Realfoodology - 38: How to Rebalance Your Body and Become Well Again with Dr. Stephen Cabral

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

On today’s episode I speak with Dr Stephen Cabral, a naturopath, Ayurvedic & functional medicine practitioner. He developed his passion for health & wellness after going through severe health complications at the age of 17. He saw over 50 different doctors, tried over 100 different treatment protocols, but still saw no hope of recovery. It wasn’t until he met an “alternative” health doctor who explained to him how he got here and how he could become well again, that he began his recovery process. It was at this young age that he knew his life would be dedicated to helping others rebalance their bodies and renew their health. Now he has seen over 250,000 patients, has 5000 hours of doctoral work under his belt, 2200 hours of internship and 600,000+ pages of research study. We talk about functional medicine and why you want to find a functional dr, we talk about weight and how to lose it in a healthy way and so much more! Show Note/Links: https://stephencabral.com/https://www.instagram.com/stephencabral/

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. The weight, by losing weight, you'll have to change things in your life to get your body healthier. And that will then allow you to lose the weight. So we always look at it from a standpoint of health. Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Swan. I am the creator of Real Foodology, which is of course this podcast, as well as an Instagram, more recently a TikTok, and started out as a food blog in 2011. If you guys love this podcast, please rate and review it. It helps me so much, and it helps get this podcast out to more ears.

So I would really appreciate it. On today's episode, I speak with Dr. Stephen Cabral. He is a naturopath, an Ayurvedic and functional medicine practitioner, and he developed his passion for health and wellness after going through severe health complications at the age of 17. He saw over 50 different doctors, tried over 100 different treatment protocols, but he still saw no hope of recovery. And it wasn't until he met an alternative health doctor whom explained to him how we got here and how we could become well again. And that is when he began his recovery

process. It was at this really young age that he knew his life would be dedicated to helping others rebalance their bodies and renew their health. He has now seen over 250,000 patients. He has 5,000 hours of doctoral work under his belt, 220 hours of internship and 600,000 pages of research study. This guy really knows his stuff. We talk about functional medicine, what it is, why you would want to find a functional medicine doctor. We talk about weight, how to lose it in a healthy way, and so much more. We also mentioned Ayurveda a few times in the episode. And so for anyone listening that is unaware of what it is, I thought

I would give a little background on it just so you are up to speed. Ayurveda is a natural system of medicine that was originated in India more than 3000 years ago. It is the ancient Indian medical system. It is based on ancient writings that rely on a natural and holistic approach to physical and mental health. Ayurvedic medicine is one of the world's oldest medical systems, and it remains one of India's traditional health care systems. It's based on the idea that disease is due to an imbalance or stress in a person's consciousness. And Ayurveda encourages certain lifestyle interventions, natural therapies to regain a balance between the mind, the body, mind, spirit, and the environment. So a lot of

modern functional and integrative practitioners use Ayurveda in conjunction with modern therapies as an overall integrative approach to modern health. Do you want to hear the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging? Of course you do, because all of us are concerned about aging. There is a class of ingredients called senolytics that were discovered less than 10 years ago, and they are being called the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy aging and enhancing your physical prime. Now, when I'm talking about aging here, I'm not just talking about on a superficial level, wrinkles and saggy skin. I'm talking about energy, joint pain, your ability to show up for your life, cognitive function. I'm talking about the real effects of cellular aging on the body and what it does to our body as we age. Now, as we age, everyone accumulates something called senescent cells in their body.

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checkout for $100 off. Thank you so much to Lumen for sponsoring this episode. And with that, let's get to the episode. Steven, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm so excited to chat. I appreciate you having me on. Thank you so much. Yeah. So I want to dive in first to functional medicine and integrative health. I want to talk about this. I think this is so important for people to understand and why, at least in my opinion, why I feel like we really need to approach health in this way.

Can you explain a little bit about it? Yeah. So a lot of times, you know, there's so many brilliant nutritionists and doctors and practitioners in general. And, you know, I know that you've met so many brilliant nutritionists and doctors and practitioners in general. And, you know, I know that you've met so many great people. They don't have to be a dietician. They don't have to be a doctor or whatever it might be. And they just have so much knowledge. And so what we try to do, you know, in life is we always try to share what we believe works for the greatest amount of people, or at least what we've seen work for ourselves. So the difference is though, that a lot of these recommendations that people make is they do work, but what they don't tell

you is they don't work for about 25 to 30% of the population. So most of them are phenomenal advice that the majority of people will benefit from. And then about a third of the population will actually become worse. And so what functional medicine allows you to do, if you use it wisely, is that you can actually look into someone's body to then discover what the proper plan is for them based on where they're at right now, but also then in the future, how things may change. So for example, I used to not be able to fast when I was younger and I was sick and I had a lot of dis-ease in my body. And then my body got healthier. It became more flexible in a way. And then I was able to fast. So it's like,

yeah, fasting is good, but for whom, right? And so that's essentially what functional medicine allows you to do. Yeah. And I mean, the reason why I tell people this a lot on my Instagram, I encourage people to seek out functional medicine doctors and integrative health doctors because they, they look at the deeper root cause, right? Like, and they're, they're working with preventative measures instead of we're like making up for the disease or whatever that we find. So, and I found that a lot of times it takes someone getting sick and totally just fed up with the traditional system that has no answers for them,

that leads them to this path of really finding out and getting to the root cause of what is going on instead of just throwing a bandaid on it and throwing a medication at something. Without a doubt. I mean, you eventually get, as they say, so sick and tired of being sick and tired that you're just saying,

everything that I've been doing seems to work for a little while and then it doesn't. And there's a reason for that because as you begin to peel back the onion, you discover that there's typically multiple areas that need to be worked on. But we're all, myself included, we were looking for the silver bullet in order to get well. And that's why, so I always, you know, I answer a lot of people's questions online and through my podcast and all those things. And people are saying, well, I went to a functional medicine doctor and they found out I had an imbalance in estrogen and they put me on DIMM. And I say, is that it? Okay, great. So you got one nutrient that's supposed to now fix all of that. Well, how did you become estrogen

dominant? Was it thyroid issues? Was it insulin issues? Was it vitamin D? Was it adrenal issues with the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal axis? So it's like, it's a disservice. So what we're really looking to do is we're saying, if you can continue to ask why, that's what I tell people. It's like, okay, I have bloating. Okay, well, why do you have bloating? Well, I don't do well digesting vegetables. Okay, well, why don't you do well digesting vegetables? You can't just get rid of vegetables in your diet. So why don't you do well digesting them? Like, okay, well, I don't know. Oh, and so then we run a lab test and at home lab test, we find you have candida overgrowth, but you also have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Oh, and you have H. pylori. Now you produce too little stomach acid.

You have slow peristaltic movement in general. Your stomach, now your intestines actually cause the vegetables to stay there longer. They begin to ferment and they feed the yeast and they feed the bacterial overgrowth. And that's why you have bloating. Okay, well, we can get rid of the candida overgrowth, H. pylori and the bacterial overgrowth. And now guess what? There's no more bloating. So it's just about asking why until you can't ask why anymore. Well, and it's interesting, you brought up a great point, because with traditional medicine, if someone was to go into their doctor and say, Oh, you know, I have bloating, I have heartburn, they're most of the time just going to throw them heartburn medicine. And what you just mentioned, with like an integrative or functional medicine doctor, they're going to actually go in and do all these tests.

They're going to do a stool test and then they're going to find, you know, the candida or whatever it is that people that's the underlying root cause of it. And this is why I love so much this approach, because it's not a one size fits all. It's not like, OK, well, the literature says that you just need this heartburn medication. It's actually diving in and it's individualized because now we get to see what's happening individually in this person's body and what's really going on. And I love that you brought this up because this was actually something I was going to, this was my next question for you. So people that are experiencing health issues. So for example, I get questions constantly all the time about food sensitivities

and bloating. I feel like those are the questions I get asked the most. Where would you tell people if they're experiencing this to start looking? Yeah. So the, I mean, we, we are a general based practice. So ours is virtually work with people all over the world. And what I found is that people get sick and imbalanced the same way all over the world. And it's not unique just to the US. It's like Australia and Europe and wherever. It's like everybody gets, they get ill and they become imbalanced. And so we need to start to look at, and again, so I would say the majority of our practice is about like 70%, 75% women, 25% men or so experiencing hormone issues and experiencing low mood, fatigue, and digestive issues. Like

that's so many of the world. Like that has to be at least two thirds of the world. I have less energy, lower mood. Don't feel like I have the same ambition drive I used to. And I get gas and bloating and it doesn't feel very good. It's like, okay, yeah. And we'll throw poor sleep into that as well. So it's like, well, what do we do? Well, we really have to look at the two main drivers. There's so many different drivers of dis-ease in the body, but really what we're looking at is poor adaption to stress. And because of that, so again, like if you want to say, well, why do I have SIBO? Why do I have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth? Well, it's a good possibility that stress, not even just antibiotics, caused your SIBO. Like that's a very good possibility. So if we say, okay, well,

why do you have bloating? Well, you have bacterial we say, okay, well, why do you have bloating? Well, you have bacterial overgrowth. Okay, well, why do you have bacterial overgrowth? Oh, well, you're chronically stressed. And when you're chronically stressed, food doesn't digest properly. You don't make the hydrochloric acid that you should, or maybe you overproduce. It's possible. The food is allowed to stay there and ferment longer. There's not the same peristaltic movement. Or you have ileocecal valve dysfunction, which means the small intestine, like the food that's being digested, broken down, eventually has to go into the large intestine. And none of the bacteria from the large intestine is supposed to seep back into the small intestine because that's how you

get, it's one way you can get SIBO. So when you look at it and say, oh, my own stress may have caused my bacterial overgrowth. And so for me, again, it's always looking at why. So there's two main things that you need. And I really recommend lab testing, of course. There's just no doubt about that. Is to run, if you believe you have bacteria overgrowth or parasites or H. pylori, like any type of bloating or gas or dysfunction, bacteria and parasites stool test. No doubt about it. Like that's, that's a great place. You can also run the, people call it the

oat lab. We call it the candida metabolic and vitamins lab. Cause there's so much more than just kind of, nobody has any idea what organic acids test means. Like it sounds actually dangerous. So, so we don't typically call it that, but that's what it is. But it's a great one. Again, you can run these through a practitioner, your local integrative health practitioner. We actually train a lot of dietitians. We have a lot of registered dietitians learning to do this work because they realized that their schooling let them down. Meaning like it was a great starting point, but you can't go, you don't want to give people the food pyramid. Like you don't want to, that's not the ideal thing. And so they're learning to do this. This is the next level. This, I believe, is the future of real healthcare. And I do recommend working with someone because how do you learn this all on your own within a 12-week period?

It's very challenging. So it's nice to be able to work someone and talk things through. And that is what I recommend. And you don't have to do it forever. It's kind of like you could connect with a personal trainer and have them set you up with a program and then check in every six weeks if you want. And then they give you a new program. And that's OK, too. So I think there's a lot of different ways. And I think that the nice thing about, there's not a whole lot positive about the pandemic.

But the nice thing is that a lot of things have moved virtual. And we can have a conversation anywhere in the world right now. And you can obviously do that with a practitioner as well. So in the beginning of this, you mentioned that this doesn't work for everyone. What did you mean by that? And why does it not work for everyone? If I said that I'm mistaken, because this is the only thing that works for everyone. Meaning that you can try a million different diet plans and people like, oh, I got benefit from this. I didn't get benefits from this. Why, why? But when you run at-home lab testing, you know exactly about you, nobody else. So my lab,

I run what's called a big five every single year and I do it. I'm already well, but I do it now. So I don't get sick again because I was sick for a decade. So I don't want to go back. I'm unwilling to go back. I will skip the late nights out with friends now and all the alcoholic drinks, all things because for me, it's just not worth it. I've made that decision in my life. Will I drink alcohol every once in a while? Yes. Am I going to drink it three, four times a week? No. And am I going to eat a lot of dairy? The answer is no. It certainly does not work with my body. So as much as I love cheese and all sorts of different types of desserts, not going to do it, right? They make coconut ice cream. If I want ice cream, I can have coconut ice cream. I'll be okay with that. So that's how, but again, I do these things now to stay well,

because I can see if things are starting to move in the wrong direction. And yes, you can do a blood work, but nowhere near the degree. I mean, I saw doctors for two years and the best specialists in the world, all they were looking at was blood work. They had no idea I had gut issues. They had no idea I had adrenal issues until we ran some of these more functional medicine based labs that can then give you more of the intricacies as to what's going on with your gut, your nervous system, your hormones, your omega threes, your food sensitivities, heavy metals. I mean, when's the last time a doctor tested you for heavy metals? It's like never, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's so important. And you also, you brought up such a great point that I, again, I think is so important with

integrative health is that you can look, you can start looking at the numbers and doing these tests and see if you're headed in a certain direction for a specific disease. I mean, like perfect example, Addison's disease is one of them. And this is so frustrating about conventional medicine is that you're not diagnosed with it until you have full-blown Addison's disease, and then there's no turning back from it. But if you have an integrative or functional medicine doctor, they're able to look at those numbers and say, huh, we're headed in this direction that doesn't look great. So why

don't we do some measures, figure out what's going on and implement measures that can stop that. And so would you say that you can actually reverse disease? It's, I don't know. Did you know that I had Addison's disease? I actually didn't know that. No, I just use that as an example a lot. Because that's more of an obscure, like rare example is, but it does happen. You have Cushing's where you produce too much cortisol and you have Addison's where you produce no cortisol and people like, well, good. I don't want to produce cortisol, but you really do. Because if you don't want to walk around,

like you feel like you have the flu every single day where you, I mean, that's what Addison's, if anybody wants to know what Addison's disease feels like, think about when you were at your worst with, I don't want to say the virus, the virus that's going on now, or the flu. That's what it feels like every single day of your life. Your body's inflamed, your joints hurt, your legs feel like they weigh a ton each, and you never wake up. You're a zombie because you don't produce cortisol and your cortisol is supposed to peak between six and eight in the morning. If it doesn't, you don't necessarily start producing melatonin because you don't know what's up and what's down. Your nervous system is just so dysfunctional that you don't produce cortisol

at the appropriate times, if at all. So I didn't produce cortisol. So I did an H, why am I forgetting the name right now? A ACTH STEM test. And you basically sit in a doctor's office and you have your blood taken every hour for three hours. And they give you an injection and you have adrenal corticotropin hormone to see if you actually produce cortisol. And I didn't, and this is, they didn't realize this for two and a half years into my disease. And I ended up with type two diabetes because you can't regulate blood sugar if you can't regulate your adrenals. I had rheumatoid arthritis from all the inflammation and all the gut issues that they didn't find out again for

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gentle enough for kids to take every single day. And I really love the ingredients in this one. It's orange and acerol cherry, which is a powerful source of vitamin C and antioxidants, astragalus, elderberry, and propolis. These are all really great for overall immune health. If you want to try the products that I talked about today or any of the Organifi products, go to Organifi.com slash realfoodology and use code realfoodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash RealFoodology. Because I spent two years going to the most brilliant medical doctors in the world. And don't get me wrong, I give conventional medicine a hard time, but it's the best in the world for emergency medicine and acute-based care. So, you know,

if someone ever came to me and they had blood pressure of 200 over 120, I'd say, you need blood pressure medications. I can't give you that recommendation. I'm a doctor of naturopathy. I'm not a medical doctor. But get stabilized so you don't die, have a stroke, and then we'll help get you well. That's definitely possible. So it took me three years to even find out about functional medicine because I was sick in the late nineties. I didn't have internet. Some people probably did, but I didn't. And, um, read a lot of books, found out there was this whole thing called natural health. I got into nutrition, started there and lo and behold, uh, met a lot of great practitioners, a lot of great doctors met my mentor when I was 27, uh, within six months,

I was completely better. So it can happen. I mean, I don't, you know, this has been 20, 25 years. So I'm healthier now than I ever have been. I feel like I get healthier every year and I'm disease free. So, you know, is it your genetics? Well, sure. Like all of this is locked to my genetics, rheumatoid arthritis, the diabetes, that runs in my family. However, I don't have type 2 diabetes anymore. I don't have rheumatoid arthritis. I don't have Addison's. I don't have my jacuzzi and stuff, myelitis. I don't have any of these things, but yet they're in my genetics. So what knowing your genetics allows you to do is say, okay, I'm susceptible to this, but you can also shut it off based on cleaning up your gut,

your nervous system, your food sensitivities. I mean, I was sensitive to everything you could name. So I was like, okay, how do you go about this? So it was a long journey. It certainly was, but I wouldn't have it any other way because a hard journey teaches you a lot. And if you make it through, then you are a new person. And I'm happier now with the person I am now than I was before when I was a teenager. I mean, I can fully relate. I had so many hormonal issues when I was in my 20s that I really struggled. And it wasn't until I was able to find an integrative doctor that was able to do all the tests and lab work and stuff to say like, oh, you have really low progesterone. No wonder, you know.

And I was also struggling with adrenal fatigue. And there were so many things going on that, again, like we've said that conventional medicine just completely missed. So I'm so grateful for this preventative approach, and also the diving into like, what's actually really going on. So how did you get so obviously, you found conventional herbs, or you found integrative medicine? What were kind of the steps that helped you on your path to get better? Like what were things that you did that were able to improve your health? So I ran a lot of these same labs that we're talking about right now. I ran the adrenal hormone based lab. I ran it with thyroid. I ran the food sensitivity test and all of those

were helpful, but we have to think back. This is now, let's think, the late early 2000s, late 90s, early 2000s. And functional medicine still wasn't really a thing yet. It was definitely around, but not that big. But I still ran the same exact labs that I offer today. I mean, that's the amazing thing. It's like so strange because I never thought I'd be doing what I'm doing now, but it was a gradual progression. And it's like, how could you not? Like after a while learning all this is like, how could I not now teach this? But anyway, so the problem was back then, if you had adrenal issues, you were given licorice root and DHEA and nothing wrong with that. However, that's not really fixing the, that's more green medicine, right? So licorice root is supposed to help you

maybe produce a little bit more cortisol, but really extend the life of the cortisol you're already producing. And DHEA, well, you know, okay, that could be a good recommendation because then it's allowing you to really satisfy more of the sex hormones, the testosterone, the estrogen, maybe help a little bit with balance, definitely can help with the immune system and inflammation. Okay, so I get it, but it didn't teach me anything about lifestyle. So I have something called the de-stress protocol. It's diet, exercise, stress reduction, toxin removal, rest, emotional balance, supplements, and success mindset. And you don't fix everything. Now, supplements are a must for most people, at least for the first 12 to 16 weeks to help rebuild their body or give the body a

heroic push in one direction. But it's not the only thing. So no one really taught me about how to control blood sugar to help with my adrenals, how to deal with stress to help my adrenals. I was a very stressed teenager. I was a pitta-based mindset. I was into sports and trying to do well in school and trying to just be a perfectionist. And that didn't work out very well. And so I crashed. But the other thing was, from the ages of 14 years old to 17 years old, I was put on twice a day amoxicillin for skin. So nobody told me that from early childhood, four or five times a year taking azithromycin, we had Z-packs in my house, that I would have completely destroyed my gut flora, causing massive intestinal permeability. So every time I ate, even when I was eating healthier food in my new nutrition plan, I was spilling proteins into my bloodstream,

which was then causing an inflammatory reaction by my immune cells, which then flared up things like rheumatoid arthritis. And so it was a gradual process. I eventually, to make a long story a little bit shorter, I met my mentor. She combined Ayurvedic medicine with naturopathic medicine and genetics. So she said, listen, genetics matter. You obviously have methylation issues. You have detox pathway issues. Your whole family, all your grandparents and your parents have rheumatoid arthritis. Here's how we get out of this. Teach you about your lifestyle through Ayurveda. Use functional medicine lab testing to start to run exactly what's wrong with you. We understand your genetics because of all the methylation pathways. And I was like, this is, I've read a lot, but I've never had it put to me like this. And so I just

dove in headfirst after that. And then that was basically the end of the first chapter, which was getting well, I finally got well. And then the next is optimization. So even once you're well, now it's like, okay, how far can we take this? Now that's where I fill it now. Like even maybe just even like the last six, seven years is like, now it's optimizing to that next level. It's like, okay, how good can we get this? And it can be pretty good. It really can. So you touched on something that I'm not sure a lot of people are aware of, something called epigenetics. Are we just destined to be sick or have like a certain disease just because of our genes? Or do we actually have control over that? So I have broken this down into three parts. So we have our genetics, which is our code. Then we have, I call it the rain barrel effect. So that's

basically what I'm just trying to share with people is we don't get sick overnight, we don't get better overnight. So a lot of people say, oh, I'm really sensitive to EMFs. Well, you're sensitive to EMFs because you probably have a lot of heavy metals, you have inflammation, you've filled up this rain barrel. Like I had debilitating allergies for the entire month of April. We're recording this in April right now. I can open my eyes, my eyes aren't red, I don't have all these sensitivities. I had debilitating allergies for the entire month of April. We're recording this in April right now. I can open my eyes. My eyes aren't red. I don't have all these sensitivities.

I had massive mastocytosis and allergy-based issues. Well, those went away, not overnight, but they went away once I got rid of the candida, the H. pylori, and the SIBO, and I sealed up my gut wall. Now there was less reactivity in my body. So my massive TH2 immune dominance, which I'm prone to through my genetics, got squelched. Why? Because I emptied that rain barrel. I began to handle stress in a better way. I began to fix my gut issues. I removed the heavy metals like I had large amounts of mercury because I was trying to do, even though internally my body

was decimated, I still went to the gym to try to build up externally, probably to show off to the world, like, listen, I'm not this sick. I'm not that bad. And it made me feel better at least, but I was eating rice and a can of tuna every single night. Not a great idea for mercury. And so basically we have our genetics, we fill up the rain barrel, and then we have a triggering event. And the event might be food poisoning. It might be a virus. It might be high levels of stress, a breakup, like anything like that. And then that tips you over the edge. And that's when obviously our genes, we look at it as like, oh, well, this is our destiny. Well, I would say it's in your code. However, just like you said, through epigenetics, we have the ability to turn that on and off. And so I got rheumatoid arthritis at 17, 18, but I don't have it now 20 plus years

later. So it's like, well, is it still there? Of course it's there. It's in my code, but through epigenetics, we can turn it off and turn it off, turn it on and turn it off. And I'll say one more thing is that this whole concept of disease is really, turns people into victims. And I'll say one more thing is that this whole concept of disease is really, turns people into victims. And I can say this because I was a victim for a good decade, and even longer than that. I was upset. I was really upset. Like, why me? Why this happened to me? Well, the only way that I got better was to disassociate from my disease. Because very few people ever recover from Addison's disease or autoimmune issues. So the only way I was going to get better is if I wasn't Addison's disease,

if I wasn't rheumatoid arthritis. So too many people say, I'm an IBS sufferer. I'm a Lyme sufferer. And I get it. They're debilitating. They're terrible. But as long as you associate with that disease, which, by the way, is just a name given to a collection of symptoms, then you're always going to have it. But if you can begin to disassociate and go back to a time

when you were healthy or view you as the future you have healthy, you're going to get better a whole lot faster. And that's why mindset is a big part of getting well. Yeah, that's such a great point. Yeah. And I just, I find the conversation of epigenetics. So it's super empowering to me because even though you may have something like diabetes that runs in your family, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are also going to have diabetes because people do not realize we have a lot more control over this than, than we even want to admit. Like you said, there's mindset change. There's also lifestyle changes. You know, where you live affects you, whether you're being, you know,

like your environment in your house, pollution, your diet, maybe stuff that's in your water. And so we have a lot of control over this. And to me, that's super, super empowering because then it means that I can actually do something about it. And like you said, I'm not like a victim

to just my genes and what's happening to me essentially. No matter how sick you are, if you're listening to this, there's no doubt about it. You can get well. And the only problem is we've been led to believe that it has to happen within seven days or 14 days. And I've seen most change happen within, just to let people know, about 12 to 16 weeks. And that does fall in a line with when your red blood cells turn over. And so you get new cell receptors in the end of those. So that can dramatically change blood sugar for the next time around. You get new nutrients inside your cells. You have new lipid membranes for absorption. So 12 to 16 weeks.

And if you really work at it, three to four months to overcome these things is not that much of a trade. And then even the worst of the worst, six months to a year maximum. I mean, I was pretty bad. There's always someone worse, right? That's perspective, but I was pretty bad. And it took me about six, seven months. And again, you don't get better just at the seventh month. I was getting better like 10, 15% a month. I would relapse a little bit and get a little bit better because we learn along the way. It's not, it's a little bit of a zigzag. It's not a straight line. And even when you have the best program, it needs to be tweaked a little bit for you. And so like, just cause, just cause I say, Hey, these are the foods that should be fine for you. They're not

sensitivities, pretty easy to digest. You might try them. You say, Oh, I can't eat that food. It gives me really bad indigestion or whatever it might be. And I say, okay, we just cross it off the list. No big deal. We'll try it again in six weeks or 12 weeks. Such a great point too, because I don't think we give our bodies enough credit. Our bodies want to be healthy. And if we give them the right tools, diet, exercise, a healthy lifestyle, it's going to promote a healthy body. It's going to promote a healthy life. And I want to go back to this a little bit. So you can actually reverse these diseases as well, right? Like if someone is suffering with diabetes, conventional medicine tells them like, well, you're, this is just your life. Now you're going

to be on medication for the rest of your life and you're going to be struggling with insulin, but that's not true. It not as really not true, but it's also the wrong way to look at it. Um, people, people say, so is your rheumatoid arthritis in remission? And I say, well, it's one way to look at it. It's never coming back. So is it a remission or is it gone? Cause you can't find it on blood work, right? You can't find, I have normal cortisol levels now. You can't find my Addison's on blood work. You can from like 1988 or I should say 1999 or something like that. So what happened? Like where is it? Can you reverse it? Well, I mean, it depends on how we look at it. I don't believe in the disease model in the first place. A lot of these symptoms we feel. So for example, you have, let's say, rheumatoid arthritis or Hashimoto's.

Okay, well, your joints are under attack. So my thumb joints would get inflamed from rheumatoid arthritis. So that's very common with people with RA. I was just younger when I got it. Usually it's in like your late 30s or 40s. But with Hashimoto's, it's inflammation of the thyroid. It's the same thing with MS. It's inflammation of the myelin sheath. So it's like, well, what are we really talking about? Well, there's your genetic predisposition. I'll never get Hashimoto's, it's inflammation of the thyroid. It's the same thing with MS. It's inflammation of the myelin sheath. So it's like, well, what are we really talking about? Well,

there's your genetic predisposition. I'll never get Hashimoto's. It's not possible. My genetic code does not allow for Hashimoto's, but it certainly allows for rheumatoid arthritis, where someone else who has Hashimoto's might not get RA. So it's like, well, you know, pick your poison, I guess, right? But the thing is, those inflammation of the thyroid and inflammation of my thumb joints, they are symptoms. So what am I really doing? Well, I got rid of the symptoms that we call rheumatoid arthritis because I no longer had proteins floating around on my bloodstream or bacteria or mold that set off my immune system to create these CD8 cells that caused apoptosis, programmed cell death in the tissue of my joints here. So it's like, well, so did I get rid of the RA? Yeah, the RA, the RA was a byproduct of my intestinal permeability because 90% of all

autoimmune issues stem from the gut. And so what I would say is don't even think about the disease. It's a collection of symptoms. Control what you can control. You don't control rheumatoid arthritis. I don't control Addison's disease, but I can certainly control my response to stress. And so that's what I did. Yeah. I love that. It's so empowering too. So can you explain some of the underlying reasons why people get sick and become overweight? And I want to, I want to say this. I know weight is a really sensitive topic for many people. And there's this movement right now that's saying it's not about the weight. And I understand what people are getting at because, um, health doesn't look like one size, but can you explain the

science behind why like too much weight and body fat, um, can lead to health issues? Yeah. And I think we have to just, we have to have just civil conversations about this because there's no place for bullying and there's no place for body shaming. Like that's so, you know, that's one of the worst things that you can do, especially to children and teenagers. Right. So I have two young daughters, they're six and eight years old. And I certainly, I can't prevent it, but I certainly hope that they don't have to deal with any bullying or anything like that. And we teach them to be respectful of others because they just look around at their cousins and they look around at their friends and look,

and they have different shapes and sizes. Some are taller, some are shorter, some are bigger. I mean, it's just like, that's just the way that it works. And Ayurveda teaches us this. So Ayurveda, there's the vata or the ectomorph, smaller joints by genetics. The pitta, broader shoulders, able to put on a little bit more muscle. Then we've got the kapha, which is more of the more robust body type, but larger joints. They're going to have a little bit more body mass. Their calves are naturally larger without doing calf raises at the gym. It's just that's their body structure. So the goal, though, is to create the perfect body for you that you were given in this world. And that's it.

But there is something to being overweight. And we can't accept being overweight because it's an actual health issue. So I have the fortune of now it's been we've seen well over a quarter of a million people. And the leading causes of mortality and death are heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke, which go together, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. All of those go up exponentially with two things that we know of, smoking and being overweight. So don't smoke and don't be overweight. Now, 10, 20 pounds overweight, that's a different story. We're not talking about that. We're talking about a BMI above 25. And that matters for most people.

Again, I was in the natural bodybuilding world back in the day, and I get it. And I wouldn't even make the argument that if your BMI is above 25, even as a bodybuilder, it's probably not healthy. You might look healthy per se, but not necessarily healthy. So the goal is just like, hey, you can be a 24.9 BMI as a kapha body type, and that's perfect for you. And the vata might be a 19.9, and that's okay. So I caution people, if you're more than 30 pounds away from your ideal weight, your healthy weight for you, then I would really work on that first because you'll, the weight, by losing weight, you'll have to change things in your life to get your body healthier. And that will then allow you to lose the weight. So we always look at it from a standpoint of health. Yeah, I love that. And when you start striving for healthier, just for a healthier body and start making healthier choices,

the beauty of it is that oftentimes the weight falls off naturally because you're doing things that are supporting your body and supporting the health of your body. Yeah, absolutely. Well, the last thing that you want to do is over-exercise or under-eat, which is the majority of what people are trying to do to, to lose weight. So those are the two worst things that you can do in the long run in the short term. Sure. They're the best things that you can do, but that destroys your metabolism long term. So if you're looking at just lose weight for the next 21 days, fine. But certainly that's going to come and that's going to bite you after about four to six weeks, especially for women, because their hormones are just much more sensitive

to starvation, essentially overwork and under food, under calories. Yeah. So can you explain some of the underlying reasons why people get sick and become overweight? Like what are some things that people can start looking at if they are listening right now and they're struggling with this? What's kind of the path you would send them on? So it always goes back to understanding you and your unique you. So just like we talked about our susceptibility to certain diseases, there's a susceptibility to weight gain. There's just no doubt about that. And some people are going to be more susceptible based on their genotype than others or what Ayurveda calls the dosha. But that's okay. It just means that for you, you're going to be more prone to

that. Just like, again, my body is not the robust body that I sometimes would love it to be in terms of doing all these different sports and getting, I wish I'd only had to sleep six hours a night, but my body needs a good seven and a half to eight hours a night. And that's okay because my nervous system needs a little bit more rest. Now I can fight that all I want, but the truth is that's what I need, right? I can try to make up excuses. I can try to take more neurotransmitter I want, but the truth is that's what I need, right? I can try to make up excuses. I can try to take more neurotransmitter precursors, but it's just not healthy. It's not working with my body. So you have to work with your body. And then also, a lot of people that

are more prone towards weight gain have underlying what is called functional hypothyroidism. So their thyroid, if they run their TSH, let's say it's a three. Now in conventional medicine, they don't have any issues until it raises above a five. But the problem is that's not healthy. That's not optimal. They also have suboptimal vitamin D and they have suboptimal blood sugar regulation. So for them, their fasting glucose when they wake up might be 100, might be 97, when really we want it in the 70s or 80s. And that means you're tapping into more blood sugar naturally between meals and overnight. And these are easy things to test with a $20

glucometer when you wake up in the morning. They can kind of see moving towards type 2 diabetes. And again, but no medical doctor would ever tell you that. And then you say, okay, well, why do I have these things? Well, sometimes it's actually a dysregulation in your gut. So it goes back to the gut again. There is poor absorption of nutrients, which causes you to have more cravings, or you have more anxiety because you're not producing enough serotonin, which starts in the gut, which causes you to want to eat more carbs. And I don't think carbs are the enemy, but overeating carbs for someone that's sensitive to them is an issue. And then, of course, there's the nervous system issue. And if you're overly stressed, even if you don't eat,

your body's going to produce more glucocorticoids, which is cortisol. It's going to break down more glycogen in your own body. It's going to create more blood sugar. And it's not going to allow you to tap into body fat. So you've got the bacteria in your gut, bacterioides and formicides. We don't have to get too deep into that. Are they balanced or not? I don't know. You can test. And then you've got your own stress. And that's why, again, there's so many things it could be. But I'd like to keep going back to foundational approaches. And if you can control

the nervous system, and you can control your digestion and gut, you're 80% of the way there. There could definitely be heavy metals and infections and mold and lime. And so there's no doubt about it, but it's almost impossible to fix those other things if you don't fix the neurological issues and the gut issues. Yeah. Yeah. And I know for a lot of women, it can be a hormonal imbalance. I find that a lot of women really struggle with their weight when they're, you know, hormonally imbalanced. Um, so in, in this comes back to, I've had a lot of conversations lately with different people, like Mark Sisson was on recently, and we were talking about metabolic flexibility,

which is something you kind of touched on, um, which is basically when you get your blood sugar to stay relatively stable throughout the whole day. How does someone get to that place of metabolic flexibility? You had mentioned earlier that you really struggled. There was no way you would be able to get through fasting because your body was really in a state of dis-ease, as you said. How do you get back to that place where you do have that flexibility? I mean, that's the question. And so what we look at is what is causing that inability to get there and we correct that for the individual. So I will say, and I forgot to mention that, and that's one of the most important, is that many women in our practice with, well, they believe it's weight gain and it is, the scale moves, but it's really this toxic water weight and their body's puffy and swollen rather than a lot of extra adipose tissue. Because we

have to remember our body's about two thirds water and adipose tissue and everything just swell. And so what happens is when you're exposed to a lot of chemicals and pesticides and DHT and paraben and triclosan and all these hand sanitizers, your body needs to put them somewhere. And it's easiest place if it can't detox them through the liver fast enough, can't stay in the bloodstream, so it'll put them in the adipose tissue. So the interesting thing is, then when we burn body fat, all of these things get dumped back into our bloodstream. And now our liver has to keep up again. So we can talk about liver detoxification or maybe another time, but back to the estrogen dominance. So nine out of 10 women that we see with estrogen dominance. So basically that's the water retention a week or so before your cycle,

or maybe even your missed cycle, or you have an irregular cycle. Sometimes you get acne, sometimes you get oily skin, sometimes you get thinning hair on the top of the crown of the head, low mood, irritability, some digestive issues and bloating, and all again, about five days to seven days or so before day one of menstruation. So when you look at this and we run labs, we run labs around days 19, 20, or 21 of a female cycle or when they have the most symptoms. And we find is actually they have normal estrogen levels. And that was the strangest thing until I started testing because they perfectly normal estrogen. What happens is their progesterone levels are so low. So now they get all of the symptoms of high estrogen,

even though you have normal estrogen. That's why if you run your labs with your typical PCP, everything looks normal. But the problem is during your luteal phase of your cycle, progesterone remains pretty low. And then it starts to jump around day 17. And then days 19 through 21 or so, it starts to peak. That's why you test during those days because your progesterone, there's something called an estrogen to progesterone ratio. And if your progesterone's not high enough, you feel like you have high estrogen. So you get all of the symptoms that I just mentioned, which includes water weight gain. So if you gain three to five pounds a week before your menstruation, most likely it's estrogen dominance, but it doesn't mean that it's high estrogen.

So what do you do? It's like, well, you can't lose that weight through diet and exercise. You actually have to lose it through hormonal balancing. And that has to do with blood sugar rebalancing and adrenal rebalancing because every time you call for more cortisol because of stress, you're going to deplete your progesterone levels. Yeah. And is there a connection with that, with the liver detoxification? Cause I will say when I was really struggling with hormonal imbalance, I, that was exactly what I struggled with. I had really, really low progesterone and And what ended up ultimately helping me the most is I started taking supplements and eating more foods that were supporting the detoxification

pathways in my liver. And that started flushing everything out. And I was able to balance my hormones. And I'm sure there were so many other things going on. But is there a connection with that? 100%. Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah. that's why, I mean, one of the best things that really anyone can do on their path, let's say that you're doing a mold protocol, a heavy metal protocol, parasite protocol, digestive protocol, whatever it might be. You really want to start with a 21-day functional medicine detox if you've never done one before, because it's going to teach you about intermittent fasting. It's going to teach you about liver detoxification of essentially, these are the nutrients that you

need for phase one. And most people, if they're taking a good activated multi with good methylated B vitamins, and they're taking their zinc and their selenium and all these great things, they're going to get those. But most people don't get the phase two nutrients. And so they get a block, which means that they're not able to break down, well, they're able to break down the fat soluble toxin, but it becomes this, what's called an intermediary metabolite that I'm sure you know about, maybe you've talked about on the show, but it creates massive oxidation now in the body. And whenever there's oxidation, there's inflammation. When there's inflammation, well, now you open up your genetics again. So what we really need are all of those sulfur-based amino

acids, and you can take them through nutrition product, through functional medicine detox as taurine, N-acetylcysteine, glycine, glutathione. You can do a reduced version of that. They're all great. But you can also get them on a daily basis because you're not going to functional medicine detox every single day of your life. You're going to get them through cruciferous vegetables. And so as you start to up those with broccoli and cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, and you might say, well, when I eat those, I get all this cramping and bloating. Well, then that probably shows you, again, weak digestion, some type of overgrowth. The vegetables aren't the problem. The digestive system is the issue.

Let's correct this. That's why sometimes you have to take one step at a time, knowing that you'll eventually get there, but without a doubt. And so just to kind of answer your question, and I'm very long winded, that you're not able to get rid of what's called the estrogen metabolites from your body, which is basically the used up estrogen hormone that although not as potent, still can build up in your body. So now you have greater amounts of estrogen esters or estrogen metabolites that build up, creating more estrogen dominance. What is this functional medicine detox that you're talking

about? So I started this about 2010 in my practice, and I only did it for like the worst of the worst because 10, 11 years ago, that's what it was indicated for. So no matter what, so I mean, I studied naturopathy, like that, that was my degree. And other people studied to become a nurse practitioner, other people studied to become a medical doctor, or a chiropractor, or an acupuncturist, or registered dietitian. But you can then do post-doctoral work in functional medicine. And so back then, when I was there 2008, 2009, 2010 or so, with IFM, I was studying these things.

And I'm like, oh, this looks really interesting. And it was like, you're using like 10, 12 products with people. But when you have really bad autoimmune issues and all sorts of issues, a lot of people are willing to do whatever it takes. And I saw dramatic results, meaning like massive reductions, we have to say healthy levels of inflammation and all those good stuff. But let's just say these people got phenomenally better in 21 days. And it was unlike anything I'd ever seen. And I'd done a lot.

And so I said, okay, the fringe benefit though, is people were losing 10 to 20 pounds in three weeks, which does not seem possible. Because you're not burning that much body fat. It's just not happening. Because there's not that much of a caloric deficit. So what was going on? Well, these people are so massively inflamed and holding onto so much toxic water weight that we

call it now that they just dropped that inflammation and they were rebalancing hormones and blood sugar and their sleep and all these different patterns in such a fast way. So what we did, and a lot of other companies now are doing this as well. My company is Equal Life. That's how you get the labs. That's how you do this functional medicine detox. Now it's just three products. There are other great companies like Thorne's a great company. Pure Encapsulation's a great company. So I'm not trying to just promote ours.

But functional medicine companies are the answer. They do third-party testing. They put a lot of money into research. Products cost a little bit more, but that's because you have to spend so much more money to create these types of products. And now it's just three products. So you take, ours is a functional medicine capsule, which contains the selenium, the glycine,

the N-acetylcysteine, the taurine, the glutathione that I was talking about with an Ayurvedic blend that I added for Triphala, which helps to keep the bowels moving during a detox, and turmeric, which of course we know is a great spice, and ginger, which ginger is great for digestion, but it's also good for the kidneys, the liver, and the intestines. And then there's a daily nutritional support shake, which contains then all of the nutrients you need, the methylated B vitamins, et cetera. And I'll tell you, I mean, it's, it doesn't cost more than food.

And if it's one place that people can start, it's not going to be your finish line, but it's a phenomenal way to start. And it really is. It's my number one suggestion for people. I love that. I love giving people actionable things that they can do to start heading on their path to health, because I've, I've realized more than anything with all the questions that I get from people's, a lot of people are, you know, run down, fatigued, feeling sick, dealing with bloating, gut issues, allergies, eczema, and no one really knows where to start, you know? And so everyone's kind of struggling to figure out like, okay, how do I get on this path? Like I keep hearing that I'll feel better if I change my diet and I do this and I do that. And, and there, and you know, as people are going to learn listening to

this episode, there's a lot of different components involved and it really comes down to finding someone that will work with you and knows what to look for and knows what, what to test for, and also can give you recommendations on diet and lifestyle changes. And there's so many different components and I know it can feel like a little bit overwhelming. But I like to remind people that, you know, this, and you said this earlier, it's not going to happen overnight. It's these little changes that you start making day to day. And then one day, you're going to wake up and you're going to look back and be like, Oh, wow, I feel so much better. And, you know, I took all these steps, and you'll be able to look back and kind of see the path that that led you on to this new path of health.

This is really what happened with me. I struggled for a long time in my 20s, hormonal imbalance and gaining weight. And you know, it's crazy, I look back and I was severely inflamed. I mean, you can literally see it in my face. Um, I had such horrible heartburn that I had to get a scope down my throat because they saw, they thought that something really crazy was happening. Um, it turns out I just had really crazy gut inflammation and a hormonal imbalance. And, um, you know, once I was finally able to start getting the answers of that and clean up my diet, clean up my lifestyle, I was able to, you know, drop the weight, get rid of the inflammation. I haven't had heartburn in probably eight years. Um, and it,

it was all just little, little things that I had to figure out. And, um, yeah, it's kind of like a, it's a guessing game. You really, you have to like approach it in an individual way and start figuring out what exactly is going on in your body specifically. And it's great that you share your story. And I try to share mine as well, because people have to understand is that a lot of what you figure out about yourself and the way that you can help others is through going through your own trials. And I'll tell you though, like, I always give my mentor credit, Dr. Pete, like she pulled it together for me, but I wouldn't have understood her message had I not done all the other, it wasn't like I wasn't trying to get well before that. I was, I was getting well and then I would relapse. I was getting well. And so you have to just begin

the journey and take the first step because then after that, it reveals to you what the next step will be, but you don't even get to learn the next step until you start the first. So of course, a whole food diet is where you want to start before exercise, before anything else. You need to put good nourishment into your body. But at the same time, if you're not absorbing it well, it's tough, right? So you're putting the right foods in, I'm doing the right thing, but I'm still getting bloating. It's like, that's why digestion is a great first place to start. But the reason why I mentioned the functional medicine detox first and why you have to start somewhere is because if you don't first open up those liver pathways, you're not going to heal. So your liver is an organ. I always have this guy on my desk right here. So people watching

the video, this is a massive organ right here. I mean, your liver is right underneath the right side of your rib cage. It filters all of the blood in your body every six minutes. So think about not changing your car filter or not having a car filter. Driving down the highway, the amount of soot and everything that would come into your car. It's the same thing with your bloodstream. I mean, your liver is filtering all of that.

And yes, it does that all day long. People say, well, there's no need to do a detox. There is, trust me. You can run any heavy metal detox lab. You can run an environmental detox lab. I'm guaranteeing you, you find something. That means your liver didn't get everything. And so, but it's not the end all be all. It's a great first place to start. It opens up the pathways and then it allows you to get more benefit from the hormonal balancing program, the gut rebalancing program, the heavy

metal, the mold, the Lyme, because you've opened up those pathways and your blood is cleaner, legitimately cleaner. And you can run you can run those labs to, to, to prove it as well. Well, and I think people don't realize too, that our livers can become sluggish over time because we don't think about how much we are getting exposed to on a day-to-day basis. I mean, stuff in your water, plastic in your food. Um, if you live in a congested city pollution in the air, um, pesticides in your, in your food. And so there's so many different factors that, um, you're being exposed to on a day-to-day basis that your body's then having to cleanse out. I mean, for women, the stuff that we put on our face or skincare, this all plays a role. And, um, it, I don't say this

to scare anyone, but just to remind you that, like you said, it's really important to support those detoxification pathways because our body can only handle so much of it before it starts to get overloaded and sluggish and run down. Without a doubt. I mean, the statistic right now from, I believe it's the Environmental Working Group, is that the average woman uses 12 different skincare, cosmetic, shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer-based products. And she's exposed to 168 different chemicals a day just from that alone. Because one is they don't label everything that's in that product. And second is when you look at the back of a bottle of these products, you can't pronounce half of these words. And so they're not just natural like shea butter or coconut oil or whatever it might be. And so I don't need people to be perfect. I always tell them that. Listen, I'm not perfect. I don't need everybody perfect.

Every once in a while, you might use some saran wrap or whatever it might be. But you try to do as best as you can. And that's why you do the functional medicine detoxes. You try to eat well on a daily basis. You eat your cruciferous vegetables. You try to get some sleep and you do your intermittent fast every day. And these are the things that allow you then not to fill up the rain barrel so it doesn't overflow. It's like you do the things to keep empty

and yeah, you might add a little bit every day. I mean, I still have some, you know, a flex meal once a week, whatever you'd like to call it, because I enjoy certain foods and I want to always enjoy those foods. So I eat them. And I'm not pretending that this is a health food, but it's like, well, I do all these other things.

I can fill up my rain barrel a little bit. I'll be okay. And so I think that's a better way of like looking at life. It's like, look at the main things that you do. Not the things every once in a while. Get a good water filter, get a shower filter, a bath filter. Try to eat organic quality food, you know, when you can. If you can't buy all organic, then stay away from the dirty dozen. Just don't even buy them. And these are all things that you can do for you and your family.

Yeah, that's really important. And I love that message too. I try to share that as well with people because I don't want everyone to get overwhelmed and then just not do anything. But the point is that there's a lot of things that you can control and that you can, that you can control and that you can change with pretty minimal effort. You know, um, it's just a matter

of kind of picking and choosing. And then, you know, like you said, kind of finding those vices, like, do I drink alcohol? Yes. I love my wine. Do I drink it every night? No. Um, and I do other things. I have other things in place that I know support my body and support my health so that it allows me that flexibility to have some of those v gluten, like I like bread and pasta. I love bread and pasta. I grew up in a Portuguese and Italian family. And so there's a bit of comfort to that. There's memories and I don't necessarily want to get rid of those. But before I couldn't do those for a long period of time because they actually cause massive inflammation in my body. They cause sinus congestion. They cause joint pain. So I had to eliminate them for a certain period of time. But then you do get well. And once you do get well, you learn, well, you first learn the hard way because you think that you're all better. Everything's good. So you say, oh, I can have alcohol, a glass every night,

wine. I can have some pasta maybe three, four times a week. And then it doesn't hit you right away, right? The rain barrel hasn't overflowed yet. Three weeks down the line, you're like, I can't believe my migraines are back. I can't believe I'm getting skin rashes and rosacea again, or my joints hurt. And you're like, well, it can't be the gluten and the wine or the whatever, because I've been using those now for weeks. No, no, no. That's not how it works. It's not usually the one, you know, serving of it. It's a buildup over time. So then you're like, okay, let me go back. Let me eliminate first. Let me get healthy. And then you're like, okay, what can I do? And so I've realized for my body, I can do it twice a week and there's no issue at all. So I can have two flex meals a week, not back to back. Cause that actually causes too much inflammation in the body. Cause now you're

doing inflammation on top of inflammation, let the inflammation die down for a bit. And then you can add another offense to it. And that's fine with me, but for alcohol once a week, maximum, that's what works well for my body because it throws off my sleep too much. And so when I track my sleep and I look at my deep sleep, my REM, my heart rate variability, my rest and heart rate, um, if I have a drink too close to bed, I'm not gonna get the best night's sleep. Now, if I'm with friends on a Saturday night and I want to enjoy their company and I decide to have alcohol or not have alcohol, that's my choice and that's okay. And I do that. And then Sunday's recovery the whole next week, and we're good to go. So again, I think as we've been saying too, it's, it's getting well, and then learning more about your body in the process, you're not gonna

be perfect. And that's okay. But if you really get into this, you'll be there within 12 months. I mean, like next year at this time, and a year always seems far away in the present moment, but it's short as we look back, uh, you'll be a totally different person. And you're going to feel better because that's ultimately the goal at the end of the day is just feel better in your body. And that's the beauty of this is when you start implementing these changes in your life, you're not going to want to go back to those foods before. You're not going to want to go back to that lifestyle before, because you're going to feel so good in your life, you're not going to want to go back to those foods before you're not going to want to go back to that lifestyle before, because you're going to feel so good in your body that you're not going to want to be in that sick state anymore. And there, you know, I have a personal

story with, you were talking about that kind of buildup and consistency of food. So when I was in high school and actually it bled over in a college as well, I had, I never got diagnosed with this, but looking back, I'm pretty sure that this is what was happening. I had some sort of psoriasis or something going on in the back of my scalp. And I mean, it was inflamed red. It was constantly itching. I mean, just bothering me 24 seven basically. And I didn't really think too much of it. Cause I just kind of in the back of my mind was like, Oh, this is just my life now. You know? Well, I ended up getting diagnosed right out of college with a wheat allergy and I cut gluten out of my diet.

And I had remembered that the doctor had told me, she was like, you know, we kind of just need to get you back to a state of low inflammation, bring down the inflammation. Then you can probably incorporate gluten back in, you know, in a little bit in your life. And so, um, I've been gluten free for the last 10 years. And last November, I had a friend come visit me and he has his sourdough that he loves. And I mean, he was making sourdough bread every day was making a sourdough pizzas and sourdough pancakes, like we like went for it. And I remember thinking, okay, I'm just gonna go for it this week and see what happens. And you know, it was fine. You know,

the whole week, I was like,, Oh my God, I feel great. And before when I was younger and I had gotten diagnosed, I would eat gluten and almost immediately I was in a fetal position because I was in so much pain. And so I started thinking, Oh wow. Okay. So I can do this. The sourdough doesn't affect me as much. And you know, like I'm fine. So then fast forward a week later, I got that psoriasis back in my scalp. It full blown came back. And I mean, I had forgotten about it because it had gone away when I was in college. This is like 12 plus years ago.

And I was like, what is going on? Why am I like, so why am I getting all these crazy symptoms? And then I was able to connect it back. I was like, oh, wow. Well, I just fully overloaded my body with an extremely inflammatory food for me, not saying it is for everyone, but gluten doesn't do well with my body. And I was able to make that connection. It's good that you were because a lot of people, again, you're not going to see that because it didn't happen at that first assault. But you, and I'm not saying to eat gluten for you,

but we found that even people with celiac, if they eliminate for a long enough period of time, they get their body and their gut rebalanced, that if they're exposed to it in the future, they're probably going to be fine. Don't go out of your way to eat it, of course, but you're probably going to be fine because you've rebalanced your body. Now, celiac is a different story because you actually have a genetic predisposition to an autoimmune reaction within your gut when you eat gluten and gliadin. So that's a bigger issue. But for a lot of people like you, and again, I'm not saying do this, but in a week from now, you've now eliminated it for, let's just say months, you'd probably be able

to go out and have a little bit of gluten and you'd be perfectly fine and then wait another two weeks and do it again. Because again, it creates inflammation. There's no doubt about it. And gluten creates inflammation in every individual. It's just, let's call it a scale from 1% to 100%, with 100% being the fetal position and you're all inflamed and you end up with skin rashes or joint pain or whatever it might be. But no matter what, I just did a show on this that it increases zonulin. And when that happens, it's going to begin to increase intestinal permeability. Now, again, one meal of gluten, not a big deal. But what happens is over time, I mean, think about it. How many people wake up and they have cereal or breakfast bar or pastry or muffin or whatever it is. And then for lunch, they have a sandwich. And then at dinner, you do

pizza for takeout or breaded chicken or whatever it might be. I mean, people are eating gluten three times a day. And it's just like, well, you can imagine the assault on the gut and the body when you've been doing it for that long. And that's what I did. I mean, that's how I grew up, cereal, sandwiches, and pasta at dinner. So that was not helping me. I know. Same. Neither for me as well. But yeah. And so this is something interesting to the gut connection and the inflammation. Um, what I mentioned, so my doctor had told me that if I was able to heal my gut, get rid of that inflammation, then my body could take it in little increments again. And this is something I share with people a lot. Like anytime people start seeing a lot

of sensitivities and allergies start popping up out of nowhere. I always tell people, go look at the gut health first, get, you know, some stool tests done, whatever it is, go see someone that's going to look at your gut and see what's going on. Because generally what that means is that there's some sort of inflammation and your body is unable to process and digest it. And there's like a deeper cause happening here. You're not just all of a sudden allergic to all these foods. That's right. Yeah, without a doubt. And you know, mine happened from poor eating as a child, no doubt about it, a lot of antibiotic use. For other people, it could be a food combining issue that are on proton pump inhibitors or acid blockers, which allows for a lot of this bacteria parasites into the gut. Women on birth control, oral contraceptives, heavy metals, all of these

things can disrupt the gut. Pesticides. Exactly. Yep. Pesticides is a huge one. Because they act like antibiotics. That's what we need to look at first. That's why it's like antibiotics are fine if it's a life-saving base condition, but for the common cold or like sniffles, I mean, that's what I used to get them for. It's really questionable. And so, you know, we just need to begin to have a different philosophy on health. And it's that, I mean, even, you know, as a board certified doctor, my job is not to heal anybody. My job is to put your body in position to heal itself. That's it. I take away the toxicities

that it has by giving you specific protocols for heavy metals, like natural chelating things, such as biofilm disruptors, craxyl chlorellalorella, certain things like that. And what I do is, again, take away the toxins and try to help replace those deficiencies based on labs. But at no point do I tell your body how to pull all those strings. That's not the way it works. And I think that if we're really being honest, practitioners or not, we don't know all of the beautiful intricacies within the body as to how it works. We have a really good idea, but we don't know everything. And that's why it's best not to pretend to play creator. And you simply give the body what it needs and allow it then to heal itself. And some people get healed in 12 weeks, some 16,

some in 21 days. It's like, well, how do we know? We don't know. We know only after the fact how imbalanced your body really was. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love that so much. Before we go, I'm curious your thoughts on food sensitivity tests. A lot of practitioners have very strong feelings in either direction about them. How do you feel about those? Yeah. It's like, there's this, There's this dogma that goes around in every single profession that it's just this need to be right. It's like your truth is better than somebody else's truth. And it's like, well, who are we really trying to help here? So I always tell people that. It's like, whether I'm working with someone's medical doctor or their personal trainer or whoever, we're all on the same page. Because

the end goal is to help this patient or wellness client heal. And so for me, inside of my practice, I can tell you for sure, myself included, that IgG food sensitivity testing is phenomenal. It really is. And they use it at places like Children's Hospital in Boston. There's a lot of great studies that show that it works. There are also studies saying that, well, we don't know if it works or not. That's how everything is. So does ashwagandha work for stress? Yeah, absolutely. Does it work in 100% of cases? No, it doesn't, which is why we use synergistic products that's not just ashwagandha for stress. It's L-theanine, phospholiserine, rhodiola, ashwagandha. It's like, you don't have to rely on just one thing. That's the nice thing.

And do we ever just do food sensitivity testing? And if someone's not positive for something, then we don't eliminate it? No, we'll eliminate it based on the person's story as well. Because IgG is one immunoglobulin. So if someone's like, well, I eat dairy and every time I eat dairy, I get cramping and loose stool. Okay, well, that actually has nothing to do with your immune cells, your immunoglobulins. That has to do with most likely lactose intolerance, which is an enzyme lactase to break down lactose. So that has nothing to do with the sensitivity. That's a digestive issue.

So when we're talking about sensitivities, we're talking about a sensitivity to the particular protein that might be escaping from the bloodstream. And so I'm a wholehearted believer in it. I don't take any lab in general, though, as the end-all be-all. That's why you do a consultation. You speak with your practitioner. Their story means as much as the numbers, because this is not conventional medicine. This is functional medicine or integrative health. And so no, I definitely use it. I've seen it work phenomenally well in my practice. And it's been a great guide for a lot of people, especially with migraines, skin issues, allergies, et cetera, that sets off the Th2 side of the immune system. Yeah. I'm of the mind that it's always a great jumping off point. You know, it's kind of you go there first, and then it will hopefully send you on a path to where you can continue on and figure out what is really going on. And, and it's important to to note that when you go and see an integrative doctor versus like a conventional doctor, when you just go see your conventional doctor, you see them for what, maybe 10 minutes, and then they're on to the next. Whereas if you sit down with an integrative functional medicine doctor, your first appointment,

depending on who you go to is an hour, hour and a half. They want to know everything that's going on in your body, your lifestyle, how's your social life, how's your mental health, all of these things play a role. And then I think that a lot of those get overlooked. And it's important that people understand that there's so much more involved. It's everything. We need to know everything that's going on in your life, not just your diet and are you sleeping? The psycho-emotional perspective is huge. And you're just not going to get that through conventional medicine. But again, it's not their fault. You go to school as a medical doctor to diagnose disease based on solely blood work. And whatever comes up as a medical doctor to diagnose disease based on solely blood work and whatever comes

up as a disease, you medicate with a specific pharmaceutical. That's not the medical doctor's fault. That's the game. Okay. And, but I'll be honest with you, 99% of the population wants that. They're not, they're not listening to your podcast. They're not saying, oh, I'm going to get myself well. And I think it's unfortunate and I wish it wasn't the case, but it's still the case. So we still need medication for those people. But if you're willing to work on your nutrition, you're willing to start to walk at your 10,000 steps a day. You're willing to start to calm your mind, to reframe your mindset, to look at the way that you look at the world and to handle stress and to work on your sleep, then you deserve robust health. Because

I'll tell you right now, like my life now is infinitely better than when I was sick. I was still the same human being, but I was miserable. I mean, absolutely miserable. So I didn't want to live that life anymore. I wanted energy. I wanted to go after my goals in life. But you don't get to do any of that until you actually get healthy. And so that's why, again, that's why I also feel bad in a way that a lot of people don't even know that any of this exists. They don't. And their medical doctor will never tell them that. And they'll always say things like, well, it's not based on science. You know, I always ask like, when's the last time you read science? Like, when's the last time you read a book or a scientific

study? Because I have a lot of my friends or colleagues that are medical doctors. And I'm like, how many journals are you reading? How many books are you reading? And I mean, I do it like, you know, as them joking around about their colleagues, but most people aren't. Like you learn what you learn in school and that's it. So if your doctor's like 65 years old, they get nothing wrong with a 65 year old doctor,

but they may not have read anything or barely anything for 30 years. And so like anything new that's current. So I'm just, I tried myself to be, I'm not perfect by any means, but I keep my mind open. I'm learning from everybody. And I just, I'm always searching for

what are the other truths out there that might come in conflict with my truth? And whose truth might this be that I'm not offering right now? And I think if you have that mindset, well, for my practice, you can't help but help more people. But also if you have that mindset for yourself,

you can't help but eventually get well and lose the weight as well. Because just one thing about the weight that I want to say is picture yourself, and I actually recommend this for people, buy a 40 pound weight vest. It's going to cost you $40, $50. Wear that weight vest around when you're in your house.

Think about how awful you feel with that extra 40 pounds on. Everything is harder. Try lying down with it. It compresses your chest. Think about taking that 40 pounds off. When you take off that weight vest, even though you have your own extra 40 pounds, you can actually adjust these vests,

you feel so much lighter. You feel so much more energetic. Think about that for yourself. And we do that all the time. When we, when, when we had an actual practice, now our practice is virtual and people appreciate it because they say, I get it. I understand it. And I just think that we need more of that. It's like, how do you visualize, how do you think of yourself already in that end state? Cause it's hard because you get to put in some work, but the work is worth it. If you can feel, if you can already feel that state of where you'll be at one day. Absolutely. Like you said, what is better than

feeling great in your body? You know, you can't function and live a life that you want to live when you're fatigued, have brain fog, your brain doesn't function, you know, as well. You're because think about like, there's that connection between the gut and the brain in the vagus nerve. And when your gut is inflamed, you're going to have brain fog. You're not going to have as, um, your cognitive function is not going to be as great. There's so many different things going on. And when, when you start getting to that place of feeling better, it's going to immensely change your life in every area without a doubt. And also I want to, yeah. And I want to touch on one more thing that you said. So I, I've, I hate this. Everyone is right now saying like, I believe in the science. And I think when people say that they forget that science is ever

evolving and ever changing. And we need to realize that when new information comes out, we need to be malleable enough to say like, okay, well now, now we know this, we knew this before, but now we know this and we need to be able to move with it and be okay with some of our theories being questioned and, um, really looking at the science as something that's not just like a state. And then that's it. That's not debatable, but something that's ever evolving and ever changing. And, you know, it's great. You talked about like, so the 65 year old doctor and a great point. Um, you know, if he's not keeping up with the science, he may have no idea about this gut connection that we only learned about in the last like 10, 15 years. He probably didn't learn that when he was in medical school. And again, it's just, we're always learning new things about the body. And as these things come out, we need to

constantly be keeping up with it and changing and being okay with the changes of it. Yeah. And that's the real issue. So let's say you built an entire practice or business around one form of nutrition. You're going to find every study that points that you're correct, right? And you're going to forget all the others, right? So should everybody be fasting for 16 hours a day? I can show you studies that show it's positive. I can show you studies that's negative. Should everybody be following a keto diet? I can show you thousands of women that it's hurt after about 28 days, that it's lowered their thyroid. It's caused adrenal-based issue, adrenal dysfunction, or it was called the diurnal dysfunction where adrenals or cortisol starts to get produced more

at night than in the morning. So it's like all of these things are correct, but they're correct for who and for also how long. So, you know, I believe in a 24 hour fast, but am I doing that every day? No. Right. Cause I have to eat food. So it's like, well, when should I do that? So like you just said, this, the science is malleable for your viewpoint. That's a big thing. Uh, but also, you know, people thought they were really smart with medicine in the late 1800s. And it's disturbing if you go back to see what they were doing. And so I question a lot of what conventional medicine is doing, though. But I don't question a lot of what natural health is doing.

I question when it's taken too far. So that's the only issue. So in Ayurvedic medicine, I mean, we have 6,000 years of tried and true natural medicine and natural health. In traditional Chinese medicine, we have 3,000, a little over 3,000 years. We have Greek, we have Roman-based, we have Native American styles of health. So we're looking at these things. And so that's what I did actually for my internships. I traveled around the world and I studied in India and Sri Lanka and China and Europe and all around the US. And I saw more similarities than differences. And that's

why I started to move towards that functional medicine detox and things like that, because they heal people through subtractive properties. So they realized that adding more to someone that's already full is only making them worse. So it's like you try to get someone to process 30 vitamins, you know, or like, you know, 30 capsules will say like, oh, this person's low on CoQ10, they're low on B12, they're low on this. Yeah, they do need all of them, but they can't process all of them through their liver because their liver is so backed up. And so it's like, so I look at two ways. I look at the science now. What does Ayurveda say? 6,000 years. Because every time I've gone against Ayurveda, I've been wrong. And if it's just like a new way of saying it from a scientific perspective, I love it.

But I also, I like anecdotal evidence as a good starting point as well. And I knew this because 20, not 25 years ago, but close to it, I started in the nutrition and fitness space field. And I realized that everything my colleagues were doing, because I was young, you know, and so like I looked at them, what were they doing? None of this was written in any of my certification textbooks, but it was 10, 15 years later. So what practitioners are doing in practice now, as long as it is based on science, that this is probably going to be the truth in the future. So when I got diagnosed with intestinal permeability in the early 2000s, yeah, you're right. Conventional medicine laughed at it. Now there's all sorts of Harvard-based publications from like Dr. Alessio Fasano that all about gluten and zonulin and well, yeah, okay.

So science finally caught up to what we already knew. So I would be careful. I like a blend of what we know to work and then also on science and be very careful of the fringe science. So there's a lot of popularity with nicotinamide riboside as an anti-aging nutrient. Well, I think it's fantastic. I think it's very powerful, but taking more of it may be a really bad thing because now we're finding that it's depleting methyl donors. So again, it's like in our Western-based mindset, we take yoga too far. Like what happened to Hatha yoga?

Is Hatha yoga not okay? We had to make it like yoga for sports. We take a little bit of resveratrol or nicotinamide riboside or all these things. It's just taken too far. That's it. And so a lot of something is not better than some of something is what I found as well.

Yeah, I love that so much. And I just, I love the approach of integrative and functional medicine and the Ayurvedic approach as well, because oftentimes they're doing tiny little tweaks and, you know, supplements and diet changes and whatever it is. And it seems as though it's an approach to, to have the less amount of symptoms and create less amount of harm as possible. Whereas you look at some of these drugs, I mean, just think about the drug commercials that we hear for pharmaceuticals. And then at the very end, it's really fast and like low voice,

but they're naming off all these horrible, insane symptoms. And so for me, I'm just of the mind of like, okay, I don't want to vilify medication. We probably would not be here as humans on this planet without Western medicine and medication. But I do think that oftentimes it's better to take the less harmful approach in the beginning and really try to rule out everything else so that you can, so that you can really just get back to a healthier body, you know, and, and do less harm instead of just going straight for the, the pharmaceutical drugs. That's right.

Only in acute based circumstances where your life depends on it or a loved one's life depends on it. You know, when you get a staph infection or something like that, you don't want to mess around and say, well, because you might be able to fix it with things like tea tree oil, oregano oil, cloves, thyme, et cetera. But at the same time, like you don't want to risk that. Yeah, exactly. Why risk that?

So just take the antibiotics and then at the same time, okay, take some Saccharomyces boulardii, some probiotics, some, you know, glutamine and zinc to help rebuild your gut. That's a much smarter approach. You can always come back, but you need to make sure that you came back in order to be able to heal these things. Yeah, for sure. Yes, exactly. And it's being able to differentiate between like when you actually, these are like the life or death situations where you really need it versus just like you said, like a common cold, taking an antibiotic, it's not even really going to do anything. You know, it's, it's supposed to target bacteria, not a virus.

You're a hundred percent right. And they've also found that if anything, it helps you get better 24 to 36 hours faster. That's it. Cause it takes 72 hours for your immune cells to really start to build up. And we kind of forget that it's like, oh, well, if I've been, if I've had this cold for four or five days, then it's been going on for too long. Well, a normal cold is, you know, somewhere between four and maybe up to three weeks. And so I think that our impatience sometimes lends us to, but also what we've been taught. I mean, I grew up believing that conventional medicine was almost like a religion. Like it was not to be questioned. It was this, it was almighty. Like you, you, you never questioned your doctor. And, and now I think that we don't need to question our doctors,

but we need to understand what they're there for. Conventional medicine is there to help you in acute based circumstances with disease. And then you can, you can have a integrative health practitioner and a medical doctor and you should, you shouldn't get rid of your medical doctor. You should just have both. They do two different things and that's a great way to look at it. Yes. Oh, I love that so much. So before we go, I ask everyone this, what are your health non-negotiables? Meaning no matter what, no matter how busy your day is, these are things that you do to promote health and just feel good in your body. So like, for example, I always go for a walk outside no matter what. So I get vitamin D and I get exercise. That is like

a non-negotiable for me. I do. I've actually built up a bunch of these over the years. And that's because my work is so crazy and so intense that I'm in that sympathetic nervous system. So now I need to be able to switch to that parasympathetic nervous system three times a day. So I have three anchors. So what I do is I have an hour to myself in the morning before my two young daughters wake up. That's my time.

The rest of my day, honestly, until eight o'clock at night is everybody else's. And I'm okay with that, but I need my one hour in the morning. So that's it. It's actually, it's just a very relaxed hour in the morning. I do some movements. I make myself a smoothie. I actually make some for my daughters as well. It's just relaxed. We'll put it that way. Actually, the smoothie doesn't come for about an hour and a half to two hours after waking, but that's a story for another day. But it's relaxed. And then at lunch, I do the same thing. I take a walk every day. I tell people that unless it's raining sideways, because I can't be soaked going back to work,

I'm outside. I mean, I'm outside in the snow. I'm outside, whatever it is, in Boston. And then at the end of the day, I have some quiet time as well. So it's basically like noise all day and then quiet, calm the nervous system, quiet. I have a quiet lunch to myself. I'm with people all day over video and all that now. So I have a quiet lunch to myself. I might watch a video. I might watch something funny, just something binaural beats to switch my nervous system. Okay. And then at the, cause you should be relaxed while you're eating, right? So I don't want to do work while I'm eating. So that's what I do. And then

at the end of the day, it's really the same thing. It's making sure that I get home every single night to enjoy dinner with my family. I turn my phone off and I relax. And so those are my non-negotiables. I also keep food very simple. Like a lot of people love to come up with all these gourmet recipes and I eat not the same thing every day, but it's simple, very, very simple. And that's a nice way for me to enjoy my meals without being stressed about them. I can save my fun meals for that twice a week like I talk about. Yeah, I love that.

Well, that's awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. Please tell everyone where they can find you. So I do a daily podcast about all of the topics that we talked about today. They're about 20 minutes long. That's called the Cabral Concept. Everything can basically be found on my social media,

just at stephencabral.com. And my book is called The Rain Barrel Effect. So that is essentially the principles I teach. The first half of the book is how you got sick or overweight, or you feel like you're aging rapidly. And the second half is about the de-stress protocol. So that is that. And then also we train a lot of great practitioners all over the world, and they're called integrative health practitioners. A lot of people use the term. It's fantastic. We don't try to take the term from anybody. And so that's what I say is like, you don't have to work with me. Work with an integrative health practitioner. Work with someone that does this style of coaching. And we also open source all of this at equi.life, E-Q-U-I dot L-I-F-E.

And that's where people can get the labs anywhere in the world, the protocols so that you don't have to ask a doctor if they're unwilling to do it for you, because to be honest, most are not. Many are. Yeah. I've seen that as well. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. We will have all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much. Today was so good. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Real Foodology podcast. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Chris McCone. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie, spelled with a J. Love you guys so much. See you next week.