Fermentationist Certification Program

Introduction to Summer Bach 0:00

Hey, welcome back folks. Today I have the distinct pleasure to introduce to summer bach. She's a trained herbalists certified in integrative nutrition through Columbia University. She was a raver in her early 20's. I'm not sure what that is, but it's probably, you know, some Cool thing and knowing summer as well as I do. Uh but she also had devastating allergies uh and when those emerges left her exhausted and hive ridden and she was only able to consume maybe about 30 foods without a reaction. And um you know, that's something that totally stumps the medical community and it's, I think it's right in the backyard of a good health coach, you know, so we invited somewhere on because she's got an amazing program in history and we're gonna have her tell us all about it. She's leveraged her background in microbiology and her fascination with the gut. She transformed her own health, obviously using wild probiotics in fermented foods and digestive bitters.

I know summer well enough to know she's got a lot more going than that. So, so sort of put your seatbelts on, we'll see what happens as we interview. But she now also, I wanna have her brag about her gut rebuilding program. It's called guts and glory apothecary online and um the whole phrase gut rebuilding probably came from summer thanks to summer and her efforts. Uh It's a cornerstone terminology in the health coaching field and you're looking at one of the original pioneers here folks. So summer, thank you so much for being here.

It's a real pleasure and I look forward to hearing more about your background first. Let's start with that, like, like what the hell is a raver? And what was going on back then? Well, first of all, thanks for having me here, I'm just thrilled that you've created this resource for everybody because I know how important it is. I mean, I started out from literally scratch and every bit of information can really help. So, um a raver, it's a partier, somebody who goes to raves, I used to go to raves all the time and it was fun, took a lot of drugs and I would say that really, um kind of, you know, that in conjunction with, like, the earlier trauma of my life, it just set me up to be super sick, like, it was one of the catalysts along the way.

And so, so how do you go from raver? Because, you know, look, we all parties, some of us harder than others, me, I've always been very competitive, you know, and so I thought I could party, like, you're not gonna have a party, me man, you know, we just call them parties, but but I get it. So, now tell me about the allergies

Early Life, Allergies, and Health Struggles 2:51

and things like that, how do you do have a, such a uh, robust lifestyle, let's call it and have allergies that couldn't have got, you couldn't have been getting along very well, Right? No, I mean, honestly, it was miserable. I, my eyes would swell up, the whites of my eyes would actually swell up um like, almost above the iris when it was really bad and I had sores on my nose and my mouth, I was bloated. I was overweight, I was just swollen and puffy all the time. And I had hives most the time somewhere on my body. I mean, I would just like eat something and break out in hives or I would touch something or smell something and break out in hives.

My body was so over reactive that I just I didn't function well. I mean, I was in a constant state of fight or flight all the time now that I look back, I realized like, I was completely stressed out. I would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes with my heart rate, I even calculate, I checked at one time and it was at 1 88 beats per minute um in the middle of a dead sleep. And it's just like my rental in and my histamine everything was just pumping at the wrong times. And I just I was super reactive to everything. And I remember being really allergic to tree pollen and grass pollen. And at one time in the spring, I was standing at the bus stop going to school and I saw this like, gust of pollen drift through the air as the wind blew through the trees and my whole body like puffed up and I was like, you know, because I just I knew what was gonna happen and I sat there and thought about it for a minute and I realized, wait a minute. I was born here like this is my world.

It makes no sense that I'm allergic to this, you know? And at that moment I realized like I'm gonna do everything that I can in my power to heal myself from my allergies because this isn't normal. And even though we accept it in our culture to like, oh you have allergies, it's just take allergy shots. This is something you deal with for the rest of your life. I was like, no, I don't accept that because it doesn't make sense that I would be allergic to the world that I was born into. That's really astute, you know, that's quite an observation to be making for a young raver.

Um Now, so you mentioned uh you mentioned um you know, allergy medication or something. What were the doctors telling you at that time? Like, like what was going on with your medical treatment and obviously, you know didn't suit you. But how were they treating you? Well, they, you know, I mean, I tried various things. I mean, you know, they were mostly having me try various like um you know, nasal sprays and Benadryl and anti histamines and all these. Yeah, and you know, quite honestly it's like I could take all of those things and I still had allergies. So you know and then I would take those things and conk out which was no fun and I felt drugged up on Benadryl and things like that or I just felt like amped up from the various kind of and into history and so it just didn't feel like I felt worse taking the anti histamines even if it would dry stuff up a little bit.

So I was like I had to choose between, okay I feel like you're either drugged and you're go to sleep or you're on speed or have a runny nose and hives and like itchy eyes and be completely miserable like what a great choice. You know I was like this is not a solution. So you know I think that was really hard and then I ended up you know through this whole experience I went and studied herbal medicine at an amazing program in New Mexico and I was there for a full academic year as a full time program and it was outstanding.

The school isn't there anymore which is really sad. I wish I could recommend it to people and I learned a lot about herbs there so I started taking every kind of herb you could possibly take for your liver you know to clean up any of the stuff going on that's causing the allergies. I take it from my skin, I take it from my adrenaline was taking just tons of herbs and I remember um you know, I actually I actually end up getting trained as a health coach and I was working with my doctor and I was working with her patients. So I was doing health coaching with all of her patients, she would recommend them to come to me was getting great results for them.

I mean I was miserable because I had all these allergies and stuff and I couldn't figure it out no matter how many people I went to and I would get diagnosed with Candida and I Candida protocol and you know, I had all these different doctors telling me different things, I did all these, you know, allergy clearings and tons of stuff. And so I finally went back to this doctor who was sending her patients to me and you know, I was like, help. Like, I really need your help. And I felt like I was taking a really drastic move at that point because you know, going to the doctor was definitely a last resort for me because I felt so let down by so many doctors at this point and she looked at me and she goes, what are you doing here? And I was like, what?

And she goes summer, you know more about this than I do. And I was like, what? And she was like, here's what's gonna happen, I'm gonna write you a prescription, you're not gonna fill it, I don't think it's going to do anything anyway, so what are you doing here? And I was like oh my gosh! The train left the station. I'm stranded in the middle of nowhere. I went home and like had a total meltdown because I really felt like it was a lot for me to get to the point where I was like going to a doctor and being like like I'm going back to a traditional doctor like al empathic medicine.

Like okay I've tried all these other things. I've done all the stuff that I can possibly find. I've worked with every practitioner in the alternative world. I've done all my own training, I've done everything I've done every fast, every cleanse every single thing I can possibly try and everything worked just a little bit but nothing gave me like the real relief. And so I went home and I you know I was just doing some more research and this is not a time where you could search things on the internet and find the answers that you could find, you know a few years ago and I just remember doing a little bit more research and asking questions and kind of telling some people about my current state of my current predicament.

And I did find another doctor and she said you know why don't you try probiotics?

Doctors, Herbal Medicine, and Probiotics 9:00

And so I tried probiotics? Okay interesting. I've never heard of those, you know? So I tried probiotic and it really made a difference for me. And so being trained as an herbalist, I asked myself the question, you know, what is the whole food form of probiotics? Like how did my ancestors 500 years ago get probiotics in their diet because they didn't have little white pills made in a laboratory that they could take and if this is an essential part of our lives then there's got to be a source. And at that time of course, you know how when you're looking for answers, like they all come from all directions. I was reading sally Fallon's book, my mom sent me a book by Sandor Katz about fermentation and it just all started coming together like the way that our ancestors got probiotics was through naturally fermented foods and they didn't know that they were getting probiotics, they thought they were just preserving foods naturally so they could make it through the winter and things like that. But conveniently there was a symbiotic relationship between those foods and those organisms in the food and our immune system and our gut health. And I started um eliminating all the herbs that I was taking and I decided I'm just gonna focus on my gut and nothing else.

And that focus changed everything because I just really like honing it all into one organ system and dealing with just that one organ system that really you know, was dealing with my immunity was what it was doing, helping me manage this like overwhelming immune reaction that I was having all the time. Um it really helped me get things in order and of course because I live in the United States and we like supersize it and we go to the extreme and if if a little bit of probiotics are good, maybe a lot are better. So I was like fermenting every like read, I literally would ferment everything before I go into my mouth and I had like all these concoctions on my counter and and I went overboard and I actually ended up kind of going too far with it and started getting some histamine reactions from having too much.

So this whole process of healing was really fascinating. I learned like there's there's there's sort of a sweet spot, you know, I don't want to go too far too with this stuff and you know from there there's just been there's many, many layers of that onion to keep unfolding and you know, that was just the very beginning of the process. And since then I have to say like yeah, I was gonna ask you, I want to come back to the story because it's fascinating and you know, I love getting to know you better. I mean you and I have sat and had drinks and stuff, not nothing crazy, but like, you know um I'm getting to know you better than I ever have before now. Um I've read, you know, sally Fallon's nourishing traditions, I think I think it probably should be required reading for nutritionists and health coaches, you know and the other book you mentioned.

Um but where because you started off with, I knew something was wrong. What where do you think that comes from? Like like there's a lot of people in the health coaching world who started with their own health problem but there's some who didn't, I didn't I didn't have a health problem but I've been in it for 20 years, you know? So where but where's this did your mom do herbs? Did you did you read a book when you were 10 that said trees are cool, you know like where did where did you get this from?

You think because you I know I know another thing about you is that you you believe in intuition and that kind of stuff. What what about you? What how do you know something was wrong? Well I think there's a couple of sides to it. So my mom is, she's a botanist, she's a horticulturist, she is obsessed with plants and so growing up she would always put wild food in our salads. She's like wildflowers, Wild, we would go on walks following my mom in the forest and she would hand me and my sister twigs to chew on and be like this is blah blah blah and you chew on this for a headache and the native people used this route for blah blah and she would just teach us all about her.

So I do think that was an integral part of like influence for me growing up and so that was, I found that really fascinating. Um and then the way I really knew something was wrong was actually, you know, I mean there was always a feeling or whatever, but when I was in Herbal Medicine School, I did like um basically it was like an elimination diet sort of a cleanse of sorts because I was just eating super clean, I took out all the common allergens and on day it was like five, I was just eating like rice, Turkey and vegetables, you know, very, very simple and on day five I felt like a wool blanket got pulled out of my brain and it was literally the first time in my entire life, I was probably 20 or 21 at this time and I felt like um I was calm and I felt grounded, I didn't have any anxiety for the first time in my life and I looked around and I was just like everything looked clearer, crisper and I literally was like, oh my gosh, this is how normal people feel, this is what you feel like, you know? And that moment was so profound and so powerful and you know, I realized I needed to figure out how to feel like that all the time, but I couldn't just eat like rice, turkey and a few vegetables for the rest of my life.

Like I knew I needed to like expand my diet a tad and you know, I just became fascinated at that point. Plus there's like eating stuff like it was hard to maintain some of those habits until you have to work through a lot of stuff to get to the point where you can eat in a way that really is good for your body and not be self sabotaging or running to food to try to numb things or sugar or these other things that we used to literally numb out. So that became my quest really was like, how do I get to feel like that all the time because this is, this is really special and I could function here and I think this is how a lot of people probably feel that feel good, you know, and I think there's a lot of people that are walking around similarly to me for the 1st 20 years of my life that are walking around now that are in their forties, fifties and sixties who have never had a moment like that, who have probably felt like crap their entire lives and they've never had a moment of clarity like that, a moment of like real true health too to compare it to and say, wow all those things I'm feeling every day aren't just part of the normal fabric of my existence, those are things, those are those that's noise that's being added into my system through, you know, foods that aren't good for me chemicals toxins, all these other things.

And, and I, I get that, you know, that there's sometimes these moments of clarity that uh, um, you probably wouldn't get from any other system except for one of natural self discovery, self awareness. Looking into what's really wrong people. And you know, people who have been, they feel like crap. They've got that brain fog and uh, you know, they can't pay attention. Uh, they're not sleeping well. They're tired and fatigued. They've got, they could have even skin or up, you know, like physically and they go to their physician and they get a laboratory, you know, they get this blood work done and they get told, well, nothing's wrong with you. You know, like, like your blood work looks normal. Didn't ever tell you that or you know, someone who was told that yet there's something that tells, you know, I know something's wrong with me, you know, and I'm not crazy.

Have you experienced that or know someone who has? Yeah, I mean, of course I experienced it myself. I mean with, you know, I had so many tests done and everybody just kept telling me I was healthy. You're so healthy. Your blood looks great. You know, it's like, I mean, it just, it really created a lot of trust because I didn't, I knew I wasn't healthy. I had a lady in my office once and she was getting chiropractic treatment. I was walking her back to the treatment room and I could tell she felt bad.

And I said, What's wrong? Well, let's just wait. And I'm 40 lb overweight. And it's because of a medication I take for the hives. She said, I've I've if I don't take this medication, I get the hives and you know, it makes me fat. And so I was at my doctor the other day and he said, look, basically, lady, you got your choice, you can be fat or you can have the hives take your pick. And I said, well, that makes me depressed. And he says, no problem, I'll write your prescription for antidepressants.

And she said, so now I just don't know what to do, and I feel so bad, you know? Well, that's not to mention the pain in the neck that she has, that she's coming in our office for, you know? And so I said, well, did you ever try to find out why you get the hives? And she just her head just about snapped off her neck. What I go, did you ever turn to find out why you get the hives? You know, like, and just do with it at that level rather than just mask the symptoms, you know? And she she just it just was it was one of those moments of clarity where she, like you just mentioned where she just realized that she's really had the wrong attitude. There's something that she doesn't know, she needs to know. So we were able to help her.

But um tell us more now go kind of back to your story about this fermentation thing, you're fermenting everything including I don't know what that means by everything but you know you can't ferment steak, I mean were you a vegetarian or what I was eating meat? I was, I was eating meat, I was eating dairy,

Fermentation, Gut Rebuilding, and Business Growth 18:30

I mean I was fermenting any dairy before I ate it. Um I was fermenting literally every kind of vegetable um beans, beans and rice making miso, making injera um making Italy's and I was fermenting literally every single thing I could find in any culture that fermented something, I was looking it up and figuring it out and trying to make it and I realized that when I ate those fermented foods, they were pre digested and I was digesting them actually much easier and that's I think why I got into it because I was like oh my gosh like I am digesting this food better and then I was making so many fermented vegetables that I started filling up the extra jars with the fermented vegetables and putting them an extra fridge that I had in the garage and then people would come over at my roommates friends and it's just the word spread and people would come over and by I had a jar sitting in the refrigerator that just had a little money sign on it and people would put money in and take a jar, they just come in my garage and you know, it's just like this little self serve, you know, business that started from literal scratch from just, you know, this whole process and it eventually turned into a company um that is still around today. You had a roadside stand with fermented veggies instead of like the real, the real veggies, you know, whatever.

So how do you go from from that to uh to um coining a phrase gut rebuilding, you know, like how do you get that's pretty far apart, you know, and was, did you have this big vision at the beginning or did it just really nurture and what were you doing for a living while you were doing all that you said you were working in a doctor's office, But well, yeah, I was working, I mean I was working part time as a health coach and quite honestly starting out as a health coach was really hard. I mean, for me, I didn't know what to do. I didn't really understand how to do business.

I don't know how to run my own business. Like it was just, it was a lot to figure out all at once. I needed to figure out how to work with people and get experience working with people. Um So it was kind of a combination of factors, I always had a part time job at that time. I was working either at like a food co op or I would work at supplement stores, sometimes herbal stores, um you know, I liked the environment like to be around food or herbs, things like that, I like those people, um so that was like the part time thing and then I did have a sauerkraut businesses as well on the side, which is insane.

Um and so at one point I was able to leave the, you know, the part time work and then I was running a sauerkraut company and running my health coaching business and with the health coaching. What happened was I did various business classes here and there and they're like, you need to find a niche, but what do you know, I was like, well I know how to get better or start to get better from this, you know, at the time, you know, once I figured all this stuff out, I felt a million times better and I was like, oh, I just want to shout from the rooftops, like I need people to know what is going on. And so I primarily at that time worked with people who had been diagnosed with Candida, that was my main like niche at the time and I worked overtime, it expanded it just into gut health and this concept of gut rebuilding was really me going through all the steps that I did to heal my body and putting them into like a plan and a system that made sense that I could walk people through.

And so I did it with individuals at first and then over time I started teaching it online because I honestly like people would come to my house and meet me in my kitchen uh for the our health coaching sessions and I didn't like it. I felt like it was a little bit of a violation of my privacy. I felt I was like cleaning my house before people came instead of really sitting down and focusing on their stuff, you know, and reading their health history and all the things I needed to be reviewing. I was like, I felt really self conscious and then I, so I, you know, I'd rent out rent out various places and tried all of that stuff and it just never felt right, it never fit. I felt way more comfortable working online with people and I had friends in different areas of the country that wanted to work with me.

And so it was just like maybe this is an easier step, you know, So I decided online was a better option, maybe I can reach more people and maybe it just means I can work from home and not have to like clean up my house like crazy before people come over here and you know, I, there was also a lot of promises, you know, maybe there's a little less overhead and all this stuff and, and so I went for it and I was like, I'm gonna try this and it was a really good fit for me. So I led my gut rebuilding class live online many, many times um, year after year until finally like I got, I felt like I got really clear about how to create the most engaging program, the most effective way of getting through this protocol um, in a way that, that helps the greatest amount of people.

So at this point in time it's an evergreen program that it's on my website and sells and it's really, really cool actually. Yeah, it is really cool and you're a good business person, you know, we've talked about that with some of the other guests on our, on our event here, um, about, you know, not being shy about charging for your services and um, what is, what is the value of it, what is it worth and stuff? Um, I still want to get from, from where you were at, left the story last to, to the gut rebuilding, like coining that phrase and the guts and glory apothecary. So, and it could have just been some really slow thing that has been a grind for you all the time.

It could have been that you had some moment of, you know, revelation like, hey, I need to be like charging what it's worth or something like that to talk about that a little bit. Like how do you get to profit from your ideas? Well, I realized that I needed to come up with a name that other people weren't using. You know, that was like a really key part of this for me. I was like, you know, I need to name this, something that's, that's positive, that's supportive, that's you know, some, I wanted to be a little bit um contradictory to what we were being taught at the time.

So what we're being taught at the time is that you had to kill off all the parasites in your gut. You had to kill the Candida, you had to kill kill, kill, kill, kill, take these herbs or you know, take all these different things, do this cleanse and like poop out all the new koi black, you know, like it was, yeah, I mean everything was all about killing it off because there was like invaders in your body. And I realized this through various epiphanies as I was studying this, this like whole idea of symbiosis.

I really got fascinated by the idea of, you know probiotics. When I learned about them and ferments. And I started reading scientific papers on every single thing that I could find and there was actually more information out there than I realized and what I became aware of and when I studied in college, I studied ecology and ecology is actually a fascinating subject, especially when you think about the gut because ecology has a lot to do with like we would talk about forest ecology. I studied a lot about plants as influenced by my mom. And they talk about all these relationships that the plants have with each other in the root systems and how they connect and like feed each other and communicate. And then about the micro, like the fungal network all throughout the forest that connects the roots of the trees and communicates to the trees that way. And it's all very, very fascinating. And all these organisms are playing nice together, the plants, the animals and maybe they're playing whatever a little bit mean sometimes. But it's all this circle and everything is feeding each other. It's just a really beautiful, I mean, circle of life. Right?

But what's fascinating is that concept of ecology actually works within the gut as well. So like when we talk about ecology, we think about invasive species from time to time, like certain animals or plants or something will get carried from one continent to another. And when it goes to this new continent, that animal will go crazy, it will go out of control because it doesn't have its natural predators in place to keep it in check. And so this concept around like invasive species was really fascinating to me because you can apply all this to the gut because what would happen in human guts as people take antibiotics.

It wipes everything out. Um, and then a lot of times the pathogenic organisms or the invasive organisms can come and grow faster in that rough terrain. You know, like weeds. So you look at the rocky terrain of certain areas and weeds can come in really easy there. It seems like these like real corn a cious like uh, you know, like pathogenic kind of things that can grow in more stressed out situations and that's what happens in our gut. And so I was fascinated by this concept of just symbiosis and ecology and realized, okay, what what needs to happen here?

Like we need to, we need to change our viewpoint. And I, you know, saw the work that was done with William Pastor and how he talks about the germ theory. And I just I realized, no, no, this isn't right. Like it really is a lot about that theory of bio terrain and you have to have a strong bio terrain. And I was super inspired by that. So I just kept brainstorming. What what are we doing here? Oh, we're rebuilding the gut, We're gonna rebuild this so that it's a strong environment and then the body can naturally do what it's supposed to and fight anything off and get into balance how it's supposed to because killing off that organism isn't gonna matter if you kill off if you try to kill off an invasive species. It's not, I mean, you can look across the world and all the places where there's been invasive species, it doesn't happen, can't do it. You gotta work harder to make the natural terrain stronger. And so that's really what I focused on in this work and what it took for me for this, this program to really take off and become success successful. It just took me putting myself out there.

Quite honestly, I had to get on as many other people's blogs and podcasts and summits and, and, you know, it's not easy at first. If you if you really don't have a lot to contribute, how do you get, how do you get on somebody's thing that has a big audience. And I will say one of the big first steps that I did was I did a summit and I, you know, I became a host of the summit like a leader and I asked people to be on that and I did it on a topic that hadn't really been focused on before. And I invited some really, you know, intriguing speakers there.

And I think that was just a really big first moment for me where where it started to elevate what I was doing in the world. And that's when a lot of people started noticing I got more and more eyeballs. Um, it was a pivotal moment for me and from there, it's just continued to grow. I agree. Yeah. If you do it right. You know, if you have a good summit manager, uh I certainly couldn't put this one on by myself, you know, I I partnered up with a really good guy and I can do my part and they do their part and it all works out pretty well. Um So tell me I want to go because we have a lot of nerds listening and watching and um nerds are cool because we have all have our nerd side, you know, and I just I just I just finished interviewing uh Karen christian, you know, and and we talked a lot about the nerd side of us where we just have to know how things work and you know, then there's this other side of this and says I want to help people, you know, I'm very much an altruist, you know, and then we have this other part that's all about the, you know, the business side, like I want to be independent.

Um I don't want to just go work in some office for $20 an hour, you know, I want to be able to afford to live the lifestyle that actually sets an example for other people. That brings in the whole idea of walking the talk. So, so tell us a little about a bit more about your walk to talk program because you started you started in a rough shape. Uh but you had some sense that something was wrong and that drugs weren't the answer and you

Stress, Nervous System Balance, and Adaptogens 30:30

started playing around with uh with the probiotics and then the natural wild probiotics that the kind that come from um uh plants and things like that. And I know you also like your idea of digestive bitters you know and you kind of mix this, tell us about your apothecary like like brag a bit you know like like people want to know well you know something that I realized early on um is that you know when you're in the digital world, people are still separated from you by a screen and I think that you know while your personality can still shine through and you can still help people in that realm, I felt really strongly that I did have all this knowledge as an herbalist.

So I wanted to use that knowledge and you know put it into practice. So I made these various digestive bidders for my guts and glory apothecary. And these bidders are really helpful at stimulating digestive juices, helping calm people's nervous system down and get them into a parasympathetic state, a state of rest and digest they fully extract the nutrients from their food. And so I made these tinctures at first and these various powders for my clients and then over time I was like you know what, I need to do this bigger because I have this green in between people. And if I can mail it to people then they have a physical reminder every day that they're still doing this work and obviously like it helps to like you spray those bidders in your mouth, your saliva starts pumping, all your digestive juices start pumping and you really notice the difference very quickly.

Um Most people, they experience less bloating and and really just like a better feeling of satisfaction when they eat their food and they can often even stop when they're full. They can tell sooner when they take digestive bitters. So I'm doing this program online with people and I just started mailing that out to my gut rebuilding clients and over time they, you know, my liver lover warming bidders has been the most popular one by far. And that one just, I mean it's, we sell so many of those products and it's just become this thing where I I realized like they're my clients are sitting at home and they're taking this little spray in their mouth before each meal and it's reminding them of the work that we're doing together.

It's reminding them of me and like what I stand for in their lives exactly. It reminds them that like you know, there's somebody out there who's figured out how to get better from this naturally and like I think all those things that physical reminder is super helpful for people and herbs are strong allies, They teach us, they teach what our body needs to know. And so I just, I love the power of herbal medicine. You know I love having an herbal apothecary and we primarily sell digestive support but we also sell some products that are designed for helping the adrenals and the nervous system. Because I am a strong proponent at this point.

Like after all the work that I did you know with probiotics and like trying to get my gut right, I am so clear at this point in time that stress is the biggest um you know like catalyst for disease like on this planet as far as I'm concerned you know if you can figure out how to get into a parasympathetic state and stay there as much of the time as possible, you're just gonna you're gonna get sick way less often because I started studying microbes looking. So let's get a little nerdy. There is um there is a branch of medicine or a science called microbial endocrinology and this is the study of how microbes communicate with each other and with our system. And it's the way that they use chemicals that they produce and the way they use the chemicals that we produce as communication as signaling um as stimuli. And so what we what we know is that in the lab if you want certain organisms to grow faster you you add nor epinephrine adrenaline basically if you add this chemical which is a neurotransmitter that our body makes if you add that into the solution of bacteria those bacteria will replicate at a much higher rate.

And so a lot of times this actually what's crazy is that many of the bacteria that replicate faster with norepinephrine tend to be more of the pathogenic bacteria. And so what we're, what we know then is that in a body in a system which is I mean this sounds gross, which is just basically a bag of symphony of chemicals happening all the time. All you know, all these little text messages. These little chemical messages that are sending messages to our own cells but also sending messages to the bacterial cells of our body. If you are full of adrenaline from having high histamine like I did and the adrenaline was coming in to like shut down that history response or it's just a stress response or you have an infection that's causing a stress response. There's all kinds of things that can cause this.

You know as we know even lifestyle factors, toxins or even emotional factors, trauma relationships, you know, there's financial stress, there's all kinds of stressors, right? All of these have the same chemical effect in the body and that chemical effect is the same on the bacteria and it's not good. And so at this point in time I spend so much of my coaching work helping people figure out how to actually reduce stress in their life and how to get into a parasympathetic state because we've heard the term stress reduction stress management for decades.

It means nothing to most people anymore. It's very cliche, it sounds boring. Most people have given up on the topic and I just approach it from such a different standpoint. I think that we have to start to look at our lives, take an inventory and start to get the things out that are stressing us out and I think we have to really focus on you know how how do what does it mean to be in a parasympathetic state? Like I can say that word but most people don't really know like do you know when you're in a parasympathetic state? Do you know when you're in a sympathetic state?

Do you know how to get out of it. It's not just like sitting on a cushion and meditating because you should be in a parasympathetic state just walking around your house doing something like doing normal stuff. You shouldn't just be in a stressed out state during your active waking hours all the time and you shouldn't just have to prepare a sympathetic state when you're asleep. There's like an in between that needs to happen and most people don't have access to that. So that's that's the big work I do today.

And so you know some of my herbs really focus on that piece too. I use a lot of adaptive genic herbs to help promote that parasympathetic state but that's where I'M seeing the biggest healing happen with people because they've gone everywhere. They tried all the things like I did and that's the needle mover that I find is the most effective especially with gut health. It's amazing that you bring this up because it's so true and you um it's overlooked by the people who um probably should know the best. And uh I completely agree you know that you mentioned you drew the relationship between the the sympathetic nervous system which is your invokes your fight flight. You know you you get cut off in traffic uh sympathetic nerves man go straight to the adrenal medulla.

You release the adrenaline called norepinephrine, epinephrine now but um and then what that we initiate the HP. A. Access now. You got cortisol flying around. Well that's you know temporarily not a bad thing, it's an an inflammatory, it's a pain killer. You know it raises your blood sugar so you have energy so you can think straight you know regular test stuff but you can't stay there and if you stay there if the parasympathetic doesn't come back in balance. We call one fight flight we call the other.

I've heard it called rest and digest. I've heard it called feed and breed you know kind of like that one. And um you're definitely in a in a different state when you're like that. So uh I I and I know herbs can be important but when you say adapted gin, most of those are made from herbs um now are they good with its high or low or is the only good for you know like people who are um like would you take them, when would you take them? Like a and then you can take them you can take them any time but you just need to adjust the amounts that you're taking and really play with the various kinds of herbs.

So it depends so when I'm working with clients like I actually was working with a client yesterday and she was telling me about her situation where she feels overwhelmed and she feels like you know it's just it's so easy for her to get some super stressed out by little things. So my recommendations after having a long conversation with her were holy basil and rodeo Ola. Those are two herbs that have holy basil seems to really work well with the cortisol levels and the rodeo Ola. We find that it just like helps people have a better feeling of well being. Um So you know I mean it's just different, I've tried all different kinds of adapted gems on myself and when I was in a state of fight or flight like certain things like ginseng and weren't the best for me because it would kind of keep you know it tended to like push me a little bit more into that state.

I get a little jittery, I get a little bit too amped, I needed things to help break down all those chemicals. so you know it just depends on the person and I really recommend that people try out different blends. I make one called winning streak because that's really what it feels like. It feels like you're having a winning streak when you take it. It's just like a really nice blend of herbs. It's ones that are a little bit more geared towards getting you in a parasympathetic state and with any herbs I recommend people start small and build their way up. You know, don't don't do a full dose the first time you want to start small and get a feel for how it's reacting with your body.

But yeah, I mean adapted gyms are such an important part of the process because it's again it's an herbal ally. It's like teaching your nervous system what it could be like. Um you know you I think most people don't know what it feels like to be in a parasympathetic state. I didn't You know I really didn't know I I lived in a sympathetic state. I think from the moment I was born for a very very very long time. I mean I think like 30 plus years until I started to learn more about the parasympathetic state and what this means and like learning that it's it's profound and it's something that you can keep learning, it's a practice and it's really profound because if you haven't been there very long, very spent very much time in the parasympathetic state once your body starts to learn it you get a little tired for a while. Like you have your body is like oh this is good for us, people in the state like okay let's let's have out here for a while and you're like I'm just kind of like I don't feel like doing like there was a couple of months I was like I don't feel like doing like I didn't have that same like you know kick in the pants drive.

That was just literally me running on adrenaline my entire life. And I got addicted to that feeling and I had to learn how to function in a different way and not be just like you know pedal to the metal all the time. Even that's fun. I still like going into that mode. I know how to get out of it now and not be just stuck there all the time. That's a good thing. Well yeah, I'm glad to hear it because as I was born the other way I was very much parasympathetic dominant my whole life. I've been pretty laid back. I think maybe that's why I landed in southern California, you know where I could just suck up the sun and chill and it doesn't mean I don't work hard. Parasympathetic have incredible endurance.

You know we can work all night and you know get a few hours sleep and and get back up and uh and work some more, but we will take our rest, we will take our naps, we will make sure that we totally, you know, chill. Um and the sympathetic kicks in like and I noticed the opposite of what you noticed, you noticed, wow, I really enjoy this parasympathetic. Well I can't say enjoy the sympathetic, but I know one is kicking in like when my my yard caught on fire, you know, that's when you need the, you know, you need that sympathetic man, boom, you know, your adrenaline, your cortisol, you know, and you're you're aware and you're just you're hyper vigilant, you know, and this kind of thing. So, but we need to be balanced.

We don't want to be too much of one or the other. If you're to parasympathetic, you're you're like catatonic. You know, you're just kind of like, this is why I think I'm certain actually that um we have Children who are so different from one another in the same family. So a mom might be got my one kid, you know, he's like ants in his pants always

Fermentation Certification and Health Coaching Leadership 43:00

bouncing around and and doing things and finger poking and getting in trouble, whatever it is. You know, can't say another one won't get off the sofa. That's actually the distribution of energy through the nervousness and one is parasympathetic, you know, so you do need to get them off this office sometimes, you know, and they need to get a little more on the sympathetic side. So one is not bad versus the other. I want you to talk because we're you know, winding down here a little bit because just because time constraints, I love talking with you somewhere. Um Tell us about the fermentation ist certification program.

Yeah, so I created the fermentation certification program because I spent so much time researching all these microbes and learning about you know, where they come from, what they do in our bodies. Um and I realized through all of this reading of articles that basically all the different bacteria have different jobs in the body. And when you look at fermented foods foods we have I call them the functional ferments. So the functional ferments are the fermented foods that have a very clear health benefit.

Um There's you know I mean alcohol is a ferment. I don't you know you could argue alcohol all day long. I don't really have that listed in my functional ferments list. Um Coffee is a ferment, you know there's chocolate, there's bread, there's various things like that. The functional ferments for me are really things that are that you know have a strong health benefit because of the various bacteria that are in them and because of the by products that those bacteria helped create. And so you know just as an example like Sauerkraut Kimchi that's a very common example but they you know a final batch of these foods can have as many as 23 different kinds of living organisms in it. And when you eat these fermented foods, you're getting a diverse array of these bacteria in a form that our bodies are used to.

You know our ancestors have encountered these various fermented foods most likely. And as you eat that fermented food, you're you're not just getting the bacteria, you're also getting all of the by products, you're getting the lactic acid and all the various they call it bacteria. Since the organic acids, everything that's created by those bacteria is also entering your body and those are used as fertilizer by the gut. I mean it literally helps balance out the ph it's used natural antimicrobial. And what I learned over time is that there are all different kinds of effects based on these various kinds of fermented foods.

And there's certain fermented foods that are good for certain health conditions and some that are not. And you need to really understand the nuances of these functional ferments in order to know how to use them in your practice. Because when we live in a world that is it's it's curated by media and the media loves sound bites and the sound bite is that our gut is you know our guts are out of balance. We need probiotics, fermented foods are great, eat fermented foods. You know like that's the sound bite right.

But the reality is way more nuanced as we know. I mean I think that's like the beauty of this field right of doing like functional nutrition and all these things. The beauty is that you find that every human is different. Just like you're talking about your nervous system versus minor. The system like we have different needs are the different kinds of food that we eat, different herbs that probably resonate better with our bodies. It's the same with fermented foods. And so I teach this, it's a four month long certification and all my students go through 13 different ferments.

They learn how to make them, they have a handbook and they learn all the different probiotics, They learn what health concerns work well with these foods and which ones don't. Um and then they have to make that ferment document it and they go through the whole processes and at the end they do have to teach a class um and they have to submit some other final projects and it is a super fascinating superfund program. But what I love about it is that so many of my students, they get done with this and they either start a fermented food company of some kind where they start making ferment and selling it or they are able to go into their practice.

You know, we have naturopathic physicians have acupuncturist health coaches who use this in their practice and they're able to make better recommendations for their clients are not doing what most doctors are doing, you know who read like a blog post about it and they're like oh everybody should eat Sauerkraut. Well no no not everybody should eat sauerkraut. Yeah, it's my favorite ferment personally and I recommend it to a lot of people but not everybody should, you know and there are times to eat it and there are times not to.

And you can say that about all the different comments like miso and vera, it leaves um tempeh you know, there's there's so many different kind of functional ferments out there and they're delicious. They're amazing. They're fascinating. But what I find most fascinating is the fact that there is just a very different microbial profile with each ferment and just knowing how they're broken down, understanding the science behind it like with Injera and Injera is an Ethiopian uh like kind of like a pancake. It's teff teff is the grain that it's made out of which is the smallest grain in the world. And it's fermented for a period of time and then it's cooked in a way that makes it really delicious and and wonderful.

And it's a slightly like sour pancake. Well this is extremely good for you and it's high in iron and it reduces all like the process of fermentation reduces all the fight tapes. So it's like taking out the part like these enzyme blockers like these parts of food that are hard for us to digest and then amplifying the various nutrients of that food at the same time. So if you're working with somebody who's low in iron like this is a great ferment to be recommending to those folks because it actually amplifies the iron intake of that food more so than if you just ate teff by itself.

You know it's like now you've amplified this and so that that whole process I just I find it utterly fascinating to learn how things ferment how it works and and really I'm just totally blown away by the idea that humans have been doing this for tens of thousands of years. You know this is like part of our D. N. A. You know and not only that like the information that our body is gathering from that food it's it's so much more vast than eating a carrot. You know you have all of these chemicals being produced by these bacteria that are now communicating with your immune system and helping it to calm down, helping you to identify good bacteria and helping you to identify the ones that should not be living there and just helping your body manage that whole process of immunity that's happening inside the gut.

It's so beautiful and I think you're doing so much for the health coaching community summer by offering your course you know like why keep it to yourself right? So I think any wellness professional wants to become adept at making and teaching clients how to use and uh the functional ferments um is gonna, you know, really enjoy your course and we're gonna put all the information about it in our show notes somewhere. Do you think there's something else that we could be doing to provide leadership in the, in the health coaching field?

I mean, you teach your course, I teach my course, we have other people teaching course. I just want to collectively what we could do to expand the backyard of, of the health coaching profession to to elevate it well, I think that overall coaches need way more confidence in themselves and in the power of their work. I think at this point in time it's really easy to get um to kind of get blown over by a lot of the doctors that are now speaking out and like saying the things that we've been saying for over a decade.

Yeah, and I think what happens, I mean many of these people are my friends and I'm proud of them and the work that they're doing. You know, these doctors that are speaking up and saying this and they're validating many of the things that we've been saying for a long time, but I think it's important to really think about the work that you're doing as a house coach and how integral that is. It doesn't matter if a doctor is saying the same thing that you've been saying for a long time or that you believe just cause they're a doctor doesn't mean there's not a place for you, even though they're saying it, like we still need health coaches doing this work because health coaches know how to work with people to change habits.

We take the time to coach them, we take the time to listen, you know, it's kind of, I think about it as like, you know, almost like going to the mechanic, like going to take your car to a mechanic, you know, like there's you're not gonna take your car to the mechanic, hey, fill it up, put some gas in here for me. No, you take it to the mechanic to get it looked at under the hood, you know, I feel like the health coaches are more like fill it up, you know, that's our job. Like we like we don't need the doctor to be like doing the job that we do. So I I always encourage health coaches like remember you have such an important part is such an important part of the the face of health care right now and it really involves us having the confidence that we know what we're doing. We know how to work with people.

We can help them change and we can help them get real results in the work that they're doing. And my personal belief as to how you do that is you continue to get training, keep getting trained, take various certifications, you know, like take F. D. N. Take my fermentation certification, take other certifications that you're learning about here at this summit because every certification you take will give you more tools to do your job better. And the truth is is like we I think that health coaching is so desperately needed more than almost anything else right now. And the coolest part about it, I live in the south so I feel like I see what the mainstream kind of looks like.

It's like the Petri dish of the mainstream is right in my backyard. You know, I don't live in California where it feels like everybody's like already caught on to a lot of stuff. The truth is is there's there's people who are just now figuring out that gluten free might be the answer for that right? There are millions and millions and tens of millions of people who still need this work and still need this help. And they need someone they can actually just talk to on a regular basis to get the support to make the changes because you can tell somebody something. But when you leave them to their own design, what are they gonna do? They're either gonna slip off and not do it anymore. Or they're they're just gonna kind of like give up because they don't know all the information they get stuck.

They have obstacles that they're facing that they actually need help unwinding and that's the work that I'm doing every day when I work with clients helping them to online. The habits to self sabotage all these pieces and doctors aren't trained in that area, just not, they'll tell you what to do and you're supposed to go home and just do it. It's not that simple that if it were that simple, literally everybody would be healthy because we all know, we're supposed to eat our vegetables and get some exercise, you know, I think you're right and we could just end there with those wonderful words of wisdom. But I just, I'm compelled to say that.

Um, it isn't just the habits, you know, because doctors could use health coaches just to get people to comply with their orders, you know, and that's not what we're about either. We're not here to make sure you take your medication, you know, because it's like really, it's it's to get on this more, much more what you said about the discovery and awareness and um, that there's ways to get healthy and you don't have to just live on medication for the rest of your life. I mean, some people do because of what has happened these, um, but, but uh, but most people can actually get healthier and that's the real backyard of a health coach. Um, not just to be compliant with, with doctor's orders. Um, so thank you for that so much.

Uh, great words of wisdom and experience and uh, I look forward to the next time we get together and you know chat some, some health talk. Um, I think I'd like to have you come on one of our other programs and I'll hook you up with the step proper staff for that if you'd be willing to do it, I would love to thanks so much for having me. And Hey, I can also give everybody, I have a fermented foods pairing charge that goes with with various health symptoms. So I'm sorry. I just, Yeah, I mean I have, I have this amazing chart that lists all the functional ferments and the top 33 common like symptoms and which ones go with which, and I think people would love to be able to use that as just a cheat sheet that will help you figure out what you should be recommending based on your client's symptoms.

Okay, fantastic. We're gonna put that in the show notes too and we'll talk to you again. Thanks so much for being here and sharing. Thank you