Written by Christopher Kelly
Nov. 7, 2014
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Christopher: Hello and welcome to the Nourish Balance Thrive podcast. I'm joined today by Wendy Myers. Wendy is a certified holistic health and nutrition coach. She is the founder, head writer and Chief Eating Officer -- that's the most important bit -- at Liveto110.com. She's passionate about spreading her health message through her writing, podcast, speaking, and her Modern Paleo Cooking Show.
Hi, Wendy. Thanks for coming on.
Wendy: Thank you so much for having me.
Christopher: Tell me, how did you get started in the whole Paleo community and helping people?
Wendy: Well, it started with my father coming down with cancer, and I just started reading a lot about nutrition and was just trying to help him. He was on what I thought was very good medical care. I was very enamored of the medical community and drugs and all the latest treatments, et cetera, et cetera, and I just -- he passed away within six months, and it was a horrible death and it was very traumatic for me.
So I really started questioning his treatments and how sick he became from them, and started studying nutrition and how that could have promoted his cancer and caused it and started learning about detox and saunas and just stuff I had never read about prior. So it really got me interested and the more I read, the more I couldn't stop reading, and I started Liveto110.com to communicate what I was learning and try to get the word out on having a healthy diet and detoxification.
At one point, I tried a vegetarian diet and I got pretty ill within a couple of years of doing that.
Christopher: I tried that too and have much the same experience, actually.
Wendy: Yeah, and unfortunately that was some of the first things I stumbled upon when I started studying nutrition, and I stumbled upon the China Study -- it's very convincing even though it's complete BS -- and I changed my diet. Within two years, I had thyroid issues and adrenal issues and I couldn't think straight. I couldn't carry on a conversation.
Christopher: Yeah, I've had that, too.
Wendy: I was a mess. So I went to my doctor to figure out what's wrong with me, and I just happened to be reading Natasha Campbell-McBride, the GAPS diet, Gut and Psychology Syndrome. There was a whole page in there, "Nutrient Deficiencies in a Vegetarian Diet," and I was reading all my medical tests that my doctor just did.
Then that drove me to the Paleo diet and I developed my own version of it called "Modern Paleo." I also thought it was important in my book "The Modern Paleo Survival Guide" to incorporate detox, because many people start a Paleo diet and it doesn't reverse their disease or it doesn't make them feel as good as many of the books promised and it's because they're missing that really important piece of the puzzle, which is detoxing and not consuming foods that are toxic in our modern environment.
Christopher: So how did you get to the point then that you were ready to start a book? What was it that made you thought that we need another book?
Wendy: Well, I just wanted to address that aspect of detox, so I'm like --
Christopher: Okay. So you don't think any of the books at the moment -- you're right, actually. A lot of them -- I think it's been a problem in the community in general is focusing too much on the foods when we know that sleep and, say, stress management are at least as important, and certainly the detox thing. Yeah, I don't see that as well addressed in some of the books I read.
So maybe you should start by defining what is "detox."
Wendy: Yeah. Well, detoxification is -- I think a very important component is not intaking things that are toxic, avoiding toxic foods, chemicalized food, foods with partially hydrogenated oils that have nickel in them, avoiding most seafood that has mercury and cadmium-nickel and other heavy metals in them.
I'm okay with seafood every once in a while but I prefer people just eat small fish, the yucky ones that no one wants to eat like anchovies and sardines. Just the little ones, the herring, mackerel, little ones. So preventing intake and then detoxing hundreds of chemicals and heavy metals that are interfering in our body's metabolic function.
I think a lot of people, they're not aware that there are estimates between 80,000 and 100,000 chemicals in our environment that are used for various purposes and very few of them have been tested for safety in humans, and the World Health Organization has estimated that we have 212 chemicals in our body. The Environmental Protection Agency did another study that we have over 700 chemicals in our body.
We know that there are at least hundreds in every person, and obviously these are not synergistically combining to promote health. So it's extremely important for people to not only pay attention to eating a healthy diet, which will strengthen the body and strengthen its ability to detox, but also to actively engage in something every day that will help you to detox these metals and chemicals.
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Christopher: Okay, yes. So you can google a term; it's the CDC National Report on Human Exposure. It's called "The Fourth Report." So if you just google "CDC Fourth Report" you'll find this huge and rather depressing document that talks about all these chemicals.
So really, the thing I've learned is you can't really avoid your exposure to all of these things. I mean, they're everywhere. There's an organic acids test that we've been running on the people that we work with and one of the organic acids shows exposure to xylene, and xylene is a metabolite of coal tar and it just turns up in carpets and paint. I'm sure it's in pretty much everything in the room I'm sitting in.
The reason they choose that particular metabolite is because you cannot avoid your exposure to it, and when it shows up in high levels in the urine, you know that the person is having a hard time detoxing. So what do you think you can do then to support in terms of food how well your detox is working?
Wendy: Well, definitely you want to intake foods that contain folate, which is a form of folic acid, and green foods: green leafy vegetables, cruciferous vegetables. Anything green contains a lot of folate. That will help your detox pathways or methylation pathways, et cetera.
As far as activities, definitely an infrared sauna. Infrared saunas are one of the best, easiest ways to just sweat all the stuff out. You sweat out phthalates, you sweat out BPAs, stuff in plastic, pesticides, radioactive metals, cesium and things like that from Fukushima. You just sweat out everything.
Christopher: So tell me, I know nothing about saunas. It's definitely beyond my knowing. So what's the goal? So just anything that makes you sweat? So if I'm on the bike and it's really hot -- which it has been all summer -- and I'm sweating loads, will I get any benefit from sauna or is that just making you sweat?
Wendy: Well, it's more that sweating. Sweating is good because you do detox some. You are keeping that organ -- it's the largest organ in our body -- you are keeping it the open -- many people have very congested skin and they're not able to sweat.
However, there's a little bit more to it. The infrared sauna, the infrared rays penetrate you depending on what type of sauna. The far infrared, they penetrate about one to two inches, which would be two to five centimeters, and the near-infrared saunas, which are something I'm a big proponent of, those will penetrate you about three or four inches, about roughly up to seven centimeters. So when these rays penetrate you, they heat you up from the inside, so you are reaching deep inside your body and heating up these cells and vibrating them so that they release their toxic contents.
Christopher: Oh! That's interesting.
Wendy: Yeah. So it's much, much more effective than just sweating or going to a Finnish or a Swedish sauna, which is what we call them here in the U.S., where it's just a sauna that's in a lot of people's gyms or it's real hot. It's a hot box and you sit in it and you sweat a little bit. Those only are penetrating one or two millimeters so you're not getting the detox benefits that you would with a near or far-infrared sauna.
Christopher: Okay. So I get the same -- the reason I was originally -- I was looking at sauna a lot earlier this year and there's some pretty well established, ergogenic, athletic performance gains that can be had from them.
Wendy: Absolutely.
Christopher: So would I get those same gains from an infrared sauna?
Wendy: Oh, yes, absolutely. Yeah, they definitely help in muscle recovery and reducing inflammation. They get your circulation going. There are so many, many benefits to them and in my website I sell three or four different sizes and shapes of near-infrared saunas. Some of them are really affordable. I have one that's just one single bulb and another one that's got three or four bulbs on it, because some of the far-infrared saunas can run into the thousands of dollars and that's not practical for a lot of people, so I like to offer something that is more practical and affordable for the majority of people.
Christopher: Oh, yeah. That's what I was going to say. The reason it never happened for me was because I was just -- I don't know, I guess it was low priority. You can say that I don't have time for something, but what you really mean is you haven't prioritized time for something. I ended up not doing it just because I had to travel probably every two miles to go and do it.
So I was going to say -- so that's what you use, is it? You have something in your home.
Wendy: Yes, yeah. The bulbs that I use or the near-infrared sauna, they're just these cheap light bulbs that you get at a hardware store. They're called "heat lamps" and they're red in color. They're about 250 watts.
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You can use just a single bulb on certain areas to heal infections in the body or a muscle strain, et cetera, but the full detox benefits are when you're inside an enclosure and you are sweating. You get hot enough to sweat. So that's why I have a model that's got four bulbs on it so that you can put it in your home shower, a small closet, et cetera, and just hang that in there so that you can sweat.
Christopher: Excellent. That sounds like a really good idea. I have to look into that. Then another thing that I thought was really interesting in your book was the nutrient density of foods. Can you explain what that means to you?
Wendy: Yes. Well, I think it's really important today, because most people suffer from nutrient deficiencies, is that we need to really think about eating the most nutrient-dense foods in our diet and keeping to a minimum the foods that aren't as nutrient-dense, like grains. The most nutrient-dense foods are organs, organ meats like liver and kidneys, et cetera.
Then next down on the notch are meats. Meats are incredibly nutrient-dense. People love to think of them as just these protein blobs but they are actually really rich in minerals and so many other things: fats, saturated fats, all kinds of things that our bodies need to function. We need cholesterol. We have cholesterols in every single cell of our body. It's important to have some dietary intake of cholesterol.
Then the next down on the notch are vegetables. Vegetables are incredibly nutrient-dense, especially the cruciferous vegetables. Then next down are fruits, and then grains, and then sugar which is almost nothing, pretty much nothing.
Christopher: So what it needs to do is to stick to the top half of that table then.
Wendy: Exactly.
Christopher: And then what do you look like in terms of macronutrient ratios? What do you recommend?
Wendy: Well, as far as the ratios, sometimes I like to think more in terms of amounts people need because I can relate more to that.
Christopher: Yeah, it's obviously a very personal thing, very individual thing. So how do you go about -- I should probably rephrase that question -- how do you go about finding out what ratios are right for you?
Wendy: Well, everyone's a little bit different. I like when people eat about a pound to one pound a day of animal protein. So that's about 0.2 kilograms. I'm sorry, I don't know the exact conversions for your audience. I apologize.
Christopher: No, my audience is -- actually, that's just me. That's kind of weird. I'm not even consistent with these metric or imperial. I'll just mix and match and confuse everyone.
Wendy: Yeah, yeah. So it's roughly about 10 to 15 percent animal protein, because you need some but you don't need a lot. A lot of people at Paleo, "Eat all the meat you want. Beef jerky all day long," but you can get too much of a good thing. So the diet should mainly be vegetables and things of that nature, and then a little bit of fruit because fruit contains a little bit too much sugar, and then if you tolerate it --
That's the differentiation of the Modern Paleo diet versus Paleo is I feel that we would not have survived as a species had we not adapted to new foods in our environment. So while the Paleo diet is more about reenactment of what the Paleo man ate, only meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds and fruits and vegetables, I feel that there are many people that can eat dairy and they can eat grains and legumes and potatoes and they're just fine, but a lot of people had issues with those. So those can be added to the diet if they tolerate those foods.
Christopher: Yes, I'm with you there. Obviously, the Paleo diet, it was a concept. It's an interesting idea that you're trying to reenact it to the letter, but I have some other interesting examples of foods which are most definitely not Paleo. Superstarch is one thing I use in my bike. Superstarch is a high-molecular weight cornstarch that allows you to take on carbohydrate during exercise without having an insulin response and switching off fat burning, which is -- it's obviously not Paleo but it works extremely well. I couldn't deny that.
Then the other thing I've been playing with recently is ketone ester salts as well so I can artificially induce ketosis with the supplement. Clearly it's not Paleo, but it doesn't mean it's not good. Well, that's great.
Wendy: Hey, some of these biohacks are amazing.
Christopher: Yeah, and then I wanted to talk to you about -- so we do a whole bunch of tests in our practice. We don't go as far as hair mineral analysis but I know it can definitely be a problem, and sometimes I wonder whether some of the people that we're working with are not getting better as fast as they could if they had a better idea with what's going on with their magnesium level. So tell me about hair mineral analysis. How does it work?
[0:15:02]
Wendy: Basically, when you think of any test, every test is going to have a myopia where you're not going to be able to a hundred percent know what's going on inside a person's body because things are very complex. But testing is a great way to be able to peer inside the body but you have to recognize any test's weaknesses.
Hair mineral analysis is no exception. I had to train for two years to learn how to interpret the information on the hair mineral analysis and then also how to supplement to correct the imbalances on a hair mineral analysis, and there's about four decades of research behind interpreting a hair mineral analysis.
So we're never doing a hair test and looking at the calcium level or magnesium level by itself and say, "Oh, it's high. They don't need calcium," or "It's low. They need calcium." That's not how it works, and a lot of people that pooh-pooh hair mineral analysis don't have that knowledge where they think they're just looking -- they're correlating the body's level of calcium to the calcium level, and that's not how it works. So unless you have a certain amount of training, you're not going to be able to interpret or use the information in a useful way. The hair test is a tissue test. That's the main reason I use it in my practice is because we're testing the body's tissues for mineral levels and heavy metals.
Additionally, if you're testing the blood, if you're just testing the blood for minerals there's a problem with that too, because you're probably doing an RBC mineral test, but a lot of time people have a low magnesium status even when they have adequate levels of magnesium in their tissues, like, say, if they've been taking magnesium for years and they still have a low RBC level, and that's because if they were stressed the day before they had the blood test, the cells automatically will release magnesium. It will release it from the blood. That's just a response from the adrenal hormones. If you're stressed, the cells release magnesium and then it wouldn't show on your test.
So every test has its little issues that have to be accounted for and also because the blood has to be kept at a very narrow margin of error. The blood is homeostatic, meaning it has the ability to take minerals from the tissues or the bones to keep the mineral levels at a very narrow margin. That's why I really don't like testing minerals in the blood because you want to be checking the tissues, because by the time the blood shows a serious deficiency of minerals, you're very sick and depleted.
So you don't want to wait until the blood levels are low. You want to test the tissues because that's going to give you a more accurate picture of what's going on in the body. That's the purpose the hair mineral analysis serves, and it's also nice because it shows a three-month average of what's going on where the blood is showing you what's going on that hour, for instance.
Christopher: Okay. Well, yeah, I was going to say that's the way that I've shied away from the blood testing too is that I'm not sure it's actually any better. It's just not clear to me.
So is it true then when you see -- when I look at studies, I look at studies that were done in the late '90s, say, and they really pooh-pooh the hair mineral analysis. Now, when I look at the more modern studies, they say proceed with caution.
Now, could it be that their comparison is somewhat flawed? It seemed like the main complaint now I saw in one particular study was the levels, they varied quiet a lot from lab to lab, but does it make any sense then to compare those levels individually? You just said that you can't just look at any one marker by itself. So does it make any sense to then extrapolate that further and look at just one marker across many different lab tests? Do you think it's not a fair comparison?
Wendy: No, it's not a fair comparison, because I'll tell you what studies you were looking at. There's one from 1995 and there's one from, I believe, 2001. Basically, those are junk science. One of them has a sample size of one, which we know is not -- you can't correlate that or generalize that to the population. You have to have a sample size of at least 20 for results to have statistical validity.
Number two, the test from 2001 had a sample size of two where they had two girls -- they were twins -- that they were sending out lab hair and they were cutting the hair from the ends of their hair and not on the scalp, which is incorrect. You have to cut the minerals from the scalp. I don't know what labs they are using. Just like for any lab, there are good labs and there are bad labs.
Christopher: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, this particular study I'm looking at is from February 2013 but it's an n=1, actually. Hair was donated by a 22-year-old healthy, black-haired Asian man, just n=1.
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Wendy: Yeah, and you see, you can't -- that doesn't mean anything. You know what I mean? So like I said, there's 40 years of science behind this. There are hundreds of thousands of tests that were done by Dr. Paul Eck who cracked the code, so to speak, and correlating these hundreds of thousands of hair tests to health conditions, and then it took him a long time to figure out how to supplement in a way that corrected the imbalances on a hair test because the minerals are all dynamic. An increase in one will cause an increase and decrease of all the others.
So it's very, very complicated to figure this out. So unless a researcher is aware of that research and unless he's designing his study correctly, the results of those studies and the conclusions are not going to be correct, and if they're sending the hair to a lab that washes the hair, that will wash away the sodium and potassium which are water-soluble minerals. So you can't ever have any kind of study where they're washing the hair with chemical solvents or harsh detergents or alcohol. That'll ruin the results. I only send my tests to labs that do not wash the hair and there's only two in the United States.
Christopher: Okay. Who are they?
Wendy: They are Trace Elements Labs in Dallas, Texas, and Analytical Research Laboratories in Arizona.
Christopher: Okay. Yeah, I'm completely with you that the research is obviously extremely useful but it's not everything. And even personally, I've had amazing improvement in my health following outcome-based protocols is the best way to describe it. So it's not like there's some study on Pop Med that shows that this system works. It's 22 years of somebody's experience that shows that it works.
Take for example Blastocystis hominis, which is a low-grade infection, a parasite. Try and find a Pop Med study that shows that it causes body aches or fatigue, but we know from experience that when you get rid of something like that, it definitely improves the outcome. So yeah, I'm all about that.
So how do you go about solving -- say, you find mineral imbalance on the test. Do you need a compounding pharmacy then or something to fix the problem?
Wendy: No, not at all. I start with the hair mineral analysis, and then just from my training I develop a custom supplement program. Most people across the board, they need calcium, magnesium and zinc. They need the main macrominerals.
I also provide kelp. Kelp is a wonderful source of trace minerals, all natural, nice source of iodine to feed that thyroid. Most importantly, people need certain nutrients to help increase their metabolic rate or decrease their metabolic rate, and that's the key is people's metabolism is too fast, it will wear out their body. It's just like a hummingbird. They're trilling really, really, really fast and eventually, it wears out their organs and their body.
Conversely, if someone has a slow metabolic rate, we need to steadily increase that, increase the body's energy, heal the adrenals and thyroid, the body's energy glands, so that they have the energy to be able to detox, because most people, if they have any fatigue whatsoever, they probably have a slowed metabolic rate, which about 80% of people do. So the focus of the program is supplementing in a way that improves that metabolic rate, however it may be.
I also give glandulars as well, also a digestive aid that helps to increase bile flow. It's very important for people to detox to have adequate bile flow. So that's a focus of the program as well. Also selenium, selenium is very, very important.
But there's many different variances in the hair test that I have to correct, different ratios of one mineral to another that are corrected with various supplements. So everyone takes a certain basic regimen and then there are other ones added that are customized to help them change their body chemistry and improve their health.
Christopher: Okay. So this is all off-the-shelf stuff then.
Wendy: Yes. Yes, it is.
Christopher: And then my other question was about coffee enemas. So this is something else that I'm like, "I don't know about this. It sounds..." And again, it's another one of those things where I don't think you can find a study anywhere that shows this works for pretty much anything, and if one exists, I'd love to see it. So tell me about coffee enemas. How the hell do they work?
Wendy: They are unbelievable! I could not shout loud enough.
Christopher: Can I use Folgers instant coffee? Will that work?
Wendy: No instant coffee, I'm afraid. But I can't even express enough how amazing coffee enemas are. Our livers are so taxed today. They are so toxic and so overburned with all the high-fructose corn syrup we're eating and all the hundreds of metals and chemicals and all the hormones and pesticides, everything that it has to process.
[0:25:10]
Many people think that the coffee enemas are about cleaning out the colon. That's not what it's for, it's a by-product, but it's for detoxing the liver, and when my clients are on this detox program, the whole point of detoxing is how you detox is having a clean, healthy liver.
So we've got to get that liver functioning. We've got to unplug it, uncork it, so to speak, and when you're retaining the coffee enema -- which contains caffeine and palmitic acid which improve or facilitate the detoxification of the liver -- when you retain that coffee inside you, that caffeine dilates the portal vein that goes from your liver to your intestines and dilates all the capillaries in your liver.
It dumps everything, all the toxins, into your intestines for elimination, it increases bile flow -- which I talked about, which is important for detoxing heavy metals -- and while you retain the enema for about 15 minutes, which is the goal -- probably not going to happen your first time out -- but the blood will filter through the liver about four to five times and clean up all the garbage that's floating around in your blood.
So many times when people are on a detox program and they feel headaches or nauseated, or they're really tired, or they're angry or irritated, or any of these symptoms that people can have when they're on a detox program, the coffee enemas just take it away because all the metals and chemicals that are floating around causing those symptoms are detoxed and evacuated with a coffee enema.
They're absolutely life-saving for some of my clients that are doing my detox program which is called Mineral Power because some people are really sick and they're really toxic. They've gone to doctor after doctor after doctor, nothing is helping, and it's just because they're toxic. So the more sick someone is, the more important it is for someone to do daily coffee enemas.
Christopher: So what's the difference then between just taking -- if the mechanism is just the vasodilation of that portal vein, what's the difference between just eating something? The nitrates in beets, for example, are a vasodilator. What's the difference? Is it something to do with the physical presence in that one area or is it something else?
Wendy: Yeah. Things work on our body differently. Certainly, eating certain foods will increase bile flow or dilate the portal vein or other veins, but it's just -- somehow, the mechanism of the coffee, it's the palmitic acid, it's the caffeine in that area that aids to dump the heavy metals.
The coffee enemas also increase glutathione by about 600%. Like I said, they increase the bile flow, which is most important for getting your liver working and taking out and escorting out those heavy metals. It also changes the pH of the colon and it kills parasites in the colon. I have pretty much at least half of my clients have parasites and worms come out that they can visibly see.
Christopher: Oh, really?
Wendy: Yes. I mean, they're shocked. They're completely shocked, and I'm like, "Why are you looking in the toilet?" But they do. They have worms and other parasites that come out. Some of them are really large. So it definitely kills stuff that's in your colon.
Christopher: Wow. So have you ever done any before-and-after stool test and then you see this as an effective form of antiparasitic?
Wendy: I did some parasite testing myself prior to starting this program but they didn't find anything. I just had some H. pylori, which is not in the colon, obviously, but I had not done any before or after testing, personally. I hadn't really worried about it because everyone has parasites, and there's thousand of parasites. There's not a test for all of them. We've got parasites in our brains. We've got liver flukes. They're all over the place, and so everyone has parasites. I automatically assume that.
I don't feel the need to do testing because what I do with my program is they have a supplement called GV3 which has pancreatin and ox bile and some other things, black radish that help to kill parasites in the digestive system. Couple that with the coffee enemas and just strengthen the body with minerals and the body eventually gains enough strength where it kills off parasites and it's no longer a good host, because parasites are opportunistic and they prey on weak hosts.
So the whole combination of the program lends itself to killing off parasites in addition to the infrared saunas. Heating up the body kills off a lot of parasites, yeast, bacteria, fungi, viruses.
Christopher: Interesting.
Wendy: Yeah, because they don't tolerate heat very well. So the whole combination of the program pretty much kills everything off and I don't feel the need to do testing.
[0:30:02]
Christopher: Okay. And then talk to me about copper toxicity. Would I find out if I have a problem with it through the hair mineral analysis?
Wendy: Oh, absolutely. This was the baby -- copper research was the baby of Dr. Paul Eck who cracked the code and created mineral balancing using hair mineral analysis. He was obsessed with it and -- because it's very hard to detect with blood tests. Most of my clients have low levels of copper in their RBC blood cell tests when they're in fact extremely copper-toxic in their tissues.
Sometimes the copper does show overtly where they have a really high copper level on their hair test. Those are usually the people that are really unhappy campers where they have a lot of anxiety and depression, their minds racing, they can't sleep, they have other issues, they've got fibroids, endometriosis, any kind of infertility or female reproductive issues, anything like that. Copper toxicity can cause a huge range of mental and physical disturbances.
Some of the ones that have high copper are usually the more symptomatic ones, but majority of people have what's called "hidden" copper toxicity on their hair test that's denoted by a very high calcium level and a high zinc level, and that doesn't mean they just have lots of zinc and calcium bioavailable to use by their body. It's more a disturbance of the adrenal glands. When we have adrenal fatigue, we have increased biounavailability of copper, builds up in our tissues, and then that causes the high zinc and calcium.
Christopher: Okay. So should everybody avoid taking a multi with copper in it? I know there's lots of copper-free multis that are popping onto the market.
Wendy: Yes, yeah, and there's a reason -- I mean, here's the problem is -- especially in prenatal vitamins, they tend to have more copper in them, but people do need a little bit of copper. Even the supplements that I give people they do have a little bit of copper, because the copper toxicity is biounavailable copper and it has to do with the adrenal glands not being able to release a certain hormone to be able to utilize copper. So the body just sequesters it away in various storage sites in the reproductive organs, the liver, the brain, et cetera, the heart.
So people need bioavailable copper to be healthy, and so until we get the body chemistry straightened out, I do give people a little bit of copper. But most supplements have too much.
Christopher: Okay. And then how does this relate to pre-pregnancy planning? Do you think this is all even more important so you'd want to get your house in order, so to speak, before getting pregnant?
Wendy: Absolutely. I mean, this is something I'm really passionate about because, unfortunately, I learned about detoxification and mineral balancing programs a little bit too late and my daughter was on the autism spectrum. This is happening more and more, and more prevalence because women are toxic. Our environments are toxic. Our diets are toxic.
So I think it's incredibly important for women to try to detox for at least a year or two prior to getting pregnant. It's something that I'm very passionate about in trying to get the word out about that women have got to get these chemicals and metals out of their body because, of course, we pass on our nutrient deficiencies to our children and we pass on our heavy metal and chemical toxicities.
It doesn't matter where you are in the world. Studies show that Inuit women in the Arctic have 70 chemicals in their breast milk even though they're in very remote areas. There's no escaping. So you just have to be smart and try to get these chemicals out before you pass them on to your baby.
Christopher: Yeah. So I was about to say people might ask the question, "How do I know if I'm affected?" The answer is, "You are."
Wendy: You are.
Christopher: There's no question.
Wendy: No doubt. The only question is how much of these chemicals and minerals are inside you. That's the only question to ask.
Christopher: And then is it inevitable that women are going to have problems with their thyroid after giving birth?
Wendy: A lot of women do just because the baby sucks everything out of you. Nature wants us to survive and procreate so it gives everything to the baby. So it's very, very important that women eat a healthy diet when they're pregnant, but even if you do that, the baby still takes a lot of if from you, and it takes women, it's estimated, about 18 months to recover from pregnancy and remineralize their body and renourish it.
[0:35:04]
And it's very, very common -- I had this myself -- where women developed thyroid issues following a pregnancy and it makes it very hard to lose the weight. I, like many, many women out there, was trying to lose that baby weight and working out all the time, and eating healthy, and going to bed hungry, and doing all the stuff I was supposed to be doing and it just wasn't happening. In the past it was very easy for me to lose weight, and so I thought, "Well, maybe I'm just getting older." I didn't know what the problem was, and I went to my doctor and found out I had low thyroid function.
So I spent a lot of time researching that and figuring out how to heal it and I happened upon this mineral balancing program. My own program is called "Mineral Power." There are different kinds of programs that balance your minerals, but I found this program and I healed my thyroid with it. It didn't happen overnight. It does take time to remineralize your body and get your body balanced and nourished, but you can heal your thyroid and avoid going on synthetic or even natural supplemental hormone replacement.
Christopher: So what type of thyroid problems did you have then? because my understanding is that most thyroid issues in the U.S., most thyroiditis is actually an autoimmune disease. So presumably, yours was not.
Wendy: No, it wasn't. I had just high TSH, which was generalized hypothyroidism. It's estimated that 90% of people have an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto's. I don't consider it so much an autoimmune disease. It's something that clears in about six months on my program.
It's really just typically an infection in the thyroid and the body starts attacking it because it's trying to attack the infection, and I find that's something that resolves very quickly. It's not something that people have to live with for the rest of their lives like medical doctors tend to tell people, and it's just because they don't know how to heal people with supplements and detoxification.
Christopher: Interesting. So your thyroid function returned to normal. Your TSH came back inside a reasonable range, not just the wildly wide range that's normally stated on the lab results, right? So it's 1.5 or something like that?
Wendy: Yes. No, mine was about 3.5, and now it's hovering at about 1.0. So I've completely healed. All my thyroid tests are normal.
I don't like thyroid tests so much. They're not 100% reliable again because they're not showing what happens to the hormones after they leave the gland. A lot of times people have normal thyroid tests, but if they have a really high calcium level on their hair test, that calcium which regulates cell permeability and osmosis, if it's really high, the thyroid hormones they're making will not be able to get into their cells.
So that's why a lot of people have normal thyroid tests and still have thyroid symptoms, or if they supplement with thyroid hormones it doesn't clear up their symptoms because they just can't get into the cell. That's why it's important to correct mineral imbalances and correct body chemistry so that the thyroid can actually truly start working, and that does involve healing the adrenal glands as well.
Christopher: Okay. And then what about babies? What are your top tips when we have an 11-month-old baby? How did you do that? How should we be transitioning into solo food?
Wendy: Well, definitely you want to wait until at least six months to introduce solid food, because a lot of parents make the mistake of trying to feed, introduce their growing boy -- he's getting big and they feel like he needs some more food, but the intestinal lining is not developed enough prior to six months of age and so when people introduce food in there, it can cause the child to have allergies and food sensitivities and things because the body sees these large proteins and large food molecules as something to attack. So you definitely want to avoid any kind of solid food introduction prior to six months of age.
Christopher: Is that a hard limit then? Do you think once the kid is showing interest in food, then you know it's okay?
Wendy: Yeah, I would tend to go with just a hard line, like nothing before six months of age, for sure.
Christopher: Okay, and then what do you think the first food should be?
Wendy: I love pureed organic vegetables. I made all my daughter's own baby food. I love pureed grass-fed meats and I made a lot of chicken broth, homemade chicken broth to puree a lot of the vegetables and meats. Makes it real savory and adds a lot of nutrition and fats and minerals and things. So I definitely love the homemade chicken broth and pureeing it with fresh vegetables.
Christopher: Okay. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately, Ivy doesn't really like puree. It's kind of a strange thing. I don't know whether it's the texture or what. I think a part of it is she doesn't like anybody putting a spoon in her mouth. She has to be really hungry before she'll eat something off a spoon or a fork.
[0:40:09]
Wendy: Okay. Yeah, every kid is different. If they just want little chunks of food, give them the chunks.
Christopher: Yeah, yeah. So that's what we normally do, and she definitely likes things that she can't -- she doesn't really have the teeth for. She does have some teeth but she can't eat a lamb chop or something like that, she just sucks on it, and I wonder how much nutrient she gets from just sucking on it without actually swallowing the whole meat. It's pretty dried out by the time she's finished with it, but I wonder --
Wendy: Well, hey, she's still getting some of those fats and things, so it's still good.
Christopher: And then how do you progress? How do you do it now? How do you make sure -- your daughter's four, right?
Wendy: Yes.
Christopher: So you're probably getting into pre-school or even school-type age. How do you keep her on track?
Wendy: Well, as far as diet?
Christopher: Of course, yeah.
Wendy: Well, it's definitely challenging. My daughter is a really picky eater so there's limited numbers of foods that she'll eat. It's really frustrating. But I just tend to -- I do have my daughter on supplements. I think it's really important to give children probiotics. Children that are fed probiotics tend to have far fewer allergies, and I've had my daughter allergy tested and the allergist could not believe that she didn't have any allergies, like nothing. Nothing registered, and it's just because I had given her probiotics since birth.
So I'm big on also supplementing calcium, magnesium, zinc because that's deficient in a lot of foods and many children are born deficient, but as far as the foods, I just give lots of sweet potatoes and some of the sweeter vegetables children tend to gravitate towards, the peas and the carrots, the squashes and the sweet potatoes, yams, things like that. Those are good to focus on those because children will tend to eat things that taste a little bit sweeter, and they don't like the bitter foods like some of the cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower and whatnot.
So we don't want to turn them off to vegetables. We want them to be all gung-ho on vegetables so give them the ones that are going to be most likely to produce success in eating them, and also arranging them in a way that's really fun. Sometimes I'll make a smiley face, or I'll make a flip-flop with a couple of green beans and make a little bottom of a shoe with some green beans, flip-flops for the top. Just doing all kinds of fun stuff make it really inviting and make her want to eat the vegetables.
Christopher: Yeah, we've noticed that, actually. I guess Julie was already an expert because she has younger brothers, the youngest of which is actually only nine, so she knew all of them as babies. I would have never have known to do half the stuff that she does, but placing the food out on the table seems to be quite an important part of it.
I'm not exactly sure how that works, but at dinner, when the food is on the plate, she seemed less interested, but when it's organized in little rows in front of the table, she would sit there picking them all up one by one in a way that she won't when the food is arranged normally on a plate. Yeah, it's interesting.
So have you done some hair mineral analysis on your daughter then? What did you find?
Wendy: Absolutely, because my daughter, like I said, was on the autism spectrum. Right before her third birthday, I have a girlfriend that's an occupational therapist that has worked with hundreds of autistic children and she said, "Your daughter, I think she's on the spectrum." So I went and got her tested and --
Christopher: Sorry, can I interrupt you there? So what would be the symptoms then? I'm not particularly familiar with the spectrum. So is this just something that's in theory that you've measured? You didn't see any behavior that's classically associated with autism?
Wendy: No, I did. Just not making a lot of eye contact, not responding to her name, her language wasn't developing, and sometimes people can brush it off thinking, "Oh, my daughter is a late bloomer," because children develop at different rates. And also because she was an early developer. She had 50 words by the time she was one, and so --
Christopher: Oh, wow!
Wendy: -- I kept having this thing in my mind that -- I wasn't rewriting the map in my mind, so to speak, because my daughter was ahead. She was ahead in a lot of markers.
But then, I feel because of the vaccinations I was giving her -- I started at six months but I felt like shortly thereafter she ceased progressing, and from one to two years old she just stayed at the same language level. She'd learn a new word and then she would forget it, and there wasn't any progression and then she wasn't as responsive. She wasn't responding to her name. There were some signs. I don't know. I was worried but I just kept thinking, "Well, she's getting a little bit better, a little..." It just was very small, incremental steps in her language.
So finally, I had to face the music and get her tested. But I stopped vaccinating her at 18 months, and I, of course, was one of those parents who are so gung-ho. "You have to vaccinate. I think it's irresponsible if people don't vaccinate." And lo and behold, my child was one of the one's that was vaccine-injured.
[0:45:05]
So once I started getting her into special-ed pre-school, I started doing the hair mineral analysis and she wasn't too imbalanced, but she had a ton of aluminum and aluminum is a neurotoxin that is in vaccinations. They use it now instead of mercury as a preservative and an adjuvant to irritate the immune system so it responds to the dead or attenuated virus in the vaccination. She had tons of aluminum.
So I put her on my Mineral Power program and every single hair test, the aluminum was off the charts. She just had tons of aluminum and it causes learning delays and whatnot. So needless to say, over time she has improved tremendously. She is fully talking now, fully engaged, emotional, eye contact. She's still a little bit behind in her speech but she cannot be considered autistic at this point. She has a speech delay at this point.
Christopher: How can you know for sure that the aluminum came from the vaccines though? I mean, I just realized that the so-called "natural" deodorant -- I just didn't read the label. I've been smearing this thing in my -- it just looks like a mineral stick, right? You can get this from Amazon. They get really good reviews. People say, "Oh, yes, it's a natural alternative," but actually has a ton of aluminum in it and I've been smearing that in my armpits every day. So how do you even know where the aluminum has come from?
Wendy: I don't. I know she got some from me because I had a lot of aluminum. Everyone has aluminum. It's the most common element in the earth's crust. It's in air, food and water. You can't avoid it. But I also know that vaccines all have aluminum, but I think there's other things -- there's lots of ingredients in vaccines that can cause brain inflammation and other problems. It's very well established. On my own podcast, I had Dr. Sherri Tenpenny. She's got a site called "The Vaccine Research Library." There are 6,000 studies that show the correlation between vaccines and injury and death.
So I don't know a hundred percent. That's just as a mother, my intuitive sense absolutely was not 100% from the vaccinations but I suspect because she was so ahead, having those 50 words by the time she was one, and because of the -- soon after I started the vaccinations, her development ceased and didn't progress, and when I stopped the vaccinations again about six months later, she started to improve again. So I can't say a hundred percent but it's just my feeling. It was definitely a contributor.
Christopher: Okay. So what advise would you give me then? Ivy actually hasn't done -- I don't know if I should say this or not, but she hasn't actually done any vaccines at all yet and it's not really like I've decided that's the right thing to do. It's more that we just haven't really done anything yet. So what would your advice to me be?
Wendy: Well, I don't want to advise anyone on that because it's a very personal choice, because there is a real risk in not vaccinating.
Christopher: Yeah, of course.
Wendy: People do die from diseases that are completely preventable from vaccinations, but children also die from getting vaccinations. So I think it's one of those things -- I did write an article on my website called "Vaccines Cause Chronic Immune System Dysregulation" and I believe that vaccines, because they improperly stimulate our immune system in ways that are not natural, that over time -- in the U.S. we're expected to do 36 mandatory vaccines by the time a child is six years old. So that is going to introduce a lot of toxin into the body and stimulate the immune system in a way that's not natural, and I feel that over time, people develop certain kinds of illnesses from the immune system not being stimulated properly like autoimmune diseases, cancer, allergies and things of that nature. I go into the exact mechanism of how that works in the article.
So that's my personal belief. So I never will vaccinate myself or my child or my dogs based on what I know, but that's not the right choice for everyone. Some people, that's the right choice for them. So it's a very personal decision that people have to make, but I urge people to get educated about vaccinations because some of them are not necessary; like Gardasil for HPV, completely worthless and is killing hundreds of perfectly healthy young women. But there are some that are maybe more -- it might be a good idea to get if you're deciding to vaccinate.
So again, it's a personal decision. I urge people to go on Dr. Sherri Tenpenny's website -- she's one of the foremost experts on vaccinations and injury -- and just do your homework.
[0:50:05]
Christopher: Okay. I will. And then I want to just get back to the Mineral Power program. Can you talk about some of the outcomes you've seen? Can you pick an example and show me some -- tell me about some before-and-after effects of doing the program.
Wendy: Yes. Well, I know one of the biggest things that people love by doing the program are relieving brain fog because our brain just -- they don't function if they don't have the right nutrients. It needs zinc and B12 and iron and other nutrients and healthy fats, and when we get rid of the aluminum and the copper and other metals that are interfering in the brain's function, people can start thinking again. They can start having conversations again. The brain starts working. So for me, that was truly profound in how much better my brain started working.
Additionally, people had all manner of health conditions reversed because a lot of diseases and health conditions are disease labels or these labels that people -- many physicians and health practitioners have to have a label to give a treatment or a medication but most diseases have the same underlying cause, which are nutrient and mineral deficiencies and heavy metal and chemical toxicities. Not all of them but the majority of them, so all manner of health conditions and symptoms are reversed by doing this type of program.
I had one client that had vitiligo, which is an autoimmune disease that attacks the skin and turns it white, and within three months on the program, her vitiligo, at least on her trunk, started disappearing because once the immune system is fed and the body is fed and you start getting rid of toxins that make the immune system go awry and attacking the body, once you remove some of these things and feed the immune system, it just calms it down and it stops attacking the body. It's the same mechanism that happens with Hashimoto's.
When people start doing the infrared sauna in killing infections off on their body, increasing their body temperature and inducing this fever that kills off all this crud in the body and detoxing all these metals and chemicals and killing parasites, et cetera, it has a profound effect on the body. The body can just start working again once you remove these hindrances to metabolic function and give the body the nutrients it needs to function.
Christopher: And then so presumably, you're working on digestive health at the same time for that person. They probably have GI symptoms too, right?
Wendy: Yeah, absolutely. Most do, or they at least at bare minimum have impaired digestion. So even if they are eating a healthy diet, they're not able to assimilate the nutrients. So everyone's digestive system needs a little bit of work so I provide supplements for that, and the coffee enemas and infrared saunas really help with that as well.
Christopher: Interesting. Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time today. This has been a very interesting conversation. I've got lots of homework to go and do. There's a ton of work for me. So where can people find -- is Liveto110.com -- is that the best place to find you?
Wendy: Yes, Liveto110.com is where you'll find -- I've got a weekly article, a weekly "Live to 110" podcast episode. I have a weekly recipe, a Modern Paleo recipe. My book will be out next year. It's "The Modern Paleo Survival Guide" all about diet, lifestyle and detox, and lots of info about detox on my website as well.
I also have a cooking show, The Modern Paleo Cooking Show, so lots of resources for people to improve their health absolutely free. And I have -- like I said, my Mineral Power program, you can find it at Mineralpower.com -- you can find it at Liveto110.com also -- but I think it's one of the most profound programs that I have found to help reverse disease and improve people's health.
Christopher: Wow! It's really inexpensive as well. Am I right in thinking I can do this thing for $300?
Wendy: Yeah, it's not that expensive. I mean, you have to buy supplements on top of that every month so it can get a little bit pricey, but it's very affordable. It doesn't have to cost a lot of money. You don't have to do thousands of dollars in testing. We just see where the body chemistry is at and supplement to correct it.
Christopher: Brilliant. Okay.
Wendy: Yeah.
Christopher: Okay. Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for giving your time today. I really appreciate it.
Wendy: Thank you so much. It was great to have me on the show. I appreciate it.
Christopher: Okay. Cheers, Wendy.
Wendy: Bye-bye.
[0:54:39] End of Audio
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