65. How He Reversed Autoimmune Illness Without More Protocols with Seamus Mullen

I want to take a quick break from today's episode to ask if you've ever felt overwhelmed by all the conflicting health advice out there. I get it. My name is Mona Sharma, celebrity nutritionist and that's why I put together with my colleague Dr. Mark Hyman, 12 Essential Wellness Tips, the foundational principles we live by to optimize energy, digestion and longevity. These are simple, science backed and rooted in ancient healing traditions. Register now to get your copy of the 12 tips@monasharma.com 12 tips before we dive into today's episode, did you know that your stress response is unique to you? Your hormones, your genetics, your lifestyle all play a role in how stress affects your body. My name is Mona Sharma, celebrity nutritionist and that's why I created the Stress Personality Quiz, a simple science backed tool to help you understand your stress type and how to manage it. Go ahead and take the quiz now@monasharma.com quiz. Welcome to Rooted in Wellness with me, wellness advocate and holistic nutritionist, Mona Sharma. Together we will take a journey to discover natural healing practices from imbalance to balance, guided by ancient wisdom and modern scientific insights. I was raised living summers on an ashram, so I learned early on that food is medicine and your kitchen is your greatest source of healthcare and prevention. After facing two heart surgeries, anxiety and weight challenges, I discovered that just because your symptoms are common doesn't mean that they are normal. Together with some incredible guests, we will explore the power of our mind, body and soul connection. Returning to our roots to rediscover our greatest well being. What if your chronic symptoms aren't a sign of failure but your body's last attempt to protect you? In this episode, I sit down with Seamus Mullen, an award winning chef, health coach and chronic illness thriver. To unpack the emotional, physical and spiritual layers of true healing, we explore how Seamus went from multiple near death experiences to autoimmune disease to a life rooted in vitality, intuition and deep self trust. Together we dive into what most wellness plans miss. The nervous system's role in recovery, the importance of slowing down and how food, movement and breath can become acts of remembering, not restriction. Seamus also shares the rituals and mindset shifts that helped him transform his relationship with his body and why healing isn't about becoming someone new, but coming home to who you were all along. Seamus Mullen is an award winning chef, health coach and author who transformed his life after near death experience and diagnosed autoimmune disease. Through his personal story. Seamus really reminds us that healing is possible even when it feels out of reach and that sometimes feels the most powerful medicine is believing in your ability to begin again. Let's dive in. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to take a moment to share something that's been a complete game changer in my wellness journey. Ifit, you know how passionate I am about the science behind everything we do for our health, from the supplements that we take to the way that we nourish our bodies. Well, that same level of scientific rigor is exactly what drew me to iFit. This isn't just another fitness app promising quick fixes or trendy workouts that fade away. What sets IFIT apart is their unwavering commitment to science backed fitness. Every single workout is carefully crafted by world class trainers and informed by real research. Whether I'm flowing through a Pilates session in my living room, getting my heart rate up with cardio or building strength with weights, which I love, I know that each movement, each sequence, each recovery, recovery period is designed with intention and backed by evidence. Some days I need that gentle movement to support my nervous system. Other days I'm ready to challenge myself with something more intense. Ifit understands that wellness isn't one size fits all, it's deeply personal. As someone who is incredibly selective about the brands that I align myself with, IFIT has earned my trust through their dedication to combining cutting edge science with accessibility. You've probably heard me talk about the importance of movement and consistency, and that's exactly why I love iFit. IFit delivers interactive science backed workouts with world class trainers for use at home, in the gym or on the go. Whether you're doing cardio, lifting weights or Pilates, every workout adapts to your needs and your goals. It's fitness informed by science and made personal. Learn more@ifit.com that's if I t.com. Welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

Thanks Mona. Thanks for having me because I've been wanting to do this for a long time, so I'm really, really thrilled.

Yay. So we're going to dive into so many things. You are a renowned chef, you are a healer, you're a leader in the wellness industry. You're an author. You've gone through an incredible journey. And to start off, we ask our guests, you know, this podcast is really about ancient wisdom in our modern world and how we can become more rooted. And when I say rooted, it's rooted in our health and our lifestyle and who we are, but also in this inner wisdom that we all have to know how to heal. So you as a practitioner and a leader in this space, do you have practices every day that help you feel more rooted?

Yeah, without a doubt. And it's funny because I. Practices are things that for me come and go in waves. And when it comes to like daily practices, I've noticed, like, if I look back, there's things that I was doing 15 years ago when I really got started on this journey that I no longer do and other things that I do religiously still, and they always kind of come in waves and come and go. But yeah, there are things that, like, for me, there's some non negotiables. Breathing is a non negotiable. And I think that's something that most of us need to learn how to do consciously. And that was a big part of my awakening and understanding that we have this medicine cabinet inside ourselves that we all can access. I think the breath is the most basic key to opening that medicine cabinet. So that's a non negotiable for me. I do it all the time. And even my wife Ricky and I were talking about this the other day. She noticed as we're driving, anytime that I'm not talking, I'm actually focusing on my breath. If I'm in the car, I'm doing breathing exercises, or if I'm sitting in the sauna, I'm conscious of my breath. I'm always trying to bring myself back to my breath. So that's a daily practice that keeps me super rooted. And there's a zillion other things we can talk about, but that's probably the most basic.

What I love about this question is no matter who's sitting in that chair, if you're a scientist, if you're an author, if you're no matter leader, everyone lists modalities that are free. The tools that help them feel their best to start their day are all these modalities that are free, rooted in how the body knows how to heal. So thank you for sharing that. Now, on the flip side, you know, I think that you're also sitting here because you recognize now when you're drifting from your rituals every day, I think that wellness today, and you might, I think we've actually talked about this. So many people are treating their wellness like a checklist. So they don't even notice that the things that they're checking off their list for wellness is actually the thing that is causing them to feel uprooted. So do you notice when you drift, are there certain habits that you go through, through your life that cause you to Feel uprooted. Do you recognize those signs?

Yeah, there. Sometimes it's really hard to recognize until you're pretty far off the path. Yeah, it's. It's like the frog being boiled in water. You don't really realize it until suddenly you're cooked. But I would say I've become more aware of seeing the signs, seeing the things where, okay, wait, this doesn't feel quite right, or maybe I feel a little sluggish or I'm not sleeping as well as I'd like to be sleeping. And that becomes a reminder to get back on focusing on my daily practices. But this, this past year has been a real struggle for me and I actually got pretty far off of things and went totally off the rails and had had some major health issues that I had to address. And getting back to the daily practice really, really helped me come back into center and, you know, reminded me of, of the importance of being, of taking. If we don't take care of ourselves, nobody's going to do it for us. You really got to, you got to take care of yourself first.

And thank you for sharing that too, because I think that a lot of times with the people who are sitting, having this conversation, they think that we've always arrived and that we are able to thrive consistently.

Yeah.

But I think that because we've kind to the rock bottom or we've been diagnosed with disease and we reverse those things, it's kind of the greatest driver. We are so in tune with the fact that you are the healer, but also nothing matters if you don't have your health. So over time as we drift and we get that note of like, oh my God, I'm here again. Shit. Okay, we gotta get back to the things that we know how to do to heal. Right.

We're not permanently unshakable.

You got it?

None of us are. So I, you know, I've seen it in, I've seen it happen in my own life many, many times where I've made great strides. And I think that one of the things that we forget about. I love that you said that we haven't arrived, because that's true. We're always arriving as part of that path that we're on. But health, like anything else in life, is spiralic. And there's moments where the one thing I can tell you, and I always remind myself this when I'm not feeling well, whether it's physically or emotionally not feeling that well, is that the one thing I know is that I'm going to feel better again. At some point, and I'm going to feel shitty again at some point. And that's just sort of the reality. And if you can make peace with that and then stop kind of associating negativity with the input rather than inflammation as an example, is just information. So if you can look at either sadness or anxiety or pain as information, that's an illustration of where you should be focusing your efforts. And. And a true belief that everything is a pendulum and you will get better if you believe that. That's the first fundamental step.

I love that you said that, because one of the biggest challenges with my clients is that when they get to a point, it's almost like this feeling, oh, oh, I'm here again. This is it. I'm sick. This is what I'm gonna feel like forever. Yesterday I felt like I arrived, and then today I felt like I did not at all. And here we are. So this is good timing for this conversation. Your story is one of the most inspiring ever. And I'll never forget when we met, we were at an event for Timeline Nutrition. We were speaking on a panel together with our dear friend Dr. Shah. And hearing your story and healing from autoimmune disease and rheumatoid arthritis obviously hit home. I don't even know if you know this about me, but my mother suffered from autoimmune since. Since I was born. So it's the most crippling, debilitating disease that is out there. And I know that a lot of doctors, when they diagnose the disease, it's kind of like it's written off, like, okay, good luck with that. Right. And here you are. You turned it around. So can you do me a favor, just for our audience, paint a picture of how you moved from chronic autoimmune, what life felt like then in your world, working at this high as a high profile chef, to the road towards vibrant health.

Yeah, I mean, it was. It was really challenging. I think the first part of the journey for me, which I think a lot of people who have struggled with RA or with Crohn's or other autoimmune dysfunction can relate to, I didn't know what was going on in my body. I just slowly felt as though my health was breaking down. And all through my 20s, I had a series of acute inflammatory attacks and different joints, it would move from one shoulder to the other shoulder, then I'd have it in my knee, then I'd have it in my hip. And they never would last more than three or four days. So it was really hard for me as like playing whack a mole and hard for me to understand that there was a correlation between all of it. So Also, this is 30 plus years ago. We were, I didn't, I wasn't thinking about my health at all. The conversations around autoimmune disease and lifestyle and all that stuff were very, very limited to small, small pockets of small communities. People weren't really talking about health in the way that it's now part of the general conversation. And then I was diagnosed. And when I was diagnosed, there was a bit of relief on my behalf. I felt like, okay, here's something I can hang my hat on. I understand what's going on. I had a series of rheumatologists that all said, don't worry, there's meds, you're going to be fine. You're going to be on these meds for the rest of your life. And if this doesn't work, we'll switch you to something else. And I think there was a part of me that liked the idea of being sick too, because it gave me an explanation and it also solidified me in the realm of being a victim, which was a very comfortable place to be. And I don't think I wanted to admit that. But outsourcing the responsibility of my wellbeing to professionals and outsourcing the, the reality of my discomfort to a disease took all of the responsibility off of me. And all I had to do was just show up, take the meds and say, this is why I feel like shit. And I was able to in that focus on my career, which I really did. I mean, I pushed, pushed myself, I opened tons of restaurants, I won a lot of awards, I did really, really well. But my body was totally breaking down. And by my mid-30s, mid to late 30s, I got to the point where it was really clear to me that if I didn't make some serious changes, I wasn't going to live for very long. In fact, I never, I didn't think when I was, I remember when I was 36 thinking that I would not live to see 40 and I almost didn't. In fact, I had a near death experience in 2012 and coming out of that, my heart stopped for nearly two minutes. And coming out of that experience, which was really one of the most spiritual and incredible experiences I've ever gone through, I made a commitment to focusing on my own well being. And I didn't know what that path would look like. But I started to learn as much as I could about Autoimmune dysfunction, leaky gut syndrome, which I dove into gut dysbiosis. All the sorts of things that, that I started to understand were probably drivers of my autoimmune dysfunction. And then over time and something that I've really, as I've formulated more of my own hypothesis around why AI happens by autoimmune disease happens, autoimmune dysfunction, I think a lot of it really is rooted around, around nervous system disruption. And I think that that's kind of the outer layer. So as I've sorted and I didn't, even when I first was on my journey in overcoming ra, I didn't realize that so many of the practices that I was adopting were actually nervous system regulating practices. I was just doing them because I was like, oh, I feel better if I do this. And this seems to, you know, being calm is important, managing stress, whatever that means.

Right.

And now I have a much clearer idea, understanding as to how specifically to manage stress from the outside and what that means and then the implications that has on my health.

Do you have a family history of ra?

Not that I'm aware of. My grandmother had arthritis in her shoulders and was never diagnosed with ra, but I think that she had ra. I think the way that it showed up, I think that's, I think that's probably what was going on. But I'm also, you know, I think that genetics is a. Plays a really small, small role in how disease presents itself.

I think so too. And it's funny, I love that you're sharing that and like, what a story. Also, I think we're talking about nervous system regulation a lot more these days, but EAs with medicine. Growing up at the ashram, something that an ayurvedic doctor would always talk about is anything to deal with the bones, especially with diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. It's the body storing unprocessed trauma and emotions within your bones. And with that insight, and the way that I look at my mother now and everything that she's gone through, and maybe for listeners too, if you know somebody who suffers from ra, the things that they were exposed to, the things that happened in their life, the way that they feel on the outside, my mom was the strongest person alive, I'm sure. You look like you were at the prime of your life. Everything was just working for you. We've become these masters of just muscling through it. Right. And I agree with you about the diagnosis. So many people are relieved when they get a diagnosis. I identified as somebody who had A heart condition. It's like, huh, yeah. Okay, good to know.

That's what happens. You end up identifying with it.

Yeah, yeah. But here you are. You change things around. So as you went down this tunnel of understanding leaky gut, which some doctors today are still disintegrating, by the way, isn't that crazy, learning about the impact of food on the body? Like, were you making the connection between the types of foods that you were eating?

Not initially. In fact, it was. My grandmother was the first one who said, you really should look at food. She said, listen, there's gotta be a correlation. And I went to my rheumatologist in 2006, 2007, and said, hey, what do you think about changing the way I'm eating? And across the board, the response I got was, well, if you think that it's going to make you feel better, I. E. Placebo effect, that is. It's all in your head. Which I think is great, because everything is actually psychosomatic, you know, when you think about it in reality, because pain is, you know, is top down and bottom up. But, yeah, no, I. I mean, I. It took me a while before I was. I was the one that's pushing my doctors to say, hey, is there a correlation? Is there a correlation? There's got to be some. There has to be some. Some relevance between the two. And of course, obviously there is, I.

Think, a good takeaway from your story that would really land with people. And I'm sure you work with clients of this capacity also. You and I became masters at kind of ignoring the symptoms until it moved and then it went somewhere else. And then something else came up, and then finally something just was a little bit more explosive that caused us to tune in, never ignoring the symptoms. And here we are, we're living in this world of modern medicine. And you've mentioned the prevalence of talking about inflammation and how that's the root of so many diseases that are out there. It's still kind of an umbrella term. But do you work with, like, a spectrum of clients who have different degrees of inflammation and 100. How do you help them recognize what that is?

I was actually just talking with someone I work with this morning who has been doing really, really well. And he just had. He was like. He just had a. Traveled on a business trip. He got off a plane and had really bad inflammation in one of the joints and his fingers. And he said to me, you know, I. I've been doing great. And, you know, the only thing I can think of is I went to Whole Foods. And I had this sushi and maybe the sushi, could it be that. And I am of the opinion that rather than. We tend to look for acute causes to acute responses. And I think that's really, I call this sort of transactional medicine. Goes all the way back to the idea that, oh, here's the problem, here's the solution. And if it's, you know, the problem with that mentality, it's the difference between germ theory and terrain theory, the problem with that, that, that mentality and everything that we do is ro interested in this idea of germ theory, which is what Louis Pasteur came up with. And our medicine, our whole medical system is based around that. And even in, in sort of non traditional healing pathways, you might say, oh, well then perhaps this food triggered that. And I look at it as. And when we're in horses, when we're talking with horses, there's this concept of the 13th rabbit that your horse can, can ride by 12 rabbits and it's totally fine. And then the 13th rabbit pops out and the horse bolts and freaks out. And there's nothing wrong with that rabbit. Isn't that rabbit. It's that along the way the horse's nervous system is becoming more and more elevated and then the 13th rabbit just pushes it out of its parasympathetic state into. And so in the case of, you know, the guy I was talking to this morning, my client that I was working with this morning, it might not necessarily be the whole food sushi thing that he had or whatever, but that was the 13th rabbit in this case, or it could have been. And that in sort of in concert with everyone that's going else that's going on. And that's why I love the concept of terrain there. If we think about the terrain.

Yeah.

So it's not the one acute issue issue or the one acute activity that causes the inflammation disruption. It's more likely that it is. We've elevated the entire baseline of inflammation so to a point where all it takes is, you know, the 13th rabbit to push you overboard and then the body's response is going to respond wherever it's weakest. So in his case, he has a history of inflammation in the joints of his hands. So it's likely that that's where it's going to happen. But if, you know, it could, it could show up anywhere. And that's, and that's kind of, that's where it comes back down to. And you helped me tremendously this, this winter, getting through, bringing down My terrain to bring down my baselines, systemic inflammation to a point where I wasn't having acute flare ups because I went through. I go through this too, and it's been a long time since I went through, like, really, really struggled, you know, And I, And I know what it's like having gone through it, but it's also, it's really helped me understand, oh, I got to bring everything down. We got to bring everything out. And that means it's not as simple as taking. You got to take this one supplement. It's about making sure you have really good sleep hygiene, making sure that nervous system regulation is in check, making sure all the, the, the nutritional inputs are making sense. And nothing is. Nothing is, Is too inflammatory. So whenever I have some work with someone who's got, boom, an acute flare up, it's time to reassess everything, bring everything back down, do a little bit of a reset.

You got it. I'm like, I'm getting giddy over here because you're, you're speaking my language and working with you through that. Yeah. As an outsider looking in, you can see it's this concept of accumulation. Like, oh, gosh, there's so many things that have just built up within you. You get to a point where it does become acute. And one of the first questions that I ask all of my clients is, who's part of your care team? And whenever I work with other people in the industry like you, who work as leaders in wellness, because we know so much, we often don't ask for help.

Absolutely. I mean, you nailed them. I mean, this winter, when I've gone through this winter, which was really challenging, really illustrated that for me because I'm not very good at asking for help. And I'm so grateful that one. I reached out to you because you've been incredibly helpful. Dave Asprey was super helpful. I have one that I work with who does myofascial work. She's been incredibly helpful. Mike from Motion, who turned me on to. Has become a great friend, really wonderful practitioner to work with. So, you know, I find people. Dr. Frank Lippman is a longtime friend of mine, has always been super helpful. Alejandro Younger has been great. So, yeah, I mean, I have people that I call out to when I, When I really need help. And I'm always amazed at how willing and open and helpful everyone is.

I love that.

I shouldn't be amazed, but I am.

Yeah. Shout out to Motion. Let's just shut them out. I think that they're the future.

Yeah.

Of healthcare. Because they address the nervous system first.

I love what motion does. Not only that, but they also, to your point, as you were talking about this idea of both ancient wisdom and modern technology, they. They really bring those two elements together in a beautiful way.

So if you don't mind sharing, then. So you went through the second with me. I went through mold two years ago, so that was my second wave of the intensity. Well, we see you've got inflammation. You know, it's such a buzzword. But when people who are listening, who are ignoring the signs, we talked about nervous system regulation and emotions that we could be holding onto. You went through something pretty extreme. Living through the LA fires, working with clients that you have. What are some of the exposures that you think that are an assault to our bodies?

I mean, I think, honestly, heavy metals, tap water is a big one. Air quality, mold, you know, generally speaking, I think we all could benefit from. I think Dr. Lustig always talks about protect the liver, heal. What does he say? Protect the liver, heal the gut. That's his mantra. And I think that that's like such an important thing. We overlook the importance of our detoxing pathways. And one of the things that I learned in my own experience is that also the lymphatic system is incredibly important. And when I was first diagnosed with ra, initially I was misdiagnosed, as they thought I had lymphoma and I had a massive cyst removed from my neck or a tumor from my neck, which of course was just a clump of lymph nodes that were taken out. And when you remove a huge part of your lymphatic system, the system doesn't work nearly as well and efficiently as it should. So for me, that's a big thing. Making sure that you're. And it can be something as simple. Like I have a daily practice of dry brushing in the sauna. And that really now really makes a big difference. It helps me sweat. I start sweating much more quickly in the sauna, which tells me that I'm, you know, I'm detoxing.

Yeah.

So I think making sure, being aware and understanding what that means, what you're. We may not even know what it feels like to. To be over toxified, if you will. But detoxing, you'll know it. I mean, I recently did a liver cleanse and my mood dramatically improved by day three.

Wow.

I felt so much better. And I think it's interesting. And, you know, in traditional Chinese medicine, they say you store anger in the liver, so just releasing that, which Makes sense, you know, releasing that. I felt so much better.

Yeah. So maybe for listeners, I always say, like, do an audit. If Shame and Seamus and I were at your house with you, if you're going to reduce your toxic load, going through your food, going through the areas of your house that cause you a little bit of tension or stress or anger, resentment, going through the products that you're using.

Yeah, that's a big one.

The exposure to toxins and chemical cleaners and makeup and gosh, I just did a full audit with a client yesterday. It was just. It's too much. And slowly, gradually, you notice to feel a difference and you get a little bit better sleep, or the inflammation goes down in your joints a little bit or you're digesting your food a little bit better. It's so important to do consistent audits because I don't know about you, but in our house, especially with kids, you start gathering more and more and more.

Stuff shows up and. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And also look at, I mean, one of the things that I often suggest with clients is look at the areas in which you could have the most exposure. Your skin is obviously a huge organ, probably the biggest organ in your body. So think about what are you, first of all, what are you wearing? And for men, and this is a big thing, but are you wearing, wearing cotton underwear? That's a real big one. You know, where. What, what else are you wearing? What are you, what is, what material is your clothing made of? If you're using deodorant, think about all your, your lymphatic system, which really, there's so many lymph nodes all around your, your armpits. So if you're using, you know, you're using deodorant that's got chemicals and has, has aluminum and all this, all the other garbage that's in it, what is that doing to your lymphatic system? Because we absorb so much right there. What are you. And down to. I mean, I'm a little, I'm a little freakish in that I think about what am I brushing my teeth with, what am I flossing my teeth with? Dental floss is another one, because there's, you know, we have so much plastic floating around our system.

It's wild.

And the vast majority of dental floss, like Glide dental floss, it's made of, made of plastics. So every time you're flossing your teeth, you're absorbing a little bit of plastic, and you can, you can go down rabbit holes and it can be exhausting but doing an audit every once in a while of the, the skin care products you have, your toothpaste, your, your toothbrush, even the bristles on your toothbrush. Like think about all of the ways in which you could unintentionally be consuming plastics. And that's a big one, you know.

But once you do the audit, it's done. You know, the plants that are safe. It takes you some time. It might be a bit of investment up front, but over time you know exactly what's safe for your house and your house becomes a kind of a sanctuary.

Yeah. And your habits too. That's the other part. Like Ricky and I have changed our sleep habits and I've, you know, over the years, for the past 15 years, I've gone back and forth about blue light blocking glasses and blah, blah, blah and all this stuff. And now, you know, I've realized just dimming the lights in the evening is a, is a great simple thing to do. You know, just making sure you're bringing all the lights down. You don't have to go so far as to changing the light bulbs, but if you want to, you can. But for us, dimming the lights, slowing down the evening, spending some time on the floor before going to bed. So we, you know, either we lie on a PEMF mat together or we do a little bit of red light or we stretch and roll around on the floor and we wear blue light blocking glasses in the evening and we kind of slow everything down. That makes the sleep quality so much better. And then she and I both sleep with eye masks and sound machine and we tape our mouths because we're, we want to make sure that we're more nasal breathing. It makes for awkward goodnight kiss, but other than that it's, it's, it's really helpful. And while that only seemed like a ton, once it becomes a part of your routine, it's just like, oh, this is, this is what you do and feels, feels really easy. And then the same thing with the morning. How do you start your day? And another simple thing to do is to put your phone on and turn the WI fi off. Put it on an airplane and put it in a different room and get a, either don't get an alarm clock at all or get a conventional alarm clock, like a wind up clock.

It's funny, there's so many layers, but all we're doing is we're kind of taking out the assaults of what consumerism and what modern living has really done to us to go back to roots and what I love about the story that you just shared. Thank you. We think about our restorative time as just the sleep time, but it's not. It's the couple hours prior to bed and then a couple hours after waking.

Right.

And what you're choosing to do in those times, and I think part of your journey, just as an outsider, the miracle that people need to be reminded of, of when you do those things for your body. Your body has the ability to heal, to function. You've optimized the terrain, your nervous system is primed. Your body feels safe. It can receive the benefits of everything that you're doing. So talk to us about what it means to live with regenerative health and how that really is kind of like the antithesis of modern medicine.

Yeah, I mean, I, I have this idea that I love this, that this, the idea of the regenerative human we are in the sense we are. As I think Alan Watts said, you're under, under no obligation to be the same person you were 10 minutes ago. And not only are you under no obligation, in fact, it's impossible for you to be the same person you were 10 years ago because we're constantly becoming new people.

Yeah.

Our, our cells, our mitochondria, everything is growing and changing and evolving. And the habitual actions that we take will impact how we evolve and in what direction we evolve. And that really to me is like the, the outermost layer of how we can continue to become the best versions of ourselves. We can be our own doctors. You look at, you know, you look at a dog, and when a dog isn't feeling well, it goes outside, it lies on the ground, maybe next to a tree and spreads out. It knows how to rebalance itself. Animals in the wild know how to care for themselves. We have kind of forgotten what it means to care for ourselves. And like the most basic way that we can care for ourselves, the single most basic thing we can do, is relearn how to breathe. That's the beginning. Once we've learned how to breathe again and how to truly make sure that we're slowing ourselves down, we're breathing consciously, we are breathing through our nose, which is so important, the next thing that we can do is we can give our body a break. I think fasting is one of the most incredibly successful medicinal interventions you can possibly have for nearly every malady. And it doesn't have to be an eight day, ten day water fast. But remarkable things happen in the body when you take the input of food out. We're all carrying around way more calories than we need at any given moment. We can certainly go 24, 36, 72 hours without food. And it's not easy necessarily. It takes training just like anything else. Learning how to breathe again is not easy. Learning how to ride a bike is not easy. Yoga is not easy. None of these things are easy. But it doesn't mean that we should be scared of them. In fact, leaning into the challenge of them, leaning into the difficulty is where we foster and create resilience and strength. So the idea of being regenerative really starts from the outside. It starts with breath, it calming the nervous system. And then with each layer in, we start with the breath and the nervous system, and then within that is the immune system. And then within that is our health. Once we get into that central area, that's where our health is. But we really have to learn how to calm the nervous system. And unfortunately, modern conveniences are all designed to captivate our attention. And as a result, we're being assaulted, as you said, we're constantly being assaulted with all of these things that are so tempting and they're hyper palatable in terms of food, that are hyper palatable in terms of media. Like we see them, we must consume them. It's very difficult not to see it. Even the environments in which that we live are all about temperature neutrality. They're very comfortable. Everything is for our convenience and comfort. And it has a long term detrimental impact on our well being. It erodes our resilience and it makes us really, really vulnerable to the next pathogen, the next person to cut you off in line, you know, the next unhealthy relationship that you have. It makes us really, really vulnerable. So fostering that strength comes from learning to regenerate.

I think that that's so beautiful. Have you ever been to an ashram before?

I haven't, no. But I know I want to go with you guys. Yeah, we would love that.

I have this concept of helping my clients build their ashram in their city, in their home. And what got me really excited about it is the fact that I kept saying, like, nobody has time to go away to an ashram for a week or two weeks or a month if you ever do. It's the ultimate wellness experience, I promise you. But everything that's taught there you can do in your own house. And when it comes to yoga, this big umbrella term of yoga that we now associate with just doing these asanas, these hard poses, yoga started with breath. And at the ashram, 35 minutes, 40 minutes of the yoga class, we start just with breath, and that's the tuning for the body. And for anyone listening who has never maybe are intimidated by breath work or it feels hard or yoga feels hard, I always say go for three to five classes and instead of focusing on how hard the class is, notice how you feel after. Because it's the feeling after all of these things that's the driver for you to go back. Right. And whenever you leave a yoga studio, I don't care what city you're in. We went to Istanbul, for crying out loud. And the first thing that you see when you get into a city center, you're marketed, you know, a food or a fast food restaurant, or looking this way or eating this way, it's like, despite your best efforts, wherever we go, there's like just more. Exactly. So I think it's important for people to recognize that, especially with your story and how you can make your body just kind of reverse or unlearn the impact of the assaults. So thank you for that. When we think or kind of just think about something that you speak to all the time, and it's never about painting a really terrible lens on the Western system, but I've heard you say that you've healed in some spite of the medical system. Can you elaborate on that?

Yeah, well, listen, we've all said this, but Western medicine is really, really good. When you have a bone sticking out.

Of your leg, you got it acute feeling.

Yeah. And that's. I think it goes all the way back to Louis Pasteur and the idea of germ theory. It's taking. Germ theory is essentially, if there's a pathogen and there's a solution to that pathogen and sort of like an antigen to that pathogen, and you isolate that and you have health. And that's. I think that's a. That is an incomplete view, a vision for, for healing. I think in the case of a bone sticking out of your leg, there is a very clear, acute issue to address. Now, what happens beyond that? On the other side of healing, that's a totally different story. This idea that I mentioned before of transactional health, where we have a problem, we go to a specialist, we go to a professional, and they tell us, okay, here's the solution to the problem. And too often the way that medicine has been practiced for the past, really, the past 40 years, 40 or 50 years, is that that has been a pharmacological intervention. And to actually look at the chemical compounds and what's happening in your body with so many pharmacological interventions, they may work to a degree, but at great expense. And I've seen in my own, my own health, when I was really, really sick with ra, I was on a biologic drug. I was on a number of different drugs, but I was on a biologic drug that was an immunosuppressant, so it suppressed my immune system. And I obviously, obviously, to me, I had dysbiosis in my gut, I had an imbalance of bacteria in my gut, and I had leaky gut syndrome. I got very, very sick with bacterial meningitis, and an infection went from my gut, bacteria went from my gut to my brain. And that only happened because I was being treated for conventional treatment for ra, which is to create a wet blanket on top the entire immune system, which essentially, not only did it suppress my immune system's ability to fight a bacterial infection that spread to my blood, but it also led to the bacterial infection. It created the weak junctures in my, the epithelial lining of my gut so the bacteria could pass into the bloodstream. And I've seen since then, with many, many other folks that struggle with autoimmune issues that when they follow a conventional path of symptomatic treatment, they get to, in Western medicine, they loved it, called disease management.

Yeah.

And my vision for health is not disease management, is thriving.

Yeah.

And to thrive really means to help the body learn to do what it's so good at, relearn to do what it's so good at, doing what we intuitively know the body. We are homeostasis seeking machines. And we're so good at healing ourselves. If we can just tap into some of that ancestral wisdom that is millennia old, that's part of our DNA. And again, that's why fasting, I think, is such an important step in so many, for so many issues, but particularly for autoimmune dysfunction and for cancer, I think they're incredible. Zero risk protocols that can pay huge dividends.

I'm with you. So let's talk about that and your experience fasting. The science is there, Right? But I think the science is also proving what ancient wisdom among so many cultures and prior to biblical times. Right. Has known all along. Now when we think about the gut microbiome that really has to digest everything from our emotions to our environment, to the food that we eat, to the water we consume, there's so many people out there who, whether it's digestive issues, irritability, heartburn, gas, brain fog, bloating, constipation, diarrhea like these are all symptoms That I think people have normalized or they've lived with it for so long that, oh, it's just so I am, you know, having a bowel movements two or three times a day. I actually had a client this week who, her doctor said that, oh, every three days, that's okay. That's still normal.

Oh my God.

Yeah. Meanwhile, her total toxic burden test came back with every single thing on it in red. Which is wild after years of living this way. Anyways, I digress. The point is, is that we cannot ignore these symptoms. Now through the power of fasting, what are we doing? Let's talk about what happens within the body. And how did you see the correlation between fasting and your symptoms?

Well, I mean the biggest thing is that it's the ultimate anti inflammatory diet because nearly everything that we eat can be inflammatory. When we are in a hyperinflammatory state, everything requires energy to break down. And the byproduct, some things, you know, as we've learned over the years through technology and trial and error, you know, corn is easier to digest if it's nixtamalized. Beans are easier, easier to digest if they're, if they're soaked and they're cooked for long periods of time. That doesn't necessarily mean they're easy to digest, but the key term word is easier to digest. So for someone who is in a heightened inflammatory state, you want to get rid of anything that is quote unquote easier to digest and literally just bring things down to things that are virtually, they're almost, they're the easiest things to possibly digest. And the easiest thing to digest are the calories that we're carrying on ourselves. Those are literally the easiest things to digest. So learning, retraining the body to have metabolic flexibility is really, really important to under so that our metabolic system understands how to access the surplus calories that we're carrying around in our white fat. That's, you know, that's, that's sort of the baseline. But what happens when we're fasting? It's incredible the things that happen when you're fasting in the first, in within the first 36 hours, our metabolic system shifts over. When you get to like 60 hours, your immune system starts shifting over. Everything is regenerating within our body the minute you give it a break. And I think that part of this is also overlooked often when we talk about it in medical terms is our emotional relationship with food also shifts. You come out of fasting with a very, very different relationship with food. And a lot of the things that before I fast, I found myself craving or eating more easily. The sugary, hyper palatable things that even though I'm pretty good, I'm still just as susceptible as anyone to wanting to eat potato chips and chocolate and stuff like that and ice cream and coming out of a fast. My desire for any food that is not really, really nourishing, it just goes away. And it's not like it's a challenge, like, oh, no, I'm not going to eat that. It's like my body actually doesn't want that in it.

Yeah.

And you start to have a very different relationship with food, which we eat for so many different reasons. And hunger is really kind of at the bottom of the list of reasons why we eat. So re. You know, rebooting that relationship with that emotional relationship with food, I think is. Is not to be overlooked as one of the powerful benefits of fasting.

I think we're still in this process of unlearning the imprinting that happened in the 60s, 70s and 80s around. We need to eat, we need to snack. It's normal to have three to six meals a day. Maybe some of it's backed by scarrity. I think a lot of it is backed by food cravings. I think if anyone has any type of craving that feels too intense, try fasting for even a day. Your taste buds are going to change because you're starving microbes within your gut microbiome. And I think that the science is still emerging, but based on just personal stories like this, the evidence is there, I think, that fasting for two, three days, personally, it's always been hard for me. It doesn't get easier for me. Fasting for 12 to 16 hours is kind of like my sweet spot. And it's something that we do in our household. But I think that there is really, it's like a moment of magic that everyone can tune into. If you're suffering from any symptoms, find a partner to fast with or a community or a group and do it together. That's when I was able to do it for you.

It's a lot easier if you're doing something else. Yeah.

And that was the proof. It's like, oh, okay. My sleep was interrupted because my metabolic system was shifting and I was in a deficit and stuff like that. But by the end of day two, more mental clarity and stop me if I'm wrong. But did you notice that things looked more in tune? You could see details. I felt like my eyesight.

You can walk on the wall and stand on the Ceiling. Yeah, it's usually for me it's day two to day three when that really kicks in.

Yeah.

My first experience was, my first serious fasting experience was in 2012 with my brother. And he had just done a one on one coaching session with Dave Asprey. And Dave was. Had just written the bulletproof diet and was bulletproof coffee. He had just started really pushing bulletproof coffee. And so my brother was like, listen, let's try this. Because he was very supportive of me and my journey. And I'd come out of having this near death experience. I'd started to feel better. I was still quite overweight, but I was. And I was still struggling, but I was like on my path now. And so my brother and I decided to do a 10 day water fast. And it was really, really hard. Yeah, the first three days were really, really hard. And then we hit our stride and it was like incredibly easy. And I don't even remember how much weight I lost. I lost a lot, like 18 pounds or something. And I never gained it back. And I just felt really, really, really good. I felt great. And in fact, we could have gone a little bit longer, but we were both like, no, we got to break this now. But it totally reset all of my cravings. It reset, totally reset my relationship with food. And that's actually stuck. And that was 13 years ago. It's stuck. And it's nice to know that that's a tool. And I just did. I did a 3 day fast or 4 day fast last week. And I only cut it short because it was my birthday and the kids wanted to have a birthday dinner with me. But I was like, oh, I'm in the groove now. This feels really, really good. I want to do more of this. So I'm going to do another one maybe next week, maybe just like three or four days. And I just noticed I felt so much better. My mobility increased, my sleep increased, I had more energy in the morning. I felt great. And the other thing that's interesting that I've noticed is that and I do regularly fast for 16 hours a day. I can be hungry and I can feel that, you know, that ghrelin growl. I can feel all of that, but have plenty of energy. And that's a difference from being hungry and having no energy and low energy. And that really has to do with normalizing your. And by normalizing I mean sort of balancing your blood sugar. And fasting is a great way to do that. If you're new to fasting, I highly suggest going slowly into it meaning start with 12 hours slowing down your sugar and carbon carbohydrate consumption, going more into protein based consumption. As you're getting closer to fasting, it'll just make it a lot easier. If you really are someone, someone who has a very fast metabolism and you eat a lot of carbohydrates and sugar, it's going to be really, really hard and you are going to experience that serious drop.

I think it gets you in tune with the actions and the foods that you're consuming that are really impacting your health and the drive that it has over you. I remember when I was younger, food, it has such a control over me. Like it would dictate if my day was good or bad. It would impact my mood. I was probably craving different types of foods all the time. But then that just dissipates. And what that does then is give you the control back. Right. It's no longer about these cravings. You're now the controller of your body and your health. And something that you alluded to that comes up on every podcast, which gets me so excited, is the optimization of your mitochondria. Like your body doesn't have to do all the work, which digestion takes a tremendous amount of energy. So when your body doesn't have to do that anymore, it's able to tune in. I think now, even with the studies around optimizing or increasing mitochondrial function through fasting, which intuitively doesn't make sense because you'd think that your body needs the energy from food, but your body's able to now kind of ignite mitochondrial function. Right, which gives you more energy and more.

Yeah, it's one of the best ways for simulating autophagy is through through calorie restriction or through, through fasting. And it's funny that that you mentioned that. Actually I was just speaking with someone recently who we were talking about fasting and she said and calorie restriction. And I actually think that calorie restriction is a lot harder than fasting.

Oh, for sure.

I think it's a much more difficult thing to do and less effective as a means for really thriving, particularly, you know, at the subcellular level. Fasting is like one of the best things you can possibly do. Obviously sauna and cold exposure and lifting heavy objects, those are all really good ways to stimulate autophagy. But fasting is really easy to do. At least short periods of fasting, 12 hours, super easy.

Good point. Have you ever done a fasting mimicking diet?

Yes, I have. Yeah, I've Tried that before.

My stomach was just growling me.

I found it so much more difficult. And a big part of the challenge I have with that is most of the fasting. Mimicking diets that are sort of designed, have a lot of carbohydrate in them.

Yeah. Yeah.

And.

Or it's fake food.

Or it's fake food. It's. Yeah, it's. It's ultra processed. Or processed food. Yeah.

I have to pause this episode to share something that's completely transformed how I feel every single day. And it all starts in my gut. I'm talking about Pendulum's Metabolic Daily and I'm genuinely obsessed with 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. And so much of that comes down to our gut microbiome. If you're constantly battling afternoon energy crashes, sugar cravings, and that sluggish feeling after meals, Metabolic Daily can change everything. This isn't your typical probiotic. It contains live Akkermansia municiphila. It's an incredible next generation strain that most of us are deficient in. It literally strengthens your gut lining and helps your body metabolize sugars and carbs so much more efficiently. What I love most is how it makes me feel. My energy is sustained throughout the day. I'm not constantly thinking about my next snack and I actually feel a little bit more full faster. It's like my body finally learned how to work with the food instead of against it. Plus my digestion has never been better. What sets Pendulum apart is the science. They were founded by PhD scientists and doctors with the Mayo Clinic as the their first investor. They're the first company in the US to bring live Akkermansia to market using DNA sequencing in an oxygen free facility. I'm so selective about supplements that I recommend and Metabolic Daily has earned a permanent spot in my routine and recommendation to my clients. Go to pendulumlife.com and use code Mona M O N A for 20% off all Pendulum membership first orders. That's pendulumlife.com with code Mona. Your gut and your energy levels will thank you. You mentioned horses earlier and I was at a lovely event with you and Dave Asprey at your home and the power of horses and ultimately just being in nature. I learned things about horses and nervous system regulation that I'd never heard of before. Can you talk to us about maybe if people have never had an experience to be around a horse. Craig rides too, so he knows the wisdom that comes with them.

Yep, he's got it. He's got the. He has the bug.

Yeah, but like, you know, the shake that happens that you mentioned with the horse and talk us through really ultimately the power of nature and being around animals.

Yeah, I mean horses are, or I used to think horses were really special animals and now I've really come to think that we're all special animals.

Yeah.

And horses just happen to have a really deep and long relationship with humans. And they're just, they, they're, they're really spectacular. One of you can't, you can't really hide anything from a horse there. We all have electromagnetic fields and horses have a much larger electromagnetic field than we have. So they can really sense what's going on with their nervous system often before we can and before. I mean, here. I digress. There's so much I want to say to this topic.

So I don't, I don't want to hear all of it.

So I, I have become totally obsessed with this idea of universal consciousness. That consciousness does not exist in the mind. That the mind is just a doorway into a greater consciousness that's always evolving and growing. In the same way that every time you use an AI bot, you're contributing to artificial intelligence and you're, you're feeding into it and you're creating, you know, it's getting smarter and building as it goes. I think all of our thoughts and all of our actions are contributing to a greater consciousness. And animals, because they for the most part are not linguistic in the way that human animals are. We're all animals communicate in a way that is much more external to their mind than, than us. And I think some of us. I don't know if you've listened to the telepathy tapes, but it's completely changed my life and I highly recommend that. It's mind blowing. I think some of us, it's a focus on non verbal autistic kids and their ability to communicate non verbally, but not just to each other in the same physical sphere, but across, transcending space and time. And it's absolutely incredible. And it's changed completely how I think about consciousness. But it's also illuminated so many things that I've experienced in my life. Like, oh, I was just thinking about you and there you are, you just showed up. Things like that, things that we, in our materialist world we write off as being coincidence or oh, isn't that cute? And I've really started to see that there. No, actually the more we practice these things, and I work on this with the horses a lot, like I practice thinking about the horses Trying to communicate with them. Sometimes I'll even just be driving in the car and I'll say, tell them out loud. I'll be home in 45 minutes, and I'll feed you when I get home, and I'll really think about them. And I'll pull into the driveway, and all of the horses will be standing there looking at me, just waiting for me. Or we have one horse who has one eye. She's a rescue horse, and I like to feed her away from the other horses. And I'll. Just the other day, I had this wonderful experience where I just kind of said to myself, red, go into the stall and wait for me. I'll feed you in there. And she just turned around and she walked, like, all the way around the corral into the stall and waited for me. And so there. I do believe that, you know, I used to think that horses were incredibly sensitive, and that's why they could tell when there was an earthquake coming or if the weather's going to change. It must, because of the change in the barometric pressure. I think it's less that sensitivity. It's more that they're just attuned to a greater consciousness that we as humans have kind of forgotten about. But where it really becomes relevant to us as we operate in this material world is their attunement to our nervous systems. They become these incredible mirrors that show us exactly where we are at any given point. And being with them is incredible because they're masters of getting from the sympathetic into the parasympathetic state. They are so good at distinguishing between real and perceived threat. And we, as humans tend to be really, really bad at that.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Then we get triggered, and we stay there.

And I saw this firsthand. So you did a beautiful demonstration with one of your horses. And I was really looking at it through the mirror of, you know, just human behavior. And, you know, there was, what, 20, 30 of us standing around, and you could just show or see. You could see when the nervous system of the horse was, like, shut down and nervous and not knowing what was happening. And then a caregiver stepped in and you were able to put them at ease, and you literally could see the shift. And, gosh, if we just had this awareness, I think, as kids growing up, how to attune our energy, how to recognize we're in a. In a dysregulated state, and the impact that that does to our physiology. And my kids are. They love watching things. They learn through experience. If I had exposed them to things like that when they were younger or if we had experienced that, how different life would be today. And this ties into such a big topic, which I love. Would you say that your healing journey ultimately became a spiritual experience for you? Because that's what it was for me and the people who know me and a lot of my clients, I love you. Who stayed with me the longest, they stay with me because the concept of the number on the scale or the six pack or whatever dissipated. They stepped into optimal health and what it meant to optimize the vessel. But then it became a spiritual journey and like trying to discover themselves and understanding their connection to consciousness and something that was so great. Can you share a bit about this massive concept?

Oh my gosh. So I am with you 100%. And my journey started as a mechanics journey where it was really about how do I hack my way to health. And you know, I need to get all the wearable devices and I need to monitor my sleep and check my blood ketones in the morning and what's my fasting insulin and step on the scale and do all of that. And those tools are all really, really can be really helpful for creating, you know, you know, when you're hiking on a mountain path, there's cairns, there's like these piles of stones that keep you on your path. All of those little tools are like cairns on your path. But they aren't, they aren't the solution, they aren't the path themselves. They're just way markers. And I think for me there has been a big shift and it's ever evolving my connection with horses and you mentioned something that's really beautiful which is co regulation because we are, we're co regulating animals. We start by co regulating in the womb with our mothers. We match our heart rate to her heart rate. We even match our microbiome to her microbiome. Our nervous system matches to her nervous system. And then we slowly, as we separate from our mother, we learn how to self regulate. But we never lose the need to also co regulate because we are, we are not solo animals. And I think that there's a spirituality in that and understanding that we can co regulate not only with, not only with our partners or with, with our friends or with our family, but we can also co regulate with, with animals. We can co regulate with nature and understanding that everything in, in this world that we exist in has a resonance. There's a vibration to everything. Whether it's a stone or it's a ripple of water. There's a vibration to everything and multiple vibrations. And we can. And that's. This is where the spirituality in it for me really comes in is when, when we can be observers of that resonance and then we can feel that resonance and then we can match our own resonance to that resonance or our, you know, in scientific terms, our autonomic nervous system. When we can co regulate to that reson resonance. That's when we are, we're returning to being a part of nature and not apart from nature.

You're making me think of this story because I agree with you and I really do think that the future of healing also people are going to understand, you know, vibration and frequency healing. And ultimately how when we're doing all the practice that you practices that you and I have mentioned, we're shifting our frequency into a different state, our body functions differently. The horse that you mentioned would probably never go to eat if it was in a dysregulated state. It would make sure that it was safe. You for first, right? So when Elijah was born, my son, I always say like he was my gift to kind of teach me how to love myself. Because healing felt very selfish. It felt like something was very external and protocols and doing and hardcore. Like the harder that I could go, the better I would do. And that's what I was meant to do. All of a sudden when I was pregnant with my son, I was so terrified of having a miscarriage. So I would be mindful of my thoughts. And sure enough, when he was born, he was born by an emergency C section. There was a younger nurse who gave me the heated blanket, those metallic blankets. And my body was in shock. I was just shaking like, oh, teeth chattering, everything. And finally this older Jamaican woman nurse comes in. She's like, give her her baby. And so I brought him into my arms and within seconds my body regulated. It was him that I needed and we kind of regulated together. And so that moment, going through that experience is always the awareness like, oh, you're out of. You're not regulated right now. What do I need? And I'm noticing with my kids also, if they're worked out or overwhelmed or whatever it is, it's just the regulation, like something about their frequency is asking for a change in their environment or necessity within that we have to tune into. And gosh, can we just do this as adults?

All I know we really need to, we need to like, we really have to return that idea. I mean, think about the resonance, that whole idea of even heartbeat, breathing. Those are like the, those are the sort of the biggest ones. But then there's the energetic resonance that we're not even aware of. And you mentioned something at the beginning and also shout out to Elijah, who's an incredibly cool kid and like just an amazing young human. And in spite of that shocking introduction to the world, it's a testament to how, because there's nothing, first of all, there's nothing more traumatic than being born and then you have emergency C section and being separated from your mother, like those are like major traumatic experiences that all humans go through a version of that. But being able to then learn how to co regulate, come back into self, you know, he's, he's a really, really cool kid. He's a sweet kid and he's got like an incredible energy to him. And I mean he is, he's really great. Of course you said something at the beginning of that, of what you were saying that, that really, really resonated with me, which was when you like a horse, that we were talking about the horse. If he's in a sympathetic state, that fight or flight state, he's not going to be able to eat, not going to think about eating. That I think is one of the biggest issues and biggest causes of ill health in our society today is that we are in a chronic state of sympathetic nervous system overdrive. And what actually happens in our bodies when we go into a sympathetic state, when the sympathetic nervous system takes over, blood is shunted from the digestive system, is shunted from the organs to the, to the soft tissue, to the muscles so that we can do those superhuman things to get us away from whatever the car crash, the line, whatever, you know, whatever, whatever the real threat is. And when that happens, we can't digest. If you think about like a horse in a sympathetic state, it's not going to think about stopping to eat and it wouldn't be able to. So therefore it doesn't need circulation, blood flow, oxygen going to its organs for digestion. And as soon as it's out of that state and it's back in safety, it comes back into a parasympathetic rest and digest state. And then it can eat and it can digest and it can get nutrients from the food that it's eating. But because we have so many inputs that are constantly putting us into a sympathetic state over and over and over again and our nervous system becomes sticky, it's not, it should glide easily in and out of sympathetic to, you know, you're parasympathetic to sympathetic. Oh no, I'm okay. You know, instead we're, like, constantly doing this. We're constantly being jolted into that sympathetic state. And as a result, we so many of us end up with. I mean, I think that that's a big driver of obesity, honestly. Metabolic dysfunction, metabolic dysfunction, gut dysfunction, gut dysbiosis, all of those things, really, because we are getting so locked into that sympathetic state over and over and over again. So I just wanted to touch on that.

Yeah, I love that you brought that up.

But that whole idea of CO regulation and the fact that. That Elijah was able to also be the co regulator to you, we. It's not that we are scared to put that responsibility on our children, but it's beautiful to be aware of the fact that our children are also part of our own medicine journey.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely.

And holding them close is as good for us as it is for them.

I agree. And you mentioned autism earlier. I work with a client who has an autistic daughter, and she's like, that little girl is doing God's work.

Of course.

Yeah.

That's the spirituality. Yep.

So for listeners, you know, when we think about this dysregulated state as being such a driver for frequency and imbalances within the body, for many of us, we're like, yeah, stress is not going anywhere anytime soon. Like, life is stressful. I'm looking at a lot of things, but we've mentioned some things.

I have to disagree with that.

Let's do that. Go there, please.

It's a choice.

Funny, because Dr. Zach Bush was here earlier, too. He had a completely change of lens also. So let's talk about the fact that it's a choice.

It's a choice. Everything in life is a choice. The relationships we are in are a choice. And that includes not just the relationships we have with people, but the relationship we have with ourselves, with our environment, with the foods that we eat, with the way we breathe, with the water we consume. They're all choices. And so many of us get comfortable and identify with being in a stress state. The number of times that I talk to people like, how are you doing? Oh, I'm good. I'm so busy. I'm so busy.

Yeah. Like, it's an emotion.

Yeah, exactly. Like. Like busy is an emotion. Exactly. Yeah. And I. I think it's really hard when you're in it to feel like it's a choice that you're choosing. But I guarantee you do a fast, it'll change. I mean, that's like. And the fast may not necessarily be a food fast, too. The fast could be like, let me do a fast from this project that I'm working on. Let me do a fast from this group of people that I always am communicating with that I don't feel good with afterwards. Because, you know, in the same way, once you start to. Once you start to reassess your relationship with food, you realize, oh, these foods. I don't feel great when I eat these foods. In fact, I don't think I want them. Same thing happens with people. Like, I don't feel great when I'm around these people. And that goes to resonance. Like, this person is not necessarily resonating with me, or I don't feel good resonance around them. You might want to choose not to spend as much time with that person. And it's. I don't mean to be trite, because it's. Everybody has really, really. Everyone's got challenging lives. That's the nature of being human. But there. There is a choice. And I think too often we identify with the stressed version of ourselves.

That's why we have to have these conversations. Because otherwise, busy and insanely busy and stressed just becomes the norm. Right. So that's a really great. Reframe. Reframe. What are you choosing every day? Is it a choice that you can change something else? Another concept that I'm working on that I've been working on with my clients is, you know, the lens that you have on. Right. If you're living in the lens of, I'm sick, I'm overweight, I can't change. I can't do any better. What would happen if you just try to change the lens for the day and just try on. What would it be like to make a different decision that day? Or maybe, you know, it might feel like you're being strict with yourself, but setting boundaries on the biggest areas in your life that are causing you the most harm or discomfort.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that probably the biggest one for most people is their telephone. Yeah, their. Their. Their. Their phone. It's not a telephone anymore. It used to be a telephone. If it only it were a telephone, it would be a lot better. Creating some boundaries around the phone is a huge thing.

Yeah.

And I don't think enough people really understand, or they may conceptually understand that the phone is a key driver of anxiety, but they don't understand just how much that's true. It's not just the content that they're consuming. It's the way in which the phone is constantly requiring a new energy reset and a new attention reset over and over. And over again. And we have it on ourselves. It's not even to mention to go into like the, the EMF waves. And we don't know what that does to us. And my main concern with like electromagnetic frequency is how does it affect our brain waves? How does it affect, you know, is it putting us into a big beta state? Like, is it putting. What state is it putting us into? How is it affecting our brain waves? So, you know, I, I'd rather not. I don't worry myself about getting mired in the science. Like, well, just let me create some boundaries with my phone. I don't look at it after 7 o' clock in the evening. I don't look at it until 8 o' clock in the morning. You know, things like that. Not only do I not look at it, it's turned off and it's away from me and then creating again just like fasting, fast from the phone. Can I do. What can I do today? Can I go on a hike this morning without my phone? Yeah, little things like that.

I forgot my phone on Sunday and it was such a gift.

It is a gift.

It's amazing. It is a gift. Science or not. I'm with you. Everyone here has experience being sold to, right? Whatever you're talking about around your phone, two seconds later you're getting pop ups for whatever that topic was. So like, be aware of that and be mindful. Shift the algorithm. Right. Talk more about spirituality. Give me quotes on love and healing and Richter.

Just say Alan Watts Ram Dass into your phone over and over again.

Yeah, let's reset the algorithm together. Oh my gosh. So much time has gone by. We haven't even talked about food. I'm sitting with one of the world's best chef. God, if this world could just experience your cooking.

Ah, thank you. They can. You actually, you can. I have a meal delivered. Toast. You can.

Okay, so first we're going to talk about your book and everything that you included in there. The fact that food is medicine is the foundation, where the food comes from is pillar. You make food look simple. You have so many recipes that for somebody, a nutritionist that doesn't love cooking, I find them really easy to follow. I think that it's your love and your energy that goes into a lot of things.

Also just trying to understand that it doesn't. You don't need to overcomplicate things.

Absolutely. So can you just share about the inspiration behind that? And like some of the recipes, everything's colorful. So we're talking about frequency today. Everything is colorful. Everything is simple. The ingredients are super tangible. Despite being one of the world's best chefs, talk to us about the inspiration and, like, the. You really put it in a cadence that was easy for people to follow. So although it's a healing food cookbook, it doesn't feel that way. It's something that I want to keep out for everyone to see.

Yeah, well, that's. I mean, that's. Thank you so much. That's really. Well, take all the compliments. It feels great. I just like with this whole idea of frequency. Another word I love is vibrancy. I think food should be vibrant. We eat with all of our senses. When you're cooking, you hear the food cooking. That's something that I try to always. Even when I was a young cook and I didn't really understand anything about health, I was just focused on, I want to be the best technical cook I can. I would always teach the cooks I worked with that we cook with all of our senses. You smell, you touch, you taste, you listen. That's really, really important listening. That's like one that we forget about, that there's the sound of cooking. The sound of, like, when you put a steak into the pan and you hear that sizzle, like, that's a real sound. When you crack a carrot with a knife, that's a real sound, and it's a unique sound that is literally specific to that very activity, and it elicits a memory. We have so many. Such a powerful relationship with food. Just thinking about food, we start to digest food. If you think about. I ask you to think about closing your eyes and biting into the juiciest, most incredible lemon. You've heard this before.

I knew you were going to say that.

Yeah, because I've done that. I've been doing this for years, and it always works. Immediately you feel at the back of your palate and the sides of your tongue, you start salivating.

Yeah.

And what most people don't really realize is those are digestive enzymes. That's where the digestive process begins. And it's also part of why acidity is such an important part of food, because it helps to stimulate digestion. Chewing mindfully, just being present with food is such an important thing. And it's easier to do when you take a moment to really appreciate what you're eating. And that's easier to do when what you're eating is actually really beautiful and delicious.

Yeah.

So, you know, there's some basic tenets when it comes to a relationship with food that are Non negotiables. For me, knowing what those ingredients are is at the most base level. And I think that that's really, really fundamentally important. Just know what you're cooking with. Have a sense as to where it comes from and where it's. Where it is, is somewhat indigenous, too, because there is no such thing as really being indigenous to any anywhere, because we are. We are nomads. And our food, or our food, our food's nomadic, too. It transcends any kind of border and culture. And then, you know, really trying to balance it. I. I remember having a chef once who taught me that food is like four points on a compass. And make sure you have, you know, you have acidity and you have saltiness and you have some sweetness, inherent sweet sweetness in it. And all of those things are. You have some fattiness. That's really, really important. But then texture and crunch. Again, we eat with. When you're eating, that sound of a carrot or celery in your ear that you hear inside your head is really, really unique to your experience with food. And food is nostalgic. So having, you know, digging up family recipes, and maybe they weren't the healthiest family recipes, but cleaning them up can be great.

They're just doable.

Yeah. So, yeah, I know. Food's really great. It's. That's a really wonderful part of being human because we do have a relationship with food that's very different from other animals relationships with food. It is cultural. It is in many ways, the language of culture. It's the first thing that whenever you go to a new place that anyone wants to show you that they're proud of is their food. It is so important. And we live in a land of abundance in so many ways. And getting back to that idea of choice, we can choose the foods that we eat. We can really choose good foods.

Yeah. And I love that you brought up just being curious about where your food comes from. Also, something I pray for is recognizing farmers as our first line of defense when it comes to our healthcare in the future. And they just were so far from that. So I started showing my kids just videos of how some foods are grown, and it gets them really in touch with kind of the miracle of food. As you were speaking, I thought, oh, my gosh, we should show them videos of amazing chefs cooking and the love affair that goes into that. Right. Because I think that kids are just so disconnected. They'll want to eat so much more than pasta and chicken nuggets and, like, the staples once they finally either get a taste or they feel inspired by something else.

And if they even get them cooking. And we, I cook with our kids all the time and they love, they love to help, they love to cook. And even things that they might have been somewhat apprehensive about eating if they've participated in making it totally change. And then suddenly they appreciate and love things that they wouldn't otherwise love. Yeah.

And tell us how people can eat your food.

So if you go to my website, which is seamusmullen.com, there's a link there for real food heals. Or you can go to seamusmullen.com realfoodheels and you can order directly from they're prepared meals. They're shipped twice a week fresh, never frozen, and all really, really delicious fiber and healthy food. So you can get it at home nationwide.

Incredible.

Yeah.

I'm just so happy. Thank you so much.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I could talk to you for hours.

There's a lot more we'll do. Episode two. Yeah. Because there's so much more that we can talk about.

Some rapid fire questions.

Yeah, hit me.

What's one way that you think that people are making healing and health too complicated?

Okay. Making healing and health too complicated. Looking at the data.

Looking at the data. Oh.

Instead of, instead of trusting how they feel.

Oh, I love that. What's your favorite ancient healing remedy?

Ancient healing bone broth.

Ah, good one. And if there's something about modern medicine that excites you, what would it be?

It would be the confluence of ancient wisdom and modern technology.

I love that. Welcome to the right place.

Exactly.

And if you could leave, tell our listeners what are you most excited about in the future? What are you looking forward to?

I love that the conversation around health and nutrition is, is front and center now and more and more people are paying attention to it. I love that it seems as though the conventional old guard of medicine is opening up to, into Asian wisdom. And I don't, you know, I love when I can talk to a neurologist and they're like, oh yeah, I get it. Like meditation is actually a really important thing for, for neuropathy, you know, and to hear that, that's, that really gives me, gives me hope. And when I, when I hear from rheumatologists asking me for, for help and guidance around food. In fact, I've, I helped a small cohort at UCSF with a pilot program that we started like five years ago for ulcerative colitis for a small group of people with ulcerative colitis, just following a food protocol and 85% of the cohort, which is like, it wasn't a huge group but it was enough that it was significant. It was like 60 people, 85% completely got off their medication within six months by just changing the way they're eating. So it's, it's, you know, it, it. I, I have a lot of hope that when we start to, to reevaluate our relationship with how we do life that so many of the issues of chronic illness that unfortunately we're exporting now to the greater world because it really, a lot of it comes from this industrialized food complex we have in the US there's so many people that are suffering unnecessarily and band aid pharmacological solutions are not solutions. They're interventions that can have a place, but they are not a long term solution. And we all have to remember that, you know, we have the ability to heal ourselves. Our bodies are incredible. As I said before, homeostasis seeking machines. We just have to get out of the way and you know, maybe look for the right teachers and keys to help unlock that pharmacy.

I couldn't agree more. You're such a perfect spokesperson to be doing this work. I think that you're not only redefining health, you're redefining what healthy eating and what health food food is. And knowing you personally, your mission is really driven by a desire to, to help people heal. And that comes off like it really does.

Thank you.

So thank you for the work that you do. I'm so excited for the year ahead. I'm so excited to have you back on. We're going to link out to everything for you below so people can stay connected to you, what you're doing. Thank you.

Thanks Mona. Sam.