Category: Nutrition

Plant-based diets are put to the test in the treatment of periodontal disease.

How does nutrition affect periodontal disease? First, what is it? “Periodontal disease is a bacterial infection that results in inflammatory destruction of the connective tissue and bone that support the teeth.” As such, it is therefore one of the leading causes of our teeth falling out. Like most infections, though, the way in which our body responds may play a critical role. The presence of bacteria is the primary cause, but a susceptible host is necessary to initiate disease. 

The standard explanation of periodontal disease is the plaque theory, which posits that the buildup of plaque leads to gingivitis or gum inflammation, which then leads to periodontitis or inflammation lower down beneath the gums. But, in some forms of periodontal disease, plaque doesn’t appear to play a critical role. There has been more interest in the last few years in the importance of systemic health, our body’s response. In this respect, nutrition may be of great importance because it’s been implicated in a number of other inflammatory diseases, all of which carry elevated periodontal disease risk. 

Traditionally, when we think of the effects of nutrition on dental diseases, we’re only thinking about cavities. But what about the role of diet in periodontal disease? There has been less research, but if it’s about inflammation, one would expect diets rich in saturated fat to make things worse, increasing oxidative stress as well as inflammation. So, we may want to cut down on saturated fat, but let’s not just speculate. Is there an association between cholesterol levels and periodontitis? If not, it would be hard to implicate saturated fat. In fact, there does appear to be a link. Those with high cholesterol do appear to have up to double the risk. 

So, what about periodontal conditions in vegetarians? A hundred vegetarians versus non-vegetarians were studied, and those eating vegetarian had “better periodontal conditions (less inflammation signs, less periodontal damage, and better dental home care).” It should be considered, however, that vegetarians may not just be avoiding meat but may also be healthier in other ways, like practicing better dental care. 

Do people who eat more saturated fat get more periodontitis? Yes, in one study, participants had double the risk at the highest levels of saturated fat intake. That was a study in Japan, where they eat less than half the meat and dairy than do Americans in the United States. The only way to know for sure, though, is to do an interventional trial where you change people’s diets and see what happens. And, researchers did just that and found that bone loss was indeed magnified by a diet high in saturated fat and cholesterol—at least in the rats they studied. 

 In my video How to Treat Periodontitis with Diet, I talk about the kind of study that I was looking for. Its title kind of ruins the suspense: “A High-Fiber, Low-Fat Diet Improves Periodontal Disease Markers” in terms of probing depth, clinical attachment loss, and bleeding on probing—all of the standard measures. And, of course, eating a healthier diet also improves body weight, blood sugar control, and systemic inflammation, but that complicates matters. Maybe people’s mouths got better just because they lost so much weight.  

Researchers have shown that you can improve periodontal disease with bariatric surgery, such as stomach stapling. After eight weeks on a diet, the study participants went back on their regular diet and gained back most of that weight. But, the periodontal disease improvements persisted, suggesting that it was more than just the weight loss that lead to the improvements. Might the high-fiber diet have altered their good gut flora or perhaps their oral flora? What exactly was going on? 

German researchers took 20 women with mild to moderate chronic periodontitis and, for a year, tried to transition their diets towards more wholesome nutrition. This meant more plant foods, more whole foods, more fresh foods—trying to center their diets around vegetables, fruits, whole grains, potatoes, and legumes (beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils). After 12 months, the patients showed a significant reduction of probing pocket depth and gingival inflammation. And, for the first time, the researchers measured decreased concentrations of inflammatory chemicals inside the crevice between the tooth and gums. These chemicals, which are thought to be responsible for the tissue destruction in periodontal disease, decreased by as much as 75 percent. And all the while, their oral hygiene status didn’t change, suggesting it was the diet that did it. But what was missing here? A control group. Nevertheless, there’s never been any randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of diet for periodontal disease until now, which I’ll cover next. 

You can also watch my video Best Foods for Halitosis and Gingivitis.

It’s  Celiac Awareness Month. At this stage I’ve written 4 x Best Selling books which all have one thing in common… they discuss gluten as a major contributor to many many health issues and provide recipes and solutions to enjoy foods without gluten. 

Have this knowledge that I’m about to share with you so that you won’t have to be a victim to gluten side effects.  

Celiac Disease Awareness Month increases the public’s knowledge of the autoimmune disorder celiac disease. Celiac disease is when the small intestine is hypersensitive to gluten, leading to difficulty in digesting food and it can lead to many serious and painful symptoms. 

Whether or not you have celiac disease I believe it is best to avoid gluten as much as possible. Treat gluten like a special occasion even if you can tolerate it. I do not have celiac but when I hit rock bottom with my health 14 years ago I cut gluten completely from my diet because it takes a lot of energy from the body to digest gluten. I needed all my strength to heal. Now I have gluten once or maybe just twice per month and that is the perfect balance for me. 

Eating gluten daily can be damaging for your health unless it is high-quality sprouted non-GMO certified organic gluten, and you have a digestive system that’s able to process it.  

Let’s first get some facts straight about gluten. 

• Gluten has changed dramatically over the last 60 years thanks to GMO farming
• If you are even wondering what gluten is it’s wheat, rye and barley
• Did you know gluten is what our ancestors lived off and loved? It filled up the native Americans hence the word gluten… it acts like glue in the gut. But now we have so much food at every corner we just don’t need it 
• Gluten is naturally in flour which is used to make breads, cakes, cookies muffins but it’s also used as a filler in candy, shampoo, supplements, medications, canned food, pickles, spices and more. Read your labels! 
• Gluten can wreak havoc on your digestive system. It’s one of the top 4 usual suspects contributing to all your health problems. That’s right. Try cutting down gluten and watch your health problems dissolve away
• Gluten is inflammatory to the body even if you have the perfect digestive system 
• Eating gluten can lead to acne, psoriasis, brain fog, anxiety, and even depression. Before I started this natural life I ate gluten every day and was bloated, had digestive issues, and was so tired all the time 
• Gluten is naturally occurring in nature so when I say eat as natural as possible it can apply but the rule with gluten is it has to be from a good source, organic non-GMO gluten! Don’t just put low-quality gluten into your body, you are asking for trouble! Make a deal with yourself that you will only consume the best gluten possible from here on 

Gluten is just unnecessary these days we have so many better alternatives. But I get it gluten can taste amazing freshly baked bread mmm I get it that’s amazing. I personally enjoy gluten as I mentioned once or twice a month but it’s high quality so I don’t feel guilty that it’s doing damage  

• Treat gluten like a special occasion and you will be right. Do not eat gluten every single day like a sandwich or you are asking for trouble. I’m telling you it’s best to be avoided 
• People with celiac obviously cannot have any gluten because it’s just too painful for them. And please don’t disregard this disease or a gluten intolerance as it is a real disease and can cause a lot of discomfort
• Another option is go to Europe and eat gluten there – it’s much higher quality 

My favorite gluten free alternatives that I recommend to all my clients are: 

• For pizza check out cauliflower crusts
• For baking use one part almond flour and one part tapioca for that perfect consistency to make bread, cakes, pancakes etc 
• Check out my recipes in my books for gluten free cookie dough and cookies. All of my books are gluten free 
• For pasta check out Explore Cuisine. Explore Cuisine is organic pasta made with beans, lentils and pulses to make a high protein and high fiber gluten free delicious pasta. I love all of them but absolutely check out the red lentil penne for a more traditional pasta and this edamame Mung bean fettuccini. It cooks in 5 minutes and it’s perfect with some olive oil, sea salt and spinach

If you follow my gluten-free plan like thousands of others you will be set and enjoy amazing digestion! 

To recap:

• If you have celiacs enjoy my gluten-free alternatives 
• If you don’t have celiacs limit yourself to gluten once or twice a month but make sure it’s high quality There are so many epic alternatives out there these days that you won’t even miss it. Whatever you do do not consume genetically modified gluten products or “foods”

Enjoy! 

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello my friends. 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 hundreds of clients that have healthier lives now because of FDN and the work of a specific FDNP.

We are having with us once again, Dr. Kimberly Boehm. She was someone who had come on last year. But I needed to highlight her again cause Dr. Kim is going to give us some things today for practitioners, but also for potential clients of FDN practitioners, including herself.

Dr. Kim is almost 60 years old. She says this herself in the podcast. This has relevance. She has had multiple other careers. She was in health coaching for about a year and a half before ever doing FDN. She wasn’t finding success with just the health coaching.

She had clients, but what really happened is when she had the FDN system added on and she knew what to do consistently for each client when they came on board her business, that’s when things blew up for her. Now in the last two years since graduating, she has taken on hundreds of clients as an FDN practitioner. She’s making great money, she’s helping people, they’re sending her referrals. That’s the beauty of this work.

What’s crazy is Dr. Kim does not really do much social media. She has stuff on there, but that’s not even close to her main source of getting clients. I could be wrong, but based on what she’s told me I would pretty much guarantee that less than 5% of her clients come from social media. It doesn’t mean social media is bad, just saying that we obviously don’t need it.

Hundreds of Clients: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

She did not reinvent the wheel; she is an advocate for doing FDN exactly as it is taught. And better yet, the majority of her clients, all these hundreds that have come in, have come from her doing the lecture packages that we offer to graduates of FDN. So that’s it. She’s literally doing exactly what Reed recommends and what Reed would go do himself if he were to start this all over from scratch and just learn about FDN. It’s working for her 15 years after this course started.

I don’t want to come across as harsh or anything like that, it’s the complete opposite. Many of our practitioners, brand new to this, are over complicating it sometimes, and they do figure it out eventually. But they’re like, worried, do I need to do this thing or hire this business coach, or do all that kind of stuff.

There are times and places for those things, and social media can be a great avenue. It can be something where you get a lot of clients from if you know what you’re doing. But you can go become an FDN, buy a $300 lecture package, and you’ll get a call with Reed Davis himself, you’ll get everything that you need, and go give a free talk in your town.

Oh, and by the way, there are guides in the lecture packages that show you who you should call. There are advertisements that you could print your business on, and then you could hang them in your local town or wherever it’s at. It wouldn’t really just be something that you hang in your local town, right? It might be at the library or church or something similar, whatever works for you.

Hundreds of Clients: A Little About Dr. Kim Boehm

We have all the stuff. You have the PowerPoint slides, a call with Reed. Just do the FDN course, do the lecture packages, and it’s working brilliantly for Kim. You don’t have to charge anyone to come to the lectures; just do them for free. This is proof that this can work for anyone, pretty much anywhere, even in today’s world.

A little bit about Dr. Kim, a very short bio here. She is an FDN that returned to college to earn a doctorate in naturopathic and original medicine, which is a DNOM. I’ve never seen those letters, actually. That’s interesting. She continues her FDN and naturopathic practice in Virginia and recently opened a drug/alcohol and DNA lab.

Oh yeah, by the way, when she’s not working with 18 to 20 clients every single month, or I think she said 15 to 20 clients, she also just opened up another lab. No excuses, man. Let’s get this done, let’s go help people, do what we gotta do.

Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode. All right, Kim. Good morning and welcome back to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?

[00:03:57] Dr. Kim Boehm: Good morning. I’m great. How are you doing?

[00:03:59] Detective Ev: I’m doing well. This is an earlier podcast for both of us. You’re East Coast, so it’s 8:00 AM for you as well, right?

Dr. Kim Boehm: Yes, it is.

Detective Ev: Cool. I actually have the podcast thing open for a lot of the day, but no one ever books in this early. I like this. It’s a good way to start the day, get inspired with another FDN out there, killing it.

Hundreds of Clients: Success with the Lecture Packages

I wanted to bring Kim back on for a couple reasons. One was the fact that when we had brought her on before she was actually doing an Instagram Live, and then I repurposed it. There are times that that’s appropriate. But I have seen in the numbers, I think people are just so used to a certain level of audio quality that when we repurpose Instagram Lives, I might not always give the guest the full justice that I would want them to have. So, it’s cool to have you back.

But then two, I love, that we can go to both sides of this today. We can go to the practitioner side and then we’ll move into the client side and successes that you’re having there. Because you kind of came into FDN and challenged in a very positive way, a lot of the common misconceptions that people need to be social media gurus to make their business work, they need to do some crazy cool strategy.

You literally came in, did FDN, got the lecture packages that Reed has recommended since FDN has been in existence, the stuff that he was doing all the way back then. They’ve been updated and stuff, but still fundamentally it’s the same. You just went and did it and it’s been leading to a lot of great things in business.

Roughly speaking, how many clients are you working with right now? How many have you acquired since you graduated from the course?

[00:05:17] Dr. Kim Boehm: I’ve probably had hundreds since I graduated. I tend to have anywhere from 18 to 20 at one time that are in the cycle. They migrate in and then they migrate out. But typically, there’s about 18 to 20 at a time right now.

Hundreds of Clients: Spending Time with the Clients

[00:05:30] Detective Ev: Awesome. So, let’s say if it was even a hundred, and that’s like a low estimate, because that’s still really good. When did you graduate the FDN course?

[00:05:38] Dr. Kim Boehm: It’s been I think two years ago now.

[00:05:40] Detective Ev: If it was only 102 clients with the kind of work that we do and how in depth we work with our clients and the amount we’re able to charge because of how in depth we work with them and the results that we get, that’s still pretty good.

So, you’re someone out there that’s just kind of rolling with it, making it work. And you were doing very well last year in June at the Biohacking Congress in Boston. You were already doing well.

So, when you graduated the FDN course, did you immediately go with the lecture packages? Was that your first route?

[00:06:10] Dr. Kim Boehm: No. I had actually been a health coach for a year or so prior to doing FDN. So, I had already hung out my shingle and was already working with folks.

This is part of my story really; I had been in nursing, and I loved it. I didn’t love the business model of it. I found that to be a little bit lacking. So, I thought, you know, what do I want to do? I want to be a health coach. Because I want to be able to spend the time with people that a physician is not able to because of the business model, not because he doesn’t want to.

Hundreds of Clients: Functional Labs Were the Missing Piece

Then I went to Duke Integrative Medicine Department there. They had a phenomenal program. I hung up my shingle, I was getting people. But they weren’t all reaching the clinical outcome that they wanted, even though they were following the coaching program.

The missing piece for me was the functional labs, right? Because we were letting clients just decide where they wanted to go. Sadly, they didn’t really know either, they were guessing. So, we were leading them perfectly, but sometimes to the wrong place, if that makes sense. The labs were the missing piece.

That’s how I came to FDN, was to learn the functional labs, learn how to clinically correlate that to assessments. And then everything changed, game changer. People started hitting their clinical objectives. Then they started telling other people that, you won’t believe it, here’s what I did. It just blew up from there.

[00:07:34] Detective Ev: That’s awesome. And this is the biggest thing for FDNs out there. I always think the first, and it’s a different number for everyone, but it’s the first few handfuls of clients. If you can figure that out, and do FDN the way that it’s taught, you are going to get these people results.

Half the time they’re walking billboards cause they’re going to look different. Even if that’s not what they came to you for, they’re going to look different. The skin gets clear, there’s more vibrancy, the weight is at a healthier level. They can’t hide it. So, people are complimenting them. What did you do? Oh, I worked with Kim. Right? That’s kind of how it goes. It’s not that simple, but it really is kind of how it manifests itself.

Hundreds of Clients: Health Coaching & Objective Data

Let’s be clear about something with this health coaching. This isn’t anyone’s fault, but the industry that we’re in, it’s very hard for us from a marketing perspective to, on a Facebook ad, say, become a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner, because that might not mean anything to someone inherently. We almost overlap with the health coaching stuff.

But from what it sounds like, you were a, by definition, health coach, right? Just helping people set and achieve health goals, is that correct?

[00:08:34] Dr. Kim Boehm: Right. So, we were identifying what optimum health looked like to that person, why they wanted that, what they were going to do with it, let’s set some goals around it.

And I still use it, to be honest with you. I still use the program. But I now have objective data, not just subjective data. I have objective data to go with it. Now we know where we’re going. We found the healing opportunities; we weren’t just guessing at them. And that made all the difference in the world when I put it all together.

[00:09:05] Detective Ev: Yeah. Again, there’s nothing wrong with it, like you just said, you actually use it yourself. But it’s unfortunate cause people will call me, like, I’m doing the course enrollment stuff now. When they call me, they’re like, oh, well what kind of health coaching is this? Or like, is this a health coaching program? I’m like, yeah, but not in the way that you’ve probably been taught.

Because the traditional definition of health coaching has been kind of, I don’t want to say tainted, that’s the wrong word, but it’s been misrepresented. It used to mean something else and now it’s like 25 different programs that call themselves health coaching.

Hundreds of Clients: The Life Changing Conversation

Really there’s one definition, and it’s a good one. But you almost always want to add that into something else if you’re going to be working with complicated clients. Like, if you have someone with Hashimoto’s, they either need to be working with another professional or you need to have more resources if you’re just going to do health coaching. Cause usually those people aren’t going to just magically get better from setting goals. We gotta have some things to actually do that we know are going to produce positive clinical outcomes like you talked about.

How did you hear about FDN and then make that leap into it?

[00:10:03] Dr. Kim Boehm: I actually heard about FDN when I was getting my certifications for health coaching. One of the ladies in my cohort, as we were practicing together to get our accreditation, I had a conversation with her. I said, Elise, something’s not working. I am working this program perfectly with clients and we’re getting to the end. They have followed it perfectly, but they’re not having the clinical outcome.

And I’ll never forget. She said to me just as casually as she could, she said, well, you know, you really ought to look into FDN. You get the functional labs; it makes all the difference. And I thought, I have no idea what she just said. FDN? What is that?

She gave me the link and I went and looked. It was one of those things where I knew it when I saw it, that’s the missing piece. And she’s a thriving, successful FDN herself. But she is the one that introduced me to it and got me into it. And it changed my entire practice. Took me to a whole new level.

Hundreds of Clients: Advanced Care Card

[00:10:59] Detective Ev: That’s awesome. Unfortunately, I don’t think everyone has the same exact experience with FDN with that aha moment, but a lot of us do. That’s what happened to me. I mean, I told you I drove to California. I heard Jenn Malecha talk, and I’m like, all right. This wasn’t a crazy trip. That’s why I came out here.

You just find that missing link. You don’t even necessarily know how to verbalize it sometimes. But I was looking for objective data and didn’t necessarily realize that. I was in the cycle of trial and error and didn’t necessarily realize that at the time.

So, you’re working with tons of people. One of the things that you and I were talking about on the phone is one of the biggest things, and I share this in a podcast. I gave you the credit for it cause I didn’t know anyone else who was talking about this. You introduced me to the idea that FDNs actually get approved now for this Advanced Care Card, which is revolutionary for not only our practitioners, but our clients as well.

So, what does this mean basically, in terms of how we can structure and finance our packages with our clients?

[00:11:56] Dr. Kim Boehm: Yeah, that’s another game changer. When I look back over the big bullets of things that changed my entire trajectory, having the Advanced Care Card was one of them.

Because for a lot of folks, we were in the middle of some pandemics and other things. People were losing their jobs and couldn’t go to work. Money just became a real barrier to people being able to do one of our programs that was not covered under insurance.

Hundreds of Clients: Get Paid & Get Started

So, I did some digging around. And yes, there’s a company called Advanced Care Card. They will finance programs like ours that are considered out of network, if you will. They’ll do it 15 months interest free.

So, depending on the package that someone purchases from you, they can really get that price point to fit in their budget. And they can go longer than 15 months if they want to. Interest does start accruing on month 16, but you can go out, I think, up to 60 months. I mean, you can really get it down pretty low.

But they pay me up front. I get all my money. My client then pays them back in monthly installments. It works beautifully. I have a lot of people that use that.

[00:13:01] Detective Ev: When I was talking to a gentleman named Bo or something, he was doing the demo for me. I went over all this stuff cause I couldn’t believe this.

So, correct me if any of this is wrong. As the practitioner, we get all the money upfront. They can only spend it really at our business because it’s tracking the card. So, it’s not like they could go screw up. If they don’t pay in the monthly payments, we’re not punished for that. We don’t owe a fee as the practitioner. There’s really no risk to us whatsoever.

[00:13:24] Dr. Kim Boehm: Right, exactly. I don’t know whether my clients ever pay their card balance or whether they don’t. I just know that I got my money upfront, and it allowed us to jump off and start going. Yep.

[00:13:37] Detective Ev: It has changed the conversation completely in even my own practice.

Hundreds of Clients: Removing a Hindrance to Healthy Results

I instantly got on that. I’m like, there’s no way this is real. And they got us approved almost instantly.

Now when we did one of the lecture talks, which we’ll mention in a moment, the conversations I was able to have with people, cause like our three-month program, personally at my place, is like, $4,500 with the labs. I believe in what we do. We give exceptional service. People come in and have very serious conditions. And they will walk out sometimes in the four months and either at least be 80% better. Some of them don’t have these things anymore, they’re in a remission state. So, I feel very comfortable charging the amount that we charge, given what we’re doing.

But it was always a tough conversation, no matter how much money you have, to say, oh, it’s three-monthly payments. It’s going to be like $2000 up upfront, you know $1250 here, $1250 there, or whatever. Now it’s like, okay, well you can do that if you’d like. Or for interest free, if you have good, excellent credit, because they’re actually very fair even with the good credit, I think it’s like a high 600 they’ll accept for this, 0%, 15 months. I get all the money up front and now it’s $300 a month for the person. And three or four months in, they feel the best that they’ve ever had.

If they only had paid those three to four months to me, that wouldn’t even cover the cost of the labs. So, I think they’re happy to pay these things. And let’s be honest, when you feel good, you’re able to make money easier. It’s a lot easier to work when you feel like a 10 out of 10, rather than a two.

Hundreds of Clients: Neglect is Not an Option

[00:14:56] Dr. Kim Boehm: Absolutely. And I love that.

To me, all of the promotional materials are free as well. So, I always have the pamphlet sitting out when I do a lecture, with my own material, so that it’s not just, here’s my program, but here’s how you can pay for that program.

But the other thing too, anytime you start having conversations about money with a client, that can be a little bit hard to wear both hats, right? I’m going to help you, but I also want money for helping you. So, you really have to understand how to have those conversations and remind them that there’s a cost to doing nothing as well. Like you were saying, there’s missed time from work. There is any number of things that also cost them by just ignoring their problem.

[00:15:37] Detective Ev: Yeah. And there’s a certain level of conviction that comes for us as practitioners, having spent money ourselves to get results for our own stuff, or seeing it in clients, right?

Like my parents say this publicly and they’re willing to do it. But they spent over a hundred thousand dollars on my mom’s health. My parents do okay; they did not have a hundred thousand dollars. So, you know what I mean by that, right? They’re getting this from credit and other things that we shouldn’t have been getting it from, but there was no other option.

Then I saw what my mom paid, a little over $5,000, to work with an FDN that I referred her to for a set period of time, and that was the thing that got her better.

Hundreds of Clients: Confidence from Experiencing Great Results

In my head, there’s just a certain conviction on the phone. I’m like, I know I can stop them from going down the rabbit hole and spending a hundred thousand dollars on BS and nothing, and just getting organs removed. At the same time, if you’re willing to spend the money here, yeah, you give us a few months and we’ll get you the best results you’ve got in 20 years, most likely.

When you could say that with conviction, because you’ve seen it in yourself and you’ve seen it in other clients, people would actually pay a lot more than that amount if they knew that you were going to get the results that you were going to get. Right? That’s the thing.

[00:16:34] Dr. Kim Boehm: Yeah. I had a client that just concluded her program on Monday. She came to me about ready to have to have her gallbladder out. She was told that she was going to have to have her gallbladder out.

We went through our program for three months. She went back to the doctor. He said to her, I don’t know what you’re doing. But yeah, we’re not going to do that now. So, she even said to me, how much is my gallbladder worth monetarily? Here’s what I paid for your program. Here’s what I would’ve paid to have my gallbladder removed from my body. Now I get to keep it and I’m fine. And here’s what I spent. So yeah, it’s all relative, isn’t it?

[00:17:11] Detective Ev: Yes, it is.

One, this last little part here, I guess more for the practitioners, but it does connect to practitioners and clients alike. And then we’ll talk about more of the actual coaching side and what this looks like.

Hundreds of Clients: Happy to Pay for Good Results

I do the podcast obviously, so I interact with a lot of FDNs. And this is not a condemnation of anyone that comes through. But you can start to see, as someone who interviews people, that your mindset is a lot of what has to do with people’s success here, or lack thereof.

There are people that have been doing this for several years. Again, it’s not a judgment or condemnation. I love everyone in FDN, but they barely had a few clients, right? And they got like 10 certifications. Then we have others that come through sometimes, and this might be the only certification they have ever done. And within one year, they’re earning over six figures and their clients are happy to work with them and refer them to other people because of the great work that they’re doing. That’s a heck of a good way to live your life when you can make a great living and people are happy to pay you it because you do such a darn good job at what you’re doing.

Now, not even just talking about the specific numbers thing, but like, you have had a lot of success with these lectures. So, you’re not doing the social media thing. The lectures, if I’m not mistaken, are free. I did charge for mine because I was doing Facebook ads, and I charged like $10 a ticket, basically.

But I know for yours, I think you do it the real way that Reed recommends, which is actually doing it for free. So, what are these lecture packages and how do they help connect our clients to us, as practitioners, and let them know what we’re doing here?

Hundreds of Clients: The More Lectures, The More Clients

[00:18:40] Dr. Kim Boehm: That was the third game changer for me.

The lectures are packages that I bought right off of the FDN site. They had absolutely everything in there that I was going to need. It had a PowerPoint presentation that Reed had put together, a video of Reed actually giving it, the handout material, surveys, who to call to try to book the venue, what to say. Here’s the ad to put in the paper. I mean, I made nothing up on my own.

I bought the package; I did the package. But there’s several of them. I had so much success, I bought them all. One is Stress and Hormones; one is Say Goodnight to Insomnia; Fibromyalgia, but whatever the topic.

That is something too that probably makes me a little bit different. Cause a lot of FDNs create a niche and that’s their niche and that’s what they want to focus on, which is beautiful. I know a lot of them. Jenn Malecha hits it out the park. You know, Lyme Boss hits it out the park.

Mine didn’t so much end up that way. I started out with a focus, fibromyalgia, because that’s what my sister had, and I wanted to help her. But then from there my practice took me in all types of areas. So, I can’t say that I any longer am specific to one niche.

But yeah, those lecture packages were the money. I went out and did them for free. Went to libraries just like Reed said. Had some libraries that told me, no, we don’t really want to do that. Fine. Went to some churches, did them there. But the more I did, the more I got. And you could sign people up on the spot.

Hundreds of Clients: No Age Requirement on FDN

I did some social media, but not so much. I’m almost 60, you know, so that’s not really my thing. I find people where I actually meet people, at my church, my friends, my neighborhood, my family, the lectures that I do. So, that’s really where I find my people.

[00:20:29] Detective Ev: I appreciate you saying this too, cause I never am going to ask. Well, one, people wouldn’t know it if they’re on the camera. But two, I’m never going to ask someone directly. But I appreciate you saying almost 60 because I told you before we got on air here, I’ve had some people call and they’re like late forties, almost 50. Like, am I too old to do FDN? I’m like, what? Where did you see an age requirement on this?

In fact, people are dealing with more health issues, statistically speaking, the older that they get, right? So, if anything, your market would open up even more. And certainly, I mean, I could say this as a 20 something. There are a lot more 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds that are willing to make changes for their health, for their longevity, and to be able to participate in their lives than there are early 20 somethings who want to go to college and get on the five-year party plan. Right?

So, it’s not that I’ve never worked for someone in their twenties, I have. But a lot of the clients that end up coming to us are notably older than myself.

Hundreds of Clients: Common Doesn’t Mean Normal

My point is, it’s a valid question, I guess. But I would dismiss it the second it came up, in my end of the phone call. I was just like, no. That is silly because we have people, like yourself, out there doing the lecture packages, crushing it, doing a lot better than some of the 30-year-olds that come in and do FDN.

And then I gotta shout out Leslie Parran. She hasn’t been on in almost a year and a half, two years. But Leslie, 40 years of nursing, retired 65 years old, comes and does FDN. Starts a full practice in the middle of the pandemic. I mean, so gimme a break. You know, people can do this if they want to do this.

[00:21:51] Dr. Kim Boehm: Yeah, I think sometimes too because of my age, you do have friends your own age that are starting to feel aches and pains that they never had. And the assumption is, is that because it’s common that it’s normal. That’s where I get to remind them that, you know, I don’t feel like that. I don’t have that going on. Nor do I take any medicine at all. My weight’s great. So, it gives you a different angle, I think.

And sometimes too, people perceive that because I’m older, I’ve been doing it longer. When really there could be a 24-year-old that’s been doing it longer than I have. But they look at the two of us sometimes and think, oh, you must be super experienced. Like, no, I’ve been doing it a couple years, you know?

[00:22:32] Detective Ev: Yeah, that’s cool. There’s always advantages to everything, right?

Hundreds of Clients: A Powerful but Cheap Option

Because I’m thinking actually, even as you said that some people perceiving it as normal, that actually might be a limiting belief right there. Whereas the 20-year-olds that I do know that do feel like crap, the one good thing, Kim, is they know it’s not normal. So, when they call, they’re already under the impression that we need to do something.

Guys, the point is, I just wanted to introduce some of this stuff today. Because can you do social media and be a guru with it and do fancy marketing and ads? Yes. I’m actually attempting to do that right now with my own business.

At the same time though, just two weeks ago, I called Kim beforehand to ask her how these things went. Cause I actually had never done one, but you were my inspiration for doing this with our business. We went out and we gave one of Reed’s lecture talks. We had like 35 people show up. Fourteen were interested in calls. We’ve already at the time of recording this, have facilitated the sales and are actively working with some of those people. We made more than enough money back from the event. The people are happy.

It’s really special when you can go out there and do something, one, for your community, that again, we only charge $10 for and there’s way more value than $10, or free, in these lecture packages. So, even if they came out and just got that, they’re good to go. Then you have this very authentic conversation about, hey, well, do you want to do something more? And we give them a free discovery call.

Hundreds of Clients: Rescuing Clients from the Cycle of Trial & Error

When you do the discovery call, I will give someone tips on that call even if they never purchase from me or I know that they will never be able to. That’s how I do business. And that’s how all of us do business cause it’s a wise thing to do. You give and then it just seems to be a cycle of life. Things come back to you from doing that in an honest way.

With all of this said, again, crushing it in the practice. Started out maybe with more of a specific niche and now it’s kind of branched out. I have seen this with other FDNs where maybe just to get on the ground and get running, you start focusing on one thing. But FDNs become known as people that can really help just about anything when nothing else has worked.

People call me when nothing else has worked. They’re like, I’ve been dealing with this for five years. I heard you could help. I wish they came to us sooner, but you will get known as that. Then it kind of becomes this broad thing.

[00:24:40] Dr. Kim Boehm: Yeah. I think my largest count now is I was the seventh practitioner that someone saw before they got resolution. They had been in that cycle going from their general practitioner to their endocrinologist to gastroenterology. Well, I don’t know. Your labs are normal. Let me send you here.

They were just in the proverbial loop and finally came to me with their hands thrown up saying, hey, you’re my last hope. Maybe it is just me, maybe I am making it up, maybe this is normal. I don’t know, but I’m just going to try one more time.

So yeah. Seven.

Hundreds of Clients: Do All the Labs

[00:25:15] Detective Ev: When these people are coming to you to move into, specifically, the client side, obviously, some people listening know about the FDN system, many don’t fully understand this. And you have that mix of coaching that you’re adding in. There are other things and then you have your expertise from nursing as well. There’s going to be things there that can be, probably, helpful.

When someone’s coming to you and they’ve worked with seven practitioners, where do you start? Do you just start with the basics? Are they missing major things in their life? What are some of the things that you’re seeing come up with those types of clients?

[00:25:42] Dr. Kim Boehm: That’s the beautiful thing is that FDN is the same every single solitary time, different for everyone, but the same elements in everyone’s program, although no one’s program is the same.

We start with all of the assessments. We start with, what is their diet, their metabolic type. We do the five basic labs. You know, it’s funny because I’ll see people say, well, which lab should I do for this? And which lab should I do for that? You should do all five labs every single time because they all tell a picture, and they all complement each other. That’s how I do it. I don’t ever look at eliminating one or only doing one. It’s like, no, I want them all.

[00:26:27] Detective Ev: I didn’t know that about you, because this is, for better or for worse, promoted a lot now in FDN. Again, I don’t know if it’s good or bad. So, wait, do you not even offer packages where they can not get all the labs?

Hundreds of Clients: Guess, or Test?

[00:26:39] Dr. Kim Boehm: I offer one I’ve never sold in the entire time I’ve been in practice. Yes, I have it. And it’s just coaching. I generally don’t even have to steer people away from it. I’ve even thought about, well just take it off, you’ve never even sold one.

But it’s, do you want to just take a whack at it, trial and error? Try to pull away the most common food sensitivities. Let’s see what bang we get for our buck. Let’s drag this out for months while we try and take away. Or do you just want to test and not guess? You know, test and I’ll just give you a two-page report. Here they are, let’s avoid these. You know?

I don’t know why anybody would. Most people are pretty excited when they realize that their lab work will just give them the answer and they’re happy to pay for it. I’ve never sold one that didn’t have labs.

[00:27:30] Detective Ev: Right, so, okay.

To make it more specific, I mean like some FDNs will advocate, again, this isn’t against them either. I’m just trying to raise people’s awareness that this can be done this way and it should be done this way, technically. When you do offer labs though, you do not offer a package where they can get one lab and three consults. It’s like if you’re getting labs at all, we’re doing the full program.

Dr. Kim Boehm: Yes.

Detective Ev: All right.

Hundreds of Clients: Adjusting Coaching Sessions, Not the Labs

[00:27:50] Dr. Kim Boehm: Well, the way I approach it may be a little bit different. But I started out my practice making three packages. One that had all five labs. It had, I think, 18 coaching sessions in it. Then I had a middle package that had three labs and 12 coaching sessions, again, with money being the financial barrier there. And then I had the one that had no labs.

I found that I was either selling my top package or nothing, because people really wanted all the labs. And so, I thought, well, how can I make that more attractive? So, what I started peeling away was coaching sessions, not lab work. Now you get all five labs, but instead of 12 coaching sessions, how many do you need?

Six. Six is great. With six we can do our report of findings, we can do diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, supplementation, and a model for sustainable change. That will give you everything you need. And then if you need more later, come back and grab a coaching session on this. Let’s do a deeper dive here.

But I never cut the labs. I cut the coaching sessions. And people seem to love that. That’s my number one package now is all five labs with only six coaching sessions.

[00:29:03] Detective Ev: Excellent. So even though maybe you started out having a package that offered three tests, you were only selling the top one basically.

Nowadays, if I want to work with Kim, it’s like, theoretically, I guess, unless you take it off after this podcast, you could get the coaching only. But if you want to do labs, we’re doing the full FDN system. Is that correct?

Hundreds of Clients: Deep Dive the Protocol One Good Time

[00:29:22] Dr. Kim Boehm: Yeah. I find, people want that. They want all of it, all the labs.

I usually approach it from, how much handholding do you need, because some people really do need that accountability. Some people need that every two weeks for a number of months. But other people are more type A, if you will, and a, Kim, if you’ll just tell me, I’ll do it.

Well, that’s fine too, but I don’t want to cut out all the coaching sessions. I do want to deep dive. Let’s talk about diet and what we’re going to add in, what we’re going to take out. Let’s talk about rest. So, we go through all of the protocol one good deep dive time, but then we’re done unless you come back.

[00:30:01] Detective Ev: Yeah, there needs to be some coaching always. I mean, even the most disciplined person, like maybe they don’t react well to a supplement, right? Well, what do you do? Because now if you didn’t buy the coaching and they’re calling you up, that could get annoying pretty quick for both parties. So, it’s better to just have those in place.

My point in just honing in with this, forgive me for asking basically the same question three times, I wanted to prove something here. Because again, this is the third and final way that I know of that you really challenge what is being taught nowadays in coaching in general. But even in our own FDN community, a lot of FDNs do talk about structuring the packages in such a way where like, all right, maybe one package has one lab and one package has three labs and one package has all of the labs, and I am guilty of this.

Hundreds of Clients: Labs Give Priceless Insight

I have talked about this on the podcast and have stated it’s not ideal. But I did say sometimes, just depending on where your mindset’s at, it might be overwhelming for people to actually charge someone what you need to charge to justify running all six tests.

Now, is it worth it, if clients are listening? Yeah. Because we’ll get you crazy results, which is cool. But you have to understand from a businessperson’s perspective, they might be going from an employee mindset to running their own business. Like, oh, I can’t charge a few thousand dollars for this. I can’t do that. Even though they paid it themselves to get better. That’s beside the point.

You started out maybe a little bit differently, but you ended up doing exactly what Reed says and you’re having success. I think that’s what I was really trying to get at here. It’s like, He was teaching this 14, 15 years ago and still in 2023, all the social media stuff, all the fancy technology, he always talks about he has his pager and his fax machine, or that’s what he had back in the day. We have all this fancy stuff.

Do the lecture packages, give people what they actually need, which is all the labs. We are not lab test salespeople. They are tools that we use. We don’t get a kickback from the labs. You are charging them to pay for the labs because it’s useful for them. It’s actually something that can give us insight. And you’re working with people in a meaningful way, right? Never cutting the coaching down to nothing but giving differences for different people. Some might need six sessions, some might need a whole lot more than that, depending on where they’re at.

Hundreds of Clients: Aim & Shoot

But this is working for you. It shatters every single excuse that I hear from someone when I’m talking to them and they’re saying, oh, well, I haven’t had success because of this or that. And this is not Ev trying to come out and hit people with the hammer, be a hard butt. I’m saying this cause I actually love our community and I think it’s crazy that some people aren’t having success with this in the first year of graduating.

I know that there’s different life circumstances, that there’s luck and unluckiness involved in anything in life. And this is coming from a highly motivated person. Yes, there’s times I’ve gotten lucky. But at a certain point, if you’re a year in and you’ve never taken one client, I don’t think that’s the FDN system. I think there’s something more going on there.

[00:32:41] Dr. Kim Boehm: I think that we need to coach ourselves first, right? Because you’re never going to hit a target if you don’t aim for it, and you don’t actually do the things that you need to do to hit it yourself. So, you know, physician heal thyself first, right?

You have to have a plan, work the plan, create your own barrier plan. What’s going to happen when I don’t have this, or what’s going to happen here? It’s not just open the doors and they will come. It is a business, and it does take work.

But if you do the work, I have found that Reed was 100% correct. Don’t tell him I said this, but if you’ll just do what he told you to do, you can absolutely crush it. And the lectures are one of those things, I think people have to get comfortable stepping out.

Hundreds of Clients: Clients Need to Be Understood & Guided

I understand that public speaking is not for everybody. That’s not their thing. They’re nervous about it. But if you’ll just do it a couple times, you’ll find that you really become passionate about it. And then you can create your own lectures, right? You can talk about anything. You just have to let them know that you understand their specific concern and how you’re going to address it.

[00:33:42] Detective Ev: Absolutely.

Kim, with the clients that are coming to you, I’ve been very curious about this, especially with someone who is now not really any longer working with any particular niche. With the demographics that you’re working with, are they doing the gluten free thing? Are they coming to you with a lot of a dietary experience or has some of these other practitioners that they worked with, have they never even talked about that?

I guess I’m wondering like, what are some of the biggest wins that are produced from the labs? I love what you said, how you know, the program always kind of looks the same, but every program ends up being different. I’m paraphrasing that, but I loved that. Because the FDN system is always the same. How we go about it with the individual once the results come back might look different.

But I’m curious if there’s common things that other practitioners are missing, whether it’s food sensitivities, bacterial overgrowths, or something like that.

[00:34:27] Dr. Kim Boehm: I think, don’t miss the big picture for any one specific lab. All of the labs tell a story.

Hundreds of Clients: All the Labs Together Tell a Story

For instance, the food sensitivity, I love that one. However, what I know to look for, and some of this now is with time and experience. It’s not just the technical textbook part of the knowledge, it’s the clinical aspect of the knowledge. You put the two together and that’s where you really start seeing more results.

But when I see a huge number of food sensitivities, I know to look for high zonulin on one of the other labs. I add a zonulin onto my GI MAP because I like to have two markers for it. But I know to look, and I love that they’re completely different labs. So, the labs are independent of each other, which solidifies and validates, in my mind, what I’m really seeing, high number of food sensitivities, high zonulin. Imagine that, high zonulin. Oh, wheat. Wheat is on their list. You can put your story together when you look at all of it.

Indican, you see a high indican marker. Well, then I’m going to look at the Metabolic Typing Diet. They’re probably not a protein person if they’ve got a lot of indican sitting there that they’re not processing.

You know, that’s experience, I think. But I’ll tell you, going through that in the FDN course where we had the mock clients, that’s real life stuff. Rather than being nervous about it and wishing you didn’t have to do it, embrace it. Because that’s what it’s really like.

And they do want to see you succeed. You know, nobody’s trying to trip you up, they want to see you succeed.

[00:36:06] Detective Ev: Right.

Hundreds of Clients: Get Expertise by Doing the Work

I think that’s one of the coolest parts about this. The FDN course can teach you a lot. But there’s just something that comes from the experience of looking at the labs and seeing these real human beings and what happens, what it looks like on the results. And then when you work with a hundred people plus, it’s like, wow, you really gained a unique skillset.

We always have the support here too, which is great, guys. If something comes up on the labs, first client, that is super complicated and somehow we didn’t cover it in the FDN course in its entirety, you can literally get a clinical advisor session. You can talk to them and then of course they know what’s going on. They’ve seen it.

It’s so amazing what some of those guys and girls have seen before on the labs. Like, I’ll see the weirdest thing; they’re like, oh yes, I saw this one time in this very specific person two years ago. I’m like, cool. Thank you. I’m glad that we have you.

But then that’s one more notch to your knowledge that you have now and you’re never going to forget that. Then the next client has it. Okay, cool. I know this one and I can go back there. The FDN thing is amazing, but it is doing the work with the clients that just makes you an expert at this and really get to the next level.

So, if we could quantify it somehow, with the success that you’re having now, what percentage is contributed to the nursing background? What percentages contributed to the coaching, what percentage would be contributed to FDN? And it’s okay whatever it is. I’m just curious cause you do have a mix of backgrounds.

Hundreds of Clients: FDN + Health Coaching

[00:37:23] Dr. Kim Boehm: Nursing, as wonderful as that was, I really have to say, absolutely zero. I’m just being honest. What that taught me was doctors are wonderful people and they really want to help. But doctors, unfortunately, are a part of a business model that is structured in a way that they’re not the boss.

You tend to think, oh, the doctor is boss. The doctor is not the boss. Doctor’s a paid employee just like the receptionist and is told how many people he or she will see today before they leave. Our number was 32 people a day. If you do the math on that, that’s somebody every 15 minutes.

My doctor was one of the nicest, best people I’ve ever known in my life who just didn’t have more than 15 minutes to spend because he was going to see that many people. He was going to talk about so many different things to put the checks in the boxes.

Medicine and being a nurse taught me, I don’t want to do that. It taught me, I want to be able to spend time with people, to not just throw medicine at them and resolve the symptom or suppress the symptom. I want to help them fix the problem. You just can’t do that in 15 minutes. That’s what I got from nursing.

FDN put the last check in the box I needed to be successful. Health coaching, great. Taught me how to talk to people, how to create plans, how to work a plan, but it didn’t tell me which plan to work. FDN told me what to look for, where to find it, what to do to resolve it. Then put that with how to coach them to it, game changing.

Hundreds of Clients: Client Success Story #1

[00:39:09] Detective Ev: Beautiful.

I’ll ask at the very end where people can find you and work with you and stuff. But I think since you have worked with such a variety of people in a very short period of time, I’m actually kind of interested in covering like maybe two or three client testimonials or just stories to the degree that you’re able to share. I understand some people, even if they have great success, are more private than not.

So, to the degree that you’re able to, are there any client stories that come across your mind when I say like, all right, what’s some of the best transformations that you’ve seen? Where like, maybe someone is coming, seven practitioners in, at the end of their line, and unfortunately thinking to themselves that this might be normal. And then we’re actually able to help turn things around with them.

[00:39:47] Dr. Kim Boehm: It’s funny cause as I look back over the last couple years, so many come.

Certainly, the one that is most recent was just Monday with the young lady in her late twenties getting ready to have her gallbladder out, who doesn’t have to do that anymore. That was a huge transformation in just a little more than 90 days.

She said to me, the funny thing is, is that I paid you the amount of money I did to basically tell me that I have to eat right, I have to exercise, I have to reduce my stress, and I have to just drink a lot of water and all these things that are so common sense. But I wasn’t doing them, and you helped me do it. It’s life changing how much energy I now have. That’s certainly one.

Hundreds of Clients: Client Success Story #2

Another one was a young lady that I worked with down in Florida.

Brilliant young woman at the aerospace college down there. The name of it is escaping me on my tongue. But she was about ready to have to quit school because she was having migraines that were just so debilitating. She would stay in her dorm room with her pillow over her eyes because even the light and sound just created nausea. She just couldn’t handle it.

And so, she was trying her best to go to class. She was missing all the social aspects of college. And she was grabbing an apple and something else here and there thinking, okay, I’m just going to try to eat healthy. I’m going to weather through.

We did her food sensitivities, and it turns out the more apples she ate, the worse she felt. That was like the highest food sensitivity that she had. We pulled that away and a couple of other things. Got her sleeping better; taught her some stress management breathing techniques. And now she’s crushing it and about to graduate. Who knows what she’s going to do in our space program one day?

That was pretty cool.

[00:41:28] Detective Ev: It’s amazing.

I know that you do a lot of talks, are these young people coming to the talks or did you find them somewhere else?

[00:41:36] Dr. Kim Boehm: I have a condo down in Florida and so I have two churches. I go to church here in Virginia where I live, and then when I’m in Florida, I have a church there. She was part of the church family there and knew that I was an FDN practitioner. She knew that I had gone back to college myself to get my doctorate.

Hundreds of Clients: An Inspiring Curiosity

She was talking to me one day and while she didn’t ask for my help, I have to admit she’s one I did pro bono. I just felt like I was being led to help this young woman. If you can help her, just help her. And I did. Her family paid for the labs, and I did everything else pro bono. But it almost makes me cry when she just runs up to me now and throws her arms around me and tells me how life changing it really is. It was a beautiful thing.

[00:42:19] Detective Ev: Yeah. This is awesome.

So, I have one personal question for you today. I was hoping I’d have time for it, and we actually have quite a few minutes to ask this. You stated yourself, almost 60. You’ve done very well for yourself, right? You’ve been involved in business before this even before coming to FDN and crushed it better than 90% of people that go through the program, just through doing the actions that we recommend.

You just opened up a lab that does different things, different types of testing than maybe we would typically do with FDN. But you just opened up a lab, you’re pushing the FDN stuff, working with 15 to 20 clients at a time. I gotta ask, what is inspiring you personally, Kim, to just keep going and doing all this cool stuff?

[00:43:00] Dr. Kim Boehm: Curiosity. You know, I think that nursing opened up a curiosity of why people don’t feel well and what are they doing and what do they all have in common. Then starting my own practice, just one thing led to another. After FDN I remained curious.

Hundreds of Clients: FDN Fulfilled Credits for Doctorate

After that, I went back to college. I got a doctorate in naturopathic and original medicine, which was very much in line with FDN. They actually let me count FDN. It settled 14 of my credits and 210 hours of my doctorate program because they looked at the FDN and saw what I had learned.

They were like, check, check. You don’t have to take this. You don’t have to take that. Which was beautiful, right? So, I went ahead and did that. Wrote my dissertation and made sure on the front page I gave Reed Davis all the credit for getting me started on that path.

[00:43:52] Detective Ev: I love this. Curiosity is a great answer actually for this because I guess it’s a little different.

I’m in my twenties. You want to believe certain things and maybe it happens, maybe it doesn’t. But I really felt like you and I got along so great at the Biohacking Congress in June. We were lucky, because other than another volunteer, Kim and I were kind of like the main, not that you were staffed per se, but you were doing the speaking for FDN. I was staff, of course, at the time, so we were truly there representing FDN. I just felt like it was such a kindred spirit thing.

It’s so weird to me to see people slow down for reasons outside of just like, okay, we obviously are, unfortunately, even if we’re FDNs, we’re going to have less energy eventually at some point in our life. That’s just the natural progression of this experience here on earth. But for me it’s like, I want to do things that I love, I keep adding on more stuff. Cause again, I’m excited and I am curious.

Hundreds of Clients: Passionate About Work

I see people like Reed, who, I mean Reed is 70 years old, right? And the guy’s going and doing keynotes at conferences. He’s doing two to three podcasts a week and so much with FDN.

Again, there’s a certain time where you always gotta check in with your own health and making sure that you’re not overloading that. I fully get that. But I think the reason I ask that question is one, cause I’m selfishly interested in it. But two, I think this is what can happen when we are doing work that we’re truly passionate about.

Many people that come into the world of FDN, Kim, I talk to them and they’re coming from jobs that they’ve been stuck in for 20 years. They were okay jobs, nothing wrong with them in and of themselves, but they’ve never been passionate about their work.

They were trained from the first day of kindergarten to not like Monday through Friday. Then they were forced back into that in the workforce. And so, they have not liked Monday through Friday, generally speaking, from five years old all the way up until 40. This idea that they can go do something that they love and like, I am so thankful to be able to hop on this podcast with you at 8:00 AM.

You don’t have to do this with us. This is not your most profitable means of doing something. It’ll be lucky if one or two clients come from something like this, and yet you still choose, happy as can be, send a huge smiley face in the email, can’t wait to hop on. Right? That’s a good way to live, guys. And I think that gives us life in and of itself.

Hundreds of Clients: Blessed

[00:46:00] Dr. Kim Boehm: Well, Jim Carey said, you can fail doing what you don’t love, so why not do what you do?

[00:46:10] Detective Ev: That was in relationship to his dad becoming an accountant.

[00:46:14] Dr. Kim Boehm: In relation to his dad being a CPA and hating every minute of it. He wanted to pursue comedy and other things just like Jim wanted to. And when he saw that his dad failed doing what he hated, he decided, why not do what you love? If you’re going to risk failure, at least risk it doing something you want to do. So, that’s how I choose to live.

[00:46:37] Detective Ev: I have never heard someone else bring that up in conversation, but I heard that part of his one speech. I’m sure he has brought it up many times, I guess. But that stuck with me.

What people don’t get is pursuing something that you love, even if you haven’t achieved it yet. Like, you know, I do this speaking in schools. Just the act of saying I’m moving towards that every day and seeing yourself get closer, that’s a good life.

Most people, we’re not moving anywhere, or we’re moving downhill. Like, it’s not good. You’re not really stagnant, you’re either growing or you’re dying, right? So, just the journey of trying to go after what you want, that is a more exciting way to live than most people are living right now anyway, by choice.

If you are fortunate enough to actually get to that next level, get to do the things that you want to do, that’s just called being blessed. I think we’re very blessed with that ourselves. I think a lot of FDNs are. They absolutely love what they’re doing.

Where to Find Dr. Kim Boehm/The Signature Podcast Question

[00:47:33] Dr. Kim Boehm: Me too. Yeah. It’s the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done. To feel like you’re helping other people, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s life changing.

[00:47:39] Detective Ev: Kim, where can people find you? Obviously, they don’t have to go to a lecture of yours in Virginia or Florida to find you. If they wanted to reach out to you or work with you, where can they do so?

[00:47:48] Dr. Kim Boehm: Functionalhealthgroup.org. That’s my website. That’s my Facebook page, LinkedIn, every different social media. Functional Health Group.

[00:48:00] Detective Ev: Perfect.

And then our signature question on the podcast only because I cannot remember if I asked you this cause it was an Instagram Live. And even if I did, you’re constantly learning. So, I don’t know, maybe it’s different.

But the signature question, Kim, is if you could get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, so you can get them to start doing one thing or you can get them to stop doing one thing, what is the one thing that Kim would get them to do?

[00:48:25] Dr. Kim Boehm: Lower your stress level.

My answer last time was get outside, get some sunshine, get some exercise, some fresh air, all of those beautiful things. But when I see the impact too, of lowering your stress level and just starting from a lower set point, you can have the exact same reaction to things. But when you started a higher set point, you end up at a different place than if you just lower it.

For me in that naturopathic whole progression of health that’s a very strong spiritual base for me. That’s a beautiful thing. It is a peace. Peace that passes understanding.

Conclusion

[00:49:02] Detective Ev: I respect your memory, not only knowing that I asked you last time, but you’re like, oh yeah, this is what I gave the answer to. So, FDN works, guys. It keeps us sharp.

Thank you so for coming on with me, again.

Dr. Kim Boehm: You’re welcome.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

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/.

Overview

This note takes 10 nutritional myths and aims to provide the best rebuttal for each of them. The 10 myths are:
1) Meat is full of saturated fat
2) Red meat is harmful
3) Dietary fat must be restricted
4) Cholesterol causes heart disease
5) Saturated fat causes heart disease
6) Whole grains are healthy
7) Eat 30g of fibre daily
8) Eat five-a-day
9) The Ireland food pyramid is healthy
10) Public health has our best interests at heart

Ground ginger and ginger tea are put to the test for blood sugar control.

In a case report of the “successful management of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention,” a 45-year-old man took responsibility for his health into his own hands and sought to defeat his disease and get off the meds by eating foods purported to be anti-diabetic, as you can see below and at 0:20 in my video Flashback Friday: Is Ginger Beneficial in a Diabetic Diet?. How strong is the evidence for ginger?

“Diabetes is reaching pandemic levels…and requires safe, affordable, and effective therapies.” So, what about ginger’s “potential in prevention and treatment”? As you can see in the graph below and at 0:37 in my video, in a petri dish, increasing exposure to ginger compounds improves blood sugar uptake of muscle cells almost as much as the popular diabetes drug metformin. 

And, in rats, ginger might work even better than metformin, but weight and blood sugar reduction observed in rodent models “does not translate to humans.” As you can see in the graph below and at 0:59 in my video, a combination of nutraceuticals caused mice to lose 30 percent of their body weight in one month, but what about people? Researchers found no benefit compared to placebo. You don’t really know if something works in humans until you put it to the test.

When researchers fed people refined white–flour bread with a cup of water, their blood sugars rose over the next two hours. But, when they drank some unsweetened green tea with that white bread instead of plain water, there was less of a blood sugar spike. The same with cinnamon tea and also with ginger tea made by mixing a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger into a cup of hot water. You can see this below and at 1:17 in my video. The study subjects were all healthy, though. What about the effects of ginger in people with diabetes? 

In the first study of its kind, diabetics were randomized to take a teaspoon of ground ginger a day for two months. It was hidden in pill form, so the researchers could compare results with subjects taking identical-looking sugar pill placebos. The result? Ginger supplementation decreased the levels of insulin, which is a good thing, as well as lowered levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, but without a significant effect on blood sugars. Now, heart disease is the leading killer of diabetics, so a 13 percent drop in bad LDL cholesterol would be reason enough to shell out the nickel a day it would cost to add that much ginger to your diet, but it would have been nice to also see an improvement in blood sugar control. There was that drop in insulin levels, which suggests improved insulin sensitivity, and a significant drop in insulin resistance. Is it possible the researchers just didn’t give the ginger enough time to work? That study gave it two months, but what giving three months? 

Researchers gave subjects even less ginger, just 1.6 grams, less than a teaspoon a day, but did so for 12 weeks, and ginger did in fact reduce blood sugar levels, as well as decrease inflammation, cutting C-reactive protein levels in half. 

What about scaling down to just eight weeks, but, this time, using a higher dose—3.0 grams a day, which is about one and a half teaspoons? Researchers found a significant decrease in fasting blood sugars and long-term blood sugar control in the ginger group, “thereby showing the effect of ginger in controlling diabetes.” In fact, the placebo group continued to get worse, while the ginger group got better, as you can see below and at 3:14 in my video. 

Similarly, researchers saw amazing results in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with a teaspoon a day for 12 weeks and also recorded improvements using a teaspoon and a half, where all of the participants in the ginger group were better and all of those in the non-ginger group were worse, as you can see below and at 3:27 in my video. 

So much significant difference, just because of a small amount of an inexpensive, safe, simple, and side-effect-free spice. If you put together all of the studies, “the combined data clearly demonstrated” that ginger can lower blood sugar levels and improve long-term blood sugar control—and do so at a totally manageable dose. You could just stir a teaspoon of ginger powder into a cup of hot water and drink it. How easy is that? So, “overall…‘adding [a] little spice to our life’ may serve as a delicious and sensible way to maintain a healthy body.” 

If one plant can do all of this, can you imagine if your whole diet was centered around plants?

Here’s a video to draw you in to the dozens more I have on diabetes, one of our leading killers: How Not to Die from Diabetes.

Ground ginger and ginger tea are put to the test for blood sugar control.

In a case report of the “successful management of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention,” a 45-year-old man took responsibility for his health into his own hands and sought to defeat his disease and get off the meds by eating foods purported to be anti-diabetic, as you can see below and at 0:20 in my video Flashback Friday: Is Ginger Beneficial in a Diabetic Diet?. How strong is the evidence for ginger?

“Diabetes is reaching pandemic levels…and requires safe, affordable, and effective therapies.” So, what about ginger’s “potential in prevention and treatment”? As you can see in the graph below and at 0:37 in my video, in a petri dish, increasing exposure to ginger compounds improves blood sugar uptake of muscle cells almost as much as the popular diabetes drug metformin. 

And, in rats, ginger might work even better than metformin, but weight and blood sugar reduction observed in rodent models “does not translate to humans.” As you can see in the graph below and at 0:59 in my video, a combination of nutraceuticals caused mice to lose 30 percent of their body weight in one month, but what about people? Researchers found no benefit compared to placebo. You don’t really know if something works in humans until you put it to the test.

When researchers fed people refined white–flour bread with a cup of water, their blood sugars rose over the next two hours. But, when they drank some unsweetened green tea with that white bread instead of plain water, there was less of a blood sugar spike. The same with cinnamon tea and also with ginger tea made by mixing a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger into a cup of hot water. You can see this below and at 1:17 in my video. The study subjects were all healthy, though. What about the effects of ginger in people with diabetes? 

In the first study of its kind, diabetics were randomized to take a teaspoon of ground ginger a day for two months. It was hidden in pill form, so the researchers could compare results with subjects taking identical-looking sugar pill placebos. The result? Ginger supplementation decreased the levels of insulin, which is a good thing, as well as lowered levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, but without a significant effect on blood sugars. Now, heart disease is the leading killer of diabetics, so a 13 percent drop in bad LDL cholesterol would be reason enough to shell out the nickel a day it would cost to add that much ginger to your diet, but it would have been nice to also see an improvement in blood sugar control. There was that drop in insulin levels, which suggests improved insulin sensitivity, and a significant drop in insulin resistance. Is it possible the researchers just didn’t give the ginger enough time to work? That study gave it two months, but what giving three months? 

Researchers gave subjects even less ginger, just 1.6 grams, less than a teaspoon a day, but did so for 12 weeks, and ginger did in fact reduce blood sugar levels, as well as decrease inflammation, cutting C-reactive protein levels in half. 

What about scaling down to just eight weeks, but, this time, using a higher dose—3.0 grams a day, which is about one and a half teaspoons? Researchers found a significant decrease in fasting blood sugars and long-term blood sugar control in the ginger group, “thereby showing the effect of ginger in controlling diabetes.” In fact, the placebo group continued to get worse, while the ginger group got better, as you can see below and at 3:14 in my video. 

Similarly, researchers saw amazing results in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with a teaspoon a day for 12 weeks and also recorded improvements using a teaspoon and a half, where all of the participants in the ginger group were better and all of those in the non-ginger group were worse, as you can see below and at 3:27 in my video. 

So much significant difference, just because of a small amount of an inexpensive, safe, simple, and side-effect-free spice. If you put together all of the studies, “the combined data clearly demonstrated” that ginger can lower blood sugar levels and improve long-term blood sugar control—and do so at a totally manageable dose. You could just stir a teaspoon of ginger powder into a cup of hot water and drink it. How easy is that? So, “overall…‘adding [a] little spice to our life’ may serve as a delicious and sensible way to maintain a healthy body.” 

If one plant can do all of this, can you imagine if your whole diet was centered around plants?

Here’s a video to draw you in to the dozens more I have on diabetes, one of our leading killers: How Not to Die from Diabetes.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: What is going on, my friends? 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 powerful relationship in our bodies.

We are actually privileged to be able to talk to Reed Davis’s partner in crime today, Raewyn Guerrero. Raewyn has been in the functional medicine space for almost eight, nine years at this point, then recently graduated FDN. I wanted to bring her back on the podcast. Now, when I say back on, even if you’ve been listening for a while, you might be like, when was she on before? I don’t remember that name. She was in Episode 30.

Yeah, it’s two years later and we’re just ever so slightly bigger than we were back in those humble beginnings. So, we thought we’d have her back on to talk about something a little different this time. In that first episode, she shared her story. I’m going to guess she was kind of new to podcasting and I wasn’t as experienced back then. I’ll put that in the show notes for you guys. Again, that’s her story.

Today we’re supposed to be talking about hormone health for women and how it relates to gut health and mold toxicity. I say supposed to talk about that because that is not necessarily where the conversation ended up. We did have bits and pieces of that, it’s in there somewhere. There are some great little side tangents that I think you guys will really love. Stick with us. I think you guys will enjoy this for the high energy. We will get the episode going in just a second here.

FDN’s Health Space Unmasked – Dr. Terry Wahls

But if you’re listening to this at the time of it coming out, or maybe the day after, you still do have a day or two then to get registered for our May Health Space Unmasked event. And that is with none other than Dr. Terry Wahls.

If you somehow do not know who she is, I would recommend that you open up your preferred search engine and just search for Dr. Terry Wahls. Then realize we have the privilege of getting her on with us for free, at least for you guys it’s free, for a couple of hours with a Live Q&A. She is going to be talking about so much cool stuff.

I know autoimmunity is going to be in there cause that’s pretty much par for the course anytime you get to talk to Dr. Terry Wahls. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I can even steal her for the podcast. But we’ll see if she goes for that. I will try. I’m hoping it goes well.

With that said, if you want to get involved with that, go to our show notes or just type in the URL, fdntraining.com/unmasked.

A Relationship: Tipping the Scale

Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.

All right. Hello there, Raewyn. Welcome back, technically, to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?

[00:02:52] Raewyn Guerrero: I’m doing great. It’s Friday and I’m just so excited about being back on this. It’s been two years since I’ve been here.

[00:02:58] Detective Ev: Yeah. Well, I said “back” almost hesitantly because technically before it was the FDNthrive Podcast, and we’ve since obviously moved to this. It’s cool because I appreciate all the people that came on back then and now, we have some legitimate listenership.

You actually saw results in your own business back then. You actually had someone that resonated and there were some clients from that. But it’s fun now getting to talk to a larger audience and just impacting people in a different way. We’ll have some fun today with this.

One thing I didn’t tell you before recording is if you see that little blur in the video, don’t worry. It’s all good. It’ll come out fine.

But Raewyn, for those that maybe have not listened to all 230 episodes now, I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to do that, but just in case you had something better to do with your life, can we go just briefly into your background of how you got into this space? Because it wasn’t by accident, you’re just like everyone else where you struggled with some stuff yourself.

[00:03:45] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah. You know, Evan, this is such a long-winded story, so I’m going to do my best to condense it. Because there’s never one thing, but there is one thing that tips the scale, right?

A Relationship: IBS

There are several things that led to this moment, but the big thing for me was anxiety and IBS back in 2011 and being dismissed by my gastroenterologist with, oh, this must all be in your head. Go see a psychiatrist. That’s what literally put me on the path to trying to figure out what was going on.

Why would I be imagining all this stuff going on with my stomach? You know, it’s just not true. I was so fixated at that time on the mind-body connection, I didn’t really understand this relationship between the body and the mind, that they communicated with each other, and that what’s going on when your gastrointestinal tract can actually have a very direct impact on your hormones, on your energy levels, on your immunity, on your metabolism, on pretty much everything, your skin. Honestly, I was dealing with all those things.

I had chronic migraines, awful periods. Literally you couldn’t touch me 10 days before my period because I’d be so swollen and inflamed and just in pain. Then of course compounding all of that with IBS was just not a lot of fun. But up until that point the IBS was really the tipping point.

I didn’t realize that I wasn’t supposed to be living every month in pain like that, I did not know that. Actually, I was just told by my family, my mother and my aunts, it’s just part of being a woman, suck it up. And not realizing, living on 1600 milligrams of Motrin for five days of the month is not actually good for you. So, you wonder why I had gut issues. Right?

A Relationship: Immune System Emergency

My IBS diagnosis was my wake-up call. That was the thing that actually set me on the path to trying to figure out what was going wrong in my life. And it all happened around the same time of me getting divorced.

I had been on multiple antibiotics. I was sick all the time cause there was a lot of stress going on in my life and everything that I know now about cortisol and what that does to your immune system. The thing is, I couldn’t take time off work because I was now the only breadwinner.

I couldn’t be like; I can’t afford downtime. I can’t afford to go off on a retreat for six months and figure out, cause I needed to get my own apartment, sort things out. So, I just powered through it, saw my doctor like every month, and got a course of antibiotics to deal with whatever, tonsil infection, ear infection, bronchitis. I had like a ton of upper respiratory tract things that were going on that entire year.

2010 is when I split up with my ex-husband and I got sick pretty much every single month. Every month I had something going wrong. And I remember the doctor that I was seeing at the time, he and I actually ended up becoming friends, and he ended up studying functional medicine too. He was the only person who looked at me and said, you know, there’s something wrong with your immune system. You need to do something about this.

But in the 10 minutes that you get with him once a month, all he could say is, maybe you should look into probiotics. That set me off on looking into probiotics and all those kinds of things.

A Relationship: Helping Others Heal

Then by the time the IBS showed off, I was like, all right, I really have to take some action on this. I started looking into changing up the way that I was eating and how I was living. Cause I was in a high pressured, stressful, corporate environment. It did not allow for weakness or perceived weakness.

That’s the beginning, that’s the origin story. It’s just evolved so beautifully from there. Now that I look back, I just see the hand of God guiding me and pushing me all the way to where I am right now and being able to help people in a way that actually moves the needle on health overall. I’ve helped over 350 women so far.

[00:07:22] Detective Ev: Nice. So cool.

[00:07:22] Raewyn Guerrero: In a one-on-one capacity, you know. That feels good.

[00:07:26] Detective Ev: Yeah. Well, and think about the ripple effect that that has, right? Because when someone works with us, like I know the people that I’ve impacted directly and indirectly from someone working with me, and it’s just kind of beautiful. If it’s 350 people, the only thing we know about that is that it’s definitely more than 350 people, cause they’ve done something too.

[00:07:40] Raewyn Guerrero: Totally.

You know, that’s the beauty of it. When I work with women, and I think that’s why I love working with women because they share everything with their girlfriends, with their daughters, with their sisters, with their mothers, with their husbands. They’re like, you should do this too. They get everybody on the same bandwagon. And it feels really good.

So, you’re right, that halo effect is just so powerful and so inspiring. I’m always humbled by it.

A Relationship: The Gut-Skin Connection

[00:08:03] Detective Ev: I know our main topic today is going to be about the hormone stuff. One thing that I have to go back to really quick is just because this was something that was a recent experience for me, is the ibuprofen thing. So many people act like ibuprofen is not a big deal because I can go to the store and buy this for a few dollars and get like 20 tablets.

Well, as you know, I got three wisdom teeth removed recently. It was a crazy amount of pain and swelling. And one of the reasons I do take my health seriously is so that when I need to use certain things like that, Yeah, I mean I was taking ibuprofen. I’d rather that than Percocet, personally. So, I’m taking ibuprofen at a decent dose every day, probably 400 milligrams in the morning, 400 milligrams mid-afternoon or early evening. That was keeping things at bay. Now, I was doing this for two weeks.

What was so nuts about this, Raewyn, is, you know, thankfully, even though my skin’s been super bad in the past, it’s gotten to a great place. And it’s nothing major, nothing to complain about, but I thought it was nuts how I was doing everything else, pretty much the same that I normally do, but the only thing that changed is the anesthesia, which you were telling me about at the conference. I figured it’s not great, but I didn’t realize how bad it could be, the anesthesia and the ibuprofen specifically. That already had led to like a couple skin breakouts that I noticed.

People don’t connect that this is something that is actually damaging the gut and hurting it. And then it can manifest as skin issues.

A Relationship: Powerful Meds on the Gut

Like how many people do you think are out there, especially young adults that are maybe 18, 19 years old with acne, connecting that? Oh yes, maybe it’s the ibuprofen I’m taking every day. And I’m only needing that cause I’m eating inflammatory foods that are causing pain, migraines. It’s just so disconnected for so many people.

I think it’s amazing for them when they finally come into this space and realize what you and I did. You’re looking at all these things separately at one point and then you realize, no, it’s all combined. The period stuff, the mental health stuff, the IBS, this isn’t separate. It’s truly all connected.

[00:09:44] Raewyn Guerrero: It totally is.

I keep talking about this bidirectional relationship between the body, the gut, and the brain. That’s like been the entire basis of my whole practice since I started this in 2016. The gut, when we think about the fact that it’s where everything gets digested, assimilated, and we’ve got this one-inch layer of the epithelial lining, like that’s all it is. You start taking something powerful like a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug or something even more powerful like anesthesia, what do you think that’s going to do to that epithelial lining? What is it going to do to it?

I want to give you a quick story about a client of mine who she had a brain tumor. Now it was a benign brain tumor. She came to see me for anxiety. And this is when I was practicing as a hypnotherapist. So, I actually trained in hypnotherapy before functional medicine. That’s why I said, I was very obsessed with this mind-body connection, not so much the body-mind.

A Relationship: Causing Anxiety

She said, I don’t know where this anxiety came from. I’ve never been an anxious person. I’m a happy person. She was an Iranian woman, a praying person; she was Persian Christian. She said, I’ve never been anxious. I don’t know what’s going on, blah, blah, blah.

You know, I didn’t do detailed intakes the way that I do now. So, my intake was like in person. I’m sitting down and I’m talking to her and it’s over like two or three sessions. I’m getting this story of what happened with this brain tumor, da da da.

She’d had a really abusive first marriage, a really, really abusive, first marriage. And it created a lot of stress for her. But she said because she had this tremendous faith that everything would work out. She practiced breath work, yoga, meditation, and prayer every day. She believes that’s what prevented the tumor from becoming cancerous because it just ended up being like this ball.

The anxiety showed up shortly after she had surgery, she said this out of the blue panic. She’s like, I have no idea where this has come from. I’ve never been this person. I have these butterflies in my stomach. Like, I’m afraid to leave the house. That’s never been me. She’s obviously in a much better place, like psychologically, and a happier relationship, very well set up in her life.

When we started digging into it, I said, do you think that this has anything to do with the fact that you were basically knocked unconscious, and your body was shut down by these really powerful drugs. The light bulb went off for her.

A Relationship: Causing an Emotional Rollercoaster

She said, you know, I think you might be right. None of this existed before I had the surgery. I was fine, you know, apart from headaches. She had headaches cause she had a brain tumor. But apart from the headaches, like she didn’t have any anxiety. So, we were able to kind of unpick that and realize, okay, you’re going to need some support.

I wasn’t practicing functional medicine back then, so we did a lot of work around trying to clean up her nutrition. She was still eating a lot of bread and stuff cause Persian cultures, middle Eastern cultures, they do eat a lot of Pitta and that kind of thing. So, we tried to clean up her nutrition cause I knew a little bit about the fact that certain foods could be quite harmful and some you could take them out and you might feel a little bit better. But I ended up referring her on.

I thought it was very interesting that that was my first experience of seeing that someone having experienced anesthesia would end up feeling that way. Then I experienced it, same thing, about two years or three years later when I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I was like a mess, emotionally, like a rollercoaster for a long time afterward, just so up and down.

Now, I thought about it, and I didn’t want to take the, not the Percocet, whatever they give you codeine, cause I knew, I was like, it’s going to make me constipated. No, I don’t want anything like that.

A Relationship: Multiple Traumas Affecting the Gut

[00:13:02] Detective Ev: Vicodin probably. Hydrocodone or whatever.

[00:13:02] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah, that was it. I didn’t want to take any of that. But the anesthesia totally made me loopy for a while. Not just in the week after the procedure, like literally for about, I don’t know, maybe 6, 7, 8 months of just being up and down, being very volatile emotionally.

And I’ve seen it over and over, when clients come in. They’re like, I don’t know where this started. We do a little history taking, that lifestyle intake form, and I’d ask them questions. I’m like, have you had surgery recently? They’d be like, yes. I’m like, okay. You start seeing the patterns emerge. You know, I’ve had surgery for my hip, or I’ve had surgery for my wrist or whatever, and they’ve been knocked out.

The minute they get knocked out; the body gets shut down. It’s such a traumatic thing that happens to the body. You’re literally killing it, you know, to make it go to sleep in order for someone to perform usually very traumatic things to you as well.

Wisdom teeth surgery, it’s like for me, they were drilling into my jaw and cutting things out because it was impacted. It’s not pretty. That’s pretty traumatic. The trauma from the anesthesia, then the physical pain trauma as well, the pain trauma, these things have a direct effect on what’s going on with your gastrointestinal tract and how well you’re absorbing, assimilating nutrients, and how well that’s converting into things like hormones or neurotransmitters.

[00:14:19] Detective Ev: Sure. I’m very lucky that I still, overall, I think I feel very good afterwards.

A Relationship: Pre-Anesthetic Glutathione Treatment

But one of the things that I did as well, thankfully, because I have a gene panel ran through GX Sciences, it hit me right before the surgery because I hadn’t looked at it in a couple years. One of the things on there, it’s very common I guess in terms of genetic SNPs, but it’s just a genetic SNP that is focused around not being able to produce as much glutathione naturally as some other people.

One of the warnings there, and it hit me like two days before, it said on the recommendations, watch out for long-term anesthesia, like in terms of like long duration, I guess, is what I mean. Consider pre-anesthetic glutathione treatment. So, literally the day before, I went and got an IV drip for the glutathione. I guess I’ll never know how much that helped me or didn’t, but I just seemed to bounce back pretty quickly. It really did seem to be the ibuprofen that hurt me worse than anything.

Then the stress relief that I got after having these dang teeth removed. Because, Raewyn, I think over the last two years since I got the first one removed and then like an idiot didn’t get the other three out at the same time, what has always been in my head as a speaker, as a podcast guy, as someone who requires himself to talk for a living, I’m always sitting there in my head thinking, oh, when is it going to happen? When’s it going to happen? What am I going to have to cancel? So, I actually think this was a better reality for me because all three were impacted. I knew this was coming someday, I just didn’t know when. I was basically waiting until it forced me.

A Relationship: Saying “Yes” to Meds

This idea now that like, I’m pretty much good to go, this, I mean, I’m not going to grow any more wisdom teeth, that’s for sure. That’d be very strange if I did. I just feel like kind of a freeness from that. Now I know that I won’t need surgery for a while. So, I think the lower stress of that’s pretty good.

But this is something for people to watch out for. I guess, typically speaking in surgery, you don’t have a lot of other options, especially with the impacted wisdom tooth. I wasn’t doing just Novocain for that. Yeah. I don’t want to sound like less of a man, but yeah. We have this stuff for a reason. I’m like, you can knock me out. I don’t need to hear you cracking my teeth and drilling while we’re doing that.

[00:16:08] Raewyn Guerrero: No, you don’t need to feel that. You really don’t need to feel that. Like, honestly, if you have to think of any type of surgery you have to go through, anything to do with like the mouth or the throat, for me, just feels like, ugh. Just please don’t.

When I used to get recurring tonsillitis when I was little, I remember they were like, oh, you should go get your tonsils out. I never ended up doing it because when the ENT put me in the chair, I was seven years old. He starts talking about where are they going to make the incision and blah, blah, blah. My mom is there with me. I literally got up and ran out of the room. I was like, no one is touching my throat.

A Relationship: Gut and Hormone Bidirectional Connection

It’s such a sensitive and powerful area too, if you’re using your voice professionally. You know, back then I was singing a lot. I was seven, but I was singing a lot, writing a lot of music, that kind of thing. And I didn’t want anyone going near my throat. I’m like, you’re not going to touch my instrument. No one’s touching that.

So, I could understand with your teeth as well. Like, you need those, that’s survival. People going near it, it’s a big deal. It’s a really, really big deal.

[00:17:02] Detective Ev: Well, since we probably have spiked every audience member’s cortisol now, it’s a good time to transition into the hormone side.

[00:17:09] Raewyn Guerrero: Please do. Yeah, because we really have gotten them nervous. Like, yeah, I hate talking about bad teeth.

[00:17:12] Detective Ev: So, I know that before we recorded, we were talking about two main sections, and of course if something else comes up that’s totally fine. But I know that we wanted to discuss how the gut can relate to hormones, especially women’s hormones and also the mold thing. Maybe since we were kind of already talking about the gut, that might be the logical place to start.

You already mentioned the bidirectional relationship that’s well established in medicine and just we’re continuing to get more and more evidence of this. Evidence isn’t even the right word. We’re getting more and more definitive answers as to how this works.

But what is the connection then between the gut health side and how this affects someone’s hormones? Because I think even in the functional space, if you’re new to this especially, that might seem a little disconnected.

A Relationship: Food is Information

[00:17:50] Raewyn Guerrero: Well, I like to use music metaphors, car metaphors and music metaphors.

So, if we think of a symphony and we have got all the different players involved, you have a conductor. I feel like the gut is actually the conductor of your symphony because obviously what you put in your food is information. It’s going to get broken down and translated and redirected into different parts of the body where it’s needed. I just touched on the fact that what you’re consuming needs to be, not just good. Well, obviously it needs to be, but regardless of is it healthy food or not healthy food, like it has to be broken down and then it has to be converted.

Now, we have this whole detox chain or channel, whatever you want to call it. You got the liver, the kidneys, the gallbladder. You want to make sure that all of those things are working in harmony. If they’re not, it’s usually because of the fact that we’re overburdening them by crappy, toxic, processed food, which unfortunately people eat nowadays because it’s convenient.

We opt for convenience over our own health, which is a really terrible sign of our low self-worth and the fact that our society is so disconnected from the way that food actually was designed. Food is there to nourish. We offer these crappy things in boxes, packages, plastic, whatever, and then we ingest them. We inhale them a lot of the time too.

If we talk about the fact that we’re not even chewing anymore, we’re not producing enough of the enzymes that are required to help break food down because we’re eating in a distracted or a hurried manner. Most of the time I was guilty of this.

A Relationship: The Rest and Digest Phase

I worked at a bank, and I sat at my desk. I ate breakfast there, lunch there, and sometimes the occasional dinner there. Because if you stayed past 9:00 PM they’d buy you dinner. People would hang out just to be like, we’re going to get dinner and we’re going to be able to order sushi or whatever. You know, you order whatever you want, it would get sent to you.

[00:19:42] Detective Ev: And now you’re eating late too.

[00:19:43] Raewyn Guerrero: So many things are wrong with corporate culture. Let’s just, not even. So, you’re eating at your desk and you’re eating in a very hurried, distracted manner. You’re not chewing, you’re inhaling, not producing enough saliva enzymes in order to predigest your food before it even hits your GI tract. That in itself, right there, is a massive problem. And that’s something everybody can change. We can all change that.

We don’t have to be rushing from here to there to there. Because when we are in that constant state of arousal, because that’s what it essentially is, and we talked about cortisol a little while ago, that is literally being in fight or flight. But when you need to eat and when you need to absorb food, you need to be in the rest and digest phase. Practitioners who are hearing this know this, but we’re all guilty. We’re like, okay, I have like 10 zoom meetings today. Do I build in breaks for myself or do I just power through?

A Relationship: Utilizing Lifestyle Tools

Believe it or not, finishing the FDN course actually gave me a gray hair because I literally sat for like 12 hours a day for the last couple of weeks, just so that I could power through. It’s like birthing a baby, like you just want it done.

Now, the thing is people are living their lives like that all the time. I can have a stressful moment or a stressful period, but I know that I have my tools in place to recover from that. So, I can practice my breath work, go sit in my sauna. Thankfully, I have a tiny little sauna, a little Therasage, one person, zip up. You look like a jacket potato. Your head pops out of it and your arms can pop out too if you want to hold your phone or your remote or whatever. Cause I’ll put the TV on, and I’ll watch like a YouTube video or a podcast or something. But I know that I have tools that can help me get back into rest and digest really quickly, just like you do.

Because you were saying like, well, I took all this ibuprofen and I had the surgery, but I didn’t really have too much downtime. Everything was fine. And why is that? Because, you know, you have your tools. You know, like, oh, I’ve done my research. I know that I’m probably going to need a little bit more glutathione than other people to keep my liver doing its job. So, you go and do that. That’s the beauty about this way of thinking, this approach, because you become so in tune with your individual body and what it needs.

A Relationship: Reducing Cortisol

Then you’re not at the mercy of the one size fits all. Well, everybody goes for surgery, and everybody bounces back. You might not bounce back at the same rate as somebody else. You might need extra support.

In my case, you know, eating at my desk, I mean, nobody should be eating at their desk. It’s just wrong. You should be eating with friends and family sitting outside if you can, if it’s warm where you live. But sitting and communicating and having community with other people, chewing your food, making it an enjoyable, pleasurable experience.

Because that in itself, well, one that reduces cortisol. It increases oxytocin when you’re in community. These are all things that we need in order to be able to function properly and for us to feel connected and to feel happy, and to feel balanced. We talk about homeostasis a lot in functional medicine to feel balanced, right? Homeostasis is a state of balance. Getting into rest and digest is probably the number one thing that we need to be doing in order to be able for our bodies to recover, for our hormones not to get used up.

You know, back in the olden days, and I say olden days, 2016, when I was learning about functional medicine, we used to talk about the cortisol steal. Now that’s not really so much of a thing. But it’s a great construct to understand what happens when you start using up too much cortisol because you’re in fight or flight all the time and you’re not giving your body a chance to chill out. And you can be in fight or flight for numerous reasons.

A Relationship: The Body Can’t Discern Different Stressors

One, you could have hidden infections, pathogens, parasites, yeast, mold, fungus, whatever. You could be experiencing psychological stress, partner stress, work stress, children stress, you know, psychological stressors. So, you got your biochemical stressors, those internal ones, you got your psychological ones, and then you could be experiencing some kind of physiological stress as well. Maybe you’ve broken a bone, or you’ve had surgery. Right?

These three types of stressors, they are interpreted by the body in the exact same way. Cortisol does not know the difference between the biochemical, the psychological, or the physical. It doesn’t know. It just knows that, oh my God, I need to start pumping out more of this in order to keep up with what’s going on.

And then what ends up happening, it keeps pumping and keeps pumping. And because you don’t give it a chance to settle down, we have this wonderful analogy of like, think of your body as being elastic, like this rubber band. If you are being stretched continually, what’s going to happen? You’re going to end up snapping.

The idea with a rubber band is that you stretch it and then you give it moments of bounce, let it spring back into shape so it can maintain its elasticity. The body is the exact same way. If we’re not giving ourselves the downtime that we require, and downtime doesn’t only mean sleeping, but it definitely plays a big part in recovery overall and being able to kind of rebalance things and get us back into that rest and digest. Sleep is part of it, but you can do restful activities as well.

A Relationship: The D.R.E.S.S. Protocol

Meditation is obviously a restful activity. Chiang Tai Chi, gratitude journaling, there’s so many wonderful ways to actually incorporate rest into your life that’s not only about going to bed at 10:00 PM. Rest is one of the first ways that we can do that to get us back into rest and digest where we’re actually digesting our food, assimilating and getting it into a place where we’re going to be able to use this. We’re not going to be bloated, uncomfortable, and gassy, et cetera.

[00:25:04] Detective Ev: I have something to add. That was a lot of great stuff. It’s so funny how even as well versed as you are, so many of our practitioners that come on here are, what we’re talking about action-wise is not particularly profound, right? It’s like, chew your dang food. Actually rest, actually take that time.

This is why I think it throws people off with the FDN program especially. Yes, you have all these fancy labs, and we have practitioners that are insanely intelligent and well-versed. But D.R.E.S.S, diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, supplementation is still the core. If you nail that down, you’re going to get the results for your clients and yourself that you’re really looking for more often than not even if you never ran a lab test.

Now the lab test can help customize it. It can help accelerate those results greatly. I’ve found that to be true. But D.R.E.S.S is still the core of all of this. This happens all the time on this show. We go off onto all these things, then it kind of comes back to, well can you actually break down your food? Can you chew? And it is more than going to bed at 10:00 PM like you said.

A Relationship: Daily Intentional Actions to Lessen Stress

I also like that you brought up the body’s reaction to, you have the psychological or physical stresses. Then you have the hidden infections; you have other things like that, biochemical stresses. Right? But the body doesn’t care. It doesn’t care if you’re late on taxes, it doesn’t care if you just got into a fight with a family member, it doesn’t care if you have a parasite in terms of the stress reaction.

It almost seems, and I don’t mean it in a fearmongering way, there’s always hope to this. But in today’s modern world, it’s like practically impossible to truly shut this down in your body unless you are being intentional about it, cause we are being bombarded in a million different directions. Us just being under this artificial light right now while we record a podcast, we know that that spikes cortisol just a little bit. Just doing that is going to put you in that state.

If you are not taking those daily actions intentionally to put yourself in rest and digest that’s going to be kind of an issue, especially if you’re more of Type A people. Like, I don’t know. Cause you’ve worked on yourself a lot, but you strike me as someone like myself who at the core we’re very Type A. I think that’s correct. Right?

[00:26:56] Raewyn Guerrero: Absolutely. And that’s why we end up burning out and ending up with gut issues and all those things because we don’t know when to stop. We want to achieve things and we want to be perceived as being high achievers.

A Relationship: Childhood Trauma

I work with a lot of people who are exactly that way because they don’t want to be seen as being failures. They want to be seen as being, like, I can handle anything. We’re super women, we can do whatever.

You know, men too. I’ve worked with a couple of men who are big high earners in their firms and that kind of thing. But they would show up with like OCD and anxiety and panic and all this internal stuff. A lot of it linked to early childhood trauma as well, which we don’t often talk about as practitioners.

I remember working with this lady, I’ll tell you this quick story. I have a lot of stories cause, like I said, 350 people, you end up with a lot of stories. But her story was wild. She came to me because she told me she was struggling with constipation; she was in her sixties. Looked incredible, she looked like she was in her thirties. She looked amazing. Worked out a lot, very fit, very trim. She’s on her third marriage and she was blaming her third husband for the constipation, which cracked me up.

Again, I’m doing my intake, asking questions, getting a feel for this. I said, so you’re saying that your constipation began when you got married. And she’s like, oh, no, no, no. I’ve had it like since I was 13. I’m like, okay, hang on. You are blaming your husband, but you are saying that this has been going on since you were thirteen. She’s like, well, he’s stressing me out. I’m like, well, you clearly have been stressed out from before.

A Relationship: Shifting Priorities

So, I said, tell me what happened when you were 13. She got really somber and silent and said, I was raped by my cousin when I was 13. I was like, okay, have you ever talked to anybody about this? Nope, never. And I’m like, okay. Wow!

Now, I am a hypnotherapist. We were able to do some really deep, intense work, getting her to release a lot of that. Her stomach, she said, while we were doing it, we were writing out a letter to the cousin, like what she would say to him. I don’t think she ever sent it, but she did actually meet him later on at a family reunion, and she said her stomach literally flipped.

But while we were writing the letter, she said, stuff’s starting to move. Like, I can feel like a physical change starting to happen. I was blown away by that because, again, we store so much of our trauma right there in the center.

You think about it, when someone’s going to punch you, you kind of guard yourself, right? You tighten up your gut and all those things. Now when you tighten that up, everybody knows what happens. The blood is not focused on digesting. You’re not digesting when you are in fight or flight. Your body’s priorities shift to your extremities, to other things. They’re not focused on breaking down food or assimilating.

So, what we were saying just now about the body cannot tell the difference between your boss yelling at you, your girlfriend yelling at you, your broken leg or your screwed up jaw or having been raped when you were 13 years old, 40, 50 years earlier. It doesn’t know.

A Relationship: Stress’s Effect on Hormones

It gets stuck in that mode of trying to defend itself and it doesn’t know when to shut itself off. You have to consciously, intentionally be like, I am going to work on this. I am going to set aside 20 minutes for breath work or for gratitude, or for whatever those things are, and that’s going to help my cortisol come down or come back into where it’s supposed to be. Then it won’t be depleting all of my progesterone and estrogen or testosterone.

I can tell you from experience, like I’ve been living in multiple countries for the last three, four years because of the whole Covid thing and because of the fact that my husband was in a different country to me. We had a long journey to being able to live together.

When we ran my labs, my SHP, I kind of knew it was not going to be great, but I’m like, oh my God, I’m flatlining. I’m one of those people who is flatlining, even though I knew to take magnesium because I have genetic SNPs for slow methylation, slow estrogen metabolism, all those things. I’ve done my genes as well, and I know my COMP genes I need help with. I need a lot of magnesium because that can increase anxiety, et cetera.

So, I was taking all the things, I was doing the magnesium. But the fact that I was moving every two or three months, like this is a lifestyle, just a stress, right? Packing up your stuff every three months, separating from the person that you want to be with every three months, like that’s a big deal.

A Relationship: Hormone Production, Food Digestion, Blood Sugar Regulation and Food Choices

By the time it was all over and I was in one place and could run all these labs, I’m like, oh boy, look at my sex hormones. They don’t exist. I mean, I am in my mid-forties, so that has probably something to do with it. But I genuinely believe, and knowing everything that we’ve learned about the body, that stress has a direct impact on hormone production. People who say, oh, well, it’s just stress. I’m like, it’s not just stress, that’s a big deal. We need to neutralize that stress.

At the time, I was selling my old house, moving, and same thing, I kinda like powered through that. That’s what we do, these Type A’s. We’re like, all right, I have to get all this furniture out of here by this date, so I know that I’m not going to be sleeping for like the next four or five days. Those things have an impact on things like your hormone production, and the way that you’re digesting food, and your blood sugar regulation, all those things, and the food choices that you’re going to make as a result of that.

Because when your blood sugar’s out of whack because you’re not getting the right kind of rest or sleep, or you’re under a lot of pressure, your body is craving quick release energy. It’s like, bring me the gluten-free donuts. At least they’re gluten free. But I’m like, they’re still terrible.

In England, by the way, there are all these kick butt apps that you can hit a button and they’ll deliver stuff to your door, like whatever it is. It’s like Vietnamese food, Thai food, sourdough, gluten-free donuts, they will deliver it all to your door.

A Relationship: You Gotta Do it All

I’m like, well, I’m not cooking cause I’ve just gotten rid of all of my cooking utensils. I’ve gotten rid of everything. I can’t make any food in my kitchen anymore cause I’m selling it all and getting rid of it all. What can I order today? You know, guilty, I am human. I am like, I definitely want the beautiful Vietnamese food. But I want a dessert to go along with it because I haven’t eaten all day and my blood sugar is tanking. I need something to kind of bring me up. Obviously, this is not the way that we want people living.

I saw it in my own labs. And I’m like, dang, I have to practice more what I preach, especially when I’m going through like super stressful situations. You know, I was practicing my meditation and stuff, but it’s not enough. You’ve gotta do it all. You have to make sure you’re eating right, you’re chewing, you’re sleeping, all the things.

The meditation was keeping me going. I’ll be honest. I think even if I wasn’t sleeping a lot, I was able to kind of do my 20 minutes and that would sort of like keep me alive, you know what I mean?

[00:33:21] Detective Ev: Yeah. There’s this thing too with, I think, especially all of us as practitioners, a lot of us listening are future or current practitioners. The one thing is we’ve been so darn sick in our lives, a lot of us. And I’m not comparing it to certain people, I mean, certain people have dealt with terminal cancer. I’m not saying that that’s the general person who comes on here, but we’ve been sick, man. We’ve dealt with a lot. There’s quite a bit built up there.

A Relationship: Looking for Health Clues & Validation

I think two things happen when we start moving that needle, even a little bit, maybe let’s say 30%. One, we feel so good comparatively, that you think like you’re completely fixed. And number two is you have this beautiful thing, you have this passion now.

So, for the Type A, this is like the ultimate excuse to go out and just be buffing out 12 hours a day because I have this passion, I have this energy. It’s not like I even hate the work. I literally love the work now and I wanted to work anyway, so this is a great excuse.

I actually really just appreciate your transparency in the labs, especially when you weren’t even asked. You were kind of flatlined with, I’m guessing the cortisol is what you meant at the time.

[00:34:18] Raewyn Guerrero: The cortisol and the testosterone, all the sex hormone hormones. Yeah. I was in what we call the exhaustive phase, you know?

[00:34:25] Detective Ev: Wow! But I doubt that this is unique for many practitioners, so I appreciate you being the one to share it.

We shouldn’t have this, but I imagine sometimes we get our pride involved. We’re like, oh, I’ve been doing this for five years, I should be better. It’s like, dude, that’s not what this is about. You use the labs not only to find clues, but a lot of the times it’s validating. Or two, it can be very insightful and could kind of shine a light on something that you might have thought that you felt pretty decent in a certain sense.

A Relationship: Impactful Health Detective Work

[00:34:46] Raewyn Guerrero: I probably did. I think that’s why I was running them because, I’m going to bring up the “V” word. I had been vaccinated in order to enter the United States, and a lot of issues showed up for me almost within a month of that. A ton of issues happened.

[00:35:00] Detective Ev: Wow! I did not know you ended up having to do that.

[00:35:02] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah. That was not cool. It’s not something that I believe in. You kind of have to do it in order to become a permanent resident. It was a big deal and it really kind of knocked the wind out of my sails in a big way. Hormones kind of got messy. Some mast cell activation stuff kick kicked in.

This is why what we do is so important. When I realized like, okay, I don’t feel like myself anymore. I don’t have the energy to just bounce out of bed the way that I used to anymore something is up. It went straight to like, let’s look at what the labs are saying.

I was having really weird periods as well. So, for people who are into hormones, I’m like, something is totally up because this is not a normal period for me anymore. Something’s wrong. I started going down the route of, well, I have to test, I have to figure out what it is. Because I know if I go to a regular doctor, they’re not going to be able to tell me anything.

I may have been feeling really tired. I was pretty tired, like really, really tired.

A Relationship: Knocking the Scales Out of Balance

You know, you kind of chalk it up to like, well, maybe it’s just because I moved country. I also lost my mom last year. I think there were a bunch of things that all happened in like quick succession.

It was like, lost my mom, moved country two or three times. I moved to Mexico, moved back to San Diego, moved to England, and sold house in England. It was like every two or three months I had something big happening. So, by the time November rolled around, I was getting sick a lot too. I had like a couple of colds and flus.

Like, okay, time to run our labs and find out what’s going on. Sure enough, the labs showed. And like I said, the vaccinations was my tipping point. That pushed me over the edge. Cause up until that point, I’d been managing, my body was compensating. But by the time the vaccines got into the picture, I had like three, which was horrible, pretty gnarly, once that happened, it just kind of knocked the scales out of balance even more.

Obviously, I was managing with food and all those other things, but by the time that happened, it just got a little bit stressful, so difficult. Sometimes that’s what our clients experience. They’re like, well, everything was fine until this one thing. And I’m like, was it really fine? Because now that I look back, I was like, was I actually fine? Because I was juggling a lot. There were a lot of plates in the air, right?

But I had this one tipping point that was like, my body just couldn’t deal with it. It kind of screwed things up a lot.

A Relationship: Covid & the Vaccine

[00:37:04] Detective Ev: Well, it’s fascinating and legitimately speaking, it’s probably my favorite part about you. You have no restrictions at all with topics and you know, that’s me at my core. I gotta be a little more correct cause I’m doing the podcast and stuff, but I’ll talk about anything with anyone, religion, politics, and we’re respectful about it. That’s what’s nice. You’ll sit down and listen to someone. There’s nothing wrong with it if you’ll do that, I think. But that’s a whole separate podcast in and of itself.

My whole point is, I actually appreciate you bringing this up, it’s not something I typically talk about on here. But I have seen this and in fairness, I’ve seen it with Covid itself too. This is what people need to think about because there are plenty of people who got Covid. I got covid, I was sick like 24 hours and totally fine afterwards. No, I did not get the vaccine, you know that. And then I have other people who got the vaccine, and they were totally fine afterwards.

I have both groups though, where I know people who were totally against the vaccine, got Covid, sick as a dog, still dealing with complications afterwards. And then the same thing with the vaccine. So, it’s not that I’m advocating for getting one versus the other, not that you have really a choice with the one. But I’m just saying that I do believe it was a powerful thing.

A Relationship: A Plethora of Crazy Symptoms

If we’re just talking about the virus, it’s powerful. If we’re just talking about the vaccine, it’s powerful. And so many people are walking around, never getting into rest and digest as we talked about earlier. They have a million chronic stressors. And if most of those chronic stressors that we’re dealing with are like, let’s say, little half percenters or one percenters, you get Covid, a powerful virus, or you get the vaccine, BAM. You just got hit with like a 5%, 10% or possibly even more. Well, you’re going to notice a 5%, 10% or a lot more than you’re going to notice a little half percent change. I think that’s what happened to so many people.

So, I appreciate your transparency with this because I assume anyone that listens to this podcast, no matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, you’re very open to the idea that this could cause these issues. But I don’t think this had enough media attention in the way that it should because I know other people that, yeah, man, this screwed up a lot of stuff, especially for women. I saw that a lot with women.

[00:38:54] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah. You know what was interesting was when I called, cause I wanted to see a functional gynecologist. I’m like, look, my periods are weird. The first thing they ask, they go, well, what’s your main complaint? They’re on the phone. They’re like, what are you dealing with? I have no idea what’s going on in my periods. They’re like, oh, you’re not the only one. Like, pretty much everybody calling us is having like the craziest symptoms, like crazy.

A Relationship: More Complications & More Clients

You know, I hadn’t had crazy period symptoms for a really, really long time. Like once I had kind of gone Paleo in 2011, come off of gluten and sugar and all those things, I had like almost invisible periods. So, like this whole, I don’t want to be graphic, but just sort of this heavy bleeding, I was like, what is this? This is not normal. That was really freaky.

So, for me, it was like I was experiencing some pretty gnarly symptoms that were disturbing. And knowing that I’d taken such good care of myself, mostly, like more than other people, I’m like, I’m not going to McDonald’s, I’m not drinking, I’m not eating fast food. 

I’d eat the Thai food that came on delivery, but again, that would be like mostly like broth and vegetables. It was just quick. It’ll show up and I’ll eat it. But it’s still like I’m eating vegetables and chicken or beef or whatever, and it’s all real food. Do you know what I’m saying? Like the difference between ultra processed fast food as opposed to you can still get healthy fast food, you know?

As practitioners, more and more people are going to come into our practices with complications from what’s happened over the last three years.

[00:40:18] Detective Ev: Yeah, and thankfully we’re prepared in so much as we are used to dealing with complicated people. We’re used to not giving up and just saying, oh yeah, sorry we couldn’t help you after our little three month program. It must be you. We know what we’re doing, so it must be you. We don’t dismiss people like that ever.

A Relationship: A Camping Experiment

I’m just really thankful that I was already in communities like this and a part of FDN prior to this happening because I was, admittedly, a little nervous throughout. Maybe I shouldn’t have been, but I was. I never felt like actually fearful though. It was like a minor nerve that went away the second I turned on my Facebook and went and saw all my AFDNP members and all my colleagues who are just like posting about stuff, looking at different protocols, trying to defend ourselves in any way possible.

I don’t know if we were on Facebook with each other back then. Actually, we hadn’t met in person at that time.

Raewyn Guerrero: No.

Detective Ev: So, I used Covid as an experiment cause you know how much I love the light side of things. I love studying sunrise, all the effects that light has. Well, I figured, when am I going to get to do this again as an adult? So, I camped for two months straight in the beginning of the pandemic, like all of June and all of July 2020. I literally slept outside like 53 nights out of the 60 cause there were thunderstorms.

What was nuts, Raewyn, is outside of the Covid stuff, I was the tannest I’ve ever been, I looked awesome. I was only sleeping like six hours per night, but I felt great. It’s because sunset here was like 10 PM and then it would rise at like 4:30 AM. The light would start coming up. So, naturally I just would wake up.

Raewyn Guerrero: Wake up with the light, yeah.

A Relationship: Wanting to Know What’s Real

Detective Ev: I’m recovering from the gym. What I would normally only be able to do three times a week, I could do six times a week and my body was just recovered and ready to go the next day. And I’m thinking about this like, this was 60 stupid days. This is what we were supposed to do for the entirety of our life.

[00:41:51] Raewyn Guerrero: Right? I love that you’re talking about this, cause you probably know about Jack Cruise, right? Like, are you a big Jack Cruise fan?

[00:41:56] Detective Ev: Oh, I got into him probably seven, eight years ago. Yeah. That’s when I learned about this.

[00:41:59] Raewyn Guerrero: Well, exactly, because he’s sort of like this leading authority. So, everybody was listening. If you don’t know about Jack Cruise, go follow him on YouTube. Follow him on Instagram. He’s very outspoken, very contrary. You know, he pisses off a lot of people, but he’s so awesome because all he does is share facts.

 And this is what I like. You know, you said, oh, what side of the political? This is not about politics to me. This is just about what’s true and what isn’t. Right? So, I like to err on the side of like, I’m going to stick with truth. Like, I want to know what’s real.

I don’t want propaganda. Yes, I said it. I don’t want the media spin on something. I want to know what’s real. And what I do know is real is that we have an innate intelligence that was designed specifically so that we can deal with the world and anything that gets thrown at us.

A Relationship: Mold is Everywhere

You know, we keep talking, like Mindy Peltz last week. She said, when your finger gets cut, what does it immediately start to do? You don’t bleed to death. It starts knitting together and it starts healing. Your body is designed to heal. So, no matter what gets thrown at it, that’s what its job is, your cells.

And they don’t need to be told. Although sometimes they might, because we’ve been telling ourselves, oh, you can’t heal, you need a prescription, you need a doctor, you need a da, da da, da, da. You know, maybe you need to just start telling it like you’re perfectly capable of healing.

Now, that’s not to say ignore if you have, you know, you can get vitamin D from the light or whatever. But spending time outside, I think that is probably the number one healer.

And we were going to talk about mold, so I’m going to land the plane with this. Okay?

[00:43:30] Detective Ev: Thank you. Cause I was like, yeah, we’re not getting that today.

[00:43:31] Raewyn Guerrero: No, I’m going to land the plane with the mold right here.

So, for everyone who is dealing with mold, myself included, because that was one of the things that showed up in my labs. It’s in the house and we’re working on that and fixing it and all that stuff. Because that’s another thing. It might have been here forever, but I couldn’t deal with it. Everyone’s so fixated on remediating, remediating. Well, what about your own body? Right? What about your body is not able to deal with it? Cause mold exists everywhere.

A Relationship: How Was Your House Built?

The thing that’s happened in the last three years is that everybody has spent time inside. Everyone has been glued to their computers under their artificial crappy light. They are not interacting with other humans because they’ve been afraid of them or told to be afraid of them.

Then we have this whole 5G thing that’s coming about where that’s amplifying and stressing out things like mold and they’re starting to proliferate more. So, the more time that you spend inside, the more you’re going to be exposed to stuff that’s growing in your house.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed how houses in America are built. Our neighbors’ house is being built so I’ve been watching the entire process. It’s been going on for a while. Now, the whole of winter, it has been raining here, and his house is all made of wood. The whole thing is made of wood and has been soaked to the core.

Now they’re starting to wrap it and all of that wood is black. I’m like, he’s building mold into his house. That’s a brand-new house. Because it has rained for four months straight, that wood’s been wet. People are like, oh, I’m moving into a new house. I’m like, do you know how it was built?

[00:44:53] Detective Ev: Yeah. Define new anyway, right?

[00:44:55] Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah. Do you know like how it was built? Was it built in winter? Was it built in summer? Were there a lot of thunderstorms? So, mold in your home, in your environment, like having a proliferation of it, obviously, not good. You don’t want to be living in a moldy house.

A Relationship: Strengthen the Body’s Resiliency

But the thing is, mold exists in nature; it’s there to break things down. Right? That’s the whole point of it. Now we have to be able to be resilient enough within our own bodies to be able to withstand it. Obviously, minimizing things like 5G exposure, turning off your Wi-Fi router at night because the EMFs are a big contributor to what’s going on and the fact that we aren’t getting any light.

My big turning point actually came when we went to Mexico for a month. A lot of my symptoms resolved just from being able to be outside for an hour to two hours a day, being in the sun for two hours a day. Sunlight is probably the number one thing you can do to reduce your symptoms of mold or to get your body into a place where it’s actually doing its job. It’s regenerative.

We’re like plants, we keep saying that. We’re like plants just with more complicated emotions. We need light and not artificial light, not blue light from our phones. We need to be outside, waking up, going outside, walking outside, exercising outside. You know, you were saying you did that for 60 days, but that’s how people lived before industrialization and before the way the world is now.

I remember growing up as a kid, we spent lots of time outside. You played with your cousins; you rode your bike. Now children are like, you know, with carpal tunnel syndrome from playing on their devices all the time and the blue light exposure and all the things that are really making us sicker as a society.

A Relationship: Playtime Before Video Games Existed

We’re becoming sicker, quicker. It’s because of things like EMFs, because of things like not getting the right amount of light. It’s not just about the food anymore, it isn’t. Honestly, it’s about the way that we’re living. We’re living ourselves into disease.

[00:46:48] Detective Ev: Yeah, absolutely.

I’m not surprised, but it is interesting that you found some relief by going to Mexico. The USA, listen, I’m never the person to talk about on the USA. I’m very grateful to be here. Also, there is the nationalism thing that is taken a little too far where we think we’re so superior to a place like Mexico. Yet, if you go down there, you might actually feel better because sometimes our supposed progression is actually our regression in terms of our health and just being human.

You know, we have these kids that probably, I mean, at least artificially, they have way more dopamine than before, but they feel less satisfied and less happy. Cause they’re getting dopamine from the wrong place and these surges.

Raewyn Guerrero: They’re miserable. They’re all depressed.

Detective Ev: Not that it was ideal, but I’m so thankful that at least I got to grow up in the generation where, we did play video games all night, but we did that after hanging out from 11:00 AM until 10:00 PM when our parents made us go in. We were biking to the store and we’re Ding-Dong Ditching and doing stupid crap. I think they call it Knock, Knock Run in Europe or something like that. You know, we got to do these things and it was cool. Man, I can’t even imagine being before where you actually just did outside and then there is no video games.

A Relationship: What Humans Need

[00:47:47] Raewyn Guerrero: You go camping. You pitch a tent; you learn how to pitch a tent.

You probably played baseball. We played cricket. So, you play cricket, you know, you play outside, you play in the sun, you run around, you get your metabolism going, you get your blood pumping, you sweat. You do the things that humans need. We need to sweat; we need to eat.

Again, you used to sit down with your family and nobody’s like glued to their phone while they’re eating cause that didn’t exist. They were sitting down, you’d talk about your day, about things, you know. And not everybody had happy childhoods either. I’m just saying, in the ideal world, we would have this sense of community, of connection to ourselves, to our families, and to nature, to light and to the earth, and to clean air and being outside in it, fresh, clean air.

That’s not happening so much anymore because we made cities, like, we made people think, oh, moving to a city is a sign of like, progress. But is it? I lived in a city for 22 years and I can tell you right now, you just used that expression, like the thing that we think that we’re being progressive, but actually, it’s our demise. It’s leading to our demise.

And the whole AI thing actually completely freaks me out right now too, because everyone’s like, oh, AI, AI. And I’m like, I’m not so sure this is a good thing. Didn’t everybody see The Matrix? Didn’t you see what happened there? The machines took over because they think they’re smarter than us, you know?

A Relationship: What’s Real Progress?

Someone I know, like a really good friend of mine, he said, I just had a conversation with artificial intelligence. I’m like, why? Why would you do that? And he’s like, because I wanted to see if I could and if it could emote, and it can. I’m like, that’s terrible and terrifying.

So, there’s a really great line, I think Jeff Goldblum said it in Jurassic Park. He’s like, we’re so fixated on trying to figure out if we could, we haven’t decided if we should, we haven’t thought about it. So, we’re like, can we get this far as a human race? Can we go here, do this, create this? Do we need it? Is it actually helping us? Is it actually good for us? Should we?

You know, those are the kinds of questions when you talk about being intentional, so much of progress is just progress for the sake of progress. Not necessarily do we actually need these things, or maybe we need to come back to some basics because people are sick. They’re sick and they’re dependent on medications and they are lonely. Which is another huge thing that came out during Covid, how lonely people were. That’s not helping anyone live longer, happier, healthier.

All these things that we get thrown at us, that were supposed to fulfill us and supposed to make us happy, climb the corporate ladder, get the promotion, get married, have 2.5 children and the white picket fence, and all the things that we’re told are going to make us happy, then we get there and we’re empty. We’ve disconnected completely.

A Relationship: Catching People Before They Fall in the River

That whole process of being intentional I find so powerful. And I feel like when we become ill, that’s when we wake up to it. I wish we didn’t have to.

Reed and I always say this, I said, I wish I didn’t have to keep pulling people out of the river. I want to catch them before they fall in. Because it would be so much more powerful, the kind of lives that they could live if they were not spending six to 12 months recovering. Right?

If they were actually able to kind of tap into who they really are and what they’re meant to be doing and being aligned with that and that vision of who they’re supposed to be, rather than, oh, I’ve gotta fight all my symptoms right now, I gotta figure this out. You know that takes time and energy and you don’t have a ton of energy and time.

If you want to be focused on who you’re meant to be and your purpose and all that, if you don’t have the energy to do that because you’re sick and you’re worried about the future and about your body, you don’t have the bandwidth to start focusing on what you’re meant to be doing on this earth.

[00:51:17] Detective Ev: Absolutely.

Raewyn, we are shockingly, and I mean that sarcastically, over our 50 minutes. This is the only downside of having rapport with the people before they come on. We’re just getting started. You give us like a couple more hours, we’ll go. We have like five different subtopics here that we could have done.

Where to Find Raewyn Guerrero

I’m really glad that we got to do this podcast today with video and stuff. I think your personality was very easily portrayed here. The people that resonate with you are going to know, okay, that’s like my person. This is who I want to work with. So, who do you typically serve now and then where can people find you if they’re that person?

[00:51:49] Raewyn Guerrero: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share that. I would love to be able to gift people something. Can I do that?

Detective Ev: Okay. Yeah, sure.

Raewyn Guerrero: Yeah? So, you can download, I have like a whole roadmap on how it would be like if you were going to work with someone who was like me. So, you don’t have to work with me, but you can. You can see like, oh, from start to finish, this is how you’re going to be carried and nurtured in this wonderful container – the labs that I use, the frequency and cadence of our meetings, those kinds of things, the supplements, all those sorts of things. So, if you want that, you can download it and you just have to go to my website gutsyexecutivecoach.com/download-pathway.

It’s the CEO pathway, cause I do work with women who are in business and who are Type A’s kind of like myself. That’s pretty much who I’ve attracted and who I want to continue to help because they have so much drive and they want to do good in the world. They want to elevate the people around them.

Conclusion

But if they don’t have the energy to do so because they’re feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, fatigued, tired, stuck, anxious, fearful, which is generally the kind of demographic of the people that I work with, they’re struggling with things like their hormones, and they don’t know why they’re not getting answers from their doctors or their therapists, come my way.

And if you want to be proactive and you don’t have to end up in a doctor’s office, come my way too. That is really where I do want to really focus a lot of my work now on – getting them before they fall into the river, like getting them on the riverbanks.

[00:53:10] Detective Ev: Excellent.

I love that river analogy. I might actually steal that myself cause it’s so freaking true. And we’re just like wired as humans that we need to fall in first sometimes before we realize it. But I think with podcasts like this, and there’s many other great ones out there, I think we can raise that awareness so that eventually, yeah, we’re getting the people before they go in. Or maybe they only have a foot in and they’re not, you know, halfway out there.

Raewyn Guerrero: Or drowning. Yeah, nobody’s drowning. No drowning and no life rafts needed. We can teach you how to swim.

[00:53:35] Detective Ev: Yeah.

Raewyn, two years later, thank you so much for coming on and sharing this with us today.

[00:53:40] Raewyn Guerrero: Thank you so much, Evan.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

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/.

Longstanding nutrition advice tells us that we should stick to the perimeter of grocery stores (where the fresh food is) and avoid everything in the center aisles. Generally speaking, this is solid advice – but there are a number of healthy packaged foods throughout the grocery aisles we can use to supplement our home cooking.

Our culinary nutrition graduates around the world focus on teaching their communities how to cook simple meals, condiments and staples from scratch, along with tips and tricks like batch cooking or kitchen hacks to help you prepare meals quicker.

Sometimes, though, it can be extra challenging to make meals and work or school lunches without a little extra help, which is where carefully curating healthy packaged foods comes into play.

There are a number of reasons why someone might choose foods in packages, including:

Let’s talk about healthy packaged foods, what to look for and what to avoid in the supermarket aisles.

Healthy Packaged Foods: Label Sleuthing Tips

Highly processed foods that don’t support our wellbeing far outweigh the options for healthy packaged foods. To ensure you’re selecting a product that is health-supportive and meets your nutrition goals, the first step is to start reading food labels.

While conventional nutritionists tend to emphasize calories or grams of fat, culinary nutrition wisdom is about looking at the ingredient lists on products to determine what is actually in the food we’re eating and if those ingredients are beneficial to our health and wellness. Skip the nutrition facts panel and look at the ingredients instead.

Some things to avoid when buying pre-packaged foods include:

• Bisphenol A (BPA). If purchasing canned goods or foods in plastic, look for cans and packaging that are BPA-free because BPA is a known endocrine disruptor. If a package doesn’t specifically state it’s BPA-free, it’s probably not.
• Artificial Food Dyes. Processing and packaging can suck the colour out of foods, and manufacturers add dyes to bring them back to life. These harmful additives are linked to cancer, hyperactivity, allergies and more.
• Preservatives. There are many additives that preserve food and we tend to avoid sulphites, nitrites, sodium benzoate, BHA and BHT.
• Canola And/Or Sunflower Oil. This is a common ingredient you’ll see on labels as canola oil is cheap, but it is also genetically modified and highly processed to the point where it is rancid. More on how to choose healthy cooking oils here.
• Trans Fats/Hydrogenated Oils. Our bodies can’t actually recognize the chemical structure of trans fats, and this can lead to things like high cholesterol, heart disease and cancer. Look for ‘hydrogenated’ or ‘partially hydrogenated’ oils in ingredient lists to detect trans fats.
• Refined Sugars. Sugars are habit-forming and can influence diabetes, mood disruption, hormone imbalances, cancer, cavities and cardiovascular disease. Sugar can present itself in many names, including sucrose, glucose, fructose, corn syrup, maltodextrin and more – get a list of other names for sugar here.
• Artificial Sweeteners. Promoted as a way to lose weight and balance blood sugar levels, artificial sweeteners have compromised our health, leading to weight gain, increasing our cancer risk, disrupting gut health, and damaging the liver, just to name a few. Skip aspartame, sucralose, sugar alcohols (xylitol, mannitol, sorbitol, etc.) and Acesulfame K. Learn more about alternative sweeteners here.
• Added Sugars. Sometimes sugar appears in places you wouldn’t expect, like tomato sauce, crackers, salad dressing or bread. Check labels for added sugars.
• Natural Flavours. “Natural flavours” is a broad term and they may be safe, or not. If you see natural flavours on a label, get in touch with the company to determine what they actually are.
• MSG. This flavour enhancer is found in many processed foods and may cause neurotoxicity, headaches, obesity, liver damage, allergic reactions and reproductive issues.
• Gluten and Dairy. As the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program is gluten-free and dairy-free, we avoid products that contain gluten and dairy.

When purchasing healthy packaged foods, look for:

• Simple ingredient lists. A short ingredient list doesn’t always mean a product is healthy, but generally limited ingredients means that you’ll be consuming fewer of the ingredients mentioned above.
• Whole ingredients. Look for whole, unprocessed ingredients. For example, look for whole, crushed, dried or chopped fruits and vegetables in packaged foods versus their powders, which have undergone far more processing and stripping of their nutrients.
• BPA-Free. Look for this label on canned or plastic goods. Glass jars are also a good option to avoid BPA.
• Non-GMO. Purchase packaged foods that aren’t made with genetically modified ingredients.
• Organic. This ensures there will be no synthetic pesticides, GMOs and fewer heavy metals, plus organic farming is better for animals and the environment. Note: organic doesn’t always equal healthy – organic cookies are still cookies!
• Wild. If purchasing canned fish, aim for wild options rather than farmed.
• Grass-fed. If purchasing animal products, we look for organic and grass-fed options.
• Low to moderate sodium. Salt is a very effective preservative, yet many packaged foods contain loads of white table salt, which is detrimental to our health. Look for healthy packaged foods that are low in sodium – you can always add better types of salt when you cook and serve your food.

Labels can definitely be confusing – more advice on how to avoid being fooled by the label here. You can find specific recommendations on what to look for in healthy packaged foods below!

Best Healthy Packaged Foods

Canned Fish

Sardines, salmon, anchovies and herring are some of our favourite anti-inflammatory, omega 3-rich fish. If you’re eating healthy on a budget, sardines are inexpensive and are fantastic in salads, on gluten-free toast or with roasted veggies. Find more canned fish recipes here.

What to Look For: Fish packed in water or olive oil and sea salt.

What to Avoid: Due to mercury concerns, we only have canned tuna as a very occasional treat.

Frozen Berries

Berries are flash frozen at the peak of freshness when they are picked and are rich in fibre, antioxidants, and immune-supportive Vitamin C.

What to Avoid: Most frozen berries or berry mixes should only contain berries – there really shouldn’t be any preservatives.

Plain Frozen Vegetables

Similar to fruits, frozen vegetables are frozen when they are fresh and are wonderful tossed into soups, dinner bowls and even smoothies.

What to Avoid: Veggies that have been pre-roasted and then frozen (they don’t taste great).

Nuts and Seeds

Whether buying in bulk or in small packages, nuts and seeds are wonderful plant-based sources of protein and are rich in nutritious fats, vitamins and fibre.

What to Look For: Raw, organic or unsalted.

Gluten-Free Grains

Plain gluten-free grains such as rice, wild rice, quinoa, millet, sorghum, teff and amaranth are perfect for side dishes, burritos, in stir-fries or other one-pot meals, or to bulk up veggie burgers. Learn how to optimally cook them (no more mushy grains!).

What to Look For: Single ingredient grains.

What to Avoid: Packaged rice with seasoning packets, as these often contain natural flavours, excess sodium, unhealthy oils, and MSG.

Oats

A morning staple, oats can be used to make both sweet and savory oatmeal, baked oatmeal, granola and gluten-free baked goodies. Plus you can use them to make oat milk.

What to Look For: Whole oats, either steel cut, quick cooking or rolled.

What to Avoid: Most instant oatmeal packets, though some are better than others. Watch out for natural flavours, colours and preservatives. If you are gluten-intolerant or are celiac, purchase certified gluten-free oats.

Gluten-Free Pasta

Gluten-free pasta is an excellent pantry staple – when cooking with it, we like to use less pasta and load it up with nutrient-dense veggies.

What to Look For: There are many varieties and shapes of gluten-free pasta, including those made with rice, quinoa, corn, chickpeas, black beans, lentils and more. Any of these are good options depending on your preference. Most pastas should be made from a grain/bean and water.

What to Avoid: Mono and diglycerides, which contain trans fats.

Dried Fruit

Rich in fibre and great for digestion, dried fruits add oomph and flavour to baked goods, smoothie bowls, or can be used as a natural sweetener.

What to Look For: Single ingredient dried fruit, or dried fruit sweetened with applesauce.

What to Avoid: Sulphites, flour, canola and/or sunflower oil (the former prevents discolouration, the latter prevents the fruit from sticking together), and added sugars.

Beans – Canned and Dried

Beans and legumes are a wonderful way to add more fibre, vitamins and protein to your diet and they can be added to a wide range of dishes.

What to Avoid: Refried or baked beans that contain added unhealthy cooking oils, preservatives and refined sugars.

Tomatoes and Tomato Paste

Tomatoes are a good source of cancer-preventative lycopene and are a versatile kitchen ingredient, great in pasta sauce, on pizza, in salsa and other condiments, soups, or stews. Tomato paste adds a rich flavour and thickens up the texture of your dishes.

If you always end up wasting tomato paste, try this culinary hack to save it!

What to Look For: Tomatoes or tomato paste in BPA-free cans or glass jars.

What to Avoid: Canned tomatoes with extra seasonings such as yeast extract (MSG) or natural flavours.

Dark Chocolate

When made with quality ingredients, chocolate can be a nutritious addition to your diet. It’s one of our favourite healthy pre-packaged foods!

What to Look For: Optimally, organic and fair-trade chocolate. If that isn’t available, aim for the darkest chocolate you can find – the darker it is, the less sugar it will have.

What to Avoid: Milk chocolate, dark chocolate with milk ingredients, artificial flavours, soy lecithin, artificial colours/food dyes.

Trail Mix

Often a combination of nuts, seeds, dried fruit and chocolate, trail mixes make a great snack when you’re on the go.

What to Look For: Plain trail mixes with fruit and nuts/seeds – raw nuts/seeds if you can, organic, unsalted.

What to Avoid: Canola oil, soybean oil, sulphites, hydrogenated oils, milk ingredients or modified ingredients, sugar, icing sugar, corn syrup, or other refined sugars, natural flavours, artificial colours, shellac. If you have a peanut allergy, watch for peanuts.

Nut/Seed Butters

Aside from being supremely tasty, nut and seed butters are high in protein, essential fats, antioxidants and fibre. If you’d like to learn more about them and dip your toes into making your own, grab our guide to making and flavouring nut and seed butters at home.

What to Look For: Plain nut and seed butters with only the nut/seed, salted or unsalted.

What to Avoid: Hydrogenated oils, canola oil, palm oil, added sugars.

Gluten-Free Flours

Perfect for gluten-free baking, bread, crackers, breakfast foods, thickening soups and stews, or dredging fish or other animal products, we love having a variety of gluten-free flours in the pantry. Get our Gluten-Free Flour Guide and Substitution Reference here.

What to Look For: Single ingredient, certified gluten-free flours to ensure there hasn’t been any cross-contamination. We really like Bob’s Red Mill, which is widely available in North America.

What to Avoid: Gluten-free flour mixes that contain a ton of starches like corn starch, tapioca starch, potato starch and white rice flour. These flours are better when used in small amounts, but are often predominant in many flour mixes. If you have digestive issues, you may want to avoid mixes with xanthan gum.

Dried Herbs/Spices

Dried herbs and spices are wonderful in a pinch when fresh isn’t available, or if you find yourself buying fresh herbs and not using them before they spoil.

What to Look For: Organic, non-irradiated spices, either ground or whole. We like to purchase many spices whole and grind them ourselves to maintain their freshness and volatile oils.

What to Avoid: We prefer buying spices in jars or small cardboard boxes rather than plastic, and store them in a cool dark place.

Applesauce

Great as a snack or used as an egg substitute in baking, applesauce is a healthy packaged food that is rich in a variety of vitamins, minerals and fibre.

What to Look For: Organic applesauce, as apples are high up on the dirty dozen list, in jars if you can find them. You can buy plain applesauce or ones mixed with other fruits.

What to Avoid: Applesauce with added sugars, refined sugars, natural or artificial flavours.

Coconut Milk and Shredded Coconut

Coconut is anti-microbial and anti-bacterial, plus it contains medium-chain fats that balance blood sugar, fuel the nervous system and is easy for us to digest and use. Creamy coconut can swing both sweet and savory!

What to Look For: Coconut milk in BPA-free cans or cartons, unsweetened shredded coconut.

What to Avoid: Sulphites, preservatives, refined sugar or added sugars, guar gum or xanthan gum if you are sensitive to them (they can cause digestive upset in some people).

Salsa

Whether you opt for mild, medium or super spicy, salsa is a wonderful condiment for chips, veggies, or burrito bowls.

What to Look For: Salsa in jars rather than cans (the acidity of tomatoes eats away at the lining of cans or plastic), organic salsa.

What to Avoid: Natural flavour, added sugars, artificial colours/food dyes.

Sauerkraut and Pickled Vegetables

There is a difference between sauerkraut and pickles that have been fermented with a salt and water brine, and pickled foods that use a heated vinegar brine to create the sour flavour. We much prefer the former, for both the taste and the health benefits.

What to Look For: Look in the refrigerator case for true fermented vegetables that should only contain water, salt and spices.

What to Avoid: Artificial colours, sulphites, white vinegar, sugar, preservatives.

Olive Oil

Olive oil is a versatile oil in the kitchen – it can be used in everything from medium-temperature baking or roasting to stovetop cooking to condiments like salad dressings, dips and hummus.

What to Look For: Cold-pressed, extra virgin olive oil, organic, in a dark bottle.

Pasta Sauce

No time for simmering? Grab a jar of store-bought pasta sauce for pasta dishes, pizza, soups or stews.

What to Look For: Pasta sauce in glass jars or BPA-free cans, organic, low sodium.

What to Avoid: Natural flavours, hydrogenated oils, canola oil, added sugars, refined sugars, artificial flavours, sauce in plastic containers or BPA cans.

Healthy packaged foods aren’t always easy to navigate, but with these guidelines, you can begin to determine which ones fit into your lifestyle, as well as when it’s worth it to take a shortcut. Once you figure out the healthy pre-packaged foods you enjoy, they can be great companions to your cooking.

Image Credit: iStock/Kwangmoozaa

What are the effects of cell phone radiation on sleep quantity and quality?

“Sleep is crucial to the development of physically and psychologically healthy children,” but a number of factors have been identified as interfering with sufficient sleep, including the use of electronic media devices. These days, most children and nearly all adolescents have at least one such device “in their sleep environment, with most used near bedtime.” Such use is associated with “inadequate sleep quantity, poor sleep quality, with excessive daytime sleepiness.” There are calls to minimize access to these devices at bedtime, but “which comes first, media use or sleep problem?” Are the kids and teens not sleeping because they’re on their phone, or are they on their phone because they can’t sleep? I discuss this in my video Friday Favorites: Do Mobile Phones Affect Sleep?.

“Higher media use has been consistently associated with more irregular sleep patterns, shorter sleep duration, as well as more sleep problems.” Are we pushing back our bedtime because we’re so caught up in whatever we’re reading, writing, watching, or playing, or does using our devices key us up so we have trouble falling asleep? In college-aged students, it may be more of the reverse—not sleeping leading to pulling out their screens rather than just staring at the ceiling. In early childhood, though, it may be a bit of both. How might screen time interfere with sleep?

Use of smartphones and tablets may not just push back bedtimes and overstimulate us. The “light emitted from devices affects circadian timing” by interfering with the production of melatonin, the sleepiness hormone that starts ramping up as soon as the sun goes down. When we put a screen in front of our face, the excess light at night may confuse our brain. Of course, if you’re checking email with the lights on, then you’re already overexposed and the little bit of extra light from the screen may not make much difference. But, if you’re in the dark and need to send off that final message, then adjusting the light settings on your screen to be more yellow may help.

What about the cell phone radiation? Might leaving your phone on the nightstand somehow affect your sleep? There’s an enzyme called ß-trace protein that makes a sleep-promoting neurohormone in the brain, and researchers found that those with greater long-term exposure to cell phones or cordless phones tended to have lower levels of this enzyme in their bloodstream. So, the thinking is that the “emissions from wireless phones affect the release of ß-trace protein in the brain,” especially from the tissues right up under the skull, closest to where we typically hold the phone. So, there is a possible mechanism if cell phones do indeed affect sleep, but you simply don’t know until you put to the test.

Study participants were exposed to 30 minutes of a cell phone in talk, listen, standby, or off modes. All of the lights and speakers were disabled, and insulation was used to prevent them from feeling if the device was heating up, so the participants didn’t know which group they were in. After the exposure, researchers took away the phones, shut off the lights, and told participants to close their eyes and try to fall asleep. As you can see in the graph below and at 2:59 in my video, those exposed to the phone when it was off or in listen or standby mode fell asleep within about 20 to 30 minutes, but after being exposed to the same phone in talk mode, it took closer to 50 minutes on average to fall asleep.

The reason for the significant difference between talking and listening might be because the typical SAR value—that is, the specific absorption rate of how much cell phone energy your body absorbs—is about nine times higher when you’re talking than when you’re just listening to someone else talk.

When you do finally get to sleep, though, what are the effects of cell phone exposure on sleep quality? There have been about 20 studies, and they’re split about half and half in terms of whether cell phone exposure affected sleep parameters—and not all in a negative way. It reminds me of the brain function data. (See Do Mobile Phones Affect Brain Function? for more on this.) Yes, an increase in the excitability in our brain cortex, the outer layer of our brain, in response to exposure to cell phone emissions might disrupt sleep, but that increased excitability may also mean faster reaction times.

Similarly, in affected study subjects, those exposed to an active cell phone showed significantly more R sleep. But R stands for REM, so participants got about 4 percent more potential dream time, which isn’t not necessarily a bad thing.

What are the effects of cell phone radiation on sleep quantity and quality?

“Sleep is crucial to the development of physically and psychologically healthy children,” but a number of factors have been identified as interfering with sufficient sleep, including the use of electronic media devices. These days, most children and nearly all adolescents have at least one such device “in their sleep environment, with most used near bedtime.” Such use is associated with “inadequate sleep quantity, poor sleep quality, with excessive daytime sleepiness.” There are calls to minimize access to these devices at bedtime, but “which comes first, media use or sleep problem?” Are the kids and teens not sleeping because they’re on their phone, or are they on their phone because they can’t sleep? I discuss this in my video Friday Favorites: Do Mobile Phones Affect Sleep?.

“Higher media use has been consistently associated with more irregular sleep patterns, shorter sleep duration, as well as more sleep problems.” Are we pushing back our bedtime because we’re so caught up in whatever we’re reading, writing, watching, or playing, or does using our devices key us up so we have trouble falling asleep? In college-aged students, it may be more of the reverse—not sleeping leading to pulling out their screens rather than just staring at the ceiling. In early childhood, though, it may be a bit of both. How might screen time interfere with sleep?

Use of smartphones and tablets may not just push back bedtimes and overstimulate us. The “light emitted from devices affects circadian timing” by interfering with the production of melatonin, the sleepiness hormone that starts ramping up as soon as the sun goes down. When we put a screen in front of our face, the excess light at night may confuse our brain. Of course, if you’re checking email with the lights on, then you’re already overexposed and the little bit of extra light from the screen may not make much difference. But, if you’re in the dark and need to send off that final message, then adjusting the light settings on your screen to be more yellow may help.

What about the cell phone radiation? Might leaving your phone on the nightstand somehow affect your sleep? There’s an enzyme called ß-trace protein that makes a sleep-promoting neurohormone in the brain, and researchers found that those with greater long-term exposure to cell phones or cordless phones tended to have lower levels of this enzyme in their bloodstream. So, the thinking is that the “emissions from wireless phones affect the release of ß-trace protein in the brain,” especially from the tissues right up under the skull, closest to where we typically hold the phone. So, there is a possible mechanism if cell phones do indeed affect sleep, but you simply don’t know until you put to the test.

Study participants were exposed to 30 minutes of a cell phone in talk, listen, standby, or off modes. All of the lights and speakers were disabled, and insulation was used to prevent them from feeling if the device was heating up, so the participants didn’t know which group they were in. After the exposure, researchers took away the phones, shut off the lights, and told participants to close their eyes and try to fall asleep. As you can see in the graph below and at 2:59 in my video, those exposed to the phone when it was off or in listen or standby mode fell asleep within about 20 to 30 minutes, but after being exposed to the same phone in talk mode, it took closer to 50 minutes on average to fall asleep.

The reason for the significant difference between talking and listening might be because the typical SAR value—that is, the specific absorption rate of how much cell phone energy your body absorbs—is about nine times higher when you’re talking than when you’re just listening to someone else talk.

When you do finally get to sleep, though, what are the effects of cell phone exposure on sleep quality? There have been about 20 studies, and they’re split about half and half in terms of whether cell phone exposure affected sleep parameters—and not all in a negative way. It reminds me of the brain function data. (See Do Mobile Phones Affect Brain Function? for more on this.) Yes, an increase in the excitability in our brain cortex, the outer layer of our brain, in response to exposure to cell phone emissions might disrupt sleep, but that increased excitability may also mean faster reaction times.

Similarly, in affected study subjects, those exposed to an active cell phone showed significantly more R sleep. But R stands for REM, so participants got about 4 percent more potential dream time, which isn’t not necessarily a bad thing.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: What is going on, my friends. 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 T2 and other thyroid hormones.

We’re talking to a woman who probably needs no introduction. You guys have maybe heard of her before. Her name is Dr. Amie Hornaman, also known as the Thyroid Fixer. She’s got a lot going on, a lot of cool stuff. But I was pretty humbled in this conversation just in the sense that she brought up stuff that I hadn’t even really heard of before, and that’s pretty rare.

Normally, I’ll get a few things where I might have heard of it at a surface level, but never dove in information wise. I got plenty to learn, but this was cool. I like having stuff like this where someone just expands my horizons completely and really knows what they’re talking about on a specific set of topics.

If you somehow don’t know who she is, I’m going to give a quick background and then you’ll get to the podcast right away today. We actually interviewed her live right at KetoCon 2023, so that was amazing.

FDN’s Health Space Unmasked – Dr. Terry Wahls

Also, if you guys are listening to this, you still have some time to register, like basically a couple days to register, for our Health Space Unmasked event. That is fdntraining.com/unmasked. That will be in the link below.

Health Space Unmasked is our free event every single month. It’s only done on the first Saturday of every month and we have an awesome topic, awesome guest. This is where you guys heard Dr. Ruth Roberts when she was talking about pets. This month we will be talking to none other than the great Dr. Terry Wahls. That is absolutely a name that you heard of.

I feel like this is one of the first things people end up reading or studying when you get into this space. Dr. Terry Wahls has an unbelievable story in terms of personal healing. If you somehow don’t know that you definitely gotta hop on.

Again, click the link in the show notes and we’ll get you guys registered. It’s a completely free event. Those are some of our most value driven events that we host for free. So, check this out and I’ll see you guys there. Hopefully I’m going to be on myself.

About Dr. Amie Hornaman

A quick background on our friend Dr. Amie Hornaman. She is known as the thyroid fixer and is host of the top-rated podcast in medicine and alternative health, The Thyroid Fixer, with listeners around the globe. She is the founder of the Institute for Thyroid and Hormone Optimization, an organization with transformational proven approaches to address thyroid dysfunction and support people in returning to full health.

Dr. Amie is also the creator of The Fixxr™ Supplement line with revolutionary proprietary supplements that are changing the lives of many people. Ultimately, she is a woman on a mission to optimize thyroid patients around the world and give them their lives back. Her bio is of course, more extensive than this, but if you guys want to read that, I will have that in the notes for you.

Without further ado, let us get to our Live interview with Dr. Amie Hornaman. All right, Dr. Amie, welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?

[00:02:47] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Thank you so much. I love being here.

[00:02:48] Detective Ev: Yeah. This is fun. We are at KetoCon 2023 Live in person.

It’s actually really weird to get to do podcasts like this. We were supposed to do one yesterday, not you and me, but someone else didn’t work out. And I like this. I can get used to this for podcasts.

[00:03:01] Dr. Amie Hornaman: I know. You get to smell bacon, watch people walk around.

[00:03:04] Detective Ev: Yeah. You guys have no idea what we’re dealing with. We got people cooking bacon literally right next to us while we’re doing this. So, I’m sure we both have the same plan afterwards finishing this podcast.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Absolutely.

T2: Gaining Weight

I always like to start the show off pretty much in an identical way. No one gets into this space by accident as a client or as a practitioner. There is typically something that leads to this. Very few five-year-olds right now are telling their parents, mom and dad, I can’t wait to go to KetoCon when I’m older. You know, it’s intentional. So, I have to ask, how did you kind of end up in this space? What was your original background? And then we’ll talk about more technical stuff after that.

[00:03:38] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Yeah, absolutely. So, I started 20 some years ago. I was competing in NPC Fitness and figure competitions. I was doing fitness modeling at the time, too. You know, that’s really rigorous. You have to diet down your eating. You’re eating keto, basically. You’re eating the meat and the fish and the broccoli and the asparagus. You’re hitting the gym a couple times a day. I had done it many times before, so I knew how to prepare and how to get my body into that kind of shape.

This one particular show I was getting ready for, the NBC Pittsburgh, was a huge show, the scale was going up and not down. Every time I stepped on the scale, it went up, up, up. And I’m thinking, this biologically doesn’t make sense. I mean, even your listeners know like, wait a minute, if she’s doing this and this, she shouldn’t be gaining weight.

So, I did what we all do. I go to the doctor.

T2: A Diagnosis

I went to my doctor, and I said, this is what’s going on, doc. This is what I’m eating. Look at this, what’s happening in my body. Because I really felt my body was rebelling against me. And I got told, you’re normal; everything’s fine. It’s all in your head. Just not a big deal.

Now I was 25 pounds heavier. On a little 5’2″ frame that is a lot of extra weight to carry. And I wanted an answer. At that point, I didn’t even care if they told me it was something serious. I just wanted an answer. I went to six different doctors, all of them misdiagnosed me.

The seventh one finally gave me the diagnosis of hypothyroidism. You have hypothyroidism, Hashimoto’s, and here’s a pill. I left the office all pumped up. I’m like, sweet, there’s a pill. I’m going to lose weight. I have a name for this. I have a name for it. I left and I started on it.

Five months later, nothing happened. Not one pound lost. I didn’t feel better. Nothing. I got frustrated. I was really low; I was really depressed. Really low because I thought, well, maybe there isn’t an answer. Maybe it is just me. Maybe I need to do more. Maybe I need to eat less and exercise more.

Then I found functional medicine. I kept hearing the name of this practitioner. You know, you hear something a couple times, you’re like, all right, that’s the universe telling me I gotta go. Right? So, I went to see him, and he completely changed my life. He did all of the testing that should be done.

T2: Getting Better and Wanting to Help Others Get Better

We looked at the entire profile, my supplements, my food, my labs, my medication. He put together what I now do for my patients, a total plan, the right thyroid hormone replacement, the right supplements, the right way to eat. When all that came together, my body responded and that was it. That was it for me.

I knew if I went through that frustration, there’s going to be other people that are, and this needs to be addressed. I need to go out in the world and help people. So that’s what totally changed my career.

[00:06:20] Detective Ev: That’s an awesome story. I was going to say, it’s awesome, obviously not overall, but what it led to is kind of beautiful. You know, it created this passion and stuff.

And what’s fascinating is when FDN first started as a course, like 14, 15 years ago, it was mainly attracting people who had been through exactly what you’re talking about. There was a lot of personal trainers, there was a lot of fitness competitors, and they were kind of getting screwed.

I feel so bad, especially for the women in this space. I know it’s not the main topic of today, but it’s something I have to recognize. For those listening that don’t know, there are studies showing now that women are more likely to get told it’s in your head or, oh, you’re fine. You need to be a little less stressed. You know what I mean? Clearly something was wrong here.

T2: The “Sounds Like” Method

I also think too, I have such a respect for the people in the fitness competition space, cause it’s hard as crap. Let’s be honest. That is not an easy thing to do. I think it’s even harder on women’s bodies because there’s still this expectation to be incredibly low body fat percentage. But again, the studies show that a male can maintain a lower body fat percentage, slightly easier than a female can. So, you guys are exceptionally beating up your body in these cases.

And just to be clear for the audience, what were you doing professionally at the time while you were competing?

[00:07:23] Dr. Amie Hornaman: I was still in the health space. I was doing basic nutrition. I was basically helping other people with show prep. You know, doing diet plans and doing workout plans and helping people in the gym. But it wasn’t this deep into the medical side. That’s my passion now.

 I love it. Gimme a set of labs and I geek out. Which I’m sure a lot of your listeners are like, yeah, gimme those labs.

[00:07:46] Detective Ev: Yeah. And that’s why I’m excited to talk about that today. Because the other lesson here is too, Reed Davis, the founder of FDN, constantly says this, and I think having a real-life example helps connect this with people.

He always says the “sounds like” method doesn’t necessarily work. This is kind of why. Because once you even got someone to recognize the thyroid thing, you did get the treatment, which is partially correct. You should have been treated for thyroid, but you’re months in and nothing’s really working, right?

T2: The Thyroid Hormone Change That Worked

When you only do something on the “sounds like” method, it says, oh yeah, sounds like thyroid. You run a lab to validate it. Ah, pat yourself on the back. Yeah, we were right. Sounds like thyroid, except it didn’t work and you needed more stuff.

I’m curious too, before you transitioned, can you list off, do you know the most profound thing for you? Was it a dietary change? Was it a mental change? Like what led to actually getting you better? Or was it the whole set and it’s kind of hard to pinpoint.

[00:08:36] Dr. Amie Hornaman: It was the thyroid hormone change. Cause they had put me, just like you said, what Reed says all the time, love Reed. You can’t take a one size fits all approach.

And one of the issues that we’re seeing really in conventional medicine today, but in all forms of treatment, is you do this and then you do this. So, a person has a thyroid problem, give them T4. That’s it. And that is the standard of care in today’s world. That’s why so many women are still suffering.

I say women, because women get hit with hypothyroidism much more than men. I mean, there is a subset of men that still get hit with it, but women get hit more than men do. It’s just a shame that we just slap these protocols on people without really looking at who they are and what they really need without testing thoroughly.

I would say it was that change of, you go off of T4 and you add in T3. That combination of those thyroid hormones, that worked for my body.

T2: Addressing the Real Problem

Again, it’s not a one size fits all. It might not work for your body, but that’s what worked for mine. Then everything else fell into place.

What I see in my practice is women will come to me and they’ll say, I’m doing all the things. I’m taking the supplements, I saw a nutritionist, I’m addressing my stress, I’m sleeping, I’m doing all the things, but nothing is working. Well, yeah, because your thyroid is completely waxed. Nothing is going to work unless we address this.

But then once we address it, then you get the reward for your effort. Then you get the bang for your buck for getting to bed and getting eight hours of sleep and hitting the gym and eating clean. It all starts to work together so beautifully.

[00:10:12] Detective Ev: Awesome. So, okay. You have this experience; it creates this passion; it ends up being a beautiful thing. What training did you do afterwards? Or was it a lot of self-study? Like how did you get to the point where you felt, okay, wait, I can apply this to other people in practice.

[00:10:26] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Well, yes, a lot of experience. But then I got my master’s in clinical nutrition, my doctorate in clinical nutrition, and then I became a functional medicine practitioner, all of that.

[00:10:35] Detective Ev: So, a lot of experience here. And listen, our audience is very open. I mean, we go through an eight-month certification and unfortunately, I say unfortunately, tongue in cheek, but we can help people better than a lot of Western medicine.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Oh, FDNs are awesome.

T2: Dr. Amie’s Stereotypical Patient

Detective Ev: It’s just kinda funny though. You go through eight months and as a young man, I can do this a lot better in terms of getting people well than sometimes people who went to school for 12 years.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Ah, yeah. That’s an understatement.

Detective Ev: Yeah. It’s the wrong system. It’s not a knock at the intelligence or knowledge even of Western medicine, but clearly, they’re learning the wrong thing, if I can go figure this out in eight months and they’re having trouble in 12 years.

So, you, kind of, again, reinvented yourself and now you’re helping people with this. Who is the stereotypical person that comes in? Is it exclusively thyroid sufferers? Are there other people that will work with you as clients or patients, whatever you refer to them as?

[00:11:19] Dr. Amie Hornaman: No, we do hormones too because it’s all tied together. I mean, you know, whenever the thyroid’s off, we’ll normally see insulin resistance. We’ll see dysregulated hormones.

So, we might have a woman that has PCOS and really high androgens, high testosterone. We might have a perimenopausal, menopausal woman that has all of her hormones in the tank, you know, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone are all low and her thyroid is off.

I would say this stereotypical patient would be a woman, usually 40 to 55, 35 to 55, dealing with a variety of different things. It could be weight gain, it could be infertility, it could be just extreme fatigue, loss of libido, hair loss. I mean the symptoms go on and on. But they all kind of tie together to paint that picture of, okay, this is what we have to look at now.

T2: Just One Set of Labs

So, because of these symptoms, and you are a unique individual, so we have to take your symptoms into account, the most important words you can ask a patient or a client, are how do you feel? How do you feel? Because what the labs show are one thing, but how do you feel? And then we get into those labs, and we really get a treatment plan in place.

[00:12:25] Detective Ev: Okay. I think people sometimes get confused on the podcast cause I bring on people all the time that aren’t FDNs. It’s like, I want you guys to expand your consciousness and so does Reed. Reed is really big on like, listen to other people find who’s getting results.

FDN is cool. It’s not a one size fits all. It’s not the only thing. So, we’ll typically run a set of labs though. If I come in or my mom comes in, for example, to your clinic, is it always going to be a certain set of labs? Like, are you always just going to run the full thyroid panel on everyone and a few other things? Or will it be individualized to the person?

[00:12:53] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Well, because I geek out on labs, I like looking at everything altogether. Because why not, right?

I think what a lot of women or patients in general deal with is they’ll go to their doctor, and they’ll say, okay, this is my problem. They’ll do this, just one set of labs. And now it’s like, whoa, okay, that didn’t show us anything. Now they have to go back, and they have to get more. Now, we’ll look at this. You’re wasting months of this person’s life.

T2: Get All the Puzzle Pieces

So, let’s just get it all. Let’s get it all and have it right there in front of us, and then we can start connecting the dots too.

Okay, well this is low, which could indicate that over here this is going on too. Oh, yep. Look at that, that’s messed up too. We have to address that. So, I think having all the labs in front of you, or as many as you possibly can, is only going to help you as the practitioner help that person even further. Because now you have the puzzle pieces all in front of you and you can start putting that puzzle together.

[00:13:45] Detective Ev: So specifically, what are some of your preferred labs?

[00:13:47] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Full thyroid panel has to be TSH, Free T4. We know everybody will get those. You gotta have the Free T3 in there, the Reverse T3 because that’s the antithyroid hormone. So, if Reverse T3 is high, that’s going to give you a ton of answers right there that the person is basically in survival mode.

The two antibodies, which I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve seen one antibody tested when they go to conventional medicine, or nothing, usually nothing. But then sometimes one. And I’m like, do we realize that there’s two? So, both antibodies that test for Hashimoto’s.

And then let’s get into the hormones. Let’s do total estrogen, estradiol, estrone, progesterone, free and total testosterone, DHEA, SHBG, FSH, LH. I mean, the list goes on and on, but let’s get all of them. Then sit there and piece that together.

T2: Finally, a Thyroid Panel and a Diagnosis

Let’s get insulin, let’s get A1C, let’s get a CBC and CMP, because that tells a lot, right? Let’s get a lipid panel, and then we can go into the nitty gritty, the vitamin D, the mag, all of that. And we can get into the functional testing as well.

But if you just start with the serum, you just start with that blood test, you get a lot of answers there, and that’s going to direct you down another path to do additional testing.

[00:14:56] Detective Ev: And you can do it fairly affordably, which is kinda nice.

Humor me here, because I know for you this might be completely basic. But for some of our audience, sometimes they’re kind of just getting into this and they might be new to the functional space. Can we explain the difference between, everyone uses the term “full thyroid panel”, what does that actually mean, and why is it important?

Because like my mom, for example, she had Graves’ disease. Thankfully she’s doing a lot better now. Unfortunately, we didn’t learn about this until she had her thyroid removed, but functional medicine still saved her life right now.

Dr. Amie, she went for seven years not getting a diagnosis. Like you told us, it’s all in your head. You own a business, so you need to be less stressed. She was crazy low TSH. Finally, someone ran a basic thyroid thing. We’re talking just TSH, and I think maybe a couple antibodies were ran, and they diagnosed her with Graves’. So, until I had talked to her, no one had ran a full thyroid panel, still.

Again, we know how this story goes, but what is a full thyroid panel and why is it so important?

T2: Take a List

[00:15:49] Dr. Amie Hornaman: That’s great that you asked that because if someone goes to their doctor and asks for a full thyroid, they’re going to get TSH and maybe Free T4. But beyond that, you have to be specific. Go in there with a list.

You better have that Free T3 listed. And I like the totals. The reason why I like the Free forms of thyroid hormone, the Free T3 and Free T4, that’s what’s available in your body right now to get to the cell. So, if you grab a total, that’s a bonus. Definitely get those Free numbers.

Then the Reverse T3, like we said, the antithyroid hormone, that’s important because that gives us a direction as to, well, why is that Reverse high? If they’re on too much T4, they have a conversion problem.

Maybe their ferritin is low. They’re anemic. Maybe they’re estrogen dominant. That’ll push it up. Maybe they’re insulin resistant. That’ll push it up. So, that Reverse T3 that, I guarantee you, if you ask your doc, they’ll say, oh, well I only do that in a clinical setting. That Reverse T3 is so important. And to that answer that docs give, I always argue, well, you’re going to do it in a clinical setting.

If someone’s in the ER or the ICU, the Reverse T3 is going to be high to put them in that survival mode cause our bodies are so smart. If you’re injured, you were just in an accident and your body’s trying to heal, you don’t need to be burning fat. You don’t need to even have brain power or grow your hair. You don’t even need to poop every day. You just need to survive.

T2: Look at the Thyroid Hormones

So, testing Reverse T3 outside of that clinical setting is even more vital. Because that gives us so many answers to look deeper as to what’s pushing that up. Then of course, the two antibodies to check for Hashimoto’s, a hundred percent. That’s the full.

[00:17:29] Detective Ev: I know the answer but humor me. Is it possible that TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone, could look fairly normal, but your antibodies could be through the roof.

[00:17:38] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Usually, the TSH looks normal. In fact, usually the TSH is optimal when I see patients coming to me. I mean that TSH might be below a 2, a beautiful 1.5, 1.7, something like that.

Then you get into those thyroid hormones. Because we have to remember that TSH is a pituitary hormone. It is not a thyroid hormone. So, when we’re measuring the thyroid, I want to know about your thyroid hormones.

I want to know what that Free T3 and Free T4 are; what are those numbers? What is your thyroid gland actually producing? Then yes, the antibodies can be present. That’s when we know, okay, you’re slowly destroying your thyroid. Your body is confused, and it thinks your thyroid is a bad guy. It’s going out and it’s beating it up.

So, we need to look at those thyroid hormones, the Free T3, Free T4 to really see how far down are they? How much destruction has occurred with that Hashimoto’s. And even if it’s not Hashimoto’s, I still want to know those thyroid hormones because sometimes addressing those, that’s the key.

Who cares about the TSH? Get that out of the way. Let’s look at those thyroid hormones.

T2: TSH is Not a Thyroid Hormone

[00:18:42] Detective Ev: Yeah. A good way for people to remember this cause it’s so funny that you talk about, TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. Everyone hears it the first time, like, oh, it’s a thyroid hormone.

Well, all you have to remember is, what is it actually saying? Thyroid stimulating hormone. It’s a hormone stimulating the thyroid. I don’t get confused by that. That’s how I always remember it, at least, like, let’s actually read the words, you know? Sometimes people complicate signs. I’m like, there’s actually a lot in the words if you just listen and don’t get overwhelmed by it. So again, the TSH thing, huge misleading thing. Every now and then you’ll see it.

We had an FDN practitioner, he’s a clinical advisor. His name’s Ryan Monahan. His TSH was a 150 when he got tested finally. And it was only a 150 because that was as high as the test went. The highest I’ve ever seen was a client of mine named Kate, and she shares this publicly, that’s why I’m sharing it. Hers was a 211 and she got it ran three years ago.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: I have never seen that high.

Detective Ev: It was by far the most insane thing. I didn’t want to insult her, but I said, do you mind, can you send me a screenshot of the labs please? Just so I can check everything. Sure enough, right there, I’m like, wow. I’m glad I didn’t come at her, like, no, that’s not right. Because she was a hundred percent correct.

So, the doctor literally was like, how are you even getting out of bed? She’s a mom. And moms on a mission, man. You don’t mess with them.

[00:19:46] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Adrenaline will do a lot.

T2: Multifactorial Stressors

[00:19:47] Detective Ev: So, there’s a lot of debate about this. There’s the stress of our modern world, environmental toxins, gluten, whatever. Of course, I think it’s multifaceted or multifactorial. What are you seeing are some of the most common causal factors for the women that come and work with you? It’s not as simple as just gluten and just stress, right? Are there more things going on that everyone listening should think about changing if they want to get this stuff under control?

[00:20:09] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Yeah. The answer is so cliche because I feel like we hear it over and over again. But until we really take it in and embody it and make some changes and then see the results of those changes, you don’t really make that connection.

So, for instance, environmental toxins, like you said, we are in a world that that’s increasing. I mean to even find organic produce is tough. We’re kind of getting to the point where, you better go to the local farmer. You better go to the farmer’s market. Because even just going into the grocery store and getting organic, little scary still.

Detective Ev: You don’t know.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: You don’t know for sure.

Everything that’s in our, especially for women, our beauty products, our body wash, our face lotion, the shampoo, everything that we’re being exposed to on a daily basis, add on top of that now, Wi-Fi, 5G. We’re on the computers all day long. The blue light, that’s a stress.

Hormonal issues, that’s a stress. The xenoestrogens that we’re being exposed to, that starts throwing off our hormones, which then affects our thyroid. That’s a stressor as well. So, I think it’s, like you said, it’s so multifactorial, where it’s all of those.

T2: Don’t Forget the Deficiencies

Then we get into the deficiencies. You start looking at magnesium deficiency, iron deficiency, low or high selenium. Then we can go into iodine, which I’m very passionate about. I believe people do need iodine. I think too many people stay away from that. But in low amounts, you can bring that Reverse T3 down. You can really improve some things.

So, it’s all those deficiencies as well, stacked upon the stressor, stacked upon the environmental toxin exposure. And then it’s just a recipe for disaster.

[00:21:46] Detective Ev: All right. I have a variety of questions that I wanted to ask, not disconnected, it’s still the main topic.

But one of the things that you got me right before we started, you talked about T2, this almost like, what did you say? Hidden thyroid?

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Forgotten Thyroid hormone, yeah.

Detective Ev: I’m always transparent. I think, hopefully, people appreciate this on the podcast. I like to consider myself an expert at digging the information out. I don’t necessarily consider myself an expert on any one thing. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of that, if I’m being a hundred percent transparent.

So, what is that? And is that on, I don’t even know if I’ve seen that on thyroid panels. Can you get that done? But tell us about T2 and why it’s important.

[00:22:19] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Okay. So, when we’re looking at the thyroid, it produces four thyroid hormones, actually, 1, 2, 3, 4. We know about three and four because there’s tests for them, and that’s what we focus on.

T2: BMR and ATP Production

One is inactive, so we can just push that aside. T2 is very active. In fact, it increases basal metabolic rate, so the amount of fat that you’re burning at rest. It actually works at the mitochondrial level. What you’re going to see when we address T2, when we add in T2, and I’ll get that in a second, is you will not see the thyroid labs change. There’s no thyroid mimetic effect. It’s not going to make a person all of a sudden look hyper.

If you take T3, you’re going to get this increase in T3, you’re going to get a suppression of TSH. And if you’re working with conventional medicine, they’re going to call you hyper. Like, oh my God, you’re hyper, you’re going to have a heart attack and bone loss. But T2 does not do that. It has no effect on the cardiovascular system. It has no thyroid mimetic effect, so that’s a bonus. It’s literally increasing your basal metabolic rate at rest, and improving ATP production, which so many thyroid patients deal with weight gain and fatigue, those two. That’s what T2 will address.

It is not in any conventional test yet. We can test it in studies. So, I’ve been diving into T2 for about 15 years now, using it on the sign and supplemental form with my patients and seeing tremendous improvement. Tremendous. Especially if they’re kind of stuck in that conventional system where they’re on T4 only or they’re not quite on the right thyroid treatment. They’re in that struggle/frustration mode with weight, that they’re ready to take a bridge because nothing is working. You add in T2 and now you start to see that metabolism increase.

T2: Only Burning Body Fat

I always like to refer back to bodybuilders, even though I came from that. They really are the OGs of biohacking. I mean, they’ve experimented on themselves long before; they were using peptides like 20 years ago. Now we’re all like, oh, peptides. So, very interesting.

I heard a professional bodybuilder, who trains other pros, talk. He said, you know, I don’t let my people use T3 because it is abused in the bodybuilding world to lose fat. People will take T3 thyroid medication when they’re getting ready for a show or to lose fat because it’s going to do that, but it’s going to shut down your own thyroid production. And they’re going to come out the other side with a thyroid problem.

He goes, I don’t let my pros use T3 because number one, it’s going to burn your muscle and your fat at the same time. It doesn’t directly just burn fat. It doesn’t discriminate. And number two, they’re going to come out the other side with a thyroid problem needing thyroid medication the rest of their life, that they just induced upon themselves for no reason.

He goes, I use T2 because it will only burn body fat. It does not burn muscle at all, and they come out the other side with no thyroid problem whatsoever. And then, I mean, stacked upon all the research that I’ve done and actually looking at the studies on T2, I was like, yes. I love hearing that somebody else is experimented with this because it’s true.

T2: The Forgotten Thyroid Hormone

So T2, I call it the forgotten thyroid hormone. You can only get it in supplemental form. It does occur naturally in natural desiccated thyroid medication. So, your Armour, your NP, it occurs, but in a tiny little amount. If you have a 60-milligram tab of Armour, you might be getting eight or nine micrograms of T2. When you take it in supplemental form, you can get like a 100, 150, which is what you use in the studies to really produce that body fat loss.

[00:25:42] Detective Ev: Okay. Well, first of all, something to think about here. If the person who trains pro body builders isn’t even recommending T3, that’s probably, you know, considering what some of those people will put into their bodies, might be something to consider here.

Fascinating stuff with the T2. I feel a little better now knowing that this isn’t actually something that is widely like tested for or something. Cause I’m like, I can’t believe I don’t know about that. This transitioned perfectly though into the next thing I wanted to ask. Because a lot of people will, whenever we post something about thyroid, will respond with what about the Armour thyroid and all that kind of stuff.

Two questions. So, one, what is your general opinion? And maybe the second question is the one to start with. My mom’s missing a thyroid. I’m not asking for medical advice here, I’m asking if this was you that didn’t have a thyroid, can you replace Synthroid with those types of things? Is that possible? Cause we’ve always been very hesitant with that, admittedly.

T2: Full Thyroidectomy Needs T4 & T3

[00:26:28] Dr. Amie Hornaman: So, your mom doesn’t have a thyroid. This is fantastic because so many people have had either a thyroidectomy, partial thyroidectomy, or radioactive iodine treatment. You take out the thyroid gland that once produced T4 and T3, the thyroid gland that is the main conversion gland. Now we get some conversion of T4 to T3, and for the listeners that don’t know, T4 is inactive, T3 is active. You want to have that conversion happen. That thyroid gland was a main converter when it was in the body, so you take that out too.

Now, to give someone like your mom T4 only, that doesn’t even make sense. She needs T4 and T3 together. Now to answer that first question, it becomes very personalized. We have to say, okay, maybe mom would be best suited with a little bit of Synthroid, T4, and let’s add in some T3 separately. That way we can start really low Liothyronine, just use a little bit. We can go up in her dose and just find her sweet spot, her optimal spot.

Or we can do NDT. We can use Armour thyroid, or NP, because that is T4 and T3 together. And as long as she’s converting that, fantastic. It’s all about really finding what that individual person needs.

But a hundred percent of the time, if a person does not have a thyroid gland, my God, do not give them T4 only. Give them T3 in some way, some form, because they will thrive.

[00:28:00] Detective Ev: Okay. So again, from a non-medical perspective, and just be careful here, in theory then it is totally possible for someone without a thyroid.

T2: Start Slow and Low

[00:28:08] Dr. Amie Hornaman: To be optimized a hundred percent, yeah.

[00:28:10] Detective Ev: You’re almost making the argument that you would need to have some level of this, at the very least, in with the Synthroid because it’s incomplete.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Right.

Detective Ev: Okay. Wow. And considering how well my mom’s doing right now, I think this could only just send her up even higher. That’s amazing. Thank you very much.

And going back to the T2 then, cause I realized I didn’t specify this, just so we don’t have a bunch of people on the podcast that are like, oh, where do I buy supplemental T2? Correct me if I’m wrong, this is not something that they should be taking willy-nilly. Right? They should probably be working with someone like you or at the very least testing before they just start going and experimenting. Correct?

[00:28:43] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Yes and no.

I’ve been studying this for 15 years. I actually did come out with a supplement that contains T2 because I got sick of trying to source it from other places and giving it to my patients and being like, here, take this. So, I did come up with a supplement called Thyroid Fixxr. But since you can’t really test for it, I tell people just start low and slow.

Let’s say one of your FDNs are working with someone that can’t lose weight and you’re doing all the things. I mean, you are just throwing everything at it, and you’re like, what is happening with this person’s metabolism? Right? Just start with a little bit of T2, even if you don’t know if they have a thyroid problem. They can take this cause it’s going to improve their thyroid function.

T2: Thyroid Fixxr Supplement

Like we said, it’s not going to shut down their own thyroid production. And it’s going to work at the mitochondria level, so you can give a little bit and see how they respond. Definitely if you have a thyroid patient that is not optimized whatsoever, add that in just a little bit, and see how they respond.

It’s kind of just like any supplement that we do. You know, most people will respond well. Occasionally you’ll get that weird person that’s like I don’t do well on B12. Okay.

[00:29:50] Detective Ev: Something could be great for one person. Terrible for the next.

[00:29:54] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Right. So, just start low and slow and experiment. See how that person responds.

[00:29:58] Detective Ev: Cool. That was actually a more hopeful answer with this than I thought. Because generally speaking, we’d be depending on the supplement, a little more hesitant. That’s kind of cool to know that people can do that.

Awesome to know that you have that. I did not realize. So that’s called Thyroid Fixxr.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Thyroid Fixxr, yeah.

Detective Ev: Is there anything else other than T2 or is it just that?

[00:30:11] Dr. Amie Hornaman: I do have a little bit of L-Tyrosine in there because that’s super for the thyroid. I mean, all thyroid patients need L-Tyrosine. Coleus Forskohlii that helps with the fat burning as well. But those are in just small amounts. The main ingredient 3,5-Diiodo L-thyronine is T2. That’s the big, long scientific word for it.

[00:30:28] Detective Ev: Well, to connect the tyrosine thing, I always hate that I can’t remember this cause I always screw up on it. When you say like T4, aren’t we talking about something with tyrosine in there or am I messing that up?

T2: Gluten and the Thyroid

[00:30:37] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Well, yeah. When we’re talking T4, T3, it’s the thyroid hormone molecule with iodine atoms connected to it. So, the T4 has to lose one to become T3. I mean, tyrosine is involved in that process.

[00:30:52] Detective Ev: Yeah. I always remember the Ryan Monahan guy, the same guy that’s now super passionate about this, he talks about that. I thought that was fascinating. Cause I’m like, what a basic thing. Like how many people are just not digesting right or not getting enough protein? You know, and they are not getting tyrosine that they need. It could be a huge issue here.

Two last things, I want to ask about client testimonials, but before that, the gluten thing. Because now what’s fascinating, Dr. Amie, is my mom goes, we’re in Pennsylvania, so she now goes to University of Penn for her medicine stuff, anything Western, she goes there.

What’s crazy is the doctor at UPenn told her last year, she made sure, she said, oh, you had Grave’s Disease, right? History of that? Mom’s like, yes. All that kind of stuff. She’s like, are you gluten free? This is the doctor at UPenn. I thought that was really awesome just to see how far we’re getting along.

Now, my mom’s been gluten free for years because of what we taught her at FDN, but some people will say that it doesn’t seem to do anything. Others are like, oh, molecular mimicry, it’s attacking your thyroid. And I’m an amateur in the molecular mimicry sense. Is this actually true that in some people, they are consuming gluten, and the body is now attacking their thyroid directly because of this?

T2: Autoimmune Predisposition

[00:31:55] Dr. Amie Hornaman: That’s what we see in the studies. I mean, now you and I know studies can be skewed. They can be biased, but I don’t really see a reason for bias in this. There’s no gain. We’re just saying, listen, when we look at the gliadin molecule, so gluten’s protein is gliadin. When we look at that and we look at the thyroid gland, they look a lot alike.

I always use the analogy of soldiers, when you have an autoimmune condition. In your mom’s case, those soldiers, they were going out and beating her thyroid gland up and dumping all of this thyroid hormone into her body, hence the Grave’s Disease. Those soldiers can be there even after removal of a thyroid gland.

And when we eat gluten, those soldiers who are conditioned to think the thyroid is bad, the thyroid is an invader, it’s a bad guy, they go out and attack when gluten comes in the system. Cause they’re like, oh, there’s that invader again. We need to launch an attack.

Now they go out and attack and what if you don’t have a thyroid gland? Where are they going to go? Maybe your joints; here comes RA. Maybe your skin; here comes psoriasis. God forbid, maybe your brain.

[00:33:06] Detective Ev: I was about to say the brain as well. Yeah. Okay.

[00:33:07] Dr. Amie Hornaman: MS, lupus. Autoimmune begets autoimmune. Where we see one, we see more than one.

So, absolutely. I love that your mom is gluten free still, even without a thyroid, because she still has that autoimmune predisposition.

T2: Do the Antibodies Matter so Much?

[00:33:19] Detective Ev: Well, right. I actually didn’t know what to say to her with this, cause I always want to be very sure before I say something to a family member especially.

She feels great. Objectively, everything has gotten better. The one thing that hasn’t though is her antibodies are still decently high despite all her changes. They keep telling her, oh, well it’s actually normal for someone to still have high antibodies after the surgery. Now what the heck does normal mean to me from Western medicine?

But again, if I don’t know the answer, I’m like, okay, mama, are you feeling better every day? Are we doing better in every other area? And she’s like, yes. So, I’m a little careful there.

It doesn’t seem to make sense to me though. Shouldn’t those have gone down or do you care about that in a full thyroidectomy patient? Because it’s not partial, it is out.

[00:33:57] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Right. No, that is a fantastic question. We care and we don’t.

So really, whether it’s a full thyroidectomy patient or not, I always say, don’t hang your hat on your antibodies. I get a lot of people that are so hyper focused on their antibodies. Oh, I have 900 antibodies. I go, yeah, but how do you feel? Like, I feel great, and my thyroid hormones are optimized, but I have these antibodies. I go, then chill out. Everything’s okay. We’re going to work to get the antibodies down. But all is well.

With your mom, I would say if she’s having symptoms, then let’s really attack those antibodies.

T2: Still Thriving with Antibodies?

Maybe we use some low dose naltrexone, maybe we use some black cumin seed oil. You know, she’s already gluten-free. You’re supporting her immune system, which I know you are. So, if we’re doing all of those things, then let’s just chip at those antibodies. Let’s just chip away and not panic. The overall goal, of course, is to reduce them. But sometimes you will, sometimes you won’t.

Some people will have antibodies and they’ll still thrive and be fine because the hormones are balanced.

[00:34:54] Detective Ev: Gotcha. Thank you. This is making me feel better. Cause that’s bothered me. Like, why is this? I just thought it was automatically bad. And like you said, sure, in a perfect world we get it better.

But this is where it comes down to treating the person instead of just the paperwork. Cause that’s me honestly falling subject to treating the paperwork. It’s like mom is doing well, she’s doing the best she has in 20 years. So, who am I to necessarily say that it’s a requirement for her to get to where we want to go?

Anyway, with the last several minutes we have here at the very end, of course, we’ll shout out where people can find you. And that’ll all be in the show notes cause. I know our audience and someone’s ears are perking up with this particular episode.

Do you have any, to the degree that you’re able to share it, any just favorite client stories? Cause I’m sure you’ve really changed some people’s lives doing this type of work.

T2: Health Success Story

[00:35:34] Dr. Amie Hornaman: So many. It’s so fun. I’m going to show a couple of them on Sunday when I talk. But one really stands out.

She’s been my like little star patient. She was in her thirties and came to me, had a lot of trouble with fertility. Multiple miscarriages. On top of that, could not lose the weight. Overweight, PCOS, hypothyroidism, and her hormones were all unbalanced. Her progesterone was low, her testosterone was low.

I always preach the message of hope. She really thought, I’m such a tough case. No one else has been able to help me. I’m not quite sure how you’re going to help me. But you came recommended so I’m going to, you know, whatever. She was skeptical, but she dove in.

She has now lost over 40 pounds. I talked to her the other day. She was like, yeah, five more to go, but I’m good if I stayed here. It’s all right. Two beautiful babies. More energy than she knows what to do with. I think she ran, she either ran a marathon or a half a marathon. She’s like, that’s always been my goal. I was always too heavy and too tired, and I couldn’t get through the day. Now she is like beaming, like living life. You can see it in her face, in her skin, her smile, and her countenance. I mean, she’s just amazing.

So, to really, literally give someone’s life back. I interviewed her for my podcast too. She’s crying, I’m crying, like everybody’s crying because it’s just so beautiful to literally give someone their life back and to see that change.

Conclusion/ Where to Find Dr. Amie Hornaman

[00:36:58] Detective Ev: Awesome. Yeah, we could probably do a whole podcast on just those. I love that kind of stuff because we can get so technical. But at the end of the day, I believe facts tell, stories sell. Sometimes just hearing that kind of stuff, it connects it for everyone.

So, where can they find you and everything that you offer? Please shout out the podcast, websites, anything like that.

[00:37:15] Dr. Amie Hornaman: Absolutely. The podcast is The Thyroid Fixer Podcast. That’s a great place. I mean, I love talking. Just like you, I love talking. I love giving people information that they can actually take home and implement. So, The Thyroid Fixer Podcast.

My website is dramiehornaman.com. The supplement site is Fixxr Supplement, so fixxrsupps.com.

And then you can find me on all social. So, just look for Dr. Amie Hornaman on Instagram, on Facebook, on all of that, and dive in. Yeah, connect with me, ask me questions. Whatever you need. I love helping.

[00:37:46] Detective Ev: Awesome! Guys, please, that was a wealth of information. Go check her stuff out. If you have any questions, either reach out to them or follow us at fdntraining on Instagram and you can ask questions there.

But Dr. Amie, thank you so much for coming on with us.

Dr. Amie Hornaman: Thank you so much.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

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

For more information about us, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/about-fdn-functional-testing/.

Introduction

Many thanks to Casie for this week’s paper. It is about weight change and mortality in older adults (Ref 1). The article concluded that weight loss is associated with an increase in mortality. Casie sent me an email saying, “As a woman about to turn 70 who has lost 3 stone and kept it off for the past three years, I find this sort of article worrying.”

I have personal experience of weight and health in older age. My mother developed appendicitis in her late 70s. Never one to complain, she was in excruciating pain before she finally gave in to the inevitable and called a doctor. Thankfully the GP had known mum for decades and knew for her to be describing pain as 9 out of 10, things were serious. By the time mum was rushed into surgery, her appendicitis had burst and attached, in part, to her bowel. The surgery was thankfully successful, but any doctors who looked back at her notes thereafter commented “you shouldn’t really be here should you?!”

Mum was carrying about 20lb of extra weight at the time of the incident. She lost most of that in the during and after of the acute illness. Since she had weight to lose, this was not a problem. Indeed, she was quite pleased about it. Had she been of normal weight, her weight loss would have added a serious complication to an already serious condition. It made me realise that ‘having something to fall back on’ is valuable at life threatening times.

A 2005 study supports the notion that having some excess weight can be life extending. The study was by Flegal et al and it was called “Excess deaths associated with underweight, overweight, and obesity” (Ref 2).

Every month, we publish around eight new videos, four Friday Favorites, eight blogs, and four podcasts on NutritionFacts.org. We are bursting at the seams with all sorts of health and nutrition info that we don’t want you to miss, so we wrapped up the juiciest bits into a nice, bite-sized blog as an end-of-month recap in case you missed anything or just want a refresher. So, what were some highlights from April?

Dietary Guidelines: “Eat as Little Dietary Cholesterol as Possible”

The reason we care about cholesterol is because we care about heart disease, the number one killer of men and women. Individuals who eat more eggs have been found to have significantly higher coronary artery calcium scores, which is a sign of atherosclerotic plaque buildup in the arteries. And, this seems to translate into a higher risk of heart attacks and death. Each additional half an egg consumed per day was significantly associated with higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease and dying from all causes put together. The Institution of Medicine recommends that individuals should eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible, and this was reiterated in the 2020 – 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Dr. Greger has testified before the committee a couple of times. Check out the highlights from 2020.

A Case of Stage 3 Cancer Reversal with Fasting and Spontaneous Regression of Cancer with Fasting

Dr. Greger previously addressed what to eat after a cancer diagnosis, but what about eating nothing at all? In 2015, a remarkable case report was published in which a woman with stage 3 follicular lymphoma underwent a medically supervised, 21-day water-only fast, after which her enlarged lymph nodes were substantially reduced in size. The patient then remained on a whole food, plant-based diet, and, at six- and nine-month follow-up visits, she remained asymptomatic. After three years, her follow-up was published: Remarkably, she appeared to remain cancer-free, confirmed by CT and PET scans, with no additional intervention other than the dietary change. At present, long-term fasting in cancer treatment is supported only by some case reports, so more research is desperately needed. In the meantime, starting on a healthier diet seems like a win-win. In fact, following a whole food, plant-based diet free of sugar, oil, and salt—with or without fasting—is sometimes sufficient to induce an intense healing response.

Friday Favorites: Win-Win Dietary Solutions to the Climate Crisis

Happy Earth Month! Did you know we have the power to improve our own health and that of our planet every time we eat? We are facing a climate emergency. Fossil fuel use is going up, but so is per capita meat consumption. In fact, one of the solutions to help the climate crisis is to eat mostly plant-based foods and reduce consumption of animal products. What makes designing a sustainable diet so easy is that the same advice is good for us and our planet. The least healthy foods also sometimes cause the worst environmental impact. The foods with the most nutrition often just so happen to be the foods that cause the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, so we get a win-win effect.

Can Oxidized Cholesterol 27HC Explain Three Breast Cancer Mysteries?

For more than a century, we’ve known that cholesterol may be associated with cancer proliferation. Consumption of dietary cholesterol increases breast cancer risk, and there appears to be a dose-response—the more cholesterol consumed, the higher the risk. Researchers found that about two years after breast cancer treatment (surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation), not one woman in the lowest third of LDL cholesterol blood levels had a recurrence of breast cancer, but that was not the case for women with higher cholesterol.

It was recently discovered that 27-hydroxycholesterol (27HC) is a cholesterol metabolite that can function as an estrogen and increase the proliferation of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer cells, as well as stimulate prostate cancer cell proliferation. So, it isn’t necessarily the cholesterol, but what cholesterol turns into; oxidized cholesterol may play a role in the initiation, promotion, and progression of cancer. Some estrogen-driven breast cancer tumors may rely on 27HC to grow when estrogen isn’t available. 27HC may also explain why breast cancer patients with higher vitamin D levels appear to live longer, as vitamin D supplementation decreases 27HC levels in the blood. For Dr. Greger’s vitamin D recommendations, see our Optimum Nutrients page.

Is It Safe to Consume Cannabis Edibles?

Smoking cannabis can create respiratory problems, so using a vaporizer is an alternative, but what about eating it? Edibles may carry increased risks to children and pets, as well as increased risk of overdosing, which can lead to severe respiratory depression. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to oppose legalization. At the very least, cannabis edibles shouldn’t be packaged to look like popular candy, like Keef Kat, Buddahfinger, and Munchy Way. Some states have banned selling marijuana-infused candy with that kind of imagery, but to play it safe, perhaps we shouldn’t be making cannabis candy at all.

One issue with edibles is that it may take an hour or two after consumption before an effect is felt, so users may overconsume, thinking they didn’t ingest enough to feel an effect when they perhaps didn’t wait long enough. In fact, there have been case reports of individuals dying after overconsuming cannabis edibles. If you’re interested in learning more about cannabis, check out our extended series starting with The Institute of Medicine Report on the Health Effects of Marijuana.

The Right Idea, the Wrong Message

When individuals were offered a bacon cheeseburger, a chicken sandwich, or a fish sandwich, 17 percent chose the bacon cheeseburger. Swap out the fish sandwich choice for a veggie burger, and bacon cheeseburger preference doubled to 37 percent. How can offering a healthier food option actually drive people to make even worse choices? It’s thanks to a mind-blowing glitch of human psychology called self-licensing. The thought is that when we see a healthier option, many may make a mental note to choose that at some unknown next time, thereby giving them the excuse to indulge now. We may unwittingly justify doing something that draws us away from our goals after we’ve just done something that takes us towards them—like justifying eating a donut because you lost so much weight last week. Not only does making progress towards a goal rationalize decision making that undermines us, but even just considering making progress can have a similar licensing effect. Listen to the podcast to hear more about this fascinating glitch and the wild reality of “remedy marketing.”

This has been a wrap-up of just a small sampling of our recent content. To see everything from the past month, be sure to check out the video, blog, and podcast pages.

Every month, we publish around eight new videos, four Friday Favorites, eight blogs, and four podcasts on NutritionFacts.org. We are bursting at the seams with all sorts of health and nutrition info that we don’t want you to miss, so we wrapped up the juiciest bits into a nice, bite-sized blog as an end-of-month recap in case you missed anything or just want a refresher. So, what were some highlights from April?

Dietary Guidelines: “Eat as Little Dietary Cholesterol as Possible”

The reason we care about cholesterol is because we care about heart disease, the number one killer of men and women. Individuals who eat more eggs have been found to have significantly higher coronary artery calcium scores, which is a sign of atherosclerotic plaque buildup in the arteries. And, this seems to translate into a higher risk of heart attacks and death. Each additional half an egg consumed per day was significantly associated with higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease and dying from all causes put together. The Institution of Medicine recommends that individuals should eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible, and this was reiterated in the 2020 – 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Dr. Greger has testified before the committee a couple of times. Check out the highlights from 2020.

A Case of Stage 3 Cancer Reversal with Fasting and Spontaneous Regression of Cancer with Fasting

Dr. Greger previously addressed what to eat after a cancer diagnosis, but what about eating nothing at all? In 2015, a remarkable case report was published in which a woman with stage 3 follicular lymphoma underwent a medically supervised, 21-day water-only fast, after which her enlarged lymph nodes were substantially reduced in size. The patient then remained on a whole food, plant-based diet, and, at six- and nine-month follow-up visits, she remained asymptomatic. After three years, her follow-up was published: Remarkably, she appeared to remain cancer-free, confirmed by CT and PET scans, with no additional intervention other than the dietary change. At present, long-term fasting in cancer treatment is supported only by some case reports, so more research is desperately needed. In the meantime, starting on a healthier diet seems like a win-win. In fact, following a whole food, plant-based diet free of sugar, oil, and salt—with or without fasting—is sometimes sufficient to induce an intense healing response.

Friday Favorites: Win-Win Dietary Solutions to the Climate Crisis

Happy Earth Month! Did you know we have the power to improve our own health and that of our planet every time we eat? We are facing a climate emergency. Fossil fuel use is going up, but so is per capita meat consumption. In fact, one of the solutions to help the climate crisis is to eat mostly plant-based foods and reduce consumption of animal products. What makes designing a sustainable diet so easy is that the same advice is good for us and our planet. The least healthy foods also sometimes cause the worst environmental impact. The foods with the most nutrition often just so happen to be the foods that cause the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, so we get a win-win effect.

Can Oxidized Cholesterol 27HC Explain Three Breast Cancer Mysteries?

For more than a century, we’ve known that cholesterol may be associated with cancer proliferation. Consumption of dietary cholesterol increases breast cancer risk, and there appears to be a dose-response—the more cholesterol consumed, the higher the risk. Researchers found that about two years after breast cancer treatment (surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation), not one woman in the lowest third of LDL cholesterol blood levels had a recurrence of breast cancer, but that was not the case for women with higher cholesterol.

It was recently discovered that 27-hydroxycholesterol (27HC) is a cholesterol metabolite that can function as an estrogen and increase the proliferation of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer cells, as well as stimulate prostate cancer cell proliferation. So, it isn’t necessarily the cholesterol, but what cholesterol turns into; oxidized cholesterol may play a role in the initiation, promotion, and progression of cancer. Some estrogen-driven breast cancer tumors may rely on 27HC to grow when estrogen isn’t available. 27HC may also explain why breast cancer patients with higher vitamin D levels appear to live longer, as vitamin D supplementation decreases 27HC levels in the blood. For Dr. Greger’s vitamin D recommendations, see our Optimum Nutrients page.

Is It Safe to Consume Cannabis Edibles?

Smoking cannabis can create respiratory problems, so using a vaporizer is an alternative, but what about eating it? Edibles may carry increased risks to children and pets, as well as increased risk of overdosing, which can lead to severe respiratory depression. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to oppose legalization. At the very least, cannabis edibles shouldn’t be packaged to look like popular candy, like Keef Kat, Buddahfinger, and Munchy Way. Some states have banned selling marijuana-infused candy with that kind of imagery, but to play it safe, perhaps we shouldn’t be making cannabis candy at all.

One issue with edibles is that it may take an hour or two after consumption before an effect is felt, so users may overconsume, thinking they didn’t ingest enough to feel an effect when they perhaps didn’t wait long enough. In fact, there have been case reports of individuals dying after overconsuming cannabis edibles. If you’re interested in learning more about cannabis, check out our extended series starting with The Institute of Medicine Report on the Health Effects of Marijuana.

The Right Idea, the Wrong Message

When individuals were offered a bacon cheeseburger, a chicken sandwich, or a fish sandwich, 17 percent chose the bacon cheeseburger. Swap out the fish sandwich choice for a veggie burger, and bacon cheeseburger preference doubled to 37 percent. How can offering a healthier food option actually drive people to make even worse choices? It’s thanks to a mind-blowing glitch of human psychology called self-licensing. The thought is that when we see a healthier option, many may make a mental note to choose that at some unknown next time, thereby giving them the excuse to indulge now. We may unwittingly justify doing something that draws us away from our goals after we’ve just done something that takes us towards them—like justifying eating a donut because you lost so much weight last week. Not only does making progress towards a goal rationalize decision making that undermines us, but even just considering making progress can have a similar licensing effect. Listen to the podcast to hear more about this fascinating glitch and the wild reality of “remedy marketing.”

This has been a wrap-up of just a small sampling of our recent content. To see everything from the past month, be sure to check out the video, blog, and podcast pages.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Well, hello my friends. 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 NLP.

If my voice seems a little shot to you, it is because we just got back from KetoCon 2023. What an event! Robin Switzer does it again. It was the biggest health event I have been to so far. Now, I did not really go to any prior to 2020, so keep that in mind. Man, she’s killing it and she’s bringing numbers back to these things in a time that it is so hard to do. So, huge props to Robin and everyone involved. Great job running an awesome event.

The next event I will be at is the CellCore one in the middle of May in Boise, Idaho. Never thought I’d be getting sent to Boise for a conference, but I’ll take it, man. That sounds good. I don’t have any extra time, but I would love to do some hiking. I’d also want my girlfriend with me and stuff. She’s from Spokane, Washington, and has done way more serious hiking than me. So, she’d probably be a great person to have for some of those hikes that could be going on in Idaho.

I really want to hit Bora Peak. It’s the highest point in Idaho. Not this time, but we will get them next time. Anyway, enough about that.

Book a Call – Enrollment Course Advisor

Hey, if you’re considering becoming an FDN and you’re listening today to learn skills that you can apply with your coaching clients, maybe you’re not an FDN yet, you can actually book a call directly with me now. You can hit me up at fdntraining.com/call and talk to yours truly. Just in case you somehow don’t already get enough of me on a weekly basis with this dang podcast, now you can book a call directly and talk about the course.

NLP: Gabriela’s Area of Expertise

What we do have to talk about today though, is our friend Gabriela Couto is back. Last time she was talking about fluoride and the dangers associated with it. Now we’re talking about NLP. This is kind of the area of expertise that she has moved into. She does a lot of business and mindset coaching now, and this is an interesting one. I love getting to talk about anything personality related. I’m still waiting for a Myers-Briggs expert to hop on with me. But for today, we will have to settle for just NLP and it is a pretty darn good episode.

I hope you guys find some use from this that you can actually apply to your clients and your sessions to make them more effective. Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.

Hello Gabriela and welcome back to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?

[00:02:20] Gabriela Couto: I’m doing well. Thank you again for having me.

[00:02:20] Detective Ev: I’m glad to have you.

We’re both cheesing right now. We were in a completely deep 20-minute philosophical conversation before we got on. And so, not that this conversation won’t be awesome but it’s undeniable that we’re having to come down a few notches to get back to this podcast today. It’s still going to be very cool.

I think it’s going to be fun in a unique way because Gabriela was on before. You guys might remember her if you’ve been listening for a while. It’s crazy that that’s been almost probably a year at this point. She used to work as a dental hygienist and got very interested in fluoride and what it was doing.

NLP: Non-Traditional Business Coaching

What’s interesting about you, which actually applies to our conversation even off air, is you don’t really strike me as someone who goes into researching anything with a strong opinion. And I admit, like I do that. So, it’s challenging for me sometimes. You’ll more go and say, okay, I’m curious about this, like, let’s see where the data leads or where the perspectives lead.

Your podcast with the fluoride thing, you never came across as some too far functional person where they’re like, oh, it’s the most evil thing in the world. And you know, they used it in the Nazi concentration camps, which is actually kind of true.

But I’m already thinking it’s bad and then I’m doing the research and now I’m doing it with a bias. You literally just had this curiosity and said, okay, I’m going to go figure this out. You were shocked by what you found and then how your professors even reacted when you presented them this information that you were presenting somewhat neutrally. What’s cool is we talked about that there. I’ll put this in the show notes, so please check out Episode 161 with Gabriela.

We just got a review recently where the person was very kind and said, can you please actually remember to link these episodes that you mention? So, I made a little note to myself that will actually be in this one today. So, check out Episode 161 there.

But Gabriela now, and we alluded to this last time, does, I don’t even know if we can call it business coaching in this traditional sense. It’s not like you’re helping someone lay out a spreadsheet or a marketing plan, although certainly the work could lead to someone executing on those things.

NLP: A Consciousness Coach or Mental Masseuse

You do something much deeper, and we’re going to talk about NLP today and other stuff. But just to be clear for the audience before we get into it, how do you currently define what you offer people?

[00:04:21] Gabriela Couto: I think it depends on who the person is. It’s kind of funny bringing the NLP into the conversation because it depends how you perceive things and how I can best relay that information to you.

There’s two ways that I go about it. I either say that I’m a consciousness coach in the sense that I bring the hidden conversations from your subconscious mind and merge that with your conscious mind. I bring that into awareness so that you can start to realize what you are focusing on and creating that reality or how you function and connect with other people.

Or also talking, I say like a mental masseuse in the sense for people who are more in the emotional and energetic aspects of it. It’s kind of massaging the mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies. I say masseuse because most people go to a massage or has gotten a massage before, and they know that there are knots in their body that are limiting their range of motion or how they actually function and feel in their body.

So, if you can massage the mental and emotional and spiritual body, it’s removing those knots so you can actually think clearer and have a deeper connection with yourself and with other people.

[00:05:27] Detective Ev: I love the mental masseuse thing. Every now and then someone comes up with a tagline that just sticks in your head and now I’m not going to be able to forget that. That’s good branding.

NLP: Hitting a Year-Old Goal

With the NLP thing, how we’re going to connect this for you guys today is twofold. One, we’re going to talk about some stuff that you can immediately apply to your own business working with clients. Then perhaps something actually might resonate with you today where you would like to work with Gabriela. That could be also something to do there.

Gabriela and another good friend of ours at one point were working together in kind of separate categories, but they offered something together, so I worked with them. What was interesting, and to be fair to you, I never even really connected this until a few months ago. I never even gave you guys enough credit for this.

The work that you guys had done, I had a very specific income goal at that time, as you remember. What happened is in the next two months, I mean, I hit that, and I’ve been able to mostly maintain it. I’m in fact, far exceeding it some months.

What’s funny is, the other person that we worked with, she helped me in a different way over the long term, but at that time there was nothing really that I had done with her that led to that at all. So, it’s like there’s really only one thing that I did. It was the direct work I was doing with you.

To me, as deep as I am into this, some of it initially seems like far out. But then you feel like kind of a lightness, and you can see how it’s working in your life. It’s hard to deny that it didn’t do what I wanted it to do because I had been working on that goal for over a year.

NLP: Neurolinguistic Programming

Then within a matter of two months it happened and maintained. When something maintains, especially that, to me is a true shift in consciousness. That means like, all right, cool. We have put ourself now on this plateau, and then there’s the next one and the next one, and you can keep going further. So, with NLP specifically, that’s probably the most applicable thing that people can take today, maybe not even having heard of it and apply it to their clients.

Just to be clear, what does NLP stand for and what’s your background in it? Cause it’s kind of extensive.

[00:07:15] Gabriela Couto: Yeah. I first just want to say that’s amazing. Congratulations! Just to hear that evolution for you is so profound. Thank you for sharing.

So, NLP is neurolinguistic programming and it’s basically the linguistics or the language of the mind. It’s being able to understand how you function and how your brain communicates with other people. When you can have a better understanding, essentially labels to what communication is, then you can understand how other people communicate and you start to pick up on their language patterns. You can have deeper connections with people because you also understand yourself more.

[00:07:51] Detective Ev: Then in terms of your training with it when did you start becoming interested in that? Because you’ve been talking about this, honestly, as long as I’ve known you, I feel like.

NLP: Learning to Take Responsibility in Communication

[00:07:57] Gabriela Couto: It was actually kind of funny how it presented itself into my life. I was, again, dental hygiene before and I went to an acupuncturist. I saw this book on water and I was so fascinated with it, so I read it. The same day that I actually finished it, and the book talks about NLP, my sister comes in the room and she’s like, hey, this team is coming in to teach NLP. Do you want to take it with me?

I was like, are you freaking kidding me right now? Like, What? Like, who even hears of NLP? So, I was like, if I can get the time off of work, then yeah. I’m so down. I got time off so easily. It just flowed so well. I really did it for me to kind of understand myself a little bit more.

Then I was so infatuated with it because I have struggled a lot with communication growing up and feeling a lot of being misunderstood. That’s also created a lot of other anxiety for me and social anxiety essentially. So being able to tap into that and learn for yourself, I realized how this can also help and serve other people.

It’s essentially putting responsibility on your end in the sense of like, okay, it takes two to tango. So where is my responsibility? When you can take responsibility with your actions, your patterns, your responses or reactions in general, then you have the awareness and the control to make that switch in that chain so that you can actually create that life that you want.

NLP: Applying What You Learn Is Powerful

Kind of like our conversation earlier, like it’s not easy, it’s not the most pleasant. I had to have a confrontational conversation with somebody today actually, and confrontation has always been something really hard for me. Being able to overcome that, that’s when you start to grow. That’s when you can actually learn and apply all of these lessons.

I think the most important thing is understanding that yes, you can learn, you can read everything, but once you actually take the action and apply that into your life, that’s when you actually have that true knowledge and that true power.

[00:09:54] Detective Ev: Nice. I never knew the part about, for whatever it’s worth, you never struck me this way. This is cool. I never knew the part about struggling with communication and stuff. I find that interesting cause it’s not necessarily equitable to NLP, but NLP is a system, right? It’s, in a sense, a way to type people and figure out maybe how they’re communicating. That’s obviously, basically what it is. And then you were able to adjust accordingly for that individual.

That’s the same reason I got into the Myers-Briggs thing. I knew, I’m like, well, I’m a decent person, I feel like, and yet, I’m having these communications with people and it’s coming across completely wrong. At some point we have to look at ourselves and say, I’m the one that’s consistently having these problems.

Seriously, at one point in my life, it’s probably like eight out of 10 times I’m having communications with people and it’s not going the way that I want it to go. It doesn’t mean that I’m inherently flawed. It doesn’t mean that you’re inherently flawed.

NLP: Communicating in a Receptive Way

But I’m probably the one that has the most opportunity for work here if I’m the one that’s having the problems consistently with such a variety of people. That’s why I studied that cause now I’ve learned how to appropriately say something to certain people.

Guys, this is not to be mistaken, cause I hear this 5% to 10% of the time where people mistakenly believe that this is somehow an attempt at manipulation or something like that, that that’s not the case at all. If you used it that way, that would be the case, but I don’t use Myers Briggs that way.

Like I know Gabriela’s type, I know my best friend’s type, I know my girlfriend’s type. I do this to display information in a way that they will be receptive to. So, if my idea is like, hey, we should go do this on Friday night, I’m not changing the idea or hiding it, I’m just presenting it to them in the way that might be most receptive to them and that they can understand so that we can at least make a decision about the idea.

With NLP, the thing that I’ve heard before is visual, kinesthetic, and auditory. I know that’s probably loaded, but can we break that down and what that actually means?

[00:11:36] Gabriela Couto: Yeah. I first just want to touch up on the first part that you mentioned. I think that’s really good and it’s a really good way to conceptualize what NLP is and kind of like what you were saying the Meyers Briggs is. It’s you understanding the other person and that’s essentially what NLP is. It’s understanding how that person communicates now.

NLP: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic

So, it’s putting essentially a label to them, but it’s also realizing it’s just a label. Labels essentially creates boundaries. But also, how can you expand those boundaries?

Yes, I’m an INFJ, but I’m so much more than an INFJ. You know, it’s not holding me to that. Even with the term manipulation, yes, people can say it is manipulation. One, it depends on your definition of manipulation, and that’s where NLP comes into play. It’s really understanding your definition of what these terms are.

Manipulation, it’s your internal representation, your connotation. Is this a good connotation, manipulation, or a bad? It’s the same word as influence. You know, you can influence somebody in terms when if you influence, you’re manipulating them. And so, it’s just realizing, oh, I have a negative IR. Where did that come from? When did I start to define that manipulation of something bad? And you can also manipulate somebody into something positive.

So, to answer your other question of VAK, the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, going back to the Meyers Brigg, everybody learns differently. People can visualize things, or they really have a good memory because they can see it in their mind’s eye.

There are some people who they hear and listen to podcasts. It is something that is easier for them to obtain that information versus somebody who can see it through pictures or through a movie.

Then there’s the feelers. People who are better at learning by experience. They have to go through that experience to actually learn the connotation.

NLP: The Different Categories and Their Values

Then you can understand how somebody operates. It’s even using your words, oh, I see what you’re saying or, oh, that resonates with me. Resonating is somebody who is good with auditory versus visual person. Oh yeah, I see what you mean. It’s starting to pick up on those little key words, and that’s where you start to understand how they communicate.

[00:13:50] Detective Ev: Okay, cool. I don’t know if it’s this simple, but like is there types with this? Would you say someone’s like this type primary and then secondary, tertiary, or can everyone be a little bit of all that stuff on a different day? That part I’m not familiar with.

[00:14:04] Gabriela Couto: Yeah, I think it’s all relative.

So, another aspect of NLP is understanding what your values are. You have different categories such as relationships, career, personal development, and you have different values for each.

It’s being able to understand like, oh, maybe when it comes to learning through business, maybe you actually have to see somebody do it first and then do it yourself first. Versus there are some people that they need somebody to guide them through the experience first, or maybe they just learn instantly just by seeing it and they get it. I think everything is pretty relative.

The other important thing to understand, because when you can understand communication and how somebody listens, another concept is, are you an inferential learner or listener or talker, or are you literal? You can have one of each. I’m a very inferential person when I speak, but I’m very literal when you speak to me. You have to be extremely specific with what you mean, because if not, I take that literally.

NLP: Inferential or Literal?

[00:15:08] Detective Ev: I feel like this is me. This part’s definitely me. That is tough. Like you can know what it means, but then it’s hard to think of examples. I hear you on this.

I always remember, like when I worked at my parents’ restaurant when I was a kid. I would sometimes, like at 17, drive over to get certain things. I constantly had this issue where they wanted me to get certain stuff, but they never said it directly.

It might have been like, get the stuff for the back office, right? So, I go to the back office really quick, and I see this is empty versus like maybe something was low. They’re like, well, I wanted you to get everything that was low. I’m like, how about you give me a list of things to get, and I will happily get it with a smile on my face?

I needed to know the specific items in the quantities that we are getting them at the price that we will buy them. Then I will go do that. I don’t know if that helps spark your example at all, but I feel like everyone’s always told me I’m very literal. I just resonated with that word when you said it.

[00:15:54] Gabriela Couto: So, like, yeah, inferentials, reading in between the lines. The example that they give an NLP, I guess it’s the best example that I can really give. It’s like, if you’re hanging out with a friend and they say, oh, like, I’m thirsty. An inferential person will read through the lines, and they will get that glass of water. Versus a literal listener would just be like, you’re thirsty. Like, that’s it. What do you want to do about it?

NLP: Recognizing the Shifts

It’s also realizing how do you speak? Are you a very literal person to somebody who’s inferential where they will read in between too much in the lines when you’re already literal or are they literal? I think that’s so important to understand within business dynamics or in real estate or anybody that you kind of communicate and have a bigger purpose with is understanding how they communicate.

[00:16:41] Detective Ev: Gotcha. Not to put you too much on the spot then here, but we’ve worked together and know each other well enough. If it’s that circumstantial that it can be different between business and interpersonal relationships and intimate relationships or whatever, fair enough.

Do you recall, or do you know offhand, like when you were working with me? Obviously, you’re picking these things up then, so was I getting typed by you with these letters? Like did you know which styles I communicated with or received better?

[00:17:06] Gabriela Couto: To be honest, no, not necessarily. Really putting me on the spot. Sometimes I think it’s also an intuitive thing.

A big thing is rapport or to see shifts within the person’s response. So, if there’s a shift in their voice or their breathing pattern or a result on their face, it’s being able to tap into that aspect and seeing, okay, there’s a shift. Are they understanding me or not?

And again, you can have a shift and that could be you understanding something, but somebody else could blink, say it’s blinking faster. To you that’s processing it, but somebody else, it could be like, I’m so confused. So, it’s just kind of understanding that person.

NLP: Automatically Typing People

Essentially, you’re building that rapport with them. It does kind of take time to understand what their shifts are. I think just because I do know, or I had known you before then, that I was able to understand those shifts. But these are just like different categories or different ways that you can have a better communication with somebody.

[00:18:07] Detective Ev: Fascinating.

All right, so then with clients, obviously this can go pretty deep. I don’t expect anyone today to have this mastered, that would be ridiculous. But I know for myself, and this is something I do naturally now, I can’t help it. I, for better or for worse, am so obsessed with the Myers-Briggs thing, and it won’t leave. It just stays for all these years.

When I am talking to someone, I am not even thinking about this anymore. I do this with every person that I meet; I’m automatically doing like my system in my head to try to type this individual. I think in a way that is not particularly visual, it’s not blank, but it’s not particularly visual.

I’ve always been very good at like memorizing letters and numbers. That’s where I excel. We can drive on the road and pass a phone number for half a second. I can be like, all right, here’s the phone number. But I can’t remember the eye color of someone that I maybe talked to for 20 minutes, like that would be very challenging for me to do.

NLP: Helps with Building Rapport

My point in mentioning that is I’ll have these memories sometimes. And Maddy, I don’t know if she likes this, but she’s an INTP and my best friend’s an INTP, so go figure, right? I have these two very close people that meet the same type. There are times where I think I said something to her or I’ll be talking to him and I think I said something to him and they’re like, you didn’t talk to me about that.

Now, the memory in my head, I realize, is not Maddy or Brian, it’s INTP. I’m literally picturing the letters and that’s where I’m like, oh no, I said this to the INTP. And they’re like, not this one. You know, maybe the other one in your life, but not this one. I think it’s kind of funny how I’m so systematized in my head that that’s how I’m doing this.

I’ve been doing it for a while though, so I can do that pretty quickly. It’s not accurate a hundred percent of the time, but I can get a good feel for people. It certainly helps to have better rapport with them and work with them for a while. But the advantage to our practitioners is they do work with their clients for a while.

Let’s say I am a practitioner. Maybe I have like 2, 45-minute interactions with a client and we’re getting pretty deep. They’re talking about maybe their worst health issues, their struggles; clients get pretty open with us. Is there some basic stuff that I can start looking out for that you could teach us maybe from an NLP perspective that might help us at least get into the VAK thing. Maybe some things to listen out for or watch out for?

NLP: Listen for Cue Terms

I’m trying to hit on all of them right now to see where this person’s at and what type they might be.

[00:20:16] Gabriela Couto: I think that it is cool to have the ability to have these concepts and even to like categorize somebody as an INTP versus an INFJ. Does that also put somebody in a box and limit them from other possibilities that they could step into and listening? With these techniques, I think it is important to learn but not putting it on a pedestal like this is all or nothing kind of thing.

I think the best thing would just be, well, what is their language pattern in the sense of, I feel, or I keep seeing. It’s having those terms within. I can also send you this too. There’s like different words and terms that certain people use if you are a feeler, like, oh, I feel this way. I’m trying to think of an another. I don’t focus too much on this aspect, but I think it is a cool concept for people to learn and just picking up on those terminologies and the rapport building.

So, do you notice a shift in their face when they understand something and ask them, oh, I noticed a shift in you. What did that mean? Kind of just asking them what is really going on in their mind to really understand what their shifts are. Because then, you will pick up on those patterns of that person individually versus these categories oh, you are a VAK. But I think for the most part, a lot of people actually know the way that they learn.

NLP: Converting Your Language Pattern

So, like I’m a very visual learner and a feeler. For me, I’m a visual.

So, asking a person like, how do you typically learn? Like are you better at visualizing? Are you better at listening, or are you more with experience? Then having that answer, I think, it’s just converting your language pattern to fit what they respond to.

[00:22:10] Detective Ev: Okay. It can be pretty simple, honestly. It’s just asking questions and taking the time to do that investigative work. So, okay. I’ll use myself as the test dummy here. I’ve done this.

Someone came on that does Enneagram. We had like this whole psychoanalyzing session. It was kind of hilarious. I won’t put you through that, but that was pretty funny. Like we went through this whole thing.

So, for myself with what I already brought up, like if I read a book, that is the easiest way for me to retain something. When I see only words and numbers and I get to see the words and numbers, I can be sometimes perfect retention. That’s always been a nice thing.

The secondary thing I would use is like podcasts, I can do pretty well with. Even if I hear a stat. Let’s say it said 20% of people that do this get this result. I remember it, but even that, I almost have to put it through like my mind first. It literally feels like my mind is like this blank slate sometimes. You know, a computer programmer, like how they would type on like a black screen? That’s what it feels like.

NLP: Everyone Has a Different Sequence

I could even, in conversation, it’s hard for me to do this and focus a hundred percent admittedly, but if someone talks at an average pace and not mine, which is like, 2X, always constantly without caffeine, I can almost take the words that they’re saying if I wanted to and play it as if it was like a typewriter across my mind.

So, if you said the whole VAK thing, again, I’d be like, okay, VAK, like I’m seeing those letters. It almost seems to be that order for me where it’s like, there’s this visual aspect, if I see it, very helpful. Then auditory is good, but I might start messing up the percentages a little bit. Cause it wasn’t a perfect translation from my ears to this syntax in my mind. And then I think the last one by far for me is the kinesthetics.

Do you think this is accurate based on what I said? Would it be, what is that, VAK then in order by coincidence?

[00:23:45] Gabriela Couto: Yeah. And again, everybody has a different sequence. A good analogy is like, how do you buy something? Is it because it looks really pretty? Is it because the sound of it or you can hear other people complimenting you on it? Or does it feel good? Like is it the material? It’s seeing how you make those decisions based on what you’re going to buy. Is it from an external validation or does it make you feel good?

The other concept that I actually wanted to bring up is eye patterns.

NLP: Eye Patterns

For me, when I was studying in school, I would always look up. I never understood this, but I actually had a friend call me out. She’s like, you always look up at the ceiling whenever you’re trying to remember something or studying. For me it’s literally VAK. I always get this confused because it’s flipped based on who you’re looking at.

The right side is remembrance. So, if I’m looking at you, and it’s on my right side, your left, it’s all remembering. So, you are visually remembering. If it’s neutral towards the side, you are auditory. You’re remembering what you heard. And if it’s down, you’re remembering what you felt.

On the opposite side, it’s the creative side. So, the left side, if your eyes go up towards the left, you’re creating a visual. Like, think of a blue tree, then you’re going to think of a blue tree, typically, your eyes to the left. And then auditory is towards the middle. You’re constructing the feeling if it’s looking down.

The only thing important to know is that if people have gone through a lot of trauma, then that can also be flipped. So, it’s also understanding your client and if they have experienced that trauma, then it might be flipped.

[00:25:26] Detective Ev: What’s interesting about this is I feel like the whole eye thing is something that, even five, six years ago, you see on like Facebook almost as a little guide where it’s like, how to tell if someone’s lying. Then they have this eye chart. I know it’s definitely not that simple. But was this a concept that came from NLP originally then?

NLP: Do Eye Patterns Reveal Lying?

[00:25:41] Gabriela Couto: Psychological wise, I think so. I mean, NLP is, in the sense of it’s in the psychological range or concept. To say if that was the origin of it, I don’t know about that.

[00:25:54] Detective Ev: No worries. I’m sure it’s older than Facebook, so we can at least say NLP had it before Facebook ever had it. I’m pretty sure the vast majority of people on the podcast would’ve heard that part, ads like, oh, you can tell if someone’s lying.

But one thing that you already said that I feel like would be totally misleading about memes like that then, because it’s just overly simplistic, is all right, well, I’m not seeing actual objects. I see text and numbers a lot better, but I can create an image that’s just very crappy and grainy.

Maybe everyone doesn’t see it like this. How I see my dreams and I recall dreams, it’s almost like very faded. It’s not like I’m there, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s nowhere near as present as you and I are right now when I’m looking at you. Maybe everyone doesn’t see their dreams like that, but that’s the only comparison I would’ve used is dreams.

But my point is, if you said that blue tree example for example, you could have said, well Evan, did you see the blue tree on your walk the other day? I would be creating that image, trying to figure out like, oh, did I see that blue tree? And then the Facebook meme would say, oh, well he’s lying cause he’s creating that image. It’s like, well no, I couldn’t see it to begin with, so that’s why I have to reconstruct this thing in my head.

NLP: It’s Not Right or Wrong, Just Different

So, is that really a good way to tell if someone’s like lying or not? Especially considering how controversial that can get, should you be banking on lies based on eye pattern or should you use it more for this reason to help people?

[00:27:08] Gabriela Couto: I would say use it, I’m always for helping people. They didn’t really say anything about lies. That’s more psychology versus NLP, the language pattern.

I do think it’s cool to understand the subconscious mind and the reticular activating system. Because now, again, it’s brain, that awareness. Oh, I wasn’t aware of that blue tree, so the next time I’m going to go for a walk, I’m going to notice that blue tree and putting that into perspective.

But even kind of like you said, how your dream was a little bit faded, everybody has their own way of thinking and creating these images. It’s not to say it’s right or wrong, it’s just different. I think that’s the biggest lesson that I’ve learned with NLP is not concluding to something being right or wrong. It’s just, it is what it is and it’s just different. It’s observing that difference versus having an expectation. Cause once you start to have that expectation, then that leads to more disappointment, so to say.

[00:28:11] Detective Ev: Got it. All right, so, I’m your client. Let’s say you’re one of our functional practitioners, right? You hear what I just said, and correct me if I’m wrong, because I know that visual’s probably normally a little more expansive. Like maybe people like see actual.

NLP: Different Perceptions but Same Type of Learner

Like Maddy, my girlfriend, she has these vivid dreams and has a crazy imagination where she can clearly see the actual scenery of what’s going on. Where I just don’t have that. Is it fair to say though, if I’m reading a book and physically seeing it, and that’s how I retain it well, her and I could both be visual, even though the visions might be different?

[00:28:44] Gabriela Couto: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Everybody perceives it in their own way.

[00:28:48] Detective Ev: All right, so then assuming that I’m a visual person and I’m your client and you’re a functional health practitioner, how then can I support someone through some of these protocols that we’re doing? Like one of the issues that we have maybe sometimes is the person being compliant to what we’re recommending.

Like let’s say, hey, well we notice on the labs that you have this, this, and this thing that you’re sensitive to. It’d be great if you could remove this for a little bit and the person’s having trouble complying with that. What might be useful for someone like me who’s a supposed visual person in like raising compliance. I feel like this could be really useful for our practitioners.

[00:29:21] Gabriela Couto: Yeah, that’s a great question. What I would say is kind of giving them the visual of why it’s important. So, to say like, would the symptoms continue to happen if you didn’t comply with it? And what would the results be if you did comply with it? So that they can start to visualize that and say, like, imagine. Imagine if you continued.

Using NLP to Solidify a Protocol

So, the “imagine” term word is that visual aspect. It’s using that term like, okay, imagine yourself and putting that person into that perspective or that reality, using their imagination, what it could and couldn’t look like. Then for them to have that understanding like, why are you doing this? Like you came for a reason; let’s comply.

[00:30:08] Detective Ev: I feel like, yeah, I’m starting to pick this up. Again, it’s surface level understanding right now. But then I’m thinking, okay, for the kinesthetic person, so that’s someone who feels. Going to my example, I’m always fine with talking about the stuff I dealt with. It was the cystic acne was one of the main things that always bothered me. Unfortunately, that’s an easy thing to imagine with me.

You would just be like, well, imagine what it looks like to have that. Now I can picture that just fine. Then that triggers all these feelings and stuff, and I don’t want that. So, okay. It makes sense that that would get me going.

For the kinesthetic person, I’m almost thinking especially in terms of chronic disease, this would be something along the lines of then asking them to think about how they feel when they’re dealing with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. And they’re like, oh, I’m tired. I can’t help my kids. It makes me feel sad. So, that would be how you’d kind of communicate with that person then to solidify the protocol a little more?

[00:30:57] Gabriela Couto: Exactly just like that.

NLP: It’s Like Setting a Goal

It’s putting that into the perspective of how they’re going to feel and how’d it feel to not have that cystic acne. Then they can start to understand. Or it’s creating that feeling, even though it doesn’t necessarily exist. It’s still creating that feeling of potentiality of like, oh, this is how I could feel. This is my goal; this is what I want to feel like.

Then just encouraging them that you can feel this way following the protocol. We’ve seen it, done it, before. And the science is showing that these are the steps to get to that feeling. It’s kind of like setting a goal, knowing what that was going to feel, look, sound like.

For people who are more auditory, it’s being like, can you hear the thoughts that you would have in your head. Like how you would talk to yourself differently or what other people would say or compliment you?

Detective Ev: Yes, that’s what I was thinking.

Gabriela Couto: Like, wow, your skin looks brighter. Like, what have you done?

[00:31:57] Detective Ev: I’m like literally seeing this now. Well, that’s ironic, but that wasn’t the pun. Okay. That’s actually very funny because I’m literally saying this. I’m giving you my type basically, if we’ll call it that, while we’re speaking.

But if, in theory, at least for this, VAK in that order, in terms of what I should prioritize, I’m already thinking about what motivated me to do this. I don’t think anyone walks to the mirror with cystic acne and feels particularly great. Like I get that. But for me it was that personal thing first before anything else. Like I just wanted to look in the mirror and see, okay, this is good. This looks okay.

NLP: Question Clients’ Way to Learn on an Intake Form

But then the secondary thing is, yeah, you’re right, I actually enjoyed when people said your skin looks so good now. Or I tell people I had this, and they’re like, wow, I can never picture that. That feels good too.

But then even the feelings of like, well, you’ll feel so much more confident when you have this, and you’ll feel powerful in interactions because you’re not worried about that. And that is true, it didn’t not happen. But I can even feel my motivations and what they actually were. Now that I’m connecting this to that, it’s like, no, my motivations were clearly in that order of the visual, compliments, in the sense being the auditory, and then the feelings afterwards were actually just a byproduct of the other stuff. But ironically, that wasn’t the main thing.

And then yet, if you talk to a lot of people, they’ll speak from their communication language. I feel like so many people said to me, well, think about how confident you’re going to feel. I’m like, yeah, that’s great; that didn’t get me going. It was like, I just wanted to look in the mirror and see that and think, okay, this is good. This looks normal.

[00:33:26] Gabriela Couto: My mind goes to two different ways that you can actually start implementing this. Like if there’s a survey or a form to fill out prior where you’re like just asking them questions like a medical history, so to say, you can even add that. Like, are you visual, auditory, or kinesthetic; and like what are your goals? What is it that you want to feel? Look? And you can even have all options. What do you want to feel like?

Using NLP to Get Clients the Best Results

What do you want people to say or what are the thoughts that you want to start saying to yourself? Basically, just cover all VAKs, because to learn the best, it’s tapping on every single category, VAK.

And I think if you get that form ahead of time, you can start doing research. Okay, this is their goal, this is what they want to feel, look, sound like. Then you can talk to them in that way, kind of reiterating what they’re saying. You’re also giving them clarity of what they do want. Then it just brings in a stronger connection with your client.

[00:34:20] Detective Ev: Nice. I know NLP obviously goes deeper; I get that. But this is actually kind of immediately applicable today in my opinion. I don’t think anyone could listen to this and not get something from this, like use common sense basically.

Now that you know that there’s a structure here, use the common sense to figure it out. Okay, are they working more with the visual side, the auditory side, or the kinesthetic side? Then in terms of getting them compliant to the protocol to assure that they get the best results, this is where we’re using this in a completely ethical way. We’re actually trying to boost the efficacy of the protocol that we gave to them.

They already paid for it, so it’s not like we’re trying to get money or something. You can actually use that to keep them on track and just use that common sense. How’s this person learning? Then constantly remind them, Ev, just imagine how good you’re going to look when this happens. Ev, you’re going to look great when this happens. Right? You’re not even thinking twice about that. It is so subconscious.

NLP: It’s Not Manipulation

Like as the person, if my coach was saying that every session, I’d be like, okay. Like, yeah, cool. Thank you for the reminder again. But that might sink a lot deeper.

Then I guess it’s hard to sometimes measure the results that you have with someone by actually doing this versus not doing this. But I certainly don’t see how it could hurt. I think this could actually help a lot. And it could help with sales calls too, if you know that the person’s a good fit, but they’re having some hesitancy. Reframing how you’re pitching to them or trying to close the sales call.

I’m not that advanced with this yet, but you could use the respective visual, auditory, or kinesthetic to actually sell that thing if you knew that it was going to help them. I think this can be immediately used by our community.

[00:35:45] Gabriela Couto: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I think the biggest thing is the emotional intelligence, and it’s just being able to connect with that person. It’s kinda like putting yourself in their shoes. Like what is it that they’re seeking? What is it that they’re trying to strive for, and how can you best help them?

And going back to the previous conversation of the manipulation, it’s not manipulation. You’re supporting them in their goal in the best way that you know how by changing your language pattern. It also shows your character and that your heart is really there to serve them because you are trying to learn them.

NLP: Inspire Clients by Understanding Them

I think most people, they want to feel relatable. They want to feel seen; they want to be understood. And if you can understand and see your client for them as a person versus their symptom or disease, so to say, they’re going to feel more inspired and knowing that they’re not alone and that they can do this. They are motivated and they have that support that they need.

[00:36:41] Detective Ev: Yeah. Okay, cool.

So, with our last, like 11, 12 minutes here what I want to talk about obviously is your offerings for practitioners and then how you can actually help them with this. Obviously, the work that you do is more personal. It’s not like you’re coaching, per se, from my understanding, a practitioner in using these techniques with their clients, although I’m sure that can be done indirectly. But who is someone that you are passionate about helping?

I don’t want to answer that for you, but I think this would make sense and it’s worth mentioning. A lot of our practitioners, we have a subset of them that they know all the information, they know just as much stuff as all the practitioners out here that are killing it with our system, making six figures, helping tons of people, and yet they’ve barely taken two clients. And they take the clients, and it doesn’t work out. I know it’s because of what’s going on up here.

For those listening on audio only, I’m pointing to the head. It’s something that’s going on in the brain, in the mind. Can this work help them get over those limiting beliefs to maybe take the clients on and charge them accordingly when they literally have the same system that all these other successful practitioners have?

NLP: Dealing with Limiting Beliefs

[00:37:43] Gabriela Couto: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s a great way to identify it.

We do have a system, there is a system. How come the system works for some people and why the system doesn’t work for some people? I think that really comes down to those emotions that you have, the limited beliefs. If you think about the subconscious mind, the subconscious mind is to protect us. It filters the least and generalizes so much of the bits of information that we are receiving right now based on our trauma or our experiences.

So, the ages from zero to seven is when our minds are sponges and we’re picking up on the programs and the beliefs. One of the biggest ones that a lot of people say is like, oh, you have to work hard for your money, or money doesn’t grow on trees. People have like this negative idea about what money is. Or like all rich people are bad.

Realizing where are these beliefs coming from and how is this affecting me in my work? Maybe those aren’t the best examples for this particular conversation. I think it’s the ability to communicate.

Some people not feeling understood or not feeling connected with themselves or having that confidence with themselves and what their abilities are. Where did that stem from and how is this holding you back from connecting with a client? Because you can only connect with people to the depth that you connect with yourself. You don’t have that connection with yourself, or you’re overwhelmed. And if we’re thinking on an energetic term, your energy isn’t like relating it to money, right?

NLP: The Energetic Exchange

It’s like where are you spending your energy? Where are you putting it? And if you are all clustered and spread apart, then you’re not harnessing yourself and you’re not being magnetic yourself.

It’s going back to that intuition, like people can feel you, that’s just the way that our subconscious mind and our bodies work. It’s an energetic exchange. If you are struggling to harness your energy, then that person is going to feel that and it’s going to actually create that resistance. It’s also like that need, oh my God, I need a client. I need to do this. It’s the state of lack versus how can I serve this person? How can I support this person the best way possible? Putting them first versus you.

[00:39:56] Detective Ev: I totally agree with this because I’ve seen this phenomenon that connects totally with what you’re saying right now.

You would think, the longer that someone is trying to get clients or make money doing this, the better they would get somehow. You think you’d be learning something and yet, not all the time. Some of the time I have found the opposite is true. That it’s like the same people 2, 3, 4 years later are still struggling to get clients.

I feel like it connects to what you’re saying, where now they’re actually deepening this belief that they’re desperate for the client and they’re just conveying that energy in every call and every interaction. It’s one of the reasons that I’ve always recommended that, it depends on the person, but more often than not, I recommend that the people stay in their current job before taking a full plunge into FDN.

NLP: Energy Flows Where Attention Goes

I don’t want to overwork anyone; but make it to the point where it’s like you are doing so well at FDN, that it’s impractical to keep your full-time job because then you have that confidence in the back of your head. Like, oh, my bills get paid regardless of whether or not I get this client.

It’s also more ethical for the client cause you’re focusing now solely on people that you can serve, and you want to work with versus who you think could give you a paycheck. I don’t think anyone would do that so blatantly or maliciously, but you might be doing that subconsciously. You’re like, all right, well I can get this person to pay. I really need the money right now. And you’re selling someone that shouldn’t have been sold that’s not your ideal client anyway. Maybe you don’t even want to work with them.

[00:41:16] Gabriela Couto: I think that’s a huge concept. There comes a point where you are desperate, and you do need that. When you keep going on that cycle of like, oh my God, I haven’t closed a client, that’s going in your subconscious mind and those negative harsher emotions overpower the other grateful, gratitude nuances.

Energy flows where attention goes. So, if you’re focusing on the bad, and that’s just our natural human instinct, the subconscious mind to protect ourselves for survival. It’s being able to shift my energy, again, to put that perspective on how can I help this person the most?

[00:41:53] Detective Ev: So many practitioners making great livings with the system that you know it’s not the system. It’s almost like a college degree.

NLP: Personalize the System

Let’s take philosophy versus chemistry. I’m going somewhere with this. Philosophy, there are people that have made a lot of money in that area. There are famous philosophers. But obviously it is less applicable than chemistry. So, there are less people making philosophy than as chemists. My point is it is fair to say that there are systems that are better than not.

There are health coaching programs in our realm of health coaching that we’re in that are not great. It’s like 2% or 3% of the practitioners actually make any money with this. And you know what? They probably would’ve made money in anything that they did, whether it was real estate, wall street, lawyer, whatever, because they got it up here in the mind.

Yet, our system, I feel like, is the equivalent of the chemistry thing here because we can take someone who’s not that confident, who’s not that personable, and they can still make a living doing this. It’s a better system, so we know that that’s solid. But then again, there’s some people that just never get it together while others are getting like a hundred clients a year.

It’s one thing if we’re talking like the good people get three and the bad people get none. You’re talking about a hundred plus client differences on any given year. To me, that has to be consciousness. That has to be mindset at that point.

[00:43:02] Gabriela Couto: Yeah. Realizing that yes, we have a system. But just because the system works for one person doesn’t mean that exact system is going to work for another person. I think it is a foundation and it’s something that you can revert to, but it’s also putting your spin to it, your touch.

NLP: Synchronicity

Like, okay, what feels good for me to do? Do you face resistance to this system? And where do you feel that resistance to? Because that resistance is either an opportunity for growth to overcome, maybe it’s a fear or it’s just saying like there’s another way to do it and it’s being curious. Okay, how else can I do this and what’s going to work best for me?

[00:43:41] Detective Ev: Okay.

I think a lot of our practitioners might be stuck then because the other pattern I noticed with these people is their health might be 80% better, but it’s not like a hundred percent. I wonder if there’s not a limiting belief there that okay, FDN only got me to 80%, which most people would kill for, by the way guys, if they had chronic health issues. But you’re somehow invalidating yourself subconsciously thinking that, oh, since I didn’t get to a hundred percent, I’m not perfect. I can’t go and help other people.

[00:44:07] Gabriela Couto: Talking about synchronicity, that is a huge concept that has been coming up. It’s understanding that you have already arrived, that you are whole. And if you’re focusing on, I’m not healthy yet, or I’m not perfect, first define what is perfect for you. How do you know that you are operating at a hundred percent? It’s being able to identify that because then that’s when you can fill those holes.

But realizing that like you are already doing the work. I think a lot of it, honestly, comes down to health and emotions. Emotions are energy in emotion and it all merges together. It’s all entangled. You can’t have one without the other. You can’t have perfect health without having confident thoughts or harnessing your emotions.

Where to Find Gabriela Couto

Because you can be the healthiest person going on runs, eating the best foods, but how are your emotions? Are you reacting versus responding? It’s being able to see like, how do you even operate in society? How do you contribute to society? I think that’s also a big question.

And going back to like, how can you serve in the best way possible? How can you operate in your best way, not just physically and in health, but also to an energetic stance of your environment and those around you?

[00:45:27] Detective Ev: Awesome. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. I feel like this all connects kind of perfectly.

So, with that said, where can people find you? Is it still just Instagram? Do you have a website that they can go to? What do you prefer?

[00:45:37] Gabriela Couto: Yes. I am actually currently working on a project with another friend which I will send you the website if you’re open to that. But you can just direct them to my Instagram link, @yogabriela.c and we can connect from there.

[00:45:51] Detective Ev: Perfect. I will have that in the show notes.

And yeah, this stuff worked for me. The last part especially that you said about you can be eating all the right foods, doing this kind of stuff, but if that emotional thing is not a hundred percent addressed or at least mostly addressed, that can be a hindrance. It’s not that I even didn’t want to accept it, I thought, yeah, that makes sense, but I didn’t realize how deep it can go. I think for a lot of us that might be the case.

So, if you intuitively feel like there’s something here, I would definitely reach out to Gabriela.

Conclusion

Don’t forget to try these things with your clients, the VAK, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

But thanks for coming on and sharing completely different knowledge with us today, teaching us about the dangers of fluoride last time and now how to work with clients this time. I appreciate it.

[00:46:27] Gabriela Couto: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Evan.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

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

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

Here in North America, Spring has descended upon us and that means a lovely array of produce is cropping up at farmers markets, grocery stores or your garden, if you’ve got a green thumb. Spring recipe creation is a ton of fun and very visually appealing on the plate, too!

The colour of the day here is green, as spring is jam-packed with delicious green veggies of all flavours and textures. Second in command are the pink/red hues of spring foods like radishes, rhubarb and strawberries.

If you are looking for the scoop on greens check out our Guide to Dark Leafy Greens, which breaks down the health benefits, flavour profiles and cooking tips to make the most of your greens.

20 Best Healthy Spring Recipe Ideas

Roasted Asparagus

Roasted Asparagus by Skinny Taste

Sometimes the tastiest way to eat spring vegetables is simply and nakedly – and this basic roasted asparagus recipe is a great place to start.

Simple Kale Salad

Simple Kale Salad by Jessica Mitton (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

Give yourself a spring tune-up with this easy salad recipe that you can customize with your favourite local spring vegetables.

Glazed Strawberry Rhubarb Oatmeal Scones

Glazed Strawberry Rhubarb Oatmeal Scones by Athletic Avocado

Maximize a classic spring recipe combo – rhubarb and strawberry – by baking them into these delicious gluten-free scones that you can even have for breakfast!

Strawberry Shortcake Smoothie

Strawberry Shortcake Smoothie by Cindy Spratt (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

This post contains 3 awesome kid-friendly smoothie recipes, including this delightful strawberry shortcake version that is sure to be your next favourite breakfast.

Thai Coconut Cauliflower Soup

Thai Coconut Cauliflower Soup by Sweet Lizzy (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

When spring evenings have a slight chill, warm up with this vegan, Paleo and Whole 30 soup. You toss your favourite spring veggies into the broth for a customized bowl of goodness.

Vegan Pesto Pasta with Kale

Vegan Pesto Pasta with Kale by Lazy Cat Kitchen

Pair the warmth and comfort of pasta with some fresh spring veggies for a bright, tasty meal.

Wild Garlic Hummus

Wild Garlic Hummus by Home of Happy

The perfect spring recipe for dipping your seasonal produce!

Spring Pesto + Pea Risotto

Spring Pesto Risotto by Planted and Picked (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

Get fancy with this vegan + gluten-free risotto recipe that is very easy to make. We love adding dark leafy greens to our risotto as well!

Broccoli Fennel Slaw

Broccoli Fennel Slaw by Karen’s Colorful Kitchen (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

It will only take you about 10 minutes to pull this healthful, digestive-friendly salad together. It’s a great one for meal prep and can be easily doubled for the week.

Ginger Rhubarb and Vanilla Cream Bars

Ginger Rhubarb and Vanilla Cream Bars by The Nourished Mind

A great Paleo + vegan spring recipe that allows us to focus on the star of the show – beautifully tangy rhubarb.

Baked Spring Pea & Dill Fritters with Lemon Tahini Sauce

Baked Spring Pea & Dill Fritters with Lemon Tahini Sauce by Moon and Spoon and Yum

These baked fritters are lovely as a side dish or snack, or can be folded into a recipe-free dinner bowl for a hearty meal. And go heavy on the sauce!

Pressure Cooker Spring Chicken Soup

Pressure Cooker Spring Chicken Soup by Kitschen Kat

Instant Pot lovers will go wild for this spring-inspired soup that is packed with veggies and herbs, and only takes 15 minutes to cook.

Spring Shaved Veggie Salad

Spring Shaved Veggie Salad by Fed and Fit

Put your spiralizer to work with this easy and elegant spring recipe that is a fantastic make-ahead dish. If you don’t have a spiralizer, use a veggie peeler instead.

Rhubarb Strawberry Smoothie

Rhubarb Strawberry Smoothie by The Healthy Tart

We love the idea of adding stewed rhubarb to a smoothie! It makes it easier to digest and adds a bit of extra sweetness.

Creamy Vegan Queso

Creamy Vegan Queso by Jessica In The Kitchen

This luxurious vegan queso is perfect for drizzling over all of your spring veggies. Or heavily dousing, if you’re anything like us.

Asparagus Chard Ramen Bowl

Asparagus Chard Ramen Bowl by The Grateful Grazer

A vegan, one-pot meal that is easily customizable based on whatever veggies need to be used up in the fridge.

Spring Arugula Salad with Shaved Asparagus, Radish and Peas

Spring Arugula Salad with Shaved Asparagus, Radish and Peas by Flavour the Moments

Fresh arugula and radishes give this lovely spring salad a little bit of a bite, but you can certainly use a milder green if you prefer.

Roasted Radishes

Roasted Radishes by Neurotic Mommy

Move over, potatoes. There’s a new game in town.

Strawberry Rhubarb Butter

Strawberry Rhubarb Butter by Meghan Telpner (*ACN Founder + Director)

A super simple recipe that allows the strawberries and rhubarb to shine in all their glory. You’ll want to spread this on everything.

Lavender Granola

Lavender Granola by Kara Lydon

The floral notes in this lovely granola recipe pair perfectly with your favourite spring fruits, dairy-free smoothies, smoothie bowls, or dairy-free milk.

Tangy White Asparagus Salad

Tangy White Asparagus Salad by Life and Lemons (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

Why should green asparagus have all the fun? This white asparagus salad has minimal ingredients but is strong in flavour.

Expo West is the biggest natural food and product show in the world! This year over 67,000 people attended and 3,000 people exhibited. Expo West of course only exists because of the people behind it; the organizers, the attendees and the exhibitors. Who you are about to see are some of the most influential, passionate, noteworthy and amazing people in the health industry. Some are new to the industry and some are long-time pioneers. 

These are my people of Expo West in order of who I first saw on day one through to day four! 

 

Day 1

 

1. Vitacost team

2. Cindy from Remedy 

3. Ugly people 

4. Elavi 

5. Gracia Broc Shots 

6. Lauri Olita 

7. Max Golberg 8. Dr Bronners lady9. Dr Bronners guy 10. Regenerative farming guy talking ? need pic  

11. Jordan Rubin Day 2 

1. Andrea canada ?

2. Shawn Redmond salt  ? Shawn pic?3. Nama well girls ?

4. SunButter team 5. Primal kitchen 6. Aura Bora 7. My book signing

8. Food Earth Team

9. Josh and Steph     

10. Baby11. Brain Cakes 12. NBA player John Salley

13. Guy from IG ?

14. Cleveland kitchen 

15.Vegetable peeler

16. Explore Cuisine 

17. Mark Goldfarb 

18. Eric schnell ?

19. Alexis  pic?

20. Primal Blue Stripes

21. David Bronners and the lady 

22. At David Bronners

23. Shane 24. Inlakesh team 

25. Me with Inlakesh team 26. Spinach lady ?

27. John from Nutiva  

Day 3

1. Lisa ?

2. David from Bobs Red Mill 3. Pri 4. Boccon5. My book signing (John Roulac friend, Hunter)6. Kroger team  ? use first pic with Vitacost crew at SuButter booth? 

7. Chef bae  ?

8. Oggi team ?

9. Jeffrey smith ?

10. GG  need pic

11. Brian ?

12. Sylvia team 

Day 4 

 

1. Dirt don’t hurt  ? diff pic? 

2. Thongs guy – need pic

3.Cheese guy Doug ..need pic of you and him

4. Enessa ?

5. Jim magner 6. Chris Fade 

7. DJ ?

8. Marci ?? 

9. Redmond team  need pic

10. Redmond guy11. Redmond team plus ladies ?12. Alyson Edward and sons   need pic

13. Matt from Lakanto  ?

14. Brutal 15. Yummy Bear 16.Phresh greens 17. Ashley at gracias madre –   do you have one with Ashley?

Ingredients:

Method:

1. Peel and cut sweet potato into small chunks. Add to a saucepan with water and bring to a boil until the sweet potato soften completely

2. Meanwhile cut dill, spring onion and lemon rind

3. Once sweet potato softens, add to bowl and mash with a fork until soft like a purée

4. Add defrosted green peas, dill, spring onion, lemon rind, and lemon juice and mix together

5. Add salmon mince to the sweet potato mixture, season with pepper and mix

6. Form mixture into 8-10 balls

7. Flatten and coat in flour, whisked eggs and breadcrumbs to make cakes

8. Place on a flat tray and bake in the oven at 180C for 20-25 minutes flipping the cakes halfway for both sides to turn golden and crispy

9. Serve with a side salad of lettuce, tomato, capsicum, kimchi, lemon and white vinegar

Can make it in advance, store it in the fridge for 2 days otherwise freeze it and place it in the oven when you want to eat it!

Body Fusion Nutrition & Dietetics

175 Burns Bay Road, Lane Cove, NSW 2066, Ph: 0422 297 721   6 Ryde Rd, Hunters Hill NSW 2110 Ph: 0422 297 721                     

       579 Darling St, Rozelle NSW 2039, Ph: 0411 474 607