Category: Nutrition

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello there, Dr. Connors. Welcome to the Health Detective Podcast where we’ll be talking about hope for cancer patients today. How are you?

[00:00:03] Dr. Kevin Conners: I am great. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:05] Detective Ev: Yeah. For those that don’t know, Reed Davis was just on Dr. Connor’s podcast, so I would highly recommend going and checking that out. I’m not sure if that’s already released or will be released sometime in the future. But just in case, what is the podcast name so those people can go check it out.

[00:00:18] Dr. Kevin Conners: It’s Connor’s Clinic Live.

[00:00:20] Detective Ev: Cool. We’ll have that in the show notes for you guys, but definitely go over there and check it out. Reed, he’s on so many podcasts, but he always finds something new to say. A lot of our audience likes going and listening to the ones that he does as well.

One of the things that we always do on this show is typically talk about how people got into the space. We don’t want to necessarily spend a tremendous amount of time on that today because I’m just fascinated by what you do. But in summary, how did you get into this space? Because that was one thing I’m unsure of. Did you have your own health challenges, or did you just find information that led you away from the conventional path?

[00:00:52] Dr. Kevin Conners: Into the space of taking care of people in an alternative process, you mean?

Detective Ev: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Kevin Conners: Well, I became a chiropractor in 1986, so I’m an old guy. I’ve been doing this a long time. How I got into chiropractic is I had my own health challenges.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Rife Therapy

I was an athlete in high school and injured myself. I was blessed enough to have a mother that was very into alternative things way back then in the 70s. She brought my brother and I to chiropractors. We went to a chiropractor that did kinesiology and acupuncture and was very natural minded, a lot of nutrition. I knew at a very early age, at least when I was in high school, that’s what I wanted to be.

So, I went down that pathway immediately right after high school, planned out my college that way, and became a chiropractor in 1986. Really practiced functional medicine, though we didn’t call it that then. But what I do now is very different. So, I don’t practice chiropractic any longer. I gave up my license 15 years ago to be practicing what I do now.

How I got into this is a whole nother story. Now I see mainly people with cancer. That’s really 90% of our practice is cancer patients. Most of them are Stage 4, have been through the medical realm, and have gone down the whole standards of care protocols that didn’t work and now they’re seeking us out.

How that all started was my interest in Rife Therapy, which is light frequency therapy. That really was emerging back when I was in chiropractic school studying alternative methods, I read about Royal Raymond Rife. I thought, that’s just fantastic. I was drawn to that but felt, like, I’m a chiropractor for goodness’ sake. How am I going to treat cancer patients? I really had zero interest to treat cancer patients. Just wasn’t on my heart at all.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Giving up Chiropractic Care

Well, a lot of things happened through my practice. We ended up selling my practice. My wife and kids and I, we did full-time missionary work in Mexico for a period of time. Came back to practice and it wasn’t more than a year that we were back into practice that one of my patients came to me and she said, I have breast cancer in both breasts. They’re wanting me to do chemo and radiation, and I’m declining. They said, I only have three months to live.

That was my aha moment to buy a Rife machine. She lived another 13 years. Within that time, I saw more and more cancer patients come to me, really saw their writing on the wall. Got in trouble with the state board. They were after me all the time for what I was doing. Ended up giving up my chiropractic license so I could practice taking care of cancer patients. So, that brings us kind of up to date what we do with cancer.

[00:03:39] Detective Ev: Perfect. It’s interesting how many chiropractors I talked to that it was the same thing that leads FDNs into becoming FDNs now. No one necessarily went out and just randomly chose this path. They kind of had some experiences that led them to this.

Then most of the chiropractors I know, especially the ones that were doing it for a while, such as yourself, they end up adding in these functional aspects. It’s very cool to where you’ve taken that. And this was the reason Dr. Connors, we were so excited to have you on.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Ticking Time Bomb

Anyone that listens regularly knows whether intentionally or not, one of the things that we end up focusing on more often than usual is the autoimmune aspect of health conditions. I think that’s just par for the course in a lot of functional medicine. Because autoimmunity is a set of conditions that really gets mistreated in Western Medicine, in my opinion.

But cancer’s this whole other thing because not only does it get mistreated in Western Medicine, we already know that, but the problem is, there is this label on top of your head where you kind of feel like there is this direct, or in your patient’s case, indirect ticking time bomb.

We lost my aunt to cancer, unfortunately. They scare the heck out of these people so bad, and perhaps rightfully so. Because if you’re really dealing with a terminal cancer, you should clearly do something about that. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t. But it almost doesn’t even give these people time to think about all these other things that they can be doing lifestyle, and now cancer becomes their life.

So, these people are coming to you, like you said, pretty much almost at the end of the rope. Are they doing that because they’ve already tried Western Medicine and now, they feel like they need to go into alternative options?

Hope for Cancer Patients: Outside Pressure & Inside Pressure

[00:05:05] Dr. Kevin Conners: Well, we certainly do have patients that come to us because they’ve studied alternative methods in the past. Maybe it’s because they had an experience like you. They had an aunt with cancer who went the conventional methods and it didn’t work. They told themselves, I’m not going to do that when I get cancer.

We have those patients that come to us that haven’t gone down that path yet, but most of our patients have. And it is, I would say you hit the nail on the head, people are scared to death. I mean, you go to the doctor, and you hear the “C” word. It’s not only you that are scared. You might be positioned mentally in a way that I want to do an alternative thing, but you have family members that are pressuring you.

There’s a lot of outside pressure and certainly, there’s inside pressure in the medical realm. I can’t tell you how many times people have said they went to the oncologist for a lump in their breast, and the oncologist said, we need to do a biopsy right away. And they said, well, let me think about it.

They’re walking out the door to the car and they’re getting a call from that same clinic. They just walked out the door and say we need to schedule your biopsy. They’re like, hey, I told the doctor I need to think about it. Well, we need to get this scheduled right away. He said, we need to get this scheduled right away.

Hope for Cancer Patients: The Mental Stress

There are heavy pressure tactics by the medical profession in the cancer realm. I think that is so unethical and immoral, but it exists. To be honest, it works because these people do more often than not, get scared into going down a path that they at least had more time to think about, analyze, and pray about than they were led to believe. I think that’s a crime, honestly.

[00:06:48] Detective Ev: It is. It’s so sad because, again, I’m in this space. I’ve had experiences myself that led me to this. Honestly, Dr. Connors, I tried to put myself in my aunt’s shoes. Especially because she was diagnosed with a specific brain tumor that I can’t admittedly remember the name of offhand, but it was relatively rare. I tried to think like what would happen if I got that diagnosis.

I think even with all the information that I have now, it would get you going a little bit. Then you’re stressing out about the stress because, of course, we all know how bad the mental stress of this is for the body. So, it’s a shame what’s happening to these people.

Now, of course, I probably already know the answer to this, but I’m asking this question to lead us into a deeper conversation with it. One of the biggest arguments that you constantly hear from Western Medicine is that cancer, we’re just getting better at diagnosing it, it’s not that it’s actually more common. I think both can be true at the same time.

Obviously, we’re getting better at diagnosing it. But do you believe that cancer is actually just becoming more prevalent, especially since you’ve been working on this for a while? If so, what are some of the main factors leading to this?

Hope for Cancer Patients: An Early Diagnosis

[00:07:43] Dr. Kevin Conners: Well, statistically, you can’t argue that cancer is not becoming more prevalent. It is.

In 1971, when Richard Nixon signed a document issuing $20 million dollars or whatever for cancer research at that time, now it’s been exponentially more. One in 21 Americans, that was the statistic in 1971, one in 21 Americans would be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. Now, it’s one in three, and some more recent statistics, it’s even worse than that.

So, we are losing the war on cancer using our conventional model. Yes, we’re getting better at diagnosing it and we can diagnose it faster. All the early diagnosis benefit is that they start care earlier. They can show a kind of a rubber number, greater success rate because their success rate is completely based on a five-year status.

So, by the day you’re diagnosed, if you’re diagnosed January 1st, 2020, and you lived till January 2nd, 2025, and you died, you might have lived a horrible last three years of your life, you’re still going down as a cure. That is listed as a cure in their statistics, so that their treatment is listed as a cure.

If you were five years and one day past your date of diagnosis, you’re cured. Well, you’re dead. Okay, how did that work out? That’s really the push for early diagnosis so they can start care earlier. The time clock can start ticking earlier.

If you’re diagnosed stage 4 cancer, you just got diagnosed last week, the chance from the care protocol of you living five years is probably not that great. So, they want an early diagnosis.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Open to Both Sides

I’m not saying that all doctors are evil looking for numbers and their statistics to rise. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not even against standards of care. I think there’s lots of times that coupling alternative things with chemotherapy or radiation and debulking surgery, it’s the right thing to do. I sometimes have to talk people into doing that.

Don’t think I’m this alternative doctor that hates oncologists. But I do disagree with the ethics of many oncologists that are out there. I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the patient to always do what they’re recommending.

[00:10:02] Detective Ev: I greatly appreciate you saying that. I should have brought it up already, but I can imagine with a title like this podcast, we might get a unique listener or two. That’s usually what happens with any podcast. So, if they’re listening for the first time, they might not get that, yeah, FDN is in alignment with that. You’re in alignment with that.

This is not an against-Western-Medicine thing, and especially with cancer. I don’t think I could be any more for it because you’re going to have to mix these things in. I don’t necessarily believe at all that my aunt was wrong for getting the surgery that she got pretty soon after getting that diagnosis. It was the next three years that was ridiculous to me in how they tried to handle this afterwards.

So, especially with cancer guys, this isn’t medical advice, but you’ve really gotta be open to both sides, I think, if you want to have some success with this. I’ve seen plenty of people go with autoimmune disease for many years and really didn’t even do anything Western Medicine wise. Then they can handle it through functional medicine, fine.

Hope for Cancer Patients: What Cancer Is

This a different ball game and a lot of the times cancer is fatal. You want to tread a little lightly and do everything that you can, and respect people’s decisions.

So, in terms of this, it’s happening more and more, what do you think are the biggest things outside of the obvious, right? We could all generally say diet. I think our audience is advanced enough to know that. What are the main things though that are leading to these increases in diagnoses.

[00:11:18] Dr. Kevin Conners: First, let’s understand what cancer is. I know your listeners know, but it is really, it starts in one cell. It’s not caused from a genetic issue. It’s something got inside the cell and disrupts the DNA in the nucleus.

Normally cells reproduce and then the mother cell, you could say, dies. This takes place multiple times a year. Your skin cells reproduce, the mother cell dies, and that skin flakes off. That’s how your body ages too. That’s how your body continues to heal.

But it’s when your cell goes in rapid replication, something is affecting the DNA and causing the cell to go into rapid replication. Replicating cells that are going into rapid replication has this same thing wrong with it. Something had to get inside the cell.

Now, when we were uncovering the genome a number of years back, we were thinking, well, maybe this will uncover the cause of cancer. Well, it didn’t. It wasn’t a genetic source. There are very few cancers that have a pure genetic source to them.

Hope for Cancer Patients: It’s Almost Always a Toxin

It’s almost always a toxin. You know, it can be a biotoxin that gets inside the cell, a virus that affects that, or a fungus. But most commonly, by far, it’s a toxin that gets inside the cell. It could be a heavy metal, could be a chemical from a fertilizer, pesticide, herbicide. That’s really the thing that is the cause of cancer.

Then you look at, okay, well our rate of cancer is going up so high. Well, are we exposed to more toxins? Are we exposed to more chemicals? Your listeners, you don’t need to be convinced that we are exposed to more chemicals. Even if you’re trying to eat a perfect diet organically, through your mouth is only one source of exposure to toxins.

It might be one of our smaller sources of our exposure to toxins you absorb through your skin. You absorb fastest through your lungs, you’re breathing in poisons all the time. You might be trying to eat organic food all the time, but this carpet is gasifying right now, and whatever this shirt was dyed in. We’re breathing in this stuff.

We are exposed to so many poisons that we absorb, and our body has to get rid of. What you don’t get rid of becomes a part of you. And it doesn’t just sit in your extracellular spaces. It gets pushed into intracellularly, and intracellularly, it can affect other things in your cytoplasm. Certainly, if it gets into the nucleus and affects the nucleus, it can be the cause of cancer. It can cause that rapid replication.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Getting the Toxins Out

The bottom line is, from a functional medicine perspective, the best thing you could do for your non-cancer patients is to help them understand the processes of detoxification. That it’s not just a one thing you’re going to do every quarter and take this little package and detox yourself. It is a daily process. If you are not detoxifying what you’re absorbing through whatever means today, it’s going to become a part of you, and it increases your risk of cancer.

You talk about autoimmune disease; it can be the antigen that sparks an immune reaction against your own cells and be the cause of autoimmune disease as well. So, it is really the big issue with ill health period.

[00:14:52] Detective Ev: I think this is segueing us into a really fun part of this conversation, as fun as this can be. I wanted to talk about your methodologies and the things that you’ve learned.

People, especially when they’re new to this space, they focus a lot on the overwhelm of the toxins, as we should be. We just discussed that. We’re loading up so much stuff into our world, it’s incomprehensible. But we also forget that human beings were still exposed to things throughout history, maybe way less than now, but still exposed to things. We could also talk about this side, it’s a perfect storm.

Yes, we have more chemicals and toxins in our environment than ever before, but at the same time, we are also destroying or limiting our ability that we naturally have to detoxify these things. Oversimplified, but if you’re getting a good night’s sleep, one of the things that sleep can do is help your body move those things out.

Hope for Cancer Patients: The Seven Phases of Detoxification

So, if we’re sleeping worse than ever before, we’re eating whatever it is, like 16, 17 times a day on average, if you count every time someone consumes a calorie and you never give the gut a break, we’re now worsening our body’s ability to detoxify and we’re loading it up with more toxins than ever before. So, we have the perfect storm.

I love that we already got to the idea that detoxification is not something that you do once a quarter. I’m not condemning anyone; I don’t want to do that. But I cannot believe how often I see that even in the functional space, oh, I’ll just do this cleanse every few months. I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to be.

You’re talking about daily processes. So, what are some of those daily things that people can start doing or that you help patients with?

[00:16:19] Dr. Kevin Conners: Well, it gets a little complex actually. I wrote a book about it; The Seven Phases of Detoxification and people can download it.

[00:16:26] Detective Ev: We’ll have that in the show notes for you as well.

[00:16:27] Dr. Kevin Conners: But it is dealing with all these seven phases. You know, we learned about the three phases in our liver. Well, I didn’t hear about the other four phases.

Everybody wants to start with chelation. Oh my gosh, I did a hair analysis and I have high mercury, so I need to start a chelator.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Supporting All the Pathways

Well, you have no business starting a chelator unless all your other six phases are open. Because if you’re going to start pulling stuff out of the tissues and it does not have easy access to go through phase 1, 2, 3, in the liver and get through the gallbladder and be bound in the gut so you don’t reabsorb it and be deposited in the toilet, you’re just going to make yourself sicker.

The Seven Phases of Detox are really talking about the chemistry of detoxification. You have to be able to have healthy bowel movements that you’re getting stuff deposited in the toilet, a healthy urinary system that you’re getting stuff out of your body. Also, you have to be binding stuff in the gut these days because we’re exposed to, especially women with estrogens, it’s the number one thing that you’re going to reabsorb. You have to be binding this stuff up in the gut.

If your liver is doing all this work to conjugate things and to make things soluble, and then to put it into the bile, and then to get it into the gallbladder and from the gallbladder into the small intestine, and then you’re just reabsorbing it and the liver sees it again, I can just picture your liver screaming like, what is going on?! Didn’t I just get rid of you three days ago?

You know, we have to be supporting that on a constant basis before we start trying to chelate stuff out of the tissues because our hair analysis came back elevated. We have to be supporting all those pathways.

Hope for Cancer Patients: The Neurology of Detoxification

So, when you got a toxicity test, like a hair analysis, and it does come back positive, that’s just your sign. That’s just, hey, this person is not getting rid of stuff very well. Not, this person was exposed to a lot of mercury. Well, we’re all exposed to a lot of mercury. We’re supposed to be getting rid of it. You need to support these pathways.

Most of your listeners understand everything that I just said, but somebody who doesn’t could download my book. I go into detail in the seven phases of detox that I call that. But one of the things that I think we miss, and I think that practitioners could often miss is the neurology of detoxification.

We talk about the chemistry of detoxification. You gotta use binders, and you gotta make sure you’ve got a lot of fiber, and you gotta make sure you’re supporting phase one and phase two in the liver, and all these kinds of things. That’s talking about nutrition, that’s talking about supporting things chemically. So, that’s the chemistry.

But we often overlook the neurology. What controls all of our cell’s function, what controls our detoxification pathway is the neurology, and that is your vagal nerves. Your parasympathetic pathway controls both. We’re really hot to trot on that with our patients because your parasympathetics also control your immune system.

If you want to stimulate your immune system, you have to stimulate your parasympathetics. If you want to stimulate detoxification, you have to stimulate parasympathetics. You talk about, well, that is number one, or at least high up in the rankings of why we can’t get rid of what you alluded to, why we can’t get rid of our toxins, even though we might be doing so many things right.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Stimulate Your Parasympathetics

We live in a sympathetic driven world. We’re all stressed to the hilt; our to-do list is overflowing. The pressure from home and work and thinking that we have to live in a million-dollar house and drive these fancy cars, everybody’s living over budget.

The stress is, even though you might think you’re really good at handling it, I’m sure your parasympathetic system is suppressed. You’ve gotten really good at successfully mitigating your sympathetic drive, but that doesn’t mean your parasympathetics are actually functioning.

Then we have a suppressed immune system, we have a suppressed detoxification pathway among a lot of other things, we end up long-term having heart issues and blood pressure problems and diabetic problems. Your parasympathetics control your insulin function control, so many things.

You as a practitioner, if there’s practitioners listening, get good at teaching your clients to do parasympathetic exercises. Yeah, it’s possible to say, get rid of your stress in life. But start focusing on that, start doing some parasympathetic stimulation.

It’s easier for us when we’re dealing with cancer patients to get people to do coffee enemas, one of the best parasympathetic stimulators. But in my book, I have some more detail of different silly neurological exercises that really help stimulate parasympathetics and some others that help calm the part of the brain that controls the sympathetics, which is the mesencephalon part of the midbrain, some exercises that will help calm that. That is a key thing that I think a lot of us practitioners, including myself, forget about sometimes, the neurology of this.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Stress and More Stress

[00:21:34] Detective Ev: I would agree. Because even when you said that it’s like, okay, is it a brand-new concept? No. Would I even be listing that as the top important things if I had to guess what to do with a cancer client? Probably not. I wouldn’t put it up there as much as I maybe should.

Again, I can’t stress that enough what I was saying before. The irony of this whole cancer thing and the way that we approach it as a society is there is no way that this person’s body isn’t under stress to some degree, because otherwise they never would’ve gotten cancer most likely. Then we scare the heck out of them and start treating them like this human from another planet. Grant you, it’s in a good way a lot of the times.

Everyone was very sympathetic to my aunt and supportive of her. But I think that’s probably stressful in a way. I haven’t been through that, but I would imagine. She was a high-level professional, go figure, before the diagnosis. Now everyone’s almost looking at you as like something that you need to be taking care of in a week, that’s gotta weigh on your mind. You are already stressed coming in, you have even more stress now.

I love that that’s incorporated in something like your book. I wish I had more time between the time of scheduling, and I would’ve liked to read it, but I’ll still get back to it. Then maybe if there’s another podcast to be had in the future, based on what I read, I’d love to do that. But we’ll have that in the show notes for people.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Learning From Each Other

You also offer courses. One thing I didn’t fully understand, those courses, can they be taken for practitioners, like for practitioners to learn to help their clients? Or would they be more for the consumer?

[00:22:48] Dr. Kevin Conners: Well, they’re really for the consumer. We have practitioners that take the course. We do have Q&A times on the course, but we don’t allow practitioners to say, I have a patient that has this. That’s not what that’s for. But we’re here to help anybody.

Anybody that we can, we are here to help. We’re here to try to educate as many people as we can. I stand on the shoulders of other practitioners. I’m no great hero in the health field. I stand on other people’s shoulders, and I know that people need to stand on my shoulders, learn everything they can from me and from my mentors.

Our society is flippy. Practitioners used to ask me when I used to do a lot of teaching to practitioners, aren’t you afraid that the medical profession’s going to come after you with what you’re doing? At the time, this was a number of years ago, I really wasn’t. I felt like things were loosening up and the standards of care field was loosening up, becoming more acceptable of alternative practitioners.

In the last three years, boy that just flip flopped completely back. I feel like sometimes we’re back in the 1950s when Hoxie was thrown into prison and his clinics were closed up and the things that burgeoned the Mexico cancer clinics because they were shutting down anybody that wasn’t doing what they thought was the right thing to do, we are moving more back into that field.

Hope for Cancer Patients: We Need More Grassroots Education

So, the more we can educate young practitioners in the functional perspective to do grassroots education where you’re small enough and they’re not going to come after you.

Hey, I just fought off a state board issue and just settled it two weeks ago because they came after me again six months ago. Well, they just ended up dropping it because I didn’t do anything. But this is what we’re faced with.

So, the more that you could do grassroots education to give people hope where they’re not getting hope and get people to calm down and just to look that there’s other things that they can add that can really increase their survival rate, It can just save people’s lives.

[00:24:54] Detective Ev: I appreciate so much of this, especially this idea that you stand on the shoulders of these other people because it’s never that I’m so wise, right?

I’m a younger person, but I’ve been through these health issues for so long and got exposed to this so early that it led me into this path. I don’t really take that many one-on-one clients and they wonder, well, why do you do the podcast and speaking then, and not that? It’s because one, I just think that’s my specific role. We need to share this with as many people as possible.

I see exactly what you’re talking about. When it’s one high level, very well known, infamous even, doctor doing this, it’s pretty easy for them to shut it down. When we have millions of practitioners running around out there doing the work, spreading the word, and educating people, it is what it is.

Hope for Cancer Patients: A Level Playing Field

Clearly, we don’t get political on this show, but I think anyone that listens to this, regardless of what side of the spectrum they fall on, it doesn’t even matter, because we all are in agreement that the way the alternative healthcare field was treated over the last three years is absolutely awful.

There is a meme that I saw online, and you can get something from memes. It’s more a political cartoon than it is a meme. It had what was supposed to be millions of people basically hunched over and their backs are flat, and on top of their backs is a board game, right? There were only a few people playing the board game.

The whole idea was, all the people ever had to do was just stand up and the game’s over, that’s it. You can’t do anything. There’s no fighting, there’s no war. It has nothing to do with that. You just stand up and the board game’s over. I think that’s what we need to do, right?

This is why we do the podcast, is to get this out to as many people as possible. Just let them know that there’s alternative options. Because if enough people stand up, the game is over, and people can have a level playing field. They can still go to Western Medicine; we encourage it as you already did multiple times in this podcast.

But for them to not even have these other options, to then be treated in an unethical way, as you mentioned, with these rush tactics and scare tactics and fear mongering, that’s not a level playing field. That’s just straight up not fair.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Everybody’s Different

[00:26:47] Dr. Kevin Conners: It is, and I totally agree. I, a hundred percent would agree with everything you just said. We just need to be educating people. Keep teaching, keep teaching, keep teaching. That’s the key.

[00:26:59] Detective Ev: Obviously, you can’t get into the nitty gritty, every case is complex, but you mentioned that you take on a lot of stage 4 patients. How would the approach be different, if at all, with a stage 4 patient versus someone who maybe just got diagnosed with a cancer that is actually not typically that deadly or at the very least has a long rate of survival? Would those treatments be different in your world?

[00:27:18] Dr. Kevin Conners: No. With our patients, everybody’s different. The way we do the testing, we get a cheek swab from people. We test specifically what we want them to be on and what we want them to be doing. So, we don’t have set protocols.

It doesn’t make any difference to me if you’re stage 4 and you’ve got two weeks to live, or you’re stage 1b. It doesn’t make any difference; we still need to tack it.

A person can move from stage 1 to stage 4 relatively quickly. Many times, when they come to us with stage 4, they don’t have a lot of hope because, why didn’t they come to us earlier? Well, sometimes people got diagnosed when they’re at stage 4 and they didn’t have that option.

But when they’re stage 4, and they’ve done two years of standards of care, they haven’t really looked at any alternative things to this point. Now they’re told, oh, it’s not working, you’re going to need to contact hospice. Now they freak out and then they contact us.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Calming the Fear

They’re fairly scared. Our job is to give them hope and say, you haven’t even done any of this yet. Let’s start from ground zero here and build your body up.

We see people turn around. I don’t say that we have success, I give all the credit to God. God is your healer. But we see some pretty miraculous things in our office. So, it doesn’t scare me at all if someone is stage 4, we just gotta get them to not be fearful.

[00:28:35] Detective Ev: I know it must be pretty darn hard to acknowledge this in the moment, but you would think fear would be the last thing you want to feel because obviously it is just going to accelerate that stress on your body. Again, that’s coming from a place of ignorance, thankfully, of not having dealt with this. I’m sure that’s easier said than done. But it’s nice to have a practitioner like you in front of them or online or wherever that has that calmness with it. I’m sure that builds their confidence a little bit.

Whenever the cancer thing comes up, because we’ve done well over 200 episodes on here and it really is only a thing that comes up every now and then, maybe once every two months on average, can I just hear one of like the best stories that you’ve ever had? Maybe even a stage 4 person where they come to you thinking that they’re at the end of the line and it’s just worked out really well. Even if they didn’t cure the cancer, maybe it was just an extension of life. I’d love to hear something like that. I think that’s good for the show.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Client Success Story (1)

[00:29:23] Dr. Kevin Conners: Well, we have a lot. Matter of fact, that was one of the things that the board came after us for, cause we had a whole page full of video testimonials that people had made. They did testimonials at home, and they sent us the videos, they were so thankful.

But one of our most memorable patients, he passed away now, but he came to us a number of years ago. I remember him because he looked like my dad. I went through my father’s death and my dad passed away from heart disease and kidney failure, but I remembered what he looked like because his face was just ashen the last few weeks.

This man came to us looking like that. He came in and he said he was given two weeks to live by Mayo. We were in Minnesota at the time, so I see a lot of Mayo patients. Two weeks to live, by Mayo, and he said, my wife just wants me to come in here and do whatever you have to do. That’s when we were doing a lot of treatment in the office at that time.

He just reminded me of my dad, and I literally had to excuse myself from the room and just kind of recompose myself because I was just like, oh Lord, why did you send me this guy? You know, this is just really a bad memory. My dad had just passed away just shortly before that. Well, he started care with us and he is coming in every day for that first week.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Client Success Story (1) cont.

Then he says at the end of the first week, he goes, oh, I won’t be here next week cause my son’s coming in from California. We’re going to go hunting. I’m like, oh my goodness. So, okay. Well, Lord, maybe you just sent him here to get better so he could go hunting with his son. I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that.

Well, I kind of thought he’s probably not going to be back. I don’t know what’s going to happen to this guy. Such a sweet, older guy, he was in his late seventies. Sure enough, he comes back in the week afterwards. He goes, okay, I’m ready. Back to start again. He just kept getting better and better and better and better and better.

Well, he lived another three and a half years. When he passed away, his son, who I never met, ordered an autopsy because his son was convinced, my dad didn’t die of cancer. Well, prior to him coming to us, he had stage 4 pancreatic cancer with metastasis to the stomach and the liver and the esophagus when he came to us.

So, his son ordered an autopsy and read the autopsy report at his dad’s funeral. It said there was no cancer present. He died of cirrhosis of the liver caused from the chemotherapy that he had prior to coming to us. That was a moving story.

I still haven’t met the son. But the son was just so convinced that what he did alternatively saved his life or at least for another, let him live. He died at, I think he was 83 years old or something when he passed away. Of course, he’s not alive today, but he lived for a lot longer than two weeks.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Client Success Story (2)

We have another pancreatic cancer patient. She’s out over seven years right now. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when she was pregnant. They told her to have an abortion and to start chemotherapy right away. Instead, she came to us. Never had an abortion. She had the baby, never did any chemotherapy. She’s completely absent of disease according to her oncologist.

We have lots of stories like that, but we don’t cure everybody. You know, we don’t cure anybody. And not everybody lives a lot longer than they were supposed to. Most people do. I just think that adding alternative, regardless of what you’re going to do with standards of care, when you start cleaning up the body and you do things that are going to help your cells function better, you’re just going to have a much better quality of life. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

I mean, I think our days are numbered before the foundations of the Earth are set. It’s just we have to decide what we’re going to do with them.

[00:33:01] Detective Ev: On the occasion that I’ve been fortunate enough to talk to people like you who add this functional side to people dealing with something so serious, this is par for the course, right? They are very honest in acknowledging there’s plenty of cases where you’re just extending the life. Although you have these crazy amazing stories, like the one with this guy that reminded you of your dad. It’s just so awesome to hear this.

One thing I want people to understand too. I’ll connect this, I was a really anxious kid as a kid. I had a panic disorder and lived so much of my life in fear and just being worried to do things.

Hope for Cancer Patients: The Beauty of Extension

Now what I do the older I get, I don’t do it in a fearful way, but let’s say you had six months left, and I knew that right now, I don’t do that because of any health condition. I just say, hypothetically, what if you knew that it was about six months until you weren’t going to be here anymore? Would you still not go do that thing? And almost every single time, with the exception of skydiving, I haven’t gotten myself onto that one yet, I’ve been able to work myself through the fear by just saying, well, yeah, of course I would do that.

Well, you’re an idiot. Nothing’s promised anyway, right? Like you don’t know that you have that other six months, so you might as well just go do that darn thing.

My point in mentioning this and how I’m connecting this is for you and your work and the work of these patients really, for them to be allowed an additional three years when they think they have two weeks, the quality of that life and the appreciation of that life for those three years while they’re here, I’m sure those hunting trips are a little different than the ones that they had 20 years ago. I’m sure there’s just a different beauty in the day-to-day stuff. And three years when you’re thinking like someone who know they might not be here tomorrow and is living life in that way, I think that is an amazing gift to be able to give.

Regardless of whether or not that man would’ve ended up passing away from cancer or not, to give that extension of life with that level of appreciation, that’s a pretty cool thing to be able to do with people.

Hope for Cancer Patients: A Blessing and Not a Curse

[00:34:45] Dr. Kevin Conners: I think one of the reasons why I titled my book Stop Fighting Cancer and Start Treating the Causes way back when I first started seeing people with cancer, I discovered that was a huge issue. Fear was a big issue. I just noticed in the people that had the attitude, well, it is what it is, and God is in control, I’m going to do everything on my part to get better, but I’m just going to trust him for the results, they ended up having the better results.

Versus a person who’s like freaking out, full of anxiety, can’t handle anything, you know, their life is in chaos, their anxiety is creating chaos in their home life. They have the attitude of these bumper stickers, you know, like F Cancer, right? And I get that people are angry when they get a serious diagnosis like this.

How can this be fair? You know, I’ve done everything right in my life, or whatever their justification is. They’re angry about their diagnosis. I understand that maybe that’s a phase that everybody has to go through, but I think you have to get to the other side. When I have patients that get to the point maybe that they understand that their cancer is a blessing and not a curse, I’ll tell you, they just have better results, and their quality of life is so much better.

I got a diagnosis, stage 4 cancer, and I’m on six years now. My type of cancer, not very successfully treated medically, so it was really easy for me to refuse chemo. Because the average person, when they get the stage 4 diagnosis to my cancer, your average life expectancy is about 15 months, and that was doing chemo.

Hope for Cancer Patients: We’re All Terminal

So, it was like, okay, well I ain’t doing that. So, I’ve been through it myself. And you do go through these anger stages and such, but you have to get to the other side and go, this is a blessing. Just like you said, you can count every day as a blessing.

You look at the world differently now. You could say, well, we should all do that. We should all look at like, what if you’re going to die tomorrow? How would you live today? But we don’t. You know, sometimes it takes the scare of a serious diagnosis. The truth is, we’re all terminal.

Detective Ev: No one’s getting out alive.

Dr. Kevin Conners: Nobody’s getting out of here. You can get hit by a bus this afternoon. It’s like, well, how are you going to live differently? What do you want to leave as your legacy? How people are going to look at you. And how their life is going to be changed because of what you did and what you said and how you lived and how you went through difficult times.

What kind of faith did you show when you went through difficult times? Who are you holding on to? I think those are so important lessons that you pass on to the generations that follow you and the people that you’ve been able to touch.

[00:37:34] Detective Ev: This is amazing. That’s what my aunt, although again, she did pass away from it, she also didn’t take any alternative routes for whatever it’s worth to the listener. But my aunt, I knew her well. We went to Christmas together and we went to Thanksgiving together. But you don’t really know someone sometimes in your family.

Hope for Cancer Patients: Free, Alternative Cancer Treatments

When I saw that, it was like she became the best version of herself. She went so deep into the mind and was so positive through all of this, in how she interacted with her family, herself, and the people around her.

What she ended up doing, this is not for me to say, I’m a believer myself but I don’t know what God’s plan is with all this. It’s sometimes hard for me to say that this wasn’t within the plan for my aunt to experience and pass this way because in her name, over the last two years, there’s been over $700,000, $800,000 raised for a nonprofit cancer center that now offers, go figure, alternative treatments to people with cancer for no cost. It is completely donation based.

They can get acupuncture, they have a community to talk to people, and that is in her name in our town because that was her vision. She knew she was going to pass at some point and just said, I want this done, someone figure this out. And the family, her best friend, a local guy, they have worked tirelessly to make this work.

So, is it my place to say it was supposed to happen? No, I’m just saying, looking at it now, it’s kind of hard to say that there wasn’t an amazing benefit from this. At the very least, it stemmed from her mindset around this. She said, I’m going to make the best out of this possible and not live the last few years of my life feeling sorry for myself every single day. Again, I can’t say that for myself cause I haven’t been through it, but there’s people that have done it. Look at how beautiful it is when they do.

Where to Find Dr. Kevin Conners

[00:39:13] Dr. Kevin Conners: Absolutely. That’s fantastic.

[00:39:15] Detective Ev: Yeah. Dr. Connors, where can people find you and your courses?

I think we’re going to have something worked out here and if something needs to be updated, I can release it accordingly when we get that updated. But I think there’s some type of discount our practitioners can get and our listeners.

[00:39:29] Dr. Kevin Conners: Yes, I believe so. Go to connorsclinic.com, and you’ll see our courses.

You’ll see, that’s our cancer website. You’ll see all that we have there. You can contact our office, talk to a real person. They can direct you and help you with any questions that you might have.

[00:39:48] Detective Ev: Thank you. I love having this connection because, given enough time, this is going to come up again. Hopefully not for myself, but for someone I care about.

I’ve had people come on for different reasons. This is the first time where it’s like, oh, now I actually feel like I have somewhere to call if this did happen.

Conclusion – Signature Podcast Question

I want to finish with the signature question that we always finish on the Health Detective podcast. It’s not cancer specific, we’re going a little more general now.

The question is, if I could give you a magic wand and you could get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, so you can actually force them to do one thing, or you can get them to stop doing one thing, what is the one thing that you would get them to do?

[00:40:27] Dr. Kevin Conners: Nobody’s ever asked me that before. I think to ask better questions, really. It’s not to eat better or do this better. It’s, start asking themselves questions and not just be led like a sheep, I think. Yeah, just to learn to ask questions.

[00:40:47] Detective Ev: Excellent. Dr. Conners, thank you so much for today.

[00:40:50] Dr. Kevin Conners: All right, thank you.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

To hire an FDN Practitioner, go to fdnthrive.com.

For a FREE eBook, go to fdnthrive.com/steps/.

Use these mindful eating journal prompts and reflection questions to assess your current relationship with food.

Mindful eating is all about finding what works for your unique body. It’s about tapping into your body’s cues, your personal wants, likes, and dislikes. It’s about getting to know your habits and tendencies in a compassionate way so you can make adjustments with ease. 

What is Mindful Eating?

Here at Nutrition Stripped, we believe there are two important aspects of eating well every day: what you eat and how you eat.  The concept of mindful eating is more about how to eat rather than what or how much you are eating. It’s all about putting the focus back on your experience at mealtimes.

Mindful eating is a practice that allows you to be more intentional with your eating habits while also maintaining a healthy relationship with food. Slowing down and bringing more mindful awareness to what you’re eating and how you’re feeling before, during, and after meals is one of the best practices you can have for finding what works for you and creating healthy eating habits. 

The following mindful eating journal prompts will walk you through exactly how to reflect on your relationship with food so you can be more mindful.

10 Mindful Eating Journal Prompts and Reflection Questions

You can use these journal prompts and reflection questions to get to know yourself and your relationship with food a bit better. Use this knowledge to help build your mindful eating routines and positive relationship with food. 

While engaging with these mindful eating journal prompts and reflection questions, don’t forget to do so with compassion. Don’t judge yourself or your answers, allow yourself to be candid and honest. This allows for growth and change.

You can engage with all of these prompts in one sitting, or you can pick one or two to engage with at a time. Whatever works best for you! 

1. How would I describe my current relationship with food?

(i.e. balanced, imbalanced, negative, forced, easy, restrictive, tumultuous, normal, frustrating, controlling, easeful, fun, etc.)

In this first mindful eating journal prompt, reflect on your relationship with food. What words come to mind when you think about it? How would you describe it? This will help to set the scene for what we’re working with while engaging with the following prompts.

2. What do I enjoy about my current relationship with food? 

(i.e. I’m able to eat what I enjoy while also physically nourishing myself, I never feel restricted, I don’t feel out of control around food, I enjoy nourishing myself, etc.)

Think through the positive components that you associate with your relationship with food here. What parts of your relationship are enjoyable? What do you like about it? Get really specific here. 

2. What do I dislike about my current relationship with food? 

(i.e. I’m not able to eat what I enjoy, I don’t know how to nourish myself, I often feel restricted, I feel out of control around food, I feel stressed about food, etc.)

Now think about what you may not enjoy about your current relationship with food. And remember, self-compassion is key here. No judgment allowed! Just let yourself mindfully reflect and assess. This particular mindful eating journal prompt can help you identify what you would like to change. 

3. What does hunger feel like to me? What does satiety feel like to me?

(i.e. My stomach growls, food starts to sound good, I think about food more, I get a little brain fog, my stomach feels empty, my hands get a little shaky, etc.)

Now that we’ve working through some of the overarching themes, let’s work through some of the more specific parts of your relationship with food. While engaging with this journal prompt, it can be helpful to physically picture yourself the last time you felt hungry. Maybe it was earlier today, or last night, or even right now! Then start to walk through the feelings (both physical and mental), that you experience. 

4. Do emotions ever impact my eating habits? If so, how? 

(i.e. When I’m sad I turn to food, when I’m excited I never want to eat, when I’m stressed I eat past my hunger cues, when I’m stressed I ignore my hunger cues, when I’m overwhelmed I overeat, etc.)

Think through how your emotions impact your relationship with food. What kinds of emotions impact your choices? How often does it happen? What happens when you’re feeling that emotion and in need of food? The more awareness you have surrounding your emotions in relation to food, the easier it will be to change or sustain your actions at the moment as needed. 

5. What food items do I enjoy eating? 

(i.e. anything and everything you enjoy)

Remember, this is a judgment-free zone. Write down everything and anything you enjoy eating, whether that’s an enjoyment-based food or a more nourishment-based food. If you struggle to think of anything here, that lets you know that this area needs a bit of discovery and exploration! 

6. What food items do I often crave? 

(i.e. chocolate, peanut butter, pasta, leafy greens, green juice, candy, potatoes, etc.)

Think about the food items you crave often. Foods you enjoy and foods you crave are slightly different. Cravings are stronger and sometimes may even feel involuntary. By shining a light on your cravings, you can learn a lot about where those cravings are coming from and why you’re experiencing them.

7. Are there any food rules I abide by? If so, list them. Are these food rules rooted in balance? If not, how can I make them more balanced?

(i.e. I can’t eat past 7 pm, I can only have carbs during the first half of the day, I can’t have chocolate in the house, I have to have vegetables with every single meal, etc.)

You can learn a lot about your relationship with food by identifying any food rules that you abide by. Once you’ve listed out any food rules that you have (as shown in the example above), reflect on whether or not they’re balanced. If the feel strict and rigid rather than flexible and easeful, try and think through how you can remove the rule and change it into something more balanced.

8. Are there certain foods I consider to be, “good”, or, “bad”? If so, what are they? And why do I assign this morality to them? 

(i.e. whole foods are good, starchy carbs are bad, candy is bad, ice cream is bad, vegetables are good, green juice is good, etc.)

When we label food as good or bad, we allow guilt and shame to come into our relationship with food. By identifying where and why morality plays a part in your relationship with food, you can start to remove it and practice more balance. 

9. Do I feel confident in my relationship with food? If so, why? If not, why? 

(i.e. yes, I nourish myself in a way that works well for me, no, I don’t know how to nourish myself without feeling overwhelmed, etc.)

Confidence is key for a mindful, balanced relationship with food. But sometimes we forget to check in with this! Take a moment to check in with your confidence level. Get to know where and why you do or don’t feel confident, so you can work to maintain that confidence or make a shift. 

10. What would I like to change about my relationship with food? How will I go about doing this based on my answers to the questions above? 

(i.e. I would like to remove morality from food, be more mindful at mealtimes, build my confidence, etc.)

Identify exactly what you would like to change and adjust after engaging with the previous questions in this reflection. Once identified, remember to do so with compassion and without haste. Take your time and remember, the goal is balance not perfection.

The Takeaway

Mindful reflection is one of the most powerful tools you can use to develop and maintain a balanced relationship with food. Use these mindful eating reflection questions time and time again to get to know yourself and your relationship with food even better!

Do You Want to Experience More Balance with your Food Choices?

When it comes to reducing body weight, dark roast coffee is more effective than light roast coffee. If you drink non-paper-filtered coffee, such as boiled, French press, or Turkish coffee, you should know that the amount of cholesterol-raising compounds in the lightest roast coffee beans may be twice as high as in very dark roast coffee beans, as you can see at 0:07 in my video Which Coffee Is Healthier: Light vs. Dark Roast. It appears some of the cholesterol-raising compounds are destroyed by roasting, so, in this case, darker is better. (Alternatively, as I described in Does Coffee Affect Cholesterol?, you can use a paper filter and eliminate 95 percent of the cholesterol-raising activity of coffee regardless of the roast.)

You may be familiar with another video of mine—Friday Favorite: Does Adding Milk Block the Benefits of Coffee?, which showed that dark roasting may also destroy up to nearly 90 percent of the chlorogenic acids, the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory phytonutrients purported to account for many of coffee’s benefits. In that case, light roast would be better, as you can see at 0:39 in my video. However, dark roasting can wipe out up to 99.8 percent of pesticides in conventionally grown coffee and more than 90 percent of a fungal contaminant called ochratoxin, a potent kidney toxin found “in a wide range of unprocessed and processed food including coffee”—foods that can get moldy.

What about the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) products of combustion that are suspected to be carcinogenic and DNA damaging? As you can see in the graph below and at 1:16 in my video, darker roasts may have up to four times more than light roasts. “Thus, roasting conditions should be controlled to avoid the formation of PAHs due to their suspected carcinogenic and mutagenic properties.” To put things in perspective, benzopyrene is considered to be “the most toxic and the most carcinogenic” of these compounds, and even the darkest roast coffee might only max out at a fraction of a nanogram of benzopyrene per cup, whereas a single medium portion of grilled chicken could have over 1,000 times more, as you can also see in the graph below at 1:39 in my video.

 

Overall, you don’t know if light versus dark roast is better until you put it to the test. A study found that “dark roast coffee is more effective than light roast coffee in reducing body weight” and even said so in the paper’s title. Folks were randomized to a month of drinking two cups a day of light roast coffee or dark roast coffee, roasted from the same batch of green coffee beans. In normal-weight participants, it didn’t seem to matter—there were no significant weight changes either month—but overweight study participants ended up about six pounds lighter drinking dark roast coffee than light roast coffee, as you can see at 2:05 in my video. They lost more than a pound a week just drinking a different type of coffee.

What about light versus dark in relation to blood sugars? We’ve known since 2015 that even a single cup of coffee can affect the blood sugar response. As you can see at 2:33 in my video, after drinking a cup of coffee with more than a dozen sugar cubes in it, which is about a quarter cup of sugar in one cup of coffee, blood sugar spikes higher over two hours compared with the spike from the same amount of sugar in just plain water. “What is not known is whether this statistically significant increase in blood glucose [sugars] is physiologically relevant,” clinically meaningful. After all, coffee consumption does not seem to increase the risk of diabetes, and if you compare drinking light roast coffee with dark roast coffee 30 minutes before “a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test,” that is, drinking about 20 teaspoons of sugar, there didn’t appear to be any difference. Perhaps the take-home message is that regardless of whether the coffee is light or dark, maybe we shouldn’t be adding 20 spoonful of sugar to it.

Finally, what do we know about the effect of different roasts on heartburn and stomach upset? We find out in my video Does Low Acid Coffee Cause Less Acid Reflux?.

How Much Added Sugar is Too Much? Check out the video!

When it comes to reducing body weight, dark roast coffee is more effective than light roast coffee. If you drink non-paper-filtered coffee, such as boiled, French press, or Turkish coffee, you should know that the amount of cholesterol-raising compounds in the lightest roast coffee beans may be twice as high as in very dark roast coffee beans, as you can see at 0:07 in my video Which Coffee Is Healthier: Light vs. Dark Roast. It appears some of the cholesterol-raising compounds are destroyed by roasting, so, in this case, darker is better. (Alternatively, as I described in Does Coffee Affect Cholesterol?, you can use a paper filter and eliminate 95 percent of the cholesterol-raising activity of coffee regardless of the roast.)

You may be familiar with another video of mine—Friday Favorite: Does Adding Milk Block the Benefits of Coffee?, which showed that dark roasting may also destroy up to nearly 90 percent of the chlorogenic acids, the antioxidant, anti-inflammatory phytonutrients purported to account for many of coffee’s benefits. In that case, light roast would be better, as you can see at 0:39 in my video. However, dark roasting can wipe out up to 99.8 percent of pesticides in conventionally grown coffee and more than 90 percent of a fungal contaminant called ochratoxin, a potent kidney toxin found “in a wide range of unprocessed and processed food including coffee”—foods that can get moldy.

What about the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) products of combustion that are suspected to be carcinogenic and DNA damaging? As you can see in the graph below and at 1:16 in my video, darker roasts may have up to four times more than light roasts. “Thus, roasting conditions should be controlled to avoid the formation of PAHs due to their suspected carcinogenic and mutagenic properties.” To put things in perspective, benzopyrene is considered to be “the most toxic and the most carcinogenic” of these compounds, and even the darkest roast coffee might only max out at a fraction of a nanogram of benzopyrene per cup, whereas a single medium portion of grilled chicken could have over 1,000 times more, as you can also see in the graph below at 1:39 in my video.

 

Overall, you don’t know if light versus dark roast is better until you put it to the test. A study found that “dark roast coffee is more effective than light roast coffee in reducing body weight” and even said so in the paper’s title. Folks were randomized to a month of drinking two cups a day of light roast coffee or dark roast coffee, roasted from the same batch of green coffee beans. In normal-weight participants, it didn’t seem to matter—there were no significant weight changes either month—but overweight study participants ended up about six pounds lighter drinking dark roast coffee than light roast coffee, as you can see at 2:05 in my video. They lost more than a pound a week just drinking a different type of coffee.

What about light versus dark in relation to blood sugars? We’ve known since 2015 that even a single cup of coffee can affect the blood sugar response. As you can see at 2:33 in my video, after drinking a cup of coffee with more than a dozen sugar cubes in it, which is about a quarter cup of sugar in one cup of coffee, blood sugar spikes higher over two hours compared with the spike from the same amount of sugar in just plain water. “What is not known is whether this statistically significant increase in blood glucose [sugars] is physiologically relevant,” clinically meaningful. After all, coffee consumption does not seem to increase the risk of diabetes, and if you compare drinking light roast coffee with dark roast coffee 30 minutes before “a 75-g oral glucose tolerance test,” that is, drinking about 20 teaspoons of sugar, there didn’t appear to be any difference. Perhaps the take-home message is that regardless of whether the coffee is light or dark, maybe we shouldn’t be adding 20 spoonsful of sugar to it.

Finally, what do we know about the effect of different roasts on heartburn and stomach upset? We find out in my video Does Low Acid Coffee Cause Less Acid Reflux?.

How Much Added Sugar Is Too Much? Check out the video!

Introduction

Hello. Hello. FDN people. I hope you guys are doing well. We have a cool Live. Today we’re going to be bringing on Brandy, who is someone really important at FDN, like THE person at FDN. But she stays behind the scenes, so it’s kind of cool to get to talk to and hear from her expertise. We’re going to be talking about doing FDN around the world. I’m going Live with her right now.

There we go, Brandy. Hello. How are you?

[00:00:23] Brandy Buskow: Hey Ev. How’s it going?

[00:00:23] Detective Ev: It’s going well. I realize we never get to talk as much as we used to, so it’s nice to see you.

[00:00:28] Brandy Buskow: Oh goodness. I’m sorry. Touching things on my screen. Making it all look weird. Yes. Good morning.

[00:00:33] Detective Ev: Cool. So, Brandy’s up in Canada and I’m in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As you guys know, you can always drop where you’re from below. This is more relevant than ever because we’re actually talking today about doing FDN around the world.

It’s kind of interesting, Brandy, because we started the Health Detective Podcast, for example. You know, if you start any podcast, you don’t have major celebrities on, you get maybe 10 downloads if you’re lucky, all from your home country and stuff. And now it’s amazing to see we have Australia, UK, Canada, fighting back and forth every month for who has the second most listeners with us outside of the US. We got Thailand.

And so, it is possible to do FDN around the world. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, we have practitioners in 50 countries around the world now.

FDN Around the World: Working Remotely

I know that’s more your expertise than myself. So, if you don’t mind, what I’ll do today is I can comment on this from the podcast side and the people I’ve interviewed around the world, but I think you’ll be able to speak to the legality of this, the technicalities of this, and how this works.

Yeah, let’s just start off with the simple. Why can we do FDN around the world? Why is this something that I can’t just do in the US or Canada for example.

[00:01:34] Brandy Buskow: It’s a great question. And the beauty of the FDN course is that we aren’t limited to just working with people that we can see face-to-face. I would venture to guess, probably 80% of our FDN practitioners work remotely. They have a home office; they work with clients all over the world. We can do sessions via Zoom and that allows us to reach many more people.

If we were just siloed into just our local area, we wouldn’t be able to reach as many people as we like. And I’m sure Reed has probably talked on here before, but his mission is to help as many people as possible get well and stay well naturally. We can do that at FDN because we have that global reach.

The beauty of it is, is that when we established our medical director program, which is our lab program, when Reed started the FDN course in 2008, we have really worked hard to make some really great relationships with lab companies worldwide.

FDN Around the World: Getting Test Kits into & Out of Countries

We do have distributors that we work with in Europe. We also have a company in Australia. Many of our lab partners in the US and now Canada, because Fluids IQ, one of our biggest partners, is based out of Canada, they can ship all over the world. So, we’re able to help people globally, which is amazing. I think that’s one thing that also sets us apart from many other practitioners, we’re helping people everywhere.

[00:02:47] Detective Ev: Yeah. Please correct me if I’m wrong here, I know this is not true for all 50 countries that we’ve already worked with and all the countries in the world, this would be a little tough, but as countries become more and more popular in the course, even in Australia, they have different units of measurement and they might use some different labs. Don’t they actually get slightly different parts of the course? Like they get different trainings to actually learn how to apply those labs in their country.

[00:03:09] Brandy Buskow: For sure. Specifically, Australia, yes. We do have some separate training for our Australian practitioners specific to the test that they would be getting. Otherwise, the test that we teach in the course is available worldwide.

One of the things I always tell people, especially with our sales team, cause we talk to a lot of people, India, South Africa, Mexico, England, I mean, all over the place, is that we can get a test kit into any country in the world. That’s never a problem. We can get a test kit into any country. Where there may be an issue is whether or not the samples can be shipped out of the country. We have found that the majority of countries, there’s no problem with it.

FDN Around the World: A Diverse Community

You know, there’s a couple, potentially, where there may be some issues. So, what I always recommend, if you’re living in a country where you’re unsure if we can do testing, here’s the question to ask. Talk to your local couriers and say, “Is there any issue with me sending exempt”, this is a key word, exempt “human specimens out of the country?” They’ll be able to tell you quickly, they’ll know what that means.

From our experience, there’s very few countries that cannot ship out of the country. Meaning we can ship to every country and most countries can ship the specimens out of the country back to the lab so that we can work with them. So, we help all of our practitioners everywhere be able to access testing for themselves and for their clients.

[00:04:30] Detective Ev: Excellent. And if you’re just tuning in and wondering what we’re talking about today, we’re actually talking about FDN and how it works around the world.

Yes, the company started in USA so, that’s great and all. But over time, I mean we have practitioners from everywhere. I actually always say it’s kind of fun getting to do the podcast cause this is one of the most diverse communities I’m a part of. You know, you’ll go into AFDNP, which is our professionals’ group, and you’re talking to someone from Europe, you’re talking to someone from Asia, sometimes Australia, Canada. It’s actually really cool getting to talk to everyone.

FDN Around the World: Putting Yourself Out There

Just think about the staff, right? Like all the different time zones we have to go through just to set a darn meeting, right? You gotta check with Ireland sometimes and then parts of Canada and USA.

So, if you’re just tuning in and you have questions about how FDN works around the world, this is definitely the time to ask. Otherwise, we’ll just keep going through stuff ourselves.

Now to be clear, if hypothetically it was one of those rare circumstances where someone’s country that they’re trying to do FDN out of is just a place where maybe they can’t send the labs out of, that doesn’t actually stop them from going through the course, right?

I mean, of course there would be an issue with them doing the labs on themselves and that is a part of the course, but they could work with clients from America or Canada or somewhere else, right?

[00:05:40] Brandy Buskow: Absolutely. And that’s what I kind of talked about off the top, is that we’re able to work with anybody around the world.

Me being in Canada, I have clients in Canada, the United States. I’ve had clients in Australia. I had a one in Russia. I think I actually worked with one in South Africa as well. We can work with anybody anywhere in the world.

So, if you’re a practitioner and your particular country is maybe a little bit difficult with the testing, the good thing is, is that you can work with anybody. If you’re willing to put yourself out there, you can work with people outside of your country and still be successful.

FDN Around the World: With or Without Labs

The other thing that I like to tell people is, what you learn in the course is still extremely valuable even without testing. There’s a lot of things that we can teach people and we can coach people on even without the testing.

The other thing that we do really well is we teach you how to look at testing from a different perspective. We’re not looking at the numbers and saying, okay, well let’s give you this for that. We’re taking that broad overview of a test and looking at it differently, like, who is this person? What are these test results telling me?

So, even if the only thing you could get in your country, let’s say, is blood work or maybe it’s a food sensitivity test from a local lab, you can still work with that information, get information about your client, and work with them using the principles that Reed teaches in the course. There’s lots of ways that you can support people and we give you that foundation and that structure in FDN to work with clients, with or without labs, and still have them see results.

[00:07:06] Detective Ev: “What are the most important tests to use no matter where you are?” I would just go off the top of my head and say, the food sensitivity test seems to be one, because it’s not going to always be the same test. But you could get a food sensitivity test, I’ve seen at least, just about anywhere.

FDN Around the World: Making Strides with Food Sensitivity Alone

But then again, I’m learning something today too, cause I didn’t realize that most of the time if there was any problem, the problem would be shipping it back out. I didn’t know that even shipping it in is rarely the issue. So, based on that knowledge, Brandy, I mean, what would you consider the most important test to use no matter where the person is?

[00:07:39] Brandy Buskow: I would have to agree with you with the food sensitivity test.

Even here in Canada where we have socialized healthcare and don’t have things like LabCorp, Quest, and a lot of those direct-to-consumer lab companies, I can still go and order my own food sensitivity tests. And I think that is true in most countries.

I’m sure you’ve seen it, Evan, but a lot of practitioners have seen the food alone, like even just finding that part out and making shifts with the food, can make a huge difference with clients.

So, I would definitely say that if you can get a food sensitivity test and maybe the only other thing that you can get is blood chemistry, and we have an amazing, advanced blood chemistry course that is available to everybody. Let’s say the other one that you can get is blood chemistry. That can be very valuable. You could take the D.R.E.S.S. principles that we teach you in the foundational course and be able to help your clients make change.

[00:08:27] Detective Ev: One thing I’ll add on. I think this is something that’s probably going to, even if they’re watching the replay, it’s going to go through someone’s head. They’re going to say, wait a second. No, my specific country has laws that only doctors can order the labs and stuff.

FDN Around the World: You Don’t Have to Be an MD

Well, a lot of FDNs aren’t doctors to begin with, guys. We do have MDs that go through the course. But like myself, for example, I’m not a doctor. Brandy’s not a doctor. That’s one of the cool things about FDN.

You’re getting trained in how to actually analyze these things. And yes, we have a medical director program, which is the doctors who are able to facilitate these orders for us. But I’m never the one that has some paperwork there that says, Evan Transue ordered this lab. That would be illegal, so we don’t do that. I’m not a doctor.

I think that’s where there’s a disconnect for people sometimes where they think, I’m not a doctor, I can’t do this. It’s like, that didn’t even matter anyway. In fact, sometimes we have doctors that go through the course so that they can utilize our medical director program in other states and other countries, if they’re based out of the US at least. Because they might only have a license, let’s say in Pennsylvania. And so, they want to work with clients all around the country or world.

It’s not that they’re giving up their license, but they’re basically ordering through our medical director program because it gives them more freedom than even their licensure as an actual doctor gives them. I think that confuses people a little bit if it’s the first time that they’ve heard it. But you never have to worry about that because you’re never the one ordering the labs; and you’re definitely not the one running the labs on the individual.

FDN Around the World: Research-Use-Only Tests

I wouldn’t have Brandy in my office and take a saliva sample from her, that’s not what we do. Brandy is running the test on herself. It is a self-administered test that you are analyzing the results of. Does that make that clear or do you think that’s good for everyone?

[00:10:01] Brandy Buskow: Yeah, and I think that’s a great distinction for us to talk about is the test kits that we’re sending are considered self-tests.

So, you can collect the sample at home, as Evan said. You’re not going to a doctor’s office where they’re collecting your saliva, they’re collecting your stool, they’re collecting your dried urine. You’re doing that at home, then you’re sending it back to the lab.

These tests, I like to use the word that Dr. Gonshor uses. The tests that we use can be considered “research use only”. The reason that that’s important is because when we’re using them, we’re trying to gather information about that person, not to diagnose them.

If you’ve ever heard Reed talk about the FDN course, he says, we don’t diagnose anything specifically, it’s all metabolic chaos. We are looking at, what are the clues or what are these tests telling us are the underlying stressors or things that are going on in this person’s body that’s contributing to their health complaints. And what can we do with lifestyle to help make improvements?

We’re not prescribing anything. We’re not going to look at a marker, like I said earlier of, oh, your cortisol’s high. Let’s give you something to lower the cortisol. That’s a this-for-that approach. That’s what we do in conventional medicine, that’s not what we do as FDN practitioners.

FDN Around the World: Looking at All the Evidence

We say, why is your cortisol high? What’s going on that’s making that happen? What can we do? What can we help you adjust in your lifestyle to lower your stress and bring that cortisol down? Not just, here’s a supplement. That’s a big distinction.

That’s why when we’re talking about testing, it’s important to understand this is not standard tests that your doctor’s going to order for you, look at the results, give you a diagnosis, and write you a prescription. That is not what we do. That’s why we use the labs that we use because it gives us a lot of information about the different body systems so that we can have a big picture.

I like to use this analogy when I’m talking to people. If I’m a detective, the Health Detective Podcast, we like to use that word, if I’m a detective and I go to a crime scene, I want all the evidence. I cannot solve the crime if I only have one piece of evidence.

Liken that to, if you only run one test, you’re not going to get all the big picture. We gather evidence so that we can see what is going on with this person. Let’s uncover as many of those underlying stressors as we can, and then let’s give them recommendations and things they can do with their lifestyle, whole body approach, to make improvements in their health.

[00:12:21] Detective Ev: Absolutely. I have something to add to that, but I want to get to the questions first. Thanks for asking. “Self-tests, so even if not an FDN practitioner, a person could test themselves but just not know how to read the results?” They would have to have the doctor, I guess, to facilitate that order.

FDN Around the World: Medical Director Program

That’s what our medical director program does. But I mean, I guess in theory, if you could get a doctor to somehow do that, yes, that would happen. But I would be a little careful with that because if you don’t have the philosophy that comes with FDN or even something similar, I’m not just saying it’s only FDN, but FDN or something similar, the best that you would ever be able to do then with those labs without training is treat the paperwork.

You would only be able to tell if something’s high or low if you don’t know anything else about that and don’t have the training. I mean, that might work in allopathic medicine to the degree that allopathic medicine works. But if you’re watching a Live like this and trying to get the results that we get, you’re probably going to want that different level of analysis.

So yes, in theory, some of these labs, I guess, could be acquired by the consumer but most of the time they would need to be facilitated by a doctor, and that’s what our medical director program allows us to do. That’s one of the perks that you get as a certified FDN practitioner. It’s not just take a few classes and, basically, everyone gets a certification.

My girlfriend is going through this right now, and she went to college. She is consistently impressed with how intense these practicals are and the testing that she’s going through to actually have to graduate. She feels like she knows a lot about this. I can tell every time she gets off one of these calls it just boosts her confidence more and more. You leave FDN feeling like, all right, I know what I’m doing here.

FDN Around the World: Looking Through an FDN Lens

So, again, long way of saying, yes, you could, I guess, get these labs. One, it’d be a little tricky. And two, I mean, at best you would just be able to see what’s high or low and I think that’d be kind of risky. I just don’t know why someone would want to do that, I guess, is what I’m trying to say.

[00:13:55] Brandy Buskow: Yeah. I think that’s where we go back to, if you’re living in a country where, let’s say maybe there is a difficult time getting the specimens out of the country, but you can get a food sensitivity test and maybe blood chemistry, you’re still going to want to have the proper training to look at it from the perspective that we look at it as FDN practitioners. It’s one of not treating the paper, but actually having a good thorough intake process with your client, understanding what their areas of concern are, and then getting as much information as you can to create a lifestyle protocol.

So, if you live in, and unfortunately, China is a country that’s difficult, so let’s say you live in China. You could still take this course, learn a lot of information, and be able to have protocols and an understanding on how to guide your client in the different areas of their lifestyle where they can make improvements even if all you can get maybe is say, a blood chemistry and a food sensitivity test. You can make change.

FDN Around the World: The Cost of FDN’s Course

But if you’re just going blind, and I’m sure anybody on here has done that. If you go online and you do your blood work and you’re looking up, what does it mean when my TSH is high, you’re going to get so much information, it’s confusing. Then you’re going to think, well, I found the answer because it’s high, but there’s so much more information that you need to know.

That’s what we do as FDN practitioners. We look at the whole picture. We don’t look at just one marker.

[00:15:16] Detective Ev: Absolutely. By the way, that was a good question. Feel free to comment again, I just wouldn’t understand why someone would necessarily want the tests without the training. I might be missing something and feel free to shoot us another comment.

Someone else said, “How much is the training? How many weeks or months is the program?” I can take some load off you with this one. The training right now, I realize it updated, right? So, what is it, $8,995, now?

[00:15:36] Brandy Buskow: $8,997, yes.

[00:15:37] Detective Ev: What you can actually do, and one of the things I love about FDN, is they offer you payment plans all the way out until like 24 months, and it’s in-house. It’s not like you’re going through a third-party credit check. You can do that and get it even at a better rate. But I think 24 months is more than enough if someone’s serious about this kind of thing. Yeah, you can do it through that.

FDN Around the World: Finishing the Course in 8.9 Months

In terms of how long the program will take, I think the average right now, I remember Reed was at a conference with me recently, I think it was like 8.9 months. He was very specific. These guys track their data. But it can be done I think reasonably in as little as six months if the person’s putting in a lot of effort.

My girlfriend and best friend are both going through right now, I already mentioned that she was going through. She started in September and she’s about to graduate, technically, in a couple of weeks, assuming she passes everything, and she’s been doing well. That would’ve been about six months. But Maddy’s also put a lot of effort into it.

And my best friend’s also on the same pace. He started a little later but will be graduating a little later. These people were able to do this in six months. And Maddy works full-time currently, so she did that with a full-time job, and she has to handle me. Between all those things, you know, if she could finish FDN in six months, I think that you guys can do it as well. So, you can be out there doing this work.

I’ll answer this question as if it already came up because this was something I got all the time when I was on the course enrollment side, Brandy. People wonder like, well, can I do this work though if I’m on a 24-month payment plan and I finish in six months? That’s how much FDN believes in their system? The answer is, yes. So, you would’ve only paid like a fraction of what you got the value of, right? And you got lab tests included in the course, that’s the crazy part.

FDN Around the World: Educational Content Plus Mentoring

Just the lab tests themselves would’ve accounted for almost six months of your payments already. Yet, you can be out there charging what we charge as FDNs.

We have a whole thing that we do in person, local to me. I mean, we’re charging $4,500 for a three-month program. That is what FDNs should charge, at the very least. Even if you’re new, even if you’re charging a bit less than that, you’re still doing pretty well for yourself. That’s what it is.

Someone said, “Where can we look at the curriculum?” Thank you. I know something offhand, but that’s probably linked to the podcast.

[00:17:27] Brandy Buskow: You can go to our website, functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com. There’s a nice pretty tab at the top that says, Programs. If you click on Programs, you have access to our course curriculum. We also have a course tour there as well, so you can get a behind the scenes look.

I think this person was the one who asked about how long it took, so I want to just expand on what you said, Evan. So, yeah, it takes about eight to 10 months. There’s about 150 hours’ worth of educational content, plus 11 hours of mentoring time, which means you get one-on-one with a mentor, where you get to practice what you learn. It’s a role play scenario. You get 11 hours with a mentor, and then optionally, there’s two hours per week of calls that you can attend for extra support.

FDN Around the World: FDN Course Support

One of them is with Reed for an hour. And the other one is with our lead mentor, Elizabeth Gaines. You could ask her questions, you can get feedback, and then our support is also always there. So, you can always email support if you need anything. It’s really important for us that you feel confident and that you’re able to get through the course. We want to make sure that we’re supporting you.

Hopefully that answers all of those questions. Thank you, Jo. Yes, the link is also in our bio as well.

[00:18:36] Detective Ev: We’re throwing out the mentorship too, because when you and I went through the course, there was mentorship, but it’s just expanded so much since five, six, or whatever. How long ago did you go through Brandy? It was a while ago.

[00:18:47] Brandy Buskow: I graduated January 2nd, 2014. It’s been a while.

[00:18:52] Detective Ev: Yeah. I didn’t start until 2017. The mentorship was just set up so much differently.

What FDN always does, everyone gets this, you’ll get a post-grad interview. That’s just them getting feedback, like, how can we make it even better? And everyone gets this, which is crazy when you think about how many hours go into just that over time.

It’s been so much fun to see, like my friends and girlfriend going through the course right now. They get this Facebook training group, right? They’re going in and they’re supported by like hundreds of other people and the staff. Reed’s hopping on there. Reed’s almost 70 years old and is hopping online with these people just to help out.

FDN Around the World: A Great Time to Join FDN

I mean, guys, he’s got this company running like a well-oiled machine. Now Brandy’s, basically, in charge at this point.

He doesn’t have to do this, is my point. And he’s still hopping on with the trainees. He’s still hopping on with the graduates. He does the same things on Friday, lecturing for this stuff.

It’s a cool time to join still because we’re big enough that we have all these systems in place for you and just small enough that you could still get direct access to the original founder of this who’s been teaching in some way for 20 years and directly as a course for whatever that is, 14, 15 years almost. That’s awesome.

One thing that I wanted to go back to, since I don’t see any other questions in the chat right now. And if you are just tuning in, this is a great time to ask, I mean, technically any questions about FDN, but specifically about how FDN works around the world, cause that’s the main topic today.

You had mentioned China as an example as being a country that is tough. I’m sorry to throw you a tough question cause this might be case by case. Let’s say though, I’m someone in China. I want to go through the course, and we know that the labs are going to be an issue. This does matter because part of the cost of the course is I get these labs to run on myself. Does that change at all or is that too tough on the person?

FDN Around the World: International Lab Partnerships

I already think the course is underpriced as it is, as someone who went through this. I know I work for them, but I’m also unbiased cause I didn’t work for them for the first three years that I did this, and I thought it was underpriced.

So, would that change at all, or would it just be like, hey, it’s still the same price and you can get the labs maybe when you’re out of country? How does that process?

[00:20:38] Brandy Buskow: That was a great question. Everybody who enrolls in the course gets four test kits included in their tuition to run on themselves. So, you get to be your own first client and you get to experience the process.

If you live in a country where the labs are difficult, there’s very few times that we have found, like our team works very, very hard cause we want you to get the labs. Even in China, we’ve had this happen. We may not have been able to get all four but we’ve at least been able to get them two.

And we’re always working with lab companies and finding distributors that can work with us. That’s why we are establishing partnerships with labs internationally. Like I said, we have one in Australia that does have an Asian distributor that will ship test kits.

Now, not all of them can go. But we’ve been able to get at least two so you can get the information and then we can give you some guidance on, maybe check with your doctor for these other tests to see if we can get some more information. I don’t recall ever a time where we couldn’t at least get one to two test kits to somebody in a difficult area.

FDN Around the World: International Supplement Suppliers

Like I mentioned, China was one of them. Unfortunately, during COVID times, South Africa was another one. We were able to get kits in there, but it wasn’t that South Africa wasn’t allowing the specimens to come out, it was that there was a lockdown on the borders.

What we did is we actually established a relationship with somebody in South Africa that knew the regulations and was able to support our practitioners there, get access to testing locally. That’s one thing we pride ourselves on is we’ve always been trying to create these relationships with labs so that we can make sure that our practitioners have access to them.

The same is true for supplements. We’re always working on that. That’s something big we’re working on right now as well, is trying to find as many supplement suppliers as we can so that regardless of where you are, you have access to supplements because that can also be difficult. That’s one thing, like I said, we work really hard on.

I see Vonya’s question. Yes, there is testing in India, so absolutely. It’s interesting, we had quite a few people from India reaching out to us lately, which is exciting. We love to hear from everybody. We have a couple of trainees in India currently. So yes, we can do India.

[00:22:47] Detective Ev: I’ll make the next one easy because @roadmaptovitality said, “What about in Canada?” Canada, and correct me if I’m wrong on this, I think that’s our second biggest country in terms of like the amount of FDN practitioners. Brandy is in Canada. She has always been in Canada while doing FDN.

FDN Around the World: Doing FDN in Canda

[00:23:01] Brandy Buskow: Yes. I can definitely speak to that question. No problem doing FDN in Canada. In fact, one of the labs that we teach you in the course, Fluids IQ, their lab is based in Toronto. Three of the tests that are included in tuition come from Fluids IQ in Toronto. The nice thing is, as a Canadian, when you become a practitioner, you can open an account with them, and you can pay in Canadian funds.

Now, the other tests for Canada, they do come from the US, and they are in US funds, but it’s really easy. There’s not a lot of restrictions here in Canada. And if you have any questions, we’re happy to answer any questions you have about your particular country.

[00:23:39] Detective Ev: Not that she really cares, but just out of respect, I won’t mention her name, but I know like one of our most successful FDNs right now is based out of Canada. She’s killing it guys. She’s making enough for several FDN practitioners. It definitely can be done up there.

“How about practicing in Europe and places like Denmark?” I actually don’t know the answer.

[00:23:58] Brandy Buskow: Yeah, absolutely. One of our big lab partners who distributes worldwide is based out of Denmark. We have a lab partner where they specialized in the logistics of shipping, and they’re based in Denmark.

[00:24:10] Detective Ev: Very cool. @roadmaptovitality asked again. I love this back and forth, Brandy, we’re killing it. “Do you use CellCore products?”

FDN Around the World: Not Lab nor Supplement Loyal

One thing you want to understand about FDN, and I’ve mentioned this in other Lives, this is actually one of the parts I love about them most, is we are not necessarily lab loyal or supplement loyal, although we of course try to teach certain things in the course just to not be confusing.

That’s why Fluids IQ is a major partner of us. We still use Biomatrix and stuff with a lot of the supplements. But when I say we’re not loyal to one, it’s because we don’t necessarily care about the lab or supplements, we don’t have any deals with them. We want to know what works best for the specific thing that we might be working on.

So, even though we don’t teach CellCore in the course, the good news is, yes, we do have access to it. Actually, I just got my approval the other day. If you go on their list of approved practitioners, CellCore’s kind of one of the harder ones to get into. It so happens that you asked about CellCore, it’s a tougher supplement company to get into. And right on their list, they have Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner. So, I got registered just probably six or seven days ago for our business cause I wanted some of their Para 1, Para 2 stuff. So yes, you can get that as an FDN practitioner.

Then the good news is, I always tell people this, we never talked about this enough on the sales team, if you are a health nerd, the amount that you spend on the course, and then the wholesale pricing that you get on supplements, if you live long enough, I promise you, you’ll get the money back just in wholesale.

FDN Around the World: FDN Vetted & Recommended

The amount of money my family and I save on these like 40%, 50% discounts on supplements, I have spent enough on those to make way more back than what I spent on the course. It’s kind of cool, right?

Any other questions about doing FDN around the world, feel free to shoot them below. I know we’re at the 30-minute mark.

[00:25:42] Brandy Buskow: Let’s talk about the supplement question here, Evan. To your point, we’re not completely tied to one company. Again, because we’re international, not every supplement company is available in every country.

I remember back when I started, the only thing we ever talked about was Biomatrix. When I started, I had to go on the website and look at what are all the ingredients, and then go to the health food store locally and look up those ingredients and find something similar. That’s why we’ve changed to, we have some that we recommend because we’ve vetted them, they’ve been around for a long time, they have a lot of high quality.

But you’re free to use whichever supplement company that you want. If you have a favorite company that you want to use, you can do that. There’s no hard and fast rule of you only have to use these ones. That’s again, because we’re international, we want it to be flexible for our practitioners everywhere.

[00:26:30] Detective Ev: Absolutely. Even in the course, if we went into every little supplement lab that I could get access to as an FDN, it’s actually overwhelming. It’s more just cool to learn about it. This is the set stuff that we’re going to use in the course. This is vetted. We know that this always works. This is good.

FDN Around the World: D.R.E.S.S. Lifestyle

Then it’s just more like the gift that keeps on giving when you’re graduated because I must have accounts with like 10 to 15 different places. Not that you have to do that cause you can use things like Fullscript, I suppose. But it is just kind of cool. I like having the accounts myself and just being able to get the wholesale orders and we use it a lot in business.

One other thing I wanted to touch on, if there’s no immediate questions is, just because we did this before, but we didn’t really elaborate on it. I think when people are first hearing about FDN, whether it’s through the podcast or through our marketing or whatever, I think they initially think that it’s only labs, right? That’s what we are, is just lab training.

You had actually mentioned, well, hey, even if you didn’t have any of the labs, you could still do FDN. I think if it’s someone’s first interaction with us or first couple interactions with us, that might be confusing. So, I’ll touch on that a little bit and then obviously I know you will have some way to elaborate even better.

One of the things you guys gotta understand is that FDN primarily is a lifestyle changing modality, right? We learn about things like D.R.E.S.S., it’s our acronym for diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, and supplementation. In my opinion, even though I’ve worked with some really tricky clients, and in fact I was a tricky client myself in terms of how complicated my case was, when you nail down D.R.E.S.S., which we teach you extensively in the course, D.R.E.S.S. does not necessarily require any labs whatsoever.

FDN Around the World: Accelerating Healing with Labs

You will get people 70%, 80% better all the time. Or they’ll get themselves better by just applying the things that you taught them really. So, what I do think more often than not, it’s not always the case, but more often than not, the labs are more or less an accelerator to get the person feeling a lot better, a lot quicker.

Because yes, if you are someone who’s been dealing with health symptoms like I was at 20, 21 when I went through the course, I’d been dealing with health symptoms since before five years old. If you just start changing your lifestyle, even if you do it dang near perfectly, you are right, it could take several months or even a few years just by changing lifestyle for the body to heal naturally.

Now, if you get labs involved, and you figure out just exactly what areas got most affected by you not living the best lifestyle for the last whatever it was, 10, 15 years, that’s when you have those healing opportunities, we can really accelerate this healing process. I hope that makes sense to people, but that’s how I look at it.

It’s like, even if you just put someone through D.R.E.S.S., I think given enough time, the vast majority of people would actually get better. The labs can just be a great accelerator for people that we work with, and they’re sometimes very sick and they’ve been sick for decades. That’s why they want the labs. They need it. They want to feel better quick.

FDN Around the World: The Importance of the Big Picture

[00:29:06] Brandy Buskow: Yeah. And we’ve experienced this, Evan. I mean, you’ve been around when we had a lab go away. Like, there was a lab that just closed its doors. So, labs come and go. And while it’s important for us and we pride ourselves in like we are one of the best programs that teaches you how to look at labs differently, we cannot discount the importance of D.R.E.S.S. Because that’s what we do. That’s the lifestyle program.

The other thing that I wanted to mention is, a lot of people focus on supplements. You can’t out supplement a bad diet, not going to bed on time, or being a stress case, like you just can’t. So that’s why it’s important to focus on all of those areas of lifestyle. I think FDN does a really great job of teaching you the framework that you need to use with your clients and helping you to look at things differently.

I’ve said this a few times. If you really understand FDN, and the more you practice it, the more you understand the importance of the big picture. Because it’s so easy for us to go down a rabbit hole and a nuance of one little area and we forget that we need to look at the big picture. That’s where you get results. Because that’s what conventional medicine does.

You go to a specialist for every single thing. Say, okay, I’m going to go to a specialist for the gut. Oh, now there’s a skin issue. Okay, now you’re going to go to a dermatologist. Oh, now you’re having headaches. Now you’re going to go to a neurologist. It’s not fixing the problem.

FDN Around the World: The Importance of Lifestyle

We learn in FDN, Reed calls it clinical correlation, but also, we learn really good observation skills so that we can really help our clients and not get dragged down into the weeds where every other practitioner has gone with them, and they haven’t gotten results.

So, I love that you said that. Labs, we definitely pride ourselves in that, but it’s not the be-all end-all. You can still learn a lot from the FDN program if labs went away tomorrow.

[00:30:56] Detective Ev: Absolutely. It’s like if we have them, why not use them? That’s just intelligent to do. But we can’t get caught up in that and we don’t want to misrepresent ourselves. It’s lifestyle at the end of the day, but we just happen to be also very good at the lab stuff.

I’m glad that you mentioned that idea of that lab closing. I think that was the ultimate testament to what Reed had been talking about, almost hypothetically, for years before that. Like, oh, we don’t really need a lab. No, we really didn’t need the labs.

We saw what happened during that temporary thing in the beginning of the pandemic. And FDN not only made it through, it actually is bigger than ever before and continues to grow. So, it doesn’t matter, we’re still getting people healthy and still helping them.

“Is HTMA a part of the curriculum?” HTMA is not a part of the curriculum in and of itself. It’s a good question and it’s similar to the supplement question actually because we’re not loyal to any specific lab necessarily. But FDN was created around Reed Davis’s expertise in running labs with over 10,000 clients.

FDN Around the World: Foundations First

It’s crazy how that worked out. In his world, he was not using HTMA at the time. However, one of the cool things about FDN is all the labs that we get access to as graduates. We do get access to HTMA labs. You can order them through our medical director program once you graduate.

Shameless plug, if you don’t mind. We always gotta shout out our friend Kendra Perry. She is an FDN herself. She has one of the better HTMA courses out there. I haven’t gone through it because I’ve only just started using HTMA on and off in the last six months. I’m excited to do that. From my understanding, she is very good at teaching it in a way that still is in alignment with a lot of the FDN principles.

I would start with FDN and see if this works. I promise you it’s going to work pretty well with or without HTMA. Then those are things that probably are best to add on over time. I’ve seen applicability to it, and I’ve seen applicability to a lot of different labs that weren’t taught in the main course.

There’s a reason that Reed taught it the way that he did. He doesn’t care what labs we use. HTMA doesn’t mean anything more to him than salivary hormone testing. He’s not loyal to any of those things. It’s what worked over and over again in all these clients that he worked with.

So, if you want to access it, go through FDN, but we won’t teach it in the main curriculum, no.

[00:32:54] Brandy Buskow: HTMA is a great test and a lot of our FDN practitioners use it but it’s considered a next-level test. You want to get the foundations in place first.

FDN Around the World: Advanced Courses & More Testing

And if you do take Kendra’s course, she will actually reiterate that. The reason we don’t have an HTMA course is Kendra is an FDN practitioner. Her course is amazing, and we recommend it. So why reinvent the wheel?

You do get access to the testing post-graduation. We have over 60 tests in our medical director program. Let’s talk a little bit about this cause then they might get the question, well, if I can order it and I can’t interpret it, how is that helpful?

So, whenever you order something through our medical director program, you always have the option to have a 30-minute consult with one of our clinical advisors who can support you. Now, those sessions are not meant to teach you. They’re not going to teach you all about the HTMA in 30 minutes, but they can help you with that particular client and those test results and help you to see if you’re on the right track and give you some insights.

So, beyond the five foundational tests that we teach you in the course, you have access to more, and you can schedule a clinical advisor consult anytime with one of our FDN clinical advisors. They can support you on any new test that you want to add.

But I always tell our new graduates, because we do a post-graduate interview with every single person who goes through the course to get their feedback, I always tell them, get comfortable with the foundations first. Feel really confident with those, then if you want to learn about more testing, you can dive into some advanced courses and some more testing, and that’s the time to do it.

FDN Around the World: Education on Top of the FDN Foundation

But don’t feel like you have to know every single test before you can help somebody, because then you’re going to get stuck and then you’re never going to help anybody. You have the tools that you need with the foundational course, and then you can add on as you go.

[00:34:38] Detective Ev: It’s fun to add it on as you go because now you have the philosophy, right? Like you understand how to look at this stuff. Most of these labs, not all of them, but I’m thinking about for example, another one that comes up often is like the OAT. You can run that through a few labs. One of them is Great Plains, it’s a popular one.

Great Plains, because they want you to run their labs, of course, they have training on the OAT that you can go to. But it’s really important to have that FDN philosophy beforehand. Listen, I’m actually not speaking directly on Great Plains. I don’t know what they teach. I just know that they offer this education. You might find that’s maybe a little bit more treating the paperwork.

I don’t know what that specific lab, again, just saying that in general, some of these labs might be more treating the paperwork. So, now you’re getting the education on the lab and what the markers mean, but you also have it through this FDN lens, and you’re able to kind of combine this.

That’s where it’s like, all right, yeah, we could teach 60 labs in the course and charge $30,000 for it and it’s going to take you three or four years. That would be a little ridiculous.

FDN Around the World: Supporting Clients Further

Or it’s like, all right, let’s nail down the foundational stuff that works 80%, 90% of the time in the way that you want it to. It always works to some degree. I’m saying 80%, 90% of the time in that, like that is literally all you need for the client to get to where they want to go. Eighty to ninety percent of the time I have found that the FDN foundational course gets them to where they want, in that amount of percentage.

But you might find 10% to 20% of the time, maybe the client got 80% better doing the foundational stuff and they have been disciplined for six to 12 months. Okay, cool. Well then, we have an array of things that you can choose from to make an intelligent decision with like how can we support this person a little further?

I was one of those people that needed it myself. I ended up doing the HTMA cause I felt a little rundown last year. It turned out, I mean, I don’t know if it was actually FDN, it was more me not doing something properly, right? But that HTMA was support for me through that time. So, totally cool to use all that stuff.

Someone said, “I like the KISS method.” And if someone doesn’t know what that is, that’s keep it simple, stupid. Yes, even though FDN obviously dives deep and nerdy into the lab stuff, we do try to keep it as straightforward and simple as possible through the main course. Then if you want to nerd out, trust me, we got plenty of that in post-graduation in our professionals’ group.

FDN Around the World: Book A Call

With all that said, Brandy, we’ve been going for 40 minutes. I want to definitely shout out the Hormone Workshop. But in terms of the topic of how to do this around the world, is there anything else that we needed to hit on today?

[00:36:49] Brandy Buskow: I don’t think so. I think we covered it.

You know, we pride ourselves on being an international country’s company. So, if you are international, you have some questions about your specific country, feel free to reach out to our team. If you go to our website, there’s a button there that says BOOK A CALL. It’s no pressure. Their job is to answer your questions.

So, if you have a specific question about your country, book a call. Talk to one of our course advisors and they can answer your questions.

[00:37:13] Detective Ev: Excellent. All right.

Then just while I have you guys, because we’ve been getting so much outreach because of this, like a lot of people are interested. Someone said, “silly, instead of the stupid.” Yes. I’ll use a better acronym next time.

Oh, we have one more question. “How do we navigate on the health coaching regulations that other countries might have?”

[00:37:30] Brandy Buskow: This is a broad question, but I’ll attempt to answer it. One of the things that’s important for everybody to understand is that there isn’t like one licensing body for health coaching. It doesn’t exist. There are organizations and there’s boards, but there’s no like legal regulations for health coaching.

FDN Around the World: Health Coaching Regulations

Having said that, the one thing that’s important to keep in mind about FDN is that Reed came from a law background. It was very important to him that what we do as FDN practitioners is well within our scope of practice.

We do not cross the line into diagnosing and treating or what doctors do. They have their place; they do a great job with what they do. We stay in our lane and teach you in the course the right language to use, how to stay within your scope so that you are doing things ethically and legally. There’s no law anywhere that I’m aware of that prevents you as a health coach from giving lifestyle advice.

[00:38:26] Brandy Buskow: The only thing that may be an exception would be places that you have to be a nutritionist or a dietician to prescribe a diet or meal planning. FDNs do not do meal planning or prescribe diets. We give you recommendations, but we don’t do any prescribing. That’s the only place that I’m aware of where there are regulations.

But there’s no rules about giving lifestyle advice of you should go to bed on time, you need to move, you shouldn’t be eating a ton of sugar. There’s no law that prevents you from giving advice like that.

[00:38:57] Detective Ev: I always forget to mention that about Reed having that law background. We are as by the book as they come. We provide the paperwork for you too in the course, it’s a terms of service agreement, letting them know that they are agreeing to, one, let you see their lab test results and two, basically give them educational type of insights on it. That’s all it is.

FDN Around the World: Insurance Coverage

The only way I can picture this ever happening, and I am speaking from a limited scope cause I’m just thinking about US, but I know here there’s been a push for maybe health coaching to get covered by insurance, which sounds really nice on the surface. But the second you go through insurance, just like certain chiropractors have here and just like certain acupuncturists have here, they are allowed to limit what is actually covered by insurance and what you’re allowed to do.

When you go to a cash-based chiropractor or acupuncturist in America, they can do whatever they need to do and want to do. If I go to a chiropractor that’s insurance covered, great, my insurance covers it, but they can only do like three or four different main types of adjustments, versus, my chiropractor’s got some crazy stuff that’s really cool going on over there.

So FDN, it’s never going to be covered by insurance the way that we would want it. As long as we’re cash based and you have the proper terms of service, I can’t see anything preventing us from doing what we’re doing. We’d be living in a pretty crazy world if that happens.

[00:40:09] Brandy Buskow: The insurance statement is you don’t want to be covered by insurance because if your services are being covered by insurance, the state is then going to dictate to you how much you get paid.

So, if you’re working for a doctor as a health coach and your services are covered by insurance, you might get $30 an hour. If you work for yourself, and that’s cash basis like Evan said, we have FDNs making $200, $300 an hour in their packages. So, it’s not always a good thing.

Stress and Hormones Workshop

I do understand there’s some practitioners that want to do that, they want to work for doctors, they just want to do coaching, and that’s great. We’re not against that. We need more people who want to do health coaching and be out in the world and help people. But overall, there is no, like large governing board that governs health coaching.

[00:40:54] Detective Ev: Absolutely. Last thing I want to shout out for you guys, a separate topic, but again, a lot of people have been super interested in this is our Stress and Hormones Workshop with yours truly.

I’ll be hopping on with Jo Pate. She’s another person here at FDN, so you guys have probably seen her a couple of times definitely on our Instagram. She’ll be co-hosting with me and we’re going over 70 plus slides really getting you into our world of FDN. It’s an $11 workshop. You guys know how much we give out for free if you just think about like the podcast and Instagram and stuff.

Eleven dollars in our world is actually going to get you quite a bit. You will get to see how you can apply the way that we think about hormones, specifically, into your health coaching practice, even if you never go through the course. And we’ll also give you a really nice teaser if you are interested in the course. Then you can actually see, this is what they teach.

So, if you’re interested in that, it’s going to be Live, March 2nd, 7:00 PM EST for myself, 4:00 PM PST. Then we got people all around the world. I’m sorry, you’re going to have to do the rest of the conversions yourself. But that’s 4:00 PM PST, 7:00 PM EST. And that’s United States.

Conclusion

Go check that out. If you can hop on Live with us, there’s a Q&A at the end, too. It’s going to be about two hours total. We’ll go through the slides, teach you a lot about hormones and stress, and then we will do the Live Q&A. Even if you can’t make it directly, you will have a lifetime access to the replay for the $11.

So, if you’re interested in that, do one of two things. You can either drop the word hormones below, or since we’re about to end the call as well, you can actually DM us. We have real human beings that talk on our Instagram, it’s not a chat bot. You will get to talk to one of our staff members. Just shoot them a message in the direct messages spot and let them know that you’re interested in that Stress and Hormones Workshop, and we will get you signed up.

I think we covered quite a bit today. I can’t believe it’s already been 50 minutes, Brandy. It was nice talking to you.

[00:42:37] Brandy Buskow: It’s always great, Evan. And I hope a lot of people learned a lot of things. Again, if we didn’t cover any of your questions, feel free to reach out to our team. We’re happy to answer your questions. We want you to feel confident in your decision in joining the FDN family.

[00:42:48] Detective Ev: Cool. All right. Thank you, guys, so much and I hope you have a great weekend.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

To hire an FDN Practitioner, go to fdnthrive.com.

For a FREE eBook, go to fdnthrive.com/steps/.

The world of gluten-free baking is both wonderful and challenging – the results can be incredibly delicious, but it can take some trial and error to discover the best gluten-free flour combinations and which flour to use and when. In the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program, which is entirely gluten-free, we have an entire module dedicated to gluten-free baking and sweet treats! In other words, gluten-free flours are important to culinary nutrition!

We’ve spent many years experimenting with both sweet and savory gluten-free baked goods (a tough job, we know) and have learned a lot along the way. Using this A to Z gluten-free flour guide, you can skip the flops and rock-hard gluten-free muffins and go straight to the scrumptiousness.

The most important thing to know about working with gluten-free flour options is this: you must blend multiple flours together for the best results. Using a singular gluten-free flour will result in those hockey puck cookies that no one wants to eat. So generally, when you are substituting a gluten-free flour for wheat flour, or a gluten-free flour for another gluten-free flour, you’ll need to play around a bit and see what works best for you.

Without further ado, here are some of our well-loved gluten-free flour options and the best way to use them.

gluten-free flour guide and substitution reference

Download your free *updated* Gluten-Free Flour Guide and build your own gluten-free flour blend (plus we share a few extra gluten-free recipes to get you started). ↓

Almond Flour

What is it?

Take raw, blanched almonds, grind them to a fine flour and you have almond flour. You can also buy milled almond flour, which is finer in texture, or save your almond pulp and blend it up into almond flour. This and other nut flours — such as hazelnut, walnut, pecan and seed flours — add protein, fibre and vibrant taste to grain-free and gluten-free baking.

Best for: Cookies, cakes, muffins, hearty crusts, pancakes, and crumble toppings. Heavily used in Paleo diet recipes.

How to substitute: Use up to 25% of nut flours in gluten-free flour mixes.

Recipe to Try: Grain-Free Almond Flour Cookies

Amaranth Flour

What is it? 

The tiny whole grains that make a surprising breakfast cereal can also be ground into a fine flour. Amaranth is rich in protein and has a grassy, earthy taste.

Best for: Due its grassy flavour, use it in savory dishes like pizza dough.

How to substitute: Swap it 1:1 from glutenous flour

Recipe to Try: Amaranth Flour Crackers

Arrowroot Flour

What is it?

Arrowroot flour is a fine flour that comes from the arrowroot plant (you may also see it labelled as arrowroot starch or arrowroot powder). It looks very similar to corn starch, potato starch and tapioca starch.

Best for: Use it as a thickener in place of corn, potato or tapioca starch. It’s also helpful when you need any kind of dough to stick together.

How to substitute: Substitute arrowroot flour 1:1 in place of corn, potato or tapioca starch. When using it in baking, aim to have no more than 20% arrowroot in your gluten-free flour mix.

Recipe to Try: Grain-Free Chocolate Sandwich Cookies

Bean Flours

What is it? 

Dried beans can be ground into flour as easily as grains can.  Chickpea flour — also known as garbanzo bean or ceci flour — is used for flatbread in the south of France. Lentil flour shows up in Indian cuisine. Fava beans become flour and show up in some commercial gluten-free baking mixes. They are all rich in protein and fibre.

Best for: You can use bean flours in both sweet and savory dishes, but use them in small doses as their flavour can be overpowering.

How to substitute: Use up to 25% of bean flours in gluten-free flour mixes.

Recipe to Try: The Best Banana Pancakes with Chickpea Flour

Buckwheat Flour

What is it?

Buckwheat flour is made from ground buckwheat. Has a rich, nutty flavour and a very high nutritional value, making it popular in many nations, especially in Asia. Buckwheat is the fruit of the buckwheat plant and has no relation to wheat or grasses – so it is a 100% gluten-free flour.

Best for: Muffins, cookies, pancakes, waffles and breads

How to substitute: Add up to 50% of buckwheat flour in your gluten-free flour mixes

Recipe to Try: Orange-Scented Buckwheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Coconut Flour

What is it?

This gluten-free flour is made from coconut that’s been dried and ground. It’s very dense, high in protein and it’s the most fibrous of all of the flours. That’s why you’ll need to add at least an extra 1/4 cup of liquid to your recipes when using it. It’s commonly used in Paleo diet recipes and pairs best with eggs – so it doesn’t always work in vegan recipes.

Best for: Things that don’t need to rise very much like pancakes, cookies, waffles and crusts

How to substitute: Coconut flour soaks up a lot of liquid, so use 1/4 cup of coconut flour in place of 1 cup glutenous flour (or another gluten-free flour). You’ll also need to add an extra 1/4 cup of liquid.

Recipe to Try: Mini Gluten-Free Apple Galettes

Millet Flour

What is it?

Mild and ever-so-slightly sweet, millet is an adaptable grain that is rich in magnesium, nature’s relaxant mineral. It soaks up the tastes of the foods surrounding it, making it a very neutral gluten-free flour to use. Millet flour lends a crumbly texture to breads and muffins and is the least allergenic of all the grains.

Best for: Breads, muffins, cookies, cakes, crusts

How to substitute: Use up to 25% of millet flour in your gluten-free flour mixes

Recipe to Try: Instant Ragi Dosas by Food Trails

Oat Flour

What is it?

Oat flour is simply made by grinding whole grain oats in the food processor or blender. It’s rich in soluble fibre and it’s great for balancing blood sugar levels. One thing you need to ensure if using oat flour is that it’s 100% gluten-free. While oats are naturally gluten-free, they are often planted and processed alongside wheat, leading to cross contamination. Buy certified gluten-free oats for grinding into flour, or certified gluten-free oat flour.

Best for: Breads, muffins, cookies, cakes, crusts, granola, fruit crisps, scones

How to substitute: Use up to 20% of oat flour in your gluten-free flour mixes

Recipe to Try: Chocolate Cherry Chia Bread

Quinoa Flour

What is it? 

As a grain, quinoa is nutty and delicious. As a flour, quinoa is a little bitter. It’s packed with protein, but the texture adds density to gluten-free baked goods. Use a little quinoa flour in combination with other gluten-free flours for the added protein boost without the bitterness. You can also toast your flour in the oven to amp up the flavour.

Best for: Savory baked goods like biscuits, flatbreads, zucchini bread or herbed muffins

How to substitute: Due to its high protein content, you can use this 1:1 for wheat flour, but we recommend only using up to 25% in baking mixes.

Recipe to Try: Herbed Quinoa Flatbread

Rice Flour

What is it?

When farmers harvest rice, they shuck the grains of its outer husk, which are inedible. What is left after this process is brown rice. If the farmer also removes the germ and bran from the rice grain, he or she is left with white rice. Brown rice flour is made from the first type of rice, and white rice flour is produced from the latter. Whether it is brown or white, each type can be ground into rice flour. This is a great base for gluten-free baking.

Best for: All kinds of gluten-free baking. Can also be used as a thickener in soups, stews, fillings, etc.

How to substitute: Swap it 1:1 for glutenous flour or any other gluten-free flour. Use up to half of brown rice flour in gluten-free flour mixes.

Recipe to Try: Yummy Gluten-Free Pancakes

What About Arsenic in Rice Flour?

Arsenic is a heavy metal found naturally in water and soil, and was once commonly used as a poison. It is carcinogenic, and makes its way into rice because rice fields are flooded, giving the grain more time to absorb it.

Studies on rice show that most varieties of rice are contaminated with arsenic, and some products – especially rice products for babies and young children – have arsenic levels that are considered concerning.

Arsenic in rice is something to be mindful of, but there are a few ways to mitigate the potential risk:

• Rotate through different gluten-free flours, so you’re limiting exposure and not eating rice (or other rice products and rice-based baked goods) daily or multiple times a day.
• Basmati rice is lower in arsenic than other varieties.
• There are certain rinsing and cooking methods for rice that massively lower the amount of arsenic.

Learn more about how to reduce arsenic in rice in our Guide to Cooking Beans and Grains.

Sorghum Flour

What is it?

Sorghum flour is closest in texture and taste to traditional wheat flour of any of the gluten-free flours. In a few cases, it works as a direct substitution for wheat flour, such as in pancakes. It’s also high in antioxidants.

Best for: Muffins, breads, pancakes, crepes, cookies

How to substitute: Swap it 1:1 for glutenous flour or any other gluten-free flour. Use up to half of sorghum flour in gluten-free flour mixes.

Recipe to Try: Butternut Squash + Lentil Muffins

Tapioca Flour

What is it?

What we in the West call tapioca comes from a plant originally from Asia known as cassava (in South America, it is known as manioc). When the root has been dried, it is ground into white flour. Tapioca flour is also known as tapioca starch. Its starchiness makes it an excellent gluten-free flour, but it must be used in combination with other flours to make great baked goods.

Best for: Mixing into gluten-free flour blends. Can also be used as a thickener in soups, stews and fillings.

How to substitute: Substitute tapioca flour 1:1 in place of corn or potato starch. When using it in baking, aim to have no more than 20% in your gluten-free flour mix.

Recipe to Try: Gluten-Free Paleo Biscuits

Teff Flour

What is it?

The tiny seeds of teff make a fascinating porridge. Dark brown as molasses, with a slight taste of chocolate, teff porridge will fill you up in the mornings.  As a flour, teff is nearly miraculous. The fine flour — ground from the tiny seeds — almost dissolves in baking, giving it a slightly gelatinous quality. It binds the baked goods in a somewhat similar fashion to gluten.

Best for: Waffles, banana bread, cookies, muffins

How to substitute: Substitute 1:1 for other gluten-free flours. When making a flatbread like injera, you can use 100% teff. Other times, you may want to use up to 25% teff in your gluten-free flour mixes.

Recipe to Try: Ethiopian Injera

Xanthan Gum and Guar Gum

What is it?

Xanthan gum is used in gluten-free baked goods, toothpaste, salad dressings and frozen foods as a stabilizer. It binds everything together in a uniform consistency. Only a tiny amount (1/2 teaspoon or less) is enough to bind the dough to make cookies and pie crusts.

Guar gum is made from dried and ground seeds of the guar plant, which grows in India and Pakistan. It’s often found in many processed foods such as commercial ice creams and puddings. In small amounts, guar gum can be a somewhat effective binder, mimicking some of the effects of gluten.

Best for:  Gums have a tendency to irritate the digestive system. These are often best avoided for this reason.

More Alternative Flours

In this guide, we featured gluten-free flour options that tend to be accessible and available at a lot of grocery stores. With the rise of certain therapeutic diets, there are even more specialty options now to experiment with.

It can be trickier to swap some of these flours into wheat flour recipes or gluten-free flour recipes, so it’s best to try a tested recipe that has been designed to use them.

Learn:

Ready to dive into gluten-free baking?

Grab our updated Gluten-Free Flour Guide! In it you will find all these gluten-free flours (and more) plus we share our go-to gluten-free flour blend recipe, as well as a few extra gluten-free recipes to get you started. ↓

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 health and nutrition information! Starting now, we are taking all of that information and wrapping 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 the highlights in February?

Treating Parkinson’s Disease with Velvet Beans and Fava Beans

Our two new videos on Parkinson’s disease released this month addressed the question, If we have known for decades that Parkinson’s is manifested by a dopamine deficiency in the brain, why not eat a dopamine diet? The dopamine in foods can’t actually cross the blood-brain barrier, but its precursor, levodopa (L-dopa), can and is then able to be converted into dopamine. Dr. Greger found interesting data on velvet and fava (or broad) beans, which both contain L-dopa. The information on velvet beans looked promising at first, but there are some hurdles to its use—including its nasty taste.

What about fava beans? They contain less L-dopa than velvet beans, but they are tasty—so you can eat more of them—and can be consumed as a whole food. Substantial clinical improvements were noted in patients after they ate fava beans, similar to that of receiving a standard drug. Overall, the research is ongoing, and, until we know more, Parkinson’s combo drugs like Sinemet should remain the first-line therapy, but adding beans to our diet can only help. Even just one and a half spoonsful’s worth of roasted soybeans (“soynuts”) led to a significant improvement in symptoms as an adjunct treatment.

 

The Best Diet for Fibromyalgia and Other Chronic Pain Relief

Fibromyalgia has long been dismissed as a psychological phenomenon, but it’s now understood to be a disorder of pain regulation and sensitization. If pain is typically caused by inflammation, does an anti-inflammatory diet help reduce the effects of fibromyalgia? A recent study found that on a plant-based diet, perceived pain decreased an average of three points (on a ten-point scale), falling from an average of five or six points down to just two out of ten. The study didn’t have a control group, but there’s no downside to giving healthier eating a try—not only to help with fibromyalgia pain, but for a whole host of other concerns.

 

Vinegar for Blood Sugar Control and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) Treatment

Vinegar has been shown to help accelerate weight loss, reduce cholesterol, act as a disinfectant, and blunt spikes in blood sugar and insulin after meals. Since insulin resistance has been suggested as one possible cause of polycystic ovaries and we know vinegar can improve insulin resistance, could it also benefit those suffering from PCOS? A tiny study using one tablespoon a day showed improvement for about half of the participants. The jury is still out, but this suggests that vinegar may help, so why not give it a try? Whatever your reason for taking a daily dose of vinegar, remember to never drink it straight, as it can cause second-degree caustic burns down your throat.

It has been suggested that insulin resistance is one of the causes of polycystic ovaries and we know that vinegar can improve insulin resistance, so researchers decided to study the effect of vinegar for PCOS. Seven patients seeking a non-pharmacological treatment for PCOS were given a beverage containing a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar every day for a few months. The insulin resistance did improve in most, but did their cycles return? Yes, in four out of seven. Before the study, they were either having their periods every 50 or so days or not at all, or they were not ovulating, but most resumed within 40 days on the vinegar. Now, this doesn’t prove anything, but it’s at least sufficient to indicate the possibility that it may help. And, what’s the downside? A tablespoon of vinegar would cost less than 10 cents a day. (Another reminder to never drink vinegar straight.)

 

Dr. Greger in the Kitchen: Groatnola

Two years ago, Dr. Greger made a video about his then-favorite breakfast, the Cran-Chocolate Pomegranate BROL Bowl. He still loves it, but with pomegranate season waning once again, he’s on a new kick: groatnola! What’s that? Whole-food granola made with buckwheat groats, sweet potatoes, and spices. Give it a try, and let us know what you think!

 

Tea Tree Oil for Cold Sores and Warts?

Tea tree oil has antifungal and antibacterial properties, as shown in videos such as Does Tea Tree Oil Work for Dandruff and Athlete’s Foot? and Do Natural and DIY Tea Tree Oil Cleaning Products Disinfect as Well as Bleach?. Warts and cold sores, on the other hand, are caused by viruses, so does tea tree work on those conditions? Maybe on warts (at least in a singular case report), but not on cold sores.

 

Vegetarian Athletes

In this three-blog series, starting with What Is the Gladiator Diet and How Do Vegetarian Athletes Stack Up?, Dr. Greger looked at the history of vegetarian athletes and how they stacked up to their omnivorous competition. Top groups of athletes, from ancient Romans and Greeks to modern-day Olympic runners, have been known to eat largely plant-based diets. Overall, most studies have found little difference between vegetarian and omnivore athletes when it comes to cardio or strength fitness. Since extensive research has shown that a plant-based diet has the benefit of greater long-term health outcomes, it seems like a winning choice. 

Healthy Bones

This month’s spotlight is all about bone health. Do people eating plant-based have greater bone loss? Does animal protein intake lead to bone loss? What is the relationship between milk consumption and rates of hip fractures? Check out the podcast for answers to those questions and more. In a nutshell, though, for the strongest bones, eat plenty of phytonutrient-packed plant foods and incorporate weight-bearing exercise.

 

---

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 health and nutrition information! Starting now, we are taking all of that information and wrapping 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 the highlights in February?

Treating Parkinson’s Disease with Velvet Beans and Fava Beans

Our two new videos on Parkinson’s disease released this month addressed the question, If we have known for decades that Parkinson’s is manifested by a dopamine deficiency in the brain, why not eat a dopamine diet? The dopamine in foods can’t actually cross the blood-brain barrier, but its precursor, levodopa (L-dopa), can and is then able to be converted into dopamine. Dr. Greger found interesting data on velvet and fava (or broad) beans, which both contain L-dopa. The information on velvet beans looked promising at first, but there are some hurdles to its use—including its nasty taste.

What about fava beans? They contain less L-dopa than velvet beans, but they are tasty—so you can eat more of them—and can be consumed as a whole food. Substantial clinical improvements were noted in patients after they ate fava beans, similar to that of receiving a standard drug. Overall, the research is ongoing, and, until we know more, Parkinson’s combo drugs like Sinemet should remain the first-line therapy, but adding beans to our diet can only help. Even just one and a half spoonsful’s worth of roasted soybeans (“soynuts”) led to a significant improvement in symptoms as an adjunct treatment.

 

The Best Diet for Fibromyalgia and Other Chronic Pain Relief

Fibromyalgia has long been dismissed as a psychological phenomenon, but it’s now understood to be a disorder of pain regulation and sensitization. If pain is typically caused by inflammation, does an anti-inflammatory diet help reduce the effects of fibromyalgia? A recent study found that on a plant-based diet, perceived pain decreased an average of three points (on a ten-point scale), falling from an average of five or six points down to just two out of ten. The study didn’t have a control group, but there’s no downside to giving healthier eating a try—not only to help with fibromyalgia pain, but for a whole host of other concerns.

 

Vinegar for Blood Sugar Control and Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) Treatment

Vinegar has been shown to help accelerate weight loss, reduce cholesterol, act as a disinfectant, and blunt spikes in blood sugar and insulin after meals. Since insulin resistance has been suggested as one possible cause of polycystic ovaries and we know vinegar can improve insulin resistance, could it also benefit those suffering from PCOS? A tiny study using one tablespoon a day showed improvement for about half of the participants. The jury is still out, but this suggests that vinegar may help, so why not give it a try? Whatever your reason for taking a daily dose of vinegar, remember to never drink it straight, as it can cause second-degree caustic burns down your throat.

It has been suggested that insulin resistance is one of the causes of polycystic ovaries and we know that vinegar can improve insulin resistance, so researchers decided to study the effect of vinegar for PCOS. Seven patients seeking a non-pharmacological treatment for PCOS were given a beverage containing a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar every day for a few months. The insulin resistance did improve in most, but did their cycles return? Yes, in four out of seven. Before the study, they were either having their periods every 50 or so days or not at all, or they were not ovulating, but most resumed within 40 days on the vinegar. Now, this doesn’t prove anything, but it’s at least sufficient to indicate the possibility that it may help. And, what’s the downside? A tablespoon of vinegar would cost less than 10 cents a day. (Another reminder to never drink vinegar straight.)

 

Dr. Greger in the Kitchen: Groatnola

Two years ago, Dr. Greger made a video about his then-favorite breakfast, the Cran-Chocolate Pomegranate BROL Bowl. He still loves it, but with pomegranate season waning once again, he’s on a new kick: groatnola! What’s that? Whole-food granola made with buckwheat groats, sweet potatoes, and spices. Give it a try, and let us know what you think!

 

Tea Tree Oil for Cold Sores and Warts?

Tea tree oil has antifungal and antibacterial properties, as shown in videos such as Does Tea Tree Oil Work for Dandruff and Athlete’s Foot? and Do Natural and DIY Tea Tree Oil Cleaning Products Disinfect as Well as Bleach?. Warts and cold sores, on the other hand, are caused by viruses, so does tea tree work on those conditions? Maybe on warts (at least in a singular case report), but not on cold sores.

 

Vegetarian Athletes

In this three-blog series, starting with What Is the Gladiator Diet and How Do Vegetarian Athletes Stack Up?, Dr. Greger looked at the history of vegetarian athletes and how they stacked up to their omnivorous competition. Top groups of athletes, from ancient Romans and Greeks to modern-day Olympic runners, have been known to eat largely plant-based diets. Overall, most studies have found little difference between vegetarian and omnivore athletes when it comes to cardio or strength fitness. Since extensive research has shown that a plant-based diet has the benefit of greater long-term health outcomes, it seems like a winning choice. 

Healthy Bones

This month’s spotlight is all about bone health. Do people eating plant-based have greater bone loss? Does animal protein intake lead to bone loss? What is the relationship between milk consumption and rates of hip fractures? Check out the podcast for answers to those questions and more. In a nutshell, though, for the strongest bones, eat plenty of phytonutrient-packed plant foods and incorporate weight-bearing exercise.

 

---

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

Many thanks to Jamie Toff, a health and boxing coach, for this week’s note. Jamie spotted an article entitled “DASH diet may reduce CVD risks by 10% with greater benefits for women and Black adults, experts flag” (Ref 1).

The article behind the headline was “Effects of diet on 10-years atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk (from the DASH trial)” and it was written by Jeong et al (Ref 2).

The DASH Diet

DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (Ref 3). The diet was first introduced in 1997. It is promoted by the National Institute of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHBLI) for reducing blood pressure. It is regularly heralded in studies as one of the “Best Overall Diets.”

The DASH diet recommends the following servings from each food group for a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet (Ref 4):

Introduction

[00:00:00] Detective Ev: All right. What’s going on everyone? We’re having a great time here at FDN. We have an awesome announcement for you guys with our hormone workshop. I don’t know if you actually knew that that’s what this announcement was going to be yet. But I will be hopping on with the big man himself in just a moment, Reed Davis.

I was looking at our podcast stats lately. Canada and Australia are having a back and forth between our second most listened to countries with the first being the United States.

I’m bringing on Reed Live. Gimme one sec here. Here we go. Alright, Reed. That was one of our best ones yet, man.

[00:00:33] Reed Davis: Fantastic. Can you hear me, okay?

[00:00:34] Detective Ev: Yeah. This is awesome. We were just having everyone shout out where they’re from. We got Washington, Philly. Philly is cool. I’m actually in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. We should connect, definitely reach out. We got everyone all over the world here.

It’s kind of amazing. You know, just started out FDN all these years ago with doing these talks in San Diego and now look at what this is, man. We got people in different countries, all these different time zones reaching out. Today guys, what we’re talking about is our hormone workshop. We’ve never actually done something exactly like this, it’s going to be pretty cool.

It’s a way that you can get in and learn about some of the things that we get to learn as FDNs, except you don’t have to go through the whole program. It’s a really affordable price.

Hormone Workshop: To Reach More People

This is going to be going down March 2nd, and it’s at 4:00 PM PST, 7:00 PM EST. I’ll be on there Live, actually, with Jo Pate. We will be going through 70 plus slides for you guys, talking about a lot of nerdy stuff and we’ll go through that today.

But Reed, one of the things I wanted to just start off with to let people know what’s going on, is why are we offering this. It’s only $11 to do this workshop. I mean, we valued it at over $700 with all the things that we’re including. I know we’ll touch on those later. But why this, right? When we offer this huge course, why do the workshop?

[00:01:42] Reed Davis: Well, we want more people to be exposed and have money not be an object for it. You have to charge something and it kind of gets them to commit to showing up. But the real reason is the mission.

So, in 1999, that’s in the last century, some of you probably weren’t born yet, I started helping people. My goal was always to help as many people as possible. After spending 10 years in an office learning the craft, I put a course together. That was back in 2008. What I realized, Evan, was that boy, I’m helping a lot of people.

Our clinic was getting really famous, and we were just outperforming standard medicine. We were getting people on natural wellness pathways, and they were really excited and happy and referring us. We had something that was working. People kept telling me, Reed, if you would teach others how to do this, think of how many people you could help then.

Hormone Workshop: March 2nd, 2023

I didn’t think I’d be a teacher. I was totally happy just promoting FDN in our clinic and running a great clinic and everybody’s happy. But when the thought occurred to me, it finally sunk in. Think of how many people you could help if you could deputize others.

So, since 2008 we’ve been doing that, and now we’re in 50 countries. How did I know? But that’s the deal. That’s why we’re doing this in the big picture.

[00:03:04] Detective Ev: I love this, and some people are already asking, so thanks. You’re a step ahead of me. We have a hormone workshop going on. We’re actually still explaining what it is, but if you want the link to it, we’ll give you all the information. If you just dropped the word hormones below, we’ll make sure it’s sent to you guys.

The date is March 2nd. It’s at 4:00 PM PST, 7:00 PM EST. When you get it for the $11, you actually get a lifetime replay. So, even if you can’t make it that day, you could still catch the replay. But I would recommend it because we’re doing a live Q&A at the very end of it. I’m expecting that to be a pretty cool thing.

We have, “uncovering the truth about stress hormones to jumpstart your health coaching career.” Couldn’t have said any better, Kay-Marie, I absolutely agree.

Hormone Workshop: You Gotta Understand Hormones

All right, one of the things I wanted to touch on as well is why do health coaches in particular need to understand hormones.

Obviously, there’s many programs out there and some of them really don’t touch on that. They might touch on dietary theories or how to set health goals, which is of course very important. You can’t really get anywhere if you don’t have a goal. But not everyone gets trained in the hormones.

And I would say that’s one of the things we’re trained in best as FDNs. I learned so much about this stuff. As my girlfriend and best friend and his girlfriend are going through the course right now, Reed, they’re almost graduated actually. They were just shocked. These are college educated people. One has a degree in analytical chemistry, and he was just so impressed by what he was learning on the hormone side in FDN.

So, why do health coaches need to know this? What benefit do they get?

[00:04:21] Reed Davis: Well, one of the first things to break down is the body’s exposed to the environment. As they say, we’re only human, so your body’s going to break down.

One of the first things to break down is your hormones. It starts with cortisol and DHEA, those are hormones. Cortisol goes up, DHEA goes down, you’re in a catabolic state. Now your body’s really breaking down. What’s the next thing to go? The sex hormones. Because when you say hormones, people think of testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, but there’s others.

There is that cortisol to DHEA ratio, which kind of controls the whole thing. Then you’ve got melatonin and others. You’ve gotta understand the hormones because it’s one of the first areas the body breaks down.

Hormone Workshop: Not Focusing on Diagnoses or Symptoms

[00:05:01] Detective Ev: Someone said, “is this different than what is taught in the course?” It’s actually part of it, but you get way more being in the FDN course.

If you’re already an FDN, I should have mentioned, this would not be something that you’d really want to do because you already have this and then some in the FDN course. This is for people out there who are health practitioners or wanting to become them. Maybe they’re not ready to make this huge jump yet.

We’re giving it to you for $11. Since we have so many people on, that’s how we’re able to do this. We’re able to give you a lot of value for something super cheap.

Then someone said, “hello to both Evan and Reed.” Hello. Thanks for hopping on. I’m sorry that I don’t know how to pronounce your username, but I feel like you hop on with us a lot. So, thank you for that. I remember you before we had 40 people on these lives.

I was wanting to talk about too, this is a little confusing for people, the symptoms that might be relevant to this workshop. Now, one thing you guys will learn in this workshop is why we’re not really focusing on diagnoses or the symptoms, per se. There’s clinical correlation and we’ll touch on that, but they’re almost irrelevant in a sense, cause we’re going even deeper.

But some of the symptoms that might be associated with these hormone issues, and you might be seeing these in your clients, guys, are the weight gain and stubborn belly fat, low energy and fatigue, low libido, dry and irritated skin, hair loss. I’m just listening off a few.

What else you got off the top of your head?

Hormone Workshop: Systems that Go Off with Stress

[00:06:14] Reed Davis: Well, you named some of them. I’m thinking that as the body’s breaking down almost any symptom could occur. If you’re going to fix it, hormones are part of it.

I mean, there’s the immune system, digestion, detoxification, energy production, autonomic balance, and that’s what I’ve seen go off with stress. You’re going to get hormone imbalances and the autonomic nervous system; you’re probably going to go into fight/flight.

So, any one of those symptoms, anxiety, sleeplessness, irritability, bad moods, and those kind of things go along with it. But it could also result, depending on one’s weak links, in other things occurring, like you said, low libido, inability to build muscle, energy levels, of course, and on and on.

[00:07:00] Detective Ev: Absolutely. We got a lot of questions already. Guys, feel free, throw them at us. I always say, especially when Reed’s on, if I was not a trainee yet, I’d be asking questions all day. You guys getting on for free.

We have some smart people watching today, that’s for sure. Someone said, “do we have to meet a deadline to start the program?” If you mean the workshop, no, because we have the replay. And if you mean the actual FDN program itself, no, you could start at any time.

I mean, we have a huge staff that seems to be growing by the week. We are able to take you guys at any time and still give you that mentorship and the things that we do. Someone said, “I’m planning on starting the course in April, but I will register for this workshop as well.” Yes, especially for the $11, I’d highly recommend that. You’ll get yourself a nice base prior to getting into the course in April. Highly recommend that.

Hormone Workshop: Bone Density Problems

[00:07:44] Reed Davis: Someone said, “osteopenia.”

Yeah, bone density problems are just another common thing that happens with the cortisol to DHEA imbalance. We do teach you in the course how estrogen affects your bones.

Progesterone affects your bones, even testosterone and especially cortisol. It’s known that high cortisol, especially if it’s artificial, like cortisol medication, cortisone and these kinds of things, asthma inhalers, skin creams, and all this stuff deteriorates the bones. You would never want to do it unless you’re at least 35 years or older, cause bones are still growing, believe it or not, till you’re about 30. So, osteopenia, osteoporosis, and all kinds of things.

I saw someone in there really quick, Evan, say, “are we hiring?” Yeah, we’re hiring FDNs. I have 40 people, including Evan, on the staff, and they’re all FDNs. Maybe there’s one or two in bookkeeping, but everyone else. This has grown since 2008.

Everyone that took the course thought, hey, can I help you somehow? That’s how we’ve grown, just by bringing everybody into the interior family too. Just like Evan, he was a graduate and had some talent, wanted to help and look what he’s doing. He’s doing amazing things.

He goes and speaks in public for us. He runs the podcast; he runs these Instagram Lives and things like that. Heck yeah. We’re ready to put people to work cause we are expanding. But you gotta be an FDN.

[00:09:06] Detective Ev: Well, talent is subjective, Reed. So, thank you very much, I appreciate that.

Hormone Workshop: Take this Info and Run

We had someone else say, “thank you for specifying that this is for people that maybe are not trainees yet.”

Absolutely. And if you’re just tuning in with us, cause I know we got a lot of people coming in and out, probably, we are talking about our hormone workshop. We’ve never actually done something like this Live, but this is a way that for only $11 you can kind of get into our world of FDN.

We’re going through 70 slides. You have to listen to me the whole time and my co-host there that day, Jo Pate. But if you like listening to me, then this could be fun for you and you’re going to learn how we think about hormones and what we actually do to address these things as FDNs.

And this is stuff that you can immediately apply into any health coaching practice, right? You can go take this information and run. We do give you access to a lifetime replay, so even if you can’t get onto that day, that’s totally fine.

Drop the word hormones below and we will make sure someone reaches out right now or right after the live so that you can get the link to that. But that’s just drop the word hormones below.

Someone said, “once you’re in balance with hormones, can you stop taking the hormone supplements like pro adapt?”

[00:10:11] Reed Davis: Yeah, sure. The whole idea behind supplements is that they substitute for what you’re not getting, whether from diet, lifestyle, or what have you.

Eventually, if things go back to what we want, which is equilibrium, you know, homeostasis is the official term, then yeah, you could cut back.

Hormone Workshop: Skin Conditions

But a lot of people take a long time to heal cause it took them a long time to get where they’re at, you know? So, depending on the progression of the downward spiral in chronic stress related conditions, that could give us a clue along with the labs of how long it would take you to get back to quote/unquote “normal”.

[00:10:52] Detective Ev: Someone just made a comment saying, “skin conditions as well are affected.” I know that all too well. That was kind of the coolest part about FDN for me. I mean, I had a lot of other stuff going on, but let’s be honest, severe acne was the one I cared about the most, especially as a young man.

You know, FDN, because we don’t treat or diagnose anything specifically, they never said, here’s this thing for your acne, or we’re going to run this test for your acne, nothing like that. We just did the FDN system. As we did the things that we would do for almost anyone, of course it can be tailored a little bit because there’s bio individuality, but the core system remains fundamentally the same. Yet, you know, my skin’s looking the best that it ever has.

That happened shortly after going through FDN, even though this was the first place I ever went to that wasn’t treating the acne. Well, if you know better, it’s not ironic. But to the average person, it seems ironic then when you stop treating the symptom and the skin. That’s actually when my stuff started getting better because we were looking at other stuff. So, great comment.

Hormone Workshop: Insight Into FDN

Okay, what else have we got here? Alright, a few people are dropping the word hormones.

If you’re just tuning in and wondering why there’s a spam of hormones in the chat, it’s because that’s how you will get access to our hormones workshop. It’s only $11. You got two hours with yours truly, and co-host, Jo Pate. We’re going through 70 slides teaching you guys all this stuff about hormones that a lot of our trainees get to learn.

Now, of course, if you are a trainee, you get way more than this in the course, plus all the other stuff that we teach. But this is a nice little thing to actually get an insight into our world. It’s stuff that you can go run with and apply in your own practice.

But Reed, this is not just for people necessarily that are already health coaches with a thriving practice, right? Aren’t there some other people that could benefit from this, probably?

Hormone Workshop: Getting the Basics

[00:12:23] Reed Davis: Yeah. FDNs could listen to get reminded, and it’s exciting to be part of the community and just to chime in.

That’s a beauty of FDN. When I first taught my very first course back in 2008, I thought that people would take the course and go forth and multiply, go do what you were taught. But they, in a sense, just sort of wouldn’t go away.

The community formed immediately as one of camaraderie and mutual mission, very mission driven, things like that. So, from day one, from the first class, we’ve had this strong sense of community.

Anything we produce, well, it’s for new people who aren’t FDNs yet or otherwise, is welcome. I would love to see some FDNs we know there.

[00:13:05] Detective Ev: Yeah. We had Suzanne say that she is an FDNP and she’s going to register because it’s good to re-listen to the foundational basics. I absolutely believe that because the longer that I’ve been in FDN, the more that I’ve realized what you told us in the course anyway, that D.R.E.S.S. is the main thing – diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction supplementation. If you really learned to nail that down and intelligently apply it to your clients, you’ll help them more than most people out there. Right?

The labs are fantastic, and we learn so much about that in the course. But at the end of the day, you’re wasting your time if you don’t get the basics down. You gotta learn that stuff and don’t underestimate them just because they are basics, right?

Hormone Workshop: Getting Results

I’ve been doing boxing, Reed. I told you that when we were in San Diego. Our trainer just has us doing the jab over and over and over again. Of course, you want to be doing fancy combos and stuff like that. Well, dude, you’re not going to be doing any combos or knocking anyone out until you get this other stuff down. Right? That really is true. If you go watch a match, you’ll see people throwing the jab all day long.

Someone said, now this is just a really nice comment, “I love this program. I haven’t seen anything comparable. I literally have been fantasizing it exists as I don’t want to have to go to school to be a doctor.” This is a great point, because we still need doctors and Reed is the first one to tell you this. But a lot of people are going to school for certain things, to get a certain result that is not actually required to go to school for.

I remember Reed, when I was doing the course enrollment stuff, I got a call from someone that wanted to go to naturopathic school, and that’s wonderful. We have naturopaths that are in FDN. I said, all right, cool. What do you want to do? They said, well, I want to help clients and I want to work with people from a natural perspective. I said, Okay.

I’m not going to go through the whole story, but we dug deeper. The reality of it, what it came down to, is they didn’t want to be a naturopathic doctor per se. They wanted to be able to do what they believed a naturopathic doctor can do.

Hormone Workshop: Wanting to Help People Holistically

I let them know, we can actually get the same results similarly to what you wanted, in FDN. And you can go through this in nine months if you’re willing to work hard and just study. Then you can be out here using labs and doing supplements and stuff like that. Once they realize that, it’s cool.

There’s times and places for all these credentials and all these degrees depending on what the goal is. But for many of us, we just want to help people, we want to do it a holistic way. To do that, what I just said, you don’t have to go to school for 12 years to do it. In fact, sometimes it might be best not to do it, depending on how you want to help people, I would say.

Okay. What else? We got a lot of people dropping hormones. It’s going to be a good workshop. You guys are putting pressure on me. I better come up with something good to say. No, I’m kidding. We have some good stuff for you guys.

I actually want to talk about what we are going to be nerding out on next. Some of the stuff that’s coming the top of my head is we’re going to be explaining to people the brain/body diagram, Reed, which I actually talk about in schools still to this day. I break it down a little more simply, but just so you know, that gets used to kids to explain to them.

Hormone Workshop: Nerding Out on the Labs

Think about it, especially as a young person, all they see is the symptom. That’s the only thing they’ve ever been told. And a lot of adults, they’re more the ones that are hard to get the message through to. When I tell that to a student, they’re like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. They intuitively get this when I explain that.

In addition to the brain/body diagram, that’s kind of a whole philosophy behind the FDN system, what else are we going to be nerding out on? Cause this is not just going to be some borderline baseline workshop. We’re actually diving deep into some topics.

[00:16:08] Reed Davis: Well, you’re going to nerd out on the labs, which is cortisol, DHEA, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. We’re going to look at melatonin, secretory IgA, because these things are all interconnected.

When you have stress, it throws you into a catabolic state, your body just starts breaking down. Now, if you resolve the stress really quickly, things should go back to “normal”, quote/unquote. I hate the word normal, but, you know, homeostasis is a desire. The stress is so chronic, and you don’t even know where most of it is coming from.

Hormone Workshop: Test, Don’t Guess

It could be from aches and pains from old injuries. It could be from chemical and biochemical assault from the environment, new clothing, household care products, personal care products, and on and on. So, you got all of those aches and pains from injuries. You got the chemical stressors from the environment. You got biochemical stressors that your own body’s making.

Then you got, of course, when you say the word stress, people think of, my job, or all my relationships, or all my money, or all my kids, all these. You have all these different types of stress. It’s ubiquitous and it eventually catches up with you.

The cool thing about FDN is we look at the measure, we measure the hormones involved. We’re not guessing. We’re testing. Hey, this should be an expression. You know, test, don’t guess.

Anyways, so yeah, we look at the data and it gives you an objective finding that you can then feel responsible toward. The first comment when we show people their test results is, how come no one else ever showed me this? I mean, we’re basically explaining exactly why they feel as lousy as they do. This is why you feel so crappy. This is off. That’s off. This is like this. This should be here, but it’s here. And they go, wow.

The next question is always, well, what do I do about it? That’s where the all-natural, a hundred percent drug-free protocols come in. You got yourself into this, you can get yourself out of this. It’s the most empowering way of thinking that I know of.

Hormone Workshop: Taking Control of Your Own Health

I mean, I can tell so many stories, I know that we have limited time here.

But I have to say what got me involved, cause I was in a different field. I was in environmental law saving the whole planet, air, birds, water, trees, bees, you know. I was out there on my motorcycle in the desert, fixing things. And I started thinking about, well, what about people?

I’m finding dead animals and birds and bodies of water that were polluted and on and on. Lot of opportunity for healing the planet. But I turned my attention to opportunities for healing people. I went to work, and I changed jobs. And what I just said is very applicable.

You know, you need to take control, yourself. That’s what FDN is about. The people that I met in the office, those first few months and years, they had no control. They just were putting their health in other people’s hands and getting disappointed with the results. Well, it’s not finding the right person, it’s taking that responsibility and getting the right data and actionable plan and system. That’s what FDN is, it’s a systematized, find out what’s wrong and how to fix it, program.

[00:19:14] Detective Ev: I love this message about personal responsibility and if you got yourself into this, whether intentionally or unintentionally, most likely it was the latter, you can get yourself out. That’s probably the most rewarding part about FDN.

It’s really darn cool actually when you get the initial labs back. Maybe it’s a hormone test. Like for myself, I was 21 years old at the time and I’m in the exhaustive phase of HPA axis dysfunction. And if you don’t know what that is, we’ll be touching on that in the workshop.

Hormone Workshop: Making Positive Changes in Health

At first, it’s validating, and then second, you’re like, oh darn. My body’s not in a great spot right now.

But what’s cool is when I got that next hormone lab back and I had moved myself up into a very minor version of the acute phase of HPA axis dysfunction, that’s progress, guys. That’s a huge difference in the outcome of my life because I learned about this stuff through FDN. It’s just amazing. It’s fun and it’s cool to be able to look at this stuff objectively.

Someone said, this is from our conversation before, “doctors need coaches because they can’t spend as much time explaining the information as we can after each patient.” Absolutely. You know, people need that time, and they also need the expertise of the doctor. It’s kind of cool that we can all work together.

Kim said, “I am currently taking the FDN course, and if you are on the fence about enrolling it is by far the most robust and well-rounded course available.” Thank you, that is awesome.

“I received a doctoral degree in 2015, civil engineering, but my life mission is to help people recover from chronic illness.” Excellent. We have plenty of engineers, believe it or not, that have gone through the FDN course, and I think that’s because of the systematized nature of FDN.

If you check out our podcast, the Health Detective Podcast, go look at the titles. I have a few engineers that have interviewed on there. You might like that if you’re considering becoming an FDN. She said, “thank you for developing this.” You are welcome. She was thanking you, Reed. Wow, we got a lot of comments.

Hormone Workshop: Advanced Information

All right, so if you guys are just tuning in and kind of confused, a lot of comments going on and we’re talking a lot, we are doing a hormone workshop. It is a hundred percent Live. There’s going to be a Q&A at the end. Myself and Jo Pate, one of the other people here at FDN, we are going to be going through 70 plus slides on the way that we think about and deal with hormone issues as FDNs.

This is advanced stuff. It’s not just going to be a kind of boring webinar. You will actually learn something. It’s only $11, and you can go take this and apply this in your own life if you’re just a consumer. But especially if you’re a health coach or practitioner already, or thinking about becoming one, this is something that you can apply the very next day with your clients.

If you want to get that, drop the word hormones below. If you’ve seen other people doing that, that’s why. Drop the word hormones below and we’ll make sure to send you over.

One thing I wanted to talk about, Reed, and towards the end of your last answer, we were kind of getting to this, I just want to ask it explicitly. You were talking about how when people get our labs back and our results back, they’re like, we can show them how they feel or why they feel a certain way.

Hormone Workshop: Going Farther Upstream

Now, when people go to the Western Medicine doc sometimes, through really no fault of their own, I mean the Western Medicine docs are doing what they know how to do, a lot of times, their labs look normal over there. But they can come to us the very next day and our labs don’t look so normal. Just for someone that might be hearing this for the first time, or maybe they just started following us, why is it that the labs that Western Medicine is running can look normal while simultaneously ours actually really don’t show any normalcy whatsoever?

[00:22:17] Reed Davis: The simple answer is that we’re going much farther upstream with our labs. Physicians, let me tell you, they’re not doing anything wrong. They’re not bad people. They’re doing what they’re trained to do, which is to save lives and to relieve suffering. They do a very, very good job.

If that’s what you want, and by the way, I recommend you go there because you never know how bad it could get. Doctors are trained in the downward spirals and how fast and deep they can go, so you want that. But if you’re looking to change your lifestyle and get some additional markers, it would tell you more functional markers, these hormone imbalances, the way we look at them, problems with the immune system, the way we look at it, problems with digestion and detoxification, the way we look at it as healing opportunities, they’re not trained in that.

So, if you’re going there to those physicians and complaining about the results, it’s kind of your own fault. You’re going to the wrong place. Your ladder’s up against the wrong wall.

Hormone Workshop: Your Ladder’s On the Wrong Wall

When you want functional medicine or you’re willing to take responsibility for your own health and you want to collect data on your own body that they’re not offering, you have to go get your ladder against the other wall.

It’s not that they’re bad, they’re the wrong wall for you to have your ladder on, if you’re looking to truly recover and restore health. What they do is relieve pain and suffering and try to halt the progress of really quickly downward spiraling, like terminal type conditions.

Both would be great; they work hand in hand. As you said earlier, we do have a lot of physicians now coming to FDN to our alumni group saying, hey, who wants to work for us? I want to hire some FDNs. We’re not an employment agency and we’re not even a trade school, but you will have skills to be able to earn a living.

Most FDNs are private health entrepreneurs. They want to work their own hours; they want to set their own wages and only answer to what’s best for their individual client.

[00:24:21] Detective Ev: What’s crazy with Western Medicine, there are times, guys, where someone’s sick enough that yeah, Western Medicine’s labs are showing up not so great too, and ours aren’t showing up great either.

But it’s an amazing thing to be able to do for someone when they know that they feel bad. Again, through no fault of Western Medicine, they’ve been invalidated by that system because they’re not looking in the right place for what’s going on with this individual. When they come to you and you can show them this stuff, it’s really helpful.

Hormone Workshop: Focusing on Healing Opportunities

Someone said, from the last time I was talking about the workshop, “when is it?” Sorry, I should have said that again. It is March 2nd, and it is going to be at 4:00 PM PST, 7:00 PM EST start time.

It’s going to be about two hours, although there is a live Q&A at the end. I’ll stay on with you guys as long as you want, except not past 10:00 PM EST cause I gotta get a good bedtime to make sure my hormones are taken care of. But outside of that, we’ll stay on pretty much as long as you guys want.

“How will we receive the link?” I believe that when you guys drop the word hormones below, what will happen is someone will shoot the link to you in the direct messages. You should be able to do that. If you guys have any questions, by the way, I know a few people have already asked, but if you have any questions while we are still on, feel free to drop them below. Any questions in general about FDN, or specifically, would be even better, about the workshop itself.

“New here, do you offer a lab testing course?” Well, I don’t know if I would word it in that way. How would you reword that?

[00:25:36] Reed Davis: Yes, sure. We teach a lot about lab testing. It’s not your standard interpretation, which is diagnosis and treatment model, we shy away from that. Instead, we focus on what are the healing opportunities that we can identify for a person, starting with ourselves.

Hormone Workshop: More Skill, More Knowledge, Reed’s Experience

Everyone who takes the FDN course, by the way, runs at least four labs on themselves and I pay the lab fees. You get one-on-one help with your own personal history case, everything going on with you. And I pay for that mentorship. It’s all included in the tuition, running the labs on yourself.

It sounds to me like you might be a good candidate. But another thing that Evan mentioned was, well, where are you in your journey? Would the FDN course be good for me? Obviously, everyone could benefit.

Let’s say you have a college degree or got some college and you’ve also got a certificate or two. You tried personal training, you tried massage, you tried nutrition, and you’re not quite making it. You’re not really building a robust referral-based waiting list practice. That’s the holy grill, robust waiting list, referral-based practice. If you’re not well on the way after a couple years, then you may be doing something that’s not working.

You’re doing something that is not work of you, it’s not working for your clients. You need more skill; you need more knowledge. I will lend you every bit of my experience. Again, I can teach you what I learned in 10 years, in 10 months, all the hard work, trial and error, and all the stuff for you.

I want to quickly shout out to a lot of people who made some very nice comments here. “Thank you for the love.” That’s how FDN is. That’s just how it is, plain and simple. So, if you’re surprised at all the hearts and things, don’t be surprised. This is what incinerates when you’re out helping people and you’re working with like-minded folks.

Hormone Workshop: BHRT

[00:27:29] Detective Ev: Yeah. It’s such a cool community because it’s diverse as can be. You have all different backgrounds, countries, whatever. But you’re all coming together for one core thing and a way of believing in a right for people to have access to health information in this way. I think that’s what’s so cool. It’s one of the most diverse groups I’m a part of actually.

Okay. What else have we got here? “Any discussion in the workshop on BHR?” Well, I’m guessing that’s bioidentical hormone replacement therapy and perimenopause/menopause. I don’t know that I’ll be talking about that directly per se, but this is all things that we touch on in the FDN course.

So, I will mention why this is relevant. Actually, there are certain circumstances that you’ll learn in the FDN course, if you went through, where bioidentical hormone replacement therapy could technically be a recommendation on a temporary basis.

Of course, we try to stay away from heavy duty stuff, if not necessary. But I’ve had that come up in my practice and it’s amazing. You can get people turned around real quick feeling better. Then what we do with them though is make sure they’re doing the deeper work so that they don’t need those things long term.

I think that’s where a lot of, unfortunately, functional medicine just sometimes is missing the mark. I’m not being negative; I’m just being honest. Cause they’ll throw people on these hormones and there’s no end date. You know what I mean? It’s like, all right, we’ll just use this forever.

Hormone Workshop: Live on Instagram

It’s like, okay, if you really need that life jacket right now, we’re all for that. We don’t want someone to be in pain or suffering needlessly. But we’re still looking at how do we get you out of that water though so that you don’t need the life jacket eventually, in this case that would be the hormones and stuff. We’ll be touching on that stuff indirectly for sure. Good question.

What else we got here?

[00:29:00] Reed Davis: If you want more information, cause I see some questions, just type the word hormones into the chat box, and we will follow up, with all kinds of staff on, paying attention, listening. They want to find out is this something you should do.

And by the way, you know, the price of this thing that Evan’s been talking about, I know it’s really high. But if you could just scrape together $11 from somewhere, just skip lunch one day and you can afford this thing and find out.

[00:29:26] Detective Ev: And call it intermittent fasting. Right? You’ll be good.

Alright. “Will there be a replay?” Yeah, I’ll just run through everything again real quick cause we got a lot of people on here today.

So, we’re talking about our hormone workshop. You can watch this Live; it will be saved on Instagram so you can go through what we’ll be talking about there on our page. But it will be March 2nd, 4:00 PM PST, 7:00 PM EST. It’s going to be about two hours, maybe a little longer cause there’s a live Q&A at the end. I’ll be answering your questions and so will Jo Pate, she’s another person here at FDN. We’re going through 70 slides.

FDNThrive for Public Consumers

It’s a lot of content all about how we think about hormones as FDNs, how we address it. You guys are going to get some information that is actually usually only given to our practitioners and it’s all for $11. How you get the link for that to sign up, is by dropping the word hormones below in the chat. We’ll make sure you get it.

Someone else asks, “Sorry if you have answered this, how would I go about getting my hormones tested through FDN?” Well, we actually haven’t answered that. If you weren’t going through the FDN course and you’re more interested as a client or consumer we can have someone reach out to you, Bethany, from our FDNThrive program. We won’t get too much into that today, but it is where we take on people from the public and you can actually work with an FDN without going through the course, if that’s just not something that’s in your future you’re trying to do. I’ll make sure someone gets reached out to you there if they haven’t already.

Okay. “Do I need a doctor degree in order to recommend or prescribe BHRT? How can we incorporate this with the FDN credentials?”

[00:30:48] Reed Davis: You know, it does require licensure to officially prescribe hormone replacement therapy. That’s not the business we’re in. We’re in, how can you take responsibility for all the input, everything that caused you to have imbalanced hormones and fix it at that level.

Most of those things are stress related. Some could be more medical though, like cysts and surgeries and growths, weird medical stuff and that’s between you and your doctor.

Hormone Workshop: D.R.E.S.S. For Health Success Program

But for someone who just has an imbalance and they’re not sleeping right, and they’ve got brain fog and they’re gaining weight and bad skin, you know, all the things we talked about, there are natural ways to balance your hormones versus just taking the hormone therapy . And by the way, if you’re going to take hormone therapy, obviously we recommend the bioidenticals.

And oh, by the way, some of that stuff’s over the counter. So, if it’s over the counter, then yes, you can educate your clients about that availability, and they can try that if that’s what they prefer to do. I’m not against a lot of things. BHRT is fine temporarily as a relief. If you’re having hot flashes and night sweats and you’re miserable because you’re not sleeping, get some relief care. There’s not a problem with relief care. If bioidentical hormone replacement therapy’s working for you for a temporary period of time, then yeah, I’d say go for it.

And yes, you would have to see someone who is licensed to prescribe that. But if you’re willing to take responsibility for why you need the BHRT, what’s out of balance, is it just the hormones or all the other systems in your body connected, and the answer is yes, they are, we give this comprehensive look.

Then, we don’t say prescription, it’s not a word in our vocabulary really, but our recommendations would include diet and rest and exercise and stress reduction and supplementation, the infamous D.R.E.S.S. or Dress for Health Success program. Man, you’d be surprised what just goes away when you get yourself straightened out based on the lab work. You have the lab work to provide a foundation, markers, benchmarks before and after.

Hormone Workshop: The Body’s Innate Ability to Heal

[00:33:03] Detective Ev: Before and after is the coolest part.

There’s nothing better than feeling better subjectively, then looking at the labs objectively and things are really trending in the right direction. That can happen at any age. The body’s really cool.

We always bring up this example. It’s so simple, but it proves that the body has an innate healing ability. That’s not some like pseudoscientific crap. If I get a paper cut, my finger fixes itself, that’s it, right? That innate healing ability exists through every cell throughout the body.

It’s just that a lot of the times when someone’s dealing with chronic symptoms or disease, it’s a lot more complicated than just a paper cut. I know to stop the paper cut, I just gotta stop picking the scab. We help you figure out some of that more advanced stuff and one of those ways is hormones.

“What brand of supplements do you recommend?” I can cover this one for you, Reed. We’re not loyal necessarily to any one specific lab or brand of supplements. That was one of the coolest things I liked as a practitioner when I came into FDN. Not that there’s anything wrong with repin supplements or labs, that’s fine. But FDN doesn’t have any branded stuff.

FDN goes and finds the best labs for a specific category, the best supplements for a specific category. My gosh, Reed, I must have accounts with almost 10 or 15 labs, supplement labs at this point. I got signed up for Cell Core today, because you’re allowed to do that as an FDN. They approved me in four hours, thank you FDN. We’re not loyal to any one thing, we just want to know what is the best for that individual person in this case.

Supplementation: Substitution, Stimulation, and Support

However, with that said, in the course itself, just for the sake of not getting too confused and overwhelmed, Biomatrix is something that we cover a lot. I know Ultra Life’s still in the course. And I believe that now you guys have updated the course even to have some Bio Botanical stuff in there as well, if I’m not mistaken.

[00:34:35] Reed Davis: Yea. Well, I think you put it right. It’s more about the ingredients. And where I was revising, there are several companies that we really like.

We try to teach you what the ingredients are and what they do for your client, if anything, and then you get to make your own choices. So, you’re not committed to one brand. I think that’s the point is that if you do FDN, no, you don’t have to use one product or another, you get your choices. But you need to know what you’re doing, what those supplements are good for.

We call it the four essences of supplementation, really quickly. Substituting for what is missing from food cause food sucks. Even if you’re eating organic, you’re not getting all the vitamins and minerals in the sense of fatty acids and trace elements and phytonutrients and all these things. So, you’d need to substitute what’s missing from food.

You can stimulate certain things when you need to. Like you’re getting on a plane, you want to stimulate your immune system. Well, that makes sense. Well, we teach you what to use or what you can use if you want to. So, substitution, stimulation. The next test is support. You might need to support your adrenals, support digestion, or support other organs and systems and cells and tissues and the whole thing.

Supplementation: Self-Treatment

And then finally, self-treatment. Now that’s not really a supplement. There’s no such thing as a wormwood deficiency. But you could learn that wormwood helps with certain little critters that you might want to chase away in a natural way.

Substitution, stimulation, support, and of course self-treatment are the four essences of supplementation.

There’s a huge, big module on that. We teach you, I think, what you need to know. And you can go pick and choose who you like or what’s cheaper if you want. We don’t think you should go that way, but you know, you can kind of mix and match. You’re not bound to one brand.

[00:36:22] Detective Ev: Yeah. So, username getingrammy was talking about they were not able to find the link, so I apologize if it wasn’t clear. What will happen, getingrammy, is that when this Live is actually over, when you exit out of this screen, your direct messages, which will be at the top right of your screen, it’s like a little triangle arrow thing, we will shoot you a message. We actually have real people doing this, it’s not automated by like a chat robot or something. It might take a few minutes after the Live to get it to you, but we will make sure you get the link.

Hormone Workshop: Health Coach Workbook & Lifetime Access

And if you’re just tuning in, we’re talking about our hormone workshop. You can get access to it by dropping the word hormones in the chat below, if you’re wondering why people were doing that. It’s March 2nd, 7:00 PM EST, 4:00 PM PST, it is Live.

I will be there with you guys doing 70 slides on hormones. I laugh every time I say that cause it’s going to be a lot. You guys are in for a good show, hopefully, with that one. Then we have a Live Q&A at the end to cover anything that you might want to know and that we may have missed. It is only $11.

This is stuff that you can actually take the next day and go apply in your own life if you’re just interested in getting yourself healthy. Or you can apply in your practice if you are a health coach or someone thinking about it.

And getingrammy said “thank you.” You are very welcome. I’m glad I could help.

One last thing, Reed, I just wanted to touch on. And if you guys have any last second questions, drop them below because you got the man himself here.

I just wanted to go through every little thing that you guys will get in the the hormone workshop, just in a succinct way. You will get the Live workshop itself. You are also going to get a health coach workbook. That’s incorporated with this program as well. It’s going to be fun. Lifetime access to the recording.

Yes, 70 slides is a lot and I talk very fast when I get excited. And I’m excited like 90% of the time I’m talking about FDN. You guys will have recordings of that as long as you need it.

Hormone Workshop: Mind/Body Diagram & Stress Quiz

You’ll also have the live Q&A. Even though you do get the replay, I would highly recommend hopping on so that you can get your questions answered if you have them.

You’ll also get the mind/body diagram. I’ll touch more on that in the workshop itself. And you will get a stress quiz, that is something that you can not only use for yourself, but technically in your practice.

Someone said, “This is fantastic.” I know that name very well. I don’t know who that is behind that, but I actually follow them, I know they’re an FDN. “Thanks. This is fantastic. Thanks for also bringing the best to FDN.”

“If you’re thinking about taking the certification training just do it.” I would recommend that myself. That’s why I got like all these close people in my life going through right now. So, we’re about to have some fun with this.

Last chance, drop the word hormones below.

If you are watching the replay, we will be checking this for at least a few days, possibly more. So, definitely drop the word hormones below or just DM us and we’ll make sure you get the link.

But Reed, is there anything else that we need to cover today? I mean, I got my notes over here and I feel like we touched on almost everything. We got so many people that look like they’re going to be hopping on with us. It’s going to be great!

[00:38:51] Reed Davis: Just thank you. I’m continually blessed and feeling it, and happy that we are able to develop the mission, work on the mission. I could never call it completed because we’re not at that point yet, but we’re well on the way. Also, hello to the people I know.

Conclusion

I see Dr. Hassan just jumped on. I haven’t talked to him in a long time, but I appreciate you and all the other people who gave a little shout out or messaged the love of some sort. I appreciate it. It’s my life’s work. It’s hard to just say one thing about it, as you know.

[00:39:22] Detective Ev: No worries.

Well, guys, we always appreciate you hopping on. If you want more free information outside of the workshop itself, check out the Health Detective Podcast. I host that for FDN. We now have over 215 episodes. There is business advice for health coaches, interviews with our practitioners, some of the craziest health stories that you’ve ever heard.

I just said this actually yesterday, I tagged FDN. One of my favorite stories that I’ve legitimately ever heard on the podcast will be released next Monday. You can get a bunch of other free information from us there. That’s the Health Detective Podcast.

If you want access to the workshop on March 2nd, 70 slides on hormones, done Live with a Q&A as well at the end for you guys, drop the word hormones below.

But outside of that, I’m looking forward to seeing you guys during our next Live, whatever that may be. I’m not sure yet, but I know I will be recruited. So, that’ll be fun. Thank you, guys. See ya.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

To hire an FDN Practitioner, go to fdnthrive.com.

For a FREE eBook, go to fdnthrive.com/steps/.

Case Study
Client: Catherine (names have been changed for privacy)
Stats: Female, 45 years old, busy working mom, doesn’t have a ton of time to allot in the kitchen, feels like she is trying to eat with the goal of weight loss, has successfully lost weight in the past, but old strategies aren’t working this time and she is increasingly frustrated.

Goal: 20 pound sustainable weight loss (for wedding in six months)
Outcome: Consistent 1 to 1.5 pound loss and weight maintenance

After reading yet another article about nutrition myths, I found myself thinking about how Calories In/Calories Out is still being talked about as THE important aspect in weight gain and loss. This one just keeps hanging on because it contains one kernel of truth. But, in my opinion, the concept is just too simplistic. This is a much more complicated story.

The notion of number of calories you eat needs to be less the number you expend as the only answer for weight loss is dumbing down the problem. Our bodies are complicated systems and to tackle weight loss, we need to address the issue from MANY angles to systematically put new sustainable habits into place.

In my opinion, other aspects of food matter as much or more than calories: food nutrient density, food macronutrient split, portions, food timing, emotional eating, getting to the kitchen/grocery store, habits around planning and prepping, individualized gender, age, activity level, hormone balance (stress, sex, sugar, thyroid, hunger/full), consistency, and I am sure there are more. So, while the calories and the energy they provide are important, they are only one aspect in a body system that works synergistically for weight goals. Each aspect needs to be addressed in a personalized way.

Let’s dig in.

Eating Disorders

Approximately one million Australians are living with a diagnosed eating disorder (3% anorexia nervosa, 12% bulimia nervosa, 47% binge eating disorder (BED) and 38% other eating disorders). Currently however, what we are commonly seeing in clinic is in fact what we call “disordered eating”.

You can read more about types of eating disorders and their classification here

Disordered Eating

Disordered eating is consistent with behaviours such as restriction, binge eating, vomiting and laxative use that do not meet the criteria for an eating disorder. Approximately a third (31.6%) of Australian adolescents engage in disordered eating behaviours annually!

What other types of disordered eating behaviours do we see in clinic?

Please note, one behaviour does not classify disordered eating! It can be a combination of behaviours and is of an individual nature.

• Food avoidance: Commonly we see people completely cutting foods out of their diet based upon their belief system and an inability to make dietary changes based upon fear. For example, cutting out all carbohydrates with the fear that eating these foods will cause them to gain weight.

• Obsessive calorie counting: There are times where unfortunately this tool can have negative consequences for our clients. In some scenarios they may not even care much about the food quality, they are just trying to meet their numbers.

• Exercising to “work off food”: This can be quite common, especially in adolescent populations.

• Complete rigidity and routine with no flexibility: If clients are unable to often stray away from the same meals and snacks daily or spontaneous enjoy food outside of their normal, this can be a bit of a red flag.

• Irregular eating: This could swing from a couple of huge days of eating out and consuming alcohol over the weekend to restriction come Monday – with many meals skipped in an attempt to even out intake.

Health implications of disordered eating:

1.     Inadequate dietary intake of macro or micro nutrients leading to nutrient deficiencies such as low iron

2.     Weight gain influencing chronic disease risk factors

3.     Weight loss resulting in hormonal regularities, impacting menstrual function and fertility or sex drive

4.     Social isolation impacting mental health

5.     Lack of concentration, attention and depressed mood

6.     Progression to an eating disorder which has even more serious implications

The Good News: Dietitians are experienced at supporting clients recovering from both eating disorders and disordered eating! Interested? Book in here with our Dietitian Tatiana

It’s not often you can order sustainable salmon at a restaurant. True Food Kitchen is an exception! Their entrees, starters, craft cocktails, seasonal items, bowls, burgers, wines, sandwiches, refreshers, beer, salads, sides and pizzas are superb. The ingredients are rooted in science, sourced with integrity and crafted by chefs. Google ‘True Food Kitchen’ in your area! There are 42 locations in 17 states!  Dinner at Graze was phenomenal. I had the loaded roasted potatoes. Roasted potatoes with cashew cheese, seitan chorizo, guacamole, vegan sour cream, pickled jalapenos & green onions. I cannot recommend this enough! It was everything. The grilled veggies were simple but flavored exceptionally with subtle spices. The cocktail menu was also clean and excellent!

Graze is a plant-based bistro and bar, serving brunch and dinner 7 days a week. They have brunch until 3:00pm and the dinner menu is served all day. Go see them when in Nashville!Can we just talk about the airport for a minute? I have never ever seen an airport like Nashville in the last 14 years of traveling for this work. The Nashville airport (American Airlines terminal) had organic coffee, organic tea, a place for açaí bowls and ginger juice, a Mediterranean place for lunch or dinner, and the most wild I’ve ever seen, a local and organic grab-and-go carrying Localmeel a local company dedicated to helping people travel with nourishment. I got the hummus bowl, an organic local veggies bowl, a kale salad bowl with tahini dressing, some Remedy Organics green matcha drink, and Four Sigmatic mushroom coffee! Plus they have live music at the airport… I mean. Thank you, Nashville for turning it up! 

 

In your experience, how have you found food to tell a story and shape culture?

Food is both created by history and creates history. Cuisines are created by history because they mix with invasions and population movements. It shows the movements of people and the introduction of new ingredients, cooking methods, and recipes. Sometimes these cuisines are impoverished–think of the globalization of cuisine and fast foods–but often they come out richer. In my book Vegan Africa, for example, I highlight the Indo-Chinese influence on the cuisine of East Africa and the Lebanese influence on all of West Africa. These result in unique dishes that are consubstantial with the history of these parts of the world.

On a personal level, the way we eat says a lot about who we are, where we come from, and all of the people who came before us.

And, finally, cooking creates history because it brings people together. It creates bridges between people through commonality. In fact, it is often the first introduction we have to another culture.

 

How do you educate people about the intersection of food, history, health, and culture?

This book is the materialization of my personal journey. As a young adult, I began to question my identity and naturally my relationship with food was at the center of this reflection. I made the work of becoming more intentional about food because it plays such a big part in our lives. I began to ask myself more systematically: Why am I eating what I am eating? How was this food produced? By whom? How can I live fully without inflicting suffering on other beings? And, finally, How can I reclaim my ancestral culinary heritage?

I wanted to share the fruit of my research to shed light on African cuisines and to encourage others to want to know and appreciate them better. I hope to inspire others to see food for what it is: a sacred fuel for our bodies and a central component of our identity.

 

Please tell us a little bit about your cookbook Vegan Africa. What countries and cultures are highlighted in it?

Africa is a huge continent and the culinary cultures are very diverse. With my book, I humbly wanted to represent the whole continent, from North to South and from East to West. Vegan Africa includes recipes from Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and many other countries! It is, of course, more of an initiation or, as I like to say, an invitation to discover these rich African culinary cultures. During the writing of the book, I had the pleasure of exchanging recipes with many people from different African countries, and they entrusted me with recipes from their countries of origin.

In addition, some of the recipes in my cookbook are my own creations, the result of my travels and my experiments, such as Cassava Tabbouleh with radishes and Herbs and Red Cabbage Salad with Mango and Raw Okra. My book is also full of personal anecdotes, cooking tips, and family cooking secrets.

 

As a chef, what do you envision as the way forward to encourage people to include more fruits and vegetables into their diets?

Often, fruits and vegetables are seen as boring side dishes. We need to reverse this narrative and really put them back at the center of the plate. I believe this necessarily involves education. We have to make people aware of the need to eat a nutrient-dense diet for good health. I am also convinced that it involves kindness and curiosity. Often, people are resistant to change because they are afraid of changing their routines. That’s why, in my cooking, I make it a point of honor to use ingredients that are accessible everywhere and by nearly everyone. Then I try to show that with a few spices, it is possible to totally transform everyday foods and give them a new dimension. For example, the next time you cook carrots, why not try roasting them instead of boiling them? And have fun with flavors! Try citrus zest, cumin, sumac, cardamom, ginger, or smoked paprika. Open up the field of possibilities.

 

Please tell us a little bit about your work and career.

By day, I work in the health and wellness sector. I help companies whose mission is to help people take care of themselves to improve their Customer Experience. In addition to this, I run workshops and cooking classes.

I am also occasionally a chef for individuals and companies for very intimate dinners. And on top of that, one thing I never stop doing is developing new recipes that I share on my Instagram account @thespicysoul.

I have a very holistic approach to health, and bringing wellness to others is what motivates everything I do.

 

Sautéed Spinach and Mushrooms with Plantains

SERVES 4 ✦ PREP TIME: 15 minutes ✦ COOK TIME: 35 minutes

Dishes made with leafy greens are very popular in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in South and Central Africa. Any leafy green will do—such as taro, cassava, sorrel, or sweet potato leaves—but here I opted for spinach leaves since they’re easy to find in most parts of the world.

2 tablespoons water 1 onion, chopped 4 tomatoes, diced 8 ounces (225 g) button mushrooms, chopped 31⁄3 pounds (1.5 kg) fresh spinach 1 tablespoon curry 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 2 teaspoons garlic powder Black pepper (to taste) 4 firm plantains, peeled and cut into large chunks

 

1. Heat a large pan over medium heat. Add the water and onion, and cook until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. 
2. Add the tomatoes, and cook for about 5 more minutes, stirring regularly.
3. Add the mushrooms, and stir to combine. 
4. Gradually add the spinach, stirring until it wilts.
5. Stir in the curry, smoked paprika, garlic powder, and black pepper (to taste). Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 10 minutes. If the mixture sticks to the pan, stir in a splash of water.
6. Meanwhile, place the plantains in a large pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Cook until easily pierced with a fork, about 15 minutes.
7. Serve the spinach and mushrooms along with the plantains.

TIP: The greener the plantains, the less sugar they have. To steam the plantains, make a small cut halfway through each piece. Place in a steamer, and steam until easily pierced with a fork, about 10 minutes.

You can find Chef Marie Kacouchia on Instagram @thespicysoul

 

In your experience, how have you found food to tell a story and shape culture?

Food is both created by history and creates history. Cuisines are created by history because they mix with invasions and population movements. It shows the movements of people and the introduction of new ingredients, cooking methods, and recipes. Sometimes these cuisines are impoverished–think of the globalization of cuisine and fast foods–but often they come out richer. In my book Vegan Africa, for example, I highlight the Indo-Chinese influence on the cuisine of East Africa and the Lebanese influence on all of West Africa. These result in unique dishes that are consubstantial with the history of these parts of the world.

On a personal level, the way we eat says a lot about who we are, where we come from, and all of the people who came before us.

And, finally, cooking creates history because it brings people together. It creates bridges between people through commonality. In fact, it is often the first introduction we have to another culture.

 

How do you educate people about the intersection of food, history, health, and culture?

This book is the materialization of my personal journey. As a young adult, I began to question my identity and naturally my relationship with food was at the center of this reflection. I made the work of becoming more intentional about food because it plays such a big part in our lives. I began to ask myself more systematically: Why am I eating what I am eating? How was this food produced? By whom? How can I live fully without inflicting suffering on other beings? And, finally, How can I reclaim my ancestral culinary heritage?

I wanted to share the fruit of my research to shed light on African cuisines and to encourage others to want to know and appreciate them better. I hope to inspire others to see food for what it is: a sacred fuel for our bodies and a central component of our identity.

 

Please tell us a little bit about your cookbook Vegan Africa. What countries and cultures are highlighted in it?

Africa is a huge continent and the culinary cultures are very diverse. With my book, I humbly wanted to represent the whole continent, from North to South and from East to West. Vegan Africa includes recipes from Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mali, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and many other countries! It is, of course, more of an initiation or, as I like to say, an invitation to discover these rich African culinary cultures. During the writing of the book, I had the pleasure of exchanging recipes with many people from different African countries, and they entrusted me with recipes from their countries of origin.

In addition, some of the recipes in my cookbook are my own creations, the result of my travels and my experiments, such as Cassava Tabbouleh with radishes and Herbs and Red Cabbage Salad with Mango and Raw Okra. My book is also full of personal anecdotes, cooking tips, and family cooking secrets.

 

As a chef, what do you envision as the way forward to encourage people to include more fruits and vegetables into their diets?

Often, fruits and vegetables are seen as boring side dishes. We need to reverse this narrative and really put them back at the center of the plate. I believe this necessarily involves education. We have to make people aware of the need to eat a nutrient-dense diet for good health. I am also convinced that it involves kindness and curiosity. Often, people are resistant to change because they are afraid of changing their routines. That’s why, in my cooking, I make it a point of honor to use ingredients that are accessible everywhere and by nearly everyone. Then I try to show that with a few spices, it is possible to totally transform everyday foods and give them a new dimension. For example, the next time you cook carrots, why not try roasting them instead of boiling them? And have fun with flavors! Try citrus zest, cumin, sumac, cardamom, ginger, or smoked paprika. Open up the field of possibilities.

 

Please tell us a little bit about your work and career.

By day, I work in the health and wellness sector. I help companies whose mission is to help people take care of themselves to improve their Customer Experience. In addition to this, I run workshops and cooking classes.

I am also occasionally a chef for individuals and companies for very intimate dinners. And on top of that, one thing I never stop doing is developing new recipes that I share on my Instagram account @thespicysoul.

I have a very holistic approach to health, and bringing wellness to others is what motivates everything I do.

 

Sautéed Spinach and Mushrooms with Plantains

SERVES 4 ✦ PREP TIME: 15 minutes ✦ COOK TIME: 35 minutes

Dishes made with leafy greens are very popular in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in South and Central Africa. Any leafy green will do—such as taro, cassava, sorrel, or sweet potato leaves—but here I opted for spinach leaves since they’re easy to find in most parts of the world.

2 tablespoons water 1 onion, chopped 4 tomatoes, diced 8 ounces (225 g) button mushrooms, chopped 31⁄3 pounds (1.5 kg) fresh spinach 1 tablespoon curry 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 2 teaspoons garlic powder Black pepper (to taste) 4 firm plantains, peeled and cut into large chunks

 

1. Heat a large pan over medium heat. Add the water and onion, and cook until the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. 
2. Add the tomatoes, and cook for about 5 more minutes, stirring regularly.
3. Add the mushrooms, and stir to combine. 
4. Gradually add the spinach, stirring until it wilts.
5. Stir in the curry, smoked paprika, garlic powder, and black pepper (to taste). Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 10 minutes. If the mixture sticks to the pan, stir in a splash of water.
6. Meanwhile, place the plantains in a large pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Cook until easily pierced with a fork, about 15 minutes.
7. Serve the spinach and mushrooms along with the plantains.

TIP: The greener the plantains, the less sugar they have. To steam the plantains, make a small cut halfway through each piece. Place in a steamer, and steam until easily pierced with a fork, about 10 minutes.

You can find Chef Marie Kacouchia on Instagram @thespicysoul

Introduction

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

My guest with me today is Kate House. We will not be focusing so much on crazy health issues today. That’s always good to kind of take a break from, I think. Because when I’m constantly interviewing about it and when you guys are constantly listening to it, it is important and it’s very inspiring to hear these stories, but you’re constantly thinking about the diseases that people go through. So, it is healthy to switch it up.

I like to switch it up with business or personal development content because you really can’t lose with this. On one end, most of our FDN practitioners or health coaches who listen to this show, they are entrepreneurs, or they want to move into a more entrepreneurial role. So, the business stuff helps out. But on the personal development side, whether you are on a health journey or a business journey, this is something that you’ve probably realized by now, those are personal development journeys.

There is no one that gets a massively successful business without having to go through personal growth. You do not overcome tricky health challenges without engaging in personal growth. And there’s a million other ways that this applies. If someone becomes a natural bodybuilder, they are going to have to go through a personal growth phase, if not just a whole journey, to get to where they want to go, right?

About Kate House

This can be contributed to a lot of different areas of our lives, but certainly health is one of them. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t come out better personally on the other side of their health journey because they had to, to get to where they wanted to go. So, Kate House, our guest today is someone who focuses a lot on that.

She is a certified health coach, but she’s more of a traditional health coach. I think this is a nice refreshing change up in our routine on this show because she actually is going to help us focus on the mindset stuff and the changes that need to be made. It is amazing to focus on the labs and the science, clearly that is my preference. But I also have been doing this long enough to know that if we ignore the other stuff, you’re not going to get a lot of people well. You have to help them through the journey.

Kate House can be found running around her small town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with her two little boys as a stay-at-home mom and a wife to her college sweetheart. By night she is the host of the Live by Design Podcast, health coach, educator, meditation enthusiast, slow but steady runner, and creator of her women focused personal growth group, the LBD Collective.

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania’s actually not too far from myself, and we found out she went to high school probably 20 – 25 minutes away from where I went to high school. Small world, right?

It’s her purpose in life to help others release personal growth overwhelm, get unstuck, and finally take the action to launch in the direction of your dreams. Together, she wants to help people live by design, not by default.

Personal Development: Live by Design, Not by Default

I love this because I look at this as living intentionally. It’s something that I was very fortunate, blessed, actually, to get exposed to at 18 years old.

Most people are kind of going through their lives like a ship without a map. Like could you imagine that? And it sounds ridiculous, but this is what most people do. They set the ship to sail, and yet no one knows where it’s going. So, you don’t know if you’ve ever arrived.

You don’t know if you actually got there and you’re just hoping for the best. Well, that’s not going to go so well. In fact, probably one out of a thousand times, is that going to work out favorably for the ship versus someone who lives intentionally or lives by design, as Kate talks about. If you have that map and you have that goal, yes.

Unfortunately, there are some crazy things that could happen, one out of a thousand times, that maybe lead that ship to not getting there. But a ship with an intention, 999 times out of a thousand, yeah, it’s going to probably get to where it wants to go. Certainly, those are worthy odds to pursue. So, we will be talking today about how to live by design and the personal growth aspects of the health journey or of a business journey.

Without further ado, let us get to today’s episode. Alright. Hello there, Kate, and welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?

[00:03:58] Kate House: Ah, I’m so great. Thank you so much for having me here. I am super looking forward to this conversation.

Personal Development: Goal Setting & Mindset

[00:04:03] Detective Ev: Me too.

Her and I were talking before we ever started recording, it’s one of those rare cases where we’re actually relatively local to each other, still to this day – both Pennsylvanians. She went to a high school that is 25 minutes, 30 minutes from where I live right now. It’s not the first time that happened. I didn’t tell you this off air, there was someone else on here that I’ve never met in person. She lives in Florida now; she went to Council Rock North and we’re the same exact age.

We would’ve been the same year too and just never knew each other, but then met through online world. It’s kind of cool. I like that aspect of the online world. There are obviously the cons, but it’s amazing who you can get to meet and stuff.

Now, if you are clicking on this episode today, you might notice that it’s a little different than some of the other ones we post. We didn’t have any severe health issues in the title. The reason we brought this on is because you guys seem to love business stuff. It’s not that we’re necessarily talking directly about business stuff today, but there’s a personal development side that goes into health journeys or business journeys.

There’s goal setting, there’s mindset. I would go as far as to say that I really do believe that the biggest factor in people not succeeding in business 80 plus percent of the time is their own limiting beliefs and their relationship with themselves more than it is anything else.

Personal Development: Mindset Can Be Limiting

I have someone in my life, he’s my age, and he’s the first to admit this; I’m not being rude. He was terrible at school. He is not a traditionally intelligent person. He came out of college, didn’t even do anything related to his degree, and within three years was already doing a half a million dollars a year in a business that he created. Why that happened was because he doesn’t know that you’re not supposed to be able to do that.

He’s never not been profitable from day one. It’s like, oh wait, 18 months is the average time that the business should be profitable. No one ever told him, never knew so he just took off with it. Sometimes ignorance can be bliss. Kate, the problem is we get a lot of smart nerds at FDN and they’re overthinkers that kind of limit themselves.

So, before we get into the goal setting, self-love, all these things, I want to just explain to people how you actually got into the health side. You’re not someone that necessarily was dealing with crazy health issues yourself, but you did see it in family members. So, can we touch on that a little bit?

[00:06:02] Kate House: I’m an open book when it comes to my story. I’m Kate House and I’m the host of the Live by Design Podcast. The reason it’s called Live by Design, my unofficial tagline is that we’re choosing to live by design and not by default. I first heard that saying years ago, long before I ever had a business. I was working a nine to five, but I heard this saying and it put words to an experience that I had been living but I didn’t have a way to articulate it.

Personal Development: Be Where Your Feet Are

So, I heard live by design and not by default, I was like, that’s it. That’s the thing.

For me, I haven’t personally, I’ve been very fortunate, I haven’t gone through any huge health journeys or transformations. However, my younger brother was 18 months younger than me. When he was born, he’s autistic and a Type I diabetic and non-verbal.

He had to work so hard in life to communicate with others. He was one of the most joyful people I’ve ever known, despite the hardships that he worked through. Even at four years old, he had open heart surgery. So, this guy just, he went through so much, right? And I was there every step of the way.

One of my earliest memories was seeing my brother have a grand mal seizure. Because of that, I learned at a very early age what a gift it was to be in the body I was in, just to be dealt the hand that I was dealt. I felt like I had to live with purpose, not only for myself, but for my brother as well.

It was really this beautiful gift that he gave me of learning to really find joy and happiness in the present moment. He was one of the most present people I’ve ever known. That saying like, be where your feet are, David was always just in that moment. He taught me that. Then he also gave me the inspiration to, kind of like your friend, to ditch those limiting beliefs and just go for it. It’s definitely been a journey when you talk about personal development.

Personal Development: Helping Others Progress to Their Dreams

I used to be a perfectionist; I’ve always been a high achiever. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, like I’m a total nerd. When you describe that person, I’m like, hi, it’s me. But with that, I’ve learned to let go of these expectations and the shoulds of others and just really listen to that small inner voice.

I started off in corporate America. I was like this is great and all, but it’s not quite the right fit for me. It’s not lighting me up. If I want to live by design and not by default, I want to feel connected to something in my day-to-day life. So, I became a yoga teacher.

From there, I layered in a health coaching practice. I became a behavior change specialist, and now I’m a podcaster with like over 200 episodes, which still boggles my mind. I love just helping other women choose to live by design and not by default, to get unstuck, to ditch those feelings of overwhelm, and to make sustainable progress in the direction of their dreams. We really home in on the habits and the goals side to make that happen.

[00:08:52] Detective Ev: Excellent. This is cool. You are actually the traditional health coach then in a sense. We almost have to use that term as FDNs, just because it’s easier to market than saying, Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner. Sounds pretty cool, but you don’t necessarily know what that is.

But I always specify to people, there is a huge difference between traditional health coaching and FDN. We need both of them. If you’re trying to address a chronic health issue, I don’t think you’re really going to be able to achieve that without both of them incorporated.

Personal Development: Total Transformation

You and I went through Institute of Integrative Nutrition. I should have mentioned that because I swear 25% to 30% of the FDNs that I talk to went through that program. And that is Health coaching. You are helping someone set these goals for themselves health wise, and helping them reflect, right?

So, it’s not a counselor but you are counseling them on some of the stuff that they’re doing or not doing health-wise. They might come to you with the health goals. They might come to you even with some things that they’ve already learned from labs or whatever, and you’re helping that person get through it.

One thing that Kate and I were talking about off air is the truth of the matter. It might be a little oversimplified, but most people could effectively implement FDN programs in about two or three one-hour sessions. Yet, no one has ever done that ever in our world because that’s not that simple.

There is the behavioral change that needs to happen, and it’s a personal development journey. The person that you are in that given moment with those health issues is not going to be the same one that you are when you have achieved the results that you want and conquered these things. That’s beautiful, but it also makes it tougher. It’s not just as simple as getting some lab results back.

One thing I gotta give you a huge compliment with is the ability to see the health challenges of someone else and start making changes in your own life to hopefully, not that you thought that you were going to get those specific things, that would be pretty rare, but just have any consequences health-wise.

Personal Development: If You Don’t Change Anything, Nothing Changes

I really only know a handful of people, and I’m obviously in this space, who are wise enough to be like, oh, that’s happening to someone else. Hmm, that could happen to me. I’m going to give up some of these short-term pleasures to prevent something more serious down the road. So, huge testament there.

How did this start for you in terms of like actually working with clients? Was that nerve-wracking going from the corporate side, to be like, all right, I’m a business owner working one-on-one, or groups, whatever it is you might be doing.

[00:11:01] Kate House: When I left my corporate job, I loved my colleagues. They’re people I’m still close with to this day. But I just was so anxious in that position, stressed. I was having nightmares about my work email crashing, and I just realized nothing changes if nothing changes.

I like to jump into things with both feet so when I first started, it’s been this series of shifts, right? When I first started teaching yoga, I would get into the studio and my voice was shaking. There were so many weird words that came out when I was first learning how to cue the physical postures. But with repetition you get more confident.

I did that for about three to four years. By the end of that time, I could walk into a room and really confidently lead a group of 30, 40 people for 60 minutes, and I’m the only one talking that whole time. When I first started teaching, I had so many notes. I had to figure it out by doing. That’s what I’ve learned in life is that you figure out the next right step by taking action. If you don’t change anything, nothing changes.

Personal Development: The Ripple Effect

It sounds so like, duh, Kate, when you say it, but it’s true. So, I started as a yoga teacher. Then I layered in the health coaching cause I had students who, in a lot of my yoga teaching, I was bringing in these personal development lessons. I was bringing in positive psychology, just things that I personally like totally nerd out about.

They would hear this in class, then they wanted to go a step deeper. I was like, well, I would love to, but I need to make sure I’m doing that from a place of having the right education. That’s when I did IIN like you had mentioned. Working with people one-on-one feels like a really big responsibility. You know, you want to serve them well, you want to support them well, and really encourage them in this transformation journey. I enjoyed it so much.

That’s why I started my podcast. I was like, how can I just share some of these takeaways with more people? At IIN, we talk a lot about this ripple effect where we show up as our true, beautiful, authentic selves, and there’s this ripple effect that inspires other people, encourages them, gives them permission to do that in their lives as well.

So often I find in my coaching practice, we start with something, a health-related thing, right? I want to sleep better. I want to feel energetic in my body. I want to fuel my body with foods that blesses it, whatever it might be for that person. But so often it is this personal growth journey.

We talk about mindset, we talk about self-love, we talk about core values or a personal sense of purpose. It’s this whole picture of the person and it’s really beautiful to see.

Personal Development: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

We were saying off air before we started recording how a rising tide lifts all boats. It’s really neat to see, and I’m sure you’ve seen this in your experience too. We really lean into this health side of things. While our health is growing and we’re getting stronger and more confident, all these other areas of our life become a little bit more intentional and rises up as well.

[00:13:50] Detective Ev: It’s one of many vehicles. You can see this so many places in life. It doesn’t mean that every single person unfortunately, learns to apply the same personal development principles to all areas of their life. But it’s really common that you see someone.

I’m going to talk about natural bodybuilders. It’s very common that I see the natural bodybuilder that also has great relationships and good finances and they’re doing something that they love to do. Similarly, we see a ton of people here that get their health under control, and then all of a sudden, the money starts coming in, all of a sudden, that broken relationship is also healed.

It’s not always so simple but a lot of the same things can be applied into multiple areas. Really, it’s pick your vehicle. Whatever you want to do, do it. Most likely it’s health, because that’s probably what you got forced into if you’re listening to a podcast like this. Then it just works almost effortlessly sometimes into other areas of your life to shift it there. It’s pretty powerful.

Before we talk about specific techniques or certain things that you’ve learned, goal setting, all this stuff, one thing that I think would be highly beneficial to the audience is we have so many females listening that also are becoming, or already are entrepreneurs.

Women Owned Businesses Are Profitable

This is a universal problem with entrepreneurship. Especially for females, I can’t really speak fully, I’m only speaking from hearing from people. I don’t know if it’s because traditionally in the world there was a time, not that long ago, men dominated all of these spaces.

I don’t know if limiting beliefs come from there or whatever it might be. But the truth of the matter is, and this isn’t just motivational stuff, this is factual. Women own businesses are doing phenomenally. They are doing way better than a lot of men owned businesses, they’re way more profitable.

If any of you guys watch Shark Tank, the show, it’s based out of the US. It’s a business investing thing. One of the sharks, I remember him saying that all of his female owned businesses were profitable. This was like eight seasons into the show. And all of his men owned ones were not profitable after eight seasons of the show, which is kind of crazy. So, ladies, there’s no reason to have limiting beliefs, but it’s also not just as simple as me listing off a statistic.

For you, Kate, what would be some advice to women who are out there. They know in their heart they want to do this; they do want to be an entrepreneur. They want to let themselves flow creatively, but they’re scared. They’re like, wow, I’ve never done this. Most of them have had jobs before, but some are actually coming from a more stay-at-home mom life and then want to get into this world. It can be tough. So, do you have advice for them as they’re growing into that?

Quick Commercial Break – Health Space Unmasked

Hey there friends. It is Detective Ev popping in here really quickly. I have a special announcement. If you’ve ever been interested in applying functional medicine to your pets, yes, your fluffy friends can get functional medicine too, we’ve got some good news.

You might have heard of our monthly event before; it’s called the Health Space Unmasked. It’s completely free. What we do is we bring in Reed Davis, the founder of FDN, with a big expert in the functional medicine space. We go live for a couple of hours. There’s usually a hundred plus people on, and that’s growing by the month. People can actually ask questions and interact with the guests that we have.

This time, it is going to be Dr. Ruth Roberts. She is talking all about, you guessed it, how to apply functional medicine to your pets. How you can register for this to get the free link is by simply going to fdntraining.com/unmasked. If you want, you can just go to the show notes after this episode or right now, click on it and make sure you get registered so that you can learn how to do some functional medicine with your pets.

All right, now back to today’s episode.

Personal Development: Be Your Own Permission Giver

[00:17:13] Kate House: I love that question. I really appreciate the way that you phrased that. Absolutely, there are a couple things come to mind. The first is to do it scared.

Oftentimes, the thing that’s on your heart to do it starts off as like this little whisper inside your heart. For me, I’ve had these people in my life where before I became a yoga teacher, I had been thinking about wanting to make that change. Then one day out of the blue my husband turned to me and was like, babe, I think you’d be a great yoga teacher. I was like, hot dang. Yeah. Okay, let’s do this.

Then for a while I’ve been thinking to myself like, I think I want to start a podcast. Then my best friend texted me out of the blue and was like, hey Kate, I think you should start a podcast. And I was like, oh my God, it’s happening again. So, listen to that little voice inside of you. And if you need somebody to encourage you, wait for that person to do it or have a conversation with somebody that you can kind of brainstorm it with. But listen to yourself. You can be your own permission giver.

Personal Development: Applying Gifts in the Season You’re In

The other thing that I would say is to give yourself permission to grow slow, to build a really strong foundation. For example, and I can really only speak to my own personal experience, but I started my podcast in the summer of 2020. I know it’s such a 2020 thing to do to start a podcast.

But I was home, I had a one-year-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old at the time. My husband works full-time, and he was working from home. I was like, well, there’s never going to be a better time than now, because we’re here all the time. I’ve got more support with the kids than ever, and I was a full-time stay-at-home mom.

I had this desire to be, to have this identity, to show up in this world, to have my motherhood, but I didn’t want to be defined by my motherhood. I love my children so much. Being their mom is my most favorite thing in the whole world. However, I still wanted to honor the yoga teaching that I had done. I wanted to honor the health coaching.

I was like, you know what? I think a podcast is the way that I can do it. For me, in that season of life, that’s another thing, take into account the season you’re in. In that season I had little children. I was the primary caregiver. I still am, my kids are still home. They haven’t started school yet. I had to find a way to show up and to serve and to use my gifts in a way that worked in that season.

Personal Development: Taking Small Foundational Steps

A podcast was perfect cause I could get my kids down for a nap. I could record a quick episode, edit it up, and get it scheduled to go out the next week.

Now I’m three plus years into this journey, I have over 200 podcast episodes. I’ve guested on a bunch of shows. But if I had started off thinking like, I want to get this one specialty, and I want to host a virtual summit, and I want to have a group coaching program and a masterclass, I would’ve felt so overwhelmed to have been like, heck no, I’m out.

Give yourself permission to start to do it a little scared, maybe feel a little trepidatious. But take small steps. Record that first episode, go for that first walk, hire your first coach, like a business coach, whatever that looks like for you, right? Get the website, start small and allow it to grow from there. Carve out those pockets of time in your day and be really intentional with that time.

When I sit down, I don’t know if you’ll see the video of this, but I’m recording this in my home office and when I sit down at this desk, I light a candle, I put on my noise canceling headphones, and I’m out of motherhood mode. I know that my kids are with a sitter. They’re with my husband, they’re with somebody, they’re safe. I am in work mode, and I get stuff done when I’m in work mode.

Personal Development: Fear of Failure

I know a lot of you listening are high achievers. You’re incredibly talented. You can get it done. You have to turn off your phone. You know, get off of the scrolling, the doom scroll, right? Don’t compare yourself to other people and where they are because you are in this season of life, and you have something to share and to give.

If you just dial it in, you will make progress, even if it’s just a handful of time. That adds up over time to something really beautiful. So, do it scared. Use those pockets of time and get help and support and education where you need it.

[00:20:54] Detective Ev: This is excellent. I love this advice of just starting.

I’m sure there’s many reasons, but I think the obvious reason people never do this is cause they are afraid to fail. They’re afraid to be seen in a negative light by other people. I don’t know where this came from cause I certainly didn’t always have this. I actually had the opposite.

I don’t know if you ever heard this in one of the podcasts that you listened to, but I ended up, it was kind of a weird transition in my life. I’d never graduated high school. I got kicked out. There was a lot of bad stuff happening, just substance use and mental health at the time, which ironically was one of the things that got me into the health space, and I’m thankful for that. But my self-perception, whether or not this is good or bad, it’s not what I’m debating, it’s just it led to something half decent.

Personal Development: Our Time Here Is Limited

My self-perception at the time was I’m a loser. But then I got into this personal development stuff. It was forced down my throat by some friends of mine at the time. I started to actually benefit from this loser self-perception because I had no fear. In my head, I was already as low as I could be.

Now, of course, that wasn’t actually true. Looking back, you can unfortunately always go lower and always go higher. But in my head, it was so bad that I had no fear to try new things or to engage with public speaking or whatever it might be, because anything almost was a step up from where I was at.

I don’t want people to go through pain, but I almost wish I could give everyone those experiences. Because the truth of the matter is our time here is so limited. So, I start to ask, like there are 50, 60-year-olds that still think like this. I’m like, what day do you stop caring? Like you’re going to not be here someday and you’re missing out on all these wonderful gifts and unique opportunities that were meant for you, right?

And it doesn’t matter what branch of spirituality you’re in. If you have even some shred of this, even if you’re an atheist, like obviously you have unique things that you can offer the world that would just be a commonsense thing you would imagine. And how much of that is the world missing out on because you were too afraid to not look that great when you first started?

Personal Development: You Gotta Start Somewhere

I dare anyone to go back to the first podcast that I did even on here. And I had already been doing podcasting for a couple of years. I was speaking so fast because I had never done paid podcasting. FDN now hired me to do this and I’m super nervous. I don’t want to screw it up for them. Yet, I’m still speaking super-fast and published these episodes. I speak fast, but it’s more excited as opposed to nervous, and it’s more controlled than it ever was before. You gotta start somewhere.

Your business is not going to be perfect overnight. All these people that you look at that you’re jealous of or you’re feeling envy with, they started at a similar place to where you started, I can almost guarantee that. No one walked into the gym and was super jacked. No one had a business just be super successful overnight. At the very least, these cases are so rare that they’re not even worth paying attention to.

So, I think that’s great advice. I hope it’s taken to heart. This isn’t something I came up with, but I can’t remember wherever where I got it from. If something scares and excites me at the same time, it’s probably a pretty good thing to be going and doing.

You and I had talked about some topics we could explore before we got on air with goal setting and self-love or whatever, but are there common themes and issues that are coming up with the people that you work with? I know it’s primarily; I believe you said 25 to 40, 45-year-old women, something in that age range.

Personal Development: Taking Care of Everyone Else First

[00:23:54] Kate House: Well, it’s funny cause the women that I work with are where I was just a handful of years ago. I just want to be that person that reaches a hand out and is like, there is hope, there is a solution. We can do this together.

Yeah, I would say they’re high achieving women who expect so much of themselves. They want to show up so well for the people in their lives, whether it’s their family, whether it’s their career, whether it’s their education, that their health and their wellbeing gets put on the back burner. They are taking care of everyone else first.

They’re just pouring and pouring and pouring into the people that they love, which is so beautiful. But they get to the end of the day and they’re just like, ugh, I’ve got nothing left for me. So, I’m just going to click on the TV and eat a snack that feels good at the time and stay up too late and then, roll into bed when I’m exhausted.

There’s nothing wrong with that. I certainly have had my share of those nights. I still choose sometimes to sit down and watch a movie and enjoy that process, right? But we want to be living by design and not by default. That’s the through line with all the women I work with is we have this deep desire for either a shift or a change or to just feel more vibrant or energetic or just connected to our lives. Sometimes we get into this default mode and sometimes that happens because it’s like you’re just trying to survive the day.

Personal Development: Pockets of Time for Self-Care

Like certainly back during the pandemic, I had two little kids, I was the main caregiver. My husband was working from home and like honestly just surviving the day. The goal every day was like, I gotta keep these humans alive. I get to the end of the day, and I was exhausted and felt so depleted. I knew in my mind the things that I should be doing or could be doing to feel better, but I just couldn’t even get there. I was just so, I got nothing left, you know?

I think it’s this idea of how can we layer into those pockets of time I talked about earlier. Whether it’s for your business or for your own self-care, you can find these little pockets of time where you can layer in these purposeful habits that pour into yourself.

Now as a parent, especially, there’s this saying, you have to pour into yourself first before you can pour into other people. But I wake up and my kids need to be fed and the dog needs to be let out. I have to care for other people first oftentimes. So, what are ways that we can, throughout our day, care for ourselves?

Well, does that look like, over your lunch break going for a walk and taking out the earbuds and getting connected with your body and your breath and moving? It could look like at the end of the day; you click off the screen an hour before bedtime and you sit, and you read an actual physical book. There are all these different ways that we can pour into our wellbeing, whether it’s our physical health, mental health, emotional health.

Personal Development: Overlearning & Oversaturating Our Minds

That’s really the through line with everyone I work with. They feel a little stuck or they feel a little overwhelmed and they just want to get clear and focused.

The other thing I find too, with those of us who are high achievers, is we do all the reading, we listen to all the podcasts, we watch the YouTubers, we watch the documentaries, and we get stuck in this cycle of learning, learning, learning. I’ve been there, so I know. We overlearn and we kind of oversaturate our minds.

We don’t leave the time to just sit with what we’ve learned to decide what parts of what we’ve learned we want to take and apply to ourselves. What do we want to say like, yeah, that’s a great idea, but it’s not for me. Then leave the time to actually implement it. We get stuck in this overlearning phase. Then we know, quote, “know” what we should be doing, quote “should be doing”. But we’re not leaving the time to reflect and to implement. Then we just feel like we’re falling behind and we feel overwhelmed, and we feel stuck.

A lot of the work that I do, I go down the research rabbit hole cause I’m a nerd and I love that. In my women’s group coaching program, for example, every month we do a different topic. We did self-love last year and I went down the rabbit hole of like, let me do all the learning for you. Then during our coaching time together, I’m like, okay, let me share with you the best of what I’ve learned and here are the different ways we can implement it.

Personal Development: Knowing but Not Changing

We do a journaling night every month. That’s that time we need someone to tell us, like hit pause. It’s okay to slow down and to decide, based on what I’ve learned, what do I implement, what do I release, and how do I layer it in as a habit that I can come back to time and time again?

[00:28:01] Detective Ev: Awesome. One of the things that I found so interesting, and I don’t know if it was Tony Robbins or someone similar who said something like this, but I’ll never forget it. It was, what could you do better right now, I think they said in finances, health, and maybe relationships?

I’m someone who works on myself. And right now, without even having to put in much effort, I could come up with answers. I could definitely do this better with finances. I could absolutely do this better with health. And here’s how I could improve my relationship, right? We kind of all know, even without reading or learning anything new. I am always able to answer those questions. So, it’s really hard to make the argument that it’s not just mindset outside of this or personal beliefs or something else.

I think what’s interesting is with a lot of these high achieving people and women that if we ask them what they should do so that they’re not constantly burning themselves out or all this stuff, they would know the answer. So, how do you help them make that mindset shift? Because again, they really do know what they should do, but it’s not being done.

Personal Development: You Are Worthy

I do believe that, especially like the moms out there and stuff, of course they’re selflessly helping others. But when someone is putting out so much that they’re hurting themselves in the same time that they’re actually helping others, yes, there’s an aspect of selflessness there, but I also think that does expand in a lot of people. Maybe they feel that the only way they get validated is by working themselves to the point that they’re exhausted or can’t go anymore. It’s more than just being selfless.

How do you help these people make that mindset shift or identify that in themselves? Because you’re preaching to the choir for us right now. Even if it’s, again, maybe we talk about more severe health issues on this podcast, this profile of the woman that you’re describing is identical to 90% of the people that I interview or people that we work with, I would say. So, how do you help them make that shift?

[00:29:45] Kate House: I would say, friend, you are worthy. You are worthy of feeling good. You are worthy of feeling energized. You are worthy of rest. You are worthy of pouring time and energy and resources into being the person you really want to show up as. You are worthy of not being burnt out, you are worthy of feeling vivacious and vibrant.

Now, maybe not every single day, we go through hard seasons of life, but you are so worthy. My encouragement would be to make yourself a priority in your life, the same way you prioritize the people you love, the same way you prioritize your career or your education or whatever that looks like. You are worthy of being at that same level of importance in your own life.

Personal Development: Where is This Lack of Self-Worth Coming From?

Here’s the tough love approach, nobody can go to the gym for you. Nobody can eat the foods that bless your body. Nobody can make you go to bed. These are all things that you have the agency to implement, but you just have to know that you are worthy of that intentionality.

This is a generalization, but as a mom especially, sometimes we can feel like it’s this badge of honor to always be busy or to do all the things for everybody, and yeah, we get burnt out. The thing that I would just say is that you’re worthy and you’re worthy of having goals for yourself outside of your motherhood or your parenthood or your career. You can have interests that you pursue just because you love them, and they make you feel joyful in the day to day.

Just like a reminder that you have so much worth, and you can choose to pour into that in whatever way speaks to you.

[00:31:27] Detective Ev: Do you think that there is a more common theme than not in terms of where these women lose their sense of self-worth? Is it society, and that could be social media or something else? Have they gone through trauma? I mean, I’m sure that comes up some of the time.

I’m just wondering what the core theme seems to be, because I hear this all the time. I do believe society, I don’t know if it’s always the cause, but I know it’s not helping any situation. Where do you think? At least the woman that you work with, I know that’s what you can speak on, where is this lack of self-worth coming from? Cause we’re seeing it all the time.

Personal Development: Showing up Perfectly or Not at All

[00:31:56] Kate House: That’s such a great question. I was reading an article on; I think it was either Psychology Today or verywellmind.com recently. It was talking about the societal pressures that are put on women specifically to show up and do all the things and be expected to do it perfectly and to do it selflessly and all of these things. It leads us to giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, and not taking the time to pour into ourselves.

So, I think it can come from so many different places. I think it can come from culture, from society. I think it could come from our upbringing. It could come from just something you saw like in ads over and over and over again when you were a child, right? Like it can come from traumatic experiences, absolutely. It can come from so many different places.

But I do tend to think that, as women specifically, we feel this pressure to have to show up perfectly or not at all. Sometimes that can keep us stuck because it keeps us from trying something new. Like I had said earlier, like nothing changes if nothing changes. But if we’re so afraid of showing up and not being great at it, it keeps us from starting.

If we’re worried about somebody judging us, like, well, what will my friend think? Or what will this person say on social media or whatever, who cares? This person, they probably aren’t even thinking about you.

Personal Development: Gratitude Practices

And that’s the thing. We’re so worried about what other people think about ourselves, but in the end, like they’ll either be supportive, or they’ll check out, you know? I think it just comes back to this idea of how you live your day is how you live your life. Can you find these moments in your day that feel really good?

I’m a huge advocate for gratitude practices. My husband and I have a practice that we do with each other every single day, we’ve done it for years. It’s made our relationship closer. We share something specific that we’re grateful to the other person for in that day. Then we share something that we’re generally grateful for.

Sometimes the thing I’m generally grateful for, I’m like, gosh, I had the best cup of coffee, the kids were playing outside, and I had a quiet moment to myself; it was wonderful. And sometimes it’s just as simple as slowing down and noticing, right?

We can be so distracted with our phones, with our emails, with everything pinging and trying to get our attention. Sometimes it’s this matter of how can I focus and get back in touch with myself and what I actually desire and what lights me up? How can I get back in touch with that and let go of all these outside pressures? How can I just instead not get my validation or my sense of purpose from outside of me? How can I turn inward instead?

[00:34:20] Detective Ev: I don’t know that I necessarily have a solution to it other than just to not engage in it as much.

Personal Development: The Comparision Game

I love evolutionary psychology and biology. I find these things fascinating cause I do believe a lot of our problems, both men and women, it stems from this.

I’m a religious person at this point, not even just spiritual. I can still recognize that we have biological urges and needs on this planet. And one of those biological urges, it’s really the only reason we’re here from a biological perspective is to mate, reproduce, and help that offspring survive. I don’t want to simplify our existence; I’m just recognizing something that’s clearly true if we’re having an honest conversation.

I think what happens is whether people realize this is actually where it’s coming from or not, women see other women in a magazine or social media, or when men see other men, because men I think are just much less open to talking about this. But I cannot scroll on this thing for more than 30 seconds without seeing the most jacked dude I’ve ever seen. Right? Like it’s constant like lifting and they’re on steroids and they have their shirt off, all this kind of stuff, right? So, you’re comparing yourself to others.

But the issue with social media is you can automatically compare yourself to the top tiers in that area out of 7 billion people. You’re not really in competition with them but our primitive minds trick us into being in competition with them.

Personal Development: The Scrolling Blues

This all comes down to, again, not to make it sound so simple, but we are animals. In a tribal perspective, you would be competing for the best mate. I don’t necessarily know that me just stating this solves it. But what it does help me with is, if I go online and see some jacked up steroids, dude, I’m not actually competing with him. He can have a mate and I can still have a mate and we’re all good, right?

My girlfriend could see some whatever Victoria’s Secret model. First of all, the Victoria’s Secret model’s probably not going for me. But second of all, I’m not going for her. Like, we’re not competing. I love this girl. Right? So, it’s kind of weird because I think we trick ourselves and think that it’s coming from something more complex.

It’s like, no, the truth is we want to be the hottest and best-looking mate and we want to compete in this market. That is really where a lot of this stems from. I don’t know, at least for me, acknowledging that that is probably true and then realizing how silly it is because I’m not competing with some random person from England that I will never meet online. You can sometimes just turn these off or delete the apps. I don’t know about UK.

I find very little scrolling, and it’s not even necessarily just a comparison thing, I don’t know if it’s just the dopamine or whatever, very little scrolling makes me feel very crappy. Ten minutes of it, I just feel myself like wired and tired. It’s not a good stimulation at all. I’ll just delete the apps for the day. You can redownload them, but it also prevents that mindless scrolling.

Personal Development: Social Media for the Right Reasons

I don’t need to be on Instagram when I’m using the bathroom. If you have it on the phone already, you’ll find yourself just naturally clicking it. It’s muscle memory versus having to redownload it. Although it’s not a major inconvenience, it’s just enough that you’re like, Dude, I’m using the bathroom. I don’t need to redownload Instagram right now and then set up the account to do all this stuff. That’s just my small tip for it.

But I also believe that a lot of this stems from just biological urges that are totally fine, totally natural to have, but we need to be smart enough to override some of them and be realistic. Say, okay, I’m not competing with seven or whatever, 3.5 roughly billion men out there. You are not competing with 3.5 billion women out there. That’s insane. That’s never how it was supposed to be, obviously.

[00:37:33] Kate House: Yeah, and I think it comes back to just that intentionality piece, right? Like there are plenty of times that I have followed somebody who really inspired me, but if I ever find myself falling into that trap of comparison, that immediately puts you feeling less than.

When I go on social media, I want to connect with my friends. I want to be inspired by people who are in the same way that I, help the women that I work with, I’m maybe a couple steps ahead. I look to other women. I have a business coach. I’m in groups and programs and all the things, right? So, I want to go online and see the people who are a few steps ahead of me.

Personal Development: Creating Parameters

Maybe if there’s somebody who’s like a hundred steps ahead of you, maybe that’s where you start to fall into that space of like, oh, this doesn’t feel great. You can unfollow somebody. You can choose not to use the discover feature, right? Like, you can just look at the accounts that you choose to follow and be inspired by them.

I love that piece that you touched on as well, of just checking in with yourself and being like, how do I feel? Do I feel wired and tired because I should probably stop this.

In our family, we’re actually in this change up in the way that we use technology right now. I love technology. I mean, my whole business is run online, right? But we’re moving towards putting all of our social media apps on an iPad. That way you only use it when you’re using the iPad and when you’re really intentional about it.

We have a charging station set up on our first floor of our home where our cell phones go. We have tech free time. Our phones live downstairs when we go upstairs to bed. You know, different ways that we can just be intentional.

What you feed yourself physically is so important. What you feed your mind is just as important. So, if we’re on this journey of health and wellness and choosing to pour into our mindset and our self-love and our goals and all those things, like we have to be careful what we’re putting in as well. You know, creating some of those parameters for yourself can feel really freeing in a way.

Personal Development: Engaging in Nature

[00:39:08] Detective Ev: It is tough cause we literally use this for business and I’m thankful for it.

I started camping in the beginning of the pandemic. Even worse than you starting a podcast, I started camping, right? That was the next coolest thing to do. I now go to this spot, it’s a big campground. There are showers and stuff and people, you don’t feel unsafe, even if you’re new to it.

You don’t get any cell service for about the last 15 minutes driving in. I can’t just walk to the end of the campground and turn it on. I mean, you’re not getting anything, it’s not going to work. And I cannot believe the freedom that I feel being there.

All I have is some logs, some food, a tent. I got the car. Other than the car, it’s not much more than our most primitive ancestors would’ve had. Yet, I feel almost as good as I possibly could feel. It’s not a high. I think that’s what the issue is with today’s world, we run on these cycles of lows and highs. There is in between that, a nice, neutral calm that exists when we’re in harmony with what we’re supposed to be doing.

If we gotta engage in today’s world with social media and things like that, fine. I’m doing it right now and I’m not going to change that per se. But just remember that we’re already designed in such a way that less is more. Literally, all you need was already out there just waiting for you. If you choose to engage with it, you might feel more satisfaction and happiness than the best paycheck or whatever drugs you’ve taken in your life.

Personal Development: Setting Aspirational Goals

You will get a better feeling than any of those cheap highs. It doesn’t even compare.

One thing, Kate, I wanted to move to, to make sure that we get to talk about this today is these four areas of goal setting. I know our type A’s are going to love this on this show. I’m sure you’re going to have a healthy perspective and how to actually apply these things. So, why don’t we go through those four categories and then talk about how we can actually set those for ourselves. Cause I’m really interested too. I love goal setting.

[00:40:58] Kate House: I could talk about goals all day long. As we start this piece of the conversation, it’s important to remember that even when we’re in pursuit of goals, we have to remember to, like you were talking about in camping, to be present in our day-to-day lives.

Sometimes we can get so lost, especially as high achievers, in the pursuit of the goal that we forget to really find and cultivate that joy in our day to day. Just a little disclaimer while we talk about our goal setting. But yeah, when I approach goal setting, I think about setting goals that are aspirational, attainable, meaningful, and habit based.

Aspirational is the first piece. It’s like what could your future self, one year from now, do? With the skills you’re going to acquire and the skills you already have, and resources and energy and time and all of that, what is something aspirationally that you could do in a year if you really worked hard?

It’s probably a goal that puts some butterflies in your stomach cause you’re like, can I do that? It’s an aspiration, but you trust yourself enough to try.

Personal Development: Setting Attainable & Meaningful Goals

The next part is attainable. Let’s be realistic. You can see behind me right now; I have my vision board. I use these goal setting principles when I create my vision board. I want something that’s attainable. I don’t want it to be so easy that I could do it tomorrow.

Say I’m signing goals for a year, which is the cycle I usually use. I want it to be attainable within a year. One thing that I’m working towards is that all the money I make in my business, we put towards paying off our home mortgage early. If I were to say, I want to be debt free in our home in the next year, right now, that’s actually not attainable. That’s a goal that I could set, but I’d be setting myself up to not be successful, right?

Instead, I could break it down into something that’s attainable, maybe a stretch goal within the next year. Stretch goals keep you excited. They keep you motivated.

The next is that it has to be meaningful. This kind of ties into the earlier parts of our conversation, we feel these outside pressures of what we should be doing or what our parents want for us, or our friends or our partner or society at large, whomever. But we forget to set goals that mean something to us, right?

Sure, you can go out and do something that’s a goal that you felt pressured to do. As a high achiever, you could probably go out and rock it. That’s the hard thing, being a high achiever, we have to get back in tune with ourselves. Just because you could be good at it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the thing that is the next right step for you.

Personal Development: Setting Habit-Based Goals

Then the last thing is that it’s just habit based. So, once we have this aspirational, attainable, and meaningful goal, how can we break it up in such a way that you can work on it a little bit every single day?

There’s this whole idea of habit stacking and layering habits into your day that’s a whole other conversation. But how can you work towards that every single day?

For example, a goal I’m working towards are some specific goals for my business and the impact I hope to have with it. The habit I have is that I work from 6:00 to 8:00 AM every single day cause I am a stay-at-home mom, and my husband works from 8:00 – 4:30. In the evenings we like to cook together, we like to have family time together.

So, I wake up early. I’m not a morning person, but I do it cause the habit I’ve layered into my day is that I work for those two hours each weekday. That’s how I make slow but steady progress. So yeah, that’s my approach to goal setting.

[00:44:02] Detective Ev: It’s an awesome tip. When it comes to especially the world of online business, I think the world of online is weird because it’s made us more distracted than never before.

But if you can find a way to focus on this, you will get more done than our ancestors could have gotten done in their lifetimes. This is real because you have 16-year-olds, some of them are making $25,000, $30,000 a month online. It sounds incomprehensible, but you get these kids that are highly motivated, they’re excited, they’re willing to study online.

Personal Development: Faithful to the Purposeful Habits

I actually have found for myself, I’m more of a morning person now. But it is trained because I guess I was always a night owl my entire life before I got into the health stuff. I find that my best hours are those few in the morning.

I wrote a book more for myself. It’s not like something I advertise. I hardly ever talk about that on here. But when I was writing the book, I’d write in the morning mostly. Man, my mind is working so well. I haven’t been distracted by the day yet. I’m sure, I’m assuming you do something similar. It’s not like you’re checking social media and then going, doing these two hours, right? Like you’re leaving that kind of away.

[00:45:00] Kate House: Yeah. I wake up, I pour a cup of coffee, I fill up my giant Nalgene, that’s always by my side. I drink like three of these a day, huge advocate for hydrating. It’s free and it releases the brain fog. I make my protein smoothie and I come downstairs.

I’m really grateful that my husband is super supportive of the work that I do. He’s like, I got the kids, I got the dogs. I come down to my office in our basement and it’s like, I am not available to the family right now. They are all cared for. And yeah, I’m not scrolling social media. I’m not checking my text messages. Do I have text messages to return? You bet your buns I do. But I don’t do it during that time.

Personal Development: Focused and Flowing

I put on these headphones, I light my candle and I just use that energy. That for me in those early morning hours, my mind isn’t full of like, gotta call the kids pediatrician, I need to fill out his application for school, this and the other thing. I’m like, I’m just in it in those two hours.

I probably do six hours’ worth of work during those two hours because I have to stay super focused. I don’t know if you had this experience when you were writing your book, but sometimes I stand up at the end of those two hours and I’m like, I must have been sitting weird, my foot’s gotten numb. Or like, I really have to go to the bathroom. You just get in the flow and you’re just so focused. Having those blocks of time can be so powerful.

[00:46:09] Detective Ev: I did have that. But I was more constantly just amazed too of like, oh, this is really what I can do in two, three hours of my time here when I’m actually focusing.

And again, I think that’s a unique experience to today’s world. Because obviously you can type way faster than you can write. I’m like a nerd typer. It’s ridiculous. So, I’m flying through this.

And not every day is going to be a great day with writing. Some days you sit there, and you write 200 words in a two-hour period cause you’re just blocked. Other days it’s like, okay, I wrote a couple thousand words today and this is half decent. Like this is a fraction of my book done in two hours, basically minus the editing that needs to be done.

Personal Development: Making Realistic Goals

These are unique things of today’s world. Sometimes less is more. Just start with an hour. If I can just focus for a solid hour, get into that habit.

I hope people are realizing what you’re saying. You have a routine here. It’s the candle, the headphones on, a specific place of your house, no distractions. You are training your brain to be like, when we do this, this is the activities we do. We work. Versus, upstairs and I don’t have the phone, I’m going to bed. It’s proven, this is good for your brain to do. I recommend anyone do that, especially if they’re newer to the entrepreneurship thing.

One question I gotta sneak in. Especially as a high achieving person, how do you teach clients to make realistic goals? Because there’s a real fine line here. There are people that will make a goal that they know that they can achieve, I tell them, that’s not a goal, that’s a to-do list.

Let’s say someone’s making six figures, $8,600 a month, roughly. I’m going to make $8,600 this month. Well, if you’re already doing that, that’s just to do, that’s not a goal. Versus, let’s say I’m making whatever bottom line, $100,000 dollars a year. Now, I want to make $300,000 in a year, but I don’t really have a real plan. It’s probably unrealistic if I’m doing that in a year, but I set that cause it sounds good.

Somewhere between the literal $100,000, $8,600 a month versus the $300,000 is probably something where I do need to push myself. I need to become a more intelligent version of me, more knowledgeable, to achieve that. But I also don’t want to undercut myself where I know I’m going to get that raised this year.

Personal Development: Getting Quiet with Yourself

How do you help people create healthy goals that are realistic, but also push you?

[00:48:17] Kate House: I love that question. I think it involves getting quiet with yourself first.

As a coach, especially, the person who knows your client best is your client, I really encourage people to tune out of all the noise. Take out your earbuds, go for a walk by yourself. Really start to think and feel into it. I’m a huge advocate of like, I’m such a heart-centered person. Like, feel into the goal, right?

Don’t set the goal that’s expected of you. Don’t set an arbitrary goal that you’re like, maybe that $300,000 isn’t actually attainable this year. Right? Let’s think about what is something that makes you excited to show up? What is something that makes you excited to work hard? Something that makes you excited to work at 6:00 AM right? If I weren’t so passionate about the work that I do and the women that I touch and support, I wouldn’t be doing it at six in the morning. So, get in touch with that thing that really lights you up.

Then the other thing that I would suggest is like, take the time to write the goals for yourself and then get in community with people who are working towards something similar. That’s why I have a group coaching program, cause these women are elevating each other together. They’re creating relationships, they’re creating accountability. They’re in community.

That’s why I’m in a mastermind for podcasters. Get in community with the people who are maybe that step or two ahead of you, who can lift you up as well. That would be my suggestion is like, don’t be a silo. Don’t go at alone.

Personal Development: Finding Likeminded Support

Pick something that lights you up that even on the days when you don’t feel like doing it, because you won’t feel like it every day, you’re still going to show up because it’s meaningful and personal to you. Then get in circles with people, whether that’s listening to their podcast, reading their book, joining the mastermind, hiring the coach, whatever that looks like. You can decide what that is.

I mean, I’m in a podcasting mastermind. It’s free. It’s three of us women who are podcasters and we’re in a Voxer chat together. We check in with each other every week. That’s something that we can do to grow, support, and learn together, and it’s totally free. Or you can go do a paid program, whatever that looks like for you.

But don’t limit yourself by thinking, I don’t have the finances to do that. Cause there’s so many ways you can do this for free. Surround yourself with those people who are doing that thing that you’re working towards so that you can feel encouraged and inspired along the way.

[00:50:25] Detective Ev: Kate, where can people find you? I’m realizing more and more as you’re talking, I thought it was only going to maybe connect with one side of our audience, which is fine. But now I’m like, it’s actually both, because whether someone is on a health journey actively trying to heal it, they could benefit from you. Or if it’s someone that actually kind of has mastered the health stuff and now they’re on the business side, I think you would help them just as readily with some of the stuff that you offer there.

So, where can people find you if they’re interested in learning more about the programs and working with you?

Where to Find Kate House

[00:50:50] Kate House: Well, thank you so much for this time. It’s been such a pleasure. I always pinch myself that like I get to do this for my work.

But absolutely, if you are a podcast lover, which I’m sure you are, since you’re tuning in here, you can find me over at the Live by Design Podcast. It’s hosted by me, Kate House.

My last name is House, just like a house. It’s too easy. My website is mskatehouse.com. And I’m over on Instagram. I’m active over there at mskatehouse. Apparently, there’s another Kate House out there in the world so that’s why I’m Ms. Kate House. So, slide into my DMs.

I love starting conversations with people. And if you ever want to connect for coaching or if you need a group environment, the LBD Collective is a really beautiful place to start.

Thank you so much for having me. This is such a pleasure.

[00:51:34] Detective Ev: Yeah, likewise. Thanks for coming on.

Conclusion

And guys, you always know what we say, especially when it’s a newer topic. If you enjoy content like this, reach out to us directly on Instagram. We have real people, not chatbots, at fdntraining. Just say, I really appreciated this, or, stick to the health stuff. But I have a strong feeling that if I enjoyed this and I’m in the FDN community, I don’t know how they wouldn’t.

It’s nice too because you still learn something here. But it’s not so technical with the functional health stuff that I need to be like having, you know, my brain rocked every single sentence. I can learn without having to go super sciencey. It’s a nice mix and a nice change up. And we appreciate you coming on. Thank you.

You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.

To hire an FDN Practitioner, go to fdnthrive.com.

For a FREE eBook, go to fdnthrive.com/steps/.

It doesn’t get much easier than a two-ingredient recipe – and it’s incredible how much therapeutic nutrition you can receive from two simple ingredients. Homemade gummies (or homemade gelatin) are delicious, versatile, family-friendly and fun to make and eat. We have a full guide to help you learn how to make gummies. From what kind of gelatin to use, to flavour options, to how to pull off the best consistency, we’ve got you covered.

How to Make Gummies: Best Tips and Recipes

Culinary Nutrition Benefits of Homemade Gummies

Why make your own gummies in the first place?

Many conventional gummy candy brands contain highly refined and processed sugars like glucose syrup, which can negatively impact our health. They have natural and artificial flavours, which in most cases are synthetically produced, as well as food dyes that are associated with cancer and hypersensitivity. Lastly, they typically contain unhealthy or unsustainable oils. Despite their claims of containing ‘real fruit’, most brands are well-removed from any whole food source. 

On the other hand, homemade gummies:

As whole fruit juice is naturally sweet on its own, you typically don’t need to add any extra sugar to it, either.

What Is Gelatin: Health Benefits and Why It’s Important for Gummy Recipes

A key ingredient in homemade gummies is gelatin. It helps them ‘gel’, and is also rich in culinary nutrition benefits.

Gelatin is an incredible source of protein, which is vital for: 

Gelatin is derived from animal bones. Specific amino acids in animal bones include glycine, glucosamine and chondroitin, which can aid with tissue repair, sleep, mobility and skin health. 

Gelatin Vs. Collagen: What’s the Difference? 

Gelatin is extracted from collagen – it’s actually a broken-down form of collagen. Gelatin has a shorter chain of amino acids, which is what makes it simpler for us to digest than collagen. 

Nutritionally, gelatin and collagen are similar but their consistencies are very different. Collagen completely dissolves in liquid, for example, if you add it to a smoothie or an elixir. Gelatin binds to liquids to form a gelatinous, firm or jiggly texture depending on how much you use. 

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Curious to learn more about restorative nutrients? The Culinary Nutrition Expert Program has an entire module devoted to Therapeutic Foods, which empowers you to determine key therapeutic foods for yourself, your family or your clients. You’ll learn that with certain foods and specific nutrients, food can play a powerful role in healing, or simply in restoring and maintaining optimal health.

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Best Gelatin Brands

Gelatin brands are typically made from either beef or pork. As with any other type of animal product, we recommend sourcing gelatin that comes from organic, grass-fed animals. This yields a gelatin product that is better for your health and the planet.

Some of the gelatin brands we like are:

Visit your local health food store, grocery store, or online shop to see what is available near you. The only ingredient on the label should be ‘beef gelatin’ or ‘pork gelatin’. (These may be written as ‘bovine’ or ‘porcine’). 

Can You Make Gummies Vegan?

You can substitute agar-agar powder for gelatin (you’ll need to use 1/8th of the amount of gelatin called for). Note that you won’t receive the health benefits of the gelatin (but there are other benefits to seaweeds like agar). 

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How to Get The Best Consistency When You Make Gummies

This can be tricky! If you’ve tried homemade gummies before and weren’t happy with the consistency, these tips can help you troubleshoot. 

There are three main factors that affect gummy consistency.

The liquid-to-gelatin ratio.

Using more gelatin and less liquid will yield a firmer gummy; less gelatin and more liquid will have a softer consistency.

The amount of pectin in the fruit you’re using. 

Pectin is a fibre found in fruits. It also acts as a binder, for example in jam recipes or baking. If you’re using a low-pectin fruit, you may need to add more gelatin if you’re aiming for a thick, candy-like consistency. 

Citrus fruits, apples, quinces and plums are some examples of high-pectin fruits; cherries and a number of berries like strawberries and blueberries are low-pectin. Find a full list of pectin fruit amounts here. 

The amount of protease enzymes in the fruit that you’re using. 

Certain fruits contain protease enzymes. Bromelain (found in pineapple) and papain (found in papaya), are two such kinds of these enzymes. They can be incredibly beneficial for digestion as they help us break down our food.

Unfortunately, they will also break down the gelatin in your gummies, which will prevent them from forming and gelling beautifully. 

Fruits that are high in proteases include pineapple, papaya, figs and kiwis. 

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Do You Need to Sweeten Your Gummies? 

Fruit juices are highly concentrated, so we find we don’t need to add extra sweetener to them to make gummies. However, if you’re using a tart juice or simply for personal preference, you can add a natural sweetener of your choice. 

Learn more:

Nutrition Enhancers

There are a few ways you can pack even more nutrition into your gummy making! 

• Add herbal tea
• Stir in collagen powder for additional protein
• Use cinnamon, dried ginger or turmeric for flavour and anti-inflammatory benefit
• Try an adaptogen or mushroom powder
• If using a larger mold, add finely chopped fresh fruit
• Drop in some Vitamin D
• Try CBD oil for homemade CBD gummies

Best Gummy Molds

The best molds to use are the ones you already own! Try:

• Candy molds or chocolate molds
• Silicone muffin trays
• Ice cube trays
• Regular muffin trays lined with paper liners
• A large glass dish or container – then cut gummies into squares or use cookie cutters after they set 

The gummy bear shaped molds are adorable, but we aren’t a fan of single-use items unless you know they’ll become a staple tool or appliance in your kitchen. 

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how to make gummies: Recipes

We have two options for you to try: soft gummies and gummy candy!

Soft Gelatin (Jiggly Gummies)

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Firm Gelatin (Gummy Candy) 

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