Caroline Alan x Mona Sharma | LIVE Podcast Recording & AMA

All right, so we are trying something new, and we're going live as a way to kind of engage with our amazing audience at the same time. And we're going to publish everything and edit everything also with you. Here we go. Amazing. Well, I guess we will dive in. Caroline Allen, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

Thank you so much, Mona. It's so nice to be here with you.

So I have to say, you were the founder and CEO of Beam Minerals, One of my absolute. I'm late to the game. My greatest findings, I would say, of this year in terms of how I felt and things that I've added to my client protocols and stuff like that, because I've done the deep dive now into Minerals since meeting you, thanks to our dear friend Dr. Mindy Peltz, our super connector. So before we dive into all of that goodness and why everyone I'm learning should be taking minerals. Rooted in Wellness is all about ancient wisdom in our modern world and really how we can become more rooted. And when I say rooted, it's rooted in ourself and in our life and kind of this inner wisdom that we know that our body has to heal. So I always start off this episode by asking, what are a few rituals that you have in your life that help you feel really rooted?

Such a sweet question. The biggest one for me is that every morning when I first come to consciousness, I do a practice from something called ho', oponopono, which is I connect with my inner child, if you will. They call it the unhappili. And I talk to her about the day and what's going to be happening today. And I ask her what she needs today and what would help her, and if there's anything she really doesn't want to do. And, you know, we. We have a little conversation, negotiation, information sharing. Sometimes she's like, no, I don't want to do that. I'm not doing that. And. And then I have. And then what I've learned over the years is that if I actually listen and make that change, that everything flows in the day. If I try to force her, the subconscious part of myself to do something that's not in flow, I'm swimming upstream, and it's problematic. So that's my daily practice. That's one of my daily practices.

Carolyn, that is so special. You're one of the.

You.

You're the only one so far who said that. And I have to go deeper on that because it is so special. Was there a point in your life where you had to make the decision to do that inner child work, to be able to meet her again.

Yes. And it was not easy. So, you know, the first time that I tried this, it was actually at a ho' oponopono workshop, which I ended up. In the end, I ended up teaching ho', oponopono, which was not something I asked for, but I was asked to do it. But when I first went and I first did this exercise where you just. The whole part of the exercise is you sit with your inner child and she did not show up.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I had spent so many years kind of what I say, throwing her under the bus and making choices, forcing, disciplining, making myself do things, pleasing others instead of taking care of her, which is myself. You know, clearly at that time, there was a disintegration, and now there is integration. So I don't think of her as other, even though we do have these conversations. But it took actually several years before there was trust, and there was a sense that I would actually make different choices if it wasn't right, and I would take care of myself instead of others or a schedule.

It's so powerful. I ended up, after nutrition, getting into NLP because I realized on my first or second client calls, everyone was in tears talking about things that happened in their past life. And I know even for my own healing journey, the food and nutrition and what we put in is just this little piece. And the second we have the freedom to deal with the inner stuff that is driving the disorder decisions that we're making every day, that might not be in alignment, because I was an expert at repressing that little girl. Oh, I'll deal with you later. Don't want to hear that today. Right. I'll have you back to do an entire podcast on this. So thank you for sharing that. It's just. It's so special and so crucial to the work that has to come when you do healing. So with that awareness and the beautiful magic with ho', oponopono, now you know what you need to do in the morning as this grounding ritual and what I'm seeing today. In today's modern world, a lot of people are treating their wellness like a checklist, and they might have daily practices or rituals that are actually uprooting them. And for people like us who show up as these experts, I think that there's awareness. After you go through a healing journey, you notice when you drift from feeling rooted. Are there certain habits that happen in your life or things on your checklist that cause you to feel Uprooted, you.

Know, the biggest one has been travel. So I, for my work, I travel a huge amount. And one of the things, you know, so I had this experience is I'd have all these practices at home that were, you know, life giving in rooting and I would get on an airplane or pack my bag and they would go out the window. And I've changed those dramatically so that, you know, now when I go travel, when I arrive, I rent a car and I go to the grocery store. It's the first thing I do, you know, so. And that's just one of many things I, I bring a lot more stuff because I want to have those things that do take care of me. So I think travel is very, very hard. It's, you know, it's really come into my awareness how much fear exists in the container of travel. You just go to the airport, everyone's worried about making their flight and where they're going and do they have the right stuff and are they going to get fed and are they going to be comfortable? And there's so much fear. And I've just started, you know, really just talking to people in the airport. Hey, how are you doing today? What's going on? You know, and, and suddenly all the every, it's like, oh, there's a person. Oh, okay. Now it just lowers the stress level whether it's the flight attendant or the checkout check in people or somebody in line and we have a long line in the security line or whatever.

Yeah, the power of connection. And how beautiful too because travel is so uprooting from the food to the lack of sleep to the access to things that are on your wellness protocol to EMF exposure and all of those things. So that's a really, really good one to note.

And shet fuel I think is huge.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. But things that we need to be aware of and I asked that question so that people are aware of just thinking ahead for prevention. We talk about prevention. We. It's not always about adding more things in. It's about just being prepared ahead of time. So to dive right in, let's start at the beginning. Why is understanding minerals at a cellular level so critical for healing?

Well, you know, it's so beautiful because you started the conversation talking about the ancient. And the thing that we need to understand is if you look around the room that you're in, everything is made of minerals. All of the structure in your body is minerals. Every structural element in the universe is made of minerals. If you took all the water out of your body, you would be a little pile of minerals. So that's how fundamental minerals are to everything animate and inanimate. So that's the first piece of it. The second is that at a cellular level you have, your body has about 37 to 150 trillion cells in it, depending on your size. And inside of each cell are these little energy generating units or powerhouses. People call them powerhouses of the cell, the mitochondria. And there are a huge number of them. I want to give you a sense of scale so you can understand how much energy it takes for me to sit here and talk with you, move my hands to think as well as, you know, all of the hundreds of autonomic processes that are going on at any given moment in my body, all of them require energy and that all of, nearly all of that energy is generated by these mitochondria. Now, on the back of your arm, in a single cell, you might have one to 200 mitochondria in one cell in your heart that's pumping all the time. In one single cell, maybe 5 to 8,000 mitochondria. And in a single neuron in your brain, you could have upwards of 2 million mitochondria. So think about all of these mitochondria that are generating energy. And then you ask the question, or I ask, what fuels mitochondria? It's two things. Amino acids, many of which your body makes, synthesizes, and minerals, all of which have to come from the outside. That lays out the basic conceptual framework of why minerals are so important in the body.

When I think back to my own illness, any illness, I really think that mitochondria, although it's becoming a buzzword, I really think that it's going to become a framework that doctors are going to be required to assess. And we've had so many people talk about mitochondrial health and I, I can't wait for us to get to a point where we can actually test mitochondrial function in our different cells and stuff like that. But to your point, I think that we can say when we're focusing on practices that optimize mitochondrial function, we feel better. And the way that you that down so beautifully is understanding what the body is made out of and what it needs. And when I said before, like, we're so consumed about putting so much in instead of the function, we'll talk more about supplements. And I love the beautiful pairing that beam has with amino acids. Now I'm starting to understand it a little bit. But for our listeners, let's Maybe talk about, like, what are some of the everyday processes in our bodies that might be going wrong when we don't have. When we're sufficient in. Or, sorry, when we're deficient in minerals? What are some that people can look out for?

Yeah. So it's really important for people to understand that when the body does not have enough minerals to generate enough energy, it's like a city operating in a brownout. Okay. Your body's like a city operating in a brownout. So what does it do? It chooses the most important functions, and the other things start to go downhill, and you end up with chronic symptoms that include brain fog. Remember, in a single cell, 2 million mitochondria. If you don't have enough mineral fuel to fuel to provide the necessary components for energy generation in your brain, you will experience brain fog. You might experience depression, A feeling like there's a weight, like a fog, like a weight over your head. I mean, a cloud, certainly. Cramping. All cramping in the body. All cramping, whether it's a heart attack, menstrual cramps, or a leg cramp, is mineral deficiency in a local area. Okay. Then we have inflammation in the gut. So when you have inflammation or chronic inflammation really, of any type in the body is a sign of mineral deficiency because the body simply cannot generate enough energy to do the processes to remove the inflammation in that particular area. It says, well, we'll just keep the inflammation at a low level. So you end up with a chronic issue. Skin issues. All sorts of skin issues, whether they're, you know, psoriasis or eczema or just dull skin, are related to mineral deficiency. You know, really, my story, I think my personal story illustrates this really well. And if that would be a useful thing, I can tell.

Yeah, let's talk about it. Like the symptoms that you just mentioned, I think in a daily conversation, we might, you know, somebody that you speak to today is suffering from those symptoms. And I have yet to hear one person say, oh, you know, maybe I'm deficient in minerals. This is something that I really need to look into. I haven't heard that even as a nutritionist. So I think the power of story is so important. I think that everyone sitting in that chair that I interview, it's your story that brought you here. So please do share.

Yeah. So it was about closing in on 15 years ago, and I was coming out of a corporate career, and I had two young kids. I was working 50 hours a week. It was very intense. And at that time, I had Bad inflammation in my gut, even though I had been gluten free for seven years. But I was unable to get over the continual bloating, discomfort, and elimination issues. I could not sleep through the night. I would wake up three, four, five times a night. I had frequent urination, constant frequent urination. I had bad inflammation in my mouth. And this was really critical because I had very bad gingivitis, gum recession, and bone loss in my teeth. I had recurring sinus infections that came back every six weeks or so. Now, historically, I have. I have an autoimmune or I had an autoimmune condition growing up. I also had mold exposure, an intense mold exposure event. So I've had some things that were definitely attacking different aspects of my body or making, you know, creating this chronic hypersensitivity with my immune system. So at that time, I met my business partner and he. He handed me one day this little cup of liquid minerals. And I was like, what is this? And he's like, you know, maybe minerals would help you. I've got these minerals. So. And he had a small company, and he was selling essential oils and these minerals. And I tried them and they tasted like water. So I took them every day. And after two months, I, you know, I thought I might be starting to feel better. I was like, huh, you know, maybe I. Maybe I'm feeling a little better. And I went to the dentist, and she looked in my mouth after having my teeth cleaned with no bleeding, no, you know, pain. And she said, what's happened that the tissue in your. In your mouth is completely pink and healthy and the ph has completely changed? And I was like, huh, maybe it's these minerals. Then four months in, the other thing that I had was flatlined adrenals. They'd been flatlined for over a year. And I had been working with a naturopath on all sorts of different potential remedies to change this, and nothing had worked. My last appointment, she'd given me a prescription for hydrocortisone, which I was not going to take. We did the test, and she was reading the results, and they were one third of the way up the chart, not just a little bit, but one third with their natural sawtooth pattern, which is also an important aspect. And over the space of eight or nine months, all of the symptoms that I described to you resolved. And I was left with this huge, you know, curiosity. I mean, no one, I mean, I've spent. I've probably spent $100,000 on my health over many, many years trying to get better. And I. No one ever said, you know, do you maybe your mineral deficient. No one ever said that.

And were you doing any other protocol? You mentioned the naturopath that you're with, were you doing any other protocol at the same time?

I was doing all. Oh, you mean when I, I was do. I changed nothing. I changed nothing except for taking the minerals. That's the interesting thing. I will say that over time my diet did start to change over those eight or nine months because number one, my sugar cravings. I'm not a big sugar eater, but I ate a lot of fruit and I just started not wanting fruit. I just. So my diet started to naturally change rather than trying to change what I was eating. I just naturally started to choose different things. And also because I started sleeping through the night. Your cravings, I just. Well, also my energy started to return. You know, it's a, it's a cycle. You know, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. You give the foundational fuel. And now everything in the body, all the biosynthesis process of thyroid and hormones and, and sex hormones and you know, digestive enzymes and like all of like every biosynthesis process in the body requires minerals of different types, every single one.

And we'll dive into the fact that this is probably very much an issue of our modern world. But again, so you mentioned gut issues, which so many people suffer from frequent waking up throughout the night, which so many people suffer from frequent urination, which is interesting. I usually associate that with like food allergies and sensitivities, mold exposure, which is more prevalent, bleeding gums. And I'm thinking about even dental health of our children and adrenaline adrenals because so many people are so stressed today, all with this foundational aspect of minerals. And you mentioned the concentration. So we talked about the heart, the brain and also the concentration of mitochondria in our ovaries. So I'm thinking about all women with reproductive issues today or terrible pms. I don't think doctors are prescribing minerals either. So I wanted to hover in on that. Thank you for sharing your story. What, what a beautiful awakening too. Right? I love stories like that because I think women, society, we're so sick and tired of hearing about these insane hardcore protocols that people have to go on with insane fasting times and expensive procedures. When you really talked about one foundational truth to the body which is simply giving it what it needs. So thank you.

And what's kind of happened out of this is a realization that we've Been taught through our medical professionals and scientific, you know, perspective to think of our body more like a car. Like parts and pieces and systems and, you know, you need gas, add gas, you need oil. You know, things it like as if there's a tank for magnesium that you can just fill up every day.

Right.

What really became clear to me is that this body is a natural cellular ecosystem that is part of a much greater ecosystem of the Earth. We are actually part of the Earth's ecosystem. Inside our bodies, we have all these microbiomes that are smaller ecosystems. Even inside a cell is a separate ecosystem. The way that ecosystems work best is with small incremental changes and infusions over time. Large, huge changes in natural ecosystems are like earthquakes and volcanoes and forest fires and, you know, tsunamis, things that cause a lot of damage. So one of the things I'm really wanting people to begin to think about, and I talk about it in a book that I'm going to be that's being published next spring. I talk about this complete change of perspective to thinking about your body as an ecosystem. And like that practice of the una hapili, the child, each day being gentle and loving with it.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of the word nourish. How can we nourish our bodies a little bit more? And it's funny, as a practitioner, I keep going through this lesson. You know, I go deep into Eastern, and then I get caught in kind of the dangling carrot or the beautiful diamond of western medicine. And two years ago, when you and I first met, I shared. I went through mold toxicity, and sure enough, what did I do? I attacked the mold. I went through protocol after protocol after protocol, only to be left with, I would say, about a year and a half now of rebuilding my gut and healing my digestive system. I completely stripped my gut microbiome because I forgot that interconnectedness of everything. And funny, yesterday I did a video for my community to talk about the cellular ecosystem. I think that the foods that we get from the earth and fiber, it connects us to our ecosystem. And yet what we're consuming, what we're eating, we are so disconnected from. We don't even know where our food is grown anymore. But let's use that as a segue to understanding why in our modern world are we so deficient in minerals? You know, some people out there might say, well, you know what, Mona, Caroline? I'm eating my veggies every day, so this can't be me. I'm doing my part.

Yeah, and this is the sad thing. So a 2018 study was done, and they compared foods grown in 1950 with foods grown in the early 2000s. And what they found was a significant decrease in nutrient values, and particularly minerals, but even also protein, and a rise in carbohydrate levels. So the sad fact is, this is an absolute fact. You cannot get enough minerals from the foods you're eating, even if you're eating foods grown in your backyard organic garden. Because when this is the thing I want, this helps frame it. Okay. Because so many people say that. But let's understand it. When let's say you grow a baby in your uterus, all of the structure of that baby, remember, all structure is minerals. All of that structure comes from the minerals that are taken from your body to build that baby.

Yeah.

When a plant grows in the soil, whether it's a small little pea shoot or a huge, like, California redwood tree, all of its structure comes from minerals that are pulled from the soil via the roots. So when you now in nature, what happens is the plant grows, sooner or later it dies. And when it dies, it falls and it decomposes, and all of that mineral nutritional value goes back into the soil. But we cultivate, we grow plants in soil, we harvest them, we take them away, we store them, we eat them, and we dispose of their waste far away from where they were grown. And then those soils, over time, become mineral depleted. Now, one could say, well, why don't we just quickly just throw some minerals on the soil? And this is the problem, is it doesn't work like that. In the same way that it's not like, super easy to get minerals back into your body by adding pills and powders and mineral drinks. It's also not easy to get minerals back into the soil in a way that is bioavailable for the plant. And to exacerbate all of this, we're now drinking bottled, filtered distilled water.

Chlorinated. Yeah.

Or, well, hopefully filtered. So the chlorinate, chlorination has gone out. But many people do drink just tap water. Now, the one thing about tap water is it does have a lot of minerals, but it also potentially has all sorts of different toxicants, fluoride and fluoride, chlorine, etc. So we need to filter our water. But the problem in, and think about it, in nature, never in nature has there ever been water that was utilized by any cellular system that was devoid, that was empty, devoid of minerals. Mineral is a carrier. You know, I mean, I think it's Ayurveda that really Talks about water. It's a carrier molecule. That's power. Now if you take all the stuff that it's carrying out, it's no longer provides its full function in the body. So this is really, and this is what's really affecting children because kids are drinking lots of filtered and bottled water and they're really struggling with mineral deficiency. So they have brain fog, learning disabilities, cramping coming off the sports field, struggling with athletic, all sorts of issues and other chronic symptoms. I think I just read a thing today that since 1950s to today, in 1957% of children had chronic symptoms. 56% of all children today have chronic symptoms in the U.S. yeah.

Things that should be front page news that should just stop the world from functioning. Whenever we hear about these stats around children, it's just ridiculous. And another one of those is just the quality of our soil. We cannot survive unless we've got some nutrient density to our soil. And we know that through industrial farming practices, stripping our soil of minerals, it's really causing that depletion. So thank you for painting such a beautiful picture on that. So people understand and it ties into the concept of organic. Like if you were to think about walking onto a non organic farm and you think that the food is okay, but you see this farmer in a hazmat suit spraying everything, you know, covering his face so he's not inhaling it, but that's okay for us to consume. I think that the organic matter, the organic question, really, really matters. So it's important to think about the roots of it all. And the synergistic approach that you mentioned in these eastern traditions. I love that you brought up Ayurveda. They would never recommend a vitamin a mineral, an herb in its singular form, because of that synergistic approach. Right. Do you want to talk a little bit about that about like the synergy that you guys.