Category: Nutrition

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka, Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show about a private chef for DC films becoming an FDN.

Alright. Hello there Erin, and welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?

Erin Blevins: Good, how are you?

Detective Ev: I can hardly remember a time I was better. Thank you for asking.

That’s kind of my catchphrase. That might throw you off for someone I just met a few minutes ago. You know, it’s a good little affirmation of sorts cause people usually ask how you are.

So, what we like to do on this show to get started is, it’s kind of always similar, I love to know what the person dealt with health-wise because, generally speaking, we don’t get into this space by accident. Usually something pulls us into it. So, I’m going to go out on a whim and assume that you dealt maybe with some health stuff. And I’m just curious, what was that and what did that look like when it began?

[00:00:37] Erin Blevins: Which led me to FDN.

Well, before that, I’m going to have to start with, I have been in this space for about 15 years. I started as a chef, and I moved into the aesthetic space. So, I started cheffing at a pretty high level. I cheffed for DC films, so I’ve worked on Justice League, multiple DC films.

A Private Chef for DC Films: More Rewarding Work

I was able to take what I learned with my dad, who’s a restaurant owner, and develop that into cooking delicious food that has an aesthetic purpose or an athletic purpose. And then, working into my practice after every time I get off of a movie set and there’s anything published in Men’s Health or Men’s Muscle and Fitness, people get ahold of me. They want me to work with them on their nutrition.

Most of the time it’s CrossFitters; I just want to perform better; I just want to have abs or some of these things that used to be really fun for me until I had a client who called me from the Seattle Children’s Hospital. She said, I’m in the Children’s hospital; I have cancer. She’s about 15 years old.

I said, you know what? You’re up in Seattle. Let me find someone who would be a better fit for you. Like, let me find someone who works in this area. And so, I started reaching out to a couple coaches in her area. She emailed me back and said, you know, I know that you’ve worked with Wonder Woman, I know that you know you work with Superman, and I’d really like to work with you. I don’t want any more hospitals. And I was like, crap, I’m going to have to figure out a way to help her.

So, day by day I’m doing research, getting on the phone with her, and we’re changing her diet and we’re changing her blood work. I’m like, okay, this is cool. Working really close with her mom cause she’s a young girl, going through that process, I was like, you know what, this is so much more rewarding for me than just aesthetic stuff.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Tragedy Out of Nowhere

You know, the movie stuff is cool. Getting to see your work on the big screen is really cool, but this is affecting someone where like, they’re living in the hospital and they might potentially be able to get out, which she did. Her main goal was she wanted to graduate high school. She wanted to go to high school and graduate, and she is now in college. So, she’s doing great! And I’m like, wow, this is so much better of a process. Like, I want to work in this area. And so, my practice naturally started to gravitate towards that.

In the meantime, I was still doing movies and still doing projects like that, and my daughter got really sick. My 13-year-old daughter got really sick about a year and a half ago. She was with her dad. And I said, take her to the hospital. You guys are close just take her to InstaCare. It sounds like she has meningitis.

Took her to the hospital, sent her to another hospital. Within four days she passed away out of nowhere. You know, she was at school Friday, no symptoms whatsoever. We found out that she has an extremely rare, I don’t want to call it autoimmune, but it acts like an autoimmune, called HLH. I don’t know if you’ve heard of HLH.

It’s an accumulation of white blood cells in your organs. Once it’s turned on or triggered by an infection or a virus or a bacterial infection, without treatment or without them figuring out what it is, because it does act like an autoimmune, the fatality rate is high. It’s like 99.9% once that’s been spun into process.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Introduced to FDN

So, coming back to the drawing board, I’m like, wow! I’m helping all of these people, I work in this field, I work in autoimmune, I’m dealing with people with cancer, but I had no idea. I couldn’t figure this out. So, I started my own personal healing process and started learning more doing various certifications.

And the cool thing about the direction that I went in the past is, up until this point, I had so much experience, 15 years of experience at a really high level. And now I really wanted to dive into the education piece so that I could have both you know, traditional education, I should say.

Someone actually came into town for a seminar that we were putting on. And he said, you know what would be really interesting is if you were able to legally read blood work, because I read blood work all the time. You know, people come to me with blood work. He said, one of my coaches has their FDN, supposedly, it’s really cool. I don’t know too much about it. And I started digging into the FDN and looking at all of the courses.

Actually, I found the Oxalate Course first, which I thought was really cool because I recently wrote a book about carnivore diet. And I’m like, oh, this is really in line with some of the things that I’ve taught. And diving into blood work has been so interesting just to come back to something where everything resonates with me. Like, this is so helpful. I can add so much to my practice. So, that was kind of my introduction to FDN, long-winded.

[00:05:44] Detective Ev: Well, yeah. It’s a heck of an introduction.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Helping Others

[00:05:47] Erin Blevins: Yeah. And I haven’t shared too much about my daughter on podcasts, I do podcasts all the time.

I just want to let you guys know I’m so grateful for the knowledge and education that I’ve gotten this far. Because I really do think that once we can deep dive into some of these other issues that are on standard blood tests, we can figure more out. The more we know, the more we can help people out, the more we can change for the better. So, I’m super grateful.

[00:06:18] Detective Ev: I respect the heck of out of having that mindset through all of that. The mindset that you have is that I’m grateful about it. And we’ve all been through our own stuff. I’ve never been through that, that’s for sure. But it’s the only way to make sense of it.

You have to use this stuff to help others or serve others, otherwise it will never make sense. And maybe it never makes sense. Maybe that’s not even the right word. But you’re making the best out of a situation that has otherwise nothing good about it and trying to do something with it and help others. So, I commend the heck out of that. That’s incredible.

So, are you graduated FDN, are you finished with it now?

[00:06:49] Erin Blevins: I’m not done yet, not quite.

[00:06:52] Detective Ev: I wanted to comment on the job too. What a unique thing. I’ve never heard anyone that was in that position for the movies and stuff. That’s very cool. Just out of curiosity, how did you get into that originally? Just wanted to do that when you were younger or just fell in your lap?

A Private Chef for DC Films: The Right Skill in the Right Place at the Right Time

[00:07:05] Erin Blevins: Not even a little bit.

So, I also co-own a gym in Salt Lake City, a private gym. My husband and our business partner – our business partner is Mark Twight. Most people know him because he was the guy that facilitated 300. So, all of the big guys on 300, that was Mark Twight. Mark pulled my husband on as an assistant.

My husband and Mark were both working at Gym Jones. Mark was the co-founder of Gym Jones. And like I said, they’re well known for training military and 300 was their first big movie that they did. So, Mark pulled my husband Michael on to his next project, which was 300: Rise of an Empire. And then they continued to make movies.

Then Michael and Mark pulled me on for Justice League. They said, you know, we’re all friends with Henry. Henry loves your food. You know about nutrition. Let’s put it all together. And I was like, okay, let’s do this. But up until that point, I had never done a facilitation of that magnitude.

So, it was really stressful. It definitely teaches you how to do your job really, really fast. So, it was kind of like, you know, having the skill, but being in the right place at the right time. Then from there we did a good job and it just kept growing and growing.

[00:08:31] Detective Ev: Yeah. And that should not be underplayed in any sense to people listening. Because I think there’s a lot of times I’ve been focusing more after, whatever this is, 250 something episodes, we start with just health stuff. But we realize one of the necessities of our audience is getting the business side down too and learning those types of things.

A Private Chef for DC Films: It’s Better to Be Prepared

You did have the skill. That’s the point, right? So, it’s like the opportunity came because you had the skill. Now, is it possible that some people could have the same skill and never get the opportunity? I mean, sure. But if you don’t have the skill, it’s guaranteed to not come. And that’s how I always kinda look at things.

We’ve been doing a lot of content this month, especially when this comes out. This will be right after our Summer Open House. People know we’ve been talking about business a lot. It’s never as lucky as people think. There’s always preparation, meeting opportunity, and so, you’re way better off being prepared.

There’s the one motivational speaker, Les Brown, I love what he says. He said, I’d rather be prepared and not have an opportunity, then have an opportunity and not be prepared. So, you never know what’s going to come your way when you’re ready for this. I mean, I’m lucky enough to get to do this as a job for FDN, the podcast.

But there was two years of podcasting where I paid to do it. I was actually literally paying a radio show for the opportunity to be there rather than getting paid to do it. So, does that mean FDN is going to find you? Not necessarily, but you got a lot better odds if you do it that way. So that’s cool.

When you’ve been going through the course so far, what have been some of like maybe the biggest insights or revelations to you? I know you’re very passionate about this health thing, so obviously there’s plenty to learn. What’s been some huge insights that you’ve had so far?

A Private Chef for DC Films: Tweaking for Metabolic Function

[00:09:54] Erin Blevins: Some of the big insights have been metabolic function, well, especially because I work with athletes, right. A lot of times it’s like, okay, you just have to eat carbohydrates. Eat carbohydrates, it’ll fix everything. Obviously, you and I know there’s so much more to that.

I think FDN, for me, has been kind of like peeling back an onion. There are so many layers that could be a contributing factor to how somebody feels or how somebody’s machine functions. And, getting into some of the panels that we have access to order has been really cool. Especially the adrenal function stuff, that’s been really interesting to me.

Working on a movie set, some of these people are smashed and they’re just pounding caffeine. It’s interesting because I look at these big projects like a sporting event, right? You prepare for this thing. It’s this long, hard, almost like physical effort and then you’re done. And some of these people don’t ever have like an offboarding of like rest and recovery.

I think years and years and years of that, you look at these people that are so creative and they’re doing all of these amazing things and they’re so overweight. They have such health problems. It’s like there’s gotta be another answer to this.

I think some of the biggest things that I’ve seen so far is how these things actually play out on a metabolic level or a CNS level. Little things we can tweak to make a bigger outcome within three weeks or within four weeks instead of just continuing on that path of never-ending caffeine. There’s going to be an expiration date to that somewhere.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Benefits of Changing Things

I can’t wait to start using my FDN and having that in play on some of these bigger projects. It’s going to be really amazing.

[00:11:46] Detective Ev: Cool. I don’t know anything about those people, I guess directly. But just my perception would be, if you’re a high-level actor or actress, going back to your sport comparison, it would be the same where you’d think that these people want to optimize and be on their game.

They want to look good as long as they can too. So, sometimes FDN is best sold with vanity if nothing else. You know, it’s not going to make anyone a 10 out of 10. It didn’t do that for me, but it made me look a little better. Right? I had some skin issues go away and stuff like that, so.

Erin Blevins: Oh, absolutely.

Detective Ev: I think maybe that’s a motivating factor for some people too, if they know that they can perform at a high level for a long period of time, look healthy and stay healthy. I think that actually might be a motivating thing for them.

[00:12:22] Erin Blevins: Absolutely. And right now, nootropics are huge. You know, take this pill, you’re going to think better, feel better, and have a bigger capacity mentally to do your job.

But side effects of actually changing things could be, better skin, thicker hair, thicker eyelashes. That might be so minute to some people. You know, I just cover it up with makeup, but people don’t have access to that all the time. And I think it feels good to feel good, right.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Getting More Education

[00:12:48] Detective Ev: Then just so I’m clear right now, you’ve kind of blended a couple things in. You said that you work with these athletes, so what does the work currently look like before you graduate from FDN and add that on maybe?

[00:12:59] Erin Blevins: What is my work? Okay, so I just finished Rebel Moon, Zack Snyder’s New World which will be coming out on Netflix. It’s really cool sci-fi. We filmed season one and two and I believe that’ll come out at the end of the year. So, you’ll start seeing trailers for that.

Rebel Moon has been my current project. Actually, during the end of Rebel Moon is when I found FDN. We got to a point where I’m looking at blood work and production’s kind of seeing these emails come back and forth. At one point someone said, are we listening to Erin or are we listening to the doctors?

And I’m like, don’t put these guys on medication. Like, oh my gosh, we can fix this so easily without. At one point, one of the producers said, hey, we’ve been working with Erin for 10 years. Let’s go with what Erin says. And I’m like, shoot, I gotta cover myself legally. You know, it’s not just from a legal standpoint, but hey, I want to back up what I know with some more education. So, that’s a project that I’ve just wrapped up since I started FDN.

Hopefully, if the timeline ends up being right with another project, I have two other movies coming out. One of them is Rebel Moon, the other one I’m not able to talk about quite yet. But it’ll be a really cool military project, which is a cool military movie.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Acknowledging Trauma

I’m wrapping up my book, so I have my second cookbook coming through right now. We’re teaching a big seminar tomorrow and that’s about it.

[00:14:38] Detective Ev: I have another question. It’s odd doing these podcasts, but you get very serious in terms of the topics. Like, this is a health thing, right? And you do get serious stuff on here. We’ve only known each other for a few minutes, so I kind of go with my gut on where to go or not go with certain things. But I get a feeling it’s okay.

I wanted to ask this before, and I’m going to ask it now. The situation with your daughter, well, let me preface this. There are so many people that listen to this show that their health issues came after something pretty severe. It was traumas in their life, it wasn’t a joke. And I think some people might listen and hopefully, be inspired to hear that you’re taking this and making the absolute best that you could of it.

You’re still working, you still have things going on. And I know that it’s a year and a half later, but for some people, I mean, this is debilitating long term.

Erin Blevins: It’s not that long.

Detective Ev: Right. And I want to know, what is your advice or what can we say to the people out there? Because this is a lot of our listeners that are just stuck, I mean, debilitative and paralyzed from the traumas that they’ve dealt with in their life. And I hope that that’s okay to ask because actually I mean that as a compliment. It seems like you are being productive with this and doing things. So, I’m curious about that.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Working Through Trauma Safely

[00:15:44] Erin Blevins: So, I’m an athlete. I’ve been competing for probably close to 20 years in multiple sports at a pretty high level. My normal with anything stressful, anything traumatic, is I’m going to train through this. I’m going to work out, I’m going to clear my head, I’m going to do moving meditation. And after the death of my daughter, I was kind of like stuck in this weird, like numb. I had energy, but I was kind of like, if I do something, I feel like I’m going to get hurt. This is really weird.

There’s a lot of literature written about trauma and physical manifestation of injuries, right? So, I started working out one month after London passed away. My daughter’s name was London. I had signed up for a competition and I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to go do the competition. I already signed up for it. I’m not going to be competitive, I’m just going to have fun.

And my body’s like breaking down. Emotionally, I don’t know if I wanted to do it. But I’m like, maybe it’ll be good for me. Maybe it’ll be fun. Like shoulder pain and weird stuff was starting to happen. I realized I need to slow down. You know? Now we know, like CNS system is taxed, right? Something like this happens and you’re already just maintaining just to be alive.

So, I changed some of my hard efforts and hard exercise to, hey, I’m going to go for a walk. I’m going to go for a jog, but it’s going to be zone 2 pace.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Part of the Healing Process

We know zone 2 helps recover the CNS system. Walking’s really great for the CNS system. It works similarly to EMDR therapy, you know, rapid eye movement and left brain, right brain. I switched over to doing some things like that and my body started to feel better. Obviously, I’m not lifting weights and doing some things like that. And I kept working and I kept writing. I kept trying to be creative.

Because my work, I also have a full clientele of nutrition clients. And I didn’t want to say, hey, all of you clients that I’ve had for a while that are dealing with all of these various things, I can’t help you guys anymore because, I need some time. And maybe I should have taken more time off.

I did take a little bit of time and obviously my clients were very flexible with me. But I found that if I doubled down on what I could teach my clients and help them become better, it was actually part of my healing process.

And writing this book about carnivore diet, do I think carnivore diet’s the only answer? No. I have clients that do all different things. But if I can give a little bit of information to someone and help them with their autoimmune or arthritis, that was a little bit of healing for me. So, I think it’s just a change of mindset, you know.

Obviously, the death of a child, I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. It’s a really, really hard path, a hard journey. But I think my process is to turn around and teach other people how to go through hard processes. And that’s kind of what I want to do.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Different Mentalities in Trauma

[00:19:06] Detective Ev: Gotcha. Well, I thank you for answering that. Cause I think that’s actually, conceptually it’s simple, but in practice it’s not. And I never want to project, because again, we’ve all had our stuff. I’d certainly take my stuff over that personally.

But I have found those times where I’m just stagnant and I’m not doing anything. Like there’s a time and a place for that. You gotta digest things; you don’t want to hide from it either. But I don’t find that that’s particularly helpful long term. And I feel so bad for some people that I talk to cause it’s like years after stuff and their entire life, it’s still completely different because of it. And I know mentally it’s always going to be different; I get that. But I sometimes wonder.

Because when I hear you, you can kind of pick up on someone’s energy. I don’t know if that’s just me or other people can do that. But when I heard you say it originally, the way that you said it, like instantly I can see, okay, that’s not someone repressing something. That’s someone who has actually made tremendous strides in a year and a half. And maybe I’m like talking out my butt, but I feel like when I hear those things, I can just pick it up instantly where the person’s at emotionally.

So, I was like, whoa, this is really impressive and potentially very useful for others that are going through stuff. Cause I know, I feel like I would need to be moving and shaking and doing my routine stuff at least to some degree to have that level of normalcy and to feel productive.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Erin’s Clients

Because if those things were making me happy before and bringing me fulfillment, and then I just take them all away and now I have this serious trauma to deal with, I mean, it seems like it’s just adding fuel to the fire. So again, thank you for that.

Erin Blevins: Yeah, of course.

Detective Ev: With the clients that you’re working with, nutrition wise, since you didn’t have something like the FDN certification beforehand, you focused on the blood work, and you have the interest in carnivore. I’m curious, what does the nutrition side look like with them?

Not that someone needs a certification for their stuff. There’s plenty of people that go through this program that have been doing the same thing for years with great results. Let’s be honest, it’s not that hard to beat the US government in terms of nutrition guidelines. You could just put a hundred diets on the wall, blindfold yourself, and throw a dart, whichever one you hit, you’d still be a little better off than what they’re doing.

So, I’m curious, what does new nutrition work look like? Are your clients people that are a little more open already to nutrition and doing things right and need adjustment or are they coming from total standard American and you gotta transform it?

[00:21:14] Erin Blevins: I get both. Some of my clients are well-read, well-educated and also have tried a million different things. Obviously, sometimes being more educated is harder because maybe they’re educated in all the wrong things for them specifically.

So, a couple things that I start off with is a conversation. Like how do you feel? You know, similar to the FDN, like let’s go through a questionnaire. Let’s see how you feel.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Monitoring Clients’ Progress

Although I’m not testing them with blood work or actual metabolic testing, some of my clients do bring that stuff to me, but it’s not required. And I kind of go down the checklist, ask really good questions. Obviously, after doing this for a while, there’s some things that I can pick up on and be like, hey, let’s change this.

And as we change, we also see how they feel. How do you feel, how do you look, how does your skin look? You know, is your skin clearing up? Is your energy getting better? And so, I think it’s similar, but without the like, you know, here’s a test that shows you this, which is really cool. I’m super excited for that.

It’s similar, but more just based off of, you’ve gotta be really honest with how you feel at that point. And the problem is, some people don’t know how they feel, you know? So, I kind of have to teach them. I had this client once who, he’s like, you always ask me how I feel, but I don’t really know how to tell you how I feel. He was an athlete.

And I’m like, okay, now we’re going to do some tap tests. We’re going to see how well you’re sleeping, see what your heart rate looks like during your workouts and after your workouts, when you wake up. So, there are other metrics that we look at that aren’t necessarily the same things we test for in the FDN, right? It’s probably a longer process.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Modifying Nutrition

Normally, I work with a client for about six months, and I talk with them weekly. So, every week it’s like, hey, give me an update. You know, how is this process going?

To get a little bit more in depth with it, we teach energy systems. So, if somebody comes into our gym or our private space, we get a lot of military guys, we start with energy systems. Like, you are this type of military unit and you guys need to be able to go really far.

So, now we’re looking at endurance, the endurance system. That system loves a little bit lower protein, some carbohydrates, and mostly fat, theoretically. Obviously, everyone is a little bit different. And so that’s kind of where I start. Then we kind of modify it from there just depending on how the client or the person responds. That’s one other way that I kind of go about my practice on a weekly basis.

If I get someone like a CrossFitter, usually CrossFitters have adopted the paleo diet, which is great. But they tend to be doing a lot of intensity on a high fat diet and sometimes we flip flop it. We give them some carbohydrates around training and bring their fat down and they feel great. They actually have more energy during the day.

 After that process starts, then we kind of narrow down what foods work for them and what foods don’t work for them.

[00:24:22] Detective Ev: That’s interesting that you said that you adjust the CrossFitters in that way. When you said around training, do you mean then specifically just around training and not the rest of the day? Because they’re usually a little bit higher on the fat side compared to many other things.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Nutrition Variables

[00:24:34] Erin Blevins: It depends on the client. I still have some clients that are doing high intensity training and generally CrossFit is short, right? Thirteen minutes, you might be at a higher heart rate. And then after that, like your body should be able to recover from that fairly quickly.

Obviously, there’s some scenarios. I mean, I have athletes that do an all-out minute of work and that trashes them for weeks on a neurological level. So, there’s different variables to this. But my clients that don’t do well with carbohydrates, like I have plenty of CrossFit athletes that are actually diabetic. And so, recovering a little bit around training and then going back into blunting that blood sugar spike and giving them fats throughout the day is beneficial for them.

I don’t like eating a lot of carbs. I actually do really well with them. So, I shoved my carbohydrates before and after my training and then I kind of trickle them off the rest of the day. And I eat mostly proteins and fats.

[00:25:34] Detective Ev: I was wondering cause at FDN we do the metabolic typing thing and it’s interesting how that can be adjusted. But I found even just in different seasons of my life, it’s been wise to adjust it.

I just thought it was interesting that you used the intensity phrase. Because when I’m doing this crazy stuff, like boxing or whatever it might be, the idea that I’m going to eat a high fat meal before that just doesn’t work a lot of times. You could feel it in your stomach. We know this. It’s one of the reasons it creates that satiety because it does take a lot longer to digest. So, it needs to be mixed.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Nutritional Balance

Then I’ve had times in my life where I wasn’t actually doing that much. I mean, I’m always active, but it was never the intense boxing type of thing. And yeah, the high fat, like ketogenic type of thing, worked very well. So, I’m a believer that we should be able to get into a state of ketosis. I think that’s relatively healthy.

Now, whether or not we do that every day, long term, is a different question. I’m more worried if the person doesn’t eat carbs for three days and is still not in the state of ketosis, that doesn’t really show good metabolic flexibility to me.

Erin Blevins: Right.

Detective Ev: But I took it too far. Cause I was like, all right, I’m going to do keto. I’m going to stay in this until I get all the way better. And what I realized is, okay, it’s the balance. It’s the fact that when you first started this, you couldn’t get into ketosis at all. Now, I mean, if I just went one day low carb and did some intense exercise, I’m back to shooting up a 0.5, 0.6 on the ketone meter. Right?

Erin Blevins: Yeah.

Detective Ev: That’s the flexibility so, that makes sense.

I just thought that was good for people to hear that sometimes with the intensity you think it’s so simple with how complex we get with all these labs and fancy things. But it’s very easy for us, even as functional practitioners, to still get dogmatic. We forget that we’ve got three macronutrients for a reason. They’re all supposed to be used in their time and place. And if you’re going to go beat the heck out of your body, you need to do that.

A Private Chef for DC Films: When Carbs are Needed

I find even with work, I need higher carbohydrates a lot because I’m calm on camera and stuff but even if I feel calm nowadays, there’s no way it’s not doing something to me physically. Because I told you I had, like, it’s not a normal day. I had like two hours of Lives before this. We have this right now, I got a call after this, and by the time that’s done, I know I’m like going right now, but I can already predict, I’m like, whoa. I found I gotta buff up the calories and carbs those days and I feel like light years better. It’s kind of interesting.

[00:27:43] Erin Blevins: Yeah. Well, the brain, we know the brain likes glucose, I think just to kick jumpstart it, I should say.

Just out of curiosity, how would you feel doing like two back-to-back or three back-to-back podcasts on keto diet? Would you feel good, or would you start to crash a little bit?

[00:28:00] Detective Ev: It’s a good question. I’m trying to think when was the last would’ve done a podcast on that?

[00:28:04] Erin Blevins: I need carbs too, to be honest.

[00:28:06] Detective Ev: Yeah. If I’m in it and I get the hydration right, like my best days ever are with that. But if I want it consistent throughout the day, like it does kind of do nice to kind of mix everything in a little bit.

But man, I usually do a lot of public speaking, like it’s a separate job, but in schools and stuff. And I hate doing it late in the afternoon, cause then I would’ve had to eat throughout the day.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Adapting Fuel Sources

I love going in in the morning fasted, but super well hydrated. Right? I got the potassium, sodium, magnesium, I got all the minerals in. My brain just flies. The words are perfect. I don’t use um, like, and so. And so, I do that in ketosis.

But yeah, if it’s like six presentations back-to-back-to-back, which I have done, then I need the fuel. Otherwise, this is not going to work the rest of the day. The first one’s going to be great. The other five are going to suck.

[00:28:51] Erin Blevins: Right, right. I get that. The keto diet, I think is a great tool.

Oftentimes I hear people that say, you know, seven years ago, my leanest I’ve ever been, this is what I was doing. And I think people need to realize like maybe seven years ago you didn’t have a job, you didn’t have the extra stress, you didn’t have kids. You’re able to do whatever you want whenever you want.

And I don’t think it necessarily has to do with slow down, metabolism, or age, it could be you’re training your body to do something totally different. Maybe you were walking to commute and now you have a car. You know, all of those different factors play in. And I think as we go through life and change and we train our system to use different fuel sources, we obviously have to adapt.

I like to think of myself as a very active person. Like I said, I’ve competed in multiple sports. But a lot of times during the day I’m sitting at my desk, so I’m not carb loading all day. You know, I just don’t need it.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Zone 2 Training & The CNS

Where three or four years ago when I was competing internationally and CrossFit, I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to. I was training two, sometimes three times a day. So, the scenario might have been different.

Could leanness be achieved doing something totally different than you did seven years ago? Absolutely. It needs to match what you’re doing at the time. Yeah, I like that you mentioned that.

[00:30:12] Detective Ev: I’m also glad that you said the walking versus driving, your commute, because it triggered something from before.

I didn’t want to stop you, but I wanted to ask about that cause I fully admit, I did not know. Obviously, I know walking is good for us, that seems like common sense. But I did not know the benefits to the CNS. And I also want to focus on that zone 2 thing. This is a concept I’ve heard before. I couldn’t tell someone what it is by definition. So, can we touch on what zone 2 training is and how this helps the CNS? Cause I find that fascinating.

That’s probably very validating for the practitioners out there that, sometimes we feel like bad almost recommending it. And you’re learning this in FDN if you didn’t already know it, and you might have been with your experience. But like some clients come back and they’re so darn sick and their hormones are so off that the recommendation really is like, yo, you gotta chill on the exercise and just do the walking. Which always made sense to me for a different reason.

But now that I know that it can help regulate the CNS, I’m fascinated by this and how this works.

A Private Chef for DC Films: The Reliable Zone 2 Base

[00:31:04] Erin Blevins: So, the zones are relative to like, zone 1, zone 2 zone 3. I want to say it goes up to zone 5, would be, you know, your all-out pace, like your lactic system is going to shut you down in seconds. A 20-, 30-meter sprint would be maybe that system. And they correlate with your heart rates.

Everyone’s heart rate is a little bit different. I actually have a high heart rate. I can flush oxygen at a fairly high heart rate, so it looks like I’m in a zone 3 or 4, but I’m really in a zone 2 to 3. So, everyone is a little bit different, but these are like general little zones.

Let’s say you were training someone to run a half marathon. You want to start them at a zone 2, you want to build this base. It’s time on your feet, it’s this slightly elevated heart rate, but it’s not taxing you. It’s not stressing you out, it’s not sending any signal to your system to shut you down and stop. Right? And eventually that zone 2 gets pushed to a zone 1 because you naturally start to get fitter, right?

So, if I had an athlete that came to me and they were like, hey, I train 10 times a week. What else can I add? Because, you know, I can do these five-minute efforts, I can do these 10-minute efforts. The first thing I’ll say is zone 2. Add zone 2, and eventually, again, that’s going to push all of their intense portions of their training up. And it’s going to make their middle ground seem like it’s not quite so hard. So, it’s always the pace that you can rely on.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Zone 2 for Recovery

Going back to the walking, walking is always something that you can rely on. Hopefully, you know, for the most part, people should be able to go on a walk. They should be healthy enough to go on a walk.

Maybe you’ve seen this in your own life, maybe a walk feels so good that you pick up the pace a little bit. You know, maybe your normal walk that you take after dinner is naturally getting a little bit faster and faster. And maybe it feels really good to jog that sometimes. That’s the natural progression of fitness without any kind of stress signal being sent. Your system is just saying, hey, I feel fit enough and I’m able to do this.

So, we always bring people back to zone 2 for recovery if they’re overtrained and they can’t sleep, they have no appetite, but they’re actually overtrained. We bring them back to zone 2 for maybe a full week. And that’s always something that we can rely on to get someone back to the state where they’re recovered enough to train again.

[00:33:34] Detective Ev: It sounds like, again, one of those things it’s like kind of straightforward and simple enough. But 250 episodes, I don’t think anyone’s ever brought that up. And I guess the walking thing, it clearly must do more than meets the eye. Because if it’s not summer and I’m not in like hiking shape, cause I do exercise throughout the year, but hiking’s different, right? I’m not going to go just recreationally, walk 12 miles. That’s not my favorite thing.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Benefits of Decreasing Exercise Intensity

But if you do have a day where you gotta walk like 6, 7, 8 miles, it’s kind of hilarious how many other activities I can do totally fine, but you walk the seven or eight miles and you’re like, I’m pretty glad I’m home. Like I’m a little tired from that.

So, clearly, it’s doing something and that makes sense that it can be a very simple part of a progression to get the fitness back or if you’re overtrained at the time, to kind of just do something, be productive, but also allow some time to heal and recover too. So, that’s cool.

Again, it’s validating for our coaches that feel so hesitant recommending, like just do some walking right now. I tried that. I remember when I first got my results back, I was only 21 and I was in the exhaustive phase of HPA Axis Dysfunction.

Erin Blevins: Holy cow.

Detective Ev: Brandon Molle had talked to me and he’s like, listen man, I need you to back off some of the exercise stuff for a little bit. And I didn’t listen to him. I broke my foot like two days later. So, that worked pretty well to get me to stop doing things.

You’d think I felt worse cause I’m sedentary now. I got the foot broken, whatever. Six days later I woke up and it was just like the first day in probably years that I woke up and I feel really good. Like I got good mental energy, I was ready to study the course that day. I didn’t feel like I needed to down the chocolate or the other things and stimulants to keep going. It was really interesting. And that was only six days of really giving my body some rest.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Contemplating Changes

Again, nothing rocket science here, but people forget that the physical stuff is a stressor on the body. There’s a reason you can’t go exercise 12 hours straight. That’s not going to work for most people. I mean, I guess the ultra-marathoners can pull it off. Most of us, unless we’re very, very well trained, that’s not going to work. Unless it’s David Goggins, you don’t see him running an ultra-marathon every single weekend. Right? For most of it’s not going to work. But cool.

How will the coaching change for you now that FDN is going to be a part of it? Like, are you just going to automatically upgrade and every client’s going to get all the labs? Or will you still do a mix of both? Like what’s your vision for that?

[00:35:41] Erin Blevins: I hope so. I mean, at first, I was thinking that maybe I would just take my harder clients and do these tests. But the more and more I go through the FDN, the more and more I just want to change my practice and say, look, from the get-go, everyone is getting this. And maybe for selfish reasons, because I want to know what’s going on.

But I think there’s a lot of people that do the intuitive like, hey, let’s try this and let’s throw this out there. Obviously, I do feel like I have a little bit of an upper edge because I have so much experience. But I think it’s really going to set everything apart.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Validating-Data

I think in FDN, they say, we don’t guess we test. And I love that. I love that so much because I don’t want to guess; I want to see it and I want to know exactly where to go from there. And I want my clients to see it.

You know, I have clients that go through a whole six-month process. They lose 30 pounds, they’re sleeping better, they’re off caffeine and they’re like, well, I just don’t know how I changed. You know, I didn’t hit my 50-pound mark. And I’m like, oh my gosh. So, I think it’ll be useful for clients like that as well.

[00:36:52] Detective Ev: It provides a lot of validation too when they feel like crap and then they can see objectively why they feel like crap.

I remember I was talking to my acupuncturist one time, and he wasn’t challenging it, he just loves going back and forth and so do I. And he said, Ev, do you think those lab tests are ever hurting some people by like putting something into their head that’s not there? And I said, no, the opposite.

People that I’m working with, it’s validating for them to finally get shown why they feel the way that they feel. I promise you; they already feel like crap, they know something’s wrong with them. But it’s worse because no one’s validated it. So, I don’t think it’s hurting them to do the labs. It’s quite the opposite.

Also, I don’t think it’s selfish at all for you to want to know what’s going on. Why would you even want to know? So, you can serve them at a higher level.

Erin Blevins: Right.

Detective Ev: That’s what that does. I think that’s pretty selfless.

A Private Chef for DC Films: High Quality Investment

And what’s really cool for you, I say this all the time on calls if I’m talking to someone considering the course, you’re pretty much in the best spot that you could be because FDN works, the system’s great. The hardest part for people is if they’re not experienced with the business side, that’s a new skill that they have to learn.

Not only are you experienced in business, you’re experienced in the health business and have clients. So, the fact that now you can just have this very organic conversation with many of them and say, hey, you know, I added this on. Would you like to do this now? I mean, there’s such low hanging fruit there for people to help. Then allows you to raise the income. It’s kind of great, everyone wins in that sense.

[00:38:11] Erin Blevins: Exactly. I mean, and just being able to go into picking up a new contract for a movie, I bring so much more to the table. Because production, they want to know where their money’s going. And if their money spent is going towards something that’s really, really useful, it’s really hard for them to say, are you sure? You know, we’re paying this big chunk of money.

For me, you know, I’ve done movies. What I’ve done has worked so far, so it’s a little bit easier for me to come into another production, and they know that I’m going to do a good job. But now I’m coming in with my FDN and they’re like, oh yeah, this is a no-brainer because we get to cut out this step and this step and hire this one person who can do all of these things.

A Private Chef for DC Films: A Referral-Based Business

Sometimes these guys are in stunts for five or six hours and then they have to go give lines. Then they have to go weight train and have to wake up at 4:00 AM. You know, they’re taxed, they’re burning the candle at both ends.

It’s cool to say, hey look, this is what your metabolic tests are saying; this is what your blood work is saying. How can we help you right now over the next two weeks because there’s not really any breaks in this next two weeks? What can we give you nutritionally so that you can feel better right now? You know, what can we do to support your brain function?

I love that you said electrolytes, because electrolytes will just turn your brain on in such an instantaneous way. But I think that brings so much more to the table and not just with movies. Obviously, that’s not a position that everyone is in. But you have to realize these are just people. Outside of a movie, they’re just people that also want to feel better. These guys get off of a movie production, they go home, and they still want to know how to feel good.

A lot of times I’ll work with someone and they’re like, hey, can you work with my wife? This is what she’s dealing with. Of course. Like, let’s help her to feel better too. So, I actually have not posted or told anyone, I’m open, I’m taking clients. Because I have not had anything other than a mouth-to-mouth referral in over 10 years. So, as soon as you can get people who are feeling great, they’re going to send you their mom and they’re going to send you their grandma.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Walking Billboards

Everyone in their close system wants to do what they’re doing to feel so great. I think playing up those positive feedback loops with your client, like, hey, you’re feeling great. Let’s talk about all the positives this week. Then they’re going to go out and talk to all of their friends and all of their family.

[00:40:45] Detective Ev: Yeah, I keep telling FDNs that, because again, the business conversations have been a main thing especially lately.

One of the things I try to tell him is, the first 10 to 20 people, that’s always going to be the hardest. And not because you can’t get your family, you technically could. I mean, first 10 to 20, like full paying, ready to go clients, they’re usually the toughest. But after that, I mean, our clients become walking billboards for us, basically. Cause they can’t help but look better and feel better.

And then it creates a very organic conversation where people start to ask, hey, what are you doing? Oh, hey, I’m working with Erin. Hey, I’m working with Evan, or whatever it is. And so, I mean, yes, you’re probably going to have to do some extra marketing and stuff like that still.

But I mean a lot of FDNs that have been doing this long term, it’s the same situation as you. It’s been 10 years and no, they can run completely off referral base. That’s amazing.

As we kind of wrap up our time here, I wanted to go back to the book that you’re working on in addition to where people can find you in general.

[00:41:37] Erin Blevins: Can I give you one tip really quick, just because my background is actually in media and marketing.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Sharing What You’re Learning

Detective Ev: Sure. Please.

Erin Blevins: One of the best things that you could do is change yourself and use yourself as your own billboard. Post what you’re learning on Instagram, post what you’re learning on Facebook. Talk about how good you feel, talk about, hey, this week I didn’t only lose weight, but my skin looks good. I feel good, I woke up before my alarm. Like, post that stuff, talk about it. Because that’s going to resonate with someone, and people will start reaching out to you.

[00:42:07] Detective Ev: That’s a great tip. It’s like some of the other people who have come on here and said something similar. You just gotta do it, get over your fear. It’s like they’re all afraid to share their stuff on social.

I’ve said, one of the best plans, not that I came up with, that I’ve heard from people like you that’s worked for them, they actually start posting their journey of FDN while they’re going through the course. Never selling anything, no offer. Didn’t say, click here to book a call. Just like, hey, here’s what I learned this week. Here’s what I thought was cool.

So, now by the time you’re done with the course, you got like 26, 30 weeks plus of content. And then you finally can leave an offer if someone hasn’t already reached out to you to work with you. You don’t gotta be super salesy, it’s just sharing this information with people. I think that’s amazing.

We might go a little over the two minutes right now. It’s totally fine. I wanted to briefly touch on that carnivore diet book, because you had actually talked about you noticed that you do better on carbs sometimes and you kind of feel good with that.

A Private Chef for DC Films: Expanding the Carnivore Diet

Carnivore naturally gets people into ketosis normally and it’s more restrictive. So, are you writing that book to be used as a therapeutic diet or how do you view carnivore?

[00:43:08] Erin Blevins: Yes, more as a therapeutic. I don’t recommend this to everyone, but for some people it resonates and it’s useful. I think it’s a reset.

The more I learn about hormonal balancing and thyroid function, I think it’s important to have a little bit of carbohydrate in there, especially if you’re training, doing anything active. I like just a little bit in there.

So, carnivore to heal gut disorders, to reset some of that stuff. If nothing else, just so as people are adding things back in slowly, they know, okay, that didn’t work. Okay, that actually does good in my system. Then we can test people with the FDN. But I love that process.

I’ve adopted and expanded the hardcore carnivore of just meat, salt, eggs, more of the high protein, high fat. And I’ve gone towards a little bit of fruit, super low oxalate, bitter fruits and squash, a little bit of honey, mostly because I still want to train. I still want to keep all my muscle. I’m super long and lengthy.

The first six months of carnivore diet, I did a good job of keeping my protein up, but I had a little bit of muscle wasting. So, looping back around it was important for me to put some of that stuff in. I touch on that a bit in my first book, and I’ll touch on it a more in my second book. My next book is a bit more variety.

Where to Find Erin Blevins

[00:44:42] Detective Ev: Cool. All right. Well Erin, where can people find you and the books? What are the titles and stuff?

[00:44:47] Erin Blevins: Yeah, so the Essential Carnivore Diet Cookbook is my first book. I am on social media, so I’m on Instagram. I answer lots of questions there actually. I’m @shutup_eat. And then my website is shutupwork.com.

[00:45:06] Detective Ev: Sweet. I will have that in the show notes for everyone.

And today we have the signature question for you. We do this every day but it’s your first time on the podcast, so I always like to end with this.

Signature Podcast Question

The signature question is this, if we could give you a magic wand and you could wave it and get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, so what you can do is you can get everyone to do one thing or you can make them all stop doing one thing, it’s one or the other, what is the one thing that Erin would get them to do?

[00:45:35] Erin Blevins: Stop eating seed oils. That just comes to my head first. Obviously, there’s a lot of other stuff, but stop eating seed oils.

[00:45:46] Detective Ev: They’re terrible for you. Yeah. You guys should look into that if you somehow don’t know about those yet.

Well, I think a lot of practitioners know about it, but they don’t know how bad it actually is. Because I did not know until I heard this gentleman, Ben Azadi, talk at a conference. He had actually said like, the half-life of them or something is over a year or something ridiculous. They stay in your body seemingly forever.

I knew it was bad, but when you know it’s that bad, it’s one of those things that, yeah, maybe I don’t cheat even once a year with stuff like that, considering how gross it is.

[00:46:13] Erin Blevins: Yeah. The cool thing is I think that we’re starting to realize how bad they are and there’s so many more products that take it out. It’s in everything. The best you possibly can, pull it out.

Conclusion

[00:46:24] Detective Ev: Yes. Thank you so much for coming on today. And I would love if we could get you back on once you’re done with the course.

Erin Blevins: Absolutely.

Detective Ev: That would just be awesome to kind of see the journey and then all the additional things that you like.

[00:46:32] Erin Blevins: Cool. I would love to. Thank you so much.

Detective Ev: Thanks.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com. Our Instagram handle is @fdntraining.

For more informational and functional health-oriented podcasts like this one, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/health-detective-podcast/.

To learn more about us, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/about-fdn-functional-testing/.

When it’s time to prepare a meal, most of us open up our fridge and pantry and get to work, or we make a trip to the grocery store to purchase what we need. For much of human history, though, we’ve reached for our sustenance by foraging as hunter-gatherers. Wild foods grow all over the world in their natural glory, and you may be fortunate enough to encounter them close to where you live. In fact, you may have strolled by delicious and special wild foods without even realizing it!

There’s no question that modern agriculture has made fresh ingredients more readily available (and in some cases, safer), and foraging for wild foods isn’t always practical for all communities. Yet wild foods, if you can access them ethically and sustainably, are a wonderful addition to one’s dietary rotation.

What Are Wild Foods?

Wild foods are things that grow spontaneously and instinctively in nature, with no intervention or control by people. Wild foods can include:

• fruits
• vegetables
• nuts and seeds
• fish, meat and game
• herbs
• weeds
• seaweed

Health Benefits of Wild Foods

As wild foods grow unbidden and must endure harsh conditions such as inclement weather, animals, pests and insects, and other challenges in their natural habitat (including humans!), they are typically hardy and strong in the face of these threats. 

Wild foods are usually:

• Rich in antioxidants and phytochemicals, which serve as protective measures for the plant and for us when we consume them
• Rich in overall nutrients
• Great for biodiversity and the environment, as they play a natural role in their surrounding ecosystem
• Are free from the pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals used in conventionally farmed produce or meat

If you can find them in your neighbourhood or nearby parks, another huge benefit is that wild foods can be free! Learn more about the individual health benefits of some of our favourite wild foods below.

Foraging for Wild Foods Safely and Responsibly

Just because a berry springs up on the side of the road, it doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat it!

If you are new to wild foods and foraging, it’s best to seek out a written guide or go on a foraging trip with a guide who can help you learn how to recognize what is safe to eat. Many wild foods can be poisonous, and safe foods and unsafe foods may look alike. We highly, highly recommend drawing on the expertise of an experienced forager.

When looking for wild foods, always ensure you are taking what is yours to take. Don’t forage on private property, and make certain that you are not defying any local gathering, hunting or fishing laws in public spaces. 

As wild foods are part of a unique ecosystem, taking too much, taking at the wrong time of the year, or taking from the wrong part of the plant can have devastating consequences. Always harvest wild foods responsibly and sustainably; otherwise, there will be none left for anyone to enjoy.

Remember, you don’t have to go foraging yourself to enjoy wild foods! There are experts that harvest wild foods to sell at farmers’ markets or small businesses. Check out your local markets to explore wild foods you can purchase. 

Indigenous Food Rights and Food Sovereignty

The Academy of Culinary Nutrition is headquartered in Canada, where Indigenous Peoples have been foraging, hunting and fishing for centuries until about 400 years ago when colonizers began to appropriate their land and implement laws and restrictions prohibiting their food systems. 

Indigenous food sovereignty has been severely compromised throughout North America and around the world, too. It wasn’t until colonizers began stripping the natural environment of its plant and animal foods that many wild foods became endangered; up until then, Indigenous communities foraged, hunted, fished and trapped responsibly and with great care for sustaining the world around them. 

For more information and to advocate for Indigenous food rights, connect with Indigenous groups and non-profits in your local area.

Our 10 Favourite Wild Foods

Wild foods will vary greatly depending on where you live; since 2013 we have learned a great deal about wild foods from around the world from our global community of Culinary Nutrition Experts. It’s exciting to enjoy and appreciate what is around us!

These are some of our favourites, and why we love them. 

Medicinal Mushrooms

Key Health Benefits: We love medicinal mushrooms because they contain anti-cancer properties and immune-supportive polysaccharides called beta glucans. They are also rich in minerals like iron and copper, as well as B vitamins and Vitamin D. Some of the common wild mushroom varieties close to our headquarters are chaga and reishi, which we adore.

Learn More: Guide to Medicinal Mushrooms: Types, Best Uses and Recipes

Wild Leeks

Key Health Benefits: In our neck of the woods, wild leeks are one of the first spring vegetables. As a member of the onion family, wild leeks are rich in sulfurous compounds that help us detoxify and offer us anti-inflammatory properties. They also contain high levels of quercetin, an antioxidant that acts as an anti-histamine, protecting us from allergies, hay fever and asthma.

Learn More: Best Wild Leek Recipes

Wild Berries

Photo by Uliana Kopanytsia on Unsplash

Key Health Benefits: Common wild berries are blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. Wild berries are especially rich in antioxidants. All berries are high in fibre and Vitamin C and have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.

Learn More: The Health Benefits of Berries

Edible Flowers

Key Health Benefits: Edible flowers have a large swath of benefits depending on which ones you choose (see below). Some help to calm you, others stimulate and support digestion, many are rich in Vitamin C and antioxidants, while some have anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. We like using edible flowers in teas and tinctures!

Learn More: How to Cook With Edible Flowers

Seaweed

Key Health Benefits: Seaweeds are incredibly nutrient-dense. They are high in iodine for the thyroid and hormonal health, chlorophyll for nourishing and cleansing our red blood cells, and iron and B vitamins for energy levels. Seaweed also contains protein, anti-cancer compounds, and is naturally salty without the excess sodium.

Learn More: Guide to Seaweeds and Sea Vegetable Recipes

Dandelions

Key Health Benefits: Often considered a pesky lawn weed, dandelions are nutrient-rich and should receive more appreciation! Dandelions contain anti-inflammatory and anti-diabetic compounds, are high in the antioxidant beta-carotene, have the prebiotic carbohydrate inulin, and a variety of vitamins and minerals. They are often used to support digestion and the liver. Another bonus: you can use the root, stem, leaves and flowers of dandelion, so nothing is wasted!

Learn More: How to Cook With Edible Flowers

Fiddleheads

Photo: Isabelle Boucher

Key Health Benefits: Fiddleheads are the coiled ends of the ostrich fern, and get their name because they look like the end of a fiddle or violin. They are a spring vegetable high in fibre, antioxidants, omega-3 fats, and omega-6 fats. Fiddleheads must be cleaned, stored and cooked properly (don’t eat them raw); otherwise, they may cause extreme digestive upset.

Learn More: What The Heck are Fiddleheads? and Sautéed Fiddlehead Ferns

Maple Water

Key Health Benefits: Maple water (which is boiled to become maple syrup) predominantly comes from maple trees in colder climates, such as the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, as well as the Northeastern United States. Some people are lucky enough to live on properties where they can tap their own maple water, which is extremely hydrating and is rich in antioxidants.

Learn More: Guide to Natural Sweeteners and The Best Naturally Sweetened Recipes

Nettles

Key Health Benefits: Also known as stinging nettles, nettles are packed with chlorophyll (the ‘blood’ of plants), iron, magnesium, nutritious fats, a range of vitamins (A, C, D, E and K), and have anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. Nettles sting your skin when you touch them – eliminate the sting by cooking them or steeping them in a tea. Be sure to use tongs and a strainer/colander when washing and handling them in your kitchen!

Learn More: Steamed Nettles with Toasted Sesame Seeds by Feasting at Home

Wild Salmon

Photo: Caroline Attwood on Unsplash

Key Health Benefits: Wild salmon (and many other varieties of wild fish) are rich in anti-inflammatory omega-3 fats, protein, Vitamin D and Vitamin B12. Salmon can help us build resilience, boost our mood and support brain health, maintain hormone balance and assist digestion.

Learn More: Guide to Eating Fish: Choosing Healthy and Sustainable Options

These are some of the wild foods that are available to us. We encourage you to explore the special array of wild foods in your area – and to do so responsibly and safely!

“Corporations are legally required to maximize shareholder profits and therefore have to oppose public health policies that could threaten profits.” That’s just how the system is set up. “Unequivocal, longstanding evidence shows that, to achieve this, diverse industries with products that can damage health have worked systematically to subvert the scientific process.” As I discuss in my video Flashback Friday: Sugar Industry Attemtps to Manipulate the Science, internal documents showed that Big Sugar was concerned that health food “faddists” were becoming an active menace to its industry. Sugar was under attack, “and many of the poor unfortunate public swallow the misinformation broadcast by the propagandists.” For example, in his book Pure, White and Deadly, John Yudkin says, “All of the propaganda, inspired or otherwise, [says]…that sugar is a non-essential food.” How dare anyone say sugar is a non-essential food! Next, they’ll be saying sugar isn’t really food at all. The sugar industry’s line? “Sugar is a cheap, safe food,” and that came from the founder and chair of Harvard’s nutrition department, Fredrick Stare, long known as “Harvard’s sugar-pushing nutritionist.” 

Not only did the sugar industry try to influence the direction of dental research, but it did the same with research on heart disease, paying Stare and colleagues to write a review that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967 to help downplay any risk from sugar. Now, to be fair, that was five years before we even realized triglycerides were also an independent risk factor beyond just cholesterol. The main reason that attention stayed focused on saturated fat is not because of the might of the sugar industry. There just weren’t as much data to support sugar’s role in heart disease. In fact, the even more powerful meat and dairy industries loved the anti-sugar message. Who do you think sponsored Yudkin? In fact, in the acknowledgements at the beginning of Pure, White and Deadly, he thanks all of the food and drug companies that had provided him with such constant generous support. Who paid for Yudkin’s speaking tour? The egg industry, of course, to try to take some heat off of cholesterol. 

Hegsted, one of the co-authors of the funded review, wasn’t exactly an industry cheerleader. He recommended people cut down on all of the risky stuff and eat “less meat, less fat, less saturated fat, less cholesterol, less sugar, less salt, and more fruits and vegetables, unsaturated fat and cereal products—especially whole grain cereals.” But, it wasn’t the sugar industry that got him fired for speaking truth to power—it was the beef industry. 

The sugar industry was able to conceal its funding because the New England Journal of Medicine didn’t require disclosure of conflicts of interest until 17 years later. These muckraking researchers suggest that “policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies,” but why is the food industry funding studies at all? When it comes to the corporate manipulation of research, “ultimately, conflicts of interest need to be eliminated, not just managed” and disclosed.  

“Change will not occur until public health researchers refuse to take money from the ultraprocessed food industry.” Period. “It worked for tobacco,” and many prestigious medical and public health institutions have instituted bans on tobacco-industry funding.  

Can’t scientists remain objective and impartial even in the face of all of that cash, though? Apparently not, as industry-funded research has been shown to be up to 88 times more likely to produce outcomes favorable to funders. What a surprise. Do we think corporations are in the business of just handing out free money? 

The classic example is the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, which accepted a million-dollar grant from Coca-Cola. Before the grant, its official position was that “frequent consumption of sugars in any beverage can be a significant factor in the…initiation and progression of dental caries [cavities].” After receiving the grant, it changed to: “Scientific evidence is certainly not clear on the exact role that soft drinks play in terms of children’s oral disease.” As Center for Science in the Public Interest’s Integrity in Science Project put it, “What a difference a million dollars makes!”

12 Healthy Barbecue Tips and Tricks

Add Lots of Veggies to Your Meal

Many barbecues are heavy on the meat, carbs and sweets and light on veg. Focus on filling at least half your plate with fresh or grilled vegetables. A fresh salad is always a great choice, but you can also opt for fresh veggies and dips, healthful French fries, mixed bean salads, spiralized veggie noodles, salsa, or guacamole (you can even make guac on the grill!).

Create Your Own Burgers

Sure, there are loads of burgers at the grocery store but when you make them from scratch there’s no preservatives, binders, fillers, factory-farmed animal products or byproducts – just whole ingredients (and no freezer burn either!). Whether you love making veggie or meat burgers, there are plenty of options to choose from in this post of 20 Best Burger Recipes.

Choose the Best Quality Protein You Can Find and Afford

Photo: Christiann Koepke from Unsplash

Whether we’re choosing to grill burgers, chicken, or fish at your healthy barbecue, we opt for meat that is organic and grass-fed, and fish that is sustainable (if you’re confused by meat labels, this is a great guide to what all the terms mean). If you’re grilling tofu or tempeh skewers, we recommend non-GMO soy – and be careful about the veggie burgers you buy. You want to ensure you’re purchasing a veggie burger that is made up of actual vegetables, not highly processed powders that are far removed from its original form.

Use a Heat Stable Cooking Oil

Explore Alternative Bun Options

Make Your Own Condiments

Try Fun Mocktails!

Add a Fermented Food To Your Plate

Fermented foods are a rich source of probiotics that help to support our immunity and foster good digestion. We love a good homemade pickle (learn how to make them here), a side of sauerkraut, or kimchi is also an option if you enjoy spicy foods.

Serve A Healthy Dessert

There are tons of options for sweet treats that will satisfy any sweet tooth at your healthy barbecue and provide plenty of nutrition. Fresh fruit is always a fantastic choice (watermelon is ultra yummy in the summertime) or you can use your barbecue to grill fruits like peaches, pineapple, bananas, or nectarines. Otherwise, you can choose from one of these delectable desserts:

Stay Hydrated

If you’re out in the heat during your healthy barbecue, ensure you stay hydrated with plenty of beverages and foods rich in electrolytes (that aren’t sports drinks) that will help you beat the heat.

Practice Safe Sun Protection

Photo: Bianca Mentil from Pixabay

Consider Making Your Healthy Barbecue a Potluck

Whether you’re having a single guest or 5 guests, consider asking them to bring a dish. While you’ll have less control over the dishes other people bring, there is something to be said about the health benefits of lowered stress that making an entire meal may cause, as well as the health benefits of enjoying a meal with loved ones. Learn more about the keys to a good potluck dish here.

With these healthy barbecue tips and tricks, you and your family can enjoy a fantastic meal, great company and feel good in your body at the end of the day.

Header Image: iStock/Olga Peshkova

In this episode of Stop Dieting: Get on the Healthy Side of Life, David is with Reed Davis, and they talk about functional medicine, the limited effects of supplements, David’s golden rules of weight loss, how common things aren’t necessarily normal, the tests available in functional medicine, where to get your protein from, and many more.

One of my favorite natural products of all time can help to relieve the skin of inflammation immediately. It’s called the Natural Healing Gel and it’s by a reputable company called Sovereign Silver. 

In our pursuit of healthy, radiant skin, we often encounter various challenges, one of which is skin inflammation. Whether caused by allergies, irritations, or skin conditions, the discomfort and redness associated with inflammation can be frustrating. However, there is a natural remedy that deserves the spotlight: colloidal silver gel. In this blog, we will explore the potential benefits of colloidal silver gel in soothing skin inflammation and promoting overall skin health.

Understanding Colloidal Silver:

Colloidal silver refers to tiny silver particles suspended in a liquid base, usually water or gel. It has a long history of use in traditional medicine and is known for its antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties. When used in gel form, colloidal silver can provide targeted relief and enhanced absorption into the skin.

Soothing Skin Inflammation:

1. Antimicrobial Action: Colloidal silver has been shown to possess broad-spectrum antimicrobial properties, effectively combating bacteria, fungi, and certain viruses. By addressing the underlying microbial causes of inflammation, it can aid in reducing redness and soothing irritated skin.

2. Anti-Inflammatory Effects: Research suggests that colloidal silver can help modulate the body’s inflammatory response. By regulating the release of inflammatory mediators, it may contribute to calming skin inflammation and alleviating discomfort.

3. Enhanced Healing: Studies have indicated that colloidal silver may promote wound healing. By supporting tissue regeneration and minimizing the risk of infection, it can contribute to faster recovery and reduced inflammation.

Using Colloidal Silver Gel for Skin Inflammation:

1. Cleanse and Dry: Start by gently cleansing the affected area and patting it dry before applying the colloidal silver gel. This ensures the skin is clean and ready to absorb the gel effectively.

2. Apply the Gel: Take a small amount of colloidal silver gel and apply it to the inflamed skin. Gently massage it in circular motions until fully absorbed. Adjust the frequency of application based on personal preference and the severity of inflammation.

3. Consistency is Key: Like any skincare routine, consistent use is important to experience the potential benefits of colloidal silver gel. Incorporate it into your daily skincare regimen for long-term support against skin inflammation.

When it comes to alleviating skin inflammation, colloidal silver gel has emerged as a promising natural remedy. With its antimicrobial properties, anti-inflammatory effects, and potential wound-healing benefits, it offers a soothing solution for those seeking relief. Embrace the power of colloidal silver gel and nurture your skin towards a healthier, calmer complexion.

If you have skin eruptions from acne & eczema, razor burn, sunburn, do microneedling this gel will also help!
 

It’s worth a try! You have nothing to lose! 

Try the NEW Natural Healing Gel: 

– Limited time pre-order offer starts now until July 5th!
– Save 20% on your order, PLUS if you order 2 or more you’ll get a FREE GIFT. Use this link and bio code: EARTHDIET20 

Sovereignsilver.com

Gazpacho originated in Andalusia in the southern region of Spain where the hot climate called for a cooling and hydrating dish. Originally, Gazpacho was made by pounding bread, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, and salt in a mortar, creating a thick paste. Water was then added to achieve the desired consistency, and the soup was served chilled. Over time, the recipe evolved to incorporate the vibrant flavours and rich colours of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and onions.

Our super-simple, classic Gazpacho recipe is the easiest chilled summer soup that you’ll ever find and takes less than 10 minutes to make. If you pre-chill all the ingredients, you can eat it immediately – it’s like having a health-boosting smoothie for a starter and is a great take-out lunch if you have a fridge at work or a flask to keep it cool. It is packed with Vitamin C and a generous dose of other vitamins and minerals from Vitamin K to copper.

Ingredients:
1 cucumber, peeled, deseeded & roughly chopped
1 onion, peeled & chopped
1 red pepper & 1 green pepper, deseeded & chopped
1 litre of tomato juice, chilled
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
ground black pepper

Method:
1) Put all the ingredients in a blender (liquidiser) and blend until smooth
2) Season to taste.
3) Chill in the fridge for two hours before serving.

Top Tip – For the quickest & easiest way prepare the cucumber: peel it whole; cut lengthways into quarters; slice out the seeds in one knife action and you have a peeled and deseeded cucumber. Then chop it up.

For a couple of alternatives to try out, let us know how you get on with these added extras…
Option 1 – Add a clove of garlic or two for extra kick and anti-Candida properties.
Option 2 – Add a couple of dashes of Tabasco for a nice bite
Option 3 – Add some sweetness with some watermelon
Option 4 – Go creole style and add some Jalapeño peppers and some lime juice.

Most importantly. Enjoy!

Beyond nutritional content or composition, the structure of food has a remarkable impact.

Food structure, not only nutrient composition, may be “critical for optimal health.” As you can see in the graph below and at 0:12 in my video Flashback Friday: Which Is a Better Breakfast: Cereal or Oatmeal?, corn flakes and rice products cause a much greater spike in blood sugars than rice or corn on the cob, but it’s not just because of the added sugar.

“Even with identical chemistry [the same ingredients], food structure can make a major difference to biological and health outcome.” For example, if you compare the absorption of fat from peanuts versus the exact same number of peanuts ground into peanut butter, you flush more than twice the amount of fat down the toilet when you eat the peanuts themselves. Why? Because no matter how well you chew, small bits of peanuts trap some of that oil that makes it down to your colon, as you can see in the graph below and at 0:35 in my video, and the physical form of food not only alters fat absorption, but it alters carbohydrate absorption, as well.

For example, rolled oats have a significantly lower glycemic index than instant oatmeal, which is just oats in thinner flakes, and oat flakes cause lower blood sugar and insulin spikes than powdered oats. They all have the same single ingredient—oats—but in different forms, and they can have different effects, as you can see in the graph below and at 1:02 in my video.

Why do we care? The overly rapid absorption of carbohydrates after eating a high-glycemic index meal can trigger “a sequence of hormonal and metabolic changes” that may promote excessive eating. Researchers fed a dozen obese teen boys different meals, each with the same number of calories, and followed them for the next five hours to measure their subsequent food intake. Those who got instant oatmeal went on to eat 53 percent more than after eating the same number of calories of steel-cut oatmeal. The instant oatmeal group was snacking within an hour after the meal and went on to accumulate significantly more calories throughout the rest of the day, as you can see in the graph below and at 1:41 in my video. They ate the same food but in a different form, with different effects.

Instant oatmeal isn’t as bad as some breakfast cereals, though, that can get up into the 80s or 90s on the glycemic index—even cereal with zero sugar like shredded wheat. The new industrial methods used to create breakfast cereals, such as extrusion cooking and explosive puffing, accelerate starch digestion and absorption, causing an exaggerated blood sugar response, whether they have added sugar or not. Shredded wheat has the same ingredients as spaghetti—just wheat—but has twice the glycemic index.

As you can see in the graph below and at 2:23 in my video, when you eat spaghetti, you get a gentle rise in blood sugars. However, if you eat the exact same ingredients made into bread form, all of the little bubbles in the bread allow your body to break it down more quickly, so you get a big spike in blood sugars, which causes your body to overreact with an exaggerated insulin spike, and that ends up driving down our blood sugars below fasting levels, which can trigger hunger. Experimentally, infusing someone with insulin so their blood sugars dip can cause their hunger to spike—in particular, their cravings for high-calorie foods can spike. In short, lower glycemic index foods may help one feel fuller for longer than equivalent higher glycemic index foods.

Researchers randomized individuals into one of three breakfast conditions—oatmeal made from quick oats, the same number of calories of corn flakes, or just plain water—and then measured how much they ate for lunch three hours later. As you can see in the graph below and at 3:17 in my video, not only did those who ate the oatmeal feel significantly fuller and less hungry, they also went on to eat significantly less lunch. After eating the oatmeal for breakfast, overweight participants ate less than half as many calories at lunch—hundreds and hundreds of fewer calories. In fact, the breakfast cereal was so unsatiating that the corn flakes group ate as much as the breakfast-skipping water-only group. It’s as if the cereal group hadn’t eaten breakfast at all.

If you feed people Honey Nut Cheerios, they feel significantly less full, less satisfied, and hungrier hours later than those who had been fed the same number of calories of oatmeal. Though both breakfasts were oat-based, the higher glycemic index, reduced intact starch, and reduced intact fiber in the Cheerios seemed to have all conspired to diminish appetite control. The trial was funded by the Pepsi Corporation, makers of Quaker oatmeal, pitted against Cheerios from rival General Mills. An exposé on industry-funded study manipulation later revealed that the study originally included another arm, Quaker Oatmeal Squares. “I am sorry that the oat squares did not perform as well as hoped,” the researcher told Pepsi, which decided to publish only the results about its oatmeal.

In case you missed my previous video on cereal, check out Flashback Friday: The Worst Food for Tooth Decay. It’s wild how the same product can have such different effects on the body based on how it was processed. Whole grains are better than refined ones, but the wholiest of all? Intact grains. Instant oats are better than powdered oats, rolled oats are better than instant, steel-cut oats are better than rolled, and intact oat groats are the best!

Check out this cooking video of my Morning Grain Bowl from the How Not to Die Cookbook.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka, Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show about a perfect FDN story.

To start, I kind of realized lately, if I’m a first-time listener of this show, I have no idea who this guy is or why he’s qualified to have a podcast. So, what I will start doing in the beginning is giving a very brief intro, under 30 seconds, just for the new listeners to understand why they’re listening, why I do this, why I’m a part of FDN. Then, if you listen to it regularly, you can just skip the 30 seconds, super easy. We’re like 250 something episodes in and I figured, yeah, maybe that would be a good idea.

So again, my name’s Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I called myself that because we are health detectives here at FDN. I dealt with seven different diagnosed conditions at the age of 18. This got progressively worse from the age of 5 to 18, and then eventually got into natural medicine. Not only did the FDN system resolve all seven of my diagnosed conditions, but it also helped my mom get her life back.

Now I am dedicated to them completely and spreading their message however we can. So, I do the podcast here. I’m also Director of Sales as of recently. So, if you ever need anything, you’re more than welcome to reach out to me and I can get you hooked up with a member of our team.

A Perfect FDN Story: Successful Business

Well, today, this is a fan favorite guest. It’s Ryan Monahan, one of the probably coolest and best clinical advisors we have ever had at Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. He was also the first guests, other than Reed, if you count Reed as a guest. Cause Reed Davis and I did kind of an episode zero when we first began all this. Then Ryan was the next guest right after that. He was the first long format interview. He came on again, talked about mold. He’s done so much for the podcast, so much for our community.

He has a great story, which we’re going to talk about in a summarized version today. And then we’re going to be speaking with him about something that we’ve never brought up on the show. And I don’t mean that in a general sense, I mean that specific to him. We’ve never brought up how he has such a successful FDN business.

And what’s really cool is, I didn’t even realize this part, he kind of challenges a lot of mainstream marketing narratives that he doesn’t really have any particular niche and he does things unconventionally. Now, I’m not saying I would necessarily recommend that myself for someone in business, but the point is you don’t have to do things cookie cutter to have success.

If the niche thing and all that overwhelms you and doesn’t resonate with you at all, I think this is going to be an episode that you really enjoy. You get to hear from someone that is highly intelligent, very knowledgeable, unconventional in a business sense, and yet still is able to do this as full-time work. Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.

A Perfect FDN Story: Focusing on Thyroid Dysfunction

All right, well, the hour has begun. So, we’re about to get started folks. Welcome to the Summer Open House event. And by event, I mean series of events, 22 long events in the month of June. We’re having fun here and we have finally made it to our halfway mark.

We still got 50% of the events left. There are tons of stuff happening for the rest of the month. You can always check the schedule at fdntraining.com/summer. And if you’ve missed any of these talks, remember we do have the replays available.

The replays are available for a fee. It’s fdntraining.com/summer. When you get registered, you’ll have the option to do VIP. And when you do VIP, you’ll get access to the recordings as well as get access to our private Facebook group where you can ask questions to our staff, including myself. We want you guys to use that as much as you can if you are in VIP.

Now we’re like at 250 episodes, which is absolutely crazy. So, we’re bringing Ryan on today to talk about something a little different. But here is his bio, in case you don’t know who this is. He is the founder of Mindful Nutrivore. And he is a health detective residing outside of Boulder, Colorado, with a passion for uncovering the hidden stressors that contribute to thyroid malfunction.

Ryan spent over 10 years visiting more than 40 health professionals, true story, to find answers to his chronic health complaints until being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in 2012. His mission is to change the dialogue about chronic disease towards a holistic, functional approach. So, we’ll touch on his story in the beginning today, but we’ve done that in depth on the podcast, so you’ll want to check that out as well.

A Perfect FDN Story: An FDN Household Name

And then we’re going to move into the business side for you guys, something that Ryan and I never get to talk about enough. We’re going to talk about how to get a referral-based business going. So, Ryan, we’ll start with the health stuff. How are you, my friend? It’s good to see you.

[00:06:28] Ryan Monahan: Good to see you, Evan. Full circle.

[00:06:31] Detective Ev: Yeah, for real. It’s kind of crazy now because whenever you start a podcast, I think it’s such a trendy thing, let’s be honest, still to this day. You kind of expect, all right, like episode 10. Then we give it up or something happens, you know, water spills on your microphone and that’s the excuse to never do it again. And yet here we are all this time later doing this stuff.

So, I should have mentioned you’ve actually been on twice cause you came on and did a mold special with us where you touched on a bunch of cool things. It did encourage me to get an air purifier. I admit I did not spend the crazy amount of money on some of the ones that are probably a lot better, but it’s undoubtable that it definitely helps. So, I thank you for that.

But Ryan, we got a bunch of new people, in terms of new to FDN, that are watching these Lives. So, we’re on Zoom. This is the VIP group that’s allowed on here, but there’s tons watching on YouTube right now, in our Facebook group. It’s being streamed a bunch of different places, so they might not know you. They might not know that you’re pretty much a household name in the world of FDN. So, let’s touch on your journey, man.

A Perfect FDN Story: Long-Lasting Mystery Health Symptoms

How did this start for you as a young guy? Like what symptoms did you start dealing with?

[00:07:31] Ryan Monahan: Well, I love talking about this and I’m so glad that I have the opportunity to do it to a full house. That’s really cool for some of the new people in the FDN community who may not be familiar with my story.

Evan, we’ve gone over this on prior podcasts, so I’ll keep it a little shorter for the sake of today’s discussion. But I’d love for anyone listening to go back and check that original podcast episode where we go into it in more depth.

The short version of the story is that starting in my teenage years, I had been dealing with a number of seemingly unexplained chronic symptoms ranging from chronic fatigue to depression, to debilitating allergies and asthma and digestive issues, and kind of everything in between. This was a mystery for me for many, many years, well over a decade, as you mentioned in my bio. I had seen over 40 health specialists in the northeast area where I lived at the time in Connecticut.

And it was kind of the typical experience with, take this for that. Been given various treatments or pharmaceuticals, but never really feeling like I was getting to the root of anything. Just kind of masking the symptoms and treating the symptoms on the surface.

So, it wasn’t until I was 28 years old that I visited a health professional that was also licensed in traditional Chinese medicine. So, took some of a little bit of a different lens at looking at things, a little bit of a different experience. And he ran a whole bunch of blood work on me, including a thyroid panel.

A Perfect FDN Story: Debilitating Chronic Fatigue

He called me up maybe two or three days later after the blood work came in and said that I had Hashimoto’s disease. And I said Hashi, what? I had no idea what he was talking about. I had very little understanding even of what the thyroid does in the body in terms of its role in physiology except maybe what I learned in a high school physiology class.

And so, immediately started doing some research to kind of put together the clues with what he was saying, with what I was going through with my health. And you know, love to tell this story because it’s so crazy and it’s also a testament to FDN in the process of where I’ve come. When we reviewed that blood work together, my thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH level was 150. It was actually technically above 150.

For those of you that don’t know, the higher that number, the slower your thyroid function. Okay? Ideally, from a functional/optimal perspective, we want to see that number between about a 0.5 and a 2. That’s kind of the sweet spot, 0.5 to 2. So, I was above 150, which essentially meant that I was, metabolically speaking, almost like in a coma. And I was really purely running on willpower.

The doctor even literally commented that day, like, I have no idea how you’ve been able to get up in the morning. And that’s how it felt. The chronic fatigue was debilitating. It wasn’t just your kind of everyday fatigue. It was to the point where some days I’d be lying in bed the entire day, just kind of staring at the ceiling. At certain points I thought I might be dying cause I just had no idea what was going on. Right?

A Perfect FDN Story: Disenchantment with Conventional Medicine

But this is something that I was wrestling with on my own because I felt that no one really from the outside would be able to understand what I was going through or just think that it was in my head. Because on the surface I looked more or less somewhat normal. Like just my physical appearance, I was kind of puffy and swollen. But these were kind of silent symptoms you can’t necessarily see from the outside.

So, that being said, it was tremendously validating to know that there was something physiologically wrong, that the chronic fatigue, the brain fog, the depression, the constipation, all these things I was going through, it wasn’t just in my head. There were real physiological problems going on.

And long story short, that was kind of the beginning of my disenchantment with the conventional medical approach and then eventually kind of transitioning into learning more about holistic and natural approaches.

[00:11:42] Detective Ev: The whole story is remarkable. And I’m also realizing as we’re talking, I’m so full of it. You’ve been on three times cause we’ve talked about mold, but we also did that thyroid thing together.

Ryan Monahan: We did the thyroid lab review.

Detective Ev: Yeah. If we’re counting this one, you hold the record then. That’s awesome.

But my point is, just thinking about all this thyroid stuff and connecting it together, I get that it was a different time; I get that it was 11 years ago. And we’ve really, really made some progress in Western and functional medicine over these last 11 years. But the idea that no one even thought to run something as seemingly simple as a thyroid panel until after you had seen all these people, I mean, I would hope that this would be unheard of now.

A Perfect FDN Story: Importance of a Thyroid Panel

And we know it’s not necessarily unheard of in Western medicine, but I feel like there’s a lot of stigma that also plays a role in this. I mean, thyroid conditions are a little more common in women than men, generally speaking. Well, I had some thyroid stuff going on and they ran it with me. But they didn’t even identify that it was out of the reference ranges because it was only for functional medicine that my TSH was out of reference ranges not for Western medicine.

And not to mention, in an odd sense, you’re kinda lucky, I suppose, that TSH was high because there’s whole thyroid panels out there that your TSH could look normal, and the rest of the stuff looks like crap. But they don’t even run that sometimes in natural and functional medicine.

[00:12:56] Ryan Monahan: Both super important points there.

So, first of all, I should have mentioned this when I was walking through the story, but there was no thyroid panel run until that one doctor in 2012. No doctor ever before that had ever mentioned it, considered it. I mean, I could have saved a lot of time and pain and heartache and finances if I had learned about this sooner.

That being said, I feel like that should be the standard of care that anyone coming through a doctor’s door with routine blood work should be given a thyroid panel. And that’s a big reason of why I do what I do. And then secondly, you’re making a great point too about the TSH.

A Perfect FDN Story: TSH Alone is an Incomplete Picture

For those that don’t know, again, TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone, but it’s just one marker amongst a greater picture of thyroid health. And a lot of times doctors will only run this one TSH marker, which by itself, I can’t emphasize enough, doesn’t really tell you anything. That marker by itself does not give you the full context. It’s just garbage.

I hope it’s okay to just be blunt about it. That marker by itself just doesn’t tell you anything. It’s possible to have your TSH be in the normal range, even from a conventional perspective, but your actual thyroid hormones, like your T4 and T3 might be really, really low. So, if you’re only running TSH, you’re going to miss that picture. You might also miss the fact that you have antibodies to the thyroid, so there’s a lot more going on.

[00:14:25] Detective Ev: Yeah. They’ve had me hosting every day, so don’t worry about the blunt thing. Especially my talk with Jennifer Woodward in business school, I kind of went into Ev-mode. So, I think you calling these tests garbage or the lack thereof garbage, I think that’s totally fine, my friend. One of the more tame things today or this month.

But I want to kind of transition a bit into the healing. And I know we’re doing a super summarized version of your journey today so that we can talk about the business stuff as well. But for those that are already hearing this, I would hope that someone recognizes that’s a pretty powerful and crazy story. I mean, it’s one thing now because you see this guy, looks completely healthy, is healthy actually. And so we can almost become a little detached from what this person was going through.

A Perfect FDN Story: Symptoms Reappear

But, Ryan, man, this was every day of your life for a long time. It’s scary as crap when you’re going to all these doctors and no one’s telling you what’s wrong. I mean, I’m sure you start to get in your own head wondering like, is this something that can be fixed?

If you guys want to hear stories like this, we got almost 200 of them. And I say 200 because some of the Health Detective Podcast interviews are not always just about health stuff. But all you gotta do is search for the Health Detective Podcast on Apple and Spotify, and you can hear Ryan’s original episode or any of the wonderful people we’ve brought on.

Then we also talk about the resolutions, which is what we’ll transition into. Because the tough stuff matters to talk about, but the beautiful part is when these people get better. So, I know that you went to this doctor and that was kind of the first aha moment for you where it’s like, okay, at least I know what’s wrong. But that doesn’t mean that you just started taking a natural approach overnight. So, what were the next steps after that diagnosis?

[00:15:55] Ryan Monahan: You’re right. I did not take a natural approach right away. That came a little later.

Initially, actually, I was put on Synthroid, which is the synthetic version of thyroid hormone. And to be honest, I felt amazing like overnight. It wasn’t even gradual. The next day, I felt like a totally different person. I had never felt that way since I was a kid. It was kind of a miracle. Unfortunately, over the next roughly six months, all my symptoms started coming back. That’s when I really started to question things.

A Perfect FDN Story: Searching for Answers

Up to that point, I had never really thought much about, well, what is causing the thyroid to become dysfunctional in the first place? Because certainly this doesn’t just happen randomly, right? This is not random. It doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. But no doctor I had seen for my thyroid health up to that point had ever really talked about that or looked at things from that angle.

So, that’s when I started to become curious about how the thyroid works. Cause I figured in my mind, something intuitively told me, if I can understand how it works, maybe I can bio hack it, maybe I can tweak things, maybe I can fix it. This is a true story. I literally went on Google, and I searched something like, book about Hashimoto’s, or like, book about thyroid health. I had not known if there was anything out there like that.

Sure enough, I stumbled on Isabella Wentz’s book on Hashimoto’s. And in my mind, I was like, this is a long shot that someone’s already written a book about this, but someone had written a book about it. I was like, wow. So, within seconds I bought it on Amazon, and I read it from cover to cover.

When I read that book, like just my mind and my interest was lit on fire. I just had that passion, where you just have these few moments in your life where you know like exactly what to do next. I read this book and I was like, I don’t know how she got to where she is, in terms of like what she does for a living, but I want to do that.

A Perfect FDN Story: A Plethora of Problems

I wanted to become a version of Isabella Wentz and help people with thyroid issues. She was talking about all these labs too, that she runs with her patients in her practice, you know, gut testing, adrenal testing, food sensitivities. I was just like, that’s where it’s at. I need to figure out how the system is broken so I could bring it back into balance, right?

Soon after that, I started searching for health programs, you know, related to holistic health and came across FDN, again, through like a Google search. And then had gone to PALEO f(x), I want to say it was like 2013 maybe, it was a long time ago and ran into Reed and Jen Malecha and Brandon Mollé.

Detective Ev: Good crew to run into.

Ryan Monahan: Good crew, really solid A-Team crew, and got to pick their brain about the FDN program. I was just pretty much immediately sold on just on the tagline alone, test, don’t guess. Because, you know, I had extrapolated from my experience with the thyroid, that just knowing that information, changed my life. And I thought, well, what other information, what else is there that I don’t know yet in terms of my underlying health and physiology?

And sure enough, as I started to go through the course and run all of these labs on myself, you know, uncovered all kinds of things, parasites, H. pylori, C. diff., eventually worked through the whole nightmare of mold overgrowth and mold exposure, which is a whole nother story, maybe for another day. You and I have talked about that on a podcast episode. Anything you can imagine, hormone imbalances, nutrient deficiencies, you name it, I’ve had it.

A Perfect FDN Story: Challenging Western Medicine

I’ve had all the hidden stressors that you can count. And you know, it took time. I worked on it; I was persistent. In my mind, there was no other way because I never wanted to go back to how I felt before. So, this was just, full tilt, fully committed to this kind of new approach.

[00:20:03] Detective Ev: Well, there’s a lot of major things here, but for the sake of today, there’s two things I really want to emphasize, Ryan. Because if I had a dollar for every time someone brought up this, intuitively knowing this didn’t make sense, I mean, I’d have around $200 cause we’ve done 200 episodes. So, I would not be a rich man, but I’d have some extra change. You know, I could buy a lab test or two.

But that’s such a key thing that I hope people take away from today. It is not to blindly challenge medical professionals for no reason because you watch a YouTube video. That’s not what I’m suggesting. But if you’re one of those people, cause this is a really common theme on the podcast, it’s one of the only common themes I’ve seen over time. People are getting told different things from different places. None of it’s really working. And then, gosh forbid, we can get a diagnosis. They take a medication or get a surgery and then the symptoms kind of come back or new symptoms come back.

If you are in that boat, it is not just blindly challenging Western medicine to say, hmm, maybe this doesn’t make sense. I think that’s a very fair and logical thought process at that point.

A Perfect FDN Story: Health is a Moving Goalpost

And I love how you brought up intuition. Cause a lot of people especially the women, when I asked them, I just knew, it was in my gut. I just felt this, that this wasn’t right. This didn’t make sense. You’ll find they had no background in holistic health whatsoever. They just weren’t buying the narrative.

And the truth of the matter is, that’s my story. At 18 when I got the one diagnosis of Meniere’s disease and I’m looking this crap up on Google, I’m seeing suicide support forms for this and all this stuff. I’m like, no. How can I be this sick and have seven different conditions that are apparently unrelated, and my friends don’t even have one? Something doesn’t add up there.

Just so we give people maybe something to take away from today, health-wise, what were some of the biggest things that you would say that got you to where you’re at now? And I guess even though it should be clear from just hearing you and seeing you, where are you at now? How do you feel? What is the health like today?

[00:21:54] Ryan Monahan: Yeah. Well, starting backwards then, I mean, I feel amazing. I don’t really have all that much to complain of, and I don’t really believe in perfection. I don’t think anyone’s health is perfect, even amongst the A-Crew of the FDN community, for the simple reason that health is a moving goalpost, right?

It’s not that we’ve reached a certain destination and then we’re like, I graduated. I got my diploma in healing and now there’s nothing else I have to do. We’re constantly working on this. It is a process and an art form even that takes dedication.

A Perfect FDN Story: Food is Medicine

That being said, on an average given day, I’m 10000% better than I felt 5, 6, 7 years ago. Just in a completely different place in terms of energy, mood, sleep, digestion. Again, very little to complain of except for rare, occasional things that pop up like they would for anyone.

So, yeah. Kind of dialing it back, you had asked what I had done kind of initially in some of those initial stages to start to heal and repair. One of the first things I did kind of around that same time when I started reading that book on thyroid health and kind of digging a little deeper, was that I had also discovered the autoimmune protocol or the auto autoimmune paleo diet, sometimes it’s called. That was really the first time that I had really embraced the idea of food as medicine.

You know, that alone already noticed a 20% or 30% major shift in my health, my energy, my focus, cognitive function, libido, all those kinds of amazing things you might expect when taking an approach. I think that was the first time I had encountered the term nutrient density, cause certainly up to that point my diet was anything but nutrient dense.

So, this is when I started to explore things that were a little foreign to me at the time like bone broth and organ meats and eating a lot of fermented foods that are still, all to this day, staples in my diet. That was really transformative to me and that was something that really clicked with me in terms of waking up from the matrix, so to speak.

A Perfect FDN Story: The Definition of Insanity

Again, going back to what I said earlier, there were these kind of little steps on the way there. And each time, all of those approaches proved themselves to me by doing it. Because you can explain these things all day long to your clients, but you know, you can’t intellectualize it.

At a certain point, you have to be willing to say, I’m going to try a different approach because I’ve been doing this conventional approach for, you know, a decade or longer, and it hasn’t worked for me. And the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That’s really very much what I was experiencing with the conventional medical approach. It just wasn’t working. So, at that point, I was willing to do yoga and change my diet and meditate and work on my mindset and was receptive and open to those approaches.

Finding FDN helped me to find that community of like-minded people that had a similar mindset and very likely, in most cases, similar experiences and backgrounds. Where typically, you know, you find someone who’s been through the ringer, so to speak, with these challenges with their health and not really getting the help they need. And sometimes that’s what you need to kind of, again, wake up from the matrix and think outside of that consensus reality, I call it, to looking at a different way of thinking.

That’s kind of more of a general answer. But then the short answer would be, you know, D.R.E.S.S. Right?

A Perfect FDN Story: Real Healing Takes Time

It was changing my diet. This is probably like a whole nother rabbit hole, but up until my Hashimoto’s diagnosis, I was usually going to bed at 12 o’clock or 1:00 in the morning. So, I really had to make some adjustments slowly over time to my sleep schedule. The movement and exercise and yoga and the stress reduction and mindset component, I mean, there were so many layers to it that I could talk about it for hours. But ultimately it was about making slow and gradual changes.

And this is something I actually picked up from Sean Croxton, who I know is kind of heading up the keynote presentation for the open house. You know, he has this thing he says, little by little, a little becomes a lot. And I just love that so much. I think about it almost every day. I teach that to clients who get overwhelmed with all the things they think they have to change overnight.

And I’ll say, look, it took me years to make all these changes. You’re looking at my chapter 10 and you’re on your chapter 1 right now. So, don’t compare yourself to where I’m at cause we all have to start somewhere. You know, it’s not like overnight I detoxed and cleansed my body of these gut bugs and bought an expensive water filter and air filter and did all this biohacking stuff. It just takes time.

[00:27:02] Detective Ev: Yeah. That’s a really good way of putting it. I think that’s why the stories on the podcast and other places that we post them are powerful because, I mean, we’re summarizing it in into a freaking hour. There’s only so much that you can do in an hour.

A Perfect FDN Story: How Much Did FDN Help?

But you really get to realize this is a long time. I mean, it’s years for many people, even on the healing side.

Now the good news is, and I think most FDNs would generally agree with this, it’s kind of fascinating to me. You can take a super sick person, and if they’re willing to do most of the stuff that you recommend, they’ll be feeling like 70%, 80% better in three months. And then that last 20% to 30% sometimes, that’s the part that could take a few years to really get that under control. Not always, but that’s kind of how it goes. It’s fascinating.

We do have some questions from the audience here. Someone said, “did you heal yourself just going through the course and being your first client or continuing on from that foundation?” I can even say this too, what percentage of your healing would you contribute to FDN? Because you’re a very well-versed guy. I mean, you’ve studied a lot of different things, so maybe that’s a different even way to word it.

[00:28:01] Ryan Monahan: Yeah. That’s an interesting question. I’ve never thought about it in terms of a percentage.

I was kind of just at the beginning of this path as I had discovered FDN and started the course. And I had been doing an AIP diet already, doing that kind of nutrient dense paleo diet to help manage the autoimmunity. I had been doing yoga probably at that point for maybe a couple of years actually; I had even done a yoga teacher certification.

A Perfect FDN Story: FDN D.R.E.S.S. Protocol

So, point being that, you know, I had some of these concepts in place, but I didn’t yet have a foundation or a framework like the way that FDN frames things for you in terms of that D.R.E.S.S. protocol. It’s so powerful and elegant and simple. But there were things I was missing from that.

If you think of D.R.E.S.S. as like being the four legs of a table, diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, supplements is maybe the bowl of fruit on top of the table. Well, you know, I’ll tell people, you can’t be missing even one of those things or else you’re going to have a lopsided table. Okay?

And so, I maybe had some of those foundations in place, but probably the biggest thing I was missing was the stress reduction. When I say stress reduction, I mean both mentally and emotionally. Also, in terms of those physiological stressors, cause let’s not forget the word stress, we’re also talking about hidden stressors in the body. And that was a huge, huge, just gaping hole in my knowledge that FDN really helped to fill in.

So, I would say, going through the FDN program probably helped me uncover maybe 80% that I was missing from the equation. Cause when I talk hidden stressors, I was dealing with some really deep, hidden stressors like mold and heavy metals and things that not necessarily every client is dealing with, things that are that deep seated. They might be, you know, things that are a little bit simpler. So, going through the FDN program helped me create that foundation.

A Perfect FDN Story: The Epitome of FDN

Then on top of that, I continued on to take every single one of those advanced courses and learn as much as I could. The advanced courses on oxalate, organic acids, blood chemistry, SIBO, thyroid, I mean, I just devoured it, is a good word. You know, I wanted to essentially have no gaps in my knowledge when it came to my own health journey and being able to help other people. So, yeah, I hope that answer makes sense.

[00:30:34] Detective Ev: It does. And it’s cool because it kind of transitions us perfectly into the next part. There was a follow up question of, “do you just focus on helping clients with Hashimoto’s?”

So, another thing that we wanted to bring Ryan on for today, because we’ve talked about his health stuff and is very well versed in these things like I said a few different times between Instagram and the podcast or whatever. But what we kind of neglect to mention sometimes is you’re one of our more successful FDNs.

I mean, you’re kind of the epitome of what we hope for with every practitioner that goes through. You have someone still on a health journey, has done some stuff, but could use some adjustment. Goes through the course, is their best testimonial because they help themselves, and then is actually able to turn this into a career.

I’ve been trying to get this point across to people throughout the entire month of June, and I’ll continue to do so. It’s like, well, are you guys a health place or a business place? In my opinion, we’re both. I think we kick butt at both.

A Perfect FDN Story: A Referral-Based Business

We’re really good at getting people well and keeping them well, and then actually giving them the tools to navigate when something does come up. Because you’re right, it is a never-ending thing.

I had wisdom tooth surgery, right, which forced me onto antibiotics. That led to a stomach ulcer, because I guess it just messed some stuff up. Now that doesn’t mean I’m less of an FDN. It doesn’t mean that I don’t know the things that I knew the day before I had the ulcer or had to take the antibiotics, but now I know how to navigate that differently. It’s really kind of an amazing thing. So, health symptoms still happen to all of us, but we’re at a much safer place. And thankfully we’re not struggling every single day, most of us. It’s like little waves come and we know what to do when they’re there.

So, to get back to the question of do you just focus on helping clients with Hashimoto’s now? We should talk about the fact that you do have a great business. You have a referral-based business, which does not mean that you never get a client from the outside world, but you’re making a good amount of income from just what you’ve done and helping other people and them recommending others to you.

So, Ryan was also a clinical advisor for quite a few years at FDN. He was like a fan favorite clinical advisor. But this is a good problem to have. His business got so successful that he couldn’t really justify doing the clinical advising stuff anymore.

A Perfect FDN Story: Some Key Broad Marketing Ideas

In one sense, that’s probably the best-case scenario that we could ever have at the company, when the people that are teaching our practitioners are having so much success that it’s like, no, we gotta go do this. So, how the heck did you go into businessperson when you didn’t really have that background all the way to now doing this full-time, didn’t study this in college, and having a referral-based business?

[00:33:00] Ryan Monahan: One small correction. Evan, you would be totally excused from this cause I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this.

Detective Ev: Oh, please. I hope so.

Ryan Monahan: I have a double major in music and in marketing.

Detective Ev: I did not know the marketing.

Ryan Monahan: Two very different things. But I technically have a bachelor’s in marketing.

Detective Ev: Fair enough.

Ryan Monahan: To be fair, it was mostly pretty useless. There were maybe three things I retained. I say that because I don’t want that to intimidate anyone. I don’t really attribute my success doing FDN with a bachelor’s degree that I got when I finished when I was 22 because I don’t really see them as related. There were some kind of key broad ideas that I took from that.

You know, 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers, like 80/20 rule, I remember that. I remember the AIDA acronym: attention, interest, desire, action. So, what do I take from that broadly? Well, here’s the one thing I remember from marketing school is that it doesn’t matter how smart you are, doesn’t matter how much you know, if people aren’t aware of your product, they’re not going to buy it. If people aren’t aware of your service, they’re not going to buy it. So, if there’s anything I remember just very broadly from marketing school, it’s that.

A Perfect FDN Story: Never Really Specifically Niching

Fast forward to today. Let me answer the question first with the, do I only focus on helping clients with Hashimoto’s and then I think that’ll help to tie in some other ideas that I’m getting at here. So, the answer is no. Okay? And there are some ways in which I differ from the normal narrative within our world.

For example, I think many of you have probably heard this throughout the course of the Open House, that, you know, you want to find your niche and you want to hyper niche, that really hyper specific in order to be successful. I have good news for some of you who maybe that doesn’t resonate with or may be intimidated by that idea. I’ve never really done that.

Yes, I have a story and some of you have heard that story today about my journey with Hashimoto’s and autoimmunity. And that story will always be a part of me. That story helps me to connect with other people who might resonate with my story to want to work with me. I’ve been able to share that story on dozens of podcasts. So, in a sense, yes, I’m going to kind of appeal to a certain type of audience with autoimmune disease as their kind of primary health challenge that they’re working through.

But at the same time, over the years, I’ve never turned down people coming to me with other health issues, depression, anxiety, weight gain, migraines, mold illness issues. But why is that? Well, I’ve always taken what Reed Davis has taught in the FDN course, very literally, which is that we can help anybody. Because it’s not about treating specific conditions, it’s about addressing everything in the body, non-specifically.

A Perfect FDN Story: FDN Works on Anyone

So, the fact that someone has condition A, B, or C, it doesn’t intimidate me because I’m not interested in how we’re labeling the symptom or condition or disease or diagnosis. I’m much more interested in what’s going on underneath the surface and those hidden stressors, infections, toxins, hormone imbalances, immune system dysfunction, nutrient deficiencies. These are the things that are bringing the system out of balance and leading to some kind of symptom or condition on the surface that we’re labeling as Hashimoto’s.

Hashimoto’s even, I believe, is a symptom of deeper dysfunction in the body. Like I said earlier, the thyroid doesn’t just become dysfunctional in a vacuum randomly. Okay? So, for me, and I want to say this at a full respect to people that teach the methodology of niching out and hyper nicheing, cause I get it.

But that doesn’t resonate with me; it doesn’t work for me. Because I want to be able to help anyone that needs my help. I almost have an interest in like testing the limits of this, like, how well can it work for any condition or label or diagnosis. And I’ve been in practice as an FDN for close to eight years and I can tell you it works on anyone.

So, I hope that all makes sense, and that the audience finds that information useful or a little bit different. Again, it’s almost like heresy to say that I feel like that idea is so ingrained and popular to kind of niche and hyper niche. But I haven’t found a need to do that in order to be successful.

A Perfect FDN Story: Pros and Cons of Niching

[00:37:45] Detective Ev: This is the reason that we’re having this month with the Summer Open House. I told you even before we got on, it’s nice to have another guy that’s on here talking. We’ve had a lot of women on, which is fantastic, but FDN is for everyone.

We’ve had 60-year-olds that are on this, doing full-time practices. Then we’re going to have people that are in their early thirties. There may have, even outside of me, been some late twenties on this month. I’ll have to go back and check. But this is the point, it doesn’t discriminate; it is for everyone.

We could spend all day going back and forth with marketing stuff. And I’m an amateur marketer myself. But I think one of the reasons that this gets promoted is simply because, in the right circumstances, it might, especially if it resonates with you, accelerate one’s growth a little bit quicker.

Only because if there’s two signs on the sidewalk when I walk down the street and I’m back in the midst of my health journey and I have severe cystic acne, and one of the signs is like, we help everyone naturally and the other sign is like tired of dealing with cystic acne, we have you covered. Right? Of course, naturally my eyes will wander to the one that talks to me.

The difference is when you cast a big net you might miss some fish. But now, a lot more people are paying attention here. I might at least glance at that other side. Because the problem with the other side of the cystic acne, if I don’t have that condition, which is the majority of people don’t have that condition, I am definitely not looking at that sign.

A Perfect FDN Story: So Many Ways to Do FDN Successfully

So, I actually think it’s a really interesting point and it’s good for people to hear this. We’re not trying to bring on contradictory messages or confusing messages. Find the one that resonates with you.

[00:39:12] Ryan Monahan: That works for you, right?

Detective Ev: Yes.

Ryan Monahan: For some people, the hyper niching thing, it works obviously. Many people have done that successfully. That’s just not the route that I took. Simple as that.

[00:39:23] Detective Ev: You wouldn’t know this obviously, Ryan, but we had a panel discussion actually that you were invited to. Unfortunately, you had your business stuff going on. We would’ve had Ryan on that panel, and you would’ve seen a huge diversity, we already had some, but a huge diversity in how people got clients.

We had Kim Boehm on, exclusively gets clients through referrals and speaking gigs that she does for free. She might, outside of Reed, be one of the people that has done the most free speaking gigs to go get clients using the lecture packages. Then you have Martha Lewis, who lives in a more remote area of might be Mississippi or Alabama, and she’s like, I just didn’t have too many places to talk. So, I had to expand onto the social media side.

The point is, Ryan – successful practitioner, Kim – successful practitioner, Martha – all successful practitioners. So, there’s many ways to do this. And I think it’s, honestly, quite frankly, a huge testament to the system that we can do this in so many different ways and eventually it still works out.

How though did you get to the point of referral base business over all these years? Because that’s delivering an exceptional service for a long period of time to be able to do something like that.

A Perfect FDN Story: Under-Promising and Over-Delivering

[00:40:28] Ryan Monahan: Under-promising and over-delivering.

[00:40:34] Detective Ev: Okay. I thought it was a dramatic pause. And you’re like, you all think on that for a second. And I’m going to come back.

[00:40:40] Ryan Monahan: You know, I mean, in a sense that statement is kind of self-contained, cause that really is a big part of the truth. But I’m happy to elaborate on that.

Detective Ev: Please.

Ryan Monahan: And not leave you guys in suspense.

So, yeah. Really truly, like just building rapport with clients I think is really important. You know, that gets to the human side of what we do beyond like the clinical, right? Just like having a good bedside manner, really listening.

You know, like when the client wants to speak, giving them that space to speak so that they feel heard. Repeating back to the client what they’re sharing with you, so that they know that you hear them is a really powerful coaching tool. That may be one of the most powerful things you can ever do, because I can almost guarantee you most people have never had that experience.

Like, whoa, this guy actually is listening to everything I’m saying. Just sitting there going like this doesn’t prove that you’re listening. But repeat it back and summarize, and add some empathy to it, too. Just kind of acknowledge how difficult that it is just from what you’re hearing of what they’ve gone through. For most of you, that’s going to be easy to do because you’ve been through something similar. So, I get it. Right? It’s like that feeling. I can’t imagine how difficult that must be.

A Perfect FDN Story: Do a Good Job and Give Results

Again, I would say on the over-delivering side of things, just really being there as much as you can be for the client in terms of your presence, your communication, over communicating, providing more than they ask for. Just give them an experience that they’ve never had before.

I’ll say this, when I do a sales call with a potential client, I don’t necessarily go super scripted. I’m a pretty organic guy with everything I do, and I shoot from the hip with a lot of things that I do. But there’s one thing I make sure to say every time during that call, which is that, if we decide to work together, this is going to be the most comprehensive investigation into your health you’ve ever done. That’s the value that I’m bringing to the table.

And 90% of the time or more that’s really going to resonate with people. Because I’m telling them we’re not going to leave any stone unturned. It’s likely in the past you haven’t succeeded because you’re missing key information. So, let’s just put an end to it. Let this be the last stop. Let’s look at everything we need to look at to complete the picture.

Well, that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about with over-delivering. I like to believe my business is primarily referral-based because I get those referrals from people who get results and I do a good job. I don’t think I would be getting those referrals if that wasn’t true.

[00:43:40] Detective Ev: How much easier, straightforward, or smooth are the calls with a referral-based prospect versus someone that randomly found you on a website that has no connection to you other than whatever you list on social media or your website?

A Perfect FDN Story: Warm Referral Calls

[00:43:57] Ryan Monahan: So, how is it different to have clients coming to me through referrals versus finding me like on a Google search or something?

[00:44:03] Detective Ev: Yeah. And the hint here is I want to show people what’s possible with this. Because I think a lot of people get intimidated by sales calls, even though I’ve been hammering that for the last 10 events basically.

But I want to show them too, this can really get fun when people are calling you and they’re warm and they’re happy and their friend or family member went through. It’s a lot different sometimes than the calls with others that might not know you at all. Those calls can be great. But I’m just wondering how you find those are different.

[00:44:27] Ryan Monahan: Most of the time with these referral calls, and you said it, the key operative word there was warm. It’s like easy. What I mean by that is that person is already fairly convinced in their mind, if not already convinced, that they want to work with you.

Really, they’re just doing the call as kind of an introduction to learn about the cost, the logistics of getting started. And so, there’s, to me, much less of an intimidation factor when I get a referral, because I already know they’ve most likely been referred to me by someone who has given me a really solid review and recommendation. Like, you gotta work with this guy. At least that’s what I’m hoping was the conversation that was going on in the background. And I’m not saying I go into it being overconfident or cocky. I’m still going to kind of work for it and convince them of the value of what I do.

A Perfect FDN Story: A Fun and Amazing Journey

But I would say with referrals, it tends to be almost a little more in the bag than maybe someone who found me on like a directory or something like that. Those calls can be slightly more intimidating because they don’t know you from the next average Joe or other practitioner. So, there’s a little maybe more work of kind of building rapport and some connection and convincing them of the value of what you do.

[00:45:49] Detective Ev: Yeah. I really want to paint the picture for people. This is the dream FDN. And this has happened to a lot of people. Again, you come in sick, well, we’ll help you take care of that, right? Give you the resources you need to have to get well and stay well. Help you create the business. And then you’re doing such a good job.

And obviously you add a lot of things, Ryan, that can’t be taught. Those are things that you’re choosing to do. So, fair enough. But get to a point where you have now made a legitimate, solid, predictable income with this that continues to grow. And you’re getting referrals from nice people that are excited to work with you. So, people don’t have to be afraid of the business side. This is a really fun experience and kind of an amazing journey to go through.

We do have a question on YouTube here. It’s Chris K and I saw them on the other day, so we’re glad you’re with us again.

“Hi Ryan. I’m curious about the limits of FDN. I know someone who is no longer able to digest food and gets all nutrition from a PICC line to the heart. Could she be beyond FDN? Sounds like it started from a virus.”

A Perfect FDN Story: Working Around the Edges

[00:46:53] Ryan Monahan: That’s one of those more complex scenarios where that person’s definitely going to need medical attention, but that doesn’t mean in my mind that you couldn’t also be on their healthcare team.

This is where I think of the kind of, you know, it takes a village approach with something more complex. I’ve never worked with someone in that situation, but I have worked with plenty of clients that necessitated medical attention. And the way I’ll explain things in that context is that, you know, we’re going to be able to work on the diet and lifestyle aspects of things, kind of working around the edges, right? Because there are likely fundamental needs that aren’t being met.

You know, maybe we will uncover some kind of hidden issue in terms of underlying stress that might be contributing to those digestive issues, who knows? I wouldn’t claim to be an expert in that specific topic at all. But again, I wouldn’t see why you wouldn’t be able to help someone on the diet and lifestyle side of things.

[00:47:57] Detective Ev: Yeah. Well, I love how you talked about working around the edges because just by sheer coincidence, recently, we onboarded the client at my business, Maddy’s going to be working with them, who, their kidney function is at about 30%.

You would think the initial thought would be, oh, highest package. But I’m like, well, wait a second. If they’ve gotten to this point, through no intention of their own, they’re doing a lot of things wrong. I’m like, alright, great. Less is more. Let’s start with just the diet stuff. And also, I don’t want to move the needle too quick.

A Perfect FDN Story: A Collaborative Relationship

It’s kind of funny, but the irony in all of this is, it works so well that if you move the needle too quick for someone that is on said medications, he’s on like 26 pills a day, you don’t want to shift those dosages too much. I’m like, cool, you’re definitely messing up the diet unintentionally. Let’s start there.

I love that working around the edges thing. Then you support. And then maybe, I’m not saying this can happen guaranteed, but who knows, maybe the kidney function goes up to 40%, 50%. Keep moving that little by little. Right? And then now we can do some deeper investigation if we need to. So, sometimes those are the best clients cause less is more in those cases.

[00:48:54] Ryan Monahan: Yeah. There can be cases where your work could be a very collaborative relationship with traditional medical doctors in that sense. Because, you know, the average doctor visit is something like seven minutes in the United States.

So, as well meaning as many doctors are getting into this field, they just don’t have the time to walk them through the diet that’s most optimal for them and the lifestyle strategies that are going to benefit them even if they did want to talk about those things. That’s where I feel like it can be really helpful to have a coach on your team.

[00:49:27] Detective Ev: Yeah. Got another question for you, if you don’t mind. This is great. And I didn’t invite people to do this; I should have because it’s a little different since we’re doing a podcast. But now’s the time, definitely use the last 12 minutes here or so to ask Ryan questions cause normally we don’t do podcasts like this. This is fun.

A Perfect FDN Story: Labels of Dysfunction

We have Sharon also on YouTube. “Have you worked with complex cases where dysautonomia and MCAS are involved stemming from surgical trauma?

[00:49:50] Ryan Monahan: Yes. I’ve worked with dysautonomia and MCAS. The more complex underlying factors that are driving that may be different from one person to the next.

If you’re dealing with something like a surgical trauma, you might want to incorporate certain like energy work or healing modalities, something like dynamic neural retraining from Annie Hopper, which involves kind of retraining the brain and the nervous system or something like Primal Trust.

These are programs that are designed to reprogram the nervous system response so that we’re not always stuck in this kind of fight or flight. Because for some people being stuck in that sympathetic dominant fight or flight state, it might cause your immune system to be overly active or hyperactive and constantly be activating those mast cells to release histamine. I’m getting a little more on the technical side here.

Detective Ev: Just a bit.

Ryan Monahan: This is a good opportunity to talk about this. I’ve even spoken about this in the AFDNP group when MCAS has come up. Something like mast cell activation syndrome I view as just something, as a label. I don’t think MCAS exists. I think it’s just a label for deeper dysfunction. It’s a symptom of imbalance and dysregulation in the body.

Now there might be a dozen different root causes behind that. And what causes MCAS for person A may be different for person B, right? So, it’s ultimately about doing that deeper investigation, uncovering what someone’s hidden stressors or imbalances are using the functional lab work and getting to kind of the root of what’s driving that.

A Perfect FDN Story: Overcomplicating It

And Evan, note this down. I’d love to do like an hour podcast on just the whole topic of histamine intolerance because it’s something I’ve done a very, very deep dive on. There are so many moving pieces to it, and so many simple, simple actionable things you can do to help resolve it. I think sometimes people overcomplicate it a little bit.

But yeah, just wanted to use that MCAS example. Even something like dysautonomia can be as simple as a vitamin B1 deficiency. There’s a ton of research on this, the relationship between B1, which is thiamine, and dysautonomia.

Sometimes human beings have a tendency to seek very complicated answers. But it’s just like, you know, what do you do when your computer is malfunctioning? The first thing you do is just restart it before you try going into the operating system and like reprogramming things at the base layer. You just restart the computer 90% of the time that fixes the issue.

It’s fun to go down these clinical rabbit holes, it really is. And I’m more than guilty of this. But often the solutions are very simple.

[00:52:33] Detective Ev: It’s kind of the funniest part about it, because it could be a simple solution. But if you want to get nerdy with anyone, Ryan’s one of the best to do it with.

Chris K said “Evan, the PICC thing is peripherally inserted central catheter.” Okay. Thank you.

[00:52:48] Ryan Monahan: It’s a catheter and so that’s how the nutrients are being delivered.

[00:52:53] Detective Ev: Yeah. Wow. That does not sound like something I would like, so I’m going to keep doing my FDN stuff.

A Perfect FDN Story: Investigating Health Issues Nonspecifically

But you brought up, indirectly, a great point here. You were kind of getting at, these are symptoms. By the way, if someone that’s just watching this for the first time, that’s new to FDN, or maybe you’ve only been watching this month, I mean, these are new concepts to try to ingrain and digest. But these are specific conditions that these people are asking about. I appreciate that and respect that. That’s what we’ve done since day one.

Even as kids, if you weren’t in the medical space, we’re just taught to ask about specific conditions and you get diagnosed with stuff. This almost doesn’t matter to us. It really doesn’t. I mean, it matters in so much as, okay, when someone’s operating on 20%, 30% kidney function, yes, I’m going to take a slower approach just because we could get their body working so well that we want to make sure it’s in alignment with the medications.

And that we’re having, as Ryan mentioned, that collaboration with Western Medicine, we don’t want it to be a battle. It should be a really good collaboration so that the patient and client can get the best clinical outcomes. But we’re not dealing with any of this stuff specifically. You could put any condition in this chat right now, there’s a lot out there. Put any cancer, put any autoimmune disease, there’s really nothing that FDN couldn’t support.

Now on the show, on the Health Detective Podcast, you get people that have complete remission of symptoms. I’m not making a claim, that’s actually what they’ve said. Others, maybe they get 80% better and they’re using a little Western medicine. So that’s fine.

A Perfect FDN Story: A Positive Rate of Change

What you’ll never find, which is amazing, somehow in all these interviews, I’ve never had this, I’ve never had someone that didn’t get 60%, 70% better by doing FDN, and that’s like the low end. Most people are 80% plus probably.

[00:54:24] Ryan Monahan: If I can interrupt really quick.

Detective Ev: Please.

Ryan Monahan: First of all, 60% is a massive difference. Especially if someone’s been just crawling at a snail’s pace for years without any progress, that’s a massive difference.

And also, something I’ll always point out to a client, let’s say they’ve only had 50% progress in a six-month period. I’ll remind them, you know, the journey’s not necessarily done when we’re done working together. I have provided you with, I have taught you a set of tools to carry this forward into the future and remain healthy for a lifetime. So, imagine if you kept following the rules of D.R.E.S.S. and the recommendations I’ve given you, where you’ll be in another six months from now.

If you’ve already gotten 50% better, why not assume you’re going to feel a hundred percent, you know, by the end of a 12-month period. You have to look at it as like a rate of change and then projecting that rate of change into the future. I think I’ll leave it at that.

[00:55:22] Detective Ev: It makes sense because, it’s not exactly what you said, but it’s a complimentary point. When people get into natural medicine, it’s not going to be overnight, everything’s better.

A Perfect FDN Story: Less Stress and More Time

This is the only woo-woo part about it, and it’s not woo-woo because you can prove it. Why are we doing all this stuff, eating better, doing the tests, whatever? It’s to get the body at a point where there’s so little excess stress that it can do what it does naturally, which is heal. And again, that’s not woo-woo. Cause if I get a paper cut, that heals itself. We all know that. Paper cut is fairly straightforward though. Okay. Don’t mess with it, don’t overuse it, don’t pick the scab, fine.

When we’re talking about complex systemic issues, there’s a lot more than just paper that’s leading to those issues. So, you gotta kind of erase all of that and give your body, like a scale. You gotta give it more ability to heal than it is getting broken down. But that’s going to take time. The idea that you’re just going to cure this stuff overnight is crazy. So, that’s why it can take time to do these things.

You can have the best natural program in the world, but it is going to take some level of time for the body to get back to where it was. And that’s why kids, generally speaking, not always, but generally speaking, bounce back quicker than the 80-year-old client because they’ve got a little more of that vital reserve that we always talk about. There’s a little more bounce and energy that can allow them to, I guess, activate that healing process quicker, if you will.

Chris K said, “it’s a huge difference from just managing or slowing down symptoms.” Yeah. Well, and we’re really managing the stress, that’s kind of what we’re doing. Yeah, that’s a huge difference though.

A Perfect FDN Story: Biology Resists Change

Ryan, I’ll have one last question for you in a second that’s more like kind of a fun business/investment course thing. But I want to know, do you have any last points today? Where can people find you? Because obviously you have a practice and people might be interested in working with you.

[00:57:02] Ryan Monahan: I just want to add a point to what you were just speaking to. I heard this great expression from Dr. Sam Yannick. He’s a really brilliant functional immunologist. So, he’s in the realm of immunology, but from a functional perspective. I took one of his courses years ago, and he teaches this concept that biology resists change.

What he’s getting at is, I’m looking out my window, for example, there’s this huge tree across the street. The roots that go into the ground are as deep as the height of the tree. Okay? If you were to try to uproot that tree and plant it somewhere else, that would take a massive amount of effort. You’d have to dig dozens of feet underground to dig up those roots.

And if any anyone’s ever done any gardening and they’ve moved a vegetable or a set of flowers to another pot or into the ground, it’s often going to experience something called transplant shock. Where initially, because of the change, the plant’s going to go into shock for a few days and it’s going to kind of wither, it’s going to seem like it’s not going to make it. Okay. So, what am I getting at here?

A Perfect FDN Story: Patience for the Overhaul

Well, this is an analogy that I use with clients quite a bit in terms of, if biology resists change and the body is rooted in dysfunction, well, that’s kind of a biological state that it’s become used to. So, we’re kind of transplanting our dysfunctional biology out of that dysfunctional environment in soil. We’re uprooting ourselves entirely and we’re trying to establish a totally new and healthy and fertile environment for the body to thrive in.

That’s going to take time for your body to get used to that kind of shock. Cause we’re just kind of like overhauling the whole system. So, biology resists change. Something to think about in terms of why this approach can be a more patient one and why it can take more time.

I know I want to be mindful of time. My name is Ryan Monahan. I go by The Mindful Nutrivore. You can find me at themindfulnutrivore.com. You can find me on Instagram at themindfulnutrivore.

Ethan. Sorry, I called you Ethan, Evan.

Detective Ev: Oh, whoa.

Ryan Monahan: Sorry. One of my best friends is named Ethan, and both begins with an E.

[00:59:14] Detective Ev: Oh. So, it’s a compliment. You’re associating me with your best friend. Thank you.

Ryan Monahan: Yes.

Detective Ev: All right. Well now, all right. That’s cool. I’m fine now. I’m fine.

[00:59:20] Ryan Monahan: My apologies. Evan, you can have that all in the show notes, I assume.

[00:59:24] Detective Ev: Yeah. Well actually, we already have it in the comments on YouTube, Facebook, and Zoom. We got your stuff right there. I’m going to rapid fire this question and ask you one more thing.

Ryan Monahan: Okay, cool.

Detective Ev: “Can you talk about the pace of improvement with FDN versus shooting in the dark with no guidance and no knowledge from labs?”

A Perfect FDN Story: Pros to the FDN Course

I will, if you don’t mind, cause I had one thing for you all. I’ll cover this one. It was rapid. It took me years to probably get 30% better just shooting in the dark, trying organic, trying this supplement, trying this next thing versus months with FDN and getting the labs under control. And I didn’t have a lot of money at the time, so I barely did any of the labs. I had to do them kind of slowly and progressively, and I still found that it was much more rapid. So, we’re talking about extreme noticeable differences between rates of improvement.

They said, “thanks for that.”

And what I wanted to ask you, because you are again, the epitome of FDN. So, hopefully people are listening that are in a position that you were. They got some health stuff going on, they really want to make this a living, they want to be a part of the community.

So, for someone who got the full extent of what FDN can offer, the health stuff, the community, and the career, we have a thousand dollars off this entire month of June. It’s $8,000. It’s the biggest sale we’ve ever ran for an entire month. Would you have paid more than $8,000 for the FDN course?

[01:00:38] Ryan Monahan: I made the investment in the course back in something like six months with my first two clients. So yes, easily and then some. Yeah, totally. To be able to run my own business, be my own boss, to do something meaningful and to help people, make a good living work remotely, I can go on.

 But I can’t really think of many cons. Not to say it’s not a lot of work, it is. But it’s meaningful work.

Conclusion

Yeah, it’s a no-brainer, especially with that thousand dollars off. So, I hope you all take advantage of it. Cause even if you never go into practice, it’s a skill set you’ll have for a lifetime. You’ll be able to order lab tests for yourself, for your friends, for your family. So, yeah, I mean there’s nothing to ever regret there.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com. Our Instagram handle is @fdntraining.

For more informational and functional health-oriented podcasts like this one, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/health-detective-podcast/.

To learn more about us, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/about-fdn-functional-testing/.

Summer is the perfect time to indulge in sweet, frozen treats, but for those who are allergic or intolerant to dairy (and many of us are!), traditional ice cream is a scoop of torture. In recent years, the number of dairy-free ice cream options in the freezer aisle has exploded and we’re grateful for that. But it’s oh-so-fun to make ice cream ourselves instead. Our options are only limited by our imaginations, and as an added benefit, we can skip the preservatives often found in vegan ice creams (like the inflammatory carrageenan).

You don’t necessarily need an ice cream maker to make homemade dairy-free ice cream: they whip air into your frozen desserts, producing a fluffier result, but you could easily put your ice cream mixture directly into the freezer instead. Go on, give it a try!

If you’re looking for a little inspiration to get you started, here are more than 20 amazing dairy-free ice cream recipes we’ve discovered around the web. Let the drooling commence!

23 Best Dairy-Free Ice Cream Recipes

Avocado Ice Cream

Avocado Ice Cream by Feel Good Foodie

An ultra creamy dairy-free ice cream recipe that offers tons of flavour variations if you want to experiment. And we fully intend to.

Low-Carb Keto Chocolate Ice Cream

Low-Carb Keto Chocolate Ice Cream by Big Man’s World

This five-ingredient recipe is low-carb, ketogenic, Paleo, vegan, and doesn’t even need an ice cream maker. There’s really no excuse not to make it.

Vegan Mango Lime Fro-Yo

Vegan Mango Lime Fro-Yo by From the Larder

Bring some extra sunshine into your life with vegan fro-yo. All you need are mangoes, limes and coconut yogurt. Easy as pie – or fro-yo!

Cookie Dough Ice Cream Sandwiches

Cookie Dough Ice Cream Sandwiches by Feasting on Fruit

You don’t need to turn the oven on to make these sandwiches – they’re no bake, no churn and extremely easy to devour.

5-Ingredient Coconut Milk Ice Cream

5-Ingredient Coconut Milk Ice Cream by My Darling Vegan

Get back to basics with a ridiculously easy coconut milk ice cream, which works as a great base for other flavours. Instead of regular sugar, we like to use natural sweeteners in this one.

Vegan Golden Milk Ice Cream

Vegan Golden Milk Ice Cream by Sondi Bruner (*ACN Head Program Coach)

Give your dairy-free ice cream an anti-inflammatory boost with the addition of turmeric. You can also freeze this mixture into ice cube trays for smoothies.

Get your FREE Dairy-Free Ice Cream Guide plus 35 more free resource guides!

Fill out the form below for instant access.

Leafy Green Mint Chocolate Chip Sherbert

Leafy Green Mint Chocolate Chip Sherbert by Green Smoothie Gourmet

Ever tried transforming your green smoothie into ice cream? This recipe will show you the secret method to making it taste delicious.

Paleo + Vegan Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream

Paleo + Vegan Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream by Paleo Running Momma

Have the best of all worlds with cashew-based ice cream swirled with strawberry purée and graham cracker crumble. Yum.

Fresh Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Fresh Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream by Love Chef Laura

Chocolate mint lovers will adore this simple and easy no churn recipe that has fresh mint and just a touch of spinach to add extra green colour.

Our entire Culinary Nutrition Expert program is dairy-free.

Click to here to learn more!

One Ingredient Banana Ice Cream

One-Ingredient Banana Ice Cream by That Clean Life (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

All you need are frozen bananas for this vegan ice cream recipe – but there are also instructions for how to make chocolate, mint, strawberry and green tea flavours by only adding one extra ingredient.

Coconut Ginger Ice Cream with Plantain Chips

Coconut Ginger Ice Cream with Plantain Chips by Snixy Kitchen

Add some crunchy goodness to your dairy-free ice cream with crushed plaintain chips. We love this idea so much!

Tiger Tail Dairy-Free Ice Cream

Tiger Tail Dairy-Free Ice Cream by Meghan Telpner (*ACN Founder + Director)

A healthy reinvention of the classic 80s ice cream flavour, using a mix of essential oils and a charcoal-infused licorice swirl. This one will bring back memories…

Chocolate Protein Ice Cream

Chocolate Protein Ice Cream by Vegan Yack Attack

You’ll never guess the secret protein-rich ingredient in this dairy-free ice cream recipe. (It’s not protein powder!)

Lemon Turmeric Sorbet

Lemon Turmeric Sorbet by Ahead of Thyme

All we can say about this one is it’s completely and utterly refreshing. What more do you need?

Our entire Culinary Nutrition Expert program is dairy-free.

Click to here to learn more!

Basil Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Basil Chocolate Chip Ice Cream by Ashleigh Grange (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

Yes, you can use herbs like basil in dairy-free ice cream. And you should.

Paleo Pumpkin Hazelnut Ice Cream

Paleo Pumpkin Hazelnut Ice Cream by Chelsea Joy Eats

Of course you can eat this in the summertime, but with the pumpkin purée and warming spices, you can easily make this for a treat throughout the fall and winter.

Cherry Cashew Miso Ice Cream

Cherry Cashew Miso Ice Cream by Sweet Lizzy (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

A touch of miso – one of our favourite fermented foods – adds umami to this decadent, healthy dairy-free ice cream. Try it – you won’t be sorry.

Salted Dark Chocolate Olive Oil Ice Cream

Salted Dark Chocolate Olive Oil Ice Cream by Pickles ‘N Honey (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

Coconut milk, cacao powder, coconut sugar, sea salt and… olive oil? Yep you read right. And it’s a lovely, fruity addition.

Cherry Coconut Sorbet

Cherry Coconut Sorbet by Sun-Kissed Kitchen

It takes some extra time to pit the cherries, but the results are so worth it.

Strawberry Banana Nice Cream

Strawberry Banana Nice Cream by A Dash of Megnut

You probably already have everything you need in your fridge or freezer to make this 2-ingredient ice cream, so you might as well do it now.

Super Fudgy Marble Fudge Ice Cream

Super Fudgy Marble Fudge Ice Cream by Keeping It Kind

It’s got fudge in the name TWICE. So we’re sold.

Raw Brownie Ice Cream Sandwiches

Raw Brownie Ice Cream Sandwiches by Sheena Scott (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

A simple dairy-free nut-butter swirl ice cream sandwiched between easy, no-bake cookies. A heavenly treat for a hot summer day!

Layered Nice Cream Squares

Layered Nice Cream Squares by Wellness 1st (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

This multi-layered dairy-free ice cream treat is very easy to enjoy – and you probably won’t be able to stop at just eating one.

“Orthorexia nervosa is defined as an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy food.” Want to know if you’re orthorexic? “The ORTO-15 is the most widely accepted assessment tool used to screen for orthorexic tendencies….” A score of 40 or lower was considered the best threshold for an orthorexia diagnosis. There are 15 questions, scored from one to four, so you can end up with a score of 15 to 60, with a score under 40 denoting orthorexia. So, getting ones and twos and even an occasional three on your answers would mean you may have orthorexia, so lower scores are worse. 

You can take the test yourself. I present the questions in my video The Orthorexia Nervosa Test from 0:44 and below. They start out: “When eating, do you pay attention to the calories of the food?” Your choices are always, often, sometimes, or never. According to the test, the healthiest answer is “often,” with the orthorexic answers being “always” or “never.” I can see how always obsessively worrying about calories could hint at a problem, but if you’re eating healthfully enough with a diet centered around whole plant foods, you don’t need to worry about calorie counts or portion control. The healthiest foods, such as fruits and vegetables, don’t even have nutrition labels, but, apparently, if you’re never googling the calories of every apple you eat, you may have a problem. 

Next question: “When you go in a food shop do you feel confused?” Supposedly, the healthiest answer is “always.” You should always be confused, and if you’re not at least often confused, you may end up needing to be drugged. 

Question 3: “In the last 3 months, did the thought of food worry you?” Supposedly, the healthiest way to answer is “never.” You never once worried about what you’re putting into your body. According to the test, it would be healthier if your eating choices were “conditioned” worries about your health. Additionally, taste should “always” be more important than the quality of your food. According to the test, if you think the quality of food is even “sometimes” more important than taste, you may have a mental illness. What if you’re “often” willing to spend more money to have healthier food? Crazy! Are you so delusional that you think “consuming healthy food might improve your appearance?” My favorite, though, has to be question 14: “Do you think that on the market there is also unhealthy food?” You’ve got to be kidding! Finally, question 15 penalizes people who live alone: “At present, are you alone when having meals?” 

If you scored under 40, you are not alone. Using this test, about 50 percent of registered dietitians in the United States are supposedly suffering from a mental illness. The prevalence of orthorexia nervosa “presents as being impossibly high.” Anorexia and bulimia are estimated to be no higher than about 2 percent, so it’s a bit “counterintuitive to believe that a phenomenon of restricting eating that is not well understood” has rates as high as nearly 90 percent. 

It’s no wonder The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the psychiatry profession’s official diagnostic manual, does not include orthorexia as a psychiatric diagnosis. And psychiatrists love turning things into mental illnesses. The latest edition turned kindergarten temper tantrums into a disorder, and drinking too much coffee or even having bad PMS can be a mental illness. But they’re still not going to go there with orthorexia. “Researchers,” for example, “had a tendency to pick and choose which questions of the ORTO-15 they used and they determined their own cut-off scores for diagnosis,” resulting in an “alarmingly erratic use of the ORTO-15 tool” that was designed to measure orthorexia. The bottom line is that the ORTO-15 test “is likely unable to distinguish between healthy eating and pathologically healtful eating”—whatever the latter may be. 

More recently, new criteria have been introduced. Given the “impossibly high prevalence rates,” new emphasis is placed on health problems because of diet, such as “malnutrition, severe weight loss or other medical complications from restricted diet” that would, by definition, make it an unhealthy diet. Take, for instance, the tragic case in which someone had tried to live off of a few spoonsful of rice and vegetables and ended up bed-ridden. If that is what you want to call orthorexia, fine, but one wonders if that case might of have been clouded by some actual psychiatric diagnosis like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). 

If you add in those adverse health criteria, then the prevalence of orthorexia drops to less than half of 1 percent, which seems a little more reasonable. Interestingly, those eating vegan diets had the least pathological scores in the sample. Though this may reflect that they’re just being less serious about healthy eating, reaching for the vegan donut rather than the lentil soup. 

Today marks the day in which I have finally sold Body Fusion after 11 incredible years!

I bought Body Fusion from another Dietitian called Mia Ballenden back in 2012 just fresh out of University. With no training in business and completely new to private practice, it was a steep learning curve to say the least and presented many challenges.

Over the years the Dietitians working for me and myself were able to work with the communities of Lane Cove, Hunters Hill, Rozelle, Cremorne, Balgowlah, and Wahroonga. We also supported clients interstate and overseas via online consultations. Working within chronic disease, weightless and sports nutrition – We touched so many lives for the better! 

Not only did I get the opportunity to work with thousands of clients but I also had to adapt and learn to be a Manager. My team built new clinics, maintained existing ones, chased new opportunities (workshops, food industry projects, work with schools) and developed countless new business processes to support ongoing success.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank ALL the amazing people who have been involved in this journey. For your contributions and time given to Body Fusion, I will forever be grateful. I can’t even express gratitude I have for the personal and professional growth I have experienced and how much I have enjoyed working with you all. 

To my clients. I am SO proud of you all. Your willingness to turn up, succeed, fail and learn, execute your goals and share your journey with me was humbling. I hope for each of you that the future is bright, healthy and happy.

Especially to my parents Debbie and Wolfgang who were our accounts/HR and business development manager for years. Not only did you give me sound business advice and direction, you also supported me emotionally when times were tough as a daughter. How lucky were we to experience this all together?!

Today is a bitter sweet day. I am sad to move on but also excited for the future and the new creative pursuits I can explore.

Tatiana, I wish you all the best moving forward. Its been a pleasure to experience your journey to date and I am confident you will continue to carry on the strong integrity of the Body Fusion brand! 

So onwards I go and in the words of my favourite poet Rumi:

“The end is another beginning.” 

Sending much love, 

Ashleigh xx

What Makes the Best Holistic Health Coach Certification?

The top 3 reasons holistic health coaches joined FDN, even after graduating from other certification programs.

Welcome holistic health warrior!

If you’ve landed on this page, you probably fall into one of two categories: 

1. You’re not yet certified as a holistic health coach, but want to be!
2. You’re already certified (yay!), but something is still missing.

The good news is that whichever category you fall into, you’re in just the right spot.  

Here at Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN), we’ve trained over 4,000 health coaches & practitioners, who are now able to make an incredible living doing what they love most. 

Many of those 4,000 people came to us with zero experience (other than their own healing journey), but many others came to us after receiving another holistic health certification.

So…why would our students invest even more money once they’re already a certified holistic health coach??

Because they realize they’re missing a few key tools for success.

So today, we’re going to dive into the top 3 reasons holistic health coaches decide to join FDN after getting certified elsewhere. 

#1 | “I Can’t Run Labs.”

There are a few key points you’ll learn inside many health coach certification programs.

Things like:

Generalized diet & nutrition to support whole-body health.
Best practices to support whole-body health.
Positive psychology and behavior change techniques.

And don’t get us wrong, all of this is important!

BUT – there are a few key things missing, with the first being…

FUNCTIONAL LABS.

We’re going to make a bold statement here…

Learning how to run functional lab tests, analyze them through a holistic lens, and also have access to ordering them, is the difference between a wildly successful health coach and every other health coach out there. 

Now, if you’re fairly new to the health coaching industry, you might be wondering how we can make such a lofty claim like this. Or, maybe like many health coach grads, you already know this to be true, and you’re desperate to get your hands on this kind of training. 

Either way, the proof is in the pudding. Our FDN graduates consistently go on to build 6-figure health businesses, and mastering functional labs plays a huge part in this. People pay for results, and being able to make data-driven health decisions gives you (+ your clients) results!

How to Pick the Best Holistic Health Coach Certification?

The best certification gives you:

High-level functional lab test training
Access to ordering functional labs post-graduation 

You need both.

Because if you pick a program that teaches you how to analyze functional labs, but doesn’t give you access to ordering them once you graduate, you’re going to have a hard time running your own business. 

So, be sure to consider your long-term goals. If you want to start and grow your own online health business, make sure to think about these things when choosing a program!

What Do You Get With FDN?

When you join the FDN certification course, you:

• Receive the most advanced functional diagnostic training in the industry.
• Learn how to apply the data from functional lab results to create highly personalized diet & lifestyle protocols.
• Get access to ordering 60+ functional labs through our Medical Director Program (MDP) even if you’re not licensed.

At the end of the day, this gives you the tools to run your own, self-sufficient & successful online health business.

#2: “My Clients Aren’t Getting Results.”

Another complaint we hear from health coach grads *before* they join FDN, is that their clients just aren’t getting results.

Even though they care so much about helping their clients get well, and they *thought* they were prepared after receiving their certification, still…

Their clients aren’t experiencing real, life-changing transformations.

If you can relate to this as a Health Coach grad, know that you are not alone!

So, what’s the problem?

If you’re using “best practices” rather than a data-driven, personalized approach, you’ll have a hard time getting powerful results for those tougher client cases.

This can effect:

Your confidence as a Health Coach
Your business growth
Your revenue

Which means you need to find a certification program that focuses on applying functional lab results to protocols that work, and getting unparalleled client results.

How to Pick the Best Holistic Health Coach Certification?

The best certification combines: 

Diagnostics + lab testing, with 
Comprehensive diet and lifestyle protocols

This allows you to look under the hood to see what’s going on in the body, then create a comprehensive roadmap to resolve hidden stressors and restore health.

What Do You Get With FDN?

When you join FDN, you learn a proven methodology to restore function within the body, no matter what symptoms or diagnosis your client comes to you with. Yes, seriously!

So when you graduate, you have the tools to find solutions to ANY health issue, because your decisions are backed by data, science, and a proven system, rather than generic “best practices”.  

This ultimately leads to greater confidence, happier clients, faster business growth, more money, and more health coaching success!

#3: “It’s Hard to Make Money.”

The health coach industry is booming, being valued at about $7 billion in 2021. [1] Which means the amount you’re able to charge is booming, too!

So, why then do so many certified health coaches who start their own business have a hard time making money after they graduate?

Well, a lot of opportunity comes with a lot of competition. With the number of health coaches rising everyday, it’s never been more important to stand out!

This means moving beyond offering generic holistic health advice, and solving real health problems. 

This will then lead you to…

You guessed it – 

Excellent client results

Getting consistent, transformative results for your clients is hands-down the best way to set yourself apart from other health coaches, get referrals, and grow your biz.

How to Pick the Best Holistic Health Coach Certification?

We’ve already covered the importance of choosing a program that teaches you how to utilize functional lab testing and apply it properly.

And, you should also keep your eye out for a certification that focuses on client results. If you don’t hear mention of client results, this is likely not a focus inside the program.

What Do You Get With FDN?

Here at FDN, we set our students up to build 6-figure online health businesses. It’s not uncommon, it’s the norm.

In fact, our founder, Reed Davis, tells students that if you’re not making 6-figures during your first year, you’re doing something wrong!

That’s because you learn how to get real results for your clients, which in turn leads to a thriving, referral-based health business!

Join the FDN Certification Program and Become a True Health Detective. 

If you, like so many others, feel like you’re missing key pieces of the puzzle to building a successful online health business, let’s talk.

Book a call with one of our course advisors to learn more about us, and discover if our certification course is the right fit for you!

Resources:

1. https://blog.marketresearch.com/7-billion-u.s.-health-coaching-market-gains-favor-among-consumers-insurers-employers 

A recent study conducted in Sweden investigated the association between dietary fat intake and the incidence of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) in over 41,000 individuals for an average of 17.6 years. The researchers found a potential link between saturated fat intake and a higher risk of PD, but they did not observe any association with total fat, monounsaturated fat or polyunsaturated fat.

However, the study’s conclusion that saturated fat intake might be associated with a higher risk of PD has a logical flaw as saturated fats form a significant constituent of total fat and they are always found in the same foods as both unsaturated fats. Hence finding associations with one fat and not the others, or total fat, raises concern. The saturated fat finding might implicate dairy foods (as this is the only food group with more saturated than unsaturated fat). However, the study barely mentioned dairy products and did not investigate this further.

I did investigate dairy further and found interesting, but inconsistent results – the suggestion that milk consumption is associated with a higher risk of PD, but only in men. Another finding that low-fat dairy products have an association with PD, while high-fat dairy products do not. No plausible mechanisms were offered for any of these findings. 

We also have all the usual flaws of population studies – the inaccuracy of the food frequency questionnaire, association not causation, the relative risk seems high/the absolute risk is tiny and a healthy person thing going on. The relative vs absolute risk issue was a big one in this study – the incident rates of Parkinson’s Disease in the Swedish study were approximately 100 in 200,000 person-years. 

My research did find some factors that seemed protective against PD (coffee, exercise and smoking) and some factors that were far greater risks than anything to do with fat (pesticides, chemical exposure and general anaesthetics). 

In conclusion, it would be impossible to avoid saturated fat, as it is ubiquitous in foods. Similarly, dairy foods are valuable sources of essential nutrients, and people should not be deterred  from consuming them.

The full version of this article can be read below

The Mediterranean diet has been a dietary pattern that has been positively linked to the health and weight outcomes of menopausal women. Here are 4 key principles of the Mediterranean diet that can be implemented to better support your body if you are going through menopause:

1. Plenty of colour per day

Fruits and vegetables contain essential vitamins and minerals for normal body functioning as well as protective anti-oxidants. To get the most out of your fruits and vegetables, ensure that you eat as many colours as you can as each colour has different properties. Fruits and vegetables are low in calories, high in fibre and micronutrients, therefore are beneficial in filling you up when you are trying to lose weight.

2. Consume complex wholegrain carbohydrates

Carbohydrates still remain an important nutrient during menopause as they are essential for energy and blood sugar stabilisation. However, refined carbohydrates are not recommended as they break down rapidly into sugar and require a greater release of insulin to process the sugar in the body. Complex wholegrain carbohydrates can help to normalise your blood sugar levels and insulin levels helping to prevent excess weight gain.

3. Increase plant-based protein

Although animal-based protein sources should remain present in your diet, legumes make a part of the Mediterranean diet. Legumes such as soybean, chickpeas etc. contain phytoestrogen which can minimise symptoms such as hot flashes in menopausal women if consumed regularly. Consider adding them to substitute excess animal-based proteins.

4. Reduce processed and packaged products

The Mediterranean diet avoids anything processed and packaged. These foods are energy dense and nutrient-poor. They are high in sugar, fat and salt which can impact weight, energy levels and chronic diseases that menopausal women are at risk of such as high cholesterol and blood sugars.

Reach out to an Accredited Practising Dietitian today who can support and guide you through this stage of life with practical tips. You are not alone!

On today’s episode, I’m interviewing Reed Davis, the Founder and Creator of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, an online course that teaches ANYONE how to THINK and ACT like a functional health practitioner. In March 2020, I took Reed Davis’ course and became an FDN. Becoming an FDN not only changed my life, but it has changed the lives of the clients I work with. FDN is the BASE framework that I use with all my clients, and the place I’d recommend ANYONE to start if they’re looking to teach themselves how to be a functional health practitioner.

Eggs are one of nature’s true “superfoods” and contain many essential nutrients our bodies need to function properly. Here is an overview of the nutritional content of eggs:

Protein: Eggs are an excellent source of high-quality protein, containing all the essential amino acids that our bodies need to build and repair tissues.

Vitamins: Eggs are a good source of a number of important vitamins, including vitamin A (vision and eye health), vitamin D (important for immune functions), vitamin E (anti-oxidant) , vitamin K (blood clotting), vitamin B12 (nerve cells and energy metabolism), and folate (cell division and growth). These vitamins play a crucial role in maintaining good health and supporting various bodily functions.

Minerals: Eggs also contain several important minerals, including iron, zinc, selenium, and phosphorus. These minerals are important for supporting bone health, immune function, and overall health and wellbeing.

Choline: Eggs are one of the best dietary sources of choline, a nutrient that’s important for brain health, liver function, and metabolism.

Although chicken eggs are the most popular, you could look out for and experiment with duck, quail, goose, turkey and even ostrich, equivalent to about a dozen chicken eggs. Make sure that the eggs you buy are always produced from free-range birds.

Eggs are very versatile and easy to prepare, making them easy to incorporate into many recipes and meals. Whether scrambled, poached, boiled, or fried, there are many approaches to enjoy eggs as part of a healthy diet.

Here are some simple recipes for you to try out… Please do add more

1 – Shakshuka (above):
This Middle Eastern dish is perfect for a weekend late breakfast/lunch. Saute some onion, garlic, and peppers in a frying pan, then add a tin of tomatoes and spices (such as cumin and paprika). Crack eggs into the mixture and cook until set. Sprinkle with fresh coriander leaves.

2 – Devilled Eggs:
A delightful appetiser or addition to your lunch box that can be made with various fillings. Hard-boil some eggs, then halve them and remove the yolks. Mix the yolks with mayonnaise or NLY, mustard, and seasonings of your choice. Spoon the mixture back into the egg whites and garnish with herbs or spices.

3 – Omelette:
Always a favourite for a quick breakfast, lunch or supper – Start to finish in under 5 minutes.
Whisk together two or three eggs. Heat a large knob of butter in a small frying pan and pour in the egg mix. Add your favourite veggies (such as spinach, tomatoes, peppers or any left-overs) or cold meats and cook until the eggs are set. Top with a sprinkle of cheese and enjoy!

Orthorexia nervosa is “an unrecognized psychological eating disorder in which the person becomes obsessed with eating pure, healthy and right kinds of foods to improve health.” Whereas individuals with recognized eating disorders like anorexia are concerned with the quantity of food, orthorexics care about the quality of their food. “Many researchers have raised questions about the validity” of orthorexia as an entity, but I always try to give the benefit of the doubt. A medical case report was published on orthorexia in a critical care journal about “eating disorder emergencies.” The article discussed cases of bona fide eating disorders, like a woman with anorexia collapsing from self-induced vomiting and laxative use after years of throat and rectal bleeding—indeed, a tragic eating disorder emergency. But what about  the orthorexic case? 

A 53-year-old man who had had a triple bypass two years prior went in for a check-up. His physician recommended he see a dietitian since his BMI was down to 18.5 or so, which is right on the cut-off for being underweight. Evidently, he had been eating so healthfully that he had lost a significant amount of weight. He stated that “since his diagnosis of coronary heart disease and high cholesterol, he only eats ‘natural and organic foods.’” Therefore, the author concluded, he “probably has orthorexia nervosa,” a psychiatric illness. “He clearly is preoccupied with food and judges others based on their food choices,” when, in fact, he very well may have been saving his own life. To me, the most outrageous thing this guy did was get a triple bypass. I mean imagine lying on a psychiatrist’s couch and saying: I know I could switch to bean burritos, but I’d rather pay someone to slice open my chest with a knife, maybe saw my breastbone in half, and put me at risk for stroking out instead of dealing with the underlying cause. What do you think, doc? 

Then, we learn that some orthorexics become evangelical as they share their feelings of disgust or disappointment towards their family, friends, and even children for their normal food choices.” I mean, it’s bad enough they care about their own health, but caring about their family and friends or even their children? Off to the institution you go! 

What we eat is the number one cause of death in the United States, killing hundreds of thousands more Americans every year than cigarettes, and it’s also the number one cause of disability. But, if you’re disappointed your kids are eating multi-colored marshmallows for breakfast, you may have a mental illness? Absurd.

If you recognize these so-called warning signs, what should you do? In my video Orthorexia Nervosa Symptoms, I talk about an article that suggests you should confront the person. I know it’s not easy, but if you see someone obsessively trying to avoid unhealthy foods—and, even worse, trying to get others to do the same—“the most important thing to do is to let them know you’ve noticed.” Confront them. The “possibility of helping them save their own life or get the help they may need far outweighs uncomfortable emotions.” The irony, of course, is that they are trying to save their own life and maybe yours. Imagine if you were able to talk Mr. Triple Bypass out of his healthy eating obsession. You’d probably kill him. 

To his credit, even Steven Bratman, the person who coined the term orthorexia has backed off, saying that he “did not intend to propose a new eating disorder.” As an alternative medicine practitioner, he just wanted his patients to “relax the dietary corset and live a little.” Where did people even get this idea that he was trying to “coin” the name for a novel eating disorder? If you go back to his original article, he just said he has “coined the name ‘orthorexia nervosa’” for a novel eating disorder—an eating disorder he saved himself from. “I was eventually saved from the doom of eternal health food addiction” with the help of “tacos, pizza, and a milkshake.” 

One of the directors of the Yale Center for Eating Disorders, Kelly Brownell, expressed his skepticism: “We’ve never had anybody come to our clinic with [orthorexia], and I’ve been working in this field for at least 20 years.” 

“Without research to back his theory, Bratman is simply another guy trying to make a buck off the health-conscious public, Brownell says. ‘They invent some new term, a new diet, a solution to a problem that doesn’t even exist. The burden should fall to the authors to prove that what they’re saying is correct, before they start unleashing advice on the public.’”