Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Dr. Stephen Cabral on the Secret to Conquering Chronic Illness EP 431

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

https://passionstruck.com/passion-struck-book/ - Order a copy of my new book, "Passion Struck: Twelve Powerful Principles to Unlock Your Purpose and Ignite Your Most Intentional Life," today! Picked by the Next Big Idea Club as a must-read for 2024. In this captivating episode of the Passion Struck Podcast, Dr. Stephen Cabral delves deep into the intricate web of chronic illness, offering a roadmap to optimal health. Dr. Cabral's expertise in functional medicine elucidates the underlying causes of health issues, empowering listeners with practical strategies to reclaim their vitality.  Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/stephen-cabral-secret-conquering-chronic-illness/  Sponsors Brought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. Brought to you by Nom Nom: Go Right Now for 50% off your no-risk two week trial at https://trynom.com/passionstruck. Brought to you by Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth provided an exclusive offer for my listeners. 35% off site-wide when you use the code “PASSIONSTRUCK” at https://cozyearth.com/ This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/PASSIONSTRUCK, and get on your way to being your best self. This episode is brought to you By Constant Contact:  Helping the Small Stand Tall. Just go to Constant Contact dot com right now. So get going, and start GROWING your business today with a free trial at Constant Contact dot com. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/ UNCOVERING THE HIDDEN FACTORS BEHIND CHRONIC DISEASES WITH DR. STEPHEN CABRAL Known for his groundbreaking book 'The Rain Barrel Effect,' Dr. Cabral shares invaluable insights on understanding the root causes of health issues and how to achieve optimal well-being. Join us as we explore topics ranging from the impact of toxins on our health to the importance of quality sleep and the role of inflammation in diseases like ALS and high cholesterol. All things Stephen Cabral: https://stephencabral.com/  Catch More of Passion Struck My solo episode on Why We All Crave To Matter: Exploring The Power Of Mattering: https://passionstruck.com/exploring-the-power-of-mattering Catch my episode with Dr. Anthony Youn On How To Feel Great And Look Your Best Watch my interview with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon On The 3 Keys To Being Forever Strong. Listen to my interview with Dr. Casey Means On Unlocking Limitless Health: Metabolism’s Key Role Catch my episode with Dr. Mark Hyman On How Personalized Medicine Is Revolutionizing Healthcare Listen to my solo episode On 10 Benefits Of Meditation For Transforming The Mind And Body. Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! How to Connect with John Connect with John on Twitter at @John_RMiles and on Instagram at @john_R_Miles. Subscribe to our main YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Subscribe to our YouTube Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@passionstruckclips Want to uncover your profound sense of Mattering? I provide my master class on five simple steps to achieving it. Want to hear my best interviews? Check out my starter packs on intentional behavior change, women at the top of their game, longevity and well-being, and overcoming adversity. Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/   

Coming up next on Passion Strike. So the only reason that we are not at our peak state is we have some type of toxicity or we have some type of deficiency. Because we don't necessarily control our bodies. We control what we put into them, give them the raw material, and then our body in its innate wisdom knows what to do.

So I always say that there is no doctor in the world that heals you. Your body heals itself. A doctor or integrative health practitioner will help you, your body heals itself, a doctor or integrative health practitioner will help you put your body in position to heal. I call it the big rocks theory, I'm sure you've heard of this before. So big rocks theory is like, how do we get better? Well, you've got big rocks, small rocks, pebbles and sand. If you want to fill a barrel almost like the reverse rain barrel, and you want to get the 80% of the results with 20% of the work, you need to hit the heavy hitters.

Fix the nutrition, fix the sleep, and work on the stress. Like these types of things that take good nutrition. Something is just to fill up your deficiencies. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.

Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become Passion Struck.

Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 431 of Passion Struck, the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, be better, and make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that. We have episodes, starter packs, which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com

slash starter packs to get started. Are you curious to find out where you stand on the path to becoming passion struck? If so, dive into our engaging passion struck quiz. Crafted to reflect the core principles shared in my latest book, this quiz offers you a dynamic way to gauge your progress on the passion struck continuum.

Just head over to passionstruck.com to embark on this insightful journey. With just 20 questions in roughly 10 minutes of your time, don't miss this chance to gain valuable insights into your PassionStruck journey. Take the quiz today. And in case you missed it, earlier this week I had a phenomenal interview with Sharon Salzberg, a pioneer in bringing meditation and mindfulness to the Western world. As New York Times best-selling author and co-founder of one of America's first meditation centers,

Sharon shares timeless wisdom on cultivating compassion, resilience, and true happiness. Tune in to discover how Sharon's teachings can transform your life, offering practical tools for dealing with life's challenges and enhancing your emotional well-being. If you liked that episode or today's, we would so appreciate you giving it a five-star rating and review. They go such a long way in strengthening the passion struck community where we can help more people live an intentional life.

And I know we and our guests love to hear your feedback. Today, I am thrilled to welcome Dr. Steven Cabral, board certified doctor of neuropathy with an extensive expertise in integrative health and general medicine. In a world where healthcare costs continue to soar, chronic illnesses like autoimmune disorders, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and more are on the rise.

It's evident that conventional approaches are falling short. What if the key to reclaiming our wellbeing, shedding unwanted weight, and truly feeling alive again lies in a 6,000 year old secret? That's precisely what Dr. Cabral's book, The Rain Barrel Effect, explores. Imagine your body as a rain barrel, slowly filling up with life's daily challenges, lack of sleep, stress, toxins, and more. You may

not notice the accumulation until it spills over. Dr. Cabral feels that the spillover is what often sends us rushing to the doctors for quick fixes, while the real issue lies in addressing the underlying habits that fill our barrels. This principle is echoed by great minds in various domains, from Warren Buffett's advice on accumulating knowledge to financial planners advocating small consistent savings. And it's also what we discuss on this podcast continuously. It's the small actions that add up, and yet we often overlook this wisdom when it comes to our health. In our interview, Steven offers a common sense approach to well-being, breaking it down into

key areas, diet, exercise, stress reduction, sleep, and moving toxins from our life. These are simple steps that can lead to optimal health. Yet, they are often neglected in our daily routines. One of the most eye-opening takeaways from his work is the profound impact of toxins on our gut biome. With over 77,000 man-made chemicals in the U.S. alone, our bodies are under siege. It's no wonder that many people experience improved health when they consume higher quality foods and reduce exposure to chemicals.

Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am absolutely thrilled and honored today to have Dr. Stephen Cabral join us on Passion Struck and I'm so excited that we're actually bringing you this episode today live, which I know the audience loves. Steve, it's so great to have you here and thank you for making the drive and coming

to do this in person. Yeah, I appreciate you having me and I'm excited for our conversation today. Well, I wanted to start off by maybe understanding your roots. And I understand that when you were a kid, you wanted to be an archaeologist. Yes. Can you tell me a little bit about that passion and where that came from?

That's great. So you did your research. So my passion was always for the unknown, and it was for adventure and exploration when I was a kid. I used to read a lot of books. And some of it was science fiction. And some of it was mysteries like the Bermuda Triangle and those types of things.

And when I was younger, I knew that I loved sports. But I wasn't going to be a Division I athlete. I wasn't going to be able to make it to the pros. So I started to explore other things in my life. And what it allowed me to understand is that there is so much in this world that we can feel passionate about, that we can begin to explore, that also shows us, I think, so much about ourselves.

Why that came in handy is that when I got extremely sick at 17 years old, I had to eventually branch out from conventional medicine in order to find the answers that would ultimately lead to my cure. Yeah and that's actually where I wanted to go because I understand you're a teen and everything is going well in your life and then one day you wake up and you're just so ill you didn't know what to do with yourself. Can you take us back to what was happening at that point

and what was going through your body and what you were experiencing? Yes, so the truth is that I always had the signs as a teenager that something wasn't quite right. I had the allergies, I had sometimes the grogginess upon waking that really shouldn't happen as a teenager, but I always ignored that and I always just continued to push through.

But when I did wake up that one fall morning at 17 years old, which I can very specifically remember even to this day, is that my glands and my neck were swollen to the size of golf balls or a little bit larger. Same with my armpits, same within the groin. You've got lymph nodes basically at different key points throughout the body and their job is to circulate the white blood cells, bring them to those lymph nodes almost

like cleaning stations, and to be able to purify the body. So for me, when I woke up and all my lymph nodes were swollen, I could barely swallow, my eyes were basically swollen shut, I knew something was very different. I had been sick many times as a child, which I thought was normal, again, just being a kid, but that morning was different and I knew that it very different. I had been sick many times as a child, which I thought was normal, again, just being a kid. But that morning was different, and I knew that it was different. What I didn't know, it would be two years

of going to the doctor for 24 months, seeing over two dozen different specialists, a lot of these the best doctors in the world in Boston, Massachusetts. And although my blood work was off and I had low white blood cells, they knew something was wrong. They couldn't figure out what it was.

And it took me over two years just to get a diagnosis. Yeah, it's one of the biggest issues I've experienced myself with the way that the medical system works today is it seems to be all protocol based. And the way I like to give the analogy is it's almost like it's a tree, but instead of looking at the whole system, they're looking at the leaves or the branches individually instead of what's underlying, causing all these issues.

And that's at the core, I think, of the difference between traditional medicine and what you practice with functional medicine. Is that a good way to think about it? It is, and I had no idea what integrative health or alternative health or functional medicine was. This is back in the mid-90s. So I was a senior in high school,

supposed to be the time of my life. Like I played three sports and I loved school, I really did. And what happened was when I got sick, I had to leave school for almost two months. I almost lost literally everything. I had basically a scholarship grant going into college. I was in National Honor Society, all these different things that I built up basically for the ego, college. I was in National Honor Society. All these different things that I built up

basically for the ego, right? And all of that came crumbling down. I lost 30 pounds and most of that was muscle because when you're a teenager, you're probably pretty lean in the first place if you're playing a lot of sports. So all of that just washed away. And I had to rebuild myself

what would be over the next 10 years. Now, two years later, I finally had a doctor say to me, this is chief of staff of one of the top hospitals in the world. And Boston, Massachusetts has three of the top hospitals in the world. It has Mass General Hospital, it has Brigham and Women's, and it has Beth Israel.

And so I don't want to say the hospital is at one of those, and the chief of staff is the top one. So I got a referral to be able to go there. My parents pulled any strings they had, and we're just a regular middle class family. And they basically said, listen, you've done MRIs. You've done CAT scans. You've done this.

We can't figure it out. It's either going to get worse, and then it will show up in your blood work, or maybe it'll get better, but we just don't know. And so I was dejected. I was told it was all in my head. I was told all these different stories. And then one day, by chance, which sometimes happens in your life, you just have to take action,

then if you're given that opportunity, a neighbor said, have you ever heard of the Moreno Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts? And this is one of the very first integrative health centers, really in the United States in the 90s. This is 30 years ago or so when functional medicine was being done.

And that opened my eyes to a new world of practicing medicine and healing. Well, and then how did that lead you down the path of what you ended up studying and becoming and your incredible podcast and everything else? Was it that personal journey that ignited that spark in you to pursue this professionally as well? Not in the beginning, because I was skeptical of alternative health or natural health. But we started running lab tests that went beyond blood work. So blood work is amazing at diagnosing disease. But it never tells you why that disease came about in the first place.

So my blood work only showed my white blood cells were off, because they were running basic panels. Well, it turns out I had autoimmune issues. I had Addison's disease, which is the inability to produce cortisol. And I had type 2 diabetes. Now, besides that, I had POTS, I had insomnia, I had allergies, I had all sorts of other issues, histamine issues, but those were the major ones. Those are real diagnosed diseases. Again, I always say there's no alternative to alternative health because nothing else looks for the underlying

root cause, but when I would go to these doctors, they would look at my gut health, and it turns out I had small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which is called SIBO. I had candida overgrowth. I had what's called leaky gut, or increased intestinal permeability. 30 years ago, they would laugh you out of a conventional medicine doctor's office. Now, of course, it's written about on Harvard's website. These are things that I believed in.

So what I did was begin to work on all the issues that I had. I had high mercury levels. Because when I was in college, I was trying to put muscle on and go to the gym and all these things because if I couldn't fix the inside, I wanted to fix the outside. That's how I looked at it. And it gave me a lot of hope, honestly. That's why I love exercise and I love the gym.

But what I did, I was eating a can of tuna every night on microwavable rice, which obviously you should not do these things, and then some cheap olive oil. And that was a great source of that. But there's a lot of mercury in tuna. And so my mercury levels got built up over time. So over time, I began to fix these things. I met my mentor finally at 27 years old, 10 years after

this process started. And she was the one, Dr. Pete, who put everything together. She took the different labs, so state of the art function medicine lab testing with Ayurvedic medicine, put it together. Six months after I met her, I was completely better. She was the one who pushed me to say, you've read thousands of books, you've been to a hundred different practitioners, you have to go back to school and then teach this yourself. And that's exactly how it was. I love this story because I have a history of having traumatic brain injuries.

And I had a ton of post-concussion long-term syndromes and symptoms. And I kept going to doctors and they kept telling me, basically, you're barking down the wrong tree. It has nothing to do with any of that. And I finally was actually talking to a psychiatrist who said, John, what you need to do is become the CEO of your own health, and you need to start guiding these people to the destination that you wanna go. And so what it opened up for me is I did get those lab tests,

but a much more comprehensive panel of them, and what it showed was that I had critical deficiencies in hormones and vitamins and other things that were at the root cause of this inflammation. And then I also discovered that I wasn't eating as cleanly as I possibly could and that my gut health was playing a huge role in it. But similar to you, once I started to get the right

supplements in the system, altered my diet, started doing intermittent fasting, got my sleep routine in check, it was like just dramatic things started to happen for me. The brain fog cleared. I was much sharper, et cetera. So a long way to asking this question, but I remember talking to Katie Milkman, who's a behavior scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.

And I asked her, what got you to want to get so involved with behavior change? And she said, when I was an undergrad, happened to see the study that by the time most of us are in our 50s, we have one, if not two underlying conditions. And she said that at the core of it is all of these things are typically reversible, but they're caused by the choices that we make, which is really the study of behavior

science. And how much do you believe that's true? I 100% believe it's true The problem is that it's very difficult to discern what your underlying root cause is that's leading to these one to two conditions So in our practice bring it full circle. I never thought about this until years later But I ended up doing my internships overseas. Now I did some in the United States, but I went to China and I was an intern in a traditional Chinese medicine hospital.

I studied Ayurvedic medicine in India and Sri Lanka. I studied functional medicine and bioregulatory medicine in Europe and in the US. And so at the time I didn't realize it, but I was using my love for exploring adventure in the unknown to figure out what the best way to help people was. I honestly believed that there was one way

that we could help everyone. And what I realized that Ayurvedic medicine's amazing, traditional Chinese medicine's amazing, functional medicine, all of that, but not for every single individual. I was in clinics with hundreds of people in these clinics. Some got better, Some didn't. So what I realized was that everything works. You have to know who to use it with at the right time. Now the way that you know how to do that is by running.

Yes your blood work. Very important but not overlooking looking at gut testing vitamin and mineral testing. Omega 6 is for us. Omega 3 is. So when people ask, do you believe in omega 3s? Do you believe in this diet? Do you believe in that diet? I say, yeah, I believe in all of it for the right person at the right time. Here's how you find out what's right for you. That's what I was missing for years. I didn't know what was right for me. A friend would say, oh, I used to have bloating. I used to have all these things.

This is what I did. I would try it, got some results maybe, or maybe I didn't. And it's the same for each individual. We don't necessarily know what's right for us until we start to explore that. So we've seen now over a quarter of a million people in our practice. In Boston, I had two locations,

and now it's completely virtual. And we work with people in 27 countries all over the world, so we have a large data set to say there are things festering under the surface. We call it the rain barrel effect. And you think you're totally fine, just like I did at 17. But one little thing, and it overflows, and now you get the diagnosed disease.

And so our job is to say, before that rain barrel overflows, what's going on? And it's not usually one thing. No, and I love that analogy to the rain barrel effect, because what it brings up in my mind is something I experienced which is burnout. And I've heard you talk about burnout on a couple of podcasts. And to me when you think about burnout it's not something that happens overnight. At least for me when I think it originally started which was probably a decade before it hit its peak, I think it started almost unconsciously. It was this subtle, gradual buildup.

And then once it's reached another foundation, it keeps building up. And you don't even notice it because it's happening so slightly. I think this is how depression happens as well. And then I reached a point where it was at a medium grade and a couple things happened in life and all of a sudden hockey sticks

and you're completely numb. Yes. And I think our health kind of goes the same way is over time, like a rain barrel, it collects with these drops and before you know it, it starts overfilling and then you have all these percussions that you're feeling, whether it's chronic pain or fatigue,

or you can't sleep, or whatever it might be. Is that a great way to think about it? 100%. And I say that there's usually three events. So, one, there's a genetic predisposition. So I was genetically predisposed to type 2 diabetes that runs in my family, and I was genetically predisposed to autoimmune issues like It runs in my family. And I was genetically predisposed to autoimmune issues like rheumatoid arthritis.

Now, usually you would get those in your 40s or 50s or 60s, not at 17. So strange that I would get that early, but it's in my genetics. And then it's lifestyle. And then just like you said, there's a hockey stick event. That's what I've seen over my 25 years, is that there's a triggering event, I call it.

So that is what overflows that rain barrel. Now sometimes it's exposure to a heavy metal, pesticide, whatever it might be, but sometimes it's, and it often is, emotional based stress. So I have something called the de-stress protocol that reverses this, but the beginning of it, I was 17, but I was stressed out. I was playing three sports, I was the oldest in my family, I was 17, but I was stressed out. I was playing three sports. I was the oldest in my family. I was going to be the first one to go to college.

I was trying to ace my SATs. I was working a job at the same time. I was doing martial arts on top of the sports I was doing, trying to have friendships, trying to have relationships, not sleeping, and that was terrible. But I was also taking amoxicillin, a antibiotic, since 14 years old. My dermatologist, meaning well, to improve my overall skin,

wanted to give me something that would help with acne. Well, lo and behold, and they didn't know it back then, but it destroys your gut bacteria as well. So since 80% of your immune system is in your digestive system in your gut, what did it also do? Destroyed my immune system. So now it left me susceptible to this huge amount of stress that many people have in their life. My body couldn't handle it, and it overflowed.

By that point, I had so many deficiencies and so many toxicities, it shouldn't take years to get better. It should take, for the worst cases, about three to six months, not overnight, but about three to six months. For me, I didn't have the answers, so it took years. Yeah, and I think that's another thing that people don't understand is you find yourself in this place, and you think it's going to be like a light switch, and you're going

to go from feeling this way to all of a sudden feeling recovered. And just as it was a gradual buildup, it's going to take time for your body to readjust. And I think that's something that's often overlooked, is people start changing their eating habits or something, and three weeks later, they don't feel completely different, and then they want to stop, and they don't understand

that it's going to take a long time to work yourself back to a stable environment that your body needs to function properly in? Well, two parts to that. So one is in 21 days you can feel radically different because you may have been missing certain B vitamins or antioxidants or mineral imbalances were off. But at the same time people then just be like, oh, I'm healed. But you're not because you have to get to a much deeper level within the body.

Yes, adding nutrients can sometimes give you a huge boost. But just as you said, that does not mean that the work has been done at a much deeper level. So when I was 27, I met my mentor, Dr. Pete, better in six months. That means no more arthritic pain, no more of the Addison's disease, again, that weak cortisol production, no more of the mastison's disease, again, that weak cortisol production,

no more of the mastocytosis, the bad allergies and those types of things. But it actually wasn't for years later that I was at my pinnacle, which I've been able to maintain. So now I'm in my mid-40s, but I feel better than I did when I was in my early 30s or even my teens before I got sick. And the reason is that just interest, your health, what you're doing compounds over time. So my biological age has continued to go down

from when I was in my mid-30s. I was also much more stressed in my mid-30s, running a huge practice and all of that. But it doesn't mean that just because now I'm in my mid-40s, I should start to decline. If anything, the work that I've done over the years now is starting to finally pay off to a greater degree. Yeah, and my inflection point happened

when I was a C level on a Fortune 50 company. And I think I was under just so much stress. I had family stress. I was traveling outside of the country about two weeks, a month. In fact, one of these years I did 350,000 miles traveling. And then when I was in the office, there was so much catch-up that I was doing 80 to 100 hour weeks, plus the pressure, the politics, the HR issues. It was just everything.

And once all that starts compounding and you're eating on the road all the time so you're not eating healthy you're not getting in the regular exercise you're not getting in the self-care practices it's like everything unravels and I remember finally going to a therapist and I was talking to him about everything that's happening in my life and he said I want you to do a visualization exercise. And he goes, picture yourself sitting on a stool in the kitchen. And he goes, but your stool just has one support underneath it, and it's the constant grind. And he goes, what do you think that's doing to you and it's going to do to you?

I go, it's going to make me topple over. He said a much better way to think about your life is think about it as a stool with multiple pillars under it. And one of them could be physical health, mental health, emotional health, relationship health. And if you get all those things in balance, you're not going to have to worry about these other things because you'll be better able to handle stress. And I think that's a lot of what you teach in your practice. I love that analogy, because I always think of it as, I haven't thought of the single leg stool before,

but people always use the analogy of the three-legged stool. But ours is an eight-legged stool. So as you're thinking that, I'm like, yeah, the de-stress protocol's eight parts. So it's diet, exercise, stress reduction, tox removal, rest and sleep protocols, emotional balance, scientifically-backed supplements, and a success mindset.

And you teach so many of these things on your show. It's amazing. But the nice thing is, so one is, if you get the perfect diet, phenomenal. Still probably not going to fix the majority of people. Diet alone is not enough. Because if you don't produce enough stomach acid or too much, you're not eating the proper foods for your body.

You don't have the right bacteria in your gut. You might have H. pylori. You might have parasites. You might have yeast overgrowth. You might have mold. You don't actually know. So all the greatest foods in the world, they're not going to fix that.

So that's a problem. But I like to look at it this way. You don't need to be perfect in life to get an A result. But if you're 80% in 80 areas, instead of being 100% in one area, which is really hard to maintain, if you're on the road, it's so challenging to eat well every single meal. And sometimes you just want to enjoy yourself for a meal.

So I look at it as, okay, de-stress protocol, all of the major things, no one is more important than another, because I'll tell you, I have people in my practice, high performers, and they're hitting all of the top ones except for the stress, emotional balance, success mindset. They're always worried about what's gonna go wrong. They've got childhood trauma things that they're dealing with like most people but there's a kind of coming to a forefront and there is feelings of

shame or not enough self-worth and that stress weighs on them and crushes their health. And sometimes they're looking towards a supplement or anything for that. No, supplements are very helpful. Magnesium, things like adrenal soothe, which have a phosphocering, they'll take the edge off. But you still have to do the work. And the work is what allows you then

to use less than of the supplements in diet and exercise, less of the maybe sauna cold plunge, which are all great, and more of being at peace within yourself. Yeah, I always like to bring up magnesium because I was, one of my favorite interviewees is Dominic D'Agostino, who I'm sure, and Dom always says to me, magnesium is the most underrated supplement there is out there.

It could be true, yeah, for sure. Well, one of the things that you explore in the book, and it's in part one of the book that I think it's important for us to go into, is toxins. And if I remember correctly, you go through 10 of them in the book. But why are toxins something that we should be aware of, but so many of us don't pay enough attention to?

Yeah, the first half of my book is dedicated to how you got here. Not at your peak health, not at your peak body, not at your peak longevity, anti-aging, and mindset state. And so there's really two things. Like that's the amazing thing is that most difficult things to achieve in life can be broken down into simple components. So the only reason that we are not at our peak state is we have some type of toxicity or we have some type of deficiency because we don't necessarily control our bodies. We control what we put into them, give them the raw material, and then our body in its

innate wisdom knows what to do. So I always say that there is no doctor in the world that heals you. Your body heals itself. A doctor or integrative health practitioner will help you put your body in a position to heal. So you have to get enough sleep. You're not going to heal in five and a half hours of

sleep, so we need to start with some heavy, I call it the Big Rocks Theory. I'm sure you've heard of this before. So Big Rocks Theory is like, how do we get better? Well, you've got big rocks, small rocks, pebbles, and sand. So if you want to fill a barrel, almost like the reverse rain barrel, and you want to get the 80% of the results with 20% of the work, you need the heavy hitters.

Fix the nutrition, fix the sleep, and work on the stress. These types of things. They take good nutrition. Something is just to fill up your deficiencies. And the exercise is important. All those meditations are important. but if you're not doing the big things, it's going to be difficult to get there. And so for me, I talk about toxins and even when my book came out, which isn't that long

ago, people were, they would just dismiss, conventional medicine would dismiss toxins, like it doesn't exist, but like there, when I wrote my book, there was over 77,000 manmade toxins. That means these things are not natural from nature. All of Europe, they only allow 8,000 in there was over 77,000 man-made toxins. That means these things are not natural from nature. All of Europe, they only allow 8,000 in Europe. Of these, 77,000. Now in the United States, there's well over 100,000, with some are in the range of about 140,000,

because these actually have to be listed with the World Health Organization and the United States, the FDA. And it's remarkable that we don't talk about them more often, because these toxins, let's just think about them like aluminum, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, herbicides, pesticides that are on our food. All of these things in cosmetics for women, all these things then get into our body.

And our body, it can't keep them there. We know that they lead when they accumulate to Alzheimer's, MS, autoimmune issues, and so much more. So our job is to find these toxins, not worryimmune issues, and so much more. So our job is to find these toxins, not worry about them. I tell people that. We don't want to, because that adds more stress. So we need to look at what are the main things. Clean water, clean food, clean air.

Start there. So water filter, shower filter, air filter for your home, and then when you can, do what's called the dirty dozen and clean 15. So there are 12 foods that you should never eat unless you can buy organic. But then there's also 15 foods that you can eat if you can't afford to buy all organic or can't access it. So it's a nice happy medium, and it will allow you to put less of these pesticides in your body as well, which actually hurt your gut bacteria.

Well, and that's actually where I wanted to go. I was interested in hearing you talk about more your beliefs on organic versus inorganic, because you hear a lot of people out there argue that even though they're saying they're organic, they're not truly organic. But can you give some of those examples of those natural things that we definitely should eat in an organic state?

Yes, so when we're looking at, the easiest way to think of it is fruits and vegetables where you cannot wash off the pesticide. And so what that looks, let's take for example any soft berries. So what happens is you can't wash a raspberry. You can run it out of water, but that pesticide that's sprayed on it is going to absorb through. And a lot of the things like spinach and a lot of the others, you just can't literally clean the pesticide off.

It gets absorbed in. Apples is another big example. And it's not easy to get organic apples, because apples will be destroyed in orchards unless they're sprayed with something. So you're right, how do you get an organic apple? Well, they're using copper-based sprays and they're using other things as well. They're typically less harmful, but no matter what,

I do recommend is when you get this produce, more like apples and fruits and veggies, that you put them in a container of water. Just use a ceramic bowl or stainless steel bowl and just add some baking powder or baking soda. That's all that you need to do. Or you can use apple cider vinegar, or you can use what's called an ozonator.

It's literally just a unit that you plug in, you put a tube into the water, and it blows in an extra oxygen molecule. And that oxygen molecule will actually help clean the food itself. You just need to let it sit for about 15 to 20 minutes, put it on a towel, let it dry, that helps clean that off. Now that's for the clean 15.

For the dirty dozen, the berries, the spinach, the lettuces, those types of things, try to always purchase those organic or just purchase a different fruit. Like, you don't have to demonize it, just purchase a different one. And I will say that there's an organization called the Environmental Working Group, ewg.org, that every single year puts out a new list of their Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen. So people can always check in that as well. OK.

And on the clean air side, something that I always am concerned about is the fragrances that we bring into our houses, whether there's something that we plug in, something that we put in the car that we plug in, or a candle that we burn. How much should we be worried about those types of things? So those are legitimate toxins that we never think about it because they're so pleasant smelling but they are artificial and they contain what are called VOCs.

So volatile organic compounds or chemicals and we inhale these through our nose which is actually more dangerous believe it or not than swallowing them in most cases. And the reason is that when you breathe something in through your nose it which is actually more dangerous, believe it or not, than swallowing them in most cases. And the reason is that when you breathe something in through your nose, it gets almost a free pass into the bloodstream. And whereas if we consume something, it has to get broken down by our stomach acid. It has to be digested through the first part

of the small intestine, which is called the duodenum. So bile mixes it. If bile finds toxins, it will basically bind it up and then move it through in a bowel movement, so it's a lot safer. And then after that, when you digest something, it then moves through the liver to be able to detox it. Well, with these fragrances, they can go right into the bloodstream.

Same with why I recommend a shower filter. The chlorine from your shower filter turns into a vapor in a hot shower or a steam, and you breathe it in. Goes right to the bloodstream. It is a chemical and a toxin to the body. And it creates free radicals. You might say, well, what disease does it cause?

OK, well, it creates breakdown of tissue in the body and inflammation. And then inflammation leads to whatever you are genetically susceptible to. That's the weak spot. So just to bring it full circle, essential oils are a much better alternative in a, almost like a steam, that are not sensitive to the body.

Meaning the body can use the essential oils that are all natural rather than synthetic fragrances. Okay, I think that's some great advice and it is hard during the holidays to break away from those scented candles because I think we all want our houses to smell like pumpkin pie or cookies or other things. Now, you can find a pine essential oil, which is a nice one. But I also say this.

Let's say you have a favorite candle that brings you back to your childhood and beautiful memories. It's the things that you do all the time that you need to worry about. If you burn that candle once or twice a week for four weeks during the holidays, you're going to be totally fine. So I don't like people to overly worry, and I like them to reduce the heavy hitters.

So you're in your bedroom for eight hours a night. That is the majority of the time. And now you're not awake for it, but you're still there. Reduce the EMFs in the bedroom. Reduce the Wi-Fi in the bedroom. Use organic sheets, comforters, bamboo sheets Wi-Fi in the bedroom, use organic sheets, comforters, bamboo sheets, whatever you want to use, a clean mattress. All of those things pay dividends because it's eight times, 365 days a year, times your lifetime.

So clean up the bedroom first, that's your air filter, all of those things, and you can even move your air filter around the house. That's what I tell people, you get one air filter, great, put it in your bedroom a couple hours before, it'll turn over all the air, then move it into your living space during the day. That saves you money. Well, that's a great idea. I'm going to take you up on that one. One other toxin I did want to explore with you is alcohol.

And I know it's something that people don't like to talk about or like to hear about, but can you give your thoughts on its impacts? So I very quickly become the least interesting and most hated person in the room once I start talking about alcohol and it's because the effects that alcohol has on the body, it's an immunosuppressant and it really does wreck your sleep and I would like to talk a little bit about that and it affects your brain. So we have something that when you put it into your body, it is a known chemical and toxin. That means that a lot of other functions begin to slow.

Your liver now focuses in the cytochrome P450 pathway. It has to break down this alcohol that can't stay in your bloodstream, because if it does, it will kill you. So it breaks it down and uses a tremendous amount of energy and a tremendous amount of resources, which can then create deficiencies over time. So it uses your folate, your methyl vitamins,

your methyl donors like methylfolate, methylcobalamin, which is B12, trimethylglycine, which is TMG, a lot of these sulfur-based amino acids that most of us aren't getting, because we're not eating a lot of cruciferous-based vegetables or garlic or onions, these types of things. And then it will help you get to sleep, which is a false sense that you're

getting a good night's sleep. But if you're someone that likes to track your sleep, you'll notice that your deep sleep, which should be about 90 minutes per night, actually goes down less than an hour. So yes, you fall asleep quickly, but it's not restorative sleep. You have a higher heart rate, a lower heart rate variability, which is a measure of recovery and rejuvenation,

and then it affects the brain long term as well. And Dr. Amon has a lot of great studies on that as well. Yeah, one of the things I'm always worried about is we have a history in my family of dementia. And so as I have started to research many of these things, one of the things I have realized is how important sleep is, because that's when your body is clearing the amyloid plaques out of the system and flushing it. And if you keep having these recurring periods where you're not getting those deep cycles in, it can exasperate your chances from what I've studied of having things like that happen.

Is that a... 100%. Okay. Yeah, no, that's absolutely correct. I have a three-part series on my podcast that goes through the end of Alzheimer's. Meaning like no one needs to get Alzheimer's anymore. So sometimes I give conventional medicine a hard time, but conventional medicine has amazing acute base testing and they do a great job at saving lives. What they don't do is help people very well with chronic based disease. So if you get Alzheimer's, conventional medicine doesn't do a lot. But there are actually protocols,

like the MEND protocol, that's been clinically proven, like in trials, to reverse nine out of 10 cases of Alzheimer's. Now the ones they can't reverse are terminal Alzheimer's, or terminal dementia. Alzheimer's is a variation of dementia, right? So there's levels of dementia. Alzheimer's would be one of those. And if you've ever seen the brain, I teach this in something called high-performance health. variation of dementia, right? So there's levels of dementia, Alzheimer's would be one of those.

And if you've ever seen the brain, I teach this in something called high performance health. You've seen the brain of someone with terminal Alzheimer's, there's holes in the brain. Natural medicine, conventional medicine, we don't know how to repair that. So when you get to that state, unfortunately, you have holes in the brain.

Now, here's the amazing thing, and I now recommend this to anyone that's able to. It's not fully accessible. I totally understand that. But you can do a full body MRI now without contrast, the toxicity of the contrast. And you can look at the brain and you can find hints of dementia or Alzheimer's 20 to 30 years in advance. Alzheimer's doesn't happen overnight.

Again, it overflows that rain barrel. It is years of, just like you said, the amyloid plaques is one of them. There's no doubt about that. High levels of cortisol, inflammation, heavy metals. These are all things that affect the brain. Lower amounts of neurotransmitters. And so our job is to test and give yourself on a yearly basis a clean bill of health. I'm good. Now you don't have to worry about that because yeah my family as well. Unfortunately, one of my grandfathers had Alzheimer's. On my wife's side, her grandfather had Alzheimer's.

And you look at a specific allele that you have in your body, which tells you you're more prone to it. Even if you're more prone to it, it doesn't mean that you have to have it. So the nice thing is test ahead of time, give yourself the clean bill of health. Nobody develops Alzheimer's over a year.

And you're good for the next year. Keep doing the things that are keeping you well. And as a teaser alert, in a couple moments here, we're going to be talking about my own toxicity reports, which we're going to share. So that's going to be interesting for me to go through those. So one other thing I did want to ask you about

is there seems to be a rise in ALS right now. And to me, it was quite shocking, because it is such an awful, depilitating disease. Yet the occurrence of it is just starting to skyrocket. Are the same things that we've been talking about linked to this as well? 100%. Unfortunately, if you look at the studies of what the top cause of mortality were in

the early 1900s, it was specific diseases and accidental deaths, things like that, that are very easily treated now, which is amazing. But we now have all of the diseases of chronic inflammation. And so one of the things that I really try to hit home is that inflammation is not necessarily something to be squelched for the sake of squelching inflammation. So you could take turmeric, right? There's all sorts of great things that you can take.

Ginger, all these great things. But do you know why you have inflammation in the first place? Because inflammation doesn't come out of nowhere. There's always an underlying root cause. It could be weakened mitochondria. Again, it could be high levels of cortisol, low levels of thyroid, heavy metals, gut-based issues, go on and on. There's probably like a good dozen to two dozen things. Now, I always say for every disease, there's no more than typically 10 to 12 factors for

that disease. So all we need to do is work through which one of those 10 to 12 you have for high blood pressure or low thyroid or for whatever it is. And by process of elimination, we figure out what it is. Now it's typically not just one. It's two to three. And OK, we work on those two to three for you individually.

Instead of, oh, is number eight or nine, or this is what your friend had, it might not be the same exact thing as you. So now the leading causes of death in the United States are cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure and stroke, which go hand in hand, type two diabetes, cancer, and then Alzheimer's. And after that, it's really preventable things.

Like it's COPD, okay, well, we can't smoke, we can't inhale asbestos or chemicals. And then it's accidental falls, it's, believe it or not, climbing up on a ladder or riding a motorcycle. We don't wanna, we can't inhale asbestos or chemicals. And then it's accidental falls. It's, believe it or not, climbing up a ladder or riding a motorcycle. We don't want to do these things. So these are all very preventable. There's kidney-based issues, which

goes along with type two diabetes and high blood pressure and being on a handful of medications. I mean, they don't tell you that being on blood pressure medications affects your kidneys over time. So our goal is to work on chronic preventable disease. We add a minimum of 10 to 15 years to our life. The only reason we have a human lifespan of 74 to 77 years old, 74 for men and 77 for women, is only

because people die of one of those specific five. And so if we can prevent those, which we can, people easily can live to 85, 90. Now, we teach how to get to 100, but it's not a guarantee. But you certainly get not only increased lifespan, you get increased healthspan. So quality of life, being able to do what you love well into your 60s, 70s, and 80s. I'm glad you did bring up type 2 diabetes. You probably weren't aware of this.

I'm sure you're familiar with Cyrus Combata, a doctor. He wrote the book Mastering Diabetes. And he's from California, but he just happened to move to St. Pete about two years ago. So he and I have become good friends and I love his book. And what they showed in it was primarily through diet interventions that 95% of type 2 diabetes is reversible, but almost all of it is preventable in the first place. Yes. As for type 2, for type 1,

I believe that in the future we will be able to reverse type 1 diabetes through stem cell-based therapy, and a lot of these rejuvenant therapies, they're called Yamanaka factors, which we don't have to get too deep into that, but certain cells in the pancreas are destroyed with type 1 diabetes. With type 2, you're not responding properly with the beta cells to insulin and being able to unlock the cells to get the glucose actually where it's supposed to be.

And I totally agree that type 2 diabetes is reversible, for sure. Okay. And then the last area I wanted to talk about, because I think it's something that a lot of people experience, is problems with elevated cholesterol. And what leads to that? And for so many people, why is it so difficult for them to bring it down? Yep. So there's a genetic predisposition to high cholesterol.

But a lot of people blame it on genetics alone. It was very easy for me to do the same. When I started running all this blood work at 17, I'd elevated cholesterol at 17 years old and low HDL, which is the so-called good cholesterol. It's only called good cholesterol because it's non-oxidized cholesterol. And it takes the oxidized cholesterol out

of the bloodstream. So that's why it's called the good cholesterol. But you need to balance both, of course, to make enough hormones, et cetera, in your body. We get a lot of conflicting information. You don't want a high cholesterol. A lot of people say, no, it's no problem. It creates hormones.

It creates this. You want a balanced amount of cholesterol in your body. Now, the issue is that cholesterol doesn't come from one factor. So dietary cholesterol makes up about 20% of the cholesterol you might see essentially in your bloodstream. 80% is produced by the liver. But people dismiss diet because they say it's only about 20%.

Well, some people don't do a great job of clearing saturated fats from their body. So some people don't respond well to saturated fat. That is actually a fact. However, a lot of people do just fine. So how do we know? Well, we have to see if you're a responder to that or not. Elevated levels of cortisol can be another factor. So when your body produces high levels of stress,

you start to pull calcium into your bloodstream, and you create a lot more inflammation. So that's why we're big on magnesium, because magnesium pulls the calcium then out of the bloodstream, along with K2 and D and a lot of other factors. But what happens is when there's inflammation in your arteries, the body will naturally produce more cholesterol in order to patch up the inflammation or the micro tears in those arteries.

So our job is to say, why the inflammation? Why the deficiency maybe in certain vitamins and minerals? Are you not getting enough antioxidants? Is the diet best for you based on your bio-individuality. Bio-individuality just means what's good for you may not be right for another individual, even though there's a foundational approach to overall health and nutrition, and to figure out what that factor is. But again, no more than eight to 12 reasons total of why your cholesterol may be elevated out of range.

And I like, as someone who took the oath to do no harm, I always want people's cholesterol between 160 and 200 and in total cholesterol the HDL ratio of 3 to 1 or less. And then I look at more advanced factors that is more and more people are getting hormone therapy these days. Do you see any correlation between hormone therapy and cholesterol at all and how it's being processed by the liver? So I do. And again, this doesn't affect every male.

But one is I think I say this with sensitivity because I understand why many men and women are using hormone replacement therapy. Let's just talk about testosterone replacement therapy right now though. So you might be in your 30s or even 40s and start to feel low, low mood, low energy, low libido, low ambition, low drive. The problem is there is an underlying root cause even if your testosterone is low as to why it's low.

And if we use testosterone at a younger age, we never find out why it was that your testosterone is low, as to why it's low. And if we use testosterone at a younger age, we never find out why it was that your testosterone dropped. So I'm okay with testosterone placement therapy. I don't use it in my practice. But I'm not okay with not finding the underlying root cause, which will just find another mechanism for its way out. And you'll get the boost in energy and libido and ambition by taking TRT.

But underneath, there's still that issue that wasn't corrected. And so I want to work on that, whether it's the strap, the sleep, the diet, the exercise. However, having said that, testosterone replacement therapy is now much better than it was a decade ago. Men or women that are using TRT are now giving themselves an injection once or twice a week rather than one massive injection once or twice a month where the levels go really high

and then dip back down because it can cause an increase in red blood cells and thickening of the blood itself and cardiovascular issues, especially if you're not monitoring your testosterone levels which is easy to do right at home which is a tube of saliva as well. So monitor your levels, make sure that you're not at what's called super physiological levels, that you're around a normal range if you're running your free testosterone

and total testosterone, really important, or it can have side effects. Okay. Yeah. Well, how about we go into my results and- Explore your results, yes. And drum roll here. Well, I appreciate you, as I say, always being the brave one. Not so much the guinea pig.

People always use that term. But these are labs that have been run now for 40 to 50 years. These labs, although not specific blood work, are CLIA certified. They're from FDA-based labs. And millions upon millions of data has been used to get the same validity

that you would have with these with anything else. And maybe just give a little background, because as you said, I was pleased because some of my sponsors had me do blood work. So I was pleased I didn't have to do it again. But you had me do a hair sample. And that test is for what? That looks at minerals and heavy metals. And we're going to go over that first.

So functional medicine works by looking beyond the blood work, integrative health, however you want to refer to it as. You can take a saliva sample when you want to look at hormones. It's a great way to look at free hormones. So not total but actually what your body is able to use. And then you would use a hair sample to look at heavy metals or minerals because your hair is just a protein that captures anything that's excreted, which is why they use hair mineral testing for pregnancy-based lab tests for PubMed.

They use it for NASA. They use it for the FBI, for anything like that, which is great for that. And then we use a finger prick. You didn't do that specific one, but we'll look at thyroid that way. We'll look at vitamin D, other things that have to be looked at by the blood. So every specific component of the body and specific sample looks at something different in the body beyond just blood work. Now blood work has a big downside.

So again, we run blood work in our practice as well, but running your blood work only shows what is in the blood not being used necessarily by the cells and tissues themselves. So it shows what's available but not necessarily what's being used. So we want to look at what was used and excreted. Alright, so we're going to look at that minerals and metals test first, then we'll look at the candida metabolic and vitamins test, which that one's for the gut health and vitamin levels versus the mineral levels and heavy metals that we'll look at now. So this one goes through a bunch of minerals.

We'll go over the ones that were maybe just a little bit out of range and could be improved. The first four are the electrolytes. This is what always throws people off. It's calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium. And they think that if they're not using enough sea salt or magnesium or calcium, that their levels, that's why their levels are off.

It actually has everything to do with the state of stress in your body. So when your body's stressed, you produce more norepinephrine and cortisol. That then begins to draw calcium into your bloodstream, which believe it or not, can lead to hardening of the arteries and can lead to a heart attack.

So that's why it's not always about cortisol, right? So backdrop is we're in the middle of a book launch, so probably under a little bit more stress than normal. Yes, so when I looked at this, I said, all right, John has to be following a wellness-based protocol, because these are good results overall. They really are.

So we have a mildly elevated calcium, and we have a low optimal magnesium. So you might say, great, magnesium's optimal, but everything in your body has an antagonist or agonist partner, basically. So if you look at the yin and yang of Chinese medicine, there is a dark side and a light side, right? Everything.

There's no happiness without sadness. In your body, there is no... Calcium is the fight or flight, and magnesium is calming the parasympathetic nervous system. So even though your magnesium is good, it's in the optimal range, your calcium is slightly high. So for you, we would actually say let's increase higher magnesium foods or your magnesium dosage just a little bit more at dinner time or before bed. This is really where you begin to fine tune your health.

I'm sure you're taking magnesium. You're already doing a great job. So it might be increasing that by one capsule, 120 milligrams or so per day. And then what do we do? Well, we retest that in another four to six months and actually see if that's the perfect amount. Siri's speaking to me right now. So now we look at your sodium to potassium.

Your sodium is a little bit elevated over your potassium. All this shows again is that your increase, a hormone called aldosterone, an increasing blood pressure a bit probably because of a little bit of stress. So what do we do? Not necessarily increase potassium to balance it, but work on things like resonance breathing, journaling, doing a sauna, specifically breath work to calm that sympathetic nervous system. Does that make sense? Yep. Yeah.

So then we move on to the rest of the minerals. We look at copper levels, manganese, zinc, chromium, which is used for blood sugar, selenium, and phosphorus. There's just two that I want to point out. So typically we would go one by one for everyone, but I want to give you an overview of this. And then it comes with a summary on the lab, which is not for medical professionals. It comes for everyday people so that you can actually read your results. It's very important that, as you said earlier, you become the CEO of your health.

You can't put this off to a doctor. You can't put this off even to an integrative health practitioner. You want them to guide you, but you need to take ownership of this. And so the plan explains all of that. But this is interesting because a lot of people now, especially since the pandemic, have been using a little bit more zinc. And we've been finding, though, their copper levels are starting to go lower. And it's because when you increase one, you decrease the other.

They need to be in balance. They need to be in balance at precisely 15 milligrams per day of zinc and about 1 milligram of copper. So copper is very little, but it still has to be within ratio. And when your copper levels start to go down, we see things like allergies or ADHD in children, learning-based issues. We see skin rashes

sometimes, we see hair loss or thinning or grain. We sometimes even see stress and mitochondrial issues. Can't produce the same ATP for energy for the workouts. So it's pretty fascinating. So because copper is used for the mitochondria, it's also used for the thyroid. So what we do is we say zinc is a great nutritional supplement, great to get in foods, but there's a product called Balanced Zinc that's 15 milligrams of zinc with 1 milligram of copper. So in addition to we use daily nutritional support or daily activated multi, whatever vitamin that you like, you add that to it to boost those copper levels a little bit. Does that make sense?

It makes sense because I take a liquid zinc every day, but I'm not doing the copper. And you're not doing too much zinc. So on your lab report, it shows just optimal or low optimal. So you're doing the right amount of zinc, or you could use a little bit more, but not enough of the copper. And you don't want to overdo copper either. It's like you don't want to overdo a vitamin or mineral,

but you also don't want to undo it. You find this optimal zone, and believe it or not, like you said, it doesn't happen overnight, but you're like, oh, yeah, I do have a little bit more energy. Oh, I am able to push past lactic acid or fatigue a little bit better. I love this type of work. Again, this kind of goes back to the archaeology, the adventure. Every new lab that I read is fun to look inside of someone's body that they don't necessarily

know. Myself included, I run these twice a year. All right, so there's one thing that we want to go through, and that's the heavy metals. So we look at lead, that's probably the most egregious. Luckily, we almost never find lead in most individuals. I could share with you some crazy case studies. I have one in my book where someone thought they had cancer, ends up being very high levels of lead.

So you did have elevated levels of mercury, you have elevated levels of cadmium, and elevated levels of aluminum. So there is some exposure in your life that's leading to these. It could be cookware, like aluminum pans, aluminum spatulas, aluminum foil, that's the most often. Sometimes it's anti-perspirant.

And I will tell you though, we don't know how long you've had it. So this is your first time running this lab. So if I had data from you five years ago and they were normal, and then I had one a year, I'd say, oh, it's over the last six months that you got exposed to this. What new things have you been doing? Do you have a new water filter? Are you just drinking tap water more often?

How are you getting exposed to these things? And we would actually be able to look at that. So I podcast to you on how you get cadmium, how you have high levels of mercury, how you have high levels of aluminum Mercury is almost predominantly from fish that there's other reasons that I don't know that we should discuss here on the show today But it's predominantly from larger fish like tuna Swordfish bluefish large fish in general. Okay eat a lot of swordfish. Yeah, that could be that could be it So for the large fish, we like to say first we do a heavy metal detox in general. Okay. Eat a lot of swordfish. Yeah, that could be it. That could be it.

So for the large fish, we like to say first we do a heavy metal detox. So we pull these things out of your body naturally using crack cell chlorella, biofim disruptors, vitamin C, and a few other things. So all natural. It takes about eight weeks. But we limit the large fish for three months. We don't eat them. But then we add them back in if people love them, once a month, maybe twice a month.

Okay. All right. Any questions on those? No. Like I said, you know, like I said, no. Not as bad as I was worrying about. No, it was, it's actually really good. And then what I want to do now is go over what's called a Candida metabolic and vitamins

test. This is over 70 biomarkers. It's a urine sample that you just take first thing in the morning. So these labs can be done ages three and up. Our oldest wellness client's 105 years old. So we span three years to 105. And the first page goes through looking at yeast overgrowth in the body, candida overgrowth, potential mold exposure, as well as bacterial imbalance in the gut.

And the way that it looks at this is that your gut is semi-permeable, and if these things end up in your bloodstream, well, they end up then getting filtered by the kidneys, which comes out in your urine. It's very simple how we look at them. Okay. Overall, good news, no yeast, major yeast overgrowth. So no candida overgrowth. How do we usually get this?

Alcohol, antibiotics for women birth control, these things can lead to yeast-based overgrowth. There are some bacterial imbalances though. Now most of it though, believe it or not, is in an overgrowth of commensural or even beneficial bacteria. So there's not something like a lot of the negative bacteria, but there's an overgrowth of gut bacteria. This typically happens with slow bowel transit time, so sometimes cause a patient or sometimes just slow moving through the body. Sometimes it's with things like Prilosec or antacids, and we didn't do an intake, so I'm

just throwing things out there for the average individual. Or it can be you did a protocol and you over replenish, we'll say, with bacteria in the gut. That's almost never the case, but it's possible. And there's the fermentation there. So there's a little bit of overgrowth with bacteria. What we would do is a mild protocol, called the CBO protocol, to begin to lower those levels, and then just use a multi-strain daily probiotic support.

But we might not even need it on an everyday basis. We might only use it for 90 days for you. And then your gut settles out, and we maintain that. And again, this can be retested four weeks after you begin the protocol to make sure everything is perfect. And so again, this is the future of medicine, but we're able to do it now, which is the amazing thing.

Any question on the gut health? No, I try to eat clean. Like I said, I intermittent fast. I'm proud of myself that I'm doing the right things because I absolutely want to have that health span along with the lifespan because I don't want to feel like I can't do the things later on in life that I want to do. 100%. And what I found with your labs,

and this is what I find for a lot of people that have already been into health for a little bit, is that the labs are good. Now we're trying to make them great. We're trying to optimize that next level. Where if you'd come to me and you said, I have bloating, I have gas, I've got autoimmune issues, the first page would be not something that you want to see. Now the nice thing is, everything is correctable.

This isn't that rheumatoid arthritis where it's deformed the joints. We're not there. We're at an imbalance that can, yes, create inflammation in the body, lead to some gas and bloating, but we're not overboard. We need to just fine tune that area. Next, we look at your mitochondria, and your mitochondria are actually fantastic.

I'm assuming you're someone that has pretty good energy, good amount of drive, good amount of ambition. All of that look great, so no issues with the mitochondria. Next, we look at neurotransmitters. You have good levels of dopamine. Oftentimes, by the time we get to age 40, dopamine levels start to drop a little bit. Norepinephrine drops a little bit.

Some of that is just deficiencies and burnout, but your levels are good. Dopamine leads to the reward center of the body, the pleasure center. So you still have, most likely, good drive, good ambition, good leadership, want to achieve that next level, and that happens there. All right, so now the next part we want to look at is serotonin levels.

So it's one of the numbers that I mark down on your lab that I would like to help you improve. So serotonin is the happy, feel-good neurotransmitter. And on this lab that we look at, what we're looking at is not necessarily serotonin itself, but a metabolite of serotonin called 5-HIAA, and it means that you actually use serotonin called 5-H-I-A-A and it means that you actually use serotonin in your body. So serotonin comes from tryptophan, it gets converted to 5-hydroxy tryptophan and then actually serotonin in your body. So we can help with 5-hydroxy tryptophan but really a lot of people are missing vitamin B6, they're missing copper, they're missing selenium, they're missing

a lot of things that help convert that. The other issue is even if it's not showing up as not as good not in good mood or not as happy or just feeling a little bit more low, which can happen with people, even not depressed but moving towards just lower mood, it can actually affect their sleep. Because in order to be able to really get to melatonin production at night, which helps to shut down cortisol, get you into that deep sleep, good REM sleep, you need to be producing enough serotonin.

So that's one that we would obviously love to go deeper on, help you a little bit more with that to produce that, to improve your overall sleep and potentially even a little bit mood as well. So the last part that I want to go over is actually your vitamin levels. And obviously we didn't do an intake ahead of time, which I like to be able to read this from an outsider's perspective and say, here's all the different possibilities without necessarily knowing you and allowing that to cloud my judgment. So when I look at this, I saw someone that really was on a good nutritional supplement

and good diet plan. So our philosophy is that 90% of what you want is from your diet. But I've never run a full report on anybody and seen that diet alone fills every single vitamin and mineral that they need. I've just never seen that happen. And I've worked with high performance all over. But when you play all out in life and you go all out and you have a lot of stress, even if it's good stress, it depletes a lot of these vitamins and minerals.

So whatever you're using right now, your B12 is excellent, your B6 is excellent, which almost never happens. I'll tell you that. B6 is really used for the nervous system. Your B6 is excellent. Your B5 is excellent. That helps produce a lot of the hormones. Cholesterol all the way to testosterone and cortisol.

So that looks great. B2 is excellent, which is called riboflavin. CoQ10. I don't know if you're supplemented with CoQ10, but your levels are excellent. So this is not a product that we would actually need to use right now. That's great to know. It also then says, oh, I can save $50 a month by not using Ubiquinol or CoQ10.

N-acetylcysteine look good, which is used for detoxification. And your biotin, which is energy, carbohydrate utilization, hair, skin, nails, really powerful vitamin there too. The only one that was a little low was vitamin C, which is interesting because vitamin C helps recycle vitamin E and a lot of your other antioxidants. So I might suggest just a little bit more vitamin C in your diet, high vitamin C foods

or supplementation. You don't need a lot of it, but maybe 500 milligrams a day, maybe one gram total per day, typically in divided doses, would be just that right amount. And again, like I said, whatever you're using right now currently is getting you there. Now, this combined with the minerals and metals test is what we really needed. That's called the starter kit.

And you do all of this at home. Why is it important? Because we saw that you actually needed a little bit more copper, maybe a little bit more zinc, a little bit more magnesium. We do that, everything begins to improve. And those are things that you would actually feel the difference within 21 days. Now over time, they build up, they refill the reserves, you feel even better, but you'll notice

the difference without a doubt in two to three weeks of taking this. Okay, well great. And one thing I wanted to tell the audience is the tests he gave me were not that intrusive. So it was just a hair sample and a urinalysis. And so that's something I like because a lot of these tests, you have to have your blood drawn, you have to do other things. That's why, this is specifically why we lead with these labs. Because a couple of snips of hair, that's all that you need. It tells you the last 30 days of data

just because your hair grows about a quarter inch a month. And then a urine sample. Anybody can run those, you ship it to the lab, That's all that you need. It tells you the last 30 days of data just because your hair grows about a quarter of an inch a month. And then a urine sample. Anybody can run those. You ship it to the lab. We get your results and everything is kept private. Like it's not shared with your insurance or life insurance. It's not shared with your medical doctor unless you want to share it with them.

And you get the results with a plan that's customized for you. So I truly believe this is what helped me get well. This is why I'm so adamant of bringing this out to the world. And I truly believe this is going to be the future of medicine for everyone. Personalized based nutrition, personalized based protocols. So I've heard that from you and I've heard it from Mark Hyman. So those are two very good sources.

That's great. And Care if it's Gerald. So three of you. Yes. Well, speaking of podcasts, you have an incredible podcast. It's one that I personally like to listen to myself because you have so many great solo episodes

where you're covering so much of the different topics we talked about today. And I'm glad that you're starting to do interviews now as well to supplement with that. But maybe if the audience isn't familiar with your podcast, can you tell them a little bit about it? Yeah, I appreciate that. So my podcast is called The Cabral Concept.

I've been doing it now for about eight years. There's about 3,000 episodes. And there's a search box. It's a daily show. But it's only 15 minutes long. And the reason why I do the 15-minute shows is because sometimes, if I was teaching an hour and a half long seminar,

it'd be the breadth of information that you go through can be overwhelming. So what I wanted to do was teach one topic per day of what we need to look at and then an action plan on how to improve it. So even though there's things to worry about in the world, there's always an underlying root cause, there's always an answer as to how to improve it. So each day there's a new topic in terms of functional medicine. On the weekends I answer people's questions and there's also a search box. You can just type in rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, Hashimoto's, diabetes, whatever

you want and all the shows will pop up on that at my website. And I think your timing is great because I do mine for 15 to 20 minutes as well because I found that's typically the time when people get distracted. So some of the stuff I've loved to read is things by Jim Quick where as you're speed reading I try to read no more than 25 minutes, 20 to 25 minutes at a time is the sweet spot because after that you start wandering. And I think the same thing with podcasts. Yeah, I haven't even really thought of it like that, but I totally agree. That's about the amount that you can kind of keep headspace wise. And then I hope that then someone takes that

next step whatever that next step is. Maybe it's at home lab testing. Maybe it's just another podcast. Maybe it's reading a book. Whatever that next thing is to help them down that journey because it doesn't happen overnight. That's obviously the goal. OK. And then Steve where's a great place for people to go if they want to learn more about you and if they're interested in potentially being a patient of yours? Yes, so my website is stevencabral.com. It's Steven with a PH. You can find the labs there, you can find my book there, you can find really whatever you're looking for at that main spot. Social media, I'm pretty active on Instagram. We're starting a new YouTube-based channel, but also I'd love to be able to put in your links today,

your show notes, just an offer for your community for the starter kit. I just truly believe that this is the best place to get started for them, for their children, for their family. And so wherever they want to find us or find me, they can do so. OK, well, it was such an honor to have you on the show.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate you having me. Thanks again. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Dr. Stephen Cabral and I wanted to thank Stephen for the honor and privilege of joining me on today's show. Links to all things Stephen will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. Videos are on YouTube at both John R. Miles, our main channel, and our clips channel, Passion Struck Clips. Please go check it out and subscribe. Advertiser deals with discount codes are in one convenient place

at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. You can find me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles, and you can also join our weekly challenge every single week in our newsletter. We put out a new boundary expanding challenge to get you on the path to becoming passion struck. Just go to passionstruck.com and sign up for our newsletter. You're about to hear a preview of the passion struck podcast interview I did with dynamic Richard Dolan, the visionary financial fulfillment coach who's on a mission to redefine our relationship with money from his early days as a relentless entrepreneur to a success as a financial maestro. Richard shares a story of creating wealth and impacting lives.

In this episode, Richard divulges strategies and mindset shifts that are necessary for achieving financial independence and living a life of purpose and abundance. Politicians, members of the Royal family, artists, writers, musicians, actors, producers, dignitaries. I've worked with so many people from different classes of life. That's the one thing I notice they all share in common is that when it's go time, it's grow time. They lock into something really, really narrowly. I've called it the zoom factor.

When you look at the zoom factor, it's like the function of your telephoto lens. And for some people, they might look at their camera and say like that has a zoom lens as well when you zoom in on something when you take that which is far and you bring it close nothing else matters nothing else matters taking something that's out there and bringing it right here so that's all that matters that's what they share all in common remember that we rise by lifting others so share the show with those that you love and care about if you found this episode with Stephen Cabral useful then definitely share it with someone who could use the advice that he gave in today's program. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show with those that you

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