How Nicotine Patches, Salt Water, and Sleep Hacks Helped Me Feel Human Again

Heather's Health Crisis and Brand Pivot 0:00

I wanted to retire from being a cosmetic tattoo artist for two reasons. I feel like touching people is how I got sick. I just got to that point where I was like, I don't know how I feel anymore about tattoo ink, about breast implants, all that stuff. So I wanted to do something different to earn income. And I decided to launch a brand called Project Goods. We launched with a shampoo and conditioner that's high end, but fragrance free. We did a million dollars in sales without advertising just from having these products.

It's not because I'm so great, but it's because people need it and they want it. And there are a lot more people who either can't tolerate fragrance anymore or understand how bad it is for you. And they want to live a bit of a low-tox lifestyle. Welcome to the TBD Fit podcast on Dr. Talks. I'm your host, Daniel Keeley, and I will be guiding you through this wellness journey in terms of optimizing health and longevity, where we unpack the science, the do's, the don'ts. and everything in between. Come join us.

Look forward to seeing you inside. Welcome back to another episode of the TBD Fit Podcast, where we dive deep into real conversations around healing, wellness, and what it truly means to take charge of your health. And our guest today is the epitome of that. I'm your host, Daniel Healy, a functional medicine practitioner who believes that true healing starts when we look at the entire person, not just the symptoms. Today's guest is someone who's storing perfectly embodies that message. Heather Gordon, also known as Pretty Sick Heather on Instagram, who's amassed quite a following, went from being a cosmetic tattoo artist and a beauty brand founder to becoming a viral voice in the wellness space.

And she doesn't cry her see. So I appreciate what she's been preaching in her goal of patient to patient help after facing her own health crisis in 2021, dealing with hormonal imbalances, autoimmune issues, and long COVID. She decided to take healing to her own hands, which sometimes can go wrong too, but certainly she's smarter than the average bear. Her transparency, human curiosity have inspired hundreds and thousands of people online and we are going to have a conversation on her healing crisis and healing journey today.

We're going to talk about all things COVID, nicotine, you'll name it, we'll probably cover it. We just talked offline for quite a bit of time and Her health journey and story is certainly interesting. So welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I love what you're doing and I've already enjoyed quite a few episodes of your podcast. Yeah, we were, we just launched that not long back. And so I was saying offline as I'm so glad that someone's actually tuning in, the guests have an absolutely amazing conversations, extremely fruitful, a lot of knowledge that can be passed along to help patients heal.

So Heather, you have built quite a following, which is impressive since you said it's only from the beginning of the year, but let's go back in time and. give our population here kind of shed a little light on who you are, what led you to what you're doing today. In 2021, I started to not feel right and also not really look the same. I started to put on a lot of almost water weight. I started to feel like I was gaining weight. I'm not somebody who really gains weight. I'm kind of always the same weight.

And I just almost felt like I did when I was pregnant. So I thought my hormones might be doing something weird. And, you know, I saw a functional practitioner dabbled in HRT, but it wasn't really moving the needle for me. And as it turns out from my own research and exploring and listening to podcasts like yours with Dr. Neil Nathan and learning that I think I have mast cell activation syndrome and histamine intolerance issues and long COVID, which I didn't know you could have if you weren't vaccinated and I wasn't vaccinated.

So I just had never really thought that that might be something that was wrong with me. And as kind of turns out, it's a little bit of all of that. It's part autoimmune, part probably really old mold mycotoxins from not the current home that I live in, but some childhood experience or a workplace that I wasn't even aware of. And it might've not have been a problem until it was a problem. And what I'm learning more and more from my own audience, which I say we're patients helping patients or people helping people.

I'm not giving medical advice. I'm just helping share my story and help people explore theirs is that COVID for whatever reason, whether you think it was a virus or it was G or whatever you think it is, has ignited in some people a lot more sensitivities to mold. It seems to have triggered Epstein-Barr virus in people, which I know is dormant in a lot of the population. And it probably was dormant in me, but it became active. And I think even Lyme, I didn't test for Lyme, but I have been bitten by a tick and I have kind of some of the classic symptoms of it.

And so it was just a little bit of everything. Simultaneously, my mother, who's 79 years old with Parkinson's, got the COVID vaccines and took like a really big nosedive in her Parkinson's health after she got vaccinated. And I was looking to help her primarily while I was also dealing with my own inner private, I don't feel good. I don't know what's wrong with me. And I came across the nicotine patch protocol from Dr. Brian Artis, who happens to live in my same area. And then I started listening to different people and it was all kind of coming together for me.

So I started the nicotine patch protocol for my mom for Parkinson's. I wanted to try it first before I could ever explained to her to put a nicotine patch on. She's a not smoker, not drinker. Like she would not know what I was telling her to do that for. So I thought I better test drive this. And lo and behold, three days in, I started to feel better. Like a lot better. And this is kind of the long story short. I just proceeded down that journey of curating what is now in my healing guide or my ebook, a long COVID protocol.

What does that protocol look like? It looks like onboarding nicotine, the nicotine patch, and there's definitely directions to it. You do not want to just slap a nicotine patch on. You want to cut them down. And there's a lot of instructions because nicotine patches come in little clear square and around like skin tone. patch, you cannot cut the round ones, they have a reservoir and all the nicotine will be released. But the square clear ones have a matrix and you can just cut them down. So you might buy 7, 14 or 21 milligrams and you're going to cut them down to like one to two milligrams to start with.

And then there's also things that people will take with it to help them tolerate onboarding nicotine, like Zyrtec Pepsid, like H1H2 blockers, NAC, not to be confused with NAD. Dow helped me a lot, ancestral beef kidney, just with my histamine. And ivermectin is another thing that we put in there and people do really good on. So it's just a little bit of a mixture of everything for kind of The person who doesn't know who to see can't afford functional practitioners and they're not getting this stuff from their traditional doctors and is comfortable experimenting and exploring with alternatives because they've been from doctor to doctor and they just keep getting misdiagnosed, especially if you're female.

And you're anywhere from at this point, 35 to 55, 60, you'll be told it's perimenopause or menopause. And it might be, but I don't think like for me, HRT wasn't going to work if I didn't clear up these elevated spike proteins. Yeah, the spike protein is central how the virus infects cells and how your immune system responds to it. I mean, it's kind of unlike any other virus that we've seen. So the damage is very, very severe. But the underlying issue is like the immune system dysregulation or just poor immune function where this comes in and now despite protein bind states to receptors on the human cells, especially in the lungs, heart, blood vessels, gut, brain, all throughout the body.

And then after it binds, it fuses with the cell membranes and it releases its genetic material inside. So the viral, you get hijacked, the viral and it takes over and this leads to kind of more immune dysfunction leads to more inflammation. And then you're stuck in this kind of what we tout as long COVID. Yeah. In terms of your nicotine protocol, so you're just, I guess let's talk reference end of one, like what we did for you that you found worked very well. So you're putting in the patch, was it just like one milligram dose that you're cutting at two milligrams?

Like what dose can start at? Do you dose up? Roughly one to two milligrams. And you're going to tie trade up every couple of days as you tolerate it or you want to. Again, it's biohacking, right? There's no rules. You just kind of have to do what works for you. And I got myself up to seven milligrams in about a week. And I was on day three, I started to have some brain fog lifting. I think a lot of us experienced what's called loss of joy with this. And I just had loss of joy in my life. And I had unexplained loss of joy.

Like things that I should be happy about brought me nothing. And I started to have joy where I would just naturally feel happy again. And that, that I really noticed on like the third day. And I think from there, you know, increase your dose if you want to. I wore a seven milligram patch pretty much 24 seven for almost six months. I rotated around my body. Um, a lot of people do welt up from it. It's not really the adhesive. It is actually the nicotine. I don't know why you might know why, but Putting it on the bottom of my foot is something that I learned in a Facebook group and it really, the body really tolerates it down there for some reason and does not react.

So I wore it there for a long time and then eventually I stopped sleeping in it and now I wear it probably five days a week during waking hours at about 3.5 milligrams. I could probably not wear it, but I find it makes me feel better cognitively with joy and I'm afraid to relapse and I also don't want to get COVID. People are still getting it and it keeps viruses away, keeps you healthy from what I understand and that's just where I'm at today. It's been just over a year since I've been doing this and I always say I'm subject to change my mind but Right now, it's working for me and it's working for a lot of people and it's helping them maybe not be the be all end all cure, but it's helping them get better enough to be able to in a plan of action and get out of the house and start to put their life back together because a lot of people just start isolating.

You just feel horrible. So let me maybe provide some light into kind of how it works and why it works. Interestingly, the bottom of our feet are very, very porous. So this is the thought process of grounding or earthing. We discharge protons or positively charged molecules into the earth because we should be more negatively charged. This is the same presentation when you fly close to the sun. That's why pilots or stewardess higher prevalence of cancer were meant to be negatively charged. And so when you're putting in the feed, that's absolutely brilliant.

That's something I didn't do with my patient population. So that's why when you say patient to patient healing, we were talking about this prior offline. As practitioners, we kind of operate in silos. Medicine is essential, unfortunately. Anecdotally, what happens is really the powerful nature of how people can heal, right? So what I've done or what my colleague has done or what you have found and shared with the population through other Facebook forums. And that's where I hope in the future, we become this kind of centralized state medicine where now people can help.

And regardless of someone's credentials, what works is what works.

Nicotine Patch Protocol for Long COVID 12:00

Like you can't just volunteer how you feel. Right. And so sometimes as practitioners, often we force things and I fundamentally disagree with that. Medicine has to be personalized. Sure. You know, mycotoxic burden was high previously. That creates a heightened susceptibility to COVID or any other immunity. But when you're looking at nicotine in particular, it's super interesting because this is not really novel. The SARS-CoV-2 virus, as I alluded to, it enters through the ACE2 receptor. So nicotine has been found to modulate that expression.

It can both kind of tenuate up or down, but what it really does, it stimulates nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, which really are profound in reducing the cytokine storm. So cytokine releasing IL-6, IL-1-beta, TNF-alpha. things that kind of shift you into an H2 immunosuppressive, highly inflammatory immune dysfunctional model. And so what nicotine does, it can kind of not only dampen that, but kick the spike receptors off of the spike protein off of the receptor site. So it's interesting that you've been able to achieve such a potent degree of benefit.

Just kind of from, from N of one, right? It's kind of researching and following some, some individuals. So what I also want to highlight, which you did really well there is adding in other such immune modulators or detox enhancers or histamine considerations without two blockers. And then some, I think it was neonatal or you said liver extract or some. NAC was one of the ones that I used. Yeah, or glutathione, which is critical. Very hugely chewed up, um, in terms of any sort of immune dysregulation, especially mycotoxin related.

Um, but no, you used to mention, I think it was a liver extract or a glandular. Ancestral beef kidney. Kidney. That's interesting. Yeah. Dow in the form of beef kidney. Got it. Okay. And then I also added in something that I don't know the real word for, but it's PEA. Yeah. Do you know what dosing you were doing there? Not off the top of my head, just one a day, whatever I have. I was, you know, really the histamine once I got rid of the, the panic feeling, the anxiety feeling, the palpitations, the, the scaries that I had from the spike, I guess.

Then I was really left with. what might be like mast cell activation, certainly histamine intolerance. And then I really went after that just to try to turn around those mast cells and create just a better environment inside myself and just doing a lot of work on mitochondria. And things like that. Another thing that's made a huge difference in my daily life is a really, really high quality, like mineral salt, like a sea salt really increased my salt intake. And I no longer have like joint pain.

I just feel a lot better on salt. A lot of salt. A lot of salt. For me. We're taught not to add salt. Salt is driving the blood pressure, which is cardiovascular risk. So many people I know now that use mineral salt, not table salt, say that their blood pressure is better. Yeah, salt is critical. The problem is our water, we're drinking dead water. It's not structured and it's devoid of minerals. And if you look historically, As water kind of falls from the mountains, it passes rocks, the structure has to be memorialized.

We don't get that. And so water now is not absorbed into cellular anymore. So it just hangs out in extracellular space. Our cells become more like raisins instead of robust plums. And so the goal is to get the water into the cell, but because the cell membranes are so rigid because of our heightened toxic burden. And so the cell kind of swells up more because we're dehydrated. We're not getting enough minerals. We're, um, uh, we're poorly hydrated just in, in general and we're minerally depletion.

And we have low oxygen status, our high toxic burden. Things can't get out and things can't get in. So nutrients can't get in. toxins can be eliminated. And so now we're stuck in this chronic inflammatory burden. And it's interesting because PEA in general really helps reduce that inflammation, especially for mast cells. So we'll use that in terms of improving outcomes with our CSRS patients, our mast cell patients. So smart choice there, even with like neuropathy, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, that's a great supplement that can help move the needle.

Again, you have to change the environment, right? The environment is what keeps us sick. And so what you're doing is you're kind of checking all those bases like NAC, glutathione, critical to supporting immune health and detoxification. PEAs, the kidney extract, salt in the water. We think that it is the ratio that's a problem. So you have to look at the sodium to potassium ratio. You have to look at the magnesium to calcium ratio, right? So context is super relevant. So I applaud you for kind of looking at all that.

You know, you said something really smart to me about salt and being dehydrated and the ratio. And I learned that from somebody, a podcast or TikTok or Instagram, and I started to do it. And then I started to want to understand why. So when I started drinking a high quality, like mineral salt, salt water, not a lot of water before bedtime, I stopped waking up in the night to pee. So one of my e-book healing guides, a trilogy, and it started as a sleep e-book long before it talked about long COVID stuff because I told you I got famous on TikTok for a sleep hack.

So in there, I explained to people if you drink salt water before bed, you might know the science. This is layman's terms. It'll really hydrate you it'll it'll push all of your fluids into your tissues and cells and whatnot instead of just blood to bladder so that you don't have to eliminate all night long and i'm 55 years old and i do not get up in the middle of the night to pee not once and this became a hot topic in my videos and people wouldn't believe me and then they would try it and they may not get up three times, they'll get up two or get up two times, they'll get up one.

And it's true. It's because we're really dehydrated. And so people will chase water all day long and they'll pee all day long. And they think they're doing the right thing, but they're actually not hydrated because they're not balancing. Like you said, the ratio of electrolytes out and whatnot. And now that I'm truly hydrated, I don't have to go to the bathroom all the time. And I look more hydrated. Well, you look good. I mentioned that at the beginning. So you're doing something right. But what you alluded to is osmotic balance and intracellular hydration.

That's what people don't recognize, right? People, they know I need to drink more water. Well, what kind of water are you drinking? Is it in glass? Is it in plastic? Is it dead water? Is it distilled from a spring? Is it deuterium depleted? What kind of water are you drinking? We're more water than anything else. Well, we're definitely more bacteria than anything else, but our body is compromised primarily of water, 70% in some estimations. And so obviously we need to stay hydrated, but we need to stay mineralized more importantly.

And so that's often neglected. And what depletes minerals is infection, right? It takes a lot to run the demands of our brain or any organ function in the body. And especially in Lou, when inflammation is so high. And so we just burn through vitamins and minerals. People don't understand that. So when you're ill, you need more. More doesn't always equal better. So this is just blindly taking more supplements. It's a targeted personalized approach. But that was interesting in terms of your your nicotine solution.

because clinically we've seen a lot of efficacy and the other integrations certainly have its place. Now, in terms of your sleep hack, this is interesting because this is what I'm known for, actually, which I haven't disclosed this yet. I'm curious to hear your sleep hack. Okay, I'm going to do it with my eyes open, but you're going to do it with your eyes closed and you can do this to fall asleep and you can do this to stay asleep. So you're going to you're assuming you're trying to fall asleep.

That's why your eyes are closed. So you're going to look up. And you're going to look down, left, and right. Then you're going to do a clock from like 12 o'clock all the way around. And you're going to go the other way all the way around. And then if you can, try to cross your eyes or look at the tip of your nose. And I hear this is called like something parasympathetic, vagus nerve reset or something. You might know, but it makes you fall asleep. And you might need to do it two times, three times.

I never make it past three. I fall asleep somewhere in between the third try, two and three, every night. So we've worked with very high level athletes and I will test their eyes because that is a function of nervous system balance. And often enough, we're stuck in this kind of fight or flight, sympathetic, autonomic state where this becomes high risk for injury. And if the nervous system is imbalanced and your eyes now are out of balance, well, certainly that's going to impact performance. So in fact, our ability to shift.

into parasympathetic rest digest in time when our circadian biology should follow in light or in conjunction with the cycle of light in the moon and we should get to bed just after sunset. I say this all the time, I think good happens after sunset. But yeah, what we do is we force blue light and we try to get more work done or we try to unwind and watch TV or scroll, whatever the case, instead of trying to optimize for sleep. And so I'm going to try that. Definitely, you're kind of synchronizing everything there.

Um, and we do some cool eye tricks with, with our athletes, but eyes are, are often very overlooked because it's a muscle that's constantly operating very, very, uh, metabolically active and, and nutrient rich. So it needs a lot of zinc. There's a lot of other nutrients that, um, make sure that the eyes function properly. And because we, I think only second to the, the heart and maybe brain, the eyes have more mitochondria than, than anywhere else. And so if there's an oxidative burden, then your eyesight is going to take a huge hit.

You know, I have posted this video a bunch of times. Like I said, it went to like 11 million views overnight the first time. It's part in part because When I'm trying to explain it and do it at the same time, it looks really funny, but people will comment that they start yawning when they're practicing it or they're getting drowsy watching me do it. And it also works really well. Um, if you feel like you're having a panic attack or an anxiety attack for some reason, it's very calming to people. So again, it's a reset.

And I'll, um, I'll give you a clinical pro that I've used very effectively to help reset, um, kind of the HPA, but just to shift the body into a more rest and digest parasympathetic state. So for people that come in, and I used to say this when I started years ago, 50% of people come in with gut issues, 50% with sleep issues. Okay. And often enough, both. So this is one that I learned from Dr. Kowski, who I've also had in the podcast, if you haven't, that was a brilliant episode as well. So what he was suggesting is to do very quick kind of circadian reset.

Melatonin, one full dropper, which equates to I think one milligram roughly about every waking hour. I heard this podcast. Okay, for seven to ten days in conjunction with L-thening. So melatonin improves every single cell organism on the planet, clinical, through our biology. It's estimated, going back to COVID, why babies didn't get COVID is because the high culture melatonin is tremendously antiviral. Okay, but if we have mycotoxins high inflammation, we produce less at night. And you can see that if you track through an oring or a whoop or any sort of HRT in the different cycles of your sleep.

So what we'll do, we'll actually dose it during the day. It's interesting. Tumors cannot grow at night because of melatonin. So it's not only anti... So we'll dose that every single hour in conjunction with L-theanine, melatonin calms the body, L-theanine calms the mind for a one-two punch for a stress-sleep reset. We'll do that for seven to ten days. I have patients coming in with decades of insomnia that I get shifting their biology, their circadian ramicity, and they're sleeping like babies after a few weeks.

That's amazing. What brands I need to know. So we use several different brands, all practitioner grade. One that I like is Neutrodyne, Pneumetica. Those are historically the ones that I use with that. They're both for quick tinctures. So melatonin, alethionine. We never suggest ever anyone operate heavy machinery because it will make you lethargic. And I said, that's your body resetting saying let's time to take a nap. because we are overworked, malnourished, overfed, under recovered, sleep deprived, and our health is only deteriorating.

So it's time to prioritize us. And if we can nap like our Italian counterparts or European counterparts, perhaps that might be best. But if you can't just dose down, the goal is you try to reset that, try to be mindful within, you know, Seven days, sometimes longer for people, but it's also a tool that if someone needs a kind of a quick reset, cause they're under a high load of stress, use that. So my patients are like, Hey, Daniel, can I, can I do that? And these are all natural nutrients. Everything is very safe.

I always say is we help you heal faster and safer and what you did with your eyes, right. It's free. Yeah. total to shift your biology and we can get into breath work too but that's absolutely brilliant what else in your healing toolbox i want to learn more teach me more okay and then i want to ask you about what water we're supposed to be drinking since it's all dead and i know we need to mineralize it and everything but i want to know what water you drink I have a whole protocol on our EMR, our medical portal where we suggest that talk to our patients.

Here's good options for water. Here's even better options for salt. Okay. Because we talked about now the remineralization, the overlooked component because not all salt is equal and a lot comes back with high degrees of heavy metal. For sure. Yeah. So I want to check that. Okay. So another thing that is, this was, this came before the nicotine patch in my life was going fragrance free. So I ended up in 2021 with chemical sensitivities and fragrance intolerance came out of that. I could not find effective shampoo and conditioner like bougie shampoo and conditioner that was fragrance free.

I could only find aloe vera and water from sprouts and it just wasn't good for my hair. And I even can shop at the cosmetology beauty supply because of my old license and there's not one fragrance free shampoo and conditioner in the entire place and they have a few hundred brands. So I decided that that was going to be the next thing I was going to do. I wanted to retire from being a cosmetic tattoo artist for two reasons. One, I feel like touching people is how I got sick because I think I got shed on from all of the vaccinated patients I was touching because I wasn't vaccinated.

And two, I just started to question wanting to put the ink in people. I just got to that point where I was like, I don't know how I feel anymore about tattoo ink, about breast implants, you know, all that stuff. So I wanted to do something different to earn income. And I decided to launch a brand called Project Goods. And that was just going to be a working title until we figured it out. And it ended up just being what we decided to call it. So we launched with a shampoo and conditioner that's high end, but fragrance free just a year ago in October of 2024. You know,

Sleep, Salt, and Circadian Reset Hacks 28:00

as you saw on Instagram that we did a million dollars in sales without advertising just from having these products. And it's not because I'm so great, but it's because people need it and they want it. And there are a lot more people who either can't tolerate fragrance anymore or understand how bad it is for you. And they want to live a bit of a low-tox lifestyle. And then from there, we launched a body wash and a face wash. The body lotion comes out next, then the face cream. From there, we're going to do a pet wash that's fragrance free because you cannot find a dog shampoo that's not scented and a baby wash all in one.

And then we'll go on from there, but it's just going to be a few core products that are for men, for women, for any type of skin or hair that are just high end and fragrance free. So that's kind of. Like me going fragrance free is a huge part of my healing journey. I did not understand how bad our environment is and what we put in us, on us and around us matters. And I have a fragrance free home now. I run, you know, high grade Jasper. We do not have any scented home cleaning products. There is nothing scented in our cabinets, in our bathrooms.

It is fragrance free and I sleep good and I look better and I feel better. And I don't think people realize in your labels that one word fragrance is protected by trade secret law, at least in this country. And it's 4,000 Rockefeller by-products. It's your PFAS, your plastics, your phthalates. It's your endocrine disruptors, your hormone disruptors, your formaldehydes. It's pretty much all the garbage. I appreciate this coming from you because sometimes the avatar that explains it, people receive it differently, right?

If I'm sharing this with women, right? And I'm a male with a shaved head. It's sometimes received differently, but the science is unequivocal. This is crippling our health and worse yet our children. So I appreciate your mission. Um, certainly the tap to my suspicion, maybe even more so than the shedding of the vaccine that you were suspicious of is the, the ink because the notorious with heavy metals and heavy metals are. Immense endocrine disruptors, much like valates and fragrances. And I think one of the trade secrets, one of them, if I was reading this like 10 years ago, one of the fragrances was from like a beaver anus.

And remarkable where they're sourcing some of this. Take a look at that. Like that was published. They found that one of the sources of one of the fragrances was... I don't know how that's going to enhance smell, but needless to say is what's acceptable here is certainly toxic. And the limits we know now, mercury as an example, very heavy metal, sometimes found, well, definitely in vaccines, but in hopefully not in the tattooing you were using, but. Anything's possible, unfortunately, because a lot of times things are not always disclosed if they're beyond a quote unquote detectable or safe level.

We realize there is no safe level in all of that. We do provoke tele-mental testing in our patients and we see the reference ranges over the last decade dropping lower and lower and lower because there is no safe limit. But the problem is it's just ubiquitous in our environment. So the question is how can we build a robust immune system to fight and what you're doing is being super mindful by eliminating all those xenobiotics, all the disrupting hormones so the body isn't constantly under this barrage because our skin is our largest organ.

I beg to differ that our muscle is probably our hardest organ that we know of longevity but everything is absorbed to the skin and so if you don't eat it, why would you put in your skin? People don't recognize that. Your skin is actually eating the nutrients that you're putting on top. Oh yeah, it's porous. Very porous, right into the bloodstream. Just like the nicotine patch, that's why it works so well on the skin. A lot of these transdermal patches, glutathione you mentioned you were taking, that's one probably best absorbed through the skin, obviously.

Second to, I mean, IV being the best. Needless to say, so I applaud you again. Yeah. You know, I think people are so emotionally attached to their fragrances. And one of the reasons that I, I believe you may tell me differently, but what I learned is not to get confused with the nicotine patch. We don't, we do not celebrate smoking or vaping. Okay. But cigarettes and vapes have parazine in them to make them addictive. Fragrance also has parazine in it to make it Addictive and to make you like it and I say that fragrances the new secondhand smoke and once you eliminate it from your life And you don't you aren't exposed to it.

Not only can you like you can't tolerate it. You'll have an aversion to it They don't smell good anymore. You see you smell right through that emotion and it just smells like garbage. And I don't think people realize it's not rose, it's not patchouli, it's not lilies. It's not what you think it is. It's just chemicals. And the same exact chemicals that we would clean our toilet bowl with is the same chemicals in the fragrance of your products. It's just scented differently. Pine salt versus rose or musk or vanilla, but it's the same chemicals.

So, you know, and of course my daughters are 17 and 19. They don't listen to me. So they, they want to load up on their, their fragrances and stuff. And, uh, it's hard. It's hard to tell them you can't do that. Like you can't put self-tanner on in my house. But when you mentioned vaping, because to me that's been a, it's kind of a trend almost, if you will, with Juul that kind of illuminated that some time ago, but we now realize the damage with vaping. What's very prevalent in vaping is cadmium.

Cadmium is an issue. It can cause osteoporosis, lung cancer, renal tubular damage. There is a big problem with a shift into what people think is healthier. Same thing with fragrance. To me, as you said it, fragrance free is the way to be. I always joke around when I told you offline I've been plastic free since 2003. Because I saw right away early on what plastic is doing to crippling again our endocrine system. and how it can collect in the brain. But needless to say, there was an actually interesting study in terms of plastic really quickly.

I was watching a documentary. There was a group of Italian scientists. They developed a problem that looks like a manoray that floats at the, at the surface level of the ocean or the sea there. And it collects anything, any debris at the top that's undetectable by the eyesight. So it's microscopic in nature. It is inundated with plastic, but you can't see it. We are swimming it. Fish are eating it. More eating them. Exactly. So we're all toxic. The question is, okay, I want to instill hope. It's not fear mongering.

The body is resilient. We can get rid of it. We just have to be very intentional and the products you design I see are very intentional. I want to showcase really quickly my routine. Yeah. Because this might surprise you. So obviously I had long locks previously. I cut them off. I almost developed this kind of Buddhist minimalist philosophy. I realized if I can reduce because Manicuring everything, grooming, taking care of everything. If I was spending, you know, up to half an hour to an hour a day daily by just shaving my head, I would say I would free up one year's worth of time.

I would extend. So for women, I can't imagine everything that goes through. But so shaved it all off. What I do now is literally I went to They might have one in Texas, I'm not sure. It's called Air Ancient Bath House. So they have them, I think New York, Chicago, Barcelona, and Italy. When you bathe, you bathe with salt. That's literally what I do. So I just take a whole heap full of salt. I don't want to deter anyone from using your products. Still use your products to rehydrate. But all I do is just bathe myself with salt.

Now it might burn if you're shaving, right? So I don't suggest that. But sometimes I'll use a conditioner. I'm eager to try your products as well. I've always been looking. There was a company out of Canada, which I partnered with years ago called Living Libations. And they formulate things very, very myopically with the great degree of detail and essential oils and they go big into the oral microbiome and oral height, which has been a staple within my practice because the oral microbiome sees the gut microbiome and it's too weighty.

So if you have problems here, you can have problems down there. Um, but so in terms of my, and when you said like any sort of skincare products, um, using clays to extract any sort of impurities, all of that is key, but most of the stuff on the market, people don't realize. I don't know where you can go to any store, Costco, Walmart, Wargames, that you're not going to find garbage. I don't know anything that you can find the shelf as you suggested that is filled with some degree of toxicity. I don't know.

And I mean, even my product brand might not be clean enough or holistic enough for what some people's desires are. And, you know, I was really looking for that, like, where can we kind of create something that's fragrance free and effective that, you know, it's got synthetics in it as well, but I really handpicked and chose what I'm going to use and what I'm not going to use. Another popular video of mine is my deodorant detox video and I'm, I'm more bougie than crunchy. So I will just say that I'm not like head to toe, like crunchy girl, but I just realized like, I have to let my lymphatic system, you know, drain and I want to heal and I don't want to be putting deodorant on.

And at first I started with like a better brand, Humble was the brand, fragrance free or unscented. And then from there I'm like, I'm just going to get rid of this altogether and get through this deodorant detox. And you can get through it. It might take about a month, but if your gut is healthy, your oral microbiome is healthy, you're working on your health, you shouldn't smell anyways. And I don't sweat, I don't smell, and I even got my husband to do it. So we're deodorant free now. And I, it's hard to explain to people that you shouldn't need it.

I mean, maybe occasionally you're going to sweat, but you shouldn't be smelly. I don't recall the last time. Well, okay. I'll cycle deodorant very rarely. Do I ever wear deodorant? It's been a long time and you nailed it. If every, your environment, your internal ecosystem is healthy, is balanced, there will be no smell. So I presume, are you not ever using any sort of perfume then or anything like that? I don't use essential oils because I can't tolerate anything scented. My nervous system, I still need to work on this.

From the all the long COVID stuff, my nervous system still sees scent as a threat and I still do lock up into fight or flight, like I'm being held at gunpoint if somebody even sits next to me with perfume on. And essential oils still do that to me. Cause you know, they're not all good. Some of them just say they're essential oils, but you have to really, really figure out the quality of them and where they're sourced from and whatnot. But scents still kind of are unpleasant for me. And so, no, I'm not using any perfume now.

I will, I can probably change that. Okay. I'll have to suggest a product. I'm trying to look it up here. I think it's called, they might've changed the name Biotics. I think it's Centarest, but it's for specifically for kind of those chemical sensitivities when people react to essential oils or fragrance, smells, everything like that. Sometimes it's a molybdenum deficiency. I would love to, I would love to explore this with you because it's like that last rung on the ladder that, and she told me that it was making her nauseous and she had to shower it off before the time that it was supposed to cure.

because it was making her so sick. I'm thinking like, I can smell it from downstairs. Yeah, I will, I'll help correct that with you. We'll dose that up properly to overcome that. But obviously the self-tanners, it's our unrelenting pursuit of what society deems beautiful. And I'll find we were talking about, you know, breast implants and now how sometimes that's mold, but maybe it's not mold in your circumstance, thought it was something else, which very likely is the case. I think that a mother's intuition is often right.

And in general, if we follow our gut, we're, we are right. Sometimes we just don't know what we don't know and know it's everything. Books behind me, some of those I'm still eager to read. Right. And it's continues to evolve. The goal is to stay current, uh, at least for us so that we can deliver better outcomes for our patients. But more importantly, as you said, to listen to patients because they're doing very cool things like what you're doing as an example. Yeah. Helping yourself on your own healing journey, right?

Yeah, you know, and I'm really transparent about going through the whole ex plant process and putting them back in was not an easy decision, but it was the right decision for me at that time. But I kind of said to myself, like, if this becomes an issue, like I'm done, like there, I'm taking them out and I'm done. But I also was like, well, I'm 55. Like I, like. I would be upset if like my daughters wanted to go down that road and get started with it, but I had already gotten started with it and it sort of didn't work for me that well when I took them out.

So, but I don't feel great about it. You know, it's not, it's, it's, I like to tell people like, don't do it if you don't really need to do it. You know? I want to also bring light to ivermectin, another hot topic. Yeah, let's do. So it was interesting, I was not doing what I preach because I was scrolling last night in preparation of today's conversation, looking at your catalog of video, which you do very well with, very, very captivating and informative. And I see you come from a place of being genuine and just trying to help, right?

You see kind of what works for you. You're very upfront with your story, which really is what resonates not only with me, but All of us, we're all sick. All of us are sick. And the more that I go to these conferences, I see just all even practitioners are sick. And catalyst is just, that's what, you know, got us into this is overcoming our own problems typically because the conventional route didn't have the right. Yeah. It was the same with me too. And so we figured I have to figure out, okay, well, how do we figure this out?

And I don't like the term alternative care or even holistic how like it's alternative care. No, it's restorative care is what it is. Right. The problem here, the model we adopted is that you're ill, but let's look at the impact of ivermectin, how you've used it very effectively.

Fragrance-Free Living and Project Goods 43:00

I have ivermectin in my healing guide and I've used it on and off for the past year. And I always like to tell people I'm not the best resource for instructions on ivermectin. and you can go to the ivermectin for cancer group on Facebook or you can go to the FLCCC because if you ask 10 people how to do ivermectin, you're going to get 10 different answers. So this is just what I've done. There's the paste and the liquid and the pills. The pills are for humans. They're not very cost effective if you're going to be taking a lot and taking it regularly, but If you feel better with that, you can get the pills.

And you can get them online without seeing a physician if you need to, if you're self-insured like me. And then the paste is, you know, you go to your local tractor supply. Amazon sells it. They also sell fake. I've only ever gotten real on Amazon, but I know people get fake. And if you get it, then it's fake. There's no notches on the plunger. Don't use it. Most people dose the paste one notch per 50 pounds. other people take a piece-thighs amount daily for however long I guess they want to. There's people that do 14 days on, 14 days off, 14 days on.

Some people do five off, five on, five off, five on. And then other people will do like two or three nights every month over the full moon. And then there's the liquid. The liquid is the injectable for cattle and swine. We do not inject it. And don't use the pour-on, that's a different liquid. But the injectable is my favorite. I don't inject it. And I use, it's one ml per 100 pounds, according to my research. And I take a quarter of a teaspoon. And I did the initial 14 days on, 14 off, 14 on at the beginning of my healing journey a year ago.

And now I will just use it if I feel like something's coming on or like my daughter had COVID two, two weeks ago and I share, I was the one taking care of her. So I instantly got on Ivermectin once a day for a couple of days, just to be preventative. I never noticed like a big parasite cleanse situation for myself, but I know other people really can find it challenging to do it. And they might experience parasites and die off and need a binder. And that was not the case for me. Your turn. What do you do?

What do you know? I was, I found the product. I misspoke when I said centerized. I think maybe that was an older name, tolerate, but I'll sort you out with the chemical sensitivity. Yeah, I want that. So it depends what we are trying to treat, I guess is really the discourse here in terms of the addition of ivermectin. Again, I like practicing personalized medicine. So context is very, very specific, but. In terms of ivermixin, I look at it as an anti-parasitic, which has a high degree of efficacy.

The problem is when you're looking at parasites, they're very, very difficult to find on a stool analysis. And when you mentioned Nathan and now her colleague, Jill Christa, who I follow very closely because she's a wealth of knowledge. And in terms of that, I was just at a pediatric conference with her and she inspired me to make my own anti-parasitic because we have black walnut hulls growing in our back yard, which is remarkable. Needless to say is when she was putting up slides of parasites in stool that was undetectable again, when, when just doing a, uh, sending out for, uh, within a comprehensive stool analysis, it was confirming my suspicion that parasites are a lot more prevalent.

Now we've evolved with parasite. The question is the body burden and our immune dysfunction. So two branches of the immune system, TH1, TH2, TH1 focuses on. The neutral cells, lymphocytes, what does that mean? The body's fighting against bacteria and virus. Think about it as intracellular cleanup. The TH2 branch goes more toward now treating, fighting against fungus and parasite. Extracellular. So TH1 cleans inside, TH2 cleans outside. We are stuck in this extracellular, the body cannot now not clean the inside because of the fungal load, because of the parasitic load.

And now the cells are toxic and now then the cellular tissue becomes toxic. Now the organ tissue becomes toxic, now the organism or the human becomes toxic. But it starts at the cellular level and starts at that shift into the TH2 dominant branch where the body is stuck in this very high inflammatory burden and it can't kind of come out. So we need to make a shift and I'll use peptides to do that. Ivermectin is very good at modulating NF-kappa B, which is one of those kind of shifting markers that triggers more inflammation.

And then you have COVID, the whole cytokine storm, again, stuck in that TH2 dominant state. And so you become over time, that's autoimmunity. When your immune becomes suppressed, it can't handle that toxic load. The dosing that we'll do. So I've done it with oral capsules. The price has gone down substantially too. So it has become very affordable, depending if we're treating, you know, cancer patients or just some antiparasitic or kind of a prophylactic, um, because it can benefit there's again that immune modulation component.

So when you said you, you feel like you're, you know, it might help when, when something's coming on. So somewhere between 0.2 to 0.3 mg per kilogram and then all the way up to 0.5 maybe even sometimes higher but for cancer depending on what stages and then dosing frequency with kind of the severity of what someone presents with. So there's ways to do it, but again, going back to Parasite, it really was eye-opening because I'm not seeing Parasite, but yet I'm seeing a lot of anemic patients, but they're eating meat.

They're doing a lot of the right things and they're still struggling. My suspicion is Parasite. We treat for Parasite and then they get better. And literally I have a testimonial the other day with a patient. It was the same thing. She was struggling with loose stool for years. Imagine just not being able to have a healthy bowel movement in years. And so we did kind of a anti-parasitic cleanse cleanup and. Bowel kind of came back because we're killing off some of the bad players, parasite or otherwise, that's kind of crippling not only your gut microbiome, but then your immune regulation.

Why? Because it's estimated even maybe upwards, closer to 90% secretory IgA, the gut at the layer of the epithelial barrier at the gut. your immune system resides right there and it's a very potent protective barrier. But when you have dysfunction, it too goes into red alert over time. It just can't keep up. And then we have immune suppression. So the goal is to just find a balance, restore the balance. It starts with a healthy gut, but these parasites, what happens is when you have intestinal permeability, the gut opens, the gut lining, which should remain adhesed, tight intact, beautiful gut membrane.

But what happens with, um, too many bad players, too many chemical toxins, mycotoxin exposure, gluten, dairy, some other foods that are ridden with pesticides. It kind of opens up the gut. Now you have parasites that can leave and go elsewhere into the body, in the brain and the joints where the hollow space is where there's less vascularity, they love to play. So that's one component of treatment. I was, I was just interested to, uh, to kind of get your take cause I saw you promoting it. I was like, that works.

I mean, uh, But most people steer clear. So that's a tool in the toolkit, I guess is the point. Yeah, you know, a lot of people are curious about it and interested in it and they just want to know like how to do it and what to do. I'm like, here's a couple of the ways that I've been told and, you know, do it at your own risk, but this is, you know, and, you know, people, people are desperate. Okay. So should we be doing coffee enemas? Yes and no. A coffee can be aggravating for some. Some practitioners love it.

Others say we were never meant to stick things into the anus. Even hydrotherapy, colon hydrotherapy. So anything that you're inserting can be deemed as aggressive. It's going to change the constitution of the microbes for the better. Obviously we've done fecal transplants with a high degree of efficacy, so suppositories can work. So I'm not diametrically opposed. In the right context, I am very bullish on colonics or hydrotherapy or coffee enemas. I don't think it's the right tool for everyone at the right time, but some people, they swear by it.

Other people, it really inflames them. So mixed bag. In general, I think it's pretty safe. I'm not necessarily opposed when, when people want to try it. I don't particularly like putting things up in that office. So it's not necessarily my first go-to, but you can do not only coffee. I have not done a coffee enema, but I know they're very popular and there's a lot of data about them. So I just wondered what your thoughts were. And if you're not saying, Heather, you should do it. It'll change your life.

I'm not rushing. For some patients, it has changed their life. So I will be, I will share that again. I've been able to achieve very high level results without having to do that. So again, it's a tool in the toolkit. What some people will put open up capsules of probiotic and put it in that way as well. So an alternative kind of treatment idea, but again, is to me. If you're asking, biggest bang for your buck, my foundation five, eat right, sleep right, move right, talk right, poop right. If you can master that, you're, you're going to feel right.

And so I think what you were alluding to, you know, with the selection and criteria selection of what you're putting into your products and. Could it be better? Could it be worse? You're trying to eliminate the fragrance. You're doing a lot of good. The point is progress over perfection, I think, as well, which you really named. And I agree with you. And I think that people want a tangible something they spent money on or a professional they paid. They really get hung up on the ivermectin thing.

If people didn't ask me about it all the time, it wouldn't be my first thing to talk about. It is complicated. It's confusing. I'm uncertain. Things that have changed my life are I sleep like a queen and my husband and I don't live together. Now, this is a second marriage, but we will never share our primary bedroom again and we have a great intimate life. We are both optimized with our sleep and we just sleep better in our own spaces, with our own temperatures, with our own things, the way we like it.

I like a weighted blanket, he doesn't, he likes it colder than I do, you know, the whole thing. Blackout curtains, white noise, all this stuff. Like it's my healing space and I can sleep for eight hours. So sleep is one of them circadian rhythm, you know, things that don't even cost anything. The salt, that's not super expensive. And like, I agree with you, you know, the food can be, can take work. It takes effort to eat well and it can be a little more expensive, but it's worth it in the long run.

And exercise can be free, but I stopped wearing sunglasses and I don't use sunscreen. And I get out in the sun. It's, you know, appropriate amount of sun, but I get out there with sunrise and I don't always get out there at sunset. And I try to get some time in the midday with, you know, a hat or if I need it, but I liked running and not wearing sunglasses and putting sunscreen on has really changed a lot for me. We need the light to hit our sun to connect the production of melanin in the skin to protect us from the UVB damage to synthesize vitamin D through cholesterol.

I mean, it's remarkable how we're no longer living in agreement with our biology. We're not meant to wear sunglasses, but we are certainly meant to be in the shade. So the point is not to sun gaze, it's just to get light, hit your skin the appropriate amount of time for the appropriate duration so that we can pursue optimal health. Sunscreen is another one that boggles my mind, just lathering on more toxicity on the skin. Yeah. And as a woman, it's hard to find makeup without it in there and I don't want it.

My mom... has had a lot of sunscreen, a lot removed from her face, most surgery after most surgery, like big scars from it. And has only ever been told sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen every day, every night, put it in your makeup, in your cream. And she has nothing but sunscreen. And every time she goes to the dermatologist, they burn more stuff off. And I just feel bad for that generation. She gave up her gallbladder, her thyroid. All this skin cancer has Parkinson's and that was just so eye-opening for me.

I'm like, you know, I think everything they're telling you to do is wrong. So I have a rule, we don't give up our organs and try not to biopsy anything. You're so right. Intelligent design or otherwise, nothing is superfluous. Everything has a purpose. And there's a consequence when we do remove them. Gallbladder, most notably. You're going to have a problem with bile secretion. This is going to further lead to osteoporosis. Especially in your post-menopausal years as a female, as hormones plummet off the cliff.

Ivermectin, Parasites, and Detox Strategies 56:00

Parkinson's, interestingly, much like Alzheimer's, has been mistreated for a long time. We realize now that it is a problem with the gut, and it's a problem of kind of what you're inhaling through the nose in the olfactory bulb. But without a healthy gut, you're not gonna have a healthy brain. We treat things where the problem is, but it's not where the problem is. It's a consequence of where the problem started elsewhere. And the thing with Parkinson's, you have to optimize the GI, you have to reduce the total toxic burden.

The chemical sensitivities too, which then impacts and impairs motor skills. But needless to say is going back to the organ component, you're absolutely right. And what I love what you said about your healing space is you're not identifying with societal norms anymore, right? What, how we have to look or how, what we do to be prettier, apply to our skin, et cetera. Your final works for you, right? It is suggested that most couples that sleep in separate beds sleep actually better coincidentally.

Well, right, like would we put our children in the same bed if we could afford and we had the space for them to have their own space? No, because they wouldn't sleep as good. Here's the thing is I, I value science, right? I, I hope is powerful, but within hope, I like science and certainly our gut microbes. Cause we're more gut, uh, we're more bacteria than we are human. By a factor of 10 to one minimum, people don't realize. So I pray to my gut bugs every night instead of to hope. Okay. But I still don't want to deter from hope.

Um, there's, there's science, but then there's also what works for you. Right. And so that's the epitome of practicing personalized medicine. What works for one is going to be maybe very different from another. And you found what works for you and your mission and your journey has been to inform people about the danger of what you struggled with for so long, which has created an identity, but then has also created a purpose, which I absolutely love. And I applaud you for. Thank you. I want to try some of your products.

I'll send you the product to clean up your chemical sensitivities and fix that for you. Yeah, I really, really want to know about that. I'll send you some product. I'll send you everything we have. And then do you see patients just remotely? Do you do telehealth or in person only? No, no, we, we do telehealth. Um, so we, we got patients throughout and, um, if any of your guests or within your community want to find us, so it's TBD fit, uh, dot com. Okay. Um, it's also, oh, I don't, I don't know if I should do this or not.

I can give you my personal email. It is D for Daniel and then last name C for cat H I L L E. So it's like dchilly at gmail.com. because my ebook, Healing Guide, it's a lot. And I had put two people in there that one was just my functional practitioner who I haven't seen in a long time, but I just put it in there initially. And she was like booked up for a year in advance like that. And so if you want me to put you in there as a resource, people are always looking for, you know, They don't want to see their doctors anymore.

They're traditional allopathic doctors. They're looking for help and people who think like we think. And so I'd love to put you in there if you would like that. And they may or may not book, but it certainly is free advertising. My goal is simple. If I can help, I will always figure out a way to help. And it's not only me, I have a team here that I've created over decades worth of experience. We treat some very chronically ill patients and we have people that just want to optimize. They're like, Daniel, just give me the peptides, put me on whatever is the latest.

So we do everything in between. I need to book an appointment with you. I need just you to decide what labs I need. It's been a while. I've been on my healing journey and I have not had any labs done. I'm like, I'm just going to do this for like a year and a half and then I want to get all the tests that you recommend done. I'm self-insured. I don't know if you saw that video that I think health insurance is a scam, but I'm self-insured. Instead of wasting my money on premiums, I take that money and let myself see whoever I want to see and pay whatever it costs.

But I'd love to get a reading on myself, parasites, all the things. Like I'd love to know with all the work I've done, if I've moved the needle at all. Well, you still, there's something that I can't quantify is how you feel. Yeah. And, and so. What I've heard throughout the conversation is you feel better. You're dialing in the details. You're not perfect. No one's perfect, but you're very much living with intention with your choices. And so you're setting yourself up for success. And that's now reflected in your following as well as people that who care, who live with intent, who want something better.

And you're just trying to do good. I see like you're, you're genuinely trying to do good. And when you said patients helping patients, people helping people, I'm, I'm one of those people, right? Our goal is we're just trying to collaborate. We're just sharing collective information experience and just trying to help each other, you know, get better. So I will definitely, um, I will task myself with helping you directly. Thank you. So it'll be a pleasure to do that. I would love that. When was the last time?

Cause you mentioned hormones early on and then you came off. So I can't imagine you're not taking any right now. I take progesterone only a hundred milligrams of prometrium. I wasn't sure how I was feeling on estrogen the last time I was on it. You know, I don't want to be estrogen dominant. And I was leaning towards feeling a little fluffier and looser and more jiggly than I like. I, you know, I'm not currently on testosterone, but I have taken it in the past. You know, at one point I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's and then I didn't have it.

I've been on T3 and T4. I'm not right now. It's just, none of those things really worked or made me feel better. And it might've just been all this other stuff that was going on. So that wasn't really the right time to address that. I don't know, but it's definitely time to start over. Well, I'll finish with this. So now we're approaching on time and this has been an awesome conversation. So I appreciate your time. I don't like guessing. I like testing and treating. So when you bet as I'll do the test, we're speaking the same language because it's important to get a baseline such that we can track progress.

And to me, whenever I take on a patient, what's number one most important is progress. I need to see progress week over week. month over month. That's what someone is paying for and so I don't take any relationship lightly. I have an unrelenting mission to improve patient outcomes and we always say we'll 100% success rate because we look at all the details. We'll do a genetic test, a comprehensive blood test, stool analysis, any sort of specialist is definitely a hormone panel and especially critical as women begin to age When you look at skin care, well, you need estrogen.

It's critical to collagen synthesis and elastin in your skin. So to make sure you're, you're aging gracefully and maintaining a level of, of your youth. Sleep is obviously critical and we can discuss that further, but we'll look at hormones and we'll look at the downstream metabolites. So how you're converting hormones and how you're absorbing hormones. And what we don't do is not, we're not a hormone shop where you come in, you're low, you're automatic. That is absolutely a disservice to the patient who often gets worse first.

Why? And I almost mismanage all the time is because our receptors are saturated with toxicity. right like cars on a road and imagine if you went to your house and you have nowhere to park because it's full of stuff and that's the debris you need to clean out so you need to clean out you need to detox first we are all toxic as i looked before the question is what degree right? And we just don't recognize that because sometimes we feel good. So the toxic burden is low, the body talks is very, very effectively.

And we do that at night, but most people, as we said, we're not sleeping well anymore, right? So we're sleeping live, and we're not getting in the right food. So I appreciate that you're dialing the details. But yeah, well, I can definitely take a look at I'm really looking forward to this because I had this in the back of my head for a while. And I just was like, I need, I want to, I need someone new. I'll know when I know, like the universe will tell me when it's time. And I'm like, you know what?

I need to book an appointment with you. I love what you're doing. I love what you're sharing. I love the conversation and it made me feel really comfortable and optimistic. And I'd like to look at all my numbers. You know, it's interesting because when you popped onto the podcast earlier, so we were diving deep in all things oral microbiome. That is one thing that's very overlooked. And dentistry is archaic. We're leaving dead teeth in people's mouth with root connects and it's driving vascular risk factors.

It's remarkable how some practitioners are still practicing in the dark ages, in my opinion, unfortunately. I just took my daughter to her dentist appointment because she was insisting she had a pain in the tooth. And I didn't want to. She nannies for the guy. So I felt like we should go to him. He says he's going to put a fluoride treatment on her. And I said, no, I don't want, we're not doing that. And he was like, What do you mean? Like, what do you mean? This is what works. And I go, have you, have you not been educating yourself in the last decade?

Like what? I said, no, like, can't you do something like to remineralize the teeth? And he goes, the teeth don't remineralize Heather. And I'm like, I think they do though. So yeah, I hear you. We're one of the few countries that continue to practice that unfortunately.

Hormones, Testing, and Closing Thoughts 1:06:00

Right. And while it is contentious, the science is unequivocal, but in reality, this is still a concern. And if you go to standard of care and the insurance based model, that's standard of care. And that's the tool that these practitioners learn. So the principle to me is I'm not undermining intellect to these physicians because they're brilliant in nature, but. The problem is that was their tool in their toolkit and they weren't taught differently. And as you said, the research has now demonstrated the dangers.

But more often than not, people are just not keeping up to date. And what's interesting is I had a patient come in the other day, very quick story. And she, I see this all the time. Most of my patients now have seen several other functional medicine practitioners. I see we are not all alike anymore. They go to a course and then they label themselves as. brings in these tests and she's like, the practitioners didn't even know how to interpret these tests. And I go, okay, very quickly, I will interpret everything for you.

I will answer all your questions. But the problem is they'll do some of these tests and then they don't even know where to start. You're using ChatGPT to analyze their labs. Perhaps, but sometimes ChatGPT is better. You're right. I mean, I know you got a patient. You follow Jack Cruz at all, Dr. Jack Cruz, the sunlight guy? No. Okay. I'm going to introduce you to some podcasts and stuff. He's like the sun guy. And I've heard some of his information about like, people who live near the equator and their teeth and how much sun plays a role.

It's really interesting stuff. And then you've got like people in Denmark that have all these health problems and you can tell based on their teeth, it has a lot to do with the sunlight. So each tooth is an individual organ which connects, there's a meridian that connects each tooth to each organ. And so when there's a problem in the tooth, there's likely dysfunction elsewhere. Light is critical to our existence. We don't live in harmony with the light cycles anymore in conjunction with the moon or the sun, unfortunately, and it's to our detriment.

Right? Only vitamin that the body can synthesize is vitamin D. How unique. We need light and sun. And the further that we go away from the equator, usually the more kind of disease begins to, so seasonal affective disorder is very, very real. It doesn't mean you can't adapt. The body is resilient, but you just have to be even more intentional. Be aware of it. Yeah. Well, good. It was lovely talking with you. This has been absolutely awesome too. We'll continue to connect here offline. Where can people follow you?

Obviously your Instagram and buy your products, try everything out. Instagram is at Pretty Sick Heather and my brand is Project Goods, projectgoods.com. And that's it. Beautiful. Heather, this has been awesome. I don't know if you caught at the end of the previous conversation, but I always end every conversation with one last question. If you could have one superpower, what would it be? One superpower. What would it be? This is a tough one. Just joy every day. Life is short. We got to enjoy. I love it.

Heather, you are awesome. Kudos to what you've been able to, how you've been able to reinvent yourself and the success you've had and your mission to just help. I appreciate it. You'll be seeing me for my own medical needs. Thank you. You're very welcome. We'll speak soon. Thank you for tuning in to the TBD Fit podcast on Dr. Talks, where we unpack all things health and longevity. If you enjoy the show, like, review, and subscribe. This allows us to have a greater reach and help others on their health and wellness journey.