Logan (00:05):
Welcome. I'm Logan Christopher from Lost Empire Herbs, and this is the Health Sovereign Podcast. Today with me, I have Eddie Stone, the CEO of Touchstone Essentials. Welcome, Eddie.

Eddie (00:17):
Hey, Logan. Thank you for the chance to be here and to talk with your good folks.

Logan (00:22):
Yeah. Well, so we're gonna be diving deep into Zeolites today, which is a very interesting topic. You know, I, I probably heard about Zeolites the first time, maybe it might have been 10 years ago now, but it, you know, any, any area like this, there's, there's a whole bunch of information and also some, like myths and misconceptions floating around there. So I hope that we're able to clear up all that in today's interview.

Eddie (00:45):
Yeah, a absolutely. I, I think my initial exposure was probably 2005. So I've got a, a few years under my belt with it, and over that time have just continued to grow in my fondness of it and, you know, what it can do to support the body, sort of natural pathways for detox, which is, I think, super important. So I, I look at it as one of the more interesting and, and frankly, critical for good health, just natural minerals that are out there, right. That can really do some big things.

Logan (01:15):
Yeah, absolutely. The, the longer I've been in health, the more I realize, like, detox is such an essential part of it, especially in today's world, more so than in the past. But let's, let's start at the beginning. What are zeolites and they're, how they're made is pretty interesting, so can you start there?

Eddie (01:32):
Yeah. And so I'll tell everybody right up front, we know quite a bit about Zeolites. They've really been around, you know, sort of human beings, human consumption for, you know, thousand plus years. I mean, frankly, you could probably go back close to 5,000 years and look at Chinese clay eating societies, which really, it's, it's sort of a nice way of saying people that had dysentery and were sort of forced to live by river banks and beds and, you know, really were eating dirt, right. For survival. And there were some interesting outcomes that as they ate that clay or the dirt, which clearly contained zeolites there was some that were getting better, right? It played some role in, in stopping the viral replication that was taking place with, with dysentery. And of course, there's, there's history with the Romans using it as part of their plumbing systems and things, which had some interesting outcomes.

Eddie (02:26):
And so we know a lot about zeolites. I think there's 51 or 52, something like that, very specific types that kind of fall in three categories. There's, which you would not think of for human consumption or globule, and then there's sheetlike. And, and what we work with is a sheetlike zeolite called Clin optilite. And in the US it actually has grass status from the FDA because it's, it's been around so long, used safely by people. I think there's 300 plus some pieces on PubMed and actually doesn't even have really contraindications. And so there's sort of a, a safety for all sort of mentality around it. What's interesting when you study clin optilite, specifically, the way its structure is with its for carbon perimeter bonds. It has a native or, or natural negative charge to the cage zeolites, if you looked at 'em under a microscope, a really good microscope you would see that they have tunnels or channels, maybe think of it like Swiss cheese a little bit.

Eddie (03:31):
And if you look at it in its large form, or say a larger size, you'd sort of see the same thing that if you mill it down to a smaller size, it's gonna have a very similar appearance with those tunnels or channels or cages we call it. And the fact that they have those negative cages becomes interesting in if, when we talk about things like heavy metals and other environmental pollutants that have positive charges because they actually create an attraction to one another, almost like the north end and the south end of a magnet sort of drawn together. Well, when you're talking about detoxing, you know, that's pretty important, right? How something might bind. And, and since zeolites are, are not essential minerals. There's no repository or place that they would stay in the body. So there's, there's a lot of interesting things there to explore.

Eddie (04:18):
But most of the time you see is like zeolite form with ply lakes or salt water colliding with lava Mm-Hmm. . And that, that's when this crystalline structure comes into being. And we would find ze elect deposits, almost like mineral deposits, right? In, in many parts of the world. Some would have sort of a greater amount of purity than others. We, we mine ours in the US in a, at a, in a site that would, would be considered very pure actually out of the ground, would have compliance with say, prop 65 status. It, it's that clean out of the ground. So it's, it's an interesting mineral with a lot of history that in general, as in human beings in nature, in water and air plays a role sort of infiltration, infiltration and, and, and cleanup, right? So it's it's, it's kind of ubiquitous in that regard. Yeah.

Logan (05:09):
Nice. You mentioned a couple other clays and like the more common ones, bentonite K clay, then there's also activated charcoal. Both of these have absorptive properties, right? The same as zeolite, but what, what sets zeolites apart from these other substances that are gonna have some somewhat similar effects?

Eddie (05:30):
Yeah, so when you think of the clays, just in, in general, or even charcoal charcoal's almost like a filtration unit, right? So if something passes by, you would want it to have a catching effect to just things in general that you don't want your water or whatever happens to be. Where zeolite is distinctive is that it has a real drawn property or specific property where it's looking for positively charged particulates. In this case, that category fits heavy metals like cadnium, lead, mercury, aluminum, others, clearly things we do not want in our body. And so it becomes really interesting when you start to think of it that way. And it isn't just that it can trap in its cage because of that negative charge. You also get what's referred to in math as a zeta effect, where it can have that same attractive quality at the top of the cage.

Eddie (06:25):
And so think of it this way if, if I had a magnet, a piece of paper here, and I put it over the top of the magnet, if it's a fairly thin piece of paper, the magnetic qualities will extend, you know, through the paper to whatever's on the top of the surface. So while the Zeoli os can attract things and track them in its cage through ion exchange as it would be moving through the body, 'cause it works on proximity, you also have a snowball effect where it's going to gather things on its surface, right? And so now that's two sort of qualities. And then as you have zeolites and what I refer to as bunches, right? When you take it in a drop, even though you can't see it, because it's a nano size, right? It's, it's really small. There's thousands of particles in there.

Eddie (07:07):
And so as they would travel, there's almost like a sweeping effect, or think of a, a set of, say, snowballs coming down the hill, right? And, and the external things that are gonna get, gather with 'em. And so in that regard, it's specific. And in this case, it also is not really going to have an impact on positive minerals in the body because they would not have a charge that has the most attracted to. So the zeolite cage actually based on size and charge, creates this strong attraction. We actually, in our process flood the cages with calcium and magnesium, not enough to have a nutritional impact on the body. But so then that, there's something in there that doesn't have, but a modest definitive force. So when it seeds a heavy metal, the on exchange is, is aided or helped, right? That's part of making it more bioavailable. You, you can't do those things with the clays or really even the, the charcoals, right? There's simply just filtration products with a, a, a passive impact on, on cleanup.

Logan (08:08):
Okay. And I've heard that like charcoals, those may be pulling out some of the, the minerals that are useful, like zinc that in, in those cases that that may happen, whereas that's not gonna be happening with the zeolites.

Eddie (08:19):
Yeah, that's exactly right. So that's why, I mean, frankly, you know, you hear a, a, a lot of different protocols, right, about detox, right? You're in this business, so you get a lot of, of, of ideas. I'm concerned when I hear people so broadly using day in and doubt clay or charcoal, just for that factor, very difficult for them to take measure of how many good minerals are are being eliminated as well. And so they might be forced into a very regimented routine of, of mineral supplementation. That's probably not necessary. And so, you know, for me, in my experience, I just believe the zeolite represents a more a a superior, simpler way, right? With less complications, less potential for side effects, including depletion of minerals. There's no research to suggest that the zeolite has any impact on, on the electrolytes you need generally. Mm-Hmm. . And so for, for me, and, and I, I'll, I'll be candid with the, with the crowd, I'm, I'm 60 years old, and so at this point, you know, I, I, I think about those kind of things, right? I don't wanna sort of make those mistakes for my own personal consumption or what I, you know, ask my family or my customers to use. Yeah,

Logan (09:29):
Absolutely. And then one other thing I want compare or get your thoughts about is I've been hearing a lot about fulvic and humic acids. We, we sell, which is a natural source of these, and those have some similar, but maybe different detox properties as well. So how, how is zeolite similar or different to those?

Eddie (09:49):
Well, in the case of fulvic acid, and so we do offer a phobic product ourselves. We don't offer a humic product a little separate issue for us. And so we focus really on, on the phobic, 'cause we can have a little greater control in, in terms of what we're looking for inside of a profile, like of trace minerals. Yep. And so our particular one, it's got phobic and C based trace minerals, and then some zeolite in there as well. It's, it's, it's sort of a, a, a three in one product. When you think of phobic and trace minerals, you think of adding back to the body, supplementing the body with trace minerals or other compounds. Phobic is tremendous amount of compounds, right. That we believe have good qualities for health and the body. And in fact, you found fulvic acid fairly freely even in commercially grown crops 25 or 30 years ago.

Eddie (10:39):
Of course. Now the way crops are not rotated, I should say, or, or how commercial use is in terms of fertilized pesticides things of this kind, you just don't see it. Like we once did some organic fruit and vegetables would still have some FBE in it. And so we think supplementing, well, it can be a, a positive thing for people to do, but one is supplementing in the body, principally some nutrients, amino acids that you would find in the FBE trace metals primarily. And the other is just simply there to aid the body in elimination of toxins. That's, that's really all that zeolite is gonna do. 'cause Like I said, it, it, it, there's no, it's not an essential mineral, so it's not playing a role in that regard in the body.

Logan (11:19):
Okay. Very nice. Correct me if I'm wrong, but some of the early research around zeolites was actually with like cesium and some of the radioactive elements, they were using it in Chernobyl. Is that right?

Eddie (11:32):
Yeah, I mean, I, I, some of that is really fascinating when you sort of do a deep dive on it. Even not just Chernobyl, but Fukushima Mm-hmm, right? Sort of a, a similar type thing. And so what they have found is that it can trap some of these radioactive materials. You know, how much some of those types of details, I don't know that they fully know the scope of that research. So what Zeolites have, what they've done is they've mixed it with concrete. And as they've gone in to try to seal these places where they've just said to themselves, okay, I'm gonna abandon this because we don't believe we could control or mediate or, or, or get rid of this sort of radioactive material water, whatever happens to be, this was particularly true in Chernobyl. I think in Fukushima, they've tried to do more of that type of work.

Eddie (12:19):
So they used Zeolites mix of concrete to seal the areas, and it did have an impact of stopping it sort of in its place. And that's still today, decades later. Of course, that radioactive material is gonna be there a long time, but there's no reason to think of this as, as, as breaking down. So I, there's some research even to look at fighting forces that in the field of battle or the theater where depleted uranium and other materials have been used in heavy shells and, and, and some weapon tree that could have a positive impact. But outside of just some preliminary research on that, I don't really know of final research to draw, you know, significant conclusions. But I, I think what it speaks to is the fact that we, we recognize both historically just studying history, but then just in general with research, that zeolites have a lot that they can do to sort of serve human beings in, in dealing with environmental pollutants of all kinds, right? And if there's a, what is it, a hundred plus thousand different manmade chemicals of properties that, that are out there sort of floating in the system that we live in, it's tough.

Logan (13:25):
Yeah. That, that's exactly what I'm saying. The detox is so important because never in the span of humanity have we had to deal with these things. And it's not like I mean, lead enough of that will definitely kill you right then and there. But the little bits that are found in the food and the air and everything, it's the, the chronic in the buildup of all these different things all at once, which leads to us needing to do like various protocols and take products like these in order to support our health if we wanna be healthy and thrive thriving. That is,

Eddie (13:54):
Yeah. I, I, I don't, I think we underestimate the role that it plays over time in, in diminishing the impact of the immune system, right? How the immune system functions or the repair network in the body, right? How your proper, proper function of enzymes, which are so critical for organ repair or whatever happens to be, and I know at at 60 right? My peer group, right? I look at 'em, some have lived a cleaner life than others, right? We won't give commentary to it. But you can sort of see the impact if your lifestyle is not sort of promoting a healthy access to water, air, some exercise, some of these type things versus those that ignore it, and, and your body, I believe it's just becomes overburdened or overwhelmed and you lose some functionality. It'd be just like an automobile, right? If you never did any tuneup or changing the oil or, you know, whatever happens, you're, you're gonna degrade functionality and that's appears to happen to us.

Eddie (14:47):
And then of course you see acute issues whether that's things that are happening with skin problems or rashes, or I guess there's some belief that people on the spectrum, in some cases it can be because they don't manage heavy metal exposure very well, or there's a buildup. And so their body isn't sort of naturally or natively helping to expel those things that it can impact sort of function, right? I, I refer to as executive function speech, clarity of thinking control of behavior emotions, things like this. And so it's a, it's a deep issue that I don't think everybody faces that, but clearly your, your DNA as it's replicating, it's gotta impact you in some way. And I don't think it's positive, right? The exposure.

Logan (15:30):
Yeah. So Xix is mostly well known. We've kind of already talked about it for helping to remove the heavy metals and also some of the radioactive components we talked about a little bit, those, but when I was doing the research for this kind of diving deeper, I was bit more surprised. I shouldn't say surprised, but I really hadn't heard this much before, that it's good for removing mycotoxins as well. I unfortunately have lived in two mold houses in a row, and my wife had Lyme disease and it got ex extremely bad. So doing a lot of the mitigation and the slow process of pulling the, the mycotoxins out, and that's another thing that's kind of everywhere in the environment. Like lots of houses have this problem, and it seems to be a growing problem as well, more people getting sensitive to it. So can you talk a little bit about mycotoxins and how the lytes can help in that area?

Eddie (16:18):
Yeah. So when we, when we think of it in that way, you know, based upon my exposure to the literature and some of the, you know, I'm not a PhD or, or that I wanna make that clear to people, but I spend a lot of time with these folks. And so here's those interpretations from just sort of the theory of, of why people are getting this relief. And there's sort of two dynamics that appear to be at work. One is that fundamentally when you start to clear out heavy metals and other environmental pollutants that zeolites can directly impact, we, we, we sort of know this, right? Because of positive charge, negative charge, all these dynamics, then you free up your immune system to better manage the load of exposures to other kinds of toxins. And so it's the, the molds and, and, and the mildews and, and other issues like that.

Eddie (17:07):
And so that's sort of one attribute. The other is that particularly if you're talking about pathogens, you, you make the body an inhospitable host. And, and so you're talking about with zeolites the ability to help balance a person's pH we know that it can promote healthy gut flora. And so all of these things can contribute to the body's native ability to manage toxins and exposures. Now, if you're living in a home or a place where you've got this constant exposure, the first thing to do is get the heck outta there. Yeah. Right? And, and, and eliminate the exposure because you've got a body burden that you're probably seeing all kinds of health deteriorations beyond just the obvious, right? 'cause Your entire system is overwhelmed once you help out some part of the body. It's just like when you add good nutrition and you're detoxing, man, now your whole system can better perform to do what it's supposed to do to, 'cause there's a certain amount of mold and mildew that frankly the body can manage, right? It's just when there's this over exposure. And so that's why I believe the greatest contribution is cleaning the body up from doing other tasks and focusing on the main thing, right?

Logan (18:16):
Well, and you're not gonna get a 100% away from mold in mycotoxins in, in in your food and the air, all, all kinds of different things. So yeah, that's that. That's great. Another area that is really important, and something we talk about a lot at Lost Empire herbs is endocrine disrupting chemicals. This is a huge factor. Endocrine, meaning the hormonal system and all these chemicals such as BPA that can have estrogenic effects, anti androgenic effects, obesogens, antithyroid, like a large gamut of negative effects across the body. Yeah. And these chemicals, once again, are just about everywhere. Some big areas are of course, pesticides, skincare, but water and food, different stuff like that. And Zia lights also can play a role in this. Is it because they're just the positively charged chemicals as well in the zeolites? It's gonna help pull 'em out.

Eddie (19:08):
That is part of it. But I don't know, in my description when I was talking earlier, the sweeping effect. So one of the things we know is that it isn't just what can happen in the cage or the surface, it's that them working in a cluster. Maybe, you know, sort of now I'm, I'm gonna simplify a pretty complex process here, but think of a gang of zeolites, kind of like rolling through the system, right? And they're going to be collecting other toxins as well. We could be talking about microplastics P oss. And there's, there's just going to be a positive impact across the board that we refer to as a sweeping effect. And, and frankly, this is, I mean, this is one of the more toxic or areas of toxicity that I have concerns about. We sell in our product line quite a few products made from organic fruits and vegetables.

Eddie (19:58):
And that definition for the most part means, right, the practices of not using petroleum-based fungicides, herbicides, pesticides, things like that. Now we actually have to check our crops or what we receive and what we're buying for microplastic intake through the root system. Mm-Hmm. , just like we've just seen recently fish that literally have begun to adopt microplastics as a part of their organ structures in their bowel. And I'm sure there's some human beings that if, if, if those same types of of of research was done, we, we'd find people sort of got plastics now as functional parts of, of their body. And so I really, I worry heavily about those things be because we just long term, you know, we don't completely know what's gonna happen there,

Logan (20:44):
Right? Yeah. I mean, the decrease in fertility being one of the problems that is coming from all this. Yeah. And that's interesting that the uptake of these pollutants, even if you're doing things right, like with many of our herbs, just because of the really leaded gasoline, the fact that they did that for decades and it a lies and got everywhere. So you can have a forest out there that should be pristine, but there's still some amount of lead in the root system, which is gonna be uptake into the, the trees and herbs. We, we obviously test for that stuff, and we have strict limits, but you can't eliminate it completely. So this is why you need support in the thing. So, you know, you have some amount of it and can it just be pulled out slowly and slowly all the time, especially to get to the lead that's been stored in your bones since you were probably born, because our parents had this problem too, right?

Eddie (21:33):
Yeah. Hey, listen, if, if we checked everybody's blood for DDT, which was banned in the seventies, right? 99% of human beings alive in this earth, they're gonna have it or take C eight, which is a principle component in Teflon, which was sort of introduced in society with non-stick cookware in the late forties and fifties, but then became ubiquitous in fabrics and carpets and things like that. A hundred percent of the people in the earth are gonna find C eight in their tissue to simply because it's a part of the atmospheric rain winds. Yeah. We, we've created our, we're we're a living experiment with these darn things. Yeah. Which is concerning.

Logan (22:13):
Yeah. And not to scare people. 'cause I know like the, the first exposure to this stuff, it can feel quite overwhelming, but the, the good news is there are things like this that you can do protocols to one, just dramatically reduce your exposure. That is like the, the first step, whether that's mycotoxins or the ca eight, the pesticides and different stuff like that. And then two, can you support your body because the body essentially knows what to do with this stuff to get it out when you especially give it the right support to do so.

Eddie (22:42):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I marvel at the genius of the human body and, and hopefully we can catch up to it with our practices. Yeah.

Logan (22:52):
So you mentioned a little bit about zeolites benefiting the microbiome, and I also saw some information on it. It improves the integrity of the intestinal barrier limiting intestinal permeability. And I actually saw there was even one study that was looking at the absorption of gluten, which obviously a lot of people are gluten-free or have problems with gluten today. So I was surprised to see zag maybe having an effect on gluten specifically.

Eddie (23:16):
Yeah. You know, gluten intolerance, there seems to be some relief there. Of course, the biggest thing a person can do is just, yeah, be careful of their exposure and what type of gluten, right? 'cause It's, it's different whether it's coming from a ancient seed or whatever that happens, happens to be. We've also just sort of extending that sort of area. We get a lot of positive comments about people that have, you know, said, Hey, I've got leaky gut, or I was told I have leaky gut and I've got these symptoms and these other things. And so that, that repair improvement on the health of the gut and the bowel really is a common commentary that we get. And in, in, in fact my own, my own belief in sort of study. And so we've probably got 35,000 plus five star reviews, and I think our zeolite products are bumping up on 20,000 on their own.

Eddie (24:06):
And so we look at 'em pretty carefully to read the commentary. And what people are, are saying is kind of strong indications, right? 'cause They're, they're not things we can control. These are all done by third party that we can't have any impact on. And so when I see people refer to having a real increased in energy and sleeping better, my own instinct is that's because the health of their gut's improving. Mm-Hmm. , you know, I just think that's sort of the first thing that starts there when you, when you think about the gut, it's not common for people to sort of recognize that 50 plus percent of the serotonin that most people are producing is coming from their, their gut. You know, some people call it the second brain, however they want to refer to it. Well, of course, if you don't have an adequate amount of serotonin, you're probably not in a good frame of mind.

Eddie (24:52):
You're probably not sleeping well, then you're probably eating worse 'cause you're eating your feelings. I mean, these, these, these whole cycles. And so I think that is a real quick contribution by helping to balance the pH in the gut and, and sort of creating inhospitable environment for unhealthy yeast and things that can take over the flora damage the lining of the intestinal wall, contribute to leaky gut. And so that's one of the first things I really see people talk about is, is are those types of issues that I think are related to their gut.

Logan (25:24):
Yeah, absolutely. And so the immune system and the, the modulation that Zite can have on that, all, all the stuff you're saying, it's effect on the guts, obviously pulling stuff away and out of the body, so the body is freed up to do things. But I, I saw it was specifically referring to it having an action similar to super antigens. Can you go into detail about that?

Eddie (25:46):
Yeah. You, you know, as, as I look at that, I'm, I'm not sure the mechanism of action is, is clear to me. I think there're observing an outcome that's consistent enough that's saying, okay, this is because Right. There's a cause and effect that they're seeing, but I don't know that I understand fully, except that it could, in this case, have an antioxidant type of quality, right? Just in terms of how it's functioning inside the body, remembering that there's an iion exchange taking place that you would think about as an antioxidant type of behavior, right. Where you're giving up a good for a bad. And so beyond that, though, I don't, I don't know that I understand fully, and I'm not sure the literature yet does. Right? I think that is an area where we'll learn more about and be able to speak to specifically in the future. Yeah.

Logan (26:30):
So next step I mentioned to you before, but I, I spent some time on PubMed. I also am not a PhD. I, I did one semester at community colleges. Like, yeah, I can learn better by myself. And now love it. I spent a lot of time going through scientific studies so a little bit familiar with how those work, but went through a click through and run through and looking specifically at the clinical trials and just wish I could get your input on some of these. So several of these were in humans just one kind of what we were just talking about, but improving IBS symptoms. So just that, that gut health that you were talking about, right?

Eddie (27:05):
Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And so if you sort of look at how the human body under normal circumstances reacts over time to zeolite if, and, and if renal functions, normals kind the first place to start processes out of the body in about a four to six hour period of time on normal basis, and know a little bit about that, looking at urine discharge. And so there's enough research out there about urine discharge to sort of understand sort of that biological function. And so, and, and then we see it, this is, it is an interesting place. We have parents with kids that are on the spectrum. And, you know, one thing you see there, I mean, I think generally if, if you don't have a kid on the spectrum and you read about it, then you think about the parents are dealing with just mostly behavioral type of issues, right?

Eddie (27:53):
That's the emotional and behavioral type of issues. But other things a little deeper is a lot of those children have real significant gut problems. Mm-Hmm. constipation can be this real critical battle, you know? And if you've got a really young child that's constipated all the time, you've got a really unhappy child. I mean, you've got all kinds of things there that are difficult to deal with and, and the kid probably can't even probably verbalize it, right? So you've got these things. So when you can create a more consistent pattern with renal function, then bowel function can follow. And so as it is improving, right, the pH and, and finding relief and, and helping to probably drive out some of these bad yeast and other things, normal bowel function should occur. This is clearly something that's on a consistent basis that being seen by people.

Eddie (28:45):
And so it's really you know, I I just think that's great, right? Because along with that, you get relief, right? As you get better transit time, most people dealing with IBS issues would see better outcomes, particularly if that also means the bad flora begins to diminish. So the good flora is in there so that it's not these issues where they've got a constant loose stool that really is almost like water to where they've got something with the proper amount of bulk and, and action. And so, I, I, I, and you know, for if you deal with people, I've got a, a brother and a mom that have had all kinds of bowel IBS type issues their whole lives. And, and managing that is so challenging. So when you see people get that relief, it's really fulfilling.

Logan (29:31):
Nice. next up there was one looking at topical wound healing and comparing it to the, the standard of care that is used for such in hospitals and finding that Zeolites has some positive action there.

Eddie (29:43):
Yeah. So at this point, there's, there's, there's nothing from a regulatory standpoint that allows us to make claims about that. So I just want to kind of make that little caveat there. But anecdotally, and just to say that out loud, you know, anecdotally, but over the years, right? You see a lot of anecdotal commentary, I believe, because it plays a role in helping to clean out wound sites, particularly when you're, you're, you're talking about bacterias and things that if you can disrupt that process of how the bacteria grows or extends itself, or even viral replications, right? So it's gonna play some role. We've had people, and again, this is just anecdotal share with us before and after on spider bites Mm-Hmm. and pretty quick recoveries that they're describing about themselves. And so, you know, you don't know all the dynamics of those situations, right? We don't know all the things. Did they put ice on it? Did they put ine on it? You know, we, you know, you don't, you don't know all those things, but they're saying, at least in some way, they feel like that the use of zeolites played a role in, in the quick the quick way or, or how rapidly wound healing occurred. Right? So you know exactly what the mechanism are, it's probably unique to each individual person.

Logan (31:03):
Well, historically, various clays will be used for tices and plasters for all kinds of injuries. So it certainly makes sense there. Yeah.

Eddie (31:10):
Yeah. Yeah.

Logan (31:11):
The next one, and this one is kind of interesting, was reduced lead uptake from water. They're literally giving people lead , but with zeolites and showing that less of it was being absorbed in the body, which I would not wanna play a role in that study, but I guess it's good for us to know .

Eddie (31:26):
Yeah. I'm not even sure. I think that's ethical. But when, when we have seen those pieces, and there's more than one of those, there's several of those that I just don't quite agree with the ethical standards associated with it, but they've counted on the fact that the zeolite binds in the fluid prior to consumption the lead. And since the zeolite is a non-essential mineral, there's no way for the lead to stay behind their outcomes would suggest that's true. Mm-Hmm. , right. If you look at the positive outcomes that have occurred, it's just yeah. Risky and questionable to do that, but, you know, I, I think they prove their outcome. Yeah.

Logan (32:03):
The next one was increased bone mineral density. Is this because, well, like I was saying, like lead in various other heavy metals may get stored in the bones, and then if the body is detoxing these, then perhaps it can put in the better, more useful minerals, or is there some other action at play that

Eddie (32:19):
You're aware? Nope. I, I, I think it's exactly what you're describing, because whether it's lead or mercury, which we know can also have an impact on brittle, brittle bones and things like that. Mm-Hmm. , you, you get rid of those right? That are blocking a receptor or the natural uptake or use of calcium or magnesium in combinations you're, you're just gonna see an IM improvement. Right? And so I'm, I'm confident that's exactly as you described, where that's coming from.

Logan (32:45):
Yeah. All right. And the last human trail here that I saw was less chemotherapy induced side effects. So everyone knows that chemotherapy is really rough to go through, somewhat even describe it as torture. And the side effects can be quite brutal and really all, all sorts of different things. So being able to lower these, that seems like quite a good benefit to get, right?

Eddie (33:07):
Yeah. That, that's exactly right. I mean, on a personal level, you know, I've had plenty of people share those experiences, and you're, you're right, it is, it is just brutal on the body. Mm-Hmm. , you know, what's happening there, right? They're, they're, they're, they're trying to poison and kill off a disease before they kill off the host, right? That's a heck of a battle to engage in. But I, as I've had it described to me, helping the gut to maintain a certain amount of health Mm-Hmm. during that process just allows people without constantly stool or other types of issues be able to tolerate these treatments that they're going through. Mm-Hmm. . And that happens frequently enough that if I had that unfortunate diagnosis, and that was the, that was the pathway I chose I'd be loading up on zeolite just so I could kind of tolerate whatever I'd signed up for.

Logan (33:57):
Yep. The, a few other trials were in farm animals, and this is still interesting stuff. So the first one was chickens and that the zeolites were protecting them from the aflatoxins, a certain type of mycotoxins that was in the diet. So this is one of the studies that was showing that they had that positive effect or useful effect against mycotoxins.

Eddie (34:17):
Yeah. And, and I think the functionality there, we would, we would probably look to think of it in the same way that it's having that positive impact on humans. Yeah. Right. And how it helps to manage and deal with those microtoxins and, and, and pathogens.

Logan (34:30):
Yeah. Yeah. Not, not enough people realize that, you know, when we're feeding grains to animals that don't normally eat them, in many cases, these are moldy grains. It's not the stuff fit for human consumption, so it goes to animals, and then there's the bioaccumulation. This gets into the tissues of the chickens, the cows, et cetera. And then you're, you're getting mycotoxins through this route, unfortunately. So here using zeolites could help 'em, of course, if we didn't feed 'em greens, greens in the first place, that might be useful too.

Eddie (35:00):
You, you've just touched on a really deep subject there that I, I, I don't know if the public really wants to know Yeah. Because that feed supply, it means it's gone bad. That's why it goes to the animals. And for us not to make a direct connection on that, it's just a, a, a mistake in our thinking. We, we, it expose ourselves in ways that nobody intends, but, you know, garbage in, garbage out like they used to say with computers. Right. And same type of thing.

Logan (35:30):
Yeah. The next one was pigs and decreased e coli, but specifically they're looking at e coli that had antimicrobial resistance. So zeolites pos possibly playing a role in helping, you know, with all the antibi resistance that is going on due to our overuse of them but this being able to lower the e coli that was involved in those pigs.

Eddie (35:54):
Yeah. So sometimes when you, you look at EE coli or other pathogens along those line, they survive in the body and they would survive in, in the pig's body because they create an invisibility to the host immune system. Mm-Hmm. , almost like a cancer does, right. A a cancer sort of hides itself at a certain point. That's why it flourishes, because the immune system doesn't really attack it. You've, you've, you've got NK cells, natural killer cells that are supposed to fight cancer in your body, but they don't marshal up their, their impact or do their work if they don't see the cancer there. And so when you look at immunotherapies for cancer, where they may take a tumor, I live pretty near Duke University Hospital where some of this research has taken place. It's quite fascinating. And they give these immunotherapies to tumors where, for example, one of the common ones is they give the tumor polio.

Eddie (36:49):
It won't create polio in the human, but the immune system sees it as polio, and all of a sudden it didn't see the tumor before. Now it sees the tumor and it attacks and shrinks and, and tumors have even been eliminated. I mean, there's, there's really promise there. When you have these things in the bowel system and a person begins to use zeolites the theory is that you, you basically break down some of the membranes or other things that they e coli or these other pathogens are hiding behind, and they become exposed to the natural immune system to go in there and attack it. Mm-Hmm. . And so it's, it's playing this cyst in, in the body's native function. And I, another area where I'm excited about where that research can take us and what else we can learn.

Logan (37:37):
Yeah. Yeah. That I have not heard about the giving polio to cancer. Very interesting stuff.

Eddie (37:42):
Yeah.

Logan (37:43):
But the last trial here, this was the one that had a null result. So it was in steers and it did not reduce any negative effects that came from a high sulfur water. Apparently too much sulfur can cause some issues here. And the zeolites we're not mitigating that one. Can you speak to why that might be?

Eddie (38:01):
I think because it's just not a good fit for it. Yeah. , right. A ZA zite does not have a ubiquitous impact on environmental pollutants. Yep. And so, and, and I'm, I'm happy they do some of those trials just so we can learn more, but there are some out there that I've read, not unlike that where you go, that's just not what it's gonna do. Right. That's not that, it's not gonna support that. I

Logan (38:23):
Mean, sulfur is generally like, we need sulfur and everything, so it's, it's not gonna bind, doesn't have an affinity for this compared to many of the other things that we're looking at. Right. And basically it comes down to that.

Eddie (38:33):
Yeah. And I actually think that may be an advantage overall because you're talking about an inner mineral. Right. And, and so this is another reason why it's not having a negative impact on positive electrolyte levels or other things like that. Right. It's, it's not gonna try to distinguish that. That's not a part of its functionality. Mm-Hmm. . And so while it'd be great to see ev it impact everything you can kinda logically see why it wouldn't. Yeah.

Logan (39:00):
Alright. So that's enough of the trials. Now I want to go into some of the details specifically more about your products and how they're set apart from some of the other zeolites out there. First of all respect to you for posting your lab results online. Okay. I wish more supplement companies did that. Sure. The, you know, not, so if a zeolite already was bound to something and you consumed it, it technically shouldn't be getting into your body. Right? So let's say that zeolite was already bound up with lead as we were seeing in that lead in water study that shouldn't be getting into your body, but still your zeolites are tested to be very free of heavy metals involved in them, right?

Eddie (39:41):
Yeah, that's right. So your your, your identification there, the logic there is, is correct. Right. The zeolite, since it's not essential, and if it's a naturally mined zeolite, the challenge would be that when you look across the landscape of sales of supplements in this zeolite category, you've got a fair amount of our competitors that are selling synthetics. Hmm. And the synthetics can, can kind of look the same from a, a chemical standpoint, but they've been shown to have a vulnerability to weak acids, which would what you'd be describing in the gut. And so what would happen there is that the bond, the four carbon bonds break down, and so now the zeolite breaks apart and whatever it was bound to breaks apart now becomes available in the body. So we're pretty critical that whatever you're doing use clin optill light naturally mind, and then test the source.

Eddie (40:36):
Make sure you understand the amount of clin optill light that's in your sample, and then test it for purity. Now, we, we partly do that because putting it through a proprietary process of, of sort of cleaning and prepping the cage, right? It's just going to be more effective if it doesn't have lead or something already in it. Right. If it's got a soft calcium, a soft magnesium in it, then it's gonna easily give that up in an ion exchange in the device. So there's a, there's just, there's a strategy to that, but I think it's important. So I, I tell folks there's sort of three things to consider. Principally, I think you should also think about who you're doing business with, and do they put lab results online? Do they have naked reviews? We call it, I mean, things so that you can know as a consumer guarantees all this kind of stuff. And we, we really, we started touchstone 12 years ago to address those questions. I, there's, there's some good supplements out there, but there's probably 99% of the, the supplement marketplace. I wouldn't use what they have. Right. I just know enough to know better. But in our ,

Logan (41:38):
It's funny, we do all the same things you do. So lab tests online, third party independent reviews, like yeah, that's, I agreed. I wish more companies did these things.

Eddie (41:46):
And it's a big category, right? So, and people are spending real, do I never take for granted the money that they're spending? Mm-Hmm. , you're spending this money, spend it wisely. You know, it's your body, it's your health. It's probably arguably as important a place for you to invest, you know, is, is is your health and what you do. But in our case, we think the sourcing's pretty critical, which I, I talked about. That's online. The prep of the cage is critical. We just don't see that very often. Mm-Hmm. that people are doing that. Right. And then the third thing is to consider size, because size in this case matters. We have two versions. We have pure body regular, which has a mean average size of 0.5 microns. Yep. The green drops. And it's denser, right? You, you notice it, it's cloudy taste it, you can see.

Eddie (42:34):
Yeah. Yeah. You can taste it. You can see what's there at that size. The bulk of those drops are gonna main or remain in the gut. And, and in the bowel system is in almost a concentration, which is exactly what we're looking for. If you go much smaller, it migrates out of the gut soft tissue into the bloodstream. Now there's some benefits there, but we are first really trying to address the health of the gut, which is your first line of defense when we come to toxicity, right? Your, your, your gut's the critical player here for the human body. We have the nano size product, which is the spray, the blue erwin, the blue label that you showed. And at a nano size, it's gonna go anywhere, water goes. And so it's going to enter the cell structure. And with a lot of heavy metals, you're talking about angstrom size particles that are literally hanging out in the tissue in the cell structure.

Eddie (43:28):
And so the zeolite with a nano cage, which is, let's just say generally speaking, a thousand times larger than say the angstrom size becomes a great conduit for these very small fine particles, but disrupted to your DNA disrupted to how your telomere process works, telomeres production, all these dynamics. And so both are necessary. If, if I thought I could sell just one answer for everything, that'd be terrific. That's just not the case. And so you've really got to adopt two strategies. And people said, I'm gonna tell I can only afford one go nano. You got a hundred trillion cells in your body. Let's start there. Mm-Hmm. and deal with your gut. Unless your gut's just this really major issue, and you've got to heal your gut to get there. But we think the, we think the combination is important. Just as important to us as getting the bad stuff out of the body, putting the good stuff in. These two things for, for us are, are sort of married together and people say, well, how long before I'm clean? Well, unless you live in a bubble, this is a daily routine just like getting good nutrition. It's just, you, you just need to think about this on a constant basis 'cause of the world we live in.

Logan (44:38):
And could you talk to the difference between like powdered zeolites I heard people talk years ago, but like it was a more cost effective solution to get that. But based on what I've heard you say it, it sounds like the liquids are actually gonna be more beneficial in different ways. Could you go into more detail on the differences between that and why you, you go with liquid in the two different ways? Yeah.

Eddie (44:59):
Yeah. And I'll just, just in full transparency, we're if, if we're not the largest deal like company, we're, we're one of mm-Hmm. . And so if we thought we should be selling a powdered product, it'd be easy to do, right? We, we would just simply do that. But the powdered product is gonna be a large particle. And so you, you know, you're talking about a spoonful of something. I literally see people use spoonfuls of of the powder that are gonna be so large in their size that the amount of surface area created right in, in the zeolite case, the smaller the zeolite particle, the more surface area that's created per drop, kind of counterintuitive, but it's exponential. The larger, the smaller the surface area, therefore the, the, the least effective in, in terms of impacting proximity, zeta effect, trapping in its cage, all these sort of dynamics.

Eddie (45:52):
And so, and I don't believe it's reasonable to think people will day in and day out, take a teaspoon to a tablespoon of a powder of zeolite and choke that down. And I've been, I'm, as I said, I'm 60. I've been involved in supplements since my mid twenties. If people won't use something day in and day out, then there's really not the long-term benefit that you're looking for. And so, from practical standpoint, that's just a tough exercise. I think people are gonna, this granular thing, they swallow every day. The other one is in a powdered form. It cannot have been prepped. You've gotta take it to a liquid environment in order to prep the cage. So that it's more bioavailable. And the reverse of that, taking it from taking the powder to liquid and then from liquid back to powder, again, it would be so time consuming and expensive.

Eddie (46:48):
That's just not what's taking place. If you are buying a, a powdered product in that regard, that product has not gone through a preparation to enhance. Its, its bioavailability. So you, you might get more volume for your money, but you're not going to get more effectiveness for your money. That's just, that's just not the case. And so we're, we're proponents where you see powders, I believe, in their best applications is mixed with concrete for industrial applications that we've talked about. It can be even in the feed of animals. If you're talking about a 1600 pound steer, I know that there are vets with large animals, you know, 1800, 1200 or 2,400 pound large horses, right? Where tiny drops may not be the solution. 'cause They've got a mix with feed very large volumes of powder. So you, you can have, you could probably have places where you'd say, okay, this is a better solution, but for human consumption, we just, we just don't think so. We don't think you're getting what you think you're paying for. Mm-Hmm.

Logan (47:51):
. And regarding the synthetic zeolites, are many of those powders gonna be that, or some, some synthetics, some not.

Eddie (48:00):
Most of the powders will be naturally mined. Yeah. They, they could be synthetics. We are, the biggest use is, it's, it's, it's interesting. The biggest use of synthetic zeolite is an automobile tire rubber because it, it's mixed in there to diffuse heat, it acts as a reflective quality mixed with rubber automobile tires. The friction right. Can create heat. And the more friction, the quicker those tires degradate. And so they manufacture in high volume synthetic zeolites mixing with tire rubber to dissipate heat in your automobile tire. It's a cheaper solution than some of the other chemicals that can do that. To my knowledge, all the people selling synthetic zeolite as supplements are just simply re repurposing what was manufactured for automobile tires. And so to me, the whole idea is just plagued with problems. Right. don't, don't know. Sometimes you just don't mess with mother nature. Yeah,

Logan (48:58):
Yeah. In general, it's a good rule of thumb. Mother nature is a, a good guide as far as what where to start.

Eddie (49:04):
Yeah. Yeah. That's what we believe.

Logan (49:06):
Yeah. what would you recommend, I know we're wrapping up here, but what are some of your other besides zeolites, like detox things, like what do you do in your life in order to be healthy beyond just taking Zeolites? I know it's a broad question, but Yeah. Some of your top

Eddie (49:22):
It, it is, you know, I tell people, number one, there's, there's a lot you can do that doesn't cost anything. I mean, one, even a modest amount of mindfulness, right? Just trying to have some management of stress movement, big proponent of movement breathing exercises, things that are free. And you may not live in an environment where you can avoid exposure to toxins, but if you do, you should. Right? Things that you can do if you're in a modern home and you can introduce fresh air on occasion and not be trapped by the chemicals associated with drywall, carpet, varnish, cleaners, you know, so I tell people to one, know that there are things you can do and you should do grounding. Get yourself out into the woods on occasion and walk right. Breathe in those oils coming off trees and fla plants and flowers, right?

Eddie (50:16):
So those are things I think that are important from a dietary standpoint. I think most people get it. I think they, they, they don't need a box of chicken wings thinking they just did the most, the most healthy thing possible, or a meal comes to a drive through window. So if you can limit that stuff, so it's not daily, it's more of treats, right? I'm a big advocate of trying to have some moderation. I'm not, I'm not trying to ask people to just give it all up, but maybe a little bit, right? That's the first thing I tell 'em. I do use the zeolite. I use our phobic product. 'cause I, I know the trace minerals can be critical to how the body functions. We have a greens powder. As much as I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, I just don't get the concentration of deep leaf green vegetables that I think I need.

Eddie (51:00):
And there's probably few things that the body more effectively works with than deep green leafy vegetables. And so I, I'm a big proponent of using that on a daily basis. We have a fiber supplement, it's a great mix of fibers. This is not Metamucil. And, and so I, I, I just believe managing bowel health, gut health with fiber, greens, zeolites, you know, trace minerals, phobic, those are just, to me, just really common sense, great ideas. And then we have a, a glucose control product we call it, which helps to manage blood sugars and blood sugar spikes specifically. And I don't think people realize how they wear their body down with this. Well, manmade diet, I think 95% of the foods we're eating in this country on average, are coming from ultra processed foods, which don't have a lot of fiber. They're generally high in fat salt, or really a lot of sugar and carbohydrates, right? And so blood sugar spikes and the epidemic of type two diabetes, and I could get on a whole soap box that I want, but I'm a big believer most people would benefit trying to manage their blood sugars. And so we've got a supplement for there, there are others out there. I, I think we've got a good one, but I I think those are areas to think about. Greens, fiber manage your blood sugar detox. Those are, those are as good advice as I can give somebody.

Logan (52:18):
Right? Yeah. I mean, the basics are the basics for a reason, right?

Eddie (52:22):
Yeah. Yeah. It's not as complicated right. As I think people think.

Logan (52:25):
Yeah. It, it, it's easy to get lost in the weeds, but coming back to, you know, don't lose the forest for the trees, right? Yeah,

Eddie (52:32):
Yeah,

Logan (52:33):
Yeah. So we have a special offer on Zeolites along with this episode. You'll find the details for that at health sovereign.com/zeolites or health sovereign.com/seven three since this is episode 73. So thank you very much, Eddie. This was a illuminating interview. I'm excited to continue to take Zeolites. Yeah, great stuff.

Eddie (52:54):
Yeah, Logan, thank you. And, and the privilege to speak to your audience. And hey, listen, everything you buy, even on special comes with these unconditional money backed guarantees, and so take a chance on yourself, folks.

Logan (53:06):
Absolutely. All right. Thank you, Eddie.

Eddie (53:08):
Thank you.

Logan (00:02):
Welcome everyone. Logan Christopher here with the health sovereign podcast. And today I have joining me, Mike Broadwell from SolaraGem. Thanks for joining the call, Mike.

Mike (00:30):
Hey, well, thank you. It's great to be here.

Logan (00:32):
Yeah. So this should be an interesting topic. Definitely an interesting one that most people are probably not familiar. A lot of people haven't thought about this stuff. And, well, I'll admit, like when I first heard about gems and stones and whatnot, there, there was a big part of me that didn't wanna believe in that crap, right? Like two woo woo. Two new ag. But then as I kept kind of hearing about it as like, okay, I gotta at least give this a try, like skeptical thing, but as like, okay. And I felt like stuff from a stone. And since that time, then I played with it a little more. I did stuff like programming, quartz, crystals. I don't know if we'll end up talking about that and had some good results with that. So I was like, okay, well there's something here. So for me, you know, I'm really interested in what works, so I, I'm not gonna be trapped in this ideology. It was like, Nope, there can't be anything there. Therefore there won't be right. But if I notice something, then I I'm gonna investigate it. And actually recently the stones and gems have been calling me much more and SolaraGem was one of the ways that it did that. So I don't know. Did you have a somewhat similar story? How did you get involved in this in the first place Mike?

Mike (01:41):
Actually, I, I ran across a company out of England about it was 2011 actually almost October, I think of 2011. I was at a conference on bio energy. It was really a cool conference of all kind of amazing people there. Dr. Claude Swanson was there. He just passed away recently, but he was a pioneer and really documenting a lot of the physics behind energy work and all this stuff. And so I, I ran across a similar device and just laid on the table in this crowded exhibit hall and just really chilled out dramatically and ended up asking several people who were attending. A friend of mine, had a table and I was sitting there with them and I'd ask people, which of these things do you like? And almost everybody really pointed to the crystal light therapy. And so I started working with this, this company outta the UK for several years, learning it and kind of coming in from a whole different angle, being an engineer by training and not a medical person. And so I think it's good that I didn't have any preconceptions. And I just saw what amazing things it could do over the years and got quite good with it. And then through various means just decided to create my own system. And that's what this large is. So yeah, kind of a stumbled into sort of thing.

Logan (02:56):
Nice. Nice. So tell people, what is this large gym?

Mike (03:01):
Well, so large gym is basically full spectrum, light pass through different mixtures of gemstones and color. So here's, here's one for instance, I don't have it even turned on, but I'll, I'll turn it on here. The so what we're trying to do is emulate sun sunlight, passing through mixtures of gemstones and color filters. And we use this on different, different mixtures of this on different parts of the body mm-hmm . And this is what was done in the ancient world. They would take people out in the sun, put different mixtures of stones on different parts of the body and that's ancient healing. So it, it goes back thousands of years and we've just kind of modernized it with where you can do it indoors. Don't have to worry about the weather, that sort of thing. but pretty simple in concept

Logan (03:48):
Mm-Hmm nice. So yeah, just thinking as far as people kinda the, I always like to look at what's the natural effects, cuz I, you know, what did we evolve with? What are, you know, that's the whole reason I'm in herbs and stuff like that, right? This stuff that has been part of medicine for a long time. So gems and stones have actually been that for very long, just not as well known. So a, a person could take gem if they had it go outside, slap it on some area of their body and the sunlight infusing through that should deliver some sort of benefits.

Mike (04:19):
Yeah. The stones have a natural energy with them and some people can sense that that's why crystal shops are everywhere and people are, you know, into it. But the light actually explodes the energy through the stone even enhances it. And think about fiber optic. I mean, you're basically it's basically crystals, you know, everything we use in communication and computers is all based on crystals, mostly artificially grown crystals, but it's, it's all about communication. So it it's, it's a very ancient technique. And if the ancient, I VEIC, people will tell you that the two ways to get the maximum energy from stones is to either grind them up into a powder and drink them, which is probably not recommended unless you really know what you're doing or use the light to the sunlight or light to take the energy into the body. So it does amplify it dramatically and very powerful.

Logan (05:12):
Nice. Yeah. My understanding is with Iveta is they also have gone deep down the, the alchemy rabbit hole. So with stuff like gems and metals for it to be assimilable by the body, it has to go through some major, major steps of processing and that's something I'm into, so yeah, really kinda understanding that. But yeah, that makes sense. A more easy way, a more user friendly way of being able to work with these was through the light frequencies rather than digestion .
Mike (05:44):
Yeah. And there are people that do make gym lickers now where they'll take stones and put 'em into a glass of water and, but you still have to be careful because some of the stones are toxic. Some of 'em have, you know, toxic elements in 'em. So it's beautiful with the light therapies. I can just shine the light through the stone, into a liquid and make an, the Lier or really program, any sort of cream or oil or liquid, any, anything like that. And it it's, it's kind of fun to have a party and let people taste wine before and after mm-hmm , you know, it makes a dramatic difference. So

Logan (06:18):
Yeah. Tell a little bit more about that. That was one of the first stories I heard regarding this. I was like, that's quite interesting.

Mike (06:24):
Yeah. It's it's, it's funny. I've done that on several occasions. And, and a few years ago I was at a health conference actually out in San Diego, I believe. And it was, there was an organic wine company that set up a, the big booth and they were having a reception giving people samples of all their wine. So I, I took one of the bottles and, or a glass, I guess, and I structured it for the guy running the wine stand and he's like, oh wow, this is way better. I said, well, you need me to do a whole bottle. I said, sure. And he said, well, I'm gonna, he was gonna put it away and keep, I'm gonna keep this. I no, no, keep serving it. I'll do it all night. So I was just, we had like 50 or 60 of these holistic doctors, you know, doing before and afters and every single one of 'em said, it's way better after we did the crystal fusion light into it. So mm-hmm and the wine people were cool. I mean, the next year I tried it and the people were mad at me doing it cuz you know,

Mike (07:15):
It did make it better.

Logan (07:17):
Yeah. So what are the different gems that can be used for this? You have a couple like starter ones, that's where you recommend people begin with the ones that I've been working with. So yeah. Can you go into some details on that?

Mike (07:31):
Absolutely. Yeah. I, I have some recommended starting points just because there's a lot to this and there's millions of gems. It seems like are.

Logan (07:39):
Yeah.

Mike (07:41):
And

Logan (07:41):
It's quite incredible how many there are out there. I have like books that go over this, like it's, it's overwhelming, right?

Mike (07:47):
Yeah. It, it can be and that's you don't want people to be overwhelmed. So what we start with typically is an amethyst gym mixture. I'll just throw that on here. So you can see and I'm using a I don't know if that really shows up very well in the light. It's not real bright mm-hmm but it's, it's using more of what we call a Scarlet color. So it's not quite some people say, well, why isn't this purple because it's ambass well, the, the color filters follow a slightly different protocol. And we'll talk about that in a bit. But the amethyst is one of the more broad based stones. It's, it's a type of quarts and the color of stones comes from the, what we would call impurities in the stones or the different minerals in the stones. So amethyst is a form of quarts.

Mike (08:31):
It's fairly common stone and you probably seen the big geodes and things that people have amethyst mm-hmm , but amethyst is very powerful in that. It really helps to relieve negative emotions helps to relax the mind. And we always wanna start with the mind with the emotions, with the stress, cuz everything is rooted in that our, all of our problems really start between our ears and if we're not addressing that. And so, and that's the one people are gonna really experience the most. It's also a really great stone for chronic pain arthritis, anything like that, cuz it helps to clear cellular memory. And so most people are gonna delve into this, at least for personal use would be probably for pain or stress or sleep issues, but probably more pain. That's what tends to drive people. And so the amethyst is a great one to really address the sleep, the stress, the pain,

Logan (09:26):
Those are three huge areas that a lot of people have some difficulties with. So yeah, that's makes sense. Why it's a, the broad base one to start with.

Mike (09:36):
Yeah. And then secondarily, I don't have the exact one here,

Logan (09:40):
But let me mention before just my own experience. What I I've noticed with that, you know, I'm, I guess I'm fairly I can feel energies reasonably well and not like great at it, but becoming more in tune with my body over the years in many different practices with the ammos the, the biggest thing I feel with that. And I've, I've been using it while meditating is just a sense of peace. That is quite profound. It's actually very nice to do. And I've been using that one quite regularly to do that. It's it's quite powerful subtle, I guess, but powerful, definitely noticeable for myself.

Mike (10:17):
Yeah. It it's funny cuz I've, I've probably, I don't even know how many people I've run this on over the years. And a lot of times, you know, you get people that are intuitives and they're like, oh this is doing this. And I love those people cause they can tell me so many things mm-hmm but a lot of people are like, oh, what would you notice? Well I feel kind of relaxed and they act like they're disappointed in some way. And I like put the room of a hundred strangers and all this noise for 20 minutes and you feel relaxed. You do, you realize the benefit, every cell in your body is moved into the more health beneficial state. And it it's just funny how we don't value things that are so important. So mm-hmm, I think the beauty of this is it gets us to have to slow down and start to really just value things that aren't, you know, we, we want the whizbang, you know, lightning bolt fix me now doctor

Logan (11:11):
.
Mike (11:13):
We kind of see where that's got in the world. Right. That, that whole process is kind of really bad.
Logan (11:19):
yeah. Quick fix has a big downside here. Right.
Mike (11:26):
But you know, there's so many ways that, that you can address things and it's it's amethyst is just a great one to start now. Sapphire is another really nice one that you can use again on the crown used for stress used for, and, and there's multiple ways to look at this as some people were in the chakras and what they call the chakras or energy centers. And you can certainly use that as, as one process to, to work through. But a lot of it's just you know, tribal knowledge kinda like acupuncture, you know, it's been around for millennia and somebody figured it out. Mm-Hmm, , that's, that's a lot of what I've done with this. And then there's all kind of guides on crystals and things that they're not always in agreement, but they're nice jumping off points.

Logan (12:12):
Mm-Hmm yeah. I've tried just holding stones and doing some meditation with those and it's I'm still pretty early in it compared to yeah. I know people have done much more and being able to like feel the presence or the energy of that. And I wouldn't say I haven't had anything as strong as like feeling the amethyst that that sense of peace is quite strong with that. And I, I haven't used it for sleep cuz I, I already sleep well. But I imagine, and that's, it's a big use that many people, I definitely gotta give it to my wife to try for that purposes cuz unfortunately she does not sleep as well as me. But that seems like a, a, a major thing that could help a lot of people.

Mike (12:54):
Yeah. It's, it's, it's really huge. And, and I, I sleep every night with it's actually, I, I have one called the sleep seven, which is a form of amethyst called super seven, but I think that might be a trademark. So I just called it sleep seven, but it's, it's amethyst and six other minerals that are found in the same stone and it's more of a purple filter and it has some other stones in there to kind of balance. So that's more specifically for sleep. The, the main amethyst, I kind of wanted to balance a little more with the pain and it's a little more energizing, so people will think, well, I, I don't wanna do this cuz it'll make me go to sleep. But I don't know. It's your ex is your experience. I find it's actually more invigorating. I feel like I got a little rest, but

Logan (13:35):
Yeah, it's it's, as I said, a sense of peace, that's like the, the main word I'd put on it. So it's not necessarily like I'm not getting drowsy. Mm-Hmm it's just like nice and pleasant. And I imagine I could very easily drift off to sleep with that. But it also doesn't leave me yeah. Feeling like I can't go about my day cuz I, I, I do the meditation with that almost first thing in the morning after some journaling and other stuff. And so yeah, I'm ready to go.

Mike (14:05):
Yeah. I've got one guy that's a specialist with the Bo body work and does works with all kind of top athletes and he says, he'll actually make him sleepy. He'll put it on clients while he is working on 'em and it's just getting the periphery of it. It kind of makes him a little sleepy at times.

Logan (14:20):
Yeah. Nice. But it's, everyone's different. Right. You're gonna have slightly different effects from the different things. I like the idea that you formulate with them. Right. So you got formulas of the stones for specific purposes. Makes perfect sense.

Mike (14:34):
Yeah, there, there, there are combinations of stones. And so I, I do call them by the main stone, but there's at least two or three stones in most, every mixture. Okay. At a minimum. So there are more than meets the eye to 'em and then the whole color therapy is adds another element. So, and the frequency and the light. So that's, it's kind of the sum is greater than the, the parts, I guess mm-hmm, say, but it's, it's remarkable. And, and the beauty of it is the whole family can use it, use it on the pets, use it on plants, you know, use it on friends. I mean, it it'll last, you your whole life pretty much. So it's, it's simple and it's robust. And you know, so I think the key thing is there's a lot of cool stuff out there, but people don't use it cuz it's too complicated or too difficult. And they just, ah, I'll do it tomorrow, you know, sort of thing. yeah. And I try to make this where it's as simple to use and people can just build it into our routine. And I do find people that will say, well, it kind of took me a while to kind of start using it, but now I, I can't live without it. That's like I'm addicted to it.

Logan (15:41):
Do most people in your experience notice some of the benefits right away or is it after like a week or a month of using it that they're noticing more what's your experience of other people's experience, but that

Mike (15:53):
It, it really varies now typically I'm demonstrating it on people that may have some pain or, you know, I'm trying to ask 'em about and work on the pain. And so a lot of times they can have an immediate shift pretty major shift. And sometimes people will just say their head feels a little bit warm which is kind of their body just kind of getting used to it. And I'll tell 'em to, to touch it. And it's ice cold. I mean the, the settings we use doesn't create any heat. It's just the body is responding to it. So again, it's a physiological reaction, maybe just trying to figure out what's up. I've had practitioners that say, well it takes two or three sessions saying Manhattan for people to start feeling it more typically because of course it's kind of a hard Scrabble place, you know, and people are and people don't know what to feel.

Mike (16:41):
Half time they ask me, you know, what am I supposed to feel? Well here, you feel like you feel. And I think the big thing is we're just disconnected from feelings. We live in this kinda living our head, living this, you know, mechanical kind of life and we've disconnected and everything really happens at the level of feeling, not here by the time we get it here, it's, we're reflecting on. What's already happened. And it's, mm-hmm, like I tell people it's, it's kind of like the, the dad and a sitcom, you know, he's trying to act like he's in charge and knows what's happening. And it's just like, no, , you know, that's what neocortex is, right.

Logan (17:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, that's my experience too. The, not as a judgment, but lack of awareness is just kind of culturally enforced of, you know, internal sensations and emotions, feelings that we're having. This subtle energy is which, you know, our whole culture says that doesn't even exist. So , it makes it hard to connect to it. Right.

Mike (17:38):
Well, and it's, it's, I've just been reading this book called the presence process which is brilliant and how clearly the guidance outlines kind of the whole process of growth. And the first seven years are all emotional experience. Mm-Hmm and we really, the next seven is when we start to really develop the mental and start to figure out what does all this mean? But pretty much everything we experience in life is purely at a raw emotional level that we have no idea what's going on and it's terrifying. It's exhilarating. It's all these things. And these are the emotions that drive everything that we do. Yeah. And until we can get in touch with those emotions and realize that's, what's running everything, we think it's because of this and that, but this is this ridiculous, you know, it's,

Logan (18:21):
It's I forget who was saying this, but something along the lines of emotions drive everything you do, especially if you don't think emotions, try to repeat you. , it's just hitting from you. And as someone who really has suppressed a lot of feelings due to trauma and different things over the years and coming to terms with that it's quite amazing what I could hide from myself.

Mike (18:48):
It, it's remarkable. And, and you know, it's, it's, those emotions just have to be witnessed and experienced and we may never know what they're really about. And it's not even, it's not about figuring out that, oh, that's when the, the dog bit me when I was two years old or something, that's just that terror that, I mean, who knows what a two year old even imagines when something even we could laugh about now might see it happen to a two year old, not in that queue. It might be just completely terrifying. And, but it's that feeling and that sensation that we're running from and when we can let it come up and let it wash through it's, it's just amazing how many layers and it's, to me, it's like shutting down the apps on your phone, you've got like a hundred apps open. You wonder why your phone doesn't run and why are we run down by stress while we run down?

Mike (19:36):
Because we are running all these apps all the time that are there. Mm-Hmm . And I find that something like this large him, it's almost like it casts a different perspective on it. So all of a sudden that that thing that's been running around our entire life, that just feels like me all of a sudden starts to stand out a little bit because I've cast a little bit different perspective on it. And mm-hmm I can say, oh, what's this. Or, and just, it might just fizzle and push your way, but there's a lightness that comes after that. And after doing that daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, slowly, we start to clear the clutter.

Logan (20:11):
Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually thinking back. So I've been meditating for a while now and using mostly the, the amethyst, but occasionally some of the others and, you know, stuff is coming up in that. So how much is the meditation? How much is that helping to support it? I really like this idea with the, a technology such as this, and you mentioned this a little bit, one, it's like a one time investment and you can reap the benefits of that. That's always great compared to like consumable products or whatnot, where you gotta keep buying. Even if it is a little more expensive, it's it? It will last, right. If you take care of it, mm-hmm but then how can you stack the, this, this large gym along with either other technologies and or other methods? I think that's really where you can see a lot of benefit. So, you know, we were talking about sleep. Obviously you can do that while doing it, but you could do this. So different clinicians have used this. Could you give us some examples of different ways that people may be using this large, not just by itself, but with other practices and modalities?

Mike (21:12):
Absolutely. There, there are sound healers that might be doing primarily sound work, but they put this on because this is, this is a whole different level of that. The bodies are reaching. I, I think of it like that. The stones are the most ancient mm-hmm that we have, and they've been chilling out for millions billions of years. And so they're not like getting real stressed over .

Logan (21:33):
Yep.

Mike (21:34):
So it kind of creates this deep kind of primal kind of beacon in a sense. And then a level of sound healing is gonna work at a different level in the brain and the body and the perceptions, and then your plant medicines and the herbs that you're dealing with are, again, working at different levels because our stomach, all these are really antennas. I mean, everything in our body is an antenna. That's, that's measuring frequency. It it's measuring stuff at some level. So I think that we stack these, we're just covering a wider spectrum because life doesn't come at us. Like we think it does. Life is really just frequency because everything that we think is real, we don't really know what anything looks like. It's all, it's, you get pretty feel empty,

Logan (22:19):
Right?

Mike (22:20):
If you get to that, we know science tells us that color is just a matter of reflection off of this, into my eyes. And my brain processes that, that desk you're sitting at is mostly air and or nothing. And then the atoms. So we have no idea what anything looks like. And we actually are able to form things into concepts as objects. And then we attribute causality to these objects, but life doesn't really work that way at all. And that may be kind of crazy. But what we're doing with these core frequency techniques is we're actually getting down to the, the core ingredients, you know, we're baking it. It's, it's baked into the cake by the time we see it, but we're getting down to the cake ingredients when we run these frequencies. And, and that's where everything's happening. Not after the fact when we think we have just gonna put it in this little.

Mike (23:09):
So so yeah, I mean, one of the, one of the great ways to use this, well, I've got a, a nature path in Arkansas that recovered from stage four. Cancer has got an amazing documentary about her life that won 71 film festivals called the unbelievable plight of Mrs. Right? And you can look that up on your streaming services, unbelievable plight of Mrs. Wright, amazing woman. And she's been using this large M several years. She said it helped her with her vision. When I first met her, she said, well, I was, she kept looking out the window. I was running it on her head. And she said, I thought, maybe she's bored. She goes, no, I keep looking out there. Cuz I have double vision since I had the brain surgery. And I don't wanna tell anybody cause I like to drive scary, but

Logan (23:54):

Mike (23:55):
But she said her eyes were clear enough. And so since that time she's been using it, she actually had her tube that they did with the surgery. The little port, she didn't have that taken out for about nine years. And so we were gonna go actually work a conference last summer and two weeks before she's like, I'm gonna get my port out. And I said, you sure you wanna do that? We got a conference in two weeks. She said, I'll be fine. And, and she specifically only used the Larm no medications or anything. And the pictures within two or three weeks, it's almost completely healed up from NA's car to virtually nothing. And she also uses a lot of the Emerald and that was just within Emerald. And she uses Emerald on people that she deals with that are going through chemotherapy because it takes away the nausea.

Mike (24:42):
But I've, I've worked with stroke recovery with oh my gosh chronic pain arthritis neuropathy just about anything. As you can imagine, I've worked with animals, several really good results with animals. I got holistic vets that use this Dr. Cola you've you've, you've familiar with Dr. Macola pretty well on guy. He had a major shift in his heart rate, variability using crystal fusion light. It was the older technology I used to sell before I had this one, but he's pretty major shift. And we did he had tried everything to hack this issue and he gave me permission to talk about it publicly, but nothing did it until we shift the energy around it. And he called me the next day, just ecstatic. And then actually email me two months later. Cause he had an even better response after fasting and still didn't understand why it happened, but it's, it was pretty cool. So yeah.

Logan (25:38):
Well, yeah. I just wanna, if people think about this, right, you have these light frequencies that are going and it's not just stopping at your skin. It actually penetrates into your body, into the, the cells and you know, there's people looking at that DNA or the bones themselves, like they're the DNA itself releases photons, right? It we're working on light frequencies on that level. It's not just about the coding of proteins or anything like that. So there's a whole bunch about the body. We don't quite understand, but if you understand that these signals are going into the cells and it, we're not just operating off chemicals that are telling cells to do things, but the frequencies will do that as well. So it's really not that far out there to understand how something like this could work. Right. Do you have anything to add to that?

Mike (26:26):
Yeah. Well a simple one, we all notice. I mean, you're in California where the traffic's pretty crazy. Right. And, and how many times do you feel somebody in your blind spot? You're almost gonna pull a lane over and then you just feel somebody in the blind spot mm-hmm , that's your energy field, cuz that they're what, 30, 40, 50 feet away from you and you're feeling them mm-hmm and so we've all had those kind of experiences. I grew up with three sisters and a mother and they could communicate without even using English. And I had no idea what they were talking about half the time, but it's well known that mothers can feel their children or in trouble from mm-hmm across the country. So what, what is that? Well, that's happening at a level that we, you know, our, our scientific approach is that if we don't understand it, it doesn't exist and that's really dumb I mean,

Logan (27:17):
And then we think we understand things, but it's not actually how diverse either.

Mike (27:22):
Exactly. I mean, it's just, it's just more and more. I think more people are starting to, to grasp that, that mm-hmm so yeah, it it's just that that light, that energy is it's fundamental to, to who we are. And I don't know it's I I've found there's so many things I've seen happen that I, I couldn't begin to explain why this happened, but it's like the body knows more than we do. And what we're really doing is just helping to put the body back and remove what's keeping the body from doing its own magic, which is it's designed to be self-healing, it's designed to be in homeostasis and to balance. And I just wanna remove what's keeping it from that, which is usually gonna be stress related or it could be an injury. It could be any number of things that are impeding the flow in the body, the energetic, the lymphatic, the blood, whatever. And just keep that moving the body's like, thank you. I know what to do. Give me the materials a lot of times it's just that energy cuz our body robs Peter to pay Paul. And I find a lot of times that just shining this on people just it's like the body says, oh thank you. I needed that energy. I don't have to take it from there. And mm-hmm

Mike (28:34):
it's it's it's pretty remarkable.

Logan (28:37):
Yeah. So let's dive into a few other stones. We got started with amethyst one down some side roads. So let's come back to address a couple more of them. What else are, are some of the, the starter ones that are really useful for people?

Mike (28:50):
Yeah, so I kind of have a track, so I like to start people with an amethyst and then depending on what their needs are typically, if it's, if it's physical health, just general wellbeing or a condition of some sort of physical that I'm dealing with, the second one would be a Cornelian stone, which is an orange kind of a bright orange. I don't have one right in front of me, but it's more of an energizing. So if you think in terms of cooling, the, the purpleish kind of amethyst is a calming, cooling color. Orange is kind of a hot color, like a fire, like a match. And so I want to energize. And so one of the first areas that we really focus on is the spleen. And if anyone's done Chinese medicine or acupuncture, the spleen is a huge, important part in the Chinese medical system.

Mike (29:39):
Mm-Hmm and most people have a damp spleen. Most Western medicine ignores the spleen and they think, oh, we can take it out. It's not important, but no, it's, it's actually part of the pancreas in the stomach. This is probably why we can take it out, cuz it's not really taking out the whole thing. But that spleen energy is what regulates a lot of the serotonin in the body. It's the blood filter. It's also the energetic center of the body, cuz we do have an energy center we're electromagnetic beings. And so that can boost the immune that can kickstart the system. So I, I really like that is the stress and then immune system mm-hmm and that's just kind of the two basics. I tell people, this is like brushing your teeth and taking your shower in the morning, just do these. And before you start, cuz if you know, many times I'll own a friend one, like they sprain their ankle and I say, well, you try yo, I put on my ankle, what did you do? Your head and spleen, no, we'll do that. And then they'll do it. And they're like, oh my gosh. Cause it all works together.

Logan (30:40):
Right?

Mike (30:40):
The carnelian is also great for anything that's gonna need more blood flow or needs to be enhanced or energized. So for men, as we get older, prostate issues certainly can be an issue. It's great. On the, on the VA vagus nerve, right under the left ear, you can just put it right on the right on the skin and and have it pulsate. And we usually pulsate at a higher frequency around 10 Hertz with that, whereas the Amos more like one and a half Hertz. But that can really, we actually want to stimulate the vagus nerve to calm down the, the autonomic nervous system. And so using those together is so it's, they're really beautiful that they, they give you so much to kind of balance and then boost the immune system.

Logan (31:24):
Mm-Hmm yeah. Could you go into a little bit more detail why the different hurts, the different stroke settings on the light for the different gems? Is it just more like faster pace is more energizing and kind of matches that one?

Mike (31:37):
Exactly. And it's, it's kind of brainwave frequency. So one and a half hurts is kind of in the Delta frequency. And so what we wanna do is take someone down into theta and pull 'em down and brain and trainmen if you've probably run across with audio or with sound, but you can also and train the brain through the frequencies. So by strobing the amethyst at, at a one and a half Herz, which seems to be an ideal frequency, it just helps to pull the brain waves down into that Delta state. And also it's recognized by the body because the body's used to these frequencies, cuz these are kind of the, heart's kind of the clock of the system and then all the frequencies are, are derived from this heartbeat. And so this natural to the body, I tell people it's like being in Japan in the airport and you hear somebody speaking English and you're like, you just naturally gotta, oh, I recognize that mm-hmm .

Mike (32:29):
And so it helps the body. Whereas the faster frequency is again, kinda like stimulating. Like if I was gonna put the baby to sleep, I would do a Lubi, very slow frequency. And if I'm gonna energize, I want a fast frequency. So again, I'm trying to energize, stimulate, get things moving or calm, relaxed balance. And there's, there's some places in between we could go, but I tend to just stay with those two. I think those are pretty easy. And, and the vagus nerve, a lot of the vagus stimulation out there, they look in the 10 Hertz ranges, a lot of your tens machines, things like that will work in that 10 Hertz frequency range. So again, that's, that's in the alpha frequency range, which is more your passive awareness and part of his limited because the light source that I use is an off the shelf light, which saved a lot of money on the system and makes it easy to repair. But that's as fast as the, the light would go. So that's kind of the limitation, but it's really pretty much what we need. I mean, it, it, it kind of fell in perfectly with my experience and, and what was needed. So so yeah, that's kind of the frequency element.

Logan (33:43):
You mentioned having it right there is, are you gonna have more effect having the light and the crystals basically right up against the skin versus having some distance away from it?

Mike (33:56):
Not necessarily. It's, it's basically what you want to think about is how big an area do I want to cover? If I'm, if I'm covering like my whole chest, for instance, I have a chest cold, then I could put it further out. This, we kind of put it up close, just cause we're, we're really getting right down on that vagus nerve location. And so it's gonna put a little more light energy, more in a concentrated area, but it's, it's very forgiving. I, I, I tell people it's not really, it's subtle energy. It's not about the amount of light. I run the light at 10% of its capability for several reasons, but it's really, doesn't need to be more, it's actually less is more. It's not about how much it's, it's the subtle energy and the body actually can take it in without it'll actually resist it if it's too much.

Mike (34:42):
And but yeah, it's as a general rule, if you just think about you, I tell people, go in a dark room and shine it on the wall and then pull it in and out and you get an idea of how big the light pattern gets. And then you can have a general idea, but, but that's a good question. And again, is something maybe individual for you. I mean, some people don't want to use the strobing. That's say I have to use the St. Strobing. It's like, no, do you need to put you know, REO in lasagna, you may not be as good . So I would say use it and then see for you. Does it make a difference? I think it does for me and I, I would hate for somebody to get less benefit just because I just don't want to do it, but try it and see it's I, I think it does add something, but it's not always necessary. And some people are bothered with strobing and things like that, but mm-hmm, just, you know,

Logan (35:37):
All right. Let's touch on a couple other stones.

Mike (35:40):
Yeah. So kind of the third stone after we do like the balance emotional balance and all this and, and the energizing, the immune system, I would go with probably a Emer, the Emerald stone, which is the green greenish type stone. Let's see what I had here. This is a, if I have one right in front of me this is actually not technically, not an Emerald, but it's green. So it looks like one. This is a parallel, which is a little bit different. Mm-Hmm and but Emerald is, is a great anti-inflammatory, it's great for acute pain for it's good for the thyroid. It's good for the, again, any kind of stomach virus or inflammation, or you can calm the liver. It's great for the heart the heart, the chakras, the green as your, your heart chakra mm-hmm .

Mike (36:30):
So this is a really wonderful for autistic children. We found that the Emerald really works beautifully for calming them down. So it's kind of the number three on the list of if you're looking at first aid or just a, a really a good system because of burns your acute pains, your all the things that can happen. You know, we get cut some scrapes and sore throats and hay fevers and things like that. So I love the Emerald and again, that's the one Dr. Wright was using with the chemotherapy for nausea. It's really great for that. So many things, ear infections, sinus infections I had a case just a few weeks ago where I had a real swelling in, in this whole ear. And I thought, well, I don't know if this is a tooth or what, but I could really, it almost hurt to, to chew.

Mike (37:20):
So I just started running this on it and within a day or two, it was down. So I, I don't know what it was. I probably should go to the dentist, but I didn't . But it seems to be fine. And so just things like that great for dental surgeries or any kind of post surgical recuperation, because it's an anti-inflammatory analgesic and aseptic. It really is just a beautiful, and it's balancing, it's kind of green as your center color in the chakras of the seven. So this mm-hmm , the green is kind of the core balancing between everything. So that's number three. And then number four, again, I would probably look at either something like the rose quartz, which is great for the heart. It's great for skin. It's really good for emotional issues that people are, have heartbreak or any kind of trauma, which we all have in life mm-hmm .

Mike (38:15):
So that's a really good one. Moonstone is great for especially female hormonal balance for any kind of premenopause or, or women having trouble conceiving. And there's all sorts of, it's really a great hormonal stone for women. Good for thyroid. Good for migraines, very beautiful kind of balancing stone mm-hmm serine is a very cleansing stone that can be used all over for pretty much any, any part of the body, but great in the stomach and the digestive system. So kind of move out from there. I mean, we can I think it kind of depends on the path that somebody's on the three or four are kind of your first date kid. And then beyond that, you can just kind of expand out of that.

Logan (39:03):
Nice. Nice. What do you use yourself the most?

Mike (39:09):
Well, probably the, the sleep seven or the amethyst, because I sleep with it every night. Right?

Logan (39:13):
that's a lot hours

Mike (39:16):
And I, you know, it's funny cuz the system I used to sell it, it would run for up to an hour and shut off. So I used to fall asleep with it and sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night, I'd put it on rose courts and run it again. It's very nice. I thought, well, this one doesn't actually shut off. What if I run it all night? And I was just so amazed at how deeply powerful healings I would get. I mean, a lot of times I will, you know, start fall asleep with it on my crown. And then maybe I do wake up at 3, 2, 3, 4 in the morning and I'll put the rose boards on the heart and sometimes things are processing things come up and I'm actually processing. And then that rose court seems to just push 'em through slowly and I'll just have amazing dreams.

Mike (40:00):
And then often waking up where I don't even wanna get outta bed. It just feels blissful, not every night. And it it's interesting. I've had some things processed. I remember one night in particular where I just felt yucky, you know, you just, sometimes you just feel like you're not screwed in. Right. And I was, you know, went to bed with a Amit amateur on my head and I thought I woke up and I thought, you know, it's not gonna work every night. I just feel, yeah. You know, but so finally I did switch to the rose courts and it seemed like after a long time I kind of got this insight that I had this limiting belief in my mind that, well, yeah, the world's designed to work as long as we follow God's rules and nature laws and all, but that's only up to a point and beyond that I'm screwed.

Mike (40:45):
And I saw that I had this belief structure that just came to my awareness. And as soon as I saw it, it evaporated and I just started feeling wonderful. I mean, it was just that quick, like a light. And it was like, that's been running around for how many decades in my brain and mm-hmm it, it just showed up into my awareness. So I, I think it does enhance things like meditation and it gives you the ability to hold that space. Cuz sometimes in meditation it's hard to hold a space when you've got a lot going on. Right. And it's mm-hmm so I think this, well,

Logan (41:19):
My mind still bounces around, but it's more peaceful

Mike (41:24):
And if you take now the, the real power which is kind of the real value in, in the LAR gym, especially is, is it's so much less expensive than any other system I've seen out there to use multiple units. And especially in healing work, when, if I can put three units on somebody, four units at a time, like I, I had a case not long ago, I was out in Las Vegas at a, a clinic. And this doctor asked me to come by and work on one of his staff who had really bad PTSD. And so I put an amethyst on the crown, a rose quarts on her heart. And then I actually put an Emerald on her Vegas, the doctor that had mentioned it told me the wrong one. He was thinking Carnalian and he was he was telling me about Vegas.

Mike (42:06):
I was still learning him about, and he's used this technology a long time, but he said, you know, he said later, oh, that should have been Cornelian. I was, I was thinking backwards, but regardless she went into such a deep, profound, relaxed state at first she got a little anxiety. I talked her through it and she, I said, you okay to keep going? Yeah. And then a few minutes later she was just, oh, this feels so good. And she was just deeply BLI out. And then I eventually moved and put the Cornelian on her spleen. And I mean, she, the next day I went in the clinic and she said that she went home, took a nap, went to bed at normal time, slept really well and still felt great the next day mm-hmm and it was pretty remarkable. I think doing those three together, just accelerated because it just creates this, it overpowers, you know, we have so much negative energy and all this stuff going on. I think this just being able to counterbalance it with a, just a steady rock, solid frequency,

Logan (43:05):
You know, it's rock solid pun intended. yeah. I haven't even thought about doing multiple at once. That's that sounds pretty amazing. I'm curious. But besides the sleep in you describing this here, it's I'm thinking like, oh yeah, I've just been like doing it in my morning routine, but forgetting about it the whole rest of the day. Right. So now I'm thinking like, oh, I can carry this around and be using it multiple times. Like, are you using this throughout the day in many different ways?

Mike (43:33):
I do. Yeah. I, I like to do my spleen in the morning because the spleen will energize you. So I usually like to kind of wake up and just, you know, do your Renaissance time or you're gonna call it mm-hmm when you first wake up, just throw it on your spleen for 20 minutes and kind of get a boost there. And then, you know, if I, if I feel run down during the day or, or, you know, something starts to bother me a little bit. It's funny how many times over the years I've sat there and worked all day and like feeling like crap. And then finally it's like, I really should go do this. Like I'll do it later. And then finally I go do it and I'll be like, man, I feel so good. Why should I, why did I feel miserable for, you know, the five o'clock or four o'clock when I could have knocked this out and you know, and doesn't take that long mm-hmm and so it kind of depends on what pops up and but I've just, I find that at least doing it in my sleep, you know, nobody can argue, they don't have time when they're sleeping.

Mike (44:28):
Right.

Logan (44:28):
right. Yeah. It's one of those no extra time activities, which is always good, cuz you know, who doesn't have a busy life these these days.

Mike (44:37):
And I, I think it's so important that we consciously have to get back to this stillness and quietness it. It's just, you really are not gonna heal any other way then think just slowing down. And I think the fastest way to slow down you know, that's, the real answer is not ignoring it until we just run ourselves on the ground. It's really, how do we incorporate something that can really help us to slow down and, and it just, everything starts to work better and life slows, like they say in the NFL, right? The rookie quarterback sees the, the field slows down right. As they get more mature mm-hmm and life's kind of that way. I think it slows down as we slow down and start to realize what's important and what's not. And most of it, these, these, these crazy emotions that are just driving us since, you know, are pre, cognizant days really in the womb and those are what's driving us. And if we can start letting go of those things, life will just slow down and all the things that seem so important are just not really that important.

Logan (45:41):
yeah. Yeah. I'm just thinking you, you address like how we can use these as first aid things, right? So when you have pain, whatnot, that's a good opportunity in one where you can, should be able to quickly see the difference. And that's always good cuz you, you know, you want to know that something is, is working, but you know, so much of this is also gonna be like kinda just maintenance or preventative and you know, that's hard to sell, but if you wanna actually be healthy, you gotta pay to do it. Right. You can't wait till you're, you know, your arms chopped off to do something about it. Right. And in that case, of course, you know, so large, Gem's probably not the best bet. Go see a doctor at that point, right outside of that. If you need help with your heartbreak, you know, doctor's not a good source. Maybe this large gem will help you there. Right?

Mike (46:28):
Oh yeah. And it's, and it is, I mean you know, one particular case I've seen happen several times is if someone, if you feel like you're getting a flu or a cold or whatever, the inventive disease of the day is

Logan (46:42):
monkeypox, that's a new one.

Mike (46:44):
Monkey yeah. Monkey shines you know, take a Ruby. Or if you, if you don't have the Ruby take the, the Cornelian on the 10 Hertz and just put it right on the nap of the neck, just right up against like, and I've had, I've done that several times and I had a friend, it was last new year's actually right before new year's we were supposed to be meeting at a mutual friend's house in Atlanta. They have a big, you know what? You may know the Zelensky Eric and Sabrina Zelensky have you run across them. They're big in essential oils and people may have heard of them. Dr. Dr. And mama Z is their call. Well, mama Z really loves the soar. M she just just loves working with this. And we were, and Dr. Siegel, Marlene Siegel down in Tampa was we're all mutual friends.

Mike (47:33):
So we were gonna meet at disease for their annual new year's dinner that they invited us to. And so Marlene called me if week or so before and said, I, I got the flu. I just felt like I'm getting the flu. I feel terrible. I did my head in and swing. What else should I do? And I said, well, take the Ruby, put it right on the back of your neck. And, and she texted me a few minutes later. She said, it's been three minutes. It's already a big difference. And then when I saw her, I said, well, how are you doing? She says, oh, I said, she goes, I'd put that on my neck. And after about three minutes, I felt a pop. And my head cleared on my joint pain went away I felt great. And she was telling people at the, at the dinner party about it. And she goes, you, you need to write all this down. I said, well, Marlene, I've told you a bunch of stuff already. You're not gonna remember it all. But you know, it's it's who knows how it's just one of those things I picked up and mm-hmm that made her a whole week. I mean, she could have been sick for a week if she hadn't done that. And I'm not saying it's gonna happen every time. I don't really know why it does, but it's

Logan (48:34):
Well, it's, it's another tool to add to your, your tool bag, right? Like if I notice the first symptoms of me getting sick, you know, one do a whole bunch of stuff. So that doesn't even happen in most cases. But when that's there, you know, eating garlic onions and ginger, horrible eating raw, but it seems to work really well. Obviously got some herbs, like elderberry doing various I've done like energy drills and taking zinc there there's a whole bunch there. So just, this is one other thing to add into it. It's with those little tips and tricks that you can be better off and knock it sick, got knock. It laid out like so many people do from so many things so often.

Mike (49:14):
Oh yeah. And, and pretty much everything is going right down that spinal column. So you're hitting, you're hitting pretty much all the communication pathways. So it it's mm-hmm, , it's, it's crazy. I've seen, I mean, years ago I had a, a friend in England and we were at her sisters, her sister just had a rotator cuff surgery. So we were gonna do some Emerald and help clear it. And so I started running the amethyst on the crown of her head or the Sapphire, I forget which one she started feeling tingling in her Phantom elbow tip, because when she was a child, they would apparently shave your elbow, tip off. If, if you had TB and she supposedly had TV, I've never heard of that. Never knew anybody else that's heard of that. But she was feeling tingling in her Phantom elbow tip. And it was like really bizarre. Yep.

Mike (50:03):
But we have this energy body, this energy blueprint is still there. Even then when the bones are gone, that's why there are things like Phantom limb pain because that energetic signature is still there. Yeah. The blueprint. So we're working on that level of and then there are some advanced techniques. We can do some shamanistic type things that will shift the whole energy body. Mm-Hmm emotional there's psychiatrists psychologists that use this because people will open up, they'll start talking, they'll start, there's a, a program by a company called XTO called Evok where you speak into it and it can tell emotional blocks through your frequency response to your voice. And there's several other tests out there like this, but mm-hmm, , I've had at least half a dozen Evok practitioners tell me when they use the crystal fusion light, that it will accelerate the clearing process through that. So it mm-hmm , it does open up these emotional pathways and so it's, it's remarkable in, in a lot of ways. And I think the more people are just open to just experiencing it and not trying to force it to do a certain thing, but just really experience for what it can do. They'll get better results.

Logan (51:18):
Yeah. Yeah. Now remind me a story. Energy medicine practitioner that I was learning from saying was someone with Phantom, Lynn was just doing the Meridian lines off that Phantom limb and that made the, the pain go away. So just where they would be in the body except the limb wasn't there. I was like, yeah. That's interesting. So your story there reminded me of that.

Mike (51:40):
Yeah. It's, it's, it's just remarkable all the ways that are how profound everything is and we are just so ignorant of it and

Logan (51:48):

Mike (51:51):
Physical model. That's just so silly and that's breaking down. I mean, I think we're seeing that people are more and more seeing that this model is just mm-hmm, hopelessly flawed and it, you know, it's good. It's good for within the bounds of where it's good. Like, you know, but I've even seen people question, you know, getting your broken bone set, you know, . Yeah. So who knows? I mean, we all say, well, that's good, but even some people say, well, no, that's the way they do. That's not good. So who knows, but we're having to learn this stuff that I think our ancestors knew and

Logan (52:24):
Mm-Hmm, ,

Mike (52:24):
You know, it's just, it's cyclical, I guess. And this is just a beautiful way to bring it back home,

Logan (52:30):
You know? So yeah. I've been having great result with this and wanted to share it with my audience. It's definitely, you know, not a well known thing out there. So I wanna spread the word on it. Thank you so much, Mike. I hope everyone has enjoyed this as much as I have.

Mike (52:47):
Yeah. It's my pleasure. And you I'm anytime to come and answer questions. I do. If anybody does purchase this, I give ongoing support. I mean, people get my cell phone number. I just talk to a guy probably half an hour today. That's just got a set of him. So I'm happy to, you know, make sure that people get the most out of this cuz it's I do it more. The love of just I've seen such amazing things with it that I wanna keep it, keep it going and make it available to more people. So I do appreciate the opportunity

Logan (53:16):
Mm-Hmm absolutely. Yeah. And you need more tools in your tool bag. If you wanna be healthy today, you know, herbs are great, but they don't cover everything like physical exercise, very important. Gotta do it, but doesn't cover everything. Right? So some light therapy with some gemstones, there's a cool one that most people are not making you. So , let's get that added in and what it can do for the support from the physical symptoms to the emotional and beyond that. It's it it's really cool.

Mike (53:43):
Well, especially for people that are working out, I mean, I don't know if everybody on your list or your audience pulls trains with their hair

Logan (53:51):
Nope. Nope. Not quite,

Mike (53:53):
But it can, it can really help. I remember one time I slipped going out of my back deck in the winter time and really wrenched my knee. And that night I, I was actually having to go down to my parents and help them with something and I could couldn't even stand up and I just basically ran the, the light therapy and ice packs, Emer enrolled and ice packs. And within the, by the next day it was way better. And then, and how quickly it it's, it can help for people that are doing strenuous physical workouts just to recover faster from those inevitable things that can happen. So it definitely has a place with that as well.

Logan (54:33):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm still early in my use on the system, have a lot more experiments to run with it all for sure. So when we do have a, a special deal for you that Mike is graciously extending your way if fuse the coupon code Logan in all caps, that's L O G a N. You can save a hundred dollars off each of the gems each of the different gem lights that is available. So thank you very much for that, Mike.

Mike (55:00):
Hey, my pleasure. And, and do keep in mind that you do purchase the light source separately and we'll have instructions on that, so that, but the gym stones themselves or the LAR gym mixtures are what we're offering the coupon on. And but yeah, the lights you can get pretty much anywhere, Amazon best buy, pretty, pretty easy to find.

Logan (55:23):
And you have details for that on the lights, quite easy to just walk you through the steps you should probably offer 'em just on your site, get a wholesale, make it easier for people . But yeah,

Mike (55:33):
Yeah, it it's just one of those things that when I came up with this, it was during all these lockdowns and people were kind of, so I thought, well, how can I make something that people can be more self-sufficient and yeah, plus I, I think it's with the stands and with the accessories, there's dozens and dozens of different ones. And so find one that works for you, you can get 'em all over. So I've just tried to keep it a little simpler rather than me having to, cause I have to mark it up, you know, to stocking things

Logan (56:00):
Right. Right. Of course, of course. And what's the website for people to visit

Mike (56:05):
It's? Solaragem.com, SolaraGem.com.

Logan (56:11):
And of course you'll have show notes and links to everything, more info on the website, health sovereign.com. You'll be able to find it there as well. So thanks everyone for listening. If you have any follow up questions, be sure to reach out to myself or Mike, but I, I hope you have found this illuminating unintended there and yeah. It, whether you can do it now or later, just at least keep this in the back of your mind. And maybe it's something that you'll be hearing more about in the future. Thanks everyone for listening. Bye-Bye Mike. Bye. Bye. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Get to the bottom of what's truly healthy in this crazy complex world. So you can take back what is rightfully yours. Welcome to the health sovereign podcast. This is your host, Logan, Christopher

Logan (00:19):
Joining me today is Nate Rifkin. Nate used to be suicidal and drink alcohol every morning to get through the day he dropped out of college, went, broke bankrupt, and even worked on the street corner, waving around a sign to afford rent and food, but he's managed to turn his life around and find love. And now has an incredible life. A certain kind of meditation was a driving force behind his transformation, and he's just published a book on it, which is already a number one new release on Amazon, that meditation and his story is what we're talking about today. Welcome Nate to the health sovereign podcast.

Nate (00:54):
Well, thank you, sir. Thank you. I'm really honored to be here.

Logan (00:57):
Yeah, we met years ago then kind of reconnected pretty recently. He sent me a copy of your book, the standing meditation, which I found a very enjoyable, quite quite the story you have in there. We'll talk about that. And as the title talks about, it's really built around this idea of that standing meditation, the immortal post, which we'll also be talking a lot about and something that I've been practicing regularly since then. So thanks for that as well.

Nate (01:29):
Oh, I, my pleasure I'm honored. I hope you've been enjoying it.

Logan (01:32):
Yes, very much so. So I think we'll start with that. What is the immortal post and how did you find out about it?

Nate (01:45):
Sure. Yeah. That's, that's a great question. So I mean, as, as you saw in the book, I mean the, the super short version is I used to be a kind of, I had to kind of a messed up life. You could say, I, right. So let's just, let's just throw it out there, you know? So I mean, I just didn't have very good parents. So I grew up as a kind of an outsider teenager, and I figured, you know, when I grew up even more things would get better, but they didn't. So I dove into self-help. And the super short version of that is I, I actually felt worse. My life got worse. And I really tried, I really, really tried doing the positive thinking and doing the goal setting and the affirmations and there's realization, every everything you could probably throw at with the exception of tossing in the kitchen sink, I did it and I wasn't getting anywhere.

Nate (02:42):
And I started to actually really feel upset that nothing was working. So on top of, you know, getting my hopes up I was now feeling kind of like betrayed and almost paranoid and just really, it just really that even though I was trying to put in the effort, I wasn't getting results. So I started to really get jaded. That's what I mean by paranoid has jaded about all kinds of self-help stuff. And really just started not believing in myself. Fortunately I had one mentor at the time that I was actually learning a lot of marketing from because I've always been interested in B running my own business or growing some kind of a venture that way. And I was like 24 years old, 25 years old, something like that. And he was super into this spiritual tradition called Daoism. The way I like to say it is that, or a way like to explain it is if you've seen star Wars and you saw Yoda, you kind of have a good grasp of Taoism.

Nate (03:54):
Yeah. I mean, really like every, like whoever wrote the script,

Nate (03:58):
I'd be, I guess it's towards, it looks like he probably had helped. I mean, whoever wrote that script and put Yoda in there was super into Dallas and the idea that you're like this gotta out in the woods, just kind of meditating and staying humble that

Nate (04:11):
That, that was, that's sort of the,

Nate (04:14):
This sort of the big picture level of the spiritual tradition, but the cool part about it is this mentor. He was learning a lot about it and he learned that there are actual, like tangible down to earth practices you can do when you're following the spiritual tradition. And everyone knows about meditation. Most people in the West learn about how you, you sit down and you just kind of observe your thoughts. I mean, that's, and you let them go. And that's basically mindfulness. Well, I, I mean, I dabbled in, excuse me, I dabbled in that and mostly it just kind of frustrated me even more. It just kind of left me feeling kind of restless. I mean, it's great. If it's all about a, Hey, if it works for you, you know, double down on it, that's awesome. But for me, I don't know, it wasn't working out.

Nate (05:02):
So he taught this meditation is actually done standing on your feet and any, and you talked about it, like, look, this is sort of the, the foundational pillar of a lot of this esoteric kind of Dallas martial arts practices and people who would do this, you know, over in China and they live these long healthy lives and they'd, they'd had tremendous amount of energies flowing through their bodies. So, I mean, my ego just lit up on that. I'm like, Oh, this is so cool. Maybe this will work. And it actually did. And when I started practicing it, I wasn't like trying to necessarily like, be a happier, more engaging person, but other people started to remark them, designate your something's different about you. So that's when I knew I'm like, wait, there's something to this. And I was feeling more energized, feeling better about myself.

Nate (06:00):
And I realized, you know, what, nothing else in my life has really worked, but this has worked. So I'm going to dive as deep into it as I can. So that's sorry if that was like the crazy long answer. But, but yeah, so, and that's, that's kind of the best way I can sum it up in and, and for the last many. And I, I think we met before I started learning it, but we reconnected years later after I'd taken a deep dive and actually found like some teachers, teachers who actually went to China and learned a lot of this stuff and I've been practicing it and diving deep ever since. Right.

Logan (06:37):
Very cool. Yeah. I think that speaks to a bunch of different things. I'm kind of curious because yeah, throughout your book, you really knock hard on these like affirmations, visualization and whatnot. But I'm curious as to your opinion, is it, you don't believe those things work or that they didn't work for you because of some underlying reasons?

Nate (07:00):
You know, I, I, I think it was more that they didn't work for me and it was also the way I was learning them and the way I went about them, because honestly, like if you test something, everyone is so different. So if you test something out and it gets you results, then that's fantastic. I think every it's sort of like, what is the best tool for the job? So and I've, and I've done a lot of like research and the actual science behind a lot of these things, because there, there are a lot of self helps techniques out there. That's some scientists actually said, you know what, let's actually put on a real study here, let's have a, let's have a placebo controlled study and let's find out so visualization, I think, well not, I think it's like from what I've read in the scientific research is amazing for AF athletics.

Nate (07:49):
It is absolutely an amazing performance enhancer because it, your brain is just wired into your central nervous system and visualization will just cause tremendous changes with what your body's capable of, where I start, where I like to rail against it is when it's extrapolated out to, well, we can use it to enhance strength. We can use it to enhance stamina. We can use it to enhance agility. So let's imagine money flowing through you and stuff like that. Or, you know, let's teach it, let's teach this really expensive course and tell people that if they, if they picture living in their dream home and then go into credit card debt, you know you know, pretending to have this lifestyle, eventually you will have it. And if you don't, it's your fault and you need to pay me, or that's the kind of stuff that I'd like to rail against.

Logan (08:46):
Right? Yeah. So it really depends on the target. And I'd say in addition to the athletics, which obviously I've focused on a lot there I have seen some research around being able to manipulate things within your physiology such as white blood cell count different people using it around cancer and that sort of thing. So that, yeah, that's, I think that's good. Cause we, we use these kind of nebulous words like visualization one, that's not even a good word because it shouldn't just be a visual thing, but then yeah. What is your target with it? Is it like improving your performance or your blood markers in some way versus increasing your bank account? And I'm sure once again, it happened, it works for some people in doing that. So what is, what is the difference between people in working with these different things,

Nate (09:32):
Right. Yeah. And, and how, like you just said, even like calling it just visualization, because what happens if you're not, what happens if your visual isn't sense, isn't really the primary sense that actually initiates a change within you. We were like, like, we were just discussing like 30 seconds before we started recording. Some people might be more audio. Some people might be more tactile, so yeah, totally. Is that, that's kind of why I also said it, it matters who's teaching it cause there's some people out there who wouldn't get the nuances that, that, that you definitely, you know, described it.

Logan (10:14):
Yeah. Yeah. I feel very few people go deep into how to actually work with visualization. A lot of the fun things you can do with that, but let's get back to the meditation. One of the things that stood out in your book, because this has been a subject on my mind I'll just read some quotes here. I tried to change my thoughts and habits while ignoring the energy controlling both. It was like trying to correct a laptop's low battery signal by rearranging the icons on the screen. And then also for many people focusing on the physical and mental won't help them change nearly as much as also working directly with energy. One, I thought that analogy of the rearranging desktop icons was really appropriate to this. And this speaks to a kind of how I've talked about healing is looking at these different perspectives. You have the physical, you have the energetic, the mental, the emotional, the spiritual kind of different levels. And sometimes problems exist more on some of those areas or levels than on other ones. So what you're describing here, you're trying to change basically your thoughts or your actions, but it wasn't until you began doing the standing meditation that rewired your energy, that things really began to shift. Is that right? And can you speak more to that?

Nate (11:35):
Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's perfect. Yeah. I can definitely speak more to that because it kind of relates to what we were just talking about. Everyone's different. So part of this journey that you go on is about finding the, kind of the combination that works for you, that initiates change you want. So I see our thoughts and our, our, our mental capacity and our physical capacity, and also working with this subtle energy there. I see them all as interrelated, each one affects the other. So when I talk about the energetics this is where I'm talking about what the Taoists would refer to as cheap. And there's some other spiritual traditions that have different words for it. And there's, there's even some of Western science and starting to look into this, like there's a lot of studies on acupuncture that are trying to investigate like, well, if it works, let's see what actually makes it work and it might have to do with the, the PI's electricity that is running through channels in your body, specifically your fascia and that.

Nate (12:45):
Yeah. And that I mean, a lot of, as certain point just goes over my head. But it it's, it's, it's fascinating because again, I have to do, I have to go here like Yoda at arrested stars and talked about how there's an organizing force behind the universe. And they called it the force. Well, guess what she might have to do with embryological development. And she might be the organizational force. This is how some scientists are putting at the organizational energy behind the growth and development of your body. So it's just fascinates me. So in the West, we, most people just don't know about this. And it's, and yet it's such a profound part of our existence, a driving force behind our existence. So I, I, I, I try to come up with different metaphors to try and get this across. One, one other one I use is like, it's kinda like trying to organize a nutritional program and, and eating lots of carbohydrates and fats, but neglecting protein simply because you just don't know protein exists.

Nate (13:53):
That sort of looking back how I think I faltered as my journey as I was trying to use thoughts and actions, but as neglecting the energy. And for me, that was the missing piece for, for someone else there actually. And I think there are a lot of people in the spiritual community like this, they're trying to work with their energy, but they're ignoring their body and, and, and they could be running into the, actually the same problems that I was because they require something different. So I, I that's, that's why I was really passionate about writing this book is because I think there are a lot of other people out there like me who just don't realize that they're neglecting a crucial piece of the puzzle that could actually make all this other self-help stuff actually work.

Logan (14:42):
Yeah. Even before I kind of started to thinking in this frame framework, I was really kind of interested in these different things. So it going for that multi perspective view, and it's just so important for healing, because like you're saying, you know, you're, you're not going to be healthy if you don't eat any protein at all. So if you're just neglecting one of these areas completely you might be able to survive for some time doing that, but yeah, you're not gonna certainly won't be optimal or ideal in doing so.

Nate (15:15):
Yeah. I'm a simple guy. I just, I want everything working on my side, you know,

Logan (15:20):
Unfortunately it's not so simple to always do that. Right.

Nate (15:24):
The

Logan (15:28):
You have to do more than just one thing in order to do a bunch of things. So talking about this and energy, right. I guess a big question that comes up for me and maybe you covered it in there. So people have, whether they've experienced it or at least seen it, but seeing people doing Tai Chi or Chi gong, a different kind of slow movements where you're meant to move this energy around, how are those different or can be contrasted to a standing meditation?

Nate (15:59):
Oh, that's a great question. Because you know, Tai-Chi, and she'd gone through all of these forms and practices come from Dallas. And so it's all, it's all the same really cool family. The difference I would say is that with the S with the standing meditation, it, for me, what I really appreciate about it is it's stripped away a lot of the difficulty involved in Tai Chi because you have to, you have to learn, I'm learning Tai-Chi right now. And it's a, it's very complex. It's very subtle. And you have to learn this form. Whereas with the S with a simple standing meditation, you're removing the challenge of moving in a correct way. So it allows you to focus more on feeling the energy, because there are fewer distractions and the, and there are fewer things that require your attention similar with chigong now what's, but what's also interesting about Tai Chi Qigong and the standing of meditation.

Nate (17:02):
Is that the way in which you stand? Like for instance, it's not just as, as you saw from the book, it's not just a simple standing up, you know, you have your feet facing forward a little bit wider than your shoulders, and you tuck your hips down, almost like you're sitting on a very, very high bar stool and your knees unlock slightly, and then you tuck your chin. So this lengthens, your spine, these subtle adjustments to your stance are actually the foundation of most cheek gong and Tai Chi. So what, so it's, when you're doing a simple standing meditation like this, you're actually doing what advanced Tai Chi practitioners and she gong do. They're just adding in more layers of movement to it. But the foundation is this way of standing that connects you to the earth, energy and the energy above you. So that kind of almost cleans out your system and, and, and kind of charges you like a battery.

Logan (18:10):
Yeah. Great, great. Yeah, I think that's helpful for people to know. And one of the things I also thought was useful in there, and it is matching to my experience with it that you found the, the standing meditation it's like easier to clear your mind to meditate, quote, unquote then a sitting meditation. Can you explain why that is?

Nate (18:35):
Yeah, it's, it's really cool. It's kind of like I described earlier when I was, I felt so frustrated with a sitting mindfulness practice. It's wonderful, but it's also really, really hard. And it's really, really hard to actually get, right. The whole idea behind these practices is to blank out your mind and not think and it's, it has tremendous benefits, but it's also not only is it challenging to do it's really easy to fall into the trap of almost doing it. And there's a lot of people out there who are like, Oh, I've meditated for 20 years. It's like, no, dude, you've daydream for 20 years.

Nate (19:19):
That's why you're so angry with it, Sarah. So, but the great thing about the standing meditation is there are these subtle things you have to do in order to stand correctly. Like I said, tucking your chin and also tucking your hips and unlocking your knees so that your spine lengthens and relaxes. And because there are these subtle little how do I put the subtle little steps to go through when you get into the standing meditation and to loop back to, to make sure you're doing it right, you're throwing your mind a bone to chew on. You're giving it a task and you're giving it a task that actually helps you drop into a Meadows, meditative state and, and physically relaxed your body more. So it's, it turns into this virtual cycle where the more you relax, the better your form, the better your form, the quieter, your mind, and the quieter, your mind, the more you relaxed.

Nate (20:19):
So instead of turning into this frustrated, like bunched up balls, like I'm trying to clear my thoughts and I've wasted 10 minutes. You're actually able to S it's like slipping onto a highway. You're actually able to slip into the cycle where if your mind is racing, all you have to do is like, okay, I'm going to return to checking to make sure my shoulders are relaxed. Okay. Let's, let's see if I can breathe a little deeper and keep my shoulders relaxed and down even more. And then all of a sudden you feel better. And when you feel better, it is a heck of a lot easier to let your thoughts quiet down. So it said virtuals, virtual virtuous cycle.

Logan (21:00):
Yeah. One thing I've noticed for whatever reason, my body tends to carry more stress intention up in the neck, the shoulders for PZ its muscles. And these can, I noticed that seems to be unwinding in practicing this, that it will actually not quite feel sore, but it will get more stiff throughout the meditation because I'm, I'm noticing it more, I guess, would be the way to turn it. So this is bringing more awareness and attention to that area where undoubtedly, I need more attention and awareness.

Nate (21:36):
You would be no, I mean, that is just I relate to that 100% and it's true. And you know, I'm glad that you brought that up because in any kind of metal meditation or, or energetic practice, when that feeling of like, Oh my neck, I can actually feel even more stiffness in my neck. A lot of people are not going to see it like you did. They're actually going to get frustrated and they're actually going to blame themselves for like, Oh no. It's like, no, no, no. That's, that's great. If you feel that tension bubbling up, your awareness is increasing. It's okay. It's all good. It's just, like you said, this is an invitation to actually relax it away. It's it's I like to think of these practices or any kind of meditative practices is sort of like running the self-cleaning setting on the oven.

Nate (22:27):
It's not always going to be a fun process, but you're going to be better off if, if it's part of your life and your, your, yeah. Your neck and traps. I mean, we work on our, on our computers and we're not small people they're not really built for us, so yeah, it's just gonna be a disaster when we use it. But these kinds of practices will eventually unwind that as, and it's really surprising how far it'll go like years ago. I thought, wow, my shoulders and neck are really loose. But it, it keeps ongoing. It's, it's remarkable how optimized our body can become if we keep chipping away at that.

Logan (23:08):
And that brings up one of the things you said in there. Again, I liked how you put it, but alignment, you, you talk about like using a mirror or some other methods of feedback because what feels right within our body often isn't right. It's just whatever, then that's why it feels right. So you can't necessarily just go based off of feeling, have to kind of check it with the other senses.

Nate (23:34):
Yeah. I mean, it's kinda, it's kinda like in life having a comfort zone and thinking, well, if it's comfortable, it, this must be optimal, but that's, that's how we self-sabotage ourselves because we convinced ourselves that our comfort zones is what's actually best. And we never actually see outside of them doing this meditation actually kind of clued me into so white people and why I was so stuck in life it's because when we really start to grow, that's usually when our mind starts telling us, Oh, no, this is, this is bad. This is wrong. It's like, right. We're when we're on the cusp of a breakthrough. That's that's oftentimes when the voice in our heads saying, Oh, no, this isn't actually right for us. It that's when it gets the most seductive. So yeah, it's, it's the same with this the standing meditation, what is actual true alignment is not going to feel proper, at least not at first, but eventually as you relax into it, you you'll reach that new level.

Nate (24:43):
And it's like, Oh, wow. I didn't know what I was missing. And it, and I I'm sure you've found this to be true when you're showing someone how to swing a kettlebell for the first time or something like that. It's whatever they think feels right is, is going to be goofy and whatever feels goofy to them is actually correct. I mean, that's, that's what I went through and I started swinging them. I've been getting into them lately and it's you really have to take it on faith from someone who has been there and done that until you actually, your body acclimates to the, to the new experience. And then you truly know for yourself, Oh, okay. Actually, this, this is actually what's best.

Logan (25:26):
Yeah. And that speaks back to the, the feedback is, I mean, that's all based on our neurology and the feedback mechanisms inside. But as I was saying before with the, the standing meditation, bringing new awareness into it is kind of the first step of allowing that to change up a bit as you move through. So another concept that I think is useful as we're talking about alignment here is that it's largely about the, the flow of energy or cheek in the body that working on something like this, and of course, other practices as well, allow that energy to flow better. So can you talk about this concept and why it's so important and why many people may be missing out on it?

Nate (26:16):
Yeah. Yeah. I like that you use the word allow because the thing about this kind of subtle energy is that it is all about allowing the flow to increase rather than trying to force it. Forcing is counterproductive. The way I like to describe it is when you engage in staying standing meditation practice it's like turning on it's like turning the faucet of the sink. The water's there, the water is ready to flow through the nozzle. It just requires an opening. So that's why in any practice like Xi gong or a tide, or actually even as a simple Sinek meditation, the emphasis is always on physical relaxation because any physical tension in your muscles is going to shut down that flow of energy. Now this, but this is where it can get a little complicated because if we're going to move, we're going to engage our muscles. So the key is to do so with as much relaxation as possible while you're still moving in an optimal way. And that's why Tai Chi looks like this kind of graceful flowing form is they want to complete the movements while

Speaker 5 (27:40):
Using the minimal

Nate (27:41):
Of muscular tension and eliminate unnecessary muscular tension. It's also why they have such peaceful expressions. So when, when this is done, then the energy can move more freely. And when the energy moves more freely, it can start scrubbing away and pushing away and cleaning up like emotional stagnation because the whole, I, the whole idea behind this, for me, that that really helped me out so much was that I had the old, emotional gung from an unhappy childhood teenage years, early twenties residing in my body. It is a real thing where if, if you have buried emotional gunk, that you have not helped processed in a healthy way, it is stuck in you somewhere. It is stuck in your organs. It is stuck in your tissues. It's stuck in your spine. It's stuck in your connective tissue. It's why, it's why someone who went through a lot of terrible, frightening experiences when they're younger, will walk through their life with their shoulders a little bit pulled in, in a defensive posture.

Nate (28:53):
It's, it's been programmed right in there. So when you start to relax and open up and the energy starts flowing, it starts to chip away and wash away and clear away that old emotional gunk. And that's, that's why when you do meditation, sometimes you'll have old feelings pop up, you'll have old memories pop up. You're wondering what the heck is going on here. That is sort of the bubbling up process that when you relax and the energy starts working, that's the processes initiating it's like that self-cleaning oven is heated up, and this is the stuff is being melted away and cleared away. And the answer is to really just keep going and, and relax even more into it and lean, lean into it in a kind of, and spiritual sense because you're going to be able to come out the other side of more relaxed person and a more functional person where your old, emotional patterns aren't going to trip you up.

Nate (29:52):
They're, they're not going to keep you locked in your comfort zone anymore. So it'll loop. So to loop back around to the question you asked, the, the key is to allow with, with your level of relaxation and to do so in a way where you're your quiet mind and your alignment and your continual monitoring of your physical tension is all working together to, to allow the energy to flow. Because it's tough when I started, I mean, like, I couldn't feel nothing. You could just blast me over the head with an energetic sledgehammer and I couldn't force myself to be more sensitive. I had to go through this process and it took a long time where I actually had to feel more and more, or I had to open myself up to feeling more and more fortunately I was just, just by going through this process, you're doing good work on yourself, and it's going to be very worthwhile, even if it requires patients to feel the results

Logan (30:59):
[Inaudible] and going deeper with alignment in your book, you mentioned, and these, I just haven't done a lot of these. And a part of me has always thought like, Oh, I should do more chiropractic or more massage. And then for whatever reason, I don't do it a lot, but these manipulations can help with that alignment. Can you speak to that and how they've supported you on this journey as well?

Nate (31:26):
Yeah. it's, it's funny because when I was working as when did I start, it was when I was unloading trucks for a living. And I think I was making about $10 and 50 cents an hour, and it is backbreaking work. And I'd actually been doing the standing meditation for awhile and emotionally. I had completely transformed as a much happier, more well adjusted, friendly person. And I just kept on getting this weird intuition because when I do, when I started doing the staying in meditation, I would like feel these gentle pops in my spine, almost like you're getting a chiropractic adjustment. Or if, if you kind of just get up and stretch a bit and stretch to the side, you know, everyone's kind of had that experience where you get a little crack in one of your between your spinal disc.

Nate (32:21):
It feels nice. I started getting those little cracks and they slowly over time, over weeks and months, the cracks started going up. My spine is it's like, let's say in October it would be around my pelvic area. Well, come January, it would be halfway up my back. I'm like, well, this is so cool. And I had the sorta voice pop in my head and it said, you know, by the time these cracks reached the top of your spine, like your occiput area, your life is going to go through a really positive financial transformation. I was like, well, I hope so.

Speaker 6 (33:01):
That's really cool. I like, I don't know.

Nate (33:06):
So I kept practicing. And then around the time when I was unloading trucks and I was miserable, it was awful. I decided I'm going to do something that seems kind of crazy to me. On my days off, I'm going to go get a massage and I'm going to go see a chiropractor. So I Googled like, and I've found the cheapest. I mean, it was still there. Great. But the cheapest massage I could find, and the cheapest, like here, walk in, drop off the table and I'll crack your neck chiropractor. I could find that's all I could afford. And I'm like, Hey, it either works or doesn't, let's find out. And all I can tell you is those cracks eventually did reach the top of my spine and my stance got even better. And I was able to meditate even deeper. And within a couple of months I actually was introduced from someone I know to a company that I was actually really excited to work for.

Nate (34:08):
And I moved across the country and I started a whole new career. Now I tell you that story. I'm not saying this goes back to sort of my cautions about like people teaching visualization. I'm not saying it's like, here's the key, everyone go, go get that chiropractic adjustment. You're going to win the lottery. But there seem to be a very, very profound, interesting relationship between my spine aligning and my body relaxing and my life unfolding in a way that I was all ready working toward on a very practical level. So looping back to are you talking about with alignment? It, I discovered something very funny, a lot in a lot of when the, a lot of people think of meditation, they think, Oh, okay, I'm going to do this practice. And it's gonna, you know, spill over to the rest of my life and improve my life, which is great and totally true.

Nate (35:07):
I started thinking in kind of a counterintuitive way where I started thinking, what kinds of practices can I do that will support my meditation. And specifically like you, like, you brought up the alignment of my body and my meditation. So ever since then I've always explored various methods that would actually increase my alignment and relaxation even more for the purpose of improving my standing meditation now, not, I mean, to be candid, I'm a little obsessed with this thing. I really love it. I really love Taoism. And that's why I do this, but I've really found that if the key to making meditation work is relaxation and alignment, I'm going to find out how to enhance my relaxation and alignment, using ways other than meditation to support those efforts. I mean, it's kind of like, if you want to be a champion weightlifter, it's not just weightlifting, you want to improve, you're also going to want to optimize your sleep.

Nate (36:08):
You're also going to optimize your nutrition. Right. So I found massage was okay for like my wife massage actually really, really helps her relax for me. It's, it's, it's not really that great. Chiropractic adjustments have been really good working through negative emotions honestly, and learning to better process, negative emotions is actually been profound for my physical relaxation. And actually recently kettlebell swings have been very profound. Because if you think about it, when you, when you swing a kettlebell in order to complete the movement, you, your body automatically has to relax your hip flexors and various muscle groups. It's, it's essentially the opposite of how our bodies sort of get maladapted by sitting all day. Yeah. Cause when we swing a kettlebell, we're actually flexing really, really hard in the, in the diametrically opposed movement, which is great because I mean, even, even if someone doesn't give a crap about a standing meditation, if they sit all day, a kettlebell swing can be fantastic because it's gonna, it's gonna trigger your body to relax the muscles that become chronically tense via sitting well.

Nate (37:34):
And those are the same muscles, interestingly enough, that you want to relax in order to make a standing meditation work so that you could lengthen your spine and connect to the earth more, it's all interrelated. So that's, that's my mindset when it comes to the sort of thing is that I want, I want to use ancillary practices that will rid myself of chronic tension because honestly, like if you get rid of your chronic tension and you're able to get a good night's sleep, man, life is, and you get a good cup of coffee, man. Life is clear.

Logan (38:12):
Yeah, no, I really like that question. What kind of practices can support my meditation? And that's what led me that kind of question, not with meditation specifically, but I want to be a strong man, what can I do? Cause I'm not naturally gifted at this. And that's what led me into all these different fields, herbalism NLP, that everything was always coming back to that one thing. But yeah, I feel that's really interesting. I forget who I was listening to, but someone was talking about chiropractic at really at its heart was just about freeing up the body, manipulating it so that it is free to be able to communicate, move energy, do what it needs to do in the best way. So that, that makes a lot of sense that, well, that's something I should go try. I should do my own little experiment like that track for a while and see if I make more money.

Nate (39:03):
Aye. Aye, aye, aye.

Nate (39:08):
You need to come back for more advanced coaching. Did they get it? Yeah,

Nate (39:12):
I almost didn't include that the book, but it's what happened. And I think for me

Nate (39:18):
That

Logan (39:19):
What you said in there, it speaks to that, that intuitive voice that for whatever reason was saying, like and you know, meditation is one of the tools to becoming more intuitive. You get this, the, the being becoming more sensitive and then listening to that still voice. So yeah, the voice was telling you that it was the case for you, which of course does not mean it's going to be the case for anyone else, but

Nate (39:48):
In my book.

Nate (39:48):
So describe how it's like, it's kind of like chaos theory. It's like when a butterfly flaps its wings it contributes to a hurricane getting created on the other side of the planet. So perhaps my adjusting my spine, like that was the butterfly that helped create the hurricane of a new, better prosperous future. But the thing about chaos theory is we'll never know what happens the second time, the butterfly flaps its wings. So everyone's different and no matter what I can say for certain that when you get the energy flowing better and when you're able to harness your energy better and clean out your emotional gunk with meditation, profound, good things will happen in your life. I it's, but it's still chaos. So I can't slap a guarantee on the box and say in six weeks, this will happen. But I can say good stuff will happen. And I, and that, that was enough for me to change my life.

Logan (40:54):
Right. I mean, at the very least you'll feel better about what happens when you clear away the emotional trauma and the tension that just rides along in your body and all that stuff. I mean, part of your story in there, we haven't talked about this, but you mentioned working to unload the trucks, but you were assigned spinner for a couple of years, like street corner holding one of those signs. You were one of those guys that

Nate (41:20):
Was, I was that guy,

Logan (41:23):
But it was part of your like spiritual journey, like being okay with that, you know, a lot of other stuff happened that kind of stripped away and your ability to kind of make that because

Nate (41:34):
Become its own sort of meditation.

Nate (41:36):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, cause I really,

Nate (41:39):
I really messed up my life before I got into Dallas. And so, I mean that, that train had already derailed so much that it took a lot to get things back on track. So I mean, I, I went bankrupt in like I think it was, I think I officially filed or got discharged in 2012 or maybe it's yeah, I think it was 2012. And I, I was the guy who had dropped out of college. I had almost no job experience and it was the, the 2008 financial meltdown was still pretty recent history. So I'm like thinking to myself, Oh crap, man. I mean, I had a business with two partners just dissolve and I,

Nate (42:22):
I was like, what am I going to do to, I need to get a job, but I don't have a resume.

Nate (42:27):
I got like, no qualifications. I mean, part of that was my limited beliefs. I really think I, I could have actually gotten a really cool job in business or marketing or something like that. But I think I had to go on this journey first. So I mean, I found a job like you could [inaudible] the scripture was perfect. It was just like, Hey, you can listen to audio books all day. It's full time. It starts at 10 bucks an hour and you'll get raises. And it's a fast growing company. I'm just like, what, what is really as like look kind of scam is what is going on. But I got the job. Yeah. I guess I did a really great interview. Yeah.

Nate (43:11):
And it's great if I could stand outside

Nate (43:13):
And the re it really, it was legit. It was a job where they gave you a costume and you stood on the sign and it was like, the store had like 10 locations in the downtown or not downtown Denver, but in the Denver area I worked 40 hours a week and it was beautiful. I was the happiest I'd ever been the, the money from the job. I just moved into the cheapest place I could find. And I made more money than I spent and I ha and I was able to listen to audio. I listened to the Steve jobs biography. I listened to the George Washington biography. It was great. And I could stand out there and my world had shrunk to just that street corner. So talk about being alone with your thoughts. Sometimes I would just turn off my headphones and I just listen.

Nate (44:02):
And I just had my, once it's like a staying meditation practice. I had my one few things I had to focus on and that's it. And I got to put my life back together again and learn to, I had one supervisor, you know, in the store that whatever store is working on that any given day. And I had to learn to take orders, scrub toilets, wash the windows and be darn good at it. And it was actually a tremendous amount pride it's like in Dallas. And they talk about you chop wood and you carry water. And after light, you chop wood and carry water. And most people are like, what I thought enlightenment. I could like just levitate and sit on the cushion all day. And the people would worship me. It's like, look, the idea is you have these tasks that you have to do every day beforehand.

Nate (44:51):
And if you get enlightened, you're still going to return to those tasks. It's not that you escape this life it's that you change and you change how you relate to this life. And once I was able to do that, then if I wanted to, and I did, I did want to, I could actually go about transforming my life and it would actually work this time. So all that self-help stuff that had failed for me. I could actually return to it as a different person and this time it, it actually worked. I, I really could think differently and have a better work ethic, worth it. Yeah. Work, work ethic. And, and as, and as a result, I really could work hard and bring about you know, different results. So it's like we talked about at the beginning where we said, you know, there's the physical, there's the mental and the energetic.

Nate (45:52):
So once, once I was able to harness the energetic and really use that job almost as a practice ground to integrate into my life, someone might look at me, be like, Oh, that's terrible. He's just some guy in the street corner waving a sign. Or you might be down on yourself because like, Oh, got this dead end, go nowhere job. Or just, you know, my life is pretty lousy. I'm surround with bad people, but wherever you're at now, that is your training ground, where you can learn to go back to the basics and really just take, take charge of how you've run energy through your body. And from there, once you master that on the inside then you can chop wood carry water in a whole different way. And as a result, change your circumstances.

Logan (46:40):
Yeah. In many ways, like it was an initiation you had to go through. Yeah. You had to have an old burned down, you know, bankruptcy being humbled to the point of that, where you could earn really then a rebuilding process. It all, that'd be stripped away. The old you to give birth to the new you in essence. Right. And it was probably a slower journey than you liked. And no one likes the, the dips when they go through them. But in the end, looking back, you know, it was a journey and it was what needed to happen to get to where you are today, right?

Nate (47:15):
Yeah, absolutely. I needed that because not only did I start out like, like a pretty sad, like angry person, I was also an arrogant person. So I, I needed to kind of get healthy, smack upside the head so I can get them.

Logan (47:32):
That's all years of sound spinning.

Nate (47:37):
You know, it's like my teachers say today, it's, it's, they're, they're pretty harsh, but they, but they say the spirit realm doesn't care about your body. Wait, what, but the, but it's not, it's not in a bad way. Or it's like, Ugh, watch out. You're going to bad. Things will happen to you. It's not like that. What they mean is the spirit realm cares about your spiritual development. That's what they care about. Now, if that means you're going to have to go through some trials in life, then you'll have to go through those trials. But if you can go through the journey and learn from it and allow yourself to be molded by it, well, then all of a sudden your journey will be enhanced as you enhance your health or as you enhance your career. So sorry, I'm, I'm just very into the more spiritual stuff here, but it's it's you reminded me of that. So it's, it's, it's just the idea that it may seem bad at first, but if, if you can dig and not only find the lesson, but allow that lesson to mold you like burning away, you know, draws from gold, then all of a sudden the harshness of your lesson is no longer going to be required and then you'll be able to work your way out of it.

Logan (49:06):
Yeah. And one of the things you talk about in your book, you have a chapter on antifragility, which is a concept that I think is hugely important. I mean, it applies to health, it plays, the wellbeing applies to so much. Can you talk about, well, let's switch or come back to standing meditation, but how does standing meditation teaching more? Anti-Fragile

Nate (49:33):
Sure, sure. Let's see. I th I think it was two or three years ago. No, it was probably three years ago. At this point, I read the book antifragile by Nassim to lead an amazing book. I mean, it is a, it is a strange book. I it's, it's an unusual book but it's, it's an insane concept because we, we have the word fragile, you know, basically means something that's easily broken. But there's, there really, wasn't a word in the English language that meant the opposite of that. Now someone might say, well, the opposite is like strong. It's like robust. Well, it's like, well, robust is more like resists breaking, but that's not a true opposite. The true opposite is something that's going to easily shatter is something that gets stronger from forces that make something shatter like volatility. So this, this concept is kind of so unknown in, in our culture, probably most cultures that we didn't even have a word for it until to lead wrote the book antifragile that's, that's my understanding.

Nate (50:43):
I'm pretty sure that word did not exist before he came up with it. So in nature, in a, in a healthy natural environment, living things are anti-fragile within certain parameters. And I mean, look, I'm sure, you know, all you read probably read about this more than me, where like scientists had taken dishes of single cell organisms. You could probably look this up online, somewhere, the exact study and applied arsenic to them poison and they'll die. Well, they'll take a dish of the same organisms and they'll apply a very, very, very small amount of arsenic to them. And instead of dying, or instead of staying the same, the organisms will actually thrive because they put up natural defenses that caused them to become more healthy, thriving living things. So anti-fragility is the basis for all exercise. You're put, you're putting your body through a stressor.

Nate (51:51):
I mean, exercise is supposed to be a shocking event to your body. Whether it's to your fast Twitch muscle fibers, or whether it's to your cardiovascular system, you put it through a stressor that makes your body go, Oh, I need to adapt to this. And it comes back stronger and you become healthier as a result. So what's interesting about this is I applied the concept of anti-fragility to what makes the standing meditation such a great practice because when you're in the standing meditation, it's, it's a very interesting thing. Someone can actually try to push you from the side, like they can push on your shoulder. And if you have your hips tucked properly and your chin tucked properly so that your spine lengthens and you're relaxed, and your knees are slightly unlocked and your feet are facing forward. And they're, they're, they're wider than the kind of frame of your shoulders.

Nate (52:52):
If someone pushes you from the side, you can actually become, you will not get pushed over. You will actually become more stable and more rooted into the earth because the force that person is using gets directed into the earth. And I thought, this is such a cool metaphor for how someone can thrive in life, because we have a choice on how we can react to life circumstances. And when we get hit with a challenge we can fold, which is the approach. We can, we can have a stiff upper lip and get really angry and resentful and be like, no, never again. I'm never going to let this happen to be again, that's the, that's the robust approach. I think a great example of this is in relationships. You know, we can have a bad partner in a relationship in a dating relationship. And as a result, we can walk away feeling very wounded and very hurt and keep these wounds festering within us.

Nate (53:54):
That's the fragile approach. Or we could say, Oh, all, all men are pigs. You know, all, you know, all women just treat me like crap. That's sort of like taking out the strong, like stiff, like robust approach. It's like, Oh, I'll never, I'm never going to be hurt like this again, neither of them are healthy, but in our culture, we might think, you know, one of the other has some healthy aspects to it. And if we want to be alone for the rest of her life, there's even some functional aspects to it, but the anti-fragile approaches to take it to take that challenging situation. And after that relationship is over and be like, all right, how can I use this as a way to actually make myself healthier and stronger? What can I learn from this? What did this identify in me that requires change?

Nate (54:47):
Like how did I get triggered? What patterns keep coming up, because the more we can identify this stuff the easier it is to overcome it. And now we're bouncing back from the bad relationship stronger. And that's, what's going to enable us to be the kind of person that can actually get a great relationship. And I know this from experience because I had to do a lot of work on myself before I met my wife because, and I actually wrote this in our vows. I was becoming the kind of person that she would choose to have. So, and it's, it's, it's applies to relationships and your health and your career and your spiritual walk, the anti-fragile approach is to choose to come back better and stronger and more developed from whatever comes your way. You don't let it defeat you and you don't simply withstand it. You take the third option, actually grow from it.

Logan (55:51):
Yeah. I really liked that, that connected things for me, I was actually recently writing about like mental toughness and antifragility, and especially around emotions cause mental toughness, what it really is. It's more so emotional toughness and there's a time and place for it. But the idea that oppression or repression would be that, that robust response. I like how those were linked, which I didn't see before. That's that's really good. Yeah. Anti-fragility is such a huge concept. So hopefully more people can practice it now that we have lexicon for. So, yeah, absolutely. Well, mate, we're coming up on the end of our time here. This has been great or ranging conversation. I hope people have enjoyed it. Where can people go to follow more of your work, pick up your book, whatever you want to point people to.

Nate (56:40):
I appreciate that. If, if someone goes to the standing meditation.com that will forward right to my book's Amazon page and he could find it on Amazon just by searching there. And I also write articles on Nate rifkin.com. So I really appreciate that. And I just really want to say thank you and quickly tell you something funny here over, I mean, at this point it must be over 10 years ago, I listened to you interview someone named Dr. Chris holder. And that name kind of stuck with me ever since I really enjoyed the interview you did. And years later I ran into him and we became friends. And he sends his love by the way. And he actually, not only as a teacher of mine and a friend of mine, he was the officiant at me and my wife's wedding. So I want to mention that cause it's so cool. And because I just, yeah, I just hope that I can make a difference nearly as profound to your listeners as, as he did to me when you interviewed him. So it's a really cool circle to get looped back to. So I'm really, I'm really grateful to be part of, part of that circle. I'm grateful that you had me on your show.

Logan (57:56):
That's great. Yeah. You mentioned several different people in your book and I know a good amount of them. It's so cool. Yeah. All right. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on. And anyone listening, you can find show notes, links for everything over at health, sovereign.com. Hope you've enjoyed this and we'll be back again another time. Thank you. Thank you.

Logan (00:00:20):
Welcome. Have an amazing conversation for you today that well tried to get to the heart of kind of the old paradigm, the new paradigm, where our healthcare paradigm is failing and great guest for you on this topic today, a woman that suffered through four auto-immune conditions and ultimately was able to correct these Whitney Morton is the founder of Morgan nutrition and the creator of the thyroid reboot method and the gluten Gotland system. She has helped dozens of women with chronic Hasimoto's and other autoimmune conditions bust through the obstacles, keeping them from the life they want by uncovering the root causes of their symptoms and eliminating their unique triggers. She is a licensed acupuncturist, a functional nutritionist, and a certified gluten-free health coach. Let's dive into the call today. Welcome Whitney. Thanks for joining the health sovereign podcast today.

Whitney (00:01:12):
Thanks Logan. I'm super excited. Glad to be here.

Logan (00:01:15):
Yeah, this should be a fun conversation here where I wanted to start was that I've been really interested in people's stories and I was just poking around on your website and some of the phrases, like I grew up believing that there was a pill for every ill being the daughter of a surgeon and an art nurse. I was certain that modern medicine could solve practically anything. And that's, I mean, obviously you have being the daughter of a surgeon and a nurse that's even more stronger for you, but that's kind of like the default paradigm that everyone is in regarding health, right?

Whitney (00:01:52):
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think that's the default paradigm of the health system, right? I mean, it's, it's not just us as consumers. It's, it's the folks we're training. So unfortunately, yeah, it's, it's a pill for every ill and in my household, if there was any kind of religion, it was medicine, you know,

Logan (00:02:11):
That's it like scientism and medicine at all being scientific, but certainly religious is one way you can definitely look at it. And some of the other stuff you said that I was a Western medicine groupie going from doctor to doctor, but getting no solutions, I thought that was a well put, obviously a sad state of affairs, but accurate. And you're obviously not the only person that has gone through such a thing.

Whitney (00:02:37):
Yeah. Unfortunately. And, and in my household, you know, my dad being a surgeon, which I think takes a very special type of ego it wasn't just enough to go see a doctor. You had to go see like cream of the crop specialist. Right. So there was a certain amount of medical snobbery in my family as well. Right. And so yeah, it was, it was quite a very narrow perspective on health for sure.

Logan (00:03:06):
And that's the thing like, obviously surgery is amazing when it is properly used, but as you were saying that narrow perspective unfortunately, as we look at things like chronic disease, some of the stuff we'll be talking about today, that's where we see Western medicine, not even falling short, but really kind of falling flat.

Whitney (00:03:28):
I absolutely agree. And, and in some instances they think not even just falling flat, but digging a deeper hole for everybody, you know, because there's that the, the, the chronic disease management is based on acute care. Right. So, but it's not, it's different. And oftentimes, you know, if, if the medical paradigm doesn't really have any options for chronic disease care, well then that's when all these no CBOs come in, you know, which is the opposite of the placebo and the regular, no CBO that, that I hear all the time from my clients is, well, my doctor said, there's nothing I can do, or there's no cure for that. Or I need to be on this medication my entire life, or, or, you know, five years down the road, it's going to get worse. And this is how it's going to be for me. I mean, there's all of this like crystal ball, you know, prophecy going on that is, is, is really powerful for, for the patients, right? Because these doctors are, are the experts, you know, and that's not a diss on doctors because God love them. We need them, but it's just a different paradigm.

Logan (00:04:40):
Yeah, absolutely. Then that's the thing, Oh, the doctor, there's nothing that the doctor can do for the person, because it is, they don't have the skillset to work with these things within their paradigm or the system. There actually is nothing that can be done, but that doesn't mean that's true. That's where we begin to look outside of the paradigm outside of the system and we find, Oh, there's like 50,000 things you can do.

Whitney (00:05:04):
Absolutely. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Logan (00:05:09):
Sorry. I think we might have a little delay here. So yeah, in your story, and unfortunately this is a common story. You get a disease, get another disease. The doctors can't do anything. They, they literally tell you there's nothing in that can be done. And eventually you get to a point, can you tell a story? Like what led you going outside of doctor? You said Western medicine groupie. The problem is when people say they've tried everything, it means they've seen 10 different doctors, but they haven't actually gone outside of that system. What led you to finally breaking free from this system?

Whitney (00:05:47):
Sure. Well it was after being diagnosed with already two different autoimmune diseases, right. And then I wound up getting what I thought was a bladder infection that just wouldn't go away. And then I, I seem to be in constant pain. I went to a urologist and ultimately got diagnosed with interstitial cystitis, which is a incredibly painful autoimmune disease of the bladder. And if you can, for any of your listeners, you know, if you've had a bladder infection, you know how painful it is, but just imagine one that never goes away, the pain is 24 seven. And there's absolutely nothing that takes the edge off. Right. That that's kind of what that diseases like. So I was around 40 and I was sitting in the head of urology of course, right. Because I was a snob. And so I'm sitting there in the doctor's office and he says to me, I mean, this is almost verbatim, says nothing can be done.

Whitney (00:06:51):
It's not going to kill you, but you're going to die with it. It's probably going to get worse. We can try and manage the pain, but you should join a support group. And it was in that moment. And I, and I swear Logan, it was like like every cell in my body in unison just scream the word. No, it wasn't a thought in my head. It was just like, I was just hit like full body slam with this rejection. Like, no, this is not my future. Cause he was telling me your life is over. You know? And that's really what I was hearing from him. And I walked out of that office and I knew that I wasn't going to accept what he said. I knew in that moment that, that aha of, Oh, in your world, there's nothing that can be done because you don't know what to do. And because you don't know what to do. You think that that's the end all be all right. But I can't believe that. I don't believe that I don't know where my path has headed, but I know I'm getting off the path. I've been walking my whole life. That was really the moment.

Logan (00:08:02):
Yeah. That's it's it seems that it is so often it's it has to get bad enough. That's that's when people break free, it's either people themselves or a loved one. Cause I've just been interested in like what actually pops people out of the, the dominant paradigm and you see it very clearly there. I loved how you're saying your body screamed though. And it is a sense that was like rock bottom. Yeah, no, I'm not going to accept that. So then what do you do that, is that searching for yourself? How did you then step outside the paradigm?

Whitney (00:08:37):
Well first it was just, you know, a bunch of online stuff and, and trying to do my own research, going to health, food stores and asking other people who I thought might, you know, have a different way of looking at things. I stumbled upon a local acupuncture clinic and started getting with, and I actually got a significant amount of relief and I just really fell in love with the medicine. And so I started acupuncture school. And that was kind of my first like talk about a deep dive, you know, outside of the traditional medical paradigm. Right. I mean, there's nothing further away than medicine. But I got so much healing from that. That by the time that I graduated from acupuncture school, my interstitial cystitis was gone. You know, I, it wasn't a part of my body anymore. And, and you know, everyone in the medical industry said that could not happen.

Whitney (00:09:31):
Right. That that's impossible. So that was really my first look at another way of perceiving health and how to heal the body from the ground up. And in Chinese medicine, there is this root branch philosophy. They look at health and disease much like a gardener, you know, looks at the trees and the plants that yes, the symptoms show up in the branches and the leaves, but it's the disease or the imbalance is really coming from the root system and the soil. Right. So that's where the majority of your focus has to be. So that's what started my healing was, was, yeah, I need to, I needed to do some things to alleviate my pain, which were the symptoms in the branches, but I needed to figure out what the hell caused this to happen in the first place, what was going on at the deeper levels that set the stage for this, right?

Whitney (00:10:28):
This doesn't just happen out of the blue. And it was Chinese medicine that allowed me to start doing that deeper work. And coincidentally, the acupuncture school where I was attending was right next door to a naturopathic clinic. And the doctor there taught some of the biomed classes that I was taking and I developed a great relationship with her and her husband and became very interested in natural Pathi as well. So did a lot of self study in that world. And then when I got out of acupuncture school, I went into a functional nutrition certification course and got some more training in, in that same root branch philosophy, but from a Western mindset, you know, so same language, you know, but, but spoken with different dialects sort of, and it just transformed everything for me. And, and then the confirmation came several years later when I went to to a gastroenterologist because I was having this very, very precise pain in my stomach.

Whitney (00:11:36):
And I thought, you know, I'm a type a student I study all the time. I'm, you know, I've just got that kind of a personality. It's probably an ulcer, you know, maybe I should check this out. So I went, I went just to get a scope and they've just said, well, let's go ahead and do a, a lower, you know, a colonoscopy at the same time. Let's just get it all done. So we did an upper and lower and they discovered I had celiac disease and I, I, I woke up from the anesthesia and my doctor said, I can't believe it. You have absolutely no symptoms of it. You don't present like someone with celiac disease, but you have full blown celiac disease. And and then all the pieces of the puzzle really fell together for me, because then I realized that's the first domino that fell was my celiac disease. And it was funny cause that's the last diagnosis I got, right. That was my fourth auto-immune diagnosis. And they found it by accident. So it really goes to show you how you have to pay attention to uncovering, you know, everything that could be at the root of whatever your diagnosis or your symptom, your set of symptoms might be.

Logan (00:12:46):
Right. Yeah. So interesting with auto-immunity, especially when we see this. So you had celiac they are only able to do that with this diagnostic test. You didn't have any of the normal symptoms, which is how they at least in the beginning begin to diagnose celiac, but it's tied into all these other at a tends to look at the things versus seeing the body as ecology as you were saying, or holistically looking at everything altogether. So that's very fascinating. Can you just list out for listeners to the four autoimmune conditions you had?

Whitney (00:13:30):
Sure. the first one I got was psoriasis. Then Hashimoto's then interstitial cystitis then celiac disease. But I had celiac disease long before I developed any of those other three. I am just what they call a silent celiac.

Logan (00:13:53):
Okay. I haven't heard that term before. And yet really that was, you know, the multiple causes, but that was at the root. Why then it expressed in your skin with the psoriasis that it expressed in the thyroid with Hashimoto's and then your bladder as well. Right. It's all tied together. Yeah. Yeah. So after you had this diagnosis, then that's when you went gluten-free

Whitney (00:14:19):
Well, I had actually gone gluten free before I ever got my diagnosis. Because in school I, I became pretty captivated by, you know, the paleo template and and that works really well for my body. I wasn't intentionally like, you know, obsessively gluten-free and I certainly didn't live in a gluten-free house, but just because, just because I was paleo, I, I, you know, my consumption of gluten, my, well, my intentional consumption of gluten rate was zero. So that just cleaned up my immune system and really took a lot of that systemic inflammation away that allowed my body to, to, you know, heal the psoriasis, to reverse the interstitial society cystitis. I didn't really know that it was wow. That huge domino of gluten has gone. I didn't, I couldn't draw that straight line until I got that celiac diagnosis. Right. So, but I would have never gotten it if, if that fluke hadn't happened. And 30% of people with celiac disease don't have any GI symptoms. They, they usually express neurologically like panic and anxiety. And I certainly had panic and anxiety attacks from that from my early twenties.

Logan (00:15:41):
Yeah. It's a, the way I liken it for other people was even though, obviously there's the problem with the gluten and the interest intestinal permeability, the kind of quote, unquote, the war, the battleground may be taken into other parts of your body which is just an interesting way that our body seems to work. Absolutely. So, yeah, this is interesting. Just kind of thinking through it. Did you, was it just the paleo thing or were you aware at my understanding is going gluten-free in general is going to be good for just about anyone that has auto-immune conditions. That's at least something worth trying out,

Whitney (00:16:22):
Oh, a hundred percent of the time. And in fact, the majority of my clients all have autoimmune disease. Usually more than one and I have yet to find a single person who doesn't have an underlying gluten sensitivity. Now that doesn't mean they have celiac disease. Right. But gluten is 99% of the time, part of the picture, along with other triggers, right. Everyone has their own perfect storm of variables that brings them to a particular diagnosis. But gluten is, you know, if you had to line up the usual suspects, right. Gluten would be in the lineup. And, and along with viruses or parasites and heavy metals, you know, things like that can trigger as well. But gluten is definitely a pretty popular culprit. Pretty common.

Logan (00:17:14):
Yeah. When my wife got diagnosed with autoimmune conditions, Sjogren's syndrome that's. That was learning about gluten sensitivity around that time. So that's one of the steps that we took in that, along with having her mercury amalgam fillings removed. Those are two of the like major factors that really allowed her to quote unquote, her autoimmunity. Yeah. That's fantastic. So with all these different things it, it part, yeah, cause and effect is not as linear or simplistic as most. Well as we would ideally like it to be especially as Western medicine tries to identify things with it. It often is, as you were saying, we have these usual suspects, but there can be all kinds of other things and how they play that perfect storm in a person's body can change from one person to another. And so it is with our treatments as well. Right. So you had the acupuncture going into natural paths, going gluten-free all these different things helped you to overcome these different conditions. Is there a few other the important pieces or was just these tools alone? Did that seem to be enough for you to overcome these conditions?

Whitney (00:18:40):
Well, I mean, I think I overcame 80% of, of what was going on that I, that I could identify as being wrong. Right. I would say I got 80% improvement on, on everything. But even for myself, I wasn't, until I got further education around functional medicine and started running certain functional labs on myself that I was able to identify deeper areas, areas of imbalance that needed to be, you know, restored. Right. So it's kind of a catch 22 it's it's, it's one thing to use your symptoms as your guidepost. Like, Oh, I changed my diet and this got better. Right. And so you've got that in equals one experiment going, but there are a lot of things that can be percolating in the root system that isn't necessarily expressing an, a symptom. Yes. Right, right. So, so you need to really investigate deeper. I think regardless of what your own feedback is telling you

Logan (00:19:46):
[Inaudible], so let's dive into that testing a little bit and that's that is an area that I think is a huge, really useful. obviously it can be expensive and it can be a difficult in and of itself. Like there's testing that is incomplete, that we can talk about that with thyroid specifically, like people get a TSH test and the doctor says my thyroid is fine. that's obviously not a big enough of a picture there. So there's really an art and a science to the testing. Would you agree with that?

Whitney (00:20:18):
Oh yeah, absolutely. So you're, you're spot on about thyroid testing. It's the traditional paradigm it's, it's kind of inadequate, meaning it doesn't really gather a whole lot of data. And so they, they make deductions based on a limited amount of data and usually, yeah, it's just TSH. Right. And as long as that TSH looks good, they're not going to dig any deeper. They just say, Oh, it's not your thyroid. But you know, TSH can look normal and you can still suffer from hypothyroid symptoms. There can still be thyroid dysfunction. It just isn't showing up in the TSH. Right. So yeah, there's limitations of the testing. And then also even if they're doing like, let's just stick with the thyroid, even if they're doing a real comprehensive thyroid test there's limitations in the reference ranges. So what, what traditional medicine thinks is normal? It's based on a standard reference range, which is actually pretty wide, it doesn't represent what's optimal or what's functional. It represents what's normal. Right? So when you're looking at functional interpretations of even standard labs their reference ranges are much tighter. So the ability to you know, to identify dysfunction of, of a system or a gland you're, you're gonna get that identification much sooner if you're looking through the paradigm of functional medicine.

Logan (00:21:43):
And could you talk a little bit about for listeners that aren't clear the difference between hypo and hyper thyroid and that these conditions there's Hashima Oh, no. So there's auto-immunity but they're not all autoimmune conditions. What's the difference between those?

Whitney (00:21:57):
Right. So hypothyroidism just means, you know, in general terms, your, your thyroid gland is under functioning. You have too little fibroid hormone getting into the cells. And so you've got all these classic symptoms, like your hair is falling out, you have dry skin, you're gaining weight, you're constipated, right? No libido all of that kind of stuff. Hyperthyroid is the opposite. You've got too much thyroid hormone. And so now you've got these that the symptoms of revved up metabolism, you know, so you're losing weight, you have a fast heart rate, you can't sleep, you don't have appetite just, you know, running around with more energy than, than, than you can stand, that kind of thing. So that's just the general definition. Then you have the auto-immune picture, right. Which is Hashimoto's would be the auto-immune version of hypothyroidism and graves' disease is the auto-immune version of hyperthyroidism.

Whitney (00:23:00):
But interestingly, the majority of hypo thyroid cases according to current research much of that is actually undiagnosed. Hashimoto's so many women go undiagnosed and they're just given this diagnosis of, Oh, you're hypothyroid. And they never really find out that they actually have an autoimmune process going on. And again, that comes back to sometimes the testing limitations, a lot of doctors don't even run antibodies. They're not looking at that, you know, so, so I always just assume from the very beginning, if you have hypo function there very well could be an autoimmune process going on and we need to look at that. Right. That's that's really important. But Hashimoto's any auto-immune disease just means there is excess tissue destruction, right? So in the case of Hashimoto's there's excess destruction of the thyroid gland that is compromising the production of thyroid hormone.

Logan (00:24:03):
So we mentioned earlier the, the usual suspects, gluten viruses, heavy metals parasites, probably like endocrine disrupting chemicals. I know those can be specific to the thyroid as well that these maybe causing the hypo thyroid, what, I mean, I'm curious what would be some causative issues where a person was not having auto-immunity so they had hypothyroid, but it was not Hasimoto's.

Whitney (00:24:32):
Oh, sure. So nutrient deficiencies is a big one, right? So just your standard American diet and a little bit of stress you're going to have nutrient deficiencies and most women by the time they're in their thirties, have most women have been on some form of birth control pill for several years, which is also going to set you up with some chronic nutrient deficiencies. So there are certain nutrients like the B vitamins and selenium and iodine and iron and amino acids. You know, there's, there's kind of a list of heavy hitters that do a lot to support thyroid function, not only you know, the ability to produce the hormone, but, but to convert T4 into T3, to make sure that your hormones getting into the cells, you know, all of these functions require certain nutrients to make them happen. So nutrient deficiency is, is probably a, a big cause when you're just talking about your general, you know, clinical or subclinical hypothyroidism.

Whitney (00:25:34):
But then there's also like halogen chemicals, you know, so if you're a swimmer or you spend a lot of time at a pool there's chlorine in your shower, water, you, you know, you brush with fluoride toothpaste these halogen chemicals compete with thyroid hormone, right? And they compete with iodine, which, which the thyroid needs. So chronic exposure to these chemicals can interfere with your ability to produce enough thyroid hormone and for it to dock into the cell receptors. Right. another big causal factor is just chronic stress. So, you know, the adrenals, you know, we used to think about in terms of adrenal fatigue, right? That, that you get to a drink Dremel fatigue when you've been so stressed out for so long that your adrenals are burned out, right? That's the language we used to use. But the, the messaging system of the adrenals that goes from the hypothalamus, the pituitary to the adrenals, it's kind of a parallel track along the messaging system that talks to the thyroid. So if someone is in a state of stress over a series of years or months all of that cortisol and those messaging hormones that are related to your stress response, actually drive down your thyroid hormone production and keep the hormone you do have from getting into the cells. It developed, it causes kind of a thyroid hormone resistance. So those are kind of like the three big ones just for your general, you know, hypothyroid cases.

Logan (00:27:10):
Excellent. And this is why we see so many people with hypo thyroid conditions. Do you know why women have this so much more? I forget what the statistic is, but it's like three times, or even greater than that women have a thyroid conditions much more so than men.

Whitney (00:27:28):
Yeah. I don't think there's a definitive answer on that, but I have my own suspicions that we're looking at a combination of things. One is just that we have a much more nuanced endocrine system. We go through you know, kind of stressful hormonal events just because we have a cycle. And then we, we go into menopause and, you know, so we have, and then there's pregnancy. So we have these big hormonal sort of disruptions and events that, that can leave us more vulnerable. On top of that, women tend to get more exposures to toxic chemicals than men do. Most women on average, you are exposed to about 160 toxic chemicals just by getting ready for work in the morning because of all the personal care products and the makeup and stuff like that, then nail Polish, right. Hair dye. So men's exposure on a daily basis throughout their life just tends to be lower. Right. so that really impacts our susceptibility for auto-immune disease. And a lot of the chemicals that are in those personal care products actually disrupt thyroid function very specifically. Right.

Logan (00:28:44):
That, that, that was my personal theory regarding the, the exposure to chemicals with the skincare. So that's great to hear that you came to the same conclusion from it. I think that is a huge part of it. So in general, I mean, this is going to support anyone, reduce the amount of endocrine disrupting chemicals and things like halogens heavy metals. If we can reduce these while treating nutrient deficiencies, I mean, this is going to help with everything beyond thyroid conditions as well. Right. it's crazy. Yeah. That, I mean, it, it kinda is very difficult when we're like, Oh, you have InterSystems cystitis. We don't know what to do, but basically almost every disease. If we look at nutrient deficiencies and toxicities, like that's as basic as we can go and we'll help with virtually everything.

Whitney (00:29:35):
Absolutely. I mean, even if you can't do all of the functional testing, like you can't find out if you have heavy metal toxicity you can still do some common sense things with the help of, you know, health coach to make the right dietary changes, to do the right, you know, liver support or gentle detoxes that can kind of just, you know, reduce your overall toxic burden, but you're not doing any heavy key lading. I mean, there are definitely interventions that are less costly and can get some progress for you. Right. and I would say hands down diet is, or nutrition. I don't want to say diet, but nutrition is the number one, most pivotal thing. If you get that right. Wow. That can, that can handle like 67 that, of, of what you need to get done, because it's just, it's a constant source of interaction, you know, with the body. I mean, it's what we do 24 seven. Right,

Logan (00:30:34):
Right. Yeah. One of the other things you said on their website that I thought was really well put was auto-immune disease. Doesn't just happen. This is an idea that I don't know where it came from. I mean, I guess it's because doctors couldn't find a germ that caused it or something specific. So one, sometimes I thought, Oh, it's just in your head. Secondly, you know, we don't know, we don't know what to do with it. So yeah, we're, we're just not going to talk about it that much, but yeah, there is causes they may be complex and often they are rooted in diet. Like almost always has their same in with gluten that's, that's something that is usually worth going for and far from blaming people for the things like, I, I don't think that's, that's obviously not useful, but I find it's really useful to take responsibility, you know, regardless of what the cause was it is going to be your responsibility to now work towards healing, this condition, whatever it happens to be. And that can be a long and painful road. But ultimately I think if you have you know, what you want to do and you, you can go outside of just a one paradigm, look at a few different options. I think people can, would be amazed at how much can be healed in doing that.

Whitney (00:31:54):
Oh, I totally agree, Logan. Absolutely. And in fact, it's a really hard road. If, if you ready to take personal responsibility for your own healing, right. It's, it's really difficult. Because there's, it's like swimming upstream against a lot of messaging that is trying to get you to stop doing right. Trying to get you to comply to the traditional paradigm. So you, you do have to kind of have a strong spine for that. And, and I think that that only comes from a place of personal conviction.

Logan (00:32:32):
Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk a little bit about leaky gut or gut permeability. Are you of the opinion, I've heard this from some people that well obviously some people have really bad problems with gluten like you with celiac. I seem to have some sensitivity to it but never manifested in an auto-immune disease or diagnosis as such. But gluten is not digestible and causes gut permeability in everyone.

Whitney (00:33:06):
Yes, it does. And it does in a couple of ways. But one of the main reasons why it does is well, because the gluten protein is, is just, we don't have the evolutionary capacity to deal with it. So it, it, it sets off an inflammatory cascade and disrupts those tight junctions, which, which are the gateways, you know, between the cells. So every time you eat gluten, those tight junctions open up and they allow things to pass through that aren't supposed to pass through. And then there's the there's the wheat germ agglutinin, which is the lectin part of wheat that also disrupts the integrity of the mucosal barrier and kind of punches holes in the gut. So those are two primary ways that it causes leaky gut in everyone. It doesn't matter if you're sensitive or not.

Logan (00:34:04):
What are some of the other usual suspects or the prime causes of leaky gut?

Whitney (00:34:12):
Well, I'd say over the counter medications and prescriptions are, are pretty common culprits. Also chronic stress, just, you know, burning the candle at both ends staying up till 2:00 AM, you know, bingeing supernatural on Netflix or, you know, whatever, right. I mean, that kind of those lifestyle factors, a lot of computer time sedentary lifestyle go, go, go, right. And then you've got, you know even a moderate amount, if it's consistent alcohol consumption is going to make you very vulnerable to a leaky gut. And then of course you've got the heavy metals and the toxins, right. And the glyphosate that's you know, that's everywhere in this country, right? So you put glyphosate together with gluten and wow. I mean, it, it just, it just rips holes in your gut for several days, right. So if you're, if you're going to Starbucks every morning and getting that croissant, you're, you're ingesting gluten and glyphosate every morning and you will always have a leaky gut. So to a certain extent, even if you don't have a gluten sensitivity, even if you don't have an auto-immune disease, but, but you want to heal your gut, you have to get rid of the gluten or it's never going to happen.

Logan (00:35:32):
Okay. So let's talk testing for gut it's all on your website. You have some great regarding that this is, seems to be a topic that is growing in popularity. Like people are recognizing. Yeah. my, my gut health is not great and yeah, there's microbiome, there's different aspects to it. But as far as looking leaky gut, what are some of the best options out there?

Whitney (00:35:57):
Well, I mean, personally, I think the best option is, is a blood test where, where you're looking for antibodies to things like zonulin and actin and lipopolysaccharides. That's, that's what I want to see, because I want to see what's getting through the gut that your immune system is making antibodies to. But there, there are many practitioners who will use, what's called a lactulose mannitol test where you drink a sugar solution of a large sugar molecule and a small sugar molecule. And then a few hours later, you know, you collect the urine and they see how much of that sugar is recovered in the urine. So that's really based on you know, these large sugar molecules should not be able to get through a gut that is healed and sealed. So if there's a lot of lactulose showing up in the urine, right, then, then we have a problem, right.

Whitney (00:36:57):
So but these tests can, can give us a lot of false negatives because if you've got bacterial overgrowth in your small intestine and you drink that sugar solution, the bacteria is going to start munching down on the sugar and then your test results are gonna look normal. Right. and other things can affect those results too. Like just your, your transit time, right? How quickly you have a bowel movement after, after you eat. I mean, that, that will affect what happens to, so, so there are some things that we kinda need to rule out. So I frequently will see someone come to me and they've had a lactulose mannitol test done, and it looks totally negative. There's no leaky gut that's indicated. Then we run the blood test and we see that they have a pretty profound, profound and persistent leaky gut. So I always opt for blood testing if that's possible.

Logan (00:37:55):
Nice. And then as far as healing, the leaky gut, where do you start with that?

Whitney (00:38:01):
Well, removal is the first thing, right? You've got to remove the triggers. So there are just certain common sense things that, that I think everyone should do. The first being, get rid of all the grains in your diet not just the gluten, but all the other grains because they, well, one they're not particularly nutrient dense and they, they bring with them a lot of anti-nutrients and things that disrupt the mucosal barrier and create, you know, damage and inflammation and promote leaky gut. Doesn't have to be gluten to do that. And then legumes are, are not as bad as grains, but they also can be disruptive and inflammatory for the gut. And then there's things like the alcohol and the process sugar, and right. So I usually try and get people to transition to more of an ancestral template. So your paleo primal kind of template and then, you know, looking around the environment, right?

Whitney (00:38:59):
Stop painting your nails, stop dyeing your hair, stop, you know, stop putting on a lot of chemicals on your body. Get a shower, filter, you know, these kinds of common sense changes that we can make in our behavior and our daily surroundings. But then at that point you kind of have to look at, alright, well, what are the mysteries we need to solve? You know, are there other food antigens that are causing your immune system problem and, and disrupting your gut health, right? Or do you have a constant drip of mercury coming into your gut? That's a problem, right? Or do you have a chronic parasite that we don't know about it? So it's not uncommon to see Giardia and Blastocystis. These are two parasites. I see all the time where clients don't have any, you know, quote unquote symptoms of parasitic infection.

Whitney (00:39:49):
But these are chronic infections. And, and until you get rid of those, it's really difficult to truly heal and seal the gut. So removal is really the first, the first big thing. And then we look at, you know, replacing, maybe what's not, what's been missing reinoculating the microbiome based on you know, what their current gut flora looks like, right? They're bacterial and yeast profile, their short chain, fatty acids, stuff like that. And then we also think about repairing, right? So things like you know, L-glutamine and marshmallow root and slippery Elm and zinc carnosine and immunoglobulins, you know, that help repair and restore mucosal barrier, integrity.

Logan (00:40:33):
Are you fan of bone broth as far as repairing the gut?

Whitney (00:40:37):
Absolutely. And in fact, Logan, that's something that, you know, it, if someone wants to really get, get their gut healed and sealed quickly you do a five to seven day bone broth fast, and you basically have a pretty healed gut because those, the cells in our, in our gut, they turn over every, about every five days. Right. So if you can just lay off the food and just do water and a little bit of bone broth every day, that gives your body the ability to do what it knows how to do anyway, repair all that damage and, and create new healthier cells. Right? So for folks that are have chronic or multiple autoimmune diseases, and they've been dealing with chronic illness for a while, and they're kind of swimming upstream against this against the strong current that they've been fighting their whole life. Oftentimes I'll have people just do you know, a three to five day bone broth fast once a month. Let's just kind of like do a monthly reset. And that seems to really help them maintain a balance of low inflammation. So yeah, bone broth is super

Logan (00:41:50):
Wow. That makes sense. Because it hits on all the things you were saying as far as for removal replacement and repairment, you remove all the bad stuff by fasting, and then you get the bone broth in there, which is one of the most healing things for it. And I imagine you could throw a few of those herbs or probiotics in addition to that, and that would work even better.

Whitney (00:42:09):
Oh yeah. Throw a little L-glutamine into your bone broth and some extra collagen peptides and stuff. Yeah. You can kind of supercharge your, your bone broth.

Logan (00:42:20):
I liked that. How to fix auto immunity fast.

Whitney (00:42:23):
Yeah. Well, let's, I wish I could put that on a bumper sticker, but

Logan (00:42:29):
Know a person can do a fast like that. You know, that's stepping stones, many people I've never fasted before depending on where they're coming from. So that's not something that jump in with both feet in most cases. I mean, I'm sure it works for some people. It took me years and years and fasting before I even did a seven day fast. So

Whitney (00:42:48):
Yeah, it could be something that you need to work up to you particularly if you're coming from a place of standard American diet where you've got a lot of blood sugar dysregulation, it can be really tough to fast.

Logan (00:43:00):
Yeah. Although bone broth, I think is easier than water. I did my longest fast with seven days nonetheless day of that, I had bone broth after doing just like teas, water even some dry fasting in there. And that first sip of bone broth was like being hugged. It was so amazing.

Whitney (00:43:25):
Yeah. That's awesome.

Logan (00:43:28):
Okay. I think those are excellent strategies as far as doing that. And I mean, these are things that everyone can do. Again, we, we focused a bit on auto-immunity on thyroid conditions, but in general, this stuff will help people with just about everything, right?

Whitney (00:43:46):
Yeah, I think so. And, and in fact, you know, when I think when I look at chronic disease in general, not just auto-immune disease you, you really can get 80 to 90% of the work done. If you just have this mindset of let's remove all of the crap that we know really off the body and causes inflammation in everybody and all these chemicals that shouldn't be in our environment, but, but we're coming into contact with them all the time, you know, just these common sense things. And then, and then replace nutrient deficiencies that are there almost a hundred percent of the time, you know, that's just such a huge benefit, but that also kind of means for a lot of people getting the grid in terms of, you know, getting off the social grid of, of that behavior of fast food and going out to restaurants and socializing around food and socializing around drinking. And that's probably the, the thing that some of my clients have the hardest time with is that sense of, Oh, I don't want to be different than everybody else. Right. that, that can be kind of a hard adjustment to like find your new tribe, you know, that can support you in a different type of lifestyle.

Logan (00:45:05):
Yeah. And any tips on that, what has worked well as far as getting your clients to make that because yeah, I mean, food is such a social thing that, that often is the thing that holds it back, you know, that in addition to all sorts of mental and emotional baggage that people seem to have around food. But the, the social component is huge. So yeah. What do you recommend for clients that are finding that hard to do?

Whitney (00:45:30):
Yeah, well, there are some like certain phases that people go through, you know, they, when, when they realize that they have to make these kinds of changes, first, they go through kind of like a cycle of grief, right. Like lamenting for a previous way of life. And one of the first things I think that, that folks should try and do is replace some of their like mainstay comfort foods. You know, if you, if you go online and, and you punch in, you know, macaroni and cheese, paleo, I mean, just the paleo at the end of every Google and you, you can come up with recipes where you can kind of feed that emotional comfort food connection for yourself by perfecting a few recipes, you know, cause you gotta have something you can kind of pull out and go, okay, I, I'm not going to backslide.

Whitney (00:46:19):
I can have this comfort food and I can keep moving forward. The other thing is, you know, getting the support of your well, whoever you live with, right? So if, if you live with a family or if you have roommates or whatever, making sure that, that you, your immediate environment is a supportive environment and there are ways to have conversations around that and, and, and gain the support of the people that love you. Beyond that, I really recommend you know, today it's, it's so easy to find a community out there, whether it's, you know, just listening to like the primal blueprint podcast with Mark Sisson, right. Or, or other paleo podcasts, there's also a lot of books getting educated, right? Getting exposure to people in the community that are super excited to support you in an ancestral lifestyle or an autoimmune paleo lifestyle, whatever, whatever template you're doing.

Whitney (00:47:20):
The other thing is there is I want to mention this because there's an app and you can download it on your phone. It's called Vivify, it's a really bad for an app, but it's V I M I F Y. And they run these challenges usually once every couple of months. And so you can do like a primal or a paleo challenge, and it's all gamified there's coaches that have online support, you know, all this all smartphone-based they give you all the education, all the support, all the cheerleading. So for some of my clients who feel really isolated, particularly on, on a paleo journal, I mean, journey, they really find benefit in participating in these online challenges because it's just an instant community. And, and everyone who's struggling is kind of having the same struggles. Right. And they can be there in support not from a place of lamenting, but from a place of cheering each other on.

Logan (00:48:19):
Yeah. That's great. That's a long list of very useful stuff. And yeah, I found much the same, like as much as he can out of your house, like, it, it doesn't mean you can never eat crappy food again, but just upgrade your crappy food. Like you were saying with the comfort foods, like you can still eat Mac and cheese. It's just a paleo versions going to be not as detrimental to your body as, you know, Kraft, macaroni and cheese. So, yeah. And with diet, especially because of food, like willpower's a notoriously faulty resource. So having those fallback positions that are better off than previous fallback positions, if he can just upgrade those that, that can make such a huge difference.

Whitney (00:49:02):
It's, it's a game changer. It really is. And if you can sustain that for long enough, then if you ever go back to those old, you know, comfort foods, they don't taste the same as you remember them. And you don't feel good when you eat the right. They're not very comfortable anymore.

Logan (00:49:20):
Yeah, absolutely. That's I like this idea of this like upward expanding spiral of vitality. And as you improve over time, yeah. You may come back to different things, but as I was saying, even the crappy food that you eat, like it's still organic and it doesn't have all the chemicals and different things. So yeah, it's, it's just a better way of doing things once you can get there, but realize the, the path often is very long in doing this, but you gotta start somewhere and just one step in front of the other. Yeah.

Whitney (00:49:50):
Yup. And, and I think the, the architecture or the scaffolding that holds all of that together is the educational piece. You gotta be willing to educate yourself, to read a few books, you know, to understand why those foods are bad for you. You know what they actually do biochemically, you know, in your physiology, it's one thing to make decisions emotionally, but you gotta be able to defend them logically. Right. So that can be particularly for people who have any kind of a type a, or, you know, soap box kind of mentality certainly do. So I can talk about gluten all day long. And you know, anyone starts giving me resistance about, you know, Oh, you should eat this can't you have one little bite of this. I just go into full education mode. You know, I was like, no, let me tell you why you shouldn't put that in your mouth. So, you know, it drives my husband crazy, but so, you know, you can become your own little lifestyle warrior. And even though it might annoy the people around you initially, pretty soon it starts to wear off on them. You know, both my daughters are now paleo gluten-free they're, you know, they're loving life in that different way of eating, but when they were teenagers, Oh my gosh,

Logan (00:51:06):
Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's reminding me when me and my wife first went. Gluten-Free like, one of the things I did was a there's some Telus summit series all about gluten. So I was like, Oh, okay. Gonna go dive in this, learn all I can. And, you know, as he said that the kind of evidence, the education really backs up, it makes your actions easier to do once you really kind of understand what it's doing and why it may not be a good fit for you.

Whitney (00:51:34):
Yeah, absolutely. That one, one trip, my husband and I were in a long car ride and, and he really wasn't completely on board with the gluten thing. And we just listened to wheat belly all the way home. And by the time we got home, he was like, Oh my God. You know, I'm never eating that stuff again.

Logan (00:51:56):
All right. And the good news is there are, yeah. I mean, if you're still doing grains, there's, gluten-free food has come a long way from back in the seventies or so, although yeah. Sometimes definitely getting, removing all the grains and recognizing all that. But yeah, I mean, paleo foods come a long way and so it continues to become easier while still satisfying everything. And then soon enough, as you were saying, like your lifestyle is shifted where those stuff you used to love you try it again. It's like, no, this isn't even that good. But the memory of it is better than the actual

Whitney (00:52:34):
Exactly.

Logan (00:52:39):
One thing you mentioned a little as far as acupuncture. So we've really kind of focused on diet and diet of course, is super important, both for what it includes and what it doesn't include, but I'd like to focus on these other modalities. So using the acupuncture and no part of that, as part of your training probably involve the use of Chinese herbs included in there, which gets through the diet component. But I mean, this is energy. It's moving through meridians in the body and the insertion of needles, like how is that helping with health? Where do you see that place? Is there like certain conditions or certain areas that, that really helps? How is the acupuncture kind of assisting as you make these other changes? I know it's kind of a broad question, but could you speak a little bit to that? Sure.

Whitney (00:53:24):
Well, from the Chinese medicine perspective matter follows energy, right? So the health of, of the human body, all the organ systems is dependent upon the energy flow. And if you manage the energy flow, the matter follows, right. So everything has an energetic component when we're talking about any sort of symptom collection or, or diagnosis. So energy medicine is super important and, and it's absolutely, I wouldn't even say it's adjunctive, you know, I I'd say it's, it should be part of your medical team, right? Your healthcare team, if you have a community acupuncture clinic in your area, that's the kind of acupuncture I practice. It's a community setting, it's low cost. That way people can afford, you know, two or three treatments a week if they want. The beautiful thing about it is you're not treating a collection of symptoms.

Whitney (00:54:20):
You really are treating the energetic imbalance and kind of giving the body signals. And it knows what to do with those signals. You know, the acupuncturist themselves are not like, you know, wizards or anything. We just know how to balance and allow the body to manage energy flow in the way that it knows how to do right. She, gong is another way you can do that. You know, acupuncture is, is me managing your energy by, by putting needles in your body. But if you, you know, took some Qigong classes and started practicing, she'd gone on a daily basis, that is like manual acupuncture. You're doing for yourself. You are, you know, really influencing the energy flow and tapping into all those meridians. Something like EFT, emotional freedom technique uses acupuncture points and also, you know, mind, body messaging that can be transformational, you know, so I usually counsel my clients to do some aspect of energy management, right.

Whitney (00:55:26):
Sometimes it's acupuncture, sometimes it's EFT, sometimes it's Tai-Chi or cheek gong or something like that really depends on where they're at, what they're up for. But yeah, I think it's critical. And you know, the Chinese knew this for 2000 years, but now quantum physics is telling us that, right, right. Th that we are mostly empty space and energy. And and, and that our organs do vibrate at different frequencies. We can measure that now. Well, Chinese medicine has known that for thousands of years, there is a different type of energy in the liver than there is in the small intestine. And they've known how to access that and influence that, you know, for, for thousands of years, but we are now getting verification of that, you know, which I think is awesome. So you know, whether, you know, even if you're just someone who loves to meditate, you know, that's another way of managing your energy. But I think thing that you got to keep in mind, everyone needs to keep in mind is that emotions are energy, right? And that if you have particular habits of thinking and feeling that, that vibrate at lower frequencies, like anger and worry and fear and frustration and things like that, that can really impact your energy quality, that will impact your organs and your tissues. Right. So it's also about kind of rewiring your habitual ways of thinking of feeling that really don't serve your own health and wellness and vitality.

Logan (00:57:01):
That's great. Yeah. I really liked the, how you phrase that in the beginning. Like we've been mostly talking about kind of chemicals, obviously there's an energetic component to food as well, but the, the Western mindset it's, you know, it's all about the chemicals and what they're doing in the body, which is important, but this energy aspect is equally as important. So no matter what disease you're working with or what condition or what you want to do making sure that energy management as you phrased it is a important piece of that. And there are a bunch of different tools and methodologies for doing so, but you got to make sure to include some because well, it matters.

Whitney (00:57:38):
Yeah. And then it comes back to what you spend so much time talking about, which I really love that concept of being sovereign right. Of your own health. And, and that's part of that personal responsibility, not just for the food that you put on your body, but the way that you react to people in your life, right. Are you, you know, chronically judgmental, right? Are you, if you complain about everything, I mean, you really have to be in a place where you take an honest inventory about you know, your habits of emotional response and, and even thoughts that you don't voice, you know, because even if they're not spoken, your body still hears them, every cell in your body still knows. You're thinking that thought. So, so you really do need to be more mindful.

Logan (00:58:27):
Absolutely. Well, thank you, Whitney, for this wide ranging conversation. I, it definitely helped clarify and solidify a few things for me. I'm sure the listeners got a lot out of it. Where can people go to find out more about you and your work?

Whitney (00:58:43):
Sure. well, my website is Morgan nutrition.com. You can find me on Instagram at Morgan nutrition, 24, Facebook at Morgan nutrition. I've got a YouTube channel Whitney Morgan nutrition. So pretty much you can find me all those places and on my website if folks are interested, I do have like a free thyroid lab interpretation guide. If you want to download that that's a big frustration for so many women. Their doctors tell them everything's normal and they don't know whether or not they should even argue with that, right. They don't understand maybe what's missing. So this is a great for women to take more control of their own thyroid health and be a little bit more assertive and have better questions when they go see their doctors. And also I've got a great course called the gluten gauntlet mini course. And the first lesson is free and it's just about teaching you how to transition your house to truly gluten-free house. And the first lesson is all about how to have those conversations with your, with your family to get everyone on board. So that's free at my website as well.

Logan (00:59:52):
All right, excellent. And I'll be sure to include all those links in the show notes. So you can head to health sovereign.com, find this episode and find those there. Thanks everyone for listening. And thank you, Whitney. It was a pleasure.

Whitney (01:00:04):
Thanks you. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. You take care.

Medical Monopoly Musings #63
FDA Reverses Mercury Amalgam Position after 50+ Years

“That’s the worst off-gassing I’ve ever seen. It’s toxic just for me to be standing here talking to you.”

Imagine hearing someone telling you this about your mercury amalgam fillings.

My wife did.

We were at an alternative health conference back years ago. One of the exhibitors was able to measure the off-gassing right then and there.

Shortly after returning home, she sought out a dentist that would remove the fillings for her. Between this and changing diet a whole bunch of her autoimmune symptoms from Sjogren’s syndrome disappeared.

Something big just hit the news recently. Did you see it covered? Chances are unless you’re tapped into alternative health news sites that it was buried under the more pressing coverage of the day.

The FDA reversed its long-held position stating that, at least for selected high-risk populations, mercury amalgam fillings should be avoided.

“The amalgam releases small amounts of mercury vapor over time. While low-levels of inhaled mercury vapor are generally not harmful to most people, these high-risk individuals may be at increased risk of adverse health outcomes,” says the FDA statement.

My wife happened to be in one of those selected populations, a woman that planned to get pregnant later.

Yet also in that statement we find a catch-22. “The FDA is not recommending anyone remove or replace existing amalgam fillings in good condition unless it is considered medically necessary because removing intact amalgam fillings can cause a temporary increase in exposure to mercury vapor and the potential loss of healthy tooth structure, potentially resulting in more risks than benefits.”

Certainly, it is important for their removal to be done right. Seek out a great biological dentist to do it.

But let me get this straight…It is a heavily toxic metal before it is put into your body. It is toxic when it is removed from your body. But it is mostly safe inside your teeth, except for the off-gassing.

Ultimately, by talking about high-risk groups, they’re saying this has health complications, but only certain groups will NOTICE them.

If it is toxic for one, it is toxic for all.

If you’re in one of those high-risk groups should you remove them or not? The FDA will not give you a clear answer.

The other interesting thing about this has to do with time. A CNN article covering this says, “The FDA and American Dental Association have said for years the material is safe, but advocates have called for a filling material that doesn't contain mercury since the 1970s.”

The powerful industry groups such as the American Dental Association, and the regulators such as the FDA deny, deny, deny that there is any problem with this medical procedure for decades and decades.
The top regulators and top scientists. AKA the experts.

Meanwhile, the lay people, the advocacy groups saying it’s toxic, get smeared and discredited, labeled as anti-science conspiracy theorists.

They fight against it since at least the 1970’s. This battle has waged for over 50 years. And who turns out to be right?

Well, the ADA still stands by these saying they’re a “durable, safe and effective” material.

Do you believe them?

Are the experts right…or it is actually the people?

Let’s think about this as a parallel to other medical interventions. Where else might powerful associations and the regulators be wrong? Where else do they say the science is settled (when in fact they often do not have safety science)?

Where else have the conflicts of interest kept a lockdown on the consensus opinion for decades and decades?

References:
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-issues-recommendations-certain-high-risk-groups-regarding-mercury-containing-dental-amalgam
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/24/health/fda-dental-amalgam-health-warning/index.html
https://www.ada.org/en/publications/ada-news/2020-archive/september/ada-reaffirms-that-dental-amalgam-is-durable-safe-effective-restorative-material

Medical Monopoly Musings #62
FDA Bought by Brawndo?

I recently re-watched the 2006 movie Idiocracy. It’s a very silly movie. But one thing struck me in there relevant to today’s issue. In it, in the future a sports drink, named Brawndo comes to be an all-powerful corporation, so much that they’re watering crops with it, a major part of the plot. The movie narrator tells us:

“Brawndo, the thirst mutilator, had come to replace water virtually everywhere. Water the basic component of all life had been deemed a threat to Brawndo’s profit margins. The solution came during the budget crisis of 2330 when the Brawndo corporation simply bought the FDA and the FCC, enabling them to say, do and sell anything they wanted.”

Silly, right?...Or not that far off from the truth?

According the FDA website, their total budget in 2019 was $5.7 billion. They state that, “Excluding tobacco user fees, federal budget authorization funds about 62 percent of FDA’s budget. The remaining 38 percent is paid for by industry user fees.

Human drugs are 65% funded by industry. Biologics are 40% funded by industry.

This was a result of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act passed in 1992. It’s been reapproved and modified multiple times since. With the largest lobbying army there is, laws and regulations tend to be in Big Pharma’s favor contrary to public perception.

Unlike Brawndo, Big Pharma has not outright bought the FDA…but neither are we as far away from that as most people who trust the FDA imagine!

“Instead of a regulator and a regulated industry, we now have a partnership. That relationship has tilted the agency away from a public health perspective to an industry friendly perspective,” said Dr. Michael Carome, director at Public Citizen, and a former HHS official.

Does this effect the end results? In 2010, 59.2% of drug applications were denied. In 2017, only 19.7%.

“You don’t survive as a senior official at the FDA unless you’re pro-industry,” said Dr. Thomas Marciniak, a former FDA medical team leader.

Understand that user fees are just one of many arrows in the quiver of Big Pharma capturing the agency. By itself it wouldn’t mean too much. But combine it with the revolving door, consultancy fees, what whistleblowers say, etc. and you’ll get the more complete picture.

Here’s an example. A ProPublica article shares the details of Nuplazid, made by Acadia Pharmaceuticals to treat Parkinson’s. Nuplazid had failed to show any improvement in two Phase 3 trials. Then Arcadia got permission from the FDA to do a new trial with a never-before-used scale of assessment designed to reduce the placebo effect (sounds familiar to the previous issue), plus reduce the normal two necessary trials to win approval to just one.

This new trial showed a small but statistically significant benefit. FDA medical reviewer Dr. Paul Andreason didn’t want to approve the drug because of serious adverse effects including death. For seven out of 91 to benefit, five would have serious side effects and one would die.

The FDA held an advisory committee. Testifying on behalf of the drug were doctors (paid consultants to Acadia), doctors from Parkinson’s advocacy groups (funded by Acadia), relatives of Parkinson’s patients (travel funded by Acadia), even a grandaughter of a Parkinson’s sufferer (later a paid brand-ambassador of Acadia).

As a result, Nuplazid got approved. In 2016, Nuplazid cost $33,000 per year of treatment. Between its approval and June 2018 there were 6,800 adverse reports and 887 deaths. In 2018 the FDA reviewed data but decided this was insufficient to make any changes.

How many of the advisory committee members or those re-reviewing the drug had financial conflicts of interest with Acadia?

Just one example of countless. A JAMA article looking at FDA approvals writes, “The amount of Prescription Drug User Fee Act fees collected from industry increased from an annual mean of $66 million in 1993-1997 to $820 million in 2013-2017, and in 2018, user fees accounted for approximately 80% of the salaries of review personnel responsible for the approval of new drugs.”

At the very best the FDA is trapped between a rock and a hard place. They now cannot do their job without funding by Big Pharma. And it’s clear, along with other elements, this funding comes with a pro-industry price-tag.

Idiocracy takes place in the year 2505. Sadly, I don’t think it’s going to take nearly that long with our current trajectory…

References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8NJRRnnatw
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/fact-sheet-fda-glance
https://www.propublica.org/article/fda-repays-industry-by-rushing-risky-drugs-to-market
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-analysis-finds-no-new-or-unexpected-safety-risks-associated-nuplazid-pimavanserin-medication
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31935033/

Medical Monopoly Musings #61
Scientific Shenanigans in the Placebo Effect

For any drug to be approved it must be blindly tested against a placebo. Because a belief in an intervention can cause the body to heal or change, testing against placebo is done to see if a drug has a real effect more than just the placebo. (Go back to #11 to learn why we should focus on harnessing the placebo rather than simply testing against it.)

In short, if a drug performs no better than placebo then it is not helping. Or if it has more side effects than placebo then it is dangerous.

If you’re a drug company and you want to get your drug approved then it’s all about beating the placebo control group in effectiveness, and having no more side effects than the sugar pill. In the end this comes down to statistics.

If you know your outcome, winning drug approval, you can aim to hit it. Thus, the science can be manipulated in a wide variety of ways. Here are a few:

• Of course, there is straight up falsifying data. This is rare because less overt methods exist but it occurs, like it did with Merck’s Vioxx (see #7).
• Look for a secondary outcome. Instead of looking for less deaths for instance, which many people are interested in, go for some biomarker in the body that is less relevant. For instance, statins lower cholesterol but may not positively impact mortality.
• Find effects just a sub-group, but use this to promote effectiveness (as was done with Remdesivir to win approval in #44)
• Diminish side effects. (In #59 we saw how a side effect of cardiac arrest was listed as fainting, or #40 how Prozac suicides were changed to overdoses, despite normal doses being used.)
• Don’t use an inert placebo but an active one instead. (Like HCQ was put up against a placebo of vitamin C in a recent study.)

There are even more ways than these, and it is to that we turn next.

Last issue we explored Dr. Maurizio Fava who held extensive conflicts of interest while being in a scientific gatekeeper position at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Among his lengthy conflicts was a patent section. Several of patents covered “A method and system for performing a clinical trial having a reduced placebo effect is disclosed.”

The patent filing includes, “It has been suggested that addressing the placebo response issue is one of the most important challenges facing the future of industry-sponsored psychopharmacologic drug development…The present invention comprises a system and technique for implementing a study and a related analytical plan aimed at reducing both an overall placebo response rate and a sample size requirement for clinical trials. By reducing the placebo response rate and the sample size, the present invention can, among other things, lower the expense and time required to evaluate the efficacy of new therapeutic compounds.”

Smaller sample sizes and less placebo response means that drugs have a better chance of being shown to be safe and effective.

Smaller sample sizes and less time also means less cost, which is important because, as mentioned, these are industry sponsored trials so they want faster and cheaper results.

Mentioned in the conflicts statement is that these patents are being licensed from MGH to Pharmaceutical Product Development LLC. (PPD). This company is a “leading global contract research organization.” These CRO’s do outsourced research services for pharma companies.

Their homepage states, “PPD offers proven solutions, ranging from early development to pharmacovigilance to post-approval services, to ensure your product’s success.”

Not save lives. Not heal people. Ensure product’s success…because that is really what it is all about.

Follow the money! Not only will Fava make money, but the hospital, MGH, gets funding from the patent. No wonder Fava has been promoted to the top spot there. Meanwhile, PPD, other CRO’s organizations, and consultants for drug approval such as revolving door Laughren, get paid by Big Pharma for success.

My, my…what a tangled web of conflicts we weave! It is no wonder so few people can understand how it’s possible they get away time and time again.

References:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/416105
https://nyulangone.org/news/clinical-trial-tests-efficacy-common-antimalarial-drug-prevent-covid-19-infection
https://web.archive.org/web/20180517181848/https://mghcme.org/faculty/faculty-detail/maurizio_fava
https://patents.google.com/patent/US7840419B1/
https://patents.google.com/patent/US7647235B1/
https://patents.google.com/patent/US7983936B1/
https://www.ppd.com/