91: Free Medicine - Easy ways to improve and maintain your health with Carly Johnson

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hey everyone, what's going on? Ready for another episode Today I've got one of my Instagram friends literally like met somebody on Instagram and now we're friends. It's crazy. And her name is Carly Johnson or Carly Brauner Carney or Carly or both or am I saying this wrong? Is it everyone?

You're great. Both. Either or all. Yeah, all the names.

So Carly is the host of the doing a different podcast which she had me on a little while ago. And we were just saying earlier that I'm still to date the only person that's ever been on two episodes, which is super awesome. And she has an awesome blog and a really cool Instagram page at Frolic and Flow. And she's like one of these people that just kind of knows a lot of cool stuff and like the health and wellness front, the non toxic living front and all that stuff, which is super relevant to all of you that are listening probably, hopefully. If not, you can skip this one, but you probably should listen anyways. Everyone, Carly. Carly, say hi.

Hello everyone. Thanks so much for having me, Brian. I'm super excited to be here on your show. I've listened to many episodes when I was going through my own mold journey. So I just appreciate your expertise and content so much.

Oh, that's so nice.

I mean it. We need more knowledgeable mold people in this world.

I appreciate it so much. Well, today, today is the Carly show. So I want, I want you to share a lot of the cool stuff that I see you talking about all the time, posting about all the time. We did, we did like before.

Before we got on and started recording just like, hey, what should we talk about? And like literally just bullet pointed like 10 things and it was like all over the place. But they're all cool things. So we came to this idea of talking about like this concept of free medicine. And I think this is such a cool thing because there's so many awesome things we can do for ourselves. Not only from like kind of easy to do treatment modalities for like detoxing and stuff, but also like what you bring in your house because that is part of part of how your body reacts. Right. So like what, you know, cleaning products you use, and they're all kinds of things. Right. There's so many things that could go to this. So I love the idea of like this free medicine thing and like, what can we do to kind of create a healthy environment that supports our healing process and things that we can do along that front. So I love that idea for the show, everyone. That was a 100 Carly idea.

Yeah. I came, I came up with the idea of free medicine probably a few years ago when I was feeling frustrated with the wellness industry putting a lot of emphasis on exposing expensive supplements and testing. And it looked like everyone in wellness was wearing a really cute matching workout set. And I was like, this isn't wellness. There's so much we can do on a daily basis to support our overall health and happiness that is free. And so I've been talking about free medicine for a while now. And while I don't think that sick people can necessarily only utilize free medicine to be healthy, I think there's a really big role role it can play in maintaining health and gaining health. And I'm just super excited to share about it.

Yeah, this is cool. So let's just like start jumping into stuff.

So.

So let's just like right off the top, what are. Before we get into like some of the like, more like treatment type of things people can do maybe for their bodies. Let's like talk about the house for a minute.

Okay.

So we're not talking about mold and stuff. Like, if anybody wants to hear me talk about that, listen the other bit bajillion episodes, we're gonna talk about other things. Right. So. So what are some things that are like super easy that people can do to start creating like just a healthier space for them to be in their place?

And I can talk about free things, but there will also be some low cost and maybe some high cost things mixed in. But opening our windows daily for at least 10 minutes a day is one of the best, best ways to improve air quality in a home. So there's a really interesting study I love to tell people about. The epa, the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to find out how much time people were spending in their home so they could figure out the exposure to the chemicals in a home and how toxic it was for people. Because if they were spending one hour, it might be inside. It may be a different equation than if someone was spending 12 hours a day inside. So they found that the average person was spending 90% of their time Indoors. And further down their study, they also found that the average indoor air pollution in homes and buildings in the United States is five to 10 times more polluted than big industrial cities in the U.S. like New York, Louisiana, Chicago. So our indoor air is very polluted and we can actually distort, disturb, and bring in fresh air just by opening our windows daily. So that is free medicine. It's also a practice I use in my own home, even if I have air purifiers. But I love just opening windows every day for minimum of 10 minutes year round.

I love that. I love that. I know that study. Like, I've quoted the same study and it's, it's crazy. It's crazy how the, the second piece of it, like, yeah, we all spend time indoors. I think with COVID I, 90% doesn't surprise people. But this study was done well before that, so it's not like tied into that.

Yeah, this was like done 20 years ago.

Yeah, but the whole thing that like LA and New York, which are just like historically gross polluted cities and like the indoor air quality in homes is actually worse than what's outdoors. Yeah, it's crazy when you think of it that way.

It really is. Other things I like to encourage people to do are simply throw things away. So synthetic candles, synthetic air fresheners. Synthetic, it reads. I don't know exactly what the term is, but there's these wooden reeds that people will put in a scent and they'll kind of light up a room with their fragrance. And all of those things contain different chemicals like phthalates that we don't want to be breathing in. So another free thing to do is just get rid of toxic products like candles in your home. And that itself, itself improves air quality. It doesn't mean that you can't replace them with something better, but getting rid of them is the first step.

Wow, that's pretty cool. So that's not like essential oil stuff, right? That's actually like the incense stuff. Is that what that is?

So incense and, and essential oils are usually fine for most people, but we're talking about like the Yankee Doodle candles or any candles that aren't a hundred percent beeswax. So soy or apricot wax, we don't want those in our house. A lot of times they're using petroleum byproduct in their wax on top of adding synthetic fragrance to their candles. And fragrance is a really interesting word because it actually encapsulates 400 different ingredients that could be involved in making a Fragrance, you'll see oftentimes just fragrance on a label. But they don't have to tell you what's in fragrance, so it's kind of a mystery word. We don't actually know what is in a certain fragrance. So my rule in our house is no synthetic fragrances at all. Essential oils are fine, and so is incense. I don't love incense myself, so I don't really use it. But no synthetic fragrance because it can disrupt so many different things, including lungs, nose, nasal passages, and they're indic. It is an endocrine disruptor, so it's not great for our hormones.

Wow. My wife used to love those Yankee candles that smelled like Christmas.

I know, it's funny. I'll walk into my friend's house and I'll see them still, and I'm like, I don't know what to tell you right now. These are not good for us. And I know a lot of people love them to get in the holiday spirit and. But here's what I think. If you're having to use synthetic fragrance or a candle or even, like, bathroom spray to cover up a scent in your home, there's a bigger problem, and we're not really getting to the root cause of the problem. We're covering it up with chemicals that aren't good for us, but the root cause is probably something bigger that we need to look into, like potentially mold or other. Mm. Yeah. So I encourage people to kind of look at that more holistically.

Yeah. There are one of, like, the big, like, immediate signs, like, if you're looking to, like, buy a new house or you're going to rent a new place, and you walk in and they have scented candles everywhere. There's a big problem in that house, and you should run away. Like, the only reason they're bringing in a million scented candles is to cover something up that doesn't smell good. So that's, like, such an easy thing. So that makes total sense.

It's so true. And then I am really big, and this isn't necessarily free, but I think it's worth the small amount of money that it can be. I believe that of the first things people should do for a healthier home is actually improving the quality of their drinking water through filtration. So the Environmental Working Group has a really, really cool website where you can go and put in your specific zip code and look at your water sourcing, and it will tell you how healthy your water is. And you will be so surprised by the amount of chemicals, heavy metals, pesticides that are found in water all over the country. So one of the first things I did was get a Berkey water filter or there are even really high quality pitchers now that we can put in our fridge. And even if we aren't filtering all the water that comes in our home, drinking water is especially important. So I definitely, if I, if you're listening right now, go ahead and head to the environmental working page. Look at how clean or dirty your water is and you'll be surprised. I mean, Austin, Texas, where I live, it has some chemicals 10 times over the safe limit. And I really believe that in the future we are going to look back at the quality of water in the United States as one of the biggest public health crisis that we avoided and undermined at one time because that's how bad our public water is.

Yeah, it's. I actually am like going, I'm on the website right now. I'm like trying to pop around. It's, it's interesting. I have a Berkey filter myself. Love it.

And it's so weird. So I like try to do a visual like what I'm thinking because I, I talk to people about water sometimes too. We don't do water testing, but just like generally it's like if you ever, like, if you're ever in plumbing, work done and there's like a plumbing line that breaks or something, so you have a leak in your house or something, they open up the plumbing line, you see all the crap that's inside of the, of the pipe, right? All of your water's coming through there. Like to think that your water's coming out super clean even though it's, it's just traveling through a pile of crap is like ridiculous. You know, it's just like. So that, that, that has scared me from drinking just tap water forever, I think.

Yeah. And that website will scare you as well. It's pretty frightening what is in our water and just how unhealthy it is. And I think a lot of people underestimate or trust that the government or their municipality is taking care of their water and that they prioritize that. And it's not true. There are very low water standards that haven't been updated in over 50 years. Think of the environmental changes we've gone through with the introduction of hundreds if not thousands of chemicals in the last 50 years. A lot of them that are water soluble like glyphosate. And we haven't updated our water policy. So it's definitely a first, first five priority. When I'm working with people to help the. Help them have healthier homes and better health overall.

First five, that's catchy. That's clearly a framework that you have that you follow. So. So are we going down the five? Is that what we're talking about right now?

Um, it really depends. So it'll change depending on the person's health, what their goals are, what their budget is. But for everyone, water and quality drinking water is something we talk about from the very beginning. And then another free thing. And I guess this isn't ne 100% free if you don't have a vacuum, but most people already have a vacuum in their house. Vacuuming weekly. And I know you'll get this, Brian, but vacuuming weekly is also one of the best things you can do for your air quality at home. Dust definitely is a culprit for things like mold and VOCs. I like to say that mold and VOCs ride on dust. So without that, we reduce these compounds in our home that we are interacting with all the time. So just vacuuming on a regular basis can also improve air quality. And it's easy and it's very low cost.

That's one of the big things that I, that I talk to people about, like dust management when we're, when maybe there's like a problem in the house and like, maybe they're renting, they're going to move in three months or they have to wait till remediation can start or something like that. It's like, what can we do right now to like, try to help without like actually fixing the source yet? Because we're like waiting for that, you know, And I, I kind of use the phrase, like, do spring cleaning on steroids. Like go through your house and do that like there and just pull all the furniture out, clean everywhere. Because you're right, that's how it pops into our breathing zone. So if it's not there, then it can't pop into our breathing zone. And that's like such like a biggie easy thing that we can do.

And I would piggyback off your point on cleaning that cleaning products and the products you use to clean your home, it's actually very important what you choose. Many cleaning products, the conventional products that you see at Safeway and Whole Foods, they're not actually very healthy. They may be cleaning bacteria, but they also have different scents, different chemicals that we are coming in contact with on our counters, on our floors that look that lead and contribute to our overall toxin burden increasing. So the cleaning products I Like are branch basics. Huge fan of them. They actually work and they're non toxic, they aren't scented. And then if you want something that is a little bit lower budget making your own cleaning product with vinegar products and there's some really good online recipes for that. But getting rid of the things like Windex and 409 and these big name products, that is another easy swap out. Or like I say toss the toxins.

Yeah. It just seems the more that I talk to people that know about this stuff, like this side of it, because I'm always, I'm such on like the other side of it that I'm just so focused there that it's like, okay, we ripped everything open and got everything remediated. Now I have to put it back together and it's like, oh God, what do we use to do that? So like when I'm, when I'm talking to people about like building materials or the products that you're bringing in and try to like maintain that low toxin burden in the house, it, what, what it kind of seems like to me is that like anything that's a big brand is just like not ideal almost.

Because it's like usually true.

And they've gotten to that point right? Then they've, then they're maximizing like bottom line at that point it seems like.

Yeah, I think that unfortunately standards are very low, I mean even for personal care products. So things like makeup shampoo. The Union has banned 1300 ingredients and the United States government has banned 11. So we are working with completely different chemicals. Our chemical load is so much higher because of our legislation. It's really protected by big lobbies and big companies that don't want to have to make changes and don't want to take responsibility for the cleanliness and toxicity of their products.

That is nuts.

Yeah. So I mean that's a whole nother tangent that we can go on. Things like deodorant and tampons and shampoo and makeup and lipstick, all these things matter as well. They all contain chemicals. They're all actually unregulated. Except for the few chemicals I just mentioned, the 11 or so that are banned. They can put anything they want in these products. And because consumers don't really understand ingredients and there's a lot of chemistry involved, we don't know what we're putting on our bodies. And again, I will always come back to overall toxin load. It really matters, the accumulation of toxins in your life if you're wearing a toxic lipstick one day. But everything else in Your life is really healthy and there aren't a lot of endocrine disrupting chemicals, then you're probably going to be okay. It's not going to be that hard on your body. But when your toxin load goes up from your personal care products, from the environment, outside side, from indoor air pollution, from you know, xyz, that's when the body starts to experience health problems.

Yeah, it's just, it's too much for it to handle. Right. It's like overflowing the funnel or it's the holes in the bucket are filling up too. Whatever the analogy is, it's just like that burden is, is too much for people.

That's true.

So on the hormone front it's like completely off topic. Right. But I know you know we had talked about Hashimoto's and obviously like thyroid is hormone regulation to some extent, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I don't know a whole lot about hormones but I know that they're obviously what we're talking about and impacts that in some way. I don't know like how, how deep dive you have really gone down the hormone path. So I don't want to put you in a place to talk about stuff you're super comfortable talking about but like just I guess like what's like big picture, like if you have a hormone disruption, like what are the types of things that you might see if you have a hormone imbalance or is it super different depending on what hormones they are?

Everyone expresses symptoms differently. But I mean women paying attention to their cycles is a really good first is a great place to start. How many days is it? What is the bleeding like? We have this funny belief, we've come to believe that super painful, super like heavy bleeding and long or short cycles are normal just because they're common, but they actually aren't normal and they usually indicate health imbalances. So I would say for women, knowing your cycle and tracking it is one good way to keep an eye or a gauge on hormonal health. And then.

Hormone imbalances can express themselves in fatigue, you can see blood sugar issues. There are so many like hair loss for women.

And bone density is connected to hormones. So there are a lot of symptoms, big and small, dry skin that can indicate hormone imbalances.

Yeah, it's. There's just so many things that could be. This is the thing about like toxic load, right. Is that it's not just impacting like one system in the body. Like it can, it can impact multiple systems and, and the symptoms can be varied across Each one of those as well. And it makes it so hard to, like, try to pinpoint exactly what's going on.

Right. And not only that, but once there is some sort of hormone imbalance, there's usually a cascade of other organ imbalances because all our systems are connected. So we're. When your sex hormones become a little off, it can affect your adrenals. Adrenals is. They're very closely tied to thyroid. Thyroid has a lot to do with metabolism, cardiovascular health, brain health. So it's very hard to look at the body with 1 to 2. When 1 to 2 symptoms are occurring and pinpoint the exact thing that's happening, because it's usually depending on how far down the sick or wellness spectrum a person is, there's usually a lot going on. There's usually many different factors happening, you know, from talking to various people. With mold, there's never, you know, it's usually mold and three other things that mold has contributed to.

That's right. I mean, that's me. It's mold and now other things that have happened because of that, that I'm. That I'm working on. But it all. It all comes back to where it started. And. And for me, that's what it was. But for other people, that's. It's not always the same starting place. Right.

Totally.

But I. I think that's why having, like, this talk about. About reducing or eliminating as much of the kind of, like, unnecessary toxic load that we. That we expose ourselves to is so important, because they're, like, super easy changes that you can make. Like, we haven't even gotten into talking about, like, switching from plastic containers to glass containers. And, like, I mean, there's just so many little things, like the types of pans that you cook on. Oh, yeah. You know, and. And a lot of it isn't super expensive. Some stuff. You know, like, one thing that we. That we started doing was because we had a lot of plastic, like, Tupperware stuff, like, you know, a while ago, and it was like, okay, it's kind of like time to replace this stuff, so let's just replace it with the right kind now. Right. We didn't, like, purge everything. Everything that we had at once. We kind of like, started doing it as it came time to do it. To make it more sustainable. Yeah, yeah. Like doable, not overwhelming and stuff, because I don't know. Do you find that when you talk to people about stuff like this that they. They feel like they have to do everything at once because they're learning about it at once.

Sometimes, like dial back. I really encourage people to make it a process because if you don't, it can be very expensive up front and it can create stress. You don't need to run around your house replacing everything in one weekend. Like you said, I love the swap out method. Once a shampoo is done, replace it with something better. Once your pans are scratched or weren't worn out, something better. If you're, if it's time to replace your Tupperware, like you said, get glass instead of plastic. It can be a process, it can be a journey. And I think when people get super stressed out about making these changes, that stress is more harmful than some of these, you know, quote unquote toxic products are for their overall health.

Yeah, I mean stress in its own right creates the same types of reactions in the body that exposure to like environmental issues are going to create. Oh my gosh, he's reacting to it.

I wish people could understand how detrimental stress is on the body. It really degrades systems, it degrades hormones. It is so hard on the gut, the thyroid, managing. We're never not going to have stress in our lives. We're human. There's a lot going on for all of us. But we can figure out ways to reduce it and we can figure out ways to better manage it. And it's funny because I was talking to a client once and she was, I was like, how's your stress? And she's like, oh. And she was experiencing a lot of symptoms, wasn't making a lot of progress with diet. And I was like, how's your stress? And she's like, ah, you know, like every 19 year old girl's stresses. And I'm like ah. If you're not willing to look at your stress, if you're willing to write it off like that, then you're going to continue to see problems because it is that big of a factor in health.

Yeah, it is. I mean, and then you. So that takes you down. The other is like stress, it's sleep, it's even things that are not like environmental related or product related or other things. It's like. So then you start asking the question like, well, do I start with myself? Do I start with like where do I start? You know what I mean? It's just like, so it can be overwhelming like that. I think the whole kind of in terms of your, the stuff that you have, I like the swap out like method kind of moniker that you use for that because I think it makes it like A tangible thing. You say, okay, this is how I'm going to do this. When something happens, I swap out something else. And it kind of works that way. But yeah, the stress component, the. The sleeping component of things, I mean, it's those. Those couple things alone can have such a big impact on so many different areas of your life. And you don't even realize it until you start doing it, until you start doing something about it.

I used to work one on one with clients, and I would help them reach various health goals. And regardless of what their goals are, I always had my five pillars of health, and they were nutrition, clean nutrition, sleep and stress, reducing toxin exposure.

And then community, happiness and community and happiness. So it's never just about. And I might have. I don't know if I forgot to say sleep or not, but that's definitely in there. And exercise and all of these things are important for everyone. And different clients will look at these different pillars, and half of them won't need to adjust their exercise, half of them won't need to adjust their sleep. But maybe they're lacking community. Maybe their mental health is really suffering. Maybe they can improve their diet. So it's gonna be different for everyone. But those factors that I named really are the foundation of a healthy body and a healthy life, because it's more than just a healthy physical being. It's also how you are interacting with your environment, with the people in your life, your relationships. I mean, health is. It has these tentacles that go out into every part of our life.

Yeah, I. I mean, I. I totally agree. And there are. I think everyone. You can look at it. There are areas that I'm doing okay at. There's areas I can get better at. That's kind of. Honestly, that's kind of like the fun thing about this whole wellness thing is that, like, I feel like there's always something new that, like, oh, man, this is really cool. What if I, like, looked into this and then if I start feeling better, I'm like, man, I just, like, figure something out. This is pretty neat, you know?

Totally. And I think I encourage people to do that. When you find something that feels good, when you're like, ooh, hiking every week, feel. Feels amazing. Lean into that, because that is good physically, mentally, it increases happiness. Like, lean into the things that make you feel good. And that's actually coming back to free medicine. What free medicine is all about is finding what works for you. Finding the things like meditation, stretching, you know, phone free time, prayer. For some people, journaling all these things. Can help your health and your overall lifestyle.

Yeah, so that was the next move. So we're tying back to free medicine. So I was, I was going to try to, to move off of like the product stuff and get more into let's say like the health, wellness, ongoing detoxing, like that kind of stuff that, that is either. I don't want to keep throwing the word free because sometimes things cost a little bit. But like things that are not like ridiculous, expensive, let's kind of like throw it out that way. What are, what are some of your favorite things on, on kind of the, the wellness side of the front when it comes to that.

So for me, walking every single morning, I regulate and like help improve my circadian rhythm by getting light in my eyes first thing in the morning. It basically tells your body, hey, we're awake. It's time for the cascade of hormones that need to flow and come about in the morning. It helps them do that. So I am a big fan of natural light. I try to walk as much as I as possible throughout the day. I take breaks, so that's free and it's huge for me. Other things for me that are big is sun. I get 20 minutes of sun usually in a bathing suit in my backyard every single day. So good for mitochondrial function. Makes me feel really great. And then in that I'm grounding so I am connecting with the earth. My body is on like a little towel just laying out in the sun. So those two things are big. Free medicine routine. Those are big parts of my routine. I also have a gratitude practice. So gratitude has been shown in so many studies to increase health and happiness and then other things that aren't free. I mean I eat very well. I eat mostly organic. I'm really a big advocate for a real food, whole foods diet. And I recently have been loving red light therapy. So those are some things I do daily that actually don't take up a lot of time. And the only one that's really expensive or kind of expensive is the red light therapy. But those other ones are free or low cost.

It's. So I do a lot of these same things. So I was so curious like what your things are. So I, I wake up. So I actually have an infrared sauna as well. So I wake up and do that mostly just for the mold detox piece. Yep, I, I got into that piece. So I usually do that first thing in the morning. But outside of that I walk the dog like it's like 6:45 in the morning and I'm out walking the dog for the same reasons that you talked about. As soon as we take my. My wife takes my daughter to school, I go stand outside of in the backyard with my shirt off. And I do sun and grounding while I'm out in the backyard. And then I do red light therapy, too. So it was cool to see that you had a lot of the same things on the list.

Totally. I love saunaing as well. I haven't been doing it as much lately because I'm not on a specific detox. But I will say over the last, you know, I've been on a health journey and in the health space for the last six years. And I would say over the last 12 months, I have really, really had to dive into detox. And I've learned so much about what true detoxification is and why I think it is actually a pillar of health in 2021. We have more chemicals in our environment, we have more metals. We are, overall, humans have a higher toxic burden than they ever have probably in history, except for certain events in specific places. But I really do believe that detoxing, sweating every day, eating cruciferous vegetables, moving our bodies, all of these things contribute to lymphatic flow, to elimination, making sure we're pooping every day and peeing every day, all of these things contribute to overall detox. And I definitely think there needs to be a bigger emphasis on detox in health today.

Yeah, I think so too. Like, I started looking at it because of just the exposure, the mold exposure stuff that I had. And then you start looking at, like, you go beyond that. Like, yes, Infrared sauna, for example, is a good detoxer for mold. But, like, you start looking at all the other benefits that come from it. And you start, you go, you look at all the studies, and it's like, lower incident of, like, cardiovascular, you know, events, lower incidence of like, Alzheimer's disease and like, neurological issues. And the list just goes on and on and on. And you're like, I mean, this is just good in general. This isn't just about, like, detoxing from a certain toxin or something like that. You know, it's. It's. And then you look at all those. You mentioned lymphatic drainage. I mean, another really cheap, easy trick is dry brushing.

Yep.

I mean, I mean, I bought a dry brush on Amazon for, I don't know, like, 15 bucks. And it was like all night. Natural brush. And, and it's an easy thing you can do.

Yeah. And even things like contrast showers. So speaking of Lymphatic drainage and movement. Having two minutes of hot, two minutes of cold, and trading off a few times. It's a really good way to stimulate the lymphatic system as well as is foot baths and taking really hot baths. So those are all freeways. Exercise. Can't say it enough. Just taking a walk after dinner. Great for blood sugar, Great for lymphatic drainage, movement. There are so many things, I mean, bonding with. I have a list that I keep. Bonding with pets, keeping promises to ourself, a morning routine, proper posture, human connection, alone time, gratitude. I already said creating art, having difficult conversations, setting boundaries, time and sunlight in nature, stretching. All of these things are free medicine in.

That's what's so cool about this stuff. I think that, like, our. The world that we're in right now, like, at least like the western side of things, it's. It's all driven by pills, you know, like, that's just what the health system is driven by. It's, it's prescriptions, it's, you know, all that stuff. And there's so many, like, like people survived for a very long time before, like, certain pills were created. Like, there are things that people were doing that was helping. And you just like, literally just listed like maybe 15 things, like, just like on a short list like that. Like all those things add up, right? So, like, if you take the things you were talking about earlier and subtract a couple, you know, of these, of these sort of, you know, you know, the products we were talking about, you fix the water, you do some things that kind of help on that front. And then on the flip side, add in three or four or five of the things that you just mentioned in this list, you start looking at, like, the net result of that, and you can actually start having a pretty significant impact on yourself without really spending a.

Whole lot, you know, it's totally true. It really is. And then there are. There's so much free information online today to learn the specific tests that someone might need, rather than the 15 tests that all cost a bunch of money. So there's just resources now that we haven't had in the past, whether that be on Instagram or just. Just the Internet in general, but are so helpful and beneficial to people's wellness.

Yeah. So one thing I wanted to ask you about, because I saw you. I don't even know how long ago you posted this, but I saw it and I was like, oh, my God, this is so. I've never even seen this before. So it was mouth taping and the benefit of not mouth breathing while you're sleeping. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah. So I'm definitely not an expert, but I will share my experience with it and my husband's experience with it because it's been really big for. For him, mouth taping is exactly what it sounds like. It's putting a piece of tape over your lips. So at night you breathe through your nose and not through your mouth. Mouth breathing has a plethora of problems that occur not only in the gums and teeth, but also cardiovascular health, metabolism. Mouth breathing is really destructive to the body. So we really want to make sure that throughout the day and at night we are breathing through our nose. So my husband, I actually am naturally a nose breather at night. I don't have a problem. But my husband uses mouth tape every single night because if he didn't, his mouth slips open and he starts breathing through his mouth. And dentists are starting to become really aware of this. It started with more integrative dentists recommending this to people. Because you're more prone to cavities if your mouth is dry because saliva is protective. And if your mouth breathing you reduce the amount of saliva in your mouth that dries out and your teeth, you know, will most likely become infected with cavities. So it's a practice that we do with a three dollar tape. It just sits by our bed. It's not a big hassle. And in the morning you peel it right off. But it has really big health benefits. And I think it's something that we're going to start hearing about more and more for the average person, especially men who are more prone to snoring and sleep apnea and things like that.

Yeah, it's super cool. So I, I am prone to snoring. I don't know if I actually have sleep apnea, but I mean, that's kind of what's happening. Like the throat's closing up a little bit. Right. And that's kind of what's causing it. And, and it was an issue for me. It still is. And I got this. I got this thing, which I didn't even realize I was doing this until I saw you. You write about it. And I was like, oh man, I'm kind of like kind of mouth taping on my own without even realizing it. So, hey, that's something for me. But I got like this little mouth guard that like my tongue kind of gets like suctioned just like out of my mouth. Like, maybe like, I don't know, half an inch or something. And it opens up my throat a little bit when it sleeping for doing that. And then I don't snore anymore. And so that's. I went through this whole thing of trying to find something to keep me from snoring because my wife was like, listen, enough's enough. You gotta figure this out. And I use like different mouth guards and different things that like moved my jaw and all kinds of stuff. And it honestly was like creating like more problems, I felt like, for me. And then as soon as I found this thing, which is just simply just like pulling my tongue out.

What's it called?

It's called the Good morning sleep solution.

Okay.

I think I literally just ordered two more of them because, you know, you gotta swap them out every now and then because you know they get dirty. Right. So you clean them. But at some point in time you have to do that. I'll actually look it up real quick and see what it is. But that's what I ended up getting. Yes, the Good morning.

Sleep solution. Good night sleep solution.

I don't know, something like that.

Solution. Good. Good Morning snore solution. There it is. The Good morning snore solution. That's it. Not that enough people are listening to this. That's going to make it like a big bump in their sales or anything, but you're welcome.

Anyways, it was cool. So I do that, but in turn it forces my mouth to be shut at night, basically. And so then I saw that you were like writing stuff on this. I was like, oh, my gosh. This is like just one of the random, like, luck cool things that I ended up sort of doing. I looked into a little bit. My core, like, thought on why it would help is just because of all the bacteria that's in our mouth generally. And so my initial thought was, well, if we're breathing through our mouth, I guess maybe we're breathing more of that bacteria down into our gut than we normally would during the day. It's like, maybe that's what the problem is. So I didn't really know what, like the mechanism for the problem was, but it kind of made sense like when I started thinking about it.

Yeah, there's so much more to nose and mouth breathing. If you haven't read the book Breathe by James Nestor, I highly recommend it. Seriously. One of my favorite books I read last year and it's all about why breathing through our nose is so important. But he has this anthropological twist on it where he talks about different mouth or different breathing Techniques throughout history, different practices, practitioners, different success stories from nose breathing. So I definitely recommend Breathe by James Nestor.

Well, that's pretty awesome. Yeah, I feel like I might actually check that out.

You'll like it. My husband and I both read it. We're obsessed with it. We've recommended it to like a hundred people. Lots of good reviews. I think it's a New York Times bestseller. But I will say that I think one of the next frontiers in holistic wellness, one of the big focuses that is going to come into play is oral health. We underestimate the impact that our mouth, our gum, our teeth, our airway health has on the rest of our body. It's all connected. If there's an infection in our mouth, it usually means that it is getting into our gut, it is getting into our bloodstream, it is getting into our lymphatic system. So I really think that crazes in oral health are going to come about in the next two to five years.

I totally agree. So like, I, I actually went down this like crazy oral path.

Because I, I accidentally found out that I had a pretty massive like infection in my mouth when I was a kid. I got hit with a baseball in the mouth and knocked out like four of my teeth. And so I had root canals and different things. And, and, and, and so anyways, I end up going to the doctor, into the dentist, not because of this problem or anything, just because I was going in and they're like, are you okay? Like, what are you talking about? Like, like, show me like the X ray. They're like, this is like a massive, massive infection. I can't believe that you don't feel pain anywhere. I'm like, no, but regardless, we got to get rid of this thing, you know, and so it turned into like this two year thing of like, they had to get it out. They basically dig out a bunch of like my kind of like all the bone that's under there because it was all, it was all just basically deteriorated. That to repack it in, I had to regrow bone in there and do this whole thing and, and then get, you know, different, you know, how to get like implants and different things put in. And, but it was interesting because like after it came out, like I wasn't feeling so sick or anything, you know, but I was having like different sorts of like skin breakouts and things that were just happening like way more frequently than they had really before. And I did notice that like, while they didn't stop completely because I do have some other things Going on, like, the frequency and like the severity of them did go down a little bit. Like it was really clear that, like, it was causing a problem, you know what I mean? And in a way that I was super sick, you know, it was just like I wasn't even really noticing.

It's like low grade fatigue, low grade infection kind of thing dulls the mind a little bit. It's interesting your story reminds me of one of my best friend's stories. She fell down in college and knocked her front four teeth out. Had to get replacements. And she ended up getting diagnosed with cancer about 10 years later. And one of the first things her holistic cancer doctor said was, I noticed you have fake teeth in front. Can you tell me about why you have them? And she did. And he said, the next day, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to go to my dentist and they're going to check you for infection. Because I see such a connection between mouth infections and cancer. And sure enough, she had a massive infection. And part of her healing journey was cleaning out that infection, making sure her mouth was, you know, up to par and healthy again. And so a lot of people say you can't have a healthy body without a healthy mouth.

Mouth. Yeah. That's so crazy. So she didn't really feel anything either, huh? It just kind of was there?

No, she didn't feel anything either. But a lot of people have had root canals who have had fake teeth, like implants, who have knocked teeth out. It's just something to be aware of. It doesn't mean that this is going to happen to you or that this is happening, but it is something to just generally be aware of. If you are sick and you can't get better after trying every everything, get an X ray done to see if there's cavitations. It's something I've had done before. And I definitely recommend going to a biological dentist for things like this.

Yeah, definitely. And then like going back to like the free medicine idea stuff. Oil pulling is such like an effective detoxing method for the mouth and other things. So, like, for those that don't know what that is, you basically take like coconut oil, basically, and you rinse your mouth with it for 10 minutes.

Yeah. And then you spit it out. You don't swallow it?

Yes, yes, please don't swallow it.

You spit it out. And then I immediately like, like put more water in my mouth and rinse. And then I spit that out, like, to make sure I'm getting everything out But I mean, the. The research and the information on that and how effective that is and just helping to detox is super. It's super interesting, too. There's so many of these, like, little things that you. You can do. I. I have this chart where my entire day I've gotten off of it lately. I can't, like, claim that I'm still doing it, but I almost put it out. I almost shared it with everybody at one point because I wanted people to see, like, all the things that, like, I was doing on a daily basis where, like, physically, like, to anyone, I look fine, you know? But I called it my upgrade chart. And I broke out my day basically, like, every half hour, every whatever. And it was like, okay, so I wake up, and the first thing I'm doing is sauna. And then I'm gonna do red light while I'm standing on a vibration plate. And I'm. And I'm oil pulling all at the same time for the time that I'm on the red light.

Wow.

And then I'm doing this.

That is some multitasking.

I know. I was like, I don't have that many minutes, so how many things can I do at the same time?

But it's really interesting. And, like, when I was really on it and I was doing it just like everyone, you know, know you kind of, like, go in and out, you know, on things. But, like, when I was, like, really on it, especially with the red light piece, I don't know if you've experienced this. You tell me, because I know that you do it too. When I was doing it, like, every day and then. And then I took a couple days off, I felt like. I felt like. Like a battery that wasn't charged. It was really weird. Like, I didn't notice how, like, how. I don't know if energetic. It's not really the right place as energetic. I just felt like that I was, like, ready to go, basically. But then when I stopped doing it, I just completely felt like. Like drained and tired. It was like. It was so nuts. And it was directly attributed to not being on that thing. Do you ever notice anything like that?

I don't. I've only had it for, like, a month and a half, so I haven't had enough time to experiment. But, I mean, it's funny that you say lack of battery charge because the red light is literally charging your cell's batteries, the mitochondria. So it makes sense that you're feeling that way. And the red light's just so amazing. I Mean, it is. There's hundreds of studies that show benefit in various capacities. I per. I personally use it for thyroid health as well as skin health. It just helps build collagen, it reduces people's need for thyroid medication, it reduces antibodies. So it's pretty spectacular. And I definitely. I have the full body red light right now from Biolite Shop. I really like Biolight Shop, and I am gonna get a few more because it's something I use every day and just have. Have noticed small difference, especially in my skin and how my thyroid feels and inflammation there.

Yeah, I did a really deep dive on it when I was looking at mine. I have the platinum LED one.

Cool.

Which is. Which is red light and then also near infrared. It's like the combo one of it.

What brand is that?

It's called Platinum.

Okay.

And then the name, like the model is the Biomax.

Okay.

Is what it is. And it's one of the ones where you can buy panels and connect them to make like a larger thing. Right. So, like, you don't have to buy it all at once if you. If you can't or you don't want to or whatever. You can get one of the individual panels and then you can get another one later and kind of build out like a full body one if you want to. Right. Or you can get like smaller ones. So that's what was kind of cool about it. But, like, I just pulled up this note that I started writing. This note is dated January of 2020. And then I just have this list of all of these things. Decreases inflammation, upgrades your thyroid function, helps you lose fat, boost your recovery, it optimizes testosterone levels, it increases your energy, your blood circulation, fertility, your immune system, your eye health, stem cells, skin, and I mean, it just goes on and on, like everything.

Yeah. If you. If you Google, if you go to PubMed and you put in photo biomodulation, which is what red light is called, you'll find tens of studies, hundreds of studies on proving exactly what you just listed.

Yeah, it's really cool. I actually recently also just got. And I haven't done it long enough to see if it's working, but I got a red light device for my. For my head, for my hair regrowth.

Yeah.

And so not that I'm like, severely losing hair or anything, but I'm like in the back a little bit, you know, and the front's kind of going back a little bit. It's not crazy. But I was like, I wonder. You know, I started researching it and it was super interesting. Like, it looks like that there are connections that there, and. And it's basically like signal. It's like signaling. The molecules and the pathway were in, like, the hair matrix that allows things to, like, grow or not grow or whatever and kind of like turns them back on. And I was like, all right, I'll try this. Yeah, I got that thing. And. And so I use it, like, every night. It's like. It's like two minutes. You just wear this thing for like, two minutes. Because it's. It's actually the red laser light. It's not like, put out through an led. So you don't have to do it as long and see how it works. I don't know. I mean, there's just so many, like, cool things that are out there, and some of it's free, and some of it, you know, maybe costs a little. And if you can afford to do some things that cost a little because you think it's cool, then you do it. But the awesome thing is that there's a bunch of stuff you don't really have to spend anything on that you can do. And I think that's, like, what the fun part of this conversation is. It's just kind of geeking out over all this stuff, which is pretty neat.

And just finding what works for you. What. What works for me isn't going to be your go to products or routines. Right. And we. It's really easy to see on Instagram everyone else's routines and their schedules and what they prioritize. But what you prioritize can be different and should be different, because biologically, we are all so unique. So listen to this. Listen to all the people you follow and take what they're saying with a grain of salt. Because your body is different and your routine is. Your schedule. Your preferences will be different, too.

Yeah, for sure. Except, like, you should listen to Carly because she knows what she's talking about.

I'm kidding. You're right. Obviously, everybody is different and they need to kind of, like, figure out what works for them. But it's nice to have. You're so. You're so cool because there's, like, so many things that you. That you, like, share. It's like this one place with so many, like, different types of ideas and stuff. That's why you're such a good follower and a good read. So for those people who have not found you yet, they should. So rolloc and Flow on Instagram, your.

Blog is also called frolicandflow. Me.

Yep. And then. And Carly's podcast is Doing it different, which is a really cool podcast where she talks about a lot of the similar stuff and gets a lot of cool people to come on. Only one person has come on twice, whoever that is.

Thank you so much for coming on twice, Ryan.

No, thank you for putting me on twice. Anyways, I feel like we did a lot. We could probably wrap it up here. Is there any, any sort of final thought or anything you you'd like to throw out there?

Just thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it and big fan of your work.

Oh, thanks, me too. All right, we'll. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.

Bye.

Woohoo.

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