unexpected things I learned from the Culinary Nutrition Expert program
Name: Jenna Richards
Location: Perth, Western Australia
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
That kale is yummy! Honestly, I know it sounds silly, but I really didn’t know how to make kale taste good and now we eat it almost every day.
Name: Caroline Sabbah
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
Having us submit pictures of our weekly recipes as homework really helped me develop my love for food photography, recipe development and also helped with the creation of my Instagram page. I also learned how to make elixirs on my own!
Name: Disha Kagdada
Location: Singapore
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
Blog writing is something I didn’t expect to learn in the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program. It gave me the right steps to help uncover my writing skills.
Name: Michelle Marshall
Location: Newmarket, Ontario
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
I was surprised at how the training from the course fit so easily into everyday life, and how much it changed my thinking about food and its therapeutic qualities. Right after finishing the program, my mom became very ill. Because of my Culinary Nutrition Expert training, I was able to do the research necessary to make health supportive meals to give her body a chance to heal.
I didn’t expect to appreciate meal planning so much. Eating and preparing real food does take time (but it’s so worth it!) and meal planning is key to being successful at it.
For me, the most illuminating thing about the program was the encouragement to look into health claims and their objectivity. The world of nutrition science can be very confusing, but with a scrupulous and discerning lens, as well as some careful research, some basic truths can be established. I knew a good amount about nutrition before enrolling but what helped the most were the tips about evaluating research, looking for biases, and digging a little deeper than what’s advertised on the surface.
Name: Heather Gill
Location: Springfield, Tennessee
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
I was surprised by how much writing we did to explain culinary nutrition and how much I’m using it now. So thankful for this program and what it taught me. I use it daily!
Name: Lori Moore
Location: Kingsport, Nova Scotia
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
I was surprised by both the skills and the confidence I gained to be able to create original recipes and to adapt favourites to optimize nutrition without compromising taste. Before the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program, I had never created an original recipe, and since completing the program I have consistently created a new recipe every week. I was also surprised by how much fun it is to style and photograph food without a fancy camera.
Name: Hannah McNicholl
Location: Berkshire, United Kingdom
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
There was so much I learned in the program. But two that stood out were how easy it was to make dairy free milk, and that it was possible to make delicious wraps out of just rice and lentils!
Name: Karolyn Yue
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
I learned how to balance my blood sugar levels. Before the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program, I had heard of the concept, but I didn’t really understand it. Now I consistently eat this way and feel much better because of it.
Name: Jaclyn Beatty
Location: Clarksville, Tennessee
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
I’ve been surprised at how deeply rooted the ideas, practices, and behaviours of the program have stuck, long after it ended. I’ve always considered myself a healthy eater, but the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program reset the bar by transforming my thought process around food and nutrition. Going the extra step in the kitchen to truly create optimal health is now non-negotiable and second nature.
Name: Andi Smith
Location: Dallas, Texas
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
I was surprised by how quickly I gained the confidence to create my own recipes. I loved taking the knowledge I gained and challenging myself to take any recipe and make it as healthy and tasty as possible. I fell in LOVE with cooking, but not just cooking. I fell in love with being creative in the kitchen. I also really loved all the science behind foods. I like having reasons and knowing why/how something is healthy and beneficial. It was super fun to learn how to combine foods for a greater benefit.
Name: Theresa Diulus
Location: Seabrook, Texas
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
One of the most surprising things I learned that I still share with people to this day is that there is no one right way to eat and that as Meghan says, “labels are for tin cans.”
I had no idea how much the researching conditions aspect would end up giving me so much confidence in creating my own business. Previously I thought there was no room for me in the saturated catering world. I was able to see the holes I could fill in the market, and how my business might be very different than others. I am forever grateful that the program pushed me in ways I wouldn’t have done so for myself!
I didn’t expect to learn how to write a blog post and market myself online. The Culinary Nutrition Expert Program provided me with the skills to create my own blog!
Name: Roslina Manaf
Location: Selangor, Malaysia
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
The most unexpected and surprising thing I learned is that I thought I was enrolling in a culinary class. But the course gave me so much more than just the skills for recipe creations. It helps to shape, enrich and change my perspective of what healthy means beyond physical measurements.
Name: Kathryn White
Location: St. Thomas, Ontario
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
Confidence! I went into this course looking for ways to heal myself. I was also trying to figure out what I was going to do as a teacher no longer in the classroom. What I came out with was self-healing, inspiration and the confidence to transfer my teaching skills to a different format. The Culinary Nutrition Expert Program has inspired me on so many levels that I have started my own business to try to educate others about healthy eating and lifestyle choices. I love being able to take what I have learned and share it with others.
Name: Jennifer Kular
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
The program confirmed my love for cooking whole foods, from scratch, to nourish our bodies with the best ingredients. Cooking, food styling, and food photography are the three areas I really enjoyed. After a lot of consideration, I realized that my passions and best energy are spent on recipe development. I love tweaking traditional recipes to make them into healthier options. It will always be a pleasure to style and photograph my food, but my heart is deeply rooted in the kitchen and I came to this realization because of the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program!
Name: Joan Gordon
Location: Richmond Hill, Ontario
Unexpected Thing I Learned:
There were many things that I learned and was surprised about, but the recipe that seems to be used the most is the nut milk. I generally make almond milk, but have tried other nuts too. I just can’t believe how much I love it and it loves me!
Looking for a little meal prep inspiration? Need something easy to take with you to work? These 5 balanced bowls are exactly what you need!
Meal prepping can get really old really fast, especially when you’re sick of your usual go-to recipes. That’s where these balanced bowls come in! Bowls are a great way to add variety and versatility to your meal prep without having to spend hours in the kitchen.
Using the Foundational Five to Create Balanced Bowls
In case you’re new to the NS Community and the Mindful Nutrition Method, the Foundational Five system is part of how we teach you to build balanced meals. It makes it easy for you to give your body the nourishment you need while having the flexibility to enjoy the foods you love without stressing about food.
The Foundational Five is made up of five elements of nutrition including Protein, Fat, Non-starchy Carbohydrates, Starchy & Sugary Carbohydrates, and the Flavor Factor (which brings vibrancy, deliciousness, and enjoyment to your meals).
You can download our free guide that walks you through our Foundational Five system for creating balanced meals that you can use to meal prep or cook fresh this week!
5 Balanced Bowls
Test out some of these Nutrition Stripped favorites the next time you’re in need of a balanced bowl for lunch or dinner.
This is a great bowl to add to your meal prep this fall. It’s a delicious savory bowl packed with nutrients through ingredients like quinoa, tempeh, and brussel sprouts. It’s the perfect combination of comfort and nourishment!
How could you not love a delicious bowl that’s filled with flavor and nutrients? It’s so easy to toss together mid-work-week or prepare in advance for ease. We’re all about prioritizing the combination of enjoyment and nourishment here at Nutrition Stripped. And this recipe is a beautiful example of just that!
This Grilled Portobello Mushroom Steak Bowl is the dish you need for both nutrition and comfort! Packed with all the vitamins and minerals, it’s a wonderful way to eat a balanced meal.
This Sweet Potato and Greens Bowl is a delicious way to enjoy a combination of fall flavors and textures. Sweet potatoes and greens are a staple in many households for their versatility, and because they’re readily found in most grocery stores and farmers’ markets.
This bowl features a delicious fall ingredient that you may not think to purchase as often — figs. Not only do figs add a nice sweet flavor to balance out the salty and savory ingredients, but they’re also incredibly fiber-rich, both with soluble and insoluble fiber. Give this balanced bowl a try next!
This Vegetable Rice Noodle With Peanut Sauce is a great example of how to make a fully delicious and equally nutritious meal that will leave you satisfied and well-nourished. The fresh ingredients and delicious flavor combinations make it perfect for any time of year!
This is a super versatile balanced bowl. You can use any greens you have readily available in your refrigerator! Just toss together your favorite greens, some avocado, beans, eggs, broccoli, and sprouts. Then top with a delicious green dressing!
You can make this for any meal of the day, and you can even prep it in advance for busy days.
Tips For Making Balanced Bowls
There are a couple of tips you should keep in mind that will help you out a bit when prepping these 5 balanced bowls.
Invest in good-quality storage containers
Having quality storage containers can make all the difference when you’re frequently making balanced bowls, especially if you’re taking them on the go. It can ensure your prepped meals stay fresh longer, and prevent any leaking or spills while traveling.
Don’t be afraid to experiment on your own
You can mix and match so many great ingredients to create a balanced bowl of your own. You can even use our Foundational Five formula to do so!
FAQ About These Balanced Bowl Recipes
Have a few questions? Check out these FAQs!
What if I don’t like some of these ingredients?
The great part about all of these recipes is that they’re so versatile and flexible. Not a fan of sprouts? Totally fine! Swap them out for some basil or arugula. Can’t stand sweet potatoes? Feel free to leave them out! Don’t let a few ingredients stop you from enjoying the ease and convenience these balanced bowl recipes can give you.
Do You Want to Experience More Balance with your Food Choices?
Then find your balanced eating type!
Take this 45-second free quiz to find out which balanced eating archetype you are, and what your unique type needs to maintain balance with the way you nourish yourself. That way, you can finally be free from food and diet obsession, maintain a balanced weight, and cultivate a positive relationship with food and your body.
The consumption of berries can enhance “beneficial signaling in the brain.” Plant foods are our primary source of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds, but some plant foods may be better than others. As I’ve explored before, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial showed us that one cup of blueberries a day can improve cognition among older adults, and the same happens in children after just a single meal with blueberries, though two cups of berries may work better than one.
As I discuss in my video Benefits of Blueberries for Mood and Mobility, that single hit of berries may also improve mood. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study, young subjects were asked a series of questions, such as Are you very slightly or not at all, a little, moderately, quite a bit, or extremely interested? Excited? Strong? Ashamed? And so on. As you can see in the graph below and at 0:55 in my video, before and after drinking the placebo, there was no significant change in young adult participants aged 18 through 21. But, two hours after consuming about two cups of blueberries, their positive mood scores improved significantly. They felt more enthusiastic, alert, inspired, and attentive. The same results were found in seven- to ten-year-old children. Benefits achieved not with some dangerous new mood-enhancing drug or Ritalin, but blueberries—and after just a single meal.
Now, blueberries can’t do everything. Although a cup of berries certainly appears to improve brain function, no improvements in walking (gait) or balance were observed. What if you tried two cups of blueberries a day?Might six weeks of two cups of frozen blueberries a day affect the functional mobility in adults over age 60? Study participants were randomized to prepackaged blueberries or prepackaged carrot juice as a control, and researchers measured tasks, including one where “two bright yellow ropes on the floor outlined the narrow path, and participants were instructed to walk within the roped path.” The blueberries beat out the carrot juice control, and significant improvements suggest “blueberry supplementation may provide an effective countermeasure to age-related declines in functional mobility…” In retrospect, the researchers thought perhaps the control should have been “a true placebo (e.g., cucumber powder) without antioxidant properties,” since the carrots themselves may have offered some benefit, too. Had they used a different control, the blueberry results may have been even more impressive. “Overall, this study demonstrates the need for greater exploration of blueberry supplementation as a nonpharmacologic countermeasure to the public health issue of age-related declines in functional mobility and independence.” Or, to use the punnier version, “dietary interventions with polyphenol-rich [phytonutrient-rich] foods, such as blueberries, present a potentially fruitful strategy for combating some of the deleterious effects of age-related neurodegeneration.” (Emphasis added.)
Isn’t science grand! I love that these studies were conducted.
A No Excuses November mentality helps keep you on track. A holiday party is a special celebration, where you might add extra alcohol, delicious appetizers and a beautiful meal or dessert to the otherwise ordinary day. If planned for and looked forward to, this is great. Enjoy. If it is another decadent meal in a long string of indulgence, it is less celebratory and increases the risk of weight gain.
So instead of this: Celebrate à Celebrate à Celebrate à Celebrate = holiday weight gain.
Do this: Choose wisely à Choose wisely à Celebrate à Choose wisely = NO holiday weight gain.
From lots and lots of experience with myself and clients, it’s best if a planned indulgent event is buffered by planned healthful choices. No need to keep eating the sweets. Eat it once, enjoy it and then get back to your normal healthy ways quickly and efficiently (it works!)
Recipe: Carrot Ginger Soup Serves 4, Calories 375, Carbs 32g, Fat 28g, Protein 4g From Lisa Bryan
This gluten-free, dairy-free vegan recipe is hearty, bright orange and delicious.
2 tbsp avocado oil or olive oil 1 medium onion diced 3 cloves garlic minced 3 tbsp ginger minced or finely diced 2 lbs. carrots peeled and chopped 4 cups veg broth 1 bay leaf 1 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp salt
Toppers: 1/4 cup avocado oil 1 shallot 4 tbsp coconut cream 4 tbsp cilantro chopped 4 tsp pine nuts
Heat oil over medium-high in a large pot. Add onions and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add ginger and garlic and stir for another minute or two. Add carrots and cook 10 more minutes. Add the broth, bay leaf, cinnamon and salt. Bring to a boil, cover and turn heat to low for a gentle simmer until carrots are soft. Blend the soup until it’s fully pureed and smooth.
To make the crispy shallots, finely slice the shallot and separate each layer of the slice. Heat the avocado oil in a pan on medium-high and once hot, add the shallots and cook until crispy. To serve, divide each portion of soup into a bowl, dollop one tablespoon of coconut cream on top and garnish with crispy shallots, pine nuts and cilantro.
Ahhh…health coach pricing – it’s an important topic, and one we’re excited to jump into today.
If you’ve landed here, chances are we owe you a congratulations!
Whether you’ve just decided to pursue a new career, or you’ve already completed a health coaching program – it’s an exciting time. Wahoooo! 🥳️
And naturally, one of the next big questions is about health coach pricing. After all, in order to change lives & run a sustainable business, you have to charge for your services, and you want to be sure you’re charging the right amount!
But the truth is…most new health coaches feel unsure on the topic of health coach pricing.
So, today we’re diving in head first to hash this out.
Come on in!
Health Coach Pricing: Services & Programs.
First things first…you can’t get clear about health coach pricing until you know what exactly you’ll be selling!
There are lots of options here, but some questions to ask include:
Are you planning to offer single sessions?
Packages of sessions?
Do you want to offer a high-ticket wellness program (e.g. “signature program”)?
For graduates of our FDN certification program, we typically recommend developing a “signature program” where you are selling a specific transformation that your client can expect by taking your program.
What do we mean by “selling a transformation?”
We mean that you develop a program that is geared towards helping a very certain demographic of people with one main problem. For example, thyroid issues, weight loss, fertility issues…the options are endless.
The truth is, your wellness program will help people with a whole lot more than the main issue you choose, but with respect to marketing, it’s MUCH easier to sell a program that offers a specific solution.
Now, of course you cannot guarantee specific results, but you can share strong testimonials that show how your signature program has worked for other clients.
If you decide to offer single sessions, we usually recommend offering a 90-minute strategy session where clients can see what it’s like to work with you & get their most urgent concerns addressed.
The last thing we’ll say on this front is that more is not always better! Focus on one single health coaching program at a time! Having too many offers is not going to help you grow a profitable wellness practice.
Health Coach Pricing & Your Wellness Practice.
A critical piece of health coach pricing is making sure your packages & programs are packed with value!
Here is a list of things that will increase the value of your offers:
1. “Live” sessions.
A very common business model that we see work well is creating a signature program that combines pre-recorded videos & “live” weekly sessions.
It’s a smart way to structure your offers because chances are you deliver the same material over-and-over to clients, and some of it can be recorded & reused each time!
However, “live” access to you is going to benefit your health coach pricing strategy because peoplevalue the chance to ask questions & get personal support.
2. More access to you.
Speaking of “live” support, there are many kinds that you can choose to offer, and each one is going to provide your clients with a great sense of encouragement and true support – the kind of support that’s going to lead to higher client outcomes and greater earnings for you.
This type of support can look like:
Voice messaging (e.g. voxer)
Email support
Direct Messaging
Group calls
Q&A calls
3. Health Coach Pricing & Functional testing.
Now this is a BIG one when it comes to being able to charge higher prices, and it all depends on whether or not you have the proper training to offer testing & analysis.
Graduates of our FDN Certification Course not only provide coaching support, they can also order functional testing, provide analysis of test results & develop customized protocols that get to the root of the issue.
Keep in mind that most health coaching programs don’t train you in this area OR provide access to order labs without working under a licensed practitioner or physician.
Sooo, if you’re looking to increase your health coach pricing & stand out in the sea of other online health coaches, definitely consider stepping up your game with the FDN certification course, which can be completed online in just 6-12 months.
Note: Even if you’ve already completed another health coaching program, you can add the FDN certification to your toolbox & start charging more!
4. Social proof from previous clients.
Put yourself in your ideal client’s shoes for a minute…
You’re scouring the internet for someone who can help navigate your health issues, and at the end of the day you just want someone you can relate to. You come across a couple of health coaches that seem to fit the bill, but one has a testimonial page and the other one doesn’t.
Which health coach or practitioner are you likely to go with??
Here’s the beauty of testimonials – you only need one to start, and you can even use your own healing journey to showcase what you’re capable of doing.
The FDN Certification Course provides you with the opportunity to run functional tests on yourself which turns you into a great case study right away 😉
Learning firsthand is really the best way and gives you the real world confidence you need to start helping others in the same way.
5. Value add-ons
Another aspect of health coach pricing is add-ons. There are so many creative ways to add value to your services or programs.
Here are some things to think about:
Include a community for group support on Circle (or Facebook)
Provide access to customizable meal plans
Offer a discount on high-quality supplements
These are just a few ideas. Play around with the health coach pricing & strategies that work for you & your unique business goals.
Health Coaching Pricing for Your Wellness Practice.
Now that you know how to increase the value of your offers, the question remains – what amount do you charge? 💰
It’s easy to let self-doubt & imposter syndrome creep in here:
“Am I really doing enough to be charging this much?” “Am I going to scare people away with these rates?” “Am I charging enough?”
But stay focused on the value you provide (like we just talked about) + a little pricing strategy. Focusing on the fact that you’re changing lives & delivering REAL results will help you stave off any unwanted self-doubt.
When it comes down to setting prices, here are some recommendations:
Shop The Market – what are other people charging for similar services?
Use a “Secret Hourly Rate” – figure out how many hours of your time is spent on each given program or service, and what hourly amount feels fair to you. But keep in mind, you can still charge a flat program or package fee and keep this hourly calculation to yourself!
Always Add Padding – don’t forget you’re going to be paying a good chunk of change for taxes, and there will always be unexpected business costs that come up, so add some padding!
Adjust Often – As you continue to build experience, collect testimonials & gain confidence, you will want to increase your rates accordingly. We recommend evaluating your prices every 6 months.
Nailing Your Health Coach Pricing = More Freedom for You!
The ultimate goal for most coaches & practitioners is to build a truly sustainable wellness practice or health coaching business.
What do we mean by “sustainable”?
We mean a profitable business that provides you with the lifestyle you want, while also providing high value for your clients.
The most profitable & sustainable wellness practices seem to have one thing in common – they focus on a high-value / high-ticket program that delivers results.
So keep this in mind as you’re thinking through your offer strategy & pricing.
For example, if you want to move away from offering hourly sessions, then price your single sessions much higher. Make them look less appealing compared to the value offered in your signature program! This will make it a “no-brainer” decision for people to choose the 3-month program, which you know will deliver better results than single sessions anyway!
Better client results = the ability to charge more = a more sustainable wellness practice.
Health Coach Pricing & The Expertise to Charge More!
If you’re a health coach looking to increase your value (+ pricing!), we’d love to chat with you about how the FDN certification course can help you charge more.
In just 6-12 months you could be trained in how to use functional testing to get better results for your clients, without the need for ordering tests through a licensed practitioner.
Yes, you heard that right – our graduates get access to ordering functional testing through our Medical Director Program, and are able to run highly-profitable independent wellness practices!
In fact, many of our graduates completed other health coaching programs first, and then decided to come to FDN to gain the skills they needed to charge more!
A couple of readers spotted the paper for review in this week’s note – thank you. The paper was called “Time-restricted eating and exercise training improve HbA1c and body composition in women with overweight/obesity: A randomized controlled trial” (Ref 1).
The three abbreviations in the title of this note are time-restricted eating (TRE), high intensity interval training (HIIT) and hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), although the latter is usually known by its abbreviation – HbA1c. HbA1c is a measure of glucose in the blood stream over the previous three months.
Time restricted eating (TRE) is, as the name suggests, a dietary intervention whereby eating takes place in a window of time. There are different options for TRE, related to how long the window of eating is and when it takes place during the day. E.g., TRE may involve not eating before noon each day or not eating after a certain time. It may involve eating within an 8-hour window etc. In this paper, time restricted eating was defined as eating within a window of fewer than or equal to 10 hours and with the last meal consumed no later than 20.00 hours.
High intensity interval training (HIIT) is performed as short, repeated bouts of high-intensity aerobic exercise separated by low-intensity breaks. It can involve many different exercises e.g., cycling, swimming, jogging, star jumps etc and the intense period, break period and number of repetitions can vary. In this paper, HIIT was defined as three supervised treadmill sessions per week. Specifically, two of the weekly sessions consisted of 4 x 4-minute work bouts at 90–95% maximal heart rate (HRmax), separated by 3 minutes of moderate-intensity recovery. The third session comprised 10 x 1-min work bouts at greater than or equal to 90% of HRmax separated by 1 minute low-intensity recovery. All sessions included a 10-minute warm up at 60–70% HRmax, and a 3-minute cool-down, for a total scheduled exercise time of 108 minutes per week.
The background to the paper was given as – it is known that time-restricted eating (TRE) and high intensity interval training (HIIT) can improve cardiometabolic health, but it is not known if combing these interventions can induce further improvements.
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Well, hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show discussing a gut problem with Parkinson’s Disease.
We are talking to an absolutely brilliant woman who is on truly the cutting edge of science, if everything that she said today is accurate. And I have every reason to believe it is. I just mean that some of it is so darn cool that it’s almost incomprehensible to me to believe that this actually is going to exist soon. I’ll make sense of that in just a second. I’ll read her bio first and then I’ll explain what we’re talking about today.
Martha Carlin is a citizen scientist, systems thinker, wife of Parkinson’s Warrior, John Carlin, and founder of The BioCollective, a microbiome company expanding the reach of science.
Since John’s diagnosis in 2002, Martha began learning the science of agriculture, nutrition, environment, infectious disease, Parkinson’s pathology, and much more. In 2014 when the first research was published, showing a connection between the gut bacteria and the two phenotypes of Parkinson’s, Martha quit her former career as a business turnaround expert and founded The BioCollective to accelerate the discovery of the impact of gut health on all human health, including Parkinson’s.
Martha was a speaker at the White House 2016 Microbiome Initiative Launch, challenging the scientific community to “think in a broader context”. Her systems thinking background and experience has led to collaborations across the scientific spectrum from neuroscience to engineering to infectious disease.
A Glyphosate Eating Product
She is a respected out of the box problem solver in the microbiome field and brings a unique perspective to helping others understand the connections from the soil to the food to our guts and our brains.
In today’s episode, we are talking about primarily the formula that was created, which is now multiple products, and a lot of them have the main formula in it. But a formula of sorts that was created with people who have Parkinson’s in mind. It’s also something that could affect a lot of people in terms of microbiome health in a very positive way.
What we will also be mentioning today, which I find even more revolutionary than this, is she’s working on a company and they’re filing patents and stuff like that. Apparently, this could be out as early as 2023. It’s going to be a product that has certain bacteria in it, microbes, that can consume glyphosate.
What this would mean is that, in theory, you could put this in your backyard for a garden and it would eat up glyphosate, Roundup, and then you would have a much purer garden. Of course, there’s bigger issues because it comes from the rainwater, it comes from a lot of different things. But this would still be a huge product for a variety of reasons.
I just thought it was fascinating. I have never heard of something like this. I’ve never heard of it being developed. Then supposedly the person that is really on the front lines of this and actually going to offer something to the market was lucky enough to come on our podcast. Really, we are lucky enough to have her so that we could bring this message to you guys. I think you’re going to love her.
The Start of An Amazing Journey
She’s passionate, very intelligent, extremely well read. I mean, there’s nothing to not like about this podcast. It fits in perfectly for what we try to do here. Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.
All right. Hello there. Martha. Thanks so much for being here with us today.
[00:03:20] Martha Carlin: Thanks for having me, Evan.
[00:03:22] Detective Ev: Yeah, I’m excited to talk to you.
There was a lot of interesting things when I was reading your bio. I’m like, okay, wow. A lot of different routes we can take. I’m especially interested in the whole Parkinson’s side, and I know that’s a huge aspect of your family’s story.
I don’t know if this will just organically get into that, but I always start with the same question on this podcast. You said that you were listening to a couple of interviews, so you probably know this.
I’d like to just know what the heck got the person into this space to begin with. Because no one gets into this by accident, not yet at least. This is intentional because of something that happened to us or someone we care about. So how did you get into this?
[00:03:52] Martha Carlin: Absolutely. I got into this 21 years ago. My 44-year-old husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He had been a very healthy endurance athlete. It just didn’t make sense to me that someone like that would get an old person’s disease.
I actually had a background in accounting and business operations. I was a business turnaround expert.
Antibiotics Causing a Gut Problem
I just looked at how the neurologist sort of looked at him and said, you have Parkinson’s, which I had already figured out. Gave him a pill and said, come back in six months. I was like, this doesn’t make any sense.
So, I took my business turnaround approach, which I was trained in something called Transaction Flow Review, how you identify risk in a business. You look at everything that’s flowing through the system, and you try to figure out where the break points are that cause business risk.
I said, okay, we should look at the body like a system. What’s flowing through it? Like food and water. I started first 21 years ago looking at the food and water system and all the things that might have been contributing to that. Just totally threw out the pantry and started over. It’s taken 21 years of increasing into different areas of the science and connecting the dots.
Then in 2014 I read a book called Missing Microbes by Dr. Martin Blazer, that was talking about the age of antibiotics that we’ve all grown up in. How that was destroying something called the microbiome, which I really hadn’t heard much about. That made a lot of sense to me cause I knew my husband and other people with Parkinson’s who had taken a lot of antibiotics in childhood for infections like strep.
Six months later, a scientist from Finland showed that he could divide the two primary types of Parkinson’s by the gut bacteria. Some people have tremor more dominant, and some people have posture and gait problems. He could separate that just by looking at the gut bacteria.
I was like, Eureka. This is it. The gut is the general ledger, and I quit my job.
Looking at Common Microbiome Functional Loss Patterns
We started funding some research at the University of Chicago. About six months later, I formed a company called The BioCollective to start collecting fecal samples from people to not only look at Parkinson’s but look across what we call diseases for common functional loss patterns in the microbiome.
[00:06:38] Detective Ev: I love that you brought up the antibiotics thing because it’s something I mention occasionally on this show. It’s sometimes tough to see what came first, the chicken or the egg, at least for me.
I know I had severe sinus issues, which maybe shouldn’t have always been treated with antibiotics. However, it’s still a symptom, right? So, something else was going on to trigger that even. Martha, I mean, by the age of 18, I had been on 20 courses of antibiotics in my life, some of which lasted a month. Then I look back, I’m just thankful to be as normal and healthy as I am now because we really don’t know fully what that does long term.
That’s amazing that that researcher could differentiate these Parkinson’s people into two different groups based on that. That was something I’ve never heard of, so that’s already hugely valuable to the audience. Thank you.
One thing I gotta ask is, we’re going 21 years back, 44-year-old husband, this is happening. From my understanding, because you have this business background, were you a health person at all? I mean, was this something you had ever even considered?
Fear Hit When First Diagnosed
[00:07:30] Martha Carlin: No, I was not a health person at all. I was very business focused, down to the brass tax. Although it’s kind of funny. Because in college, I went into college, and I was going to become a chemical engineer.
I got there and I had a terrible chemistry professor. I saw that I was not going to get to have any fun if I studied chemistry. So, I changed my major.
[00:07:55] Detective Ev: My question is that, especially with someone without the health background, and I’m thinking 21 years back. Cause I know from me, I’ve been in this space about nine years now. Even myself, I have seen such a dramatic transition in the way that people approach this mostly because of the internet, because this information spreads rapidly now.
You have no health back background. Obviously, you’re a very sharp person, but that doesn’t mean that necessarily translated over into knowledge about health right away. You figured out the Parkinson’s thing before the doctor even said it. I gotta ask, what the heck’s going through your head though, seeing a 44-year-old husband with Parkinson’s without a health background?
I mean, are you like freaking out? Are you scared? Like what’s happening at the time?
[00:08:33] Martha Carlin: At first, we were both really scared. I look back at some of the journals that I wrote and the things that we said to each other. You know, we didn’t think he’d still be around now.
Parkinson’s is Not Necessarily Progressive
In 2011, which he was diagnosed in 2002, we climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. When we were on top of that mountain, we were both standing there crying because when we heard that diagnosis, we thought there’s absolutely no way he would have any kind of life at that point.
I mean, that’s what the doctors sort of tell you. You know, this is progressive. There’s nothing you can do about it. I’m here to tell you that’s just not true.
[00:09:10] Detective Ev: And that was kind of my point because it doesn’t really matter per se, how smart the individual is. If you don’t have this functional health background, then yes, you would typically take what the doctor’s going to say at face value or what society says at face value.
So that’s why I was like, wow, this must be kind of scary at any age, but at 44. To think this is my husband and he’s just going to get progressively worse. I didn’t want to ask this, so I thank you so much for saying that cause I was hoping.
Well, you seem pretty happy. You seem like you got a lot of this figured out. Like he’s still with us today, right? That’s amazing, 21 years later. So what? 65 years old?
[00:09:41] Martha Carlin: He’s 64 and he’s doing great. We had a rough bout with COVID last year. We had to kind of get back from some of the long-term effects of that. But all of the skills we’ve developed over these 21 years, and people that I’ve connected with who’ve been able to help me, has gotten in fact in good shape there too.
Clean Food Heals Up a Gut Problem
[00:10:01] Detective Ev: Amazing. Actually, I’m interested in one thing first because we kind of already alluded to this. But I really like to dissect this point, which you might already be aware of.
To have the ability to clearly eventually say, whether it was directly to the doctor or not, that you are going to do different things. You must have done that, otherwise your husband wouldn’t be in the condition that he is in today. How long did it take to get to the point where this goes from, oh my gosh, like this might get progressively worse over time and I’ve kind of lost my husband, to, no, I think I can take proactive action with this?
I understand that you came across some research, but how long did it take to find that stuff?
[00:10:35] Martha Carlin: You know, early on we just changed the food supply, and I focused very much on clean food, which in 2002 was kind of hard to find. There wasn’t a lot of organic, there wasn’t a lot of that. But just through cleaning up the food and not eating processed foods, we saw a pretty immediate improvement.
He was a marathon runner, so he’d been sucking on that goo stuff that they make for marathon runners and drinking soy protein shakes. I got him off soy protein and got him off a lot of that stuff.
I would mention diet to the neurologist, but they didn’t really pay a whole lot of attention. But there was kind of a big inflection point after the gut stuff, really making that connection. That sort of leads into a product that I made.
A Gut Problem: Measuring the Microbiome
I went to a research conference, and they showed that the sugar alcohol, mannitol could stop the aggregation of the proteins in an animal model. I came back from that meeting. He’s had some ups and downs over the years. So, we always kind of tweak and work on things.
At that time, he was walking with a cane and not able to navigate through a crowd. So, I came back and bought a mannitol chemistry book and started looking at this amazing molecule. Humans don’t use it, but bacteria do.
I got with a friend of mine who’s a fermentation chemist, and we looked at the bacteria that make mannitol from glucose and fructose. We made this little formula for my husband to try. Within a month we were measuring his microbiome. We could see that getting back closer to the healthy human microbiome. He was no longer walking with a cane, and he was able to navigate a crowd. We’re like, wow, we really have something here.
At that point, they used something called the UPDR score to show how advanced your Parkinson’s is. The higher the score, the worse you are. About that time, his score was a 35. After about a year on that, his score had improved back down to a 20 and was stable at 20 for about four years until he had COVID in December.
[00:12:51] Detective Ev: Wow. Oh my gosh.
I know he probably did some work too, but I feel like he’s pretty lucky to have someone like you that’s this dedicated to trying to figure this stuff out, two decades later, still sharing. And this is a fraction of you guys’ lives at this point still out here sharing information with others.
A Gut Problem: Chronic Constipation
You know, we’ve had a lot of people come on and we talk about a variety of conditions. But I feel like Parkinson’s might have only really been dove into once before in almost 200 episodes.
Again, I told you about our audience. We do have a lot of people maybe in their thirties and forties listening and perhaps of all the things they’ve dealt with, Parkinson’s hasn’t been one of those things yet. I know our audience is going to love this just for prevention or working with clients.
So, you guys have really nailed this down to the gut microbiome being one of the biggest things.
[00:13:31] Martha Carlin: It is. What’s interesting is I started digging into the data about the incidents of Parkinson’s. Cause you know, I’m like, this is an old person’s disease.
We were in a young onset group. I started digging into the data, and the number of people under the age of 40 being diagnosed with Parkinson’s has nearly doubled in the last decade. Now it is more men. It’s about two-thirds men and one-third women. But one of the other kind of key indicators is chronic constipation precedes a diagnosis of Parkinson’s by 10 to 15 years.
Out of a cohort of people who have IBS and IBD, which a lot of younger people do have, about a third of those people go on to develop Parkinson’s. So, dealing with your gut now while you’re young, can really help maybe stop it or certainly push it further out.
Do Most Sick People Have a Gut Problem?
[00:14:31] Detective Ev: It seems like, obviously, we’ve come a little farther in functional medicine now. I mean, you know, Hippocrates said all disease begins in the gut, which is extraordinarily profound for his time. We know it’s a little more complicated than that now. But I mean, really, it seems to be a necessary component at the very least, in almost everything.
I’ve never had someone hop on here that has done the testing like you guys have and actually tracked this stuff with any condition, whether it’s cancer, autoimmune, anxiety, depression, whatever, that had an optimized gut. You just don’t see someone that has an optimized gut with health symptoms. So, man, we’re playing with some fire here in today’s world and we’re basically Guinea pigs, right?
Because yes, in 2002, you’re right, we were coming off of the main stretch of like GMOs where they were just being used in the US completely unrestricted. I mean, not that they’re as restricted as I’d like to see now. But I mean, no one even knew what the heck these were, right? They’re just being added to the food supply. No one knows what’s happening.
And we’re seeing that the glyphosate is starting to be utilized, the antibiotics are getting handed out like candy even for a cold. Well, it could be something more, so you might as well take these for a cold. Thank God we’re moving away from some of that, but we still got quite a bit to do.
So, of course, in addition to what you’ve created, what other things have you found to be most effective for impacting people’s gut microbiomes in a positive way? Like what are some things people can do?
Exercise is Good for a Gut Problem
[00:15:52] Martha Carlin: Well, you know, exercise turned out to be one of those surprising things.
Back in 2008 we got connected to a researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. J. Alberts. He had discovered kind of by accident, riding the bike ride across Iowa, RAGBRAI, that a friend of his with Parkinson ‘s when riding a bike, his symptoms disappeared.
So, he’s ended up spending more than a decade studying the impact of exercise on the brain and also starting to look at the gut. And there’s a number of researchers that have shown how exercise can improve the gut microbiome.
[00:16:30] Detective Ev: Does this depend on the type of exercise? Because I’m thinking immediately about your husband. I’m like, okay, well, a marathon runner and he got it. I don’t want to be quoted on this by anyone listening because I only like to say that if I know it for sure.
But I recall reading something that the average life expectancy of marathon runners is only like late fifties. The theory behind it being, there’s so much stress on the body. Whereas something like biking might be considered a more moderate activity, generally speaking. So, does it depend on the type of exercise?
[00:16:56] Martha Carlin: I don’t know that Dr. Alberts has studied the extreme part of the exercise. But what they do is a low impact cycling program where you cycle at a certain RPM three times a week. That is, I think, much better for the mitochondria. The stress side of marathon running, that’s another area that I really just started focusing a bit more on this year.
Too Much Exercise Can Be Too Stressful
You know, a lot of marathon runners, historically, were consuming high carb, high glucose. They convert themselves into like anaerobic fermenters, which basically produces lower ATP. I think that’s part of the problem.
Then, like you were saying, that excessive stress creates basically a dumping of magnesium. You’ve gotta get that magnesium back in to handle that excess stress. I do think that extreme exercise, like that is just too much stress for the body long term and converts the whole system in the wrong direction.
[00:17:59] Detective Ev: It’s probably one of the things that tricks up some of our clients the most when our FDNs go work with people. Because if we look at a hormone test and we’re seeing them in a very exhaustive phase of HPA axis dysfunction, one of the recommendations that we might suggest to a client, and by the way, this was suggested to me at 21 years old.
They were like, hey, maybe back off the exercise for a little bit. Like, don’t not move your body. That’s ridiculous. They really said, just give walking a try for a little bit. I’m like, what? Like this is crazy.
I was in a position at the time where I had just broken my foot, so this was actually highly motivating cause I couldn’t even really walk. I could only do my crutches. So, I wasn’t doing any extreme exercise. I said, all right, I’ll just take it easy. I had planned to go to the gym before and like at least do what I could, upper body wise. But I said, whatever my foot needs to heal, fine.
A Gut Problem with COVID & Parkinson’s
I just remember a week went by, Martha. I woke up the one day, I just had so much energy, like drive. I just felt good cause I never really stopped exercising.
Of course, we want to be able to get back to that exercise long term, just so it’s clear to people that might be listening and be a little confused by that. But the point is, sometimes, yeah, it is a stress on the body and people forget that.
So, if your body is already super stressed out because of a chronic illness or disease, we need to make sure we’re balancing that while we get you healthy. Then we can get you back onto a reasonable amount of exercise that is sustainable long term.
Does your husband now, is he able to, Cause I mean he climbed the mountain with you. That’s ridiculous. Is he able to move around a lot or did COVID prevent that?
[00:19:21] Martha Carlin: No, he’s able to move. I mean, he’s fully mobile. I will say, I think there’s another researcher I’m working with who’s looking at the microbiome in Parkinson’s, but also in COVID. There were some similarities in loss of bifido bacteria in the gut of people who did poorly in COVID and that’s also associated with Parkinson’s.
Those bifido bacteria are highly sensitive to antibiotics. One of the main ones is what we get from breast milk and of course, most of our generation were fed on formula, so we didn’t really get that underlying microbiome piece. But yeah, he’s doing great.
[00:19:59] Detective Ev: Awesome. I want to just highlight it a little more. So, you guys have a product or is it a series of products with the mannitol in it? Can we explain that a little more?
[00:20:07] Martha Carlin: We have a series of products, but the initial product that I made for my husband was a product that we eventually named Sugar Shift. It’s Biotic Quest, Sugar Shift, because it shifts how your body metabolizes sugars. It takes the glucose and fructose that we’re getting way too much of in our diet, converts it to mannitol, which humans don’t use, but is really a prebiotic fiber for bacteria.
So, we saw what was going on in him is it’s shifting the metabolism back to supporting energy production, restoring that TCA cycle. In that process, of course, it was affecting blood glucose. I didn’t know at the time, about 65% of people with Parkinson’s have some, there are some research papers that have called it like Type III Diabetes, same with Alzheimer’s. There’s this glucose dysregulation.
That’s one of the primary mechanisms of action. But we’ve since designing it to make the mannitol, we’ve found it increases bifido bacteria, it improves energy production, it helps with bacterial melatonin production, so improves sleep. I can’t really say this, but customers tell me they lose weight. It helps them if they want to do intermittent fasting, they’re not as hungry in the morning and can eat later.
I have a chief scientific officer of my company, is a microbial ecologist that was a professor at Cal Poly for 30 years. We worked together with another scientist building a computer model that can predict how bacteria worked together to sort of put back functions, if you will, into the gut.
Bioremediation of Glyphosate: Good for a Gut Problem
We have one that supports better immunity. We have one that supports cardiovascular. We just released a sleep product that helps in the production of tryptophan and bacterial melatonin. But a lot of the formulas have at their base, our core formula that does that sugar conversion and mannitol production.
[00:22:09] Detective Ev: That’s what I was wondering. Cause I’ve seen many great companies that have this core thing, and a lot of the things are centered around that. I understand that this is doing stuff in the gut, but this is fascinating to me cause it’s, again, honestly, very new information in a sense.
Would you suggest that other people look into like probiotic usage, or can this replace this? Do you still need to utilize probiotics elsewhere?
[00:22:28] Martha Carlin: Yeah, it is a probiotic. It’s eight strains. Four of those are strains we isolated ourselves and did the work.
One of those strains happened to be, it’s a lactobacillus plantarum that was resistant to glyphosate. It has a pathway called the third pathway that breaks down glyphosate without producing AMPA, which is more toxic to the brain. I mean, that’s maybe a little too technical for most people. So, we think part of how it helps people is through that bioremediation of glyphosate and detoxification of the body.
But what most people don’t realize when they go to a store and they look at the shelf of probiotics, probably 90%, 95% of those formulas on the shelf are pretty much the same. They have a very limited number of strains of bacteria in them.
Probiotics in Fermented Foods: Good for a Gut Problem
There are 12 widely grown strains in the industry and only three major producers globally. You’re not getting a lot of diversity.
We actually figured out the strains we wanted, isolated them ourselves, worked on what we needed to do to get them down the path of production and all that. One of them is actually a species called Leuconostoc mesenteroides. It’s found widely in fermented foods around the world. But you don’t see it in very many probiotics and it’s a really amazing microbe, I would say. So, fermented foods will help support you as well.
But you know, I do know there are people who have FODMAP sensitivities who are kind of working through that. That’s the only people that have had occasional issues if they’re really FODMAP sensitive to the formula.
[00:24:14] Detective Ev: Well, this is cool because like you said, so many of these in the stores, there’s many problems with them, right? They’re lacking in diversity. The other issue is half of these things are refrigerated, and so there might be a good chance that a lot of it dies once it even goes into the GI track. There’s many controversial things with it.
One of the things I’ve always wondered too as a consumer, is because a lot of the research is fairly new, and the gut microbiome is so complicated, I kind of wonder, are there going to be unintended consequences sometimes from these people that go to the local health food store and just take this stuff over and over and over again?
A Gut Problem: Fix Your Nutritional Profile
It sounds like yours is more, one diverse, so you have that. But also, two, kind of like utilizing something the body would do naturally and just kind of supporting it. That seems more sustainable to me long term if I had to put my money on something.
[00:25:01] Martha Carlin: Yes. I believe so. I do think it’s always good to take a periodic break.
The other thing, cause you’re on the nutrition side, you talk to a lot of nutrition people, is the food that you give those bacteria will impact what they produce. You can’t just fix a problem by taking a probiotic. You gotta fix your nutritional profile and be getting those trace minerals that we’re so depleted of. That glyphosate depletes from the food, from the animals, from us.
[00:25:34] Detective Ev: The glyphosate thing is still crazy to me. That was one of the first topics that got me into this space.
I remember I wasn’t like in it, in it yet, but I was 16. I wasn’t doing too well, felt terrible. Then I learned about what, Monsanto at the time, Bayer now, was doing with glyphosate or whatever. Then the craziest part, Martha, is the fact that they basically ruled that, oh, yes, it is carcinogenic, so we’re going to have to remove it from the market. But they give them a time limit.
If you and I were running a company with a product that they proved was causing cancer, we would have to remove it the next day. They say, oh yeah, no problem. Yeah, you just take your time and get it off the market. We’ll just keep infecting the water and the land every single place.
Removing Glyphosate from the Soil and Water
But you know, you take your time getting it off the market. I mean, what kind of craziness is that while people are out there suffering with these things?
In fact, if I go all the way back to the 21 years ago, the earliest thing I was looking at was the genetically engineered food and the chemicals that were used on it. I had in my head; how can we fix this?
Well, back to my chief scientific officer. He was a pioneer in using microbial mixtures to clean up oil spills. So, we actually have another company called PaleoBiotica that has a product that breaks down glyphosate in the soil and water. It can remove glyphosate from the soil and water.
We’re just bringing that to market this coming year. But we’ve done quite a bit of research on that, and we have some new data coming out in December that we’re going to be excited to share as well.
[00:27:03] Detective Ev: Wait, so would this be something that people could, I have a garden in the backyard. I could use this in a garden? Is that what it would be used for?
[00:27:09] Martha Carlin: Yep. You could use it in a garden.
We’re talking to organic farmers, because most people don’t realize this, but the fertilizer on most organic farms is conventional manure. The conventional manure, we’re working with a farmer right now who had a problem with one of his crops.
A Gut Problem: Glyphosate Throughout the Organic Food Supply
We’re working with the scientists who traced it back to the poultry manure that he was using.
He puts four tons an acre on the land as fertilizer, but each ton of manure had something like eight tenths of a pound of glyphosate. Because they’re eating the feed that has glyphosate, their manure has glyphosate. It’s not broken down. We’re just spreading it through the organic food supply as well.
[00:28:00] Detective Ev: I’m not wanting to be pessimistic on here and there is hope. Look, there’s great people out there like you doing stuff, but I mean, man, what a mess, right? This is something that they will look back on one day and just say, what the, you know what, were we thinking? This is a nightmare.
That’s one of the reasons too, like, I always suggest to people. I’m like, okay, organic is great. It might be a little better than your truly conventional stuff, but if you really can, local. I mean, that’s still not going to avoid everything. Cause if you live in an even mildly population dense area, I mean, it’s in the water, it’s everywhere.
My girlfriend, she’s from Washington State and like I said to you before we got on air, I’m in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t that she was even challenging me on it. It was almost like disbelief. I told her, I’m like, Babe, there’s glyphosate in rainwater everywhere in this country.
And she said, well, it’s not in the rainforests in Washington and the national parks and stuff. I said, I bet it is. She looked it up. She couldn’t believe it. She’s like, it’s in the water in these places that they’re not even spraying it anywhere close to directly in those areas. And it’s still there.
Microbes: Great Fix for a Gut Problem
This is going to take a while to clean up.
[00:28:58] Martha Carlin: It is.
But microbes are amazing. I love microbes because they make so many things. Most of the pharmaceuticals actually are made by microbes. They make vitamins, minerals, hormones, neurotransmitters. They can do all that and they can break down all kinds of toxic things and fix problems you wouldn’t even imagine. They eat plastic and concrete.
[00:29:26] Detective Ev: I got hope in them. I appreciate you actually bringing it back up cause I never ever want to leave people on a pessimistic note with some of this stuff.
But it’s a real problem. It needs be treated with seriousness and people that can do something about this should go do something about this. Sometimes it’s as simple as you might be able to vote in a local township meeting on usage of these things. And I encourage everyone to do those things and just help spread awareness.
But beside the point, please reach out to me and get you back on once that company is fully good to go and everything’s on the market. Because I know our audience, including myself, would love to use that product.
I mean, my girlfriend and a couple friends and I, we have wanted to do this for a while, and we finally got it together. Spring of 2023, we’re finally going to be trying to settle on a property that not only would act as like a retreat center, best case it’s a retreat center that we host out, or worst case, it’s like our compound if anything hits the fan, right?
We want like a self-sustaining place. I would love nothing more than to be able to utilize your guys’ product and know that we could.
Grow it Yourself
Because wherever we buy it doesn’t really matter, there’s going to be something there. So that’s amazing! I think that’s going to be a revolutionary product, my friend. I mean, that’s pretty big.
[00:30:31] Martha Carlin: We believe so.
And actually, my husband and I moved to a farm. We’ve been in Colorado for the last 25 years. I grew up in Kentucky and we moved back east to a farm in the area where I grew up so that we could grow our own food, have our own animals, know what they’re fed, know what they eat, and be able to protect our own food chain.
[00:30:55] Detective Ev: There’s a quote that I’m probably misquoting. But it was something along the lines of like, the greatest act of rebellion against all this health stuff and like the crappy food in the grocery market and all these things is to be self-sustaining. Grow it yourself.
That is the greatest act of rebellion is to say, cool. Well, I don’t need your crappy grocery food store. Ideally you wouldn’t need a lot of the pharmaceuticals, although they are lifesaving in certain circumstances. So don’t be a martyr. Go use it when you need it.
But that is one of the greatest things that we can do and encourage people to do is try to get this stuff on their own. Much easier said than done. But the last two to three years, for me, that was all the push that I needed.
I’m like, you know what? Airbnb is so popular anyway. I’m like, worst case scenario, we have this great investment and we rent it out as that. Then again, worst case is we could use this for something really important if need be.
Tweaking the Diet for Parkinson’s – a Gut Problem
With all that said, you had mentioned certain foods being able to feed bacteria or rather have the bacteria do different things in different ways. I know this is not a recommendation for everyone, but is there a certain type of diet, if you’ll even call it that, that maybe you have your husband and you follow?
Is it more ketogenic? Is it paleo, is it vegan? What’s worked for you guys?
[00:31:59] Martha Carlin: So, in fact, he jokes about this a lot. It’s like the no fun diet version, whatever. We’ve tried a lot of different things. I think, currently, really a whole foods, low carbohydrate diet has been extremely helpful. You know, shifting more to the ketogenic side and away from those grains.
I mean, I can’t believe in all these 21 years, we didn’t find out until last year. We did the wheat zoomer and he had eight, like four gluten and four gliadin antibodies that were focused on that.
But we’ve also recently been looking at a low sulfur. There’s evidence in the microbiome of people with Parkinson’s in a longitudinal study that there is dysregulated sulfur metabolism. So, we’re looking at that.
Then also a high lysine, low glycine diet. Those are a little bit tricky, but we actually just started working on that with our functional person this last week sort of trying to lay out how we might try that.
But definitely no sweets anymore. I mean, John stopped drinking beer or anything like that about 10 years ago maybe. Just laying off the grains and that’s been a big one. And no soy.
Molecular Mimicry
[00:33:16] Detective Ev: Yeah, definitely not.
When you said you guys did the wheat zoomer just last year, it was part of the story where I feel like I do this literally every sentence. We were kind of almost going back and forth in our sentence and I didn’t get something a hundred percent. Were you suggesting that he had been consuming gluten in some way for the last 20 something years?
Martha Carlin: Yeah.
Detective Ev: Oh my gosh.
[00:33:40] Martha Carlin: That actually tied out in a sort of odd way to my microbiome data. I had started working on a hypothesis of something called molecular mimicry where we could see the different bacteria that were more present in people with Parkinson’s, that your body produces an antibody to those, but they have molecular mimicry with human proteins.
One in particular we had been looking at was these heat shock proteins called Alpha crystalline. In human alpha B crystalline is part of the proteins that help manage misfolded proteins. Anyway, I had this like whole table of looking at the bacteria and what heat shock proteins produce, and I came across two papers.
One connecting the alpha crystallin. Wheat actually makes an alpha crystallin that has close histamology to the human alpha B crystallin. So that kind of tied out and we ended up getting the test.
But then also spinach, corn, and soy, I believe, they have an antibody to something called aquaporin. That manages like fluid in and out of tissues in the brain. So, these antibodies related to aquaporins could potentially be involved.
Making Metabolic Water While Fasting
We figured out there was a water homeostasis problem in people with Parkinson’s from the girls in my lab, when we were collecting fecal samples. They could tell someone had Parkinson’s just by looking at their stool sample. No information, they would know.
They said it’s like parts of it are like concrete. So that, I sort of tied back into this aquaporin and what could be going on with water back and forth across the cells.
[00:35:32] Detective Ev: Wow! How literally did you mean that? Did you mean like a hundred percent of the time they can tell this or like 60% of the time? Either way it’s impressive, but I’m curious about that.
[00:35:41] Martha Carlin: I don’t know if it was a hundred percent of the time, but it was a lot. And we couldn’t believe there was nothing in the scientific literature about it at all.
The other thing about that though, in the literature, mitochondrial dysfunction is part of what’s going on in Parkinson’s. And your mitochondria make metabolic water in your body when you’re fasting. So, the other thing that we’ve done over the last nine months, getting him back in shape from COVID was doing the fast-mimicking diet from ProLon.
[00:36:15] Detective Ev: Oh, nice. Yeah, we love those guys.
The first time I did that was for FDN, a few years back. You know, it’s not the most fun thing in the world, but man, it’s such a better way to fast. It’s like sustainable actually.
I’m someone, I’ve done these 72-hour water fast and like it works. But man, I mean, it is so mentally and physically challenging to do that, where ProLon.
A Gut Problem: Kicking Off That Autophagy
Would I rather be doing something else? Yes. But will I make it through? Also, yes. And they have the data to back it up. I suppose, for someone like you who clearly loves the data, I feel like that must have been cool to find something like that. Like, all right, this works.
So, are you guys going to be using that regularly now?
[00:36:43] Martha Carlin: We do. He did it about every five weeks leading up to get ready for our daughter’s wedding. That was in July, and now we’ve sort of spread it out like maybe it’ll probably be every six to eight weeks.
But he definitely by the end of that five-day fast looks a whole lot better, feels a whole lot better. And of course, autophagy’s not working well in Parkinson’s, so that kicking off some of that autophagy is probably a big part of what’s helping.
[00:37:12] Detective Ev: Yeah. It almost can’t be, right? I’ve really started to study over the last few years this idea of the mitochondrial dysfunction as a part of many chronic diseases.
Are you familiar with the guy, Dr. Doug Wallace?
[00:37:23] Martha Carlin: That name is familiar, but you know, I look up so many different people.
[00:37:28] Detective Ev: I could tell. Yeah. Geez. I could tell.
Anyway, someone like you would probably love his stuff. You could just go on YouTube even. And I encourage everyone out there to do this, Dr. Doug Wallace.
It’s pretty technical. Maybe even above my pay grade. I feel like you, honestly would have a much deeper understanding of it than myself if you listened to him.
Epigenetic Regulation of Mitochondrial Genes by Antibiotic Exposure
But he was the guy, he’s out of CHOP, believe it or not, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, for those that don’t know. The reason I say that like that is cause it’s close to me. I guess Martha and I know that, but the audience might not.
This guy was really one of the main people that figured out this whole connection between mitochondrial dysfunction and this chronic disease epidemic. If I’m not mistaken, his initial research showed a correlation between this and like 85% of chronic diseases, including cancers, autoimmune, everything, right? Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s. Well, I guess I could have blanketed that with dementia. But you know what I mean? It’s like almost everything.
Then, at that time, it was still believed that that other 15% probably is still relevant, but he just hadn’t gotten there yet in the research. It was amazing to see how this could correlate.
[00:38:28] Martha Carlin: There’s an interesting connection there too. Back at the beginning of my understanding of the microbiome and reading Martin Blazer’s book, I actually found a paper out of, I think it was the University of Oregon, where they showed basically the epigenetic regulation of mitochondrial genes by antibiotic exposure.
They showed the impact of antibiotics on the mitochondria and the post antibiotic expression of the mitochondria. It was changing the genes of the mitochondria, and they showed that that was, I believe, through the impact in the microbiome.
Because what you get left behind after you take the antibiotics, is a microbiome that is resistant to antibiotics. Well, that’s basically bacteria that can produce antibiotics. But then you get a factory in your gut that could potentially, you know, be making more antibiotics.
Does Soy Affect LPS Trafficking?
There was more impact on the mitochondrial gene expression post antibiotics than during antibiotics, which was kind of a mindblower for me.
And also tied back to one of the early books I read was on nutritional epigenetics, where I was able to kind of tie into how soy was maybe potentially regulating a gene involved in LPS trafficking, which is an inflammatory protein.
[00:39:59] Detective Ev: Wow, you are sharp as a tack, my friend, by the way. This is very impressive.
Well, we get a lot of smart people that come on, but like, I mean, the fact that you weren’t even in this space. I don’t care if you’ve been doing it for 20 years. The fact of the matter is you were not in the space for the first 40 something years of your life, not even close to that, and then have accumulated this amount of knowledge.
It’s both admirable just for the reason that you did it to begin with, but also just extremely impressive and cool that you could sit here on a camera with me and just be like, oh yeah, this, this, this, and this, this doctor, this thing. That’s pretty amazing.
Then I watched her, for those just listening and not watching on the video. I watched her jot down the Doug Wallace thing. So, I know you’ll be catching that lecture probably pretty soon. So that’s really cool.
As we kind of have our last six, seven minutes here together, what is the mission for you now? Because I am sure you guys are at a point where you don’t need to be doing these podcasts.
Fixing a Gut Problem for the Whole World
You could probably go figure out something else. Yet here you are about to launch a whole new product in the upcoming year. So clearly that passion’s never died. What’s the mission for you now?
[00:40:51] Martha Carlin: Well, my mission is to bring healing to the gut, to like the whole world if I can.
What I’ve said to a lot of people is we can sort of make a temporary fix on the gut. And I think we’ve got some good solutions for that at BiotiQuest. But ultimately, we’ve gotta fix the soil and the water and the food. I tell people all the time, they’re like, well, what’s your mission? What’s your purpose? And I’m like, saving the world.
[00:41:19] Detective Ev: That’s cool. And you’re actually out here doing it. I think it’s kind of brilliant. I always tell people, and any functional practitioner would, you try to utilize the foods and sources of water that might have less exposure to glyphosate.
But I know if I take a urine test right now, of course I’m going to have glyphosate in me. Which is really scary in a sense. Like I can’t get away from this. It’s almost like in the world of functional, we don’t focus on the symptoms necessarily, we focus upstream. It sounds like, yeah, you’re playing chess cause you’re on that next upstream thing.
Like great, we can educate people. But the truth of the matter is, if this isn’t out of the soil and stuff, it’s an uphill battle for sure. And I think this is almost like just weird timing for you guys to come out with this. I think it’s amazing because I know in 2023, I think they’re required to ban it residential, for glyphosate.
Lighten That Glyphosate Load, Fix a Gut Problem
[00:42:03] Martha Carlin: Yeah. But that’s not where most of it’s coming. I think that was sort of a gimmie. It’s still being sprayed. I think I saw somewhere it was like 400,000 tons a year or something just in the United States.
[00:42:17] Detective Ev: I totally agree with you. It sounds cute and it sounds nice, but you realize, that’s not the main problem.
Nonetheless, I know like my dad, he had landscaped his whole life and now we don’t use it thankfully. But he didn’t know any better at the time and so he’s walking around just spraying Roundup.
So, to some degree it’s probably going to impact at least somewhat positively, which is great. We have a lot more work to do. But I think, truly your product that you’re working on, that’s going to be something that could put a dent in it. I have never heard of anything like that.
[00:42:45] Martha Carlin: We don’t think there is anything like that.
We have filed a patent. It’s moving forward, but that process is kind of slow. And the same thing with our human product. I mean, we need to do some kind of study where we can see and prove what it’s doing, either through urine metabolites or some of that. But we do know that those bacteria specifically do that breakdown. We do believe that it would help.
There’s another health group that makes yogurt out of our probiotics. They take a capsule and make it into high fat yogurt. I think some of the mechanisms there are that it makes the vitamins, especially the fat-soluble vitamins, more bioavailable.
There’s a lot of different things, tricks and tips, that you can do to make a difference on your glyphosate load, I guess.
Where to Find Martha’s Products & the Signature Question
[00:43:36] Detective Ev: Sure. All right.
Two more questions for you then today to finish up. One is where can people find your products that you currently have available if they wanted to purchase these things?
[00:44:10] Detective Ev: Okay. I’ll have this in the show notes.
Last question, and you might already know this if you listened all the way through. But my signature question on the Health Detective Podcast to finish up today is if I could give you, Martha, in this case, a magic wand, and you could get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, what is the one thing that you would get them to do?
[00:44:29] Martha Carlin: Oh, wow. Trust their gut. But take care of your internal ecosystem. Take care of your gut.
[00:44:40] Detective Ev: Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on with us today.
[00:44:43] Martha Carlin: Thanks so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.
Conclusion
[00:44:45] Detective Ev: All right folks. That’ll do it for today’s episode with Martha Carlin. I hope you guys enjoyed this one and are as excited for some of the things that she’s working on as I am.
I am someone who wants to have a self-sustaining property for a variety of reasons. And a couple friends and myself are looking to have that done early-ish, spring of 2023. Not done in terms of like, it being built. But done in terms of the land and the space has been purchased so that we can actually pursue this.
And to think that there might be a product coming out soon that would help us make the soil even better, that excites me a lot. I love the idea of this, and I will be the first consumer of it for sure.
Of course, if this does all go through as is planned, then we will be having Martha back on to talk just about that because that deserves at least one podcast episode in and of itself.
If you guys enjoy the content that we’re sharing, please consider leaving us a review on Apple and or Spotify. If you’d be so kind as to do that, we would love you even more than we already do.
I’m looking forward to talking to you guys again soon. But until then, please take care.
Only about one in four people have heard of Campylobacter, compared to 90 percent who are familiar with Salmonella. “Although the incidence of these two…gastrointestinal infections is amazingly high,” infecting more than a million Americans every year, “it is even outranked by the incidence of infection caused by extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC)”—a bug even fewer people have likely heard of.
Extraintestinal? That means outside of the intestines, as in causing bladder infections, and pathogenic, meaning disease-causing. Indeed, E. coliresults in millions of infections annually. As I discuss in my video Friday Favorites: Urinary Tract Infections from Eating Chicken, “multiple lines of evidence indicate poultry as a major food animal reservoir for urinary tract infections”—that is, a source for the bacteria that cause UTIs in people. (You may recall I explored this several years ago, as discussed in my video Avoiding Chicken to Avoid Bladder Infections.) This is based not only on studies showing that blood infections, brain infections, and urinary tract infections in mouse models can be caused by these kinds of E. coli from commercial chicken meat and eggs, but also on studies of women with multidrug-resistant urinary tract infections reporting significantly more frequent consumption of retail chicken. Similarly, elderly consumers of chicken were significantly more likely to have Cipro-resistant bladder infections compared to those eating no chicken at all. Pork, but not beef, was also associated with increased risk, as you can see below and at 1:14 in my video.
“There have been few observed associations between beef cattle or retail beef and human ExPEC, suggesting that beef cattle are not a reservoir for human ExPEC” (bladder infections), whereas, in chickens, of the up to 90 percent of chicken carcasses harboring E. coli, about one in five isolates tested had the potential to cause urinary tract infections.
What about eggs? We know retail chicken meat “is contaminated with ExPEC isolates that resemble the strains that cause human infections,” but what about retail chicken eggs? Instead of one in five being ExPEC in chicken meat, it was more like just 1 in 20 among eggs, which is closer to levels for pork or beef.
Researchers are so sure that chicken is the primary reservoir that when they find the same kind of strain in a vegetarian, they interpret that “as consistent with human-to-human transmission or errors in reporting of poultry consumption rather than human strains being derived from a source other than chicken.” Someone may claim to be vegetarian but actually eat some chicken, for instance, or perhaps there was human-to-human or even shopping-cart-to-human transmission. (See my How to Shop for, Handle, and Store Chicken video.) Most people fail to sanitize their hands after picking up a package of poultry in the grocery store, so the “bacteria potentially left on the cart could affect other shoppers….A shopper who is not purchasing poultry, or is purchasing poultry and is following safety precautions, could still be exposed to poultry contaminates via the cart.”
“It’s difficult to estimate how much ExPEC exchange can be attributed to person-to-person contact” after the rectum of a poultry consumer has been colonized. Researchers swabbed public restrooms to try to quantify the risk, collecting more than a thousand samples from 56 public restrooms in 33 establishments. As you can see in the graph below and at 3:07 in my video, they found a lot of evidence of E. coli in general, but particularly in restrooms at public parks and fast-food joints—even more so than gas stations, which surprised me. What was really unexpected for me, though, was that women’s restrooms were worse than men’s!
Only about 1 percent of the samples the researchers took were positive for ExPEC bacteria, however, but they were recovered from sites that were not associated with toilets and were not visibly contaminated. So, one might come into contact with ExPEC bacteria with their bare hands after turning off a faucet after washing their hands, for example. In this way, the risk “could not be fully eliminated by careful hand washing or avoidance of fecal-appearing debris”—though it’s probably a good idea to avoid that anyway. Using hand sanitizers after exiting the restroom, not to mention in the meat aisle after touching a package of poultry, may offer additional protection.
What proportion of the seven million bladder infections—a common form of urinary tract infection (UTI)—every year in the United States is caused by chicken meat? “If no more chicken were consumed, how many E. coli UTIs would be prevented and how much would the prevalence decline?” It’s hard to tell because of the “time lag between the acquisition and asymptomatic colonization of the intestine with an ExPEC organism and the development of an infection.” You can eat some contaminated chicken today, but the UTI-causing ExPEC bacteria may hang out in your colon for months before making their way into your bladder and triggering an infection. The reason we know it can take that long is by studying the intestinal population dynamics of UTI-causing E. coli between partners. Increased rectum-to-rectum transfers “might be explained by the high levels of E. coli present in the urine of an infected woman, increasing the probability of transmission via direct contact.” That is, the E. coli could then be transferred to their partners, depending on certain intimate practices, such as cunnilingus.
The bottom line? There is “compelling evidence that retail meat, particularly poultry, serves as an important reservoir for human exposure to antibiotic-resistant E. coli that is causing UTIs. Thus, the term foodborne UTIs or FUTIs has been adopted to describe these infections.”
Certainly, we could decrease the burden of these foodborne bladder infections by developing some sort of ExPEC vaccine, but why not just reduce our contact with fresh or frozen poultry? No harm, no fowl.
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Well, hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on IV Nutrient Therapy and The How Do You Health? Festival.
We have some great energy in this episode. There’s actually three of us hanging out, because we had two guests on at the same time. We are talking to Baldomero Garza, aka Baldo, and Jonathan Mendoza, aka Nurse Doza.
We are talking about Vitamin IV therapy, which is going to be really interesting. But most importantly we are talking about The How Do You Health? Festival. The How Do You Health? Festival will be going on in December in Austin, Texas. It is a Friday to Sunday event, so let me get the dates for you really quick. It is December 2nd, that Friday until Sunday, December 4th.
I will be there. I’ll actually be speaking for FDN at that event. We’ll have Courtney Jagoda there as well. And Courtney Jagoda, if you do not know, is someone who is on our course enrollment team. You might have actually talked to her if you enrolled in the course already and you are currently an FDN or an FDN in training. We would love to see you guys.
I’m sure there’s going to be a bunch of other FDNs hanging out because Austin is seemingly a hotspot for all things functional medicine, biohacking, all this cool stuff.
I’m going to read the bios for these gentlemen here and then we are going to get right into it today.
About Baldo and Nurse Doza
Baldo has extensive experience in education and sales, marketing, and startup business practices. He holds a certification in yoga, is a fellow biohacker, and loves mixing health drinks behind vitamin bars to help people feel good. His philosophy is to focus on the simple things that we all have access to, to optimize our bodies and create a healthy environment conducive to longevity. He believes that fasting, sleep, and exercise are the greatest tools and foundations for longevity, and that nutrition, supplementation, and meditation is how we maximize those tools. Climbing is also his passion.
Then Jonathan Mendoza, aka Nurse Doza, is the founder of MSW and co-founder of the Health Lounge, MSW Nutrition, and How Do You Health? Network in Austin, Texas. An Austin Native, Nurse Doza has been studying nutrition and its effects on our health for over 15 years. While in his last year of chiropractic school, Nurse Doza began nursing school so that he could eventually utilize the healing benefits of both body work and intravenous vitamins and minerals.
Now, MSW Health Lounge is an Austin hotspot for groundbreaking health and wellness, hosting regular lunch and learns and other events for the community to come together and learn about how to improve their lives with health. His passions include teaching, discovering new healing modalities, interviewing guests on the How Do You Health? Podcast, and traveling with his loved ones to anywhere with a mountain.
I think you guys are really going to like the episode. It’s just, again, really fun energy. Then we’re talking about some exciting stuff.
How Do You Health? Festival
They have the first, well, first that I know of, Health Lounge, where people can actually just come to hang out and talk health with other people.
Then they have what is probably going to end up being one of the flippin’ coolest health events of the entire year, How Do You Health? Festival. We’ll talk about how you can get a discount for that if you’re looking to come to it. We will shout that out at the end of the episode, and then you can find it in the show notes as well.
Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode. All right. Hello there Baldo and Nurse Doza. Welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you guys?
[00:03:22] Baldo: Great man. Thanks for having us on, for sure.
[00:03:24] Detective Ev: All right. If you are listening, because guys, we were doing audio way before we ever did video. Actually, the video side is something we only just started publishing recently, believe it or not. We did almost 170 episodes of this podcast audio only.
So, for those listening that are maybe confused, like, did I just say hello to two people? You heard it correctly. We actually have two guests today at the same time, cause these guys work together. I think this is going to be fun. I mean, my gosh, our 50 minutes already fly by as it is.
I feel like today’s going to be a total breeze and that’s why I don’t want to spend any more time messing around. I want to get right into it with you guys. One thing I do want to do because I want it more conversational, of course, but I will go with you guys individually, if you don’t mind.
Looking For a Higher Purpose
It’s so important on the show that we figure out the person’s background and how they got into this space. Everyone finds that interesting. No one gets into this space by accident.
I guess Baldo, we’ll start with you, my friend. How did you even get to this place that you’re in now? Like, how did you get to doing this stuff?
[00:04:17] Baldo: This will be great because it’ll be a segue to his way, because my way to get into the health space was because of John.
For me, growing up I was always an athlete. I even played college tennis. After that, I always found myself in different competitions. And John’s the guy that I always came to for advice because, he’s my best friend. Since college we’ve been best friends. Also, he was working in that space, he’s a nurse practitioner and a chiropractor.
Basically, what it came down to is that we both found ourselves in our lives in a kind of a crossroads. With him, it was really more like he wanted to practice a certain way. For me, I was being very successful in sales, I was actually selling Cutco knives. But I just didn’t know what that was going to lead to. For me, I just got caught in the whole, what am I going to do next here? Just sell more knives? And then the year after that, just sell more knives.
But for me, it never connected to a higher purpose. At some point, hearing his stories and, you know, I do understand the whole realm of health. I always pretty much took care of myself. At that point, I was not taking care of myself the best. I had just started to let go.
Finding Fulfillment in Helping People
At the same time, I knew his struggles and his genius that I wanted to help some way. We always wanted to own a bar together. Growing up in college we used to drink so much. It just happened that we stopped drinking.
I mean, he stopped drinking, then, because of that, I stopped drinking. So, we didn’t have a bar to really run anymore, or that idea of one. Then we decided to do more of a health bar. That’s how both the clinic started and then we also started a supplement company.
Then the next phase is we started a festival out of like, just trying to celebrate people doing health in different ways.
[00:05:51] Detective Ev: John, we’ll throw it to you.
[00:05:52] Nurse Doza: To kind of play off of what Baldo said, at the time when I pitched them this idea, it was probably around, I think 2016, 2015.
At the time in both of our lives I just got married, just bought a house, had a kid, and thought about having another kid. You know, he’s traveling the world, wants to continue to travel and climb mountains, and find a job that is fulfilling cause he’s not really happy. I’m at a place where I made the most money at a job and I wasn’t happy either.
I said, well, I think we can find something that would really give us this fulfillment that we haven’t found before. I think it comes down to helping people. The way that we knew how to do that was through vitamins and through nutrition and lifestyle changes. Because as a chiropractor, you know, that’s what we’re taught, to treat the body as a whole and do it from a natural standpoint as possible.
Vitamin Bar Idea – IV Nutrient Therapy
Then as a nurse practitioner, you’re taught medications and how to prescribe. I quickly realized that medicine wasn’t going to be the answer. It wasn’t going to fix everything. Most people thought medicine would, you know, be a magic pill.
So, when we got into starting a business, everything was from the ground up. My personal journey was diabetes in my family. I was pre-diabetic at one point. Baldo mentioned, I drank a lot, ate like crap, but somehow managed to be successful and somehow pull it together. Then realized I wasn’t keeping it together and said, all right, now I gotta work on myself and improve myself before I can start helping others. This is all going on while I’m becoming a practitioner.
By the time I get to get my so-called crap together, now it’s the point where me and Baldo are at Crossroads in our professional life and saying, hey, we want to try something different. Let’s go for this Vitamin Bar idea. It’s crazy enough to work in a place like Austin, Texas and we’re going to work our butts off to make sure that it does work.
So, you know, being a practitioner, you’re not taught business. But Baldo taught me business and he taught me how to do a business in a situation that it’s never been done before. It’s been the most fun ride I could ever have dreamed of.
[00:07:46] Detective Ev: I gotta just say, I noticed this immediately, the respect that both you guys have for each other. Like, you guys are the first ones, you’re like, oh, John did this for me. Then you’re saying, hey, well he knew the business side and did that. That’s just real friendship.
Blue Bag Moments
That’s kind of cool. You guys are just making me excited. I’ve been doing health stuff for about nine years, you know, and you could do a lot by yourself, right? But it’s always better with more. One of my best friends just had what I would call (and this will make sense in a second), like his blue bag moment.
The blue bag is something that I heard from the speaker, Chris Brady. What it is, it’s like those ice packs that you used to have as a kid. You break it and then the blue stuff kind of spreads out everywhere. Once it spreads, it never goes back to its original form.
I think for many people in the entrepreneurial world or like the health world, it’s like, I mean, you guys went from drinking all the time to, that’s not even something that you do. And you’re starting a health bar, which is the exact like antithesis of a normal bar, which is amazing. There’s these blue bag moments that we have in life, typically with entrepreneurship and other things as well, where we just say, You know what? Enough’s enough. I’m never going back. I’m going to do something else. And your form is permanently changed.
He just had that. He calls me up, he’s an analytical chemist, smartest guy I know. He literally says, Dude, I quit the job. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I got $25k saved and I want to go do something else right now. I’m like, what? So, he came to a business conference with to be two weeks ago. I’m like, it’s a changed guy.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: Healthy Connections
I’m just excited cause I see in you guys the respect that you have and the success that you’re having business wise. And I’m hoping to replicate a similar thing down the road.
I want to know more about this health bar. Cause I would imagine that is the first thing going through everyone’s heads. So, in any order. I mean, I’m not going to make you guys go like one after the other every time. That’s kind of ridiculous. So, whoever feels inclined to tell us about it.
[00:09:21] Nurse Doza: I’ll go with this one. The vitamin bar idea is exactly what you think of it in your head right now. It’s people smiling and laughing and conversing. There’s music playing in the background, and we have a really good time. I mean, that’s really what it is.
But the conversations and interactions, engagement all evolves around health and wellness topics. It’s very educational, it’s very matter of fact. It’s also open-minded discussions, which, you know, basically sets the environment for intellectual people attending and showing up to be at this Vitamin bar, right?
Because if you think about it, if you were a health and wellness enthusiast, like we all are, where do you go to hang out to talk about this with people? Because if you go to the gym, you’re not going to find it all the time there. I mean, that’s the truth. Then where else are you going to go? A smoothie bar?
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: You’re Always Welcome
It’s like, we need to go to a place. And a lot of times I thought about it, being a chiropractor. I was like, well, you go to a chiropractor if you want to be healthy. Then I’m like, all right, well, what if we had a bar that people wanted to get healthier, they wanted to hang out here and be healthy all the time here? Imagine if like they came here every day or every other day, and that’s what started happening.
We created a health bar that was so welcoming to the person needing some kind of encouragement in that direction, to get to healthy. They found it with us. Everyone who comes in here is on their own path to health and wellness. Which I think is why we’re in this realm because we know that something helped us, we can help other people.
So, the vitamin Bar is more of that. It’s a community. And it’s a community where people can come together and know that they’re always welcome. Even during the pandemic, everyone was welcome, if you know what I mean. We wanted to make sure that if you always need help, you want to feel better, you want better energy, you want to lose weight, you don’t know who to talk to about your body, you know, like you can come to us. We’re always here if you want to talk about it.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: Deep Health Subjects
[00:11:02] Baldo: Now you gotta understand that it is a health bar. That’s why we call it that. I mean, the first name of it was the Vitamin Lounge. That’s what it was. But it is a holistic care clinic, right? So, if anyone needs anything, blood work, like anything that you would go to a regular clinic for, you can find it here, you can do it here. The only difference is that the setting is different, right?
The setting is we have really comfortable chairs. There’s always like some deep house music going on in the background. But people are talking about those issues that normally, even with your regular doctor, is hard to kind of like address those.
Sometimes doctors, even in your case sometimes, it’s like you’re pulling at the teeth just to get like, can you just tell me what’s really going on? It’s like, then they’re kind of embarrassed or like it’s a taboo subject. Well, you don’t get that a lot in our clinic or in our lounge. Because there is this setting and it’s almost like people, for some reason, people walk in, and you’ll hear some of the deepest health subjects or concerns or sicknesses. They’re just being spoken about out in the open, but in a very like, charming way.
Cause people are like, well you know what? My cousin had the same thing. This is what they tried. Now all of a sudden, it’s like there’s a support system while the music’s going and they’re having vitamin drinks and maybe they’re getting an IV. That’s kind of how that goes.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: You’re Gonna Feel Better
And then we have lunch and learn. We’ll bring in speakers from everywhere just to come give an hour thing and we’ll do free lunch for people. So, very much a communal environment that we set up. It’s kind of like what you do when you go to the bar, right? Like you drink with your buddies and no subject is taboo.
You’re just talking about everything cause you like, have all these drinks. It’s just that you’re not drunk and you’re not going to feel like crap the next day.
[00:12:35] Nurse Doza: You’re going to feel better the next day actually. And that’s the thing. What was really cool about it was we quickly realized because of this whole setup, anyone that showed up to our lounge was going to get healthier.
Like the second they walked in, whether it was a conversation, whether it was one of our vitamin drinks, whether it was a vitamin IV, they were going to get better. So, we knew that we had something special on our hands.
And we talked about like, how can we make this even more unique? So, what we started to do was customize the whole approach, right? Because there’s one side of it where you can come in and get a vitamin IV. At the time, we were starting like the movement with a bunch of other people who were opening IV clinics. It wasn’t the norm. Now it is, right?
At the time, people were like, why would you do a vitamin IV? Why wouldn’t you just take supplements? We’re like, well, it’s cause it’s the best way to put vitamins in your body. Okay, that makes sense. And after a while, everyone was doing them.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: Measuring Performance
Well, they came to us after a while because they were like, well, you know, I think there’s a reason why I need these IVs so much. Can you tell me why? So, we said, yeah, of course we can, we do lab work.
They’re like, What? We’re like, yeah, we do tons of labs. We do advanced lab work, which you all know about. And we said, so we can figure out exactly what’s going on in your body and we can play around with it and kind of see what makes you function better.
Then what we started doing was customizing the vitamin IVs. We started customizing the vitamin drinks they were having along with the vitamin IVs. What we started noticing was that people were getting better. And when you say get better, it’s like, well, how do you measure better? It’s like, how do you measure performance, right?
I say, you know, better energy, better mood, better sleep, better poops, better sex, better body, better mindset. To me, that’s feeling good. That’s what we were doing for people. It was very interesting because we’re using very scientific things that are taught in medical clinics and schools, nursing programs.
They’re saying, this is how you’re supposed to take care of the body. We said, yeah, but we’re going to make it fun. So that’s what this whole concept is.
[00:14:26] Detective Ev: I love you guys already. I just gotta say this is freaking awesome. Great attitude, great business partners together. I got a few questions. I guess a little bit different topics though.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: Catering to the Work Experience
So first, most obvious one is just to be clear here, so I could come in, and maybe I’m wrong, but like I could come in on Friday at 5:00 PM. Maybe I don’t even want to do any tests right now, but like, I just want to meet other health-oriented people. I’m traveling to Austin. Am I understanding that correctly? I can come in and just hang out there?
[00:14:50] Baldo: Oh yeah. People co-work here all the time. One of the first things that I said, look, whatever we do, we just gotta have the fastest internet. I don’t want someone leaving only because of the reason that they can’t download an email that they really need to check.
That’s such a basic concept, right? But it’s like, people just come because of that. Like, they’ll just co-work.
[00:15:07] Nurse Doza: But you gotta think about this, so you’re getting a vitamin IV which for anyone who hasn’t had one before, it takes about an hour. You’re sitting down for 60 minutes straight. What are you going to be doing for 60 minutes straight?
Well, think about most people during the workdays, they’re going to be working, right? So, they bring their laptop. What we do is we cater to that experience. A lot of people will come in and they’re like, hey, I gotta get on this call, I gotta jump on this, blah, blah, blah.
I’m like, do what you need to do. Just stick your arm out and tell us what kind of mix you get.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: A Legit Medical Clinic
If they call ahead of time, they schedule, the IV is literally waiting for them with everything they need in the bag based off their labs and with a very white glove kind of smooth operation.
So, you imagine like, well, what if I don’t do the IV? I’m like, Well just come and hang out. Listen to a talk. Just come in. That’s what we tell people.
Cause you imagine when we started this, it was very hard to explain it to people right away. Obviously, we’ve gotten used to saying it over and over again, but at first it was very different for most people.
So, they sometimes say like, I don’t understand, this is a medical clinic? I’m like, yeah. I have a license and everything to do all this stuff. You just gotta come over here and check it out. When they walk in, they got it. They just walked in, and you feel the energy when you walk in. You just kind of sit down and people have called it a vortex. People have called it like just getting lost sometimes.
But they’re just like, what is it about this place that I want to be here? And what’s cool is, I don’t know too many people can say this about their jobs. When Baldo and I started, we quickly realized we never knew who was going to show up at the lounge that day.
It was kind of a good thing, right? Because people were literally driving by, or they brought a friend in from town and they would bring them over. They’re like, hey, you gotta check this place out. There’s nothing like this. I don’t even know how to describe it. I just bring people here and just make them feel good.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: In and out All Day Long
We’re like, cool, all right, do this, blah, blah, blah, and then just throw it at them. They would be like, what is this? Like, what am I doing? This has to be good for me, right? I’m like, yeah. You’re actually detoxing your liver, revitalizing your brain, and balancing your hormones.
They’re like, what? Are you serious? I’m like, yeah, you just make sure that you do this more consistently than usual, and then you’ll feel the difference after a while.
[00:17:03] Baldo: What’s crazy about it is that IVs actually took a little while for them to start out, cause for like the first year it was mostly IMs, injections, right?
We had like different formulas. We had a menu kind of like if you go for a smoothie bar. They’re like, well, what kind of shot do you want? People would be like, well, let me get an eight pack. Because then they would come twice a week and they would be like, all right, I’m going to show up. I’m here for my shot. Like I’m going to take off, grab a drink. Then they just pop in and out all day long.
[00:17:25] Nurse Doza: That was the crazy thing. It was like a bar. And it is still like a bar. We have people who’ve come in two or three times a week. Sometimes they just come in, stop by and say hi. They’ll grab a drink. They’re just like, I just want drink.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: Convenient Health
What happens is we actually put a supplement store in the front cause we have a really good supplement line. Some people just come in and buy supplements. So, I never even see them come in for IVs or whatever.
They’re like, oh, so-and-so stopped by and picked up a bunch of X. I’m like, What? Like, yeah. They said hi, and said they were doing well. They were just checking in almost like, Cheers. I’m just like, Wow, that’s awesome.
What’s really great about it is like, you know Baldo was saying with the wifi, those little attention to detail things. Like now someone’s going to come there and know that they can get all their work done. They can put their headphones in, they’re not going to be bothered.
And we have their card on file, so they don’t even have to pull out their card. They just like, you got me right. Okay. I’m gone. Then they walk out. To me it’s convenient. This is convenient health at your fingertips, how you want it. It’s wellness your way.
[00:18:18] Detective Ev: Dang.
All right. I have an entrepreneurship-oriented question and then I have a health-oriented question. I actually think I’m going to start with the entrepreneurship one because our audience, guys, is a lot of people considering the FDN course. It’s people in the course or people that have already graduated. And naturally about 90% plus, I mean, it might even be 95% plus of the graduates are taking a more entrepreneurial approach.
Making it Over the New Entrepreneurship Hump
First of all, the fact that you guys are in Austin is amazing. We go down there a lot for conferences, and we have a lot of FDNs in Austin. So literally after this interview, I’m going to make sure to shout this out for you guys in our professionals’ group, cause I’ll have people coming in next week. So, this’ll be amazing.
You guys got great energy. But with the entrepreneurship side, my girlfriend, my business partner and I, we started what we call a light therapy studio in, I’m in Pennsylvania. We just started that in April of this year. It’s weird, it’s different.
We’re using red lights, but I also have UV lamps for vitamin D because we can’t really get that up here in the winter. Like from November to January you can’t get any and most people aren’t going out with a bunch of skin exposed in February or January anyway. So, it doesn’t even matter that you can get it in a sense.
We have a bunch of stuff in there, infrared sauna, it’s all light-oriented and it’s different. Like you said, I mean, some people come in, they’re like, what is this? And then they come in, they’re like, oh, I get this. This is cool.
You guys were doing something innovative, something new, and clearly just by going through the years here, you obviously have had success for yourself. Otherwise, you guys probably would’ve been outta business by now. You made it over that hump. Entrepreneurship can be tough.
FDN, we’re not reinventing the system. There are thousands of FDNs out there. So, I figure any advice that you might be able to give for that can help these guys.
Having an Opportunistic Mindset
How did you navigate a new space? How did you get through some hard times? Like what’s your advice for these entrepreneurs out there that are listening?
[00:19:54] Baldo: I will say this, when I got into this space, like I said, I had no health. What I would say first of all is let your passion drive you. You’re going to have to, because I mean that’s what was exciting for me.
Like so much was, no. No. No. You can’t do that. You can’t say that. No, you can’t do it that way. You can’t say it that way. Coming from a very strict business sales aspect, which I’ve done for many, many years. Many times, it was like, hey, let’s go, let’s try this. He’d be like, no, we can’t. You can’t do that.
This is a medical industry. He’s like, okay, well no, you can’t do that. You can’t give that. You can’t give commission. Like you can’t. All these like can’ts. For me it was always like, sweet. That means that I now have barriers. So as long as I stay within these barriers, then it’s easier to get more creative with it, because now I know I can’t go this far or this far.
Definitely attitude’s a big one, because you gotta see all those cant’s and why nots. You gotta see them as opportunities to like, well, sweet. That means that I have less things to think about so that I can allow my creativity to grow.
At this point, like what we became known for was free B12 shots. Our sign still says, Home of the Free B12 Shot, right? So, people come in, it’s like everybody gets a free B12 shot that’s never been here before.
Plenty of Barriers, Less Decisions
Usually, that’s the little nugget that once they come in, they see all the other things and they want to ask questions.
For us it was always education, right? It’s an opportunity to educate people on the different things. We made it very simple from the get-go. I think this is also an important point, to have your values and what is it that you’re going to stick to?
For us it was always, look, if any decision that we have to make doesn’t educate and or doesn’t help another business grow or another person grow in some way, then we’re just not going to do it. Right? Because as we started to get more popular, we had so many opportunities.
It was quickly like, but who is that helping? Is it only helping us or is it only helping them? Then it’s not worth our time because we want people to grow. We want other businesses to grow as well too.
Then of course, we gotta have an opportunity to educate. That made it so much easier. What happened was that we just put plenty of barriers so that we have less decisions to make along the process.
[00:21:55] Nurse Doza: I agree completely with everything Baldo just said. To just summarize it, that’s the very beginning phase of an entrepreneurship, what he just described. You can summarize that as one word. Mindset.
Because like I said, I didn’t have a business background. I have a healthcare background; he has a business background. He doesn’t have a healthcare background. So, we were teaching each other. But like you said, there’s tough times at the beginning.
Lead with a Loving Service
If you’re bootstrapping it, creating something from the ground up, if you don’t get up, you’re not eating. You know? So that’s how I look at it, right? That was our mindset.
It was like, all right, no, is not an answer. You know? If you tell me, no, that’s fine. I’m going to find another solution. That’s what he taught me. So quickly, I was like, perfect.
Then I have to be self-sustainable at the same time, so I gotta work on myself. Which he also taught me breath work, yoga, introduced me to yoga, which changed my life. He would be like, now you can just do that whenever, you have that tool. That’s cool.
Mindset was everything at the beginning of entrepreneurship. It’ll get you through tough times. Sometimes you just have to believe it will.
Then the second part, which I believe is what was a big success for us too, even to this day, is we have always led with our loving service. This has been taken from a mentor of ours. If you think about it, Baldo said this perfectly before. He said, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. I said, that’s fascinating.
He said, your passion is what’s going to be what motivates people to want to do the work and be involved and stay engaged. I said, really? He goes, yeah. That’s like the perfect sales pitch. I was like, okay. So, every time that someone showed up, remember, keep in mind we’re starting from ground zero.
People See Authenticity
So, one person walks in the door, we’re giving them the undivided attention. Well, when a hundred people finally walked in the door together, we’re still giving everyone the same attention. At least we try our hardest. Because we know they’re coming clear across town, sometimes out of town to come in here and see us and to see this. We gotta make it worth their while.
We think about like, all right, there’s that one time someone’s going to hear or say or think something for the very first time, and all of a sudden it changes their world the way that everything that we’ve done has changed ourselves. So, that loving service though, will never steer you in the wrong direction.
People see authenticity, they know you’re real and they know they can trust you, which is the next step into actually getting paid.
[00:24:11] Detective Ev: Well, and it’s an energy guys. I mean this seriously, I’m not one to say negative things, but I also won’t flatter people just for the sake of it. I mean, no. It just shows, it’s obvious.
You guys started speaking for five minutes and I’m like these guys are different. It’s a whole, not to sound too new agey, hippie, but like, it’s a consciousness, it’s a vibration, whatever someone wants to call it. You guys got a great one coming out in this podcast.
Now, switching to a health question, but still related to your business. I’m fascinated by any science that might be behind the IV thing because I go to a clinic near me. It’s in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It’s cool.
A Question About the Scientific Evidence
I go there if like I was feeling a little rundown or maybe before I’m traveling sometimes. Or If I was doing a fast, it’s great to get those electrolytes in. I mean, they do a great job at that. And I felt those. I don’t always feel everything that they do.
I know you’re not supposed to feel everything that they do necessarily. But of course, I mean at least at their place, those treatments are a good amount of money. You could go in there and buy a $400 treatment.
Now, I believe it has validity. I have never sat there and looked one time at a study, admittedly. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff to look up, right? Is there science showing how much better this is? I mean, people keep going to these places, so obviously it’s doing something.
Why would someone come in here and pay these amounts versus just buying oral supplements for some of this stuff.
Commerical Break: Health Space Unmasked
Hey there friends. It is Detective Ev popping in here really quick. I just wanted to tell you; we still have our event going on for the Health Space Unmasked event.
If you do not know what that is, it is where we nerd out on the first Saturday of every single month of the year. So, depending on when you’re listening to this, if you’re listening to this in the future, you could still catch the next event that would be relevant to you.
But I’m looking for the people who might have been listening to this episode in the first two days that it came out. Then, you have not missed our November one yet, which is November 5th, 2022, at 8:30 AM PST all the way until 10:30 AM PST.
This month’s topic is Oral Health, Sleep, and Metabolic Balance featuring Reed Davis and Dr. Aron Gonshor. Dr. Aron Gonshor is the genius behind Fluid’s IQ Lab, which if you already train with us, then you know how great they are. If you do not know anything about FDN yet, and the labs that we use, totally fine.
Fluid’s IQ is a company that came in and saved the day for us when we really needed it, and we wanted to partner with a new lab. They are so willing to customize. They are fantastic for our practitioners and just for our company in general. So, we love these guys. And again, Dr. Gonshor is a genius.
So how you can get involved in this event and further events, is by going to fdntraining.com/unmasked. That’s fdntraining.com/unmasked. And of course, I will have that in the show notes for you guys as well.
Now back to today’s episode.
IV Nutrient Therapy: Better Your Biochemistry
And forgive my ignorance, but it’s a serious question.
[00:26:51] Nurse Doza: This is a very valid question and it’s something that we dealt with at the very beginning when we first started, especially coming from doctors, you know, like other doctors. Like why would I give vitamins in an IV? You know, that’s a waste of money.
That was part of when Baldo talked about the no’s before. He’s like, well, we can just ask for a bunch of referrals from doctor’s offices. I was like, no, they don’t like what we’re doing.
He’s like, why? I said, well, they don’t understand the science behind it. So, he would be like, well, what’s the science behind it? I said, well, it’s actually biochemistry. I said, have you ever heard of biochemistry? He goes, yeah, I’ve heard of biochemistry. You mean like carbon, and you know, magnesium and stuff? Yeah. Like that.
But what happens is the magnesium and the selenium go into your body, even the zinc goes into your body. Then you take in, form a recipe with it, and make hormones out of it. He’s like, what? I was like, yeah.
Like that’s why we eat, cause we need the nutrients out of the soil that comes from the food. Then we ingest that stuff, break it down, and use it for things like hormones and like neurotransmitters and detox. He’s like, what? So, that’s why we should take vitamins. I said, yeah.
But here’s the thing. When you take the right kind of vitamins, your biochemistry works better, which means your overall function will improve.
IV Nutrient Therapy: We’re Like Mechanics
So, when we look at labs, and this is a perfect segue into what you do, labs are actually the first thing that we’ve ever done. Even before we did a vitamin bar together, the clinic was a side gig for me, a few years before Baldo and I started together. I was doing just labs. I was doing house call telemedicine labs.
I didn’t have my nurse practitioner license yet. I was just doing it as a chiropractor. I was recommending supplements because I’m not going to recommend medicine. Supplements, you know, because that’s how much I believed in the research and all the peer reviewed articles that I had read before that I was like, wow, this is biochemistry. Like this is essential. This is our foundation.
So, I looked into more than just B12. Okay. I really looked into things like B9. I looked into things like glutathione. I looked into things like amino acids. I started studying epigenetics. What labs started telling me was it was a diagnostic scan of all the systems in the human body.
What we really look at is, when we look at labs, essentially, we’re a mechanic. When someone brings in their body, like the human car, essentially, they’ll say, I’m not sure which system is off, the light is on, aka their knee’s hurting or their back is in pain, right?
Okay, well let’s check the systems. Let’s do a diagnostic scan, order some labs. Okay, cool. And then you say, okay, well, we got your report back and this system over here, the one that deals with detox, well at checkpoint B, according to your labs, it goes left and it should go right.
IV Nutrient Therapy According to the Objective Data
I think because it’s going right or it’s going left, I think it’s because you’re deficient in this thing over here, which we noticed. This deficiency directly leads to malfunction of this organ and this system. And if we essentially give you what you’re missing, the whole thing works better.
So, everyone’s like, yeah, that sounds like it makes sense. I’m like, okay, cool. How do you want your vitamins then? They’re like, I don’t know, the best way possible.
I’m like, okay, let’s put them in an IV. Some people are like, well, I’m terrified of needles. I’m like, okay, cool. We’ll put them in pills. Or how about this? You want to have them really fun? We’ll make drinks with them and now you can have a vitamin stack every morning instead of coffee. People are like, okay, how do I know this is working?
Because, you know, I can feel a difference. I’ve lost a little bit weight. Is it placebo? I’m like, okay, let’s check the labs again. What we started doing was we followed up all our labs with people and we basically turned everything into a protocol.
So, we say, okay, if you’re going to start this and you really want to be serious about it, cause we’re all science nerds, which everyone bought into. They say, yeah, I want to see my data. I’m like, this is objective data. That’s what labs are. It just tells me what’s going on in the systems.
Then it’s up to the practitioner, the individual to decide what to do about it. What we’ve decided to do is say, okay, we’re going to give you X, Y, Z and then we’re going to recheck the labs.
IV Nutrient Therapy: Effective Absorption
Here’s the thing. We don’t care about a diagnosis. And I’m going to just be honest. If you call it diabetes, I’ll say it is metabolic dysfunction. What about depression? I’m like, you mean mood issues? You’re like, yeah, I like that. I’m like, cool.
Because the way we’re going to view this is we’re just looking at what the labs tell us. You can tell me all this subjective stuff, your toe is on fire, all this. But what the labs tell me is completely different. So, when people start looking at it that way, they say, okay, so I’m not just getting an IV because I’m hung over.
I’m like, no. No, we’re giving you an IV because your immune system sucks, and this is the only way you’re going to absorb your nutrients and lower your inflammation. And we can show the lowering of inflammation in, guess what? Laboratories.
[00:31:05] Baldo: I’ll follow that up a little bit with the business side of that equation. Because for me, when I first started, I was like, I don’t understand why these things cost so much money.
And I get it like from a business standpoint, like vials only last a certain amount of time and they have to be at a certain price for it to make financial sense. Plus, you need an actual nurse, which means that that salary is a little bit higher. So, all those different equations are higher prices.
But we quickly figured out like, look, if we’re doing protocols and people are doing this far in advance, and if we can sell them packages of IVs and sell them packages, now they don’t have to pay $400 bucks for an IV. They can pay an average of $160 for an IV.
IV Nutrient Therapy Packages
They can come in once a month or once every other week. They paid a little bit because now it’s a business transaction. That’s the thing that was always so frustrating with coming into the health world. I don’t understand supply and demand, if I order more things, it should be cheaper from our end.
I mean you talk about NAD and how expensive NAD treatments can be, like thousands of dollars. Well for us, we average a NAD treatment for $250 bucks. We just do so much of it.
Some people have asked other places because we’ve heard this, how come their NAD is so much cheaper? They’re like, it’s cause it’s not real, or it’s not the good kind. No, it’s just that we do so much of it, and we could get it at a cheaper price. It just makes sense.
That’s how our business model has always been. And we’re a cash only business, so it always just made sense. Even from the suppliers, we’re going to pay you cash. We’re not trying to do anything with insurances or anything like that. So that’s kind of been the strategy since day one.
I mean, we even just said like, we’re going to do free B12 shots for free, because people will come in for that. It’s like, but if you really want a really cool shot with that whole thing going on with your detox, you should add these two other vitamins. It’s just another $20 bucks. They’re like, yeah, let’s do that. So, all of a sudden, we weren’t doing free B12 shots. You know, it did happen, but most of the time it’s like, no, no. Kick it up a notch for $20 bucks more. It just made sense.
Customized & Affordable IV Nutrient Therapy
[00:32:56] Nurse Doza: I want to play on something that he said just a second ago. So, you brought up the IVs. You said, hey, I don’t know if it’s working or not. I don’t know if I was supposed to feel something.
Well, Baldo and I have always taken cost into consideration, right? Because this is cash based, which we understand like this is hard earned money people are paying this for. We made a vow to make sure that no one ever walked away from one of our IVs and said, oh, I didn’t feel anything. Because if they’re spending that amount of money, I want to know that I felt something.
So, every one of our IVs was designed very different. Our formulations are completely different than most of the IV clinics around the country. You will not find ours. Ours are very unique because they’re so customized. You imagine like when you get exactly what you need, you can feel the difference.
Keep in mind instant gratification is really big on most people. Especially if you’re building a system up, especially a business. They’re not going to say, I spent $400, $300, $200, $100 and I didn’t feel anything. I’m not going to go back there again and try again and take two. That’s not going to happen. We can’t afford to lose customers. It’s like, we gotta knock it out the first time.
Now the second thing was, going back to the cost, I told Baldo we have to make sure that this is affordable because health should be affordable. You know, cause really, like, food should be free, sunlight’s free, like, you know, water should be free.
But our cost has to make sense.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar for Every Walk of Life
So, what we started doing was thinking like, what if someone came in and just said, all right, I got $20 bucks on me. What can I do for 20 bucks?
It would be like the best thing I could do. I said, you could get a drink. You can get this supplement that you put on the tongue that gives you serotonin, dopamine within 20 minutes. Then you can get a free B12 shot. Here’s the thing, it hits 30 minutes later, you’re going to feel amazing. All that stuff detoxes your liver, so you’re reducing inflammation.
Then from a standpoint of saying, hey, this is essential, this is science behind it, I’m like, yeah, it’s all legitimate. You say for $20 bucks, I could spend $20 bucks on a lunch that’s going to inflame me and keep me constipated. Or I could go across the street and go get all these vitamins that’s going to make me feel incredible and add years to my life.
So, it quickly got turned into the idea of saying like, this has to be appealing to every walk of life, everyone who walks in here. If they can’t afford anything, we’ll give them a hug. Like honestly, we’ll give them a big hug and I’ll probably buy them a drink. I don’t care.
[00:35:13] Detective Ev: Yeah. It’s kind of genius too cause it’s coming from such a good place, but it’s also just genius from a business standpoint. Because when I’ve been into these places, I mean I know the one in my town, great people, love them to death.
I mean, the bare minimum is like $75 bucks. Like that’s the lowest one that you could do. Again, you can do things all the way up to $400.
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar Regulars
At least I’m somewhat educated on this, so I can go in and even if I don’t feel anything, I know in theory this was a wise thing to be doing when I’m sick.
But yeah, going in and spending $150, $200 bucks for most people on something that they might be skeptical of, and then they don’t even feel anything afterwards, it’s like, okay, well, I don’t know about that.
But by the way, I thought that was a great explanation that made a lot of sense to me. I mean, I’ve always had some common sense with it. Like, all right, vitamin C, for example, right? If I feel sick and I go get 10 grams of that, or whatever they put in the IV.
First of all, I know that even if I could take 10 grams of this, which normally I wouldn’t be able to, it’d make me very upset. I might have diarrhea or whatever. That’s not all getting absorbed anyway. So, as opposed to an IV, I’m actually able to take more and I can actually get more. So of course, there’s the benefit there.
Now, in a perfect world, I mean, how often would you guys like to see people coming in for this stuff? I mean, is this something that people in theory should be? I’m just saying, perfect world, wave a magic wand, every day, every other day, every week?
[00:36:24] Baldo: I mean, we have plenty that come in weekly. I think once a month is very common as well. We have a good chunk of people that come in weekly, like our regulars, right?
IV Nutrient Therapy: Feeling Like a Superhuman
They buy packages. We’ll even do like, hey, you know, we’re going to do a yearlong package. If you buy like an IV a week, it’ll be like super cheap. Just because we can fund it that way. We can go to our suppliers, aka our pharmacies, and they’ll give us even better deals cause we’re just like doing, you know what I mean? It’s just regular business sense.
Because for them it was also the same thing. Like our pharmacies, they’re like, wait, so you’re willing to like do that amount? Are you sure you’re going to use it? It’s like, well, we will. It’s not a problem. You have to manage those statistics on what you’re using and all that.
But we get to that point. At some point, it wasn’t too late in our business that we got to where we were at least doing bigger batches. You know? Now we do that where some people would be like, just gimme a whole year and then they get it at a better price, and they come in once a week.
But monthly is common. It’s probably the most popular thing where people come in once a month. I’m just here for like my tune-up basically.
[00:37:23] Nurse Doza: I would recommend to people, especially cause we get this question. I get this question a lot too. I’d say, look, if you could do it weekly, like honestly, if you could get a weekly IV, you would feel like a superhuman.
I mean, honestly, there’s no other way around it because I’ve been doing that for a while and that’s why I tell people.
IV Nutrient Therapy: For Some, it’s the Only Way to Take Vitamins
The clients that can afford to do it, who do it weekly, they tell us the same thing. They say they don’t get sick. They have tons of energy. They never had jet lag.
You know, they never really go out and drink anymore because they know that their tolerance has gone down so much because they cleaned out their liver. They’re like, I don’t even want to drink. Why would I do that to my body? I feel incredible.
So, I tell people like, well, if that’s not for everyone, a month is probably like a good starter. Like once a month is a good treat for yourself. It’s a good investment. Really, $200 bucks. I mean, come on. For a month you’re going to spend $200 bucks on something else that’s crappy.
Look, depending on where your nutritional levels and deficiencies are at, that one IV a month, might last a while. And I’m saying like a couple of months. You know, weekly IVs, they should last a week.
The thing is some people just choose to take their vitamins that way. Especially like, some people have colon cancer, that’s the only way they can take their vitamins. You think about it, they’re like, my digestive tract doesn’t absorb anything.
You mentioned the vitamin C. They’ll be like, well, I have to put this in here. But the thing is, I’m like, you don’t just need vitamin C. You need L-glutamine, right? L-glutamine is needed for your digestive tract lining.
IV Nutrient Therapy: Best Quality, The Best Way Possible
Most people have digestive tract irritation, which means they have a loss of glutamine. So, what do we do? We put glutamine in the IV, go back door, basically. Go up into the digestive track lining, and now we start basically adding to the collagen that way with the vitamin C and with maybe B5, and maybe a couple other things.
All of a sudden, we’re repairing it without having to go through the digestive track, which basically adds less irritation on our metabolism.
[00:39:06] Detective Ev: You guys are going to get me; I’m going to end up going to this place every freaking week for like three months.
[00:39:10] Nurse Doza: I know. Everyone says that.
Now here’s the thing. On a side note, I want to go back to vitamin C. I know we’re pressed for time, but just a side note. For anyone who does vitamin C IVs, you don’t have to go more to get the benefits, just FYI. Just keep that in mind even with Vitamin IV dosages and ingredients. More is not better.
Imagine like, I’m not doing glutathione all the time. I’m doing it every once in a while, and just a little bit. I’d rather do more NAD. You know? Like right now, Baldo and I each do big NAD IV bags weekly in our bag. We add the NAD to all our other stuff. Then we basically increased our dosages over years now.
So, to me it’s like, well, I have a daily supplement regimen and then my weekly IVs now consist of stuff that’s the best quality that gets into my body the best way possible, right?
IV Nutrient Therapy Vitamin Bar: Let’s Check First
Cause the term “optimization” is thrown around a lot. But if you own a freakin’ vitamin IV bar, with the best supplements and vitamin drinks possible, and you can do labs all the time, you’ve gotta believe we’re doing everything too. So, we do it, we turn right around and do labs and say, is it working? If not, let’s change it.
What is your diet doing? Okay, let’s check food sensitivities. Let’s check stool samples. You start looking and you say, okay, if you figured all the stuff out, you get to optimize. That’s where the fun comes into play.
The term mitochondrial biogenesis was discovered 30 years ago, and we quickly realized that our bodies have the capability to make new cells and spawn off and promote longevity. But you can only do that if you put the body in the healthiest state possible.
Well, think about it. Most people have to either take supplements or change their diet or do something in order to get the nutrition they need. We say, look, I don’t care where you take your supplements from. But if you come here, you’re going to take the ones you need.
Okay, some biohacker told you, you need 20 grams of vitamin C IVs all the time. Don’t listen to that person. All right? We gotta see exactly what your body needs, cause you might not need that much.
[00:40:58] Baldo: That happens all the time. It’s like I heard on the podcast that this and that. I was like, Bro, like no, no, no. That doesn’t have to be true. Could it be true? Maybe. But you know, you have to look. You have to find out and look and ask the right questions.
Third Company: How Do You Health?
[00:41:10] Detective Ev: Gotcha. By the way, guys, if we go a few minutes over, not a huge deal. I appreciate it. I mean, there’s a lot of energy here. There’s three of us, so no worries at all. I thank you for being respectful to that.
Well, now by the way, I will probably end up doing an experiment where I go to the place down the road like once a week, just for a few months. I mean, it’s so close to our business. It’s like four, five minutes away. First of all, it’s just great networking, you know? I like supporting them, they’re great people. So, I think I just may do that. And if I do, I’ll shoot you guys an email or something. I became superhuman as promised.
I wanted to talk about the festival too, like let us know about that. Something I’m excited for. So, for the viewers that have no idea, what is it called? What’s going on? When’s it happening?
[00:41:44] Baldo: I’ll start with that. It’s called How Do You Health? Our third company is called How Do You Health? It started as a podcast. That’s what we named our podcast. It kind of stemmed from like a bunch of different conversations that were happening in the lounge. It was like so many different angles.
At some point it’s like, well, I want people to hear about these things because the whole idea is that it’s not up to any one person to tell anyone what they should do for health. It’s a bunch of recommendations, right? There’s a lot of like, hey, I tried this, or my cousin tried that. This worked, that worked.
Venue for a Month
It’s really about like you educating yourself on all the different modalities that exist out there and making the right educated guess or an educated decision on what’s going to work best for you. What makes you feel the best? So, that’s where that name came from, The How Do You Health?
It’s the idea of like, what are people doing for health? Then what can you take from that and make it your own as well. We even tackle subjects as business health as well. You know, what are people doing for the health of their business? We kind of like that.
We always have our Friends’ Miss, where we kind of throw a party for like our clients and close friends. During the pandemic in 2020, we were looking for a venue to do our Friends’ Miss. It was supposed to be for a day.
Someone offered us, one of the venues. Hey, since you’re paying $X amount for this one day, like, would you guys be interested in just getting the whole month and doing something with it? And we’re like, why? How much would that be? He gave me the number. I’m like, man, like, no. We wouldn’t even know what to do with it.
So, whenever we signed the contract for the day, for some reason on the way there, I was like, hey man, like I’ll give you like five grand for the whole month. Like, what are you going to do with it? He said, I need more than that.
A Full Month of Community Health Related Events
And I was like, well, I’m just saying we’ll fill it up every day. But you know, I just wanted to throw it out there cause here’s some money. Then he ended up saying yes. And we did, we filled it up for one whole month and we just ended up calling it like, well this is The How Do You Health? Fest.
So, what we ended up doing, I texted a bunch of the business owners in Austin, health related companies, food companies. We’re like, Dude, come tomorrow to this venue Native Hostel. I got a surprise, like kind of a gift for the community. We both all showed up.
I brought this big old calendar and I said, hey, we got this one place for the whole month. We can do whatever we want because we’re going to make this a medical establishment, so it won’t get closed down. We are going to be doing IVs and it’s going to be our clinic. But this is also an opportunity to, what do you want to do?
People say, I want to throw this kind of event where like, we’re going to have a yoga class and then we’re going to educate people about vegan food. Awesome. You can have that Thursday.
Like, we’re going to do this Friday and we want to do things with paleo and with keto. And I was like, Sweet. You have that day.
So, all of a sudden, we had a full month of events all throughout the day with workouts and light shows.
The How Do You Health? Fest, December 2nd – 4th
That cool thing about it is that next door there was like this little integration of an immersive art experience right next door. So, worked out a deal with them where it was like, hey, as we sell our tickets, like they also get a pass for y’all. Give me a price on that. That worked out.
And then one of the nights, the biggest night was we had a psychedelic education night, right? During the pandemic, it became a big thing. We’re like, what about psychedelics? What if we did this? And we’re like, look, I know it’s out there. I think it’s our responsibility almost to provide education on it so that people can make their own decisions and not just go and take a bunch of drugs for no reason.
We had speakers coming in and speaking about those things. We had panelists. We had people talking about women’s health and panels on that, and speakers on that. And that’s what it just turned into this whole festival.
Then last year, that’s what happened. They’re like, so what are we doing for the festival this year? We’re like we weren’t even thinking about that. But then we pulled it off again. We did a three-day event and we got speakers from everywhere.
So, then this year, same thing. First, full weekend of December, December 2nd through the 4th. How Do You Health? Fest, howdoyouhealthfest.com. You can go on there. There’s so many speakers, so many different activations, so many different light experiences and play experiences. Our big thing is that we want to add play to everything.
An Outdoors, Healthy Environment Conference
I think the number one feedback that we got last year, my favorite feedback actually came from vendors. They love the fact that they got to be part of the experience and that they also got to enjoy the festival and not just work the whole time because we did it in the blocks.
Like now it’s time to go hang out with the vendors and learn about them. Like now it’s time to learn about what the sciences are and the speakers and the panelists, and then like, now it’s time to go play.
You know, this year we have this company called Gel Blaster. They’re setting up this really cool experience that’s like great for environmental health because it’s kind of like a paintball, but it’s all biodegradable stuff. They’re going to give away prizes and so we’re going to have little contests.
Freddie Kimmel’s going to come in and bring some people from Broadway and they’re going to do like a whole skit with everyone that’s in attendance. So that’s going to be fun.
Last year we filled up a pool with ice and we did a group ice plunge, 6,000 thousand pounds.
There’s going to be saunas, there’s going to be, I mean, you name it, there’s going to be all the tech, there’s going to be music, there’s going to be dancing, there’s going to be workshops. It’s a really neat experience.
We’ve gone to so many different health conferences and like you’re inside of a freaking closed door, no windows. People are like smoking and drinking. We went to Vegas, and I was like, this is not a health conference. I mean it was cause the information was great, but the environment around it wasn’t exactly that.
The Dream of the Ultimate Festival for Health & Wellness
That’s a common thing. Like you’re indoors. The sun is probably the healthiest thing that you can do. So, let’s do that. Let’s do more of that.
[00:47:01] Nurse Doza: Well, I think the festival itself, as far as like the vision, the whole concept for the vitamin bar on the backstory is that I pitched the idea to Baldo about the vitamin bar lounge years ago out of a music festival.
That was one of our things, we always go to ACL Festival here in Austin. It just happened a couple weeks ago. We always go. And I was like, Man, what if just one day we created a festival that was just like, you know, a dream festival for us? What would that look like?
We’re not musicians and we’re not in music, we’re in health and wellness, right? But we’re still artists. So, we’re like, well what would the ultimate festival for health and wellness would be like if you had like all the disruptors there, all the educational speakers you can imagine, all the cool wearable devices, and there was great networking and immersions and activations and experiences.
So Baldo and I talked about it. We said it’s the experience of having a community where you could show up, not know anyone, and feel welcomed enough to ask a question and feel like you can. And then, you know, like I said, that group ice plunge, we did it with like 30 people. I mean, I didn’t know everyone in there.
High Vibe, Loving Service Atmosphere Festival
I mean we jumped in together. Some people were doing it the first time. We jump in there and then right after that we all hop into a mobile sauna.
There was like a trailer built out like a sauna and it’s big enough to fit like 10 or 12 people. We had like a masterclass in there. This guy, he started, it turned into a master class. But we were all in there.
[00:48:21] Detective Ev: Just throws down in the sauna.
[00:48:23] Nurse Doza: It was cool. Then like breath work happened afterwards. We had a DJ there.
We’re going to have like live painting this year. Because think about it, if it hits all the senses, like why do you even go to a festival to begin with?
You go there for the experience; you go there to feel alive. So, when people show up, I have to imagine there’s some people who don’t have a connection to others. Especially nowadays, mental wellbeing is the most important thing you could do for your body.
If you look at just showing up to a place that is so welcoming to others and so lifting. You know, like we genuinely only hang out with people, and only invite people to hang out with us who generally want to help others. If you imagine that frequency, the higher-level consciousness, that’s what the festival is.
People on high vibe energy basically saying, hey Bro, you look like you could use some help. What do you need from me?
The Most Groundbreaking Info Possible
I mean, that’s essentially how it is all weekend. What do you need from me? What can I help you with? I mean, yeah, there’s vendors and you know, you can buy stuff, but that’s not what the intent is. It’s basically saying, hey, imagine if you couldn’t walk into our vitamin bar. But you were like, hey, let’s throw a festival out of it.
[00:49:28] Nurse Doza: That’s what this is. It’s like walking into our bar, but for three days in beautiful Austin, Texas, outside on this land that has the most beautiful homes you could ever imagine, with some of the most educated speakers on the most groundbreaking information possible, doctors, practitioners, like actual doctors, like actual practitioners, not, you know, someone that took a weekend course.
You have people now saying like, this is what’s going on right now in health and wellness. You should be on the radar with this because this is what the future of healthcare looks like. And that’s what we’ve created.
Honestly, Baldo and I are attendees when we’re there, you know? We’re there listening. I’m excited about some of the doctors who are going to show up because I’m going to get a chance to geek out with them and listen to them. Like that’s what this place is about.
[00:50:19] Baldo: I also enjoy the fact that we work with people that have run the festival that are willing to make changes on the spot.
A Fire-side Chat Under the Starlight
Last year we had beautiful weather and at some point, someone’s like, Man, it would’ve been cool if the stage was outside. And I was like, do you think we can pull this off? It was like, we got 20 minutes before the next thing and then somehow, we pulled it off. We just we’re moving everything down here.
Then we just had this under the starlight experiences, and we set up all the chairs around this big fire. It was like huge bonfire. All of a sudden it was like a fire-side chat, but it was a stage instead. Like plenty of people were there hearing.
And the first one was our keynote on psychedelics and then followed up by comedy. At some point I was like, oh crap, it’s 2:00 AM. It ends at 10 PM. It’s a ranch so people would just hang out.
[00:51:01] Nurse Doza: Talk about adapting.
So last year we set up a DJ with the idea that everyone’s going to dance. Well, it didn’t happen that way. The DJ was after the psychedelic education and it was so mind blowing that night. I mean, we had tons of doctors, panelists, like everything, and it was great. And afterwards people wanted to talk about it. They wanted to discuss more.
So, instead of going and dancing with the DJ music, they had it in the background and they had conversations along with it. The DJ came up and I’ll never forget, she was like, no one was dancing. I said, what are you talking about? Like, I was dancing when I was talking to this guy (like not in front of me).
A Revolutionary Concept
We were under this beautiful tree, and we were talking to all these people, and the beats were making us kind of like sway. We were jamming out. We weren’t talking over the music that much. So, it was like the perfect tone. She was like, huh? I said, yeah, you set the perfect setting for us. The experience was perfect.
This year we have a DJ now who’s going to be doing that all throughout the day.
[00:51:55] Baldo: She’s an environmental DJ. She’s going to be feeling the vibe and then playing with the vibe.
[00:52:00] Nurse Doza: So, if you need a break from learning, you can go chill and get higher vibration by a DJ on a lawn overlooking hills. Like it’s, you know. Come on.
[00:52:11] Detective Ev: This is so cool. I mean this seriously. Cause I’ve talked about other events on here all the time, so people know I’m not lying if they’re a regular listener. That description made this the one the most excited to go to in the past couple of years. I mean this could be awesome.
And I love the fact like what a novel concept, a health conference that actually has outside elements. How is this even revolutionary? Right?
But my friend Ben Azadi and I were just talking about this the other day cause we were at a biohacking thing in Miami. Listen, I understand how complicated it is to actually host a conference that people have to bring money in, and you have to be able to kind of rely on the weather. I get that that’s tough in a lot of places, especially Miami. It could start thunder storming at any time.
Detective Ev Will Be Speaking at the Festival
But still it is at least somewhat ironic when I’m in there at 7:30 AM until 6:00 PM and I’ve never gone outside yet today, basically at all, right? Cause I took the Uber there, I was in the hotel before, and I’m sitting here talking about biohacking and red light and all this crap.
I’m like, what about the red light that’s free outside on Miami Beach? And the grounding I could be doing and swimming in the water. It’s kind of funny.
But guys, first of all, I can’t wait to have you back on. I would hope that this is already an invite that you would accept. I gotta have you guys back on. This is great energy. We needed way more than the hour today.
I want to finish up with just two quick things. One is going to be simply like, where can people find everything?
Oh, and by the way, for those that are listening that don’t even know, I’ll be speaking at How Do You Health? I just found out that because Reed had something come up that weekend. I’m usually the fill in for Reed, so I can’t wait to throw it down, talk about some labs and other good stuff.
With that said though, just go through it again. Where can people find the health bar? Where can people find, How Do You Health?, all of that stuff first. Then I’ll get my last question for you guys.
Where to Find MSW Lounge & The How Do You Health? Fest
[00:53:43] Baldo: The Health Lounge in Austin, I mean, they’re all pretty simple. There’s MSW Lounge. MSW: Mendoza Sports and Wellness is what that stands for. mswlounge.com takes you to, like, you can even book online appointments. But it takes you to our place here in Austin.
And then howdoyouhealthfest.com is how you find the festival. Then we do have a code for you guys. It’s howdoyouhealthfest.com/FDN for 20% off tickets. So, if anyone wants to attend, they’re more than welcome to do that. It’s going to be a blast.
We will be releasing daily tickets next week or in two weeks from now. But right now, they can buy three-day passes. I mean, with a discount, it’s like $160 investment for a full weekend of like just hanging out with friends and seeing all sorts of fun stuff.
[00:54:31] Detective Ev: Excellent.
Thank you very much for offering that to our community too. We have a lot of FDNs in Austin.
We were just down in Miami. Some woman, I hadn’t even met her before, she’s like, oh yeah, we came to this conference because I heard it on the podcast. I’m like, that’s amazing. So, I’m hoping that we can draw some people in ourselves.
I’m looking forward to seeing you guys and just really seeing what is probably going to be the future of our kind of health conferences, right? Maybe the MDs will keep doing their stuff. But this kind of stuff, that’s the future.
Signature Question: Meditation and Controlled Breathing
Final question for you guys, and it’ll just be like an in order thing. We’ll do Baldo first and Nurse Doza next. I always have a signature question on this podcast, and it’s one that can be really simple, but also a little thought provoking depending on how you want to take it. Because in our space, we’re big thinkers about health.
The question simply is, if you could wave a magic wand, so each of you individually, you could wave magic wand and get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, whether that’s literally do one thing, or you get them to stop doing one thing (it could be either), what’s the one thing that you would get them to do?
And yeah, Baldo, we will start with you.
[00:55:32] Baldo: I think that for me, I would say, it’s kind of a combination. But the answer is meditation and to be very cognizant of your breathing. For me, that’s the most important thing.
There’s so many times that I find myself in a certain situation, and the first thing that I notice now is like, well, how am breathing? When I feel like I can’t control anything else, then I can at least control my breathing, slow it down. Usually what happens is that I start getting solutions for different problems that I’m thinking about or that I’m stressed about.
It’s kind of reverse engineering, right? Like the breath is the first thing that happens. But for me, it comes from the meditation. My meditation in the morning is kind of like a calibration. That way, whenever I know that I’m not in that state, I can easily bring it back through my breath.
Signature Question: No More Processed Sugar
[00:56:16] Nurse Doza: That’s a good one actually. I knew you were probably going to say that.
Mine would be, everyone would stop eating processed sugar. And he probably knew I was going to say that too.
[00:56:25] Detective Ev: Leaves us with two things to think of.
Guys, again, we’ll definitely have you back on. I think I speak for the audience already. Just the energy was really fun today. This has been really cool. Thank you, guys, so much for taking the time to come on with us. We’ll see you guys on some meetings of course, but I’ll also see you in December and I’m looking forward to it.
[00:56:40] Nurse Doza: Yeah. Can’t wait to see you, man. Thank you for having us, Detective Ev.
[00:56:45] Detective Ev: All right, my friends. That’ll do it for today’s episode with Baldo and Nurse Doza. That’s a heck of some names we got here, right? We got Detective Ev, Baldo, and Nurse Doza. I mean, what could you want more on a podcast?
I hope to see you guys at The How Do You Health? Festival. I could be wrong, but to me, I mean, this seems like it’s going to be the event of the year.
We’ve really experienced a transition in the conferences since the pandemic happened, right? A lot of people have the access to information that they’ve always wanted. We get that online. It’s not something really revolutionary at this point. The internet’s been around for a while. So, when people go to these conferences, I mean they cost money, they cost time.
Conclusion
They want more, it seems, than just learning. They want an experience because we can go learn at home. We don’t have to dress up in a suit. We don’t have to sit there in an uncomfortable seat for eight hours or 10 hours or whatever it might be. We want to have an experience with it.
I feel like these folks that are running this are geniuses because they’re focusing more on the experience mixed with the education instead of just the education part.
I could be wrong, but to me it sounds like a good time. Definitely, as a fellow biohacker, it sounds like a good time. So remember to check that out. Link is in the show notes.
You can also check our Health Space Unmasked event in the show notes. And as always, if you’re looking to try the FDN course, we have that in the show notes as well. You can try completely for free and there is no credit card required.
Finally, if you like the information that we are sharing, please consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple and or Spotify. If you’d be so kind as to do that, we would love you even more than we already do.
I am looking forward to talking to you guys again soon. But until then, please take care.
Homemade nut and seed milk is a staple liquid that can be used in many different ways in the kitchen. It’s one of the first cooking techniques our Culinary Nutrition Expert students learn to master, and they are always surprised at how easy the process is. Basically, if you have nuts or seeds, water and a blender you can whip up a simple batch (or blend a larger amount for batch cooking and meal prep). If you’re game for some nut and seed milk excitement, there are also many ways to jazz things up by adding new flavours, natural sweeteners and nutritional boosts to amp up the health benefits.
In this culinary nutrition guide to nut and seed milk, you’ll learn how to make a basic batch of nut milk, along with the best nuts and seeds to use, batch prep and storage tips, flavour options, nutrition add-ons and best uses.
Culinary Nutrition Benefits to Making Your Own Nut and Seed Milk
There are many reasons to make our own nut and seed milks. The store-bought varieties are expensive, very watered down and often loaded with preservatives, refined or artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers and stabilizers that may detract from our health. On the other hand, homemade nut and seed milks are:
Free from any additives or preservatives
Naturally dairy-free (dairy milk can be difficult to digest and aggravate many health conditions – this is why the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program is completely dairy-free)
Simple to adapt with different nuts, seeds and spices
Higher in bioavailable nutrients if nuts or seeds are soaked in advance
Best Nut and Seed Options for Homemade Dairy-Free Milk
You can use virtually any nut or seed – it depends on your preference or if there are any food allergies in your household. Some are more strongly flavoured than others, which we have indicated below.
Neutral Nut Flavours
Almonds
Cashews
Macadamia nuts
Brazil nuts
Stronger Nut Flavours
Seed Options
Most seed milks have a robust taste; you’ll need to experiment with which ones you enjoy or mix them with a more neutral nut for a subtler flavour.
Sesame seeds
Pumpkin seeds
Hemp seeds (these don’t need to be strained either)
Sunflower seeds
The following seeds do not work well as the base for seed milk. They are, however, great in very small amounts for thickening or nutritional boosts.
Fruit Options
Gluten-Free Grain Options
How To Make Nut and Seed Milk: Step by Step
Ingredients
1 cup nuts or seeds (or a mix of both)
4 cups water
Tools:
Blender
Measuring cups
Fine-mesh strainer or nut milk bag
Large bowl, for catching nut milk or seed milk
Storage container
What to Do:
Soak the nuts and seeds. This helps to eliminate phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors that inhibit digestion, and increase the bioavailability of nutrients (soaked nuts and seeds, if left for long enough, will eventually sprout – the soaking helps to kick off this process). Soaking time will depend on the nut or seed you choose – larger and heavier nuts will take 6-8 hours, smaller around 2 hours.
Add the nuts/seeds and water into the blender. Blend until smooth.
If using a strainer: Place the fine-mesh strainer over a bowl. Strain the pulp by pouring the milk through the strainer, pressing on the pulp with the back of a spoon to squeeze out the liquid.
If using a nut milk bag: Pour mixture through the nut milk bag, straining out the pulp by carefully squeezing the bag. You could also fashion a nut milk bag using a few larger layers of cheesecloth, but a nut milk bag is a good purchase and there are several other ways you can put it to good use.
Transfer the nut or seed milk to your container and store in the fridge for up to 3 days. Shake before using.
As homemade nut milks and seed milks don’t have any preservatives, they won’t last for weeks. If you won’t consume it in a few days, you can freeze it (see more in the storage section below).
Ideal Nut-to-Water or Seed-to-Water Ratios
We typically use a 1:4 ratio – so 1 cup of nuts or seeds to 4 cups of water. However, if you’d like to create a thicker and creamier milk, you can try 1:3 or 1:2. Keep in mind you will go through your milk quicker and it will be more expensive if you do this on a regular basis.
Best Blenders for Nut Milk and Seed Milk
We love using a high-speed blender for super smooth nut and seed milks. A regular blender or even a bullet-style blender will also work well (though you’ll need to make milk in smaller batches with a single-sized blender). A food processor can also do the job, though it will likely be messier.
As fresh dairy-free milk can go rancid quickly, it’s the perfect recipe to make in large batches and store it in small containers and freeze for later use. We like to store it in multiple-sized containers, including:
When storing nut and seed milks, ensure you leave at least an inch of head space at the top of the container to allow for expansion (like you would when making broth). It will keep for at least a couple of months, but you’ll likely consume it well before that.
Flavouring and Sweetening Nut and Seed Milk
This is where you can let your imagination run wild! Create your own signature nut milk flavour blends and customize to what you enjoy (or what your family will love). Here are some of our favourites:
Vanilla extract or vanilla powder
Chocolate (you can use cacao powder, or try melted dark chocolate)
Fresh fruit (strawberries are very popular!)
Herbal coffee alternatives like Dandy blend
There are more flavour options that also provide nutritional boosts, which we’ll discuss in the section below.
The nutritional boosts you add will also impact and improve the flavour!
Herbal Teas
Health Benefit + Flavour Profile: Varies depending on the tea chosen. Check out these Top 20 Herbs for Tea as a starting point.
Filtered Water
Health Benefit: Filtered water removes many compounds found in water sources such as chlorine, volatile compounds, and odors. These compounds will vary depending on where you live – check out our Guide to Choosing a Water filter for more details. Flavour Profile: Neutral and clean.
Banana
Health Benefit: Rich in fibre for digestion and blood sugar balance, potassium for heart health and exercise recovery, B vitamins for energy and nervous system support, and the antioxidant Vitamin C. Flavour Profile: Sweet
Cinnamon
Health Benefit: Balances blood sugar levels and reduces inflammation. Flavour Profile: Sweet and slightly spicy.
Maca
Health Benefit: Relieves stress, boosts energy levels, balances hormones and increases sex drive. Flavour Profile: Malty.
Matcha
Health Benefit: Very rich in antioxidants, supports brain health and focus, and can help with weight loss. Flavour Profile: Astringent, vegetal.
Turmeric
Health Benefit:Reduces inflammation and pain throughout the body, rich in antioxidants and cancer-fighting nutrients. Flavour Profile: Bitter and spicy.
Cloves
Health Benefit: Anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial, and contains antioxidants. Flavour Profile: Pungent, warm, sweet and slightly bitter.
Cardamom
Health Benefit: Reduces inflammation, aids digestion, good for dental health, lowers blood sugar and blood pressure. Flavour Profile: Sweet.
Ginger
Health Benefit: Reduces inflammation and nausea, supports digestion. Flavour Profile: Spicy.
Nutmeg
Health Benefit: Anti-inflammatory, rich in antioxidants to shield us from damage and has anti-bacterial properties. Flavour Profile: Spicy, nutty, with a little sweetness.
Goji Berries
Health Benefit: A complete protein, contain many antioxidants and 21 trace minerals, and help to support the immune system. Flavour Profile: Sweet and tangy.
Health Benefit: Rich in fibre for digestive health, heart health and blood sugar balance, a source of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fats, chia contains calcium and magnesium for bone health while flax helps with hormone balance. Flavour Profile: Neutral flavour, but flax and chia have an effect on texture – they are mucilaginous, which will thicken up your nut milk.
How to Use Nut and Seed Milk
You can use nut and seed milks in both hot and cold recipes, including:
Once you begin to make your own nut milks and seed milks, you won’t want to return to the store-bought options.
Psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease that affects about one in 40 people, making it “one of the most frequent chronic skin diseases worldwide.” There are a lot of different drugs for it, some of which cost more than $100,000 a year to get a response. There are cheaper ones, like cyclosporine, but they carry long-term risks of kidney damage, hypertension, and malignancies. In fact, cyclosporine can cause cancer and kidney toxicity in more than 50 percent of the patients treated long-term, and, in terms of risk of malignancies, it carries up to 42 times the rate of cancer. And it doesn’t even work that well: It only keeps the disease at bay in a little more than half of the patients over a four-month period. There’s got to be a better way.
What about plants? “Topical botanical agents for the treatment of psoriasis?” As I discuss in my video Aloe Vera for Psoriasis, aloe vera gel is said to possess “anti-inflammatory, anti-pruritic [anti-itching], and wound-healing properties.” You may recall that it actually made things worse when it was put to the test for healing wounds. (See my earlier video Is Aloe Effective for Blood Pressure, Inflammatory Bowel, Wound Healing, and Burns?.) “The exploitation of aloe preparations has been accompanied too often by misinformation and exaggerated claims in advertising literature and commercially-inspired articles in the press and popular periodicals.” There is some impressive evidence, though. For example, to test its anti-inflammatory properties, it was tested head-to-head against steroids for exposure to mustard gas.
Mustard gas is probably the most widely used chemical warfare agent. It was first used in World War I, and the last widespread military use was in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, with more than 100,000 military veterans and civilians exposed, “and many of them are still suffering from long-term complications,” predominantly itching. Even decades after surviving a gas attack, 70 to 90 percent of victims are still suffering.
Topical steroids, the most frequently administered medications, do help, but long-term use is associated with a variety of side effects and is not recommended. How about safer agents, like aloe vera?
Sixty-seven veterans injured by chemical warfare were randomized to apply either steroids or an aloe vera and olive oil cream, and the aloe vera mixture appeared to work as well as the drug, as you can see in the graph below and at 2:27 in my video.
So, researchers decided to give it a try for the management of psoriasis. By the end of a month-long study, the aloe vera-based cream had cured 83 percent of the patients, compared to the placebo’s cure rate of less than 10 percent, and resulted in “significant clearing of the psoriatic plaques,” the skin lesions.
That’s compared to an inactive placebo, though. How about compared to steroids? Aloe was found to be “more effective…in reducing the clinical symptoms of psoriasis,” as you can see in before-and-after photos below and at 3:02 in my video.
In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study of a commercial aloe vera gel for the treatment of slight to moderate psoriasis, conditions improved in 70 percent of the sites treated with aloe, compared with 80 percent of the placebo-treated areas improving. The placebo beat out the aloe. Indeed, “the high response rate of placebo indicated a possible effect…in its own right, which would make the Aloe vera gel treatment appear less effective.” The placebo was essentially xanthan gum and water, and the researchers figured that, instead of aloe failing, maybe xanthan gum works, too!
All in all, for psoriasis, the “results on the effectiveness of Aloe veraare contradictory,” but applying it on the skin appears safe, so why not give it a try?
So…you’re shopping around for a health coaching certification program?
Yessss – we get so excited when people decide to become health coaches!
And we know your head is probably FULL of questions, right?!
Questions like:
How much can I expect to make?
What would my day-to-day job look like?
Is this really going to work for me?
How much is all the training going to cost?
There are lots of factors at play when trying to answer the questions above, but one of the biggest is the education & training you choose.
Why?
Because your education & training greatly impact:
what services you’re qualified to provide
how much you can charge
who you work with, and
how much flexibility you have in your work
So…what does this mean for you??
It means that choosing the right training program is critical!
Which is exactly why we’ve dedicated an entire blog post to it. 😃
Our goal with today’s post is to help you understand what’s available so that you can make the best possible decision for you & your family.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
The “gold standard” of health coach certification
A very appealing alternative to consider
How to decide what’s right for you
Let’s get to it!
The Gold Standard in Health Coaching Certification
The National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching (NBHWC) is considered the “gold standard” when it comes to getting board certified as a health coach.
We say that primarily because it’s the most well-known & popular option. Butttt, as you read through this blog post, keep in mind that just because something is popular, doesn’t mean it’s the best path for you.
Our goal is to help you understand your options!
So, let’s chat about it.
Health Coaching Certification Through NBHWC
Established in 2012, National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching (NBHWC) works to advance the health coaching profession. One of their roles is to vet all the popular & emerging health coaching programs on the market & choose which ones they want to acreddit (e.g. approve).
If you’ve completed a program that has been approved by NBHWC, then you’re eligible to sit for their board exam. Since launching the exam in 2016, over 7,000 coaches have obtained the credential as a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC)1.
3-Steps to Health Coaching Certification Through NBHWC.
If you decide to become certified, you’ve got 3 steps:
Complete a training program approved by NBHWC, such as:
Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN)
Health Coach Institute (HCI) and
Functional Medicine Coaching Academy (FMCA)
Complete 50 health coaching sessions that meet their criteria
Have an associates degree (or higher), OR at least 4,000 hours of work experience
Once you’ve got those covered, you can apply for the board exam, which has a $100 application fee and $400 exam fee (fees quoted as of 2022). After passing the exam, you are required to complete 36 hours of continuing education credits every 3 years to maintain your certification.
So, what does this particular health coaching certification do for you?
In a nutshell, it shows future clients & employers that you’ve completed some high-quality training & education.
All sounds pretty good right?
But don’t stop there because there is another juicy option to consider!
An Attractive Alternative to Health Coaching Certification
If you haven’t heard of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN) before, we’re glad you’ve landed here!
FDN has over 4,000 graduates worldwide and is well-respected within the functional medicine & holistic health communities.
The name “Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner (FDN-P)” is a mouthful (we get it lol), butttt basically it means that you are a functional health practitioner.
In fact, many FDN graduates refer to themselves as a “Functional Health Coach”, and for the most part, you get to choose what you call yourself. The important thing to note however is that as an FDN-P, you have more advanced skills than your average health coach.
Yes…even those with the gold standard NBHWC seal of approval!
FDN practitioners specialize in using functional testing to help pinpoint the root causes behind people’s symptoms, and they’re really good at it! But it doesn’t stop there. Once they have the test results, they create data-driven diet & lifestyle protocols to help people address their symptoms & reclaim their health. 👏
FDN practitioners are given highly specialized training that sets them apart from other health coaches, and allows them to launch + grow successful online wellness practices.
The truth is, many students who have already completed other health coaching certification programs come to FDN because they realize they want more in-depth training & education.
Now… we know what you might be thinking:
“This is going to take forever!!”
Complete an approved health coaching program
Get board certified through NBHWC
Get advanced training through FDN
But guess what??
You have the option of skipping right over steps #1 & #2, and coming straight to FDN!
This surprises most people because they assume we have a bunch of prerequisites!
But the truth is, FDN Founder Reed Davis, has intentionally kept the prerequisites to a minimum because he’s so passionate about getting this knowledge out to anyone with a strong desire to learn.
In order to enroll in the FDN certification course, all you need is:
1. a genuine desire to help people heal
2. an interest in holistic health
That’s really it!
The course takes about 6 months for most people to complete, but you’re able to take up to 12 months if you need extra time. Once you graduate, you will have the title Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner, FDN-P.
Becoming an FDN-P sets you apart from other health coaches for many reasons, so let’s take a closer look at that.
Health Coaching Certification vs. FDN Practitioner Certification
We touched on this above, but to recap:
FDN provides more in-depth training than your average health coaching certification program.
As an FDN-P, you can:
Order functional testing (independently, without a doctor involved)
Analyze test results (with access to a program mentor for help)
Create your own custom protocols based on those test results
An NBHWC health coach cannot order functional tests unless they work under another practitioner or physician.
As an FDN-P, you act as a true health detective, digging into the data to find the root cause/s & creating personalized protocols to help your clients get better.
Sounds pretty good right?
But maybe you’re still unsure if you can really skip the health coaching certification part…
So let’s keep going!
Options For Board Certification
Because Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN) is so well-known within the functional health industry, most of our graduates are highly respected whether they are board certified or not!
However, some people just want that extra stamp of approval, and we get it.
While the FDN program does not qualify you to sit for the NBHWC board exam, it does qualify you to get board certified through the following organizations:
The American Natural Wellness Coaches Board (ANWCB)
The American Association of Drugless Practitioners (AADP)
ANWCB & AADP are both reputable organizations, and you can display their logo on your website for an additional level of credibility.
One piece of important advice:
Don’t let yourself get tooooo hung-up on getting certified in every single thing under the sun. It’s a common mistake we see new health coaches make allll the time!
The truth is your future clients will be most interested in what you can do for them. Not in a stack of certificates collecting dust in your file cabinet.
Typically prospective clients are most impressed by actual testimonials & raving reviews, which you’re totally capable of collecting!
So, are you ready to learn how you can become an FDN-P?
How to Become an FDN-P
On average the certification course takes 6-8 months to complete, but you have a full year to complete the course if needed, which is great for people who have busier schedules.
You can learn more about the course right here, but here’s a summary:
Over the course of 6-12 months, the FDN Certification Course teaches you how to analyze functional lab results, and create data-driven diet & lifestyle protocols to help your clients build better health.
What you learn:
The FDN method of intake & investigation
The D.R.E.S.S. For Health Success™ framework
Comprehensive training on (6) foundational functional lab tests
How to create personalized data-driven healing protocols
What’s included:
(13) self-paced modules w/ module exams
(8) 1:1 sessions with program mentors
(4) functional health test kits (no extra charge!) to run on yourself
Access to the Medical Director Program (upon graduation) to order 60+ lab tests
Access to a growing library of “done-for-you” business resources, forms & templates
Opportunity to join our graduate program for ongoing business development support
Whew, that was a lot of information, wasn’t it?
Let’s recap, and help you choose the best path forward!
How to Choose The Right Path For You
One of the most important questions you can ask yourself is what you want your career to look like.
For example, some employers require the NBC-HWC credential when hiring new employees to work for their business or organization. If you have a specific wellness practice or business that you want to work for, ask them what requirements they have for new health coaches.
On the other hand, becoming an FDN-P prepares you for many different career paths, including:
Working for a functional medicine practice
Working for a supplement company
Working as a host of wellness retreats
Working as a corporate wellness consultant
Working as a functional health and wellness speaker
But the most popular option among FDN graduates is to start their own online wellness practice.
If you’re leaning toward starting your own business (we’re rooting for you if you are!), then becoming an FDN-P is going to provide the best value for you because you are trained to operate your own individual practice.
Here are a few other top questions to ask yourself when trying to decide between becoming an NBHWC Health Coach or an FDN-P.
How much do you want to earn?
Do you want to follow doctors orders or create your own protocols?
Do you want access to ordering functional tests for your clients?
Do you want to work for yourself or for another business?
Get Your Health Coaching Certification Questions Answered!
We’re here to help!
We offer a free 45 minute consultation to answer all your questions.
Our Course Advisors are educated on many health coaching certification programs and can help you determine if FDN is a good choice for you, or not!
PLUS, we’ll be sure to provide some tips & next steps on how you can start or grow your health coaching business.
Do you find yourself reaching out to ordering takeaway as its too hard and time consuming thinking about what you can make for lunch when you have less than 15 minutes?
Tatiana, an experienced Dietitian working for Body Fusion located in Sydney shares her tips for balanced lunches:
1. Prepare your ingredients in advance
Save time by preparing before your work week even begins! Staple ingredients can be used to make lunch meals during the week quickly and help save time. This will make sure If you only have 5 minutes during the morning rush or 10 minutes during your working from home lunch break you can easily make a delicious and nutritious lunch for yourself.
Some of Tatiana’s recommendations are:
· Cut vegetable sticks (carrot, celery, snow peas) and store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days
o These can be eaten alongside a dish that lacks vegetables
· Poach a whole chicken and keep in the fridge for up to 3 days
o This can then be used to make a wrap or sandwich or salad
· Hard boil eggs and store in the fridge for up to 4 days
o This then can be used to add into a wrap or salad
· Make homemade hummus or tzatziki and store for up to 7 days in the fridge
o This then can be added to the base of a sandwich
· Buy ready-made salad mixes
o This then can be used to increase the vegetables in a lunch meal
· Boil quinoa and store in an air tight container for up to 7 days in the fridge
o This then can be used to make a nourish bowl or served with a side of protein such as tinned fish, shaved turkey or lean beef strips
2. Prepare a whole meal in advance
To save even more time and remove the daily thought of “what am I going to have for lunch today”, Tatiana recommends lunch meal preparation. She herself spends a few hours every Sunday to make lunch meals for herself and her partner.
Tatiana’s process is;
1. Plan two meal ideas using healthy website or family cookbooks
2. Purchase what needs to be bought
3. Prepare the meal
4. Pack the meal into 8-10 containers (enough for 2 people)
5. Store it in the fridge for up to 5 days
3. Double your night meals so there is enough for lunch leftovers the next day
If you are already making the meal, then why not make enough for 2 meals! OR make extra of you main meal staple and re-use it in a different way for lunch the next day.
Some of Tatiana’s creative suggestions for your leftovers are:
· Grilled Chicken – Make chicken rice paper rolls with slaw, rice noodles and soy sauce
· Boiled rice or pasta – Use it as a base of a nourish salad bowl with lots of vegetables and a protein source
· Mince Meat – Serve it with some rice and frozen microwavable veggies
· Roasted veggies – Combine it with eggs and cheese to make a frittata
We hope this has inspired you, but if you need further ideas or need someone to put this into practice reach out to Tatiana today in clinic!
Dinner at MAS Tapas this weekend! I always make a stop when I am back in Charlottesville. So many locals say this food is the best of the best!
MAS Tapas is a buzzy Spanish eatery offering tapas & wine in a vibey setting with an incredibly lively bar & patio.
Their menu includes local and organic dishes. They use non-GMO organic flour, organic sourdough bread (this is a restaurant you can eat the bread), local pastured eggs, organic dates, organic arugula, organic cauliflower with coconut milk, organic wood-grilled chicken wings, organic local chicken, wild shrimp, and local mushrooms from Sharondale Farm!
Their tapas are often shared among large groups which allow for communal sharing and contributes to the neighborhood setting.
I am blown away by how many organic ingredients they use plus all of the fresh, local produce! I always make sure to visit when I am in town. I highly recommend MAS Tapas!
Also, Check out my new Anothersole purse! I recommend Anothersole as they are committed to creating sustainable and ethical products. They are made from recycled plastic bottles and are super durable! So cool!
Many thanks to Dr Charles Beardall for this week’s note. It’s a novel one. The paper was called “Red and processed meat intakes and cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes mellitus: An umbrella systematic review and assessment of causal relations using Bradford Hill’s criteria” and it was by Hill et al (Ref 1).
We’ve looked at umbrella reviews before. They are supposed to be the best of the best of evidence. They look for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which pool together all data and they pool these together. This process has a couple of initial flaws. First, all pool-together articles are only as good as the original studies. If the original studies are poor, then poor has been pooled with poor. Second, systematic reviews and meta-analyses should find the same studies. Exclusion and inclusion criteria may differ, but the same studies will appear in different pool-together articles. This means that a number of studies will be duplicated. In meta-analysis, the larger/longer studies carry more weight. If these are duplicated (as they likely will be, since they are the major studies), then they carry even more weight in an umbrella review, likely to the point of disproportion.
The novel aspect of this review was that most researchers present risk ratios as conclusions and then infer that association can mean causation. Bradford Hill established famous criteria for assessing if association is likely to mean causation (Ref 2). This study examined the findings against the Bradford Hill criteria to see if causation might be likely. I’ll use the full name, Bradford Hill, throughout this note so that we don’t confuse Bradford Hill with the lead author of this week’s paper – Hill.
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hey, what is going on my friends? Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, AKA Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on navigating toxins in our world and the crazy things that get put into many of our household cleaners and foods. A lot of the household cleaners will be brought up today.
We’re talking to Madalyn; she is a certified integrative health practitioner and vibrancy life coach, founder of The Clean Bee Holistic Health Page, and host of the Clean Bee Podcast. Please go check that out as well. I’ll put it in the show notes. She is a passionate, clean ingredient advocate, driven to help educate and empower others on how they can reduce their toxic load, both body and mind.
Through educational content, newsletters, podcast episodes, and more, Madalyn shares her nearly 10 years of experience, education, and learning to guide others on their unique journey. During her quote, “time off,” you’ll find her reading, studying (she loves to learn), working on creative projects, any kind of movement (especially dancing), cooking, traveling, or spending time outdoors with her loved ones.
I always really love the topic of toxins. Not because I like hearing about the toxins themselves, but I actually find these kind of empowering. We can learn about alternatives and things that we can actually do to deal with the toxins. There are ways to navigate this in today’s world.
Navigating Toxins & Making Small Changes
I also find that this is one of the topics, I’m not a hundred percent sure why, but it’s one of the topics that people that aren’t into health are rather receptive to. If you tell people about things that are in their detergent, their soap, or their hand soap, they are willing to make those changes. You just have to tell them about it. They’re willing to pay .50 to .75 cents more for something that works just as well, or maybe only slightly worse in terms of the actual cleaning but doesn’t harm their bodies. Because they don’t feel the pain of this as much as losing a food, right?
When you tell someone that they need to take away gluten or maybe dairy or whatever it might be, there is some pain associated with that. There is a social pain because maybe they can’t eat the same way they would’ve before, like going out to restaurants. There is obviously the addiction aspect that comes with wheat especially, it does tickle our opiate receptors. I don’t think it literally tickles them, but that’s a good enough word for today.
There’s pain that’s associated when we lose the food. Whereas with this, I think if people know about it, this is the reason why they’re receptive to it. I have found that to be the case, and so I encourage you to either share this podcast with people or just tell them to look out for ingredients.
Maybe you’re talking to a friend, and you remember an ingredient from this specific show. Just tell them about that ingredient. Tell them to look out for it and give them the alternatives. I think we can make a really big change just by starting with something so simple.
Health Space Unmasked
I need to tell you guys about our Health Space Unmasked event. This is something that we do every first Saturday of the month. It is a deep dive into one or more topics with some experts. It’s Reed Davis, the founder of FDN and his guest for the day.
This one you do not want to miss. It’s going to be happening this weekend, November 5th. That’s assuming that you’re listening to this podcast closely after it comes out. But it’s November 5th, 2022, Saturday, 8:30 AM to 10:30 AM PST.
We have none other than Dr. Aron Gonshor. If you do not know who that is, it is the man behind a few of the labs that we use in the FDN certification program. Now, of course, you get access to a bunch of labs once you graduate, but we use Fluids IQ for multiple things while you are training, and Dr. Aron Gonshor is the guy behind that, he is absolutely brilliant. He and Reed will be talking about oral health, sleep, and metabolic balance.
At the time of recording this, we get a little over a hundred people on these lives, which is crazy because it’s Saturday morning, it is nerdy as can be, and it’s for two hours. Yet, we get a live audience that is around a hundred and sticks around the entire time.
It’s great to connect with people, it’s just really fun, again, you get to nerd out. So, if you want to get the link for it, and by the way, this is completely free. It’s just something that you can join in and hop onto. It is fdntraining.com/unmasked. That is U N M A S K E D fdntraining.com/unmasked. That’ll be in the show notes.
The World of Functional/Natural Medicine Calls Us
Okay, now let’s get to today’s episode. All right. Hello there Madalyn. Thanks so much for being here with us today.
[00:04:31] Madalyn Tavares: Absolutely, Evan, thank you so much for having me.
[00:04:33] Detective Ev: Glad to have you on.
I know that you had done some stuff with Reed, so that’s pretty cool. I should have asked this before we went live, but I might as well now. Is that episode already out at the time of recording this or will it be out relatively soon? When will his episode on your show be out?
[00:04:48] Madalyn Tavares: It will be coming out in November of this year. So not out yet. I’ll definitely keep you posted. It was a really good one.
[00:04:54] Detective Ev: Awesome. You guys can check that out and we’ll talk about her podcast and stuff and where you can find that later, of course.
But today we are going to start off in the same way we typically always do on the show and it’s diving into the person’s health journey. We had already alluded to this topic before you and I went live, but I don’t even need to allude to it to know that no one gets into this space by accident.
It’s not something that you sit there as a five-year-old and can’t wait to get into this world of functional natural medicine. It’s not really how it goes. Usually, it calls us rather than the other way around. So, I’m curious, what did your health journey look like? I mean, when did symptoms start? Let’s start from the beginning.
Navigating Toxins: A Staph Infection
[00:05:28] Madalyn Tavares: That is the common thread that I find as well. Amongst every conversation, someone has found their purpose through their pain essentially.
But my story started back in 2013. I just graduated from university, I moved to the Caribbean. That’s a whole other story of how that happened, but I was living and working. And about six months in, after moving, I noticed a bump on my shin that I just was like, oh, it’s a mosquito bite. Thought nothing of it.
A couple days later it got a lot bigger and was really painful. So mentally, I went down the spiral of thinking, oh no, it must be a spider bite. They’re going to have to cut off my leg. I started freaking out. Go to the ER and it turns out it was a staph infection.
At this point, I’m 21 years old. I’m like, staph infection, What? What even is that? I’m like, isn’t that something that you get when you’re like 90 years old in the hospital? Apparently, it’s actually quite common to happen in the Caribbean just because of the warm climate and things just being a lot more moist.
They basically said, Here’s some antibiotics. If it doesn’t go away in a couple days, you’re probably going to have to have it drained. See you later.
So, I do the antibiotics and it doesn’t go away. Eventually I have to get it drained, also a very painful experience. Then a couple weeks later, I had another staph infection pop up, but this time it was a swollen lymph node under my arm.
Navigating Toxins: Staph Infection #2
I go to the doctor, a different doctor this time, and they say, okay, we’re going to need to cut it open and drain it. And they’re like, here’s more antibiotics.
Well, thankfully I had already a fairly intuitive sense that another round of antibiotics back-to-back probably wasn’t the best idea. So, I just had this curiosity strike me. I was like, what’s going on inside my body as to why I’m not able to fight off these infections? What is going on?
So, I went down the proverbial rabbit hole or wormhole as you can say, and I researched how to heal staph infections naturally. That was kind of like my starting point. To make a long story short, I was able to heal them naturally. I did not take that second batch of antibiotics.
What I realized in that research process was that despite my best intentions, what I was putting in and on my body was, in fact, quite toxic, not really that supportive to my overall health and wellbeing.
That was really the entry point in my journey of getting curious about what’s in my food, what are in my cleaning products, what’s in my makeup, skincare, and all these other components that we can unconsciously not even think about. So that was really the process in how I got started into being more mindful and then now sharing that journey and process with others.
[00:08:23] Detective Ev: Well, I’m curious about this because there’s a few things here. Anyone that listens regularly knows I’m obsessed with the mindset that goes into thinking about things more naturally, because it does take a certain type of person to be able to go away from what the mainstream is pushing.
Mom’s Influence of Navigating Toxins
Where I’m exceptionally fascinated with this is that it seems on the surface that this ability to go away from that paradigm was so early on, so I’m curious. And maybe this wasn’t the case cause you did use the word intuitively. You knew that kind of wasn’t the best idea to be taking a second round for this.
Did that come from somewhere? Did you have a family influence of natural health? Were you already involved with it? I mean, surely you have to understand why. Most people, especially at 21, are not necessarily thinking like that. So, was there anything that led to that?
[00:09:03] Madalyn Tavares: That is such a great question and yes. I mean, my mom was definitely ahead of her time. She’s, for sure, still a part of the more conventional kind of paradigm. But she did have some of her own thoughts and feelings about things way ahead of her time. Did not come from a holistic background herself or anything. But she was involved in the medical field, more of like an office perspective.
But I remember from a really early age, my mom always saying, never take antibiotics unless you absolutely need it. She told us that from a really early age. So, I already had that in the back of my mind, even though we really were your typical like nineties era family, eating the Kool-Aid and the other things. So, I do think that, for sure, played a part.
Navigating Toxins & Chemical Smells
But I will say that from a really early age, and I don’t know where this came from, but I had an aversion not to quote/unquote “germs” and what I perceived to be dirty, but I had an aversion to chemicals. I remember from a really young age thinking, if somebody just wiped this counter down with bleach, I don’t really think I want to put my food on it and then eat it.
I didn’t like the smell of things like Pine-sol and bleach, which is like my mom’s favorite cleaning materials back in the day. I don’t know if it was just a little bit of that. It’s just kind of wired like a little bit differently. But yeah, that’s such a good question. I never really thought about that before. But yeah, it started quite young, I guess you could say.
[00:10:28] Detective Ev: Well, and it makes sense now because that was the seed that had been planted years and years before. And it just so happens that the perfect, well or imperfect, depending on how you look at it, circumstance occurred where this antibiotic thing comes up. It could have been any medication, and you wouldn’t necessarily have thought about it in the same way.
But I’m always curious, especially with someone that does it so early on. I mean, almost as early as it can be into a health journey. The most common answer I get that’s interesting is these people will be sick for, you know how it goes 10 to 15 years. They will say whether or not they use these words or not, it’s a little different, but it’s like their gut feeling, intuition, they just knew.
Navigating Toxins & Autoimmunity Connection
At some point they’ve had enough, and they realize this doesn’t make sense what I’m being told, because I’m doing exactly what I was told. It’s not working. And in fact, when I look back over these years, I think I’ve gotten worse. So that I can understand. But this is pretty impressive to get it that early.
So regardless of your mom’s influence, that’s still years later. That’s cool that you were thinking like that. And I have to laugh at the Pine-sol and bleach thing because, well, I hated that too. My mom was a total nut with it.
It’s interesting because countries, you might know this already, but countries that have more chemicals used, also have higher instances of autoimmunity, which is no surprise to anyone in our world. But it’s kind of ironic, you think, oh, we’re cleaning more things, so shouldn’t that be better? It’s like, well, that’s not how we were made. You know, we are animals, people forget that.
What’s interesting too is despite someone who didn’t necessarily have like the most insane story, you’ve made this your life and created a passion around it. So how did we go from, maybe a more natural treatment for this staph infection and never having to take that second round of antibiotics to doing what you’re doing now? Where did you decide, I maybe want to go help people with this?
[00:12:08] Madalyn Tavares: To be honest, I had always had an interest in health and wellness, but at that point it had been very conventional, you know, like my Yoplait yogurt, and I’m going to have broccoli and counting calories and very millennial and previous generation mindset.
Researching & Navigating Toxins
Especially I think as a woman and growing up in the heroin chic era of Kate Moss, and just being ridiculously thin, this kind of ideal that we were striving for back then. So, I came already to that point with an interest in health and wellness, but I’ll be totally honest, at that point in time, it was purely aesthetic.
It’s your typical mindset when you’re young, you think you’re invincible. You’re not worried about something long term necessarily; you just want to look good in the moment. Then I realized the information I thought was actually helpful for me, my body, and my health; and here I was spending X amount of dollars every month on supplements from Walgreens, trying to take my multivitamin and thinking that I’m doing all of this good.
I’m also a big fan of reading, so I think that’s a part of it. I realized in a lot of the research, I was like, this isn’t even actually that helpful for me. And I remember the very first vitamin that I stumbled upon was actually, I’m sure you and your listeners know, but just the synthetic form of B12, cyanocobalamin.
When I read the research around how that’s not even bioavailable and it’s this synthetic version; and how there’s these other options that are actually more beneficial to the body and more likely to absorb, I thought, well, one, I’m kind of wasting money, and two, this is really frustrating. Why has no one ever explained this? So, I think it came from a little bit of just indignation or frustration in my own journey. Then I’m like, I gotta tell people about this.
Navigating Toxins & Trying to Explain the Insanity
[00:13:58] Detective Ev: And it’s tough too, especially, I mean, we’re not that far off in age, I’m 27. So, I think as young people too, when we get into this, sometimes, not always, and this was not universal in my family, but there can be a little thing of like young kid syndrome, or like nephew or niece syndromes. Like, what do you really know about these things? It can be a little tough to explain it to people.
Everyone in the audience I guess knows this already, but when you explain some of the injustices and the insane things that go on in the health industry and the marketing behind it, and you tell it to other people, factual things, it almost sounds like a conspiracy because it’s so nuts. Of course, if the person doesn’t sit down and actually read the stuff for themselves, they’re like, well, that’s insane. I’m like, well, you’re right. It is insane.
But the conclusion should not be, oh, it’s insane, it’s not true. It’s like, no, it’s insane, and it actually is true. I mean, we have companies like Monsanto still out there. I know that they were bought out by Bayer, but like they exist, they’re operating. They have had people at Stanford ghost write studies for them that were not even real. And then what do they do?
Oh, they pay their little fine, but they’ll make more on the next round, so they don’t care. I mean, man, I’m someone who appreciates the business freedom in this country for sure. But that’s where a line needs to get drawn. A company like that should never be able to operate again.
Navigating Toxins & Shiesty Marketing
If there’s such a lack of integrity amongst multiple people to allow people at major universities to ghost write studies for them, you do that once you’re done in my opinion. If I was ruling this, I’d be like, yeah, that’s never happening again. Your company’s done. But I digress. You don’t need to get us started on that; I suppose.
But that’s my point. Some of the stuff like you’re even talking about, the B vitamin thing, this is crazy. They’re marketing this like it’s so great. Like you said, it’s not even bioavailable. I actually, honestly, off the top of my head, would not have known that one. But I trust your word for it, so it’s like, that’s crazy enough.
Then you really get into the deep stuff, you’re like, no, they’re literally poisoning people. We know that it’s kind of poisoned, but eh, you know, we’ll take the money first and then deal with the consequences later. It’s like, wow! Yeah, a little nuts.
You’re reading and you’re studying and clearly a well-versed person, did you get any specific certifications or degrees in this stuff that led you to do what you’re doing now?
[00:15:59] Madalyn Tavares: Yeah, I totally touch on that. I just want to pull on that thread that you said cause I totally agree with you.
[00:16:04] Detective Ev: I can’t do that to you. I can’t put that out there and then not let you respond.
Navigating Toxins Started with Different Kinds of Self-Teaching
[00:16:10] Madalyn Tavares: I’m just feverishly nodding my head because it’s just funny that you went in that direction. Because that’s a big piece of what I am really passionate about now. Specifically, it is kind of sharing that information with people, not only what choices can you make to best help you right now, but also just building that awareness of getting comfortable with also just asking questions and getting curious about your health.
Also, just curious about how the systems that are in place operate so that you can be the most informed patient, person, client, whatever. So, I could not agree with you more on everything that you just said. And, yes, it started with years of medical journals, podcasts, books, PubMed, and just all of these different avenues of kind of self-teaching.
Then, at this point, maybe like four years ago or so, I did an integrative health practitioner certification. You know, I learned a little bit about lab testing, functional testing which is totally something I actually want to continue to develop. Which is an amazing reason that I connected with Reed. So, that is something coming down the pipeline as well to just continue to develop that skill. But yes, it’s just a fire that doesn’t seem to get dimmed.
[00:17:27] Detective Ev: Yeah, it’s hard for it to get dimmed when you walk around and I don’t mean it in a pessimistic way, but you constantly see the problem, right? All you gotta do is go to your local grocery store or Walmart or whatever, and I’m reminded, okay, we need to do something about this. So, I find a healthy passion and a healthy fire that comes from that.
Navigating Toxins & Helping Others Do the Same
It’s not like I’m like, oh my God, we can never beat this. I actually feel very optimistic about this problem specifically. Now there’s a million problems our generation is dealing with, and that’s another story. But the health one, maybe it’s because of the bubble that you and I exist in and I’m thankful for it. But when I go on my Facebook, I see a bunch of FDNs. When I’m on this podcast, I hear about people doing the work and saving other people’s lives, so I am optimistic.
I’m like, you know what? There’s going to be some messiness until we get to our destination. But man, there are so many people, intelligent, well versed, knowledgeable and beyond dedicated out there pushing right now. Like there’s people listening that might just be listening from the health perspective. They’re not interested in doing the courses or anything like that and that’s fine.
I hope that they realize that there are literally millions of people right now sacrificing their life and their time just to help people that don’t even know that they exist yet. That is pretty inspiring and pretty cool. And we’re lucky enough to be two of those people, right? It’s hard for that to get dimmed when we see what it did for us, and then we know what it can do for others when so many people need it.
So, how did this lend into, I guess, like a business or whatever, or whatever you do? When you were at 21 going to the Caribbean, I missed this in the beginning, was that for a job or was that like, hey, I’m done college, I’m going to go for fun? What was that for? Then how did that transition into now?
Navigating Toxins Evolved from My Own Experience
[00:18:56] Madalyn Tavares: I went for a job. I graduated, ended up going down there for a vacation. Very serendipitously, I always feel that the universe, God source, whatever your audience is comfortable calling it, there’s this like everything happening for a reason. I truly don’t think that if I hadn’t moved there and had that experience, I don’t think that things would’ve transpired as they have until this point.
So moved down for a job. Obviously, getting out of your comfort zone and being in basically a new country, a completely different environment, just figuring things out as a young 20-something. I also realized how expensive things cost and the Caribbean is expensive anyway. But just like developing this passion for taking care of myself and then realizing that so many people have no idea of exactly like you said. All you need to do is go to the grocery store and you can see the problem all around you.
[00:18:56] Madalyn Tavares: I went for a job. I graduated, ended up going down there for a vacation. Very serendipitously, you know, I always feel that the universe, God source, whatever your audience is comfortable calling it, there’s this like everything happening for a reason. I truly don’t think that if I hadn’t moved there and had that experience, I don’t think that things would’ve transpired as they have until this point.
So moved down for a job. Obviously getting out of your comfort zone and being in basically a new country, a completely different environment, just figuring things out as a young 20-something. I also realized how expensive things cost and the Caribbean is expensive anyway. But just like developing this passion for taking care of myself and then realizing that so many people have no idea of exactly like you said. All you need to do is go to the grocery store and you can see the problem all around you.
I try to stay optimistic as well and come from that place that it’s not that there’s anything wrong with anyone, it’s just that there’s a lack of knowledge. To be honest, this path has just truly been so organic. There was never like, this is going to be my business. I’m going to do this and make money. It truly has just been like an evolution of my own experience.
Talking and sharing about it on a blog since 2013. Then, that kind of evolving over the years, me becoming well known for that just in my own circle, my own little sphere of influence with my friends and people saying, Hey Maddie, what do you think about this? What do you think about this supplement? Or how can I wash pesticides off my vegetables?
Market to Yourself in a Different Body
Just sharing my knowledge and trying to help empower other people. Then truly in 2020, I think like a lot of people, probably a lot of your listeners, I just had this epiphany moment where I was like, at that point. That’s when I launched The Clean Bee, basically.
I was like, you know, I’m going to take this as my passion and actually separate it from just my normal blog that I was doing and things that I was just sharing. I was like, I’m actually going to make a separate dedicated space where I can really make this about how to help others. That was how it’s evolved since.
[00:21:08] Detective Ev: Sweet. So, you had been blogging for seven years, if my math is right, then at that point, 2013 to 2020?
[00:21:15] Madalyn Tavares: Yeah, Instagram, WordPress blog. I mean, my background from my bachelor’s degree is multimedia journalism and production. So, I think that I’ve just naturally been inclined to enjoy those things and enjoy writing. I’m a big avid writer, avid reader, and so it was just like a natural progression from there, and then the podcasts.
[00:21:34] Detective Ev: I was only asking cause I think people still to this day really underestimate the power of blogging particularly in our space, and I’m sure it applies to others. But in this space, I mean, guys, when you’re doing marketing (because we have a lot of people starting their businesses or working on it), you have to think from the perspective of the person you’re trying to talk to. A lot of the times that’s us in a different body in a sense.
Don’t Underestimate Blogging
So, when we’re looking up health stuff, think about how many times, oh gosh, I gotta ask this question. Or what does this supplement ingredient do? When you go on Google, then you’re what? If you’re in the supplement store, you’re not watching a video, you’re reading. A lot of the times it’s the blogs that are going to come up or whatever.
I read all the time still, different blogs. I don’t even mean to go there, but I end up there organically. So, I think, people, don’t underestimate that because even if you’re not the best writer, first of all, there’s a million apps out there now that can help you. You could hire someone very cheap on Fiverr or Upwork to edit it for you for the grammar if you really feel like you needed it.
And a lot of people are nervous to be on video. Like, what we’re doing right now, it’s not for everyone and that’s fine. It wasn’t for me for a long time. And you don’t even have to do that. So, it’s actually something you could, once you have it perfect (there’s a lot of perfectionists out there in our FDN world), you could click publish and submit and it’s good to go. Definitely don’t underestimate that.
But I like that this evolved into a podcast and stuff, because you strike me as someone who just, some people have the personality, and they should be going and doing that and using it with the world.
So why Clean Bee? Like what does that mean?
“Life Is Messy, But It Shouldn’t Be Toxic”
[00:22:50] Madalyn Tavares: That’s a fun question. It actually struck very intuitively, it just kind of hit me.
I was working in a cafe one afternoon. Working through just actually reviewing some modules from a previous year and just kind of like refreshing some of my information. I got up, packed up, walked next door to the grocery store. And as I’m walking into the grocery store, all of a sudden, I got this idea.
It was like, Queen bee, clean bee. And it’s like learning to be the clean bee of your own home, was kind of like the initial sort of iteration. I immediately left the grocery store, turned back around, went back to the cafe. I was like, I feel really inspired about this. I’m just going to make this a domain name and an Instagram handle right now before it’s taken somewhere else.
Then pretty much a couple weeks after that, I had this, my tagline is, “Life is messy, but it shouldn’t be toxic.” That’s really the basis of and the pillar of what I like to do. Whether that’s the toxins in your food or makeup products or the toxic mindset shifts or patterns or habits that maybe are not supporting you anymore. Learning, you know, how to kind of cut free of that. It’s just been a little bit of an evolution from there. But yeah, it just totally came out of like a random inspired moment.
[00:24:11] Detective Ev: I feel like a lot of FDNs have this. Maybe, again, this work just kind of calls for it. But the way that you describe these things, like it hits you. I mean, to anyone in the moment it sounds so impulsive and like almost irresponsible.
Following Your Intuition
But then I just tell them like two years later after it worked out and they’re like, wow, how’d you do that? I’m like it literally just came to me. Then I said, okay, I’m going to go do that because it feels correct. There’s no other way to describe it.
I was someone who was very skeptical of that stuff as a kid. I mean, I grew up like an atheist. Not only skeptical, I was honestly, very cruel to people who claimed to be able to do things like that or receive messages in that way. I’m like, this is insane. Yet I’ve seen myself struggle so badly with the things that I tried to do logically. On paper, this looks great. This is a solid, good financial plan and I struggle with that.
Then the thing that comes to me out of left field that seems totally impulsive, doesn’t even make sense, I go do that and it’s like everything I’m touching just turns to gold with it. At a certain point in your life experience here, you just have to accept that. I try to plan it out perfectly, I got all the steps and that didn’t work, and it was a struggle. It’s like, you know, pushing this boulder uphill.
Then I do the thing that makes almost no sense, it’s completely impulsive, it seems it came to me outta nowhere, and it’s like, I’m rolling with the boulder downhill. It just moves outta the way for me. It’s really cool how that kind of works out.
So, if people listen to your podcast what can they expect? They can learn about toxins and things to avoid and what else can they learn?
Breaking Down Navigating Toxins Info
[00:25:29] Madalyn Tavares: It’s very much a mix of tangible tactical steps, like actually avoiding toxins like glyphosate, like you touched on earlier from Monsanto now owned by Bayer, understanding how to support that process. But also, we talk a lot about mindset. There’s some spirituality episodes. There’s a lot about habit building. A lot of, you know, very health specific episodes.
My audience is mostly female, and there is a big hot topic right now for the community of just birth control and actually coming off of that, if that’s a choice. Which I actually kind of touched on with Reed in our episode, which will be going live you know, in the future.
There’s some specific health concern episodes as well as my own kind of personal insights and downloads that I like to share, just like things that I’m working through in real time.
I find that in the health and wellness space, I don’t think that this ever comes from a malicious standpoint, but I do think that oftentimes health and wellness can feel quite exclusionary and inaccessible to a lot of people. They feel like, oh, I don’t know what those words mean, or you know, I’m just not interested in it.
I’m really just passionate about trying to parse things down and make it digestible and also hopefully entertaining, so that people that aren’t necessarily interested in it can still glean insights that can help them in their day to day.
[00:26:55] Detective Ev: That’s really cool. I appreciate that. I don’t know if I would’ve worded it that same way, but I mean, you’re a hundred percent right.
People Learn Through Others’ Stories
I feel like that’s what we try to do on this show, because we do have nerdy episodes where we get like technical. But a lot of this is stories. Because I believe the facts tell and the story sell. It’s not like we’re selling anything in particular. I’m not talking about the course. I mean that’s great if you want to do it.
But I’m trying to sell you on the idea that there’s this whole other world. And perhaps, despite what you might have been told, the chronic health issues or symptoms that you have might be avoidable. It’s not a claim. I’m just, how many times do you have to see it on this show?
We have everyone. Cancer, lichen sclerosus. What am I looking for? Do you know?
Madalyn Tavares: Yes, I know.
Detective Ev: I’m missing that one. I will not edit that out just for integrity. That’s the point. Diseases that you can’t even pronounce, and we’ll get them better. So, there you go.
But yeah, people need to know this through the stories that this is even possible and that this is something that they can truly do. So, if you can bring that in a digestible way that’s practical, I think that matters. Cause it does intimidate a lot of people, especially in your world if you’re going to touch on chemicals and toxins. Some of those words are very hard to cover. That’s just pretty cool. Yes, as I know all too well.
[00:28:02] Madalyn Tavares: It’s so true. And I love what you shared about stories. I think hearing healing stories is so important in the process.
Successful Healing Stories Lends Hope
For instance, I am actually recovering from knee surgery, which is why I’m not in my normal podcast space, actually. I can’t fit in there cause I have to have my leg propped up. It’s been a wild few weeks.
But in this process, I’ve been finding myself gravitating to stories of people that also had knee surgery that also have overcome this. Just hearing their success brings me this sense of hope and trust in the process. So, I think what you’re doing by sharing these stories, it’s such an integral part of the process for healing, for literally anyone, for anything.
[00:28:45] Detective Ev: Now I’m curious about what it is that you offer people. I would guess it’s more than just the podcast, right? Like are you offering a one-on-one service or what?
I am asking this genuinely, cause I know I have you send over the bio and stuff. But I think the guests know this, but if they don’t, I like to go into the episode with a healthy amount of ignorance. I don’t mean negligent ignorance where it’s like, I don’t know anything about the person. But I want to ask authentic questions.
I want to ask them in a way that an audience member might be thinking about asking a question like that if they were in front of you. So, I don’t even fully know what you offer. I’d love to hear about that.
Navigating Toxins: The Pantry Audit
[00:29:16] Madalyn Tavares: I do offer one-on-one services. I will say, you know, the main pillar is the podcast.
Then I offer something called The Pantry Audit, which is essentially a program that was birthed out of, cause I was doing one-on-one coaching. What I realized is that while I absolutely love that for long-term support, I was realizing that I think for a lot of people it can feel a little bit intimidating.
They also feel like, I’m not even really sure what I need help with. What I thought was, what is the question I’m getting asked the most? And that is, Maddie, what do you think about this oat milk? Or what do you think about this supplement? Or how do I read labels? Or how do I understand what the best products are to help support my health and my family?
So, I created The Pantry Audit to be essentially this more short-term kind of support where it’s very tactical, it’s very tangible results. It’s me essentially walking you through your pantry of course, the fridge, basically all of the cabinets and drawers and doors in your kitchen, and helping you understand how to read labels, understanding what your health concerns are, and how we can actually support your transition into something else that’s more beneficial. Really just giving people the tools so that way the next time that they’re going to the store or shopping, they feel more empowered.
It’s not this, oh, well, someone told me to get this, so I’m just going to get this. It’s, I know why I should get this because of X, Y, Z.
Shorter Program to Get Quick Results
[00:30:46] Detective Ev: That makes a ton of sense. It doesn’t always happen because you can’t really control the client per se. But that’s clearly the goal of FDN, right?
Reed always says this, we don’t want a revolving door practice where you gotta come back to us every year just to make sure everything’s okay, or like, because you got sick again. We want you to understand, maybe not as much as us, but enough to go out there and, like you said, empowered.
Like okay, I can look at this and I can make an informed decision as the consumer as to why this is bad or good for me. Then I can maybe even tell my friend that’s with me at the store that day that this is something that’s good or bad and why?
You’re right. There’s a huge difference between, oh, someone told me to get this, so I search for that, and I get it. Versus, I understand why I’m getting this or not getting this rather for certain things, you know? I think that’s very important.
So, just to be clear, you do still work with people one-on-one, but offer that? Or is the one-on-one and done?
[00:31:32] Madalyn Tavares: That is the one-on-one capacity that I’m doing at this time. So, if anyone’s interested, I’ve got all the details I can send your way.
Instead of a longer program, which is what I had done previously, this is more like a short-term and then we can always consider working on a long-term setting after that. But I think that it’s a great way to get your foot in the door and get started and see some results, straight out of the gate.
Navigating Toxins: The Goal is to Develop Knowledge
Just to echo what you said, in social media in particular, it’s a beautiful thing in a lot of ways. But I also think that it can be a little bit overwhelming cause there’s so many products out there, right?
So many people get really excited about a product and I mean, I’m just as guilty as anybody else. But there is this kind of like promoting of something and then people buying it without knowing why. So that’s really the goal is to develop that knowledge.
[00:32:18] Detective Ev: Well, we ended up having more time than I would’ve thought, so I have some final questions for you that are like ones that’ll probably take us plenty of time anyway.
From your one-on-one stuff, I’m always really curious about client testimonials and I’m always talking something where you can actually share it. If you can’t use their name, that’s fine. Obviously respecting privacy. But I’d love to know if there’s just maybe someone had a health transformation with you, or you found some like crazy chemical in their house that they never would’ve thought about. Whatever it is for you that just seems like a really cool testimonial. I’d love to hear like one or two of those that sticks out.
[00:32:49] Madalyn Tavares: That’s such a fun question. The one that came up initially was, and I won’t say her name, but she is someone who had historically really struggled with eating disorders in the past. Which I am not, claiming, I’m not an expert in that specifically.
She had overcome that with the help of a therapist and some other people and was then at the point where she was wanting to just get a better understanding of her health and wellbeing in general.
Collaborating With Someone Who’s on Your Side
One of the things that ended up being such a random sort of discovery is, she was struggling with migraines. She would get them here and there, so we took a look at her supplements. We were including some different things like magnesium to try to support her body.
But then we realized that she was actually wearing AirPods for a big chunk of the day, hours and hours and hours wearing these AirPods on walks, on work calls, just listening to music around the house. I just suggested to her, and this is obviously I’m not going to go down the whole wormhole that is the science and information behind, are things like EMFs harmful to our health.
But it was just a suggestion that felt for me, quite intuitive. I was like, you know what? Let’s actually switch that up. I would like for you to try for one week, don’t wear those and just listen to a speaker or use wired headphones if you need to.
She actually noticed, she felt a little bit more calm, like in her body, she said. And she wasn’t having as many migraines. Obviously, that is so anecdotal, and I don’t have a hard data set to prove that that’s what it was. But that’s what I think is so important about having someone just on your side who’s invested in your health and your journey.
These are things that you just might not consider. Just through conversation and having that support in place, you can uncover that there might be some weird little triggers that you never even thought of.
Navigating Toxins: EMF Effects on The Sick
[00:34:46] Detective Ev: That one’s tough for me because I feel like, one, I do believe that they’re having an effect on our body to be very clear. I appreciate you labeling it anecdotal, but that’s kind of the point of the client testimonials, right? I just love to hear the anecdotal things.
It is tough for me cause I feel like the healthier I get, the less it bothers me. Whereas before when I was super sick, I remember going to like Miami for about a month, at one point for job stuff, and I was getting destroyed down there. Like two weeks in, I’m like, Dude, this sucks. I do not feel good despite better sun. And you know, I know how to use the sun properly. You’d think I’m doing better and honestly; I’m not doing well at all. Again, this is my anecdotal experience. I’m not making a claim on it one way or another.
But it almost seems as if the EMF stuff worsens people who are sick, to me, rather than maybe being inherently causal. Although I’m sure for some people it does cause it. My biggest argument for that is that, well, everyone in a major city, like I live 50 minutes outside of Philadelphia. Now there’s trees in a field. Beautiful right here, right? So, obviously it is a dramatically different amount of EMFs hitting me in the center of Philadelphia.
If it was that bad by itself, like why isn’t everyone just dropping dead? I mean, that’s dramatically different. That’s not even comparable to what I’m getting right here where I can lose service if I drive two minutes down the road. And that’s a fact. I could actually lose service there. So, I don’t know.
Navigating Toxins: The Overflowing Cup
But then again, the people that get sick, they get really sick in the city, it seems. There’s higher rates of mental health issues, there’s higher rates of cancer. So, I don’t know. I haven’t figured that one out yet. But I think that’s pretty cool that you were able to give her that insight.
Certainly, I mean, my phone, yes, you’re right. I always call on speaker. I basically just started using the Bluetooth again for the first time in like six years as of a year or two ago. And I felt comfortable with it. So that’s still amazing that, that did that for her.
[00:36:25] Madalyn Tavares: I totally hear you on the anecdotal evidence and also, I really just want to highlight the part that you mentioned about feeling like that was more of a trigger when you’re in a less healthy state.
I do fully agree with that. I think that you can look at that from literally any perspective. Because I do like to think about, let’s say we have a cup, for instance. Every single toxin is another input into this cup. When that cup is full, it starts overflowing. I feel like that’s the manifestation of symptoms. So, little things like heavy EMF exposure can send you over the edge.
Just like you can think this with allergies and autoimmune. I mean, so many different avenues that we could go down. But yeah, I fully agree that it can be more of an issue if you’re in a less healthy state.
Navigating Toxins: Start with Your Water
[00:37:15] Detective Ev: Now, it’s actually somewhat rare that we get someone who is almost like centered around the toxin stuff and the chemicals. Of course, you branch out, but this is the center. It’s normally the opposite where they center somewhere else and maybe this is one of the branches.
So, I’m curious. Maybe we’ll start with three, if you want to go to five, you’re more than welcome. But I’m sure you can do a lot with three. What would be some of like the top three chemicals or toxins or whatever that people are getting exposed to maybe that are easy to avoid or that you believe that need to be avoided?
I guess a better way to word it so I don’t give you five questions in one, is what are the top three chemicals you would love to see people avoiding and where are they typically getting it?
[00:37:54] Madalyn Tavares: Oh, great question. Yes, this could be a long list.
When I speak with anyone, the first thing that I always suggest is, filter your water. Municipal water, as probably all of your listeners know, is not the best source. Depending on where you live, you can actually just pop in your zip code and get a full water report from your municipality. They’re required to give you that. I always suggest doing that first, so that way you know what you’re dealing with.
Then you can choose the best filter that fits within your budget from there. Because I’m not somebody that’s going to say, go and spend $400 on a water filtration system that you cannot afford. Do what you can with what you have.
Navigating Toxins: Deodorant and Detergent
But if you have the knowledge of knowing what’s in your water, which for most people they probably know. But things you know, like fluoride, chlorine, obviously all of the VOCs and these other chemicals that run off in our streets and then end up in our water supply. Definitely filter your water.
And then the other two I would say is, let’s talk about deodorant and let’s talk about your detergent. I call it like the two Ds.
The deodorant, we can stop exposing ourselves to aluminum, because that’s another thing that often shows up in water. And as often if you live like me, I live in a city, so I am very cognizant that I’m breathing in these chemicals. If you can reduce just one extra exposure, I think especially for women. With the information out there of the link between aluminum-based deodorants and increases in things like breast cancer, it’s just, we gotta stop that.
Then detergent would be the other one. I think we forget that our skin is the biggest organ on our body. And everything that comes into contact with our skin is getting absorbed. I feel like I can smell Tide or Gain down the hallway when my neighbors in my apartment building are washing their clothes.
If you can find something that you still love, that still works for you, that’s going to be a lot less toxic to your body and your skin, go for it.
Navigating Toxins: Washing Clothes Without the Soap
[00:39:55] Detective Ev: This was a little different when we first started dating, but my girlfriend was a little hesitant. Listen, someone’s going to kill me on this show for this, but it’s not dirty. I would never do this if it’s dirty. But like I wash my blankets and sheets regularly. And a few years ago, I’m not saying I’ve never done it in the few years, cause I do it every now and then to keep it going.
I have a good washer and dryer, I just put it in on heavy duty, and I see what the water does and it’s on warm. It’s not like I’m doing it with cold water, like I do it with warm. My blankets and sheets come out smelling just fine every time. They’re not dirty anymore. They’re all good to go. If I had a real stain or, gosh, if I was eating on the bed. I try not to do that, but like if I’m rushing around doing something crazy for whatever reason it might be, and something spills, yes, of course.
But I think we also sometimes overestimate like what actually needs to be done. I understand that the soaps, they do things and I get that. But I’m also like, guys, it’s a washer. Like they did not invent this so that it does nothing without the soap. That doesn’t even make sense. Like it does a good job at thoroughly cleaning your garments and stuff without that.
Navigating Toxins: Soap Nuts is an Option
So again, it doesn’t smell, it’s clean. Like, are we in agreement that this is good? Because I’ll like go to the gym and sweat. I mean, you could smell that it’s different. It’s not like, you think it didn’t get cleaned. It smelled before I went to the gym and now it does not smell. So obviously, something happened.
I know that’s not for everyone. I know I’m not going to get most people on board with that. But to me, I’m like a minimalist in that sense. I want to minimize the exposures as much as possible. And I’m sure there’s natural ones that are great. But like at the end of the day, I mean it is a lot of chemicals.
So, my follow up question to that was going to be, do you have any like favorite Clean Bee approved brands that you like for maybe detergents and stuff like that?
[00:41:29] Madalyn Tavares: Great question. I mean, depending on budget and if there are so many other concerns from the individual.
But funny story. I actually really love soap nuts which is extremely minimalist. If your listeners know, I mean, it’s literally a nut and then you put it in a sache with like essential oils.
Detective Ev: Was that on Shark Tank?
Madalyn Tavares: No. It literally comes from a tree. Like this is from nature.
[00:41:50] Detective Ev: Oh, definitely not on Shark Tank.
[00:41:51] Madalyn Tavares: It’s actually where the word soap comes from because it’s saponin. And when you get these little nuts wet and they move around in the washing machine, they actually do produce like suds. So that’s an option if you want to be extremely conscientious.
Navigating Toxins: Supporting the Healthier Option Companies
But then there’s brands like Better Life. There’s brands like Molly’s Suds. There’s brands like, Hive. Obviously, Dr. Bronner’s is a huge one that a lot of people are aware of. But lots of different avenues of companies.
I really love to support brands and companies that are out there doing the work to try to bring a healthier, better product to the world. And just being mindful that those companies don’t get bought out by bigger companies that then change the formulation. That’s the little caveat I’ll say. But yeah, lots of different options.
[00:42:39] Detective Ev: Well, I hope these people listened all the way through and thankfully we do actually have a high retention rate. But I hope they listened all the way through. Cause I feel like some of the stuff that we talked about at the end here, between the things to look out for and then the brand recommendations, I mean, there’s a few brands there.
Again, since I take this minimalist approach, I don’t typically have to worry about a lot of these things, but I’ve never even heard of a few of those brands, and I’d like to be educated on it. I will go check those out myself.
Where to Find Madalyn Tavares
I have two more quick things for you, Madalyn. One is where can people find you if they’d like to work with you or see what you do?
[00:43:06] Madalyn Tavares: Thank you so much. Well, I’m at theecleanbee.com and that’s T h e e Clean Bee.
Pretty much on every social channel. But the main space where I hang out is Instagram @theecleanbee. Lots of daily life behind the scenes, but then a lot of information. Be sure to check out the highlights. There’s tons of good stuff on there.
As it relates to like product recommendations, I have a series called Simple Swaps where I do exactly as it sounds, showing kind of a conventional option and then giving a few different swaps that are easy to do. So, Instagram is the main space.
At also The Clean Bee Podcast and then theecleanbee.com, which is kind of where everything is at if you’re interested in working together. I’ve got all the information there and how to get in touch.
Health Detective Podcast Signature Question
[00:43:51] Detective Ev: Thank you. All right, final question, I promise. It’s the signature question on the Health Detective Podcast. And this will be a fun one cause I’m not sure which route you’re going to take with this.
The signature question is, if I could give you, in this case, a magic wand and you could wave it and get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health, that could be you’re either getting them to do one thing or you’re getting them to stop doing one thing, either or is fine, doesn’t matter to us really. But what is the one thing that you would get them to do?
[00:44:18] Madalyn Tavares: Wow. Oh man. I’m going to go with the first thing that came up to my mind, which is get outside, get your bare feet on the earth.
I know that sounds a bit woo woo. But if you can just breathe some fresh air, spend some time with people that you love, spend time outside, roll around in the dirt with your animals, like, just allow yourself to be exposed and in nature. I think we spend a lot of time inside. I’m extremely guilty of this. Most of my work is inside.
But if you can get outside, get that fresh air, get the vitamin D from the sun, and just enjoy being in nature.
[00:44:54] Detective Ev: Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on with us today.
[00:44:56] Madalyn Tavares: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. This has been awesome. I really appreciate it.
Conclusion
[00:45:00] Detective Ev: All right guys. That’ll do it for today’s episode with Madalyn Tavarez.
If you enjoyed this episode, let me know, because I’m kind of getting some ideas recently. We had Ryan Monahan on a few weeks back and he did a live lab reading with us. So, we went over my thyroid results from like two and a half, three years ago. You guys really enjoyed that one. We got great feedback. And right now, it’s actually a pretty well viewed video on our YouTube. We still have a lot of work to do on the YouTube, but people were viewing that one, so it’s cool.
I’m kind of thinking toxins could come on again because we could talk about toxins all day. I mean, Madalyn has a whole podcast on this, right? But not only could we talk about it all day, we could actually do video versions of this where we go over some labels or have actually real things in our hand where we show you guys what’s hidden in these products. I think that’d be kind of cool.
Let me know if you would like that. You can always send a comment to us by going to Podbean and then searching for The Health Detective Podcast. I am looking forward to talking to you guys again soon. But until then, take care.
Are you frequently undereating and looking to kick the habit? Keep reading to learn what to eat so you can stop.
Not eating enough food can be the result of a multitude of different factors. Commonly, we see it happen when individuals are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or more emotional than usual. These are often the causes of unintentional undereating. On the other hand, we also see cases of somewhat intentional undereating as a result of restrictions from diets, detoxes, and cleanses.
Whatever the cause for you, it’s important to identify it and turn it around early on. That way, you can either prevent the habit from developing further or break the habit if it already exists.
Are you Undereating?
So how do you even know if you’re undereating? Your body will most likely be communicating with you to let you know that it needs more energy than you’re providing.
You may feel tired or lethargic, experience dizziness or poor cognition, or notice hair loss and brittle nails. You may also find yourself to be very irritable and feel cold all the time. In the case of females specifically, you may even experience the loss of your period, or amenorrhea.
If you’re experiencing three or more of these symptoms, chances are you’re undereating.
5 Steps To Stop Undereating
Try out implementing the following 5 steps to start eating in accordance with your body’s nutritional needs.
Add a Source of Fat to your Meals and Snacks
For some reason, fat is often easily forgotten. When listening to client recalls during our first few appointments, I often hear meals that sound so incredible, but they simply have no fat in them.
Try adding a source of fat to each of your meals and snacks whenever you can. Fat is the body’s most nutrient-dense food source. That means, a tiny bit of it packs a big nutritional punch! By simply adding one fat-containing food item to your snack or meal, you’ll significantly increase the amount of energy you’re getting. That means you’re one step closer to no longer undereating!
Think of food sources like fatty fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel, and sardines), nuts, seeds, nut butter, seed butter, avocados, avocado oil, olives, and olive oil for this step.
Don’t be Afraid of Carbohydrates
There’s nothing to fear when it comes to carbohydrates, or starchy carbohydrates to be more specific. Starchy carbohydrates are the body’s primary source of energy. We thrive on them! They provide the brain and red blood cells with the glucose they need to survive and thrive.
When it comes to starchy carbohydrates, people often believe they should avoid them entirely or significantly restrict them because of all the negative health connotations associated with them. Do we want to be cognizant of balance when it comes to processed starchy carbohydrates? Absolutely. But does that mean we want to restrict starchy carbohydrates? Absolutely not. This will lead to undereating over time.
Try and incorporate natural, complex sources of starchy carbohydrates on a regular basis. Think of ancient grains (such as quinoa, farro, and amaranth), whole grains, fruits, and starchy vegetables (such as sweet potatoes, peas, and squash) for this step.
Pay Attention to your Hunger Cues
Your body uses hunger cues to communicate with you when it needs more energy and when it has enough. When we listen to these cues and abide by them regularly, it’s much easier to avoid undereating. On the flip side, when we ignore these cues and attempt to follow an eating schedule or a diet, undereating is much more prevalent.
Start by getting to know your hunger and satiety cues. On a regular basis throughout the day, pause and reflect. How are you feeling in regard to hunger? Are you very hungry, slightly hungry, or content? What about fullness? Are you very full, slightly full, or content?
Once you have an idea of what your cues feel like, you can start to abide by them. This is one of the best ways to prevent undereating in the long term.
Food First, Caffeine Next
Beverages, particularly caffeinated ones, can mess with those hunger cues we just spoke of. Sometimes they can suppress your hunger, even when it’s unintentional.
Instead of starting your day off with a coffee first-thing, try having your breakfast first. This can help prevent the coffee from curbing your hunger. In reality, it’s a good idea to abide by this guideline with most beverages that aren’t water. That way, you know you’re satisfying your hunger with food as often as possible!
Manage Stress and Overwhelm
When we’re feeling stressed, anxious or emotional in general, it’s much easier to ignore those hunger cues. The body becomes preoccupied with coping, which can push off hunger.
If you know this is the case for you, try to get into the habit of practicing regular stress management. Whether that’s a form of journaling, meditation, or movement, it can help to minimize those stress levels and in turn, let your hunger and satiety cues thrive.
The Takeaway
When it comes to undereating, the key is to first figure out what’s not working well. Are you restricting intake intentionally? Do you feel more stressed than usual? Or maybe you’re forgetting to add fat to your meals?
Once you know what you may be missing, you can then use these 5 steps to build a balanced, sustainable diet and prevent undereating for good.
Do You Want to Experience More Balance with your Food Choices?
Then find your balanced eating type!
Take this 45-second free quiz to find out which balanced eating archetype you are, and what your unique type needs to maintain balance with the way you nourish yourself. That way, you can finally be free from food and diet obsession, maintain a balanced weight, and cultivate a positive relationship with food and your body.
Pumpkins are inextricably linked to the autumn season – but these lovely winter squashes can definitely pull their weight in the kitchen beyond pumpkin pie or decorations throughout the fall and winter. If you’ve always found pumpkins unwieldy and difficult to use, this guide for what to do with a whole pumpkin will help!
The flesh is rich in fibre, an important nutrient for good digestion, blood sugar balance and cardiovascular health, while the seeds are high in an array of minerals like energy-boosting iron, zinc, plus manganese and copper to support bone production and prevent free radical damage. The seeds are also a good source of protein.
Why Not Use Canned Purée?
There may be times when canned pumpkin is the simple and convenient choice. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when choosing canned pumpkins:
Pumpkin pie purée vs pumpkin purée: Be careful when buying canned versions to ensure you are getting the one you want. Pumpkin pie purée or mix is typically sweetened and has additional spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.
Bisphenol A: Most canned goods are lined with bisphenol A, a chemical that disrupts the endocrine system and is associated with infertility, hormone-related metabolic disorders, and cancer.
What are you getting? Aside from chemicals, preservatives or additives that may be in the canned stuff, the US cans that say ‘100% pumpkin’ may also contain other varieties of squash. This is to help make the canned purée more thick and starchy in consistency, as sometimes pumpkins can be stringy. While we’re absolutely down with winter squash, it’s good to know exactly what we’re getting whenever we are buying or eating something! When you cook a pumpkin, you know for sure that what you’re getting is the real thing.
Price/Quantity: Store-bought pumpkin that comes in a BPA-free can is typically pricey, and you only get a small amount – maybe 2 cups worth. When you bake and use your own, you can batch prep for a variety of recipes, or freeze it for later.
If you’re not planning to carve it, there really isn’t a need for a gigantic 50-pound pumpkin. While you’ll certainly get a lot of flesh and seeds from it, that size is much more difficult to work with!
Choose pumpkins that feel heavy for their size, have firm skins and don’t have any soft or moldy brown spots. We like to use pumpkins that are smaller, especially if you’re new to cooking and eating pumpkins! Three to five pounds is a good place to start, and then you can choose larger pumpkins when you’re more comfortable with handling them.
If the pumpkin is on the smaller side, cut a small slice at the bottom so you have a flat surface to keep it from rolling and rocking.
If your pumpkin is very tough and difficult to cut, pierce the flesh in several spots on a baking sheet and roast it in the oven whole. If you’re making purée (see below) you can roast for longer, or if you just want to soften it, then bake for 10 minutes or so, until the skin can yield to your knife.
To cut and cook into purée:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Cut your pumpkin in halves or quarters, depending on the size.
Scoop out the seeds and save them to roast as a snack (see below).
Place the pieces cut-side down on a baking sheet lined with parchment. You can brush a bit of heat-safe oil onto the halves if you’d like.
Roast for 45 minutes or so, until the flesh is soft and tender and can be easily pierced with a fork.
When the pumpkin is cool enough to handle, scoop out the flesh and mash it, or toss it into your food processor if you don’t feel like mashing it by hand.
To cut and cook into whole cubes for recipes:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Cut your pumpkin into quarters.
Scoop out the seeds and save them to roast as a snack (see below).
Slice the skin off if desired (we like to do this!).
Cut the quarters into smaller chunks. Smaller cubes will cook or roast faster than larger chunks. The size you choose will depend on the recipe – you may want larger wedges to serve as a side dish, or smaller ones to steam or roast for smoothies. You can grab a visual of chopping pumpkin in this video.
Either use right away for the recipe you’re cooking, or stash in the fridge or freezer to cook later.
Saving and Roasting the Seeds
Roasted pumpkin seeds make an amazing snack, and are often a good alternative to nuts for those with nut allergies or for school lunches. Here’s how to do it:
Follow steps 1 or 2 above, scooping the seeds from the flesh.
The flesh will be stringy and likely cling to the seeds. We like to soak the seeds for 30 minutes to an hour or so in cold water, then pull any remaining flesh from the seeds.
Spread the seeds on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, or a bit longer if needed, until the seeds are dry. Watch them carefully starting at the 10-minute mark so they don’t burn.
To make pumpkin seed butter: skip the herbs and spices and dry the seeds plain. You’ll need at least 2-3 cups of seeds, so you may need to store and save your seeds to make the butter when you have enough of them! Then whirl them in your food processor until they break down and become smooth and creamy.
The Pumpkin as a Vessel
You can toss your pumpkin skin into the compost once you hew the flesh and the seeds; however, you can also use it as a cooking vessel! Use it as a tureen for soups and stews, cut it in half and stuff it with grains, veggies, nuts, seeds or dried fruit, or fill it with dips and spreads instead of using a serving bowl. For the latter, smaller pumpkins tend to work better!
Use Those Pumpkin Guts!
When you scoop out the seeds from your pumpkin, you can gather the stringy, fibrous bits between them in your recipes. Use the ‘pumpkin guts’ for broth, juicing, baking, dips and spreads, and more.
You Can Eat Pumpkin Leaves, Too
Tired of spinach and kale? Pumpkin leaves count as a dark leafy green and you can use them in the same way – in salads, soups, stews or stir-fries. Just ensure you use the young leaves, as older pumpkin leaves turn bitter and rough.
pumpkin Recipe Inspiration
Feeling inspired to cook with a whole pumpkin from scratch? Try some of these ideas:
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: We’re going to be talking about income as a health coach, income as an FDN, different tips and tricks. How much money can you actually make doing this? Then of course, if you guys have any questions, you can drop them below if you are Live. Even if you’re not Live and you’re watching the recording, you can also drop questions because we do go back to these things.
We have real people on our Instagram. We do not have a chat bot or something like that. We get why certain businesses do that, but we prefer to have a real human interaction with you guys. So anytime you reach out in our DMs, we have that as well. All right, so I’m going to get started here in, how about now?
Oh, cool. We got more people joining in. Drop where you’re from below if you’re watching Live. From Columbia! Oh, living in Italy! Two cool places right there. So thanks for letting me know.
We wanted to talk about why certain things make money and some things don’t, right? Because I believe FDN Practitioners/health coaches are in a really good position right now, and there’s stats to back that up. We actually have a whole blog that we wrote on this. So, if you drop the word “blog” below in the comments, whether it’s during the recording or after, we will make sure to send that over to you.
We share some references there. Share statistics about how much health coaches are actually making right now because they’re doing surprisingly well both independently and when they do jobs for other people.
Potential Income: Formula Explaining Health Coaching Success
But this was a formula that I learned at a really young age, and I’m so thankful that I did. This is something that you could apply to almost anything in your life if you decide to get out of the industry completely, which I’m not sure why you would do that in this day and age. But if you did, you could still apply this to other places.
I wish I had my little whiteboard with me, but we’re currently moving so I got the back of this notebook. That’s how much I love you guys. I’m going to taint the back of my notebook even though I’m sure you guys are like me and love these different notebooks. The formula is going to explain exactly why health coaching and FDN makes sense. The reason FDN health coaches are making money right now is because of this formula.
So, we have perceived value. Perceived Value is going to be the first thing, and that is times Replaceability. I think that has an “i” in it. You don’t need to spell well to make good money, let me tell you this. Perceived Value times Replaceability. Then it is times The Number of People Who Can Get that Value. So again, forgive my handwriting, but this is going to be a good formula.
And if you truly understand this, not that I’m some financial expert, but I was lucky enough to have this taught to me by people who are doing very well for themselves. Then it makes very clear sense to why FDN and health coaching is a great thing to be doing right now. Perceived value times replaceability times the number of people that can receive the value. What does that actually mean?
Perceived Value
This is exactly why celebrities make more than teachers, even though a lot of people think this isn’t fair. By the way, I’m not advocating for the fairness of this one way or another. That’s way beyond my pay grade. I’m showing you a formula that actually works. It’s something that I’ve applied to my life. It’s helped me tremendously. Then it helps you make sense of the whole health coaching and FDN thing.
Let’s talk about Perceived Value really quick. And we’re going to use another example first just so the health coaching thing makes sense. Let’s use that celebrity and teacher example really quick cause that’s the classic one.
Why are these celebrities and basketball players and stuff making all this money when teachers don’t make enough? Well, again, I’m not arguing the fairness of this, but here is why. The Perceived Value of a teacher is objectively higher to an individual than a basketball player.
If I’m watching the NBA, let’s use Kobe Bryant, he was a total legend. So, Kobe Bryant, great basketball player. But no one is going to argue that to the individual, a great teacher that you had in high school wasn’t more valuable to you than watching Kobe Bryant on the TV. So, the perceived value of the teacher is actually higher than that of Kobe Bryant.
[00:03:38] Detective Ev: Yet Kobe made millions and most teachers do not make anywhere near that.
Replaceability & The Number of People Who Can Receive that Value
We need to go to the rest of the formula. Well now we’re multiplying it by Replaceability. When we multiply it by Replaceability, we see, okay, well there’s only one Kobe Bryant. He’s a personality. He made a name for himself. He’s one of the best in the world. So, you have that as well.
But then here’s one of the key things that people really miss. It is the number of people that can receive that perceived value. With Kobe Bryant, the difference is you have a low amount, really, it’s just entertainment value, for a couple of hours on the weekends or maybe weeknights whenever they play. But the replaceability was, I mean, nearly impossible to replace him. He’s going to live in spirit forever.
Then the number of people that can receive that value. This is really where these celebrities and stuff make their fortunes. He can give a little bit of value to millions of people on a weekly basis, or he could do this at one time. This is why the income kept pouring in for him.
Whereas a teacher, even though we would consider their job more valuable in society, did not make as much. So, how do we apply this to health coaching, FDN, all this type of stuff? Well, let’s take the average health coach. The average health coach is someone, I mean, the traditional definition here, that’s what I’m using. I’m not saying every health coach is like this.
A Traditional Health Coach
By the way, for those just tuning in, you guys can ask any questions you want below. We’re talking about income as a health coach, income as an FDN. And if you drop the word “blog” in the comments, whether it’s Live or you’re watching afterwards, we’re going to actually send you a blog that we did.
It had a lot of success. People really loved it, and it has statistics and data showing you that we are actually doing really well in the health coaching industry right now and why it might be a viable thing for you to pursue if you are kind of struggling for income or maybe you’re in a job transition or you’re just scared of the times. We get that. But this is still a pretty good thing.
We have the formula, and then let’s plug health coaching in. The traditional definition of a health coach is typically someone who is working with an individual to help them on their health goals, right? If you actually look up what health coaches do, that’s typically how it’s defined.
If they work in a doctor’s office, for example, they might be the person that’s not writing prescriptions. They’re not even really giving protocols as a health coach. But they might be helping the individual or the patient engage in the things that the doctor asked them to engage in. So, whether it’s staying on course with the medication, or maybe they, God forbid, recommended some lifestyle or dietary changes, they can help them with that.
The Value of a Health Coach
Now, for most of us that are watching something like this, especially, or following the FDN page, we would like to do a little more than that. But let’s not discredit it, that job has a lot of value. I mean, what are all the labs and all the information worth if the person can’t even pursue those things and actually stick to them? They’re worth literally nothing then, it’s just information.
So, you take a health coach, and the perceived value is actually kinda high. Most of us procrastinate. Most of us can’t stick to what we start. If you have someone that can actually do this for you, the perceived value is fairly high. But you’re not getting rid of any really severe health issues that way, not just by being a health coach at least.
So, that’s not as valuable as it could be. The Replaceability, I mean, these are online certifications. Not that FDN isn’t, but I’ll explain why it’s a little different soon. The Replaceability, well, anyone can go do most health coaching certification, so they’re becoming more and more abundant. I mean, there’s tens of thousands of these types of health coaches out there.
The number of people that can receive that value while assuming they’re working one-on-one with clients, it’s only one individual who can perceive that value. This is still working out really well for a lot of health coaches. But what if there were other ways where you can kind of add value to the client to greatly raise your perceived value? And if there were different things that you can do to make your replaceability that much harder, it would make you that much harder to replace.
Perceived Value of an FDN Practitioner
I think that’s why a lot of people that go through health coaching certifications, totally not myself, then pursue FDN. I’m kidding, but I’ve said this before, I am one of those people.
I got a health coaching certification, and I liked that certification. It was great, but I didn’t feel like I had the tools to go out and help people. So, there’s many aspects there of why I was making $0 when I did that.
But then I pursued FDN. And FDN, what it did is my perceived value goes through the roof. Because instead of just being able to help someone follow a goal or a prescription medication schedule that was given to them, I’m now able to be a health detective, right?
I can actually look at labs that even doctors are not trained to look at because doctors are really trained primarily to use blood work, and I’m talking general practitioners here. They’re trained to use blood work; they’re looking for just highs and lows in the reference range. They’re not actually trained to look for hidden stressors and clues on these labs. They don’t even utilize most of the labs that we use despite the labs having a scientific basis.
So, the perceived value becomes extremely high because there’s actually only so many people that can do this. That’s the replaceability, right? There’s only several thousand FDNs walking around, and there are millions and millions and millions, I mean, literally hundreds of millions of people who need this work.
You could argue that anyone could take FDN and that would be accurate. But by the time that actually happens, that this space is saturated, you would’ve done probably just fine for yourself that I think you’d be well within retirement.
FDNs’ Perceived Value is Through the Roof
I don’t know if we have to worry about the replaceability thing, although I would acknowledge that yes, one day you could make the case that anyone could do this. So, it would be kind of replaceable. But where this is a little different than a normal health coaching certification too, if you think about it, is labs, deep science, data. I mean, sure anyone can sign up, but it’s not necessarily for everyone. I think you guys know what I mean.
There’s a lot of these cute health certifications out there. You maybe do two hours of work each week. You’re not even allowed to go ahead in the course, and basically everyone graduates, right? It’s like a little metal for participation, kind of, let’s just call it what it is. I mean, that’s what happened to me. That’s really the experience I had.
No one’s grading me, really. No one was checking up on me and seeing that I actually knew the information. They just said, Okay, he did some modules, he must know this stuff. So of course, my perceived value was low. I wasn’t even being monitored.
Whereas FDNs, you’re going to have to train hard, you’re going to have to study hard. Sure, anyone can join in, but you’re going to have to prove yourself to make sure that you actually are going to get access to our medical directors, who are going to let you facilitate these lab orders through them for your clients. That’s not just anyone getting to do that. So of course, the replaceability is a little tougher here and the perceived value is through the roof.
Replaceability of FDNs is Really Tough
How many people do you know would benefit from something like getting lab testing analyzed by someone who’s thinking from a holistic perspective? It’s probably about eight out of 10 people that you know, I would imagine.
True. We study hard. Yes, we do, that’s for sure. And Jo said it’s worth it. It’s absolutely worth it. That’s why all of us are so passionate about this. But that’s the point, right? Some things in life it’s worth working for. That’s why these people study so hard to become doctors and lawyers. There’s a payout on the other side.
And in terms of the payout for health coaches, FDNs, and these types of professionals, if you want to learn more about this, we wrote a great blog on it. So, if you haven’t already, drop the word “blog” below in the comments. And even if we’re not Live, we’ll have someone reach out to you and send you the blog that we did because a lot of people liked this. There’s data and statistics to back up what we’re talking about and how well the health coaching industry is doing, let alone the FDN industry.
So, the last thing on here was the number of people who can receive that perceived value. Well, if you’re working one-on-one with an FDN, by definition you’re working one-on-one. That’s not a lot of people. But thankfully, the perceived value was really high. Right? And the replaceability, at least at this time, is pretty tough. There’s not a lot of FDNs walking around. There’s not an FDN in every town. There’s not even an FDN necessarily in every city, I would imagine. Although we are getting close, that’s pretty cool.
Potential Income: Add Group Programs into the Mix
But each FDN can only work with so many people at a time. It leaves it to be a space where many of us can participate and still get a piece of the pie, help other people. It’s a really cool thing.
But now we could talk about how people get into group programs. There are FDNs out there. You know, sometimes I’m a little hesitant to even say these things cause I feel like it’s so cool that it sounds unbelievable. But they put it in the blog so there’s no reason I can’t say it.
I’m the only one in Norway, I think. Well, here’s the point, Vanessa, right? If there’s so few FDNs in Norway that you think you’re the only one, that means it’s not saturated in any sense. That’s really good. And that’s a big country. That’s actually one of the places my girlfriend and I want to visit first. Europe, we want to go to Oslo one day.
So, the group programs, people are killing it with this. We have FDNs legitimately speaking, that are making $70,000 a month from the group programs that they offer. And it’s because they have a high perceived value. They’re not really that easy to replace. And on top of it, the number of people that they can affect at one time goes up almost unlimited depending on how many people they can bring into the group.
So, does that make sense how this formula works? Again, I’m not arguing whether it’s fair or whether we should change something in society. I’m just telling you how to use it because it was taught to me and it’s working really well.
Potential Income: Raise our Mindset and our Income
It’s why as a public speaker, I mean, this works out well for me. I can go give perceived value to hundreds of people, if not a thousand at one time. The replaceability is a little tough cause most people hate public speaking. The number of people who can get the value of course, is a lot and the perceived value is pretty good depending on the topic. This is what allows us to make good money as FDNs.
And Reed Davis, the founder of FDN, I don’t know if you guys know this, he actually has a goal. He believes that every single FDN should be shooting for a hundred thousand dollars a year, assuming that they want to do it full time after graduating. It’s so weird how our mindset can limit this or perceive that number one way or another.
Cause some people will say like, I can never make six figures. Then half of us are out here like, my gosh, in the world we live in today, six figures is like the new 50,000. Right? I’m not saying that in an insulting way to someone who doesn’t make six figures. I’m just saying I think we need to elevate our mindset a little bit. We need to set that as the standard for ourselves.
I mean, the food’s going up, the gas is going up. I’m not saying that to scare anyone, but we have tools that we can use to actually raise our income and we need to engage with those. If the rest of the world’s going to go up, and maybe the boss you have right now in a separate field isn’t paying you more, well, you need to do something then and take action to get more money, more income.
Potential Income: Taking it to the Next Level
The only way you can do that is by providing more perceived value to more people. That’s the only way that you can do that ethically, at least. We recommend doing it ethically, that’s for sure. That’s a good way to live your life.
So FDN, I mean, just the fact that Reed has the basis, the goal for everyone, people need us now more than ever, of course. And I’m actually going to talk about in a second how this is one of the things that people will spend money on, even if they don’t have a lot of money.
But to finish that original point, Reed talks about all the time, like that goal being a hundred thousand dollars a year mark. If that’s his goal for the average FDN, I mean, imagine if you want to be not average.
Maybe you want to put in an extra five hours a week or a couple hours a day. Maybe you want to work on yourself in a personal development sense, and you want to work on your personality, your ability to speak on camera, your ability to close on a sales call, your ability to market yourself. This is the base for the average FDN. We’re not talking about the people that want to take it to the next level.
Because the people that take it to the next level, we’ve seen them do half a million dollars a year. We’ve seen them do $70,000 a month. I mean, it’s kind of crazy what we can do here because there’s multiple ways to do it.
Potential Income: Multiple Ways to do FDN
You could work one-on-one; you could work in groups with people. Of course, you could speak or write a book on the topic. The book stuff, I wouldn’t underestimate that. You might not make money off the book itself, but the book can be a great business card of sorts to get you those speaking gigs and to get you one-on-one clients. A lot of people like writing about their stories, so it’s kind of cool.
Now if you’re just tuning in and want to know what we’re talking about today, we are discussing income as a health coach, income as an FDN. You can actually drop any questions that you might have below. I’d be happy to answer them. And we have some other FDNs on that might be able to assist there as well.
Then on top of that, if you want some of the statistics that we’re referencing, because there’s a lot of money being made in the health coaching industry right now. It’s doing really well, and most people can’t even do what we do as FDNs in the health coaching space. We’re like high, high level health coaches. I don’t even necessarily think it’s fair to call us health coaches, but it’s good for marketing purposes, I’ll put it that way.
So, you can drop the word “blog” below and we will actually get you that blog that we sent out to our email list. It did really well. People really liked it because it showed you real stuff and real reasons as to why health coaching is a great thing to be pursuing right now.
Too Unhealthy to Make Any Money
Jo Pate also said in the comments, people need us now more than ever, and that was one of the things I wanted to touch on. The world is getting sicker. We do not need any studies to know that. I mean, you could see it, but of course there are studies to back it up.
The point of me mentioning that is people will spend the last bit of money that they have on health stuff. Now, I’m not saying that we do that to take their last penny. That’s ridiculous. The reason I’m saying this is because they actually need to get healthy to make more money and to do good things in life.
You may have heard my story before if you listen to the Health Detective Podcast, which we do for FDN. I was an 18-year-old guy who barely could put in a 40-hour work week, cause I felt so terrible, and it was getting worse and worse. I had a disease diagnosis at one point, that could have qualified me for disability if I gave it enough time. I know what it’s like to not be able to make any money because someone is so unhealthy. That was me.
You could actually switch this around. People look at this as an investment when they’re not healthy because they’re like, Dude, I can’t do anything anyway. I need to just put in my money for this. Maybe I need it for the credit card.
Potential Income: People Need Us Now More Than Ever
Again, I’m not really for taking people’s last penny unless I know for a fact in my heart that I can help that person ethically. I can get them to that next level so that, yeah, maybe they spent $3,000, $4,000. $5,000 with me and with the labs. But I know that I can turn that into a six-figure job for them when they’re able to be healthy again and happy in their relationships, right?
People need us now more than ever. There’s more sick people out there than ever before. We have unique answers that, man, if we go back to that formula regarding the replaceability. And if you’re just tuning in, you could watch the replay because it’ll be saved and posted on our Instagram.
We are really hard to replace right now. There is not many people doing what we’re doing and getting the results that we’re getting. That’s why FDN saw so much growth in the last 10 years, let alone the last two years with the pandemic and everything going on. So, don’t underestimate even during a recession, even during tough financial times, people’s ability and willingness to spend the money on things that matter if they know that we can help.
Jo Pate said they can spend that much and more just searching for answers and get them nowhere.
Potential Income: They’ll Spend it to Get Real Answers
Yeah. This is something I always kind of shared. It’s really sad for my family but my mom always has given me permission to share it. My mom and dad, because of my mom’s undiagnosed thyroid disease and all the other things that came with it, cause it’s not like Western medicine treated that particularly well, they spent over a hundred thousand dollars on her health.
And my parents, I mean, they work their butts off. They didn’t have a hundred thousand dollars to spend, if you know what I mean. There are people out there all the time that would kill to find someone that they only have to spend three to five grand with depending on how you structure your packages. They’ll love to spend that with you. They’ll literally put it on the credit card just to get those answers so that they can get back to their life.
Someone said, health is priceless. Yeah, that’s absolutely the case.
And hi to all the people that are just tuning in. We’re talking about income as health coaches, income as FDNs. If you have any questions, you can drop them in the comments.
Or you could drop the word “blog”. You might have seen a bunch of people doing that. The reason they were doing that is because we’ll send you in your DMs, (I think that’s how we’ll send it to you; I don’t know how else we would), we’ll send you the blog that did really well lately and it was all about how great the health coaching industry is doing, data and statistics on how much money average health coaches are making, let alone FDNs.
Potential Income: FDNs are Above Average and Worth It
You know, a shameless plug, I do think FDNs are a little above the average health coach in terms of the value we’re able to provide to people. Someone else said it’s worth it to find real answers. I would’ve never found what was going on in my body without this. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s what it is, right?
I’m working with a client right now. This person is someone who, I want to be vague cause I’ve never asked them if I could share anything yet. It’s someone who struggles with severe mental health stuff and other like acne type of things. This individual works as a self-employed person. They’re a sole proprietor, right? They have their own business. It’s not like a brick-and-mortar thing, but they do work for themselves.
When you work for yourself, man, and you’re sick, it’s one of the scariest things because you are the one that needs to show up constantly. I’m not saying this in a way of condemning them, I’m showing you what people will do. I’m actually impressed with this person. This person is an adult, and they had their mom pay for this stuff that we’re doing. And I don’t feel bad taking that cause I know how much we’re able to help this person.
We were on the consult together just last night and he was so thankful about the things that I was showing him and how we can get him better so he can go make that money and pay it back.
Are any herbal remedies taught in the course? Yeah, to a degree. Cause we’re really big on intelligent supplementation and a lot of our supplements do teach herbal things.
Herbalism
But if you really want to dive deep into herbalism, one of the things that you can do after you take the main FDN course is one of our advanced courses is actually in herbalism. You can take a whole intensive on herbalism offered, one of our teachers. So pretty cool. And you can get really nerdy with that if you want. Great question.
That’s not an advanced course that’s actually talked about that often. It’s one that I haven’t gone through. I’ve heard tremendous things about that. We have a few FDN clinical advisors that are herbalist. It’s fascinating to me what they know about certain mixtures and how like this supplement interacts with that supplement.
So, if you’re just tuning in, we’re talking about income as a health coach, income as an FDN. Ask any questions that you got. I’m kind of going through some stuff and then I will tune out if the questions stop. Or, alternatively, you can drop the word “blog” below because what we’ve been doing for people is sending out this blog that did really well on our email list.
The reason it did well is cause we provided a bunch of data and statistics regarding how well the health coaching industry is doing right now and different options for people.
So, one other thing I wanted to share today is different ways to make money as an FDN or as a health coach. Obviously, we talked about you could do group programs or you could speak, or you could just work with people one-on-one.
Potential Income: FDNs Hiring FDNs
But there’s also opportunities that don’t necessarily involve doing your own thing. Thankfully, there are increasing opportunities to work for other people. We have a lot of graduates out there. We have a lot of graduates that are actually doing this as work. As they have more and more success, who do you think they hire when they need someone to help support them in their practice? They go to FDN.
All of the time now we have people posting in our professionals’ group, which is something you can get access to after you graduate. It’s like our tight-knit community where we help each other with advanced business training, money-mindset, a bunch of health stuff that’s just part for the course. They’ll go in there and they’re hiring FDNs right now.
I saw one listing, they were hiring an FDN for $75 an hour. This is going and working for someone else, for just completing the FDN course. I say “just” as if it’s like something you do over the weekend. I mean, it’s not that. But compared to most other things that would be required to make $75 an hour, I think an eight-month, nine-month course is a pretty reasonable thing for people.
I actually don’t think I’ve shared this on here yet. Because of the economy, people are a little scared, right? So, it’s easy for me to say as someone who’s been doing FDN for years that, oh yeah, everyone should do FDN or health coaching or whatever. It’s a good industry. But the people in my life are better proof of that.
Health is a Precious & Prioritized Commodity
My girlfriend just started pursuing FDN about a month and a half ago because she sees where everything is going, and she believes that this is a great way to make money still.
One of my best friends in the world, he was a chemist. Smartest guy I know, literally. Analytical chemist, and he ended up leaving his job, which we’re not necessarily suggesting you go quit your job to do FDN. Make the money with FDN first, and then if you want to transition out of the job, that could be a good thing to do. But he just said he had a bunch of savings, so he said, you know what? Screw it. I hate this. I’m out of this.
Now he’s pursuing FDN as well. Outside of the fact that it’s really cool to have one of my best friends and my girlfriend be going through FDN, I think it shows that there’s real belief in this. They see me, they see my life and the things I get to do with my colleagues, and they know that this is something that, I mean, the world would have to completely collapse for us to go out of business. Then you got bigger problems than just income.
But the point is, in terms of the scale of jobs and how they would kind of go and go and go if economic downturn really continues to happen, we’re one of the last because people need to be healthy. People want to feel well, they want to have good libido, they want to have clear skin. They don’t want to be dealing with mental health issues all the time. This is one of the first things that people will prioritize.
Potential Income: FDN Gives Grads Confidence to Go Do This
Thanks for everyone who’s joining. Again, if you have any questions, you could feel free to drop them below. You can ask anything about FDN or just ask anything about the income mindset and all the things that can be done with the FDN program.
Let me see if there was anything else I wanted to talk to you guys about today. Oh yeah, of course. The story of Christa Lyons, someone I just interviewed for the Health Detective Podcast. If you don’t listen to that, that’s usually the main place I’m found at FDN. You can check that out.
Christa talked about how she was a health coach for years. Then in FDN, one year after graduating, she went up four times in income. But I appreciated her humility and transparency with this. She said Ev, it wasn’t actually that even just FDN allowed me to take on so much more clients or just charge more in and of itself. She said it allowed me to take on clients because I actually felt that I could help them.
That’s another way that FDN and the right health coaching program can help with income is feeling like you actually know what the heck you’re doing. Because how many of us have graduated from a certification and we’re like, Yeah, I got my piece of paper. Then you’re like, okay I have no idea what I’m doing.
We want something that actually gives us the confidence to go out and charge money so that we can make income. That’s important too. And FDN is definitely a program for that.
Potential Income: FDN Business School
Taylor said, Does the program help you build a business? Great question. FDN focuses on this a ton nowadays.
Now, to be clear, in the main FDN course, we do not have extensive business training. We teach you how to take on a client, onboard them, and stuff like that. But we’re not talking about the marketing side of things or all the other complexities of it.
But because people like you and like me, admittedly, wanted to know more about the FDN business side of things, or like how do we do this as a business, we now have a Business School, which is extremely cheap and affordable compared to the FDN course and for what it offers. You can DM us and ask about that, and we’ll get a real human talking to you about what we do in the business side of things.
Also, I have an episode with the person, Jennifer Woodward, who created FDN Business School. She’s an FDN herself. That episode’s on the Health Detective Podcast, so that’s Episode 173. If you go and search on Apple or Spotify, you can listen to that episode and what we offer there.
But basically, what this is, Taylor, is a business school for FDNs that takes someone who might not even know the taxes involved with business, they’ve never sold anything even at a lemonade stand. It can take them in 90 days to someone who has all of the things set up, the emails, the website, the marketing side of things. What do I say on a call when I talk to someone? How do I get leads to even talk to someone to begin with?
Potential Income: FDNthrive for Real World Experience
Jennifer said in her own words, she wanted this to be designed to be something that someone could come in, doesn’t have a shred of business experience, and after those 90 days knows what they’re doing, feels confident with it, and can actually go start charging clients and making a living doing this. So yes, we do offer that now.
Then of course, FDNthrive, in a sense, even cooler. FDNthrive will give you real world experience with FDN clients. That’s ran by Jo Pate and it’s a lot more intimate. There’s like a lot of one-on-one stuff there. That’s a great program as well if you need it.
Does insurance pay for the labs? That was by PDXsole. I’m sorry, I don’t know what your real name is, but PDX, the insurance companies do not pay for the labs. Kind of interesting how they don’t pay for our labs, and we get the results that we do. Right? But besides the point. Sometimes HSA will pay for the labs which is cool.
There is one main lab that we use, the GI MAP, that in theory, if a doctor ran it, it could be covered by insurance. I don’t take that route, like I’m not going to go out and find a doctor that does that.
You know, my clients are pretty gung-ho and pretty ready to do this. I find that that’s the case for a lot of FDNs out there. Thankfully they’re never usually trying to nickel and dime the $400 for the lab test. They are ready to invest in their health. And that’s the people we recommend taking on.
First Business Steps: Share Your Story as You Go Through the FDN Course
But yes, in theory, one of the tests could be covered by insurance, but that would not be through us anyway, unless you’re a doctor or another type of licensed practitioner.
The answer really is, that as an FDN, no, none of the labs are covered by insurance. But I’ve never seen that as a huge issue.
Been there, done that. FDN gives confidence for sure. Yep.
Someone said, how do you get started? Jump in after graduating from the course? What was the first thing you did to start your business? This was asked by Megan. Great question.
And by the way, guys, if you’re just tuning in, you can ask any question you want below. We’re talking about income as a health coach, income as an FDN, business stuff, or you can ask anything about FDN in general.
The steps could be a little different depending on the person. Megan, I’m going to give you the things I’ve seen work best for most people. For some people, this is so smart. They either already had or started like a blog or a posting series.
There’s someone doing this right now. I forget who it is, she has a weird username. It’s different than her name is what I mean. I can’t think of it. But she is posting her journey of going through the FDN course. So, she’s posting all the labs as she’s doing them, she’s posting her health story. She’s not selling a thing. There’s no one asking for payment, nothing like that. She’s sharing what she’s doing.
So, what do you think that’s doing for her business?
Run Labs on Yourself as You Study FDN
She’s getting all these people commenting, saying, oh, what do you do?
[00:28:54] Detective Ev: How can I get these labs, or whatever? She’s building a client list before she’s even able to take clients as an FDN cause she hasn’t graduated.
I didn’t do that. If I could go back, the biggest thing I would do is be sharing my journey, going through the FDN course on social or on a blog even so that people can follow me, and they see what I’m doing. Then eventually by the time I graduate, we’ve been building a relationship for 6, 7, 8 months. Now that’s a good time to invite someone if they actually qualify for it or need it to maybe work with you as a client.
You actually get five tests included in the course, your time at FDN. You will be using labs and then one, not lab test. It’s still a a test, it’s just not a physical lab test. You’ll get four of those and then one of that non-physical one.
You’ll be going through these tests while you’re going through the course, and so you can show people, hey, look what I found on this one. Oh, look what I found on that. And they become very interested in it. You weren’t being obnoxious, you weren’t selling. So that’s one way to do it.
Public speaking, if the person’s willing to do it, is undoubtedly the best. It’s how Reed built his business. He actually has a program for us called Reed’s Famous Lecture Packages. They’re like a hundred bucks, and you get a one-hour call with Reed Davis, the founder of FDN in addition to these slides that he literally gives you and you can customize yourself for your presentation.
First Business Steps: Lecture Packages & Public Speaking
We had a woman come on for Instagram Live. She’s an FDN, her name’s Kim Boehm and she’s also on the Health Detective Podcast (Episode 157) if you wanted to listen to it there.
Kim went and she didn’t reinvent the wheel. She said, I’m going to do exactly what they tell me to do at FDN. So, she went through the course. I think she graduated in like seven or eight months. Within six months after graduating, this woman was doing $10,000 a month as an FDN, did not have a health coaching business before this.
You say, well, how is that possible? Because Kim went out and did the lectures. Her first lecture, I think she had 12 or 13 people show up to a little free talk at a library. She sold seven clients from that talk, and she did not invent any of this. The FDN system, already there for her. She just went through the program. The lecture packages and the slides, she purchased that for a hundred dollars and talked to Reed on a call for an hour. They game planned and strategized. First time going out, sold seven clients on it.
Now Kim is also, I would consider her a strong public speaker, so that’s something to note. But I mean, this is nothing that someone couldn’t learn.
I would say document your stuff on social media for sure. If you have the ability to public speak, that is one of the best things you could ever do. Then maybe third, this is like in order of how I would prioritize these things to a degree. One and two are tied. But number three that is not as great, but does work, is you could take on family members for free.
First Business Steps: Take on Family/Friends for Free
Now, you might regret that later because it could be more of a hassle than it’s worth. But if you take on a family member for free and just charge them the price of the lab, what you do have, Megan, is you have people that have data. You can make the trade off like, hey, can I share your story on Instagram or social media in general?
Now you have your uncle’s lab test results back. Maybe he ran three labs. Yes, you didn’t make any money doing it. But you can get on Instagram and show, okay look, my uncle, he has this kind of stuff going on. We’re working together right now and oh my gosh, we found this bacteria on the gut test. We found this food sensitivity. People love the labs.
If you want a little tip on advertising in FDN business, show the lab results. People love it. And I don’t have to prove that to you because one of the reasons you’re probably watching this is because you love getting your own lab results back and figuring out what’s going on in your body.
So, Megan, I hope that answers your question. And if you have anything else, let me know.
Priscilla said, can you sign up for advanced courses without being an FDN? It’s not something we talk about often, but yes, you can. Any of the FDN advanced courses can be purchased without being an FDN. It would probably help you to have the mindset of an FDN before going into them, but they are made and designed that other health practitioners can use them. If you’re interested, for sure give them a try.
What else we got here?
FDN is a Self-paced Program
[00:32:42] Detective Ev: Is the program self-paced? How much time estimated does the program require weekly to complete? Stay at home mom here. Okay, cool. Well, we have a lot of stay-at-home moms. We have moms that are working, doing this, so don’t worry about that.
It is self-paced for that reason because we have a lot of professionals that come in and want to do this in their own time. You could finish realistically if you wanted to push it a little bit, you could finish as soon as six months. Right now, I think the average is about eight to 10 months. I think 10 months is a little long for most people. I do think this can be done before that.
But also, I’m biased because I never went through the course at a time that I was working full time. So, it’s not really fair for me to say that it wouldn’t take 10 months if I had other things going on, or if, gosh forbid, I was a mom.
It is completely self-paced. You can do it on your own time, and you do have 12 months to complete it. We don’t shut you out if you don’t finish in 12 months. I mean, there’s other things that you can do. You can get restarted for, I think, it’s like a hundred something bucks. Don’t quote me on it, but it’s very cheap.
But there’s no reason really someone shouldn’t be able to finish in 12 months unless an unexpected life event happens.
Integrating FDN Course Work for Moms
It is perfectly designed to be finished in eight months, and this is assuming that the person can do about 10 to 12 hours a week. It could be as little as eight hours a week if you were already someone who maybe had a lot of background in this. But if you didn’t have a lot of background, it could be more on the 12-hour side. We’re talking not even two hours a day dedicated to FDN.
A lot of the videos that are in the course are 20 to 30 minutes. So, all right, the kids haven’t woken up yet. Bam, I do 20, 30 minutes of FDN in the morning. All right, cool. They’re distracted with the TV. I can do another 20, 30. Also, they’re eating dinner or something. Then do 20, 30 minutes there. So, it’s very easy to integrate it into one’s schedule. They’re not like two-hour videos typically. So, great question.
Alright. Do we got anything more? I see Nick Logan. Long time no see brother. Hope you’re doing well.
Megan said thank you. You’re welcome.
PDX said, does the public reach out to you looking for practitioners in their area? And then do you all forward the leads to us? This has been asked many times, so fair question. It does get asked. I know eventually one day we’d love that. As of right now, there is not just a database listed with FDN practitioners.
Most FDNs Work Online
However, there are people that come to the main FDN course side of things. I know this cause I used to do like course enrollment. Some of you might have signed up through me even. But they’ll call us and say, well, hey I like the course and all. I don’t want to do it; I want to work with an FDN, and I’d like someone local.
Now most FDNs don’t work in person, they’re working online. But the bottom line is we will try to do our best to say like, okay, like listen, we know Sally Sue is in Alabama and she’s in this town. We’ll try to hook you up with someone close to that.
But honestly, you don’t need to rely on that to get clients. We help you in other ways with the business side of things to be able to get those clients elsewhere. But occasionally it does come in and yes, that could be a way that you get one or two clients.
Was full-time corporate when I went through the course, took 12 months. Okay, cool. Well, and Jo, you had a lot of other things going on too. Yeah. All right. Fair enough. That could be 12 months for some people because Jo works her butt off. If it took her 12 months, it could be realistically 12 months for people.
What labs are taught in the course? That’s asked by Casey.
Great question. I always try to separate this for people and I don’t want to be confusing. We have access to over 60 labs as FDNs once we graduate.
Functional Labs FDN Teaches
In the course, we are teaching a specific system that works extremely well and most people, like the vast majority, are going to get 80% better if you just stick to the system.
The other labs that we have access to could be to course correct in certain situations or maybe it was a lab that really helped you. It’s really just cause we don’t want to limit you as FDNs, but there’s certain ones that we only teach in the course.
You’ll learn about food sensitivity testing. You’ll learn about gut testing and basically like what bacteria, parasites, yeast, and stuff are in there. There’s leaky gut tests and liver functions. There’s hormonal testing.
There is one test that’s not actually a lab test at all that I already mentioned before, and it’s called the Metabolic Typing Test. What this does is help people figure out the specific macronutrient ratios and food pairing combinations that they need to feel their best and be healthy.
I always make a joke that my metabolic type completely shocked me. My one shake that I make, I call it like an “Ev shake” and so does my family. It could probably give the wrong person a heart attack cause it’s so high in saturated fat, but for me, because of my metabolic type, it’s perfect. I feel satiated for hours. I have great energy and my labs have never been better. So go figure. Right?
Those are the tests that we teach in the course. Then we teach you how to look at those all together from this big picture perspective. We’re really trying to figure out clinical correlation and clinical correlation’s a lot different than a diagnosis.
Diagnoses vs. Clinical Correlation
A diagnosis would be, all right, my blood sugar’s been at this level for the last two times that I got it measured at the doctor’s office. So I am, by definition, diabetic. Clinical correlation would be saying, we see your blood sugar’s high in the afternoon, and we notice that’s also when you get really anxious. That’s clinical correlation, but it’s not diagnostic.
We’re teaching you how to clinically correlate with these labs to find hidden healing opportunities in the body that we can use to help the person get back on track.
So, it took me six months and I was dealing with brain fog. Awesome, Tracy.
All right, so if you guys have any more questions, drop them really quickly. Otherwise, I will be signing off.
And if you were wondering why did people comment, “blog” randomly? Maybe you tuned in really late. Drop the word “blog” if you want our blog where we’re talking about how much health coaches are making right now, how much FDNs are doing right now. We have data and stats to back that up. And if you drop the word “blog” in the comments, we’ll actually have someone DM you so you can read that. Again, people really love that one when we sent it out in the email, so you guys might like it too.
I’m going to give you about 20 more seconds. Any final questions? Maybe I’ll give a final word of advice. I mean, listen, right now people do need this stuff. People are suffering with their health, and we have a tried-and-true system.
Potential Income: FDN is Time Tested & True
This isn’t something we started last year. It’s not something two years ago. I mean, I’ve been a practitioner for five and a half years. There’s some that have been practitioners for 13, 14 years as FDNs. Then Reed Davis, the founder, before he was teaching the course, he’s been doing this for 20 something years.
This isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Again, it’s time tested. And if you guys want to hear more stories about people having success with the business side or the health side, check out The Health Detective Podcast. If you don’t know me from there, that’s actually what I mainly do for FDN, nowadays.
We have over 180 episodes interviewing people who have overcome crazy health challenges or really succeeded in their business because of FDN. And man, all you need to do is listen to five of those episodes before you’re like, okay, this is this type of person, like in terms of their personality. Because maybe you think, well, you have to be super extroverted to go do this.
There is every type of personality on that show at this point because of how many episodes we have. You will relate to someone. You can see them having success and then you’ll realize, oh, maybe I can go do this.
What’s the typical income in the first year?
Someone said their favorite podcast. Thank you so much, Casey. You made my day. I appreciate that.
The typical income in the first year, I don’t even know if we have data on that, so I have to be very careful with that. Reed Davis’s goal is for the person to make a hundred thousand dollars in the first year.
Potential Income: Grads Doing FDN as a Business are Doing Well
Do I think that is realistic full-time? I 100% do, even without prior business experience.
We have people that have clients lined up before they ever even graduated. They sign up two, three people right off the get go. That could be $2,000 to $6,000 in profit depending on what they’re charging at the time.
But yeah, maybe we can eventually get that where we can have like the typical income earning for people. Some graduates also do it as a hobby, by the way. They’re never going to start a business. But for the people that do start it as a business, seems to be going pretty well.
Again, you can go to The Health Detective Podcast to check out some of the stories. Those people are legally allowed to share how much they’re making and what they’re doing so you can hear it from them.
Thank you, guys, so much for tuning on today. And thanks for asking questions and being engaged. I’m glad I got to talk to you for 46 minutes. Sometimes when I do these Lives, I’m like, what have I been saying for 46 minutes? What came out of my mouth today? I’m hoping it was something good.
Again, last chance, drop the word “blog” below. It’s not really the last chance. If you’re watching this on the recording, you can do it then too and we’ll come back to it.
But drop the word “blog” below and we will make sure to send you guys that blog where we’re talking about how great of an industry health coaching and FDN practitioners are in right now during this economy.
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