you hello and welcome to the wellness plus podcast I'm your host Karina Rachel and I'm joined today by Michelle Norris she is the co-founder and CEO of REO FX thank you so much for being here with me today of course thank you so much for having me yeah so my husband Keith he was the another co-founder of pillow effects decided quite some time ago it's been probably close to maybe 16 years back when it was dial-up when you we didn't have high-speed Internet he was online just talking to at the time Rob wolf and who didn't have his book out yet by the way Rob wolf and art Devaney and talking to them online because he was coaching a coach through he's always done some type of coaching some type of body building that type of thing he's done that all of his life and so he was working with a wrestling coach and was trying to find some dietary things that would help his wrestlers kind of get an edge and Keith's always been very fascinated by nutrition and the ability to really change your body through what you're eating and how you how do you train and that type of thing so he was online talking to rob and art and they were telling him about this Paleo diet and so oddly enough he thought well this is really interesting but before he was gonna pass it on to the wrestling coach he wanted to try it out for himself so he started down the path of paleo he said this all makes sense and everything so he started it for himself he was probably paleo for the better part of a year before he finally convinced me to try it out at the time chef my specialty is Italian food made my own pizza and pasta dough that kind of thing and we believed that we ate healthy we didn't eat a lot of fast food we didn't eat a lot of junk food but what was happening was we did have a lot of refined carbohydrates in our diet pasta the pizza dough even though it was homemade and from good quality ingredients we were not eating healthy so when Keith decided to go ahead and try this out what was interesting is that he has a hereditary form of high blood pressure and the doctors were telling him if we don't get this under control we're gonna have to put you on some type of medication and everything he tried everything he reduced salt he'd all of the things he reduced his caffeine intake stopped drinking any type of alcohol nothing changed it and so when he started on paleo at the time he was where he worked they did a blood draw every 58 days the blood bank would come and they'd do a blood drive and so every 58 days he would give blood and the nurses would before they do your take your blood they always check your blood pressure wellthis after he had been paleo I think probably about three or four weeks at this point he goes to give blood they take his blood pressure and they generally gave him a lecture before they would take his blood she starts to move on and he goes what hold on just a minute what was my blood pressure and she says 120 over 80 and he goes can you check that again cuz he thought there was something wrong and so she checks it again and she's really irritated and she goes it's 120 over 80 and he's like okay so it's kind of anecdotal but he's like this is the first thing that he notices this is a big change then he started really noticing that he came out of the food coma the fog where he was constantly needing to eat he had to eat several times a day every couple of hours he would get real low blood sugar would start getting the trembling the shaking would get very hangry in fact our kids used to tease him and say dad are you blo blood Chickering do you need something to eat anyway we constantly carried around snacks with us because he needed to eat so often and so that was his first clue that this this Paleo diet was something for him so he started doing a lot of research and obviously talking to Rob Rob celiac Rob's talking to him about the celiac piece of it and he keeps telling me I really think every time literally every time I ate I had really bad stomach cramps and felt awful was just very sick and constantly in a fog felt very dazed lethargic not a lot of energy I had been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome IBS which is irritable bowel syndrome fibromyalgia and I had also been diagnosed with early onset rheumatoid arthritis sixteen years ago so I was 36 is that right Wow yeah yes it was a lot and so um he he he's not one of those people that'll beat you over the head with something so he would just mention it every once in a while whenever I would say oh man I really don't feel good or whatever he would say I think he might have the celiac thing you should get it checked out and the other piece of that was that he stopped eating anything that I made that was not would not fall into a Paleo diet so he would start making his own dinner so if I was making anything with pasta or pizza or anything like that he'd make his own food and so he had been paleo like I said further about the better part of a year and I was making one of our kids was having a birthday or something and so I'm there I am I'm making you know pasta I'm making all kinds of pizzas and he's over there making his own dinner and I finally said to him you're like never gonna have my pizza or pasta again are you and he said no and I really think that you have celiac and you get it checked out and I went okay so that was finally the I finally did it for me to get to check it out so I went and I actually got tested and the endocrinologists that I went to told him all my symptoms and everything and he really believed that I probably was celiac at the time that they tested they didn't test for the right antibodies and so I I came up negative and so he said look everything that you're saying sounds about right so I'd like to do a biopsy on your colon and and check for sure and I was like and while he's doing this this is one of the things beside things that makes me laugh now he's literally falling asleep while he's talking to me I'm not even joking like he was nodding off in the middle of speaking to me and it wasn't like he was listening to me he was actually talking and he just kept falling asleep and I kept thinking I don't want this dude cutting into my colon but the other part of it too was I didn't understand why is the next step invasive why not just remove this from my diet see how that works so I went home talked to Keith and I went paleo and literally three weeks into paleo everything was gone um I had no symptoms of fibromyalgia chronic fatigue fibra or aryl bowel syndrome any of that the other thing was when I went back into the doctor there was no sign of RA at all none which meant I was misdiagnosed because RA doesn't go away it goes into remission and so so I was misdiagnosed and that's I think for me one of the telling signs of how bad chronic inflammation can be to your system that it can actually give you a false diagnosis of a very difficult disease so right and maybe you know that's kind of like like you said it's not something that you're going to one day work now you just need to get used to this mm-hmm but how many other people are out there right and this is the other piece of it how many of them are on our a medication that shouldn't be that's that's the part that gets me so I I'm fortunately for me number one on any medication um I I was on lots of other medication for migraines and that type of thing so one of the things that that happened to first was that all of these were gone all of these symptoms were gone then there was I had not even recognized it it had not actually registered that I had a problem but I had a low back pain that I did wasn't really cognizant of but it was there so it was part of my normal life and so it was something that we we just start believing is normal and that's part of our our life and and what-have-you and that was gone that was that was another thing that was like wow okay then what was really interesting is at the time you know women that are on the sad Dyer at the standard American diet tend to yo-yo when they decide to diet they can they can drop low whatever and so you tend to have all kinds of sizes of clothes in your closet which I did I had everything from the size 6 to a size 12 and you don't even know or recognize when you're transitioning up and down that scale of size and so I was trending back down and didn't recognize it and just thought this is normal this is what what happens this is what I do and so um our son played select baseball and he had they had been offseason for probably 12 weeks or so I had probably at this point been paleo for probably six or seven weeks something like that and we had their first game of the season and showed up and all the parents hadn't seen me for you know 12 weeks and they were just like oh my god you look amazing you've like lost so much weight you look so healthy you looks you know so vibrant what what are you what are you doing I hadn't done anything I was I mean I literally had not dieted because if I decided to diet I would lose weight but I didn't even make that conscious decision I just was eating paleo and and it's funny so one of the things that that really got me was during the time that I was paleo originally paleo before before all the parents on the team saw me I was pissed I was angry that I had to remove these foods from my diet in order to be healthy and I was in a bit of denial because I kept believing well at some point I'll put these back into my diet and I'll figure that out it'll happen I'll just be able to do it and so so I was in total denial and I I was a food writer I wrote for several websites and did a lot of recipe development and continued that even after I was paleo continued doing recipe development for websites that would be considered part of the sad diet and so I only enough when this day came where all the parents saw me and were like oh my god you look amazing what have you done and I registered that I had literally done nothing I was just eating paleo that's kind of know starving myself but that's pretty much what I did prior to that and so when when that registered to me I was like oh my gosh this is information that could help people Keith's always jokes that that was the day a paleo evangelist was born because at that point it was like oh my god this can actually make people not only make people healthy but you know help them in that weight-loss journey and everything so it was it was crazy so I immediately stopped writing for the other websites and started my own website at that way so it's just incredible there's so many people out there that ya know it's definitely a lifetime for me now um I I will I cheat every one small I will have something I don't because I'm not triggered anymore as much as I was back then because I'm not continuing to constantly do I fortunately for me I was at one point told that I was borderline celiac by a doctor turns out that's not true and you can't be borderline you're either are or you aren't and so even in you know knowing having as much knowledge as I had being told that along the way as was something that was really interesting so I was told I was borderline celiac turns out I'm not I have a gluten sensitivity and clearly it causes chronic inflammation for me but I can have gluten and not die but it will cause me all kinds of problems sometimes I choose it depends on if it's something that's going on a big you know celebration or something like that I might have a little bit I try not to very often and and the thing is is that there are times where you're it's gonna happen accidentally you're gonna get gluten and so I constantly carry gluten pills with me in event but but for the most part I'm no I'm happy I don't have any issues what's interesting so a lot of people will say oh I could never give up pasta I could never give up pizza I could never give up bread and I would say to you if I can do it anybody can because those were my three go twos on everything with regard to you know comfort food with what made me happy or what I you know you the foods that that I identified with as you know just my social interactions with family and with celebration and all of that stuff those totally are what I identified with and now I actually prefer the gluten-free counterparts the zoodles for instance I prefer those over over having pasta anyway and I think they taste better they're obviously a lot healthier for you and they don't give you that that food coma that fog that just that also that feeling of having bloating right and so I prefer them now and yeah it's not something that I'm I'm in denial about anymore clearly like your experience with the low back pain we're like you weren't even really accepted but their situation is unchanging so I think putting it like oh would you trade pasta and bread and all those things feeling better you could have ever imagined deal again interestingly we have somebody on the podcast recently and they sped me among my patients people are more likely to is probably more than anyone realizes yeah and I completely agree with you there so that goes to show you and you actually have a health professional telling you that the addiction for sugar and refined carbohydrates is so much higher than cigarettes totally believe that this does not even faze me - I mean I definitely believe that that is probably one of the biggest things that was hardest for me to get over so I I gave up the pizza and pasta mmm not not readily but I did it and I of course didn't die or anything and I you know I didn't get in a you know big huge depression over it I was pissed but I was I was not you think that these are gonna be painful painful things and the in reality though definitely the trade-off is so much better but the thing that took me the longest was to get rid of the sugar it took me a long time that was not overnight it was probably a good six months so I was I should say I was mostly paleo for those but I was still drinking dr. pepper and what have you I still had sugar in my coffee what I did do was switch what I was doing so it did help me lose the white and it did help me feel better pretty immediately was I switched the sugar in my coffee for originally the first thing I switched to was raw sugar then I switched when I found out that there was coconut sugar and this was a long time ago this was like the very very very beginning coconut sugar was like not prevalent and but I found out that there was this thing called coconut sugar and that it actually had some nutrient value and so I started using the coconut sugar instead of sugar in my coffee now I was weaning down but it took me quite a while and I switched from having sodas to I switched over that it's about the same time that I also went I decaffeinated I stopped drinking caffeine found out that it was one of the triggers for my migraines and everything so I which actually I'll get back to that in a minute because there's an interesting aside to that but so I was doing decaffeinated the or the caffeine free coke at the time because there was not anything else that had caffeine free that that it was appealing to me I didn't really care for sprite or 7up and so so switch to that and then I when I found that there were that I could do like my own kind of like make my own simple syrup with the coconut sugar and and so then I started switching to soda water with that and then weaned that down to nothing so that now I drink I love like soda water with nothing just a little squeeze of lime or lemon in it and and but it took a long time it took a good six months to get to that it took six months to get me where I was not I don't do any sugar whatsoever in my coffee anymore so really really super crazy about that and that whole thing and it's the addictive nature of what those are and the thing is is that the food manufacturers know this they know that they use our DNA against us I mean that's just what they do and so when they marry really good marketing with the fact that they manipulate and they may facture foods to use our own DNA in our wiring against us it's kind of hard to overcome engineers yes and just you know I started really Dean for what it was my money to these companies that basically rather see us all be stick when you start changing your diet you start becoming aware of the difference like emotional attachments you have to food and when your stress or whatever it would be like one thing that you always gravitate towards right a little bit about you know what is you know what is the Paleo diet yeah I can talk about that so um my are we run along paleo and primal and so the difference between paleo and primal is that paleo no dairy primal dairy if your body can tolerate it and there's a lot of people that cannot tolerate dairy but there's a caveat to that there's a lot of people that believe that they are lactose intolerant which is not actually correct what's happening to a lot of people actually a good majority of people as far as dairy is concerned is that they probably if they have any issue it's not necessarily the lactose it's the casein but the other part of that the other piece of that is it's also the processing so we suddenly decided in the name of shelf life that we wanted to start ultra patch pasteurizing our dairy not only that then we also homogenized it the and then so what these two things do is they destroy all the good bacteria that is in dairy and then we fortify it by putting in synthetic vitamins which your body does not recognize and that that typically is what people believe is lactose intolerance it's really the intolerance to synthetic vitamins that have been added back to that that dairy so there's that piece there are people that are lactose intolerant and casein intolerant but a lot of times what we find is that if they moved to raw dairy which is very difficult in a lot of states to get in the state of Texas it is legal except that you have to go to the farm to get it you can't just go into the store and buy it um there are low heat pasteurization and you can get it non homogenized which is great in the stores the problem is you still have the pasteurization and but generally as a rule those are those are great alternatives and what we find is that a lot of people that try that tend to not have a problem so getting back to paleo and primals so both of them though although primal wiles dairy and paleo does not both of them are removing all processed foods all added sugars all grains legumes soy and then there's some you know there's a lot of you know I don't know controversy that's probably not the right word but a lot of discussion and debate over whether or not starches are safe and so personally I believe that's a N equals one every person's got to do their own research and figure out if if starches work for you because on a lot of levels they can be very beneficial particularly if you do a lot of working out those can be very helpful to a person that works out because they actually need the carbs finding the right ones is what's really the key is finding out are you a person that can tolerate rice for instance I cannot my blood sugar gets my insulin is totally shot to hell if I have rice I don't recover well from it so I don't eat rice and my alternative is cauliflower rice and that type of thing where's other types of rice and ricing other vegetables and that type of thing potatoes sweet potatoes those are all things that you need to test and see so I do well on red potatoes which are the new little new potatoes or the fingerling potatoes or the purple potatoes don't do okay on sweet potatoes which is weird so you would think that I would do fine but I get an insulin shot from eating those and don't recover so but that's basically it is really just eating Whole Foods whole real foods and when you eat whole real foods you shop the outer perimeter of a grocery store if you're at a grocery store it's better to go to a farmers market know who your food comes from if you can but shopping that outer limit and only going down the aisles when you need paper products or whatever you know some types of supplies um and you know the thing is is that I would also go further as far as what I believe paleo and primal are and that is not just removing the toxins from your foods but removing the toxins from your life and that is removing toxins that in the way that you clean your house because there's a lot of toxins in the cleaning chemicals that we use in our in our homes then there is the toxins that we put on our bodies every day which is you know soaps and shampoos and canoe and then for ladies we put on makeup and they say on average that the average woman puts 86 toxic chemicals on her body and face per day 86 and so that and the thing is is that at the end of the day we have so much stuff going on in the environment we have so much pollution and that type of thing our food supply is not what it was before we back when our grandparents were coming up they had a good food supply they their foods were nutrient-dense ours are not we have soil depletion because we're mono cropping we have a lot of toxic runoff and then of course you take into account that we have lots of pesticides that we put on our foods and we have inhibitors that either inhibit growth or bugs or some type of thing like that but also that are we add a lot of chemicals and hormones to animals and so in our opinion the what we call a confined animal feeding operation is what factory farming is and we believe that that should be completely abolished it is something that is not good for our planet it's not good for us but at the end of the day you know it's there's just so many things that are going on and we just have to really be careful about you know the toxins that we have because we're getting lots of people to have a lot of toxic overload on their bodies and their bodies can't overcome it we're in a day and age to where like I particularly do not have my gallbladder anymore if I would have known back then what I know now I would never have let them take my gallbladder we have all of our we have all of our organs for a reason and just removing one because there's an issue is a little bit in my opinion very what's the word and it's not just ridiculous it's kind of in my opinion it's it's um I can't think of the word I'm anyway medieval in a way we remove these organs instead of fixing the problem that's causing the issue and the thing is is that lots of these things I could have fixed the problem if I had been given dietary advice to change what I was eating I would have been able to fix that problem on its own your body is miraculous it is an amazing and lack of a better word machine it's not a machine but it is this amazing thing and it has the ability to heal itself of all kinds of things cancer included if it's given proper nutrition if it's given all the proper things that it needs to fuel itself it can overcome and this is the thing a lot of people don't realize this but almost every day you have cancer in your body almost every single day you have cancer in your body of some kind and every day your body fights and gets rid of it your body is capable of that the thing is is that there comes a point where the toxic overload is too much for your body to continue to fight it and that's why we ultimately end up with disease we end up with cancer heart disease obesity diabetes Alzheimer's all of these things are huge contributors because of the fact that we end up with this toxic overload from the foods that we eat so that's why I take that further and say it's it's removing all toxins because all the load ends up ultimately causing a problem so you could be this is the thing I I've been paleo for a long time I just battled skin cancer last year and so um the thing is is that my body was able to naturally overcome it I didn't have surgery I didn't do chemo I did not do radiation which by the way cracks me up because the initial dermatology office that I went to i'll it will remain nameless right now was very irritated with me because i would not rush to surgery I told him hold on give me five minutes to figure out what this is and what I can do about it I'm not ready for you to just take me cut me open and start giving me chemo and doing all of that stuff and so and I'm sorry not chemo radiation and um so I they fired me as a patient because I refused to just go in and do surgery I chose a natural path and the thing is is that I was cleared of skin cancer in three months because I chose this natural path and I chose to do the things that my body needed it to do instead of choosing to have them cut into me and so the thing is is that we we I think that a lot of times we allow the medical establishment to scare the out of us to do what they want us to do because at the end of the day obviously money but at the end of the day - they aren't about they're about sick hair not about health care they're not about prevention there are about maintaining and managing disease that's what the system that we have is and the thing is is that that system was initially set up we needed it because at the time that it was set up we had communicable diseases and they needed to be taken care of and and what happened is of course pharmaceuticals came in and so now we take a pill for everything we take a pill because we have you know we are depressed or because we have impotence or we whatever the case may be we we've got depression we have all of these things so every there's a pill for everything it seems like and so the problem is is that we're very very quick to go ahead and say pop the pill and this is I'm not I'm not preaching at anybody I'm just this I'm with you which was a piece that I said oh and this isn't a side that I want to tell you about a little bit later is that one of my triggers for migraines was caffeine so I decided to go off caffeine might have you well I was on medications for a long time since I was 17 from since I'm 17 until 2016 I came off all medications what's interesting about that is that my medications I took a daily medication for for migraine prevention then I took another medication if a migraine was coming on to try to stave it off and then I took another medication actually I took two Daly's now that I say that I'm sorry two daily medications then the middle medication to try to stave went off and then a full-blown triptan if and I had a prescription for three different trip tans because you're only allowed so many trip tans per month and so I would have to switch because my migraines were coming so fast and so hard and so often and so and you couldn't take two trip dance within two days of each other because then you could end up with serotonins syndrome so I had all this medication that I was taking and turns out after I came off of all the medications and I also did cranial Botox treatments for migraines it seemed to help a little bit but they didn't they weren't them and all Bo I kind of got control of my migraines once I went paleo but I still had them because I was stolen medication but as soon as I finally let go of that medication all my migraines have stopped it's because it's perpetuating this situation it's perpetuating and putting you into this loop of you know a lot of people you hear about rebound headaches from particularly acetaminophen over-the-counter drugs that type of thing you hear about rebound headaches well if those can do it why in the world wouldn't these highly highly toxic and highly potent drugs do that well they do absolutely did so everything that I was on was perpetuating the situation that I was in and I figured out caffeine's not really the trigger caffeine with those medications was the trigger because now I can do caffeine and I'm totally fine it never causes a headache for me anymore 17 and I'm 52 now but I've been migraine free for two years now so all of that that's that's the system we have and so everything is about what pill can we give you to try to take care of this the problem is is that the pills never end because you end that pill ends up causing something else that you end up so you end up in this cow cade where they said that the average person in the United States is on oh no doubt no doubt well and this is the thing doctors if they're lucky get six weeks of Pharmacy pharmaceutical training while they're in school now sick we're talking six weeks out of a 12 to 18 year education six weeks and then that's what they do so it's interesting because this doctor actually I was on a panel with him not this not not that long ago and he said we are trained for a five minute solution well what do you think you're getting in five minutes it's going to come off of notepad and they're going to sign it at the end and you're gonna take it to a pharmacy that's your solution and the problem is that's not a solution at all that's a band-aid and it's a band-aid on a gunshot wound right and it's certainly not that all pharmaceuticals are bad now there are so many instances where well and when you also see that we're the only country that allows pharmaceutical companies to actually advertise directly to consumers which is unbelievable it is really unconscionable because at the end of the day you're taking away the opportunity for this person to actually get well because we all want the quick fix and so when we see a commercial that says you know which by the way everybody seems to ignore all the disclaimers at the end that like end in death and all of these things that come with a lot of these pharmaceuticals is they just all they hear is the quick fix oh this is gonna fix my problems this is gonna fix my problems no it's going to mask your problems and guess what more than likely nine times out of ten gonna make your problems worse and so it's it's really unconscionable that our country allows pharmaceutical companies to do direct consumer advertising it's like said it's not and there's no other countries that allow that so you know what else are we to expect it's gonna happen and the thing is is that at the end of the day the whole system that was set up like I said before was I was set up to try to get rid of the communicable diseases well we did and now this system is broken and doesn't work for what we have now we have what we call diseases of modernity or diseases of well I should it's interesting I was just an ancestral health symposium and they kept saying it's not really diseases of modernity what's happening is there's just this explosion of these diseases that are now there there that the modern problem is what they are so cancer obesity diabetes Alzheimer's heart disease all of these things are all the rise and in our children which is even more disappointing and more upsetting but it's it's really interesting we the system that we have isn't set up to fix that it's set up to maintain it and to just right when you start talking to people a lot of times they receive multiple diagnoses of a lot of different things so I wonder you know in your situation so much was resolved by changing oh yeah I I would imagine the my entire diet was horrible from the time I was 17 the other thing is I think that the the initial perpetuation of the migraines was the fact that I was put on the pill so I'm also introducing a synthetic hormone into my body and my body's trying to figure out what the hell are you doing and what and thing is is it at the end of the day I'm so glad when I actually finally did get off of that medication I got off that medication after just I think I had only been on the medication for a couple of years but it in ended up inducing what they call cyclical migraines which is or sorry I'm trying to think of the word here right now menstrual migraines which so I had those addition and then of course you know you you put that all together with you know I'm a I'm a teenager I'm not eating I'm not sleeping right because you know we stay up all night long and do whatever and then if you know all of the other things that you add to that and so it's just really the whole thing is really interesting how the whole system is set up we we put girls on on preventative you know to contraceptives that are just so toxic I mean it's just not even funny I'm I really wished I would have known then what I know now because I would have never allowed that not that would have probably been a big piece of it for me but I know I've learned that now introducing to our system it disrupts our endocrine system right like our mood our sexual health you know everything you know you can start looking at like okay how many of the body systems rely on hormones and so you can think about you know not to mention the different endocrine disrupting chemicals from the plastics and fragrances I mean you just start your me my big flick aha moment was in college kind of learning about cancer and apoptosis and our bodies always stopping cancerous awesome it's not like you just randomly a cell becomes cancer people are under weight name me or like very much the same thing it's just really interesting well it's interesting that you bring that up because um the thing that I find interesting is that we have like you said so many hormones so many things in our foods and or anything that's where I don't know there some people have started to really take notice that particularly young girls you start seeing young girls younger and younger starting to have breasts starting to have menstruation that's not that's not normal that's because of the introduction of all the hormones into our food system and the thing is is that it's really difficult to get around any of that and free like we have endocrine disruptors and everything like the thing is is that soy is one of the largest endocrine disrupters in the in this country soy is in everything like you can't it's it's really difficult to avoid it and the thing is is that's actually that's actually something I'm allergic to which is interesting to me that it took me a long time to figure out that I was having problems because of the amount of soy that was in I think and you I don't know boy don't get we're just like going down a rabbit hole and I'm gonna I'm one of those people that just get so upset about the fact that we have the system that we have you know between swipe between all of the things the thing is this soy cheap it's a really cheap thing to put into our products and everything and and we're one of the only current countries that allows what we do some of the things that we allow into our food system they're not allowed in other countries and I'm not one of those people that's all tinfoil hat ish and conspiracy theory but at the end of the day a friend of mine said you cannot control a healthy and independent thinking citizenry but you can control one that's dependent and sick well I mean this is where we're headed and and it frustrates me because like I said before the system that we had for the medical system was something we needed back when when they first developed the medical school we needed it we don't need it anymore we needed a complete overhaul and our doctors need to learn to practice health care prevention not sick care and we just are not set up for that system and you brought up type-2 diabetes that they initially wanted to call it adult onset and the thing is is that yes that's a you can see that direct correlation from lifestyle to disease you can see that correlation particularly when it comes to diabetes what a lot of people don't know is that they call Alzheimer's type 3 diabetes so Alzheimer's can be completely prevented prevented it's just what are you doing to prevent it so I'm a big proponent of everybody knowing what your DNA is I have had my DNA done by 23andme unfortunately 23 and mean no longer does the full scale thing that they did a few years ago like I had done and I recently found out that I'm apoE 3 for well for people to understand what that is so there's a point 3/4 and apoe4 for both of those are the alleles for Alzheimer's my grandmother died of Alzheimer's complications at the age of 93 she had Alzheimer's for a good probably 16 years and so this is the thing now that I know that for most people and this is something that I'm gonna actually be talking about a lot at pelo FX this next year and bringing in some some people too because I think particularly because I've been paleo I have been kedo I've done all of that I've done high saturated fat well for people that are 83 4 or 4 4 that is actually not helpful for us so I have to watch my saturated fat intake so I can't have coconut oil on a normal regular basis I can't have butter like everybody else I can't have bacon fat and I also have another allele that's called GAD one that has a problem with glutamate so I have to really watch what I eat as far as meats and stuff are concerned because of the glutamine content because it's excitatory to the brain and so oddly enough I've been paleo and keto for all this time and Here I am and I've been relatively healthy but I started noticing that I had some issues and I ended up with a severe mold exposure that caused all kinds of hormonal problems so there's a lot of things in the environment that can cause real big issues and it caused a huge fluctuation in my hormones in the last couple of years well finding out that I'm a poly three-four helps me to know that okay my paleo diet has to be a modified Paleo diet I need to be a little bit more Mediterranean olive oil avocado oil avocados lots of lots of those is good for me but watching the rest of it so it's so I think that's probably one of the most key things besides having your blood drawn and having your hormones tested and having you know having a standard for what is your and I and I'm preaching this a lot mostly to young women because I wish I would have again wish I had that you know hindsight is 20/20 but knowing back in the day when I was actually relatively healthy that I could have had blood markers set up for now that I can be showing to doctors and saying hey this is what I look like when I was healthy this is what my blood looked like when I was healthy I don't have those benchmarks I wished I think that I did now my blood is tested every quarter I have my blood tested every single quarter to see where I'm at with hormones particularly because menopausal and all of that but the thing is is that if I didn't know those things if I didn't know my DNA I could still be doing detrimental damage to myself thinking I'm eating healthy and the thing is is that that's part of I think that we're very fortunate that we have the ability to take a look at our DNA and know it is that's the other part of it too is I don't think people need to stress over their DNA what they need to do is understand it that they're all switches your DNA is just a switch and it's a matter of whether you turn that switch on or you turn that switch off and right now I need to make sure I don't turn those switches on because I am at high risk for getting Alzheimer's and so doing everything that I can to make sure that I stay as healthy as long as possible is the last thing I want to do is be a burden to my family my husband or my children and because I have Alzheimer's when I could have prevented it I could have done things to change it and I didn't and the thing is is that I'm doing all of that now and I think that it behooves all of us to find out what are the things in our what are those switches that we need to make sure don't get turned on and do the work because it's work it's not easy but do the work to make sure that you don't become a burden to somebody else this is the thing is that we don't think anything of that we don't think of the fact that we at the end of the day we believe we've gotten this in our heads that we this the the road to death is a slow decline and that your body just starts deteriorating and that's just part of it and that's at the end of the day our the way we're supposed to live is we're supposed to live until the moment we die we are not supposed to go into the slow decline into deterioration it's not supposed to be that way and we've accepted that lie and that is a lie perpetuated by Big Pharma it's a lie perpetuated by our medical establishment that's not the way we were intended to go and so I'm doing as much as I can in my part and educating people to understand that your health is actually not just your right but your responsibility to take control of because you have to be your own health advocate because doctors don't have the ability to be your health advocate not that they wish you harm they don't by and large you know the majority of doctors out there are they got into becoming a doctor because they wanted to help people but at the end of the day most of them end up not doing that most of them end up making people very sick or perpetuating and keeping them in their illness instead of freeing them from that and you can be freed from it there's no reason to be a slave to it it's just you have to take responsibility you have to be the one that does the work and the thing is is that sometimes it's not easy I have thought doctors I fought my doctor for three months over my eye of hypothyroid and it was induced by the severe mold damage the severe mole I mean the severe mold exposure caused hormone damage to me that ended up causing a problem with my thyroid and I was arguing with him for three months of it and he kept checking my and this is the thing too is that I would have loved to have had my this is why I I say over and over get you blood drawn get your get your blood work know what your blood work is and the thing is is that if I had had my blood work from back in the day when I was healthy I could have showed it to him and showed him the difference and said this is when I'm healthy this is what my thyroid looks like when I'm healthy because that's the other piece of this is that the numbers that they use to determine whether or not you're sick or you're healthy are numbers based on people who are very sick not on people who are healthy so when they say average who wants to be average like I don't want to be average I want my health optimized I don't want to just settle for being average so when he comes in and he says all your numbers are average no that's not and we're all individual that's the other piece of this is we're individuals so what your TSH should look like for you that's normal for you may not be normal for me I may need a higher TSH I maintain it very much lower TSH it's just totally dependent on the individual and that's the problem is that we're moving in that direction to where we're doing customized medical and and what we're gonna start seeing is is customized healthcare and we're starting to see it happened because doctors are starting to catch on that oh crap this person is completely different than this person and the numbers they don't match well I was subclinical my numbers didn't they didn't look like I was but I had every symptom that there was and I knew without a doubt I had it and there was a nodule on my thyroid that's the dead giveaway you shouldn't have a nodule on your thyroid if you don't have a thyroid problem well um finally after three months my TSH started screaming and he was like oh yeah you're right I'm like well if you'd listened to me three months ago I was telling you you need to look at symptoms you need to look at the person you need to look at this person how are they feeling what is it that there I mean do they have no energy do they have is their hair falling out do they have thinning eyebrows all of these things that were happening to me weight gain that was unexplained and that I couldn't get rid of I mean all everything across the board hitting a wall at 3 o'clock in the afternoon feeling like sometimes I couldn't even get out of bed and so he wasn't he just kept treating the numbers instead of treating the person and that's something you have to fight for it when you are a patient and and it's not easy but it's worth it when you finally I feel amazing now I finally got all of the stuff that I needed and I'm feel amazing holistic approach to actually what they're experiencing now but what are the major events almost they went through and it's just really interesting how you know people that have kind of accepted their diagnosis or accepted their condition of health or whatever like you don't even necessarily think you know oh I'd really like to feel better that's where they're at and like there's nothing they can do but you're right you know now more than ever there are more resources for people to get that inside look I mean like it's just such an amazing thing we can see our blood see our genetics it's amazing how much insight you can gain just time knowing what's going on in your body and now we have more access to healthy foods we've ever had before more access to information and it's interesting even just looking on like YouTube is one example you know YouTube started exist like alternative to the mainstream media people can come out its spring speech you can say whatever you want and over the last couple years there's been this big move of censorship I mean it's basically like they've chosen what they like and the information that they like and if you have information they don't like third cutting your income we can see it even on our views so what's going on in their algorithm like our videos you know aren't getting views and so you know we've done well you know who is YouTube beholden to for content creators or their advertisers and unfortunately those advertisers are big pharma big food all of those things that are big pockets channel it's kind of trying to you know offer natural alternatives for so of course they don't like us right if you've got political views that they don't like I mean there's just so many content creators that have been virtually silenced so it is really up to the consumer up to the person for us to you know look outside of the mainstream because you're not gonna find this information on a major television network right and unfortunately even on YouTube unless you really know how to go and look for it now like even their YouTube algorithm is shifting towards just the information they want people to see right and I think in a lot of ways you know people start feeling you know overwhelmed and it's like oh look there's just nothing that I can do from my perspective I really see it as like hey now there's there's more we can do than ever yeah we have all of these different resources we can learn about our bodies learn about food and different dietary approaches you know I think it'd be fun to do another podcast on like paleo recipe maybe you can shine a little light you know because you know I just try to help people see it not as limitations of all these things right like let's look for you know where's the springboard then we can move into really taking care of ourselves and helping our bodies do what they're supposed to do we just be healthy be energized and there's unfortunately in this modern age where everyone's like you're saying instant gratification everyone's just busy all the time rushing around and it's like well you know that's the thing too is that we we take better car care of our cars than we do ourselves we put more into our cars than we do ourselves and I think that's really unfortunate because if this is the only vehicle you're getting it's it so you don't get to trade it in and get a new one you this is the one you get but we don't take care of it because we don't see it like that at all we don't see our health as an investment we see it as a cost and your health is definitely an investment and at the end of the day if you don't invest in your health trust me you're gonna be really sorry down the road because then it's gonna read thats when it's gonna become a cost and you no longer can invest it's like you're missing out on the shot to invest in it right now so you either invest in it you're gonna pay now or you're gonna pay later you're not getting out of it so figure out which one is more important to you and you know I want to go back to something you said a little while ago you were talking about all of these different things these different stressors on our bodies and that is something that is so interesting to me because all of these things that we start creating disease from is all ends up being stressors its environmental its toxic its whatever it the case may be and the other part of that is is that we were we're meant to be these species that we can become superhuman in a just at the flip of a switch because that's we evolved to become so if you suddenly had a predator after you you were you're a caveman and you suddenly have you know t-rex bearing down on you you suddenly became superhuman because your system kicked into gear and gave you what we call the flight-or-fight response and that's either you're gonna be able to stay and fight you're not gonna fight the t-rex you're gonna run so that's the flight and the thing is is that unfortunately our bodies in are now in a constant state of flight or flight and the problem is is that we weren't made to be in a constant state of it it was supposed to be this boost occasionally when needed when there was something that was we were in danger it was a way for your body to be able to help you get yourself out of that danger and for the species to survive and so the problem is now we're constantly in that state because of all the stressors and all the mental stressors that we put on ourselves of having you know that big corporate job and keeping that corporate job and not sleeping and working all night and being under you know artificial light and constantly in this state of stress all the time we're constantly in a state of stress so our adrenals are shot to hell that's that's begins that piece then like you said we have doctors can't don't ask for all what what traumatic things have you gone through or what have you what have you been through because at the end of the day all disease ultimately stems from trauma that we store in our body and so we don't have animals have this way of releasing trauma they throw themselves on the ground they shake they do whatever you see this is something that's been really interesting to me lately my dogs I love when I pet them that every time I pet them they shake and I was like why is that so I went and I checked it out and it's because you've excited them too much they need to shake that off and so I that's an interest so then I get really disappointed if I should them and then they don't shake and so I'm like oh I didn't excite you so the thing is is that we don't have any way to release that we don't release it so we hold it in our body and then ultimately down the road because we don't take care of our body we don't we don't exercise properly we don't sleep properly we don't feed ourselves properly we eat junk we do all of these things we high-stress jobs we're constantly it ends up that that trauma ends up ultimately becoming disease and so ah that's another thing is that we we need to seek alternative forms of therapies that are not traditional and the thing is is that you know Eastern medicine has been doing this first centuries and there's people that have been surviving and thriving because of the fact that they have these therapies and modalities that they use so one of the things like doing chiropractic acupuncture massage EMDR therapies now I am a big fan of infrared and I do asana almost every single night and that's helping release the toxins that are caught up in my body and that you can't it's just very difficult as particularly when you're so busy to do the things that you need to do so we just need to do we need to take care of ourselves because like I said this is the only vehicle you get here so why are you taking care of your you know little Ford Mustang but you aren't taking care of this because this is a Ferrari I mean it's amazing machine it's a Ferrari it it does everything for you if you're good to it if you take care of it you're looking for a mechanic that you really trust and interestingly the relationship with doctors is like completely upside down you know like you take it in whatever they say is just like very interesting and this is a thing we usually allow our insurance company to dictate who our doctor is yeah we don't usually choose our doctor ourselves we choose well go on and go oh well this one's close to me I'll go to this one and we don't actually shop for who actually fits us like I my the doctor I was using I no longer use I liked him at the beginning when I first started using him but when I realized that I was gonna have to fight him on everything that I needed became a problem for me and I ended up choosing a functional medicine doctor that I don't have to do that with that he's my partner and that's the problem is that we need to see doctors as our partners in that we can come in and we educate ourselves and we know what's happening in this and this vehicle and we can go in and go okay well she's breaking down she's not running properly this is what I'm seeing and this is what's happening and these are the things that you know I'm I'm feeling and that's the other thing is we don't trust ourselves and our bodies anymore we don't listen to our bodies and your body has its own diagnosis system it can tell you when it's having an issue and by the time it tells you that it's having an issue that issue is pretty far gone and so we shouldn't be waiting so when we initially first start feeling oh you know I'm kind of having it like this little tweak in my my right knee what's that go get it checked out immediately because that is an indicator that's a diagnosis that's that would be no different than your light coming on on your dash saying I need to be serviced it's the same thing but the problem is again we keep seeing this that our health as a cost and not as the investment that it is and like I said some point it stops being able to be an investment and it's gonna become a cost and it's gonna be one of the two you're not getting out of it it's one way or the other so choose which way you want to go and I would say this way it continues to allow you to be a free person to have quality of life to not be tied down to for one thing you see health care costs are doing nothing but skyrocketing and they there's no way around that considering the system that we're working with and the fact that we don't have a health care system we have a sick care system and you know Obamacare as much as it tried to do what it was to try to get insurance coverage for everyone that's really not gonna work at the end of the day either so and we don't even still know what that whole system is gonna be even the people that wrote the law don't know what it's gonna be so my thought process is try to not be part of that system because we don't know what it's ultimately gonna end up being and so I don't know that's that's my whole thing is you're gonna pay one way or the other just figure out which way you want to go do you want to try to keep yourself out of that system do you want to try to keep yourself healthy and free and have quality of life and not be on 24 different medications and worrying whether or not the medications are contraindicated for each other and all of that just like every peg in the same hole you learn about your body maybe it's blood testing or genetic testing to help you learn do you also mentioned you know chiropractic massage acupuncture with other pieces for people well this is the thing too I also believe that there are many pillars to health so you have obviously your physical health you have your mental health and I think those can be tied together quite a bit so you have your physical you have your mental you have your emotional health again tie those three three things together then you have your relational health then you have your financial health and then you have your spirits wealth and the thing is is that you I'm not one of those people so I'm a Christian I'm non-denominational Christian but I'm a very open Christian there are a lot of people that that are like well if you're a Christian you're just Christian and that's just the way it is and I just don't believe that I I believe that I believe that's my path I believe that's what works for me I believe it can work for a whole lot of people but I think I'm gonna say this in the words of the Dalai Lama get on the horse and ride and whatever that horse is for you if it's if it's Christianity if it's Buddhism if it's foul ism if it's whatever it is get on your horse and ride it and don't don't I just don't worry about what the thing is is that there are people that will be gravitating towards Christianity because whatever they see in me they're like oh I would like to have that or whatever that might be and there and there are people that are like no I don't have any belief in anything I think at the end of the day we all believe in something even if it's we think it's nothing so even if you think that there's no God you still have a belief I don't highly recommend that one but I believe that I just believe there's I think there's something a lot bigger than all of us and I and I think having a tie to that is is really important so I work in plant medicine quite a bit and I have done a lot of work over the last three years and it's completely changed my life and changed probably the trajectory of my life because I've been able - for me tap in to that divine source and really get connection that that tells me okay you're not on the right path this is your path and you need to head this direction and and and I believe that you need to find whatever that is for yourself and that nobody can tell you what that is that you have to you have to be that tells you it's very interesting how you know when people do take those to improve they're almost always they notice that improved emotional people start I think there's so much culture like bottling stuff up everyone's really like social media connected we don't really kind of communicate with people we don't talk about our emotions and our feelings and the things we go through and I think that like emotional bottling up in that spiritual I'm just kind of you know hey everything is is interconnected your emotional well-being and just you know I think in general people you know we feel overwhelmed we feel like there's just too much whatever it's like what can you do that helps you just kind of feel like you're taking the and you have some kind of swimming that grounds you or you can come back to it's like how do you handle that and not just bottle it up and let it you know yeah um you know there's so many pieces of that that I'm just like which one do I jump on because I you know we constantly have this debate over like you were talking a little bit earlier about nature over nurture and the thing is is that they both matter genetics and epigenetics matter they both do there's not one it's not one over the other they both matter and the thing is is at the end of the day we are so socially connected through social media and all that but we're not connecting which is big difference and we're not having relationships like we were intended to be we're of tribal people we need community we need people and that's that's another thing that's not healthy anymore is that we're and the thing is is that it's not like oh get rid of the technology that's not what I mean I think technology has its place it's no different than you know thing is it's like I'm also not one of those people that's like Oh screw all of Western medicine and pharmaceuticals obviously at the end of the day pharmaceuticals have had a place and and and I also would not you know Keith always says this I wouldn't want to break my leg in another country I'd want to break it here and I would you know we have shamans that we work with for oursa motional and spiritual health and everything but they're not who we would see if we broke a leg we're gonna go see a Western doctor I'm not gonna go see a chiropractor for a broken leg I'm gonna go and have it set and done all that there's a place for all of these things it's what's the perspective what's the proper place for that and I think once you start realizing that technology is great but it needs to be put in perspective and it needs to be used in a way that is healthy for you and not harmful and the thing is is that we tend to particularly as Americans take everything to the extreme and so instead of doing something like that we need to kind of step back off my friend Dallas Hartwig is less media more social and I totally yeah less media more social I totally agree with that because we end up tending to have these relationships through you know Facebook and what have you and and don't get me wrong I think that some of that has been really great because you get people connected through through that media that may not have found each other or whatever cuz I mean you think about it we can actually we could right this minute talk to people over in another country and then be part of this that's amazing that's incredible technology but at the expense of what and at the end of the day turns out that a lot of social media and everything is at the expense of our emotional and our mental and our spiritual health but when you start just recognizing that like 24 hours a day no Wi-Fi but I mean you can drawing in that factor than everyone's different so some people's bodies are not going to be negatively affected by those things are not affected in a apparent way mm-hmm but then there's other people whose bodies are just not going to be able to tolerate it all right and it's very interesting how you know we look at all this information and people feel overwhelmed they feel confused like oh ho I'm just gonna go get a pizza it was just too much for me I really see it as like the knowledge is power things like you know about this do something simple like turning your Wi-Fi router off at night when Disney was a recommendation that somebody gave recently you're on airplane mode when you guys leave you know all these technological devices I think it's important that we just recognize in addition to the social effects that we're getting from spending more time online and less time in social interactions with people do these devices there if I cannot help you harness in general anyways yeah and most of us are I think either in a room filled with computers or cell phones all day long if you're in a big office or something we just need to start recognizing that these things do have an impact on us at the same time there's really simple things we can do and outside more working for home sometimes bring off your electronic devices at night but that's just kind of one little piece that I think also you could be you know that same thing with a dude you know talking about the manufacturing of food and extending the shelf life more incredible technology you know what they've been able to do to food but at the same time it's come with this really big cost now we just need to back up and be like alright well maybe those you know canned foods and processed food that's great keep your you know wherever you're gonna be that you need those non-perishable foods handy because they're gonna potentially save your life one day yeah agreed I mean like one of the things you said earlier and the severe mold exposure it did affect Keith a little bit but not like it affected me so that's just the individuality of a person's system and what's happening and then the thing is is that he you know stress affects him very differently than it affects me and so you just have to be mindful and really tap into your body's knowledge on what it needs and and how it needs things to be because at the end of the day like I said this is the one vehicle you've got and it's an amazing one you know how are you going to treat it of course thank you so much for having me I appreciate it I thank all of you the loans plus podcast I hope that you will join us over on wellness plus TV where you can see the video versions of this podcast and of course you can visit XCOM to learn more about michelle and her incredible incredible elio event definitely want to throw into his pocket more with you so yes thank you all for listening and I look forward to having you on the program again .
Video Description:
Michelle Norris is the founder and CEO of Paleo f(x)™, the largest Paleo conference in the world. Her personal health issues and struggles with traditional medical orthodoxy inspired her to upend the way the world tackles health, wellness and prosperity. In this episode, she will sit down to detail how the Paleo diet changed her life, and how it can change yours too.
