When ‘Healthy Habits’ Aren’t Enough: Hidden Toxins and Longevity

Introduction to Health Destiny 0:00

No matter all the things that you go through, that's what it's so amazing to have the tests and these things to look at because again, you can change your health destiny. That's what we're here for is to either see a practitioner who can help you work with us, whatever it is. We have so many amazing tools now at our disposal that we didn't have even five or 10 years ago. And so it's just taking your power back, every day making choices that are promoting health and longevity, as opposed to being stuck in like maybe your old subconscious patterns that are keeping you stuck, right?

So we have a ton of power and I always urge people that this data is just amazing information that you can utilize to just change your whole health trajectory toward longevity and health. This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

Dr. Ashley Beckmanu2019s Background in Natural Medicine 0:58

All right. Well, I've got an amazing special guest today. It's my co-host, Dr. Ashley Beckman. And Dr. Ashley is going to share a little bit about her hero's journey of how she got to be one of the top longevity doctors for people in America. You know how she's gotten to where she is and she's worked with a lot of top celebrities in Hollywood and a lot of the the top leaders in the world and and and is treated. Thousands and thousands of thousands of people so. Dr. Ashley, thank you so much. And I would love for people just to get to know you a little bit better.

And why don't you just share a little bit of where you were when you first kind of got into healthcare, you know, maybe some challenges that you were dealing with there. Sure. So I got into natural medicine. I was interested just kind of in food for nutrition and really changing your lifestyle. But I had started to learn a bit about herbs and homeopathy. And so one of my homeopathic teachers, he urged me to go to acupuncture school. And not too long after being in acupuncture school, I had just an instance where I woke up.

It was extremely hard to walk or hold my phone. I had a ton of joint pain. And I had someone who had chronic migraines. And I went to my regular GP at the time. This was 25 years ago. And she just said, well, there's nothing that I see here. You probably have an autoimmune issue. It's going to take probably 10 years to show up on labs, if it ever does. And there's nothing we'll even do. So luckily, I was already enrolled in grad school for herbs and acupuncture. And it was a very different set of theories that we use, but a lot of them are focused on longevity and foundations of health.

And again, I was very interested, though, in toxins and how maybe this could be impacting me. But still, even at this time, lab testing, there weren't really tests for toxins. There were for heavy metals, but not Lyme. And so maybe fast forward 15 years, I had already, I went through and got my graduate studies through acrobatics and Chinese medicine.

Personal Health Crisis and Early Testing 3:26

Then I went back and did an additional two more years of a doctorate in healthy aging and longevity, because to me that is really where our future is. And the customization, right, that we can do now with all this amazing lab tests. And that's really where I got into epigenetics because to me, you can learn a lot if you're pairing genetics with functional medicine and all of these amazing tests that we have now. And with Chinese medicine, I really wanted to blend kind of like the ancient spiritual and the wisdom of those teachings that I learned with all these really modern technologies that we have.

Well, let's talk about that for a second because this is a medicine that has been around for 5,000 years now. The person, Dr. Axe, I went over to his house and he's just harping on me around Chinese medicine. He's just studying it on his own and he's in teaching mode in his kitchen as we're eating lunch. all of these different things about Chinese medicine. But just talk about that, because you don't typically, when you're talking about longevity, you don't typically think like, oh, Chinese medicine.

And I know you integrate functional medicine and environmental medicine and longevity science in with what you're doing. But why Chinese medicine? Sure. So, well, that's the whole thing, right? Like my, it's so popular that the doctor, we had two specialties of our doctor, at least that were at my school. It's either healthy aging and longevity or fertility, right? So both of these are kind of some of the most famous things that acupuncture is used for in Chinese medicine. But longevity to me is critical.

We all want to figure out ways that we can you know, add things to our life on a day-to-day basis with the way we eat or the way we think or feel or, um, you know, exercise, but then we also need to see what are these habits that we have that are draining our, it's called vital chi or energy and really, you know, shortcutting your longevity potential. So in shiny. Oh, go ahead. Did you say vital chi is like at the core of longevity? Yeah, it's like, so we talk about, there's real quick little terms.

There's chi, there's your shen, which is like your mind or your spirit. Sorry, your chi is your energy. So like day-to-day energy, you get that from food and exercise and things like that. Your Shen is your spirit and your mind and it's this beautiful organ that's all connected. And then your Jing is this essence that you come here with, that you're born with, that's very coveted and vital and it gets depleted with overdoing things, living a crazy lifestyle, stress. And you know, our current lifestyle is very depleting for this.

And this is just the opposite of what you should be doing in Chinese medicine to conserve this in order to live a long, fruitful life. If you're a medical doctor, nurse practitioner, chiropractor, or other health expert that's stuck in a broken system, there's a better way. The Freedom Webinar shows you a proven five-step system to build a seven-figure virtual health practice or how to modernize your current brick and mortar practice without the burnout. Learn to create high ticket programs, automated income, residual revenue, and attract clients ready to work with you.

Book your million dollar strategy session today by clicking the link in the description. Wow. Wow. So good. Well, let's just pause on that. And I want to go back to all of the things like longevity medicine and Chinese medicine and functional medicine, all the things that you've learned. And you're like a geek about lab testing love and analyzing people's genetics and blood tests and customizing things for people, but for your patients. But like, you know, when you were dealing with what you were in acupuncture school, like what was kind of the thing that made you realize like,

Toxic Burden, Genetics, and Mold Discovery 7:56

okay, I need to go deeper than just this, you know? Well, sure. So I, you know, again, because I was so interested in food and how it impacted me. So this was, you know, a lot of us have kind of thrown this term around, like we feel like a canary in a coal mine. Right. So I was kind of the one that if someone walked by me with strong perfume, I would get a hake. This eventually got worse where I started to get really bad migraines. Again, I did tie it to eating gluten and dairy. But I mean, there was a point where I had to leave work.

And this was in my office in Beverly Hills because I was sick from a migraine. And I had to be wheeled out in a wheelchair. And my husband had to pick me up because, again, it was from food. So at that point, I just knew there was more than just herbs and nutrition and Chinese theory. And at that time, food sensitivity testing was really big. It made a lot of sense and helped me quite a bit. But it was not until many years later that these other tests for toxins and Lyme came up and mold that I saw my body burden was so high that the lab company just said, what do you do?

This is one of the worst tests we've ever seen. And I wasn't even going to take the test because I used to do, you know, four times a year seasonal cleansing with herbs. I ate super healthy and I just figured there's no way I have any toxins because I, you know, haven't touched a plastic water bottle in 20 years. Like I was busy about toxins. You didn't, you didn't touch a plastic water bottle in 20 years? No, I mean, I refuse to buy plastic. I refuse to eat anything out of plastic. I became very- Okay, so wait, pause.

You were essentially living this perfect lifestyle, but you had this crash and burn moment, and you did this total toxic burden test, right? It was with these planes years ago, yeah. Okay, yeah. And so what did it come back with? I had, I think it was 75% of the markers were all in like 75 to 100%. Wow, why? Really bad. Oh my gosh, that's crazy. Why is that? Well, that's when I was getting into looking at my genetics, right? And so then what I started to see is I had never taken glutathione. I'd never taken a methylated B vitamin.

This was many years ago. I thought pretty much you just do everything with herbs and food, right? Yeah, and then you juice, which is elevated heavy metals. I've been vegan, you know what I mean? Like all the traditional things that we all try. So when I looked at just my detox pathways and my ability to detox certain chemicals, they just weren't very good. It was a very strong pattern that I needed extra support, that I wasn't getting through food and nutrition and herbs pretty much. So to me, that was a huge missing piece of looking at it and seeing these variants and genetics that had just predisposed me to not being able to clear things very well.

Wow. Interesting. Yeah, and that is something that I think we should just take a pause at. I want to highlight this for the listener because everyone is different. Everyone has different predispositions genetically. I don't develop the antibodies to get rid of mold. If I'm exposed to mold, it bioaccumulates in my body. something like 60% of the population build or they have higher levels of antibodies that can actually remove them all. Or maybe it's 40%. And, and so, but the majority, you know, close 75%. So you're in the chosen 25%, but the chosen 25% for you.

There you go. So that right there is important to know. And I didn't know that. And my roommate who was also being exposed to the same mold that I was exposed to, he wasn't dealing with brain fog, liver shut down, eczema, chronic fatigue, all the things I was dealing with. Now, and, but, but, you know, just pause on this because it's so critical to understand that everyone is different and every, like you literally bioaccumulated a lot of those toxins because you weren't able to get rid of them.

You may have been exposed to, thank God you lived the lifestyle that you did. Right. Because if you didn't, you would have just been like at a hundred percent for everything. Right. Yeah, and I have some pictures, because again, I've been into this stuff a long time. So I had these pictures of old iridology photos from 2003. And I had a friend look at it, and she's like, first of all, she just said, wow, I've never seen anyone's shift in eyes so much. You have cleared out so many toxins. This is amazing.

Because if this had been you at 22, or whatever it was, she just said, there's no way you wouldn't be very, very sick right now. like wow these eyes show so much you know potential disease and again i i'm so grateful that i was you know sensitive right i think there's there's a superpower in being sensitive because your body is alerting you to things that you need to take note of and make changes in your life so again i don't always see this as this difficulty, it's more just thank you for sharing, right, like letting me know that this is not a safe environment.

And then we have so many more tools now. But again, it was kind of like getting tested for Lyme and mold that it was, it's always great to see, you know, when you can have some positive tests

Epigenetics and the Longevity Diet 14:04

and just go, okay, this makes a lot of sense. Why neurologically, this has been so impactful for my system. So you ended up doing, you know, the, the, the, the toxicities tests for GLP, um, the GPL. Yeah, exactly. And then, and then the other, the other, uh, um, thing that you found was that you had mold, right? And, and, and so kind of talk about that journey, um, and how you address that and, you know, and, and then, you know, some of the things that you've done to like, you know, in the, in the process to address a lot of these underlying issues.

Maybe four years later, I did the extensive, vibrant tick-borne testing and the mold testing. That was only because I was living in a house that had an active water leak that we found out about because we were alerted by the water company. there was a leak. So again, thank goodness they let us know. And then that, you know, I had been specializing in mold because so many of my patients' tests were all coming back with high markers for mold. And now I was testing most people for it where, you know, again, the testing just wasn't that great many years prior.

So now that we have access to this, And it shows up in so many symptoms for different people. For me, this was still very consistent. It was just migraines, joint pain, brain fog, fatigue. And I thought this was all because I had transitioned and I was just at home in my office seeing clients, but it didn't make any sense to me how I would be way more tired, you know, seeing eight people a day where I'd been seeing 30 a day with two and a half hours of driving into Beverly Hills. Do you know what I mean?

I was like, something's off here. And it was very interesting to see how much mold I had and how much lime. I think I had over 20 co-infections and lime, and it was a lot. Oh my gosh. Talk quickly about that and what you're seeing with lime and mold and how many women in America that you're noticing are dealing with this trends or even just personal anecdotes from your practice. It's a big thing, right? So there's some just kind of red flags. If I hear a client, and it's a lot of kids too, where if they say they have a joint pain that wanders, like maybe it's in your knees or your elbows or your wrists and it kind of jumps around, I always check for Lyme.

And usually we find it. So that's a big one for a lot of people. But it's different than just saying I'm a little bit achy, right, in my hands or something. It's a red flag when you hear that's jumping. Is it true? Everyone has Lyme. It's just a matter of what level of exposure and then if your immune system decreases and then Lyme can get out of control, kind of like Candida albicans, right? Sure. I probably wouldn't come for them totally the same. Right, right. All Candida for sure. Cause it's also just part of the gut.

Um, but I do have some people, their Lyme tests don't come back. Like there's not everybody will show up positive for Lyme, but you will have varying amounts for sure. if you have mold exposure, your chances of either Lyme or different viruses or bacteria are often higher because that mold has depressed your immune system, allowing these other pathogens to flourish, right? So not everybody that has mold exposure has Lyme, but I would say most people with Lyme often have a mold exposure in their past, which is why we checked them both.

But yeah, it ended up, Again, it takes some time, but there's so many tools we have now that it's, you know, maybe now I'm down to like five kinds, five strains. So huge, huge improvement. And for people to think that you can't, you know, resolve these things or feel a lot better. It's a long journey, but it, you know, we have so many tools now. It's great. What's your post-test on the toxic burden? I'm down so low. It's so great. Toxins weren't even as big of a thing as the mold and the lime in hindsight.

It's been years clearing those out first, but now because I redid them because of the fires we had here and we were so close. You were literally like one of the houses bare. It's like your neighbor got burned down, unfortunately, and then your house didn't, right? Yes. Our neighborhood got saved, but less than a mile away, it was there and destructive. So I was really, I luckily, I had already had a previous total toxin test. It was pretty good. I think I had a few left, no big deal. And then I redid it.

And luckily, because of where we are, I think just downwind, I did not, I mean, we were not getting a lot of the ash and things that were going into LA and like Santa Monica. So yeah, my toxin test is still really good. Even after the Malibu fires, I'm so happy to hear that. What is a doctorate in healthy living or healthy aging and longevity even look like in epigenetics? I mean, you got your doctorate in that.

Longevity for Women and Nervous System Stress 19:48

It's really cool. But what does that even look like and what did you do your thesis on? Sure. So again, at the time, I I was so interested in this extreme customization, which when you look at that, that's going to be looking at your genetics. I was looking at what are some of the most beneficial top compounds that we have in Chinese medicine or just in the longevity space that people are studying and have a big impact. So I ended up writing my thesis on the epigenetic effects of resveratrol and then EGCG, which is what's in green tea, sulforaphane in cruciferous vegetables, and then curcumin, which is in turmeric, right?

So basically just really deep dive study into all these compounds because it was part of this epigenetic diet, right? increasing the foods that are naturally occurring with these compounds does this have an effect on your epigenetic markers. And basically all of the testing, everything that I came across was extremely favorable. And so it's really amazing because you can just make sure that even what you're eating is optimized for longevity, right? So there was a ton. The other thing that was super fascinating about caloric restriction, right?

Eating 20% less calories than the average person also had a five-year increase on your lifespan. It was very interesting. But again, if you think about that probably normal person is way over consuming, right? Like, fortunes are so huge, it's creating a massive burden on our bodies. So I thought that was very interesting that other, because I kept coming across that data quite a bit. Wow, so interesting. And the whole concept of consuming food that has certain compounds that allow for you to shift your methylation biological clocks and live longer, healthier.

I mean, you've proven it in your research, right? But it's been proven so many times. And so we'll go into an episode thin slicing some of the epigenetic diet and, you know, get into that. Now, you've become an expert in longevity for women. And unfortunately, a lot of the research has been done on men. And so just kind of we'll get into another episode in the future. We'll probably entitled it longevity for women. We'll have you share a lot of the details of what you've researched, studied, and a lot of the pre and post lab tests you've seen and the people that you've worked with.

What would you say, if you could give a Coles Notes lecture on longevity for women, what would you say? Sure. So, you know, some of the biggest things are, you know, that we're very different, at least especially hormonally. So male cycle is 24 hours, right? And we have our cycle that runs generally over the course of 28 days with four different phases. and that ideally you would be adjusting things throughout those phases. And again, one of the biggest takeaways that I see just time and time again is how some of these extreme measures, and again, I love sauna, but it's not for everybody.

Similarly, cold plunging or cold therapy, so many women lose their cycle because they do it too aggressively. The heat can be too draining for a lot of women. And again, it just depends on what cycle they are in their life and sometimes what cycle they are within that month. And these things can have such a huge impact on fertility, energy, thyroid, adrenal. We're just different systems and we tolerate stress differently. But again, it still is customized, right? If you take someone who's already very stressed or anxious, One of the worst things is probably to throw them in a cold plunge.

They're already at a high level of anxiety. We need more of the nervous system calming and vagal tone support, different measures. And that doesn't mean that men don't need those either. It's just that we really have to look at the individual to tailor these biohacking tools that we have. And again, it could just be different. for the female where she is, even how someone is just doing with their nervous system at that time, because the nervous system for most people is just on high alert constantly.

If it's not on alert because of toxins we're exposed to, it's on alert from our cell phones going off constantly, from being on the phone and just looking and seeing all these things in the world that are not happy. promoting kind of danger and fear constantly, even with marketing, everything we consume or even movies and news. And would you say that women are wired differently around that, like men, you know, are protectors and, you know, maybe they can handle a little bit more UFC fighting and maybe, you know, whatever is on social media, barely on social media.

But women maybe should be thinking about those things and being cognizant of what they're exposing themselves to as well, right? I think so, too. And again, it depends on even people's past, right? We have so many stored memories that if you're someone who's had any sort of trauma that relates to violence, it's not the best thing to be watching violent movies or seeing people be killed. We really want to fill our consciousness with what we want in our future, right? Like some people see things as like sport or it's for fun or entertainment, but it's going into our system.

And those things also are epigenetic. Our epigenetics can be changed and modified by a happy thought versus a stressful thought. So even straps for entertainment is impactful, male or female. So bring it all together for, for me, um, in respect to the kind of like model of longevity healthcare that you, you, you love. I know we align with so much. Um, but you know, bring together functional medicine, your doctorate and healthy living and longevity. healthy aging and longevity and environmental medicine and all the things, the functional medicine, all the things that you've done,

Root-Cause Medicine and Patient Optimization 26:48

like kind of piece it together, help me make sense of kind of like your, how you would define longevity through these different models. Sure. So we touched on this a little bit, but you know, a lot of times people reach out to us when something's wrong, right? When they're already sick or, for example, what happens a lot with me is a lot of women, especially moms, they might've had sick kids or they've had autoimmune issues themselves. They just don't feel like themselves anymore. They have brain fog, fatigue.

Maybe some pain a little weight gain and then or they have some more chronic issues going on So a lot of them are just looking to see you know What's going on because things are shifting and I just don't feel like me anymore, right? Oh Again, we we have to look at the foundations We have to get dialed in your sleep your stress your you know, good food your home environment and things like that and then what we need to do is make sure how they're regulating their stress levels and nervous system.

But then we get to look at some of the specialized labs and testing. And a lot of people, again, especially with women, let's just say their thyroid and iron are suboptimal levels, but they're in normal ranges. Their doctors said they're fine. Most women are dismissed. when they go to the doctor and they're just told, well, your labs are good. So you're probably either stress or you need an antidepressant or maybe you need to exercise. That happens to almost every single client. If I had a list of every crazy thing that they've come back to that their doctor has said, it's just mind boggling and sad because they're so dismissed.

And so what my job is to do is to find these things, and that's where we're looking at root causes of why this is happening, and then try to put together a solution, and then that's where we get to put in some of this optimization once we've cleared out toxins that we've looked at and found with all these great labs that we have. Wow, so good. So, you know, again, precision healthcare at its finest, longevity medicine at its finest. I mean, we're going to get real deep into a lot of the really cool technologies and solutions and longevity.

science in the near future. But yeah, Dr. Ashley, thank you so much for sharing your heart with us and your background and your story. You've been through a lot, right? What really the visual image of you being in your Beverly Hills clinic and then being wheeled out in a wheelchair by your husband. I mean, that is just like a crazy image to think about. And then for you to be like, I'm vegan, I never drink out of plastic, never buy plastic. Then you get your labs done and it's like, all of these things are in the red and you're like, whoa.

Then to address these underlying causes to then get to where you're at right now is just such a blessing and it's just so awesome to hear. Any last words of inspiration that you'd want to share? Just if somebody's struggling, maybe they're in a wheelchair or maybe they are dealing with mold toxicity or they have chronic headaches or depression or anxiety or whatever it might be. what would you say to them? So you know what a couple I forgot to mention this too because this is a really key factor when you're working with someone right is kind of also remembering how did you enter this world right so I was a c-section and formula fed and on a ton of antibiotics because I was I was sick as a kid So these are also really big pieces that led to, you know, why I wasn't processing toxins so well.

And, and I did live in a home that had mold when I was a kid, like our basement was always full mudded and that's just normal, right? It's like, you know, these things were normal when we were little. So looking at your, you know, early past as well in childhood is usually a very big piece of the puzzle. And people forget that those things have impacted you even into your twenties, thirties and forties and beyond. Right? The thing I like to leave people with though is no matter all the things that you go through, that's what it's so amazing to have the tests and these things to look at because again, you can change your health destiny.

Like that's what we're here for is to either see a practitioner who can help you, you know, work with us, whatever it is. We have so many amazing tools now at our disposal that we didn't have even five or 10 years ago. And so. It's just taking your power back every day, making choices that are promoting health and longevity, as opposed to being stuck in like maybe your old subconscious patterns that are keeping you stuck, right? So we have a ton of power and I always urge people that this data is, you know, just amazing information that you can utilize to just change your whole health trajectory toward longevity and health.

Beautiful. I love it. And where can they learn a little bit more about you, Dr.

Final Takeaways and Where to Learn More 32:18

Ashley? Yes, on my website, www.drashley.com. Nice. I remember when you asked me, like, should I buy drashley.com? And I was like, oh my gosh, it's available? How crazy is that? Yeah. I'm like, yes, buy drashley.com. Yeah, you're like, I was like, OK, done. That is awesome. Well, thank you again. I look forward to getting into all of the genius that you have from everything from the thesis and the papers you've written to the amazing clinical breakthroughs that you've created. We'll also be interviewing experts together, and we'll have a lot of fun as we co-host the Longevity Leaders podcast.

So I appreciate you, Dr. Ashley, and I hope you have an incredible day. You too. Thanks. Thank you for tuning into Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your wellbeing. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com. Stay connected, stay healthy, and join us next time on the issues that matter to you most.