Be Organic Podcast Season 3, Episode 5 – Deciphering The Beauty Industry

Learn what clean beauty really is, how brands handle certifications, and all about the ingredients you avoid in beauty supplies. Kat hosts The Organic Girl (Lisa Fennessy) to dive into the world of beauty products to go beyond just ingredients – packaging and sourcing also plays into the “ethical beauty” world. Clean beauty also goes beyond just makeup! Have you ever heard the phrase “If you can’t understand every ingredient don’t use it”? Listen to learn why this might not be true.

Special guest Lisa Fennessy created This Organic Girl out of a passion to explore the latest and greatest in clean beauty and organic lifestyle as well as THE WHY.
She took her BA in journalism from Northeastern University and turned her knowledge into a platform that helps women to feel empowered as consumers, while also making a positive impact on their health and the planet.

TIME STAMPS
2:20 “Ethical Beauty” and How it Goes Beyond Clean Ingredients (jump to section)
4:30 Retinol (jump to section)
6:20 Similarities Between Clean Beauty and the Food Industry (jump to section)
9:45 Clean Beauty Goes Beyond Just Makeup (jump to section)
11:30 Difficulty Measuring Impact on Toxic Ingredients (jump to section)
13:07 Brands and Their “Clean” Marketing and What to Look For (jump to section)
16:00 Certification vs. Verification (jump to section)
21:25 Ingredients To Stay Away From (jump to section)
24:45 Top 5 Certifications (jump to section)
31:47 Sephora’s Clean Beauty Mark and If It Can Be Trusted (jump to section)

Transcription Below

 Kat Eckles: Welcome back, Be Organic listeners. This is Kat Eckles. We are so excited to have you on another episode of the show today. Today you’ve got just me. Landon is occupied with other things, but I have an amazing guest to fill in the gap. I am so excited to talk about all things clean beauty with the Organic Girl, Lisa Fennessy.

A little bit about Lisa. She’s an Atlanta transplant by the way of Boston. She created Organic Girl out of a passion to explore the latest and greatest in clean beauty and organic lifestyle, as well as the why. She took her B.A. in Journalism from Northeastern University and turned her knowledge into a platform that helps women to feel empowered as consumers, while also making a positive impact on their health and the planet.

Through her website and social media, she helps women find these solutions for themselves and gives them the tools they need to make the best decisions for themselves and their families. This Organic Girl was recently featured in Southern Living and Better Homes and Gardens, and now Lisa is here to help us make sense of the clean beauty industry. Welcome, Lisa, or should I say the Organic Girl?

Lisa Fennessy: Thanks so much for having me. I’m so happy to be here.

Kat: I’m known around town as the Juice Lady, so the Organic Girl is a little cuter. I like that. I might steal it.

Lisa: Mostly people just stare at me because I have gray hair, so I don’t think we even get that far.

Kat: Oh, that’s funny. So, we’ve heard some other guest speakers talk about clean beauty and namedropped some names, but I don’t know that we’ve ever really talked about what clean beauty really is and how beauty brands choose certifications to be deemed clean. Of course, there’s a lot of greenwashing in the industry, and it’s just an industry that’s exploding.

I thought it was a really important topic to discuss so we could get this information to our Be Organic listeners and help them really decipher what’s clean, what’s not, and what’s acceptable. I’m really excited to have you on the show today. 

Lisa: Thanks so much. That’s a super loaded question, but I’ll start chipping away and then we can take it from there. I think the first thing to really know about “clean beauty” – I’m going to actually reframe that and call it ethical beauty. There’s so much that goes into a beauty product in terms of ingredients, packaging, sourcing, and messaging that it really takes ethical decisions along every single step to make what would be an ideal ethical beauty product. 

The other thing about that is oftentimes when people talk about clean, they’re only referring to the ingredients. They’re not referring sometimes to the packaging, for example, that may affect the planet in a good way or a bad way. That’s a word that I’ve been trying on the blog and I really like it. 

“Ethical Beauty” and How it Goes Beyond Clean Ingredients

The other thing about clean beauty or ethical beauty is it’s a sliding scale. Sometimes what some people think is ethical beauty to them, other people might not think it’s ethical enough, right? There’s no hardcore outline saying this is ethical beauty, this is clean beauty, A, B, C, or D. It’s not like that. It’s really kind of a gray area. Of course, there are some hard lines that we can draw. I’d rather not have formaldehyde in my eye product. That obviously is not something that really would be up for a huge debate, but there’s a lot of gray area because really what comes into play is percentages of ingredients. 

We as consumers don’t really have privy to that information. If we pick up a bottle on the shelf, of course, there’s an exception to every rule. There’s actually one brand called Ingredients, and they actually forefront their ingredient list with all the percentages, but that’s the only time I’ve seen that. If we go into Target, for example, and pick up a bottle of shampoo, we’re not going to see, “Oh, guess what? This shampoo is actually 80% water, 10% oils, and 2% preservative.” We don’t get to see that. Because we don’t get to see that, it’s hard for us to really kind of make gross assumptions about specific ingredients.

Then that’s when debates startup, and it’s like, “This is considered clean. No, this is considered clean.” Also a lot of times, ingredients have nested ingredients in them. Retinol is a good example. You can get retinol made but it needs to be preserved as its own ingredient. Some of them come in liposomal encapsulation, which is a fancy word for saying it’s more self-preserved, or the way it’s created. It has an encapsulation system that keeps it from turning or oxidizing. 

Another way that it’s preserved is with something called BHT and I personally don’t like to use that on my skin. It’s also, I believe, on California’s WHO List of restricted ingredients. The point is, what we’ll see on the ingredient label is retinol. We won’t see is retinol preserved with BHT and also X, Y, and Z. We don’t get privy to all the ingredients that are actually in that one ingredient.

It becomes really nuanced, is what I’m trying to say. Do you source your ingredients locally? Do you source your ingredients worldwide? Shea butter from Africa that you have to ship over to the United States – if you get that organic, is that more responsible than a non-organic local cactus oil or something? It really is brand dependent. It really is product dependent. We can make these broad strokes and cover a lot of bases with that, but of course, there’s nuance to it. That’s why these discussions are really important. 

Retinol

Kat: Totally. It doesn’t seem like it’s that different. The food industry – I guess the food industry’s probably a little bit more regulated. I hear you saying that there are basically just a lot of regulation issues in the beauty industry, which it sounds like. Even with food, you can get an organic, pre-packaged cracker or something that has an ingredient list a mile long, or you can get a nonorganic, locally sourced sourdough something. It’s the same kind of thing. You’re really looking at what goes into something before you’re putting it in, on, or around your body, basically. 

Lisa: Yeah, true. I think what adds to the nuance in this situation too are ingredient lists. What we value here at This Organic Girl is if they’re done to the INCI standard (“Inky” is what people call it in the business) which is an international labeling nomenclature. It’s a way to talk about your ingredients in a way that’s universal.

For example, if I picked up a product off the shelf and it says almond oil, I don’t actually know if that’s sweet almond oil, bitter almond oil, or what type it is. It’s not enough. So the INCI will give you the exact name for the exact ingredient. So, that’s really cool because you know exactly what it is. The problem is that INCI has all these very specific names that look very confusing. Then, people pick up an ingredient list and they’re like, “Oh, this looks awful. I don’t understand anything that’s on the back of this label.” I feel like it just sends the wrong message.

Similarities Between Clean Beauty and the Food Industry

Some of the messaging in ethical beauty or clean beauty has been like, “If you can’t read every single ingredient on the back of your lotion, don’t use it.” That’s not really true because we’re using scientific nomenclatures and international nomenclature that isn’t really accessible to laypeople. Also, science-forward ingredients that are not harmful to the body, but super effective on the skin, like retinol for example. Retinol, we obviously know that word, but there are other ingredients that we don’t know, and is a new ingredient to the market, like chebula. We’re like, “What is that? Oh my God, I don’t understand it. So it must be bad.” No, it’s actually just the fact that we’re progressing and creating new ingredients that are going to be on the label too. 

I think with food, I know picking up a cracker label, if I see almond flour, salt, and dates, I’m like, “Okay, this is great. I know exactly what’s in it.” I think I just want to tease that out because I think with beauty it’s a little bit different. 

Kat: That’s funny you say that because this morning or last night I was looking at one of my ingredient lists. There was a long name on there, and I was like, “Oh, that’s kind of weird.” I didn’t pick up on that. I looked it up and it was tea tree oil. I just want to back up real quick. When we talk about the beauty industry, I feel like people automatically go to makeup, but you at Organic Girl talk about anything that has to do with what you put on your body. You’re talking about makeup, skincare, lotions, and exfoliators. You go over all of that, right? 

Clean Beauty Goes Beyond Just Makeup

Lisa: All of that. We like to talk about what goes in your body, what goes on your body, and just making good decisions around all of those things in general. I’m not opposed, and I’ve been known to talk about mattresses and probiotics. The goal here is really to not get on my soapbox and tell people what to do, but I really want to address the questions that people should be considering when they’re making their own decisions. 

What I always say is if you go through the process and you’re like, “Okay, I’ve considered X, Y, and Z. Now I know. I also just want to go back to the store and buy my favorite Colgate toothpaste that I’ve always bought, because that’s what works for me and it’s what I like the best.” It’s like, do you, that’s great. If you’re making an informed decision, then my job is done. I just don’t want people to be bamboozled into making decisions because of marketing lingo or just because of the rote habit that “my mom bought this laundry detergent, so I’m going to buy it too.”

Kat: Right. I think with the beauty and body industry, think about it, we’re putting lotion on our body that’s staying all day. The makeup’s on our face all day. We’re sleeping on the mattress eight hours a night. The laundry detergent’s on our clothes, which is on our bodies 24/7.

We don’t really think about how impactful it is and how much it’s impacting us. I feel like everybody, when they get into wellness, goes straight to food. Which of course is great, but this whole body/beauty industry is so important because it’s around us, literally 24/7.

Difficulty Measuring Impact on Toxic Ingredients

Lisa: Yeah. And the other thing is too because it’s such a barrier, there are so many X factors in our lives, right? Like the water we drink, the food we eat, and the air quality around us. It’s impossible to measure the impact that 1% paraben in your deodorant is going to have on your body. You just can’t.

That’s why it’s just always kind of a heated debate. There are two ways people look at it: these ingredients are innocent until proven guilty or these ingredients are skeptical and they’re skeptical until proven innocent. When you get two people at opposite ends of the spectrums coming together to debate about the impact that these products have on your body, you’re going to get two really different points of view that I think both have valid points. The thing is we can’t isolate these situations, but we do know from science that’s continuing to build out information about these ingredients, that there are better options that pose less of a risk. 

Kat: Right. I think you can’t become orthorexic about your life. It’s like you said, if that Colgate or toothpaste brings you happiness, you sometimes have to do it. I haven’t found a super clean foundation that I love so I use a dirty one, but I just don’t wear it every single day.

Lisa: Do you like a liquid foundation or a powder foundation? 

Kat: Liquid. 

Lisa: Do you like a dewy finish or a matte finish? 

Kat: Dewy.

Lisa: Okay. Yeah, you have to try the Ilia Supra Skin Serum Foundation. Try that. It’s so good. It’s my favorite. 

Brands and Their “Clean” Marketing and What to Look For

Kat: Writing it down. To that point, let’s talk about brands. A lot of them make claims to be clean and drop buzzwords or certifications. How do you really distinguish between the good, the bad, what’s really clean, and what’s not when you’re looking at a brand or a product? 

Lisa: Yeah. I’m so glad you asked this because we actually just did this huge research study at This Organic Girl. We spent the last four months working with a consultant, her name is Krupa Koestline. She owns KKT Consultants and she is a clean cosmetic formulator. She’s also worked with brands in the past like L’Oreal and Neutrogena, but she’s pivoted and works now with more ethical brands. Anyways, she’s been around the business and she helped us create an infographic with the pros and cons of the most popular beauty certifications. I feel like I learned so much.

I have a couple of weight points that I want to make about beauty certifications. When we say that we’re talking about things like USDA Organic body oil or face oil, we’re talking about MADE SAFE products. EWG, which is the Environmental Working Group, have their own verification program called EWG Verified, which you’ll see. It’s a green circle with an E in the middle. We’re talking about NSF, we’re talking about Cosmos. All of these are seals of approval or certifications that you’ll see on a brand’s logo in packaging that’s supposed to indicate to the consumer that this is an ethical product, this is a clean product.

I feel rest assured by buying this product because it’s been third-party vetted. The main takeaway here is that any product that has one of those seals on it that we just talked about, I want to recommend. That is a better option than just walking into a CVS and a Target and grabbing anything.

This also applies to Clean at Sephora or buying anything from Credo, which is a clean beauty retailer online. Those products have all been vetted and are going to be better options than just the standard “walk into your corner store bodega and grab the first thing off the shelf.” I want people to find comfort in that, and I want them to feel empowered that they’re making a better decision by looking for those tools and using them. I’ll pause there if you have any questions. 

Kat: No, I love that. I think that it’s a great place to direct people. It’s almost like Whole Foods, they do their meat a little bit differently. Maybe it’s not organic, grass-fed, and everything, but there are a couple of things that they take off of their meat before they even allow it in the store. It’s just a good place to start. I appreciate that.

Lisa: Yeah, totally. Now, when you get into the nitty-gritty, there are definitely some certifications that are more strict and provide a, I want to say, more vetted, more elevated, and more of a bigger look at the product before they certify it.

Certification vs. Verification

When you get into it, there are actually two different types of programs that we’re talking about here. There’s a certification and there’s a verification program. The certification is actually when you have the people certifying your product, and the standard that they’re certifying it to is two different things.

For example, USDA Organic is the standard. If you go in and see Zoe Organics in Nordstrom, they have some baby products that are USDA-certified Organic. They’re certifying to the USDA Organic guidelines, and then a third party is coming in looking at those guidelines, looking at the product, and saying, “Yes, these criteria match up.”

You earn certification. Now those programs are Cosmos, USDA certification, USDA Organic, and also another program called NSF. All of those programs are third-party standards, and the party is separate. To contrast, you see programs like MADE SAFE, EWG verified, or Clean at Sephora. All of those programs are one in themselves.

The program makes up the standard, and then they certify to their standard. You can see just by making that one delineation, that the certification is going to be a little bit less of a biased process. Then, certifications get audited annually too. So if you have your product certified, your product gets audited annually, but also the standard itself gets audited as well. You just have stricter, kind of more eyeballs in the mix, and less wiggle room. I’ll pause there for any questions. 

Kat: No, that’s good. So if a brand doesn’t have any certification, do you completely write that off, or what do you look for? I know sometimes, like you said, locally made products are obviously not going to go out and get certain certifications. What are some standards that you look for, even if it’s a product outside of those certifications? 

Lisa: Yeah, it’s kind of situational. If you’re going into your corner store and just grabbing a face lotion that’s not certified or doesn’t have any sort of tools like that on the label, I would probably say maybe not. I wouldn’t recommend that but if you’re in the beauty space, maybe you’re shopping at Credo, and you’re just like, “Oh my gosh, I see this one line that looks great but I don’t see any certifications on it, but it could be a beautiful brand.”

The other thing is, our founder formulator runs so the founder of the brand is also the formulator. She’s working in her own lab testing, developing, and formulating. Some of these founder formulators are even growing their own ingredients. They’re working with local farmers, creating their own tinctures, and creating their own infusions. To them, that becomes the base of their face lotion, which they then add in locally procured extracts and botanicals. Some of this is really art and crafted in beautiful skincare, like artisanal skincare. Those oftentimes are not certified in any way.

Does that mean that we shouldn’t patronize those people? Hell no. That’s honestly probably some of the best skincare. One of the founder formulators that I love is Pablo Skin. Once a year, she makes a Jasmine hydrosol. People usually say Jasmine Hydrosol is impossible to create because it’s such a delicate flower that you can’t actually retain the scent. She’s contracted and found this man in Hawaii who built his own machine that can extract the Jasmine Hydrosol without ruining it. She packages it in limited editions and sells it one time a year annually. How beautiful is that? 

Kat: Yeah, right. That’s so cool. 

Lisa: That’s insane. She’s not certified, but I would recommend that till the day I die. Again, it’s situational, but I would say if you are specifically shopping for something that’s artisanal, handcrafted, and small batch, just go on the website, start reading around, and see what they do and what they value. Then I would say it’s okay if it’s not certified. Use it as a tool, but if a brand isn’t certified in that space don’t chalk it up to having a ding like, “Oh, well they don’t have that. That’s just not really how it should be.” 

A lot of these brands are small brands and they choose to allocate their resources to something else other than certification. If you’re heading into Target and you’re just like, “Oh, this brand’s probably good, even though it’s not certified,” I would say mainstream, I would probably still recommend leaning on the certifications. 

Ingredients To Stay Away From

Kat: What are some of the ingredients in the beauty industry that you would avoid at all costs or most costs? 

Lisa: I would say fragrance is a good one. That’s pretty much ubiquitous across all products that we use. It’s in diapers, trash bags, lotion, candles, and air fresheners. It’s in everything, including makeup. The problem with that is it’s a category ingredient. We don’t know exactly what the ingredients are. Fragrance, yeah, great, but what’s actually in the fragrance? Is it essential oils? Is it synthetic fragrance oils? Is it phthalates? We don’t know what’s in there. 

Really, the issue is non-disclosure because we want to make decisions about what we put in our bodies. We don’t want somebody else to make decisions about what we put in our bodies. We definitely don’t want somebody to make decisions about what we put in our bodies without even telling us.

The reason why people can do that is from an antiquated law called the Fair Trade and Patching Act that was established back in the 1960s, and it still hasn’t been changed. What happens is sometimes people can just hide ingredients in there, like, “We don’t want to disclose this, we’ll just file it under fragrance.”

That being said, there are fragrance brands that I would recommend, like Abbott NYC, for example. You go on their perfume company, and they list actually every single ingredient in their fragrances. That way you can look it up and you can just see what I am actually using. They’ve already done the research on it. They talk about how they choose ingredients and what they do so you can see the difference there. I would absolutely use that fragrance from a company that’s being transparent, forthcoming, and ethical in their decision-making about what they’re using for fragrance ingredients.

I remember when I first had a baby and I was like, “Oh my God, obviously I’m going to get Dreft, or whatever that laundry detergent is that every mom gets.” It’s the only one with the baby on it. Clearly, I have to get that. I went to the store, and the ingredients at that time weren’t even listed on the packaging. What’s up with that? There are just two different standards. I try not to make blanket statements because there’s always an exception.

I want people to think critically about the decisions that they’re making, not just be like, “Okay, so fragrance is a no always.” I’m telling you right now, fragrance is a no probably 90% of the time. If you can take that out, and if you can work to just remove that. Look at your laundry detergent, look at your candles. Is it in this? Then you see it is, and you’ll just be like, “Oh my God, it’s in everything.” The thing is with fragrance, what can be in there are phthalates, which is what people are calling now “the forever chemicals”. They never break down and they’ve been tied to endocrine disruption, which has been directly linked to cancer. Things like formaldehyde. There can be things in there that you just really don’t want to use. 

Top 5 Certifications

Kat: Right. That makes total sense. Let’s go back to the certifications real quick. There are just five major ones I want to go over and get your opinion on that are probably on more of the mainstream products. I thought you could speak to each of them just for people that are going in and seeing those so they can understand what they mean. The first one is MADE SAFE. I see that on a lot of things. What does that mean? 

Lisa: Yes. So MADE SAFE is America’s first non-toxic seal of approval. They have so many different categories: baby, home, body care, and sheets. They do so many different things. The EPA, which is the Environmental Protection Agency, has 85,000 different chemical components listed in the registry, and EWG bans 6,500 of them. They have a robust program. If you see anything that’s MADE SAFE certified, I would feel good about buying that. They have some great standards, and I use their resources online all the time to sometimes look up ingredients or see who’s newly certified. 

Consumers brands have to go through a robust program to get certified. The one caveat there though is that it is a verification. MADE SAFE itself is creating MADE SAFE’s rules and then certifying brands to their own rules. If I’m a brand and I’m taking my product to get MADE SAFE certified, that’s having my product third-party vetted, but MADE SAFE isn’t then annually audited by somebody else. 

For example, one time I emailed them and I had asked, “Do you guys allow Phenoxy ethanol?” because it wasn’t listed on their restricted list. They were like, “Yeah, we do.” Then a couple of months later, they emailed me back and they said, “No, we don’t.” Then a couple of months later, they emailed me back and said, “Oh yeah, we do, in less than 1%.” It’s one of those things where obviously people are allowed to recreate their standards and things change over time. That’s 100% valid. If that wasn’t valid, then we would still be burning hotdogs over a campfire like cavemen. Obviously, things change. It just has the potential to be more of a biased system.

I’m only highlighting that because if you are one of those consumers that’s just like, “I want the best of the best no matter what”, I think that’s something cool to know. You would probably want to look for something that has a certification versus a verification. Certifications are going to be USDA Organic, Cosmos, NSF, and NATRUE. I think there was one more that we talked about the other day that was just a little bit less popular, so you probably won’t see it anyways. There are not that many of them, but that’s the biggest difference. Again, like I said, anything that has these third-party certifications like MADE SAFE and EWG, I say 100% grab that over anything else.

Kat: That’s so good. USDA-certified Organic I obviously know a lot about because our juice bars are all Certified Organic, but I guess in the beauty industry that might be a little bit different. Can you speak on if they are allowed to use certain chemicals? I know in our stores we aren’t even allowed to use certain soaps, bleach, or cleaning supplies. They’re really regulated about what chemicals we can use. I assume that would be the same for the beauty industry. 

Lisa: Yeah, totally. The thing is, you will see some beauty products that are USDA-certified Organic, but the problem is getting a beauty product USDA-certified Organic is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. That certification was actually developed for food and agriculture. It wasn’t developed for beauty products that are not 100% agriculture. They use a standard that if something’s USDA-certified Organic, there are actually three different categories that it can be. It could be made with 95% plus organic ingredients. Then there’s another one that’s made with organic ingredients, and then it’s 70%. It’s detailed in the blog post if you guys want to go to thisorganicgirl.com Beauty Certifications. It details what you will see there. 

That’s why we don’t see that one a lot in beauty because it’s not really made for beauty. If you have a body butter that’s all oils, waxes, almond oil, jojooba oil, shea butter, and cacao butter all mixed together, all of those can be Certified Organic. Then you could get that product USDA-certified Organic. It’s just really hard to use in the space, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not used in this space. Because it’s a certification, it does look at all things. It looks at things in the manufacturing process too. We’re looking at cleaning products used. For example, I don’t know if you’ve heard about the benzene scare and sunscreens this past summer?

Kat: I don’t think so.

Lisa: Yeah. There was this independent lab called Valisure that tested a bunch of random sunscreens, and a large portion of them came out positive for benzene which again is another known carcinogen. Benzene can end up in a product for a couple of different reasons. It could be a reaction between two other ingredients. It could be cleaning materials used on lab equipment that could be benzene based. When you get a product that’s USDA-certified Organic, Cosmos Standard, or NSF certifications, those products have been restricted and you can only use certain cleaning agents on lab machines.

It’s kind of cool when you know that because then you can go in and when that scare happened and everybody’s like, “Oh my God, what?” The list of published sunscreens that did have benzene in them is still online. You can go to valisure.com and look it up. A lot of them were like Whole Foods 365 mineral sunscreen. Things that I would grab and be like, “Oh, well this is obviously the better option.” Meanwhile, lurking in the background… 

When you buy a sunscreen that’s been USDA-certified Organic, for example, or Cosmos certified, there is one at this time that is Cosmos certified in the United States, it’s called Love Sun Body. It’s okay. They’re still in the beginning stages. Some years their formula is great, and then other years they tweak it and it’s not as good. I would say keep my eye on them. I don’t want you to go and buy it, and then be like, “Lisa said to buy this and it sucks.” It’s just kind of too thick sometimes. Anyways, the point is when you pick up a sunscreen with those certifications, off the bat, benzene is not even an issue. Isn’t that cool? 

Sephora’s Clean Beauty Mark and If It Can Be Trusted

Kat: Right. I love that. Before we wrap up, I want to talk about Sephora really quick because that’s obviously the first place I think about when I buy or when talking about makeup, even though I probably don’t even really buy from there anymore.

I know they’ve started this whole clean beauty mark on their products, and they pass our test for clean ingredients. Is that a certification or a mark that we can trust? How do we decipher that the products that they’re pushing out there are clean?

Lisa: Yeah. I also want to just preface this conversation by saying stores like Sephora are evolving too as the industry evolves. The Clean at Sephora program right now isn’t the same as it was 18 months ago, and it won’t be the same in 18 months. Looking at it now, they’ve actually published their initiatives on their blog and on their website, saying “By 2022, our goal is to avoid all of these processes”, like ethoxylate, ingredients that go through ethoxylation, and stuff like that. It’s evolving and trending toward getting better and better and better. 

I would say if you’re going to go in, I would say go into Sephora. Absolutely. Buy their products that are clean. At Sephora, they actually have two programs. They have one that’s called Clean at Sephora, which looks at the ingredients and lets you know that those ingredients are better than the conventional ingredients used in beauty products. Then they have another program called Clean and Planet Positive, I believe is what it is. That one takes into consideration the impact on the planet through packaging and biodegradable ingredients that give a bigger scope towards ethical beauty. 

The Clean at Sephora program right now uses a couple of ingredients that I personally still tend to avoid. They’ll use synthetic fragrances without having brands fully disclose what’s in the fragrance. Things like that where I’m just like, “Well, I don’t really trust that yet, even though it’s been vetted by you.” I want to do that, I don’t want to take it at face value by somebody telling you that this is okay, but actually give you the ingredients.

So that’s still one issue, but again, it’s trending toward disclosure. For example, Credo Beauty is a store where you can shop online. I think they showcase 128 brands. They’ve asked all of those brands to fully disclose what’s in their fragrance ingredients and over 70 brands stepped up to the plate and did it.

On Credo, you can see exactly what’s in the fragrance ingredient for these specific products where, guess what? Sometimes you can’t even find it on that own brand’s site. For example, if ABC brand has their website you can go on, it says, “Oh yeah, we use X, Y, and Z, and fragrance.” There’s no fragrance disclosure, but then you go to Credo and it says their fragrance is essential oils, or their fragrance is a mixture of synthetic fragrance and essential oils or whatever. They’re disclosing what’s in it. The needle is being moved, and we’re getting better and better. I would say you have to keep an eye on it, but also you can find that information that’s published on Sephora, like their initiatives over the next couple of years.

I also just want to say, if you’re somebody who loves to go to Sephora, just do it. Buy the clean beauty and feel good about it. It’s good. The thing is people always ask me,  “What should I switch out first? How can I make a bigger impact?” I’m like, you can make a bigger impact by making sure your water is filtered. It’s not going to be the 1% synthetic fragrance component in the product that you use three times a week. You have to just maintain a big picture otherwise you’re going to drive yourself crazy, then stress is going to ensue, and then that’s arguably even worse than where you were to begin with.

Kat: I think that’s such good advice too. I’m guilty of this where I’m so quick to write something off, just be like, “Oh, I’m not going to Sephora, they use bad ingredients. They don’t get it,” and move on. I think we need to give more credit where credit is due to some of these companies that are trying to do the right thing.

Our company’s not huge. We have a hundred and some stores, but I know how hard it is  even for us just to pivot on a dime. I think sometimes with these big companies, it takes a minute to be able to source things correctly and do the right thing. The world’s changing so fast, and the industry’s changing so fast. I think that’s really, really good advice. Just keep an open mind and keep checking back to see what they’re doing to change, because it might be better than you think. 

Lisa: I always like to say too, instead of nitpicking, with Clean at Sephora brands, we’re talking still indie brands. These are indie beauty brands. When you start an Indie beauty brand, can you come out of the gate Cosmo certified and packaging all correctly? With every I dotted and every T crossed. Can you do that?

Kat: Maybe if you have VC backing.

Lisa: If you’re just one girl trying to make it happen, you’re going to have to take steps along the way. My first and foremost thing is I wanted to make sure we had refillable options available. That was my number one thing, and that’s what I focused on first, but give me time to take steps. If we come at it as consumers with this massively critical eye and just write people off, that just does our own self a detriment.

We need to be supporting the brands who have their moral compass aimed in the right direction so that they can continue to make strides, be innovative, and then make an impact in the market in a bigger way. If we really want to make an impact, it’s not nitpicking these little brands. Why don’t we call Proctor and Gamble and tell them that we want Old Spice Cosmos certified? That’s going to make a bigger impact than asking some tiny indie brand why they chose regular almond oil instead of organic almond oil, and how dare they.

Kat: Exactly. Lisa, it’s been so great to have you today. I just think this is great information and I’m sure we could talk for a day. I’d love to have you back on, and we could dig into even more topics more specifically. Where can our listeners find you if they want to learn more about you and all the information you have out there, like your Instagram, your socials, website, and all that?

Lisa: Across all channels @thisorganicgirl and on the web at thisorganicgirl.com. I just want to mention too, I have a couple reels out that I did recently of Top Ten at Target and Top Ten at Sephora. If you’re curious about what that looks like and my top picks from mainstream stores, check those out. They’re easy to consume and super actionable. 

Kat: I love that. I always like to end the show by asking all of our guests what is their best tip for living life Organically.

Lisa: Yeah, I thought about this because I’m like, “Oh god, that’s kind of an impossible question.” I would say, just be committed to learning and don’t beat yourself up along the way because we’re all learning, and we make the best choices we can with the information that we have at this time.

We’re never going to be ideally organic, 100% mental health, and balance, all of it. It’s going to be impossible. It’s just making the best choices you can at this point in time and being open to learning. 

Kat: I love it. Awesome. Well, thank you Organic Girl. I appreciate you, and I appreciate all you do. I know our listeners are going to have fun exploring all of your information and everything you have to offer. Thank you again for your time this morning, choosing to join us, and for just doing all the work that you do for this bite of just having healthier lifestyles, healthier options, and just more information out there for the educated consumer. We really appreciate it. 

Lisa: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me.

Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit. 

Landon Eckles: So if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. 

Kat: We’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, and slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might want to hear more about. 

Landon: All right, y’all. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to be organic.

Kat: Just a quick legal disclaimer, we are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness and nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you.

In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice Franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.

Be Organic Season 3 – Episode 04 – Lupus: How to Recognize it and How to Fight it

On today’s episode, Kat and Landon sat down with Margaret Romero, a Columbia-trained Functional Medicine Nurse Practitioner with expertise in lupus, to discuss her impactful story and more. Once severely ill and diagnosed with lupus, Margaret overcame this life-threatening diagnosis by singlehandedly finding the culprit for her illness: gluten. This immense discovery transformed her life and brought her to where she is today.

Listen to learn all about lupus, mold, herbal remedies, and healing your body from fatigue and pain.

TIME STAMPS
8:00 Kat’s experience with bone broth for gut health (jump to section)
9:00 When to look into your symptoms instead of thinking they are “normal” (jump to section)
11:04 Particular age groups that are diagnosed with lupus (jump to section)
12:39 Lupus diagnosis tests (jump to section)
15:19 Gluten and the impact it can have on testing (jump to section)
16:39 Parasite herbal treatment (jump to section)
19:00 How to find the right specialist or practitioner (jump to section)
26:18 Practical steps to help with pain, fatigue, weight gain, and more (jump to section)

Transcription Below

Kat Eckles: All right, Margaret. Thank you so much for joining us today. We’re so appreciative of your time and your vulnerability. This topic we’re going to discuss, I know is super personal to you. Thank you so much for joining us.

Margaret Romero: Thank you so much for having me. It’s an honor.

Kat: Awesome. Well, let’s talk about lupus. Let’s talk about what it is, your journey to how you were diagnosed, and what that looked like for you. I’m sure everybody would love to hear about that.

Margaret: Sure. Lupus is an autoimmune condition and it varies. It can sometimes attack the skin, or it can sometimes attack the kidneys. At times, people will have a rash on their face called the butterfly rash, so it can present differently. Overall and in general, most people will have full-on muscle pain and joint pain. So lots and lots of inflammation is happening in the body. For me, it was about the year 2007.

I started getting random joint pain: wrist pain one week, then it would be knee pain, and then my ankle. It was very fleeting, so it would come and go and attack a different joint. At the time I was like, “Maybe I worked out too much.” Eventually, it became worse and I had blood work done. Lo and behold, I was diagnosed with lupus. It progressed very, very quickly for me. It went from fleeting joint pain to an inability to walk due to so much pain in my joints and in my muscles, just so much soreness. It was ramping up to the point where it went from one day to the next day with me waking up with a shortness of breath.

My boyfriend at the time drove me to the hospital and I was Medi-flighted to another hospital in Arizona. I was living in New Mexico at the time so I was totally alone. They were telling me about my results and I already had known what was happening, but it was so fast that it was just hard for me to wrap my head around it. At the time I wasn’t into autoimmune conditions, that was not my thing. As I was making an appointment to see someone about it, the next thing I knew, I was in the hospital. When all of this was happening, my brother, who was a doctor, came out to Arizona and flew me out to Boston, which is where I was hospitalized again. They do kidney biopsies to just check what’s going on there.

So, I had all of that done. I was hospitalized for a couple of days, and when I got home I was put on twenty medications. I still felt horrible, nothing was really working. I was still inflamed, I was still in so much pain, I had put on almost thirty pounds of water weight, and I did have the rash on my face as well. My hair was falling out and it was just a time of my life that was so painful and I felt so alone. Of course, I now had a kidney specialist and my rheumatologist who deals primarily with autoimmune conditions, and I never really felt very supported by them.

It was just sort of like a doom and gloom type of thing. “You’re going to have this for the rest of your life. You’re going to be on medication for the rest of your life. I’m sorry. How was your mood? Are you depressed?” It was just not a good experience overall not only because of what I was going through physically, but what I was going through emotionally. I really didn’t feel very supported by my specialist at the time.

Kat: That totally makes sense. Do you think this is something that a lot of people deal with and is undiagnosed? Do you think this is more rampant than we know about?

Margaret: There are so many women that I talk to and even when I read on Facebook autoimmune groups, I’ll often hear women tell me, “Nobody knew what I had.” It took years to know what was going on in my body. Sometimes it’s underlying. Sometimes it’s not caught necessarily in blood work, but you still have the symptoms or it’s low level. It shows up as they’re diagnosed with fibromyalgia or joint pain. They’re put on Prednisone or pain medication.

Without really looking deep enough or trying to figure out why this is happening to begin with, which was definitely the case for me, it was like, “You have lupus. Here you go, here are your pills. I’m sorry. You’ll always have this. Good luck.” I brought up to my rheumatologist that every time I ate, my joints would get so swollen and red, especially my knees. My cheeks would get really red and my face would get a little bit swollen. I said, “I want to get checked for celiac disease. Is there a way we can do this? I know there’s a DNA test for it.” She said, “No, just save your money. Take the medication. You don’t need to do that type of test.”

Being a Nurse Practitioner at the time, I decided to just go out, get my own test, and do it. Lo and behold, it came back that I had two non-celiac gluten-sensitive genes. The moment those results came back, I became gluten-free. The trajectory of my health and life changed in such a big way because once I knew that I needed to be gluten-free, I went all in. I eliminated my diet, bought cookbooks, and attended gluten-free cooking classes. At this time, I was living in Colorado, so that was readily available, thank goodness.

Within a week’s time from becoming gluten-free, my joint pain started going away. It was remarkable to see, after a couple of months of being on twenty pills per day, how that did nothing for my vitality, my health, or my pain. This one simple thing that the rheumatologist had told me to just forget was really one of the things that started the healing process.

Kat’s Experience With Bone Broth For Gut Health

Kat: Unbelievable. My son had a kind of autoimmune disorder from his infancy in a couple of different medical things. The same kind of thing happened. They wanted to do all these treatments on him, and I just started giving him bone broth. I literally gave him a bone broth three times a day, just flooding his body with it. It started to heal his gut and his symptoms went away. So, it’s so crazy to me how lifestyle just plays such a big part in making us better or sicker, unfortunately.

Margaret: Bone broth is amazing. It is amazing for gut healing, especially drinking it first thing in the morning. It’s typically what I like telling my patients to do: before your coffee, have a cup of bone broth. It does wonders.

When To Look Into Your Symptoms

Kat: You talked about the symptoms you were experiencing, which were predominantly a rash and joint pain. I applaud you. I guess you got into so much pain that you couldn’t live. Some of those things, like the joint pain, I get here and there. So, at what point do you start to kind of really take those things into consideration and go get tested versus writing it off as, like you said, “I lifted too heavy that day”, or “It’s just a little pain”? What point do you suggest that people start to really look at what’s going on?

Margaret: Yes, that’s a great question. Yes, people work out and they have knee pain, this or that. If it’s something that’s out of the ordinary, you suddenly get a lot of pain, let’s say, in your knee. Then the next day or a week later, it’s now your knee and another joint, and then another joint or you’re having any sort of muscle achiness. That’s another thing, achiness. The other most common thing is if you’re having sores inside your mouth. Cold sores, or any type of sores, are a really big indication of lupus in the beginning stages. Well, in all stages, but during flares especially.

Kat: I’ve never heard that, that makes total sense. My brother has a lot of sores in his mouth. Not to out him on a podcast, but maybe I need to get him in there to get tested.

Margaret: Well, one of the common things for gluten sensitivity (so many people have gluten sensitivity that they’re not aware of) is having recurring canker sores. I used to get them and don’t get them anymore, but having gluten sensitivity can sometimes trigger recurring canker sores.

Kat: Totally. Well, that makes sense with autoimmune because gluten impacts autoimmune. So it totally all goes together.

Margaret: Yeah.

Particular Age Groups That Are Diagnosed With Lupus

Kat: Do you see an age group that predominantly is getting diagnosed with this? Is it something that usually comes out in your twenties or is it something that at any point in life can flare up?

Margaret: I would say, there are teens that have lupus anywhere through their sixties. For the majority of women (men and women get it, but I work primarily with women), it’ll be in their thirties. Mid-thirties to mid-forties is, for some reason, the biggest time when women get diagnosed, and it could be due to so many different factors. One of them being stress or environmental toxins. There are just so many things that can trigger it, even genetics.

Kat: Probably childbirth and, like you said, just stress, different points in life, and probably lifestyle buildup. It’s funny, I just said to my husband last night, I don’t eat whatever I want, but I’m not uber strict. I turned thirty-five this year, and it’s like I have five to seven pounds that came out of nowhere that I can’t get rid of and I’ve never had to deal with before. I feel like when your body starts to hit thirty-five, things just change and it’s almost like your lifestyle in the last fifteen years of adulthood has kind of caught up with you. So, that kind of makes sense.

Margaret: Yes, so many things change in the body. Our hormones shift and there are just so many things going on, so, yeah, that’s true. A lot of women do complain about that.

Kat: Are the lupus diagnostic tests pretty straightforward, something that you can find pretty easily? Or do you have to really dig in to find it?

Lupus Diagnostic Tests

Margaret: Rheumatologists have their pretty standard testing panels for all autoimmune conditions. Pretty much where they start is testing all of that and seeing the results. Then they move forward and will give the newly diagnosed medications and Prednisone depending on where they are in their flare or in their diagnosis. What unfortunately is not checked is trying to figure out what the triggers are to lupus, M.S., or any autoimmune condition. Why did this happen to begin with? It’s that exploration that, unfortunately, conventional medicine does not do. I think conventional medicine is amazing in acute care and emergency situations. I think that they lack in treating chronic illnesses.

Kat: When a patient comes to you and they’ve either been diagnosed or you diagnosed them with lupus, what does your treatment plan look like versus what a conventional plan would look like?

Margaret: Well, one of the first things I do is testing. I do a little bit of further testing when it comes to blood work. Sure, I’d like to see the panel that they get from the rheumatologist. I’d like to see all of that. Typically, all my patients come in with a diagnosis already, so we already know that they have all of that. What I want to know is: What are your hormones like? Do you have vitamin deficiencies? Are there any toxins or do you work in a place where there are a lot of toxins? Hairdressers are notorious for having autoimmune conditions because of the toxins they’re around every single day. Those are the things I look for.

I also do stool testing. The majority of individuals with autoimmune conditions, I can’t tell you the number of times they tell me they have gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, or reflux issues. So, it’s really looking closely at that because they could have parasites, Candida, an overgrowth of really bad bacteria, and/or H. pylori. All of these things contribute to stopping an autoimmune from appearing. It’s not overnight, these things happen over the course of many, many years.

Gluten And The Impact It Can Have On Testing

Kat: Absolutely. With your treatment, is gluten something that you recommend all of your patients stay off of?

Margaret: Initially, yes. While we’re doing testing, I just have them get off the gluten, but sometimes it’s hard to get off gluten. I will say, a lot of people will really feel like there’s nothing to eat, but there actually is so much to eat. Gluten and dairy are at the top, but there are seven total top allergens, including eggs, soy, gluten, dairy, and nuts.

There are foods like that. Now for everyone, it’s different. Sometimes I’ll do a food allergy panel to see, “What does your body not like?” When I get back the results of people who have so many food sensitivities, that is a clear sign of gut issues and permeability issues. So, we take the time to look at those stool sample results and go from there. We need to heal the gut. We need to get rid of the pathogens, parasites, or worms that could have triggered this autoimmune condition.

Parasite Herbal Treatment

Kat: What do you do for parasite treatment? Do you like colon cleanses or do you have a product you like?

Margaret: There are so many different ways. I usually will do herbals and we start there. Before I put anyone on anything, I need to make sure that they’re going to the bathroom every single day, right? I need to make sure that they’re able to detox and put them on supplements to support that. Because just taking all of these things, “You have yeast. You have parasites. Let’s just give you everything all at once.” It’s too much depending on the person and how long they’ve been ill, you know what I mean?

Kat: Absolutely. Yeah, I think that’s such an important thing to note: how people can recognize if their detox pathways are open. We have an infrared sauna in our house and, of course, sweating is one of the ways that you detox, but I don’t love cardio. I’ll do some pilates and weightlifting, so I’m not ever busting a huge sweat. When I first was getting in the sauna, it would take me a good ten or fifteen minutes out of a forty-five-minute session before I could actually start to sweat. Now it’s almost like I open that door and I’m sweating before I’m already in there.

It’s just because my detox pathways are so much healthier from training my body to be that way. I think it’s important that people are sweating and, like you said, going to the bathroom regularly. There are things you can look for in your urine to see if you’re detoxing correctly, and I think that’s something people probably don’t even realize is important.

Margaret: Definitely, yes. I love the infrared sauna. I don’t have one in my home, though. I wish my place was big enough to have one, but I do go down the street to one and I think that’s critical. If people can get into an infrared sauna, I think that would be amazing. It helps to get rid of toxins and heavy metals as well. I think it’s super important.

How To Find The Right Specialist Or Practioner

Kat: Yes, I love that. How can people find the right specialist? If they’re not in your area or if they only have access to or only ever thought about going to a more conventional medicine, what are some practitioners they can look for to help them through this more natural lifestyle process of having lupus?

Margaret: Yes. If you’re newly diagnosed, or even if you’re not, I would say absolutely find yourself a functional medicine practitioner. A lot of us are doing virtual consults now, so they don’t have to necessarily be in your town, though if you want one, certainly even just a Google search. We’re just expanding more and more, so I don’t think it’ll be that hard to find.

Kat: What I love about treating in this way is you don’t really need to see your clients face to face. Of course, that’s always nice and great, but you really can look at their testing and talk to them about different things that they need to do in their lifestyle. It can all be done virtually, which is amazing.

Margaret: Yes, absolutely. I love doing the video, especially for initial visits because seeing someone’s face really gives me a lot of information about their thyroid, if they’re anemic, or with their hair texture if it’s thinning. It gives me a lot of information just by looking through video.

Kat: Absolutely. I know you treat other things besides lupus, but you really focus on women and women’s health. What are some of the other things that you treat or issues that you’re seeing becoming more predominant with women in general?

Margaret: Well, there’s always the hormone imbalances. I have women transition from perimenopause into menopause. Lately, that’s been the topic of choice, but I would say even bigger than hormones (because hormones have been around forever, women are always transitioning from peri into menopause) is mold.

Kat: Wow.

Margaret: It’s a big one, yeah. It’s everywhere. It’s in almost every building that most people live in, it’s in their homes, it’s in the schools, it’s in the buildings that they work in. It’s everywhere. So, when nothing shows up in blood work, check for mold.

Kat: What’s so interesting is we bought our forever home. I had started following someone on Instagram that really was talking about mold, so I was like, “We should test our house.” I did the ERMI test and, of course, we had it and it was in our HVAC. It’s a fairly big house and we had to replace all the HVACs and it was this huge, huge expense. I’m like, “Why in the world would they not do this on home inspections? Why would they not test for mold? It was a $200 little test I did.” They said, “No houses would sell, every single house would come back with mold.”

Margaret: Oh my goodness.

Kat: Yeah. It is such an epidemic and nobody is dealing with it like you said. I thought we’d be having allergy attacks all the time, or unable to breathe, but it’s not that at all. It was the weirdest symptom. One of my daughters was four or five at the time and obviously had been completely potty trained and everything like that. She started having accidents every single night and I was like, “This is so strange.” Then I happened to be watching one of the doctor’s videos and she said that bedwetting is one of the symptoms of mold, so that’s why I tested for it. It’s these symptoms that make absolutely no sense. Then you find out a lot of these molds aren’t even causing respiratory issues, they’re causing liver issues and all these other things that we don’t even think about. Like you said, it’s a really big issue that I don’t think enough people talk about.

Margaret: Oh my gosh, nobody talks. No conventional doc will ever say, “Do you have molds in your home?” I mean, almost never because my brother’s a physician and my parents had molds in their basement. I was like, “Oh my God, we gotta get rid of this asap.” I called mold people, they came, and they tested it. It was in all of their walls, but all the mold was taken out. My brother didn’t blink an eye when I said that there was mold in the basement. Hello, my parents are having cognitive issues. Yes, they’re older, but still, it also affects the brains of children and it’s rampant in schools. It’s crazy.

Even while they’re doing remediation, they’ll still have classes happening with all those chemicals and everything in the next room with the children there. You don’t know. Then, your kid has a runny nose all the time or is always sneezing and it’s just allergies. People always think it’s just allergies. It’s most likely mold.

Kat: Right. You’re allergic to mold. Yeah, I know. The problem is too, you can’t really heal from it until you’re out of the environment or it’s out of your environment.

Margaret: Exactly.

Kat: Yeah. You really have to deal with it and, of course, it’s expensive. It’s just a huge hassle, so it’s really a problem.

Margaret: It’s huge. An infrared sauna is amazing for mold, it’s hands down one of the best things.

Kat: Yep. I know there are some practitioners that call for a kill-by-sweat protocol.

Margaret: I do. Yes, the binders. Depending on the mold, it’s really important to get really good mold testing too if you think you’ve been affected. There’s a test on Quest labs called the C4a that gives you one number that tells you if you’ve been exposed to water-damaged buildings. I think that’s really great, but that won’t tell you which species of mold. There is a urine test that tests for mold, which I love. Then you kind of know which binder to use for which mold.

Kat: Okay, that’s great advice. Isn’t it true that something like 30% of people are very sensitive to mold? It’s a protein or some sort of antibody that you have that indicates that you’re much more susceptible to mold versus other people.

Margaret: Right. With some people, you can have a partner that is completely unaffected by it and then the other person is just suffering horribly from it. So you do have that difference, yeah, for sure.

Practical Steps To Help With Pain, Fatigue, Weight Gain, and More

Kat: That’s awesome. Well, I’d love to wrap up by talking about some practical steps our listeners can take if they’re experiencing any of these lupus symptoms or just pain, fatigue, hot flashes, weight gain, or any other issues that are related to the female body in general.

What are some of your most basic pieces of advice? I know we’ve talked about a few of them, but if you could just kind of wrap it up with a few more, that’d be amazing.

Margaret: Okay, so for people that have been diagnosed with lupus, I would say number one, find a functional medicine provider. I also give steps. We can talk about that after, but there are some steps that you can do when you first diagnose. Definitely find a functional medicine provider.

You want to eliminate high-inflammatory foods, gluten, and dairy. I would start there and even look at some of the toxins you may have in your home. Are you using Lysol every day? Are you cleaning with bleach? What are you cleaning your dishes with? Your laundry? I would eliminate some of those things. Trying to get rid of or decrease the amount of toxins that you’re exposed to on a daily basis will definitely help the burden that your body is going through at this moment. With lupus and the flares that people get, stress is a huge, huge component. I can’t talk about this enough. I think women in general, we’re such givers, so all we do is just give, give, give. We never really leave enough time for ourselves, for self-care, for rest, for relaxation, or for time with our friends because we’re always taking care of everybody else.

I think it’s super important, especially if you’re going through a major health crisis, to take time for yourself, practice some self-care, give yourself some downtime, and not feel guilty about it. I think that’s really just a huge reminder because we just tend to be the ones that will hold down the fort. We’ve got a job or a business and we’re just doing a million things, so try to decrease the amount of stress in your body, I think in general, for women. I mean, really look at things that you’re consuming and how you’re eating. I’m just going to tell you right now, I am gluten-free, 100%. All of my vegetables and the majority of my food, like 95, if not 97% of all my food is organic.

If you are someone that’s consuming butter or cheese and you really can’t get off it, or you’ve tried and you really can’t, then at least switch to organic. Try to choose grass-fed beef and organic chicken. There are just these little changes you can make that will definitely impact your health.

Kat: Yes, it’s amazing advice. Well, awesome, Margaret. Thank you so much for your time today. I’d love for you to share with our listeners where they can find out more about you, your socials, and your websites. Any information you give would be great.

Margaret: Sure. I love hanging out on Instagram. I am on there every day, and if you’re interested in the types of foods that I eat every day, I am on there showing you just how simple it is.

My Instagram is Margaret Romero. My website is margaretromero.com. Today, actually, I am hosting a masterclass. It’s a free masterclass for women with lupus, but I’ve also got a couple of things on Instagram as well. There’s a seven-day Lupus challenge that’s totally free that you can find on my Instagram bio.

Kat: I love that, awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today. Before we wrap up, I always like to ask our guests: What is your one best tip for living life organically?

Margaret: I would say, just being yourself and being as authentic as you can. It’s just so important. When I hosted my podcast for the first time, I was really sort of coming out of the closet with how spiritual I am rather than the professional medical provider. I think that just really fuels your soul. So whatever feeds your soul, do that.

Kat: I love that. Awesome, Margaret. Like I said, thank you so much for your time today. This was great information, and I love that you can see patients from all over. I’m sure some of our listeners will be reaching out after they hear this. I appreciate all you’re doing for women, for wellness, and just helping everyone live their best life. So thank you for all you do, and thank you for sharing with us today.

Margaret: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit.

Landon Eckles: So if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode.

Kat: We’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, and slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might want to hear more about.

Landon: All right, y’all. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to be organic.

Kat: Just a quick legal disclaimer, we are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness and nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you.

In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice Franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.

Be Organic Podcast – Season 3, Episode 3. Dr. Lauren and Dr. Dana Brindisi: HyperBaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT)

Thanks to Justin Beiber, Tim Tebow, and an increased number of athletes, hyperbaric chambers have been the talk of the health and wellness world recently. What are these chambers? What do they help with? They promote increased oxygen, sharpening the brain and providing more energy, and helping heal tissue and nerves.

Put under pressure in a hyperbaric chamber, your red blood cells can bind more oxygen then they would normally at regular room air. That helps tissue heal and repair faster/better! The brain utilizes all of the oxygen that we take in, so HBOT can help greatly with treating neurological conditions. HBOT also helps the tissue of the body get more oxygen, aiding in the healing process.

We sat down with Dr. Lauren and Dr. Dana Brindisi, Board Certified Chiropractic Neurologists sisters, to talk about this mysterious chamber, how it can help people, and more.

TIME STAMPS

4:09 What is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (jump to section)
8:12 How HBOT helps put more oxygen in your system (jump to section)
11:46 Who is HBOT for and what does it treat (jump to section)
16:50 HBOT benefits for DNA (jump to section)
20:57 Side effects of HBO chambers (jump to section)
27:46 The Brindisi sisters’ tip for living life organically (jump to section)

Transcription Below

Landon: Be Organic listeners. Hey guys, what is going on? This is Landon. So good to be chatting with you guys again. We actually have the pleasure of having Dr. Lauren Brindisi and her sister Dr. Dana Brindisi both on the show again. They were on our show last season, just brought some really great knowledge. I’m gonna give you guys their background again. But today we are gonna be talking a lot about the hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I’m a huge proponent of this. I use it every single week. It’s helped me in a lot of ways. I’m not gonna spoil the show, but this is something we’ve never talked about here on the Be Organic podcast. So I’m really, really excited to jump in. Let me give our guests their background just so you guys can hear just what they’ve done and all that they’ve accomplished. They’re very, very smart and I love to listen to them. The Brindisi sisters both found their love for helping others when they were younger, and this desire to help others only grew stronger in college. They both pursued a path in functional neurology and chiropractic neurology, and now work side by side at Carolina Functional Neurology Center right here in Charlotte. They’re both board-certified chiropractic neurologists, and Dr. Dana is also a certified functional medicine practitioner. Dr. Dana opened Carolina Functional Neurology Center in 2018 to provide the Carolinas with a cutting-edge approach to healthcare. A holistic treatment center that focuses on finding the root cause of your symptoms and provides you with the treatment and tools to live your most functional life. Throughout Dana’s career thus far, she’s had the opportunity to work with thousands of patients in a clinical setting, including myself, members of the U.S.A. Women’s Hockey Team, several NHL players and the U.S. Ski Jumping team. Now we have the utmost pleasure of having them both on the show today.

So I’m really excited for this episode. As I told you guys, I’m a huge proponent of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, or what we like to refer to as HBOT. I know that’s a fun word, HBOT. I do this every single week. So Dr. Lauren, Dr. Dana, thank you so much for coming on the show. We’re so excited to have you again.

Dr. Lauren: Yeah. Thank you so much for having us. We’re excited to be here. 

Landon: Awesome.

Dr. Dana: Yes. Thank you.

Landon: You guys are fantastic. I know that, but for our listeners who have not maybe heard our previous recording, or if they haven’t heard about you, just tell us about yourselves and just kind of your line of work. 

Dr. Lauren: Yeah. So Dr. Dana and I, we are both doctors of chiropractic, but our post-doctoral training is in clinical neuroscience and functional medicine. We both practice functional neurology. We have two locations. I am here in the Charlotte office and Dr. Dana is in the Raleigh office. We work with patients of a variety of types, but usually across the neurological spectrum I’m dealing and ranging from kids with developmental disorders to concussions, vestibular conditions, degenerative conditions, kind of all the way across the board. And we do active neurological rehab in our office. We have a variety of modalities that we use to actually activate and exercise a variety of brain regions for each individual patient, and we both do have hyperbaric oxygen chambers in both of our locations.

Landon: That’s awesome. Thank you for that. I’m really excited to talk about hyperbaric oxygen therapy. One, because I had really never heard about it until I came to you guys and I was really wanting some clarity, some mental clarity, a little bit more energy, some more stamina. And, you know, I just kind of felt like I was having maybe some brain fog if you will. I’ve been doing the hyperbaric oxygen therapy chamber for months now, and I can really, really see the difference. So let’s talk about that. Tell our listeners if they’ve never heard about it, what it is, and we’ll go from there.

What is Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

Dr. Dana: So some people might know about hyperbaric oxygen therapy, but they might not know that they know. A lot of people have heard of nitrogen toxicity from scuba diving, and so a lot of people know that when scuba divers come up and they have this problem they go into a chamber. That chamber is hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The difference between that and what we do in our office is our chambers are mild hyperbaric chambers. So the amount of pressure that you’re under is a lot less compared to a chamber that you would see in a hospital. Ours are filled with ambient air, and then we use supplemental oxygen, versus a chamber that you would see in the hospital where they fill it with one hundred percent oxygen. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a tube or a tank that you kind of go into. Ours, you can lay down in. They’re very comfortable. They are soft chambers, so it’s not a hard shell, and you get zipped up into the chamber. You actually have to be inside and then the chamber pressurizes. In the first few minutes of being in the chamber and during the therapy, you’re gonna feel that pressure change just as if you were to dive down into a deep end of a pool. Or if anybody has been scuba diving, you understand that you have to clear your ears and things like that. So you feel that pressure change a little bit in the beginning. And then for us, you lay down. Our sessions are anywhere from one to two hours typically, and you just get to hang out in there. Most of our patients are getting supplemental oxygen, so we’re basically pumping in one hundred percent O2 through an oxygen concentrator so patients can wear a mask. This is just allowing us to provide you guys with more oxygen than we could ever carry at regular atmospheric pressure, or without a mask. The therapy in general is really comfortable. Most of our patients go in, you know, some people work in there, some people nap in there, some people watch YouTube in there. It just kind of depends on what you want to do for that hour that you don’t have anybody else around, and you can just kind of hang out. Most people enjoy it. We have a lot of people that ask about claustrophobia and stuff because you are contained in this chamber. Really most of the time people do pretty well. It’s a lot bigger than it looks from the outside. If anyone’s ever had an MRI, if you could handle that, you could handle the hyperbaric chamber a hundred times over, so it’s really pretty easy. 

Landon: Yeah, no, absolutely. It’s funny, I was going for an hour and then I opted to do two hours, first to make sure I was good with it, and then just kind of, you know, I just feel like the more time I spend in there, the better I feel. Also, it helps me like you just said, it’s the only time in my entire life where I’m literally by myself because we have five kids and they sleep with me. They’re like literally always with me. So I’ve opted for two hours really just to escape them. But no, it’s been fantastic and just kind of like what you said, you go into this soft tube and it’s almost like because you’re pressurizing it, it kind of blows up like a bubble almost. It doesn’t get super big, but it does definitely expand. When you’re laying in there, you can raise your arm up and it doesn’t touch the ceiling, so you have a lot of room in there. I don’t get claustrophobic, but I can understand why someone might have that concern. After doing it, I really don’t think that it’s a big issue. You know, and it’s funny like you said, I’ve brought my laptop in there before. I’ve gotten work done in there before. It’s awesome. For me, it’s two hours of time that I just get to do really whatever I want uninterrupted, and also I’m healing in the process. Let’s talk a little bit about that. How does it work, and really how does it help? How does it help to have more oxygen in your system? 

How HBOT Puts More Oxygen in Your System

Dr. Lauren: Just like Dr. Dana said, that like where I talked about how the tube blows up and you get put under pressure. When you get put under pressure, that actually allows our red blood cells to bind more oxygen than we otherwise would be able to at regular room air. When that happens, that’s gonna help tissue heal and repair better. So in our case when we’re dealing with patients who are dealing with a variety of chronic conditions, neurological conditions, we know that the brain utilizes the most amount of oxygen that we take in. For all of us in general, we’re utilizing all of the oxygen that we take in. So when you’re trying to live your life and then you’re also trying to heal and repair, and that goes for patients that we see, that goes for everybody on a regular basis dealing with a variety of things that can cause oxidative stress, the chamber allows the opportunity to dissolve more oxygen into the tissue, and help it heal and repair faster. And then the other thing is there’s a whole other variety of benefits that we’ll kind of talk about as the podcast goes on. But the biggest thing is it’s allowing our tissue to get more oxygen, and we need adequate amounts of oxygen for any tissue in our body to heal and repair.

Landon: Yep. I totally agree. When I go in there, it’s almost like a de-stress thing. I go in there, and it’s not like almost instant, but I definitely feel it kind of throughout the week. I just feel less stressed, and it doesn’t mean that I have less stress in my life. I guess my body’s just more equipped to handle it, and I feel more clear, like more mentally clear. Does that make sense? 

Dr. Lauren: Yeah, I agree. I mean I enjoy going in the chamber when I have the opportunity. All of us deal with stress on a day-to-day basis, and that’s a huge cause for any of us to feel run down.

Landon: Yep.

Dr. Lauren: I feel like the chamber is a great way… I’m sure part of it is like you said, we can get in the chamber and you have a minute to yourself. A whole hour or two to do something just devoted to yourself to kind of get away from all the hustle and bustle. As Landon knows, the chamber in the Charlotte office, there are no windows, there’s nothing. You’re just in a room. You can turn the lights off, and you could be totally in the dark if you wanted to, so there’s that added benefit. I feel like when I get out of the chamber, I definitely have more energy. I sleep better, and I feel like my mental clarity, I just feel sharper. So it’s just a great tool. Even just a wellness tool for sure.

Landon: Yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s funny, we have a relationship with Tim Tebow. He’s our brand ambassador. I’ve actually talked to him about the hyperbaric chamber. He used to sleep in one every night. I know that Justin Bieber sleeps in his hyperbaric chamber at night.

Dr. Dana: Everybody mentions Bieber.

Landon: Yes, he kind of popularized this I guess. I’m hearing more and more that UFC fighters and different athletes are really spending a ton of time in the hyperbaric chamber. So I guess talk to us about the type of patients that you see, and how it could be helpful for them.

 

Who is HBOT For And What Does It Treat

Dr. Dana: Yeah, so there are a lot of different benefits. A lot of times we talk solely about the extra oxygen that you’re getting, and because it’s getting dissolved into your tissue and into the plasma of your blood you can actually circulate way more oxygen. That is usually exponentially more helpful for any type of condition, any type of healing, any type of wellness. Because Landon I’m sure, as you guys know, I’ve probably talked to a lot of people about mitochondrial dysfunction. There’s a lot of research being done, and it’s kind of looking like that’s the baseline for disease, and aging, and all of that stuff. But the hyperbaric chamber has a lot of benefits in addition to providing more oxygen. Actually the act of getting into the chamber and going out of pressure, and getting out, is causing something called neovasculation where you’re actually producing new capillaries. You’re building new blood vessels as you go in and out of pressure. You’re increasing the size and density of your mitochondria. For those of you that don’t know, the mitochondria is the powerhouse of your cell. It’s what’s creating energy at a cellular level for us to just be how we are right now. But then also we need excess energy if we want to heal from anything. It can heal nerves, it can heal wounds. It actually migrates stem cells, which is a huge area of research now. It can have anti-inflammatory properties, it can have antibacterial properties. So when we talk about who goes into the chamber, we’re putting people in there for neurological conditions, but we also see people with autoimmune conditions and different toxicities. Whether they have gut issues or mold toxicity, or Lyme disease, or neurodegenerative conditions. There are other practices. We don’t really do this in ours, but people use hyperbaric oxygen therapy for cancer and all of that stuff. Because the benefit is systemic and it affects your whole body, and in addition to the oxygen you get all of these other things happening at a cellular level. It is just a wonderful therapy. We can use it for so many different conditions. But also you gotta make sure you’re going to somebody that understands because not every person with every condition should be going into the chamber.

Landon: Right.

Dr. Dana: Those treatment plans and everything look different for everybody.

Landon: Yeah, absolutely. Now you guys are much smarter than me, but correct me if I’m wrong. If your mitochondria isn’t operating to its fullest potential, you really can’t heal, right? Because that’s really what’s allowing ourselves to regenerate and to heal. Is that a correct statement?

Dr. Dana: It’s gonna be difficult.

Landon: Yeah, exactly. You know, if we’re able to pump more oxygen into the system, help our mitochondria, then obviously healing can happen, right?

Dr. Dana: Mm-hmm. Your mitochondria does a lot of different things, and there are a lot of little nitty gritty pathways that are in there. When you go into the hyperbaric chamber, the benefit that you’re having is on what’s called your electron transport chain, where we’re actually dumping more oxygen at the end of that cycle so that you can produce more energy. There are a lot of other therapies that we use or supplements. For example, CoQ10 is a supplement that actually works on pathways in your mitochondria. Or red light actually works on pathways in your mitochondria. So there are a lot of different things that you can utilize to do that. Combining those things are also really good for people. There’s a lot of research being done on mitochondrial health and mitochondrial dysfunction, and kind of what that means for us as human beings in disease and in health.

HBOT Benefits for DNA

Landon: Yeah, absolutely. Any other reasons why someone would use the HBOT or any other conditions maybe that we haven’t discussed yet that they would use it for? 

Dr. Dana: Lauren, you wanna take that one?

Dr. Lauren: Sure. I mean, Dr. Dana touched on a bunch of them. I’m not sure if I have anything to add. They’re used for a variety of reasons. Anywhere from in the hospital for wound healing, diabetic neuropathies, burn victims. Now kind of what we’re seeing and what we’re doing with some of these soft chambers is they’re being utilized for a whole variety of conditions. Because it’s globally affecting the body, right? I think we’re gonna see more and more as continued research comes out with the chamber and these added benefits on a cellular level. You kind of look at it a little more globally in terms of how is that helping any type of tissue heal and repair. Then the other thing that I don’t think we’ve touched on yet is what they’ve been looking at in terms of the DNA, and what we’re dealing with the benefits of the chamber. For actually elongating a part of our DNA called telomeres, which we understand the telomeres shorten as we age. They’re actually showing that the benefit of the chamber in terms of actually elongating telomeres. I think that’s a huge aspect of research right now that’s really being pioneered in terms of understanding anti-aging, and how we can actually do things to reverse that and talking about, “Okay, we have our biological age, but what is our age actually in terms of the health of our DNA and our tissue?” That’s a totally different way to look at this versus just very condition-specific. I think there are benefits to the chamber that are gonna be far more reaching for everybody in a sense.

Dr. Dana: I think to see more people, Landon, that are using it like you are for wellness. Because I mean you guys started Clean Juice because you wanted people to be healthy, right? A lot of things that we do in healthcare in general are from a therapeutic perspective because we’ve already gotten ourselves into a situation that we need to kind of crawl out of. Whereas I think things like nutrition and hyperbaric oxygen and all of these different things that we have to offer can be super beneficial for people who don’t have any sort of issue, but they want to stay healthy. They want to maybe prevent themselves from developing a disease, or aging more gracefully, or just better in general. I think we’re gonna find that out with the research. I think just wellness, in general, would be a great benefit for a lot of people. If we could kind of spread the word. 

Landon: Yeah, no, I mean that’s like you said. That’s exactly what I’ve enjoyed about it. I don’t have a specific condition. I didn’t suffer from any kind of brain trauma or concussion or anything like that. I mean, maybe I did when I was younger. Who knows? I think that for me it’s definitely been more about the health and wellness side of it. I just feel better. I want to operate at my highest level, right? At the level that God wants me to operate at. If I’m not doing all the things that I can do to get there, then I feel like I’m kind of cheating myself. Things like making sure my diet’s on point and exercising, getting the right amount of sun, drinking the right amount of water, adding in the hyperbaric chamber, and some of these other therapies I have found have really, really helped. I’m in my late thirties, but I feel like I’m probably in the best, I wouldn’t even say shape, but just the best overall kind of health and wellness point I’ve ever been at in my life, you know? And I’m getting older. I’m approaching 40 and I feel better than I ever have. I think it’s for some of these reasons.

Dr. Dana: Your telomere age is probably 22. 

Landon: Yeah, exactly. Correct me if I’m wrong, and you guys might not know this story, but doesn’t Terrell Owens sleep in one every night just for that specific purpose? Have you guys heard that? He was doing this back when he was playing in the NFL, and I think he continues to do it. If you look at Terrell Owens, I mean, gosh, he’s probably in his mid-forties to, who knows? I think he’s maybe even 50, but he looks like he’s 30 years old. I mean, just absolutely amazing physical health. I think that the hyperbaric chamber is one of the reasons why.

Dr. Dana: That very well could be. I haven’t heard for sure, but I do know that there are a ton of, as we mentioned, celebrities and high-level athletes that use these regularly for I’m sure a whole host of benefits. 

Side Effects of HBO Chambers

Landon: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s talk about side effects or somebody who shouldn’t use it. Anything like that, that our listeners could learn about.

Dr. Dana: Yeah, so again with our chambers because they’re mild hyperbaric, the side effects are pretty minimal. When we talk about more of a hard chamber that you would go into in a hospital setting, again that’s under a lot more pressure with one hundred percent oxygen, things become a little bit trickier in that regard. We do get concerned about central nervous system oxygen toxicity, or pulmonary toxicity. And then we talked about nitrogen toxicity where you really see that from scuba diving, and the chamber is actually helping with that. When we talk about mild hyperbaric, our chambers go up to 1.3 atmospheric pressure, which is the equivalent of diving down anywhere from 10 to 12 feet underwater, give or take. Really with that pressure change, the biggest side effect that we are concerned about is something called barotrauma, and mostly odic trauma. So we’re looking at trauma to the vasculature in the ear. That sounds really scary, but it’s kind of the equivalent to if you’ve ever broken a blood vessel in your eye, or if you know somebody where it looks funky, but really it’s a little bit irritating and that’s kind of it. It will naturally heal. We’re not under enough pressure really at 1.3 atmospheres to worry about any sort of rupture of the eardrum or things like that, that we would be concerned about. If you’re scuba diving at a deep level or you are going into a hard chamber that is at a higher atmosphere of pressure, those are the biggest things that we look out for. We combat that by our staff putting people into the chamber and we’re going very, very slow. We’re monitoring you guys the entire time. We give you walkie-talkies so you have communication with us. Really the first indication that you might have an issue is a little bit of pain in your ear. And then we’re dialing that back so we’re not pressurizing the system too quickly and we’re allowing you a moment to clear your ears, or we’re just kind of holding you at an atmospheric pressure and allowing your body to spontaneously clear that before we bring you up even further. Which, I don’t know if you’ve experienced any sort of difficulty clearing your ears. Some people do, some people don’t, and we don’t really know until you get in. 

Landon: Yeah. I have never experienced any difficulty with it. I mean, you definitely notice it. So I’ll give the listeners my experience in doing it when I go in. So I go in, they zip it up, and they start to pressurize it. It’s a pretty slow process. It’s not like it’s pressurized immediately, and that’s intentional, right? You want your body and your ears, and you know, everything you get kind of used to the pressure going up. They’re with you kind of the whole time making sure as the pressure goes up that you’re able to clear your ears. If you guys have ever been on an airplane, it’s kind of the same thing. Sometimes you gotta kind of either hold your nose and blow it just to clear that pressure from your ears or chew some gum. I’ve heard that helps too. My ears, because I’ve done it so many times now, I can do it without having really to do anything. I think because my body’s kind of used to it at this point. But it’s just like a plane. Going up in a plane and coming down. It’s the same kind of feeling. Or if you’ve ever swam kind of deep at the deep end of a pool, it’s the same deal, like where you have to clear your ears. I mean, that’s basically it. So once you’re pressurized in there, it feels like you’re just kind of literally sitting in there hanging out, working, doing whatever. Then on the way down, they come back in and they let the pressure release. And again, it’s a slower process just to make sure everything’s safe and that you come down okay. You kind of clear your ears again. And so that’s basically it. It’s pretty easy. You know, I was maybe a little intimidated the first time I did it just because I’d never done it before. I’ve actually been scuba diving. I’ve been on airplanes, so I kind of knew what to expect. But I think sometimes if you’ve never done anything before you can be a little intimidated, but once you do it the first time, it’s like, “Oh this is easy. I’ve done this hundreds of times in my life.”

Dr. Dana: Yeah, and the chambers, like you said, there are a lot of people that have these and they put them in their house. So these mild chambers, these soft chambers are really meant for at-home use. There are dual valves on them, so technically you could get yourself in and out of it. We don’t do that at the office. We take care of that for you guys as our patients. It’s a relatively simple process. To answer the second half of your question about people who maybe shouldn’t go into the chamber. There are some contraindications. We look at, under pressure we can kind of up-regulate some medications and we’re really looking at some very specific medications for cancers and things like that. Like I said, we don’t really treat those patients in our office necessarily, but if you’ve ever been on the medication or whatever, we pay attention to that. Women in their first trimester of pregnancy should not go into the chamber, but actually, they’ve shown some really great benefits for pregnancy and fetal development post-first trimester. Then there are some vascular conditions and things like that either in your health history or currently that we would look at before we would allow you to go into the chamber. So there are a few, but for the most part these mild chambers are really, really safe. Like we talked about, people enjoy going in them, take a nap, do your work, do some meditation. Whatever works for you. So we love it.

Landon: I love it too. I’ve been traveling a little bit here lately and I haven’t been in there in a couple weeks and I’m just listening to this podcast, like listening to you guys talk about, and I’m like I gotta get in there right now. I gotta get back in there. I’ve really loved it, and it’s funny, we’re always looking for great health and wellness tips here. Different things to just talk about how we can help people improve their lives. For me, I love talking about things that I love and that I do, and so to have you guys on here and to be talking about this is great because I really believe in it. I can really attest to how much it’s helped me optimize how I think I want to live. So I appreciate it and it’s been awesome to have you guys back on the show.

Dr. Lauren: Yeah, thank you so much for having us. It’s great to talk about these things. We’re just as passionate and we’re so thankful for you guys and everything you’re doing with Clean Juice to provide healthy options for people out there. So thank you. 

Landon: You’re welcome. Our sign-off question is, can you tell our listeners how you say you live your lives in the best way organically? I’d love to just kind of hear your perspective on that. You can take it a lot of different ways, but we’d love to ask that question here on the Be Organic Podcast.

The Brindisi Sisters’ Tips For Living Life Organically

Dr. Lauren: Me? 

Dr. Dana: Yeah. Mm-hmm. You go first. 

Dr. Lauren: Okay, I would say I think the biggest thing is really learning to listen to yourself. Listen to your body. Learn these types of things to understand what are things you can do on a regular basis to optimize your function and live your best life. I think that ultimately starts with listening to yourself and learning what you need to do and do what’s right for you.

Landon: That’s good. 

Dr. Dana: I love that. Mine was gonna be — you guys can’t see my pin right now — but mine was gonna be, “be kind to yourself”. Sometimes we’re not as good to ourselves as we are to everybody else, and especially that little voice inside your head. I feel like when you’re trying to live an organic or healthy lifestyle, or make some changes or crawl out of a hole of dealing with some sort of health issue, or otherwise, sometimes we can be really negative. I think that in order to live as organically as possible, you really gotta be kinder to yourself. And my pin says, “be kind to your mind.”

Landon: I love it. It makes a ton of sense. I think sometimes, especially as parents, and folks who are employed and have jobs, we can end up putting so many people in front of us, right? But then if we’re running ourselves down, if we’re not optimized, if we’re not really running at our full capacity, then we’re actually kind of short-changing the people who are around us. I know that if I’m tired and cranky and burned out and working too much, I’m not the best dad I can be. I’m not the best leader that I can be. So if I don’t take that time to invest in myself, I’m actually cheating the people around me. It’s kind of the opposite of how we think. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve gotta, you know, do everything for my kids.” Of course, kids take up a lot of our time and they take up a lot of energy, but if we’re not reinvesting back into us, then what are we doing?

Dr. Lauren: Exactly. Can’t drink from an empty glass.

Landon: That’s very well said. Well, listen I know we’ve got a lot of listeners right here in Charlotte. We’ve got a lot of listeners in Raleigh. Tell us where our listeners can find you guys either socially, or if they want to come check you out. If they want to even test out the hyperbaric chamber, tell us how we can get in touch with you.

Dr. Dana: Yeah, absolutely. Our website is carolinafnc.com. We have a lot of information out there about what we do, and we’ve got a pretty decent social media platform, so you can find us on Instagram. You can find us on Apple Podcasts. You can find us on Facebook, you can find us on YouTube. We put out a lot of content to build awareness for neurological conditions and for other options for people out there who maybe want to try something different than medication, or they don’t even want to try the medication. All of those platforms you can find us at Carolina Functional Neurology. We hope that we can help as many people as possible.

Landon: Awesome. I just looked up your handle on Instagram and it’s @carolina_functional_neurology. Good stuff on here. Some great content. I love how you guys do this. So listeners, go check ’em out. If you’re here in Charlotte, give their office a call. Get in that hyperbaric chamber. I’m telling you, it’s gonna be worth it. Pretty cost effective and I absolutely love it. Thank you guys so much for coming on the show to talk about this. I think it’s been an awesome show and it’s something, again, we’ve never talked about and we love bringing these things to our listeners. So we couldn’t have done it without you guys.

Dr. Dana and Dr. Lauren: Thanks, Landon!

Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit. 

Landon: So if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast to never miss an episode.

Kat: And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might want to hear more about.

Landon: All right, y’all. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to Be Organic.

Kat: Just a quick legal disclaimer, we are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you. In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.

Shift your mindset, shift your life. On this episode we sit down with Dr. Patricia Boulogne to make sense of complex and challenging situations, whether it’s mind, body, or soul, by finding a simpler and better way that gets you unstuck, productive, faster, and measurable results.

Dr. Patricia Boulogne is a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner, Coach, Chiropractor, Speaker, and Author. She has helped thousands over the last 35+ years stop adapting their lifestyle to pain, and chronic problems by focusing on the whole person.

Listen for actionable tips about sickness, managing symptoms, and getting to the root of your problems!

TIME STAMPS
3:50 What “Einstein’s Time” is (jump to section)
11:11 Focus on setting your intentions for the day to set your mindset & handle situations better (jump to section)
11:50 Daily affirmations & how to process situations (jump to section)
12:39 Tools to use when faced with unforeseen circumstances throughout the day (jump to section)
16:02 Journaling / writing to get things off your chest (jump to section)
20:22 Three reasons why people get sick (jump to section)
29:32 The Grim Reaper Syndrome – are you sick and don’t know it? (jump to section)
34:35 The power of Chiropractic care on sickness (jump to section)
42:04 Lifestyle solutions anyone can do to improve their health immediately (jump to section)

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Transcription Below

 

Kat Eckles: Welcome back, Be Organic listeners. This is Kat Eckles. We are so excited to have you today. I am solo on this episode – solo host, I guess I should say. My husband is not here today, but we are going to fill in for him with an amazing guest. We are so excited to have her. We are gonna be talking about shifting your mindset and shifting your life.

We are so excited to have Dr. Patricia Boulogne. Her motto is, “Fix your health and fix your life.” Dr. Pat makes sense of complex and challenging situations, whether it’s mind, body, or soul, by finding a simpler and better way that gets you unstuck and productive with faster and measurable results. Dr. Patricia is a certified functional medicine practitioner, coach, chiropractor, speaker, and author.

She has helped thousands over the last 35 years to stop adapting their lifestyle to pain and chronic problems by focusing on the whole person. Her clients and patients find out the why and the cause of the problem and identify the starting point of their health journey. Dr. Boulogne is the founder and principal of ask Dr. Pat Health Team Network, a company dedicated to skyrocketing your health, lifestyle, and mindset with strategies and programs that make sense and help you age gracefully, think, move, and feel better and live longer and happier. That is so amazing. And Dr. Pat, we are so excited to have you today.

Dr. Patricia Boulogne: Thank you very much. We’re talking about one of my favorite topics today because, it’s just something that inspires me, and I’m on fire about it. So I’m gonna let you lead into exactly where you’d like this to go, but thank you for the invite.

Kat: Yes, we’re so excited. This is something I love talking about too. I can’t stress it enough, when it comes to health, how important this is and how important your mind and your thoughts and your intentions are. Not just for the outcome of tangible things in your life, but your health and your body and your cells and things that are going on. So I just appreciate that you’ve put so much thought in your practice to this theory and you find it as important as I do.

Dr. Pat: Well, one of the first things, when I had my office and I saw patients in brick and mortar, one of the things I noticed about patients was their concept of “I’m sick.” They went and bought whatever they had going on at Kmart’s Blue Light Special. For them to have that shift, that it doesn’t have to be that way and that pain’s not a lifestyle – because mostly people see chiropractors as for pain.

The biggest thing that I help my patients do is get out of that mindset and look at what their whole life and what their health really look like: why structures function, your posture’s function, and why that’s so important for how your organ systems work in relationship to certain things that we do to help support that, like diet and nutrition and exercise and sleep. That positive mental mindset is like the icing on the cake in how you start your day and that type of thing, but it made a big difference.

Most of my practice was maintenance. Even after 10 years, I still had people with pain problems come in, but I had a significant nutritional practice at that point in time, which is the start to functional medicine. That’s kind of how I got there for doing that aspect of it.

Einstein’s Time

Kat: I love that. One thing you talk about is Einstein’s Time, and I would love to kind of hear your background on that theory and, and why you call it that.

Dr. Pat: Well, I love Einstein’s Time because people know – like if they’re at a craps table and they’re throwing dice and throw seven, eleven, seven – it’s just like they’re in their groove. It might not be holistically the best groove for playing craps and that sort of thing, but just being in something where you’re in your groove. Like if your groove is cooking, you know that when you cook and when you’re making a meal, you know when you’re making it that it’s going to turn out great.

Our thoughts are so important. In the book Water for Chocolate, they talk about this woman who was promised to be married, and she fell in love with this guy, but the guy was promised to be married to her sister. And in the book, they talk about all her sad emotions when she had to make dinner for everybody, when they were going to announce that engagement.

And she cried the whole time while she was making the dinner, and all her sadness went into the food. By the end of the time that people ate that meal, they were crying. It shows that – because she had to give up the love of her life to her sister– it shows why our intention is so important.

We hit the ground running, and we wake up; our mindset is set in tune to everything that we do. If we’re in Einstein’s time, then things run smoothly. When we start running uphill, they don’t, or it’s more of a struggle. an example in a book that I read called The Big Leap, when he talks about Einstein’s Time, he talks about this guy who lost his wife.

His daughter was at school and called him up about a month or so later. He had to get this article out, and she said, “Dad, I gotta talk to you,” and he said, “Sure, honey, go ahead.” She said, “No, I’m gonna come home. I need to talk to you face to face.” She said, “I should be there in a few hours.”

So he looked at the clock, and he hung up and went back to writing his article, but he couldn’t get his mind off his daughter coming home: “Oh my God, what does she want? Is she okay? Is she sick? Is she gonna die?” You know? And then he looks at the clock: “Oh God, now she’s late,” and it interfered with his productivity and getting the most out of his day and getting the most out of his precious moments in his life while he is living his life and his health.

So eventually his daughter comes in the house and she goes, “Oh my God.” He goes, “Where have you been? I’ve been so worried about you.” And she goes, “Well, I had a little bit of a delay because I stopped because I was hungry. So I ate, and then you always tell me not to drive and talk on the telephone the same time, so I had a telephone call that I had to talk to somebody. And then I had to buy gasoline.” So she goes, “That puts me here now.”

And he goes, “Oh, I’m so relieved. Are you okay? What’s going on? Tell me what’s going on.” He was so worried his whole day, and he let worry occupy that moment. The moral of story is she said to him, “I just wanna drop out of school. I don’t like the curriculum I’m in. I’ve gotta figure out what I wanna do. I’m hating what I’m doing. And I just wanted to get the OK from you that I could drop out of school.”

And he sat down, and he goes, “Sure, drop out! You’re okay. That’s all that’s important.” And then he went and he wrote his article that he needed to get done in the shortest period of time.

So when he got in his groove, in his vibe, and he went back to doing what he needed to get done, he had no distraction around him. He was able to complete that task stellarly. A lot of us get distracted throughout the day, and so a lot of times –women multitask a lot– and a lot of people go, “I can’t exercise, and I can’t journal. By the time I end up eating breakfast, multitasking, and da, da, da, da, and journaling, I’m already at noon time, and then I’m tired.” And they go, “How can I do that, Dr. Pat? How can I get those things in and still be productive and get a lot outta my day?”

I know women are so great at multitasking. And I said, “Well, what you do is, you just have to be committed to being up and out the door at least 45 minutes earlier than what you’re doing right now.” And I said, “And you start your walk by focusing on your breathing, and you’re gonna walk for that 45 minutes.” So you focus on your breathing, and that’s a specific technique I teach to get the most out of that. And then the next three to five minutes, you focus on what you’re grateful for, and you just name them off. You don’t have to write them down or record them or anything.

Then we’re up to 10 minutes now. so in the next 20 – or if you have a half hour, you can space this out accordingly – you just focus on exercising. You just pay attention to what you’re doing, what your posture is. And you’re exercising for the sake of exercising: walking, whatever your exercise is, and then after that, you can start saying, “Okay, so what are the top three things I need to get done today for me?”

You can record them into your telephone because everyone has a telephone with them, usually, just in case, right? So then you have the top three things, and then you have the three things that you can do that you need to do for your business, or for your family – you know, business is a broad term there.

And then you have three things that you have to get done in the week. It’s simple; you record them, and they’re done. And then what you can do is either talk that out or just think it, and then record it. So you have it and you don’t have to worry about, “What did I say? Those are nine things. I don’t know if I’ll remember them all.”

Lastly, you journal. You can dictate your journal. So in that 45 minutes, you can get a lot done: jump in the shower, get dressed, go to work, then get into your day, and you’ll have that done. If you get into the ritual of that, which is practice, practice, practice, and takes longer than there’s a 21/90 day rule for making behaviors a specific habit.

We can talk about that in a second, but if you do something like that to make it a habit, then you have that down to a science, so it’s just part of your routine. Having that in your routine, like getting up and having 16 ounces of water, you know, while you’re in the front part of that walk, and making sure that you’re hydrated, because you need hydration for every pillar and aspect of your health.

Focus on Setting Your Intentions

Kat: That’s so good. What I kind of imagine, when you tell that story about the dad that got so preoccupied with the daughter, is like, if you do some of these things that you mentioned, really focusing on setting your day and setting your intentions for the day and exercising the muscle of your brain and your mindset, when those situations come you’re able to handle them differently. We’re all gonna be met with those things where there’s a thing maybe in the back of our mind, and someone wants to talk to us, and we don’t know what it’s about or whatever it is, but once we’ve done the intentions to make ourselves stronger every day, we can handle those situations better.

Daily Affirmations & How to Process Situations

Dr. Pat: Yes. You can do affirmations on that walk after your three days as a part of that. You can say what your affirmations are for that day. You could easily say, “Nobody can disturb by peace of mind.” So when things come up, you have to ask yourself, “Okay, so what’s really going on here? What do I have to do first? What’s my most important task or what’s my important thing to do?”

And it’s like, “What do they want?” or if you start ruminating, those thoughts can undo any good that you’ve done on your walk, being in focus. So affirmations would be a good,portion of that, or having an accountability buddy that you can walk with, or that you can pass, and share those. “Here’s my goals for the day,” and then check in later: “I did them!” just celebrating those short successes – and long successes too, because those short successes add up.

Tools to Use When Faced With Unforeseen Circumstances

Kat: Absolutely. And what are some of the tools that you use when you’re faced with those unforeseen circumstances throughout your day?

Dr. Pat: Well, I have a very specific time when I look at, for instance, LinkedIn messaging. I schedule things in my calendar, I don’t answer my telephone, especially if I don’t know a number. If I look at it, I don’t know a number, and I’m expecting somebody to call me from a particular area code, I’m going, “Well, maybe I don’t have their number in my telephone.” Then I might pick up and answer it, and if it’s not who I’m expecting to talk to, then I’m off the telephone, literally within 20 seconds.

But I have an agenda that I stick to and where I focus on. So I don’t do emails, for instance, until the end of the day, because emails can be so easy that next thing you know – you open something and go, “Wow, that looks really interesting,” and the next thing you know, it’s an hour.

My most productive moments are usually in the morning. I set it up for myself to be an hour and a half that I just focus directly on what I need to do. If I’m recording and if I have the energy, I will let that run into a second hour and a half, so I’ll put three three-hour blocks with a break in the middle part of it. Sometimes in that break in the middle part of it, I’ll just go out and I’ll walk for 10 minutes, just take a walk and not think about stuff, don’t bring my telephone, just walk and then come back.

Another thing that helps me reframe that when stuff happens – what is it, “Life is what happens to you while you’re making other plans?” – and I have to tend to something, then I’ll just deal with it. Do it, get it over with. I teach the same thing for somebody who can’t sleep at night.

If they’re ruminating on a thought and they can’t get it out of their head, like, “I should have said this,” or “I should have said that,” it’s like, sit up in bed, turn the light on – or don’t turn the light on – identify what it is, and just ask yourself, “Is there anything I can do about that right now?”

If there is, get up and do it. If there’s not, then write out keywords or write out your list of what’s going on in your brain, put it next to your bed, and bless it for your highest good. It will be there tomorrow. It’ll be waiting for you. Then give yourself permission to go back to sleep.

Kat: I love that.

Dr. Pat: Because a lot of times we’re thinking about how you push yourself, and sometimes we push ourselves past our limits without honoring our need to repair, restore, and revitalize so that we can jump in and be vibrant, and we can be healthy, and we can be strong, and we can be happy.

Journaling

Kat: I love that. There’s something to be said for writing down your emotions. I find that to be very therapeutic for me. You talk about journaling, but sometimes even if I’m angry at someone, or if I’m having some sort of extreme emotion towards someone, I’ll sit and I’ll write them a letter knowing that I’m not ever really gonna give it to them, but it’s almost like you said, blessing it, getting it off your spirit onto something else and then being able to move on. I find that to be a really great tool.

Dr. Pat: It is a great tool and I have taught women – women, from what I’ve seen, have a tendency to write those letters more than men do – so when women are in relationships and there are issues with their spouse, their parent, or whatever, I tell them to write the whole thing out and then tell me how many pages it is.Then I ask them to tell me, “Okay, so I need you to take that five page letter or that three page letter and make it into one page to one page and a half max between now and our next session that we talk.” What it does is help them funnel down those thoughts and what’s really going on underneath the surface, that is wearing and tearing at their heart and their energy and their time and their space.

Sometimes they send them, but I said, “If you want somebody to read something, you have to say something nice. Say something nice. Say something nice. And then pivot and say, ‘The reason why I’m writing this to you is because…’” You have to be really crystal clear, and if you do that, then they’re already feeling good because of the first three sentences, and you’re speaking to them in a way that people learn, because some people learn either aurally or by feeling or by visual. I’m much more of a visual and feeling type person. My first training is as a chiropractor, so I have a lot of training that’s visual, and my last learning style is auditory.

So if I’m learning a language, I have to see it, talk and feel it, put the stickers all over my house, that kind of thing. I learned from my own stuff that I did when I would write out how I felt and I would journal that, I would sit there and ask myself, “Would I read this?” and the answer usually was no. So then – to what you said about writing your emotions – sometimes I would take that and I would just throw it in the fireplace and burn it.

Kat: Right. It’s more for you. It’s more so you can get it off your, chest. It’s funny; I have teenage girls and we see it on TikTok all the time and laugh and it’s like, “Girl, you’re writing him those paragraphs and those letters and he’s not reading it,” especially when they’ve left the relationship, but it’s just therapeutic for the person going through it, to be able to probably identify with their own feelings. Sometimes it’s just the process of acknowledging to yourself and putting words to what you’re feeling.

Dr. Pat: Yep, and then you can move on. My mentor’s wife, who was also a mentor to me too, always said to me, as far as relationships go, you don’t have to do anything. If someone’s gonna hang themselves, they’ll do it pretty quick. Mm yep. Just be you, be happy, be strong. Just be who you are and step into your future.

Kat: Well, and there’s something when you’re operating from that authenticity and from that positivity – you can use the new age words, vibrating at that… whatever it is – but when you’re putting that out, you’re going to attract that, and other people that are like-minded and operating like that are gonna be drawn to you. So it’s a win-win, really.

Dr. Pat: Yeah, my mentor – the male part of it – used to say to me, “A red flag is a red flag is a red flag. And he goes, “What color is a red flag?” I said, “Red.” And I go, “Got it. Got it. Got it.” Although I didn’t listen to him all the time, but… got it.

Kat: That’s funny.

Dr. Pat: But that is good.

3 Reasons Why People Get Sick

Kat: Well, let’s pivot here and let’s talk about why people get sick. I know you talk about three reasons that you believe why people get sick or the three Ts. Could you explain those to us?

Dr. Pat: I can! Actually, we just talked about the third one, which is thoughts, on some level, but the first one is trauma. The second one’s toxins. And the third one is thoughts. So trauma would include from nine out of ten births have some type of cervical damage in the neck from the birthing process. So that’s why you want to have those biomechanics of a, even a newborn checked out by a chiropractor who does a lot of infant and natal type care in their offices. There are specific chiropractors who specialize in that. Having those segments in alignment because structures function, that’s that fifth pillar of health that I always talk about. Also, if you don’t take care of it, then you start the body sitting up from birth, starting to have inflammation in the body, and you don’t want inflammation, because inflammation isn’t something that happens one day and then gone. It stays there and it accumulates over a period of time, and so when it accumulates over a period of time, it will try to settle into your weakest organ system.

So a lot of people, their weakest or system is their gut, which leads us into toxins. Toxins include any everything from the air that you breathe, the water you drink, to the food that you eat, the cosmetics that you use, whatever you put on your body, what you use in your garden, and what you use in your house for cleaning.

On that note, eating very high quality food and eating very clean food is important. Knowing what ingredients are in your cleaning supplies is important because a lot of them are carcinogenic. Glade air fresheners that you plug into the wall have been linked to some types of cancer. Why they still sell them, I don’t know. So there’s the air that you breathe, your sheets that you use in the dryer. Those things that – you don’t want those in your house if you really want to be healthy, if you want to take control of your environment, because how your genes express themselves is how they’re expressing themselves in a given moment to the environment.

So if those things keep on accumulating, it’s important. We all know that what you put in your mouth is supposed to nurture you and nourish you so that you can make it through even your longest day, and a lot of times, people are so nutrition deprived, or they have such poor combinations of food, or their food looks like food, but the list of chemicals and list of ingredients in it is really toxic, like a lot of things that have sugar and corn syrup in them.

On that note, we can’t do too much about the outside air, but we can do something about our inside air. So having a good air cleaner in your house would be an ideal thing to have, especially if you live in the inner city. If you’re living in the city or inner city, or people who are very sensitive in the country to even pollens, that type of thing.

And then the garden thing, it’s just like someone just posted – I was so upset. Someone just posted my dog breed, and one of the reasons we were supposed to do this before I had to cancel – my dog passed away from old age. But someone did a post on my breed of dog, and this dog was like three years old and had lymphoma. And lymphoma – whatever dogs get, humans get also – a lot of lymphomas, when I first hear lymphoma, I’m always going, “What’s their heavy metal toxicity? What was the exposure to glycophosates like Roundup?” And other insecticides, herbicides, that type of thing, fertilizers. We don’t realize how much our environment affects our ultimate outcome.

Then your cosmetics – if you can’t eat your cosmetics, you should not put them on your skin. Your skin absorbs 65% of whatever you put on. Reading those labels and taking a look at what it is before you use it, then you are making an educated the choice about whether or not you’re gonna use something that’s not so good for you. Even in supplements and vitamins – there’s a lot of supplements and vitamins and drugs that have binding portions in those, and those things can be quite toxic and quite harmful.

It’s like if you take a steroid one time – no big deal. But if you look at the different types of steroid, there’s some steroids that have a cumulative effect that leads more towards chronic illness and disease. So that toxin part is a big, huge part.

It’s like, – you know, do you drink …. I don’t know what part of the world you’re in. You’re in North Carolina, right?

Kat: Yes.

Dr. Pat: So you might call it soda, but up north in Michigan, where I grew up at, we called soda “pop,” and you’re looking how much – in a typical can of Coca-Cola, I think there’s 11 or 20 teaspoons of sugar in it. The diet ones, they have aspartame or some other type of sweetener, and people who are losing weight and using sweetener to lose weight… it is not the thing to do. They actually have found that those people are gaining weight and they struggle a lot more than people just using natural, normal things.

When people juice, I always tell them like to use more vegetables than fruit. In fact, I personally don’t like mixing fruits and vegetables together too much. I pick and choose on what side of the spectrum a fruit is. If it’s very acid, if it’s sweet, I food combine those together when I’m making something specific, if I’m gonna be juicing or something like that.

The big deal about thoughts – it’s unfortunate, but if we get stuck in our thoughts, then we don’t get a handle on it. If we’re worrying too much, or if we have anxiety or we’re depressed, you gotta go back to the gut, number one, because I now know that the gut and the brain connection on those types of mental wellness issues are directly connected, but then it undoes any good that you do.

If you figure out how, like “I’m gonna get structurally sound and see my chiropractor and I’m going to exercise and I’m going to get toxins out of my life!” but if you can’t get a handle on your thoughts, it undoes at least up to seven times the whatever you did to correct those other two issues.

So when you’re looking at “Why do people get sick?” They get sick because of traumas and inflammation that never gets handled. And they have a new norm – they get sick because of toxins from all those things that I mentioned that was a whole litany. And they get in their thoughts, asking, “is there anything I can do about this?” or “What did I learn from this?”

That’s a good question. Something happens: “What did I learn from this?” If you know what you learn, if you can identify what you learned from it, then you can say, “I’m not going to do that again. I’m gonna do the best I can do not to do that again. What can I do to set it up do I don’t walk that same path again?”

Kat: Right.

Dr. Pat: That’s when the mentor thing comes in: If it’s a red flag, it’s a red flag, it’s a red flag. We just have to pay attention to that. That’s why people get sick, basically.

Kat: Yeah. Well, it makes so much sense and all of it, especially the toxins piece – we’re just surrounded by it all the time. Even if we’re making the best decisions, like you said, it’s in our fertilizers or in our water. There’s just so many times that we’re met with it. So we really need to make sure that we control the things we can control, which is our thoughts and working through our trauma. I just did a week actually, out in Idaho, my husband and I did EMDR sessions, which are amazing for trauma and really going through your life and working out things. It’s something that we all need to just really work at healing in ourselves so our terrain can be healthy enough so that when it’s met with those toxins, we can detox them correctly.

Dr. Pat: Right. For sure. One big thing is to stop being so hard on yourself. We all make mistakes. The idea is: “What did I learn and how do I get past this?”

The Grim Reaper Syndrome

Kat: Yes. Something I wanted to make sure we touched on is something that you call the Grim Reaper Syndrome, which is when people are sick and they don’t even know it. How are people supposed to know that they have something going on and how can they identify what’s up with their bodies before it gets to be too out of control?

Dr. Pat: So I call it Grim Reaper Syndrome. We have signs and symptoms that go on in our life. I’m gonna give you an easy one, like people who have floaters. When I was 47 years old, I didn’t have floaters In my eye, even then, but I had friends who did. When I went to acupuncture school – because I’m an acupuncture physician also – they tell you that floaters are related. If they’re clear, then it relates to your liver – in your liver meridian, not in your liver itself. If they’re dark, they relate to your kidneys. Then you can ask better questions about other functions that are happening in the body based upon that. So there are signs and symptoms that we put off, or we say, “I could eat anything, but just in the last three months, every time that I ate, blah, blah, blah, I feel bloated.”

So people – who do they have a tendency to ask first? Their best friend, right.? Or their mother. Somebody like that. “Hey, I’ve been having this lately. Have you ever heard of anybody having that? I just don’t know if I should be concerned or not.” And they say, “Oh, don’t worry. I had that when I was your age, it goes away.”

Then you realize, because you didn’t pay attention to those, minute signs and symptoms, three years later, it’s worse. And now you have IBS, you have other type of digestive issues. You have gluten sensitivity, you have other things going on because of those things.

In my book Why Are You Sick, Fat, and Tired?, which was an Amazon bestseller, it tells you look at where your weakest link is, and then look at how that’s playing out in your other 11 organ systems. When you look at your body as a Swiss watch, it’s all supposed to work together. When it doesn’t, you know exactly where to spend your time, energy, and your money, looking at this is what seems to be going on, and talking to somebody who could put the pieces of the puzzle together for you. And then saying, “How do I get outta here? How did I get here in the first place?”

So other signs and symptoms that you could use – I used to ask a patient of mine all the time, “Why don’t you tell me about your stools?” He’d say, “Oh, Dr. Pat, I don’t wanna talk to you about my stools.”

I said, “Just tell me if they’re well formed and what color they are.” He’d say, “Oh, sometimes they’re like small pieces, you know, and blah, blah, blah.” Well, in Chinese medicine, all that stuff means something. Whether they’re well formed, whether they smell and such, because they shouldn’t smell if you’re eating well and if you don’t have any heat in your body, in a Chinese form.

So when you have that heat in your body, it’s when you have stinky poops. Paying attention to those things and then saying – you know, anybody who has a business and anybody who has a has family, they don’t want the crisis to happen. They want to be aware of it before. So like, “Okay, I have these issues going on. Let’s fix them now.”

Let’s not fix it after you’re in crisis and it’s gonna cost you a lot more money. For instance, in a business situation, or you have a family discord that could possibly cause some kind types of rifts. A lot of times we have perceived ideas about what’s happened or what’s not happened.

So there’s a lot of signs and symptoms like your eyesight. You have perfect eyesight, and all of a sudden you need reading glasses to do that. There’s exercises you can do for your eyes that helps you prolong the strength of the muscles of your eyes, because when those muscles get weak, it changes how the eyeball is shaped.

Kat: Right.

Dr. Pat: So there’s tons of things that you could – I used to get up and only go to the bathroom once at night, but now I get up and go twice, and the second time I can’t go back to sleep. How do I get back into that deep sleep cycle so I can have the high melatonin levels that I need in order to repair and revitalize my body and my body can detox normally.

Another example is like having, you know, how many bowel movements does somebody have in a day. Sometimes people have four or five, and that’s a lot! You’ve got to take a look at the big whole picture, but that’s what Grim Reaper Syndrome is. It’s not paying attention at the get go, that “I’ve got this going on and this has been going on” and then it turning into something that you don’t want to happen.

The Power of Chiropractic Care on Sickness

Kat: Well, that’s why I love chiropractic care, especially, because you’re going in, like you said, a lot of your practice is maintenance and that’s what we do at this point with our chiropractor. You’re going in to see this doctor who knows you, who knows about your health. They’re fixing the most important thing, which is the spine, but then you can talk about some of these other things, like, “Hey, I’ve noticed this,” or, “Hey, I’ve noticed that,” and you really get to look at yourself from a functional medicine approach, generally far before something ever turns into anything, and it could be as easy as adjusting a vertebra or adding a new vitamin or whatever it is. I think there’s all these very early steps we can take to prevent that stuff down the road.

Dr. Pat: I had one patient one time. She’s like, “My stomach has been so upset for the last couple days.” I said to her, “Okay, tell me more about that.”

So she told me more about that. So in Chinese medicine, what was cool about becoming an acupuncture physician is that there are segments on the back that I learned as a chiropractor did something in a certain organ system, basically, because all those nerves go to every cell, organ and tissue. So in Chinese medicine, when somebody tells me they have stomach issues, I’m going like, “Ah, stomach therapy!” And then I have it in my head: urinary, stomach, 25, and then organizing what lumbar segment goes with that. So when I’ve adjusted those and this woman especially got up, she goes, “Oh my God, that’s gone!”

I had a woman one time that had severe pubic pain in the front. Severe. I was filling in at a doctor’s office and I just said to her, “Wow, has anybody ever looked at your pubic bone before?” And she said, “What’s that?”

I said, “Well, turn over. Let’s see what’s going on here.” Let’s strengthen the muscles that are attached to it. So if there’s strength, they’ll align up on their own. And sometimes you hear a pop when that happens, when they align up on their own. And we’ll see if that’s helpful for you, because there’s nothing here that’s like going – I don’t know if we’re missing something or if it’s coming from above, if it’s an ascending or a descending problem.

So I did that and I was standing out in the lobby of this office, and the woman’s coming out, and she was profusely crying, and I thought. “Ooh, this is either gonna be a good thing or it’s going to be a bad thing, and I’m gonna have to go back in there, gonna have to do this all over again.”

She goes, “Dr. Pat, in four years, this is the first time I don’t have any pain.”

Kat: Awww, that’s amazing.

Dr. Pat: And I just went like, “Let’s celebrate!” because that was such a big win for her and it changed her life. I was just so glad to be part of being in the right place at the right time – because I think nothing’s by chance – and helping her have that moment where she ended up having no pain. Pain’s only indicative that something’s wrong. It’s not the end all.

Kat: Exactly, and that’s why I think functional medicine and seeing a doctor like you is so important. There’s a place for modern medicine, and we can go there. I think that’s great, but they might look at someone like that and, you know, prescribe pain relief. They might not look at the reason behind why it’s happening. For you, you were able to pretty quickly and easily switch something in her to relieve her of that pain.

Dr. Pat: Yeah! It’s just tuning in and tuning on. Doing the work, getting inspired, having intention, purpose, focus – that whole spiel. It’s fun when those things happen, even for me who did it, they’re “wow” moments. They’re going like, “Wow, this is the reason why I do this. This is the reason why, and I like that. I wake up every morning ready to solve problems. So we can solve a problem. We can take the long way or the short way.

I like the short, fast, simpler way. That’s better. That gets people unstuck so they can move forward and they can have results, faster and better. That’s always the way that I have functioned, when I’m looking at somebody or, when I’ve been bored at an airport waiting for a plane, when I used to fly a lot. I would walk up to people and go like, “Gosh, how long have you had knee pain?”

And they would just turn around: “How do you know that?”

“Well, you’re limping, and your ankle’s moving, but it’s affecting the rest of your spine. You should see a chiropractor and get that [worked out], because structures function. You have to have that good structure in order to be able to have good function.”

You mentioned something about functional medicine before versus traditional medicine. I teach in my course Be Stronger Than Medicine the difference between traditional medicine, functional medicine, and lifestyle medicine, and why lifestyle medicine and functional medicine kind of go hand-in-hand. With traditional medicine, you have to have something before they can diagnose. You have to have the flat tire. Not just the leak in the tire, you have to have the flat tire, and they do a lot of tests. I always say, if we’ve got something going on, go do the test, tell me, give me those test results and give me their diagnosis, and then we’ll fix your problem. In the meantime, we’re gonna get there anyway.

Functional medicine really deals with the person, because it isn’t one-size-fits-all medicine. You’ve also got to take a look at what somebody does in their family, how those genetics are playing out. [For example] wondering why in my family, everyone has heart disease, but I don’t. Well, what did I do?

I changed my constitution by changing the food that I ate, and choices of my food that I ate, because that will change how your genetics play out by changing your constitution and improving that. Lifestyle medicine is just the art of taking what you know from functional medicine and then creating those lifestyle solutions so that you can unravel those problems that you’ve got going on. And how do I get there faster? And how do we monitor it?

In lifestyle medicine, it’s without drugs first. You’re looking at diet, you’re looking at exercise, you’re looking at targeted supplementation, and then you do a drug and the idea isn’t to do the drug forever. The idea is to do the drug, to get you back to a norm that you have something that you can work with.

Kat: I love that.

Dr. Pat: It’s great. It’s just like that. This is like when you know those pieces of the puzzle – and certainly Western medicine is important. If you’re having a stroke, I am not the person to call. 911 yourself and get to the hospital ASAP, because especially with a stroke, it’s really important, because you want to be able to get past that dangerous zone and be able to do rehab. And so it’s like, “What can I do now that this has happened?” There’s always something you can do to improve your life so that you can live better, think better, and move better.

Lifestyle Solutions to Immediately Improve Health

Kat: I love that. Well, as we wrap up, I would love to hear a few lifestyle solutions that anyone could do to improve their health immediately. I know you have some good tips in that department.

Dr. Pat: Well, I have a long list. I usually say I’ll give three and I end up giving around ten, but I’m trying to keep it to three today.

So the first thing is understanding that nobody knows if their body’s functioning a hundred percent and their organs are functioning a hundred percent of the time. Health is not the absence of disease or infirmities. So if that’s the case, the five components of health are diet, nutrition –you’ve got to have a great diet that’s supported by great nutrition– and you have to exercise. You’ve got to move or you’re going to die. You have to be able to sleep and you have to have sleep things. Then you have your positive mental attitude, so your mindset stuff from the time you get up in the morning to the time you get down.

A tip would be: always start your day on a good note, on a positive note. If that means reading a couple quotes that are positive or your quote for the day is this, and writing it down and putting it in really good places for you to see, that would be one thing.

And then structure is function in the posture portion – biomechanics of the [body].

So the biggest thing that goes with every one of those is hydration, because you need hydration to digest your food. You need hydration to bathe your body and keep it hydrated so that it’s functioning. You need it for your joints, you need it for digestion, you need it to sleep. If you’re not hydrated, you will not sleep. When you sleep, biggest suggestion is turn your equipment, whatever you use off – turn your telephone off and use your airplane mode because that electromagnetic energy coming from your telephone emits farther, especially if it’s right at the head of your bed.

You need hydration for sleep, also – I just got off on a tangent on that – and you need it to be able to think well. Your brain needs fluids. Your body needs to be that aspect of your brain and your brain detoxifies in that deep level of sleep, which is the third and fourth level, and that’s where all the really great magic happens for your health.

You also need it, you know, for the structure-function part of it, your ability to be able to adjust your posture – it’s just so ingrained your organs. They tell you that people who drink a 16 ounce bottle of water first thing in the morning, starts that process of hydrating. So how do you know how much water to drink? Tip: 50% of your body weight. The 50% of your body weight is like, if you weigh 170 pound or 150 pounds, you would have 75 ounces of water.

If you hate drinking water, cannot stand the taste of it, first off: don’t drink tap water. You want to have some quality high level of filtered water. So you drink the filtered water, and if you don’t like drinking it, then drink it out of a bottle that’s measured so that you can drink at least that amount. You can drink it with a straw, because the reason why people get upset stomachs from drinking water is because they’re swallowing air.

Or psychologically, if the rim of a glass is hitting your nose, psychologically, they say that that represents to somebody that they might be drowning. So if you’re really sensitive or claustrophobic, drink water out of a straw.

You can put essential oils like lemon and lime and grapefruit in your water, because it’ll pick it up – or fresh lemon-lime that same thing, in your water, so that you stay hydrated. But hydration’s one of the biggest things you possibly can do to maintain and help your health.

Kat: Awesome. Well, that’s all such great advice, Dr. Pat! I’m sure we could talk all day long. You just seem like a total wealth of knowledge, but I appreciate you giving us [this information].

Dr. Pat: I channel this. I channel this stuff.

Kat: I would love for our listeners to know where they could find more about you. I know you mentioned an Amazon book and maybe your website – just any information about where we can learn more about you.

Dr. Pat: You can! You can find out about me on LinkedIn, and my media sheet that I gave you has all my links to connect with. So, people can connect me with me on healthteamnetwork.com and they can connect with me on LinkedIn. I have a Facebook page. I don’t use that very much.

I focus on doing a lot of podcasts. You can listen to my podcast. If you go to YouTube and put my name in Dr. Pat Boulogne. The last time I was in there, 50 of the 150 podcasts that I’ve done in the last year are there, so you can get information like that. I have an upcoming course in October called Be Stronger Than Medicine, and I can email you the link for that so people can find out more information about that.

I also, if people buy my book, give them an opportunity to have a 30 minute consult with me at no charge, just to help them make sense of how their chart plays out in their health snapshot that they get from the book called Why Are You Sick, Fat, and Tired?

Kat: Awesome. I love it, Dr. Pat. Well, like I said, thank you so much for your time today. I know our listeners are gonna love this episode and, um, we hope to stay in touch and have you back on in the future.

Dr. Pat: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I love helping people and having those conversations so that the light bulb goes on and they have better options. Then they can make better decisions moving forward in their health.

Kat: Absolutely. Well, thanks again, God bless, and we will talk soon.

Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier and body and stronger in spirit.

Landon Eckles: So, if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast to never miss an episode.

Kat: And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow; slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might wanna hear more about.

Landon: Alright, y’all, thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to Be Organic.

Kat: Just a quick legal disclaimer. We are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness and nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you.

In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.

Looking to get healthier but hate salads? We’ve got a good place to start! Starting to eat more plants can be intimidating – but it’s easier than you think. On this episode we sit down with Helen Hall to talk about living a healthy lifestyle (from the 80/20 plant-based diet to how to sneak in more greens). Living a healthy lifestyle also goes beyond just nutrition – we explore sleep, mindfulness, saying “no”, and other tips to creating a better environment for yourself on your journey.

Helen is a powerhouse woman who has not only made a name for herself in the entrepreneur world, but also in the healthy living space. With everyone trying to jump on the bandwagon of healthy living, this woman has been a part of the movement for years, because it isn’t only a movement for her, it’s a lifestyle. Her love for living a healthy lifestyle fueled their desire to create products that make healthy living fun and impactful. Helen is the founder of the brand Blender Bombs, which are plant based super food balls made with 100% real ingredients. Helen is also a co-founder of Tipsy Spritzer, an organic spritzer.

TIME STAMPS
1:28 Helen’s journey with plant-based living (jump to section)
4:18 The 80/20 lifestyle (jump to section)
6:05 Diet restrictions and the psychological effect (jump to section)
6:52 Advice for starting a plant-based lifestyle (jump to section)
7:54 Sleep is just as important as nutrition (jump to section)
9:47 Your body & palette adjusts as you start eating healthier (jump to section)
11:14 Reading labels – avoid nutrition labels & focus on the ingredients (jump to section)
14:49 Tips for keeping on track while being busy (saying NO to things!) (jump to section)
16:13 Surround yourself with the right people (jump to section)
20:11 The power documentaries can have on your health journey (jump to section)
23:46 Foods Helen stays away from (jump to section)
25:00 What might be lurking in your cans that’s not on the label (jump to section)
26:50 What you should incorporate into your diet every day (jump to section)

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Transcription Below

Kat Eckles: Welcome back, Be Organic listeners. This is Kat Eckles. My husband Landon is not with us today, but I am replacing him with someone maybe much smarter than him. We have the awesome Helen Hall with us today. Helen is a powerhouse woman who has not only made a name for herself in the entrepreneurial world, but also in the healthy living space. With everyone trying to jump on the bandwagon of healthy living, this woman has been a part of the movement for years, because it isn’t only a movement for her, it’s her lifestyle.

Her love for living a healthy lifestyle fueled her desire to create products that make healthy living fun and impactful. Helen is the founder of health food CPG brand Blender Bombs, which is a plant-based superfood made with 100% real ingredients. Helen is also the co-founder of Tipsy Spritzer, an organic spritzer. We have the honor of having Helen in the Be Organic studio with us today, and I’m so excited to pick her brains about all things clean living. Welcome, Helen.

Helen Hall: Thanks.

Kat: I’m so excited, because we got to talking before this a little bit, and your story kind of aligns with mine a lot. We were kind of living these different health lifestyles and health and wellness and eating clean, and plant-based really kind of changed our lives, so it’s been really cool to hear your story and how that kind of parallels our story.

Helen: It’s so funny. I feel like when people have that story, they just have to change their entire life to share it, because so many people haven’t experienced it yet. All we want is for people to experience it.

Kat: Yes, absolutely. So I’d love for you to maybe share about that a little bit. Just kind of like what you told me, your background and how you kind of got into this plant based lifestyle and what you were doing before versus now.

Helen’s Journey

Helen: Totally. So I grew up in Atlanta. I always thought that I was gonna be a fashion designer. I’ve been designing clothes, and instead of sewing, stapling them together, since I was a kid, so shortcuts are my specialty, but the conversation we just had that was a shortcut, you know, always finding shortcuts, right? And that is how Blender Bombs got started as well.

When I went to college, I gained 30 pounds. I was trying to figure out how to lose it. I tried the shortcut diets. I tried keto, I tried paleo, I tried vegan, I tried the low calorie diet, the low carb diet, all that stuff, and although I would lose weight, I would gain it back quickly. It was just this constant tug of war mentally. It was exhausting as well, and I wasn’t properly fueling my body, so I was always hungry, and then I was introduced to smoothies.

I started having a smoothie every day, and I would add chia seed, hemp seed, flaxseed, walnuts, pecans, dates, almonds. I went all out after learning about smoothies. I put all of those ingredients in my smoothies and I noticed that my palate just completely started to change. I started craving whole foods more. I didn’t have my late night sugar cravings. I didn’t even want to drink alcohol as much anymore because I had finally realized how good it felt to fuel my body. So that is how 80/20, whole food plant-based came into play. I like to say that I’m 80% whole food plant-based, 20% whatever. Tipsy goes into the whatever category!

After college, instead of going that fashion route, I did personal training, because I had fallen in love with the health and fitness industry. I saw that my clients would exercise a lot, but they would go and eat whatever they wanted, and they were frustrated with themselves because they didn’t know about nutrition. So I asked them to make that smoothie every day. They wouldn’t because it took too much time. That’s when we created the shortcut of Blender Bombs. So, a Blender Bomb is like a ball that has chia seed, hemp seed, flaxseed, walnuts, pecans, dates, almonds, aloe, bee pollen, vanilla, cinnamon, sea salt, and a little bit of honey in it.

It’s all in this like super dense, thick –it’s dense, it’s a dense ball, but a Vitamix or a Blendtec or a Ninja or a Nutribullet can handle it. So you throw it in the smoothie, you add your fruits and your vegetables, and then you have a meal replacement smoothie. It really keeps you full: it’s every essential amino acid, every essential fatty acid.

We get a ton of testimonials about, energy levels, no more sugar cravings, a lot of blood sugar control. What I’ve found with Blender Bombs is once you can get that first meal of the day or your lunchtime meal of the day to be healthy, it starts that domino effect of people making other changes in their lives.

Kat: Absolutely. I love that you were talking about earlier that it’s so dense and it has so much nutrition in it that if you’re doing every day, you’re really keeping yourself satiated so you aren’t binge eating. I’ve been susceptible to that too, where I’m trying to diet and restrict myself, even if it is with a smoothie. Then seven o’clock hits, and I’m like, if I don’t hit Chick-fil-A, I’m gonna die. So it’s actually sustaining your hunger in a much healthier way.

Helen: Yeah, it’s crazy. I force myself to have one every day. Weeks that I don’t, because I travel a lot, I notice a difference in my cravings. That’s the number one thing for me, but everyone’s different.

The 80/20 Lifestyle

Kat: Yeah. So you talk about 80/20, which is really cool. That’s probably how I live too, which is like 80% healthy and 20% whatever. What does that look like for you on a daily basis?

Helen: I think also what’s cool is if you had asked me that five years ago, I could tell you what I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the last week, because I was tracking it. Now, I don’t even think what I eat anymore. It’s so ingrained. It’s so natural.

But we stopped at Taco Bell this morning. I’ve never been to Taco Bell before, but we stopped at Taco Bell this morning and they have this veggie option. So, I just automatically click the veggie option, and definitely 80% of what we got was plant-based. It had black beans, and it had tomatoes… and then the rest of it was cheese and tortilla. That’s mostly plant-based! The easiest thing for me, I’ve found, is when I go out to eat, I eat plant-based. If I go somewhere and friends are cooking for me or there’s a homemade cake or whatever, there’s no restriction there. Especially when someone makes something with love, I’ll eat it, but if I’m gonna choose to go eat something myself, it’s gonna be mostly healthy.

Diet Restrictions and the Psychological Effect

Kat: Yeah. And I think that restriction can get almost psychological, too, to where you go too far on the opposite direction where it’s like you aren’t even really enjoying life. I had this friend who was so restrictive, and she’s since come out of it, but I didn’t even want to go out to eat with her, because it was just awful, you know? She was stressed out the whole time because she didn’t want her salmon to have anything on it or whatever, you know? She was living in this awful headspace.

Helen: I used to be like that.

Kat: Yeah. She’s come out of it now and has said how much better her life is, just allowing better energy to flow through.

Helen: And guess what? My fear and I’m sure her fear, too– lot of people with orthorexia do it for weight– but I didn’t gain weight when I stopped stressing. If anything, your body and your hormones start to balance out because you don’t have this anxiety around food anymore. That was freeing to understand.

Advice for Starting a Plant-Based Lifestyle

Kat: If somebody wanted to start this lifestyle, what advice would you give for them? Because I know it can sound overwhelming for some people that just don’t even know where to begin.

Helen: I mean, honestly, go to clean juice, get a smoothie every day. I tell everyone to start with one smoothie a day, always, because even if you just have one healthy, nutrient-dense meal a day, you’re gonna go to bed happy and proud of yourself. Then you start to develop confidence, and that’s when you wanna make the next change. So, whether it’s eating 80/20 plant-based for your other meals… just mostly plant based. So, I’m not a fan of salads personally. I don’t like salads, but a lot of people love ’em. So, you know, get a plant-based salad and instead of getting chicken on top, add avocado, and then for dinner, have your chicken or whatever it is that works for you.

Sleep is Just as Important as Nutrition

But also, I think it’s important for people to realize that sleep is just as important as nutrition is: sleep and mindfulness of some sort, like positivity. So, what you watch on TV, who you surround yourself with, the people you talk to on the phone, the books you read– all of that stuff is just as important as what you eat.

Kat: It’s funny, you mentioned Taco Bell and I always joke that I got into smoothies because I was a recovering Taco Bell addict. You know, I went to college and that’s what we did: did whatever we did and then went and had Taco Bell at 2:00 AM. You know what I saying?

Helen: Ours was Cook Out.

Kat: So, I was eating that way– and I got pregnant young, we started a family young– and I remember having the baby and I was like, “I need to be healthy and live for this kid,” but I hate salads and I hate roasted vegetables, and I’m never living my life to eat that way, you know? So I was like, I gotta figure this out, and that’s how I got into smoothies, because I was like, I can put literally anything in it, and if you put a banana in it, it actually tastes fine.

Helen: And peanut butter!

Kat: Yes! A banana and peanut butter. And I remember back in the day I was doing like POM pomegranate juice. I would never drink that now, but that was the base of my smoothies, because it was sweet, and it covered up everything. For years, that’s how I had all my vegetables, and even today, you’re never gonna see me ordering a plate of brussel sprouts. I’m always gonna order French fries, but because I’m having Clean Juice Green Juice, a ginger shot, and a smoothie most days, I can balance that out with that.

Helen: I think it’s so cool that we have a liver to get rid of toxins, right? And so if you have one super solid meal a day, your body’s gonna take care of you. As long as you show your body you care about it and you get at least one solid meal a day, two if you can hang with it, your body will thank you, and you’ll feel it.

Your Body & Palette Adjusts

Kat: Your body adjusts, too. Like today, I ran my daughter, who’s at work with us today, through Chick-fil-A and I had some and was like, “This isn’t even good.” I build it up in my head and then I have it, and I was like, “This is actually disgusting.” So it’s like if you – sorry, Chick-fil-A.

Helen: I mean, you’ve done a good job, Chick-fil-A!

Kat: Yes. Teach us what you do! But it was like I didn’t want it, you know what I’m saying? It’s like once you start to eat healthy, yes, you’ll have cheats and stuff, but your general disposition, your body’s gonna be like, “I want more of that nutrition. I want more of what’s actually feeding my cells, what’s actually making me healthy,” and you’re gonna slowly, over time, be more drawn to that.

Helen: Yeah! The smoothie bar – we started that four years ago, the tester smoothie bar in Charleston – we have a lot of those initial recipes, and I can’t even drink them anymore, because they’re too sweet to me. That was what I wanted at the time, and now I can only drink the green veggie ones. But four years ago, my palate was completely different than my palate is now.

Kat: It’s funny you say that. That’s why we formulated the Clean Juice menu – as I’m sure you did too – for people going to McDonald’s to be able to come in and have a smoothie and be like, “Oh, this actually tastes good.” They think it’s all wheatgrass and apple cider vinegar, but you can go get the youthful one or the recovery one and it tastes really, really good. So it’s like teaching people that healthy food and organic fruits and vegetables is actually delicious.

Helen: Especially with y’all’s bowls, I feel like that’s so hefty. It’s so filling. Someone who’s hesitant about smoothies, they can start with the bowls and they’ll be very satisfied.

Kat: Totally. So in this kind of plant-based realm, I love your product because it’s an actually clean plant-based product. When you’re looking at the label, it’s chia seeds, like you said, walnuts– very clean whole food ingredients. How do you teach anyone that you’d be teaching about this to try to look for that versus some of these other things that are on the market that are basically soybeans and chemicals?

Reading Labels

Helen: Honestly, I have not ever looked at a nutrition label. I only read the ingredients, so I don’t look at calories. I don’t look at fat content. I don’t look at protein, fiber… none of that. I only look at the ingredients, and that was very refreshing for me, because I was able to stop counting and stop using numbers. If the majority of the ingredients in this thing came from the earth, I’m good to go. If you look at the back, it’s like looking at the difference between a cashew yogurt and a Dannon yogurt. I don’t even recognize those ingredients on a Dannon yogurt, but cashew yogurt– I recognize it. Same thing with the difference between Malk and Silk, almost. Sometimes you just don’t even know what you’re getting unless you recognize it.

But also, here I am talking about that, but I’m so lucky to be able to do that. A lot of people aren’t able to pick and choose. They have to take what they can get, so that’s where this 80/20 is – mostly whole food plant-based, but 20% whatever.

Kat: We just actually launched a shirt that said “count chemicals, not calories.” If you’re eating whole, you almost can’t gain weight. You almost can’t.You’re not putting bad things in your body if you’re eating things that are right from the earth that are just whole. Everyone can go get an apple or a banana instead of a pack of Doritos that has 400 different chemicals that you don’t even know what they are.

Helen: I have a meeting on Friday with a production company about filming a documentary where I gain 30 pounds eating chemicals, and then I show people how to lose it by eating Blender Bombs and 80/20 plant-based and all that stuff. So if that goes through, you have to do it with me. Oh, you’re like “I’ve had two babies. I’m good.” Wait, how many kids do you have?

Kat: Five.

Helen: Oh my God, five babies. Yeah, you don’t need to do that. Your time’s done.

Kat: Yeah, I’ve done that, for sure. And to that point, I gained weight with all them, because I was kind of lenient my pregnancies. When I went about it to lose the weight, I literally just cut out all processed food. That’s all I did.

Helen: And then it happens overnight.

Kat: I was really, really, really strict and really kind of restrictive, but then the weight was off and I could kind of cheat a little bit.

Helen: It’s so freeing. I feel like we’re in this podcast talking a lot about weight, but that’s because, we know that is why people get into healthy foods at the beginning, and then when they start to feel the effects of it, then it becomes more about how you feel, and your energy levels, and the way that you treat your body, and it’s less about your weight. Soon enough, you don’t even have to worry about weight anymore. It’s a non-issue.

Kat: Absolutely, yep. You don’t even think about it. I don’t even really get on the scale anymore.

Helen: No, I haven’t stepped on a scale in five years. I have no idea how much I weigh. But my pants fit! Sometimes they don’t, sometimes they do.

Kat: So, you’re busy like me. You have like 17 different companies and friends and social life and influence and all these different things. I know people can run into this roadblock of “I’m too busy to work out” or “I’m too busy to worry about healthy food.” What are some of your tips that help you keep all that in check, even though you’re living such a busy lifestyle?

Saying NO to Things

Helen: So, this is a lesson I learned this year and I’m sure some of you may have heard me say it on my podcast before, but maybe I’ll say it today and it’ll resonate with you: it’s saying no to things.

I was listening to The Blonde Files podcast on the way here, and they were interviewing the founder of Suja, and she was like, “Honestly, my life changed when I had a kid, because I finally had an excuse to say no to things.” A lot of people, as we were talking about earlier, are people pleasers: sometimes it’s hard for me to say no to events or say no to people because I don’t wanna hurt anyone else’s feelings. My love language is showing up. Being in front of you is my love language. I get caught in this cycle of “If I don’t show up and go do all these things, say yes to all these events, people are gonna think I don’t care about them or that I think I’m too busy or better than them.”

Really, you’ve got to learn to say no. I’m learning to say no. You’re lucky you have five kids – you have a big excuse to say no! You can just blame it on the kids. I’m still working on saying no, but I’ve gotten better at it the last couple weeks. It’s the first time I’ve been able to sit at my desk for three hours at a time besides having to run to a meeting. I can’t say the last time I sat for three hours and didn’t have a meeting or a phone call in between, so I’m a big “no” girl now. What about you? I’m curious.

Kat: Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I have the right tips, because I feel like I’m all over the place all the time, but, I have my husband, who’s a good partner. Maybe that’s my tip: find a good partner. We balance each other out really well. I doesn’t have to be a spouse. It could be your business partner or your friend, but find someone that has the opposite. I was actually telling you when you came in, it’s like we’re completely different.

I’m very relaxed and I’m very go with the flow, and he’s really wound up tight, but I think that we really help each other out there. Like he kind of gets me. It’s funny– I posted a meme on Instagram today that’s a teddy bear in the bathtub and it says, “Yeah, I’m on my way.” That’s me. I’m just chilling, but I’m coming. So it’s good that he keeps me in line, but it’s good for him to have me who’s kind of “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Like last night, he was ready to jump off the bridge. You know what I’m saying? And it’s like, “I promise that if the kids got into Play-Doh, it’s okay.” Stuff like that. Having a good person that supports you emotionally and at work, too. I can tell when he needs a break and I need to pick up the slack somewhere, and he knows when I need to really focus my time at home and he needs to make sure he’s really overseeing things at work. I think God gave us each other, whether it’s through marriage or friendship or business to support each other and pick up the slack for each other. So just surrounding yourself with the right people.

Surround Yourself with the Right People

Helen: Yeah, because my last relationship, as we talked about earlier, we worked together, but there was none of that. Whatever you just said, that wasn’t there. There was no helping each other out. The new relationship that I’m in could not be more balanced. Like you said – I pick up the slack when he’s stressed, he is always trying to help me when I’m stressed, and it’s so easy. So maybe things will get better and less stressed.

Kat: That’s awesome. And Landon’s so funny. If I’m ever stressed, he’s like, “I love this! This is so exciting! I love seeing you stress!” But then he’s able to really support me because he knows what that feels like.

Helen: That’s awesome. That makes me happy to hear that. It is cool seeing what you guys have built together and still maintain a strong relationship.

Kat: Oh, most days.

Helen: 80/20!

Kat: Yeah, 80/20, exactly! But you get to see another side. We never worked together. Now it’s been seven years, so we’re really in it, but I remember the first three years it was really cool for me to see that side of him, as this leader and CEO. I was just a stay-at-home mom, so for him to see my creative side, you get to know each other a lot more and have a different level of respect and admiration. And the negative stuff too– I could see where he can fall short, but you get this whole window into someone else when you’re really working together like that.

Helen: And just realizing with the partner or family member, employee, or whatever: no one’s going to be a Jack of all trades. Everyone’s gonna have their strengths.

Kat: Absolutely. And to that point, he knows that my value here is probably a little more on the creative and bigger vision side, and I can’t really do that without my downtime to ideate and go through my process, you know? So I think he’s had to learn that about me. He could be up at 5:00 AM every day. He’s a grinder and all that, but I need to drive and think to be able to come up with something to add value.

Helen: Some of the best thinking happens when driving.

Kat: Totally, totally. I remember when we first started, I would call Kobe, who was our marketing guy, and he’d be like, “You need to stop driving, because you keep calling me with all these ideas, and I can’t keep up with you.” He was like, “Quit driving to places. You need to listen to podcasts and not let your brain go,” because it was just so many ideas when we got started.

Helen: Your husband definitely is a podcast guy in the car.

The Power of Documentaries

Kat: Yes! So, what other kind of practical tips could we give people about changing that lifestyle? What are some things that early on, like when you were losing 30 pounds – that’s a significant amount of weight. That’s a huge lifestyle change. What did you do in small pieces to make those changes?

Helen: Well, documentaries. I would even go as far as to say 75% of the people that you talk to who are healthy or plant forward become that way because of a documentary, whether it’s Game Changers or the juicing documentary or What the Health or Forks Over Knives.

Kat: Forks Over Knives was mine. I remember watching that, and I was like, “Wow, this is crazy.”

Helen: Yeah! Most of the time it’s a documentary, because – reality TV stars can push products so much better than influencers, because reality TV stars share their lives, and people feel invested in them. With documentaries, rather than just a thirty second commercial, you get invested in their lives and you get invested in the truth, and then you wanna change because they changed, and you saw what happened with them. That’s why I think me doing this documentary will help so many people and just be another angle to get people to go more plant forward. I would say watch all those documentaries on Netflix, and I would say personal development.

Personal development was huge for me because you have to start to understand that consistency is key. If you go to the gym one time, you’re not gonna look any different. If you go to the gym two times, you’re not gonna look any different. If you eat one salad, you’re definitely not gonna look any different, but you do that for a week or two, and you will look different and you will feel different. The more you understand about the process, the easier it is going to be to do it for the long term. Same thing with me for smoothies. I went down the rabbit hole on Google and I thoroughly understood smoothies, and that’s when I was able to do it consistently. So with our marketing, with Blender Bombs, we are constantly posting testimonials. Just like what you’re doing with the podcast: you’re constantly hearing other people’s stories. And the more that you hear that, the more you’re gonna be able to change.

Kat: Absolutely. Just kind of surrounding yourself. They say you become like the five people you’re around the most, but everything that you’re feeding yourself is giving your body and your thoughts and your energy life. So if you’re listening to podcasts that are all about health, you’re going to want to make those changes. You’re going to get little tidbits that – I think that’s what it is, too: I think people are so overwhelmed in the beginning that if they can just get little changes and little things that they can do to eventually make those bigger changes, that’s great for them.

Helen: Like they always say, just choose one new year’s resolution. Just one. Same thing with when you’re starting healthy, just choose one, like start with one smoothie a day.

Kat: Absolutely, and like you said, sometimes it’s as easy as sleep. After putting your phone down at 10:00 PM and not touching it again and getting a full eight hours of sleep, you feel like a whole new person.

Helen: I’d definitely say that’s necessary for everyone.

Kat: I think sleep’s probably the biggest. Everyone says food’s the biggest, but it might be sleep.

Helen: Yeah! I was reading this sleep study, and only 2% of the population can go function at prime with less than seven hours of sleep a night. You know, that 2%, please come work for us! We’re looking for you! But most people definitely have to have that.

Kat: Yep, I know I’m probably more in like eight or nine hours, and if I don’t get it, I’m really off.

Foods Helen Stays Away From

So I know you do 80/20. Is there anything that you completely stay away from? That you don’t consume at all?

Helen: I used to completely stay away from meat with the exception of wild game, like venison if someone I knew got the venison. But lately – I got my bloodwork done, because I was on Accutane earlier this year, which I knew better than, but I did it anyway. I had a perfect blood panel before Accutane, and then after Accutane, I had some deficiencies. So I started having meat like once a month. Otherwise, not really. Other than that, I’d say I eat everything, at least a little bit.

Kat: Well, and that’s good! You have the Tipsy brand, which is alcohol. So you obviously indulge in that in moderation.

Helen: Well, there’s a crazy story about that, actually. I’m sure Katie told you her story, but I used to have eczema covering my entire right arm ever since college. It was super bad during the summer. I was just like, “Oh, it’s heat,” right? I could never figure out what it was, because it would go away a lot more in the winter, but it was full on out in the summer.

One day I tried everything: got rid of gluten, got rid of dairy, got rid of– I was just completely plant-based, whatever. I got rid of alcohol, whatever, it still was there. And then I was on the boat one day and I was drinking a White Claw or a Truly, and my eczema was flaring like crazy.

And I was like, it’s heat. And Katie was like, “Maybe it’s cans.” And so then I gave up everything in a can, and my eczema went away within like eight days. So even when I was alcohol free, I was still getting eczema, because I was drinking things like this. So I gave up everything in a can.

And then we started (we as in Katie) started calling different manufacturers of canned drinks being like, “What is in this?” and there’s a product called Velcorin that they add into anything in a can that isn’t a hundred percent organic. That really aggravates me. They don’t disclose it on the ingredient label.

But then there’s, you know, Spindrift, which is a hundred percent organic, and my eczema still goes crazy with it because of the lining of the can. So I just have to be very careful with the cans. It’s crazy what we don’t even think about that’s going into our bodies. You don’t know because America doesn’t make you disclose it.

What’s Lurking in Your Cans?

Kat: Right. It’s funny. I stopped cans. I was a big La Croix drinker and I stopped cans probably four years ago or so just like instinctively. I was like, “Everything I drink is out of aluminum.” I was just thinking more about the aluminum and now I just get the glass Pellegrino bottles, because at least they’re glass.

Helen: They’re the best. We love glass. But there is a company called Recess out of California, and they have an adaptogen drink like this, and then they have a CBD drink. They are made in the same manufacturer as us, and their cans don’t have the liners. There’s no Velcorin, and I can drink those all day and not get eczema. I will get some eczema after today on my neck.

Kat: Wow. All these different things… I had a friend who was breaking out in rashes everywhere all the time. I looked at her one day, and she had the Apple Watch, and I was like, “When did you get that Apple Watch?”

And she was like, “Probably like two months ago.”

I was like, “When did the rash start?”

And she’s like, “Probably two months ago.”

I was like, “Take it off,” and she took it off, and that rash went away within like 48 hours.

Helen: I’m gonna die. That’s crazy. Wow.

Kat: She was just more susceptible. Not everyone’s gonna have that reaction, but you do have to see what your body’s reacting to. It’s crazy.

Helen: But smoothies are for everyone.

What You Should Incorporate Into Your Diet Every Day

Kat: Yes. Well, that was gonna be my last question. What would you tell people to incorporate every day in their diet? Probably both of our answers would be smoothies, Blender Bombs.

Helen: Smoothies. I swear by it. I’ve never had a customer be like, “Hey, this didn’t work for me.” I really haven’t. Unless they’re allergic to something. One time I did; an employee, she was getting so bloated and found out she was allergic to walnuts, so she had to switch to the nut-free one. But yeah– that and sleep. I think you nailed it.

Kat: It’s just such an easy way to get a nutrient dense, full profile, satiating way to start your – and that’s the other thing: most people are starting their day with this smoothie, which is awesome, because it’s setting the tone for your whole day. I know whenever I have a smoothie first thing, then I actually want to make a healthy dinner versus DoorDash something. All those little choices add up really quickly.

Helen: Donuts… yeah, no, I think so. Smoothies and sleep. That’s the vibe. That’s what you should name this podcast.

Kat: There you go. Smoothies and Sleep. It’s easy. Awesome. Well, thank you, Helen, so much for joining us. It’s been awesome to get to chat with you.

Helen: We have a code, also, for your listeners. CLEANJUICE is the code for 20% off at blenderbombs.com.

Kat: Tell everyone where we can find you, where we can find Blender Bombs, and all that kind of stuff.

Helen: Yeah. So my personal is @helenhall. You can DM me whenever. And then @blenderbombs and CLEANJUICE for 20% off, but thank you so much for having me. This is such a cool spot.

Kat: Oh, awesome. Well, you’re so motivating and inspirational, and I know our listeners are gonna love getting to know you and following along with all you have going on, and maybe we’ll see your Blender Bombs in Clean Juice very soon.

Helen: Yeah! We’re going to make it happen.

Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit.

Landon Eckles: So, if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast to never miss an episode.

Kat: And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might want to hear more about.

Landon: All right, y’all, thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to Be Organic.

Just a quick legal disclaimer: We are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you.

In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.

Be Organic Podcast – Season 2, Episode 29. Matt Maruca: Sunlight, Mitochondria Function, Red Light Therapy, and Circadian Rhythm.

As a young kid, Matt struggled constantly with debilitating headaches, allergies, and gut issues. He spent years trying Western medical drugs, Eastern diets and herbs, and modern diets and supplements to find healing, but nothing worked.

All these treatments did was mask the symptoms.

Four years ago, he learned about mitochondria, and everything changed and now he’s on the show with us today to teach us about mitochondria, Ra Optics, and how we can reset our circadian rhythm.

TIME STAMPS
1:34 What mitochondria is & how it affects the body (jump to section)
5:20 How important mitochondria are to our health (jump to section)
11:05 How to know if your mitochondria are damaged (jump to section)
17:04 The importance of sunlight & light for mitochondria (jump to section)
18:04 The circadian rhythm (jump to section)
25:29 How much sunlight you should get on a daily basis (jump to section)
35:54 Red light therapy (jump to section)
45:25 Ra Optics (jump to section)

USE CODE “BEORGANIC” FOR 15% OFF RA OPTICS!

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Transcription Below

 

Landon: Be Organic, listeners. Hey guys, what is going on? This is Landon, your co-host and co-founder and CEO of Clean Juice. So happy to be on another show with you guys here on our Be Organic podcast, as always powered by Clean Juice. We’ve got an awesome guest for you today that I’m gonna introduce in a minute.

The title of our show is “Better Light and Better Sleep Equals a Better Life.” We’re gonna jump into that. So, I am joined by Matt Maruca and he has got an awesome company and a really cool background. So I’m gonna tell you guys a little bit about Matt:

As a young kid, Matt struggled constantly with debilitating headaches, allergies, and gut issues. He spent years trying Western medical drugs, Eastern diets and herbs, and modern diets and supplements to find healing, but nothing really worked for him. All these treatments really did was mask the symptoms. Four years ago, Matt learned about mitochondria and everything changed. And now he’s on the show with us today to teach us about mitochondria, his awesome company RA Optics which we’re gonna get into, and how we can reset our circadian rhythm. So, Matt, welcome in. Thank you so much for being on Be Organic. 

Matt: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. 

Landon: So I said the word mitochondria… Some of our listeners may have never heard that word, or they probably haven’t heard it since high school biology.

Matt: Right. 

Landon: So talk to us a little bit about mitochondria, what it is and how does it affect the body? 

What is the Mitochondria?

Matt: Yeah, so the mitochondria are the cellular engines that basically power all of our cells. And so, you know, as biologists came to understand life and understand that life is composed of cells, you know, they started to go deeper and say, “Well, what makeup cells?” You know, there are all these things inside of cells called organelles, which are little, let’s say compartments or pieces that carry out different functions within every single cell. And one of these organelles, one of the most significant of all of them are mitochondria. Mitochondria is plural; mitochondrion is singular. 

So basically, what they do is they allow us to take food from the environment and get energy from it by reacting it with oxygen. So they’re sort of like a little controlled combustion engine — you could think of it like that. It’s actually exactly accurate. In other words, like a little fire that’s under control.

So the parallel is that fire uses a hydrogen-based fuel source, like logs or wood or paper or gasoline, and it reacts that hydrogen with oxygen from the air and that makes water. And that releases a ton of energy as in the case of a fire, you know, a bonfire or an explosion caused by lighting gasoline on fire, et cetera. The rate of reaction is different there, but it’s the same concept. And in our cells, it’s the same thing. We take in hydrogen-based fuel, which is either a fat or a carbohydrate from some place in the environment, and then we react it with oxygen from the air to make water. And then that hydrates our cells.

But that process is exothermic, meaning it releases energy. And that’s what allows us to make ATP, which basically is sort of the energy currency in ourselves. For people who wanna go a little bit deeper – the reason we’re able to gain energy from that reaction is because initially the water that we’re actually making already existed on earth. And, through the process of photosynthesis light strikes the water and different organisms, like plants, actually break the water molecule. They take the hydrogen and the oxygen, separate them even though they like being together, and put them in a suspended state where they’re separated only because the energy and the environment is allowing them to stay separate. And then that’s a way of storing energy. That’s basically how energy is stored in plants and in animals in fat, for example. So basically, what we’re doing is we are undoing that reaction and the energy is stored in the electrons specifically of hydrogen they’re in an elevated energy state.

And when we put them through this process, basically, we’re just releasing that energy that’s there, which is actually just sunlight energy. So all fire is just re-releasing sunlight energy that’s stored in a carbohydrate – in a plant. And all human metabolism is also just re-releasing stored sunlight energy in a food source, whether it’s a carbohydrate in a plant or a fat.

But that gets to the point of The Light Diet, which is kind of what we’re talking about here today. Light is so important because it just shows you that all energy that we’re using in biology fundamentally goes back to sunlight. 

Landon: Absolutely. Well, thanks for expanding on that. I think I understood about one third of what you said, and I appreciate- 

Matt: OK, well, let’s get into it. Let’s get into it. 

Landon: Well, you know, I think basically what I heard is that mitochondria is really important to our health. Right? And I think you’re even quoted saying that health is literally a synonym for how well our mitochondria is working. So just expand on that and tell us how important the mitochondria is to our overall wellness.

How important mitochondria are to our health

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. So maybe without making it so scientific, the engine of our body is like the engine of a car. If it works well, then we’re gonna work really, really well. If it doesn’t work well then it actually is not so important, necessarily, what food that we’re putting into it because the engine can’t burn that fuel.

So another way of saying that is: if someone had a car and their engine’s working really, really well they can put in regular gas or they can put in premium gas. It’s probably not gonna make the biggest difference, at least right away. In the long term it will have an impact, for sure. And so the fuel source is important and that’s worth considering in the case of food, food is really important for our health.

However, in the case of a car with a bad engine: the spark plugs are all worn out. You go try to drive the car and you put in regular gas and it’s not working. And then you say, “Well, let me try premium gas.” You put the premium gas in the tank. You try to run the car and it’s still not working.

And so then you say, “Shoot, like, there’s gotta be something else that’s going on besides just the gas because regular/premium, it didn’t make a difference.” So you take the car to the mechanic. The mechanic says, “Oh, well your engine’s not working. That’s why it doesn’t matter what kind of gas you’re using. You gotta fix the engine.”

And so that’s why the mitochondria are so important to our body – because they are our engines. They’re processing our fuel and allowing us to stay alive. And if they don’t work – so another way to sort of elaborate on that is – if they don’t work at all, then we die. So there’s this poison called cyanide that soldiers would wear in a little capsule on their neck, in case they got captured in war, and they would bite it and it would kill them immediately. ‘Cause cyanide basically blocks the flow of electrons in the mitochondria, which is how we generate that energy that I was talking about before. 

Landon: Wow. 

Matt: And so, yeah, you’re dead if the mitochondria stopped working. Immediately, within seconds. 

Landon: Wow. 

Matt: So they are our life energy. Right? And where it gets really, really interesting is there’s actually research that has been done by the leading researchers in the world in biology and in mitochondria that have basically found that when the mitochondria decline in function even 10% or 20% – when they go below a certain threshold to function – what happens is certain systems in the body start shutting off or declining in function. So if you think about a city, an electrical grid. If there’s a blackout you have no power. That would be the equivalent of an entire system in the body going down and someone dying basically.

But you can also have a brown out, where there’s still some current running on the wire but it’s just not enough to power, you know, the whole city or to power heavy duty electrical equipment, for example. And in our body, the basic functions that are like the light bulbs and the things that don’t take so much energy that are easier to stay on are things like our heartbeat. You know, the core essential functions of our body that we need to have going. Now, the things that would be like the heavy duty machinery, like fax machines and so on, that might not be able to work with a brown out are the things like our neocortex, the human brain is a highly developed piece of evolution that requires a lot of energy. And if it doesn’t have that lot of energy, then it’s not gonna work. 

There are other examples. What these researchers have shown – specifically a guy from the children’s hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania, which is actually my home city – funny enough, Philadelphia. He has shown that in the case of this brownout, so to speak, in our body with the mitochondria not working so well… if it’s happening in the brain in a developing child, that leads to the phenotype, a.k.a. the disease of, autism or some kind of developmental disease. If it’s in an older person, if they’re having a mitochondrial dysfunction in their brain, that can lead to degenerative diseases. For example, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, et cetera. If it happens in someone’s heart, they have heart disease. If it happens in someone’s pancreas, they have diabetes. If it happens in, you know, their liver, then they have all sorts of liver issues. It’s basically system based.

But really the issue is that the mitochondria throughout the body are failing. So that’s, I think, a good elaboration on why they’re so important because they are our engine and the better they work the better we work. And if they don’t work the way they’re designed, then we have this dysfunction or disease that’s occurring in the body.

Landon: Gotcha. Well, super helpful. Definitely appreciate the layman’s terms ’cause I, sir, am a layman. So I appreciate that a lot. Definitely helping me understand this a little bit more. So I mean, really you can make the argument that all chronic diseases are mitochondrial, right. Meaning that they manifest when the mitochondria are severely damaged.

Looping back to, you know, your intro when you were kind of going through all these things with the debilitating headaches and kind of all these, you know, different health issues that you were having. It sounds like your mitochondria was damaged. Right? And you were having all these issues with your mitochondria. So I guess, you know, the questions from there for me are like, how did you know it was your mitochondria and how, if I’m suffering with some stuff, how do I know if my mitochondria is damaged or not?

How to know if your mitochondria are damaged

Matt: Yeah, so it’s, uh, it’s a good question. There’s really not as much measurement as would be ideal, because the science is super young. So people are starting to build out ways of testing the mitochondria and looking into it. I was having all those issues as was mentioned in the bio. And, you know, I was like a 13, 12 to 13-year-old going into high school with these gut issues, allergies, headaches, and I just didn’t feel well.

And really, we can make it really simple. Like, the general thing we’re all taught is that these diseases people are having today are genetic, you know. So if you have a disease, it’s genetic. It’s caused by some issue that you inherit from your mom and your dad in your genes. They’ve looked over the last 50 or 60 years since they discovered DNA, and they thought that that was gonna be, like, the thing. Every disease: “Oh my gosh, it must be in the genes, because the genes direct life.” But in reality, they haven’t found the diseases in the genes. None. Like, very little. In fact, you can have an identical twin, you know, identical twins – one who gets some disease and the other who doesn’t. Or one who lives until 80 and one who lives until 50. So the difference isn’t in the genes. The difference is actually in their environment. And so the mitochondria are really just sort of a mediator of the environment. They’re a reflection of the environment we’re living in because within the body, because they’re the engine, they’re sort of the part that is most involved with the environment.

In other words, if you think of a car, like, the seats inside of the car or the metal under the car, are these things they’re not really as prone to damage as the engine. Like 90% of the time the car has issues, it’s the engine. Because there’s so much moving and so much happening. Right?

And that’s the same with the mitochondria. They’re doing so much all the time that it’s more likely that there are gonna be issues there than anywhere else. And so basically the only way I really came to understand was, “Well, these issues weren’t genetic so they must be coming from something environmental.”

And then, based on the research, you know, I can just understand that that is mediated through the mitochondria. And then, you know, we can talk a little bit later on or we can get into it now – however you’d like – I started to learn about what kind of things actually impact the mitochondria that are things that we can actually change. You know, that was really interesting. 

Landon: Yeah. No, let’s definitely talk about that. I’m super interested in it. You know, with the car analogy kind of relating back to the human body. You know, some people try to diet and exercise their way out of health issues, but they find that that’s not enough. Right? So like, I would love to hear, you know, your more thoughts on this from you. 

Matt: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, diet and exercise are sort of like the go-to approach for health today. And it makes sense because that’s what we’ve been taught and that’s all we really have come to know. And even so much so that in the alternative health world, where we’re a little bit more advanced than just, “Oh, you have a disease. Take this drug,” right? Even in the alternative world, this is still sort of the foremost idea of how to achieve health. You know, improve your diet, improve your nutrition, improve your supplementation, and go out and train. That is really useful for many people. And often actually solves most people’s issues. 

Landon: Right. 

Matt: Now, in my case, it really didn’t. And the interesting thing- you know, I actually have some friends who are functional medicine doctors who, you know, treat patients. And they’ve said that in their training and in their practice, they’ve seen that there are certain people who- you know like older people let’s say, who respond really well to certain IV drips and certain functional medicine treatments with all these targeted, you know, supplementation regimens and all this stuff. And they see actually great responses from these elderly people, oftentimes. But then you take a kid who’s like 15-16 years old and addicted to video games, always inside, never in the sun. And you put them on some kind of protocol that looks like, based on their data, that it should work. And it does nothing.

And so, sort of the thing that they were, as a medical doctor, attributing this to based on their research as they recounted it to me was that probably the kids who are living this toxic indoor lifestyle – super pale, super sickly, sort of, you know, their eyes are glazed over when you look at them, they don’t really have great communication, social skills.

They’re having really damaged mitochondria function because of this indoor environment. And so no matter how much of the nutrients you give them, no matter how much of these things you give them, their body’s innate capacity to function and to heal is damaged. And so they can’t really utilize all that stuff.

Whereas the person who’s 60 or 70, they grew up in a healthy environment. They live a relatively healthy lifestyle. Cause they’re maybe just not on a computer all day. Maybe they go for walks or they spend time with their friends. They’re happy, you know, whatever they found some fulfillment in. And they just needed a little kick.

So all those nutrients and this and that actually worked, I found that to be fascinating, right. That the body has this innate capacity to heal this innate energy, which the mitochondria are sort of a key piece of. And by living a healthy lifestyle, doing all these things that I wanna get into, we just function kind of well often, and we don’t get sick, we don’t have disease.

The importance of sunlight & light for mitochondria

So the things that really interested me, and this is kind of in the title of the show, was light. This was like my intro point to mitochondria. I was reading a ton and reading from these genius bloggers and doctors and neurosurgeons talking about these subjects. And one of the things that one person in particular was really honing in on was the importance of sunlight and light for mitochondria. And the reason is because, well, the body is this really complex system, right? There’s so much going on in the body and it’s so far beyond diet and exercise. And so, for example, to simplify health just down to diet and exercise goes back to the car analogy. It’s like saying, “Well, your car’s not working so well. Forget about the engine, the car’s not working so well. We just gotta put in premium gas instead of regular. And we just gotta go out and drive it a little bit more.” Is that gonna fix the car? Absolutely not. That’s not gonna fix any broken engine. But again, that’s limiting the human being just to the whole thing and not, not really looking a little bit deeper, we actually have to look, “Okay, why might our engines not be working so well. How can we actually heal that?” And then we can take the most advantage of the benefits of exercise and the benefits of a clean diet. 

So getting into light and why this is important for the mitochondria. And by the way, if you have any questions, feel free to interrupt me at any point. So. getting into light. Our body has this thing called a circadian rhythm, which is a fancy- schmancy science term for a biological clock or an internal clock. So our body has these sort of clocks that – shocker – they run the length of 24 hours, which is a day, you know? 

Landon: Right. 

Matt: And so, we can kind of very intuitively understand the reason for that is that the most profound change in our environment on a regular basis is the fact that at one point of our existence it is extremely bright. There’s this thing called the sun that’s shining on all of us and it’s very bright and very intense. And it kills – it’s toxic for – most bacteria. We’re mostly made of bacterial cells. So it’s, it’s something that’s a really significant environmental factor that needs to be accounted for. And then the other part of the time it’s not there and it gets a lot colder. And so that’s something also that needs to be accounted for. And so that’s why we have this circadian rhythm. 

If we just got rid of the concepts that we all know of the earth being a sphere and spinning around the sun- although some people disagree with that whole thing, but that’s a different conversation, you know, let’s not go there. So basically, if we get rid of that concept, like if you just took earth as “we are here” like, it’d be kind of interesting. Like, wow, it gets light and then it gets dark and then it gets light and then it gets dark and forget about spinning around the sun and rotating around our own axis. That’s something that’s really significant. And you, you know, we actually sleep and then we get up, and then we sleep, and then we get up, and then we sleep, and we get up. And so basically that is the way. One could say that life, when it evolved, was actually constantly asleep. You know bacteria, they’re just kind of- yes, they’re getting nutrients from the environment, et cetera- but they’re not awake in the way that we consider ourselves or other animals awake. 

Landon: Right.

The circadian rhythm

Matt: And so what we could say is that we actually evolved wakefulness in the sense that we consider it. And we had to maintain some period of what we call sleep for repair and regeneration. Which is the state that, you know as I’m saying, the majority of living organisms remain in for all of their existence. This sort of more rest and digest regenerative period. So we evolve this sort of wakefulness, which is a pretty cool thing evolutionarily. Because it really allows us to go out and have a sort of higher chance of getting nutrients and, you know, basically doing the things that life does.

So that’s what this circadian rhythm came into existence for: to sort of allow us to keep track of this regularly changing environmental cycle. Because, long story short, organisms that can better track their environment and changes have better ability to survive in those environments. And so back to the mitochondria and this whole story about health: the mitochondria are really impacted by this circadian rhythm.

In other words, they depend on it and they need to have light from the sun, basically, during the day to function optimally. Doesn’t have to be like a bright, sunny Southern California day, summer day. Just some light, which is always there even on a gray, cloudy day. Because people ask, “How do I get sun when it’s gray and cloudy?” There’s still light, usually. Unless you’re in northern Norway for periods of the year, right? So they need light during the day, but they also need time to regenerate and heal at night. And so, if I had to say like one of the best ways you could harm people’s mitochondria- not that it’s intentionally done, but that one could harm their mitochondria without noticing it- what I would recommend is that people use an artificial light source to stimulate their body to stay awake beyond the time when the sun has departed. And keeping in mind that the sun is sort of our power source. Right? Even though we use food for energy as well. When the sun is present, it’s powering our biology on many levels beyond what we can just get from food by itself.

And that’s a very interesting conversation we can touch on a little bit, but basically the sun is like a supercharger for life. It’s like the best multivitamin ever. And every single cell, every single biomolecule in the body, absorbs certain wavelengths of light and they require a certain amount of that to function at their highest level.

More isn’t always better. If you get too much you’ll sunburn and, you know, you could die if you get too much sun. We’re like a painting and the sun is the painter. The rays are like the brush. But we’re a dynamic painting. In other words, we require our stores of these wavelengths of light to constantly be topped off, to function at the highest level.

And so what I would recommend people do if they want to disrupt their mitochondria, disrupt their cellular energy production and cause these issues. I would say use an artificial light bulb or something that triggers the brain to keep secreting the stress hormones to stay awake once the sun’s gone. Because what you’re gonna do is stress the hell outta the body because it’s trying to stay awake and function when it doesn’t have the power from the sun to do so anymore. 

But that’s what we’re doing today. We have all these artificial lights we turn on when the sun goes down to trick our brain to keep making stress hormones, like cortisol, to stay awake when we don’t really have the power from the sun to keep staying awake. And then the other side of the coin, I would say, don’t go outside at all especially in the morning. Avoid morning sunlight, because morning sunlight is essential for the mitochondria to function properly. Now, again, I’m making an example of what I would recommend for someone who wants to have bad mitochondria.

Of course the opposite would be true in the other direction, which I think you’re understanding, it would be to avoid this light at night. So our brain can know, “time to go to sleep” when the sun’s gone and we can regenerate and heal and repair the way our mitochondria are designed to. With the key thing being melatonin.

Melatonin is the hormone that repairs the mitochondria. Which is why it’s the most important antioxidant, anti-aging, anti-cancer molecule in the whole body. And then the key on the other side of not having artificial light after sunset will be to get ample light. Especially in the morning and throughout the day.

And that’s a really healthy way to reset the circadian rhythm. Optimize our body’s energy production systems, the mitochondria. And optimize our energy and vitality in the day. And then optimize our sleep and repair at night. 

Landon: Yeah. Wow. That was a lot- that was really good. 

Matt: It’s a lot. I know. 

Landon: No, that was a lot, really good information. And I’ve got a lot of follow up questions for you on it, so-

Matt: Please let’s get into it. 

How much sunlight you should get on a daily basis

Landon: Yeah. So, you know, I’m with you. I think that the sun is the main source of our existence, really. In terms of, you know, biologically how we are here. So, this is a very specific question to you but- just generally, you know people should be getting sunlight.

How much sunlight do you get? How much sunlight do you recommend that people get? Because, you know, it can be different in different parts of the country, the world, just in terms of, you know, the types of rays that they’re getting and how often. But, if you were to make a general statement, you know- most of our listeners are in the United States, you know, what would you generally tell them to get on a daily basis kind of compared to what you do? 

Matt: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s funny you say that and I appreciate you, you know, suggesting I try to generalize and I will. But it’s funny if you consider the United States. You have the Florida Keys and Miami, and you also have basically Siberia if you go to Northern Alaska. So, exactly. It’s a pretty diverse- it’s very, very hard to generalize even the continental United States. You have Maine and Miami. Yes, it’s amazing that we can have such diverse climates just in this one country. But as far as, like, what I get for sun… so this is an ever-evolving experiment of mine. Sometimes I get too much sun and I burn because I’m sort of trying to, you know, push the limits a little bit. 

Landon: Right. 

Matt: First and foremost, I’ll just claim to people: burning is not good. Burning is sort of saying you’ve gone beyond your limit. Like, it’s that you’ve gone beyond it. So I recommend people avoid burning basically at all costs. Even if it means getting a little bit too little sun. Just in general as a safety recommendation. Because burning is where you can start to run the risk of- like, people talk about skin cancer and this and that… now, I wouldn’t go that far necessarily. Skin cancer is very complex. As is all cancer. And it goes all very far beyond just sunlight exposure. 

Landon: Right. 

Matt: Although it can be a trigger. But, typically, there’s factors involved. Like, you know, Glyphosate in the food supply and all sorts of other toxins and constant circadian disruption that leads to cancer. So like this whole idea- I was gonna call it a myth, but this whole idea of light – sunlight – causing skin cancer is not fully founded by the evidence. And all the leading researchers in the world on light agree on this. You know, I’m sort of like a messenger I would say. But there are these people who have spent their entire lives studying these things and they are sort of in agreement. Anyway, that’s a different point. We could also touch on that a little bit more, but that’s the gist of that one. We’re not gonna have time to go super too deep on the whole UV and skin cancer thing. 

But anyway, what I will say about sun- and we will touch on that- just so people have an idea is: you so you wanna get a healthy dose below burning. What I do is probably- so every morning I get morning sunlight. So I look at the sun when it’s rising for between five and 15 minutes, and just let it kind of hit my face. And then even if I’m not looking at it directly, because out the window of my place I have a really good sunrise view. And on my Instagram, my Instagram is @thelightdiet. And people can look that up and just see there’s pictures of me looking at the sunrise and stuff. A lot. I watch the sunrise in the morning. And then in the middle of the day, I’ll try to do, like, between 15 and 30 minutes of midday sun bathing. And then in the evening I’ll watch the sunset. 

So that is like the basic “light diet” protocol that I recommend to people. It’s just morning sun for, again, 5-15 minutes as early as you can around sunrise. Midday sun bathing- actually this is where it varies the most depending on where you are in your tan. Because morning sun isn’t gonna burn you no matter where you are on earth. The early morning. Just because it’s filtered through a lot more atmosphere. That’s why it’s a lot more- they call it golden hour, sunrise and sunset, for photography because it’s filtered through more atmosphere. So more of the blue violet and ultraviolet is filtered out and therefore it’s less likely to burn, et cetera. In fact, it’s just doesn’t burn, for the fir- depending on where you are. If you’re close to the equator, the tropics, or it’s summer where you are, which means that because of the Earth’s tilt, the sun is gonna reach a higher angle in the sky at that time of year, which makes it summer versus winter when it reaches a lower angle in the sky, because of the Earth’s tilt in the other direction.

Basically, the sun’s gonna climb faster. It’s gonna climb up. So if you’re somewhere where it’s really wintery you’ll notice the sun kind of goes along the horizon throughout the day. And maybe it goes up, but it’s going more horizontal than it is vertical. Whereas if you’re either on the equator, in the tropics, or somewhere where it’s summer- typically, the sun the further you go from the equator, it’s still gonna rise horizontally and kind of cross the sky rather than just go up and over top. But it’s gonna rise a lot faster. And so the point is: the higher the sun goes in the sky, off the horizon- the angle of inclination they call it- the more ultraviolet there is coming through, the faster you can get burned. Because there’s less atmosphere filtering it out. So it’s just, it’s really simple. Like, if you think of a swimming pool and you had to swim across the swimming pool, you’d have to go against a lot more water than if you swim straight to the bottom. If it was, like, say a 20 meter long pool by like 5 meters deep, you know, you’re gonna get through it a lot faster if you go straight down.

And it’s the same thing if the sun’s coming at us across the atmosphere at a distance, it’s going through a lot more atmosphere. Whereas if it’s at the highest point in the sky, they call it the zenith, it’s going through the least amount possible. That’s why it is correct and accurate if people say, “If you can’t see your shadow,” which means the sun’s almost directly overhead or more overhead or, “If your shadow’s shorter, there’s more UV. There’s more ultraviolet.” That’s generally true. Unless, of course, it’s a cloudy day. Then all bets are off. Because if it’s cloudy, the UV could still be super high, but you wouldn’t really know. So you do have to kind of be careful on cloudy days. 

But anyway, the reason I’m saying all of that is for people to understand midday sunbathing. In general, I recommend in summer- whatever that means, because in the tropics and the equatorial regions it’s basically always summer by these terms in summer. By the Northern and Southern hemisphere terms, like, anywhere north of the tropics- like basically Florida and above, where there is a definitive winter and summer… But say it’s summer, you’d probably wanna spend between 5 and 30 minutes, and even up to an hour, sunbathing in the middle of the day. 

But it’s going to depend on your skin type and your tan. So you can have super dark skin, but not be super tan. Or you can have super dark skin and be super tan. You could have really light skin and not be tan, or have really light skin and be very tan. So there’s like all these different types of skin. And then within each type of skin, there’s different, you know, either super pale or super tan within that skin type. And so those are all variables. But in general, even the lightest skinned person with darker skin is gonna have somewhat more resistance than the lightest skin person with lighter skin. Just because they have more melanin, you could just see it. Like, again, someone who has, like, European descent who has tan skin is gonna have a certain level of, you know, shade to their skin tone. Someone who is of South American descent may have a darker Native American skin tone. That’s basically their starting point. Like, when their “pale” is maybe as dark as the European person when they’re tan. You see what I’m saying?

So you can kind of use skin tone, just looking at your own as a gradation of like where you are. And the key thing is just go out, typically- make it super simple- 2-5 minutes. I would recommend people start on each side of their body between 2-5 minute. Even 2-3. And just build up 2-3 minutes per day.

And you’ll quickly know if you can just get a lot more or if you’re like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. My skin’s getting kind of pink. I need to back down.” Just because your skin gets pink, too, people doesn’t mean that you’re burnt. It just means there’s blood flow occurring at the surface, which is because the blood wants the sun. So it comes to the surface so that the water and the blood can absorb the light. This is why we get pink when we go in the sun. Now, if you stay super pink and you- if you stay super pink, it means you’re- the blood’s staying at the surface to dissipate excess heat. 

Again, people will, like, tap someone’s skin. If I look burnt, someone pushes on my skin and they’re like, “Oh, you’re burnt,” you know, “I can see when you push down it turns white and then it gets red again.” No, that’s just because there’s blood at the surface. When you’re really burnt is when you have, like, pain or it’s crispy. You wanna avoid that. So if you start getting pink, that’s kind of like your indicator. “Okay. Probably enough sun.” If you wanna get a little more, great. But don’t push it. Yeah, and that’s kind of my explanation. One other thing I’ll add is, again, it’s really all about feeling your way and feeling what’s right.

Landon: Yeah. 

Matt: But again, not burning. Like, one day per week, typically- I’ve started getting this rhythm, especially cause I’m working a ton of my business- one day per week I will just “sun day”, like, the whole day. I mean, not really the whole day, but like two or three hours I’ll just kind of go out and really get a good cook. And I typically will, you know, not burn because I’ve developed a pretty good ability to absorb light. But I hope that answers your question. That’s like all the things I’d recommend about, you know, for a basic explanation for people who wanna start sunbathing. 

Landon: Yeah. No, that’s, that was really helpful. And I think it’s good to talk about, you know, that we’re not all, you know, the same person, right? We’re all very unique and, you know, we’re all designed very differently. And so it’s hard to answer a really general question when we have so much uniqueness to us. So yeah… 

Matt: You know, one thing I’ll add that could really help though. That there’s an app called Deminder, like a reminder but just with a D. Deminder. And it’s on iPhone app and I think they have an Android app too. And you basically go in, you put in your location. You put in your skin tone and then it will tell you, based on your location, the UV index. And you can even say, I’m gonna have a sun exposure. You say how much of your skin is exposed, how overcast or not overcast, you know blue sky, it is that day. And then it will tell you, based on how much skin you have exposed, how much clouds there are in the sky -or none- and then how much time you’re in the sun. You press “start exposure” with all the settings set, then you press “stop exposure” when you’re done. And it will start to actually estimate for you how your body’s vitamin D level is. And, and it’s really, really useful just to kind of start to get an idea for like, okay, the UV is this and I got this much sun. I personally don’t use it. Cause I’m just going very intuitively. 

Landon: Right. 

Matt: But people could use that just to get a sense of how strong the sun is where they are. Or they could just Google “UV index” and just, you know, just be relative in your dose. But if someone has been doing this for a long time, I encourage people: like, go for it but just don’t burn yourself.

Landon: Right. Exactly. No, that’s really good. You know, kind of those little, you know, tips and tricks that our listeners can just take away, “Oh, I can download an app and if I’m new to this and check it out. And it can kind of help me as I learn how my body reacts to the exposure of the sun.” So that’s awesome. Appreciate that a lot. 

Matt: Yeah, of course. 

Red Light Therapy

Landon: I wanna switch gears a little bit and- well not really. I mean it’s kind of in the same genre, but I wanna talk a little bit about red light therapy. I know you’re a proponent of it. I was just looking on your Instagram. I see you’re using red light therapy. I do too. I have a product called Joovv, I think is what it is, and I’ll stand in front of it. 

Matt: Nice. 

Landon: And, you know, I’ll especially use it cuz I do a lot of jujitsu. So, like, if I’m hurt, I’ll try to focus on that area. And I don’t even know if that works, but for me it does, like, I don’t know scientifically why it works, but I think you do.

So tell me, you know, a little bit about red light therapy and I think it probably has to do with our mitochondria, but I’m not quite sure. And I’d love to hear your explanation. 

Matt: Yeah. Actually you’re on point. Absolutely. So it does have to do with the mitochondria largely. Basically, there are like – it’s amazing – there are, like, volumes on red light therapy. I mean, people have written whole books about it that people can go out and Google search and read. There are so many papers about red light therapy, like hundreds, if not, maybe at this point, thousands of peer-reviewed, you know, controlled trials with people using red light therapy.

And they’re, they’re seeing really amazing results in basically everything they look for. And to me, this speaks to the overall amazingness of the sun. Because basically the only reason red light therapy works for a living organism goes back to the painting analogy I gave earlier, that we’re like a painting that’s constantly being painted by the sun. We’re, like, dynamic.

So the reason red light therapy works is because it’s one of the colors from the sun, or “wavelengths” is the scientific term for color that our body utilizes. Or really another way to put it, basically just to go back to that so people can really have the full context here: the sun provides a certain scope of energy that reaches the earth in huge quantities. The sun itself emits almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum, which is all the light in the universe from like x-rays, gamma rays, all these super high-frequency wavelengths that are actually toxic to the body cuz we didn’t evolve with them, all the way down to like radio waves and things that we use for communication now on earth.

But that didn’t exist on earth before we started trading them as humans because they’re all sort of filtered out by the atmosphere. So. Um, that’s this thing called the electromagnetic spectrum. It’s, like, all the light energy. Even the stuff we don’t see. What we see is just 1/70th of the electromagnetic spectrum. And that’s what we call visible light, or just light. And so that’s what reaches the earth in huge proportion. So it’s pretty amazing, but again, our planet’s perfect for us. Or a better way of saying it is we evolved perfectly for the planet.

So that energy that’s reaching the earth from the sun in these abundant quantities, the small sliver there that’s not filtered out. It’s like one octave. If you think in musical octaves, it’s like one octave out of like 70 octaves, right? One octave that reaches earth is the colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. And before red there’s infrared, which we can’t see. And after violet there’s ultraviolet, which we also can’t see. But there’s lots of them reaching earth. And so if we think of life as an energy, an energetic system – which it is – what the energy of the sun basically allowed us- the energy of the sun basically allowed life to become complex. Because the inner wavelengths of light from the sun are sort of like, if you think of a- this is a great way to put it actually: like a pianist playing a piano, right? Every finger that the pianist has can play different keys and so on. And the wavelengths of light from the sun are like the pianist playing the different keys of different available molecules in the environment that resonate with those wavelengths from the sun. This might sound kind of scientific, but maybe just a simple/better way to put it is that light from the sun literally shaped the creation of life. We evolved based on what was available from the sun. It wasn’t like we evolved separately from the sun.

The sun provided all these wavelengths of energy. All these colors and different molecules on earth that have a resonance with those colors. We’re basically able to organize with that energy in certain ways. And so, as a result of this is why I’m giving this background so people can really understand it as a result of this process. We have, you know, basically every single wavelength or the majority, a huge amount of the wavelengths of light from the sun actually have effects on our body. Not just as some sort of random, weird coincidence. But actually because those are the same wavelengths that led to those processes existing in the first place.

Does that make sense? 

Landon: Yeah. No, it does. 

Matt: So I’m hoping I’m explaining this. I’m doing my best here. Well, so basically, one of those colors or wavelengths from the sun is red. And so it happens that red was really important in the process of mitochondrial energy production and creating this system. It was utilized heavily in this process, in the development and evolution of this process. And the specific molecules, or particles that resonate with red light from the sun in our body, one’s called “cytochrome c oxidase”. And this is a really important protein that basically is essential in the process of energy production in the mitochondria.

And we can just leave it at that, but so cytochrome c oxidase absorbs red light. And when it absorbs this red light, it actually improves its ability to carry out all of its processes. This is what I was getting at earlier about the light of the sun and the different wavelengths doing so much more for the body than just what food alone. Because food gives us energy, but it’s only giving us a specific type of energy, you know, that we can utilize to basically make ATP in our cells. It’s not giving us all of the different energies of the wavelengths of light, which again, you could think of like different buckets that need to be filled up to function at the highest level. We need our bucket of red light filled up, and our bucket of blue light, and our bucket of ultraviolet, and et cetera. And so when you go and get red light therapy, basically what you’re just doing is you’re putting yourself back in resonance with certain wavelengths of light that we evolved with from the sun that optimize a process that was designed based on the availability of that light. 

So the reason I’m getting into all this detail is just for people to understand. Cause I really want people to understand that it isn’t like we just happen to have found this thing called red light therapy. That’s an added benefit to life. Like, no, this is how we’re supposed to work.

Landon: Right. 

Matt: We’re supposed to have quick cellular repair and regeneration. We’re supposed to have really good energy production. We’re supposed to have clean skin because we’re out in the sun in nature. But now that we’ve disconnected from that, we’re re-supplementing a portion of that light, which is a very important portion. And that’s why my company, RA Optics, is actively developing red light therapy devices actually for use. So I’m a huge fan of red light therapy. 

Landon: Okay. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely.

Landon: Cool. Amazing. 

Matt: Yeah. So something similar comparable to, I would say a Joovv panel and some of the other, you know, businesses out there. We’ve created a really, really high level product that we’re gonna be launching probably in the next couple of months. But that’s even beside the point, you know? It’s like, I really appreciate your interest in getting to the core of this. But at the same time, you know, in a way that people can easily understand. And I think we’re doing just that. That’s why red light therapy is so, so useful. Like it is. It is great. But at the same time, I would say, really really important for people to realize, based on what I’m saying, the key thing to do is to go actually and get back out in natural sunlight. Because even though you could do red light therapy, and it will have those benefits that you’re saying. They are scientifically proven. There’s, like I said, cleaner skin, faster healing of wounds, or just general recovery. You know, improved mitochondrial energy production, which as we discussed earlier on, makes every system in the body work better. You know, I didn’t use this phrase, but there’s this great saying that “a rising tide lifts all ships.”

Landon: Yep. 

Matt: And so if you have good mitochondria. And you’re, you’re doing something like red light therapy or sun bathing or blocking artificial blue light at night – which is what the glasses that we make do, you know. When you’re doing anything like this, it’s improving mitochondria function overall throughout the whole body. And then that rising tide lifts all the ships, all the systems in the body can improve generally speaking, you know? 

Landon: Yeah. No, absolutely. That’s awesome. And it’s a very, I guess, detailed way. And it’s funny, it’s like, it’s detailed to me. But to you, you’re probably making it, you know, as simple for me to understand, but you know, what that tells me is that you are passionate about this. You are a subject matter expert on this whole thing, and that’s probably why you developed your company RA Optics. Right? 

So, you know, tell us a little bit more about what you guys do. You just, you kind of generally went over. You know that you guys provide lenses, but I’m looking on your website right now. You guys do a lot. So tell me about, you know, RA Optics and what it is that you want to provide. 

Ra Optics

Matt: Yeah, well, so basically I started RA Optics because actually I was graduating high school. And so, you know, I’m 22 years old right now. So, you know, people often are like, “What? How are you so young and intelligent?” And I’m like, “Well, you know, there were these Greek philosophers who were writing masterpieces by the time they were like 17,” you know? Like so, humans are really intelligent beings and we can become really intelligent. And I believe that the education system is the number one thing that often stifles people from this.

Now I was blessed with some really inspired teachers and some really great opportunities, but in general, I see the education system sort of like a, you know, feedlot for cattle. That they’re basically just bringing people through for slaughter. Like to throw ’em on the corporate, you know, chain for the rest of their lives. And it’s diminishing human intelligence, in my opinion. And this is why things like Waldorf schools and things where they get kids out in the sun and learn in their own ways. I think it’s super awesome and important. 

But, so anyway, I started the business because, well, I wanted to have an income source so I could do my own thing. And I had spent the last four years researching health and learning about all this stuff and had learned how important light was. And I just said, well, after thinking about many different ideas, it just became clear that the lowest hanging fruit, the simplest thing to have the biggest impact for people’s health was blue light blocking glasses – based on what I was learning. Because they can easily and efficiently block all the light from the different light sources that can disrupt our bodies’ circadian rhythm and sleep.

And that’s why we created what previously I called night lenses. We now call them sleep lenses. So, RA OpticsSleep Lenses. They block all this blue light that can disrupt our sleep at night. And what this does for us is it allows us to calm down more naturally in the evening to biologically produce more melatonin. But which allows us again to relax, to sleep more deeply, and have more restful and regenerative and repairing sleep. And then to wake up with more energy.

And so today people are either accepting that they have no energy and that their sleep’s bad and they can’t relax in the evening, or they’re using partial solutions. Which would be, for example: it’s common that people- everyone needs- not everyone but many people need to have a drink of alcohol to relax in the evening.

That’s largely to do with constant circadian disruption. You know, it’s one thing for enjoyment for a party. Now it’s like, two glasses of wine a night otherwise I’m not even gonna be able to chill out. Like that’s the thing for a lot of people. People need to take Valium, Ambien, et cetera, to actually put the lights out, you know. And then they need to drink five cups of coffee in the morning when they wake up just to stay awake.

And that’s something that simply can be replaced by either no light at night or red light at night. Which is something we’re also developing in addition to the red panels for therapeutic use, just lighting. But basically, people can, you know, do that or candlelight. Or, you know, a simple thing to do – and I recommend people do all these things. Use candles in your house at night, replace your bulbs with even just warmer incandescent bulbs instead of LEDs. Or even red bulbs you can buy on Amazon for the time being. Again, we’re gonna develop something far superior. 

Landon: Cool. 

Matt: But basically, that’s something people can do. And then the screen lenses that you can see on the website are basically the solution for daytime. If you have to sit indoors all day and be exposed to, you know, bright light from screens, et cetera, et cetera. These block out the blue light which, even during the day from these light sources can be excessive and damaging to the eyes causing eye strain, headaches, fatigue, and exhaustion.

So that’s really what RA Optics is selling. But really what we’re all about is, and you can see it, like, it’s all about elevating humanity. It’s just, how can we bring humanity up? Because that’s the mission that, you know, I wanted to go on myself. And the answer is, like, in order to elevate humanity we have to each elevate ourselves. And this is one way that people can do a really good job of elevating themselves. 

Another way is by drinking clean juice, you know, and getting healthier by eating better food. You know, that’s another thing people can do. So there’s many facets and this is sort of the one that I hope to contribute to the world.

Landon: Well, that’s awesome. I mean, you know, it’s very clear that you’re super passionate about this, that, you know, this is something that you are very into and have learned a lot about. You’re very intelligent and have a deep understanding of this stuff. And I love that, you know, I think it’s sometimes good to be a Jack of all trades. Sometimes it’s really good to, you know, really hone in on one thing and kind of help the world in that way. And so, you know, we’re doing it with organic food and you’re doing it, you know, with all the cool things that you’re doing. So I just think that’s fantastic. 

Matt: Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Landon: I’m looking on your website right now. And, you know, you’ve got some different lenses for screen time, right? If we’re, if we’re stuck in front of a computer, like you said, and then sleeping. I think that’s really cool. Listeners check out his website. It’s RA OPTICS. I’ll spell it for you. It’s R-A there’s no “w” so it’s just R-A-O-P-T-I-C-S, raoptics.com. Lot of really cool stuff on here. I’m definitely gonna be getting a pair of these. I think I’m gonna try the sleep lenses. Cuz it’s funny, I do look at my phone sometimes before I go to bed. But I think there’s some setting where you can turn it red, but it’s probably not as good as what you’ve got going on here with your sleep lenses.

So I’m gonna check that out. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. That would be great. And there are some settings, actually, you can Google search, like how to make your iPhone red. There are some good videos about it. But that actually is good for phones. The key thing where our lenses come in the most handy is all the lighting in houses, and public, and friends houses that aren’t circadian-friendly yet.

Landon: Right 

Matt: Now that’s a problem that I have a very strong feeling that I may be gonna be able to solve, or at least do a really good number on in the next, you know, decade or even sooner. But for now, that’s why the glasses are a really simple thing people can do. Cuz all the lighting in the world isn’t changing overnight and it’s not even gonna happen and really maybe right away.

But that’s the direction we’re gonna go. As long as I think people are open to, you know, becoming better. And I think we are as a species. Even though it sometimes doesn’t appear that way. So yeah. 

Landon: Yeah. No, absolutely. Matt, I really appreciate it. This has been really super informative episode. Go follow Matt at – it’s just @thelightdiet. I’m actually checking out his Instagram right now. It’s funny, when you were talking I didn’t picture you as a blonde, long-haired dude, but now I do. Cause that’s exactly what you are. 

Matt: That’s funny. That’s the sun worshiper side coming out for sure. 

Landon: That’s awesome. And then, you know, we plugged your website. I definitely want my listeners to check that out. But anything else, anywhere else that they can find you, learn more about what you do? 

Matt: I would just say, yeah, go to raoptics.com. That’s R-A-optics after the Egyptian God of sunlight Ra. So raoptics.com, @thelightdiet Instagram. And that’s basically it. Subscribe to our email newsletter so we can send you really cool stuff and updates and so on and so forth. But that’s it. And just check it out. 

Landon: Awesome. Cool, Matt. Well, thank you so much. It’s been a great episode. Check out his website, check him out on Instagram, and better light and better sleep equals a better life. So thank you, sir. I appreciate it. 

Matt: Thank you so much as well. I really appreciate it. 

Landon: Awesome. Nice job. That was really good. Super informative. We’ve never gone in depth on this type of stuff. So I think our listeners are gonna super dig this. 

Matt: Oh, dude, I’m so stoked. I really, really appreciate it. And yet you’re a great interview host. You know, I was just listening to Impact Theory yesterday for the first time. 

Landon: Yeah. 

Matt: Tom Bilyeu, you’re probably familiar with that. You actually have a very similar, I would say, maybe even voice to him. But also just like a super- maybe not the voice, but something about your interviewing skills and, and that’s a huge compliment cuz he’s very talented of an interviewer, I would say. 

Landon: Thank you. 

Matt: So, and you’re able to bring a really good positive vibe and you know- like, not interrupting the guest, even if, if, if I’m going on a tangent. I mean, it’s good. It’s good to just, I think kind of just go with it. As the host. So I think you do a really great job. 

Landon: Thank you. I mean, that’s, it’s funny, like when I’m doing these, that’s exactly what I try to do is I try not to interrupt. I hate listening to podcasts and stuff where the host is always interrupting and interjecting. You know, it’s just like, “Hey, I brought you on, on my show. I wanna hear what you have to say. And so if you talk for 20 minutes about something, I wanna hear it all.” You know. And so it’s funny, I think, like, I think that’s probably the number one thing that separates Joe Rogan from everyone else is that he just listens, you know? And I think that, I think that’s the skillset that we’ve lost. So I really focus on that. So I appreciate you. I appreciate you telling me that. 

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you do a great job. I’m actually checking out your website now as well. And I see Tim Tebow on your front page. Dude, that’s awesome. I love it. 

Landon: Yeah. 

Matt: I’ll have to come to one of your locations sooner than later. Now, I didn’t look this up. Are you guys in Cali at all? 

Landon: We are. So if you head up to Yorba Linda- so it’s a little bit of a drive for you, but if you’re ever up in the OC area. We actually have a UFC fighter named TJ Dillashaw, he’s our franchise owner there. He owns that store and then he is developing some more in the area. So, yeah, check out his clean juice in Yorba Linda 

Matt: Dude. Amen. That sounds awesome. I will absolutely go check out the Cali location. Yorba Linda, that’s actually where my mother grew up as, as a young girl. So that’ll be super cool. Go back to my mother’s Homeland. So yeah. Cool. Well, awesome man. Thanks again for what you’re doing. I really love it. And, you know, if you guys are ever out in San Diego, don’t hesitate to gimme a shout. And, you know, I just always stoked to connect and also if you guys have, like, I’d love to get you a pair of glasses, just like, as a gift even for you and your partner or, or wife.

Landon: Awesome. 

Matt: So that would be my pleasure. I don’t know if you guys do like affiliate stuff with your podcast. If not great, if you do great. I mean, either way, like, but we can set up like a- I didn’t wanna like, try to interrupt the interview to ask you the question. Yeah, we could set up Clean Juice as like a 15% discount and give you guys 15% commission. So there’s just, you know, I’ll send a follow up email to Katheryn, but 

Landon: That’d be awesome. 

Matt: Basically. That’s stuff we could do. And then yeah, if you guys have any friends too, or like people in the health world- cause I’m really looking to get this message out and grow the business and grow the brand. So if there’s anyone, you know, who are like, you’re like, oh, this person would really be into this who hasn’t done a podcast about this subject yet, or whatever, or you just think we’d wanna try the glasses. Like totally down to hook people up and- 

Landon: Awesome. 

Matt: And just. Spread the word. So… 

Landon: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. Yeah, definitely follow up with Katheryn. She’ll be on the lookout for that email. She’s she’s listening. And so she’s getting all this, so appreciate that. And then, I mean, dude- I think you should [00:55:00] probably, if you haven’t done, you should probably start your own podcast cuz you have a lot to talk about.

Matt: Yeah, I actually should. I absolutely should. I have, I actually- so I have The Light Diet podcast. I have my own. But I haven’t- yeah, but I haven’t done many interviews. Just because I haven’t quite figured out the format that I really want to take. Like whether I wanna do solo episodes going deeper into this or interview a ton of guests.

Landon: Yeah. 

Matt: Although I think really the guests is kind of the way to go. Cuz then I get to take on the experts in this field. It’s just there’s not that many, 

Landon: Right. 

Matt: That’s kind of the issue. But I could just go general and go, 

Landon: You know? You could do both. I mean, that’s what we do. 

Matt: I could do both. Oh, you guys do solo?

Landon: We do some solo, mostly guests. 

Matt: Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good mix. For now, going on other people’s podcasts for me is a really great gig. But I appreciate your feedback. I’m definitely gonna get my show going. The other thing is like just running my business. I’m, like, doing a lot as myself with not as much help as I’m looking to bring on. It’s a process as well. But anyway, man, yeah, thank you for the advice. I really appreciate it. 

Landon: Yeah, dude. And it’s funny, we have a lot of guests on. I go on some podcasts, but they’re more like business podcasts and things like that. But you know, you’re probably more focused on like health and wellness. So like, you know, we know a lot of folks-

Matt: I’ll go on business podcasts, for sure. I think I can definitely tailor the message to tired and stressed entrepreneurs. 

Landon: Yeah, I know. That’s a hundred percent. Yeah. That’s your demo right there so… Awesome, dude. Cool. Well, congrats on everything you’re doing. 

Matt: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Congrats to you guys as well. It looks like you built an amazing brand. 

Landon: Thank you so much. 

Matt: You guys are like my inspiration. Like, I wanna make my website look way cooler like yours, you know?

Landon: Thank you. Well, if you ever have any questions about anything, dude, just let me know. 

Matt: Dude, thanks a million. I appreciate it, Landon, take care. 

Landon: Yeah. It’s my pleasure. Thanks, Matt.

Katherine: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit. 

Landon: So if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts, to never miss an episode. 

Katherine: And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, slide into our DM’s with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might wanna hear more about. 

Landon: All right, y’all. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to be organic.

Katherine: Just a quick legal disclaimer. We are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness nutrition with our expert guests. You should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you. In addition, this is for educational purposes. Only clean use franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws

Be Organic Podcast – Season 2, Episode 30. Tim Tebow: Food, Faith, & Fulfillment

Our special guest, Tim Tebow, joins us on today’s show to talk to us about healthy eating (beyond sports), transparent ingredients (choose organic!), keto, body positivity, faith & more!

Plus – find out Tim Tebow’s go-to smoothie & juice.

“We have the ability to change our life by the way that we eat, the way that we sleep, the way that we take care of ourselves.” – Tim Tebow

Tim Tebow is the founder and chairman of the board of the Tim Tebow Foundation, which operates ministries that are dedicated to serving and celebrating people with special needs, caring for homeless and abandoned children, providing physical and spiritual care to children with profound medical needs, and fighting human trafficking. Join us as we discuss his passion for this amazing foundation!

TIME STAMPS:

3:19 Tim Discusses His Journey to Clean Eating (jump to section)
7:00 Tim Discusses Some of His Favorite Healthy Foods (jump to section) 
10:10 What Tim Tebow Eats in a Day (jump to section)
14:55 If Tim Tebow were making a smoothie and a juice, what would he put in it? (jump to section)
18:30 Tim Tebow Talks About Faith in Relation to Clean Eating (jump to section)
23:26 Tim Tebow Shares His Testimony (jump to section)

 

Transcription Below

 

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Landon Eckles: Hey guys, this is Landon Eckles, your Be Organic podcast host as well as the CEO and co-founder of Clean Juice. I want to say thank you so much for tuning into this special episode that we filmed with Tim Tebow. Tim is an amazing guy. He needs no introduction, but as you guys know, he is our new national brand ambassador and he just stands for everything that we believe in and this is a partnership made in heaven. We are just so excited to be partnering with Tim. If you want to learn more about Tim and how he’s working with Clean Juice, check out our website, CleanJuice.com. If you’re interested in a franchise opportunity, because some of you might not know, but we’ve grown so much across the country in opening stores.

We’ve done that through franchising, by bringing in incredible franchise partners. So if you guys are interested in that, check out CleanJuiceFranchising.com, and you get a ton of information to get connected with our team there. But anyhow, again, I just wanted to say thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode.

It is absolutely a great one and we are so excited and blessed to have Tim Tebow as part of the Clean Juice family.

—

All right, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Be Organic podcast. My name is Landon, co-founder and CEO of Clean Juice. I’m here with my beautiful wife, Kat. We are actually on set live in Nocatee, Florida, and we have a very special guest that I’m going to allow Kat to introduce. 

Kat Eckles: So, not that this guest needs much introduction, but, he won the Heisman trophy in two national championships as a quarterback for the University of Florida. It’s my pleasure to introduce the one and only Tim Tebow. 

Tim Tebow: Thank you guys. I appreciate you. Thanks. I’m glad to be here. Glad to hang out with you guys for the day, too. And I’m grateful I got the chance to know y’all over the last few months and everything that y’all are doing and glad to be a part of it. And it’s exciting, exciting to actually be here. 

Kat: I think everyone knows you just from your sports background, but what I’ve found so interesting in just getting to know you and talk to you is you really have so much more going on than that even, you know, more so than sports, like your business ventures.

One of my most favorite things is your Tim Tebow foundation, which really helps with human trafficking. And we came to talk about business and many of our conversations just turn to that because it’s something we’re passionate about as well. I just wanted to mention that and make sure I brought it up because I think it’s really important to you.

Tim: Thank you. It’s definitely my biggest calling and purpose, is to fulfill our mission statement, which is to bring faith, hope, and love to those needing a brighter day in their darkest hour of need. We do that in every way possible because ultimately we believe the greatest thing you can do in life is change another life for the better.

We try very hard to do that every day and every opportunity that God gives us. 

Kat: So we’re here today because we’re partnering with you, which is so awesome and I think it was super natural for us because, obviously what we do here at Clean Juice is clean food and organic eating. That’s something that you’ve been passionate about not only for your athletic career, but just for your businesses and your ventures and just performing at your peak so I’d love to hear about your journey to how you got there.

Tim Discusses His Journey to Clean Eating

Tim: Yeah. I love that, Kat, because so many people think for me that the way I eat and the way I train and a lot of things I do in life are because of sports and sports are only a tiny piece of that.

I will be as focused on what I eat, how I sleep, how I go about life, just as much when I’m done playing sports. Because for me, it’s a way of life. It’s not just a way of sports. I want to be as healthy and as focused and as you know, healthy in body and strong in spirit, you know, 50 years from now. For every day that God gives me, I wanna make the most of that.

I want to make the most of it in sports, but I want to even more so I want to make the most of it in life. And so many times we train for sports so we can be our best, but we gotta have that same mindset, that same heart posture, that same focus in life so that when God gives us opportunities and opens doors for us in life, that we’re ready to be able to take advantage of that.

We’re not bogged down with stress. We’re not fatigued. We have the energy to go after those things, you know, with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. I’m someone that when I would learn something about health, I would always want to apply it. When I learned as  a boy, when I was 15 years old, just how bad sodas and junk food was, I got rid of it.

And I haven’t had a soda since I was 15 years old. An then, you know, in college and our nutritionist that we should carb load. And I was like, okay, I guess this is actually the best thing, right? But really this has a lot of negative effects. I’m gonna get rid of this.

It’s just been this constant journey of trying to learn and, and grow and adapt and what I would hear and who I would be around. It’s exciting to be with you guys and offering something that really is clean and it’s healthy, but I would say for me, probably the biggest thing over everything is that it’s trustworthy. There are not a lot of places you can go where exactly what they put on their signs is exactly what you get in your food.

That’s one of the biggest things that we started with our conversations. When you say, okay, it’s USDA certified organic, you mean it. And then we’ve talked through all your testing and how hard it is to get all of that. And so it’s like, you know what? It means enough to you and that means enough to me. And I appreciate that. 

Landon Eckles: That’s awesome. It’s funny. My next question for you was going to be so when you’re going out to a restaurant, what’s the one thing that you really care about when you’re choosing where to eat. But you kind of just answered that.

Tim: Yeah, and that’s honestly why it’s hard. You try to find places where you can trust what they’re giving you, but you don’t have, I mean, I’m trying not to be negative, but you don’t have a lot of those options, right. You might order something you believe is healthy, but you don’t know the background of where it’s come from, what the soil is like where it was grown–all those different things.

You know, for me and my wife, we both so believe in trying to take care of our body and get the cleanest products we can. Even when she cheats a little bit, it’s still like a healthy cheat, you know? For us, it’s so important. And that’s why one of the biggest things that comes to my brain is trustworthy.

It’s also the peace of mind, right. You might not always feel the difference of just one meal, but that peace of mind of knowing what I’m getting is exactly what’s on the label.  

Landon: Absolutely, no doubt. I appreciate you answering that. So when you’re going out and getting something to eat, a lot of people think that to eat healthy, it’s not gonna taste good, but I’m sure you’ve got a ton of favorites that are super healthy. Tell us about some of those favorite things. 

Tim Discusses Some of His Favorite Healthy Foods

Tim: Well, I’ll tell you when I first started the keto diet, which was in 2011, or the end of 2011, no one knew what that diet was and most people had no idea how to make recipes for it but so much has changed along the way. A lot of people are, even if it’s not keto, they’re finding more low carb options, low sugar options.

And so you’re getting a lot more options today than you had 10 years ago, which I’m very grateful for. But then we also have just found different ways to like, we just had pasta the other night that my wife cooked but we made it out of my dad’s garden. He has squash and zucchini 

and then we had the sauce on top which Demi made. And it was like, I’m eating spaghetti, you know, like this is amazing. And then we have brownies. We have healthy ice creams. We have awesome smoothies. Even when we splurge, we’re gonna have cauliflower pizza.

There’s so many more options. And I think when people say now, you know, I have a sweet tooth. I’m like, okay, is it gonna be as good as if you just pour a bunch of sugar in and make brownies? No, but it’s good enough to stop the cravings. I really believe that. And I think if you give it a try, you know, for some people listening, if you were like

“I’m Italian and I love this or in so much is culture-based too. I think there’s enough options for most people now where it can be good enough, but also healthy enough. And I would encourage people to just give it a try. 

Kat: Well, I think you kind of train your taste buds too, right? Now you’d probably go eat Chick-fil-A or something. You’d eat a chicken sandwich and fries or whatever, and you might know that that’s not the best thing for you. You wouldn’t enjoy it as much as you thought. 

Tim: I can taste very quickly when I have something where I feel like they put something in it. I can taste it and I can feel it very quickly. My taste buds have changed so much to now when I somehow get a bite of something I’m like that’s too much. You know? And I don’t like it. 

I’ve never been a really sweet person. Even when I was young, I wouldn’t have sweets. It’s changed so much. People say, “Do you have the craving?” Honestly, never. Every now and then if Demi’s having ice cream, I’ll get a little keto ice cream, but I never want a regular ice cream.

The longer you train your body in your mind, I think the more it adapts and you become so comfortable with it and, and excited knowing that I’m choosing healthy options. 

Kat: I’d love to hear what a day in the life of Tim Tebow’s food looks like. 

What Tim Tebow’s Eats in a Day

Tim: Oh, that’s a really good question. I think it changes and adapts depending on the day, the practice, how hard I’m training, if I’m traveling, if I’m speaking, if we’re on a mission trip. It’s all different and I really try to adapt because of all those things.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a mission trip in a foreign country and I’ve just decided to go full-fast because it’s just easier. I’ll just get a bunch of water and go full fast. If it’s a quick trip like 3-5 days, then I would go either a full-fast or a moderated fast.

It was helpful because honestly, sometimes you eat something that you don’t know exactly what it is and that can be a lot worse. And then if I’d just had a practice, it could be a lot more intake because of the stress level and the impact. Every morning, the last few mornings have been a six egg omelet with bacon, sausage, chicken, and ham, all mixed in.

I’m getting a bunch of protein. I’m getting a bunch of fat in there and I’m fueling up pretty good. I’m killing so much water and that would just be in the morning.  I’m probably having something like that five or six times within the day. I’ll also have multiple shakes or smoothies in between those meals to be able to get everything else in.

Those are really high, heavyheavy lift, heavy training, heavy practice days. So it changes based on what what I’m asked to do. On some Sundays, I’ll be doing a church service not far from you guys in North Carolina and that’ll look a little bit different. I will have something earlier in the morning, but I’m not gonna crush it right beforehand because before I speak, I can’t really eat a lot, you know?

Honestly a green drink and a little coffee or something might do the trick beforehand. Then after the first service or before the second one, I might do another one. Then, after I finish the next service, I might eat a little bit more food, because it’s hard for me to eat before I speak. So it just totally changes based on what  I’m asked to do and the stress level and how hard it is to do. Does that sort of answer your question?

Landon: You’re clearly on the go but you know, you have different things that you do to fit kind of the regimen of your day, but it’s really all centered around a desire to just eat clean and pull on with your life and live a healthy lifestyle.

Tim: I mentioned earlier that I am on a keto diet, but I think sometimes it’s very easy to be keto but not always be clean keto. There’s a lot of different diets and I think there isn’t one that works for everyone but for me, it’s keto, but it’s also clean and it’s as much organic and green as it can be. Yes, I consume a lot of good fats, a lot of avocados, a good amount of protein, but then I think where we sometimes miss the boat with a lot of people with keto is they forget the clean and the organic.

For me, it’s a mixture of all of those. I really want to encourage people when they pick a particular type of diet with a list of foods on there, that you pick the clean versions of those. You can eat chicken and steak but get the cleanest versions of those. I feel like I’ve been learning over this time as well. 

Landon: That’s a great point. People hear keto and probably think immediately it’s a ton of meats. But our friend wrote a book called “Ketotarian,” which is basically the keto diet, but it’s all plant based. So you can eat keto, but in a very healthy way. French fries are technically keto, but I don’t see you eating French fries. 

Tim: Are they really? I’ve never heard that before. Based on whose definition? I haven’t had French fries in a real long time. But yes, I think that’s important. Let’s not just follow a diet per se and  just follow the words, but let’s figure out how that works for you and then get the cleanest versions of those so that we can be as healthy, be as focused, be as energetic to fulfill the things we’re asked to do.

If Tim Tebow were making a smoothie and a juice, what would he put in it?

Landon: You mentioned smoothies a few times. Obviously, we love that because we sell a lot of smoothies. Well, I want to ask you a playful question about that. If we made a Tim Tebow smoothie, what would be in it? 

Tim: The base has to be avocado. I love avocado and I feel like nothing really gives me the same energy and focus that avocados do. If I’m going smoothie, it would have to be avocado and then a Macadamia nut butter or a cashew butter or almond butter or something like that mixed in. I would go with a whey protein and then maybe add some cacao nibs in there, especially if the whey protein is chocolate and make it more of a peanut butter chocolate smoothie.

But if I was making a juice, then I’m going to add a bunch of spinach, celery, cucumber, lemon, ginger, turmeric. Those would be my juices and smoothies, off the top of my head.

Landon: That’s funny because you basically just described our double one smoothie and our green juice. 

Tim: That’s awesome. I love those. The thing for me too that I’m so grateful for is smoothies are great for when I don’t really feel like eating more.

Sometimes when you’re training hard, you have to get so many calories but you don’t want to keep eating, to be honest.It’s such a great way to give yourself the fuel quickly, easily, and with great taste. That’s something that smoothies and juices do for me. I don’t want to sit here, especially before an event or something, when you don’t have an appetite, but you know you need to fuel yourself. with something. Smoothies and juices are just the easiest.

Landon: I’m the same way at the office. We’re running all day long and barely have time to grab anything. I have a smoothie every single day for lunch, just because you know, I’m not an athlete or I’m not training like you are, but at the same time, you know, I’m using my mind and all my directs, working on growing the brand and it takes a lot of energy.

A lot of times I don’t have the time to just sit there and get this massive meal. So I have a smoothie every single day for lunch and I follow it up with juice at night.

Tim: What’s in your smoothie?

Landon: So I drink our youthful one every single day which is blueberries, coconut oil, and almond milk. There’s a double scoop of hemp protein in there. I add spinach and spirulina. 

Tim: I could definitely make a good blueberry one, too. You’ve got me thinking over here. We need to put me in the kitchen for a second. 

Kat: So I’d love to transition to your faith a little bit because you know, that’s what you’re known for. I even remember being back in probably college, and you had the Bible verses under your eyes and we all thought that was so cool. But something that really struck me in past conversations we’ve had is you said even at an early age, you would be in church and they would be preaching and saying things and you know, maybe the pastor was severely overweight or there was this big gluttony issue that nobody was talking about.

So it sounds to me that even with your healthy eating from an early age, God really put that conviction in your heart and something that you were passionate about.

Tim Tebow Talks About Faith in Relation to Clean Eating

Tim: I’m not passionate about everybody having six packs. That has nothing to do with it. I’ve never encouraged anybody to worry about their figure. I want to worry about people’s health because I believe every single person has a calling, has an opportunity, has a chance, has a mission that God has given us, right? Every single person I believe has that. But when we don’t take care of ourselves, what we’re really saying to God is that this vessel, this temple, that you gave us, it’s not really that important.

I want God to know that, man, what you’ve given me is so important. I want to do every possible thing with it to honor you and to help as many people as possible. 

We have the ability to change our life, by the way that we eat, the way that we sleep, the way that we take care of ourselves. And when we don’t focus on it it’s a little bit like, Hey God, you know, it’s not that important. And I believe that every single life is so valuable that God sent his son because God lives life.

Jesus came to give life and give life abundantly. And we need to have the same mindset. Every life is so valuable. Every life is so important, but we need to take care of our bodies that way, like we really care about it. And so for me, I’ve been very passionate about that, whether it was being on the governor’s council of physical fitness for the state of Florida, or it was doing things with young people and obesity and wanting to be a part of it and help with it.

It’s just been so important to me because I think education is important. Encouragement is important, giving people healthy options is important. That’s why I’m grateful to be a part of you know, something like this with you guys and Clean Juice is because, is it for a profit? Yes.

But it’s also for a purpose and it’s also for people. I want to believe that when people walk in that, yes, there is a chance we can make a profit? Of course, because that matters. But also do we also believe that it’s for a purpose and it’s for people and they can be better by it?

Yes. Because ultimately that’s more important than the for profit part will ever be for me, because I do believe that whatever hands find to do, we should do it with all our might. We can’t do that unless we are giving ourselves the right fuel, the right mindset, the right focus to be able to go after those things.

And I want to go after whatever God wants me to go after and to do that, I need to take care of my body so I’m ready when he asks me to run.  

Landon: Absolutely. I think that’s so well said. I love how you said that those things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. People think that we can make drastic impact in the world, positive change, and also make money to support our families while doing it, you know? There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, the Bible calls for it. When we founded Clean Juice, we wanted God to be in the center of what we do. Our mission statement is straight from 3 John 1:2, which is “Dear friend, I hope all is well with you and that you are as healthy in body as you are strong in spirit.”

And when you hear that as part of our mission statement how does that resonate with you and what are your thoughts?

Tim: Well, I think it’s healthy in body by the fuel you put in and strong in spirit by the encouragement. And that’s one thing I feel is, you know, just being around you guys and.

The joy and the happiness and not being ashamed of your faith you know, having it here on the wall at Clean Juice, so that when people walk in, they’re encouraged, not because they’re necessarily preached to, but because there’s a smiling face. There’s people that are excited to see them. To me, that is how I would take that strong in spirit.

Just sitting here in a Clean Juice in Nocatee, I can see that when people walk in, they walk out being a little bit better physically and they walk out being a little bit stronger emotionally and maybe even spiritually by being able to be around believers that truly care about them.

Maybe later someone will say to them, “Why are you so excited? Why do y’all put Bible verse on here?” This might give them an opportunity to even go a step deeper. I think that’s really cool. 

Kat: You said we were bold to share our faith, but I just want to thank you for historically being so bold throughout your career. I know you’ve taken heat for it sometimes like we did, not to the same level as you but it can be difficult but I think it can be really cool for you to share your testimony and what Jesus has done for life.

Tim Tebow Shares His Testimony

Tim: He’s done everything for my life. I grew up in a Christian household. My parents were missionaries. I was born overseas. I’m the son of missionaries and I went to church all the time, but it wasn’t until one day I was lying in my bed and I knew I didn’t know Jesus. So I got up early, couldn’t sleep, ran to go see my mom and I said, “Mom, I got to ask Jesus to come into my heart.” And she said “Okay, let me go get your Dad.” And I said, “No, Mom, we don’t have time for that.” 

So we got on my knees right there on our couch and asked Jesus to come into my heart. And I know at that moment I went from darkness to light. I was adopted into the family of God, my eternity was sealed, and I have a home in heaven. But there was such a journey from that point.

One of the biggest impactful moments in my life after that was when I was 15. I was on a mission trip in the Philippines and I had the opportunity to meet a boy with his feet on backwards who was viewed as a throwaway, as insignificant. Actually a lot of people believe that he was cursed and I knew that day that sports were a big part of my life and that’s what I wanted to do but I knew leaving that village, that mountain, that day, that the boy changed my life. 

I knew God had called me to a new, more important mission. And it wasn’t sports anymore. It was a fight for people that can’t fight for themselves. He was a catalyst for TTF and he was a catalyst for what I believe is my greatest calling in my life until the day I get to go to heaven is to fight for people that can’t fight for themselves. When you really sum up what we do as a foundation, it is fighting for people that can’t fight for themselves, whether that is the special needs, whether that is those that are being trafficked, whether it’s the orphan, whether it’s the forgotten, whether it’s the people that are viewed as cursed around the world, the kids with life threatening illnesses, whatever.

It is for those that are in their darkest hour of need. And they need us to bring faith, hope, and love. They need us to fight for them. They need us to stand up for them. And so I’m so grateful for all the different times that God has impacted my life, but those were really two of the most impactful and the catalyst for what I believe is my biggest calling to this day.

Landon: That’s awesome. It’s very strong. Tim, I want to ask you a pretty personal question if you don’t mind. We’re sitting here in a Clean Juice, and there’s a prayer jar right behind you. All of our guests have the opportunity to write a prayer and to drop it in the jar. Then later we pray for them. So if you were to write a prayer and drop it in that jar, what would your prayer be?

Tim: I think the first thing that comes to my mind would be that I would have the intimacy and wisdom to know what God wants me to do. And the courage to follow through on it.

And that somehow God would take my weaknesses and my flaws and my failures and like he’s done with so many people and heroes in the Bible that he would use them to do something to bring a lot of people to know him because ultimately, I want it to be the biggest thing that I do here on earth is to make his name great and introduce people to him.

I know I’ve already failed at that so many times and fallen short, but I’m so grateful that our God is the God of mercy and grace. And that he uses people that fall short and that means he can still somehow use me. And I’m so grateful for that. And I think that would be my prayer is that I would be close enough to know him or what he wants me to do, and I would have the courage to live it out.

Kat: Thanks for sharing that Tim, that’s really good. I wanted to talk a little bit about work ethic. It’s funny. Sometimes Landon and I will leave after meeting you and I’m like . .  “Tim just makes me feel like I’m accomplishing nothing in life. I’m like a complete failure.” You just have this presence about you that screams work ethic and really that’s purpose and drive and you doing what God wants you to do, but what can you say to maybe some of those young athletes out there, maybe they’re in little league or high school or just athletes that are so focused on sports about your work ethic and how you got to where you are?

Tim: You know, what’s funny is that my whole life and probably all of our lives, we hear people in school and coaches and teachers and everything. They talk about having a work ethic and it never really made sense to me. And it still doesn’t make sense to me. You don’t want to have a work ethic for the sake of having a work ethic. Whoever said that’s a great thing, like it’s just a work ethic, right?

You want to have a work ethic because the purpose in what you’re doing is so great that I care about it so much. I can’t help but have a good work ethic. I can’t help but be disciplined. I can’t help but be focused. I can’t help but be a critical thinker. I can’t help but be locked in because what we’re asked to do is so important, right?

I think when you try to inspire people in work ethic as the end goal, it’s really hard because yes, we can get up at five o’clock and we can go train, but then it’s like, dude, I’m just having a work ethic for work ethic. It’s going to fizz out.

But if your purpose is so great, if you care about it so high, if your mission is so important, then I think the work ethic is sustainable. The discipline is sustainable. I just don’t think for the sake of work ethic that people can get up and train and give their best every day. I don’t.

But if the mission is so important, if it’s so valuable, if it’s for your faith, your friends, your family, your, you know, herding people, or living out a dream. If that’s what you’re doing now, my work ethic can be stronger because my “why” is stronger. I would encourage those in high school, middle schooler kids that maybe are listening to us right now that they’re trying to figure that out.

Then I would go deeper than just your work ethic. I would go to the why, why are you doing it? Do you really love it? What is your dream in doing it? Is it to get a college scholarship? Is it to be able to make your parents proud? Is it to be able to prove the doubt, whatever it is, have something that is stronger than just your work ethic and have your “why” be something that is strong, that that’s the reason you can get up and go grind. 

Landon: That’s awesome. That’s really great. You know when we created Clean Juice, one of our prayers for the brand was that we weren’t just going to provide healthy food, but like you said earlier, we’re going to do it in a fun, loving atmosphere and almost be a place where people can come in, get a really healthy product, enjoy the smiling faces, somebody behind the counter that actually cares for them. You know, almost be a place of refuge for them from the craziness of their life. 

When we sit with you, you have so much going on. There’s so much noise and kind of almost chaos in your life. What do you do to kind of drown out the noise? What do you do to get some silence or relief?

Tim: I think it’s by the people around. I think so much that we do in life is about the people. For me, where I go to find that refuge, and I guess where you could say to find the peace is the people. It’s my wife, my mom and dad, my friends, even our family at TTF. Shoot, I’d say sometimes it’s our orphanages around the world or the people we get to minister with and too as well. I’d say, you know, our team that we’re so blessed to be around. I love being around them every day. I love going to our foundation offices and hanging with their team because they’re the best people I know. I think it’s important. 

My dad always told me, always told me, when we were young, “He walks with Wiseman will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. And in a multitude of counselors, there is wisdom.”

I just really want to try, and haven’t always done it, but I want to try and take that to heart. I want to walk with wise people, you know, and have people around me that are going to speak life, speak truth into my life, and hold me accountable.

But I also look forward to being with them because I know who they are and what they’re about. I’m grateful for that. And I think that is really a driving force in my life is having those people. It’s a big difference when you’re filled up with those people versus if you don’t have them.

Landon: Absolutely. I know Kat and I had the pleasure of meeting you, Tim, in your Tim Tebow Foundation. When we left there, we said, “Tim is just in his element in there.” You were so genuine in your interaction with your crew. It was just so authentic. And that tells us that you care. And you care so much about them, but also you’re getting filled up from what you’re doing, the focus in your life. That came across very clear to us. 

Tim: Yeah. I think the craziest thing is when we are there, I never count the hours. My wife knows when I’m going to the office, she’s not seeing me until late. It just goes by because we we love what we’re doing so much, that it’s so important. 

For us, it’s not a charity. it’s not an organization. It is a mission. It is a calling. It is a purpose. I encourage all the listeners to search for that in your life. What is that thing that is so much bigger that you never have to punch an alarm clock and you never have to wait till Friday for.

Life’s not about one day, it’s about this day. Find that thing, that this is your day to go after that. Because for me, it’s there and it’s what we get to do there. And I’m glad you guys felt it when you’re there because it truly is a lot of my favorite people and favorite things to do.

Kat: It’s great people. It’s really down to earth. Every time we’ve been there, we’re like every single person is just down to earth and genuine. You can feel it. It speaks a lot to you, too. They say, you know, who you surround yourself with is who you are. And, you know, you surround yourself with great people.

Tim: They’re a lot better than me.  

Kat: Lastly, I want talk about how you don’t align yourself with a ton of brands and I think that’s probably by design. I know you’ve even mentioned some sponsorships that you turned down just because you didn’t align with their brands and didn’t want to promote them, but you’ve chosen Clean Juice, which is awesome.

You know, I know we’ve talked a lot about this, but what’s the number one thing that speaks out to you about Clean Juice and what are you most excited about moving forward with us? 

Tim: I think it’s several things. I think it’s one, the people, it’s you guys. 

And I think two, it’s the product like I mentioned. It’s good for people and it’s going to help people walk out the doors, being better, being encouraged. I think overall what you guys have done and what you guys have started is exciting, it’s encouraging. I think it’s super commendable.

I love that you have Bible versus right behind. And I love that it’s something that you’re not ashamed of and you’re willing to live out and you’re going to encourage other people in that. Kat, the first time we talked, you were so determined on the process of how everything goes.

I loved it and it was almost dogmatic, but it was great. I love that. I love that when people come into a Clean Juice that they can trust the product.

I think it’s really important to be authentic, transparent, and trustworthy. You know what, we’re going to disagree. A lot of people are going to come in and disagree. I think this is better than this, but if we’re trustworthy about why we have it, if we’re transparent about it, then you know what, we can even disagree, but we know we’re on the same page.

I think that’s something that you guys have done such a great job on. People can trust the product. It’s extremely transparent and it’s faith based and you’re going to wear that on your sleeve. All those reasons combined is why I’m thankful to be sitting here today.

Landon: That’s awesome. Tim, we’re deeply thankful for you. We appreciate the vote of confidence and just the partnership and like Kat said, we believe it’s going to bear a lot of great fruit and we’re just grateful for you. We’re grateful for who you are and who God created you to be. So, thank you brother. Thanks for being on our podcast and thank you for joining the team. 

Tim: I’m grateful too. I’m also excited to see the health impacts of so many people. I know we’ve kind of put that slightly to the backburner. That also is super encouraging to me is seeing the pictures back here and just yes!

I love encouraging people. They can do this. Come on, you know, Yeah, love it. So I’m pumped. Thank you guys. 

Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit. So, if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast, to never miss an episode. And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram.

Give us a follow, slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might want to hear more about. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to Be Organic.

Just a quick legal disclaimer. We are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness and nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you.

In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.

 

Be Organic Podcast – Season 2, Episode 27. Eat. Sleep. Move. Breathe.

It’s something we’re happy to ignore, but it’s massively impacting your body. That’s right, today we discuss mold and mold illness. Our special guest, Dr. Jen Pfleghaar, helps us learn about identifying mold illnesses, the best ways to combat mold, and even the common foods mold is hiding in. Dr. Jen is a double board-certified physician. Fellowship-trained and board-certified in Integrative Medicine, she works with her patients to diagnose and treat illnesses such as Mold Illness, Thyroid disease, CIRS, Estrogen Dominance, Hormone Imbalance, Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, and Lyme Disease.

We also talk about hormone imbalances in men & women and easy ways to limit excess hormone mimickers (Hint: it’s time to ditch the k-cups and plastic water bottles!). Dr. Jess helps shed some light on common illnesses that are overlooked by conventional medicine & give us practical tips to help your body heal and move along a healthier journey. 

TIME STAMPS
2:30 What is mold illness? (jump to section)
5:01 How you can identify mold (jump to section)
8:17 Killing mold with bleach can make the problem worse (jump to section)
8:55 Mold in food (jump to section)
10:52 Coffee is one of the top moldy foods/drinks (jump to section)
13:22 Hormonal imbalances (jump to section)
14.49 Natural ways to fight hormonal imbalances (jump to section)
24:23 Treating men & women for hormonal imbalances (jump to section)
27:00 Ways to limit estrogen mimickers for men & women (jump to section)
28:21 Common illnesses that are overlooked by conventional medicine (jump to section)
31:20 How a beginner can start to move through a healthy lifestyle (jump to section)

Transcription Below

“ If you’re not sleeping well, you’re not restoring your body overnight. Your brain isn’t detoxing at night because your brain detoxes at night through sleep.  You are not getting the rest, you are not getting the healing. So, sleep and actual high-quality sleep which can be affected by medications like Benadryl. Alcohol can affect your sleep. Sleep is very important.” 

Landon Eckles: Be Organic listeners, hey guys, what is going on? This is Landon, CEO and Co-Founder of Clean Juice. So excited to welcome you guys into the Be Organic Podcast, which is of course powered by Clean Juice. We’ve got an awesome show for you today. As always, we’ve got an awesome guest for you today. As always, the title of our show is Eat, Sleep, Move, and Breathe; things that are vital to your life, vital for your health and wellness.

I’ve got an awesome guest named Dr. Jen Pfleghaar. We had a little debate on how to pronounce her last name. Her last name is awesome. But I’m going to refer to her as Dr. Jen, because I don’t want to mess it up. But Dr. Jen, welcome into the show. We’re so excited to have you. I’m going to give our listeners a background so they can get to you know a little bit before we jump into some dialogue. I’m really pumped to be chatting with you. 

Dr. Jen Pfleghaar is a double board certified physician. Fellowship trained and board certified in integrative medicine. She works with patients to diagnose and treat illnesses such as mold illness, thyroid disease, CIRS, estrogen dominance, hormone imbalance, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and Lyme disease. Yes, she’s very smart. 

Dr. Jen also helps with natural solutions to aging skin, wrinkles, stretch marks, acne, and skin tone. Her own health history of Hashimoto’s and having children sparked her interest in integrative medicine. She’s very passionate about helping patients with chronic disease and letting our body heal itself.

Dr. Jen is a certified yoga instructor with 200 hours with Oral Wellness Center, and kids yoga with Yoga Fit. That’s awesome. She’s a published author of a book called, Eat, Sleep, Move, and Breath; A Beginner’s Guide to a Healthy Lifestyle. Obviously, hence the title of our show today. We are so excited to have her with us. She is going to be teaching us a bunch of things about our bodies, that we probably didn’t know. So, Dr. Jen, welcome in. Thank you so much for being here. 

Dr. Jen Pfleghaar: Hi, Landon. Thank you so much for having me. 

What is Mold Illness

Landon: It’s our pleasure. I want to jump right into it. You cover some stuff that really isn’t well known out there or not really talked about a lot out there. The first thing that caught my attention was mold illness. I want to talk about what mold illness is. How can we prevent it? And how does it go so undetected? Why is this not talked about more? 

Dr. Jen: Right. It’s really not talked about a lot. People are like shower mold, black mold, what does it mean for our health, right? So, mycotoxins are produced by mold. The mold produces mycotoxins. The mycotoxins are some of the most prevalent toxins in our environment. So mold spores can be very small, you inhale them, and you get them kind of stuck in your lungs and your intestines. They kind of hang out there because it’s a moist, warm environment, and they produce mycotoxins. That is where we run into issues. We have these mycotoxins produced by these fungi, this mold, and they grow on basically any surface if the environment is wet and warm. We see this on the inner walls of buildings, wallpaper, fiberglass insulation, ceiling tiles, anywhere. So, say you are in school, in a hospital, or a work building and look up and see the drop ceilings. Have you seen the ring that tells there was water damage, do you know what I’m talking about? 

Landon: I know exactly what you are talking about. 

How You Can Identify Mold Illness

Dr. Jen: You would be worried that there might be mold there. One of the common mycotoxins that you can test for is Arachitol Toxins. And Arachitol Toxin A can have adverse neurological effects, kidney problems. A lot of people that I see that are positive for Arachitol Toxin A, it’s almost a telltale sign. They get these like electric shock type feelings as they describe. They go to doctors and are dismissed. They are put on Lyrica or something, which is for pain. When someone tells me that, I’m like, “We are going to check you for mold illness.” Now, how can you prevent it? A lot of the time, people don’t know they have been exposed to mold. But sometimes people come to me and it’s easy. They’re like, “Yes, I lived in a mold building when I was younger. I lived in a basement that smelled musty.” That kind of gives us a good hint. Mold illness can look like anything from high blood pressure to insulin resistance to brain fog. It is pretty much all these strange symptoms and nothing is helping. 

First, you would look in your house, right? You’d look underneath the bathroom sink, see if there are signs of water damage there. If you have a basement, see if there are signs of water damage in the basement. Or if there is any history of basement flooding. If it smells musty, you would also check behind walls, if something looks abnormal with a wall, We moved into a new house two years ago and they just painted over this closet by the garage. And it was starting to bubble out. I was so mad. I was pregnant. I am super paranoid about mold. Everyday I say to my husband, “Is our roof okay now? Is there mold in our house? Are we good?” We had a mold remediator, a mold company come out and test for mold. They didn’t even have the test. They took out some of the drywall and they’re like, “Yeah, you have black mold.” So, they remediated it. They closed off that entryway. We got a whole new roof. Because a lot of the times mold comes from roof leaks, bathroom leaks, shower leaks, and basement floods. Those are the big ways in the house. So, if you have had any of those or live in a house that was flipped let’s say. They  just kind of cover up things. You need to remediate and get the mold out there. 

Landon: Right. That’s so common, you know, these house flips, especially in the market today. So many people are buying houses and making them beautiful and that’s great. But I think that they don’t even know to look for these things, the contractors who are flipping these homes. But if we are just covering it up with paint, we are not really getting rid of it, right? 

Killing Mold With Bleach Can Make The Problem Worse

Dr. Jen: Yeah, exactly. And that’s the thing, mold remediation can be very expensive. I’m actually working with someone now and we’re trying to treat her mold illness. But she’s living in mold. So, actually  made the decision that she’s going to sell her house with the disclosure that there is mold because they did have it tested. But they can’t afford the remediation right now because it is expensive. Bringing it down all the way to studs with this mold problem and then treat the mold. One thing that I always thought until knowing more about mold is you can kill mold with bleach. But that actually can make it worse. When you are dealing with mold, you really want to make sure you are working with a good mold remediator. This is not something you want to do yourself. Don’t watch a YouTube video and try this. You want to get to an expert when you’re dealing with mold. It can get pretty nasty. 

Landon: Yeah, absolutely. You described some of the symptoms that we might feel when we might even know it. We probably don’t even know that it is being caused by mold. So, I think it’s good you outline that because people are feeling this way. You can even argue that chronic coughs and things like that could be a mold illness, right? 

Mold in Food

Dr. Jen: Right. And another source of mold that I haven’t touched on yet is mold in food. 

Landon: Yeah, right point. 

Dr. Jen: So, grains. A lot of the time I will have patients that have autoimmune problems or have thyroid issues. We take them off on a grain free diet. They do better. And part of me is like, is it the glyphosate, which is RoundUp and another toxin, or is it the mold? You have wheat and corn in these silos, which is warm and wet, and they get mold. Then they get the mycotoxin, and that can be found in beans, corn, rice, wheat, nut trees, even in eggs and meat. It is usually from Aspergillus and that’s going to cause issues such as abdominal pain, cancer, some liver damage, which affects your detoxification. You also worry about your food which is why you want to look for organic to help a little bit.. 

Landon: Absolutely. Totally agree with you on that. 

Dr. Jen: The mold topic, it is frustrating, you know. I think the first step is just be aware of these things. If there is low-hanging fruit, like you’re in your home and did have some areas where there might be a chance there was mold, or mold behind the drywall where you don’t see it, that’s when you want someone to investigate. There is ERMI testing. A  good mold in inspector that knows what to look for is probably gonna be your best bet if it’s on your radar at all.

Coffee Is One of The Top Moldy Foods/Drinks

Landon: Yeah, no, absolutely. I was gonna go back to the food thing. I’ve read and heard, and I’ve even talked about this on this podcast with other people, but isn’t coffee one of the things that’s most susceptible to mold? Have you heard that? 

Dr. Jen: Yes. I talk about moldy coffee. There’s a really popular coffee chain and my husband likes to get coffee there. And I’m like, “Oh, drink your moldy coffee,” as a joke. But yeah, you want to make sure that it is actually independently mold-tested. I think I spoke with one of the local owners, Ross,  that your coffee is tested, right? 

Landon: Yeah, it is. We have a couple different coffees that we use for different products that we have. But one of the coffees is, Purity Coffee. That’s what we consume at home. It is tested for mold. It’s a fantastic coffee. We really, really like those guys. They are doing an awesome job. 

Dr. Jen: Yeah, that’s so important. I’m not a coffee person anymore, I gave that up after residency. It’s been about 10 years since I really drank a lot of coffee as a treat all habit. But you don’t want to have moldy, pesticide-filled coffee. Sometimes I wonder, the young women I see in middle school, high school having all these PCOS problems. Their testosterone is elevated, their periods are irregular, but they’re drinking coffee from Starbucks, those sugar-laden frappuccinos every day, right? You have to wonder, is it the moldy coffee, is it the sugar, what is it? But yet, we have to bring attention to this because if we don’t, nothing is going to change. We will continue to serve moldy coffee. 

Hormonal Imbalances

Landon: 100%. I totally agree with you. And it’s these little things that we don’t realize are affecting our health, affecting our mood. If we are not feeling good, it just comes out in an emotional way. So, I totally agree with you on all of that. 

I love that you identified the mold illnesses in some ways that we can think about them and what we can do about it. Let’s move into hormone imbalance and chronic fatigue. I know that is a big part of your practice, what you do, and what you treat. Especially as it relates to thyroid disease. How are some ways people can check to see if they have these hormonal imbalances, maybe if they don’t even know what this is. But what are some of the symptoms they are having, how to bring some consciousness to this? 

Dr. Jen: Right. So, hormones are complex. We think of hormones, we think about estrogen and testosterone. There is more than that too. There is progesterone, there is thyroid hormones, there is cortisol, which is a stress hormone in our adrenal gland. So, that’s why you really want to focus on a whole body approach. 

So, things to look for. It’s not normal to feel tired all the time. It’s not normal if you are a menstruating woman, who has these menstrual cycles every 28 days. They should be every 28 to 30 days. If they’re too short or too long, that can mean hormonal imbalance. Women having facial hair, men not having a good sex drive. I mean, these are all indicators that something is off with our hormones and this is your body telling you that something’s off. For the thyroid specifically, if you are losing hair, your skin is pretty dry, or constipated are problems. Our bodies are so smart and give us these little signs that something is off. We should step in and try to help our body to find out what the root cause is before it turns into a major disease or illness. 

Landon: Absolutely. So, you know, if somebody’s feeling fatigued and feeling some of these symptoms, what are some things that they can do? Some natural ways, right? I know there’s a lot of different prescriptions and things that they can take. What are some natural ways for someone to fight against these hormonal imbalances?

Natural Ways to Fight Hormonal Imbalances

Dr. Jen: The first thing for most, you know, foremost is food or nutrition. 

Landon: Yup. 

Dr. Jen: So, yeah, I mean, food is medicine. And I completely changed my diet after my residency when I really started to tune in more to integrative medicine. I mean, it’s embarrassing to talk about, but I used to think that margarine was healthy for me. I used to drink diet pop because I didn’t want the calories. I was a resident. I graduated medical school, right? And when you are a doctor, you’re patients are like asking for nutrition advice and we know the least about it unless we do extra training or learn it on our own. The low-fat craze, all that craziness. We know that was all nonsense now. Really what you put in your body is very important. 

A well-balanced diet is not what the FDA tells us, right? It’s not. But I’ll tell you what, eating more vegetables is gonna decrease your morbidity and mortality. It’s going to decrease your chance of dying and your change of getting diseases. That is what it means. Lots of vegetables. Good proteins, right? Organic food so you not having the pesticides. Grass-fed meat. I think we are so stuck on red meat being bad, meat is bad. Vegan stuff is very popular. But grass-fed meat is very highly nutritious. It has lots of B vitamins in it and Iron that we need. Focusing on food is very important. 

What does that mean? Cutting out processed food. Processed foods, things that you buy in a package at the store, those are the things you want to try and avoid. Drinking water. I think another problem is that all of these drinks, frappuccinos, stuff like that, are really popular. These Bang drinks, which kids in middle school are drinking these caffeine drinks. 

Landon: Yeah. I have teenagers. They have their friends over all the time, and I’m like, “Guys, do you realize you are just drinking straight junk? Synthetic caffeine, which actually has been proven to decrease your testosterone. I’m talking to males, 14 years old, and working out thinking they are tough. It is very counterintuitive. But 100%. 

Dr. Jen: I mean, if I drank that sort of caffeine in middle school, it’s first of all not good for growth and testosterone. But I’m just floored that it is sold to that age. You know, my kids will have friends over and they will ask for pop to drink. I’m like, no. What do you mean? We have organic juice boxes that we bring out once in a crazy time when we are a little crazy. My kids would drink Sprite all day if I let them. But that’s what we have to understand. Our body’s are wired to want and crave sugar because it gives instant energy. When we were in the paleolithic time and caveman, that sugar was very scarce. When our body sees it, it’s like, “Okay, I want that. I’m not going to get it again.” But that’s not true. We have endless supply. We have drive-throughs, Krispy Kreme on every block. We need to like use our own minds and put a stop to that and say, “Our body might say it wants this, but it doesn’t.”

It’s tough. It’s tough with kids. Parents with kids, I feel you. It’s really tough. 

Landon: Because the supply that’s out there, it’s like 90% bad, maybe 10% good. But it should be totally the opposite. Like we should be eating well 90% of the time and believe you can have a treat every now and then. We are not meant to be perfect. If you are having a Sprite once a month or whatever as a treat, that’s okay. That’s fine. But if you are having four a day, that’s a big problem. I think we just have gotten to the place where the supply of all this crap food is just like, it’s crazy. We think, “Oh, there is so much of it. I should be having it all the time.” It’s just not the case. 

Dr. Jen: It’s really difficult. Not only explaining that to children, but adults. It is tough. To be kind to people if they are listening and just want to eat sugar all the time, it’s hard for me, or eat out every day, once you cut out the sugar, give yourself two days without sugar, you will crave it less. Cut out the fast food, you will crave it less. It’s not that you need to just do everything at once. It’s tough. It takes a while to get to the point where you are doing 90/10. We probably do more 80/20 probably. That’s the thing, you don’t have to be perfect. When we restrict so much then people binge. That makes it harder. 

Landon: 100%. I totally agree. At first, it was hard to make these changes. I drink a smoothie every single day for lunch. Going from a sandwich or a burger to every single day to have a smoothie, that was a big change. But once I did it, I was like, “Wow.” I cannot imagine eating a massive cheeseburger for lunch. I would feel like crap for the rest of the day. Your body reacts to these things in a really good way. In the beginning, your body might not be getting what it is used to, even if that is not good. Your body quickly adapts. It will feel way better having an organic smoothie from Clean Juice, you know. 

Dr. Jen: Yeah. I’m a big fan of smoothies. You can always add stuff in to give more boost and everything. Just little changes. My favorite, sometimes I will crave green juice without any sugar in it. My body will just want that. I think listening to your body’s cravings is very important. They are good cravings. For example, after I had my last child, all I craved was green juice and broccoli. I would just steam four cups of broccoli and eat it all myself. It makes sense because you are going from a high estrogen state when you are pregnant to a normal to low estrogen state. And your body is detoxing all that estrogen. And it goes through phase one and phase two detoxification. DIM is one of the things that helps the Phase 2 reaction. It is found in broccoli. So, I thought it was really cool that my body was so smart. I feel like we are not in tune as much with our bodies. When I work with my patients, talking to them to write down their food diary and see how food is affecting them. They are able to get really intune with their body and it is really great. 

Landon: It’s funny, your body will tell you what it wants. Even babies, they don’t know not to be in tune. Their body tells them exactly what they want. They will reach for it and reach for the thing they want. Whether it is a breast, whatever it is. They don’t know how to articulate it but they know their body wants it. They go for it. I just think as we get smarter, we get dumber, right? I think that’s a great point. 

Dr. Jen: Yeah, that’s great. And another thing for people out there, eliminating something that might be triggering you is a good idea. Like corn for a month, usually four to six weeks is a sweet spot to eliminate it and reintroduce it. You will know how you feel once you bring that back in. That’s a good tip if you think something is bothering you. If you get bloated or something every time you eat a tomato, eggplant. Then take out night shades for a month, see how you feel, and then bring them back in. See if you notice any aches, pains, or bloating. 

Landon: Right, exactly. It’s like all of our body’s are built so differently. While I might be able to eat five pounds of spinach a week and love it, like that could be really detrimental to somebody else who maybe be “allergic” or just doesn’t react in the body as it reacts in mine. It’s super interesting. 

Dr. Jen: Yeah, absolutely. 

Treating Men & Women For Hormonal Imbalances

Landon: Question, do you mostly treat women or do you treat men as well for hormonal imbalances? 

Dr. Jen: Yeah, both. So, mostly women, childbirth, hormones, 20s to 40s autoimmune disease, gut health issues. And I do treat men optimizing testosterone, finding root causes to why that might be sub-optimal, gut health things. It is interesting because working with both men and women, they do present differently. It’s very interesting. But it’s fun. It’s fun to work with all ages, all sexes. 

Landon: It’s interesting because I’m getting to the later part of my 30s, right? And so, you know, I feel at this age my friends are around the same age and telling me how tired they are, little energy they have for the gym, etc. I really think there is a male kind of epidemic out there of testosterone reduction. You hear of a lot of guys going on TRT and things like that. I think it’s the environment and so many things out there causing it, especially if you are not eating right, not getting enough sleep, too stressed out, working too much, etc., etc., etc. There is this massive issue where men just are not producing the testosterone they were, even 100 years ago. 

Ways to Limit Estrogen Mimickers for Men & Women

Dr. Jen: Yeah, I agree. One big culprit for this is estrogen mimickers. All of these estrogen chemicals that we have in the environment, like phthalates and parabens and chemicals. That is going to decrease testosterone and compete for the binding sites through sex hormone binding globulin and all of this. You also have the men that start to get these belly’s, with this excess adipose tissue. Then you have your testosterone converted to estradiol through aromatase, which is in the fat cells. You have this chemical reaction. Then it’s just a perfect storm of losing testosterone and then it’s going to estrogen. Men are not supposed to have estrogen like that. It’s kind of like a mad cycle. Detoxing, estrogens, and making sure that you are detoxing the estrogen metabolites out of the body. It is a simple thing. Don’t drink out of a plastic water bottle. That is going to have that BPA, which acts as an estrogen mimicker. 

The other thing I can’t stand is when people do the K-Cups, Keurigs. You have that plastic cup and you are literally shooting boiling hot water through plastic to get your coffee. I mean, that is a cup of BPA. 

Landon: Yeah, I totally agree. 

Dr. Jen: I lose my mind with that. And for women, it’s not good. So, I know it’s super cool and trendy. I don’t drink coffee, but I know that it is cool to have this instant, and it’s easy. And I’m like, “I have to talk some patients down.” They have to let it go and find a different way. It’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. 

Landon: Exactly. I have a machine where it grinds the beans every single morning. I drink it out of a glass mug. I’m aware of that. I don’t think a lot of people are. That’s why I love this show, we bring awareness to things like that. K-Cups are so popular. But you are literally putting boiling hot water into the plastic. You have to understand that some of that plastic, whether you see it or not, it’s in your cup, right? That is just not good for you. Great call out there. 

We’ve gone through a lot of really great content. But I did want to touch on something that you mentioned before. I think it’s important. With conventional medicine, correct me if I’m wrong, you don’t get a lot of nutritional training, is that right? 

Dr. Jen: Not when I went, nope. 

Common Illnesses That Are Overlooked By Conventional Medicine

Landon: Yeah. So, what do you think are some of the common illnesses are that kind of get overlooked by conventional medicine that could deal with that realm? 

Dr. Jen: I think they are almost all connected. I mean, if you are not eating correctly and getting inflammation, that is going to cause disease. Disease is caused by inflammation. Everything from hypertension to autoimmune disease. I think it’s all kind of related. It’s not just about eating your vegetables. It’s about having the right oils. You don’t want to have vegetable oils. It’s all the GMO food. Our food is really kind of being poisoned and has been slowly over the last few decades. All we are seeing is more inflammatory, chronic diseases. It’s really big. I almost wish that every doctor could do the integrative medicine fellowship I did. It was not only amazing for me to go through it because it was such an amazing program. But now when I work in the emergency room, I can talk with patients. We sit down, talk about diet, meditation, and just really bring all the aspects of a patient together. It’s not just a pill. But at the same time, the patient has to want to work. It’s not simple. It’s not really easy to live a healthy lifestyle, right? It takes work every day, as you do, right?

Landon: Yeah, it takes proactiveness, right? 

Dr. Jen: Yes. 

Landon: Exactly. You have to be intentional. It takes some intentionality, for sure. You can’t just wake up and hope that you are going to make some good decisions today. It’s like no, we have to be more thoughtful than that. 

Dr. Jen: Right, right.

Landon: But then once we set up our lifestyle in that way, it actually becomes so easy, right? It becomes part of our normal routine. As human beings, we are just kind of prone to that. Is our routine getting in line at Dunkin Donuts and grabbing a donut and coffee every morning? Or is it swinging by Clean Juice grabbing a juice, making your own juice home at home, organic smoothie, whatever it is. You will have a routine, just what will it be? I agree with you on that. 

Kind of finally, I love that we’ve talked a lot of about this stuff, but you don’t have to go to the doctor and get prescribed all these different medications. You can literally do the things that are found in your book, right? Like eating and sleeping and moving and breathing. Talk to us a little bit about your book. Talk to us about, you know, how just a beginner can kind of guide themselves to this healthy lifestyle through some of the things that you talk about in there.

How a Beginner Can Start to Move Through a Healthy Lifestyle

Dr. Jen: Absolutely. So, Lars Ezra, who wrote the book with me, and then Connor Martin, he is more of the experience piece. But Lars and I went through this fellowship together. We’re both ER trained, work in the ER, board certified ER doctors, and we went through this fellowship together. And we were just both fed up with seeing chronically ill people in the ER. We are like, we do what we can. So, that’s why we wanted this simple beginners guide book out there. 

Now here’s the thing about it is that even if you’re not a beginner, you’re probably still gonna need help on one of these four areas. So, you know, nutrition is one of them. We spoke a lot about that today. 

Movement is another one. You think about movement, you think about walking, you are moving your lymphatic system which is a way to detox your body from all these toxic burdens we are having every day. Movement is also good, weight lifting, to help with sarcopenia, which is the decreased muscle mass as we go. So, lifting is very important. We are not out working in the fields and lifting and doing hard labor. We are sitting at desks, most of us. You have to lift. 

Sleep is overlooked so much. It’s one of the things I ask at every follow-up appointment, every initial appointment with my integrative medicine patients. If you are not sleeping well, you are not restoring your body overnight. Your brain is not detoxing at night. Your brain detoxes at night through sleep. You are not getting the rest, you are not getting the healing, so sleep and actual high quality sleep which can be affected by medications like Benadryl, alcohol can affect your sleep. Sleep is very important. So, in the book we talk about solutions to sleep, things to do. On my Instagram, I have a lot about sleep. I talk about that a lot. 

And then meditation. So, I did not realize how important meditation and breath work was until I did my fellowship.I thought I was too busy to meditate. I didn’t really understand it. And now I truly believe it’s so important. Mindfulness, meditation, breath work, gratitude. It can change your life. For me, you know, doing a gratitude journal, it just helps with anxiety, it helps with worry. It just puts a new perspective on your life. Even if you have something bad happen to you, you are still grateful for other things and/or happened so you could learn from it. I think when we are not living in a state of gratitude, it is easy to let every little thing ruin your day, get to you, or stress you out. I see a lot of people that have chronic stress and it doesn’t go away. You are constantly living in this fight or flight, sympathetic, unhealthy state, where parasympathetic, rest and digest, it’s gonna heal your gut. It’s going to let your body heal and rest and repair. So, those four things are crucial. 

They are the pillars of health. What you can do is just work on one at a time. If you’re super overwhelmed and you’re like, “Oh my goodness, I’m not doing any of these.” Just start with one. You know, go for a walk every day for 30 minutes. I just think that sometimes if we don’t simplify things, it can be overwhelming. That was the purpose of the book. 

The four pillars are just, let’s simplify it. It can be overwhelming if you follow someone on Instagram, listen to a podcast, and they are talking about all this stuff like we started out. Like mold, and people are like, “Oh, my gosh, what am I going to do?” It’s like, start with sleep, or just let’s start with taking out french fries in your diet. Focusing on one thing at a time and doing it slowly so it can be not just a diet or not just a fluke thing. It really can be part of your lifestyle. 

Landon: Amen. I totally agree. You gave so many great nuggets on how to improve our lives, health and wellness, and our mental wellbeing, right? We’re gonna have 60,000 thoughts a day. What’s the lens of those? What’s the filter of those thoughts? Is it built on a foundation of gratitude or is it built on a foundation of everything that’s going wrong in our lives? Gosh, you said such great things. You’ve been incredible, Dr. Jen. I really appreciate having you on the show.

I’m going to start following you on Instagram. Tell me where I can find you? Where can our folks find your book, your website, or if you have a podcast, tell us about how we can get more connected with you?

Dr. Jen: Yeah, absolutely. I am behaving on Instagram, so I should still be there. So it’s @IntegrativeDoctorMom. I have a website, www.IntegrativeDoctorMom.com. Also my office website is www.PflegMed.com. I started a podcast last fall. It is, The Integrative Health Podcast with Dr. Jen. I have some cool guests there. We geek out a lot because I like to do that. That’s how you can get a hold of me. I’m most available, talking a lot, and ranting on Instagram. That’s kind of where I hang out the most. 

Landon: @IntegrativeDoctorMom, I’m checking out your profile right now. Tons of great content on here. Just really good advice. Some nice photos of you and your family it looks like. So, very good stuff, Dr. Jen. Thank you so much again. 

Dr. Jen: Thank you. 

Landon: You’ve been awesome. Some really great information on this podcast. I know our listeners are absolutely going to love it. Thank you for being on the show. We appreciate you. 

Dr. Jen: So much fun, thanks for having me. 

Kat: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit. 

Landon: So, if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast to never miss an episode.

Kat: And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might want to hear more about. 

Landon: All right, y’all, thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to Be Organic. 

Kat: Just a quick legal disclaimer, we are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness and nutrition with our expert guests, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you.

In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean Juice franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.

Be Organic Podcast – Season 2, Episode 26. Jessica Van Antwerp: Helping People Heal Through Exploration

Let’s talk about travel! While we might not be able to travel right now, before you know it we will be off and roaming this beautiful earth. Did you know travel can be a huge part of your health & wellness journey? There is a reason why travel often leaves you rested & rest. Getting out of your natural environment can be vitally important to healing.

Our guest this week is Jessica Van Antwerp is the owner and CEO of Integral Travel, providing wellness retreats and education to teach people how to unlock the natural healing capacity of their bodies while connecting with others and the planet. She draws on over a decade of experience in the health and wellness industry, as well as the wisdom she’s gained through her personal struggles with anxiety, weight, low self-esteem, and addiction.

TIME STAMPS:

3:20 How Jessica Found Her Path (jump to section)
15:05 Process to Help Heal (jump to section)
19:52 About the Retreats (jump to section)
28:08 Opinion on True Physical Health (jump to section)
35:00 At Home Tips (jump to section)
38:46 Where to Find Integral Travel (jump to section)

Transcription Below

Landon Eckles: Be Organic listeners, hey guys, what is going on? This is Landon, your co-host and CEO of Clean Juice joined as always by my beautiful wife and co-founder of CEO Kat Eckles. We are just super excited to be chatting with y’all today.

We’re super excited because we are talking about a topic that we’ve never talked about, and it’s one that I believe that everyone who’s listening right now is going to be super pumped to hear because it’s about travel. And travel is awesome. Travel is fun. And most of us have not been traveling. So, let’s talk about travel. We are super excited to be talking about helping people heal through exploration. 

We’ve got an incredible guest for you, as always. I’m gonna allow Kat to do our introduction on.

Kat: Yes, we are so excited to have Jessica with us today. Jessica Van Antwerp is the owner and CEO of Integral Travel. They provide wellness retreats and education to teach people how to unlock the natural healing capacity of their bodies, while connecting with others and the planet. She draws on over a decade of experience in the health and wellness industry, as well as the wisdom she’s gained through her personal struggles with anxiety, weight, low self-esteem, and addiction. There is nothing more fulfilling to her than empowering people in their own well-being and helping them to heal their hearts. 

We are so excited to have Jessica on the show today. I’m ready to jump in and hear all the things you have to say and teach us about these retreats you do. So, Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jessica Van Antwerp: Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Kat: So excited. It’s funny that we’re doing this podcast today. I didn’t even know this was the topic until I got to the studio today. I’m a Christian and I’ve been on my own spiritual journey. But the one kind of piece of Jesus’ life that has been sticking out to me recently is when he kind of got filled with the spirit and then he went into the wilderness, he went into solitude. We saw the same biblically with Paul when he changed from Saul to Paul and he went off by himself. I just was kind of meditating on this fact and I’m like, how many people don’t do this today? How many people don’t take that time and really put the effort into developing their spiritual self.  A lot of that is through retreat and leaving their normal lives and taking themselves out of the environment that they are in to be alone with their thoughts. 

It’s just so cool we are talking about this today because that’s kind of, I’m assuming the premise of what you do. You are pulling people out of their natural environments to heal and focus on their healing and focus on their well-being. And I think it’s such an important piece of life that so many people don’t do just because of the business.

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. 

Kat: Yeah, that really just allows people to heal and develop themselves correctly. So, I’d love to kind of hear, basically your bullets here. 

Jessica: Exactly. 

Kat: I know that you specialize in  helping people heal through exploration, and of course that’s a connection to nature, which is amazing. I’m big on grounding and all of these things. I just kind of wanna hear about your premise of what you do, why you do it, and how it really helps other people?

How Jessica Found Her Path

Jessica: Yes. As you mentioned, I own Integral Travel. Our top level offering, if you will, is wellness retreats. But we have a bunch of other offerings that lead up to a more immersive experience. 

I went into massage school in 2009, as sort of a solution to how to help people more effectively than bartending. There’s sort of like an insight to being a bartender when people just pull up a seat and tell you all their problems. All I could really do at that time was like listen, and nod my head, and offer really uneducated advice. But I wanted to have a more tangible way to help people. So, massage school was sort of the door that just opened up for me. Going into that realm, this whole world of health and wellness was opened to me, things that I had never even thought about in terms of spiritual health, emotional health, mental health, and how every layer of our being is interconnected and they communicate with one another. So, you may have some physical symptoms that are cropping up, but it may be because of some emotional thing that you haven’t healed or a spiritual thing that isn’t addressed. So, just learning about this over the last 10 years and really putting it into practice in my clients, in my private practice, has been incredible to see the growth that people have experienced. 

Our ultimate purpose and mission of Integral Travel is to heal people’s hearts. And I think that’s a lofty goal, you know? We can’t do that obviously without people’s participation and willingness and desire. We think that, with that as the ultimate goal, then so many other problems sort of solve themselves on the way down, sort of like a trickle down kind of effect. 

But we really want to empower people in their own health, help people feel good, and feel vital in their bodies to address their pain patterns, to look at their own addictions and why they may be engaging in destructive behaviors. Yeah, just take control over their own bodies, their own lives so that we don’t have to feel like a victim to our circumstances.

That point in particular, that last one being victim to one’s circumstances, was really driven home to me in 2012 when I was managing a wellness center. The irony of this story is never lost on my every time I relay my experience. I was working like 90 hours a week, setting up the wellness center, getting it up and running, and totally lost track of all my own self-care and personal health practices. And I had actually turned to drinking to relax at night, drinking coffee in the morning to wake up because I was only sleeping like six hours a night and smoking cigarettes actually to have an excuse to go outside and take some deep breaths, even though I was inhaling toxic air. That eventually led to a nervous breakdown on my part. It’s not something that I would wish on anyone. 

But that particular day, a gentleman walked into the studio that I was managing and said, “I’m here to talk to someone about teaching QiGong.” I had practiced QiGong before. We went into the studio. He gave me a little 10-minute preview, 15-minute preview or something, and used that. I dove into the practice. Practiced every single day for six months. And that is what healed me from the breakdown. 

Kat: What is QiGong for those of us that don’t know? 

Jessica: QiGong is a combination of two different words. Qi means energy and gong is cultivation or exchange. 

So most people have heard of Tai Chi. Perhaps have even seen people doing it, whether on the TV or in the park somewhere, whatever. Tai Chi is a type of QiGong. So, QiGong is a practice of energy cultivation. Essentially on a physics level, you are manipulating the vibration of your body, of your cells, and your frequency with the intent to get rid of stale emotions in your body, things that are no longer serving you. And therefore, make way for new, fresh energy from the universe to come into your body. So, this is the energy that causes plants to grow, moves the wind, moves the planets in their orbits. It’s an incredibly powerful force. Really learning how to call that into your body is incredibly healing. 

Kat: You know what is so interesting is I’m sure just like Tai Chi, they’ve probably been using this method of healing in the eastern world for longer than any of us could ever realize. Whenever I learn about these practices, it’s always just mind blowing that we’ve completely lost them in our Western society and completely don’t integrate them. They even seem hokey, they seem strange to people. But you and I can attest to many of these things I’ve done energetically as well, that, I mean, it really is life-changing and it’s something that we’re just so used to taking a pill, or taking this, or taking that, but it’s like when we can really look at these practices how much they can impact us, it’s crazy. They have been going on for years, and years, and years, and centuries. We have just totally lost sight of them. 

Jessica: Millennia, yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, kind of going back to physics, because I like to be science-based in my approach to health and wellness. I understand that QiGong, because it’s a foreign word and a foreign practice to most of us in the western culture, can be a little strange and difficult to wrap your mind around. When you think of it from that atomic, and even subatomic level of just kind of changing the vibrations of your cells, that’s what those pills are doing also. Those pills you are taking, even if you don’t take supplements or any kind of pharmaceuticals, the food you eat is changing the vibration of your body. You are becoming one with the food and the food is becoming one with you. 

With QiGong, we are just sort of like bypassing the intermediary of this external thing, changing our vibrational frequency and learning how to do that on our own. 

Kat: It’s so true. Even when you talk about food, what we do at Clean Juice, we do all these organic smoothies, organic juices, and that was interesting for me as well as I studied food. Food as it relates to frequencies and energies and when you are looking at organic kale, organic ginger, or cucumber or even fruit, they are all high frequency, high vibration foods. When you are looking at fast food and processed food, and meats that are laid in with pesticides and antibiotics, they’re all low frequency foods. So, when you say that, you become your food, it’s like when you are eating high frequency organic fruits and vegetables, your whole body is operating at a high frequency and a high capacity as to when you are lowering yourself down with all the fast foods, processed foods as most Americans are. That’s just setting the stage to not be able to heal and operate correctly. I can relate to what we do with the frequencies and how important that is. 

Jessica: Exactly. Even beyond that physical level of the vibration, you can change your diet and be eating all the high vibration foods, right? But if you’re not dealing with the stress, the internal reaction to your circumstances, then there are still some other forces at play within your body that are changing the way your body functions. 

Kat: Absolutely. 

Jessica: You know, stress causes the body to function in a different way. The focus of the eyes changes. The blood moves away from the core, digestion, out to the limbs, so you can run away. This was all programmed when we were going to be eaten by a saber tooth tiger on the plains or something like that. That’s just the physiological way that the body functions. It’s not focused on healing when you’re in a state of nervous system activation because it doesn’t know if you’re gonna survive the night or even the next five minutes when you feel a threat to your life.

But we exist in these perpetual states of sort of artificial threat of the looming deadline from our boss, this thing, or just the mountain of the to do list that is weighing down on us that we just don’t seem to have enough time in the day to do everything for everyone. That again, affects the way that your body changes. Not only eating the high vibration foods but then internally performing some alchemy so that you are more in control of the way that your body is functioning. Do you have conscious control of shifting out of that state of fight or flight and into the rest and digest mode? I think that is one of the things that we focus on at Integral Travel, really downshifting the nervous system activation, again, to activate the natural healing capacity of the body.

Kat: That’s so important. I’m not sure people even realize that they are living in this fight or flight. I know that I haven’t done it so many times. And sometimes, I remember when we were starting our company, it was exciting. We were having so much success. We were going, going, going. There were a lot of great things happening. On the tail-end of that, I’m exhausted. I’m running myself down and don’t realize how much restoration I really need to be able to deal with these things correctly. 

Then you have the whole other added element of all these traumas that all of us are dealing with womb traumas to childhood traumas and all these things that our body has held onto for so long. And we’re hitting adulthood and we’re going 90. We haven’t even dealt with the stuff that happened to us when we were two and three years old and our body holds on to that. I think there is so much healing that everybody needs to do there with themselves and their spiritual self. 

I love what you do because it’s just honoring that in a way. You know, it’s honoring to say, “I need to slow down. I need to slow my body down. I need to slow my mind and my spirit down so I can really acknowledge not just my day to day but all of the things in the past that happened and I can release them so I can move on in a healthy way.” I just think it’s really, really special. I love that. 

Jessica: Thank you. You got it. 

Kat: I know you talked about your nervous breakdown and I appreciate you being open and sharing with that. I guess I would love to hear how just kind of nature and being in nature, your process helped to heal things like that nervous breakdown, anxiety, and addiction? Just the kind of success stories that you have seen on your retreats? 

Process to Help Heal

Jessica: Well, nature in itself has healing properties. We’re just beginning to understand that from a scientific point of view. Really since the industrial revolution is when human beings started becoming more and progressively more disconnected from nature. Like we used to live in rhythm, in cycle with the seasons, you know, like being mostly outdoors and having sort of temporary shelters in nomadic days. And really following the weather, eating seasonally, eating what’s available to us in our local area. 

I think going back to that ancient wisdom, just like you were talking about Qigong as a practice that’s been going on for millennia. This is really like ancient and sort of basic stuff. We have become so enamored with modern technology and the modern way of life that we’ve lost track of that ancient wisdom. There are studies being done that are showing that being in nature, spending a two or three-day weekend in nature versus two or three-day weekend in a city has an effect on your T-cell count. These are your immune cells that actually fight off infection that lasts for up to two to three months after you get back from that weekend. There are all sorts of healing properties that nature can imbue into our own bodies to make us feel more healthy. So, being in nature and connecting with the natural environment at any one of our destinations is an integral part of each of our trips, each of our retreats. 

One of the most profound transformations I’ve seen, well, there’s two stories. One is of a gentleman who was a student in the massage school where I teach, and he went on one of the retreats. He was just sort of like a grumpy guest. Nothing was ever good. He was always sort of sour about everything. He had trouble getting along with a lot of other people in the classroom. He was a really challenging student. He went on one of our retreats to Thailand. He came back an entirely different person. He underwent an incredible transformation during the journey, which is challenging. I’m not going to sugar coat it and say, you just come back to this light being. But you have to go through some darkness to get to the lightness sometimes in terms of confronting the way you’ve been, the way that you’ve treated people in the past. So, he definitely went through a few dark days of the soul during this retreat and came out the other side. He is so kind, so loving, and joyful. He has a smile on his face. Every time you see him, he wants to give you a big hug. It’s just amazing. That’s why we do what we do. 

And then there was another woman who also went on one of our Thailand journeys in a different year and she was struggling with an addiction to opioids for pain. So, she was in pretty constant chronic pain. And even over there, we had to break away from the group to take her back to the hospital to get her prescription refilled. But by the end of the journey, she had gone like five days without any of the painkillers. These trips to Thailand, basically we’re living outside. We sleep, depending on the destination, we were sleeping in huts or cabins. They are all open areas. There is generally no air conditioning in the places that we go in Thailand. So, we feel the heat of nature when it’s hot. We feel the rain when it’s rainy. We are very immersed in the local environment. She has also undergone a similar transformation as the first gentleman that I was talking about. She has become such a joyous being, is way more empowered in her own health, managing her pain, and way more motivated to help others also to seek out natural solutions and kick that opioid addiction. 

About the Retreats

Kat: That’s amazing. Tell me a little bit about these retreats just fundamentally. How many days are they there? And you mentioned Thailand, do you usually go to those types of locations? Where are some of the other ones that you have? 

Jessica: The number of days of the retreats vary based on the destination. We have some domestic retreats here in the States that are just four days, so sort of a long weekend. When we go overseas, we like to spend at least a week, if not more. Those two people actually went on very long journeys in Thailand, they went on like five week journeys in Thailand. We are sort of shifting away from that length of retreat. That was also at a time when we were teaching Thai massage and they were both there to learn Thai massage and how to do that for other people. Now, we are focusing more on just general health and wellness practices because there is such a need for it in our modern education system. We are not really taught how to take care of ourselves, even though we spend our entire lives in these bodies. We’re sort of trying to teach people what they may have never learned to begin with. And also, of course, invite people to share their own wisdom that they have learned through their personal care journey over the years, a bit of a digression. 

We are going to Baja this fall. We have also been to Scotland, Morocco, Costa Rica. Once COVID slows down, looking at doing a retreat at an eco village in the center of Kenya. Really, just sort of all over the world. If you ask me where I wanna go, I’d be like, “Where don’t I want to go?” I’ll go there. 

Kat: That’s so amazing. Love that. And I think, like you said, just connecting with the world, the nature, and the different pieces is healing in and of itself. I love that. 

What does a typical day look like there? Are you doing talk therapy, yoga, what can one expect when they are on one of these retreats? 

Jessica: Great question. The day generally follows a pretty easy flow. It’s not super rigorous in terms of the time spent on this activity or that activity. But we generally start the day with some sort of movement practice, like yoga to just wake up the body. That is before breakfast. Then we have breakfast. To do an activity, generally an outside activity in nature, wherever we are in the morning, come back for lunch, and then a more mellow movement practice, probably like a QiGong practice which is just slow, mindful movement, coordinated with breath in the middle of the day. And then afternoons are reserved for either free time or wellness treatment. So, we always like to incorporate some treatments in each one of our retreats. So, whether it’s massage or acupuncture or reiki session, cranial sacral. We’ve even had astrologers come and sign on to be part of the trip and provide astrology readings. Personal nutrition consultations. That is focused in the afternoon. And if you’re not receiving one of the treatments, you have some free time. And then, dinner. There is always an evening discussion that ties in sort of the activities that we were doing for the day and how they relate to our health and wellness. We usually finish with an evening meditation. 

There are various little wellness kinds of chats throughout the day that ties in the activities we are doing on how our body’s natural capacity to heal itself. Massage for example, just being the way in nature has positive effects on one’s health. So, do touch. Touch has been shown to increase all of the happy hormones, serotonin, dopamine, decrease cortisol and adrenaline and those sorts of stress hormones. It decreases blood pressure, it decreases the respiratory rate, and just helps the body shift into that parasympathetic nervous system state, that rest and digest state. Every single one of the activities that is incorporated in the retreat has been chosen specifically for its effect on the nervous system.

And then educating our participants about those things. It’s super easy to go home and take a 10 minute walk around your neighborhood and be in nature, under the trees, and breathing that fresh air. It’s easy to incorporate a little bit more touch into your daily life. The goal is that people learn tools and techniques that they can take back home with them and incorporate into their daily lives. 

Kat: That’s awesome. I imagine there is a big piece of just rest that’s important with all this. It’s like sometimes we are going, going, going. We are jam-packing our schedules and our days. I love that there is movement and learning, but it’s also just probably rest and reflection and reminding your body what it feels like to not be in a constant state of what’s next. 

Jessica: Exactly, exactly. The jungle yoga retreat that we go to in Thailand, there is no internet there. There are no phones, no internet, no TV. So, you just get this respite from the constant pings and dings and notifications that are coming out of whatever device or perhaps even multiple devices, you know, as we go throughout our days. It’s really fascinating, the first few days to witness other people and experience it myself. It’s sort of like a technological addiction of reaching for your phone because it’s a habit to check whatever notification, check your email, check to see if anything came through on social media. And to see how people really slow down over those first few days. And then, on day four, it’s like everyone is really there. They are super present. And then that’s when the magic really starts to happen. We connect with each other as human beings without that distraction of the phone. It’s a really special time. 

I think that taking a vacation is different from going on a retreat, right? Taking a vacation you can often fall into the same trap of that go, go, go, do, do, do, cram in as much as you, particularly if you are in an international destination where you are probably not going to get an opportunity to go again. You just have to see all the things. You have to go see the Eiffel Tower, go to the Louvre, and all the spots, you know, in Paris. You come back from your vacation and you are just as tired, if not more tired than when you left. 

So, yeah, the retreats are really about slowing down. It’s about depth of experience as opposed to breadth of experience. 

Kat: I love that. That’s so great. I know that you believe like I do, so much of physical health has to do with emotional, mental, and spiritual health. I know we have kind of touched on this a little bit. But maybe explain in your own words, because I always try to accentuate that on this podcast when I have anybody that comes on that talks about this correlation just because I truly believe it’s so important. I believe it’s probably the most important piece of health, and it’s probably talked about the least. You really have to deal with this spiritual, emotional, mental side of yourself if you wanna see true physical health. So, I would love to just kind of hear your thoughts on that and any opinion that you have.

Opinion on True Physical Health

Jessica: Yeah, absolutely. I’m very sensitive to skepticism around the interconnectedness of these layers of being. So, I like to always address that sort of first. For people who are still learning about how mental things, emotional things show up in the physical body, just think about when you’re nervous about something. The nervousness is an emotion, right, that shows up in your body in a specific way. Maybe you sweat a lot, maybe your palms sweat, maybe you get butterflies in your stomach. These are physical manifestations of an emotion that you’re experiencing. Or if you’re angry, maybe you get hot, maybe you get red. Like there are things that are happening in your body because of an emotion that you’re feeling. So, then it expresses itself through that way. 

I sort of interpret things through the lens of Chinese medicine given my background in shiatsu, which is a specific style of body work based in Chinese medicine, the same system of medicine as acupuncture. It is a super beautiful system. Even if we do grasp this concept of the interconnectedness between the body, the mind, the spirit, and all levels of emotions and mental activity, it doesn’t always give us how things are interrelated or give us an understanding of what to do about it. So, Chinese medicine for me, through the lens of the five elements, has helped me understand the correlations, the mental correlations that show up in our bodies, the emotional correlations that show up in our bodies, and then how to address them from sort of an elemental perspective.

I know we are sort of getting into heavy theory here. The elements in Chinese medicine, fire, metal, water, wood, and Earth. If you think about water putting out fire, that’s a controlling elemental relationship. Some things that are associated with the fire element are your vivacity that is coming out through your tongue. Like actors have a lot of fire elements in them. Teachers also have a lot of fire elements because they get up in front of a group of people and are teaching things. If you have an issue with stuttering, something with your speech, related to the fire element, stuttering, a lisp. Water element correlations to kind of draw that under control to sort of tame the fire, if you will. So, water element being associated with deep psychological states. Like if you think about like waters running deep. There are all these expressions in our modern lingo that sort of allude to the elements. And to their wisdom and power. So, slowing down when you speak sort of may be a way to address the stuttering. 

I might be going off on a really unrelated tangent here. I think it’s fascinating. And for me, it just brought everything into focus. It was like, oh, okay. Learning about all the correlations of all these elements helped me, you know, take that frame, if you will, turn it and put it into between myself and my life and all the symptoms I was dealing with or whatever, and be it like brought everything into focus. It was like, this thing is related to that thing. And that thing is related to that thing. It’s all this one system. It’s not a separate symptom over here, this separate thing over here, and this separate thing over here.

Maybe a simpler example. The wood element in Chinese medicine consists of the gallbladder and the liver organ networks. It’s associated with decision making. Well, gallbladder specifically is associated with decision-making. And it runs that meridian, that energy pathway in the body runs down the side of the body to the hips. So, oftentimes hip issues are associated with some gallbladder sort of issue. 

My husband had a double hip replacement a number of years ago. He was in a previous marriage also and that was not going well. They had talked about divorce, but they weren’t, you know, really convinced that that was the right way to go. Well, after he had his double hip replacement, they made the decision to get a divorce. The physical can also affect the other layers also. So, maybe his hip issues were due to this like indecision, not choosing a stance, deciding what direction to go, and it manifested into this intense hip pain. Once he addressed the hip pain, then all of a sudden the decision became easier. 

Kat: It really is all related. Again, it’s like something that they’ve understood in Eastern medicine for long before we came in and almost eradicated it out of our normal vocabulary and normal culture in America. It’s sad because I think it’s just an important piece of well-being and health for everyone. I just really applaud people like you that are bringing it to the surface and talking about it and educating and creating the space to honor that. 

Jessica: Well, thank you for allowing me to share it with you and your listeners. 

Kat: So, before we go, what are some things that maybe people can do at home if they don’t have the capacity whether it’s time or finances to go on one of these retreats? What is a suggestion for someone to do at home to make a change in their daily life to improve it and connect with nature? 

At Home Tips

Jessica: Well, I definitely think that going for walks is a great way to just connect with nature, slow down. You know, I think a lot of times we associate the need for exercise and movement with things like hardcore, cardio intense, interval training, something where you sweat. But really just movement in general is so good for your body. Gentle moving helps pump your lymph which is basically your body’s waste disposal system. It gets your blood flowing. It helps you breathe a little more deeply. And it gives you the added benefit of spending that time outside so you can get some fresh air. I know there are some air quality issues around different parts of the country right now with a lot of the fires going on in the west. But you can still get the effect of the greenery, being outside, and moving your body. So, taking walks is a really easy and free one. 

Again, incorporating touch, however that may be. If you don’t have the financial resources to get a massage for example, even just start incorporating it within your home life, with your loved ones, your children, your spouse. Just be more conscious of touching one another. That gives you the added benefit of syncing your nervous systems. Your nervous system has a concept called entrainment where the frequencies in which they are vibrating may be dissonant and different at first, but if you stay in contact for 10 to 20 seconds they sort of sync up. Then it just enables an easier flow with your partner, your loved ones. So, incorporating touch. 

Drinking good water. I mean, enough water I think is a challenge for many Americans. But drinking good quality water. If you are just drinking tap water, you’re actually ingesting a credit card-sized worth of plastic every single week because of all the microplastics that are in our water supply. So, good filtered water. Please do not use a one-time use disposable water bottles. But a reusable water filter that you can just attach to your tap. 

Integral Travel, we also have a lot of resources for every financial kind of tier. So, we have free meditations that will help you ramp down out of that sympathetic nervous system activation state down into the parasympathetic rest and digest. We have a whole suite of those free meditations on our website. I also teach two online Qigong classes every week by donation. So, there’s no financial obligation to participate. I just want to share this work with people because I truly credit it with saving my life and helping me heal from my nervous breakdown. And it’s an incredible and powerful practice. So, those classes are available by donation. We are also about to launch a suite of cleanses that will help. I have an intro to QiGong course. You know, there are a lot of resources through the Integral Travel website as well that people can just start doing on a daily basis, at home, on their own. 

And then if they want that more immersive experience, they can kind of work their way up to a retreat. 

Kat: I love that. So, good. Well, Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re so excited to chat with you and like I said just learn more. I really honor and appreciate what you do. 

If our listeners would like to learn more about you, where would they go? Let’s just share your website and any social media, anything like that where they can learn more? 

Where to Find Integral Travel

Jessica: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on, Kat. It’s really been a delight to chat with you. I really respect and honor the education that you’re helping to provide to people. We all have a similar goal in mind, which is health, wellness, and feeling good. 

So, if people want to connect with us, www.IntegralTravel.com is the website. They can sign up for the newsletter. We’re always sending out the latest things that we are learning about health and wellness, in addition to our latest offerings and products.

We are on Instagram @Integral_Travel. And we are on Facebook as well @IntegralTravel. We do have a YouTube channel as well with all sorts of videos of little stretches, pain patterns, and we are constantly coming up with new videos, new meditations and like to share those with the world. Lots of different ways to connect. 

Kat: I love it. Well, again, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m excited for our listeners to learn more and I just wish you all the best with this venture and just everything you’re doing. Just know we are rooting for you and really respect the healing work that you’re doing. So thank you for sharing with us today and best of luck as you move forward.

Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier in body and stronger in spirit. 

Landon: So if you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast to never miss an episode, 

Kat: And we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juice’s Instagram. Give us a follow, slide into our DMs with any suggestions for guests or topics that you might wanna hear more about. 

Landon: All right, y’all. Thanks for listening. Have a great week and remember to Be Organic.

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Kat: Just a quick legal disclaimer, we are not doctors. While we absolutely love discussing wellness nutrition with our expert guest, you should always talk to your physician or other medical professional before making any dietary or lifestyle changes. They can assess your specific needs and come up with a plan that works best for you.

In addition, this is for educational purposes only. Clean juice franchises are only offered by delivery of a franchise disclosure document in compliance with various state and federal laws.