Science & Spirituality Talks with Kara Fitzgerald, ND

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Science and Spirituality Talks. I'm here today with Dr. Kara Fitzgerald. I'm just going to tell you a little bit about Kara. She has been doing a lot of things over these years. Definitely. I'm sure you've had your eye on some of the research that she's been putting out. She has been a forerunner in epigenetics and longevity. She has both research and a clinical practice. So what I really appreciate about Kara is the fact that she can straddle both aspects of science and then bringing that over into clinical application. She's also written a best selling book called Younger how to Reduce youe Bio Age and Live Longer and Better. I know Kara because she and I are both educators for the Institute for Functional Medicine. She teaches for a different module. She teaches for the immune module, she lectures globally and she also has her own podcast called New Frontiers and Functional Medicine. But we're going to get into a little bit of a different space today, getting into the deeper aspects of Kara and getting to know her a little bit better. So welcome.

Woohoo is right.

Let's see where we go down this Getting to know you. And I'm curious as well because you know, I know you, but I don't know you. And for everybody on here, I'm learning much more about their life and it's teaching me things.

Well and as I said to you, off, off, off recording. Yeah, you're, it's people are people like your podcast. I mean my, our colleagues, our colleagues have commented to me.

Yeah.

Well, so anyway, kudos.

It's your turn. You, we, we get to know a little bit about you, but we're going to start with the science. So I would say walk us back in the past and kind of give us an, a little bit of an inkling as to how you got into naturopathic medicine, drawn to science and also the research that you're doing today. Go back as far as you want. You know, you could start from the age of seven. I've had all different kinds of responses to this question.

So go wherever you feel us. I feel like I had a pretty cool foundation in that. My mom and I think maybe we've talked about this before, you and I, but like my mom raised us aware of what we were eating, the environment like we had, I was a raised, I was raised with a kind of a painful awareness of eating good food. It's funny, right? It's painful. It's. I'm, I say that, I say that really kind of Joking. But it's, but, but it, but I did have some, some trauma around eating healthy. Like the only kid in school, school with like sardines and homemade, like super dense crazy bread. Like, like I cleared a cafeteria table because of my sardines. I mean, there's a little trauma, There's a little trauma in that. Right? But I, I, I mean, I say that, I say that just with a lot of, just, I mean, a lot of appreciation. The reality is, you know, because my, My mom is wildly healthy. I mean, she's this incredible example of living, you know, walking, walking this walk and ex. Extending that information to us despite, you know, for, for a massive chunk of time being a single mom, we didn't have a lot of money. We had government food. We went to the food kit, the soup kitchen. I mean, we seriously had some humble, humble beginnings. And she, she raised us to be curious. She raised us with, with an awareness of sophisticated foods. She, you know, plied us with brewer. She, you know, like, sort of like the, I think probably the trending nutrients at the time, breweries, vitamin C, they still are. And then she raised, she raised us with a lot of curiosity. Like, curiosity was fostered into our existence. And, and, and I mean, I remember I just off the top of my head, the thing that comes to mind with that question is that she would never tell me the definition of the, of a word. I was super curious. And she would stoke that by, by telling me to look it up. And I'd be really mad at her because I would be like, mom, I know you know it. I know you know, but I was so curious, I would just have to look it up. And she said to me many, many years later that that would prompt a dialogue, you know, with the, the etymology, multiple meanings, and then the words above and the words below and it would just turn into this thing. And I think she just created, she created a natural foundation for where I ended up. I mean, there's just no doubt about it that that's where it came from. My mom was a nurse and you know, later she, when she was in her 40s, so we were older, she went back to school, she went, she moved to New Haven, went to Yale, got her aprn, became a psychiatric nurse practitioner, studied at the Jungian Institute. Yeah, I know. Badass. And, and just. I know, I know Sounds like a yes. And, and I'm proud of her today because she's strong, she's super vital, she's out. She's actually announced her retirement whenever that was, and then said Now I'm a potter. That's what she. And I mean, and she had always had that artistic element, but she brought that back in and that's what she does. And sometimes she puts her stuff in shows. I mean, her pottery is gorgeous. I don't know that I have anything.

I think I see one right behind you.

This is actually, this is not. That's from a conference I did thinking that as a gift. I, I will. I have some. I have. I have a piece in my. In my office in Connecticut. But yeah, her work is really pretty cool. Anyway, I, I mean, just that her presence, her thinking, her curiosity, like all of that, that. The space to foster ours, the insistence that we fostered ours, you know, going to museums. I got that from her. And then on my dad's side. My dad was an engineer. My dad was a pilot. He taught us how to like planes. He had this other. He had like. It was definitely sort of right brain, left brain, but also fused between the both and, you know, just really different experiences, but with both of them a. A commitment to kind of being. Being. Being smart, you know, being thinking kids sort of kind of living bigger. I mean, I mean, I took off my first airplane. I. When I was nine. I mean, I had my own logbook when, believe it or not, I mean, we all learned how to fly. We all learned. Wow. Yeah. He was an instructor, so that's my. I think that my childhood kind of created the potential for me to discover science. I didn't. It took. It took me a while. I. My mom was also a musician and classically trained violinist. We all ended up becoming musicians. I was a musician through my teen years and through my teen years. Yeah, actually maybe in some early 20s. I was a bass guitar player and I almost went to music school. I was accepted into music school, so talk about like a different direction. But I was. Yeah, I was. I was a musician in my younger years and we wrote our own material and we toured and all sorts of kind of fun stuff. So I, I, you know, I think probably that creative thinking that. That sort of energy of my. Of my childhood informed who I became and kind of being able to think out of the box in a. In a way relatively without discomfort. You know, I mean, this is jumping way ahead, but my mentor, Richard Lord, and we'll get to that at the laboratory. His. He always told us to embrace the uncertainty. And sitting in that. Sitting in that place of definitions coming from, you know, the very out of the box or unexpected locations was something that just. Or is something that you know, I can be with.

Yeah.

So yeah, there's a little bit of my background, but you probably want to know when I got into.

Well, gosh, this is also interesting. I didn't know any of those things. Your mom and my mom must have been sisters from another brother.

I know, I know. I think we. We've like touched upon this a little bit in our. In our various communications because I knew that about your mom.

Let me just go back again, like. So you grew up in Connecticut?

Connecticut, Yeah. I was born in Ohio. I was born in Cleveland and. But moved to Connecticut when I was young. When we were. When I was seven.

And how many siblings?

I have three, so two brothers and a sister.

And where are you in the birth order? Just so I can orient myself. And your family? Down middle, low, middle, low, middle, low. Okay. Okay. All right, got it. So sometimes, somehow I can see you kind of rocking out as a bass guitarist, though that is within my scope of thinking and I can project out a little bit. I think that'd be kind of cool.

What about.

So with your mom being a nurse, being artistic and really curious like you, I'm kind of wondering about the spiritual framework of your household. I think you said to me long ago that your mom is Polish.

No, my dad is. Your dad is Polish.

I was looking at your last name and just assuming that it was your mom.

Right.

And so I'm just kind of curious. When I think of the Irish Polish, I start to think, what did she grow up Catholic.

What was.

Did you have any kind of spiritual framework? I don't know.

Big time Catholic with Irish and Polish or. You can't, you can't escape. That's what I'm. Yeah, we grew up Catholic for sure. I went to Catholic school when I was really young in Lakewood, Ohio. Super. I, We. I grew up in a. I was in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. My. My dad's family lived in the Slavic village section of Cleveland. So like, like my. All my Polish family were there until they all migrated out to the suburbs as they, you know, became successful with their like delicate Polish delicatessens and stuff like that. My grandpa had a hardware store and yeah, like pierogies were a huge factor in my early childhood. Yeah, for sure. So definitely, definitely both. Both sides. Catholic. Yeah. When I went to a lot of church when I was young, but then my parents got divorced and that took that just. That prompted a re. Evaluation of the strict interpret. Interpretation of Catholicism. So when we moved to Connecticut, slowly over time, it was less about being Catholic and, And More. I don't know. My mom just went through a phase of just being spiritual about a lot of stuff. And it was. Maybe sometimes it was successful. The only. The memory that's coming to mind, which is super duper funny. I'm gonna have to. Maybe I'll tell her to listen to this. It's. But like, she went through a Native American phase, you know, and she's like, I remember getting my period, you know, early on, and her telling me to go sit under the tree on. You know, and the moss. And the moss. I'm like, yeah, whatever, mom, whatever. Into the mods. But I was like. I was just. I was a punk rocker, you know, and I was just like. Like, whatever. Yeah. I was so 6. I was like, well, I wasn't 16. I got my period before that. But I just remember just being absolutely mortified at the suggestion. And it's hysterical to think back on it, you know, but, yeah, that's what she said. I don't know. Maybe it was a full moon.

Well, that is tradition. That makes sense to me. Yeah, but.

So you're gonna have to introduce that idea in a little younger, though. Like when your kids already established into like, complete alternative with a biker like you did, you might have passed that window.

Yeah, it sounds like it. She tried at least, but it sounds like. So she's still living. She's still in. Okay. And are you close to her and do you see her in a different light now that you've had this experience? Kind of like with a mom that was so cutting edge in so many ways?

I mean, I. Without question, all, you know, consistent. I mean, how she raised us and it wasn't always easy. I mean, definitely, let me say, going through a divorce, you know, not having money, going through being, you know, just, just, just. And being somewhat impoverished. Although we were in a world where we weren't different, you know, we were kind of in an environment where a lot of people were struggling, so it wasn't like we stuck out in any capacity. But I. No, I get that. What I learned those pivotal pieces as. As disparate as they seem in some ways, you know, from my dad and from my mom. I mean, there's no doubt that they have informed who I am today. There's just no doubt in my mind. I mean, yeah, I mean, you know, our. It's to be able to design, you know, to. To be able to actually think like, and design a research study around epigenetics, and that's a massive flash forward. But just to have the Capacity, like in our clinic, in the set, in the clinic setting that we built, the team, like just this, this environment where we all get to participate in thinking we can think outside of the box. You know, we work together. Together. Just. There are. I think there are certain elements in the, you know, in the community and what we've been able to accomplish in our community, in our clinic, as in our platform that, that are special and are sourced to having a certain level of freedom. Having actually a pretty large level of freedom. When I was a kid, and in fact, maybe too much, another thought to just popped into my head was, was buying alcohol when I was way too young to do so. And because there was a package store across the street, the street, a liquor store from our apartment and my mom going over there. I remember when my mom went in and she told the guy, she's like, stop selling to my daughter. She's 14. She yelled at, oh, that's so funny. But we need.

On this podcast, we need to hear her side of the story.

She just went in there and opened a can of whoop ass on guy and he never sold. He never sold anything to us. Again, not hysterical anyway that we had. There was a certain level of. Of freedom of freedom of thought of, you know, of awareness and all of that. That sure. Absolutely influenced. Influenced who I am.

Well, and I, I'm wondering too, you know, with your thinking on epigenetics, you know, how much of that is actually genetically primed. You know, the fact that your mother was a nurse, your dad a p. An engineer, kind of having that structure, healing, did that just transfer into you? You know, I always wrestle with that question of nature versus nurture. And you have a daughter, so you're actually going to see what happens there with nature versus nurture. Right?

Yeah. Well, I mean, my daughter is adopted and I mean. Right. I mean, I guess that doesn't. That's the nature versus nurture. Also. I, you know, I. Yeah, no, I think that that's a really good question, Deanna. I. For. For me and for my daughter. Yeah, I mean, well, and I mean, there's just. There's a. You know, as we move deeper into understanding epigenetics, you know, nature is nature and nurture is nurture. Like, you inherit your. You inherit the nurturing as well. You know, it's kind of crazy. You inherit epigenetic patterns. You inherit that information into your genome. I think the lines are, you know, are blurry. You know, nature versus nurture. It's like, I mean, they've always been Blurry. But perhaps they're even more now knowing that we can inherit, and we do inherit the nurture. We inherit nurture. We can inherit the trauma. You know, we can inherit all of that. Like, I, I just, I think about, you know, the inheritance patterns of my dad's family coming from Poland. And, you know, they didn't, they came because of a hardship. Right. So that information exists in my genome. And, you know, my mom's family also, they came from Ireland mostly. Same kind of information in, you know, they, they, yeah, they didn't. People don't come to the United States because things were super easy. Right. For all of us. Some people, I mean, obviously there's a continuum. I, I, I wrote about this, I touched upon this in the book. Just, you know, thinking about slavery, thinking about, well, Native Americans were here, you know, and then their experience. But those of us, those of us who, who migrated here, certainly, we didn't do it because lives were, our lives were cushy. And so there is that, that, that awareness in my, in our epigenomes.

Yeah. Yeah. What is it? Like, stress. You mentioned slavery, the stress, poverty, famine.

Like, everything that changes to the dietary pattern. Yeah, huge. Like going from, you know, a traditional Native American diet to like, here's your pound of flour or whatever, then your bag of sugar. I mean, you, I mean, and just meteoric. Just the development of diabetes, you know, from where there wasn't. It's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's interesting. So let's move forward in your timeline a bit. I feel like I'm taking you through a timeline for everybody here. So let's move into your past. Your teens. What did you decide to study in college? Did you go right into biology and medicine or where did you land there?

No, it's a little bit of a circuitous route. I mean, I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Somebody, a friend of mine, an influential friend of mine, suggested that I wanted to be a social worker. You want to be a student? You'd make a good social worker, Cara. And I said okay to that until I actually. And I did all of my electives and had a blast doing all my electives. And then I got into my social work classes and I was, it was pretty clear that it actually wasn't what I wanted to do, but I just didn't know. And I didn't know. And so I just sort of went for it. I, I, I actually stopped. I left school for a chunk because I, I, I, I just, because it just wasn't Right. I got through my electives, had a blast. And then when I actually got into to training in social work, I really. It just didn't resonate with me. Let me think what happened in my journey. I ended up. So I had. At some point in time, I got through undergrad with a degree in English because back then that's what you did when you didn't know what you were going to do with a. With a focus in the classics. And I remember. So I ended up still just, you know, having some unanswered questions, just, Just not. And. And taking one of my final classes in school was in Buddhism, actually. And that whole experience, and there's kind of a backstory, interesting backstory to that of I. I actually. I had a spiritual experience. Believe it or not, I had it. I had a spiritual experience at a. At a young age. I had a momentary awareness that. I didn't call it a spiritual experience. It's only in hindsight that I gave it that label. I called it higher thought. So I had this. I had an awareness at a incredibly young age, maybe I was 19, maybe it was 20, that we weren't using our entire brains, you know, that we were just sort of living in this really small place within our brains. And I had this moment of feeling like I was thinking from my entire, you know, in. In using my entire brain. I called it higher thought. I kept a journal back then, and that's what I wrote. I was like, I had this awareness of higher thought and I could see an interconnection in the universe. And I mean, it was really kind of. It was a. It was a pivotal. It was really pivotal experience. Experience for me at such a young age. But it. In it. It ended up, you know, even as I stumbled along and with who am I and what am I going to do? And I. Okay, so I had the spiritual experience. And. And it was incredible. It. I remember feeling like. Like I. I shared it with a handful of people. What had happened. People were pretty incredulous. And I remember after a time in my life, I just kind of stopped talking about it. You know, it really. Even though it wildly informed my existence. So ultimately, after doing, you know, getting my. My first degree, I had this course in Buddhism. And I. And it was an effort to kind of understand what this experience was. And. And I ended up moving into a Zen center. So I ended up. We did a meditation practice together. We went to. We went to a Korean Zen center. And I was like, you know, when in doubt, move into a Zen center. So in my 20s, I lived sitting in the unknown of who am I and what am I going to do? You know, like those that, those times of really big questions. I meditated. I went into, I moved into a Zen center and did a ton of meditation. Um, I think it's interesting, I think sometimes when we're in our 20s, like, like when I ended up, when I went to medical school, when I went to naturopathic medical school, a lot of my friends were finding spirituality at that age, whereas I was finding science. It was like, it was like flip flop because I had really done this. I had spent quite a bit of time in meditation. And so during that, during that period I, I was, I became aware of the fact that I wanted to go to grad school, you know, and I began to sit with what would that look like? Would it be psychology? Would it be medicine? I wasn't sure. The way that I ended up making the decision was I left the Zen center and I started to work in healthcare, food store. My very first job by the way was in a co op because, because we got food from the co op when I was a kid and you know, you could get your discount if you donated your hours. So my mom would give me like an allowance to do it. So I was familiar with that food, health, food store environment. So I got a job there. I worked in the supplement section and it was in. And, and this is when I was toying with who am I I? Or what will grad school look like for me? And I, I ended up really falling in love with nutraceuticals and particularly the mechanisms of nutraceuticals. So this was like, this was really, I think when I, in my 20s, when I found biochemistry and found a, just a wild passion for it, in fact, you know, Udo Erasmus, Fats that heal fats, the kill, of course, right. A real seminal work on fatty acids. That book. I remember that book kept me up at night. Kept me up. It was so ecosanoid biochemistry was so exciting. I was, I was quote you on that biochemistry. It was so ridiculously exciting. It's funny because the, the, our manager in that section, who's still one of my best girlfriends many, many years later, just, it was such a funny hoot for her to. I would come in, I would be like Suzanne did, you know, and I would just give her all this science and when we would have customers, they would just be like inundated with having to hear about, you know, the mechanisms as I was understanding them. And she would sometimes have to rescue people. And because I had this sort of like. She had to like, extricate me from kind of overwhelming people. And, you know, I came from such a different background. Like, my language was not always pristine and it would be peppered with four letter words and, and, and she would have to. She would like, manage that as well. But it was, it was, it was amazing. So this was still in my 20s, but it was then that I began to realize that. Actually layer into that, getting chronic fatigue. So I got Epstein Barr at that time and I was treated. Yeah, I had. I had pretty profound fatigue. And I think in part, this is ironic, but I think in part it had to do with hardcore meditation with really truncated sleep and a full time job. Yeah. Yes. I mean. Yeah.

How were you meditating on average?

I mean, we would just. We. We would be up in the Zen center. We would just get up really early and start early. And I was young, so I would stay up late and then I would get up and work a full time job. I worked in a restaurant. And then I was doing like GRE stuff. You know, I was doing other stuff as well. So I just had, I. I had a lot going on. And then we would do retreats. And the retreats were. I tried to meditate like three weeks per, you know, winter. In the winter. If I could do that. If I, you know, I did that for a couple of years. And then we had monthly weekend retreats that would be, you know, super early morning until late. By design. They didn't. We weren't sleeping a lot in that structure so that you would sit in meditation.

Cara, I have two questions for you that are just percolating on up, and I just feel like this is the time to answer before we move on to your medical school training. So you grew up Catholic, but then you had this higher thought experience and you pivoted over to going to a Zen center. How did you. And you said that you took a course on Buddhism to try to understand it. So how did you make that transition? Like, just talk about that tender transition of being raised with one way of thinking about your spiritual views and then moving over to this other one. And was that easy to do, or did you feel like Catholicism couldn't answer it for you and that's why you pivoted over?

Well, we had already transitioned, I think, as a family when. When my mom and dad got divorced, because that was such a big disruption coming from a pretty strict Catholic background. Like, there was a reconciliation that had to happen. Like, if you're Going to sort of forgive that experience. You have to look beyond that struck that conservative structure that existed in our world. You know, I know that it doesn't. It's not necessarily quite as strict in others. So we were already starting to. We were already starting. I say we because I really felt like this was a family. I mean, I remember having a kind of a table, a kitchen table dialogue about, you know, what we thought about Catholicism and, you know, eventually kind of putting down the practice, the weekly practice of going to church. Although I have to say that it certainly has come back for me and I live in a very Catholic country and I have such an appreciation for it. Like, it's. I really do. An extremely pivotal book for me was in the Zen Center. My mom gave me this book called the Feminine Face of God. And it was, it was, it's. And it's about, you know, I mean, it's about Jesus. It's been such a long time. It's been a long time. I can see the COVID It really moved me. I think it's like, about biblical teachings. Somebody else knows a lot better than I do. I know there are people listening to this podcast right now, like, but it was, it was one of those books that just, I don't just brought a deep. It was just. It's a really beautiful book. I think a lot, I think a lot of it is, oh, and it's written by two women. It's pulling these really juicy, beautiful quotes from the Bible. Very deep, super resonant quotes. And one of them, at least one of them, maybe both of them were Buddhists also, you know, and, and in Buddhism there's no, you don't give up your religion of origin. Like, there's, there's no ask in Buddhism to change and to, and to, you know, subscribe to a structure of belief. So people from all different religions come and honor and celebrate whatever their, you know, birth religion is or whatever they may still be practicing and they can engage in the, in the Zen, in Zen. I was in Zen Buddhism specifically. So in Zen there isn't. There's no ask to, to buy into a dogma or a doctrine or anything. You know, it's, it is just, it's a, it's a practice. So it, it wasn't, There was never any conflict. And I think just my mom giving me that book because I was in the Zen Center. I don't mean it was just. I know it really, it was pivotal for her, but that just, you know, it just really felt like it fulfilled, you know, it fit into those years for me. And that experience and, you know, was very meaningful for me. So I had a really rich spiritual life as a. As a young individual. And it was different. It was, it came, you know, I developed it, it unfolded and unfolded in front of me, you know, and it was informed by my childhood, but by my experience, by, you know, all of those things.

It also sounded like it. It came up like when you had this more spiritual awakening, like the crux of it was coming through when you figured out that social work was not something that you wanted to do. It was kind of like, what I'm hearing is like, it was like a breakpoint. It was like, oh, wait a minute, what do I want to do? So then pulling out of that, giving yourself some time, and then was the spiritual awakening kind of a long, drawn out thing, or was it kind of like we had an evening where it was like, oh, my gosh.

Yes, it was. Yeah. And that predated. Yeah, that actually, that predated Zen. I mean, that ultimately is what prompted me to get into Zen Buddhism. And I practiced for a little while something called a Course in Miracles too. It was like, I did. I went through a period of just like, of, you know, as I was searching for, you know, meaning for that, for. For that experience, kind of how to be with it and incorporate it. Course in Miracles played a role. It's funny, I think of, you know, I studied, I did a lot of. I took a lot of philosophy, existentialism, logotherapy, you know, man, search for meaning. Like the, like, there were things like that in my 20s. It was really felt with that. And it culminated in my experience in the Zen center ultimately doing too much at once. And which is ironic, right? People don't think one could develop chronic fatigue meditating. I meditated like I writ. You know, like, I started to, like when I became a competitive cyclist, I. I think I probably approached meditate. No, not exactly, but. But I. So I needed to, I needed to pull back. Like, I was ready to leave. I had been close to two years there and I was ready to move on. I. You know, it was funny. I. I have this memory right now of somebody just like being, you know, somebody saying to me kind of like, wow, I can't think in hearing about my meditation experience, experience. I can't think of a bigger waste of time. Kara. Someone said that to me, I remember, and it made me laugh so hard when he said that, because I'm like, gosh, I can't. I can't think of a better Use of my time. I can't think of a better use of my time than getting to do this. And one of the really cool things about Zen Buddhism is that when you do a meditation, everybody there thanks you. Because when one person gets enlightened, we're all enlightened. So your enlightenment is my enlightenment. When you go on a retreat and you're sitting, your clear mind becomes my clear mind. And so when you do those kinds of things, every. Everyone thanks you. And in the original, you know, in the Korean tradition that I came from, you get gifts, you know, people supply you with food. People come with, you know, big bags of rice and just, you know, they make dishes, lots of kimchi, lots of fermented foods. Back within to my early years, buried, buried in the. In our backyard. And it was just, you know, and you do service. Like I was kitchen master, they called. Like I was in charge of. Of cooking for a while. Like we would all have our own areas that we would be in charge of. And it was. The other thing was that was amazing about. It was that was just an awesome community. And we were isolated. We were right in the middle of New Haven, Connecticut. You know, we're actually part of Yale. It was. This was part of Yale. So we were right in the middle of the city. It wasn't an isolated setting. We would go to the, the Zen center in, in Rhode island, which was. Which was more rural, but, you know, we were right in the middle and there was a weekly meditation and the. In the Yale Chapel. In fact, our heads end Master or the. One of the. One of the heads in our. In our school, in our. There in. In New Haven. Actually everybody was involved in Yale in one form or another. But he was. Yeah, he. He toggled between both worlds a lot. But it was just this really vibrant, awesome community to be a part of. It was just a fabulous community. But it was time for me to go. You know, it was time for me to go. I knew it was. It was a stop on. On my journey. And for a period of time I was in this health food store, which really that's combined with becoming unwell, going to a lot of doctors. So having that story that so many of us have not getting better by conventional needs. And it was my landlady who was in her. She was like a spitfire in her 90s, said, you need to go to my doctor. And her doctor happened to be a naturopathic physician who had. Who was like one of the first nds in our state or one of the most early Licensed. I mean he's still alive. So you know, it wasn't that long and he wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't that long ago, but I don't know how old he is. It is getting to be long ago because I'm, because I was in my 20s, now I'm in my 50s. But anyway, I went to see him. He prescribed a botanical combination. He gave me some CoQ10. He G. Gave me some super basic gentle dietary advice. He wasn't, he didn't strong arm me at all into it. Just you know, eat a, eat a little bit more veg, cara. You know, just some basic stuff, something simple that I could do as a, as a young person. He was able to kind of meet me where I was at and I got better, I got better, I got better, I just got better.

Yeah.

And, and that combined with my background, combined with being in the health food store. I think as I explored schools, you know, going to naturopathic medical school just seemed just unequivocally the, the appropriate fit, you know, it really did.

What did your parents think?

I think that they, I think, I think people were somewhat, I mean it was so surprising. I mean I think people were really quite surprised. I don't know what folks imagined I would end up doing, but I had discovered without question a deep, deep, deep passion for biochemistry, for nutritional biochemistry. It's funny, I, it because of my medical experience, because, because of my experience of a classic condition that is non responsive to, you know, conventional intervention. I went to naturopathic medical school. I, I mean I, I could, I could see my, like it's in, I, like I'm, I, if, if, if the, if the, if it was turned, if the prism was turned ever so slightly, I'm sure that I, I, I could have been in a PhD program. I remember, you know, like I remember being in naturopathic school aware, it's so crazy like aware that I'm not going to go into practice as a full, full time clinician. Like clinical medicine. I was, I was interested in, of course, but it was the mechanism and that only grew. That only grew. I was in the Pacific Northwest. Jeff was lecturing Christy Carol McMaken. I mean I was just seeing these really badass people, but you know, especially I'm just so, I was wowed by Jeff's lectures. I was wowed by our nutritional biochemistry, or not nutrition, our medical biochemistry lectures. All of this stuff was so interesting to me. And you want to know one of the reasons why. And so here I am in school And a lot of my. A lot of my friends are there. They're discovering yoga, they're discovering meditation. They're just. And I became a competitive cyclist. I mean, I had been a cyclist all along, but I turned the volume up and, you know, the. Of course, cycling out in the Pacific Northwest is incredible, and there's all sorts of races going on. So I became a competitive cyclist while I was in school, which really helped with my thinking, which really did, you know, when I would be training out there. And I dove into science. I just absolutely dove into science. And I remember my friends, my roommate, she's sinking into her spiritual self and I'm in my science. And she was like, kara, you know why? She's like, why? And I remember saying to her, this was a big deal for me. I was like, you know, God is in the mechanism. That was my. Aha. And it stayed with me. It still is. And that's because. That's because. And it started at school and then it, you know, I ended up getting to be in a laboratory, which I absolutely needed to be. But it was like the more I understood, the more I unpacked about, you know, the. The mechanism to, you know, to. As I was learning in school, but then, you know, later when I was in reading research articles and so forth, and the more I understood physiology, biochemistry, et cetera, the more of the pieces of puzzle. The puzzle were put together as new papers would come out. You know, the more understanding we had around the interconnection of neurotransmitters and metabolism and cofactors, coenzymes, and the, you know, and the enzymes themselves. And just all of this, the more I got it, the more elegant it was, the more beyond the. The greater it was than anything I would be able to design myself. That's Was like this massive aha. For me, like, the more you understand, the more you unpack science, the more elegant it is, the more poetic it is, the more, I don't know, like, it's like it. The more. The more balanced, the more. I mean, it's just extraordinary. And it's. It's just absolutely beyond anything I would ever be able to do. I mean, it almost. It brings tears to my eyes because it's like that. For me, those experiences of piecing this together is, you know, about being able to, as much as I can as a human, as a mere mortal sort of touch on what God is. Isn't that wild?

I'm like having many goosebump moments over here. I'm just holding space I really love listening to this. You know, I even wrote it down. God is in the mechanism. I mean I think that's why scientists either become very religious or spirit spiritual or they go the other way. Like it's very. I, I have seen that in my.

Yes, of course, like people want to be able to define it and, and those people contribute extraordinary content to it. But there's something about sitting and allowing science to unfold before you and sort of receiving that information. So here's the. So here I am as a. Studying naturopathic medicine and I should have a clinical career. I was not the, I mean I was okay in clinical medicine, but I was, I was thriving here. And you know, just by. I wasn't sure what I would do when I graduated. I don't know that I would, I wasn't a competitor. You know, we have a finite amount of residencies and I knew I needed postgraduate experience experience and I, I didn't think that I would qualify. I wouldn't be able to get a residency and I, I wasn't called to do full tilt clinical medicine. And so here I am sitting as, I'm, as I'm coming to the close of my education which was so rich and incredible and amazing. I loved it and I loved my extracurricular education. Like you know, listening to, to Jeff and, and, and the people that we had access to in the Pacific Northwest, you know, just as much as anything. Gosh, I was really into saw while deficient bacteria back then and seeing light of mat man getting to be able to see her. And that's a whole side conversation. But I just had all these amazing educators and there's so many great educators, you know, in the Pacific Northwest. So many brilliant people getting, having some degree of access to ifm. I mean there's just, there was just so much possibility out there, so many opportunities and I just, I just took them all. I was very, very excited and then you know, would process it all as I was like on my bike. But here I am coming to the close. What the heck am I gonna do? And I developed and I wasn't going to apply for a residency. I was thinking and thinking and throwing out lines and very, very strongly sitting with the idea of a PhD. It's funny, we had business, we had a business, we had a business education class and I convinced my professor, I'm like, I'll never have a clinic practice. I just never will. Like I don't need to do our final. And so we had this agreement that I could write up a Research design. Like he let me do something else. Of course I've had a clinic practice for many, many years. But it was super funny. I was absolutely convinced that wouldn't be my path. But I got very, very sick. I developed. I had the flu, classic flu. I was stuck in my apartment on my little folding, like my little fold out. It was a very humble apartment, this little fold out couch that. By the way, my apartment was later in that Sean Penn movie, Call of the Wild. It was like for 30 seconds. It was in that movie. Yeah. It's not funny, but I'm sitting on this and I just. And I decided, you know, I was like, Karen, just look at the postgraduate opportunities. Just look at the residencies. And thank God I did because there was Metametrics Laboratory on there. Metametrics Laboratory was doing a residency. It was really a postdoc. And that was it. I just was that I was inspired to apply. So I did it and that's when I moved. I got the position, amazingly enough. I remember my first. My Richard lord, who's a PhD, you know, a very highly regarded PhD nutritional biochemist and leader in the field. Just extraordinary educator with an amazing background in various labs that he's worked in. He interviewed me and he was. His obsession at that time was low homocysteine and its influence on glutathione. And we ended up writing a white paper together. I barely understood what he was talking about, but I was ridiculously excited. I was so freaking excited. That was my, that was my interview. Just listening to him with my jaw on the floor. He ended up just being my deepest, dearest mentor. And I want to say, and I learned so much. And I was, I was a contributor. So we wrote white papers. I was a contributor to Laboratory Evaluations for Integrative and Functional Medicine. Just it was most. We had lab. Lab rounds. I mean, we just steeped in science and I just got to learn. He was like my Zen master in science. And I just learned as at his feet. And we would have these long, long discussions. And I remember thinking like he would often because he had to get me out of his office. You know, he had to do some work. And so he would like send me off with a Zen co on. Like he would give me a biochemistry. A biochemistry question that was hard enough that I would just scant her off and I would try to answer it and he would get some peace, you know, like, you know, why is. What did he ask me? He asked me about, you know, the cot, you know, what amino acid residue is at the catalytic center of the econitase enzyme. And why now? Go. Go.

This kind of sounds like your mom telling you to go look up the word in the dictionary and you go down the path, right? Like, there's kind of a pattern here of. And curiosity.

He was super supportive, and he. He was also very challenging. And he pushed, you know, he pushed me. We had, you know, we had these lab rounds that were, you know, basically, you know, the equivalent of. Of. Of, you know, that kind of environment in a PhD program where you have to defend yourself and you have to come forward with good papers and you better know, you know, you better have your references and understand the mechanism. I mean, those were our rounds. They were obviously, they were not clinical rounds, but they were so fun. And you need. And you just had to be versed in the science and in depth, depth, way and ready to, you know, provide your conclusions and your evidence in your papers and so forth. And it was super rich. But one of the coolest things he taught me, and this is. This is. This is full, full circle moment, was he was very spiritual, by the way. He was really spiritual. He was a. He's like, he's a Southern Baptist. He's still alive. He's a Southern Baptist. But he had the Boringer Mannheim poster in. We had a library at the. At the laboratory story, and there was the Boringer Mannheim poster, and it was kind of lower to the ground, and there was like a little stool there. And he said to me, you know, the Boringer Mannheim pathway chart was like, all known metabolism circa 1993 is when that pathway check right now. But we were using it all that, all the time. I mean, this was way before, you know, any meaningful access to, you know, in the. In the form that we have today online. You had to. You really had to rely on your pathway charts. But I remember him telling me, sit down. You know, sit down in this little kind of bench thing. It was like a. It was sort of like a Buddhist chair. And he goes, hold your eyes at half mast. Stare at the Boringer Manheim chart. Ask your question. Ask your biochemical question, and hold your eyes and wait, you know, and you will see what you need to see. That is how I was. That's how I was taught to read that chart. Not go to, you know, row nine. You know, see row nine. I'm like, I'm losing it. You know, just go down and over the way that most people use the Boring or Manheim chart. Yeah. He was like, just sit in there, ask your question, and Allow. Allow. So whenever. Whatever we were thinking about nitric oxide or methylation or transulation or, you know, that's.

That's a beautiful synthesis. So really, you know, again, like, really connecting deeper to those pathways. Is he the person that led you down the path of exploring more with methylation?

Yeah, that was a part of the lab because we were doing, you know, we were looking at. For sure. I mean. I mean, yes, from the get go. Because, of course, homocysteine is cornerstone. Yeah. Methylation cycle. So, yeah, from the. From the get go. You know, it was a fabric of my existence there. But then. Let me see. So. So then we. They, you know, I left the lab. I moved back home, actually. I wrote the Case Studies in Integrative and Functional Medicine, which was a kind of a lab textbook for how you apply.

I remember that book. Yeah, I still have a copy somewhere. Yes.

Yeah. And that was. That was applying laboratory science and clinical practice. And I went back to Connecticut. I lived with my mom for a little while. Let me think. It was around that time, authoring that book that I ended up joining faculty at ifm. I started. I joined a clinical practice. When I was there, the lab was sold. So, I mean, I was still kind of steeped in that world, but a few. But it was changing because I wasn't there. And the loss of that community. Community, the laboratory community, was huge for me. And that was when I started Journal Club. That was when I started the Journal Club because I was, I remember, like, doing basically. I feel like I, you know, just stalked David Hossey one day at his image and conference and sort of forced him to listen to me. Like, I'm like, david, something's not right in my soul, and I don't know what it is, you know, And I'm, like, talking and talking. I'm like, oh, my God, we don't have lab rounds anymore. I'm not, like, with this group of, like, juicy humans who are just curious and want to explore. Like, I bust that world moving from Atlanta. And that's when I had the epiphany. Like, we needed to start this Journal Club and just bring together. Bring together all of us, because there was this extraordinary group of people. Like, all of us. We were going to the IFM conference. Like, there was this budding, extraordinary group of, like, really deep thinkers, like the next generation. And so we did Journal Club for a long time. And that, as you know, was extremely. Was so enriching and nourishing and. And. And. And I was able to recreate that. So Just understanding this really deep centric need for community. My clinic is in, it's in person. We still have a brick and mortar in Connecticut, but also virtual. And you know, we still have two rounds a week, like way more rounds for, you know, the amount of patients that we see just because, and we keep each other current. I mean, I was like, I would always jokingly say, you know, it takes a village to stay current in literature. Now you can use chat, gtp, but even still, you know, you have to verify all of it. There's like just like a whole new tool that one needs to use. But we just, I just, you know, I, I created a, or worked on creating a community there and then a community for the platform and you know, just keeping the curious minds up and alive. And I think in all of that, you know, I mean, I guess that epigenetics, like, epigenetics figures in. During that early time during journal club and, and sort of building my, my practice and my platform, you know, the world of epigenetics that science was sort of coming towards us and I would, it was, it's funny, I was like, I was, I was, I was interested in it, but I was always like, I, I was also a little bit like, you know, I've, I've, I've got it over here. Like, I'm cool. You know, I've got this community. We have this amazing, amazing, you know, this amazing journal club. I have a clinical practice where, you know, I'm speaking, I'm doing, I'm at the, I was at the IFM that time and at that time and I was a little resistant to really taking in the science on epigenetics, like ingesting it and incorporating it into my thinking. And, and it might be, it's very, it's possible that that resistance comes from the fact that it would be so profoundly life changing for me that maybe I was like, now I'm pretty happy how I am right now. But I finally dove into reading the papers and, and you know, and then questions started to arise like, you know, the early science and epigenetics was all about, was mostly in cancer and how cancer tar, you know, hijacks gene expression and you know, does it through methylation. And I had this strong one of a primary way, not the only way of course is through manipulating gene expression vis a vis the innomethylation. And you know, the next question was, how are we doing this? How, how are the interventions in functional medicine influencing. Could we be doing harm? Could, Are we bettering this and you know, minimizing how aggressively cancer, cancer can take over. Like, like we had various questions coming up and what else was in this? Just the. Of course, you know, we were talking a lot in our space back then about nutrigenomics and you know, it was clear those of us practicing functional medicine knew that we had to be influencing gene expression. So that was a conversation in our space. But we, but there just wasn't, there wasn't the science there yet. Having a really smart team, of course. Romilly Hodges who you sent to me, she's still, she's still my right hand woman in many, many ways, but definitely in science. You know, she and I began to tussle with if we were going to influence DNA methylation using a functional intervention, what would that look like? And ultimately designing a diet and lifestyle intervention, bringing it into clinical practice, seeing you know, good response from the patients who we prescribed it to and then finally being able to research it, you know, just being extraordinarily blessed with the funding through Braeck and Metagenics to be able to actually research it in a, in a clinical trial. We didn't at. So I was, we were convinced. I mean I was, we had, I was just like we have to be influencing gene expression, we absolutely have to be influencing DNA methylation with this intervention. I mean I could see our intervention would drop homocysteine, it would change certain biomarkers. But cavalierly I was like, even with the, even with the scant to non existent human data, I just, I was absolutely convinced we had to be moving the needle there. Biological age as a thing was not, I mean at that time we did not think that you could influence biological age. Before Vath who developed the, you know, the first clocks, the father of the field didn't think that they were changeable. It was during our study we were, we were underway that the, that the first two papers came out, the vitamin D study showing defic repletion in the face of deficiency in obese African Americans reversed or slowed biological age. So in that D deficient population and then the TRMM study and you know, both of them were relatively, were small childs, especially the trim. The trim was only nine men, but they reversed biological age and all the clocks and Horvath was an author, was the, was the final author on that paper. He did all their calculations. And I remember being in our study as those two papers came out, just blown away, you know, that that biological age was something that was changeable, that was influential and, and of course now many, you know, years later, of course it's, of course we can influence biological age, you know. Of course. But at the time it wasn't thought possible. So anyway, that was our first, our first investigation. So we had the Illumina EPIC array, we had a lot of the, of epigenetic data, a lot of DNA methylation data. And so we, we took a look at the clocks and it was very, very, very, very exciting to see that we had changed in eight weeks time in the first randomized control study using a diet and lifestyle intervention. You know, that our control group had. Excuse me, that our, our study cohort had, had gotten biologically young, younger by over three years as compared to the control, and then the within group was just over two years. It was, yeah, it was, it was pretty extraordinary. I mean, it was a really, just huge, huge moment for us just to be able to design and get to contribute new science. And it, and, and it just seemed to be born out of, you know, the, my prior experiences just kind of fit into where I came from. And having a team, having a really smart team around me, allowing all of us to ask the big questions and think the big thoughts and design something, build something, something, you know, being kind of cavalier, having some faith, you know, or maybe having a lot, lot, lot of faith. It's.

Kara, I mean, to really congratulate you on your journey in so many ways because you have been a first in many respects. And the way that you have created and used that diversification of thinking and teams and different thought systems, I mean, you were doing journal club and then you had your podcast where, you know, people weren't really talking about things like, you were right. And then came longevity, and now we sit in 2026. Longevity is one of the biggest things. And you've already done the science and you did the science and then had the book. And I just feel like you have primed so much. You primed this path for all the people around you, for yourself, and for all of the people that you've helped as patience. So I'm just wondering at this time of your life where you're in your 50s, you've done a lot, you've achieved a lot. You have a spiritual underbelly from your 20s. So looking forward and kind of visioning out, what do you see for yourself in that respect because you have come so far, so where is there to go? Or do you feel like you're going to sit in the Zen of all of this? Do you have a certain trajectory or do you even think about it? In that way.

So things that I'm thinking about currently are really honoring and putting in front the community that we are. Like I'm so huge on community. I mean you will rarely hear me say I feel, you know, I did X or Y or Z. It's oh, it's like, it's just there's a, there are, you know, I stand on the shoulders of giants. A. And I also just, I, I'm. I, I support the human beings around me. I want to hear from them, I want to hear what they have to say. I want to, you know, just be present to their own brilliance that they will bring forward. I mean we all have a role to play play. We all have a job to do. We're all, you know, contributing our best and I think kind of providing room for that with my team and with our greater community, you know, in our, in our webinar platform and we'll have a, we're going to do another masterclass this year and we had people from 110 different countries and there's just, just this wildly active chat and I love it. I just love dialoguing with people in our space because they're so freaking interesting and thinkers and big hearted and wanting to do right in the universe. I mean there's just so much right in our world and I want to foster that, bring it forward and continue to allow and just, you know, I just, that really, really makes me happy. So there's that going on. We're thinking about in, in the scientific realm, you know, getting funding for now, moving into, looking at exposomic aging versus program programmatic aging and, and can we influence that with our intervention. So that's kind of a nice juicy new area that I'm excited about moving into. And I'm back and I'm back in bike racing. You're like, I see a lot of.

Your reels on, on social media. You're with your daughter and it seems like yeah, you're, you're looking a great life in that way. Right. You have that work life balance it seems on the outside.

Yeah, I might have too much life versus work first. You know, I did, I mean not that I know people will push back on that but you know, I was like work has been extremely juicy and satisfying rewarding to me. But yeah, now with my, with my daughter, with my little human and with my community here in Mexico are awesome cycling community and just get sort of getting back, going back to competing again and I just love it. It feels very, it's an interesting interpretation of meditation. But, you know, we go out very early when it's dark and it's the desert here and the stars are massive and bright, and it's just so cool. It's just. It's amazing. It's delicious and inspiring and kind of frees me. So I mean, I mean, that's where I am. I mean, there's a lot of really cool things going on and I am bullish on making space for, you know, others that's, you know, allowing.

Yeah, the mentorship, it's, you know, the. The legacy. The next generation really tending to that. And I really. That. That's so beautiful to hear. Well, in our final moment, I guess anything that you would want to leave us with as it relates to science and spirituality that you feel may inspire other generations or just even for yourself.

I mean, I think there's something about really allowing yourself to be open. I've been somebody who's always got a whiteboard or, you know, a large pad of paper. I guess you can use notes. I have notes on my phone. You know, whatever medium works, you know, capturing that information. Capturing. Capturing those thoughts. They might seem disparate, but I think those in inspirational nuggets that can come to us. We need to capture those and. And respect them and know that they'll come back. I have. I have piles of little sticky notes and stuff where I capture things like that. And you know, working with my team, we really. We do that. We capture a lot and, and we. And it comes back and it informs us like. Like a lot of what I talked about here. I. Dialogues with my team on. And we've got our fat. We have some fathom. That's because I. We were talking about the podcast and spirit, spirituality and science and. And. And then I, you know, it was in that conversation with my team, you know, just kind of recollecting some of the things that I've shared with you today. You know, being in the Zen center and all of, you know, when God is in the mechanism. Richard Lord teaching me to read the boring, boring, boringer Mannheim chart and just cool stuff like that, you know, just allowing. It's like allowing something bigger. Allowing something bigger than myself to exist and inform, you know, inform my thinking and inform my decision making. Also trust, but. And also trusting that, you know, yeah, I would hand that. I would hand that to people. We all. I mean, the thing is, you know, I said this once when Jeff gave me. In 2018, he gave me the Emerging Leadership Award at PLMI, and it was a ridiculous honor. It was very unexpected. It was so unexpected that I think I was actually in my pajamas in bed. And Brett Eck was like, hey, Carrie, you better get back down here. Get back down here. And. And Jeff, you know, Jeff was a very early believer in the. In my work in epigenetic, like hardcore. He was a big time believer in what we were doing and super, super, super, super supported us, which we needed. I mean, I needed to lean on him a lot because I knew it was way out of the box. But you just have his steadfast belief and it was manifested certainly in. In a beautiful way. And that such unexpected, but so honored to receive that award. And I was up there and I was just like, just. It hit me, I just say, you know, that this is an all hands on deck moment and we all have something to offer in this journey. And what my offering looks like is different than what your offering looks like. We all have it's all hands. If we are going to, you know, achieve the mission of really changing the trajectory of not just healthcare, but really humanity, it's all hands on deck. And we really need to live with full intention and allow ourselves to blossom and to be that. That. That big human that we're all capable of. But again, it's really. It's important that we respect sort of my color is a different color, you know, like. And all of this is allowed because there's this exquisite symmetry that's really beyond what we're capable even of seeing at this point. But that's not exactly what I said, but I said something about that and. And it was amazing because David Perlmutter came up to me after and he said, gosh, Kara, now I know why I came to this conference. You know, I came to hear what you had to say, which is so beautiful and moving for me, but I do. But I without question believe that with every fiber of my being and to allow someone else to expand, to give them that opportunity to have that space and to. To witness them in what it is that they do is so juicy and rewarding. So that's what I would probably end with.

Love it. This has been beyond inspirational. I have even taken notes on my little sticky path here.

That's awesome.

Thank you for letting me share space with you. Thank you for being a source of so many inspiring ways of thinking. And I'm sure that whoever's listening to this has already, you know, the neurons are firing and the inspiration is carried forward. So thank you so much, Kara. This was really a delight. And all these interviews, again, they're teaching me, I feel. And what you're imparting here is this energy, the energy of your life and how you've expanded through it. And I can feel it. So thanks again for being on.