Category: Nutrition

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bob Red Mill is dedicated to providing the country’s best Gluten Free products. For them, it started in the early 1980s, when the Gluten Intolerance Group first asked us if they could separate out gluten free grains. Gluten free diets weren’t mainstream back then, nor were gluten free foods. However, their core value has always been that everyone should have access to whole grain nutrition, and that was the driving motivation behind the expansion into gluten free products.

 

 

 

Remedy Kombucha is an all-natural kombucha that’s full of live cultures & organic acids that can be good for your gut health. One of the things I love most about it is, it has no sugar due to its long age brew meaning, it’s a great option for those trying to cut down on sugar while also helping to improve your gut health! Win,win! 

 

 

 

A traditional Chinese flatbread that originated in the Ming dynasty of China. Ming Bings are plant powered pockets by Chef Ming Tsai- A 21st spin on the traditional Bing. The entire MingsBings lineup is vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and plant-based.

 

 

 

 

 

Lakewood Organic products are Certified Organic which means the fruit and vegetables are grown and harvested in accordance with the USDA National Organic Program (NOP). All Organic fruit and vegetables are grown and processed according to strict guidelines such as soil quality, pest and weed control, and without the use of additives, growth regulators or prohibited substances such as most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Yum!

 

 

People who took my Anxiety Free supplement at Expo West reportedly felt more stable, less anxiety, less stressed and run down, more focus and clarity, felt a stronger immune system, happier, calm and energized in the brain. All good things! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are my Top 50 Natural Foods and Products from the largest food show in the world Expo West! These are foods and products that help change our lives for the better, they are made with natural ingredients which are better for supporting our immunity, healing, beauty and also much better for the environment. 

 

My favorite way to take broccoli sprouts is with Broc Shot! Broc Shot is a ready-to-shoot wellness shot that is made with 100% pure broccoli sprout powder and filtered water. They are shelf-stable so you can travel with them. Broc Shot is a quick and effective way to get your daily dose of sulforaphane.Sulphoraphane is clinically proven to heal gut lining, detoxifies and acts as a prebiotic feeding the good bacteria in the gut. 

 

Dirt Don’t Hurt is a⁠ 3 Sister owned All-Natural Oral Care + Beauty & Body Care Brand focused on detoxification. All of their products are 100% Earth + Plant Based, Vegan, and Cruelty Free!⁠

Taking a more natural approach inspired them to start making their own products with clean, pure, and earth + plant-based ingredients. They incorporate activated Charcoal, earth clays, essential oils, and herbs into their beautiful products. The smell of these products is divine!

 

Bob Red Mill is dedicated to providing the country’s best Gluten Free products. For them, it started in the early 1980s, when the Gluten Intolerance Group first asked us if they could separate out gluten free grains. Gluten free diets weren’t mainstream back then, nor were gluten free foods. However, their core value has always been that everyone should have access to whole grain nutrition, and that was the driving motivation behind the expansion into gluten free products.

 

 

Remedy Kombucha is an all-natural kombucha that’s full of live cultures & organic acids that can be good for your gut health. One of the things I love most about it is it has no sugar due to its long age brew meaning it’s a great option for those trying to cut down on sugar while also helping to improve your gut health! Win win

 

A traditional Chinese flatbread that originated in the Ming dynasty of China. Ming Bings are plant powered pockets by Chef Ming Tsai- A 21st spin on the traditional Bing. The entire MingsBings lineup is vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and plant-based.

 

 

Lakewood Organic products are Certified Organic which means the fruit and vegetables are grown and harvested in accordance with the USDA National Organic Program (NOP). All Organic fruit and vegetables are grown and processed according to strict guidelines such as soil quality, pest and weed control, and without the use of additives, growth regulators or prohibited substances such as most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Yum!

 

 

My Anxiety Free Supplement is made with 10 natural and USDA-certified organic ingredients including ashwagandha.

People who took my Anxiety Free supplement at Expo West reportedly felt more stable, less anxiety, less stressed and run down, more focus and clarity, felt a stronger immune system, happier, calm and energized in the brain. All good things! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 wanted to wrap 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 March?

The Role of Endotoxins in Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Endotoxins are highly pro-inflammatory components of bacteria like E. coli that can be absorbed through our gut wall and circulate in our bloodstream. Elevated endotoxin levels are associated with a host of health conditions, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, depression, and heart disease. Researchers have found a higher abundance of endotoxins in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease on autopsy. The highest levels of these components are found in foods like meat, perhaps helping to explain why those eating more plant-based may be as much as three times less likely to develop dementia.

 

The Impacts of Plant-Based Diets on Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer

We know there appears to be a significant protective effect of a vegetarian diet for heart disease and all cancers combined, particularly for those eating vegan, but what about breast cancer and prostate cancer specifically? Studies have shown that more plant-based eating is associated with a significant reduction in breast cancer risk, and when it comes to prostate cancer, plant-based foods are associated with either decreased or neutral risk and animal foods are associated with either an increased or neutral risk. We shouldn’t only look at foods to avoid, like meat, eggs, and dairy products; we should also look at foods to embrace, such as vegetables, especially greens, and pulses, like beans, lentils, and chickpeas—foods that Dr. Greger includes in his Daily Dozen to encourage people to add to their meals each day.

 

How Much Erythritol Sweetener Is Too Much?

Erythritol, a sugar alcohol naturally found in small quantities in certain fruits and vegetables, is mass-produced commercially for use as a sweetener. It has a role in actively preventing tooth decay and has been reported to be “totally safe,” with almost no calories. It also has the highest digestive tolerance of all of the sugar alcohols and appears to have anti-oxidant properties and protective effects on the cells that line our arteries. Unfortunately, as I will detail on April 3 in the follow-up Update on Erythritol Sweetener: Are There Side Effects?, a new study published interventional data in mice and in vitro that suggests erythritol may be harmful, and so (*spoiler alert*) I urge everyone to stop consuming it until we know more.

Is Light or Dark Roast Coffee Healthier? and Less Acid Reflux from Low-Acid Coffee?

Coffee is more than just a drink to put some pep in your step. It may influence cholesterol, body weight, your blood sugars, and more, and light and dark roasts have different effects and their own pros and cons, depending on your own health priorities. One example is that dark roasting may destroy up to about 90 percent of chlorogenic acids, the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory phytonutrients thought to account for many of coffee’s benefits, so light roast would be better in this respect.

Don’t be fooled by “low acid” coffee. It doesn’t help with the acid reflux, heartburn, or stomach upset that plagues some coffee drinkers. The low acid is a reference to low chlorogenic acid—which is exactly what we don’t want. Low-acid coffee producers use a slow roasting process that destroys the beneficial compounds. That’s like an orange juice company going out of its way to destroy the vitamin C and then branding its OJ as “low acid.” Technically true, since vitamin C is ascorbic acid, but the OJ maker would be bragging about destroying some of the nutrition, and that’s exactly what low-acid coffee companies are doing.

This month included a bunch of coffee content! In addition to this pair of blogs, we also released a new video about coffee and iron absorption and a Friday Favorites video that asks, Do the Health Benefits of Coffee Apply to Everyone?.

 

Fight Aging with Brain-Healthy Foods and Can Lutein Supplements Benefit Our Brain Function?

Two major risk factors that impact brain aging are chronic, low-grade inflammation and oxidative and nitrosative stress, so antioxidant and anti-inflammatory foods may be helpful. Researchers investigated eight different dietary antioxidants, including vitamins A and E, and only lutein, the major carotenoid concentrated in the brain, was “significantly related to better cognition.”

Dark green leafy vegetables are lutein superstars: A half cup of kale has 50 times more lutein than an egg, and adding just 60 grams of spinach a day for a month can significantly boost macular pigment for most. Based on lutein/zeaxanthin supplement trials, greens may improve visual processing speed in young healthy people and significantly improve cognitive function in young adults and seniors. The earlier we start loading up, the better. Eat your greens!

Do You Need to Be Gluten-Free?

You’re probably familiar with the buzz around “gluten-free diets,” but is going gluten-free safe and beneficial for everyone? Until recently, the scientific world largely maintained that the wheat protein gluten would provoke negative effects only in people with rare conditions, such as celiac disease. Now, an expert panel recognizes gluten sensitivity, which may affect about 1 percent of the population.

There is no evidence to suggest that following a gluten-free diet has any significant benefit in the general population, however, and indeed  there is some evidence that a gluten-free diet may adversely affect gut health in those without celiac or gluten sensitivity. For the overwhelming majority of those who don’t have issues with gluten, whole grains—including the gluten grains of wheat, barley, and rye—are health-promoting and consumption is linked to the reduced risk of chronic disease. Dr. Greger includes two of these grains in his popular Basic BROL, which you can find on our recipes page.

---

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 wanted to wrap 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 March?

The Role of Endotoxins in Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Endotoxins are highly pro-inflammatory components of bacteria like E. coli that can be absorbed through our gut wall and circulate in our bloodstream. Elevated endotoxin levels are associated with a host of health conditions, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, depression, and heart disease. Researchers have found a higher abundance of endotoxins in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease on autopsy. The highest levels of these components are found in foods like meat, perhaps helping to explain why those eating more plant-based may be as much as three times less likely to develop dementia.

 

The Impacts of Plant-Based Diets on Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer

We know there appears to be a significant protective effect of a vegetarian diet for heart disease and all cancers combined, particularly for those eating vegan, but what about breast cancer and prostate cancer specifically? Studies have shown that more plant-based eating is associated with a significant reduction in breast cancer risk, and when it comes to prostate cancer, plant-based foods are associated with either decreased or neutral risk and animal foods are associated with either an increased or neutral risk. We shouldn’t only look at foods to avoid, like meat, eggs, and dairy products; we should also look at foods to embrace, such as vegetables, especially greens, and pulses, like beans, lentils, and chickpeas—foods that Dr. Greger includes in his Daily Dozen to encourage people to add to their meals each day.

 

How Much Erythritol Sweetener Is Too Much?

Erythritol, a sugar alcohol naturally found in small quantities in certain fruits and vegetables, is mass-produced commercially for use as a sweetener. It has a role in actively preventing tooth decay and has been reported to be “totally safe,” with almost no calories. It also has the highest digestive tolerance of all of the sugar alcohols and appears to have anti-oxidant properties and protective effects on the cells that line our arteries. Unfortunately, as I will detail on April 3 in the follow-up Update on Erythritol Sweetener: Are There Side Effects?, a new study published interventional data in mice and in vitro that suggests erythritol may be harmful, and so (*spoiler alert*) I urge everyone to stop consuming it until we know more.

Is Light or Dark Roast Coffee Healthier? and Less Acid Reflux from Low-Acid Coffee?

Coffee is more than just a drink to put some pep in your step. It may influence cholesterol, body weight, your blood sugars, and more, and light and dark roasts have different effects and their own pros and cons, depending on your own health priorities. One example is that dark roasting may destroy up to about 90 percent of chlorogenic acids, the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory phytonutrients thought to account for many of coffee’s benefits, so light roast would be better in this respect.

Don’t be fooled by “low acid” coffee. It doesn’t help with the acid reflux, heartburn, or stomach upset that plagues some coffee drinkers. The low acid is a reference to low chlorogenic acid—which is exactly what we don’t want. Low-acid coffee producers use a slow roasting process that destroys the beneficial compounds. That’s like an orange juice company going out of its way to destroy the vitamin C and then branding its OJ as “low acid.” Technically true, since vitamin C is ascorbic acid, but the OJ maker would be bragging about destroying some of the nutrition, and that’s exactly what low-acid coffee companies are doing.

This month included a bunch of coffee content! In addition to this pair of blogs, we also released a new video about coffee and iron absorption and a Friday Favorites video that asks, Do the Health Benefits of Coffee Apply to Everyone?.

 

Fight Aging with Brain-Healthy Foods and Can Lutein Supplements Benefit Our Brain Function?

Two major risk factors that impact brain aging are chronic, low-grade inflammation and oxidative and nitrosative stress, so antioxidant and anti-inflammatory foods may be helpful. Researchers investigated eight different dietary antioxidants, including vitamins A and E, and only lutein, the major carotenoid concentrated in the brain, was “significantly related to better cognition.”

Dark green leafy vegetables are lutein superstars: A half cup of kale has 50 times more lutein than an egg, and adding just 60 grams of spinach a day for a month can significantly boost macular pigment for most. Based on lutein/zeaxanthin supplement trials, greens may improve visual processing speed in young healthy people and significantly improve cognitive function in young adults and seniors. The earlier we start loading up, the better. Eat your greens!

Do You Need to Be Gluten-Free?

You’re probably familiar with the buzz around “gluten-free diets,” but is going gluten-free safe and beneficial for everyone? Until recently, the scientific world largely maintained that the wheat protein gluten would provoke negative effects only in people with rare conditions, such as celiac disease. Now, an expert panel recognizes gluten sensitivity, which may affect about 1 percent of the population.

There is no evidence to suggest that following a gluten-free diet has any significant benefit in the general population, however, and indeed  there is some evidence that a gluten-free diet may adversely affect gut health in those without celiac or gluten sensitivity. For the overwhelming majority of those who don’t have issues with gluten, whole grains—including the gluten grains of wheat, barley, and rye—are health-promoting and consumption is linked to the reduced risk of chronic disease. Dr. Greger includes two of these grains in his popular Basic BROL, which you can find on our recipes page.

---

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: 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 on lingering Lyme disease.

I apologize if I sound a little funky on audio today. I, yet again, need wisdom tooth surgery. If you’re wondering why does he say, “yet again”, what does that mean? Two years ago, when I went under to get my first impacted wisdom tooth removed, I was not smart enough to get all three removed. I’m not actually sure if intelligence is the main issue here so much as it is just plain fear.

I’m someone who goes back and forth with a lot of this stuff. I know on one end we have completely screwed ourselves over and we actually have made our jaws smaller based on what we’re doing without breastfeeding a lot of kids, and I was not breastfed. We have these high sugar diets, and we now know that affects jaw formation.

So, on one end I know that my wisdom teeth are going to have to be removed. On this other end I’m like, oh my gosh, this is super scary. I don’t want to do this. I know it’s not the worst surgery in the world, don’t get me wrong. But I just hate the idea of risking anything sinus wise or anything in terms of feeling in my lips and tongue.

Speaking to Youth – A Spiritual Experience

I don’t know if I make this clear to some of the people in my life sometimes. They’re always like, what are you scared about a wisdom tooth surgery for? Well, everything I do involves speaking for a living, right? Like everything I do, I speak, and I want to do this for as long as possible. So, the idea that I get the surgery and there’s a risk of that being affected, I think that’s where it comes from more than anything.

Plus, my gosh, man, I hear too many crazy stories about Western medicine on this show. I live in a bubble, right? We’re not against Western medicine by any means. But when you live in a bubble like this, unfortunately, I think it subconsciously creates an inaccurate picture of things that don’t go wrong nearly as often as it might seem when you listen to a show like this. Just something to keep in mind.

But with that said, in terms of speaking for a living, I actually have some really fun announcements on this show. It’s one of the main things that Brianne Gates, my guest today, and I will be talking about. I have been speaking to youth for about five, six years now. It has been one of the best things that has ever happened in my life. It is one of the things that took me from an atheist into being a believer because there is no other way to describe how I feel when I do that work other than it is a spiritual experience, and I will not be stopping it. I’m kind of able to manage basically once, maybe twice a week doing some things for myself and just really lessening the load.

Course Enrollment Advisor

But I did make a decision recently. There was an opportunity that came up at FDN. I won’t say that it was an easy decision, but I’m also someone who is very in tune with his intuition, and I pray. I’m able to kind of go into certain places and just get some clear answers, even if it doesn’t necessarily feel right emotionally in the moment. I can kind of know on this deeper level that something is correct. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I feel like to an audience that listens to this show it’ll make sense to more people than not probably on here or at least you’ll respect it.

So, good news for you guys. It’s kind of cool. What I decided to do is I did come on with FDN. So, now I will not only be doing this podcast for the foreseeable future, but I will also be one of the course enrollment advisors. That means at any time if you are interested in looking into the FDN course or you have more questions I am one of the people that’ll be available for you to talk to. It’s not guaranteed that you’re going to talk to me by any means if you’ve been listening to the show for a while. Unfortunately, again, that’s not a guarantee, but I will be one of the people on there.

It’s a great position. They are very fair about how they work this out. I have done something like this before for FDN, so I knew it’d be cool. And the biggest thing for me is just this ability to work wherever I want and then still have my business supported because we have this in-person business.

Weekly Instagram Lives

I have a few practitioners there for FDN, and so I do more of the sales stuff for the clients there. Then they’ll actually work with the clients, cause that’s their passion, they do that one-on-one. I have always felt more called to sharing the stories and I love these short little interactions that come from quote/unquote “sales calls”. I never really like looking at it like that just because I know how society views that. But I love that. That’s what gets me going.

I love to do these short interactions. It’s one of the reasons I love speaking. You know, you go in for 40 minutes, bam, done, and then there’s novelty from the next time that you go out and do it. I hope that makes sense. Maybe some of you are like that, maybe not. But yeah, I’m on the team now. I will be focused a lot more on FDN than ever before.

I’ll be doing podcasts as a guest for them. I’ll be doing weekly Instagram Lives once I get these last three wisdom teeth out. Yes, I was smart enough, I’m going to get the other three out this time rather than have to do another surgery in two years. That just sounds ridiculous.

Powerhouse Team of Go-Getters

Let us know, please, I’ll send you something if this is true for you, if you have genuinely and truthfully been listening since the last time this happened. We’ve been doing this podcast long enough that this happened before on this show. Shoot us a DM and let me know and I’ll send you something cool over. I’ll figure out something that’ll be interesting.

Outside of that, again, we’re talking to Brianne Gates today. She, at the time of recording this, is one of the other course enrollment advisors. Brianne is awesome. I have only recently gotten to actually interact with her. I already sensed we’d get along well. But when you get to interview someone and really feel their energy and know what they’re all about, I’m like, whoa, we got an awesome powerhouse team here that is the perfect mix of go-getters, but still very in tune with the needs of the other people.

We probably refer more people out half the time than we do take them on. We want to make sure that they are in the perfect program, course, or reading the perfect book, whatever it might be for them. We don’t want to bring people into FDN if we know it can’t help them in the immediate moment or serve a need that they might have today if they’re calling us. It’s just cool to see someone that shares that mix of passion but also empathy for other individuals. You guys are going to love her story today.

Health Space Unmasked – April 1st, 2023

My last announcement, this is big. Please don’t skip through this cause you guys are all going to want to hear this. If you have ever attended one of our Health Space Unmasked events, they are the first Saturday of every month. We bring on a guest lecturer and it is cool. They will stay on for a couple of hours.

Typically, they do a Live Q&A and they really throw down on a niche topic. In the beginning of March, we had Dr. Ruth Roberts. She was great because she talked all about functional medicine for pets. It was the first time we’ve ever even kind of touched on that subject in the Health Space Unmasked.

Then we just recently had her on the podcast as well to answer some different questions. This next guest for April is someone that you guys know very well, probably, if you are not new to this space. It is drum roll, please, Dr. Tom O’Brien. Dr. Tom O’Brien is a great friend of Reed Davis’s, founder of FDN.

He was an author of a book that I read very early on into this journey. I still remember so much of the information I was exposed to in that book because it was profound to me. When you are new to this space and you’re learning about what is actually scientifically available to us, and then you realize it’s not even shared in the mainstream, it’s kind of crazy.

Dr. Tom O’Brien – Gluten & Autoimmunity

So, I read his book, The Autoimmune Fix. I was down at the Jersey Shore, we were on vacation, and I looked like a total nerd. I mean, I usually look like a nerd. But I definitely looked like a nerd that time because everyone was at the beach, and I was reading The Autoimmune Fix by Dr. Tom O’Brien.

He’s just an amazing guy. If you somehow don’t know who he is, he is an expert in all things gluten and autoimmunity and the connections between the two. You will want to be on this one.

These are free events, by the way. They’re not paid events, so you get a ton of great information. You get the Live Q&A. It’s really just a fun place to hang out with other health minded folks. We usually have a hundred plus people hop on Live, let alone on the recording.

I believe Dr. Ruth Roberts set a record for us. I think there was 180 people on Live. She’s just cool. That’s a testament to her and her topic.

So, if you guys want to get involved in that, you can go to the show notes or you can type in your browser fdntraining.com/unmasked.

We are looking forward to seeing you guys on Saturday April 1st. And no, this is not an April Fool’s joke. We are doing this; it’s going to be cool. Without further ado, let us get to today’s episode.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Brianne’s Health Journey

Alright. Hello there, Brianne. Welcome to the Health Detective podcast. How are you?

Brianne Gates: Hi Evan. Thank you. I’m good.

Detective Ev: I’m glad to have you here.

This one’s actually a really cool one, guys, because Brianne and I are in unique positions right now, and we’ll talk about this more as we go down the podcast. But not only are we going to talk about her story today, we have a pretty cool announcement. Right now, as of the time of recording this, Brianne and I are the two course enrollment advisors.

So, if you book a call in the show notes below, like maybe you’ve been considering the course and you want to talk to people that you kind of feel like you know or have built some rapport with, even if they haven’t built it with you, you’ll get to know both of us today pretty well. Then you can book with us, and it’ll be basically like round robins. So, you’ll get one of us and we’re both friendly people; we don’t bite. You can talk to us about the FDN course and see if it is a good fit for you.

But today we’ll treat this just like any other podcast for the most part. Because Brianne is an FDN practitioner, she has a health story. I’ve only seen the very basics of this, so I’m like, whoa, this was a lot going on. You seem like you have a ton of energy now. Good to go. So, I’m excited to dive into your journey.

The first question that we always ask on this show is what were your health symptoms like and when did they start for you?

Lingering Lyme Disease: Antibiotics & More Antibiotics

[00:09:32] Brianne Gates: My health symptoms started at a very young age, like nine months old. I started having ear infections at that time, I’m 43 now.

At that time, antibiotics were the routine. I was given antibiotics at nine months old and then given antibiotics every time I had an ear infection, which then led to more upper respiratory issues, so, chronic sinus infections, strep throat, inflamed tonsils. It was just antibiotic after antibiotic for me for probably 18 years. I took around 30 rounds of antibiotics until I was 18 or 20. We all know now what that does.

My symptoms were like, I had major candida symptoms. I didn’t know at the time what that was, but I had massive sugar cravings. The biggest issue that became more and more prevalent was depression.

You know, what I have learned as a practitioner now, everyone manifests differently, the symptoms, right? Not everybody, if they get Lyme disease gets joint pain. Not everyone gets the same symptoms. My symptoms from a leaky gut and inflamed gut was depression and mood instability. I would be up and be able to do anything. So, I was diagnosed as bipolar in my early twenties because I had this constant up and down which we now know is from a lack of connection from our gut to our brain.

I was totally obsessed with food. I was obsessed with stimulants like diet pills and caffeine. So, I really shot my adrenals really young. I really burned the candle at both ends because I was just exhausted, and I couldn’t focus. I had all of these like, broken brain symptoms as Dr. Tom O’Brien would call them.

Lingering Lyme Disease: SIBO, Fibromyalgia, & Chronic Fatigue

It was really, really difficult to have a linear path to my day. I was constantly hungry, constantly craving something, not able to focus. And then started in hormonal issues, acne, then chronically getting sick. I got diagnosed with Epstein Bar when I was like 16.

When I was 22, that’s when like the bottom fell out. It was like I had no energy anymore. Literally, if I was driving somewhere, I’d have to pull over and sleep in the back of my car because I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I was always bloated, always looked like I was six months pregnant my entire life pretty much. It looked like I was carrying a child, which was really difficult as a lot of people know.

That was the downhill where it’s like nobody knew what to do. SIBO and fibromyalgia were just coming on the map. So, I was diagnosed with both SIBO, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome at around 23, and I changed my entire life then. Like it was gluten free in 2002 when nobody even knew what that was. I just changed my diet, did as much as I could, and a lot shifted. But the depression was something that I never had shift until about four years ago.

[00:12:54] Detective Ev: Wow. There’s more similarities here than there are differences. I actually am surprised by that. One, I know most people listen on the audio. I’ve been working for FDN a little bit. I had no idea you were 43. So, I think you’re a great testament to natural health. This is awesome.

Brianne Gates: Thank you.

Detective Ev: I hope I’m looking that good at my forties.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Getting Rid of the Bugs is Not Enough

So, with the depression though and the antibiotics specifically, I find that very interesting. I’ve never actually even heard someone else word, like, oh, by the age of 18 I was on this many antibiotics. On this show many times I’ve said by the age of 18 I was on like 20 courses. It sounds like it was a little more, but at a certain point, like you’re just frying the gut. I’m sure anyone over 10 courses has completely destroyed their gut, let alone, we’re talking 20, 30.

And it’s interesting that you mentioned that depression was one of your biggest things, cause that’s a huge part of my story too, the acne. Now what I’m interested in, I don’t know how literally you meant this, but you said at 23, which is now, 20 years ago, you got, quote/unquote “diagnosed” with things like SIBO or whatever. Were those doctors actually looking at those conditions 20 years ago?

[00:13:51] Brianne Gates: You know, surprisingly, I went and saw Dr. Mark Pimentel at Cedars-Sinai who is now the leader in small intestinal bacterial overgrowth research. He did coin that phrase that long ago, and I was diagnosed with that. However, at the time, the remedy was antibiotics and I had known enough not to do that.

So, I went and did rounds and different rounds of antimicrobials, herbal antimicrobials, which would work for a time. Then it would come back because I really wasn’t getting to the root cause. You know, just getting rid of the bugs and like going after bugs is not the whole story as we know.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Abnormal Fatigue

[00:14:31] Detective Ev: Right. One other part I related to is funny. Sometimes healing can be slow and we don’t always necessarily recognize all these amazing changes that have happened. I have only met you a few times and we both know that we’re both high energy. That’s pretty clear.

That idea that you were driving and like having to sleep in the back of your car, I’m like thinking about it because we were discussing off air. Now, I never have that issue. Yet I remember before, like even visiting some of my friends in college, I always just planned, if I got like two hours into driving, I would always pull over to fall asleep or something. I never once at that age thought that that was abnormal.

I’m like, oh, well it’s a long drive, of course you’re tired. It’s like, dude. I mean, yeah, four or five hours of driving isn’t fun, but you slept last night. You shouldn’t be needing to do this. I mean, my eyes are like closing on the road. I have to pull over, otherwise it’s dangerous at that point.

Now, I always like to get into the mindset of people, especially those of us who have dealt with symptoms from a very young age. What was your thought process on what was going on with you, let’s say even like 18 through 23? I mean, you’re getting these diagnoses more and more getting added on, especially bipolar, that’s a relatively serious mental health condition to get diagnosed with at the time, and still to this day, right? What is your perspective? Did you think this made sense? Did you just think this is how you were? What was the viewpoint on it?

Lingering Lyme Disease: God Had a Different Plan

[00:15:42] Brianne Gates: You know, I knew deep down that this was not correct. Something was not right. I said, no, no, no. This can’t be my life sentence to have to take drugs.

I had already come from a background where my mom had gone to a chiropractor, had used natural substances. I always loved plants and natural medicine. It was already in me as a lover of nature and believer that God has a plan. So, I was like, you know what? I’m going to just work really hard at learning everything I can.

It was an interesting time because I was a theater major at UCLA. I was going to go and be an actress, and it was like God had a different plan. It was like I just had this huge inspiration to learn everything I could about natural medicine.

Luckily, I lived in Los Angeles because back in the day Erewhon was not the Erewhon that it is now. Erewhon is this grocery store in Los Angeles is this very high-end grocery store. But at the time, when I was in early 2000’s, Erewhon was still this like crunchy granola health food store, a place where people would gather to bring new products and to learn.

So, many days, I would just go into Erewhon and have conversations with people to learn about Chinese medicine. I mean, that was where I started making my own decoctions of Chinese herbs. I would just talk to people on the health food store floor. That is what really led me to having a passion.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Reading & Learning

Then I started working at Erewhon. I learned even more, and I was like, oh my gosh. I kind of melded my training and acting and being an orator and communicator with my knowledge that I was learning. So, I just began teaching people naturally on the floor at Erewhon.

[00:17:38] Detective Ev: That’s awesome.

Brianne Gates: It was just passionate.

Detective Ev: This all connects, I feel like, so much better now. I’m like, oh, okay. And you lived in California. I feel like they would’ve been a little more open to this stuff. I mean, actually part of my story is going out to California to learn from like the natural people. That’s how I found FDN. I went to California on a whim, and I saw Jenn Malecha speaking in a coffee shop about health stuff. Go figure, you know. That’s amazing.

So, at the very least when you were ready to kind of make this transition and say, I want to go this path, but God’s got me going this way, you kind of had those resources to start exploring pretty early on into the natural side and these more holistic modalities.

[00:18:10] Brianne Gates: Yeah. I didn’t let anything stop me. I just would read and learn. And working at Erewhon, you immerse yourself in a health food store on the floor in the natural supplement aisles.

I was like a rep from New Chapter, New Chapter is a big nutritional supplement company. She came in one day and she heard me speaking. She was like, hey, would you be interested in a job? At that time, New Chapter was like the biggest in the industry, like the darling. It had just come out with organic supplements, the first organic nutritional supplement company.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Restoring the Microbiome, Brain, & Energy Levels

To work for a company like that was literally a dream come true. It was the best thing ever. Then after that learning weekly training, and I was training with Paul Shulk, who is a master herbalist (he founded the company) I was then inspired daily to up my game and really understand what I was putting in my body. It was big.

Meditation was very big, and mindfulness was very big in our company at the time too. So, I was being a student of not only physical medicine, but energetic medicine, mind/body medicine. Yeah. I was with New Chapter for eight and a half years.

[00:19:26] Detective Ev: Very cool. So, alright, let’s get the timeline back.

What age did you start a New Chapter and where’s the health at at the time?

[00:19:30] Brianne Gates: I started at New Chapter when I was 27. So, from the time when I was diagnosed with bipolar, fibromyalgia, all of those things, I was at 23. Between 23 and 27 is really where I struggled probably the most with my health and just did random jobs.

I worked at Sony Pictures and did like supporting executive assistant. But it was really, really, really challenging to feel good. It took me probably at least four years to get my microbiome to a place where I wasn’t having so many physiological issues of being able to use my brain like a normal person, being able to have the energy levels of a normal person.

So, when I started with New Chapter when I was 27, I definitely had my energy back. I was much more what you say quote/unquote “normal”.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Finding a Way to Healing

[00:20:19] Detective Ev: Yeah, it’s nice when that finally happens. Especially with young people who deal with this, it’s tough, man.

I’m not making excuses; some people go through worse stuff. But like, one of the things that happens is, especially you and I, we’re obviously go-getter type of people, your heart wants to go do all these things. You have your dreams, I have mine. But when you’re sick, man, like I remember working odd jobs as well, like my parents’ restaurant, Uber, all these different types of things and I’m so fatigued doing them. You feel lazy. You’re like, why can’t I just get this going?

At the very least, if this makes you feel a little better, I really do feel different than other people. Like, I don’t feel necessarily as bad as they do when they only sleep for four hours. You know, they can take some caffeine and it works. If I take caffeine, I feel like heck, like, this isn’t actually working for me.

So, there’s nothing better than when you wake up the one day and finally start to realize, you know what? I’m not falling asleep behind the wheel at the car, or I actually can get through a whole work date. It’s pretty nice.

And for you, I feel like, man, there wasn’t clear structure. You were doing so much research, you had to figure a lot of this stuff out on your own. Four years is a long time, but still without the structure, it is nice that you did get there. That’s a lot of hard work that goes into that, especially when you’re sick.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Medicine, Flare Ups, & Symptoms

Now you had mentioned that the depression never really fully subsided until about four years ago. So, we’re talking about almost 27 to roughly 39 years old this is still one of those lingering things.

I think a lot of people have what I call, it’s not clinical for those listening, but I call them like primary symptoms. The primary symptoms are the ones, like you had almost alluded to in the beginning that when some people have a leaky gut, they get this or that, you just get this. For me it’s my skin. That’s the first thing that will always show, and depression second for me. So, I will break out before anything else.

I might still be in a great mood. If I keep pushing that wrong thing, shortly after, I noticed, ah, I don’t really want to get outta bed today, or, you know, I don’t have any motivation to do anything when normally I’m a freaking nut. That’s what happens.

So, what was going on in that almost 12-year span where like, you know a lot about this, but still this one symptom is kind of lingering?

[00:22:09] Brianne Gates: Exactly. It was really, really frustrating. You know, I did, I was on and off medication for depression, bipolar. I was diagnosed bipolar II. I wasn’t as extreme as bipolar I. But I did take medication pretty regularly on and off. I have to say healing is not linear. So, I did really, really good for a while and then I’d kind of have a flare up and have symptoms again and things like that.

Lingering Lyme Disease: A Lyme Diagnosis

It was the biggest blessing. People might say I’m crazy, but it was being diagnosed with Lyme disease. When I was diagnosed with Lyme in 2018, I’d eaten some fish in Florida that had ciguatera or mold. I got so sick that I had an episode of Bell’s Palsy on an airplane by myself. It was very short, but I knew what was happening. I was like, on the airplane, gosh, this is crazy. The whole side of my face is drooping and I’m here by myself on an airplane.

Then the week after, I had diarrhea for five days, had to go to the hospital. I just chalked it up to being a really bad case of food poisoning. Well, it was like a downhill decline from that point. I lost about a half a head of my hair, and if you can see, I’ve got a really full head of hair. So, losing half a head of my hair was a huge wake up, like, what’s going on with my body.

Again, the fatigue started coming in, depression started coming in. I was really bloated. At that point, I think the only reason I was diagnosed, I got very lucky. A functional doctor, he tested me regular blood test, which usually doesn’t come back with Lyme. We all know Lyme lives in the tissue; it doesn’t live in the bloodstream. It’s rare that you’re going to get a positive if you’re just looking in the blood without provoking.

At the time, I was using these patches called Life Wave. Are you familiar with Life Wave?

Detective Ev: I’m not familiar with Life Wave, no.

Brianne Gates: They are these like biophoton resonance patches. It’s very out there, but it really works.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Detoxification

I was using these biophoton patches. What it did is it irritated the Lyme bugs – the Borrelia – enough, that they started mounting an immune response and then going into my bloodstream. So, I was lucky enough to get a diagnosis even before Lyme was on my radar.

[00:24:22] Detective Ev: Well, it’s hard to say that it’s not working. I mean, that’s crazy.

[00:24:24] Brianne Gates: Yeah. I really attribute it to the Life Wave provoking the bugs out of their hiding place, it started making them uncomfortable. It was a glutathione patch that I used. So, from then that led me to a deep dive into obviously biofilm colonies and how these bugs can live in your body and evade your immune system for forever, like literally. That really, really helped me.

Also, I learned a lot about the different phases of detoxification and the absolute, so crucial role of bile. I am a bile like expert. I just think bile is so important that you need to clean the bile. I started focusing on what Dr. Kelly Halderman calls phase 2.5 detox, which is like in between phases two and three. Really cleaning up the bile so that those toxins that get stuck in the bile can be removed, and that my detox pathways can be open. So much of it, when you are chronically ill for so many years, your lymph is full, your bile is full, everything is just full up.

The Lyme world really opened me into understanding how to open those detox pathways, how to work so that we can get at these root infections that are causing the inflammation, causing the biotoxins that were in me. It was that cleaning up the body, cleaning up those infections.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Redirecting Neural Pathways

Also, after you do all that, I rewrote the neural pathways with doing DNRS, Annie Hopper’s DNRS program. And I also did a couple of rounds of psychedelics, specifically ayahuasca which then I felt retrained my brain. So, doing the DNRS, I did EMDR also.

I did these things to kind of put my brain, instead of going down the same neural pathways that they’ve gone down when I’m full of these bugs, because these neural pathways are kind of feeding the bugs. There are certain microorganisms that wait until our stress levels are high, and then they capitalize on that and create more inflammation and create the situation that’s right for them.

Imagine that so much of my neural pathways were being funneled towards these microbes. I feel that it’s important to retrain the brain. Now, anyone can do whatever they feel like, they don’t have to do psychedelics. But that was the path that I chose. I have not had any depression since.

[00:27:03] Detective Ev: Wow. What a story. To be clear then, the 2018 diagnosis of the Lyme implies that you had Lyme before this, it’s just saying that you finally got diagnosed.

Brianne Gates: Correct.

Detective Ev: I mean, they can’t even guess then when you would’ve actually had this.

[00:27:16] Brianne Gates: Yeah, and I’ve never had a tick bite. I grew up in Southern California. People should know that you don’t need a tick bite to get Lyme disease.

[00:27:23] Detective Ev: Absolutely. I know that it doesn’t have to be a tick, but how common is it there? Because like here where I live in Pennsylvania, you won’t even believe this, this is nuts.

Lingering Lyme Disease: A Vector-Borne Illness

They do a map every year of all the counties in PA. We have so many ticks that they’ll actually show you what percentage of the deer tick out here have it? My county was the lowest and 25% of the deer tick was carrying Lyme. The highest county had like 48%.

So, when my girlfriend moved out here, and I actually got her dog sitting next to me right now. He’s a 90-pound big boy, great dog. When he ran through the field for the first time, I’m so used to it out here and just assuming people have the shots and stuff, but she came from Washington. So, when he ran through the field, he has like 20 ticks on him. She’s like, why are all these ticks on him?

I’m like, well, does he have his thing? She’s like, no, we don’t get shots for that where I live. And I’m like, he needs these shots, right? He needs these things, medications for preventing this stuff from sticking to him. My point is like, how common is it for someone that grows up in Southern California to get this from something else?

[00:28:17] Brianne Gates: You know, I don’t know how common it is. I think it’s becoming more and more common. I don’t want to scare anyone, but they call them vector-borne illnesses, which means anything that bites or literally draws blood can carry these. Even like having cats, like cat scratch illness is bartonella, that’s a co-infection that usually is seen with Lyme.

There are lots of different ways that we can be around these types of vectors, animals that could be carrying it. It’s more common than I think is being talked about.

Lingering Lyme Disease: How Common Is It?

[00:28:55] Detective Ev: Okay then from an anecdotal perspective, I’m kind of curious. When you lived in LA like if you went and talked to someone, I’m wondering what percentage of people would know about Lyme. I could walk down this town and talk to a hundred people and all 100 have heard of Lyme cause it’s that common around here. Now they don’t know about the chronic implications, but every single person, that’s just something that you learn about when you’re young here. I’m saying is it common enough that if you talk to a hundred random people in LA would there be anyone that hasn’t heard of this, do you think?

[00:29:18] Brianne Gates: Not anymore. It’s very common now. Yeah. At least they’ll know somebody that’s had it. I don’t hear, very often, stories of success with Lyme because you have to come at it in multiple different ways. Because of my training as an FDN, I have that foundation that has helped me deal with the Lyme. Also, I have a couple of mentors. You know, one mentor, he’s an FDN and his name is Scott Forsgren. Do you know Scott Forsgren?

[00:29:47] Detective Ev: I feel like I’ve seen his name, but I don’t know him well.

[00:29:49] Brianne Gates: He’s the better health guy. This guy, honestly, he has helped me so much with the people that he has on, and he’s an FDN. He was the one that I listened to so much. Then I also was like, what’s FDN? If this guy, so brilliant, is an FDN, I want to know what FDN is.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Helping People During the Pandemic

[00:30:06] Detective Ev: Nice. I actually don’t even know this, when did you go through FDN itself?

[00:30:10] Brianne Gates: 2019 and I graduated 2020, which was a good time for that cause we all know we were all just stuck inside.

[00:30:16] Detective Ev: Yeah, it was weird.

You and I talked before, it’s like I know that you have your practice, and we’ll talk about that. We are people that like to have some other variety in our life too. It’s not like 50 hours a week of clients. That was the one time I really fell back on that certification. I just started talking about it more online.

It was amazing how many people were willing to sign up with me on a fairly short notice basis just by sharing some things on Facebook and Instagram. I think it was a good time too because people hadn’t run outta money yet, you know what I mean? It was like 2020. Yeah, I’ll spend on some stuff, you know, only two more weeks to flatten the curve. Right? So, we’ll be good to go.

And then it’s like, all right, nice. I’m glad that they got to work with me cause we did help a lot of people out. That was a crazy time and could have given anyone depression, even if they don’t have anything else wrong with them. It’s enough to make the average person depressed. The last thing we need is you having all these other chronic issues going on that you don’t know about and then the whole world’s shutting down.

Lingering Lyme Disease: FDN Provided a Foundation & Structure

So, what did you gain from FDN? What I mean by that is like you’re one of the rare people that we bring on that was like fairly well versed prior to going through FDN. I mean, you’ve been in this for a while. You’ve clearly done a ton of research. You made great progress. So, what did FDN offer someone like you who already has a lot of knowledge?

[00:31:18] Brianne Gates: I mean, it is a game changer. It was such a game changer for me because I had all this auxiliary knowledge that came from all these different places.

I had done different workshops and I became a certified herbalist. It was almost two years of schooling for that. But I had never had this foundation, which gave me a structure from how to work, that was so important, and learning to be a really good health detective. So, asking the right questions, if you’re not asking the right questions, which has a lot to do with epigenetics. Like, where did you grow up?

When I ask them questions about what environment they grew up in, they’re like, no one has ever asked me that question. No one has ever asked me so many of these questions that are so pertinent. Were you breastfed? Were you vaginally delivered? You know, how many rounds of antibiotics have you taken? You would be shocked at how many people I’ve worked with in the Midwest where they grew up in farm areas with really big agriculture where it’s like intense spraying of these crops. Now they’re starting to have like neurological issues.

Lingering Lyme Disease: The Many Things FDN Teaches

So FDN brought me to have this perspective of, you need to be using these certain intake forms that really give us a roadmap as to where to go next. That was one thing. Another thing was being able to correlate. So, here’s symptoms and symptoms are so important, but how can we also have this reflection or mirror, like what’s going on in the labs that are going to correlate?

The more that I saw case studies with the program, the more I would get a reflex, oh, okay. That correlates to that symptom. It was that training of constantly seeing these case studies that helped me to be a better practitioner and be able to identify more quickly what these symptoms are correlated to.

Then lastly the D.R.E.S.S. protocol, which I know you’ve probably talked about so many times here, but really, that also we have to, as holistic practitioners, we have to address everything. I come from a background, I’m a nutritional supplement expert. I’ve spent definitely over 15,000 hours dealing with supplements, talking about supplements. That’s not the whole picture.

The whole picture is not just supplements or just diet. We have to address stress, we have to address trauma, we have to talk about all of those things. In functional medicine, a lot of them just want to throw supplements at you, which is great; supplements help. Trust me, like, thank God for them. But every letter in that acronym has its value.

[00:33:53] Detective Ev: That’s awesome. It is interesting to hear from someone again who had like a very well-versed background in this and still sees value from the course because it’s so fascinating.

Lingering Lyme Disease: FDN Pulled All the Learning Together

We get on the other side, there’s people that are coming from a job as an accountant. They know about health, but they’re like just getting into the natural side. They take FDN and they have a completely different experience where they get a ton of value in a different way.

It’s just always so cool that this course can somehow actually work for people that are brand new, but then also be very helpful. I mean, we have MDs that go through the course. It’s just always interesting to me that it can still serve these populations in very unique and genuine ways. They’ll say, this did work for me and did help me.

So, were you working with clients to some degree before this? I’m getting the timeline right. 27 started at that huge supplement thing. You did that for eight and a half years you said. So that takes us, roughly to 35, and then there’s a gap. What were you doing in the last couple of years?

[00:34:40] Brianne Gates: I worked for Life Extension, which is another nutritional supplement company.

[00:34:44] Detective Ev: Nice. So, you’ve been out there.

[00:34:46] Brianne Gates: Yeah, it’s driven, you know, a hundred thousand miles in my 13 years as an educator for nutritional supplements. So, I worked for Life Extension for three years, and then that’s when I really started taking seriously my certifications.

So, I did the 18 months as an herbalist certification and then did a Yoga and Ayurveda certification because I had that on my heart. I love Ayurveda as well, and I love Chinese medicine too, so I’ve done a deep dive on Chinese medicine. Then FDN was my pulling it all together. I have been working with clients since 2020.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Brianne’s Ideal Client

[00:35:22] Detective Ev: Nice. All right. Again, we’ll talk about this a little bit more at the very end. But I know that the client thing is not the full-time thing for you. There are other things going on, that again, the more you talk, the more I realize, this person’s very similar to me.

I get this, but you obviously serve a specific type of clientele probably more often than not. So, who is a person that if they’re listening today and they’re already liking this, like, wow, this woman’s really cool. I’m relating to her a lot. Who is the ideal client for you that comes and works with you? What might they be dealing with?

[00:35:47] Brianne Gates: Definitely someone who is fatigued, doesn’t know what is going on and why they’re feeling this way. I really have a heart for behavioral health and mood disorders because of my background and because I really understand how to reconnect those pathways from the brain to the gut.

It would be somebody who is dealing with mood issues and fatigue. I mean, I know exactly what to do in those cases. Usually, you know, chronic illness, mold illness, a lot of people don’t know that they were exposed to mold. Mold is very insidious. Fungal infections are really insidious. I think they are more common than we talk about.

Fungus is just really brilliant. You know, all of the microbes are brilliant because of how they replicate and how they communicate with each other. But fungus is another story I think, and we gotta understand how to knock fungus back so it’s not overgrown and really taking over your neural pathways and messing with your nervous system.

Lingering Lyme Disease: The Brevity of Life

[00:36:46] Detective Ev: Sure. That’s cool that you serve that population because you know our time here is very short. It’s strange, I don’t know what happened in the last two years. I’ve always kind of been, not always in a negative way, sometimes just a truly curious way, I’ve always been fascinated since five years old about this idea that we have this temporary experience on this planet.

I remember looking at the adults in my life, I’m like, how are you guys not preoccupied with this? I’m preoccupied with this idea that we just come here and then we leave. This last two years has been very interesting for me where I’m like, wow, this is really short.

One through 18, maybe it’s just because of school and school sucks, I felt like it dragged on. I’m like, okay. A hundred years or 80 years, 90 years, that’s a long time. Then the curse, I guess, of being involved in so many things that I do love, you’ve had this experience probably too, with, again, doing things that you’re passionate about, is yes, your days are amazing, but the time flies. I’m like 70, 80 years, that’s not as much as I thought it was at one time.

My point in mentioning that though, is chronic illness in general is not something we want to be dealing with in this short time that we have here, let alone depression and these other mood issues like thinking maybe that there’s no point to our life having that hopelessness or at worst suicidal ideation when our time here is already so short. We want to enjoy it to the best of our abilities. I just so appreciate and empathize you serving those communities. That’s amazing.

Lingering Lyme Disease: A Product Called Bravo

Can I ask then too, since it’s been two years and you are like super focused, I’m guessing that like you give your all to your clients just like you seem to do with other things. Is there like one or two really cool client testimonials that sticks out? Maybe just awesome stories to the degree that you’re able to share the information, I’m just curious if anything sticks out.

[00:38:16] Brianne Gates: So, I’ve actually worked with some children. I have a friend of mine who I met at Arewhon years and years ago. She’s now an acupuncturist in Louisiana and she’s just brilliant. Her name is Emily Keity. Together we have worked with some different types of population. One of them was a child.

Because of my knowledge with the microbiome and the gut-brain, I learned about a product called Bravo. Bravo is the GcMAF protein that is put into a yogurt substance, or you could take it in a freeze-dried capsule. But this is a miracle substance, created by Dr. Marco Ruggiero, can, I’m saying “can”, may, and I’m not making any claims here, but can help create these neural connections back between the brain and the gut.

Lingering Lyme Disease: Client Success Stories

One of them was a two-year-old little girl who had trouble speaking. She really hadn’t spoken much, and as we know, girls speak before boys. So, a little girl, she had been two years old and still wasn’t verbal, was a concern for her parents. As soon as we gave her that Bravo yogurt, within two days she started speaking. It was huge.

Just having the wherewithal to be able to say, hey, why don’t we try this? Why don’t we try to get that intelligence back into the gut? That was a huge one, and it was something that I didn’t have to work that hard to get to happen. It was just a suggestion that I made based on my own personal experience with Bravo and my research. That was a great one.

Then I had another friend who has overcome breast cancer and I supported her during that. It was funny because I just kind of started my journey as an FDN, so I was a little unsure. I was like, okay, I want to make sure I’m giving her all of the correct support. She also saw a functional holistic MD, which is really rare, like an oncologist MD who was holistic minded. My suggestions really were almost exactly what the MD had suggested. That made me feel really good and helped her have the confidence to do a more holistic route with the breast cancer. Now she’s thriving.

[00:40:28] Detective Ev: This is so cool. Especially with the two-year-old man. I mean, not that the cancer thing isn’t amazing.

Where to Find Brianne Gates

It’s probably biased because we went through things as young people. I have like this extreme sympathy and empathy for kids. I’m like, dude, they didn’t ask for this. They come into this world and then we give them all these toxins and all this crazy stuff’s going on. You know, that’s supposed to be like these innocent years where you haven’t really made any choices to lead to the bad outcomes that you’re getting yet.

So, to help them rewrite their childhood and even their entire life, honestly that’s amazing. Of all the client testimonials I’ve asked for on here, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a story like that from a non-verbal two-year-old not only becoming verbal but becoming verbal in a matter of a couple days because of something very specific. That’s just very interesting.

[00:41:06] Brianne Gates: I’m saying this cause that GcMAF protein in the form of Bravo is just a miracle.

[00:41:12] Detective Ev: Okay. Check it out. I might have some myself.

I’m going to transition after this into more core stuff for 10 minutes and it actually might be an audio we might be able to use with some of our people that we talk to in the future.

So, where can people find you? Again, it’s not like you want to take an abundance of clients, but if someone really feels called and like, hey, I love this woman. I think she’d relate to me a lot and can help me. Where could they find you in your practice?

Well, I have a website and it’s my name, briannegates.com.

[00:41:41] Brianne Gates: Well, I have a website and it’s my name, briannegates.com. You can go on there. And I’m also on Instagram @vibe_engineer.

Business Tips: How Do I Make FDN a Career?

[00:41:47] Detective Ev: Excellent. We’ll have that in the show notes for you guys, of course. Then for the last 10 minutes here, while I have you on, I think we have to take the opportunity to really talk about some of the course stuff.

So, Brianne, I had done course enrollment stuff before, and during the podcast left for a little bit, came back recently. Now you’ve been here for at least several months doing this and killing it, right? Just having so many people join us. What I love about our current way of doing this now is we are so focused on discerning whether or not our program really is a good fit for someone at a given time so the people that we’re bringing in are really meant to be doing this at a given time. We might give recommendations for something else if we believe that’s better, or maybe they just have to pause something in their life first before they could come and do this.

What are some like really common questions that you’re finding, you’re getting asked that you wish they kind of knew maybe before they came on some of these calls? Because again, we could repurpose this audio, we could do a whole separate podcast too, but I think this might be useful today to talk about some of this.

[00:42:41] Brianne Gates: Yeah. Great. You know, I think something that people want to know is like, how do I make a career of this? I think a lot of people are new into being an entrepreneur. I was, I’d always been an employee. So, having my own business, how did I navigate that?

Business Tips: Tell Your Story

One thing that I found that was really crucial in making this my own, making this a career that was viable, was telling my story, number one in a place where people could identify with me.

On my website is a great place for just to make your bio. What have you gone through? Most people that we talk to have a story, have a healing journey. That is what other people are drawn to. It’s not your accolades, it’s not where you went to school. It’s so much about what you have overcome yourself so that people can identify with you. I think that is a calling card.

I think, putting on there also your services, like what do you like to do, what kind of tests do you offer, your services. Then what I did is I made a PowerPoint presentation, very short one that I converted into a PDF. I would attach it to emails and send it out to doctors because I wanted to work in a clinic setting.

Nobody told me to do this. Nobody was like, well, this is how you get a job, and this is how you do this. It was more like, I looked at different doctors in my area or where I wanted to work, and I would just email their office and see if they needed my services.

Interestingly enough, I really got my feet wet working with an allopathic physician. He was not a functional medicine physician. He was like, hey, I really want to get into functional medicine and I’m going to bring you on. I’m going to bring you on to do all my functional medicine. I’m going to bring you on, we will work together and create some programs for the clients.

Business Tips: There are Options, Be Innovative

So that’s a great way for people, if they feel like, hmm, you know, I’m going to do the entrepreneurial thing. I’m going to have my own clients, but why not reach out and work like two days a week in a clinic and offer your services to a doctor that’s probably overwhelmed, probably wants to get into functional medicine and literally doesn’t have the time, doesn’t have the knowledge yet.

I did that two different times. I worked in clinics. You know, people don’t really realize that that’s an option. Working in a compounding pharmacy, just helping them sell supplements and then maybe doing some testing. There are so many different ways if you’re creative and have the gusto to put yourself out there.

[00:45:07] Detective Ev: Very cool. You just seem like you’re very innovative with this stuff. Like yeah, no one has to tell you to do it. What can they say? No. And it turned out very well for you.

Brianne Gates: Exactly like, oh, well.

Detective Ev: Yeah. This is like sales stuff 101. Right? And it applies for entrepreneurship. Cause entrepreneurship, you’re going to have to sell something at some point. If you never ask, the answer is already no. The worst thing that can happen when you ask is you get a no. Well, you already had that. So, it can only be a yes or something that you already had. You gotta get into that mindset.

FDN Job Opportunities

The person that I actually ended up on the call with after our meeting today was a chiropractor. I didn’t even realize, but I’d already talked to the other individual. She works in his practice, and he wants to send to her through FDN because he can do adjustments, right? It would take him the same amount of time to go through FDN as her. But the difference is it would take her seven, eight years to go through chiropractic school versus eight months roughly on average to go through FDN.

You know, six years ago when I went through the course, I mean, you could have created it for yourself, but I wouldn’t necessarily have said there was an abundance of opportunities to work with other people. But now in AFDNP, which is our professionals’ group post-graduation, there are weekly job opportunities for individuals, and this is increasing. It’s tough to say that it won’t become more than weekly soon enough where these chiropractors, acupuncturists, even MDs, are seeing the value of having someone functionally oriented in their clinic. They’re like, okay, we’ll go hire FDNs.

And these are not $15 an hour job, guys. I saw someone listing for $130. Now don’t get your hopes up, that’s not all the time. But I was like, the fact that someone values this certification enough that they are saying we will hire one of your grads and we’re going to pay them $130 an hour. I was like, That’s amazing. What a testament to what we’re doing, you know?

You Have to Demonstrate You Know the FDN Course Material

[00:46:47] Brianne Gates: Absolutely.

You know every single day I get a call from someone who has been referred to us by a practitioner. So usually, these people are being referred by doctors who’ve heard about us. And one thing I always tell people is that FDNs are held to a higher standard.

You don’t just pass FDN with a 70% or better and like, oh, we hope that you learned the material. It’s like, no, no, no. You have to demonstrate that you know this material. And you demonstrate that three times, as you know, during the course.

People are starting to hear more and more about the level of efficacy that these FDNs have, and they want that for themselves.

[00:47:30] Detective Ev: Yeah. I think one of the other things too that people come and talk about a lot is like, how feasible is this to actually go work online and do my own thing? The truth is, yes, there are many characteristics and factors that go into an individual succeeding in that type of thing. But what FDN now has gotten so good at when we offer the business school, and this is something that you can incorporate now when you enroll. I mean, this wasn’t even around when Brianne went through. Now you can incorporate this into your monthly payments when you purchase the course. It’s amazing and they discount it greatly.

So, you can literally have no business experience, no health experience, and go through FDN, you have the tools necessary to help a ton of people. And if you need to take advanced courses to help even crazier, rare cases, you’re more than welcome to do that. But FDN will get you pretty darn far.

FDN Business School is Business in a Box

On top of that, no business experience, no problem. We created something business oriented just for FDNs. That covers the taxes, the emails, the lead stuff online, the websites. I mean, it’s literally everything. It’s kind of amazing to see that we’re this one-stop shop now.

This is always tough cause, of course, we’re the course enrollment people. But I think a lot of people listen regularly to the show, it seems like that with our stats. I know that they, hopefully, trust me when I say this. When I see that the course with the business school added in is only $10 grand, I honestly think one of our biggest problems is that we undersell this. We should literally be charging more. I mean, you can go out and start a whole career with this and charge significant money.

[00:48:53] Brianne Gates: That’s true. It’s really like a business in a box in a way. It’s something that you can be so proud of that you feel like you’re making a huge contribution to society.

Covid was a great thing as much as it was detrimental to so many different aspects of our lives. It really opened people’s eyes to alternative choices in medicine. More and more people are like, hey, I’m going to try this.

I want to make this point. Yes, you do pay out of pocket. That is how it is. But so many people aren’t getting any help from insurance-based healthcare. And they’re like, why am I paying all this money monthly, yearly to go nowhere? People are willing to pay now for their health. This is not, you know, 10 years ago or even three years ago. Things are absolutely changing and rapidly. People want real healthcare that’s holistic like FDN provides.

FDN Isn’t Going Out of Business

[00:49:49] Detective Ev: Yeah. It’s an amazing time. It sucks that people are so sick. But there’s no shortage of business is the way to say it.

The best thing that could ever happen is we do go out of business and the reason we would is because there’s just no sick people. Guys, unfortunately we got a long time before that’s going to happen. You know what I mean? I don’t even know if that’s going to be in our lifetime the way things are going.

I really thought the pandemic would be the time. We’re like, oh, everyone’s at home. They’re going to be eating better. The stats show the opposite. Like literally people got more unhealthy than they were before. I get it cause like it’s easier to make excuses, I guess, and we’re stressed. Everyone was stressed out, so fair enough. But I was like, oh, this is it. This is the time. No people need us now more than ever.

We got about one or two minutes left in the show. Again, I think it actually, we’ll talk to our team, but Brianne it might be cool if we got on together to do a shorter episode just focused on stuff that we’re getting together as course enrollment. Like what are the top questions? And then when we have people reaching out to us, we have the course tour of course, but we can send this to people from like an enrollment advisor’s perspective.

Brianne Gates: That would be great.

Detective Ev: We’ll definitely humor that and talk about that in another time. We want to finish up though, with the signature question. I still want to include you in this, of course.

Signature Podcast Question

If you guys want to book with us by the way to talk, one of the links in the show notes will be fdntraining.com/call. It will take you to the page where you can book either Brianne or I, or again, it might have some round robin system. I promise we’re both cool. Even though you sound really cool after today. She got to talk more though, that’s not fair. No, I’m kidding.

But the signature question I want to ask you today is, if we could give you a magic wand and you could wave it and get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, so you could choose for them to do one thing or you could get them to stop doing one thing, what is the one thing that Brianne would get them to do?

[00:51:33] Brianne Gates: I would get them to love themselves more. What I mean by that, cause that could take a lot of different paths, but to love themselves in the way where they manage their stress response. They understand where these triggers are coming from so that they take a pause. They take time out of their day to pray, to meditate, to love themselves and feel their feelings so that they can show up less reactive and really show up in their lives with intention coming from a place of, not an old behavior pattern, coming from a place of love.

[00:52:10] Detective Ev: 20 years of health experience, guys. Obviously, she knows a lot and that’s still the answer. I hope people actually think about that one and take that to heart.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for coming on today. I’m excited to hopefully have you on again soon and we’ll talk about some course stuff.

Brianne Gates: Awesome. Thanks Evan.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

For more podcasts with great info like this, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/health-detective-podcast/.

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

The grocery store is packed with ingredients that support our health – and in many cases, our favourite ingredients can have multiple uses. While there are a ton of versatile ingredients, few are as functional as apple cider vinegar (ACV). There are so many uses for apple cider vinegar, from culinary to beauty care to home cleaning.

Apple cider vinegar is a fermented food made from apples and we like to buy unpasteurized and organic ACV to reap the full spectrum of benefits. Grab yourself a bottle (or two) and start using apple vinegar in a myriad of ways!

20 Uses for Apple Cider Vinegar

1. As a digestive aid.

ACV helps to boost our ability to produce stomach acid, an important part of the digestive process. Start off with 1 tsp, either on its own or in a bit of water, and add more as needed.

Find more delicious foods that help to support digestion.

2. For pickling vegetables.

We love our fermented foods and apple cider vinegar is a good one to use to add some fermented goodness to quick pickles, fire cider, or for flavour at the end of fermentation. Just don’t use it as a base for lactic acid fermentation – like for fermented veggies such as kimchi or sauerkraut – as this will disrupt the fermenting process.

3. For salad dressings and marinades.

ACV adds great flavour to your favourite salad dressing recipes and marinades.

4. As a tooth whitener.

Mix some ACV with baking soda and water and the foaming action will help to whiten your teeth. Watch how to do it here.

5. To combat bad breath.

Mouth feeling a little funky? Apple cider vinegar can help. The acetic acid in ACV can fight bacteria, so try an ACV gargle or rinse with 1 Tbsp of ACV in warm or room temperature water.

6. As a shampoo rinse.

One of the many uses of apple cider vinegar is for healthy hair. ACV revitalizes the scalp, detangles and adds shine (especially if you’re on the no-shampoo train). Start off with 2 Tbsp of ACV mixed with 8 ounces of water. You’ll probably need to experiment with this ratio, as everyone’s hair is different, so adjust as needed.

7. As a skin toner.

Apple cider vinegar can help remove oil and rebalance skin pH, plus its anti-bacterial properties may improve acne.

Grab a recipe for apple cider vinegar toner, and learn more about how to achieve healthy hair, skin and nails naturally here.

8. As a candida treatment.

Apple cider vinegar’s anti-fungal properties may benefit those with candida, particularly candida in the mouth.

9. To fight foot + toenail fungus.

Soak your feet in apple cider vinegar and water (or apply topically) to address foot and toenail fungus.

10. In home cleaning products.

Home cleaners are one of our favourite uses for apple cider vinegar! Grab some ACV and baking soda from your pantry and mix it with water and some essential oils. You can use this all-purpose cleaner everywhere.

Find more non-toxic home cleaning ideas and a free checklist.

---

Curious to learn more about cooking, culinary nutrition and therapeutic ingredients? The Culinary Nutrition Expert Program, our online 14-week certification, empowers you to use your kitchen with confidence to cook for yourself, your family and clients. And you get to eat your homework!

---

11. To prevent fruit flies.

Mix some apple cider vinegar, dish soap and water in a small bowl and leave it in your kitchen to keep fruit flies away. Sounds odd, but it works!

12. To make vegan buttermilk.

Mix 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar in your plant-based milk of choice and let it sit for 5 minutes. Then use as you would buttermilk in your gluten-free and/or dairy-free baking recipes.

13. Add it to a sitz bath

Hemorrhoid sufferers can find some relief by sitting in a sitz bath with 1/4 cup ACV and warm or cold water. This is especially helpful for women who have pregnancy-related hemorrhoids!

14. Add it to hot water before poaching eggs.

Love poached eggs, but find it challenging to make them at home? Adding a splash of apple cider vinegar to the water helps the egg whites firm up more quickly, so you won’t end up with a mess.

15. To help balance blood sugar.

Research indicates that apple cider vinegar (and other vinegars as well) can improve insulin sensitivity.

16. To improve metabolic disorders.

Animal research shows promise for ACV to help reduce body weight, cholesterol levels and inflammation.

17. Add it to your braising liquid.

If you love braised vegetables and meat, add 2 Tbsp of apple cider vinegar to the pan for an extra tangy flavour.

18. Use it in bone broth.

Pour a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar into the pot or slow cooker with the bones when making bone broth. This helps to pull the nutrients and minerals from the bones into the water.

Learn more about broths and stocks, and how to make them at home.

19. As a natural weed-repellent.

Put apple cider vinegar and water into a spray bottle and spritz on weeds in your garden for a pesticide-free and herbicide-free weed killer.

Want to start a garden? Discover the basics of growing your own food step-by-step.

20. To get rid of pet fleas.

Doggie lovers rejoice: use 1 part ACV and 1 part water and apply to your dog’s fur to repel fleas. It’s a good idea to do a small test spot first to see if your dog has a reaction to it before doing their whole body.

Image: iStock/bhofack2 

What is the relationship between the consumption of eggs and other cholesterol-rich foods and cancers of the colon, breast, endometrium, pancreas, and throat?

In 1969, a correlation analysis was performed by a Dr. Gregor—no relation, and he spelled it wrong—and his colleagues. They found a rather tight correlation between animal protein intake and intestinal cancer mortality. You can see a graph of these results at 0:15 in my video Friday Favorites: Dietary Cholesterol and Cancer. In the 1970s, this relationship was extended to include breast cancer, too, and animal fat was implicated as well. Animal protein and dietary cholesterol kind of travel together in the same foods. So, it isn’t surprising that “there is significant correlation between high consumption of cholesterol-containing food items and the world-wide distribution of colon cancer.” A “large and highly significant” correlation exists, even after controlling for other dietary factors, such as animal fat and fiber, “supporting the possibility of a causal relationship between cholesterol intake and colon cancer.”

So, is dietary cholesterol co-carcinogenic for human colon cancer? Researchers decided to try to find out by feeding some to rats. In one study, researchers injected rats with a carcinogen, and the cholesterol-eating rats got tumors in half the time and they all died, whereas most of the rats in the cholesterol-free group survived. But “the relevance of animal data to the human situation is debatable.” How would the cholesterol and cancer link even work?

As humans, we don’t need to consume any cholesterol, since our body makes all that it needs. When we do consume extra cholesterol, there’s a limit to the amount our body can absorb. So, “where does the excess go?” Down to our colon. In this way, the cells lining our colon, where colon cancer arises, “are therefore constantly exposed to fecal cholesterol.” Should a cancerous or precancerous polyp arise, might all of that extra cholesterol help it grow faster? Indeed, the amount of cholesterol we eat “could thus be a factor determining the rate of development, growth, or spread of such a tumor.” Back in the 1970s, this was all just speculation, but the researchers realized that if it were true, that would be good news, since a low-cholesterol diet, cutting down on meat, dairy, eggs, and junk—the only foods that really have cholesterol—would be a “feasible, inexpensive, and without risk” way to help prevent and treat colon cancer. So, what’s the 40-year update?

Country-by-country correlation can never do more than just inspire studies like this: “the largest nationwide population-based case-control study [to date] to assess the association between cholesterol intake and several types of cancer.” The researchers found that “dietary cholesterol intake was positively associated with risk of cancers of the stomach, colon, rectum, pancreas, lung, breast (mainly postmenopausal), kidney, bladder and NHL,” non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, or bone marrow. The flipside? “A diet low in cholesterol may play a role in the prevention of several cancers.” This means cutting down on meat, dairy, and eggs, the very foods that may increase risk of cancer.

“Thus, the findings of this study should essentially be viewed as an indication that a diet rich in meat, dairy products, eggs (and hence animal fat) is an unfavorable indicator of the risk of several common cancers…” Two cancers the study didn’t investigate, though, were endometrial cancer and throat cancer. When all of the studies on cholesterol consumption and the risk of endometrial cancer (cancer of the lining of the uterus) were put together, researchers found a dose-response, meaning more cholesterol consumption was associated with more cancer: 6 percent for every extra 100 mg of cholesterol each day. So, something like a daily omelet might increase endometrial cancer risk by about 20 percent. This may be because the extra cholesterol is converted into estrogen, or it may just be because the increased oxidative stress is reflected in higher levels of oxidized cholesterol. I talk about this in my video Oxidized Cholesterol as a Cause of Alzheimer’s Disease.

There also appears to be a dose-response relationship with pancreatic cancer, “one of the most dismal malignancies.” A compilation of studies found the risk of pancreatic cancer increased by 8 percent for every 100 mg of cholesterol, so that would be about a 30 percent higher risk for a daily omelet.

And throat cancer? Increased risk was observed by researchers for elevated cholesterol intake—about 85 percent higher odds, which is consistent with other studies. Yes, maybe it’s the oxidation, or maybe it’s the inflammation. We can’t, however, be sure the cholesterol itself is to blame. “Elevated cholesterol intake could be an indicator that a diet rich in meat, eggs, and dairy products may have unfavorable effects.”

The optimal intake of cholesterol? Zero. See Trans Fat, Saturated Fat, and Cholesterol: Tolerable Upper Intake of Zero.

What is the relationship between the consumption of eggs and other cholesterol-rich foods and cancers of the colon, breast, endometrium, pancreas, and throat?

In 1969, a correlation analysis was performed by a Dr. Gregor—no relation, and he spelled it wrong—and his colleagues. They found a rather tight correlation between animal protein intake and intestinal cancer mortality. You can see a graph of these results at 0:15 in my video Friday Favorites: Dietary Cholesterol and Cancer. In the 1970s, this relationship was extended to include breast cancer, too, and animal fat was implicated as well. Animal protein and dietary cholesterol kind of travel together in the same foods. So, it isn’t surprising that “there is significant correlation between high consumption of cholesterol-containing food items and the world-wide distribution of colon cancer.” A “large and highly significant” correlation exists, even after controlling for other dietary factors, such as animal fat and fiber, “supporting the possibility of a causal relationship between cholesterol intake and colon cancer.”

So, is dietary cholesterol co-carcinogenic for human colon cancer? Researchers decided to try to find out by feeding some to rats. In one study, researchers injected rats with a carcinogen, and the cholesterol-eating rats got tumors in half the time and they all died, whereas most of the rats in the cholesterol-free group survived. But “the relevance of animal data to the human situation is debatable.” How would the cholesterol and cancer link even work?

As humans, we don’t need to consume any cholesterol, since our body makes all that it needs. When we do consume extra cholesterol, there’s a limit to the amount our body can absorb. So, “where does the excess go?” Down to our colon. In this way, the cells lining our colon, where colon cancer arises, “are therefore constantly exposed to fecal cholesterol.” Should a cancerous or precancerous polyp arise, might all of that extra cholesterol help it grow faster? Indeed, the amount of cholesterol we eat “could thus be a factor determining the rate of development, growth, or spread of such a tumor.” Back in the 1970s, this was all just speculation, but the researchers realized that if it were true, that would be good news, since a low-cholesterol diet, cutting down on meat, dairy, eggs, and junk—the only foods that really have cholesterol—would be a “feasible, inexpensive, and without risk” way to help prevent and treat colon cancer. So, what’s the 40-year update?

Country-by-country correlation can never do more than just inspire studies like this: “the largest nationwide population-based case-control study [to date] to assess the association between cholesterol intake and several types of cancer.” The researchers found that “dietary cholesterol intake was positively associated with risk of cancers of the stomach, colon, rectum, pancreas, lung, breast (mainly postmenopausal), kidney, bladder and NHL,” non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, or bone marrow. The flipside? “A diet low in cholesterol may play a role in the prevention of several cancers.” This means cutting down on meat, dairy, and eggs, the very foods that may increase risk of cancer.

“Thus, the findings of this study should essentially be viewed as an indication that a diet rich in meat, dairy products, eggs (and hence animal fat) is an unfavorable indicator of the risk of several common cancers…” Two cancers the study didn’t investigate, though, were endometrial cancer and throat cancer. When all of the studies on cholesterol consumption and the risk of endometrial cancer (cancer of the lining of the uterus) were put together, researchers found a dose-response, meaning more cholesterol consumption was associated with more cancer: 6 percent for every extra 100 mg of cholesterol each day. So, something like a daily omelet might increase endometrial cancer risk by about 20 percent. This may be because the extra cholesterol is converted into estrogen, or it may just be because the increased oxidative stress is reflected in higher levels of oxidized cholesterol. I talk about this in my video Oxidized Cholesterol as a Cause of Alzheimer’s Disease.

There also appears to be a dose-response relationship with pancreatic cancer, “one of the most dismal malignancies.” A compilation of studies found the risk of pancreatic cancer increased by 8 percent for every 100 mg of cholesterol, so that would be about a 30 percent higher risk for a daily omelet.

And throat cancer? Increased risk was observed by researchers for elevated cholesterol intake—about 85 percent higher odds, which is consistent with other studies. Yes, maybe it’s the oxidation, or maybe it’s the inflammation. We can’t, however, be sure the cholesterol itself is to blame. “Elevated cholesterol intake could be an indicator that a diet rich in meat, eggs, and dairy products may have unfavorable effects.”

The optimal intake of cholesterol? Zero. See Trans Fat, Saturated Fat, and Cholesterol: Tolerable Upper Intake of Zero.

Case Study
Client: Susan (names have been changed for privacy)
Stats: Female, 58 years old, empty nester, still working but nearing retirement, busy, travels a lot (and enjoys it), eats out for social connection multiple times per week. Exercises. Has gained 20 pounds during the menopause transition, now feels thick and uncomfortable in her own skin and her clothes don’t fit. Susan would like to NOT buy new clothes. She wants her body back, or a more comfortable body going forward.

Goal: To lose 20 pounds and support continued weight maintenance as a lifestyle.
Outcome: Consistent 1-1.5 pound weight loss over about 7 months, while continuing to travel and meet friends for meals weekly.

Super Easy + Very Fast Lunch or Dinners with Rotisserie Chicken 

Absolute Speediest
Open a bagged salad (discard dressing), top with chopped rotisserie chicken and add 2 to 3 tbsp olive oil and 2 to 3 tbsp of balsamic vinegar, salt and fresh cracked pepper. It’s quick, easy and always delicious.

Grab-and-Go Lunch
Chicken Wrap (use burritos and or GF almond flour or casava flour wraps)
1 wrap
Chicken
½ avocado spread and or mayo
1 handful of arugula (or other green)
1 roasted red pepper (from the jar)
Add ingredients and wrap tightly. Enjoy. 

Big Salad or Bowl
Chicken
Avocado
Red onion
Cucumber
Romaine
Tomato
Kalamata olives
1 big scoop of garbanzo beans
Chopped basil
(can add or sub brown rice or quinoa)

Put all ingredients in a bowl. Top with your favorite vinaigrette. Enjoy.

Five-minute Tacos
Chicken
Salsa verde
Green chilis (in the can)
1 slice red onion, slivered or 2 scallions, chopped
2 tbsp cilantro, chopped
Thinly sliced purple cabbage
Organic corn tortillas or other gf tortillas, headed in a dry pan
Toppers: avocado/guac and squeezed lime to finish

Combine chicken, salsa, green chilis, chopped red onion, cilantro. Fill tacos and add toppers to taste. Enjoy.

White Chili
Chicken-a couple of chopped handfuls
White beans-1/2 can, drained and rinsed
1 medium onion, chopped
2 boxes of organic chicken broth
Handful of chopped cilantro
½ cup organic corn, optional
½ tsp cumin
½ tsp oregano
Juice of 1 lime

Simmer for 20 min. Combine all ingredients. Add toppers: avocado slices, squeezed lime. Done. Yummy.

Final Word: Yes, pick up the rotisserie chicken and try to buy the organic version. Serve it with vegetables — either the bagged salad, cut up raw veggies, or roasted vegies. After looking at the details, it’s still a solid family dinner option. Save the leftovers, if there are leftovers, and use them as part of lunch or dinner the next day.

Here’s How to Deal: 

Perfect Plate Size
I personally like to eat a lot of my meals on a salad-sized plate or in a medium sized bowl. I avoid the oversized dinner plates because I end up filling the plate and overeating. Once we acknowledge that we make delicious food, it is easy to understand why you might want to overeat that food. Eating on a smaller plate tricks you into thinking you’re eating plenty because the plate/bowl is full.

Knowing Your Servings
Knowing the number of servings you have made in a dish is helpful. That way, you can visually divvy up the dish into those servings, enjoying one serving per sitting-allowing you to plan when you’ll eat the remainder of the servings (lunch tomorrow?). Most recipes make 4 servings, so you can feed a family of four once, or a couple twice. Some couples like dinner two nights in a row, others like to take leftovers for lunch the next day. Either way, I LOVE the idea of watching servings and not planning for leftovers-which is great during a busy week.

Keep Track of Your Food
We do know that keeping track of what you eat and how much you eat does help you eat an appropriate amount of food per sitting. Also, we know (through nutrition studies) that people aren’t very good at estimating how much they eat. They regularly underestimate portion amounts and overeat per meal leading to a big disconnect.

Measure Portions with Your Hands
Visual cues can assist in figuring out how much food to eat. BUT, I am not a fan of the food scale. I find it time consuming, and it takes some pleasure out of eating. There is a better way, even if it is a little less accurate. You can use your hand/s and get close enough to help you assess how much is “just enough.”

The Hand Scale:

These guidelines are for per serving.

• 1 serving of fiber-rich rice or pasta (1/2 a cup): one handful
• 1 serving of meat (3-4 oz): a deck of cards, or your palm of your hand-only
• 1 serving of meat (5-6 oz): your whole hand palm and fingers
• 1 serving of green leafy vegetables (1 cup): 2 handfuls
• 1 serving of vegetables (1/2 a cup): one handful
• 1 teaspoon of olive oil: 1 fingertip
• 2 tablespoons of peanut butter: an oversized serving from a regular tablespoon

Again, keeping track helps you better understand how much food you need to feel good after you eat. If you’ve got portion distortion, are not paying attention to this aspect of eating, it is difficult to correctly assess and change the amounts to feel better or get different results.

What should you be shooting for to feel good and balanced?

It depends.

But general broad guidelines is more veggies, at least half your plate, a good amount of healthy fat until you’re satisfied and have a feeling of being clear headed and balanced without being crave-y for sugar right after you eat, and enough protein to be full enough until your next meal, which should be about 3-4 hours after you ate last. Again, these are not hard and fast rules and depend on your body and circumstance, but this is a start.

To translate the above guidelines into daily servings, one might eat:

• 2-3 servings of fruit
• 1-2 servings of starchy veggies
• 5 ish (or more) non-starchy veggies
• 3-4 servings of protein
• 4 servings healthy fat per day (sometimes fat/protein are combined, like in salmon)

And this might look like (for example):

Breakfast: Smoothie-unsweetened almond (little bit protein) , protein powder (good bit of protein), ¼ cup blueberries (fruit), handful of spinach (non-starchy veg), cinnamon (great blood sugar balancer), 2 tbsp hemp hearts (good protein/fat)—this makes a delicious smoothie formula.

Lunch: Big salad- (4-ish servings non-starchy veg) with (plant or animal) and a vinaigrette (healthy fat)

Snack: Hummus (fat and protein) with cucumber slices (non-starchy veg)

Dinner: Chicken with roasted/grilled veg-Protein (plant or animal) with roasted potatoes (starchy veg) and or broccoli.

Restaurant Portions
Restaurant portions are notoriously big. Your best strategy for eating for your body is to understand how hungry you are BEFORE your meal comes to the table. I like to use a scale of 1-5. 1=Just ate; 5=’flipping starving,’ blood sugar low, voraciously hungry, could eat the table. Hopefully, you are somewhere between a 2=mildly hungry and 4=hungry. If so, you’ll be looking for one medium sized plate of food. If the plate is oversized, leave some food. It’s as simple as that. You don’t have to eat everything that is served to you. Another strategy is to bring the leftover food home for afternoon snack (from lunch) or lunch the next day (from dinner). It’s a stupidly simple answer that takes practice, especially if you’ve grown up with the requirement to finish everything on your plate. Try it, using the rating scale really does help you eat to meet your body’s hunger.

We hope that helps you to better understand portions! For more guidance on meeting your personal wellness goals, book a free 20-minute consultation with Healthy Nest Nutrition owner Robin Hutchinson. See if our programs are right for you!

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 on how to get sober.

We’re switching it up a little bit today, but I am nearly positive that every single person in our audience can get something from this episode. Otherwise, I would not have brought this individual on. This is not someone who overcame anything using functional medicine or any type of natural medicine, to be honest. That is not only a difference on our show, I think that’s the first time it’s ever been featured in 200 something episodes.

So, why the heck am I bringing him on? What are we doing here? The reason I’m bringing this guy on is because I saw a post of his and realized what he is doing is something that will help a lot of people. What he has been through and the way he went through it is something that affects all of us, either directly or indirectly. If you know more than 10 people, this absolutely, at the very least, affects you indirectly. We’re going to be talking about legitimate addiction and substance abuse today.

Matt Leonard was someone that I went to high school with. We never said a word to each other. I don’t want you to think this is some biased thing where I’m like friends with this guy and we hang out all the time. I have seen him one time in person other than maybe walking past each other in the hallway. But we had a class of 500 kids almost at the high school that I went to.

How to Get Sober: Addiction is a Mental Health Issue

Because of this, it wasn’t particularly unheard of to not know someone or not talk to someone throughout all of high school. We saw each other one time after that at a meeting that a mutual friend was hosting. I think I shook his hand, talked to him for a few minutes. But I always just want to be clear that never am I bringing someone onto the show because I know them.

I do bring on people that I know, but it is because they have something else going on. Maybe they went through FDN, maybe they’re into health. Maybe they’re into what Matt’s into today. We’re a health show and mental health issues are a huge part of this. Addiction qualifies as a mental health issue. So, even though this might not be a story today about someone overcoming things with functional health, I felt very inclined to put it on.

If you guys really don’t want me ever putting something like this on again, just shoot us a message on Instagram at fdntraining and we won’t do things like this. It’s not going to be every month; it’s not even going to be every few months. But for right now, I think it’s too important. I’ve heard too many stories, especially after the pandemic of families struggling, not fully getting the perspective of someone who goes through this or having someone like Matt in their life or being someone like Matt.

He never really had these issues even at a young age. He’s one of the statistically rarer people that developed this at an older age, not that old, but like older than teenage years, that’s for sure. It’s a powerful story. It’s really a powerful insight and I’m so excited to see what he’s doing.

How to Get Sober: Many Things Come with Addiction

I hope that you guys, after you listen, go throw him a follow if you feel so inclined to do it. Or just show him some support, let him know that the episode helped you in some way if it did. Without further ado, let us get to today’s episode.

Alright. Hello there, Matt. Thank you so much for coming on to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?

Matt Leonard: I’m doing great.

Detective Ev: This is an interesting one guys. And I feel like I say this every other time. One, I do think they’re all interesting. But two, this is actually uniquely interesting, and I think that’ll become very evident pretty quickly if it hasn’t already, just by the title of this one today.

So, we’re not talking to someone who necessarily went through like an autoimmune disease or cancer or some of the things that we normally talk about. But one of the things we do talk about on here is the mental health side. That’s a huge part of my story. I overcame these things using functional medicine. But one thing that we have not really dove into in like huge depth is addiction and the many things that can come with that.

Matt and I, this is what’s weird, we’re from the same hometown. Did we even talk in high school? Like I can’t picture us having a conversation.

[00:03:58] Matt Leonard: It’s really funny, actually. I was literally thinking about that like 30 minutes ago.

How to Get Sober: Old Schoolmates Reunited

It’s crazy how life works. We literally went to the same high school, there’s a chance we were sitting in the same class together, but I don’t think we ever said a word to each other. We were in completely different social groups.

Almost 10 years later life finds a way to bring this back and we’re having a conversation together today.

[00:04:18] Detective Ev: Yeah, and I’m glad to just see both of us at this point are doing really well. Because, I mean, in high school I just can’t picture you, but I wasn’t an approachable character. I was in my own head, struggling with my own stuff substance wise, mental health wise. I got the shaved head, no beard. I actually look more approachable with this than without it. I kind of just looked like a not friendly person.

So, things have worked out very well. And if I’m not mistaken, where we got brought together is through Casey. But were you at the accountability club thing? Is that what it was?

[00:04:44] Matt Leonard: Yeah, so we started that. I think that seemed to fizzle out quickly. But it’s funny, the dude that was my accountability buddy randomly texted me like two years later and asked me a question. I was like, what’s up man? He is like, oh, sorry, wrong Matt. I was like, all right, cool. Good catching up with you. But yeah, we kind of got connected through that.

It’s really cool because you’re someone I’ve kind of followed a little bit from a distance for a while. Like I think it’s awesome to see you kind of doing your own thing.

How to Get Sober: Self-Absorbed

Going back to the high school, I had no idea what you were going through in high school, which probably a lot of people didn’t. It’s just, you never really know what someone’s going through. While I don’t really ever remember saying like, this guy looks unapproachable, I’m not going to talk to him, we were just completely separate and were our own different people.

But I went through stuff in high school, probably not as bad as what you were going through. I was the kid in high school, I just wanted people to like me. I wanted to be cool. At the end of the day, I was like a nerd. I was good at school, not that good at sports, but was trying to get girls, not getting girls. I was trying to make friends with the popular kids. I was like on the outskirts of that.

You’re just so kind of caught up in your own realm and your own thoughts that you’re not really concerned about what’s going on with anybody else. So, I think it’s really cool that we, almost a decade later, can kind of come on here and like talk about some of that stuff.

[00:05:58] Detective Ev: It’s made possible by the age of the internet, right?

Because realistically, you and I would probably just never see each other again in like 20, 30 years. People would go their separate ways. But some of my best relationships, like even Casey, man, I mean that’s one of my best friends at this point. We’ve done some cool stuff together.

How to Get Sober: Anyone Is Susceptible

Casey and I had choir together in high school. I sold him some things, you know, I probably shouldn’t have sold him in the form of a brownie. Nothing too serious guys, but just saying. That was about the extent of the relationship Casey and I had. And he’s just one of the best guys you could ever meet. He was kind of the one who got this together once he saw me getting some stuff on track. Now I talk to him all the time. It is cool how things work out.

Maybe, you weren’t meant to connect in high school, but then later you guys end up maturing in a similar way. So, I’m excited to just dive into your story today because similar to how you were talking about following my journey, now when I saw your page, I’m like, what?

There are so many things going on here. I’m like, one, I just wouldn’t have expected you to deal with that. Although of course anyone can deal with addiction. But then two, you’re like on this other side now looking great, doing awesome. You’ve been through a lot.

Let’s just start with this. From my understanding, and this is the good news guys, from an audience perspective, I actually only have a surface level understanding right now of what Matt went through. But when I saw it, I’m like, we gotta put this on the show. So, what actually happened? This addiction stuff for you happened like fairly late in life. This is normally something that starts in people’s teenage years and for you it was a little later.

How to Get Sober: A Non-Functioning Alcoholic

[00:07:17] Matt Leonard: Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny, if you knew me in high school, I didn’t touch a drink or a drug until I was 17 years old. Not that I had, like, oh, it’s illegal, I shouldn’t do that. It was more of just like a moral issue with it where my parents wouldn’t like me doing this or something like that. I figured I’d have time to explore that later.

Eventually, my friends got me into it. I did a little bit of the partying and stuff when I became a senior in high school. But a lot of people that I meet when I go to meetings and stuff like that, like AA meetings, are like, dude, I was smoking crack when I was 14 years old. And like my dad was handing me beers when I was nine, stuff like that. It’s just crazy cause I don’t have the craziest story out there.

Luckily, I wasn’t homeless or anything like that. My window was very small for addiction, I would say. I started when I was like 17, 18, I got to college, kind of ramped it up from there. By 25, I was a full-fledged, like non-functioning alcoholic and ended up seeking treatment. It’s kind of crazy, just like that little five-to-six-year span is where it really spiraled.

[00:08:16] Detective Ev: We talk about these things kind of loosely. I mean, I know other generations certainly have done drugs in high school. But I go into these schools still to this day and I do genuinely believe that there is a trend now to be doing these things earlier on a mass level.

How to Get Sober: Normalizing Drug Use

It’s not just one or two fringe stories of the person smoking crack at 14. You’re hearing about some serious stuff in these schools. These kids, in very nice places, are doing promethazine or Xanax or whatever, and they can’t even drive a car, legally. So, when we’re doing this this early and they’re exposed to it this early, it messes up the brain. My point is, even in our school, actually, yes, starting at 17, 18 was somewhat late.

We had a very large graduating class, there’s like 450 to 500 people per graduating class. That alone could be a reason we never really interacted. You could go through high school and miss a name or two for sure. The other side of it is like, yeah, we had a culture where I don’t think anyone was doing anything too crazy other than like a very small percentage, but it was normalized, right?

Like we go to the football games or basketball games, and you know there’s kids drunk in the front row, screaming at the other team or whatever. Weed was a huge thing in our school. So, it was this moral aspect that kind of kept you from maybe doing that stuff.

But when you were doing the substances then, was there a mental health aspect to this initially or was it more just, hey, I’m experimenting, and it just got outta hand over time. Cause normally there is a mental health side to this sometimes.

How to Get Sober: Caving to Fit In

[00:09:36] Matt Leonard: Yeah. I think when I first started it wasn’t ever really a mental health thing. It was just kind of like, I’m excited. It almost came back to that trying to fit in concept.

I remember maybe when I was like a sophomore/junior and I still wasn’t really drinking, I wasn’t smoking pot, anything like that. Throughout high school for the most part I would come in on Monday morning and all my friends at the lunch table are sharing stories about how so-and-so got so drunk and did this and these two people hooked up. It was like, dude, I just felt so left out of that.

I think part of why I finally caved was just like, I want to see what this thing that everyone else is doing and why it seems so exciting. You know, I want to get invited to those parties. I felt like I wasn’t able to build the friendships with the people that I wanted to build because they were building them outside of these activities that I was taking part in. So, that’s kind of where that started.

I don’t want to jump ahead too much, but it definitely ended up being a coping mechanism later in my life to address some of those mental health problems that I kind of started to get into.

Detective Ev: You went to college, correct?

Matt Leonard: Yeah.

[00:10:36] Detective Ev: Okay. That’s one of the things for me. There was a variety of reasons, but I only went to community college a semester and a half, dropped out, did my own thing. For me personally, I’m thankful for that. Cause I wasn’t ready to handle college.

How to Get Sober: Finding Myself and Drinking More

I was doing a lot of the stuff that people were doing in college at 16, 17 years old. If I continued that even longer, I was kind of screwed.

Our audience, it’s not exclusive to this, but like 80% are between the ages of 35 and 44. We have a lot of women that listen, they have kids. So, they need to know what they’re kind of going up against here.

I don’t want people to be fearing college, that’s ridiculous. But how has the landscape ended up at these colleges? Because I feel like there used to be the party schools. Now I feel like I can go to any college campus, and I can get blacked out drunk all weekend and no one’s really there holding me accountable. In fact, I might look like the cool person for that. Is my interpretation of that wrong or is that kind of what the landscape has become at these colleges?

[00:11:27] Matt Leonard: No. Definitely where I went to, it wasn’t the party school, but it was a big party school. That’s kind of where my drinking definitely progressed. It went from like maybe I’ll drink once a month or something when there’s a party to, I’m going out like tequila Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, maybe sometime Sunday, because you can.

You know, it’s the first time you really get to experience life on your own terms without someone there telling you what to do. The schedule kind of caters to that where you can take later classes so you can get hungover, kind of wake up, work it off or whatever. But to me it was just kind of this time of like finding myself doing what I wanted and there’s so many people out there.

How to Get Sober: College Expectations

The funny thing is, I went into college hating fraternities and sororities. I thought they were the stupidest, most culty, cringey thing ever. By my second year there, my sophomore year, I ended up joining one just cause I wanted to keep partying.

I moved off campus and quickly realized within the first two weeks, I was like, wait, I’m not surrounded by all these connections anymore. I’m kind of out here on my own. So, literally, I just joined a fraternity so I could have somewhere to party on the weekends.

We used to joke. I would literally say this with my friends, you’re not an alcoholic until you graduate. Because you’re in college, you know, it’s what you’re expected to do. You’re expected to drink and get high and do all these things. I prioritized partying a lot.

I mean, I still graduated you know, like Dean’s list honors and stuff like that. But I definitely sacrificed taking some classes or doing things that I would’ve wanted to do just because I wanted to go get drunk with my buddies a lot of the times.

[00:12:58] Detective Ev: Yeah. So, there’s this whole culture out there. Actually, if we go back into the actual DSM, which for those that aren’t mental health people, it’s the diagnostic and statistical manual. It’s how they diagnose mental health conditions. There’s a distinct difference between substance use disorder and actual addiction. They are two separate things.

I know that you actually dealt with addiction, but what’s happened a lot at these colleges is, yeah, there’s this party plan, five-year party plan basically. You add the fifth year, cause it takes that long to get out sometimes. This is textbook substance use disorder.

How to Get Sober: Drinking Daily Three Months Straight

But maybe because the person can take a day off once every week, it wouldn’t classify in the normal sense of addiction. I don’t think people are educated enough on substance use disorder. I always looked at myself even in high school, I actually didn’t meet the criteria of a drug addict. I mean, this sounds so insane to talk about now, like it was normal.

My 16, 17-year-old brain rationalized, if I only take Xanax for a week and then take a week off and now, I just add alcohol in those days, then I’m not an addict. By definition, I am not. I really am not. But I didn’t see the insanity of what I was actually doing there, that I’m like swapping drugs out. Oh, and I don’t have any of that stuff tonight, so we’ll just take a bunch of Benadryl. It’s like, what on Earth was going through my head with that?

When we classify an actual addiction, we’re talking about withdrawal, we’re talking about daily need for this. So, when did this get to the point where you’re realizing that you have a problem with this?

[00:14:23] Matt Leonard: Sure. So, just a little bit before that. Coming to the ends of college, my junior year, I went and studied abroad in Australia. That was the easiest course load I ever took. We’re there, it’s a big drinking city. So, I was drinking basically every day for three months, you know, maybe a day or two off here, or I’d end up getting sick and I’m like, I gotta stop drinking for a couple days. But, basically, for all intents and purposes, I was drinking every day for three months straight.

How to Get Sober: Drinking Prioritized Over Feelings

I came back and I think this is where it really shifts into the mental health aspect. I moved back home for the summer out for that semester to pursue an internship. I was living with my mom, so I really just stopped drinking. I ended up being like, yeah, I’ll go to the bar on Friday or Saturday, but during the week is the work week; I don’t drink stuff like this.

I started getting back into the gym. I was, gotta get my protein in and can’t do that if you’re drinking. Quickly after that I started getting severe anxiety, to the point where I didn’t want to socialize. You could be my best friend and I’m sitting in a room having a conversation with you and I’m nervous to talk to you, like I’m shaking a little bit. I just feel genuinely uncomfortable. That would happen all the time. It helped me back at work when I was dealing with clients at work, it helped me back socially.

Then it was like the weekend would come and I’d go out. I’m like, all right, I’m going to pre-game, get a couple shots of tequila in me, go to the bar. That’s when I would finally feel normal again. I pursued psychiatric help with that for like anxiety and depression. One of the first things they tried to do for me was put me on Lexapro. I think it was that and maybe an MAOI or something like that, where she was like, you can’t drink on this medication.

I was like, thanks. I’m good. Literally feeling terrible five and a half days a week, essentially, was less important to me than being able to go out and get drunk with my friends on the weekends.

How to Get Sober: An Unescapable Vicious Circle

So, I turned down the one medication she gave me. I found another medication that was like, we strongly suggest you don’t drink on this, but you can. I was like, I’ll go with that one.

That just exacerbated how quickly I’ll get drunk, how delirious I’d become when I was drunk. It created this weird chicken and the egg thing. Cause I didn’t realize this until I actually genuinely started to seek help a few years later for my drinking. Essentially what happened was I kind of almost kicked myself into a little bit of a withdrawal.

I had this crazy anxiety coming off of this insane period of drinking. I didn’t know how to cope with that anxiety until I figured out that I could drink to manage the anxiety. I’m drinking and then I’m getting anxious, so I’m drinking more. It’s just this vicious circle that I ultimately found myself unable to really get out of.

A couple years later it was just this like balancing act of, I need to be sober so I can perform my daily duties, but I need to drink to self-medicate. Ultimately, the drinking won that battle. I lost my job and was very close to not being able to pay my bills. Luckily, I had parents that were able to help me out until I finally accepted that I needed to get the help that I needed to get. It’s just crazy how quickly that can spiral.

[00:17:22] Detective Ev: I mean, even that thing with Australia, I can understand the perspective, I really can. Cause you’re going out somewhere fun. It’s like, I’m not going to do this again, maybe ever, let alone any time soon. So, you’re living it up, man. You’re having a good time.

How to Get Sober: Society Normalizes Alcohol

This was always something that bugged me. There’s a normalization of alcohol in our society, which somehow gets it into people’s heads. I’m not saying that this is you, I’m just speaking in general. It gets it into some people’s heads that this is not a big deal where most people don’t know that alcohol is one of the only drugs, in addition to the class of drugs called benzodiazepines, that the withdrawal itself can kill someone.

People say, oh, well, no, opiates can do that. No, it can’t. The seizures that the opiates cause can kill you, and it’s an indirect death. Opiate withdrawal cannot kill you. Benzodiazepines can and alcohol can because it’s the exact same mechanism. It’s something with GABA. This is not a joke.

I know that I can go to the store right now and get it super cheap as a 27-year-old male. So, we think, well, how big of a deal can it be? Right? But for better or for worse, this has been totally normalized. I don’t think this is necessarily the first drug I would normalize if I had the choice to do that. I don’t know if I would necessarily normalize any of them at this point in my life, but that’s beside the point.

It’s easy enough to think like, all right, I’m young, I’m having fun right now. I’m in freaking Australia, this is cool. So, I’m just going to go do this stuff for three months and then, yeah, all of a sudden, I have a problem.

How to Get Sober: Unable to Admit the Drinking Problem

Now I’m not asking this next question to condemn you, because I had my things like I mentioned in high school with the Xanax for one week and then off for one week, where it seems logical at the time, then you realize looking back, that this was a diluted mindset.

You said three years later, almost, it was when you got some actual help. When you went in for this anxiety and then took the medication that would allow you to drink to some degree, were you even connecting yet that alcohol was a problem? Or was this just like, oh, okay, I still want to drink so I’m going to take this medication.

[00:19:07] Matt Leonard: It’s weird because I couldn’t admit it to myself. It was almost like the kid getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar where he’s kind of embarrassed. He knows what’s the problem, but he doesn’t at the same time.

I would go in and would talk to like a doctor, I went to several. They’re asking me like how much I drink. Immediately in my head I’m like, I probably drink more than I should, but I don’t have a problem. They won’t get it; they’re 40 years old, 50 years old. I’m 21, 22, 23, that’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m like, all right, whatever I think I drink, I’m going to cut that in half.

So, I say, I think I’m drinking, we’ll call it six drinks a day, probably 10 to 12 on the weekend, something like that, so over 50 drinks a week, I would say. I’m going to be like, I drink maybe 20 to 25 a week. She would look at me and say, that’s a lot, we should cut back on that.

How to Get Sober: Trying to Outsmart Alcohol

So, half of what I’m actually drinking is what I’m being told is a lot. It’s just this weird thing where it’s like you don’t want to listen to this authoritative person at such a young age and you can’t believe that you have a problem.

One of the things that I kind of gravitated to really quickly, is like the stigma against addiction. I think we’re getting a lot better at it as a society. But the things that kind of held me back from admitting that I had that problem was I didn’t think that I was the type of person that could have one. We were kind of talking about this before the show, which was, it could happen to anybody. It could happen to doctors, lawyers, it doesn’t matter where you’re from.

I was like, dude, I went to a good high school. Both my parents love me. They’re divorced, but they also love me. I have a good family around me and a lot of friends, a secondary education in the form of college, a good job at the time, and I’m smart.

It’s crazy, one of my things was I’m smarter than alcohol, so I thought that I could beat it. Because to me, if I admitted that alcohol was stronger than me, then I was a loser, I was a failure, I was weak-minded. I thought that I had to be able to come up with a way that I could successfully drink. Whether that was switching to beer from hard liquor, or we’re going to take the week off and only drink on the weekends, or we’re going to do this or we’re going to do that.

How to Get Sober: Gratefulness

We’re only going to drink when we’re with people, not when I’m by myself, that failed every time. Every single time it led to me being back by myself, drinking in my room till I was blackout drunk, and then waking up in the middle of the night. The first thing I would reach for was that beer can or that liquor bottle just so I can get something back in me.

Covid, the quarantine, really just perpetuated this. When I first got sober, I was like, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Covid. Covid made me an alcoholic. I don’t want to say I’m grateful for Covid because that gets into a whole nother thing, but I’m grateful for what I took from Covid. Because even though it kind of destroyed a year of my life, I think it just brought it to the forefront in a really rapid way.

I think it took what would’ve been a progressive disease throughout my twenties, possibly into my thirties, and put it into this like little incubator for me to just really marinate and get all my problems out in this one-year timeframe. I think it probably saved me from wasting the next 10 years of my life battling a disease that I was kind of able to cut short.

[00:22:19] Detective Ev: That’s actually a good part about this.

By the way, on a side note, I completely respect the realness of this. I know that this is still a relatively new thing for you. But this is what works on this show and other shows, just people being honest. Since you don’t have that stereotypical thing that society puts out of like addiction or whatever, it makes people realize, oh, this does happen.

How to Get Sober: The Prevalence Among All Groups

I always say, we have the stereotypical things that you see in movies or on the news for addiction or other things. I’m like, no, the other people are just better at hiding it. The prevalence is still there amongst all groups.

Even if I want to believe that the people in the functional health world are somehow immune to this, I know that that’s just, again, my own ignorance, promoting the stigma. There is someone that listens to our show right now that is dealing with addiction. They might call themselves a functional health practitioner, seem as healthy as can be, and they’re struggling and need to hear this. Certainly, they’re going to be working with clients that might be struggling with this stuff sometimes cause that comes up.

I’m not glad that you experienced it, but I’m glad overall that it did put it into this incubator as you described, progressed it a little more rapidly while still keeping you safe enough to be here today. Because then, yeah, you waste a really significant year of your life, but then you don’t kind of like half waste the other 10 years. I think we all have those moments if we’ve abused substances or been addicted to them.

I remember when I was on probation using drugs still, and I was on house arrest at one point using drugs still. I just sat there because I had a terrible night with my high school girlfriend the night before, I was just such a jerk to her. I sat there in my bed in the morning, I’m like, what is the plan? You’re on probation using fairly hard drugs like benzodiazepines, you’re going to die or you’re going to go to jail.

How to Get Sober: Thinking 10 Minutes Ahead

I think sometimes we need the more extreme situations like it sounds you went through to have those moments where we’re like what is going on here? I can’t ignore this anymore. It’s just so in your face that you kind of have to accept that you have a problem.

I want to go back a second because I appreciate also what you said about being in the doctor’s office. You kind of knew that you had an issue, but we’re putting it on the back burner because this is something that needs to be called out for people.

If you asked Evan Transue at 17 years old, hey, do you think it’s a smart idea to be taking Xanax for one week and then not again the next week? I would’ve said, no. But we’re in our own heads, and when we’re abusing substances. I always say, we’re not thinking 10 years ahead; we’re thinking 10 minutes ahead. Just as quick as that thought comes, it gets dismissed.

We sometimes, not always, but sometimes need a third party to come in and say, do you think that’s okay? It seems so simple, but that can be the power of psychotherapy, they do a lot of stuff. But sometimes that can just be the power of having someone looking in front of us and saying, do you think that’s smart, Matt? Or, hey, that’s a lot. And you know, in the back of your head that you’re lying about the amount by 50%. Right? That’s crazy.

[00:24:59] Matt Leonard: Yeah. At some points in your life, you’re just not ready to hear things. Both of us were so young.

How to Get Sober: Covering Tracks to Hide a Problem

It’s funny because if you wrote out everything that you were doing on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope, then someone gave it to you and said, look at this person and see what they’re doing. Does this seem like a healthy lifestyle, whether they’re abusing Xanax or like I was going through almost a case of beer a day? It’s funny, like I didn’t think I had this problem.

Yet, I couldn’t go to the same beer store that I went to on Monday because I thought the little Mexican lady might recognize me and I had just bought a case of beer. So, I was like, I have to go to this store, so they don’t connect the dots and think that like, why are you drinking so much? You just bought 30 beers yesterday.

I was afraid the trash guy would think I was an alcoholic. So, I would space out how much trash I was throwing out throughout the week, all these things. But I still can’t just fundamentally admit to myself that I have a problem, even though I know what I’m doing is insane.

[00:25:52] Detective Ev: I think what happens is, again, it’s that whole 10 minutes versus 10 years mentality. I don’t want to say we lose our self-awareness, that would almost make it seem justified or excusable.

But that is kind of the experience that I had. It sounds very similar to what you’re saying. It’s like your self-awareness is a little foggy, I’ll put it that way. Because again, if someone were to come to you and ask these questions, I think any reasonable person, even if they lied to their face, would still instantly know, okay, no, this is bad.

How to Get Sober: Depressed, Lonely, and Isolated

But when you are focused on the substance and the substance alone; that’s it. It’s like, how do I get this? What do I need to do to get it? How do I get more of it? How do I get away with using it so other people don’t know? How am I hiding from the woman that might see me buy another case of beer today? You don’t even have time sometimes to think about, oh wait, this is just bad. Right? I have a problem; I have an issue here.

I think we kind of got to it. I don’t know if there’s anything more that we need to elaborate on. We talked about it from a general perspective, so forgive me if I missed it, but I feel like there’s probably a more specific moment where you realized like, okay, like crap, something’s gone wrong here sometime during the pandemic. So, was there a more specific moment where you’re like, yeah, this needs to stop, or what happened?

[00:26:56] Matt Leonard: There’s a couple events in my mind that I kind of remember significantly. The first one was right before the pandemic my girlfriend dumped me. I went into the pandemic depressed and lonely, feeling isolated. All those things that everyone felt during that period of time, that only really gave me an excuse to drink more and more. So, I just kept escalating.

I got put on notice from my job. So, I cleaned up my act for a couple weeks. Then I was like, nah, I’m good and went right back to drinking again, missing work, stuff like that. Obviously, I got fired and then sometime right before Christmas I just felt absolutely miserable.

How to Get Sober: Suicidal Ideations

I know you’ve dealt with mental health struggles. I can’t remember if you’ve ever contemplated the suicide nature of things before. I’m not sure if I was serious or if I just wanted attention, but I reached out to my ex-girlfriend. I basically told her, I can’t do this anymore, I want to kill myself. I don’t know if I genuinely felt like I wanted that or just wanted someone to see me.

She reached out to my parents, which I got mad at her for doing. But you know what normal human wouldn’t do that. I’m grateful for that. So, my sister paid me a visit. They tricked me into going to a psyche eval at a hospital, which I knew all the right things to say that they couldn’t keep me there. I knew to say that I wasn’t suicidal. I didn’t have a problem, X, Y, Z. So, they’re like, all right, you’re free to go; you’re discharged.

I went home. My mom still didn’t really know exactly what I was doing, but I think they were slowly starting to put the pieces together of like why I had just been such an absent person over the last couple years, why I always looked terrible every time they saw me, stuff like that.

My mom got me home and she said, I think you need to stop drinking. I was like, for the rest of the week? She’s like, no, forever. I literally said, you’re high. I thought that was insane. To anyone going through stuff, just the idea that you have to quit forever is such a daunting idea. You know? It’s like, I’ll quit today, but I don’t know what next week looks like or next year.

How to Get Sober: A Drinking Celebration for Being Sober

It’s funny when you get to rehab and everyone says the same things that you always think, which is how you know you’re in the right place. Mine was like, I can quit for now, but like what happens when I get married? I can’t have a glass of champagne at my wedding? I’ve heard five other people say that since I’ve thought that.

It’s just how crazy an idea is that? It’s like, you’re telling me I’d be getting married, I’m living this awesome life with this woman that I love, and my biggest concern is that I can’t have a glass of champagne at my own wedding? It’s crazy the delusions that you tell yourself.

But I quit drinking right around when my mom said that. That was like the beginning of January. I was able to put it down. I kind of stayed with them for a couple weeks and then I went back, started living at my own place in Philadelphia again. I remember I was kind of going in and out, in and out. I took a week on and then I’d sober up a little bit.

I wrote a journal entry, like, I took five days off drinking. I was like, I feel so much healthier. I feel better, I feel clearheaded, blah, blah, blah. That was on a Friday. I said, all right, I’m going to get a box of wine and I’m going to drink one glass as like a reward to myself for being able to stay sober for this week. Like, I deserve it, it’s Friday. I literally do not remember the next two weeks of my life. I cracked that box of wine. I had one, led to another, and I don’t remember what happened for two weeks.

How to Get Sober: Finally Asking for Help

Turns out I was avoiding my family, blew it off, blah, blah, blah. I finally got a phone call from my mom. She said, I’m really worried about you. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but I need to come see you. I don’t even really remember this conversation. I think I was probably like half drunk, half whatever.

She told me later cause I thought she was the one that dragged my butt to rehab, but I was actually the one that said I need help. I think I was just at such a low rock bottom, and I was tired of just lying to everyone around me that I just said, I need help. I can’t stop drinking. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve tried everything and it’s not working.

Both my parents are amazing people. They quickly found a rehab to take me to. They came down. It’s funny, I’ve heard people say your last pain point; it’s when my parents walked into my house and they walked into my room, who, I had a roommate by the way, who had no idea I was an alcoholic.

That’s how good at hiding this I was overall. I would go to the store; I’d immediately just run right into my room and put the beer in my room. I would take the trash out when he was sleeping, stuff like that. Cause I couldn’t let other people know what was going on.

This kid who’s one of my best friends, you actually know him. His name’s Charles. He’s one of my best friends since high school. He had no idea what was going on with me.

How to Get Sober: Surrender

My parents walked into my room and saw what an absolute dumpster fire of a war zone my room was, beer cans everywhere, just a disaster. My mom broke down crying and my dad gave me like one of the most disappointed looks he’s ever given me in my life where he is just like, where did I go wrong? It’s like, how did I fail this person? Like, what are you doing with your life?

That was really just the last thing that I was like, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this to the people that I love. That’s really what kicked me off. The whole journey just kind of escalated from there. I still didn’t think I was going to want to be or get sober or stay sober, but I just kind of kept doing what people told me to do.

I’m not a religious person, but they talk about higher power and stuff. I really just put my life in the hands of other people at that point, cause clearly what I was doing wasn’t working.

[00:32:17] Detective Ev: Yeah, fair enough. Ironically, I’ve moved more religious as I’ve gotten older, but it doesn’t matter. This idea of giving to something else makes sense. Because yeah, we come to these realization points I think anyone that uses stuff where it was like what I was talking about before. My plan is not working. Like objectively speaking, this is failing miserably.

So, at some point we gotta give this up to someone else. Now I still need to take responsibility. I’m the one who takes the actions, but I need some insight elsewhere.

How to Get Sober: It’s a Cry for Help

I’m not a mental health professional in the traditional sense, right? I’m just a speaker and stuff. But one thing that you mentioned was this idea of maybe you were just seeking attention when you talked about the suicidal aspect. To me, that doesn’t matter. Even if you were, the point is the attention is not narcissistic attention seeking.

It’s attention to like indirectly or directly say, hey, I need help. I need to be seen in that way. So, for whatever that’s worth to you because I feel like that’s what my suicidal ideations were at the time. I don’t know that I ever was like, okay, I’m going to go do this. But I didn’t know how else to express how much pain I was in, especially as a man. I don’t think it was a thought process. But if I say this, everyone will know this is serious and we can kind of hopefully do something about this. You’re kind of waiting for someone to come and save you in a sense.

One thing I gotta touch on, Matt, because you talked about a few things here. There was this absent side to you in your family life. But you also even said you were really good at hiding this. So, I don’t know what the answer is here. But I look at alcohol, I’m like, that’s a heck of a drug man.

One, it smells. The person is going to, literally, sweat alcohol out of their pores at a certain point. So, you can smell it on their sweat. Certainly, you can smell it on their breath. Then you would think just by the behavior, despite how much of a tolerance you might build, you’d think that you’d notice someone drunk.

How to Get Sober: Warning Signs of an Alcoholic

I don’t know too many people who have struggled with solely alcohol, but is there any advice out there to people that might believe someone else in their life is addicted? Like, what would’ve been some of the warning signs, if you have any, other than just maybe being absent from the family?

[00:34:18] Matt Leonard: I’m trying to think in terms of warning signs. Obviously, if the person is like visibly drunk and visibly drunk often, that might be a warning sign. But outside of that, like I knew that if I had to drive an hour to go see my mom, obviously I had to sober up. There was a lot of times that I couldn’t.

I would say I gotta go see my mom at five o’clock, so I need my last beer to be at 12. I can sober up for three hours enough to drive and blah, blah, blah. Then all of a sudden, I can have one more beer at one o’clock. Then I finish that beer, all right, 1:45, let’s have another one. By the time, it’s the time I was supposed to leave, I have to admit like, I can’t do this. Then I’m shooting her a text saying, hey, I’m so sorry I got a flat tire.

I came up with every excuse in the book. It was snowing. I got a flat tire. You know, I got called into work, like whatever it was. That’s like one of the things, that’s a great warning sign, if someone is consistently flaking on you. You make these plans, and they just don’t show up and they don’t really have a valid reason.

How to Get Sober: Gaining or Losing Weight

If you’re ever at work and there’s that one person that’s like always calling in sick or they had three relatives die this month, or something like that, you’re kind of like, what is going on with this person, dude? Clearly, they don’t want to be here. More than likely, they just genuinely don’t want to be there. But there is the chance that they just can’t show up for whatever reason cause they’re struggling with something.

For me it was like, I’m not sober enough to drive. Or even if I thought I could drive or whatever, someone could come pick me up, I’d be like, no, I’m way too wasted to be functional right now. So, I had to really pick and choose my battles of where I could be.

But in the event that I did show up sober, I was probably shaking, visibly anxious, and obviously didn’t look great or well maintained. I know a lot of people when they struggle with alcoholism end up gaining weight. For me, it was the opposite. I lost a lot of weight because I just wasn’t eating.

I would go anywhere from a day to, I think the most I ever hit was like probably four or five days, a couple of times, like literally just not eating. All my caloric intake was coming from alcohol. It started as laziness or me just like drinking until I wasn’t hungry anymore. Then by like the last couple of days, I might try to eat something and the most bland thing, like a piece of bread or like ramen noodles, were repulsive to me. The idea of putting something in my stomach was nauseating because my entire digestive system was just screwed at that point.

How to Get Sober: Stereotypes and Expectations

So, there are warning signs, like whether they’re drunk or whether they’re sober. I guess it obviously depends on the drug too. Like if they’re doing something maybe like cocaine, are they always sneaking away to the bathroom or something like that? But there’s definitely warning signs for everything. I showed all of them. I think the people around me just didn’t know.

[00:36:54] Detective Ev: Yeah. There’s an expectation factor, right? Just like you had this stereotype against yourself, oh, I can’t deal with this, I’m sure they actually might suffer from the same stereotype, like they’re not expecting this to happen. I know it shocked me, right?

We didn’t know each other that well, but I was just surprised to see that. I’m like Okay. Like, I just saw this guy a few years ago. Technically speaking, I guess, that was September 2019. So, you were probably struggling with this to some degree at that point, right?

[00:37:19] Matt Leonard: I don’t know the exact timeline. It was probably in a phase where I was just partying a lot, but I was able to kind of go out and be that functional person. But on the weekends, it was my priority. You know, I ended up moving to Philly. Yeah, actually that’s right around the time I moved to Philly.

I was dealing with kind of, I don’t want to say abusive, but just like a toxic relationship at that time, like very emotionally draining. I think that gave me an excuse to want to drink. Then we broke up and that gave me an excuse, I want to drink even more. But yeah, just kind of a theme of my life has always been kind of that independence is not good for me all the time.

How to Get Sober: A Full Residential Rehab

It’s like I went to college, I started drinking more; I came back, lived at home, I stopped drinking as much. I got my own place, I started drinking more, all these things. It’s just like if you leave me alone, I’ll find a way to screw it up.

[00:38:06] Detective Ev: It sounds like the treatment side of things went fairly well once you were willing to commit to a real program there. For those that might be listening and actively dealing with this, and they’re intimidated by this, what did that look like? I think you went to an actual facility, you said, right? How did that go?

[00:38:24] Matt Leonard: Yeah, so I did 30 days in like a full residential rehab. I did I think like five days of detox. Luckily, my detox wasn’t too bad. There are people who get it really bad. Especially, I have friends that are heroin or Fentanyl users, they were detoxing for three out of the four weeks that they were there. Luckily with me, it maybe took two or three days to fully be detoxed and then another week for me to kind of feel like a normal, like I have energy, kind of person again.

My first night there, I got there in the middle of the night. I think I got checked in and everything at like midnight. They put me in a room with some dude who was passed out for a week straight coming off meth. I almost had a panic attack my first night there cause it was up north around like the Pocono area. My parents just kind of dropped me there and they’re like, all right, well good luck. I felt like I had just been committed to a jail sentence.

How to Get Sober: Sticking With It

Obviously, I could walk out the door at any time, but I wanted to be there. I just felt so scared and so alone at that point, even though I was surrounded by some people. After that it took me a few days to kind of get in the swing of things.

Then I just decided I was going to embrace the program. I started making friends there. I’ve always been kind of one that’s like, I’m shy to warm up at first, but once I get going, I’ll talk a lot. By the end of my stay there, I was kind of becoming a leader in the community, stuff like that.

Then my parents wanted me to go to extended care. I was like, no, I just did 30 days. I’m cured. I’m fine. Still, in the back of my mind, like I’ll go home, and I’ll probably drink in like three months or something like that. This is kind of like where I said, just putting my life in the hands of other people. I was like, I’ll go do the extended care.

So, I went down to another place. I told them I would do two weeks in like a partial hospitalization like housing program. Two weeks went by super-fast. I was like, eh, I’ll do the month. I did the month, turned into six weeks. Then I stepped down to an IOP program, which is like an outpatient program where I’m living in their housing three times a week. I did two months of that. I did the general outpatient, which was like two times a week for a couple more months.

I ended up becoming the house manager of the house that I was living in. Dude, I stuck with it.

How to Get Sober: Get You Sober & Start the Ball Rolling

Now part-time on the side might actually end up turning into full-time. I’m working at the treatment center that I went to. It’s just this crazy thing where it’s like, I never thought that I would be here. I just kind of kept going with the punches, I just kept doing what people told me to do, even though I didn’t want to do it.

Eventually I was like, I actually kind of like it here, dude. It really wasn’t that scary once I kind of just embraced the program. I have no doubt that had I not continued past the 30 days in rehab, I wouldn’t be sober at all.

[00:40:53] Detective Ev: That matters. Because statistically speaking, and I don’t mean to discourage anyone, you know, keep trying different things, but statistically speaking, it is less probable than not that someone will not stay sober after those 30 days. I was about to ask you and you beat me to it. Like, did you feel that staying for a long period of time in these different facilities, but still, nonetheless, you stayed. That ended up being a huge aspect for you.

So yeah, I always felt like, especially for some people, like you’re talking about individuals that again, might have been doing crack and stuff in ninth grade, or nine years old, whatever it was. How on earth are you supposed to just fix things in 30 days? I mean, that just seems unrealistic to me. I don’t even think your brain’s rewired by then.

[00:41:34] Matt Leonard: That’s the thing, is like rehab, I believe, is meant to get you sober and kind of start the ball rolling on staying sober.

How to Get Sober: Teaching You to Live Sober

But the extended care, which studies have shown, you know, doing 90 plus days gives you like a, I don’t know what the number is, but a much better chance of staying sober for at least a year than just doing 30 days in a rehab program.

That partial hospitalization or those outpatient programs teach you how to live sober. Because the thing is, I don’t want to say it’s easy to get sober, but you can get sober. But it’s way harder to stay sober. It’s like if you have a bad day, if you have like some sort of trigger or you just get bored, whatever it is, you can easily go out and get drunk, get high.

The thing is, when I got sober and I got to the point where it’s like, okay, go out and get a job now, I had zero confidence in myself. I hadn’t worked in a little bit. The last job I had, I was screwing up, I was slacking off. Again, this is someone who six months, a year ago was like, dude, I have a bachelor’s degree. You know, I’m doing this, I’m doing that. Like I can take on the world.

All of a sudden, it’s like, all right, go get a job at Wawa and I don’t feel capable of doing these things. It’s just like these little baby steps and training wheels to help you, show that you can get back on the right track in life. Since then, I was a general manager at an LA Fitness. I got my personal training certification. I work in treatment. Dude, I’m balancing like three jobs right now, but that’s beside the point.

How to Get Sober: Slowly Introducing You Back into the World

I’ve again gotten that confidence back where I can pursue what I want to pursue in life and I’m capable and qualified to do these things. That’s the advantage of these extended care treatment programs. We’re going to help you get back on the right track. You’re going to get used to living at home or in this environment that’s a little sheltered, but we’re slowly going to introduce you back into the world.

Because a lot of people can get outta rehab, but the second you drive by a liquor store, you’re screwed. Cause you want to go in there. Everything you just worked on for the last 30 minutes is immediately out the window. You need to learn how to cope with that in a real-life situation.

[00:43:37] Detective Ev: I give you so much props for the transformation and giving people some hope. Alcohol in particular, I’m thinking about this more and more. Because a lot of the friends that I knew that struggled with addiction, it was different types of drugs, put it that way.

I’m realizing at least when they left treatment, they know, okay, I gotta go down to Philly now, I gotta go on the block. I’m dealing with some super dangerous people, most likely. I gotta carry a substance that’s illegal all the way back to my place. And although it would be unrealistic for someone to find you in your place, like they can’t just come in your house, I’m still doing something illegal.

There is nothing illegal about driving mostly sober, right? I mean, you have to be under the legal limit. But driving to the liquor store or walking, buying it, going home and getting blacked out drunk every day, it’s a bad decision, but nothing illegal about it.

Where to Find Matt Leonard

So, I’m like, wow, this is even tougher thinking from that perspective. Again, a lot of these people battle like the legal side. Like I don’t want to be popping Xanax cause I know well I could go to jail for this too. Like there’s many motivating factors. The only motivating factor for you is this will to say, hey, I want to live a better life, right? Because it’s cheap and easy to get. So, huge props there.

I know we’re getting a little close to time, so please take as much time as you need for this answer because I’m curious. What are you doing with this Sober Lifestyle Guy? I don’t know if you want to call it a brand or what.

What’s awesome about Matt, guys, is Matt isn’t hopping on today like most of the people. It is not that there’s anything wrong with this, people have businesses. But Matt’s not even offering anything other than hope. But he has a page called Sober Lifestyle Guy. I’m wondering what is that and what is your hope for it?

[00:45:04] Matt Leonard: Sorry, it’s just when you said Matt’s not even offering anything, that just sounded like, why are you even here.

Detective Ev: Yeah. I mean, business wise, right?

Matt Leonard: Like what value do you have to provide for us? But no, I know what you’re saying. It was just funny.

Genuinely, I’m just trying to build this brand from the ground up. We kind of touched on this before, but the stigma’s getting better in the world about addiction and stuff like that.

How to Get Sober: Supported Not Embarrassed

But I think there’s a lot of people, particularly younger people, that just aren’t able to embrace their demons. For me, like when I first got sober, there was so much shame involved. Then I slowly started reaching out to people that were in my life, my friends and stuff like that. I was blown away that every single person in my life was nothing but encouraging.

They were like, good for you, man. That’s awesome. I’m proud of you. Let me know if you need anything. Where I thought I was going to be getting these texts back, like, dude, what is going on with you? You’re a loser. How are you an alcoholic? Like, stuff like that. I’m so grateful for the people in my life that they were able to do that for me, but also it just showed there’s nothing really to be embarrassed about.

One of the ways I cope is just through humor. Dude, I’ll be at work, and you know, like something will happen. I’ll be like, that’s it, I’m going to liquor store. Like, everyone around me knows my story and what I do, and I’m not afraid to make jokes about it, stuff like that. I think if I take it too seriously, then it’s just a bad thing for me. So, I like to make light of it.

How to Get Sober: We Can Do This Together

Part of me making light of it is just creating this brand of just saying, I did this thing and if you resonate with this, then come join me. We can do this together. Eventually, maybe if it catches on, I will end up offering something. But right now, I’m just trying to create some content and see if there’s a market out there for it.

[00:46:37] Detective Ev: I’ll have that in the show notes. Give him a follow just for support. I mean, so many of us are entrepreneurs out there doing our own thing. All of us, this is certainly true, the people in the functional world we’re starting from passions, right? Just like you. So, whether or not it’s a completely different situation is fine, but we’re all starting from passions. It’d just be really cool if you showed him some support.

Matt, my final question for you today, and I’m going to reword it a little bit. Cause normally again, we might have functional medicine doctors hopping on, and I’ll ask like, if they could get every single person in the world to do one thing for their health what’s the thing that they would get them to do?

But I, I’d like to switch that a little bit today. What I want to make the question is, if I could give you a magic wand and you could wave it and get every single person who is struggling with addiction to like get them to do one thing, what is the one thing that you’d get all the addicted people to do other than the obvious?

Signature Podcast Question

[00:47:26] Matt Leonard: I have two things kind of for this. One is reach out. You need to talk to people. You can’t do this alone. You have to talk to people and you have to talk about what you’re going through. That’s if you already know that you have a problem. If you’re struggling, there’s always resources out there for places and people that can help you.

The other thing that I would say is if you’re someone that was kind of like me, whereas like, I don’t have a problem, make a deal with yourself or better yet, make a deal with somebody. They’ll hold you accountable, you won’t hold yourself accountable.

Say you’re struggling with alcohol, alright, tonight, go home, open one beer and drink that beer. Or go to the bar and drink that one beer. Can you stop at that one beer? If you can’t stop, if the second you take that sip and you say, ah, screw it, I’ll have another one, that’s probably a pretty good sign that you have a problem. Because you made this contract or this deal with yourself, and immediately the second you had that one drink, everything about that just seemed not important anymore, you probably have a substance problem.

[00:48:31] Detective Ev: Matt, thank you so much for coming on today. Again, it’s a unique topic on this show, but one that again, is needed no matter what industry you’re in. So, I appreciate it man, and congratulations on everything.

[00:48:40] Matt Leonard: Thank you, man. Thanks for having me.

Conclusion

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

To experience more informative podcasts like this one, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/health-detective-podcast/.

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

Introduction

This week’s paper was found by my most prolific anonymous paper finder. He knows who he is – thank you. It’s another paper based on the UK Biobank study. It was called “Associations between types and sources of dietary carbohydrates and cardiovascular disease risk: a prospective cohort study of UK Biobank participants” and it was by Kelly et al (Ref 1).

The UK Biobank study population recruited 503,317 men and women, aged 37 to 73 years, between 2006 and 2010. Eligible adults living within 25 miles of 22 assessment centres across England, Wales and Scotland were identified from National Health Service (NHS) registers and invited to participate in the study. There were 9.2 million people eligible. The response rate was 5.5%. The usual diet, lifestyle and sociodemographic characteristics were recorded at baseline. Physical measurements and biological samples were also taken.

The original dietary information came from a 24-hour dietary assessment (Ref 2). Participants who provided a valid email address at recruitment were invited to complete identical 24-hour dietary assessments on four further occasions between February 2011 and April 2012.

Intakes of 206 food items and 32 drinks were collated from the responses to each 24-hour dietary assessment. The UK Nutrient Databank food composition tables were used to calculate the carbohydrate intake of food items (Ref 3).

Are you struggling with chronic health issues? Do you feel like something’s off with your body, but you can’t quite put your finger on it? If so, you’re not alone. Millions of people around the world suffer from metabolic chaos – a state of dysfunction caused by various types of stress.

In this episode of the Rebel Health Coach podcast, Thom Underwood speaks with Reed Davis, a Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner and Certified Nutritional Therapist. Reed is an expert in functional lab testing and holistic lifestyle medicine, and he’s the Founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® (FDN) and the FDN Certification Course.

During the interview, Thom and Reed discuss the power of integrative medicine and how it can help us reclaim our health and reverse most chronic diseases. They dive into Reed’s contribution to the book “The Gap: Simple Steps to Reclaim Your Health and Reverse Most Chronic Diseases,” where he discusses the concept of metabolic chaos and how it contributes to our body’s dysfunction.

Reed explains that metabolic chaos is caused by three types of stress: mental stress, physical or biomechanical stress, and chemical or functional stress. He provides practical tips and strategies for addressing each type of stress and rebalancing the body’s systems.

If you’re looking for a way to take control of your health and wellness, this episode is a must-listen. Reed’s expertise and practical advice will leave you feeling empowered and inspired to make positive changes in your life.

Dozens of lipsticks and lip glosses are put to the test.

“Over the past years, using cosmetic products has increased worldwide at an alarming rate due to unending pursuit for individual beautification…” There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that unless cosmetic products contain ingredients that may be linked to disease—ingredients such as toxic heavy metals like lead.

As you can see at 0:28 in my video Flashback Friday: Is Lipstick Safe Given the Lead Contamination?, lead has been found in a wide range of cosmetic products, from eye shadow to skin cream, and foundation to blush. You may recall that I talked about lead in henna in my video Is Henna Safe?, but in looking at the data, “important warnings can be recognized”: the presence of lead in lipsticks. This is concerning because lipstick wearers may actually swallow a little bit of it. In fact, it has “been estimated that a woman inadvertently ingests 1.8 kg [about 4 lbs] of lipstick during her lifetime.” “Moreover, lipsticks can be used by pregnant women or women of child bearing age.” (I mean, obviously.) Yes, lead is highly toxic, but how much lead can there be in lipstick? Surely, it is “a very minor source….Nonetheless, one should not exclude the fact that lead accumulates in the body due to over time and repetitive lead-containing lipstick or hair dye application, which lead to significant exposure levels.” You don’t really know, though, until you put it to the test.

Thirty-two lipsticks and lip glosses were tested, and lead was detected in 75 percent of the products, which “suggests potential public health concerns.” But how much lead did the researchers actually find? About half of the samples exceeded the FDA-recommended maximum level set for candy.

That limit is set for something kids may eat every day, though. Kids are not going to eat tubes of lipstick each day. “Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that there is no safe level of Pb

intake,” and, ideally, we should get contaminant levels down to zero. As a consumer group pointed out, a quarter of the lipsticks were lead-free, so we know it can be done. Maybe we should better regulate toxic metals in cosmetics to protect women’s health in the United States, as has already been done in Europe. Fair enough, but it wasn’t well-received.

The billion-dollar lipstick industry wasn’t happy. In an article that tried to downplay the risks, the scientists-for-hire firm that once played villain in the real-life Erin Brockovich case concluded that, even though lipstick may contain lead, the concentrations are so low that they “are not expected to pose any health risks to adults or children.” Children’s blood lead levels are influenced more by background lead exposures, such as lead in the air, dust, water, and food, than by lipstick exposures, but just because our environment is so contaminated doesn’t mean we need to add to the problem. In fact, because there’s so much lead around anyway, maybe there’s that much more reason to cut down on additional exposures. But in that article, the scientists-for-hire calculated that an adult would need to apply lipstick more than 30 times a day to raise their blood lead level to even the most stringent limits and 695 times a day to get blood levels up to more concerning levels.

However, as you can see at 3:13 in my video, this was based on an assumption that lipstick would only have about one part per million lead or, at the extreme end, maybe two or three parts per million (ppm). But by 2016, about ten times more lipsticks were tested, and they averaged nearly 500 ppm—with 10 percent exceeding 1,000 ppm—going all the way up to 10,000 ppm, with more than one out of five exceeding FDA and even Chinese safety limits on lead in cosmetics.

As you can see in the graphs below and at 3:42 in my video, lip gloss was worse than lipstick; orange and pink colors had more lead than brown, red, or purple; and all of the really contaminated cosmetics were the cheaper ones, sold for less than five dollars each.

Hold on. The highest concentration found was 10,185 mg/kg. That’s 10 grams per kilogram, which means the lipstick was 1 percent pure lead. That means a single application could expose a grown woman to perhaps 12 times the tolerable daily intake.

And if a woman is interested in having children, that poses a “particular concern,” as lead accumulates in our bones and “may be released into the bloodstream during pregnancy,” where it can slip through the placenta or into breast milk.

The good news is that the FDA is considering lowering the maximum allowable lead levels in lipstick from 20 ppm to 10 ppm, something Canada arrived at a decade ago. But without enforcement, it doesn’t matter. As you can see in the graph below and at 4:39 in my video, moving the legal limit from 20 ppm down to 10 ppm would just mean that instead of 23 percent of lip products exceeding legal levels, 27 percent would be exceeding legal levels. Right now, the limit’s 20 ppm, but what does it matter if there still may be products on store shelves that violate the legal limits?

Is Henna Safe? is the video I mentioned.

I think the only other cosmetic safety videos I have are Flashback Friday: Which Intestines for Food and Cosmetics? and Avoiding Adult Exposure to Phthalates.

Dozens of lipsticks and lip glosses are put to the test.

“Over the past years, using cosmetic products has increased worldwide at an alarming rate due to unending pursuit for individual beautification…” There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that unless cosmetic products contain ingredients that may be linked to disease—ingredients such as toxic heavy metals like lead.

As you can see at 0:28 in my video Flashback Friday: Is Lipstick Safe Given the Lead Contamination?, lead has been found in a wide range of cosmetic products, from eye shadow to skin cream, and foundation to blush. You may recall that I talked about lead in henna in my video Is Henna Safe?, but in looking at the data, “important warnings can be recognized”: the presence of lead in lipsticks. This is concerning because lipstick wearers may actually swallow a little bit of it. In fact, it has “been estimated that a woman inadvertently ingests 1.8 kg [about 4 lbs] of lipstick during her lifetime.” “Moreover, lipsticks can be used by pregnant women or women of child bearing age.” (I mean, obviously.) Yes, lead is highly toxic, but how much lead can there be in lipstick? Surely, it is “a very minor source….Nonetheless, one should not exclude the fact that lead accumulates in the body due to over time and repetitive lead-containing lipstick or hair dye application, which lead to significant exposure levels.” You don’t really know, though, until you put it to the test.

Thirty-two lipsticks and lip glosses were tested, and lead was detected in 75 percent of the products, which “suggests potential public health concerns.” But how much lead did the researchers actually find? About half of the samples exceeded the FDA-recommended maximum level set for candy.

That limit is set for something kids may eat every day, though. Kids are not going to eat tubes of lipstick each day. “Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that there is no safe level of Pb

intake,” and, ideally, we should get contaminant levels down to zero. As a consumer group pointed out, a quarter of the lipsticks were lead-free, so we know it can be done. Maybe we should better regulate toxic metals in cosmetics to protect women’s health in the United States, as has already been done in Europe. Fair enough, but it wasn’t well-received.

The billion-dollar lipstick industry wasn’t happy. In an article that tried to downplay the risks, the scientists-for-hire firm that once played villain in the real-life Erin Brockovich case concluded that, even though lipstick may contain lead, the concentrations are so low that they “are not expected to pose any health risks to adults or children.” Children’s blood lead levels are influenced more by background lead exposures, such as lead in the air, dust, water, and food, than by lipstick exposures, but just because our environment is so contaminated doesn’t mean we need to add to the problem. In fact, because there’s so much lead around anyway, maybe there’s that much more reason to cut down on additional exposures. But in that article, the scientists-for-hire calculated that an adult would need to apply lipstick more than 30 times a day to raise their blood lead level to even the most stringent limits and 695 times a day to get blood levels up to more concerning levels.

However, as you can see at 3:13 in my video, this was based on an assumption that lipstick would only have about one part per million lead or, at the extreme end, maybe two or three parts per million (ppm). But by 2016, about ten times more lipsticks were tested, and they averaged nearly 500 ppm—with 10 percent exceeding 1,000 ppm—going all the way up to 10,000 ppm, with more than one out of five exceeding FDA and even Chinese safety limits on lead in cosmetics.

As you can see in the graphs below and at 3:42 in my video, lip gloss was worse than lipstick; orange and pink colors had more lead than brown, red, or purple; and all of the really contaminated cosmetics were the cheaper ones, sold for less than five dollars each.

Hold on. The highest concentration found was 10,185 mg/kg. That’s 10 grams per kilogram, which means the lipstick was 1 percent pure lead. That means a single application could expose a grown woman to perhaps 12 times the tolerable daily intake.

And if a woman is interested in having children, that poses a “particular concern,” as lead accumulates in our bones and “may be released into the bloodstream during pregnancy,” where it can slip through the placenta or into breast milk.

The good news is that the FDA is considering lowering the maximum allowable lead levels in lipstick from 20 ppm to 10 ppm, something Canada arrived at a decade ago. But without enforcement, it doesn’t matter. As you can see in the graph below and at 4:39 in my video, moving the legal limit from 20 ppm down to 10 ppm would just mean that instead of 23 percent of lip products exceeding legal levels, 27 percent would be exceeding legal levels. Right now, the limit’s 20 ppm, but what does it matter if there still may be products on store shelves that violate the legal limits?

Is Henna Safe? is the video I mentioned.

I think the only other cosmetic safety videos I have are Flashback Friday: Which Intestines for Food and Cosmetics? and Avoiding Adult Exposure to Phthalates.

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Welcome to 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 which is all about functional medicine for your pets. Let’s welcome our guest.

All right. Hello there, Dr. Roberts. Welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?

[00:00:04] Dr. Ruth Roberts: I’m well, Evan, how are you?

[00:00:06] Detective Ev: I can hardly remember a time I was better. Thank you for asking.

I heard that you did a fantastic job for us at the Health Space Unmasked event, and that’s why I tell you guys on the podcast to hop on. Most of the people that end up popping on are our practitioners. We don’t get a ton of traffic from the podcast to there. It’s like a whole separate audience sometimes.

But I’m telling you guys, there are really great events that we’re doing there. They’re longer than the podcasts, they’re more interactive. You can ask the person questions. And this was our most attended one, if I’m not mistaken. When you count the replays, like when people watched afterwards, it was the most attended one already and it just happened in early March.

It makes sense too. It’s not only that Dr. Roberts is cool. It’s a very special topic that I don’t think anyone is really discussing in an intelligent way. It’s this whole aspect of doing functional medicine with pets. It’s happened to a few of our practitioners throughout the years. I know that they’ve ran some of our labs, believe it or not, on their animals. Yes, you can do that and I’m sure we’ll touch on that in some degree today.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Applying Learned Health Support to Pets

But I just want to get started with you real quick cause again, it is a separate audience, so we’ll not spend too much time on this. How did you get into this line of work? This is so specific; it’s already niche enough to get into functional medicine. Now we’re really pushing it by adding the animals in too. So how the heck did you get into this?

[00:01:21] Dr. Ruth Roberts: How do most alternative health practitioners get into alternative health? I got really sick. And I had a dog that was the love of my life, Arnold. He lived to be 17, his last six months were not pretty. I didn’t know what else to do for him. So, that was my promise to him as I euthanized him and wished him off into whatever is next in life or afterlife.

I promised him I would find a better way because what we have to offer in conventional medicine, whether it’s for pets or people. For people that are in a chronic disease situation at the end of their life, is extremely limited. What we have to offer them to actually help them feel better is even more limited. That’s been just my driving force is what could I have done more to help Arnold. Everything I’ve learned to help support my own health is what I’ve ended up applying to pets, plus digging into some special issues that people don’t get but pets do.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: How Long Does It Take to Get Sick?

[00:02:27] Detective Ev: Got it. Yeah, that makes total sense cause everyone that shows up on this show that is helping other humans, they’ve all been through the ringer. I literally get maybe one person every three months on this podcast that actually has not really been through any major health challenges, but just chose to do it, which is very special and cool in its own right.

I’m curious if I may ask, what were you dealing with? It sounds like, like you said, you had personal health issues, correct?

[00:02:49] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Oh, yeah. This is back in 2005, 2006, I was eating the standard American diet. I was probably 80 pounds more than I am right now. I had IBS, fibromyalgia, four blown cervical discs, and I was not a very happy person. I was working ridiculous hours, working 80 to 120 hours a week easily. The caseload I was dealing with was extremely heavy. I was euthanizing five to seven pets every day. That takes a huge emotional toll.

So, I was really lucky in 2006 to find an MD that was doing functional medicine in Charleston, South Carolina. I didn’t like the answers he had. I’m like, well, how long is it going to take me to feel better? He was like, at least six months. I’m like, but I want the pill to make me better right now.

So, he asked me the question that we all ask our folks we’re supporting, and how long did it take you to get sick? Three years. Yeah. So, there you go.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: From Lovely People to Junkies

[00:03:48] Detective Ev: Well, and yeah, that’s actually kind of decent, even in our world. Like sometimes, I mean myself, it was 14 years of dealing with symptoms almost before it even dawned on me. Oh, maybe it’s something lifestyle wise, cause this started for me super young. You’re truly just subject to whatever paradigm the adults in your life may have had.

My parents are awesome people, but they’re individuals that were very, at the time, Western medicine focused. They wanted to get results just as bad as me. But you’re just not even thinking outside that box, most of us at that age, you’re just doing what the adults say.

One thing I want to home in on, because I’m always fascinated by how people come to these conclusions and make the initial jump, especially someone who came from this more conventional way of thinking, probably. What was the final straw that led to you going to a functional practitioner? Cause I know that you found them, but for a lot of people that’s something that they would completely dismiss.

And it’s sad, but I’ve seen people go to their grave still dismissing these individuals because they are so set that that can’t work. So, what opens your mind to, hey, maybe I gotta go do that?

[00:04:45] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Well, with fibromyalgia at that point, the paradigm in conventional medicine is non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. When that’s not enough, then we’ll add in some narcotics and some more narcotics and some more narcotics. I saw my own clients go from being beautiful, lovely people to junkies, to the point, literally, of trying to get me to write prescriptions for narcotics for their dogs because they were cut off at the drugstore.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Realistic Expectations

So, with fibromyalgia, I knew that that was not the path to follow. That’s what made me start looking. At this point, I had already enrolled in traditional Chinese veterinary medicine training, acupuncture, and herbal medicine at the Chi Institute. It’s like I made the promise to Arnold, and I made me keep the promise for myself as well.

[00:05:35] Detective Ev: All right, awesome. Well, I’m glad that you eventually, obviously, got a lot better. You seem to be doing great now. You said 80 pounds, I wouldn’t even know that. Did it take the six months, or did it take longer or less time to get better?

[00:05:46] Dr. Ruth Roberts: It took six months to feel decent. What I thought was normal three years prior was actually decent. And it took another year to feel good.

[00:05:56] Detective Ev: Fair enough. I think this is worth mentioning to people because if you want to get better naturally and even functionally, whatever you want to call it, it’s possible. But you gotta understand that we’re healing the body, right? If the body healed overnight, we wouldn’t be having the health issues that we have, right? It’d be pretty simple to fix this stuff. So, give it some time, have realistic expectations.

Yes, the needle should be moving for you, you know? I would even say as this stuff gets more and more advanced, because now there’s a lot more effort being put into this whole space than there was back in 2006, you probably can feel a lot better even quicker. We have a lot of people that go through FDN type programs, and they feel better in a few months, but it’s going to be more than a day. It’s not the pill.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: You Can’t Out-Pill a Bad Diet

The benefit of that is it’s more permanent, right? You don’t just stop eating this way and then all of a sudden go back to square one. You can kind of heal and then get some flexibility back in your life versus that pill. Maybe it makes you feel better at best in a day or two, but you take it away and then, oh, I got the same problems and a whole lot more than I had before, usually, right?

[00:06:50] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Right on. Yeah.

[00:06:52] Detective Ev: So, for Arnold, we did this, we figured this out, and obviously you hated seeing those last six months of his life. Seventeen is still actually really good for a dog.

What are some of the basic things that we can start with? Where are people messing up? Because like, I always know that people would be willing to do anything for their pets, usually, like generally speaking, more than they’re willing to do for their own health. Yet I see people feeding them this crazy dog food or treats with all kinds of chemicals in it.

So, where are just like the foundational things that people are messing up on that they don’t even think about when it comes to pet health?

[00:07:23] Dr. Ruth Roberts: You hit the nail on the head. What I always tell people is you cannot out-pill a bad diet, whether that’s supplements, medications, whatever. If you’re feeding that pet junk, then you’re going to get that result.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: The Originial CrockPet Diet

That’s where I started is with the original CrockPet Diet. That has been the mainstay. It is a cooked, whole food diet that you can manipulate based on what your dog or your cat needs. That is truly the foundation of health.

I mean, Socrates said this for a reason, “let food be thy medicine and thy medicine be food.” And that’s the truth. If we don’t start with what we’re eating, what we’re feeding our pets, then we’re not going to make significant progress. Sadly, there’s all these really expensive, high quality, human grade ingredient brands of food that are freeze dried, that are in some cases frozen and shipped fresh. Those are better, certainly, than the bag of Royal Canin or some sort of prescription veterinary diet. But there’s nothing that beats a home cooked meal.

So, if you think about it this way, we can get this beautiful, incredibly expensive freeze-dried food, but do you want to eat power bars for every meal? It’s like, yeah, you can do it and the astronauts can do it, but even they like to rehydrate at least their food. But that’s not what good nutrition is.

It’s food in its natural form that is cooked appropriately. And I’m saying “cooked” because most of my colleagues will tell you that raw is the only way. I’m going to tell you that that is not the only way. There is the way that is right for that pet. And then in my hands, for the vast majority of my clients and their pets, it’s been cooked food.

[00:09:10] Detective Ev: Okay. This is great.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Cooking Makes Nutrients More Available

The audience that listens regularly knows this. I like to go in with a healthy level of ignorance. What that means is I never not look up our guests, but I try to not go so in depth that I already know all the answers to stuff. So, this is actually genuine. What I try to do is, I want to put myself in the state that the audience will be in. I want to ask the questions that they will ask.

So, when you said, “cooked”, I appreciate you specifying that. Because my first thought that went through my head, I’m not a dog expert or animal expert, shouldn’t they be eating raw?

My little puppy, she can’t, whip out a pan and start cooking stuff up. But clearly, you’re the expert here and there’s more benefit to it. You said it might not be right for your dog. I don’t know if this is something that people can even figure out at home necessarily. But like, what is the advantage to a dog getting cooked food when, obviously, at the very least, it’s not something they could do naturally? So, what is the benefit to it?

[00:09:59] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Well, think about where dogs came from. They split off from wolves about 40,000 years ago. We showed up around, homo sapiens showed up about 50,000 years ago. Neanderthals had already been cooking. This is part of why we are thought to have evolved our giant brains is because of cooked food. It makes the nutrients more available.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: The History Behind Dog Food

So, same thing with dogs. They evolved eating our garbage first, what they could scavenge. You know, they’re indiscriminate omnivores and they will eat anything that’s available to them. They would scavenge food and then what we fed them, you know, our leftovers. Like, well, throw the dog the bone or whatever, the grain or the bread that we’ve cooked, started cooking, baking 30,000 years ago.

Then finally the last step is what we actually fed them. And until the 1950s, the bag of food was for ultra wealthy people with hunting dogs. So, this whole concept of feeding a nutritionally balanced diet in every bite is just a marketing promotion.

Many of my colleagues will say, but oh, raw is the ancestral diet of dogs, and that is true, but for wolves and the progenitor species before them. It’s also our ancestral diet for pro progenitor species prior to homo Neanderthals. So, that’s kind of it.

[00:11:25] Detective Ev: Fair enough. That’s actually the first time I’ve heard that. That’s really cool.

My one friend is a dog trainer, and even still to this day, they’ve experimented with a million different things, right? They don’t have one specific answer, but regardless, he always buys super high-quality stuff.

I know they actually, I think, even presently go back and forth. It’s a Dobermann, so sometimes the dog gets this raw food and then other times it gets cooked. But it’s like a huge prescription, right? They know exactly what things to put in for them. I don’t know if they’re necessarily doing it in the same way that you would.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Grains or No Grains?

Because again, they’re trying to, it’s kind of like body building humans, right? We wouldn’t necessarily call building humans to be the perfect diet, but that’s what they’re kinda doing for the dog. It’s like something that’ll buff it up and make it super athletic. So, this is interesting.

I consider myself fairly educated in health, but not the animal side. My initial thought is the animal is supposed to be eating raw. But this makes total sense, cause yeah, they kind of evolved with us.

I can never really picture my family’s dogs. We have a Shichon at our house and then we have a Chesapeake Bay retriever here. She’s like 16 pounds, cute as can be. I can’t picture her going out and like ripping up an animal and eating that raw. She’s so domesticated that obviously she does need different foods. Like she kind of moved along with us here.

I hope this isn’t too simple of a question for you, but what do you think about the whole grain thing? Because I’ve heard this argued back and forth a lot of times. I did take the risk and our family dog has eaten grain free pretty much her entire life. She is, unbelievably healthy. I mean, she’s 11 years old, Shichon, like I said. Jumps off the couch that’s four feet high, sprints up the stairs, chases deer. I mean, she’s never had a health issue yet. I don’t know if it’s just the food or other things that we’ve done, but that seemed to have gone well. So, are the grains an ultimatum or is there a time and place for that in the cooked food for the animals?

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Make Balanced, Rational Decisions

[00:13:01] Dr. Ruth Roberts: There’s no ultimatum on anything.

In the United States of America, we’re like, oh, coconut oil is bad for you in the seventies, right? So, they pulled all that stuff out. Like, that’s what used to be the butter for movie theater popcorn and so delicious, right? Now, 30, 40, 50 years later, coconut oil cures everything. The truth is somewhere in between. It’s great for some things; it’s not so great for other things.

It will increase your LDL cholesterol level if you eat a ton of it. And there’s starting to be some evidence that yes, that goes up with keto diets, but maybe that’s not such a good thing. So, grains, if you can tolerate them and they nurture you, yes, eat them. If you can’t tolerate them and they make you sick, don’t eat them.

Same thing with legumes, which is what ends up going into grain-free diets as a carbohydrate source. Beans are wonderful, they’re nutritious. However, if your GI tract cannot tolerate them, you probably shouldn’t eat them. What happened with the whole grain-free food debacle is that 65% to 70% of the calories of those foods are beans. And beans do contain anti-nutrients called lectins and phytates. Even cooking them thoroughly, if you’re eating that many beans, that’s probably going to create some issues.

That’s part of the problem about how we see food in the United States. It’s good for us or bad for us. Then we eat like, oh, blueberries are good for us. I eat two cups every day. I mean, let’s make it more balanced and complete and be a little more rational about how we approach food.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: What’s Working or Not Working?

[00:14:49] Detective Ev: Yeah. You’re like one step ahead of me. I feel like anything I’m thinking you’re already answering for me. I was thinking about this as you said it. I’m like, duh, Ev. If someone asked me, are grains bad for humans? My answer would be, well, I actually do terribly on grains, but other people I know do just fine. Why would it not be the same for dogs when we have so much diversity amongst them? That makes total sense.

Yes, some dogs might do a lot better with just more meat. Some dogs might be able to handle a little bit of everything. So, okay. I feel like yeah, I need to not make special rules. They’re still animals just like us. They’re going to have different conditions and different circumstances.

[00:15:22] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Exactly. Like, keto is a big thing. I’ve eaten keto for years off and on, for health reasons. But if you look at a lot of the products that are designed for keto, for snacks, it’s got a bunch of garbage in it. You just have to think, what’s working, what’s not working.

Is the raw diet working for my dog? Fantastic. Ooh. When he eats cooked food, it’s not so good. That happens sometimes. But most of the time raw food’s not really working for my dog. His stool is always soft. Wow. Amazing. On cooked food with more fiber, he’s doing great. So, you have to really look at yourself, at your pet, and then make decisions based off of what you’re seeing. It’s not an overnight like, yes, this is the way. You may see in two weeks or 30 days that it’s not quite the way and you have to make some modifications.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Environmental Toxins

[00:16:11] Detective Ev: Got it. Guys, so just like, I mean, as the podcast implies, just like we need to be these health detectives for ourselves, we can be health detectives for our pets. In fact, we’re obligated to, cause they don’t have that ability to do that in the same way we do. If we’re going to have them as part of our family, I think that’s kind of one thing that we owe them.

So, diet’s an obvious one. Even if they don’t know the answer, which I didn’t, if I went out and asked anyone where is like one place we’re maybe messing up with our pets? They would all say, okay, well maybe diet. Are there other things that we’re messing up on that might not be so obvious? I’m already thinking like, what about their sleep cycle compared to ours and all these things. Is there another one that is kind of a huge thing that’s affecting them?

[00:16:47] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Yeah. I mean, the next big category, frankly, is environmental toxins.

Think about it this way. If you’ve got the dog you mentioned earlier, the little guy that’s like 16 to 20 pounds or like our little dog, HiO, she’s six pounds, they’re much lower to the ground. So there is dust and stuff falling from the air onto the ground. All of that dust is laden with a chemical soup that we really don’t want to think about on a daily basis, or we might be immobilized. But these guys are snuffling it up from the carpet; they’re licking their feet and ingesting those chemicals.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Aid the Detox Process

The other part is that we are also applying pesticides to them or giving them a pill every month or every three months that contains pesticides to keep fleas and all of this other stuff off of them. I practiced in South Carolina, sometimes you need some help with flee control. But the point is, their overall environmental toxin load is astronomically higher than ours is. In fact, in cats, their toxin levels are 96% higher than humans. You can check that out on Environmental Working Group. And in dogs, their toxin levels are 46% higher than humans. Their load is much greater.

This is part of why, circling back to diet, helping nurture the microbiome is incredibly important. Helping to support the liver so that can efficiently and effectively get rid of these toxins is incredibly important. That’s the other massive thing is to focus on aiding the body in detoxification.

[00:18:33] Detective Ev: I never even thought about that from a household perspective. I think as far as I’ve gotten was, I had my dad, thankfully he agreed because he has always been a traditional guy, he smokes cigarettes. He’s a great dad. He’s just in that kind of mindset for health.

He was spraying glyphosate everywhere, cause he’s a landscaper, all outside where our dog walks. And I’m like, dad, even if you’re not going to do it for us, it’s fine. But look at Macy, her face is in this where you just sprayed like two days ago. Like, she’s going to get this, and I know we love her. If nothing else, you don’t want mom on your case when Macy has to go to the vet. So, if nothing else do it for that. He thankfully stopped.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Choose Nontoxic Cleaning Products

But now I’m thinking like, oh my gosh, my mom is a total clean freak. I kind of inherited this. I just try to do it with better products, but I’m thinking about how spotless her floor is.

Then yeah, you’re right. Macy runs with her little paws on there, and sure enough she goes into the other room and she’s always chewing on her paw and stuff. So, I’m actually just super happy that Macy’s in the place that she is now, but I’m realizing, wow, not only does our dog probably have these extra toxins, but all these dogs do. That’s actually statistically backed by what you just said. That’s kind of crazy.

[00:19:34] Dr. Ruth Roberts: It is. It’s insane. That’s the thing, being a clean freak is actually fantastic because you’re removing this stuff but choosing your cleaning product is incredibly important. So, vinegar and water, I mean, is a perfect solution. It’s going to get rid of the garbage and leave no residue behind that’s potentially toxic.

[00:19:53] Detective Ev: Okay, cool. So, we got the food, we got environmental toxins. Then I actually want to touch on this one specifically. I’m not sure if it’s something that you get into a lot, but I am huge on circadian biology. I’m fascinated by light and stuff. I do the whole, I’ve been doing it for years, the blocking the blue light at night. I’ve found that to be profound for my health. I get out and catch morning light every single day.

I’ve always wondered with dogs, like I know that they have different receptors, so it’s not probably identical to us.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Spaying and Neutering

I even understand that, if I’m not mistaken, some dogs would’ve been more like wolves. Aren’t they nocturnal to some degree, or am I completely wrong with that?

[00:20:25] Dr. Ruth Roberts: They do have nocturnal activity, but most of their hunting activity is during the day. Yeah. Then there’s coyotes that are definitely out there hunting at night. It’s kind a mixed bag. Cats are definitely nocturnal, for sure.

[00:20:37] Detective Ev: Okay. Either way, I’m wondering, if a family keeps their TV on all the time while they’re sleeping, all of us would know that that’s terrible. But I’m wondering about like their fluffy friend that’s sleeping at the end of the bed that’s also subject to that TV. Is that something that you’ve studied at all or what’s your opinion on that?

[00:20:54] Dr. Ruth Roberts: No, there’s clear evidence that EMFs, light pollution, all of that messes up everybody’s circadian rhythm, messes up their melatonin production, all of those things. That’s incredibly important. But I’m going to tell you that if we’re going to talk about the top 10 chunks, that’s down at the bottom of the list or close to it.

Because sadly, the other big chunk is that we spay and neuter these guys before they ever reach endocrine competency. It’s interesting, there’s a researcher at the University of Oregon at Corvallis, at the veterinary school that’s actually linked excess luteinizing hormone production in spade and neutered pets to creating receptors for luteinizing hormone on tissues that shouldn’t have them. They are the joints, the bones, the bone marrow, the adrenal glands, the brain, the gut, so, all of these places where we’re seeing chronic disease.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: A Main Cause of Cancer

Her research is pointing to that as being one of the main causes of this epidemic of cancer we are seeing in our dogs and cats. That’s a huge problem.

Again, you can’t un-spay or un-neuter. Maybe somewhere in the future there will be some sort of hormone replacement. But what we can do, again, is support our pets to help clear excess levels of luteinizing hormone and just be cognizant that this is an issue. That is just fascinating research and horrifying at the same time.

I mean, we solved a problem of pet overpopulation, but unfortunately, in the meantime, we created a monster with it. Does that make sense?

[00:22:33] Detective Ev: Yeah, it does. I’m just trying to think. We only had Macy in my family, and it was never really my responsibility. We kind of got her as a teenager, mostly for my sister.

Now I love Macy to death, right? I would take out anything for her. But I just never really thought about that aspect. Then we have Jager here who was my girlfriend’s dog, and of course I love him now. I’ll put it this way, he’s fully intact. He’s a 90-pound dog, so you get to see it every day. It’s in your face kind of.

He’s by himself though, he’s not with other dogs. But he doesn’t seem to show anything negative from this. In fact, this is actually one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever been with. Like he is not aggressive. He’s not mean.

This is so tough cause, I guess, it’s situational, but like, should we really be doing this to animals at all? Like should we be spaying and neutering?

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Not a Society for Intact Pets

[00:23:12] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Well, this is a really a double-edged sword. It truly is. Tell me again how old Jager is?

Detective Ev: Jager’s four years old.

Dr. Ruth Roberts: Okay. So, he is a young guy. This is the thing is that I’m seeing dogs, Labradors, at five and six, dying of lymphoma. I mean, this is just crazy.

But back to your question, should we be doing it at all? Here’s the difficulty, in Europe, they really don’t, and they don’t have anywhere near the incidence of cancer that we have in our pets in the US. The difficulty is when I started practice in 1990, the local SBCA took in, I think 45,000 animals a year, and they euthanized more than 38,000. That’s a problem.

Theoretically, yes, it would be better if we did not need to spare or neuter, or we had some way to control it. But the reality is, is that US society is not set up for a society of intact pets. The other issues are things like daycare, boarding kennels. They can’t get insurance if they allow pets that are intact into their facilities. It’s kind of a tough one. Definitely a tough one.

[00:24:25] Detective Ev: I did not know that about the insurance either cause my buddy owns a whole thing and obviously we don’t talk about that side of his business. I just think it’s a crazy job and God bless him. Like I know you make great money, but there’s just certain things that aren’t worth it. You gotta really love what you do to be doing that.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Socializing Pets Properly

Let’s say hypothetically, I guess for most people this wouldn’t be realistic, but if your dog never had to go to daycare and you know that you’re only ever going to have like one dog at any given time, like my girlfriend is never going to add on another dog while Jager is alive. In that case, I mean, if they’re not interacting randomly with other dogs and they’re not going to daycare and you know that it’s just going to be at the house, it would probably be clearly better to keep them intact and let them do as nature intended.

[00:25:03] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Exactly. The other thing is, is that doesn’t mean that we can’t do something like a vasectomy, or an ovary sparing spay that would prevent them from reproducing and not have the pet overpopulation problem take off again.

The other thing is too, is learning how to socialize our pets properly. We spend a lot of time in Mexico and there’s dogs running around on the beach. For most Americans, they’re like, oh my God. They’re going to…, but they’ve worked it out. They’ve learned how to socialize with each other and learned what appropriate behavior is and is not.

[00:25:37] Detective Ev: I agree with that because Macy, she’s good, but my parents live on like three and a half acres, not rural, but getting there. She doesn’t see other animals and she barely sees other humans. We usually go out, like when I lived with my parents, we usually went out because no one really wants to drive the 30 minutes to us. They’re all in town or the city or whatever.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Let’s Talk Action Steps

So, when Macy sees another human or dog, it’s a little embarrassing, right? But I got to see Jager with Maddy. I’m like, I can’t believe how well behaved this dog is. Whether it’s a fair stereotype or not, these are the ones that you’re worried about, right? It’s a big dog, and he’s intact on top of it so you’re expecting a problem. Yet Jager is like a thousand times better behaved than little Macy to be dead honest.

So yeah, training the animals right and socializing them properly, I think could go a long way.

[00:26:21] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Amen to that. It would solve a lot of problems for us too.

[00:26:26] Detective Ev: Yeah. Alright, now I want to spend like the last 20 minutes or so, not only just talking about what you offer, but talking about what are the steps then? Because I think everyone that is willing to listen to a podcast like this and listens to us in general, even if they didn’t have the answers, they already know that we’re doing stuff wrong with our dogs and animals.

I’m already thinking I’ve never really considered the environmental toxin thing outside of glyphosate. I need to go focus on that. I’ve never really even thought, not that it’s a little too late with Macy, but the whole spaying and neutering thing, I didn’t know that that could be contributing to the cancer.

Let’s talk about some action steps. I think you mentioned some type of food. Do you produce and sell that or is that somewhere else we can buy?

[00:27:00] Dr. Ruth Roberts: No. That’s the whole thing.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Start Cooking for Fido

The original CrockPet Diet I developed back in 2006 just as the first pet food recall hit. It is a recipe of home cooked food, proteins, brassica vegetables, other veggies, grains and or beans based, and or some other starch based on what that individual pet can tolerate and then healthy fats.

There’s a course that we’ve got a great question and answer group every week to help you learn how to cook and how to modify the diet for your pet. Whether you do mine, whether you do Dr. Judy’s, whether you do somebody else’s recipe, start incorporating real food into your pet’s diet.

If all you can do to start with is go down to Costco and grab a giant bag of Normandy blend vegetables, which has got some broccoli, some cauliflower, and some squash in it, grab a handful, cook it up, throw it on top of the dry food. You’re making the first step. That is critically important. For many pets that will be like, holy smokes, this dog looks and feels so much better. So, that is step one. Work on the food in the way that you can. Once you get more confident and you start to see the changes, you’ll want to do better because it just is astonishing sometimes.

The second is to be cognizant of what products are in my home. I mean, do you have Mr. Clean under the sink? God knows what’s in Mr. Clean. He does a great job, but you know, why? So, be cognizant of that.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Keep My Pet Healthy Plan

Look at the shampoos, the products that you may be using on your pets. The flea prevention, the heartworm prevention, the flea pills.

This never made sense to me. Let’s give a dog an oral pesticide that’s going to work for 30 days, which means they have to eat it, absorb it into their fat, and then release it to the skin to kill the fleas. Just be super aware of what you’re doing and start to question, is this really in my pet’s best interest. Scale the things back that you can, look for natural options for heartworm prevention, if possible, for flea control. And talk with your veterinarian. You may not get much good feedback, but at least you’re going to know where they stand.

Vaccinations, it’s really clear, the literature was super clear in 1994, I think was the first paper Dr. Schultz published showing that the duration of immunity after a properly executed puppy or kitten series and a booster at roughly 16 to 18 months of age was at least three years and, in many cases, up to seven. So, ask your veterinarian four titers which is a blood sample, to see if they’re still protected against a particular core vaccine issue like distemper or parvo virus.

Then just from there, work on controlling inflammation, work on supporting detoxification, and that can be as simple as adding in omega-3 fatty acids, probiotics to help support the microbiome, and milk thistle to help the liver get rid of excess garbage. That’s the simple, every day, day in, day out, keep my pet healthy plan.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: What About the Vaccines?

[00:30:15] Detective Ev: Nice. Well, and the good news is if you’re focused especially with the chemical side, if you’re focused on just bettering your own health in your own home, it seems like a lot of this would go fairly well together. Because if you’re cooking your own food, get something going for the puppy too. If you stop using toxic cleaners, you’re automatically helping them. That seems like it all works together kind of nicely.

[00:30:32] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, we know our pets are our family. So, these are things that if we’re aware that they’re problems that we would do for our children, we’re just doing it for the four-leggers.

[00:30:43] Detective Ev: Actually, I had this written down, but we got so into it that I honestly forgot this one. I will preface this so that I don’t put you in a weird position. I’m curious, so what is your opinion about the current, if I may ask this, the vaccine schedule for the dogs?

And I hate that I even have to disclaim this, but of course the default is not to be reasonable in today’s world. So, just to be clear, guys, just because we are on a functional podcast does not mean this is an anti-vaccine thing at all. But I think most of us, when you’re in the functional space, the reasonable opinion for most people starts to be, it’s not, no vaccines; it’s like, okay, do we need to give the kids all of these? I think that’s a reasonable question.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Core, Non-Core, and Not Recommended

So, I have the same question for the dogs. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do any ever. But are we giving too many? Because I’ve never had to give these vaccines to a dog. Like Maddy’s getting shots for Jager like every other few months sometimes for like ticks or this thing or that thing. Is that overdone, do you think?

[00:31:30] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s clear. So again, the research started in 1994 showing duration of immunity was much longer.

Then the other thing that happened was cats started getting fibrosarcoma, tumors, at injection sites. It’s like, whoa. That was super for veterinary medicine because it made us ask, do we really need to give these vaccines every year and what’s creating the problem for cats? So, we asked the questions, and we got some answers. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues don’t follow the correct protocols.

The American Animal Hospital Association has been publishing vaccine protocol recommendations for 30 years now. They divided vaccines into core, non-core, and not recommended.

Core vaccines are distemper, parvo, rabies, and the recommendation is for puppies 12 weeks, 14 weeks. If they get a vaccine for the first time then, they’re good for the puppy series because maternal antibodies have dropped at 12 weeks sufficiently to allow the puppy to create its own antibodies. Revaccinate at one year and then going forward do titers.

Non-core are things like leptospirosis, Lyme vaccine, and there’s a couple of others. Then non recommended are ones like Coronavirus, that was always a vaccine in search of a disease. And the flu vaccine is sort of in that category.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Think Your Way Through

With the non-core, what you have to think about is, is there Lyme where I live, and what’s the incidence map look like? And are there other tickborne diseases like anaplasmosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever? If that’s the case, the Lyme vaccine is not going to protect against those, and it probably doesn’t protect it. It’s got an on again off again track record.

What’s important there is doing really good tick control because Lyme is terrible, but so are the other diseases. If you’re not protecting it against ticks, you’re inviting problems. Leptospirosis, again, you have to look at the incidence map for your area. If it’s a really high incidence, then okay, consider it knowing that according to Dr. Schultz, if the vaccine is not given at least every six months, which no veterinarian does, then your dog is not protected against Lepto.

He’s done a lot of research for almost every company. And he’s had to sort of tone that down a little bit to be able to keep doing the other good work that he’s doing.

So, think your way through. You know, are you going to take a malaria vaccine if you live in California? Probably not, because the incidence of malaria in California is probably about zero. Just think your way through. You can Google stuff. What’s the incidence of Leptospirosis in dogs in Flint, Michigan? Then you can go from there.

Rational discussion about this doesn’t happen. And unfortunately, veterinarians are now strong-arming people to get annual vaccines saying, okay, I won’t see you anymore if you don’t do this, even though the science says that’s not the correct thing to be doing.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Pro-Vaccine for Specific Things

[00:34:41] Detective Ev: Thank you, because I’m glad I still got the opportunity to ask that question. To me, the fact that human vaccines too, have turned into things like religion and politics, I just, I can’t understand this.

The people that go to the extreme on one end and say, no vaccines ever, they’re all bad. I say, okay, do you think some medications are useful some of the time? Every single one of them will say yes. I’m like, so why would that not work for vaccines?

Now, on the opposite end, some people will say, because if you come up with the idea that perhaps a vaccine caused any type of side effect or downside, they’d be like, no, that’s impossible; that doesn’t happen. And I asked them, does every medication have some chance of causing some side effect? And they’re like, oh yeah. I’m like, oh, but vaccines are exempt from that? So, I argue both sides with it.

I’m like, guys, if we could just stop going so extreme, maybe we can figure out some answers here and say, all right, which ones the pros outweigh the cons. Versus which ones are like, okay, are we just doing this cause someone said that we were supposed to do it and we never really thought about it, like you said.

[00:35:33] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Because this is the standard of care, right?

That is a problem. I am not anti-vaccine; I’m pro-vaccine for specific things. Because I can tell you I have treated 30 cases of parvo every day for six weeks in the summer for years, and it’s horrible. It’s horrifying.

Where to Find Dr. Ruth Roberts

Also, I got a rabies vaccination when I was in veterinary school. I had a horrible reaction to it, but that’s an issue for me, individually. There are vaccine reactions that happen. There are ways to help support pets so that they don’t happen.

Again, it’s an individual decision and it’s also what’s actually a problem out there. So, yeah, we have to have a rational discussion and unfortunately that’s not happening.

[00:36:20] Detective Ev: Cool. Well, thank you for that.

All right, so now I want to ask, I gotta get to a client testimonial too. I’m sure there’s been some amazing things that have happened over the years. But to be clear, you offer stuff online, but can people work with you in person still? Like you’re practicing right?

[00:36:31] Dr. Ruth Roberts: No. So here’s what I’m doing actually. Yes, we’ve got a website, drruthroberts.com. We’ve got the courses available for sale there. We have supplements available for sale.

What I’m doing now is because, yes, I can work with people one to one, but that’s very slow and I’m not helping as many people as I can. What I’ve done is actually develop a certified holistic pet health coach training program. Much like the human health coaching model, this has made a massive impact in people’s health because, if you get up and move and drink more water and maybe consider cutting a few things out of your diet, you’re going to feel a boatload better and helping you take the baby steps into the big steps. This is what is going on.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Training & Supporting Holistic Pet Health Coaches

So, I started this program in June. I have 12 graduates now that are certified. They’re out there helping people in astonishing ways. Because I’m able to continue to support them with weekly coaching calls, if they hit a problem with a particular pet they’re working with, we can walk through it and help them solve the problem. In this way, we’re making a massive impact on pet health when people are getting stonewalled by their veterinarians.

I don’t mean to bash my profession, they’re under tremendous duress. I mean, they’re trying to see complicated medical cases in six to 12 minutes, and you cannot do the job well doing that.

So, that’s where my main focus is right now, is training and supporting holistic pet health coaches. That is the way that you can get support to start figuring out what are the lifestyle changes I need to do? What do I need to talk to my veterinarian about for my dog with kidney disease? These folks can give you the information you need to ask intelligent questions, really maximize the value of any veterinary visits you’ve got and help you figure out what the heck is going on when you get some of those lab results back.

[00:38:31] Detective Ev: Dr. Roberts, I both love and hate you. I love you for creating this. I hate you because the second my animal loving future sanctuary owning girlfriend hears this, I’m going to know when she listens. Because she’s going to call for a meeting for the couple’s budget. She’ll be like, yeah, let’s talk money really quick. And I’m normally the one to initiate it. I know when she initiates, I’m like, yeah, she heard Dr. Roberts’s podcast, all of a sudden.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: A Discount & A Bonus

I’m not joking though. I can picture her actually doing this because her real dream is to own this whole sanctuary for animals and stuff, like a wildlife sanctuary, right? She’s got a whole vision for this.

The fact is she’s about to graduate FDN in like a week and a half after recording this. Actually, while we are speaking, she’s doing one of her final practicals for the course. That’s amazing.

What a cool thing to create. I mean, this is going to be big.

[00:39:14] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Yeah, it is, it’s going to be huge.

That’s the thing, for the FDN folks, we have, well, I mean there’s two things that are just amazing. One is that we’re offering a $500 discount on the class itself. It is a $5,000 course but we’ve got several payment options available. And I think Reed is offering a bonus as well for folks that sign up.

[00:39:38] Detective Ev: Yes, this makes more sense now. I believe it’s still April 30th, don’t quote me on it. It’ll be in the show notes guys. Just go to the show notes and we’ll have all the details there. But if you sign up for Dr. Robert’s course before a certain timeframe, you will actually get one of the FDN advanced courses for free.

So, you’ll have a heck of a lot of learning to do in the next year or so. But hey, that’s never really a problem for this community. I think they love doing that.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: It Works for Everybody

This is big though, cause there’s no shortage of pets. I’d love if all these humans did this, but this might actually be more of an entryway to get humans to do FDN stuff than the other way around because they’ll do anything for their pets.

[00:40:10] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Exactly. That’s always been my secret backdoor. I lived and walked when I was talking for pets and people would see what was happening with their pets and see what was happening with me. They’re like, oh, I should do this too.

I had a guy that, he was my optometrist. I went to see him, and he said to me, you know, Ruth, I gotta thank you because through what you did, by teaching us how to cook for our dogs and cats, we realized what we were eating was hurting us. So, we made massive changes in how we eat, how we feed our children. It’s made everybody healthier.

That’s exactly it. I mean, we’re all mammals, right? It’s going to work for everybody.

[00:40:50] Detective Ev: Yeah. I had to get this question today. I always like to ask people when they’re working with humans, what’s like one of their favorite testimonials.

But now between the work you’ve done and the practitioners you’re training, I don’t care where it came from. I’m just curious like, I want to see how good this can get. Like what is one of your favorite stories? Like, I don’t know if there’s animals with diseases that get reversed, or maybe it’s just an extension of life or quality of life, but what’s your favorite one that you’ve heard so far?

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Client Success Story

[00:41:14] Dr. Ruth Roberts: Oh man. It’s tough. I mean, there’s so many amazing things from my own patients.

But one of the best things was from one of my students who’s now graduated. He has a massage business for dogs. So, he was already working closely with dogs and especially with folks in the agility world. He got a client, and this lady had a very, very itchy dog. They tried everything, steroids, apoquel, cytopoint, all these chemicals and medications to control the symptoms.

He got her to commit to cooking and adding in fairly high dose of omega-3 fatty acids, adding in some probiotics and adding in the supplement to balance the diet and provide glandular support. In about three weeks she was weaning the dog off of medication with absolutely no issues.

He’s like, oh, wow. This really, really was easy and this woman is incredibly happy because now her dog is not on all these potentially disease inducing medications.

[00:42:18] Detective Ev: Nice. Guys, they got such a short life compared to us. Not that we couldn’t argue our life short in the grand scheme of things. But the last thing we want to do is waste a year of their life. It’s a lot different than wasting a year of ours when we’re sick, right? I mean, that’s a notable fraction of what they’re doing.

You’re getting my wheels turning. I hear so much stuff on this podcast that it’s like, I’m excited for everyone, but I don’t really think about it personally.

Functional Medicine for Your Pets: Support, Education, & Business Tips

But this, you’re getting me. I’m like, all right. One of my business partners for our functional medicine studio, his original business is, like I said, he owns a dog kennel with 50 dogs. He’s super popular in the area, so I’m like, hmm. We go through Dr. Robert’s course and then we have him, and we already have qualified the clients cause they’re paying like $4,000 to do these board and train programs with him. So, they have money for this kind of stuff. I’m like, All right. We might have something here, my friend.

And it seems easier to work with dogs than humans sometimes.

[00:43:07] Dr. Ruth Roberts: It is. And that’s all good stuff.

That’s the thing, Evan, is that in this program, yes, you get the coaching calls with me, so you get support during and after. But you also get a mentor to work with one-to-one. So, if you’re hitting like, oh my God, traditional Chinese veterinary medicine is freaking me out and I’m really struggling with it, you have somebody to talk to, to help walk you through that, start to understand it a little bit better. We’ve got such an amazing community of people. They’re all supportive of each other.

That’s the other big thing, is part of what I teach, is how to promote yourself so that you can actually make this a business and support yourself, your family, and do what you love at the same time.

[00:43:49] Detective Ev: Very cool. Is there any other place that people can follow you? I don’t know if you use Instagram, Facebook, or whatever, but is there any place people can follow you or check out your stuff?

Dr. Roberts’s Social Media & The Signature Podcast Question

[00:43:56] Dr. Ruth Roberts: All that stuff: Instagram, Facebook, we have a really huge YouTube channel. We’ve got some stuff going on TikTok. Yeah. So just look for drruthroberts. You’ll be able to find me kind of anywhere.

[00:44:10] Detective Ev: Awesome. I’ll have that down below for you guys. Now this is interesting cause we usually finish with my signature question and so you can answer it any way you want. We might have already talked about this in the pet sense. So again, you interpret it the way you want.

But normally what we ask is, if in this case, I could give Dr. Roberts a magic wand and you could wave it and get every single person in this world, or dog, to do one thing for their health or get them to stop doing one thing, what is the one thing that you would get them to do?

[00:44:41] Dr. Ruth Roberts: I would get them, dog and people, to spend at least three minutes a day together with no telephone, no electronics on, no distractions, so that they’re both completely present and communicating in the ether, so to speak. It’s super clear that mindfulness is essential for us in this crazy world to stop and get some white space.

It’s also critical for our pets. Because if we’re running around cranked up and wired and fired all the time, they’re receiving that energy of anxiety. And if we will take the time to just let it go, calm down, sit back inside of ourselves and be present with them, that makes an enormous difference.

[00:45:31] Detective Ev: Excellent. Thank you so much for hopping on with us today.

[00:45:34] Dr. Ruth Roberts: With pleasure.

Conclusion

Thank you for spending time with us today. You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

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

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

Slow cookers, also called crockpots, are one of the handiest tools to have in a whole foods kitchen. They allow you to eat delicious home cooked meals without having to actually cook – the appliance does all the work for you! Simply toss in your ingredients at the beginning of the day and when you arrive home later, all you need to do is grab plates, cutlery and a ladle.

Though you can create a variety of dishes in slow cookers – from cakes to condiments – we love using ours for comforting winter soups and stews.

Why Choose a Slow Cooker?

With the rise of the Instant Pot, a pressure cooker that gets dinner on the table in a fraction of the time, is it worth hanging onto your slow cooker? A couple of things to consider:

• If you already have a slow cooker, why not use it? We always like to make the most of the kitchen equipment we have before investing in new ones.
• With a slow cooker, you can open up the lid to stir, taste and season. With an Instant Pot, once it’s sealed you can’t change things up until the end of the cooking process.

Put your slow cooker to work by making one of these amazing slow cooker recipes!

25 Best Slow Cooker Recipes

Healthy Slow Cooker Chili

Healthy Slow Cooker Chili by All The Healthy Things

A classic that you can load up with all the toppings. Dairy-free cheese and guac anyone?

---

Slow Cooker Tofu Butter Chicken

Slow Cooker Tofu Butter Chicken by Jessica In The Kitchen

Butter chicken gets a vegan makeover in this tofu slow cooker version. Delish.

---

Slow Cooker Low Carb Gumbo

Slow Cooker Low Carb Gumbo by Fit Men Cook

Okra is one of those vegetables that sometimes doesn’t get enough love. Here, it gets the star treatment in a slow cooker dish that’s packed with seasonings.

---

Slow Cooker Vegan Sweet and Sour Tempeh

Slow Cooker Vegan Sweet and Sour Tempeh by Healthy Slow Cooking

No collection of slow cooker recipes would be complete without a selection from one of the queens of slow cooking, Kathy Hester. She has literally written the book – several in fact – on vegan slow cooking, and this simple recipe is sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

---

Minestrone Soup

Minestrone Soup by Pinch of Yum

A hearty soup flavoured with Italian herbs and vegetables. To make this gluten-free, use zucchini noodles or gluten-free pasta.

---

Asparagus, Spinach and Potato Soup

Slow Cooker Asparagus, Spinach and Potato Soup by Bowl of Delicious

This slow cooker vegetarian soup is brightened up with fresh dill and lemon. We’re in.

---

Easy Slow Cooker Vegetable Korma

Easy Slow Cooker Vegetable Korma by Big Man’s World

A veggie-packed dish that is also vegan, gluten-free and Paleo. Save us a bowlful, or two.

---

Slow Cooker Butternut Squash Soup

Slow Cooker Carrot Butternut Soup by Peas and Crayons

A few basic ingredients comprise this simple soup that you can jazz up with a variety of spices and toppings.

---

Slow Cooker Quinoa Vegetable Soup

Slow Cooker Quinoa Vegetable Soup by Eating Bird Food

A plant-based, gluten-free, protein-rich stew that is full of flavour and will fill you up.

---

Slow Cooker Beef Stew

Slow Cooker Beef Stew by Bewitchin Kitchen (*Culinary Nutrition Expert)

Randa actually made her own wine to use in this stew – but you can easily use storebought or bone broth instead.

---

Chicken Chile Verde

Healthy Slow Cooker Chicken Chile Verde by Ambitious Kitchen

A comforting, Paleo-friendly slow cooker chili that is full of good-for-you green stuff.

---

Slow Cooker Oatmeal (Chinese Style)

Chinese Style Slow Cooker Oatmeal by Pickled Plum

Hands up if you like savory oameal (*raises hand). We love the tasty toppings in this recipe which include chili oil, mushrooms, goji berries and more.

---

Crockpot Coconut Thai Chicken Curry

Slow Cooker Thai Chicken Curry by Shuangy’s Kitchen Sink

A beautiful and golden Thai yellow curry packed with veggies – and it’s Paleo and Whole 30 compliant, too.

---

Slow Cooker Chicken Soup

Slow Cooker Chicken Soup by Coconut Contentment

There is nothing better than chicken soup on a cold, wintry day – and this delicious one also happens to be jam-packed with vegetables.

---

Apple Pie Steel Cut Oats

Vegan Slow Cooker Apple Pie Steel Cut Oats by The Full Helping

Pop this vegan recipe into your slow cooker overnight and wake up to a delicious breakfast that reminds you of dessert.

---

Slow Cooker Chana Masala

Slow Cooker Chana Masala by Cook With Manali

A hearty and easy meal you can likely pull together using ingredients from your pantry.

---

Slow Cooker Apple Cider

Slow Cooker Apple Cider by Spirited and Then Some

Mocktail, anyone? Your guests’ mouths will be watering when they get a whiff of this crockpot cocktail.

---

Slow Cooker Coconut Lime Chicken Soup

Slow Cooker Coconut Lime Chicken Soup by Baked By Rachel

A gorgeous, elegant and simple Paleo soup that uses the powerful flavour combo of coconut and lime.

---

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Slow Cooker Mashed Sweet Potatoes by Nutritious Eats

Give the oven a rest and use the slow cooker to make these sweet, mashed goodies.

---

Campfire Stew

Campfire Stew by Recipes From a Pantry

Bring the cooked-over-a-campfire vibe indoors with this tasty pork-based stew.

---

AIP/Paleo Chicken and Dumpling Soup

AIP Paleo Chicken and Dumpling Soup by Heal Me Delicious

Coconut and cassava dumplings are the crowning glory of this Autoimmune Paleo (AIP) chicken soup.

---

3-Ingredient Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup

3-Ingredient Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup by Sondi Bruner (*ACN Head Program Coach)

A vegan split pea soup with only 3 ingredients: can it be true? Yes! And it’s delicious. Life just got waaaayyyy easier.

---

Slow Cooker Baked Beans

Slow Cooker Baked Beans by Goodie Godmother

Baked beans made from scratch are the ultimate comfort food. This version is simple, and you can easily swap the brown sugar if you’d like for a natural sweetener.

---

Slow Cooker Lemongrass Pork With Coconut Rice

Slow Cooker Lemongrass Pork With Coconut Rice by What To Cook Today

An incredibly aromatic crock pot dish that will make your home smell amazing as it cooks.

---

Slow Cooker Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies

Slow Cooker Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies by Food Faith Fitness

Let’s finish off with a sweet treat, shall we? It’s faster to bake cookies in the oven, for sure, but we can’t resist these gluten-free and Paleo crockpot cookies.

Most Americans get less than half the recommended minimum daily fiber intake, which is problematic as the benefits of fiber go way beyond bowel regularity.

“Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, believed that all disease begins in the gut.” Of course, he also thought women were hysterical because of their “wandering uterus.” So much for ancient medical wisdom.

Even though a condition like constipation can have a “major impact…on physical, mental and social well-being,” it’s “often overlooked in health care.” This may be because poop-talk is “taboo,” but constipation can have “a severe influence on…everyday living,” both psychologically and physically. Constipation can literally hurt, causing “abdominal discomfort and pain, straining, hard stool, infrequent bowel movements, bloating and nausea.”

No wonder “laxatives are among the most commonly used drugs…Most are quite safe when used judiciously, intermittently,” but because people use them so frequently, laxatives end up being one of the most common causes of adverse drug reactions. Perhaps treatment should instead address the underlying problem that causes constipation, such as lack of dietary fiber. You probably don’t need a meta-analysis to demonstrate that “dietary fiber can obviously increase stool frequency in patients with constipation.” I discuss this in my video Friday Favorites: Is Fiber an Effective Anti-Inflammatory?.

“Populations in most Western countries must be considered on world standards to be almost universally constipated.” In the Western world, constipation is an epidemic among the elderly, but among those centering their diets around fiber-rich foods, it’s simply not a problem.

Where is fiber found? As you can see at 1:37 in my video, a patient summary in the Journal of the American Medical Association sums it up with an illustration of whole, unrefined plant foods. For those of us who may be smug about our hearty intake of fruits and vegetables, we need to realize that “fruits and leafy vegetables are the poorest source of plant fiber.” Why? Because they’re 90 percent water. Root vegetables have more fiber, but the real superstars include legumes, such as beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils, and we can’t forget whole grains. What about fruits? Gram for gram, fiber from fruits does not seem to have the same effect. It may take 25 grams of fruit fiber to double stool output, something just 10 grams of whole-grain fiber or vegetable fiber can do, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:08 in my video.

And that’s not all fiber can do. If you eat some whole-grain barley for supper, your good gut bacteria are having it for breakfast the next morning. This releases butyrate into our bloodstream, a compound that seems to “exert broad anti-inflammatory activities.” This could help explain why researchers found that “significant decreases in the prevalence of inflammation were associated with increasing dietary fiber intakes for all group.” As you can see at 2:44 in my video, the group with the highest fiber intake in the study had decreased inflammation—and that was with getting just the minimum recommended daily intake of fiber. So, if you have knee pain, for instance, should you eat more fiber-rich foods?

“Dietary Fiber Intake in Relation to Knee Pain Trajectory” is a study that followed thousands of patients. Researchers found that a high intake of dietary fiber, which is to say just the minimum recommended intake, was “associated with a lower risk of developing moderate or severe knee pain over time.” What’s more, two Framingham studies found that higher fiber intake was related to a lower risk of having symptomatic osteoarthritis in the first place.

Don’t a variety of diseases have an inflammatory component, though? How about “fiber consumption and all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortalities”? Researchers found that, compared with those who consumed the least amount of fiber, those who consumed the most had 23 percent less cardiovascular disease mortality, a 17 percent lower risk of dying from cancer, and 23 percent lower mortality from all causes put together. “Unfortunately, most persons in the United States consume less than half of the recommended intake of dietary fiber daily.”

Researchers suggest all sorts of potential mechanisms for which fiber could be life-saving, such as improving cholesterol, immune function, and blood sugar control, but it may also have more of a direct cause. If you ask people to bear down as if they’re straining on stool, they can experience a rapid increase in intracranial pressure—that is, pressure inside your skull. And, if you look at trigger factors for the rupture of intracranial aneurysms and ask hundreds of people who had strokes or bleeds within their brains, one of the biggest trigger factors noted was “straining for defecation,” multiplying your risk by seven-fold.

This is one of the reasons legumes and whole grains are emphasized in my Daily Dozen checklist, which compiles all of the healthiest of healthy foods to ideally fit into your daily routine. It’s available (for free, of course!) as an app (Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen) on [iPhone] and [Android], and you can learn all about it in my video Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen Checklist.

If you buy processed grain products, how do you know they contain enough fiber? Check out The Five-to-One Fiber Rule.

Most Americans get less than half the recommended minimum daily fiber intake, which is problematic as the benefits of fiber go way beyond bowel regularity.

“Hippocrates, the father of western medicine, believed that all disease begins in the gut.” Of course, he also thought women were hysterical because of their “wandering uterus.” So much for ancient medical wisdom.

Even though a condition like constipation can have a “major impact…on physical, mental and social well-being,” it’s “often overlooked in health care.” This may be because poop-talk is “taboo,” but constipation can have “a severe influence on…everyday living,” both psychologically and physically. Constipation can literally hurt, causing “abdominal discomfort and pain, straining, hard stool, infrequent bowel movements, bloating and nausea.”

No wonder “laxatives are among the most commonly used drugs…Most are quite safe when used judiciously, intermittently,” but because people use them so frequently, laxatives end up being one of the most common causes of adverse drug reactions. Perhaps treatment should instead address the underlying problem that causes constipation, such as lack of dietary fiber. You probably don’t need a meta-analysis to demonstrate that “dietary fiber can obviously increase stool frequency in patients with constipation.” I discuss this in my video Friday Favorites: Is Fiber an Effective Anti-Inflammatory?.

“Populations in most Western countries must be considered on world standards to be almost universally constipated.” In the Western world, constipation is an epidemic among the elderly, but among those centering their diets around fiber-rich foods, it’s simply not a problem.

Where is fiber found? As you can see at 1:37 in my video, a patient summary in the Journal of the American Medical Association sums it up with an illustration of whole, unrefined plant foods. For those of us who may be smug about our hearty intake of fruits and vegetables, we need to realize that “fruits and leafy vegetables are the poorest source of plant fiber.” Why? Because they’re 90 percent water. Root vegetables have more fiber, but the real superstars include legumes, such as beans, split peas, chickpeas, and lentils, and we can’t forget whole grains. What about fruits? Gram for gram, fiber from fruits does not seem to have the same effect. It may take 25 grams of fruit fiber to double stool output, something just 10 grams of whole-grain fiber or vegetable fiber can do, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:08 in my video.

And that’s not all fiber can do. If you eat some whole-grain barley for supper, your good gut bacteria are having it for breakfast the next morning. This releases butyrate into our bloodstream, a compound that seems to “exert broad anti-inflammatory activities.” This could help explain why researchers found that “significant decreases in the prevalence of inflammation were associated with increasing dietary fiber intakes for all group.” As you can see at 2:44 in my video, the group with the highest fiber intake in the study had decreased inflammation—and that was with getting just the minimum recommended daily intake of fiber. So, if you have knee pain, for instance, should you eat more fiber-rich foods?

“Dietary Fiber Intake in Relation to Knee Pain Trajectory” is a study that followed thousands of patients. Researchers found that a high intake of dietary fiber, which is to say just the minimum recommended intake, was “associated with a lower risk of developing moderate or severe knee pain over time.” What’s more, two Framingham studies found that higher fiber intake was related to a lower risk of having symptomatic osteoarthritis in the first place.

Don’t a variety of diseases have an inflammatory component, though? How about “fiber consumption and all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortalities”? Researchers found that, compared with those who consumed the least amount of fiber, those who consumed the most had 23 percent less cardiovascular disease mortality, a 17 percent lower risk of dying from cancer, and 23 percent lower mortality from all causes put together. “Unfortunately, most persons in the United States consume less than half of the recommended intake of dietary fiber daily.”

Researchers suggest all sorts of potential mechanisms for which fiber could be life-saving, such as improving cholesterol, immune function, and blood sugar control, but it may also have more of a direct cause. If you ask people to bear down as if they’re straining on stool, they can experience a rapid increase in intracranial pressure—that is, pressure inside your skull. And, if you look at trigger factors for the rupture of intracranial aneurysms and ask hundreds of people who had strokes or bleeds within their brains, one of the biggest trigger factors noted was “straining for defecation,” multiplying your risk by seven-fold.

This is one of the reasons legumes and whole grains are emphasized in my Daily Dozen checklist, which compiles all of the healthiest of healthy foods to ideally fit into your daily routine. It’s available (for free, of course!) as an app (Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen) on [iPhone] and [Android], and you can learn all about it in my video Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen Checklist.

If you buy processed grain products, how do you know they contain enough fiber? Check out The Five-to-One Fiber Rule.