The Dylan Gemelli Podcast - Episode #3 Featuring Mona Sharma! Conventional vs. Holistic Medicine, Navigating food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the r...

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Tune in to The Dylan Gemelli Podcast featuring Celebrity Nutritionist and Rooted in Wellness Podcast Host Mona Sharma!! This must watch discussion covers a wide array of topics from conventional vs. holistic medicine, navigating through food choices in our processed world, the great oatmeal debate, the role of spirituality in healing, understanding inflammation and health markers and so much more!! Mona opens up about her journey into wellness with the trials and tribulations she had to overcome! DO NOT MISS THIS ONE!!   Follow the Rooted in Wellness Podcast https://www.monasharma.com/rooted-in-wellness-podcast Follow Mona on instagram @monasharma ______________________________________________________________________   Today's episode is sponsored by Apollo Neuro!   Get the Apollo Neuro for $90 OFF!! USE CODE GEMELLI to save https://apolloneuro.com/gemelli _______________________________________________________________________________ To PURCHASE MITOPURE visit Dylan's landing page and use code DYLAN to save 20% OFF!! https://shop.timeline.com/DYLAN     TONUM supplements for the MIND AND BODY!   USE CODE "DYLAN" to save!!  https://www.tonum.com/DYLAN     THE BREAKTHROUGH MIMIO HEALTH FASTING MIMETIC SUPPLEMENT!  20% OFF with code Gemelli  https://mimiohealth.sjv.io/c/6588260/3323599/30611     TRULY Increase Your NAD LEVELS with WONDERFEEL NMN: https://getwonderfeel.com/?utm_source=DylanGemelli&utm_medium=podcast     MESCREEN: The world's first and only at home mitochondrial efficiency test   Save $100 with CODE   DYLAN   https://mescreen.com/cart/47561239626013:1?discount=&ref=DYLAN       HIRE DYLAN ON THE MINNECT APP HERE: expert.minnect.com/@DylanGemelli     Follow Dylan on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tiktok @dylangemelli and PLEASE SUBSCRIBE and leave reviews!!   MAKE SURE TO GO TO DYLAN'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL for MORE video content!!    https://www.youtube.com/@DylanGemelliBiohacking Email Dylan for booking, collaborations and/or to apply for the Dylan Gemelli Podcast [e-mail] Visit Dylan's Homepage https://dylangemelli.com

Today's episode is sponsored by Apollo Neuro. Apollo is the leading doctor recommended wearable technology. Apollo's award-winning smart vibes AI works effortlessly behind the scenes, automatically integrating into your life to deliver gentle, personalized vibrations that activate your vagus nerve, helping you fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and wake up balanced, focused, and ready each day. Not only that, but the Apollo Neuro is the first and only wearable that improves your HRV. Apollo is effortless. Simply wear it throughout the day and night and let it do the work

for you. It's safe for anyone and everyone with no side effects and is the only wearable that can be worn anywhere on your body. Optimal health requires both the mind and body to be in line and Apollo is the key to establishing that connection. Check the description below to save $90 with my special discount. Take control over your health today with Apollo Neuro. All right, everybody, Welcome back to the Dillon Jameli podcast. So as you can see, different background, different environment, different set. I am thoroughly blessed. I am actually in Santa Monica, California on set with my guest today, who was so kind to allow me to interview her here live, which is a true blessing.

But I want to introduce to you somebody very, very special, so special that I came out here to see her to do the interview. She has one of the most popular and best podcasts. in the wellness, and I would just say health and wellness in general. And you know what? Let's just call it what it is. Just overall of a podcast. And she also is a celebrity nutritionist and amongst several other things that we're going to get into today.

But my friends, welcome Mona Sharma. Thank you so much. So excited to be here. And like I said, so what an honor to meet you in person and connect with your wife also. Beautiful energy. Thank you. Thank you. Like I said, this is exciting for me because I have never done this life.

I well I take that back I guess at the Mr. Olympia but that wasn't my podcast so I've really never done my own one-on-one live like this. It's always virtual. So much fun with the energy of the other person. It makes you can tell within five seconds. Yeah, exactly. This is so. Okay. So I want to start with your backstory and we got to talking about it earlier and I find it not just intriguing, but it's going to be so helpful to so many people.

It's going to inspire people, but I hope, my hope is that when we talk about backstories and a lot of the people that are in wellness, have a story of struggling with their health or something, some kind of trauma that happened to them. And so I really want to spotlight that and talk about it. And hopefully it will help people feel more comfortable to talk about themselves, not be embarrassed or ashamed and make them realize that no matter who it is, chances are we've all gone through something. So I'd love it if you would be so kind as to kind of share your backstory and we can kind of get into detail. Such a good point. Yeah, my journey definitely called me into this profession. It wasn't at all by choice. And I shared with you before like growing out my mom.

I've only ever known her to have rheumatoid arthritis, like completely deformed. So with my journey and my suffering, I never really felt the urge to ever complain because it never was as bad as my mom and the things that she's gone through. But nonetheless, I realize now, wow, there's a lot of people who need to hear my story. because a lot of the things that people are suffering with today were calling their symptoms and suffering normal when it's absolutely not. So prior to health and wellness, my life looked very different. I come from the corporate cosmetic world. I worked really, really hard to just do well in my profession because coming from an Indian father, I did not become a doctor or a lawyer. And with that came a lot of hustle and grind, and I did it.

And working for some incredible luxury beauty brands, it was probably somebody's dream job. It was definitely fun. I was able to work with a lot of celebrities and, you know, show up and do makeup at fashion shows and travel. But at the end of the day, it was a corporate sales job. And the typical corporate scenario where I was trying to work harder than everybody else to get attention, to get more a better salary. We were eating out constantly. We were drinking. I was smoking. I was working up in hotel rooms, not knowing what city I was in. I was excited of traveling so much. Like, it sounds kind of cool, right? And it was. But my health was absolutely suffering. One, because of the job, but two, you know when you know that your purpose, your soul is just out of alignment? Yeah. Like, I just wasn't meant to be there. And I knew that. So I knew things started to go sideways when I got these heart palpitations. And these heart palpitations got so bad that I would be running on a treadmill and, like, literally had to grab on really quick.

So I thought that I would pass out. And I pushed through it for as long as I could. I still kept drinking and partying and doing all that. And then I just thought, like, this is ridiculous. So at that point of my life in my 20s, I was not interested in getting to the root cause, air quotes, my healing. Like, I didn't want to do the work. I just wanted something that was fast, quick, take the suffering away for me. And that's exactly what the doctors did.

They wrote me a prescription for a beta blocker medication. And it worked. It took my palpitations away a little bit. It definitely slowed my heart right down. But it made me completely lethargic. Like my brain fog was severe. I stopped being as active as I was. force myself to go to the gym and workout because I was so terrified of gaining more weight.

But I ended up gaining 45 pounds. Like it was crazy. And like on a small frame, you really feel that. So went back to the doctor. I'm like, okay, this clearly is not working. I can't remember things anymore. I'm not sleeping well. My clothes don't fit.

My joints are sore. So they said, well, the next solution could be going in for a heart surgery, which was pretty major. They said that it was minor heart surgery. I don't think there's such a thing. I was going to say. Yeah, like it's, anyway, minor heart surgery, but it's to do something called an ablation where they burn off this electrical valve within my heart for a condition that I had, which was called atrial tachycardia. Yeah.

So I said yes. So 24 years old, going for my first heart surgery, and I was awake for the whole thing. You see your heart on a massive screen. A wire goes through your neck and through your groin. These wires go through in every area. They induce you with caffeine, adrenaline, all these uppers to try to induce. these palpitations that I knew would only happen. It would only happen if I was out doing something, moving my body, bending down to pick something up, like a fast movement. Finally, a couple hours into it,

where her palpitations started. They went off with an ablation. It feels like this fire or explosion just going off in your chest. And I thought, great, we did it. But I woke up the next morning in the hospital. Same thing. Heart was pounding. Damn it. Okay, here we are again. Let's go in for a second heart surgery. Went in for the second surgery a couple months later. At this time, I just want everyone to know I was exercising hardcore. I was working out for like an hour, hour and a half at the gym. I was on the Atkins diet, like restriction like crazy. My girlfriend's called my apartment, the house of free, sugar free, carb free, fat free, this free.

Like I was restrictive, right? And still, my weight was going up. My anxiety was through the roof. I was definitely sad. I definitely had major digestive issues. I wasn't sleeping at all. My joints were sore. Like, this was like, you know, just plummeting at a really fast pace.

So obviously when the doctor said second surgery, this is a solution. Let's just go do it. I was game. But in the second surgery, my, I remember crying, like really bawling my eyes out. Like, what the hell am I doing? I'm having heart surgery. I'm 24 years old. What is my life?

Like, I'm sad about a lot of things in my life that are happening. Doctors never asked me about that. just wanted to know, well, how much McDonald's are you eating? How much you smoking? How much you drinking? I wasn't necessarily doing too much of that. But I was really sad. There was a lot of internal emotions that I hadn't dealt with. I was stuffing everything down. When I would drink, obviously, like many people, it was to mask something that was happening within me. Like, I don't have to think about my problems anymore. Great. Let's go do that. But in the second surgery, they said, okay, well, we found another area where we can do the sublation. If we go through with it,

you might have to wear a pacemaker for the rest of your life. And honestly, Dylan, it was like one of those typical scenarios that you hear about. My life flashed before my eyes. I imagined what it would be like to be on medication, identifying as somebody who had a heart condition for the rest of my life on top of having this, you know, battery pack come through my skin forever, right? You're just like, no way. Like, this is not my life.

This is not happening. This cannot be my future. And the irony with all of this, as I shared with you, my upbringing was very different. The beautiful thing about my dad's background is he had an insight on Ayurveda, which is an ancient Indian healing, you know, way for healing the body. And my mom with her arthritis, you know, he saw a solution to, by taking us to live at an ashram every single summer. So this ashram was in Valmaran, in Quebec, in Canada, where I'm from. and we spent time every summer living in the mountains, waking up, meditating, doing breathwork, two hours of yoga,

living in nature, living in communities, spending time in prayer, chanting, singing. Like, it's the ultimate wellness retreat. But as a kid, I don't know if you went to like fun summer camp. I didn't go to fun summer camp. I got to go to yoga camp. So what my parents didn't know that they were doing was imprinting these rituals to my life. So in that moment in the heart surgery,

I knew that I had to go back to my roots. That's exactly what I did. I quit the corporate job. I went back to my roots. Became a yoga teacher, a meditation teacher, a holistic nutritionist, just for the sake of my own healing journey. I ended going back into the cosmetic world for a little bit of time. But I became a nutritionist while I was there as like an exit strategy. When I went back to the ashram, the weight melted off my body.

I was finally dealing with all of the open running tabs that were. were in my mind, the chaos that was in my body. I started eating like a really clean plant-focused diet. I was finding stillness every single day. And my palpitation stopped. Wow. So I knew that this was a message that I had to share with the world because the diet industry is insane. People, I'm sure some of your listeners are still looking for the next red pill, the diet, the protocol, the guru to follow. And we're on the cycle of looking for. And it's like, it's time that we end that cycle and just heal. Yes, I couldn't agree more. Well, first, I appreciate the story because sometimes it's hard for people to share those because they kind of have like a PTSD with it and other people thrive on

it and they are able to use that as kind of fuel for this is how I improved. You know, I've made a million mistakes and I look back on them and I don't dwell on them. I say, wow, this has helped shape me. So thank you for doing that because it's not easy for a lot of people. I think once you do it, though it does become more ease and more helpful. So I want to touch on a couple things. So with the palpitations, now there's several things that can induce that. Like we were talking about, anxiety can certainly induce that. I feel like with you, it was more kind of diet and health related, probably.

One of the things that I found, like I had it way too much magnesium. I didn't realize I was taken. And a lack of electrolytes can do that potassium magnesium. There's so many different things. There's too many supplements you could take. What do you feel was the actual root of all of that, just lifestyle or what do you feel that it was? There's a couple of things. I would say if I had to put them in order, first and foremost, it was a level of stress, sadness, and anxiety that I had in my life that I'd never really learned how to process.

Although I knew about meditation and breathwork and all of these beautiful modalities and I did practice yoga, for me, because I grew up, with it. It was kind of like a checklist. Like, okay, I'm going to be mindful today and I'm going to tap into a mindfulness practice. Okay, check, did that instead of actually dropping into it. And the reason why I say that's first is because when I went to do my yoga teacher training, have you ever done a yoga teacher training? I haven't. No. So what happens often when you go away to these retreats, you're living with community for about four weeks. In the second or third week of practicing yoga for, God knows how many hours a day, the yoga teachers start to drop like flies from the yoga mats.

They're having these emotional releases, sometimes physical releases. And like, I remember looking around, it's like, wow, there's out of the 20 people. There's like four people left and less today. And that was me as well. Like, just would go and cry

and like recognize all of the things that I was bearing down. So if you think about it, if you're living in a state of extreme stress, worry, sadness, or anxiety, are you going to make the best decisions for your health? Like, for me exercising, it wasn't exercising for the joy of moving my body.

I was exercising for the sake of this number on the scale to not fucking go up. I have to fit into these pants. Right, right. If I was meditating, I was doing it because, you know, someone said it's good for me and I can check it off my list to show that I'm A-type and I can get a lot of things done. Right. So that was first and foremost. With the education lens that I have now, looking back, the second thing, there was definitely

deficiencies. My diet, I was probably eating the same foods every single day. I was drinking chlorinated water. I was definitely deficient in magnesium. I was not taking electrolytes for the amount that I was sweating. There was definitely metabolic dysfunction because I noticed that when I would cut out refined starches and flowers, I didn't get my palpitations as much. But when my glucose was stable eating higher protein, that's why I chose the Ackins diet, I felt a little bit more regulated. But the second something stressful happened, or if I were to skip a meal, just instantly back into tachycardia.

And then the last thing was probably my gut. My digestion was a mess. I was bloated after every single meal. What I said about the laxatives, if you're taking laxatives consistently, you're dehydrating your colon. That's not good. Right?

You're likely killing off colonies of good bacteria that are responsible for keeping you healthy, that are responsible for your food cravings and your energy and your focus, right? So here I was with this lack of diversity on top of being on antibiotics from every single year from when I was three years old till about 16 when my mom found a functional medicine doctor.

So no doctor had ever addressed that. My mom focused on probiotics a little bit, but we know today that in order to build back and colonize good bacteria in your gut, it takes eating a lot of plant fiber, getting a variety and diversity of nutrient-rich polyphenols, right? So when I was at the ashram, I was eating more carbohydrates from,

the earth like plant-based carbohydrates, potatoes, starches, squash, stuff like that than ever before. But at any given meal, I probably would have had 15 to 20 different types of fiber, right? Which is like unheard of in our world, right? Especially if you're dieting. So I think it was a culmination of all those things that ultimately allowed my body to heal. So, and I had a method for going into this. My point was, and I'm glad you shared this, is doctors will try. try to diagnose a problem that may not exist to put you on medications. And they're trying to treat

instead of prevent or fix, right? So that was what I wanted to stress is because I also was telling you before, like, I had the heart palpitation issues and I found that it was too much bacterium. I was hooked up to Holti monitor. I did EKG, echo cardiogram, normal, normal, normal, normal. But then, you know, they may have done a surgery on you that you didn't need, put you on beta blockers, you didn't need. And I'm not trying to demonize. doctors because there are some very good ones out there but more often than not they're they're trained to have a one-track mind and it's put you on this and i can get into the way the insurance works now we can relate we can see that i've done that enough but this is these are just simple facts

and that's why when you brought up we'll just call it alternative medicine options i think that it's important one do your own research to maybe go get a second and third opinion it's fine for an athlete when they get injured to go get three and four opinions on a surgery, right? So why isn't it fine for a person to do their own research and go, you know what? Okay, thank you for your opinion. Let's go look at some maybe alternative options and see what else is out there and maybe just kind of, you know, and that's like why I come from the world of peptide. You come from some alternative medicine. Do you find that, how do I say this kindly, do you find it to be better suited for people to go seek alternative therapies often.

Honestly, you nailed it. This is literally the inspiration for my podcast to merge ancient medicine and ancient rituals and ancient practices with modern day medicine because we need both. Yes. I would say the Western medical system, as we know it, it's broken, right? The rate of diseases are on the rise. The rates of prescription drugs amongst adults and youth are on the rise. Diabetes, cancer, obesity amongst adults and children is all on the rise.

The system is broken, right? So I did go through a period when I was really pissed off. Like, why did I have the heart surgeries? Why didn't we go through like every other modality first and leave that as a last resort? But then I understand like at that time I wanted the quick fix. One, so that was on me. And two, doctors are trained to take away the suffering. That's exactly what they did.

So I should be thankful that that's what they did because to a certain extent, my palpitations did dissipate a little bit. Today what I know, though, and how I work with my clients is if you don't have a doctor who is your partner in healing, then you have to find yourself a new doctor. Doctors aren't trained to get to the root cause of my suffering. Doctors didn't ask questions about the root cause of my palpitations, when they started, how they started, what could be like the instigator behind it all. They didn't know the emotional turmoil that I was going. The year that my palpitation started, right? It wasn't a concern.

So with that said, I think, you know, doctors, you know, I work with people today. They work with, they have doctors who they've had in their families for decades. So out of loyalty and love, they don't want to leave them. Right, right. But they're not even able to ask questions. Okay, so you want to put me on a statin. Is there something else that we can do before we go on the statin? Or if I go on the statin, is there an action plan to potentially getting off the statin, right?

There should be an action plan that comes with it. So just ask questions. Yes. Like, you know, there's a lot of doctors. doctors who, oh, you got the perfect bill of health, you're exercising, you're eating well, you have McDonald's once in a while, you're healthy, you're fine, you don't have to look at these labs, where now we know because of our genetics, living in our modern, very polluted, toxic world where the nutrient density of our food isn't nearly, you know, close to what it

used to be, the paradigms have completely changed. Yeah. So we need doctors who are really, really interested in healing and bringing our bodies back into balance. And I think that there's an awakening that's happening right now. But at the end of the day, I don't think in our lifetimes, unfortunately, you and I will ever see the day where, you know, big food, big pharma companies are ever going to, it's a for-profit industry right now.

So, you know, that's what I always tell people. General practitioner is generally, right? It's just, it's boring. It's just kind of like you got a 10 minutes tops normally unless you know your doctor well, you might get 15 because they got their booked all day long. They can't ask you about your diet in depth. They can't really, they get a blood panel and it's so quick that they go through it. And the importance, so like what I do a lot now is hormone optimizations where I'm studying.

All people will want me to do is not just fix my hormones, but how do I fix everything? Yeah. You know, because a lot of times even go into an endocrinologist, you can go in there and they'll look at your total test. And they'll go, oh, you need TRT. And it's just like, wait a minute, where aren't we looking at your free test and seeing that your free test may be low because it's SHBG is high. It's bound up your test. These are just, you know, things that I see.

Why aren't we looking for possibilities in estrogen prolactin issues first? Why aren't we addressing possible liver functioning issues that could be affecting your TRT or your diet or something? And it's just, and that's just, you know, for hormone optimization, but it's the same thing with high cholesterol. You know, we try to fix that first without a drug because we can, you know. Yeah. And you brought up a really great point, which is probably what your audience appreciates most about you.

Okay, so HRT, great. Amazing that, you know, peptides and everything are getting all of this attention. But why are the hormones out of balance to begin with? And that's the question that you're asking, right? And whether you are dealing with diabetes, frozen shoulder, a cardiac issue, you know, the instigation is all stress, right? Yes. So like address the stress, where the stress is coming from.

When I work with my clients, we not only address the physical body, it's the emotional body, the spiritual body as well that we have to look at the human physiology as like this holistic paradigm instead of in singularity. And we have to move away from this like symptom treating protocol because treating one symptom and one medication could have a slew effect that throws everything else out of balance within the body. Thank you. I have this, and I have this argument with my mom often because she doesn't want to do blood work and doesn't want to do this, but I feel this.

And I say, mom, look, I could say, hey, you feel this. It could be 20 different things. I could address it, but I could theoretically guess wrong because I'm doing a hypothetical analysis on what your problem is, but it could be different things. and what I could do is not only exacerbate the problem, but make it worse because I'm addressing the wrong thing. Now, I wonder how you feel about this, and I see this. This is one of the main reasons people come to me. You go to the doctor, you get a physical, and maybe as you get older, they'll do a blood panel.

And it's very basic. It's your CBC and your CMP, which is fine. You need to know these things. And for anybody watching, that's your complete metabolic profile and complete blood counts. The problem with those is they only tell you a minimal. amount. You're not getting comprehensive blood panels done. So I don't know, like when I'm looking at cholesterol, like we were talking about, yeah, they'll test your LDL, your HDL, your triglycerides, and your total cholesterol. But what's the important stuff? It's your APOB. It's your LPLA. It's

your particle sizes. And they're not testing for high sensitivity C-reactive protein. Well, all the things that happen to us mainly originate either from inflammation or the gut, right? Yeah, you're right. There's definitely key biomarkers that a lot of doctors aren't looking for. And like your mom, I think there's a generation, even today, ignorance is bliss. Like if I don't know about it, great. You know, even my in-laws, like they come from a family where the women and men tend to live a really, really long time. So they just assume that the same is going to happen for them, right? But we live in a very different world than our parents, grandparents and ancestors did.

Like the tables have turned a little bit. So, yeah, I would say when you're working with a doctor, or if you really want to optimize your health, first question what you want, right? So you and I were talking about when somebody hires me, typically, Mona, help me get to this number on the scale. Help me get the six pack. Help me fit into this dress. Or for some people, help me get, you know, do pull-ups or handstands, right? And yoga.

And that's fine. And I promise we can get there. But like your past and my past, we can get to the goal. And then what happens? We fall off this wagon. And then we're looking for the next protocol or pill. or person or whatever to follow, and then we're trying something else

and trying something else. And I know your listeners will resonate with that. Enough of the wagon. Like enough with that. How about just focusing on how you're feeling every day? When you wake up in the morning, do you feel happy? Are you energized? Does your body feel good?

Or your bowel movements, you know, functioning, right? Are you having one to do bowel movements a day, which you should be? Are you hydrating or your joints loose? Do you have muscle pain? Like, just feel into your body whether or not you feel good. And think about what your goals are.

Like my goals in my 20s and 30s obviously are very different than now. Now the entire, you know, inspiration for me and everything that I do for my health is how I'm going to age. Right. I want to be 90 or 100 years old with a backpack with my grandkid in the back, right?

Going up a canyon hiking. And I think that if people can get in touch with the future version of themselves and how they want to feel, that alone is the motivation to stay on track, to eat like you love yourself, to speak like you love yourself, think like you love yourself,

instead of sabotaging ourselves the way that we do, like I did with hardcore exercise, hardcore diet, hardcore pills, hardcore strategies, whatever, you name it. And in finding a doctor, you know, when I work with my clients, run your laps once, if not twice a year. Yes.

More than that, if you're dealing with key inflammatory markers. So you mentioned some really significant ones. And so we're looking at our L.P. Little A, for example, a lot of that has to do with a genetic precursor like you and I probably have. You have an Italian background, I have an East Indian background. It's something that's prevalent. Then you want to look at your triglycerides. Also, what's that number like? You want to look at your particle sizes. You want to look at your HPA1C as well. You want to look at your C-reactive protein, like key inflammatory markers that tells us whether or not your body is under a state of stress. From that state of stress, if you're ignoring those numbers, then of course you're now leading into this route of what we call accumulation. You're accumulating inflammation. When you accumulate inflammation, you're probably not making the best choices for yourself, right? You're probably not understanding why the number on the scale goes up, why you're having certain food cravings, why your hormones are off, why your testosterone is dropping, right? It's like you've got to find the source of the inflammation in order to

figure that out. And like I say, to all my my clients, there's no perfect protocol out there. Your food plan, your supplement protocol should be completely different than what you're seeing on social media, than what you're seeing with your friends and your neighbors or whoever you follow on Instagram, right? It's the way that it should be. Your diet should be as unique as your blueprint. 100%.

Here's a very easy, understandable example of this. It's like when we were kids and we bought a video game and we just didn't want to read the instruction manual. We just tried to figure it out. And we did. Once you get older and you start reading and learning, I'm like, oh, shit, I didn't know this, this, this, this or this or this. And I missed all of this. So in simple terms, it's you diet, for example, well, this has been working, but I still, I don't feel great here, here, here.

Well, because you never looked into it. You never got down into all the different aspects of it and figured out, well, shit, I'm missing this. this or this and if I just change a couple small things, I think a lot of it is two things. It's a lack of knowledge and understanding. And I think it's just, I hate to say this, but it's almost kind of just a little bit of lackadaisical attitude. It's just like, oh, well, this is the norm. This is what it is.

And so this is what it's going to be and who cares. I hear that a lot. And it really frustrates the shit out of me because it's like, no, it doesn't have to be that way. Some people will look at people like you and I and people in our kind of line. like we're nuts, you know, like, we can't do all of that. That's not possible every day, but you certainly can if you care. And trust me when I tell you, we're not doing this because we're crazy. We're doing it because we found that it works and we've done it and tested it.

Now, like I told you before, I'm very spiritual. Some people aren't, that's fine. I don't, that's not what I'm here for. But what I do feel is that everything was put here for a reason and that everything on earth is here for a reason that it can heal us. There's got to be a way. And that's why so many natural herbs and things, you know, it's funny because you hear a lot of people in the drug industry or doctors that will tell you,

oh, you know, this doesn't work or that doesn't work. Well, part of the problem is, is when you get a supplement that's not FDA regulated, you may get a pill like, like,

well, I was talking about taking too much red yeast rice. Well, shit, I don't know if I've got triple the amount in one pill and not enough in another. I could be taking too much. That's part of the problem there. If everything was regulated,

I would think you would find a ton of merit in so many different herbal treatments. It's the wild west out there. The supplement industry is going to continue to be the wild west. The food industry also, like we can't trust the labels. So never, like, who cares about what's on the front of whatever label of the supplement or the food that you're eating?

You've got to look at the back of the label. You also have to understand where it comes from. And I think the really cool thing that's happening with science and with Western medicine, is understanding genetic testing, right? So you brought up red yeast rice. A lot of people, whether it's a vitamin B supplement or even omega-3 fatty acids,

like we can actually now tell if you carry a genetic profile that doesn't even allow you to absorb these artificial supplements and stuff like that, right? So it is complicated. Even as a nutritionist, it's overwhelming. And the only way to go through it is through trial and error.

Thank you. And you brought up a really good point. So here you are. I'm saying, yes, understand your biology. Go get your blood labs. done, test out the supplements that you think you want to try out, test out different ways of eating to see if it makes you feel better. But trust also that it might take time for your body to actually respond. You know, we come from a society where we want, you know, quick fix, instant

gratification. I want to see the change right away. I have clients who get so pissed off, like if the number on the scale is not going down fast enough, they don't trust this process of healing. But you have to really, you know, in Arvado, we align our bodies with nature, right? a term that I love right now is circadian rhythm. We understand that every organ in our body actually has its own circadian rhythm. So here we are trying to go out. We're exposed to blue light all the time, trying to work harder, push harder. We are a nation that is more stressed than ever before in history, right?

We're taking our bodies out of linemen instead of just coming back to the foundational truths of just like bring our body back into balance and resting and restoring, right? So just trust the process and that it might take a little bit of. time. And the second thing that I really would love to go back and hover on, you said that you're a spiritual person, right, or religious person. And I agree with you, like, whatever your background is. But what really surprised me for my healing journey is it's almost like all of a sudden, me going back to the ashram, the food didn't matter, the supplement didn't matter. And certainly, I stopped working out. So that didn't matter either. So like my entire universe kind of just shattered.

all the things that I thought that I was supposed to be doing to look a certain way and feel a certain way aren't true, but what am I doing? And I was attuning to my spirit. I was going to say, yep. Yeah. So growing up was really confusing. So I went to a Catholic school, but on the weekends we would go to a temple. And in Toronto, there wasn't a Hindu temple in Toronto in the 80s, so we would go to a

Harry Krishna temple. Wow. So, you know, Roman Catholic school, learning about Jesus and God and, you know, Mary and Joseph and no one that looked like me at all. And then to the temple where, you know, would be dancing and singing and like Hindu guys. And so amazing, right? But what I love about the ashram, it's the Shivaananda Ashram,

is they're non-denominational. There's pictures of all guides up on the wall. And in prayer, ultimately, and I think that this is true for all religions, your guide, your inner truth, your spirit, that is your guide. You're aligning with God or your higher spirit or whoever your deity is. And that was a foreign concept to me. And the miracle of that experience was it pulled me out of the very limited focus of, you know, always thinking about my body, my mind, my thoughts, my stress, how hard healing was,

the exercise that I had to do, the physical pain, this, it's all like very selfish. And then all of a sudden, focusing on like becoming one with others and living in community and like connection with a higher source or belief outside of myself, It pulled everything back. And then I could take a holistic view of like, oh my gosh, like, girl, you're so hard on yourself. Stop obsessing so much. Relax into it.

Do what you love. Eat what you love. Eat to nourish yourself. You don't even have to diet anymore. Just eat real food. Right? Yes. So again, these basic foundations.

So that's where I just wanted to honor like the spiritual aspect, whether you believe in God or not. I just think it's so important to align with something that's bigger than yourself. Living in a world where diet and nutrition. and healing is so self-absorbed. I know. And that's just it. I think, and you and me and my wife were talking about this, when you find yourself,

that's when you kind of find your health. Yeah. If you're all over the place and look, I mean, we've all, seriously, every human has been there. There's no human ever, aside from Jesus, that didn't have this going on. Like, who am I? What am I doing? Hard on yourself.

Stress, everything. thing. When you can start to learn how to deal with that and come to grips with who you are and everything that you're doing, like I was sharing with you about my eating history and I'm still hard on myself, but I probably went from like a million impossible to deal with. Probably my wife hates to live with me, won't ever say it out loud type of deal to now like way beyond tolerable. And she, I can tell you right now, she just enjoys seeing me actually eating. And I can't tell you how it's changed everything for me. I'm not sleeping great because I'm so amps to do everything every day and still just like

happy, feel great and like. Don't you notice it's like there's beauty when you catch yourself going back to in all way? It's like drifting back. And I think it's important for, you know, your listeners to hear. I don't consider myself somebody who's healed. No. Like I still get my heart palpitations on occasion.

And then that for me is like, oh, it's happening again. What am I doing? Where am I out of alignment? Where am I really stress? Where am I not honoring myself? What kind of foods am I eating, right? I ask questions. Nothing matters when you don't have your health.

And God forbid that happens to anyone listening. You have to take it from us. There's nothing matters when you lose your health. And that happened to me at a very young age. So when you instead align with like what you and I are trying to do through everything that we try and all the companies and the supplements, which I'm so excited about, is we're trying to bang our constitution. back into balance, but to build the resilience back.

Yes. So what is resilience? Like, resilience is a child that comes into this world. They are glowing. They're happy. They are like they own who they are. Their bodies heal. Their mitochondrial function is optimized, right?

Like, everything is just functioning at its best. They're resilient. Yes. Their body knows how to heal. And as we get older, we somehow lose that our bodies have the capability to do that. Our bodies are healing. You and I right now in this moment, without even the body, thinking about it, right? Our hearts are beating for us to keep us alive. We never think about that,

right? And I think that if we remind ourselves like, oh, yeah, I'm doing things in my life to take the resiliency away from my body. So what do I need to bring resilience back into my life? And through that, you can cultivate what your perfect healing protocol should be, because it's going to be different for everybody. Yes. I'm glad you, I was going to mention resiliency. And I got off topic because we were talking about something else. And I wanted to say the body is very resilient. And a lot of People will say, well, I've drank for this long, and so I'm already screwed. I've smoked this long. I'm already screwed.

And you know, like for me dealing with bodybuilders and people that have used steroids or whatever, they'll go, oh, my liver's resilient, it'll be okay. Well, yes, your body's very resilient, but to be resilient, you have to take care of it and treat it right, or it can't ever be resilient. And you, yeah, we've all, I mean, just like you said, you parted, you drank. I did 10 years worth of, unfortunately, drugs and alcohol, you know? And you can't change what you did, but you can attempt to fix it. And you can thank God or thank whatever that you have the chance and ability to do that.

And by monitoring yourself and making sure you can go, okay, I messed up here, but I can fix this. And this is how I fix it. One of the things I wanted to ask you about that I have really troubled me. And I find this that it's becoming demonized. I feel like science and everything we've ever learned and everything, was based upon asking questions, questioning everything, because that's how we learn in advance. And if you don't have the ability to ask and you're just told and you just do, then we can't learn, we can't find new methods, we can't evolve together, and we can't say, you know, hey, that doesn't

maybe sound right. Can we look at another option? And that's how we were getting into options. How do you feel about that concept in general? And are you kind of a question asker and a deep, thinker and do you find that troubling that it does get demonized at times? Oh yeah. I am a question asker. I want to know everything. You and I are in school for a reason because we're going to be eternal students, right? And I would say that as a society, I think that we have really lost touch with our intuition.

Our bodies have a radar to tell us what is right and what is wrong. And we live in a society that has trained us to when we go to our doctor's offices, they're wearing this white lab coat. they are right, I am wrong. So they're saying to do something, which means that they went to school for it, I have no right to believe it, I'm just going to trust what they say

and follow along, whether or not it feels right. So it's funny, like when it comes to healing, I think that inherently, and this is what's kind of trending these days too, is like nervous system regulation, right? When we learn how to regulate our nervous system, we tend to trust, we come back in

into the knowing of our body, right? There's thinking about stuff all the time, I'm thinking about education, thinking about what we should do, what we should eat, how we should work out versus knowing. Now, I know what my body needs to heal. I know what makes me feel really good. I know what makes me feel happy in the morning. I know what I need to do every single day in order to function in this insane, stressful world, right? Yeah.

So the more that you can do to practice using that muscle, building your, you know, trusting your intuition again to shift from thinking to knowing, you're going to be on the right path. It takes a lot of faith. Yeah. And I'm sure if I were to talk to you, like over the years as we go through this journey of healing, there's going to be some people you've got to cut out of your life. Yeah. There's just, there's no more alignment anymore or the people who think that you're woo or out there or crazy. Like, you know, people who just think out of sight, out of mind, like, I don't want to hear about that.

Or I've been doing this for years. I've been, you know, I've been eating this way for years and I'm totally fine. Are you? Yeah. Like, are you, do you really feel great every single morning? So I'm not meeting a lot of people who feel really great every single day right now. So I think that there's something that comes to that. And I think it is a very spiritual approach to healing.

Yes, I agree. And that's part of it is being honest with yourself. You know, I've had to do that. I'm sure you've had to do that. And it's hard. It's not easy. It's not easy to look in the mirror and go, man, you know, you're just, you're just off. You're just off and you're being dishonest with yourself.

And I can't tell you how many nights. And I think part of it was when I stopped smoking pot that helped me get a clear mind of things. Because I've smoked pot since I was 11 to 42, 41, right around. I gave it up for Lent earlier this year and I haven't smoked since. And a lot of that was I would start thinking like so paranoid about myself. And then I'd wake up and go on, oh, you were just, you know, thinking this and it wasn't reality and everything. And once I stopped doing that, I got a more clear picture. of, dude, you got some issues that you need to address and you need to stop acting like you

don't. And because you're, sometimes when we're teaching people and we're in a state of maybe people look at us and view us as something special or good, we forget that we had mentors. We learned and we have our own issues. And I think for every single person, if you take, I don't know, five, ten minutes and just sit there and think, am I really okay or what is it? And how do I fix this. A lot of times for me it's now it's when I go on a morning walk every morning. I started doing that and sometimes my wife will go with me if it's not too cold for her and other times I'm by myself and I just kind of do my prayer, talk with God or get my gather my thoughts and go, you know, yesterday I didn't do so hot at this, you know? And I think that reflection and thinking

and being honest and accountable also is something that's lost anymore. And I think when you have that, I think it could take you into a much further realm of health and happiness. Yeah. And I love that you brought that up. And congratulations. Like, that's a really big deal to cut out pot. I know so many people who continue to smoke pot as almost like a coping mechanism. And we live in a society now.

We're like we've really normalized it also. But you took a, you kind of pull back and ask yourself, well, who am I without doing this? Who am I without this habit? Right. And I would say when I work with my clients, you know, without me even saying anything to you, if I were to follow you around for one day, you had Mona on your shoulder as you went around through your day from the morning until you went to bed at night, what is the one, two, or three things that you are doing that you know are sabotaging your health, how you're feeling,

or your happiness, right? And most people are like, oh, okay, well, here we go. And they can write out a list. And by no means do you have to start by stripping away all of those things at the same time start with one thing you know simple thing for me that i've been working on is like just cutting back on coffee i love coffee me too oh my god i love the flavor the aroma the ritual everything about it but i'm also somebody like my adrenals need a lot of support like i tend to get wired really really really quickly and i see it manifest on my laps right so to start with the one thing and i think maybe

to simplify things like because i i wonder when people hear you and i speak they're probably curious like one what are we doing like we're all the crazy things that we're doing right but like what are the foundations right i start with with the foundations are you sleeping do you sleep well right we're talking about your sleep and your circadian rhythm right and now i'm the opposite i go to bed at 930 because it just feels good for the season that i'm in right now and i'm really focusing on you know energy like i just want my body to to heal i had mold exposure a couple years ago and it's just been a doozy just healing from that so It's still coming back into balance. So are you sleeping?

There's a lot of trackers out there. I wear an aura ring. There's whoop bands. There's all these things. But like they're worth the investment because you can see are you getting deep sleep? You can look at your heart rate variability. So the variability in your actual heartbeat to see how that adjusts and shifts during times of stress. Are you breathing?

Like for a lot of my clients on a call, I'll say, can you just like take a breath? Oh, yeah. Just like take a deep breath. Are you breathing properly? We're also stressed or. busier than ever before. We're like taking these short, shallow breaths every day when we can shift our nervous system just by breathing. The other really surprising one is, are you chewing your food? Like if you have digestive issues, let me see if you're chewing your food. Then break down the food

before it gets into the stomach. You're going to be taking a whole lot of stress off your digestive system, right? Yes. And then you can focus in on like taking out all the bad things and the seed oils and the processed foods or the too much alcohol and stuff like that but start with the foundations first i'm glad you brought that up i actually put a video out on things to do on thanksgiving and one was slow down don't stuff yourself and chew and and you know really soak it in i i i was bad and you know why i was so bad with it because i was starving myself so when we eat i'm just shoveling it down i now you don't see me doing that as much now i'll take a bite and set it down and kind of keep doing what I'm doing or whatever.

And part of that is because I've been putting cayenne on there and I'm not good with spicy. So I have to slow it down. But it's helping me to slow it down. And then I'm trained now to do that because, I mean, the very rare occurrence we'd go out to dinner, I'm like done in two minutes. You know, and it's uncomfortable for everybody around. And I'm sitting there like a moron looking at everybody while they're eating.

Well, now it's not like that. And that's something that sounds so dumb, but it does make a difference. And if you take all of these little things, and add them up, they come into a big thing. And people don't think about that. Did you have family meals growing up? Like, did you have a solid? Every single night.

And then especially Sunday, every single night. I got myself into trouble in my 20s. And once I went away, I developed some pretty bad habits based on the circumstances that I was in. And once I got out of there, it was like a development of this. I got to stand when I eat for like a year. and I don't want anybody around me because people were hovering around and everything in the situation that I was in. And I kind of used that. And then I developed more eating disorder, dysmorphia things.

And that led to another issue of how I ate and everything. My whole life was based on family family. I'm a only child in an Italian family. So everything was we ate dinner together every single night. What a gift. Yes, it was. I mean, I'm totally blessed. And I used to go out to dinner a lot and do all of that.

And, you know, we just went at to dinner for like the first time. I mean how long a few weeks ago. And that's like pulling teeth for me. But I'm so much more comfortable and happy now. And we sat there for hours. And, you know, it's some things that sound so trivial and so stupid, they can be so hard for some people. And, you know, everybody's got something. And they supported a lot of people with weight loss just by focusing on how they eat.

Yeah. Digestion takes up a tremendous amount of energy. work in your body. And often when I'm speaking to groups of people or in conferences, I'll say, you know, by show of hands, how many people here suffer from, um, purport, bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, you're taking antacids, um, burping, belching. And like, every hand is out. Everyone is suffering from these digestive issues. If you're suffering from any of those symptoms, you literally are going through life with like a red engine light flashing. Your body's trying to communicate with you. that something down here is not working and you're ignoring it.

And we've normalized it, right? Like it's normal to have IBS these days. It's normal to have floating. It's normal to not have a bowel movement every day, which is crazy. It's not normal. It's not normal. It's common, but it's not normal. So by simply, and this is what happens at the ashram.

So I have an older brother and sister, but they're much older. So growing up meals were kind of fast. We certainly never spent time sitting and relaxing. And then today's world, how are we? sitting and eating. Most people have their phone on the table. They're scrolling. A lot of people are eating and driving for crying out loud. You're eating while you're working. Our ancestors would have smelt food cooking, which starts the digestive process. Just smelling food cooking tells your body, oh, food is coming soon. So start making those digestive enzymes to digest food properly, right?

Now everything's instant and fast. When we're sitting down at the ashrum, though, no one has their phone out. We're sitting outside in nature. We're sitting. We're sitting amongst community, we're spending time in conversation with each other. We're eating a lot slower and the focus is really on chewing or chewing our food. And I couldn't believe I mentioned going back and eating all these different types of plant fiber. My digestion was fine, but I was taking time to digest and metabolize my food. And what happens when you do that? You're queuing your satiety signals also within the brain to say, oh, maybe I don't have to eat so much anymore.

The craving subside. you're not constantly, you know, thinking about food or what the next meal is going to be or the next dessert. Like you turn on your body's intuitive eating to understand your body is full. You don't have to eat anymore. Yes. Which, again, foundational truth. Yes.

There's so many little things like I was saying. And they just, and so for instance, and you tell me what you think about this. Now, I kind of go on the schedule where when I get up, I fast for about two, three hours. I wait 90 minutes to have the coffee instead of just having it right when I'm on it right and i'd like to do my little arrow press and make my like filip-proof like i told you i do i do protein powder and the s ct oil in mine um and then you know i i what i start off with now because what i used to do was just starve all day i'd have my wife would make every single night she'd make about like six seven green peppers two three zucchinis a box of mushrooms a whole onion and an eggplant

and i would just snack on that shit all day long that's all i would have what's a peanut butter was my only source of fat now and i'm thinking about eating all day long doing that like just all day that's all i'm thinking about now it's like okay i do like avocado toast and i'm telling you i don't even think about eating for hours after that like at all because it's so satiating and you know and then it's like go into fish and then go do cardio for an hour and a half but i love cardio and then a couple hours later have ground beef let it rest go to the gym but i'm walking after every meal or moving and that's one of the that we found works extremely well. So what do you think about that?

Yeah, so fasting, obviously, like the science is there for men and for women. We as women need to be fasting in a very, very different way. Yeah. A lot of my friends and colleagues have written books about fasting, and it's phenomenal what it can do for your body,

for atopathy, for taking out inflammatory cells and preventing disease and reversing metabolic dysfunction and stuff like that. Like the science is there. So a couple of things. One, fasting has been written about since biblical times, right, amongst all religions, which I think is so cool. There's a spiritual aspect to it.

It was almost like this gift to your body to restore. When you're not taking in food and not digesting, as we said, takes a lot of effort, your body can go in and like really tune into what needs the healing. It can take that energy and put it towards healing and repairing and restoring, which is special. Yeah. But I think that we do fasting kind of backwards. I think that if you're going to skip a meal, like why do we break fast? We break fast and have food earlier on the day because food is information.

Calories are energy. Energy is fuel. Fuel gets us through our day. It's our brain function, right? I think it gives us energy to go out into the world. And you can argue like, you know, shifting your body into ketosis and using ketones for fuel and stuff like that. I get it. But for me, I think it just makes sense if you're going to skip a meal, try skipping dinner.

Because the longer that you go without having food in your system or at least like, you know, four hours of no food in your system before you go to bed, you'll probably notice that your sleep scores are going to improve. And when we're eating dinner, it should be a smaller meal. We eat dinner as our largest meal of the day, but we don't need all that extra fuel at night before we go to bed. Makes sense, right? So I'm not saying like if you're on a fasting protocol and fasting in the morning feels really good for you. and your blood labs are showing it, right, then stick with fasting during the day. If you're a woman,

fasting according to your cycle is really beneficial. You definitely don't want to be fasting for long periods of time during your third and your fourth week because you could be putting your body into more stress, increasing your cortisol, which is going to backfire. You're not going to lose the weight that you want to be losing. In the first two weeks, you know,

something that I work with my clients on is, can you fast for 12 to 14 hours a night? Just in the practice, every single night have dinner at six or six. seven, break your fast at six or seven. It's a solid amount of time for your body to just go in and repair and restore without having to do extra work, right? If you want to try on fasting therapeutically, you know, every Monday, for example, I will typically fast for about 16 to 18 hours, stretching my fasting time just a little bit more, which feels really good for me.

Sure. But I would say that working with my clients, it's different for a lot of people, like figuring out what your fasting schedule should be based on your health goals, based on hormone imbalance, based on your glucose levels and stuff like that, like it really takes a little bit of trial and air to figure out what works for you, what feels best for you, and what keeps you happy? Like if you're fasting and you're miserable all the time, if you're going from zero to 100, if your partner's like, whoa, like what's going on? Probably just need some some proper satiation, some pressure. Well, it depends on your activity level and there's a lot of things that factor into.

Sure. You know, and that's why I think the key that you keep saying that I tell everybody is every single thing in life is trial and error. There's no cookie cut or answer to every single question. You and I can get people every single protocol under the sun and does not necessarily mean it's going to equate. Totally. I do think that how you start your day is everything.

Yeah, I do too. Right? I do too. So you probably start with some hydration. Yes. First thing in the morning. Yes. For me, it ranges.

Sometimes I'll drink hydrogen water. Sometimes I'll drink water with lemon to support my liver. lately I've been drinking water with coriander seeds. Coriander seeds are anti-inflammatory, which are really beneficial. Or a type of tea is called CCFT. You heard of that? No, I haven't. So you take a tablespoon of coriander seeds, cumin seeds, and fennel seeds.

You soak them in some hot water overnight. In the morning, you strain the seeds and you just drink the tea, and you have a tea that's really supportive for your hormones. Phenol is amazing for your digestion. The seeds are great antioxidants, which put out free radical damage to the body. There's some oils that come off the seeds also, which are really supportive for your digestive system, your digestive tract.

So start your day with something that's going to, one, help you eliminate toxins from sleeping from the night before. Two, if it's something that's going to help to reduce inflammation, there's lots of studies behind hydrogen water also for that reason. Start your day with something so supportive of your body before you put a coffee into it. Okay. All right.

I started doing my wife is the queen of teas. So I started to do it. So I started to take, because I was feeling a little, I think I'm drinking too much coffee because I started to use an arrow press and I'm grounding it up now instead of K cups. So I'm kind of overdoing it. So I switch to much. I do like a bulletproof matcha green tea as my second thing during the day. Oh man, it's delicious. Yeah.

You know, I've got to practice having more matcha first thing instead of caffeine. If I could push my caffeine from coffee back until about 10 or 11, I think that would be. Yeah. That's what like I said, I mean, I'm even. And because lately, and where I live, it's been, I woke up the other day and there was covered in snow. And I was like, I opened the door to go for a walk. And I was like, okay, what happened? And I just geared all up.

And then, of course, she didn't go when I went. But I feel like, even though I work out a ton, just that 20 minutes of walking and the conditions outside and appreciating the earth and the things that have been given to us, looking at the sky. I mean, I live in Iowa, like I said, and I, you know, it may seem farmy or whatever to some. but I appreciate it so much more now. Just looking at the grass, the land, the sky. I mean, there's something to appreciate no matter where you live. Grounding. Yes.

Grounding first thing in the morning. Yes. The world is waking up like. Exactly. Do you today. Oh my gosh. There's so much you do. Just go.

Hesel, hustle. Have some more caffeine. Go, go, go, go, go. You're starting your day off, grounding, regulating your nervous system. You're actually sleep training. Right? If you read the studies around circadian rhythm. So if you want to honor your body's circadian rhythm and support your body's

ability to get into deep restorative sleep at night earlier. If somebody especially has a hard time falling asleep before midnight, get outside first thing in the morning. Yes. Your eyes up to the sky towards the sun, the red light therapy that we get from sunlight triggers serotonin production within our bodies. It tells our gut microbiome to produce seroton, feel good, happy hormone. And it's going to support you with your body's circulatory, sorry, it's going to support you

with your body's circadian rhythm throughout the day, which will help you sleep. bed night also. I've noticed a major impact. Even on the days, nobody wakes up feeling great every single day. Nobody. I've noticed the days where I just feel kind of shitty, like just kind of, I'm just beat. When I still go for the walk, I mean, it makes a big difference for me to come back home and start working or whatever I have to do it. I may not feel perfect, but I feel a hell of a lot better than if I was just sitting there like thinking about how bad I felt. Yeah. You know, so. Something that I did that's crazy. My one non-negotiable for 2020. was to walk every single Monday.

So Monday I chose because typically that would just get me spiraling in stress and busyness and anxiety and worry. Yeah. So every single Monday I'll go for a walk after I get my kids to school. No podcasting. No listening to anything. Just literally me, my breath, my feet on the ground, looking up at the sky, feeling expansion, looking at nature around me.

And I swear it's like it's when some of my best thoughts come, my ideas come. Yes. I feel like I'm making better choices for me. for myself throughout the day, which makes sense, right? Like if I were to wake up instead on a Monday, look at my phone, start with coffee, have a second coffee, sit down on my computer without going outside. Like, that just shows you the quality of life that you're choosing for yourself, right? It's not good.

I agree. I thankfully, I have a treadmill in my house. So when it's extremely bad, I can at least open the window and walk in the morning, just to be moving. It's not the same, but it's still better than nothing. Absolutely. Okay. So I wanted to shift to a couple of things with you that we were kind of talking about before.

So I want to talk first because we got into the whole oatmeal thing. And this brings me to it too. That's like I eat that before I go to bed and I should never do that. And I know that I've been doing it for so long. I've got to stop doing that. But okay, when we started talking about it, it's so controversial. I've been eating oatmeal consistently probably 15 years daily. Now, I do agree about the glyphosate, like I was telling you,

can be an issue. And obviously there's instant oatmeal that are filled with garbage and sugar and whatever. When you could literally just buy non-GMO, non-glyphosate, clean oats. And you could, like, I used to put protein powder. Now I'm just putting a little bit of grass-fed butter and a little, like, half-serving of organic maple syrup

or honey in there, which I'm finding is just burning belly fat. Wow. It's amazing. You can't overdo it. You know, I'm talking like a, quarter of serving of a grass fed butter, maybe half. I weigh it, so I know it's seven ounces for a half, right? And then a little teaspoon of maple syrup in there.

So you can make your oatmeal delicious without buying all that crap. I guess my question is, in your opinion, since there's so many opinions of this, is oatmeal really so bad? Like all of a sudden the past year, I'm hearing about how it's peasant food or how it's this or how it's that. And it's so bad for you. And I'm not going to name names, but somebody bigger said that only peasants ate that. And that's what they said.

He's going to say that too. Yeah. I'll keep that because I like some of the things he does. But that's neither here or there. And for so long it's been so good for you. Fiber and grains are so good. And now grains are so bad. And it's like, okay.

You know, I want to know. So in your professional opinion, what do you think about that? I think the first question is look at everything that you're consuming and what your food addictions are. And, you know, in comparison to that, our oats really that bad. The second thing is I'm more in alignment with if there's a food that comes to us from nature that can serve our health and chances are it can be good for us. However, are there oats out there because it's such a massive, you know, commodity crop? our oats have been sprayed with pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and glyphosate.

So for people listening, if you don't know what glyphosate is, glyphosate is a pesticide created that's owned by Monsanto that has had detrimental effects. And there's incredible doctors like Dr. Zach Bush, who have literally looked at the onset of use of glyphosate amongst so many different types of crops and the rise of imbalances and disease and ADD and ADB. and stuff like that. So now, if you're looking for oats, you want to look for an oat branch that has a label that says glyphosate-free.

There's two brands, farmers we know and Zigo oats. I'm not affiliated with them at all. But look out for those two brands. There you go. Yeah, do farmers too. Love them. Now, from an Ayurvedic perspective, how you cook your food, how our ancestors cooked our food,

was very different than how we cook things today, right? So even things like lectins and stuff like that, we would have used pressure cookers in the past, and we would have soaked our beans and our lindles for a long period of time to limit the lectins that we're going into our body. Oats are no different. If you're consuming, you know, an oatmeal that is a,

what do you call a quick, quick oats? Yeah. Quick oats, chances are, aren't going to have the quality of fiber that's beneficial to our health. Exactly. So look for like a stone, ground, whole grain, oat, you know, that you can cook slowly. soak them if you like before you cook them,

but also how you cook them. So you mentioned adding in butter. So when I'm making oatmeal for my kids, they're not getting it every single day, but I can see it as a therapeutic food. I'm adding in some almonds milk. I'm putting in probably a tablespoon or two of organic ghee, which is clarified butter,

which has butyric acid, which is really great for our gut health. I'm cooking it slowly. And then I'm letting the oats cool a little bit. So you're lowering the glycemic index, and that was the demonization of it too, right? Like, you know, eating your oatmeal is no different than having five candy bars. Well, yeah, it can be depending on how you're cooking and eating them, right?

Yeah. So for my kids, I might cook the oatmeal with dates. So I chop off one or two dates, which are loaded with fiber again. And then I might sprinkle some nuts and seeds on top of it. She's going to say walnuts. Onuts, there you go. Yes, you're adding a fat, which is going to lower the glycemic spike along with the, with the ghee, which is going to lower the glycemic spike.

Yeah. I might be adding in some berries, like wild blueberries also, additional fiber and antioxidants. Like there's no way a meal like that is going to be unhealthy for you. And I do almond butter. I mean, adding almond butter in it. Sometimes my son loves that. Yes. They're not dusting it with brown sugar and sugared berries.

And they're not having heaping bowls of it at all, right? So look for the quality of oats. Be mindful of how you're cooking them and what you're cooking them with. and just be mindful to include some good quality fats. And what's a solution for any type of food that tends to spike our glucose? Walk. Go for a 15 or 20 minute walk after your meals. Whether it's oatmeal or any meal for that matter,

one of the rituals in my house is every night after dinner, before we put the dishes away as a family, clean up as a family, we all go out for a 15 or 20 minute walk. What is this going to do? It's going to bring down the spike of glucose from the foods that we ate, bring us back into a really healthy metabolic state, improve our energy also, support the digestion of our food.

So don't stress about stuff like that. If you would ask me about like Doritos, right, then we have to talk. If you're going to ask me about like white Wonderbread and cheese whiz and stuff like that, then we've got to talk. Let off the Wonder Bread. Yeah.

I would say the greatest service, like without anything that we've talked about today, go into your kitchen, your fridge, your cupboard, You can ask yourself, like, what would Mona not want to see here? Right. Then you don't even need me. You just, you know, to throw that out. And the second thing is, like, how much of this comes from the earth and how much of this

comes from a factory? Yep. And if it comes from a factory, chances are it won't serve your health. If it comes from the earth, chances are it will fuel your health. So you get to decide. Question. So you brought up a glucose spike. And I want to talk about that.

One, what is glucose spike? What causes that? And two, do you find that oatmeal causes? is a big glucose spike. Yeah. So your metabolic health, if you want to look up someone, Dr. Casey means, do you know who she is? Yes.

Yeah, she's a dear friend of my house, her Callie. I watched him at the eutamonious. I'm talking about GOPs and he was very, very aggressive and very onto it. I loved it. You got it. Very impressive. So Casey is a co-founder of Levels, which is a continuous glucose monitor. and through their study and research,

they can literally see how metabolic dysfunction can be directly correlated with diseases like Alzheimer's, obesity, cancer, you name it, right? And this wasn't an issue for any of our ancestors because, again, the quality of our food was different, we're eating a lot more fiber, and we were leading a lot less processed foods. Today, having processed food in our diet is normal.

Eating from a package is normal. And yet when we eat these foods, and if you're wearing a continuous glucose monitor, which I highly recommend to people. So you can see how different foods impact you, you'll see how when you have a certain food, if it causes a dramatic spite, right? So for people who are listening,

it looks like a mountain and a molehill, right? Mountain and mole, instead of just like, let me say that again. So if you're wearing a continuous glucose monitor, and you see these massive spikes and dips in your glucose, and that causes metabolic instability throughout the day, Meaning you've seen constant spikes and dips and constant spikes and dips, chances are that you're the type of person who's constantly thinking about food, who's constantly thinking about having the donut to pick me up,

the coffee in the afternoon, the crackers, whatever it is, to that constant, like, I need a boost, I need a boost. Instead of somebody who has great metabolic flexibility, who can handle these metabolic spikes but come back into a neutral zone. So how often are you doing that to yourself throughout the day? Yeah. If you're eating oatmeal for breakfast without having good quality fats and then having a donut and then having, you know, pasta for lunch, white rice for dinner

and all of these starches, chances are you're doing that. So this is why this year you've probably seen a lot of people talking about how to build a plate. When you build a plate, you want to focus on having a balanced meal like our ancestors did of a good quality protein, really great carbohydrates that come from the earth, which is fiber, and then good quality fat. So when you're eating the starches, like we said about the oatmeal and merging it with a protein or fat, you're going to lower the glycemic spike of that food. Right.

So when you look down at your plate, ask yourself, what am I missing? Do I have a carb or protein and a good quality fat at this meal or do I need to add something in? Yes. That will really be supportive. Okay. Or if you know you're going to go out for an amazing Italian dinner, right? What do the Italians do? When they serve bread, they have olive oil or balsamic vinegar with it.

That's going to lower the spike of the bread. They have whole grain bread, which, you know, isn't. touched by the chemicals that we have. That's another story. Or if you're Indian or Filipino, right? There's always lentils or good quality fats or those starches were slow cooked or even cooling your rice before you eat is going to lower the spike of the rice. Right. Right. So lots of little hacks that you can look into. But yeah, wearing a continuous glucose monitor is something I do with all my clients to give us insight to how healthy their metabolic function is. Wow. I'm going to do that. So you're going to have to

Show me what to get later because I want to do that. I think that will be highly, it'll be a good kind of test, and I can show it to people and give them data with kind of. For sure. Yeah, Levels Health. They've got an amazing app. You simply take a picture of your meals. You scan the monitor, and it tracks everything for you.

You get to report the next day of, like, what the ratings are. Like, this meal was really great for you. This one wasn't so much so that you can start to learn how your body metabolizes different foods. So what if your glucose, say, it spikes near bedtime? What kind of negative effect does that have? Then it probably means that you might be working through some instability throughout the night. If you're spiking, you're going to crash, right? And often if people crash too low, then they're waking up.

Or if it's because you've had a meal too close to bed, it means your body is just working really hard to digest your food, right? A lot of people, when they go through fasting protocols, if you're fasting for one, two or three days, which is a protocol for some people, their glucose might be really, really low. and that might cause them to wake up a lot. So if you are somebody who wakes up consistently throughout the night and you don't know why, look at your glucose. That might give you some insight. Perfect.

All right. All right. Good to know. These are all tremendous facts. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about our food in general. I feel like right now, hopefully, that it's going to be addressed a little bit. We'll see.

That remains to be seen. But I'm hoping that it's starting to come to light a little bit more. What do you think are some of the biggest, like, corporates? Because there's a ton. I mean, obviously, we're talking about glyphosate and things like that. Is organic even safe anymore? I mean, what, how do we do our best? Because I think some things are unavoidable.

I think you'll agree. What do we have to do to do our best? And what do you think needs to be addressed or improved the most with things right now? And I know that's a long list and a loaded question, but try to, you know, and you're top of your list. Yeah. So I'm always cautious answering this question because I'll never forget the day where someone had purchased a call with me with their mother. And I went through my whole spiel of what foods to take out, what foods to focus.

And, you know, halfway through the conversation, Mona, we live in a food desert. Like, you want me to get these healthy, unprocessed foods. That would take me 45 minutes just to get to the store that might have some of them, right? So, you know, for anyone listening, just like, do the best you can with this knowledge. So let's dive into the biggest culprits. Okay. So one of the biggest culprits, I would say, is like refined seed oils, refined vegetable oils that we know now are causing inflammation to our bodies. So canola oil, eating out, as you said before, too, like whenever you eat out, they're not cooking with, you know, olive oil or just plain old butter or ghee or anything like that.

They're using cheap, refined seed oils or canola oil or vegetable oils because they're cheap, right? But these oils are heated at such a high temperature. They are refined. They are likely rancid. And like I said, they tend to cause this inflammation. And they are in everything. My biggest pet peeve is you go down, even a really healthy grocery store, if you go down the kid's snack aisle, you will not find, you'll maybe find one brand of snacks.

But even has the label on the front that says gluten-free, healthy, keto, whole brain or whatever. You turn the box around. the ingredient, the second ingredient's canola oil, right? I know. Yeah. It's horrible. If, just go through your cabinets. If you have any food product that says canola oil on it, throw it in the trash.

Do yourself a favor. You don't have to go on a diet. Just get rid of those foods first. If you don't believe me, go and go to YouTube and Google how canola oil is made and you will never ever want to consume it ever again. It's disgusting. Yeah. I don't.

Yeah. And like the food industry is really tricky. So oat milk was also demonized. right? Yeah. Coke milk had canola oil in it amongst a bunch of sugar also. Rapeseed is another word for canola oil. Yes.

Right? Yes. So rapeseed, also, you want to just get rid of that. So whether you have canola oil, vegetable oil, sunflower oil, sunflower oil, cotton seed oil, palm oil, like, all of these oils are inflammatory. If you want to look for safer oils to cook with or even in your processed foods, you want to look for olive oil. You want to look for something that's a little,

safer like avocado oil or even coconut oil. Those are much safer options, especially to keep in the house. Cooking with butter also in ghee, like I'm a really big proponent of that. I'll use avocado oil if I'm cooking something at a high temperature. That would be the first thing. The second thing is sugar, right? Yeah. And you talked about like healthy earlier.

Healthy to us and healthy to somebody, you know, walking down Santa Monica might be completely different, right? sugar is something that you want to get out of your diet. And I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about cane sugar, right? Our ancestors all use a little bit of cane sugar and they were fine. We didn't see obesity in those days. I'm talking about glucose, fructose, all of the syrups that are going into foods also to make them sticky and trigger the reward center in your brain to want more of those foods. I'm talking about Coca-Cola and sodas and Pepsi and all of those carbonated beverage

that are completely toxic for our health. There's a direct correlation with how they impact our digestion. They cause us to crave more sugar over time, how they're linked to obesity, obviously to diabetes, metabolic instability also. So it's not about no sugar. Like you will find sugar in my house, but we make responsible choices around it. And I would say, again, the second category that that goes into

is these ultra-processed ultra-packaged foods that tend to come in boxed package foods. Yes. Right. What would the third one be? Third one I would say is like a lot of these refined flowers. Yeah. Right?

Like we were eating so much almond flour, processed flour. And they just like, it's just too much. Yeah. Right. They're more than our ancestors would have ever used. So just notice how many refined processed foods that you're consuming. Your breads, if they use the word enriched. I was just going to say enriched.

Yeah. Like anything that has to be enriched. is like there's nothing in that that's going to serve your health. There's trigger words. Like when it says artificial. Yes. Artificial flavors. Artificial colors.

Artificial dyes. Especially. Gosh, parents, I know it's not easy for your kids to avoid all the artificial stuff. But like if you don't buy it, they can't eat it. Exactly.

It goes for you too. If you don't buy it, it won't be in the house for you to eat. And if we're going to make any changes to our food system, we need to control with our dollar. If we don't give money to the companies, we're just using that money for marketing. advertising by the way.

Those foods are not expensive. They are cheap as hell to produce. They spend more in the marketing, the advertising to you and your kids to make you buy that food than what goes into the actual food and in itself. And it's not real food. Remember, if it comes from a processed, packaged food, it's boxed. It's dead. There's little to no nutrient value to it.

Simply eat real food. Just eat real food. So we did a little thing at home and I told my wife, I said, let's do this. let's just go through the cupboard real quick and look at my pre-workout my BCAA pattern like stuff that you know we need to take for what I'm doing when I work out recovery things that are important and I said let me see here because I have been overlooking this and this could be contributing to certain things that I feel at certain times let's look and see how many of them say blue yellow whatever color that say less than 2% sucralose you know whatever but how many of you of these less than 2% am I actually taking in? Totally. Yeah. And I started going through it. I went, shit, a little bit in one might be okay.

Like, you know, I really eat as clean as I possibly can, but I love Quest bars and I take that little bit of sucralus. I don't give a shit for one, you know, a couple days away. I don't care about that. But then it's like, okay, that's fine. You can do one maybe. But then I started going through the math and I'm like, okay, like, this has it, this has it, this has it.

And I think that sometimes you can always, you can always, you know, I think that sometimes you can overlook it because it's your supplements that you're taking. Sure. You know, and some of the gummies that you take and some of the, just the everyday pills that you take if you read the case. And then some people will go in and they'll go, well, I can buy magnesium at the grocery store and if it's five bucks, why is this one 20? We'll go take a look at what it says on the back.

Exactly. All of a sudden, you're microdosing chemicals. Yeah, exactly. And magnesium, for example, there's, well, there's several different kinds, you know, magnesium that you could take and people just it it goes back again to education and maybe lack their name that I think is important that people need to take into consideration but like you were saying learning food labels and seeing when you see a food label I don't think some people understand it's the order that they're listed you know and how much is in whatever yeah so the order that the

listed means that the first ingredient is is what has the highest quantity within that product at the end of the day though, like if you don't know what an ingredient is, like literally you don't know what it is, don't know where it comes from, don't know how it was made, neither will your body. And your body will not know what to do with it. It will be contributing to the inflammation or the accumulation that you are experiencing. And that's such a good point too, right? Because a lot of people will probably come to us and say, oh, I've been eating this for 20 years and I'm totally fine. Disease doesn't onset overnight. It's the result of accumulation over time. So it's not just the toxins from the food.

It's not just the chemicals from, you know, the products that we're using. Think about all the toxins that you are consuming anywhere from, like, if you really want to go down the wormhole on this one, right? Your personal care products, your toothpaste, your deodorant, your face washes, however many products you use on your hair, your skin every single day, your toothpaste, stuff like that. Think about your clothes, the plastics, that come in your clothes.

Recently, I tried to find socks for my kids that didn't have a lasting in them or spandex. It's virtually impossible, right? Microplastics are becoming such an issue within our blood. Children, umbilical cords now have microplastics in them, right? Like these toxins are now, so we get to a toxic burden, right? You want to go around your house.

How many toxins are lingering in the laundry detergents, in the cleaning products, in the dryer sheets, you know, in the plastics on whatever's hanging up around your house, right? Like everything is plastic. Yeah. And the containers that your food is sold in. Oh, I just got in talking about it the other day too. And look, like you can go crazy where at that point, I understand ignorance is 100% bliss,

not knowing what you're getting yourself into. But knowledge is power. Yes. And if you are concerned with living happier, longer life. And if you are concerned with turning off the genetic markers that you have that might lead you getting a disease or not, we've got to pay attention. So just try to reduce your toxic burden. Yes. So if you're going to choose the quest bars, like you're probably taking away toxins from bucket A so that like the sucralose every once in a while for you is okay. You're mindful of

when your body's inflamed, right? But I would say the key things that you know that you could take out of your life, take out the toxins and what could be fueling the toxic burden within yourself, because that will probably make you feel better too. I get a lot of push. that I see on not just really to me, but I see to other like people that are doing information podcast videos is, oh, that's too much. Oh, I don't know. I don't understand. And people just give up. You know, and it's like, look, when we do something like this, we're not telling everybody, that's like trying to tell an alcoholic, just stop drinking. Oh, totally, a depressed person. Just go work out. Yeah. That's not how it works. What we're saying is be, here's all of the information.

Start with a little bit and just work your way. I understand not everybody. can afford this, not everybody can do this, and everybody can do that. But you certainly can do some of these things. Yeah. You just have to win or do it. You have to take the time to learn. And I think that starts with caring. Yeah. You know, and it pains me when people just give up or don't care. You know, I understand circumstances situations. I have been this high and I have been this low. So I know, you know, but I've always tried to figure, you just, I've always said this. You just figure shit out. You just do. If you tell me that you're too busy to work out, get your ass up a little bit earlier in the morning and go to bed earlier. You can do it. You can, you can always manage.

And I get these people that tell me, I'm just so busy. I can't talk or I can't do this. And it's like, well, you had an hour here that you were looking on your, doing that you can if you want to. You got it. It's a choice. It all comes down to choices. Yes. It's called prioritizing. Yeah. And so I guess I don't want people to feel overwhelmed or just do this. They throw their hands up in the are when we do a thing like this. We're just covering all the bases. We are reading as much information as we can, right? Yes.

And I think that's a really good point to own in on. It is choices. And if you think back, like whether you have kids or not or have a pet, and here you are, like you're looking at ingredientless as best as you can. You want to make the best decision for this, you know, little being so that they are feeling their absolute best. Why does that stop, right? And why then for us do we feel like it's okay to put this?

these things into our body, right? A lot of it is food addiction. Like, you know, food scientists are hired to make foods more addictive. I know. Right? Like every detail is thought of when you go to a fast food restaurant or to a restaurant to make you buy more, to think about the extra order, the bigger size of the fries or the more sugar or the dessert, right?

Like everything is thought out. You might not feel like you have any control until you put yourself, your higher self into the driver's seat. If your best friend came to you and said, God, I'm really suffering. I'm not sleeping well. I feel sad. You know, my cycle is off. I'm gaining weight.

I don't want to feel this way anymore. What advice would you give to them? Like, what's the one place where you would start? And then maybe reverse the mirror. And like if you could love yourself that much, what choices would you make that would be different? Right. 100%.

And that's really what I was saying earlier is about just being accountable, thinking about others. How are your decisions affecting those around you that you love too? You know, sometimes we don't think of it. about that. So if you have kids setting a good example, think about your health for your, your spouse or there's somebody in your life, you know, and we don't do that. No, not at all. So, yeah, that's a good place to start. Like, is there stuff within you that you know you've got to deal with? And then the second place is just look at how you're nourishing yourself.

Yeah. I coach my clients in, like, when you have the lens, when you have this lens, when you go home, you walk into your kitchen, you walk into your pantries, what if you were to consider that your first line of health care. That's the place that's going to dictate how you're going to age, whether or not you're going to get sick, how your body looks, what your energy and your mood are like, you're going to fill it with the best things. Yes. To become independent on doctors and medications and being told you to do is not a good thing.

Be dependent on yourself, the decisions that you make. Some things will get out of control. You can't control. Like you can't control the spread of COVID. But you can certainly build your immune system up and do what you can to protect yourself from airborne diseases or whatever, you know, and taking care of yourself, it starts there. So I know you've been very generous with your time, and I know I've gone on and on with you and I could keep going. Before we go, would you tell people a little bit about your

podcast, what you talk about, how they can, and the places they can find you? And of course, we'll put everything in the descriptions for everybody to find you, but kind of just a little bit about your podcast and will follow you. So I'm on a mission to really merge the wisdom that all of our ancestors had, which I probably said a thousand times today, I think there's a lot of wisdom that comes from these ancient practices and doctors that honored the wisdom of our bodies to heal, but also foods, ingredients, teas, how to use, you know, things from nature to help us, right? That was very much part of my healing journey. But I want to merge that with the Western world and Western medicine, where we need it. Like, if we need surgery, you need a heart surgery,

you want to get to a specialist at a hospital, right? But there's a time and a place. And I think that the sooner that the two worlds come together, the future of healthcare will be integrative healthcare. Imagine going to your doctor's office and before your visit, you're sitting in a waiting room, taking deep breaths, right, tuning in to what is actually wrong, questioning, like, when did these symptoms actually start? How do I feel? How do I want to feel? Right? Merging acupuncture with a medication that you're going on with an action plan to get off, right? So it's merging Eastern and Western medicine called Ruted in Wellness for that reason because that was my healing journey.

Right. And so, yeah, people can find me through rooted in wellness as my podcast. I'm incredible guests, men, women from all different backgrounds, kind of shedding light on this topic. And I think that the more information that we have on how to heal and take ownership back that way, the better the future looks for our health. We're empowered. If you go to my website, monosharama.com.

I have a really great foundation of healing, eight pillars of being rooted in healing. You can get a course there. That's for free. Find me on Instagram. I'm the person. And that's how you and I connected. I answer all my messages. I really love the sense of community and empowering each other and staying in touch that way.

Oh, that's amazing. Thank you for all that you do and that you're doing and your mission. And that's why I wanted to come out here was to help spread that and to be a part of it myself. So thank you. Thank you. I got spoiled a little bit today being in here. Now I want to do this for every podcasting. I wish I could.

But once again, you've been so generous with your time and allowing me. need to be in here. And I just, I really want to thank you. Thank you. Yeah, such a pleasure. Thank you. So all right, everybody. Well, like I said, we got a little spoiled today. We'll try to do this more often. But I just want to thank everybody for watching and I hope you enjoyed this. I will put everything in the description on where to follow Mona. And so stay tuned for plenty more to more, Dylan Jameli. And I said, fuck that up. That's okay. That's because we're closing. Yeah. Stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Jameli and Mona Sharma, signing off.