The Bossticks - #115: Dr. Stephen Cabral - Gut Health, Anxiety, Depression, Energy, Metabolism & Hormones

Episode Date: May 22, 2018

Dr. Stephen Cabral is a board certified naturopathic doctor. At the age of 17 suffering severe health complications and having no success with traditional medicine, Dr. Cabral started looking for answers. Now as a certified naturopathic doctor, he is on the show to talk about gut health, anxiety, depression, energy, metabolism, and hormones. To connect with Dr. Stephen Cabral click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE This episode is brought to you by THRIVE MARKET. We use Thrive for our online grocery delivery on a weekly basis. They provide the highest quality products and ingredients delivered straight to our door with unbeatable prices.  Be sure to grab our deal by going to to https://thrivemarket.com/skinny to receive $60 of FREE organic groceries from Thrive Market + free shipping and a 30 day trial!" Keep in mind that Thrive Market's  prices are already 25- 50% below retail because they cut out the middleman. And now they are offering $60 off free organic groceries!      

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

So, I mean, the people always tell you to exercise more and to eat less, right, to lose weight. If you've already done that, you're like, you know what, I've already done that, I still can't lose the last 10 pounds, or maybe you can't lose 100 pounds, whatever it might be. It's usually inflammation, and it's usually a lot of times a toxicity-based issue. So they have too much, too many estrogen-based metabolites or they're exposed to heavy metals or whatever it might be. And their body's puffy, right? It's swollen. And it's so hard for them to let go of that. And the reason is it's like a survival-based mechanism.

Welcome back to the skinny confidential, him and her show. If you are new to the show, thanks for joining. that clip was from our guest of the show today, Dr. Stephen Cabral. On this episode, we discussed digestion, immunity, energy, metabolism, hormones, and mood. For those of you who are new to the show, I'm Lauren Everts and the creator of The Skinny Confidential, which is a blog, brand, book, and obviously a podcast. The Skinny Confidential is a resource for women all over the world, which has turned into this huge, incredible community. And I'm Michael Bostic. I'm an entrepreneur and business operator. I've specialized in brand building and direct-to-consumer marketing over the last 10 years.

recently the co-founder and CEO of Dear Media, a podcast network that puts an emphasis on female hosts and audiences. Okay, so we are recording this early because we're headed down to Cabo for my birthday. Can't wait to see what you have up your sleeve, Michael Bostic. I was heading out. I didn't know you were coming. Yeah, I'm coming. I thought this was going to be a little escape for myself. Nope, not an escape. Do you remember my rule?

What's your rule? The rule is you can only celebrate birthdays in spans of 10 years. But I guess we'll make an exception for you. You like celebrating my birthday. Don't lie. No, I like celebrating your birthday. Oh, okay. Don't, let's not put that I like celebrating birthdays out there.

Not a birthday, yeah? No, and you know what? Your dad gave me shit? He's like, you gotta celebrate birthdays and you got to celebrate birthdays and you got this whole thing in guilt trip me. Sorry, Brad, you know. My dad celebrates Martin Luther King Day. He celebrates President's Day.

Flag Day. Valentine's Day. Every day. My dad is like a really big on celebrating and he loves a card. Yeah, no. He's overdoing it. All right. So we're headed down to Cabo.

And we wanted to pre-record this because we really want to try to take a step back from technology a little bit for four days. We're constantly connected to the computer and the phone and the iPad. So it should be nice to kick back, relax, have a couple of margaritas and maybe some chips and salsa and guacamole. Listen, you want to work hard and you want to hustle and hustle and hustle and all that. And there's a lot of people that are out there with the hustle, hustle, hustle, work hard message, which I think we praise a lot of that as well. But I also think it's just as important to talk about the downtime and the rest time. You know, I was at a meeting the other day and we were talking about how cool it's going to be when it becomes in style to not answer emails during weekends or not be on the phone during like non-work hours. And like right now the cool message is hustle, hustle, hustle and all that.

But people are, you know, if there is such a thing as work life balance, it is important. I want people to know that while we do work, it's important to disconnect and to reset and to take time to read and to learn and to calm down. down, meditate, whatever you got to do, because then you could come back and perform at an optimal state. You don't want to always be on. I was on for probably seven years straight every day. And then I realized that I was lacking this huge part in my life, which was gaining clarity and stepping back and looking at something from an outside perspective. So I started doing a lot of yoga. I started meditating. I make it a point to read every single day. I walk a lot lately. And I think that it is really, really important to disconnect so you can have the full scope of what's happening because if not,

you're just running on a treadmill and you're in it all the time. Yeah, I was at a meeting yesterday morning and we were talking a lot about this and I realize that sometimes I have a tendency as well to get stuck tunnel vision. I'm in the business or I'm working on something and I'm like, go, go, go, go, a million miles an hour. And then I realized, holy shit, wait, I'm not learning, I'm not reading, I'm not calming down, I'm not self-reflecting. And so I'm not performing as well as I could be. What did I do last night, right? Went to bed at like eight o'clock. You were so extra last night. I found him in bed at eight o'clock with his weird fly eye mask on. No, no, I didn't go to bed at eight o'clock. The white noise machine was on. The lights were slightly dim. The chihuahuas were around you. You were in your

barefoot dreams blanket. Yeah, but I was, I read for like an hour and a half, two hours. And you know, it's funny. Every time I go back to doing something like that, I'll make a connection of something I'm not doing in my professional life. And I'm like, oh shit, it's the reason I'm not doing this is because I'm not taking time to do this kind of stuff. So yeah, I mean, listen, I'm on point today, I think because I took that reset. I have a lot going on today just as everybody else probably does. But, you know, and we have another interview this afternoon. And so I just, I need, we need to do things as people to make sure we're not constantly in whatever we're doing and we're taking a step back and looking at it from like a, you know, an outside perspective. Like you're looking down on the stage

as opposed to out from the stage. I feel like some of my best business ideas have been when I'm meditating or in yoga. So if you're running around like a psycho, make sure you take some time to yourself. We will be in Cabo this weekend, relaxing and really trying to take a step back from the phone. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be like a Cabo trip or something like that or a trip. It could just essentially be two to three hours a day or an hour a day, too, whatever it is, just time to self-reflect and not be constantly go, go, go. Okay, with that, let's get into the him and her tip of the week. You can go first. So I know a lot of women are not. going to like this tip. A lot of women are not going to like it. And it has to do with sleep and most

importantly, sleeping in the cold. Yes, ladies, sleeping in the cold. No, Michael. Is this really your tip? Are you serious? It's my tip. And I know, like I said, a lot of women aren't going to like it. Can we just sleep without having to do like all this weird shit? No, listen, it's important. And I'll tell you why. Everyone's like, okay, what's you going to say? So I've recently been looking a lot more into sleep, I think it's super important. And like I said, I need to figure out hacks or metrics that can help me perform better, right? And if that means that I need to alter my sleep or I need to get the most optimal sleep, now I'm super interested in that subject. And anybody that's listening to the show or knows me personally knows that when I get into something, I kind of go balls to the wall and have

to figure out as much as I can in the quickest time as possible. So I've been looking into it a lot more and scientists have long known that sleeping in a cool room can actually help you get more restful and peaceful sleep. But now research is suggesting that there's another big benefit. And it's that sleeping in cool conditions or colder conditions can actually help boost your metabolism. Lauren. Okay.

Well, I mean, but still, Michael, I just want to sleep and chill. No, I know. So listen, now it's saying cold can actually make you rest better and sleep better and also can boost your metabolism, which is also going to help with weight management. Researchers have found that cool temperatures can stimulate the growth of a fat called brown fat, and that's a special kind of fat that burns energy in your body. So it's going to boost your metabolic health or metabolic health, and it's going to protect against obesity and diabetes. So there's not just, you know, I'm not just doing this for my own benefit because I like sleeping in the cold. I'm doing it

because it actually now seems to have a health benefit. And you know how I am about these like, you know, phases and, you know, scientific proof. But this makes a lot of sense to me because my whole life, I've been sleeping at 68 degrees. How do you know what you've been sleeping at your whole life? I set the temperature on the thermostat. You are like next level today. And then when I moved in with you, we kind of like altered that. No, I do a good 72.

We're going back to 68. No, we are. We're going back to 68. Listen, why don't we try it for a month and you'll see, and if your metabolism sky rockets and it gets better than like. 72 is what Mercedes-Benz said is the ideal temperature. So my car is always set to that. For driving, but for sleeping, listen, I promise you guys,

everyone out there do some research, sleeping. cool conditions will help with burning fat and your metabolism. So that's my tip of the week, 68 degrees. Okay, you will be sleeping in the cold because I'm going to pitch a tent and put it outside like ritual. Listen, I'm not opposed to that either. Okay, whatever. All right, her tip. So mine actually has to do with sleep too, and we actually didn't discuss this before the podcast. So that's We are, we're sinking. We're sinking. Okay, so I have been researching this nonstop. And I know that a lot of people have said this, but I just want to really reiterate it on the podcast. So I've come to the conclusion that silk pillowcases are where it's at. Michael, your cotton pillowcase has got to go.

We got a lot of work to do in the bedroom. I'll do the silk if you do the 68. Maybe compromise at 69. Okay, so silk pillowcases are way better than cotton pillowcases because of beauty. All right. Beauty's pain sometimes, guys. It's really going to help with your blowout. I know that that's crazy, but it's really, really annoying when you go and get a blowout and then you sleep on your hair and it gets all fucked up. And anyone else with me? And also, it's going to help with sleep lines. So you can actually get wrinkles and fine lines when you're sleeping. I'm sure you guys have heard the research on this. If you haven't, you can head to the skinny confidential. I did a post on it. But silk is natural. So it's spun by silkworms. And the fabric contains 18 amino acids.

And amino acids are amazing and insane for your skin. So we're doing all this stuff to our we're putting our oils on, we're doing our sleep bun. When we're laying on the pillowcase all night and your face is on that pillowcase for like eight hours a night, it's really important that you have something that's amazing like silk. So there was this article by this girl named Taylor and she has a blog called Taylor Time and she says, while you sleep at night, your skin is getting nourished by this beautiful silk. First, the feeling of sleeping on silk is so luxurious and elegant that it's also good for you. Most plastic surgeons and dermatologists can tell you that when you go visit,

them that they can see what side of your face you sleep on by the lines on your face. Michael, let me see your face. What side do you sleep on? I'm thinking you sleep on the right. Oh, God. So those sleep lines turn into permanent wrinkles, guys. And what the silk is going to do is it's going to be so soft and silky and your face is just going to glide right over it. And it's not going to cause that friction and those sleep lines. Silk is also hypoallergenic, which we love. And when it comes to cotton, it is going to create friction, which we don't. want. So go for the silk, get away from the cotton. I'm going to switch out your pillowcase tonight, Michael. The silk pillowcase that I'm using right now is this really pretty rose colored pillowcase,

and it's by the Roxy experience. My dad actually gave it to me, and I absolutely love it. It's really pretty. You can check out her Instagram and let me know. But again, it's all about those preventative measures that make all the difference in the long run. Okay, let's discuss something that doesn't have to do with sleep, okay? Let's talk about coffee. But not coffee, what is in my coffee. So lately, I've been using coconut milk. And I actually got this tip from Kristen Cavalieri. In her latest book, she talks about using coconut milk in her lattes. But if you're going to do coconut milk, you have to find a good one. It can't be those ones with all the added gums. So you want to look at your ingredients and you'll see what I mean. Sometimes some of them have these like weird

gargums and all this weird shit in it. I've been doing cold brew. I like Lucky Jack Cold brew. do it with coconut milk over ice and cinnamon. And the coconut milk that I've been using, of course, is from Thrive Market because I'm obsessed and I can't stop shopping there. Their ingredients are simple and straight to the point. They actually have their own brand of coconut milk. And if you look at the ingredients, it's kind of insane because it's just organic coconut extract and water. That's it. So this situation is going to be creamy and delicious. I just feel like it's a pantry essential. Everyone needs it's in their pantry. Even if they're not using it for coffee, you can use it for smoothies and teas. So,

all of Thrive Markets, coconut milk comes from ethically sourced organic coconuts in the Philippines, and they contain no additives and no preservatives. So Thrive coconut milk is so pure that they only contain two ingredients, like I said, and that's organic coconut extract and water. They're also vegan, dairy-free, gluten-free, and paleo-friendly, making them versatile enough to be in a wide range of diets. What else I like about their coconut milk is it actually contains vitamins like B1, B3, B5, B6, and vitamin E. And it has this thing, selenium in it, which is awesome for your skin and magnesium. So you're going to get all those good for you vitamins and your coffee, lots of minerals in there.

Just make sure, like I said, when you're buying the coconut milk that you're looking at the ingredients. That's why I always use Thrive because I know what I'm getting. They do all the research. I don't have to dig. So for those of you who aren't familiar with Thrive, Thrive Market is a one-stop shop for all high-end, high-quality, and highly discounted groceries, supplements, beauty products, and household supplies. Thrive Market guarantees its customers 25 to 50% below retail off all items because it cuts out the middleman.

And Thrive Market is offering all Skinny Confidential, him and her listeners, $60 in free groceries and free shipping with a one-month trial when you go to Thrivemarket.com slash skinny. The thing that I like about Thrive is I can grab my coconut milk, my Annie's Mac and Cheese, maybe some rosemis spray, little unscented dessert. all in one swoop. The categories are all organized for you. So there's a paleo section, a gluten-free section, health, babies, pets, snacks, they have it all. So if you guys want this coconut milk for free, go to thrive market.com slash skinny. I'm telling you, you will love, love, love, coconut milk in your cold brew. Enjoy and cheers. Dr. Stephen Cabral developed his

passion for health and wellness after going through severe health complications at the age of 17. He saw over 50 different doctors and tried over 100 different treatments, but saw no help for his recovery. It wasn't until he met an alternative health doctor whom explained to him how he got there and how he could become well again. He started his recovery process after that, and then at a young age, he knew his life would be dedicated to helping others rebalance their body and renew their health. Dr. Cabral has been hired by 300 health clubs, wellness clinics, holistic centers, training studios, and by other health professionals to improve. their training programs and services. On this episode with Dr. Cabral, we're going to discuss digestion, immunity, energy, metabolism,

hormones, mood, anxiety, and depression. With that, welcome to the show, Dr. Cabral. Dr. Stephen Cabral, here we go. I think sometimes it's, Lauren and I battle with this. Going back, it's like, okay, we ask the guest to introduce himself. Like, that's going to work. But at this point, how would you introduce yourself? I mean, bundling it all in to a concise, like, who the hell are you?

Right. It is hard to fully explain because if I call myself a board certified naturopathic doctor, then people, the next question is, well, what's a naturopathic doctor? So typically I tell people that a naturopathic doctor is someone that goes to school to learn about medicine, but the last two years, what happens is they learn about vitamins and minerals and deficiencies and toxicities, and they use natural-based modalities, not just nutritional supplements, but actual lifestyle, versus going off the other route, which would be pharmaceutical-based. So what I do is I help people with whatever it is, whether it's weight loss, wellness, anti-aging, we find out what their deficiencies are and we find out what their toxicities are.

We essentially remove those toxicities and replace the deficiencies. We rebalance the body and get them well again. Oh my God, I got to come in and see you. I'm looking forward to it. I need to get those cortisol levels under control. It's number one. We should check that. Okay.

So let's go back. How do you, I mean, there's a lot that we got to unpack here. and I'm sure that I'm going to learn a ton. Let's go back. How did you get into all of this? So, you know, growing up as a kid in Medford, Massachusetts, I always tell people like, we didn't even know what functional medicine was or naturopathic medicine. And really, this was never a goal of mine.

It really wasn't. As a kid, I wanted obviously to play sports and do all those things. And I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was a little older. But what happened was when I was 14 years old, I started taking antibiotics. Now, I'd always taken them as a kid because that's how we grew up. but I took antibiotics for skin-based issue, and it went on from ages 14 to 17. So over that course of time, I took over 3,000 capsules of amoxicillin. At the time, I didn't know it, but that essentially wiped out all my good gut bacteria,

and it sent my immune system awry. So what happened was one day, as we always say, out of the blue, I woke up with glands the size of lemons literally in my neck, in my armpit, groin, everything was just swollen, these lip nodes. So what happened was basically I got up and I could just feel my throat swollen and I was sweating. I didn't know what was wrong with me. So I went to go downstairs to see my mom and just be like, hey, there's no way I'm making it to school today. And my legs just gave out of me.

They literally gave out of me and I fell back in my bed. So heart rate's racing like 155 beats a minute. I wasn't jogging or anything. So I'm like, what's going on here? So I went downstairs and that essentially was the start to two years of going to see doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist, no one had any idea what was wrong with me. And the reason was that my blood work didn't look that bad. Sure, I mean, they saw some maybe some Epstein-Barr virus, things like that. But what happened later was that, again, I went to all these specialists,

they told me it was all in my head, or that I would have to get more sick, and then they could diagnose me with some type of disease. Well, I did. I got more sick. I mean, that was the path. I just got more and more sick. Ended up having to leave school my senior year, which was, you know, obviously really troubling for a kid who's, you know, playing sports, all this friends are there, getting ready to go off to college, taking your SATs. That was really heartbreaking. It was a very, very dark time for me. And luckily, we have no idea how to this day my mother got introduced to a functional medicine doctor. This doctor looked at my cortisol levels, my DHA, my testosterone, started to look at my gut. So what he found was this. He found that it had Addison's

disease, which is basically the inability to output cortisol. We always talk about cortisol is bad, right? And it is when it's very, very high, but it's also terrible when it's low. So like a good cortisol is like what you develop when you're working out. That's right. To about like 40 minutes or so and then it might get too high, right? If you were doing really, really intense workouts. Well, mine was up there because I was a young kid, perfectionist, fight or flight, like all of those things. And then it just crashed.

It crashed with the antibiotics. It crashed with my immune system. So I end up being diagnosed later with what's called Addison's disease, the inability to really produce cortisol. I had type 2 diabetes. that was because of the hormone dysregulation as well, rheumatoid arthritis, myelagic encephal myelitis, and something called Pots.

Pots is literally I would walk up maybe six stairs. My heart would race to 150, 150, 155 beats per minute. I would start to get dizzy and I would have to lie down on the stairs legitimately. So it was a really tough time, but it got me into this space right now. I ended up working with many, many doctors, many, mentors, and they're the ones that essentially led me to being able to heal my body. So let me ask you this. You're diagnosed with all of these things.

I can't imagine how traumatic that is. What did the, I don't say regular doctors, but what did the typical doctors want to do to fix these issues? Did they start prescribing you a bunch of steroids, a bunch of medicine, a bunch of more antibiotics? Like what was their solution to all these problems? Yeah, that's exactly correct. So even after the functional medicine-based doctor

saw that had these very low cortisol levels. So we did a saliva-based test. So it's more of a subclinical test, not necessarily just doing the blood. Well, then they said, okay, let's do what's called an ACT-T-H-Stim test. And then that actually said, okay, yes, we agree that you have Addisons. We're going to put you on Cortef, which basically is artificial cortisol.

The problem is, at this time, I became just a student of natural health. I just started reading hundreds of books, and that led to literally over 1,000 books, 2,000 books. And I saw that if I were to remain on these drugs, most likely I'd die of a heart attack at a younger age. I'd have arthrosklorosis, so I would be dead at a young age if I continued on from a 17, 18-year-old kid at that point. So my goal was to say, is there another way? And that's what I was just asking. And I knew personally that if I got here through improper living, then I should be able to reverse that through proper living. So that was my mindset. I had no idea how to do that. But I was on a quest now to heal myself. And I remember like literally as a young kid sitting in the waiting area saying, you know, if I ever figure this out, I'm going to share this with the world. I really am. And but the truth was I never really believed it. That was kind of a thought in the back of my mind because I had never heard of any. recovering from these things. So how did you heal yourself and get to where you are today? Because you look totally healthy to me right now.

So about, it took, it was a long process. It really was. And that's because I had to, this was functional medicine. I would say more in infancy. So this was just over 20 years ago. And what happened was I would meet one person. They would have some knowledge in this area. And I got a little bit better.

But then I would relapse because it wasn't the full picture. And then I would go to another person and they knew a lot about the gut. So I would start to heal my gut. Now I could absorb more nutrients, more minerals, and more vitamins, I started to feel better. And then, of course, I would push it too hard in the gym or with exercise, and then I would relapse again. So then I started to learn about lifestyle and starting to balance the nervous system and not go hard all the time. And then I met my, I always call her my final mentor. And she taught me about Ayurvedic medicine.

After that, she urged me to go back to school, get my naturopathic doctoral degree, and I'm definitely an obsessive type person. So then I went overseas. And I said to myself, there's no way the United States. Where's overseas? So I went to India, Sri Lanka, China, Europe, and then I studied all over the U.S. as interning, basically. I was interning there. Because what I believe was this is that in the U.S.,

they couldn't get me better fully. You know, of course, there's practitioners that are great. I didn't see all of them. But what I learned was this is that I wanted to go overseas and whoever had the best form of medicine, that's what I was going to use in my practice, because I knew one day I would now practice. So what I did was I found that in Ayurveda,

Arrithic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, all over the world, they're all amazing, but the problem is we always try to fit people into this box, right? And so if you do acupuncture, well, it's acupuncture only, right? But if you do acupuncture and herbal-based medicine, now you're going to get even deeper. Now you talk about lifestyle and mindset, you'll get even deeper. So what I found was we can't put people in just one box. Like, not everybody's keto or primal or paleo or low carb or high carb. Things work for different people.

And if we stay open to it, we can literally heal anybody. that's my opinion. What has been one of the most amazing practices that you've done to get to where you are today in the Ayurvedic practices? So I believe Ayurveda literally means the science of life. And it's the oldest form of medicine in the world. It's 6,000 years old. Every other form of medicine, even traditional Chinese medicine, came from Ayurabetic medicine.

So I use that as the basis point for everybody. I look at body types, like what it's called doches, but it's just called the genotype or somatotypes in kind of the United States. So we start there so we naturally know what someone's more prone to because we know that that's their genetics. But then after that, it's how they live their life and they can start to get out of balance. So the way that I got from feeling good at like 26, 27 years old, by then I was feeling good, but not great. Like, you know, good. I woke up, but I still had a little bit of lagging energy in the morning, but fine, I can now function during the day. I had no more rheumato arthritis, no more type 2 diabetes, Addisons, any of those things.

They were all gone. But it wasn't optimal. I got optimal when I started to then balance my energy systems. Rick, fully healed the gut so that didn't take all my energy, so I had stronger digestion. But then I started to ease into my day. When I didn't start like under stress, like a firecracker right away, then I wasn't jacking up those cortisol levels. I wasn't burning myself out literally.

I notice that too. If I start the day off like with cortisol, I tell Michael, if he wakes me up like scream something or he used to scream shit when he woke up sometimes, like he forgot to do something. I can't do it. We actually, we had an Ayuravidic specialist on the show. Her name is Sahara Rose. And like Pitta and Kofflin and all that stuff. Yes.

But I really identify with this approach to medicine because I think, in any approach to anything, when people try to do a blanket diet or a blanket health regimen or anything and apply it to everyone, I think that's a huge mistake. So I like this approach because like you said, everyone's different. Certain people are going to have different responses. Maybe something that works for you is not going to work for me. And I think where I run into trouble. with traditional medicine is that they try to apply blanket policies to everyone. And then if it's not,

if it's not working, they just continue more and more and more. And so I think it's really important when you're thinking about anything that's fitness, health, whatever, relationships that you take an individual approach. Would you say that the most important practice is slowly getting out of bed? That's been something that's really made a big difference. It is for people who are high stress types. So if you know yourself as a type A. Both of us. Then you have to do things to purposely. So what I do is I actually divide my day up because I know, because I know that I just know the speed at which I like to live, and that's fast. And I talk fast, I move fast, all of those things.

So what I do is I now wake up 90 minutes before I need to leave the house. So it's 60 minutes from my day, a half hour to get ready for the day, basically. And I do my greens potter, I do my smoothie, I do my body weight exercises just to move by body. Not a workout, just to get my breathing going. It's kind of like an asana from yoga, but it's just, you know, pushups and chin ups. just not to get a, not to failure, just to get the body moving. I take some time to breathe. I might listen to a podcast, a video, something to put my mind in the right place. And then I'm ready to start the day. No email. None of that. My phone's still on airplane. And then what I do is I work

my day for about, let's say, four hours or so. And then I have lunch. And lunch at that time is always a walk. And the reason is you want to switch from flight or flight as soon as possible. So what I do is for me breathing and going for a walk and putting on what's called binaural beats. Anybody can look up binaural beats. Is it on Spotify? Yeah, one of my favorite ones is called Whole Tones. But if you type in just binaural,

and maybe we can put that in the show notes. Yes, we will, you guys. Then what it does is it literally entranes the brain to kind of calm that nervous system. So I really enjoy that. It does a lot for me. And I go for a walk and then I just usually do lunch. Now I'm with people all day long.

So for me, since I don't work, Like if you're a solo in a cubicle, you want to meet people at lunch, right? But for me, I'm with people all day long. So what I want to do is take lunch by myself. It's a quiet time. And then I call what's called the second half of my day. And the second half of my day is back with people, back with in my practice or writing or podcasting, whatever it might be.

And then after that I go to the gym and I exercise. And that's again, for me, it's actually more of a meditative practice because I know that if I train super hard, I'm just going to burn up my body again. So I'm just kind of in there, make myself feel good. I might do a little bit of boxing. I would do some body weight exercise, a little bit of. weight training, a little bit of cardio. And it's more to feel good and keep myself in shape than it is anymore to crush my body. So what time do you go to bed and what time do you wake up and how

important to sleep is to this whole equation? I know sleep for me is like non-negotiable. I have to get at least eight hours or I'm a raging bitch. Ask my husband. It's not pretty. Well, that is the big thing again, right? It's all about balance. And so it's literally what I look at as like a seesaw. So if you go hard all day, sleep's more important. If you're an athlete, training four or six hours a day, sleep's more, you need like nine, ten hours of sleep. But if you just sit, not in a negative way, but if you're just sitting down all day and you're not exercising, you might not need the eight, nine hours. You might need more like seven to eight.

You know, I think everyone needs between the seven and nine. Iervated would say the ectomorph or the vata would need more like nine, and the endomorph would need more like six or seven hours or so because their body's just not as metabolically active. So I go to bed at realistically 10 p.m. I like to go to, I like to try to go to bed by 9.30. So what I do now is I get into bed with a book around 930. Again, that helps turn off my mind.

And then what I do is I wake up about 5.30. And that's when I start my day. Wow, Michael, are you getting inspo for that? Michael's been waking up at 6, which is really early. Yeah, I mean, it depends. Like, with my life and what I do, like, sometimes I have to work super late. And on those days, I used to still try to get up early. And now I'm like, listen, on the nights that I'm working until midnight, one,

I'm going to get up the next day a little bit later. but typically if I can get to bed, which is my cycle's a little off, but if I can get to bed by 10, you know, like 536 is ideal. I want to go back a little bit and talk about when you were sick. And we touched on this. What can you walk us through specifically what you started to do to heal yourself and where you started to see results? Like, what was the moment you're like, wow, this is really working for me

or this practice is working or this type of medicine is working? Like, can we unpack that a little bit? Because I know we talked about it, but it was we glazed over it quickly. know there was a long, long traumatic process in your life. So I'd like to learn more about it. Even when I had the real hormone issues with not being able to produce cortisol and I had low testosterone and low DHA, it never really fixed itself until I started to heal my gut. So that's why I tell everybody, you know, whatever you have right now, if you can run in what's called an organic acids test, that's going to be the place to start because it's going to look for

Candida overgrowth. It's going to look for like clostridium dupacal, some bacterial overgrowth. A stool test is great as well, but it's obviously you're collecting stool and not a lot of people do that. I'm going to give you a stool test tonight, Michael. It's a three days. A pink heart bag, you can put it in. So, you know, what you'll do is you'll find a lot of things going on down there. And what happens is this is that if your body, like you can eat the best foods in the world. And a lot of people do, especially we're out here, California.

There's so many amazing restaurants. You can do juice and you can do all these things. But here's the issue. If your body cannot absorb it, if it can't break it down in your intestines, you have about 28 feet of intestine. You're not going to be able, your cells aren't going to see that. So what I did at first was I had to remove the H. Pylori, which is a bacteria in the stomach that doesn't really allow you to produce stomach acid properly to break down protein. It can start to ferment food, putrefied food in your stomach.

Then I had to wipe out the candida and the small test of bacterial overgrowth at the same time. When I did that and I started to rebuild the gut wall, now all of a sudden I could manufacture my own B vitamins. I could actually, you know, create those out of the known bacteria. But when you say when I did that, how did you do it? Did you do it with probiotics? Like, what was the exact things that you did? So that's why probiotics are actually not my first recommendation of my practice.

Really? And the reason is, and I know they're kind of one of the hot things right now. But if you have bacterial overgrowth in your gut, do you want to put more bacteria in there? Right. Makes sense. Yeah, the answer is no. So if you get a lot of bloating, you get a lot of gas. And it's not right after meal.

Because right after meal, it's usually you just have weak digestion and you start to get bloated. But a couple hours later, if you have bloating your gas, and especially by the end of the day, you very well may have a little bit of small test of bacterial overgrowth. And the reason is this, or Candide overgrowth, when you take antibiotics or alcohol or Advil, ibuprofen, birth control, poor food combining stress, all those things start to change your microbiome. They start to open up that gut wall. And that means when you eat these certain proteins as well, they seep into the bloodstream. Same with the bacteria. That causes an immune-based reaction. When you cause an immune reaction, you cause puffiness or inflammation in the body, but also it drains a lot of energy. Your body's always

fighting these pathogens that are coming through the gut wall. Now, they might be harmless foods that most of us eat, but the problem is when that gut walls open, it was never supposed to be exposed like that. They come into the bloodstream, and when they do that, they fire off this war zone, this inflammatory-based war zone. Then we look at the autoimmune-based diseases. We look at the extra stress. And so that, that's why, like, that's the place to start. So what I did was I wipe those out first with herbal-based remedies, so like things like oregano oil, caprolic acid, pot-arco, but also what's called biofilm disruptors. Wait, wait, wait, okay.

Oregano oil, I have all the time. I try to make Michael do it. He won't. Hopefully you're taking notes. What's the next thing? Well, I mean, so we can make up a whole protocol. So it's called a Candida and bacterial overgrowth protocol. It's pretty straightforward.

But before this, you have to figure out what you have, right? Right. It's a good idea. You recommend, is there a specific test that the audience could walk away from? Like, I know you brought something that we can try here. The organic acids test. So it's a simple at-home urine test. So again, we offer these online, but if you have a local practitioner, like if you have a

recommendation for a naturopathic doctor in your ear or a functional medicine practitioner that specializes in the gut, then that's going to be a home run. Like, that's going to be really worth your while because I'm telling you right now, if you can optimize your body, it doesn't matter what else you want in life. Now you have the energy to do it. So before I was grogging until 11 a.m. I never woke up. Didn't matter if I had a cough or any of those things.

I never woke up. But then I optimized my body. There was less inflammation. Now I wake up without an alarm at 5.30. My body wants to wake up. Can me and Michael come and see you and do these tests? Anytime you want, but we can also just ship them. So that's what we do too. Because my whole goal is this is we we want people to be able to take back their own health. You shouldn't have to ask your doctor and they're like, well, why do you want to run those labs? Like that you're already in a vulnerable position asking your doctor be like, hey, I read this. I think I might have this and you kind of feel again vulnerable like I was there. So my job and a lot of other practitioners as well, not just me, I want to be able to get these two people. So we literally ship them all over the world. Let people actually take the lab. They ship it back to the lab.

I read their results. I give them my personal recommendations. And they get on the call with a health coach. And so really, I mean, this, I believe this is the future medicine. I really do. And it's not just me doing this. So you can find other practitioners. And I just, I really believe you have an issue right now.

You can figure it out. It doesn't matter whether it's migraine, psoriasis, autoimmune, any of those things. They can be figured out. They can because they all have a root cause. Those things are all symptoms. So a migraine is a symptom. skin issues are a symptom, headaches are a symptom, you know, joint pain's a symptom. And so what we need to do is figure out why is that happening in the first place.

If we figure out why it happened, well, we correct that, then, you know, it's not a miracle, it's something like that. We actually scientifically figure it out, well, you had this, this and this wrong. Let me ask you this, this is maybe, this something that triggered when you were talking about the future of medicine. Is there any negative, I don't want to say reaction, but is there anything that's negative from it? Say you're still a little bit hesitant, you're on the fence. I'm not saying I am because I'm not. But if there's somebody, it's like, oh, I'm still want to stay with my traditional doctor and try that.

Is there, is there anything wrong with also trying the stuff that you prescribe, like at the same in-co, in conjunction? Or is it, you know what I'm saying? Like, if they're doing both. I actually think that it's amazing to have both. Like, so I'm not one of those people. There's so much ego in medicine. There really is. And that is not the point where, or the place that I want to come from.

I mean, if the end goal is to help the patient or the wellness client, right? If that's our end goal, why don't we do everything in our power to do that? So what I recommend is that every person has an MD, so a medical doctor, and everybody has a health coach or ND, a natural path path pathic doctor. And that is the best of both worlds. Then for acute-based care, you could go to them or you can always have your blood work run every year. That's a great thing to do. And then your health practitioner can work on all the lifestyle-based things, the nutrition that your MD never went to school for. Remember, a medical doctor, if they're lucky, they get one nutrition course in four years.

That's it. if they're lucky and they do nothing with supplementation. So when they always say like, oh, you know, there's no such, there's no truth in supplements. Like that just, I mean, not to be mean, but that just shows the ignorance because every Friday I do what's called on my podcast, I do a super nutrient of the week. And I just show people through science. Like last week was niacin. And I show people like, hey, here's what the research shows.

Helps with LDL, helps with HDL, helps with HDL, helps with diabetes, helps with mood, helps with Alzheimer's. Like, this is clinically proven. These are scientific research studies that I'm quoting here. So we know that they work, and I think it's unfortunate that we have to say, oh, my form of medicine is better than yours. So, because if I'm ever having, again, God forbid anything like that, a heart attack, something like that, I'm going directly to the emergency room, right?

I'm not fooling around. But then for all chronic-based illnesses. Remember, if you're going to have to deal with this for the rest of your life, that's chronic. See a natural health practitioner. Very, very, very interesting. And I agree with everything you just said. I think that, I mean, again, if I have a heart attack on the street, I'm following you to the emergency room.

But I don't think there's a, I don't if there's anything wrong with trying the other remedies as well and exploring other options because limiting yourself to strictly an MD when there could potentially be other answers, especially other answers that have been around thousands of years. I think that shows the ignorance of humankind as a society in general right now. It's like, don't just close yourself off because one guy went to, I mean, that's going to make sound bad, but one guy went to school for four years, right? Or eight years, however it was. I want to talk about cortisol. So I told you earlier, got my test back, and I have extremely high cortisol. My husband's cortisol, I think if he got his tested, would be off the charts. I think so many people nowadays.

How the hell would you expect my cortisol be low living with you? No, I think it's the opposite. What, where can someone who's sitting at home with high cortisol start? Like, give me something that's like a beginner package. Nothing too crazy. What can they do just a little, just a little tip or a trick at home to kind of improve that. Sure. And just to give people a little background, if they don't know what cortisol is, it's, it's the main stress hormone that your brain signals, so your hypothalamus tells your batutari

gland in your brain, hey, let's make some adrenaline, norapheneph. And then after that, they say, oh, okay, we're under stress. Now, the stress could be, you're in traffic, you're late for work, late for a meeting. It could be anything, right? You're yelling at your kids, whatever it is. And then I have a three and five-year-old girl, so that's why I always bring them into the equation, even though I love them, it can be a little stressful sometimes. So, you know, what I look at as well as then, what does cortisol do to the body? Well, cortisol, we know, is great in the short term because it helps us under stress. It gives us like tunnel vision and it gets us ready to either run away or, you know, fight.

But in the long term, it burns out brain cells. It lowers your thyroid. It lowers progesterone and women, which leads to estrogen dominant. So they start to gain weight. They start to have more water retention, lower mood, irritability, acne, all those things. And that happens from cortisol. Remember, if you have higher levels of estrogen than you do progester, That's why we have a lot of infertility in this country as well.

What happens is you start to lower the hormones that are precursors to cortisol, which would be progesterone. And again, it affects men too, but not as much as it does women. And so what we want to do is always focus on all areas that we can, right? Some areas we can do better than others, meaning like if you really don't like your coworkers at work, hard to get away from them because you need your job, right? So then you focus on every other area that you can, lower inflammatory foods, getting more sleep at night, practicing meditation. Like what? Give us some foods.

I want to get so specific here. because I think a lot of people deal with this. What kind of foods? So believe it or not, I know we're on a low-carb, keto-based craze right now, but if you want to keep cortisol levels low, your body needs carbohydrates. Okay.

That's the bottom line. Carbs are the only thing that cuts cortisol. Fat does not and protein does not. But we don't have to go overboard on that. We can still just use, you know, low glycemic berries. We can use great carbohydrates like yams, sweet potatoes, yucca,

and a little bit at each meal, right? So what I do is I usually recommend a smoothie in the morning, low glycemic berries. You can put your greens, and then you can do whatever you want. And then for lunch, you might add a half a cup. So if you're looking to lose weight, you can still eat carbohydrates. You really can.

And that's going to be very beneficial for your thyroid as well. So whenever we're thinking anti-inflammatory, we're thinking plant-based. And it doesn't mean that I'm not saying you can't have some fish or some eggs or other things as well. But when you want the anti-inflammatory benefits, you want more plant-based foods. Okay. Like any plant? Any kind of plant works. Well, so this is where it comes back to the gut, right?

So if you have digestive-based issues, I know a lot of people are eating salads right now. But salads are extremely hard to digest. It's literally cellulose leaves. Like it's leaves you're trying to break down if you think about it like that. And we don't have a rumin like a cow. You don't have an extra stomach. So what we want to do a lot of times is when we're feeling, and you might think about this. When you're feeling stressed, what do you want?

You want comfort food, right? Easy to digest processed carbs. Well, you can get a healthy version of that by doing cooked vegetables. Like cooked carrots and root vegetables are amazing. So cook purple carrots or rainbow carrots with parsnips. Again, you can do some cinnamon and sea salt on baked sweet potato or, you know, diced sweet potato, really like tasty things as well. And then have some protein with that, of course.

You can do some salmon and you can do or if you're vegan. You can start to do some maybe some black bean soup, which is much easier to digest than actual whole black beans. So there's so many things that you can do. And my recommendation is to also choose some foods that you enjoy. Because if you enjoy your meal and you, and you're also, I'm a big advocate of the blue zones. And so if you also bring community into that, you share a meal with some. And all of a sudden, that lowers cortisol levels as well. So if you're angry when you're eating, certainly you're not going to be able to digest it.

So let's dive into the gut now because you've got specialist. You know, when you get stressed, you get that knot in your stomach. Let's talk about the science behind that. But let's also talk about the gut in general. I heard someone told me the other day that the gut has a mind of its own. I know it sounds crazy. Maybe you could speak more on it. What would you tell someone the first step is to kind of figure out what,

works in their gut and how to figure out their gut and how to navigate what they should be putting in their gut, all of it. Sure. So from a functional medicine perspective, and again, like functional medicine basically means looking at what's called subclinical level. So you look at blood work for sure, but you want to look at other things that don't just diagnose disease. And in traditional medicine, the reason we don't, in traditional medicine, so I'm not a medical

doctor, I'm not a traditional doctor, you look at blood work. And the reason why you look at blood work is because then that can tell you high cholesterol, okay, put them on a statin. High blood pressure, okay, let's put them on a calcium channel blocker or beta blocker, whatever it might be. Okay, they have this. Like, you just, if they come in with this, then you give them medication. And that's the way the system has to be.

I'm not, like, I'm not against medical doctors. They're forced to practice that way because that's how health insurance dictates it. And they also, I mean, I have, so a lot of my personal private wellness clients are also doctors and they're MDs and they say, I wish I could do what you do. But they have to see 30 people a day. I see maybe six to eight. That's it. So I can spend an hour with a person.

And I don't just do one consultation. People like, oh, can I just meet with you once? I'm like, no, because you're not going to get the benefit from it. So we meet two to three times minimum. And then you can teach things along the way. So there's just no teaching in traditional-based medicine. So with functional medicine lab testing, you can start to look at your gut. You can do food sensitivity testing, which is amazing.

We do what's called an IGG test. This is actually really important for people and goes back to your question. So if you react to a food, let's say you get hives, brain fog, fatigue, watery eyes, red airs, any of those reactions. That's what's called an IGE reaction. It happens within minutes to hours. The most famous one is peanuts, right? Peanuts and some kids or adults could have an anaphylactic shock.

They go into anaphylactic shock, which means that throat starts to close up right, their airway. Well, that's the most pronounced, but anyone within like, you know, just even mild reactions, that's an IGE. Think of it as immediate. We don't lab test that anymore. And the reason is it just, it costs a lot of money to do that when,

and you can figure that on your own, right? If you eat muscles and you get hives every time you eat muscles, stop eating muscles. Like, that's just the way it is. So, and the reason I do that too is my wife keeps eating muscles, even though she knows that she has a food allergy or food sensitivity to them. I'm like, how many times do you need muscles before you figure out that this is not a good food for you? But anyway, we're Portuguese and Italian, and she loves that as part of it. So what I say is test for the IGG. And IGG is a latent response.

That means, let's say, let's say today is a Thursday. And you had food on a Tuesday. It can actually react on Thursday. So it's a delayed response. That's so hard to figure out without food sensitivity testing. Now, you can keep a food journal and you can do a rotation-based diet, but a lot of people aren't willing to go to that level. And so we say, just test that.

And you can find out that eggs, even though you don't get bloating, don't have any issues with them. Well, they're the number two food sensitivity in my practice. And we've tested thousands of people. And so what happens is people could have joint pain or brain fog a couple days later, any of those things. I'm like, well, what happened? Why am I feeling this way?

I went to bed last night at a good time. And so that's essentially a nutshell, what functional medicine does. It looks at the inside because it's not showing itself always in the outside. And I always tell people, if you can, do it well, you're healthy. You know, find your baseline now. And then if you ever start to slide, well, you know what a good baseline level is for you. And again, the reason I always say start with a gut is because nutrition is the foundation. But what if you can't absorb all that good nutrition?

You know, you can eat all the great vegetables, all things. But if they're causing you bloating and all these issues, then that's not the place to be. So what are three takeaways that you can give the audience on how to improve their gut at home? Just simple changes. So the first thing is if you feel tired after your meals and you get a lot of bloating, cook your food first. And again, you might say, well, I always cook my protein. Sure. You don't have to cook the fat because that actually oxidizes olive oil or avocado.

But cook the vegetables. Because vegetables contain what's called the cellulose structure. And then we have the crucifers vegetables that actually have a cellular structure that looks like a cross. and that's part of how they got their name. So what we want to do is if we can, we're going to either blend those, puree those, cook them. You know what they do this the rest of your life.

And it sounds like baby food, right? But what you can do is if you feel better after that meal, you know your digest system's weak. Because you ate the same foods, you just pureed them. You just blended them. So if that's the case, first start with what's called the digestive enzyme.

So we have something just called daily digestive enzyme. It's simple. It helps you digest proteins, fats, and carbs. That's it. So what's it doing? Well, it's giving your body back a little bit more strength. That's all. Like, it's literally just giving you back some enzymes in your stomach,

help you to hopefully produce a little bit more hydrochloric acid. And then the food won't end up putrefying in your stomach, causing that to kind of blow out. And then the small intestine is right around the belly button area, that circle around the belly button. And if you're feeling like you're always distended there, well, most likely that food is fermenting in your small intestine, feeding candida to potentially feeding bacterial overgrowth as well.

Okay, two more little things that they can do. Digestive enzyme. What else? You said blend the vegetables. will give me one more. Or just cook them really well. So I something was called the fork test. It was one of the more popular things that I chatted about one time of my show.

And you never know it's like going to be a good takeaway. But the fork test means this. Any food that will not squish between the prongs of a fork is going to be harder to digest. That's it. So steak is obviously harded to digest than salmon, right? Because salmon will crush right through that. So think of that. Easier to digest, make sure it passes the fork test.

The other thing is this. I remember especially when I was like more to lifting and all these different types of things it was eat every two hours, right? That will boost your metabolism. Well, here's the thing. If you're putting food in your stomach that often and turning in your digestive system every two hours, it takes an enormous amount of energy. About one-third of all of our energy, about 30% of all every energy for the day goes to digestion. It will be even more if you're eating all day long.

So it's actually better for most people. Again, we say most because there's never an all for one. But 99% of the people to go about four hours, three to four hours so that your stomach completely empties. want to feel a little bit hunger before that next meal. Now your body is ready for that next meal and you will have less likely to put, because if you have all this undigested food in your stomach and then you put up on top of it, it's just going to be hours. It's just going to sit there and literally putrefine your energy. You're going to feel terrible. Those are great tips. I want to do

kind of a plot twist here and go into weight loss. So I know you know a lot about that. Let's start with how you think people sitting at home again can kickstart a weight loss. Give it. us like a couple tips and tricks, easy hacks. Or maybe start with, maybe start with what they're doing that they think is good for weight loss, that's not, and then we can go into the fixes. So, I mean, the people always tell you to exercise more and to eat less, right, to lose weight. But we see people that are way beyond that, right? There's at some point you can only eat two few, you know, two little calories and you can only exercise so much. Those have limiting returns, meaning that if you're currently exercising, let's say four times a week, more days than not.

So first of all, if you're not doing four times a week of exercise, I implore you to do that because it's also good for your health. And it's good for if you do it not at an intense, necessarily like super intense pace, it will also help calm your body down. You'll feel better. You boost endorphins. You'll have less depression, all of those things. So I recommend that more days than not of exercise.

So let's say four days a week, you do Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, off, Thursday, Friday, maybe do some fun activities on the weekend or take a yoga class and like that. go for a bike ride. And then you do want to make sure that you're not overeating, right? And overeating would be, okay, how many calories are you really taking in? If you're taking in like over 3,000, well, maybe you are really overeating. How do you track that? Well, you can just purchase or you can just download a free app on your phone. One of the ones I recommend is lose it. It's totally free. And all it does is it shows you your calories for the day, but it also breaks down your macros, which is kind of nice. So it can actually show your health coach like,

or here's my protein, here's my fat, here's my carbs, because maybe you are eating too much of one particular one. So if you've already done that, you're like, you know what, I've already done that. I still can't lose the last 10 pounds or maybe you can't lose 100 pounds, whatever it might be. There's a big difference. For the people who can't lose the last 10 pounds to 15 pounds, it's usually inflammation and it's usually a lot of times a toxicity-based issue. So they have too much, too many estrogen-based metabolites or they're exposed to heavy metals or whatever it might be. And their body's puffy, right? It's swollen. And it's so hard for them to let go that and the reason is it's like a survival-based mechanism, right? So when you start to increase

cortisol levels, you put it on a little weight around your stomach. Like that's, that actually raises your own blood sugar, believe not, even if you're low carb. A lot of people don't know this. Your body will raise blood sugar on its own. I test a lot of, I work with a lot of elite CrossFit athletes and a lot of elite athletes. We test their blood sugar after their workout. They go and fasted, their blood sugar's over 300. They haven't had any carbs. So you can see how stress can actually increase our own blood sugar. So what we do is we kind of modulate exercise. We say, okay, let's not to overdo it. Let's exercise like a normal human being should. And then so what we do, we have two groups of people. The people have to lose the last 10 to 15 pounds. We just make sure that

we either do the seven, 14, 21 day detox to really balance out inflammation to balance out hormone levels, all of those things. And then for the people who are at like 100 pounds, they need to lose. Let's just say 50 plus or more. Then that's a major overhaul because we need to look at what's their thyroid doing, especially if they're, because I've seen people eat 1100 calories a day and they're still 50, 60 pounds overweight. So it's clearly not a food issue at that point. And it's unfair then. It's unfair for them to say, oh, well, you're not trying hard enough.

You should just exercise more. Honestly, exercise and nutrition at that point are not going to help. They need to rebalance those hormones. They really need to look at stress. They need to look at their gut. And it's a deeper thing. But the nice thing is, then it will literally cascade in their life and fix so many other areas.

So where do you start with someone that it's not a nutrition or exercise? Like, how do you really pinpoint that? Well, ideally we'll do a functional medicine test. Okay. But for those people that can't do a functional medicine test, we'll start, I created something called the Dr. Ball detox, and we start there. And it's because I know that not everybody can run a functional medicine test. Like, I just know that.

I don't want to be like this elitist doctor who's only willing to work with these people. I think that's unfair. So what can we do that's going to help your average person who wants to get good results? What we need to do is we actually need to teach them how to eat again. We need to do the fundamental. So let's go over the fundamentals. So the fundamentals are, we all know that intermittent fasting works. The question is how long you should be doing it for?

Well, let's not go overboard. Let's just start at 12 hours. So you're going to stop eating somewhere around 7 o'clock at night, and you're going to start eating again at 7 a.m. And that's basically it. So we first teach that. That can be monumental. Why?

Because just not eating for 12 hours, and especially two to three hours before you go to bed, allows now for your body to naturally detoxify. It allows inflammation levels to cool down. You actually start tapping into body fat because you don't have any more, you're not putting any more fuel into your body. So that's a fundamental. Then after that, we like to not have this monumental huge breakfast in the morning. We like to keep their energy.

So it's a huge thing. If you have no energy in the morning, don't waste more energy by creating like an omelet with turkey sausage and all that. And again, I was there. Like, only reason I know these things is because I made every mistake there is. A lot of people think they need a huge breakfast, right? Like they think that's a lot of people believe that they do. But that's incorrect, yes. No, I like a limited breakfast, smoothie.

You like a limited everything. What about my husband that doesn't eat anything? He forgets to eat. Yesterday, he came, he thought he was so cool. He came to meet Mimi and I, my little sister, for lunch or for late dinner. And he said, I have been just running on coffee today. No, I think that I have, I think I do something similar to you. I think I do a lot of intermittent fasting.

Maybe I've just never called it that or thought about it that way. But to me, to perform, like, if I don't eat eight and then I don't eat again until eight in the morning, that's a normal day. Like that there's no difficulty there. I think, and I feel good doing that. I always have trouble when people say, you need to eat more, and I'm like, I'm feeling fine.

I feel like I'm in decent shape, not the best. But I don't need, I don't need to eat these huge meals throughout the day. I just, you know, a little coffee or smoothie in the morning. That'll carry me through lunch. And so, again, you can always test those theories and you can say, am I not hungry

because I'm in a state of fight or flight? And if you're, remember, if you're in a state or fight or flight, it turns off the digestion. That might be part of it. And so I always ask people that because, like, you know, you don't know.

And so, of course, you can test that, obviously, with just a simple at-home saliva test. But the other thing is you can say, okay, I know that I'm not really going to slow down during the day. So let me just eat really easy to digest foods all day long. And then at night, I'll have my real meal. And there's nothing wrong. Well, that's a fine compromise. I mean, it really is. What's a common mistake that you see people making with weight loss?

The biggest one right now is going too low carb for too long. Okay. So also low calorie, of course, but both slow your metabolism. So in my practice, there's no guesswork. So what I do is a lot of, we start actually low carb. So again, I just want to say like everything works, right? Everything works. We just have to know who does it work best far.

So we'll go lower carb, not zero carb, but lower carb, mainly vegetables and some yam, sweet potatoes, root-based vegetables for 21 days, okay? So that's how we'll kickstart the weight loss. But then we say, how does this person respond to it? If they're not losing weight, well, then there's a hormonal based issue because their body is basically in what's called a starvation-based state. And that's why we're lowering their carbs. So the body thinks it's even starving to an even greater degree. And that's why when I test a lot of people who are in keto-based diets, and it shows that their thyroid level starts to go lower.

And that's an increase basically in TSA. So it's kind of strange, but your TSA goes up. It's called your thyroid-stimilating hormone. Because when thyroid lowers activated thyroid, your body calls for more thyroid hormone. Now, it usually does not happen in guys. I just want to let you know that. It's typically only or mainly in women. So it's more like if a, if I'm a lot of, you If I see 10 cases, it's nine plus cases are women. So that's why women, I don't think do great on a low carb diet for an extended period of time. Maybe somewhere between three and six weeks.

And then what I do is I help them transition off of the low carb diet. So we start to just add in more, like we add in berries with their smoothie in the morning. We start to add in like a half a cup of the sweet potato, the yam, the yucca, the beats, all those different things. And then we say, okay, how are you doing? Are you still losing weight? Because if you are, great, let's try to add more carbs. The goal should always be to add more carbs, not to spike blood sugar because it's

It's not like you're sitting down to a bowl of just white rice on its own, right? It's not like, it doesn't live in isolation. So we're eating it with other foods that helps modulate that. And again, we know that as they're losing weight, we're most likely not spiking blood sugar. But again, even if you want to test that, a simple $20 gloucomitor. It's called a glucometer that you can buy on Amazon. And then you can say, oh, am I really, is my blood sugar coming back down below 95, two to three hours after a meal?

And if it is, you're okay. Like, everything's good. Well, this is, I'm super happy you came on because I think it's really important. important for people to hear this message and have this conversation because there's so many people that get stuck, you know, in a constant circle or they're like, they're trying and they're not being lazy. They're doing what they can to lose weight, but they're, you know, they think it's cutting carbs and exercising like crazy. And if all this other steps off in it and doing that other thing's not going to help, like they need to know, they need to know what to do, you know. And I, and I feel terrible for people

that are doing everything they think they should be doing, well, they may be missing a piece that's crucial, right? Like, they don't know this stuff. It's, it's, you know, it's a sad cycle to be stuck in. It isn't, it's not their fault. I mean, that's the whole thing. Like, I really believe, and I see people, and I'm much more empathetic now. I wasn't empathetic 20 years ago because I didn't know any of this, but we see people who are overweight and we think like, oh, they're just not taking care of themselves. That's not the truth at all. Listen, lazy is one thing, and I have no sympathy for that, right? But lazy, you're on your own. But if you're trying and it's not working, then you need to know this stuff so that you can fix it. Exactly. What is one piece of

advice that you can share with our audience that requires minimal effort, but it makes a big, big difference. In terms of overall life, happiness, stress. Let's keep it on the wait talk. Okay, we'll keep it on the weight talk. What I would do is if you haven't done the stop eating two to three hours before bed, that's huge. Okay.

So every weekend I do something just called Ask Cabral, the Cabral House calls. And we get questions from literally all over the world, and it's just my way to try to pay it forward. Like literally, I was fortunate enough to meet amazing doctors, especially my final mentor, Dr. Pete, who gave me the answers that I was looking for. She finalized that with Ayurveda and genetic testing and functional medicine testing. So any way that I can help, I try to. So what I would say is this is that people are wondering, because I get people writing in,

like, I'm not able to lose weight. Here's my whole diet. And I'm like, okay, everything looks good. But now they're eating like the rice cakes and the almond butter before bed or they're eating like a container of hummus and celery. is after their dinner. And the problem is this. You're now asking your body to spend more of its energy breaking down all those foods rather than going into more of a calm, relaxed, parasympathetic nervous state where it lowers cortisol. It can then boost hormones, meaning like a lot of people

don't know this, but your thyroid actually peaks out, T-Sh peaks out around midnight and then T4 around 4 a.m. Well, all those things aren't going to work like that if your body's still using its energy for digestion. And you don't want all of your calories before bed. So if you look at, you know, people like, oh, well, it doesn't really matter when you have it. Well, it does. You know, it really does for a lot of people. Not for everyone, again, not for everyone, but for women especially, it does matter. And again, most of my practice is women. So what we look at is let's stop eating two to three hours before bed. That's it. And then after that go 12 hours. It's not that hard. Because if you stop eating two to three hours before bed, you can stop at 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock at night,

six o'clock, whatever you want to do, and then just go to that same time. Yeah, maybe, you know, watch one show before bed, read a little bit, read a positive, self, help self-improvement book before bed get your eight hours wake up um just have a glass of water don't eat right away or do some greens in it whatever you want to do and then an hour later after waking up you can eat then you might even go 12 13 hours okay to end this interview i have this random question that i'm obsessed with oh god i'm ready how important is tongue scraping because i feel like it's an epidemic that people don't scrape their tongue and now i have everyone around me scraping their tongue. It's in Christmas

stockings for my family. My friends are getting them as like gifts for their baby shower. Like I'm about the tongue scraper. I like that that's making a comeback because that's an Ayurvedic methodology basically for the morning. So in Ayurvedic medicine, a lot of people don't

know this, but oil pulling and tongue scraping came from Ayurveda. And so what you want to do first before you do your oil pulling is use a copper or a stainless steel tongue scraper. And what it does is it takes the bacteria off of the tongue. But it does more than that. A lot of people believe in Eastern-based medicine that the tongue, as well as your fingers and hands and your feet, are connected to all the organs

in your body. So you're essentially massaging the tongue. You're not doing it too hard. Again, like anything that I can do, I try to go hard at it. So back when I was first learning this, I was like, my tongue would literally be bleeding. Like, that's not exaggeration. And I was like, all right, maybe I'm taking this too far. That's like me. I love to take everything a hair too far. A hair too far, yeah. And so I think it is great. It actually is. And if people, People are willing to do it. They don't feel overwhelmed by it. Fantastic. And then, you know, I just say just as you get in the shower before you get in the shower, then put up, you know, a tablespoon of sesame oil in your mouth or coconut oil and do some oil pulling to pull the bacteria right out of the gums and the teeth. And that will help to prevent gingivitis, cardiovascular-based disease. Pretty amazing. You're telling me a guy from Boston takes things too far? A little bit. Yeah. I'm going to get a billboard in West Hollywood that says, please scrape your tongues. Love the skinny open. I think it's great. Where can everyone find you? Pimp yourself out. The new book, The Rain Barrel Effect.

When was this written? It's not... It's five years in the making, but it just came out about three weeks ago. It's on Amazon. Rain Barrel Effect, how a 6,000-year-old secret, holds the answer to finally getting well, losing weight, and feeling alive again. Yeah, that's... I mean, that's literally...

All this stuff is in here? It is. It's how we get sick, right? So the rain barrel effect literally means no one gets sick overnight. Just like me taking those 3,000 antibiotics, being a stress kit. Eventually, I hit my tipping point, the water will float, and then all of a sudden I was sick. Well, to reverse that, you need to empty your rain barrel.

And so the second half of the book is teaching you that. And there's a quiz to see how far you're out. Because maybe you're getting close. And the quiz tells you that about that. My podcast is daily podcast called The Cabral Concept. My whole thing is teaching. It really is. And I love that.

That's my favorite part to it. And one day, that's literally just retire and teaching. If the audience wants to slide into your DMs, you know, on social, where can they? Yeah, on Instagram. That's where I mainly reside. And it's just Stephen Cabral. I love it. Thank you so much.

That was so informative. I have a question. I actually have a couple when we get off. Thank you. I appreciate you having me. Thank you very much. Really quickly, I want to announce the giveaway winners

for the Woo for Play sex love oil. And the first one is Fit underscore Zuzi. The second one is Glow Gitter Diaries. And the third one is Rachel Monty. I will message you guys on Instagram. But if you hear this before, you can just email me at Lauren at the Skinny Confidential and we'll send you your woo.

Lucky, lucky, lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky. If you guys want to win another bottle of Wu, we'll give away three more. All you have to do is tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram. Also, tipsy Thursday. Do you guys want a quick email from me? Tons of value. It's going to be my favorite beauty hacks, favorite drugstore mascara, favorite song of the week, show book, wellness tip.

So much fun. It's a short email straight to the point, kind of like a TSC appertief for you. To check it out, go to the skinny confidential.com and click Lorne Everton. and then subscribe. Drop your email into the box and you'll get the next one. With that, thank you guys so much for your attention and we will see you next Tuesday. This episode was brought to you by Thrive Market. Thrive Market is your one-stop shop for high-end, high-quality and highly discounted groceries, supplements, beauty products, and household supplies. Thrive Market guarantees its customers 25 to 50% below retail on all items because it cuts out the middleman. Thrive Market is offering all skinny confidential,

him and her listeners, $60 in free groceries and free shipping with a one-month trial when you go to thrive market.com slash skinny. Again, that's thrivemarket.com slash skinny. Happy shopping and we will be back next week.