Living with Pain and not Drugs! Guest - Catherine Carrigan

We are here with our very popular guest who's been with us multiple times in the studio and on, on our radio program, Katherine Carrigan. And she is a medical intuitive healer and— applause— I'm gonna have to insert some applause here— Amazon's number one best-selling author. And her 8th book, not her first, second, third, all of them went to number 1, but even this 8th book, The Difference Between Pain and Suffering, just went to number 1 in 2 categories, medicine and psychology and alternative medicine references.

That is so cool.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Yeah, today it's been at number 1 for the past 12 days. That is so exciting.

That is fabulous. And look at this, it's not as if, well, for those of you listening, It's like an inch and a half. It's not an easy thing to do. And it's not even her first one. It's not even her first one. That is so awesome.

All right.

Her work and everything that she does is all based around empowering her clients to achieve a high level of health and happiness naturally. And trust me when I say, if you were to just go and Google Katherine Carrigan or go to katherinecarrigan.com, just scroll down and look at some of her photos and images, and you'll immediately just kind of take a deep sigh of pure joy and pure peace. And I love how every time you email her, and when she emails you back, she has this beautiful image of a flower, or I should say an image of a beautiful flower. It's just lovely, and it really just kind of calms you down immediately when you see it. Alright, we're going to have a lot to talk about with Katherine, so thank you so much for being here. I want to just do a shout out to her handles though, so you can start kind of reaching out to her already. KatherineCarrigan.com, we already mentioned. You can also Facebook with her, Katherine Carrigan Author, and then tweet with her @CSCarrigan. I got that right. CS Carrigan. Again, if you just Google Kathryn Carrigan, you're gonna find her. She's gonna be number one, let alone being an Amazon bestseller, and you're gonna find all her information and handles. But there you go. All right, so I guess the first question when I, when I hear this and I, when I got your book, was the fact of like, how, how big of an issue is this?

Well, that's a great question, Bernadette, and the reason that I wrote this book is that the leading cause of death in the United States now for people under 50 is actually drug overdose, which is hard to even imagine. And of those drug overdoses, 60% of that is opioids. So those of us who are in natural healing, who teach people how to empower yourself to feel better naturally, you know, we've got a big job ahead of us, right? And what I see is that a lot of people, they have an injury, they have a surgery, they get on a medication, and then it becomes a slippery slope. And, you know, you, you understand how to operate your car, how to operate your cell phone, how to operate your computer.

Let's learn how to operate your body, our bodies. Exactly, without having to, to douse it with all of these artificial, artificial things. Now, for those listening who may not necessarily sorely, they hear the word opioids all the time right now, 'cause it's a huge thing. What specific drugs, what street names maybe, are in that category that not only parents have to be worried about, but the individuals themselves?

OxyContin, Oxycodone, and the Percocet, any of the major heavy drugs that you're gonna receive after surgery. And again, when you're in pain, you wanna be compassionate with yourself, but you also wanna learn how to get off of these things because they set you up for dementia, they set you up for depression and anxiety. They literally rewire your brain, and you need your brain.

Right, right. Well, and it's just, um, more importantly, I guess the basic foundation of this is you're fogging yourself.

Absolutely.

You're fogging yourself. You're not present completely ever if you're self-medicating yourself that way. And I'm guilty of it because especially during spring and during major outbreaks of pollen, you know, I start hitting the Benadryl. But, and you can immediately feel that fog coming over you, and let alone the drowsiness. So I don't do, you know, I don't do painkillers, never have had to do painkillers. I need to knock on wood somewhere. Please God, I haven't needed to. You know, but I get it, but I get it because of my kind of attachment. I wouldn't call it an addiction because I only use it during certain seasons. At the same time, it's certainly something that becomes almost like you don't think about it, right?

Yeah.

And that's what people do.

Yeah. Well, what we really want to do, it's a matter of self-education. So you want to learn how to help yourself feel better naturally. There's no side effects to these natural healing methods.

Right, right. Okay, cool. All right, so you talk about in your book, um, the pain body and the light body. Can you explain what you mean by that? And again, Amazon number one bestseller, The Difference Between Pain and Suffering. So you can also learn about all of this in greater detail than just this program. So Be sure to go out and check that out. Check that book out.

So the pain body, what's your pain body? Your pain body in a nutshell is your unresolved emotional garbage. Now we all have, speaking personally, we all have emotional garbage. And it's really just a question of are you dealing with it or not? This is why coaching is so important. This is why therapy is so important. This is why giving yourself time to process is so crucial. And we all have emotions, and the thing to understand is that when you do not deal or face or cope or resolve your underlying core emotional issues, they, as Sigmund Freud said, they come out in other unexpected ways.

Isn't that the truth?

And emotions can shut down literally any process in your body. So the way— I'm a medical intuitive healer, and when I do medical intuitive readings, I read the 5 levels of your body. So what are the 5 levels? Your physical body, you know what that is. The energy body includes your breath, your chakras, and your acupuncture system. The emotional body, which is actually the largest part of you. The mental body, which is your thoughts and your beliefs. And then your spiritual body. So it's so crucial to resolve these emotions because they can shut down any process, and if you don't resolve the emotion, You can sort of fix little aches and pains, but the energy of those emotions is going to more— continue in other areas. Right. And in my book, there's a lot of reference material. So for example, I've got a list of all your muscles. So when you have a pain in a specific muscle, that's going to be related to a specific acupuncture meridian and specific emotions.

Okay, so before we go down that path of some of the references and resources, and she'll have ton of them, tons of them. She always does. So you can count on getting the answers that you need from Kathryn. So let's break this down and get practical. These emotions that you're talking about, because a lot of people don't even really talk about them or acknowledge them or even kind of, you know, kind of consider even listening to a conversation like this because it's kind of like, no, what I don't know doesn't hurt me. I want to avoid it. I don't like that space. So let's get real. What are the emotions that we're talking about?

Okay, so again, any— if you just think of your negative emotions, okay, which we all have, your grief, your anger, your pride, your blame, your shame, your anxiety, your depression, your hatred, your envy, right? You know, all these negative emotions, they just sit sink you. And so the way this works, again, a lot of us are used to going to the doctor, but there's a tremendous amount of research that's being done in natural healing. So, for example, let's say I feel an emotion. Let's say I feel— well, I'll just pick one. Let's say I feel resentment. Okay? Now, when I feel that emotion, it's going to literally light up the specific area in my brain, okay, and that's going to reflex to specific, actually, acupuncture points and specific organs. So there's a flow of energy in the body. If I'm doing a medical intuitive reading, I have a lot of people who come to me, they've been in pain for some time and they're not able to get over it, and I kind of figure out where do they get stuck. So there's a flow of energy in the body. So you have a Hara line. Your Hara is a vertical electrical current, and this vertical electrical current that goes basically up to the heavens, down into the earth, and your Hara line feeds your chakras. Now, your chakras are like vortexes of energy, and when we practice yoga, tai chi, and chi gong— and I teach chi gong and yoga— these energy exercises actually balance these major energy centers. And this is huge for your entire well-being, right? Your chakras feed your acupuncture meridians. A lot of people have heard of acupuncture. Your acupuncture meridians feed your organs, and then your organs feed energy into your muscles. So by the time you have a pain, let's say in your hamstrings, which is the back of your legs, okay, you have to ask yourself, did it, did it really start with the muscle? Is it a problem with the organ? Is it a problem with the meridian? Is it a problem with the chakra? Is it blowout in the hara line? So, but in a nutshell, your emotions can shut down any physiological process, and when you fail to resolve those emotions, even if you get rid of this little ache and pain, it's going to literally morph into pain and discomfort in other areas of your body.

Right. Sure. I mean, that only— That only makes sense. And if you really think about it, you know, when you're in a bad mood, that mood, that emotion of, you know, kind of whether it's sad or angry or frustrated, it just oozes through your entire body into your soul, into your spirit, into your everything, and influences the rest of the day, the rest of the week, however long you you choose to hold on to that bad day. And yet, if you were to release— once you release it, once you acknowledge it, once you kind of shed it as we talk about here, once you kind of take ownership of it and control of it, then you can find yourself all of a sudden lifting and getting lighter and happier and joyful, right?

Yeah, and that brings us to the light body. So just as you have a pain body, You also have a light body. So what is your light body? Your light body is the radiance of your soul. So what happens is that a lot of us— I know a lot of people, if you look energetically at somebody who's got, say, fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue, their aura, their energy field, actually looks sort of like dirty. And the way I explain it is, if you remember the comic strip Peanuts. Sure. Okay, and there was a character Pigpen.

Yes.

Who walked around with a cloud of dust. Oh yeah.

Yeah.

So when you don't resolve these emotions, when you don't shed the bitch, you're literally walking around with this cloud of—

That's a great visual.

Yes.

A cloud of dust.

A cloud of dust. And it manifests in aches and pains everywhere. Right. On the other hand, you have this light body, which again is the radiance of your soul. And the more that you take the time to connect to your spiritual self, the less pain you'll actually experience.

Now, is it just spiritual though? Is it really just— I mean, only for those people out there who, you know, a lot of people consider this to be very woo-woo. Hey, I even did. 7 years ago, we would not be having this conversation because it was just way too woo-woo and, you know, just too woofy. Yeah. Is the only word I can think of. So, but is it really spiritual? Because I have a number of friends, I'm not sure how this happens, but I have a number of friends who are agnostic if not atheist.

Mm-hmm.

And to them, they have no spirituality.

Okay.

So how do we kind of reconcile that?

Okay, so this is my comment. You have to ask yourself, who are you? You're not your body, you're not your emotions. Even when you're 2 years old, you're not your emotions. Right?

That's a good point. Sure.

Yeah, sure. Who you really are is this eternal being. So there's agnostics and there's atheists. I think being agnostic is sort of actually an honest way of looking at things. Right, that's true. You know, what's out there? I don't really know, right?

But they know something is, they just don't know what it is.

So you have, in my opinion, for what it's worth, I think that you are your soul. And there's really levels of power here. So when you understand this, and this all the way, by the way, my thinking comes from yoga philosophy. I've taught yoga for 21 years. The book includes an appendix with 41 yoga exercises that I use most often for people to get out of pain. So, alright, you are this eternal being, okay? Eternal. And your soul, your spirit, whatever you want to call it, your spiritual self controls your mind. Your mind controls your emotions. Your emotions control your energy, and your energy body controls your physical body. So these are levels of power. So the most powerful level to work on when you want to actually feel better is to connect to your spiritual self. Okay. So how do you do this? And I'm going to just talk or say something really simple. If you don't remember anything that I said today, remember this: all illness or dis-ease is slowed-down vibration. Now we've all had the experience of that. If you've ever been to the hospital or you visited somebody in the hospital or you've been to a nursing home is really the best example of this. When you're in these places, it's very slowed-down energy. So if you've been to a nursing home, you'll be looking at your wristwatch like, "Oh my God, I've been here 5 minutes, it feels like 3 hours," right? So all disease or illness is slowed-down vibration In order to heal, what you actually have to do is shift your vibration or lift your vibration. This isn't just a matter of distracting yourself. It's literally lifting yourself. It's shifting.

It's adjusting yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

So how do you do this? You pray. You meditate. You go out in the garden. You walk in nature. You talk to a friend. You go to a comedy club. You laugh at a funny movie. You take a hot bath, you take the day off, you cry until the tears are gone. Because if you cry long enough, sooner or later you're going to come to the end.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Ah.

Yeah.

I feel myself lifting. Yeah. I feel myself lifting. Yes. Just acknowledging it and knowing that there could be these underlying things that are keeping me, in this case, from really kind of just soaking up what the world has to offer. It just kind of says, okay, just let it all go and acknowledge it, let it go, and you feel lighter.

Yes, you do feel lighter.

Immediately.

Yeah, so you really want to spend time with your spiritual self on it, hopefully on a daily basis. Myself, I wake up and I pray and meditate and I start the day that way. Me too. Yeah, exactly. And then I play with my puppy. Me too. And then I'm just like, okay, I start the day in this really happy place.

Yeah, we get an opportunity to see each other. We live in the same neighborhood, so it's really cool. So I'll, you know, she'll be out there walking her dog and I'm out there with Charlie, who— oh, I almost forgot where he was. And yes, so we get to kind of feel each other's energy as we're out there. Taking care of our pets. We have a lot to talk about, but we're gonna take a quick break. I'm gonna grab some water, and when we get back, we will be talking more into kind of how we can— what are those resources? She was talking about them earlier, and how can we tap into more of this natural healing as opposed to this self-medication healing? And keep in mind that question: on a scale of 1 to 10, be honest with yourself. Where are you when it comes to— do you reach for a pill, do you reach for a drink, do you reach for something artificial, or do you, like she said, take a walk, lay down and just close your eyes and meditate or pray or do something naturally? Even if that's food, and we're going to be talking about that, right? Even if that's certain foods that will provide you what you're looking for. Alright, so we'll be right back with Katherine Carrigan. Welcome back everyone, we are in studio with Katherine Carrigan, one of our most popular guests, and she just released, published a book, The Pain— The Difference Between Pain and Suffering, number 1 on Amazon. You need to go to KatherineCarrigan.com or go directly to Amazon, and you also see the 7 other books that she has. And this particular one was very intriguing to me because I often will think about how often— not to say that there's a tremendous amount that I do— but when I reach for a pill or reach for a glass of wine as opposed to just kind of tapping internally to kind of get out, get out of that frustrating day or that, you know, feeling of betrayal or a business issue that is just stress-induced. So I have a question. I know, and you talked about it before we went to break briefly, you had mentioned that there's food and there's things that we could be doing beyond the walking and the breathing and the meditating, but there's things that we could be eating and putting in our bodies that would take care of the same healing that we're expecting from artificial pills and medications and whatnot. What are they?

Okay, so first of all, I can— when I'm working with people, and I work with people with severe chronic pain, so fibromyalgia, arthritis, chronic fatigue. I've even worked with people with trigeminal neuralgia, which is the most painful condition in medical literature.

Oof.

So it's important to understand that you can cut your pain in half just through food. Okay? Now I want to make a comment and follow up on what you're saying because one of the chapters in my book is about self-compassion. Okay? And you're human. And when you find yourself medicate— self-medicating, not if, but when you find yourself self-medicating, the first thing you want to do is bring compassion for yourself. Okay, the most healing vibration of all is unconditional love, and you want to bring that to yourself. So, you know, we all have these negative emotions, we all have stressful days or stressful weeks or stressful months or stressful years. And so you want to bring that compassion to yourself, most especially when you're having a hard time. And one of the things that I tell my clients is that mental health doesn't mean you never have a bad day. It never— it doesn't mean— mental health doesn't mean you never get depressed or you never get sad. Mental health means that you can sit there and feel angry or even have have a panic attack or feel sad and not need to eat, pop a pill, over-exercise, overwork. You face yourself. And I always say the quickest way through the mud is through the mud. Not over the mud, around the mud, through the mud.

Just go right through it.

Through the mud. And, you know, some of those times in life when you're going through a lot of pain, and pain is physical, suffering is the emotional experience. When you're going through these challenges, again, you want to ask yourself, how can I be kinder to myself? How can I be gentler to myself? You know, how can I make my life even 2% easier? Because a lot of times, a lot of depression, which I've written 2 books about, is simply pressure. So you want to— one question I ask my clients a lot of times is, how can you make this even 2% easier? Because they'll go, oh, I've got this going on and that going on, and they just feel stuck. And the, and the stuckness contributes to a huge amount of pressure.

Yes, absolutely, that's a great point.

Yeah, so it's like, okay, well, you can't get rid of it totally, but how can you make it 2% easier.

What's the relevance to 2%?

Because when you realize that you can make it even just a little bit easier, and you realize maybe I can make it a lot easier.

Yeah, yeah, right.

But you start with a little bit, right?

Right.

Now, how you start with a little bit is actually with your food. And I have a phrase or sentence that I teach my clients, and the sentence is, nobody in their right mind eats cats. Nobody in their right mind. In their right mind eats cats. What are cats? Nobody in their right mind eats cats.

Nobody in their right mind.

No one in their right mind.

And I don't want to meet that person. No.

So what are cats? Caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, sugar, and then the friends of cats. Friends of cats are fried foods and gluten. Now, so, you know, you may be listening to this and you go, you know, Katherine, I'm not giving up my coffee, my wine, my cigarettes, my cigars, and my— I grew up in the South. Fried okra is one of my favorite foods, and love French fries and all that stuff. I'm not giving up my cakes, my cookies. These are how I self-medicate. But then one day, you're on every legal drug, and then all the over-the-counter ones, and you can hardly bend over, you can hardly stand yourself because you're so miserable. And yet, so why is this so important? Why is food so important? 70% of inflammation begins in your gut. Now, if you have pain, you have inflammation. Inflammation is like fire in your body. Inflammation can even affect your brain. For example, when people have inflammation in their brain, they have their brain cells die off, and then eventually you get things like dementia and Alzheimer's. So when you turn to natural healing, you're going to age better. Inflammation is a primary risk factor. It's one of the 3 primary risk factors for cancer. So when you eat an anti-inflammatory diet— I'm going to talk about what to eat in a moment— when you eat an anti-inflammatory diet, you age age more easily. You have less aches and pains, you look younger than you are, and you feel better.

Your skin is good, your hair is good. Yes, yes. I can certainly tell when I've been on a sugar diet. I can. I mean, it just takes the, takes the moisture out of my face. It makes it a little bit gr— not grayer, but duller. And my hair, uh, is frizzier, let alone the, you know, the bose gut, as my 5 sisters and I always called it. Oh yeah, it's true.

Yeah, so CATS: caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, sugar, fried foods, and gluten.

Now, one of the friends— the friends—

the friends of cats are fried foods and gluten. And so one of the things I talk about is CATS. So if you think about the 4-legged furry friends, if you think you're in charge of cats, you're wrong.

Not like our doggies. Yeah, cats are very hard to control.

Yeah, dogs, they want to make you happy. Cats, you know, if you think you're in charge of cats, you're wrong. And it's the same thing when they creep into our diet. You know, you start eating a little bit of sugar, and then sooner or not, you're like, you know, it's all day long, and then it's affecting everything. And you know, it's so easy to get out of control with cats and the friends of cats. Now—

Well, before you go there though, okay, so because you're going to tell us what to eat. Yeah. And will you relate it to the cat? So for instance, those people sitting out there going, well, I need caffeine in order to find energy, and I'm, you know, in order for me to get over that 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah. I'm sensing you're going to be like, Well, there's a lot of things that can help with that.

Okay, well, so here's the thing. I, I am a master at helping people overcome addictions. And here's a professional secret: when you realize you're addicted to something, whether it's caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, sugar, fried foods, or gluten, the cats and the Friends of Cats, the first thing you do is you find a substitute. Okay, so for example, I'll give an example. I had a client and he was smoking marijuana every day for 16 years, and he would try and stop, and he just couldn't do it. So it's like, okay, you've got to find the substitute. So in his case, then we got him on to video games. Okay, it's legal and drug-free. And then after a couple months, he came to me, he's like, okay, the video games are taking over my life. I'm spending 30 hours a week, you know, doing my video games. And then we move to the next thing. So basically what you want to do is you want to step down your addictions. Okay? And going back to the opioids, opioids are gateway drugs to heroin. Okay? And like I said, these opioid drugs, they're going to set you up for dementia because they kill your brain cells and anxiety and depression and all these other health problems, serious health problems, not just addictions. So you basically find a substitute. Substitute. So for example, if you're addicted to coffee, you switch to green tea. Green tea has caffeine in it, but it's metabolized totally differently, and green tea has catechins, which are natural antioxidants, which are really good for you.

Okay, so green tea is a fit. Green tea. I have it right in there. I will do that. Alright?

So you find the substitute.

Okay.

Right?

Yep.

Yep.

Fabulous.

Okay, now as far as alcohol, one of the things that I point out to my clients, technically, technically, if you are drinking 14 or more drinks per week, that technically qualifies you as an alcoholic.

I am.

Okay, so many people, they drink regularly, and they go, "I'm not an alcoholic. That's other people." Okay, well,— and big picture also, I'm real practical. I'm human, I'm not a control freak. I'm like, you know, this is about keeping it in the middle of the road.

Right, right.

Okay, so if you have no pain and you're managing your life well, you know, you keep it in the middle of the road. But if you notice that you're drinking 14 or more alcoholic beverages per week, then your dear friends at AA would probably love to visit you and have you at one of their meetings. AA is fabulous. Al-Anon is fabulous. One of the most spiritual organizations on the face of the earth. Right?

There you go. There you go. So you're not saying give it up totally, just watch where the road leads you and make sure that you're staying in the middle and And if you don't need it, you don't need it. I mean, you know, it's just— you don't do it just because it's there. But at the same time, be very, very aware of just how much there it is.

Yeah. And going to the big picture, if you're listening or watching and you're in tremendous pain, like if your pain level is 7, 8, 9, or 10 out of 10, then, you know, you've got to really pull back on the cats. And the Friends of Cats.

But what if someone is not in physical pain, mm-hmm, and yet you do know, just like you're saying, and I, you know, having hit 50s, you all of a sudden start wondering and worrying about things like dementia and Alzheimer's and what you're gonna be like as a 60-year-old, 70-year-old, 80-year-old, and it really starts to kind of like, you know, become a primary stream of thought.

Yeah.

So maybe someone's not in pain, and yet that spirituality or that— I'm sorry, that suffering side though is there, and sooner or later it's going to manifest itself. Yeah. So what do you tell them as far as even working with you or work, you know, going to someone? What do you tell them?

Okay, so first of all, the more that you reduce the pro-inflammatory foods The more you reduce the foods that cause inflammation, the better you're going to age, the more beautiful you will look, the healthier your brain will be, the more energy you will have, the less trouble you will have struggling with your weight because inflammation is a primary cause of obesity.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Okay?

Yeah.

And the reason that's the case is that when you're eating eating these foods that cause inflammation, your body secretes a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol makes you fat around the midsection. All you have to do is put your hand on the belly and— mm, okay.

She doesn't have one, by the way. She's putting her hand on her belly, but she doesn't have one.

Yeah. If you put your hand on the belly and there's a little more there than you would like, then one of the really important steps is to reduce the cats and the friends of cats, and you're going to be amazed. This is going to work better than Weight Watchers. It's going to work better than boot camp. Even those high-intensity exercise programs are pro-inflammatory. What if you could just walk and do tai chi and qigong and yoga and eat an anti-inflammatory diet? And, you know, be your ideal size.

Well, it was funny, and I know it sounds like I'm gonna go off on this, but Tom Brady was on CBS This Morning, and he's 40, 18th year in football, and he was commenting very similar to what you're saying, is that he does, whether it's his nimble workouts to his eating, to reduce the inflammation, and at the same time he doesn't want to be big bulky muscles. He's like, no, I find that the more nimble and the soft— he calls it soft muscle— that I am, I have higher endurance, I have higher strength. And he said, and it's all through his focus on avoiding anything of inflammation as well as eating well and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I found that very, very interesting. Yeah, because that's what you're saying, is that these gyms are training you to kind of bulk up and do it incorrectly, and therefore are actually pro-inflammation.

Well, anytime your heart rate exceeds 100 beats a minute on a continuous basis, your body has to release the stress hormones, and that's going to raise your inflammation. So all I'm saying is— and hey, if you like that, if you If you like going to boot camps, if you like knocking yourself out, go for it. I mean, there's some people who really thrive on CrossFit and thrive on that intensity.

I'm one of those, by the way.

Yeah, thrive on that.

I'm one of those.

If you love it, do it. But on the other hand, all I'm saying is it's actually easy to be your ideal size if you eat an anti-inflammatory diet and you reduce or avoid the the cats and the friends of cats.

Alright, on that note, cats and friends of cats. We're gonna take another quick break, but when we get back, we still have a lot to talk about because I really want to understand, you know, rich people and health, you know, and real healthy people, they have something in common, and I think it's not just money. Am I right? Yeah. Alright, she's gonna tell us all about it when we get back. We'll be back. Welcome back everyone. We have Katherine Carrigan, one of our most popular radio guests, in the studio. So for those of you who will be checking this out online with the video, do so tomorrow. It'll be uploaded by tomorrow on both our Shedding the Bitch YouTube channel as well as sheddingthebitch.com and of course And of course we'll share it on Facebook and the other social sites. Deborah's out there tweeting and Facebooking, so you can always do a shout out to Catherine and she'll get it to her. Alright, so we were talking about food and the right foods to eat, we were talking about cats and the Friends of Cats. So what are the foods that are non-inflammatory?

Okay. The first one is water. And as you know, there's different kinds of water. And when I'm working with somebody who's in pain, I actually like them to drink not necessarily all, but some of their water as distilled water. Now, why is this so important? So water contains particulates, and distilled water is very, very pure. There's very little stuff in it. And distilled water will actually pull toxins out of your joints. So Alexander Graham Bell, for example, cured his own arthritis by drinking distilled water. And here in Atlanta, I get distilled water delivered to me. And again, I don't drink exclusively distilled water, I drink other things as well. But when I do drink water, I drink a certain amount of distilled water every day, and that's going to help reduce your pain naturally. No drugs, no over-the-counter drugs.

So those bottled waters are not distilled. You'd have to go and specifically get distilled water. Yeah, not too difficult. And so of your— say someone takes in 8 glasses a day, what percentage of that should be distilled?

I would say at least half of that.

Half of that. So go buy the gallon bottles of distilled. Do they come in the single servings?

You can. Usually if you go to a grocery, you can buy gallon jugs of distilled water, and then most major metropolitan areas you can have distilled water delivered to you in 5-gallon jugs, and that's how I get it delivered to me.

Okay.

Now the next thing that I'm very big on is actually making juices and/or smoothies.

Yes.

Yeah. So green juice, and you know, a lot of my clients Clients are like, you know, I just cannot drink anything green. Oh my God. So, you know, I always talk about beginner juices and, you know, so on. You know, when you get like hardcore like me or probably you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love my kale and spinach. Yes, it's fabulous.

Makes you feel so great. So go to your local grocery, look in the produce section and you're going to usually find organic bottled juices. Now you can definitely make your juice. I have a Breville juicer that's, in my opinion, the top of the line juicer. I also have a Blendtec blender. And health nuts will argue about which is healthier, juices or smoothies, and the technical answer is smoothies because the phytochemicals are found in in the fiber, okay, but you know, we're getting people who are in pain moving forward. Yeah. So the first step is to move forward and to start drinking something, so something organic and juice. So go to your local grocery and try a variety of organic juices. And one of the things I point out to my clients is it has to taste good. To it or these people will not make money.

Yeah, right.

So, go ahead and try it, just like when you're a little kid.

And there's not too much sugar in there?

Again, there's going to be things that taste good like apples and pears and watermelon and so on, and those things are good for you as well.

Okay.

So, what you want to, to blunt the glycemic effect, you want to eat some protein with that, okay, but when I have people People who are in pain, who are in terrible pain, I usually like them to do 20 ounces of juices or smoothies per day. So if you're sick or in terrible chronic pain, 20 ounces of smoothies or juices per day.

Okay, so test me out.

Test you out?

Yeah, test me out, see if I'm doing this right. So I make my smoothies every morning.

I'm impressed.

I do, I love them. And I put kale. Spinach, a banana, peanut butter, I'll throw some strawberries in there.

Wow.

A dose of, um, protein powder? No, olive oil.

Oh wow.

And I really don't do much with protein. What protein?

Well, you've got the peanut butter in there.

Well, I got the peanut butter in there. Oh, and I will throw an egg in there. Wow.

I'm impressed. Oh my God.

Is that good?

That's amazing.

Is that too much? Too little?

No, it's amazing.

That's my favorite drink.

Oh my God, it's amazing.

Yeah.

Okay, now here's a really good, this is a good beginner juice. Okay. Now, here in Atlanta we have Trader Joe's.

Yes.

Okay, and if you go to Trader Joe's you can get two things. You can go to the refrigerated section and you can get bottled cherry juice. Now cherry juice is a wonder drug. It will cure arthritis. The other thing about cherry juice, it's really good for people who have insomnia, which is a lot of people. At any rate, it's not going to put you to sleep in the morning though. Anyway, what you do is you blend together cherry juice and half a bag of kale.

Half a bag?

Half a bag.

One of those big bags that I get at Walmart?

Yeah, half. Wow. Anyway, you whirl it together in a regular blender, and yes, It will be green, but it's still green.

But get over the color.

Yeah, get over it. Just shut your eyes, put it down. But cherry juice and kale is a really good beginner juice. It tastes good and it is amazing for you.

Sweet! Yes, and it's a lot less expensive than the recipe I make. Yeah, okay, cool. All right, so other, um, in our last couple of minutes, because I do want to move on to something else, but I want to wrap up foods. Anything else that they should really think about?

Yeah, again, lots of water and green juices. If you just do focus on those two things, and again, eating really clean foods, right? Mm-hmm. So again, one of the rules I like to make everything simple. I've worked with people who are retarded. One time I helped a retarded diabetic lose 45 pounds. After that, I thought I'm going to treat everybody like they're retarded. So here's a rule: if your grandmother ate it, it's probably okay. And cook the way your grandmother cooked. Do not cook anything in the microwave. When you cook in the microwave, it reverses the the spin of the cells, and it will even— even eating microwave vegetables will raise your cholesterol.

Oh wow.

Yeah, so yeah, avoid the microwave. Okay.

All right, so cook stovetop.

Yeah, stovetop, however your grandmother cooked.

All right, wow. Okay, learning tons. Yeah, but before we do wrap up, I did want to ask you about this, you know, the secret that rich people and healthy people have. That we all want to know, and I think it goes beyond money. What is it that the two of them know that we need to know?

Okay, well, what's really interesting, over the years I've done my work for 24 years full-time, and I've ever had every kind of client you can possibly imagine. My youngest client, newborn baby, people into their 90s. I've had rich people, I've had homeless people, I've had every kind of person. You can think about. And what I observe is that rich people and healthy people think alike. So let me talk about what I mean by that. Rich people value their money. Rich people, they put effort and thought into building their financial well-being. They save money, they have the best investment advisors, they can tell you how much money is in their savings account or in their investment portfolio, they're thinking about it.

Right.

Right? Okay. Their eye is on the ball, so to speak. Now, healthy people, they also, they have their eye on their health. Okay? And they do, just like wealthy people build their wealth and actively think about that, healthy people actually Act about. Think about their health and they build their health. They take their vitamins. They find the best people to advise them, just like the wealthy people are always looking for the best people to advise them about their money.

Right.

Healthy people are looking, you know, who can help me take my health to the next level? They exercise every day. They take supplements and they manage their stress. So, you know, sooner or later we're all going to fall down, skin our knee, twist our ankle, go to the dentist and have a bad experience or something. You know, as they say, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. But healthy people, when they have physical pain or emotional suffering, they deal with it.

Key. They deal with it. They go through the mud. Not over it, not under it.

Yeah. They go, okay. I fell down, I twisted my knee, who can I get to help me fix this? Right. Right?

Right.

So just like wealthy people, not if they make a mistake, we all make mistakes, when they make a mistake, they deal with it. They don't, you know, they put a premium on not being in debt. They really focus on that. So both healthy people and wealthy people, in my observation, they have their eye on their money and on their health, and it's a mindset. At the end of the day, it's a mindset. And when you adopt this mindset about building your financial well-being and building your health well-being, yes, then you can be healthy and wealthy, and it's not even that hard. Yeah, right.

Yeah, it feels hard, especially, you know, because change is hard. Hard, right? Or some people find change to be hard. But you know what? Anything worth doing is going to be hard in some way, shape, or form. But when you really are determined and committed to doing it, that hardness will kind of dissipate over time as you're getting more and more acquainted into your new mindset.

Yeah, well, you know what? It can all be hard. Okay, and one of the things that I'm pointing out is that the— I point out to my clients, the largest cult in the world is difficult. Okay, the largest cult in the world is difficult. So you can either have a hard time being in a lot of pain, feeling miserable, right? Or you can decide that it's worth it to take care of yourself and feel better.

That's what it's all about, is that decision, is that self-awareness, is that mindset. So each and every one of our listeners in our Shedding the Bitch community, you deserve to focus on it and to make a commitment to yourself. Self-love yourself, self-care yourself, and really focus on being that healthy and even that rich individual, but that healthy individual. And I love these tips that Katherine has provided. And be sure to go to Amazon and check out her number one bestseller, And is it the 8th number one?

It's my 6th number one. My first book was published in 1997.

Oh, wow.

I don't even know if Amazon was available then.

Yeah, if Amazon was available.

I don't know.

But The Difference Between Pain and Suffering is available right now. Like she said, 12 days it's been on the bestseller list and it's just come out. So definitely check that out. Go to kathrynkarigan.com to learn all the information you want to know around Katherine and the resources that she has. And as well, link in with her Facebook and tweet with her and simply go to KatherineCarrigan.com and you can find out all of her contact information. But check out this book because you know what everyone, you don't need to be suffering and you don't need to be in pain. However, you need to be aware of it and you need to be committed into making a difference and changing it. And Catherine's a great resource that you can engage with in order to do that, and especially through her books. So do that, please. We want you to be healthy and strong and as rich in your life, in all aspects of your life, as possible. Thank you so much for being here. I always love having you.

Thank you, Bernadette, and thank you everybody out there for watching and listening.

Yeah, and next week we have Andrea Arena joining us. She is the CEO and founder of Time Squared. It is a concierge service, so we're going to be talking about how to get rid of the chaos in your life and the tweaks and the tips and the advice and the tools and resources that will make you more efficient, more productive, and more sane in your life. So tune in for that. And then of course, I can't believe it's almost October. Ask Bernadette is the first Tuesday of every month, so be sure to go out there on Facebook or Twitter on our Shedding the Bitch pages. Post your questions, your stories, your challenges, and it's AMA, Ask Me Anything. And if I can't answer it, I'll reach out to my experts just like Katherine. Alright? So I wanna again wish everyone a rich and prosperous week. A shout-out to everyone that's still recovering from the hurricanes and the tragedies, even if it's, you know, the fires out west or whatever the situation might be. As Katherine was saying, be good to yourself, be compassionate with yourself, and know that we are all here to help lift you up. So until next week, thank you very much for joining us, and we'll see you right back here on Jen and the Bitch Radio. Thanks everyone!