Realfoodology - Getting Healthy at a Cellular Level with Dr. Bill Rawls

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

118: **REALFOODOLOGY PODCAST IS NOW ON YOUTUBE!** Bill Rawls, MD, graduated from Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest  He was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in his mid-forties. He developed insomnia, fatigue, joint pain, muscle pain, and all the symptoms that collectively pointed toward fibromyalgia. Looking for answers he started searching outside conventional medicine. For the past 15 years, he has extensively studied the science behind herbal therapies and new sustainable approaches for protecting health. Today, Dr. Rawls shares the revelations that helped him and thousands of others reclaim their lives. Dr. Rawls is a leading expert in integrative health and Medical Director of Vital Plan, a holistic health and herbal supplement company in Raleigh, NC. He is the best-selling author of Unlocking Lyme, and his most recent book, The Cellular Wellness Solution: Tap Into Your Full Health Potential with the Science-Backed Power of Herbs.  Topics Covered: Advantages and disadvantages with acute care Issues with western medicine  Pharmaceuticals  Fixing your body at a cellular level  What is healing? How to slow down aging  Dormant microbes  Parasites and microbes Germ Theory  What is aging?  Benefits of herb Best herbs to start taking today  How to reduce stress at a cellular level  Red light therapy  Ancestral health and longevity  Environmental toxins  Check Out Dr. Bill: Get 15% off at both vitalplan.com and vitalplanselect.com  with code Realfoodology  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vitalplan/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VitalPlan Twitter: https://twitter.com/VitalPlan  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRv4ZKm24n7Ospxwo2OLiFw Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/vitalplan/ https://vitalplan.com/ https://rawlsmd.com/about https://cellularwellness.com/ Sponsored By: Higher Dose higherdose.com use code REALFOODOLOGY FOR 15% OFF SITEWIDE ION - Intelligence of Nature www.intelligenceofnature.com Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 15% off all one time orders Organifi organifi.com/realfoodology Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% off Cured Nutrition www.curednutrition.com/realfoodology REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% off Check Out Courtney: **REALFOODOLOGY PODCAST IS NOW ON YOUTUBE!** Courtney's Instagram: @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Further Listening: Glyphosate, GMO's and How To Navigate the Food System with Zach Bush MD

On today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. Herbs are doing things that our foods no longer have the capacity to do. So we're getting this rich phytochemistry that's protecting ourselves beyond just eating well and doing all the things that we need to do from a lifestyle point of view. Taking herbs gives you just this huge boost of cellular resilience that, wow, it's powerful. Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast. I am so happy that you're here. I am your host, Courtney Swan. I am the creator behind Real Foodology, which started out as a food blog back in 2011 when I was getting my master's of science in nutrition and integrative

health. It has since then become a Instagram. If you guys don't follow me on Instagram, please go to Instagram at real foodology and give me a follow. And now more recently, it is this podcast and I am so grateful that you guys are here and listening. On today's episode, I talk with Dr. Bill Rawls. He graduated from Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University in 1985, and he was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in his 40s. He developed all the symptoms that you can imagine, insomnia, fatigue, joint pain, muscle pain. Looking for answers, he started searching outside of conventional medicine because he was not finding healing in the way that he had hoped. He is very well researched. He is the author of

The Cellular Wellness Solution, which is a fantastic book. I left a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out on Amazon. And we talk a lot about the pillars of health that he goes into great detail on in his book. And these are stress factors. So poor diet, toxic environment, mental stress, physical stress, and microbial stress. We go into detail about what all of these mean and the importance of them and what it means for your health. We also talk a little bit about getting back to our ancestral roots and eating as our ancestors did and just getting back to eating real food, which is, of course, the message of real foodology.

So I was very grateful to have him on. I hope that you guys love this episode as much as I did. Dr. Rawls has so generously given me a code to share with you, my podcast family. You're going to get 15% off at both vitalplan.com and vitalplanselect.com with code realfoodology. Both of these links are in the show notes. All right, friends, I cannot believe that it is already November 2nd. When I announced this giveaway, we had six weeks for the giveaway and I cannot believe that it's been six weeks. Okay, so I'm going to announce the winners. We have five winners total. And I just want to say thank you so much for everyone that entered. You guys left the most amazing ratings and reviews and I am so humbled and so touched by them. And I'm truly so grateful for

this amazing podcast community. And I'm so so grateful for this amazing podcast community. And I'm so grateful for you guys because I would be nowhere without you guys. Like this podcast would be nowhere without you. So I just want to say thank you so much. Okay. I hope that I get everyone's names correctly here. So I'm so sorry if I mispronounce anything, but the winners are Antonella Rodriguez, Mandy Rawlings, Cindy Dale, Christina Moreno, and Jana, who did not leave their last name. So I've emailed you guys, please send me your address and we will get them shipped out to you as soon as possible. And for everyone else, please stay tuned because we're going to do another giveaway soon, I hope. If you have listened to this podcast for a while, you know,

I talk a lot about our exposure to environmental toxins, whether that's pharmaceutical drugs and heavy metals and herbicides and pesticides in our tap water or our food and finding phthalates in our food and pesticides, et cetera. There's a lot of stuff that we're being exposed to on a day-to-day basis. And while there are some things that we can do to control and mitigate our exposure to these toxins, there's only so much that we can do. So one of the things that I am a huge proponent for is sweating every day. Now, this means moving your body, getting exercise, getting your lymph flowing. Another great way to do this is with a sauna. I am a huge fan of the higher dose sauna bag.

I have personally had one for about three years now. And what I love so much about it is that it does not take up a lot of space. So if you, if you live in a smaller, uh, like apartment or a small house and you don't have the space for a big sauna, this is the perfect option for you. Or even if you do have a big space, it's really great because it's super portable. Um, I personally lay in my sauna bag on my bed and then I either read a book or I watch TV and it's great because you get all the benefits of an infrared sauna, but you don't have to have a big, huge sauna in your house or you don't have to leave your house either to go to a sauna.

The higher dose sauna bag is so great. I always make sure to get a sweat in at least a couple times a week. And what's so great about it is that you are supporting your detoxification pathways and helping your body to sweat out everything that we were being exposed to on a day-to-day basis. If you want to try any of the higher dose products today, including their sauna bag, you are going to get 15% off if you use code realfoodology. So go to higherdose.com, that's H-I-G-H-E-R-D-O-S-E.com and use code REALFOODOLOGY and you're gonna save 15%. I recently had the founder of ION, Dr. Zach Bush,

on my podcast and if you have not gotten a chance to listen to that episode, I highly recommend checking it out. His name is Dr. Zach Bush. If you were unaware of his work, he and I are very aligned in speaking out about glyphosate or otherwise known as Roundup, which is a heavily used herbicide on our food. And it is showing up everywhere and it is having a detrimental effect on the health of our planet, on the health of humanity. It's really affecting our health. If you guys have been listening to

this podcast for a while or been an avid follower of my Instagram, you are very aware of the horrible effects of glyphosate on our body. It acts like an antibiotic in the soil. It also acts like an antibiotic in our body. So it is killing off all of the good beneficial bacteria that we need in our bodies. So this is one of the reasons that Zach Bush created Ion Gut Support. I'm a huge fan of this product. I take it every single morning. One of the things that it helps to do is to repair the tight gut junctions of our gut, which is something that glyphosate slowly breaks down. So I'm a huge fan of this product. It is really, I think, helping at least minimize the effects of glyphosate on our body. And I'm so grateful for people like

Zach Bush who are speaking out about this and also creating products to help us minimize the effects of glyphosate on our body. And I'm so grateful for people like Zach Bush, who are speaking out about this and also creating products to help us minimize the effects of the glyphosate exposure. So definitely check out ION and please listen to the episode. I think you guys are really going to love it. Dr. Zach Bush is such an amazing man and his message is really important and we need to get it out to as many ears as possible. So I hope you guys enjoy it. Can you tell the listeners a little bit about your background and how you got started in the cellular wellness world? Oh, sure. Yeah. By accident. nothing planned. You know, I went to medical school and was really attracted to obstetrics and gynecology

because it dealt with people who were generally well and bring life into the world. And it was really a healthy, fun population. But it came with really rigorous night call. And I was practicing on a small town on the coast of North Carolina where I was taking call every second to third night, every second to third weekend. And I was one of those people that if I had people in the hospital or in labor or whatever,

I just didn't sleep very well. Plus, when I was off, it's like, I don't really have time to sleep because I've got so much else I want to do in life. And 30s, I could do it. By the time I hit 40, everything just caught up with me and my body crashed in a way that I didn't expect, in a way that the conventional medical system seemed to be at a loss to really help me and ended up turning to herbal therapy almost by default, got my life back. And then it was like, wow, this is remarkable. And I really need to investigate this. So I spent the past 10 years really figuring out how the herbs had helped me and what was going on in my body. So you said something that was really poignant

that 90% of healing is actually from self-care. Can you talk about that more? Yeah. Well, that's kind of what the whole book, the premise of the book, I think we turn to the medical establishment to fix us whenever we don't feel well. And I think we're asking the medical system to do something really it's not designed to do. You know, the medical system does an exceptionally good job of stabilizing illness. You know, if you're acutely ill, like you break your leg or have a heart attack or even in chronic illness, what drugs do and what surgical procedures do, all these things we do is stabilize that really bad situation.

But herbs don't really have the potential to truly promote healing. You know, they stabilize the body so it can heal, but they're not doing anything to push it in that direction. So in chronic illness, you know, unless you're dealing, getting, affecting those stress factors that are precipitating the illness, you're just not going to get well. And our system really isn't designed to help people do that. Yeah. And I think, well, I mean, obviously it all started out with well intention, I believe, but we've gotten to a place where it's no longer just about acute care, which is a really important component of healthcare, but we have doctors that were taught how to perform acute care,

but we have so many people that have chronic illnesses now that they, I believe, are not fully equipped to address because it's a totally different approach. We try to manage chronic illness with acute intervention, right? If you have high blood pressure, we don't give you things that restore your vascular system back to normal so your blood pressure normalizes. We artificially block the elevated blood pressure. And as went in to see a doctor at any given time, routine physicals, my blood pressure would be 150 over 100 or greater. And they said, you know, this is essential hypertension. We don't really know what it causes it. You can take medicines for it. It will get worse over time. So all the medications really made me feel bad. So I was kind of like, yeah, you're just going to have to live with it. Along came this

health crisis. And I kind of forgot about that and did the herbs and then just kept doing the herbs. And I've been taking herbs and doing lifestyle interventions and that sort of thing for 15 years, my blood pressure went to normal completely. Now at 65, on any given visit, it'll be 115, 120, over 70 to 80, perfectly normal every single time. So, you know, so what the herbs are doing is normalizing that so they don't work as acutely as a drug. Yeah, it's taking the drug right up front could save a person's life, but they want to fix your vascular system where the herbs have the potential to help restore normal. And that's what's so remarkable about them. Yeah. Wow. Well, we need to get to a place where we have two different buckets. We go see a doctor,

we go to the hospital for acute care, for an accident or something like that. But then when we're dealing with something, for example, like hypertension that you were dealing with, we need to have doctors that are trained to go about this in a new approach. Instead of just putting you on a drug that's going to have other symptoms, that you're then going to have to have another drug to mask those symptoms, we need to get to the root cause and start practicing preventative wellness, preventative care, which is what your book is essentially all about. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it does take the whole thing down to the cellular level, which I think does change the playing field

in how you look at that spectrum between wellness and illness. So it, but you know, it's, doctors are trained to, in that acute intervention, and I, you know, and it takes a lot of time and training to get them there. So we need people like you and health coaches and others who are trained to help people help themselves and, you know, really look at the value of prevention. So I think our healthcare system needs to pay attention to that. But, you know, it's an issue of our whole society and culture that we need to be, everyone needs to be paying attention and we all need to be talking about it because it's so important. This notion of on a cellular level, I think is really important for

people to understand. So when you say that, what do you mean exactly? Like, what does that look like implementing it? Yeah, it, you know, it took me a long time to kind of come around to this, but it's, looking at it at the cellular level just makes everything work. And the deal is that anything is simpler if you take it down to its smallest functional unit, right? So your cell phone is a unit. A 747 is a unit. And if something breaks in your cell phone or a 747, it needs to be fixed or it's not going anywhere. Your body is a composite of trillions of individual functional units that we call cells, which means that our cells are all working together to do things. So everything that happens in the body is a function of cells.

So it's not like the heart is a single unit. It's a composite of billions of cells. So, you know, it can shed cells. Cells can go bad and it can keep right on going, which is what makes our body so special. So it's the needs of our cells that are so important as far as health. And, you know, it's so when you have symptoms, a symptom basically is cells that have been stressed or injured. You know, if you step wrong and twist your ankle, you've injured cells in your ankle. And a couple of things happen. One, those cells that are injured release chemical substances that activate nerves that tell your brain something's wrong. So you feel it as pain, but you lose that function. You can't walk on the ankle. So it's the same thing

with any kind of group of cells that are injured. Like if you block a coronary vessel, you starve the cells in your heart and you feel it as chest pain, but your heart doesn't work as well. So any symptom that you have is a reflection of cells in the body that are stressed. So looking at that, what we try to do is,

well, let's take a medicine or whatever just to get rid of the symptom. But that's artificially blocking those signals that are going to the brain. It doesn't necessarily stressing the cells so with something like a heart attack or you know a sprained ankle it's pretty obvious and um you know you you unblock the vessel or use crutches for a while, and all of that area will heal. Well, what healing is, is the ability of cells to recover from stress, to repair internal damage and regenerate new cells. So that, looking at healing, so what chronic illness is and chronic symptoms is when the stresses are ongoing and cells can't recover. So you change that conversation to say, what's stressing the cells? And that's very different from how do we suppress the symptom or how do we slow down disease process?

We want to promote cellular recovery. And so when you ask that, there are really only five categories of things that affect cellular stress. And it simplifies things. So it's food, it's what you eat, are you nourishing yourselves? And are they getting everything that they need? You know, oxygen and blood flow? Are you polluting your body with toxic substances, you know, from food you eat or air that you breathe? Are you stressed? Because when we are pushing that stress button all the time, over taxes ourselves so our cells need downtime to rest so when we're pushing ourselves by excessive stress and not getting sleep they don't get that downtime they can't recover so everything starts breaking down um exercise being

sedentary as you know so trauma damage can damage cells but being sedentary. So trauma damage can damage cells, but being sedentary can because we need blood flow. Blood flow moves fluid and bathes our cells and helps us get rid of toxic substances. Then the last one, and we'll talk about this more as we go along, is microbes. We are exposed to bacteria and viruses and protozoa and stuff all the time, and they are a direct threat to the cells of our body. While we're here, why don't we just dive into that a little bit?

I know a lot of people, I've seen a lot of videos of people talking about this online, like parasites and the bacteria and different bacterias that we're being exposed to. How do we keep ourselves from getting these parasites or how do we address them? There's a lot of questions about them right now. It is.

And I've been diving into these questions for a decade and a half. So part of my story was I eventually identified with chronic Lyme disease because I found that I was carrying some of those microbes. Since then, I've kind of even moved beyond that idea of diagnosis altogether. And what's emerging is this picture that our relationship with microbes is a whole lot more complicated than anybody possibly imagined.

You know, I think everybody knows we have microbes in our gut or bacteria in our gut, bacteria on our skin. That's pretty much a known fact. But there's an emerging concept of something called dormant microbes or dormant microbiome. In other words, all these things we pick up, whether it's from tick bites or flea bites or respiratory infections or our microbes in our gut and our skin trickle across into our bloodstream.

So things are getting inside our body a lot more than we realize. And these things can enter our cells. Many of them are intracellular. So many bacteria, all viruses, and some protozoa have the capacity to live inside of our cells. They want to get inside of our cells because that's where the nutrients are, that's where resources are, but it's also protection from the immune system. But as it turns out, if your cells are healthy one mechanism that one thing that can happen is the microbes can become dormant inside the cells and it turns out that there's pretty

good evidence accumulating that that's happening all through our lifetime and we have things ebstein-barr toxoplasmosis, chlamydia, mycoplasma, and the list just goes on and on. And that's just what we know about. But as long as they're dormant, it doesn't necessarily affect the function of our cells. There's even some suggestions that there may be even some symbiosis that our cells need this. So you have to remember, though, that a bacteria is like 100 to 1,000 times smaller than one of our cells. So our cells can harbor bacteria that are really small. They can be dormant, and it doesn't affect the cell at all. And we may have that scattered all through our body, our heart and our brain tissues everywhere.

In fact, there's growing evidence that that's exactly the case. So if you're healthy, your cells are healthy, you're eating a good diet, you don't have a toxin overload, you're getting eight hours of sleep at night, you exercise every day, you're going to be okay. But if those things aren't happening, like in my case, all that lack of sleep, not going just hour, days after day, day after day without getting a decent night's sleep for 20 years, all that caught up and it stressed my cells to the point that those microbes started reactivating. And your body goes from an environment that favors healthy cells to one that favors microbe growth. And the microbes start breaking down cells, breaking down red blood cells to release iron because they need iron to function.

And it's really a fascinating concept because when you look at it, it starts explaining why people are chronically ill. And we have different chronic illnesses because, and part of this, we're still in the early stages of figuring this out, but the theories are intriguing because you look at it and it's just a very logical model. And again, we have different illnesses because we all picked up different microbes and different microbes have different propensity for different cells in the body. So, you know, we're all a little bit different. Our risk is different. It may come out differently in one way than another way, but it gets back to that root of cellular stress. So if you can address those issues of cellular stress, then you can do wonderful things.

And you know, that's what I was doing with herbs, though at the time I wasn't aware of it. It really is a testament to the importance of staying healthy and being resilient. I believe what you're talking about is essentially terrain theory, that we will be constantly throughout our lives exposed to bacteria, protozoas, viruses, and the way our body responds is going to be determining, determinant on how healthy we are. And that comes down to the cellular level that you're talking about, how stressed we are, if we're getting enough sleep, the toxins in our body. And so it's a great reminder that it's really important to stay healthy for a multitude of reasons. And one of them being that we're resilient to all these things that are beyond our control. Absolutely. You know, that's it. You know, it's so there's so many

things that you can do to stay healthy. And it becomes more important as we age, because what aging is from a cellular point of view is loss of functional cells. You know, over time, our cells gradually run out of energy. And we have the ability to make new cells and generate new cells, but there are limits on that. So you reach peak cell count at around age 20. At that point in life, you have five to 10 times more cells than you really need. And all your cells are brand new. But as you go through life, your cells gradually lose function and you lose cells.

And so your ability to counter cellular stress, fight off microbes, all of that sort of thing is decreased. But what I can tell you is I'm living a very healthy life at age 65 because I am doing the things that I need to do to keep the cells that I have left at pink functionality and keeping all of my cells healthy. And that keeps me more resilient. Yeah. Yeah. It's really important. I think it's a societal thing that we have been told that as you get older, like, oh, this is just part of getting older. And there is a certain component of that, the things that people are suffering from as they get older. But we're not being told that there's a lot of that that we can minimize by staying healthy and we can support our cellular health and support our mitochondria so that we don't have to just, you know, put our heads back and say, well, you know, this is just happening because I'm aging

and I'm getting older. It's like, no, there's a lot of things that we can do to make sure that we're still vital and thriving into our older age. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, none of us live forever. You know, I've got that. I'm aging. I haven't stopped the aging process. But, hey, I'm 65 and I'm still kite surfing. And at age 50, I didn't think I would be doing those things. So yeah, it's really cool.

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off all Organifi products at Organifi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I. Or you can go directly to Organifi.com slash realfoodology. One of the things that I really struggle with the most is falling asleep at night. And this is why I love Cured Nutrition because I have found that their product Zen in combination with CBN has really helped me to fall asleep quicker. In Zen, it is a combination of magnesium, reishi, CBD, and then it has things like passionflower, ashwagandha. All of these just help to calm the mind and calm the body and get you ready for bed. And then I also take their raw CBN nighttime hemp oil. CBN is known specifically for creating more relaxation than CBD does.

So the combination of these two together has really helped me to fall asleep quicker. I'm obsessed with Cured Nutrition and all of their products because they go above and beyond their commitment to high quality, organic, healthy products is above and beyond any other CBD company I've seen. If you want to hear more about it, I had the founder on the podcast, Joe Sheehy. He's amazing. He's a good friend of mine. I can't speak highly enough. If you want to try these products or any of the other cured products, go to curednutrition.com slash real foodology and use code real foodology and you're going to save 20%. That is cured, C-U-R-E-D, nutrition.com slash realfoodology. So I know herbs, you've mentioned herbs a couple

times and those are a huge part of your cellular wellness solution. How can we utilize plants to support ourselves? Yeah, well, it really just, it's very logical. I mean, you think about it, plants have all the same stress factors we do. Free radicals, toxic substances, you know, physical stress, and definitely microbes of every variety. And plants have to protect their cells. All living things have to have a system of protection. So this system of plant protection is chemical. All plants are producing substances called phytochemicals, and they provide protection. But they're also chemical messengers that coordinate functions, cellular

functions. And a lot of those things are like our hormones and chemical messengers in our body. So when we take the herb, we basically gain the plant's regulatory system to restore homeostasis and cellular protection system. The plants we define as herbs are plants that humans have been using to promote health for hundreds or thousands of years. So of course, all plants don't work. Nobody would eat poison ivy twice. But these things we define as herbs

just mesh well with our biochemistry. And so that extends into the food plants, but the herbs are doing things that our foods no longer have the capacity to do. So we're getting this rich phytochemistry that's protecting our cells. So beyond just eating well and doing all the things that we need to do from a lifestyle point of view, taking herbs gives you just this huge boost of cellular resilience that, wow, it's powerful. It's cool. So in your opinion, what are some of the most powerful ones? Can you name a couple? Oh couple oh gosh there's so many

good ones but you know i have my standard list these are herbs that i take every day so when i'm looking for herbs for that purpose of prevention balancing restorative properties we're looking for herbs that don't have drug-like properties. So there's certainly some plants that have chemicals in them that do have drug-like actions, and people are looking for those for certain purposes. So I'm more looking for herbs that don't have drug-like effects. And in doing so, we have herbs that are safe. They don't have drug-like effects. And in doing so, you know, we have herbs that are safe. They don't cause adverse reactions. Their functions are primarily protective and balancing.

So those things you can take on a daily basis. And, you know, you don't really worry. And it's not like taking a drug. You could take it the rest of your life and you would be fine. So one herb is rhodiola. That's a favorite of mine. Grows in Siberia. Interestingly, it also can be found in the Appalachians of North Carolina, Appalachian Mountains of North America. So, you know, that's the thing, you know, you find similar plants all over the world. But rhodiola grows in a harsh, cold climate, generally at a higher altitude.

So the phytochemistry that it's producing is really good for helping us become more resilient to physical and mental stresses. It protects the heart. It increases oxygenation of tissues. Really good for all the organs in the body and all the cells you know basically we're protecting cells but it's it's considered an adaptogen which means it balances stress hormones that um you know when we're when we're stressed when we've pushed ourselves too hard it can kind of tone that down a bit. And so rhodiola is really good for that. Turmeric, everybody's heard of that one.

Wonderful anti-inflammatory herb. People in India consume about a gram of turmeric a day in curry. And it is felt to be one of the reasons why they have such a low rate of Alzheimer's and cancer in India. So turmeric is a really nice one. Reishi mushroom. Now, it's a mushroom. It's not a plant, right?

But we kind of throw the mushrooms in there. of a rainbow rust colored mushroom that is um that is right right on the the bottom of the tree that's a reishi so reishi's are uh had are grow all over the world but there's certain species that grows in asia has been studied by the japanese and has been found to have all kinds of really wonderful anti-cancer properties so rishi is exceptionally good um a couple of others go to cola from india really good for brain health um yeah there are just so many others uh japanese knotweed has resveratrol like grapes it's a really good antimicrobial. And it's just, yeah, but there's some basic ones. And I encourage people, you know, don't be intimidated. One of the reasons for writing the book is just to get people started on a core

and of those basic herbs that are really safe. And the idea, you know, this is really foreign concept. I mean, everybody looks at herbs like drugs. You know, I've got this symptom. I need to take this herb to get rid of it. And where I've come in my journey is, no, they're really protective. And how they're working is they're restoring cellular health.

And some herbs are really good for doing that for specific cells. So they have, you know, more specific actions, but that's how the herbs are working all the way around. So taking them, just that idea of taking herbs on a daily basis for prevention is novel. It's new. You know, we don't think of herbs that way, But wow, I think that's the most important way we should be looking at herbs. And again, I've been taking these herbs continually for 15 years. The long-term studies of herbs doing that is really fantastic. When I was writing the book, I actually found a study showing that many of the herbs that I mentioned in the book have been found to be, when taken on a regular basis, actually reduce the risk of chronic illness and cancer across the board.

So we're getting there. up, but it is, I just think about what would happen if everybody in the country was taking just a handful of herbal capsules. We want them to change their diet and everything else, but if they were doing that alone, I think we'd see a dent in chronic illness. I really do. Yeah, that's really powerful. I agree. And when you mix it together with cleaning up your lifestyle, prioritizing sleep, making sure that you're eating a really healthy diet, I mean, it becomes incredibly powerful. And how amazing, I talk a lot about herbs and supplements, I guess you'd say in general, because the beauty of them is that the majority of these don't really have any side effects. Whereas a lot of these pharmaceutical drugs that we're pushing, not only are they just band-aids, they're not addressing the root cause,

but they're also creating more symptoms in the body. So then we just have another issue that we have to clean up. Whereas with these herbs, they're just coming in and they're helping at a cellular level and they're actually addressing the root cause. You know, I think that's the big difference. And, you know, I think there's a value. There's a purpose for every pharmaceutical made. But the primary purpose of pharmaceuticals and surgical sorts, stabilizing it can put it in a position of being able to heal. But the drugs themselves aren't really addressing these cellular stress factors, so they're doing nothing to directly promote healing. Whereas the herbs, that's where we can really do benefit by promoting the actual healing process by reducing cellular stress. When you reduce cellular stress, you reduce mitochondrial demands, you reduce nutrient

demands, and cells get that opportunity that they need to start recovering and rebuilding. So on a cellular level, what are things that people can do to reduce their stress? I mean, I think, you know, a lot of people are aware of meditation, which I think is really powerful on a cellular level as well. But from your findings that, you know, how can we counteract these primary stress factors? So the thing that is affecting so many people in an adverse way is eating high levels of processed carbohydrates. And I know that you've spent a lot of time addressing these issues. That's the big one, you know, and it's cutting those carbs down. I mean, I try to keep my dietary carbohydrate consumption below about 150 grams a day. I don't go ketogenic because ketogenic is just not comfortable and I just don't think you have to go there. But keeping it below at least 200, even better down below 150,

yeah, it gives you a little bit of room that you can enjoy food. Eating more vegetables than anything else. Vegetables are so important. things and eggs. I'm not vegan, but I respect that. And I think you can be very healthy. But I think it's easier. These other protein sources are really good and good for you. So food is important, but we do really a disservice with eating too much carbohydrates. It affects insulin levels. It affects everything in the body. Interestingly, when I was researching the book, I was aware of a few herbs that had anti-diabetic properties. But the more I searched, the more I found, and I actually found a study that documented that a couple of hundred herbs have been documented to have anti-diabetic

properties, either protecting cells from the adverse effects of carbohydrate or helping to normalize insulin. So herbs can help there too. Second on the list is toxins. And man, we're all getting pounded. You know, plastics, petroleum, heavy metals, which comes from coal, burning coal, all of these things are so much a part of our world and it's hard to get away from them. So taking steps to filter your water, eat clean food whenever possible, and, you know, do the things that you need to do to clean your air. Air filters, air purifiers, but maybe just living in a place where the air is clean can really be beneficial. Stress, wow, we're all getting hit with it. I mean, we're just getting pummeled with stress

and that was the big thing for me is just uh stress and no sleep and we all have to slow down and just take time during the day to de-stress and enjoy life um and the big thing is just prioritizing sleep you know if you're watching intense television till 11 o'clock at night, you're not going to get good sleep that night. If you have to get up at seven the next morning, you're going to be sleep deprived. You really do need eight hours. Seven and a half to eight is almost essential. Six and a half doesn't do it. And in that, you need deep sleep. And most people just aren't getting deep sleep. Exercise, really important because it moves blood. More than anything else, exercise is important for moving blood. Now, it does a lot of things. It normalizes

stress hormones, increases endorphins, everything else, but your cells needed to be washed. to allow fluid to bathe our cells and wash them out, which just helps pull away toxins, deliver nutrients, doing all the things that are so important for cellular health. And then finally, just that microbe component is really important. And that's where the herbs can help us. But just keeping our cells healthy. You know, we hear a lot about the immune system protecting us. So that's just one layer. So I divide up our defenses into three layers. So you have barriers, your skin, the intestinal lining

that are designed to keep microbes out or microbes contained in the gut. But they're leaky. Things get across. Your immune system is your backup system when things get across. But the third layer is your cells can defend themselves. Our cells have the ability to expel microbes or contain microbes so they stay dormant if they're healthy. So when you lose cellular health, you lose your ability to not only manage this internal dormant microbiome, but to protect yourself from new threats. Wow, that's really important. And I like that you broke down all those pieces. I just read that chapter the other day in your book

about all the different modalities and ways that we can protect ourselves essentially. What do you think about other modalities such as like red light therapy for cellular health? Red light therapy is something and I've been paying a lot of attention to, I don't have one myself. I'm looking for an excuse to get one because I think what we're doing there is just we're energizing ourselves. So our cells, everything needs energy. Our cells need energy. And I think that we are just introducing a subtle form of energy into the cell that helps energize it so it can recover from stress and do the things that it needs to do to function better.

So I think that's what we're doing with red light therapy. And there is a lot of great research on red light therapy out there. The only downside is it's a free-for-all because of the research. There are just all kinds of products out there, some good, some not so good. And I don't know enough about it really at this point to say, well, that one's absolutely good and that one's not so good. But there are things like that. So when I'm looking at therapies of any kind, is it something that stabilizes a condition when somebody is acutely ill or having just a bad

situation happen? Or other therapies, the things that are promoting healing, promoting wellness, are going to be things that promote cellular health. So I'm always asking that question, is it affecting our cells in a positive way? Is it doing something to our cells to either energize them or reduce the toxin load or help the cell in some way to regain what it needs to function optimally? So I know you talk a lot about ancestral health, and this is something that I think is really important, too, that we've lost a lot of our wisdom and our intuition to what really truly means to be healthy. Where does ancestral health tie into longevity? You know, it's how our cells are programmed. You know, that's how to think about it. All right. So I read a National Geographic article about bacteria living in boiling water in rivers in Peru. There's these rivers that the temperature gets to 150 to 200 degrees and bacteria live there. They didn't just jump in. They adapted to being able to survive in that really high temperature

over a very long period of time. And so it took thousands and thousands of generations. So that's what it takes to change genetic programming is repetitive exposure to different conditions than maybe we're adapted to. So it takes thousands of years, thousands of generations to change something. When you look at our ancestry, for several hundred thousand years, we ate a forage food diet, which was basically wild plants, probably about two-thirds plants, two-thirds animal matter, but very lean animals. It was very low calorie. It was very high nutrient and it had a lot of fiber in it. And our guts are dependent on that. And we didn't start changing that until about 10,000 years ago, which on a timeline, you know, that's an instant.

And even when we started eating grain, we were still eating forage foods and other kinds of things. So it's only been in very recent history that we've shifted to this very high grain, high meat diet and fatty meat that are fed grains and beans. And our cells just aren't programmed for this. We're also not programmed for the toxins. All right. A way to think about this is, you know, most of the things that we consider toxic to us are either heavy metals or foreign organic chemicals. Those things didn't exist on the surface of the earth before a couple hundred years ago. It wasn't until we started mining, specifically mining coal, which started about 3,000 years ago, that we started pulling these unnatural elements from

the earth. And some of it happened with volcanoes and that sort of thing. But for the most part, living things weren't exposed to it. So now you look at the amount of coal that we've burned over the past several hundred years, and all coal has heavy metals in it. And it precipitates out in the water and the air, and, you know, we're still doing it. Petroleum. If you went back millions of years ago and ate the algae and plant matter that became petroleum, it'd probably be good for you. But millions of years of heat and pressure have distorted those organic compounds that came from plants into forms that are just not compatible with biological life anymore. So when we take these things, it interrupts the normal organic compounds that our cells use, and it just clutters things with stuff that the cell can't use. So that's why all these organic chemicals from petroleum and plastics, you know, they're organic, but they are

not forms that are compatible with life anymore. And we've just, we poured those out all over the earth. And it's, so yeah, it's, you know, the other side of petroleum is you know we've got great food systems we can travel we can live in air-conditioned homes it's just we've got a lot of people now you know when i was born there were three billion people on earth now there's 7.8 and it's um and everybody wants the same standard of life that we have and they probably deserve it you know everybody should so we have to find better ways of doing that um and and we we have to respect the value of petroleum but at the same time say you know we we just can't live with this um and we we we really have to start managing these chemicals so it's not just about global warming. I'm more concerned

about the toxin threat than I am that because, you know, it's we're seeing more more chronic illness every year. Sixty percent of the American population is defined as chronically ill. WHO last month released a statement suggesting that cancer has become epidemic worldwide. And it's because all of these things inhibit cellular health and allow the microbes to flourish in our body and compromise their cellular functions. And that leads to all kinds of internal problems. This is a huge issue that I talk about

often on my podcast because it's all connected, you know, because we're storing our food in plastic and then the plastic chemicals are leaching into the food. Then as well as our tap water, you mentioned earlier, it's full of all these chemicals that are running off from the pesticides and all of these plants and the factories. I mean, it's a really big issue and it's causing disruption to our endocrine systems. And this to me is the most concerning right now. And this is why I encourage people, and I'm curious to hear what you have to say about this, because I don't like to leave people with this hanging kind of doom and gloom to support your detoxification pathways, because we can only do so much.

You know, I encourage people to eat whole real foods as much as possible. Stop buying so much stuff in packages and stop buying foods in plastic. Don't heat your food up in plastic. There's only so much we can do. You know, to a certain extent, we have to say, you know, we're doing the best we can. And I encourage people to sweat, do sauna if you can, work out. What are some other things that you would suggest for people to do? You know, I think you're right on target with those things.

And it's, we can do things as individuals and that's the good news. But we also have to start doing smarter things as a society, as a culture. We really need to start paying better attention to these things. And it is an issue. And every year, the statistics grow more sound that it is something that is a significant threat. It's hard to deal with because we don't see the immediate effects. You know, they're cumulative over time and it's this just chronic low-grade exposure. But yeah, I think it's time for us to start moving on it as a society. What I do, you know, I was fortunate enough to find a place to live that is on a marsh. And, you know, we get good clean air off of the

water. We change the filters in our house, we filter our water. And I, you know, I make all my food from scratch. I mean, we buy fresh vegetables. I eat a ton of vegetables every week, and we just don't buy anything that I can buy that's not in a package. I do. So we're doing a lot of things to protect ourselves, my family and I. And that pays off. It feels really good. But I think we still have to be looking at that from a whole society point of view.

Absolutely. And I'm happy that it's being talked about on a wide scale level right now. And like you said, people are concerned more about it from the lens of climate change, which is obviously a huge concern. But I take it a step further like you and I say this is a huge concern from a toxic burden level and the way that we are not thriving and living our best anymore because we're being so run down by all these toxins. And what you said, I think is really important to point out again, is that it's a cumulative over time. I did a post recently on my Instagram a couple of days ago about candles

and burning them in your home and how toxic it is because of these fragrances and all the chemicals that they put in the wax. And I had a woman comment and she said, well, I've been burning these for, I don't remember the timeline, but she said something like 40 years and I'm fine. And I was just thinking, oh man. I mean, at some point, I hope not. I don't wish this on her, but I was thinking at some point that's going to catch up with her.

And I don't like this mentality that it seems that a lot of us have is that, well, I'm fine now, so I'm gonna be okay. And I don't say this to scare people, but I say to remember that just because you don't feel the effects of it right now doesn't mean that it's not having an effect on yourselves. That's right. Yeah. You know, people smoke for 40 years too, but sooner or later, I mean, it does take years off their life. But more importantly, I think that it hinders life. You're not reaching your full capacity, you know? And again, I'm aging, but at age 65, my brain is sharp. My body

is sharp. I can do the things that I want to do. I can fully engage in life in a very productive way. And we all want to keep that. I mean, that's what life is all about. And I see people losing it when they're in their 40s, you know? And they're just letting something precious go and it just kind of slips away. And yeah, they can live like that for 40 years or longer and drugs will keep you alive, but you just won't reach your full potential. That was so beautifully said and important for people to hear.

So before we go, is there anything that you have not covered about the cellular wellness solution or really anything that we should talk about? There's a lot of stuff in that book for sure. It was hard to know what to leave out. So there's a lot of great information. I mean, it's really everything that I've learned so far up until I published the book, everything that I learned for my whole career. I'm still learning though. I'm still learning new things since the book has

been published. But the big thing is just thinking at that cellular level and thinking about health in terms of cellular health and how we can keep ourselves healthy. This slows down the aging process and it just keeps you functioning, keeps you at your full potential. Really super important. Yeah. Well, and I said this earlier, I like the way the book is set up. It really feels like a guidebook. I literally have it next to my computer right now. And I've been enjoying it a lot. And it's full of a lot of wisdom that I think people need to hear. Oh, thank you.

Then I have accomplished my goal. Yay. I love that. So I have a question that I ask all of my guests. And I'm very curious to hear what yours are. What are your health non-negotiables? So these are things that no matter how busy your day is, you take the time to prioritize these for your health. Eat good food, sleep, and exercise. And I try to walk a minimum of three miles a day, and that's my minimum or the equivalent. I eat well just eating good food.

That's so remarkably important. And making sure I get that sleep every night. I'm just so protective of my sleep now because it's so essential to staying well. It really is. And you feel it when you're not getting good sleep. Yeah, for sure. It really infiltrates in your whole day. And I take my ribs every day.

Boy, that's an essential too. No doubt about that one. Yeah. Amazing. Well, please tell people where they can find you and where they can find your book. The book can be found on Amazon and it's been pleased that so far we have over 100 five-star reviews of people that really wrote some sincere compliments. So that was really nice. I think people are really getting what I wanted for them out of the book. And the website, which we will have more information, is cellularwellness.com.

I have another site called RawlsMD that is more for a chronic illness audience of helping people that are more desperately ill. And it's got lots of information there. Less focus on wellness though um and then finally vitalplan.com is uh i am medical director and co-founder of supplement company just to really uh promote good quality supplements that people can rely on and the education for how to use them. So that's something my daughter and I have been doing for about 10 years that I get a lot of pleasure out of. Awesome.

Well, I'm going to leave all those links in the show notes so people can check them out. I just pulled up VitalPlan and this looks great. I'm excited to dive into that. Awesome. Cool. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the podcast today. Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. It was a real pleasure.

Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much. See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist. As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first.