts to kick into gear, your sex hormone level starts to drop because when cortisol goes up the female hormones start to drop in response to that because you’re burning up so much cortisol that estrogen, progesterone and testosterone start to drop.
• I’ve been in practice for 23 years and I’ve never seen an exception to this. I’m sure they do exist.  I’m sure there are women out there who have had spontaneous failure of her ovaries unrelated to the whole rest of her body but I’ve never seen it.
• Often times the most important thing that we want to treat is not the first thing that we treat.
• Toxins in the body can come from two places. It can be auto-toxicity meaning you’re generating toxins yourself and they could come from an external source.  There are a lot of chemicals and heavy metals that we’re exposed to.
• Between the internally generated toxins that are coming from your gut not working properly and the external toxins, that whole toxic stew gets dumped right on your liver, and in general, they say now every American has somewhere between 122 and up to 400 or 700 toxins at any one time.
• Every single person has at least 122 toxins in their body right now. There’s no one who’s immune to this.  It doesn’t matter how pristine your environment is or how much organic food you eat, we’re all basically toxic.  That becomes a problem too because you process your hormones in your liver as well.  So that will contribute even more to any kind of hormone imbalance if there’s a liver toxicity issue.
• A lot of these toxins are endocrine disrupters. They mimic hormones.  You get this chemical plastic derivative thing in your body and it looks almost exactly like estrogen to all your cells and so your body tries to utilize it like estrogen and that causes a whole heck of a lot of problems too.
• Even if you get the lifestyle stuff figured out, you’re meditating for a couple of hours every day, you’re eating well, you’re getting plenty of sleep, you’re exercising properly, just the fact that there are so many environmental toxins, pretty much means that we all need some kind of treatment these days. I don’t want to be Debbie Downer here but the modern world is not something our bodies can handle on its own anymore.  Maybe a couple hundred years ago you could.
• I don’t think it’s possible for people to be healthy without at least a yearly check up with your functional medicine doctor.  It’s a reasonable thing just to keep yourself on track once you do get healthy.
• I just hate to see people struggling on their own for so many years when it’s relatively straight forward for us to help people if we can get the labs done and start to analyze things.
• Women and men react to stress in some ways very similarly and in some ways very differently. The male stress physiology is fight or flight. They will either pick up a spear to kill the tiger or they will run away.  Women do a bit of fight or flight but they also do tend and befriend.  Their stress hormones escalate, like a man’s would, but they also release other hormones that calm them down a little bit.  So women are less likely to pick up a spear and kill someone. They’re more likely to grab a child nearby and take care of them, that’s the tend part.  And they’re more likely to connect with other women in the community, that’s the befriend part.  They try to have a more community-based solution to whatever this potential stress is.
• Women have a slightly different hormonal response but in our culture, women are under so much emotional pressure from the work world and family that they tend to have as many cortisol problems as the men do even though they have this in-born system for them to take care of themselves a bit better.
• My favorite female patient is in her mid-30s and a helicopter pilot. She came in with chest wall pain, digestive problems and she wants to get pregnant and she can’t.  We ran an adrenal panel, looked at her hormones, checked out the gut and toxicity issues.  It turned out her whole problem centered around an infection called Giardia.  It’s a pretty common intestinal parasite.  Running a stool test, finding and treating the Giardia, and then working on her adrenals, within 3 or 4 months, she was pregnant.
• It’s an interesting pattern. The more you have of a drag on the digestive tract, the more inflammation you get the lower your sex hormones go.  Many times with women, if we simply put them on gluten-free diet and treat a parasite, they’ll find that their natural fertility comes right back.
• You could Google Celiac disease and fertility, there are hundreds of research studies, mostly done in Europe, on the connection between gluten and inflammation in the gut and infertility. That extends out to older women too who are going through perimenopause and are having hot flashes and night sweats.  It’s the same kind of pattern.
• My favorite male patient is in his late 50s. A very nice, happily married man.  That’s one of my tenets of overall health is a good long-term relationship.  Bad marriages destroy people’s health no matter what.
• He’s a marathon runner and he finally had this crash where he was training for his marathons as he’s always done. He picked up H. Pylori on a trip somewhere overseas.  This was going on for two years.  Medical doctors were testing him and couldn’t figure out what was going on with him and he all of a sudden completely collapsed and wasn’t able to exercise anymore.
• We got him on a good quality adrenal program, started to give him a little extra DHEA because he had really low testosterone and low sex drive, and got his H. Pylori cleared up. Now he’s on the road to recovery.
• It’s so satisfying to be able to solve these problems with just a couple of relatively simple labs. It’s not even that complicated really.
• Symptoms don’t necessarily correlate with what the origin of the problem is. That’s what makes functional medicine so difficult.  It’s not symptomatically oriented.  If we can think of body systems and have a clear model of treatment, then you can address symptoms, not one to one like this pill for that symptom but in a more comprehensive manner.
• Functional medicine is just coming into its own. It’s so exciting for me to talk to doctors everyday and see how well the public is starting to receive this message that we’ve been hammering away at for 20 years.
• There’s a direct relationship between the length of time that you’ve had a female hormone problem, how severe the symptoms are and how damaged the gut is. It’s not that they’re connected, they’re literally different sides of the same coin.  They’re not just related, they’re the same problem.  We just see it from different ways.  The common link is chronic inflammation because it destroys our gut lining and our hormone output simultaneously.
• You can’t have chronic inflammation and have your gut be okay or female hormones be okay. It’s impossible.  That’s why these two things are not just linked, they’re really two aspects of the same exact problem – gut health and hormones.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Kalish Method:  Healing the Body, Mapping the Mind

Book – Your Guide to Healthy Hormones

Dr. Kalish’s website for patients

Dr. Kalish’s website for doctors

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Tom has a Master’s in Nutrition and is a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner. Tom and his wife Ali published the gluten-free Whole Life Nutrition cookbook over 8 years ago and have been experts in food sensitivities for over 10 years. Their newest book is The Elimination Diet – Discover the Foods That Are Making You Sick and Tired and Feel Better Fast.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is an elimination diet? What’s the process like?
• Do we have to avoid our foods sensitivities forever?
• What is your thought on rotation diets? Do you think that they have any kind of validity?

Key Points made by Tom:

• When people have food reactions, it’s probably the thorn in their side that’s keeping them from feeling better whether it’s skin conditions, mood issues, astrointestinal problems.
• We used to run tests, some of the results were fabulous but some of them were incredibly far off from where our person was. A test would come back negative that they didn’t have a response to corn or soy or wheat, yet every time they ate those foods, they got a rash on the right side of their face, they got terrible fatigue, or they got horrendous diarrhea.
• Whatever the case was, the lab wasn’t necessarily dictating what was actually happening with that particular person and they were frustrated.
• There’s one lab that never lies and that’s your body.
• If you’re eating a particular food and you’re having a particular symptom over and over again, I don’t care what your doctor, lab, or anyone in the world says. Your body is telling you something.  It’s saying that when you consume that particular food, you’re having something happen to you that you don’t enjoy, so let’s take that food out for a while.  Then people get so much better!
• If it’s migraines, it happens within 3 to 5 days. With skin conditions, it may take a couple of weeks.  If it’s chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia or some autoimmune condition like Hashimoto’s, it varies.  I’ve seen it take 9 days or 2 months.  It depends on the person and what’s going on with them and what else is happening.  Are they under stress?  Do they have terrible digestive issues?  Do they need help with enzymes?
• The reality is the vast majority of people get better and they get better fast.
• So many people are taking nonsteroid anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) for various pains. The FDA has literature saying there is a solid warning on all NSAIDs stating that on the day you start taking it, you have an increased risk for cerebrovascular, cardiovascular disease.  Meaning you might have an increase for stroke or a heart attack.
• So many people are in pain. One of the top 10 reasons why people see a physician is for back pain.  They’re coming in and saying that their pain is caused by me not having enough medication.  No!  Your pain is coming from something irritating your immune system.  You have your immune system secreting chemicals that elicit a pain response. If you can calm the inflammation down, you can get rid of your pain.
• There’s literature on Vitamin D and pain. I see that when people have food sensitivity reactions, they’re often deficient in Vitamin D.  They’re not absorbing a lot of the D that they’re taking via supplements and in the diet.  They’re having some chemical issues that are degrading the D.
• Here’s a case study: I had a middle aged woman who’s a school teacher. She was just the bee’s knees, a lovely human being.  She gave every ounce of her being to the children that she taught.  Yet she was totally fatigued and had all these joint problems.  All we did was put her on a gluten elimination diet and she said she felt 20 years younger!
• The reality is, it comes back to the most simple thing that Hippocrates told us forever. In 790 A.D., he started saying “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food”!
• A lot of people are terrified and overwhelmed at the elimination diet. They’re afraid to give up pasta, bread, and cheese.  They think there will be nothing to eat but there is life after that.
• We have now over 3,000 commonly used recipes. You don’t have any deficit whatsoever.  There are no issues with lacking recipes.  Some of the comments we get from people are that they had no idea that vegetables could taste so good.  They had no idea they could feel like this when they woke up in the morning.  They thought they had to have coffee every day.
• Perlmutter taught us this at The Institute for Functional Medicine. People are down on what they are not up on.  So if you’re not familiar what life is like without gluten or dairy which are the two most irritant foods for a lot of people, then you immediately push it away until you get enough inspiration or input.  Ten to thirteen recipes is all it takes for someone to shift their entire life.
• I hear people kicking themselves all the time saying that they wish they would’ve done it sooner. They had no idea that food was such powerful medicine.  It wasn’t just their skin issue that went away but it was their cholesterol that normalized, their cardiovascular disease markers that lessened to a point of them now being off of their high blood pressure medication, being off of their statin medication.  They’re happy every day.  They no longer need their antidepressants.  There are so many different things that people say.
• The elimination diet is the process of removing particular foods. We look at the scientific literature, case studies and determine which foods cause the most responses in the most people and we take out those foods for a period of time.  I take out a large amount of foods in the beginning and I start adding them back at two weeks but they’re the less reactive foods and then we start adding  back the heavier stuff after we’ve taken it out for a while.
• Here’s the premise: If you’re eating a food now, and your immune system is confused, and is launching an attack every time you’re eating that food, you’re experiencing the inflammation response after every single meal.  Our goal is to stop that.
• The “normal” for most people is pretty bad. What people get accustomed to is crazy!  The neat thing is there’s a level after that.  Once you reach that level, there’s a level after that.
• You should be waking up, your eyes popping open and you go “What’s up for today? Let’s hit this!  Let’s go!”  You get out of bed, eat, and you should still feel energy.  You go about your day and you’ll have energy that’s consistent.  There doesn’t need to be a slump at 3:00.  There doesn’t need to be this total exhaustion by dinner time.
• People don’t know that you don’t have to have gas after every meal. They don’t know that if you’re loosening your belt due to bloating that that’s an imbalance.  They don’t know that excessive belching or flatulence.  Or they think it’s okay to have two bowel movements a week or it’s alright to have 4 to 6 bowel movements per day. That’s not it.  There’s another level.
• We start to piece the foods back in one by one. You’ll start to pay close attention to what happens.  We ask you to listen to what happens in your body after you eat food.  Some people will notice that a fog comes over their head.  They eat a certain food and they’re not so happy, they’re tired, they feel like they’re walking through molasses.  Or with some their skin flares up.
• When you notice these physical responses to foods, take it out and leave it out for a while. And watch out because all of a sudden, your body starts healing itself.  That’s when your energy level goes up.  That’s when your skin gets really supple and smooth.  That’s when your gastrointestinal tract calms down and you realize that you don’t have to have the gas, nausea, bloating, diarrhea or constipation.
• Leave those foods out for 3 three months. In the book, I talk about different food and supplements that actually help heal the body.  Then once the body is healed, you can challenge that food back in.  Sometimes you still respond and sometimes you don’t.
• What I find is usually in the beginning, people react to a ton of stuff and when they challenge back in, they don’t respond to some of those things later on. It’s just a matter of calming the system down so it can heal itself and then the body no longer responds to certain foods.
• In that time and space, you are no longer sensitive to that food. It doesn’t mean you’re not always going to be sensitive to it.  There are certain foods that can be problematic as Tom O’Bryan would say.  He would say that the vast majority of people shouldn’t add gluten back in.  There are a lot of undiagnosed Celiac or gluten sensitive people so it’s just best to leave the gluten out.  Most people do better without gluten.
• When it comes to things like eggs, soy, or corn, some people can add those things back in just fine and not have a response. I would say that gluten and dairy are the ones that people do better with leaving out for a long time.  Gluten – maybe their whole life.
• Once you feel the difference, that doesn’t sound like a death sentence. That sounds like a prescription for freedom.
• You’re not going to have to leave a food out for the rest of your life. The vast majority of foods a lot of people will tolerate.  Here’s the reality, that’s coming from a limited space of knowledge.  You’re worried about taking a food out but when you take a food out and you feel fabulous, then the choice is always yours.
• If you add that food back in and your only symptom is mild fatigue, some people would rather have the mild fatigue and still eat their chocolate. But then I say to look at the data on autoimmune diseases.  It starts in the gut.  When someone has a leaky gut, they leave themselves more susceptible to other diseases later on whether it’s Parkinson’s disease or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.  Whatever it is, you’ve got to calm the gut down to avoid all disease.
• You can risk that or leave that food out. It’s up to you.  And some people don’t react at all.  In that case, eat it up, you’re fine.
• I have not seen rotation diets work. You usually need a lot longer than the 3 to 10 days of rotation before the immune system calms down.
• From that position, you are now in a position of power. You know what foods are causing you pain and suffering and which ones aren’t.  Not everyone does well with all foods.  If you look at animals, if you feed an animal grapes or chocolate, it could kill them depending on what kind of animal it is.
• Certain animals, because of their genetics and their type, they don’t respond well to certain chemicals in foods. Humans can be that way.  It can be based on how much stress and inflammation we have.  There are so many different times in life when you might have changed how your body responds to foods.  I’ve seen this after trauma like childbirth, the death of a spouse, auto accidents, chemical injuries.  People respond to foods almost overnight.
• There are going to be times in your life when you feel like all of a sudden, you don’t feel good and you don’t know what it is. It may be your food.  Just do this elimination diet and you can figure it out.
• Over the last decade, we’ve found that this is the most powerful intervention people can do. There’s nothing I’ve seen, no supplement that compares, there’s no specific dietary protocol that I’ve seen that compares.  This is the first step for functional medicine health.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Elimination Diet: Discover the Foods That Are Making You Sick and Tired–and Feel Better Fast

Tom’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Sanders is a naturopathic doctor in Connecticut and specializes in rheumatology and autoimmunity. Her passion is finding the underlying cause of immune dysfunction and restoring balance to the immune system with functional medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• What causes autoimmune disease?
• What are some of the infectious triggers for autoimmune disease?
• How is gut health related to autoimmune disease?
• What can be done to treat the gut in autoimmune disease?
• Can you give an example of a case from your private practice of a patient that had an autoimmune disease and how you treated them?

Key Points made by Dr. Sanders:

• Autoimmune disease is a wide spectrum of things.  It can attack many different systems.
• The way I describe autoimmune disease is like when you get a virus, a cold, your immune system kicks in to attack the virus.  Now imagine that your body thinks that you are a virus: your own tissues, body, heart, and joints.  What would happen if your immune system got confused and started to attack yourself as though you are a virus?
• Some common examples of autoimmune diseases are the arthritis family such as rhumatoid arthritis.  Also, Hashimoto’s thyroid disease and Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis.  There are even some theories that say how autism could be an autoimmune disease meaning the immune system may be attacking the brain as though it were a foreign object.
• The causes of autoimmune disease are multi-factorial meaning that there are so many things that can happen but the current theories of autoimmune disease really point to a genetic predisposition that gets set off, or it could be some environmental trigger.
• We really try to find what these environmental triggers are and remove them as much as possible.
• For me, triggers are the fun and rewarding part because it’s different for everyone.  Two people with rhumatoid arthritis may have symptoms that are almost identical but through the course of knowing the patient, their triggers are entirely different.  That’s what keeps it interesting.
• The Big 5 Triggers: 1.) The gut is the most common trigger; 2.) Other infections.  Not just in the gut but potential viruses lingering in the bloodstream.  We know with psoriasis, strep tends to be a trigger.  Children with PANDAS often have a history of strep.  A flora imbalance in the mouth.  Any type of cell that looks like the gut which we call mucosa but that really extends to the lung, sinuses, mouth and even vaginal.  It’s really widespread; 3.) Hormone imbalance.  The common example here is Hashimoto’s.  It’s very often linked to high estrogen or an estrogen imbalance, it’s not in balance with progesterone.  Estrogen being out of whack can also affect patients with Lupus or rhumatoid arthritis; 4.) Neurotransmitter imbalance.  There’s a growing field called Neuro-Endo-Immunology.  This is how the nervous system and brain chemicals are connected to the immune system.  Stress, anxiety, and mood disregulation definitely go hand-in-hand with these patients who are so inflammed; 5.) Heavy metals and enviornmental toxicity.  That has a lot of effects on the immune system.  Things like BPA and GMO foods that we’re seeing so much more of now than ever before do play quite an integral role in the autoimmune process.
• When I talk to somebody and I’m trying to learn what their triggers are, I’m really trying to screen them then decide which of those 5 triggers are the most important at that time.  Oftentimes, it’s not just one – that’s what makes it so complex.
• It’s very important for the patients to understand how the gut impacts what’s going on in the rest of the body. Specifically for autoimmune patients, they need to understnad that the immune system is primed in the digestive system.
• We have an immense amount of immune cells lining the gut and the job of those immune cells is to look at the food that you eat and make sure there are no pathogens or bugs like food poisoning.  It’s there to protect you from something you may get from the environment.  That’s the purpose of having an immune system so engrained in the digestive tract.  It’s the first security gate to allow things into the bloodstream.
• With that understanding, it then seems to make sense that if something is wrong in your digestive system, that’s how the connection occurs with the immune system.
• Then we get into the idea of the microbiome and what’s happening with the bacteria in the gut.  What it really comes down to is a certain type of immune cell called a regulatory T cell.  They regulate the immune system.  When the immune system is overactive such as in an autoimmune disease, the regulatory T cells’ job is to calm them down.
• Those immune cells are increased by the presence of good, friendly bacteria.  Lactobacillus, the bifido group, and all of our probiotic flora increase the amount of regulatory T cells that we have in our gut.
• On the flip side, the more infections we have like yeast, parasites or an overgrowth of bad bacteria, those regulatory T cells come down in number and that allows the immune system to run rampant.
• It’s a crucial balance between healthy probiotic flora and reducing these pro-inflammatory bad bacteria that allows these regulatory immunue cells to be in good number.
• There’s also the question of leaky gut.  Think of your gut lining like a really tight fence.  When you eat something, it should be digested into very tiny molecules that then are allowed into the bloodstream.  Now imagine the fence opening up and it’s more like a chain link fence with these big holes.  Now when you eat something, it’s allowed to enter the bloodstream in a larger form.  The immune system gets revved up by that.  It doesn’t like large particles entering the bloodstream and it starts to attack them and when the immune system gets so revved up like that, combined with someone who has a genetic predisposition to have an autoimmune disease anyways, it sets the stage for an autoimmune disease to occur.
• The gut really is the focus for most autoimmune patients.  If I can’t distinguish where to start with someone, I’ll start with the gut.
• It’s your place to go back to.  It truly does control so many systems.  The gut does control the brain chemicals, the neurotransmitter balance, the hormones, and it controls the toxicity in getting rid of that.
• We have stool testing for the lower intestine, breath testing to evaluate the health of the small intestine.  I’ve seen a high number of patients not producing enough stomach acid.  What that does is it allows food to enter the intestines undigested.  That is then food for the bad bacteria so that can be a predisposing factor to why these infections come about.
• Food sensitivities and reactions are a major cause of leaky gut or at least a contributing factor.  When looking for triggers, it’s important to evaluate food intolerances and some of the biggest culprits are gluten, dairy, and soy.
• The cycle has to be broken somewhere.  Usually the patient has to go through a certain period where they’ll eliminate some things with the goal of healing the gut with the hopes of bringing those foods back at some point.
• Case Study:  48 year old female with rhumatoid arthritis.  She had been on conventional medication for a while but didn’t feel comfortable so in conjunction with her doctor, she decided to stop and came to our clinic with the hope of finding a natural alternative.
• Main complaints:  Pain in hands, feet and knees; some swelling, red, hot joints; fatigue
• During the intake, the triggers were pointing to digestive complaints she’s had her whole life:  diarrhea, constipation, bloating, heartburn.  She also has a significant history of anxiety and depression.
• I was most interested in the digestive and nervous systems.  To look at the brain chemicals to see if the history of anxiety and depression may be impacting the immune system and possibly even the digestive complaints.
• Typically on the first visit while waiting for testing to come back, I get them started on a pretty strong anti-inflammatory protocol using different anti-inflammatory supplements and diet techniques.
• For this patient, we started with a stool test and a neurotransmitter test.  She was starting to feel pretty well just on the anti-inflammatories but the stool test showed very low-levels of good flora, especially the lactobacillus family and a high level of a certain organism called Prevotella which is a virus that’s being linked more and more to rhumatoid arthritis when it’s found in the digestive system.  Her neurotransmitter panel showed a little bit of an imbalance in her adrenaline markers.
• Treatment started with natural antibiotics and probiotics.  It’s a little controversial but I choose to do both to eradicate that bacteria and also to enhance her good probiotic flora.  Also trying to work on her adrenaline markers.
• Adrenaline is made in the adrenal gland.  Low adrenaline may be linked to adrenal fatigue.  It’s usually from chronic stress.  I did some counseling with her to figure out where her stress is coming from and just working with her on stress management techniques like meditation, exercise, and basic things.
• She’s doing really well.  Her anxiety, joint pain and digestive system are so much better.  Just by eradicating this bacteria and boosting her good flora levels.
• If a patient is on conventional medication, I think the best thing to do is to use functional medicine and natural medicine very safely making sure that nothing interacts with the medications to get the person to a place where they’re feeling stable and well because when it comes to naturopathic medicine, our number one factor when we take our oath is:  Do no harm.  So if a patient goes off of their medication, pain will relapse for a certain period of time because you’ve removed the band-aid essentially.  While that seem like a good thing to do in the long-run, the momentum starts to shift towards pain and inflammation in such a strong way that using natural medicine to stop that momentum and turn it around can be a little difficult.
• What I typically say to a patient in that case is let’s combine functional medicine, natural medicine with your prescriptions for now and get you to a place where you’re feeling great.  Once you’re feeling great for a certain period of time, and that timeframe depends on the patient, then let’s have a conversation with your rheumatologist about starting to slowly cut down.  That way, we’re in a bit more control of the situation and I feel like there’s a forward momentum towards healing that even though we start to pull out some medication, the body may be in such a forward motion towards getting well that it may have less of a negative impact.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Sanders’ website

Dr. Sanders’ facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Kelley is a Board Certified Family Practice doctor and a Diplomat of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine.  She is a founding member of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, and also a member of The Institute of Functional Medicine and The International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society.  She sees patients at WholeHealth Chicago – one of the Midwest’s oldest and most respected Integrative Medicine clinics.

Main Questions Asked:

• How common is Lyme Disease?  How many people are not being diagnosed properly?
• Where are the real “hot spots” for Lyme ticks?
• What are the signs and symptoms of Lyme Disease?  How would we know to ask our doctor to be tested?
• What are the traditional and non-traditional tests for detecting Lyme?
• How can all of these tests come back as normal but we could still have Lyme Disease?
• How often do you just assume there’s Lyme Disease instead of running all of the tests and just go straight into doing treatment and just do a trial of therapy?
• Can you talk a little more in-depth about treatment?  If you get a tick bite, should you immediately go to the doctor and get a course of antibiotics?
• Do you have any tips for removing ticks? In cases where you can remove part of the tick, can you still send it to tickreport.com?
• Can you give us a real live case where a patient was really struggling with their health and you figured out they have Lyme Disease and the treatment that they went through?  Then how they responded to treatment?

Key Points made by Dr. Kelly:

• The CDC says there are 300,000 cases of Lyme Disease per year, although there are probably more than that.
• The biggest hotbeds are on the East Coast centered around Connecticut. The other big hotbed is Wisconsin.  It trickles down to Chicago and the Midwest.
• It’s everywhere.  Everyone likes to think it’s just in wooded areas.  It’s even in urban areas like Chicago.  It’s found in every state.  I’m sure it’s found in every province in Canada as well.
• There are two big points:  acute and chronic.  In acute, if you’re scabbing and paying attention, you can pick up on it.  Usually, with a tick bite, you get a bullseye rash then antibiotics because that’s all you need.
• Most people don’t know they even got a tick bite because the ticks are so tiny.  Over half the people don’t even get a rash, or if they do, it’s not the typical bullseye rash.  Some people will get large red splotches.  Sometimes they go to urgent care and get diagnosed incorrectly as cellulitis which is a bacterial infection of the skin.
• If you get severe flu-like symptoms in the middle of summer and you were just walking in the woods the week before, it could very well be Lyme Disease.  Some people get a bit of a cold then it clears up and they don’t think much of it until it becomes much more of a chronic issue.
• Chronic symptoms are joint pain or swelling, chronic fatigue, brain fog, focus and concentration issues, mood changes, anxiety as a new issue for them, and heart issues like arrhythmias or irregular heartbeats and palpitations.
• There are a lot of manifestations of it. It’s called The Great Mimicker. It mimics so many other diseases and problems, it can be hard to diagnose and find.
• For Lyme Disease, the CDC recommends a 2-tiered step process.  One is a screening test called the ELISA Test.  If that’s positive, they’ll do a Western Blot which looks at different proteins and the antibody reaction to those proteins on the bugs.  The problem with this is the screening test misses about half of the patients so it’s actually not that good.
• There is a slightly better screening test called the C6 ELISA Test.  You can request this.  It’s a little better at picking up patients but it’s still not the world’s best screening test.  You can ask your doctor to run both.
• The Western Blot is a much more important test.  It gives us a lot more information.
• The bands are little proteins that stick out from the bugs.  The bands are the antibody responses to those proteins.  They’re trying to find different responses to the bugs.
• There are two different antibodies: IgM and IgG.  IgM is typically thought of as more of an acute infection so if you just got infected, the IgM will be high. IgG is usually more of a chronic antibody or a memory antibody so your body is prepared if it ever runs into that bug again.
• Lyme Disease can hide out and allude the immune system and come back out, so that IgM can stay positive for a very very long time.
• Typical labs will only run three bands. For example, on the IgM, only two are really super specific for Lyme Disease, for Borrelia burgdorferi.
• There are other labs out there that will run the full Western Blot.  My favorite is probably IGeneX Labs.  They do two strains of the bug, not just one. They do every single band and they grade them, it’s not just negative or positive.  It’s “negative indeterminate” and then it goes up to 4+.  I think you get a better idea of what kind of reaction your body is having to that bug if it’s there.
• There are some other tests available but unfortunately for Lyme Disease it’s just not that great.  It’s a very very smart bug and eludes our immune system to protect itself and so these tests can be difficult and hard to find.
• We’re waiting for better long-term studies to show what other tests can really help us determine if the disease if there or not.  There are cultures available that can take up to eight weeks if not longer to run.
• There are some T cells which are a different kind of antibody test.  Sometimes it only shows up in the culture in a PCR which is another test you can run.
• Sometimes you have to play investigator and keep looking underneath all of these stones to see if you can find it.
• It’s possible to do all of these tests, have them come back as normal and still have Lyme Disease.
• The CDC does not require any form of lab to diagnose Lyme Disease.  This is straight off of their website.  You need two things to diagnose Lyme Disease: probable exposure and have the signs and symptoms of Lyme Disease which are very diverse.
• If it hasn’t shown up in the labs and you have a very strong clinical suspicion that that’s what’s happening, then I think it’s worth talking to the patient and deciding to try this and see if they’re doing better.  It’s a reasonable option as long as everyone agrees that’s the best way to go forward.
• There are several different locations where you can take the ticks and send them in and they will test the ticks for Lyme and co-infections.
• One of them is tickreport.com but there are several others you can send them to.  Usually there is a small fee.
• If you get an acute tick bite and see it, the CDC recommends a couple of weeks of antibiotics.
• Most Lyme literate doctors don’t think that two weeks is enough.  It should be at least twenty days, if not longer, depending on the symptoms.
• If you develop symptoms like joint pain, flu-like symptoms and things right away and go on antibiotics and they don’t get better, then you need to stay on the antibiotics for at least three months to see if they will clear.
• If you’re lucky enough to catch it that early, you have a pretty good shot of clearing it.  You just need to stick with it.
• Some herbal and homeopathic treatments for acute tick bites are herbs like astragalus that you can take if you live in a Lyme endemic area to help prevent getting the infection in the first place.
• Tick removal tip:  Use tweezers.  What you do not want to do is light it with a lighter.  With the tweezers, you want to try to grab it from the head and pull it directly out.  There’s also a gadget called the Tick Twister.
• Case study #1:  17 year old girl.  Biggest complaints:  mood issues, a lot of anxiety, OCD-type tendencies and anger which all came on rather abruptly when she was around 14 or 15 years old.
• She really hadn’t had any mood issues up until that age.  All of a sudden she almost became a different person even to the point of being suicidal. She had been in some in- and out-patient therapy and on every medication you can think of and didn’t respond plus having bad side effects.
• She is not happy and is struggling.  Her mom is distraught because her baby is no longer herself and there’s nothing they can do to help.  It’s things like that where you start to dig into the history.
• Her family spends a lot of time in the forest preserves but she didn’t remember getting a tick bite but they do have dogs with ticks.
• I did the IGeneX Test on her and she was positive. We started treating her with antibiotics.  It was a struggle because she is young and had had enough of doctors.  We convinced her and she started taking the antibiotics.
• I saw her on my schedule about six weeks after she started on the antibiotics and I was just thinking “Oh no – I hope she feels better.  What else can I do for her?”
• She came in smiling, was happy and joking with me!  I was floored – she was a new person! She was off all of her psych medications and doing well in school.  It was a phenomenal turn-around.
• Case study #2:  4 year old girl on the Autism Spectrum.
• Her family lives a little south of the city in a wooded area with lots of possible tick exposures and lots of animals.
• I started her with the Functional Medicine 4-R gut rehab.  That makes huge impacts in and of itself which I always love to see.  Then we started treating her with antibiotics.
• After two weeks, her mom said, “She’s speaking in sentences and looking at us.  My whole family is flabbergasted by the changes in this little girl!”
• There are some really great stories. There are also patients who take a lot longer.  If you’ve been sicker longer, if you’re older, if you have other issues going on, it’s going to take longer to weed through it all and get you feeling better.  Unfortunately, not everyone gets well that soon.

Resources Mentioned:

WholeHealth Chicago

Dr. Casey Kelley’s facebook page

Lyme Disease website

International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (ILADS)

Tick Report.com

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Niki is an award-winning, internationally-renowned registered nutritionist and health writer who helps people optimize their energy. In 2005, she co-founded one of the largest mind-body medicine clinics specializing in fatigue in the world. Niki is also the host of the Abundant Energy Summit.

Main Questions Asked:

• Why are you so interested in fatigue and helping people optimize their energy?
• Can you explain the difference between just regular fatigue and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?
• What are some of the underlying causes of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?
• What are some of the key tests that should be run for those with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

Key Points made by Niki:

• Chronic fatigue is NOT the same as depression. Depression can be a side effect of having chronic fatigue.
• For a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) diagnosis, you need to have about 4 out of 8 symptoms for longer than 6 months: fatigue, sleep problems, memory/concentration issues, muscle pains and aches, or digestive problems. However, the key defining factor is post-exertional malaise. That’s the key thing – a failure of energy after doing some kind of exercise or mental or emotional exertion.
• You can have either an immediate drop in energy or a delayed fatigue so it could hit a day or two later. It’s a real rationing of physical, mental, and emotional energy.
• Burnout is much more involved with chronic overwork, it tends to be more psychologically induced but you can have a full-blown physical and emotional burnout. It can turn into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which is specifically that post-exertional aspect.
• One route to getting Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a toxic or viral onset.
• Getting Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is very serious. These people can be more functionally impaired than people with Type 2 diabetes, kidney failure, or congestive heart failure.
• There’s a whole range of physiological, brain-related, and psychological factors to consider. At the top is gut-related issues.  It’s back to this idea that health really starts and ends in the gut.  Research is linking gut dysbiosis and problems in the gut with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
• The microbiota is very important. Ninety percent of all the cells in our body are made of the bacteria in our gut.  That’s hugely important and is huge factor in immunity as well.
• There are a lot of consequences from an imbalance in gut bacteria. The toxins produced by them spread through the gut lining which then become damaged and systemic in the body.  When that happens, the key thing you want to focus on with fatigue is those toxins affecting mitochondrial function.  Mitochondria are the power section of all of our cells.
• We have 50 trillion cells in the body and almost every single cell has this little bit of mitochondria which produces ATP (Adenosine triphosphate) – the energy currency of the body. When we have a problem in the mitochondria, there’s your energy rationing, that post-exertional fatigue.
• You’re looking at causes caused by other causes that are underlying and due to other things. It’s this system approach that you need.  It’s not a one-shot thing that goes wrong and that causes your fatigue.
• Look at things like food sensitivities, chemical sensitivities, use of antibiotics in the past. Correct the environment to get rid of any negative factors, then heal the gut and gut lining and sort out the gut bacteria.  When you’ve done that you can then come in with these other things like targeted support to reboot mitochondrial function.
• Usually we’ll start with the gut then we’ll do targeted support for other areas. Adrenal fatigue could have occurred.  The thyroid can be going a bit out of balance.
• The testing of gut bacteria is changing and improving all the time. We’re getting into DNA sequencing of bacteria in the gut now which is even more accurate than cultures of gut bacteria.
• Amalgam fillings can be a problem for some people but not others. That’s an area where you could get tested to see if it’s a problem for you.
• Limbic kindling is this idea that a chemical or environmental toxin, a microbe, or a psychological thing like emotional trauma, can actually get programmed into the unconscious part of the brain, the limbic system. When that happens, it’s as if you literally start having a neurological sensitivity to certain things.  This can be caused by a one-off shock to the brain or it could be a low level intermittent exposure which, over time, reduces the threshold required for a sensitivity response to those environmental factors.
• There’s a neurological reaction occurring where the brain is having a fight or flight response because it’s in a state of stress and fear. It’s been trained to react that way to those exposures either from a toxic one-off shock or this low level intermittent exposure.
• So we can have an extreme reaction. It might even be what’s going on in the brain is affecting the immune system. So until you stop what’s going on in the brain, you can’t fix the immune system.
• This is a tragic thing that’s happening in the brain which is this missed aspect and the psychology techniques are going to be the very best techniques. That’s why things like meditation are so important because the studies are there showing that you can calm the amygdala response down through meditation.
• If the brain is in this chronic state of stress because it’s got limbic kindling, your whole body is in a state of chronic stress because the brain is the master controller of the rest of the body. It means you’re not in rest-digest-detoxify.  Patients need to be in their healing states while you address the gut, mitochondria and these other things.
• The limbic work is very important. I recommend people look up the work of Patricia Fennell because she had done work on this amazing thing called The Four Phase Model of Chronic Complex Illness and it doesn’t just apply to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
• Basically people go through crisis phase, stabilization, resolution and then integration.
• The first phase of the illness, becoming ill is a trauma. The process of your life collapsing around you is a trauma.  Emotional trauma is a form of limbic kindling.  At this stage, you want to match treatment intervention to the phase the patient’s in.
• During the Abundant Energy Summit, you’ll enjoy: Optimizing physical, energetic, psychological and spiritual energy; Cutting edge state-of-the art modern research in biochemistry and physics; Ancient perennial wisdom from Eastern and Western traditions; Practical steps you can take TODAY to improve your energy; And more.

Resources Mentioned:

The Abundant Energy Summit

Niki’s website

Book – Managing Chronic Illness Using the Four-Phase Treatment Approach: A Mental Health Professional’s Guide to Helping Chronically Ill People

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Finkelstein has training in both conventional and integrative medicine, and he is the recipient of numerous distinctions. Drawing from his diverse medical expertise, Dr. Finkelstein offers both a micro and macro point of view on today’s healthcare needs and challenges, and he provides a tried-and-true solution for healing individual patients and the medical system as a whole. It’s called Slow Medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• Many people have chronic health problems and they’ve tried a lot of remedies and they’re still And, they’re tired of being offered band aid solutions. Is this what prompted you to write your book – Slow Medicine?
• In your book you outline 77 questions that we should answer to figure out where our health problems really coming from. Can you tell us more about that whole process?
• Your 77 questions cover 4 key categories: Self, Relationships, Nature and Beyond. Can you give some examples?
• How do you see people using your book or how do you recommend they use your book?

Key Points made by Dr. Finkelstein:

• There’s a fundamental problem when we try to do things too quickly especially when it comes to a complex situation like how we feel and whether or not we’re healthy whether that’s in our mind or body, our communities, all those things together.
• There needs to be an appreciation that things take time and one of the things that take time is that initial evaluation of looking at the pieces of the puzzle and making sure at least the majority, if not all, of the pieces are examined to really understand what’s going on with the person.
• To me that’s an inventory of questions that analyze not just the physical body but the way that physical body interacts with the rest of that person’s life which is what’s in their mind, what’s in their community, what’s in the environment around them, things that affect us all, all the time.
• There actually is a better definition of health: the functional relationship between the body and the rest of the person’s life.
• A good body works really nicely but if you have crappy relationships then what good is it doing for you? Similarly, a person could be sick and broken down yet has remarkable relationships and a remarkable life and maybe they’re days or minutes from death and they’re smiling, they’re still able to do that.  I’ve seen that dozens and dozens of times.
• Health is a functional state of being. It’s not just the numbers.  This more holistic assessment of health is like doing a jigsaw puzzle.  Imagine if you kept half of the pieces in the box.  You would never complete the picture.  The first step to any puzzle’s solution is to get all of the pieces out of the box, flip them over and then come up with some sort of practical plan to piece them all together.
• Health is moving in a direction of greater value, vitality and meaning. It doesn’t mean I live forever, it doesn’t mean I never get an ailment, it doesn’t mean I don’t have to see doctors and therapists.  It means I can function well enough to live my life and that’s what that definition is trying to establish.
• Say I was a magician and I have this wand I can wave and get rid of all your ailments. The question I’m still going to ask you is “Now what are you going to do with your life?” because without clearly understanding why you want to be healthy, unconsciously, the body doesn’t necessarily follow when there’s no coherence.
• Our cells are driven not just by our thoughts, but they’re driven by, maybe, a more existential spiritual longing for something greater meaning of our lives and that needs to be connected in this process.
• In my wheel of health idea there are 7 spokes: Self, relationships, nature, beyond, the physical body itself, the mental/emotional body and community which is our working relationship with each other.
• Then there are 4 relationships. It does start with self.  How do you feel about yourself?  Do you spend enough time taking care of yourself?  Do you recharge your batteries or do you rush, rush, rush through your own life and your name doesn’t appear in your own calendar?
• Are you aware of life force energy within you? In truth, our state of being is all of these things happening at the same time.
• Look at the things where it would be easiest for you to make a move. Make a plan for yourself that in the next week or month, I’m going to do the easiest things first.  I’m going to do the edges of this puzzle.
• Then take the inventory again. Now you see where the opportunities are and you read those areas of the book where those come up and do those steps.  Over time, you see that it’s a blueprint for health.
• Six months later, people feel remarkably better. Not because they’re targeted a particular ailment or symptom but because they’re promoting the innate healing response because by pulling this all together they get stronger and stronger and stronger.  The picture becomes more complete.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Slow Medicine: Hope and Healing for Chronic Illness

Dr. Finkelstein’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

James is the host of the Functional Forum – a monthly meet up that streams live for functional medicine and integrative medicine practitioners. James is also the host of the critically acclaimed Evolution of Medicine Summit – a free worldwide event held online featuring experts and innovators on the cutting edge of creating sustainable change in healthcare. The next Evolution of Medicine Summit will run September 21-28, 2015!

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you tell us about your Evolution of Medicine Summit and some of the speakers that will be featured?
• What technologies are changing the face of healthcare and might benefit our listeners in their everyday lives?

Key Points Made by James:

• Functional medicine is the future of primary care.  There’s not a lot of value given in primary care as it is today. You go in and it’s either drugs or surgery and there’s certainly no empowerment.  There are better solutions for chronic diseases in functional medicine but it does require that the patient participate.
• There are evolutionary concepts around like the Paleo Diet, health technology, and the evolutionary forces within the body like the microbiome.
• We have a profoundly reactive system.  We don’t do anything until it goes wrong.  A successful chronic disease management system has to be very pro-active.
• At this year’s Summit, we’re talking about health care from scratch.
• What we see is the combination of evolved practitioners who are doing functional medicine and integrative medicine combined with the power of technology to scale education, nutrition and some of these other areas.
• Bucky Fuller said, “You don’t change things by fighting the existing reality. To change things you have to start a new system or create system that makes the old system obsolete.”  I think that that is a better strategy for us in trying to build a chronic disease management system that actually works.
• We have some fan favorites coming back to the Summit this year like Chris Kresser, Dr. Perlmutter, Kelly Brogan, Dr. Hyla Cass, Dr. Nicholas Gonazalez and Tosca Reno.
• We’ve seen patients bring their doctors up to speed.  In a situation when someone moves from being unhealthy to healthy without drugs or without surgery there is typically a moment where doctors go “What just happened there?  What are you doing?”
• I hope the Evolution of Medicine Summit would be the kind of resource (to share with your doctor) because it’s free and you can watch it from anywhere in the world.
• We need a lot more functional doctors.  We need one for every 500 people.
• There’s a technology that I really like.  It’s an app called MyMee that helps you track your diet. The greatest thing about this is your practitioner is getting it in real time.  Active tracking is a powerful force in changing behaviour.
• MyMee lets your health coach send a gentle reminder to you to track your meal information.  It creates a much stronger connection between the practitioner and the patient.
• The Functional Forum is going to be this cross-section of technology and functional medicine that’s going to be the driving force that’s going to evolve medicine more quickly, and why we’re so keen to feature technologies that we feel really change the game.
• To everyone listening, you’re in the right place. You’ve got a good mentor here.  Developing community is important to really make sure you can maintain whatever changes consistently.

Resources Mentioned:

Evolution of Medicine Summit

Functional Forum

MyMee

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

As a therapist turned coach, Susie equips high potential entrepreneurs and executives to reduce stress, improve communication, increase intimacy, and not bankrupt their relationships in pursuit of profits and success. She believes “relationships are the currency of today” so creating better ones is vital to success in all areas of life. Susie is the bestselling author of Listen, Learn, Love: How to Dramatically Improve Your Relationships in 30 Days or Less!

Main Questions Asked:

• When somebody wants or needs to make a 180 degree change for health reasons and they’re not getting support from their family what can they do?
• Can you talk about each of the three skills – listen, learn and love?
• What is one action step our listeners can do TODAY to see improvements in their relationships?

Key Points Made by Susie:

• Getting support from family members: one of the biggest things is how are we selling it?  We’re all selling all the time.  The first place I would look at is the Why.  What’s in it for them?  If they have a reason that is beneficial to them I got more help and support.
• Putting it in the framework of what benefits them for their support.  People will do something with the “What’s in it for me?”  Also, vice versa, what’s the loss if they don’t support you?  People respond well to pain. Pain is a big motivator.
• If your child won’t help with tasks, instill natural consequences.  Nothing will get your kid moving faster than when it affects them.  When it becomes personal to them, it suddenly becomes important to them.
• We don’t get change if we’re always rescuing.
• It’s like a shock because no kid believes his mom is ever going to follow through.  Stick to your guns.
• With a spouse, it’s similar but with less leverage.  Instead of consequences, have ramifications with the spouse.
• Stand your ground with your spouse versus letting them sway you.
• It’s the idea of “I’m not going to sacrifice what’s important to me even if you’re going to be unhappy.”
• With a spouse it’s really important to remember that it might be really uncomfortable and tense but what’s the greater reason?  What’s the greater good?  You can’t put a price on your health.
• It’s willingness to be uncomfortable and let there be tension when you know what you’re doing is right.
• If family members want to eat some junk food, let them but set certain times and places for it.  I like peanut m&ms so I had my husband take them to work so I wouldn’t be tempted.
• Wisdom in relationship with yourself and others is knowing what our limitations are.  I have a really strong will in a lot of arenas, I don’t need to exercise it where it’s extra hard.
• The willingness to say no and really be comfortable in that yuck of “this isn’t fun”.
• There are some places where self-care means being uncomfortable.
• Sometimes extreme measures are the best thing you can do.
• A lot of times when I work with clients and couples, if they’re not being taken seriously, they have a part of that.  We don’t like to take responsibility for that but it is true.
• There was a client I worked with once that had some teenage boys who didn’t help around the house.  And one day she said “I’m just tired of being/feeling like a doormat.”  I looked at her and said “Then get up off the floor.”  She did not like that I said that but it was this idea of as long as you continue to let them treat you that way, they will treat you that way.  So, if they don’t do the dishes, and you do them, what have you taught them?  If I outwait mom, she’ll take care of it.
• There used to be this book called Miss Piggle-Wiggle. It’s almost prescribing the disease is the cure.  So for picky eaters, she would say “Fine, let them eat that one thing.” It would almost cure itself.  It’s a fiction book but this idea of the kids who never want to go to bed, okay, stay up late but all the consequences that come with that, all the natural ramifications, you have to let it come to bear out.
• If you’re sick, take care of yourself and let the chips fall.  Do everything you can to put yourself first because if you’re well, it will help your relationships. Eventually they’ll see the light and if they don’t, you have a whole other issue on your hands.
• We teach people how to treat us.
• The skills listen, learn and love sound really simple.  We all think we listen well, learn is a fun one and love.  I broke these down into practical steps.  I’ll give you one for each of them.
• Listen:  Most people would say they listen, but we have to think about how we listen.  When you’re listening, pause and pay attention to what is being said both verbally and non-verbally versus working on what you want to say either in rebuttle or response.  People are often unaware that they’re not listening until they take time and go “What is this person really saying?”  not “What do I want to say back?”
• Learn:  It’s really about learning the below-the-surface things about people.  What is it that you can learn about them?
• Love:  Loving well means that we’re willing to love sacrificially.  We’re willing to have a big picture.  If I change, I will get better and that will help them long-term but a lot of times we don’t have the big picture for the moment-to-moment of daily life.
• Try to validate and clarify when somebody shares something with you.  Sometimes we miss the moment to let them feel really heard.  It is uncomfortable to feel sad that you hurt them but if we can live in that moment.
• It’s okay to be uncomfortable in relationships.

Resources Mentioned:

Susie’s website

Book – Listen, Learn, Love:  How to Dramatically Improve Your Relationships in 30 Days or Less!

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Perlmutter is an amazing doctor and a pioneer in his field. He’s a Board-Certified Neurologist and Fellow of the American College of Nutrition. He’s the author of many books, including Grain Brain – The Surprising Truth About Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar – Your Brain’s Silent Killers, and his latest book is Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain – For Life!

Main Questions Asked:

• Can we do anything to keep our brain healthy?
• Will they ever consider the bacteria inside us another organ?
• What treatment do you recommend after a course of antibiotics?
• Besides LPS testing what other tests do you recommend to assess gut health and leaky gut?
• What are your big tips for us?

Key Points made by Dr. Perlmutter:

• In neurology there have been no meaningful treatments for autism, Alzheimer’s – until now.
• Gut health has a huge role on the brain health.
• We have 3 pounds of bacteria in our gut and they help our immune system, our nervous system, our hormones, and so much more.
• Changing the destiny of your brain happens mainly through changing your diet.
• For the first time we are considering the Microbiome – the bacteria that live in us and on us – as a vital organ.
• In Ontario they are now doing research on autism and how the chemicals created in the gut by gut bacteria affect a child’s brain.
• In Arizona they are doing research on treating autism using fecal microbial transplants.
• We are dramatically overusing antibiotics in North America. Always ask yourself if you really need to take antibiotics or not.
• Broad spectrum antibiotics are like a weapon of mass destruction to the intestinal bacteria.
• You should take a broad spectrum probiotic during your course of antibiotics, and continue taking it for a few weeks after your round of antibiotics is finished.
• Fermented foods and probiotic foods are teaming with good, healthy bacteria for brain health.
• Prebiotic foods have high levels of nutrients to feed the probiotics in the gut.
• Your dinner table should contain both probiotic foods and prebiotic foods.
• Bad bacteria creates inflammation in the intestines, which then causes leaky gut, which causes more inflammation in the body, and this fuels degenerative disease like cancer, autoimmune disease, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes.
• Leaky gut can be measured with an LPS test (lipopolysaccharide testing). When LPS levels are high it indicates you have a leaky gut and bacteria products are in your bloodstream and creating inflammation and damage – including damage to your brain.
• High levels of LPS is implicated in Alzheimer’s, autism, ALS, and even major depressive disorder.
• Depression may be caused by a leaky gut! The way to keep serotonin levels in balance is to keep your gut health in check as 90%+ of the serotonin in your body is manufactured in your gut.
• You are at high risk of having leaky gut: if you were born by c-section; if you’ve taken an antibiotics once every 2-3 years; if you are more than 20 pounds overweight; if you have diabetes (type 1 or 2); if you have food sensitivities; if you have celiac disease; if you have an autoimmune disease; if you have chronic diarrhea; if you have IBS.
• If you’ve had your tonsils out as a child, or tubes in your ears, you’ve likely already been bombarded by antibiotics and now have leaky gut and bacteria imbalances which predispose you to potential future brain problems.
• Research is being done on Type 2 Diabetes with fecal microbial transplants and finding that after transplant the gut bacteria are reprogrammed and the diabetes gets cured.
• Keep an open mind about brain health. Answers are out there and we are learning so much nowe about the brain-gut connection. Educate yourself as much as you can.
• Stop eating carbs and sugar. Stop eating artificial sweeteners.
• Eat more fermented foods – cultured yogurt, kimchi, kombucha.
• Eat more healthy fat – it’s your friend!

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar–Your Brain’s Silent Killers

Book – Brain Maker: The Power of Gut Microbes to Heal and Protect Your Brain–for Life

Dr. Perlmutter’s website

Video – Explaining fecal transplants

Dr. Permutter’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Ruscio is a naturopathic doctor and expert in Functional Medicine. In addition to being in private practice, he also researches and lectures nationally to doctors and students. Dr. Ruscio is also currently writing a book on Hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s. He is a leader in the functional medicine movement to focus on treating the cause of disease rather than medicating symptoms.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did you get into functional medicine?
• What is SIBO exactly?

• What are some of the signs and symptoms of SIBO?
• What are the real ‘red flags’ that make you think your patient has SIBO?
• How do we test for SIBO?
• What are the treatment options for SIBO?
• Where does SIBO come from in the first place? What is the root cause?

Key Points made by Dr. Ruscio:

• SIBO stands for Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth.
• SIBO symptoms are very similar to IBS (irritable bowel syndrome): gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, or abdominal pain.
• Non digestive symptoms include: fatigue, joint pain, or depression.
• There should be no bacteria in the small intestine. SIBO can cause damage to the intestinal lining similar to celiac disease or full blown gluten allergy.
• My ‘red flags’ for SIBO are: digestive upsets, skin conditions, headaches, fatigue, rheumatoid arthritis.
• Basically if you’ve changed your diet and still have symptoms then it’s time to get checked for SIBO.
• If you feel worse after taking probiotics this is another ‘red flag’ that you may have SIBO.
• Rosacea, fibromyalgia, restless leg syndrome, painful periods, high cholesterol, obesity can all be caused by SIBO.
• SIBO testing is done by a hydrogen breath test. You drink a solution and then collect breath samples over 2-3 hours. If too much hydrogen or methane (or both) are found then you have SIBO.
• Testing can be done at home with a convenient test kit.
• Benefits of testing: you know if you have SIBO or not; and we know how easy or difficult it is to fix!
• Mild cases of SIBO usually take one round of treatment to clear.
• Moderate cases of SIBO take 2-3 rounds of treatment.
• Severe cases of SIBO can take more than three rounds of treatment to clear.
• Treatments to kill off or starve the bacteria include: herbal antimicrobials like oregano, grapefruit seed extract, and berberine; pharmaceutical antibiotics (Rifaximin and Neomycin); or a liquid diet called the Elemental Diet.
• Once you’re done with treatments it’s important to retest to make sure the SIBO is actually gone (even if you’re feeling great!) or the SIBO will grow back.
• The root causes of SIBO include medications (like painkillers and acid blocking medications), and impaired motility/movement in the small intestine causing the area to go stagnant and breed bacterial overgrowth.
• Once people clear SIBO it’s really important to prevent the SIBO from growing back. Dr. Ruscio will be doing a formal research study on this so if you’re interesting in being in his study contact his office directly.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Ruscio’s website

Dr. Ruscio’s podcast

Dr. Ruscio’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Ellen has been involved in Natural Medicine since 1964. Ellen is a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild and is a board certified holistic nurse. She’s written many books, and is a TV and radio host.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is some of the research about where arthritis comes from?
• Can you explain what stealth pathogens are?
• What are some of the herbs that can be used to help with inflammation?

Key Points Made By Ellen:

• Over the years, I’ve seen many patients no longer have arthritis.
• When we talk about the word “cure” what we mean is the reversal of all symptoms, no longer have the pain, or if disfigured, a discontinuation of further breakdown in the joint structure. Also, the reversal of blood indicators.
• There is a vast amount of knowledge available in mainstream medical publications on where arthritis comes from, like the Journal of Rheumatology.
• Things that cause inflammation in the body are linked directly to leaky gut.
• If you want to reverse a disease, you have to take responsibility for the causes.
• Very often toxins are in the food you eat. If you’re not eating organic and are eating your food allergens, these can trigger a response.
• Are you eating packaged foods? If there are words there you cannot pronounce or sound like chemicals, they probably are.
• The first step is a cleansing diet. For those who don’t want to do that, perhaps their physician and medication is the right route for them.
• People who want to use natural remedies have to take responsibility for what they put into their mouths and what they do with their body like exercise and movement.
• Stress reduction is helpful and effective like mind-body work, massages, and rubbing a tennis ball on the bottom of your foot.
• Take active action in your life.
• Some herbs to use to clean toxins out of liver are milk thistle, dandelion and burdock root.
• Stealth pathogens are microorganisms that can encase themselves and hide such as lyme disease. They are able to hide from the immune system by covering up the white blood cell receptors that would normally indicate that there’s an invader and should be destroyed.
• Another problem that causes things like autoimmune disease is the overuse of antibiotics. This causes the development of resistant strains.
• Some natural remedies such as berberine actually downregulates the pump and does not allow the microorganisms to use it and that’s why it’s an excellent natural antibiotic which doesn’t cause anti-resistant strains.
• Either you change your lifestyle and the initiating factors or the disease will continue to advance.
• When looking at non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to bring down the pain of arthritis, the problem is they actually increase leaky gut syndrome and in that way they make the disease process worse and not better!
• One of many great herbs to use is curcumin. It’s well-proven to have anti-microbial, anti-carcinogenic and anti-inflammatory effects.  It’s sort of like the wonder herb.  If combined with piperine (from black pepper) you get a much better absorption.
• Other herbs to help with the inflammation of arthritis are boswellia, white willow bark, external topical agents such as ginger compresses.
• For autoimmune types of arthritis, the best combo is rehmannia, rosemary or rosmarinic acid, and cordyceps. These all help deactivate the autoimmune response.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Alternative Medicine Definitive Guide to Arthritis: Reverse Underlying Causes of Arthritis with Clinically Proven Alternative Therapies

Ellen’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Jonathan is an internationally recognized wellness expert who specializes in using modern science and technology to simplify health. He has collaborated with top scientists for more than 10 years to analyze and apply over 1,300 studies. His work has been endorsed by top doctors and scientists from Harvard Medical School, Johns’ Hopkins, The Mayo Clinic, The Cleveland Clinic, and UCLA.

Main Questions Asked:

• What if everything we were taught about eating, exercise, weight loss, and health was wrong?
• Can you explain why our current model of weight loss is totally wrong? Should actually we be eating more and exercising less?
• What are the three devastating dieting myths that have finally been replaced by science & clinical research?
• What are six simple steps we can take now to start dropping extra pounds immediately & permanently?

Key Points made by Jonathan:

• The harder we’ve tried, the fatter and sicker we’ve become. A long time ago, nobody knew what a gym was, didn’t count calories and so on, yet they were healthy.
• The USDA basically says to eat less and exercise more to lose weight. That’s like telling someone who’s depressed to frown less and smile more.
• Science says we absolutely need to heal our bodies. We need to provide it with an abundance of material so it can repair itself.
• With exercise, we should be doing a deliberate amount of deliberate exercise.
• More is not better.
• Eating healthy cannot be hard. If it were, we’d have died off a long time ago.  It doesn’t require calorie counting or a PhD.
• What healthy means to me: How did people eat prior to the obesity and diabetes epidemic?  How do cultures eat that don’t have obesity and diabetes?
• Instead of plant vs. animal and high calorie vs. low calorie, how about high essential nutrition vs. low nutrition?
• Diet Myth: Calorie counting is required to lose weight.
• Calories were introduced in 1825 and most people, even in 1950, did not know what it was. Animals cannot count calories.  The body is designed to balance us out automatically.
• Diet Myth: A calorie is a calorie.
• Calories are not all the same in terms of what they do to your body or the nutrition it brings. They vary in how they fill you up, how they’re used in the body, the hormonal responses they trigger and the essential nutrients they provide you.
• Diet Myth: Calories are all that matters.
• Of course you will lose weight on 1200 calories per day but the issue is keeping the weight off. That’s not sustainable.  What matters is what calories do.
• Shift away from the starvation mindset. Starvation doesn’t work – it’s not healthy and cannot heal your body.
• Replace it with the idea of eating an abundance of healthy SANE food. Up your intake of non-starchy vegetables like green leafy veggies – everyday.

• Trade exercise for sleep.  Sleep more!

Resources Mentioned:

Book – The Calorie Myth: How to Eat More, Exercise Less, Lose Weight, and Live Better

Jonathan’s website

Jonathan’s podcast

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Ronsley is the host of Australia’s #1 food podcast Bond Appetit which focuses on two main areas: uniting entrepreneurs through food and fixing their relationships with food. He’s been cooking for over 19 years.  He’s started and runs his own fresh food restaurant specializing in uniquely flavored food and also working in a big kitchen as part of a brigade of chefs.  Ronsley has a Master’s Degree in Software Engineering and an MBA in Psychology and Leadership.

Main Questions Asked: 

• How did you go from a Master’s Degree in Software Engineering and an MBA in Psychology and Leadership to owning a restaurant and being a chef?
• How do your degrees in software engineering and psychology help you with being a chef?
• What would you say are 5 small actions to help us get unstuck regarding food and nutrition?
• Some patients get sick of drinking water. Can you put something in water to give it some flavor?
• For those of us who cannot afford a personal chef like you just yet, what would you say are 5 small actions that all of us could start doing today to help get us unstuck when it comes to food and nutrition?

Key Points made by Ronsley:

• Tip #1: Drink lots of water.  Increasing your water intake is a massive benefit.  It helps with sugar and fat cravings.
• Your brain doesn’t know the difference if you’re hungry or thirsty so go for water first.
• Flavoring should NOT be added to your water. If you need to add flavor to your water squeeze a lime into it, but don’t use artificially flavored water.
• Tip #2: Eat fresh food, real food.
• Go to farmer’s markets, the butcher shop, the fishmonger’s, etc. Support your local providers.
• Most people are so used to processed food that the gut bacteria crave it. Break the cycle!  Persevere for a couple of weeks eating only real food to let your taste buds and other senses adjust.
• Tip #3: Plan your meals.  We plan our day, our businesses and our holidays so they turn out well.  We should be planning our food in the same way.
• You can batch cook and put multiple dinners together in 30-60 minutes.
• Use tools like food processors to do most of the work for you.
• Do your salad and veggie prep at the beginning of the week.
• Tip #4: Do NOT eat in front of the TV.  We’ve lost the idea of sitting around the table and sharing a meal with loved ones.
• We think we’re getting more done by eating at the computer but our body doesn’t know what to do, if it should get in digestion mode or not.
• When we’re at the table and talking, our body gets into food and digestion mode. And, rates of depression don’t exist if you share one meal a day with your family. (True story!)
• Just eat and don’t do anything else.
• Tip #5: If you go to the supermarket do not believe in the labels.  It’s just pure marketing.  If you really want to know what’s in the box, read the list of ingredients.  If you cannot pronounce it or don’t know what it is, put it back.

Resources Mentioned:

Ronsley’s website

Ronsley’s podcast

Ronsley’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Brandon is the host of the Zen Dude Fitness podcast show and author of “Zen Dude Fitness: A Simple and Fun Guide to Looking Great Naked, Finding Inner Peace and Living the Good Life”.  With a background as a professional fitness model, holistic body hacker and serial entrepreneur, he’s certainly got some amazing tips to share.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is Zen Dude all about and who is it for?
• What inspired you to write this book?
• You talk about the four pillars of fitness. What are they?
• What is the one big take-away you can give our listeners?

Main Points Made by Brandon:

• Make the process of eating healthier and performing at higher levels a game.
• The four pillars of fitness are: spiritual, physical, emotional, and mental.
• Most people start with physical training then move into wondering what else is possible. What role does my mind play in this health/fitness game?  Hey, I also want to be happy.  This all gives a framework for the all-encompassing spiritual side which allows you to connect to something greater than yourself.
• A commonality of successful people is the spiritual element.
• Once you get the body feeling and performing better, you can dive into the other pillars.
• Emotional fitness can be built up deliberately by conditioning you to use happiness; for the mind, have more “a-ha!”moments and creativity. The spiritual aspect ties it all together.
• Body Mind Spirit = Life is in Balance
• A perfect body in itself is NOT what will make you happy. It’s how your body feels when it looks like that brings happiness.
• Training the body and mind holistically is really what brings consistent happiness and consistent fulfillment.
• We get fulfillment by creating a blueprint in our mind of what we want. Be crystal clear on what this blueprint looks like.
• Take action!
• Make a list of things you admire about yourself and start to fall unconditionally in love with yourself!

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Zen Dude Fitness:  A Simple and Fun Guide to Looking Great Naked, Finding Inner Peace and Living the Good Life

Brandon’s website

Brandon’s podcast

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Nedd is a practicing medical doctor and is the creator of The Stress Survival Kit and author of “The Time to Be Happy is Now” and “Power Over Stress” which is used at New York University.  He gives practical techniques to help you get your happy back and master the stress in your life. He is the president of the International Stress Control Center, a contributor to CBC, has a TV show and a radio show called 1 minute with Dr. Ken Nedd.

Main Questions Asked:

• Why is happiness important?
• Does happiness help with our health in any way?
• What are things people can do to help with their decision to be happy?  How do you really get into it?

Main Points Made by Dr. Nedd:

• Longevity is linked to 3 factors:  conscience passion, activity/exercise/movement, emotional competence which includes happiness.
• The single factor which determines how long you’ll live is how happy you are.
• Make the decision to be happy.  It’s the equivalent of doing 15 minutes on a stationary bike!
• Despite what’s going on in your life, if today you decide to adopt the body language, thoughts, etc to be happy, you will raise your levels of IgA (helps to fight disease) and IgM (immune system chemicals).
• People who have been diagnosed with cancer and decide that they’re going to be happy anyways, lived longer than those who did not.
• Happiness has physiological consequences.  You risk dying when you have unhappy thoughts.
• One friend that’s happy has enormous value to you.
• Happiness can increase your wealth and performance.
• Become a Giver in your relationships and at work, just serve others.
• Money can buy happiness – when you share it with other people.  Giving turns money into joy.
• Relax!  Take a deep breath through your nose.
• Relaxation is not what you do – it’s what you allow to happen.
• Be GREAT!  G – Give, R – Relax, E – have Empathy, A – Act the part of a happy person, T – be Thankful/grateful.  These are all important to happiness.
• By changing the outer actions of our body, we change the inner workings of our mind.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Ken’s Book – The Time to Be Happy is Now

Dr. Ken’s Book – Power Over Stress

Dr. Ken’s Stress Survival Kit

Dr. Ken’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Marla is a Board Certified Clinical Nutritionist, a Board Certified Nutrition Specialist and a Licensed Dietician Nutritionist who specializes in helping people make diet and lifestyle changes to help improve their health and vitality as well as inflammatory conditions, high blood pressure, digestive problems and fibromyalgia to name just a few.

Main Questions Asked:

• Why is it that you’re so interested in detoxification?
• Did you have any health challenges that detoxification helped you with?
• What exactly is detoxification?
• Why is Round-Up sprayed on wheat and what are the consequences?
• Which foods should we buy organic?
• What signs and symptoms might a person have that may indicate they need a detox?
• What is a good detox? How long should we detox?
• Is it normal to feel ‘bad’ during a detox?
• What can we start doing every day to help us detox better?

Key Points made by Marla:

• The daily bombardment of chemicals and pollutants means that everyone has something to detoxify.
• Gluten, processed food, corn and the like have many pitfalls and should be avoided.
• Round-Up Ready Wheat is bad for our gut health and we should avoid this and genetically-modified foods.
• Glyphosate is the pesticide in Round-Up and acts as an antibiotic so it removes the probiotics from our soil and impacts our gut health.
• If you’re juicing pesticide-laden produce, the pesticides are going straight to your gut and bloodstream.
• Strawberries are sprayed with bromide – a flame retardant – and always should be eaten organic because the bromide interferes with iodine and thyroid health.
• Apples and pears are also highly sprayed with pesticides.
• Greens like kale, spinach and cabbage are also high in pesticides and if you’re juicing them they should always be organic.
• Corn is often genetically modified, and can cause inflammation, high blood sugar, and leaky gut.
• The Dirty Dozen Foods = the fruits and veggies we should absolutely buy organic because they have the highest amounts of pesticides.
• The Clean Fifteen Foods = the fruits and veggies we don’t have to buy organic because they have the lowest amounts of pesticides.
• Migraines, headaches, allergies, fibromyalgia, aches and pains, chemical sensitivities, chronic fatigue, digestive problems, including Crohn’s disease, menstruation disorders, menopausal symptoms are some conditions that shout you need to do a detox ASAP.
• Signs and symptoms indicating that kids need a detox: anger issues, irritability, behavioral differences, poor concentration, poor focus and sleep issues.
• Cleanse = dietary modifications like removing harmful foods from your diet and adding in things like juicing.
• Detoxing = the biochemical process that happens primarily in your liver and kidneys to break down chemicals. There are many different pathways for chemicals to get broken down in your liver, and you can have genetic difficulties in certain pathways and are considered ‘poor detoxifiers’.
• 14-28 days is a good amount of time to detox.
• Feeling bad during a detox is common. This can be because some of the toxins are getting reabsorbed. Drinking lots of water helps this, as does having daily bowel movements.
• Some things you can start doing today: Drink more water, eat healthier foods, stop using dryer sheets, stop using so many chemicals on your body, drink green tea, and use an antioxidant supplement every day.
• Great antioxidants include N-acetyl-cysteine, vitamin E, Vitamin C, vitamin A, glutathione, and zinc.

Resources Mentioned:

Environmental Working Group

Marla’s website

Marla’s private practice

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Tracey is the author of “Master Your Sleep: Proven Methods Simplified”. She’s a psychiatrist who helps women jump off the hamster wheel and manage life so they can actually enjoy it! As a working mom herself, Dr. Tracey noticed that her patients and friends were seeking solutions to help them avoid burnout.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is burnout? How is it formally diagnosed?
• How does sleep relate to burnout?
• What are the different stimulants that people use and why are they so bad?
• What can we do to get more sleep?
• And for those quitting coffee, what are things they can do starting now?
• What are binaural beats?  How can they help us relax and sleep better?
• What about using meditation for relaxation?

Key Points made by Dr. Tracey:

• Fatigue is a huge factor in burnout, and is usually the first symptom of burnout.
• There is a lot of overlap between burnout and depression.
• The physical part of burnout is feeling exhausted and maybe getting a cold.  The mental part can be a lack of enthusiasm for things you enjoy.
• Giving, giving, giving and giving more with no reward seen plays a part in burnout.
• It’s very important to recognize the work and deeds of others.
• Moms do double-duty by working all day then putting in a second shift at home often to the detriment of their sleep.
• Sleep is extremely important and should even be prepared for.
• Chronic sleep-deprivation leads to increased cortisol levels which then has a negative domino effect on the body.
• Nobody should be at peak form at 10:00pm due to stimulants if they have started their day at 6:00am.
• Use of stimulants for focus and energy is not always a good thing.
• A regular bedtime is critical to getting great sleep.
• To prepare the mind for sleep, no electronics or doing tasks like paying bills should be done one hour or less before going to bed.
• Taking 10 to 15 minute breaks to reboot your mind during the day can help you be more efficient and get better sleep at night.
• Aromatherapy is one way to decompress from your day.
• Binaural beats or tones relax and calm the mind with music. It can be listened to during the day for a break or at night to prepare for sleep.
• Meditation helps you to be present in the moment which helps you experience more and helps you be calmer and more focused.

Resources Mentioned:

Book – Master Your Sleep: Proven Methods Simplified

Dr. Tracey’s website

Dr. Tracey’s podcast

Dr. Tracey’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Heather is the host of Fresh Eats Radio. She is also creator of Fresh Eats Seasonal Detoxes and A Loving Approach to Stubborn Weight Loss. She helps busy moms, wives, and entrepreneurs get rid of overwhelm when trying to eat healthy – like dealing with picky eaters, or fitting real foods into a busy schedule.

Main Questions Asked:

• Why is it so difficult for us to change our diets?
• How do we get over self sabotage when it comes to our diet?
• How can people get out of perfectionism and move forward with their diet?
• What do cravings mean? How do we get over them?
• What should people do when they don’t want to throw out all the unhealthy foods?
• How do we deal with picky eaters or other family members who don’t want to follow our new eating habits?
• How do people deal with fear of attention that often comes with weight loss?

Key Points made by Heather:

• Self sabotage can be a sign of perfectionism, such as “I’ll make over my whole pantry first before I get started”.
• It can also be a sign of fear of failure.
• With picky eaters it’s easy to pass the blame onto others when it’s us that really needs to take action.
• Self sabotage can also be a fear of success, such as “what will happen if this new diet works and I actually start feeling better?”
• Perfectionism can be a sign of a deep rooted fear of failure, and people use perfectionism to protect themselves.
• Get real with yourself and ask yourself “Why do I want this (food) when I know it’s not healthy for me and it contains all kinds of harmful ingredients?” or “Why am I craving this (food) – what am craving in my life?”
• Consider cravings as signals that your body is craving more out of life.
• Sweet cravings often mean a craving for self-love, nurturing, time off, relaxation, self-pampering.
• Craving crunchy/salty foods is often an expression of frustration, anger, or stress that needs to be dealt with.
• When we deal with the deeper issues the cravings will go away.
• Craving fatty foods/dairy/cheese if often a need for more nurturing, but could also be a signal that you need more healthy fats in your diet.
• Excuses are another way we sabotage ourselves, such as “Stop eating dairy? But I just bought a case of yogurt at Costco yesterday and I don’t want to waste it”.
• Change is scary. Honor that fear and move beyond it.
• Ask yourself “What if I keep these unhealthy foods in my pantry instead of getting rid of it?”
• Sometimes it can just be a feeling of a loss of control that stops you from changing your diet.
• Nobody likes the feeling of being told what to do and not having control – even with their diets. People tend to rebel against diet changes.
• Change is ‘easier’ when there’s some buy-in. Have a conversation with your family members and let them know why you want to improve your health and their health. Tell them you expect them to at least try the new meals and new foods.
• When it comes to weight loss there’s often an underlying fear of attention that comes with the weight loss. “I don’t deserve it” or “I’m not good enough” are common themes that underlie this fear.

Resources Mentioned:

Heather’s Tips for Healthy Eating

Heather’s website

Heather’s podcast: Fresh Eats Radio

Heather’s Fat Pants Files

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Brad is known internationally for his creative and often humorous use of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Brad is the author of the best-selling children’s book “The Wizard’s Wish,” the co-author of the best-seller “Freedom at Your Fingertips,” and a featured expert in the film “The Tapping Solution”. He has also been a presenter at a number of events, including Jack Canfield’s Breakthrough to Success, has done teleseminars with “The Secret” stars Bob Doyle and Dr. Joe Vitale, and has been heard internationally on a number of internet radio talk shows.  Brad also has well over 500 videos on YouTube, and is a contributing expert on the Huffington Post.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)?
• How can EFT help people make better choices and achieve better results with their health?
• Can you explain how these techniques can help people beat cravings, such as the impulse to overeat?
• Is this something anyone can learn?
• Can you lead us through an EFT session right now?
• Can people learn EFT online or is personal training required?

Key Points made by Brad:

• Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is also known as ‘tapping’. You tap on key acupuncture points on the hands, face, and torso to create balanced energy within your body and release stress from the body.
• Emotional freedom is the freedom to make better choices for our emotional and physical well being.
• After doing EFT tapping he lost his interest in eating sweets and chocolate for years.
• Anyone can learn EFT – even children.
• Research has proven that EFT works by dramatically reducing cortisol levels in the body and creating more of a relaxed and calm state.
• Brad leads us through an EFT session to help lower our stress and teaches us the points to tap on.
• EFT can be done safely by most people, but some will need help and extra guidance by an EFT professional – especially if they are tackling bigger emotional traumas.
• EFT can be used for physical and emotional health, but it can also help with your career, finances, success, relationships, goal setting, etc.

Resources Mentioned:

Brad’s website

Brad’s videos

Book – Freedom at Your Fingertips

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Kate is a renowned expert in the field of naturopathic medicine. She is THE leading authority on vitamin K2 and author of the book “Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life”.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can calcium be harmful for us?
• What is the Calcium Paradox?
• What does K2 do in the body?
• If vitamin K2 is so important how was it overlooked for so long?
• Is your book only for people who take calcium supplements?
• What are the symptoms of K2 deficiency?
• Do we have to worry about getting too much K2?
• Is there a test to measure our K2 levels?
• What health conditions can K2 help?
• What should listeners look for in vitamin K2 supplements?
• Can K2 help brain health?
• Can K2 help kidney disease?
• Can K2 help fertility?

Key Points made by Dr. Kate:

• The calcium paradox is even though calcium is good for us it’s not good if the calcium ends up in your kidneys or in your arteries or other soft tissues where it shouldn’t be.
• Vitamin K2 helps direct calcium to where it’s supposed to go, and even helps remove calcium for where it shouldn’t be.
• We need calcium but we need it in the right places.
• K2 activates certain proteins to help guide calcium into your bones and teeth, and help bind calcium and remove it from tissues where it shouldn’t be.
• K2 also helps with cancer prevention and protection, and helps insulin sensitivity in diabetics.
• Vitamin K1 is not the same as K2.
• K1 is found in green leafy vegetables and affects our blood clotting.
• K2 is not found in green leafy vegetables and does not affect blood clotting. It’s very often overlooked and mistaken with K1.
• Deficiencies of K2 are very common.
• K2 is a fat soluble vitamin and best found in grass fed animal products – grass fed egg yolk, grass fed meat and butter.
• K2 can be found in certain fermented foods because of the bacteria, like Gouda and Brie cheese.
• Vegans and vegetarians can get their K2 from natto – a Japanese fermented soybean food.
• The job of vitamin D is to help calcium get absorbed into your bloodstream from the foods you eat, and the job of K2 is to direct the calcium from your blood and into your teeth and bones.
• Studies show that people who take calcium supplements have a far greater risk of heart attacks and strokes because the calcium builds up in the arteries.
• If you take calcium and/or vitamin D supplements you should also take K2 supplements.
• Symptoms of K2 deficiency don’t usually manifest until it’s very advanced, like osteoporosis and atherosclerosis.
• Other signs of K2 deficiency you may notice include excess tartar build up on your teeth; facial wrinkling; and varicose veins.
• Studies show that K2 deficiency is quite widespread.
• K2 is quite non-toxic and will not build up in the body like other fat soluble vitamins can.
• There is no test outside of the research setting for K2, but because K2 deficiency is so widespread and K2 is non-toxic you’re safe to increase your dietary intake or take a supplement.
• K2 can help kidney stones, osteoporosis, osteopenia, atherosclerosis, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer (especially prostate and lung cancer).
• When it comes to buying supplements make sure you’re getting K2 and NOT K1 – look at the fine print on the ingredients label.
• There are 2 different types of K2 – MK4 and MK7. They both work but they need to be taken at very different dosages. If the label does not indicate the specific form of K2 then don’t buy it.
• MK7 dosage is 120-180 mcg (this is the one usually available in Canada).
• MK4 dosage is 1,500-3,000 mcg.
• K2 can be very helpful for brain health. It seems to prevent the damage associated with loss of blood flow, like from a stroke or ultramini-strokes.
• K2 can help for overall kidney health and for patients on dialysis. It can also help prevent kidney stones.
• K2 can help fertility and can boost testosterone levels in men.

Resources Mentioned:
Dr. Kate’s book – Vitamin K2 and the Calcium Paradox: How a Little-Known Vitamin Could Save Your Life
Dr. Kate’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Jennifer is the host of the Health and Happiness Movement – a FREE 28 day online series that will focus on the whole body approach to Health and Happiness. Jennifer is bringing together speakers from around the world to talk about how vital our physical, emotional, relational, professional and spiritual wholeness are to health and happiness.

Main Questions Asked:

• What inspired you to bring the Health & Happiness Movement into being?
• What kinds of resistance to change did you notice along your journey?
• What are some pearls of wisdom that you learned from the experts you interviewed?
• What speakers do you have involved in the Health & Happiness Movement?
• What is next for you?

Key Points made by Jennifer:

• After realizing she had lifelong depression and the different causes for why she was unhappy she was inspired to bring the Health & Happiness Movement to the masses.
• Along with depression Jennifer also suffered from chronic pain and fibromyalgia.
• She made a simple mind shift and within two days she was totally fine and pain free.
• There were many times along her journey that she felt self-doubt and resistance to change.
• Being outside of your comfort zone is scary, but Jennifer overcame this by taking it step by step.
• We have three intelligence centers – our gut, our heart, and our head.
• She also learned that most people are often in a hypnotic state during many parts of our day. What we put in our mind impacts our health and happiness.
• Some of the guest experts for the Summit include medical doctors, naturopaths (including Dr. Carri), nutritionists, hypnotist, experts in NLP, marriage counselor/coach, professional business coach, addiction specialist, and many more experts.
• After this she will start the Health & Happiness Podcast and she’s also writing a book.

Resources Mentioned:

Website – Health & Happiness Movement

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Christianson is an Arizona-based Naturopathic Physician who helps people overcome adrenal and thyroid disorders and achieve lasting fat loss. He authored the New York Times bestselling books: “The Adrenal Reset Diet” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Thyroid Disease”. Dr. Christianson is the founding physician behind Integrative Health.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is the underlying cause of weight gain?
• What do you mean by ‘survival mode’?
• What are the most common internal stressors?
• How do we get ourselves out of survival mode?
• What is the diet you recommend to help keep the cortisol rhythm intact?
• What are some symptoms if we’ve eaten too many carbs?
• What are some symptoms of we need to eat more carbs?
• What are other easy ways people can regain their adrenal rhythm?
• You explain the clinical trial on your diet in your book. Can you describe the results?
• How much do our genes control our body weight?
• What are three easy and actionable things we can start doing today to help our cortisol rhythm?

Key Points made by Dr. Christianson:

• The body has a capacity to prepare for danger. This ‘survival mode’ causes us to store more weight more easily.
• Survival mode causes more fat to be stored around our organs to prepare us just in case we go through a period of food shortage.
• There are many invisible triggers for survival mode – artificial light, pollutants, processed foods, and how we schedule our lives.
• Pollutants (even sound pollution) and processed foods (including fructose and high fructose corn syrup) are the most common internal food stressors.
• Cortisol is the main stress hormone and it also manages blood sugar.
• The foods we eat have a big impact on our cortisol rhythm.
• Avoid wheat, dairy, eggs, processed foods, and sugar – this is nothing ‘new’.
• It’s what ‘to do’ that’s new – think of carbs as a tool. The timing of your carbs makes all the difference…have more of them later in the day…and less of them earlier in the day.
• A diet too high in carbs causes erratic blood sugar. These people are hungry all the time and never really full or satisfied.
• A diet too low in carbs causes insomnia or poor sleep.
• It’s best to eat carbs later in the day for better sleep.
• Diet alone can help adrenal rhythm, plus there are other adrenal strategies depending on the patients cortisol needs.
• There are three different patterns of cortisol imbalance – too high, too low, and backwards.
• The clinical trial for the 30 day diet showed it helped to correct all three patterns of cortisol imbalance.
• Research on identical twins proved weight has no genetic component.
• Start today: Take a deep breath. Belly breathing helps balance cortisol.
• Start today: Get bright light first thing in the morning. Go outside for half an hour within an hour of waking up, or use a light box that is 10,000 LUX or stronger. Bright light helps balance cortisol.
• Start today: Journaling. Get your emotions and thoughts down on a piece of paper and reflect on it. This can help balance cortisol.

Resources Mentioned:

Adrenal Quiz

Dr. Christianson’s website

Meditation vibration bracelet

Dr. C’s book – The Adrenal Reset Diet

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Dr. Junger was born in Uruguay. He graduated from medical school there in 1990 and moved to New York City for his postgraduate training. He completed three years of training in Internal Medicine at NYU Downtown Hospital and three more years of fellowship in Cardiovascular Diseases at Lenox Hill Hospital.

The drastic change in lifestyle and diet resulting from his move to New York City soon showed up as irritable bowel syndrome and depression. Becoming a patient of the system he was practicing was such a shock that it started his journey in search of an alternative solution to his health problems.

His findings are the subject of his first book “Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body’s Natural Ability to Heal Itself”, where Dr. Junger describes how he became aware of the toxicity of our planet. He also explains how detoxification and cleansing have been around for thousands of years, but the knowledge has been lost, and right now it’s more important than ever to reclaim this information. Most importantly, “Clean” is a manual for readers to learn how to turn on and work with their own detoxification systems to restore and maintain optimal health.

Main Questions Asked:

• Can you share your personal health journey?
• What is the ‘gut’?
• In your book ‘Clean Gut’ you talk about the root cause of disease. Can you tell us more about this?
• What are some of the most common toxins were exposed to from our food?
• Can you describe your Clean Gut Program?
• What are some success stories from the Clean Gut Program?
• Who should do a cleanse?
• Who should NOT do a cleanse?
• How often should we do a cleanse?

Key Points made by Dr. Junger:

• After moving to New York and working crazy hours during his medical training and eating ‘fast foods’ he slowly started to lose his health.
• He gained weight, started having allergies, and was diagnosed with depression and irritable bowel syndrome.
• It was through cleansing and detoxification that he was able to restore his health – and more!
• The gut includes: the intestinal tube; the intestinal wall; the nervous system within the intestines; the immune system within and around the intestines; and the intestinal bacteria. It’s very similar to the roots of a plant.
• Health and disease originate in the intestines.
• We’re putting a lot of things in our intestines – what we eat and drink – that nature never designed to be in the intestines. This is why humans have diseases that are not seen in any other animals on the planet.
• Leaky gut upsets the immune system and the nervous system and triggers the downfall towards chronic disease.
• If you take a bird’s eye view of a supermarket you’ll see that 90% of what is sold comes in a box or bag or wrapper.
• These things have chemicals/preservatives in them that keeps those ‘foods’ from rotting. These are similar to antibiotics because they kill the good bacteria in your gut.
• The Clean Gut Program is based on the 5 R’s.
• Remove = remove the things that shouldn’t be in your diet: toxins, chemicals, gluten, dairy, sugar, alcohol, coffee, grains and sugary fruit.
• Restore = restore the good nutrients we need.
• Reinoculate = reinoculating your gut with good bacteria.
• Repair = repair the wall of the intestines, or the leaky gut; L-glutamine can help this.
• Relaxation = relaxation is usually forgotten about and stress can destroy the functions of your body.
• Many problems have greatly improved or and completely resolved after cleaning up the gut, including autoimmune diseases.
• Detoxification programs and gut repair programs are contraindicated for patients on specific medications that need to be tightly controlled (such as the blood thinner Coumadin, antiepileptics, antisezure medications, insulin dependent diabetics), advanced cancer patients, and women that are pregnant or breastfeeding. Everybody else can benefit from a detoxification or gut repair program.
• For the general public it’s best to do a 21 day detox program once a year.

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Junger’s website

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Main Questions Asked:

• What is EMDR? How was EMDR developed?
• What does an EMDR session look like?
• Is there any research on EMDR? Is it a valid therapy?
• What can EMDR treat?
• How can we find an EMDR practitioner that’s properly trained?
• Can you give us a real world example of an EMDR case you’ve treated?
• Can EMDR be done over the internet?

Key Points made by Dr. DaLene:

• EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing – a psychotherapy technique that is simple looking but incredibly complex.
• EMDR was developed by Francine Shapiro after thinking of a traumatic memory, and noticing the patterns of how her eyes fluttered. She focused on the eye movements and the traumatic memory dissipated.
• EMDR really gets to the root cause of traumas and traumatic memories.
• Whether traumas are big or small EMDR can be very helpful.
• EMDR always starts with a thorough history so the clinician can figure out what memories need to be addressed.
• The patient sits across from the therapist, and the therapists helps guide the patient’s eye movements – the patient follows the therapist’s finger or a wand – while the patient remembers a specific memory.
• EMDR is one of the most researched treatments for trauma.
• The World Health Organization says EMDR is one of the best therapies for trauma memories.
• The eye movements cause a calming of the limbic system – the emotional center of the brain. This has been proven with SPECT scans of the brain.
• Research on EMDR can help bulimia – the study she’s done cured 50% of bulimics.
• EMDR is a validated therapy for PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder.
• It can also help anxiety disorders, addictions, and eating disorders.
• Dalene gives a real example of a case she treated in her private practice where the patient was sexually abused as a child. With EMDR she was able to fully recover.
• It is not recommended to do EMDR sessions over the internet or remotely until the patient is in a really good place mentally/emotionally. Tapping into deep difficult emotions needs to be done in person in case the patient needs extra one-on-one help.

Resources Mentioned:

Find a properly trained EMDR therapist– USA

Find a properly trained EMDR therapist – Canada

Dr. Dalene’s Private Practice (530) 245-9221

EMDR Training for Professionals

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Cathi is an internationally acclaimed expert in the ancient art of Feng Shui. She has 20+ years experience consulting and teaching and has worked with over 1,000 clients around the globe. Cathi’s work has helped clients increase revenue, reduce stress, resolve conflicts, build health and more. She is the host of the Feng Shui Mastery Show podcast.

Main Questions Asked:

• Where does Feng Shui come from and why is it popular now?
• Do people need to believe in this to work?
• How can Feng Shui influence our health? Does it affect both physical and mental health?
• How can we use Feng Shui? What are some tactics we can use for our home?
• Is there a specific area of our home that has to do with health?

Key Points made by Cathi:

• We live in a world of duality – yin and yang.
• There are five kinds of energy that exist in the world – water, wood, fire, metal and earth.
• These energies can be related to our health – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
• Feng Shui is where science meets art – where the invisible meets the visible – and a very individualized approach to energy healing.
• Feng Shui is one of the oldest forms of medicine in the world. You don’t need to ‘believe’ in Feng Shui for it to work.
• What you have in your environment is affecting you whether you know it or not.
• Clutter is not really a part of Feng Shui, but what you should think about is what is causing an obstacle in your life will impact your health.
• Clutter can be very draining to your energy, and to your health.
• Plants that are dying are a reflection of energy that is spiraling down and weakening your health.
• Surround yourself with pictures of nature that are elevating and inspiring. Make sure they contain all 5 elements – wood, fire (sun, orange flowers), water, metal (round shapes, metal objects) and earth (terracotta pots).
• Pictures of trees can help you feel stable, rooted, and suggest growth.
• Plants should always be healthy, not sickly or dying.
• Clocks should always be working and not stuck in time.
• In Feng Shui the east part of your home is linked with your health, but it’s much more complicated and involves your date of birth and other numbers.
• There are four locations specific to YOU based on your birth date and time that affects your health. The same can be said about your success and wealth.
• You must not have any electrical appliances where you sleep. Even a TV that’s off is still generating an electrical charge that impacts your health and healing.
• Space clearing is another way of moving energy and cleansing the energy.

Resources Mentioned:

Cathi’s Website

Cathi’s email: wealthyspaces@gmail.com

Cathi’s YouTube Videos

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Dr. Jill received her medical degree from Loyola University School of Medicine in Chicago and her Bachelor of Science degree in Bio-Engineering at the University of Illinois. She is board-certified in Family Medicine and Integrative Holistic Medicine. In 2006 Dr. Jill was voted by faculty to receive the Resident Teacher of the Year award and elected to Central Illinois 40 Leaders Under 40. In 2010, she founded Flatiron Functional Medicine in Boulder, Colorado where she practices functional medicine.

Dr. Jill is also a 10-year survivor of breast cancer and Crohn’s disease and passionate about teaching patients how to “live well” and thrive in the midst of complex and chronic illness. She is also committed to teaching other doctors how to address the underlying cause of illness rather than just treating symptoms through the principles of functional medicine.

Main Questions Asked:

• How did you get involved in Functional Medicine?
• How does autoimmune disease relate to our intestinal health?
• How do the bacteria that live in us and on us influence our health?
• What is leaky gut? What causes leaky gut?
• How do I know if I have SIBO?
• How do I get tested for SIBO?
• How do I get tested for yeast overgrowth?
• How do I get tested for leaky gut?
• How do we heal a leaky gut?
• How do we maintain healthy intestinal bacteria?

Key Points made by Dr. Jill:

• It was through her personal health journey with breast cancer and Crohn’s disease that Dr. Jill got involved with Functional Medicine.
• Autoimmune basically means your body starts to think of itself as dangerous and starts attacking itself.
• Crohn’s disease is when the body attacks the lining of the digestive tract, basically causing ulcers though the entire digestive tract.
• Autoimmune disease always starts along the gut lining. This is because 80% of our immune system is here.
• The bacteria in our gut, whether they’re healthy or not, will determine our health.
• There are always three pieces to any and all autoimmune diseases: 1. Genetic predisposition; 2. Environmental triggers (like toxins, stress, gluten, infections, etc); and 3. Leaky gut (aka: intestinal permeability).
• Everyone with an autoimmune disease should stop eating gluten and whatever other foods they have food sensitivities to.
• The most common food sensitivities are dairy, sugar, corn, soy, alcohol, and yeast.
• Zonulin is a little trap door between every cell that lines the intestines, and if this trap door stays open then the microbes in the intestines and the food in the intestines leaks into the bloodstream directly. This is what ‘leaky gut’ is.
• Zonulin is directly triggered by gluten – whether you have gluten sensitivity or not.
• Bacteria wear a coating called LPS which is a big trigger for autoimmunity and inflammation.
• A big part of healing autoimmune disease is to assess and heal the gut first.
• Gas, bloating, and constipation and/or diarrhea are not normal, and are common signs of SIBO – Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth.
• The majority of bacteria should live in the colon – not the small intestine.
• The toxins that are created from SIBO can cause fatigue, brain fog,
• Yeast overgrowth is another common cause of leaky gut.
• Common symptoms of yeast overgrowth include rashes, psoriasis, craving sweets, bloating, diarrhea, and for women these symptoms are worse around their period.
• An Organic Acids urine test can show markers of bacterial and yeast overgrowth in the intestines.
• Stool testing can also be helpful to determine bacterial and yeast infections, as well as parasite infections.
• The ‘poor man’s test’ for SIBO would be to try FODMAPs foods – for 24 hours eat the foods highest in FODMAPs and if you feel worse and have terrible abdominal symptoms there’s a pretty good likelihood you have SIBO and/or yeast overgrowth.
• Other signs of leaky gut include: rosacea; chronic unexplained iron deficiency; B12 deficiency; multiple food allergies; worsening environmental allergies; weak peeling cracking fingernails; eczema; and psoriasis.
• Healing a leaky gut first begins with identifying what the problems are – not just throwing probiotics at it.
• The first place to start is with diet – Paleo Diet is the best place to begin.
• Herbs and medications can be used to kill off microbial overgrowth.
• Probiotics are definitely necessary – the right kind of probiotics for the right patient.
• Inflammation often needs to be addressed with L-Glutamine, DGL, and even organic ghee.
• Diet is the most important factor to maintaining healthy intestinal bacteria.
• If you have an autoimmune disease you have to stick to your healthy diet 100% for life.

Resources Mentioned:

FODMAPs Diet

Dr. Jill’s website

Dr. Jill’s facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

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Sayer is a widely recognized researcher, author, and lecturer, an advisory board member of the National Health Federation, and the founder of the world’s most widely referenced, evidence-based natural health resource of its kind – GreenMedInfo.com.

Main Questions Asked:

• What is the latest research saying about breast cancer?
• What role does industry play in breast cancer awareness?
• Should you still have a mammogram? What about breast thermography?
• What about the BRCA gene? Is breast cancer genetically based?
• What are some of the primary causes and solutions for breast cancer?
• What should women do to protect themselves?
• Are there any key nutrients or healthy practices women can start doing today to help protect them against breast cancer?

Key Points made by Sayer:

• DCIS – ductal carcinoma in-situ – has been recommended to be reclassified as a benign growth.
• Breast cancer awareness month was initially founded by a pharmaceutical giant.
• Mammography screening puts women at greater risk for developing breast cancer due to mutations of the BRCA genes.
• The research shows that mammography screening has not lead to a reduction in overall mortality from breast cancer, but instead has found benign lesions that would have never become cancer in the first place.
• Most women are overdiagnosed and overtreated.
• Mammography relies on low dose radiation. Numerous studies show that this causes higher levels of DNA damage to breast cells, basically planting the seeds for future breast cancer.
• Thermography measures the heat signature that comes off the body. It’s much safer than mammography.
• Thermography can detect changes in the breast tissues much earlier than they’re ever seen by mammography.
• Breast cancer is not genetically based. There are many factors beyond the control of the genes that causes cancer.
• There are over 500 different genetic mutations associated with the BRCA genes and some of these mutations are actually protective against breast cancer.
• Limiting exposures to chemicals, detoxing chemicals out of the body, and limiting exposure to radiation (including mammography) all help prevent breast cancer.
• Body care products that have mineral oil or phthalates are a known cause for breast cancer.
• Bisphenol-A from hand creams and lotions and thermal printer paper is a known cause for breast cancer.
• Heavy metals can act like estrogens.
• To prevent breast cancer stop eating GMO foods as glyphosate is a known carcinogen.
• Consider your diet as gene regulating. Use your food as your medicine and eat a whole foods healthy diet.
• Known breast helpers: flax seed powder, non-GMO cultured soy, red clover, and coffee.
• Do not fall victim to overdiagnosis.
• Turmeric – use it in food or supplements as it’s the most promising single intervention to prevent breast cancer and all the other cancers bundled together.

Resources Mentioned:

Sayer’s Website

Sayer’s Facebook Page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!

Shirley is the author of “Finally…Food I Can Eat” – an inspirational dietary guide and cookbook for people affected by food allergies and intolerances. She is recognized as a menu-planning expert. Shirley has given seminars on food allergies, cooking, and menu planning.

As a nutritionist and dietary designer, Shirley offers her clients and their families a rare understanding and unique expertise that few people can match. Her pleasant and caring manner, her own experience as a food-allergy sufferer and her creative design flair, helps offer hope for people struggling to find the light at the end of a dark dietary tunnel.

Main Questions Asked:

• Is gluten just a fad diet? Do we really need to stop eating gluten?
• Are gluten free foods healthy for us?
• What about dairy sensitivities?
• Is ghee, or clarified butter, considered dairy or not?
• What are three tips for going dairy free?
• Are there any easy ways of stopping sugar?
• Are natural sugar alternatives healthy for us?

Key Points made by Shirley:

• Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye.
• Wheat today is not the same as wheat of yesteryears.
• 1 in 3 people is sensitive to gluten.
• Gluten creates inflammation – and if you’re not feeling it now you will feel it later.
• Celiac disease is very different from gluten intolerance. Celiac disease is an autoimmune reaction that destroys the intestinal lining.
• If you suspect you might have Celiac disease you need to be tested for this before eliminating gluten from your diet.
• Pre-packaged gluten free foods are NOT necessarily healthier for us – they are mainly empty calories that do nothing but spike your blood sugar and insulin.
• Most gluten free foods are made with corn and soy which are genetically modified foods.
• There are hundreds of foods that are naturally gluten free.
• Work on mastering one meal at a time and within a month or two you will be on a gluten free diet.
• The proteins in gluten and dairy are similar, so if you have a problem with one you’ll often have a problem with the other.
• Take all dairy out of your diet for 3 weeks, and then introduce ghee, or clarified butter, and see how you feel. If you get symptoms then you are sensitive to ghee and it isn’t good for you.
• There are many dairy free options: almond milk, hemp milk, coconut milk, flaxseed milk, rice milk. Look for the unsweetened, unflavored versions.
• Cheese alternative: try Diaya cheese – it’s made out of pea protein, tastes good, and melts really well.
• Sugar is as addictive as cocaine and heroin, which makes it difficult to get off of.
• Sugar is in every pre-packaged food. Start reading labels and become aware of how much sugar you eat on a daily basis.
• When baking consider using fruit, like applesauce, to sweeten your baked goods.
• Stevia is a great natural sweetener and it doesn’t create blood sugar spikes.
• Xylitol may or may not be good for you. For some people it creates digestive upset.
• Shirley offers her 21 day challenge every November.

Resources Mentioned:

Podcast – Tackling Food Allergies & Sensitivities Part 1

Book – Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

Book – Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar – Your Brain’s Silent Killers

Shirley’s course – The Gluten Free, Sugar Free Way

Shirley’s book

Shirley’s website

Shirley’s Facebook page

Book – Reclaim Your Energy and Feel Normal Again

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5 star rating and review on iTunes!