Blood sugar, also known as blood glucose, comes from the food you eat, namely carbohydrates, or carbs. Carbs are one of three macronutrients that all foods break down to: Carbs, Fats, Proteins.
Blood sugar is used for energy for the moment. Sugars that are left over, circulate in the system and are eventually stored in your fat cells for later use. Too much sugar circulating for too long can be harmful and can lead to weight gain. The more weight you gain, the less sensitive your body becomes to insulin. As a result, your blood sugar levels can rise. Eventually, insulin resistance and eventually type 2 diabetes may result.
This was my first time ever picking an avocado from a tree! It was a special moment, and now I wonder how many of you have picked an avocado straight from a tree? Also how blessed are my friends to have an avocado tree in their backyard?! There is an abundance of avocados growing there.
Avocado makes such a fantastic topping on an Earth Bowl! I created a vegan Earth Bowl that’s made in 10 minutes! Most Earth Bowls with rice and beans take over 40 minutes to make, here’s how to make one in a shorter amount of time.
For rice and beans check out Food Earth’sshelf-stable Indian meals their delicious rice and kidney beans are cooked in 3 minutes on the stovetop. Add to the bowl as the first layer.
To include more protein I added CHi Foods’organic plant-based pork! It’s delicious and not made with any processed ingredients like almost every other plant “meat”. It’s made with sacha inchi and other superfoods! Sacha Inchi is such a versatile seed. The benefits of Sacha Inchi include improving cholesterol levels, aiding in weight loss, improve gut health, and they are far more sustainable to grow than nuts. CHi is available in 4 flavors, CHi-Rizo, Italian Herb, Maple Sage, and Original.
Add fresh raw toppings like avocado, broccoli sprouts, and lemon.
A truly delicious and filling bowl. All the textures and flavors make for one satisfying meal! And my vegan Earth Bowl was featured on KTLA news recently!
Vitamin C, turmeric, beta-glucan fiber, and vitamin B12 are put to the test for recurring canker sores (aphthous ulcers).
Canker sores can be “a painful and often recurrent inflammatory process of the oral mucosa,” the lining of our mouths. Similar to other chronic inflammatory conditions, DNA damage due to oxidative stress caused by free radicals is thought to play a role.
Normally, free radical production is balanced with antioxidants, but if the concentration of free radicals gets too high and our antioxidant enzymes and the antioxidants we get in our diet “cannot compensate for these radicals, the balance changes in favor of the oxidants”—that is, in a pro-oxidant direction. This can lead to oxidative damage within our body. Does that mean that people who experience recurring canker sores—also known as recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS)—have fewer antioxidants, more oxidation, and more DNA damage? Yes, yes, and yes. As you can see in the graph below and at 0:51 in my video Best Supplement for Canker Sores, they exhibit more pro-oxidants and more oxidative stress in their bloodstream, lower antioxidant status, and more DNA damage. This suggests it might be possible for antioxidants to help improve the DNA damage caused by recurring canker sores, but you don’t know until you put it to the test.
Sixteen boys and girls around age 12 with recurring canker sores were given a whopping 2,000 mg (2 g) of vitamin C a day. That’s considered the tolerable upper daily limit for adults before you start getting diarrhea, and 1,200 mg may have that effect on a 12-year-old, but it’s all about risks versus benefits. How did they do? As you can see in the graph below and at 1:33 in my video, 15 out of the 16 kids cut the number of canker sores they were getting at least in half. In the three months before they started the vitamin C, they had averaged four canker sores each, but in the three months they were on it, they each had less than one on average. When they stopped the vitamin C for another three months, the ulcers started coming back. Then, when they once again added the vitamin C, the canker sore rate dropped again.
What about directly applying antioxidants, like a turmeric gel? Let’s find out. A turmeric gel containing 2 percent curcumin, the yellow pigment in the spice turmeric, was swabbed directly onto canker sores twice a day and “significantly reduced pain intensity and size of the aphthous ulcer [canker sore] compared to placebo,” which was a gel containing no active ingredient. Okay, but wouldn’t it be nice to see a comparison to an active treatment from an independent research group, rather than this study without an active treatment that was funded by the curcumin gel manufacturer?
Yes, and here we go. This randomized clinical trial compared a generic 2 percent curcumin gel to a prescription steroid gel and found that the curcumin worked just as well. This provides “strong evidence that [topical] curcumin gel can be used as an effective and safer alternative to steroids in treatment of RAS.” You may remember I’ve previously discussed that topical honey beat out the same steroid for both ulcer healing and pain reduction, as you can see in the graph and at 2:46 in my video. So, if you’re going to use something topically, honey seems better, but what if, instead of a topical application, you just want to swallow something like vitamin C but want something that doesn’t give you diarrhea?
Thirty-one patients with recurring canker sores were split into two groups and received either 20 mg a day of placebo or yeast beta-glucan fiber, which is the amount found in just an eighth of a teaspoon of brewer’s yeast or nutritional yeast. As you can see below and at 3:17 in my video, the placebo group experienced no significant change, whereas ulcer severity in the yeast group was cut nearly in half. So, now you have another useful alternative.
If it’s all about antioxidants, can’t you just treat recurring canker sores by eating a plant-based diet high in fruits and vegetables? That hasn’t been put to the test, but keep in mind a plant-based diet could also make things worse if one is not ensuring a regular reliable source of vitamin B12 through supplements or fortified foods. For example, a 30-year-old women had recurring canker sores for four years. She ate few animal products and didn’t supplement with vitamin B12, so she became B12-deficient and began experiencing weakness, tiredness, numbness, and tingling. She was immediately started on vitamin B12, and her deficiency symptoms got better. Her canker sores also improved and she experienced “a rapid and complete recovery” within weeks of starting vitamin B12 after years of suffering.
We’ve known since the 1970s that vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to canker sores—so much so that it’s recommended to consider B12 deficiency any time a patient has with recurring canker sores. In fact, a number of nutrient deficiencies may contribute. A study compared the lab tests of those with recurrent canker sores to those without and found that more than half of the canker sore group showed evidence of hematinic deficiencies—that is, blood-forming nutrient deficiencies. In contrast, less than one in ten in the non-canker sore group exhibited these deficiencies. In this case, we’re talking about iron and folate deficiency in addition to vitamin B12 deficiency. When the study participants were given supplements, their canker sores improved and this was more pronounced among those who had no family history of canker sore problems.
You can see how vitamin and mineral supplements might help people who are deficient, but might a supplement like vitamin B12 help people who are not vitamin B12 deficient? Apparently so. As the title of the study states, “cyanocobalamin”—the most common form of supplemental B12—“may be beneficial in the treatment of recurrent aphthous ulcers [canker sores] even when vitamin B12 levels are normal.” The researchers took a group of 72 patients with frequent canker sores and gave them vitamin B12, regardless of what their levels were. Ninety-six percent of the participants got better regardless of whether they started out vitamin B12–deficient or with normal vitamin B12 levels in their blood, as you can see below and at 5:37 in my video. In this case, there was no control group, though, so we don’t know how many would have gotten better without the vitamin B12 supplement. In addition, the researchers injected the vitamin B12, and injections can have an even greater placebo effect than pills—especially with something like a syringe of vitamin B12, which has a striking mad-scientist-looking ruby red color, as you can see below and at 5:57 in my video.
If only there were a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of oral vitamin B12 for canker sores. And, here we go. In this case, 1,000 micrograms of sublingual vitamin B12 were taken every day for six months. It took five months, but, eventually, the duration of canker outbreaks, the number of ulcers, and the level of pain were significantly reduced, “regardless of initial vitamin B12 levels in the blood.” So, whether you are vitamin B12–deficient or not, B12 supplements seem to help. By the end of the study, twice as many in the vitamin B12 group appeared to have been cured. The researchers concluded that “vitamin B12 treatment, which is simple, inexpensive, and low-risk, seems to be effective,” but don’t forget that it appeared to take months before it started working. In another randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of a vitamin B12 ointment applied directly to the canker sores, a significant reduction in pain was demonstrated within only two days compared to placebo, regardless of whether the participant was vitamin B12–deficient or not.
[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 about craniosacral therapy.
We’re switching it up a little bit today, at least in terms of the profession of the person that we’re about to interview. We’re talking to someone who does more physical manipulations with their clients and patients. But the stories that this person has both for themselves and their clients, like in terms of the health challenges and then overcoming things, are right on par with our normal show. I think you guys are going to love this one. It’s a fresh way of switching things up a little bit.
His name is Jeremy Quinby. He has a podcast himself actually. He’s been improving the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities for the past 25 years.
At an intersection of manual therapies, mental health support, orthopedics, pain management, and newborn pediatric care, he has become known as a bridge builder between many fields of care. As a graduate of St. John’s University in Minnesota, he considers building community to be one of the things that has been a part of every project he’s been involved with.
Having had practices in New York and Minneapolis, his ability to develop health networks to support the populations he has served has become his trademark. And now as the host of the Highway to Health podcast, he is furthering this outreach across the United States and beyond promoting a more fully realized approach to integrated care.
A Podcast Host Himself
This guy has such a cool story that will be shared at the end of the podcast, and I mean, just the client testimonials. I kind of give a teaser already in the intro, but there’s another one that I think you guys are really going to find interesting. Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.
Well, hello Jeremy. Thanks so much for being here with us today. This might be the first person, between the mic and just how good it sounds, the headphones, then the fact that you have a proper backdrop, this might be the first person that hopped on here that truly has a better podcast set up than me. This is nice.
We’re glad to have you on today. I appreciate you accommodating me. We had some time stuff and Jeremy was great with that. It’s going to be fun today because the reason he has all this podcast equipment is because he is a podcast host himself amongst many other things.
One of the first questions I always like to ask here, and I actually don’t know this about you. I always do this with everyone, just so you know. I like to go in with just enough ignorance cause I want the questions to be genuine. I’m not for the scripted stuff personally. I get why people do it, but I like it to be genuine.
At the same time when I was reading your bio, you might be a little different than some of the people that we have on this podcast. Historically, 90% of the people on here have had some severe health challenges and that’s how they got into this space. Is that the case for you? How did those start? What did they look like?
A Congenital Foot Issue
[00:02:51] Jeremy Quinby: Well, I was originally an English major. I wasn’t even planning on going into a health field at all. I went to writing school for a while after college and also, I’m a musician. So, during that time period between the writing and the music and just probably the life challenges of being in your early twenties, I started having a lot of back problems.
I was an athlete in high school and started to have some back stuff pop up. Basically, it was just over and over again was having what we would call, your back go out. I later found out it was muscle spasms due to a kind of congenital foot issue, a very flat foot on one side.
My pelvis, kind of uneven for my whole youth and adult life. I now have lifts and I’ve kind of figured out ways to keep me balanced. But when I was in my mid-twenties, I was really struggling and just wasn’t getting any answers. So, part of it for me, I tried a lot of different kinds of therapies.
Massage Therapy is a Very Real Therapy
I started doing Pilates in the nineties. Was a little ahead of the trend on that one. It wasn’t being taught quite as well at that point either. Then I actually decided to go to massage school just to learn. I didn’t even plan on doing it as a career. I just thought it was interesting.
A friend of mine had given me some books and showed me some stuff to do to alleviate back pain. But that was as far as I thought I was going with it. Turned out, I really liked doing the work. I liked doing manual therapy. I got good hands for it, apparently, like very giant mitts. And I’ve been doing it for 25 years.
That shifted into a lot of different kinds of work. I knew it wasn’t all about body work to kind of heal my back problem.
[00:04:14] Detective Ev: I don’t get massages nearly enough. I kind of wish I did more.
I remember this one time though. People that get them know what I’m talking about, but people that don’t, they think I’m like completely overselling this. They actually got me involved in a membership at Massage Envy because of this. The one woman did such a good job. I don’t know how else to describe it except almost euphoric at the end. I felt light, it was just amazing.
Now, I wasn’t getting that every single time, and it’s different people every time when you go there. That was when I realized, whoa, this is more than just a cool little thing that my mom does. This is a very real therapy that has probably many applications I was completely unaware of at the time. You know what I mean? There’s a lot more to it.
Craniosacral Therapy: Osteopathic Work
[00:04:54] Jeremy Quinby: Oh yeah. I got interested almost right away. I had a teacher who led me into craniosacral therapy, which is a kind of osteopathic work, much more gentle, actually.
I do a mix of some very deep tissue work and trigger point work. But I also do this very gentle osteopathic work, which I can use for a lot of things, especially when someone comes into my office with what I had when I was first struggling and my back kind of kept going into spasms. But I work with all sorts of conditions now. I don’t just work with neuromuscular stuff. I actually work with a lot of nervous system related things too.
[00:05:22] Detective Ev: I want to explore more about this back problem. This is great. Your credentials and bio is already perfect for the show. Now adding on the health story too, that was a surprise to me.
It’s interesting because as far as I know that’s unique. I can’t think of anyone in all these episodes that has had their main thing be a back type of thing. And you already suggested that it was more than just the massage thing.
This isn’t just a physical thing, it seems. I mean, of course you know what I mean by physical. Anatomical thing, I guess I am trying to say here. It seems like there was a little more there. So, can you expand on that? Like, how did you come to the conclusion that it was more and not just, this is something I have to live with?
Craniosacral Therapy Plus Dietary Changes and Supplements
[00:05:59] Jeremy Quinby: Sometimes there was no rhyme or reason as to why I was experiencing the back stuff. It seemed to flare at certain times. I started realizing some stress and anxiety aspects of what was going on as well.
So, once I kind of got in and started having some relief and started learning how to take care of my back and my body in general a little bit better, I also started getting into mental, emotional, and spiritual work of like, what is going on? Why am I having this struggle at this point in my life? This is not just about my back.
Some of it was working. I had immediately started working with people out of school and almost started a private practice right away. I started seeing some of the same things. You know, it’s easier to see other people’s things than it is to your own. So I started kind of identifying with certain things. That just kind of kept me going down that path.
But I started also getting work, different kinds of work too. Sometimes really gentle work for me would be kind of amazing and I sometimes felt like I really needed deep tissue work. So that was kind of an interesting part for me.
I was also starting to dig deep into the dietary part of healing my body that way. Starting to study supplements. But at one point I was taking way too many supplements. Then I just decided, I don’t think that’s the biggest part here for me. I felt like it was about how I was taking care of myself, my relationships, my relationship to my body, and myself. Those were all the big parts that I felt like I needed to get into.
A Women Dominated Space
[00:07:17] Detective Ev: One of the things on this show that I’m obsessed with, and any regular listener knows this, is the mental transition that is needed to open up one’s mind to this completely alternative world. This is especially true for us as men.
We are in a women dominated space still to this day, at the time of recording this, like by a significant margin. Our podcast gets a fair amount of downloads, and when I look at the numbers, it is 80 something percent women still, despite the number. In the beginning, I thought, maybe it’s just because we’re brand new, two years ago. You know, you’ll only get like a hundred downloads an episode at that time. You’re like, no big deal.
Then as we’ve grown and grown and grown, I’m like, these numbers have stayed the same in terms of the demographic that it affects. If not, it’s even more overrepresented amongst women now. So, I think for men especially, there’s a real big shift mentally, paradigm wise that needs to occur for us to be open to this stuff.
You talked about, I mean, even the idea of like being open to the emotional and spiritual side. Did you have some type of influence in the family or a spouse, or did you just happen to come across the information? I mean, how does Jeremy go from the 20 something year old guy with back pain to this person that’s completely open to these subjects of dietary stuff, spiritual, emotional aspects of health?
Craniosacral Therapy and Movement
[00:08:25] Jeremy Quinby: Yeah. I think I had some of it in my family. It wasn’t a big component for me, and a family component wasn’t huge. I think my mom has had some influence in the way that she tends to be a person who volunteers a fair amount of time to help other people. I think that is part of having this interconnected life with people and going a little bit deeper spiritually that way.
But I also am just like a huge reader. You know, being an English major, as soon as I finished massage school, that was just the tip. I knew there was so much more for me to learn. So, I was just constantly pouring through books and getting into stuff. And I also wanted to solve this problem. I mean, this was really affecting my life.
[00:09:00] Detective Ev: What was, let’s say, one of the first things, not massage related, that you saw helping make a true impact in your back, whether it’s some type of other therapy, a supplement (probably not going to be that considering you said you realized you were taking too many), a dietary approach? Like, what was one of the first things that showed you objectively that it was working to take this alternative approach?
[00:09:18] Jeremy Quinby: Well, I kind of knew movement was going to be a big part of it for me. I was testing and trying lots of different kinds of things. When you’re in chronic pain for some period of time too, I don’t know if you’ve had anything like this before, any health challenge. It starts to play on your mind a little bit.
Craniosacral Therapy and Music
You start thinking, I’m not going to be able to get out of this, and this is what the rest of my life looks like. When you’re 25 and you feel like you’re 75, it’s pretty scary. So, I just started realizing that movement for me was probably the number one thing.
I started meditating pretty regularly at that point. Really just from reading stuff and some tapes and stuff at the time that I was picking up. But I found it was really just working on getting into that head space. It’s a similar head space that I feel like I get into playing music.
Music for me has been another one of those things. I can sit down for an hour, and I feel like it helps to move a lot of the emotional content that’s going on. Even if I’m learning a new song or I play a few different instruments, so sometimes if I just get on the drums and really work it out that way.
It’s very much like I was when I played basketball and getting into the flow of the game. Afterwards I just felt great. So, I knew there was something to that. I also felt like I knew there was something like a social anxiety that I was struggling with at the time, and the way that I was managing certain relationships and even relationships with parents and stuff like that.
I just kind of started to focus on what I needed to do. Sometimes it was about using my voice for certain kinds of things. Oddly enough, now, I’m on the microphone all the time. But I felt like that was something I needed to be able to get better at, to express myself.
Craniosacral Therapy and Mobility-Based Work
Even if I was wrong, sometimes that’s just the start of the conversation that helps to create some resolve. So, I knew that there was a mind-body connection to the way that my body was sort of responding to these things. Over time I could start to feel the difference in my body.
I did start learning some very specific things, if you want to get into the physical part of what I started to figure out. I had a physical therapist who (I was living in New York City at the time), who worked with dancers. I got connected with her. She had sent some clients/patients to me.
She figured out that I had a ligament laxity issue, my ligaments were overly loose and flexible. With my spinal ligaments, that was causing some muscle spasming to happen. It also creates instability.
Then certain muscles in your pelvis, your hip flexor muscles, I was having the same problems with my shoulders and my neck. They were all basically overworking. I had to really learn a whole new approach. Cause a lot of my exercise at training up to that point was sports based.
I don’t know if you had the experience in high school of playing sports and going to the high school gym or the college gym and learning to train that way, but it’s like, squats and squat racks, bench pressing, and all that stuff. That was the absolute wrong way for me to work out.
I had to shift into more stability and mobility-based work that helped to free up my back, my hips, and get my shoulders in a little bit better place and get my core to stabilize. That was really what made the biggest difference for me.
Bleak Outlook of the Future When Sick
[00:12:03] Detective Ev: For some context, the whole reason I got into this space as well is from health challenges.
Not really the stuff that you’re talking about, but mental health issues and other physical health issues from the age of about five till 20 years old. I definitely relate to what you’re talking about with the 25 feeling 75 thing. There was a lot of reasons that I got into this space, but one of the things that ended up happening at 18, I was diagnosed with what I was told at the time was a quote/unquote “incurable disease.”
I say quote/unquote, and I can say this because I don’t have the symptoms of this anymore, so you’re not going to tell me it’s not incurable. It’s a heck of a coincidence that I started changing my lifestyle around and within three months I’ve been in remission now. Because they’ll call it remission, right? That’s what they’ll say. It’s like, well, this is the longest remission ever. I must be just that lucky, I suppose. And I’m sure it’s total coincidence.
But the point is, it’s kind of dramatic. I remember having this time that I thought I was doing a little better, and I was with the mental health side, then I get this diagnosis. I just remembered thinking similar to what you were saying, I can’t do this for the rest of my life.
And if someone’s listening for the first time, that’s why I’m being hesitant. I’m trying to make sure it’s said correctly, cause other people might get this. But I had depression before and there were suicidal ideations that came with depression.
Move the Needle Slightly to Reinstall Hope
I had some suicidal ideations that came with this, but I do not know how to say it. It was different than the depression ones. It was almost just a giving up. I was saying, why on Earth? I hate to call suicide practical. I never, ever, as someone who’s in the mental health space, want to imply that.
But it was one of those things where, if I’m going to feel like this for the rest of my life and now, I’m going to lose my hearing and all this stuff based on what that disease was, why would I want to stick around for this? This sucks, you know? The good news about a practical suicidal ideation is it’s not as illogical as one caused by depression. Depression, everything’s doom and gloom.
This was almost, well, if I’m going to do that, I might as well try everything before I actually commit to something like that. Thankfully it was only like two more attempts of trying different methods, not suicide attempts to be clear, and I found this dietary stuff. And I’m realizing, oh, I’m moving the needle now with these symptoms.
You don’t need to do much to get that hope reinstalled in you. Similar to your story, it’s like, just seeing that move in the right direction and the pain be relieved a little. Or having the awareness to notice, you know, some days I’m in a lot more pain than not, but I didn’t change that much. So, there must be another component here.
Chronic Health PTSD
I think if we can reinstall that hope for people that shuts off those suicidal thoughts almost immediately. I just needed to know that there was hope for something. And when a doctor, an authority figure tells you at 18 that this is incurable, you’re going to lose hearing in one ear, you’re going to need surgery eventually, that is something that can get you pretty messed up pretty quick mentally.
I’m just very thankful that I thought outside that box and that you did as well. Now we’re able to help other people. I don’t want to put the words in your mouth, but I’m guessing that’s where the passion comes from. Is it from the pain that you felt, literally and figuratively, you almost feel obligated to help other people? Would that be fair to say?
[00:14:57] Jeremy Quinby: I mean, I don’t even know if it’s an obligation. I think it’s just an innate part of who I am that I want to do this. Also, it’s a belief now. Like, I’ve talked about this a lot on my podcast. I got into a health tech project about seven or eight years ago where we started kind of studying intake forms.
One of the interesting things that we came up with was asking a question about how do you believe you’re going to get better. That really hit something with me that really led to the podcast. That’s kind of what went on with me. Because once you’ve been through a chronic health period, there’s a little bit of a PTSD that kind of lingers for a while. You get a little flare up of something and you think, I might be going back to that place again.
Do Everything Thing You Know to Do First
There’s a confidence that you have to kind of build over a period of time and sometimes it includes scans. You know, I had these scans done when I was like 27 years old that showed arthritis in my lower back. They immediately wanted to start doing injections and lots of supplements, MSM chondroitin, and all these different things, which I did a little bit of. I didn’t go with the injections.
But I have these scans that I still bring to appointments. I have a checkup once in a while and have them look at it. My spine really hasn’t changed much, and I’m 52. So, those kinds of things give me this belief as you have, we can actually improve our health.
That’s one of the things that I want to instill in people. I get a lot of people, they could be 35, they could be 60. I’ve seen people at 80 make huge health changes. I know that it’s not about age and I know that whatever the condition is, there’s some way to figure out how to improve this person’s lifestyle. And sometimes it does include surgery.
You know, if you’re 80 years old and your hip is really degenerated, there might be a point. I still think, do all the PT and exercises and try to strengthen your body as much first, if it still doesn’t cooperate, then maybe surgery is the answer. But when I’m working with somebody who’s 30, it’s a totally different game most of the time, even at 50.
It’s the Quality of Life While You’re Here
[00:16:35] Detective Ev: We’re careful about how we present these things. I mean, clearly Western medicine can go too far with their philosophies and never being open to us. We know that. But then I find a very similar theme sometimes in the functional practitioners.
They had such a bad experience in the Western world, then now, it’s only the functional side, or natural side, or whatever you want to call it. No, it’s a mix of both. I appreciate you just being realistic. It’s like, all right, at 80, maybe, right? It could be any older age, maybe you have to consider other options.
I make a joke. I don’t know how serious I actually am about it, but I had severe cystic acne too in my health story. You know, I shouldn’t be eating Hershey’s kisses because of that, it doesn’t typically help my skin. It usually affects it very negatively. But I love Hershey’s kisses.
So, it’s kind of like, at 85, 90 years old, if I started breaking out again all of a sudden, would I maybe just take some cream so that I could keep eating the Hershey’s kisses? I think I’m going to live a lot longer than 90, that’s my personal goal. But there does come this certain point where it’s like, maybe just use some Western medicine interventions and enjoy these last little bits here.
Because no matter how functional you are, we are going to pass away. No one’s making it out of here alive. It’s the quality of life though, while you’re here. A 30-year-old, no, we probably want to avoid those things.
Is Surgery Necessary?
I’d love for us to actually touch on maybe what your opinion is on surgeries kind of being overdone sometimes. Because I remember what happened to me. The first real injury I ever had.
I did not play many sports. Well, I didn’t really play anything in high school. I played like intramural basketball. But I was using substances. I didn’t even finish high school. It was very bad at that time because of the mental health issues. Then I got very active after that.
I started getting my stuff back together and I biked a lot and I played basketball a lot. One of the first things I did was, I snapped some ligament they said when I fell off my bike. I remember going to the orthopedic doctor. He was saying that we need to do surgery. He just acted like this was the assumption.
Now, this was five, six years ago, maybe even more at this point, Jeremy. So, I’m going in there and he’s speaking very commonly. He’s very nice and it’s a person I trust. I trust the practice. But to me, I was so scared of going under and I’ve ironically had to do that now anyway for different reasons.
But at that time, I couldn’t even comprehend going under any anesthesia. There was no way in heck someone’s going to cut open my wrist without me being under. So, I had a dilemma here. He just said it as if it was such a certainty. So, I asked him, cause I knew better at that point. I know to ask doctors. Like, do I have to get a surgery?
Oversold Knee, Hip, and Back Surgeries
He said, well, just so you know, I mean it could heal up and there could be scar tissue and it could be fine. I’m like, is there any consequence if I don’t get the surgery? He said, well no. If there’s scar tissue, I mean, we could break that up and then we could still do it.
I said, so you’re telling me that there’s no consequence if I take time to not do the surgery and it doesn’t end up working? He said, yes. I said, that would’ve been nice if you led with that. By the way, I’m not saying this will happen for everyone, but just for the record, I have zero pain in my wrist. I haven’t for years. I have good mobility.
The only thing I can’t do is a straight barbell curl. I have to use an easy bar. That’s what eventually caused some pain. Seems like a minor price to pay for not having to go through a surgery at that time. Sorry, long-winded story. But my point is though, do you think there are a lot of surgeries being thrown around to younger-ish people that really probably don’t need these things?
[00:19:41] Jeremy Quinby: I’ve been treating for long enough that I think there has been a change in orthopedics. When I first started doing work, I saw a lot of back surgeries that weren’t helping people. I know people in orthopedics, and I know that there was a time where some of these packaged total knee, hip and back stuff were being oversold, let’s just say.
Some People Just Want a Quick Fix
But at the same time, I think there’s a choice that a doctor has to make when somebody comes in if they don’t think they’re going to do the work of recovery, then surgery is the option. I mean, that’s the sad thing too.
In my practice, I get people who come in and they’re ready to work. And I kind of don’t take people who aren’t cause I feel like that’s the kind of thing you’re going to have to do. If you work with me, I’m going to give you stuff to do movement wise, we’re going to work on stress management strategies. If I feel like there’s a major health challenge that’s related to diet, I’m going to get you working with somebody there.
I’m going to try to help somebody really improve their health and their lifestyle at the same time. But some people aren’t really looking for that. They just want you to make that wrist work right now as best as it can. A lot of times they’re not even going to do the PT.
I think there are still people who are making poor decisions as orthopedists. But I’m meeting more and more orthopedists, especially younger ones who are really trying to avoid surgery as much as possible with people.
I tore my Achilles playing basketball when I was 43. It was a partial tear, but the orthopedist said it’s basically a 50/50. You can get surgery, or you can let it heal on its own. The heal time is about the same because it’s going to take a little bit longer after surgery, but you’re going to have to be a little bit more careful if you don’t do the surgery.
Regaining Physical Fitness is Tough
But the stats on this are, it’s basically about six of one, half a dozen of another. You’re going to have the same results, the same chances of reinjuring it, all that stuff. So anyway, I had to stop playing basketball at least completely.
[00:21:27] Detective Ev: Basketball’s a heck of a sport, especially when it’s done recreationally, cause it’s not really worth it in any sense.
There’s a million other things I could do to get the same health benefits of it. Still to this day, Jeremy, I am just starting to actually be able to run properly again because of a foot injury five years ago in, you guessed it, a pickup basketball game. I mean, the foot became supinated, it led to IT band stuff.
Listen, in the beginning, I didn’t take it seriously enough so there was issues there. But that wasn’t even a case of like a surgery or no surgery thing. It was just the recovery was a nightmare. Many things got messed up. I learned very quickly.
I was humbled because I remember, like 19, being cocky and thinking, how did my uncles and stuff ever put on all this weight or get lazy, whatever. Why don’t you just continue with physical activity? Then I realized, wow, you know what, how much it’s taking me right now to get back into this, and it sucks.
The cardio’s tough. I used to be able to run miles and miles, no problem. Now I go do a simple basketball game one on one. I’ve been playing with my friend very lightly and that’s taken it out of me. I’m like, Dude, you gotta really work to keep this up. And the minute you lose it, it’s extremely hard to get back.
Craniosacral Therapy with Newborns
So, I have a little more sympathy now. It’s not an excuse for those listening. But I have a little more sympathy for how people do lose this cause it can take one stupid thing before you do.
It’s cool to know that you’re doing the work that you’re doing, probably keeping people much more active. That’s what I’m kind of curious about. Just so we can say it directly, what type of client does Jeremy take on? Who are the main types of people that come to you? I’m sure you get a variety, but what’s some common things that you work with?
[00:22:52] Jeremy Quinby: Well, I have a very strange career because I do a lot of whole family work.
I do craniosacral work with newborns. That brings me into a whole new realm. For about 10 years, I just did almost more orthopedic sports related work. But I was starting to kind of see things that I thought were almost on this stress kind of fight or flight response type of thing.
You know, things that can flare when you have a stress response, anything that’s related to your endocrine system, your hormonal responses to things that can lead to inflammation, that can lead to histamine. They can lead to stuff with your gut.
When I start seeing those kinds of things on top of an orthopedic challenge, which is a lot of times, what people get led to me or they just feel crummy, or they’re fatigued all the time. That’s kind of the adult that comes to me. But now, I work with newborns.
Seeing the Young Person in the Adult
With newborns, the ideal newborn that comes to see me usually has had either a difficult delivery, is having some feeding challenges, sometimes they have tongue tie or torticollis or a lot of digestive issues. To me, having worked with adults for so long too, they’re also sympathetic kind of fight or flight type of responses that are happening at their level. Right?
The thing that I’ve come to explain to a lot of people is being born is probably one of the most stressful, challenging things we go through. But we don’t think about it. And as parents, cause I have two myself, you don’t think about what the baby is going through exactly, cause you’re overly tired and can’t figure out why they won’t stop crying and all these things.
But I think you can see them in the moment of their lives that they are. And one of my colleagues actually, that I interviewed on my podcast who’s older, asked me, what’s changed in my practice since I started working with babies. I told them that now any adult that I work with, I almost kind of see them as their younger selves. And I try to get that information from them too.
Like for you, was there a moment in your teenage years that was really challenging? Was there a moment in childhood? Sometimes they were children of alcoholic parents or there was some sexual abuse or there was some physical abuse or a bullying by a sibling. I hear these kinds of things all the time too. There can be a lot of different things that are going on with the person and I’m only seeing what’s presented symptomatically.
Chronic Illness and Trauma Connection
This is where I think our more holistic approach to care can make some improvement with somebody because we are really looking at them as a whole person, the whole experience.
[00:25:04] Detective Ev: That’s one thing that we obviously do as FDNs as well, is kind of go back in time and figure out was there something, right? You can’t always pinpoint it and you don’t always even need to, but it’s worth the effort to try.
I’m not someone who like works with cancer patients, but I’ve come across many people with this. It is unbelievable how obvious the trauma is with those people, like the significant thing or things that happened to them. I mean, 95% of the time I could figure it out, if they might even know, within 10 minutes.
The body doesn’t get sick like that unless there’s quite a few things going on. Somehow, even with the terrible diets and all these things that we have in today’s world, I find that almost always there was another traumatic component. I also find it very commonly in autoimmune patients as well, just not as commonly as the cancer side.
The one thing I don’t think I fully understood is how did you transition to working with the babies? What made you want to do that? Cause that’s really cool and very particular.
[00:25:56] Jeremy Quinby: I didn’t plan on that part at all.
I had a midwife that I was treating for quite a while because delivering babies is actually quite hard on your body. She kind of kept saying, oh, you know, I keep seeing this with babies, or I think your work could be really helpful with this.
Craniosacral Therapy Opens a 6-week-old’s Eye
I had just started a business in Brooklyn, New York. I was doing movement work with people, I was doing body work with them, running a business, you know, training body workers and trainers. I just had way too many things going on.
But she kind of forced my hand with a baby who had really asymmetrical cranial bones where one of the eyes wasn’t opening yet at six weeks. Which is a long time I now know, for no movement to happen there. So, they wanted to put the baby in one of these little cranial caps, these little helmets to try to form the cranial.
The cranial bones when you’re that age, are really pretty mobile, so they’re not even really bones. And those sutures, there’s a lot of little fluid spots like the fontanelle that we see on the top that allow for a fair amount of fluid pressure to kind of come up to the system and move those bones into place.
She wanted me to do an evaluation for the doctors she was working with, and she wanted to try to avoid the helmet if possible. So, I just kind of felt around and I told her what I noticed. But you’re kind of treating a little bit. Cause the way craniosacral work, in terms of evaluation is concerned.
You kind of have to do this very gentle traction and you’re kind of feeling for the way fluid pressure moves around up through the system and around these cranial bones. So, a few days later they called me and said, you’re not going to believe this, and they sent me a picture. The eye had already opened up more.
Craniosacral Therapy for the Whole Family
You know, I’ve been working with adults with chronic back pain, so that can be a six-month project. Just to have something happen in a few days, to me, just blew my mind. Then I kind of got hooked. I did some volunteer work for a while, and I met a PT who was a lactation consultant as well. She was really interested in using me in some way too.
She started bringing people to see me. I did that volunteer wise for a while and then I went back and studied pediatric work. Cause I was like, all right, I’m going to add this. The great thing about it is that I now get to work with multi-generations of families.
A lot of times, I’ll start working with a baby, that’s how I get introduced to a family. Then the parents, and sometimes the caregivers or the grandparents are involved. They all kind of see what I’m doing and say, oh, I could really use some of this work. I have had neck problems for a long time or whatever. So, there’s quite a few multi-generation families that I now get to work with.
I’m actually in between two cities. I work out in New York, still, eight times a year. Then I’m in Minneapolis. I grew up here.
[00:28:13] Detective Ev: Hopefully we have some listeners in either of those areas. It sounds like you’re in Minneapolis a lot more. It’s kind of rare, honestly, nowadays that someone comes on here and is working with an in-person business. We have it maybe one out of 15 has an in-person thing. A lot of these are like functional coaches do online stuff at this point.
Online Postural Correction Work
But your work, I mean, is inherently necessary to be in person with the individual. I don’t think you should, at least, coach people to be doing the work that you’re doing without the proper training.
[00:28:43] Jeremy Quinby: Well, my manual therapy practice, yeah, I’m doing in person. But I’m actually doing some functional movement work now and kind of postural correction work online. That just started during the pandemic.
I just started realizing I could work with somebody and record those exercises. They can see themselves doing the movements and then they can practice them. I just share a Dropbox folder and then they work on those exercises for a while. Then we meet again.
We go through things that they’re struggling with, and we add new things. Sometimes I just get someone started on these kind of foundational pieces that they need to do to like work on helping heal their back. Or if they’re an athlete, they keep having the same recurring injury cycles, I can kind of figure that stuff out pretty quickly and give them something to start working on.
Sometimes it’s like eight or nine exercises, some foam rolling or some mobility work and some cord work or something, and they’re good to go. They end up doing a lot better. It can be done that way too.
[00:29:32] Detective Ev: That’s awesome. I love that you mix both together. I haven’t mentioned this yet in this podcast and I typically don’t mention it here cause it’s usually not relevant to the conversation. But I do still deal with some lower left back pain because I have scoliosis and then I have an extra vertebra that we’ve seen on the x-rays and stuff.
Squats or No Squats
What is also fascinating about what you said, cause I made the connection myself. Like I do fast and stuff, so I’ll do water fast or fasting mimicking diets, and I also practice ketosis. When I am in a ketogenic state or a fasted state, which for the sake of today’s podcast is virtually identical for what I’m talking about, I will find that the same things that would normally aggravate the back don’t seem to aggravate the back.
It’s not that I don’t have this anatomical issue. I mean, I have an extra vertebra. That’s clearly wrong, it’s not supposed to be that way. My spine curves out, it doesn’t look pretty on an x-ray, and yet here I am without the pain a lot of times.
Then similarly, I have found very well-meaning people, some chiropractors I worked with. Two separate chiropractors said like, you should never squat, a barbell squat that is. Yet nowadays, I mean, I don’t do anything crazy. It’s not like I’m some huge power lifter. But I mean, I’m squatting, 250, 260 for reps, and it’s a low bar squat. That should put more stress on the lower back, if anything.
I feel totally fine. If anything, that’s helped my back a ton. I think there’s, again, many well-meaning people that get this narrative pushed by the Western thing. Oh, you should just never squat again. It’s like, no, I could probably squat.
I think there’s probably other things involved with that and not that anyone needs to barbell squat. I love it. I think it’s a great exercise. It’s just fun too. So, yeah, for someone like me, like would I be someone who would benefit from this online stuff? Is that the type of person that would benefit?
The Functional Movement Model
[00:31:05] Jeremy Quinby: One of the first things I’ll ask somebody when I first start working with them and they’re struggling with something like this, or they’ve had some history of a problem like this, I’ll ask if there’s anything that that’s limiting them from doing, something that you’d like to be doing more of.
A lot of times it is, like if you really love squatting, I want to get you to a point where your body can manage to squat better. Or if you love tennis and right now you feel like you can’t play tennis because of your shoulder, let’s figure out what we need to do for that shoulder. Because I feel like they’re the most motivating forces that we have.
Sometimes I’m working with grandparents, and they say, I’d just like to be able to get up and down off the floor with my grandkids. You need to figure out what that motivating factor is for them, and then it’s easier to train for it. That’s kind of the functional movement model. What is it that you need to do functionally for the thing that you love and want to do more of?
[00:31:52] Detective Ev: These are customized things. I guess this is where I’d like to break this stuff down cause you do offer quite a bit. So, if I come to you in person, I can get work done whether I’m an adult, a baby, or whatever. I can work with you in person in that sense?
[00:32:03] Jeremy Quinby: Yeah. Because I work with nervous system related challenges. Like, I might try to either just myself or even find somebody else that might be related to what’s going on.
Do the Tests, Get the Data
So, let’s say depression has been an issue, right?
Then sometimes, as you know, body work can actually, with some regularity, especially during a time where you’ve been struggling or if you know that in the fall going into winter, these things start to flare up for you, right? Then we just start to kind of come up with a game plan.
And I’m always into the idea of like, let’s try some little mini tests. Let’s see how this goes this year, right? Let’s try six weeks leading up to the holidays cause that’s the other factor, right? It may be about winter, it may be kind of a seasonal effective thing, or it may just be about the holidays in your family. But again, we’re trying to manage a challenge here.
So, let’s try to figure out what might work for that? Maybe it’s acupuncture, you know. For some people they do really well with depression and some Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Sometimes it’s different kind of nutritional supplements and a functional medicine person might be the right person to talk to and just have some tests done.
You know, Reed Davis and I had a conversation a couple weeks ago about all of this. Not everyone needs a lot of supplementation. But I think to have the tests done in the first place gives us a lot of information about what might be going on. Like there could be some inflammation, there could be some low testosterone issues or some other kind of hormonal challenge.
There could be stuff going on with the thyroid. Let’s gather all this information and then at the end of the day, we can get together and figure out.
[00:33:25] Detective Ev: Yeah. Especially with the depression thing. That is cool by the way. Most people listening would know Reed Davis is the founder of FDN. You can actually go hear him get interviewed on Jeremy’s podcast. I will make a note to put that in the show notes here so people can go click on that afterwards. That’d be very fun.
Reed does a lot of interviews, and I don’t think I advertise that nearly enough. This would be probably the first one many of them would listen to honestly.
But the depression thing, clearly close to my heart with the stuff that I was mentioning to you in the beginning. We see this too, this idea that it seems to be very inflammation based, right? Because we used to think it’s like just a serotonin thing. That’s getting more and more outdated as we get more and more science, but the inflammation aspect seems to be there. That’s why all of these components could affect people differently.
That’s why some get benefit from the acupuncture. A lot of people could get benefit from the body work and stuff. That’s the one thing I know about my lower back, anytime I’m in pain, and correct me if I’m wrong here. It’s probably oversimplified, it’s not so much of a correction rather it’d be an elaboration. But that is triggering a stress response in my body anytime I have that pain. Right? Like, isn’t my body reacting to this accordingly? That’s not helping me.
[00:34:27] Jeremy Quinby: Yeah. You know, I think there’s another part. As we age, our body has a harder time with recovery in process, right?
Craniosacral Therapy Works the Fascial System
There are things that build up in the tissues. I’m a big fan of body work, not just doing it. I get regular body work too. Massage work is really good for moving everything through your lymphatic system.
Anything that’s built up, sometimes we get metabolic waste that’s in there, lactic acid and that kind of stuff. I mean, our body can use a certain amount of that. In fact, we use lactic acid as a kind of energy system for the body. It’s like the ethanol of the body. We use it for anaerobic work. But too much of it can cause muscle spasms.
So, we have to be smart about helping the body at a certain point, pretty much past 25. That is where the tipping point seems to be if you watch pro sports and that kind of stuff. That’s where everything usually starts to become more complicated. And something like craniosacral therapy is actually really good.
I don’t know how much you know about craniosacral therapy, but it’s really working with the fascial system, the connective tissue system, and especially that dura membrane system. So, we have this fluid tide that moves back and forth within that dura membrane. It bathes the cerebral spinal fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord.
It goes from your sacrum to your head and back about every five to seven seconds. Kind of different for everybody. It’s this kind of internal pump. It’s oddly a saline tide that’s just moving back and forth within the system. When we sleep, that system opens up a little bit more and it kind of forces more through the system. It moves it out through these little villi into your lymphatic system as well. That’s why it’s semi hydraulic.
Craniosacral Therapy Frees Up Mission Control
Part of what my role is, is to free up as much restriction around that system. That’s a big innate part of our immune function is that that system does this work on its own all the time. And if that system is cleaned up and we don’t have all these different kinds of amyloid stuff like that, that builds up in the system, it just helps our nervous system function better.
That nervous system is basically mission control. That’s why I got drawn to it, especially having the back problem. It’s like I wanted to have as much effect on that. If it’s a mental health challenge, if it’s a physiological challenge, I want that nervous system to function as highly as possible on its own.
Cause you know, there’s a lot that’s going to go on between me meeting with people in sessions and to me, that felt like one of the biggest things I could do in terms of impact was to kind of help balance that system. That system helps balancing us from staying in fight or flight for too long a period of time. Getting patterned into that kind of response also patterns us into the inflammatory responses and the histamine responses and all these things.
The more we can move ourselves into that parasympathetic response, the better we digest, the better we are able to be at rest. We sleep better. All the sexual function side of things is also that parasympathetic side. So, if people are having ED issues, getting that system back in balance is another big one.
That’s why the more I get into this work, the more I’m helping a lot of that stuff. A lot of kind of COVID long haul stuff right now too.
Craniosacral Therapy Mobilizes Fascia Around Organs
[00:37:09] Detective Ev: I honestly don’t know much about that. When it comes to stuff that can be worked on in this way, I have a lot of ignorance around it. Sometimes people will think I’m super knowledgeable, but really what it’s come from is figuring out my own issues. As I figured them out more and more, it’s like, okay, I’ve learned a lot. But it’s very specific to what worked for me. And it just so happens to overlap. I have a lot of ignorance here and plenty to learn.
You mentioned this fluid going back and forth, that sleep can help this. Is it fair to say then that the quality of one’s sleep could have a pretty dramatic impact on this system that you’re working on?
[00:37:50] Jeremy Quinby: Huge. And the better the quality of sleep, you know. That’s the thing that we’re really trying to get to. Part of the craniosacral approach is also, it’s basically an osteopathic work. You know, it’s not osteopathy. It’s a different focus and perspective, but it’s the same system that technically chiropractors are working on.
Getting work on myself, I like craniosacral work better because it’s very low force. We only use about five grams of pressure, which is mostly like traction type of work. But we can also kind of work with mobilizing fascia around organs and around the breathing system. And if that breathing system is moving really well, that informs the nervous system that everything’s ok.
If we have a shortened breathing system, that fight or flight response goes up. We don’t sleep as well, we don’t digest as well. All the factors that could flare that have been challenges for you are much more likely to flare when that’s happening too.
Craniosacral Therapy Loosened a Baby’s Arm
[00:38:36] Detective Ev: Well, since we only have several minutes left, the one thing I especially gotta ask someone like you that’s been doing work like this for so long, I’m always really curious about just maybe one or two client testimonials that stick out to you. Maybe they were particularly heartwarming or whatever comes to your mind. Are there like one or two stories that you’ll just never forget and maybe made a really huge difference and impact in the person’s life?
[00:38:57] Jeremy Quinby: Well, early on when I first started working with babies, I had a baby who had been born with the arm kind of up above its head and kind of had a shoulder tear, muscle tear. But they couldn’t, since babies are so small and MRIs aren’t always used in these situations, they weren’t sure what was going on. They called it Erb’s palsy, which meant that one side was not functioning. They thought that, that arm might never come back to have function.
They had been to Shriners in Philadelphia and all sorts of neurological tests and done all these different things. After the first session that I worked with the baby, the baby started using her arm. It just kind of goes to show too how sometimes things are really locked up. I look a lot at how things neurally pattern, because that neural patterning a lot of times will kind of take over when there’s a perceived trauma.
That’s the interesting thing with babies is, you know, parents might go through trying to do everything perfectly natural, have a water birth and home birth and have a doula at home and everything. But the baby might have a totally different experience.
Client Testimonial: 10-year-old with Panic Attacks
That might be great for the parent, having the baby at home and everything. But babies can have different kinds of perceived trauma from the event, and we’re all individual in that way. So, I always take everything case to case. I never look at anything as a condition. And I think sometimes that is the mistake. We want a diagnosis, we want to call this Erb’s palsy, but I’m just looking at it as something very generalized.
Another one, just talking about this case. I worked with a 10-year-old boy at one point who was having panic attacks. The same thing, been through all sorts of neurological testing, really didn’t seem to be changing anything at all. They tried some medication, didn’t seem to be working for the panic attacks. So, the mom brought him to me. I tend to really kind of work from a perspective of continuously asking questions as I’m treating.
Not everybody does that. Some people are like really quiet while they treat. I always feel like I’m going to get a certain amount in intake and people always miss things in intake, even if I have the question on there. I dunno why. I think it’s a protective mechanism of some sort.
But anyway, as I’m working on him, he tells me that he hears a little fluid in his ear. So, for some reason, I was thinking is there anything that ever happens right before you’ve had these panic attacks or right before the last panic attack, was there anything that you remember? And he said, A really loud truck. I was like, that’s interesting. Made note of that.
Craniosacral Therapy Around the Temporal Bone
Then kind of putting that together with the fact that there was something draining in his ear. The other thing is that the panic attacks never happened again. After I was doing some kind of mobilization work around his temporal bone, something drained.
So, my guess is there was some kind of echo chamber that set off his alarm system and his nervous system because it was so loud and so sharp that even though he knew it was a truck, his nervous system just went into shock. So, there must have been something going on with hearing and he never had a problem again.
[00:41:42] Detective Ev: It’s amazing. I feel like you could probably write a whole book on just these cool stories to testify. Well, I’m working on it. Man, I wish I had you when I was younger. I mean, I know it’s different for everyone, but panic attacks were the first symptom that I really remember, maybe with the exception of like stomach pain.
I was diagnosed with panic disorder at 15. I mean, it became an everyday thing. It became the thing where like, I’m hiding at home because you start to associate certain things with the panic attacks even though they really happen whenever. There isn’t actually a rhyme or reason for them.
It’s one of the toughest things for me to describe to someone mental health-wise. Now I’m assuming if I had schizophrenia, that’d probably be even harder to describe. But in terms of my life, Yeah, panic attacks, it’s like, you feel like you’re going to die. It’s like, did you really feel that way? Are you being dramatic?
A Faulty Panic Response
It’s like, No. A hundred percent scariest thing I’ve ever felt in my life. And it happened all the time. So, to take that away from someone, that’s pretty amazing work.
And I love the arm story. I mean, it’s not necessarily inherently bad to have that label on it, but the labels become self-limiting. We’ll put that Erb’s Palsy label on, and it’s like, Okay, well that’s it. There’s nothing we can do. Sorry, your arm’s stuck like this. And one session, I mean, that’s ridiculous.
[00:42:46] Jeremy Quinby: To follow up with that, that wasn’t the end. Because the arm started to have function, they put her in PT and in PT they realized she had a torn tendon. So, then she had a minor shoulder surgery at two years old or something.
But that was such a huge moment to realize that arm can work again. You know, and then sometimes we do need the surgical aspect of this too.
But like with panic attacks, a lot of this I know from my back issues that it’s a patterned response a lot of times that starts to happen. The nervous system really loves to build these patterns in it. It’s an efficiency mechanism that the body has, like learning how to play piano. Our hands learn the shape. We don’t have to re-learn that every single time we sit down at the piano.
But the same thing tends to happen with something like this that’s faulty, where all of a sudden, your body goes into this protective response, this panic response. It learns how to do that, and it starts to look for opportunities even to like, kick that in.
Where to find Jeremy Quinby
[00:43:36] Detective Ev: I love describing it that way cause it’s so straightforward. It is an efficiency mechanism because the body doesn’t want to waste all this energy.
It’s why guys, when we’re driving a car to a place that we go to routinely, like you almost are not there presently while you’re driving. Like, how did I just get there? Because if we actually had to focus on every little thing we do all day, it’s exhausting.
Think about when you start a new job, how different you feel going home at the end of the day versus if you’ve been doing it for five years and it’s kind of routine.
So, Jeremy, of course everything will be in the show notes, but I always like to hear verbally, where can people find you and where can they find your podcast?
[00:44:08] Jeremy Quinby: Sure. If anyone’s looking for me for my practice or wants to learn more about what I do or this kind of work, it’s jeremyquinbycst.com, like craniosacral therapy.
That’ll probably be in show notes. And Highway to. Health is the name of the podcast.
[00:44:22] Detective Ev: Awesome. Our signature question on the podcast is what we will finish up with today. I normally am actually really bad at predicting what people will say, and with you, I got no idea. Because you have a lot of experience and you’ve read a lot. You can’t predict it, I found.
The Health Detective Podcast Signature Question
But the signature question, Jeremy, 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, and you could choose to get them to do one thing, or you could choose to get them to stop doing one thing, what is the one thing that Jeremy Quinby would get them to do?
[00:44:51] Jeremy Quinby: I’d get them to sleep eight hours a night. I mean there’s so much restorative work that happens in sleep. It’s amazing to see how kids can sleep and not every kid can sleep well. I mean, I work with some of those kids too. But as we age, I think just the amount of things that we’re processing make it harder and harder for us to fall asleep, to stay asleep.
Then if we have any physical challenges going on, I mean, when I had back problems, I slept horribly. And just what that ends up doing for our mental-emotional states too. I think if I could get everyone that I’m working with to, and it’s one of the first things that I do when I first start working with people is I make them commit to for the next four weeks, to adding a half hour a night of sleep.
Basically, either you gotta do it on the front end or on the back end. But I think for most people they gotta go to bed earlier. I’ll usually suggest getting off of devices, setting some boundaries around when you’re taking emails and texts and work-related stuff too, because that all eats into that stuff.
But that’s the magic wand that I’d like to use.
Conclusion
[00:45:51] Detective Ev: All right guys. That’ll do it for today’s episode with Jeremy Quinby. I hope you guys like this one. This is a little bit of a switch up.
The stuff that he knows is just things that I am not really aware of at all. I mean, there’s so many different things that you can learn in the health space. So, to hear what people are able to do from a physical standpoint, like actually physically manipulating something and getting results, I just think that’s amazing. It’s yet one more therapy out there that could help someone in a really serious way. So, we need to spread this message, right?
Now if you guys like what we’re sharing, please consider leaving us a five-star review on Apple and or Spotify.
If you’d be so kind as to do that, guess what? We’d 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.
Many thanks to a reader from Australia for this topic. This week we are looking at a randomised controlled/clinical trial (RCT). It was quite large and quite long. RCTs are always worth reviewing, as they are rare in the field of nutrition.
The study for this week was by Baker et al and it was called “Effects of cocoa extract and a multivitamin on cognitive function: A randomized clinical trial” (Ref 1). As the title suggests, the trial looked at both cocoa extract and multivitamin-mineral supplements to evaluate whether they have any impact on cognitive performance.
The background to the paper was given as – some population studies and some small clinical trials have suggested benefit can be derived from cocoa extract and/or multivitamin supplements. There would thus be a benefit to establish definitive evidence by doing a large enough, long enough trial. That’s what the researchers set out to do.
We get it – test taking can be nerve-wracking! But, at FDN, we make sure that you’re completely prepared before administering our tests. Our training is very thorough and most students feel confident by the time they get to the exams.
Our entire course is designed so that you get a true grasp of the information needed to be an exceptional health practitioner, and we provide wonderful mentors who are there to help you succeed.
Just wait and see…your confidence is going to skyrocket once you rock the testing and realize all that you’ve learned.
Why Now is The Best Time to Pursue Health Coach Certification. Plus, How Long it Takes.
There has never been a better time to pursue health coach certification!
There are soooo many reasons for this, but the primary reasons (in our opinion) include:
The mainstream healthcare system is failing
Chronic health conditions are on the rise, and
People are desperate for answers & support
While none of these things are good on their own, there is one thing about them that is good – they provide the perfect opportunity for the health coaching industry to thrive!
If you’ve made your way to this blog, our guess is that you’re considering a health coach certification program. Maybe you’re dead set on becoming a health coach, but you haven’t mapped out “a real plan” yet. Or, maybe you’re still wondering if health coaching is right for you.
Either way, one of the most common questions we get is:
How long does it take to become a health coach?
It makes sense why this is one of the first questions we often hear! Because if you’re like many of our students, you have a busy life, and it’s hard to imagine where you’ll find time for a health coach certification program.
Maybe your mind is full of “if / then” scenarios:
“if i just wait until my 3 year old starts preschool, then I’ll have the time”
“if i just wait until things slow down a bit at work, then I’ll have the time”
“if I just…., then I’ll have the time”…
Well, we’re here to tell you (and we mean it when we say this):
The right time is now.
How can we be so sure?
Because a health coaching career is life-changing, for you and your future clients.
As a Health Coach, you’ll be:
Transforming the lives of people who’ve been desperately seeking answers
Witnessing the transformations of your clients & feeling fulfilled
Creating a career that is flexible & can change with you as your needs evolve
The bottom line is that health coaching jobs are in high demand (ref. 5).
Getting started now with health coach certification will allow you to capitalize on this growth while the market is hot & launch a career you love in no time.
Just how quickly are we talking?
Students from our FDN certification program are completing the coursework in less than 12 months, while putting in only ~6 hours per week. The average time to complete the program is 8 months, but you get a full 12 months if needed.
Just imagine where you could be 6-12 months from now.
To help you gain confidence in pursuing your health coaching dreams, we’ve put together some more detailed information.
A Closer Look at How Long it Takes to Become an FDN-P.
The time it takes to complete a health certification program is going to vary depending on the program you choose.
Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner (FDN-P) is the title you receive if you choose to go through our FDN certification course. While our program is slightly different from other health coaching certification programs, many of our graduates refer to themselves as health coaches.
One of the main differences is that the FDN certification course provides more focus on functional lab testing, but surprisingly it doesn’t take much longer than most other health coach certification programs. You can read more about how we compare to other programs here.
The timeline below is based on the average completion time of 8 months.
Months 1-6 | Complete all course modules & end-of-module quizzes
Months 7-8 | Practical exercises & exams (includes live mentorship)
Month 8 | Complete open-book written exam + oral exam + an interview with mentor
CONGRATULATIONS! You’re officially an FDN Practitioner. 🥳
After graduation, you have the option to join the FDN Business School, where you spend another ~3 months learning the ins-and-outs of running a thriving wellness business. But even for those who opt-out of this portion, we have helpful templates & resources available.
Now that you have an understanding of the timeline that the average FDN student embarks on, let’s take a peek at how other health coach certification programs stack up.
Other Health Coach Certification Choices.
Timeline | Institute of Integrative Nutrition (IIN)
You’ve probably heard of this one 😉 They certainly have some fancy marketing efforts! In fact, many of our students first obtained a health coaching certification through IIN, and later came to FDN to dive deeper into functional testing & diagnostic training.
Time-length of Program: 6-12 months
Things to consider:
IIN does not provide graduates access to order lab tests like FDN does
IIN does not offer the same level of live mentorship that FDN does
Timeline | Health Coach Institute (HCI)
HCI is another well-known health coach certification program. They have two different program options – one for a Health Coach and the other for a Nutrition Coach, in addition to some advanced options.
Time-length of Program: 6 months
Things to consider:
Although the program length is shorter than many others, the business training & mentorship is provided in a separate ‘Coach Mastery’ Program that takes 12 months to complete.
HCI does not provide graduates access to order lab tests like FDN does
Timeline | Functional Medicine Coaching Academy (FMCA)
FMCA “encompasses the evidence-based principles of Functional Medicine, positive psychology, functional nutrition and mind-body medicine, all within a coaching framework”.
Time-length of Program: 12 months
Things to consider:
FMCA requires 8-10 hrs/wk, and appears to offer less flexibility
FMCA prepares students primarily to partner with Functional Medicine Doctors, rather than run their own functional tests for patients / clients.
Hopefully that gives you a sense of what’s out there & how long these programs take to complete. Butttt, once you start sifting through information like this, it’s inevitable that new questions start to pop up. 😉
So, we’ve compiled some of our FAQs to help you move forward.
Now that you know how long it takes to become a health coach, and the general time commitment you should expect, the next step is to reach out to the program that feels most aligned for you! We’d love to chat with you – you can schedule a call here.
We get it – test taking can be nerve-wracking! But, at FDN, we make sure that you’re completely prepared before administering our tests. Our training is very thorough and most students feel confident by the time they get to the exams.
Our entire course is designed so that you get a true grasp of the information needed to be an exceptional health practitioner, and we provide wonderful mentors who are there to help you succeed.
Just wait and see…your confidence is going to skyrocket once you rock the testing and realize all that you’ve learned.
The average base salary of a Health and Wellness Coach is $48,2494. Keep in mind this is going to vary depending on your exact credentials, service offerings & location!
However, FDN graduates are able to charge a premium for their services because they can order & analyze functional tests for their clients. In fact, many FDN-P’s are making well over 6 figures within their first 12 months of practicing! You can read more about health coach salary ranges here.
To put it simply, health coach certification doesn’t take long!
Yes, it requires some dedication and you will have to set aside time for your coursework, but completing these certification courses is entirely doable – even with that busy schedule of yours.
Your future clients are out there, right now.
Even if you don’t think you’re quite ready for a career change, completing a health coach certification course puts you one step closer.
Plus, if you go with FDN, you’ll also get some valuable insight into your own health. That’s right – your tuition actually includes functional lab tests for YOU, and you get to review your results with an expert.
This is because we believe to truly “walk the talk” you should start with yourself.
Institute for Integrative Nutrition: Nutrition School for Online Health Coaching, https://www.integrativenutrition.com/?utm_channel=PaidAd&utm_medium=SEM&utm_source=Google&utm_campaign=14866260716&utm_adgroup=128880754798&utm_term=institute%20of%20integrative%20nutrition-e&utm_content=588968098488&gclid=CjwKCAjwu5yYBhAjEiwAKXk_eNvpmBfGG. Accessed 26 August 2022.
Functional Medicine Training & Health Coach Certification, https://functionalmedicinecoaching.org/. Accessed 26 August 2022.
“Health Coach Institute Coach Mastery Program | HCI Master Class.” Health Coach Institute, https://www.healthcoachinstitute.com/programs/coach-mastery/. Accessed 26 August 2022.
“Salary: Health Coach (August, 2022).” Glassdoor, 13 December 2021, https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/health-coach-salary-SRCH_KO0,12.htm. Accessed 26 August 2022.
“United States Health Coaching Market Report 2021 – ResearchAndMarkets.com.” Business Wire, 15 January 2021, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210115005462/en/United-States-Health-Coaching-Market-Report-2021—ResearchAndMarkets.com. Accessed 26 August 2022.
Place all ingredients, except for chia seeds, into a blender and puree until smooth. Pour chia seeds into glass jar, pour pumpkin pie flavored liquid over seeds. Place cap on jar and mix well. Place in fridge overnight or for several hours. (More chia means thicker pudding, less means more liquid-y).
Pumpkin Pie Spiced Creamer (dairy free, no extra processed sugar) Whole New Mom Up your fall home coffee game.
1/2 cup cashews 2-3 cups water 2 tbsp maple syrup 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice 1 tsp vanilla
Place cashews in a container and cover with water for a few hours (2-4). Drain nuts and place in a blender. Add enough new water to just cover the nuts. Add syrup and spices and blend again.
Spicy Toasted Pumpkin Seeds She Wears Many Hats An easy grab-and-go snack.
1 cup pumpkin seeds, rinsed and dry ½ tsp garlic powder ½ tsp sea salt ½ tsp cracked black pepper ½ tsp paprika ¼ tsp cayenne powder (optional) 2 tbsp olive oil
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl combine all ingredients until seed are coated well. Spread evenly on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Bake until toasted and slightly browned, about 15-20 minutes, tossing halfway through.
Falling leaves, cooling temperatures, getting out the cozy sweaters, and the appearance of winter squash, apples and root vegetables at the grocery store means that autumn is underway. Another sign to add to the list of autumn essentials: pumpkin spice. It’s easy to make at home and is an incredibly versatile spice to have in your pantry.
What Is Pumpkin Spice?
While it may seem that pumpkin spice has been around forever and a day, it’s a relatively new seasoning blend. There is the odd reference to pumpkin spice in cookbooks from the late 1800s, yet it wasn’t until the 1950s that the blend was packaged and sold to be used more widely, beyond recipes that contained real pumpkin in them.
In 2003, a well-known coffee company (you know the one we mean!) introduced its Pumpkin Spice Latte and that’s when pumpkin spice hit the big time. And we’re not just talking lattes – pumpkin spice has permeated throughout the food market, earning just over $500 million in sales in 2019.
This unique spice blend is a mix of:
Cinnamon (the most dominant flavour)
Nutmeg
Ginger
Cloves
Allspice
Culinary Nutrition Benefits of Pumpkin Spice
It doesn’t just taste delicious!
Basic Pumpkin Spice Recipe
This blend is very easy to make at home (you probably already have everything you need) and you can adjust the spice ratios depending on what you like.
You can easily double or triple this recipe and it will keep well if sealed properly all season long.
Your entire home will smell heavenly with pumpkin-spiced baked goods cooking in the oven! We also love adding chocolate chips to our pumpkin-spiced cookies.
(And you can never have too many gluten-free cookie recipes! Try one of these 27 recipes with vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, grain-free and Paleo options.)
Muffins
Do you like to slice your muffins in half? We sure do, so we can slather them with nut/seed butter, coconut butter, coconut oil, honey or ghee.
(Adore bread but don’t have enough solid gluten-free options? Try one of these Gluten-Free Bread Recipes.)
Dairy-Free Ice Cream
Dairy-free ice cream may be enjoyed most during the summer, but with the warming qualities of pumpkin spices you can dish it up throughout the fall and winter.
Do you like the idea of whole food, from-scratch cooking, but think it’s impossible to achieve with a busy life? The Culinary Nutrition Expert Program can help you build your kitchen confidence and learn to make recipes that support your health, your family’s health or the health of your clients.
Soup
You may have tried dairy-free pumpkin soup already, but have you added pumpkin spice to the pot? We definitely recommend it!
We like assembling chia pudding a few days ahead so that we have a batch of tasty, pre-prepped, portable breakfasts and snacks ready on hand. The pumpkin spices take them to another level!
(Tired of eating the same old, same old breakfasts? These 12 Energizing Breakfasts can help you feel full of vitality throughout the day!)
Oatmeal
Gluten-free oats cooked in coconut milk and pumpkin spice and heaped with nut/seed butter and fresh or dried fruit is the ideal breakfast for the colder months.
Season your nuts or seeds, or create your own trail mix, with the deliciousness of pumpkin spice. The addition of your favourite natural sweetener and some coconut oil can add depth to the flavours.
Create a pilaf with your favourite gluten-free grains by mixing in sautéed onions, garlic, ginger and then adding in pumpkin spice and sea salt. Finish with some dried fruit and you’ve got a delectable side!
Pumpkin spices aren’t just for sweet dishes. A number of popular seasoning blends and cultural foods feature cinnamon, ginger, allspice, nutmeg and cloves. You can swap in your pumpkin spice mix in a variety of one-pot dishes like tagines or chilis, or try it in Jamaican-style jerk dishes.
(Sometimes you just want a little nosh, right? Bite-sized snacks are perfect for when you’re feeling snacky, having guests over for a party, or for little mouths you need to feed.)
With all of these ideas and options, your autumn is sure to be packed with pumpkin-spiced deliciousness!
If there were such a thing as a “superfood,” cruciferous vegetables like broccoli would certainly be wearing the cape. Along with kale, collards, cabbage, bok choy, cauliflower, and many others in that vegetable family, crucifers contain a relatively unique class of phytonutrients that can potentially help prevent DNA damage, metastatic cancer spread, and lymphoma; activate defenses against pathogens and pollutants; boost your liver detox enzymes; target breast cancer stem cells; and reduce the risk of prostate cancer progression. That’s why I include cruciferous veggies in my Daily Dozen healthiest-of-healthy-foods checklist. For more information and all of my videos on broccoli, check out the topic page.
Recipe: Mexican-Inspired Bowl
If you’ve found yourself with a sudden hankering for broccoli, try this recipe from Ángela, our Spanish Social Media and Program Coordinator. With broccoli, beans, whole grains, and a homemade salsa, her recipe will check off several of your Daily Dozen boxes for the day. Get the free recipe here, and watch a video on how it’s made on our Instagram.
Host a Screening
Share the latest in evidence-based nutrition with your community by hosting a free screening of my “How Not to Die” or “Evidence-Based Weight Loss” presentation. Each video runs for approximately one hour. Your free Digital Event Kit will include the video, an introduction to NutritionFacts, a fun trivia game for attendees, and tips for hosting. For more information and to sign up, go here.
Volunteer Spotlight:Midge Constantino
I’ve been a volunteer for NutritionFacts for a couple of years. I assist on a variety of projects, but my primary role is to compile lists of videos that are added as YouTube cards accompanying the recordings of Dr. Greger’s Live Q&As. His mission of sharing evidence-based nutrition information to the general public is incredibly important, since misinformation sadly abounds. It’s been such an honor to help support NutritionFacts in my own little way.
I believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and my favorite is Chocolate Oatmeal from The How Not to Die Cookbook. It’s yummy, very easy to prepare, and sustains me throughout the morning.
Those eating plant-based have a reduced load of antibiotic resistance genes in their gut.
P.S. We hit 200 million lifetime YouTube views! As you know, I made it my life’s work to reach as many people as possible with health information that can change and save lives. I’m grateful to all of you for watching and sharing these videos, helping to spread the healthy-living message.
Live Q&A TODAY
Every month, I do a live Q&A right from my treadmill, and the next one is today, October 20!
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: What is going on, my friends? Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on extremism in medicine.
We have a special guest on today. It’s one of the most popular guests in terms of their social media presence that we have ever had on the show. His name is Dr. Bradley Campbell. Perhaps you follow him already, and if you do not, we would highly recommend that.
Of course, we will have his Instagram and other links in the show notes so that you can go give him a follow. He’s always dropping a ton of knowledge and just actual practical stuff. It’s not just a hype Instagram, there’s real things there. One of the coolest things that he does that I personally love is these morning drives in the convertible where he gives talks with his dog on his way to the office. You’re just going to have to go check those out to see what I mean. But again, they’re really cool.
Dr. Bradley Campbell is a holistic physician, author, and musician. In college, he majored in Pre-med and saxophone performance and then decided to attend multiple natural medical schools to help people find the true root cause of their problems.
Dr. Campbell is currently working on completing 10 postgraduate degrees in natural healthcare. Aside from playing music, he enjoys traveling, water skiing, motorcycling, and spending time with his Irish setter, Elvis.
Two Interesting Health Experiences
This guy’s only 32 years old. The reason I say that is because when you hear how much he has already done with his life and what he’s currently doing, it’s kind of hard to believe that he did this all before the age of 40. It’s pretty impressive stuff.
What’s even cooler is not only does he help patients, but he does have his own story too. I say it that way because typically people on the show do have their own story. What I have found is if they are doctors that usually can go 50/50, sometimes they’re just doctors that got into the medical space to help others, like most doctors do. Then they transitioned eventually when they realized the system might not have been serving their clients.
But other doctors actually had experiences and he had two particularly interesting ones. One was one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard in terms of how fast he healed. You guys will get to hear all of that and more in today’s episode.
Without further ado, let’s get to it.
All right. Hey there Dr. Campbell. Thanks so much for being here with us today.
Dr. Bradley Campbell: Thanks for having me on.
Detective Ev: This is a nice change of pace. Listen, you know how it is in the functional world, it’s like a very women dominated space. I love interviewing all these women, but it is very nice to have some, bearded men here today. Younger guys, testosterone flowing into this podcast. I mean, seriously, it is a little rarer that there is younger than not males in this space. So, it’s cool. I’m liking that we’re doing this.
Not Afraid to Speak Out
I don’t know about you, but I find that so many friends of mine from high school or the college-ish years, they’re really starting to feel the modern lifestyle now and the effects of it. Now they come to us. We were weird before, but now it’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
[00:03:02] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Yeah, they’re like, oh, you feel good? What’s that like?
[00:03:06] Detective Ev: Men start paying attention when a certain part of their life isn’t working so well. You know what I mean? Then they start asking you about the questions and stuff. But I will spare the audience of that detailed conversation.
I like to jump into this podcast pretty similarly in the same way with every single person to start off. I am fascinated by how people end up in this space especially when it is a male. Again, it’s not really the common route to take this more functional approach or challenge the system.
I love the stuff that you do on Instagram. I mean, you’re not afraid to say what you’re thinking. I think we need a lot more of this. How did you get into this type of space as opposed to just becoming any old doctor out there?
[00:03:44] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Well, I finished my chiropractic, naturopathic schools, and acupuncture school and then wasn’t sure what to do cause I was just studying super hard. So, I wrote a book.
Then after that I wasn’t sure what to do. So, I started a nonprofit right before the pandemic started. The nonprofit was going to be helping lower income people around the Chicago land area in the United States. Because of the pandemic, we couldn’t meet in person to treat people and to educate people.
Extremism in Medicine: Social Media Pushing Fear, Division, and Anger
So, I decided to go towards the online space and found that I could reach thousands more people online than I was ever able to reach in person. And it was a lot cheaper for me personally. I’ve still invested tons of my own money towards equipment and all those things that we have to do for podcasts or for other things, camera gear and video things.
At the end of the day, what I realized is just that there was a lot of fear-based narratives going on in the online space. And I realized that the social media platforms tend to push a lot of fear, a lot of division, a lot of anger. Facebook has admitted this in recent years and people who have worked at Facebook, has said, yeah, the algorithm actually does do this.
Cause what they’re trying to do is just keep people on the platform as long as possible. The more they can emotionally trigger you, the more they can get you to comment on posts that are inflammatory. The more that their business succeeds, the more that they keep you on the platform. You have to be very mindful about what you surround yourself with.
But I was seeing a lot of my mentors either go super into team pandemic or like lockdown and take all the shots and do all the things and wear five masks. Then I had a bunch of other people, mentors of mine, who were going the opposite way, saying like, this is all BS. There is no such thing as the pandemic. This is all over hyped and they’re over counting the deaths and the shots are going to kill everybody who takes them within two years. Like, that’s totally not true.
Extremism in Medicine: It’s Easy to Become Dogmatic Against the System
I just saw a lot of misinformation on both sides and wanted to be a little bit of a voice of reason or moderation or calm hope for people to allow them the space to save their minds in a middle ground way that doesn’t have to be this polarizing, binary, inflammatory perspective.
[00:05:45] Detective Ev: I did not realize that was the motivation for you hopping online at all. Clearly, it’s working, and I think it’s being well received because people want this. I’ve never used those words, but this is something that we’re pushing at FDN in general, especially for our practitioners. Because you know how it is, it is very easy, especially for people like myself and like many of our practitioners who have been kind of messed up by Western medicine.
It failed us. Even if it was really good people behind it, the system still failed us. It’s very easy to become dogmatic and say, well, everything there is bad. I’m not going to trust anything.
And I completely agree with you on this. This isn’t something I’ve discussed on the show before, but I know they wouldn’t mind this. In the beginning of the pandemic, I was one of the more people like in my family who was extremely cautious about everything. Because it’s amazing how much ignorance can surround these topics.
Like they’re not caring about the masks, they’re not caring about washing their hands. I’m talking like a week or two in, Brad. I’m like, we don’t know anything about this, guys.
Extremism in Medicine: Most People Are in the Middle
Honestly, my prediction was, I thought it was a superbug, like an antibiotic resistant thing before we knew it was a virus. So, I’m like, wow, I’ve read about this. You know, we know it’s coming at some point, we just don’t know when. I’m thinking, guys, maybe you want to use a little extra soap today or something. Like, this isn’t really the thing to go against.
Then we have people, three years later, we’ve done just about everything you can. If you want the vaccine, they’re widely available. We’ve done every possible measure. The world’s pretty much open. And then, you know, you still have people on the other extreme end.
And I want to be very clear for those listening, that’s not a judgment, I’m just showing that I like to be somewhere in the middle of those two ends of the extremes. I think that’s exactly what you just described, and it’s probably why you’re taking off. Because most people are in the middle. That’s actually where they are. That’s why we call them extremes because most people are not on either end of that.
[00:07:22] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Correct. Yeah. It’s like most people don’t want to give every human on earth, every single shot that’s available to them, or they don’t want to give their child like six boosters. Right now, the uptake for children for the boosters is less than 2% because people are realizing what’s just admitted this week.
Finally, even though we knew this from reading the research before was that the shots don’t stop you from getting the infection. They’ve seen that in children.
Reserve the Lifesaving Protection for the Elderly
They’re like, well, if the kids got over it once or twice or three times and giving another shot isn’t going to help them not catch it again, why would I give it to the kid when you could save those things for the elderly, the people who really need some of that lifesaving protection there.
So, I think there’s a lot of gray in a world where the media and other people and social media likes to be very black and white, and people have appreciated that.
[00:08:10] Detective Ev: Well, yeah. We talk about following the science, which I’m very much an advocate for. I would imagine as a doctor you were for that as well. I don’t know many people that wouldn’t be for that. That’s the thing too, it’s like we get into this stage, and we know that kids, I mean, like you said, have virtually no risk of this.
This is not a serious thing for kids. I mean, you gotta be pretty sick, even by our standards, to get to a place where COVID could actually seriously affect a child. Maybe it’s changed a little recently, I do agree with that. But even six months ago, a year ago, we’re still taking extreme precautions for children.
I’m like, do you see children dropping dead on the street? I’m in schools a lot. I work in schools as well, and like they’re rubbing their faces. The funniest one ever, Dr. Campbell. I was doing a presentation in a school, and I laughed in the middle of it. I couldn’t hold it because this kid, it’s exactly what you expect from kids in schools using these masks.
Extremism in Medicine: People Wanted the Freedom to Choose
He has his blue mask on, but he was wearing it as a headband and had feathers out of it, like a Native American. I was like, oh yeah, this is preventing these kids from spreading COVID around. You know? I was like, good Lord man. It was the funniest thing ever.
But that’s the thing, it’s like these kids are obviously spreading it. Most of them are are completely fine. So, we should follow that science and not just the dogma promoted by the media one way or the other. That’s where I’m at with that for sure.
[00:09:19] Dr. Bradley Campbell: I think people wanted to just make up their own decisions and act accordingly rather than sort of being told what to do or forced to do.
[00:09:25] Detective Ev: Absolutely.
Now I want to rewind just even a little bit. Again, I’m truly really interested in people’s stories, that’s kind of my big thing. You said, you’re getting into chiropractic school, naturopathic medicine of all things. Again, these statistically are more female dominated spaces. Maybe not the chiropractor, I’m not sure, but I know for naturopathic physicians it is.
Did you experience your own health story or some type of other experience in your family?
I follow your stuff, but everyone knows this, that listens regularly. I go in with a healthy level of ignorance because I want to almost interact with you as a listener would, maybe they have no context.
So how did you even choose that path?
A Profound, Miraculous Event
[00:09:56] Dr. Bradley Campbell: I had a couple health issues that were problematic. One big one was a concussion when I was nine. I had nine months where my IQ dropped in half, my short-term memory was lost, and my personality was basically gone. Went from a grade ahead to a grade behind in school.
After nine months of seeing 30 plus doctors, I went to a chiropractor who found a dent in my head that was pushing on my brain. He did cranial work, which only a few chiropractors and osteopathic physicians know how to do. He basically pulled the dent out of my head, took the pressure off my brain, and within an hour I was completely back to my normal self. That was a profound, miraculous event.
Then in college I was doing saxophone performance and Pre-med at the same time, and I was getting really congested and sinusy, having tons of sinus infections and tonsil infections. I got my tonsils out. I had sinus surgery. I had three surgeries in a period of two years. I wasn’t really sure why that was happening.
I went to my doctor, I’m like, you know what, could food play a role in creating mucus, phlegm, or congestion? He’s like, no, food doesn’t do anything for your health. It’s just your genetics. You just have bad tonsils, and you just have allergies. There’s nothing you can really do about it.
You’re already taking allergy shots. So just do the surgeries, take these pills, and we’ll see you in three months. I was like, Okay, sure.
Extremism in Medicine: Modern Medicine Doesn’t Know Everything
Then one day I was like, you know what? He might not know everything. He’s a little arrogant and I’m not so sure I buy that.
So, I just Googled like what makes mucus, and first thing was like milk. I was like, Oh shoot. I’ve been having a quarter gallon of chocolate milk at 5:00 AM every day before I go play saxophone, and then creating an allergic response that then was making mucus in my sinuses.
As soon as I stopped the milk, days later, my sinuses were perfectly fine, and my allergies pretty much resolved. I was like, okay, modern medicine doesn’t know everything. I didn’t realize that doctors don’t learn more than a few hours of nutrition in most medical schools.
So, I was pseudo gaslighted by my doctor, I guess at that point, just out of his own ignorance. He meant well, I believe, because that’s what he was taught. But I realized there was more towards healthcare than just being a medical doctor or a surgeon.
That’s when I decided not to go into Pre-med and to go more of the chiropractic, naturopathic route to really get to the root cause, do more nutrition, do more lifestyle medicine, and really help people heal and get healthy rather than just do drugs or surgery.
Even though I really liked the idea of doing surgery to help save people’s lives, I feel like I wanted to make a bigger impact and really get to the reason of why their chronic issues were going on.
A Soul Crushing Injury
[00:12:21] Detective Ev: So, you were always a smart guy, high achieving person.
To be clear with that grade thing, by the way, I know this might not have been the case for you, but let’s say normal for you would’ve been 10th grade, you were in 11th and the concussion pushed you back to like the ninth.
Dr. Bradley Campbell: Yep.
Detective Ev: Wow. Okay. That’s not fun.
[00:12:37] Dr. Bradley Campbell: No, it was pretty rough. I remember getting bullied for being the stupid kid, which was really weird for me.
[00:12:43] Detective Ev: Right. It’s not particularly easy to skip a grade. I mean, you probably had the exact opposite identity most of your life. Not that you were bullying, but that you were probably known as like a relatively smart person.
[00:12:53] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was pretty soul crushing of an injury. My whole sense of self was blown up to bits, really.
[00:13:00] Detective Ev: So yeah, you’re taking the Pre-med path. I can understand now how this gets altered a little bit. You’ve already done it a few times, so I just want to emphasize it. Again, I think this is important whenever we’re talking to a decent audience size at this point.
I like that you say that your doctor pseudo gas lit you and that you still believe he’s a good person. It’s just so extreme when people start acting like all the Western medicine’s bad or they’re sitting on the fountain of youth.
Extremism in Medicine: Just Share the Truth
I always say that to them. I’m like, go look at the average doctor, seriously. Go to a family practice near you and you tell me if they even look like they’re sitting on the fountain of youth in their back office while giving you rat poison. It’s really humbling actually, in a sense.
You almost want to believe that it’s the doctors because it’d be easy. Oh, look at that problem. We can just stop using them and we’re all saved. It’s very humbling in a sense. When I fully accepted that at 18, because I mean, I had been sick for like 13 years before this so there was a long journey beforehand.
When I finally accepted this, I said, dang. This problem is so much bigger than I even realized. You know, I wish the problem was just my local doctor. This is way farther out than that. It gets really convoluted because you say, well, it’s the system. Well, what makes up the system? Overall, a lot of great, well-meaning people, who have just been taught things that might not be the best.
It’s like, who do you point the finger at? How do you stop it? I think one of the best ways, and this is why I do what I do, is podcasts like this, what you’re doing on Instagram. You don’t have to condemn that necessarily. You can just shine light on things that are working. Clearly, it’s, again, well received based on the results you’re getting and tons of other practitioners and doctors out there who are just sharing their truth.
This is what happened to me. This is what happened to people I know. People receive it very well, I think.
Extremism in Medicine: The Doctors Wish They Could Give Health
[00:14:36] Dr. Bradley Campbell: I mean, the system, some people are really pretty negative. Well, I’ve talked to many doctors. I’ve taught medical doctors at their med schools, actually, and on integrated medicine. They’ll say like, well, you know, diabetics, they’re just screwed.
They have no chance in the heck if they’re poor because the water is bad. The food quality is bad. It’s really cheap to buy a two liter for a dollar of Coca-Cola when Fiji water is going to be $5 for the same size. There’s a source in the tap water in Chicago, 30% of the tap water in Chicago is now tainted with lead.
So, they’re saying, these people are just like screwed and the system is broken, and we don’t know what to do because we wish we could give them health, but they can’t afford it. We don’t know how to do it. It’s way beyond the doctors.
A lot of doctors are aware of nutrition and the importance of nutrition, it’s just we have a deficiency of practitioners. We don’t have enough doctors to go around. We don’t have nutritionists to go around.
The air is not super clean, but the water’s not clean in Flint, Michigan, or a lot of other places. The food is also a problem. We need to remake healthy soil to remake healthier food.
A lot of people just aren’t aware of even subtle things like organic food from Mexico is not the same as organic food grown in the United States. An organic strawberry, you can grow in Mexico, hydroponically in water, not soil, and it has 50% less mineral content and nutritional value of an organic strawberry grown in the United States in soil, but it’s cheaper.
Extremism in Medicine: Shining Light, Making Informed Decisions
Americans are smart. They’ll go down to Mexico and grow the strawberries in hydroponic conditions in order to then make it for cheaper and resell it back to the United States. They can make a bigger profit for less investment. The problem is that then you have to eat twice as many strawberries, get twice as many calories with half of the nutritional value.
We wonder why we have this obesity epidemic. It’s like even when people are trying to eat organic, sometimes they’re not eating the best quality, even when it is what they believe to be high quality food.
[00:16:26] Detective Ev: Wow. This is such an example of like, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Right? Because you know, they’re a business, they gotta do what they gotta do. Since we allow this, why wouldn’t they do it? You know, of course they’re going to go do it.
I could argue also that you would hope someone has a higher moral standard than that, but at the end of the day, again, business has gotta make money and there’s things implicated with this. It’s like then what do we do? Point at them too.
Do we point at the people with the water quality control? There’s too much. It’s actually overwhelming, and that’s why it’s awareness. You used that word. It’s shining light on these other things so that you could make more informed decisions.
It’s interesting that you brought up the organic standards too, because that was, honestly, the first thing that ever got me into this.
Local Vs. Organic
I remember at 16 it was a bot account on Twitter. Sounds hilarious but this is the truth. It was called Truth or Bot and it was conspiracy this, conspiracy that, whatever. I’m sure there was a lot of junk on there but one of the things was what Monsanto was doing and GMOs and stuff.
This was like 11 years ago; I’m reading this stuff. I’m like, this can’t be true. There’s no way. Then I search it on Google, and I find the news reports. This company’s crazy. How do they still exist, let alone eventually getting bought out by Bayer?
You guys really gotta think about why a pharmaceutical company would want to buy that. They either have a whole new strategy and they know that this is going to save the world and their pharmaceuticals are going to go outta business, or they’re smart and they know that these things might correlate a lot more than we think.
But I remember seeing that and was like, gung-ho organic. I’m like, at the very least I gotta do that. And sure, you’ll eliminate the GMOs, at the very least. Well, hopefully. But you try to do that.
Then I realized over time, I’m much more concerned now with local in a sense than I am organic. Now that doesn’t mean there’s not really crappy local. But I’m really blessed, there’s a health food chain up here near me. I’m in Pennsylvania. There’s about five of the stores, been in the family for 30 years, all family owned.
They’ll put these labels on the food and stuff. The produce says, within a hundred miles they know the farmers. There are actual relationships here, and of course I would like to know them personally, that’d be even better.
Remove the Toxin, Snap Health Back
I worked for this place for a while when I was getting started in my young adulthood in my career. I realized just how serious the relationships were with these places that they’re getting from. I love that. Yes, my beef isn’t always a hundred percent organic, but I would take that any day over Walmart or organic beef that they’re getting there.
A lot of times it’s the local quality over just these labels that seem really good but mean seemingly less and less as we move on here. You know what I mean? I feel like it means even less than 10 years ago, like organic’s gotten worse almost.
[00:18:49] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Yeah, for sure. I have a patient who’s an organic, apple farmer or grower, I guess. I dunno if you farm apples. But either way, he has apple trees and an orchard. He sells the apples.
He had a really interesting illness, which was actually, he had a mold inside of his body that was coming from the apple trees. He was just eating like 20 apples a day and he was just putting in more sugar that was feeding the internal yeast fungal mold and bouncing his body.
Once he actually stopped the apples, his fungal issues on his skin that were affecting his brain and causing fatigue went away like within days, which was really crazy. That was an interesting story of how sometimes you just take away the toxic factor or the aggravating factor or like an infection real fast and someone can just like snap, reverse back.
Extremism in Medicine: The Money-Making Priority
But he taught me while I was with him, as most time I’m learning from my patients throughout the day. He taught me that even though you could have your apple orchard be labeled as organic, doesn’t mean that you’re not necessarily spraying some type of herbicide or pesticide onto those apples. They’re just organic approved sprays. And some of the organic approved ones are not necessarily healthier than some of the other herbicides or pesticides, they would be spraying.
So, he was basically trying to find the best bang for his buck. He too is just meaning well. He’s like, if I don’t use any, I’m going to lose my entire crop and then I won’t be able to feed my family. I won’t be able to have an income and I won’t be able to have apples at all. So, he is like, I have to use something.
I’m going to use the one that is basically the best bang for my buck that’s going to be the most effective, while not affecting our health as much as possible. Similar to like a business, they just have to make those executive decisions of like what’s going to give us the ability to feed as many people as possible while not making huge health sacrifices.
But I think the problem with the corporation is that if someone were to make an ethical choice where they’re going to say, we’re going to put people over profit, they’ll get kicked off that board of directors. Because there’s someone else, their primary director, it’s just the way it’s set up, is that they have to choose profit first. They have to choose growing their company.
Trying To Do Well
And if there’s something that’s ethically important, but it’s going to cost the company money, then that board of directors is failing, they’re losing, and so they need to be replaced. I think it’s just the way the system is set up for. You can blame capitalism, you can blame the corporations, but I don’t think it’s truly that these people mean poorly.
I’ve actually worked with people who are consulting and coaching with these executive boards of these big companies that we’re talking about, and they are trying to do well. It’s just they also have certain layers of priority they have to deal with as a company.
[00:21:29] Detective Ev: It goes back to the same thing, right?
Like bad Apple Farmer or Grower, who knows? Probably not, right? Just a person trying to feed their family just like the rest of us. And that’s the thing too. How old are you, can I ask? 32. Okay, so then in our generation of 27, like a lot of people do point to the capitalism, corporatism type of thing.
Again, I would love it if it was that simple. I don’t think that’s the case. I think there’s bigger things here that would exist in many different systems. So again, for me it just starts with awareness. Cause I’m not even pretending that I have the solution to all of it. I don’t think you are either.
This is really complicated. There’s millions of people out there, incomprehensible numbers of human beings running around in this country alone, let alone in the world. They all have different lives, different places where they’re from. It’s not so simple. But at the very least, I think I’m big on like what I call leveling the playing field.
Extremism in Medicine: Needing a Level Playing Field
What I mean is a level playing field is not when you or I walks into the doctor’s office with a health issue. Let’s say it’s anxiety. Okay, you could take the Xanax. Okay, great. And Xanax really works for anxiety. Now it might cause side effects, I get that. Not the best long term, but still, it does work for anxiety.
But I’m never also told, hey, have you ever considered like neuroinflammation and how that’s now correlated pretty strongly with anxiety symptoms? And if you change your diet, you could in theory reduce the inflammation, right? That’s not a level playing field.
But when we have that, then to me it’s like I don’t really care what you do, to be dead honest. Take the Xanax, take this. It’s not my decision to say one way or another. But man, I wish someone would’ve told me. Probably many of our practitioners feel this way. They probably wish someone would’ve told them the other options when they were there.
Then again, it comes back to the doctors don’t even know the other options half the time. And 90% of their clients are demanding the exact opposite. They want the quick fix and the pill.
I’ve had doctors on here, like traditional MD doctors. They’ve said this is half the issue. The patients are coming to them and because we allow direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising on our TV stations in America, which I’ve said this before on the show. I apologize if it’s boring to people who’ve heard it before, but certainly there’s going to be a new listener today.
Extremism in Medicine: Lose the Battle and Go Help Someone Else
Only two countries in the world allow that, guys. It’s us and New Zealand. The rest of the countries of the world, even China, does not think that that’s okay to be doing.
Then you got Sally coming into the doctor’s office and saying, I want this thing because the TV made it look good. Then the doctor is in a really weird position because he’s or she’s got 10 minutes with this person. You can either argue with them for 10 minutes or you just give him the prescription and get the heck out. This is really complicated.
[00:23:45] Dr. Bradley Campbell: A lot of them will just give them the prescription, get out. Cause they want to spend that extra eight minutes with someone else who could be better educated. It’s like it comes down to a practicality.
If you could really use that time with another family and this is a losing battle, you just lose that battle and use the time elsewhere to help someone else.
[00:24:02] Detective Ev: One more question about your personal story with the health side. You asked your doctor at the time, hey, can foods maybe make my sinuses a little clogged or produce more mucus, whatever you might have worded it as.
I’m curious. Again, you’re obviously a smart guy, so maybe this was just genuinely a thought like that. But I’ve met super smart people that are never connecting the dots between the food and the health symptom connection. My last question there is, is there any other correlation?
Did you have a mom or dad growing up that was into this? Or was it truly just this thought outta nowhere, kind of like bam, intuition, maybe that’s my food doing this?
Maybe Food Does Matter
[00:24:34] Dr. Bradley Campbell: I have a dad who’s a dentist and a mother who’s a nurse, and my mom was more into the natural side for many reasons. I think cause she had some car injuries where chiropractic helped her and that kinda opened her into the gateway drug natural healthcare.
But I think, at the time, it was just a friend. It was like a sheer luck of the draw. I had a friend who had told me that citrus food was making him congested. So, I think what I was doing the week before I was like, Well, that’s interesting. Why would a tangerine or clementine, why would that make him congested? That’s really weird that food could actually do that.
A week later, kicked me in the head. I was like, wait, if food could make him congested, I’m drinking a quarter gallon of chocolate milk. Maybe that’s doing it. Maybe my food also matters.
[00:25:22] Detective Ev: The reason I hone in on that question is because it’s something I ask every time. I want to know how can we replicate this for other people?
I’ve had family members, maybe it’s been the case for you, probably in a certain way. My aunt she was in the gifted program at our local school district, so this is an objectively brilliant person. She ended up passing away from cancer. She was not willing to make a dang change.
I was already well within this space. You know, I politely sent over some stuff. I’m like, hey, if you ever want to talk. Because you don’t want to bother someone in that state either. That is a really serious thing. It was a brain cancer.
The Answer Within
It lasted for like three years and there was ample opportunity to do some things like this. The last thing I’m doing is condemning someone for making choices that ended up leading to that. Clearly, she didn’t want to die. But my point is I just couldn’t believe it. I’m like, this person is so smart, but this system has her so trapped in this that she’s afraid almost, paralyzed, to go away from anything else.
So, I want to know how can we replicate this for people, before they’re in that paralyzing fear. And Dr. Campbell, honestly, the main thing I hear, and I don’t know if this is the case with your patients, most people don’t really give me any other answer other than it was a gut feeling. They didn’t even have like a thing, they just eventually said, you know what, this doesn’t make sense.
Now how the heck do I replicate that for someone else? There’s all different IQ levels giving me that answer, so I don’t know how we give that to someone else necessarily. But believe it or not, that’s the number one answer I get is I just knew something didn’t make sense.
[00:26:42] Dr. Bradley Campbell: I think that’s it. At the end of the day, we all have the answer within ourselves. And we have to ask ourselves, is this really the root cause? Is this really dealing with the root problem of why I’m having these health concerns or these issues or these diagnoses? Does the label make sense? Does a syndrome make sense, or is there something deeper going on?
Accepting Responsibility Is Empowering
At our deepest heart of hearts, when we’re being really courageously honest with ourselves, we know what’s causing most of our health issues. We know it’s most likely us that’s the problem. It’s just educating people on that fact that you might have some responsibility in what happens to you.
Even if you didn’t know why this happened, you might be able to help yourself fair better if you make certain choices now. It’s like even if you’re not the one who punched you in the face that caused your eye to pop outta your head, you still have a role in saying how your other eye that you still have left is going to fair.
You could get diabetes, you could get glaucoma, and then you could get eye surgery and cataracts and macular degeneration, or you could eat really well and keep your other eye super healthy. Stuff happens, life happens, diagnoses happen. Accepting responsibility for what you can do is difficult, but profoundly empowering to people.
They want control, they want to be in charge. It’s just a little tricky to start to tell people like, hey, maybe those food choices aren’t the best. Maybe you can start upleveling and doing a little bit better this week and then this month and then next year you can do even better.
I think people get overwhelmed cause sometimes they feel a little too hard on themselves. Like, there’s no chance for me, I eat McDonald’s every day. So, they’re overwhelmed by the thought of having to cook for themselves or just do a little bit. But if you just start really small you can regain control of your health again, quite rapidly.
Slow and Steady Diet Improvements
[00:28:32] Detective Ev: This is an interesting point. I’m curious if you see this with your clients. I think one of the biggest barriers too is a lack of belief sometimes. That’s why I love getting to share these stories.
It’s one thing to say, let’s eat this way. I do think, myself included, it’s very hard for the average person to conceptualize because it’s not linear and it’s not necessarily objective in the sense that you have to eat this way for 30 days and this gets better. Whereas, like if we give them a pill, there’s an expectation.
Like an SSRI Right? What do they say? Two to three weeks you should start feeling something here. Xanax. No, first time you should start feeling this. I take an Ibuprofen. Yeah. 45 minutes. We can’t really do this with, and I’m oversimplifying it, of course. Like, go paleo. Oh yeah. 30 days everything would be fine.
Are you experiencing this with clients and patients that they just don’t even necessarily believe, or maybe you just think this, and they don’t acknowledge it themselves, but they don’t even believe that this can work for them?
[00:29:23] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Yeah, that is a big educational hurdle for us as natural healthcare practitioners. It’s drastically more effective, but way slower.
It’s like If we were able to modify the weather somehow and reduce the fog. Like you live in a really foggy city, like, you’re in London and there’s always fog. Then one day there’s 50% less fog, you probably wouldn’t even notice that much. Or if there’s 20% less fog, you’re not going to notice. But if every day there’s 10% less fog, then after a month you’re going to feel like you’re in a brand-new place.
Trust Your Practitioner and Your Body
That’s kind of how dietary changes go. It’s just that slow, steady peeling back of the suffering or the fog or gaining more clarity, more energy.
When you wake up a month or three months later and you’re like, wow, I’m not falling asleep after lunch anymore. Wow. I can actually sleep through the night. Or like, that itchiness is gone. Or like that wart I had, where’d that go? Hmm. That’s interesting.
A lot of these subtle changes, you just have to trust people like you and me or trust the practitioners to say, Okay, this is going to work. I believe in my practitioner. I have hoped that I can get better; I know that my body loves me. It’s doing the best it can for me. It’s innately intelligent. It’s powerful. It’s strong. It’s made to heal itself.
If even if I treat it like crap, I can still get cut and it’s still going to heal even if all I’m eating is fried chicken. We can really do a lot. Our bodies are trying to do a lot for us, and they’re doing the best they can with what they have.
If we give our bodies really good raw material, it will generally treat us really well in return. That’s why I never really start with dietary changes with people because it is such a big hurdle.
I almost always suggest that that’s going to be something we’re about to do. But I’ll start with B vitamins, vitamin D, adaptogens, magnesium, like four or five supplements that I know are going to make a shift the first day they take them or the first time.
Getting Some Quick Wins, Building Rapport
So, I’ll give them some pretty strong herbs or strong vitamins because I know if you give someone a B12 shot or high mega doses of B complexes, they’re going to feel a little different. That’s how I hook them in.
Give them the hope in terms of like, here’s what I’m giving you. Here’s what you’re going to experience. You’re going to pee out really bright yellow, then I’m going to give you beats and you’re going to pee red. And you’re like, wow, this doctor knows what he is talking about.
He’s giving me stuff; I notice instant changes. This is cool. They start feeling it, and then they get more hope, they get more buy-in. Then they’re willing to do some of the bigger lifestyle changes once they have that rapport with you.
[00:31:37] Detective Ev: I 100000% agree with this cause this is what I’ve seen with clients.
I always look for like the easy wins in the beginning. People are actually relatively fair. If you can just, especially if their needle has not been moving in years, if you get that needle moving 10%, you can get someone locked in for a year after that. They just need to know that something that you’re saying is going to work.
They’ve probably been through the ringer a lot. They’ve been to a lot of different places, We always call it like the cycle of trial and error here. They went to this doctor, this pill.
Then they do the natural cycle of trial and error where they are now at the supplement store or the supplement section in the health food store. They’re trying this and that and talking to the person who does it. Maybe they get 2% better at best.
Chiropractic, Acupuncture, NET
So, if they can see the thing that motivates them, it’s good to go. That happened with me. I mean, I had severe cystic acne. Switching to organic, moved that needle quite a bit. Now it took me years to actually get to a place where I was comfortable with the skin. But at the same time, I had motivation the whole time because I knew I was onto something here cause nothing’s worked in over 10 years.
Then I switched my diet. I’m still kind of eating crappy food, I was just eating organic crap. Just that little bit less of a toxic load I guess really helped me a lot cause the skin’s a detox organ. So, something worked there.
I want to transition into your work a little bit for the last 16, 17 minutes here so people know what you’re doing and where they can find you. First things first, you’re both in person and online. Is that correct or am I wrong with that?
[00:32:54] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Yeah, I mean, I teach online. I have an online membership to help educate people. But my primary, 50, 60-hour week thing is treating patients. I do four or five days a week. I do 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM and see a bunch of patients in half hour-to-hour long visits.
I do chiropractic, acupuncture, NET, which is a stress reduction technique, and a lot of lab testing and educating and coaching and things like that to help people get healthier. That’s my true love is I run an integrated holistic clinic with about four or five practitioners and four or five staff just north of Chicago. We’re not currently taking new patients, but there’s a wait list on our social media links.
We All Need an Outside Perspective
Because that’s been so busy, that’s why I started the non-profit to try to teach more doctors, teach more patients how to be healthy, to be their own best doctor as much as they are able. There’s like this paradox in the natural health community, it’s like you are your own best doctor. But he who is his own doctor is a fool.
It’s always good to have some coach or some outside source to run some tests or give you some perspective while also knowing that you have your own answers inside of you at the same time.
[00:33:59] Detective Ev: I’ve never heard that in all the years in this space I actually really like that. That makes a lot of sense because I even do that myself.
We have a system here at FDN where there’s like, the medical director program. Not all of us are doctors. In fact, the majority aren’t. But we have doctors on our team and then we have other practitioners that might as well because of the amount of knowledge that they know.
Whenever I run labs on myself, it’s like, all right, cool. Like, I know what this is, but why would I not get their set of eyes looking at my labs as well? I want that, you know? I think that makes a lot of sense. And I knew that you were going in person somewhere every day, because I always see you doing the convertible videos, which I think is awesome.
This just shows your dedication to the space because you do not strike me at all as a guy that buys a convertible to be flashy. I feel like you bought this just to get the light exposure in the morning for such busy days.
Teaching From a Convertible
[00:34:42] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Pretty much, yeah. And I got it cause my dog loved it. I rented one and put my dog in the back and that’s part of why people watch. He’s in the back, lifting his head up in the windstream and having a good time.
I bought a cheaper car cause I didn’t want a car payment. Then I sold that car for a cheaper convertible. This is like an old grandma Toyota Camry Solara from 2007. I just kept getting older, cheaper cars to pay off some of my debt sooner. Cause I didn’t want to do the flashy thing. But he loves it. I like the convertible. It’s a fun way to go to work.
I just realized I was so busy. I’m like, you know, I can spend that five minutes instead of listening to a couple songs or calling a friend, I can just teach something and see if people like it. And sure enough.
[00:35:21] Detective Ev: I was about to say, that five minutes ended up being kind of fruitful, huh?
Dr. Bradley Campbell: Yeah.
Detective Ev: I use my car as like a classroom a lot, right? And just switching those simple things makes all the difference, especially when you add it up over a year, two years, three years. It’s the compound effect. So, yeah. That’s cool because I think we gotta start selling the fun things of this space more.
I’m telling everyone to get a convertible. They’re like, I gotta do that for my health. I’m like, yes. They’re like, Oh, okay. All of a sudden, the checkbook starts coming out. They could afford that. They couldn’t afford the supplements, but the convertible, they got.
Chronic, Complex Illness Type People
With that said, I know you have a wait list, I understand that. But who are the main clients that you’re seeing? Are there certain patterns? Is there a certain demographic? Who typically comes to your place?
[00:35:54] Dr. Bradley Campbell: It might be like you as like a health detective, myself too. It’s sort of like the people who have been to 10, 20 practitioners and can’t really figure things out.
It’s a lot of people who, post-concussion people, where there’s not enough functional neurologists or functional type healers to go around who do craniosacral or who do quantum neurology or stuff with cold laser and acupuncture to help those people. It’s a lot of the chronic complex illness type people.
I still see families who have like colds and flus and do all the primary care medicine type stuff, and that’s typical chiropractor acupuncture type things. But the bread and butter is typically the people who need a diagnosis or who have a diagnosis but have made zero headway on it.
[00:36:36] Detective Ev: So, you said, we already kind of talked about, first thing normally for people is going to be these supplements that will help them feel better quick, so they know, okay, this isn’t a crack guy, this is something that’s going to work. He guessed the color of my pee. Like he knew what this was going to be. I like the guy. I’m impressed now.
That is not a small point cause if you do not tell someone that their pee is going to change with B vitamins, and you mess up with that. I’ve learned my lesson, I’ll put it that way. Because they start freaking out like, my God, what did this guy give me?
Utilizing Different Lab Testing
It’s like, you are so good, it’s not even funny. Like that’s the last thing you gotta worry about. But okay, so you do that with them.
And then you mentioned that you utilized lab testing as well. Is that more individualized for the individual or is there a system or set of labs that you typically like to run?
Because here, and we’re open to different perspectives, we typically do go with an approach of like a set amount of labs because we think it covers so much that we do have great results with it. But of course, there’s other people having success with very different systems. So, is it more individualized or a system?
[00:37:35] Dr. Bradley Campbell: A little of both. I have some basic markers, blood markers I’ll always check on everybody. Inflammatory markers like hsCRP, and homocysteine. I’ll check some basic like CBCs, CMPs, if people don’t have that. Things that they’ll get normally run. Then I’ll, depending on their case, I’ll tweak it.
I’ll always run some inflammatory, some immune, some autoimmune markers cause that picks up stuff. A large amount of people don’t realize they’re having an autoimmune response. And hormone testing. I’ll almost always run a full thyroid panel, some DHEA, cortisol, testosterone, some for women, some female sex hormones. I’ll run those in just about everybody.
Then depending on what issues they have, I’ll add on extra tests on top of that, whether it’s urine, salivary testings, functional gut testing, that type of stuff.
[00:38:22] Detective Ev: Okay, fair enough. So, we have like the set stuff that most people are probably going to receive, and then depending on the case we might branch out.
Extremism in Medicine: Measuring Homocysteine
That makes sense because sometimes less is more, and especially with how much this stuff costs. Of course, this is not like insurance-based stuff yet. Amazing how the stuff that works isn’t what is covered by insurance, but not the point. It’s just you want to be respectful to the client and patient when we can and try to do that stuff.
I also love that you measure homocysteine. I appreciate that because I have a family history on my dad’s side of some kind of heart stuff and I was already like doing really well in the last several years. Then I ran a full blood panel, I ran like $200 worth of blood work on me. I wanted everything, full thyroid, all this stuff and homocysteine was on there.
And was it extraordinarily high? No, but it was actually borderline high even for the Western range, and I felt good. I know how correlated that is with certain heart issues down the line, and I was so thankful to have found that at that time, just be like, all right, cool. I can get this addressed and under control like long before this is an issue.
There is admittedly, and I have no problem saying it. Even in the functional space, there is not many people looking at those markers, not nearly enough. I find some people don’t even know what the heck that is.
[00:39:28] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Yeah, it’s pretty wild. But as you know, it won the Nobel Prize in Medicine a few decades ago.
Detective Ev: I actually didn’t know that admittedly.
Extremism in Medicine: High Homocysteine Issue
Dr. Bradley Campbell: There’s a book, The H Factor Solution, is a book that talks all about it for who are like really curious or who have high homocysteine and you can’t get it down. It’s a great book to dive into.
It’s so important and it’s such a simple solution for most people to just take some specific B vitamins or tweak a few things cellularly in your body, and that marker will drastically cut your risk of cancer and heart disease and dementia, and all types of other preventable illnesses.
[00:40:03] Detective Ev: All right. We do the preliminary stuff, get the needle moving for them. They’re feeling better. Now we’re running some labs. How long are people typically working with you, especially since they have to come in person? Is this like a few months or what are the programs typically?
[00:40:14] Dr. Bradley Campbell: I don’t sign people up for programs. It’s more just like if they want to come back, great. I usually recommend that the beginning people come back every one to three, four weeks. If I stretch them out more than a month, they’re not going to come back cause the scheduling and logistics and they lose interest.
But typically they’re coming in for like three to four to six months, depending on the problem. Making some big changes and then ideally getting out so I can get some new patients in. I’ll tell people this, if you really like coming, it’s really good for you to get regular care, whether that’s weekly or monthly or seasonally. Whatever you enjoy or you find valuable for your health, the more you can do, likely the better.
First Step in Healing: Awareness
And that’s the thing about some of the hands-on healing with chiropractor or acupuncture. It does keep you at tip top shape, kind of like working out. You can’t expect to work out one time and then keep huge muscles.
Can’t expect to get adjusted or get acupuncture and stay balanced the rest of your life. So it’s good to go back and keep those muscles strong, whether that’s chiropractic or massage or meditation. It’s good to find something that you’re doing on a consistent basis.
I think working out is probably better than seeing a healer. But seeing a healer, at least seasonally is really helpful for most people just to get that outside external feedback.
Same as a coach. You wouldn’t be a cross country runner or a football player and just practicing by yourself the whole time without a coach. You need someone to look at you and tell you, hey, did you know your foot’s turning this way? Or you can turn this way. You’re a little bit off over here. It helps to have that external guide to give you some feedback and awareness.
Because really the first steps in healing is always awareness, as you’ve mentioned a number of times. And then from that, your ego says like, I don’t like that they told me I suck in this way. So how can I do better? I don’t like that my water in Chicago is probably tainted with lead or fluoride or chlorine. How can I do better? From that, even if you don’t have the instant solution, you’ll Google it. You’ll start to do some of your own research and you’ll figure out how to make that problem go away.
Client Testimonials
[00:42:07] Detective Ev: 100%. Now with your work schedule, you’ve worked with quite a few people it sounds like. I always love to ask this towards the end of the show, and I just want to know to the degree that you’re able to share, cause I know there’s privacy stuff, that’s fine. But what are like maybe one or two of some of the top testimonials or client stories that you have of people coming to you?
In our world, man, yeah. People come at the end of their line, and you could really change some things for them. So, I’m curious.
[00:42:29] Dr. Bradley Campbell: You know, we’ve had a lot of different mysterious conditions go away. We’ve had ones where people have MS that’s no longer there. We have conditions where people have had things from like Hashimoto’s and Crohn’s and colitis just mysteriously disappear. Doctors aren’t sure how. We know it’s like lifestyle and diet and nutrition and all the things and stress reduction.
One of the coolest cases I had though was a patient who was coming in and I wasn’t even really sure why they were coming in. A dad was bringing in his daughter where the daughter was having some chronic health conditions and the daughter wasn’t really getting a lot better.
She would make improvements, but then she would just kinda like revert back. What ended up actually happening was, one day I was like, well, if you’re not taking any of my suggestions and your problem isn’t getting better, why do you keep returning? I’m trying to remember the story so I can tell it perfectly.
A Father Learning Through His Daughter
What happened was the father was actually bringing his daughter in to learn by osmosis, and a lot of the teachings that I was teaching the daughter of stress reduction techniques and other things like that, was helping the dad more than it was helping the daughter who is the patient.
So the dad was learning how to regulate his own emotional stress and his own trauma. The daughter was like, I’m not getting better per se, but my dad is no longer beating me. Hmm. That was like, Wait a second. Like I didn’t know that was happening. They didn’t tell me that was happening.
But the dad was dealing with some major liver issues and anger issues, and I’ve been talking to the daughter about her liver and anger issues. But the dad was able to resolve his own liver by stopping drinking, getting less angry and ragy, and not abusing his daughter. Now they didn’t come back because I think the dad was too embarrassed at what his daughter had revealed.
I pray to God that the daughter is safe. I actually have contacted them since and they’re in a good space cause I know some of their family. It was one of those moments where I’m like, wow, sometimes we think we’re helping our patient, but we’re actually helping the people with them or their family around them.
Even if they’re not better, that awareness will level up everybody in their sphere and that could be a complete game changer for their entire family.
Changing the Trajectory of a Daughter’s Life
[00:44:30] Detective Ev: Wow. All right. That’s a heck of a testimonial. I like that. I mean, it’s a sad story obviously originally. And I can get the embarrassment that would come, you know, especially if the daughter says that.
But man. So again, I mentioned in the beginning I work with kids. To think about how that probably changed the entire trajectory of that young woman’s life. I mean, that’s pretty serious stuff, especially in today’s world. There’s nothing normal about that. We know it’s not good. We know it’s not helpful. You don’t do that to kids, ideally.
So that’s amazing. In all the testimonials I ask for, I mean, you could imagine this I guess, that’s never one that has come up in even kind of. So very interesting.
Now, where can people find you? Please mention the Instagram. Guys, I don’t care if you’re a practitioner and you’re just listening for the story and you’re already doing well on your health journey, this is an Instagram you want to follow.
It is very entertaining, it’s very educational. So where can people find you on social and then in person and then where can they find the wait list? Give it all to us.
Where to Find Dr. Bradley Campbell
[00:45:20] Dr. Bradley Campbell: Yep. So, Instagram is Dr.CampbellCares, d r c a m p b e l l c a r e s. Dr. Campbell Cares. And on there there’s a link in the bio that has links to YouTube and Telegram and some other channels we’re on.
And our Campbell Care membership. The website for that, is campbellcaremembership.com. We have courses that are a fraction of the price of super expensive courses, on thyroid, on gut dysbiosis, on some comprehensive foundations of health and weekly Q&A calls and things like that.
We have a membership there. We have a podcast that’s coming out in January that’s going to be on our website and on the Instagram. We’ll have information there for people.
I want to finish up with the signature question on the Health Detective Podcast. It’s always fun interviewing someone who’s so well versed because you never know where they’re going to go with this one.
But the question I have for you to finish up is if I could give you, in this case, a magic wand and you could wave it, you get every single person in this world to do one thing for their health. So that could be you actually got them to start one thing, or you could get everyone to stop doing one thing. What is the one thing Dr. Campbell would get them to do?
[00:46:32] Dr. Bradley Campbell: I would get them to stop doing their drugs every day and start doing them with more intention. That includes caffeine, alcohol, marijuana unless they’re prescribed a drug.
I think most people are over consuming drugs on a daily basis, and that’s leaving them not truly authentic to who they are. They’re covering up a lot of their physical and emotional health problems with waking up early with caffeine in the morning or using alcohol or marijuana to go to bed.
It leads to a perpetual state of stress and then eventual burnout. Then that leads to a plethora of health issues. So, if I could do one thing for everybody, I would get them to stop doing their drugs every day and start truly enjoying and valuing when they do, do them on a less frequent basis.
[00:47:18] Detective Ev: Not bad. 180 something episodes and no one has ever given that one. So, thank you for the fresh material. We appreciate it. And thanks for just coming all with me today. Thanks for having me.
Conclusion
All right, guys. That’ll do it for today’s episode with Dr. Bradley Campbell. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. It was pretty cool.
We ended up touching on a lot of different topics. If you listen regularly, you know, I love the conversational style of interviewing. That’s because you have some predictability to it, but there’s a lot of novelty in the conversation since you really don’t know which way it’s going to go.
Dr. Campbell and I touched on probably four or five major topics, so I hope you guys did enjoy this. Please go give him a follow. He is someone actually delivering value consistently on Instagram and other social media platforms.
Then finally, if you’re considering maybe doing work like myself, other FDN practitioners, or Dr. Campbell, but you don’t have the time to go to Naturopathic Medicine School, you might want to consider the FDN course. How you can check the FDN course out for free, is by going to fdntraining.com/tryfdn. That’s fdntraining.com/tryfdn.
It’ll let you try the course completely for free. No credit card is required.
I will be back soon with yet another interview. But until then, please take care.
Make a delicious and filling smoothie bowl in minutes with just three ingredients! This is a great hack for busy days when you still want to have a nutrient-dense meal.
First of all, for the base, I used Remedy Organics Matcha Fuel Organic Wellness Shake. The Matcha Fuel contains 12g of plant protein with superfoods like spirulina, turmeric, Maca, prebiotics, and of course Japanese Matcha! I used this as the vegan milk base for the bowl. Next, I added a frozen banana and then my Liana’s Organics Anxiety-Free Supplements. This helps to add nourishing superfoods to the recipe. This bowl is great to get your day going and is pure nourishment for the nervous system and brain!
This bowl was recently featured on KTLA News in Los Angeles! Click herefor the full recipe. You can also purchase the Matcha Fuel and more from Remedy on RemedyOrganics.com. Use my code: LIANA15 to save 15% on your next order.
Do the estrogenic effects of tea tree oil get absorbed through the skin?
Concern has been raised about a “possible link between gynecomastia, topical lavender, and tea tree oil.” As I discuss in my video Does Tea Tree Oil Have Hormonal Side Effects?, gynecomastia is the abnormal development of breast tissue. (You can see a photo at 0:14 in my video.) You may recall that I’ve talked about lavender before, but what about tea tree oil?
It all started with a case series published in TheNew England Journal of Medicine. The researchers described three young boys in whom breast growth “coincided with the topical application of products that contained lavender and tea tree oils.” How do we know the products were to blame? “Gynecomastia resolved in each patient shortly after the use of products containing these oils was discontinued. Furthermore, studies in human cell lines indicated that the two oils had estrogenic and antiandrogenic activities,” that is, pro-female and anti-male hormone activities. The researchers concluded that “repeated topical exposure to lavender and tea tree oils probably caused prepubertal gynecomastia in these boys.”
A tea tree oil company representative pointed out that “only one of three boys (Patient 2) was exposed to any amount of tea tree oil,” while all three subjects were exposed to lavender oil. So, lavender oil may have been to blame in all three cases. How did the researchers respond? “There may be a valid argument that it was the lavender oil that caused the gynecomastia. However, the tea tree oil had activity similar to that of lavender oil with respect to the in vitro estrogenic and antiandrogenic effects.”
Let me walk you through that. As you can see below in the graph and at 1:24 in my video, if you drip a tiny amount of estrogen on human breast cancer cells in a petri dish, you can spike their growth more than twelve-fold. If you add an estrogen blocker along with the estrogen, though, it abolishes the effect. But, adding increasing amounts of tea tree oil to the breast cancer cells causes their growth to increase. The reason we know it’s an estrogenic effect is because the growth decreases when you add the estrogen blocker. This appears to be pretty convincing, but herbal proponents argue that “in vitro testing alone is not adequate grounds for indicting traditionally used products and may raise public fear.”
The Tea Tree Oil Industry Association specifically argued “that only 3 of more than 100 compounds” of pure tea tree actually make it through the skin, so the researchers should have just measured the hormonal effects of those three compounds—which they did later that year.
As you can see in the graph and at 2:25 in my video, dripping increasing concentrations of whole tea tree oil on breast cancer cells in a petri dish can increase their growth when compared to an oil with no estrogenic effect, like eucalyptus oil. However, if you only look at the three components of tea tree oil that actually make it into your bloodstream when you apply them on your skin, none appears to have any estrogenic effects. None of the components that penetrate the skin appears to act as an estrogen, “neither alone nor in combination,” so you can’t extrapolate the petri dish effects of the whole oil to what one might see when it’s applied on the skin. What you see in the petri dish may not be identical to what you see in a person.
This new data led European consumer safety officials to conclude that “the hypothesized correction…of gynecomastia to the topical use of Tea Tree Oil is considered implausible.” In fact, if the anti-male hormone components of tea tree oil remain on the skin, why not use it to treat women who feel they are affected by hirsutism, or excessive hairiness? A study was conducted on such women who were instructed to spray themselves with a dilute lavender/tea tree oil spray versus placebo twice a day, morning and evening, on “areas affected by hirsutism” for three months. Before and after the treatment, “hairs were taken from four different body areas: chin, chest, thigh and upper arms.” After three months, no change was detected in the hair diameter of the placebo group, as expected. But, in the lavender/tea tree oil group, all the hairs ended up thinner, as you can see in the graph and at 3:46 in my video.
This showed that the combination of lavender and tea tree oils applied locally on skin could be effective in reducing mild excessive hairiness, potentially representing “a safe, economic, and practical instrument in the cure of this disease.”
For additional information beyond potential hormonal effects, see my video Is Tea Tree Oil Safe?. I continue to add new tea tree videos, so keep an eye on the topic page.
Enjoyed fresh happy glowing skin after a natural facial treatment yesterday. I’ve always been grateful for healthy skin, diet is everything, and I’ve even healed acne scars since I started The Earth Diet thirteen years ago. HOWEVER, lately with what’s happened in my life, I’ve never felt more pain and stress, and am aware my hormones have been imbalanced, so I’ve had little bumps on my skin, I’ve never experienced skin like this before, and I know it’s due to stress.
Part of my healing and self-care regimen is skincare, the largest organ that I don’t want to neglect. Jessica, the owner of Ladies Lounge LLC in Orlando Florida says 80% of our skincare is homecare, and 20% is in the treatment room. I met this extraordinary woman through Purple Ocean Superfood Bar (a juice and açaí bar that naturally attracts healthy-minded people).
I wanted to share her story and why Jessica pursued a facial specialist career. Her background was in fashion, she relocated from Europe to the USA and then got pregnant with her first son. Her son passed away during delivery from complications.
The next three years she spent severely depressed, her anxiety was crippling, and she couldn’t work. She eventually found her way to esthetics, went to school, and fell in love with the skincare part. Transitioning into a new career path gave her a fresh start, and she eventually gave birth to two healthy children.
Skincare was also part of her learning how to love herself again, which is something Jessica said she hadn’t done. As a part of her healing process and grieving process she donated her breast milk to Mothers’ Milk Bank of Florida to benefit from it helping other families and other babies, literally, life-saving milk. Jessica donated 8,000 ounces of breast milk.
She got started in esthetics for her own self-love journey but also to help a woman feel beautiful and confident in their own skin AND she wanted to provide healing through the power of touch. She has the most beautiful magical touch and voice. It’s so soothing and comforting, something hard to describe. I hope you will go visit Jessica and get a facial treatment from her.
Jessica chose the holistic side of facial treatments because it resonates with her own personal journey of healing Hashimoto’s which she is in the process of. She is also focusing on detox and cellular rejuvenation.
Jessica says skincare isn’t just “skincare” it’s treating yourself from the inside out, it’s how you feed yourself, your mental and emotional state. Louise Hay says the affirmation with skincare is “I accept myself”. All of this is connected to having healthy skin. The natural products she uses are botanically focused and have a lot of enzymes, they are focused on rebuilding your natural skin barrier and getting it in its healthy state. Their ingredients have a lot of fruits (enzymes) from lemons and blueberries.
Another bonus to a facial with Jessica is the bio-mat you lay on, which is warm and has infrared lights to increase circulation and reduce inflammation. It’s that well-known mat with crystals.
She also used LED therapy on my face which is a medical-grade device that NASA uses to repair the skin.
I had the “Ultimate Signature Facial” which includes hands, arm, face, and décolletage massage which was so needed and so divine. It’s amazing how much inflammation can go down after a massage.
Jessica also does brows and tinting. I hope you get to enjoy a treatment from her! I am not paid to do this post, I am so proud to highlight a person with this story, healing, recovery testimonial, and business. I would love to highlight more people in business like this, especially women! I love that we can all support each other and lift each other up. Life isn’t easy, but it’s better when we can be there for others.
How often do you get a facial treatment? Me perhaps four times a year although I wish it was more. Jessica recommends it every 4-6 weeks.
Check out Ladies Lounge Spa when you are in Orlando Florida! And give yourself a couple of hours of self-love.
[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 with FDN Victoria Franca. She has recently been accepted to the Forbes Business Council.
Now, ironically, we actually don’t talk about that today at all, but I had to shout her out for it and put it in the title. That’s a pretty impressive accolade. She had actually come in our professionals’ group and said straight up in the group that one of the reasons she was able to achieve that was because of the things that she learned at FDN. We thought that was amazing, and we thank her for the shout out.
At the same time, when you hear how this woman thinks about business and goes about approaching these things, you’ll know that she also just kind of has that special thing that you really can’t teach. Some of the stuff that she talks about, you absolutely can teach, but what I mean is the drive and the willingness to go and do it.
There’s nothing complicated in a sense about what she’s going to say today. Anyone could go do it, and yet most people will not do it. I do not mean that in a discouraging way. I’m just saying what it is. It’s the reality of how this stuff seems to go.
I hope that you take her advice, and you do the things that she mentions. I think that’d be very wise. Plus, if you’re graduated from FDN and in the professionals’ group, she might, I can’t say this fully yet, but she might be doing something for our professionals’ group sooner rather than later.
About FDN Victoria Franca
That could be something to look forward to as well. She’ll be doing a special training there. Again, I actually don’t know if this is happening, and I really do mean that. But I got all the right people connected, I thought she deserved it. So, I let someone know that I thought she should be doing it and it seems to be going well. We will see how that goes.
But we’re also going to talk about her story today and explain how she even got into the field of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, if you’ll call it a field in and of itself. She was doing something else before this. We’ll talk about the health story, business stuff, tips and tricks, and how she ended up going full time with this in less than a year of starting out. It’s actually a lot less than a year, so you will hear that in the episode.
Victoria Franca is a certified FDN practitioner, like I said, and founder of Omne Wellness. She helps career driven individuals that are feeling the burden of stress, focus on their wellbeing by addressing the root cause of their symptoms through balancing their minerals, hormones, and gut health.
Victoria also has an array of experience working with luxury resorts and spas. Her portfolio of corporate clients have included The Ritz Carlton Group, Acqualina Resort and Spa, SOJO Spa Club, and Baha Mar.
Now, I don’t even know how to pronounce the last two fully and kind of if in a sense, I don’t even know how to pronounce the last three. I have some work to be doing if I can’t even pronounce the luxury resorts and spas. Yet she has worked with these people directly.
Gratitude for the Five-star Reviews
I think you guys are going to enjoy this episode. The audio was a little choppy, but the information is solid. Stick with us here and you will learn a thing or two. Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.
Oh, hey, I lied. I have one more thing before we start today. I just wanted to thank everyone who has recently been leaving five-star reviews for us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. I know I ask you guys a lot to do that. We’re sharing a ton of free information on here and this information gets out to more people when we have higher ratings. I know it takes a few seconds.
It’s something that a lot of podcasts and YouTubers ask for, and it’s really easy to overlook that. I just wanted to say thank you so much to the people who have done this lately. We do see you, we do notice it, and we greatly appreciate it.
Okay, now without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.
All right. Hello Victoria. Welcome to the Health Detective Podcast. How are you?
[00:03:49] Victoria Franca: Hi. I’m good. Thank you for having me on.
[00:03:51] Detective Ev: Yeah, we are glad to have you. I know you’re having some pretty big success in the FDN world and just in the world in general. This is always, I think, very inspiring for people to hear what some of our FDNs are doing out there because it’s a lot of people. It’s different backgrounds, it’s different personalities, it’s dramatically different ages.
FDN Victoria Franca’s Health Journey
At a certain point, if you listen to enough of these podcasts, I think it is very good for shattering one’s limiting beliefs about, well they were successful cause of this, or that, or whatever. But when I have 60-year-olds that come on and have full-time practices doing $10,000 a month, three months after graduating, and then 20-somethings that are doing the same thing, eventually it becomes kind of hard to keep making excuses in our brain.
I don’t mean that in a rude way to anyone out there that has those limiting beliefs, cause I’ve had them. I want my limiting beliefs shattered, right? Like, give me the stuff that’s going to help me do that. We’ll definitely talk about the things that you’re doing today.
But I am curious. You and I don’t really know each other at all. I’m curious about your health story too, because I’m going to guess like most of us, we didn’t get into this work by accident. Did you deal with a health journey, I’m guessing?
[00:04:50] Victoria Franca: I did. Ooh what a journey. For me, I was on birth control for about 10 years. I decided to quit birth control cold turkey. I had no idea that I should prepare my body to get off of it. I had no idea of the chaos and the havoc that it did on my health.
When I actually came off of it, I really struggled. I couldn’t get my period for over a year. I had severe acne, I was gaining weight, I had severe anxiety and depression symptoms. It was really, really difficult to kind of navigate that without any knowledge.
FDN Victoria Starting with Acupuncture
When I went back to my doctors to really just kind of ask, what do I do? The response was, well, you should get back on birth control. That’s how you’re going to feel like yourself again.
I didn’t really understand that as a response. I, at that point, understood that my body wasn’t producing hormones and of course wasn’t balanced because I was on this birth control for so long. So how could that be the only way that I would feel, quote/unquote, “like myself”?
Basically, I decided to just do my own research. I decided to kind of start diving into more of the holistic health and I found acupuncture. Acupuncture was really my first step into the natural healing world and really focused on supporting my hormones that way. Once I started acupuncture, that was a game changer.
In a couple of months, my period came back, and I said, Okay, like this works, right? Like this is what I need. I need to focus more on the holistic healing and really find answers for my health. At the same time, I really noticed that for years I just really burned my body. Like I was burnt out.
I really had an intense workout schedule. I was malnourished and eating way too little and really didn’t see my body as my temple. I just figured that I can just keep going, keep grinding, and keep focusing on my career. At the time I was in corporate and that was little sleep, little food, lots of workout, and just really not honoring my body at all, not listening to what it needed.
FDN Victoria Found FDN
So, I came across a coach, and I started working with her. At the same time as I was working with her, I didn’t feel like she had the knowledge of doing any functional labs, and that’s what I was looking for. I wanted someone that would be able to have the coaching aspect, but also be able to have the data and be able to give me the stats.
That is when I found FDN. And instead of me finding a practitioner to work with, I said, wait, why don’t I just dive in and do this myself so I can learn how to support my body and heal my health. Really it started off just focusing on me. I wasn’t really thinking of this as doing as a business.
Again, I was working full time. I was very happy in my career, and I did not think that I would completely change directions into what I do now.
[00:07:39] Detective Ev: I think that’s a common enough story here. We get these health challenges out of nowhere. We are self-motivated to go figure it out. Then once we do the work, it’s not impossible, but it’s kind of hard not to want to do this in some way. Some people will just end up talking about it with everyone that they know, and that’s perfectly fine. Others feel like I really can’t go do anything else except this. I want this to be a part of my actual work.
FDN Victoria Thinking Outside the Box
And man, the first whole two minutes of this is just gold. I mean that seriously, because your story is so textbook in a sense, from what I’m hearing for so many younger women out there. Being on the younger side myself, a lot of people from high school or that I met in my early twenties are calling me and asking me for help with stuff. Universally, I’m hearing these issues around the birth control and especially coming off of it.
I smirked actually for those watching the video, not just listening to the audio, when you had said the recommendation from the doctor was to get on another birth control pill. I would’ve put down money on this table that that’s what the response was going to be.
Like you said, I’m impressed that you had this ability to think outside the box and be like, well, wait a second. That doesn’t make sense. We would think it’s simple. I think it’s a huge insult to our intelligence when they do things like this to us. But people are put in a position, cause I’ve been in it myself, where these doctors are extreme authority.
We look at them as extremely educated, which they are. We look at them as highly intelligent, which statistically speaking, they are. If you look at the average IQ of doctors, it is well above average. They’re making more money than most people. And I think these biases, whether or not we realize that they’re there, are effective at influencing our decisions.
We’re just like, Okay, like the doctor said it, so I’ll just do it. Who am I to argue them otherwise? It takes a certain type of personality and individual to be able to challenge that, think outside the box.
FDN Victoria On Autopilot
And God forbid, I always gotta say this in case it’s someone’s first time listening, this is not a condemnation of doctors. We know that the doctors are not sitting on the fountain of youth. Most of them look very unhealthy or on the medications too. It is the system that I’m condemning. This system is so predictable that I already knew what was going to be the recommendation for Victoria here. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Did you have, looking back, any symptoms at all health-wise prior to getting off the birth control or was that really your first challenges with health?
[00:09:49] Victoria Franca: I feel like I was just on autopilot with my body. I was so careless with my health in a way that I just didn’t take time to really listen and even acknowledge any symptoms.
I think it was when I got off of birth control, that’s when I was like, whoa, I’m really feeling it. Like this is a lot coming to me at once. It’s hard cause I think back and I’m like, Did I feel this way before? I don’t think I did, but I could have. I just honestly might have just brushed it under the rug and said, I’m too busy to deal with it.
You know, it’s a yellow flag. It’s not a red flag that my body is waving at me. Just keep going and keep hustling. I think it was more so when I got off the birth control, that is when everything was just really in my face, and I had to take action. I just didn’t feel good.
I was like, I don’t know who this person is, and I don’t like it. I need to figure myself out.
How Does FDN Victoria Transition to the Natural Side?
[00:10:39] Detective Ev: One thing I’d like to dive into a little bit more, and you said that you’ve listened to the podcast, so maybe you know this, maybe you don’t. I’m obsessed with what happens in someone’s mind that allows them to get into these alternative paths. It’s, one, just cause I’m genuinely interested in it, but also too, if we can figure out that similarity.
Honestly, there doesn’t seem to be a necessarily duplicatable one at this moment. Obviously answers I normally get are like, oh, it was just in my gut. I trusted this feeling and that’s wonderful. I can recommend that all I want, but we know it’s easier said than done.
I’m curious how Victoria goes from this supposedly unrelated career. I’m not actually sure what you were doing before, but supposedly unrelated career. Hops off birth control. Okay. Holy crap, something’s going on, to ending up in an acupuncturist office. I’m not saying acupuncture’s the most far out thing. In fact, it’s probably one of the first line practitioners in addition to chiropractors in the world of functional medicine, but that’s not where everyone’s going to go immediately.
Let’s dive into that a little bit. How did that connection get made? Is it just on a whim or did someone recommend it? I missed that part.
[00:11:40] Victoria Franca: Really what it was, I remember, I was struggling, right? I didn’t get my period for a year. So around month nine of not getting my period, I said, okay, obviously something’s wrong, hormonally, right? And after going to my doctors, the response was birth control. I said, No.
FDN Victoria Balancing Her Hormones
Then at that point, I remember talking to my mom and my mom said, I remember my friend, she wanted to get pregnant, and she wasn’t able to get pregnant. She started going to an acupuncturist, and within a couple of months she got pregnant.
Then I said, well, obviously to get pregnant, your hormones have to be balanced. If she can get pregnant, then I’m sure I can balance my hormones also through acupuncture. So that really was a little bit more of a shot in the dark. I remember I didn’t even do much research of how acupuncture can actually help with balancing hormones.
It was more of; I didn’t know where to go from it. I was like, you know what? This might work, so let me try it. I did research, of course, thoroughly to find a good acupuncturist in my area. Read tons of reviews and then found one that specialized in hormone balancing.
So, I went to her, and it was I think after a few sessions I got my period back and then my hormones started balancing little by little.
[00:12:46] Detective Ev: Okay. Thank you. There’s that missing link that I was looking for. It’s like, okay, that’s a heck of a story, right? I say on here all the time, the facts tell, but the stories really sell. It sold you on this idea that this is going to work.
I’m also impressed with that connection. I don’t think that’s inherently obvious to everyone that, oh, well because she got pregnant, this is probably the mechanism by which that happened, so that, in theory, would work for me. I know you said it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s still a respectable thought process.
FDN Victoria Moving the Blocked Energy
And I gotta say, if anyone is looking for acupuncture, because we’ve got listeners all over the place now, and you are even remotely close to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Bridge Acupuncture in Doylestown, shameless plug. These people are fantastic. The owner of this place, Victoria, graduated originally Magna Cum Laude from Yale and then went to acupuncture school.
She has a phenomenal business. It’s Grace and then this guy, Apollo. They are just natural born healers. So, I’ll save them the research if they happen to be like, I would drive an hour for these guys easily. There’s gotta be someone listening in the Philadelphia area now.
But anyway, was there an explanation, even if it’s just in theory, how acupuncture was able to do this? Because I have a surface level understanding of acupuncture. I absolutely respect it. I’ve been going to those guys for quite some time, and I felt the effects from it.
But you know, when you hear the explanation, it’s kind of like, well the chi is getting moved around and stuff like that. I mean, listen, I believe that, but it’s sometimes hard to connect how that’s doing this with the hormones. Is that your understanding of how this worked or was there something deeper?
[00:14:07] Victoria Franca: To be quite honest, at that point I didn’t really ask many questions of, what’s happening? I just remember that she said, it’s blocked energy that’s being moved. I was like, all right, whatever. Whatever it is, just move it. Like get it going.
[00:14:20] Detective Ev: You move that chi. I just want to get my period back.
[00:14:23] Victoria Franca: Exactly, do whatever you have do.
FDN Victoria Analyzing Lifestyle Improvements
I never really got too much into the logistics and the actuality of what’s happening. But I think at the same time I started focusing more on my lifestyle. I think that’s what I really took also a look of what do I do? Like, do I sleep early? What do I eat? What do I drink?
I think that also brought some awareness because the big thing that she said was you have to be sleeping early. Talked about the adrenal gland. Started talking about different terminologies that I had never heard of. At that point I was like, I guess I should do some sitting back and analyzing of my lifestyle and seeing what can I improve on.
I think the more that I did that, the more that also I started to get more curious and the more that I was like, I think I want to go on and work with a coach. So that’s when I moved on to trying to find a coach, which I found through recommendation of a friend.
At that point it was fine but also again, it was that missing link of, what are the functional tests? How can we go deeper? I want to see more data versus just like, oh, I think you have this. I think you could have that. I think this supplement would be good.
I just wanted more certainty versus just a trial and error because I was doing trial and error for that whole year. That’s when I came across FDN and I was like, Okay, this is it.
[00:15:42] Detective Ev: So funny about like, I don’t really care how it’s working. Just move whatever you gotta move.
Getting Better Whether Long Health Journeys or Short
So just to get the timeframe back here before we start talking FDN. Roughly speaking, what was the timeframe from the time that you went into that acupuncturist office before you started FDN? Is this a year or two years? What are we looking at?
[00:15:59] Victoria Franca: I would say this was about a year and a half.
[00:16:02] Detective Ev: This is good. I feel like some of these stories, especially recently, are becoming shorter and shorter, and I like this. Well, I should specify that.
More and more I’m hearing stories of people on the younger side, such as us, relatively speaking, finding these answers quicker and quicker as opposed to some of the 40, 50, 60-year-olds I’m interviewing. I mean, it’s 10, 15, 20 years sometimes. So, I think it shows how the times are moving and that’s wonderful.
We don’t want people to have to wait 15 years to find something like FDN. But it’s both good and bad. It’s bad that they had to wait that long but the remarkable part on the good side is that it still worked after 15 years of being sick.
So, you go through FDN and what were you learning about? Cause I know things were already getting a little better, but there’s always something to learn in FDN. What were you learning about your own body at that time as you were running the labs? Like were you finding some major healing opportunities or was it more maintenance stuff? I’d love to know about that.
FDN Victoria Learning and Healing
[00:16:55] Victoria Franca: There was so much healing opportunity. I think also to one point, I dove into FDN so deep. I saw the modules and I just went in. I made a schedule for myself, and I gave myself three months. I wanted to go through it all and wanted to focus on just spending as much time of my day working on it and learning. I was so excited about finally having so much answer at my fingertips, really.
I think the GI MAP was huge for me. I think that was like a big wakeup call because I had never done anything like that. The DUTCH test also was incredible. Then I had started to hear also about the HTMA. That was one that I wanted to do as well to learn more about my nutrients. So no, everything was really eye opening.
I definitely got a little bit overwhelmed; I think with putting the protocols in action myself. Because it was also during the time, I’m learning everything and then I’m taking it in and I was like, wow, I have to do a lot of changes. Clearly, I haven’t been doing life the right way the past couple of years.
That was a big wake up call, but it was also really exciting. I truly believed in the answers, and I truly believed that healing was possible, and healing is possible once you know what’s actually going on.
[00:18:02] Detective Ev: We’ll talk more about the labs in a second.
FDN Victoria Giving Some FDN Course Feedback
One question I want to ask first, and please, you could always be honest with this. I actually encourage people to do so. Constructive criticism is always welcome. I’m curious, how did your expectations of the course prior to going through it match up to the reality of the course?
Did you find that you got what you needed? Was it more than you expected? Are there certain things that could have been better? Anything is fine. I’d love to hear that from you.
[00:18:27] Victoria Franca: I loved everything. I think the practicals were incredible. That was my favorite part. Just having that one-on-one time to go over and even get that feedback. That was huge. I do think for myself, the modules itself, I went through it relatively quickly. I was able to capture the education, information and really take it in. Then putting it into action, I was like, this is the fun part. This is when I actually learned.
I don’t know how it is right now specifically, but back then the practicals were just at the end. I don’t know if now there’s any practicals in the middle of the course or not, but I think that would be great also, like a touchpoint base. Just because some people like myself are learners that are more hands on. The more we can practice, the more we actually understand the information. That would be my only feedback.
I think now knowing the HTMA test, I would have loved to have done that as part of one of the tests. It was a game changer in my health personally. It’s one of the tests that I run with all my clients. I definitely would have loved to do that earlier on.
Foundational FDN Practices Helps Balance a Body Out
[00:19:30] Detective Ev: Man, that’s going to be an interesting topic cause we had an episode recently with Barbara Madimenos and we actually analyzed the HTMA in and of itself. That was the episode.
It was kind of a risk because we know how trainees get. If I start showing them all the tests we have access to, they’ll be like, wait, I want to do all of them. There’s a very specific time and place to use these. And FDN has no problem with someone like yourself for example.
It sounds like you’ve probably been one of many people who have adopted this as something that’s like a standalone or even a primary test in your FDN practice. Fair enough. Again, many people end up doing that. We’ll talk about that.
The one disclaimer that I need to put on every time we talk about these things is, and I’ll debate for Reed here, I’m not getting into a debate with you. I’m debating myself more. The reason that it is still not a foundational thing in the course is because it’s Reed’s understanding that if you focus on the things that are taught foundationally, in theory, the minerals should balance out themselves. I have found that to be quite true.
I won’t speak for you, but I’ll say the reason that many people do include this as a foundational lab now is because it is cheap. It is very simple. The supplements are great. We have an FDN that, well, I mean you could use a variety of supplements, but there’s an FDN that had invented something called Vykon Customs. I have it right now and it’s working great to be dead honest. It’s a fantastic company.
FDN Victoria Benefited From the HTMA
You can get these people quick results in terms of how they feel and there’s something to be said about that. So, do we need it? Maybe not, I’m not sure. I don’t think any mass studies been done to prove one way or the other, but I can understand both sides.
With that disclaimed, I’m curious, what ended up being the appeal for you? I wanted to break down the test that you mentioned. Why did you end up using the HTMA, and what success have you seen with that, with clients?
[00:21:16] Victoria Franca: It was interesting. I did, the protocol that I went through in the practical. I did my GI MAP; I did that protocol with the supplements. I did my DUTCH also. I followed it to a T and I felt better. But only until I did the HTMA, really focused on the specific nutrient imbalances, that I felt a significant change.
I think for me personally, it was one of those tests and results I implemented within a month. I was like, wow! I feel very different than a month ago. And the only changes really weren’t lifestyle. It wasn’t anything regarding D.R.E.S.S. I had already implemented all of that. But it was more of the specific supplements that I was focusing on, just rebalancing those specific nutrients.
So, for me it definitely was something great for my body personally, to link it with the other tests, the other results, the other protocols. But I think the Vykon supplements you mentioned, that made it really easy.
When I first did it, that didn’t exist yet. They were still building that out. But for my clients now, it makes it a lot easier for them to stay compliant.
FDN Victoria Offers Options with HTMA Supplements
[00:22:19] Detective Ev: You might spend a little extra money, but for me, I just didn’t even care. It made so much sense to use a supplement that I can take this powder and put it in a smoothie or mix it in water very quickly.
On the road this morning, I was able to, between all my work and stuff, I could feel the difference cause I was presenting today. I could feel the difference when I took it. And I actually only ever even use this test because I knew I was like working myself to the bone. I’m like, all right, this year I’m going to be a little smarter.
I have this prepared and stuff. I mean, it really does work. It’s a targeted supplement, very specific to your body and kind of how it reacts to stress or just where you’re currently at in one’s health journey.
So, are you using this with pretty much all clients or maybe all clients period now?
[00:22:56] Victoria Franca: I use it. I do offer both. I either offer supplements through Fullscript if clients want to buy monthly and just individual, or I do offer the Vykon supplements. I like to just offer the option because some people don’t want to pay upfront for the Vykon supplements, it is a little bit more expensive, although it includes a lot more.
Some people are on a budget. So, I want to be respectful and give them options.
[00:23:18] Detective Ev: That’s what’s really cool. Sometimes it’s like, all right, well, I gotta swallow a bunch of capsules, but if I can save this money, it’s a no-brainer. Yeah, and it’s all seasons, right? There was definitely a time I would take that option.
FDN Victoria is Exploring Vykon’s Different Flavors
Now it’s just like, I got so many supplements here that it’s ridiculous. I’m just like, I could take the powder, that’s my thing. And it’s really cool having this big supplement container with my name on it. That’s really what sold me Vykon Customs.
Victoria Franca: What flavor do you use?
Detective Ev: It was Ryan Monahan who hooked me up, so he gave me that fruit punch or whatever. Again, I put it in a smoothie. I know some people have issues with the taste, and maybe that’s just specific nutrients that were customized to them.
I wouldn’t recommend it. I have been in a pinch and have definitely taken that scooper, thrown it on the tongue, and just kind of chugged it back. Listen, I’ve done it with worse supplements. It went down easy enough and I got my electrolytes in. I don’t think mine is that bad cause I’ve done it with like, very minimal flavoring and it doesn’t seem to give the taste that many people swear these supplements give.
[00:24:10] Victoria Franca: So that was one of the things in the beginning. In the beginning the taste was very, very strong. Then they came out with capsules. Then you could basically order the same thing, but they’ll put it into the capsule. So that was my go-to. I would just do the capsules versus the powder.
But now I saw that Lisa actually shared, I think yesterday or something, that there’s four different flavors now. There’s even like a chocolate flavor. So, I’m excited to try that one and see how that smoothie version is.
FDN Victoria and Her 100% Referral Based Business
[00:24:35] Detective Ev: This is the last thing I’ll say about the flavor. I’ll put it this way for the listeners. Minerals and vitamins as standalones can taste so bad that Vykon Customs, what they’re doing is they give you your customized supplement, but you don’t get the flavor added in. They literally have this like hyper concentrated flavoring thing cause it’s that bad by itself. So, you need to sprinkle that in.
But in terms of the clients that you’re helping, I know we read it in the bio, but it’s always great to hear it from yourself. Who do you serve? Who’s your type of client that you ended up starting to work with? And did you start working with them like immediately after graduating? Did you just get right to the races?
[00:25:07] Victoria Franca: It’s been interesting because now it’s going to be, I’m on year two. Honestly, the clientele has shifted. I think that’s the beauty of it, is being able to adapt with the clients that are coming to you.
I am not someone that has that niche down very, very tight. I’ve been pretty broad with helping women balance hormones, minerals, and gut health, and that’s what worked for me personally. I didn’t want to exclude ages. I was open, I did say that it was women, so I kept that in regard to who I help.
But in the beginning, it started off with friends. Friends were coming to me. I was doing that. I was doing family members, and then it became referrals. Those friends were referring out. I can say that my business right now, till today has been a hundred percent referral based, which is incredible.
Never Having a Problem with the Pricing
My clients come to me through Instagram mostly or through my website. I do a couple different calls. Of course, just for clients that are interested in working with me. But most of them are already decided, and they’ll just say, how do I sign up and how do I get started?
A lot of it, I don’t do calls anymore. It’s just more the word of mouth has been so good that they know and they reach out when they’re ready. They’re ready to sign up.
[00:26:14] Detective Ev: This is really interesting that you mentioned that part about they kind of already know. I feel bad, I don’t want to speak ignorantly here. But I do hear from some people sometimes like, oh, I’m having issues with price or this, that, or the next thing.
I don’t think I’ve ever had, in five years, one person actually arguing me on price. They might say, I need to save for it. Then they do that, and then they come back. I don’t know what I’m doing that is so special. I also don’t do it full time. That’s my disclaimer. Maybe I have a narrow lens because I’m really only working with people that get sent to me because it’s not my full-time income. Fair enough.
If I’m just trying to advertise myself out there and get it that way, then maybe that’s why. But it sounds like you have a practice where at one point at least it, wasn’t always this way or that you’re doing it full-time and yet you’re not having those issues either. I don’t know what the difference is, but I think what you’re saying is much more common than it appears.
FDN Victoria Doesn’t Chase Clients
Obviously, people like you aren’t in the groups complaining about a price thing or whatever. You only hear about the people that are struggling with that, that are going to say it. No, I think most FDNs don’t really have a huge issue with this. People are ready to go, or at the very least, like I said, they see the value in it and might just need to save or adjust finances accordingly to make that investment in their health.
[00:27:26] Victoria Franca: Exactly. I think that’s the big thing. You know, I will get clients that will say this is a little outside of my price point right now, but I am going to be saving for it and I can get back to you in a month or two. And wonderful.
My thing is this, I think maybe in business, I think in the business world online, a lot of people will chase clients. That has never been my practice. I am a firm believer that if you want to work with me, you will work with me. It’s not going to be me who’s going to follow up or chase you and ask if you’re ready to commit.
That is not the game I play because it’s your health. If your health is actually in dire need, you know, you need help. And you know you’ll do what it takes to actually get help and sign up.
I think that was something from the beginning with me is that I would rather have a client or prospective client walk away and me not go after them and chase them. And prefer to have a client that will say, hey, I can’t right now, but I will come back next month.
FDN Victoria Warns Against Troublesome Implementation
That’s it. I’m going to leave the ball in their court because I don’t want to be someone that gives off energy of desperation because you need me more than I need you.
That’s the truth. I’m here to help you and serve you, but you have to be decided and you have to commit. Otherwise, when it comes to the protocol time, you’re not going to implement it because you didn’t actually take it seriously from the beginning.
[00:28:45] Detective Ev: I had no idea that we were going to even get to this kind of specific topic today, but I love that you brought this up. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone else say it that way yet.
I was a salesperson. I did car sales; I did door to door. All you hear about is follow up. You’re knocking on the same door; you’re calling the person incessantly in car sales and maybe there’s a time and place for it. But what happens is a lot of these sales trainers and all this stuff, they act like every type of sale is the same.
I am not a sales professional in that sense, I’m not a sales trainer. But I would argue that. Because my thing is, like you just said, why would I want to be chasing someone when it’s something like this?
Let’s say I do follow up. What is it? The average sales actually made on like the seventh follow up in like correspondence? Let’s say I follow up seven times and now I sold you on this mega package, $5,000, nine months of coaching. Okay, great. And you didn’t actually want to do it, but I convinced you of it. Now I have a troublesome client to work with.
FDN Victoria Warns Against Getting Drained
They’re not getting the results cause they weren’t ready for it. I need the money cause I’ve spent the time, but I feel really guilty for taking their money. They’re not happy. I don’t think that’s the right way to do it.
A friendly email or something might be okay, but I wouldn’t use the normal sales processes that are typically touted in the sales world on something like FDN. I think it’s a bad idea. This is my opinion. I’m not saying that everyone in FDN agrees with this. It’s my opinion.
You’re having the success you’re having and also agree with this. Maybe it’s one thing for me to say this as someone who’s not doing it full time. But I think it’s a little different when someone comes on and says, you know, if you want to work with me, you’re going to.
And it’s not like there’s any shortage of people who need this work. So why would I force people into this that don’t want to do it? I think it’s unethical and it’s a bad idea for everyone.
[00:30:21] Victoria Franca: Absolutely. Then you’re going to get that client that’s going to be unhappy no matter what you do or how much you provide to them. I think it’s about as professionals in this health space, we have to be able to protect our own energy.
I think we give so much of ourselves to our clients, and we provide so much support. But if we’re signing on the wrong people, that starts to drain us even more and more. We can even look at it and say, I don’t want to do this anymore. I feel drained because I’m working with the wrong people, I’m attracting the wrong people into my business.
FDN Victoria Encourages Asking for Two Referrals
So, I think if there’s a recommendation, stand your ground. Know your value, know what you’re serving, continue serving your clients for free through social media, Instagram, YouTube. There’s so many different ways to do it. Also know that the people that are meant to work with you, will work with you.
[00:31:06] Detective Ev: I know that the initial argument from someone, or the thought in their head would be, well maybe that’s easy for you guys to say, but I need clients to eat or whatever. So how did you make the transition? Did you just have enough saved, or did you have to work the other job first and then move into FDN?
How did you make that transition into just having almost a hundred percent referrals?
[00:31:26] Victoria Franca: I still worked full time while I did FDN until last December. I was still running my business. It could have been a full-time business, but I was still working my other job just because I felt like, well, if I can do both, why not? It was working smoothly.
At the beginning, yeah, it was, I think, much easier to just say, whatever comes in, comes in. I don’t need this. This is extra for me. But to be quite honest, nothing changed once I left that full-time job other than me getting more clients and working more hours.
I think if you’re providing good service and clients are happy with you, and you’re also, I think this is the big thing, you have to be open to asking for referrals. You have to say, can you connect me with two people that are in your circle that may need my services?
Simply Ask for Referrals
The reason I say, can you connect me with two people is because it’s very simple and easy for someone to remember or think about two friends. If you say, can you connect with someone, they’re going to go through like their whole database of friends in their mind, their family members. Then they’re not going to make any connections.
I think that was key for me, is being very honest. Like, hey, I am a referral-based business and if you’re happy with my service, I would love to be able to support someone, you know, two people that you know, and not being ashamed of asking for that help.
That’s how I’ve been able to really grow my business to just be referrals.
[00:32:44] Detective Ev: That is one part of sales training that I would imagine is nearly universal, although I’m not in every industry, so I don’t know. But definitely here. I get it cause I’ve been very nervous about the stuff in my life.
It’s amazing, such a simple question. You could talk to this client for six months and then someone’s afraid to ask for a referral when they’ve done a good job. I mean it’s very hard for me to wrap my head around.
And may I ask, are you giving something in exchange for those referrals if they’re completed? Or is this just, I’m going to ask and hopefully you do it.
FDN Victoria Has a Referral Program
[00:33:10] Victoria Franca: In the beginning, no, I wasn’t giving anything. Now I have a referral program, which is, if you refer me to two clients and they sign up for whatever program that I have, then you get a free retest for the mineral analysis, the HTMA, in four months.
I have clients that literally get their retest every four months because they’re hustling. They’re talking about me; they’re posting about me. They’re sharing cause they know that they want it for themselves, and they want that free benefit. It really depends on the person.
I think most of my clients, once they get their protocol, they get everything, they see everything from D.R.E.S.S. that they’re applying to their lives, they just start showing and posting on social media. I think for me, social media has been very big. I don’t have a crazy following, but I have an engaged following. That has been very helpful.
And just people that, once they start feeling better, that’s where the word of mouth goes through. There’s nothing better than a client seeing changes and feeling good after 45 days, 30 days, and talking to people about it. It’s that simple. I think that’s what’s really important about providing a really good client experience and support, because they will talk about it
[00:34:16] Detective Ev: I love what you said about a difference between an engaged audience versus just like a big following. You know what, it wouldn’t be true everywhere. If I was selling a $5 product, not only would I need an engaged audience, I would need a very large one to make a living.
FDN is Holistic and Detailed in the Health Space
Guys, the blessing of our work is it is high ticket. It takes a lot of time to work with this person, and there’s no shortage of clients. I mean this, quite literally, a hundred engaged
Facebook friends is more than enough to create a business with this on social media, especially if you’re willing to do the things that Victoria does. Actually, ask for a referral when you’re doing a good job, having a pleased customer, especially, that’s a really cool offering.
I won’t mention it on the podcast, obviously, but I know the pricing behind that and I’m thinking that is really not that bad for you, but it’s extremely valuable for them. That’s genius to kind of include that as the thing.
I want to talk about that too, because you clearly have this business side. You’ve done some really cool things that I want to talk about. I apologize if you did mention this because I would’ve forgotten, and I admit that. What was your job before this?
[00:35:11] Victoria Franca: I used to do spa consulting for the Ritz Carlton Group, Mandarin Oriental, just different hotel brands. Actually, worked for a company that was out of London, so out of the UK. Then I was overseeing the resorts, the spas specifically here in the US and Caribbean.
Definitely business background was my thing. I was also still in the wellness space because you’re in the spa industry. But of course, when moving over to FDN, it’s a whole different ball game when it comes to how holistic and how more detailed it is versus just the spa world.
FDN Victoria Bartered FDN Services for a News Segment
[00:35:43] Detective Ev: We’re pretty on the far end, right? That makes perfect sense.
The business background is very obvious and it’s just cool to see. Listen, you can have a business background, but if the system is crap, it only takes you so far. I think there’s proof in the pudding here where people universally, if they have a business background, FDNs, limitless potential for them, right? They just keep going up and up and up with this in many ways.
I had seen just even on your Instagram, and I believe in the bio as well, you’ve had some big-time features. You’ve been in a lot of things. I don’t know if this is really duplicatable for other people, maybe it is. But how have you pulled some of these things off? Have your moment, brag about it. Like where have you been featured? Where are some of these things you’ve done?
[00:36:21] Victoria Franca: I’ve been featured, NBC 6 Miami. That was a really great feature. They were doing a holistic wellness segment for Miami. They featured one of my programs, that was amazing.
That came to be because I got in contact with the anchor. I offered my services as a barter. I said, listen, I don’t want anything in return, but I would like for you to experience it. If you like it, we can talk about maybe doing a segment, an interview, or something like that.
And she loved it. She loved the test, she loved how she felt after. She said, it’s not going to be right now, but eventually I will have something that’s in the wellness space and I’ll keep you in mind.
FDN Victoria Used H/A/R/O
That’s literally how it was. Months later, she contacted me. She’s like, I found like a perfect moment. It’s going to be brief, but it’s on the news. That’s how that worked.
Then for the other features that I’ve had, a lot of it, I used H/A/R/O. It’s H A R O, which is “help a reporter out”. It’s a free database that you can log into. You can sign up. Take that note so you can sign up.
Every single day you’re going to get three emails with tons of different reporters are going to post the topics that they need you to respond and basically pitch yourself to get featured. It is a little frustrating. The emails are so long, you have to kind of go through them and get to that fitness and health section. But every day there’s something else.
I just shot my shot. I saw a couple of them that I was like, I can answer this one and I can provide my feedback. It’s very simple. You just basically get the editor’s email, and you respond with the H/A/R/O ticket number that they assign. That’s it.
The best tip of it all is you have to do it very quickly. As soon as that email comes out, which is at 9:00 AM, 12, and 5 PM Eastern time, go through the email and if you see something that you want to pitch yourself to as a response, then go in it and write it right away. That has been how I got featured on Thrive, on Observer also.
It’s just keep trying. To me it’s like the more I can just shoot my shot, I know I’m going to land somewhere nice.
Anyone Can Do This
[00:38:28] Detective Ev: I love this. I don’t actually even know if I can make this decision, but it’d be cool to have you do some type of business training with FDN, because this is the stuff that I love.
You know what? There’s nothing special about this in terms of the fact that it’s not like only Victoria can do this. Anyone can do this. It’s just doing the work, having some confidence to put oneself out there. Give me an excuse. I mean, if you have the ability to listen to this podcast, you have the same technology necessary to do what you have just stated you have been doing.
To me, it seems like a no brainer, and I feel like people self-limit themselves when they don’t go and do these things. I digress. I just feel bad when people are struggling and all. To me, it’s just doing some work that people don’t want to do typically. It’s very true.
[00:39:09] Victoria Franca: I graduated; I started my business literally February of 2020. If there was a worse time, it was then. COVID had just started. In a way, worse time, best time situation.
For me, mindset was huge because when that happened, I immediately thought to myself, this is a waste. No one’s going to invest in their health when they are getting furloughed, let go. Everything is happening with the economy. We are in a very unfamiliar situation. That’s what I noticed; mindset was so big.
I immediately told myself, I’m not going to get clients. So, for the first month, I got nothing. I literally just watched things happen. I was like, here, I said it. I’m not going to get any business.
Mindset: Turning a Bad Situation into an Opportunity
Then I caught myself. I said, wait, what if I look at this opportunity and actually see it for the opposite, think actually I can really make something great, and actually maybe create a lower ticket offer. Everyone needs this right now. This is the time that everyone’s talking about health and wellness.
So, that’s what I did. I saw that situation and I turned it around. I created a lower ticket offering and went on from there. That’s when I started getting the clients, getting the referrals, and really started the business. But if I had stayed in that mindset of scarcity and fear, I wouldn’t be where I am today because I would always see that as a limitation.
I think maybe an exercise for everyone is sit with yourself and try to find out what is a limiting belief that I have about my business and about myself right now. Turn it around and see what’s the opportunity around that. There’s so much opportunity, we just have to be smarter than what our mind’s telling us because our mind will always play these little tricks.
[00:40:47] Detective Ev: Nice. I love this kinda stuff, anyone that knows me in real life. I actually have a few friends and family members that listen to this. I love the motivational side and the mindset side. You just reminded me of this thing by Jim Rohn. For those who don’t know, he was a motivational speaker. He’s since passed.
A Lot of This is a Mindset Game
He talked about two salespeople, the door-to-door salespeople. The day starts raining and he was showing the difference in mindset. The one guy says, oh my God, it’s pouring out here. They can’t expect you to make sales like this. It’s a terrible job. All this kind of stuff, right?
And the other salesperson says, well, this is brilliant. All the other sales guys are going to be at home and everyone else is going to be at home since it’s so miserable. This is a great day to make sales. You know, I get to some people that it can maybe sound a little cheesy, but there’s a lot of truth in that.
All they have to do too is look up. Look up how many of the Fortune 500 companies started during recessions. You’d be amazed by how many of the biggest companies in the world started at some of the worst times. Because guess what? It does shut everyone down a little bit.
I fully admit in the beginning, that’s probably the least motivated I had been in the last eight, nine years since I’d really gotten my life together and on track. It was defeating. I’m talking about myself right now.
There’s opportunity to be had when some of the people that are normally hustling the most are on the pity potty feeling sorry for themselves or doing whatever. So go out there, get it, make it happen. It shows a lot of this stuff is a mindset game.
Client Testimonials
Now Victoria, before we head off, we have several minutes left. You’ve obivously worked with quite a few clients at this point. I’d love to just hear any client testimonials that stick out. I always think these are so special. Is there any client in particular that sticks out where they came to you, maybe they weren’t in a great place, they didn’t even know what to expect, and it’s really just like a heartwarming story now?
[00:42:22] Victoria Franca: Yeah. There are a few. I think the ones that really just make me super emotional are the ones that have been trying to conceive for so long. And it’s after implementing everything, really focusing on their bodies, tuning into their bodies, understanding their bodies, that they come back with that news of, I’m pregnant. I just love that.
I have probably, I think around 10 clients now that have gone through that experience, which is beautiful. That just makes me so, so happy.
I think I have one other client that really sticks out also. She was young. Her mom came to me. Her sister came to me first, then her mom, and then her. She was about 16 and it was during COVID. She had a lot of depression. She was severely depressed with everything that was going on.
But also overall, her test results were completely off the charts. She had copper toxicity, which was something really, really high in her results. That’s something that I saw through the HTMA test, the mineral test for anyone that doesn’t know.
After implementing the protocols, the depression went away. She’s fine. She didn’t need to go on medication. She’s happy and she’s thriving. She’s now an 18-year-old. I think that’s just beautiful to see.
Stopping Some Pretty Powerful Things
You know, a family member talked about their experience, it was the sister. Then shared it with the mom, and said, Mom, she doesn’t have to go on medication. She can do this naturally. We just need to see what’s happening.
Having that support and then seeing that transformation and seeing that she was able to understand the depression is being caused by different elements that are out of balance and toxicity that’s in the body. That’s really one that definitely stands out to me, especially for being so young.
[00:43:49] Detective Ev: I love actually both of those categories. Of the conception ones, I mean, I’ve never tried to do that, but I can imagine that’s an extremely emotionally taxing thing for people, especially the older that they get. You know, they might start thinking, oh, is this going to be impossible for me to do this? And that’s quite literally life changing.
Then for the younger people, as someone who suffered with mental health issues at a young age, it’s amazing to me when we get to help a young person and we are avoiding things that we can’t even predict, right? You don’t know if that person was going to engage in substance abuse eventually, or self-harm. To be able to stop those things is pretty powerful.
That’s so cool that in such a short time you have like these high-level testimonials, that is an asset to FDN. This is great to have you.
A Funny Client Testimonial
[00:44:26] Victoria Franca: I was thinking there was one story that was actually funny. She was older, she was 42. Not that that’s old, but she did not want a baby. That was not in the plans at all, at that age especially.
I remember she reached out to me after about six, seven months of doing her protocol, and all she said was, I guess your program works, period.
I said, what does that mean? She said, I’m pregnant. I was like, what? I didn’t know you were even trying. She goes, I wasn’t, and I didn’t want a kid. I’m pregnant. I was like, oh my gosh. It was definitely a shocker for her, for my myself also. But it was funny.
Now we look back and laugh about it. She was just like, it’s crazy how you were able to balance my body to be able to conceive at that age that of course is seen as high risk.
Now she has her baby girl, and she’s beautiful and happy. They’re both thriving. It’s a very cute story. Every time I see her posting her baby girl, I’m like, oh my gosh.
[00:45:33] Detective Ev: Thank you for sharing that. That’s pretty powerful.
We had a doctor come on one time and she wasn’t suggesting people try this, but she was saying that the research she had done suggested that there were tribes documented, still having births at 60 years old. Like the women were giving birth at 60 years old.
I mean, tribes that are not interacting with Western society at all. I can’t prove that that’s true, but what I can prove is that anything that we’re doing is clearly not as good as what nature intended at its best right.
Where to Find Victoria Franca
Now there’s many accidents that could have happened to that woman before she got to the age of 60 that we prevent with Western. So, Fair enough.
But assuming that the person lived and was healthy, if our standard’s 40, I mean, we know it’s at least 50 in the wild then.
I don’t think sixty’s actually that far out. It’s hard to comprehend. It challenges a major narrative, but yeah.
[00:46:17] Victoria Franca: No, that’s very true. I’m Brazil, so there’s a Brazilian actress that just announced that she’s pregnant at 55. That has been really interesting too. Really interesting to see. I’m excited to kind of follow along her pregnancy and maybe hear what she’s done and things like that. But yeah, that was definitely a shocker for the whole country.
[00:46:36] Detective Ev: Yeah, absolutely.
Okay. So, Victoria, where can people find you if they would like to work with you?
[00:46:55] Detective Ev: Awesome. We have the signature question on the Health Detective Podcast, which we’re going to finish up with today. And that signature question is, if I could give you, Victoria, 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, whether that’s actually get them to do something or get them to stop doing something, what’s the one thing you’d get them to do?
[00:47:17] Victoria Franca: That would be sleep earlier. Sleep around 9:30, 10:00 PM. That would be my wish for the world.
[00:47:23] Detective Ev: All right guys. That’ll do it for today’s episode with Victoria Franca.
Remember, if you are either already graduated from FDN and you’re listening to this, or if you’re going through the course right now and planning to graduate soon, there just might be an advanced training in our professional group with Victoria where she is going to share some pretty solid business insights, tips, and tricks from someone who’s actually done it, right? Not just theory, not read it in a book, not help someone else do it, but actually has done it herself.
We are very fortunate in our FDN community to have a lot of people that have extraordinarily successful businesses out there. It’s because a lot of them were businesspeople before they were health people.
Now that’s not a bad thing either way. It’s not bad to be a health person first and a businessperson second. As you guys probably know, this probably applies to most of you listening, you might have been a health person first and a businessperson second. Totally normal to be that way.
Conclusion
But the problem is, we figure out all this health stuff, we’re super excited about it. Then we go and realize, now I gotta go sell, market, and I gotta handle all the business sides of things. That can be tricky. It can be intimidating.
That’s why we share these people who actually have the business side first and then the health side second, so that you can learn and use their knowledge, more or less, and accelerate the learning curve there. We do not want to spend five, 10 years learning all the business stuff.
Most of it, well at least, the amount that needs to be learned to do something like FDN successfully and full time, I mean, we’re talking about a couple of months tops. You could learn the information that you need. I genuinely believe that, possibly even less depending on what field you are coming from and the level of confidence you already have in yourself. So, look forward to that.
If you guys are considering becoming FDNs yourself, you know where to go. I mention it all the time on the show, fdntraining.com/tryfdn. We’ll let you try the course completely for free. You can find that in the show notes too. That is fdntraining.com/tryfdn to try the course completely for free. No credit card is required.
But that’ll do it for today’s episode. I am looking forward to talking to you guys again soon. But until then, take care.
If you’re interested in natural healing and or functional medicine, FDN is the right place. You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.
Many thanks to Nick from Switzerland for this week’s paper. I’m not sure if ‘thanks’ is the right word, as this is up there with one of the worst papers that I’ve ever had to spend a week reviewing.
The paper was called “Estimating the environmental impacts of 57,000 food products” and it was written by Clark et al (Ref 1). I spotted a vegan in the author list (Marco Springmann) and there may be others.
As the title suggests, the aim of this study was to estimate the environmental impact of 57,000 food products. First, there are not 57,000 foods. There may be 57,000 varieties of processed food items, but the basic foods are meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables. There are a number of different types of each of these, but real foods will number a few hundred at most, not 57,000.
The rationale for the study was given as “While previous analyses compared the impacts of food commodities such as fruits, wheat, and beef, most food products contain numerous ingredients.” This confirmed that the study looked at mostly processed foods and not what people should be eating – real food.
3. Choose a Certified Health Coach Training Program.
There are a growing number of Certified Health Coach / Health Coaching programs on the market today. Before diving into the details of what each program offers, ask yourself some questions about what you want out of a program.
Here are some questions to get you started:
How much time do you have each week?
Some programs are going to require more time than others. FDN coursework requires anywhere from 3-6 hours per week, where others require upwards of 10 hours per week.
What is your budget for a certification program?
Becoming a certified health coach is a big step, and requires a sizable investment. Many programs, including our FDN functional health certification program, offer monthly payment plans, so think about what size payment you would be comfortable making on a monthly basis.
And, a word of caution here: simply looking for the lowest priced certified health coach program isn’t going to serve you well in the long run. In fact, we have many students come to us after completing other popular health coaching programs because they realize they actually need more training & knowledge to get their clients the results they want. Oftentimes, investing at a slightly higher level ends up being the smarter choice.
Do you value certified health coaching mentorship?
Something to keep in mind with price comparisons is the value you are getting from your investment in the program. Are you simply gaining access to coursework and a certification, or are you investing in quality mentorship & a community of people who want to see you thrive?
For example, Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) may be one of the more affordable health coaching programs, but they don’t offer the level of support & mentorship that FDN does.
And, what do you get with quality mentorship?
Practical experience
Expert feedback
A higher rate of success!
That’s worth its weight in gold.
Do you want to take a functional medicine approach?
As we discussed above, getting clear on the approach you want to take in helping your clients will be a determining factor in deciding which health coaching program or functional certification program is best for you.
If you decide that you *are* interested in a functional medicine route, then The Institute for Functional Medicine (IFM) offers a health coaching program. However, keep in mind that this program prepares you to play a supporting role rather than a solo role.
If you want to be a one-stop-shop health practitioner & have your own online business, you’re going to want access to functional medicine testing, which is what the FDN certification program specializes in.
Once you’ve obtained your certification, it’s time to get to the fun part!
The work you’ve been dreaming of. 🤩
4. Launch Your Health Coaching Career (or Business)
If you’ve decided to work for someone else, you’ll want to start applying to jobs online. But, if you’ve decided to start your own online health coaching business, then your entrepreneurial journey starts here!
When starting up your own business, you’ll want to think through which systems (e.g. Practice Better & GetHealthie) & processes you’ll use to provide your clients with an excellent experience.
Things to think through include:
Getting a business license
Structuring & pricing your packages
Marketing & sales calls
Client onboarding paperwork
Collecting payments
The great thing about the FDN Certification Course is that it includes not only the functional testing education & access to ordering labs, but also the foundational business education.
In fact, FDN recently launched “FDN Business School” – a complete program helping graduates launch & grow a profitable online wellness practice!
5. Build Confidence & Grow Your Career
Now that you’ve graduated as a Certified Health Coach, what’s next??
This is where lots of students get a little….freaked out.
But it doesn’t have to be scary – in fact, this is the fun part!
If you’ve chosen to go down the path of starting your own business, just focus on getting your first five clients.
Want to know the best way to get started with building that client base?
Through friends and family!
You can take what you’ve learned and practice on your family while helping them address ongoing health concerns. What better motivator than learning you’ve helped your aunt or best friend get to the bottom of symptoms they’ve been dealing with for years!?
Still feel like you’re lacking confidence?
FDN has an incredibly supportive community. And as an FDN graduate, you have the option to book additional paid sessions with program mentors. This means if you run into a challenging client case & feel that imposter syndrome kick-in, you can get support behind the scenes! You won’t find this level of support anywhere else.
What are the disadvantages of dieting and why should you ditch dieting for good? Keep reading to learn more.
There’s always a new diet, detox, or food trend that everyone seems to be trying. But is it always a good idea to join in? Whether rooted in nutrition or geared towards quick weight loss, these trends always involve two things – restrictions, and rules.
As soon as restrictions and rules come into play, a slew of disadvantages come along with them. Such as feeling out of control around food and experiencing heightened food guilt or stress, just to name a couple. In the end, dieting is the root cause of it all. If you’re wondering whether or not it’s finally time to stop dieting for good, this article is for you. Understanding the disadvantages and consequences of dieting can help you to say no to the next detox or trend that comes your way.
What Do We Mean When We Say Dieting?
It’s important to note what exactly we mean when we say dieting. What we are not referring to here is a medically recommended diet. Such as a low sodium diet for hypertension, a low FODMAP diet for IBS, or a plant-focussed diet for high cholesterol.
What we are referring to are strict, extreme diets that tell you to avoid, remove, or restrict anything from your diet outside of the context of a medical recommendation. They often do so while promising extreme, life-changing effects as a result. Such as fast weight loss or extreme boosts in energy. Additionally, they’ll often have a time stamp associated with them. You only have to follow their recommendations or protocol for 10 days, 30 days, or 3 months. Afterward, you’re promised incredible results with minimal commitment.
If you find yourself continually following these types of diets, keep reading to learn about the disadvantages of diets before you decide to get started.
6 Disadvantages of Dieting
The following six outcomes are what we see most often as registered dietitians in the nutrition coaching realm. Individuals come to us having dieted for years and are frequently experiencing all six of these symptoms listed below.
Causes an “All-in” and “All-out” relationship with Food
Another way of saying “all-in” and “all-out”, is “on the bandwagon” and, “off the bandwagon”. Diets function in a cyclical way. You’re either on a diet or off of one. Unfortunately, they don’t prepare you for what normal life looks like after the diet is over. As a result, you go right back to your prior habits (i.e. “all-out”). Until undoubtedly, you decide you’d like to make a change and try another diet. Cue the pendulum swing from one end of the spectrum to the other.
This creates an imbalance with food and is arguably the biggest disadvantage of dieting. It makes it impossible to do both, to enjoy food and nourish yourself with food. It makes you feel like you’re either “being good”, or “being bad”, with no in-between.
Leads to Extreme Cravings
What happens when you really want your favorite ice cream that’s in the freezer, but you tell yourself you can’t have any? You want it even more. And not only that, you crave it. It almost seems to take over your thoughts and all of a sudden becomes the most important thing on your mind, right?
This brings us to the second disadvantage of dieting, extreme cravings. When you inherently want something or enjoy something, it isn’t beneficial to abruptly restrict or remove it from your life. When you do so, your mindset immediately shifts to lack. You can’t help but think about what you’re missing out on, or how good it would feel to have what you no longer can have. Over time, this manifests as a craving.
That ice cream in the freezer sounds so incredible, so you absolutely must have it. As a result, you physically have to have a mental argument with yourself to prevent yourself from, “giving in”, or “losing willpower”. If this sounds familiar, you’ve certainly experienced this disadvantage of dieting before.
Results in a Loss of Control Around Food
After those cravings kick in, the loss of control comes next.
You’re on a diet and you’re out with friends on a Friday night. You know you’re, “not supposed” to have pizza, yet, there’s some pizza at the party. Next thing you know, you’ve had three slices. At the end of the night, you’re home and thinking to yourself, “What’s wrong with me? I have absolutely no control when I’m around pizza.”. Is it true that you have no control? Absolutely not. It’s simply the diet causing this sensation.
Another disadvantage of dieting is that it not only causes a lack mindset, it also causes a scarcity mindset. Because dieting has told you time and time again that pizza is, “bad”, “not allowed”, and, “off-limits”, whenever you have access to it, it seems like it’s your only opportunity. It’s the one chance you have to eat pizza and, “get away with it”.
So, in turn, you eat more than you really want, eat past your satiety cues, and appear to lose control. The following day, you feel guilty, stressed, and overwhelmed, so you tell yourself you’re, “getting back into it”, or “doing better” today. It brings you right back to that cycle we started with.
Only Allows for Short-term Success
So what’s the draw? If we know diets cause a loss of control around food, give us extreme cravings and make us swing back and forth between extreme habits, why are people still following them?
Short-term, quick results. Diets temporarily work because of how extreme they are. As long as you follow their rules, you’ll see some results. And what happens when you do? You’re hooked. You have proof that it works, right? But very soon after, you find yourself at the “all-out” and of the spectrum, yearning to get back to the “all-in” end in order to get those results back. And the cycle continues.
This disadvantage of dieting is that the success you achieve is never maintainable or sustainable. It’s short-lived and somewhat addicting. It leaves you wanting more so you’ll always come back for more and try again.
Diminishes Natural Body Cues
When we’re constantly following someone else’s rules, it gets pretty difficult to discern what our own body truly wants or needs. Our bodies are built to communicate with us, to tell us what we like or dislike, and tell us when we’re hungry or when we’re full. But diets tell us otherwise. They tell us we’re supposed to eat a certain number of meals per day that contain a specific number of calories that can only be eaten at certain times. Cue the confusion!
New clients almost never know what true hunger or satiety feels like. They’re almost always struggling to simply understand what they enjoy versus what they believe they, “should” be eating. This is another example of a disadvantage to dieting. When we have a balanced, sustainable relationship with food, we work with the body and its cues, not against it. Diets, on the other hand, will tell you to fight those cues and ignore them.
Makes Food Difficult and Time Consuming
When you’re on a diet, or simply used to being on a diet often, food starts to be complicated. It takes up so much of your time and your thoughts. You’re constantly trying to recall the rules, remember what you ate that day or how much you had last night. You might even try and write it all down to make it easier on yourself.
Food becomes a controlling part of your life. It starts to dictate your actions and maybe even your social choices. This is what the “all-in” of the spectrum looks like.
Food is meant to be enjoyed, and it’s meant to be a source of nourishment. It’s not meant to be a daunting, overwhelming part of your life. If you’ve experienced this disadvantage of dieting before, you know it’s a viable reason to never go back.
The Takeaway
When you have a balanced, sustainable relationship with food that does not include dieting, you don’t have to experience any of these disadvantages. You’re able to eat food because you want to eat it, while also feeling in control of your choices and your actions. You’re able to experience social situations with ease. You even feel confident listening to your body’s cues and enjoying food for the sake of enjoying it!
If you’re looking for a sign to stop dieting and start building lasting habits, this is most certainly it.
Do You Want to Experience More Balance with your Food Choices?
Then start by finding 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.
A hot bowl of soup is the ultimate comfort food and at the Academy of Culinary Nutrition we love to seek hearty, dairy-free soup recipes. They’re not only delicious, but kicking it dairy-free means we won’t have to suffer from bloating, gas, allergies or any other digestive or immune issues that dairy may cause.
It’s even possible to have rich, creamy and luxurious soups without dairy by blending in:
We are enormous fans of fermented foods, so when we can find another creative way to use them, we’re game! This simple vegan soup takes 20 minutes to pull together, and it has an amazing dill pickle flourish.
Rice is a classic soup ingredient, but this recipe kicks it grain-free and Paleo by using cauliflower rice instead. A hearty soup packed with veggies and spices, plus there are vegan and Paleo options depending on what philosophy you’re into.
A thick and creamy dairy-free soup loaded with green veggies and topped with some delectable-looking polenta croutons. Who says gluten-free and vegan croutons aren’t awesome? Not us!
We love the dark colour and complex flavour that cumin and chili powder add to this straightforward soup recipe. A fantastic way to enjoy the bounty of winter squash if you’re confused about how to use them this year.
20-minute meals are the absolute best, and this chicken noodle soup is no exception. It’s not only easy, but contains a whole bunch of cold-fighting foods like garlic, ginger and bone broth. An immune-fortifying and delicious meal!
This soup recipe is so delicious you’ll forget that it’s completely nourishing for you. And it’s topped with kale chips! To make this gluten-free, substitute brown rice flour, chickpea flour, or your favourite gluten-free flour into the recipe.
A lovely mix of crunch and spiciness, this soup can be sipped as a side dish and pairs well with either plant-based or meat dishes. And have you tried to make your own sprouts yet? It’s super easy – and inexpensive!
Celery root or celeriac is a gnarled but tasty root that offers creaminess and sweetness to this dairy-free soup recipe. And, in case you’re wondering, that bright orange colour of the soup comes from anti-inflammatory turmeric!
A complete bowl of nourishment, including the fermented goodness of miso, the bright abundance of kale, the anti-inflammatory ginger and of course that luxurious kabocha squash cream.
This recipe combines the beautiful flavours of Thai food with the incredible nutrient-rich properties of bone broth (or veggie broth, if you want to make it vegan). Perfect for winter, this warming anti-inflammatory bowl uses spaghetti squash noodles, rich spices and colourful veggies.
This soup is a full-meal with a ton of nourishing veggies and protein-rich lentils, plus there’s the addition of optional Chinese herbs to boost the healing quotient. We opt, we opt, we opt.
Parsnips are a root vegetable that really don’t get enough attention – so we’re happy to see them get the star treatment in this dairy-free soup recipe.
The gorgeous colour will attract you – but the flavour will keep you dunking your spoon. If you’re not already a beet lover, you will be before you reach the bottom of the bowl.
This super easy split pea soup only needs about five minutes of prep time and then 6 hours later – ta da! – you’ve got a filling meal. And, it’s a slow cooker recipe – one of our favourite kitchen tools!
I wanted to share her story and why Jessica pursued a facial specialist career. Her background was in fashion, she relocated from Europe to the USA and then got pregnant with her first son. Her son passed away during delivery from complications.
Jessica says skincare isn’t just “skincare” it’s treating yourself from the inside out, it’s how you feed yourself, your mental and emotional state. Louise Hay says the affirmation with skincare is “I accept myself”. All of this is connected to having healthy skin. The natural products she uses are botanically focused and have a lot of enzymes, they are focused on rebuilding your natural skin barrier and getting it in its healthy state. Their ingredients have a lot of fruits (enzymes) from lemons and blueberries.
She also used LED therapy on my face which is a medical-grade device that NASA uses to repair the skin.
I had the “Ultimate Signature Facial” which includes hands, arm, face, and décolletage massage which was so needed and so divine. It’s amazing how much inflammation can go down after a massage.
Jessica also does brows and tinting. I hope you get to enjoy a treatment from her! I am not paid to do this post, I am so proud to highlight a person with this story, healing, recovery testimonial, and business. I would love to highlight more people in business like this, especially women! I love that we can all support each other and lift each other up. Life isn’t easy, but it’s better when we can be there for others.
How often do you get a facial treatment? Me perhaps four times a year although I wish it was more. Jessica recommends it every 4-6 weeks.
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