Ep.140- Diet Is A Four Letter Word with Risa Groux You Winning Life Podcast

Today's guest is functional nutritionist and certified autoimmune coach Risa Gru. She's the author of Food Frame: Diet is a Four-Letter Word, which is a guide to using functional nutrition to help identify root causes of health issues and then eat according to your needs while on the healing process. She's so passionate about food that she even has made all of her children's baby food from scratch and is passionate about cooking and creating healthy, nutritious food while working with her clients, specifically focusing on issues like diabetes, autoimmune disease, cancer, digestion, thyroid, and hormone imbalances. All right, so I'm super excited to have you here. We already had our pre pregame conference. We're finding a world of similarities and overlaps and connections, and I really just want to welcome you.

Well, thank you. It's so great to be here, Jason Wasser. I love being with like minds.

I'm glad that you're here too. So right off the bat, let's just jump right into it. You and I were just talking about neuro-emotional technique, and I have their level 3, their top certification, and you randomly just said, well, I have a connection to neuro-emotional technique. So I'd love to start there.

Yeah.

And then how that brought you to who you are and what you're doing today.

Yeah, gosh, it had such a great impact. Um, so I, um, when I first wanted— I first got married, we were able to conceive like immediately, like literally 2 weeks later after wedding, conceived, no problem, easy pregnancy, everything was great. So we're like, okay, great, we want to conceive again. And next thing you know, we just can't seem to conceive. And then we had a couple miscarriages along the way. And it was a couple of years or several years, I should say, maybe 3 or 4 years. And it was a real struggle. I mean, anybody who deals and struggles with infertility knows it's very painful. And especially after you've had one child, you're thinking, what's wrong? What happened? And so I went down a road to find out what is it, why I'm not able to conceive. So I went to go see the founder, Scott Walker, of NET, NeuroEmotional Technique. And the first thing, you And he said, why are you here? And I said, because we want to conceive. And he said, well, there's two things that humans were put on this planet to do. One is to survive, and the second is to procreate. So if you're not procreating, let's figure it out. And I was like, I love this guy. This is amazing, right? So his philosophy is that there's a lot of emotion with the physiology, and nutrition plays a part in that too. And it really started me on my path to really exploring my, my, my forever passion for nutrition. Even when I was a little kid, I had a passion for nutrition. I always thought it was so curious why people eat certain things and why they don't and why people do get fat and why they don't. And why are my, all my family members always dieting and why are some foods fattening? I mean, what, it's food. Like, why is that fattening it? You know? And then if it's fattening and then you don't eat it or you eat, I mean, it's just a very confusing as a kid. Right. So I was always so fascinated by that. And so that really expedited my journey into the nutrition world and later became a functional nutritionist.

Incredible. So I know there's so many different ways of looking at that field of nutrition, right? There's dietetics, there's nutrition, there's clinical nutrition, there's functional nutrition, there's integrative nutrition. So from your perspective, how would you define and describe what you do and what makes it unique and different than the other approaches?

So I'll answer that in two ways. There's four pillars that I focus on that basically functional medicine or functional nutrition focuses on. And one is, the first one is we look at root causes. So why is it that I'm having a headache? Why is it that I'm having panic attacks, or I can't sleep, or I can't lose weight? Why is that? The other thing we do is prevention. So we're always looking to prevent something from happening. So where conventional medicine has a little bit more wide ranges in their reference ranges on their labs or other things, then they can't treat prevention. They only can treat disease, right? So once you become in a state of disease, then they can give you some pills for an ill. Right. Um, but in functional nutrition, we look at prevention. Um, the third thing that we, the pillar that we work on is that we look at the body as a whole, one interconnected unit. So everything has to do with each other. The whole body is interconnected. And the fourth pillar that we work on is data. I always say I'm not very good at playing darts with the lights off and I cannot see the target. I'll be guessing. I get frustrated. Everybody gets frustrated. It's not very successful. So I love to have all the lights on with the target. So I know exactly where I'm aiming. So that's what we do is we look at a lot of data. I do a comprehensive blood test and I do comprehensive stool tests to see what's going on. That's for sure with every person I work with. And then my practice in, in particular, I take all those four pillars and I look at two foundational issues because I think it all comes down to these two, right? Systemic inflammation is the driver of disease. We should know this by now. The people who are or have been dying with COVID were in third stage inflammation, right? So we need to quell that inflammation. And most conventional medicine or conventional nutritionists don't even look at markers to see if you're inflamed, right? I deal with this all the time, and I can't tell you I could just sit here for hours and tell you story after story of people who are getting relief from seeing less inflammation. And then the second foundational issue I look at is gut health, because gut health is extraordinarily critical for our health, our overall health. So I take a look inside in the stool test and find out what's going on. Well, who are we hosting? What's our balance look like? Do we have any army to help us? I mean, what do we got here? Again, I don't like guessing. And so I like the data. And that's what I do as a functional nutritionist.

I love it. It kind of parodies my own personal journey of my health and healing. One, how I found NET was having major anxiety as I was going through a life stressor and going from place to place and not getting it resolved. And even sucking it up, for lack of a better word, and finding a nearby psychiatrist who unfortunately was just such an unethical practitioner that I realized subsequently that anybody who came into this person's office— because I found this years ago, I actually Googled them a few years ago and found that everybody who walked into their office pretty much on average got the same clinical psychiatric diagnosis. That was not a run-of-the-mill average thing, and he was prescribing over and over again for that. So, you know, that, that obviously didn't serve— that obviously doesn't serve any one of their— one of this person's clients. And obviously the ethics of that and the issues that were brought about because of that, how that affected me, how that probably affected other people, is a huge deal. And through that whole time, you know, previous to that, I saw someone do this muscle testing integrative nutrition thing who was a chiropractor and saying like, you should not eat this food to this, you know, to someone that is causing a host of inflammation, a host of skin-related issues. And meanwhile, the run-of-the-mill doctor's like, what are you talking about? You're not allergic to dairy. But yet it wasn't this immediate reaction. It was a delayed secondary allergy. And as the body didn't process it, didn't absorb it, and saw how that was affecting this other person. And I was blown away. I'm like, that is so crazy. I wish I could do this as a therapist, not knowing that NET, Neuro-Emotion Technique, existed until I went and found an NET practitioner for myself. And my panic attacks, and within 3 sessions, they were gone. And then a month or 2 later, I went to my first NET basic training.

Without a pill, right? Right.

And right, without a pill, without—

right.

And I did everything that I can imagine— neurology and psychiatry, acupuncture, herbs, right? Things were making dents, but it wasn't solving the core root cause, which is what you were talking about, identifying in functional medicine is, is what's underneath all of the symptoms versus the end of the day.

At the end of the day, you didn't have a deficiency in a medication that was causing your anxiety, right?

Yeah.

Right.

It was an unresolved physiological stressor that was non-conscious. And therefore the stress pattern was kicking up, especially since I was in an acute experience that was going on consistently. And in order for me to return to a normal level of handling it, even though it was still uncomfortable, That's where the NET process was so powerful for that. So once I got introduced to that world, I remember one of my favorite stories. I remember telling Dr. Walker this, uh, when I had him last year on the podcast. And I'm like, I remember when I first walked into that, that training, and I remember seeing all of these chiropractors muscle testing and hitting the different meridian points on the body in the world of applied kinesiology, which I had no clue what they were doing. And they were just like, oh, well, this is off. And this is what's going on. And like, they're doing all these quick diagnostics within 10, 15, 20 seconds. And I'm like, I can ask you a question. Like, I felt so inept. I felt so unable to truly go to deeper levels, even though I was a good therapist, and I had great clinical training, very systemic training. But it still did not hit the deeper layers of, well, what if your stress handling and your anxieties because you have a vitamin B deficiency? Whamms if your neurotransmitters are not getting, you know, going or being created because you have gut and gut and inflammation issues and lack of a good microbiome. None of this— I didn't even know any of these words or any of these concepts until I entered that community and thus got introduced to the integrative and functional medicine world.

Yeah, it's amazing when you open your eyes to natural. And when you look at the data, really is what you do is you look the data and you see what are we deficient in, whether it's a nutrient or whether it's an allergic reaction or we're causing antibodies or harm that's attacking things. Shouldn't we know? Shouldn't we look at the data and find out?

Right. So one of the things that you indicated was inflammation. And pretty much, you know, the way that we look at, you know, something that can cause any type of reaction is something you eat, something you drink, something you right, have been exposed to something electromagnetic. And right, so when you're, when you're looking at inflammation, what are you actually looking at? I know there's markers, I know there's tests, but what is actually, from your interpretation, going on when a person is exposed to something that causes that?

So, um, there's so many things that could lead to systemic inflammation. So as you, uh, pointed out, it's something you could be breathing. You know, I'm going to give you a great example because this will explain this. So I work with the world-famous professional golfer Freddie Couples, and he came into my office. He wanted to lose some weight before the Masters. And so I said, yeah, don't worry about the weight loss. We'll take care of that. That's easy. But tell me about your famous back pain that you've been wheeled off and, you know, on gurneys off of golf courses. Tell me about this. What's going on? He goes, oh, I'm in pain every day. And, you know, he travels with a physical therapist. And I mean, it really takes, you know, a little bit of a village to put his back together every day. So he tells me all the stories and all the doctors he goes to. I said, well, tell me about the surgeries. He goes, I haven't had any surgeries. So I said, huh, so I'm sure there's a little bit of structural issue here because he's swinging a golf club all the time for, you know, a million years. But what about inflammation? I said, has anybody ever checked your inflammation markers? He said, I don't think so. So I ordered a battery of tests. And when he came in that day, I said, give me an idea how much pain you're in, right? From 1 to 10, you know, 10 being excruciating. He said, I'm a 7 or an 8 every day, no matter what.

Wow.

So I put him on my detox, my 14-day detox where you just eat real food, you take out the chemicals and you detoxify the pathways. And he came in that first week. I said, how you doing? You know, what's your number? He said, I'm a 4. And then the week after, and every week after I've ever seen him, he's always been a 0 or a 1. If he picks up a golf club. So incredible. What we did was we looked at all his inflammation markers, and it turned out, you know, this guy works on golf courses all day that are treated with chemicals. He lives on golf courses that are treated with chemicals, and he's been breathing these in for, for, as you know, since before he was in college, since high school. So it adds up. He had smell sensitivity, he had headaches. Um, he has a whole testimony in my book, but he's a perfect example of somebody who had major inflammation that every doctor all over the world and all the best doctors had overlooked. And they were trying to give him all these treatments and medication, and, but they weren't ever looking at the root cause. So we looked at the root cause and that's the stomach inflammation in his case came from a little bit of what he was eating, but it was mostly what he was breathing. Yeah. Yeah. So it can be stuff like that. Um, food is a huge driver of inflammation for sure. Uh, the unfortunate thing is when we dine out, most restaurants, and I don't even care how expensive this restaurant is or how beautiful it is or how Michelin-star-rated it is, we have a lot of inflammatory oils. And that is a huge driver today of our inflammation. Because how many times do you go out to dinner in a week? Or I should say, how many times do you eat out in a week? Right.

And prepared foods or whatever it may be.

Yeah, exactly. So even I was at Whole Foods the other day and I was looking because I'm always looking at the label and Now they've let canola oil in. So I don't buy any prepared foods there anymore. Is that canola oil is a huge inflammatory driver. It's cheap. It's cheaper than good quality oil. So that is why restaurants and markets use them. And that is a huge— if you could do one thing to improve your health today, it's that. We should be cooking at home where there's no chemicals and good oils and good fats and good quality food. I mean, we're being poisoned. Yeah. With our food.

That reminds me a story years ago when I started going down the rabbit hole of doing this, even more so than I thought I was ever gonna, you know, that I even knew existed. And I found out that there was someone who was going through all these different tests and still having major allergic reactions. They were eating clean, they were getting the most, like, the best quality meat, the best quality chicken, and still having allergic reactions to something. And it turns out it wasn't actually the food, it was actually a meat glue that was used to bind layers of meat together to make it be thicker for the, you know, the minimum sale price and to, right, to layer it within the— so it could be sold as a 3-ounce, you know, or at a 3-pound steak versus a 1-pound steak. And right, all of these binders and all of these things that are, so to speak, legal, safe, that are put out in the industry, even if it's marked organic, organic still may have some sensitivity and issues.

Absolutely. And plus the fact, if you couple that with leaky gut, then we've got these gaping holes that pretty much almost any protein is going to go through that hole and it's going to go in through the bloodstream. And the body says, who are you? You're coming in through the back door. And it starts to create antibodies. So there we are in a state of attack. And we do this long enough and sure enough, we have food intolerances, you mentioned, and inflammation, of course, because we're having a cytokine storm. But we do this long enough, and then we're diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, because we are in a perpetual state of attack.

Well, the terminology that you just used, cytokine storm, let's just break that down for a second, because that was something that was a major part of the pandemic that people really didn't focus enough on. And, you know, one of my mentors who is in the integrative medicine world is Ben, you know, he put out an op-ed that he wrote to, I think, to the New York Times about why, right, in addition to obviously those that are saying one side is, you know, we need to do this. He was saying we need to do this, right? AKA, like whatever the people, the average person needs for vaccinations, but why aren't we talking also about nutrition? Why aren't we talking about what needs to happen in order to reduce all that plus the concept of cytokine storm. So can you explain a little bit to those who have not heard what that phrase cytokine storm or cytokines—

there are cytokines, are enzymes that are produced in a state of inflammation. So a cytokine storm is basically when you're in full inflammation, systemic inflammation, and a lot of it is from leaky gut and that the body creates antigens that turn into antibodies that start to attack. We have our T-reg cells, which are immunity, right? We have Th1 and Th2. And when we become autoimmune, we activate our Th17, and that activates NF-kappaB and cytokines, and it's all an inflammation storm. And then that inflammation just goes around and around and around until we quell that, right? And so bread, sugar, dairy, and alcohol are going to absolutely help increase that inflammation. And food is a huge player in trying to dampening that. And then I use my Fab Five for anybody with autoimmune, which is glutathione, which is our master antioxidant, right? We should all be taking glutathione. I take copious amounts of glutathione. I have not gotten COVID. I am shocked. I mean, maybe not super shocked, but it's amazing to me because I have been around so many people, whether they're calling me going, oh, you're going to get it. I'm like, nope, I never I never get it. But that glutathione is our master protector, right? And then I'm a big fan of turmeric, of Turmeric Max and resveratrol. I have it with quercetin so that we can help get zinc into the cells. And Omega Max, my omega, which is really, really helpful for dampening inflammation. And of course, vitamin D. Vitamin D is critical for, for inflammation.

Yeah. If anybody, anybody who's ever listened to any episodes and people who know me know I scream Vitamin D from the top of my lungs. Um, and I think Dr. Vasquez has been one of the persons who's put out the most research on— in the functional medicine world, uh, about vitamin D. Uh, people are like— even people who have— if you have asthma and you're listening to this, or you know someone who has asthma, get their vitamin D levels checked. And you— I know, Rhys, you'll confirm this, that like the average lab, they'll tell you within normal limits is 30 to 40 for vitamin D. And when we're looking at it from the functional medicine numbers, as you were talking about before, about tightening up the numbers but also increasing the value, you're talking about 60 to 80 for that optimal functional levels.

I say 80 to 100.

Okay, so right, so, so even more so. So I know that at the beginning of the pandemic, I started— I was taking— I think my vitamin D was 33 at the beginning of the pandemic. So I immediately went to go check it once I started hearing this connection. I took 10,000 IUs a day, went up 1 point after 6 months.

Oh, wow. Did you not have vitamin K in there?

Oh, we did. Vitamin D, right? D3, vitamin K, right? So apparently it was—

and you live in Florida.

And I live in Florida, right? So go figure, because especially if you think you live closer to the equator or in a place where you're outside most of the time. One of my other guests just said that he moved from Boston to South Florida within the last 2 months and stopped taking his vitamin D because he's like, well, now I'm here, I'm outside, I'm running consistently throughout the, you know, pretty much on a daily basis. And he was taking vitamin D3 on a very high level. And his numbers dropped 30, 40 points within that timeframe.

Yep.

Even though he was exposed daily to vitamin D.

And right, because we used to get it in our soils.

Right.

We don't get it in our soils. Yeah.

So I found that like, well, there must be an absorption. So I switched over to high dose. I was, I was doing a liquid dropper of that sublingual, apparently wasn't making its way and being absorbed. So already had a look at that, what's going on there. But I immediately jumped to a 50,000 IU for 10 days straight and then jumped it down once a week, and my numbers went through the roof. So I'm now kind of balancing between 50,000 IUs twice a week, and it's been staying within that range with, you know, that functional range. But it's so interesting to see how many different mechanisms just vitamin D 3 alone?

Everything. Everything. We have a D receptor site in every single cell in the body. It's actually not a vitamin, it's a hormone, right? But it's critical for brain, gut, thyroid— huge for thyroid— immunity. It's anti-aging, anti-cancer, um, uh, everything we need. We cannot make bone without vitamin D. I don't care how much calcium you're eating or you're taking, we will not make bone without vitamin D. Correct.

And one of the funny, most interesting things that I found while doing my research is knowing that it was not just a vitamin, like you said, it's actually a hormone, is actually reproductive and health for men's erections. So my guess is if you find the average person who has been prescribed Viagra and you test their vitamin D3 levels, you're probably going to have a massive deficiency. And you give them high dosage, right? Clinical. Functional level doses of vitamin D, your problem— if there's not a psychological or trauma-based, physical trauma-based issue, elevated sugars, blood sugar, right, as well. But like, at least coming from that perspective alone, as a linear, you're probably going to see a lot of people are no longer going to need Viagra out there.

For sure, for sure.

But we can't sell that, right?

I know. Yeah. What would, what would they do for profit?

Right, exactly. So it's, it's interesting. So I know one of the things that are, you know, As you were talking about this, the first thing that came to my mind is some of the— during the pandemic, some of the things that people chose to do as hobbies during the pandemic was making a certain type of bread, was doing some type of Corona cocktail team, right? Cocktail Corona teenies. And right, so sugar, alcohol, and wheat, yeast, gluten, And these are the things that people were going and doing, right? We knew all the things that like, oh, I can't find sourdough starters and making, learning how to make new cocktails and right, the amount of baking and cooking, right? But they were doing it.

Baking aisle was barren.

Right. So all of these things that people were moving into to entertain themselves, that became little like, you know, cultish things that things were like actually out of at the grocery stores that people can buy were actually causing more harm. To us than—

Yeah, quarantine, the quarantine 15.

Yeah, right, if they're lucky.

Yeah, so, you know, it's so interesting to me because I thought this, this might happen. This might be the time where we actually talk about nutrition and we actually put together our immunity with our nutrition. With, you know, if people are thinking we're gonna die— I mean, I actually had a conversation with a family member, this is a true story, story, who said, I'm not leaving the house. And I said, well, I don't— and he said, I don't know how you do. And I said, well, I feel pretty confident. My vitamin D levels are up. I have a very acidic environment in my gut because at the end of the day, a virus cannot live in acid. So I make sure I take my digestive enzymes, my Enzymax, every day. And I take— my vitamin D level is good and all that. And so I'm not really scared I'm going to die. I might get it. I might get the flu. But I'm not gonna die, so I don't want to stop living my life and just stay in the house. And he said, well, are you asking me to change my diet?

How dare you?

I know. And I said, absolutely, I'm asking you to do that if you want to go out of the house and be safe. And he goes, well, I'm not going to do that. And I go, well, you better stay in then, because I'll tell you right now, your blood sugars are not good. You, you're going to be the one to get it, you know, and you're likely to have that cytokine storm. So It really is. I was hoping we would make that connection. And I'm so grateful for people like you, Jason, because you're telling the world that food matters. Right?

Absolutely matters.

Yeah.

And I see it as a therapist. It's so funny. I'm not sure if I told this story yet on one of the episodes. But at the beginning of the pandemic, I closed my office beginning of March. And because I actually knew a few people right off the bat beginning of March that they got sick, and then I was doing a retreat in North Carolina with a friend that we were hosting for some young entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs. Um, and I remember walking in at Target— this was in Asheville, North Carolina— and there were pallets of Clorox wipes in the aisles. Pallets, right? And we're like, all right, so this was— and everybody's like, all right, we'll get through this in a month, right? But that weekend I shut down my office. But previous to that, the office that I was in, my— I was the corner unit, and next to me was a psychiatrist. And all the years I was there, I don't think I've ever referred to a psychiatrist. I may have a neurologist that I love referring to because they were low dose. They're, let's get you on and get you off the medication as soon as possible. Also, let's talk about other integrative stuff. Amazing, amazing practitioner. Um, and so I've sent most of my clients that needed any type of medication or medication management to the neurologist because they're also going to do some skin— maybe if they need an MRI or whatever else will be right, not necessarily throwing a dart. So I remember, I don't remember when it was, how long before the pandemic, but I remember during a lunch break this person knocked on my door, the psychiatrist, and was holding a box of sodas, of cans, you know, cans in their hand. And I'm like, yeah, how are you? Good. Well, I bought the wrong ones for my office. I don't usually drink these. Do you want them for you or for your clients? And no joke, I'm like, what the fuck am I going to do with that crap? And she's like, what do you mean? Like, you don't drink soda? I'm like, no. She's like— I'm like, I'm like, I don't, I don't get this. I'm like, what about the chemicals? What about the, you know, the, the aspartame or the phenylalanine, whatever, phenylketonics, whatever, however you pronounce it? What do you mean? I'm like, it's a neurotoxin, and we know that it's a neurotoxin, and we know that it's going to cause all these other things. We know fake sugars cause inflammation and all these other things, and My job is to help my clients get well, not to give them chemicals, kill them, right? And it just didn't comprehend. She's like, well, but, but, but every once in a while it's okay to have it. And I'm like, okay, so if I go out and do coke and have a stripper write in and then go sleep with a stripper every once in a while, that's Okay, too. That's not what I mean. That's not what I'm like. But it's still a chemical. And it's still doing something that's harmful and putting myself in a harmful environment that might not be good for me. But once in a while, it's okay, right? And I was being a little bit—

9 grams of sugar, my—

right, right, right, right. And I was being a little— even if it was fake sugar, right? I was being a little bit of an a-hole on purpose. But it wasn't. But I was just so blown away because at this point in my career, doing the overlap a little bit of what you're doing, not going as down the rabbit hole and within the scope of my practice, I was just flabbergasted by that. This was just not a known— it's like, we're not talking about nutrition. We're not talking about food.

Go to a pediatrician's office, go to a dentist's office. They will give you candy. They will give you candy. Literally, the orthodontist, my kids got their braces off, they gave them a sugar daddy like this big. You know, you're just like, what?

I was watching West Wing. I was watching the West Wing. I go every little bit, I go through and watch West Wing again, which is my absolute favorite show. And there was an episode where the Surgeon General was talking about legalizing marijuana. And this was right in the late '90s, early 2000s, around Bill Clinton time. And she says something in the commentary on the show that like pisses off the administration, even though she was brought in by that administration. And at the end of the visit with the Deputy Chief of Staff, with Josh Lyman, you know, and he's like, listen, you got to quit because you— or you got to resign because we didn't like what you said about, you know, we're not yet there with legalizing it. And she refused. And she's like, hold on one second. And she tosses him a lollipop and she's like, don't forget, see the doctor, get a candy. And I'm like, oh my— like, this was early, right? What, it was early 2000s? Yeah, exactly what you're saying. But I do realize, like, the inconsistencies.

I don't even know. I don't think it comes from malice. I think it is, it's just a lack of education. And hopefully that conversation you had with your psychiatrist neighbor—

probably not.

Well, if I planted a seed is what I hope. And I hope that, that people understand that there is that connection. And when I was in the— the last time I took my son years ago to the pediatrician. He was just had to go in for a check for so he could play a sport. And so we went in and the receptionist, the front person was there and grossly obese and sitting there and she said, well, would you like a lollipop? And my son said, no, thank you. And I said, hmm, I wonder. I go, oh, so sugar for him or something. And she goes, oh, no, no, they're sugar-free. And I go, Hmm, I wonder what they're sweetened with. And she didn't respond. I'm sure she didn't even really listen, but I just wanted to plant that seed. Like, you know, with this green and red and blue, bright blue, right? Lollipops. What chemicals are in there? And what are we doing? Right? Like—

Well, just the cognitive dissonance of brand awareness, right? And when I talk about brand awareness, I'm talking about like, if you're a medical practitioner and you're talking about healthcare, and yet your staff does not look within— and I'm not talking about fat shaming and people who are doing all the right things, right? And that's a whole different conversation for a different time. But if you yourself are bringing these things in and allowing your staff to share this with clients or patients, or that this is brand representation, or that your own staff isn't doing the things that you yourself are helping the public with, then there's, there's some massive cognitive dissonance that's going on in the world and the environment. Yeah, it's a value system thing. But, and I love talking about like values-based decision-making and, you know, who gets onto your red carpet, whether it's your patients or clients or even your staff. But I don't, you know, it's something that I've become much more of a passionate advocate about, about having that be consistent from the time you walk into the door to the time you leave, versus like what's going on And I'm not a perfect specimen of health. I'm a work in progress, because I've been trying to figure out all these different complex layers. And I advocate for all of this, but I'm sitting here drinking in my stainless steel water bottle with 3 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar.

Good boy.

Stainless steel water, right? So it's the little things that do add up over time. But it's what direction are we leaning in? And it does frustrate me, right? Especially as a therapist, we don't talk about nutrition. It's interesting when I started doing, uh, some more training and, and CEUs. Like I said to you, I'm one of the few therapists that I know of that have been allowed to take these clinical nutrition trainings that are usually for acupuncturists or chiropractors. But because of my NET training, they've let me in because I came out of that world, um, and can— right, from all the big supplement companies, Apex and Standard Process, Design, right, all those different companies. Um, but I find that frustration that I have is when you talk about the word systemic, we're looking at what's going on systemically. My training as a therapist was systemic. But yet we never talk or we're trained to talk about in the biopsychosocial, tell me more about your diet, tell me more. We were talking maybe about socioeconomic impact of are they buying junk food versus are they buying more healthy natural food. But that was the lay— that was the That was the top layer that it got to.

Yeah. And that is a huge issue. I mean, my mother is a psychoanalyst, double PhD. She deals with— she has a very booming practice and has been doing it for decades. And we talk, we have this conversation all the time. So because they don't really— that whole philosophy is not interactive with nutrition. And we know that 90% of our serotonin, our happy hormone, is produced in our gut. We know that we have— when we have leaky gut, we have leaky brain. We know that, you know, depression, all of those things can stem from MTHFR gene mutation. It can be genetic, it can be nutritional. I mean, I deal with— I can't tell you how many young adults I deal with from 16 to 25 that really suffer from anxiety. And these are the people who are ordering in almost every single meal. How many real, good, homemade meals do they get in a week? Maybe 1 or 2. But for the most part, they are grabbing, going, coffee, you know, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, and they're depressed and anxious. I can't imagine why.

Right. It's that vicious cycle of, like, going back to the pandemic of, "I'm so stressed out, so I'm going to have a drink," or even no matter what, at the end of the day. But we know that when you're drinking, right, your vitamin B levels get decreased. And you know that higher preponderance of alcoholism is correlated not only to trauma and other things, but also because there— you might have a predisposition because you have a lack of certain nutrients and certain vitamins and minerals in your body that are causing certain cravings. So that vitamin B loop is— I drink because I'm vitamin B deficient, and I'm vitamin B deficient because I drink, and I can't handle my stress, so therefore I need more drinking, so therefore I cause more vitamin B deficiency. Exactly.

So that loop right there. Right. Because we eat up all our B vitamins in our intestinal lining. And B is super, super critical for our methylation process, for us to be able to detoxify on our own. So if your homocysteine is elevated, I mean, good luck to you. You're not going to be able to detoxify. So you're just reabsorbing. And that could be depression, you know, lead to depression right there. And then we have, you know, we put these kids or anybody on SSRIs and they block block B vitamins. Antacids, Nexium, Prilosec, omeprazole, PPIs, they all block B vitamins. Tons of medications block B vitamins. Well, isn't that the vitamin we need so we're not depressed? And now we're taking medication that blocks it. It really is insanity. I mean, this is literally insanity. So, yeah, it's like crazy.

Like, I want to jump in on what you're saying really quickly because it's such a massive issue and I see this all the time because I always ask my clients, like, tell me about your bowels and tell me about your menstrual cycles and tell me about your reproductive stuff, right? Like stuff that the average therapist is not going to go in right away and do. And a lot of times you'll hear, right, there's GERD, there's acid reflux, and maybe they've taken a Prilosec or they're maybe taking a Zantac and all these things. And we know, besides the fact that there's been all these lawsuits for those things, but like I was mentioning before, the organic apple cider vinegar, right, with the mother in it. And how they're talking mostly about like, no, we want to— you probably have too much stomach acid, when in fact, the majority of the time, it's actually the opposite. You have too low stomach acid.

I have been doing this for a long time. I've seen thousands of patients, and I don't know if I've ever actually met anybody who has too much acid. It is all people who don't have enough. You've got heartburn, acid reflux, You've got, you've got probably too little acid. So taking an antacid shuts the faucet off further. So you're not creating any digestive enzymes. Well, open the door and put the grand opening sign and say, vacancy. Anybody can come live here because I don't have an acidic environment in which you can live. And I'll feed you bread, sugar, dairy, and alcohol so you can thrive and survive. And then what? Then you're riddled. Riddled. I had a patient come in. Fairly new patient. Maybe I've been working with her for maybe 2 or 3 months. She came in, has had chronic diarrhea her entire life. Her entire— I go, how long has this been? I can't remember a time when I didn't have it. I'm like, really? Like, as a kid? Chronic. So you think about the malabsorption she's been having because she's not absorbing her nutrients. But I'm like, oh, let's get to the root of this.

Yeah.

So I did a stool test with her. Sure enough, we got a great— I changed her diet. I cleaned her out. She started to have almost regular bowel movements, a a little bit, just a little bit, and then enough to— we could do the test. And so we got the test back and she was riddled with H. pylori and pathogens, and she was dysbiotic and had major overgrowth. And now she's complete— she's like so excited. I call her my poopin' rock star. She is amazing. She comes in every time and she has no diarrhea at all. So because we killed everything inside, right?

It's so fascinating how simple some of this is. And I know why people are like listening to this and like, but Jason, you're a therapist, like, and I know you've gone down the rabbit hole and like— but I'm so ardently a furious advocate for everything that you are talking about. I had a client that reached out to me, they were referred by— I don't even know how they got to me, but I think they were referred by someone who used to see me. And I told them I wouldn't even see them for their child until they went to a functional medicine person because I'm going to chart If you come to me, because you're going to insist that you need to see me upfront anyway, I'm still going to tell you the exact same thing. So please save yourself some money by not seeing me because I will not see you until after you get some of this stuff handled by a functional medicine person.

Right. Yeah. It, you know, it's, it's like you're swimming upstream. If you've got all these foundational issues, right? You've got systemic. I say to people all the time, they come in, they go, I just, I want to lose like 10 pounds. And I'm like, great. Let's take a look and see if we can, right? So I look at the 5 drivers of weight loss and where are those markers, right? So, you know, but most of the time, I mean, pretty much all the time, we have some major stuff going on. We've got either a virus, we've got inflammation, we've got thyroid dysfunction, we've got something. So I explain this to them. And I think this is exactly what you're saying is that we've got a fire in the basement. It is a raging fire in your basement of your house. You have got somebody on the 2nd floor saying, hey, hey, can you help me change the light bulb? And you are like, what? I have got a fire in the basement and I would be happy to change the light bulb if we can put the fire out, right? But so this is what you want. You want to lose 10 lbs.? Well, I am holding on to every resource I have got because I have got a fire in the basement. I am not letting go of anything.

Yeah, and I made that a prequalification for some Clients. Based on when they said— because I'm now really cleaning up my red carpet of who I see and who I don't see. But it's a prequalification. I'll ask if during the process that we're working together, will you, or are you open to working with these type of practitioners if I say it's an absolute necessity? And if it's anything but a yes, even if it's a, well, I'll think about it, then it's a no for me to work with them. Because I don't want to try to help a client with one hand tied behind my back and then A, one, take more money from them, B, not get anywhere, and C, like, really be frustrated because like, I knew what would help solve this in correlation with everything that I'm doing. And I can only do so much. Right. And I think that's really like where Dr. Walker— going back to like why I love NET so much— is that neuro-emotional technique is just a tool in a toolbox of what he calls the home run formula. And he describes it as like, if you imagine a baseball field and you put the issue on the pitcher's mound, you have to run all 4 bases and touch all 4 bases in order to get the home run. First base is the world of emotions. So it's talk therapy and, uh, right, that world of healing, but included neuro-emotional technique, right, would be a first base intervention. Second base is toxins and removing and helping the body process out toxins. So homeopathics and, and any other detox type products. Third base is nutrition when you're deficient, or you're having a lot of the stuff that you're talking about, right, which would be second and third base. And then home plate would be physical structural stuff. But you and I both know, based on what you told me about with your golfer, and I've seen this with other things, that emotions can cause a structural issue, emotions can cause an inability to digest, toxins can cause a structural issue, it could cause an emotional issue. So really, right, our trainings that have been out there previous to our perspective, this more encompassing systemic perspective, is you can't have one without the other. We need all of those components in order to hit that home run.

It's a comprehensive approach for sure. For sure. We're complicated. We're really complicated, you know? Yeah.

And yet the modern medicine, right, the allopathic world has split that up with, well, I only work from up to your ankle. Or I'll only focus on this one thing, but you're gonna have to go see somebody. And there's, you know, unfortunately, there's very— and I'm not, you know, you know that because there's some incredible, incredible, incredible practitioners out there.

We're not speaking pejoratively.

It's, it's broken that unfortunately it's being driven by insurance and all the other things.

Yeah, but I think it really starts in medical school.

Yeah.

I mean, I have a lot of doctors that I work with who come in here, they're surgeons. I said, do you want me to read the blood work with you, or do you want to take a look and ask me any questions? I've yet to have one doctor surgeon, everything, who has said to me, I'll take a look at it. They can't even order the blood work most of the time because they don't cover the inflammation markers I want to look at or some other things, right?

And this is what I've told some of my clients is that like, here's a list, because I have one of the lists from one of the supplement, you know, the functional medicine supplement companies that I, I PDF to all of my clients when they're doing their annuals or when like I'm getting stuck. I'm like, listen, let's just do this. And like, well, I'm not sure if my insurance will cover it. And I'm like, what's my primary care physician a few years ago said that to me. And I said, you know what, run it anyway. So if it's going to cost me whatever it's going to cost me, what's it going to cost me, $300, $400, $500, whatever it is, right? But I need to get these things done. And at that point, I didn't have access to someone who was just going to give me a script and run it, and I would just have a bulk rate, right? Not once has any insurance ever denied any of the tests that my primary care physician said, I'm not sure.

Oh, really?

Not once.

Wow.

A full comprehensive metabolic profile, right? CMP with thyroid and some of the vitamin Ds and vitamin Bs and all the ad— right? I mean, obviously, you might need to go to a specialist for certain ones because of coding issues.

Right.

But what I've advised my clients— obviously, I'm not saying legally, I'm not going to be held responsible for this, but I will tell you to say the following: don't worry about it, run it anyway.

Yeah, and I go direct through the lab, so my costs are way less. Than an insurance company. Way less. Um, the last time I tried to run it through my insurance company, I was like, you guys are stealing because I'd run the exact same panel and mine is like a fraction— not even just a little, like a fraction. Mine was like 80% less than theirs, which is crazy. No, it's criminal because there's, there's layers of people that need to get paid through that. So it's, it's, it's robbery really what it is. But yes, you should— I don't even go through my insurance company, I just pay cash and I pay just like everybody else does because it's not that expensive and you need to know. I'm not wanting to not know.

Absolutely. So let's talk about— so instead of stealing, let's add some value back, right?

Yes.

Which is your new book, Food Frame.

Yes. Very excited about my book. Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit like, you know, what— by obviously, you know, we've been talking about this and, you know, everybody who already knows and listened to other shows knows that I'm going to keep, you know, shoving this type of stuff every bunch of episodes down. If you're listening to this and you're subscribed to the show, know that you're going to be getting this over and over again, whether it's from the entrepreneurship side of— right, I talk about the business stuff, we talk about psychology, but again, I'm going to keep coming back over and over again to the functional side of things. So what are they going to get by going out and ordering this book today?

So, Food Frame, the subtitle is Diet Is a Four-Letter Word, is really It's everything that I've gleaned in all the years and the decades that I've been working with thousands and thousands of people. And I realized that not one diet type is right for everybody because we all have that friend, that neighbor, that colleague, that, you know, so-and-so who went on keto and lost, you know, 25 pounds in one week and you didn't, right? So we all know that story. And it's because that person has a very different genetic makeup and a different health status than you do. Right. That person might have some sugar dysregulation. You might not. That person might have a gallbladder and you might not. That person might have no problem digesting fats and you do. We'll see that on your stool test, your stool test. So I just, you know, when you, when you, all these books come out with this is the diet, take this out and eat this. And I'm like, what?

Right. A celery juice cleanse. Yeah, this is—

I mean, come on. I mean, I have had so many people from a non-medical person who's— yeah, from a non-medical person who doesn't see patients. So I, you know, and I have— can't tell you how many people I take off celery juice, that's the bloating stops, right? So anyway, and celery is good, it's really good for gout and stuff like that, but I would eat the celery because you don't want just the juice of the celery, you want the crystals. That's where what magic is. But anyway, don't get me started there. We don't need copious amounts of celery every day. Um, but we have these different ideas and, and fads and diet types that people are just desperate for help. And I get that. They come into my office, I'm often the last stop. They've been to every single doctor and nobody can help them. And I'm like, we're gonna find it because I am super determined. So what I do is I clear them out, I put them on my RGN detox right away for 14 days, and they're eating food, they're having collagen. It's not about starvation, but it's about opening up pathways and detoxifying. Yes, they're going to lose weight, but I— it's not a weight loss program. I always say weight loss is a side effect of wellness, and what I focus on is wellness. And so in the book, I put together— you start off with my detox because everybody needs to clean out their liver and their body and optimize their liver function. And then we get the, the data, we get your stool test, we get your blood test back. Or if you already have a diagnosis, we already know what your health status is and you should be eating, everybody should be eating according to their health status. So if they have elevated blood sugars, I'm going to recommend keto or paleo. If they have SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or they have IBS or IBD, irritable bowel syndrome or irritable bowel disease, I'm going to recommend low FODMAP. If you have autoimmune, which is a very growing community, which is very unfortunate. It is— the numbers are staggering. 50 million people in America. I mean, it's staggering. I am one of them, although I am 10 points away from reversing my Hashimoto's, and we do that in my office frequently. Um, but if you have autoimmune, I'm going to recommend the autoimmune protocol. So I highlight 6 different diet types according to what your health status is, right? We, we know that Spotify tells us what kind of music we like. We have HBO tell us what kind of movies we like. We should be eating custom in 2022 to what our diet, what our health status is. So, and I'm grateful I was endorsed by Dr. Stephen Gundry and Dr. Josh Axe, Suzanne Somers, and JJ Virgin. So, um, it's been great. I love it. It gives you a lot of help with labs and what to order for certain things and a ton, there's tons of recipes. There's about 7 recipes for each diet type that are easy, easy. I don't have a lot of time, but I always cook. I love good food. I do not want to waste any meal on bad food. So it's all good, healthy, and easy to do recipes.

That's amazing. And I know there's right now there's all these, like you said, these certain tests that are out there that people can sign up for. And there's the genetic stuff and all these different things. Does some of that stuff get answered and addressed in the book of what to do, what not to do, what to stay away from? And— what actually—

yeah, yeah. I talk a lot about MTHFR because that is a very big factor in our methylation process and our inflammation process and a lot of things, a lot of our health. So I talk a little bit about that, but I do a lot of genetic testing in my office. Um, and, um, I'm hoping that the future of medicine— I really hope by the time my grandkids are born, which I doubt it's going to happen, but I really hope so— that they take their blood and they say, okay, here's your genetic path. You have a high probability of going here, but you can make a left and not get there. And you have, you know, a high probability of this. And, you know, this is what you could happen, what could happen, what your genetics are likely to steer you towards if you do nothing.

Correct. And I think that's what's so cool, because I know a bunch of years ago I was at a conference for entrepreneurs, and Naveed Jain, who's one of the original Microsoft starters, and he created a company called Viome, which really focused on gut microbiome. And it's similar to some other stuff, but right, they, they do stool and blood analysis. They tell you what foods you should— what are your superfoods? What are the foods that you could have on the regular? What you should absolutely completely avoid? All these different biomarkers and all these other things. So there are companies out there, and obviously you have to do your research and know which ones are legitimate. And obviously, you know, and some will make supplement recommendations or make, you know, batch supplements. And knowing what you need specifically is always best to work one-on-one with a practitioner such as yourself. But I know that there's so much of a shift that's finally starting to happen at that level. And what's so cool is that I've seen like something like that company, how the prices went down 50% in the last couple years because of the technologies, becoming more readily available because more people are doing it. So therefore, it's a value back to the clients.

Yeah, I mean, information is key. And if we have access to this information, we should know. We should know what is potentially down the pipeline, right? I have this image of my grandkids saying, "You mean you had no idea you were going to get cancer? That was a surprise?" Right? We should know that we have this high probability or You know, we should— we have that technology. It should be mandatory and customary for every single person in our country.

Yep. Right. Well, we know that, you know, with Chinese medicine, they're actually paid, you know, if you're— as long as you're not paid, right, for the sick care, you're paid for the well care, right? In China, especially when it comes to Chinese medicine, that you're getting paid when you're keeping your clients healthy. When you're not getting— when they're getting unhealthy, they don't get paid. Very different system.

Imagine that paradigm. Yeah. Our insurance company should be running that way. You know, instead, we're based on your zip code. What does that have to do with my health? Like, you know, you're going to make all the money on me. Why do I have to pay so much for those people who don't take supplements, who don't exercise, don't watch what they eat, right? I have to pay for them.

Correct. And the practitioners are also getting paid on the zip code.

Exactly.

Well, from the back end, which is one of the many, many reasons why I dropped all insurance panels, besides the fact that there's many unethical practices that they put us into to have to give a clinical diagnosis when one isn't A, required, or B, doesn't actually fit. But they won't cover certain things such as couples counseling as a diagnosis code. And therefore you have to give one partner a diagnosis in order for the sessions to get covered. And they'll tell them that it is covered to the client, but not the code. And they'll be like, well, have your practitioner find a code So they're basically asking us to do insurance fraud, which is disgusting.

Crazy.

So, yep. Yeah, that's what's out there. So for people who are wondering like, well, you know, I just want to use my insurance. Well, I want to let you know that make sure you know what diagnosis, especially if you're seeing a therapist and you're using your insurance, have that conversation with your practitioner. If they've not discussed with you what code they're— not just the CPT code, which is the timeframe, uh, code of, of what's happening as far as what your— but the diagnosis code and make sure you know that. So just a little, little side challenge that's been going on in the world. So as we, as we wrap up, number one, I know there's some really cool stuff. You have a bunch of different ways people to get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to find you? I know that the book, the book can be found pretty much everywhere.

Yeah, it's in Barnes Noble, Target, Amazon, and my website at RisaGruNutrition.com. The book is Food Frame. Diet is a Four-Letter Word. Um, and, uh, they can find me on all social media at Risa Groux Nutrition. It's R-I-S-A-G-R-O-U-X nutrition.com. And I just released a, uh, wonderful class that I am super proud of. I put all my heart and soul into called Achieving Optimal Thyroid Health because people really struggle with thyroid. I know I did. And I go through all the labs, what to look for, what to tell your doctor to order, everything you need to know about thyroid health. And get your health on track and feel better. Um, so I do a lot of that, and I work with a lot of autoimmune. I'm also an autoimmune, uh, certified coach, uh, on top of being a functional nutritionist. Yeah.

And I know one of the other things is the RGN plant-based detox.

I have a plant-based detox, and I have a collagen-based detox. And so I'm a big fan of collagen, really, really helpful. I call it grout for leaky gut. So I have collagen at least twice a day. I am just a huge fan of collagen and all the benefits of it and hair, skin, and nails and gut, joint pain, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, 14-day detox that pretty much everybody who walks in my door, we're starting off there to clean out the house and start the weight loss and the energy. I mean, I get so many people like yesterday, probably had 4 people who are like, my energy is through the roof and I'm not even drinking coffee. I love this.

It's incredible. And you've been gracious enough to offer a 10% discount for the plant-based, the RGN plant-based detox. And this will be— or for the collagen one. And it's— so if you want to, if you're interested and you want to partake in this and you just go to the website, the code would be WINNING, W-I-N-N-I-N-G-10. And that's going to be active from the release date. So look on the show notes and see when this show went live. It'll be active for 3 months from the release date of this episode. And again, it's right there, either the plant, the detoxes that you were just talking about. And obviously, if they have any other questions, they want to track you down, get the book, all that other stuff, please go to any of her websites and social media and all that other good stuff. So I'm really— I know you have to jump on to another client in the next few minutes, but I really want to thank you because this is, as you can hear, And see, this is, this is one of my favorite topics to, to get into and go deep down on a deep dive.

Jason, you're awesome. You're awesome. I love what you're doing.

Thank you so much.

Great. Yeah.